id stringlengths 2 8 | url stringlengths 31 139 | title stringlengths 1 87 | text stringlengths 10 247k | embedding list |
|---|---|---|---|---|
18297 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamentations%20%28disambiguation%29 | Lamentations (disambiguation) | The Book of Lamentations is part of the Old Testament or Pentateuch.
Lamentations may also refer to:
Lamentations (Solstice album), a 1994 album by British band Solstice
Lamentations (Ngaiire album), a 2014 album by Australian artist Ngaiire
Lamentations (Live at Shepherd's Bush Empire 2003), a live DVD by the band Opeth
"Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet" from the celebration of Tenebrae in Roman Catholic and certain other Christian denominations
The Holy Saturday Lamentation hymns in Eastern Orthodoxy
See also
Lament (disambiguation)
Lamentation (disambiguation)
Laments (Kochanowski) by 16th-century Polish poet Jan Kochanowski | [
0.03482009097933769,
1.2035956382751465,
-0.6707115173339844,
-0.6870824098587036,
-0.18401415646076202,
0.5271851420402527,
1.1305527687072754,
0.0617172047495842,
-0.17286479473114014,
-0.6092154383659363,
-0.35063236951828003,
0.5052886605262756,
-0.1820089966058731,
0.07844539731740952... |
18298 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar%20eclipse | Lunar eclipse | A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon moves into the Earth's shadow. This can occur only when the Sun, Earth, and Moon are exactly or very closely aligned (in syzygy) with Earth between the other two, and only on the night of a full moon. The type and length of a lunar eclipse depend on the Moon's proximity to either node of its orbit.
The reddish color of totally eclipsed Moon is caused by Earth completely blocking direct sunlight from reaching the Moon, with the only light reflected from the lunar surface has been refracted by Earth's atmosphere. This light appears reddish for the same reason that a sunset or sunrise does: the Rayleigh scattering of bluer light.
Unlike a solar eclipse, which can only be viewed from a relatively small area of the world, a lunar eclipse may be viewed from anywhere on the night side of Earth. A total lunar eclipse can last up to nearly 2 hours, while a total solar eclipse lasts only up to a few minutes at any given place, because the Moon's shadow is smaller. Also unlike solar eclipses, lunar eclipses are safe to view without any eye protection or special precautions, as they are dimmer than the full Moon.
For the date of the next eclipse, see .
Types of lunar eclipse
Earth's shadow can be divided into two distinctive parts: the umbra and penumbra. Earth totally occludes direct solar radiation within the umbra, the central region of the shadow. However, since the Sun's diameter appears about one-quarter of Earth's in the lunar sky, the planet only partially blocks direct sunlight within the penumbra, the outer portion of the shadow.
Penumbral lunar eclipse
This occurs when the Moon passes through Earth's penumbra. The penumbra causes a subtle dimming of the lunar surface, which is only visible to the naked eye when about 70% of the Moon's diameter has immersed into Earth's penumbra. A special type of penumbral eclipse is a total penumbral lunar eclipse, during which the Moon lies exclusively within Earth's penumbra. Total penumbral eclipses are rare, and when these occur, the portion of the Moon closest to the umbra may appear slightly darker than the rest of the lunar disk.
Partial lunar eclipse
This occurs when only a portion of the Moon enters Earth's umbra, while a total lunar eclipse occurs when the entire Moon enters the planet's umbra. The Moon's average orbital speed is about , or a little more than its diameter per hour, so totality may last up to nearly 107 minutes. Nevertheless, the total time between the first and the last contacts of the Moon's limb with Earth's shadow is much longer and could last up to 236 minutes.
Total lunar eclipse
This occurs when the moon falls entirely within the earth's umbra. Just prior to complete entry, the brightness of the lunar limb-- the curved edge of the moon still being hit by direct sunlight-- will cause the rest of the moon to appear comparatively dim. The moment the moon enters a complete eclipse, the entire surface will become more or less uniformly bright. Later, as the moon's opposite limb is struck by sunlight, the overall disk will again become obscured. This is because as viewed from the Earth, the brightness of a lunar limb is generally greater than that of the rest of the surface due to reflections from the many surface irregularities within the limb: sunlight striking these irregularities is always reflected back in greater quantities than that striking more central parts, and is why the edges of full moons generally appear brighter than the rest of the lunar surface. This is similar to the effect of velvet fabric over a convex curved surface which to an observer will appear darkest at the center of the curve. It will be true of any planetary body with little or no atmosphere and an irregular cratered surface (e.g., Mercury) when viewed opposite the Sun.
Central lunar eclipse
This is a total lunar eclipse during which the Moon passes through the centre of Earth's shadow, contacting the antisolar point. This type of lunar eclipse is relatively rare.
The relative distance of the Moon from Earth at the time of an eclipse can affect the eclipse's duration. In particular, when the Moon is near apogee, the farthest point from Earth in its orbit, its orbital speed is the slowest. The diameter of Earth's umbra does not decrease appreciably within the changes in the Moon's orbital distance. Thus, the concurrence of a totally eclipsed Moon near apogee will lengthen the duration of totality.
Selenelion
A selenelion or selenehelion, also called a horizontal eclipse, occurs where and when both the Sun and an eclipsed Moon can be observed at the same time. The event can only be observed just before sunset or just after sunrise, when both bodies will appear just above opposite horizons at nearly opposite points in the sky. A selenelion occurs during every total lunar eclipse-- it is an experience of the observer, not a planetary event separate from the lunar eclipse itself. Typically, observers on Earth located on high mountain ridges undergoing false sunrise or false sunset at the same moment of a total lunar eclipse will be able to experience it. Although during selenelion the Moon is completely within the Earth's umbra, both it and the Sun can be observed in the sky because atmospheric refraction causes each body to appear higher (i.e., more central) in the sky than its true geometric planetary position.
Timing
The timing of total lunar eclipses is determined by what are known as its "contacts" (moments of contact with Earth's shadow):
P1 (First contact): Beginning of the penumbral eclipse. Earth's penumbra touches the Moon's outer limb.
U1 (Second contact): Beginning of the partial eclipse. Earth's umbra touches the Moon's outer limb.
U2 (Third contact): Beginning of the total eclipse. The Moon's surface is entirely within Earth's umbra.
Greatest eclipse: The peak stage of the total eclipse. The Moon is at its closest to the center of Earth's umbra.
U3 (Fourth contact): End of the total eclipse. The Moon's outer limb exits Earth's umbra.
U4 (Fifth contact): End of the partial eclipse. Earth's umbra leaves the Moon's surface.
P4 (Sixth contact): End of the penumbral eclipse. Earth's penumbra no longer makes contact with the Moon.
Danjon scale
The following scale (the Danjon scale) was devised by André Danjon for rating the overall darkness of lunar eclipses:
L = 0: Very dark eclipse. Moon almost invisible, especially at mid-totality.
L = 1: Dark eclipse, gray or brownish in coloration. Details distinguishable only with difficulty.
L = 2: Deep red or rust-colored eclipse. Very dark central shadow, while outer edge of umbra is relatively bright.
L = 3: Brick-red eclipse. Umbral shadow usually has a bright or yellow rim.
L = 4: Very bright copper-red or orange eclipse. Umbral shadow is bluish and has a very bright rim.
Lunar versus solar eclipse
There is often confusion between a solar eclipse and a lunar eclipse. While both involve interactions between the Sun, Earth, and the Moon, they are very different in their interactions.
Lunar eclipse appearance
The Moon does not completely darken as it passes through the umbra because of the refraction of sunlight by Earth's atmosphere into the shadow cone; if Earth had no atmosphere, the Moon would be completely dark during the eclipse. The reddish coloration arises because sunlight reaching the Moon must pass through a long and dense layer of Earth's atmosphere, where it is scattered. Shorter wavelengths are more likely to be scattered by the air molecules and small particles; thus, the longer wavelengths predominate by the time the light rays have penetrated the atmosphere. Human vision perceives this resulting light as red. This is the same effect that causes sunsets and sunrises to turn the sky a reddish color. An alternative way of conceiving this scenario is to realize that, as viewed from the Moon, the Sun would appear to be setting (or rising) behind Earth.
The amount of refracted light depends on the amount of dust or clouds in the atmosphere; this also controls how much light is scattered. In general, the dustier the atmosphere, the more that other wavelengths of light will be removed (compared to red light), leaving the resulting light a deeper red color. This causes the resulting coppery-red hue of the Moon to vary from one eclipse to the next. Volcanoes are notable for expelling large quantities of dust into the atmosphere, and a large eruption shortly before an eclipse can have a large effect on the resulting color.
Lunar eclipse in culture
Several cultures have myths related to lunar eclipses or allude to the lunar eclipse as being a good or bad omen. The Egyptians saw the eclipse as a sow swallowing the Moon for a short time; other cultures view the eclipse as the Moon being swallowed by other animals, such as a jaguar in Mayan tradition, or a three legged toad in China. Some societies thought it was a demon swallowing the Moon, and that they could chase it away by throwing stones and curses at it. The Ancient Greeks correctly believed the Earth was round and used the shadow from the lunar eclipse as evidence. Some Hindus believe in the importance of bathing in the Ganges River following an eclipse because it will help to achieve salvation.
Inca
Similarly to the Mayans, the Inca believed that lunar eclipses occurred when a jaguar would eat the Moon, which is why a blood moon looks red. The Incans also believed that once the jaguar finished eating the Moon, it could come down and devour all the animals on Earth, so they would take spears and shout at the Moon to keep it away.
Mesopotamians
The ancient Mesopotamians believed that a lunar eclipse was when the Moon was being attacked by seven demons. This attack was more than just one on the Moon, however, for the Mesopotamians linked what happened in the sky with what happened on the land, and because the king of Mesopotamia represented the land, the seven demons were thought to be also attacking the king. In order to prevent this attack on the king, the Mesopotamians made someone pretend to be the king so they would be attacked instead of the true king. After the lunar eclipse was over, the substitute king was made to disappear (possibly by poisoning).
Chinese
In some Chinese cultures, people would ring bells to prevent a dragon or other wild animals from biting the Moon. In the nineteenth century, during a lunar eclipse, the Chinese navy fired its artillery because of this belief. During the Zhou Dynasty in the Book of Songs, the sight of a red Moon engulfed in darkness was believed to foreshadow famine or disease.
Blood moon
Certain lunar eclipses have been referred to as "blood moons" in popular articles but this is not a scientifically-recognized term. This term has been given two separate, but overlapping, meanings.
The first, and simpler, meaning relates to the reddish color a totally eclipsed Moon takes on to observers on Earth. As sunlight penetrates the atmosphere of Earth, the gaseous layer filters and refracts the rays in such a way that the green to violet wavelengths on the visible spectrum scatter more strongly than the red, thus giving the Moon a reddish cast.
The second meaning of "blood moon" has been derived from this apparent coloration by two fundamentalist Christian pastors, Mark Blitz and John Hagee. They claimed that the 2014–15 "lunar tetrad" of four lunar eclipses coinciding with the feasts of Passover and Tabernacles matched the "moon turning to blood" described in the Book of Joel of the Hebrew Bible. This tetrad was claimed to herald the Second Coming of Christ and the Rapture as described in the Book of Revelation on the date of the first of the eclipses in this sequence on April 15, 2014.
Occurrence
At least two lunar eclipses and as many as five occur every year, although total lunar eclipses are significantly less common. If the date and time of an eclipse is known, the occurrences of upcoming eclipses are predictable using an eclipse cycle, like the saros.
Recent and forthcoming lunar eclipses
Eclipses occur only during an eclipse season, when the Sun appears to pass near either node of the Moon's orbit.
See also
Lists of lunar eclipses and List of 21st-century lunar eclipses
Lunar occultation
Moon illusion
Orbit of the Moon
Solar eclipse
References
Further reading
Bao-Lin Liu, Canon of Lunar Eclipses 1500 B.C.-A.D. 3000. Willmann-Bell, Richmond VA, 1992
Jean Meeus and Hermann Mucke Canon of Lunar Eclipses -2002 to +2526 (3rd edition). Astronomisches Büro, Vienna, 1992
Espenak, F., Fifty Year Canon of Lunar Eclipses: 1986–2035. NASA Reference Publication 1216, 1989
Espenak, F. Thousand Year Canon of Lunar Eclipses 1501 to 2500, Astropixels Publishing, Portal AZ, 2014
External links
Lunar Eclipse Essentials: video from NASA
Animated explanation of the mechanics of a lunar eclipse, University of South Wales
U.S. Navy Lunar Eclipse Computer
NASA Lunar Eclipse Page
Search among the 12,064 lunar eclipses over five millennium and display interactive maps
Lunar Eclipses for Beginners
Tips on photographing the lunar eclipse from New York Institute of Photography
Astronomical events
Eclipses
Lunar observation | [
-0.41210851073265076,
0.11320119351148605,
0.2933991849422455,
-0.16979029774665833,
-0.15627533197402954,
-0.02324599400162697,
0.2786647379398346,
1.0259737968444824,
-0.35231587290763855,
-0.6769447922706604,
-0.3483869731426239,
-0.3925113081932068,
-0.47871047258377075,
0.338782846927... |
18303 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber%20Pontificalis | Liber Pontificalis | The Liber Pontificalis (Latin for 'pontifical book' or Book of the Popes) is a book of biographies of popes from Saint Peter until the 15th century. The original publication of the Liber Pontificalis stopped with Pope Adrian II (867–872) or Pope Stephen V (885–891), but it was later supplemented in a different style until Pope Eugene IV (1431–1447) and then Pope Pius II (1458–1464). Although quoted virtually uncritically from the 8th to 18th centuries, the Liber Pontificalis has undergone intense modern scholarly scrutiny. The work of the French priest Louis Duchesne (who compiled the major scholarly edition), and of others has highlighted some of the underlying redactional motivations of different sections, though such interests are so disparate and varied as to render improbable one popularizer's claim that it is an "unofficial instrument of pontifical propaganda."
The title Liber Pontificalis goes back to the 12th century, although it only became current in the 15th century, and the canonical title of the work since the edition of Duchesne in the 19th century. In the earliest extant manuscripts it is referred to as Liber episcopalis in quo continentur acta beatorum pontificum Urbis Romae ('episcopal book in which are contained the acts of the blessed pontiffs of the city of Rome') and later the Gesta or Chronica pontificum.
Authorship
During the Middle Ages, Saint Jerome was considered the author of all the biographies up until those of Pope Damasus I (366–383), based on an apocryphal letter between Saint Jerome and Pope Damasus published as a preface to the Medieval manuscripts. The attribution originated with Rabanus Maurus and is repeated by Martin of Opava, who extended the work into the 13th century. Other sources attribute the early work to Hegesippus and Irenaeus, having been continued by Eusebius of Caesarea.
In the 16th century, Onofrio Panvinio attributed the biographies after Damasus until Pope Nicholas I (858–867) to Anastasius Bibliothecarius; Anastasius continued to be cited as the author into the 17th century, although this attribution was disputed by the scholarship of Caesar Baronius, Ciampini, Schelstrate and others.
The modern interpretation, following that of Louis Duchesne, is that the Liber Pontificalis was gradually and unsystematically compiled, and that the authorship is impossible to determine, with a few exceptions (e.g. the biography of Pope Stephen II (752–757) to papal "Primicerius" Christopher; the biographies of Pope Nicholas I and Pope Adrian II (867–872) to Anastasius). Duchesne and others have viewed the beginning of the Liber Pontificalis up until the biographies of Pope Felix III (483–492) as the work of a single author, who was a contemporary of Pope Anastasius II (496-498), relying on Catalogus Liberianus, which in turn draws from the papal catalogue of Hippolytus of Rome, and the Leonine Catalogue, which is no longer extant. Most scholars believe the Liber Pontificalis was first compiled in the 5th or 6th century.
Because of the use of the vestiarium, the records of the papal treasury, some have hypothesized that the author of the early Liber Pontificalis was a clerk of the papal treasury. Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1788) summarised the scholarly consensus as being that the Liber Pontificalis was composed by "apostolic librarians and notaries of the viiith and ixth centuries" with only the most recent portion being composed by Anastasius.
Duchesne and others believe that the author of the first addition to the Liber Pontificalis was a contemporary of Pope Silverius (536–537), and that the author of another (not necessarily the second) addition was a contemporary of Pope Conon (686–687), with later popes being added individually and during their reigns or shortly after their deaths.
Content
The Liber Pontificalis originally only contained the names of the bishops of Rome and the durations of their pontificates. As enlarged in the 6th century, each biography consists of: the birth name of the pope and that of his father, place of birth, profession before elevation, length of pontificate, historical notes of varying thoroughness, major theological pronouncements and decrees, administrative milestones (including building campaigns, especially of Roman churches), ordinations, date of death, place of burial, and the duration of the ensuing sede vacante.
Pope Adrian II (867–872) is the last pope for which there are extant manuscripts of the original Liber Pontificalis: the biographies of Pope John VIII, Pope Marinus I, and Pope Adrian III are missing and the biography of Pope Stephen V (885–891) is incomplete. From Stephen V through the 10th and 11th centuries, the historical notes are extremely abbreviated, usually with only the pope's origin and reign duration.
Extension
It was only in the 12th century that the Liber Pontificalis was systematically continued, although papal biographies exist in the interim period in other sources.
Petrus Guillermi
Duchesne refers to the 12th-century work by Petrus Guillermi in 1142 at the monastery of St. Gilles (Diocese of Reims) as the Liber Pontificalis of Petrus Guillermi (son of William). Guillermi's version is mostly copied from other works with small additions or excisions from the papal biographies of Pandulf, nephew of Hugo of Alatri, which in turn was copied almost verbatim from the original Liber Pontificalis (with the notable exception of the biography of Pope Leo IX), then from other sources until Pope Honorius II (1124–1130), and with contemporary information from Pope Paschal II (1099–1118) to Pope Urban II (1088–1099).
Duchesne attributes all biographies from Pope Gregory VII to Urban II to Pandulf, while earlier historians like Giesebrecht and Watterich attributed the biographies of Gregory VII, Victor III, and Urban II to Petrus Pisanus, and the subsequent biographies to Pandulf. These biographies until those of Pope Martin IV (1281–1285) are extant only as revised by Petrus Guillermi in the manuscripts of the monastery of St. Gilles having been taken from the Chronicle of Martin of Opava.
Early in the 14th century, an unknown author built upon the continuation of Petrus Guillermi, adding the biographies of popes Martin IV (d. 1285) through John XXII (1316–1334), with information taken from the "Chronicon Pontificum" of Bernardus Guidonis, stopping abruptly in 1328.
Boso
Independently, the cardinal-nephew of Pope Adrian IV, Cardinal Boso intended to extend the Liber Pontificalis from where it left off with Stephen V, although his work was only published posthumously as the Gesta Romanorum Pontificum alongside the Liber Censuum of Pope Honorius III. Boso drew on Bonizo of Sutri for popes from John XII to Gregory VII, and wrote from his own experiences about the popes from Gelasius II (1118–1119) to Alexander III (1179–1181).
Western Schism
An independent continuation appeared in the reign of Pope Eugene IV (1431–1447), appending biographies from Pope Urban V (1362–1370) to Pope Martin V (1417–1431), encompassing the period of the Western Schism. A later recension of this continuation was expanded under Pope Eugene IV.
15th century
The two collections of papal biographies of the 15th century remain independent, although they may have been intended to be continuations of the Liber Pontificalis. The first extends from popes Benedict XII (1334–1342) to Martin V (1417–1431), or in one manuscript to Eugene IV (1431–1447). The second extends from Pope Urban VI (1378–1389) to Pope Pius II (1458–1464).
Editions
The Liber Pontificalis was first edited by Joannes Busaeus under the title Anastasii bibliothecarii Vitæ seu Gesta. Romanorum Pontificum (Mainz, 1602). A new edition, including the Historia ecclesiastica of Anastasius, was edited by Fabrotti (Paris, 1647). Another edition, editing the older Liber Pontificalis up to Pope Adrian II and adding Pope Stephen VI, was compiled by Fr. Bianchini (4 vols., Rome, 1718–35; a projected fifth volume did not appear). Muratori reprinted Bianchini's edition, adding the remaining popes through John XXII (Scriptores rerum Italicarum, III). Migne also republished Bianchini's edition, adding several appendixes (P. L., CXXVII-VIII).
Modern editions include those of Louis Duchesne (Liber Pontificalis. Texte, introduction et commentaire, 2 vols., Paris, 1886–92) and Theodor Mommsen (Gestorum Pontificum Romanorum pars I: Liber Pontificalis, Mon. Germ. hist., Berlin, 1898). Duchesne incorporates the Annales Romani (1044–1187) into his edition of the Liber Pontificalis, which otherwise relies on the two earliest known recensions of the work (530 and 687). Mommsen's edition is incomplete, extending only until 715. Translations and further commentaries appeared throughout the 20th century.
See also
List of popes
References
Editions
Davis, Raymond. The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis). Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 1989. . An English translation for general use, but not including scholarly notes.
Davis, Raymond. The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis). Second Edition. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2000. . Stops with Pope Constantine, 708–15; contains an extensive and up to date bibliography,
Davis, Raymond. "The Lives of the Eighth Century Popes." Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 1992. From 715 to 817.
Davis, Raymond. "The Lives of the Ninth Century Popes" Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 1989. From 817 to 891.
Further reading
External links
Anastasii Bibliothecarii Historia, de vitis romanorum pontificum a b. Petro apostolo usque ad Nicolaum I nunquam hactenus typis excusa. Deinde Vita Hadriani II et Stephani VI; full view of the 1602 editio princeps.
Full text from The Latin Library until Pope Felix IV (526–530)
Full text from Fontistoriche after Pope Felix IV (526–530) until Adrian I (772-795)
Full Latin text of best reading of different manuscripts
English Translation (Loomis, Louise Ropes 1916) until Pope Gregory I (590–604)
Documents of the Catholic Church
History of the papacy
Latin prose texts
Books about popes | [
0.41266071796417236,
-0.10267078876495361,
-0.22832271456718445,
0.043220844119787216,
-0.07919088006019592,
0.3716350793838501,
-0.36751672625541687,
0.41364893317222595,
-0.45138832926750183,
-0.6427637934684753,
-0.14525888860225677,
0.32219555974006653,
-0.1466350257396698,
0.023484980... |
18306 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin%20alphabet | Latin alphabet | The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language and its extensions used to write modern languages.
Etymology
The term Latin alphabet may refer to either the alphabet used to write Latin (as described in this article) or other alphabets based on the Latin script, which is the basic set of letters common to the various alphabets descended from the classical Latin alphabet, such as the English alphabet. These Latin-script alphabets may discard letters, like the Rotokas alphabet, or add new letters, like the Danish and Norwegian alphabets. Letter shapes have evolved over the centuries, including the development in Medieval Latin of lower-case, forms which did not exist in the Classical period alphabet.
Evolution
The Latin alphabet evolved from the visually similar Etruscan alphabet, which evolved from the Cumaean Greek version of the Greek alphabet, which was itself descended from the Phoenician alphabet, which in turn derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics. The Etruscans ruled early Rome; their alphabet evolved in Rome over successive centuries to produce the Latin alphabet.
During the Middle Ages, the Latin alphabet was used (sometimes with modifications) for writing Romance languages, which are direct descendants of Latin, as well as Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and some Slavic languages. With the age of colonialism and Christian evangelism, the Latin script spread beyond Europe, coming into use for writing indigenous American, Australian, Austronesian, Austroasiatic and African languages. More recently, linguists have also tended to prefer the Latin script or the International Phonetic Alphabet (itself largely based on the Latin script) when transcribing or creating written standards for non-European languages, such as the African reference alphabet.
Signs and abbreviations
Although Latin did not use diacritical signs, signs of truncation of words, often placed above the truncated word or at the end of it, were very common. Furthermore, abbreviations or smaller overlapping letters were often used. This was due to the fact that if the text was engraved on the stone, the number of letters to be written was reduced, while if it was written on paper or parchment, it saved precious space. This habit continued even in the Middle Ages. Hundreds of symbols and abbreviations exist, varying from century to century.
History
Origins
It is generally believed that the Latin alphabet used by the Romans was derived from the Old Italic alphabet used by the Etruscans.
That alphabet was derived from the Euboean alphabet used by the Cumae, which in turn was derived from the Phoenician alphabet.
Old Italic alphabet
Archaic Latin alphabet
Old Latin alphabet
Latin included 21 different characters. The letter was the western form of the Greek gamma, but it was used for the sounds and alike, possibly under the influence of Etruscan, which might have lacked any voiced plosives. Later, probably during the 3rd century BC, the letter – unneeded to write Latin properly – was replaced with the new letter , a modified with a small vertical stroke, which took its place in the alphabet. From then on, represented the voiced plosive , while was generally reserved for the voiceless plosive . The letter was used only rarely, in a small number of words such as Kalendae, often interchangeably with .
Classical Latin alphabet
After the Roman conquest of Greece in the 1st century BC, Latin adopted the Greek letters and (or readopted, in the latter case) to write Greek loanwords, placing them at the end of the alphabet. An attempt by the emperor Claudius to introduce three additional letters did not last. Thus it was during the classical Latin period that the Latin alphabet contained 23 letters:
The Latin names of some of these letters are disputed; for example, may have been called or . In general the Romans did not use the traditional (Semitic-derived) names as in Greek: the names of the plosives were formed by adding to their sound (except for and , which needed different vowels to be distinguished from ) and the names of the continuants consisted either of the bare sound, or the sound preceded by .
The letter when introduced was probably called "hy" as in Greek, the name upsilon not being in use yet, but this was changed to "i Graeca" (Greek i) as Latin speakers had difficulty distinguishing its foreign sound from . was given its Greek name, zeta. This scheme has continued to be used by most modern European languages that have adopted the Latin alphabet. For the Latin sounds represented by the various letters see Latin spelling and pronunciation; for the names of the letters in English see English alphabet.
Diacritics were not regularly used, but they did occur sometimes, the most common being the apex used to mark long vowels, which had previously sometimes been written doubled. However, in place of taking an apex, the letter i was written taller: . For example, what is today transcribed Lūciī a fīliī was written in the inscription depicted.
The primary mark of punctuation was the interpunct, which was used as a word divider, though it fell out of use after 200 AD.
Old Roman cursive script, also called majuscule cursive and capitalis cursive, was the everyday form of handwriting used for writing letters, by merchants writing business accounts, by schoolchildren learning the Latin alphabet, and even emperors issuing commands. A more formal style of writing was based on Roman square capitals, but cursive was used for quicker, informal writing. It was most commonly used from about the 1st century BC to the 3rd century, but it probably existed earlier than that. It led to Uncial, a majuscule script commonly used from the 3rd to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes.
New Roman cursive script, also known as minuscule cursive, was in use from the 3rd century to the 7th century, and uses letter forms that are more recognizable to modern eyes; , , , and had taken a more familiar shape, and the other letters were proportionate to each other. This script evolved into the medieval scripts known as Merovingian and Carolingian minuscule.
Medieval and later developments
It was not until the Middle Ages that the letter (originally a ligature of two s) was added to the Latin alphabet, to represent sounds from the Germanic languages which did not exist in medieval Latin, and only after the Renaissance did the convention of treating and as vowels, and and as consonants, become established. Prior to that, the former had been merely allographs of the latter.
With the fragmentation of political power, the style of writing changed and varied greatly throughout the Middle Ages, even after the invention of the printing press. Early deviations from the classical forms were the uncial script, a development of the Old Roman cursive, and various so-called minuscule scripts that developed from New Roman cursive, of which the insular script developed by Irish literati and derivations of this, such as Carolingian minuscule were the most influential, introducing the lower case forms of the letters, as well as other writing conventions that have since become standard.
The languages that use the Latin script generally use capital letters to begin paragraphs and sentences and proper nouns. The rules for capitalization have changed over time, and different languages have varied in their rules for capitalization. Old English, for example, was rarely written with even proper nouns capitalized, whereas Modern English writers and printers of the 17th and 18th century frequently capitalized most and sometimes all nouns, which is still systematically done in Modern German, e.g. in the preamble and all of the United States Constitution: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Spread
The Latin alphabet spread, along with the Latin language, from the Italian Peninsula to the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The eastern half of the Empire, including Greece, Anatolia, the Levant, and Egypt, continued to use Greek as a lingua franca, but Latin was widely spoken in the western half, and as the western Romance languages evolved out of Latin, they continued to use and adapt the Latin alphabet.
With the spread of Western Christianity during the Middle Ages, the script was gradually adopted by the peoples of northern Europe who spoke Celtic languages (displacing the Ogham alphabet) or Germanic languages (displacing earlier Runic alphabets), Baltic languages, as well as by the speakers of several Uralic languages, most notably Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian. The Latin alphabet came into use for writing the West Slavic languages and several South Slavic languages, as the people who spoke them adopted Roman Catholicism.
Later, it was adopted by non-Catholic countries. Romanian, most of whose speakers are Orthodox, was the first major language to switch from Cyrillic to Latin script, doing so in the 19th century, although Moldova only did so after the Soviet collapse.
It has also been increasingly adopted by Turkic-speaking countries, beginning with Turkey in the 1920s. After the Soviet collapse, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan all switched from Cyrillic to Latin. The government of Kazakhstan announced in 2015 that the Latin alphabet would replace Cyrillic as the writing system for the Kazakh language by 2025.
The spread of the Latin alphabet among previously illiterate peoples has inspired the creation of new writing systems, such as the Avoiuli alphabet in Vanuatu, which replaces the letters of the Latin alphabet with alternative symbols.
See also
Latin spelling and pronunciation
Calligraphy
Euboean alphabet
Latin script in Unicode
ISO basic Latin alphabet
Latin-1
Legacy of the Roman Empire
Palaeography
Phoenician alphabet
Pinyin
Roman letters used in mathematics
Typography
Western Latin character sets (computing)
References
Further reading
Transl. of , as revised by the author
: Peter Lang.
External links
Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary on the letter G
Latin-Alphabet
Typography
History of the Roman Empire | [
0.16549235582351685,
0.3261236250400543,
-0.5119041204452515,
-0.19907362759113312,
0.12003377079963684,
0.9741723537445068,
0.4010239839553833,
0.6059868335723877,
-0.12635153532028198,
-0.7331783771514893,
0.10600550472736359,
0.15478289127349854,
-0.5133311748504639,
-0.0388646237552166... |
18307 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lugh | Lugh | Lugh or Lug (; ) is one of the most prominent gods in Irish mythology. A member of the Tuatha Dé Danann, Lugh is portrayed as a warrior, a king, a master craftsman and a savior. He is associated with skill and mastery in multiple disciplines, including the arts. He is also associated with oaths, truth and the law, and therefore with rightful kingship. Lugh is linked with the harvest festival of Lughnasadh, which bears his name. His most common epithets are Lámfada ("long hand" or "long arm", possibly for his skill with a spear or his ability as a ruler) and Samildánach ("equally skilled in many arts").
In mythology, Lugh is the son of Cian and Ethniu (or Ethliu). He is the maternal grandson of the Fomorian tyrant Balor, whom Lugh kills in the Battle of Mag Tuired. His foster-father is the sea god Manannán. Lugh's son is the hero Cú Chulainn, who is believed to be an incarnation of Lugh.
Lugh has several magical possessions. He wields an unstoppable fiery spear, a sling stone, and owns a hound named Failinis. He is said to have invented fidchell (a Gaelic equivalent of chess), ball games, and horse racing.
He corresponds to the pan-Celtic god Lugus, and his Welsh counterpart is Lleu Llaw Gyffes. He has also been equated with Mercury.
Name
Etymology
The meaning of Lugh's name is still a matter of debate. Some scholars propose that it derives from a suggested Proto-Indo-European root *(h2)lewgh- meaning "to bind by oath" (compare Old Irish luige and Welsh llw, both meaning "oath, vow, act of swearing" and derived from a suffixed Proto-Celtic form, *lugiyo-, "oath"), suggesting that he was originally a god of oaths and sworn contracts. When Balor meets Lugh in the Second Battle of Moytura he calls Lugh a "babbler". In the past his name was generally believed to come from another suggested Proto-Indo-European root *leuk-, "flashing light", and since the Victorian era he has often been considered a sun god, similar to the Greco-Roman Apollo. However, the figure of Lugh in Irish mythology and literature seems to be a better match with the Celtic god identified with Mercury, described by Julius Caesar in his De Bello Gallico. There are serious phonological issues with deriving the name from *leuk-, notably that Proto-Indo-European never produced Proto-Celtic ; for this reason most modern specialists in Celtic languages no longer accept this etymology.
Epithets
Lámfada ( ("Long Hand") - possibly for his skill with a spear or his ability as a ruler
Ildánach ("skilled in many arts")
Samildánach ("equally skilled in all the arts")
Lonnansclech
Lonnbéimnech ("fierce striker")
Macnia ("youthful warrior/hero")
Conmac ("hound-son")
Description
Lugh is typically described as a youthful warrior. In the brief narrative Baile in Scáil Lugh is described as being very large and very beautiful and also as a spear-wielding horseman.
When he appears before the wounded Cú Chulainn in the Táin Bó Cúalnge he is described as follows:
A man fair and tall, with a great head of curly yellow hair. He has a green mantle wrapped about him and a brooch of white silver in the mantle over his breast. Next to his white skin, he wears a tunic of royal satin with red-gold insertion reaching to his knees. He carries a black shield with a hard boss of white-bronze. In his hand a five-pointed spear and next to it a forked javelin. Wonderful is the play and sport and diversion that he makes (with these weapons). But none accosts him and he accosts none as if no one could see him.
Elsewhere Lugh is described as a tall young man with bright red cheeks, white sides, a bronze-coloured face and blood-coloured hair.
Finally, in The Fate of the Children of Turenn Lugh's appearance is compared to the sun on several occasions. He is described by Bres as follows:
Then arose Breas, the son of Balar, and he said: "It is a wonder to me", said he, "that the sun to rise in the west today, and in the east every other day". "It would be better that it wer so", said the Druids. "What else is it?" said he. "The radiance of the face of Lugh of the Long Arms", said they.
Elsewhere in the same passage the following remark is made:
...they were not long there when they saw an army and a goodly host coming towards them from the East, and in the vanguard there was one young man high in authority over all; and like to the setting sun was the radiance of his face and forehead, and they were unable to gaze upon his countenance on account of its splendour. And this is who it was - Lugh Lamhfhada Loinnbheimionach...from the Land of Promise...and when the Cathbarr (Manannan's helmet) was let off of him the appearance of his face and forehead was as brilliant as the sun on a dry summer's day.
Mythology
Birth
Lugh's father is Cian of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and his mother is Ethniu: daughter of Balor, of the Fomorians. In Cath Maige Tuired their union is a dynastic marriage following an alliance between the Tuatha Dé and the Fomorians. In the Lebor Gabála Érenn, Cian gives the boy to Tailtiu, queen of the Fir Bolg, in fosterage. In the Dindsenchas, Lugh, the foster-son of Tailtiu, is described as the "son of the Dumb Champion". In the poem Baile Suthain Sith Eamhna Lugh is called "descendant of the poet."
A folktale told to John O'Donovan by Shane O'Dugan of Tory Island in 1835 recounts the birth of a grandson of Balor who grows up to kill his grandfather. The grandson is unnamed, his father is called Mac Cinnfhaelaidh and the manner of his killing of Balor is different, but it has been taken as a version of the birth of Lugh, and was adapted as such by Lady Gregory. In this tale, Balor hears a druid's prophecy that he will be killed by his own grandson. To prevent this he imprisons his only daughter in the Tór Mór (great tower) of Tory Island. She is cared for by twelve women, who are to prevent her ever meeting or even learning of the existence of men. On the mainland, Mac Cinnfhaelaidh owns a magic cow who gives such abundant milk that everyone, including Balor, wants to possess her. While the cow is in the care of Mac Cinnfhaelaidh's brother Mac Samthainn, Balor appears in the form of a little red-haired boy and tricks him into giving him the cow. Looking for revenge, Mac Cinnfhaelaidh calls on a leanan sídhe (fairy woman) called Biróg, who transports him by magic to the top of Balor's tower, where he seduces Eithne. In time she gives birth to triplets, which Balor gathers up in a sheet and sends to be drowned in a whirlpool. The messenger drowns two of the babies but unwittingly drops one child into the harbour, where he is rescued by Biróg. She takes him to his father, who gives him to his brother, Gavida the smith, in fosterage.
There may be further triplism associated with his birth. His father in the folktale is one of a triad of brothers, Mac Cinnfhaelaidh, Gavida, and Mac Samthainn, whereas in the Lebor Gabála, his father Cian is mentioned alongside his brothers Cú and Cethen. Two characters called Lugaid, a popular medieval Irish name thought to derive from Lugh, have three fathers: Lugaid Riab nDerg (Lugaid of the Red Stripes) was the son of the three Findemna or fair triplets, and Lugaid mac Con Roí was also known as mac Trí Con, "son of three hounds". In Ireland's other great "sequestered maiden" story, the tragedy of Deirdre, the king's intended is carried off by three brothers, who are hunters with hounds. The canine imagery continues with Cian's brother Cú ("hound"), another Lugaid, Lugaid Mac Con (son of a hound), and Lugh's son Cúchulainn ("Culann's Hound"). A fourth Lugaid was Lugaid Loígde, a legendary King of Tara and ancestor of (or inspiration for) Lugaid Mac Con.
Lugh joins the Tuatha Dé Danann
As a young man Lugh travels to Tara to join the court of King Nuada of the Tuatha Dé Danann. The doorkeeper will not let him in unless he has a skill he can use to serve the king. He offers his services as a wright, a smith, a champion, a swordsman, a harpist, a hero, a poet, historian, a sorcerer, and a craftsman, but each time is rejected as the Tuatha Dé Danann already have someone with that skill. When Lugh asks if they have anyone with all those skills simultaneously, the doorkeeper has to admit defeat, and Lugh joins the court and is appointed Chief Ollam of Ireland. He wins a flagstone-throwing contest against Ogma, the champion, and entertains the court with his harp. The Tuatha Dé Danann are, at that time, oppressed by the Fomorians, and Lugh is amazed how meekly they accept their oppression. Nuada wonders if this young man could lead them to freedom. Lugh is given command over the Tuatha Dé Danann, and he begins making preparations for war.
Sons of Tuireann
Tuireann and Cian, Lugh's father, are old enemies, and one day his sons, Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba spot Cian in the distance and decide to kill him. They find him hiding in the form of a pig, but Cian tricked the brothers into allowing him to transform back to a man before they killed him, giving Lugh the legal right to claim compensation for a father rather than just a pig. When they try to bury him, the ground spits his body back twice before keeping him down, and eventually confesses that it is a grave to Lugh. Lugh holds a feast and invites the brothers, and during it he asks them what they would demand as compensation for the murder of their father. They reply that death would be the only just demand, and Lugh agrees. He then accuses them of the murder of his father, Cian, and sets them a series of seemingly impossible quests. The brothers go on an adventure and achieve them all except the last one, which will surely kill them. Despite Tuireann's pleas, Lugh demands that they proceed and, when they are all fatally wounded, he denies them the use of one of the items they have retrieved, a magic pigskin which heals all wounds. They die of their wounds and Tuireann dies of grief over their bodies.
Battle of Magh Tuireadh
Using the magic artefacts the sons of Tuireann have gathered, Lugh leads the Tuatha Dé Danann in the Second Battle of Mag Tuireadh against the Fomorians. Prior to the battle Lugh asks each man and woman in his army what art he or she will bring to the fray; he then addressed his army in speech, which elevated each warrior's spirit to that of a king or lord. Nuada is killed in the battle by Balor. Lugh faces Balor, who opens his terrible, poisonous eye that kills all it looks upon, but Lugh shoots a sling-stone that drives his eye out the back of his head, killing Balor and wreaking havoc on the Fomorian army behind. After the victory Lugh finds Bres, the half-Fomorian former king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, alone and unprotected on the battlefield, and Bres begs for his life. If he is spared, he promises, he will ensure that the cows of Ireland always give milk. The Tuatha Dé Danann refuse the offer. He then promises four harvests a year, but the Tuatha Dé Danann say one harvest a year suits them. But Lugh spares his life on the condition that he teach the Tuatha Dé Danann how and when to plough, sow, and reap.
Later life and death
Lugh instituted an event similar to the Olympic games called the Assembly of Talti which finished on Lughnasadh (1 August) in memory of his foster-mother, Tailtiu, at the town that bears her name (now Teltown, County Meath). He likewise instituted Lughnasadh fairs in the areas of Carman and Naas in honour of Carman and Nás, the eponymous tutelary goddess of these two regions. Horse races and displays of martial arts were important activities at all three fairs. However, Lughnasadh itself is a celebration of Lugh's triumph over the spirits of the Otherworld who had tried to keep the harvest for themselves. It survived long into Christian times and is still celebrated under a variety of names. Lúnasa is now the Irish name for the month of August.
According to a poem of the dindsenchas, Lugh was responsible for the death of Bres. He made 300 wooden cows and filled them with a bitter, poisonous red liquid which was then "milked" into pails and offered to Bres to drink. Bres, who was under an obligation not to refuse hospitality, drank it down without flinching, and it killed him.
Lugh is said to have invented the board game fidchell.
One of his wives, Buach, had an affair with Cermait, son of the Dagda. Lugh killed him in revenge, but Cermait's sons, Mac Cuill, Mac Cecht, and Mac Gréine, killed Lugh in return, spearing him through the foot then drowning him in Loch Lugborta in County Westmeath He had ruled for forty years. Cermait was later revived by his father, the Dagda, who used the smooth or healing end of his staff to bring Cermait back to life.
In other cycles and traditions
In the Ulster Cycle he fathered Cúchulainn with the mortal maiden Deichtine. When Cúchulainn lay wounded after a gruelling series of combats during the Táin Bó Cuailnge (Cattle Raid of Cooley), Lugh appeared and healed his wounds over a period of three days.
In Baile in Scáil (The Phantom's Trance), a story of the Historical Cycle, Lugh appeared in a vision to Conn of the Hundred Battles. Enthroned on a daïs, he directed a beautiful woman called the Sovereignty of Ireland to serve Conn a portion of meat and a cup of red ale, ritually confirming his right to rule and the dynasty that would follow him.
In the Fenian Cycle the dwarf harper Cnú Deireóil claimed to be Lugh's son.
The Luigne, a people who inhabited Counties Meath and Sligo, claimed descent from him.
Ainle is listed as the son of Lug Longhand (here called "Leo lam-fota") and is killed by Curnan the Blacklegged in the Rennes Dinsenchas. Ainle, whose name means "champion" is described as being renowned and glorious, but in the same poetic verse is also described as being a weakling with no grip in battle.
Lugh appears in folklore as a trickster, and in County Mayo thunderstorms were referred to as battles between Lugh and Balor, which leads some to speculate that he was a storm god.
Family
Lugh is given the matriname mac Ethlenn or mac Ethnenn ("son of Ethliu or Ethniu", his mother) and the patriname mac Cein ("son of Cian", his father). He is the maternal grandson of the Fomorian tyrant Balor, whom Lugh kills in the Battle of Mag Tuired. His foster-father is the sea god Manannán. Lugh's son is the hero Cú Chulainn, who is believed to be an incarnation of Lugh.
He had several wives, including Buí (AKA Buach or Bua "Victory") and Nás, daughters of Ruadri Ruad, king of Britain. Buí lived and was buried at Knowth (Cnogba). Nás was buried at Naas, County Kildare, which is named after her. Lugh had a son, Ibic "of the horses", by Nás. It is said that Nás dies with the noise of combat, therefore it is difficult to know where she dies. Lugh's daughter or sister was Ebliu, who married Fintan. By the mortal Deichtine, Lugh was father to the hero Cú Chulainn.
Possessions
Lugh possessed a number of magical items, retrieved by the sons of Tuirill Piccreo in Middle Irish redactions of the Lebor Gabála. Not all the items are listed here. The late narrative Fate of the Children of Tuireann not only gives a list of items gathered for Lugh, but also endows him with such gifts from the sea god Manannán as the sword Fragarach, the horse Enbarr (Aonbarr), the boat / ("Wave-Sweeper"), his armour and helmet.
Lugh's spear
Lugh's spear (), according to the text of The Four Jewels of the Tuatha Dé Danann, was said to be impossible to overcome, taken to Ireland from Gorias (or Findias).
Lugh obtained the Spear of Assal () as fine () imposed on the children of Tuirill Piccreo (or Biccreo), according to the short account in which adds that the incantation "Ibar (Yew)" made the cast always hit its mark, and "Athibar (Re-Yew)" caused the spear to return.
In a full narrative version called (The Fate of the Children of Tuireann), from copies no earlier than the 17th century, Lugh demands the spear named Ar-éadbair or Areadbhair (Early Modern Irish: ) which belonged to Pisear, king of Persia, that its tip had to be kept immersed in a pot of water to keep it from igniting, a property similar to the Lúin of Celtchar. This spear is also called "Slaughterer" in translation.
There is yet another name that Lugh's spear goes by: "A [yew] tree, the finest of the wood" (Early Modern Irish: ), occurring in an inserted verse within The Fate of the Children of Tuireann. "The famous yew of the wood" () is also the name that Lugh's spear is given in a tract which alleges that it, the Lúin of Celtchar and the spear Crimall that blinded Cormac Mac Airt were one and the same weapon (tract in TCD MS 1336 (H 3. 17), col. 723, discussed in the Lúin page).
Lugh's projectile weapon, whether a dart or missile, was envisioned to be symbolic of lightning-weapon.
Lugh's sling rod, named "Lugh's Chain", was the rainbow and the Milky Way, according to popular writer Charles Squire. Squire adds that Lugh's spear which needed no wielding was alive and thirsted so for blood that only by steeping its head in a sleeping-draught of pounded fresh poppy leaves could it be kept at rest. When battle was near, it was drawn out; then it roared and struggled against its thongs, fire flashed from it, and it tore through the ranks of the enemy once slipped from the leash, never tired of slaying.
Sling-stone
According to the brief accounts in the Lebor Gabála Érenn, Lugh used the "sling-stone" (cloich tabaill) to slay his grandfather, Balor the Strong-Smiter in the Battle of Magh Tuired. The narrative , preserved in a unique 16th century copy, words it slightly different saying that Lugh used the sling-stone to destroy the evil eye of Balor of the Piercing Eye (Bolur Birugderc).
The ammunition that Lugh used was not just a stone, but a tathlum according to a certain poem in Egerton MS. 1782 (olim W. Monck Mason MS.), the first quatrain of which is as follows:
The poem goes on to describe the composition of this tathlum, as being formed from the bloods collected from toads, bears, the lion, vipers and the neck-base of Osmuinn, mixed with the sands of the Armorian Sea and the Red Sea.
Fragarach
Lugh is also seen girt with the Freagarthach (better known as Fragarach), the sword of Manannán, in the assembly of the Tuatha Dé Danann in the Fate of the Children of Tuireann.
Lugh's horse and magic boat
Lugh had a horse named Aenbharr which could fare over both land and sea. Like much of his equipment, it was furnished to him by the sea god Manannán mac Lir. When the Children of Tuireann asked to borrow this horse, Lugh begrudged them, saying it would not be proper to make a loan of a loan. Consequently, Lugh was unable to refuse their request to use Lugh's currach (coracle) or boat, the "Wave-Sweeper" ().
In the Lebor Gabála, Gainne and Rea were the names of the pair of horses belonging to the king of the isle of Sicily [on the (Tyrrhene sea)], which Lug demanded as éric from the sons of Tuirill Briccreo.
Lugh's hound
Failinis was the name of the whelp of the King of Ioruaidhe that Lugh demanded as éiric (a forfeit) in the Oidhead Chloinne Tuireann. This concurs with the name of the hound mentioned in an "Ossianic Ballad", sometimes referred to by its opening line " (They came here as a band of three)". In the ballad, the hound is called Ṡalinnis (Shalinnis) or Failinis (in the Lismore text), and belonged to a threesome from Iruaide whom the Fianna encounter. It is described as "the ancient grayhound... that had been with Lugh of the Mantles, / Given him by the sons of Tuireann Bicreann"
Comparative mythology
Lugh corresponds to the pan-Celtic god Lugus, and his Welsh counterpart is Lleu Llaw Gyffes. He has also been equated with Mercury. Sometimes he is interpreted as a storm god and, less often today, as a sun god. Others have noted a similarity in Lugh's slaying of Balor to the slaying of Baldr by Loki. Lugh's mastery of all arts has led many to link him with the unnamed Gaulish god Julius Caesar identifies with Mercury, whom he describes as the "inventor of all the arts". Caesar describes the Gaulish Mercury as the most revered deity in Gaul, overseeing journeys and business transactions.
St. Mologa has been theorized to be a Christian continuation of the god Lugh.
Toponymy
The County of Louth in Ireland is named after the village of Louth, which is named after the God Lugh. Historically, the place name has had various spellings; "Lugmad", "Lughmhaigh", and "Lughmhadh" (see Historic Names List, for full listing). Lú is the modern simplified spelling. Other places named for Lugh include the cairn at Seelewey (Suidhe Lughaidh, or Lug's Seat), Dunlewey, and Rath-Lugaidh in Carney, Sligo. Seelewey was located in Moyturra Chonlainn and, according to local folklore, was a place where giants used to gather in olden days.
The modern city of Lyon was founded as Colonia Copia Felix Munatia in 43 BC, but by the end of the first century AD had come to be known as "Lugdunum", a Latinized variant of the ancient Gaulish name *Lugudunon, meaning "Fortress of Lugh".
One of the four regions in Galicia is called Lugo, in honor of this god.
See also
Irish mythology in popular culture: Lugh
Perseus, whose birth is similar to that of Lugh's
Táin Bó Flidhais
Triglav (mythology)
Triple deity
Explanatory notes
References
Citations
Bibliography
(Baile In Scáil, The Phantom's Trance)
via Celtic Literature Collective, accessed 5 August 2019
(Cath Maige Tuired)
via sacred-texts.com
, text via Internet Archive, text via CELT
(Compert Con Culainn)
(LGE)
(Metrical Dindshenchas)
, via CELT
, snippet via Google, via CELT
(Oidheadh Chlainne Tuireann, The Death of the Children of Tuireann)
(Some of the earlier notes on MSS in the earlier edition are wanting)
https://www.dias.ie/wp-content/uploads/2002/11/tionol2002_baillie.pdf
(M G L Baillie
School of Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen's University, Belfast)
(Rennes Dindshenchas)
, text via Internet Archive; e-text via UCD
, text via Internet Archive; e-text via UCD
(Táin Bó Cuailnge, The Cattle Raid of Cooley)
.
(Other)
Cross, Tom Peete and Clark Harris Slover. Ancient Irish Tales, Henry Holt & Company, Inc., 1936. .
Ellis, Peter Berresford. Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. .
MacKillop, James. Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. .
Ovist, Krista L. The integration of Mercury and Lugus: Myth and history in late Iron Age and early Roman Gaul. Chicago: University of Chicago Divinity School dissertation, pp. 703, 2004. (link)
Wood, Juliette. The Celts: Life, Myth, and Art. Thorsons Publishers, 2002. .
Arts gods
Characters in Táin Bó Cúailnge
Crafts gods
History of County Louth
Legendary High Kings of Ireland
Mercurian deities
Mythological kings
Mythological swordfighters
Smithing gods
Trickster gods
Triple gods
Tuatha Dé Danann
Ulster Cycle | [
-0.020412297919392586,
0.40188589692115784,
-0.20789504051208496,
-0.7905414700508118,
-0.7648295760154724,
0.8602050542831421,
0.18808601796627045,
1.0087213516235352,
-0.539452850818634,
-0.18784202635288239,
-0.7910584807395935,
0.3167375326156616,
0.10747945308685303,
0.467952579259872... |
18308 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanthanide | Lanthanide | The lanthanide () or lanthanoid () series of chemical elements comprises the 15 metallic chemical elements with atomic numbers 57–71, from lanthanum through lutetium. These elements, along with the chemically similar elements scandium and yttrium, are often collectively known as the rare-earth elements or rare-earth metals.
The informal chemical symbol Ln is used in general discussions of lanthanide chemistry to refer to any lanthanide. All but one of the lanthanides are f-block elements, corresponding to the filling of the 4f electron shell. There is some dispute on whether lanthanum or lutetium is a d-block element, but lutetium is usually considered so by those who study the matter; it is included due to its chemical similarities with the other 14. All lanthanide elements form trivalent cations, Ln3+, whose chemistry is largely determined by the ionic radius, which decreases steadily from lanthanum to lutetium.
They are called lanthanides because the elements in the series are chemically similar to lanthanum. Since "lanthanide" means "like lanthanum", it has been argued that lanthanum cannot logically be a lanthanide, but the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) acknowledges its inclusion based on common usage.
In presentations of the periodic table, the f-block elements are customarily shown as two additional rows below the main body of the table, This convention is entirely a matter of aesthetics and formatting practicality; a rarely used wide-formatted periodic table inserts the 4f and 5f series in their proper places, as parts of the table's sixth and seventh rows (periods).
The 1985 IUPAC "Red Book" (p. 45) recommends that "lanthanoid" is used rather than "lanthanide". The ending "-ide" normally indicates a negative ion. However, owing to wide current use, "lanthanide" is still allowed.
Etymology
The term "lanthanide" was introduced by Victor Goldschmidt in 1925. Despite their abundance, the technical term "lanthanides" is interpreted to reflect a sense of elusiveness on the part of these elements, as it comes from the Greek λανθανειν (lanthanein), "to lie hidden".
Rather than referring to their natural abundance, the word reflects their property of "hiding" behind each other in minerals. The term derives from lanthanum, first discovered in 1838, at that time a so-called new rare-earth element "lying hidden" or "escaping notice" in a cerium mineral, and it is an irony that lanthanum was later identified as the first in an entire series of chemically similar elements and gave its name to the whole series.
Together with the two elements at the top of group 3, scandium and yttrium, the trivial name "rare earths" is sometimes used to describe all the lanthanides; a definition of rare earths including the group 3, lanthanide, and actinide elements is also occasionally seen, and rarely Sc + Y + lanthanides + thorium. The "earth" in the name "rare earths" arises from the minerals from which they were isolated, which were uncommon oxide-type minerals. However, these elements are neither rare in abundance nor "earths" (an obsolete term for water-insoluble strongly basic oxides of electropositive metals incapable of being smelted into metal using late 18th century technology). Group 2 is known as the alkaline earth elements for much the same reason.
The "rare" in the "rare earths" name has much more to do with the difficulty of separating out each of the individual lanthanide elements than scarcity of any of them. By way of the Greek "dysprositos" for "hard to get at," element 66, dysprosium was similarly named; lanthanum itself is named after a word for "hidden." The elements 57 (La) to 71 (Lu) are very similar chemically to one another and frequently occur together in nature, often anywhere from three to all 15 of the lanthanides (along with yttrium as a 16th) occur in minerals such as samarskite, monazite and many others which can also contain the other two group 3 elements as well as thorium and occasionally other actinides as well. A majority of the rare earths were discovered at the same mine in Ytterby, Sweden and four of them are named (yttrium, ytterbium, erbium, terbium) after the city and a fifth *(holmium) after Stockholm; scandium is named after Scandinavia, thulium after the old name Thule, and the immediately-following group 4 element (number 72) hafnium is named for the Latin name of the city of Copenhagen.
Samarskite (a mineral which is the source of the name of the element samarium) and other similar minerals in particular also have these elements in association with the nearby metals tantalum, niobium, hafnium, zirconium, vanadium, and titanium, from group 4 and group 5 often in similar oxidation states. Monazite is a phosphate of numerous group 3 + lanthanide + actinide metals and mined especially for the thorium content and specific rare earths especially lanthanum, yttrium and cerium. Cerium and lanthanum as well as other members of the rare earth series are often produced as a metal called mischmetal containing a variable mixture of these elements with cerium and lanthanum predominating; it has direct uses such as lighter flints and other spark sources which do not require extensive purification of one of these metals.
There are also rare earth-bearing minerals based on group 2 elements such as yttrocalcite, yttrocerite, yttrofluorite which vary in content of yttrium, cerium, and lanthanum in a particular as well as varying amounts of the others. Other lanthanide/rare earth minerals include bastnäsite, florencite, chernovite, perovskite, xenotime, cerite, gadolinite, lanthanite, fergusonite, polycrase, blomstrandine, håleniusite, miserite, loparite, lepersonnite, euxenite, all of which have a range of relative element concentration and may have the symbol of a predominating one such as monazite-ce; group 3 elements do not occur as native element minerals in the fashion of gold, silver, tantalum and many others on earth but may in lunar regolith. Very rare cerium, lanthanum, and presumably other lanthanide/group 3 halides, feldspars and garnets are also known to exist.
All of this is the result of the order in which the electron shells of these elements are filled—the outermost has the same configuration for all of them, and a deeper shell is progressively filled with electrons as the atomic number increases from 57 towards 71. For many years, mixtures of more than one rare earth were considered to be single elements, such as neodymium and praseodymium being thought to be the single element didymium and so on. Very small differences in solubility are used in solvent and ion-exchange purification methods for these elements which require a great deal of repeating to get a purified metal. The refined metals and their compounds have subtle and stark differences amongst themselves in electronic, electrical, optical, and magnetic properties which account for their many niche uses.
By way of examples of the term meaning the above considerations rather than their scarcity, cerium is the 26th most abundant element in the Earth's crust and more abundant than copper, neodymium is more abundant than gold; thulium (the second least common naturally occurring lanthanide) is more abundant than iodine, which is itself common enough for biology to have evolved critical usages thereof, and even the lone radioactive element in the series, promethium, is more common than the two rarest naturally occurring elements, francium and astatine, combined.
Physical properties of the elements
* Between initial Xe and final 6s2 electronic shells
** Sm has a close packed structure like most of the lanthanides but has an unusual 9 layer repeat
Gschneider and Daane (1988) attribute the trend in melting point which increases across the series, (lanthanum (920 °C) – lutetium (1622 °C)) to the extent of hybridization of the 6s, 5d, and 4f orbitals. The hybridization is believed to be at its greatest for cerium, which has the lowest melting point of all, 795 °C.
The lanthanide metals are soft; their hardness increases across the series. Europium stands out, as it has the lowest density in the series at 5.24 g/cm3 and the largest metallic radius in the series at 208.4 pm. It can be compared to barium, which has a metallic radius of 222 pm. It is believed that the metal contains the larger Eu2+ ion and that there are only two electrons in the conduction band. Ytterbium also has a large metallic radius, and a similar explanation is suggested.
The resistivities of the lanthanide metals are relatively high, ranging from 29 to 134 μΩ·cm. These values can be compared to a good conductor such as aluminium, which has a resistivity of 2.655 μΩ·cm.
With the exceptions of La, Yb, and Lu (which have no unpaired f electrons), the lanthanides are strongly paramagnetic, and this is reflected in their magnetic susceptibilities. Gadolinium becomes ferromagnetic at below 16 °C (Curie point). The other heavier lanthanides – terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, and ytterbium – become ferromagnetic at much lower temperatures.
Chemistry and compounds
* Not including initial [Xe] core
f → f transitions are symmetry forbidden (or Laporte-forbidden), which is also true of transition metals. However, transition metals are able to use vibronic coupling to break this rule. The valence orbitals in lanthanides are almost entirely non-bonding and as such little effective vibronic coupling takes, hence the spectra from f → f transitions are much weaker and narrower than those from d → d transitions. In general this makes the colors of lanthanide complexes far fainter than those of transition metal complexes.
Effect of 4f orbitals
Going across the lanthanides in the periodic table, the 4f orbitals are usually being filled. The effect of the 4f orbitals on the chemistry of the lanthanides is profound and is the factor that distinguishes them from the transition metals. There are seven 4f orbitals, and there are two different ways in which they are depicted: as a "cubic set" or as a general set. The cubic set is fz3, fxz2, fyz2, fxyz, fz(x2−y2), fx(x2−3y2) and fy(3x2−y2). The 4f orbitals penetrate the [Xe] core and are isolated, and thus they do not participate in bonding. This explains why crystal field effects are small and why they do not form π bonds. As there are seven 4f orbitals, the number of unpaired electrons can be as high as 7, which gives rise to the large magnetic moments observed for lanthanide compounds.
Measuring the magnetic moment can be used to investigate the 4f electron configuration, and this is a useful tool in providing an insight into the chemical bonding. The lanthanide contraction, i.e. the reduction in size of the Ln3+ ion from La3+ (103 pm) to Lu3+ (86.1 pm), is often explained by the poor shielding of the 5s and 5p electrons by the 4f electrons.
The electronic structure of the lanthanide elements, with minor exceptions, is [Xe]6s24fn. The chemistry of the lanthanides is dominated by the +3 oxidation state, and in LnIII compounds the 6s electrons and (usually) one 4f electron are lost and the ions have the configuration [Xe]4fm. All the lanthanide elements exhibit the oxidation state +3. In addition, Ce3+ can lose its single f electron to form Ce4+ with the stable electronic configuration of xenon. Also, Eu3+ can gain an electron to form Eu2+ with the f7 configuration that has the extra stability of a half-filled shell. Other than Ce(IV) and Eu(II), none of the lanthanides are stable in oxidation states other than +3 in aqueous solution.
In terms of reduction potentials, the Ln0/3+ couples are nearly the same for all lanthanides, ranging from −1.99 (for Eu) to −2.35 V (for Pr). Thus these metals are highly reducing, with reducing power similar to alkaline earth metals such as Mg (−2.36 V).
Lanthanide oxidation states
The ionization energies for the lanthanides can be compared with aluminium. In aluminium the sum of the first three ionization energies is 5139 kJ·mol−1, whereas the lanthanides fall in the range 3455 – 4186 kJ·mol−1. This correlates with the highly reactive nature of the lanthanides.
The sum of the first two ionization energies for europium, 1632 kJ·mol−1 can be compared with that of barium 1468.1 kJ·mol−1 and europium's third ionization energy is the highest of the lanthanides. The sum of the first two ionization energies for ytterbium are the second lowest in the series and its third ionization energy is the second highest. The high third ionization energy for Eu and Yb correlate with the half filling 4f7 and complete filling 4f14 of the 4f subshell, and the stability afforded by such configurations due to exchange energy. Europium and ytterbium form salt like compounds with Eu2+ and Yb2+, for example the salt like dihydrides. Both europium and ytterbium dissolve in liquid ammonia forming solutions of Ln2+(NH3)x again demonstrating their similarities to the alkaline earth metals.
The relative ease with which the 4th electron can be removed in cerium and (to a lesser extent praseodymium) indicates why Ce(IV) and Pr(IV) compounds can be formed, for example CeO2 is formed rather than Ce2O3 when cerium reacts with oxygen.
Separation of lanthanides
The similarity in ionic radius between adjacent lanthanide elements makes it difficult to separate them from each other in naturally occurring ores and other mixtures. Historically, the very laborious processes of cascading and fractional crystallization were used. Because the lanthanide ions have slightly different radii, the lattice energy of their salts and hydration energies of the ions will be slightly different, leading to a small difference in solubility. Salts of the formula Ln(NO3)3·2NH4NO3·4H2O can be used. Industrially, the elements are separated from each other by solvent extraction. Typically an aqueous solution of nitrates is extracted into kerosene containing tri-n-butylphosphate. The strength of the complexes formed increases as the ionic radius decreases, so solubility in the organic phase increases. Complete separation can be achieved continuously by use of countercurrent exchange methods. The elements can also be separated by ion-exchange chromatography, making use of the fact that the stability constant for formation of EDTA complexes increases for log K ≈ 15.5 for [La(EDTA)]− to log K ≈ 19.8 for [Lu(EDTA)]−.
Coordination chemistry and catalysis
When in the form of coordination complexes, lanthanides exist overwhelmingly in their +3 oxidation state, although particularly stable 4f configurations can also give +4 (Ce, Tb) or +2 (Eu, Yb) ions. All of these forms are strongly electropositive and thus lanthanide ions are hard Lewis acids. The oxidation states are also very stable; with the exceptions of SmI2 and cerium(IV) salts, lanthanides are not used for redox chemistry. 4f electrons have a high probability of being found close to the nucleus and are thus strongly affected as the nuclear charge increases across the series; this results in a corresponding decrease in ionic radii referred to as the lanthanide contraction.
The low probability of the 4f electrons existing at the outer region of the atom or ion permits little effective overlap between the orbitals of a lanthanide ion and any binding ligand. Thus lanthanide complexes typically have little or no covalent character and are not influenced by orbital geometries. The lack of orbital interaction also means that varying the metal typically has little effect on the complex (other than size), especially when compared to transition metals. Complexes are held together by weaker electrostatic forces which are omni-directional and thus the ligands alone dictate the symmetry and coordination of complexes. Steric factors therefore dominate, with coordinative saturation of the metal being balanced against inter-ligand repulsion. This results in a diverse range of coordination geometries, many of which are irregular, and also manifests itself in the highly fluxional nature of the complexes. As there is no energetic reason to be locked into a single geometry, rapid intramolecular and intermolecular ligand exchange will take place. This typically results in complexes that rapidly fluctuate between all possible configurations.
Many of these features make lanthanide complexes effective catalysts. Hard Lewis acids are able to polarise bonds upon coordination and thus alter the electrophilicity of compounds, with a classic example being the Luche reduction. The large size of the ions coupled with their labile ionic bonding allows even bulky coordinating species to bind and dissociate rapidly, resulting in very high turnover rates; thus excellent yields can often be achieved with loadings of only a few mol%. The lack of orbital interactions combined with the lanthanide contraction means that the lanthanides change in size across the series but that their chemistry remains much the same. This allows for easy tuning of the steric environments and examples exist where this has been used to improve the catalytic activity of the complex and change the nuclearity of metal clusters.
Despite this, the use of lanthanide coordination complexes as homogeneous catalysts is largely restricted to the laboratory and there are currently few examples them being used on an industrial scale. Lanthanides exist in many forms other than coordination complexes and many of these are industrially useful. In particular lanthanide metal oxides are used as heterogeneous catalysts in various industrial processes.
Ln(III) compounds
The trivalent lanthanides mostly form ionic salts. The trivalent ions are hard acceptors and form more stable complexes with oxygen-donor ligands than with nitrogen-donor ligands. The larger ions are 9-coordinate in aqueous solution, [Ln(H2O)9]3+ but the smaller ions are 8-coordinate, [Ln(H2O)8]3+. There is some evidence that the later lanthanides have more water molecules in the second coordination sphere. Complexation with monodentate ligands is generally weak because it is difficult to displace water molecules from the first coordination sphere. Stronger complexes are formed with chelating ligands because of the chelate effect, such as the tetra-anion derived from 1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane-1,4,7,10-tetraacetic acid (DOTA).
Ln(II) and Ln(IV) compounds
The most common divalent derivatives of the lanthanides are for Eu(II), which achieves a favorable f7 configuration. Divalent halide derivatives are known for all of the lanthanides. They are either conventional salts or are Ln(III) "electride"-like salts. The simple salts include YbI2, EuI2, and SmI2. The electride-like salts, described as Ln3+, 2I−, e−, include LaI2, CeI2 and GdI2. Many of the iodides form soluble complexes with ethers, e.g. TmI2(dimethoxyethane)3. Samarium(II) iodide is a useful reducing agent. Ln(II) complexes can be synthesized by transmetalation reactions. The normal range of oxidation states can be expanded via the use of sterically bulky cyclopentadienyl ligands, in this way many lanthanides can be isolated as Ln(II) compounds.
Ce(IV) in ceric ammonium nitrate is a useful oxidizing agent. The Ce(IV) is the exception owing to the tendency to form an unfilled f shell. Otherwise tetravalent lanthanides are rare. However, recently Tb(IV) and Pr(IV) complexes have been shown to exist.
Hydrides
Lanthanide metals react exothermically with hydrogen to form LnH2, dihydrides. With the exception of Eu and Yb, which resemble the Ba and Ca hydrides (non-conducting, transparent salt-like compounds),they form black pyrophoric, conducting compounds where the metal sub-lattice is face centred cubic and the H atoms occupy tetrahedral sites. Further hydrogenation produces a trihydride which is non-stoichiometric, non-conducting, more salt like. The formation of trihydride is associated with and increase in 8–10% volume and this is linked to greater localization of charge on the hydrogen atoms which become more anionic (H− hydride anion) in character.
Halides
The only tetrahalides known are the tetrafluorides of cerium, praseodymium, terbium, neodymium and dysprosium, the last two known only under matrix isolation conditions.
All of the lanthanides form trihalides with fluorine, chlorine, bromine and iodine. They are all high melting and predominantly ionic in nature. The fluorides are only slightly soluble in water and are not sensitive to air, and this contrasts with the other halides which are air sensitive, readily soluble in water and react at high temperature to form oxohalides.
The trihalides were important as pure metal can be prepared from them. In the gas phase the trihalides are planar or approximately planar, the lighter lanthanides have a lower % of dimers, the heavier lanthanides a higher proportion. The dimers have a similar structure to Al2Cl6.
Some of the dihalides are conducting while the rest are insulators. The conducting forms can be considered as LnIII electride compounds where the electron is delocalised into a conduction band, Ln3+ (X−)2(e−). All of the diodides have relatively short metal-metal separations. The CuTi2 structure of the lanthanum, cerium and praseodymium diodides along with HP-NdI2 contain 44 nets of metal and iodine atoms with short metal-metal bonds (393-386 La-Pr). these compounds should be considered to be two-dimensional metals (two-dimensional in the same way that graphite is). The salt-like dihalides include those of Eu, Dy, Tm, and Yb. The formation of a relatively stable +2 oxidation state for Eu and Yb is usually explained by the stability (exchange energy) of half filled (f7) and fully filled f14. GdI2 possesses the layered MoS2 structure, is ferromagnetic and exhibits colossal magnetoresistance
The sesquihalides Ln2X3 and the Ln7I12 compounds listed in the table contain metal clusters, discrete Ln6I12 clusters in Ln7I12 and condensed clusters forming chains in the sesquihalides. Scandium forms a similar cluster compound with chlorine, Sc7Cl12 Unlike many transition metal clusters these lanthanide clusters do not have strong metal-metal interactions and this is due to the low number of valence electrons involved, but instead are stabilised by the surrounding halogen atoms.
LaI is the only known monohalide. Prepared from the reaction of LaI3 and La metal, it has a NiAs type structure and can be formulated La3+ (I−)(e−)2.
Oxides and hydroxides
All of the lanthanides form sesquioxides, Ln2O3. The lighter/larger lanthanides adopt a hexagonal 7-coordinate structure while the heavier/smaller ones adopt a cubic 6-coordinate "C-M2O3" structure. All of the sesquioxides are basic, and absorb water and carbon dioxide from air to form carbonates, hydroxides and hydroxycarbonates. They dissolve in acids to form salts.
Cerium forms a stoichiometric dioxide, CeO2, where cerium has an oxidation state of +4. CeO2 is basic and dissolves with difficulty in acid to form Ce4+ solutions, from which CeIV salts can be isolated, for example the hydrated nitrate Ce(NO3)4.5H2O. CeO2 is used as an oxidation catalyst in catalytic converters. Praseodymium and terbium form non-stoichiometric oxides containing LnIV, although more extreme reaction conditions can produce stoichiometric (or near stoichiometric) PrO2 and TbO2.
Europium and ytterbium form salt-like monoxides, EuO and YbO, which have a rock salt structure. EuO is ferromagnetic at low temperatures, and is a semiconductor with possible applications in spintronics. A mixed EuII/EuIII oxide Eu3O4 can be produced by reducing Eu2O3 in a stream of hydrogen. Neodymium and samarium also form monoxides, but these are shiny conducting solids, although the existence of samarium monoxide is considered dubious.
All of the lanthanides form hydroxides, Ln(OH)3. With the exception of lutetium hydroxide, which has a cubic structure, they have the hexagonal UCl3 structure. The hydroxides can be precipitated from solutions of LnIII. They can also be formed by the reaction of the sesquioxide, Ln2O3, with water, but although this reaction is thermodynamically favorable it is kinetically slow for the heavier members of the series. Fajans' rules indicate that the smaller Ln3+ ions will be more polarizing and their salts correspondingly less ionic. The hydroxides of the heavier lanthanides become less basic, for example Yb(OH)3 and Lu(OH)3 are still basic hydroxides but will dissolve in hot concentrated NaOH.
Chalcogenides (S, Se, Te)
All of the lanthanides form Ln2Q3 (Q= S, Se, Te). The sesquisulfides can be produced by reaction of the elements or (with the exception of Eu2S3) sulfidizing the oxide (Ln2O3) with H2S. The sesquisulfides, Ln2S3 generally lose sulfur when heated and can form a range of compositions between Ln2S3 and Ln3S4. The sesquisulfides are insulators but some of the Ln3S4 are metallic conductors (e.g. Ce3S4) formulated (Ln3+)3 (S2−)4 (e−), while others (e.g. Eu3S4 and Sm3S4) are semiconductors. Structurally the sesquisulfides adopt structures that vary according to the size of the Ln metal. The lighter and larger lanthanides favoring 7-coordinate metal atoms, the heaviest and smallest lanthanides (Yb and Lu) favoring 6 coordination and the rest structures with a mixture of 6 and 7 coordination.
Polymorphism is common amongst the sesquisulfides. The colors of the sesquisulfides vary metal to metal and depend on the polymorphic form. The colors of the γ-sesquisulfides are La2S3, white/yellow; Ce2S3, dark red; Pr2S3, green; Nd2S3, light green; Gd2S3, sand; Tb2S3, light yellow and Dy2S3, orange. The shade of γ-Ce2S3 can be varied by doping with Na or Ca with hues ranging from dark red to yellow, and Ce2S3 based pigments are used commercially and are seen as low toxicity substitutes for cadmium based pigments.
All of the lanthanides form monochalcogenides, LnQ, (Q= S, Se, Te). The majority of the monochalcogenides are conducting, indicating a formulation LnIIIQ2−(e-) where the electron is in conduction bands. The exceptions are SmQ, EuQ and YbQ which are semiconductors or insulators but exhibit a pressure induced transition to a conducting state.
Compounds LnQ2 are known but these do not contain LnIV but are LnIII compounds containing polychalcogenide anions.
Oxysulfides Ln2O2S are well known, they all have the same structure with 7-coordinate Ln atoms, and 3 sulfur and 4 oxygen atoms as near neighbours.
Doping these with other lanthanide elements produces phosphors. As an example, gadolinium oxysulfide, Gd2O2S doped with Tb3+ produces visible photons when irradiated with high energy X-rays and is used as a scintillator in flat panel detectors.
When mischmetal, an alloy of lanthanide metals, is added to molten steel to remove oxygen and sulfur, stable oxysulfides are produced that form an immiscible solid.
Pnictides (group 15)
All of the lanthanides form a mononitride, LnN, with the rock salt structure. The mononitrides have attracted interest because of their unusual physical properties. SmN and EuN are reported as being "half metals". NdN, GdN, TbN and DyN are ferromagnetic, SmN is antiferromagnetic. Applications in the field of spintronics are being investigated.
CeN is unusual as it is a metallic conductor, contrasting with the other nitrides also with the other cerium pnictides. A simple description is Ce4+N3− (e–) but the interatomic distances are a better match for the trivalent state rather than for the tetravalent state. A number of different explanations have been offered.
The nitrides can be prepared by the reaction of lanthanum metals with nitrogen. Some nitride is produced along with the oxide, when lanthanum metals are ignited in air. Alternative methods of synthesis are a high temperature reaction of lanthanide metals with ammonia or the decomposition of lanthanide amides, Ln(NH2)3. Achieving pure stoichiometric compounds, and crystals with low defect density has proved difficult. The lanthanide nitrides are sensitive to air and hydrolyse producing ammonia.
The other pnictides phosphorus, arsenic, antimony and bismuth also react with the lanthanide metals to form monopnictides, LnQ. Additionally a range of other compounds can be produced with varying stoichiometries, such as LnP2, LnP5, LnP7, Ln3As, Ln5As3 and LnAs2.
Carbides
Carbides of varying stoichiometries are known for the lanthanides. Non-stoichiometry is common. All of the lanthanides form LnC2 and Ln2C3 which both contain C2 units. The dicarbides with exception of EuC2, are metallic conductors with the calcium carbide structure and can be formulated as Ln3+C22−(e–). The C-C bond length is longer than that in CaC2, which contains the C22− anion, indicating that the antibonding orbitals of the C22− anion are involved in the conduction band. These dicarbides hydrolyse to form hydrogen and a mixture of hydrocarbons. EuC2 and to a lesser extent YbC2 hydrolyse differently producing a higher percentage of acetylene (ethyne). The sesquicarbides, Ln2C3 can be formulated as Ln4(C2)3.
These compounds adopt the Pu2C3 structure which has been described as having C22− anions in bisphenoid holes formed by eight near Ln neighbours. The lengthening of the C-C bond is less marked in the sesquicarbides than in the dicarbides, with the exception of Ce2C3.
Other carbon rich stoichiometries are known for some lanthanides. Ln3C4 (Ho-Lu) containing C, C2 and C3 units; Ln4C7 (Ho-Lu) contain C atoms and C3 units and Ln4C5 (Gd-Ho) containing C and C2 units.
Metal rich carbides contain interstitial C atoms and no C2 or C3 units. These are Ln4C3 (Tb and Lu); Ln2C (Dy, Ho, Tm) and Ln3C (Sm-Lu).
Borides
All of the lanthanides form a number of borides. The "higher" borides (LnBx where x > 12) are insulators/semiconductors whereas the lower borides are typically conducting. The lower borides have stoichiometries of LnB2, LnB4, LnB6 and LnB12. Applications in the field of spintronics are being investigated. The range of borides formed by the lanthanides can be compared to those formed by the transition metals. The boron rich borides are typical of the lanthanides (and groups 1–3) whereas for the transition metals tend to form metal rich, "lower" borides. The lanthanide borides are typically grouped together with the group 3 metals with which they share many similarities of reactivity, stoichiometry and structure. Collectively these are then termed the rare earth borides.
Many methods of producing lanthanide borides have been used, amongst them are direct reaction of the elements; the reduction of Ln2O3 with boron; reduction of boron oxide, B2O3, and Ln2O3 together with carbon; reduction of metal oxide with boron carbide, B4C. Producing high purity samples has proved to be difficult. Single crystals of the higher borides have been grown in a low melting metal (e.g. Sn, Cu, Al).
Diborides, LnB2, have been reported for Sm, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb and Lu. All have the same, AlB2, structure containing a graphitic layer of boron atoms. Low temperature ferromagnetic transitions for Tb, Dy, Ho and Er. TmB2 is ferromagnetic at 7.2 K.
Tetraborides, LnB4 have been reported for all of the lanthanides except EuB4, all have the same UB4 structure. The structure has a boron sub-lattice consists of chains of octahedral B6 clusters linked by boron atoms. The unit cell decreases in size successively from LaB4 to LuB4. The tetraborides of the lighter lanthanides melt with decomposition to LnB6. Attempts to make EuB4 have failed. The LnB4 are good conductors and typically antiferromagnetic.
Hexaborides, LnB6 have been reported for all of the lanthanides. They all have the CaB6 structure, containing B6 clusters. They are non-stoichiometric due to cation defects. The hexaborides of the lighter lanthanides (La – Sm) melt without decomposition, EuB6 decomposes to boron and metal and the heavier lanthanides decompose to LnB4 with exception of YbB6 which decomposes forming YbB12. The stability has in part been correlated to differences in volatility between the lanthanide metals. In EuB6 and YbB6 the metals have an oxidation state of +2 whereas in the rest of the lanthanide hexaborides it is +3. This rationalises the differences in conductivity, the extra electrons in the LnIII hexaborides entering conduction bands. EuB6 is a semiconductor and the rest are good conductors. LaB6 and CeB6 are thermionic emitters, used, for example, in scanning electron microscopes.
Dodecaborides, LnB12, are formed by the heavier smaller lanthanides, but not by the lighter larger metals, La – Eu. With the exception YbB12 (where Yb takes an intermediate valence and is a Kondo insulator), the dodecaborides are all metallic compounds. They all have the UB12 structure containing a 3 dimensional framework of cubooctahedral B12 clusters.
The higher boride LnB66 is known for all lanthanide metals. The composition is approximate as the compounds are non-stoichiometric. They all have similar complex structure with over 1600 atoms in the unit cell. The boron cubic sub lattice contains super icosahedra made up of a central B12 icosahedra surrounded by 12 others, B12(B12)12. Other complex higher borides LnB50 (Tb, Dy, Ho Er Tm Lu) and LnB25 are known (Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er) and these contain boron icosahedra in the boron framework.
Organometallic compounds
Lanthanide-carbon σ bonds are well known; however as the 4f electrons have a low probability of existing at the outer region of the atom there is little effective orbital overlap, resulting in bonds with significant ionic character. As such organo-lanthanide compounds exhibit carbanion-like behavior, unlike the behavior in transition metal organometallic compounds. Because of their large size, lanthanides tend to form more stable organometallic derivatives with bulky ligands to give compounds such as Ln[CH(SiMe3)3]. Analogues of uranocene are derived from dilithiocyclooctatetraene, Li2C8H8. Organic lanthanide(II) compounds are also known, such as Cp*2Eu.
Physical properties
Magnetic and spectroscopic
All the trivalent lanthanide ions, except lanthanum and lutetium, have unpaired f electrons. However, the magnetic moments deviate considerably from the spin-only values because of strong spin-orbit coupling. The maximum number of unpaired electrons is 7, in Gd3+, with a magnetic moment of 7.94 B.M., but the largest magnetic moments, at 10.4–10.7 B.M., are exhibited by Dy3+ and Ho3+. However, in Gd3+ all the electrons have parallel spin and this property is important for the use of gadolinium complexes as contrast reagent in MRI scans.
Crystal field splitting is rather small for the lanthanide ions and is less important than spin-orbit coupling in regard to energy levels. Transitions of electrons between f orbitals are forbidden by the Laporte rule. Furthermore, because of the "buried" nature of the f orbitals, coupling with molecular vibrations is weak. Consequently, the spectra of lanthanide ions are rather weak and the absorption bands are similarly narrow. Glass containing holmium oxide and holmium oxide solutions (usually in perchloric acid) have sharp optical absorption peaks in the spectral range 200–900 nm and can be used as a wavelength calibration standard for optical spectrophotometers, and are available commercially.
As f-f transitions are Laporte-forbidden, once an electron has been excited, decay to the ground state will be slow. This makes them suitable for use in lasers as it makes the population inversion easy to achieve. The Nd:YAG laser is one that is widely used. Europium-doped yttrium vanadate was the first red phosphor to enable the development of color television screens. Lanthanide ions have notable luminescent properties due to their unique 4f orbitals. Laporte forbidden f-f transitions can be activated by excitation of a bound "antenna" ligand. This leads to sharp emission bands throughout the visible, NIR, and IR and relatively long luminescence lifetimes.
Occurrence
The lanthanide contraction is responsible for the great geochemical divide that splits the lanthanides into light and heavy-lanthanide enriched minerals, the latter being almost inevitably associated with and dominated by yttrium. This divide is reflected in the first two "rare earths" that were discovered: yttria (1794) and ceria (1803). The geochemical divide has put more of the light lanthanides in the Earth's crust, but more of the heavy members in the Earth's mantle. The result is that although large rich ore-bodies are found that are enriched in the light lanthanides, correspondingly large ore-bodies for the heavy members are few. The principal ores are monazite and bastnäsite. Monazite sands usually contain all the lanthanide elements, but the heavier elements are lacking in bastnäsite. The lanthanides obey the Oddo-Harkins rule – odd-numbered elements are less abundant than their even-numbered neighbors.
Three of the lanthanide elements have radioactive isotopes with long half-lives (138La, 147Sm and 176Lu) that can be used to date minerals and rocks from Earth, the Moon and meteorites. Promethium is effectively a man-made element, as all its isotopes are radioactive with half-lives shorter than 20 years.
Applications
Industrial
Lanthanide elements and their compounds have many uses but the quantities consumed are relatively small in comparison to other elements. About 15000 ton/year of the lanthanides are consumed as catalysts and in the production of glasses. This 15000 tons corresponds to about 85% of the lanthanide production. From the perspective of value, however, applications in phosphors and magnets are more important.
The devices lanthanide elements are used in include superconductors, samarium-cobalt and neodymium-iron-boron high-flux rare-earth magnets, magnesium alloys, electronic polishers, refining catalysts and hybrid car components (primarily batteries and magnets). Lanthanide ions are used as the active ions in luminescent materials used in optoelectronics applications, most notably the Nd:YAG laser. Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers are significant devices in optical-fiber communication systems. Phosphors with lanthanide dopants are also widely used in cathode ray tube technology such as television sets. The earliest color television CRTs had a poor-quality red; europium as a phosphor dopant made good red phosphors possible. Yttrium iron garnet (YIG) spheres can act as tunable microwave resonators.
Lanthanide oxides are mixed with tungsten to improve their high temperature properties for TIG welding, replacing thorium, which was mildly hazardous to work with. Many defense-related products also use lanthanide elements such as night vision goggles and rangefinders. The SPY-1 radar used in some Aegis equipped warships, and the hybrid propulsion system of s all use rare earth magnets in critical capacities.
The price for lanthanum oxide used in fluid catalytic cracking has risen from $5 per kilogram in early 2010 to $140 per kilogram in June 2011.
Most lanthanides are widely used in lasers, and as (co-)dopants in doped-fiber optical amplifiers; for example, in Er-doped fiber amplifiers, which are used as repeaters in the terrestrial and submarine fiber-optic transmission links that carry internet traffic. These elements deflect ultraviolet and infrared radiation and are commonly used in the production of sunglass lenses. Other applications are summarized in the following table:
The complex Gd(DOTA) is used in magnetic resonance imaging.
Life science
Lanthanide complexes can be used for optical imaging. Applications are limited by the lability of the complexes.
Some applications depend on the unique luminescence properties of lanthanide chelates or cryptates). These are well-suited for this application due to their large Stokes shifts and extremely long emission lifetimes (from microseconds to milliseconds) compared to more traditional fluorophores (e.g., fluorescein, allophycocyanin, phycoerythrin, and rhodamine).
The biological fluids or serum commonly used in these research applications contain many compounds and proteins which are naturally fluorescent. Therefore, the use of conventional, steady-state fluorescence measurement presents serious limitations in assay sensitivity. Long-lived fluorophores, such as lanthanides, combined with time-resolved detection (a delay between excitation and emission detection) minimizes prompt fluorescence interference.
Time-resolved fluorometry (TRF) combined with fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) offers a powerful tool for drug discovery researchers: Time-Resolved Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer or TR-FRET. TR-FRET combines the low background aspect of TRF with the homogeneous assay format of FRET. The resulting assay provides an increase in flexibility, reliability and sensitivity in addition to higher throughput and fewer false positive/false negative results.
This method involves two fluorophores: a donor and an acceptor. Excitation of the donor fluorophore (in this case, the lanthanide ion complex) by an energy source (e.g. flash lamp or laser) produces an energy transfer to the acceptor fluorophore if they are within a given proximity to each other (known as the Förster's radius). The acceptor fluorophore in turn emits light at its characteristic wavelength.
The two most commonly used lanthanides in life science assays are shown below along with their corresponding acceptor dye as well as their excitation and emission wavelengths and resultant Stokes shift (separation of excitation and emission wavelengths).
Possible medical uses
Currently there is research showing that lanthanide elements can be used as anticancer agents. The main role of the lanthanides in these studies is to inhibit proliferation of the cancer cells. Specifically cerium and lanthanum have been studied for their role as anti-cancer agents.
One of the specific elements from the lanthanide group that has been tested and used is cerium (Ce). There have been studies that use a protein-cerium complex to observe the effect of cerium on the cancer cells. The hope was to inhibit cell proliferation and promote cytotoxicity. Transferrin receptors in cancer cells, such as those in breast cancer cells and epithelial cervical cells, promote the cell proliferation and malignancy of the cancer. Transferrin is a protein used to transport iron into the cells and is needed to aid the cancer cells in DNA replication. Transferrin acts as a growth factor for the cancerous cells and is dependent on iron. Cancer cells have much higher levels of transferrin receptors than normal cells and are very dependent on iron for their proliferation.
Cerium has shown results as an anti-cancer agent due to its similarities in structure and biochemistry to iron. Cerium may bind in the place of iron on to the transferrin and then be brought into the cancer cells by transferrin-receptor mediated endocytosis. The cerium binding to the transferrin in place of the iron inhibits the transferrin activity in the cell. This creates a toxic environment for the cancer cells and causes a decrease in cell growth. This is the proposed mechanism for cerium's effect on cancer cells, though the real mechanism may be more complex in how cerium inhibits cancer cell proliferation. Specifically in HeLa cancer cells studied in vitro, cell viability was decreased after 48 to 72 hours of cerium treatments. Cells treated with just cerium had decreases in cell viability, but cells treated with both cerium and transferrin had more significant inhibition for cellular activity.
Another specific element that has been tested and used as an anti-cancer agent is lanthanum, more specifically lanthanum chloride (LaCl3). The lanthanum ion is used to affect the levels of let-7a and microRNAs miR-34a in a cell throughout the cell cycle. When the lanthanum ion was introduced to the cell in vivo or in vitro, it inhibited the rapid growth and induced apoptosis of the cancer cells (specifically cervical cancer cells). This effect was caused by the regulation of the let-7a and microRNAs by the lanthanum ions. The mechanism for this effect is still unclear but it is possible that the lanthanum is acting in a similar way as the cerium and binding to a ligand necessary for cancer cell proliferation.
Biological effects
Due to their sparse distribution in the earth's crust and low aqueous solubility, the lanthanides have a low availability in the biosphere, and for a long time were not known to naturally form part of any biological molecules. In 2007 a novel methanol dehydrogenase that strictly uses lanthanides as enzymatic cofactors was discovered in a bacterium from the phylum Verrucomicrobia, Methylacidiphilum fumariolicum. This bacterium was found to survive only if there are lanthanides present in the environment. Compared to most other nondietary elements, non-radioactive lanthanides are classified as having low toxicity. The same nutritional requirement has also been observed Methylorubrum extorquens and Methylobacterium radiotolerans.
See also
References
Cited sources
External links
lanthanide Sparkle Model, used in the computational chemistry of lanthanide complexes
USGS Rare Earths Statistics and Information
Ana de Bettencourt-Dias: Chemistry of the lanthanides and lanthanide-containing materials
Eric Scerri, 2007, The periodic table: Its story and its significance, Oxford University Press, New York,
Periodic table | [
0.8632933497428894,
0.46038609743118286,
-0.13648055493831635,
-0.1307191401720047,
-0.3625149130821228,
-0.15555192530155182,
0.25079402327537537,
-0.2259945273399353,
0.14340557157993317,
0.044699229300022125,
-0.42268773913383484,
-0.004382324405014515,
-0.5982707738876343,
0.8493499159... |
18309 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer | Lucifer | Lucifer is one of various figures in folklore associated with the planet Venus. The entity's name was subsequently absorbed into Christianity as a name for the devil. Modern scholarship generally translates the term in the relevant Bible passage where the Ancient Greek figure's name was historically used (Isaiah 14:12) as "morning star" or "shining one" rather than as a proper noun, Lucifer.
As a name for the Devil in Christian theology, the more common meaning in English, "Lucifer" is the rendering of the Hebrew word (transliteration: hêlēl; pronunciation: hay-lale) in Isaiah given in the King James Version of the Bible. The translators of this version took the word from the Latin Vulgate, which translated by the Latin word (uncapitalized), meaning "the morning star, the planet Venus", or, as an adjective, "light-bringing".
As a name for the planet in its morning aspect, "Lucifer" (Light-Bringer) is a proper noun and is capitalized in English. In Greco-Roman civilization, it was often personified and considered a god and in some versions considered a son of Aurora (the Dawn). A similar name used by the Roman poet Catullus for the planet in its evening aspect is "Noctifer" (Night-Bringer).
Roman folklore and etymology
In Roman folklore, Lucifer ("light-bringer" in Latin) was the name of the planet Venus, though it was often personified as a male figure bearing a torch. The Greek name for this planet was variously Phosphoros (also meaning "light-bringer") or Heosphoros (meaning "dawn-bringer"). Lucifer was said to be "the fabled son of Aurora and Cephalus, and father of Ceyx". He was often presented in poetry as heralding the dawn.
The Latin word corresponding to Greek Phosphoros is Lucifer. It is used in its astronomical sense both in prose and poetry. Poets sometimes personify the star, placing it in a mythological context.
Lucifer's mother Aurora is cognate to the Vedic goddess Ushas, Lithuanian goddess Aušrinė, and Greek Eos, all three of whom are also goddesses of the dawn. All four are considered derivatives of the Proto-Indo-European stem *h₂ewsṓs (later *Ausṓs), "dawn", a stem that also gave rise to Proto-Germanic *Austrō, Old Germanic *Ōstara and Old English Ēostre / Ēastre. This agreement leads to the reconstruction of a Proto-Indo-European dawn goddess.
The second-century Roman mythographer Pseudo-Hyginus said of the planet:
"The fourth star is that of Venus, Luciferus by name. Some say it is Juno's. In many tales it is recorded that it is called Hesperus, too. It seems to be the largest of all stars. Some have said it represents the son of Aurora and Cephalus, who surpassed many in beauty, so that he even vied with Venus, and, as Eratosthenes says, for this reason it is called the star of Venus. It is visible both at dawn and sunset, and so properly has been called both Luciferus and Hesperus."
The Latin poet Ovid, in his first-century epic Metamorphoses, describes Lucifer as ordering the heavens:
"Aurora, watchful in the reddening dawn, threw wide her crimson doors and rose-filled halls; the Stellae took flight, in marshaled order set by Lucifer who left his station last."
Ovid, speaking of Phosphorus and Hesperus (the Evening Star, the evening appearance of the planet Venus) as identical, makes him the father of Daedalion. Ovid also makes him the father of Ceyx, while the Latin grammarian Servius makes him the father of the Hesperides or of Hesperis.
In the classical Roman period, Lucifer was not typically regarded as a deity and had few, if any, myths, though the planet was associated with various deities and often poetically personified. Cicero pointed out that "You say that Sol the Sun and Luna the Moon are deities, and the Greeks identify the former with Apollo and the latter with Diana. But if Luna (the Moon) is a goddess, then Lucifer (the Morning-Star) also and the rest of the Wandering Stars (Stellae Errantes) will have to be counted gods; and if so, then the Fixed Stars (Stellae Inerrantes) as well."
Planet Venus, Sumerian folklore, and fall from heaven motif
The motif of a heavenly being striving for the highest seat of heaven only to be cast down to the underworld has its origins in the motions of the planet Venus, known as the morning star.
The Sumerian goddess Inanna (Babylonian Ishtar) is associated with the planet Venus, and Inanna's actions in several of her myths, including Inanna and Shukaletuda and Inanna's Descent into the Underworld appear to parallel the motion of Venus as it progresses through its synodic cycle.
A similar theme is present in the Babylonian myth of Etana. The Jewish Encyclopedia comments:
The fall from heaven motif also has a parallel in Canaanite mythology. In ancient Canaanite religion, the morning star is personified as the god Attar, who attempted to occupy the throne of Ba'al and, finding he was unable to do so, descended and ruled the underworld. The original myth may have been about the lesser god Helel trying to dethrone the Canaanite high god El, who lived on a mountain to the north. Hermann Gunkel's reconstruction of the myth told of a mighty warrior called Hêlal, whose ambition was to ascend higher than all the other stellar divinities, but who had to descend to the depths; it thus portrayed as a battle the process by which the bright morning star fails to reach the highest point in the sky before being faded out by the rising sun. However, the Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible argues that no evidence has been found of any Canaanite myth or imagery of a god being forcibly thrown from heaven, as in the Book of Isaiah (see below). It argues that the closest parallels with Isaiah'''s description of the king of Babylon as a fallen morning star cast down from heaven are to be found not in Canaanite myths but in traditional ideas of the Jewish people, echoed in the Biblical account of the fall of Adam and Eve, cast out of God's presence for wishing to be as God, and the picture in Psalm 82 of the "gods" and "sons of the Most High" destined to die and fall. This Jewish tradition has echoes also in Jewish pseudepigrapha such as 2 Enoch and the Life of Adam and Eve. The Life of Adam and Eve, in turn, shaped the idea of Iblis in the Quran.
The Greek myth of Phaethon, a personification of the planet Jupiter, follows a similar pattern.
Christianity
In the Bible
In the Book of Isaiah, chapter 14, the king of Babylon is condemned in a prophetic vision by the prophet Isaiah and is called (, Hebrew for "shining one, son of the morning"), who is addressed as (Hêlêl ben Šāḥar), The title "Helel ben Shahar" refers to the planet Venus as the morning star, and that is how the Hebrew word is usually interpreted.Gunkel expressly states that "the name Helel ben Shahar clearly states that it is a question of a nature myth. Morning Star, son of Dawn has a curious fate. He rushes gleaming up towards heaven, but never reaches the heights; the sunlight fades him away." (Schöpfung und Chaos, p. 133) The Hebrew word transliterated as Hêlêl or Heylel, occurs only once in the Hebrew Bible. The Septuagint renders in Greek as (heōsphoros), "bringer of dawn", the Ancient Greek name for the morning star. Similarly the Vulgate renders in Latin as , the name in that language for the morning star. According to the King James Bible-based Strong's Concordance, the original Hebrew word means "shining one, light-bearer", and the English translation given in the King James text is the Latin name for the planet Venus, "Lucifer", as it was already in the Wycliffe Bible.
However, the translation of הֵילֵל as "Lucifer" has been abandoned in modern English translations of Isaiah 14:12. Present-day translations render הֵילֵל as "morning star" (New International Version, New Century Version, New American Standard Bible, Good News Translation, Holman Christian Standard Bible, Contemporary English Version, Common English Bible, Complete Jewish Bible), "daystar" (New Jerusalem Bible, The Message), "Day Star" (New Revised Standard Version, English Standard Version), "shining one" (New Life Version, New World Translation, JPS Tanakh), or "shining star" (New Living Translation).
In a modern translation from the original Hebrew, the passage in which the phrase "Lucifer" or "morning star" occurs begins with the statement: "On the day the Lord gives you relief from your suffering and turmoil and from the harsh labour forced on you, you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon: How the oppressor has come to an end! How his fury has ended!" After describing the death of the king, the taunt continues:
J. Carl Laney has pointed out that in the final verses here quoted, the king of Babylon is described not as a god or an angel but as a man, and that man may have been not Nebuchadnezzar II, but rather his son, Belshazzar. Nebuchadnezzar was gripped by a spiritual fervor to build a temple to the moon god Sin, and his son ruled as regent. The Abrahamic scriptural texts could be interpreted as a weak usurping of true kingly power, and a taunt at the failed regency of Belshazzar.
For the unnamed "king of Babylon" a wide range of identifications have been proposed. They include a Babylonian ruler of the prophet Isaiah's own time the later Nebuchadnezzar II, under whom the Babylonian captivity of the Jews began, or Nabonidus, and the Assyrian kings Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon II and Sennacherib. Verse 20 says that this king of Babylon will not be "joined with them [all the kings of the nations] in burial, because thou hast destroyed thy land, thou hast slain thy people; the seed of evil-doers shall not be named for ever", but rather be cast out of the grave, while "All the kings of the nations, all of them, sleep in glory, every one in his own house".Isaiah 14:18 Herbert Wolf held that the "king of Babylon" was not a specific ruler but a generic representation of the whole line of rulers.
Isaiah 14:12 became a source for the popular conception of the fallen angel motif. Rabbinical Judaism has rejected any belief in rebel or fallen angels. In the 11th century, the Pirkei De-Rabbi Eliezer illustrates the origin of the "fallen angel myth" by giving two accounts, one relates to the angel in the Garden of Eden who seduces Eve, and the other relates to the angels, the benei elohim who cohabit with the daughters of man (Genesis 6:1–4). An association of Isaiah 14:12–18 with a personification of evil, called the devil developed outside of mainstream Rabbinic Judaism in pseudepigrapha and Christian writings, particularly with the apocalypses.
As the devil
The metaphor of the morning star that Isaiah 14:12 applied to a king of Babylon gave rise to the general use of the Latin word for "morning star", capitalized, as the original name of the devil before his fall from grace, linking Isaiah 14:12 with Luke 10 ("I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven") and interpreting the passage in Isaiah as an allegory of Satan's fall from heaven.
Considering pride as a major sin peaking in self-deification, Lucifer (Helel) became the template for the devil. As a result, Lucifer was identified with the devil in Christianity and in Christian popular literature", as in Dante Alighieri's Inferno, Joost van den Vondel's Lucifer, and John Milton's Paradise Lost. Early medieval Christianity fairly distinguished between Lucifer and Satan. While Lucifer, as the devil, is fixated in hell, Satan executes the desires of Lucifer as his vassal.Dendle, Peter (2001). Satan Unbound: The Devil in Old English Narrative Literature. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-8369-2.p. 10 Theologians however, made no distinction between Lucifer and Satan, regarding Lucifer as Satan's primordial name.
Interpretations
Aquila of Sinope derives the word helel, the Hebrew name for the morning star, from the verb yalal (to lament). This derivation was adopted as a proper name for an angel who laments the loss of his former beauty. The Christian church fathers – for example Hieronymus, in his Vulgate – translated this as Lucifer. The equation of Lucifer with the fallen angel probably occurred in 1st century Palestinian Judaism. The church fathers brought the fallen lightbringer Lucifer into connection with the Devil on the basis of a saying of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke (10.18 EU): "I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning."
Some Christian writers have applied the name "Lucifer" as used in the Book of Isaiah, and the motif of a heavenly being cast down to the earth, to the devil. Sigve K. Tonstad argues that the New Testament War in Heaven theme of Revelation 12, in which the dragon "who is called the devil and Satan ... was thrown down to the earth", was derived from the passage about the Babylonian king in Isaiah 14. Origen (184/185 – 253/254) interpreted such Old Testament passages as being about manifestations of the devil.Auffarth, Christoph; Stuckenbruck, Loren T., eds. (2004). p. 62. Origen was not the first to interpret the Isaiah 14 passage as referring to the devil: he was preceded by at least Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 225), who in his Adversus Marcionem (book 5, chapters 11 and 17) twice presents as spoken by the devil the words of Isaiah 14:14: "I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High".Migne, Patrologia latina, vol. 2, cols. 500 and 514 Though Tertullian was a speaker of the language in which the word "lucifer" was created, "Lucifer" is not among the numerous names and phrases he used to describe the devil. Even at the time of the Latin writer Augustine of Hippo (354–430), a contemporary of the composition of the Vulgate, "Lucifer" had not yet become a common name for the devil.
Augustine of Hippo's work Civitas Dei (5th century) became the major opinion of Western demonology including in the Catholic Church. For Augustine, the rebellion of the devil was the first and final cause of evil. By this he rejected some earlier teachings about Satan having fallen when the world was already created. Further, Augustine rejects the idea that envy could have been the first sin (as some early Christians believed, evident from sources like Cave of Treasures in which Satan has fallen because he envies humans and refused to prostrate himself before Adam), since pride ("loving yourself more than others and God" ) is required to be envious ("hatred for the happiness of others"). He argues that evil came first into existence by the free will of Lucifer. Lucifer's attempt to take God's throne is not an assault on the gates of heaven, but a turn to solipsism in which the devil becomes God in his world. When the King of Babel uttered his phrase in Isaiah, he was speaking through the spirit of Lucifer, the head of devils. He concluded that everyone who falls away from God are within the body of Lucifer, and is a devil.
Adherents of the King James Only movement and others who hold that Isaiah 14:12 does indeed refer to the devil have decried the modern translations. An opposing view attributes to Origen the first identification of the "Lucifer" of Isaiah 14:12 with the devil and to Tertullian and Augustine of Hippo the spread of the story of Lucifer as fallen through pride, envy of God and jealousy of humans.
Protestant theologian John Calvin rejected the identification of Lucifer with Satan or the devil. He said: "The exposition of this passage, which some have given, as if it referred to Satan, has arisen from ignorance: for the context plainly shows these statements must be understood in reference to the king of the Babylonians." Martin Luther also considered it a gross error to refer this verse to the devil.
Counter-Reformation writers, like Albertanus of Brescia, classified the seven deadly sins each to a specific Biblical demon. He, as well as Peter Binsfield, assigned Lucifer to the sin pride.
Gnosticism
Since Lucifer's sin mainly consists of self-deification, some Gnostic sects identified Lucifer with the creator deity in the Old Testament. In the Bogomil and Cathar text Gospel of the Secret Supper, Lucifer is a glorified angel but fell from heaven to establish his own kingdom and became the Demiurge who he created the material world and trapped souls from heaven inside matter. Jesus descended to earth to free the captured souls.Willis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer (2009). The Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded Edition. Shambhala. . p. 745–755, 831 In contrast to mainstream Christianity, the cross was denounced as a symbol of Lucifer and his instrument in an attempt to kill Jesus.
Latter Day Saint movement
Lucifer is regarded within the Latter Day Saint movement as the pre-mortal name of the devil. Mormon theology teaches that in a heavenly council, Lucifer rebelled against the plan of God the Father and was subsequently cast out. The Doctrine and Covenants reads:
After becoming Satan by his fall, Lucifer "goeth up and down, to and fro in the earth, seeking to destroy the souls of men". Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints consider Isaiah 14:12 to be referring to both the king of the Babylonians and the devil.
Other occurrences
Anthroposophy
Rudolf Steiner's writings, which formed the basis for Anthroposophy, characterised Lucifer as a spiritual opposite to Ahriman, with Christ between the two forces, mediating a balanced path for humanity. Lucifer represents an intellectual, imaginative, delusional, otherworldly force which might be associated with visions, subjectivity, psychosis and fantasy. He associated Lucifer with the religious/philosophical cultures of Egypt, Rome and Greece. Steiner believed that Lucifer, as a supersensible Being, had incarnated in China about 3000 years before the birth of Christ.
Luciferianism
Luciferianism is a belief structure that venerates the fundamental traits that are attributed to Lucifer. The custom, inspired by the teachings of Gnosticism, usually reveres Lucifer not as the devil, but as a savior, a guardian or instructing spirit or even the true god as opposed to Jehovah.
In Anton LaVey's The Satanic Bible, Lucifer is one of the four crown princes of hell, particularly that of the East, the 'lord of the air', and is called the bringer of light, the morning star, intellectualism, and enlightenment.
Freemasonry
Léo Taxil (1854–1907) claimed that Freemasonry is associated with worshipping Lucifer. In what is known as the Taxil hoax, he alleged that leading Freemason Albert Pike had addressed "The 23 Supreme Confederated Councils of the world" (an invention of Taxil), instructing them that Lucifer was God, and was in opposition to the evil god Adonai. Taxil promoted a book by Diana Vaughan (actually written by himself, as he later confessed publicly) that purported to reveal a highly secret ruling body called the Palladium, which controlled the organization and had a satanic agenda. As described by Freemasonry Disclosed in 1897:
Supporters of Freemasonry assert that, when Albert Pike and other Masonic scholars spoke about the "Luciferian path," or the "energies of Lucifer," they were referring to the Morning Star, the light bearer, the search for light; the very antithesis of dark. Pike says in Morals and Dogma, "Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, sensual, or selfish Souls? Doubt it not!" Much has been made of this quote.
Taxil's work and Pike's address continue to be quoted by anti-masonic groups.
In Devil-Worship in France, Arthur Edward Waite compared Taxil's work to today's tabloid journalism, replete with logical and factual inconsistencies.
Neopagan witchcraft
In a collection of folklore and magical practices supposedly collected in Italy by Charles Godfrey Leland and published in his Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, the figure of Lucifer is featured prominently as both the brother and consort of the goddess Diana, and father of Aradia, at the center of an alleged Italian witch-cult. In Leland's mythology, Diana pursued her brother Lucifer across the sky as a cat pursues a mouse. According to Leland, after dividing herself into light and darkness:
"...Diana saw that the light was so beautiful, the light which was her other half, her brother Lucifer, she yearned for it with exceeding great desire. Wishing to receive the light again into her darkness, to swallow it up in rapture, in delight, she trembled with desire. This desire was the Dawn. But Lucifer, the light, fled from her, and would not yield to her wishes; he was the light which flies into the most distant parts of heaven, the mouse which flies before the cat."
Here, the motions of Diana and Lucifer once again mirror the celestial motions of the moon and Venus, respectively. Though Leland's Lucifer is based on the classical personification of the planet Venus, he also incorporates elements from Christian tradition, as in the following passage:
"Diana greatly loved her brother Lucifer, the god of the Sun and of the Moon, the god of Light (Splendor), who was so proud of his beauty, and who for his pride was driven from Paradise."
In the several modern Wiccan traditions based in part on Leland's work, the figure of Lucifer is usually either omitted or replaced as Diana's consort with either the Etruscan god Tagni, or Dianus (Janus, following the work of folklorist James Frazer in The Golden Bough).
Gallery
Modern popular culture
See also
Angra Mainyu
Aphrodite
Astarte
Asura
Aurvandil, aka Earendel
Azazel
Devil in popular culture
Doctor Faustus, tragic play by Christopher Marlowe
Erlik
Guardian of the Threshold
Inferno, first of the three canticas of Dante's Divine Comedy Luceafărul, a literary magazine
Luceafărul, a poem by the poet Mihai Eminescu
Lucifer and Prometheus The Lucifer Effect Luciform body
Lucis Trust
Phosphorus, the morning star, aka Eosphorus and Heosphorus
Shahar
References
Further reading
External links
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica (2010). Lucifer (classical mythology). Encyclopaedia Britannica.'' Encyclopædia Britannica, inc.
Archangels in Christianity
Babylonian kings
Bogomilism
Book of Isaiah
Christian terminology
Dawn
Fallen angels
Hell (Christianity)
Luciferianism
Children of Eos
Roman gods
Satan
Satanism
Stellar gods
Venus
Venusian deities
Vulgate Latin words and phrases
Devils | [
0.10710911452770233,
0.8253154754638672,
-0.867119312286377,
0.12748077511787415,
-0.5266100764274597,
0.5069051384925842,
0.48197081685066223,
0.4174365997314453,
-0.3246508836746216,
-0.3560926020145416,
-0.42893317341804504,
0.11771059036254883,
-0.40540581941604614,
0.3678421974182129,... |
18310 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda%20phage | Lambda phage | Enterobacteria phage λ (lambda phage, coliphage λ, officially Escherichia virus Lambda) is a bacterial virus, or bacteriophage, that infects the bacterial species Escherichia coli (E. coli). It was discovered by Esther Lederberg in 1950. The wild type of this virus has a temperate life cycle that allows it to either reside within the genome of its host through lysogeny or enter into a lytic phase, during which it kills and lyses the cell to produce offspring. Lambda strains, mutated at specific sites, are unable to lysogenize cells; instead, they grow and enter the lytic cycle after superinfecting an already lysogenized cell.
The phage particle consists of a head (also known as a capsid), a tail, and tail fibers (see image of virus below). The head contains the phage's double-strand linear DNA genome. During infection, the phage particle recognizes and binds to its host, E. coli, causing DNA in the head of the phage to be ejected through the tail into the cytoplasm of the bacterial cell. Usually, a "lytic cycle" ensues, where the lambda DNA is replicated and new phage particles are produced within the cell. This is followed by cell lysis, releasing the cell contents, including virions that have been assembled, into the environment. However, under certain conditions, the phage DNA may integrate itself into the host cell chromosome in the lysogenic pathway. In this state, the λ DNA is called a prophage and stays resident within the host's genome without apparent harm to the host. The host is termed a lysogen when a prophage is present. This prophage may enter the lytic cycle when the lysogen enters a stressed condition.
Anatomy
The virus particle consists of a head and a tail that can have tail fibers. The whole particle consists of 12–14 different proteins with more than 1000 protein molecules total and one DNA molecule located in the phage head. However, it is still not entirely clear whether the L and M proteins are part of the virion. All characterized lambdoid phages possess an N protein-mediated transcription antitermination mechanism, with the exception of phage HK022
The genome contains 48,490 base pairs of double-stranded, linear DNA, with 12-base single-strand segments at both 5' ends. These two single-stranded segments are the "sticky ends" of what is called the cos site. The cos site circularizes the DNA in the host cytoplasm. In its circular form, the phage genome, therefore, is 48,502 base pairs in length. The lambda genome can be inserted into the E. coli chromosome and is then called a prophage. See section below for details.
Life cycle
Infection
Lambda phage is a non-contractile tailed phage, meaning during an infection event it cannot 'force' its DNA through a bacterial cell membrane. It must instead use an existing pathway to invade the host cell, having evolved the tip of its tail to interact with a specific pore to allow entry of its DNA to the hosts.
Bacteriophage Lambda binds to an E. coli cell by means of its J protein in the tail tip. The J protein interacts with the maltose outer membrane porin (the product of the lamB gene) of E. coli, a porin molecule, which is part of the maltose operon.
The linear phage genome is injected through the outer membrane.
The DNA passes through the mannose permease complex in the inner membrane (encoded by the manXYZ genes) and immediately circularises using the cos sites, 12-base G-C-rich cohesive "sticky ends". The single-strand viral DNA ends are ligated by host DNA ligase. It is not generally appreciated that the 12 bp lambda cohesive ends were the subject of the first direct nucleotide sequencing of a biological DNA.
Host DNA gyrase puts negative supercoils in the circular chromosome, causing A-T-rich regions to unwind and drive transcription.
Transcription starts from the constitutive PL, PR and PR' promoters producing the 'immediate early' transcripts. At first, these express the N and cro genes, producing N, Cro and a short inactive protein.
Cro binds to OR3, preventing access to the PRM promoter, preventing expression of the cI gene. N binds to the two Nut (N utilisation) sites, one in the N gene in the PL reading frame, and one in the cro gene in the PR reading frame.
The N protein is an antiterminator, and functions by engaging the transcribing RNA polymerase at specific sites of the nascently transcribed mRNA. When RNA polymerase transcribes these regions, it recruits N and forms a complex with several host Nus proteins. This complex skips through most termination sequences. The extended transcripts (the 'late early' transcripts) include the N and cro genes along with cII and cIII genes, and xis, int, O, P and Q genes discussed later.
The cIII protein acts to protect the cII protein from proteolysis by FtsH (a membrane-bound essential E. coli protease) by acting as a competitive inhibitor. This inhibition can induce a bacteriostatic state, which favours lysogeny. cIII also directly stabilises the cII protein.
On initial infection, the stability of cII determines the lifestyle of the phage; stable cII will lead to the lysogenic pathway, whereas if cII is degraded the phage will go into the lytic pathway. Low temperature, starvation of the cells and high multiplicity of infection (MOI) are known to favor lysogeny (see later discussion).
N antitermination
This occurs without the N protein interacting with the DNA; the protein instead binds to the freshly transcribed mRNA. Nut sites contain 3 conserved "boxes", of which only BoxB is essential.
The boxB RNA sequences are located close to the 5' end of the pL and pR transcripts. When transcribed, each sequence forms a hairpin loop structure that the N protein can bind to.
N protein binds to boxB in each transcript, and contacts the transcribing RNA polymerase via RNA looping. The N-RNAP complex is stabilized by subsequent binding of several host Nus (N utilisation substance) proteins (which include transcription termination/antitermination factors and, bizarrely, a ribosome subunit).
The entire complex (including the bound Nut site on the mRNA) continues transcription, and can skip through termination sequences.
Lytic life cycle
This is the lifecycle that the phage follows following most infections, where the cII protein does not reach a high enough concentration due to degradation, so does not activate its promoters.
The 'late early' transcripts continue being written, including xis, int, Q and genes for replication of the lambda genome (OP). Cro dominates the repressor site (see "Repressor" section), repressing synthesis from the PRM promoter (which is a promoter of the lysogenic cycle).
The O and P proteins initiate replication of the phage chromosome (see "Lytic Replication").
Q, another antiterminator, binds to Qut sites.
Transcription from the PR' promoter can now extend to produce mRNA for the lysis and the head and tail proteins.
Structural proteins and phage genomes self-assemble into new phage particles.
Products of the genes S,R, Rz and Rz1 cause cell lysis. S is a holin, a small membrane protein that, at a time determined by the sequence of the protein, suddenly makes holes in the membrane. R is an endolysin, an enzyme that escapes through the S holes and cleaves the cell wall. Rz and Rz1 are membrane proteins that form a complex that somehow destroys the outer membrane, after the endolysin has degraded the cell wall. For wild-type lambda, lysis occurs at about 50 minutes after the start of infection and releases around 100 virions.
Rightward transcription
Rightward transcription expresses the O, P and Q genes. O and P are responsible for initiating replication, and Q is another antiterminator that allows the expression of head, tail, and lysis genes from PR’.
Lytic replication
For the first few replication cycles, the lambda genome undergoes θ replication (circle-to-circle).
This is initiated at the ori site located in the O gene. O protein binds the ori site, and P protein binds the DnaB subunit of the host replication machinery as well as binding O. This effectively commandeers the host DNA polymerase.
Soon, the phage switches to a rolling circle replication similar to that used by phage M13. The DNA is nicked and the 3’ end serves as a primer. Note that this does not release single copies of the phage genome but rather one long molecule with many copies of the genome: a concatemer.
These concatemers are cleaved at their cos sites as they are packaged. Packaging cannot occur from circular phage DNA, only from concatomeric DNA.
Q antitermination
Q is similar to N in its effect: Q binds to RNA polymerase in Qut sites and the resulting complex can ignore terminators, however the mechanism is very different; the Q protein first associates with a DNA sequence rather than an mRNA sequence.
The Qut site is very close to the PR’ promoter, close enough that the σ factor has not been released from the RNA polymerase holoenzyme. Part of the Qut site resembles the -10 Pribnow box, causing the holoenzyme to pause.
Q protein then binds and displaces part of the σ factor and transcription re-initiates.
The head and tail genes are transcribed and the corresponding proteins self-assemble.
Leftward transcription
Leftward transcription expresses the gam, red, xis, and int genes. Gam and red proteins are involved in recombination. Gam is also important in that it inhibits the host RecBCD nuclease from degrading the 3’ ends in rolling circle replication. Int and xis are integration and excision proteins vital to lysogeny.
xis and int regulation of insertion and excision
xis and int are found on the same piece of mRNA, so approximately equal concentrations of xis and int proteins are produced. This results (initially) in the excision of any inserted genomes from the host genome.
The mRNA from the PL promoter forms a stable secondary structure with a stem-loop in the sib section of the mRNA. This targets the 3' (sib) end of the mRNA for RNAaseIII degradation, which results in a lower effective concentration of int mRNA than xis mRNA (as the int cistron is nearer to the sib sequence than the xis cistron is to the sib sequence), so a higher concentrations of xis than int is observed.
Higher concentrations of xis than int result in no insertion or excision of phage genomes, the evolutionarily favoured action - leaving any pre-inserted phage genomes inserted (so reducing competition) and preventing the insertion of the phage genome into the genome of a doomed host.
Lysogenic (or lysenogenic) life cycle
The lysogenic lifecycle begins once the cI protein reaches a high enough concentration to activate its promoters, after a small number of infections.
The 'late early' transcripts continue being written, including xis, int, Q and genes for replication of the lambda genome.
The stabilized cII acts to promote transcription from the PRE, PI and Pantiq promoters.
The Pantiq promoter produces antisense mRNA to the Q gene message of the PR promoter transcript, thereby switching off Q production. The PRE promoter produces antisense mRNA to the cro section of the PR promoter transcript, turning down cro production, and has a transcript of the cI gene. This is expressed, turning on cI repressor production. The PI promoter expresses the int gene, resulting in high concentrations of Int protein. This int protein integrates the phage DNA into the host chromosome (see "Prophage Integration").
No Q results in no extension of the PR' promoter's reading frame, so no lytic or structural proteins are made. Elevated levels of int (much higher than that of xis) result in the insertion of the lambda genome into the hosts genome (see diagram). Production of cI leads to the binding of cI to the OR1 and OR2 sites in the PR promoter, turning off cro and other early gene expression. cI also binds to the PL promoter, turning off transcription there too.
Lack of cro leaves the OR3 site unbound, so transcription from the PRM promoter may occur, maintaining levels of cI.
Lack of transcription from the PL and PR promoters leads to no further production of cII and cIII.
As cII and cIII concentrations decrease, transcription from the Pantiq, PRE and PI stop being promoted since they are no longer needed.
Only the PRM and PR' promoters are left active, the former producing cI protein and the latter a short inactive transcript. The genome remains inserted into the host genome in a dormant state.
The prophage is duplicated with every subsequent cell division of the host. The phage genes expressed in this dormant state code for proteins that repress expression of other phage genes (such as the structural and lysis genes) in order to prevent entry into the lytic cycle. These repressive proteins are broken down when the host cell is under stress, resulting in the expression of the repressed phage genes. Stress can be from starvation, poisons (like antibiotics), or other factors that can damage or destroy the host. In response to stress, the activated prophage is excised from the DNA of the host cell by one of the newly expressed gene products and enters its lytic pathway.
Prophage integration
The integration of phage λ takes place at a special attachment site in the bacterial and phage genomes, called attλ. The sequence of the bacterial att site is called attB, between the gal and bio operons, and consists of the parts B-O-B', whereas the complementary sequence in the circular phage genome is called attP and consists of the parts P-O-P'. The integration itself is a sequential exchange (see genetic recombination) via a Holliday junction and requires both the phage protein Int and the bacterial protein IHF (integration host factor). Both Int and IHF bind to attP and form an intasome, a DNA-protein-complex designed for site-specific recombination of the phage and host DNA. The original B-O-B' sequence is changed by the integration to B-O-P'-phage DNA-P-O-B'. The phage DNA is now part of the host's genome.
Maintenance of lysogeny
Lysogeny is maintained solely by cI. cI represses transcription from PL and PR while upregulating and controlling its own expression from PRM. It is therefore the only protein expressed by lysogenic phage.
This is coordinated by the PL and PR operators. Both operators have three binding sites for cI: OL1, OL2, and OL3 for PL, and OR1, OR2 and OR3 for PR.
cI binds most favorably to OR1; binding here inhibits transcription from PR. As cI easily dimerises, the binding of cI to OR1 greatly increases the affinity of the binding of cI to OR2, and this happens almost immediately after OR1 binding. This activates transcription in the other direction from PRM, as the N terminal domain of cI on OR2 tightens the binding of RNA polymerase to PRM and hence cI stimulates its own transcription. When it is present at a much higher concentration, it also binds to OR3, inhibiting transcription from PRM, thus regulating its own levels in a negative feedback loop.
cI binding to the PL operator is very similar, except that it has no direct effect on cI transcription. As an additional repression of its own expression, however, cI dimers bound to OR3 and OL3 bend the DNA between them to tetramerise.
The presence of cI causes immunity to superinfection by other lambda phages, as it will inhibit their PL and PR promoters.
Induction
The classic induction of a lysogen involved irradiating the infected cells with UV light. Any situation where a lysogen undergoes DNA damage or the SOS response of the host is otherwise stimulated leads to induction.
The host cell, containing a dormant phage genome, experiences DNA damage due to a high stress environment, and starts to undergo the SOS response.
RecA (a cellular protein) detects DNA damage and becomes activated. It is now RecA*, a highly specific co-protease.
Normally RecA* binds LexA (a transcription repressor), activating LexA auto-protease activity, which destroys LexA repressor, allowing production of DNA repair proteins. In lysogenic cells, this response is hijacked, and RecA* stimulates cI autocleavage. This is because cI mimics the structure of LexA at the autocleavage site.
Cleaved cI can no longer dimerise, and loses its affinity for DNA binding.
The PR and PL promoters are no longer repressed and switch on, and the cell returns to the lytic sequence of expression events (note that cII is not stable in cells undergoing the SOS response). There is however one notable difference.
Control of phage genome excision in induction
The phage genome is still inserted in the host genome and needs excision for DNA replication to occur. The sib section beyond the normal PL promoter transcript is, however, no longer included in this reading frame (see diagram).
No sib domain on the PL promoter mRNA results in no hairpin loop on the 3' end, and the transcript is no longer targeted for RNAaseIII degradation.
The new intact transcript has one copy of both xis and int, so approximately equal concentrations of xis and int proteins are produced.
Equal concentrations of xis and int result in the excision of the inserted genome from the host genome for replication and later phage production.
Multiplicity reactivation and prophage reactivation
Multiplicity reactivation (MR) is the process by which multiple viral genomes, each containing inactivating genome damage, interact within an infected cell to form a viable viral genome. MR was originally discovered with phage T4, but was subsequently found in phage λ (as well as in numerous other bacterial and mammalian viruses). MR of phage λ inactivated by UV light depends on the recombination function of either the host or of the infecting phage. Absence of both recombination systems leads to a loss of MR.
Survival of UV-irradiated phage λ is increased when the E. coli host is lysogenic for an homologous prophage, a phenomenon termed prophage reactivation. Prophage reactivation in phage λ appears to occur by a recombinational repair process similar to that of MR.
Repressor
The repressor found in the phage lambda is a notable example of the level of control possible over gene expression by a very simple system. It forms a 'binary switch' with two genes under mutually exclusive expression, as discovered by Barbara J. Meyer.
The lambda repressor gene system consists of (from left to right on the chromosome):
cI gene
OR3
OR2
OR1
cro gene
The lambda repressor is a self assembling dimer also known as the cI protein. It binds DNA in the helix-turn-helix binding motif. It regulates the transcription of the cI protein and the Cro protein.
The life cycle of lambda phages is controlled by cI and Cro proteins. The lambda phage will remain in the lysogenic state if cI proteins predominate, but will be transformed into the lytic cycle if cro proteins predominate.
The cI dimer may bind to any of three operators, OR1, OR2, and OR3, in the order OR1 > OR2 > OR3.
Binding of a cI dimer to OR1 enhances binding of a second cI dimer to OR2, an effect called cooperativity. Thus, OR1 and OR2 are almost always simultaneously occupied by cI. However, this does not increase the affinity between cI and OR3, which will be occupied only when the cI concentration is high.
At high concentrations of cI, the dimers will also bind to operators OL1 and OL2 (which are over 2 kb downstream from the R operators). When cI dimers are bound to OL1, OL2, OR1, and OR2 a loop is induced in the DNA, allowing these dimers to bind together to form an octamer. This is a phenomenon called long-range cooperativity. Upon formation of the octamer, cI dimers may cooperatively bind to OL3 and OR3, repressing transcription of cI. This autonegative regulation ensures a stable minimum concentration of the repressor molecule and, should SOS signals arise, allows for more efficient prophage induction.
In the absence of cI proteins, the cro gene may be transcribed.
In the presence of cI proteins, only the cI gene may be transcribed.
At high concentration of cI, transcriptions of both genes are repressed.
Protein function overview
Lytic vs. lysogenic
An important distinction here is that between the two decisions; lysogeny and lysis on infection, and continuing lysogeny or lysis from a prophage. The latter is determined solely by the activation of RecA in the SOS response of the cell, as detailed in the section on induction. The former will also be affected by this; a cell undergoing an SOS response will always be lysed, as no cI protein will be allowed to build up. However, the initial lytic/lysogenic decision on infection is also dependent on the cII and cIII proteins.
In cells with sufficient nutrients, protease activity is high, which breaks down cII. This leads to the lytic lifestyle. In cells with limited nutrients, protease activity is low, making cII stable. This leads to the lysogenic lifestyle. cIII appears to stabilize cII, both directly and by acting as a competitive inhibitor to the relevant proteases. This means that a cell "in trouble", i.e. lacking in nutrients and in a more dormant state, is more likely to lysogenise. This would be selected for because the phage can now lie dormant in the bacterium until it falls on better times, and so the phage can create more copies of itself with the additional resources available and with the more likely proximity of further infectable cells.
A full biophysical model for lambda's lysis-lysogeny decision remains to be developed. Computer modeling and simulation suggest that random processes during infection drive the selection of lysis or lysogeny within individual cells. However, recent experiments suggest that physical differences among cells, that exist prior to infection, predetermine whether a cell will lyse or become a lysogen.
As a genetic tool
Lambda phage has been used heavily as a model organism, and has been a rich source for useful tools in microbial genetics, and later in molecular genetics. Uses include its application as a vector for the cloning of recombinant DNA; the use of its site-specific recombinase (int) for the shuffling of cloned DNAs by the gateway method; and the application of its Red operon, including the proteins Red alpha (also called 'exo'), beta and gamma in the DNA engineering method called recombineering. The 48 kb DNA fragment of lambda phage is not essential for productive infection and can be replaced by foreign DNA. Lambda phage will enter bacteria more easily than plasmids making it a useful vector that can destroy or can become part of the host's DNA. Lambda phage can be manipulated and used as an anti-cancer vaccine, nanoparticle, targeting human aspartyl (asparaginyl) β-hydroxylase (ASPH, HAAH). Lambda phage has also been of major importance in the study of specialized transduction.
See also
Esther Lederberg
Lambda holin family
Molecular weight size marker
Sankar Adhya
Zygotic induction
Corynebacteriophages – Corynephages β (beta) and ω (omega) are (proposed) members of genus Lambdavirus
References
Further reading
James Watson, Tania Baker, Stephen Bell, Alexander Gann, Michael Levine, Richard Losick Molecular Biology of the Gene (International Edition) - 6th Edition
Mark Ptashne and Nancy Hopkins, "The Operators Controlled by the Lambda Phage Repressor", PNAS, v.60, n.4, pp. 1282–1287 (1968).
Barbara J. Meyer, Dennis G. Kleid, and Mark Ptashne, "Lambda Repressor Turns Off Transcription of Its Own Gene", PNAS, v.72, n.12, pp. 4785–4789 (December 1975).
Gottesman, M. and Weisberg, R.A. 2004 "Little lambda - who made thee?", Micro and Mol Biol Revs, 68, 796-813 (available online at Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews, American Society for Microbiology)
Ptashne, M. "A Genetic Switch: Phage Lambda Revisited", 3rd edition 2003
Snyder, L. and Champness, W. "Molecular Genetics of Bacteria", 3rd edition 2007 (Contains an informative and well illustrated overview of bacteriophage lambda)
Splasho, Online overview of lambda (illustrates genes active at all stages in lifecycle)
External links
Life Cycle, Basic Animation of Lambda Lifecyecle (illustrates infection and lytic/lysogenic pathways with some protein and transcription detail)
Time-lapse microscopy video from MIT showing both lysis and lysogeny by phage lambda
Lambda Phage Life cycle (basic visual demonstration of Lambda bacteriophage life cycle)
Lambda Phage genome in GenBank
Lambda Phage Reference Proteome from UniProt
Lambda Phage Protein Structures in NCBI (3D display of protein structures for bacteriophage Lambda)
Genetics techniques
Model organisms
Siphoviridae | [
0.32726359367370605,
0.0760263204574585,
-0.4492616355419159,
0.023890135809779167,
-0.08805840462446213,
0.23475435376167297,
0.05185136944055557,
0.3783424198627472,
-0.023766901344060898,
-0.4911915957927704,
0.021393591538071632,
-0.12181169539690018,
-1.1389867067337036,
0.25307911634... |
18313 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis%20Armstrong | Louis Armstrong | Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He is among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and different eras in the history of jazz.
Armstrong was born and raised in New Orleans. Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an inventive trumpet and cornet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance. Around 1922, he followed his mentor, Joe "King" Oliver, to Chicago to play in the Creole Jazz Band. In Chicago, he spent time with other popular jazz musicians, reconnecting with his friend Bix Beiderbecke and spending time with Hoagy Carmichael and Lil Hardin. He earned a reputation at "cutting contests" and his fame reached band leader Fletcher Henderson. Henderson persuaded Armstrong to come to New York City, where he became a featured and musically influential band soloist and recording artist. Hardin became Armstrong's second wife and they returned to Chicago to play together and then he began to form his own "Hot" jazz bands. After years of touring, he settled in Queens, and by the 1950s, he was a national musical icon, assisted in part, by his appearances on radio and in film and television, in addition to his concerts.
With his instantly recognizable rich, gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer and skillful improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song. He was also skilled at scat singing. Armstrong is renowned for his charismatic stage presence and voice as well as his trumpet playing. By the end of Armstrong's life, his influence had spread to popular music in general. Armstrong was one of the first popular African-American entertainers to "cross over" to wide popularity with white (and international) audiences. He rarely publicly politicized his race, to the dismay of fellow African Americans, but took a well-publicized stand for desegregation in the Little Rock crisis. He was able to access the upper echelons of American society at a time when this was difficult for black men.
Armstrong appeared in films such as High Society (1956) alongside Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra, and Hello, Dolly! (1969) starring Barbra Streisand. He received many accolades including three Grammy Award nominations and a win for his vocal performance of Hello, Dolly! in 1964. In 2017, he was posthumously inducted into the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.
Early life
Armstrong was born in New Orleans on August 4, 1901. His parents were Mary Albert and William Armstrong. Mary Albert was from Boutte, Louisiana, and gave birth at home when she was about sixteen. William Armstrong abandoned the family shortly after. About two years later, he had a daughter, Beatrice "Mama Lucy" Armstrong, who was raised by Albert.
Louis Armstrong was raised by his grandmother until the age of five when he was returned to his mother. He spent his youth in poverty in a rough neighborhood known as The Battlefield. At six he attended the Fisk School for Boys, a school that accepted black children in the racially segregated system of New Orleans.
From the age of 7 he lived with the Karnoffskys, a family of Lithuanian Jews, at their home. Mrs Karnoffsky used to sing lullabies for him at night before bed in Yiddish and Russian. The Karnoffskys took him in and treated him like family. Knowing he lived without a father, they fed and nurtured him. In his memoir Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, La., the Year of 1907, he described his discovery that this family was also subject to discrimination by "other white folks" who felt that they were better than Jews: "I was only seven years old but I could easily see the ungodly treatment that the white folks were handing the poor Jewish family whom I worked for." He wrote about what he learned from them: "how to live—real life and determination." His first musical performance may have been at the side of the Karnoffskys' junk wagon. To distinguish them from other hawkers, he tried playing a tin horn to attract customers. Morris Karnoffsky gave Armstrong an advance toward the purchase of a cornet from a pawn shop.
Fluent in Yiddish, Armstrong wore a Star of David until the end of his life in memory of this family who had raised him.
When Armstrong was eleven, he dropped out of school. His mother moved into a one-room house on Perdido Street with him, Lucy, and her common-law husband, Tom Lee, next door to her brother Ike and his two sons. Armstrong joined a quartet of boys who sang in the streets for money. He also got into trouble. Cornetist Bunk Johnson said he taught the eleven-year-old to play by ear at Dago Tony's honky tonk. (In his later years Armstrong credited King Oliver.) He said about his youth, "Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine—I look right in the heart of good old New Orleans ... It has given me something to live for."
Borrowing his stepfather's gun without permission, he fired a blank into the air and was arrested on December 31, 1912. He spent the night at New Orleans Juvenile Court, then was sentenced the next day to detention at the Colored Waif's Home. Life at the home was spartan. Mattresses were absent; meals were often little more than bread and molasses. Captain Joseph Jones ran the home like a military camp and used corporal punishment.
Armstrong developed his cornet skills by playing in the band. Peter Davis, who frequently appeared at the home at the request of Captain Jones, became Armstrong's first teacher and chose him as bandleader. With this band, the thirteen-year-old Armstrong attracted the attention of Kid Ory.
On June 14, 1914, Armstrong was released into the custody of his father and his new stepmother, Gertrude. He lived in this household with two stepbrothers for several months. After Gertrude gave birth to a daughter, Armstrong's father never welcomed him, so he returned to his mother, Mary Albert. In her small home, he had to share a bed with his mother and sister. His mother still lived in The Battlefield, leaving him open to old temptations, but he sought work as a musician. He found a job at a dance hall owned by Henry Ponce, who had connections to organized crime. He met the six-foot tall drummer Black Benny, who became his guide and bodyguard. Around the age of fifteen, he pimped for a prostitute named Nootsy, but that relationship failed after she stabbed Armstrong in the shoulder and his mother choked her nearly to death.
He briefly studied shipping management at the local community college, but was forced to quit after being unable to afford the fees. While selling coal in Storyville, he heard spasm bands, groups that played music out of household objects. He heard the early sounds of jazz from bands that played in brothels and dance halls such as Pete Lala's, where King Oliver performed.
Career
Riverboat education
Armstrong played in brass bands and riverboats in New Orleans, first on an excursion boat in September 1918. He traveled with the band of Fate Marable, which toured on the steamboat Sidney with the Streckfus Steamers line up and down the Mississippi River. Marable was proud of his musical knowledge, and he insisted that Armstrong and other musicians in his band learn sight reading. Armstrong described his time with Marable as "going to the University", since it gave him a wider experience working with written arrangements. He did return to New Orleans periodically. In 1919, Oliver decided to go north and resigned his position in Kid Ory's band; Armstrong replaced him. He also became second trumpet for the Tuxedo Brass Band.
Chicago and recording for Gennett
Throughout his riverboat experience, Armstrong's musicianship began to mature and expand. At twenty, he could read music. He became one of the first jazz musicians to be featured on extended trumpet solos, injecting his own personality and style. He started singing in his performances. In 1922, he moved to Chicago at the invitation of King Oliver. Playing second cornet to Oliver in Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in the black-only Lincoln Gardens in Chicago's black neighborhood, he could make enough money to quit his day jobs. Although race relations were poor, Chicago was booming. The city had jobs for blacks making good wages at factories with some left over for entertainment.
Oliver's band was among the most influential jazz bands in Chicago in the early 1920s. Armstrong lived luxuriously in his own apartment with his first private bath. Excited as he was to be in Chicago, he began his career-long pastime of writing letters to friends in New Orleans. Armstrong could blow two hundred high Cs in a row. As his reputation grew, he was challenged to cutting contests by other musicians.
His first studio recordings were with Oliver for Gennett Records on April 56, 1923. They endured several hours on the train to remote Richmond, Indiana, and the band was paid little. The quality of the performances was affected by lack of rehearsal, crude recording equipment, bad acoustics, and a cramped studio. These early recordings were true acoustic, the band playing directly into a large funnel connected directly to the needle making the grove in the master recording.(Electrical recording was not invented until 1926 and Gennett installed it later.) Because Armstrong's playing was so loud he bounced the needle off the record, he had to stand outside the room in the hall. In addition, Richmond was associated with the Ku Klux Klan.
Lil Hardin Armstrong urged him to seek more prominent billing and develop his style apart from the influence of Oliver. She encouraged him to play classical music in church concerts to broaden his skills. She prodded him into wearing more stylish attire to offset his girth. Her influence eventually undermined Armstrong's relationship with his mentor, especially concerning his salary and additional money that Oliver held back from Armstrong and other band members. Armstrong's mother, May Ann Albert, came to visit him in Chicago during the summer of 1923 after being told that Armstrong was "out of work, out of money, hungry, and sick"; Hardin located and decorated an apartment for her to live in while she stayed.
In the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra
Armstrong and Oliver parted amicably in 1924. Shortly afterward, Armstrong received an invitation to go to New York City to play with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, the top African-American band of the time. He switched to the trumpet to blend in better with the other musicians in his section. His influence on Henderson's tenor sax soloist, Coleman Hawkins, can be judged by listening to the records made by the band during this period.
Armstrong adapted to the tightly controlled style of Henderson, playing trumpet and experimenting with the trombone. The other members were affected by Armstrong's emotional style. His act included singing and telling tales of New Orleans characters, especially preachers. The Henderson Orchestra played in prominent venues for white patrons only, including the Roseland Ballroom, with arrangements by Don Redman. Duke Ellington's orchestra went to Roseland to catch Armstrong's performances.
During this time, Armstrong recorded with Clarence Williams (a friend from New Orleans), the Williams Blue Five, Sidney Bechet, and blues singers Alberta Hunter, Ma Rainey, and Bessie Smith.
The Hot Five
In 1925, Armstrong returned to Chicago largely at the insistence of Lil, who wanted to expand his career and his income. In publicity, much to his chagrin, she billed him as "the World's Greatest Trumpet Player". For a time he was a member of the Lil Hardin Armstrong Band and working for his wife. He formed Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five and recorded the hits "Potato Head Blues" and "Muggles". The word "muggles" was a slang term for marijuana, something he used often during his life.
The Hot Five included Kid Ory (trombone), Johnny Dodds (clarinet), Johnny St. Cyr (banjo), Lil Armstrong on piano, and usually no drummer. Over a twelve-month period starting in November 1925, this quintet produced twenty-four records. Armstrong's band leading style was easygoing, as St. Cyr noted, "One felt so relaxed working with him, and he was very broad-minded ... always did his best to feature each individual." Among the most notable of the Hot Five and Seven records were "Cornet Chop Suey", "Struttin' With Some Barbecue", "Hotter Than that" and "Potato Head Blues", all featuring highly creative solos by Armstrong. According to Thomas Brothers, recordings, such as "Struttin' with Some Barbeque", were so superb, "planned with density and variety, bluesyness, and showiness," that the arrangements were probably showcased at the Sunset Café. His recordings soon after with pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines, most famously their 1928 "Weather Bird" duet and Armstrong's trumpet introduction to and solo in "West End Blues", remain some of the most famous and influential improvisations in jazz history. Young trumpet players across the country bought these recordings and memorized his solos.
Armstrong was now free to develop his personal style as he wished, which included a heavy dose of effervescent jive, such as "Whip That Thing, Miss Lil" and "Mr. Johnny Dodds, Aw, Do That Clarinet, Boy!"
Armstrong also played with Erskine Tate's Little Symphony, which played mostly at the Vendome Theatre. They furnished music for silent movies and live shows, including jazz versions of classical music, such as "Madame Butterfly", which gave Armstrong experience with longer forms of music and with hosting before a large audience. He began to scat sing (improvise vocal jazz using nonsensical words) and was among the first to record it, on the Hot Five recording "Heebie Jeebies" in 1926. The recording was so popular that the group became the most famous jazz band in the United States, even though they had not performed live to any great extent. Young musicians across the country, black or white, were turned on by Armstrong's new type of jazz.
After separating from Lil, Armstrong started to play at the Sunset Café for Al Capone's associate Joe Glaser in the Carroll Dickerson Orchestra, with Earl Hines on piano, which was renamed Louis Armstrong and his Stompers, though Hines was the music director and Glaser managed the orchestra. Hines and Armstrong became fast friends and successful collaborators. It was at the Sunset Café that Armstrong accompanied singer Adelaide Hall. It was during Hall's tenure at the venue that she experimented, developed and expanded her use and art of scat singing with Armstrong's guidance and encouragement.
In the first half of 1927, Armstrong assembled his Hot Seven group, which added drummer Al "Baby" Dodds and tuba player, Pete Briggs, while preserving most of his original Hot Five lineup. John Thomas replaced Kid Ory on trombone. Later that year he organized a series of new Hot Five sessions which resulted in nine more records. In the last half of 1928, he started recording with a new group: Zutty Singleton (drums), Earl Hines (piano), Jimmy Strong (clarinet), Fred Robinson (trombone), and Mancy Carr (banjo).
The Harlem Renaissance
During the 1920s, Louis Armstrong brought a huge impact during the Harlem Renaissance within the Jazz world. The music he created was an incredible part of his life during the Harlem Renaissance. His impact touched many, including a well-known man during that time named Langston Hughes. Hughes admired Armstrong and acknowledged him as one of the most recognized musicians during the era. Within Hughes' writings, he created many books which held the central idea of jazz and recognition to Armstrong as one of the most important persons to be part of the newfound love of their culture. The sound of jazz, along with many other musicians such as Armstrong, helped shape Hughes as a writer. Just as the musicians, Hughes wrote his words with jazz.
Armstrong changed jazz during the Harlem Renaissance. Being known as "The World's Greatest Trumpet Player" during this time, Armstrong continued his legacy and continued a focus on his own vocal career. The popularity he gained brought together many black and white audiences to watch him perform.
Emerging as a vocalist
Armstrong returned to New York in 1929, where he played in the pit orchestra for the musical Hot Chocolates, an all-black revue written by Andy Razaf and pianist Fats Waller. He also made a cameo appearance as a vocalist, regularly stealing the show with his rendition of "Ain't Misbehavin'". His version of the song became his biggest selling record to date.
Armstrong started to work at Connie's Inn in Harlem, chief rival to the Cotton Club, a venue for elaborately staged floor shows, and a front for gangster Dutch Schultz. Armstrong also had considerable success with vocal recordings, including versions of songs composed by his old friend Hoagy Carmichael. His 1930s recordings took full advantage of the new RCA ribbon microphone, introduced in 1931, which imparted a characteristic warmth to vocals and immediately became an intrinsic part of the 'crooning' sound of artists like Bing Crosby. Armstrong's interpretation of Carmichael's "Stardust" became one of the most successful versions of this song ever recorded, showcasing Armstrong's unique vocal sound and style and his innovative approach to singing songs that had already become standards.
Armstrong's radical re-working of Sidney Arodin and Carmichael's "Lazy River" (recorded in 1931) encapsulated many features of his groundbreaking approach to melody and phrasing. The song begins with a brief trumpet solo, then the main melody is introduced by sobbing horns, memorably punctuated by Armstrong's growling interjections at the end of each bar: "Yeah! ..."Uh-huh"..."Sure"..."Way down, way down." In the first verse, he ignores the notated melody entirely and sings as if playing a trumpet solo, pitching most of the first line on a single note and using strongly syncopated phrasing. In the second stanza he breaks into an almost fully improvised melody, which then evolves into a classic passage of Armstrong "scat singing".
As with his trumpet playing, Armstrong's vocal innovations served as a foundation stone for the art of jazz vocal interpretation. The uniquely gravelly coloration of his voice became a musical archetype that was much imitated and endlessly impersonated. His scat singing style was enriched by his matchless experience as a trumpet soloist. His resonant, velvety lower-register tone and bubbling cadences on sides such as "Lazy River" exerted a huge influence on younger white singers such as Bing Crosby.
Working during hard times
The Great Depression of the early 1930s was especially hard on the jazz scene. The Cotton Club closed in 1936 after a long downward spiral, and many musicians stopped playing altogether as club dates evaporated. Bix Beiderbecke died and Fletcher Henderson's band broke up. King Oliver made a few records but otherwise struggled. Sidney Bechet became a tailor, later moving to Paris and Kid Ory returned to New Orleans and raised chickens.
Armstrong moved to Los Angeles in 1930 to seek new opportunities. He played at the New Cotton Club in Los Angeles with Lionel Hampton on drums. The band drew the Hollywood crowd, which could still afford a lavish night life, while radio broadcasts from the club connected with younger audiences at home. Bing Crosby and many other celebrities were regulars at the club. In 1931, Armstrong appeared in his first movie, Ex-Flame and was also convicted of marijuana possession but received a suspended sentence. He returned to Chicago in late 1931 and played in bands more in the Guy Lombardo vein and he recorded more standards. When the mob insisted that he get out of town, Armstrong visited New Orleans, had a hero's welcome, and saw old friends. He sponsored a local baseball team known as Armstrong's Secret Nine and had a cigar named after him. But soon he was on the road again. After a tour across the country shadowed by the mob, he fled to Europe.
After returning to the United States, he undertook several exhausting tours. His agent Johnny Collins's erratic behavior and his own spending ways left Armstrong short of cash. Breach of contract violations plagued him. He hired Joe Glaser as his new manager, a tough mob-connected wheeler-dealer, who began to straighten out his legal mess, his mob troubles, and his debts. Armstrong also began to experience problems with his fingers and lips, which were aggravated by his unorthodox playing style. As a result, he branched out, developing his vocal style and making his first theatrical appearances. He appeared in movies again, including Crosby's 1936 hit Pennies from Heaven. In 1937, Armstrong substituted for Rudy Vallee on the CBS radio network and became the first African American to host a sponsored, national broadcast.
Reviving his career with the All Stars
After spending many years on the road, Armstrong settled permanently in Queens, New York in 1943 in contentment with his fourth wife, Lucille. Although subject to the vicissitudes of Tin Pan Alley and the gangster-ridden music business, as well as anti-black prejudice, he continued to develop his playing.
Bookings for big bands tapered off during the 1940s due to changes in public tastes: ballrooms closed, and there was competition from other types of music, especially pop vocals, becoming more popular than big band music. It became impossible under such circumstances to finance a 16-piece touring band.
A widespread revival of interest in the 1940s in the traditional jazz of the 1920s made it possible for Armstrong to consider a return to the small-group musical style of his youth. Armstrong was featured as a guest artist with Lionel Hampton's band at the famed second Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles which was produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. on October 12, 1946. He also led a highly successful small-group jazz concert at New York Town Hall on May 17, 1947, featuring Armstrong with trombonist/singer Jack Teagarden. During the concert, Armstrong and Teagarden performed a duet on Hoagy Carmichael's "Rockin' Chair" they then recorded for Okeh Records.
Armstrong's manager, Joe Glaser dissolved the Armstrong big band on August 13, 1947, and established a six-piece traditional jazz group featuring Armstrong with (initially) Teagarden, Earl Hines and other top swing and Dixieland musicians, most of whom were previously leaders of big bands. The new group was announced at the opening of Billy Berg's Supper Club.
This group was called Louis Armstrong and His All Stars and included at various times Earl "Fatha" Hines, Barney Bigard, Edmond Hall, Jack Teagarden, Trummy Young, Arvell Shaw, Billy Kyle, Marty Napoleon, Big Sid "Buddy" Catlett, Cozy Cole, Tyree Glenn, Barrett Deems, Mort Herbert, Joe Darensbourg, Eddie Shu, Joe Muranyi and percussionist Danny Barcelona.
On February 28, 1948, Suzy Delair sang the French song C'est si bon at the Hotel Negresco during the first Nice Jazz Festival. Louis Armstrong was present and loved the song. On June 26, 1950, he recorded the American version of the song (English lyrics by Jerry Seelen) in New York City with Sy Oliver and his Orchestra. When it was released, the disc was a worldwide success and the song was then performed by the greatest international singers.
He was the first jazz musician to appear on the cover of Time magazine, on February 21, 1949. Louis Armstrong and his All Stars were featured at the ninth Cavalcade of Jazz concert also at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. held on June 7, 1953, along with Shorty Rogers, Roy Brown, Don Tosti and His Mexican Jazzmen, Earl Bostic, and Nat "King" Cole.
During the next 30 years, Armstrong played more than 300 performances a year. During this period, Armstrong made many recordings and appeared in over thirty films.
A jazz ambassador
By the 1950s, Armstrong was a widely beloved American icon and cultural ambassador who commanded an international fanbase. However, a growing generation gap became apparent between him and the young jazz musicians who emerged in the postwar era such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Sonny Rollins. The postwar generation regarded their music as abstract art and considered Armstrong's vaudevillian style, half-musician and half-stage entertainer, outmoded and Uncle Tomism, "... he seemed a link to minstrelsy that we were ashamed of." He called bebop "Chinese music". While touring Australia in 1954, he was asked if he could play bebop. "Bebop?" he husked. "I just play music. Guys who invent terms like that are walking the streets with their instruments under their arms."
In the 1960s, he toured Ghana and Nigeria.
After finishing his contract with Decca Records, he became a freelance artist and recorded for other labels. He continued an intense international touring schedule, but in 1959 he suffered a heart attack in Italy and had to rest.
In 1964, after over two years without setting foot in a studio, he recorded his biggest-selling record, "Hello, Dolly!", a song by Jerry Herman, originally sung by Carol Channing. Armstrong's version remained on the Hot 100 for 22 weeks, longer than any other record produced that year, and went to No. 1 making him, at 62 years, 9 months and 5 days, the oldest person ever to accomplish that feat. In the process, he dislodged the Beatles from the No. 1 position they had occupied for 14 consecutive weeks with three different songs.
Armstrong kept touring well into his 60s, even visiting part of the communist bloc in 1965. He also toured Africa, Europe, and Asia under the sponsorship of the US State Department with great success, earning the nickname "Ambassador Satch" and inspiring Dave Brubeck to compose his jazz musical The Real Ambassadors. By 1968, he was approaching 70 and his health began to give out. He suffered heart and kidney ailments that forced him to stop touring. He did not perform publicly at all in 1969 and spent most of the year recuperating at home. Meanwhile, his longtime manager Joe Glaser died. By the summer of 1970, his doctors pronounced him fit enough to resume live performances. He embarked on another world tour, but a heart attack forced him to take a break for two months.
Armstrong made his last recorded trumpet performances on his 1968 album Disney Songs the Satchmo Way.
Personal life
Pronunciation of name
The Louis Armstrong House Museum website states:
In a memoir written for Robert Goffin between 1943 and 1944, Armstrong states, "All white folks call me Louie," perhaps suggesting that he himself did not or, on the other hand, that no whites addressed him by one of his nicknames such as Pops. That said, Armstrong was registered as "Lewie" for the 1920 U.S. Census. On various live records he's called "Louie" on stage, such as on the 1952 "Can Anyone Explain?" from the live album In Scandinavia vol.1. The same applies to his 1952 studio recording of the song "Chloe", where the choir in the background sings "Louie ... Louie", with Armstrong responding "What was that? Somebody called my name?" "Lewie" is the French pronunciation of "Louis" and is commonly used in Louisiana.
Family
Armstrong was performing at the Brick House in Gretna, Louisiana, when he met Daisy Parker, a local prostitute. He started the affair as a client. He returned to Gretna on several occasions to visit her. He found the courage to look for her home to see her away from work. It was on this occasion that he found out that she had a common-law husband. Not long after this fiasco, Parker traveled to Armstrong's home on Perdido Street. They checked into Kid Green's hotel that evening. On the next day, March 19, 1919, Armstrong and Parker married at City Hall. They adopted a three-year-old boy, Clarence, whose mother, Armstrong's cousin Flora, had died soon after giving birth. Clarence Armstrong was mentally disabled as the result of a head injury at an early age, and Armstrong spent the rest of his life taking care of him. His marriage to Parker ended when they separated in 1923.
On February 4, 1924, he married Lil Hardin Armstrong, King Oliver's pianist. She had divorced her first husband a few years earlier. His second wife helped him develop his career, but they separated in 1931 and divorced in 1938. Armstrong then married Alpha Smith. His relationship with Alpha began while he was playing at the Vendome during the 1920s and continued long after. His marriage to her lasted four years; they divorced in 1942. Louis then married Lucille Wilson, a singer at the Cotton Club in New York, in October 1942; they remained married until his death in 1971.
Armstrong's marriages never produced any offspring. However, in December 2012, 57-year-old Sharon Preston-Folta claimed to be his daughter from a 1950s affair between Armstrong and Lucille "Sweets" Preston, a dancer at the Cotton Club. In a 1955 letter to his manager, Joe Glaser, Armstrong affirmed his belief that Preston's newborn baby was his daughter, and ordered Glaser to pay a monthly allowance of $400 ($ in dollars) to mother and child.
Personality
Armstrong was noted for his colorful and charismatic personality. His autobiography vexed some biographers and historians, as he had a habit of telling tales, particularly of his early childhood when he was less scrutinized, and his embellishments of his history often lack consistency.
In addition to being an entertainer, Armstrong was a leading personality of the day. He was beloved by an American public that gave even the greatest African American performers little access beyond their public celebrity, and he was able to live a private life of access and privilege afforded to few other African Americans during that era.
He generally remained politically neutral, which at times alienated him from members of the black community who looked to him to use his prominence with white America to become more of an outspoken figure during the civil rights movement. However, he did criticize President Eisenhower for not acting forcefully enough on civil rights.
Health problems
The trumpet is a notoriously hard instrument on the lips, and Armstrong suffered from lip damage over much of his life due to his aggressive style of playing and preference for narrow mouthpieces that would stay in place more easily, but which tended to dig into the soft flesh of his inner lip. During his 1930s European tour, he suffered an ulceration so severe that he had to stop playing entirely for a year. Eventually he took to using salves and creams on his lips and also cutting off scar tissue with a razor blade. By the 1950s, he was an official spokesman for Ansatz-Creme Lip Salve.
During a backstage meeting with trombonist Marshall Brown in 1959, Armstrong received the suggestion that he should go to a doctor and receive proper treatment for his lips instead of relying on home remedies, but he did not get around to arranging it until the final years of his life, by which point his health was failing and doctors considered surgery too risky.
Also in 1959, Armstrong was hospitalized for pneumonia while on tour in Italy. Doctors were concerned about his lungs and heart, but by June 26 he rallied.
Nicknames
The nicknames "Satchmo" and "Satch" are short for "Satchelmouth". The nickname has many possible origins. The most common tale that biographers tell is the story of Armstrong as a young boy in New Orleans dancing for pennies. He scooped the coins off the street and stuck them into his mouth to prevent bigger children from stealing them. Someone dubbed him "satchel mouth" for his mouth acting as a satchel. Another tale is that because of his large mouth, he was nicknamed "satchel mouth" which was shortened to "Satchmo".
Early on he was also known as "Dipper", short for "Dippermouth", a reference to the piece Dippermouth Blues and something of a riff on his unusual embouchure.
The nickname "Pops" came from Armstrong's own tendency to forget people's names and simply call them "Pops" instead. The nickname was turned on Armstrong himself. It was used as the title of a 2010 biography of Armstrong by Terry Teachout.
After a competition at the Savoy, he was crowned and nicknamed "King Menelik", after the Emperor of Ethiopia, for slaying "ofay jazz demons".
Race
Armstrong was largely accepted into white society, both on stage and off, a rarity for a Black person at the time. Some musicians criticized Armstrong for playing in front of segregated audiences, and for not taking a strong enough stand in the American civil rights movement. When he did speak out, it made national news, including his criticism of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, calling him "two-faced" and "gutless" because of his inaction during the conflict over school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. As a protest, Armstrong canceled a planned tour of the Soviet Union on behalf of the State Department saying: "The way they're treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell" and that he could not represent his government abroad when it was in conflict with its own people. The FBI kept a file on Armstrong for his outspokenness about integration.
Religion
When asked about his religion, Armstrong answered that he was raised a Baptist, always wore a Star of David, and was friends with the pope. He wore the Star of David in honor of the Karnoffsky family, who took him in as a child and lent him money to buy his first cornet. He was baptized a Catholic in the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in New Orleans, and he met Pope Pius XII and Pope Paul VI.
Personal habits
Armstrong was concerned with his health. He used laxatives to control his weight, a practice he advocated both to acquaintances and in the diet plans he published under the title Lose Weight the Satchmo Way. Armstrong's laxative of preference in his younger days was Pluto Water, but when he discovered the herbal remedy Swiss Kriss, he became an enthusiastic convert, extolling its virtues to anyone who would listen and passing out packets to everyone he encountered, including members of the British Royal Family. (Armstrong also appeared in humorous, albeit risqué, cards that he had printed to send out to friends; the cards bore a picture of him sitting on a toilet—as viewed through a keyhole—with the slogan "Satch says, 'Leave it all behind ya!'") The cards have sometimes been incorrectly described as ads for Swiss Kriss. In a live recording of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" with Velma Middleton, he changes the lyric from "Put another record on while I pour" to "Take some Swiss Kriss while I pour". His laxative use began as a child when his mother would collect dandelions and peppergrass around the railroad tracks to give to her children for their health.
Armstrong was a heavy marijuana smoker for much of his life and spent nine days in jail in 1930 after being arrested for drug possession outside a club. He described marijuana as "a thousand times better than whiskey".
The concern with his health and weight was balanced by his love of food, reflected in such songs as "Cheesecake", "Cornet Chop Suey", though "Struttin' with Some Barbecue" was written about a fine-looking companion, not about food. He kept a strong connection throughout his life to the cooking of New Orleans, always signing his letters, "Red beans and ricely yours ..."
A fan of Major League Baseball, he founded a team in New Orleans that was known as Raggedy Nine and transformed the team into his Armstrong's "Secret Nine Baseball".
Writings
Armstrong's gregariousness extended to writing. On the road, he wrote constantly, sharing favorite themes of his life with correspondents around the world. He avidly typed or wrote on whatever stationery was at hand, recording instant takes on music, sex, food, childhood memories, his heavy "medicinal" marijuana use—and even his bowel movements, which he gleefully described.
Social organizations
Louis Armstrong was not, as is often claimed, a Freemason. Although he is usually listed as being a member of Montgomery Lodge No. 18 (Prince Hall) in New York, no such lodge has ever existed. However, Armstrong stated in his autobiography that he was a member of the Knights of Pythias, which although real is not a Masonic group.
During the krewe's 1949 Mardi Gras parade, Armstrong presided as King of the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club, for which he was featured on the cover of Time magazine.
Music
Horn playing and early jazz
In his early years, Armstrong was best known for his virtuosity with the cornet and trumpet. Along with his "clarinet-like figurations and high notes in his cornet solos", he was also known for his "intense rhythmic 'swing', a complex conception involving ... accented upbeats, upbeat to downbeat slurring, and complementary relations among rhythmic patterns." The most lauded recordings on which Armstrong plays trumpet include the Hot Five and Hot Seven sessions, as well as those of the Red Onion Jazz Babies. Armstrong's improvisations, while unconventionally sophisticated for that era, were also subtle and highly melodic. The solo that Armstrong plays during the song "Potato Head Blues" has long been considered his best solo of that series.
Prior to Armstrong, most collective ensemble playing in jazz, along with its occasional solos, simply varied the melodies of the songs. Armstrong was virtually the first to create significant variations based on the chord harmonies of the songs instead of merely on the melodies. This opened a rich field for creation and improvisation, and significantly changed the music into a soloist's art form.
Often, Armstrong re-composed pop-tunes he played, simply with variations that made them more compelling to jazz listeners of the era. At the same time, however, his oeuvre includes many original melodies, creative leaps, and relaxed or driving rhythms. Armstrong's playing technique, honed by constant practice, extended the range, tone and capabilities of the trumpet. In his records, Armstrong almost single-handedly created the role of the jazz soloist, taking what had been essentially a collective folk music and turning it into an art form with tremendous possibilities for individual expression.
Armstrong was one of the first artists to use recordings of his performances to improve himself. Armstrong was an avid audiophile. He had a large collection of recordings, including reel-to-reel tapes, which he took on the road with him in a trunk during his later career. He enjoyed listening to his own recordings, and comparing his performances musically. In the den of his home, he had the latest audio equipment and would sometimes rehearse and record along with his older recordings or the radio.
Vocal popularity
As his music progressed and popularity grew, his singing also became very important. Armstrong was not the first to record scat singing, but he was masterful at it and helped popularize it with the first recording on which he scatted, "Heebie Jeebies". At a recording session for Okeh Records, when the sheet music supposedly fell on the floor and the music began before he could pick up the pages, Armstrong simply started singing nonsense syllables while Okeh president E.A. Fearn, who was at the session, kept telling him to continue. Armstrong did, thinking the track would be discarded, but that was the version that was pressed to disc, sold, and became an unexpected hit. Although the story was thought to be apocryphal, Armstrong himself confirmed it in at least one interview as well as in his memoirs. On a later recording, Armstrong also sang out "I done forgot the words" in the middle of recording "I'm A Ding Dong Daddy From Dumas".
Such records were hits and scat singing became a major part of his performances. Long before this, however, Armstrong was playing around with his vocals, shortening and lengthening phrases, interjecting improvisations, using his voice as creatively as his trumpet. Armstrong once told Cab Calloway that his scat style was derived "from the Jews rockin", an Orthodox Jewish style of chanting during prayer.
Composing
Armstrong was a gifted composer who wrote more than fifty songs, some of which have become jazz standards (e.g. "Gully Low Blues", "Potato Head Blues" and "Swing That Music").
Colleagues and followers
During his long career he played and sang with some of the most important instrumentalists and vocalists of the time; among them were Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Jimmie Rodgers, Bessie Smith and perhaps most famously Ella Fitzgerald. His influence upon Crosby is particularly important with regard to the subsequent development of popular music: Crosby admired and copied Armstrong, as is evident on many of his early recordings, notably "Just One More Chance" (1931). The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz describes Crosby's debt to Armstrong in precise detail, although it does not acknowledge Armstrong by name:
Armstrong recorded two albums with Ella Fitzgerald: Ella and Louis, and Ella and Louis Again for Verve Records, with the sessions featuring the backing musicianship of the Oscar Peterson Trio and drummers Buddy Rich (on the first album), and Louie Bellson (on the second). Norman Granz then had the vision for Ella and Louis to record Porgy and Bess.
His recordings for Columbia Records, Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy (1954) and Satch Plays Fats (all Fats Waller tunes) (1955) were both being considered masterpieces, as well as moderately well selling. In 1961 the All Stars participated in two albums—The Great Summit and The Great Reunion (now together as a single disc) with Duke Ellington. The albums feature many of Ellington's most famous compositions (as well as two exclusive cuts) with Duke sitting in on piano. His participation in Dave Brubeck's high-concept jazz musical The Real Ambassadors (1963) was critically acclaimed, and features "Summer Song", one of Armstrong's most popular vocal efforts.
In the week beginning May 9, 1964, his recording of the song "Hello, Dolly" went to number one. An album of the same title was quickly created around the song, and also shot to number one (knocking The Beatles off the top of the chart). The album sold very well for the rest of the year, quickly going "Gold" (500,000). His performance of "Hello Dolly" won for best male pop vocal performance at the 1964 Grammy Awards.
Hits and later career
Armstrong had nineteen "Top Ten" records including "Stardust", "What a Wonderful World", "When The Saints Go Marching In", "Dream a Little Dream of Me", "Ain't Misbehavin'", "You Rascal You", and "Stompin' at the Savoy". "We Have All the Time in the World" was featured on the soundtrack of the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and enjoyed renewed popularity in the UK in 1994 when it featured on a Guinness advertisement. It reached number 3 in the charts on being re-released.
In 1964, Armstrong knocked The Beatles off the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart with "Hello, Dolly!", which gave the 63-year-old performer a U.S. record as the oldest artist to have a number one song. His 1964 song "Bout Time" was later featured in the film Bewitched.
In February 1968, he appeared with Lara Saint Paul on the Italian RAI television channel where he performed "Grassa e Bella", a track he sang in Italian for the Italian market and C.D.I. label.
In 1968, Armstrong scored one last popular hit in the United Kingdom with "What a Wonderful World", which topped the British charts for a month. Armstrong appeared on the October 28, 1970, Johnny Cash Show, where he sang Nat King Cole's hit "Ramblin' Rose" and joined Cash to re-create his performance backing Jimmie Rodgers on "Blue Yodel No. 9".
Stylistic range
Armstrong enjoyed many types of music, from blues to the arrangements of Guy Lombardo, to Latin American folksongs, to classical symphonies and opera. He incorporated influences from all these sources into his performances, sometimes to the bewilderment of fans who wanted him to stay in convenient narrow categories. Armstrong was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence. Some of his solos from the 1950s, such as the hard rocking version of "St. Louis Blues" from the WC Handy album, show that the influence went in both directions.
Film, television, and radio
Armstrong appeared in more than a dozen Hollywood films, usually playing a bandleader or musician. His most familiar role was as the bandleader cum narrator in the 1956 musical High Society starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Celeste Holm. He appears throughout the film, also sings the title song as well as performs a duet with Crosby, "Now You Has Jazz". In 1947, he played himself in the movie New Orleans opposite Billie Holiday, which chronicled the demise of the Storyville district and the ensuing exodus of musicians from New Orleans to Chicago. In the 1959 film The Five Pennies he played himself, sang, and played several classic numbers. With Danny Kaye he performed a duet of "When the Saints Go Marching In" during which Kaye impersonated Armstrong. He had a part in the film alongside James Stewart in The Glenn Miller Story.
In 1937, Armstrong was the first African American to host a nationally broadcast radio show. In 1969, he had a cameo role in Gene Kelly's film version of Hello, Dolly! as the bandleader Louis. He sang the title song with actress Barbra Streisand. His solo recording of "Hello, Dolly!" is one of his most recognizable performances. He was heard on such radio programs as The Story of Swing (1937) and This Is Jazz (1947), and he also made television appearances, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, including appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, a self-described Armstrong admirer, asserted that a 1952 Louis Armstrong concert at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris played a significant role in inspiring him to create the fictional creatures called Cronopios that are the subject of a number of Cortázar's short stories. Cortázar once called Armstrong himself "Grandísimo Cronopio" (The Great Cronopio).
There is a pivotal scene in Stardust Memories (1980) in which Woody Allen is overwhelmed by a recording of Armstrong's "Stardust" and experiences a nostalgic epiphany.
Death
Against his doctor's advice, Armstrong played a two-week engagement in March 1971 at the Waldorf-Astoria's Empire Room. At the end of it, he was hospitalized for a heart attack. He was released from the hospital in May, and quickly resumed practicing his trumpet playing. Still hoping to get back on the road, Armstrong died of a heart attack in his sleep on July 6, 1971, a month before his 70th birthday. He was residing in Corona, Queens, New York City, at the time of his death. He was interred in Flushing Cemetery, Flushing, in Queens, New York City.
His honorary pallbearers included Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Pearl Bailey, Count Basie, Harry James, Frank Sinatra, Ed Sullivan, Earl Wilson, Alan King, Johnny Carson and David Frost. Peggy Lee sang The Lord's Prayer at the services while Al Hibbler sang "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" and Fred Robbins, a long-time friend, gave the eulogy.
Awards and honors
Grammy Awards
Armstrong was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1972 by the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. This Special Merit Award is presented by vote of the Recording Academy's National Trustees to performers who, during their lifetimes, have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording.
Grammy Hall of Fame
Recordings of Armstrong were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance".
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listed Armstrong's West End Blues on the list of 500 songs that shaped Rock and Roll.
Inductions and honors
In 1995, the U.S. Post Office issued a Louis Armstrong 32-cent commemorative postage stamp.
Film honors
In 1999 Armstrong was nominated for inclusion in the American Film Institute's 100 Years ... 100 Stars.
Legacy
The influence of Armstrong on the development of jazz is virtually immeasurable. His irrepressible personality both as a performer and as a public figure was so strong that to some it sometimes overshadowed his contributions as a musician and singer.
As a virtuoso trumpet player, Armstrong had a unique tone and an extraordinary talent for melodic improvisation. Through his playing, the trumpet emerged as a solo instrument in jazz and is used widely today. Additionally, jazz itself was transformed from a collectively improvised folk music to a soloist's serious art form largely through his influence. He was a masterful accompanist and ensemble player in addition to his extraordinary skills as a soloist. With his innovations, he raised the bar musically for all who came after him.
Though Armstrong is widely recognized as a pioneer of scat singing, Ethel Waters precedes his scatting on record in the 1930s according to Gary Giddins and others. Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra are just two singers who were greatly indebted to him. Holiday said that she always wanted Bessie Smith's 'big' sound and Armstrong's feeling in her singing. Even special musicians like Duke Ellington have praised Armstrong through strong testimonials. Duke Ellington, DownBeat magazine in 1971, said, "If anybody was a master, it was Louis Armstrong. He was and will continue to be the embodiment of jazz." In 1950, Bing Crosby, the most successful vocalist of the first half of the 20th century, said, "He is the beginning and the end of music in America."
In the summer of 2001, in commemoration of the centennial of Armstrong's birth, New Orleans's main airport was renamed Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. The entrance to the airport's former terminal building houses a statue depicting Armstrong playing his cornet.
In 2002, the Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings (1925–1928) were preserved in the United States National Recording Registry, a registry of recordings selected yearly by the National Recording Preservation Board for preservation in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.
The US Open tennis tournament's former main stadium was named Louis Armstrong Stadium in honor of Armstrong who had lived a few blocks from the site.
Congo Square was a common gathering place for African-Americans in New Orleans for dancing and performing music. The park where Congo Square is located was later renamed Louis Armstrong Park. Dedicated in April 1980, the park includes a statue of Armstrong, trumpet in hand.
The house where Armstrong lived for almost 28 years was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1977 and is now a museum. The Louis Armstrong House Museum, at 34-56 107th Street between 34th and 37th avenues in Corona, Queens, presents concerts and educational programs, operates as a historic house museum and makes materials in its archives of writings, books, recordings and memorabilia available to the public for research. The museum is operated by the Queens College, City University of New York, following the dictates of Lucille Armstrong's will. The museum opened to the public on October 15, 2003. A new visitors center is planned.
According to literary critic Harold Bloom, "The two great American contributions to the world's art, in the end, are Walt Whitman and, after him, Armstrong and jazz ... If I had to choose between the two, ultimately, I wouldn't. I would say that the genius of this nation at its best is indeed Walt Whitman and Louis Armstrong."
Discography
See also
Louis Armstrong albums on Wikipedia
Louis Armstrong songs on Wikipedia
Notes
References
Works cited
Armstrong, Louis (1954). Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans.
Bergreen, Laurence (1997). Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life.
Cogswell, Michael (2003). Armstrong: The Offstage Story.
Teachout, Terry (2009). PopsA life of Louis Armstrong.
Further reading
Elie, Lolis Eric. A Letter from New Orleans. Originally printed in Gourmet. Reprinted in Best Food Writing 2006, ed. by Holly Hughes, Da Capo Press, 2006.
Goffin, Robert. Horn of Plenty: The Story of Louis Armstrong. Da Capo Press, 1977.
Jones, Max and Chilton, John. Louis: The Louis Armstrong Story, 1900–1971. Da Capo Press, 1988.
Meckna, Michael (2004). Satchmo: The Louis Armstrong Encyclopedia.
Storb, Ilse (1999). Louis Armstrong: The Definitive Biography.
Willems, Jos. All of Me: The Complete Discography of Louis Armstrong. Scarecrow Press, 2006.
Williams, Iain Cameron Underneath a Harlem Moon: The Harlem to Paris Years of Adelaide Hall. Bloomsbury Publishers, 2002.
External links
The Louis Armstrong Discography
Louis Armstrong: discography and early recordings (RealPlayer format) on the Red Hot Jazz website
The Louis Armstrong House Museum
Lucille Preston and Louis Armstrong Correspondence at the Library of Congress
The Louis Armstrong Society Jazz Band
Louis Armstrong: A Cultural Legacy
Louis Armstrong in Athens, Blog of the Digital Library of Georgia
"Louis Armstrong Transcription Project – John P Birchall"
Satchmo – My Life in New Orleans (1954) free download, autobiography
Louis Armstrong recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings.
"How (and Why) I Grew to Love King Louis" on the Uncle Tom question
"When I Pick Up That Horn, That's All" by Nat Hentoff
1901 births
1971 deaths
20th-century African-American male singers
ABC Records artists
Burials at Flushing Cemetery
People from Corona, Queens
People from New Orleans
African-American male actors
American male film actors
American radio hosts
African-American history in New Orleans
African-American jazz musicians
American street performers
American jazz bandleaders
American jazz cornetists
American jazz trumpeters
American male trumpeters
20th-century trumpeters
American jazz singers
Big band bandleaders
Dixieland bandleaders
Dixieland singers
Dixieland trumpeters
Jazz musicians from New Orleans
Swing bandleaders
Swing singers
Swing trumpeters
Traditional pop music singers
Vocal jazz musicians
American baritones
African-American jazz composers
American male jazz composers
American jazz composers
Songwriters from Louisiana
Scat singers
Columbia Records artists
Decca Records artists
Gennett Records artists
Kapp Records artists
MGM Records artists
Okeh Records artists
RCA Victor artists
Vocalion Records artists
Audio Fidelity Records artists
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners
Performing arts pages with videographic documentation
20th-century American composers
Jazz musicians from New York (state)
20th-century American male actors
Tuxedo Brass Band members
Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five members
Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven members
Red Onion Jazz Babies members
Black & Blue Records artists
20th-century jazz composers
African-American songwriters
Yiddish-speaking people | [
-0.11776546388864517,
0.1130809634923935,
-1.0535881519317627,
-0.09156077355146408,
-0.21779483556747437,
0.06729461997747421,
0.19656193256378174,
0.30424901843070984,
-0.6268657445907593,
-0.8003765344619751,
-0.060524266213178635,
0.49326092004776,
-0.6404863595962524,
-0.0545939914882... |
18315 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long%20Island | Long Island | Long Island is a heavily urbanized and densely populated island in the southeastern geographical area of the U.S. state of New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. It begins at New York Harbor approximately east of Manhattan Island and extends eastward over into the Atlantic Ocean. The island comprises four counties; Kings and Queens counties (the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, respectively) and Nassau County share the western third of the island, while Suffolk County occupies the eastern two thirds. More than half of New York City's residents live on Long Island, in Brooklyn and in Queens. However, people in the New York metropolitan area colloquially use the term Long Island (or the Island) to refer exclusively to Nassau and Suffolk counties, and conversely, employ the term the City to mean Manhattan alone. While the Nassau-plus-Suffolk definition of Long Island does not have any legal existence, it is recognized as a "region" by the state of New York. Despite geographically being an island, the Supreme Court of the United States legally declared it a peninsula as to let the City of New York rather than the federal government control its maritime boundaries.
Broadly speaking, "Long Island" may refer both to the main island and the surrounding outer barrier islands. To its west, Long Island is separated from Manhattan and the Bronx by the East River tidal estuary. North of the island is Long Island Sound, across which lie Westchester County, New York and the state of Connecticut. Across the Block Island Sound to the northeast is the state of Rhode Island. Block Island—which is part of Rhode Island—and numerous smaller islands extend further into the Atlantic. To the extreme southwest, Long Island is separated from Staten Island and the state of New Jersey by Upper New York Bay, the Narrows, and Lower New York Bay.
The longest and the largest island in the contiguous United States, Long Island extends eastward from New York Harbor to Montauk Point, with a maximum north-to-south distance of between Long Island Sound and the Atlantic coast. With a land area of , Long Island is the 11th-largest island in the United States and the 149th-largest island in the world—larger than the of the smallest U.S. state, Rhode Island.
With an enumerated population of 8,063,232 residents as of the 2020 U.S. Census, constituting 40% of New York State's population, Long Island is the most populated island in any U.S. state or territory, the third-most populous island in the Americas (after only Hispaniola and Cuba), and the 18th-most populous island in the world (ahead of Ireland, Jamaica, and Hokkaidō). Its population density is . If Long Island geographically constituted an independent metropolitan statistical area, it would rank fourth most populous in the United States; while if it were a U.S. state, Long Island would rank thirteenth in population and first in population density. Long Island is culturally and ethnically diverse, featuring some of the wealthiest and most expensive neighborhoods in the world near the shorelines as well as working-class areas in all four counties.
As a hub of commercial aviation, Long Island is home to two of the New York City metropolitan area's three busiest airports, JFK International Airport and LaGuardia Airport, in addition to Islip MacArthur Airport; as well as two major air traffic control radar facilities, the New York TRACON and the New York ARTCC. Nine bridges and thirteen navigable tunnels (road and railroad tunnels but not metropolitan water tunnels) connect Brooklyn and Queens to the three other boroughs of New York City. Ferries connect Suffolk County northward across Long Island Sound to the state of Connecticut. The Long Island Rail Road is the busiest commuter railroad in North America and operates continually. Nassau County high school students often feature prominently as winners of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair and similar STEM-based academic awards. Biotechnology companies and scientific research play a significant role in Long Island's economy, including research facilities at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Stony Brook University, New York Institute of Technology, Plum Island Animal Disease Center, the New York University Tandon School of Engineering, the City University of New York, and Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine.
History
Early history
By the year 1643, there were 14 indigenous tribes living on Long Island: Canarsee, Rockaway, Matinecock, Merrick, Massapequa, Nissequoge, Secatoag, Seatauket, Patchoag, Unquechogue, has Corchaug, Shinnecock, Manhasset and Montaukett.
The tribes used canoes as a source of transportation, and since they lived by the shores, they went fishing. The fishermen used bows, arrows, and hooks to catch seafood such as crabs, scallops, and lobster. The farmers used fish for fertilizer and planted vegetables such as corn, beans, and squash, which were popular among the indigenous people. They were exceptional farmers; they had a great understanding of how the weather and soil affected the crops. Many of them hunted animals, such as deer, raccoon, and turkey in the forest.
The government that they set up was a participatory democracy and there was an alliance between the tribes. Each tribe had their own territory and chief that was respected by other tribes. Prior to European contact, the Lenape people (named the Delaware by Europeans) inhabited the western end of Long Island, and spoke the Munsee dialect of Lenape, part of the Algonquian language family. The Lenape (who were part of the Shinnecock Tribe) practiced record keeping and used wooden tablets, trees, and stones to keep record. They also used wampum belts to write down important messages. They also used their wampum to trade with the Europeans. The Lenape people, in specific, were seen as peacemakers by other indigenous tribes, although they would defend themselves if necessary. The Europeans admired their friendliness and their skills in mediation.
Giovanni da Verrazzano was the first European to record an encounter with the Lenapes, after entering what is now New York Bay in 1524. The island's eastern portion was inhabited by speakers of the Mohegan-Montauk-Narragansett language group of Algonquian languages; they were part of the Pequot and Narragansett peoples inhabiting the area that now includes Connecticut and Rhode Island.
In 1609 the English navigator Henry Hudson explored the harbor and purportedly landed at Coney Island. Dutch explorer Adriaen Block followed in 1615, and is credited as the first European to determine that both Manhattan and Long Island are islands.
In 1636 Charles I of England, a Stuart, rewarded Scottish courtier, diplomat, and colonial governor William Alexander's service to the Crown by creating him Lord Alexander of Tullibody and Viscount of Stirling. On 22 April of that year Charles told the Plymouth Colony, which had laid claim to Long Island but had not settled it, to cede it to Alexander. When his agent James Farret arrived in New Amsterdam in 1637 to present his claim of English sovereignty he was arrested and sent to prison in Holland (but escaped).
In 1639 Lion Gardiner purchased an islet off of today's East Hampton, Gardiners Island, from the Montaukett, received Farret's approval of the transaction on behalf of Alexander (by then the 1st Earl of Stirling and Viscount Canada), and subsequently received a royal patent establishing him as Lord of the Manor over it.
In 1640 English colonists attempted to settle at Cow Bay at what today is Port Washington, but after an alert by Native leader Penhawitz were arrested by the Dutch and released after saying they were mistaken about the title.
Through Farret (who personally received Shelter Island and Robins Island), Alexander in turn sold most of the eastern island to the New Haven Colony and Connecticut Colony.
In spite of these shifting claims to title and absentee land sales, European settlers continued to purchase land directly from the Indigenous people. In 1655 they split the acquired land amongst themselves and continued to search the island for more land for settlement. Other parts of indigenous land were bought, areas that are now known as Brookhaven, Bellport, and South haven. These purchases occurred on June 10, 1664, the exchange was four coats and what is now $16.25.
The white settlers and the indigenous people lived amicably together for a while. During King Philip's War in 1675, the English governor of New York ordered all canoes that were east of Hell Gate to be confiscated. This was done to prevent the Indigenous people from helping their native allies on the mainland, who were attacking settlers there.
After the Dutch began to move into Manhattan many of the indigenous people moved to Pennsylvania and Delaware. Many of them who stayed behind died from smallpox as North Americans had never been exposed to the disease before, resulting in large scale deaths due to lack of antibodies and natural resistance which Eurasian peoples gained.
Native American land deeds recorded by the Dutch from 1636 state that the Indians referred to Long Island as ( and were other spellings in the transliteration of Lenape). was one of the terms for wampum (commemorative stringed shell beads, for a while also used as currency by colonists in trades with the Lenape), and is also translated as "loose" or "scattered", which may refer either to the wampum or to Long Island. The name "'t Lange Eylandt alias Matouwacs" appears in Dutch maps from the 1650s. Later, the English referred to the land as "Nassau Island", after the Dutch Prince William of Nassau, Prince of Orange (who later also ruled as King William III of England). It is unclear when the name "Nassau Island" was discontinued. Another indigenous name from colonial time, Paumanok, comes from the Native American name for Long Island and means "the island that pays tribute."
The very first European settlements on Long Island were by settlers from England and its colonies in present-day New England. Lion Gardiner settled nearby Gardiners Island. The first settlement on the geographic Long Island itself was on October 21, 1640, when Southold was established by the Rev. John Youngs and settlers from New Haven, Connecticut. Peter Hallock, one of the settlers, drew the long straw and was granted the honor to step ashore first. He is considered the first New World settler on Long Island. Southampton was settled in the same year. Hempstead followed in 1644, East Hampton in 1648, Huntington in 1653, Brookhaven in 1655, and Smithtown in 1665.
While the eastern region of Long Island was first settled by the English, the western portion of Long Island was settled by the Dutch; until 1664, the jurisdiction of Long Island was split between the Dutch and English, roughly at the present border between Nassau County and Suffolk County. The Dutch founded six towns in present-day Brooklyn beginning in 1645. These included: Brooklyn, Gravesend, Flatlands, Flatbush, New Utrecht, and Bushwick. The Dutch had granted an English settlement in Hempstead, New York (now in Nassau County) in 1644, but after a boundary dispute they drove out English settlers from the Oyster Bay area. However, in 1664, the English returned to take over the Dutch colony of New Netherland, including Long Island.
The 1664 land patent granted to the Duke of York included all islands in Long Island Sound. The Duke of York held a grudge against Connecticut, as New Haven had hidden three of the judges (John Dixwell, Edward Whalley and William Goffe) who sentenced the Duke's father, King Charles I, to death in 1649. Settlers throughout Suffolk County pressed to stay part of Connecticut, but Governor Sir Edmund Andros threatened to eliminate the settlers' rights to land if they did not yield, which they did by 1676.
All of Long Island (as well as the islands between it and Connecticut) became part of the Province of New York within the Shire of York. Present-day Suffolk County was designated as the East Riding (of Yorkshire), present-day Brooklyn was part of the West Riding, and present-day Queens and Nassau were part of the larger North Riding. In 1683, Yorkshire was dissolved and the three original counties on Long Island were established: Kings, Queens, and Suffolk.
18th and 19th centuries
Early in the American Revolutionary War, the island was captured by the British from General George Washington in the Battle of Long Island, a decisive battle after which Washington narrowly evacuated his troops from Brooklyn Heights under a dense fog. After the British victory on Long Island, many Patriots fled, leaving mostly Loyalists behind. The island was a British stronghold until the end of the war in 1783.
General Washington based his espionage activities on Long Island, due to the western part of the island's proximity to the British military headquarters in New York City. The Culper Spy Ring included agents operating between Setauket and Manhattan. This ring alerted Washington to valuable British secrets, including the treason of Benedict Arnold and a plan to use counterfeiting to induce economic sabotage.
Long Island's colonists served both Loyalist and Patriot causes, with many prominent families divided among both sides. During the occupation British troops used a number of civilian structures for defense and demanded to be quartered in the homes of civilians. A number of structures from this era remain. Among these are Raynham Hall, the Oyster Bay home of patriot spy Robert Townsend, and the Caroline Church in Setauket, which contains bullet holes from a skirmish known as the Battle of Setauket. Also in existence is a reconstruction of Brooklyn's Old Stone House, on the site of the Maryland 400's celebrated last stand during the Battle of Long Island.
In the 19th century, Long Island was still mainly rural and devoted to agriculture. The predecessor to the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) began service in 1836 from the South Ferry in Brooklyn, through the remainder of Brooklyn, to Jamaica in Queens. The line was completed to the east end of Long Island in 1844 (as part of a plan for transportation to Boston). Competing railroads (soon absorbed by the LIRR) were built along the south shore to accommodate travellers from those more populated areas. For the century from 1830 until 1930, total population roughly doubled every twenty years, with more dense development in areas near Manhattan. Several cities were incorporated, such as the 'City of Brooklyn' in Kings County, and Long Island City in Queens.
Until the 1883 completion of the Brooklyn Bridge, the only means of travel between Long Island and the rest of the United States was by boat or ship. As other bridges and tunnels were constructed, areas of the island began to be developed as residential suburbs, first around the railroads that offered commuting into the city. On January 1, 1898, Kings County and portions of Queens were consolidated into the 'City of Greater New York', abolishing all cities and towns within them. The easternmost of Queens County, which were not part of the consolidation plan,
separated from Queens in 1899 to form Nassau County.
At the close of the 19th century, wealthy industrialists who made vast fortunes during the Gilded Age began to construct large "baronial" country estates in Nassau County communities along the North Shore of Long Island, favoring the many properties with water views. Proximity to Manhattan attracted such men as J. P. Morgan, William K. Vanderbilt, and Charles Pratt, whose estates led to this area being nicknamed the Gold Coast. This period and the area was immortalized in fiction, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, which has also been adapted in films.
20th century
Charles Lindbergh lifted off from Roosevelt Field with his Spirit of Saint Louis for his historic 1927 solo flight to Europe, one of the events that helped to establish Long Island as an early center of aviation during the 20th century. Other famous aviators such as Wiley Post originated notable flights from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, which became the first major airport serving New York City before it was superseded by the opening of La Guardia Airport in 1939. Long Island was also the site of Mitchel Air Force Base and was a major center of military aircraft production by companies such as Grumman and Fairchild Aircraft during World War II and for some decades afterward. Aircraft production on Long Island extended all the way into the Space Age – Grumman was one of the major contractors that helped to build the early lunar flight and space shuttle vehicles. Although the aircraft companies eventually ended their Long Island operations and the early airports were all later closed – Roosevelt Field, for instance, became the site of a major shopping mall – the Cradle of Aviation Museum on the site of the former Mitchel Field documents the Island's key role in the history of aviation.
From the 1920s to the 1940s, Long Island began the transformation from backwoods and farms as developers created numerous suburbs. Numerous branches of the LIRR already enabled commuting from the suburbs to Manhattan. Robert Moses engineered various automobile parkway projects to span the island, and developed beaches and state parks for the enjoyment of residents and visitors from the city. Gradually, development also followed these parkways, with various communities springing up along the more traveled routes.
After World War II, suburban development increased with incentives under the G.I. Bill, and Long Island's population skyrocketed, mostly in Nassau County and western Suffolk County. Second and third-generation children of immigrants moved out to eastern Long Island to settle in new housing developments built during the post-war boom. Levittown became noted as a suburb, where housing construction was simplified to be produced on a large scale. These provided opportunities for white World War II military veterans returning home to buy houses and start a family. In his 1966 book, My Private America (Moja prywatna Ameryka), Kazimierz Wierzyński, a Polish poet who could not go back to Poland after World War II, describes Polish farmers living there, as "walking novels".
21st century
By the start of the 21st century, a number of Long Island communities had converted their assets from industrial uses to post-industrial roles. Brooklyn reversed decades of population decline and factory closings to resurface as a globally renowned cultural and intellectual hotbed. Gentrification has affected much of Brooklyn and a portion of Queens, relocating a sizeable swath of New York City's population. On eastern Long Island, such villages as Port Jefferson, Patchogue, and Riverhead have been changed from inactive shipbuilding and mill towns into tourist-centric commercial centers with cultural attractions.
The descendants of late 19th- and early 20th-century immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, and black migrants from the South, have been followed by more recent immigrants from Asia and Latin America. Long Island has many ethnic Irish, Jews, and Italians, as well as an increasing numbers of Asians and Hispanics, reflecting later migrations.
Geography
The westernmost end of Long Island contains the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn (Kings County) and Queens (Queens County). The central and eastern portions contain the suburban Nassau and Suffolk counties. However, colloquial usage of the term "Long Island" usually refers only to Nassau and Suffolk counties. For example, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has a district named "Long Island (Nassau-Suffolk Metro Division)." At least as late as 1911, locations in Queens were still commonly referred to as being on Long Island. Some institutions in the New York City section of the island use the island's names, like Long Island University and Long Island Jewish Medical Center.
In 1985, the United States Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Maine that Long Island is integrally related to the mainland enough that Long Island Sound and the western part of Block Island Sound constitute a "juridicial bay" for the purpose of determining maritime state boundaries. In the popular media this has been often misinterpreted as a ruling that Long Island is legally not an island. The United States Board on Geographic Names still considers Long Island an island, because it is surrounded by water.
There are few tall buildings on Long Island. Nassau County is more densely developed than Suffolk County. While affluent overall, Nassau County has pockets of more pronounced wealth with estates covering greater acreage within the Gold Coast of the North Shore and the Five Towns area on the South Shore. South Shore communities are built along protected wetlands of the island and contain white sandy beaches of Outer Barrier Islands fronting on the Atlantic Ocean. Dutch and English settlers from the time before the American Revolutionary War, as well as communities of Native Americans, populated the island. The 19th century saw the infusion of the wealthiest Americans in the so-called Gold Coast of the North Shore, where wealthy Americans and Europeans in the Gilded Age built lavish country homes.
In its easternmost sections, Suffolk County remains semi-rural, as in Greenport on the North Fork and some of the periphery of the area prominently known as The Hamptons, although summer tourism swells the population in those areas. The North Fork peninsula of Suffolk County's East End has developed a burgeoning wine region. In addition, the South Fork peninsula is known for beach communities, including the Hamptons, and for the Montauk Point Lighthouse at the eastern tip of the island. The Pine Barrens is a preserved pine forest encompassing much of eastern Suffolk County.
Geology
A detailed geomorphological study of Long Island provides evidence of glacial history of the kame and terminal moraines of the island which were formed by the advance and retreat of two ice sheets. Long Island, as part of the Outer Lands region, is formed largely of two spines of glacial moraine, with a large, sandy outwash plain beyond. These moraines consist of gravel and loose rock left behind during the two most recent pulses of Wisconsin glaciation during the ice ages some 21,000 years ago (19,000 BC). The northern moraine, which directly abuts the North Shore of Long Island at points, is known as the Harbor Hill moraine. The more southerly moraine, known as the Ronkonkoma moraine, forms the "backbone" of Long Island; it runs primarily through the very center of Long Island, roughly coinciding with the length of the Long Island Expressway.
The land to the south of this moraine to the South Shore is the outwash plain of the last glacier. One part of the outwash plain was known as the Hempstead Plains, and this land contained one of the few natural prairies to exist east of the Appalachian Mountains. The glaciers melted and receded to the north, resulting in the difference between the topography of the North Shore beaches and the South Shore beaches. The North Shore beaches are rocky from the remaining glacial debris, while the South Shore's are crisp, clear, outwash sand. Jayne's Hill, at , within Suffolk County near its border with Nassau County, is the highest hill along either moraine; another well-known summit is Bald Hill in Brookhaven Town, not far from its geographical center at Middle Island. The glaciers also formed Lake Ronkonkoma in Suffolk County and Lake Success in Nassau County, each a deep kettle lake.
Countyscapes
Climate
Under the Köppen climate classification, Long Island lies in a transition zone between a humid subtropical climate (Cfa) and a hot-summer humid continental climate (Dfa). The climate features hot, usually humid summers with occasional thunderstorms, mild spring and fall weather, and cold winters with a mix of snow and rain and stormier conditions. Spring can be cool due to the relatively cooler temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean and occasional blocking. Thunderstorms rarely form directly over Long Island, but can form over inland areas and then move eastward. Some storms may weaken as they approach Long Island due to the moderating effects of the Atlantic Ocean. The ocean also brings afternoon sea breezes to the immediate South Shore areas (within ) that temper the heat in the warmer months. The temperatures south of Sunrise Highway (NY Route 27) tend to be significantly cooler than the rest of Long Island in the spring and summer months because of the relatively cooler temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean. Long Island has a moderately sunny climate, averaging 2,400 to 2,800 hours of sunshine annually.
Due to its coastal location, Long Island winter temperatures are milder than most of the state. The coldest month is January, when average temperatures range from , and the warmest month is July, when average temperatures range from . Temperatures seldom fall below or rise above . Coldest temp ever recorded on Long Island was on January 22, 1961. Long Island temperatures vary from west to east, with the western part (Nassau County, Queens, and Brooklyn) generally 2 to 3 degrees F (1 to 2 degrees C) warmer than the east (Suffolk County). This is due to several factors: the western part is closer to the mainland and more densely developed, causing the "urban heat island" effect, and Long Island's land mass veers northward as one travels east. Also, daytime high temperatures on the eastern part of Long Island are cooler on most occasions, due to the moderating effect of the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound. On dry nights with no clouds or wind, the Central Part of Suffolk County and Pine Barrens forest of eastern Suffolk County can be almost 5 to 10 F (3 to 5 C) cooler than the rest of the island, due to radiational cooling. Average dew points, a measure of atmospheric moisture, typically lie in the range during July and August.
Precipitation is distributed uniformly throughout the year, with approximately on average during each month. Average yearly snowfall totals range from approximately , with the north shore and western parts averaging more than the immediate south shore (South of Sunrise Hwy) and the east end. In any given winter, however, some parts of the island can see up to of snow or more. There are also milder winters, in which much of the island see less than of snow.
On August 13, 2014, flash flooding occurred in western-central Suffolk County after a record-setting rainfall deposited more than three months' worth of precipitation on the area within a few hours.
Long Island is somewhat vulnerable to tropical cyclones. While it lies north of where most tropical cyclones turn eastward and out to sea (most landfalls on the East Coast of the US occur from North Carolina southward), several tropical cyclones have struck Long Island, including a devastating Category 3, the 1938 New England Hurricane (also known as the "Long Island Express"), and another Category 3, Hurricane Carol in 1954. Other 20th-century storms that made landfall on Long Island at hurricane intensity include the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944, Hurricane Donna in 1960, Hurricane Belle in 1976, and Hurricane Gloria in 1985. Also, the eyewall of Hurricane Bob in 1991 brushed the eastern tip. In August 2011, portions of Long Island were evacuated in preparation for Hurricane Irene, a Category 1 hurricane which weakened to a tropical storm before it reached Long Island.
On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy caused extensive damage to low-lying coastal areas of Nassau and Suffolk counties, Brooklyn, and Queens, destroying or severely damaging thousands of area homes and other structures by ocean and bay storm surges. Hundreds of thousands of residents were left without electric power for periods of time ranging up to several weeks while the damage was being repaired. The slow-moving "Superstorm Sandy" (so-nicknamed because it merged with a nor'easter before it made landfall) caused 90% of Long Island households to lose power and an estimated $18 billion in damages in Nassau and Suffolk counties alone. The storm also had a devastating impact on coastal communities in the Brooklyn and Queens portions of the island, including Coney Island in Brooklyn and the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, although estimates of monetary damages there are usually calculated as part of the overall losses suffered in New York City as a whole. When allowance is made for inflation, the extent of Sandy's damages is second only to that of those caused by the 1938 Long Island Express. Although a lower central pressure was recorded in Sandy, the National Hurricane Center estimates that the 1938 hurricane had a lower pressure at landfall. Hurricane Sandy and its profound impacts have prompted the discussion of constructing seawalls and other coastal barriers around the shorelines of Long Island and New York City to minimize the risk of destructive consequences from another such event in the future.
Additional islands
Several smaller islands, though geographically distinct, are in proximity to Long Island and are often grouped with it. These islands include Fire Island, the largest of the outer barrier islands that parallels the southern shore of Long Island for approximately ; Plum Island, which was home to the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, a biological weapons research facility; as well as Robins Island, Gardiners Island, Fishers Island, Long Beach Barrier Island, Jones Beach Island, Great Gull Island, Little Gull Island, and Shelter Island.
Demographics
Long Island is one of the most densely populated regions in the United States. At the 2020 U.S. census, the total population of all four counties of Long Island was 8,063,232, comprising 40% of the population of the State of New York. As of 2020, the proportion of New York City residents (total 8,804,190) living on Long Island had risen to 58.4%, given the 5,141,538 residents living in Brooklyn or Queens. Furthermore, the proportion of New York State's population residing on Long Island has also been increasing, with Long Island's Census-estimated population increasing 6.5% since 2010, to 8,063,232 in 2020, representing 40% of New York State's Census 2020-enumerated population of 20,215,751 and with a population density of on Long Island; the island is more populous than 37 of the 50 U.S. states.
At the 2020 census, the combined population of Nassau and Suffolk counties was 2,921,694 people, Suffolk County's share being 1,525,920 and Nassau County's 1,395,774. Nassau County had a larger population for decades, but Suffolk County surpassed it in the 1990 census as growth and development continued to spread eastward. As Suffolk County has more than three times the land area of Nassau County, the latter still has a much higher population density, given its proximity to New York City. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2008 American Community Survey, Nassau and Suffolk counties had the 10th and 26th highest median household incomes in the nation, respectively.
Population figures from the U.S. Census Bureau Census 2010 show that whites are the largest racial group in all four counties, and are in the majority in Nassau and Suffolk counties. In 2002, The New York Times cited a study by the non-profit group ERASE Racism, which determined that Nassau and Suffolk counties constitute the most racially segregated suburbs in the United States.
In contrast, Queens is the most ethnically diverse county in the United States and the most diverse urban area in the world.
According to a 2000 report on religion, which asked congregations to respond, Catholics are the largest religious group on Long Island, with non-affiliated in second place. Catholics make up 52% of the population of Nassau and Suffolk, versus 22% for the country as a whole, with Jews at 16% and 7%, respectively, versus 1.7% nationwide. Only a small percentage of Protestants responded, 7% and 8% respectively, for Nassau and Suffolk counties. This is in contrast with 23% for the entire country on the same survey, and 50% on self-identification surveys.
A growing population of nearly half a million Chinese Americans now live on Long Island. Rapidly expanding Chinatowns have developed in Brooklyn (布魯克林) and Queens, with Chinese immigrants also moving into Nassau County, as did earlier European immigrants, such as the Irish and Italians. The busy intersection of Main Street, Kissena Boulevard, and 41st Avenue defines the center of Downtown Flushing and the Flushing Chinatown, known as the "Chinese Times Square" or the "Chinese Manhattan". The segment of Main Street between Kissena Boulevard and Roosevelt Avenue, punctuated by the Long Island Rail Road trestle overpass, represents the cultural heart of the Flushing Chinatown. Housing over 30,000 individuals born in China alone, the largest by this metric outside Asia, Flushing has become home to the largest and one of the fastest-growing Chinatowns in the world as the heart of over 250,000 ethnic Chinese in Queens, representing the largest Chinese population of any U.S. municipality other than New York City in total. Conversely, the Flushing Chinatown has also become the epicenter of organized prostitution in the United States, importing women from China, Korea, Thailand, and Eastern Europe to sustain the underground North American sex trade. Flushing is undergoing rapid gentrification with investment by Chinese transnational entities,
More recently, a Little India community has emerged in Hicksville, Nassau County, spreading eastward from the more established Little India enclaves in Queens. Rapidly growing Chinatowns have developed in Brooklyn and Queens, as did earlier European immigrants, such as the Irish and Italians. As of 2019, the Asian population in Nassau County had grown by 39% since 2010 to an estimated 145,191 individuals, including approximately 50,000 Indian Americans and 40,000 Chinese Americans, as Nassau County has become the leading suburban destination in the U.S. for Chinese immigrants. Likewise, the Long Island Koreatown originated in Flushing, Queens, and is expanding eastward along Northern Boulevard and into Nassau County.
Long Island is home to two Native American reservations, Poospatuck Reservation, and Shinnecock Reservation, both in Suffolk County. Numerous island place names are Native American in origin.
A 2010 article in The New York Times stated that the expansion of the immigrant workforce on Long Island has not displaced any jobs from other Long Island residents. Half of the immigrants on Long Island hold white-collar positions.
The counties of Nassau and Suffolk have been long renowned for their affluence. Long Island is home to some of the wealthiest communities in the United States, including The Hamptons, on the East End of the South Shore of Suffolk County; the Gold Coast, in the vicinity of the island's North Shore, along Long Island Sound; and increasingly, the western shoreline of Brooklyn, facing Manhattan. In 2016, according to Business Insider, the 11962 zip code encompassing Sagaponack, within Southampton, was listed as the most expensive in the U.S., with a median home sale price of $8.5 million.
Economy
Long Island has played a prominent role in scientific research and in engineering. It is the home of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in nuclear physics and Department of Energy research. Long Island is also home to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which was directed for 35 years by James D. Watson (who, along with Francis Crick and Rosalind Franklin, discovered the double helix structure of DNA). Companies such as Sperry Rand, Computer Associates (headquartered in Islandia), Zebra Technologies (now occupying the former headquarters of Symbol Technologies, and a former Grumman plant in Holtsville), have made Long Island a center for the computer industry. Stony Brook University and New York Institute of Technology conduct advanced medical and technological research.
Long Island is home to the East Coast's largest industrial park, the Hauppauge Industrial Park, hosting over 1,300 companies which employ more than 71,000 individuals. Companies in the park and abroad are represented by the Hauppauge Industrial Association. As many as 20% of Long Islanders commute to jobs in Manhattan. The island's eastern end is still partly agricultural. Development of vineyards on the North Fork has spawned a major viticultural industry, replacing potato fields. Pumpkin farms have been added to traditional truck farming. Farms allow fresh fruit picking by Long Islanders for much of the year. Fishing continues to be an important industry, especially at Huntington, Northport, Montauk, and other coastal communities of the East End and South Shore.
From about 1930 to about 1990, Long Island was considered one of the aerospace manufacturing centers of the United States, with companies such as Grumman Aircraft, Republic, Fairchild, and Curtiss having their headquarters and factories on Long Island. These operations have largely been phased out or significantly diminished.
Government and politics
Nassau County and Suffolk County each have their own governments, with a County Executive leading each. Each has a county legislature and countywide-elected officials, including district attorney, county clerk, and county comptroller. The towns in both counties have their own governments as well, with town supervisors and a town council. Nassau County is divided into three towns and two small incorporated cities (Glen Cove and Long Beach). Suffolk County is divided into ten towns.
Brooklyn and Queens, on the other hand, do not have county governments. As boroughs of New York City, both have borough presidents, which have been largely ceremonial offices since the shutdown of the New York City Board of Estimate. The respective Borough Presidents are responsible for appointing individuals to the Brooklyn Community Boards and Queens Community Boards, each of which serves an advisory function on local issues. Brooklyn's sixteen members and Queens' fourteen members represent the first and second largest borough contingents of the New York City Council.
Law enforcement
Queens and Brooklyn are patrolled by the New York City Police Department. Nassau and Suffolk counties are served by the Nassau County Police Department and Suffolk County Police Department, respectively, although several dozen villages and the two cities in Nassau County have their own police departments. The Nassau County Sheriff's Department and Suffolk County Sheriff's Office handle civil procedure, evictions, warrant service and enforcement, prisoner transport and detention, and operation of the county jails. The Suffolk County Sheriff also has a patrol division, and in 2008, had patrol duties along the Long Island Expressway, when the County Executive briefly disbanded the Suffolk County Police Highway Patrol Division.New York State Police patrol state parks and parkways, with the exception of the Long Island Expressway, which is an interstate patrolled by County Police. The several SUNY colleges and universities are patrolled by the New York State University Police.
Statehood proposals
The secession of Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island from New York State was proposed as early as 1896, but talk was revived towards the latter part of the twentieth century. On March 28, 2008, Suffolk County Comptroller Joseph Sawicki proposed a plan that would make Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island the 51st state of the United States of America. Sawicki claimed all of Nassau and Suffolk taxpayers' money would remain locally, rather than the funds being dispersed all over the entire state of New York, with these counties sending to Albany over three billion dollars more than they receive. The state of Long Island would have included nearly 3 million people (a larger population than that of fifteen other states). Nassau County executive Ed Mangano came out in support of such a proposal in April 2010 and commissioned a study on it.
Education
Primary and secondary education
Many public and private high schools on Long Island are ranked among the best in the United States. Nassau and Suffolk counties are the home of 125 public school districts containing 656 public schools. It also hosts private schools such as Friends Academy, Chaminade High School, Kellenberg Memorial High School, St. Anthony's High School, and North Shore Hebrew Academy, as well as parochial schools, many of which are operated by the Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre.
In contrast, all of Brooklyn and Queens are served by the New York City Department of Education, the largest school district in the United States. Three of the nine specialized high schools in New York City are in the two Long Island boroughs, those being Brooklyn Latin School, Brooklyn Technical High School (one of the original three specialized schools), and Queens High School for the Sciences. Like Nassau and Suffolk counties, they are home to private schools such as Poly Prep Country Day School, Packer Collegiate Institute, and Saint Ann's School, and Berkeley Carroll School, and parochial schools operated by the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn.
Colleges and universities
Long Island is home to a range of higher-education institutions, both public and private. Brooklyn and Queens contain five of eleven senior colleges within CUNY, the public university system of New York City and one of the largest in the country. Among these are the notable institutions of Brooklyn College and Queens College. Brooklyn also contains private colleges such as Pratt Institute and the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering, an engineering college that merged with New York University in 2014.
Several colleges and universities within the State University of New York system are on Long Island, including Stony Brook University (which noted its health sciences research and medical center), as well as Nassau Community College and Suffolk County Community College that serve their respective counties. Private institutions include Molloy College in Rockville Centre, the New York Institute of Technology, Hofstra University and Adelphi University (both in the Town of Hempstead), as well as Long Island University (with its C.W. Post campus, on a former Gold Coast estate in Brookville, and a satellite campus in downtown Brooklyn). Long Island also contains the Webb Institute, a small naval architecture college in Glen Cove. The island is also home to the United States Merchant Marine Academy, a Federal Service Academy in Kings Point, on the North Shore.
Culture
Music
Music on Long Island (Nassau and Suffolk) is strongly influenced by the proximity to New York City and by the youth culture of the suburbs.
Psychedelic rock was widely popular in the 1960s as flocks of disaffected youth travelled to NYC to participate in protest and the culture of the time. R & B also has a history on Long Island, most notably Huntington-born Mariah Carey, one of the top-selling musicians of all time. In the late 1970s through the 1980s, the influence of radio station WLIR made Long Island one of the first places in the U.S. to hear and embrace European New Wave bands such as Depeche Mode, the Pet Shop Boys, and Culture Club. In the 1990s, hip-hop became popular with rap pioneers Rakim, EPMD, MF Doom, and Public Enemy growing up on Long Island. Long Island was the home of a bustling emo scene in the 2000s, with bands such as Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, Straylight Run, From Autumn to Ashes and As Tall as Lions. More recently, newer acts from Long Island, including Austin Schoeffel, Jon Bellion, and Envy on the Coast, have made a name for themselves.
Famous rock bands from Long Island include The Rascals, The Ramones (from Queens), Dream Theater, Blue Öyster Cult, Twisted Sister, and guitar virtuosos Donald (Buck Dharma) Roeser, John Petrucci, Steve Vai and Joe Satriani, as well as drummer Mike Portnoy. Rock and pop singer Billy Joel grew up in Hicksville, and his music often reflects Long Island and his youth.
National The Nassau Coliseum and Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater are venues used by national touring acts as performance spaces for concerts. Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater is an outdoor amphitheatre at Jones Beach State Park. It is a popular place to view summer concerts that feature new and classic artists. It hosts a large Fourth of July fireworks show every year which fills the stands. People also park cars along the highway leading to the show, and others watch from the nearby beaches.
Long Island is also known for its school music programs. Many schools in Suffolk County have distinguished music programs, with high numbers of students who are accepted into the statewide All-State music groups, or even the National All-Eastern Coast music groups. Both the Suffolk County and Nassau County Music Educator's Associations are recognized by The National Association for Music Education (NAfME),
and host numerous events, competitions, and other music-related activities.
Cuisine
Long Island has historically been a center for fishing and seafood. This legacy continues in the Blue Point oyster, a now ubiquitous variety originally harvested on the Great South Bay that was the favorite oyster of Queen Victoria. Clams are also a popular food and clam digging a popular recreational pursuit, with Manhattan clam chowder reputed to have Long Island origins.
Of land-based produce, Long Island duck has a history of national recognition since the 19th century, with four duck farms continuing to produce 2 million ducks a year . Two symbols of Long Island's duck farming heritage are the Long Island Ducks minor-league baseball team and the Big Duck, a 1931 duck-shaped building that is a historic landmark and tourist attraction. In addition to Long Island's duck industry, Riverhead contains one of the largest buffalo farms on the East coast.
Long Island is well known for its production of alcoholic beverages. Eastern Long Island is a significant producer of wine. Vineyards are most heavily concentrated on Long Island's North Fork, which contains 38 wineries. Most of these contain tasting rooms, which are popular attractions for visitors from across the New York metropolitan area. Long Island has also become a producer of diverse craft beers, with 15 microbreweries across Nassau and Suffolk counties . The largest of these is Blue Point Brewing Company, best known for its toasted lager. Long Island is also globally known for its signature cocktail, the Long Island Iced Tea, which was purportedly invented at the popular Babylon, Oak Beach Inn nightclub in the 1970s.
Long Island's eateries are largely a product of the region's local ethnic populations. Asian cuisines, Italian cuisine, Jewish cuisine, and Latin American cuisines were the most popular ethnic cuisines on Long Island as of the second decade of the 2000s. Asian cuisines are predominantly represented by East Asian, South Asian, and Middle Eastern cuisines. Italian cuisine is found in ubiquitous pizzerias throughout the island, with the region hosting an annual competition, the Long Island Pizza Festival & Bake-Off. Jewish cuisine is likewise represented by delicatessens and bagel stores. Latin American cuisines span their geographical origins, from Brazilian rodizios to Mexican taquerias.
Sports
Major league sports
The New York Mets baseball team plays at Citi Field in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens. Their former stadium, Shea Stadium was also home for the New York Jets football team from 1964 until 1983. The new stadium has an exterior façade and main entry rotunda inspired by Brooklyn's famous Ebbets Field (see below). The New York Mets planned to move their Double-A farm team to Long Island, as part of the ambitious but now-defunct plan for Nassau County called The Lighthouse Project. The Brooklyn Cyclones are a minor league baseball team, affiliated with the New York Mets. The Cyclones play at MCU Park just off the boardwalk on Coney Island in Brooklyn. An artificial turf baseball complex named Baseball Heaven is in Yaphank.
The Barclays Center, a sports arena, business, and residential complex built partly on a platform over the Atlantic Yards at Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, is the home of the Brooklyn Nets basketball team. The move from New Jersey in the summer of 2012 marked the return to Long Island for the Nets franchise, which played at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale from 1972 to 1977. The Islanders played at Nassau Coliseum from their 1972 inception through 2015, and then splitting time between Nassau Coliseum and Barclays Center from 2017 to 2021, playing their last full season at the Nassau Coliseum during the 2020-2021 NHL Season. The Islanders moved full-time to UBS Arena at Belmont Park, in Elmont, New York, in November 2021.
Ebbets Field, which stood in Brooklyn from 1913 until its demolition in 1960, was the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team, who moved to California after the 1957 Major League Baseball season to become the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers won several National League pennants in the 1940s and 1950s, losing several times in the World Series—often called Subway Series—to their Bronx rivals, the New York Yankees. The Dodgers won their lone championship in Brooklyn in the 1955 World Series versus the Yankees.
Despite this success during the latter part of the team's stay in Brooklyn, they were a second-division team with an unspectacular winning record for much of their history there – but nonetheless became legendary for the almost-fanatical devotion of the Brooklynites who packed the relatively small ballpark to vigorously root for the team they affectionately called, "Dem Bums". Loss of the Dodgers to California was locally considered a civic tragedy that negatively affected the community far more than the similar moves of other established teams to new cities in the 1950s, including the Dodgers' long-time arch-rival New York Giants, who also left for California after 1957.
Minor league and college sports
The Stony Brook Seawolves represent Stony Brook University, and have had a bevy of athletic accomplishments such as reaching the 2012 College World Series as an underdog after defeating the LSU Tigers in a best-of-3 series.
Long Island is also home to the Long Island Ducks minor league baseball team of the Atlantic League. Their stadium, Bethpage Ballpark, is in Central Islip. The Brooklyn Cyclones minor league baseball team, affiliated with the New York Mets, plays in the Short-Season A classification New York–Penn League. The Cyclones play at MCU Park just off the Coney Island Boardwalk in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The New York Dragons of the Arena Football League played their home games at Nassau Coliseum. The two main rugby union teams are the Long Island RFC in East Meadow and the Suffolk Bull Moose in Stony Brook.
The New York Sharks is a women's American football team that is a member of the Women's Football Alliance. The New York Sharks home field is at Aviator Sports Complex in Brooklyn.
Long Island's professional soccer club, the New York Cosmos, play in the Division 2 North American Soccer League at James M. Shuart Stadium in Hempstead.
Long Island has historically been a hotbed of lacrosse at the youth and college level, which made way for a Major League Lacrosse team in 2001, the Long Island Lizards. The Lizards play at Mitchel Athletic Complex in Uniondale.
Other sports
Long Island has a wide variety of golf courses found all over the island. Two of the most well-known are the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club and the public Bethpage Black Course that has hosted multiple U.S. Open tournaments as well as several other top level international championships. Queens also hosts one of the four tennis grand slams, the US Open. Every August (September, in Olympic years) the best tennis players in the world travel to Long Island to play the championships held in the USTA National Tennis Center, adjacent to Citi Field in Flushing Meadows Park. The complex also contains the biggest tennis stadium in the world, the Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Long Island also has two horse racing tracks, Aqueduct Racetrack in Ozone Park, Queens and Belmont Park on the Queens/Nassau border in Elmont, home of the Belmont Stakes. The longest dirt thoroughbred racecourse in the world is also at Belmont Park. Another category of sporting events popular in this region involves firematic racing events, involving many local volunteer fire departments.
Notable sportspeople and teams
Long Island is home to numerous famous athletes, including Hall of Famers Jim Brown, Julius Erving, John Mackey, Whitey Ford, Nick Drahos, and Carl Yastrzemski. Others include gold medalists Sue Bird, Sarah Hughes and Derrick Adkins, USWNT World Cup champions Crystal Dunn and Alexandra Long, D'Brickashaw Ferguson, Billy Donovan, Larry Brown, Rick Pitino, John McEnroe, Jumbo Elliott, Mick Foley, Zack Ryder, Matt Serra, Boomer Esiason, Vinny Testaverde, Craig Biggio, Frank Catalanotto, Greg Sacks, Gilles Villemure, Rob Burnett, Steve Park, Frank Viola, Chris Weidman, Marques Colston and Speedy Claxton.
Several NHL players were born and/or raised on Long Island, such as Vancouver Canucks Christopher Higgins and Matt Gilroy, Nashville Predators Eric Nystrom, Toronto Maple Leaf Mike Komisarek, Pittsburgh Penguin Rob Scuderi, and New Jersey Devil Keith Kinkaid. Both Komisarek and Higgins played on the same Suffolk County Hockey League team at an early age, and later played on the Montreal Canadiens together. Nick Drahos was an All Scholastic and All Long Island honoree at Lawrence High School, Nassau Co. in 1936 and 1937, and a two-time Unanimous National College All-American in 1939 and 1940 at Cornell University.
Transportation
Many major forms of transportation serve Long Island, including aviation via John F. Kennedy International Airport, LaGuardia Airport, and Long Island MacArthur Airport, and multiple smaller airports; rail transportation via the Long Island Rail Road and the New York City Subway; bus routes via MTA Regional Bus Operations, Nassau Inter-County Express, and Suffolk County Transit; ferry service via NYC Ferry and multiple smaller ferry companies; and several major highways. There are historic and modern bridges, and recreational and commuter trails, serving various parts of Long Island.
There are eleven road crossings out of Long Island, all but one providing Brooklyn-Manhattan, Queens-Manhattan, and Queens-Bronx connections across the East River, with the Triborough Bridge providing two connections from Queens, one each to Manhattan and the Bronx. The single non-East River crossing is the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, connecting Brooklyn to Staten Island across The Narrows. Plans for a Long Island Sound link at locations in Nassau and Suffolk counties (a proposed bridge or tunnel that would link Long Island to the south with Westchester County, New York or Connecticut to the north across Long Island Sound) have been discussed for decades, but there are no plans to construct such a crossing.
Public transportation
The MTA implements mass transportation for the New York metropolitan area including all five boroughs of New York City, the suburban counties of Dutchess, Nassau, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Suffolk, and Westchester, all of which together are the "Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District (MCTD)".
The MTA considers itself to be the largest regional public transportation provider in the Western Hemisphere. , MTA agencies move about 8.6 million customers per day (translating to 2.65 billion rail and bus customers a year). The MTA's systems carry over 11 million passengers on an average weekday systemwide, and over 850,000 vehicles on its seven toll bridges and two tunnels per weekday.
Rail
The Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) is North America's busiest commuter railroad system, carrying an average of 282,400 passengers each weekday on 728 daily trains. Chartered on April 24, 1834, and operating continuously since, it is also the oldest railroad in the U.S. that still operates under its original charter and name. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has operated the LIRR as one of its two commuter railroads since 1966, and the LIRR is one of the few railroads worldwide that provides service all the time, year round. In July 2017, a $2 billion plan to add a third railroad track to the LIRR Main Line between the Floral Park and Hicksville stations in Nassau County was approved. Other LIRR projects, such as the Ronkonkoma Branch Double Track Project, are also underway. Five "readiness projects" across the LIRR system, which will cost a combined $495 million, are also under construction in preparation for expanded peak-hour LIRR service after the completion of East Side Access, which will bring LIRR trains to Grand Central Terminal.
Bus
Nassau Inter-County Express (NICE) provides bus service in Nassau County, while Suffolk County Transit, an agency of the Suffolk County government, provides bus service in Suffolk County. In 2012, NICE replaced the former MTA Long Island Bus in transporting Long Islanders across Nassau County while allowing them to use MTA MetroCards as payment.
Roads
The Long Island Expressway, Northern State Parkway, and Southern State Parkway, all products of the automobile-centered planning of Robert Moses, are the island's primary east–west high-speed controlled-access highways.
Ground transportation
Several hundred transportation companies service the Long Island/New York City area. Winston Airport Shuttle, the oldest of these companies in business since 1973, was the first to introduce door-to-door shared-ride service to and from the major airports, which almost all transportation companies now use.
See also
List of tallest buildings on Long Island
Geography of New York City
List of films shot on Long Island
List of Long Island recreational facilities
List of Long Islanders, famous residents of Nassau and Suffolk
List of people from New York City, including famous residents of Brooklyn and Queens
Long Island (proposed state)
Timeline of town creation in Downstate New York
Coastal Connecticut
Jersey Shore
Notes
References
External links
Islands of New York (state)
Coastal islands of New York (state)
Moraines of the United States
New York metropolitan area
Islands of New York City
Landforms of Long Island | [
0.13298878073692322,
-0.10524258762598038,
0.27463582158088684,
-0.550770103931427,
0.32089507579803467,
-0.1848214864730835,
0.1209186315536499,
0.5051238536834717,
-0.4627716839313507,
-0.1781272292137146,
-0.3635641038417816,
-0.07889076322317123,
-0.6042638421058655,
0.0915715172886848... |
18317 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower%20Peninsula%20of%20Michigan | Lower Peninsula of Michigan | The Lower Peninsula of Michigan – also known as Lower Michigan – is the southern and less elevated of the two major landmasses that make up the U.S. state of Michigan; the other being the Upper Peninsula, which is separated by the Straits of Mackinac. It is surrounded by water on all sides except its southern border, which it shares with Indiana and Ohio. Although the Upper Peninsula is commonly referred to as "the U.P.", it is uncommon for the Lower Peninsula to be called "the L.P."
Because of its recognizable shape, the Lower Peninsula is nicknamed "the mitten", with the eastern region identified as "The Thumb". This has led to several folkloric creation myths for the area, one being that it is a handprint of Paul Bunyan, a giant lumberjack and popular European-American folk character in Michigan. When asked where they live, Lower Peninsula residents may hold up their right palm and point to a spot on it to indicate the location.
The peninsula is sometimes divided into the Northern Lower Peninsula—which is more sparsely populated and largely forested—and the Southern Lower Peninsula—which is largely urban or farmland. Southern Lower Michigan is sometimes further divided into economic and cultural subregions.
The more culturally and economically diverse Lower Peninsula dominates Michigan politics, and maps of it without the Upper Peninsula are sometimes mistakenly presented as "Michigan", which contributes to resentment by "Yoopers" (residents of "the U.P"). Yoopers jokingly refer to residents of the Lower Peninsula as "flat-landers" (referring to the region's less rugged terrain) or "trolls" (because, being south of the Mackinac Bridge, they "live under the bridge").
Geography
The Lower Peninsula is bounded on the west by Lake Michigan and on the northeast by Lake Huron, which connect at the Straits of Mackinac. In the southeast, the waterway consisting of the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, Detroit River, and Lake Erie separates it from the province of Ontario, Canada. It is bounded on the south by the states of Indiana and Ohio. This border is irregular: the border with Indiana was moved 10 miles northward from its territorial position to give Indiana more access to Lake Michigan, and its slightly angled border with Ohio was part of the compromise which ended the Toledo War.
At its widest points, the Lower Peninsula is long from north to south and from east to west. It contains nearly two-thirds of Michigan's total land area. The surface of the peninsula is generally level, broken by conical hills and glacial moraines usually not more than a few hundred feet tall, most common in the north. The highest point in the Lower Peninsula is not definitely established, but is either Briar Hill at , or one of several points nearby in the vicinity of Cadillac. The lowest point is at the shore of Lake Erie at . The western coast features extensive sandy beaches and dunes produced by Lake Michigan and the prevailing winds from the west. The relatively shallow Saginaw Bay is surrounded by a similarly shallow drainage basin. Several large river systems flow into the adjacent Great Lakes, including the Kalamazoo, Grand, Muskegon, and Manistee rivers (Lake Michigan), and the Au Sable and Tittabawassee–Shiawassee–Saginaw rivers (Lake Huron). Because of the networks of rivers and numerous lakes, no point on land is more than from one of these bodies of water, and at most from one of the Great Lakes (near Lansing).
Flora and fauna
The American Bird Conservancy and the National Audubon Society have designated several locations as internationally Important Bird Areas.
Geology
The Lower Peninsula is dominated by a geological basin known as the Michigan Basin. That feature is represented by a nearly circular pattern of geologic sedimentary strata in the area with a nearly uniform structural dip toward the center of the peninsula. The basin is centered in Gladwin County where the Precambrian basement rocks are deep. Around the margins, such as under Mackinaw City, Michigan, the Precambrian surface is around down. This contour on the bedrock clips the northern part of the lower peninsula and continues under Lake Michigan along the west. It crosses the southern counties of Michigan and continues on to the north beneath Lake Huron.
Transportation
Major airports
Alpena County Regional Airport (APN) (Alpena)
Bishop International Airport (FNT) (Flint)
Capital Region International Airport (LAN) (Lansing)
Cherry Capital Airport (TVC) (Traverse City)
Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW) (Romulus)
Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR) (Grand Rapids)
Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport (AZO) (Kalamazoo)
MBS International Airport (MBS) (Saginaw)
Pellston Regional Airport (PLN) (Pellston)
Highways
Primary Interstate Highways have two digits on their shields; auxiliary Interstate Highways have three digits. Interstate Highways include:
U.S. Highways include:
The Great Lakes Circle Tour is a designated scenic road system connecting all of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River.
Regions
Michigan's Lower Peninsula can be divided into four main regions based on geological, soil, and vegetation differences; amount of urban areas or rural areas; minority populations; and agriculture. The four principal regions listed below can further be separated into sub-regions and overlapping areas.
Northern Michigan
Central/Mid-Michigan
The Thumb
Tri-Cities
Southern Michigan
West Michigan
Southern Michigan
Michiana
Southeast Michigan
Metro Detroit
See also
List of counties in Michigan
Notes
External links
Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University, Bibliography on Michigan (arranged by counties and regions)
Michigan Geology -- Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University
Michigan Department of Natural Resources website, harbors, hunting, resources and more
Info Michigan, detailed information on 630 cities
List of Museums, other attractions compiled by state government
Michigan's Official Economic Development and Travel Site
Map of Michigan Lighthouse in PDF Format
Northern Michigan Live Streaming Webcam
Terry Pepper on lighthouses of the Western Great Lakes
Peninsulas of Michigan
Regions of Michigan | [
-0.8137341141700745,
0.2749783396720886,
-0.3029913306236267,
0.05319584161043167,
0.25841349363327026,
0.7216706871986389,
0.37153270840644836,
0.9541022777557373,
-0.28350457549095154,
-0.7359498143196106,
-0.18413197994232178,
0.4030163288116455,
0.3099174201488495,
0.2595921754837036,
... |
18318 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake%20Toba | Lake Toba | Lake Toba () (Toba Batak: ᯖᯀᯬ ᯖᯬᯅ) is a large natural lake in North Sumatra, Indonesia, occupying the caldera of a supervolcano. The lake is located in the middle of the northern part of the island of Sumatra, with a surface elevation of about , the lake stretches from to . The lake is about long, wide, and up to deep. It is the largest lake in Indonesia and the largest volcanic lake in the world. Toba Caldera is one of twenty Geoparks in Indonesia, and was recognised in July 2020 as one of the UNESCO Global Geoparks.
Lake Toba is the site of a supervolcanic eruption estimated at VEI 8 that occurred 69,000 to 77,000 years ago, representing a climate-changing event. Recent advances in dating methods suggest a more accurate identification of 74,000 years ago as the date. It is the largest-known explosive eruption on Earth in the last 25 million years. According to the Toba catastrophe theory, it had global consequences for human populations; it killed most humans living at that time and is believed to have created a population bottleneck in central east Africa and India, which affects the genetic make-up of the human worldwide population to the present. More recent studies have cast doubt on this theory and found no evidence of substantial changes in population.
It has been accepted that the eruption of the Toba Caldera led to a volcanic winter with a worldwide decrease in temperature between , and up to in higher latitudes. Additional studies in Lake Malawi in East Africa show significant amounts of ash being deposited from the Toba Caldera eruptions, even at that great distance, but little indication of a significant climatic effect in East Africa.
Geology
The Toba Caldera in North Sumatra comprises four overlapping volcanic craters that adjoin the Sumatran "volcanic front". At it is the world's largest Quaternary caldera, and the fourth and youngest caldera. It intersects the three older calderas. An estimated of dense-rock equivalent pyroclastic material, known as the youngest Toba tuff, was released during one of the largest explosive volcanic eruptions in recent geological history. Following this eruption, a resurgent dome formed within the new caldera, joining two half-domes separated by a longitudinal graben.
At least four cones, four stratovolcanoes, and three craters are visible in the lake. The Tandukbenua cone on the northwestern edge of the caldera has only sparse vegetation, suggesting a young age of several hundred years. Also, the Pusubukit (Hill Center) volcano ( above sea level) on the south edge of the caldera is solfatarically active.
Major eruption
The Toba eruption (the Toba event) occurred at what is now Lake Toba about 73,700±300 years ago. It was the last in a series of at least four caldera-forming eruptions at this location, with the earlier known caldera having formed around 1.2 million years ago. This last eruption had an estimated VEI=8, making it the largest-known explosive volcanic eruption in the Quaternary.
Bill Rose and Craig Chesner of Michigan Technological University have estimated that the total amount of material released in the eruption was at least —about of ignimbrite that flowed over the ground, and approximately that fell as ash mostly to the west. However, as more outcrops become available, Toba possibly erupted of ignimbrite and co-ignimbrite. The pyroclastic flows of the eruption destroyed an area of least , with ash deposits as thick as by the main vent. The eruption was large enough to have deposited an ash layer approximately thick over all of South Asia; at one site in central India, the Toba ash layer today is up to thick and parts of Malaysia were covered with of ash fall.
The subsequent collapse formed a caldera that filled with water, creating Lake Toba. The island in the center of the lake is formed by a resurgent dome.
The exact year of the eruption is unknown, but the pattern of ash deposits suggests that it occurred during the northern summer because only the summer monsoon could have deposited Toba ashfall in the South China Sea. The eruption lasted perhaps two weeks, and the ensuing volcanic winter resulted in a decrease in average global temperatures by for several years. Ice cores from Greenland record a pulse of starkly reduced levels of organic carbon sequestration. Very few plants or animals in southeast Asia would have survived, and it is possible that the eruption caused a planet-wide die-off. However, the global cooling has been discussed by Rampino and Self. Their conclusion is that the cooling had already started before Toba's eruption. This conclusion was supported by Lane and Zielinski who studied the lake-core from Africa and GISP2. They concluded that there was no volcanic winter after the Toba eruption and that high H2SO4 deposits do not cause long-term effects. Furthermore, due to the low solubility of sulfur in the magma, the emission of volatiles and climate impacts are likely limited.
Evidence from studies of mitochondrial DNA suggests that humans may have passed through a genetic bottleneck around this time that reduced genetic diversity below what would be expected given the age of the species. According to the Toba catastrophe theory, proposed by Stanley H. Ambrose of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1998, the effects of the Toba eruption may have decreased the size of human populations to only a few tens of thousands of individuals. However, this hypothesis is not widely accepted because similar effects on other animal species have not been observed, and paleoanthropology suggests there was no population bottleneck. The genetic bottleneck is now recognized to be the Out-of-Africa founder effect, rather than an actual reduction in population.
More recent activity
Since the major eruption ~70,000 years ago, eruptions of smaller magnitude have also occurred at Toba. The small cone of Pusukbukit formed on the southwestern margin of the caldera and lava domes. The most recent eruption may have been at Tandukbenua on the northwestern caldera edge, suggested by a lack of vegetation that could be due to an eruption within the last few hundred years.
Some parts of the caldera have shown uplift due to partial refilling of the magma chamber, for example, pushing Samosir Island and the Uluan Peninsula above the surface of the lake. The lake sediments on Samosir Island show that it has risen by at least since the cataclysmic eruption. Such uplifts are common in very large calderas, apparently due to the upward pressure of below-ground magma. Toba is probably the largest resurgent caldera on Earth. Large earthquakes have recently occurred in the vicinity of the volcano, notably in 1987 along the southern shore of the lake at a depth of . Such earthquakes have also been recorded in 1892, 1916, and 1920–1922.
In 2016, a study revealed that the Toba Supervolcano has a magma chamber containing of eruptible magma, about underground. This makes the supervolcano's magma chamber more than four times larger than the volume of Lake Superior in North America, and also larger than the magma chamber underneath Yellowstone.
Lake Toba lies near the Great Sumatran fault, which runs along the centre of Sumatra in the Sumatra Fracture Zone. The volcanoes of Sumatra and Java are part of the Sunda Arc, a result of the northeasterly movement of the Indo-Australian Plate, which is sliding under the eastward-moving Eurasian Plate. The subduction zone in this area is very active: the seabed near the west coast of Sumatra has had several major earthquakes since 1995, including the 9.1 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and the 8.7 2005 Nias–Simeulue earthquake, the epicenters of which were around from Toba.
People
Most of the people who live around Lake Toba are ethnically Bataks. Traditional Batak houses are noted for their distinctive roofs (which curve upwards at each end, as a boat's hull does) and their colorful decor.
Transportation
Parapat town is located on the edge of the lake, which is the transit point to travel the lake and Samosir Island. Medan is about 173 km by road from the town and connected via Trans-Sumatran Highway to Pematang Siantar by a 48 km road. Sisingamangaraja XII International Airport is located about 47 mi (76 km) from Parapat town.
Flora and fauna
The flora of the lake includes various types of phytoplankton, emerged macrophytes, floating macrophytes, and submerged macrophytes, while the surrounding countryside is rainforest including areas of Sumatran tropical pine forests on the higher mountainsides.
The fauna includes several species of zooplankton and benthic animals. Since the lake is oligotrophic (nutrient-poor), the native fish fauna is relatively scarce, and the only endemics are Rasbora tobana (strictly speaking near-endemic, since also found in some tributary rivers that run into the lake) and Neolissochilus thienemanni, locally known as the Batak fish. The latter species is threatened by deforestation (causing siltation), pollution, changes in water level and the numerous fish species that have been introduced to the lake. Other native fishes include species such as Aplocheilus panchax, Nemacheilus pfeifferae, Homaloptera gymnogaster, Channa gachua, Channa striata, Clarias batrachus, Barbonymus gonionotus, Barbonymus schwanenfeldii, Danio albolineatus, Osteochilus vittatus, Puntius binotatus, Rasbora jacobsoni, Tor tambra, Betta imbellis, Betta taeniata and Monopterus albus. Among the many introduced species are Anabas testudineus, Oreochromis mossambicus, Oreochromis niloticus, Ctenopharyngodon idella, Cyprinus carpio, Osphronemus goramy, Trichogaster pectoralis, Trichopodus trichopterus, Poecilia reticulata and Xiphophorus hellerii.
Sinking of MV Sinar Bangun
On 18 June 2018, Lake Toba was the scene of a ferry disaster, in which over 190 people drowned. MV Sinar Bangun was an irregular operating vessel on the lake which capsized with many passengers on board. The incident caused the death of 190 people and injuries to a number of others. Preliminary reports found the vessel was in operation with irregularities. Ignoring overloading on the vessel and operating in rough weather conditions were concluded as the main reasons leading to the disaster. Around 50 cars and 100 motorbikes, which were aboard, also sank into the lake on that day.
In popular culture
The Origin of Lake Toba is a folk story about the lake, in which once upon a time, there was a fisherman who caught a golden fish. Samosir Island is believed to be the golden fish's son.
Gallery
See also
List of lakes of Indonesia
List of volcanoes in Indonesia
Mount Sinabung
Lake Taupō
Yellowstone Caldera
La Garita Caldera
References
Further reading
External links
Toba, Sumatra, Indonesia – Volcano.oregonstate.edu Accessed 11 December 2005
Stanley H. Ambrose, Volcanic Winter, and Differentiation of Modern Humans Accessed 11 December 2005
Joel Achenbach, Who Knew, National Geographic Accessed 11 December 2005
(Lake Toba Ecosystem Management Plan) From laketoba.org
Magma 'Pancakes' May Have Fueled Toba Supervolcano
Batak
Volcanic crater lakes
Lakes of Sumatra
Tourist attractions in Indonesia
Tourist attractions in North Sumatra
Subduction volcanoes
Supervolcanoes
VEI-8 volcanoes
Calderas of Indonesia
Volcanoes of Sumatra
Landforms of North Sumatra
Pleistocene volcanoes | [
-0.37995705008506775,
-0.04459822177886963,
-0.07608931511640549,
0.03994185850024223,
-0.16762779653072357,
-0.03681127727031708,
0.569451093673706,
0.18417754769325256,
-0.3735876679420471,
0.5238602757453918,
-0.5356261134147644,
0.04869754612445831,
-0.4692910313606262,
0.5877087712287... |
18320 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lens | Lens | A lens is a transmissive optical device which focuses or disperses a light beam by means of refraction. A simple lens consists of a single piece of transparent material, while a compound lens consists of several simple lenses (elements), usually arranged along a common axis. Lenses are made from materials such as glass or plastic, and are ground and polished or molded to a desired shape. A lens can focus light to form an image, unlike a prism, which refracts light without focusing. Devices that similarly focus or disperse waves and radiation other than visible light are also called lenses, such as microwave lenses, electron lenses, acoustic lenses, or explosive lenses.
Lenses are used in various imaging devices like telescopes, binoculars and cameras. They are also used as visual aids in glasses to correct defects of vision such as myopia and hypermetropia.
History
The word lens comes from lēns, the Latin name of the lentil, because a double-convex lens is lentil-shaped. The lentil plant also gives its name to a geometric figure.
Some scholars argue that the archeological evidence indicates that there was widespread use of lenses in antiquity, spanning several millennia. The so-called Nimrud lens is a rock crystal artifact dated to the 7th century BC which may or may not have been used as a magnifying glass, or a burning glass. Others have suggested that certain Egyptian hieroglyphs depict "simple glass meniscal lenses".
The oldest certain reference to the use of lenses is from Aristophanes' play The Clouds (424 BC) mentioning a burning-glass.
Pliny the Elder (1st century) confirms that burning-glasses were known in the Roman period.
Pliny also has the earliest known reference to the use of a corrective lens when he mentions that Nero was said to watch the gladiatorial games using an emerald (presumably concave to correct for nearsightedness, though the reference is vague). Both Pliny and Seneca the Younger (3 BC–65 AD) described the magnifying effect of a glass globe filled with water.
Ptolemy (2nd century) wrote a book on Optics, which however survives only in the Latin translation of an incomplete and very poor Arabic translation.
The book was, however, received by medieval scholars in the Islamic world, and commented upon by Ibn Sahl (10th century), who was in turn improved upon by Alhazen (Book of Optics, 11th century). The Arabic translation of Ptolemy's Optics became available in Latin translation in the 12th century (Eugenius of Palermo 1154). Between the 11th and 13th century "reading stones" were invented. These were primitive plano-convex lenses initially made by cutting a glass sphere in half. The medieval (11th or 12th century) rock crystal Visby lenses may or may not have been intended for use as burning glasses.
Spectacles were invented as an improvement of the "reading stones" of the high medieval period in Northern Italy in the second half of the 13th century. This was the start of the optical industry of grinding and polishing lenses for spectacles, first in Venice and Florence in the late 13th century, and later in the spectacle-making centres in both the Netherlands and Germany.
Spectacle makers created improved types of lenses for the correction of vision based more on empirical knowledge gained from observing the effects of the lenses (probably without the knowledge of the rudimentary optical theory of the day). The practical development and experimentation with lenses led to the invention of the compound optical microscope around 1595, and the refracting telescope in 1608, both of which appeared in the spectacle-making centres in the Netherlands.
With the invention of the telescope and microscope there was a great deal of experimentation with lens shapes in the 17th and early 18th centuries by those trying to correct chromatic errors seen in lenses. Opticians tried to construct lenses of varying forms of curvature, wrongly assuming errors arose from defects in the spherical figure of their surfaces. Optical theory on refraction and experimentation was showing no single-element lens could bring all colours to a focus. This led to the invention of the compound achromatic lens by Chester Moore Hall in England in 1733, an invention also claimed by fellow Englishman John Dollond in a 1758 patent.
Construction of simple lenses
Most lenses are spherical lenses: their two surfaces are parts of the surfaces of spheres. Each surface can be convex (bulging outwards from the lens), concave (depressed into the lens), or planar (flat). The line joining the centres of the spheres making up the lens surfaces is called the axis of the lens. Typically the lens axis passes through the physical centre of the lens, because of the way they are manufactured. Lenses may be cut or ground after manufacturing to give them a different shape or size. The lens axis may then not pass through the physical centre of the lens.
Toric or sphero-cylindrical lenses have surfaces with two different radii of curvature in two orthogonal planes. They have a different focal power in different meridians. This forms an astigmatic lens. An example is eyeglass lenses that are used to correct astigmatism in someone's eye.
Types of simple lenses
Lenses are classified by the curvature of the two optical surfaces. A lens is biconvex (or double convex, or just convex) if both surfaces are convex. If both surfaces have the same radius of curvature, the lens is equiconvex. A lens with two concave surfaces is biconcave (or just concave). If one of the surfaces is flat, the lens is plano-convex or plano-concave depending on the curvature of the other surface. A lens with one convex and one concave side is convex-concave or meniscus. It is this type of lens that is most commonly used in corrective lenses.
If the lens is biconvex or plano-convex, a collimated beam of light passing through the lens converges to a spot (a focus) behind the lens. In this case, the lens is called a positive or converging lens. For a thin lens in air, the distance from the lens to the spot is the focal length of the lens, which is commonly represented by f in diagrams and equations. An extended hemispherical lens is a special type of plano-convex lens, in which the lens's curved surface is a full hemisphere and the lens is much thicker than the radius of curvature.
If the lens is biconcave or plano-concave, a collimated beam of light passing through the lens is diverged (spread); the lens is thus called a negative or diverging lens. The beam, after passing through the lens, appears to emanate from a particular point on the axis in front of the lens. For a thin lens in air, the distance from this point to the lens is the focal length, though it is negative with respect to the focal length of a converging lens.
Convex-concave (meniscus) lenses can be either positive or negative, depending on the relative curvatures of the two surfaces. A negative meniscus lens has a steeper concave surface and is thinner at the centre than at the periphery. Conversely, a positive meniscus lens has a steeper convex surface and is thicker at the centre than at the periphery. An ideal thin lens with two surfaces of equal curvature would have zero optical power, meaning that it would neither converge nor diverge light. All real lenses have nonzero thickness, however, which makes a real lens with identical curved surfaces slightly positive. To obtain exactly zero optical power, a meniscus lens must have slightly unequal curvatures to account for the effect of the lens' thickness.
Lensmaker's equation
The focal length of a lens in air can be calculated from the lensmaker's equation:
where
is the focal length of the lens,
is the refractive index of the lens material,
is the radius of curvature (with sign, see below) of the lens surface closer to the light source,
is the radius of curvature of the lens surface farther from the light source, and
is the thickness of the lens (the distance along the lens axis between the two surface vertices).
The focal length f is positive for converging lenses, and negative for diverging lenses. The reciprocal of the focal length, 1/f, is the optical power of the lens. If the focal length is in metres, this gives the optical power in dioptres (inverse metres).
Lenses have the same focal length when light travels from the back to the front as when light goes from the front to the back. Other properties of the lens, such as the aberrations are not the same in both directions.
Sign convention for radii of curvature R1 and R2
The signs of the lens' radii of curvature indicate whether the corresponding surfaces are convex or concave. The sign convention used to represent this varies, but in this article a positive R indicates a surface's center of curvature is further along in the direction of the ray travel (right, in the accompanying diagrams), while negative R means that rays reaching the surface have already passed the center of curvature. Consequently, for external lens surfaces as diagrammed above, and indicate convex surfaces (used to converge light in a positive lens), while and indicate concave surfaces. The reciprocal of the radius of curvature is called the curvature. A flat surface has zero curvature, and its radius of curvature is infinity.
Thin lens approximation
If d is small compared to R1 and R2, then the thin lens approximation can be made. For a lens in air, f is then given by
Imaging properties
As mentioned above, a positive or converging lens in air focuses a collimated beam travelling along the lens axis to a spot (known as the focal point) at a distance f from the lens. Conversely, a point source of light placed at the focal point is converted into a collimated beam by the lens. These two cases are examples of image formation in lenses. In the former case, an object at an infinite distance (as represented by a collimated beam of waves) is focused to an image at the focal point of the lens. In the latter, an object at the focal length distance from the lens is imaged at infinity. The plane perpendicular to the lens axis situated at a distance f from the lens is called the focal plane.
If the distances from the object to the lens and from the lens to the image are S1 and S2 respectively, for a lens of negligible thickness (thin lens), in air, the distances are related by the thin lens formula:
This can also be put into the "Newtonian" form:
where and .
Therefore, if an object is placed at a distance from a positive lens of focal length f, we will find an image distance S2 according to this formula. If a screen is placed at a distance S2 on the opposite side of the lens, an image is formed on it. This sort of image, which can be projected onto a screen or image sensor, is known as a real image. Alternatively, this real image can also be viewed by the human eyes, as shown in the picture below (with the caption "A convex lens () forming a real, inverted image ...").
This is the principle of the camera, and of the human eye. The focusing adjustment of a camera adjusts S2, as using an image distance different from that required by this formula produces a defocused (fuzzy) image for an object at a distance of S1 from the camera. Put another way, modifying S2 causes objects at a different S1 to come into perfect focus.
In some cases S2 is negative, indicating that the image is formed on the opposite side of the lens from where those rays are being considered. Since the diverging light rays emanating from the lens never come into focus, and those rays are not physically present at the point where they appear to form an image, this is called a virtual image. Unlike real images, a virtual image cannot be projected on a screen, but appears to an observer looking through the lens as if it were a real object at the location of that virtual image. Likewise, it appears to a subsequent lens as if it were an object at that location, so that second lens could again focus that light into a real image, S1 then being measured from the virtual image location behind the first lens to the second lens. This is exactly what the eye does when looking through a magnifying glass. The magnifying glass creates a (magnified) virtual image behind the magnifying glass, but those rays are then re-imaged by the lens of the eye to create a real image on the retina.
Using a positive lens of focal length f, a virtual image results when , the lens thus being used as a magnifying glass (rather than if as for a camera). Using a negative lens () with a real object () can only produce a virtual image (), according to the above formula. It is also possible for the object distance S1 to be negative, in which case the lens sees a so-called virtual object. This happens when the lens is inserted into a converging beam (being focused by a previous lens) before the location of its real image. In that case even a negative lens can project a real image, as is done by a Barlow lens.
For a thin lens, the distances S1 and S2 are measured from the object and image to the position of the lens, as described above. When the thickness of the lens is not much smaller than S1 and S2 or there are multiple lens elements (a compound lens), one must instead measure from the object and image to the principal planes of the lens. If distances S1 or S2 pass through a medium other than air or vacuum a more complicated analysis is required.
Magnification
The linear magnification of an imaging system using a single lens is given by
where M is the magnification factor defined as the ratio of the size of an image compared to the size of the object. The sign convention here dictates that if M is negative, as it is for real images, the image is upside-down with respect to the object. For virtual images M is positive, so the image is upright.
This magnification formula provides two easy ways to distinguish converging (f > 0) and diverging (f < 0) lenses: For an object very close to the lens (), a converging lens would form a magnified (bigger) virtual image, whereas a diverging lens would form a demagnified (smaller) image; For an object very far from the lens (), a converging lens would form an inverted image, whereas a diverging lens would form an upright image.
Linear magnification M is not always the most useful measure of magnifying power. For instance, when characterizing a visual telescope or binoculars that produce only a virtual image, one would be more concerned with the angular magnification—which expresses how much larger a distant object appears through the telescope compared to the naked eye. In the case of a camera one would quote the plate scale, which compares the apparent (angular) size of a distant object to the size of the real image produced at the focus. The plate scale is the reciprocal of the focal length of the camera lens; lenses are categorized as long-focus lenses or wide-angle lenses according to their focal lengths.
Using an inappropriate measurement of magnification can be formally correct but yield a meaningless number. For instance, using a magnifying glass of 5 cm focal length, held 20 cm from the eye and 5 cm from the object, produces a virtual image at infinity of infinite linear size: . But the angular magnification is 5, meaning that the object appears 5 times larger to the eye than without the lens. When taking a picture of the moon using a camera with a 50 mm lens, one is not concerned with the linear magnification Rather, the plate scale of the camera is about 1°/mm, from which one can conclude that the 0.5 mm image on the film corresponds to an angular size of the moon seen from earth of about 0.5°.
In the extreme case where an object is an infinite distance away, , and , indicating that the object would be imaged to a single point in the focal plane. In fact, the diameter of the projected spot is not actually zero, since diffraction places a lower limit on the size of the point spread function. This is called the diffraction limit.
Aberrations
Lenses do not form perfect images, and a lens always introduces some degree of distortion or aberration that makes the image an imperfect replica of the object. Careful design of the lens system for a particular application minimizes the aberration. Several types of aberration affect image quality, including spherical aberration, coma, and chromatic aberration.
Spherical aberration
Spherical aberration occurs because spherical surfaces are not the ideal shape for a lens, but are by far the simplest shape to which glass can be ground and polished, and so are often used. Spherical aberration causes beams parallel to, but distant from, the lens axis to be focused in a slightly different place than beams close to the axis. This manifests itself as a blurring of the image. Spherical aberration can be minimised with normal lens shapes by carefully choosing the surface curvatures for a particular application. For instance, a plano-convex lens, which is used to focus a collimated beam, produces a sharper focal spot when used with the convex side towards the beam source.
Coma
Coma, or comatic aberration, derives its name from the comet-like appearance of the aberrated image. Coma occurs when an object off the optical axis of the lens is imaged, where rays pass through the lens at an angle to the axis θ. Rays that pass through the centre of a lens of focal length f are focused at a point with distance from the axis. Rays passing through the outer margins of the lens are focused at different points, either further from the axis (positive coma) or closer to the axis (negative coma). In general, a bundle of parallel rays passing through the lens at a fixed distance from the centre of the lens are focused to a ring-shaped image in the focal plane, known as a comatic circle. The sum of all these circles results in a V-shaped or comet-like flare. As with spherical aberration, coma can be minimised (and in some cases eliminated) by choosing the curvature of the two lens surfaces to match the application. Lenses in which both spherical aberration and coma are minimised are called bestform lenses.
Chromatic aberration
Chromatic aberration is caused by the dispersion of the lens material—the variation of its refractive index, n, with the wavelength of light. Since, from the formulae above, f is dependent upon n, it follows that light of different wavelengths is focused to different positions. Chromatic aberration of a lens is seen as fringes of colour around the image. It can be minimised by using an achromatic doublet (or achromat) in which two materials with differing dispersion are bonded together to form a single lens. This reduces the amount of chromatic aberration over a certain range of wavelengths, though it does not produce perfect correction. The use of achromats was an important step in the development of the optical microscope. An apochromat is a lens or lens system with even better chromatic aberration correction, combined with improved spherical aberration correction. Apochromats are much more expensive than achromats.
Different lens materials may also be used to minimise chromatic aberration, such as specialised coatings or lenses made from the crystal fluorite. This naturally occurring substance has the highest known Abbe number, indicating that the material has low dispersion.
Other types of aberration
Other kinds of aberration include field curvature, barrel and pincushion distortion, and astigmatism.
Aperture diffraction
Even if a lens is designed to minimize or eliminate the aberrations described above, the image quality is still limited by the diffraction of light passing through the lens' finite aperture. A diffraction-limited lens is one in which aberrations have been reduced to the point where the image quality is primarily limited by diffraction under the design conditions.
Compound lenses
Simple lenses are subject to the optical aberrations discussed above. In many cases these aberrations can be compensated for to a great extent by using a combination of simple lenses with complementary aberrations. A compound lens is a collection of simple lenses of different shapes and made of materials of different refractive indices, arranged one after the other with a common axis.
The simplest case is where lenses are placed in contact: if the lenses of focal lengths f1 and f2 are "thin", the combined focal length f of the lenses is given by
Since 1/f is the power of a lens, it can be seen that the powers of thin lenses in contact are additive.
If two thin lenses are separated in air by some distance d, the focal length for the combined system is given by
The distance from the front focal point of the combined lenses to the first lens is called the front focal length (FFL):
Similarly, the distance from the second lens to the rear focal point of the combined system is the back focal length (BFL):
As d tends to zero, the focal lengths tend to the value of f given for thin lenses in contact.
If the separation distance is equal to the sum of the focal lengths (d = f1 + f2), the FFL and BFL are infinite. This corresponds to a pair of lenses that transform a parallel (collimated) beam into another collimated beam. This type of system is called an afocal system, since it produces no net convergence or divergence of the beam. Two lenses at this separation form the simplest type of optical telescope. Although the system does not alter the divergence of a collimated beam, it does alter the width of the beam. The magnification of such a telescope is given by
which is the ratio of the output beam width to the input beam width. Note the sign convention: a telescope with two convex lenses (f1 > 0, f2 > 0) produces a negative magnification, indicating an inverted image. A convex plus a concave lens (f1 > 0 > f2) produces a positive magnification and the image is upright. For further information on simple optical telescopes, see Refracting telescope § Refracting telescope designs.
System of n thin lenses
For a system of n thin lenses, let Lr denote the rth lens, fr be the focal length of Lr, and dr be the distance between Lr and Lr+1.
The focal length Fn of the lens system is given by
The proof of this (and of other formulas) is contained in the file: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/System_of_n_Thin_Lenses.pdf
Non spherical types
Cylindrical lenses have curvature along only one axis. They are used to focus light into a line, or to convert the elliptical light from a laser diode into a round beam. They are also used in motion picture anamorphic lenses.
Aspheric lenses have at least one surface that is neither spherical nor cylindrical. The more complicated shapes allow such lenses to form images with less aberration than standard simple lenses, but they are more difficult and expensive to produce. These were formerly complex to make and often extremely expensive, but advances in technology have greatly reduced the manufacturing cost for such lenses.
A Fresnel lens has its optical surface broken up into narrow rings, allowing the lens to be much thinner and lighter than conventional lenses. Durable Fresnel lenses can be molded from plastic and are inexpensive.
Lenticular lenses are arrays of microlenses that are used in lenticular printing to make images that have an illusion of depth or that change when viewed from different angles.
Bifocal lens has two or more, or a graduated, focal lengths ground into the lens.
A gradient index lens has flat optical surfaces, but has a radial or axial variation in index of refraction that causes light passing through the lens to be focused.
An axicon has a conical optical surface. It images a point source into a line along the optic axis, or transforms a laser beam into a ring.
Diffractive optical elements can function as lenses.
Superlenses are made from negative index metamaterials and claim to produce images at spatial resolutions exceeding the diffraction limit. The first superlenses were made in 2004 using such a metamaterial for microwaves. Improved versions have been made by other researchers. the superlens has not yet been demonstrated at visible or near-infrared wavelengths.
A prototype flat ultrathin lens, with no curvature has been developed.
Uses
A single convex lens mounted in a frame with a handle or stand is a magnifying glass.
Lenses are used as prosthetics for the correction of refractive errors such as myopia, hypermetropia, presbyopia, and astigmatism. (See corrective lens, contact lens, eyeglasses.) Most lenses used for other purposes have strict axial symmetry; eyeglass lenses are only approximately symmetric. They are usually shaped to fit in a roughly oval, not circular, frame; the optical centres are placed over the eyeballs; their curvature may not be axially symmetric to correct for astigmatism. Sunglasses' lenses are designed to attenuate light; sunglass lenses that also correct visual impairments can be custom made.
Other uses are in imaging systems such as monoculars, binoculars, telescopes, microscopes, cameras and projectors. Some of these instruments produce a virtual image when applied to the human eye; others produce a real image that can be captured on photographic film or an optical sensor, or can be viewed on a screen. In these devices lenses are sometimes paired up with curved mirrors to make a catadioptric system where the lens's spherical aberration corrects the opposite aberration in the mirror (such as Schmidt and meniscus correctors).
Convex lenses produce an image of an object at infinity at their focus; if the sun is imaged, much of the visible and infrared light incident on the lens is concentrated into the small image. A large lens creates enough intensity to burn a flammable object at the focal point. Since ignition can be achieved even with a poorly made lens, lenses have been used as burning-glasses for at least 2400 years. A modern application is the use of relatively large lenses to concentrate solar energy on relatively small photovoltaic cells, harvesting more energy without the need to use larger and more expensive cells.
Radio astronomy and radar systems often use dielectric lenses, commonly called a lens antenna to refract electromagnetic radiation into a collector antenna.
Lenses can become scratched and abraded. Abrasion-resistant coatings are available to help control this.
See also
Anti-fogging treatment of optical surfaces
Back focal plane
Bokeh
Cardinal point (optics)
Caustic (optics)
Eyepiece
F-number
Gravitational lens
Lens (anatomy)
List of lens designs
Numerical aperture
Optical coatings
Optical lens design
Photochromic lens
Prism (optics)
Ray tracing
Ray transfer matrix analysis
References
Bibliography
Chapters 5 & 6.
External links
A chapter from an online textbook on refraction and lenses
Thin Spherical Lenses (.pdf) on Project PHYSNET.
Lens article at digitalartform.com
Article on Ancient Egyptian lenses
The Use of Magnifying Lenses in the Classical World
(with 21 diagrams)
Simulations
Learning by Simulations – Concave and Convex Lenses
OpticalRayTracer – Open source lens simulator (downloadable java)
Animations demonstrating lens by QED
Optical components | [
0.6012195348739624,
0.3113757073879242,
0.31499162316322327,
0.0966818556189537,
-0.21781489253044128,
-0.12830089032649994,
0.11403385549783707,
-0.07392558455467224,
-0.15196464955806732,
-0.1669129580259323,
-0.5684218406677246,
0.9268813133239746,
-0.28586918115615845,
0.40591517090797... |
18322 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamorna%20Birch | Lamorna Birch | Samuel John "Lamorna" Birch, RA, RWS (7 June 1869 – 7 January 1955) was an English artist in oils and watercolours. At the suggestion of fellow artist Stanhope Forbes, Birch adopted the soubriquet "Lamorna" to distinguish himself from Lionel Birch, an artist who was also working in the area at that time.
Biography
Lamorna Birch was born in Egremont, Cheshire, England. He was self-taught as an artist, except for a brief period of study at the Académie Colarossi in Paris during 1895.
Birch settled in Lamorna, Cornwall in 1892, initially lodging at nearby Boleigh Farm. Many of his most famous pictures date from this time and the beautiful Lamorna Cove is usually their subject matter. He was attracted to Cornwall by the Newlyn group of artists but he ended up starting a second group based around his adopted home of Lamorna. He married Houghton (Mouse) Emily Vivian, the daughter of a mining agent from Camborne and they lived at Flagstaff Cottage, Lamorna.
Exhibitions
He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1893, was elected as an Associate (ARA) in 1926 and made a Royal Academician (RA) in 1934, and showed more than two hundred paintings there. He held his first one-man exhibition at the Fine Art Society in 1906 and is said to have produced more than 20,000 pictures. Like a number of his contemporaries, he was profiled as an 'Artist of Note' in The Artist magazine, by Richard Seddon, in the June 1944 edition.
Shades of British Impressionism Lamorna Birch and his Circle was shown at Warrington Museum & Art Gallery in the Mezzanine in October 2004. This details his links with Henry Scott Tuke and Thomas Cooper Gotch and many others who settled in the artists' colony in the 1880s and 1890s. "These painters helped to change the face of British art. Their emphasis on colour and light, truth and social realism brought about a revolution in British art." says the catalogue for the show.
Entranced by a Special Place: The Art of S J Lamorna Birch – at Penlee House, Penzance, part of the Royal Academy's 250th anniversary celebrations.
Today
Birch has paintings at Penlee House and in the collection of Derby Art Gallery.
References
External links
1869 births
1955 deaths
19th-century English painters
20th-century English painters
Académie Colarossi alumni
Painters from Cornwall
English male painters
Lamorna Art colony
Newlyn School of Artists
People from Wallasey
Royal Academicians | [
-0.032780662178993225,
0.28523799777030945,
-1.06436026096344,
-0.9361075162887573,
-0.20556463301181793,
0.8775306344032288,
0.4254378080368042,
-0.03805956989526749,
-0.9163009524345398,
0.5156702995300293,
-0.39365488290786743,
0.06438195705413818,
0.04156018793582916,
0.283712118864059... |
18323 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LDP | LDP | LDP may mean:
Politics
Liberal Democratic Party (disambiguation), a list of liberal democratic parties
Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino, a political party in the Philippines
Lebanese Democratic Party, a political party in Lebanon
League for Democracy Party, a political party in Cambodia
Liberal Democratic Party of Germany, a political party in East Germany
Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), a political party in Japan
Liberal Democratic Party (Serbia), a political party in Serbia
Liberal Democratic Party (Turkey), a political party in Turkey
Technology
Label Distribution Protocol, a routing protocol used in Multiprotocol Label Switching networks
Laser designator pod
Laserdisc player
Linked Data Platform, a Semantic Web specification
Linux Documentation Project
Local differential privacy
Mathematics
Large deviation principle, the rate function in mathematics
Locations
Damansara–Puchong Expressway or Lebuhraya Damansara–Puchong (LDP), an expressway in Malaysia
Long-distance footpaths in the UK (long-distance paths)
Lower Duck Pond, a fictional town created by the subreddit of /r/HaveWeMet
Language
Lingwa de planeta, a conlang mentioned in Worldlang
Other
Loan deficiency payments, a U.S. agriculture policy farm income support program
Local Development Plan, a form of town and country planning document in Wales
Long day plant, a plant that flowers when the night length falls below its critical photoperiod
Long Distance (Skateboard) Pumping
Leadership development Program, a type of professional development program for businesses and organizations
Landed Duty Paid (LDP), a shipping term indicating the seller will import to country of destination and pay duty on goods | [
0.2876885235309601,
-0.181709885597229,
-0.016926206648349762,
0.624366283416748,
-0.6322866082191467,
0.23842185735702515,
-0.3602621853351593,
0.2026512622833252,
-0.3155252933502197,
-0.029873523861169815,
-0.4893770217895508,
-0.1517043113708496,
-0.4681698679924011,
-0.206051573157310... |
18325 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour | Labour | Labour or labor may refer to:
Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
Labour (human activity), or work
Manual labour, physical work
Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
Organized labour and the labour movement, consisting principally of labour unions
Literature
Labor (journal), an American quarterly on the history of the labor movement
Labour/Le Travail, an academic journal focusing on the Canadian labour movement
Labor (Tolstoy book) or The Triumph of the Farmer or Industry and Parasitism (1888)
Places
La Labor, Honduras
Labor, Koper, Slovenia
Other uses
Labor (album), a 2013 album by MEN
Labor (area), a Spanish customary unit
"Labor", an episode of TV series Superstore
Labour (constituency), a functional constituency in Hong Kong elections
Labors, fictional robots in Patlabor
People with the surname
Earle Labor (born 1928), professor of American literature
Jérémy Labor (born 1992), French footballer
Josef Labor (1842–1924), Austrian musician and composer
See also
Labor Day (disambiguation)
Labour law
Labour Party (disambiguation)
Work (disambiguation) | [
0.6662222743034363,
0.3146921396255493,
-0.24784919619560242,
0.15241409838199615,
-0.04030761122703552,
0.8127018213272095,
-0.06436828523874283,
0.5000140070915222,
-0.7294588088989258,
-0.4366293251514435,
-0.5188335180282593,
0.3142526149749756,
-0.08698701858520508,
0.4910130798816681... |
18327 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library%20of%20Congress%20Classification | Library of Congress Classification | The Library of Congress Classification (LCC) is a system of library classification developed by the Library of Congress in the United States, which can be used for shelving books in a library. It is used by most research and academic libraries in the U.S. and several other countries.
LCC should not be confused with LCCN, the system of Library of Congress Control Numbers assigned to all books (and authors), which also defines URLs of their online catalog entries, such as "42037605" and "https://lccn.loc.gov/42037605". The Classification is also distinct from Library of Congress Subject Headings, the system of labels such as "Boarding schools" and "Boarding schools—Fiction" that describe contents systematically. Finally, the classifications may be distinguished from the call numbers assigned to particular copies of books in the collection, such as "PZ7.J684 Wj 1982 FT MEADE Copy 1" where the classification is "PZ7.J684 Wj 1982".
The classification was developed by James Hanson (chief of the Catalog Department), with assistance from Charles Martel, in 1897. With advice from Charles Ammi Cutter, it was influenced by his Cutter Expansive Classification, the Dewey Decimal System, and the Putnam Classification System (developed while Putnam was head librarian at the Minneapolis Public Library). It was designed specifically for the purposes and collection of the Library of Congress to replace the fixed location system developed by Thomas Jefferson. By the time Putnam departed from his post in 1939, all the classes except K (Law) and parts of B (Philosophy and Religion) were well developed.
LCC has been criticized for lacking a sound theoretical basis; many of the classification decisions were driven by the practical needs of that library rather than epistemological considerations. Although it divides subjects into broad categories, it is essentially enumerative in nature. That is, it provides a guide to the books actually in one library's collections, not a classification of the world.
In 2007 The Wall Street Journal reported that in the countries it surveyed most public libraries and small academic libraries used the older Dewey Decimal Classification system.
The National Library of Medicine classification system (NLM) uses the initial letters W and QS–QZ, which are not used by LCC. Some libraries use NLM in conjunction with LCC, eschewing LCC's R for Medicine. Others use LCC's QP–QR schedules and include Medicine R.
Classification
Class A – General Works
Subclass AC – Collections. Series. Collected works
Subclass AE – Encyclopedias
Subclass AG – Dictionaries and other general reference works
Subclass AI – Indexes
Subclass AM – Museums. Collectors and collecting
Subclass AN – Newspapers
Subclass AP – Periodicals
Subclass AS – Academies and learned societies
Subclass AY – Yearbooks. Almanacs. Directories
Subclass AZ – History of scholarship and learning. The humanities
Class B – Philosophy. Psychology. Religion
Subclass B – Philosophy (General)
Subclass BC – Logic
Subclass BD – Speculative philosophy
Subclass BF – Psychology
Subclass BH – Aesthetics
Subclass BJ – Ethics
Subclass BL – Religions. Mythology. Rationalism
Subclass BM – Judaism
Subclass BP – Islam. Baháʼísm. Theosophy, etc.
Subclass BQ – Buddhism
Subclass BR – Christianity
Subclass BS – The Bible
Subclass BT – Doctrinal theology
Subclass BV – Practical Theology
Subclass BX – Christian Denominations
Class C – Auxiliary Sciences of History
Subclass C – Auxiliary Sciences of History
Subclass CB – History of Civilization
Subclass CC – Archaeology
Subclass CD – Diplomatics. Archives. Seals
Subclass CE – Technical Chronology. Calendar
Subclass CJ – Numismatics
Subclass CN – Inscriptions. Epigraphy
Subclass CR – Heraldry
Subclass CS – Genealogy
Subclass CT – Biography
Class D – World History and History of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc.
Subclass D – History (General)
Subclass DA – Great Britain
Subclass DAW – Central Europe
Subclass DB – Austria – Liechtenstein – Hungary – Czechoslovakia
Subclass DC – France – Andorra – Monaco
Subclass DD – Germany
Subclass DE – Greco-Roman World
Subclass DF – Greece
Subclass DG – Italy – Malta
Subclass DH – Low Countries – Benelux Countries
Subclass DJ – Netherlands (Holland)
Subclass DJK – Eastern Europe (General)
Subclass DK – Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics – Poland
Subclass DL – Northern Europe. Scandinavia
Subclass DP – Spain – Portugal
Subclass DQ – Switzerland
Subclass DR – Balkan Peninsula
Subclass DS – Asia
Subclass DT – Africa
Subclass DU – Oceania (South Seas)
Subclass DX – Romanies
Class E – History of America
Class E does not have any subclasses.
Class F – Local History of the Americas
Class F does not have any subclasses, however Canadian Universities and the Canadian National Library use FC for Canadian History, a subclass that the LC has not officially adopted, but which it has agreed not to use for anything else
Class G – Geography, Anthropology, Recreation
Subclass G – Geography (General). Atlases. Maps
Subclass GA – Mathematical geography. Cartography
Subclass GB – Physical geography
Subclass GC – Oceanography
Subclass GE – Environmental Sciences
Subclass GF – Human ecology. Anthropogeography
Subclass GN – Anthropology
Subclass GR – Folklore
Subclass GT – Manners and customs (General)
Subclass GV – Recreation. Leisure
Class H – Social Sciences
Subclass H – Social sciences (General)
Subclass HA – Statistics
Subclass HB – Economic theory. Demography
Subclass HC – Economic history and conditions
Subclass HD – Industries. Land use. Labor
Subclass HE – Transportation and communications
Subclass HF – Commerce
Subclass HG – Finance
Subclass HJ – Public finance
Subclass HM – Sociology (General)
Subclass HN – Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
Subclass HQ – The family. Marriage, Women and Sexuality
Subclass HS – Societies: secret, benevolent, etc.
Subclass HT – Communities. Classes. Races
Subclass HV – Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology
Subclass HX – Socialism. Communism. Anarchism
Class J – Political Science
Subclass J – General legislative and executive papers
Subclass JA – Political science (General)
Subclass JC – Political theory
Subclass JF – Political institutions and public administration
Subclass JJ – Political institutions and public administration (North America)
Subclass JK – Political institutions and public administration (United States)
Subclass JL – Political institutions and public administration (Canada, Latin America, etc.)
Subclass JN – Political institutions and public administration (Europe)
Subclass JQ – Political institutions and public administration (Asia, Africa, Australia, Pacific Area, etc.)
Subclass JS – Local government. Municipal government
Subclass JV – Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration
Subclass JX – International law, see JZ and KZ (obsolete)
Subclass JZ – International relations
Class K – Law
Subclass K – Law in general. Comparative and uniform law. Jurisprudence
Subclass KB – Religious law in general. Comparative religious law. Jurisprudence
Subclass KBM – Jewish law
Subclass KBP – Islamic law
Subclass KBR – History of canon law
Subclass KBS – Canon law of Eastern churches
Subclass KBT – Canon law of Eastern Rite Churches in Communion with the Holy See of Rome
Subclass KBU – Law of the Roman Catholic Church. The Holy See
Subclasses – KD/KDK - United Kingdom and Ireland
Subclass KDZ – America. North America
Subclass KE – Canada
Subclass KF – United States
Subclass KG – Latin America – Mexico and Central America – West Indies. Caribbean area
Subclass KH – South America
Subclasses KJ-KKZ – Europe
Subclasses KL-KWX – Asia and Eurasia, Africa, Pacific Area, and Antarctica
Subclass KU/KUQ – Law of Australia and New Zealand
Subclass KZ – Law of nations
Class L – Education
Subclass L – Education (General)
Subclass LA – History of education
Subclass LB – Theory and practice of education
Subclass LC – Special aspects of education
Subclass LD – Individual institutions – United States
Subclass LE – Individual institutions – America (except United States)
Subclass LF – Individual institutions – Europe
Subclass LG – Individual institutions – Asia, Africa, Indian Ocean islands, Australia, New Zealand, Pacific islands
Subclass LH – College and school magazines and papers
Subclass LJ – Student fraternities and societies, United States
Subclass LT – Textbooks
Class M – Music
Subclass M – Music
Subclass ML – Literature on music
Subclass MT – Instruction and study
Class N – Fine Arts
Subclass NA – Architecture
Subclass NB – Sculpture
Subclass NC – Drawing. Design. Illustration
Subclass ND – Painting
Subclass NE – Print media
Subclass NK – Decorative arts
Subclass NX – Arts in general
Class P – Language and Literature
Subclass P – Philology. Linguistics
Subclass PA – Greek language and literature. Latin language and literature
Subclass PB – Modern languages. Celtic languages and literature
Subclass PC – Romanic languages
Subclass PD – Germanic languages. Scandinavian languages
Subclass PE – English language
Subclass PF – West Germanic languages
Subclass PG – Slavic languages and literature. Baltic languages. Albanian language
Subclass PH – Uralic languages. Basque language
Subclass PJ – Oriental languages and literatures
Subclass PK – Indo-Iranian languages and literature
Subclass PL – Languages and literature of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania
Subclass PM – Hyperborean, Native American, and artificial languages
Subclass PN – Literature (General)
Subclass PQ – French literature – Italian literature – Spanish literature – Portuguese literature
Subclass PR – English literature
Subclass PS – American literature
Subclass PT – German literature – Dutch literature – Flemish literature since 1830 – Afrikaans literature -Scandinavian literature – Old Norse literature: Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian – Modern Icelandic literature – Faroese literature – Danish literature – Norwegian literature – Swedish literature
Subclass PZ – Fiction and juvenile belles lettres
Class Q – Science
Subclass Q – Science (General)
Subclass QA – Mathematics
Subclass QB – Astronomy
Subclass QC – Physics
Subclass QD – Chemistry
Subclass QE – Geology
Subclass QH – Natural history – Biology
Subclass QK – Botany
Subclass QL – Zoology
Subclass QM – Human anatomy
Subclass QP – Physiology
Subclass QR – Microbiology
Class R – Medicine
Subclass R – Medicine (General)
Subclass RA – Public aspects of medicine
Subclass RB – Pathology
Subclass RC – Internal medicine
Subclass RD – Surgery
Subclass RE – Ophthalmology
Subclass RF – Otorhinolaryngology
Subclass RG – Gynecology and Obstetrics
Subclass RJ – Pediatrics
Subclass RK – Dentistry
Subclass RL – Dermatology
Subclass RM – Therapeutics. Pharmacology
Subclass RS – Pharmacy and materia medica
Subclass RT – Nursing
Subclass RV – Botanic, Thomsonian, and Eclectic medicine
Subclass RX – Homeopathy
Subclass RZ – Other systems of medicine
Class S – Agriculture
Subclass S – Agriculture (General)
Subclass SB – Horticulture. Plant propagation. Plant breeding
Subclass SD – Forestry. Arboriculture. Silviculture
Subclass SF – Animal husbandry. Animal science
Subclass SH – Aquaculture. Fisheries. Angling
Subclass SK – Hunting
Class T – Technology
Subclass T – Technology (General)
Subclass TA – Engineering Civil engineering (General).
Subclass TC – Hydraulic engineering. Ocean engineering
Subclass TD – Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering
Subclass TE – Highway engineering. Roads and pavements
Subclass TF – Railroad engineering and operation
Subclass TG – Bridges
Subclass TH – Building construction
Subclass TJ – Mechanical engineering and machinery
Subclass TK – Electrical engineering. Electronics. Nuclear engineering
Subclass TL – Motor vehicles. Aeronautics. Astronautics
Subclass TN – Mining engineering. Metallurgy
Subclass TP – Chemical technology
Subclass TR – Photography
Subclass TS – Manufacturing engineering. Mass production
Subclass TT – Handicrafts. Arts and crafts
Subclass TX – Home economics
Class U – Military Science
Subclass U – Military science (General)
Subclass UA – Armies: Organization, distribution, military situation
Subclass UB – Military administration
Subclass UC – Military maintenance and transportation
Subclass UD – Infantry
Subclass UE – Cavalry. Armor
Subclass UF – Artillery
Subclass UG – Military engineering. Air forces
Subclass UH – Other military services
Class V – Naval Science
Subclass V – Naval science (General)
Subclass VA – Navies: Organization, distribution, naval situation
Subclass VB – Naval administration
Subclass VC – Naval maintenance
Subclass VD – Naval seamen
Subclass VE – Marines
Subclass VF – Naval ordnance
Subclass VG – Minor services of navies
Subclass VK – Navigation. Merchant marine
Subclass VM – Naval architecture. Shipbuilding. Marine engineering
Class Z – Bibliography, Library Science
Subclass Z – Books (General). Writing. Paleography. Book industries and trade. Libraries. Bibliography
Subclass ZA – Information resources/materials
See also
ACM Computing Classification System
Books in the United States
Brinkler classification
Chinese Library Classification
Database of Recorded American Music
Dewey Decimal Classification
Comparison of Dewey and Library of Congress subject classification
Harvard–Yenching Classification
Moys Classification Scheme
ISBN
Minnie Earl Sears, formulated Sears Subject Headings, simplified for use by small libraries
Notes
References
External links
Library of Congress classification outline, loc.gov
Full list of LCC classification schedules, loc.gov
Library of Congress – classification, loc.gov
Cataloging Distribution Services – source of Library of Congress Classification schedules. loc.gov
Classification outline, loc.gov
How to read LCC call numbers, geography.about.com (via The Wayback Machine)
How to use LCC to organize a home library, zackgrossbart.com | [
0.10825152695178986,
0.32175230979919434,
-0.011794555932283401,
0.552832305431366,
0.34254175424575806,
-0.10895050317049026,
-0.31272798776626587,
0.1163276880979538,
-0.918600857257843,
-0.25388678908348083,
-0.3778816759586334,
-0.27613747119903564,
-0.15255510807037354,
0.700054585933... |
18328 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library%20classification | Library classification | A library classification is a system of knowledge organization by which library resources are arranged and ordered systematically. Library classifications are a notational system that represents the order of topics in the classification and allows items to be stored in that order. Library classification systems group related materials together, typically arranged as a hierarchical tree structure. A different kind of classification system, called a faceted classification system, is also widely used, which allows the assignment of multiple classifications to an object, enabling the classifications to be ordered in many ways.
Description
Library classification is an aspect of library and information science. It is distinct from scientific classification in that it has as its goal to provide a useful ordering of documents rather than a theoretical organization of knowledge. Although it has the practical purpose of creating a physical ordering of documents, it does generally attempt to adhere to accepted scientific knowledge. Library Classification helps to accommodate all the newly published literature in an already created order of arrangement in a filiatory sequence.
Library classification can be defined as the arrangement of books on shelves, or description of them, in the manner which is most useful to those who read with the ultimate aim of grouping similar things together. Library classification is meant to achieve these four purposes like ordering the fields of knowledge in a systematic way, bring related items together in the most helpful sequence, provide orderly access on the shelve, and provide a location for an item on the shelf.
Library classification is distinct from the application of subject headings in that classification organizes knowledge into a systematic order, while subject headings provide access to intellectual materials through vocabulary terms that may or may not be organized as a knowledge system.
The characteristics that a bibliographic classification demands for the sake of reaching these purposes are: a useful sequence of subjects at all levels, a concise memorable notation, and a host of techniques and devices of number synthesis
History
Library classifications were preceded by classifications used by bibliographers such as Conrad Gessner. The earliest library classification schemes organized books in broad subject categories. The earliest known library classification scheme is the Pinakes by Callimachus, a scholar at the Library of Alexandria during the third century BC. During the Renaissance and Reformation era, "Libraries were organized according to the whims or knowledge of individuals in charge." This changed the format in which various materials were classified. Some collections were classified by language and others by how they were printed.
After the printing revolution in the sixteenth century, the increase in available printed materials made such broad classification unworkable, and more granular classifications for library materials had to be developed in the nineteenth century.
In 1627 Gabriel Naudé published a book called Advice on Establishing a Library. At the time, he was working in the private library of President Henri de Mesmes II. Mesmes had around 8,000 printed books and many more Greek, Latin and French written manuscripts. Although it was a private library, scholars with references could access it. The purpose of Advice on Establishing a Library was to identify rules for private book collectors to organize their collections in a more orderly way to increase the collection's usefulness and beauty. Naudé developed a classification system based on seven different classes: theology, medicine, jurisprudence, history, philosophy, mathematics and the humanities. These seven classes would later be increased to twelve. Advice on Establishing a Library was about a private library, but within the same book, Naudé encouraged the idea of public libraries open to all people regardless of their ability to pay for access to the collection. One of the most famous libraries that Naudé helped improve was the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris. Naudé spent ten years there as a librarian. Because of Naudé's strong belief in free access to libraries to all people, the Bibliothèque Mazarine became the first public library in France around 1644.
Although libraries created order within their collections from as early as the fifth century BC, the Paris Bookseller's classification, developed in 1842 by Jacques Charles Brunet, is generally seen as the first of the modern book classifications. Brunet provided five major classes: theology, jurisprudence, sciences and arts, belles-lettres, and history. Classification can now be seen as a provider of subject access to information in a networked environment.
Types
There are many standard systems of library classification in use, and many more have been proposed over the years. However, in general, classification systems can be divided into three types depending on how they are used:
Universal schemes Covers all subjects, e.g. the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), Universal Decimal Classification (UDC), Library of Congress Classification (LCC), and Colon Classification (CC).
Specific classification schemes Covers particular subjects or types of materials, e.g. Iconclass (art), British Catalogue of Music Classification, and Dickinson classification (music), or the NLM Classification (medicine).
National schemes Specially created for certain countries, e.g. the Swedish library classification system, SAB (Sveriges Allmänna Biblioteksförening).
In terms of functionality, classification systems are often described as:
Enumerative Subject headings are listed alphabetically, with numbers assigned to each heading in alphabetical order.
Hierarchical Subjects are divided hierarchically, from most general to most specific.
Faceted/analytico-synthetic Subjects are divided into mutually exclusive orthogonal facets.
There are few completely enumerative systems or faceted systems; most systems are a blend but favouring one type or the other. The most common classification systems, LCC and DDC, are essentially enumerative, though with some hierarchical and faceted elements (more so for DDC), especially at the broadest and most general level. The first true faceted system was the colon classification of S. R. Ranganathan.
Methods or systems
Classification types denote the classification or categorization according to the form or characteristics or qualities of a classification scheme or schemes. Method and system has similar meaning. Method or methods or system means the classification schemes like Dewey Decimal Classification or Universal Decimal Classification. The types of classification is for identifying and understanding or education or research purposes while classification method means those classification schemes like DDC, UDC.
English language universal classification systems
The most common systems in English-speaking countries are:
Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC)
Library of Congress Classification (LCC)
Colon classification (CC)
Universal Decimal Classification (UDC)
Other systems include:
Moys Classification Scheme, used in law libraries in many common law jurisdictions such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
Harvard-Yenching Classification, an English classification system for Chinese language materials
Vartavan Library Classification
London Education Classification devised by D.J. Foskett and Joy Foskett and used at the UCL Institute of Education
Garside classification used in most libraries of University College London
Bliss bibliographic classification used in some British libraries
Gladstone Library Classification, devised by W.E. Gladstone and used exclusively at Gladstone's Library
Non-English universal classification systems
German Regensburger Verbundklassifikation (RVK)
A system of book classification for Chinese libraries (Liu's Classification) library classification for user
New Classification Scheme for Chinese Libraries
Nippon Decimal Classification (NDC)
Chinese Library Classification (CLC)
Korean Decimal Classification (KDC)
Russian Library-Bibliographical Classification (BBK)
Universal classification systems that rely on synthesis (faceted systems)
Bliss bibliographic classification
Colon classification
Cutter Expansive Classification
Universal Decimal Classification
Newer classification systems tend to use the principle of synthesis (combining codes from different lists to represent the different attributes of a work) heavily, which is comparatively lacking in LC or DDC.
The practice of classifying
Library classification is associated with library (descriptive) cataloging under the rubric of cataloging and classification, sometimes grouped together as technical services. The library professional who engages in the process of cataloging and classifying library materials is called a cataloger or catalog librarian. Library classification systems are one of the two tools used to facilitate subject access. The other consists of alphabetical indexing languages such as Thesauri and Subject Headings systems.
Library classification of a piece of work consists of two steps. Firstly, the subject or topic of the material is ascertained. Next, a call number (essentially a book's address) based on the classification system in use at the particular library will be assigned to the work using the notation of the system.
It is important to note that unlike subject heading or thesauri where multiple terms can be assigned to the same work, in library classification systems, each work can only be placed in one class. This is due to shelving purposes: A book can have only one physical place. However, in classified catalogs one may have main entries as well as added entries. Most classification systems like the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) and Library of Congress Classification also add a cutter number to each work which adds a code for the main entry (primary access point) of the work (e.g. author).
Classification systems in libraries generally play two roles. Firstly, they facilitate subject access by allowing the user to find out what works or documents the library has on a certain subject. Secondly, they provide a known location for the information source to be located (e.g. where it is shelved).
Until the 19th century, most libraries had closed stacks, so the library classification only served to organize the subject catalog. In the 20th century, libraries opened their stacks to the public and started to shelve library material itself according to some library classification to simplify subject browsing.
Some classification systems are more suitable for aiding subject access, rather than for shelf location. For example, Universal Decimal Classification, which uses a complicated notation of pluses and colons, is more difficult to use for the purpose of shelf arrangement but is more expressive compared to DDC in terms of showing relationships between subjects. Similarly faceted classification schemes are more difficult to use for shelf arrangement, unless the user has knowledge of the citation order.
Depending on the size of the library collection, some libraries might use classification systems solely for one purpose or the other. In extreme cases, a public library with a small collection might just use a classification system for location of resources but might not use a complicated subject classification system. Instead all resources might just be put into a couple of wide classes (travel, crime, magazines etc.). This is known as a "mark and park" classification method, more formally called reader interest classification.
Comparing Library classification systems
As a result of differences in notation, history, use of enumeration, hierarchy, and facets, classification systems can differ in the following ways:
Type of Notation: Notation can be pure (consisting of only numerals, for example) or mixed (consisting of letters and numerals, or letters, numerals, and other symbols).
Expressiveness: This is the degree to which the notation can express relationship between concepts or structure.
Whether they support mnemonics: For example, the number 44 in DDC notation often means it concerns some aspect of France. For example, in the Dewey classification 598.0944 concerns "Birds in France", the 09 signifies geographic division, and 44 represents France.
Hospitality: The degree to which the system is able to accommodate new subjects.
Brevity: The length of the notation to express the same concept.
Speed of updates and degree of support: The better classification systems are frequently being reviewed.
Consistency
Simplicity
Usability
See also
Attribute-value system
Categorization
Classification (general theory)
Decimal classification
Document classification
Information retrieval
Knowledge organization
Library management
Library of Congress Subject Headings
W. C. Berwick Sayers
Subject indexing
Notes
References
Knowledge representation | [
0.36692169308662415,
0.19904454052448273,
-0.3912043571472168,
0.522386372089386,
0.1288805454969406,
0.11519167572259903,
0.17015528678894043,
0.08311000466346741,
-0.6041812300682068,
-0.6460059881210327,
-0.543494462966919,
0.05757715553045273,
-0.04698369652032852,
0.7006475925445557,
... |
18329 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexus | Lexus | is the luxury vehicle division of the Japanese automaker Toyota. The Lexus brand is marketed in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide and is Japan's largest-selling make of premium cars. It has ranked among the 10 largest Japanese global brands in market value. Lexus is headquartered in Nagoya, Japan. Operational centers are located in Brussels, Belgium, and Plano, Texas, United States.
Created at around the same time as Japanese rivals Honda and Nissan created their Acura and Infiniti luxury divisions respectively, Lexus originated from a corporate project to develop a new premium sedan, code-named F1, which began in 1983 and culminated in the launch of the Lexus LS in 1989. Subsequently, the division added sedan, coupé, convertible and SUV models. Lexus did not exist as a brand in its home market until 2005, and all vehicles marketed internationally as Lexus from 1989 to 2005 were released in Japan under the Toyota marque and an equivalent model name. In 2005, a hybrid version of the RX crossover debuted and additional hybrid models later joined the division's lineup. Lexus launched its own F marque performance division in 2007 with the debut of the IS F sport sedan, followed by the LFA supercar in 2009.
Lexus vehicles are largely produced in Japan, with manufacturing centered in the Chūbu and Kyūshū regions, and in particular at Toyota's Tahara, Aichi, Chūbu and Miyata, Fukuoka, Kyūshū plants. Assembly of the first Lexus produced outside the country, the Canadian-built RX 330, began in 2003. Following a corporate reorganization from 2001 to 2005, Lexus began operating its own design, engineering and manufacturing centers.
Since the 2000s, Lexus has increased sales outside its largest market, the United States. The division inaugurated dealerships in the Japanese domestic market in 2005, becoming the first Japanese premium car marque to launch in its country of origin. The brand has since debuted in Southeast Asia, Latin America, Europe and other regions, and has introduced hybrid vehicles in many markets.
History
1980s: The F1 project
The Lexus brand was created around the same time as Japanese rivals Nissan and Honda developed their Infiniti and Acura premium brands. The Japanese government imposed voluntary export restraints for the U.S. market, so it was more profitable for Japanese automakers to export more expensive cars to the U.S.
In 1983, Toyota chairman Eiji Toyoda issued a challenge to build the world's best car. The project, code-named F1 (“Flagship One”) developed the Lexus LS 400 to expand Toyota's product line in the premium segment. The F1 project followed the Toyota Supra sports car and the premium Toyota Mark II models. Both the Supra and Mark II were rear-wheel drive cars with a powerful 7M-GE or 7M-GTE inline-six engine. The largest sedan Toyota built at the time was the limited-production, 1960s-vintage Toyota Century, a domestic, hand-built limousine, and V8-powered model, followed by the inline-six-engined Toyota Crown premium sedan. The Century was conservatively styled for the Japanese market and along with the Crown not slated for export after a restyle in 1982. The F1 designers targeted their new sedan at international markets and began development on a new V8 engine.
Japanese manufacturers exported more expensive models in the 1980s due to voluntary export restraints negotiated by the Japanese government and U.S. trade representatives that restricted mainstream car sales. In 1986, Honda launched its Acura marque in the U.S., influencing Toyota's plans for a luxury division. The initial Acura model was an export version of the Honda Legend, itself launched in Japan in 1985 as a rival to the Toyota Crown, Nissan Cedric/Gloria and Mazda Luce. In 1987, Nissan unveiled its plans for a premium brand, Infiniti, and revised its Nissan President sedan in standard wheelbase form for export as the Infiniti Q45, which it launched in 1990. Mazda began selling the Luce as the Mazda 929 in North America in 1988 and later began plans to develop an upscale marque to be called Amati, but its plans did not come to fruition.
Toyota researchers visited the U.S. in May 1985 to conduct focus groups and market research on luxury consumers. During that time, several F1 designers rented a home in Laguna Beach, California, to observe the lifestyles and tastes of American upper class consumers. Meanwhile, F1 engineering teams conducted prototype testing on locations ranging from the German autobahn to U.S. roads. Toyota's market research concluded that a separate brand and sales channel were needed to present its new sedan, and plans were made to develop a new network of dealerships in the U.S. market.
Brand development
In 1986, Toyota's longtime advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi formed a specialized unit, Team One, to handle marketing for the new brand. Image consulting firm Lippincott & Margulies was hired to develop a list of 219 prospective names; Vectre, Verone, Chaparel, Calibre and Alexis were chosen as top candidates. While Alexis quickly became the front runner, concerns were raised that the name applied to people more than cars (being associated with the Alexis Carrington character on the popular 1980s prime time drama Dynasty). As a result, the first letter was removed and the "i" replaced with a "u" to morph the name to Lexus.
Theories of the etymology of the Lexus name have suggested it is the combination of the words "luxury" and "elegance," and that it is an acronym for "luxury exports to the U.S." According to Team One interviews, the brand name has no specific meaning and simply denotes a luxurious and technological image. Prior to the release of the first vehicles, database service LexisNexis obtained a temporary injunction forbidding the name Lexus from being used because it might cause product confusion. The injunction threatened to delay the division's launch and marketing efforts. The U.S. appeals court lifted the injunction, deciding that there was little likelihood of confusion between the two products.
The original Lexus slogan, developed after Team One representatives visited Lexus designers in Japan and noted an obsessive attention to detail, became "The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection." Three firms were involved in the final phase of logo development: Saatchi & Saatchi, Molly Designs and Hunter/Korobkin, Inc. The finished logo was a combination of two firms’ final designs: the Lexus logo typeface came from Saatchi & Saatchi and the “L” was Hunter/Korobkin, Inc.’s design. According to Toyota, the automaker made some refinements so the logo would be easier to manufacture, rendering it using a mathematical formula. The first teaser ads featuring the Lexus name and logo appeared at the Chicago, Los Angeles and New York auto shows in 1988.
Launch
The F1 project was completed in 1989, involving 60 designers, 24 engineering teams, 1,400 engineers, 2,300 technicians, 220 support workers, approximately 450 prototypes and more than $1 billion in costs. The resulting car, the Lexus LS 400, had a design that shared no major elements with previous Toyota vehicles, with a new 4.0 L V8 gasoline engine and rear-wheel drive. The car debuted in January 1989 at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit and official sales of the vehicle began the following September at a network of 81 new Lexus dealerships in the U.S. The LS 400 was sold along with the smaller ES 250, a rebadged version of the Japanese market Toyota Camry Prominent/Toyota Vista. The launch of Lexus was accompanied by a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign.
The LS 400 was praised for its quietness, well-appointed and ergonomic interior, engine performance, build quality, aerodynamics, fuel economy and value. However, it was criticized by some automobile columnists for derivative styling and a suspension regarded as too compromising of handling for ride comfort. In some markets it was priced against mid-size, six-cylinder Mercedes-Benz and BMW models. It was rated by Car and Driver magazine as better than the higher-priced Mercedes-Benz 420 SEL and BMW 735i in terms of ride, handling and performance. The LS 400 also won motoring awards from automotive publications including Automobile Magazine and Wheels Magazine. Lexus quickly established customer loyalty and its debut was generally regarded as a shock to existing luxury marques. BMW's and Mercedes-Benz's U.S. sales figures dropped 29 percent and 19 percent, respectively, with BMW executives accusing Lexus of dumping in that market, while 35 percent of Lexus buyers traded in a Lincoln or Cadillac.
In December 1989, Lexus initiated a voluntary recall of all 8,000 LS 400s based upon two customer complaints over defective wiring and an overheated brake light. A 20-day operation to replace the parts on affected vehicles included technicians to pick up, repair and return cars to customers free of charge, and also flying personnel and renting garage space for owners in remote locations. This response was covered in media publications and helped establish the marque's early reputation for customer service.
By the end of 1989, a total of 16,392 LS 400 and ES 250 sedans were sold in the four months following the U.S. launch. Although sales had begun at a slower pace than expected, the final tally matched the division's target of 16,000 units for that year. Following initial models, plans called for the addition of a sports coupe along with a redesigned ES sedan.
1990s: Growth and expansion
In 1990, during its first full year of sales, Lexus sold 63,594 LS 400 and ES 250 sedans in the U.S., the majority being the LS model. That year, Lexus also began limited exports to the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Canada and Australia. In 1991, Lexus launched its first sports coupe, the SC 400, which shared the LS 400s V8 engine and rear-wheel drive design. This was followed by the second generation ES 300 sedan, which succeeded the ES 250 and became Lexus' top seller. At the conclusion of 1991, Lexus had become the top-selling premium car import in the U.S., with sales reaching 71,206 vehicles. That year, Lexus ranked highest in J.D. Power and Associates' studies on initial vehicle quality, customer satisfaction and sales satisfaction for the first time. The marque also began increasing U.S. model prices past those of comparable American premium makes, but still below high-end European models. By 1992, the LS 400's base price had risen 18 percent.
In 1993, Lexus launched the mid-size GS 300 sports sedan, based on the Toyota Aristo using the Toyota "S" platform from the Toyota Crown, which had sold for two years prior in Japan. The GS 300 was priced below the LS 400 in the marque's lineup. That same year, Lexus became one of the first marques to debut a certified pre-owned program, with the aim of improving trade-in model values. The marque introduced the second generation LS 400 in 1994. In May 1995, sales were threatened by the U.S. government's proposal of 100 percent tariffs on upscale Japanese cars in response to the widening U.S.-Japan trade deficit. SUVs were exempt from the proposed sanctions. Normal sales operations resumed by late 1995 when the Japanese auto manufacturers collectively agreed to greater American investments and the tariffs were not enacted.
In 1996, Lexus debuted its first sport utility vehicle, the LX 450, followed by the third generation ES 300 sedan, and the second generation GS 300 and GS 400 sedans in 1997. The marque's plans for developing an SUV model had accelerated during the U.S.-Japan tariff discussions of 1995. Lexus added the first luxury-branded crossover SUV, the RX 300 in 1998. The RX crossover targeted suburban buyers who desired an upmarket SUV but did not need the LX's off-road capability. It was particularly successful, eventually becoming the marque's top-selling model ahead of the ES sedan. The same year, Lexus made its debut in South America's most populous country when it launched sales in Brazil. In 1999, the IS was introduced, an entry-level sport sedan. Lexus also recorded its 1 millionth vehicle sold in the U.S. market, being ranked as the top-selling premium car maker in the U.S. overall.
2000s: Global reorganization
In July 2000, Lexus introduced the IS 300 in North America, following global launch in 1999 (as the IS 200) and the third generation LS 430. In 2001, the first convertible was introduced, as well as the SC 430 and a redesigned ES 300. The GX 470 mid-size SUV debuted in 2002, followed by the second generation RX 330 in 2003. The following year, Lexus recorded its 2 millionth U.S. vehicle sale, and the first luxury-branded production hybrid SUV, the RX 400h. This vehicle used Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive system that combined gasoline and electric motors.
In 2005, Lexus completed an organizational separation from parent company Toyota, with dedicated design, engineering, training, and manufacturing centers working exclusively for the division. This effort coincided with Lexus' launch in its home market of Japan and an expanded global launch of the brand in markets such as China. Executives aimed to increase Lexus sales outside of its largest market in the U.S. To accompany this expansion, next generation Lexus vehicles were redesigned as "global models" for international release. In the European market, where Lexus had long faced struggling sales owing to low brand recognition, few dedicated dealerships, and 1990s import quotas, the marque announced plans to introduce hybrid and diesel powertrains, increase the number of Lexus dealerships, and expand operations in emerging markets such as Russia.
Lexus' arrival in the Japanese market in July 2005 marked the first introduction of a Japanese premium car marque in the domestic market. New generation LS, IS, ES, GS, and RX models subsequently became available in Japan along with the SC 430, ending domestic sales of Toyota-branded models under the Celsior, Altezza, Windom, Aristo, Harrier, and Soarer nameplates, respectively. The Altezza and Aristo were previously exclusive to Japanese Toyota retail sales channels called Toyota Vista Store, the Windom was exclusive to Toyota Corolla Store, the Celsior and Harrier were exclusive to Toyopet Store, and the Soarer was previously available at both Toyota Store and Toyopet Store locations. Lexus models sold in Japan featured higher specifications and a price premium compared with their discontinued Toyota counterparts. Sales for the first half-year were slower than expected, affected by the contraction of the domestic auto market and price increases, but improved in subsequent months with an expanded lineup.
Through the mid-2000s, Lexus experienced sales successes in South Korea and Taiwan, becoming the top-selling import make in both markets in 2005; the marque also sold well in the Middle East, where it ranked first or second among rivals in multiple countries, and in Australia, where Lexus reached third in luxury car sales in 2006. Division executives in 2006 announced an expansion goal from 68 countries to 76 worldwide by 2010. By the end of the decade, this expansion resulted in official launches in Malaysia and South Africa in 2006, Indonesia in 2007, Chile in 2008, and the Philippines in 2009.
Hybrids and F models
In 2006, Lexus began sales of the GS 450h, a V6 hybrid performance sedan, and launched the fourth generation LS line, comprising both standard- and long-wheelbase V8 (LS 460 and LS 460 L) and hybrid (LS 600h and LS 600h L) versions. The fifth generation ES 350 also debuted in the same year. The LS 600h L subsequently went on sale as the most expensive sedan ever produced in Japan. By the end of 2006, Lexus' annual sales had reached 475,000 vehicles worldwide. In January 2007, Lexus announced a new F marque performance division, which would produce racing-inspired versions of its performance models. The IS F, made its debut at the 2007 North American International Auto Show, accompanied by a concept car, the LF-A.
In October 2007, Lexus entered the Specialty Equipment Market Association show in the U.S. for the first time with the IS F, and announced its F-Sport performance trim level and factory-sanctioned accessory line. Increased emphasis on sporty models was an effort to target rivals from Mercedes-Benz's AMG and BMW's M divisions. Models such as the SC 400 and GS 400 had received favorable reactions from sport luxury buyers, most Lexus models had been characterized as favoring comfort over sporty road feel and handling, compared with European rivals. By the end of 2007, Lexus annual worldwide sales had surpassed 500,000 vehicles, and the marque ranked as the top-selling premium import in China for the first time. The largest sales markets in order of size for 2007 were the U.S., Japan, the UK, China, Canada, and Russia.
In 2008, amidst the late-2000s recession and a weakened world car market, global sales fell 16 percent to 435,000, with declines in markets such as the U.S. and Europe where deliveries fell by 21 percent and 27.5 percent, respectively. In 2009, the marque launched the HS 250h, a dedicated hybrid sedan for North America and Japan, the RX 450h, the second generation hybrid SUV replacing the earlier RX 400h, and later that year debuted the production LFA exotic coupe. In late 2009, citing higher sales of hybrid models over their petrol counterparts, Lexus announced plans to become a hybrid-only marque in Europe. By the end of the decade, Lexus ranked as the fourth-largest premium car make in the world by volume, and was the number one selling premium car marque in the U.S. for 10 consecutive years.
2010s–2020s: Recent developments
In 2010, Lexus underwent a gradual sales recovery in North America and Asia as the marque focused on adding hybrids and new model derivatives. Sales in the U.S. held steady despite the 2009–2010 Toyota vehicle recalls, several of which included Lexus models. The ES 350 and certain IS models were affected by a recall for potentially jamming floor mats, while parent company Toyota bore the brunt of negative publicity amid investigations over its series of product recalls and problem rates per-vehicle. The redesigned GX 460 was also voluntarily recalled in April 2010 for a software update, one week after Consumer Reports issued a recommendation not to buy the SUV, citing a possible rollover risk following the slow stability control response to a high-speed emergency turn. Although the publication knew of no reported incidents, the GX 460 received updated stability control software.
In late 2010 and early 2011, Lexus began sales of the CT 200h, a compact four-door hybrid hatchback designed for Europe, in multiple markets. Sales of lower-displacement regional models were also expanded, beginning with the ES 240 in China followed by the RX 270; Japan, Russia, and Taiwan were among markets which received model variants intended for reduced emissions or import taxes. In March 2011, the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami caused severe disruption to Lexus' Japan-based production lines, hindering the marque's near-term sales prospects. Lexus' U.S. executives stated that due to vehicle shortages amidst close competition from BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi, the marque would not remain the country's top-selling premium car brand.
Cumulative sales results for 2011 indicated a 14 percent sales drop in the U.S. market, along with sales increases of 40 percent and 27 percent in Europe and Japan respectively, for a global sales total of 410,000 units. Lexus' streak of 11 consecutive years as the best-selling luxury marque in the U.S. ended that year, with the title going to BMW followed by Mercedes-Benz. While 45 percent of Lexus sales in the U.S. in 2011 relied upon the RX luxury crossover SUV, rival Mercedes-Benz's best-selling offering was the E-Class mid-luxury sedan, which commands considerably higher prices. Subsequently, Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda vowed to restore passion to the marque and further increase its organizational independence, admitting that "...back then we did not regard Lexus as a brand, but as a distribution channel". As a result of Toyoda's organizational changes, Lexus senior managers report directly to the chairman for the first time in the marque's history.
In January 2012, the marque began sales of the fourth generation GS line, including GS 350 and GS 450h variants, as well as a lower-displacement GS 250 model for select markets. In April 2012, the sixth generation ES line, including ES 350 and ES 300h variants, debuted at the New York International Auto Show.
In April 2014, Lexus unveiled the five-seater NX crossover. The vehicle features a very first for a Lexus vehicle: a turbocharger. Its nomenclature is denoted as the 200t. In August 2014, Toyota announced it would be cutting its Lexus spare parts prices in China by up to 35 percent. The company admitted the move was in response to a probe foreshadowed earlier in the month by China's National Development and Reform Commission of Lexus spare parts policies, as part of an industry-wide investigation into what the Chinese regulator considers exorbitantly high prices being charged by automakers for spare parts and after-sales servicing.
In March 2016, Lexus announced that it will be producing a new flagship vehicle: the two-door LC 500. The vehicle will be produced for late 2017 in a V8 version putting out 467 horsepower. The LC 500h, a V6 hybrid variant, could potentially become available in late 2017 or early 2018.
In April 2019, Lexus announced that a rebadged limousine version of the third-generation Alphard would be sold as the Lexus LM. It was also announced that Lexus would finally enter the market in Mexico in 2021 with some of the vehicles in their lineup. In October 2019, Lexus announced that it will be launching the brand's first all-battery electric vehicle in 2020.
Corporate affairs
Operations
Lexus International coordinates the worldwide operations of Toyota's luxury division from the brand's global headquarters, located in Nagoya, Aichi. Corporate entities further include the brand's Japan Sales and Marketing and global Product and Marketing Planning divisions. While organizationally separate from its parent company, Lexus International reports directly to Toyota chief executive officer Akio Toyoda. In the U.S., brand operations are managed by the U.S. Lexus division, which is headquartered in Plano, Texas. In Europe, Lexus operations are managed by Lexus Europe, located in Brussels. Companion design facilities are located in Southern California and central Japan, with the head design studio devoted entirely to Lexus models in Toyota City, Aichi.
Lexus sales operations vary in structure by region. In many markets, such as the U.S., the dealership network is a distinct organization from corporate headquarters, with separately owned and operated Lexus showrooms. By contrast, in Japan all 143 dealerships in the country are owned and operated by Lexus. Several markets have a designated, third party regional distributor; for example, in the United Arab Emirates, sales operations are managed by Al-Futtaim Motors LLC, and in Costa Rica, Lexus vehicles are sold via regional distributor Purdy Motors S.A. Other officially sanctioned regional distributors have sold Lexus models prior to the launch of, or in absence of, a dedicated dealership network.
The Lexus brand launched in the Indian market in 2017, with the models RX450h, LX450d, LX570, ES300h, NX, LS. Dealerships in Mumbai, Delhi, Gurgaon, and Bangalore became operational in March 2017, when the brand began sales in India with a second set of dealerships opening in Chandigarh, Kochi, and Chennai toward the end of 2017. This made Lexus the fifth luxury brand to be launched in India, after Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, BMW, and Audi.
Sales
Global sales of Lexus vehicles reached an all-time high in 2007, with a total of 518,000. Sales decreased in subsequent years due to the effects of the 2008 recession and the Japanese tsunami of 2011. Following this, sales recovered and reached a new high of 523,000 in 2013.
In 2014, the Lexus brand set a new global sales record after selling 582,000 vehicles. This made Lexus the fourth best selling luxury brand in the world, trailing BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz.
Global sales of Lexus vehicles increased by 12 percent in 2015 to reach another annual sales record with 652,000 units sold worldwide.
Global cumulative sales of Lexus brand hybrid electric cars reached the 500,000 mark in November 2012. The 1 million sales milestone was achieved in March 2016. The Lexus RX 400h/RX 450h ranks as the top selling Lexus hybrid with 335,000 units delivered worldwide , followed by the Lexus CT 200h with 267,000 units.
Lexus has not sold as well in Europe, where it suffers from smaller brand recognition, image, and a less-developed dealership network. In European markets, the Lexus LS has ranked behind Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and BMW in flagship luxury car sales. Automotive analysts have suggested a possible rationale for the sales disparity, in that European buyers place less emphasis on vehicle reliability and have more brand loyalty to established domestic marques. In contrast, the Lexus LS has ranked second in sales to the Mercedes-Benz S-Class (and ahead of rivals from BMW, Audi, and Jaguar) in markets outside Europe, such as South Africa.
Currently all of Lexus's models for the US market are imported from Japan, with the exception of the RX and NX, which are also produced in Cambridge, Ontario for North America, and the ES, which is also produced in Georgetown, Kentucky. The RX midsized crossover is Lexus's best selling model in the United States, while the ES mid-sized car is the most popular sedan in the line-up.
Financial performance
Financial data of Lexus operations are not disclosed publicly. However, automotive analysts estimate that the Lexus division contributes a disproportionate share of Toyota's profits, relative to its limited production and sales volume. Interviews with retired division officials indicate that depending on sales volume, vehicle product development cycles, and exchange rates, Lexus sales have accounted for as much as half of Toyota's annual U.S. profit in certain years. Division executives have employed pricing strategies aimed at sustaining profit margins rather than sales volume, with historically fewer price incentives than rival brands. In 2006, Lexus entered Interbrand's list of the Top 100 Global Brands for the first time, with an estimated brand value of approximately $3 billion annually. In 2009, Interbrand ranked Lexus as Japan's seventh largest brand, between Panasonic and Nissan, based on revenue, earnings, and market value.
Automobiles
Vehicle lineup
The global Lexus lineup features sedans of different size classes, including the compact IS model, mid-size ES and GS models, and the full-size LS. The 2-door coupe range consists of the RC and the LC. Former convertibles include the SC and IS C models. Sport-utility vehicles range in size from the subcompact UX, compact NX and mid-size RX crossovers, to the full-size GX and LX. Hybrid models include the CT hatchback, the discontinued HS, and variants of the IS, ES, GS, LS, RC, LC, UX, NX, RX and LM. The F marque line formerly produced a variant of the IS and the LFA and currently produces a variant of the GS sedan and the RC coupe.
F marque
Lexus produces its highest-performance models under its F marque division. The name refers to Flagship and Fuji Speedway in Japan, whose first corner, 27R, inspired the shape of the "F" emblem. F marque models are developed by the Lexus Vehicle Performance Development Division. The first F marque model, the IS F, went on sale in 2007, followed by the LFA in 2009. A related F-Sport performance trim level and factory-sanctioned accessory line is available for standard Lexus models such as the IS 250 and IS 350. The F-Sport trim level commonly includes cosmetic upgrades to the exterior and interior, and in some vehicles, mechanical upgrades such as an adaptive variable suspension. F-Sport succeeded an earlier in-house tuning effort, the TRD-based L-Tuned, which had offered performance packages on the IS and GS sedans in the early 2000s (decade).
Additions to the performance F Sport marque include the Lexus RC F Sport and Lexus GS F Sport and Lexus LS F Sport.
Model nomenclature
Lexus production models are named alphanumerically using two-letter designations followed by three digits. The first letter indicates relative status in the Lexus model range (ranking), and the second letter refers to car body style or type (e.g. LS for 'luxury sedan'). The three digits commonly indicate engine displacement in liters multiplied by a factor of one hundred (e.g. 350 for a 3.5 L engine), except in the case of turbocharged and hybrid vehicles, for which the digits correspond to the displacement of a naturally aspirated engine with equivalent output (on hybrids, the three digits refer to the combined gasoline-electric output). A space is used between the letters and numbers. The same letter may be used differently depending on the model; 'S' can refer to 'sedan' or 'sport' (e.g. in LS and SC), while 'X' refers to 'luxury utility vehicle' or SUV. For certain models, a lower case letter placed after the alphanumeric designation indicates powerplant type ('h' for hybrid, 'd' for diesel, 't' for turbocharged), while capital letter(s) placed at the end indicates a class subtype (e.g. 'L' for long-wheelbase, 'C' for coupe, 'AWD' for all-wheel drive). On F marque models, the two-letter designation and the letter 'F' are used with no numbers or hyphens (e.g. IS F).
Design and technology
Lexus design has traditionally placed an emphasis on targeting specific vehicle development standards. Since the marque's inception, design targets have ranged from aerodynamics and ride quality to interior ergonomics. The backronym "IDEAL" ("Impressive, Dynamic, Elegant, Advanced, and Lasting") is used in the development process. Each vehicle is designed according to approximately 500 specific product standards, known as "Lexus Musts," on criteria such as leather seat stitching. Design elements from the marque's concept vehicle line, the LF series (including the 2003 LF-S and 2004 LF-C), have been incorporated in production models.
Vehicle cabins have incorporated electroluminescent Optitron gauges, SmartAccess, a smart key entry and startup system, and multimedia features. Beginning with the 2010 RX and HS models, the Remote Touch system, featuring a computer mouse-like controller with haptic feedback, was introduced; other models have featured touchscreen controls (through the 2009 model year) as a navigation screen interface. 2014 saw the introduction of the next version of Lexus’ remote-touch innovations—the Remote Touch Interface Touchpad in the new RC Coupe.
In 1989, Lexus became among the first premium car marques to equip models with premium audio systems, in partnership with stereo firm Nakamichi. Since 2001, optional surround sound systems are offered via high-end audio purveyor Mark Levinson. For reduced cabin noise, the first LS 400 introduced sandwich steel plating, and later models added acoustic glass. In 2006, the LS 460 debuted the first ceiling air diffusers and infrared body temperature sensors in a car. Telematics services include G-Book with G-Link in Asia and Lexus Enform in North America.
In 2006, Lexus incorporated the first production eight-speed automatic transmission in an automobile with the LS 460, and the gearbox was later adapted for the GS 460 and IS F models. Continuously variable transmissions, regenerative brakes, and electric motors have been used on all Lexus hybrid models. In 2007, Lexus executives signaled intentions to equip further models with hybrid powertrains, catering to demands for a decrease in both carbon pollution and oil reliance. Hybrid models have been differentiated by separate badging and lighting technology; in 2008, the LS 600h L became the first production vehicle to use LED headlamps.
Safety features on Lexus models range from stability and handling programs (Vehicle Stability Control and Vehicle Dynamics Integrated Management) to backup cameras, swivel headlights, and sonar warning systems. The Lexus Pre-Collision System (PCS) integrates multiple safety systems. In 2007, Lexus introduced the first car safety systems with infrared and pedestrian detection capabilities, lane keep assist, a Driver Monitoring System with facial recognition monitoring of driver attentiveness, and rear pre-collision whiplash protection, as part of the LS 460 PCS. As a safety precaution, Lexus GPS navigation systems in many regions feature a motion lockout when the vehicle reaches a set speed; to prevent distraction, navigation inputs are limited, while voice input and certain buttons are still accessible. This safety feature has attracted criticism because passengers cannot use certain functions when the vehicle is in motion. Pre-2007 models came with a hidden manufacturer override option, and updated European models allow operation in motion.
Production models in development have included convertibles, crossovers, and dedicated hybrids. Under the F marque, Lexus plans to produce high-performance vehicles with its first expressions being the IS F and the LFA. Lexus officials have also discussed standard production model usage of varying platforms. The LS uses a dedicated platform, while the entry-level Lexus ES had been criticized for being too similar to the Toyota Camry, with which it shared platforms until its sixth generation, in both styling and powertrain design. The Nürburgring test track in Germany has also seen Lexus prototype testing.
L-finesse
Lexus introduced a new design language known as "L-finesse" in the mid-2000s with its LF series concepts and the 2006 Lexus GS. L-finesse is represented by three Japanese kanji characters which translate as "Intriguing Elegance, Incisive Simplicity, and Seamless Anticipation". Design characteristics, including a fastback profile, lower-set grille, and the use of both convex and concave surfaces, are derived from Japanese cultural motifs (e.g. the phrase kirikaeshi in arrowhead shapes). While earlier Lexus models were criticized for reserved and derivative styling, and often mistaken for understated domestic market cars, automotive design analyses described L-finesse as adding a distinctive nature and embrace of Japanese design identity. Opinions varied for L-finesse's debut on the GS; Sports Car International analysis praised the vehicle's in-person appearance; Automobile Magazine criticized the daring of its forward styling, and compared subsequent rival models for design similarities. In 2012, the arrival of the redesigned fourth generation Lexus GS featured the introduction of a spindle-shaped grille design, intended to be used on all forthcoming Lexus models. L-finesse exhibitions were presented at Milan's Salone del Mobile from 2005 through 2009.
Production
Assembly plants
The first Lexus vehicles were manufactured in Toyota's Tahara plant, a computerized manufacturing plant in Japan. Through the 2000s, most Lexus sedan and SUV production has occurred in Japan at the Tahara plant in Aichi and the Miyata plant in Fukuoka. In addition to the Tahara factory, over time Lexus vehicles have been produced at the Miyata plant (Toyota Motor Kyushu) in Miyawaka, Fukuoka; the Higashi-Fuji plant (Kanto Auto Works) in Susono, Shizuoka; and the Yoshiwara plant (Araco, later Toyota Auto Body) in Toyota City, Aichi. Front-wheel drive cars, such as the ES and HS, have been produced in the Fukuoka Prefecture. Toyota Motor Kyushu's Kokura plant in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka, which opened in 2008, is a dedicated hybrid production site for hybrid systems used in Lexus models such as the gasoline-electric RX. The North American–market RX 350 (since the 2004 model year) is produced at the Cambridge plant (Toyota Canada, Inc.) in the city of Cambridge, in Ontario, Canada, which is the first Lexus production site located outside Japan. In late 2015, Lexus started to assemble North American-spec ES 350 sedans at the Georgetown plant (TMMK, Inc.). In January 2020, Toyota Kirloskar Motor of India started assembling the ES sedan in its Bidadi plant.
Relative to Toyota models, Lexus vehicles are built according to different quality control standards, including more stringent body panel fit tolerances and paint quality requirements. Their manufacture involves different assembly lines, molds, welding processes, and manufacturing equipment. Lexus plant workers also undergo a more selective screening process. Production vehicles are given visual inspections for flaws, individually test-driven at high speeds, and subjected to vibration tests.
Quality rankings
In the 2000s (decade), Consumer Reports named Lexus among the top five most reliable brands in its Annual Car Reliability Surveys of over one million vehicles across the U.S.
Service
Lexus has become known for efforts to provide an upscale image, particularly with service provided after the sale. The waiting areas in service departments are replete with amenities, ranging from refreshment bars to indoor putting greens. Dealerships typically offer complimentary loaner cars or "courtesy cars" and free car washes, and some have added on-site cafes and designer boutiques. Service bays are lined with large picture windows for owners to watch the servicing of their vehicle. In 2005, Lexus also began reserving parking lots at major sporting arenas, entertainment events, and shopping malls, with the only requirement for free entry being the ownership of a Lexus vehicle. An online owner publication, Lexus Magazine, features automotive and lifestyle articles and is published online monthly and on a mobile site.
Since 2002, Lexus has scored consecutive top ratings in the Auto Express and 76,000-respondent Top Gear customer satisfaction surveys in the UK. Lexus has also repeatedly topped the 79,000-respondent J.D. Power Customer Service Index and Luxury Institute, New York surveys in the U.S. As a result of service satisfaction levels, the marque has one of the highest customer loyalty rates in the industry. To improve customer service, employees are instructed to follow the "Lexus Covenant," the marque's founding promise (which states that "Lexus will treat each customer as we would a guest in our home"), and some dealerships have incorporated training at upscale establishments such as Nordstrom department stores and Ritz-Carlton hotels.
Motorsport
Lexus first entered the motorsport arena in 1999 when its racing unit, Team Lexus, fielded two GS 400 race vehicles in the Motorola Cup North American Street Stock Championship touring car series. In its 1999 inaugural season, Team Lexus achieved its first victory with its sixth race at Road Atlanta. Led by Sports Car Club of America and International Motor Sports Association driver Chuck Goldsborough, based in Baltimore, Maryland, Team Lexus capitalized on the debut of the first generation Lexus IS by entering three IS 300s in the third race of the 2001 Grand-Am Cup season at Phoenix, Arizona. Team Lexus won its first IS 300 victory that year at the Virginia International Raceway. In 2002, Team Lexus' competitive efforts in the Grand-Am Cup ST1 (Street Tuner) class achieved victories in the Drivers' and Team Championships, as well as a sweep of the top three finishes at Circuit Mont-Tremblant in Quebec, Canada.
After the release of the Lexus brand in the Japanese domestic market in 2005, Lexus sanctioned the entry of four SC 430 coupes in the Super GT series of the All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship in the GT500 class. In the first race of the 2006 series, an SC 430 took the chequered flag, and drivers André Lotterer and Juichi Wakisaka raced the SC 430 to capture the GT500 championship for that year. In 2007, another SC 430 won the GT500 opening round race. In 2006, Lexus raced a hybrid vehicle for the first time, entering a GS 450h performance hybrid sedan in partnership with Sigma Advanced Racing Development at the 24 Hours of Tokachi race in Hokkaido, Japan. Lexus Canada also entered the GS 450h in 2007's Targa Newfoundland event. In 2009, Lexus Super GT Team SC 430 and IS 350 racers won the GT500 and GT300 championships, respectively.
Lexus' participation in endurance racing further includes the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona, sanctioned by the Grand American Road Racing Association. After entering the Rolex Sports Car Series in 2004, Lexus has won over 15 Rolex Series event races. In 2005, Lexus was runner-up, and in 2006, it won the championship. Although Toyota has won this race in the past, it was the first time that its luxury arm emerged as the winner. In 2007, six Lexus-powered Daytona prototypes were entered in the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona event at the Daytona International Speedway. Lexus was a repeat winner of the event, with a Lexus-Riley prototype driven by Scott Pruett, Juan Pablo Montoya, and Salvador Durán of Chip Ganassi Racing finishing first; Lexus-Riley prototypes also took three of the top ten spots. In 2008, Lexus won its third consecutive win at Daytona. For the 2010 season, Lexus departed from the Rolex Sports Car Series, and Ganassi Racing switched to BMW/Dinan engines.
The LF-A prototype also competed on the Nürburgring from 2008 to 2011 in VLN endurance races and in the 24 Hours Nürburgring, also with the IS F. On 14 May 2011, a CT 200h tuned up by Gazoo Racing competed in the Adenauer ADAC Rundstrecken-Trophy, a six-hour endurance race.
3GT Racing, a partnership of Lexus and Paul Gentilozzi, entered two Lexus RC F GT3 at the N.American 2017 WeatherTech SportsCar Championship in the GT Daytona class. Their first win came in the 2018 WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with Dominik Baumann and Kyle Marcelli at Mid-Ohio before winning again with the same pairing at Virginia International Raceway. Lexus finished in 8th in their first season in 2017 in the GT Daytona Manufacturer's Championship. They then improved to 5th in 2018 with the #14 achieving 5th and the #15 getting 10th in the Team's Championship.
For the 2019 WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, the running of the Lexus GT3 cars has been transferred to AIM Vasser Sullivan, which is a debuting partnership, where the driver pairing of Jack Hawksworth and Richard Heistand have currently achieved 2 wins at Mid-Ohio before winning the next race at Belle Isle. As of the result of Lime Rock Park, Lexus are second in the 2019 Manufacturer's Championship and the #12 is third with the #14 in 5th despite that being the winning car.
Marketing
From its inception, Lexus has been advertised to luxury consumers using specific marketing strategies, with a consistent motif used for the marque's advertisements. Beginning in 1989, television ads were narrated by actor James Sloyan (the voice of "Mr. Lexus" until 2009), and accompanied by vehicles that performed unusual stunts onscreen. The first decade of Lexus commercials (1989–99) consisted primarily of disjunctive verbal descriptions, such as "relentless," "pursuit," and "perfection," while vehicles were used to claim superiority in precision, idling, and interior quiet and comfort on camera. Examples included the champagne glass "Balance" (1989) and rolling "Ball Bearing" (1992). In the 2000s (decade), commercials included descriptions of features, or a narration of the events onscreen, and were often targeted at the marque's German competitors. An annual "December to Remember" campaign featured scenes of family members surprising loved ones with the gift of a new Lexus. The marque returned to the champagne glass theme in a 2006 LS 460 spot showing the sedan maneuvering between two stacks of glasses using its self-parking system, and in a 2010 LFA spot showing its engine sound shattering a glass via resonance frequency.
Industry observers have attributed Lexus' early marketing successes to higher levels of perceived quality and lower prices than competitors, which have enabled the marque to attract customers upgrading from mass-market cars. A reputation for dependability, bolstered by reliability surveys, also became a primary factor in attracting new customers from rival premium makes. Lexus has since grown to command higher price premiums than rival Japanese makes, with new models further increasing in price and reaching the more than $100,000 ultra-luxury category long dominated by rival European marques.
Automotive analysts have also noted Lexus' relative newcomer status as a marketing challenge for the brand, although some have debated the requirement of a long history. European rivals have marketed their decades of heritage and pedigree, whereas Lexus' reputation rests primarily upon its perceived quality and shared history with parent company Toyota. Several analysts have stated that Lexus will have to develop its own heritage over time by highlighting technological innovations and producing substantial products.
Lexus' marketing efforts have extended to sporting and charity event sponsorships, including the U.S. Open tennis Grand Slam event from 2005 to 2009, and the United States Golf Association's U.S. Open, U.S. Women's Open, U.S. Senior Open, and U.S. Amateur tournaments since 2007. Lexus has organized an annual Champions for Charity golf series in the U.S. since 1989. Endorsement contracts have also been signed with professional athletes Hideki Matsuyama, Andy Roddick, Annika Sörenstam, and Peter Jacobsen.
Since 2008, Lexus has run the video website L Studio. Shows on L Studio include Web Therapy.
Lexus unveiled its new "Experience Amazing" tagline in the U.S. in a 60-second advertisement at the February 2017 Super Bowl LI. The new tagline replaced Lexus's previous slogan, "The Pursuit of Perfection".
On 30 March 2018, Lexus premiered a fake partnership with 23 and Me during a spot on Saturday Night Live, for a pretend program that allows buyers to customize vehicles based on their DNA, as an April Fool's Day joke.
Lexus slogans
The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection (1989–2011)
The Pursuit of Perfection (2010–2016)
Amazing in Motion
Experience Amazing (2017–present)
See also
The Championship by Lexus
Slide (hoverboard)
References
Notes
Bibliography
External links
Official website (Japan)
Official website (International)
1989 establishments in Japan
1989 establishments in the United States
Toyota brands and marques
Car manufacturers of Japan
Companies based in Aichi Prefecture
Luxury motor vehicle manufacturers
Vehicle manufacturing companies established in 1989
Japanese brands | [
0.22717632353305817,
-0.22827249765396118,
0.5989990234375,
0.1956012099981308,
0.04555247724056244,
0.4279906451702118,
-0.5488735437393188,
0.4850115478038788,
0.19373935461044312,
0.19591452181339264,
0.3357067108154297,
0.8198627233505249,
0.34632912278175354,
0.33133646845817566,
-0... |
18330 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal%20status%20of%20transgender%20people | Legal status of transgender people | A person may be considered to be a transgender person if their gender identity is inconsistent or not culturally associated with the sex they were assigned at birth, and consequently also with the gender role and social status that is typically associated with that sex. They may have, or may intend to establish, a new gender status that accords with their gender identity. Transsexual is generally considered a subset of transgender, but some transsexual people reject being labelled transgender.
Globally, most legal jurisdictions recognize the two traditional gender identities and social roles, man and woman, but tend to exclude any other gender identities and expressions. However, there are some countries which recognize, by law, a third gender. There is now a greater understanding of the breadth of variation outside the typical categories of "man" and "woman", and many self-descriptions are now entering the literature, including pangender, genderqueer, polygender, and agender. Medically and socially, the term "transsexualism" is being replaced with gender incongruence or gender dysphoria, and terms such as transgender people, trans men, and trans women, and non-binary are replacing the category of transsexual people.
Most of the issues regarding transgender rights are generally considered a part of family law, especially the issues of marriage and the question of a transgender person benefiting from a partner's insurance or social security.
The degree of legal recognition provided to transgender people varies widely throughout the world. Many countries now legally recognize sex reassignments by permitting a change of legal gender on an individual's birth certificate. Many transsexual people have permanent surgery to change their body, sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) or semi-permanently change their body by hormonal means, transgender hormone therapy (HRT). In many countries, some of these modifications are required for legal recognition. In a few, the legal aspects are directly tied to health care; i.e. the same bodies or doctors decide whether a person can move forward in their treatment and the subsequent processes automatically incorporate both matters.
In some jurisdictions, transgender people (who are considered non-transsexual) can benefit from the legal recognition given to transsexual people. In some countries, an explicit medical diagnosis of "transsexualism" is (at least formally) necessary. In others, a diagnosis of "gender dysphoria", or simply the fact that one has established a non-conforming gender role, can be sufficient for some or all of the legal recognition available. The DSM-5 recognizes gender dysphoria as an official diagnosis.
Legislative efforts to recognise gender identity
National level
Legislative efforts to derecognise gender identity
National level
Subnational level
Africa
South Africa
The Constitution of South Africa forbids discrimination on the basis of sex, gender and sexual orientation (amongst other grounds). The Constitutional Court has indicated that "sexual orientation" includes transsexuality.
In 2003 Parliament enacted the Alteration of Sex Description and Sex Status Act, which allows a transgender person who has undergone medical or surgical gender reassignment to apply to the Department of Home Affairs to have the sex description altered on their birth record. Once the birth record is altered they can be issued with a new birth certificate and identity document, and are considered "for all purposes" to be of the new sex.
Egypt
Transgender people face significant existing societal stigma against the LGBT+ community in Egypt, a conservative Muslim nation. The procedure for gender reassignment is not illegal in Egypt, however, the complication and stigmatisation has put transgender people through mental and physical assault along with torture, as per Human Rights Watch. Reportedly, the statistics of criminal acts committed against the transgender community have not been available because they have had a history of going unreported.
Botswana
In September 2017, the Botswana High Court ruled that the refusal of the Registrar of National Registration to change a transgender man's gender marker was "unreasonable and violated his constitutional rights to dignity, privacy, freedom of expression, equal protection of the law, freedom from discrimination and freedom from inhumane and degrading treatment". LGBT activists celebrated the ruling, describing it as a great victory. At first, the Botswana Government announced it would appeal the ruling, but decided against it in December, supplying the trans man in question with a new identity document that reflects his gender identity.
A similar case, where a transgender woman sought to change her gender marker to female, was heard in December 2017. The High Court ruled that the Government must recognise her gender identity. She dedicated her victory to "every single trans diverse person in Botswana".
Asia
China
In 2009 the Chinese government made it illegal for minors to change their officially listed gender, stating that sexual reassignment surgery, available to only those over the age of twenty, was required in order to apply for a revision of their identification card and residence registration.
In early 2014 the Shanxi province started allowing minors to apply for the change with the additional information of their guardian's identification card. This shift in policy allows post-surgery marriages to be recognized as heterosexual and therefore legal.
Transgender youth in China face many challenges. One study found that Chinese parents report 0.5% (1:200) of their 6 to 12-year boys and 0.6% (1:167) of girls often or always 'state the wish to be the other gender'. 0.8% (1:125) of 18- to 24-year-old university students who are birth-assigned males (whose sex/gender as indicated on their ID card is male) report that the 'sex/gender I feel in my heart' is female, while another 0.4% indicating that their perceived gender was 'other'. Among birth-assigned females, 2.9% (1:34) indicated they perceived their gender as male, while another 1.3% indicating 'other'.
According to a survey conducted by Peking University, Chinese trans female students face strong discrimination in many areas of education. Sex segregation is found everywhere in Chinese schools and universities: student enrollment (for some special schools, universities and majors), appearance standards (hairstyles and uniforms included), private spaces (bathrooms, toilets and dormitories included), physical examintions, military trainings, conscription , PE classes, PE exams and physical health tests. Chinese students are required to attend all the activities according to their legal gender marker. Otherwise they will be punished. It is also difficult to change the gender information of educational attainments and academic degrees in China, even after sex reassignment surgery, which results in discrimination against well-educated trans women.
Hong Kong
The Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong ruled that a transsexual woman has the right to marry her boyfriend. The ruling was made on 13 May 2013.
On 16 September 2013, Eliana Rubashkyn a transgender woman claimed that she was discriminated and sexually abused by the customs officers, including being subjected to invasive body searches and denied usage of a female toilet, although Hong Kong officers denied the allegations. After being released, she applied for and was granted refugee status by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), rendering her effectively stateless awaiting acceptance to a third country.
India
In April 2014, the Supreme Court of India declared transgender to be a 'third gender' in Indian law. The transgender community in India (made up of Hijras and others) has a long history in India and in Hindu mythology.
The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, was passed by Parliament in November 2019, and came into effect on 11 January 2020. It protects transgender individuals against discrimination in education, employment and healthcare. It recognizes the gender identity of the individual, and there are provisions in the law for a certificate to be issued with their new gender identity. There have been reservations among some in the transgender community, both regarding the difficulty of obtaining a certificate, and because of lack of awareness and lack of sensitivity to the issue among local public officials. LGBTQ protests against the bill have occurred, with claims that the bill hurts the transgender community instead of helping it. Protesters noted the provision for certification, but criticized the fact that this would require people to register with the government in order to be recognized as transgender. They also criticized the inequality in herent in the vast differences in punishment for the same crime, such as sexual abuse, committed against violating a transgender or cisgender individual.
Iran
Beginning in the mid-1980s, transgender individuals were officially recognized by the government and allowed to undergo sex reassignment surgery.
Officially the leader of Iran's Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa declaring sex reassignment surgery permissible for "diagnosed transsexuals". The government provides up to half the cost for those needing financial assistance, and a sex change is recognised on the birth certificate. Despite this, Iran's transgender people face discrimination in society. Founded in 2007 by Maryam Khatoon Molkara the Iranian Society to Support Individuals with Gender Identity Disorder (نجمن حمایت از بیماران مبتلا به اختلالات هویت جنسیایران) is Iran's main transsexual organization.
Additionally, the Iranian government's response to homosexuality is to pressure lesbian and gay individuals, who are not in fact transsexual, towards sex reassignment surgery. Eshaghian's documentary, Be Like Others, chronicles a number of stories of Iranian gay men who feel transitioning is the only way to avoid further persecution, jail, or execution. Maryam Khatoon Molkara—who convinced Khomeini to issue the fatwa on transsexuality—confirmed that some people who undergo operations are gay rather than transsexual.
Japan
On 10 July 2003, the National Diet of Japan unanimously approved a new law that enables transsexual people to amend their legal sex. It is called (Act on Special Cases in Handling Gender for People with Gender Identity Disorder) The law, effective on 16 July 2004, however, has controversial conditions which demand the applicants be both unmarried and childless. On 28 July 2004, Naha Family Court in Okinawa Prefecture returned a verdict to a transsexual woman in her 20s, allowing her family registry record or koseki to be amended as she was born a female. It is generally believed to be the first court approval under the new law. Since 2018 sex reassignment surgeries are paid for by the Japanese government, who are covered by the Japanese national health insurance as long as patients are not receiving hormone treatment and do not have any other pre-existing conditions. However applicants are required to be at least 20 years old, single, sterile, have no children under 20 (the age of majority in Japan), as well as to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to receive a diagnosis of "Gender Identity Disorder", also known as gender dysphoria in western countries. Once completed the patient has to only pay 30% of the surgery costs.
Malaysia
There is no legislation expressly allowing transsexuals to legally change their gender in Malaysia. The relevant legislations are the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1957 and National Registration Act 1959. Therefore, judges currently exercise their discretion in interpreting the law and defining the gender. There are conflicting decisions on this matter. There is a case in 2003 where the court allowed a transsexual to change her gender indicated in the identity card, and granted a declaration that she is a female. However, in 2005, in another case, the court refused to amend the gender of a transsexual in the identity card and birth certificate. Both cases applied the United Kingdom case of Corbett v Corbett in defining legal gender.
Pakistan
In Pakistan, some members of the LGBT community have started undergoing acts of sex reassignment surgery to change their sex. There are situations where such cases have caused media attention. A 2008 ruling at Pakistan's Lahore High Court gave permission to Naureen, 28, to have a sex change operation, although the decision was applicable only towards individuals who were diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
In 2009, the Pakistan Supreme Court made a ruling in favor of the transgender community. The landmark ruling stated that as citizens they were entitled to the equal benefit and protection of the law and called upon the Pakistani government to take steps to protect transgender people from discrimination and harassment. Pakistan's chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, was the architect of major extension of rights to Pakistan's transgender community during his term. There are also anti-discrimination laws in the provision of goods and services for transgender or transsexual individuals (known as Khuwaja Sira, formerly hijra, or Third Gender) in Pakistani.
In 2018, the Pakistani government passed the Transgender Person (Protection of Rights) Act which officially established the legal right of transgender people in Pakistan to identify themselves as such and instituted anti-discrimination laws. These include recognition of transgender identity in legal documents such as passports, identity card, and drivers licences, along with prohibiting discrimination in employment, schools, workplaces, public transit, healthcare, etc. The bill also included the right for inheritance in accordance to their chosen gender. Furthermore, the bill obligates the Pakistani government to build protection centers and safe houses for the specific purpose of being used by the transgender community in Pakistan.
Jordan
The Court of Cassation, the highest court in Jordan allowed a transsexual woman to change her legal name and sex to female in 2014 after she brought forth medical reports from Australia. The head of the Jordanian Department of civil Status and Passports stated that two to three cases of change of sex reach the department annually, all based on Medical Reports and Court orders.
Philippines
The Supreme Court of the Philippines Justice Leonardo Quisumbing on 12 September 2008, allowed Jeff Cagandahan, 27, to change both his birth certificate, gender and name from Jennifer to Jeff, to male:We respect respondent's congenital condition and his mature decision to be a male. Life is already difficult for the ordinary person. We cannot but respect how respondent deals with his unordinary state and thus help make his life easier, considering the unique circumstances in this case. In the absence of a law on the matter, the court will not dictate on respondent concerning a matter so innately private as one's sexuality and lifestyle preferences, much less on whether or not to undergo medical treatment to reverse the male tendency due to rare medical condition, congenital adrenal hyperplasia. In the absence of evidence that respondent is an 'incompetent,' and in the absence of evidence to show that classifying respondent as a male will harm other members of society ... the court affirms as valid and justified the respondent's position and his personal judgment of being a male.Court records showed that – at 6, he had small ovaries; at 13, his ovarian structure was minimized and he had no breasts and did not menstruate. The psychiatrist testified that "he has both male and female sex organs, but was genetically female, and that since his body secreted male hormones, his female organs did not develop normally." The Philippines National Institutes of Health said "people with congenital adrenal hyperplasia lack an enzyme needed by the adrenal gland to make the hormones cortisol and aldosterone.
This, however, only applies to cases involving congenital adrenal hyperplasia and other intersex situations. The Philippine Supreme Court has also ruled that Filipino citizens do not have the right to legally change their sex on official documents (driver's license, passport, birth certificate, Social Security records, etc.) if they are transsexual and have undergone sexual reassignment surgery. The Court said that if the man, now anatomically a female, were to be allowed to legally change his sex it would have "serious and wide-ranging legal and public policy consequences," citing the institution of marriage in particular.
South Korea
In South Korea, it is possible for transgender individuals to change their legal gender, although it depends on the decision of the judge for each case. Since the 1990s, however, it has been approved in most of the cases. The legal system in Korea does not prevent marriage once a person has changed their legal gender.
In 2006, the Supreme Court of Korea ruled that transsexuals have the right to alter their legal papers to reflect their reassigned sex. A trans woman can be registered, not only as female, but also as being "born as a woman".
While same-sex marriage is not approved by South Korean law, a transsexual woman obtains the marital status of 'female' automatically when she marries to a man, even if she has previously been designated as "male".
In 2013 a court ruled that transsexuals can change their legal sex without undergoing genital surgery.
Taiwan
Transgender people in Taiwan need to undergo genital surgery (removal of primary sex organs) in order to register gender change on both the identity card and the birth certificate. The surgery requires approval of two psychiatrists, and the procedure is not covered by the National Health Insurance. The government conducted public consultations on the elimination of surgery requirements back in 2015, but no concrete changes have been made since then.
In 2018, the government unveiled the new chip-embedded identity card, scheduled to be issued in late 2020. Gender will not be explicitly displayed on the physical card, although the second digit of national identification number reveals gender information anyway ("1" for male; "2" for female). With the inception of new identity card, a third gender option (using digit "7" as the second digit of national identification number) will be available to transgender persons alike. However, it raises concerns that the practice could stigmatize transgender persons, instead of respecting their gender identity. Details of the third-gender option policy are yet to be released.
After same-sex marriage law became effective on 24 May 2019, transgender persons could marry a person of the same registered gender.
Europe
A majority of countries in Europe give transgender people the right to at least change their first name, most of which also provide a way of changing birth certificates. Several European countries recognize the right of transgender people to marry in accordance with their post-operative sex. Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Spain, and the United Kingdom all recognize this right. The Convention on the recognition of decisions regarding a sex change provides regulations for mutual recognition of sex change decisions and has been signed by five European countries and ratified by Spain and the Netherlands.
Finland
In Finland, people wishing to change their legal gender must be sterilized or "for some other reason infertile". A recommendation from the UN Human Rights Council to eliminate the sterilization requirement was rejected by the Finnish government in 2017.
France
In France, there is currently no law that defines sex-change procedures. However, it is possible to ask for a sex- or a name change before the Court. The judge decides to grant or refuse the change.
Germany
In 1908, Imperial Germany (with the help of sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld and the WhK) issued a very limited number of 'transvestite passes' – transvestite at this time referring to crossdressers as well as transgender and gender non-conforming people – which enabled individuals to dress in clothes which were seen as discordant with their sex. This ended in 1933.
Since 1980, Germany has a law that regulates the change of first names and legal gender. It is called (Law about the change of first name and determination of gender identity in special cases (Transsexual law – TSG)). Requirements that applicants for a change in gender were infertile post-surgery declared unconstitutional by supreme court ruling in a 2011.
Greece
On 10 October 2017, the Greek Parliament passed, by a comfortable majority, the Legal Gender Recognition Bill which grants the transgender people in Greece the right to change their legal gender freely by abolishing any conditions and requirements, such as undergoing any medical interventions, sex reassignment surgeries or sterilisation procedures to have their gender legally recognized on their IDs. The bill grants this right to anyone aged 17 and older. However, even underaged children between the age of 15 and 17 will have access to the legal gender recognition process, but under certain conditions, such as obtaining a certificate from a medical council. The bill was opposed by the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church, the Communist Party of Greece, Golden Dawn and New Democracy.
The Legal Gender Recognition Bill followed a 20 July 2016 decision of the County Court of Athens, which ruled that a person who wants to change their legal gender on the Registry Office files is no longer obliged to already have undergone a sex reassignment surgery. This decision was applied by the Court on a case-by-case basis.
Republic of Ireland
In the Republic of Ireland, it was not possible for a transsexual person to alter their birth certificate until 2015. The High Court took a case by Lydia Foy in 2002 that was turned down, as a birth certificate was deemed to be a historical document.
On 15 July 2015 Ireland passed the Gender Recognition Act, which allows legal gender changes without the requirement of medical intervention or assessment by the state. Such change is possible through self-determination for any person aged 18 or over resident in Ireland and registered on Irish registers of birth or adoption. Persons aged 16 to 18 years must secure a court order to exempt them from the normal requirement to be at least 18. Ireland is one of four legal jurisdictions in the world where people may legally change gender through self-determination.
Poland
The first milestone sentence in the case of gender shifting was given by Warsaw's Voivode Court in 1964. The court reasoned that it be possible, in face of civil procedure and acting on civil registry records, to change one's legal gender after their genital reassignment surgery had been conducted. In 1983, the Supreme Court ruled that in some cases, when the attributes of the individual's preferred gender were predominant, it is possible to change one's legal gender even before genital reassignment surgery.
In 2011, Anna Grodzka, the first transgender MP in the history of Europe who underwent a genital reassignment operation was appointed. In the Polish Parliamentary Election 2011 she gained 19,337 votes (45,079 voted for her party in the constituency) in the City of Kraków and came sixth in her electoral district (928,914 people, voter turnout 55.75%). Grodzka was reportedly the only transsexual person with ministerial responsibilities in the world since 10 November 2011 (as of 2015).
Portugal
The law allows an adult person to change their legal gender without any requirements. Minors aged 16 and 17 are able to do so with parental consent and a psychological opinion, confirming that their decision has been taken freely and without any outside pressure. The law also prohibits both direct and indirect discrimination based on gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics, and bans non-consensual sex assignment treatment and/or surgical intervention on intersex children.
Romania
In Romania it is legal for transgender people to change their first name to reflect their gender identity based on personal choice. Since 1996, it has been possible for someone who has gone through genital reassignment surgery to change their legal gender in order to reflect their post-operative sex. Transgender people then have the right to marry in accordance with their post-operative sex.
United Kingdom
The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 made it illegal to discriminate on the ground of anatomical sex in employment, education, and the provision of housing, goods, facilities and services. The Equality Act 2006 introduced the Gender Equality Duty in Scotland, which required public bodies to take seriously the threat of harassment or discrimination against transsexual people in various situations. In 2008 the Sex Discrimination (Amendment of Legislation) Regulations extended existing regulation to outlaw discrimination when providing goods or services to transsexual people. The Equality Act 2010 added "gender reassignment" as a "protected characteristic".
The Gender Recognition Act 2004 effectively granted full legal recognition for binary transgender people. In contrast to some systems elsewhere in the world, the gender recognition process under the Act does not require applicants to be post-operative. There must, however, be significant medical explanation as to why an individual has not undergone sex reassignment surgery. They need only demonstrate that they have suffered gender dysphoria, have lived as "your new gender" for two years, and intend to continue doing so until death.
North America
Canada
Jurisdiction over legal classification of sex in Canada is assigned to the provinces and territories. This includes legal change of gender classification.
On 19 June 2017 Bill C-16, after having passed the legislative process in the House of Commons of Canada and the Senate of Canada, became law upon receiving Royal Assent which put it into immediate force. The law updated the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code to include "gender identity and gender expression" as protected grounds from discrimination, hate publications and advocating genocide. The bill also added "gender identity and expression" to the list of aggravating factors in sentencing, where the accused commits a criminal offence against an individual because of those personal characteristics. Similar transgender laws also exist in all the provinces and territories. Conversion therapy is banned in the provinces of Manitoba, Ontario, and Nova Scotia, and the city of Vancouver, though the Nova Scotia law includes a clause which allows "mature minors" between the ages of 16 and 18 to consent.
Mexico
Jurisdiction over legal classification of sex in Mexico is assigned to the states and Mexico City. This includes legal change of gender classification.
On 13 March 2004, amendments to the Mexico City Civil Code that allow transgender people to change their gender and name on their birth certificates, took effect.
In September 2008, the PRD-controlled Mexico City Legislative Assembly approved a law, in a 37–17 vote, making gender changes easier for transgender people.
On 13 November 2014, the Legislative Assembly of Mexico City unanimously (46-0) approved a gender identity law. The law makes it easier for transgender people to change their legal gender. Under the new law, they simply have to notify the Civil Registry that they wish to change the gender information on their birth certificates. Sex reassignment surgery, psychological therapies or any other type of diagnosis are no longer required. The law took effect in early 2015. On 13 July 2017, the Michoacán Congress approved (22-1) a gender identity law. Nayarit approved (23-1) a similar law on 20 July 2017.
United States
On 15 June 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that for the purposes of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, discrimination on the basis of transgender status is also discrimination because of sex.
Regardless of the legal sex classification determined by a state or territory, the federal government may make its own determination of sex classification for federally issued documents. For instance, the U.S. Department of State requires a medical certification of "appropriate clinical treatment for transition to the updated gender (male or female)" to amend the gender designation on a U.S. passport, but sex reassignment surgery is not a requirement to obtain a U.S. passport in the updated gender. This leaves transgender Americans subject to inconsistent and often discriminatory regulations when seeking healthcare.
South America
South America has some of the most progressive legislation in the world regarding transgender rights. Bolivia and Ecuador are among the few countries worldwide that offer constitutional protection against discrimination based on gender identity. Transgender persons are allowed to change their name and gender on legal documents in a majority of countries. Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Uruguay allow individuals to change their name and gender without undergoing medical treatment, sterilization or judicial permission. In Peru a judicial order is required.
Argentina
In 2012 the Argentine Congress passed the Ley de Género (Gender Law), which allows individuals over 18 to change the gender marker in their DNI (national ID) on the basis of a written declaration only. Argentina thus became the first country to adopt a gender recognition policy based entirely on individual autonomy, without any requirement for third party diagnosis, surgeries or obstacles of any type.
Bolivia
The Gender Identity law allows individuals over 18 to legally change their name, gender and photography on legal documents. No surgeries or judicial order are required. The law took effect on 1 August 2016.
Brazil
Changing legal gender assignment in Brazil is legal according to the Superior Court of Justice of Brazil, as stated in a decision rendered on 17 October 2009.
And in 2008, Brazil's public health system started providing free sexual reassignment operations in compliance with a court order. Federal prosecutors had argued that sexual reassignment surgery was covered under a constitutional clause guaranteeing medical care as a basic right.
Patients must be at least 18 years old and diagnosed as transsexuals with no other personality disorders, and must undergo psychological evaluation with a multidisciplinary team for at least two years, begins with 16 years old.
The national average is of 100 surgeries per year, according to the Ministry of Health of Brazil.
In December 2020, a bill was introduced that defines biological sex as the only factor in determining gender.
Chile
Chile bans all discrimination and hate crimes based on gender identity and gender expression. The Gender Identity Law, in effect since 2019, recognizes the right to self-perceived gender identity, allowing people over 14 years to change their name and gender on all official documents without prohibitive requirements. Since 1974, the change of gender had been possible in the country through a judicial process.
Colombia
Since 2015, a Colombian person may change their legal gender and name manifesting their solemn will before a notar, no surgeries or judicial order required.
Ecuador
Since 2016, Ecuadorians are allowed to change their birth name and gender identity (instead of the sex assigned at birth) on legal documents and national ID cards. The person who wants to change the word "sex" for "gender" in the identity card shall present two witnesses to accredit the self-determination of the applicant.
Peru
In Peru transgender persons can change their legal gender and name after complying with certain requirements that may become psychological and psychiatric evaluations, a medical intervention or sex reassignment surgery. A judicial permission is required.
In November 2016, the Constitutional Court of Peru determined that transsexuality is not a pathology and recognized the right to gender identity. However, favorable judicial decisions on gender change have been appealed.
Uruguay
Since 2019, transgender people can self-identify their gender and update their legal name, without approval from a judge after the approval of the Comprehensive Law for Trans Persons. The new law creates scholarships for trans people to access education, a monthly pension for transgender people born before 1975 and also requires government services to employ a minimum of 1% of the transgender population. It also now acknowledges the self-identification of non-binary people.
In October 2009, lawmakers passed the Gender identity law allowing transgender people over the age of 18 to change their name and legal gender on all official documents. Surgery, diagnosis or hormone therapy were not a requirement but a judicial permission was required.
Oceania
Australia
Birth certificates are regulated by the states and territories, whereas marriage and passports are matters for federal law. All Australian jurisdictions now recognise the affirmed sex of an individual, with varying requirements. In the landmark case New South Wales Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages v Norrie [2014] the High Court of Australia held that the Births Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 1995 (NSW) did not require a person having undergone genital reassignment surgery to identify as either a man or a woman. The ruling permits a gender registration of "non-specific".
Passports are issued in the preferred gender, without requiring a change to birth certificates or citizenship certificates. A letter is needed from a medical practitioner which certifies that the person has had or is receiving appropriate treatment.
Australia was the only country in the world to require the involvement and approval of the judiciary (Family Court of Australia) with respect to allowing transgender children access to hormone replacement therapy. This ended in late 2017, when the Family Court issued a landmark ruling establishing that, in cases where there is no dispute between a child, their parents, and their treating doctors, hormone treatment can be prescribed without court permission.
Fiji
The Constitution of Fiji which was promulgated in September 2013 includes a provision banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression.
Guam
Gender changes are legal in Guam. In order for transgender people to change their legal gender in Guam, they must provide the Office of Vital Statistics a sworn statement from a physician that they have undergone sex reassignment surgery. The Office will subsequently amend the birth certificate of the requester.
New Zealand
Currently, the Human Rights Act 1993 does not explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender. Whilst it is believed that gender identity is protected under the laws preventing discrimination on the basis of either sex or sexual orientation, it is not known how this applies to those who have not had, or will not have, gender reassignment surgery.
Northern Mariana Islands
Transgender persons in the Northern Mariana Islands may change their legal gender following sex reassignment surgery and a name change. The Vital Statistics Act of 2006, which took effect in March 2007, states that: "Upon receipt of a certified copy of an order of the CNMI Superior Court indicating the sex of an individual born in the CNMI has been changed by surgical procedure and whether such individual's name has been changed, the certificate of birth of such individual shall be amended as prescribed by regulation."
Samoa
In Samoa crimes motivated by sexual orientation and/or gender identity are criminalized under Section 7(1)(h) of the Sentencing Act 2016.
See also
Gender Public Advocacy Coalition—Defunct US advocacy group working to end discrimination and violence caused by gender stereotypes by changing public attitudes, educating elected officials, and expanding human rights
Legal Precedent (2009), Right to change legal names female to male and vice versa for people transgender and intersex by the approval of the 2008 Constitution of Ecor.
Gender diversity
Legal recognition of non-binary gender
LGBT people in prison
LGBT rights by country or territory—including gender identity/expression
List of transgender-related topics
List of transgender-rights organizations
Transgender inequality
Transgender rights movement
Transitioning (transgender)
Yogyakarta Principles
Human rights
References
Notes
Footnotes
Works cited
Chow, Melinda. (2005). "Smith v. City of Salem: Transgendered Jurisprudence and an Expanding Meaning of Sex Discrimination under Title VII". Harvard Journal of Law & Gender. Vol. 28. Winter. 207.
Transgender law
Transgender studies | [
0.36414796113967896,
-0.07989980280399323,
-0.6310266256332397,
0.24830517172813416,
0.17709511518478394,
0.4383481442928314,
0.46430346369743347,
0.26571840047836304,
-0.757036566734314,
-0.13402771949768066,
-0.4098610579967499,
0.21438740193843842,
-0.24098150432109833,
0.00382029660977... |
18331 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligase | Ligase | In biochemistry, a ligase is an enzyme that can catalyze the joining (ligation) of two large molecules by forming a new chemical bond. This is typically via hydrolysis of a small pendant chemical group on one of the larger molecules or the enzyme catalyzing the linking together of two compounds, e.g., enzymes that catalyze joining of C-O, C-S, C-N, etc. In general, a ligase catalyzes the following reaction:
Ab + C → A–C + b
or sometimes
Ab + cD → A–D + b + c + d + e + f
where the lowercase letters can signify the small, dependent groups. Ligase can join two complementary fragments of nucleic acid and repair single stranded breaks that arise in double stranded DNA during replication.
Nomenclature
The common names of ligases often include the word "ligase", such as DNA ligase, an enzyme commonly used in molecular biology laboratories to join together DNA fragments. Other common names for ligases include the word "synthetase", because they are used to synthesize new molecules.
Biochemical nomenclature has sometimes distinguished synthetases from synthases and sometimes treated the words as synonyms. Under one definition, synthases do not use energy from nucleoside triphosphates (such as ATP, GTP, CTP, TTP, and UTP), whereas synthetases do use nucleoside triphosphates. It is also said that a synthase is a lyase (a lyase is an enzyme that catalyzes the breaking of various chemical bonds by means other than hydrolysis and oxidation, often forming a new double bond or a new ring structure) and does not require any energy, whereas a synthetase is a ligase (a ligase is an enzyme that binds two chemicals or compounds) and thus requires energy. However, the Joint Commission on Biochemical Nomenclature (JCBN) dictates that "synthase" can be used with any enzyme that catalyses synthesis (whether or not it uses nucleoside triphosphates), whereas "synthetase" is to be used synonymously.
Classification
Ligases are classified as EC 6 in the EC number classification of enzymes. Ligases can be further classified into six subclasses:
EC 6.1 includes ligases used to form carbon-oxygen bonds
EC 6.2 includes ligases used to form carbon-sulfur bonds
EC 6.3 includes ligases used to form carbon-nitrogen bonds (including argininosuccinate synthetase)
EC 6.4 includes ligases used to form carbon-carbon bonds
EC 6.5 includes ligases used to form phosphoric ester bonds
EC 6.6 includes ligases used to form nitrogen-metal bonds, as in the chelatases
Membrane-associated ligases
Some ligases associate with biological membranes as peripheral membrane proteins or anchored through a single transmembrane helix, for example certain ubiquitin ligase related proteins.
Etymology and pronunciation
The word ligase uses combining forms of lig- (from the Latin verb ligāre, "to bind" or "to tie together") + -ase (denoting an enzyme), yielding "binding enzyme".
See also
DNA ligase
Nuclease
Protease
References
EC 6 Introduction from the Department of Chemistry at Queen Mary, University of London | [
-0.698358416557312,
0.17883536219596863,
0.3698722720146179,
-0.48012956976890564,
-0.21162272989749908,
-0.5628288388252258,
0.025120876729488373,
-0.4982999861240387,
0.14632369577884674,
-0.5085732936859131,
-0.4781385660171509,
0.1007455587387085,
-0.6476302146911621,
0.398746818304061... |
18334 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo%20%28programming%20language%29 | Logo (programming language) | Logo is an educational programming language, designed in 1967 by Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert, and Cynthia Solomon. Logo is not an acronym: the name was coined by Feurzeig while he was at Bolt, Beranek and Newman, and derives from the Greek logos, meaning word or thought.
A general-purpose language, Logo is widely known for its use of turtle graphics, in which commands for movement and drawing produced line or vector graphics, either on screen or with a small robot termed a turtle. The language was conceived to teach concepts of programming related to Lisp and only later to enable what Papert called "body-syntonic reasoning", where students could understand, predict, and reason about the turtle's motion by imagining what they would do if they were the turtle. There are substantial differences among the many dialects of Logo, and the situation is confused by the regular appearance of turtle graphics programs that are named Logo.
Logo is a multi-paradigm adaptation and dialect of Lisp, a functional programming language. There is no standard Logo, but UCBLogo has the best facilities for handling lists, files, I/O, and recursion in scripts, and can be used to teach all computer science concepts, as UC Berkeley lecturer Brian Harvey did in his Computer Science Logo Style trilogy.
Logo is usually an interpreted language, although compiled Logo dialects (such as Lhogho and Liogo) have been developed. Logo is not case-sensitive but retains the case used for formatting purposes.
History
Logo was created in 1967 at Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), a Cambridge, Massachusetts research firm, by Wally Feurzeig, Cynthia Solomon, and Seymour Papert. Its intellectual roots are in artificial intelligence, mathematical logic and developmental psychology. The first four years of Logo research, development and teaching work was done at BBN. The first implementation of Logo, called Ghost, was written in LISP on a PDP-1. The goal was to create a mathematical land where children could play with words and sentences. Modeled on LISP, the design goals of Logo included accessible power and informative error messages. The use of virtual Turtles allowed for immediate visual feedback and debugging of graphic programming.
The first working Logo turtle robot was created in 1969. A display turtle preceded the physical floor turtle. Modern Logo has not changed very much from the basic concepts predating the first turtle. The first turtle was a tethered floor roamer, not radio-controlled or wireless. At BBN Paul Wexelblat developed a turtle named Irving that had touch sensors and could move forwards, backwards, rotate, and ding its bell. The earliest year-long school users of Logo were in 1968–69 at Muzzey Jr. High in Lexington, Massachusetts. The virtual and physical turtles were first used by fifth-graders at the Bridge School in the same city in 1970–71.
Turtle and graphics
Logo's most-known feature is the turtle (derived originally from a robot of the same name), an on-screen "cursor" that showed output from commands for movement and small retractable pen, together producing line graphics. It has traditionally been displayed either as a triangle or a turtle icon (though it can be represented by any icon). Turtle graphics were added to the Logo language by Seymour Papert in the late 1960s to support Papert's version of the turtle robot, a simple robot controlled from the user's workstation that is designed to carry out the drawing functions assigned to it using a small retractable pen set into or attached to the robot's body.
As a practical matter, the use of turtle geometry instead of a more traditional model mimics the actual movement logic of the turtle robot. The turtle moves with commands that are relative to its own position, LEFT 90 means spin left by 90 degrees. Some Logo implementations, particularly those that allow the use of concurrency and multiple turtles, support collision detection and allow the user to redefine the appearance of the turtle cursor, essentially allowing the Logo turtles to function as sprites.
Multiple turtles are supported by MSWLogo, as well as 3D graphics. Input from COM ports and LPT ports are also allowed by MSWLogo through windows GUI. Interrupts can be triggered via keyboard and mouse events. Simple GIF animations may also be produced on MSWLogo version 6.5 with the gifsave command.
Turtle geometry is also sometimes used in environments other than Logo as an alternative to a strictly coordinate-addressed graphics system. For instance, the idea of turtle graphics is also useful in Lindenmayer system for generating fractals.
Implementations
Some modern derivatives of Logo allow thousands of independently moving turtles. There are two popular implementations: Massachusetts Institute of Technology's StarLogo and Northwestern University Center for Connected Learning's (CCL) NetLogo. They allow exploring emergent phenomena and come with many experiments in social studies, biology, physics, and other areas. NetLogo is widely used in agent-based simulation in the biological and social sciences.
Although there is no agreed-upon standard, there is a broad consensus on core aspects of the language. In March 2020, there were counted 308 implementations and dialects of Logo, each with its own strengths. Most of those 308 are no longer in wide use, but many are still under development. Commercial implementations widely used in schools include MicroWorlds Logo and Imagine Logo.
Legacy and current implementations include:
First released in 1980s
Apple Logo for the Apple II Plus and Apple Logo Writer for the Apple IIe, developed by Logo Computer Systems, Inc. (LCSI), were the most broadly used and prevalent early implementations of Logo that peaked in the early to mid-1980s.
Aquarius LOGO was released in 1982 on cartridge by Mattel for the Aquarius home computer.
Atari Logo was released on cartridge by Atari for the Atari 8-bit family.
Color Logo was released in 1983 on cartridge (26-2722) and disk (26-2721) by Tandy for the TRS-80 Color Computer.
Commodore Logo was released, with the subtitle "A Language for Learning", by Commodore Electronics. It was based on MIT Logo and enhanced by Terrapin, Inc. The Commodore 64 version (C64105) was released on diskette in 1983; the Plus/4 version (T263001) was released on cartridge in 1984.
ExperLogo was released in 1985 on floppy by Expertelligence Inc. for the Macintosh 128K.
Hot-Logo was released in the mid-1980s by EPCOM for the MSX 8-bit computers with its own set of commands in Brazilian Portuguese.
TI Logo (for the TI 99/4A computer) was used in primary schools, emphasizing Logo's usefulness in teaching computing fundamentals to novice programmers.
Sprite Logo, also developed by Logo Computer Systems Inc., had ten turtles that could run as independent processes. It ran on Apple II computers, with the aid of a Sprite Card inserted in one of the computer's slots.
IBM marketed their own version of Logo (P/N 6024076), developed jointly by Logo Computer Systems, Inc. (LCSI), for their then-new IBM PC.
ObjectLOGO is a variant of Logo with object-oriented programming extensions and lexical scoping. Version 2.7 was sold by Digitool, Inc. It is no longer being developed or supported, and does not run on versions of the Mac operating system later than version 7.5.
Dr. Logo was developed by Digital Research and distributed in computers including the IBM PCjr, Atari ST and the Amstrad CPC.
Acornsoft Logo was released in 1985. It is a commercial implementation of Logo for the 8-bit BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers. It was developed for Acorn Computers as a full implementation of Logo. It features multiple screen turtles and four-channel sound. It was provided on two 16kB ROMs, with utilities and drivers as accompanying software.
First released 1990s
In February 1990, Electron User published Timothy Grantham's simple implementation of Logo for the Acorn Electron under the article "Talking Turtle".
aUCBLogo a rewrite and enhancement of UCBLogo.
LibreLogo is an extension to some versions of LibreOffice. Released in 2012, it is written in Python. It allows vector graphics to be written in Writer.
Lego Logo is a version of Logo that can manipulate robotic Lego bricks attached to a computer. It was implemented on the Apple II computing platform and was used in American and other grade schools in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Lego Logo is a precursor to Scratch.
UCBLogo, also known as Berkeley Logo, is a free, cross-platform implementation of standard Logo last released in 2009. George Mills at MIT used UCBLogo as the basis for MSWLogo which is more refined and also free. Jim Muller wrote a book, The Great Logo Adventure, which was a complete Logo manual and which used MSWLogo as the demonstration language. MSWLogo has evolved into FMSLogo.
First released from 2000 onwards
Logo3D is a tridimensional version of Logo and can be found at .
POOL is a dialect of Logo with object-oriented extensions, implemented in 2014. POOL programs are compiled and run in the graphical IDE on Microsoft Windows. A simplified, cross-platform environment is available for systems supporting .NET Framework.
QLogo is an open-source and cross-platform rewrite of UCBLogo with nearly full UCB compatibility that uses hardware-accelerated graphics.
Lynx is an online version of Logo developed by Logo Computer Systems Inc. It can run a large number of turtles, supports animation, parallel processes, colour and collision detection.
LogoMor is an open-source online 3D Logo interpreter based on JavaScript and p5.js. It supports 3D drawings, animations, multimedia, 3D models and various tools. It also includes a fully-featured code editor based on CodeMirror
LbyM is an open-source online Logo interpreter based on JavaScript, created and actively developed (as of 2021) for Sonoma State University's Learning by Making program. It features traditional Logo programming, connectivity with a customized microcontroller and integration with a modern code editor.
Influence
Logo was a primary influence on the Smalltalk programming language. It is also the main influence on the Etoys educational programming environment and language, which is essentially a Logo variant written in Squeak (itself a variant of Smalltalk). Logo influenced the procedure/method model in AgentSheets and AgentCubes to program agents similar to the notion of a turtle in Logo. Logo provided the underlying language for Boxer. Boxer was developed at University of California, Berkeley and MIT and is based on a literacy model, making it easier to use for nontechnical people.
KTurtle is a variation of Logo implemented at Qt for the KDE environment loosely based on Logo.
Two more results of Logo's influence are Kojo, a variant of Scala, and Scratch, a visual, drag-and-drop language which runs in a web browser.
See also
AgentCubes
AgentSheets
UCBLogo
MSWLogo
MicroWorlds
StarLogo
NetLogo
LibreLogo, a turtle graphics language lacking full UCB compatibility
References
Further reading
To Artificial Intelligence (1976) Early AI textbook where Logo is used extensively. (Using the Edinburgh University dialect, AI2LOGO)
Turtle Geometry Abelson and diSessa
Children Designers, Idit Harel Caperton, Ablex Publishing Corporation . Available online
Learning With Logo, Daniel Watt, McGraw Hill, . Available Through Amazon
Teaching With Logo: Building Blocks For Learning, Molly Watt and Daniel Watt, Addison Wesley (now Pearson) 1986, Available through Amazon
(Byte magazine special 1982 issue featuring multiple Logo articles).
External links
Further information and examples
XLogo4Schools is a revised version of XLogo
Atari Logo Reference manual Complete guide and reference for Atari's LCSI Logo.
DR Logo at CPCWiki
turtleSpaces is an OpenGL re-implementation and broad extension of Apple (LCSI) Logo II intended for making 3D models, animations and games. It is currently available for Windows, macOS and Linux.
Online interpreters
Logo Interpreter
papert: logo in your browser
Online PHP-based Logo Interpreter
MachineLab TurtleSphere (MaLT) Online LOGO Interprepter with 3D graphics using three.js javascript library.
Vlad Tudor's Free Online Logo Interpreter using HTML5, CSS3 and JQuery
TurtleAcademy (Learn Logo for free)
XLogoOnline uses a subset of the XLogo dialect.
1967 in robotics
Dynamically typed programming languages
Domain-specific programming languages
Educational programming languages
Free educational software
Functional languages
Lisp programming language family
Logo programming language family
Programming languages
Programming languages created in 1967
Robot programming languages | [
0.4889663755893707,
0.31285130977630615,
0.13710549473762512,
-0.0686914324760437,
0.20958715677261353,
0.24840989708900452,
-0.1342761367559433,
-0.08016401529312134,
-0.25819388031959534,
-0.6384597420692444,
-0.19889268279075623,
0.3370458781719208,
-0.5557505488395691,
0.05761311203241... |
18337 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last%20rites | Last rites | In Catholicism, the last rites, also known as the Commendation of the Dying, are the last prayers and ministrations given to an individual of the faith, when possible, shortly before death. They may be administered to those awaiting execution, mortally injured, or terminally ill. Last rites cannot be performed on someone who has already died. Last rites, in sacramental Christianity, can refer to multiple sacraments administered concurrently in anticipation of an individual's passing.
Catholic Church
The Latin Church of the Catholic Church defines Last Rites as Viaticum (Holy Communion administered to someone who is dying), and the ritual prayers of Commendation of the Dying, and Prayers for the Dead.
The sacrament of Anointing of the Sick is usually postponed until someone is near death. Anointing of the Sick has been thought to be exclusively for the dying, though it can be received at any time. Extreme Unction (Final Anointing) is the name given to Anointing of the Sick when received during last rites. If administered to someone who is not just ill but near death, Anointing of the Sick is generally accompanied by celebration of the sacraments of Penance and Viaticum. The order of the three is important and should be given in the order of Penance (confessing one's sins), then Anointing of the Sick, and finally the Viaticum. The principal reason Penance is administered first to the seriously ill and dying is because the forgiveness of one's sins, and most especially one's serious (mortal) sins, is for Catholics necessary for being in a state of grace (not guilty of serious sin and so in a full relationship with God). Dying while in the state of grace ensures that a Catholic will eventually make it to heaven, after going through a spiritual cleansing process called purgatory.
Although these three (Penance, Anointing of the sick, and Viaticum) are not, in the proper sense, the Last Rites, they are sometimes mistakenly spoken of as such.
The Eucharist given as Viaticum is the only sacrament essentially associated with dying: "The celebration of the Eucharist as Viaticum is the sacrament proper to the dying Christian".
In the Roman Ritual's Pastoral Care of the Sick: Rites of Anointing and Viaticum, Viaticum is the only sacrament dealt with in Part II: Pastoral Care of the Dying. Within that part, the chapter on Viaticum is followed by two more chapters, one on Commendation of the Dying, with short texts, mainly from the Bible, a special form of the litany of the saints, and other prayers, and the other on Prayers for the Dead. A final chapter provides Rites for Exceptional Circumstances, namely, the Continuous Rite of Penance, Anointing, and Viaticum, Rite for Emergencies, and Christian Initiation for the Dying. The last of these concerns the administration of the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation to those who have not received them.
In addition, the priest has authority to bestow a blessing in the name of the Pope on the dying person, to which a plenary indulgence is attached.
Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches
In the Eastern Orthodox Church and those Eastern Catholic Churches which follow the Byzantine Rite, the last rites consist of the Sacred Mysteries (sacraments) of Confession and the reception of Holy Communion.
Following these sacraments, when a person dies, there are a series of prayers known as The Office at the Parting of the Soul From the Body. This consists of a blessing by the priest, the usual beginning, and after the Lord's Prayer, Psalm 50. Then a Canon to the Theotokos is chanted, entitled, "On behalf of a man whose soul is departing, and who cannot speak". This is an elongated prayer speaking in the person of the one who is dying, asking for forgiveness of sin, the mercy of God, and the intercession of the saints. The rite is concluded by three prayers said by the priest, the last one being said "at the departure of the soul."
There is an alternative rite known as The Office at the Parting of the Soul from the Body When a Man has Suffered for a Long Time. The outline of this rite is the same as above, except that Psalm 70 and Psalm 143 precede Psalm 50, and the words of the canon and the prayers are different.
The rubric in the Book of Needs (priest's service book) states, "With respect to the Services said at the parting of the soul, we note that if time does not permit to read the whole Canon, then customarily just one of the prayers, found at the end of the Canon, is read by the Priest at the moment of the parting of the soul from the body."
As soon as the person has died the priest begins The Office After the Departure of the Soul From the Body (also known as The First Pannikhida).
In the Orthodox Church Holy Unction is not considered to be solely a part of a person's preparation for death, but is administered to any Orthodox Christian who is ill, physically or spiritually, to ask for God's mercy and forgiveness of sin. There is an abbreviated form of Holy Unction to be performed for a person in imminent danger of death, which does not replace the full rite in other cases.
Lutheran Churches
In the Lutheran Churches, last rites are formally known as the Commendation of the Dying, in which the priest "opens in the name of the triune God, includes a prayer, a reading from one of the psalms, a litany of prayer for the one who is dying, [and] recites the Lord’s Prayer". The dying individual is then anointed with oil and receives the sacraments of Holy Absolution and Holy Communion.
Anglican Communion
The proposed 1928 revision of the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer would have permitted reservation of the Blessed Sacrament for use in communing the sick, including during last rites. This revision failed twice in the Parliament of the United Kingdom's House of Commons.
See also
Anointing
Deathbed confession
Deathbed conversion
Excommunication
References
External links
Extreme Unction article in The Catholic Encyclopedia (1909)
Preparation for Death article in The Catholic Encyclopedia (1909)
Sacramental Catechesis: An Online Resource for Dioceses
Christian worship and liturgy
Christian prayer
Death customs | [
0.2173645794391632,
0.2860851287841797,
0.26968300342559814,
-0.2591305375099182,
0.11142589151859283,
0.42921891808509827,
1.0050965547561646,
0.6140381097793579,
0.11291982233524323,
-0.49994754791259766,
-0.07456675916910172,
0.6251837611198425,
0.38208672404289246,
-0.1329284906387329,... |
18338 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamorna | Lamorna | Lamorna () is a village, valley and cove in west Cornwall, England, UK. It is on the Penwith peninsula approximately south of Penzance. Lamorna became popular with the artists of the Newlyn School, including Alfred Munnings, Laura Knight and Harold Knight, and is also known for former residents Derek and Jean Tangye who farmed land and wrote "The Minack Chronicles".
Toponymy
First recorded as Nansmorno (in 1305), than Nansmurnou (1309), Nansmorne (1319), Nansmornou (1339), Nansmorna (1387) and Namorna (1388). In Cornish Nans means valley, and the 2nd element is possibly mor, which means sea.
Geography
Lamorna Cove is at the SE end of a north-west to south-east valley. The cove is delineated by Carn-du (Black Rock) on the eastern side and Lamorna Point on the western side. The valley is privately owned from The Wink (public house) down to the cove, which is reached by a narrow lane to the car park and quay. The small village, half a mile inland, was originally known as Nantewas. The South West Coast Path passes around the cove.
Lamorna lies within the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB); almost a third of Cornwall has AONB designation, with the same status and protection as a National Park.
History
The first record of tin streaming is in the 1380s when Alan Hoskyn was killed (murder was not proven) during a dispute with Trewoofe, after the stream was diverted. Mounds along the stream are evidence of past activity. Kemyel Mill was operated by the Hoskyn family from at least the 14th century until the 1920s, but is now a gift shop under different ownership. There were two mills: one milled corn for animal feed, and the other flour. Both mills are grade II listed buildings.
In the 17th century a privateer vessel owned by the Penrose family was regularly moored in the cove and was wrecked during a storm. At one time five cannon were on the sea floor in of water, and one is now at Stoney Cove, Leicestershire where it is used at an underwater archaeological training area. A number of silver coins found in 1984 and 1985 include one dated 1653. The wreck is a popular diving site.
A school for fifty to sixty infant boys and girls opened for the first time in the village in March 1881. The schoolroom, with a screen at the eastern end, was paid for by Canon Coulson and built on land on which he owned the freehold. The room converted to a mission room for Anglicans by removing a screen to reveal a chancel; the converted chapel had a capacity of 70–80 for services. Previously children had to go to St Buryan, some 4 km away, for schooling.
The valley is now tree-covered, but until around the 1950s the stream- and hillside were grazed by cows, horses and pigs. On the slopes, daffodils and early potatoes were grown; the flowers were sent to markets at Covent Garden (London), Birmingham and Wales.
Community radio
The local community radio station is Coast FM (formerly Penwith Radio), which broadcasts on 96.5 and 97.2 FM.
Quarries
Waste tips on the eastern side of the cove are a reminder of the granite quarries first opened by John Freeman, on St Aubyn land, in 1849 and continued working until 1911. Famous buildings and constructions include Admiralty Pier at Dover, London County Council offices, the Thames Embankment and Portland Breakwater. Stone from the cove was also used locally to build the Bishop Rock Lighthouse, Mousehole north pier and the Wolf Rock Lighthouse. Granite was dragged by chains to an iron pier, where the stream enters the sea, and transported by ship. A plinth weighing 20 tons was sent to The Great Exhibition of 1851 by sea but eventually, due to the hazards of loading ships, granite was sent by road via Kemyal and Paul Hill through Newlyn, to the cutting yards in Wherrytown. The present quay was built in the late 19th century, possibly rebuilt on an older quay, and is a grade II listed building. A quarry on the west side of the cove failed due to the high quartz content of the granite. An area of and known as the ″Lamorna Harbour Works″ was put up for auction at the Mart, Tokenhouse Yard, City of London on 16 June 1881. The property, on both sides of the valley, included ″the exceedingly valuable″ granite quarry with harbour, wharf and pier, a powder magazine, lime and mill house, carpenter's shops, 12 horse-power water-wheel, foreman's residence and a "substantial and superior" dwelling-house. Despite the 1881 sale claiming the granite quarry was ″exceeding valuable″, Freeman and Sons only employed four men at the quarry two years later and the average-sized blocks were of inferior quality compared with the quarry at nearby Sheffield.
The Lamorna Cove Hotel, built in the 1870s and known as Cliffe House, was originally the quarry manager's home, and had a school and chapel (with bell tower) for the quarry workers and their families. It was first used as a hotel in the 1920s. During the Second World War the hotel was occupied by seven French fishing families who fished out of Newlyn.
Newlyn School of Art and the Lamorna Colony
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Lamorna became popular with artists of the Newlyn School. It is particularly associated with the artist S J "Lamorna" Birch who lived there from 1908. The colony included Birch, Alfred Munnings, Laura Knight and Harold Knight. This period is dramatised in the 1998 novel Summer in February by Jonathan Smith, which was adapted for the 2013 movie directed by Christopher Menaul. Lamorna was also the home of the jeweller Ella Naper and her husband, the painter Charles, who built Trewoofe House. The Lamorna Arts Festival was launched in 2009 to celebrate the original Lamorna Colony and today's Lamorna art community.
Lamorna in culture
Lamorna has been immortalised in the song "Way Down to Lamorna", about a wayward husband receiving his comeuppance from his wife. The song is beloved of many Cornish singers, including Brenda Wootton.
The actor Robert Newton (1905–1956) was educated in Lamorna and his ashes were scattered in the sea off Lamorna by his son, Nicholas Newton.
The authors Derek Tangye and Jean Tangye lived above Lamorna where he wrote his famous books "The Minack Chronicles". A piece of land called "Oliver Land" has been preserved as a wildlife sanctuary in memory of the couple. Lamorna was the village used in the novel The Memory Garden by Rachel Hore (2007) and was a location used for the shooting of Sam Peckinpah's 1971 thriller Straw Dogs. Lamorna Cove was the title of a poem by W. H. Davies published in 1929.
The name of Lamorna's pub, The Wink, alludes to smuggling, "the wink" being a signal that contraband could be obtained. The pub is the subject of a novel by Martha Grimes, entitled The Lamorna Wink. The interior contains an important collection of maritime artefacts.
The Lamorna Pottery was founded in 1947 by Christopher James Ludlow (known as Jimmy) and Derek Wilshaw. It is currently a working pottery, gift shop and café.
Gallery
References
External links
Lamorna.info Community website
The Lamorna Society
Fishing villages
Penwith
Populated coastal places in Cornwall
Quarries in Cornwall
Valleys of Cornwall
Villages in Cornwall | [
-0.18501964211463928,
0.5880479216575623,
-0.09138669073581696,
-1.117409586906433,
0.18243920803070068,
0.6126621961593628,
0.08448244631290436,
-0.11666137725114822,
-0.3987872898578644,
0.3574102520942688,
0.07412151992321014,
0.4728405773639679,
0.22062604129314423,
0.2550901770591736,... |
18339 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law%20of%20multiple%20proportions | Law of multiple proportions | In chemistry, the law of multiple proportions states that if two elements form more than one compound, then the ratios of the masses of the second element which combine with a fixed mass of the first element will always be ratios of small whole numbers. This law is sometimes called Dalton's Law, named after John Dalton, the chemist who first expressed it.
For example, Dalton knew that the element carbon forms two oxides by combining with oxygen in different proportions. A fixed mass of carbon, say 100 grams, may react with 133 grams of oxygen to produce one oxide, or with 266 grams of oxygen to produce the other. The ratio of the masses of oxygen that can react with 100 grams of carbon is 266:133 = 2:1, a ratio of small whole numbers. Dalton interpreted this result in his atomic theory by proposing (correctly in this case) that the two oxides have one and two oxygen atoms respectively for each carbon atom. In modern notation the first is CO (carbon monoxide) and the second is CO2 (carbon dioxide).
John Dalton first expressed this observation in 1804. A few years previously, the French chemist Joseph Proust had proposed the law of definite proportions, which expressed that the elements combined to form compounds in certain well-defined proportions, rather than mixing in just any proportion; and Antoine Lavoisier proved the law of conservation of mass, which helped out Dalton. A careful study of the actual numerical values of these proportions led Dalton to propose his law of multiple proportions. This was an important step toward the atomic theory that he would propose later that year, and it laid the basis for chemical formulas for compounds.
Another example of the law can be seen by comparing ethane (C2H6) with propane (C3H8). The weight of hydrogen which combines with 1 g carbon is 0.252 g in ethane and 0.224 g in propane. The ratio of those weights is 1.125, which can be expressed as the ratio of two small numbers 9:8.
Limitations
The law of multiple proportions is best demonstrated using simple compounds. For example, if one tried to demonstrate it using the hydrocarbons decane (chemical formula C10H22) and undecane (C11H24), one would find that 100 grams of carbon could react with 18.46 grams of hydrogen to produce decane or with 18.31 grams of hydrogen to produce undecane, for a ratio of hydrogen masses of 121:120, which is hardly a ratio of "small" whole numbers.
The law fails with non-stoichiometric compounds and also doesn't work well with polymers and oligomers.
History
The law of multiple proportions was a key proof of the atomic theory, but it is uncertain whether Dalton discovered the law of multiple proportions by accident and then used atomic theory to explain it, or whether his law was a hypothesis he proposed in order to investigate the validity of the atomic theory.
In 1792, Bertrand Pelletier discovered that a certain amount of tin will combine with a certain amount of oxygen to form one tin oxide, or twice the amount of oxygen to form a different oxide. Joseph Proust confirmed Pelletier's discovery and provided measurements of the composition: one tin oxide is 87 parts tin and 13 parts oxygen, and the other is 78.4 parts tin and 21.6 parts oxygen. These were likely tin(II) oxide (SnO) and tin dioxide (SnO2), and their actual compositions are 88.1% tin—11.9% oxygen, and 78.7% tin—21.3% oxygen.
Scholars who have reviewed the writings of Proust found that he had enough data to have discovered the law of multiple proportions himself, but somehow he did not. With regards to the aforementioned tin oxides, had Proust adjusted his figures for a tin content of 100 parts for both oxides, he would have noticed that 100 parts of tin will combine with either 14.9 or 27.6 parts of oxygen. 14.9 and 27.6 form a ratio of 1:1.85, which is 1:2 if one forgives experimental error. It seems this did not occur to Proust, but it occurred to Dalton.
Footnotes
Bibliography
Physical chemistry
Stoichiometry | [
0.37616783380508423,
0.43645963072776794,
-0.3227086067199707,
-0.14493665099143982,
-0.040110647678375244,
0.2364588975906372,
0.2515639364719391,
-0.4783353805541992,
0.017225438728928566,
-0.6635265350341797,
0.06878146529197693,
0.21492788195610046,
-0.4191717505455017,
0.6158040165901... |
18340 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law%20of%20averages | Law of averages | The law of averages is the commonly held belief that a particular outcome or event will, over certain periods of time, occur at a frequency that is similar to its probability. Depending on context or application it can be considered a valid common-sense observation or a misunderstanding of probability. This notion can lead to the gambler's fallacy when one becomes convinced that a particular outcome must come soon simply because it has not occurred recently (e.g. believing that because three consecutive coin flips yielded heads, the next coin flip must be virtually guaranteed to be tails).
As invoked in everyday life, the "law" usually reflects wishful thinking or a poor understanding of statistics rather than any mathematical principle. While there is a real theorem that a random variable will reflect its underlying probability over a very large sample, the law of averages typically assumes that an unnatural short-term "balance" must occur. Typical applications also generally assume no bias in the underlying probability distribution, which is frequently at odds with the empirical evidence.
Examples
Gambler's fallacy
The gambler's fallacy is a particular misapplication of the law of averages in which the gambler believes that a particular outcome is more likely because it has not happened recently, or (conversely) that because a particular outcome has recently occurred, it will be less likely in the immediate future.
As an example, consider a roulette wheel that has landed on red in three consecutive spins. An onlooker might apply the law of averages to conclude that on its next spin it is guaranteed (or at least is much more likely) to land on black. Of course, the wheel has no memory and its probabilities do not change according to past results. So even if the wheel has landed on red in ten or a hundred consecutive spins, the probability that the next spin will be black is still no more than 48.6% (assuming a fair European wheel with only one green zero; it would be exactly 50% if there were no green zero and the wheel were fair, and 47.4% for a fair American wheel with one green "0" and one green "00"). Similarly, there is no statistical basis for the belief that lottery numbers which haven't appeared recently are due to appear soon. (There is some value in choosing lottery numbers that are, in general, less popular than others — not because they are any more or less likely to come up, but because the largest prizes are usually shared among all of the people who chose the winning numbers. The unpopular numbers are just as likely to come up as the popular numbers are, and in the event of a big win, one would likely have to share it with fewer other people. See parimutuel betting.)
On the other hand, in some locales, modern slot machines are rigged so they do give wins a certain proportion of the time — the results are not truly random. This is carefully managed so as to encourage people to keep playing, while the casino takes its designated amount of profit.
Expectation values
Another application of the law of averages is a belief that a sample's behaviour must line up with the expected value based on population statistics. For example, suppose a fair coin is flipped 100 times. Using the law of averages, one might predict that there will be 50 heads and 50 tails. While this is the single most likely outcome, there is only an 8% chance of it occurring according to of the Binomial Distribution. Predictions based on the law of averages are even less useful if the sample does not reflect the population.
Repetition of trials
In this example, one tries to increase the probability of a rare event occurring at least once by carrying out more trials. For example, a job seeker might argue, "If I send my résumé to enough places, the law of averages says that someone will eventually hire me." Assuming a non-zero probability, it is true that conducting more trials increases the overall likelihood of the desired outcome. However, there is no particular number of trials that guarantees that outcome; rather, the probability that it will already have occurred approaches but never quite reaches 100%.
Chicago Cubs
The Steve Goodman song "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request" mentions the Law of Averages in reference to the Chicago Cubs lack of championship success. At the time Goodman recorded the song in 1981, the Cubs had not won a National League championship since 1945, and had not won a World Series since 1908. This futility would continue until the Cubs would finally win both in 2016.
See also
Law of large numbers
Gambler's fallacy
Regression toward the mean
References
Adages
Statistical laws
Probability fallacies | [
0.01749098300933838,
-0.2657850980758667,
0.06342774629592896,
0.4662266969680786,
0.054576579481363297,
0.10501691699028015,
0.1976507306098938,
0.2060869336128235,
-0.09857968986034393,
-0.5755870342254639,
-0.0194384902715683,
0.31779542565345764,
-0.3395713269710541,
0.3674575388431549... |
18341 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline%20of%20linguistics | Outline of linguistics | The following outline is provided as an overview and topical guide to linguistics:
Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Someone who engages in this study is called a linguist. Linguistics can be theoretical or applied.
Branches of linguistics
Subfields of linguistics
Theoretical linguistics - the study of language as an abstract object
Cognitive linguistics - an approach which seeks to ground grammar in general cognition
Generative linguistics - an approach which seeks to ground grammar in a specialized language module
Formalism (linguistics) - the theory of language as a formal system with mathematical-logical rules and a formal grammar
Functional theories of grammar - language as used and coming from use
Quantitative linguistics - the study of quantitative language laws and corresponding general theories
Phonology - the usage of vocalized sounds and systems of sounds to form language
Graphemics - the study of language writing systems
Morphology - the property of sound and meaning change in language
Syntax - the property of grammar that governs sentence structure
Lexis - the complete set of words in a language
Semantics - the study of meaning as encoded in grammar
Formal semantics - the study of semantics through formal logic-based models
Pragmatics - the study of how context contributes to meaning
Descriptive linguistics - describing how a particular language is used
Anthropological linguistics - the place of language in its wider social and cultural context, and its role in making and maintaining cultural practices and societal structures
Historical linguistics - study of historical language change over time
Comparative linguistics - comparing languages to find similarities and historical connections
Phonetics - the study of the speech faculty
Graphetics - the study of writing shapes as assigned to sounds or ideas
Etymology - the study of word histories and origins
Sociolinguistics - the study of society's effects on language
Applied linguistics - finding solutions to real-life problems related to language
Computational linguistics - the use of computation applied to language databasing, analysis, translation, and synthesis
Forensic linguistics - language science applied to the processes of law and justice
Internet linguistics - the study of language usage on the Internet
Language assessment - assessing first or second language faculty in individuals
Language documentation - comprehensive description of the grammar and use practices of languages of a particular group
Language revitalization - is an attempt to halt or reverse the decline of a language or to revive an extinct one
Language education - teaching specific language and language science
Linguistic anthropology - study of how language influences social life
Psycholinguistics - is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language
Language acquisition - the study of how children and adults acquire language knowledge and ability
Language development - the study of early language formation
Second-language acquisition - the study of how a second language is learned
Neurolinguistics - study of language from a neuroscience perspective
Evolutionary linguistics - is a subfield of psycholinguistics that studies the psychosocial and cultural factors involved in the origin of language and the development of linguistic universals
Subfields, by linguistic structures studied
Sub-fields of structure-focused linguistics include:
Phonetics – study of the physical properties of speech (or signed) production and perception
Phonology – study of sounds (or signs) as discrete, abstract elements in the speaker's mind that distinguish meaning
Morphology – study of internal structures of words and how they can be modified
Syntax – study of how words combine to form grammatical sentences
Semantics – study of the meaning of words (lexical semantics) and fixed word combinations (phraseology), and how these compose to form the meanings of sentences
Pragmatics – study of how utterances are used in communicative acts – and the role played by context and nonlinguistic knowledge in the transmission of meaning
Discourse analysis – analysis of language use in texts (spoken, written, or signed)
Linguistic typology – comparative study of the similarities and differences between language structures in the world's languages.
Subfields, by nonlinguistic factors studied
Applied linguistics – study of language-related issues applied in everyday life, notably language policies, planning, and education. (Constructed language fits under Applied linguistics.)
Biolinguistics – study of natural as well as human-taught communication systems in animals, compared to human language.
Clinical linguistics – application of linguistic theory to the field of Speech-Language Pathology.
Computational linguistics – study of linguistic issues in a way that is 'computationally responsible', i.e., taking careful note of computational consideration of algorithmic specification and computational complexity, so that the linguistic theories devised can be shown to exhibit certain desirable computational properties implementations.
Developmental linguistics – study of the development of linguistic ability in individuals, particularly the acquisition of language in childhood.
Evolutionary linguistics – study of the origin and subsequent development of language by the human species.
Historical linguistics – study of language change over time. Also called diachronic linguistics.
Language geography – study of the geographical distribution of languages and linguistic features.
Neurolinguistics – study of the structures in the human brain that underlie grammar and communication.
Psycholinguistics – study of the cognitive processes and representations underlying language use.
Sociolinguistics – study of variation in language and its relationship with social factors.
Stylistics – study of linguistic factors that place a discourse in context.
Other subfields of linguistics
Contrastive linguistics
Corpus linguistics
Dialectology
Discourse analysis
Grammar
Interlinguistics
Language didactics
Language learning
Language teaching
Language for specific purposes
Lexicology
Linguistic statistics
Orthography
Rhetoric
Text linguistics
Schools, movements, and approaches of linguistics
Cognitive linguistics
Danish School
Functionalism
Generative linguistics
Geneva School
Neo-Grammarians
Prague School
Prescription and description
Soviet linguistics
Stratificational linguistics
Structuralism
Systemic linguistics
SIL International
Tagmemics
Related fields
Semiotics – investigates the relationship between signs and what they signify more broadly. From the perspective of semiotics, language can be seen as a sign or symbol, with the world as its representation.
Terminology - is the study of terms and their use.
Terminology science - study of special vocabulary
Philosophy of language - takes a philosophical approach to language. Many formal semanticists are philosophers of language, differing from linguist semanticists only in their metaphysical assumptions (if at all).
Philosophical logic
History of linguistics
History of linguistics
Unsolved problems in linguistics
Timeline of discovery of basic linguistics concepts
When were the basic concepts first described and by whom?
Ancient Sanskrit grammarians
Ancient Greek study of language
Roman elaborations of Greek study
Medieval philosophical work in Latin
Beginnings of modern linguistics in the 19th century
Behaviorism and mental tabula rasa hypothesis
Chomsky and the cognitive revolution
The Linguistics Wars
Compositional formal semantics arises from the work of Richard Montague and Barbara Partee
Alternate syntactic systems develop in 80s
Computational linguistics becomes feasible the late 80s
Neurolinguistics and the biological basis of cognition
Deep learning in the 2010s
Questions in linguistics
What is language?
How did it/does it evolve?
How does language serve as a medium of communication?
How does language serve as a medium of thinking?
What is common to all languages?
How do languages differ?
Basic concepts
What basic concepts / terms do I have to know to talk about linguistics?
Morphology
morpheme, inflection, paradigm, declension, derivation, compound
Phonology
phoneme, allophone, segment, mora, syllable, foot, stress, tone
Grammar
tense, aspect, mood and modality, grammatical number, grammatical gender, case
Syntax
phrase, clause, grammatical function, grammatical voice
Lexicology
word, lexeme, lemma, lexicon, vocabulary, terminology
Semantics
meaning, sense, entailment, truth condition, compositionality
Pragmatics
presupposition, implicature, deixis
Languages of the world
Languages by continent and country
Linguistics scholars
People who had a significant influence on the development of the field
J.L. Austin
Leonard Bloomfield
Franz Bopp
Noam Chomsky
Jean Berko Gleason
Joseph Greenberg
Paul Grice
M.A.K. Halliday
Louis Hjelmslev
Roman Jakobson
Sir William Jones
William Labov
George Lakoff
Ronald Langacker
Richard Montague
Pāṇini
Barbara Partee
Kenneth L. Pike
Rasmus Rask
Edward Sapir
Ferdinand de Saussure
August Schleicher
Lucien Tesnière
Nikolai Trubetzkoy
Benjamin Lee Whorf
Linguistics lists
Languages
Language families and languages
ISO 639
Official languages
Definitions by language
Alphabets & Orthography
Ideograms - Chinese and Japanese
Syllabaries - Korean
Mixed: Ancient Egyptian
Common misspellings
English words without rhymes
Acronym
Wiktionary:Definitions of acronyms and abbreviations
The placement of linguistics within broader frameworks
Linguistics can be described as an academic discipline and, at least in its theoretical subfields, as a field of science, being a widely recognized category of specialized expertise, embodying its own terminology, nomenclature, and scientific journals. Many linguists, such as David Crystal, conceptualize the field as being primarily scientific.
Linguistics is a multi-disciplinary field of research that combines tools from natural sciences, social sciences, formal sciences, and the humanities.
Historically, there has been some lack of consensus on the disciplinary classification of linguistics, particularly theoretical linguistics. Linguistic realists viewed linguistics as a formal science; linguistic nominalists (the American structuralists) viewed linguistics as an empirical or even physical science; linguistic conceptualists viewed linguistics as a branch of psychology and therefore a social science; others yet have argued for viewing linguistics as a mixed science.
Linguistics is heterogeneous in its methods of research, so that each area of theoretical linguistics may resemble methodologically either formal science or empirical science, to different degrees. For example, phonetics uses empirical approaches to study the physical acoustics of spoken language. On the other hand, semantically and grammatically, the usability of a formal or natural language is dependent on a formal and arbitrary axiomatization of rules or norms. Furthermore, as studied in pragmatics and semiotics, linguistic meaning is influenced by social context.
To enable communication by upholding a lexico-semantic norm, the speakers of a shared language need to agree on the meaning of a sequence of phonemes; for instance, "aunt" (/æ/, /n/, /t/) would be acknowledged to signify "parent's sister or parent's sister-in-law", instead of "drummer" or "guest". Likewise, grammatically, it may be necessary for the interlocutors to agree on the morphological and syntactic properties of the sequence; say, that the sequence (/æ/ , /n/, /t/) would be treated as a singular noun convertible morphologically to plurality by the addition of the suffix -s, or that as a noun it must not be modified syntactically by an adverb (for instance, "Let's call our immediately aunt" would thus be recognized as a grammatically incoherent structure, in a manner similar to a mathematically undefined expression).
See also
Number of words in English
Lexicography
References
External links
Glottopedia, MediaWiki-based encyclopedia of linguistics, under construction
Subfields according to the Linguistic Society of America
Glossary of linguistic terms and French<->English glossary at SIL International
"Linguistics" section of A Bibliography of Literary Theory, Criticism and Philology, ed. J. A. García Landa (University of Zaragoza, Spain)
Linguistics and language-related wiki articles on Scholarpedia and Citizendium
Applied linguistics
Wikipedia missing topics
Linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics | [
0.23973631858825684,
0.6269963383674622,
-0.8305879235267639,
-0.5374271869659424,
-0.24943529069423676,
0.3301408290863037,
0.641015887260437,
0.604753851890564,
-0.12301474064588547,
-0.8487682938575745,
-0.4424172639846802,
0.5937089323997498,
-0.031138835474848747,
-0.23753546178340912... |
18342 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline%20of%20law | Outline of law | The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to law:
Law (article link) is the set of rules and principles (laws) by which a society is governed, through enforcement by governmental authorities. Law is also the field that concerns the creation and administration of laws, and includes any and all legal systems.
Nature of law
Law can be described as all of the following:
Academic discipline – the body of knowledge given to - or received by - a disciple (student); a branch or sphere of knowledge, or field of study, that an individual has chosen to specialise in.
one of the humanities – an academic discipline that studies the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences.
System – set of elements (often called 'components' instead) and relationships which are different from relationships of the set or its elements to other elements or sets.
part of the legal system – legal scholarship and practice shapes how the law is interpreted and applied in societies
Legal systems
List of national legal systems
Common law
Civil law (legal system)
Religious law
Bahá'í laws
Biblical law, in Judaism and Christianity
Canon law, in Christianity
Canon (canon law) - a certain rule or norm of conduct or belief prescribed by the Church. The word "canon" comes from the Greek kanon, which in its original usage denoted a straight rod that was later the instrument used by architects and artificers as a measuring stick for making straight lines.
Canons of the Apostles
Canon law of the Anglican Communion
Canon law of the Church of England
Canon law of the Episcopal Church in the United States
Canon law of the Catholic Church
Custom (Catholic canon law) - the repeated and constant performance of certain acts for a defined period of time, which, with the approval of the competent legislator, thereby acquire the force of law. A custom is an unwritten law introduced by the continuous acts of the faithful with the consent of the legitimate legislator.
Decree (Catholic canon law) - an order or law made by a superior authority for the direction of others.
Dispensation (Catholic canon law) - the exemption from the immediate obligation of law in certain cases. Its object is to modify the hardship often arising from the rigorous application of general laws to particular cases, and its essence is to preserve the law by suspending its operation in such cases.
Interpretation (Catholic canon law) - canonists provide and obey rules for the interpretation and acceptation of words, in order that legislation is correctly understood and the extent of its obligation is determined.
Obrogation - the enacting of a contrary law that is a revocation of a previous law. It may also be the partial cancellation or amendment of a law, decree, or legal regulation by the imposition of a newer one.
Promulgation (Catholic canon law) - the publication of a law by which it is made known publicly, and is required by canon law for the law to obtain legal effect.
Halakha, in Judaism
Hindu law
Jain law
Pāṭimokkha, in Theravada Buddhism
Sharia, in Islam
Traditional Chinese law
Law by source
Sources of law
Canon (canon law)
Custom (customary law)
Custom (Catholic canon law)
Precedent of past judicial decisions (stare decisis)
Statutory law
Statute
Black letter law
Constitutional law
Constitution
Constitutional court
Sources of international law
Customary international law
Treaty
Juristic writings (such as legal treatises)
Branches of law
Public law
Public law
Constitutional law
Tax law
Administrative law
Administrative law
Code of Federal Regulations
Criminal law
Criminal law (penal law)
Criminal procedure
Substantive law and adjectival law
Substantive law
Procedural law
Law of persons
Person (Catholic canon law)
Civil law
Civil law (common law)
Civil procedure
Civil rights
Common law
Environmental law
Family law
Laws by jurisdictional scope
International law
Public international law
Conflict of laws (Private international law)
Dualism (law)
Legal pluralism
Supranational law
Law of the European Union
Treaties of the European Union
Regulation (European Union)
Directive (European Union)
European Union decision
European Union legislative procedure
Municipal law
Federal law (National law)
State law
Local ordinance
History
History of law
Cuneiform law
Babylonian law
Ancient Greek law
Roman law
Early Germanic law
Legal history of the Catholic ChurchJus antiquumBasic legal conceptsIgnorantia juris non excusatPresumption of innocence
Presumption (canon law)
Treason
Rights (Outline)
Rule of law
People who have influenced law
Canon law
Aquinas, St. Thomas (wrote influential Treatise on Law)
Benedict XIV, Pope
Gratian ("Father of Canon Law", founder of canon law jurisprudence; canon law as legal system)
Hostiensis (most influential decretist)
Gregory IX, Pope (promulgated the Decretales Gregorii IX)
Gasparri, Pietro (codified the 1917 Code of Canon Law)
John Paul II, Pope (promulgated the 1983 Code of Canon Law and the 1990 Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches)
Penyafort, Raymond of (patron of canon lawyers, codified Decretales Gregorii IX'')
Photios I of Constantinople (writer of a nomocanon)
Civil law
Napoleon
Justinian
Common law
Blackstone, Sir William
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Other legal systems
Hammurabi
Moses
Muhammad
Lists
Sources of law
Lists of legislation
Lists of case law
List of treaties
Legislatures
List of legislatures by country
Courts
List of constitutional courts
List of special tribunals and courts
List of courts in England and Wales
List of High Courts of India
Prisons
List of prisons
List of United Kingdom prisons
United States
List of U.S. federal prisons
List of U.S. state prisons
List of U.S. military prisons
International law
Environmental agreements
List of international public law topics
List of international trade topics
List of international declarations
Judges
List of judges of the High Court of Australia
List of chief justices of the Supreme Court of Canada
List of justices of the Supreme Court of the United States
List of justices of the Supreme Court of the United States by court composition
List of justices of the Supreme Court of the United States by seat
List of Lords of Appeal in Ordinary
List of Senators of the College of Justice
Privy council members
Historical lists of Privy Counsellors
List of current members of the British Privy Council
List of current members of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada
List of members of the Privy Council of Northern Ireland
List of members of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada
Caselaw
List of copyright case law
List of Judicial Committee of the Privy Council cases
List of United Kingdom House of Lords cases
List of notable United Kingdom House of Lords cases
List of Supreme Court of Canada cases
List of United States Supreme Court cases
Legislation
List of Uniform Acts (United States)
List of United States federal legislation
Other
List of business law topics
Outline of criminal justice
List of topics in logic
List of environmental law journals
List of legal abbreviations
List of Ayatollahs
List of individuals executed by the federal government of the United States
List of law journals
List of jurists
List of Latin phrases
List of Latin legal terms
List of largest law firms by revenue
Lists of law schools
List of national legal systems
List of protective service agencies
List of real estate topics
List of riots
List of software patents
List of top United States patent recipients
External links
Legal news and information network for attorneys and other legal professionals
Encyclopaedic project of the academic initiative in JurisPedia
Legal articles, news, and interactive maps
WorldLII – World Legal Information Institute
CommonLII – Commonwealth Legal Information Institute
AsianLII – Asian Legal Information Institute
AustLII – Australasian Legal Information Institute
BAILII – British and Irish Legal Information Institute
CanLII – Canadian Legal Information Institute
NZLII – New Zealand Legal Information Institute
PacLII – Pacific Islands Legal Information Institute
Notes
law
law | [
0.8157989978790283,
0.4647924304008484,
-0.15870274603366852,
-0.15876951813697815,
0.11506986618041992,
0.13436472415924072,
0.4729011654853821,
-0.17144647240638733,
-0.0976179912686348,
-0.9383878111839294,
-0.47355303168296814,
0.5819816589355469,
-0.30683714151382446,
-0.1724820286035... |
18345 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline%20of%20literature | Outline of literature | The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to literature (prose, written or oral, including fiction and non-fiction, drama, and poetry). See also the Outline of poetry.
What type of thing is literature?
Literature can be described as all of the following:
Communication – activity of conveying information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast distances in time and space.
Written communication (writing) – representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols (known as a writing system).
Subdivision of culture – shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization, or group.
One of the arts – imaginative, creative, or nonscientific branch of knowledge, especially as studied academically.
Essence of literature
Composition –
World literature –
Forms of literature
Oral literary genres
Oral literature
Oral poetry –
Epic poetry –
Legend –
Mythology –
Ballad –
Folktale –
Oral Narrative –
Oral History –
Urban legend –
Written literary genres
Cordel Literature
Children's literature –
Constrained writing –
Erotic literature –
Poetry (see that article for an extensive list of subgenres and types)
Aubade –
Clerihew –
Epic –
Grook – form of short aphoristic poem invented by the Danish poet and scientist Piet Hein, who wrote over 7,000 of them.
Haiku – form of short Japanese poetry consisting of three lines.
Tanka – classical Japanese poetry of five lines.
Lied –
Limerick – a kind of a witty, humorous, or nonsense poem, especially one in five-line or meter with a strict rhyme scheme (aabba), which is sometimes obscene with humorous intent.
Lyric –
Ode –
Rhapsody –
Song –
Sonnet –
Speculative poetry –
Prison literature –
Rhymed prose –
Saj'
Maqama
Fu (literature)
Rayok
Non-fiction
Non-fiction
Autobiography –
Biography –
Diaries and Journals –
Essay –
Literary criticism –
Memoir –
Outdoor literature –
Self-Help –
Spiritual autobiography –
Travel literature –
Fiction genres
Fiction
Manga –
Adventure novel –
Airport novels –
Comedy –
Parody –
Satire –
Crime fiction –
Detective fiction –
Hardboiled –
Whodunit –
Newgate novel –
Erotica –
Fable –
Fairy tale –
Family saga –
Frame story –
Gothic –
Southern Gothic –
Historical fiction –
Inspirational fiction –
Invasion literature –
Mystery –
Philosophical literature –
Inspirational fiction (religious literature) –
Psychological fiction –
Psychological thriller –
Romance (heroic literature) –
Romance –
Historical romance –
Regency romance –
Inspirational romance –
Paranormal romance –
Saga –
Speculative fiction –
Alternate history –
Fantasy – (for more details see Fantasy subgenres, fantasy literature)
Epic fantasy –
Science fantasy –
Steampunk –
Urban fantasy –
Weird fantasy –
Horror –
Lovecraftian horror –
Weird menace –
Science fiction – (for more details see Science fiction genres and related topics
Cyberpunk –
Hard science fiction –
Space opera –
Supernatural fiction –
Sensation novel –
Slave narrative –
Thriller –
Conspiracy fiction –
Legal thriller –
Spy fiction/Political thriller –
Techno-thriller –
Western fiction –
Literature by region and country
Asia
East Asian literature
Chinese literature
Japanese literature
Korean literature
Mongolian literature
Taiwanese literature
South Asian literature
Bangladeshi literature
Bhutanese literature
Indian literature
Assamese literature
Bengali literature
Bhojpuri language#Bhojpuri literature
Indian English literature
Gujarati literature
Hindi literature
Kannada literature
Kashmiri literature
Konkani literature
Malayalam literature
Maithili literature
Meitei literature
Marathi literature
Mizo literature
Nepali literature
Odia literature
Punjabi literature
Rajasthani literature
Sanskrit literature
Sindhi literature
Tamil literature
Telugu literature
Urdu literature
Maldivian literature
Nepalese literature
Pakistani literature
Sri Lankan literature
Southeast Asian literature
Brunei literature
Burmese literature
Cambodian literature
Indonesian literature
Laotian literature
Malaysian literature
Philippine literature
Singaporean literature
Thai literature
Timoran literature
Vietnamese literature
Central Asian literature
Kazakh literature
Kyrgyz literature
Tajik literature
Turkmen literature
Uzbek literature
Europe
Albanian literature
Andorran literature
Armenian literature
Austrian literature
Azerbaijani literature
Belarusian literature
Belgian literature
Flemish literature
Bosnian literature
Bulgarian literature
British literature
Cornish literature
English literature
Manx literature
Jèrriais literature
Scottish literature
Scots-language literature
Scottish Gaelic literature
Ulster literature
Welsh literature in English
Welsh-language literature
Croatian literature
Cypriot literature
Turkish Cypriot literature
Czech literature
Danish literature
Faroese literature
Greenlandic literature
Dutch literature
Frisian literature
Esperanto literature
Estonian literature
Finnish literature
Åland literature
French literature - also Francophone literature
Breton literature
Occitan literature
Georgian literature
Abkhaz literature
Chechen literature
Ossetian literature
German literature
Greek literature
Hungarian literature
Icelandic literature
Irish literature
Gaelic literature
Literature of Northern Ireland
Italian literature
Friulian literature
Sardinian literature
Venetian literature
Western Lombard literature
Kazakh literature
Kosovar literature
Latvian literature
Liechtensteiner literature
Lithuanian literature
Luxembourg literature
Macedonian literature
Maltese literature
Moldovan literature
Monégasque literature
Montenegrin literature
Norwegian literature
Polish literature
Portuguese literature
Romanian literature
Russian literature
Sammarinese literature
Serbian literature
Slovak literature
Slovene literature
Spanish literature
Aragonese literature
Asturian literature
Basque literature
Catalan literature
Galician-language literature
Swedish literature
Swiss literature
Turkish literature
Ukrainian literature
Yiddish literature
Middle East and North Africa
Afghan literature
Algerian literature
Arabic literature
Bahraini literature
Egyptian literature
Ethiopian literature
Emirati literature
Iranian literature
Iraqi literature
Israeli literature
Jordanian literature
Kuwaiti literature
Kurdish literature
Lebanese literature
Libyan literature
Moroccan literature
Oman literature
Pakistani literature
Palestinian literature
Persian literature
Qatari literature
Saudi literature
Syrian literature
Tunisian literature
Turkish literature
Yemeni literature
North and South America
North American literature
American literature
African American literature
Native American literature
Southern literature
Deaf American literature
Canadian literature
Quebec literature
Mexican literature
Caribbean literature
Cuban literature
Dominican Republic literature
Guadeloupean Literature
Haitian literature
Jamaican literature
Martinican Literature
Puerto Rican literature
Barthélemois literature
Trinidad and Tobago literature
Central American literature
Costa Rican literature
Salvadoran literature
Guatemalan literature
Honduran literature
Nicaraguan literature
Panamanian literature
South American literature
Argentine literature
Bolivian literature
Brazilian literature
Chilean literature
Colombian literature
Ecuadorean literature
Guyanese literature
Paraguayan literature
Peruvian literature
Uruguayan literature
Venezuelan literature
Oceania
Oceanian literature
Australian literature
Fijian literature
Kiribati literature
Marshall Islands literature
Micronesian literature
Nauran literature
New Zealand literature
Papua New Guinean literature
Palau literature
Samoan literature
Solomon Islands literature
Tongan literature
Tuvalan literature
Vanuatu literature
Sub-saharan Africa
East African literature
Burundian literature
Comorian literature
Djibouti literature
Eritrean literature
Kenyan literature
Madagascar literature
Malawian literature
Mauritian literature
Mozambique literature
Réunion literature
Rwandan literature
Seychelles literature
Somalian literature
Somaliland literature
South Sudanese literature
Sudanese literature
Tanzanian literature
Ugandan literature
Zambian literature
Zimbabwean literature
Central African literature
Angolan literature
Cameroon literature
Literature of Central African Republic
Chadian literature
Congolese literature
Equatorial Guinea literature
Gabon literature
São Tomé and Príncipe literature
Southern African literature
Botswanan literature
Swazi literature
Lesotho literature
Namibian literature
South African literature
Afrikaans literature
West African literature
Beninese literature
Burkina Faso literature
Literature of Cape Verde
Gambian literature
Ghanan literature
Guinean literature
Guinea-Bissau literature
Ivory Coast literature
Liberian literature
Malian literature
Mauritanian literature
Literature of Niger
Nigerian literature
Yoruba literature
Senegalese literature
Sierra Leone literature
Togo literature
History of literature
History of literature
History of the book
History of theater
History of science fiction
History of ideas
Intellectual history
Literature by written language
Bronze Age literature
Sumerian
Ancient Egyptian
Akkadian
Classical literature
Avestan
Chinese
Greek
Hebrew
Latin
Pali
Prakrit
Sanskrit
Syriac
Sangam literature
Middle Persian literature
Medieval literature
Medieval Dutch literature
Medieval French literature
Byzantine literature
Medieval Bulgarian literature
Old English literature
Middle English literature
Medieval German literature
Old Irish literature
Old Norse literature
Georgian literature
Catalan literature
Medieval Welsh literature
Renaissance literature
Early Modern literature
Baroque
English literature
French literature
German literature
Italian literature
Spanish literature
Bengali literature
Hindi literature
Kannada literature
Newari literature
Telugu literature
Chinese literature
Japanese literature
Korean literature
Arabic literature
Persian literature
Armenian literature
Turkish literature
Literature by century
Ancient literature - until the 6th century CE
Early medieval literature - 6th through 9th centuries
10th century in literature
11th century in literature
12th century in literature
13th century in literature
14th century in literature
15th century in literature
16th century in literature
17th century in literature
18th century in literature
19th century in literature
20th century in literature
21st century in literature
Literature by year
List of years in literature
Table of years in literature
General literature concepts
Book
Western canon –
Teaching of writing:
Composition –
Rhetoric –
Poetry –
Prosody –
Meter –
Scansion –
Constrained writing –
Poetics –
Villanelle –
Sonnet –
Sestina –
Ghazal –
Ballad –
Blank verse –
Free verse –
Epic poetry –
Prose –
Fiction –
Non-fiction –
Biography –
Prose genres –
Essay –
Flash prose –
Journalism –
Novel –
Novella –
Short story –
Theater –
History of theater –
Rhetoric –
Metaphor –
Metonymy –
Symbol –
Allegory –
Basic procedural knowledge
Poetry analysis –
effective reasoning in argument writing
Narratology
False document –
Frame tale –
Anecdote –
In Medias Res –
Point of view –
Literary criticism – an application of literary theory
Marxist literary criticism –
Semiotic literary interpretation –
Psychoanalytic literary interpretation –
Feminist literary interpretation –
New historicism –
Queer literary interpretation –
Literary awards
List of literary awards
List of poetry awards
Persons influential in the field of literature
List of authors
:Category:Literary critics
List of writers
List of women writers
Literature creation
Author
Publisher
Editor
Copy editor
Literature distribution
Publishing
Library
Bookselling
Magazine
See also
Index of literature articles
Lists of books
English studies
List of poems
List of poetry collections
References
External links
The Internet Public Library listing for Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Wikipedia missing topics
Literature
Literature | [
0.31085360050201416,
0.44836652278900146,
-0.36167582869529724,
-0.30652451515197754,
-0.15782701969146729,
0.182927668094635,
0.28937506675720215,
0.6185840964317322,
-0.3108704388141632,
-0.8583378791809082,
-0.3748730421066284,
0.08777669817209244,
-0.5013566613197327,
-0.02818161435425... |
18352 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AvtoVAZ | AvtoVAZ | AvtoVAZ () is a Russian automobile manufacturing company founded in 1966. It was formerly named as VAZ (), an acronym for Volga Automotive Plant in Russian (). AvtoVAZ is best known for its flagship series of Lada vehicles. In the Soviet Union, its products used various names, including Zhiguli, Oka, and Sputnik, which were phased out in the 1990s and replaced by Lada for the Russian market. From December 2019 to August 2020, AvtoVAZ sold Niva cars with Chevrolet branding.
The company is owned by Lada Auto Holding, in which French Groupe Renault holds a controlling 67.61% stake. AvtoVAZ is a consolidated subsidiary of Groupe Renault. AvtoVAZ produces and also exports over 400,000 cars a year, under its Lada brand as well as Renault-branded cars. From January 2021 onwards, AvtoVAZ is part of Renault's Lada and Dacia business unit structure.
The AvtoVAZ factory is the largest car manufacturer in Russia and second largest after Škoda in Eastern Europe.
History
Establishment
The company was established in 1966 in cooperation with Fiat, with Viktor Polyakov (later Minister of Automobile Industry) as director, and Vladimir Solovyov as chief designer, and intended to produce popular economy cars that would meet the growing demand for personal transport. It was set up as a collaboration between Italy and the Soviet Union and built on the banks of the Volga River in 1966. A new town, Tolyatti, named after Italian Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti, was built around the factory. The cost of the VAZ plant was estimated at $800 million in 1970 (equivalent to $ billion in ). The plant contained many of the automation systems being developed by Fiat's various subsidiaries (which were eventually amalgamated as Comau), so the Togliatti factory acted as a trial before Fiat implemented them in its plants in Italy.
The car brand to be produced ("Zhiguli") was envisaged as a "people's car" like the Citroën 2CV or the VW Type 1. Production was intended to be 220,000 cars a year, beginning in 1971 (other sources listed 300,000 in 1971); car production actually began before the plant was finished in 1970. The VAZ trademark, at first, was a silver Volga boat on a red pentagonal background, with "Togliatti" superimposed in Cyrillic (Тольятти); the first badges, manufactured in Turin, mistakenly had the Cyrillic "Я" rendered "R", instead (Тольʀтти), making them collector's items.
The company was not as vertically integrated as other Soviet enterprises; for example, it purchased components from a variety of suppliers over which it exerted little control; in the early years of the company certain parts and subassemblies were imported from Fiat's suppliers in Italy until they could be locally sourced. Unlike Western automakers, though, a large proportion of the components for the cars were made entirely in-house; for example, the Togliatti works contained its own foundry for manufacturing steel from raw iron ore, and even made its own tyres and glass from raw materials.
1970s
The first VAZ-2101 was produced on 22 April 1970, the 100th anniversary of Lenin's birth. About 22,000 VAZ-2101s were built in 1970, with capacity at the end of 1973 reaching 660,000 a year; 21 December, the one-millionth 2101 was built. A third production line was added in October 1974, boosting output to 2,230 cars a day. The same year, total VAZ production reached 1.5 million.
The VAZ plant was described as "ultra-modern" by the Chicago Tribune in a 1973 article. Production reached 750,000 cars a year in 1975, making the Tolyatti plant the third-most productive in the world. Between 1977 and 1981, AvtoVAZ acquired 30 welding robots from Japanese firms.
The original, Fiat-based models included the VAZ-2101 sedan and the VAZ-2102 estate. A deluxe version of the sedan, VAZ-2103, which was based on the Fiat 124 Special and featured a new 1.5 L engine and twin headlights, was introduced in 1972. In 1974, the original VAZ-2101 was updated with new engines and interiors, whereas the VAZ-2102 underwent the same improvements in 1976. The body style with two round headlights was manufactured until 1988.
The VAZ-2106, introduced in December 1975 as an updated version of the VAZ-2103, was based on the 1972 Fiat 124 Special T, featuring different interiors and new 1.6-L engine. The 2106 was one of the most popular rear-wheel drive AvtoVAZ models in the past; its production ended in 2001 from Tolyatti, but continued at Izhavto (Izhevsk), ending there in December 2005.
In 1974, VAZ was given permission to begin producing Wankel engines under licence from NSU. Work began in 1976, with a single-rotor Lada appearing in 1978; the first 250 of these went on sale in the summer of 1980.
After having built a number of prototypes and experimental vehicles, AvtoVAZ designers launched the first car entirely of their own design, the VAZ-2121 Niva, in 1977. This highly popular and innovative sport utility vehicle (SUV) was made with off-road use in mind, featuring a gearbox with a central differential lock lever, as well as a low- and high-range selector lever.
The VAZ-2105, based on the Fiat 124 mechanicals, but modernised and restyled, was introduced in 1979 and marketed outside the Soviet Union under the Riva or Laika trade names, depending on the country. Square headlights and new body panels distinguish this car from the earlier models. The 2105 was third-best selling automobile platform after the Volkswagen Beetle and the Ford Model T, and one of the longest production run platforms alongside the Volkswagen Beetle, the Hindustan Ambassador, and the Volkswagen Type 2.
1980s
In May 1980, a series of mass strikes at the Togliatti plant involving hundreds of thousands of workers was reported by the western press. In 1982, the VAZ-2107, a deluxe version of the 2105, was introduced; it featured a better engine, refined interiors, and a chrome radiator grille. In 1984, the VAZ-2104 station wagon completed the line-up.
Based on the success of the Niva, the design department prepared a new family of front-wheel drive models by 1984, which was of a completely domestic design. Production started with the VAZ-2108 Sputnik three-door hatchback, the series was commercially known as Samara. It was the first front-wheel drive serial car built in the Soviet Union after the LuAZ-
969V. The Samara engine was mostly designed and produced in-house, had a new single overhead camshaft (SOHC) design, and was driven by a more modern rubber belt. The five-door VAZ-2109 hatchback followed in 1987, and the four-door 1.5-L sedan, the VAZ-21099, was introduced in 1990. The same year, the front sides and radiator grille were restyled on the whole Samara range.
A white 2108 became the nine-millionth Lada built, on 24 May 1985, with the ten-millionth, on 9 October 1986, also a 2108. The twelve-millionth, a right-hand drive 2109, was produced 6 July 1989. The VAZ-1111 Oka microcar was introduced in 1988, and in 1991, its production was transferred to the KamAZ and SeAZ factories.
By the late 1980s, AvtoVAZ was suffering from the deterioration of its capital goods, such as tools and machinery, resulting from insufficient levels of investment over a long period. Unproductive and antiquated management techniques also contributed to the decline, as did the absence of market competition. The first privately owned AvtoVAZ dealership was established by Boris Berezovsky in 1989. Dealerships quickly turned into criminal rackets that at times simply stole cars from the factory.
After privatization
In June 1991, Bear Stearns was hired by the Soviet government to conduct an appraisal of AvtoVAZ and negotiate a venture with a Western partner, in preparation for the privatization of the company. An independent trade union was started during the same year, as workers deemed the traditional trade union to be too close to the interests of management.
In January 1993, AvtoVaz was re-established as a joint-stock company under Russian law. The company came to be controlled by the management, including Vladimir Kadannikov, head of AvtoVAZ. It was listed on the Moscow Stock Exchange. As with many other privatized post-Soviet companies, the financial situation at AvtoVAZ was dire, with workers being unpaid for months at a time.
In 1994, Boris Berezovsky's dealership company, called Logovaz, accounted for nearly 10% of the domestic sales of AvtoVAZ. Despite the state of the Russian economy at the time, demand for AvtoVAZ cars remained buoyant, but widespread corruption in the distribution network led the company to accumulate massive debts.
The 110-series sedan was introduced in 1995, two years after its original 1993 deadline. Development costs for the car were estimated at $2 billion. The 2111 station wagon followed in 1998 and the 2112 hatchback completed the range in 2001. A five-door version of the Niva, the VAZ-2131, was introduced in 1995.
By 1995, car sales, distribution, and spare parts at AvtoVAZ were all controlled by criminal organizations. This situation was made possible by the close relationship that existed between the criminals and part of the management. Additionally, gangsters were used to control the workers and break strikes.
By late 1996, AvtoVAZ had become the country's largest tax debtor, owing $2.4 billion in unpaid taxes. In 1997, the Ministry of Internal Affairs launched Operation Cyclone, an investigation that ultimately uncovered evidence that gangsters connected to AvtoVAZ had carried out at least 65 murders of company managers, dealers, and business rivals.
The 1998 Russian financial crisis improved the company's market position, by improving the effectiveness of export sales and making imported cars too expensive for most Russians. The VAZ-2120 Nadezhda, a minivan based on the Lada Niva, was introduced in 1998. In the second half of the 1990s, some efforts were made to improve the quality of production, but in 1999, nearly 50,000 cases of cars were still being assembled with missing parts.
In 2001, GM-AvtoVAZ, a joint venture with General Motors, was established. Increased competition from foreign car manufacturers had the company's share of the Russian market fall to 49% in 2002, compared to 56% four years earlier. In 2003, VAZ presented the concept car Lada Revolution, an open single-seater sports car powered by a 1.6-L engine producing . Production of the Wankel engine used on some Lada models (mostly the police versions) stopped in 2004.
The introduction of the new Kalina B-segment lineup to the market occurred in 2005. AutoVAZ has built a new modern plant for this model and is hoping to sell some 200,000 cars annually. The Kalina had been originally designed in the early 1990s, and its launch was repeatedly delayed, exemplifying the company's difficulty in bringing products to market in time. In October 2005, control of the company, which had until then been exercised by subsidiaries of AvtoVAZ connected to Kadannikov, was transferred to Rosoboronexport. March 2007 had the start of production of Lada Priora, a restyled and modernised 110-series model.
Involvement of Renault-Nissan
In March 2008, Renault purchased a 25% stake in AvtoVAZ in a US$1 billion deal, with Rostec retaining the remaining 75%. The deal was agreed at a time when the Russian car market was booming.
The onset of the Great Recession caused considerable problems to the company. By April 2009, AvtoVAZ was on the verge of bankruptcy, which was only avoided because of a $600 million bailout from the Russian government. As an anticrisis measure, the Russian government introduced a car scrappage scheme in March 2010. Avtovaz sales doubled in the second quarter of 2010 as a result, and the company returned to profit. By the end of 2010, automotive production in Russia had returned to precrisis levels.
In 2011, production of the classic Fiat 124-based 2105 and 2107 series models was completely moved from the Togliatti plant to the IzhAvto plant near Izhevsk, to make space for the company's forthcoming 2016 model. In April 2012, AvtoVAZ confirmed the end of the model 2107 (Lada Riva or Lada Nova), after more than 40 years.
Sales of the Lada Granta, a subcompact car developed in collaboration with Renault, started in December 2011. The Lada Largus was launched in the Russian market in the middle of July 2012. In August 2012, the Lada XRAY concept car was launched at the Moscow International Automobile Salon. The XRAY was designed by chief designer Steve Mattin, formerly of Volvo and Mercedes-Benz. The second generation of the Lada Kalina, basically a facelifted first generation, was also revealed at the 2012 Moscow International Motor Show. The Kalina is also produced as the more powerful version named Lada Kalina Sport. On 3 May 2012, the Renault-Nissan alliance has signed letter of intent to raise its stake in Avtovaz to 51.01%. On 12 December 2012, the Renault–Nissan Alliance formed a joint venture with Rostekhnologii (Alliance Rostec Auto BV) with the aim of becoming the long-term controlling shareholder of AvtoVAZ. In the same year, it was announced that Avtovaz and Sollers plan to jointly produce vehicles in Kazakhstan. The plant, which will be open in 2016, will be built in Ust-Kamenogorsk, in the eastern part of the country, and will produce around 120,000 cars a year.
Recent developments
In November 2013, Bo Andersson joined AvtoVAZ as CEO, the first non-Russian to head the company. He became involved in conflicts with local suppliers, which he accused of supplying low-quality products.
The takeover of AvtoVAZ was completed in June 2014, and the two companies of the Renault-Nissan Alliance took a combined 67.1% stake of Alliance Rostec, which in turn acquired 74.5% of AvtoVAZ, thereby giving Renault and Nissan indirect control over the Russian manufacturer.
In 2014, AvtoVAZ sold 448,114 vehicles, down 16.3% comparing to the previous year, due to the overall market slowdown in Russia. The total production capacity of the Togliatti factory is 910,000 vehicles. By 2014, the company's liabilities exceeded assets by 68 billion rubles, for UK-based Ernst & Young to express "significant doubt" about the company's "ability to continue as a going concern". In 2014, the Largus got a new modification, the Lada Largus Cross. In the fall of 2014 AvtoVAZ began production of a new Kalina model, the Lada Kalina Cross.
Production of the Lada Vesta, based on a new b\C platform developed by AvtoVAZ in cooperation with Renault-Nissan Alliance, started on September 25, 2015, at Lada Izhevsk manufacturing site. For the first time in Lada history, only a year had passed between concept car and start of production. Lada XRAY is the first compact city crossover in company's history. Starts of sales was held on February 14, 2016.
Total Lada sales in 2015 amounted to 269,096 cars, of which 207,389 were built by AvtoVAZ in Tolyatti, while the rest were made by Lada Izhevsk, giving the company a 17.9% share of the Russian automotive market.
In March 2016, Nicolas Maure became the company's CEO. In April 2016, Carlos Ghosn, Renault-Nissan Chairman, ceded his AvtoVAZ chairmanship position to Sergey Skvortsov, Deputy General Director of Russian state-owned Rostec, the minority shareholder in Avtovaz. Despite massive layoffs since 2008, in 2016, the company remained unprofitable.
Groupe Renault takeover
In October 2016, Renault invested $1.33 billion in another recapitalization of AvtoVAZ, this time without involvement from Nissan, making the company a subsidiary of the French group. In September 2017, Nissan sold its AvtoVAZ stake to Renault for €45 million.
In December 2018, Renault and Rostec completed the acquisition of all AvtoVAZ shares through their Alliance Rostec venture. The company then delisted from the Moscow Exchange. In 2018, AvtoVAZ posted a net profit of $90.5 million, its first positive result in a decade. In June 2019, Rostec announced it would eventually reduce its stake in AvtoVAZ to 25%. In December 2021, Renault and Rostec transferred its shares from the Netherlands-registered Alliance Rostec to the Russia-registered Lada Auto Holding. The new holding kept the same Renault-Rostec shareholding ratio as its Dutch predecessor.
In December 2019, AvtoVAZ acquired General Motors' stake in their GM-AvtoVAZ joint venture. As part of the deal, AvtoVAZ is set to use Chevrolet branding for the Niva models until August 2020, before replacing it with Lada.
In January 2021, following a company revamp, Renault said it would integrate Lada and sister Dacia brands into a new business unit. AvtoVAZ was made part of the business unit structure.
Company structure
Ownership
After its re-establishment as a joint stock company in January 1993, the ownership structure of AvtoVAZ became opaque, with two different management groups controlling the majority of the shares, one led by company chairman Kadannikov, holding 33.2% through the AVVA company, while another group held 19.2% through the AFC company. AvtoVAZ, in turn, owned over 80% of AVVA, which was said to be under the influence of Boris Berezovsky.
, AvtoVAZ's owner is Lada Auto Holding, which is a joint venture between Renault and t Rostec. Renault owns a controlling 67.61% stake of Lada Auto Holding, while Rostec owns a 32.39%, making AvtoVAZ a subsidiary of the Renault group.
Subsidiaries and affiliates
Various AvtoVAZ's subsidiaries and affiliates produce vehicles within Russia. The main plant is the one in Tolyatti, with three assembly lines, which assembled 312,000 cars in 2016. Lada West Togliatti is a car manufacturing plant within the Tolyatti complex, formerly owned by GM-AvtoVAZ.
, its production has been halted. Lada Izhevsk, a company established in 1965 and that adopted its present name in 2017, has one assembly line and produced 96,000 cars in 2016. VIS-AVTO is a company established in 1991. It converts AvtoVAZ cars into commercial vehicles and produces Bronto-badged Nivas. It assembled 4,146 vehicles in 2015. Lada Sport is AvtoVAZ's motorsport and performance subsidiary which produced 3,153 cars in 2015.
Apart from its own facilities, AvtoVAZ has associated companies for production. CJSC Super-Avto, a company associated to AvtoVAZ and established in 1997, is focused on the modification of Lada cars. In 2015, it converted 569 of them. In June 2016, the company filed for bankruptcy, but it resumed business by late 2016. ChechenAvto, a state-owned enterprise based in Argun, produced 6,700 cars in 2016. AvtoVAZ has had overseas partners for assembly in Egypt, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and other countries.
, other relevant AvtoVAZ subsidiaries include JSC Lada-Service (a holding of the AvtoVAZ-controlled dealerships which exists in its present form since 2007), JSC Lada-Image (official spare parts distributor in Russia, established in 2003), PPPO LLC, ZAK LLC, LIN LLC, Sockultbilt-AvtoVAZ LLC, and Lada International Ltd.
AvtoVAZ financial affiliate is RN Bank, a joint venture whose controllers are UniCredit Bank Russia, AvtoVAZ's parent Renault (through RCI Banque), and Nissan. The first financial affiliate for AvtoVAZ was AvtoVAZbank, which operated as such from 1988 to 1996. In 1997, it was replaced by Lada-Credit (originally named Automotive Banking House).
Currently produced models
Lada-badged
Lada Niva (off-road car, also known as VAZ-2121, VAZ-2131 and Lada 4x4, since 1977)
Lada Niva Travel (off-road car, since 2020)
Lada Granta (subcompact car, also known as VAZ-2190, VAZ-2191, VAZ-2192, and VAZ-2194 since 2011)
Lada Largus (since 2012)
Lada Vesta (compact car, since 2015)
Lada XRAY (crossover, since 2016)
Other
Renault Logan (since 2014, known in European markets as the Dacia Logan)
Renault Sandero (since 2014, known in European markets as the Dacia Sandero)
Datsun on-Do (since 2014)
Datsun mi-Do (since 2015)
Export
Exports of AvtoVAZ vehicles to the West began in 1974; Ladas were sold as in several Western nations during the 1970s and 1980s, including Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, though trade sanctions banned their export to the United States. Under the original agreement with Fiat, the car could not be sold in competition with the 124 until its replacement (the Fiat 131 Mirafiori) had been released and all Fiat production of the 124 had ceased.
Economic instability in the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, tightening emissions, and safety legislation meant that AvtoVAZ withdrew from most Western markets by the late 1997. In later years, Lada is again exported. The Lada is marketed in Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Chile, Egypt, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Lebanon, Moldova, Slovakia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Serbian Republic, Syria, Peru, and Jordan.
In 2015, 28,461 Lada cars were exported, mostly to Kazakhstan (14,278 vehicles), Azerbaijan (4,690), Belarus (2,360), Egypt (2,128), and Germany (1,515).
Motorsport
In 1970, AvtoVAZ CEO Viktor Polyakov set the task to create sport versions of the Lada 2101. The engines were built in Italy, whereas fine tuning was done by engineers in Togliatti. In 1971, three sport cars based on the 2101 model took part in the Soviet Winter Rally Championship. Later in the same year, a VAZ-Autoexport team earned their first prize, the Silver Cup in the 1971 Tour d'Europe.
In the 1970s–1980s, the Autoexport racing team, using different Lada models, participated in different motorsport competitions. A special Zhiguli class was created for the Soviet Rally Championship. There were different rally and track races featuring Avtovaz sports cars. In 1978, a Lada Niva took part in the famous Dakar Rally. It was also successful in a number of international competitions. In 1981, Guy Moerenhout Racing made two special models for Lada Belgium: Lada 21011 RS Sport, model with two Weber carburetors and special sport equipment, and Lada Niva Dream, with big wing extension, special colours and larger wheels. In the late 1990s, Lada Canada supported a rally operation in the Canadian Rally Championship, winning in the 'Production 1750' class on numerous occasions.
In 2012, the Lada Granta Cup was launched. The first stage of the new race series began in Moscow on the Myachkovo race track.
World Touring Car Championship
In 2008, AvtoVAZ took part in the WTCC World Championship, raced and developed by Russian Bears Motorsport, although badged as a factory team. The team raced the Lada 110 in the 2008 season, but ran a trio of Lada Prioras in the 2009 WTCC. The team scored their first championship points at Imola with renowned BTCC two-time champion James Thompson.
Lada withdrew from the WTCC at the end of the 2009 season, but returned in 2012, with TMS Sport entering a Lada Granta WTCC for Thompson in two rounds. The team added a second car for the 2013 season, driven by Alexey Dudukalo, and achieved their best result to date, finishing fifth in their home race in Russia.
In the 2013 season, AvtoVAZ returned to the WTCC championship through Lada Sport. The team used a new car: the Lada Granta WTCC, driven by WTCC World Champion Robert Huff.
The team returned for the 2014 World Touring Car Championship season, again fielding a Granta. Since the beginning of 2015, the Lada team took part in the WTCC as Lada Sport Rosneft. Starting in the 2015 season, Lada Sport used Lada Vestas. The official Lada Sport team left the category at the end of the 2016 season, although an unofficial entry by the RC Competition team kept the Vesta on the grid for another year. In 2021, Lada Sport had an one-off entry for the final race of the TCR-spec World Touring Car Cup at the Sochi Autodrom.
Sponsorship
HC Lada Togliatti, an ice hockey team currently playing in the VHL, takes its name from the marque. They won two league titles as well as the 1996 European Cup.
Lada sponsored Aldershot Football Club of the English Football League for two seasons leading up their bankruptcy in 1992. Lada also sponsored Colo Colo (Chile) during their championship season in 1991.
Lada sponsored the Renault F1 Team in 2010 after they signed Russia's first Formula One driver Vitaly Petrov.
See also
List of AvtoVAZ vehicles
Automotive industry in the Soviet Union
Automobile model numbering system in USSR and Russia
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Lada official website
Lada official website
Official history of Lada line-up
Specifications cars AvtoVAZ (Lada)
Buildings and structures in Tolyatti
Italy–Soviet Union relations
Multinational companies headquartered in Russia
Companies formerly listed on the Moscow Exchange | [
0.2469233274459839,
1.0888980627059937,
0.31173935532569885,
-0.20366211235523224,
-0.2318727970123291,
0.8483842611312866,
-0.1691007763147354,
-0.0662231519818306,
-0.22618930041790009,
0.4571404457092285,
-0.16720984876155853,
0.44686374068260193,
-0.5386059284210205,
0.9910072684288025... |
18353 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lundy | Lundy | Lundy is an English island in the Bristol Channel. It forms part of the district of Torridge in the county of Devon.
About long and wide, Lundy has had a long and turbulent history, frequently changing hands between the British crown and various usurpers. In the 1920s, one self-proclaimed king, Martin Harman, tried to issue his own coinage and was fined by the House of Lords. In 1941, two German Heinkel He 111 bombers crash landed on the island, and their crews were captured. In 1969, Lundy was purchased by British millionaire Jack Hayward, who donated it to the National Trust. It is managed by the Landmark Trust, a conservation charity that derives its income from day trips and holiday lettings. As of 2007, the island had a population of 28.
As a steep, rocky island, often shrouded by fog, Lundy has been the scene of many shipwrecks, and the remains of its old lighthouse installations are of both historic and scientific interest. Its present-day lighthouses are fully automated, one of them solar-powered.
Lundy has a rich bird life, as it lies on major migration routes, and attracts many vagrant as well as indigenous species. It also boasts a variety of marine habitats, with rare seaweeds, sponges and corals. In 2010, the island became Britain's first Marine Conservation Zone.
In summer, visitors reach Lundy by boat from Bideford or Ilfracombe, and in winter by helicopter from Hartland Point. Kayakers can also kayak to the island. A local tourist curiosity is the special "Puffin" postage stamp, a category known by philatelists as "local carriage labels", a collectors' item.
Profile
Lundy is the largest island in the Bristol Channel. It lies off the coast of Devon, England, about a third of the distance across the channel from Devon to Pembrokeshire in Wales. Lundy gives its name to a British sea area and is one of the islands of England.
Lundy is included in the district of Torridge with a resident population of 28 people in 2007. These include a warden, a ranger, an island manager, a farmer, bar and house-keeping staff, and volunteers. Most live in and around the village at the south of the island. Most visitors are day-trippers, although there are 23 holiday properties and a camp site for over-night visitors, most at the south of the island.
In a 2005 opinion poll of Radio Times readers, Lundy was named as Britain's tenth greatest natural wonder. The island has been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest and it was England's first statutory Marine Nature reserve, and the first Marine Conservation Zone, because of its unique flora and fauna. It is managed by the Landmark Trust on behalf of the National Trust.
Etymology
The place-name 'Lundy' is first attested in 1189 in the Records of the Templars in England, where it appears as (Insula de) Lundeia. It appears in the Charter Rolls as Lundeia again in 1199, and as Lunday in 1281. The name means 'puffin island', from the Old Norse lundi meaning 'puffin' (compare Lundey in Iceland). The name is Scandinavian, and it appears in the 12th-century Orkneyinga saga as Lundey.
Lundy is known in Welsh as Ynys Wair, 'Gwair's Island', in reference to an alternative name for the wizard Gwydion.
History
Lundy has evidence of visitation or occupation from the Mesolithic period onward, with Neolithic flintwork, Bronze Age burial mounds, four inscribed gravestones from the early medieval period, and an early medieval monastery (possibly dedicated to St Elen or St Helen).
Beacon Hill Cemetery
Beacon Hill Cemetery was excavated by Charles Thomas in 1969. The cemetery contains four inscribed stones, dated to the 5th or 6th century AD. The site was originally enclosed by a curvilinear bank and ditch, which is still visible in the southwest corner. However, the other walls were moved when the Old Light was constructed in 1819. Celtic Christian enclosures of this type were common in Western Britain and are known as in Welsh and in Cornish. There are surviving examples in Luxulyan, in Cornwall; Mathry, Meidrim and Clydau in the south of Wales; and Stowford, Jacobstowe, Lydford and Instow, in Devon.
Thomas proposed a five-stage sequence of site usage:
An area of round huts and fields. These huts may have fallen into disuse before the construction of the cemetery.
The construction of the focal grave, an rectangular stone enclosure containing a single cist grave. The interior of the enclosure was filled with small granite pieces. Two more cist graves located to the west of the enclosure may also date from this time.
Perhaps 100 years later, the focal grave was opened and the infill removed. The body may have been moved to a church at this time.
Two further stages of cist grave construction around the focal grave.
Twenty-three cist graves were found during this excavation. Considering that the excavation only uncovered a small area of the cemetery, there may be as many as 100 graves.
Inscribed stones
Four Celtic inscribed stones have been found in Beacon Hill Cemetery:
1400 OPTIMI, or TIMI; the name Optimus is Latin and male. Discovered in 1962 by D. B. Hague.
1401 RESTEVTAE, or RESGEVT[A], Latin, female i.e. Resteuta or Resgeuta. Discovered in 1962 by D. B. Hague.
1402 POTIT[I], or [PO]TIT, Latin, male. Discovered in 1961 by K. S. Gardener and A. Langham.
1403 --]IGERNI [FIL]I TIGERNI, or—I]GERNI [FILI] [T]I[G]ERNI, Brittonic, male i.e. Tigernus son of Tigernus. Discovered in 1905.
Knights Templar
Lundy was granted to the Knights Templar by Henry II in 1160. The Templars were a major international maritime force at this time, with interests in North Devon, and almost certainly an important port at Bideford or on the River Taw in Barnstaple. This was probably because of the increasing threat posed by the Norse sea raiders; however, it is unclear whether they ever took possession of the island. Ownership was disputed by the Marisco family who may have already been on the island during King Stephen's reign. The Mariscos were fined, and the island was cut off from necessary supplies. Evidence of the Templars' weak hold on the island came when King John, on his accession in 1199, confirmed the earlier grant.
Marisco family
In 1235 William de Marisco was implicated in the murder of Henry Clement, a messenger of Henry III. Three years later, an attempt was made to kill Henry III by a man who later confessed to being an agent of the Marisco family. William de Marisco fled to Lundy where he lived as a virtual king. He built a stronghold in the area now known as Bulls' Paradise with walls.
In 1242, Henry III sent troops to the island. They scaled the island's cliff and captured William de Marisco and 16 of his "subjects". Henry III built the castle (sometimes referred to as the Marisco Castle) in an attempt to establish the rule of law on the island and its surrounding waters. In 1275 the island is recorded as being in the Lordship of King Edward I but by 1322 it was in the possession of Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster and was among the large number of lands seized by Edward II following Lancaster's execution for rebelling against the King. At some point in the 13th century the monks of the Cistercian order at Cleeve Abbey held the rectory of the island.
Piracy
Over the next few centuries, the island was hard to govern. Trouble followed as both English and foreign pirates and privateers – including other members of the Marisco family – took control of the island for short periods. Ships were forced to navigate close to Lundy because of the dangerous shingle banks in the fast flowing River Severn and Bristol Channel, with its tidal range of , one of the greatest in the world. This made the island a profitable location from which to prey on passing Bristol-bound merchant ships bringing back valuable goods from overseas.
In 1627 a group known as the Salé Rovers, from the Republic of Salé (now Salé in Morocco) occupied Lundy for five years. These Barbary Pirates, under the command of a Dutch renegade named Jan Janszoon, flew an Ottoman flag over the island. Slaving raids were made embarking from Lundy by the Barbary Pirates, and captured Europeans were held on Lundy before being sent to Algiers to be sold as slaves. From 1628 to 1634, in addition to the Barbary Pirates, the island was plagued by privateers of French, Basque, English and Spanish origin targeting the lucrative shipping routes passing through the Bristol Channel. These incursions were eventually ended by Sir John Penington, but in the 1660s and as late as the 1700s the island still fell prey to French privateers.
Civil war
In the English Civil War, Thomas Bushell held Lundy for King Charles I, rebuilding Marisco Castle and garrisoning the island at his own expense. He was a friend of Francis Bacon, a strong supporter of the Royalist cause and an expert on mining and coining. It was the last Royalist territory held between the first and second civil wars. After receiving permission from Charles I, Bushell surrendered the island on 24 February 1647 to Richard Fiennes, representing General Fairfax. In 1656, the island was acquired by Lord Saye and Sele.
18th and 19th centuries
The late 18th and early 19th centuries were years of lawlessness on Lundy, particularly during the ownership of Thomas Benson (1708–1772), a Member of Parliament for Barnstaple in 1747 and Sheriff of Devon, who notoriously used the island for housing convicts whom he was supposed to be deporting. Benson leased Lundy from its owner, John Leveson-Gower, 1st Earl Gower (1694–1754) (who was an heir of the Grenville family of Bideford and of Stowe, Kilkhampton in Cornwall), at a rent of £60 per annum and contracted with the Government to transport a shipload of convicts to Virginia, but diverted the ship to Lundy to use the convicts as his personal slaves. Later Benson was involved in an insurance swindle. He purchased and insured the ship Nightingale and loaded it with a valuable cargo of pewter and linen. Having cleared the port on the mainland, the ship put into Lundy, where the cargo was removed and stored in a cave built by the convicts, before setting sail again. Some days afterwards, when a homeward-bound vessel was sighted, the Nightingale was set on fire and scuttled. The crew were taken off the stricken ship by the other ship, which landed them safely at Clovelly.
Sir Vere Hunt, 1st Baronet of Curragh, a rather eccentric Irish politician and landowner, and unsuccessful man of business, purchased the island from John Cleveland in 1802 for £5,270 (£ today). Sir Vere Hunt planted in the island a small, self-contained Irish colony with its
own constitution and divorce laws, coinage and stamps. The tenants came from Sir Vere Hunt's Irish estate and they experienced agricultural difficulties while on the island. This led Sir Vere Hunt to seek someone who would take the island off his hands, failing in his attempt to sell the island to the British Government as a base for troops. After the 1st Baronet's death his son, Sir Aubrey (Hunt) de Vere, 2nd Baronet, also had great difficulty in securing any profit from the property. In the 1820s John Benison agreed to purchase the island for £4,500 but then refused to complete the sale as he felt that the 2nd Baronet could not make out a good title in respect of the sale terms, namely that the island was free from tithes and taxes.
William Hudson Heaven purchased Lundy in 1834, as a summer retreat and for hunting, at a cost of 9,400 guineas (£9,870, or £ today). He claimed it to be a "free island", and successfully resisted the jurisdiction of the mainland magistrates. Lundy was in consequence sometimes referred to as "the kingdom of Heaven". It belongs in fact to the county of Devon, and has always been part of the hundred of Braunton. Many of the buildings on the island today, including St. Helen's Church, designed by the architect John Norton, and Millcombe House (originally known simply as the Villa), date from the Heaven period. The Georgian-style villa was built in 1836. However, the expense of building the road from the beach (no financial assistance being provided by Trinity House, despite their regular use of the road following the construction of the lighthouses), the villa and the general cost of running the island had a ruinous effect on the family's finances, which had been damaged by reduced profits from their sugar plantations in Jamaica.
In 1957 a message in a bottle from one of the seamen of was washed ashore between Babbacombe and Peppercombe in Devon. The letter, dated 15 August 1843 read: "Dear Brother, Please e God i be with y against Michaelmas. Prepare y search Lundy for y Jenny ivories. Adiue William, Odessa". The bottle and letter are on display at the Portledge Hotel at Fairy Cross, in Devon, England. was a three-masted full-rigged ship reputed to be carrying ivory and gold dust that was wrecked on Lundy on 20 February 1797 at a place thereafter called Jenny's Cove. Some ivory was apparently recovered some years later but the leather bags supposed to contain gold dust were never found.
20th and 21st centuries
William Heaven was succeeded by his son the Reverend Hudson Grosset Heaven who, thanks to a legacy from Sarah Langworthy (née Heaven), was able to fulfill his life's ambition of building a stone church on the island. St Helen's was completed in 1896, and stands today as a lasting memorial to the Heaven period. It has been designated by English Heritage a Grade II listed building. He is said to have been able to afford either a church or a new harbour. His choice of the church was not however in the best financial interests of the island. The unavailability of the money for re-establishing the family's financial soundness, coupled with disastrous investment and speculation in the early 20th century, caused severe financial hardship.
Hudson Heaven died in 1916, and was succeeded by his nephew, Walter Charles Hudson Heaven. With the outbreak of the First World War, matters deteriorated seriously, and in 1918 the family sold Lundy to Augustus Langham Christie. In 1924, the Christie family sold the island along with the mail contract and the MV Lerina to Martin Coles Harman, who proclaimed himself a king. Harman issued two coins of Half Puffin and One Puffin denominations in 1929, nominally equivalent to the British halfpenny and penny, resulting in his prosecution under the United Kingdom's Coinage Act of 1870. The House of Lords found him guilty in 1931, and he was fined £5 with fifteen guineas (£5 + £15.75) expenses. The coins were withdrawn and became collectors' items. In 1965 a "fantasy" restrike four-coin set, a few in gold, was issued to commemorate 40 years since Harman purchased the island. Harman's son, John Pennington Harman was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross during the Battle of Kohima, India in 1944. There is a memorial to him at the VC Quarry on Lundy. Martin Coles Harman died in 1954.
Residents did not pay taxes to the United Kingdom and had to pass through customs when they travelled to and from Lundy Island. Although the island was ruled as a virtual fiefdom, its owner never claimed to be independent of the United Kingdom, in contrast to later territorial "micronations".
Following the death of Harman's son Albion in 1968, Lundy was put up for sale in 1969. Jack Hayward, a British millionaire, purchased the island for £150,000 (£ today) and gave it to the National Trust, who leased it to the Landmark Trust. The Landmark Trust has managed the island since then, deriving its income from arranging day trips, letting out holiday cottages and from donations. In May 2015 a sculpture by Antony Gormley was erected on Lundy. It is one of five life-sized sculptures, Land, placed near the centre and at four compass points of the UK in a commission by the Landmark Trust, to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The others are at Lowsonford (Warwickshire), Saddell Bay (Scotland), the Martello Tower (Aldeburgh, Suffolk), and Clavell Tower (Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset).
The island is visited by over 20,000 day trippers a year, but during September 2007 had to be closed for several weeks owing to an outbreak of norovirus.
An inaugural Lundy Island half-marathon took place on 8 July 2018 with 267 competitors.
Wrecked ships and aircraft
Wreck of Jenny
Near the end of a voyage from Africa to Bristol, the British merchant ship was wrecked on the coast of Lundy in January 1797. Only her first mate survived. The site of the tragedy () has since been known as Jenny's Cove.
Wreck of Battleship Montagu
Steaming in heavy fog, the Royal Navy battleship ran hard aground near Shutter Rock on Lundy's southwest corner at about 2:00 a.m. on 30 May 1906. Thinking they were aground at Hartland Point on the English mainland, a landing party went ashore for help, only finding out where they were after encountering the lighthouse keeper at the island's north light.
Strenuous efforts by the Royal Navy to salvage the badly damaged battleship during the summer of 1906 failed, and in 1907 it was decided to give up and sell her for scrap. Montagu was scrapped at the scene over the next fifteen years. Diving clubs still visit the site, where armour plate and live 12-inch (305-millimetre) shells remain on the seabed.
Remains of a German Heinkel 111H bomber
During the Second World War two German Heinkel He 111 bombers crash landed on the island in 1941. The first was on 3 March, when all the crew survived and were taken prisoner.
The second was on 1 April when the pilot was killed and the other crew members were taken prisoner. This plane had bombed a British ship and one engine was damaged by anti aircraft fire, forcing it to crash land. Most of the metal was salvaged, although a few remains can be found at the crash site to date. Reportedly, to avoid reprisals, the crew concocted the story that they were on a reconnaissance mission.
Geography
The island of Lundy is long from north to south by a little over wide, with an area of . The highest point on Lundy is Beacon Hill, above sea level. A few yards off the northeastern coast is Seal's Rock which is so called after the seals which rest on and inhabit the islet. It is less than wide. Near the jetty is a small pocket beach.
Geology
The island is primarily composed of granite of 59.8 ± 0.4 – 58.4 ± 0.4 million years (from the Palaeocene epoch), with slate at the southern end; the plateau soil is mainly loam, with some peat. Among the igneous dykes cutting the granite are a small number composed of a unique orthophyre. It is possible, based on emplacement of magmas of the basalt, trachyte and rhyolite types at a high levels in earth's crust, that a volcano system existed above Lundy. This was given the name Lundyite in 1914, although the term – never precisely defined – has since fallen into disuse.
Climate
Lundy lies on the line where the North Atlantic Ocean and the Bristol Channel meet, so it has quite a mild climate. The island has cool, wet winters and mild, wet summers. It is often windy and fog is frequently experienced. The record high temperature is on 2 August 1990, and the record low temperature is recorded just six months later on 7 February 1991. Lundy is in the USDA 9a plant hardiness zone.
Ecology
Flora
The vegetation on the plateau is mainly dry heath, with an area of waved Calluna heath towards the northern end of the island, which is also rich in lichens, such as Teloschistes flavicans and several species of Cladonia and Parmelia.
Other areas are either a dry heath/acidic grassland mosaic, characterised by heaths and western gorse (Ulex gallii), or semi-improved acidic grassland in which Yorkshire fog (Holcus lanatus) is abundant. Tussocky (Thrift) (Holcus/Armeria) communities occur mainly on the western side, and some patches of bracken (Pteridium aquilinum) on the eastern side.
There is one endemic plant species, the Lundy cabbage (Coincya wrightii), a species of primitive brassica.
By the 1980s the eastern side of the island had become overgrown by rhododendrons (Rhododendron ponticum) which had spread from a few specimens planted in the garden of Millcombe House in Victorian times, but in recent years significant efforts have been made to eradicate this non-native plant.
Fauna
Terrestrial invertebrates
Two invertebrate taxa are endemic to Lundy, with both feeding on the endemic Lundy cabbage (Coincya wrightii). These are the Lundy cabbage flea beetle (Psylliodes luridipennis), a species of leaf beetle (family Chrysomelidae) and the Lundy cabbage weevil (Ceutorhynchus contractus var. pallipes), a variety of true weevil (family Curculionidae). In addition, the Lundy cabbage is the main host of a flightless form of Psylliodes napi (another species of flea beetle) and a wide variety of other invertebrate species which are not endemic to the island. Another resident invertebrate of note is Atypus affinis, the only British species of purseweb spider.
Birds
The population of puffins (Fratercula arctica) on the island declined in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as a consequence of depredations by brown and black rats (Rattus rattus) and possibly also as a result of commercial fishing for sand eels, the puffins' principal prey. Since the elimination of rats in 2006, seabird numbers have increased and by 2019 the number of puffins had risen to 375 and the number of Manx shearwaters to 5,504 pairs.
As an isolated island on major migration routes, Lundy has a rich bird life and is a popular site for birdwatching. Large numbers of black-legged kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla) nest on the cliffs, as do razorbill (Alca torda), common guillemot (Uria aalge), herring gull (Larus argentatus), lesser black-backed gull (Larus fuscus), fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis), shag (Phalacrocorax aristotelis), oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus), skylark (Alauda arvensis), meadow pipit (Anthus pratensis), blackbird (Turdus merula), robin (Erithacus rubecula) and linnet (Carduelis cannabina). There are also smaller populations of peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) and raven (Corvus corax).
Lundy has attracted many vagrant birds, in particular species from North America. As of 2007, the island's bird list totals 317 species. This has included the following species, each of which represents the sole British record: Ancient murrelet, eastern phoebe and eastern towhee. Records of bimaculated lark, American robin and common yellowthroat were also firsts for Britain (American robin has also occurred two further times on Lundy). Veerys in 1987 and 1997 were Britain's second and fourth records, a Rüppell's warbler in 1979 was Britain's second, an eastern Bonelli's warbler in 2004 was Britain's fourth, and a black-faced bunting in 2001 Britain's third.
Other British Birds rarities that have been sighted (single records unless otherwise indicated) are: little bittern, gyrfalcon (3 records), little and Baillon's crakes, collared pratincole, semipalmated (5 records), least (2 records), white-rumped and Baird's (2 records) sandpipers, Wilson's phalarope, laughing gull, bridled tern, Pallas's sandgrouse, great spotted, black-billed and yellow-billed (3 records) cuckoos, European roller, olive-backed pipit, citrine wagtail, Alpine accentor, thrush nightingale, red-flanked bluetail, western black-eared (2 records) and desert wheatears, White's, Swainson's (3 records), and grey-cheeked (2 records) thrushes, Sardinian (2 records), Arctic (3 records), Radde's and western Bonelli's warblers, Isabelline and lesser grey shrikes, red-eyed vireo (7 records), two-barred crossbill, yellow-rumped and blackpoll warblers, yellow-breasted (2 records) and black-headed buntings (3 records), rose-breasted grosbeak (2 records), bobolink and Baltimore oriole (2 records).
Mammals
Lundy is home to an unusual range of introduced mammals, including a distinct breed of wild pony, the Lundy pony, as well as Soay sheep (Ovis aries), sika deer (Cervus nippon), and feral goats (Capra aegagrus hircus). Unusually, 20% of the rabbits on the island are melanistic compared with 4% which is typical in the UK.
Other mammals which have made the island their home include the grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) and the pygmy shrew (Sorex minutus). Until their elimination in 2006 in order to protect the nesting seabirds, Lundy was one of the few places in the UK where the black rat (Rattus rattus) could be found regularly.
Marine habitat
In 1971 a proposal was made by the Lundy Field Society to establish a marine reserve, and the survey was led by Dr Keith Hiscock, supported by a team of students from Bangor University. Provision for the establishment of statutory Marine Nature Reserves was included in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, and on 21 November 1986 the Secretary of State for the Environment announced the designation of a statutory reserve at Lundy.
There is an outstanding variety of marine habitats and wildlife, and a large number of rare and unusual species in the waters around Lundy, including some species of seaweed, branching sponges, sea fans and cup corals.
In 2003 the first statutory No Take Zone (NTZ) for marine nature conservation in the UK was set up in the waters to the east of Lundy island. In 2008 this was declared as having been successful in several ways including the increasing size and number of lobsters within the reserve, and potential benefits for other marine wildlife. However, the no take zone has received a mixed reaction from local fishermen.
On 12 January 2010 the island became Britain's first Marine Conservation Zone designated under the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, designed to help to preserve important habitats and species.
Transport
To the island
There are two ways to get to Lundy, depending on the time of year. In the summer months (April to October) visitors are carried on the Landmark Trust's own vessel, MS Oldenburg, which sails from both Bideford and Ilfracombe. Sailings are usually three days a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, with additional sailings on Wednesdays during July and August. The voyage takes on average two hours, depending on ports, tides and weather. The Oldenburg was first registered in Bremen, Germany, in 1958 and has been sailing to Lundy since being bought by the Lundy Company Ltd in 1985.
In the winter months (November to March) the island is served by a scheduled helicopter service from Hartland Point. The helicopter operates on Mondays and Fridays, with flights between 12 noon and 2 pm. The heliport is a field at the top of Hartland Point, not far from the Beacon.
A grass runway of is available, allowing access to small STOL aircraft.
Properly equipped and experienced canoeists can kayak to the island from Hartland Point or Lee Bay. This takes 4 to 6 hours depending on wind and tides.
Entrance to Lundy is free for anyone arriving by scheduled transport. Visitors arriving by non-scheduled transport are charged an entrance fee, currently (May 2016) £6.00, and there is an additional charge payable by those using light aircraft. Anyone arriving on Lundy by non-scheduled transport is also charged an additional fee for transporting luggage to the top of the island.
On the island
In 2007, Derek Green, Lundy's general manager, launched an appeal to raise £250,000 to save the Beach Road, which had been damaged by heavy rain and high seas. The road was built in the first half of the 19th century to provide people and goods with safe access to the top of the island, above the only jetty. The fund-raising was completed on 10 March 2009.
Lighthouses
The island has three lighthouses: a pair of active lights built in 1897 and an older lighthouse dating from 1797.
Electricity supply
There is a small power station comprising three Cummins B and C series diesel engines, offering an approximately 150 kVA 3-phase supply to most of the island buildings. Waste heat from the engine jackets is used for a district heating pipe. There are also plans to collect the waste heat from the engine exhaust heat gases to feed into the district heat network to improve the efficiency further. The power is normally switched off between 00:00 and 06:30.
Staying on the island
Lundy has 23 holiday properties, sleeping between one and 14 people. These include a lighthouse, a castle and a Victorian mansion. Many of the buildings are constructed from the island's granite.
The island also has a campsite, at the south of the island in the field next to the shop. It has hot and cold running water, with showers and toilets, in an adjacent building.
The island is popular with rock climbers, having the UK's longest continuous slab climb, "The Devil's Slide".
Lundy has been designated by Natural England as national character area 159, one of England's natural regions.
Administration
The island is an unparished area of Torridge district in the county of Devon, but was formerly a civil parish. It forms part of the ward of Clovelly Bay. It is part of the constituency electing the Member of Parliament for Torridge and West Devon and was from 1999 to 2020 part of the South West England constituency for the European Parliament.
In 2013 the island became a separate Church of England ecclesiastical parish.
Stamps
Owing to a decline in population and lack of interest in the mail contract, the GPO ended its presence on Lundy at the end of 1927. For the next two years Harman handled the mail to and from the island without charge.
On 1 November 1929, he decided to offset the expense by issuing two postage stamps ( puffin in pink and 1 puffin in blue). One puffin is equivalent to one English penny. The printing of Puffin stamps continues to this day and they are available at face value from the Lundy Post Office. One used to have to stick Lundy stamps on the back of the envelope; but Royal Mail now allows their use on the front of the envelope, but placed on the left side, with the right side reserved for the Royal Mail postage stamp or stamps. Lundy stamps are cancelled by a circular Lundy hand stamp. The face value of the Lundy Island stamps covers the cost of postage of letters and postcards from the island to the Bideford Post Office on the mainland for onward delivery to their final destination anywhere in the world. The Lundy Post Office gets a bulk rate discount for mailing letters and postcards from Bideford.
Lundy stamps are a type of postage stamp known to philatelists as "local carriage labels" or "local stamps". Issues of increasing value were made over the years, including air mail, featuring a variety of people. Many are now highly sought-after by collectors. The market value of the early issues has risen substantially over the years. For the many thousands of annual visitors Lundy stamps have become part of the collection of the many British Local Posts collectors. The first catalogues of these stamps included Gerald Rosen's 1970 Catalogue of British Local Stamps. Later specialist catalogues include Stamps of Lundy Island by Stanley Newman, first published in 1984, Phillips Modern British Locals CD Catalogue, published since 2003, and Labbe's Specialised Guide to Lundy Island Stamps, published since 2005 and now in its 11th Edition. Labbe's Guide is considered the gold standard of Lundy catalogues owing to its extensive approach to varieties, errors, specialised items and "fantasy" issues.
There is a comprehensive collection of these stamps in the Chinchen Collection, donated by Barry Chinchen to the British Library Philatelic Collections in 1977 and now held by the British Library. This is also the home of the Landmark Trust Lundy Island Philatelic Archive which includes artwork, texts and essays as well as postmarking devices and issued stamps.
Cultural allusions
A ship named Lundy Island, 3,095 tons, was captured and sunk on 10 January 1917 by the SMS Seeadler, a windjammer of the German navy, flying the Norwegian flag.
Lundy figures in the 1919 novel Last of the Grenvilles (1919) by Frederick Harcourt Kitchin (published under his pseudonym, Bennett Copplestone).
The island is mentioned in a section of W. N. P. Barbellion's Journal of a Disappointed Man (1919), titled "On Lundy Island".
Lundy has prominently featured in John Bellairs' juvenile gothic mystery The Secret of the Underground Room (1990). The plot highlights several geographical and historical points of interest, including the (De) Marisco family.
In 2012, James May's Toy Stories featured a successful attempt to fly a modified model B. A. Swallow (a self-propelled glider) from Ilfracombe to the island.
In 2016, Lundy featured as one of the segments in "The Darkest Hour", Series 2 / Episode 4 of BBC Radio 4's Wireless Nights, with Jarvis Cocker.
One of the BBC Radio 4 shipping forecast weather areas (mentioned between Sole and Fastnet in the forecast) is named after Lundy.
See also
Barbara Whitaker, former warden.
Coins of Lundy
Puffin Island
List of people on stamps of Lundy
References
Further reading
Davis, Tim & Jones, Tim (2007) The Birds of Lundy; illustrated by Mike Langman. Berrynarbor: Devon Bird Watching & Preservation Society and Lundy Field Society,
(pp. 38−68: "The murder of Henry Clement and the pirates of Lundy Island")
External links
Lundy Field Society
Lundy Birds
Pete Robsons Lundy Island Site
LundyCam
Lundy Marine Reserve at Protect Planet Ocean
More pictures of Lundy Island
A trip to Devon's 'Puffin Island', Fast Track video feature story about Lundy, 4:15 (2011-09-23)
Islands of the Bristol Channel
Islands of Devon
National nature reserves in England
National Trust properties in Devon
Nature reserves in Devon
Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Devon
Sites of Special Scientific Interest notified in 1987
Special Areas of Conservation in England
Tourist attractions in Devon
Ports and harbours of the Bristol Channel
Barbary pirates
Invasions of England
Marine reserves of the United Kingdom
Philately of the United Kingdom
Natural regions of England
Shipwrecks of England
Island restoration
Car-free zones in Europe
Former civil parishes in Devon
Unparished areas in Devon
Torridge District
Pirate dens and locations | [
0.11930065602064133,
-0.1665431559085846,
0.5446934700012207,
-0.6305216550827026,
0.4516240954399109,
0.004690366331487894,
0.0854344367980957,
0.030737021937966347,
-0.7144194841384888,
0.0738314688205719,
0.09293057024478912,
0.3948594331741333,
-0.07579294592142105,
-0.0878912433981895... |
18356 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindow%20Man | Lindow Man | Lindow Man, also known as Lindow II and (in jest) as Pete Marsh, is the preserved bog body of a man discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Moss near Wilmslow in Cheshire, North West England. The remains were found on 1 August 1984 by commercial peat cutters. Lindow Man is not the only bog body to have been found in the moss; Lindow Woman was discovered the year before, and other body parts have also been recovered. The find was described as "one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the 1980s" and caused a media sensation. It helped invigorate study of British bog bodies, which had previously been neglected.
At the time of death, Lindow Man was a healthy male in his mid-20s, and may have been of high social status as his body shows little evidence of having done heavy or rough physical labour during his lifetime. There has been debate over the reason for his death; his unfortunate death was violent and perhaps ritualistic. After a last meal of charred bread, Lindow Man was strangled and severely hit on the head, and his throat was cut. Dating the body has proven problematic, but it is thought that he was deposited into Lindow Moss, face down, some time between 2 BC and 119 AD, in either the Iron Age or Romano-British period.
The recovered body has been preserved by freeze-drying and is on permanent display at the British Museum, although it occasionally travels to other venues such as the Manchester Museum.
Background
Lindow Moss
Lindow Moss is a peat bog in Lindow, an area of Wilmslow, Cheshire, which has been used as common land since the medieval period. It formed after the last ice age, one of many such peat bogs in north-east Cheshire and the Mersey basin that formed in hollows caused by melting ice. Investigations have not yet discovered settlement or agricultural activity around the edge of Lindow Moss that would have been contemporary with Lindow Man; however, analysis of pollen in the peat suggests there was some cultivation in the vicinity.
Once covering over , the bog has now shrunk to a tenth of its original size. It is a dangerous place; an 18th-century writer recorded people drowning there. For centuries the peat from the bog was used as fuel, and it continued to be extracted until the 1980s, by which time the process had been mechanised. Lindow Moss is a lowland raised mire; this type of peat bog often produces the best preserved bog bodies, allowing more detailed analysis. Lowland raised mires occur mainly in northern England and extend south to the Midlands. Lindow Man is one of 27 bodies to be recovered from such areas.
Preservation of bog bodies
The preservation of bog bodies is dependent on a set of specific physical conditions, which can occur in peat bogs. A sphagnum moss bog must have a temperature lower than 4 °C at the time of deposition of the body. The subsequent average annual temperature must be lower than 10 °C. Moisture must be stable in the bog year-round: it cannot dry out.
Sphagnum moss affects the chemistry of nearby water, which becomes highly acidic relative to a more natural environment (a pH of roughly 3.3 to 4.5). The concentration of dissolved minerals also tends to be low. Dying moss forms layers of sediment and releases sugars and humic acids which consume oxygen. Since the surface of the water is covered by living moss, water becomes anaerobic. As a result, human tissues buried in the bog tend to tan rather than decaying.
Lindow Woman
On 13 May 1983, two peat workers at Lindow Moss, Andy Mould and Stephen Dooley, noticed an unusual object—about the size of a football—on the elevator taking peat to the shredding machine. They removed the object for closer inspection, joking that it was a dinosaur egg. Once the peat had been removed, their discovery turned out to be a decomposing, incomplete human head with one eye and some hair intact.
Forensics identified the skull as belonging to a European woman, probably aged 30–50.
Police initially thought the skull was that of Malika Reyn-Bardt, who had disappeared in 1960 and was the subject of an ongoing investigation. While in prison on another charge, her husband, Peter Reyn-Bardt, had boasted that he had killed his wife and buried her in the back garden of their bungalow, which was on the edge of the area of mossland where peat was being dug. The garden had been examined but no body was found. When Reyn-Bardt was confronted with the discovery of the skull from Lindow Moss, he confessed to the murder of his wife.
The skull was later radiocarbon dated, revealing it to be nearly 2,000 years old. "Lindow Woman", as it became known, dated from around 210 AD. This emerged shortly before Reyn-Bardt went to trial, but he was convicted on the evidence of his confession.
Discovery
A year later, a further discovery was made at Lindow Moss, just south-west of the Lindow Woman. On 1 August 1984, Andy Mould, who had been involved in the discovery of Lindow Woman, took what he thought was a piece of wood off the elevator of the peat-shredding machine. He threw the object at Eddie Slack, his workmate. When it hit the ground, peat fell off the object and revealed it to be a human foot. The police were called and the foot was taken away for examination.
Rick Turner, the Cheshire County Archaeologist, was notified of the discovery and succeeded in finding the rest of the body, which later became known as Lindow Man. Some skin had been exposed and had started to decay, so to prevent further deterioration of the body, it was re-covered with peat. The complete excavation of the block containing the remains was performed on 6 August. Until it could be dated, it was moved to the Macclesfield District General Hospital for storage. As the body of Malika Reyn-Bardt had still not been found, it was initially thought possible the body might be hers, until it was determined to be male, and radiocarbon dated.
The owners of the land where Lindow Man was found donated the body to the British Museum, and on 21 August it was transported to London.
At the time, the body was dubbed "Pete Marsh" by Middlesex Hospital radiologists, a name subsequently adopted by local journalists, as was the similar "Pete Bogg".
The find was announced to the press during the second week of investigation.
As the best preserved bog body found in Britain, its discovery caused a domestic media sensation and received global coverage. Sparking excitement in the country's archaeological community, who had long expected such a find, it was hailed as one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 1980s. A Q.E.D. documentary about Lindow Man broadcast by the BBC in 1985 attracted 10 million viewers.
Lindow Man's official name is Lindow II, as there are other finds from the area: Lindow I (Lindow Woman) refers to a human skull, Lindow III to a "fragmented headless body", and Lindow IV to the upper thigh of an adult male, possibly that of Lindow Man. After the discovery of Lindow Man, there were no further archaeological excavations at Lindow Moss until 1987. A large piece of skin was found by workmen on the elevator on 6 February 1987. On this occasion, the police left the investigation to the archaeologists. Over 70 pieces were found, constituting Lindow III. Although the bone was not as well preserved as that of Lindow Man, the other tissues survived in better condition. The final discovery was that of Lindow IV on 14 June 1988. Part of a left leg and buttocks were found on the elevator, from a site just west of where Lindow Man was found. Nearly three months later, on 12 September, a right thigh was discovered in the peat on the bucket of a digger. The proximity of the discovery sites, coupled with the fact that the remains were shown to come from an adult male, means that Lindow IV is probably part of Lindow Man.
Remains and investigation
Lindow Man marked the first discovery in Britain of a well-preserved bog body; its condition was comparable to that of Grauballe Man and Tollund Man from Denmark. Before Lindow Man was found, it was estimated that 41 bog bodies had been found in England and Wales and 15 in Scotland. Encouraged by the discovery of Lindow Man, a gazetteer was compiled, which revealed a far higher number of bog bodies: over 85 in England and Wales and over 36 in Scotland. Prior to the discovery of the bodies in Lindow Moss, British bog bodies had been a relatively neglected subject compared to European examples. The interest caused by Lindow Man led to more in-depth research of accounts of discoveries in bogs since the 17th century; by 1995, the numbers had changed to 106 in England and Wales and 34 in Scotland. The remains covered a large time frame.
In life, Lindow Man would have measured between 5'6" and 5'8" (1.68 and 1.73 m) tall and weighed about . It was possible to ascertain that his age at death was around the mid-20s. The body retains a trimmed beard, moustache, and sideburns of brown hair, as well as healthy teeth with no visible cavities, and manicured fingernails, indicating he did little heavy or rough work. Apart from a fox-fur armband, Lindow Man was discovered completely naked. When he died, Lindow Man was suffering from slight osteoarthritis and an infestation of whipworm and maw worm. As a result of decalcification of the bones and pressure from the peat under which Lindow Man was buried, his skull was distorted. While some preserved human remains may contain DNA, peat bogs such as Lindow Moss are generally poor for such a purpose, and it is unlikely that DNA could be recovered from Lindow Man.
Lindow Man and Lindow III were found to have elevated levels of copper on their skin. The cause for this was uncertain as there could have been natural causes, although a study by Pyatt et al. proposed that the bodies may have been painted with a copper-based pigment. To test this, skin samples were taken from places likely to be painted and tested against samples from areas where painting was unlikely. It was found that the copper content of the skin of the torso was higher than the control areas, suggesting that the theory of Pyatt et al. may have been correct. However, the conclusion was ambiguous as the overall content was above that expected of a male, and variations across the body may have been due to environmental factors. Similarly, green deposits were found in the hair, originally thought to be a copper-based pigment used for decoration, but it was later found to be the result of a reaction between the keratin in the hair and the acid of the peat bog.
Dating Lindow Man is problematic as samples from the body and surrounding peat have produced dates spanning a 900-year period. Although the peat encasing Lindow Man has been radiocarbon dated to about 300 BC, Lindow Man himself has a different date. Early tests at different laboratories returned conflicting dates for the body; later tests suggested a date between 2 BC and 119 AD. There has been a tendency to ascribe the body to the Iron Age period rather than Roman due to the interpretation that Lindow Man's death may have been a ritual sacrifice or execution. Explanations for why the peat in which he was found is much older have been sought. Archaeologist P. C. Buckland suggests that as the stratigraphy of the peat appears undisturbed, Lindow Man may have been deposited into a pool that was already some 300 years old. Geographer K. E. Barber has argued against this hypothesis, saying that pools at Lindow Moss would have been too shallow, and suggests that the peat may have been peeled back to allow the burial and then replaced, leaving the stratigraphy apparently undisturbed.
Lindow Man's last meal was preserved in his stomach and intestines and was analysed in some detail. It was hoped that investigations into the contents of the stomach would shed light on the contemporary diet, as was the case with Grauballe Man and Tollund Man in the 1950s. The analysis of the contents of the digestive system of bog bodies had become one of the principal endeavours of investigating such remains. Analysis of the grains present revealed his diet to be mostly of cereals. He probably ate slightly charred bread, although the burning may have had ritual significance rather than being an accident. Some mistletoe pollen was also found in the stomach, indicating that Lindow Man died in March or April.
One of the conclusions of the study was that the people buried in Lindow Moss may have had a less varied diet than their European counterparts. According to Jody Joy, curator of the Iron Age collection at the British Museum, the importance of Lindow Man lies more in how he lived rather than how he died, as the circumstances surrounding his demise may never be fully established.
Cause of death
As the peat was cleaned off the body in the laboratory, it became clear that Lindow Man had suffered a violent death. The injuries included a V-shaped, cut on top of his head; a possible laceration at the back of the head, ligature marks on the neck where a sinew cord was found, a possible wound on the right side of the neck, a possible stab wound in the upper right chest, a broken neck, and a fractured rib. Xeroradiography revealed that the blow on top of the head (causing the V-shaped cut) was caused by a relatively blunt object; it had fractured the skull and driven fragments into the brain. Swelling along the edges of the wound indicated that Lindow Man had lived after being struck. The blow, possibly from a small axe, would have caused unconsciousness, but Lindow Man could have survived for several hours afterwards. The ligature marks on the neck were caused by tightening the sinew cord found around his neck, possibly a garrotte or necklace.
It is not possible to confirm whether some injuries took place before or after death, due to the body's state of decay. This is the case for the wound in the upper right chest and the laceration on the back of the skull. The cut on the right of the neck may have been the result of the body becoming bloated, causing the skin to split; however, the straight edges to the wound suggest that it may have been caused by a sharp instrument, such as a knife. The ligature marks on the neck may have occurred after death. In some interpretations of Lindow Man's death, the sinew is a garrotte used to break the man's neck. However, Robert Connolly, a lecturer in physical anthropology, suggests that the sinew may have been ornamental and that ligature marks may have been caused by the body swelling when submerged. The rib fracture may also have occurred after death, perhaps during the discovery of the body, but is included in some narratives of Lindow Man's death. The broken neck would have proven the fatal injury, whether caused by the sinew cord tightening around the neck or by blows to the back of the head. After death, Lindow Man was deposited into Lindow Moss face down.
Hypothesis
Archaeologist Don Brothwell considers that many of the older bodies need re-examining with modern techniques, such as those used in the analysis of Lindow Man. The study of bog bodies, including these found in Lindow Moss, has contributed to a wider understanding of well-preserved human remains, helping to develop new methods in analysis and investigation. The use of sophisticated techniques, such as computer tomography (CT) scans, has marked the investigation of the Lindow bodies as particularly important. Such scans allow the reconstruction of the body and internal examination. Of the 27 bodies recovered from lowland raised mires in England and Wales, only those from Lindow Moss and the remains of Worsley Man have survived, together with a shoe from another body. The remains have a date range from the early 1st to the 4th centuries. Investigation into the other bodies relies on contemporary descriptions of the discovery.
The physical evidence allows a general reconstruction of how Lindow Man was killed, although some details are debated, but it does not explain why he was killed. In North West England, there is little evidence for religious or ritual activity in the Iron Age period. What evidence does survive is usually in the form of artefacts recovered from peat bogs. Late Iron Age burials in the region often took the form of a crouched inhumation, sometimes with personal ornaments. Although dated to the mid-1st century AD, the type of burial of Lindow Man was more common in the pre-historic period. In the latter half of the 20th century, scholars widely believed that bog bodies demonstrating injuries to the neck or head area were examples of ritual sacrifice. Bog bodies were associated with Germanic and Celtic cultures, specifically relating to head worship.
According to Brothwell, Lindow Man is one of the most complex examples of "overkill" in a bog body, and possibly has ritual meaning as it was "extravagant" for a straightforward murder. Archaeologists John Hodgson and Mark Brennand suggest that bog bodies may have been related to religious practice, although there is division in the academic community over this issue. In the case of Lindow Man, scholars debate whether the killing was murder or done as part of ritual. Anne Ross, an expert on Iron Age religion, proposed that the death was an example of human sacrifice and that the "triple death" (throat cut, strangled, and hit on the head) was an offering to several different gods. The wide date range for Lindow Man's death (2 BC to 119 AD) means he may have met his demise after the Romans conquered northern England in the 60s AD. As the Romans outlawed human sacrifice, such timing would open up other possibilities. This conclusion was emphasised by historian Ronald Hutton, who challenged the interpretation of sacrificial death. Connolly suggests that as Lindow Man was found naked, he could have been the victim of a violent robbery.
Joy said,
"The jury really is still out on these bodies, whether they were aristocrats, priests, criminals, outsiders, whether they went willingly to their deaths or whether they were executed – but Lindow was a very remote place in those days, an unlikely place for an ambush or a murder".
According to Anne Ross, a scholar of Celtic history and Don Robins, a chemist at the University of London, Lindow Man was likely a sacrifice victim of extraordinary importance. They identified his stomach contents as including the undigested remains of a partially burned barley griddle cake of a kind used by the ancient Celts to select victims for sacrifice. Such cakes were torn into fragments and placed in a sack, after which all candidates for sacrifice would withdraw a piece, with the one withdrawing the burnt piece being the one who would be sacrificed. They argued that Lindow Man was likely a high-ranking Druid who was sacrificed in a last-ditch effort to call upon the aid of three Celtic gods to stop a Roman offensive against the Celts in AD 60.
Conservation
Environment and situation are the crucial factors that determine how corpses decay. For instance, corpses will decay differently depending on the weather, the way they are buried, and the medium in which they are buried. Peat slows the decay of corpses. It was feared that, once Lindow Man was removed from that environment, which had preserved the body for nearly 2,000 years, the remains would rapidly start to deteriorate, so steps were taken to ensure preservation. After rejecting methods that had been used to maintain the integrity of other bog bodies, such as the "pit-tanning" used on Grauballe Man, which took a year and a half, scientists settled on freeze-drying. In preparation, the body was covered in a solution of 15% polyethylene glycol 400 and 85% water to prevent its becoming distorted. The body was then frozen solid and the ice vaporised to ensure Lindow Man did not shrink. Afterwards, Lindow Man was put in a specially constructed display case to control the environment, maintaining the temperature at and the humidity at 55%.
Lindow Man is held in the British Museum. Before the remains were transferred there, people from North West England launched an unsuccessful campaign to keep the body in Manchester. The bog body has been on temporary display in other venues: at the Manchester Museum on three occasions, April to , March to , and to ; and at the Great North Museum in Newcastle from August to . The 2008–09 Manchester display, titled Lindow Man: A Bog Body Mystery Exhibition at the Manchester Museum, won the category "Best Archaeological Innovation" in the 2010 British Archaeological Awards, run by the Council for British Archaeology.
Critics have complained that, by museum display of the remains, the body of Lindow Man has been objectified rather than treated with the respect due the dead. This is part of a wider discussion about the scientific treatment of human remains and museum researchers and archaeologists using them as information sources.
Cultural references
British archaeologist and anthropologist Don Brothwell’s The Bog Man and the Archaeology of People provides an account of the modern scientific techniques employed to conserve and analyse Lindow Man. Celtic history, language and lore scholar Anne Ross and archaeological chemist Don Robins's The Life and Death of a Druid Prince provides an account of the circumstances surrounding Lindow Man's life and death, in part hypothesising that he had lived as a highborn, perhaps even as a druid who was sacrificed to the gods at the time of the Menai Massacre and Boudica’s rebellion.
See also
Haraldskær Woman
List of bog bodies
Ötzi
References
Notes
Footnotes
Bibliography
External links
1984 archaeological discoveries
1st-century deaths
Archaeological sites in Cheshire
Bog bodies
Deaths by strangulation
History of Cheshire
Iron Age Britain
Prehistoric burials in England
Romano-British objects in the British Museum
Year of birth unknown | [
-0.0845440924167633,
0.2538989186286926,
-0.09929634630680084,
-0.5207623243331909,
0.6143088936805725,
0.7192649841308594,
0.2280137538909912,
0.4843675196170807,
-0.27657434344291687,
0.27381977438926697,
-0.33980855345726013,
0.035020243376493454,
-0.0023446918930858374,
0.4982227683067... |
18360 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lombok | Lombok | Lombok is an island in West Nusa Tenggara province, Indonesia. It forms part of the chain of the Lesser Sunda Islands, with the Lombok Strait separating it from Bali to the west and the Alas Strait between it and Sumbawa to the east. It is roughly circular, with a "tail" (Sekotong Peninsula) to the southwest, about across and a total area of about . The provincial capital and largest city on the island is Mataram.
Lombok is somewhat similar in size and density, and shares some cultural heritage with the neighboring island of Bali to the west. However, it is administratively part of West Nusa Tenggara, along with the larger and more sparsely populated island of Sumbawa to the east. Lombok is surrounded by a number of smaller islands locally called Gili.
The island was home to some 3,166,789 Indonesians as recorded in the decennial 2010 census and 3,832,631 in the 2020 Census.
Administration
Lombok is under the administration of the Governor of the province of West Nusa Tenggara (Nusa Tenggara Barat). The province is administered from the provincial capital of Mataram in West Lombok.
The island is administratively divided into four kabupaten (regencies) and one kota (city). They are as follows, with their areas and populations at the 2010 Census and the 2020 Census:
History
The 14th century Majapahit manuscript Nagarakretagama canto 14 mentioned "Lombok Mirah" as one of island identified under Majapahit suzerainty. Other than the Babad Lombok document which records the 1257 Samalas eruption, little is known about Lombok before the seventeenth century. Before this time it was made up of numerous competing and feuding petty states each of which were presided over by a Sasak 'prince'. This disunity was taken advantage of by the neighbouring Balinese who took control of western Lombok in the early seventeenth century.
The Makassarese meanwhile invaded eastern Lombok from their colonies in neighbouring Sumbawa. The Dutch had first visited Lombok in 1674 and the Dutch East India Company concluded its first treaty with the Sasak Princess of Lombok. The Balinese had managed to take over the whole island by 1750, but Balinese infighting resulted in the island being split into four feuding Balinese kingdoms. In 1838, the Mataram kingdom brought its rivals under control.
Relations between the Sasak and Balinese in western Lombok were largely harmonious and intermarriage was common. In the island's east, however, relations were less cordial and the Balinese maintained control from garrisoned forts. While Sasak village government remained in place, the village head became little more than a tax collector for the Balinese. Villagers became a kind of serf and Sasak aristocracy lost much of its power and land holdings.
During one of the many Sasak peasant rebellions against the Balinese, Sasak chiefs sent envoys to the Dutch in Bali and invited them to rule Lombok. In June 1894, the governor general of the Dutch East Indies, Van der Wijck, signed a treaty with Sasak rebels in eastern Lombok. He sent a large army to Lombok and the Balinese raja capitulated to Dutch demands. (see Dutch intervention in Lombok) The younger princes however overruled the raja and attacked and pushed back the Dutch. The Dutch counterattacked overrunning Mataram and the raja surrendered. The entire island was annexed to the Netherlands East Indies in 1895. The Dutch ruled over Lombok's 500,000 people with a force of no more than 250 by cultivating the support of the Balinese and Sasak aristocracy. The Dutch are remembered in Lombok as liberators from Balinese hegemony.
During World War II a Japanese invasion force comprising elements of the 2nd Southern Expeditionary Fleet invaded and occupied the Lesser Sunda Islands, including the island of Lombok. They sailed from Soerabaja harbour at 09:00 hrs on 8 March 1942 and proceeded towards Lombok Island. On 9 March 1942 at 17:00 hrs the fleet sailed into port of Ampenan on Lombok Island. The Dutch defenders were soon defeated and the island occupied.
Following the cessation of hostilities the Japanese forces occupying Indonesia were withdrawn and Lombok returned temporarily to Dutch control. Following the subsequent Indonesian independence from the Dutch, the Balinese and Sasak aristocracy continued to dominate Lombok. In 1958, the island was incorporated into the province of West Nusa Tenggara with Mataram becoming the provincial capital. Mass killings of communists occurred across the island following the abortive coup attempt in Jakarta and Central Java. During President Suharto's New Order administration (1967–1998), Lombok experienced a degree of stability and development but not to the extent of the boom and wealth in Java and Bali. Crop failures led to famine in 1966 and food shortages in 1973. The national government's transmigrasi program moved a lot of people out of Lombok. The 1980s saw external developers and speculators instigate a nascent tourism boom although local's share of earnings was limited. Indonesia's political and economic crises of the late 1990s hit Lombok hard. In January 2000, riots broke out across Mataram with Christians and ethnic Chinese the main victims, with alleged agents provocateur from outside Lombok. Tourism slumped, but in recent years has seen a renewed growth.
2018 earthquakes
The July 2018 Lombok earthquake killed 20 people and injured hundreds more, the earthquake caused significant damage to Lombok island and was the foreshock of a larger earthquake that followed eight days later. The 5 August 2018 Lombok earthquake had a moment magnitude of 7.0, and it caused catastrophic damage to North Lombok and also caused damage to nearby Bali; it caused over 550 deaths and more than 7000 were injured. Another Lombok earthquake occurred on 19 August 2018, killing 13 people and damaging 1800 buildings.
Initially, the Indonesian National Board for Disaster Management refused international aid, claiming "earthquakes did not constitute a national emergency" and that they were capable enough to respond without help. However, the infrastructure for disaster management and relief was not adequately in place in and around Lombok, therefore, the first responders to the disaster were stretched local government agencies such as police & military personnel, domestic volunteers and business owners in the parts of Lombok that were less affected by the quakes, including the Gili islands. Small scale international fundraising initiatives were organised through social networks and the web to help source basic resources such as food & clean water, and begin assisting with temporary and permanent shelter. This was vital in the early stages of the disaster, before larger scale government assistance arrived.
Geography
The island is to the immediate east of the Lombok Strait which marks the biogeographical division between the fauna of the Indomalayan realm and the distinctly different fauna of Australasia; this distinction, known as the "Wallace Line" (or "Wallace's Line") takes its name from Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913). Wallace was the first person to comment on the division between the two regions, as well as on the abrupt boundary between the two biomes. Lombok is part of the Lesser Sundas deciduous forests ecoregion.
To the east of Lombok lies the Alas Strait, a narrow body of water separating the island of Lombok from the nearby island of Sumbawa.
The island's topography is dominated by the centrally-located stratovolcano Mount Rinjani, the second-highest volcano in Indonesia, which rises to , making Lombok the 8th-highest island. The most recent eruption of Rinjani occurred in September 2016 at Gunung Barujari. In a 2010 eruption, ash was reported as rising into the atmosphere from the Barujari cone in Rinjani's caldera lake of Segara Anak. Lava flowed into the caldera lake, raising its temperature, while ash fall damaged crops on the slopes of Rinjani. The volcano and its crater lake, Segara Anak (child of the sea), are protected by the Gunung Rinjani National Park established in 1997. Recent evidence indicates an ancient volcano, Mount Samalas, of which now only a caldera remains, was the source of the 1257 Samalas eruption, one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history, which caused worldwide changes in weather.
The highlands of Lombok are forest-clad and mostly undeveloped. The lowlands are highly cultivated. Rice, soybeans, coffee, tobacco, cotton, cinnamon, cacao, cloves, cassava, corn, coconuts, copra, bananas and vanilla are the major crops grown in the fertile soils of the island. The southern part of the island is fertile but drier, especially toward the southern coastline.
List of islands
Lombok is surrounded by many islets, including:
Northwest: colloquially the Gili Islands (North Lombok Regency)
Gili Trawangan
Gili Meno
Gili Air
Northeast (East Lombok Regency)
Gili Lawang
Gili Sulat
Gili Petagan
Gili Bidara (Pasaran)
Gili Lampu
Gili Puyu
Gili Kondo
East Coast of Nusa Tenggara
Gili Puyuh
Gili Sulat
Southeast (East Lombok Regency)
Gili Indah
Gili Merengke
Gili Belek
Gili Ular
South Coast (West Lombok Regency)
Gili Solet
Gili Sarang Burung
Gili Kawu
Gili Puyuh
Southwest (Sekotong Peninsula, West Lombok Regency)
Gili Nanggu
Gili Sudak
Gili Tangkong
Gili Kedis
Gili Poh
Gili Genting
Gili Lontar
Gili Layar
Gili Amben
Gili Gede
Gili Anyaran
Gili Layar
Gili Asahan
Water problem
The water supply in Lombok is stressed and this places strain both upon the water supply of the provincial capital, Mataram, and upon that of the island in general. The southern and central areas are reported to be the most critically affected. West Nusa Tenggara province in general is threatened with a water crisis caused by increasing forest and water table damage and degradation. 160 thousand hectares of a total of 1960 thousand hectares are thought to have been affected. The Head of Built Environment and Security Forest Service Forest West Nusa Tenggara Andi Pramari stated in Mataram on Wednesday, May 6, 2009, that, "If this situation is not addressed it can be expected that within five years it may be difficult for people to obtain water in this part of NTB (West Nusa Tenggara). Not only that, the productivity of agriculture in value added will fall, and the residents are experiencing water deficiency in their wells". High cases of timber theft in the region of NTB are contributing to this problem.
In September 2010 in Central Lombok, some villagers reportedly walked for several hours to fetch a single pail of water. Nieleando, a small coastal village about 50 kilometers from the provincial capital, Mataram, has seen dry wells for years. It has been reported that occasionally the problem escalates sufficiently for disputes and fighting between villagers to occur. The problems have been reported to be most pronounced in the districts of Jonggat, Janapria, Praya Timur, Praya Barat, Praya Barat Daya and Pujut. In 2010 provincial authorities declared all six districts drought areas. Sumbawa, the other main island of the province, also experienced severe drought in 2010, making it a province-wide issue.
Areas in southern Lombok Island were classified as arid and prone to water shortages due to low rainfall and lack of water sources. In May 2011, groundbreaking began on Pandanduri dam construction, which will span about 430 hectares and cost an estimated Rp.800 billion ($92.8 million). When finished, the dam will accommodate about 25.7 million cubic meters of water and be able to irrigate 10,350 hectares of farmland. Project construction was expected to last five years.
Demographics
The island's inhabitants are 85% Sasak, whose ancestors are thought to have migrated from Java in the first millennium BC. Other residents include an estimated 10–15% Balinese, with the small remainder being Chinese-peranakan Indonesians, Javanese, Sumbawa and Arab Indonesians.
The Sasak population are culturally and linguistically closely related to the Balinese, but unlike the Hindu Balinese, the majority are Muslim and the landscape is punctuated with mosques and minarets. Islamic traditions and holidays influence the Island's daily activities.
In 2008 the Island of Lombok had 866,838 households and an average of 3.635 persons per household.
The 2020 census recorded a population of 5,320,092 people in the province of NTB, of which 70.65% reside on Lombok, giving it a population of 3,758,631 at that date.
Religion
The island's indigenous Sasak people are predominantly Muslim however before the arrival of Islam Lombok experienced a long period of Hindu and Buddhist influence that reached the island through Java. A minority Balinese Hindu culture remains in Lombok. Islam may have first been brought to Lombok by traders arriving from Sumbawa in the 17th century who then established a following in eastern Lombok. Other accounts describe the first influences arriving in the first half of the sixteenth century. The palm leaf manuscript Babad Lombok which contains the history of Lombok describes how Sunan Prapen was sent by his father The Susuhunan Ratu of Giri on a military expedition to Lombok and Sumbawa in order to convert the population and propagate the new religion. However, the new religion took on a highly syncretistic character, frequently mixing animist and Hindu-Buddhist beliefs and practices with Islam.
A more orthodox version of Islam increased in popularity in the early twentieth century. The Indonesian government religionization programs (acquiring of a religion) in Lombok during 1967 and 1968 led to a period of some considerable confusion in religious allegiances and practices. These religionization programs later led to the emergence of more conformity in religious practices in Lombok. The Hindu minority religion is still practised in Lombok alongside the majority Muslim religion.
Hinduism is followed by ethnic Balinese and by a minority of the indigenous Sasak. All the main Hindu religious ceremonies are celebrated in Lombok and there are many villages throughout Lombok that have a Hindu majority population. According to local legends two of the oldest villages on the island, Bayan, and Sembalun, were founded by a prince of Majapahit. According to the 2010 population census declared adherents of Hinduism numbered 101,000 people with the highest concentration in the Mataram Regency where they accounted for 14% of the population. The Ditjen Bimas Hindu (DBH)/ Hindu Religious Affairs Directorate's own analysis conducted in close association with Hindu communities throughout the country found that the number of Hindus in the population is much higher than counted in the government census. The survey carried out in 2012 found the Hindu population of Lombok to be 445,933. This figure is more in line with the commonly stated view that 10–15% of the Islands population is Hindu.
The Nagarakertagama, the 14th-century palm leaf poem that was found on Lombok places the island as one of the vassals of the Majapahit empire. This manuscript contained detailed descriptions of the Majapahit Kingdom and also affirmed the importance of Hindu-Buddhism in the Majapahit empire by describing temple, palaces and several ceremonial observances.
Christianity is practised by a small minority including some ethnic Chinese and immigrants from Bali and East Nusa Tenggara. There are Roman Catholic churches and parishes in Ampenan, Mataram, Praya and Tanjung. There is a catholic hospital in Mataram as well. Two Buddhist temples can be visited in and around Tanjung where about 800 Buddhists live.
The history of a small Arab community in Lombok has history dating back to early settlement by traders from Yemen. The community is still evident mainly in Ampenan, the old Port of Mataram. Due to the siting of a UNHCR refugee centre in Lombok some refugees from middle eastern countries have intermarried with Lombok people.
A non-orthodox Islamic group found only on Lombok are the Wektu Telu ("Three times"), who pray three times daily, instead of the five times stipulated in the Quran. Waktu Telu beliefs are entwined with animism, and is influenced not only by Islam, but also Hinduism and pantheistic beliefs. There are also remnants of Boda who maintain native Sasak beliefs and could be representative of an original Sasak culture, undiluted by later Islamic influences.
Many influences of animist belief prevail within the Sasak people, most of whom believe in the existence of spirits or ghosts. They regard both food and prayer as indispensable whenever they seek to communicate with spirits, including the dead and ritualistic traditional practices endure. Traditional magic is practised to ward off evil and illness and to seek solutions to disputations and antipathy. Magic may be practised by an individual alone but normally a person experienced in such things is sought out to render a service. Normally money or gifts are made to this person and the most powerful practitioners are treated with considerable respect.
Economy and politics
Many of the visitors to Lombok and much of the islands goods come across the Lombok Strait by sea or air links from Bali. Only separate the two islands. Lombok is often marketed as "an unspoiled Bali," or "Bali's sister island." With support from the central government, Lombok and Sumbawa are being developed as Indonesia's second destination for international and domestic tourism. Lombok has retained a more natural, uncrowded and undeveloped environment, which attract travelers who come for its relaxed pace and the opportunity to explore the island's unspoiled natural environment. The more contemporary marketing campaigns for Lombok/Sumbawa seek to differentiate from Bali and promote the island of Lombok as a standalone destination. The opening of the Lombok International Airport on 1 October 2011 assisted in this endeavor.
Nusa Tenggara Barat and Lombok may be considered economically depressed by First World standards and a large majority of the population live in poverty. Still, the island is fertile, has sufficient rainfall in most areas for agriculture, and possesses a variety of climate zones. Consequently, food in abundant quantity and variety is available inexpensively at local farmer's markets, though locals still suffer from famine due to drought and subsistence farming. A family of 4 can eat rice, vegetables, and fruit for as little as US$0.50. Even though a family's income may be as small as US$1.00 per day from fishing or farming, many families are able to live a contented and productive life on a low income. However, the people of Lombok are coming under increasing pressure from rising food and fuel prices. Access to housing, education and health services remains difficult for many of the island's indigenous population although public education is free throughout the province and elementary schools are tried to be present in even remote areas.
The percentage of the population living in poverty in urban areas of Nusa Tenggara Barat in 2008 was 29.47% and in 2009 it was 28.84%. For those living in rural areas in 2008 it was 19.73% and in 2009 it reduced marginally to 18.40%. For combined urban and village the figures were 23.81% and in 2009 it fell slightly to 22.78%.
In Mataram in 2008 the percentage of the population that was unmarried was 40.74%, married 52.01%, divorced 2.51% and widowed 4.75%.
Tourism
Pre-1997
Tourist development started in the mid-1980s when Lombok attracted attention as an 'unspoiled' alternative to Bali. Initially, low budget bungalows proliferated at places like the Gili islands and Kuta, Lombok on the South Coast. These tourist accommodations were largely owned by and operated by local business entrepreneurs. Areas in proximity to the airport, places like Senggigi, experienced rampant land speculation for prime beachfront land by big businesses from outside Lombok.
In the 1990s the national government in Jakarta began to take an active role in planning for and promoting Lombok's tourism. Private organizations like the Bali Tourism Development Corporation (BTDC) and the Lombok Tourism Development Corporation (LTDC) were formed. LTDC prepared detailed land use plans with maps and areas zoned for tourist facilities. Large hotels provide primary employment for the local population. Ancillary business, ranging from restaurants to art shops have been started by local businessmen. These businesses provide secondary employment for local residents.
1997 to 2007
The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis and the fall of Suharto regime in 1998 marked the beginning a decade of setbacks for tourism. Spurred by rapid devaluation of the currency and the transition to true democracy caused all of Indonesia to experience a period of domestic unrest. Many of Indonesian Provinces struggled with elements of the population desiring autonomy or independence from the Republic of Indonesia. At the same time, fanatical Islamic terrorism in Indonesia further aggravated domestic unrest across the archipelago.
In January 2000, radical Islamic agitators from the newly formed Jemaah Islamiyah provoked religious and ethnic violence in the Ampenan area of Mataram and the southern area of Senggigi. Many foreign expatriates and tourists were temporarily evacuated to Bali. Numerous foreign embassies issued Travel Warnings advising of the potential danger of traveling to Indonesia.
Subsequently, the 2002 Bali bombings, the 2005 Bali bombings and the Progress of the SARS outbreak in Asia all dramatically impacted tourism activities in Lombok. Tourism was slow to return to Lombok, provoked in part by a worldwide reluctance to travel because of global tensions. Only since 2007–2008, when most developed countries lifted their Travel Warnings has tourism recovered to pre-2000 levels.
Present
The years leading up to 2010 saw a rapid revival and promotion of tourism recovery in the tourism industry. The number of visitors far surpassed pre-2000 levels.
The Indonesian government has actively promoted both Lombok and neighboring Sumbawa as Indonesia's number two tourist destination after Bali. In 2009. then President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Ministry of Cultural and Tourism and the regional Governor had made public statements supporting the development of Lombok as a tourism destination and setting a goal of 1 million visitors annually by the year 2012 for the combined destination of Lombok and Sumbawa. This has seen infrastructure improvements to the island including road upgrades and the construction of a much delayed new International airport in the islands south. Bali Tourism Development Corporation (BTDC) has been empowered to develop Mandalika Resort Area at southern part of the island, extending from Kuta along of sandy beach.
Tourism is an important source of income on Lombok. The most developed tourism area of the island is on the west coast of the island and is centered about the township of Senggigi. The immediate surrounds of the township contain the most developed tourism facilities. The west coast coastal tourism strip is spread along a strip following the coastal road north from Mataram and the old airport at Ampenan. The principal tourism area extends to Tanjung in the northwest at the foot of Mount Rinjani and includes the Sire and Medana Peninsulas and the highly popular Gili Islands lying immediately offshore. These three small islands are most commonly accessed by boat from Bangsal near Pemenang, Teluk Nare a little to the south, or from further south at Senggigi and Mangsit beach. Many hotels and resorts offer accommodations ranging from budget to luxurious. Recently direct fast boat services have been running from Bali making a direct connection to the Gili islands. Although rapidly changing in character, the Gili islands still provide both a lay-back backpacker's retreat and a high-class resort destination.
Other tourist destinations include Mount Rinjani, Gili Bidara, Gili Lawang, Narmada Park and Mayura Park and Kuta (distinctly different from Kuta, Bali). Sekotong, in southwest Lombok, is popular for its numerous and diverse scuba diving locations.
The Kuta area is also famous for its largely deserted, white sand beaches. The Smalltown is rapidly developing since the opening of the International airport in Praya. Increasing amounts of surfers from around the globe come here seeking out perfect surf and the slow and rustic feel of Lombok. South Lombok surfing is considered some of the best in the world. Large polar lows push up through the Indian Ocean directing long range, high period swell from as far south as Heard Island from late March through to September or later. This coincided with the dry season and South-East trade winds that blow like clockwork. Lombok is famous for its diversity of breaks, which includes world-renowned Desert Point at Banko Banko in the southwest of the island.
The northern west coast near Tanjung has many new upmarket hotel and villa developments centered about the Sire and Medana peninsular nearby to the Gili islands and a new boating marina at Medana Bay. These new developments complement the already existing five-star resorts and a large golf course already established there.
Promoting Halal tourism
In 2019, Lombok received a score of 70, the highest among the assessed top 10 halal tourist destinations in Indonesia in study conducted by the Tourism Ministry. The Indonesian Government was hoping to attract some of the anticipated 230 million Muslim travellers across the world in 2026, with potential spending of up to .
According to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, halal (or Islamic) tourism components are halal hotels (no alcohol, gambling, etc.; Quran, prayer mats and arrows indicating the direction of Mecca in every room), halal transport (cleanliness; non-alcoholic drinks; publications coherent with Islam), halal food premises, halal (Islamic-themed) tour packages and halal finance(the financial resources of the hotel, restaurant, travel agency and the airlines have to fit with Islamic principles).
Transport
Lombok International Airport (Bandara Internasional Lombok) is south west of the small regional city of Praya in South central Lombok. It commenced operations on 1 October 2011. It replaced Selaparang airport near Ampenan. It is the only operational international airport within the province of West Nusa Tenggara (Nusa Tenggara Barat).
Selaparang Airport in Ampenan was closed for operations on the evening of 30 September 2011. It previously provided facilities for domestic services to Java, Bali, and Sumbawa and international services to Singapore to Kuala Lumpur via Surabaya and Jakarta. It was the island's original airport and is situated on Jalan Adi Sucipto on the north western outskirts of Mataram. The terminals and basic airport infrastructure remain intact but it is closed to all civil airline traffic.
Lembar Harbor seaport in the southwest has shipping facilities and a ferry for road vehicles and passenger services. In 2013, the gross tonnage is 4.3 million Gross Tonnages or increase by 72 percent from 2012 data means in Lombok and West Nusa Tenggara the economy progress significantly.
Labuhan Lombok ferry port on the east coast provides a ferry for road vehicles and passenger services to Poto Tano on Sumbawa.
Pelni Shipping Line provides a national network of passenger ship services throughout the Indonesian archipelago. Pelni have offices in Ampenan.
Transport between Bali and Lombok
Flights from Ngurah Rai International Airport to Lombok "Zainuddin Abdul Madjid" International Airport take about 40 minutes. Lombok International Airport is located in southwest Lombok, 1.5 hours drive to Senggigi main tourist areas in the west Lombok, 2 hours drive to the jetty of Teluk Nara before you cross to Gili Islands and about 30 minutes drive to Kuta south Lombok.
Public ferries depart from Padang Bai (Southeast Bali) and Lembar (Southwest Lombok) every hour, taking a minimum of 4–5 hours make the crossing in either direction.
Fast boat services are available from various departure points on Bali and principally serve the Gili Islands, with some significant onward traffic to the Lombok mainland. Arrival points on Lombok are dependent upon the operator, at either Teluk Nare/Teluk Kodek, Bangsal harbour or the township of Senggigi, all on the northwest coast. Operating standards vary widely.
Festivals
A traditional event called the Nyale Festival, or Bau Nyale (meaning "to catch the sea worms), is held between February and March. The event focuses on catching the spawning parts of Palola viridis, which are known as nyale or wawo. In local legend, nyale are believed to be the reincarnation of the beautiful Princess Mandalika, who had jumped into the sea to drown herself off Seger beach, after her father had set up a contest for potential suitors to fight one another to win her hand in marriage.
See also
Tanak Tepong
Notes
References
External links
Tropenmuseum Collection of historic photos from Lombok
Lombok Indonesia Tourism
Mount Rinjani Lombok National Park
NY Times on Lombok
The Australian reports on Lombok: The New Bali
Kabupaten Lombok Utara the Regency of North Lombok
Kabupaten Lombok Tengah, the Regency of Central Lombok
Kabupaten Lombok Timur, the Regency of East Lombok
Kabupaten Lombok Barat, the Regency of West Lombok
Kota Mataram, City of Mataram
Gili Asahan
Islands of West Nusa Tenggara
Lesser Sunda Islands | [
0.14304035902023315,
0.3151172399520874,
0.14439700543880463,
-0.25546005368232727,
0.08815888315439224,
-0.20432844758033752,
-0.3352804481983185,
0.431892991065979,
-0.5689994096755981,
0.4535031020641327,
-0.1360449343919754,
0.24299781024456024,
-0.7784085869789124,
-0.4588127732276916... |
18362 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego | Lego | Lego ( , ; stylised as LEGO) is a line of plastic construction toys that are manufactured by The Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. , Lego was the largest toy company in the world. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of variously coloured interlocking plastic bricks accompanying an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and various other parts. Lego pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways to construct objects, including vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Anything constructed can be taken apart again, and the pieces reused to make new things.
The Lego Group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949. Movies, games, competitions and eight Legoland amusement parks have been developed under the brand. , 600 billion Lego parts had been produced.
History
The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891–1958), a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934, his company came to be called "Lego", derived from the Danish phrase , which means "play well". In 1947, Lego expanded to begin producing plastic toys. In 1949 Lego began producing, among other new products, an early version of the now familiar interlocking bricks, calling them "Automatic Binding Bricks". These bricks were based on the Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks, which had been patented in the United Kingdom in 1939 and released in 1947. Lego had received a sample of the Kiddicraft bricks from the supplier of an injection-molding machine that it purchased. The bricks, originally manufactured from cellulose acetate, were a development of the traditional stackable wooden blocks of the time.
The Lego Group's motto, "only the best is good enough" (, literally "the best isn't excessively good") was created in 1936. This motto, which is still used today, was created by Christiansen to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality, a value he believed in strongly. By 1951 plastic toys accounted for half of the Lego company's output, even though the Danish trade magazine Legetøjs-Tidende ("Toy Times"), visiting the Lego factory in Billund in the early 1950s, felt that plastic would never be able to replace traditional wooden toys. Although a common sentiment, Lego toys seem to have become a significant exception to the dislike of plastic in children's toys, due in part to the high standards set by Ole Kirk.
By 1954, Christiansen's son, Godtfred, had become the junior managing director of the Lego Group. It was his conversation with an overseas buyer that led to the idea of a toy system. Godtfred saw the immense potential in Lego bricks to become a system for creative play, but the bricks still had some problems from a technical standpoint: their locking ability was limited and they were not versatile. In 1958, the modern brick design was developed; it took five years to find the right material for it, ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) polymer. A patent application for the modern Lego brick design was filed in Denmark on 28 January 1958, and in various other countries in the subsequent few years.
The Lego Group's Duplo product line was introduced in 1969 and is a range of simple blocks whose lengths measure twice the width, height, and depth of standard Lego blocks and are aimed towards younger children.
In 1978, Lego produced the first minifigures, which have since become a staple in most sets.
In May 2011, Space Shuttle Endeavour mission STS-134 brought 13 Lego kits to the International Space Station, where astronauts built models to see how they would react in microgravity, as a part of the Lego Bricks in Space program.
In May 2013, the largest model ever created was displayed in New York City and was made of over 5 million bricks; a 1:1 scale model of an X-wing fighter. Other records include a tower and a railway.
In February 2015, Lego replaced Ferrari as the "world's most powerful brand."
In popular culture
Lego's popularity is demonstrated by its wide representation and usage in many forms of cultural works, including books, films and art work. It has even been used in the classroom as a teaching tool. In the US, Lego Education North America is a joint venture between Pitsco, Inc. and the educational division of the Lego Group.
In 1998, Lego bricks were one of the original inductees into the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong in Rochester, New York.
Design
Lego pieces of all varieties constitute a universal system. Despite variation in the design and the purposes of individual pieces over the years, each piece remains compatible in some way with existing pieces. Lego bricks from 1958 still interlock with those made in the current time, and Lego sets for young children are compatible with those made for teenagers. Six bricks of 2 × 4 studs can be combined in 915,103,765 ways.
Each Lego piece must be manufactured to an exacting degree of precision. When two pieces are engaged they must fit firmly, yet be easily disassembled. The machines that manufacture Lego bricks have tolerances as small as 10 micrometres.
Primary concept and development work takes place at the Billund headquarters, where the company employs approximately 120 designers. The company also has smaller design offices in the UK, Spain, Germany, and Japan which are tasked with developing products aimed specifically at these markets. The average development period for a new product is around twelve months, split into three stages. The first stage is to identify market trends and developments, including contact by the designers directly with the market; some are stationed in toy shops close to holidays, while others interview children. The second stage is the design and development of the product based upon the results of the first stage. the design teams use 3D modelling software to generate CAD drawings from initial design sketches. The designs are then prototyped using an in-house stereolithography machine. These prototypes are presented to the entire project team for comment and for testing by parents and children during the "validation" process. Designs may then be altered in accordance with the results from the focus groups. Virtual models of completed Lego products are built concurrently with the writing of the user instructions. Completed CAD models are also used in the wider organisation, for marketing and packaging.
Lego Digital Designer is an official piece of Lego software for Mac OS X and Windows which allows users to create their own digital Lego designs. The program once allowed customers to order their custom designs with a service to ship physical models from Digital Designer to consumers; the service ended in 2012.
Manufacturing
Since 1963, Lego pieces have been manufactured from a strong, resilient plastic known as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). , Lego engineers use the NX CAD/CAM/CAE PLM software suite to model the elements. The software allows the parts to be optimised by way of mould flow and stress analysis. Prototype moulds are sometimes built before the design is committed to mass production. The ABS plastic is heated to until it reaches a dough-like consistency. It is then injected into the moulds using forces of between 25 and 150 tonnes, and takes approximately 15 seconds to cool. The moulds are permitted a tolerance of up to twenty micrometres, to ensure the bricks remain connected. Human inspectors check the output of the moulds, to eliminate significant variations in colour or thickness. According to the Lego Group, about eighteen bricks out of every million fail to meet the standard required. Lego factories recycle all but about 1 percent of their plastic waste from the manufacturing process. If the plastic cannot be re-used in Lego bricks, it is processed and sold on to industries that can make use of it. Lego has a self-imposed 2030 deadline to find a more eco-friendly alternative to the ABS plastic it currently uses in its bricks.
Manufacturing of Lego bricks occurs at several locations around the world. Moulding is done in Billund, Denmark; Nyíregyháza, Hungary; Monterrey, Mexico and most recently in Jiaxing, China. Brick decorations and packaging are done at plants in Denmark, Hungary, Mexico and Kladno in the Czech Republic. The Lego Group estimates that in five decades it has produced 400 billion Lego blocks. Annual production of Lego bricks averages approximately 36 billion, or about 1140 elements per second. According to an article in BusinessWeek in 2006, Lego could be considered the world's number one tyre manufacturer; the factory produces about 306 million small rubber tyres a year. The claim was reiterated in 2012.
In December 2012, the BBC's More or Less radio program asked the Open University's engineering department to determine "how many Lego bricks, stacked one on top of the other, it would take for the weight to destroy the bottom brick?" Using a hydraulic testing machine, the engineering department determined the average maximum force a 2×2 Lego brick can stand is 4,240 newtons; since an average 2×2 Lego brick has a mass of , according to their calculations it would take a stack of 375,000 bricks to cause the bottom brick to collapse, which represents a stack in height.
Private tests have shown several thousand assembly-disassembly cycles before the bricks begin to wear out, although Lego tests show fewer cycles.
In 2018, Lego announced that it will be using bio-derived polyethylene to make its botanical elements (parts such as leaves, bushes and trees). In 2020 the company announced that it would cease packaging its products in single-use plastic bags, and would instead be using recyclable paper bags.
Set themes
Since the 1950s, the Lego Group has released thousands of sets with a variety of themes, including space, robots, pirates, trains, Vikings, castle, dinosaurs, undersea exploration, and wild west. Some of the classic themes that continue to the present day include Lego City (a line of sets depicting city life introduced in 1973) and Lego Technic (a line aimed at emulating complex machinery, introduced in 1977).
Over the years, Lego has licensed themes from numerous cartoon and film franchises and even some from video games. These include Batman, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Minecraft. Although some of the licensed themes, Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones, had highly successful sales, Lego has expressed a desire to rely more upon their own characters and classic themes, and less upon licensed themes related to movie releases. Discontinued sets may become a collectable and command value on the black market.
For the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Lego released a special Team GB Minifigures series exclusively in the United Kingdom to mark the opening of the games. For the 2016 Summer Olympics and 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Lego released a kit with the Olympic and Paralympic mascots Vinicius and Tom.
One of the largest Lego sets commercially produced was a minifig-scaled edition of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon. Designed by Jens Kronvold Fredericksen, it was released in 2007 and contained 5,195 pieces. It was surpassed by a 5,922-piece Taj Mahal. A redesigned Millennium Falcon retook the top spot in 2017 with 7,541 pieces. Since then, the Millennium Falcon has been superseded as the biggest Lego set by the Lego Art World Map at 11,695 pieces; the Lego Titanic at 9,090 pieces and the Lego Architect Colosseum at 9,036 pieces.
Robotics themes
Lego also initiated a robotics line of toys called 'Mindstorms' in 1999, and has continued to expand and update this range ever since. The roots of the product originate from a programmable brick developed at the MIT Media Lab, and the name is taken from a paper by Seymour Papert, a computer scientist and educator who developed the educational theory of constructionism, and whose research was at times funded by the Lego Group.
The programmable Lego brick which is at the heart of these robotics sets has undergone several updates and redesigns, with the latest being called the 'EV3' brick, being sold under the name of Lego Mindstorms EV3. The set includes sensors that detect touch, light, sound and ultrasonic waves, with several others being sold separately, including an RFID reader.
The intelligent brick can be programmed using official software available for Windows and Mac computers, and is downloaded onto the brick via Bluetooth or a USB cable. There are also several unofficial programs and compatible programming languages that have been made to work with the brick, and many books have been written to support this community.
There are several robotics competitions which use the Lego robotics sets. The earliest is Botball, a national U.S. middle- and high-school competition stemming from the MIT 6.270 Lego robotics tournament. Other Lego robotics competitions include Junior FIRST LEGO League (Jr.FLL) for students ages 6–9 and FIRST Lego League (FLL) for students ages 9–16 (age 9–14 in the United States, Canada, and Mexico). Jr.FLL and FLL offer real-world engineering challenges to participants. FLL uses Lego-based robots to complete tasks. Jr.FLL participants build models out of Lego elements. In its 2010 season, there were 16,070 FLL teams in over 55 countries. In its 2010 season, there were 2,147 Jr.FLL teams with 12,882 total student participants in the United States and Canada. The international RoboCup Junior football competition involves extensive use of Lego Mindstorms equipment which is often pushed to its extreme limits.
The capabilities of the Mindstorms range have now been harnessed for use in Iko Creative Prosthetic System, a prosthetic limbs system designed for children. Designs for these Lego prosthetics allow everything from mechanical diggers to laser-firing spaceships to be screwed on to the end of a child's limb. Iko is the work of the Chicago-based Colombian designer Carlos Arturo Torres, and is a modular system that allows children to customise their own prosthetics with the ease of clicking together plastic bricks. Designed with Lego's Future Lab, the Danish toy company's experimental research department, and Cirec, a Colombian foundation for physical rehabilitation, the modular prosthetic incorporates myoelectric sensors that register the activity of the muscle in the stump and send a signal to control movement in the attachment. A processing unit in the body of the prosthetic contains an engine compatible with Lego Mindstorms, the company's robotics line, which lets the wearer build an extensive range of customised, programmable limbs.
Clones
The last significant patent for Lego bricks expired in 1978. Since then, competitors have produced blocks of similar dimensions and design that can be connected with Lego bricks. In 2002, Lego sued the CoCo Toy Company in Beijing for copyright infringement over its "Coko bricks" product. CoCo was ordered to cease manufacture of the products, publish a formal apology and pay damages. Lego sued the English company Best-Lock Construction Toys in German courts in 2004 and 2009; the Federal Patent Court of Germany denied Lego trademark protection for the shape of its bricks for the latter case. In 2005, the Lego Company sued Canadian company Mega Bloks for trademark violation, but the Supreme Court of Canada upheld Mega Bloks' rights to sell their product. In 2010, the European Court of Justice ruled that the eight-peg design of the original Lego brick "merely performs a technical function [and] cannot be registered as a trademark."
In 2020 and 2021 Lego sent cease and desist letters to small toy retailers and popular YouTubers in Germany. In 2021 the situation escalated when Lego let a container delivered by clone producer Qman block in the harbor of Bremen for trademark infringement, and to test for contamination with dangerous materials. The recipient toy retailer initiated an appeal for donations to import containers of Lego clones from China to Germany and donate them to children's homes, which received more than within a couple of weeks.
Related services
Official website
First launched in 1996, the Lego website has developed over the years, and provides many extra services beyond an online store and a product catalogue. There are also moderated message boards that were founded in 2001. The site also includes instruction booklets for all Lego sets dating back to 2002.
The Lego website features a social media app named Lego Life, which is designed for children under 13 years of age. The app is available as a free download and only features Lego-related content. It was designed to be a social network for children to be inspired, create and share their Lego builds, photos and videos with a like-minded community, whilst also providing Lego content in the form of product advertising, images, videos, campaigns and competitions. The app incorporates a variety of child safety features to provide a safe digital environment for children, including the protection of personal information and the heavy moderation of all uploaded user-generated content and communication.
My Lego Network was a social networking site that involved items, blueprints, ranks, badges which were earned for completing certain tasks, trading and trophies called masterpieces which allowed users to progress to go to the next rank. The website had a built-in inbox which allowed users to send pre-written messages to one another. The Lego Network included automated non-player characters within called "Networkers", who were able to do things which normal users could not do, sending custom messages, and selling masterpieces and blueprints. The site also had modules which were set up on the user's page that gave the user items, or that displayed picture compositions. My Lego network closed in 2015.
Before My Lego Network, there were Lego Club Pages, which essentially held the same purpose, although the design lacked complex interaction.
Theme parks
Merlin Entertainments operates eight Legoland amusement parks, the original in Billund, Denmark, the second in Windsor, England, the third in Günzburg, Germany, the fourth in Carlsbad, California, the fifth in Winter Haven, Florida, the sixth in Iskandar Puteri, Malaysia, the seventh in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and the eighth in Nagoya, Japan. A ninth is planned to open in 2020 in Goshen, New York, United States, and a tenth in 2022 in Shanghai, China. On 13 July 2005, the control of 70% of the Legoland parks was sold for $460 million to the Blackstone Group of New York while the remaining 30% is still held by Lego Group. There are also eight Legoland Discovery Centres, two in Germany, four in the United States, one in Japan and one in the United Kingdom. Two Legoland Discovery Centres opened in 2013: one at the Westchester Ridge Hill shopping complex in Yonkers, New York, and one at the Vaughan Mills in Vaughan, Ontario, Canada. Another opened at the Meadowlands complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in 2014.
Retail stores
The first Lego store to open anywhere in the world was in Sydney, Australia in 1984. Located in the Birkenhead Point Outlet Centre it was not only the first dedicated Lego retail outlet, but it also had displays including many iconic Australian items such as the Holden FJ, Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the Sydney Opera House as well as buildings from Amsterdam, dinosaurs and an English Village. Known as The LEGO® Centre, Birkenhead Point, the store closed in the early 1990s.
, Lego operates 737 retail shops, called Lego Stores, globally. The U.S. stores include the Downtown Disney shopping complexes at Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resorts as well as in Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. The opening of each new store is celebrated with a weekend-long event in which a Master Model Builder creates, with the help of volunteers—most of whom are children—a larger-than-life Lego statue, which is then displayed at the new store for several weeks.
Business consultancy
Since around 2000, the Lego Group has been promoting "Lego Serious Play", a form of business consultancy fostering creative thinking, in which team members build metaphors of their organizational identities and experiences using Lego bricks. Participants work through imaginary scenarios using visual three-dimensional Lego constructions, imaginatively exploring possibilities in a serious form of play.
Related products
Video games
Lego branched out into the video game market in 1997 by founding Lego Media International Limited, and Lego Island was released that year by Mindscape. After this Lego released titles such as Lego Creator and Lego Racers.
After Lego closed down their publishing subsidiary, they moved on to a partnership with Traveller's Tales, and went on to make games like Lego Star Wars, Lego Indiana Jones, Lego Batman, and many more including the very well-received Lego Marvel Super Heroes game, featuring New York City as the overworld and including Marvel characters from the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and more. More recently, Lego has created a game based on The Lego Movie, due to its popularity.
Board games
Lego Games launched in 2009, was a series of Lego-themed board games designed by Cephas Howard and Reiner Knizia in which the players usually build the playing board out of Lego bricks and then play with Lego-style players. Examples of the games include "Minotaurus", in which players roll dice to move characters within a brick-build labyrinth, "Creationary", in which players must build something which appears on a card, or "Ramses Pyramid", in which players collect gems and climb up a customisable pyramid. Like many board games, the games use dice. In Lego Games, the dice are Lego, with Lego squares with symbols on Lego studs on the dice, surrounded by rubber. The games vary from simple to complex; some are similar to "traditional" board games, while others are completely different.
Films and television
The first official Lego film was the straight-to-DVD release of Bionicle: Mask of Light in 2003 developed by Creative Capers Entertainment and distributed by Miramax Home Entertainment. Several other straight-to-DVD computer animated Bionicle sequels and Hero Factory movies were produced in the following years. Lego: The Adventures of Clutch Powers was released on DVD in February 2010, a computer-animated film made by Tinseltown Toons.
The Lego Movie, a feature film based on Lego toys, was released by Warner Bros. in February 2014. It featured Chris Pratt in the lead role, with substantial supporting characters voiced by Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson, Alison Brie, Will Ferrell and Nick Offerman. A contest was held for contestants to submit designs for vehicles to be used in the film. After the release of The Lego Movie, independent Canadian toy retailers reported issues with shortages of Lego products and cited cancellations of Lego pre-orders without warning as a motive to stock compatible, rival products.
A spin-off of The Lego Movie, entitled The Lego Batman Movie, directed by Chris McKay was released in the US in February 2017.
In June 2013, it was reported that Warner Bros. was developing a feature film adaptation of Lego Ninjago. Brothers Dan Hageman and Kevin Hageman were attached to write the adaptation, while Dan Lin and Roy Lee, along with Phil Lord and Chris Miller, were announced as producers. The film, The Lego Ninjago Movie, was released in September 2017. A computer-generated animated series based on Lego Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu began in 2011, and another based on Legends of Chima began in 2013. A television series of Lego City has also been announced.
Books and magazines
Lego has an ongoing deal with publisher Dorling Kindersley (DK), who are producing a series of illustrated hardback books looking at different aspects of the construction toy. The first was The Ultimate Lego Book, published in 1999. More recently, in 2009, the same publisher produced The LEGO Book, which was sold within a slipcase along with Standing Small: A celebration of 30 years of the LEGO minifigure, a smaller book focused on the minifigure. In 2012, a revised edition was published. Also in 2009, DK also published books on Lego Star Wars and a range of Lego-based sticker books.
Although no longer being published in the United States by Scholastic, books covering events in the Bionicle storyline are written by Greg Farshtey. They are still being published in Europe by AMEET. Bionicle comics, also written by Farshtey, are compiled into graphic novels and were released by Papercutz. This series ended in 2009, after nine years.
There is also the Lego Club and Brickmaster magazine, the latter discontinued in 2011.
Clothing
Kabooki, a Danish company founded in 1993, produces children's clothes branded as "Lego Wear" under licence from the Lego Group.
In 2020, Lego announced collaborations with Adidas and Levi's.
In 2021, Lego announced collaborations with Justhype and Adidas inspired by Lego Ninjago theme. In May 2021, Lego announced collaborations with Adidas inspired by Lego Vidiyo theme.
References
Bibliography
External links
1949 establishments in Denmark
Construction toys
Danish brands
Danish Culture Canon
Danish design
Danish inventions
Products introduced in 1949
Toy brands
Toy companies of Denmark
Toy train manufacturers | [
0.40290963649749756,
0.1876135766506195,
0.42682647705078125,
0.04474865645170212,
0.1073012724518776,
0.5187322497367859,
-0.12360908091068268,
0.14094766974449158,
-0.5133874416351318,
0.20222818851470947,
-0.5816304683685303,
-0.010317387990653515,
0.12088559567928314,
0.38552126288414,... |
18364 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hlai%20people | Hlai people | The Hlai, also known as Li or Lizu, are a Kra–Dai-speaking ethnic group, one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. The vast majority live off the southern coast of China on Hainan Island, where they are the largest minority ethnic group. Divided into the five branches of the Qi (Gei), Ha, Run (Zwn), Sai (Tai, Jiamao) and Meifu (Moifau), the Hlai have their own distinctive culture and customs.
Names
黎 (Lí), which was pronounced /lei/ in Middle Chinese is the Chinese transcription of their native name, which is Hlai. They are sometimes also known as the "Sai" or "Say". During China's Sui Dynasty, their ancestors were known by various names, including Lǐliáo (), a general term encompassing several non-Han ethnic groups in Southern China. The name Li first is recorded during the Later Tang period (923–937 CE).
History
The 3rd century Nanzhou Yiwuzhi mentioned bandits called Lǐ (俚) who lived south of Guangzhou in the five commanderies: Cangwu, Yulin, Hepu, Ningpu and Gaoliang. They lived in villages with no walls and took refuge in the mountains and narrow passes. They did not have commanders or lords.
In the early 6th century, the Liang dynasty waged war on the Li people, calling it the "pacification of the Li dong". By the 11th century, records no longer mention the Li on the mainland.
State administration of Hainan's lowlands was indirect until the Song dynasty and state control of the inland mountains was indirect until the 1950s. By the 11th century, Chinese records state that Hlai people were living close to Chinese settlements and paid taxes to the central state. However by the end of the Ming dynasty in the mid-17th century, virtually all areas of Hainan capable of intense cultivation had been settled by Han Chinese, while the Hlai filled the niche of supplying mountain products. By 1700, the Qing dynasty had re-established administration over Hainan. Migrant merchants started entering Hainan and threatened the economic niche of the Hlai, who broke out in violent protest against these "guest merchants" in 1766.
In 1751, He Xiang wrote an essay titled "Arguments against Settling the Li and Establishing Counties." In it he explained that Hainan was dangerous not because the Hlai people were fierce, but because of malaria and poisonous animals. He mocked previous campaigns against the Hlai for conquering hamlets of no value or significance while several thousand troops died of malaria. The highlands inhabited by the Hlai were also not economically valuable, and therefore had not yet been transformed. While many Chinese generals had made a name for themselves by "settling Guangdong", they all left the Hlai alone.
During the Japanese occupation of Hainan (1939–1945), the Hlai suffered extremely heavily due to their communist resistance activities especially in western Hainan. Hlai villages were frequently targeted for extermination and rape by Kuomintang and Japanese soldiers. In four towns alone, the Japanese slaughtered more than 10,000 Hlai people. In another incident, Nationalist forces massacred over 7,000 Hlai in a village. Nationalist officers had 9,000 Hlai and 3,000 Miao executed after tricking them to the war fronts during a fake conscription campaign. As the Nationalists retreated with over 1.5 million civilians that they evacuated to the hills with, they massacred and stole food from the ethnic Hlai as well as other tribal peoples. The Nationalists executed 2,180 Miao women and children of Baisha and Baoting uprising origin. Tens of thousands of Hlai were also killed in Japanese labour camps, as unlike other Chinese civilians they and the Tanka were not evacuated by Chinese Nationalists to safety zones. Undercover Nationalist agents pretending to work for the Japanese observed how Japanese commanders gunned down thousands of Hlai while trying to escape the camp.
They are held in high esteem by the Beijing government because they fought on the side of the CPC against Kuomintang rule during the Chinese Civil War. Hainan Li-Miao Autonomous Prefecture was created in 1952 (abolished in 1988).
Language
The Hlai speak the Hlai languages, a member of the Kra–Dai language family, but most can understand or speak Hainanese and Standard Chinese. The language spoken natively by the Sai (also known as Tai or Jiamao) subgroup has been noted for its dissimilarity to the dialects or languages spoken by the other subgroups of the Hlai.
Culture
Women were able to become political leaders in Hlai society. In 1171, a Hlai woman by the name of Wang Erniang was bestowed the title of "Lady of Suitability" by the Song court and given the post of commander-general over 36 ethnic groups in the south. She was the headwoman of the Hlai people and had a husband but nobody knew his name. She was very wealthy and adept at keeping order over her people. The Song dynasty communicated with non-Chinese southerners by relaying their orders through her. In 1181, her daughter inherited her position, and in 1216, another daughter inherited the position.
Among the Hlai, the women have a custom of tattooing their arms and backs after a certain age is reached.
The Hlai play a traditional wind instrument called kǒuxiāo () and another called lìlāluó (). The Hlai in Wenchang assimilated into the local population and pretended to be Hainanese while most of the Hlai population was exterminated in most other parts of Hainan only a small portion of the Hlai survived and fled to the mountains where they still maintain a Hlai identity.
Religion
The Hlai were primarily animists. According to Hlai legends, their clans each originated from the marriage of a woman and an animal. The most prominent animal is the snake. Leigong, the God of Thunder, laid a snake on Li Mountain. From the egg hatched a woman named Limu (literally "mother of the Li") who lived off of wild fruits and nested in the trees. Eventually she married and their descendants became the Hlai people. Another version says that the woman arrived on a ship and married a dog, giving birth to the Hlai. The Hlai also worshiped other animals such as the ox, which was represented in each house by a stone that they called the "soul of the ox." The "Oxen's Festival" was celebrated on the eighth day of the third lunar month every year. On that day the oxen were forbidden to be killed or worked. They stayed at home and were fed liquor believed to protect the ox and guarantee plentiful harvest. The "najiaxila" bird of legend was worshiped as a protector god for taking care of an ancestor woman of the Hlai. Dragons and cats were worshiped as well since they are considered to be ancestors.
Genetics
The Hlai are believed to be descendants of the Rau people, Kra–Dai-speaking tribes of ancient China, who settled on the island thousands of years ago. DNA analysis carried out amongst the modern Hlai population indicate a close relationship with populations in the Southern Chinese province of Guangxi, most of them have Y-DNA O1a and O1b.
Notable people
Su Yunying, singer
References
Bibliography
Ethnic groups officially recognized by China
Hainan | [
0.4589669704437256,
0.4889826774597168,
-0.32800135016441345,
-0.4561110734939575,
-0.06887202709913254,
0.8008309602737427,
0.13041934370994568,
0.5894493460655212,
-0.3618552088737488,
-0.2797562777996063,
-0.5461416840553284,
-0.539387047290802,
-0.1766592264175415,
0.25168222188949585,... |
18365 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminance | Luminance | Luminance is a photometric measure of the luminous intensity per unit area of light travelling in a given direction. It describes the amount of light that passes through, is emitted from, or is reflected from a particular area, and falls within a given solid angle.
Brightness is the term for the subjective impression of the objective luminance measurement standard (see for the importance of this contrast).
The SI unit for luminance is candela per square metre (cd/m2), as defined by the International System of Units (SI is from the French Système international d'unités) standard for the modern metric system. A non-SI term for the same unit is the nit. The unit in the Centimetre–gram–second system of units (CGS) (which predated the SI system) is the stilb, which is equal to one candela per square centimetre or 10 kcd/m2.
Description
Luminance is often used to characterize emission or reflection from flat, diffuse surfaces. Luminance levels indicate how much luminous power could be detected by the human eye looking at a particular surface from a particular angle of view. Luminance is thus an indicator of how bright the surface will appear. In this case, the solid angle of interest is the solid angle subtended by the eye's pupil.
Luminance is used in the video industry to characterize the brightness of displays. A typical computer display emits between 50 and . The sun has a luminance of about at noon.
Luminance is invariant in geometric optics. This means that for an ideal optical system, the luminance at the output is the same as the input luminance.
For real, passive optical systems, the output luminance is at most equal to the input. As an example, if one uses a lens to form an image that is smaller than the source object, the luminous power is concentrated into a smaller area, meaning that the illuminance is higher at the image. The light at the image plane, however, fills a larger solid angle so the luminance comes out to be the same assuming there is no loss at the lens. The image can never be "brighter" than the source.
Health effects
Retinal damage can occur when the eye is exposed to high luminance. Damage can occur because of local heating of the retina. Photochemical effects can also cause damage, especially at short wavelengths.
Luminance meter
A luminance meter is a device used in photometry that can measure the luminance in a particular direction and with a particular solid angle. The simplest devices measure the luminance in a single direction while imaging luminance meters measure luminance in a way similar to the way a digital camera records color images.
Mathematical definition
The luminance of a specified point of a light source, in a specified direction, is defined by the derivative
where
v is the luminance (cd/m2),
d2v is the luminous flux (lm) leaving the area d in any direction contained inside the solid angle dΣ,
d is an infinitesimal area (m2) of the source containing the specified point,
dΣ is an infinitesimal solid angle (sr) containing the specified direction,
Σ is the angle between the normal nΣ to the surface d and the specified direction.
If light travels through a lossless medium, the luminance does not change along a given light ray. As the ray crosses an arbitrary surface S, the luminance is given by
where
d is the infinitesimal area of S seen from the source inside the solid angle dΣ,
dS is the infinitesimal solid angle subtended by d as seen from d,
S is the angle between the normal nS to d and the direction of the light.
More generally, the luminance along a light ray can be defined as
where
d is the etendue of an infinitesimally narrow beam containing the specified ray,
dv is the luminous flux carried by this beam,
is the index of refraction of the medium.
Relation to Illuminance
The luminance of a reflecting surface is related to the illuminance it receives:
where the integral covers all the directions of emission , and
v is the surface's luminous exitance
v is the received illuminance, and
is the reflectance.
In the case of a perfectly diffuse reflector (also called a Lambertian reflector), the luminance is isotropic, per Lambert's cosine law. Then the relationship is simply
Units
A variety of units have been used for luminance, besides the candela per square metre.
One candela per square metre is equal to:
10−4 stilbs (the CGS unit of luminance)
π apostilbs
π×10−4 lamberts
0.292 foot-lamberts
See also
Relative luminance
Orders of magnitude (luminance)
Diffuse reflection
Etendue
Lambertian reflectance
Lightness (color)
Luma, the representation of luminance in a video monitor
Lumen (unit)
Radiance, radiometric quantity analogous to luminance
Brightness, the subjective impression of luminance
Glare (vision)
Table of SI light-related units
References
External links
A Kodak guide to Estimating Luminance and Illuminance using a camera's exposure meter. Also available in PDF form.
Autodesk Design Academy Measuring Light Levels
Photometry
Physical quantities | [
-0.06166433170437813,
-0.1390267312526703,
0.13604409992694855,
-0.4817750155925751,
-0.3608090579509735,
-0.26648473739624023,
0.019144505262374878,
0.3078044056892395,
-0.033792488276958466,
-0.8260471224784851,
-0.49759718775749207,
0.4374723732471466,
0.05200719088315964,
0.63722670078... |
18366 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycos | Lycos | Lycos, Inc., is a web search engine and web portal established in 1994, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, web hosting, social networking, and entertainment websites. The company is based in Waltham, Massachusetts, and is a subsidiary of Kakao.
Etymology
The word "Lycos" is short for "Lycosidae", which is Latin for "wolf spider".
History
Lycos is a university spin-off that began in May 1994 as a research project by Michael Loren Mauldin of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Lycos Inc. was formed with approximately US$2 million in venture capital funding from CMGI. Bob Davis became the CEO and first employee of the new company in 1995, and concentrated on building the company into an advertising-supported web portal, led by Bill Townsend, who served as Vice President, Advertising. Lycos enjoyed several years of growth during the 1990s and became the most visited online destination in the world in 1999, with a global presence in more than 40 countries.
In April 1996, the company completed the fastest initial public offering from inception to offering in NASDAQ (LCOS) history, ending its first day with a market value of $300 million. It also became the first search engine to go public, before its big rivals Yahoo! and Excite. In 1997, it became one of the first profitable Internet businesses in the world. In 1998, Lycos acquired Tripod.com for $58 million in an attempt to "break into the portal market".
Lycos started offering e-mail services in October 1997.
Lycos Europe was a joint venture between Lycos and the Bertelsmann transnational media corporation, but it has always been a distinct corporate entity. Although Lycos Europe remains the largest of Lycos's overseas ventures, several other Lycos subsidiaries also entered into joint venture agreements including Lycos Canada, Lycos Korea and Lycos Asia.
Lycos was one of the most popular websites on the internet, ranking 8th in 1997, and peaking at 4th in both 1999 and 2001.
Near the peak of the dot-com bubble on May 16, 2000, Lycos announced its intent to be acquired by Terra Networks, the Internet arm of the Spanish telecommunications giant Telefónica, for $12.5 billion. The acquisition price represented a return of nearly 3,000 times the company's initial venture capital investment and about 20 times its initial public offering valuation. The transaction closed in October 2000 and the merged company was renamed Terra Lycos, although the Lycos brand continued to be used in the United States. Overseas, the company continued to be known as Terra Networks.
Having been set back by the dot-com bubble burst, Lycos abandoned its own search crawler in late 2001, and started using FAST.
In August 2004, Terra announced that it was selling Lycos to Seoul, South Korea–based Daum Communications Corporation, now Kakao, for $95.4 million in cash, less than 2% of Terra's initial multibillion-dollar investment. In October 2004, the transaction closed and the company name was changed back to Lycos.
Under new ownership, Lycos began to refocus its strategy. The company moved away from being a search-centric portal and toward a community destination for broadband entertainment content. With a new management team in place, Lycos also began divesting properties that were not core to its new strategy. In July 2006, Wired News, which had been part of Lycos since the purchase of Wired Digital in 1998, was sold to Condé Nast Publications and re-merged with Wired Magazine. The Lycos Finance division, best known for Quote.com and RagingBull.com, was sold to FT Interactive Data Corporation in February 2006, while its online dating site, Matchmaker.com, was sold to Date.com. In 2006, Lycos regained ownership of the Lycos trademark from Carnegie Mellon University, allowing the company to rename to Lycos, Inc.
During 2006, Lycos introduced several media services, including Lycos Phone which combined video chat, real-time video on demand, and an MP3 player. In November 2006, Lycos began to roll out applications centered on social media, including its video application, Lycos Cinema, that featured simultaneous watch and chat functionality. In February 2007, Lycos MIX was launched, allowing users to pull video clips from YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo! Video and MySpace Video. Lycos MIX also allowed users to create playlists where other users could add video comments and chat in real-time.
As part of a corporate restructuring to focus on mobile, social networks and location-based services, Daum sold Lycos for $36 million in August 2010 to Ybrant Digital, an Internet marketing company based in Hyderabad, India. Ybrant Digital paid $20 million at signing and there has been a legal dispute over magnitude of the second installment between Ybrant and Daum. In 2018, a New York court ruled in favor of Daum and appointed Daum (by then merged with Kakao) as receiver of Ybrant's 56% ownership interest in Lycos.
In May 2012, Lycos announced the appointment of former employee Rob Balazy as CEO of Media division of Lycos.
In September 2014, Ed Noel was appointed in place of Rob and manages the operations under the title of General Manager of Lycos Media.
In June 2015, Lycos announced a pair of wearable devices, called Band and Ring.
Lycos Internet was renamed Brightcom Group in May 2018.
Lycos Network sites
Angelfire, a Lycos property which provides free web hosting, blogging and web publishing tools
Tripod, a Lycos property providing free web hosting, blogging and web publishing tools
Lycos-branded sites
Lycos Chat, a photo chatting community.
Lycos Domains, Internet domain name purchasing
Lycos Mail, an e-mail provider formerly known as Mailcity.com. (As of 15 May 2018 providing only paid services.)
Lycos Weather
Lycos Yellow Pages
Former Lycos sites
Chickmail, a free e-mail service sponsored by ChickClick
Chickpages, a free web hosting service sponsored by ChickClick
Estromail, a free e-mail service sponsored by Estronet
Estropages, a free web hosting service sponsored by Estronet
Gamesville, Lycos multi-player gaming site
GetRelevant.com, a Lycos online advertising site
Gurlmail, a free e-mail service sponsored by Delia's for Gurl.com
Gurlpages, a free web hosting service sponsored by Delia's for Gurl.com
Hotbot, a search engine
InsiderInfo
Lycos Radio, allowed users to create and host their own free Internet radio shows
Matchmaker.com, a dating site
Quote.com and RagingBull.com, finance sites
Weather Zombie, a Lycos property which provided weather forecasts, with a zombie theme, via AccuWeather
Webmonkey, web-building help and tutorials
WhoWhere.com, a people search engine
Wired.com, the online arm of Wired magazine
References
External links
1994 establishments in Pennsylvania
1996 initial public offerings
2000 mergers and acquisitions
2004 mergers and acquisitions
Carnegie Mellon University software
Companies based in Waltham, Massachusetts
Dot-com bubble
Online mass media companies of the United States
Internet properties established in 1994
Internet search engines
Technology companies based in the Boston area
American companies established in 1994
University spin-offs
Web portals
Webmail
Kakao
Web 1.0 | [
0.3450436592102051,
0.010892783291637897,
-0.24653401970863342,
-0.1810806393623352,
0.16230162978172302,
0.25717952847480774,
-0.7655572891235352,
0.22424788773059845,
-0.2788684666156769,
-0.4132637083530426,
0.13249799609184265,
0.16470327973365784,
-0.16140078008174896,
0.3799192607402... |
18367 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luton%20Town%20F.C. | Luton Town F.C. | Luton Town Football Club () is a professional association football club based in the town of Luton, Bedfordshire, England, that competes in the Championship, the second tier of the English football league system. Founded in 1885, it is nicknamed 'the Hatters' and affiliated to the Bedfordshire County Football Association. The team plays its home matches at Kenilworth Road, where it has been based since 1905. The club's history includes major trophy wins, several financial crises, numerous promotions and relegations, and some spells of sustained success. It was perhaps most prominent between 1982 and 1992, when it was a member of English football's top division, at that time the First Division; the team won its first major honour, the Football League Cup, in 1988. Luton Town have a long-standing rivalry with nearby club Watford.
The club was the first in southern England to turn professional, making payments to players as early as 1890 and turning fully professional a year later. It joined the Football League before the 1897–98 season, left in 1900 because of financial problems, and rejoined in 1920. Luton reached the First Division in 1955–56 and contested a major final for the first time when playing Nottingham Forest in the 1959 FA Cup Final. The team was then relegated from the top division in 1959–60, and demoted twice more in the following five years, playing in the Fourth Division from the 1965–66 season. However, it was promoted back to the top level by 1974–75.
Luton Town's most recent successful period began in 1981–82, when the club won the Second Division, and thereby gained promotion to the First. Luton defeated Arsenal 3–2 in the 1988 Football League Cup Final and remained in the First Division until relegation at the end of the 1991–92 season. Between 2007 and 2009, financial difficulties caused the club to fall from the second tier of English football to the fifth in successive seasons. The last of these relegations came during the 2008–09 season, when 30 points were docked from Luton's record for various financial irregularities. Luton thereafter spent five seasons in non-League football before winning the Conference Premier in 2013–14, securing promotion back into the Football League. More success soon followed, with Luton being promoted from League Two and One in successive seasons in 2017–18 and 2018–19, meaning Luton now play in the Championship, for the first time since 2006–07.
History
Formation and election to the Southern League (1885–1890)
Luton Town Football Club was formed on 11 April 1885. Before this there were many clubs in the town, the most prominent of which were Luton Wanderers and Luton Excelsior. A Wanderers player, George Deacon, came up with the idea of a 'Town' club which would include all the best players in Luton. Wanderers secretary Herbert Spratley seized upon Deacon's idea and arranged a secret meeting on 13 January 1885 at the St Matthews school rooms in High Town. The Wanderers committee resolved to rename the club Luton Town—which was not well received by the wider community. The local newspapers referred to the club as 'Luton Town (late Wanderers)'. When George Deacon and John Charles Lomax then arranged a public meeting with the purpose of forming a 'Luton Town Football Club', Spratley protested, saying there was already a Luton Town club; and the atmosphere was tense when the meeting convened in the town hall on 11 April 1885. The meeting, attended by most football lovers in the town, heard about Spratley's secret January meeting and voted down his objections. The motion to form a 'Luton Town Football Club', put forward by G H Small and seconded by E H Lomax, was carried. A club committee was elected by ballot and the team colours were agreed to be pink and dark blue shirts and caps.
Initially based at Excelsior's Dallow Lane ground, Luton Town began making payments to certain individual players in 1890. The following year, Luton became the first club in southern England to be fully professional. The club was a founder member of the Southern Football League in the 1894–95 season and finished as runners-up in its first two seasons. It then left to help form the United League and came second in that league's inaugural season before joining the Football League (then based mostly in northern and central England) for 1897–98, concurrently moving to a new ground at Dunstable Road. The club continued to enter a team to the United League for two more seasons, and won the title in 1897–98. Poor attendance, high wages and the high travel and accommodation costs that resulted from Luton's distance from the northern heartlands of the Football League crippled the club financially, and made it too expensive to compete in that league. A return to the Southern League was therefore arranged for the 1900–01 season.
Early 20th century (1900–1950)
Eight years after arriving at Dunstable Road, Luton moved again, settling at their current ground, Kenilworth Road, in 1905. Captain and left winger Bob Hawkes became Luton's first international player when he was picked to play for England against Ireland on 16 February 1907. A poor 1911–12 season saw Luton relegated to the Southern League's Second Division; the club won promotion back two years later. After the First World War broke out, Luton took part in The London Combination during 1915–16, and afterwards filled each season with friendly matches. A key player of the period was Ernie Simms, a forward. Simms was invalided back to England after being wounded on the Italian front, but recovered enough to regain his place in the Luton team and scored 40 goals during the 1916–17 season.
The Luton side first played in the white and black colours which it has retained for much of its history during the 1920–21 season, when the club rejoined the Football League; the players had previously worn an assortment of colour combinations, most permanently sky blue shirts with white shorts and navy socks. Such was the quality of Luton's team at this time that despite playing in the third tier, a fixture between Ireland and England at Windsor Park on 22 October 1921 saw three Luton players on the pitch—Louis Bookman and Allan Mathieson for Ireland, and the club's top goalscorer, Simms, for England. However, after Luton finished fourth in the division, the squad was broken up as Simms, Bookman and Mathieson joined South Shields, Port Vale and Exeter City respectively. Luton stayed in the Third Division South until 1936–37, when the team finished top and won promotion to the Second Division, at that time the second tier of English football. During the promotion season, striker Joe Payne scored 55 goals in 39 games; during the previous season he had scored 10 in one match against Bristol Rovers, which remains a Football League record today.
Success under Duncan and relegation (1950–1965)
During the early 1950s, one of Luton's greatest sides emerged under manager Dally Duncan. The team included Gordon Turner, who went on to become Luton's all-time top goalscorer, Bob Morton, who holds the record for the most club appearances, and Syd Owen, an England international. During this period, Luton sides also featured two England international goalkeepers, Ron Baynham and Bernard Streten, as well as Irish internationals Seamus Dunne, Tom Aherne and George Cummins. This team reached the top flight for the first time in 1955–56, after finishing the season in second place behind Birmingham City on goal average. A few years of success followed, including an FA Cup Final appearance against Nottingham Forest in 1958–59; at the end of the season, Owen was voted FWA Footballer of the Year. However, the club was relegated the following season and, by 1964–65, was playing in the fourth tier.
Back to the first tier and late century success (1965–1992)
In yo-yo club fashion, Luton were to return. A team including Bruce Rioch, John Moore and Graham French won the Fourth Division championship in 1967–68 under the leadership of former player Allan Brown; two years later Malcolm Macdonald's goals helped them to another promotion, while comedian Eric Morecambe became a director of the club. Luton Town won promotion back to the First Division in 1973–74, but were relegated the following season by a solitary point. Former Luton player David Pleat was made manager in 1978, and by 1982–83 the team was back in the top flight. The team which Pleat assembled at Kenilworth Road was notable at the time for the number of black players it included; during an era when many English squads were almost entirely white, Luton often fielded a mostly black team. Talented players such as Ricky Hill, Brian Stein and Emeka Nwajiobi made key contributions to the club's success during this period, causing it to accrue "a richer history of black stars than any in the country", in the words of journalist Gavin Willacy.
On the last day of the 1982–83 season, the club's first back in the top tier, it narrowly escaped relegation: playing Manchester City at Maine Road, Luton needed to win to stay up, while City could escape with a draw. A late winner by Yugoslavian substitute Raddy Antić saved the team and prompted Pleat to dance across the pitch performing a "jig of joy", an image that has become iconic. The club achieved its highest ever league position, seventh, under John Moore in 1986–87, and, managed by Ray Harford, won the Football League Cup a year later with a 3–2 win over Arsenal. With ten minutes left on the clock and Arsenal 2–1 ahead, a penalty save from stand-in goalkeeper Andy Dibble sparked a late Luton rally: Danny Wilson equalised, before Brian Stein scored the winner with the last kick of the match. The club reached the League Cup Final once more in 1988–89, but lost 3–1 to Nottingham Forest.
Resurgence and fall to non-League (1992–2009)
The club was relegated from the top division at the end of the 1991–92 season, and sank to the third tier four years later. Luton stayed in the third-tier Second Division until relegation at the end of the 2000–01 season. Under the management of Joe Kinnear, who had arrived halfway through the previous season, the team won promotion from the fourth tier at the first attempt. "Controversial" owner John Gurney unsettled the club in 2003, terminating Kinnear's contract on his arrival in May; Gurney replaced Kinnear with Mike Newell before leaving Luton as the club entered administration. Newell's team finished as champions of the rebranded third-tier Football League One in 2004–05.
While Newell's place was taken first by Kevin Blackwell and later former player Mick Harford, the team was then relegated twice in a row, starting in 2006–07, and spent the latter part of the 2007–08 season in administration, thus incurring a ten-point deduction from that season's total. The club then had a total of 30 points docked from its 2008–09 record by the Football Association and the Football League for financial irregularities dating back several years. These deductions proved to be too large an obstacle to overcome, but Luton came from behind in the final of the Football League Trophy to win the competition for the first time.
Non-League and subsequent promotions (2009–present)
Relegation meant that 2009–10 saw Luton playing in the Conference Premier, a competition in which the club had never before participated. The club unsuccessfully contested the promotion play-offs three times in four seasons during their time as a non-League club, employing five different managers. In the 2012–13 FA Cup fourth round, Luton won their away tie against Premier League club Norwich City 1–0 and, in doing so, became the first non-League team to beat a side from England's top division since 1989. In the 2013–14 season, under the management of John Still, Luton won the Conference Premier title with three games to spare, and thereby secured a return to the Football League from 2014–15. After reaching the League Two play-offs in 2016–17, when they were beaten 6–5 on aggregate by Blackpool in the semi-final, Luton were promoted back to League One the following season as runners-up. Luton achieved a second successive promotion in 2018–19, after they won the League One title, marking the club's return to the Championship after a 12-year absence.
Club identity
The club's nickname, "the Hatters", reflects Luton's historical connection with the hat making trade, which has been prominent there since the 17th century. The nickname was originally a variant on the now rarely seen straw-plaiters. Supporters of the club are also called Hatters.
The club is associated with two very different colour schemes—white and black (first permanently adopted in 1920), and orange, navy and white (first used in 1973, and worn by the team as of the 2015–16 season). Luton mainly wore a combination of light blue and white before 1920, when white shirts and black shorts were first adopted. These colours were retained for over half a century, with the colour of the socks varying between white and black, until Luton changed to orange, navy and white at the start of the 1973–74 season. Luton began playing in white shirts, shorts and socks in 1979, with the orange and navy motif reduced to trim; navy shorts were adopted in 1984. This palette was retained until the 1999–2000 season, when the team played in orange shirts and blue shorts. From 2000 to 2008, Luton returned to white shirts and black shorts; orange was included as trim until 2007. The white, navy and orange palette favoured in the 1980s was brought back in 2008, following the results of a club poll, but a year later the colours were changed yet again, this time to a predominantly orange strip with white shorts. Navy shorts were readopted in 2011. Luton wore orange shirts, navy shorts and white socks during the 2015–16 season.
Luton Town have traditionally used the town's crest as its own in a manner similar to many other teams. The club's first badge was a white eight-pointed star, which was emblazoned across the team's shirts (then a deep cochineal red) in 1892. Four years later a crest comprising the club's initials intertwined was briefly adopted. The shirts were thereafter plain until 1933, when Luton first adopted a badge depicting a straw boater, which appeared on Luton shirts. The letters "LTFC" were added in 1935, and this basic design remained until 1947. The club then played without a badge until 1970, when the club began to wear the town crest regularly, having first done so in the 1959 FA Cup Final.
In 1973, concurrently with the club's switch to the orange kit, a new badge was introduced featuring the new colours. The new emblem depicted a stylised orange football, bearing the letters "Lt", surrounded by the club's name in navy blue text. In 1987, the club switched back to a derivative of the town emblem, with the shield portion of the heraldic crest becoming the team's badge; the only similarity with the previous design was the inclusion of the club name around the shield in navy blue. The "rainbow" badge, introduced in 1994, featured the town crest below an orange and blue bow which curved around to meet two footballs, positioned on either side of the shield, with the club name underneath. This badge was used until 2005, when a replacement very similar to the 1987 version was adopted, featuring black text rather than blue and a straw boater in place of the outstretched arm depicted in the older design. The club's founding year, 1885, was added in 2008. The badge was altered once more during the 2009–10 pre-season, with the red of the town crest being replaced with orange to better reflect the club colours.
The first sponsor to appear on a Luton Town shirt was Tricentrol, a local motor company based in Dunstable, who sponsored the club from March 1980 to 1982; the deal was worth £50,000. Subsequent sponsors have been Bedford Trucks (1982 to 1990), Vauxhall (1990 to 1991), Universal Salvage Auctions (1991 to 1999), SKF (1999 to 2003), Travel Extras (2003 to 2005), Electrolux (2005 to 2008), Carbrini Sportswear (2008 to 2009), EasyJet and NICEIC (concurrently, 2009 to 2015), and Barnfield College and NICEIC (concurrently, 2015 to 2016). For the 2016–17 and 2017–18 seasons the club's kit was sponsored by NICEIC and SsangYong Motor UK. The 2018–19 season saw changes to the kits and sponsors, with Indigo Residential taking up the home shirt, Star Platforms sponsoring the away strip, and Northern Gas & Power sponsoring the third. In 2019–20, Ryebridge Construction took up the vacated role of sponsoring the third kit, and for the 2020–21 season, JB Developments will sponsor the home kit, while Star Platforms and Ryebridge Construction continue to sponsor the away and third kits.
The club released the song "Hatters, Hatters", a collaboration between the Luton team and the Bedfordshire-based musical comedy group the Barron Knights, in 1974. Eight years later another song featuring vocals by the Luton players, "We're Luton Town", was released to celebrate the club's promotion to the First Division.
Stadium
Luton Town's first ground was at Dallow Lane, the former ground of Excelsior. The ground was next to the Dunstable to Luton railway line, and players regularly claimed to have trouble seeing the ball because of smoke from the trains. A damaging financial loss during 1896–97 forced Luton to sell the stadium to stay afloat and, as a result, the club moved across the tracks to a stadium between the railway and Dunstable Road. The Dunstable Road ground was opened by Herbrand Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford, who also donated £50 towards the £800 building costs. When the site was sold for housing in 1905, the club was forced to move again at short notice, to its present Kenilworth Road site, in time for the start of the 1905–06 season.
The stadium now has an all-seater capacity of 10,356 and is situated in the Bury Park area of Luton. It was named after the road that runs along one end of it, although the official address of the club is 1 Maple Road. Opposite the eponymous Kenilworth Stand is the Oak Road End, which has evolved from a stand first used exclusively by Luton supporters, then later by away supporters, and now used by both except in times of high ticket demand from away clubs. The Main Stand is flanked by the David Preece Stand, and opposite them stands a row of executive boxes. These boxes replaced the Bobbers Stand in 1986, as the club sought to maximise income.
The original Main Stand burnt down in 1921, and was replaced by the current stand before the 1922–23 season. The ground underwent extensive redevelopment during the 1930s, and the capacity by the start of the Second World War was 30,000. Floodlights were installed before the 1953–54 season, but it was 20 years before any further modernisation was carried out. In 1973 the Bobbers Stand became all-seated, and in 1985 the grass pitch was replaced with an artificial playing surface; it quickly became unpopular and was derided as "the plastic pitch".
A serious incident involving hooliganism before, during and after a match against Millwall in 1985 led to the club's then chairman, Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) David Evans, introducing a scheme effective from the start of 1986–87 supposedly banning all visiting supporters from the ground, and requiring home fans to carry membership cards when attending matches. Conversion to an all-seater ground also began in 1986. Away fans returned for 1990–91, and grass a year later. The David Preece Stand was erected in 1991, and the conversion of the Kenilworth Stand to an all-seater was completed in 2005.
New stadium
The club first expressed an interest in building a new stadium away from Kenilworth Road in 1955, the year it won promotion to the First Division for the first time. Even then the ground was small compared to those of most First and Second Division clubs, and its location made significant redevelopment difficult. The team has since made several attempts to relocate. Leaving Luton for the nearby new town of Milton Keynes was unsuccessfully proposed several times, most notably in the 1980s. The club sold Kenilworth Road to Luton Council in 1989, and has since leased it. A planning application for a new 20,000-seater indoor stadium, the "Kohlerdome" proposed by chairman David Kohler in 1995, was turned down by the Secretary of State in 1998, and Kohler left soon after.
In 2007, the club's then-owners proposed a controversial plan to relocate to a site near Junction 12 of the M1 motorway, near Harlington and Toddington. A planning application was made on the club's behalf by former chairman Cliff Bassett, but the application was withdrawn almost immediately following the club's takeover in 2008. In 2009, the club began an independent feasibility study to determine a viable location to move to. The club did not rule out redeveloping Kenilworth Road and, in October 2012, entered talks to buy the stadium back from Luton Borough Council. By 2015, these plans had been dropped in favour of a move to a new location, with managing director Gary Sweet confirming that the club was in a position to "buy land, secure the best possible professional advice ... and to see the [planning] application process through to the receipt of consent."
In April 2016, the club announced its intention to build and move into a 17,500-capacity stadium on the Power Court site in central Luton. Outline planning permission for this ground, with potential to expand to 23,000 seats, was granted by Luton Borough Council on 16 January 2019. In March 2021 the club announced that it intended to make a number of changes to the initial scheme to reflect changes caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, but that the capacity of the new stadium was still to be 23,000 and had a target opening date of 2024.
Supporters and rivalries
During the 2014–15 season, Luton Town had an average home league attendance of 8,702—the second highest in League Two behind only Portsmouth. In the 2013–14 season, when the club were in the Conference Premier, the club had significantly higher support than the other clubs in its league, with an average home attendance of 7,387; more than twice compared to the second highest of 3,568. Average attendances at Kenilworth Road fell with the installation of seats and the club's reduction in stature, dropping from 13,452 in 1982–83 to their 2014–15 level—a slump of 35% over 32 years. A supporters' trust, Trust in Luton, owns shares in the club and elects a representative to the club's board. The club's official supporters' group, Luton Town Supporters' Club, merged with Trust in Luton in 2014. The club is associated with another supporters' group, the breakaway Loyal Luton Supporters Club. Trust in Luton has, since March 2014, held the legal right to veto any changes to the club's identity, including name, nickname, colours, club crest and mascot.
Luton Town supporters maintain a bitter rivalry with Hertfordshire-based Watford. Watford have remained the higher ranked team at the end of every season since 1997. However, overall Luton still hold the superior record in the fixture between the two clubs; out of 119 competitive matches there have been 53 Luton victories and 37 for Watford, with 29 draws. The 2003 Football Fans Census showed that there was also animosity between Luton Town fans and those of west London club Queens Park Rangers.
The club produces an official match programme for home matches, entitled Our Town. A character known as Happy Harry, a smiling man wearing a straw boater, serves as the team's mascot and appears on the Kenilworth Road pitch before matches. In December 2014, after the seafront statue of Eric Morecambe in his birthplace Morecambe was restored, Luton and Morecambe F.C. jointly announced that the winners of future Luton–Morecambe fixtures would be awarded the "Eric Morecambe Trophy".
Records and statistics
The record for the most appearances for Luton is held by Bob Morton, who turned out for Luton 562 times in all competitions. Morton also holds the record for the most Football League appearances for the club, with 495. Fred Hawkes holds the record for the most league appearances for Luton, having played in 509 league matches. Six players, Gordon Turner, Andy Rennie, Brian Stein, Ernie Simms, Herbert Moody and Steve Howard, have scored more than 100 goals for Luton.
The first player to be capped while playing for Luton was left winger Robert Hawkes, who took to the field for England against Ireland at Goodison Park on 16 February 1907. The most capped player is Mal Donaghy, who earned 58 Northern Ireland caps while at the club. The first player to score in an international match was Joe Payne, who scored twice in his only game for England against Finland on 20 May 1937. Payne also holds the Football League record for the most goals in a game—he hit 10 past Bristol Rovers on 13 April 1936.
The club's largest wins have been a 15–0 victory over Great Yarmouth Town on 21 November 1914 in the FA Cup and a 12–0 win over Bristol Rovers in the Third Division South on 13 April 1936. Luton's heaviest loss was a 9–0 defeat against Small Heath in the Second Division on 12 November 1898.
Luton's highest home attendances are 30,069 against Blackpool in the FA Cup on 4 March 1959 and 27,911 against Wolverhampton Wanderers in the First Division on 5 November 1955.
The highest transfer fee received for a Luton Town player is the fee Leicester City paid for Luton-born full-back James Justin on 28 June 2019. The most expensive player Luton Town have ever bought was Croatian goalkeeper Simon Sluga, who cost €1.5m from HNK Rijeka on 19 July 2019.
The youngest player to make a first-team appearance for Luton Town is Connor Tomlinson at 15 years and 199 days old in the EFL Trophy, replacing Zane Banton as a 92nd-minute substitute in a 2–1 win over Gillingham on 30 August 2016, after the club were given permission for him to play from his headteacher.
Players
Current squad
The club operates a Development Squad, made up of contracted senior players, youth team scholars and trialists, which plays in the Southern Division of The Central League. The club also fields an under-18 team in the Football League Youth Alliance South East Conference. Luton's youth set-up consists of ten Soccer Centres across Bedfordshire and North Hertfordshire, two Centres of Excellence (one in Luton, one in Dunstable), and an Academy in Baldock that caters for players in the under-9 to under-16 age groups.
Out on loan
Notable former players
Backroom staff
As of 24 October 2021.
Shareholders
Kailesh Karavadra
Luton Town Supporters' Trust
Directors
Chairman: David Wilkinson
Chief executive officer: Gary Sweet
Directors: Paul Ballantyne, Stephen Browne, Bob Curson, Mike Herrick, Rob Stringer
Management
Manager: Nathan Jones
Assistant manager: Mick Harford
First team coaches: Paul Hart, Chris Cohen, Alan Sheehan
Head of goalkeeping: Kevin Dearden
Goalkeeper coach: Kevin Pilkington
Head of sports science: Jared Roberts-Smith
Head of performance development: James Redden
Head of coaching and player development: Adrian Forbes
Head of scouting operations: Phil Chapple
Head of recruitment analysis: Jay Socik
Strength and conditioning coach: Elliott Plant
Performance analyst: Peter Booker
Head of medical: Simon Parsell
Physiotherapist: Chris Phillips
Therapist and kitman: Darren Cook
Academy and development manager: Andy Awford
Managers
As of 9 February 2022. Only managers in charge for a minimum of 50 competitive matches are counted.
Key: M = matches; W = matches won; D = matches drawn; L = matches lost
Honours
Luton Town's major honours are detailed below; non-League achievements are omitted. For a list of all club honours, including those won outside the Football League, see List of Luton Town F.C. records and statistics : Honours and achievements.
Footnotes
A. The only other club from the south of England in the Football League at the time was Woolwich Arsenal.
B. Calculated by adding together all the home league attendances for the 2014–15 season to calculate the total attendance (200,157) and then dividing by the number of home league matches (23) to reach an average of 8,702. Attendances taken from BBC report for match that day and Soccerbase statistics.
C. Calculated by adding together all the home league attendances for the 2013–14 season to calculate the total attendance (169,906) and then dividing by the number of home league matches (23) to reach an average of 7,387. Attendances taken from BBC report for match that day and Soccerbase statistics.
D. Before the start of the 2004–05 season, Football League re-branding saw the First Division become the Football League Championship. The Second and Third Divisions became Leagues One and Two, respectively.
E. On its formation for the 1992–93 season, the FA Premier League became the top tier of English football; the First, Second and Third Divisions then became the second, third and fourth tiers, respectively.
References
Bibliography
External links
Luton Today's Luton Town News Page
Football clubs in England
Association football clubs established in 1885
Football clubs in Bedfordshire
Football clubs in Luton
English Football League clubs
EFL Cup winners
EFL Trophy winners
Southern Football League clubs
1885 establishments in England
National League (English football) | [
-0.2877020835876465,
0.08734127134084702,
-0.11873777210712433,
-0.8590149879455566,
0.11576022952795029,
-0.11965376883745193,
0.1435007005929947,
0.42970630526542664,
-0.8239896297454834,
-0.1192643791437149,
-0.2002735733985901,
0.4635046422481537,
-0.4678879976272583,
0.731192588806152... |
18369 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar%20calendar | Lunar calendar | A lunar calendar is a calendar based on the monthly cycles of the Moon's phases (synodic months, lunations), in contrast to solar calendars, whose annual cycles are based only directly on the solar year. The most commonly used calendar, the Gregorian calendar, is a solar calendar system that originally evolved out of a lunar calendar system. A purely lunar calendar is also distinguished from a lunisolar calendar, whose lunar months are brought into alignment with the solar year through some process of intercalation. The details of when months begin varies from calendar to calendar, with some using new, full, or crescent moons and others employing detailed calculations.
Since each lunation is approximately days, it is common for the months of a lunar calendar to alternate between 29 and 30 days. Since the period of 12 such lunations, a lunar year, is 354 days, 8 hours, 48 minutes, 34 seconds (354.36707 days), purely lunar calendars are 11 to 12 days shorter than the solar year. In purely lunar calendars, which do not make use of intercalation, like the Islamic calendar, the lunar months cycle through all the seasons of a solar year over the course of a 33–34 lunar-year cycle.
Although the Gregorian calendar is in common and legal use in most countries, traditional lunar and lunisolar calendars continue to be used throughout the world to determine religious festivals and national holidays. Such holidays include Rosh Hashanah (Hebrew calendar); Easter (the Computus); the Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Mongolian New Year (Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Mongolian calendars, respectively); the Nepali New Year (Nepali calendar); the Mid-Autumn Festival and Chuseok (Chinese and Korean calendars); Loi Krathong (Thai calendar); Sunuwar calendar; Vesak/Buddha's Birthday (Buddhist calendar); Diwali (Hindu calendars); Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha (Islamic calendar).
The Japanese Calendar formerly used both the lunar and lunisolar calendar before it was replaced by the Gregorian Calendar during the Meiji government in 1872. Holidays such as the Japanese New Year were simply transposed on top as opposed to being calculated like other countries that use the lunisolar and Gregorian calendars together, for example the Japanese New Year now falls on January 1, creating a month delay as opposed to other East Asian Countries. See customary issues in modern Japan.
History
A lunisolar calendar was found at Warren Field in Scotland and has been dated to , during the Mesolithic period. Some scholars argue for lunar calendars still earlier—Rappenglück in the marks on a year-old cave painting at Lascaux and Marshack in the marks on a year-old bone baton—but their findings remain controversial. Scholars have argued that ancient hunters conducted regular astronomical observations of the Moon back in the Upper Palaeolithic. Samuel L. Macey dates the earliest uses of the Moon as a time-measuring device back to 28,000–30,000 years ago.
Lunisolar calendars
Most calendars referred to as "lunar" calendars are in fact lunisolar calendars. Their months are based on observations of the lunar cycle, with intercalation being used to bring them into general agreement with the solar year. The solar "civic calendar" that was used in ancient Egypt showed traces of its origin in the earlier lunar calendar, which continued to be used alongside it for religious and agricultural purposes. Present-day lunisolar calendars include the Chinese, Vietnamese, Hindu, and Thai calendars.
Synodic months are 29 or 30 days in length, making a lunar year of 12 months about 11 to 12 days shorter than a solar year. Some lunar calendars do not use intercalation, for example the lunar Hijri calendar used by most Muslims. For those that do, such as the Hebrew calendar, and Buddhist Calendars in Myanmar, the most common form of intercalation is to add an additional month every second or third year. Some lunisolar calendars are also calibrated by annual natural events which are affected by lunar cycles as well as the solar cycle. An example of this is the lunar calendar of the Banks Islands, which includes three months in which the edible palolo worms mass on the beaches. These events occur at the last quarter of the lunar month, as the reproductive cycle of the palolos is synchronized with the moon.
Start of the lunar month
Lunar and lunisolar calendars differ as to which day is the first day of the month. In some lunisolar calendars, such as the Chinese calendar, the first day of a month is the day when an astronomical new moon occurs in a particular time zone. In others, such as some Hindu calendars, each month begins on the day after the full moon. Others are based on the first sighting of the lunar crescent, such as the lunar Hijri calendar (and, historically, the Hebrew calendar).
Length of the lunar month
The length of each lunar cycle varies slightly from the average value. In addition, observations are subject to uncertainty and weather conditions. Thus to avoid uncertainty about the calendar, there have been attempts to create fixed arithmetical rules to determine the start of each calendar month.
The average length of the synodic month is 29.53059 days. Thus it is convenient if months generally alternate between 29 and 30 days (sometimes termed respectively "hollow" and "full"). The distribution of hollow and full months can be determined using continued fractions, and examining successive approximations for the length of the month in terms of fractions of a day.
In the table below, the first column gives a sequence of such continued fractions. So to devise a calendar from each, one would take the number of days as given in the numerator and divide it into the number of months as given in the denominator. The second column shows, for reference, the time length of that cycle in years and days. The next double column shows how many of the months must be full and how many must be hollow; in each case, there is only one possible combination (how they are ordered within the cycle is not relevant).
The next column shows the decimal value of each fraction; that is the effective average length of a month over one cycle. It will be noted that each successive value comes closer to the length of the synodic month. Finally, the last two columns show roughly how long it will take (assuming one adheres to the pattern exactly) for the calendar months to be about a day off the synodic month, and which way off it will be.
These fractions can be used to construct a lunar calendar, or in combination with a solar calendar to produce a lunisolar calendar. A 49-month cycle was proposed as the basis of an alternative Easter computation by Isaac Newton around 1700. The tabular Islamic calendar's 360-month cycle is equivalent to 24 of the cycles, minus a correction of one day. It comes to 10,631 days (29 years, including 7 leap years + 39 days) with 191 months of 30 days and 169 months of 29 days.
List of lunar calendars
Gezer Calendar
Haida Calendar
Igbo calendar
Islamic calendar
Javanese calendar
Maramataka (Māori lunar calendar)
Nepal Sambat
Yoruba calendar
See also
List of calendars
Lunar phase
Epact
Paschal Full Moon
Particular calendars
Babylonian calendar
Celtic calendar
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Mongolian calendars
Egyptian calendar
Ancient Greek calendars
Hebrew calendar
Hindu calendar
Iranian calendars
Islamic calendar
Ancient Macedonian calendar
Mayan calendar
Roman calendar
Thai lunar calendar
Tibetan calendar
Notes
References
External links | [
0.38159501552581787,
0.13115890324115753,
0.15960851311683655,
-0.009981869719922543,
-0.4276280999183655,
0.22170919179916382,
0.3089601397514343,
0.5191482305526733,
-0.5939205884933472,
-0.6584585905075073,
0.03832985833287239,
-0.02551806904375553,
-0.27781158685684204,
0.3136215806007... |
18372 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount%20Lykaion | Mount Lykaion | Mount Lykaion (, Lýkaion Óros; ) is a mountain in Arcadia, Greece. Lykaion has two peaks: Stefani to the north and St. Ilias (, Agios Īlías) to the south where the altar of Zeus is located.
The northern peak is higher, 1,421 m, than the southern, 1,382 m (). Mount Lykaion was sacred to Zeus Lykaios, who was said to have been born and brought up on it, and was the home of Pelasgus and his son Lycaon, who were said to have founded the ritual of Zeus practiced on its summit. This seems to have involved a human sacrifice and a feast in which the man who received the portion of a human victim was changed to a wolf, as Lycaon had been after sacrificing a child. The altar of Zeus consists of a great mound of ashes with a retaining wall. It was said that no shadows fell within the precincts and that any who entered it died within the year. The sanctuary of Zeus played host to athletic games held every four years, the Lykaia.
Archaeological excavations were first carried out in 1897 by K. Kontopoulos for the Greek Archaeological Service, followed by K. Kourouniotes between 1902 and 1909.
The Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project, a joint effort of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Arizona began work at the site in 2004, with the aim of continuing the topographical survey begun in 1996 and carrying out a full topographical and architectural analysis not only of the altar and temenos, but of the nearby valley where the Lykaian Games were held. The detailed digital records and drawings of every architectural stone block. To date, a complete map of the area has been made, including not only the Ash Altar and temenos, but also two fountains, including the Hagno fountain mentioned by Pausanias, the hippodrome, the stadium, a building that was probably a bathhouse, the xenon (hotel), a stoa, several rows of seats, and a group of statue bases.
Many of these buildings seem to have been planned in relation to each other: the baths at the northern end of the hippodrome are on the same alignment as it is, and the stoa, the xenon, the lower fountain, and the rows of seats all appear to have been built in an intentionally similar alignment. Just to the north of the stoa four rows of seats were excavated, with the remains of a group of stelae and statue bases nearby. These would have bordered the hippodrome's southern edge, and correspond to an earlier excavated row of seats on the south-eastern edge of the racetrack. The majority of the spectators of events in the hippodrome, however, would have sat on the surrounding hills.
In the literary record
Mt. Lykaion, its religious significance, and its quadrennial athletic games appear with some frequency in the ancient literary sources. The 2nd-century Greek geographer Pausanias provides the greatest amount of information in the eighth book of his Description of Greece, where he discusses Lykaion's mythological, historical, and physical characteristics in detail. More isolated references occur, however, in sources ranging from Plato to Virgil.
Legendary period
Pausanias states that the Arcadians claimed Cretea atop Mt. Lykaion as the birthplace of Zeus, although tradition had handed down at least two other locations for Zeus’ birth.
Lycaon, son of Pelasgus, the mythical founder of the Greek race, is said to have instituted the worship of Zeus at Mt. Lykaion, giving the god the epithet Lykaios and establishing games in his honor. The Bibliotheca, a Roman-era mythological compendium, adds the story that Lycaon attempted to test Zeus’ omniscience by tricking him into eating a sacrifice mixed with human flesh. In punishment, Zeus slew Lycaon and his fifty sons. Other sources, including the Roman poet Ovid, claim instead that Lycaon's punishment was transformation into a wolf, an early example of lycanthropy.
Historical events
According to Pausanias and the Greek historian Polybius, an inscribed pillar (stele) was erected near the altar of Zeus on Mt. Lykaion during the Second Messenian War, a revolt against the Spartans. The inscription supposedly commemorated the execution of Aristocrates of Arcadia, who had betrayed the Messenian hero Aristomenes at the battle of the Great Trench.
Thucydides, a Greek historian of the Peloponnesian War, writes that the Spartan king Pleistoanax lived on Mt. Lykaion while in exile from the mid-440s BC until 427, where he built a house straddling the sacred region (temenos) of Zeus to avoid further persecution.
In his Stratagems, the 2nd-century Macedonian rhetorician Polyaenus describes a battle between the Spartans and Demetrius of Macedon in 294 BC. Mt. Lykaion extended between the camps of the two sides, causing some consternation among the Macedonians due to their unfamiliarity with the terrain. Nevertheless, Demetrius’ forces won the battle with relative ease.
Polybius and Plutarch, a Greek author writing under the Roman empire, cite a battle at Mt. Lykaion in 227 BC between the Achaean League under Aratus and the Spartans under Cleomenes III. Although the details are vague, both authors make it clear that the Achaeans were defeated and that Aratus was believed (mistakenly) to have been killed.
Religious worship
Pan
Mt. Lykaion was an important site of religious worship in ancient Greece. Pausanias describes a sanctuary of Pan surrounded by a grove of trees. At the sanctuary were bases of statues, which by Pausanias’ time had been deprived of the statues themselves, as well as a hippodrome, where the athletic games had once been held. References to Lykaian Pan are especially abundant in Latin poetry, as for instance in Virgil's epic, the Aeneid: “Lupercal / Parrhasio dictum Panos de more Lycaei,” “...the Lupercal, named after the Parrhasian worship of Lykaian Pan,” and in Horace's Odes: “Velox amoenum saepe Lucretilem / mutat Lycaeo Faunus,” “Often swift Faunus [Pan] exchanges Lykaion for pleasant Lucretilis.”
Zeus Lykaios
Pausanias records the presence of a mound of earth on the highest point of the mountain, an altar to Zeus Lykaios. He describes two pillars near the altar which had once been topped by golden eagles. Although Pausanias alludes to secret sacrifices which took place on this altar, he explains that he was reluctant to inquire into these rites due to their extreme antiquity. Pausanias also discusses the temenos of Zeus, a sacred precinct which humans were forbidden to enter. He notes the common belief that any person entering the temenos would die within a year, along with the legend that all creatures, human and animal alike, cast no shadow while inside the sacred area.
Games
The athletic competitions at Lykaion, held every four years, receive occasional mention in the literary record. Authors are in disagreement as to when exactly the games were first instituted: Aristotle is said to have ranked the Lykaion games fourth in order of institution after the Eleusinia, the Panathenaia, and the Argive games, while Pausanias argues for the Lykaian competition's priority to the Panathenaia. Pliny the Elder, an imperial Roman polymath, states that the games at Lykaion were the first to introduce gymnastic competition. The ancient Greek lyric poet Pindar records the victories of several athletes in his Victory Odes, and two inscribed stelae recently excavated from the Lykaian hippodrome provide information about the events, participants, and winners at the games.
Modern study
After 1832, when Greece had gained independence from the Ottoman Empire, European travelers and scholars began to systematically tour Sparta and the Peloponnese. Ernst Curtius, Charles Beulé, and Guillaume Blouet published scholarly studies of the area, and discussions of the region appeared in German and British travelogues as well. Many of these writers used Pausanias as their guide to the geography and sights of the region, but were also concerned to correlate modern Greek place-names with ancient evidence.
Beulé described the hippodrome and surrounding area, including large stones that he assumed formed had formed the seats of the judges and magistrates, and the remains of a building he called a temple to Pan, but which probably corresponds to the stoa of the modern excavations. The German writer Ross described the bathhouse and its ancient but still-visible cisterns, which site he noted the locals called the Skaphidia.
Mt. Lykaion was initially excavated by the Greek Archaeological Service, first in 1897 by archaeologist K. Kontopoulos and again in 1902 by K. Kourouniotes. Kontopoulos dug several trial trenches near the hippodrome and the altar. Kourouniotes's excavations of the altar and surrounding area (the temenos) were particularly informative; he learned that the altar consisted of a raised mound of blackened earth as described by Pausanias. Excavation of the earth of the altar yielded burnt stones, small animal (cow and pig) bones, tiny pottery fragments, iron knives, clay figures, coins from Aegina, a clay figure of a bird, and two small bronze tripods. Further trenches dug in the temenos produced several bronze figures, some iron objects, and roof tiles. In 1909 Kourouniotes excavated an area at the east of the mountain and beneath the summit, the site of the hippodrome, stadium, and bathhouse.
Since Kourouniotes's excavation, anthropologists and scholars of Arcadian religion have studied the site in terms of its development as a sanctuary, but there was no further systematic or scientific investigation until 1996, when Dr. David Gilman Romano of the University of Pennsylvania conducted a topographical and architectural survey of the site. Romano continued his work with the Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Arizona. A preliminary planning phase of cleaning and surveying took place in 2004 and 2005, and was followed by a five-year excavation program beginning in June 2006. A two-year period during which the findings will be studied is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2011.
Hippodrome
The hippodrome at Mount Lykaion, located in a valley below and to the north of the altar, is the only extant hippodrome from Greek antiquity, and is therefore crucial to our understanding of Greek athletic festivals. The hippodrome was constructed on roughly a north-south orientation with a retaining wall of about 140 meters along the eastern side curving around the northern end. Modern excavations have discovered portions tapering column drums that may belonged to the turning posts at either end of the race-course, from whose location it appears that the hippodrome could have had a length of 320 meters and a width of 140. A bath building is being excavated about 35 meters to the northeast of the hippodrome; a large portion of it appears to have been dedicated to a cistern, and large stone basins from the middle of the structure have been uncovered
The Lykaian hippodrome is further unique in apparently having encompassed the stadium racecourse. The early 20th century excavator of Lykaion, Kouriouniotis discovered stone blocks in the middle of the hippodrome that would have formed the starting line of the stadium. The topological survey of 1996 confirmed 6 starting line blocks, four of which were grouped together and were thus possibly found near their original orientation and position. From this, archaeologist David Romano speculated that a stadium racecourse of 170–180 meters would have been enclosed within the hippodrome. The apparently double-use of the space is particularly interesting because inscriptional evidence concerning the Lykaian Games of the 4th century BCE indicates that horse and foot-races were held during the same festivals, and possibly on the same day.
Two inscriptions were uncovered in the excavations of Kouriouniotis that give the names of winning athletes in the various contests of the Lykaian Games that were held every four years between 320 and 304 BCE. These contests included footraces for men and for boys, various chariot races with teams of adult and juvenile horses, boxing, wrestling, and a pentathlon.
Ash altar
A circular altar of blackened earth about 1.5 meters in height and 30 meters in diameter seems to date from before the migration of Indo-European peoples into the area. The excavations of Kourouniotes in 1903 of the altar and its nearby temenos determined definite cult activity at the Lykaion altar from the late 7th century b.c.e, including animals bones, miniature tripods, knives, and statuettes of Zeus holding an eagle and a lightning bolt. These objects were primarily found in the temenos. The earth-altar may correspond to a Linear B mention of an "open-fire altar"; Linear B (14th–13th centuries BCE) inscriptions also give the first mentions of offerings to Zeus and of the sacred precinct (temenos) near the altar, such as has been excavated at Lykaion.
Excavation in 2007 revealed pottery fragments and signs of activity in the ash altar believed to have been used as early as 3000 BCE. Nearby Olympia (only 22 miles away) has a similar ash altar, and both settlements held ancient athletic games. The extremely early date of activity at Lykaion could suggest that these customs originated there. Stratigraphic analysis from the most recent excavations showed prehistoric human activity at the altar site, which seems to have been in continuous use from the Late Neolithic period through to the Hellenistic era. A number of drinking vessels and bones of sheep and goats from the Late Helladic period indicates that the altar was the site of Mycenean drinking and feasting rituals, probably in honor of Zeus. An especially interesting discovery was a seal ring from the Late Minoan period (1500–1400 BCE), which could indicate some interaction between Mt. Lykaion and Crete, both of which are given as the birthplace of Zeus by ancient sources.
Recent excavations of a 30-meter ash altar on Mount Lykaion in Greece, once worshipped as the birthplace of Zeus, have revealed a 3000-year-old skeleton of an adolescent boy thought to be a human sacrifice, The Boston Globe reports. The altar is not a cemetery, the researchers note, and the skeleton was lined with stones, showing that it was not a typical human burial. Plato and other ancient writers linked Mount Lykaion specifically to human sacrifices to Zeus—the legends say a sacrificed boy would be cooked with sacrificed animal meat and those who consumed the human portion would become a wolf for 9 years.
Notes and references
External links
Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project
Landforms of Arcadia, Peloponnese
Ancient Greek archaeological sites in Peloponnese (region)
Ancient Greek geography
Ancient Greek religion
Arcadian mythology
Lykaion
Locations in Greek mythology
Human sacrifice
Mountains of Peloponnese (region) | [
-0.154155433177948,
0.8924508094787598,
-0.47043007612228394,
-0.4457806944847107,
-0.15423446893692017,
0.8779199123382568,
0.7650805711746216,
0.24556562304496765,
-0.15462420880794525,
0.30491167306900024,
-0.1148247942328453,
0.37847867608070374,
-0.8409044146537781,
0.7620784044265747... |
18374 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake%20Eyre | Lake Eyre | Lake Eyre ( ), officially known as Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, is an endorheic lake in east-central Far North South Australia, some north of Adelaide. The shallow lake is the depocentre of the vast endorheic Lake Eyre basin, and contains the lowest natural point in Australia at approximately below sea level (AHD), and on the rare occasions that it fills completely, is the largest lake in Australia covering an area up to . When the lake is full, it has the same salinity level as seawater, but becomes hypersaline as the lake dries up and the water evaporates.
The lake was named in honour of Edward John Eyre, the first European to see it in 1840. The lake's official name was changed in December 2012 to combine the name "Lake Eyre" with the Aboriginal name, Kati Thanda. The native title over the lake and surrounding region is held by the Arabana people.
Geography
Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre is in the deserts of central Australia, in northern South Australia. The Lake Eyre Basin is a large endorheic system surrounding the lakebed, the lowest part of which is filled with the characteristic salt pan caused by the seasonal expansion and subsequent evaporation of the trapped waters. Even in the dry season, there is usually some water remaining in Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, normally collecting in over 200 smaller sub-lakes within its margins. The lake was formed by aeolian processes after tectonic upwarping occurred to the south subsequent to the end of the Pleistocene epoch.
During the rainy season, rivers from the north-east part of the Lake Eyre Basin—in outback (south-west and central) Queensland—flow towards the lake through the Channel Country. The amount of water from the monsoon determines whether water will reach the lake and, if it does, how deep the lake will get. The average rainfall in the area of the lake is per year.
The altitude usually attributed to Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre refers to the deepest parts of the lake floor, in Belt Bay and the Madigan Gulf. The shoreline lies at . The lake is the area of maximum deposition of sediment in the Lake Eyre Basin.
Lake Eyre is divided into two sections which are joined by the Goyder Channel. These are known as Lake Eyre North, which is in length and wide, and Lake Eyre South, which measures . The salt crusts are thickest—up to —in the southern Belt Bay, Jackboot Bay and Madigan Gulf sub-basins of Lake Eyre North.
Since 1883, proposals have been made to flood Lake Eyre with seawater brought to the basin via a canal or pipeline. The purpose was, in part, to increase evaporation and thereby increase rainfall in the region downwind of an enlarged Lake Eyre. The added rainfall has been modelled as small. Due to the basin's low elevation below sea level and the region's high annual evaporation rate (between ), such schemes have generally been considered impractical, as it is likely that accumulation of salt deposits would rapidly block the engineered channel. At a rate of evaporation per day, a viaduct flowing a would supply enough water to create a sea. If brine water were not sent back to the ocean, it would precipitate of salt every year.
Salinity
The salinity in the lake increases as the salt crust dissolves over a period of six months of a major flood, resulting in a massive fish kill. When over deep, the lake is no more salty than the sea, but salinity increases as the water evaporates, with saturation occurring at about a depth. The lake takes on a pink hue when saturated, due to the presence of beta-carotene pigment caused by the alga Dunaliella salina.
History
Wangkangurru (also known as Arabana/Wangkangurru, Wangganguru, Wanggangurru, Wongkangurru) is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken on Wangkangurru country. It is closely related to Arabana language of South Australia. The Wangkangurru language region was traditionally in the South Australian-Queensland border region taking in Birdsville and extending south towards Innamincka and Lake Eyre, including the local government areas of the Shire of Diamantina as well as the Outback Communities Authority of South Australia.
Floods
Typically a flood occurs every three years, a flood every decade, and a fill or near fill a few times a century. The water in the lake soon evaporates, with a minor or medium flood drying by the end of the following summer. Most of the water entering the lakes arrives via Warburton River.
In strong La Niña years, the lake can fill. Since 1885, this has occurred in 1886–1887, 1889–1890, 1916–1917, 1950, 1955, 1974–1977, and 1999–2001, with the highest flood of in 1974. Local rain can also fill Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre to , as occurred in 1984 and 1989. Torrential rain in January 2007 took about six weeks to reach the lake but only placed a small amount of water into it.
When recently flooded, the lake is almost fresh, and native freshwater fish, including bony bream (Nematolosa erebi), the Lake Eyre Basin sub-species of golden perch (Macquaria ambigua) and various small hardyhead species (Craterocephalus spp.) can survive in it.
2009 to 2011
The 2009 Lake Eyre flood peaked at deep in late May, which is a quarter of its maximum recorded depth of . of water crossed the Queensland–South Australian border with most of it coming from massive floods in the Georgina River. However, owing to the very low rainfall in the lower reaches of these rivers (contrasting with heavy rainfall in the upper catchments), the greater proportion soaked into the desert or evaporated en route to the lake, leaving less than in the lake, which covered an area of , or 12% of the total. As the flood did not start filling the lake's deepest point (Belt Bay) until late March, little bird life appeared, preferring instead to nest in the upper reaches of the Lake Eyre Basin, north of Birdsville, where large lakes appeared in January as a result of monsoonal rain.
The high rainfall in summer 2010 sent flood water into the Diamantina, Georgina and Cooper Creek catchments of the Lake Eyre basin, with the Cooper Creek reaching the lake for the first time since 1990. The higher rainfall prompted many different birds to migrate back to the area for breeding.
Heavy local rain in early March 2011 in the Stuart Creek and Warriner catchments filled Lake Eyre South, with Lake Eyre North about 75 per cent covered with water firstly from the Neales and Macumba Rivers, and later from the Warburton River.
2015 to 2016
In late 2015, water began flowing into Lake Eyre following heavy rain in the north-east of the state.
2019
In late March 2019, floodwaters began arriving as a result of torrential rains in northern Queensland in January. In the past, the water had taken anywhere from three to 10 months to reach the lake, but this time it arrived in two. The first flooding would be closely followed by another surge, following rains produced by Cyclone Trevor. Traditional owners and graziers agree that it is essential that the river run its course and should not be harvested during floods, as any interference in the natural systems could damage the ecosystem.
Yacht club
The Lake Eyre Yacht Club is a dedicated group of sailors who sail on the lake's floods, including recent trips in 1997, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2007 and 2009. A number of trailer sailers sailed on Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre in 1975, 1976, and 1984, when the flood depth reached . In July 2010 The Yacht Club held its first regatta since 1976 and its first on Lake Killamperpunna, a freshwater lake on Cooper Creek. The Cooper had reached Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre for the first time since 1990. It is estimated that these waters reach Lake Eyre roughly 8 years in 100.
When the lake is full, a notable phenomenon is that around midday the surface can often become very flat. The surface then reflects the sky in a way that leaves both the horizon and water surface virtually impossible to see. The commodore of the Lake Eyre Yacht Club has stated that sailing during this time has the appearance of sailing in the sky.
Land speed record attempts
Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre has been a site for various land speed record attempts on its salt flats, similar to those found in the Bonneville Salt Flats, especially those by Donald Campbell with the Bluebird-Proteus CN7.
Biota
Phytoplankton in the lake includes Nodularia spumigena and a number of species of Dunaliella.
Birds
Birds such as pelicans and banded stilts are drawn to a filled lake from southern coastal regions of Australia, and from as far afield as Papua New Guinea. During the 1989–1990 flood, it was estimated that 200,000 pelicans, 80% of Australia's total population, came to feed & roost at Lake Eyre. Scientists are presently unable to determine how such birds appear able to detect the filling of the lake, even when hundreds or thousands of kilometres away from the basin.
Protected area status
Statutory
The extent of the lake is covered by two protected areas declared by the Government of South Australia - the Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre National Park and the Elliot Price Conservation Park.
Non-statutory
Wetlands
Lake Eyre is on the list of wetlands of national importance known as A Directory of Important Wetlands in Australia.
Important bird area
Lake Eyre has been identified by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area (IBA) known as the Lake Eyre Important Bird Area, because, when flooded, it supports major breeding events of the Banded stilt and Australian pelican, as well as over 1% of the world populations of Red-necked avocets, Sharp-tailed sandpipers, Red-necked stints, Silver gulls and Caspian terns.
See also
Lake Torrens
List of lakes of Australia
Pluvial lake
References
Further reading
Dr Vincent Kotwicki: Floods of Lake Eyre - interesting site with much data, including Lake Eyre inflows 1885–2012.
Salt - documentary film by Murray Fredericks and Michael Angus (synopsis)
NASA Earth Observatory: Lake Eyre Filling Peaks - 21 June 2009
Lake Eyre Yacht Club website
External links
Multimedia & Aerial View of the Lake Eyre
Ancient lakes
Eyre, Lake
Eyre, Lake
Lake Eyre basin
Far North (South Australia)
Extreme points of Australia
Lowest points | [
-0.16936831176280975,
0.20784346759319305,
-0.07635314017534256,
-0.2829976975917816,
-0.3730226159095764,
0.37937644124031067,
1.0687000751495361,
0.1263086348772049,
-0.5116334557533264,
-0.2882213294506073,
-0.3103528320789337,
-0.05259120836853981,
-0.5080950260162354,
0.58342742919921... |
18375 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locksmithing | Locksmithing | Locksmithing is the science and art of making and defeating locks. Locksmithing is a traditional trade and in many countries requires completion of an apprenticeship. The level of formal education legally required varies from country to country from none at all, to a simple training certificate awarded by an employer, to a full diploma from an engineering college (such as in Australia), in addition to time spent working as an apprentice.
Terminology
A lock is a mechanism that secures buildings, rooms, cabinets, objects, or other storage facilities. A "smith" is a metalworker who shapes metal pieces, often using a forge or mould, into useful objects or to be part of a more complex structure. Thus locksmithing, as its name implies, is the assembly and designing of locks and their respective keys by hand. Most locksmiths use automatic and manual cutting tools to mold keys; most are power tools having battery or mains electricity as their power source.
Work
Locks have been constructed for over 2500 years, initially out of wood and later out of metal. Historically, locksmiths would make the entire lock, working for hours hand cutting screws and doing much file-work. Lock designs became significantly more complicated in the 18th century, and locksmiths often specialized in repairing or designing locks.
After the rise of cheap mass production, the vast majority of locks are repaired by swapping parts or like-for-like replacement or upgraded to modern mass-production items. Until more recently, safes and strongboxes were the exceptions to this, and large bank vaults are custom designed and built at great cost, the very limited scope for mass production of vaults means it is more difficult to realize economies of scale in their manufacture, and the risk of a copy being obtained and defeated is lowered when vaults are custom-made.
Although fitting of keys to replace lost keys to automobiles and homes and the changing of keys for homes and businesses to maintain security is still an important part of locksmithing, locksmiths today are primarily involved in the installation of higher quality lock-sets and the design, implementation, and management of keying and key control systems. Most locksmiths also do electronic lock servicing, such as making smart keys for transponder-equipped vehicles and the implementation and application of access control systems protecting individuals and assets for many large institutions.
In terms of physical security, a locksmith's work frequently involves making a determination of the level of risk to an individual or institution and then recommending and implementing appropriate combinations of equipment and policies to create "security layers" which exceed the reasonable gain to an intruder or attacker. The more different security layers are implemented, the more the requirement for additional skills and knowledge, and tools to defeat them all. But because each layer comes at an expense to the customer, the application of appropriate levels without exceeding reasonable costs to the customer is often very important and requires a skilled and knowledgeable locksmith to determine.
While a handyman can also install and replace locks, locksmiths are specialists whose involvement may be desirable for several reason. As mentioned above, their knowledge of different lock systems can help in appropriate lock selection and the establishment of best practices. Additionally, locksmiths in many places are required by law to undergo training and maintain certification.
Locksmith regulation by country
Australia
In Australia, prospective locksmiths are required to take a Technical and Further Education (TAFE) course in locksmithing, completion of which leads to issuance of a Level 3 Australian Qualifications Framework certificate, and complete an apprenticeship. They must also pass a criminal records check certifying that they are not currently wanted by the police. Apprenticeships can last one to four years. Course requirements are variable: there is a minimal requirements version that requires fewer total training units, and a fuller version that teaches more advanced skills, but takes more time to complete. Apprenticeship and course availability vary by state or territory.
Ireland
In Ireland, licensing for locksmiths was introduced in 2016, with locksmiths having to obtain a Private Security Authority license.
United Kingdom
In the UK, there is no current government regulation for locksmithing, so effectively anyone can trade and operate as a locksmith with no skill or knowledge of the industry.
United States
Fifteen states in the United States require licensure for locksmiths. Nassau County and New York City in New York State, and Hillsborough County and Miami-Dade County in Florida have their own licensing laws. State and local laws are described in the table below.
Employment
Locksmiths may be commercial (working out of a storefront), mobile (working out of a vehicle), institutional (employed by an institution) or investigatory (forensic locksmiths) or may specialize in one aspect of the skill, such as an automotive lock specialist, a master key system specialist or a safe technician. Many are also security consultants, but not every security consultant has the skills and knowledge of a locksmith. Locksmiths are frequently certified in specific skill areas or to a level of skill within the trade. This is separate from certificates of completion of training courses. In determining skill levels, certifications from manufacturers or locksmith associations are usually more valid criteria than certificates of completion. Some locksmiths decide to call themselves "Master Locksmiths" whether they are fully trained or not, and some training certificates appear quite authoritative.
The majority of locksmiths also work on any existing door hardware, not just locking mechanisms. This includes door closers, door hinges, electric strikes, frame repairs and other door hardware.
Full disclosure
The issue of full disclosure was first raised in the context of locksmithing, in a 19th-century controversy regarding whether weaknesses in lock systems should be kept secret in the locksmithing community, or revealed to the public.
According to A. C. Hobbs:
A commercial, and in some respects a social doubt has been started within the last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security or insecurity of locks. Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discussion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest. This is a fallacy. Rogues are very keen in their profession, and know already much more than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery.
Rogues knew a good deal about lock-picking long before locksmiths discussed it among themselves, as they have lately done. If a lock, let it have been made in whatever country, or by whatever maker, is not so inviolable as it has hitherto been deemed to be, surely it is to the interest of honest persons to know this fact, because the dishonest are tolerably certain to apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of the knowledge is necessary to give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance.
It cannot be too earnestly urged that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better for all parties. Some time ago, when the reading public was alarmed at being told how London milk is adulterated, timid persons deprecated the exposure, on the plea that it would give instructions in the art of adulterating milk; a vain fear, milkmen knew all about it before, whether they practised it or not; and the exposure only taught purchasers the necessity of a little scrutiny and caution, leaving them to obey this necessity or not, as they pleased.
-- From A. C. Hobbs (Charles Tomlinson, ed.), Locks and Safes: The Construction of Locks. Published by Virtue & Co., London, 1853 (revised 1868).
Notable locksmiths
William F. Banham, founder of Banham Security, invented the first automatic latch bolt lock in 1926 after a series of burglaries on his wife's dress shop. He opened up his own locksmith shop on Oxford Street, London, and offered £25 to anyone who could pick or break one of his patented locks Banham Group still offer the patented locks.
Robert Barron patented a double-acting tumbler lock in 1778, the first reasonable improvement in lock security.
Joseph Bramah patented the Bramah lock in 1784. It was considered unpickable for 67 years until A.C. Hobbs picked it, taking over 50 hours.
Jeremiah Chubb patented his detector lock in 1818. It won him the reward offered by the Government for a lock that could not be opened by any but its own key.
James Sargent described the first successful key-changeable combination lock in 1857. His lock became popular with safe manufacturers and the United States Treasury Department. In 1873, he patented a time lock mechanism, the prototype for those used in contemporary bank vaults.
Samuel Segal of the Segal Lock and Hardware Company invented the first jimmy-proof locks in 1916.
Harry Soref founded the Master Lock Company in 1921 and patented an improved padlock in 1924 with a patent lock casing constructed out of laminated steel.
Linus Yale Sr. invented a pin tumbler lock in 1848.
Linus Yale Jr. improved upon his father's lock in 1861, using a smaller, flat key with serrated edges that is the basis of modern pin-tumbler locks. Yale Jr. developed the modern combination lock in 1862.
Alfred Charles Hobbs demonstrated the inadequacy of several respected locks of the time in 1851 at The Great Exhibition, and popularized the practice of full disclosure.
See also
Associated Locksmiths of America
Door security
Glossary of locksmithing terms
Immobiliser
Locksport
Master Locksmiths Association
References
See also
Metalworking occupations | [
0.6205185651779175,
0.43846413493156433,
-0.23452778160572052,
0.3732856214046478,
0.24475204944610596,
0.22442173957824707,
0.7486728429794312,
-0.30993494391441345,
-0.4947841465473175,
-0.23015399277210236,
-0.4149124324321747,
0.30251359939575195,
-0.15893186628818512,
0.08140977472066... |
18376 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loran-C | Loran-C | Loran-C is a hyperbolic radio navigation system that allows a receiver to determine its position by listening to low frequency radio signals transmitted by fixed land-based radio beacons. Loran-C combined two different techniques to provide a signal that was both long-range and highly accurate, features that were formerly incompatible. The disadvantage was the expense of the equipment needed to interpret the signals, which meant that Loran-C was used primarily by militaries after it was introduced in 1957.
By the 1970s the cost, weight and size of electronics needed to implement Loran-C had been dramatically reduced due to the introduction of solid-state electronics and, from the mid-1970s, early microcontrollers to process the signal. Low-cost and easy-to-use Loran-C units became common from the late 1970s, especially in the early 1980s, and the earlier LORAN system was discontinued in favor of installing more Loran-C stations around the world. Loran-C became one of the most common and widely used navigation systems for large areas of North America, Europe, Japan and the entire Atlantic and Pacific areas. The Soviet Union operated a nearly identical system, CHAYKA.
The introduction of civilian satellite navigation in the 1990s led to a rapid drop-off in Loran-C use. Discussions about the future of Loran-C began in the 1990s; several turn-off dates were announced, then cancelled. In 2010 the Canadian systems were shut down, along with Loran-C/CHAYKA stations shared with Russia. Several other chains remained active; some were upgraded for continued use. At the end of 2015, navigation chains in most of Europe were turned off. In December 2015 in the United States there was also renewed discussion of funding an eLoran system, and NIST offered to fund development of a microchip-sized eLoran receiver for distribution of timing signals.
United States legislation introduced later, such as the National Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2017, proposed resurrecting Loran.
History
Loran-A
The original LORAN was proposed in 1940 by Alfred Lee Loomis at a meeting of the U.S. Army's Microwave Committee. The Army Air Corps were interested in the concept for aircraft navigation, and after some discussion they returned a requirement for a system offering accuracy of about at a range of , and a maximum range as great as for high-flying aircraft. The Microwave Committee, by this time organized into what would become the MIT Radiation Laboratory, took up development as Project 3. During the initial meetings, a member of the UK liaison team, Taffy Bowen, mentioned that he was aware the British were also working on a similar concept, but had no information on its performance.
The development team, led by Loomis, made rapid progress on the transmitter design and tested several systems during 1940 before settling on a 3 MHz design. Extensive signal-strength measurements were made by mounting a conventional radio receiver in a station wagon and driving around the eastern states. However, the custom receiver design and its associated cathode-ray tube displays proved to be a bigger problem. In spite of several efforts to design around the problem, instability in the display prevented accurate measurements as the output shifted back and forth on the face of the oscilloscope.
By this time the team had become much more familiar with the British Gee system, and were aware of their related work on "strobes", a time base generator that produced well-positioned "pips" on the display that could be used for accurate measurement. This meant that inaccuracy of the positioning on the display had no effect, the any inaccuracy in the position of the signal was also in the strobe so the two remained aligned. The Project 3 team met with the Gee team in 1941, and immediately adopted this solution. This meeting also revealed that Project 3 and Gee called for almost identical systems, with similar performance, range and accuracy, but Gee had already completed basic development and was entering into initial production, making Project 3 superfluous.
In response, the Project 3 team told the Army Air Force to adopt Gee, and instead, at the behest of the British team, realigned their efforts to provide long-range navigation on the oceans where Gee was not useful. This led to United States Navy interest, and a series of experiments quickly demonstrated that systems using the basic Gee concept, but operating at a lower frequency around 2 MHz would offer reasonable accuracy on the order of a few miles over distances on the order of , at least at night when signals of this frequency range were able to skip off the ionosphere. Rapid development followed, and a system covering the western Atlantic was operational in 1943. Additional stations followed, first covering the European side of the Atlantic, and then a large expansion in the Pacific. By the end of the war, there were 72 operational LORAN stations and as many as 75,000 receivers.
In 1958 the operation of the LORAN system was handed over to the United States Coast Guard, which renamed the system "Loran-A", the lower-case name being introduced at that time.
LF LORAN
There are two ways to implement the timing measurements needed for a hyperbolic navigation system, pulse timing systems like Gee and LORAN, and phase-timing systems like the Decca Navigator System.
The former requires sharp pulses of signal, and their accuracy is generally limited to how rapidly the pulses can be turned on and off, which is a function of the carrier frequency. There is an ambiguity in the signal; the same measurements can be valid at two locations relative to the broadcasters, but in normal operation, they are hundreds of kilometres apart, so one possibility can be eliminated.
The second system uses constant signals ("continuous wave") and takes measurements by comparing the phase of two signals. This system is easy to use even at very low frequencies. However, its signal is ambiguous over the distance of a wavelength, meaning there are hundreds of locations that will return the same signal. Decca referred to these ambiguous locations as cells. This demands some other navigation method to be used in conjunction to pick which cell the receiver is within, and then using the phase measurements to place the receiver accurately within the cell.
Numerous efforts were made to provide some sort of secondary low-accuracy system that could be used with a phase-comparison system like Decca in order to resolve the ambiguity. Among the many methods was a directional broadcast system known as POPI, and a variety of systems combining pulse-timing for low-accuracy navigation and then using phase-comparison for fine adjustment. Decca themselves had set aside one frequency, "9f", for testing this combined-signal concept, but did not have the chance to do so until much later. Similar concepts were also used in the experimental Navarho system in the United States.
It was known from the start of the LORAN project that the same CRT displays that showed the LORAN pulses could, when suitably magnified, also show the individual waves of the intermediate frequency. This meant that pulse-matching could be used to get a rough fix, and then the operator could gain additional timing accuracy by lining up the individual waves within the pulse, like Decca. This could either be used to greatly increase the accuracy of LORAN, or alternately, offer similar accuracy using much lower carrier frequencies, and thus greatly extend the effective range. This would require the transmitter stations to be synchronized both in time and phase, but much of this problem had already been solved by Decca engineers.
The long-range option was of considerable interest to the Coast Guard, who set up an experimental system known as LF LORAN in 1945. This operated at much lower frequencies than the original LORAN, at 180 kHz, and required very long balloon-borne antennas. Testing was carried out throughout the year, including several long-distance flights as far as Brazil. The experimental system was then sent to Canada where it was used during Operation Muskox in the Arctic. Accuracy was found to be at , a significant advance over LORAN. With the ending of Muskox, it was decided to keep the system running under what became known as "Operation Musk Calf", run by a group consisting of the United States Air Force, Royal Canadian Air Force, Royal Canadian Navy and the UK Royal Corps of Signals. The system ran until September 1947.
This led to another major test series, this time by the newly-formed United States Air Force, known as Operation Beetle. Beetle was located in the far north, on the Canada-Alaska border, and used new guy-stayed steel towers, replacing the earlier system's balloon-lofted cable antennas. The system became operational in 1948 and ran for two years until February 1950. Unfortunately, the stations proved poorly sited, as the radio transmission over the permafrost was much shorter than expected and synchronization of the signals between the stations using ground waves proved impossible. The tests also showed that the system was extremely difficult to use in practice; it was easy for the operator to select the wrong sections of the waveforms on their display, leading to significant real-world inaccuracy.
CYCLAN and Whyn
In 1946 the Rome Air Development Center sent out contracts for longer-ranged and more-accurate navigation systems that would be used for long-range bombing navigation. As the United States Army Air Forces were moving towards smaller crews, only three in the Boeing B-47 Stratojet for instance, a high degree of automation was desired. Two contracts were accepted; Sperry Gyroscope proposed the CYCLAN system (CYCLe matching LorAN) which was broadly similar to LF LORAN but with additional automation, and Sylvania proposed Whyn using continuous wave navigation like Decca, but with additional coding using frequency modulation. In spite of great efforts, Whyn could never be made to work, and was abandoned.
CYCLAN operated by sending the same LF LORAN-like signals on two frequencies, LF LORAN's 180 kHz and again on 200 kHz. The associated equipment would look for a rising amplitude that indicated the start of the signal pulse, and then use sampling gates to extract the carrier phase. Using two receivers solved the problem of mis-aligning the pulses, because the phases would only align properly between the two copies of the signal when the same pulses were being compared. None of this was trivial; using the era's tube-based electronics, the experimental CYCLAN system filled much of a semi-trailer.
CYCLAN proved highly successful, so much so that it became increasingly clear that the problems that led the engineers to use two frequencies were simply not as bad as expected. It appeared that a system using a single frequency would work just as well, given the right electronics. This was especially good news, as the 200 kHz frequency was interfering with existing broadcasts, and had to be moved to 160 kHz during testing.
Through this period the issue of radio spectrum use was becoming a major concern, and had led to international efforts to decide on a frequency band suitable for long-range navigation. This process eventually settled on the band from 90 to 100 kHz. CYCLAN appeared to suggest that accuracy at even lower frequencies was not a problem, and the only real concern was the expense of the equipment involved.
Cytac
The success of the CYCLAN system led to a further contract with Sperry in 1952 for a new system with the twin goals of working in the 100 kHz range while being equally accurate, less complex and less expensive. These goals would normally be contradictory, but the CYCLAN system gave all involved the confidence that these could be met. The resulting system was known as Cytac.
To solve the complexity problem, a new circuit was developed to properly time the sampling of the signal. This consisted of a circuit to extract the envelope of the pulse, another to extract the derivative of the envelope, and finally another that subtracted the derivative from the envelope. The result of this final operation would become negative during a very specific and stable part of the rising edge of the pulse, and this zero-crossing was used to trigger a very short-time sampling gate. This system replaced the complex system of clocks used in CYCLAN. By simply measuring the time between the zero-crossings of the master and secondary, pulse-timing was extracted.
The output of the envelope sampler was also sent to a phase-shifter that adjusted the output of a local clock that locked to the master carrier using a phase-locked loop. This retained the phase of the master signal long enough for the secondary signal to arrive. Gating on the secondary signal was then compared to this master signal in a phase detector, and a varying voltage was produced depending on the difference in phase. This voltage represented the fine-positioning measurement.
The system was generally successful during testing through 1953, but there were concerns raised about the signal power at long range and the possibility of jamming. This led to further modifications of the basic signal. The first was to broadcast a series of pulses instead of just one, broadcasting more energy during a given time and improving the ability of the receivers to tune in a useful signal. They also added a fixed 45° phase shift to every pulse, so simple continuous-wave jamming signals could be identified and rejected.
The Cytac system underwent an enormous series of tests across the United States and offshore. Given the potential accuracy of the system, even minor changes to the groundwave synchronization were found to cause errors that could be eliminated — issues such as the number of rivers the signal crossed caused predictable delays that could be measured and then factored into navigation solutions. This led to a series of correction contours that could be added to the received signal to adjust for these concerns, and these were printed on the Cytac charts. Using prominent features on dams as target points, a series of tests demonstrated that the uncorrected signals provided accuracy on the order of 100 yards, while adding the correction contour adjustments reduced this to the order of ten yards.
Loran-B and -C
It was at this moment that the United States Air Force, having taken over these efforts while moving from the United States Army Air Forces, dropped their interest in the project. Although the reasons are not well recorded, it appears the idea of a fully automated bombing system using radio aids was no longer considered possible. The AAF Had been involved in missions covering about 1000 km (the distance from London to Berlin) and the Cytac system would work well at these ranges, but as the mission changed to trans-polar missions of 5,000 km or more, even Cytac did not offer the range and accuracy needed. They turned their attention to the use of inertial platforms and Doppler radar systems, cancelling work on Cytac as well as a competing system known as Navarho.
Around this period the United States Navy began work on a similar system using combined pulse and phase comparison, but based on the existing LORAN frequency of 200 kHz. By this time the United States Navy had handed operational control of the LORAN system to the Coast Guard, and it was assumed the same arrangement would be true for any new system as well. Thus, the United States Coast Guard was given the choice of naming the systems, and decided to rename the existing system Loran-A, and the new system Loran-B.
With Cytac fully developed and its test system on the east coast of the United States mothballed, the United States Navy also decided to re-commission Cytac for tests in the long-range role. An extensive series of tests across the Atlantic were carried out by the USCGC Androscoggin starting in April 1956. Meanwhile, Loran-B proved to have serious problems keeping their transmitters in phase, and that work was abandoned. Minor changes were made to the Cytac systems to further simplify it, including a reduction in the pulse-chain spacing from 1200 to 1000 µs, the pulse rate changed to 20 pps to match the existing Loran-A system, and the phase-shifting between pulses to an alternating 0, 180-degree shift instead of 45 degrees at every pulse within the chain.
The result was Loran-C. Testing of the new system was intensive, and over-water flights around Bermuda demonstrated that 50% of fixes lay within a circle, a dramatic improvement over the original Loran-A, meeting the accuracy of the Gee system, but at much greater range. The first chain was set up using the original experimental Cytac system, and a second one in the Mediterranean in 1957. Further chains covering the North Atlantic and large areas of the Pacific followed. At the time global charts were printed with shaded sections representing the area where a accurate fix could be obtained under most operational conditions. Loran-C operated in the 90 to 110 kHz frequency range.
Improving systems
Loran-C had originally been designed to be highly automated, allowing the system to be operated more rapidly than the original LORAN's multi-minute measurement. It was also operated in "chains" of linked stations, allowing a fix to be made by simultaneously comparing two secondaries to a single master. The downside of this approach was that the required electronic equipment, built using 1950s-era tube technology, was very large. Looking for companies with knowledge of seaborne, multi-channel phase-comparison electronics led, ironically, to Decca, who built the AN/SPN-31, the first widely used Loran-C receiver. The AN/SPN-31 weighed over and had 52 controls.
Airborne units followed, and an adapted AN/SPN-31 was tested in an Avro Vulcan in 1963. By the mid-1960s, units with some transistorization were becoming more common, and a chain was set up in Vietnam to support the United States' war efforts there. A number of commercial airline operators experimented with the system as well, using it for navigation on the great circle route between North America and Europe. However, inertial platforms ultimately became more common in this role.
In 1969, Decca sued the United States Navy for patent infringement, producing ample documentation of their work on the basic concept as early as 1944, along with the "missing" 9f frequency at 98 kHz that had been set aside for experiments using this system. Decca won the initial suit, but the judgement was overturned on appeal when the Navy claimed "wartime expediency".
Loran-D and -F
When Loran-C became widespread, the United States Air Force once again became interested in using it as a guidance system. They proposed a new system layered on top of Loran-C to provide even higher accuracy, using the Loran-C fix as the coarse guidance signal in much the same way that Loran-C extracted coarse location from pulse timing to remove the ambiguity in the fine measurement. To provide an extra-fine guidance signal, Loran-D interleaved another train of eight pulses immediately after the signals from one of the existing Loran-C stations, folding the two signals together. This technique became known as "Supernumary Interpulse Modulation" (SIM). These were broadcast from low-power portable transmitters, offering relatively short-range service of high accuracy.
Loran-D was used only experimentally during war-games in the 1960s from a transmitter set in the UK. The system was also used in a limited fashion during the Vietnam War, combined with the Pave Spot laser designator system, a combination known as Pave Nail. Using mobile transmitters, the AN/ARN-92 LORAN navigation receiver could achieve accuracy on the order of , which the Spot laser improved to about . The SIM concept later became a system for sending additional data.
At about the same time, Motorola proposed a new system using pseudo-random pulse-chains. This mechanism ensures that no two chains within a given period (on the order of many seconds) will have the same pattern, making it easy to determine if the signal is a groundwave from a recent transmission or a multi-hop signal from a previous one. The system, Multi-User Tactical Navigation Systems (MUTNS) was used briefly but it was found that Loran-D met the same requirements but had the added advantage of being a standard Loran-C signal as well. Although MUTNS was unrelated to the Loran systems, it was sometimes referred to as Loran-F.
Decline
In spite of its many advantages, the high cost of implementing a Loran-C receiver made it uneconomical for many users. Additionally, as military users upgraded from Loran-A to Loran-C, large numbers of surplus Loran-A receivers were dumped on the market. This made Loran-A popular in spite of being less accurate and fairly difficult to operate. By the early 1970s the introduction of integrated circuits combining a complete radio receiver began to greatly reduce the complexity of Loran-A measurements, and fully automated units the size of a stereo receiver became common. For those users requiring higher accuracy, Decca had considerable success with their Decca Navigator system, and produced units that combined both receivers, using Loran to eliminate the ambiguities in Decca.
The same rapid development of microelectronics that made Loran-A so easy to operate worked equally well on the Loran-C signals, and the obvious desire to have a long-range system that could also provide enough accuracy for lake and harbour navigation led to the "opening" of the Loran-C system to public use in 1974. Civilian receivers quickly followed, and dual-system A/C receivers were also common for a time. The switch from A to C was extremely rapid, due largely to rapidly falling prices which led to many users' first receiver being Loran-C. By the late 1970s the Coast Guard decided to turn off Loran-A, in favour of adding additional Loran-C stations to cover gaps is its coverage. The original Loran-A network was shut down in 1979 and 1980, with a few units used in the Pacific for some time. Given the widespread availability of Loran-A charts, many Loran-C receivers included a system for converting coordinates between A and C units.
One of the reasons for Loran-C's opening to the public was the move from Loran to new forms of navigation, including inertial navigation systems, Transit and OMEGA, meant that the security of Loran was no longer as stringent as it was as a primary form of navigation. As these newer systems gave way to GPS through the 1980s and 90s, this process repeated itself, but this time the military was able to separate GPS's signals in such a way that it could provide both secure military and insecure civilian signals at the same time. GPS was more difficult to receive and decode, but by the 1990s the required electronics were already as small and inexpensive as Loran-C, leading to rapid adoption that has become largely universal.
Loran-C in the 21st century
Although Loran-C was largely redundant by 2000, it has not universally disappeared due to a number of concerns. One is that the GPS system can be jammed through a variety of means. Although the same is true of Loran-C, the transmitters are close-at-hand and can be adjusted if necessary. More importantly, there are effects that might cause the GPS system to become unusable over wide areas, notably space weather events and potential EMP events. Loran, located entirely under the atmosphere, offers more resilience to these issues. There has been considerable debate about the relative merits of keeping the Loran-C system operational as a result of such considerations.
In November 2009, the United States Coast Guard announced that Loran-C was not needed by the U.S. for maritime navigation. This decision left the fate of LORAN and eLORAN in the United States to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Per a subsequent announcement, the US Coast Guard, in accordance with the DHS Appropriations Act, terminated the transmission of all U.S. Loran-C signals on 8 February 2010. On 1 August 2010 the U.S. transmission of the Russian American signal was terminated, and on 3 August 2010 all Canadian signals were shut down by the USCG and the CCG.
The European Union had decided that the potential security advantages of Loran are worthy not only of keeping the system operational, but upgrading it and adding new stations. This is part of the wider Eurofix system which combines GPS, Galileo and nine Loran stations into a single integrated system.
In 2014, Norway and France both announced that all of their remaining transmitters, which make up a significant part of the Eurofix system, would be shut down on 31 December 2015. The two remaining transmitters in Europe (Anthorn, UK and Sylt, Germany) would no longer be able to sustain a positioning and navigation Loran service, with the result that the UK announced its trial eLoran service would be discontinued from the same date.
Description
Hyperbolic navigation
In conventional navigation, measuring one's location, or taking a fix, is accomplished by taking two measurements against well known locations. In optical systems this is typically accomplished by measuring the angle to two landmarks, and then drawing lines on a nautical chart at those angles, producing an intersection that reveals the ship's location. Radio methods can also use the same concept with the aid of a radio direction finder, but due to the nature of radio propagation, such instruments are subject to significant errors, especially at night. More accurate radio navigation can be made using pulse timing or phase comparison techniques, which rely on the time-of-flight of the signals. In comparison to angle measurements, these remain fairly steady over time, and most of the effects that change these values are fixed objects like rivers and lakes that can be accounted for on charts.
Timing systems can reveal the absolute distance to an object, as is the case in radar. The problem in the navigational case is that the receiver has to know when the original signal was sent. In theory, one could synchronize an accurate clock to the signal before leaving port, and then use that to compare the timing of the signal during the voyage. However, in the 1940s no suitable system was available that could hold an accurate signal over the time span of an operational mission.
Instead, radio navigation systems adopted the multilateration concept. which is based on the difference in times (or phase) instead of the absolute time. The basic idea is that it is relatively easy to synchronize two ground stations, using a signal shared over a phone line for instance, so one can be sure that the signals received were sent at exactly the same time. They will not be received at exactly the same time, however, as the receiver will receive the signal from the closer station first. Timing the difference between two signals can be easily accomplished, first by physically measuring them on a cathode-ray tube, or simple electronics in the case of phase comparison.
The difference in signal timing does not reveal the location by itself. Instead, it determines a series of locations where that timing is possible. For instance, if the two stations are 300 km apart and the receiver measures no difference in the two signals, that implies that the receiver is somewhere along a line equidistant between the two. If the signal from one is received exactly 100 µs after, then the receiver is closer to one station than the other. Plotting all the locations where one station is 30 km closer than the other produces a curved line. Taking a fix is accomplished by making two such measurements with different pairs of stations, and then looking up both curves on a navigational chart. The curves are known as lines of position or LOP.
In practice, radio navigation systems normally use a chain of three or four stations, all synchronized to a master signal that is broadcast from one of the stations. The others, the secondaries, are positioned so their LOPs cross at acute angles, which increases the accuracy of the fix. So for instance, a given chain might have four stations with the master in the center, allowing a receiver to pick the signals from two secondaries that are currently as close to right angles as possible given their current location. Modern systems, which know the locations of all the broadcasters, can automate which stations to pick.
LORAN method
In the case of LORAN, one station remains constant in each application of the principle, the primary, being paired up separately with two other secondary stations. Given two secondary stations, the time difference (TD) between the primary and first secondary identifies one curve, and the time difference between the primary and second secondary identifies another curve, the intersections of which will determine a geographic point in relation to the position of the three stations. These curves are referred to as TD lines.
In practice, LORAN is implemented in integrated regional arrays, or chains, consisting of one primary station and at least two (but often more) secondary stations, with a uniform group repetition interval (GRI) defined in microseconds. The amount of time before transmitting the next set of pulses is defined by the distance between the start of transmission of primary to the next start of transmission of primary signal.
The secondary stations receive this pulse signal from the primary, then wait a preset number of milliseconds, known as the secondary coding delay, to transmit a response signal. In a given chain, each secondary's coding delay is different, allowing for separate identification of each secondary's signal. (In practice, however, modern LORAN receivers do not rely on this for secondary identification.)
LORAN chains (GRIs)
Every LORAN chain in the world uses a unique Group Repetition Interval, the number of which, when multiplied by ten, gives how many microseconds pass between pulses from a given station in the chain. In practice, the delays in many, but not all, chains are multiples of 100 microseconds. LORAN chains are often referred to by this designation, e.g., GRI 9960, the designation for the LORAN chain serving the Northeastern United States.
Due to the nature of hyperbolic curves, a particular combination of a primary and two secondary stations can possibly result in a "grid" where the grid lines intersect at shallow angles. For ideal positional accuracy, it is desirable to operate on a navigational grid where the grid lines are closer to right angles (orthogonal) to each other. As the receiver travels through a chain, a certain selection of secondaries whose TD lines initially formed a near-orthogonal grid can become a grid that is significantly skewed. As a result, the selection of one or both secondaries should be changed so that the TD lines of the new combination are closer to right angles. To allow this, nearly all chains provide at least three, and as many as five, secondaries.
LORAN charts
Where available, common marine nautical charts include visible representations of TD lines at regular intervals over water areas. The TD lines representing a given primary-secondary pairing are printed with distinct colors, and note the specific time difference indicated by each line. On a nautical chart, the denotation for each Line of Position from a receiver, relative to axis and color, can be found at the bottom of the chart. The color on official charts for stations and the timed-lines of position follow no specific conformance for the purpose of the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO). However, local chart producers may color these in a specific conformance to their standard. Always consult the chart notes, administrations Chart1 reference, and information given on the chart for the most accurate information regarding surveys, datum, and reliability.
There are three major factors when considering signal delay and propagation in relation to LORAN-C:
Primary Phase Factor (PF) – This allows for the fact that the speed of the propagated signal in the atmosphere is slightly lower than in a vacuum.
Secondary Phase Factor (SF) – This allows for the fact that the speed of propagation of the signal is slowed when traveling over the seawater because of the greater conductivity of seawater compared to land.
Additional Secondary Factors (ASF) – Because LORAN-C transmitters are mainly land based, the signal will travel partly over land and partly over seawater. ASF may be treated as land and water segments, each with a uniform conductivity depending on whether the path is over land or water.
The chart notes should indicate whether ASF corrections have been made (Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) charts, for example, include them). Otherwise, the appropriate correction factors must be obtained before use.
Due to interference and propagation issues suffered from land features and artificial structures such as tall buildings, the accuracy of the LORAN signal can be degraded considerably in inland areas (see Limitations). As a result, nautical charts will not show TD lines in those areas, to prevent reliance on LORAN-C for navigation.
Traditional LORAN receivers display the time difference between each pairing of the primary and one of the two selected secondary stations, which is then used to find the appropriate TD line on the chart. Modern LORAN receivers display latitude and longitude coordinates instead of time differences, and, with the advent of time difference comparison and electronics, provide improved accuracy and better position fixing, allowing the observer to plot their position on a nautical chart more easily. When using such coordinates, the datum used by the receiver (usually WGS84) must match that of the chart, or manual conversion calculations must be performed before the coordinates can be used.
Timing and synchronization
Each LORAN station is equipped with a suite of specialized equipment to generate the precisely timed signals used to modulate / drive the transmitting equipment. Up to three commercial cesium atomic clocks are used to generate 5 MHz and pulse per second (or 1 Hz) signals that are used by timing equipment to generate the various GRI-dependent drive signals for the transmitting equipment.
While each U.S.-operated LORAN station is supposed to be synchronized to within 100 ns of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the actual accuracy achieved as of 1994 was within 500 ns.
Transmitters and antennas
LORAN-C transmitters operate at peak powers of 100–4,000 kilowatts, comparable to longwave broadcasting stations. Most use 190–220 metre tall mast radiators, insulated from ground. The masts are inductively lengthened and fed by a loading coil (see: electrical length). A well known-example of a station using such an antenna is Rantum. Free-standing tower radiators in this height range are also used. Carolina Beach uses a free-standing antenna tower. Some LORAN-C transmitters with output powers of 1,000 kW and higher used extremely tall mast radiators (see below). Other high power LORAN-C stations, like George, used four T-antennas mounted on four guyed masts arranged in a square.
All LORAN-C antennas are designed to radiate an omnidirectional pattern. Unlike longwave broadcasting stations, LORAN-C stations cannot use backup antennas because the exact position of the antenna is a part of the navigation calculation. The slightly different physical location of a backup antenna would produce Lines of Position different from those of the primary antenna.
Limitations
LORAN suffers from electronic effects of weather and the ionospheric effects of sunrise and sunset. The most accurate signal is the groundwave that follows the Earth's surface, ideally over seawater. At night the indirect skywave, bent back to the surface by the ionosphere, is a problem as multiple signals may arrive via different paths (multipath interference). The ionosphere's reaction to sunrise and sunset accounts for the particular disturbance during those periods. Geomagnetic storms have serious effects, as with any radio based system.
LORAN uses ground-based transmitters that only cover certain regions. Coverage is quite good in North America, Europe, and the Pacific Rim.
The absolute accuracy of LORAN-C varies from . Repeatable accuracy is much greater, typically from .
LORAN Data Channel (LDC)
LORAN Data Channel (LDC) is a project underway between the FAA and United States Coast Guard to send low bit rate data using the LORAN system. Messages to be sent include station identification, absolute time, and position correction messages. In 2001, data similar to Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) GPS correction messages were sent as part of a test of the Alaskan LORAN chain. As of November 2005, test messages using LDC were being broadcast from several U.S. LORAN stations.
In recent years, LORAN-C has been used in Europe to send differential GPS and other messages, employing a similar method of transmission known as EUROFIX.
A system called SPS (Saudi Positioning System), similar to EUROFIX, is in use in Saudi Arabia. GPS differential corrections and GPS integrity information are added to the LORAN signal. A combined GPS/LORAN receiver is used, and if a GPS fix is not available it automatically switches over to LORAN.
The future of LORAN
As LORAN systems are maintained and operated by governments, their continued existence is subject to public policy. With the evolution of other electronic navigation systems, such as satellite navigation systems, funding for existing systems is not always assured.
Critics, who have called for the elimination of the system, state that the LORAN system has too few users, lacks cost-effectiveness, and that Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals are superior to LORAN. Supporters of continued and improved LORAN operation note that LORAN uses a strong signal, which is difficult to jam, and that LORAN is an independent, dissimilar, and complementary system to other forms of electronic navigation, which helps ensure availability of navigation signals.
On 26 February 2009, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget released the first blueprint for the Fiscal Year 2010 budget. This document identified the LORAN-C system as "outdated" and supported its termination at an estimated savings of $36 million in 2010 and $190 million over five years.
On 21 April 2009 the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs released inputs to the FY 2010 Concurrent Budget Resolution with backing for the continued support for the LORAN system, acknowledging the investment already made in infrastructure upgrades and recognizing the studies performed and multi-departmental conclusion that eLORAN is the best backup to GPS.
Senator Jay Rockefeller, Chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, wrote that the committee recognized the priority in "Maintaining LORAN-C while transitioning to eLORAN" as means of enhancing the national security, marine safety and environmental protection missions of the Coast Guard.
Senator Collins, the ranking member on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs wrote that the President's budget overview proposal to terminate the LORAN-C system is inconsistent with the recent investments, recognized studies and the mission of the U.S. Coast Guard. The committee also recognizes the $160 million investment already made toward upgrading the LORAN-C system to support the full deployment of eLORAN.
Further, the Committees also recognize the many studies which evaluated GPS backup systems and concluded both the need to back up GPS and identified eLORAN as the best and most viable backup. "This proposal is inconsistent with the recently released (January 2009) Federal Radionavigation Plan (FRP), which was jointly prepared by DHS and the Departments of Defense (DOD) and Transportation (DOT). The FRP proposed the eLORAN program to serve as a Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) backup to GPS (Global Positioning System)."
On 7 May 2009, President Barack Obama proposed cutting funding (approx. $35 million/year) for LORAN, citing its redundancy alongside GPS. In regard to the pending Congressional bill, H.R. 2892, it was subsequently announced that "[t]he Administration supports the Committee's aim to achieve an orderly termination through a phased decommissioning beginning in January 2010, and the requirement that certifications be provided to document that the LORAN-C termination will not impair maritime safety or the development of possible GPS backup capabilities or needs."
Also on 7 May 2009, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, released a report citing the very real potential for the GPS system to degrade or fail in light of program delays which have resulted in scheduled GPS satellite launches slipping by up to three years.
On 12 May 2009 the March 2007 Independent Assessment Team (IAT) report on LORAN was released to the public. In its report the ITA stated that it "unanimously recommends that the U.S. government complete the eLORAN upgrade and commit to eLORAN as the national backup to GPS for 20 years." The release of the report followed an extensive Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) battle waged by industry representatives against the federal government. Originally completed 20 March 2007 and presented to the co-sponsoring Department of Transportation and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Executive Committees, the report carefully considered existing navigation systems, including GPS. The unanimous recommendation for keeping the LORAN system and upgrading to eLORAN was based on the team's conclusion that LORAN is operational, deployed and sufficiently accurate to supplement GPS. The team also concluded that the cost to decommission the LORAN system would exceed the cost of deploying eLORAN, thus negating any stated savings as offered by the Obama administration and revealing the vulnerability of the U.S. to GPS disruption.
In November 2009, the U.S. Coast Guard announced that the LORAN-C stations under its control would be closed down for budgetary reasons after 4 January 2010 provided the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security certified that LORAN is not needed as a backup for GPS.
On 7 January 2010, Homeland Security published a notice of the permanent discontinuation of LORAN-C operation. Effective 2000 UTC 8 February 2010, the United States Coast Guard terminated all operation and broadcast of LORAN-C signals in the United States. The United States Coast Guard transmission of the Russian American CHAYKA signal was terminated on 1 August 2010. The transmission of Canadian LORAN-C signals was terminated on 3 August 2010.
eLORAN
With the potential vulnerability of GNSS systems, and their own propagation and reception limitations, renewed interest in LORAN applications and development has appeared. Enhanced LORAN, also known as eLORAN or E-LORAN, comprises an advancement in receiver design and transmission characteristics which increase the accuracy and usefulness of traditional LORAN. With reported accuracy as good as ± 8 meters, the system becomes competitive with unenhanced GPS. eLORAN also includes additional pulses which can transmit auxiliary data such as Differential GPS (DGPS) corrections, as well ensure data integrity against spoofing.
eLORAN receivers now use "all in view" reception, incorporating signals from all stations in range, not solely those from a single GRI, incorporating time signals and other data from up to forty stations. These enhancements in LORAN make it adequate as a substitute for scenarios where GPS is unavailable or degraded.
In recent years the United States Coast Guard has reported several episodes of GPS interference in the Black Sea. South Korea has claimed that North Korea has jammed GPS near the border, interfering with airplanes and ships. By 2018, the United States will build a new eLoran system as a complement to and backup for the GPS system. And the South Korean government has already pushed plans to have three eLoran beacons active by 2019, which is enough to provide accurate corrections for all shipments in the region if North Korea (or anyone else) tries to block GPS again. As of November 2021, no eLoran system has deployed.
United Kingdom eLORAN implementation
On 31 May 2007, the UK Department for Transport (DfT), via the general lighthouse authorities, awarded a 15-year contract to provide a state-of-the-art enhanced LORAN (eLORAN) service to improve the safety of mariners in the UK and Western Europe. The service contract was to operate in two phases, with development work and further focus for European agreement on eLORAN service provision from 2007 through 2010, and full operation of the eLORAN service from 2010 through 2022. The first eLORAN transmitter was situated at Anthorn Radio Station Cumbria, UK, and was operated by Babcock International (previously Babcock Communications).
The UK government granted approval for seven differential eLoran ship-positioning technology stations to be built along the south and east coasts of the UK to help counter the threat of jamming of global positioning systems. They were set to reach initial operational capability by summer 2014. The general lighthouse authorities of the UK and Ireland announced 31 October 2014 the initial operational capability of UK maritime eLoran. Seven differential reference stations provided additional position, navigation, and timing (PNT) information via low-frequency pulses to ships fitted with eLoran receivers. The service was to help ensure they could navigate safely in the event of GPS failure in one of the busiest shipping regions in the world, with expected annual traffic of 200,000 vessels by 2020.
Despite these plans, in light of the decision by France and Norway to cease Loran transmissions on 31 December 2015, the UK announced at the start of that month that its eLoran service would be discontinued on the same day. However to allow for further research and PNT development, the eLoran timing signal is still active from the government facility in Anthorn.
List of LORAN-C transmitters
A list of LORAN-C transmitters. Stations with an antenna tower taller than 300 metres (984 feet) are shown in bold.
See also
Alpha (navigation), the Russian counterpart of the OMEGA Navigation System, still in use as of 2006.
CHAYKA, the Russian counterpart of LORAN
Decca Navigator System, a British system that used phase difference instead of time difference.
Gee (navigation)
Gee-H (navigation)
Global Positioning System
Local positioning system
Oboe (navigation)
Omega (navigation system), the Western counterpart of the Alpha Navigation System, no longer in use.
SHORAN
Tactical air navigation system
VHF omnidirectional range
Notes
References
Citations
Bibliography
L. E. Gatterer "The Development of Loran-C Navigation and Timing", National Bureau of Standards, October 1972
External links
United States National Institute of Standards and Technology Site- Using LORAN C for time-keeping.
European Loran-C network website
:former LORAN-C transmitter mast, now used for longwave broadcasting
Jerry Proc, VE3FAB: Hyperbolic Radionavigation Systems:
In-depth discussion of the Loran-A system.
Histories of Loran-B, -D, and -F
Loran-C Introduction: eLoran
Integrated GPS/Loran Prototypes for Aviation Applications
The Migration to Enhanced or eLoran
GNSS/eLoran for Timing and Frequency by Locus, Inc.
Loran's Capability to Mitigate the Impact of a GPS Outage on GPS Position, Navigation, and Time Applications by Locus, Inc.
New Potential of Low-Frequency Radionavigation in the 21st Century PhD dissertation
LORAN-C chains in service
List of active LORAN-C transmitters
SDR in action: The last LORAN-C receiver is a technical description of using a software-defined radio to decode LORAN-C signals
New UK eLORAN service provision news article News article re: UK leading the way in eLORAN service provision.
eLORAN vs Loran-C at Inside GNSS—Short article describing the innovations in eLORAN
History of LORAN
Aircraft instruments
Global Positioning System
Nautical terminology
Radio navigation
World War II American electronics
Wireless locating
Navigational aids
Military equipment introduced in the 1950s | [
-0.07169950753450394,
0.2898552715778351,
0.5045723915100098,
-0.33842024207115173,
0.4206193685531616,
-0.06799427419900894,
-0.22364993393421173,
-0.06586353480815887,
-0.2784520089626312,
0.06982017308473587,
-0.6953427195549011,
0.6259584426879883,
-0.3134399950504303,
-0.2965193092823... |
18377 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunatic | Lunatic | Lunatic is an antiquated term referring to a person who is seen as mentally ill, dangerous, foolish, or crazy—conditions once attributed to "lunacy". The word derives from lunaticus meaning "of the moon" or "moonstruck".
History
The term "lunatic" derives from the Latin word lunaticus, which originally referred mainly to epilepsy and madness, as diseases thought to be caused by the moon. The King James Version of the Bible records "lunatick" in the Gospel of Matthew, which has been interpreted as a reference to epilepsy. By the fourth and fifth centuries, astrologers were commonly using the term to refer to neurological and psychiatric diseases. Philosophers such as Aristotle and Pliny the Elder argued that the full moon induced insane individuals with bipolar disorder by providing light during nights which would otherwise have been dark, and affecting susceptible individuals through the well-known route of sleep deprivation. Until at least 1700, it was also a common belief that the moon influenced fevers, rheumatism, episodes of epilepsy and other diseases.
Use of the term "lunatic" in legislation
In the jurisdiction of England and Wales the Lunacy Acts 1890–1922 referred to "lunatics", but the Mental Treatment Act 1930 changed the legal term to "person of unsound mind", an expression which was replaced under the Mental Health Act 1959 by "mental illness". "Person of unsound mind" was the term used in 1950 in the English version of the European Convention on Human Rights as one of the types of person who could be deprived of liberty by a judicial process. The 1930 Act also replaced the term "asylum" with "mental hospital". Criminal lunatics became Broadmoor patients in 1948 under the National Health Service Act 1946.
On December 5, 2012, the US House of Representatives passed legislation approved earlier by the US Senate removing the word "lunatic" from all federal laws in the United States. President Barack Obama signed the 21st Century Language Act of 2012 into law on December 28, 2012.
"Of unsound mind" or non compos mentis are alternatives to "lunatic", the most conspicuous term used for insanity in the law in the late 19th century.
Lunar distance
The term lunatic was sometimes used to describe those who sought to discover a reliable method of determining longitude (before John Harrison developed the marine chronometer method of determining longitude, the main theory was the Method of Lunar Distances, advanced by Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne). The artist William Hogarth portrayed a "longitude lunatic" in the eight scene of his 1733 work A Rake's Progress. Twenty years later, though, Hogarth described John Harrison's H-1 chronometer as "one of the most exquisite movements ever made."
Later, members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham called themselves lunaticks. In an age with little street lighting, the society met on or near the night of the full moon.
See also
Bedlam
Lunar effect
History of psychiatry
History of psychiatric institutions
References
External links
Does the full moon have any effects on mood? (cites research studies: 2 negative, 1 positive)
Crackdown on lunar-fuelled crime – BBC News, 5 June 2007
Obsolete medical terms
Pejorative terms for people
Obsolete terms for mental disorders
Insanity in law
Full moon | [
0.5059689879417419,
-0.0035456842742860317,
-0.5771747827529907,
0.28942570090293884,
-0.08203858137130737,
0.03187057003378868,
0.8963720202445984,
0.3737138509750366,
-0.4373132586479187,
0.21830269694328308,
-0.5887678265571594,
0.2627895176410675,
-0.7736486792564392,
1.070052742958068... |
18379 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear%20timecode | Linear timecode | Linear (or Longitudinal) Timecode (LTC) is an encoding of SMPTE timecode data in an audio signal, as defined in SMPTE 12M specification. The audio signal is commonly recorded on a VTR track or other storage media. The bits are encoded using the biphase mark code (also known as FM): a 0 bit has a single transition at the start of the bit period. A 1 bit has two transitions, at the beginning and middle of the period. This encoding is self-clocking. Each frame is terminated by a 'sync word' which has a special predefined sync relationship with any video or film content.
A special bit in the linear timecode frame, the biphase mark correction bit, ensures that there are an even number of AC transitions in each timecode frame.
The sound of linear timecode is a jarring and distinctive noise and has been used as a sound-effects shorthand to imply telemetry or computers.
Generation and Distribution
In broadcast video situations, the LTC generator should be tied into house black burst, as should all devices using timecode, to ensure correct color framing and correct synchronization of all digital clocks. When synchronizing multiple clock-dependent digital devices together with video, such as digital audio recorders, the devices must be connected to a common word clock signal that is derived from the house black burst signal. This can be accomplished by using a generator that generates both black burst and video-resolved word clock, or by synchronizing the master digital device to video, and synchronizing all subsequent devices to the word clock output of the master digital device (and to LTC).
Made up of 80 bits per frame, where there may be 24, 25 or 30 frames per second, LTC timecode varies from 960 Hz (binary zeros at 24 frames/s) to 2400 Hz (binary ones at 30 frames/s), and thus is comfortably in the audio frequency range. LTC can exist as either a balanced or unbalanced signal, and can be treated as an audio signal in regards to distribution. Like audio, LTC can be distributed by standard audio wiring, connectors, distribution amplifiers, and patchbays, and can be ground-isolated with audio transformers. It can also be distributed via 75 ohm video cable and video distribution amplifiers, although the voltage attenuation caused by using a 75 ohm system may cause the signal to drop to a level that can not be read by some equipment.
Care has to be taken with analog audio to avoid audible 'breakthrough' (aka "crosstalk") from the LTC track to the audio tracks.
LTC care:
Avoid percussive sounds close to LTC
Never process an LTC with noise reduction, eq or compressor
Allow pre roll and post roll
To create negative time code add one hour to time (avoid midnight effect)
Always put slowest device as a master
Longitudinal SMPTE timecode should be played back at a middle-level when recorded on an audio track, as both low and high levels will introduce distortion.
Longitudinal timecode data format
The basic format is an 80-bit code that gives the time of day to the second, and the frame number within the second. Values are stored in binary-coded decimal, least significant bit first.
There are thirty-two bits of user data, usually used for a reel number and date.
Bit 10 is set to 1 if drop frame numbering is in use; frame numbers 0 and 1 are skipped during the first second of every minute, except multiples of 10 minutes. This converts 30 frame/second time code to the 29.97 frame/second NTSC standard.
Bit 11, the color framing bit, is set to 1 if the time code is synchronized to a color video signal. The frame number modulo 2 (for NTSC and SECAM) or modulo 4 (for PAL) should be preserved across cuts in order to avoid phase jumps in the chrominance subcarrier.
Bits 27, 43, and 59 differ between 25 frame/s time code, and other frame rates (30, 29.97, or 24). The bits are:
"Polarity correction bit" (bit 59 at 25 frame/s, bit 27 at other rates): this bit is chosen to provide an even number of 0 bits in the whole frame, including the sync code. (Since the frame is an even number of bits long, this implies an even number of 1 bits, and is thus an even parity bit. Since the sync code includes an odd number of 1 bits, it is an odd parity bit over the data.) This keeps the phase of each frame consistent, so it always starts with a rising edge at the beginning of bit 0. This allows seamless splicing of different time codes, and lets it be more easily read with an oscilloscope.
"Binary group flag" bits BGF0 and BGF2 (bits 27 and 43 at 25 frame/s, bits 43 and 59 at other rates): these indicate the format of the user bits. Both 0 indicates no (or unspecified) format. Only BGF0 set indicates four 8-bit characters (transmitted little-endian). The combinations with BGF2 set are reserved.
Bit 58, unused in earlier versions of the specification, is now defined as "binary group flag 1" and indicates that the time code is synchronized to an external clock. if zero, the time origin is arbitrary.
The sync pattern in bits 64 through 79 includes 12 consecutive 1 bits, which cannot appear anywhere else in the time code. Assuming all user bits are set to 1, the longest run of 1 bits that can appear elsewhere in the time code is 10, bits 9 to 18 inclusive.
The sync pattern is preceded by 00 and followed by 01. This is used to determine whether an audio tape is running forward or backward.
See also
Vertical interval timecode
Burnt-in timecode
MIDI timecode
CTL timecode
AES-EBU embedded timecode
Rewritable consumer timecode
VTR
Manchester code
Biphase mark code
References
External links
LGPL library to en/decode LTC in software
Broadcast engineering
Electrical engineering
Timecodes
Recording devices
Film and video technology | [
0.19438402354717255,
0.0035954699851572514,
0.2953422963619232,
-0.01746927946805954,
0.3395839333534241,
0.10244794189929962,
0.11938498169183731,
-0.2457977682352066,
0.007982675917446613,
-0.3265434801578522,
-0.2430475950241089,
0.2196083664894104,
-0.15884824097156525,
-0.046665705740... |
18381 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John%20William%20Strutt%2C%203rd%20Baron%20Rayleigh | John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh | John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, (; 12 November 1842 – 30 June 1919) was a British mathematician who made extensive contributions to science. He spent all of his academic career at the University of Cambridge. Among many honors, he received the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his investigations of the densities of the most important gases and for his discovery of argon in connection with these studies." He served as President of the Royal Society from 1905 to 1908 and as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge from 1908 to 1919.
Rayleigh provided the first theoretical treatment of the elastic scattering of light by particles much smaller than the light's wavelength, a phenomenon now known as "Rayleigh scattering", which notably explains why the sky is blue. He studied and described transverse surface waves in solids, now known as "Rayleigh waves". He contributed extensively to fluid dynamics, with concepts such as the Rayleigh number (a dimensionless number associated with natural convection), Rayleigh flow, the Rayleigh–Taylor instability, and Rayleigh's criterion for the stability of Taylor–Couette flow. He also formulated the circulation theory of aerodynamic lift. In optics, Rayleigh proposed a well known criterion for angular resolution. His derivation of the Rayleigh–Jeans law for classical black-body radiation later played an important role in the birth of quantum mechanics (see Ultraviolet catastrophe). Rayleigh's textbook The Theory of Sound (1877) is still used today by acousticians and engineers.
Biography
Strutt was born on 12 November 1842 at Langford Grove in Maldon, Essex. In his early years he suffered from frailty and poor health. He attended Eton College and Harrow School (each for only a short period), before going on to the University of Cambridge in 1861 where he studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree (Senior Wrangler and 1st Smith's Prize) in 1865, and a Master of Arts in 1868. He was subsequently elected to a fellowship of Trinity. He held the post until his marriage to Evelyn Balfour, daughter of James Maitland Balfour, in 1871. He had three sons with her. In 1873, on the death of his father, John Strutt, 2nd Baron Rayleigh, he inherited the Barony of Rayleigh.
He was the second Cavendish Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge (following James Clerk Maxwell), from 1879 to 1884. He first described dynamic soaring by seabirds in 1883, in the British journal Nature. From 1887 to 1905 he was professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution.
Around the year 1900 Rayleigh developed the duplex (combination of two) theory of human sound localisation using two binaural cues, interaural phase difference (IPD) and interaural level difference (ILD) (based on analysis of a spherical head with no external pinnae). The theory posits that we use two primary cues for sound lateralisation, using the difference in the phases of sinusoidal components of the sound and the difference in amplitude (level) between the two ears.
In 1904 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics "for his investigations of the densities of the most important gases and for his discovery of argon in connection with these studies".
During the First World War, he was president of the government's Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which was located at the National Physical Laboratory, and chaired by Richard Glazebrook.
In 1919, Rayleigh served as president of the Society for Psychical Research. As an advocate that simplicity and theory be part of the scientific method, Rayleigh argued for the principle of similitude.
Rayleigh was elected fellow of the Royal Society on 12 June 1873, and served as president of the Royal Society from 1905 to 1908. From time to time he participated in the House of Lords; however, he spoke up only if politics attempted to become involved in science.
Many of the papers that he wrote on lubrication are now recognized as early classical contributions to the field of tribology. For these contributions, he was named as one of the 23 "Men of Tribology" by Duncan Dowson.
He died on 30 June 1919, at his home in Witham, Essex. He was succeeded, as the 4th Lord Rayleigh, by his son Robert John Strutt, another well-known physicist. Lord Rayleigh was buried in the graveyard of All Saints' Church in Terling in Essex.
There is a memorial to him by Derwent Wood in St Andrew's Chapel at Westminster Abbey.
Religious views
Rayleigh was an Anglican. Though he did not write about the relationship of science and religion, he retained a personal interest in spiritual matters. When his scientific papers were to be published in a collection by the Cambridge University Press, Strutt wanted to include a religious quotation from the Bible, but he was discouraged from doing so, as he later reported:
Still, he had his wish and the quotation was printed in the five-volume collection of scientific papers. In a letter to a family member, he wrote about his rejection of materialism and spoke of Jesus Christ as a moral teacher:
He held an interest in parapsychology and was an early member of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). He was not convinced of spiritualism but remained open to the possibility of supernatural phenomena. Rayleigh was the president of the SPR in 1919. He gave a presidential address in the year of his death but did not come to any definite conclusions.
Honours and awards
The lunar crater Rayleigh as well as the Martian crater Rayleigh were named in his honour. The asteroid 22740 Rayleigh was named after him on 1 June 2007. A type of surface waves are known as Rayleigh waves. The rayl, a unit of specific acoustic impedance, is also named for him. Rayleigh was also awarded with (in chronological order):
Smith's Prize (1864)
Royal Medal (1882)
Member of the American Philosophical Society (1886)
Matteucci Medal (1894)
Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1897)
Copley Medal (1899)
Nobel Prize in Physics (1904)
Elliott Cresson Medal (1913)
Rumford Medal (1914)
Lord Rayleigh was among the original recipients of the Order of Merit (OM) in the 1902 Coronation Honours list published on 26 June 1902, and received the order from King Edward VII at Buckingham Palace on 8 August 1902.
He received the degree of Doctor mathematicae (honoris causa) from the Royal Frederick University on 6 September 1902, when they celebrated the centennial of the birth of mathematician Niels Henrik Abel.
Sir William Ramsay, his co-worker in the investigation to discover Argon described Rayleigh as "the greatest man alive" while speaking to Lady Ramsay during his last illness.
H. M. Hyndman said of Rayleigh that "no man ever showed less consciousness of great genius".
Bibliography
The Theory of Sound vol. I (London : Macmillan, 1877, 1894) (alternative link: Bibliothèque Nationale de France OR (Cambridge: University Press, reissued 2011, )
The Theory of Sound vol.II (London : Macmillan, 1878, 1896) (alternative link: Bibliothèque Nationale de France) OR (Cambridge: University Press, reissued 2011, )
Scientific papers (Vol. 1: 1869–1881) (Cambridge : University Press, 1899–1920, reissued by the publisher 2011, )
Scientific papers (Vol. 2: 1881–1887) (Cambridge : University Press, 1899–1920, reissued by the publisher 2011, )
Scientific papers (Vol. 3: 1887–1892) (Cambridge : University Press, 1899–1920, reissued by the publisher 2011, )
Scientific papers (Vol. 4: 1892–1901) (Cambridge : University Press, 1899–1920, reissued by the publisher 2011, )
Scientific papers (Vol. 5: 1902–1910) (Cambridge : University Press, 1899–1920, reissued by the publisher 2011, )
Scientific papers (Vol. 6: 1911–1919) (Cambridge : University Press, 1899–1920, reissued by the publisher 2011, )
See also
References
External links
About John William Strutt
Lord Rayleigh – the Last of the Great Victorian Polymaths, GEC Review, Volume 7, No. 3, 1992
1842 births
1919 deaths
20th-century British physicists
Acousticians
Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
Barons in the Peerage of the United Kingdom
British Nobel laureates
Chancellors of the University of Cambridge
De Morgan Medallists
Discoverers of chemical elements
English Anglicans
Experimental physicists
Faraday Lecturers
Optical physicists
Fluid dynamicists
Lord-Lieutenants of Essex
Members of the Order of Merit
Nobel laureates in Physics
Eldest sons of British hereditary barons
Fellows of the Royal Society
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Members of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences
Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences
Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Members of the French Academy of Sciences
Parapsychologists
People educated at Eton College
People educated at Harrow School
People from Maldon, Essex
Presidents of the Physical Society
Presidents of the Royal Society
Recipients of the Copley Medal
Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class)
Royal Medal winners
Senior Wranglers
John
Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom
Burials in Essex
Linear algebraists
Tribologists
Recipients of the Matteucci Medal
Members of the American Philosophical Society | [
-0.3671143054962158,
0.446199506521225,
-0.3735320270061493,
-0.2463935911655426,
-0.7111666202545166,
0.6602683663368225,
1.0921355485916138,
-0.26225346326828003,
-0.24840039014816284,
0.08193092048168182,
-0.27908995747566223,
-0.11272095143795013,
-0.3754960298538208,
0.708874940872192... |
18382 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunisolar%20calendar | Lunisolar calendar | A lunisolar calendar is a calendar in many cultures, combining lunar calendars and solar calendars. The date of Lunisolar calendars therefore indicates both the Moon phase and the time of the solar year, that is the position of the Sun in the Earth's sky. If the sidereal year (such as in a sidereal solar calendar) is used instead of the solar year, then the calendar will predict the constellation near which the full moon may occur. As with all calendars which divide the year into months there is an additional requirement that the year have a whole number of months. In this case ordinary years consist of twelve months but every second or third year is an embolismic year, which adds a thirteenth intercalary, embolismic, or leap month.
Their months are based on the regular cycle of the Moon's phases. So lunisolar calendars are lunar calendars with – in contrast to them – additional intercalation rules being used to bring them into a rough agreement with the solar year and thus with the seasons.
The main other type of calendar is a solar calendar.
Examples
The Buddhist, Burmese, Assyrian,
Hebrew, Hindu, Jain and Kurdish as well as the traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Tibetan, and Vietnamese calendars (in the East Asian Chinese cultural sphere), plus the ancient Hellenic, Coligny, and Babylonian calendars are all lunisolar. Also, some of the ancient pre-Islamic calendars in south Arabia followed a lunisolar system. The Chinese, Coligny and
Hebrew lunisolar calendars track more or less the tropical year whereas the Buddhist and Hindu lunisolar calendars track the sidereal year. Therefore, the first three give an idea of the seasons whereas the last two give an idea of the position among the constellations of the full moon. The Tibetan calendar was influenced by both the Chinese and Buddhist calendars. The Germanic peoples also used a lunisolar calendar before their conversion to Christianity.
Chinese lunisolar calendar
The Chinese calendar or Chinese lunisolar calendar is also called Agricultural Calendar [農曆; 农历; Nónglì; 'farming calendar'], or Yin Calendar [陰曆; 阴历; Yīnlì; 'yin calendar']), based on the concept of Yin Yang and astronomical phenomena, as movements of the sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn (known as the seven luminaries) are the references for the Chinese lunisolar calendar calculations.
The earliest record of the Chinese lunisolar calendar is the Zhou Dynasty (1050 BC – 771 BC). Throughout history, the Chinese lunisolar calendar had many variations and evolved with different dynasties with increasing accuracy, including the "six ancient calendars" in the Warring States Period, the Qin calendar in the Qin Dynasty, the Han calendar or the Taichu calendar in the Han Dynasty and Tang Dynasty, the Shoushi calenar in the Yuan Dynasty, and the Daming calendar in the Ming Dynasty, etc. Starting 1912, the solar calendar is used together with the lunar calendar in China.
The most celebrated Chinese holidays, like the Spring Festival, or the Chinese New Year, Lantern Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Qingming Festival, etc. are all based on the Chinese lunisolar calendar. And the popular Chinese zodiac is a classification scheme based on the Chinese calendar that assigns an animal and its reputed attributes to each year in a repeating twelve-year cycle.
Comparison with lunar and solar calendars
Moveable feasts in the Gregorian calendar
The solar Gregorian calendar uses the Computus to determine the date of Easter and other moveable feasts with respect to both lunar and solar events.
The civil versions of the Julian and Gregorian calendars are solar, because their dates do not indicate the Moon phase – however, both the Gregorian and Julian calendars include undated lunar calendars that allow them to calculate the Christian celebration of Easter, so both are lunisolar calendars in that respect.
Islamic calendar
The Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar of exactly 12 months, but not a lunisolar calendar because its date is not related to the Sun; Its solar counterpart is the Solar Hijri calendar, which is used in Iran and Afghanistan.
Reconciling lunar and solar cycles
Determining leap months
A tropical year is approximately 365.2422 days long and a synodic month is approximately 29.5306 days long, so a tropical year is approximately months long. Because 0.36826 is between and , a typical year of 12 months needs to be supplemented with one intercalary or leap month every 2 to 3 years. More precisely, 0.36826 is quite close to and several lunisolar calendars have 7 leap months in every cycle of 19 years (called a 'Metonic cycle'). The Babylonians applied the 19-year cycle in the late sixth century BCE.
A tropical year is longer than 12 lunar months and shorter than 13 of them. The arithmetical equation allows it to be seen that a combination of 12 'short' years (12 months) and 7 'long' years (13 months) will be equal to 19 solar years. Intercalation of leap months is frequently controlled by the "epact", which is the difference between the lunar and solar years (approximately 11 days). The Metonic cycle, used in the Hebrew calendar and the Christian ecclesiastical calendars, adds seven months during every nineteen-year period. The classic Metonic cycle can be reproduced by assigning an initial epact value of 1 to the last year of the cycle and incrementing by 11 each year. Between the last year of one cycle and the first year of the next the increment is 12. This adjustment, the , causes the epacts to repeat every 19 years. When the epact reaches 30 or higher, an intercalary month is added and 30 is subtracted. The intercalary years are numbers 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17 and 19. Both the Hebrew calendar and the Julian calendar use this sequence.
The Buddhist and Hebrew calendars restrict the leap month to a single month of the year; the number of common months between leap months is, therefore, usually 36, but occasionally only 24 months. Because the Chinese and Hindu lunisolar calendars allow the leap month to occur after or before (respectively) any month but use the true apparent motion of the Sun, their leap months do not usually occur within a couple of months of perihelion, when the apparent speed of the Sun along the ecliptic is fastest (now about 3 January). This increases the usual number of common months between leap months to roughly 34 months when a doublet of common years occurs, while reducing the number to about 29 months when only a common singleton occurs.
With uncounted time
An alternative way of dealing with the fact that a solar year does not contain an integer number of lunar months is by including uncounted time in a period of the year that is not assigned to a named month. Some Coast Salish peoples used a calendar of this kind. For instance, the Chehalis began their count of lunar months from the arrival of spawning chinook salmon (in Gregorian calendar October), and counted 10 months, leaving an uncounted period until the next chinook salmon run.
List of lunisolar calendars
The following is a list of lunisolar calendars sorted by family.
Babylonian calendar family – common use of the Metonic cycle
Ancient Macedonian calendar
Hebrew calendar
Umma calendar
Hindu calendar family – shared astronomical roots
Assamese calendar
Bengali calendar
Burmese calendar
Chula Sakarat
Odia calendar
Thai lunar calendar
Vikram Samvat
Chinese calendar family – years start on second new moon after winter solstice (save for leaps)
Japanese calendar
Korean calendar
Mongolian calendar
Tibetan calendar
Unclassified or independent
Attic calendar
Egyptian calendar, Ptolemaic
Inca Empire
Jain calendar
Celtic calendar, including Coligny calendar
Javanese calendar
Muisca calendar
Nisg̱a'a
Old Eastern Ojibwe calendar
See also
List of calendars
Metonic cycle
Callippic cycle
Calendar reform
Particular calendars
Hebrew calendar
Hindu calendar
Islamic calendar
Jain calendar
Roman calendar (probably a lunisolar calendar with common years of 355 days and leap years of 378 days.)
Rune calendar
Tamil calendar
Thai calendar
Notes
References
External links
Introduction to Calendars, US Naval Observatory, Astronomical Applications Department.
Lunisolar calendar 2019-2020 (northern hemisphere) by courtesy of Serge Bièvre
Lunisolar Calendar
Luni-Solar Calendar
Calendar studies
Calendars | [
0.29057663679122925,
0.13239671289920807,
0.00932847335934639,
-0.14047574996948242,
-0.10812665522098541,
0.3534737825393677,
-0.0031743342988193035,
0.9972198009490967,
-0.7121778130531311,
-0.6654067039489746,
-0.2174917757511139,
-0.04459003731608391,
-0.2662328779697418,
0.49062216281... |
18383 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonids | Leonids | The Leonids ( ) are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Tempel–Tuttle, which are also known for their spectacular meteor storms that occur about every 33 years. The Leonids get their name from the location of their radiant in the constellation Leo: the meteors appear to radiate from that point in the sky. Their proper Greek name should be Leontids (Λεοντίδαι, Leontídai), but the word was initially constructed as a Greek/Latin hybrid and it has been used since. They peak in the month of November.
Earth moves through the meteoroid stream of particles left from the passages of a comet. The stream comprises solid particles, known as meteoroids, ejected by the comet as its frozen gases evaporate under the heat of the Sun when it is close enough – typically closer than Jupiter's orbit. The Leonids are a fast moving stream which encounter the path of Earth and impact at 72 km/s. Larger Leonids which are about 10 mm across have a mass of half a gram and are known for generating bright (apparent magnitude −1.5) meteors. An annual Leonid shower may deposit 12 or 13 tons of particles across the entire planet.
The meteoroids left by the comet are organized in trails in orbits similar tothough different fromthat of the comet. They are differentially disturbed by the planets, in particular Jupiter and to a lesser extent by radiation pressure from the sun, the Poynting–Robertson effect, and the Yarkovsky effect. These trails of meteoroids cause meteor showers when Earth encounters them. Old trails are spatially not dense and compose the meteor shower with a few meteors per minute. In the case of the Leonids, that tends to peak around 18 November, but some are spread through several days on either side and the specific peak changes every year. Conversely, young trails are spatially very dense and the cause of meteor outbursts when the Earth enters one.
The Leonids also produce meteor storms (very large outbursts) about every 33 years, during which activity exceeds 1,000 meteors per hour, with some events exceeding 100,000 meteors per hour, in contrast to the sporadic background (5 to 8 meteors per hour) and the shower background (several meteors per hour).
History
1800s
The Leonids are famous because their meteor showers, or storms, can be among the most spectacular. Because of the storm of 1833 and the recent developments in scientific thought of the time (see for example the identification of Halley's Comet), the Leonids have had a major effect on the development of the scientific study of meteors, which had previously been thought to be atmospheric phenomena. Although it has been suggested the Leonid meteor shower and storms have been noted in ancient times, it was the meteor storm of 1833 that broke into people's modern day awareness – it was of truly superlative strength. One estimate of the peak rate is over one hundred thousand meteors an hour, but another, done as the storm abated, estimated in excess of 240,000 meteors during the nine hours of the storm, over the entire region of North America east of the Rocky Mountains.
It was marked by several nations of Native Americans: the Cheyenne established a peace treaty and the Lakota calendar was reset. Many Native American birthdays were calculated by reference to the 1833 Leonid event. Abolitionists including Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass as well as slave-owners took note and others. The New York Evening Post carried a series of articles on the event including reports from Canada to Jamaica, it made news in several states beyond New York and though it appeared in North America was talked about in Europe. The journalism of the event tended to rise above the partisan debates of the time and reviewed facts as they could be sought out. Abraham Lincoln commented on it years later. Near Independence, Missouri, in Clay County, a refugee Mormon community watched the meteor shower on the banks of the Missouri River after having been driven from their homes by local settlers. Joseph Smith, the founder and first leader of Mormonism, afterwards noted in his journal for November 1833 his belief that this event was "a litteral [sic] fulfillment of the word of God" and a harbinger of the imminent second coming of Christ. Though it was noted in the midwest and eastern areas it was also noted in Far West, Missouri.
Denison Olmsted explained the event most accurately. After spending the last weeks of 1833 collecting information, he presented his findings in January 1834 to the American Journal of Science and Arts, published in January–April 1834, and January 1836. He noted the shower was of short duration and was not seen in Europe, and that the meteors radiated from a point in the constellation of Leo and he speculated the meteors had originated from a cloud of particles in space. Accounts of the 1866 repeat of the Leonids counted hundreds per minute/a few thousand per hr in Europe. The Leonids were again seen in 1867, when moonlight reduced the rates to 1,000 meteors per hour. Another strong appearance of the Leonids in 1868 reached an intensity of 1,000 meteors per hour in dark skies. It was in 1866–67 that information on Comet Tempel-Tuttle was gathered, pointing it out as the source of the meteor shower and meteor storms. When the storms failed to return in 1899, it was generally thought that the dust had moved on and the storms were a thing of the past.
1900s
In 1966, a spectacular meteor storm was seen over the Americas. Historical notes were gathered thus noting the Leonids back to 900 AD. Radar studies showed the 1966 storm included a relatively high percentage of smaller particles while 1965's lower activity had a much higher proportion of larger particles. In 1981 Donald K. Yeomans of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory reviewed the history of meteor showers for the Leonids and the history of the dynamic orbit of Comet Tempel-Tuttle. A graph from it was adapted and re-published in Sky and Telescope. It showed relative positions of the Earth and Tempel-Tuttle and marks where Earth encountered dense dust. This showed that the meteoroids are mostly behind and outside the path of the comet, but paths of the Earth through the cloud of particles resulting in powerful storms were very near paths of nearly no activity. But overall the 1998 Leonids were in a favorable position so interest was rising.
Leading up to the 1998 return, an airborne observing campaign was organized to mobilize modern observing techniques by Peter Jenniskens at NASA Ames Research Center. In 1999, there were also efforts to observe impacts of meteoroids on the Moon, as an example of transient lunar phenomenon. A particular reason to observe the Moon is that our vantage from a location on Earth sees only meteors coming into the atmosphere relatively close to us, while impacts on the Moon would be visible from across the Moon in a single view. The sodium tail of the Moon tripled just after the 1998 Leonid shower which was composed of larger meteoroids (which in the case of the Earth was witnessed as fireballs.) However, in 1999 the sodium tail of the Moon did not change from the Leonid impacts.
Research by Kondrat'eva, Reznikov and colleagues at Kazan University had shown how meteor storms could be accurately predicted, but for some years the worldwide meteor community remained largely unaware of these results. The work of David J. Asher, Armagh Observatory and Robert H. McNaught, Siding Spring Observatory and independently by Esko Lyytinen in 1999, following on from the Kazan research, is considered by most meteor experts as the breakthrough in modern analysis of meteor storms. Whereas previously it was hazardous to guess if there would be a storm or little activity, the predictions of Asher and McNaught timed bursts in activity down to ten minutes by narrowing down the clouds of particles to individual streams from each passage of the comet, and their trajectories amended by subsequent passage near planets. However, whether a specific meteoroid trail will be primarily composed of small or large particles, and thus the relative brightness of the meteors, was not understood. But McNaught did extend the work to examine the placement of the Moon with trails and saw a large chance of a storm impacting in 1999 from a trail while there were less direct impacts from trails in 2000 and 2001 (successive contact with trails through 2006 showed no hits.)
2000s
Viewing campaigns resulted in spectacular footage from the 1999, 2001, and 2002 storms which produced up to 3,000 Leonid meteors per hour. Predictions for the Moon's Leonid impacts also noted that in 2000 the side of the Moon facing the stream was away from the Earth, but that impacts should be in number enough to raise a cloud of particles kicked off the Moon which could cause a detectable increase in the sodium tail of the Moon. Research using the explanation of meteor trails/streams have explained the storms of the past. The 1833 storm was not due to the recent passage of the comet, but from a direct impact with the previous 1800 dust trail. The meteoroids from the 1733 passage of Comet Tempel-Tuttle resulted in the 1866 storm and the 1966 storm was from the 1899 passage of the comet. The double spikes in Leonid activity in 2001 and in 2002 were due to the passage of the comet's dust ejected in 1767 and 1866. This ground breaking work was soon applied to other meteor showers – for example the 2004 June Bootids. Peter Jenniskens has published predictions for the next 50 years. However, a close encounter with Jupiter is expected to perturb the comet's path, and many streams, making storms of historic magnitude unlikely for many decades. Recent work tries to take into account the roles of differences in parent bodies and the specifics of their orbits, ejection velocities off the solid mass of the core of a comet, radiation pressure from the Sun, the Poynting–Robertson effect, and the Yarkovsky effect on the particles of different sizes and rates of rotation to explain differences between meteor showers in terms of being predominantly fireballs or small meteors.
Predictions until the end of the 21st century have been published by Mikhail Maslov.
In media
Two appearances of the Leonids frame the story of the 1985 novel Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.
"Night of your birth. Thirty-three. The Leonids they were called. God how the stars did fall. I looked for blackness, holes in the heavens. The Dipper stove." – p. 3
"The rain had stopped and the air was cold. He stood in the yard. Stars were falling across the sky myriad and random, speeding along brief vectors from their origins in night to their destinies in dust and nothingness." – p. 351
The 1833 shower is referenced in the fourth section of William Faulkner's short story "The Bear," as published in his 1942 novel Go Down, Moses. As Ike reads the entries chronicling the slaves owned by his family, the recording for Tomy lists her death as June 1833, "Yr stars fell"."
The plot of "Halloween Approximately", a 2000 episode of Malcolm in the Middle, revolves around an attempt to view the Leonids.
In season 1, Episode 15 of Thunderbirds Are Go, "Relic", Tracy family members, Alan and Scott, travel to the far side of the Moon to rescue one of their father's old friends from an almost-decommissioned moonbase at risk of being destroyed by the Leonid meteor shower. The series is set in the year 2060.
In season 1, Episode 1 of (The Brokenwood Mysteries) The Leonids meteor shower is watched by a character in the episode as he proposed to his wife on the 17th November and his killer knew where he would be.
See also
List of meteor showers
"Stars Fell on Alabama", based on the 1833 Leonid shower
Perseids, associated with the comet Swift–Tuttle
References
Further reading
External links
The Discovery of the Perseid Meteors (after the Leonids and) Prior to 1837, nobody realized the Perseids were an annual event, by Mark Littmann
Lunar Leonids: Encounters of the Moon with Leonid dust trails by Robert H. McNaught
NASA: Background facts on meteors and meteor showers
NASA: Estimate the best viewing times for your part of the world
How to hear the Leonid Meteor Shower
Observatorio ARVAL – The Leonid Meteors
Animation of the Leonid Meteor Shower at shadow&substance.com
Leo (constellation)
Meteor showers
November events | [
0.3511280119419098,
0.29868701100349426,
-0.1063770279288292,
0.4555341601371765,
-0.35568875074386597,
0.33947932720184326,
0.15547005832195282,
0.3944466710090637,
-0.35428550839424133,
-0.05433320626616478,
-0.3932098150253296,
-0.1142602413892746,
-0.32714056968688965,
0.46877947449684... |
18384 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labarum | Labarum | The labarum () was a vexillum (military standard) that displayed the "Chi-Rho" symbol ☧, a christogram formed from the first two Greek letters of the word "Christ" (, or Χριστός) — Chi (χ) and Rho (ρ). It was first used by the Roman emperor Constantine the Great.
Ancient sources draw an unambiguous distinction between the two terms "labarum" and "Chi-Rho", even though later usage sometimes regards the two as synonyms. The name labarum was applied both to the original standard used by Constantine the Great and to the many standards produced in imitation of it in the Late Antique world, and subsequently.
Etymology
Beyond its derivation from Latin labarum, the etymology of the word is unclear. The Oxford English Dictionary offers no further derivation from within Latin. Some derive it from Latin /labāre/ 'to totter, to waver' (in the sense of the "waving" of a flag in the breeze) or laureum [vexillum] ("laurel standard"). An origin as a loan into Latin from a Celtic language or Basque has also been postulated. There is a traditional Basque symbol called the lauburu; though the name is only attested from the 19th century onwards the motif occurs in engravings dating as early as the 2nd century AD.
Vision of Constantine
On the evening of October 27, 312 AD, with his army preparing for the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, the emperor Constantine I claimed to have had a vision which led him to believe he was fighting under the protection of the Christian God.
Lactantius states that, in the night before the battle, Constantine was commanded in a dream to "delineate the heavenly sign on the shields of his soldiers". Obeying this command, "he marked on their shields the letter X, with a perpendicular line drawn through it and turned round thus at the top, being the cipher of Christ". Having had their shields marked in this fashion, Constantine's troops readied themselves for battle.
From Eusebius, two accounts of a battle survive. The first, shorter one in the Ecclesiastical History leaves no doubt that God helped Constantine but does not mention any vision. In his later Life of Constantine, Eusebius gives a detailed account of a vision and stresses that he had heard the story from the emperor himself. According to this version, Constantine with his army was marching somewhere (Eusebius does not specify the actual location of the event, but it clearly is not in the camp at Rome) when he looked up to the sun and saw a cross of light above it, and with it the Greek words Ἐν Τούτῳ Νίκα. The traditionally employed Latin translation of the Greek is in hoc signo vinces— literally "In this sign, you will conquer." However, a direct translation from the original Greek text of Eusebius into English gives the phrase "By this, conquer!"
At first he was unsure of the meaning of the apparition, but the following night he had a dream in which Christ explained to him that he should use the sign against his enemies. Eusebius then continues to describe the labarum, the military standard used by Constantine in his later wars against Licinius, showing the Chi-Rho sign.
Those two accounts have been merged in popular notion into Constantine seeing the Chi-Rho sign on the evening before the battle. Both authors agree that the sign was not readily understandable as denoting Christ, which corresponds with the fact that there is no certain evidence of the use of the letters chi and rho as a Christian sign before Constantine. Its first appearance is on a Constantinian silver coin from c. 317, which proves that Constantine did use the sign at that time. He made extensive use of the Chi-Rho and the labarum later in the conflict with Licinius.
The vision has been interpreted in a solar context (e.g. as a solar halo phenomenon), which would have been reshaped to fit with the Christian beliefs of the later Constantine.
An alternate explanation of the intersecting celestial symbol has been advanced by George Latura, which claims that Plato's visible god in Timaeus is in fact the intersection of the Milky Way and the Zodiacal Light, a rare apparition important to pagan beliefs that Christian bishops reinvented as a Christian symbol.
Eusebius' description of the labarum
"A Description of the Standard of the Cross, which the Romans now call the Labarum."
"Now it was made in the following manner. A long spear, overlaid with gold, formed the figure of the cross by means of a transverse bar laid over it. On the top of the whole was fixed a wreath of gold and precious stones; and within this, the symbol of the Saviour’s name, two letters indicating the name of Christ by means of its initial characters, the letter P being intersected by X in its centre: and these letters the emperor was in the habit of wearing on his helmet at a later period. From the cross-bar of the spear was suspended a cloth, a royal piece, covered with a profuse embroidery of most brilliant precious stones; and which, being also richly interlaced with gold, presented an indescribable degree of beauty to the beholder. This banner was of a square form, and the upright staff, whose lower section was of great length, of the pious emperor and his children on its upper part, beneath the trophy of the cross, and immediately above the embroidered banner."
"The emperor constantly made use of this sign of salvation as a safeguard against every adverse and hostile power, and commanded that others similar to it should be carried at the head of all his armies."
Iconographic career under Constantine
The labarum does not appear on any of several standards depicted on the Arch of Constantine, which was erected just three years after the battle. If Eusebius' oath-confirmed account of Constantine's vision and the role it played in his victory and conversion can be trusted, then a grand opportunity for the kind of political propaganda that the Arch was built to present was missed. Many historians have argued that in the early years after the battle, the Emperor had not yet decided to give clear public support to Christianity, whether from a lack of personal faith or because of fear of religious friction. The arch's inscription does say that the Emperor had saved the res publica INSTINCTV DIVINITATIS MENTIS MAGNITVDINE ("by greatness of mind and by instinct [or impulse] of divinity"). Continuing the iconography of his predecessors, Constantine's coinage at the time was inscribed with solar symbolism, interpreted as representing Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), Helios, Apollo, or Mithras, but in 325 and thereafter the coinage ceases to be explicitly pagan, and Sol Invictus disappears. And although Eusebius' Historia Ecclesiae further reports that Constantine had a statue of himself "holding the sign of the Savior [the cross] in his right hand" erected after his victorious entry into Rome, there are no other reports to confirm such a monument.
Historians still dispute whether Constantine was the first Christian Emperor to support a peaceful transition to Christianity during his rule, or an undecided pagan believer until middle age, and also how strongly influenced he was in his political-religious decisions by his Christian mother St. Helena.
As for the labarum itself, there is little evidence for its use before 317. In the course of Constantine's second war against Licinius in 324, the latter developed a superstitious dread of Constantine's standard. During the attack of Constantine's troops at the Battle of Adrianople the guard of the labarum standard were directed to move it to any part of the field where his soldiers seemed to be faltering. The appearance of this talismanic object appeared to embolden Constantine's troops and dismay those of Licinius. At the final battle of the war, the Battle of Chrysopolis, Licinius, though prominently displaying the images of Rome's pagan pantheon on his own battle line, forbade his troops from actively attacking the labarum, or even looking at it directly.
Constantine felt that both Licinius and Arius were agents of Satan, and associated them with the serpent described in the Book of Revelation (12:9). Constantine represented Licinius as a snake on his coins.
Eusebius stated that in addition to the singular labarum of Constantine, other similar standards (labara) were issued to the Roman army. This is confirmed by the two labara depicted being held by a soldier on a coin of Vetranio (illustrated) dating from 350.
Later usage
A later Byzantine manuscript indicates that a jewelled labarum standard believed to have been that of Constantine was preserved for centuries, as an object of great veneration, in the imperial treasury at Constantinople. The labarum, with minor variations in its form, was widely used by the Christian Roman emperors who followed Constantine.
A miniature version of the labarum became part of the imperial regalia of Byzantine rulers, who were often depicted carrying it in their right hands.
The term "labarum" can be generally applied to any ecclesiastical banner, such as those carried in religious processions.
"The Holy Lavaro" were a set of early national Greek flags, blessed by the Greek Orthodox Church. Under these banners the Greeks united throughout the Greek Revolution (1821), a war of liberation waged against the Ottoman Empire.
Labarum also gives its name (Labaro) to a suburb of Rome adjacent to Prima Porta, one of the sites where the 'Vision of Constantine' is placed by tradition.
See also
Gonfalone
Christian symbolism
Constantine I and Christianity
Cantabrian Labarum
Arch of Constantine, triumphal arch to the victory at Milvian Bridge.
Christianity
Constantinian shift
Khorugv
Michaelion
XI monogram
Biertan Donarium
Notes
Bibliography
Grabar, Christian Iconography: A Study of its Origins (Princeton University Press) 1968:165ff
Grant, Michael (1993), The Emperor Constantine, London.
R. Grosse, "Labarum", Realencyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft vol. 12, pt 1(Stuttgart) 1924:240-42.
H. Grégoire, "L'étymologie de 'Labarum'" Byzantion 4 (1929:477-82).
J. Harries (2012) Imperial Rome AD 284 to 363, Ch. 5: The Victory of Constantine, AD 311–37, Edinburgh University Press.
A. Lipinsky, "Labarum" Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie 3 (Rome:1970)
Lieu, S.N.C and Montserrat, D. (Ed.s) (1996), From Constantine to Julian, London.
Odahl, C.M., (2004) Constantine and the Christian Empire, Routledge 2004.
Smith, J.H., (1971) Constantine the Great, Hamilton,
Stephenson, P., (2009) Constantine: Unconquered Emperor, Christian Victor, Quercus, London.
Christian symbols
Christian iconography
4th-century Christianity
Constantine the Great and Christianity
Early Christian art
History of flags
Sol Invictus | [
0.22552582621574402,
0.011323625221848488,
-0.14367753267288208,
-0.22389808297157288,
-0.014726173132658005,
0.8436251878738403,
-0.1250375658273697,
0.03144209086894989,
-0.14987623691558838,
-0.30281558632850647,
0.046130578964948654,
0.027459971606731415,
-0.3772646188735962,
0.0736241... |
18385 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactantius | Lactantius | Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius (c. 250 – c. 325) was an early Christian author who became an advisor to Roman emperor, Constantine I, guiding his Christian religious policy in its initial stages of emergence, and a tutor to his son Crispus. His most important work is the Institutiones Divinae ("The Divine Institutes"), an apologetic treatise intended to establish the reasonableness and truth of Christianity to pagan critics.
He is best known for his apologetic works, widely read during the Renaissance by humanists who called Lactantius the "Christian Cicero". Also often attributed to Lactantius is the poem The Phoenix, which is based on the myth of the phoenix from Oriental mythology. Though the poem is not clearly Christian in its motifs, modern scholars have found some literary evidence in the text to suggest the author had a Christian interpretation of the eastern myth as a symbol of resurrection.
Biography
Lactantius was of Punic or Berber origin, born into a pagan family. He was a pupil of Arnobius who taught at Sicca Veneria, an important city in Numidia. In his early life, he taught rhetoric in his native town, which may have been Cirta in Numidia, where an inscription mentions a certain "L. Caecilius Firmianus".
Lactantius had a successful public career at first. At the request of the Roman emperor Diocletian, he became an official professor of rhetoric in Nicomedia; the voyage from Africa is described in his poem Hodoeporicum (now lost). There, he associated in the imperial circle with the administrator and polemicist Sossianus Hierocles and the pagan philosopher Porphyry; he first met Constantine, and Galerius, whom he cast as villain in the persecutions. Having converted to Christianity, he resigned his post before Diocletian's purging of Christians from his immediate staff and before the publication of Diocletian's first "Edict against the Christians" (February 24, 303).
As a Latin rhetor in a Greek city, he subsequently lived in poverty according to Saint Jerome and eked out a living by writing until Constantine I became his patron. The persecution forced him to leave Nicomedia, perhaps re-locating to North Africa. The emperor Constantine appointed the elderly Lactantius Latin tutor to his son Crispus in 309-310 who was probably 10-15 years old at the time. Lactantius followed Crispus to Trier in 317, when Crispus was made Caesar (lesser co-emperor) and sent to the city. Crispus was put to death by order of his father Constantine I in 326, but when Lactantius died and under what circumstances are unknown.
Writing
Like so many of the early Christian authors, Lactantius depended on classical models. Saint Jerome praised his writing style while faulting his ability as a Christian apologist, saying: "Lactantius has a flow of eloquence worthy of Tully: would that he had been as ready to teach our doctrines as to pull down those of others!" Similarly, the early humanists called him the "Christian Cicero" (Cicero Christianus). A translator of the Divine Institutes wrote: "Lactantius has always held a very high place among the Christian Fathers, not only on account of the subject-matter of his writings, but also on account of the varied erudition, the sweetness of expression, and the grace and elegance of style, by which they are characterized."
He wrote apologetic works explaining Christianity in terms that would be palatable to educated people who still practiced the traditional religions of the Empire. He defended Christian beliefs against the criticisms of Hellenistic philosophers. His Divinae Institutiones ("Divine Institutes") were an early example of a systematic presentation of Christian thought.
He was considered somewhat heretical after his death, but Renaissance humanists took a renewed interest in him, more for his elaborately rhetorical Latin style than for his theology. His works were copied in manuscript several times in the 15th century and were first printed in 1465 by the Germans Arnold Pannartz and Konrad Sweynheim at the Abbey of Subiaco. This edition was the first book printed in Italy to have a date of printing, as well as the first use of a Greek alphabet font anywhere, which was apparently produced in the course of printing, as the early pages leave Greek text blank. It was probably the fourth book ever printed in Italy. A copy of this edition was sold at auction in 2000 for more than $1 million.
Prophetic exegesis
Like many writers in the first few centuries of the early church, Lactantius took a premillennialist view, holding that the second coming of Christ will precede a millennium or a thousand-year reign of Christ on earth. According to Charles E. Hill, "With Lactantius in the early fourth century we see a determined attempt to revive a more “genuine” form of chiliasm." Lactantius quoted the Sibyls extensively (although the Sibylline Oracles are now considered to be pseudepigrapha). Book VII of The Divine Institutes indicates a familiarity with Jewish, Christian, Egyptian and Iranian apocalyptic material.
Attempts to determine the time of the End were viewed as in contradiction to Acts 1:7: "It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority," and Mark 13:32: "But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."
Works
De opificio Dei ("The Works of God"), an apologetic work, written in 303 or 304 during Diocletian's persecution and dedicated to a former pupil, a rich Christian named Demetrianius. The apologetic principles underlying all the works of Lactantius are well set forth in this treatise.
Institutiones Divinae ("The Divine Institutes"), written between 303 and 311. This is the most important of the writings of Lactantius. It was "one of the first books printed in Italy and the first dated Italian imprint." As an apologetic treatise, it was intended to point out the futility of pagan beliefs and to establish the reasonableness and truth of Christianity as a response to pagan critics. It was also the first attempt at a systematic exposition of Christian theology in Latin and was planned on a scale sufficiently broad to silence all opponents. Patrick Healy notes, "The strengths and the weakness of Lactantius are nowhere better shown than in his work. The beauty of the style, the choice and aptness of the terminology, cannot hide the author's lack of grasp on Christian principles and his almost utter ignorance of Scripture." Included in this treatise is a quote from the nineteenth of the Odes of Solomon, one of only two known texts of the Odes until the early twentieth century. However, his mockery of the idea of a round earth was criticised by Copernicus as "childish".
An Epitome of the Divine institutes is a summary treatment of the subject.
De ira Dei ("On the Wrath of God" or "On the Anger of God"), directed against the Stoics and Epicureans.
De mortibus persecutorum ("On the Deaths of the Persecutors") has an apologetic character but given Lactantius's presence at the court of Diocletian in Nicomedia and the court of Constantine in Gaul, it is considered a valuable primary source for the events it records. Lactantius describes the goal of the work as follows: "I relate all those things on the authority of well-informed persons, and I thought it proper to commit them to writing exactly as they happened, lest the memory of events so important should perish, and lest any future historian of the persecutors should corrupt the truth." The point of the work is to describe the deaths of the persecutors of Christians before Lactantius (Nero, Domitian, Decius, Valerian, Aurelian) as well as those who were the contemporaries of Lactantius himself: Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius, Maximinus and Maxentius. This work is taken as a chronicle of the last and greatest of the persecutions in spite of the moral point that each anecdote has been arranged to tell. Here, Lactantius preserves the story of Constantine's vision of the Chi Rho before his conversion to Christianity. The full text is found in only one manuscript, which bears the title Lucii Caecilii liber ad Donatum Confessorem de Mortibus Persecutorum.
Widely attributed to Lactantius although it shows only cryptic signs of Christianity, the poem The Phoenix (de Ave Phoenice) tells the story of the death and rebirth of that mythical bird. That poem in turn appears to have been the principal source for the famous Old English poem to which the modern title The Phoenix is given.
Opera ("Works") A second edition printed in the monastery at Subiaco, Lazio, is still extant. It remained in Italy until the late eighteenth century, when it was known to be in the library of Prince Vincenzo Maria Carafa in Messina. The Bodleian Library in Oxford, England, acquired this volume in 1817.
See also
Problem of evil
References
Sources
External links
Lactantius: links to primary texts and secondary sources
Lactantius: text, concordances and frequency list
Opera Omnia
Bibliography of Lactantius: compiled by Jackson Bryce
Lactantius, The Divine Institutes
Lactantius. Lord Hailes (transl.) (2021) On the Deaths of the Persecutors: A Translation of De Mortibus Persecutorum by Lucius Cæcilius Firmianus Lactantius Evolution Publishing, Merchantville, NJ ,
3rd-century births
325 deaths
3rd-century Christian theologians
3rd-century Latin writers
3rd-century Romans
4th-century Punic people
4th-century Berber people
4th-century Latin writers
4th-century Romans
Ancient Roman writers
Berber Christians
Berber writers
Caecilii
Christian apologists
Christian writers
Christianity in Algeria
Church Fathers
Converts to Christianity from pagan religions
Flat Earth proponents
Post–Silver Age Latin writers | [
-0.37059053778648376,
-0.335176020860672,
-0.5831066370010376,
0.25530195236206055,
-0.10080337524414062,
1.1035723686218262,
0.43962761759757996,
0.4581165611743927,
-0.24824954569339752,
-0.52126145362854,
-0.013930724933743477,
0.274607390165329,
-0.5982458591461182,
0.4640870690345764,... |
18386 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia | Laconia | Laconia or Lakonia (, , ) is a historical and administrative region of Greece located on the southeastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. Its administrative capital is Sparta. The word laconic—to speak in a blunt, concise way—is derived from the name of this region, a reference to the ancient Spartans who were renowned for their verbal austerity and blunt, often pithy remarks.
Geography
Laconia is bordered by Messenia to the west and Arcadia to the north and is surrounded by the Myrtoan Sea to the east and by the Laconian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. It encompasses Cape Malea and Cape Tainaron and a large part of the Mani Peninsula. The Mani Peninsula is in the west region of Laconia. The islands of Kythira and Antikythera lie to the south, but they administratively belong to the Attica regional unit of islands. The island, Elafonisos, situated between the Laconian mainland and Kythira, is part of Laconia.
The Eurotas is the longest river in the prefecture. The valley of the Eurotas is predominantly an agricultural region that contains many citrus groves, olive groves, and pasture lands. It is the location of the largest orange production in the Peloponnese and probably in all of Greece. Lakonia, a brand of orange juice, is based in Amykles.
The main mountain ranges are the Taygetus in the west and the Parnon in the northeast. Taygetus, known as Pentadaktylos (five-fingers) throughout the Middle Ages, is west of Sparta and the Eurotas valley. It is the highest mountain in Laconia and the Peloponnese and is mostly covered with pine trees. Two roads join the Messenia and Laconia prefectures: one is a tortuous mountain pass through Taygetus and the other bypasses the mountain via the Mani district to the south.
The stalactite cave, Dirou, a major tourist attraction, is located south of Areopolis in the southwest of Laconia.
Climate
Laconia has a Mediterranean climate with warm winters and hot summers. Snow is rare on the coast throughout the winter but is very common in the mountains.
History
Ancient history
Evidence of Neolithic settlement in southern Laconia has been found during excavations of the Alepotrypa cave site. Significant archaeological recovery exists at the Vaphio-tomb site in Laconia. Found there is advanced Bronze Age art as well as evidence of cultural associations with the contemporaneous Minoan culture on Crete. At the end of the Mycenean period, the population of Laconia sharply declined. In classical Greece, Laconia was Spartan territory but from the 4th century BC onwards Sparta lost control of various ports, towns and areas. From the mid-2nd century BC until 395 AD, Laconia was a part of the Roman Empire.
Medieval history
In the medieval period, Laconia formed part of the Byzantine Empire. Following the Fourth Crusade, it was gradually conquered by the Frankish Principality of Achaea. In the 1260s, however, the Byzantines recovered Mystras and other fortresses in the region and managed to evict the Franks from Laconia, which became the nucleus of a new Byzantine province. By the mid-14th century, this evolved into the Despotate of Morea, held by the last Greek ruling dynasty, the Palaiologoi. With the fall of the Despotate to the Ottomans in 1460, Laconia was conquered as well.
Modern history
With the exception of a 30-year interval of Venetian rule, Laconia remained under Ottoman control until the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence of 1821. Following independence, Sparta was selected as the capital of the modern prefecture, and its economy and agriculture expanded. With the incorporation of the British-ruled Ionian Islands into Greece in 1864, Elafonissos became part of the prefecture. After World War II and the Greek Civil War, its population began to somewhat decline, as people moved from the villages toward the larger cities of Greece and abroad.
In 1992, a devastating fire ruined the finest olive crops in the northern part of the prefecture, and affected the area of Sellasia along with Oinountas and its surrounding areas. Firefighters, helicopters and planes battled for days to put out the horrific fire.
The Mani portion along with Gytheio became famous in Greece for filming episodes of Vendetta, broadcast on Mega Channel throughout Greece and abroad on Mega Cosmos.
In early 2006, flooding ruined olive and citrus crops as well as properties and villages along the Eurotas river. In the summer 2006, a terrible fire devastated a part of the Mani Peninsula, ruining forests, crops, and numerous villages.
Municipalities
The regional unit, Laconia, is subdivided into five municipalities. These are (number as in the map in the infobox):
East Mani (Anatoliki Mani, 2)
Elafonisos (3)
Eurotas (4)
Monemvasia (5)
Sparta (1)
Prefecture
As a part of the 2011 Kallikratis government reform, regional unit Laconia was created out of the former prefecture Laconia (). The prefecture had the same territory as the present regional unit. At the same time, the municipalities were reorganised, according to the table below.
Provinces
Epidavros Limira Province – Molaoi
Gytheio Province – Gytheio
Lacedaemonia Province – Sparti
Oitylo Province – Areopoli
Note: Provinces no longer hold any legal status in Greece.
Population
1907: 87,106
1991: 95,696
2001: 94,918
2011: 89,138
The main cities and towns of Laconia are (ranked by 2011 census population):
Sparta 17,408
Gytheio 4,717
Neapoli 3,130
Skala 3,089
Transport
Greek National Road 39, Tripoli – Sparti – Gytheio
Greek National Road 82, Pylos – Kalamata – Sparti
Greek National Road 86, Gytheio – Monemvasia
Molaoi to Leonidi Road, E, NE
Communications
Radio
FLY FM 89,7 (Sparta).
POLITIA 90,7 – ΠΟΛΙΤΕΙΑ 90.7 (Sparta)
Radio Sparti – 92.7 FM (Sparta)
Radiofonias Notias Lakonias (Southern Laconia Radio) – 93.5 (Gytheio)
Star FM – 94.7
Television
Ellada TV – UHF 43, Sparta
TV Notias Lakonias – Molaoi
Newspapers
Λακωνικός Τύπος
Ελεύθερη Άποψη
Νέα Σπάρτη
Παρατηρητής της Λακωνίας
See also
List of settlements in Laconia
List of traditional Greek place names
Laconic phrase
References
Prefectures of Greece
1833 establishments in Greece
Regional units of Peloponnese (region) | [
-0.21584339439868927,
-0.34552422165870667,
-0.24210786819458008,
0.13636191189289093,
0.2767823338508606,
0.7511552572250366,
-0.20322346687316895,
0.43849968910217285,
-0.7219706177711487,
-0.06696555018424988,
0.029782908037304878,
-0.1716601699590683,
-0.4238816797733307,
0.52911239862... |
18387 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanista | Lanista | Lanista is a genus of African bush-crickets (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) in the subfamily Conocephalinae.
Species
Lanista affinis Bolívar, 1906
Lanista annulicornis (Walker, 1869)
Lanista crassicollis Bolívar, 1906
Lanista varelai Bolívar, 1906
References
Tettigoniidae
Orthoptera genera | [
-0.0858616754412651,
-0.3566024899482727,
-0.3858816623687744,
0.023028509691357613,
0.26759660243988037,
0.9269932508468628,
-0.06402726471424103,
-0.34442338347435,
-0.5468094944953918,
-0.6408095955848694,
0.29411840438842773,
-0.04213593900203705,
-0.8120360970497131,
0.094852037727832... |
18388 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laoco%C3%B6n | Laocoön | Laocoön (; , , gen.: Λαοκόοντος), the son of Acoetes, is a figure in Greek and Roman mythology and the Epic Cycle.<ref>"Laocoon, son of Acoetes, brother of Anchises, and priest of Apollo…" (Hyginus, Fabula 135.</ref> He was a Trojan priest who was attacked, with his two sons, by giant serpents sent by the gods. The story of Laocoön has been the subject of numerous artists, both in ancient and in more contemporary times.
Death
The most detailed description of Laocoön's grisly fate was provided by Quintus Smyrnaeus in Posthomerica, a later, literary version of events following the Iliad. According to Quintus, Laocoön begged the Trojans to set fire to the Trojan horse to ensure it was not a trick. Athena, angry with him and the Trojans, shook the ground around Laocoön's feet and painfully blinded him. The Trojans, watching this unfold, assumed Laocoön was punished for the Trojans' mutilating and doubting Sinon, the undercover Greek soldier sent to convince the Trojans to let him and the horse inside their city walls. Thus, the Trojans wheeled the great wooden horse in. Laocoön did not give up trying to convince the Trojans to burn the horse, and Athena made him pay even further. She sent two giant sea serpents to strangle and kill him and his two sons. In another version of the story, it was said that Poseidon sent the sea serpents to strangle and kill Laocoön and his two sons.
According to Apollodorus, it was Apollo who sent the two sea serpents. Laocoön had insulted Apollo by sleeping with his wife in front of the "divine image".
Virgil used the story in the Aeneid. According to Virgil, Laocoön advised the Trojans to not receive the horse from the Greeks. They disregarded Laocoön's advice and were taken in by the deceitful testimony of Sinon. The enraged Laocoön threw his spear at the Horse in response. Minerva then sent sea serpents to strangle Laocoön and his two sons, Antiphantes and Thymbraeus, for his actions. "Laocoön, ostensibly sacrificing a bull to Neptune on behalf of the city (lines 201ff.), becomes himself the tragic victim, as the simile (lines 223–24) makes clear. In some sense, his death must be symbolic of the city as a whole," S. V. Tracy notes. According to the Hellenistic poet Euphorion of Chalcis, Laocoön is in fact punished for procreating upon holy ground sacred to Poseidon; only unlucky timing caused the Trojans to misinterpret his death as punishment for striking the horse, which they bring into the city with disastrous consequences. The episode furnished the subject of Sophocles' lost tragedy, Laocoön.
In Aeneid, Virgil describes the circumstances of Laocoön's death:
From the AeneidIlle simul manibus tendit divellere nodosperfusus sanie vittas atroque veneno,clamores simul horrendos ad sidera tollit:qualis mugitus, fugit cum saucius aramtaurus et incertam excussit cervice securim.Literal English translation:At the same time he stretched forth to tear the knots with his handshis fillets soaked with saliva and black venomat the same time he lifted to heaven horrendous cries:like the bellowing when a wounded bull has fled from the altarand has shaken the ill-aimed axe from its neck.John Dryden's translation:With both his hands he labors at the knots;His holy fillets the blue venom blots;His roaring fills the flitting air around.Thus, when an ox receives a glancing wound,
He breaks his bands, the fatal altar flies,And with loud bellowings breaks the yielding skies.Classical descriptions
The story of Laocoön is not mentioned by Homer, but it had been the subject of a tragedy, now lost, by Sophocles and was mentioned by other Greek writers, though the events around the attack by the serpents vary considerably. The most famous account of these is now in Virgil's Aeneid where Laocoön was a priest of Neptune (Poseidon), who was killed with both his sons after attempting to expose the ruse of the Trojan Horse by striking it with a spear.
Virgil gives Laocoön the famous line "Equō nē crēdite, Teucrī / Quidquid id est, timeō Danaōs et dōna ferentēs", or "Do not trust the Horse, Trojans / Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even bearing gifts." This line is the source of the saying: "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts."
In Sophocles, however, he was a priest of Apollo who should have been celibate but had married. The serpents killed only the two sons, leaving Laocoön himself alive to suffer. In other versions, he was killed for having committed an impiety by making love with his wife in the presence of a cult image in a sanctuary, or simply making a sacrifice in the temple with his wife present. In this second group of versions, the snakes were sent by Poseidon and in the first by Poseidon and Athena, or Apollo, and the deaths were interpreted by the Trojans as proof that the horse was a sacred object. The two versions have rather different morals: Laocoön was either punished for doing wrong, or for being right.
Later depictions
The death of Laocoön was famously depicted in a much-admired marble Laocoön and His Sons, attributed by Pliny the Elder to the Rhodian sculptors Agesander, Athenodoros, and Polydorus, which stands in the Vatican Museums, Rome. Copies have been executed by various artists, notably Baccio Bandinelli. These show the complete sculpture (with conjectural reconstructions of the missing pieces) and are located in Rhodes, at the Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes, Rome, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and in front of the Archaeological Museum, Odessa, Ukraine, amongst others. Alexander Calder also designed a stabile which he called Laocoön in 1947; it's part of the Eli and Edyth Broad collection in Los Angeles.
The marble Laocoön provided the central image for Lessing's Laocoön, 1766, an aesthetic polemic directed against Winckelmann and the comte de Caylus. Daniel Albright reengages the role of the figure of Laocoön in aesthetic thought in his book Untwisting the Serpent: Modernism in Literature, Music, and Other Arts.
In addition to other literary references, John Barth employs a bust of Laocoön in his novella, The End of the Road. The R.E.M. song "Laughing" references Laocoön, rendering him female ("Laocoön and her two sons"), they also reference Laocoön in the song "Harborcoat". The marble's pose is parodied in the comic book Asterix and the Laurel Wreath. American author Joyce Carol Oates also references Laocoön in her 1989 novel American Appetites. In Stave V of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens (1843), Scrooge awakes on Christmas morning, "making a perfect Laocoon of himself with his stockings". Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly begins with an extensive analysis of the Laocoön story. The American feminist poet and author Marge Piercy includes a poem titled, "Laocoön is the name of the figure", in her collection Stone, Paper, Knife (1983), relating love lost and beginning. John Steinbeck references Laocoön in his American literary classic East of Eden, referring to a picture of “Laocoön completely wrapped in snakes” when describing artwork hanging in classrooms at the Salinas schoolhouse.
In Hector Berlioz's opera Les Troyens, the death of Laocoön is a pivotal moment of the first act after Aeneas' entrance, sung by eight singers and a double choir ("ottetto et double chœur"). It begins with the verse "Châtiment effroyable" ("frightful punishment").
Namesake
3240 Laocoon, an asteroid named after Laocoön
Notes
References
Sources
Boardman, John ed., The Oxford History of Classical Art, 1993, OUP,
Gall, Dorothee and Anja Wolkenhauer (hg). Laokoon in Literatur und Kunst: Schriften des Symposions "Laokoon in Literatur und Kunst" vom 30.11.2006, Universität Bonn (Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009) (Beiträge zur Altertumskunde, 254).
Smith, R.R.R., Hellenistic Sculpture, a handbook, Thames & Hudson, 1991,
Classical sources
Compiled by Tracy, 1987:452 note 3, which also mentions a fragmentary line possibly by Nicander.
Arctinus, OCT Homer 5.107.23
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.48.2
Hyginus, Fabula 135
Petronius 89; Servius on Aeneid 2.201
pseudo-Apollodorus, Epitome 5.18
Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica 12.445ff
John Tzetzes, Ad Lycophron'' 347
External links
Laocoon in the Digital Sculpture Project
Towards a Newest Laocoön
Mythological Greek seers
Characters in the Aeneid
Trojans
Characters in Greek mythology
Deeds of Apollo
Deeds of Poseidon | [
-0.36648523807525635,
0.46294668316841125,
-0.7348355054855347,
0.005295098759233952,
0.25385889410972595,
0.4043408930301666,
-0.2652783989906311,
0.7654752135276794,
-0.8690089583396912,
-0.16458775103092194,
-0.5678962469100952,
0.7178932428359985,
-0.710303008556366,
-0.162841171026229... |
18389 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limburg%20an%20der%20Lahn | Limburg an der Lahn | Limburg an der Lahn (officially abbreviated Limburg a. d. Lahn) is the district seat of Limburg-Weilburg in Hesse, Germany.
Geography
Location
Limburg lies in western Hessen between the Taunus and the Westerwald on the river Lahn.
The town lies roughly centrally in a basin within the Rhenish Slate Mountains which is surrounded by the low ranges of the Taunus and Westerwald and called the Limburg Basin (Limburger Becken). Owing to the favourable soil and climate, the Limburg Basin stands as one of Hesse's richest agricultural regions and moreover, with its convenient Lahn crossing, it has been of great importance to transport since the Middle Ages. Within the basin, the Lahn's otherwise rather narrow lower valley broadens out noticeably, making Limburg's mean elevation only 117 m above sea level.
Neighbouring communities
Limburg forms, together with the town of Diez, a middle centre (in terms of Central place theory) but partially functions as an upper centre to western Middle Hesse.
Limburg's residential neighbourhoods reach beyond the town limits; the neighbouring centres of Elz and Diez run seamlessly together.
Surrounding towns and communities are the community of Elz and the town of Hadamar in the north, the community of Beselich in the northeast, the town of Runkel in the east, the communities of Villmar and Brechen in the southeast, the community of Hünfelden in the south (all in Limburg-Weilburg), the community of Holzheim in the southwest, and the town of Diez and the communities of Aull and Gückingen in the west (all in the Rhein-Lahn-Kreis in Rhineland-Palatinate).
The nearest major cities are Wetzlar and Gießen to the north east, Wiesbaden and Frankfurt to the south and Koblenz to the west.
Constituent communities
The town consists of eight formerly autonomous Ortsteile or villages, listed here by population.
Limburg: 18,393
Lindenholzhausen: 3,377
Linter: 3,160
Eschhofen: 2,803
Staffel: 2,656
Offheim: 2,572
Dietkirchen: 1,724
Ahlbach: 1,281
Blumenrod is also often called a constituent community, although this is actually only a big residential neighbourhood in the main town's south end. Its landmark is the Domäne Blumenrod, a former manor house that has been restored and remodelled by the Limburg Free Evangelical community.
Limburg's biggest outlying centre is Lindenholzhausen (3,329 residents as of June 2006); the second biggest is Linter.
Etymology
The derivation of the name “Limburg” is not quite clear and may well hearken back to a castle built here (Burg means "castle" in German). In 910 the town was first mentioned as Lintpurc. Two of the popular theories are:
The name was chosen because of the close proximity to the Linterer Bach, a former stream in Linter that has now run dry and that emptied into the Lahn at the Domfelsen (crag). Linda is the Gaulish word for water.
Rather unlikely but very popular is the connection to a dragon saga (see Lindworm) and the connection with the monastery of Saint George the "Dragon Slayer" founded in Limburg. However, the monastery was built after the castle and founded around the time of the first written mention of the name.
History
About 800 A.D., the first castle buildings arose on the Limburg crags. This was probably designed for the protection of a ford over the river Lahn. In the decades that followed, the town developed under the castle's protection. Limburg is first mentioned in documents in 910 under the name of Lintpurc when Louis the Child granted Konrad Kurzbold an estate in the community on which he was to build a church. Konrad Kurzbold laid the foundation stone for Saint George's Monastery Church, where he was also buried. The community soon increased in importance with the monastery's founding and profited from the lively goods trade on the Via Publica.
In 1150, a wooden bridge was built across the Lahn. The long-distance road from Cologne to Frankfurt am Main subsequently ran through Limburg. In the early 13th century, Limburg Castle was built in its current form. Shortly afterwards, the town passed into the ownership of the Lords of Ysenburg. In 1214, the community was granted town rights. Remains of the fortification wall from the years 1130, 1230 and 1340 with a maximum length of roughly one thousand metres indicate to this day the blossoming town's quick development in the Middle Ages. There is proof of a mint in Limburg in 1180.
One line of the Lords of Ysenburg resided from 1258 to 1406 at Limburg Castle and took their name from their seat, Limburg. From this line came the House of Limburg-Stirum and also Imagina of Isenburg-Limburg, German King Adolf's wife.
The ruling class among the mediaeval townsfolk were rich merchant families whose houses stood right near the castle tower and were surrounded by the first town wall once it was built. The area of today's Rossmarkt ("Horse Market"), in which many simple craftsmen lived, was only brought within the fortifications once the second town wall was built. The inhabitants there, however, unlike the merchant élite, were accorded no entitlement to a voice in town affairs and were not allowed to send representatives to the town council. Nevertheless, they had to bear the main financial burden of running the town. Only in 1458 were they allowed to send two representatives to town council.
Saint George's Cathedral (Sankt-Georgs-Dom) built on the old monastery church's site, and also called Georgsdom, was consecrated in 1235. On 14 May 1289, a devastating fire wiped out great parts of the inner town, although these were subsequently rebuilt. One of the houses built at that time was the Römer 2-4-6, which is today one of Germany's oldest half-timbered houses. In 1337, Limburg's Jews were expelled from the town. Only in 1341 were they once again able to settle in the town, by royal decree. In 1344 a half share of the town was pledged to the Electorate of Trier, and in 1420, the town passed wholly into the ownership of Trier. This event, along with another town fire in 1342, the Black Death in 1349, 1356 and 1365, but above all the rise of the Territorial Princes, led to a gradual decline. In 1315 and 1346, the old stone Lahn Bridge was built (presumably in two sections).
Against the background of the German Peasants' War, unrest also arose among the townsfolk in 1525. After the Elector of Trier had demanded that the townsmen turn a Lutheran preacher out of the town, a board made up of townsmen who were ineligible for council functions handed the council a 30-point comprehensive list of demands on 24 May. It dealt mainly with financial participation and equality in taxation, trade and building issues with the merchant class. In the days that followed, these demands were reduced in negotiations between the council and the board to 16 points, which were likely also taken up with the Elector afterwards. On 5 August, however, Archbishop Richard ordered the council to overturn all concessions to the townsmen. Furthermore, a ban on assembly was decreed, and the ineligible townsmen were stripped of their right to send two representatives to council.
In 1806, Limburg came into the possession of the newly founded Duchy of Nassau. In 1818 the town wall was torn down. In 1827 the town was raised to a Catholic episcopal seat. In 1866 the Duchy and with it Limburg passed to Prussia in the wake of the Austro-Prussian War. As of 1862, Limburg became a railway hub and from 1886 a district seat. In 1892, the Pallottines settled in town, but only the men; the women came in 1895.
During World War I there was a major prisoner of war camp at Limburg an der Lahn. Many Irish members of the British Army were interned there until the end of the war and at one stage they were visited by the Irish republican leader Roger Casement in an attempt to win recruits for the forthcoming Irish rebellion.
From 1919 to 1923, Limburg was the "capital" of a short-lived state called Free State Bottleneck (or Freistaat Flaschenhals in German) because it was the nearest unoccupied town to the Weimar Republic.
Politics
Town council
The municipal election held on 6 March 2016 yielded the following results:
Mayor
The town's mayor is currently Marius Hahn (SPD).
Sponsorship
In 1956, a sponsorship was undertaken for Sudeten Germans driven out of the town of Uničov, Czech Republic.
Economy and infrastructure
Transport
Limburg is a traditional transportation hub. Already in the Middle Ages, the Via Publica crossed the navigable Lahn here. Today the A 3 (Emmerich–Oberhausen–Cologne–Frankfurt–Nuremberg–Passau) and Bundesstraße 8, which both follow the Via Publica's alignment as closely as possible, run through the town. Bundesstraße 49 links Limburg to Koblenz towards the west and Wetzlar and Gießen towards the east. The section between Limburg and Wetzlar is currently being widened to four lanes. This section as far as Obertiefenbach is also known as Die lange Meil ("The Long Mile"). Bundesstraße 54 links Limburg on the one hand with Siegen to the north and on the other by way of Diez with Wiesbaden, which may likewise be reached over Bundesstraße 417 (Hühnerstraße).
As early as 1248, a wooden bridge spanned the Lahn, but was replaced after the flooding in 1306 by a stone bridge, the Alte Lahnbrücke. Other road bridges are the Lahntalbrücke Limburg (1964) on the A 3, the Lahnbrücke near Staffel and the Neue Lahnbrücke from 1968, over which run the Bundesstraßen before they cross under the inner town through the Schiedetunnel, a bypass tunnel.
Once the Lahntalbahn had been built, Limburg was joined to the railway network in 1862. Limburg railway station developed into a transport hub. Eschhofen station is also in Limburg. Other railway lines are the Unterwesterwaldbahn, the Oberwesterwaldbahn and the Main-Lahn Railway. At Niedernhausen station on the Main-Lahn Railway, transfer to the Ländchesbahn to Wiesbaden is possible. With the exception of the upper section of the Lahntalbahn and express lines to Koblenz and Frankfurt, which are still served by Deutsche Bahn, all railway lines are run by Vectus Verkehrsgesellschaft mbH, based in Limburg.
Once the InterCityExpress Cologne-Frankfurt high-speed rail line had been built, Limburg acquired an ICE station. It is the only railway station in Germany at which exclusively ICE trains stop. The high-speed rail line crosses the Lahn over the Lahntalbrücke and then dives into the Limburger Tunnel.
The nearest airport is Frankfurt Airport, 63 km away on the A 3. Travel time there on the ICE is roughly 20 minutes. Cologne Bonn Airport is 110 km away and can be reached on the ICE in 44 minutes.
The Lahn between Lahnstein and Wetzlar is a Bundeswasserstraße ("Federal waterway"). Since the Lahntalbahn's expansion, however, the waterway's importance has been declining. It is used mainly by tourists with small motorboats, canoes and rowboats. Limburg is the landing site of the tourboat Wappen von Limburg.
Established businesses
Blechwarenfabrik Limburg GmbH (Metal and plastic packaging)
Bundesanzeiger Verlag (publishing house)
Harmonic Drive AG
MOBA Mobile Automation AG
Mundipharma
Tetra Pak
Vectus Verkehrsgesellschaft mbH (transport)
Nassauische Neue Presse (newspaper)
Public institutions
Education
Limburg has four schools which lead to, among other qualifications, the Abitur:
Tilemannschule, which has existed since the late 19th century and was named after the famous Limburg chancellory head Tilemann Elhen von Wolfhagen in the 1950s
Marienschule, a private Gymnasium (Grammar School), which has existed since 1895 and which belongs to the Bishopric of Limburg.
Peter-Paul-Cahensly-Schule with vocational Gymnasium (Grammar School) in the fields of economics and administration, data processing, electrical engineering and machine building
Adolf-Reichwein-Schule with vocational Gymnasium in the fields of dietetics and health sciences
Professional training schools:
Peter-Paul-Cahensly-Schule
Friedrich-Dessauer-Schule
Adolf-Reichwein-Schule
Marienschule
Hauptschulen and Realschulen:
Johann-Wolfgang-von-Goethe-Schule
Leo-Sternberg-Schule
Theodor-Heuss-Schule
Libraries:
Dombibliothek
Diözesanbibliothek
St. Vincenz Hospital
The hospital perched on the Schafsberg overlooking the town has at its disposal 433 beds and 15 specialist departments.
Sport and leisure
In Limburg there are various sport clubs; some are even represented in Bundesligen, and even at the world level.
Limburger Club für Wassersport 1895/1907 e.V. (training base for the Deutscher Ruderverband)
Limburger Hockey Club
Schwimmverein Poseidon Limburg e. V. (swimming)
various clubs in the outlying centres such as the Turnverein Eschhofen (gymnastics club), the fistball stronghold in Limburg-Weilburg
Youth meeting place in Limburg
The Evangelical Church offers with its Jugendfreizeitstätte Limburg (JFS for short, meaning "Youth Leisure Place") a meeting place for youth with many events. With table football, Internet café and many events, this institution is not only church-based, with two staff and a Zivildienstleistender supporting the visitors not only with their problems.
Limburg Mothers' Centre
The Mütterzentrum Limburg is a family meeting place for those with or without children on Hospitalstraße. The club is supported by the town of Limburg and the Bundesland of Hesse and offers among other things a parents' service that looks after children, a broad array of course offerings for children and adults, a miniature kindergarten and a café.
Volunteer fire brigades
Limburg an der Lahn Volunteer Fire brigade, founded 1867 (includes Youth Fire Brigade)
Ahlbach Volunteer Fire Brigade, founded 1908 (includes Youth Fire Brigade)
Dietkirchen Volunteer Fire Brigade, founded 1934 (includes Youth Fire Brigade)
Eschhofen Volunteer Fire Brigade, founded 1901 (includes Youth Fire Brigade)
Lindenholzhausen Volunteer Fire Brigade, founded 1933 (includes Youth Fire Brigade)
Linter Volunteer Fire Brigade, founded 1935 (includes Youth Fire Brigade)
Offheim Volunteer Fire Brigade, founded 1898 (includes Youth Fire Brigade)
Staffel Volunteer Fire Brigade, founded 1880 (includes Youth Fire Brigade)
Culture and sightseeing
Performers
The cabaret troupe "Thing", founded more than 25 years ago, moved after a short time from its initial home in the outlying centre of Staffel to the Josef-Kohlmaier-Halle, a civic event hall, where its stage can now be found in the hall's club rooms. The troupe is run by an independent acting club. On the programme are chanson, cabaret, literature and jazz as well as folk, Rock and performances by singer-songwriters. It makes a point of furthering young artists. Each month, three or four events are staged.
The dedication of "Thing" was recognized on 6 December 2003 when the Kulturpreis Mittelhessen ("Middle Hesse Culture Prize") was awarded to it.
Limburg Cathedral has a famous boys' choir, the Limburger Domsingknaben, which trains at Musical Boarding School in Hadamar, and an excellent girls' choir, the Mädchenkantorei Limburg, both singing at the Limburg Cathedral and internationally.
Museums
In Limburg there are several museums. The most important are:
Town of Limburg art collections that offer changing exhibits
Staurothek, cathedral treasury and diocesan museum with the Limburger Staurothek (a cross reliquary)
Museum Limburg Navy Museum
Pallottine Mission museum
Buildings
Only a few towns, like Limburg, have been able to keep a full set of nearly unscathed mediaeval buildings. The formerly walled town core between St. George's Cathedral, Grabenstraße (a street marking the old town moat) and the 600-year-old Lahn Bridge thus stands today as a whole under monumental protection.
The Altstadt ("Old Town") boasts a fine cathedral and is full of narrow streets with timber-frame houses, dating mainly from the 17th and 18th centuries. That's why it is located on the German Timber-Frame Road.
Limburger Dom, one of the most complete creations of Late Romanesque architecture. It was printed on the reverse of the 1,000 Deutsche Mark note from the second series, which was in circulation from 1960 to 1989. The cathedral was recently renovated and painted to reflect its original appearance.
Limburger Schloss, built in early 13th century by Gerlach von Ysenburg
Burgmannenhaus, built about 1544; serves as a museum today
St. Anna-Kirche (church), stained glass from third fourth of 14th century with eighteen scenes from the New Testament
Old Lahn Bridge, from 1315, place where the Via Publica (road) crossed the Lahn
In the Old Town stand many timber-frame houses from the 13th to 19th centuries. One peculiarity seen among the timber-framed houses of Limburg is the "hall house" from the High Middle Ages, which has a great hall on the ground floor. When restoration work began in the Old Town in 1972, the houses were carefully restored. Among the best known timber-frame houses are:
Haus Kleine Rütsche 4, narrowest spot on the historic trade road between Frankfurt and Cologne, whose breadth is written at the Haymarket (Heumarkt) in Cologne
Haus der sieben Laster (“House of the Seven Vices”) at Brückengasse 9, built in 1567, timber-frame house with carvings showing Christianity's seven deadly sins, namely pride, greed, envy, lust, gluttony, wrath and sloth
Werner-Senger-Haus, a beautiful stone hall house with timber-framed façade dating from the 13th century
Houses at the fishmarket. The square's name in the 13th century was still Fismart ("Yarn Market" or "Wool Market") in the Limburg dialect, and it was the Limburg wool weavers' trading centre
Römer 2-4-6, Germany's oldest freestanding timbered house; in the garden a mikvah was found
Rathaus ("Town Hall"), built in 1899
"Huttig" (town wall tower remnant)
Former noble estate of the Counts of Walderdorff at Fahrgasse 5
Twin towns – sister cities
Limburg an der Lahn is twinned with:
Lichfield, England, United Kingdom
Oudenburg, Belgium
Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon, France
Notable people
Imagina of Isenburg-Limburg (c. 1255 – 1313?), the Queen consort of Adolf of Nassau, King of Germany
Alois Anton Führer (1853–1930), indologist
Alexej Stachowitsch (1918–2013), Austrian-Russian author, pedagogue and songwriter, died there
Franz Kamphaus (born 1932), bishop emeritus of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Limburg
Theo Geisel (born 1948), physicist
Eberhard Metternich (born 1959), catholic church musician
Christoph Prégardien (born 1956), lyric tenor
Alison Browner (born 1957), Irish mezzo-soprano opera singer, based in Limburg an der Lahn
Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst (born 1959), prelate of the Catholic Church
Germar Rudolf (born 1964), chemist and a convicted Holocaust denier
Veronika Winter (born 1965), soprano
Stefan Saliger (born 1967), field hockey player
Peter W. Marx (born 1973), theatre and performance studies scholar
Tamara Bach (born 1976), youth book author
David Heiss, convicted murder
Gallery
Further reading
Stille, Eugen: Limburg an der Lahn und seine Geschichte, Limburger Vereinsdruckerei, Selbstverlag E. Stille, Limburg/Kassel 1971
Maibach, Heinz: Limburg an der Lahn in alten Ansichten, Siebte Auflage, Zaltbommel/Niederlande 1993
Fügen, Randolf: Highlights in Mittelhessen. 1. Auflage. Wartenberg Verlag Gudensberg-Gleichen 2003
Maibach, Heinz: Limburg an der Lahn in alten Ansichten. Siebte Auflage. Zaltbommel/Niederlande 1993; NA: Sutton, Erfurt 2010, .
Maibach, Heinz: Dokumente zur Limburger Stadt- und Kreisgeschichte 1870–1945. Limburg 1992, .
Fuchs, Johann-Georg: Limburger Altstadtbauten. Bürger und Begebenheiten. 2. Auflage. Limburg 2006.
Limburg im Fluss der Zeit. Schlaglichter aus 1100 Jahren Stadtgeschichte. (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Kreisstadt Limburg a. d. Lahn 1). Limburg 2010, .
Marten, Bettina: Limburg an der Lahn: Dom- und Stadtführer. Petersberg 2010, .
Waldecker, Christoph: Limburg in historischen Ansichten. Sutton, Erfurt 2010, . (Archivbilder)
Wagner, Harald: Limburg entdecken! Ein Stadtführer für Touristen und Einheimische. Limburg 2011, .
Waldecker, Christoph: Limburg an der Lahn. (Großer Kunstreiseführer 251). 2., erweiterte Auflage. Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2011, .
Limburg im Fluss der Zeit. (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Kreisstadt Limburg a. d. Lahn, 2). Vorträge zur Stadtgeschichte. Limburg 2013, .
Waldecker, Christoph: Zeitsprünge Limburg. Sutton, Erfurt 2014, .
Novels
Bracht, Horst: Galgenfrist. Historischer Limburg-Krimi. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2012, .
Bracht, Horst: Der Klosterbrauer. Limburg-Krimi. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2014, .
References
External links
Official website
Limburg Cathedral
Limburg Cathedral Boys' Choir
Pictures of Limburg and its cathedral
Towns in Hesse
Limburg-Weilburg
Hesse-Nassau | [
-0.46247434616088867,
0.6266632080078125,
-0.0809185653924942,
-1.4411946535110474,
-0.3001624643802643,
0.7160328030586243,
0.5465230941772461,
0.4577314555644989,
-0.5886589288711548,
-0.23145516216754913,
-0.27239692211151123,
0.2115086168050766,
0.026965808123350143,
-0.041105411946773... |
18390 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy%20Beria | Lavrentiy Beria | Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (; ; , ; – 23 December 1953) was a Georgian Bolshevik and Soviet politician, Marshal of the Soviet Union and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security, and chief of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and promoted to deputy premier under Stalin from 1941. He later officially joined the Politburo in 1946.
Beria was the longest-lived and most influential of Stalin's secret police chiefs, wielding his most substantial influence during and after World War II. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, he was responsible for organizing purges such as the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and officials. Beria would later also orchestrate the forced upheaval of minorities from the Caucasus as head of NKVD, an act that was declared as genocidal by various scholars and, as concerning Chechens, in 2004 by the European parliament. He simultaneously administered vast sections of the Soviet state, and acted as the de facto Marshal of the Soviet Union in command of NKVD field units responsible for barrier troops and Soviet partisan intelligence and sabotage operations on the Eastern Front during World War II. Beria administered the expansion of the Gulag labour camps, and was primarily responsible for overseeing the secret detention facilities for scientists and engineers known as .
After the war, he organised the communist takeover of the state institutions in central and eastern Europe. Beria's ruthlessness in his duties and skill at producing results culminated in his success in overseeing the Soviet atomic bomb project. Stalin gave it absolute priority, and the project was completed in under five years.
After Stalin's death in March 1953, Beria became First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers and head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In this dual capacity, he formed a troika with Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov that briefly led the country in Stalin's place.
A coup d'état by Nikita Khrushchev, with help from Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov, in June 1953 removed Beria from power. After being arrested, he was tried for treason and other offenses, sentenced to death, and executed on 23 December 1953. During his trial, and after his death, numerous allegations arose of Beria being a serial rapist and serial killer.
Early life and rise to power
Beria was born in Merkheuli, near Sukhumi, in the Sukhum Okrug of the Kutais Governorate (now Gulripshi District, de facto Republic of Abkhazia, or Georgia, then part of the Russian Empire). He was from the Mingrelian ethnic subgroup and grew up in a Georgian Orthodox family. Beria's mother, Marta Jaqeli (1868–1955), was deeply religious and church-going (she spent much time in church and died in a church building). She was a widow before marrying Beria's father, Pavel Khukhaevich Beria (1872–1922), a landowner from Abkhazia.
In his autobiography, Beria mentions only his sister and his niece, implying that his brother was (or any other siblings were) dead or had no relationship with Beria after he left Merkheuli. Beria attended a technical school in Sukhumi, and later claimed to have joined the Bolsheviks in March 1917 while a student in the Baku Polytechnicum (subsequently known as the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy). As a student, Beria distinguished himself in mathematics and the sciences. The Polytechnicum's curriculum concentrated on the petroleum industry.
He earlier worked for the anti-Bolshevik Mussavatists in Baku. After the Red Army captured the city on 28 April 1920, Beria was saved from execution because there was not enough time to arrange his shooting and replacement; it may also have been that Sergei Kirov intervened. While in prison, he formed a connection with Nina Gegechkori (1905–1991) his cellmate's niece, and they eloped on a train. She was 17, a trained scientist from an aristocratic family.
In 1919, at the age of twenty, Beria started his career in state security when the security service of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic hired him while he was still a student at the Polytechnicum. In 1920 or 1921 (accounts vary) Beria joined the Cheka, the original Bolshevik secret police. At that time, a Bolshevik revolt took place in the Menshevik-controlled Democratic Republic of Georgia, and the Red Army subsequently invaded. The Cheka became heavily involved in the conflict, which resulted in the defeat of the Mensheviks and the formation of the Georgian SSR. By 1922, Beria was deputy head of the Georgian branch of Cheka's successor, the OGPU.
In 1924, he led the repression of a Georgian nationalist uprising, after which up to 10,000 people were executed. For this display of "Bolshevik ruthlessness", Beria was appointed head of the "secret-political division" of the Transcaucasian OGPU and was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
In 1926, Beria became head of the Georgian OGPU; Sergo Ordzhonikidze, head of the Transcaucasian party, introduced him to fellow-Georgian Joseph Stalin. As a result, Beria became an ally in Stalin's rise to power. During his years at the helm of the Georgian OGPU, Beria effectively destroyed the intelligence networks that Turkey and Iran had developed in the Soviet Caucasus, while successfully penetrating the governments of these countries with his agents. He also took over Stalin's holiday security.
Beria was appointed First Secretary of the Communist Party of Georgia in 1931, and party leader for the whole Transcaucasian region in 1932. He became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1934. During this time, he began to attack fellow members of the Georgian Communist Party, particularly Gaioz Devdariani, who served as Minister of Education of the Georgian SSR. Beria ordered the executions of Devdariani's brothers George and Shalva, who held important positions in the Cheka and the Communist Party respectively.
He reportedly won Stalin's favour in the early 1930s, after faking a conspiracy to assassinate the Soviet leader that he then claimed to have foiled. By 1935, Beria had become one of Stalin's most trusted subordinates. He cemented his place in Stalin's entourage with a lengthy oration titled, "On the History of the Bolshevik Organisations in Transcaucasia" (later published as a book), which emphasised Stalin's role. When Stalin's purge of the Communist Party and government began in 1934 after the assassination of Leningrad party boss Sergei Kirov (1 December 1934), Beria ran the purges in Transcaucasia. He used the opportunity to settle many old scores in the politically turbulent Transcaucasian republics.
In June 1937, he said in a speech, "Let our enemies know that anyone who attempts to raise a hand against the will of our people, against the will of the party of Lenin and Stalin, will be mercilessly crushed and destroyed."
Head of the NKVD
In August 1938, Stalin brought Beria to Moscow as deputy head of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the ministry which oversaw the state security and police forces. Under Nikolai Yezhov, the NKVD carried out the Great Purge: the imprisonment or execution of millions of citizens throughout the Soviet Union as alleged "enemies of the people". By 1938, however, the oppression had become so extensive that it was damaging the infrastructure, economy and even the armed forces of the Soviet state, prompting Stalin to wind the purge down. Stalin had voted to appoint Georgy Malenkov as head of the NKVD, but he was over-ruled. In September, Beria was appointed head of the Main Administration of State Security (GUGB) of the NKVD, and in November he succeeded Yezhov as NKVD head. Yezhov was executed in 1940, and one account says he was personally strangled by Beria. The NKVD was purged next, with half of its personnel replaced by Beria loyalists, many of them from the Caucasus.
Although Beria's name is closely identified with the Great Purge because of his activities while deputy head of the NKVD, his leadership of the organisation marked an easing of the repression begun under Yezhov. Over 100,000 people were released from the labour camps. The government officially admitted that there had been some injustice and "excesses" during the purges, which were blamed entirely on Yezhov. The liberalisation was only relative: arrests and executions continued, and in 1940 the pace of the purges accelerated again. During this period, Beria supervised deportations of people identified as "political enemies" from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia after Soviet occupation of those countries.
In March 1939, Beria was appointed as a candidate member of the Communist Party's Politburo. Although he did not rise to full membership until 1946, he was by then one of the senior leaders of the Soviet state. In 1941, Beria was made a Commissar General of State Security, the highest quasi-military rank within the Soviet police system of that time, effectively comparable to a Marshal of the Soviet Union.
On 5 March 1940, after the Gestapo–NKVD Third Conference was held in Zakopane, Beria sent a note (no. 794/B) to Stalin in which he stated that the Polish prisoners of war kept at camps and prisons in western Belarus and Ukraine were enemies of the Soviet Union, and recommended their execution. Most of them were military officers, but there were also intelligentsia, doctors, priests, and others in a total of 22,000 people. With Stalin's approval, Beria's NKVD executed them in what became known as the Katyn massacre.
From October 1940 to February 1942, the NKVD under Beria carried out a new purge of the Red Army and related industries. In February 1941, Beria became Deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, and in June, following Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, he became a member of the State Defense Committee (GKO). During World War II, he took on major domestic responsibilities and mobilised the millions of people imprisoned in NKVD Gulag camps into wartime production. He took control of the manufacture of armaments, and (with Georgy Malenkov) aircraft and aircraft engines. This was the beginning of Beria's alliance with Malenkov, which later became of central importance.
In 1944, as Russia had repelled the German invasion, Beria was placed in charge of the various ethnic minorities accused of anti-sovietism and/or collaboration with the invaders, including the Balkars, Karachays, Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Pontic Greeks, and Volga Germans. All these groups were deported to Soviet Central Asia (see "Population transfer in the Soviet Union").
In December 1944, Beria's NKVD was assigned to supervise the Soviet atomic bomb project ("Task No. 1"), which built and tested a bomb by 29 August 1949. The project was extremely labour-intensive. At least 330,000 people, including 10,000 technicians, were involved. The Gulag system provided tens of thousands of people for work in uranium mines and for the construction and operation of uranium processing plants. They also constructed test facilities, such as those at Semipalatinsk and in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. The NKVD ensured the necessary security for the project.
In July 1945, as Soviet police ranks were converted to a military uniform system, Beria's rank was officially converted to that of Marshal of the Soviet Union. Although he had never held a traditional military command, Beria made a significant contribution to the victory of the Soviet Union in World War II through his organisation of wartime production and his use of partisans. Stalin never commented publicly on his performance nor awarded him recognition (i.e. Order of Victory), as he did for most other Soviet Marshals.
Abroad, Beria had met with Kim Il-sung, the future leader of North Korea, several times when the Soviet troops had declared war on Japan and occupied the northern half of Korea from August 1945. Beria recommended that Stalin install a communist leader in the occupied territories.
Post-war politics
With Stalin nearing 70, a concealed struggle for succession amongst his entourage dominated Kremlin politics in the post-war years. At the end of the war, Andrei Zhdanov seemed the most likely candidate. Zhdanov had served as the Communist Party leader in Leningrad during the war, and by 1946 had charge of all cultural matters. After 1946, Beria formed an alliance with Malenkov to counter Zhdanov's rise.
In January 1946, Beria resigned as chief of the NKVD while retaining general control over national security matters as Deputy Prime Minister and Curator of the Organs of State Security under Stalin. However, the new NKVD chief, Sergei Kruglov, was not a supporter of Beria. Also, by the summer of 1946, Beria's man Vsevolod Nikolayevich Merkulov was replaced as head of the Ministry for State Security (MGB) by Viktor Abakumov. Abakumov had headed SMERSH from 1943 to 1946; his relationship with Beria involved close collaboration (since Abakumov owed his rise to Beria's support and esteem), but also rivalry. Stalin had begun to encourage Abakumov to form his own network inside the MGB to counter Beria's dominance of the power ministries. Kruglov and Abakumov moved expeditiously to replace Beria's men in the security apparatus leadership with new people. Very soon, Deputy Minister Stepan Mamulov of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs was the only close Beria ally left outside foreign intelligence, on which Beria kept a grip. In the following months, Abakumov started carrying out important operations without consulting Beria, often working with Zhdanov, and on Stalin's direct orders. These operations were aimed by Stalininitially tangentially, but with time more directlyat Beria.
One of the first such moves involved the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee affair, which commenced in October 1946 and eventually led to the murder of Solomon Mikhoels and the arrest of many other members. This affair damaged Beria; not only had he championed the creation of the committee in 1942, but his own entourage included a substantial number of Jews.
After Zhdanov died suddenly in August 1948, Beria and Malenkov consolidated their power by means of a purge of Zhdanov's associates in the so-called "Leningrad Affair". Those executed included Zhdanov's deputy, Alexey Kuznetsov; the economic chief, Nikolai Voznesensky; the Party head in Leningrad, Pyotr Popkov; and the Prime Minister of the Russian Republic, Mikhail Rodionov. However, Beria was unable to purge Mikhail Suslov, whom he hated and felt increasingly uncomfortable with his growing relationship with Stalin (Russian historian Roy Medvedev speculates in his book, Neizvestnyi Stalin, that Stalin had made Suslov his "secret heir"). Evidently, Beria felt so threatened by him that after his arrest in 1953, documents were found in his safe labeling Suslov as the No. 1 person he wanted to "eliminate".
During the postwar years, Beria supervised installation of Communist regimes in the countries of Eastern Europe and hand-picked the Soviet-backed leaders. Starting in 1948, Abakumov initiated several investigations against these leaders, which culminated with the arrest in November 1952 of Rudolf Slánský, Bedřich Geminder, and others in Czechoslovakia. These men were frequently accused of Zionism, "rootless cosmopolitanism", and providing weapons to Israel. Such charges deeply disturbed Beria, as he had directly ordered the sale of large amounts of Czech arms to Israel. Altogether, 14 Czechoslovak Communist leaders, 11 of them Jewish, were tried, convicted, and executed (see Slánský trial). Similar investigations in Poland and other Soviet satellite countries occurred at the same time.
In 1951, Abakumov was replaced by Semyon Ignatyev, who further intensified the anti-Semitic campaign. On 13 January 1953, the biggest anti-Semitic affair in the Soviet Union started with an article in Pravdait began what became known as the Doctors' plot, in which a number of the country's prominent Jewish physicians were accused of poisoning top Soviet leaders and arrested. Concurrently, the Soviet press began an anti-Semitic propaganda campaign, euphemistically termed the "struggle against rootless cosmopolitanism". Initially, 37 men were arrested, but the number quickly grew into hundreds. Scores of Soviet Jews were dismissed from their jobs, arrested, sent to the Gulag, or executed. The "Doctors' plot" was presumably invented by Stalin as an excuse to dismiss Beria and replace him with Ignatyev or some other MGB functionary. A few days after Stalin's death on 5 March 1953, Beria freed all the arrested doctors, announced that the entire matter was fabricated, and arrested the MGB functionaries directly involved.
In other international issues, Beria (along with Mikoyan) correctly foresaw the victory (1949–1950) of Mao Zedong in the Chinese Civil War and greatly helped the Chinese Communists by letting them use Soviet-occupied Manchuria as a staging area and arranging large weapons shipments to the People's Liberation Army, mainly from the recently captured equipment of the Japanese Kwantung Army.
Stalin's death
Stalin's aide Vasili Lozgachev reported that Beria and Malenkov were the first members of the Politburo to see Stalin's condition when he was found unconscious. They arrived at Stalin's dacha at Kuntsevo at 03:00 on 2 March 1953, after being called by Khrushchev and Bulganin. The latter two did not want to risk Stalin's wrath by checking themselves. Lozgachev tried to explain to Beria that the unconscious Stalin (still in his soiled clothing) was "sick and needed medical attention". Beria angrily dismissed his claims as panic-mongering and quickly left, ordering him, "Don't bother us, don't cause a panic and don't disturb Comrade Stalin!" Alexsei Rybin (Stalin's bodyguard) recalls "No one wanted to telephone Beria, since most of the personal bodyguards hated Beria".
Calling a doctor was deferred for a full 12 hours after Stalin was rendered paralysed, incontinent and unable to speak. This decision is noted as "extraordinary" by the historian Simon Sebag Montefiore but also consistent with the standard Stalinist policy of deferring all decision-making (no matter how necessary or obvious) without official orders from higher authority. Beria's decision to avoid immediately calling a doctor was tacitly supported (or at least not opposed) by the rest of the Politburo, which was rudderless without Stalin's micromanagement and paralysed by a legitimate fear he would suddenly recover and take reprisals on anyone who had dared to act without his orders. Stalin's suspicion of doctors in the wake of the Doctors' Plot was well known at the time of his sickness; his private physician was already being tortured in the basement of the Lubyanka for suggesting the leader required more bed rest.
Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that Beria had, immediately after Stalin's stroke, gone about "spewing hatred against [Stalin] and mocking him". When Stalin showed signs of consciousness, Beria dropped to his knees and kissed his hand. When Stalin fell unconscious again, Beria immediately stood and spat.
After Stalin's death on 5 March 1953, Beria's ambitions sprang into full force. In the uneasy silence following the cessation of Stalin's last agonies, Beria was the first to dart forward to kiss his lifeless form (a move likened by Montefiore to "wrenching a dead King's ring off his finger"). While the rest of Stalin's inner circle (even Molotov, saved from certain liquidation) stood sobbing unashamedly over the body, Beria reportedly appeared "radiant", "regenerated" and "glistening with ill-concealed relish". When Beria left the room, he broke the sombre atmosphere by shouting loudly for his driver, his voice echoing with what Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva called "the ring of triumph unconcealed". Alliluyeva noticed how the Politburo seemed openly frightened of Beria and unnerved by his bold display of ambition. "He's off to take power," Mikoyan recalled muttering to Khrushchev. That prompted a "frantic" dash for their own limousines to intercept him at the Kremlin.
Stalin's death prevented a final purge of Old Bolsheviks Mikoyan and Molotov, for which Stalin had been laying the groundwork in the year prior to his death. Shortly after Stalin's death, Beria announced triumphantly to the Politburo that he had "done [Stalin] in" and "saved [us] all", according to Molotov's memoirs. The assertion that Stalin was poisoned by Beria's associates has been supported by Edvard Radzinsky and other authors.
First Deputy Premier and Soviet triumvirate
After Stalin's death, Beria was appointed First Deputy Premier and reappointed head of the MVD, which he merged with the MGB. His close ally Malenkov was the new Premier and initially the most powerful man in the post-Stalin leadership. Beria was second most powerful, and given Malenkov's personal weakness, was poised to become the power behind the throne and ultimately leader himself. Khrushchev became Party Secretary. Voroshilov became Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (i.e., the head of state).
Beria undertook some measures of liberalisation immediately after Stalin's death. He reorganised the MVD and drastically reduced its economic power and penal responsibilities. A number of costly construction projects such as the Salekhard–Igarka Railway were scrapped, and the remaining industrial enterprises became affiliated under corresponding economic ministries. The Gulag system was transferred to the Ministry of Justice, and a mass release of over a million prisoners was announced, although only prisoners convicted for "non-political" crimes were released. The amnesty, therefore, led to a substantial increase in crime and would later be used against Beria by his rivals.
To consolidate power, Beria also took steps to recognise the rights of non-Russian nationalities. He questioned the traditional policy of Russification and encouraged local officials to assert their own identities. He first turned to Georgia, where Stalin's fabricated Mingrelian affair was called off and the republic's key posts were replaced by pro-Beria Georgians. Beria's policies in Ukraine alarmed Khrushchev, for whom Ukraine was a power base. Khrushchev then tried to draw Malenkov to his side, warning that "Beria is sharpening his knives".
Khrushchev opposed the alliance between Beria and Malenkov, but he was initially unable to challenge them. Khrushchev's opportunity came in June 1953 when a spontaneous uprising against the East German Communist regime broke out in East Berlin. Based on Beria's statements, other leaders suspected that in the wake of the uprising, he might be willing to trade the reunification of Germany and the end of the Cold War for massive aid from the United States, as had been received in World War II. The cost of the war still weighed heavily on the Soviet economy. Beria craved the vast financial resources that another (more sustained) relationship with the United States could provide. He gave Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania serious prospects of national autonomy, possibly similar to other Soviet satellite states in Europe. Beria said of East Germany, "It is not even a real state but one kept in being only by Soviet troops."
The East German uprising convinced Molotov, Malenkov, and Nikolai Bulganin that Beria's policies were dangerous and destabilising to Soviet power. Within days of the events in Germany, Khrushchev persuaded the other leaders to support a Party coup against Beria; Beria's principal ally Malenkov abandoned him.
Arrest, trial and execution
Beria was first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers and an influential Politburo member and saw himself as Stalin's successor, while wider Politburo members had contrasting thoughts on future leadership. On 26 June 1953, Beria was arrested and held in an undisclosed location near Moscow. Accounts of Beria's fall vary considerably. The historical consensus is that Khrushchev prepared an elaborate ambush, convening a meeting of the Presidium on 26 June, where he suddenly launched a scathing attack on Beria, accusing him of being a traitor and spy in the pay of British intelligence. Beria was taken completely by surprise. He asked, "What's going on, Nikita Sergeyevich? Why are you picking fleas in my trousers?" Molotov and others quickly spoke against Beria one after the other, followed by a motion by Khrushchev for his instant dismissal.
When Beria finally realised what was happening and plaintively appealed to Malenkov (an old friend) to speak for him, Malenkov silently hung his head and pressed a button on his desk. This was an arranged signal to Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov and a group of armed officers in a nearby room, who burst in and arrested Beria.
As Beria's men were guarding the Kremlin at the time, he was held there in a special cell until nightfall and then smuggled out in the trunk of a car. He was taken first to the Moscow guardhouse and then to the bunker of the headquarters of Moscow Military District. Defence Minister Nikolai Bulganin ordered the Kantemirovskaya Tank Division and Tamanskaya Motor Rifle Division to move into Moscow to prevent security forces loyal to Beria from rescuing him. Many of Beria's subordinates, proteges and associates were also arrested, among them Vsevolod Merkulov, Bogdan Kobulov, Sergey Goglidze, Vladimir Dekanozov, Pavel Meshik, and Lev Vlodzimirskiy. Pravda did not announce Beria's arrest until 10 July, crediting it to Malenkov and referring to Beria's "criminal activities against the Party and the State".
Beria and the others were tried by a "special session" () of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union on 23 December 1953 with no defense counsel and no right of appeal. Marshal of the Soviet Union Ivan Konev was the chairman of the court.
Beria was found guilty of:
Treason. It was alleged that he had maintained secret connections with foreign intelligence services. In particular, attempts to initiate peace talks with Hitler in 1941 through the ambassador of the Kingdom of Bulgaria were classified as treason, though Beria had been acting on the orders of Stalin and Molotov. It was also alleged that Beria, who in 1942 helped organise the defence of the North Caucasus, tried to let the Germans occupy the Caucasus. Beria's suggestion to his assistants that to improve foreign relations it was reasonable to transfer the Kaliningrad Oblast to Germany, part of Karelia to Finland, the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic to Romania and the Kuril Islands to Japan also formed part of the allegations against him.
Terrorism. Beria's participation in the purge of the Red Army in 1941 was classified as an act of terrorism.
Counter-revolutionary activity during the Russian Civil War. In 1919, Beria worked in the security service of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. Beria maintained that he was assigned to that work by the Hummet party, which subsequently merged with the Adalat Party, the Ahrar Party, and the Baku Bolsheviks to establish the Azerbaijan Communist Party.
Beria and all the other defendants were sentenced to death on the day of the trial. The other six defendants were shot immediately after the trial ended. They were Dekanozov, Merkulov, Vlodzimirsky, Meshik, Goglidze and Kobulov. Beria was executed separately; he allegedly pleaded on his knees before collapsing to the floor wailing. He was shot through the forehead by General Pavel Batitsky. His final moments bore great similarity to those of his own predecessor, NKVD Chief Nikolai Yezhov, who begged for his life before his execution in 1940. Beria's body was cremated and the remains buried in Communal Grave No. 3 at Donskoi Monastery Cemetery in Moscow. Beria's execution was hailed by Georgy Zhukov, Konstantin Rokossovsky, Semyon Timoshenko, Nikolai Bulganin, Aleksandr Vasilevsky, Kliment Voroshilov, Semyon Budyonny and Rodion Malinovsky who at the time all held the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union, as well as Vasily Chuikov, who like Batitsky was a future Marshal of the Soviet Union.
Sexual predation
At Beria's trial in 1953, it became known that he had committed numerous rapes during the years he was NKVD chief. Simon Sebag Montefiore, a biographer of Stalin, concluded the information "reveals a sexual predator who used his power to indulge himself in obsessive depravity". After his death, charges of sexual abuse and rape were disputed by people close to him including his wife Nina and his son Sergo.
According to official testimony, in Soviet archives, by Colonel Rafael Semyonovich Sarkisov and Colonel Sardion Nikolaevich Nadaraiatwo of Beria's bodyguardson warm nights during the war, Beria was often driven around Moscow in his limousine. He would point out young women that he wanted to be taken to his mansion, where wine and a feast awaited them. After dining, Beria would take the women into his soundproofed office and rape them. Beria's bodyguards reported that their duties included handing each victim a flower bouquet as she left the house. Accepting it implied that the sex had been consensual; refusal would mean arrest. Sarkisov reported that after one woman rejected Beria's advances and ran out of his office, Sarkisov mistakenly handed her the flowers anyway. The enraged Beria declared, "Now, it is not a bouquet, it is a wreath! May it rot on your grave!". The NKVD arrested the woman the next day.
Women also submitted to Beria's sexual advances in exchange for the promise of freedom for imprisoned relatives. In one case, Beria picked up Tatiana Okunevskaya, a well-known Soviet actress, under the pretence of bringing her to perform for the Politburo. Instead he took her to his dacha, where he offered to free her father and grandmother from prison if she submitted. He then raped her, telling her, "Scream or not, it doesn't matter". In fact, Beria knew that Okunevskaya's relatives had been executed months earlier. Okunevskaya was arrested shortly afterwards and sentenced to solitary confinement in the Gulag, which she survived.
Beria was distrusted by both Stalin and high-ranking Soviet officials. In one instance, when Stalin learned his daughter Svetlana was alone with Beria at his house, he telephoned her and told her to leave immediately. When Beria complimented Alexander Poskrebyshev's daughter on her beauty, Poskrebyshev quickly pulled her aside and instructed her, "Don't ever accept a lift from Beria". After taking an interest in Soviet Marshal Kliment Voroshilov's daughter-in-law during a party at their summer dacha, Beria shadowed their car closely all the way back to the Kremlin, terrifying Voroshilov's wife.
Before and during the war, Beria directed Sarkisov to keep a list of the names and phone numbers of the women that he had sex with. Eventually, he ordered Sarkisov to destroy the list as a security risk, but Sarkisov retained a secret copy. When Beria's fall from power began, Sarkisov passed the list to Viktor Abakumov, the former wartime head of SMERSH and now chief of the MGBthe successor to the NKVD. Abakumov was already aggressively building a case against Beria. Stalin, who was also seeking to undermine Beria, was thrilled by the detailed records kept by Sarkisov, demanding: "Send me everything this asshole writes down!" Sarkisov reported that Beria had contracted syphilis during the war, for which he was secretly treated (a fact Beria later admitted during his interrogation). The Russian government acknowledged Sarkisov's handwritten list of Beria's victims in 2003, which reportedly contains hundreds of names. One of the specialists who has been able to study Beria's case file stated that the list is almost identical to the lists of women with whom Nikolai Vlasik was accused of having affairs with. The victims' names will be released to the public in 2028.
Evidence suggests that Beria also murdered some of these women. In 1993, construction workers installing streetlights unearthed human bones near Beria's Moscow villa. Skulls, pelvises and leg bones were found. In 1998, the skeletal remains of five young women were discovered during work carried out on the water-pipes in the garden of the same villa (now the Tunisian Embassy). Each had been shot through the base of the skull and had likely been naked when buried due to the lack of articles found on the bodies. Medical examiners estimated that the remains had been placed alongside the conduit at the time it was laid, in the summer of 1949. In 2011, building workers digging a ditch in Moscow city centre unearthed a common grave near the same residence, containing a pile of human bones, including two children's skulls covered with lime or chlorine. The lack of articles and the condition of the remains indicate that these bodies were also buried naked in this same time period. According to Martin Sixsmith, in a BBC documentary, "Beria spent his nights having teenagers abducted from the streets and brought here for him to rape. Those who resisted were strangled and buried in his wife's rose garden." Vladimir Zharov, Head of the Department of Forensic Medicine at Moscow’s State University of Medicine and Dentistry and then the head of the criminal forensics bureau, said a torture chamber existed in the basement of Beria's Moscow home and that there probably was an underground passage to burial sites.
The testimony of Sarkisov and Nadaraia has been partially corroborated by Edward Ellis Smith, an American who served in the US embassy in Moscow after the war. According to historian Amy Knight, "Smith noted that Beria's escapades were common knowledge among embassy personnel because his house was on the same street as a residence for Americans, and those who lived there saw girls brought to Beria's house late at night in a limousine."
Honours and awards
Beria was deprived of all titles and awards on December 23, 1953.
Soviet Union
Honorary State Security Officer, twice
Stalin Prize, twice (1949, 1951)
Soviet Republics
Order of the Red Banner of Labour (Armenian SSR)
Order of the Red Banner of Labour (Azerbaijan SSR)
Order of the Red Banner of Labour (Georgian SSR)
Order of the Red Banner (Georgian SSR)
Order of the Republic (Republic of Tuva)
Mongolia
In popular culture
Theatre
Beria is the central character in Good Night, Uncle Joe by Canadian playwright David Elendune. The play is a fictionalised account of the events leading up to Stalin's death.
Film
Georgian film director Tengiz Abuladze based the character of dictator Varlam Aravidze on Beria in his 1984 film Repentance. Although banned in the Soviet Union for its semi-allegorical critique of Stalinism, it premiered at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, winning the FIPRESCI Prize, Grand Prize of the Jury, and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury.
Beria was played by British actor Bob Hoskins in the 1991 film Inner Circle, and by David Suchet in Red Monarch. Simon Russell Beale played Beria in the 2017 satirical film The Death of Stalin.
Television
In the 1958 CBS production of "The Plot to Kill Stalin" for Playhouse 90, Beria was portrayed by E. G. Marshall. In the 1992 HBO movie Stalin, Roshan Seth was cast as Beria.
In the 1999 film adaptation Animal Farm based on George Orwell's novel, Napoleon's bodyguard Pincher represents Beria.
Beria appears in the third episode ("Superbomb") of the four-part 2007 BBC docudrama series Nuclear Secrets, played by Boris Isarov. In the 2008 BBC documentary series World War II: Behind Closed Doors, Beria was portrayed by Polish actor .
He was also an important character in the 2013 Russian mini-series Kill Stalin, produced by Star Media.
In the 1969 Doctor Who story The War Games, actor Philip Madoc based the coldly evil War Lord on Beria, even wearing his pince-nez glasses.
Literature
Richard Condon's 1959 novel The Manchurian Candidate describes brainwashed Raymond Shaw, the "perfectly prefabricated assassin", as "this dream by Lavrenti Beria".
In the 1964 science fiction novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Hard to Be a God, Beria is personified in the character Don Reba who serves as the king's minister of defence.
Alan Williams wrote a spy novel titled The Beria Papers, the plot of which revolves around Beria's alleged secret diaries recording his political and sexual depravities.
At the opening of Kingsley Amis' The Alteration, Lavrentiy Beria figures as "Monsignor Laurentius", paired with the similarly black-clad cleric "Monsignor Henricus" of the Holy Office (i.e., the Inquisition); the one to whom Beria was compared by Stalin in our own timeline: Heinrich Himmler. In the novel, both men are on the same side, serving an alternate-world Catholic Empire.
Beria is a significant character in the alternate history/alien invasion novel series Worldwar by Harry Turtledove, as well as the Axis of Time series by John Birmingham.
In the 1981 novel Noble House by James Clavell, set in 1963 Hong Kong, the main character Ian Dunross received from Alan Medford Grant a set of secret documents regarding a Soviet spy-ring in Hong Kong code-named "Sevrin". The document was signed by an LB, believed by Grant (and the mysterious Tip Tok-Toh) to be Lavrentiy Beria (written as Lavrenti Beria in the novel).
Beria is a significant character in the opening chapters of the 1998 novel Archangel by British novelist Robert Harris.
Beria is a minor character in the 2009 novel The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. Beria is described as the boss of the Soviet state's security and is in attendance at a meal with the main character and Stalin.
As "der Kleine Große Mann" ("the Little Big Man"), Beria appears as the lover of one of the leading characters, Christine, in the 2014 novel Das achte Leben (Für Brilka) (translated as "The Eighth Life (For Brilka)") by Nino Haratischwili.
See also
History of the Soviet Union
Democracy and Totalitarianism
Notes
References
Works cited
Further reading
.
External links
.
.
Interview with Sergo Beria
An outline of the Russian Supreme Court decision of 29 May 2000
Annotated bibliography for Lavrentiy Beria from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Current Intelligence. The Reversal of the Doctors' Plot and Its Immediate Aftermath, 17 July 1953.
Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Current Intelligence. Purge of L.P. Beria, 17 April 1954.
Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Current Intelligence. Summarization of Reports Preceding Beria Purge, 17 August 1954.
Lavrenty Beria performed by Bob Hoskins and other russian historical celebrities played by foreign stars
1899 births
1953 deaths
NKVD officers
People from Gulripshi District
People from Sukhum Okrug
Mingrelians
Atheists from Georgia (country)
Old Bolsheviks
Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union members
People's commissars and ministers of the Soviet Union
First convocation members of the Soviet of the Union
Second convocation members of the Soviet of the Union
Third convocation members of the Soviet of the Union
Cheka
Commissars General of State Security
Directors of intelligence agencies
First Secretaries of the Georgian Communist Party
Former Georgian Orthodox Christians
Communists from Georgia (country)
Genocide perpetrators
Soviet Georgian generals
Soviet Georgian NKVD officials
Spymasters
Heroes of Socialist Labour
Marshals of the Soviet Union
Nuclear weapons program of the Soviet Union
People of World War II from Georgia (country)
Recipients of the Order of Lenin
Recipients of the Order of Suvorov, 1st class
Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner
Stalin Prize winners
Great Purge perpetrators
Soviet rapists
People executed for treason against the Soviet Union
Members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union executed by the Soviet Union
Executed Soviet people from Georgia (country)
People from Georgia (country) executed by the Soviet Union
People executed by the Soviet Union by firearm
Deaths by firearm in Russia
Suspected serial killers | [
-0.17402228713035583,
0.19831125438213348,
-0.6323935985565186,
-0.35153746604919434,
-0.09803741425275803,
0.7777330279350281,
0.6852731704711914,
-0.5894302725791931,
-0.2636166512966156,
0.21273508667945862,
-0.825413167476654,
0.466116338968277,
-0.8075679540634155,
0.5419797301292419,... |
18391 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyonel%20Feininger | Lyonel Feininger | Lyonel Charles Feininger (July 17, 1871January 13, 1956) was a German-American painter, and a leading exponent of Expressionism. He also worked as a caricaturist and comic strip artist. He was born and grew up in New York City, traveling to Germany at 16 to study and perfect his art. He started his career as a cartoonist in 1894 and met with much success in this area. He was also a commercial caricaturist for 20 years for magazines and newspapers in the USA and Germany. At the age of 36, he started to work as a fine artist. He also produced a large body of photographic works between 1928 and the mid 1950s, but he kept these primarily within his circle of friends. He was also a pianist and composer, with several piano compositions and fugues for organ extant.
Life and work
Lyonel Feininger was born to German-American violinist and composer Karl Feininger and American singer Elizabeth Feininger. He was born and grew up in New York City, but traveled to Germany at the age of 16 in 1887 to study. In 1888, he moved to Berlin and studied at the Königliche Akademie Berlin under Ernst Hancke. He continued his studies at art schools in Berlin with Karl Schlabitz, and in Paris with sculptor Filippo Colarossi. He started as a caricaturist for several magazines including Harper's Round Table, Harper's Young People, Humoristische Blätter, Lustige Blätter, Das Narrenschiff, Berliner Tageblatt and Ulk.
In 1900, he met Clara Fürst, daughter of the painter Gustav Fürst. He married her in 1901, and they had two daughters. In 1905, he separated from his wife after meeting Julia Berg. He married Berg in 1908 and the couple had three boys.
The artist was represented with drawings at the exhibitions of the annual Berlin Secession in the years 1901 through 1903.
Feininger's career as cartoonist started in 1894. He was working for several German, French and American magazines. In February 1906, when a quarter of Chicago's population was of German descent, James Keeley, editor of The Chicago Tribune traveled to Germany to procure the services of the most popular humor artists. He recruited Feininger to illustrate two comic strips "The Kin-der-Kids" and "Wee Willie Winkie's World" for the Chicago Tribune. The strips were noted for their fey humor and graphic experimentation. He also worked as a commercial caricaturist for 20 years for various newspapers and magazines in both the United States and Germany. Later, Art Spiegelman wrote in The New York Times Book Review, that Feininger's comics have "achieved a breathtaking formal grace unsurpassed in the history of the medium."
Feininger started working as a fine artist at the age of 36. He was a member of the Berliner Sezession in 1909, and he was associated with German expressionist groups: Die Brücke, the Novembergruppe, Gruppe 1919, the Blaue Reiter circle and Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four). His first solo exhibit was at Sturm Gallery in Berlin, 1917. When Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Germany in 1919, Feininger was his first faculty appointment, and became the master artist in charge of the printmaking workshop.
From 1909 until 1921, Feininger spent summer vacations on the island of Usedom to recover and to get new inspiration. Typical of works from this period were marine settings from the shores of the Baltic See (Ostsee). He continued to create paintings and drawings of Benz for the rest of his life, even after returning to live in the United States. A tour of the sites appearing in the works of Feininger follows a path with markers in the ground to guide visitors.
He designed the cover for the Bauhaus 1919 manifesto: an expressionist woodcut 'cathedral'. He taught at the Bauhaus for several years. Among the students who attended his workshops were Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack (German/Australian (1893–1965), Hans Friedrich Grohs (German 1892 - 1981), and Margarete Koehler-Bittkow (German/American, 1898–1964).
When the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, the situation became unbearable for Feininger and his wife. The Nazi Party declared his work to be "degenerate". They moved to America after his work was exhibited in the 'degenerate art' (Entartete Kunst) in 1936, but before the 1937 exhibition in Munich. He taught at Mills College before returning to New York. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1955.
In addition to drawing, Feininger created art with painted toy figures being photographed in front of drawn backgrounds.
Feininger produced a large body of photographic works between 1928 - he was then already 58 years old - and the mid-1950s. He then lived and tought in Dessau, where his neighbor was the famous experimental photograph László Moholy-Nagy, who encouraged him. He kept his photographic work within his circle of friends, and it was not shared with the public in his lifetime. He gave some prints away to his colleagues Walter Gropius and Alfred H. Barr Jr.
Feininger also had intermittent activity as a pianist and composer, with several piano compositions and fugues for organ extant. In tandem with the Whitney retrospective, the American Symphony Orchestra under Leon Botstein, at Carnegie Hall on 21 October 2011, performed three orchestral fugues written by Feininger. Barbara Haskell, curator of the Whitney exhibit, wrote that for his entire life, Feininger credited Bach with having been his "master in painting."
After his death on January 13, 1956, he was interred at Mount Hope Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. His sons, Andreas Feininger and T. Lux Feininger, both became noted artists, the former as a photographer and the latter as a photographer and painter. T. Lux Feininger died July 7, 2011 at the age of 101.
Major retrospectives
A major retrospective exhibition of Lyonel Feininger's work was put on in 2011-2012: it opened initially at the Whitney Museum of American Art, June 30 through October 16, 2011, subsequently at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, January 1 through May 13, 2012. The exhibition is described as "the first in Feininger's native country in more than forty-five years, and the first ever to include the full breadth of his art" and as "accompanied by a richly illustrated monograph with a feature essay that provides a broad overview of Feininger's career..." Many critics have argued that the artist's work was at its most mature around 1910 in works in which the power of Feininger as illustrator balance his abstract side; however, we have to consider the possibility that Feininger used cubism as a more artistically succinct tool to establish his version of the concept known as the objective correlative.
An important retrospective exhibition of Lyonel Feininger's photographic work took place Germany and the USA in 2011-2012, from Berlin (Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen) to Cambridge, Massachusetts (Busch-Reisinger Museum), through Munich (Pinakothek der Moderne) and Los Angeles (J. Paul Getty Museum).
In popular culture
Feininger's
"The Market Church at Halle" (1930) was prominently featured in the first three seasons of the iconic television show Bewitched hanging over the desk in Darren Stephens' office.
Art market
At a 2001 Christie's auction in London, Feininger's painting The Green Bridge (1909) was sold for £2.42 million.
At a 2007 Sotheby’s auction in New York, Feininger’s oil painting "Jesuits III" (1915) sold for $23,280,000.
At a 2017 Sotheby's auction in New York, Feininger's oil painting Fin de séance (1910) sold for $5,637,500.
Selected works
1907, Der weiße Mann, (Collection Museo Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid)
1910, Straße im Dämmern, (Sprengel Museum, Hannover)
1913, Gelmeroda I, (Private collection, New York)
1913, Leuchtbake, (Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany)
1916, Grüne Brücke II (Green Bridge II), (North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh)
1918, Teltow II, (Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin)
1918, "Yellow Streets II", (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Montréal)
1920, Ostsee-Segelboote II, (Private collection, Wichita, KS)
1922, Church of Heiligenhafen, (Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC)
1925, Barfüßerkirche in Erfurt I, (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart)
1926, Barfüßerkirche II (Church of the Minorities II)
1929, Halle, Am Trödel, (Bauhaus-Archive, Berlin)
1931, Die Türme über der Stadt (Halle), (Museum Ludwig, Köln)
1936, Gelmeroda XIII, (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
1940, The River, (Worcester Art Museum, MA)
See also
Cubism
References
Further reading
Haskell, Barbara. Lyonel Feininger: At The Edge of the World. Exhibition Catalogue. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2011
Muir, Laura and Nathan Timpano. Lyonel Feininger: Photographs, 1928-1939. Cambridge: Harvard Art Museums and Hatje Cantz, 2011
Nisbet, Peter. Lyonel Feininger: Drawings and Watercolors. Cambridge: Harvard Art Museums and Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011
External links
Feininger retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Lyonel Feininger: At the Edge of the World
Lyonel Feininger Project
Moeller Fine Art - Lyonel Feininger Moeller Fine Art, New York + Berlin, world expert on Lyonel Feininger
The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum: Lyonel Feininger digital exhibit
Lyonel Feininger at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on April 15, 2015.
Available Works and Biography Galerie Ludorff, Düsseldorf, Germany
Biography
German male painters
American male painters
American comic strip cartoonists
American comics artists
German comics artists
American illustrators
German illustrators
American caricaturists
German caricaturists
1871 births
1956 deaths
20th-century German painters
20th-century male artists
20th-century American painters
Bauhaus teachers
Chicago Tribune people
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Mills College faculty
Modern painters
Black Mountain College faculty
Académie Colarossi alumni
Artists from New York City
American people of German descent | [
0.23180826008319855,
0.5132981538772583,
-0.5975698232650757,
-0.2036907970905304,
0.177824005484581,
0.6181886196136475,
0.6297147274017334,
-0.58734130859375,
-0.2505275309085846,
-0.635138750076294,
-0.4969988167285919,
-0.026665838435292244,
-0.4047643840312958,
0.3375803232192993,
0... |
18393 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life | Life | Life is a characteristic that distinguishes physical entities that have biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased (they have died) or because they never had such functions and are classified as inanimate. Various forms of life exist, such as plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria. Biology is the science that studies life.
There is currently no consensus regarding the definition of life. One popular definition is that organisms are open systems that maintain homeostasis, are composed of cells, have a life cycle, undergo metabolism, can grow, adapt to their environment, respond to stimuli, reproduce and evolve. Other definitions sometimes include non-cellular life forms such as viruses and viroids.
Abiogenesis is the natural process of life arising from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. The prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities was not a single event, but a gradual process of increasing complexity. Life on Earth first appeared as early as 4.28 billion years ago, soon after ocean formation 4.41 billion years ago, and not long after the formation of Earth 4.54 billion years ago. The earliest known life forms are bacteria. Life on Earth is probably descended from an RNA world, although RNA-based life may not have been the first life to have existed. Metal-Binding Proteins that allowed biological electron transfer may have evolved from minerals. The classic 1952 Miller–Urey experiment and similar research demonstrated that most amino acids, the chemical constituents of the proteins used in all living organisms, can be synthesized from inorganic compounds under conditions intended to replicate those of the early Earth. Complex organic molecules occur in the Solar System and in interstellar space, and these molecules may have provided starting material for the development of life on Earth.
Since its primordial beginnings, life on Earth has changed its environment on a geologic time scale, but it has also adapted to survive in most ecosystems and conditions. Some microorganisms, called extremophiles, thrive in physically or geochemically extreme environments that are detrimental to most other life on Earth. The cell is considered the structural and functional unit of life. There are two kinds of cells, prokaryotic and eukaryotic, both of which consist of cytoplasm enclosed within a membrane and contain many biomolecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. Cells reproduce through a process of cell division, in which the parent cell divides into two or more daughter cells.
In the past, there have been many attempts to define what is meant by "life" through obsolete concepts such as Odic force, hylomorphism, spontaneous generation and vitalism, that have now been disproved by biological discoveries. Aristotle is considered to be the first person to classify organisms. Later, Carl Linnaeus introduced his system of binomial nomenclature for the classification of species. Eventually new groups and categories of life were discovered, such as cells and microorganisms, forcing significant revisions of the structure of relationships between living organisms. Though currently only known on Earth, life need not be restricted to it, and many scientists speculate in the existence of extraterrestrial life. Artificial life is a computer simulation or human-made reconstruction of any aspect of life, which is often used to examine systems related to natural life.
Death is the permanent termination of all biological processes which sustain an organism, and as such, is the end of its life. Extinction is the term describing the dying-out of a group or taxon, usually a species. Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of organisms.
Definitions
The definition of life has long been a challenge for scientists and philosophers. This is partially because life is a process, not a substance. This is complicated by a lack of knowledge of the characteristics of living entities, if any, that may have developed outside of Earth. Philosophical definitions of life have also been put forward, with similar difficulties on how to distinguish living things from the non-living. Legal definitions of life have also been described and debated, though these generally focus on the decision to declare a human dead, and the legal ramifications of this decision. As many as 123 definitions of life have been compiled. One definition seems to be favored by NASA: "a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution". More simply, life is, "matter that can reproduce itself and evolve as survival dictates".
Biology
Since there is no unequivocal definition of life, most current definitions in biology are descriptive. Life is considered a characteristic of something that preserves, furthers or reinforces its existence in the given environment. This characteristic exhibits all or most of the following traits:
Homeostasis: regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, sweating to reduce temperature
Organization: being structurally composed of one or more cells – the basic units of life
Metabolism: transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.
Growth: maintenance of a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter.
Adaptation: the ability to change over time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity, diet, and external factors.
Response to stimuli: a response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multicellular organisms. A response is often expressed by motion; for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism), and chemotaxis.
Reproduction: the ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism or sexually from two parent organisms.
These complex processes, called physiological functions, have underlying physical and chemical bases, as well as signaling and control mechanisms that are essential to maintaining life.
Alternative definitions
From a physics perspective, living beings are thermodynamic systems with an organized molecular structure that can reproduce itself and evolve as survival dictates. Thermodynamically, life has been described as an open system which makes use of gradients in its surroundings to create imperfect copies of itself. Another way of putting this is to define life as "a self-sustained chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution", a definition adopted by a NASA committee attempting to define life for the purposes of exobiology, based on a suggestion by Carl Sagan. A major strength of this definition is that it distinguishes life by the evolutionary process rather than its chemical composition.
Others take a systemic viewpoint that does not necessarily depend on molecular chemistry. One systemic definition of life is that living things are self-organizing and autopoietic (self-producing). Variations of this definition include Stuart Kauffman's definition as an autonomous agent or a multi-agent system capable of reproducing itself or themselves, and of completing at least one thermodynamic work cycle. This definition is extended by the apparition of novel functions over time.
Viruses
Whether or not viruses should be considered as alive is controversial. They are most often considered as just gene coding replicators rather than forms of life. They have been described as "organisms at the edge of life" because they possess genes, evolve by natural selection, and replicate by making multiple copies of themselves through self-assembly. However, viruses do not metabolize and they require a host cell to make new products. Virus self-assembly within host cells has implications for the study of the origin of life, as it may support the hypothesis that life could have started as self-assembling organic molecules.
Biophysics
To reflect the minimum phenomena required, other biological definitions of life have been proposed, with many of these being based upon chemical systems. Biophysicists have commented that living things function on negative entropy. In other words, living processes can be viewed as a delay of the spontaneous diffusion or dispersion of the internal energy of biological molecules towards more potential microstates. In more detail, according to physicists such as John Bernal, Erwin Schrödinger, Eugene Wigner, and John Avery, life is a member of the class of phenomena that are open or continuous systems able to decrease their internal entropy at the expense of substances or free energy taken in from the environment and subsequently rejected in a degraded form. The emergence and increasing popularity of biomimetics or biomimicry (the design and production of materials, structures, and systems that are modeled on biological entities and processes) will likely redefine the boundary between natural and artificial life.
Living systems theories
Living systems are open self-organizing living things that interact with their environment. These systems are maintained by flows of information, energy, and matter.
Budisa, Kubyshkin and Schmidt defined cellular life as an organizational unit resting on four pillars/cornerstones: (i) energy, (ii) metabolism, (iii) information and (iv) form. This system is able to regulate and control metabolism and energy supply and contains at least one subsystem that functions as an information carrier (genetic information). Cells as self-sustaining units are parts of different populations that are involved in the unidirectional and irreversible open-ended process known as evolution.
Some scientists have proposed in the last few decades that a general living systems theory is required to explain the nature of life. Such a general theory would arise out of the ecological and biological sciences and attempt to map general principles for how all living systems work. Instead of examining phenomena by attempting to break things down into components, a general living systems theory explores phenomena in terms of dynamic patterns of the relationships of organisms with their environment.
Gaia hypothesis
The idea that Earth is alive is found in philosophy and religion, but the first scientific discussion of it was by the Scottish scientist James Hutton. In 1785, he stated that Earth was a superorganism and that its proper study should be physiology. Hutton is considered the father of geology, but his idea of a living Earth was forgotten in the intense reductionism of the 19th century. The Gaia hypothesis, proposed in the 1960s by scientist James Lovelock, suggests that life on Earth functions as a single organism that defines and maintains environmental conditions necessary for its survival. This hypothesis served as one of the foundations of the modern Earth system science.
Nonfractionability
Robert Rosen devoted a large part of his career, from 1958 onwards, to developing a comprehensive theory of life as a self-organizing complex system, "closed to efficient causation" He defined a system component as "a unit of organization; a part with a function, i.e., a definite relation between part and whole." He identified the "nonfractionability of components in an organism" as the fundamental difference between living systems and "biological machines." He summarized his views in his book Life Itself. Similar ideas may be found in the book Living Systems by James Grier Miller.
Life as a property of ecosystems
A systems view of life treats environmental fluxes and biological fluxes together as a "reciprocity of influence," and a reciprocal relation with environment is arguably as important for understanding life as it is for understanding ecosystems. As Harold J. Morowitz (1992) explains it, life is a property of an ecological system rather than a single organism or species. He argues that an ecosystemic definition of life is preferable to a strictly biochemical or physical one. Robert Ulanowicz (2009) highlights mutualism as the key to understand the systemic, order-generating behavior of life and ecosystems.
Complex systems biology
Complex systems biology (CSB) is a field of science that studies the emergence of complexity in functional organisms from the viewpoint of dynamic systems theory. The latter is also often called systems biology and aims to understand the most fundamental aspects of life. A closely related approach to CSB and systems biology called relational biology is concerned mainly with understanding life processes in terms of the most important relations, and categories of such relations among the essential functional components of organisms; for multicellular organisms, this has been defined as "categorical biology", or a model representation of organisms as a category theory of biological relations, as well as an algebraic topology of the functional organization of living organisms in terms of their dynamic, complex networks of metabolic, genetic, and epigenetic processes and signaling pathways. Alternative but closely related approaches focus on the interdependence of constraints, where constraints can be either molecular, such as enzymes, or macroscopic, such as the geometry of a bone or of the vascular system.
Darwinian dynamic
It has also been argued that the evolution of order in living systems and certain physical systems obeys a common fundamental principle termed the Darwinian dynamic. The Darwinian dynamic was formulated by first considering how macroscopic order is generated in a simple non-biological system far from thermodynamic equilibrium, and then extending consideration to short, replicating RNA molecules. The underlying order-generating process was concluded to be basically similar for both types of systems.
Operator theory
Another systemic definition called the operator theory proposes that "life is a general term for the presence of the typical closures found in organisms; the typical closures are a membrane and an autocatalytic set in the cell" and that an organism is any system with an organisation that complies with an operator type that is at least as complex as the cell. Life can also be modeled as a network of inferior negative feedbacks of regulatory mechanisms subordinated to a superior positive feedback formed by the potential of expansion and reproduction.
History of study
Materialism
Some of the earliest theories of life were materialist, holding that all that exists is matter, and that life is merely a complex form or arrangement of matter. Empedocles (430 BC) argued that everything in the universe is made up of a combination of four eternal "elements" or "roots of all": earth, water, air, and fire. All change is explained by the arrangement and rearrangement of these four elements. The various forms of life are caused by an appropriate mixture of elements.
Democritus (460 BC) thought that the essential characteristic of life is having a soul (psyche). Like other ancient writers, he was attempting to explain what makes something a living thing. His explanation was that fiery atoms make a soul in exactly the same way atoms and void account for any other thing. He elaborates on fire because of the apparent connection between life and heat, and because fire moves.
The mechanistic materialism that originated in ancient Greece was revived and revised by the French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650), who held that animals and humans were assemblages of parts that together functioned as a machine. This idea was developed further by Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1750) in his book L'Homme Machine.
In the 19th century, the advances in cell theory in biological science encouraged this view. The evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin (1859) is a mechanistic explanation for the origin of species by means of natural selection.
At the beginning of the 20th century Stéphane Leduc (1853–1939) promoted the idea that biological processes could be understood in terms of physics and chemistry, and that their growth resembled that of inorganic crystals immersed in solutions of sodium silicate. His ideas, set out in his book La biologie synthétique was widely dismissed during his lifetime, but has incurred a resurgence of interest in the work of Russell, Barge and colleagues.
Hylomorphism
Hylomorphism is a theory first expressed by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (322 BC). The application of hylomorphism to biology was important to Aristotle, and biology is extensively covered in his extant writings. In this view, everything in the material universe has both matter and form, and the form of a living thing is its soul (Greek psyche, Latin anima). There are three kinds of souls: the vegetative soul of plants, which causes them to grow and decay and nourish themselves, but does not cause motion and sensation; the animal soul, which causes animals to move and feel; and the rational soul, which is the source of consciousness and reasoning, which (Aristotle believed) is found only in man. Each higher soul has all of the attributes of the lower ones. Aristotle believed that while matter can exist without form, form cannot exist without matter, and that therefore the soul cannot exist without the body.
This account is consistent with teleological explanations of life, which account for phenomena in terms of purpose or goal-directedness. Thus, the whiteness of the polar bear's coat is explained by its purpose of camouflage. The direction of causality (from the future to the past) is in contradiction with the scientific evidence for natural selection, which explains the consequence in terms of a prior cause. Biological features are explained not by looking at future optimal results, but by looking at the past evolutionary history of a species, which led to the natural selection of the features in question.
Spontaneous generation
Spontaneous generation was the belief that living organisms can form without descent from similar organisms. Typically, the idea was that certain forms such as fleas could arise from inanimate matter such as dust or the supposed seasonal generation of mice and insects from mud or garbage.
The theory of spontaneous generation was proposed by Aristotle, who compiled and expanded the work of prior natural philosophers and the various ancient explanations of the appearance of organisms; it was considered the best explanation for two millennia. It was decisively dispelled by the experiments of Louis Pasteur in 1859, who expanded upon the investigations of predecessors such as Francesco Redi. Disproof of the traditional ideas of spontaneous generation is no longer controversial among biologists.
Vitalism
Vitalism is the belief that the life-principle is non-material. This originated with Georg Ernst Stahl (17th century), and remained popular until the middle of the 19th century. It appealed to philosophers such as Henri Bergson, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Wilhelm Dilthey, anatomists like Xavier Bichat, and chemists like Justus von Liebig. Vitalism included the idea that there was a fundamental difference between organic and inorganic material, and the belief that organic material can only be derived from living things. This was disproved in 1828, when Friedrich Wöhler prepared urea from inorganic materials. This Wöhler synthesis is considered the starting point of modern organic chemistry. It is of historical significance because for the first time an organic compound was produced in inorganic reactions.
During the 1850s, Hermann von Helmholtz, anticipated by Julius Robert von Mayer, demonstrated that no energy is lost in muscle movement, suggesting that there were no "vital forces" necessary to move a muscle. These results led to the abandonment of scientific interest in vitalistic theories, especially after Buchner's demonstration that alcoholic fermentation could occur in cell-free extracts of yeast.
Nonetheless, the belief still exists in pseudoscientific theories such as homeopathy, which interprets diseases and sickness as caused by disturbances in a hypothetical vital force or life force.
Origin
The age of Earth is about 4.54 billion years. Evidence suggests that life on Earth has existed for at least 3.5 billion years, with the oldest physical traces of life dating back 3.7 billion years; however, some hypotheses, such as Late Heavy Bombardment, suggest that life on Earth may have started even earlier, as early as 4.1–4.4 billion years ago, and the chemistry leading to life may have begun shortly after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, during an epoch when the universe was only 10–17 million years old.
More than 99% of all species of life forms, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct.
Although the number of Earth's catalogued species of lifeforms is between 1.2 million and 2 million, the total number of species in the planet is uncertain. Estimates range from 8 million to 100 million, with a more narrow range between 10 and 14 million, but it may be as high as 1 trillion (with only one-thousandth of one percent of the species described) according to studies realized in May 2016. The total number of related DNA base pairs on Earth is estimated at 5.0 x 1037 and weighs 50 billion tonnes. In comparison, the total mass of the biosphere has been estimated to be as much as 4 TtC (trillion tons of carbon). In July 2016, scientists reported identifying a set of 355 genes from the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) of all organisms living on Earth.
All known life forms share fundamental molecular mechanisms, reflecting their common descent; based on these observations, hypotheses on the origin of life attempt to find a mechanism explaining the formation of a universal common ancestor, from simple organic molecules via pre-cellular life to protocells and metabolism. Models have been divided into "genes-first" and "metabolism-first" categories, but a recent trend is the emergence of hybrid models that combine both categories.
There is no current scientific consensus as to how life originated. However, most accepted scientific models build on the Miller–Urey experiment and the work of Sidney Fox, which show that conditions on the primitive Earth favored chemical reactions that synthesize amino acids and other organic compounds from inorganic precursors, and phospholipids spontaneously form lipid bilayers, the basic structure of a cell membrane.
Living organisms synthesize proteins, which are polymers of amino acids using instructions encoded by deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Protein synthesis entails intermediary ribonucleic acid (RNA) polymers. One possibility for how life began is that genes originated first, followed by proteins; the alternative being that proteins came first and then genes.
However, because genes and proteins are both required to produce the other, the problem of considering which came first is like that of the chicken or the egg. Most scientists have adopted the hypothesis that because of this, it is unlikely that genes and proteins arose independently.
Therefore, a possibility, first suggested by Francis Crick, is that the first life was based on RNA, which has the DNA-like properties of information storage and the catalytic properties of some proteins. This is called the RNA world hypothesis, and it is supported by the observation that many of the most critical components of cells (those that evolve the slowest) are composed mostly or entirely of RNA. Also, many critical cofactors (ATP, Acetyl-CoA, NADH, etc.) are either nucleotides or substances clearly related to them. The catalytic properties of RNA had not yet been demonstrated when the hypothesis was first proposed, but they were confirmed by Thomas Cech in 1986.
One issue with the RNA world hypothesis is that synthesis of RNA from simple inorganic precursors is more difficult than for other organic molecules. One reason for this is that RNA precursors are very stable and react with each other very slowly under ambient conditions, and it has also been proposed that living organisms consisted of other molecules before RNA. However, the successful synthesis of certain RNA molecules under the conditions that existed prior to life on Earth has been achieved by adding alternative precursors in a specified order with the precursor phosphate present throughout the reaction. This study makes the RNA world hypothesis more plausible.
Geological findings in 2013 showed that reactive phosphorus species (like phosphite) were in abundance in the ocean before 3.5 Ga, and that Schreibersite easily reacts with aqueous glycerol to generate phosphite and glycerol 3-phosphate. It is hypothesized that Schreibersite-containing meteorites from the Late Heavy Bombardment could have provided early reduced phosphorus, which could react with prebiotic organic molecules to form phosphorylated biomolecules, like RNA.
In 2009, experiments demonstrated Darwinian evolution of a two-component system of RNA enzymes (ribozymes) in vitro. The work was performed in the laboratory of Gerald Joyce, who stated "This is the first example, outside of biology, of evolutionary adaptation in a molecular genetic system."
Prebiotic compounds may have originated extraterrestrially. NASA findings in 2011, based on studies with meteorites found on Earth, suggest DNA and RNA components (adenine, guanine and related organic molecules) may be formed in outer space.
In March 2015, NASA scientists reported that, for the first time, complex DNA and RNA organic compounds of life, including uracil, cytosine and thymine, have been formed in the laboratory under outer space conditions, using starting chemicals, such as pyrimidine, found in meteorites. Pyrimidine, like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), the most carbon-rich chemical found in the universe, may have been formed in red giants or in interstellar dust and gas clouds, according to the scientists.
According to the panspermia hypothesis, microscopic life—distributed by meteoroids, asteroids and other small Solar System bodies—may exist throughout the universe.
Environmental conditions
The diversity of life on Earth is a result of the dynamic interplay between genetic opportunity, metabolic capability, environmental challenges, and symbiosis. For most of its existence, Earth's habitable environment has been dominated by microorganisms and subjected to their metabolism and evolution. As a consequence of these microbial activities, the physical-chemical environment on Earth has been changing on a geologic time scale, thereby affecting the path of evolution of subsequent life. For example, the release of molecular oxygen by cyanobacteria as a by-product of photosynthesis induced global changes in the Earth's environment. Because oxygen was toxic to most life on Earth at the time, this posed novel evolutionary challenges, and ultimately resulted in the formation of Earth's major animal and plant species. This interplay between organisms and their environment is an inherent feature of living systems.
Biosphere
The biosphere is the global sum of all ecosystems. It can also be termed as the zone of life on Earth, a closed system (apart from solar and cosmic radiation and heat from the interior of the Earth), and largely self-regulating. By the most general biophysiological definition, the biosphere is the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships, including their interaction with the elements of the lithosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere.
Life forms live in every part of the Earth's biosphere, including soil, hot springs, inside rocks at least deep underground, the deepest parts of the ocean, and at least high in the atmosphere. Under certain test conditions, life forms have been observed to thrive in the near-weightlessness of space and to survive in the vacuum of outer space. Life forms appear to thrive in the Mariana Trench, the deepest spot in the Earth's oceans. Other researchers reported related studies that life forms thrive inside rocks up to below the sea floor under of ocean off the coast of the northwestern United States, as well as beneath the seabed off Japan. In August 2014, scientists confirmed the existence of life forms living below the ice of Antarctica. According to one researcher, "You can find microbes everywhere—they're extremely adaptable to conditions, and survive wherever they are."
The biosphere is postulated to have evolved, beginning with a process of biopoesis (life created naturally from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds) or biogenesis (life created from living matter), at least some 3.5 billion years ago. The earliest evidence for life on Earth includes biogenic graphite found in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks from Western Greenland and microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone from Western Australia. More recently, in 2015, "remains of biotic life" were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. In 2017, putative fossilized microorganisms (or microfossils) were announced to have been discovered in hydrothermal vent precipitates in the Nuvvuagittuq Belt of Quebec, Canada that were as old as 4.28 billion years, the oldest record of life on earth, suggesting "an almost instantaneous emergence of life" after ocean formation 4.4 billion years ago, and not long after the formation of the Earth 4.54 billion years ago. According to biologist Stephen Blair Hedges, "If life arose relatively quickly on Earth ... then it could be common in the universe."
In a general sense, biospheres are any closed, self-regulating systems containing ecosystems. This includes artificial biospheres such as Biosphere 2 and BIOS-3, and potentially ones on other planets or moons.
Range of tolerance
The inert components of an ecosystem are the physical and chemical factors necessary for life—energy (sunlight or chemical energy), water, heat, atmosphere, gravity, nutrients, and ultraviolet solar radiation protection. In most ecosystems, the conditions vary during the day and from one season to the next. To live in most ecosystems, then, organisms must be able to survive a range of conditions, called the "range of tolerance." Outside that are the "zones of physiological stress," where the survival and reproduction are possible but not optimal. Beyond these zones are the "zones of intolerance," where survival and reproduction of that organism is unlikely or impossible. Organisms that have a wide range of tolerance are more widely distributed than organisms with a narrow range of tolerance.
Extremophiles
To survive, selected microorganisms can assume forms that enable them to withstand freezing, complete desiccation, starvation, high levels of radiation exposure, and other physical or chemical challenges. These microorganisms may survive exposure to such conditions for weeks, months, years, or even centuries. Extremophiles are microbial life forms that thrive outside the ranges where life is commonly found. They excel at exploiting uncommon sources of energy. While all organisms are composed of nearly identical molecules, evolution has enabled such microbes to cope with this wide range of physical and chemical conditions. Characterization of the structure and metabolic diversity of microbial communities in such extreme environments is ongoing.
Microbial life forms thrive even in the Mariana Trench, the deepest spot in the Earth's oceans. Microbes also thrive inside rocks up to below the sea floor under of ocean. Expeditions of the International Ocean Discovery Program found unicellular life in 120°C sediment that is 1.2 km below seafloor in the Nankai Trough subduction zone.
Investigation of the tenacity and versatility of life on Earth, as well as an understanding of the molecular systems that some organisms utilize to survive such extremes, is important for the search for life beyond Earth. For example, lichen could survive for a month in a simulated Martian environment.
Chemical elements
All life forms require certain core chemical elements needed for biochemical functioning. These include carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur—the elemental macronutrients for all organisms—often represented by the acronym CHNOPS. Together these make up nucleic acids, proteins and lipids, the bulk of living matter. Five of these six elements comprise the chemical components of DNA, the exception being sulfur. The latter is a component of the amino acids cysteine and methionine. The most biologically abundant of these elements is carbon, which has the desirable attribute of forming multiple, stable covalent bonds. This allows carbon-based (organic) molecules to form an immense variety of chemical arrangements. Alternative hypothetical types of biochemistry have been proposed that eliminate one or more of these elements, swap out an element for one not on the list, or change required chiralities or other chemical properties.
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a molecule that carries most of the genetic instructions used in the growth, development, functioning and reproduction of all known living organisms and many viruses. DNA and RNA are nucleic acids; alongside proteins and complex carbohydrates, they are one of the three major types of macromolecule that are essential for all known forms of life. Most DNA molecules consist of two biopolymer strands coiled around each other to form a double helix. The two DNA strands are known as polynucleotides since they are composed of simpler units called nucleotides. Each nucleotide is composed of a nitrogen-containing nucleobase—either cytosine (C), guanine (G), adenine (A), or thymine (T)—as well as a sugar called deoxyribose and a phosphate group. The nucleotides are joined to one another in a chain by covalent bonds between the sugar of one nucleotide and the phosphate of the next, resulting in an alternating sugar-phosphate backbone. According to base pairing rules (A with T, and C with G), hydrogen bonds bind the nitrogenous bases of the two separate polynucleotide strands to make double-stranded DNA. The total amount of related DNA base pairs on Earth is estimated at 5.0 x 1037, and weighs 50 billion tonnes. In comparison, the total mass of the biosphere has been estimated to be as much as 4 TtC (trillion tons of carbon).
DNA stores biological information. The DNA backbone is resistant to cleavage, and both strands of the double-stranded structure store the same biological information. Biological information is replicated as the two strands are separated. A significant portion of DNA (more than 98% for humans) is non-coding, meaning that these sections do not serve as patterns for protein sequences.
The two strands of DNA run in opposite directions to each other and are therefore anti-parallel. Attached to each sugar is one of four types of nucleobases (informally, bases). It is the sequence of these four nucleobases along the backbone that encodes biological information. Under the genetic code, RNA strands are translated to specify the sequence of amino acids within proteins. These RNA strands are initially created using DNA strands as a template in a process called transcription.
Within cells, DNA is organized into long structures called chromosomes. During cell division these chromosomes are duplicated in the process of DNA replication, providing each cell its own complete set of chromosomes. Eukaryotic organisms (animals, plants, fungi, and protists) store most of their DNA inside the cell nucleus and some of their DNA in organelles, such as mitochondria or chloroplasts. In contrast, prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea) store their DNA only in the cytoplasm. Within the chromosomes, chromatin proteins such as histones compact and organize DNA. These compact structures guide the interactions between DNA and other proteins, helping control which parts of the DNA are transcribed.
DNA was first isolated by Friedrich Miescher in 1869. Its molecular structure was identified by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953, whose model-building efforts were guided by X-ray diffraction data acquired by Rosalind Franklin.
Classification
Antiquity
The first known attempt to classify organisms was conducted by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC), who classified all living organisms known at that time as either a plant or an animal, based mainly on their ability to move. He also distinguished animals with blood from animals without blood (or at least without red blood), which can be compared with the concepts of vertebrates and invertebrates respectively, and divided the blooded animals into five groups: viviparous quadrupeds (mammals), oviparous quadrupeds (reptiles and amphibians), birds, fishes and whales. The bloodless animals were also divided into five groups: cephalopods, crustaceans, insects (which included the spiders, scorpions, and centipedes, in addition to what we define as insects today), shelled animals (such as most molluscs and echinoderms), and "zoophytes" (animals that resemble plants). Though Aristotle's work in zoology was not without errors, it was the grandest biological synthesis of the time and remained the ultimate authority for many centuries after his death.
Linnaean
The exploration of the Americas revealed large numbers of new plants and animals that needed descriptions and classification. In the latter part of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th, careful study of animals commenced and was gradually extended until it formed a sufficient body of knowledge to serve as an anatomical basis for classification.
In the late 1740s, Carl Linnaeus introduced his system of binomial nomenclature for the classification of species. Linnaeus attempted to improve the composition and reduce the length of the previously used many-worded names by abolishing unnecessary rhetoric, introducing new descriptive terms and precisely defining their meaning. The Linnaean classification has eight levels: domains, kingdoms, phyla, class, order, family, genus, and species.
The fungi were originally treated as plants. For a short period Linnaeus had classified them in the taxon Vermes in Animalia, but later placed them back in Plantae. Copeland classified the Fungi in his Protoctista, thus partially avoiding the problem but acknowledging their special status. The problem was eventually solved by Whittaker, when he gave them their own kingdom in his five-kingdom system. Evolutionary history shows that the fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants.
As new discoveries enabled detailed study of cells and microorganisms, new groups of life were revealed, and the fields of cell biology and microbiology were created. These new organisms were originally described separately in protozoa as animals and protophyta/thallophyta as plants, but were united by Haeckel in the kingdom Protista; later, the prokaryotes were split off in the kingdom Monera, which would eventually be divided into two separate groups, the Bacteria and the Archaea. This led to the six-kingdom system and eventually to the current three-domain system, which is based on evolutionary relationships. However, the classification of eukaryotes, especially of protists, is still controversial.
As microbiology, molecular biology and virology developed, non-cellular reproducing agents were discovered, such as viruses and viroids. Whether these are considered alive has been a matter of debate; viruses lack characteristics of life such as cell membranes, metabolism and the ability to grow or respond to their environments. Viruses can still be classed into "species" based on their biology and genetics, but many aspects of such a classification remain controversial.
In May 2016, scientists reported that 1 trillion species are estimated to be on Earth currently with only one-thousandth of one percent described.
The original Linnaean system has been modified over time as follows:
Cladistic
In the 1960s cladistics emerged: a system arranging taxa based on clades in an evolutionary or phylogenetic tree.
Cells
Cells are the basic unit of structure in every living thing, and all cells arise from pre-existing cells by division. Cell theory was formulated by Henri Dutrochet, Theodor Schwann, Rudolf Virchow and others during the early nineteenth century, and subsequently became widely accepted. The activity of an organism depends on the total activity of its cells, with energy flow occurring within and between them. Cells contain hereditary information that is carried forward as a genetic code during cell division.
There are two primary types of cells. Prokaryotes lack a nucleus and other membrane-bound organelles, although they have circular DNA and ribosomes. Bacteria and Archaea are two domains of prokaryotes. The other primary type of cells are the eukaryotes, which have distinct nuclei bound by a nuclear membrane and membrane-bound organelles, including mitochondria, chloroplasts, lysosomes, rough and smooth endoplasmic reticulum, and vacuoles. In addition, they possess organized chromosomes that store genetic material. All species of large complex organisms are eukaryotes, including animals, plants and fungi, though most species of eukaryote are protist microorganisms. The conventional model is that eukaryotes evolved from prokaryotes, with the main organelles of the eukaryotes forming through endosymbiosis between bacteria and the progenitor eukaryotic cell.
The molecular mechanisms of cell biology are based on proteins. Most of these are synthesized by the ribosomes through an enzyme-catalyzed process called protein biosynthesis. A sequence of amino acids is assembled and joined together based upon gene expression of the cell's nucleic acid. In eukaryotic cells, these proteins may then be transported and processed through the Golgi apparatus in preparation for dispatch to their destination.
Cells reproduce through a process of cell division in which the parent cell divides into two or more daughter cells. For prokaryotes, cell division occurs through a process of fission in which the DNA is replicated, then the two copies are attached to parts of the cell membrane. In eukaryotes, a more complex process of mitosis is followed. However, the end result is the same; the resulting cell copies are identical to each other and to the original cell (except for mutations), and both are capable of further division following an interphase period.
Multicellular organisms may have first evolved through the formation of colonies of identical cells. These cells can form group organisms through cell adhesion. The individual members of a colony are capable of surviving on their own, whereas the members of a true multi-cellular organism have developed specializations, making them dependent on the remainder of the organism for survival. Such organisms are formed clonally or from a single germ cell that is capable of forming the various specialized cells that form the adult organism. This specialization allows multicellular organisms to exploit resources more efficiently than single cells. In January 2016, scientists reported that, about 800 million years ago, a minor genetic change in a single molecule, called GK-PID, may have allowed organisms to go from a single cell organism to one of many cells.
Cells have evolved methods to perceive and respond to their microenvironment, thereby enhancing their adaptability. Cell signaling coordinates cellular activities, and hence governs the basic functions of multicellular organisms. Signaling between cells can occur through direct cell contact using juxtacrine signalling, or indirectly through the exchange of agents as in the endocrine system. In more complex organisms, coordination of activities can occur through a dedicated nervous system.
Extraterrestrial
Though life is confirmed only on Earth, many think that extraterrestrial life is not only plausible, but probable or inevitable. Other planets and moons in the Solar System and other planetary systems are being examined for evidence of having once supported simple life, and projects such as SETI are trying to detect radio transmissions from possible alien civilizations. Other locations within the Solar System that may host microbial life include the subsurface of Mars, the upper atmosphere of Venus, and subsurface oceans on some of the moons of the giant planets.
Beyond the Solar System, the region around another main-sequence star that could support Earth-like life on an Earth-like planet is known as the habitable zone. The inner and outer radii of this zone vary with the luminosity of the star, as does the time interval during which the zone survives. Stars more massive than the Sun have a larger habitable zone, but remain on the Sun-like "main sequence" of stellar evolution for a shorter time interval. Small red dwarfs have the opposite problem, with a smaller habitable zone that is subject to higher levels of magnetic activity and the effects of tidal locking from close orbits. Hence, stars in the intermediate mass range such as the Sun may have a greater likelihood for Earth-like life to develop. The location of the star within a galaxy may also affect the likelihood of life forming. Stars in regions with a greater abundance of heavier elements that can form planets, in combination with a low rate of potentially habitat-damaging supernova events, are predicted to have a higher probability of hosting planets with complex life. The variables of the Drake equation are used to discuss the conditions in planetary systems where civilization is most likely to exist. Use of the equation to predict the amount of extraterrestrial life, however, is difficult; because many of the variables are unknown, the equation functions as more of a mirror to what its user already thinks. As a result, the number of civilizations in the galaxy can be estimated as low as 9.1 x 10−13, suggesting a minimum value of 1, or as high as 15.6 million (0.156 x 109); for the calculations, see Drake equation.
A "Confidence of Life Detection" scale (CoLD) for reporting evidence of life beyond Earth has been proposed.
Artificial
Artificial life is the simulation of any aspect of life, as through computers, robotics, or biochemistry. The study of artificial life imitates traditional biology by recreating some aspects of biological phenomena. Scientists study the logic of living systems by creating artificial environments—seeking to understand the complex information processing that defines such systems. While life is, by definition, alive, artificial life is generally referred to as data confined to a digital environment and existence.
Synthetic biology is a new area of biotechnology that combines science and biological engineering. The common goal is the design and construction of new biological functions and systems not found in nature. Synthetic biology includes the broad redefinition and expansion of biotechnology, with the ultimate goals of being able to design and build engineered biological systems that process information, manipulate chemicals, fabricate materials and structures, produce energy, provide food, and maintain and enhance human health and the environment.
Death
Death is the termination of all vital functions or life processes in an organism or cell. It can occur as a result of an accident, violence, medical conditions, biological interaction, malnutrition, poisoning, senescence, or suicide. After death, the remains of an organism re-enter the biogeochemical cycle. Organisms may be consumed by a predator or a scavenger and leftover organic material may then be further decomposed by detritivores, organisms that recycle detritus, returning it to the environment for reuse in the food chain.
One of the challenges in defining death is in distinguishing it from life. Death would seem to refer to either the moment life ends, or when the state that follows life begins. However, determining when death has occurred is difficult, as cessation of life functions is often not simultaneous across organ systems. Such determination therefore requires drawing conceptual lines between life and death. This is problematic, however, because there is little consensus over how to define life. The nature of death has for millennia been a central concern of the world's religious traditions and of philosophical inquiry. Many religions maintain faith in either a kind of afterlife or reincarnation for the soul, or resurrection of the body at a later date.
Extinction
Extinction is the process by which a group of taxa or species dies out, reducing biodiversity. The moment of extinction is generally considered the death of the last individual of that species. Because a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively after a period of apparent absence. Species become extinct when they are no longer able to survive in changing habitat or against superior competition. In Earth's history, over 99% of all the species that have ever lived are extinct; however, mass extinctions may have accelerated evolution by providing opportunities for new groups of organisms to diversify.
Fossils
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossil-containing rock formations and sedimentary layers (strata) is known as the fossil record. A preserved specimen is called a fossil if it is older than the arbitrary date of 10,000 years ago. Hence, fossils range in age from the youngest at the start of the Holocene Epoch to the oldest from the Archaean Eon, up to 3.4 billion years old.
See also
Biology, the study of life
Astrobiology
Biosignature
Evolutionary history of life
Lists of organisms by population
Phylogenetics
Viable system theory
Central dogma of molecular biology
Epigenetics
Synthetic biology
Hypothetical types of biochemistry
Carbon-based life
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Life (Systema Naturae 2000)
Vitae (BioLib)
Biota (Taxonomicon)
Wikispecies – a free directory of life
Resources for life in the Solar System and in galaxy, and the potential scope of life in the cosmological future
"The Adjacent Possible: A Talk with Stuart Kauffman"
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry
The Kingdoms of Life
Main topic articles | [
0.37433522939682007,
-0.05953682214021683,
-0.33182841539382935,
0.32501134276390076,
0.3791213929653168,
0.0692407563328743,
0.531477153301239,
0.31570571660995483,
-0.09629707783460617,
-0.47416579723358154,
-0.17161397635936737,
0.13455022871494293,
-0.6837819218635559,
0.31163194775581... |
18398 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La%20Espero | La Espero | "La Espero" () is a poem written by Polish-Jewish doctor L. L. Zamenhof (1859–1917), the initiator of the Esperanto language. The song is often used as the (unofficial) anthem of Esperanto, and is now usually sung to a triumphal march composed by Félicien Menu de Ménil in 1909 (although there is an earlier, less martial tune created in 1891 by Claes Adelsköld, along with a number of other lesser-known tunes). It is sometimes referred to as the hymn of the Esperanto movement.
Some Esperantists object to the use of terms like "hymn" or "anthem" for La Espero, arguing that these terms have religious and nationalist overtones, respectively.
Lyrics
See also
Esperanto music
The Internationale
Ode to Joy
References
External links
Esperanto culture
Esperanto music
Anthems
Anti-war songs | [
-0.030533885583281517,
-0.07707802206277847,
0.29604780673980713,
0.05385187640786171,
-0.41121751070022583,
0.5128059983253479,
0.20058466494083405,
0.2829780876636505,
0.34091055393218994,
-0.37398672103881836,
0.07246612757444382,
0.23165513575077057,
-0.06222854554653168,
0.16640451550... |
18400 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loonie | Loonie | The loonie (), formally the Canadian one-dollar coin, is a gold-coloured Canadian coin that was introduced in 1987 and is produced by the Royal Canadian Mint at its facility in Winnipeg. The most prevalent versions of the coin show a common loon, a bird found throughout Canada, on the reverse and Queen Elizabeth II, the nation's head of state, on the obverse. Various commemorative and specimen-set editions of the coin with special designs replacing the loon on the reverse have been minted over the years.
The coin's outline is an 11-sided Reuleaux polygon. Its diameter of 26.5 mm and its 11-sidedness matched that of the already-circulating Susan B. Anthony dollar in the United States, and its thickness of 1.95 mm was a close match to the latter's 2.0 mm. Its gold colour differed from the silver-coloured Anthony dollar; however, the succeeding Sacagawea and Presidential dollars matched the loonie's overall hue. Other coins using a non-circular curve of constant width include the 7-sided British twenty pence and fifty pence coins (the latter of which has similar size and value to the loonie, but is silver in colour).
After its introduction, the coin became a metonym for the Canadian dollar: media often discuss the rate at which the loonie is trading against other currencies. The nickname loonie became so widely recognized that in 2006, the Royal Canadian Mint secured the rights to it. When the Canadian two-dollar coin was introduced in 1996, it was in turn nicknamed the "toonie" (a portmanteau of "two" and "loonie").
Background
Canada first minted a silver dollar coin in 1935 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of George V's reign as king. The voyageur dollar, so named because it featured an Indigenous person and a French voyageur paddling a canoe on the reverse, was minted in silver until 1967, after which it was composed primarily of nickel. The coins did not see wide circulation, mainly due to their size and weight; the nickel version weighed and was in diameter, and was itself smaller than the silver version.
By 1982, the Royal Canadian Mint had begun work on a new composition for the dollar coin that it hoped would lead to increased circulation. At the same time, vending machine operators and transit systems were lobbying the Government of Canada to replace the dollar banknotes with more widely circulating coins. A Commons committee recommended in 1985 that the dollar bill be eliminated despite a lack of evidence that Canadians would support the move. The government argued that it would save between $175 million and $250 million over 20 years by switching from bills that had a lifespan of less than a year to coins that would last two decades.
Introduction
The government announced on March 25, 1986, that the new dollar coin would be launched the following year as a replacement for the dollar bill, which would be phased out. It was expected to cost $31.8 million to produce the first 300 million coins, but through seigniorage (the difference between the cost of production and the coin's value), expected to make up to $40 million a year on the coins. From the proceeds, a total of $60 million over five years was dedicated toward funding the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.
The failure of the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin in the United States had been considered and it was believed Americans refused to support the coin due to its similarity to their quarter coin and its lack of aesthetic appeal. In announcing the new Canadian dollar coin, the government stated it would be the same overall size as the Susan B. Anthony coin – slightly larger than a quarter – to allow for compatibility with American manufactured vending machines, but would be eleven-sided and gold-coloured.
It was planned that the coin would continue using the voyageur theme of its predecessor, but the master dies that had been struck in Ottawa were lost in transit en route to the Mint's facility at Winnipeg. A Commons committee struck to investigate the loss discovered that the Mint had no documented procedures for transport of master dies and that it had shipped them via a local courier in a bid to save $43.50. It was also found to be the third time that the Mint had lost master dies within five years. An internal review by the Royal Canadian Mint argued that while a policy existed to ship the obverse and reverse dies separately, the new coin dies were packaged separately but were part of the same shipment. The Mint also disagreed with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's contention that the dies were simply lost in transit, believing instead that they were stolen. The dies were never recovered.
Fearing the possibility of counterfeiting, the government approved a new design for the reverse, replacing the voyageur with a Robert-Ralph Carmichael design of a common loon floating in water. The coin was immediately nicknamed the "loonie" across English Canada, and became known as a "huard", French for "loon", in Quebec. The loonie entered circulation on June 30, 1987, as 40 million coins were introduced into major cities across the country. Over 800 million loonies had been struck by the coin's 20th anniversary.
After a 21-month period in which the loonie and $1 note were produced concurrently with each other, the Bank of Canada ceased production of the dollar banknote. The final dollar bills were printed on June 30, 1989. Initial support for the coin was mixed, but withdrawing the banknote forced acceptance of the coin.
The loonie has subsequently gained iconic status within Canada, and is now regarded as a national symbol. The term "loonie" has since become synonymous with the Canadian dollar itself. The town of Echo Bay, Ontario, home of Robert-Ralph Carmichael, erected a large loonie monument in his honour in 1992 along the highway, similar to Sudbury's 'Big Nickel'.
Lucky loonie
Officials for the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics invited the National Hockey League's ice making consultant, Dan Craig, to oversee the city's E Center arena, where the ice hockey tournament was being held. Craig invited a couple of members from the ice crew in his hometown of Edmonton to assist. One of them, Trent Evans, secretly placed a loonie at centre ice. He originally placed a dime, but added the loonie after the smaller coin quickly vanished as the ice surface was built up. He placed the coins after realizing there was no target at centre ice for referees to aim for when dropping the puck for a faceoff. A thin yellow dot was painted on the ice surface over the coins, though the loonie was faintly visible to those who knew to look for it.
Keeping the coin a secret, Evans told only a few people of its placement and swore them to secrecy. Among those told were the players of the men's and women's teams. Both Canadian teams went on to win gold medals. Several members of the women's team kissed the spot where the coin was buried following their victory. After the men won their final, the coin was dug up and given to Wayne Gretzky, the team's executive-director, who revealed the existence of the "lucky loonie" at a post-game press conference.
The lucky loonie quickly became a piece of Canadian lore. The original lucky loonie was donated to the Hockey Hall of Fame, and Canadians have subsequently hidden loonies at several international competitions. Loonies were buried in the foundations of facilities built for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
Capitalizing on the tradition, the Royal Canadian Mint has released a commemorative edition "lucky loonie" for each Olympic Games since 2004.
Composition
The weight of the coin was originally specified as 108 grains, equivalent to 6.998 grams. The coin's diameter is 26.5mm.
When introduced, loonie coins were made of aureate, a bronze-electroplated nickel combination. Beginning in 2007, some loonie blanks also began to be produced with a cyanide-free brass plating process. In the spring of 2012, the composition switched to multi-ply brass-plated steel. As a result, the weight dropped from 7.00 to 6.27 grams. This has resulted in the 2012 loonie not being accepted in some vending machines. The Toronto Parking Authority estimates that at about $345 per machine, it will cost about $1 million to upgrade almost 3,000 machines to accept the new coins. The Mint states that multi-ply plated steel technology, already used in Canada's smaller coinage, produces an electromagnetic signature that is harder to counterfeit than that for regular alloy coins; also, using steel provides cost savings and avoids fluctuations in price or supply of nickel.
On April 10, 2012, the Royal Canadian Mint announced design changes to the loonie and toonie, which include new security features.
Commemorative editions
Alongside the regular minting of the loonie with the standard image of the common loon on the coin's reverse, the Royal Canadian Mint has also released commemorative editions of the one-dollar coin for a variety of occasions. These coins have a circulation-grade finish and have been made available to the public in five-coin packs and in 25-coin rolls in addition to being released directly into circulation.
Terry Fox loonie
The Terry Fox Loonie was unveiled in 2005 and designed by Senior Engraver Stanley Witten. The coin depicts the Canadian athlete, humanitarian, and cancer research activist Terry Fox.
Following his design of the 2005 Terry Fox loonie, Witten told the Ottawa Citizen that "while sculpting the design, I wanted to capture Terry fighting the elements, running against the wind, towering over wind-bent trees on a lonely stretch of Canadian wilderness."
Specimen set editions
In 1997, 2002, and each year since 2004, the Royal Canadian Mint has issued a one-dollar coin that depicts a different and unique image of a bird on the coin's reverse. These special loonies have limited mintages and are available only in the six-coin specimen sets.
First strikes
References
Footnotes
Bibliography
External links
Loonie value – 1935 to today
The chemistry of the loonie
1987 establishments in Canada
Coins of Canada
Canadian one-dollar coin
Canadian one-dollar coin
Canadian one-dollar coin | [
0.262010395526886,
0.18986216187477112,
0.25543203949928284,
0.33448177576065063,
0.34267112612724304,
0.5804065465927124,
-0.41557714343070984,
0.7569416165351868,
-0.39724960923194885,
0.08762188255786896,
-0.28615161776542664,
0.04122242331504822,
-0.12290330231189728,
0.359585672616958... |
18401 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminar%20flow | Laminar flow | In fluid dynamics, laminar flow is characterized by fluid particles following smooth paths in layers, with each layer moving smoothly past the adjacent layers with little or no mixing. At low velocities, the fluid tends to flow without lateral mixing, and adjacent layers slide past one another like playing cards. There are no cross-currents perpendicular to the direction of flow, nor eddies or swirls of fluids. In laminar flow, the motion of the particles of the fluid is very orderly with particles close to a solid surface moving in straight lines parallel to that surface.
Laminar flow is a flow regime characterized by high momentum diffusion and low momentum convection.
When a fluid is flowing through a closed channel such as a pipe or between two flat plates, either of two types of flow may occur depending on the velocity and viscosity of the fluid: laminar flow or turbulent flow. Laminar flow occurs at lower velocities, below a threshold at which the flow becomes turbulent. The velocity is determined by a dimensionless parameter characterizing the flow called the Reynolds number, which also depends on the viscosity and density of the fluid and dimensions of the channel. Turbulent flow is a less orderly flow regime that is characterized by eddies or small packets of fluid particles, which result in lateral mixing. In non-scientific terms, laminar flow is smooth, while turbulent flow is rough.
Relationship with the Reynolds number
The type of flow occurring in a fluid in a channel is important in fluid-dynamics problems and subsequently affects heat and mass transfer in fluid systems. The dimensionless Reynolds number is an important parameter in the equations that describe whether fully developed flow conditions lead to laminar or turbulent flow. The Reynolds number is the ratio of the inertial force to the shearing force of the fluid: how fast the fluid is moving relative to how viscous it is, irrespective of the scale of the fluid system. Laminar flow generally occurs when the fluid is moving slowly or the fluid is very viscous. As the Reynolds number increases, such as by increasing the flow rate of the fluid, the flow will transition from laminar to turbulent flow at a specific range of Reynolds numbers, the laminar–turbulent transition range depending on small disturbance levels in the fluid or imperfections in the flow system. If the Reynolds number is very small, much less than 1, then the fluid will exhibit Stokes, or creeping, flow, where the viscous forces of the fluid dominate the inertial forces.
The specific calculation of the Reynolds number, and the values where laminar flow occurs, will depend on the geometry of the flow system and flow pattern. The common example is flow through a pipe, where the Reynolds number is defined as
where:
is the hydraulic diameter of the pipe (m);
is the volumetric flow rate (m3/s);
is the pipe's cross-sectional area (m2);
is the mean speed of the fluid (SI units: m/s);
is the dynamic viscosity of the fluid (Pa·s = N·s/m2 = kg/(m·s));
is the kinematic viscosity of the fluid, (m2/s);
is the density of the fluid (kg/m3).
For such systems, laminar flow occurs when the Reynolds number is below a critical value of approximately 2,040, though the transition range is typically between 1,800 and 2,100.
For fluid systems occurring on external surfaces, such as flow past objects suspended in the fluid, other definitions for Reynolds numbers can be used to predict the type of flow around the object. The particle Reynolds number Rep would be used for particle suspended in flowing fluids, for example. As with flow in pipes, laminar flow typically occurs with lower Reynolds numbers, while turbulent flow and related phenomena, such as vortex shedding, occur with higher Reynolds numbers.
Examples
A common application of laminar flow is in the smooth flow of a viscous liquid through a tube or pipe. In that case, the velocity of flow varies from zero at the walls to a maximum along the cross-sectional centre of the vessel. The flow profile of laminar flow in a tube can be calculated by dividing the flow into thin cylindrical elements and applying the viscous force to them.
Another example is the flow of air over an aircraft wing. The boundary layer is a very thin sheet of air lying over the surface of the wing (and all other surfaces of the aircraft). Because air has viscosity, this layer of air tends to adhere to the wing. As the wing moves forward through the air, the boundary layer at first flows smoothly over the streamlined shape of the airfoil. Here, the flow is laminar and the boundary layer is a laminar layer. Prandtl applied the concept of the laminar boundary layer to airfoils in 1904.
An everyday example is the slow, smooth and optically transparent flow of shallow water over a smooth barrier.
When water leaves a tap with little force, it first exhibits laminar flow, but as acceleration by the force of gravity immediately sets in, the Reynolds number of the flow increases with speed, and the laminar flow can transition to turbulent flow. Optical transparency is then reduced or lost entirely.
In waterfalls a large scale version of examples 3 and 4 occurs, as now broad sheets of smoothly flowing water fall over a ridge or edge of the waterfall. Immediately the transition to turbulence sets in with speed due to acceleration (the Reynolds number crosses the threshold for turbulence) and foamy aerated water obscures the falling flow.
Laminar flow barriers
Laminar airflow is used to separate volumes of air, or prevent airborne contaminants from entering an area. Laminar flow hoods are used to exclude contaminants from sensitive processes in science, electronics and medicine. Air curtains are frequently used in commercial settings to keep heated or refrigerated air from passing through doorways. A laminar flow reactor (LFR) is a reactor that uses laminar flow to study chemical reactions and process mechanisms. A laminar flow design for animal husbandry of rats for disease management was developed by Beall et al 1971 and became a standard around the world including in the then-Eastern Bloc.
See also
Hagen%E2%80%93Poiseuille equation
Laminar flow reactor
Reynolds number
Shell balance
References
External links
Aerodynamics
Flow regimes
Cleanroom technology
Articles containing video clips | [
-0.14132986962795258,
-0.3191898465156555,
0.40427061915397644,
0.21967577934265137,
-0.5043538808822632,
-0.0014815350295975804,
-0.2777561545372009,
0.2593001127243042,
-0.3244696855545044,
-0.7511968612670898,
-0.4651089012622833,
0.19785352051258087,
-0.26603391766548157,
0.72147464752... |
18402 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luanda | Luanda | Luanda () is the capital and largest city in Angola. It is Angola's primary port, and its major industrial, cultural and urban centre. Located on Angola's northern Atlantic coast, Luanda is Angola's administrative centre, its chief seaport, and also the capital of the Luanda Province. Luanda and its metropolitan area is the most populous Portuguese-speaking capital city in the world and the most populous Lusophone city outside Brazil, with over 8.3 million inhabitants in 2020 (a third of Angola's population).
Among the oldest colonial cities of Africa, it was founded in January 1576 as São Paulo da Assunção de Loanda by Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias de Novais. The city served as the centre of the slave trade to Brazil before its prohibition. At the start of the Angolan Civil War in 1975, most of the white Portuguese left as refugees, principally for Portugal. Luanda's population increased greatly from refugees fleeing the war, but its infrastructure was inadequate to handle the increase. This also caused the exacerbation of slums, or musseques, around Luanda. The city is undergoing a major reconstruction, with many large developments taking place that will alter its cityscape significantly.
The industries present in the city include the processing of agricultural products, beverage production, textile, cement, new car assembly plants, construction materials, plastics, metallurgy, cigarettes and shoes. The city is also notable as an economic centre for oil, and a refinery is located in the city. Luanda has been considered one of the most expensive cities in the world for expatriates. The inhabitants of Luanda are mostly members of the ethnic group of the Ambundu, but in recent times there has been an increase of the number of the Bakongo and the Ovimbundu. There exists a European population, consisting mainly of Portuguese. Luanda was the main host city for the matches of the 2010 African Cup of Nations.
History
Portuguese colonization
Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias de Novais founded Luanda on 25 January 1576 as "São Paulo da Assumpção de Loanda", with one hundred families of settlers and four hundred soldiers. In 1618, the Portuguese built the fortress called Fortaleza São Pedro da Barra, and they subsequently built two more: Fortaleza de São Miguel (1634) and Forte de São Francisco do Penedo (1765–66). Of these, the Fortaleza de São Miguel is the best preserved.
Luanda was Portugal's bridgehead from 1627, except during the Dutch rule of Luanda, from 1640 to 1648, as Fort Aardenburgh. The city served as the centre of slave trade to Brazil from circa 1550 to 1836. The slave trade was conducted mostly with the Portuguese colony of Brazil; Brazilian ships were the most numerous in the port of Luanda. This slave trade also involved local merchants and warriors who profited from the trade. During this period, no large scale territorial conquest was intended by the Portuguese; only a few minor settlements were established in the immediate hinterland of Luanda, some on the last stretch of the Kwanza River.
In the 17th century, the Imbangala became the main rivals of the Mbundu in supplying slaves to the Luanda market. In the 1750s, between 5,000 and 10,000 slaves were annually sold. By this time, Angola, a Portuguese colony, was in fact like a colony of Brazil, paradoxically another Portuguese colony. A strong degree of Brazilian influence was noted in Luanda until the Independence of Brazil in 1822.
In the 19th century, still under Portuguese rule, Luanda experienced a major economic revolution. The slave trade was abolished in 1836, and in 1844, Angola's ports were opened to foreign shipping. By 1850, Luanda was one of the greatest and most developed Portuguese cities in the vast Portuguese Empire outside Continental Portugal, full of trading companies, exporting (together with Benguela) palm and peanut oil, wax, copal, timber, ivory, cotton, coffee, and cocoa, among many other products. Maize, tobacco, dried meat, and cassava flour are also produced locally. The Angolan bourgeoisie was born by this time.
In 1889, Governor Brito Capelo opened the gates of an aqueduct which supplied the city with water, a formerly scarce resource, laying the foundation for major growth.
Estado Novo
Throughout Portugal's dictatorship, known as the Estado Novo, Luanda grew from a town of 61,208 with 14.6% of those inhabitants being white in 1940, to a wealthy cosmopolitan major city of 475,328 in 1970 with 124,814 Europeans (26.3%) and around 50,000 mixed race inhabitants (10.5%).
Like most of Portuguese Angola, the cosmopolitan city of Luanda was not affected by the Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974); economic growth and development in the entire region reached record highs during this period. In 1972, a report called Luanda the "Paris of Africa".
Independence
By the time of Angolan independence in 1975, Luanda was a modern city. The majority of its population was African, but it was dominated by a strong minority of white Portuguese origin.
After the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon on April 25, 1974, with the advent of independence and the start of the Angolan Civil War (1975–2002), most of the white Portuguese Luandans left as refugees, principally for Portugal, however many travelled over land to South Africa.
The large numbers of skilled technicians among the force of Cuban soldiers sent in to support the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government in the Angolan Civil War were able to make a valuable contribution to restoring and maintaining basic services in the city.
In the following years, however, slums called musseques — which had existed for decades — began to grow out of proportion and stretched several kilometres beyond Luanda's former city limits as a result of the decades-long civil war, and because of the rise of deep social inequalities due to large-scale migration of civil war refugees from other Angolan regions. For decades, Luanda's facilities were not adequately expanded to handle this huge increase in the city's population.
21st century
After 2002, with the end of the civil war and high economic growth rates fuelled by the wealth provided by the increasing oil and diamond production, major reconstruction started.
Luanda has also become one of the world's most expensive cities.
The central government supposedly allocates funds to all regions of the country, but the capital region receives the bulk of these funds. Since the end of the Angolan Civil War (1975–2002), stability has been widespread in the country, and major reconstruction has been going on since 2002 in those parts of the country that were damaged during the civil war.
Luanda has been of major concern because its population had multiplied and had far outgrown the capacity of the city, especially because much of its infrastructure (water, electricity, roads etc.) had become obsolete and degraded.
Luanda has been undergoing major road reconstruction in the 21st century, and new highways are planned to improve connections to Cacuaco, Viana, Samba, and the new airport.
Major social housing is also being constructed to house those who reside in slums, which dominate the landscape of Luanda. A large Chinese firm has been given a contract to construct the majority of replacement housing in Luanda. The Angolan minister of health recently stated poverty in Angola will be overcome by an increase in jobs and the housing of every citizen.
Geography
Human geography
Luanda is divided into two parts, the Baixa de Luanda (lower Luanda, the old city) and the Cidade Alta (upper city or the new part). The Baixa de Luanda is situated next to the port, and has narrow streets and old colonial buildings. However, new constructions have by now covered large areas beyond these traditional limits, and a number of previously independent nuclei — like Viana — were incorporated into the city.
Metropolitan Luanda
Until 2011, the former Luanda Province comprised what now forms five municipalities. In 2011 the Province was enlarged by the addition of two additional municipalities transferred from Bengo Province, namely Icolo e Bengo, and Quiçama. Excluding these additions, the five municipalities comprise Greater Luanda:
Two new municipalities have been created within Greater Luanda since 2017: Talatona and Kilamba-Kiaxi
Districts
The city of Luanda is divided in six urban districts: Ingombota, Angola Quiluanje, Maianga, Rangel, Samba and Sambizanga.
In Samba and Sambizanga, more high-rise developments are to be built. The capital Luanda is growing constantly - and in addition, increasingly beyond the official city limits and even provincial boundaries.
Luanda is the seat of a Roman Catholic archbishop. It is also the location of most of Angola's educational institutions, including the private Catholic University of Angola and the public University of Agostinho Neto. It is also the home of the colonial Governor's Palace and the Estádio da Cidadela (the "Citadel Stadium"), Angola's main stadium, with a total seating capacity of 60,000.
Climate
Luanda has a hot semi-arid climate (Köppen: BSh), bordering upon a hot desert climate (BWh). The climate is warm to hot but surprisingly dry, owing to the cool Benguela Current, which prevents moisture from easily condensing into rain. Frequent fog prevents temperatures from falling at night even during the completely dry months from May to October. Luanda has an annual rainfall of , but the variability is among the highest in the world, with a co-efficient of variation above 40 percent. The climate is largely influenced by the offshore Benguela current. The current gives the city a surprisingly low humidity despite its low latitude, which makes the hotter months considerably more bearable than similar cities in Western/Central Africa. Observed records since 1858 range from in 1958 to in 1916. The short rainy season in March and April depends on a northerly counter current bringing moisture to the city: it has been shown clearly that weakness in the Benguela Current can increase rainfall about sixfold compared with years when that current is strong.
Demographics
The inhabitants of Luanda are primarily members of African ethnic groups, mainly Ambundu, Ovimbundu, and Bakongo. The official and the most widely used language is Portuguese, although several Bantu languages are also used, chiefly Kimbundu, Umbundu, and Kikongo.
The population of Luanda has grown dramatically in recent years, due in large part to war-time migration to the city, which is safe compared to the rest of the country. In 2006, however, Luanda saw an increase in violent crime, particularly in the shanty towns that surround the colonial urban core.
There is a sizable minority population of European origin, especially Portuguese (about 260,000), as well as Brazilians. In recent years, mainly since the mid-2000s, immigration from Portugal has increased due to greater opportunities present in Angola's booming economy. There is a sprinkling of immigrants from other African countries as well, including a small expatriate South African community. A small number of people of Luanda are of mixed race — European/Portuguese and native African. Over the last decades, a significant Chinese community has formed, as has a much smaller Vietnamese community.
Places of worship
Among the places of worship, several are predominantly Christian churches and temples:
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Luanda (Catholic Church)
Evangelical Congregational Church in Angola (World Communion of Reformed Churches)
Evangelical Reformed Church in Angola (World Communion of Reformed Churches)
Baptist Convention of Angola (Baptist World Alliance)
Universal Church of the Kingdom of God
Assemblies of God.
Culture
As the economic and political center of Angola, Luanda is similarly the epicenter of Angolan culture. The city is home to numerous cultural institutions, including the Sindika Dokolo Foundation.
The city hosts the annual Luanda International Jazz Festival, since 2009.
The city is home to numerous museums, including:
National Museum of Anthropology
National Museum of Natural History
Museum of the Armed Forces
National Museum of Slavery
Other monuments in the city include:
Palácio de Ferro
Fortress of São Miguel
Fortress of São Francisco do Penedo
Luanda Cathedral
Igreja de Jesus
Igreja da Nossa Senhora do Cabo
Igreja da Nossa Senhora da Conceição
Igreja da Nossa Senhora da Nazaré
Igreja da Nossa Senhora do Carmo
Arquivo Histórico Nacional
Economy
Around one-third of Angolans live in Luanda, 53% of whom live in poverty. Living conditions in Luanda are poor for most of the people, with essential services such as safe drinking water and electricity still in short supply, and severe shortcomings in traffic conditions. On the other hand, luxury constructions for the benefit of the wealthy minority are booming.
Luanda is one of the world's most expensive cities for resident foreigners.
New import tariffs imposed in March 2014 made Luanda even more expensive. As an example, a half-litre tub of vanilla ice-cream at the supermarket was reported to cost US$31. The higher import tariffs applied to hundreds of items, from garlic to cars. The stated aim was to try to diversify the heavily oil-dependent economy and nurture farming and industry, sectors that have remained weak. These tariffs have caused much hardship in a country where the average salary was US$260 per month in 2010, the latest year for which data was available. However, the average salary in the booming oil industry was over 20 times higher at US$5,400 per month.
Manufacturing includes processed foods, beverages, textiles, cement and other building materials, plastic products, metalware, cigarettes, and shoes/clothes. Petroleum (found in nearby off-shore deposits) is refined in the city, although this facility was repeatedly damaged during the Angolan Civil War of 1975–2002. Luanda has an excellent natural harbour; the chief exports are coffee, cotton, sugar, diamonds, iron, and salt.
The city also has a thriving building industry, an effect of the nationwide economic boom experienced since 2002, when political stability returned with the end of the civil war. Economic growth is largely supported by oil extraction activities, although great diversification is taking place. Large investment (domestic and international), along with strong economic growth, has dramatically increased construction of all economic sectors in the city of Luanda. In 2007, the first modern shopping mall in Angola was established in the city at Belas Shopping mall.
Transport
Railway
Luanda is the starting point of the Luanda railway that goes due east to Malanje. The civil war left the railway non-functional, but the railway has been restored up to Dondo and Malanje.
Airport
The main airport of Luanda is Quatro de Fevereiro Airport, which is the largest in the country. A new international airport, Angola International Airport is under construction southeast of the city, a few kilometres from Viana, which was expected to be opened in 2011. However, as the Angolan government did not continue to make the payments due to the Chinese enterprise in charge of the construction, the firm suspended its work in 2010.
Port
The Port of Luanda serves as the largest port of Angola and is one of the busiest ports in Africa. Major expansion of this port is also taking place. In 2014, a new port is being developed at Dande, about 30 km to the north.
Road transport
Luanda's roads are in a poor state of repair, but are undergoing an extensive reconstruction process by the government in order to relieve traffic congestion in the city. Major road repairs can be found taking place in nearly every neighbourhood, including a major 6-lane highway connected Luanda to Viana.
Public transport
Public transit is provided by the suburban services of the Luanda Railway, by the public company TCUL, and by a large fleet of privately owned collective taxis as white-blue painted minibuses called Candongueiro. Candongueiros are usually Toyota Hiace vans, that are built to carry 12 people, although the candongueiros usually carry at least 15 people. They charge from 100 to 200 kwanzas per trip. They are known to disobey traffic rules, for example not stopping at signs and driving over pavements and aisles.
In 2019, the Luanda Light Rail network with an estimated cost of US $3 billion was announced to begin construction in 2020.
Education
International schools:
Escola Portuguesa de Luanda
Colégio Português de Luanda
Colégio São Francisco de Assis
Luanda International School
English School Community of Luanda
Higher education
Universities:
Agostinho Neto University
Lusíada University
Catholic University of Angola
Technical University of Angola
Methodist University of Angola
Private University of Angola
Jean Piaget University of Angola
Mandume ya Ndemufayo University
Universidade Indepedente de Angola
Sports
Luanda's Pavilhão Multiusos do Kilamba hosted games for Angola's national basketball team on many occasions.
In 2013 Luanda together with Namibe, today's Moçâmedes, hosted the 2013 FIRS Men's Roller Hockey World Cup, the first time that a World Cup of roller hockey was held in Africa. The city is home to the Desportivo do Bengo football club.
International relations
Twin towns – Sister cities
Luanda is twinned with:
Houston, United States
São Paulo, Brazil
Lisbon, Portugal
Oaxaca, Mexico
Praia, Cape Verde
Beira, Mozambique
Windhoek, Namibia
Bissau, Guinea-Bissau
Beijing, China
Macau, Macau
Maputo, Mozambique
Tahoua, Niger
São Tomé, São Tomé and Príncipe
Johannesburg, South Africa
Cairo, Egypt
Porto, Portugal
Huambo, Angola
Toulon, France
Asunción, Paraguay
Cape Town, South Africa
References
Bibliography
External links
Portal da Cidade de Luanda
www.cidadeluanda.com - Luanda, city map, History, Photos
Capitals in Africa
Municipalities of Angola
Populated coastal places in Angola
Populated places established in 1576
Populated places in Luanda Province
Port cities and towns in Angola
Provincial capitals in Angola
1576 establishments in the Portuguese Empire
1576 establishments in Africa | [
-0.1610679030418396,
-0.26673954725265503,
0.16383391618728638,
-0.25181207060813904,
0.020740985870361328,
0.46705323457717896,
-0.5314080119132996,
0.8516941070556641,
-1.319567084312439,
-0.29013001918792725,
0.3369288742542267,
-0.33747953176498413,
-0.6446689963340759,
0.6910452246665... |
18403 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical%20positivism | Logical positivism | Logical positivism, later called logical empiricism, and both of which together are also known as neopositivism, was a movement in Western philosophy whose central thesis was the verification principle (also known as the verifiability criterion of meaning). This theory of knowledge asserted that only statements verifiable through direct observation or logical proof are meaningful in terms of conveying truth value, information or factual content. Starting in the late 1920s, groups of philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians formed the Berlin Circle and the Vienna Circle, which, in these two cities, would propound the ideas of logical positivism.
Flourishing in several European centres through the 1930s, the movement sought to prevent confusion rooted in unclear language and unverifiable claims by converting philosophy into "scientific philosophy", which, according to the logical positivists, ought to share the bases and structures of empirical sciences' best examples, such as Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Despite its ambition to overhaul philosophy by studying and mimicking the extant conduct of empirical science, logical positivism became erroneously stereotyped as a movement to regulate the scientific process and to place strict standards on it.
After World War II, the movement shifted to a milder variant, logical empiricism, led mainly by Carl Hempel, who, during the rise of Nazism, had immigrated to the United States. In the ensuing years, the movement's central premises, still unresolved, were heavily criticised by leading philosophers, particularly Willard van Orman Quine and Karl Popper, and even, within the movement itself, by Hempel. The 1962 publication of Thomas Kuhn's landmark book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions dramatically shifted academic philosophy's focus. In 1967 philosopher John Passmore pronounced logical positivism "dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes".
Origins
Logical positivists picked from Ludwig Wittgenstein's early philosophy of language the verifiability principle or criterion of meaningfulness. As in Ernst Mach's phenomenalism, whereby the mind knows only actual or potential sensory experience, verificationists took all sciences' basic content to be only sensory experience. And some influence came from Percy Bridgman's musings that others proclaimed as operationalism, whereby a physical theory is understood by what laboratory procedures scientists perform to test its predictions. In verificationism, only the verifiable was scientific, and thus meaningful (or cognitively meaningful), whereas the unverifiable, being unscientific, were meaningless "pseudostatements" (just emotively meaningful). Unscientific discourse, as in ethics and metaphysics, would be unfit for discourse by philosophers, newly tasked to organize knowledge, not develop new knowledge.
Definitions
Logical positivism is sometimes stereotyped as forbidding talk of unobservables, such as microscopic entities or such notions as causality and general principles, but that is an exaggeration. Rather, most neopositivists viewed talk of unobservables as metaphorical or elliptical: direct observations phrased abstractly or indirectly. So theoretical terms would garner meaning from observational terms via correspondence rules, and thereby theoretical laws would be reduced to empirical laws. Via Bertrand Russell's logicism, reducing mathematics to logic, physics' mathematical formulas would be converted to symbolic logic. Via Russell's logical atomism, ordinary language would break into discrete units of meaning. Rational reconstruction, then, would convert ordinary statements into standardized equivalents, all networked and united by a logical syntax. A scientific theory would be stated with its method of verification, whereby a logical calculus or empirical operation could verify its falsity or truth.
Development
In the late 1930s, logical positivists fled Germany and Austria for Britain and the United States. By then, many had replaced Mach's phenomenalism with Otto Neurath's physicalism, whereby science's content is not actual or potential sensations, but instead is entities publicly observable. Rudolf Carnap, who had sparked logical positivism in the Vienna Circle, had sought to replace verification with simply confirmation. With World War II's close in 1945, logical positivism became milder, logical empiricism, led largely by Carl Hempel, in America, who expounded the covering law model of scientific explanation. Logical positivism became a major underpinning of analytic philosophy, and dominated philosophy in the English-speaking world, including philosophy of science, while influencing sciences, but especially social sciences, into the 1960s. Yet the movement failed to resolve its central problems, and its doctrines were increasingly criticized, most trenchantly by Willard Van Orman Quine, Norwood Hanson, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, and Carl Hempel.
Roots
Language
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, by the young Ludwig Wittgenstein, introduced the view of philosophy as "critique of language", offering the possibility of a theoretically principled distinction of intelligible versus nonsensical discourse. Tractatus adhered to a correspondence theory of truth (versus a coherence theory of truth). Wittgenstein's influence also shows in some versions of the verifiability principle. In tractarian doctrine, truths of logic are tautologies, a view widely accepted by logical positivists who were also influenced by Wittgenstein's interpretation of probability although, according to Neurath, some logical positivists found Tractatus to contain too much metaphysics.
Logicism
Gottlob Frege began the program of reducing mathematics to logic, continued it with Bertrand Russell, but lost interest in this logicism, and Russell continued it with Alfred North Whitehead in their Principia Mathematica, inspiring some of the more mathematical logical positivists, such as Hans Hahn and Rudolf Carnap. Carnap's early anti-metaphysical works employed Russell's theory of types. Carnap envisioned a universal language that could reconstruct mathematics and thereby encode physics. Yet Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem showed this impossible except in trivial cases, and Alfred Tarski's undefinability theorem shattered all hopes of reducing mathematics to logic. Thus, a universal language failed to stem from Carnap's 1934 work Logische Syntax der Sprache (Logical Syntax of Language). Still, some logical positivists, including Carl Hempel, continued support of logicism.
Empiricism
In Germany, Hegelian metaphysics was a dominant movement, and Hegelian successors such as F H Bradley explained reality by postulating metaphysical entities lacking empirical basis, drawing reaction in the form of positivism. Starting in the late 19th century, there was a "back to Kant" movement. Ernst Mach's positivism and phenomenalism were a major influence.
Origins
Vienna
The Vienna Circle, gathering around University of Vienna and Café Central, was led principally by Moritz Schlick. Schlick had held a neo-Kantian position, but later converted, via Carnap's 1928 book Der logische Aufbau der Welt, that is, The Logical Structure of the World. A 1929 pamphlet written by Otto Neurath, Hans Hahn, and Rudolf Carnap summarized the Vienna Circle's positions. Another member of Vienna Circle to later prove very influential was Carl Hempel. A friendly but tenacious critic of the Circle was Karl Popper, whom Neurath nicknamed the "Official Opposition".
Carnap and other Vienna Circle members, including Hahn and Neurath, saw need for a weaker criterion of meaningfulness than verifiability. A radical "left" wing—led by Neurath and Carnap—began the program of "liberalization of empiricism", and they also emphasized fallibilism and pragmatics, which latter Carnap even suggested as empiricism's basis. A conservative "right" wing—led by Schlick and Waismann—rejected both the liberalization of empiricism and the epistemological nonfoundationalism of a move from phenomenalism to physicalism. As Neurath and somewhat Carnap posed science toward social reform, the split in Vienna Circle also reflected political views.
Berlin
The Berlin Circle was led principally by Hans Reichenbach.
Rivals
Both Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap had been influenced by and sought to define logical positivism versus the neo-Kantianism of Ernst Cassirer—the then leading figure of Marburg school, so called—and against Edmund Husserl's phenomenology. Logical positivists especially opposed Martin Heidegger's obscure metaphysics, the epitome of what logical positivism rejected. In the early 1930s, Carnap debated Heidegger over "metaphysical pseudosentences". Despite its revolutionary aims, logical positivism was but one view among many vying within Europe, and logical positivists initially spoke their language.
Export
As the movement's first emissary to the New World, Moritz Schlick visited Stanford University in 1929, yet otherwise remained in Vienna and was murdered in 1936 at the University by a former student, Johann Nelböck, who was reportedly deranged. That year, a British attendee at some Vienna Circle meetings since 1933, A. J. Ayer saw his Language, Truth and Logic, written in English, import logical positivism to the English-speaking world. By then, the Nazi Party's 1933 rise to power in Germany had triggered flight of intellectuals. In exile in England, Otto Neurath died in 1945. Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, and Carl Hempel—Carnap's protégé who had studied in Berlin with Reichenbach—settled permanently in America. Upon Germany's annexation of Austria in 1938, remaining logical positivists, many of whom were also Jewish, were targeted and continued flight. Logical positivism thus became dominant in the English-speaking world.
Principles
Analytic/synthetic gap
Concerning reality, the necessary is a state true in all possible worlds—mere logical validity—whereas the contingent hinges on the way the particular world is. Concerning knowledge, the a priori is knowable before or without, whereas the a posteriori is knowable only after or through, relevant experience. Concerning statements, the analytic is true via terms' arrangement and meanings, thus a tautology—true by logical necessity but uninformative about the world—whereas the synthetic adds reference to a state of facts, a contingency.
In 1739, David Hume cast a fork aggressively dividing "relations of ideas" from "matters of fact and real existence", such that all truths are of one type or the other. By Hume's fork, truths by relations among ideas (abstract) all align on one side (analytic, necessary, a priori), whereas truths by states of actualities (concrete) always align on the other side (synthetic, contingent, a posteriori). Of any treatises containing neither, Hume orders, "Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion".
Thus awakened from "dogmatic slumber", Immanuel Kant quested to answer Hume's challenge—but by explaining how metaphysics is possible. Eventually, in his 1781 work, Kant crossed the tines of Hume's fork to identify another range of truths by necessity—synthetic a priori, statements claiming states of facts but known true before experience—by arriving at transcendental idealism, attributing the mind a constructive role in phenomena by arranging sense data into the very experience space, time, and substance. Thus, Kant saved Newton's law of universal gravitation from Hume's problem of induction by finding uniformity of nature to be a priori knowledge. Logical positivists rejected Kant's synthetic a priori, and adopted Hume's fork, whereby a statement is either analytic and a priori (thus necessary and verifiable logically) or synthetic and a posteriori (thus contingent and verifiable empirically).
Observation/theory gap
Early, most logical positivists proposed that all knowledge is based on logical inference from simple "protocol sentences" grounded in observable facts. In the 1936 and 1937 papers "Testability and meaning", individual terms replace sentences as the units of meaning. Further, theoretical terms no longer need to acquire meaning by explicit definition from observational terms: the connection may be indirect, through a system of implicit definitions. Carnap also provided an important, pioneering discussion of disposition predicates.
Cognitive meaningfulness
Verification
The logical positivists' initial stance was that a statement is "cognitively meaningful" in terms of conveying truth value, information or factual content only if some finite procedure conclusively determines its truth. By this verifiability principle, only statements verifiable either by their analyticity or by empiricism were cognitively meaningful. Metaphysics, ontology, as well as much of ethics failed this criterion, and so were found cognitively meaningless. Moritz Schlick, however, did not view ethical or aesthetic statements as cognitively meaningless. Cognitive meaningfulness was variously defined: having a truth value; corresponding to a possible state of affairs; intelligible or understandable as are scientific statements.
Ethics and aesthetics were subjective preferences, while theology and other metaphysics contained "pseudostatements", neither true nor false. This meaningfulness was cognitive, although other types of meaningfulness—for instance, emotive, expressive, or figurative—occurred in metaphysical discourse, dismissed from further review. Thus, logical positivism indirectly asserted Hume's law, the principle that is statements cannot justify ought statements, but are separated by an unbridgeable gap. A. J. Ayer's 1936 book asserted an extreme variant—the boo/hooray doctrine—whereby all evaluative judgments are but emotional reactions.
Confirmation
In an important pair of papers in 1936 and 1937, "Testability and meaning", Carnap replaced verification with confirmation, on the view that although universal laws cannot be verified they can be confirmed. Later, Carnap employed abundant logical and mathematical methods in researching inductive logic while seeking to provide an account of probability as "degree of confirmation", but was never able to formulate a model. In Carnap's inductive logic, every universal law's degree of confirmation is always zero. In any event, the precise formulation of what came to be called the "criterion of cognitive significance" took three decades (Hempel 1950, Carnap 1956, Carnap 1961).
Carl Hempel became a major critic within the logical positivism movement. Hempel criticized the positivist thesis that empirical knowledge is restricted to Basissätze/Beobachtungssätze/Protokollsätze (basic statements or observation statements or protocol statements). Hempel elucidated the paradox of confirmation.
Weak verification
The second edition of A. J. Ayer's book arrived in 1946, and discerned strong versus weak forms of verification. Ayer concluded, "A proposition is said to be verifiable, in the strong sense of the term, if, and only if, its truth could be conclusively established by experience", but is verifiable in the weak sense "if it is possible for experience to render it probable". And yet, "no proposition, other than a tautology, can possibly be anything more than a probable hypothesis". Thus, all are open to weak verification.
Philosophy of science
Upon the global defeat of Nazism, and the removal from philosophy of rivals for radical reform—Marburg neo-Kantianism, Husserlian phenomenology, Heidegger's "existential hermeneutics"—and while hosted in the climate of American pragmatism and commonsense empiricism, the neopositivists shed much of their earlier, revolutionary zeal. No longer crusading to revise traditional philosophy into a new scientific philosophy, they became respectable members of a new philosophy subdiscipline, philosophy of science. Receiving support from Ernest Nagel, logical empiricists were especially influential in the social sciences.
Explanation
Comtean positivism had viewed science as description, whereas the logical positivists posed science as explanation, perhaps to better realize the envisioned unity of science by covering not only fundamental science—that is, fundamental physics—but the special sciences, too, for instance biology, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and economics. The most widely accepted concept of scientific explanation, held even by neopositivist critic Karl Popper, was the deductive-nomological model (DN model). Yet DN model received its greatest explication by Carl Hempel, first in his 1942 article "The function of general laws in history", and more explicitly with Paul Oppenheim in their 1948 article "Studies in the logic of explanation".
In the DN model, the stated phenomenon to be explained is the explanandum—which can be an event, law, or theory—whereas premises stated to explain it are the explanans. Explanans must be true or highly confirmed, contain at least one law, and entail the explanandum. Thus, given initial conditions C1, C2 . . . Cn plus general laws L1, L2 . . . Ln, event E is a deductive consequence and scientifically explained. In the DN model, a law is an unrestricted generalization by conditional proposition—If A, then B—and has empirical content testable. (Differing from a merely true regularity—for instance, George always carries only $1 bills in his wallet—a law suggests what must be true, and is consequent of a scientific theory's axiomatic structure.)
By the Humean empiricist view that humans observe sequences of events, (not cause and effect, as causality and causal mechanisms are unobservable), the DN model neglects causality beyond mere constant conjunction, first event A and then always event B. Hempel's explication of the DN model held natural laws—empirically confirmed regularities—as satisfactory and, if formulated realistically, approximating causal explanation. In later articles, Hempel defended the DN model and proposed a probabilistic explanation, inductive-statistical model (IS model). the DN and IS models together form the covering law model, as named by a critic, William Dray. Derivation of statistical laws from other statistical laws goes to deductive-statistical model (DS model). Georg Henrik von Wright, another critic, named it subsumption theory, fitting the ambition of theory reduction.
Unity of science
Logical positivists were generally committed to "Unified Science", and sought a common language or, in Neurath's phrase, a "universal slang" whereby all scientific propositions could be expressed. The adequacy of proposals or fragments of proposals for such a language was often asserted on the basis of various "reductions" or "explications" of the terms of one special science to the terms of another, putatively more fundamental. Sometimes these reductions consisted of set-theoretic manipulations of a few logically primitive concepts (as in Carnap's Logical Structure of the World, 1928). Sometimes, these reductions consisted of allegedly analytic or a priori deductive relationships (as in Carnap's "Testability and meaning"). A number of publications over a period of thirty years would attempt to elucidate this concept.
Theory reduction
As in Comtean positivism's envisioned unity of science, neopositivists aimed to network all special sciences through the covering law model of scientific explanation. And ultimately, by supplying boundary conditions and supplying bridge laws within the covering law model, all the special sciences' laws would reduce to fundamental physics, the fundamental science.
Critics
After World War II, key tenets of logical positivism, including its atomistic philosophy of science, the verifiability principle, and the fact/value gap, drew escalated criticism. The verifiability criterion made universal statements 'cognitively' meaningless, and even made statements beyond empiricism for technological but not conceptual reasons meaningless, which was taken to pose significant problems for the philosophy of science. These problems were recognized within the movement, which hosted attempted solutions—Carnap's move to confirmation, Ayer's acceptance of weak verification—but the program drew sustained criticism from a number of directions by the 1950s. Even philosophers disagreeing among themselves on which direction general epistemology ought to take, as well as on philosophy of science, agreed that the logical empiricist program was untenable, and it became viewed as self-contradictory: the verifiability criterion of meaning was itself unverified. Notable critics included Popper, Quine, Hanson, Kuhn, Putnam, Austin, Strawson, Goodman, and Rorty.
Popper
An early, tenacious critic was Karl Popper whose 1934 book Logik der Forschung, arriving in English in 1959 as The Logic of Scientific Discovery, directly answered verificationism. Popper considered the problem of induction as rendering empirical verification logically impossible, and the deductive fallacy of affirming the consequent reveals any phenomenon's capacity to host more than one logically possible explanation. Accepting scientific method as hypotheticodeduction, whose inference form is denying the consequent, Popper finds scientific method unable to proceed without falsifiable predictions. Popper thus identifies falsifiability to demarcate not meaningful from meaningless but simply scientific from unscientific—a label not in itself unfavorable.
Popper finds virtue in metaphysics, required to develop new scientific theories. And an unfalsifiable—thus unscientific, perhaps metaphysical—concept in one era can later, through evolving knowledge or technology, become falsifiable, thus scientific. Popper also found science's quest for truth to rest on values. Popper disparages the pseudoscientific, which occurs when an unscientific theory is proclaimed true and coupled with seemingly scientific method by "testing" the unfalsifiable theory—whose predictions are confirmed by necessity—or when a scientific theory's falsifiable predictions are strongly falsified but the theory is persistently protected by "immunizing stratagems", such as the appendage of ad hoc clauses saving the theory or the recourse to increasingly speculative hypotheses shielding the theory.
Explicitly denying the positivist view of meaning and verification, Popper developed the epistemology of critical rationalism, which considers that human knowledge evolves by conjectures and refutations, and that no number, degree, and variety of empirical successes can either verify or confirm scientific theory. For Popper, science's aim is corroboration of scientific theory, which strives for scientific realism but accepts the maximal status of strongly corroborated verisimilitude ("truthlikeness"). Popper thus acknowledged the value of the positivist movement's emphasis on science but claimed that he had "killed positivism".
Quine
Although an empiricist, American logician Willard Van Orman Quine published the 1951 paper "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", which challenged conventional empiricist presumptions. Quine attacked the analytic/synthetic division, which the verificationist program had been hinged upon in order to entail, by consequence of Hume's fork, both necessity and aprioricity. Quine's ontological relativity explained that every term in any statement has its meaning contingent on a vast network of knowledge and belief, the speaker's conception of the entire world. Quine later proposed naturalized epistemology.
Hanson
In 1958, Norwood Hanson's Patterns of Discovery undermined the division of observation versus theory, as one can predict, collect, prioritize, and assess data only via some horizon of expectation set by a theory. Thus, any dataset—the direct observations, the scientific facts—is laden with theory.
Kuhn
With his landmark The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Thomas Kuhn critically destabilized the verificationist program, which was presumed to call for foundationalism. (But already in the 1930s, Otto Neurath had argued for nonfoundationalism via coherentism by likening science to a boat (Neurath's boat) that scientists must rebuild at sea.) Although Kuhn's thesis itself was attacked even by opponents of neopositivism, in the 1970 postscript to Structure, Kuhn asserted, at least, that there was no algorithm to science—and, on that, even most of Kuhn's critics agreed.
Powerful and persuasive, Kuhn's book, unlike the vocabulary and symbols of logic's formal language, was written in natural language open to the layperson. Kuhn's book was first published in a volume of International Encyclopedia of Unified Science—a project begun by logical positivists but co-edited by Neurath whose view of science was already nonfoundationalist as mentioned above—and some sense unified science, indeed, but by bringing it into the realm of historical and social assessment, rather than fitting it to the model of physics. Kuhn's ideas were rapidly adopted by scholars in disciplines well outside natural sciences, and, as logical empiricists were extremely influential in the social sciences, ushered academia into postpositivism or postempiricism.
Putnam
The "received view" operates on the correspondence rule that states, "The observational terms are taken as referring to specified phenomena or phenomenal properties, and the only interpretation given to the theoretical terms is their explicit definition provided by the correspondence rules". According to Hilary Putnam, a former student of Reichenbach and of Carnap, the dichotomy of observational terms versus theoretical terms introduced a problem within scientific discussion that was nonexistent until this dichotomy was stated by logical positivists. Putnam's four objections:
Something is referred to as "observational" if it is observable directly with our senses. Then an observational term cannot be applied to something unobservable. If this is the case, there are no observational terms.
With Carnap's classification, some unobservable terms are not even theoretical and belong to neither observational terms nor theoretical terms. Some theoretical terms refer primarily to observational terms.
Reports of observational terms frequently contain theoretical terms.
A scientific theory may not contain any theoretical terms (an example of this is Darwin's original theory of evolution).
Putnam also alleged that positivism was actually a form of metaphysical idealism by its rejecting scientific theory's ability to garner knowledge about nature's unobservable aspects. With his "no miracles" argument, posed in 1974, Putnam asserted scientific realism, the stance that science achieves true—or approximately true—knowledge of the world as it exists independently of humans' sensory experience. In this, Putnam opposed not only the positivism but other instrumentalism—whereby scientific theory is but a human tool to predict human observations—filling the void left by positivism's decline.
Decline and legacy
By the late 1960s, logical positivism had become exhausted. In 1976, A. J. Ayer quipped that "the most important" defect of logical positivism "was that nearly all of it was false", though he maintained "it was true in spirit." Although logical positivism tends to be recalled as a pillar of scientism, Carl Hempel was key in establishing the philosophy subdiscipline philosophy of science where Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper brought in the era of postpositivism. John Passmore found logical positivism to be "dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes".
Logical positivism's fall reopened debate over the metaphysical merit of scientific theory, whether it can offer knowledge of the world beyond human experience (scientific realism) versus whether it is but a human tool to predict human experience (instrumentalism). Meanwhile, it became popular among philosophers to rehash the faults and failures of logical positivism without investigation of them. Thereby, logical positivism has been generally misrepresented, sometimes severely. Arguing for their own views, often framed versus logical positivism, many philosophers have reduced logical positivism to simplisms and stereotypes, especially the notion of logical positivism as a type of foundationalism. In any event, the movement helped anchor analytic philosophy in the English-speaking world, and returned Britain to empiricism. Without the logical positivists, who have been tremendously influential outside philosophy, especially in psychology and other social sciences, intellectual life of the 20th century would be unrecognizable.
See also
Anti-realism
Definitions of philosophy
Empirio-criticism
Moral panic
Raven paradox
Sociological positivism
The Structure of Science
Unobservable
People
Gustav Bergmann
Herbert Feigl
Kurt Grelling
Friedrich Waismann
R. B. Braithwaite
Notes
References
Bechtel, William, Philosophy of Science: An Overview for Cognitive Science (Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc, 1988).
Friedman, Michael, Reconsidering Logical Positivism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Novick, Peter, That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
Stahl, William A & Robert A Campbell, Yvonne Petry, Gary Diver, Webs of Reality: Social Perspectives on Science and Religion (Piscataway NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002).
Suppe, Frederick, ed, The Structure of Scientific Theories, 2nd edn (Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press, 1977).
Further reading
Achinstein, Peter and Barker, Stephen F. The Legacy of Logical Positivism: Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1969.
Ayer, Alfred Jules. Logical Positivism. Glencoe, Ill: Free Press, 1959.
Barone, Francesco. Il neopositivismo logico. Roma Bari: Laterza, 1986.
Bergmann, Gustav. The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism. New York: Longmans Green, 1954.
Cirera, Ramon. Carnap and the Vienna Circle: Empiricism and Logical Syntax. Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1994.
Edmonds, David & Eidinow, John; Wittgenstein's Poker,
Friedman, Michael. Reconsidering Logical Positivism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999
Gadol, Eugene T. Rationality and Science: A Memorial Volume for Moritz Schlick in Celebration of the Centennial of his Birth. Wien: Springer, 1982.
Geymonat, Ludovico. La nuova filosofia della natura in Germania. Torino, 1934.
Giere, Ronald N. and Richardson, Alan W. Origins of Logical Empiricism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Hanfling, Oswald. Logical Positivism. Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1981.
Holt, Jim, "Positive Thinking" (review of Karl Sigmund, Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science, Basic Books, 449 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 20 (21 December 2017), pp. 74–76.
Jangam, R. T. Logical Positivism and Politics. Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1970.
Janik, Allan and Toulmin, Stephen. Wittgenstein's Vienna. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973.
Kraft, Victor. The Vienna Circle: The Origin of Neo-positivism, a Chapter in the History of Recent Philosophy. New York: Greenwood Press, 1953.
McGuinness, Brian. Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: Conversations Recorded by Friedrich Waismann. Trans. by Joachim Schulte and Brian McGuinness. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1979.
Milkov, Nikolay (ed.). Die Berliner Gruppe. Texte zum Logischen Empirismus von Walter Dubislav, Kurt Grelling, Carl G. Hempel, Alexander Herzberg, Kurt Lewin, Paul Oppenheim und Hans Reichenbach. Hamburg: Meiner 2015. (German)
Mises von, Richard. Positivism: A Study in Human Understanding. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951.
Parrini, Paolo. Empirismo logico e convenzionalismo: saggio di storia della filosofia della scienza. Milano: F. Angeli, 1983.
Parrini, Paolo; Salmon, Wesley C.; Salmon, Merrilee H. (ed.) Logical Empiricism – Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003.
Reisch, George. How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science : To the Icy Slopes of Logic. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Rescher, Nicholas. The Heritage of Logical Positivism. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985.
Richardson, Alan and Thomas Uebel (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Logical Positivism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Salmon, Wesley and Wolters, Gereon (ed.) Logic, Language, and the Structure of Scientific Theories: Proceedings of the Carnap-Reichenbach Centennial, University of Konstanz, 21–24 May 1991, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994.
Sarkar, Sahotra (ed.) The Emergence of Logical Empiricism: From 1900 to the Vienna Circle. New York: Garland Publishing, 1996.
Sarkar, Sahotra (ed.) Logical Empiricism at its Peak: Schlick, Carnap, and Neurath. New York: Garland Pub., 1996.
Sarkar, Sahotra (ed.) Logical Empiricism and the Special Sciences: Reichenbach, Feigl, and Nagel. New York: Garland Pub., 1996.
Sarkar, Sahotra (ed.) Decline and Obsolescence of Logical Empiricism: Carnap vs. Quine and the Critics. New York: Garland Pub., 1996.
Sarkar, Sahotra (ed.) The Legacy of the Vienna Circle: Modern Reappraisals. New York: Garland Pub., 1996.
Spohn, Wolfgang (ed.) Erkenntnis Orientated: A Centennial Volume for Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.
Stadler, Friedrich. The Vienna Circle. Studies in the Origins, Development, and Influence of Logical Empiricism. New York: Springer, 2001. – 2nd Edition: Dordrecht: Springer, 2015.
Stadler, Friedrich (ed.). The Vienna Circle and Logical Empiricism. Re-evaluation and Future Perspectives. Dordrecht – Boston – London, Kluwer 2003.
External links
Articles by logical positivists
The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle
Carnap, Rudolf. 'The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language'
Carnap, Rudolf. 'Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology.'
Excerpt from Carnap, Rudolf. Philosophy and Logical Syntax.
Feigl, Herbert. 'Positivism in the Twentieth Century (Logical Empiricism)', Dictionary of the History of Ideas, 1974, Gale Group (Electronic Edition)
Hempel, Carl. 'Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning.'
Articles on logical positivism
Kemerling, Garth. 'Logical Positivism', Philosophy Pages
Murzi, Mauro. 'Logical Positivism', The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Tom Flynn (ed.). Prometheus Books, 2007 (PDF version)
Murzi, Mauro. 'The Philosophy of Logical Positivism.'
Passmore, John. 'Logical Positivism', The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Paul Edwards (ed.). New York: Macmillan, 1967, first edition
Articles on related philosophical topics
Hájek, Alan. 'Interpretations of Probability', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2003 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
Rey, Georges. 'The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2003 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
Ryckman, Thomas A., 'Early Philosophical Interpretations of General Relativity', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2001 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
Woleński, Jan. 'Lvov-Warsaw School', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2003 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
Woodward, James. 'Scientific Explanation', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2003 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
Analytic philosophy
Empiricism
Epistemological theories
Epistemology of science
History of science
Linguistic turn
Meaning in religious language
Philosophical movements
Philosophical schools and traditions
Philosophy of science
Positivism
Theories of language
Western philosophy | [
-0.13452352583408356,
-0.026726219803094864,
-0.6344282627105713,
0.5230883955955505,
-0.49773263931274414,
0.24908845126628876,
0.6462059020996094,
0.035412922501564026,
0.5127712488174438,
-0.18134090304374695,
-0.09223967790603638,
0.37752288579940796,
-0.3183852732181549,
0.23028266429... |
18404 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz%20transformation | Lorentz transformation | In physics, the Lorentz transformations are a six-parameter family of linear transformations from a coordinate frame in spacetime to another frame that moves at a constant velocity relative to the former. The respective inverse transformation is then parameterized by the negative of this velocity. The transformations are named after the Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz.
The most common form of the transformation, parametrized by the real constant representing a velocity confined to the -direction, is expressed as
where and are the coordinates of an event in two frames with the origins coinciding at ==0, where the primed frame is seen from the unprimed frame as moving with speed along the -axis, where is the speed of light, and is the Lorentz factor. When speed is much smaller than , the Lorentz factor is negligibly different from 1, but as approaches , grows without bound. The value of must be smaller than for the transformation to make sense.
Expressing the speed as an equivalent form of the transformation is
Frames of reference can be divided into two groups: inertial (relative motion with constant velocity) and non-inertial (accelerating, moving in curved paths, rotational motion with constant angular velocity, etc.). The term "Lorentz transformations" only refers to transformations between inertial frames, usually in the context of special relativity.
In each reference frame, an observer can use a local coordinate system (usually Cartesian coordinates in this context) to measure lengths, and a clock to measure time intervals. An event is something that happens at a point in space at an instant of time, or more formally a point in spacetime. The transformations connect the space and time coordinates of an event as measured by an observer in each frame.
They supersede the Galilean transformation of Newtonian physics, which assumes an absolute space and time (see Galilean relativity). The Galilean transformation is a good approximation only at relative speeds much less than the speed of light. Lorentz transformations have a number of unintuitive features that do not appear in Galilean transformations. For example, they reflect the fact that observers moving at different velocities may measure different distances, elapsed times, and even different orderings of events, but always such that the speed of light is the same in all inertial reference frames. The invariance of light speed is one of the postulates of special relativity.
Historically, the transformations were the result of attempts by Lorentz and others to explain how the speed of light was observed to be independent of the reference frame, and to understand the symmetries of the laws of electromagnetism. The Lorentz transformation is in accordance with Albert Einstein's special relativity, but was derived first.
The Lorentz transformation is a linear transformation. It may include a rotation of space; a rotation-free Lorentz transformation is called a Lorentz boost. In Minkowski space—the mathematical model of spacetime in special relativity—the Lorentz transformations preserve the spacetime interval between any two events. This property is the defining property of a Lorentz transformation. They describe only the transformations in which the spacetime event at the origin is left fixed. They can be considered as a hyperbolic rotation of Minkowski space. The more general set of transformations that also includes translations is known as the Poincaré group.
History
Many physicists—including Woldemar Voigt, George FitzGerald, Joseph Larmor, and Hendrik Lorentz himself—had been discussing the physics implied by these equations since 1887. Early in 1889, Oliver Heaviside had shown from Maxwell's equations that the electric field surrounding a spherical distribution of charge should cease to have spherical symmetry once the charge is in motion relative to the luminiferous aether. FitzGerald then conjectured that Heaviside's distortion result might be applied to a theory of intermolecular forces. Some months later, FitzGerald published the conjecture that bodies in motion are being contracted, in order to explain the baffling outcome of the 1887 aether-wind experiment of Michelson and Morley. In 1892, Lorentz independently presented the same idea in a more detailed manner, which was subsequently called FitzGerald–Lorentz contraction hypothesis. Their explanation was widely known before 1905.
Lorentz (1892–1904) and Larmor (1897–1900), who believed the luminiferous aether hypothesis, also looked for the transformation under which Maxwell's equations are invariant when transformed from the aether to a moving frame. They extended the FitzGerald–Lorentz contraction hypothesis and found out that the time coordinate has to be modified as well ("local time"). Henri Poincaré gave a physical interpretation to local time (to first order in v/c, the relative velocity of the two reference frames normalized to the speed of light) as the consequence of clock synchronization, under the assumption that the speed of light is constant in moving frames. Larmor is credited to have been the first to understand the crucial time dilation property inherent in his equations.
In 1905, Poincaré was the first to recognize that the transformation has the properties of a mathematical group,
and named it after Lorentz.
Later in the same year Albert Einstein published what is now called special relativity, by deriving the Lorentz transformation under the assumptions of the principle of relativity and the constancy of the speed of light in any inertial reference frame, and by abandoning the mechanistic aether as unnecessary.
Derivation of the group of Lorentz transformations
An event is something that happens at a certain point in spacetime, or more generally, the point in spacetime itself. In any inertial frame an event is specified by a time coordinate ct and a set of Cartesian coordinates to specify position in space in that frame. Subscripts label individual events.
From Einstein's second postulate of relativity (invariance of c) it follows that:
in all inertial frames for events connected by light signals. The quantity on the left is called the spacetime interval between events and . The interval between any two events, not necessarily separated by light signals, is in fact invariant, i.e., independent of the state of relative motion of observers in different inertial frames, as is shown using homogeneity and isotropy of space. The transformation sought after thus must possess the property that:
where are the spacetime coordinates used to define events in one frame, and are the coordinates in another frame. First one observes that () is satisfied if an arbitrary -tuple of numbers are added to events and . Such transformations are called spacetime translations and are not dealt with further here. Then one observes that a linear solution preserving the origin of the simpler problem solves the general problem too:
(a solution satisfying the left formula automatically satisfies the right one also; see polarization identity). Finding the solution to the simpler problem is just a matter of look-up in the theory of classical groups that preserve bilinear forms of various signature. First equation in () can be written more compactly as:
where refers to the bilinear form of signature on exposed by the right hand side formula in . The alternative notation defined on the right is referred to as the relativistic dot product. Spacetime mathematically viewed as endowed with this bilinear form is known as Minkowski space . The Lorentz transformation is thus an element of the group , the Lorentz group or, for those that prefer the other metric signature, (also called the Lorentz group). One has:
which is precisely preservation of the bilinear form () which implies (by linearity of and bilinearity of the form) that () is satisfied. The elements of the Lorentz group are rotations and boosts and mixes thereof. If the spacetime translations are included, then one obtains the inhomogeneous Lorentz group or the Poincaré group.
Generalities
The relations between the primed and unprimed spacetime coordinates are the Lorentz transformations, each coordinate in one frame is a linear function of all the coordinates in the other frame, and the inverse functions are the inverse transformation. Depending on how the frames move relative to each other, and how they are oriented in space relative to each other, other parameters that describe direction, speed, and orientation enter the transformation equations.
Transformations describing relative motion with constant (uniform) velocity and without rotation of the space coordinate axes are called boosts, and the relative velocity between the frames is the parameter of the transformation. The other basic type of Lorentz transformation is rotation in the spatial coordinates only, these like boosts are inertial transformations since there is no relative motion, the frames are simply tilted (and not continuously rotating), and in this case quantities defining the rotation are the parameters of the transformation (e.g., axis–angle representation, or Euler angles, etc.). A combination of a rotation and boost is a homogeneous transformation, which transforms the origin back to the origin.
The full Lorentz group also contains special transformations that are neither rotations nor boosts, but rather reflections in a plane through the origin. Two of these can be singled out; spatial inversion in which the spatial coordinates of all events are reversed in sign and temporal inversion in which the time coordinate for each event gets its sign reversed.
Boosts should not be conflated with mere displacements in spacetime; in this case, the coordinate systems are simply shifted and there is no relative motion. However, these also count as symmetries forced by special relativity since they leave the spacetime interval invariant. A combination of a rotation with a boost, followed by a shift in spacetime, is an inhomogeneous Lorentz transformation, an element of the Poincaré group, which is also called the inhomogeneous Lorentz group.
Physical formulation of Lorentz boosts
Coordinate transformation
A "stationary" observer in frame defines events with coordinates . Another frame moves with velocity relative to , and an observer in this "moving" frame defines events using the coordinates .
The coordinate axes in each frame are parallel (the and axes are parallel, the and axes are parallel, and the and axes are parallel), remain mutually perpendicular, and relative motion is along the coincident axes. At , the origins of both coordinate systems are the same, . In other words, the times and positions are coincident at this event. If all these hold, then the coordinate systems are said to be in standard configuration, or synchronized.
If an observer in records an event , then an observer in records the same event with coordinates
where is the relative velocity between frames in the -direction, is the speed of light, and
(lowercase gamma) is the Lorentz factor.
Here, is the parameter of the transformation, for a given boost it is a constant number, but can take a continuous range of values. In the setup used here, positive relative velocity is motion along the positive directions of the axes, zero relative velocity is no relative motion, while negative relative velocity is relative motion along the negative directions of the axes. The magnitude of relative velocity cannot equal or exceed , so only subluminal speeds are allowed. The corresponding range of is .
The transformations are not defined if is outside these limits. At the speed of light () is infinite, and faster than light () is a complex number, each of which make the transformations unphysical. The space and time coordinates are measurable quantities and numerically must be real numbers.
As an active transformation, an observer in F′ notices the coordinates of the event to be "boosted" in the negative directions of the axes, because of the in the transformations. This has the equivalent effect of the coordinate system F′ boosted in the positive directions of the axes, while the event does not change and is simply represented in another coordinate system, a passive transformation.
The inverse relations ( in terms of ) can be found by algebraically solving the original set of equations. A more efficient way is to use physical principles. Here is the "stationary" frame while is the "moving" frame. According to the principle of relativity, there is no privileged frame of reference, so the transformations from to must take exactly the same form as the transformations from to . The only difference is moves with velocity relative to (i.e., the relative velocity has the same magnitude but is oppositely directed). Thus if an observer in notes an event , then an observer in notes the same event with coordinates
and the value of remains unchanged. This "trick" of simply reversing the direction of relative velocity while preserving its magnitude, and exchanging primed and unprimed variables, always applies to finding the inverse transformation of every boost in any direction.
Sometimes it is more convenient to use (lowercase beta) instead of , so that
which shows much more clearly the symmetry in the transformation. From the allowed ranges of and the definition of , it follows . The use of and is standard throughout the literature.
The Lorentz transformations can also be derived in a way that resembles circular rotations in 3d space using the hyperbolic functions. For the boost in the direction, the results are
where (lowercase zeta) is a parameter called rapidity (many other symbols are used, including ). Given the strong resemblance to rotations of spatial coordinates in 3d space in the Cartesian xy, yz, and zx planes, a Lorentz boost can be thought of as a hyperbolic rotation of spacetime coordinates in the xt, yt, and zt Cartesian-time planes of 4d Minkowski space. The parameter is the hyperbolic angle of rotation, analogous to the ordinary angle for circular rotations. This transformation can be illustrated with a Minkowski diagram.
The hyperbolic functions arise from the difference between the squares of the time and spatial coordinates in the spacetime interval, rather than a sum. The geometric significance of the hyperbolic functions can be visualized by taking or in the transformations. Squaring and subtracting the results, one can derive hyperbolic curves of constant coordinate values but varying , which parametrizes the curves according to the identity
Conversely the and axes can be constructed for varying coordinates but constant . The definition
provides the link between a constant value of rapidity, and the slope of the axis in spacetime. A consequence these two hyperbolic formulae is an identity that matches the Lorentz factor
Comparing the Lorentz transformations in terms of the relative velocity and rapidity, or using the above formulae, the connections between , , and are
Taking the inverse hyperbolic tangent gives the rapidity
Since , it follows . From the relation between and , positive rapidity is motion along the positive directions of the axes, zero rapidity is no relative motion, while negative rapidity is relative motion along the negative directions of the axes.
The inverse transformations are obtained by exchanging primed and unprimed quantities to switch the coordinate frames, and negating rapidity since this is equivalent to negating the relative velocity. Therefore,
The inverse transformations can be similarly visualized by considering the cases when and .
So far the Lorentz transformations have been applied to one event. If there are two events, there is a spatial separation and time interval between them. It follows from the linearity of the Lorentz transformations that two values of space and time coordinates can be chosen, the Lorentz transformations can be applied to each, then subtracted to get the Lorentz transformations of the differences;
with inverse relations
where (uppercase delta) indicates a difference of quantities; e.g., for two values of coordinates, and so on.
These transformations on differences rather than spatial points or instants of time are useful for a number of reasons:
in calculations and experiments, it is lengths between two points or time intervals that are measured or of interest (e.g., the length of a moving vehicle, or time duration it takes to travel from one place to another),
the transformations of velocity can be readily derived by making the difference infinitesimally small and dividing the equations, and the process repeated for the transformation of acceleration,
if the coordinate systems are never coincident (i.e., not in standard configuration), and if both observers can agree on an event in and in , then they can use that event as the origin, and the spacetime coordinate differences are the differences between their coordinates and this origin, e.g., , , etc.
Physical implications
A critical requirement of the Lorentz transformations is the invariance of the speed of light, a fact used in their derivation, and contained in the transformations themselves. If in the equation for a pulse of light along the direction is , then in the Lorentz transformations give , and vice versa, for any .
For relative speeds much less than the speed of light, the Lorentz transformations reduce to the Galilean transformation
in accordance with the correspondence principle. It is sometimes said that nonrelativistic physics is a physics of "instantaneous action at a distance".
Three counterintuitive, but correct, predictions of the transformations are:
Relativity of simultaneity
Suppose two events occur simultaneously () along the x axis, but separated by a nonzero displacement . Then in , we find that , so the events are no longer simultaneous according to a moving observer.
Time dilation
Suppose there is a clock at rest in . If a time interval is measured at the same point in that frame, so that , then the transformations give this interval in by . Conversely, suppose there is a clock at rest in . If an interval is measured at the same point in that frame, so that , then the transformations give this interval in F by . Either way, each observer measures the time interval between ticks of a moving clock to be longer by a factor than the time interval between ticks of his own clock.
Length contraction
Suppose there is a rod at rest in aligned along the x axis, with length . In , the rod moves with velocity , so its length must be measured by taking two simultaneous () measurements at opposite ends. Under these conditions, the inverse Lorentz transform shows that . In the two measurements are no longer simultaneous, but this does not matter because the rod is at rest in . So each observer measures the distance between the end points of a moving rod to be shorter by a factor than the end points of an identical rod at rest in his own frame. Length contraction affects any geometric quantity related to lengths, so from the perspective of a moving observer, areas and volumes will also appear to shrink along the direction of motion.
Vector transformations
The use of vectors allows positions and velocities to be expressed in arbitrary directions compactly. A single boost in any direction depends on the full relative velocity vector with a magnitude that cannot equal or exceed , so that .
Only time and the coordinates parallel to the direction of relative motion change, while those coordinates perpendicular do not. With this in mind, split the spatial position vector as measured in , and as measured in , each into components perpendicular (⊥) and parallel ( ‖ ) to ,
then the transformations are
where is the dot product. The Lorentz factor retains its definition for a boost in any direction, since it depends only on the magnitude of the relative velocity. The definition with magnitude is also used by some authors.
Introducing a unit vector in the direction of relative motion, the relative velocity is with magnitude and direction , and vector projection and rejection give respectively
Accumulating the results gives the full transformations,
The projection and rejection also applies to . For the inverse transformations, exchange and to switch observed coordinates, and negate the relative velocity (or simply the unit vector since the magnitude is always positive) to obtain
The unit vector has the advantage of simplifying equations for a single boost, allows either or to be reinstated when convenient, and the rapidity parametrization is immediately obtained by replacing and . It is not convenient for multiple boosts.
The vectorial relation between relative velocity and rapidity is
and the "rapidity vector" can be defined as
each of which serves as a useful abbreviation in some contexts. The magnitude of is the absolute value of the rapidity scalar confined to , which agrees with the range .
Transformation of velocities
Defining the coordinate velocities and Lorentz factor by
taking the differentials in the coordinates and time of the vector transformations, then dividing equations, leads to
The velocities and are the velocity of some massive object. They can also be for a third inertial frame (say F′′), in which case they must be constant. Denote either entity by X. Then X moves with velocity relative to F, or equivalently with velocity relative to F′, in turn F′ moves with velocity relative to F. The inverse transformations can be obtained in a similar way, or as with position coordinates exchange and , and change to .
The transformation of velocity is useful in stellar aberration, the Fizeau experiment, and the relativistic Doppler effect.
The Lorentz transformations of acceleration can be similarly obtained by taking differentials in the velocity vectors, and dividing these by the time differential.
Transformation of other quantities
In general, given four quantities and and their Lorentz-boosted counterparts and , a relation of the form
implies the quantities transform under Lorentz transformations similar to the transformation of spacetime coordinates;
The decomposition of (and ) into components perpendicular and parallel to is exactly the same as for the position vector, as is the process of obtaining the inverse transformations (exchange and to switch observed quantities, and reverse the direction of relative motion by the substitution ).
The quantities collectively make up a four-vector, where is the "timelike component", and the "spacelike component". Examples of and are the following:
For a given object (e.g., particle, fluid, field, material), if or correspond to properties specific to the object like its charge density, mass density, spin, etc., its properties can be fixed in the rest frame of that object. Then the Lorentz transformations give the corresponding properties in a frame moving relative to the object with constant velocity. This breaks some notions taken for granted in non-relativistic physics. For example, the energy of an object is a scalar in non-relativistic mechanics, but not in relativistic mechanics because energy changes under Lorentz transformations; its value is different for various inertial frames. In the rest frame of an object, it has a rest energy and zero momentum. In a boosted frame its energy is different and it appears to have a momentum. Similarly, in non-relativistic quantum mechanics the spin of a particle is a constant vector, but in relativistic quantum mechanics spin depends on relative motion. In the rest frame of the particle, the spin pseudovector can be fixed to be its ordinary non-relativistic spin with a zero timelike quantity , however a boosted observer will perceive a nonzero timelike component and an altered spin.
Not all quantities are invariant in the form as shown above, for example orbital angular momentum does not have a timelike quantity, and neither does the electric field nor the magnetic field . The definition of angular momentum is , and in a boosted frame the altered angular momentum is . Applying this definition using the transformations of coordinates and momentum leads to the transformation of angular momentum. It turns out transforms with another vector quantity related to boosts, see relativistic angular momentum for details. For the case of the and fields, the transformations cannot be obtained as directly using vector algebra. The Lorentz force is the definition of these fields, and in it is while in it is . A method of deriving the EM field transformations in an efficient way which also illustrates the unit of the electromagnetic field uses tensor algebra, given below.
Mathematical formulation
Throughout, italic non-bold capital letters are 4×4 matrices, while non-italic bold letters are 3×3 matrices.
Homogeneous Lorentz group
Writing the coordinates in column vectors and the Minkowski metric as a square matrix
the spacetime interval takes the form (superscript denotes transpose)
and is invariant under a Lorentz transformation
where is a square matrix which can depend on parameters.
The set of all Lorentz transformations Λ in this article is denoted . This set together with matrix multiplication forms a group, in this context known as the Lorentz group. Also, the above expression is a quadratic form of signature (3,1) on spacetime, and the group of transformations which leaves this quadratic form invariant is the indefinite orthogonal group O(3,1), a Lie group. In other words, the Lorentz group is O(3,1). As presented in this article, any Lie groups mentioned are matrix Lie groups. In this context the operation of composition amounts to matrix multiplication.
From the invariance of the spacetime interval it follows
and this matrix equation contains the general conditions on the Lorentz transformation to ensure invariance of the spacetime interval. Taking the determinant of the equation using the product rule gives immediately
Writing the Minkowski metric as a block matrix, and the Lorentz transformation in the most general form,
carrying out the block matrix multiplications obtains general conditions on to ensure relativistic invariance. Not much information can be directly extracted from all the conditions, however one of the results
is useful; always so it follows that
The negative inequality may be unexpected, because multiplies the time coordinate and this has an effect on time symmetry. If the positive equality holds, then is the Lorentz factor.
The determinant and inequality provide four ways to classify Lorentz Transformations (herein LTs for brevity). Any particular LT has only one determinant sign and only one inequality. There are four sets which include every possible pair given by the intersections ("n"-shaped symbol meaning "and") of these classifying sets.
where "+" and "−" indicate the determinant sign, while "↑" for ≥ and "↓" for ≤ denote the inequalities.
The full Lorentz group splits into the union ("u"-shaped symbol meaning "or") of four disjoint sets
A subgroup of a group must be closed under the same operation of the group (here matrix multiplication). In other words, for two Lorentz transformations and from a particular set, the composite Lorentz transformations and must be in the same set as and . This is not always the case: the composition of two antichronous Lorentz transformations is orthochronous, and the composition of two improper Lorentz transformations is proper. In other words, while the sets , , , and all form subgroups, the sets containing improper and/or antichronous transformations without enough proper orthochronous transformations (e.g. , , ) do not form subgroups.
Proper transformations
If a Lorentz covariant 4-vector is measured in one inertial frame with result , and the same measurement made in another inertial frame (with the same orientation and origin) gives result , the two results will be related by
where the boost matrix represents the Lorentz transformation between the unprimed and primed frames and is the velocity of the primed frame as seen from the unprimed frame. The matrix is given by
where is the magnitude of the velocity and is the Lorentz factor. This formula represents a passive transformation, as it describes how the coordinates of the measured quantity changes from the unprimed frame to the primed frame. The active transformation is given by .
If a frame is boosted with velocity relative to frame , and another frame is boosted with velocity relative to , the separate boosts are
and the composition of the two boosts connects the coordinates in and ,
Successive transformations act on the left. If and are collinear (parallel or antiparallel along the same line of relative motion), the boost matrices commute: . This composite transformation happens to be another boost, , where is collinear with and .
If and are not collinear but in different directions, the situation is considerably more complicated. Lorentz boosts along different directions do not commute: and are not equal. Also, each of these compositions is not a single boost, but they are still Lorentz transformations they each preserve the spacetime interval. It turns out the composition of any two Lorentz boosts is equivalent to a boost followed or preceded by a rotation on the spatial coordinates, in the form of or . The and are composite velocities, while and are rotation parameters (e.g. axis-angle variables, Euler angles, etc.). The rotation in block matrix form is simply
where is a 3d rotation matrix, which rotates any 3d vector in one sense (active transformation), or equivalently the coordinate frame in the opposite sense (passive transformation). It is not simple to connect and (or and ) to the original boost parameters and . In a composition of boosts, the matrix is named the Wigner rotation, and gives rise to the Thomas precession. These articles give the explicit formulae for the composite transformation matrices, including expressions for .
In this article the axis-angle representation is used for . The rotation is about an axis in the direction of a unit vector , through angle (positive anticlockwise, negative clockwise, according to the right-hand rule). The "axis-angle vector"
will serve as a useful abbreviation.
Spatial rotations alone are also Lorentz transformations they leave the spacetime interval invariant. Like boosts, successive rotations about different axes do not commute. Unlike boosts, the composition of any two rotations is equivalent to a single rotation. Some other similarities and differences between the boost and rotation matrices include:
inverses: (relative motion in the opposite direction), and (rotation in the opposite sense about the same axis)
identity transformation for no relative motion/rotation:
unit determinant: . This property makes them proper transformations.
matrix symmetry: is symmetric (equals transpose), while is nonsymmetric but orthogonal (transpose equals inverse, ).
The most general proper Lorentz transformation includes a boost and rotation together, and is a nonsymmetric matrix. As special cases, and . An explicit form of the general Lorentz transformation is cumbersome to write down and will not be given here. Nevertheless, closed form expressions for the transformation matrices will be given below using group theoretical arguments. It will be easier to use the rapidity parametrization for boosts, in which case one writes and .
The Lie group SO+(3,1)
The set of transformations
with matrix multiplication as the operation of composition forms a group, called the "restricted Lorentz group", and is the special indefinite orthogonal group SO+(3,1). (The plus sign indicates that it preserves the orientation of the temporal dimension).
For simplicity, look at the infinitesimal Lorentz boost in the x direction (examining a boost in any other direction, or rotation about any axis, follows an identical procedure). The infinitesimal boost is a small boost away from the identity, obtained by the Taylor expansion of the boost matrix to first order about ,
where the higher order terms not shown are negligible because is small, and is simply the boost matrix in the x direction. The derivative of the matrix is the matrix of derivatives (of the entries, with respect to the same variable), and it is understood the derivatives are found first then evaluated at ,
For now, is defined by this result (its significance will be explained shortly). In the limit of an infinite number of infinitely small steps, the finite boost transformation in the form of a matrix exponential is obtained
where the limit definition of the exponential has been used (see also characterizations of the exponential function). More generally
The axis-angle vector and rapidity vector are altogether six continuous variables which make up the group parameters (in this particular representation), and the generators of the group are and , each vectors of matrices with the explicit forms
These are all defined in an analogous way to above, although the minus signs in the boost generators are conventional. Physically, the generators of the Lorentz group correspond to important symmetries in spacetime: are the rotation generators which correspond to angular momentum, and are the boost generators which correspond to the motion of the system in spacetime. The derivative of any smooth curve with in the group depending on some group parameter with respect to that group parameter, evaluated at , serves as a definition of a corresponding group generator , and this reflects an infinitesimal transformation away from the identity. The smooth curve can always be taken as an exponential as the exponential will always map smoothly back into the group via for all ; this curve will yield again when differentiated at .
Expanding the exponentials in their Taylor series obtains
which compactly reproduce the boost and rotation matrices as given in the previous section.
It has been stated that the general proper Lorentz transformation is a product of a boost and rotation. At the infinitesimal level the product
is commutative because only linear terms are required (products like and count as higher order terms and are negligible). Taking the limit as before leads to the finite transformation in the form of an exponential
The converse is also true, but the decomposition of a finite general Lorentz transformation into such factors is nontrivial. In particular,
because the generators do not commute. For a description of how to find the factors of a general Lorentz transformation in terms of a boost and a rotation in principle (this usually does not yield an intelligible expression in terms of generators and ), see Wigner rotation. If, on the other hand, the decomposition is given in terms of the generators, and one wants to find the product in terms of the generators, then the Baker–Campbell–Hausdorff formula applies.
The Lie algebra so(3,1)
Lorentz generators can be added together, or multiplied by real numbers, to obtain more Lorentz generators. In other words, the set of all Lorentz generators
together with the operations of ordinary matrix addition and multiplication of a matrix by a number, forms a vector space over the real numbers. The generators form a basis set of V, and the components of the axis-angle and rapidity vectors, , are the coordinates of a Lorentz generator with respect to this basis.
Three of the commutation relations of the Lorentz generators are
where the bracket is known as the commutator, and the other relations can be found by taking cyclic permutations of x, y, z components (i.e. change x to y, y to z, and z to x, repeat).
These commutation relations, and the vector space of generators, fulfill the definition of the Lie algebra . In summary, a Lie algebra is defined as a vector space V over a field of numbers, and with a binary operation [ , ] (called a Lie bracket in this context) on the elements of the vector space, satisfying the axioms of bilinearity, alternatization, and the Jacobi identity. Here the operation [ , ] is the commutator which satisfies all of these axioms, the vector space is the set of Lorentz generators V as given previously, and the field is the set of real numbers.
Linking terminology used in mathematics and physics: A group generator is any element of the Lie algebra. A group parameter is a component of a coordinate vector representing an arbitrary element of the Lie algebra with respect to some basis. A basis, then, is a set of generators being a basis of the Lie algebra in the usual vector space sense.
The exponential map from the Lie algebra to the Lie group,
provides a one-to-one correspondence between small enough neighborhoods of the origin of the Lie algebra and neighborhoods of the identity element of the Lie group. It the case of the Lorentz group, the exponential map is just the matrix exponential. Globally, the exponential map is not one-to-one, but in the case of the Lorentz group, it is surjective (onto). Hence any group element in the connected component of the identity can be expressed as an exponential of an element of the Lie algebra.
Improper transformations
Lorentz transformations also include parity inversion
which negates all the spatial coordinates only, and time reversal
which negates the time coordinate only, because these transformations leave the spacetime interval invariant. Here is the 3d identity matrix. These are both symmetric, they are their own inverses (see involution (mathematics)), and each have determinant −1. This latter property makes them improper transformations.
If is a proper orthochronous Lorentz transformation, then is improper antichronous, is improper orthochronous, and is proper antichronous.
Inhomogeneous Lorentz group
Two other spacetime symmetries have not been accounted for. For the spacetime interval to be invariant, it can be shown that it is necessary and sufficient for the coordinate transformation to be of the form
where C is a constant column containing translations in time and space. If C ≠ 0, this is an inhomogeneous Lorentz transformation or Poincaré transformation. If C = 0, this is a homogeneous Lorentz transformation. Poincaré transformations are not dealt further in this article.
Tensor formulation
Contravariant vectors
Writing the general matrix transformation of coordinates as the matrix equation
allows the transformation of other physical quantities that cannot be expressed as four-vectors; e.g., tensors or spinors of any order in 4d spacetime, to be defined. In the corresponding tensor index notation, the above matrix expression is
where lower and upper indices label covariant and contravariant components respectively, and the summation convention is applied. It is a standard convention to use Greek indices that take the value 0 for time components, and 1, 2, 3 for space components, while Latin indices simply take the values 1, 2, 3, for spatial components. Note that the first index (reading left to right) corresponds in the matrix notation to a row index. The second index corresponds to the column index.
The transformation matrix is universal for all four-vectors, not just 4-dimensional spacetime coordinates. If is any four-vector, then in tensor index notation
Alternatively, one writes in which the primed indices denote the indices of A in the primed frame. This notation cuts risk of exhausting the Greek alphabet roughly in half.
For a general -component object one may write where is the appropriate representation of the Lorentz group, an matrix for every . In this case, the indices should not be thought of as spacetime indices (sometimes called Lorentz indices), and they run from to . E.g., if is a bispinor, then the indices are called Dirac indices.
Covariant vectors
There are also vector quantities with covariant indices. They are generally obtained from their corresponding objects with contravariant indices by the operation of lowering an index; e.g.,
where is the metric tensor. (The linked article also provides more information about what the operation of raising and lowering indices really is mathematically.) The inverse of this transformation is given by
where, when viewed as matrices, is the inverse of . As it happens, . This is referred to as raising an index. To transform a covariant vector , first raise its index, then transform it according to the same rule as for contravariant -vectors, then finally lower the index;
But
That is, it is the -component of the inverse Lorentz transformation. One defines (as a matter of notation),
and may in this notation write
Now for a subtlety. The implied summation on the right hand side of
is running over a row index of the matrix representing . Thus, in terms of matrices, this transformation should be thought of as the inverse transpose of acting on the column vector . That is, in pure matrix notation,
This means exactly that covariant vectors (thought of as column matrices) transform according to the dual representation of the standard representation of the Lorentz group. This notion generalizes to general representations, simply replace with .
Tensors
If and are linear operators on vector spaces and , then a linear operator may be defined on the tensor product of and , denoted according to
From this it is immediately clear that if and are a four-vectors in , then transforms as
The second step uses the bilinearity of the tensor product and the last step defines a 2-tensor on component form, or rather, it just renames the tensor .
These observations generalize in an obvious way to more factors, and using the fact that a general tensor on a vector space can be written as a sum of a coefficient (component!) times tensor products of basis vectors and basis covectors, one arrives at the transformation law for any tensor quantity . It is given by
where is defined above. This form can generally be reduced to the form for general -component objects given above with a single matrix () operating on column vectors. This latter form is sometimes preferred; e.g., for the electromagnetic field tensor.
Transformation of the electromagnetic field
Lorentz transformations can also be used to illustrate that the magnetic field and electric field are simply different aspects of the same force — the electromagnetic force, as a consequence of relative motion between electric charges and observers. The fact that the electromagnetic field shows relativistic effects becomes clear by carrying out a simple thought experiment.
An observer measures a charge at rest in frame F. The observer will detect a static electric field. As the charge is stationary in this frame, there is no electric current, so the observer does not observe any magnetic field.
The other observer in frame F′ moves at velocity relative to F and the charge. This observer sees a different electric field because the charge moves at velocity in their rest frame. The motion of the charge corresponds to an electric current, and thus the observer in frame F′ also sees a magnetic field.
The electric and magnetic fields transform differently from space and time, but exactly the same way as relativistic angular momentum and the boost vector.
The electromagnetic field strength tensor is given by
in SI units. In relativity, the Gaussian system of units is often preferred over SI units, even in texts whose main choice of units is SI units, because in it the electric field and the magnetic induction have the same units making the appearance of the electromagnetic field tensor more natural. Consider a Lorentz boost in the -direction. It is given by
where the field tensor is displayed side by side for easiest possible reference in the manipulations below.
The general transformation law becomes
For the magnetic field one obtains
For the electric field results
Here, is used. These results can be summarized by
and are independent of the metric signature. For SI units, substitute . refer to this last form as the view as opposed to the geometric view represented by the tensor expression
and make a strong point of the ease with which results that are difficult to achieve using the view can be obtained and understood. Only objects that have well defined Lorentz transformation properties (in fact under any smooth coordinate transformation) are geometric objects. In the geometric view, the electromagnetic field is a six-dimensional geometric object in spacetime as opposed to two interdependent, but separate, 3-vector fields in space and time. The fields (alone) and (alone) do not have well defined Lorentz transformation properties. The mathematical underpinnings are equations and that immediately yield . One should note that the primed and unprimed tensors refer to the same event in spacetime. Thus the complete equation with spacetime dependence is
Length contraction has an effect on charge density and current density , and time dilation has an effect on the rate of flow of charge (current), so charge and current distributions must transform in a related way under a boost. It turns out they transform exactly like the space-time and energy-momentum four-vectors,
or, in the simpler geometric view,
Charge density transforms as the time component of a four-vector. It is a rotational scalar. The current density is a 3-vector.
The Maxwell equations are invariant under Lorentz transformations.
Spinors
Equation hold unmodified for any representation of the Lorentz group, including the bispinor representation. In one simply replaces all occurrences of by the bispinor representation ,
The above equation could, for instance, be the transformation of a state in Fock space describing two free electrons.
Transformation of general fields
A general noninteracting multi-particle state (Fock space state) in quantum field theory transforms according to the rule
where is the Wigner rotation and is the representation of .
See also
Footnotes
Notes
References
Websites
Papers
. See also: English translation.
eqn (55).
Books
Further reading
External links
Derivation of the Lorentz transformations. This web page contains a more detailed derivation of the Lorentz transformation with special emphasis on group properties.
The Paradox of Special Relativity. This webpage poses a problem, the solution of which is the Lorentz transformation, which is presented graphically in its next page.
Relativity – a chapter from an online textbook
Warp Special Relativity Simulator. A computer program demonstrating the Lorentz transformations on everyday objects.
visualizing the Lorentz transformation.
MinutePhysics video on YouTube explaining and visualizing the Lorentz transformation with a mechanical Minkowski diagram
Interactive graph on Desmos (graphing) showing Lorentz transformations with a virtual Minkowski diagram
Interactive graph on Desmos showing Lorentz transformations with points and hyperbolas
Lorentz Frames Animated from John de Pillis. Online Flash animations of Galilean and Lorentz frames, various paradoxes, EM wave phenomena, etc.
Special relativity
Theoretical physics
Mathematical physics
Spacetime
Coordinate systems
Hendrik Lorentz | [
-0.25633540749549866,
-0.25511953234672546,
0.21208582818508148,
-0.08438826352357864,
-0.17124435305595398,
0.27418252825737,
-0.16819582879543304,
-0.4837912321090698,
-0.3131433427333832,
-0.4781574010848999,
-0.4200478494167328,
0.3481987714767456,
-0.42617902159690857,
0.5646670460700... |
18406 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous%20aether | Luminiferous aether | Luminiferous aether or ether ("luminiferous", meaning "light-bearing") was the postulated medium for the propagation of light. It was invoked to explain the ability of the apparently wave-based light to propagate through empty space (a vacuum), something that waves should not be able to do. The assumption of a spatial plenum of luminiferous aether, rather than a spatial vacuum, provided the theoretical medium that was required by wave theories of light.
The aether hypothesis was the topic of considerable debate throughout its history, as it required the existence of an invisible and infinite material with no interaction with physical objects. As the nature of light was explored, especially in the 19th century, the physical qualities required of an aether became increasingly contradictory. By the late 1800s, the existence of the aether was being questioned, although there was no physical theory to replace it.
The negative outcome of the Michelson–Morley experiment (1887) suggested that the aether did not exist, a finding that was confirmed in subsequent experiments through the 1920s. This led to considerable theoretical work to explain the propagation of light without an aether. A major breakthrough was the theory of relativity, which could explain why the experiment failed to see aether, but was more broadly interpreted to suggest that it was not needed. The Michelson-Morley experiment, along with the blackbody radiator and photoelectric effect, was a key experiment in the development of modern physics, which includes both relativity and quantum theory, the latter of which explains the particle-like nature of light.
The history of light and aether
Particles vs. waves
In the 17th century, Robert Boyle was a proponent of an aether hypothesis. According to Boyle, the aether consists of subtle particles, one sort of which explains the absence of vacuum and the mechanical interactions between bodies, and the other sort of which explains phenomena such as magnetism (and possibly gravity) that are, otherwise, inexplicable on the basis of purely mechanical interactions of macroscopic bodies, "though in the ether of the ancients there was nothing taken notice of but a diffused and very subtle substance; yet we are at present content to allow that there is always in the air a swarm of steams moving in a determinate course between the north pole and the south".
Christiaan Huygens's Treatise on Light (1690) hypothesized that light is a wave propagating through an aether. He and Isaac Newton could only envision light waves as being longitudinal, propagating like sound and other mechanical waves in fluids. However, longitudinal waves necessarily have only one form for a given propagation direction, rather than two polarizations like a transverse wave. Thus, longitudinal waves can not explain birefringence, in which two polarizations of light are refracted differently by a crystal. In addition, Newton rejected light as waves in a medium because such a medium would have to extend everywhere in space, and would thereby "disturb and retard the Motions of those great Bodies" (the planets and comets) and thus "as it is of no use, and hinders the Operation of Nature, and makes her languish, so there is no evidence for its Existence, and therefore it ought to be rejected".
Isaac Newton contended that light is made up of numerous small particles. This can explain such features as light's ability to travel in straight lines and reflect off surfaces. Newton imagined light particles as non-spherical "corpuscles", with different "sides" that give rise to birefringence. But the particle theory of light can not satisfactorily explain refraction and diffraction. To explain refraction, Newton's Third Book of Opticks (1st ed. 1704, 4th ed. 1730) postulated an "aethereal medium" transmitting vibrations faster than light, by which light, when overtaken, is put into "Fits of easy Reflexion and easy Transmission", which caused refraction and diffraction. Newton believed that these vibrations were related to heat radiation:
Is not the Heat of the warm Room convey'd through the vacuum by the Vibrations of a much subtiler Medium than Air, which after the Air was drawn out remained in the Vacuum? And is not this Medium the same with that Medium by which Light is refracted and reflected, and by whose Vibrations Light communicates Heat to Bodies, and is put into Fits of easy Reflexion and easy Transmission?
In contrast to the modern understanding that heat radiation and light are both electromagnetic radiation, Newton viewed heat and light as two different phenomena. He believed heat vibrations to be excited "when a Ray of Light falls upon the Surface of any pellucid Body". He wrote, "I do not know what this Aether is", but that if it consists of particles then they must be exceedingly smaller than those of Air, or even than those of Light: The exceeding smallness of its Particles may contribute to the greatness of the force by which those Particles may recede from one another, and thereby make that Medium exceedingly more rare and elastic than Air, and by consequence exceedingly less able to resist the motions of Projectiles, and exceedingly more able to press upon gross Bodies, by endeavoring to expand itself.
Bradley suggests particles
In 1720, James Bradley carried out a series of experiments attempting to measure stellar parallax by taking measurements of stars at different times of the year. As the Earth moves around the sun, the apparent angle to a given distant spot changes. By measuring those angles the distance to the star can be calculated based on the known orbital circumference of the Earth around the sun. He failed to detect any parallax, thereby placing a lower limit on the distance to stars.
During these experiments, Bradley also discovered a related effect; the apparent positions of the stars did change over the year, but not as expected. Instead of the apparent angle being maximized when the Earth was at either end of its orbit with respect to the star, the angle was maximized when the Earth was at its fastest sideways velocity with respect to the star. This effect is now known as stellar aberration.
Bradley explained this effect in the context of Newton's corpuscular theory of light, by showing that the aberration angle was given by simple vector addition of the Earth's orbital velocity and the velocity of the corpuscles of light, just as vertically falling raindrops strike a moving object at an angle. Knowing the Earth's velocity and the aberration angle enabled him to estimate the speed of light.
Explaining stellar aberration in the context of an aether-based theory of light was regarded as more problematic. As the aberration relied on relative velocities, and the measured velocity was dependent on the motion of the Earth, the aether had to be remaining stationary with respect to the star as the Earth moved through it. This meant that the Earth could travel through the aether, a physical medium, with no apparent effect – precisely the problem that led Newton to reject a wave model in the first place.
Wave-theory triumphs
A century later, Thomas Young and Augustin-Jean Fresnel revived the wave theory of light when they pointed out that light could be a transverse wave rather than a longitudinal wave; the polarization of a transverse wave (like Newton's "sides" of light) could explain birefringence, and in the wake of a series of experiments on diffraction the particle model of Newton was finally abandoned. Physicists assumed, moreover, that, like mechanical waves, light waves required a medium for propagation, and thus required Huygens's idea of an aether "gas" permeating all space.
However, a transverse wave apparently required the propagating medium to behave as a solid, as opposed to a fluid. The idea of a solid that did not interact with other matter seemed a bit odd, and Augustin-Louis Cauchy suggested that perhaps there was some sort of "dragging", or "entrainment", but this made the aberration measurements difficult to understand. He also suggested that the absence of longitudinal waves suggested that the aether had negative compressibility. George Green pointed out that such a fluid would be unstable. George Gabriel Stokes became a champion of the entrainment interpretation, developing a model in which the aether might, like pine pitch, be dilatant (fluid at slow speeds and rigid at fast speeds). Thus the Earth could move through it fairly freely, but it would be rigid enough to support light.
Electromagnetism
In 1856, Wilhelm Eduard Weber and Rudolf Kohlrausch measured the numerical value of the ratio of the electrostatic unit of charge to the electromagnetic unit of charge. They found that the ratio equals the product of the speed of light and the square root of two. The following year, Gustav Kirchhoff wrote a paper in which he showed that the speed of a signal along an electric wire was equal to the speed of light. These are the first recorded historical links between the speed of light and electromagnetic phenomena.
James Clerk Maxwell began working on Michael Faraday's lines of force. In his 1861 paper On Physical Lines of Force he modelled these magnetic lines of force using a sea of molecular vortices that he considered to be partly made of aether and partly made of ordinary matter. He derived expressions for the dielectric constant and the magnetic permeability in terms of the transverse elasticity and the density of this elastic medium. He then equated the ratio of the dielectric constant to the magnetic permeability with a suitably adapted version of Weber and Kohlrausch's result of 1856, and he substituted this result into Newton's equation for the speed of sound. On obtaining a value that was close to the speed of light as measured by Hippolyte Fizeau, Maxwell concluded that light consists in undulations of the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena.
Maxwell had, however, expressed some uncertainties surrounding the precise nature of his molecular vortices and so he began to embark on a purely dynamical approach to the problem. He wrote another paper in 1864, entitled "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field", in which the details of the luminiferous medium were less explicit. Although Maxwell did not explicitly mention the sea of molecular vortices, his derivation of Ampère's circuital law was carried over from the 1861 paper and he used a dynamical approach involving rotational motion within the electromagnetic field which he likened to the action of flywheels. Using this approach to justify the electromotive force equation (the precursor of the Lorentz force equation), he derived a wave equation from a set of eight equations which appeared in the paper and which included the electromotive force equation and Ampère's circuital law. Maxwell once again used the experimental results of Weber and Kohlrausch to show that this wave equation represented an electromagnetic wave that propagates at the speed of light, hence supporting the view that light is a form of electromagnetic radiation.
The apparent need for a propagation medium for such Hertzian waves can be seen by the fact that they consist of orthogonal electric (E) and magnetic (B or H) waves. The E waves consist of undulating dipolar electric fields, and all such dipoles appeared to require separated and opposite electric charges. Electric charge is an inextricable property of matter, so it appeared that some form of matter was required to provide the alternating current that would seem to have to exist at any point along the propagation path of the wave. Propagation of waves in a true vacuum would imply the existence of electric fields without associated electric charge, or of electric charge without associated matter. Albeit compatible with Maxwell's equations, electromagnetic induction of electric fields could not be demonstrated in vacuum, because all methods of detecting electric fields required electrically charged matter.
In addition, Maxwell's equations required that all electromagnetic waves in vacuum propagate at a fixed speed, c. As this can only occur in one reference frame in Newtonian physics (see Galilean relativity), the aether was hypothesized as the absolute and unique frame of reference in which Maxwell's equations hold. That is, the aether must be "still" universally, otherwise c would vary along with any variations that might occur in its supportive medium. Maxwell himself proposed several mechanical models of aether based on wheels and gears, and George Francis FitzGerald even constructed a working model of one of them. These models had to agree with the fact that the electromagnetic waves are transverse but never longitudinal.
Problems
By this point the mechanical qualities of the aether had become more and more magical: it had to be a fluid in order to fill space, but one that was millions of times more rigid than steel in order to support the high frequencies of light waves. It also had to be massless and without viscosity, otherwise it would visibly affect the orbits of planets. Additionally it appeared it had to be completely transparent, non-dispersive, incompressible, and continuous at a very small scale. Maxwell wrote in Encyclopædia Britannica:
Aethers were invented for the planets to swim in, to constitute electric atmospheres and magnetic effluvia, to convey sensations from one part of our bodies to another, and so on, until all space had been filled three or four times over with aethers. ... The only aether which has survived is that which was invented by Huygens to explain the propagation of light.
Contemporary scientists were aware of the problems, but aether theory was so entrenched in physical law by this point that it was simply assumed to exist. In 1908 Oliver Lodge gave a speech on behalf of Lord Rayleigh to the Royal Institution on this topic, in which he outlined its physical properties, and then attempted to offer reasons why they were not impossible. Nevertheless, he was also aware of the criticisms, and quoted Lord Salisbury as saying that "aether is little more than a nominative case of the verb to undulate". Others criticized it as an "English invention", although Rayleigh jokingly stated it was actually an invention of the Royal Institution.
By the early 20th century, aether theory was in trouble. A series of increasingly complex experiments had been carried out in the late 19th century to try to detect the motion of the Earth through the aether, and had failed to do so. A range of proposed aether-dragging theories could explain the null result but these were more complex, and tended to use arbitrary-looking coefficients and physical assumptions. Lorentz and FitzGerald offered within the framework of Lorentz ether theory a more elegant solution to how the motion of an absolute aether could be undetectable (length contraction), but if their equations were correct, the new special theory of relativity (1905) could generate the same mathematics without referring to an aether at all. Aether fell to Occam's Razor.
Relative motion between the Earth and aether
Aether drag
The two most important models, which were aimed to describe the relative motion of the Earth and aether, were Augustin-Jean Fresnel's (1818) model of the (nearly) stationary aether including a partial aether drag determined by Fresnel's dragging coefficient, and George Gabriel Stokes' (1844)
model of complete aether drag. The latter theory was not considered as correct, since it was not compatible with the aberration of light, and the auxiliary hypotheses developed to explain this problem were not convincing. Also, subsequent experiments as the Sagnac effect (1913) also showed that this model is untenable. However, the most important experiment supporting Fresnel's theory was Fizeau's 1851 experimental confirmation of Fresnel's 1818 prediction that a medium with refractive index n moving with a velocity v would increase the speed of light travelling through the medium in the same direction as v from c/n to:
That is, movement adds only a fraction of the medium's velocity to the light (predicted by Fresnel in order to make Snell's law work in all frames of reference, consistent with stellar aberration). This was initially interpreted to mean that the medium drags the aether along, with a portion of the medium's velocity, but that understanding became very problematic after Wilhelm Veltmann demonstrated that the index n in Fresnel's formula depended upon the wavelength of light, so that the aether could not be moving at a wavelength-independent speed. This implied that there must be a separate aether for each of the infinitely many frequencies.
Negative aether-drift experiments
The key difficulty with Fresnel's aether hypothesis arose from the juxtaposition of the two well-established theories of Newtonian dynamics and Maxwell's electromagnetism. Under a Galilean transformation the equations of Newtonian dynamics are invariant, whereas those of electromagnetism are not. Basically this means that while physics should remain the same in non-accelerated experiments, light would not follow the same rules because it is travelling in the universal "aether frame". Some effect caused by this difference should be detectable.
A simple example concerns the model on which aether was originally built: sound. The speed of propagation for mechanical waves, the speed of sound, is defined by the mechanical properties of the medium. Sound travels 4.3 times faster in water than in air. This explains why a person hearing an explosion underwater and quickly surfacing can hear it again as the slower travelling sound arrives through the air. Similarly, a traveller on an airliner can still carry on a conversation with another traveller because the sound of words is travelling along with the air inside the aircraft. This effect is basic to all Newtonian dynamics, which says that everything from sound to the trajectory of a thrown baseball should all remain the same in the aircraft flying (at least at a constant speed) as if still sitting on the ground. This is the basis of the Galilean transformation, and the concept of frame of reference.
But the same was not supposed to be true for light, since Maxwell's mathematics demanded a single universal speed for the propagation of light, based, not on local conditions, but on two measured properties, the permittivity and permeability of free space, that were assumed to be the same throughout the universe. If these numbers did change, there should be noticeable effects in the sky; stars in different directions would have different colours, for instance.
Thus at any point there should be one special coordinate system, "at rest relative to the aether". Maxwell noted in the late 1870s that detecting motion relative to this aether should be easy enough—light travelling along with the motion of the Earth would have a different speed than light travelling backward, as they would both be moving against the unmoving aether. Even if the aether had an overall universal flow, changes in position during the day/night cycle, or over the span of seasons, should allow the drift to be detected.
First order experiments
Although the aether is almost stationary according to Fresnel, his theory predicts a positive outcome of aether drift experiments only to second order in , because Fresnel's dragging coefficient would cause a negative outcome of all optical experiments capable of measuring effects to first order in . This was confirmed by the following first-order experiments, which all gave negative results. The following list is based on the description of Wilhelm Wien (1898), with changes and additional experiments according to the descriptions of Edmund Taylor Whittaker (1910) and Jakob Laub (1910):
The experiment of François Arago (1810), to confirm whether refraction, and thus the aberration of light, is influenced by Earth's motion. Similar experiments were conducted by George Biddell Airy (1871) by means of a telescope filled with water, and Éleuthère Mascart (1872).
The experiment of Fizeau (1860), to find whether the rotation of the polarization plane through glass columns is changed by Earth's motion. He obtained a positive result, but Lorentz could show that the results have been contradictory. DeWitt Bristol Brace (1905) and Strasser (1907) repeated the experiment with improved accuracy, and obtained negative results.
The experiment of Martin Hoek (1868). This experiment is a more precise variation of the Fizeau experiment (1851). Two light rays were sent in opposite directions – one of them traverses a path filled with resting water, the other one follows a path through air. In agreement with Fresnel's dragging coefficient, he obtained a negative result.
The experiment of Wilhelm Klinkerfues (1870) investigated whether an influence of Earth's motion on the absorption line of sodium exists. He obtained a positive result, but this was shown to be an experimental error, because a repetition of the experiment by Haga (1901) gave a negative result.
The experiment of Ketteler (1872), in which two rays of an interferometer were sent in opposite directions through two mutually inclined tubes filled with water. No change of the interference fringes occurred. Later, Mascart (1872) showed that the interference fringes of polarized light in calcite remained uninfluenced as well.
The experiment of Éleuthère Mascart (1872) to find a change of rotation of the polarization plane in quartz. No change of rotation was found when the light rays had the direction of Earth's motion and then the opposite direction. Lord Rayleigh conducted similar experiments with improved accuracy, and obtained a negative result as well.
Besides those optical experiments, also electrodynamic first-order experiments were conducted, which should have led to positive results according to Fresnel. However, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1895) modified Fresnel's theory and showed that those experiments can be explained by a stationary aether as well:
The experiment of Wilhelm Röntgen (1888), to find whether a charged condenser produces magnetic forces due to Earth's motion.
The experiment of Theodor des Coudres (1889), to find whether the inductive effect of two wire rolls upon a third one is influenced by the direction of Earth's motion. Lorentz showed that this effect is cancelled to first order by the electrostatic charge (produced by Earth's motion) upon the conductors.
The experiment of Königsberger (1905). The plates of a condenser are located in the field of a strong electromagnet. Due to Earth's motion, the plates should have become charged. No such effect was observed.
The experiment of Frederick Thomas Trouton (1902). A condenser was brought parallel to Earth's motion, and it was assumed that momentum is produced when the condenser is charged. The negative result can be explained by Lorentz's theory, according to which the electromagnetic momentum compensates the momentum due to Earth's motion. Lorentz could also show, that the sensitivity of the apparatus was much too low to observe such an effect.
Second order experiments
While the first-order experiments could be explained by a modified stationary aether, more precise second-order experiments were expected to give positive results, however, no such results could be found.
The famous Michelson–Morley experiment compared the source light with itself after being sent in different directions, looking for changes in phase in a manner that could be measured with extremely high accuracy. In this experiment, their goal was to determine the velocity of the Earth through the aether. The publication of their result in 1887, the null result, was the first clear demonstration that something was seriously wrong with the aether hypothesis (Michelson's first experiment in 1881 was not entirely conclusive). In this case the MM experiment yielded a shift of the fringing pattern of about 0.01 of a fringe, corresponding to a small velocity. However, it was incompatible with the expected aether wind effect due to the Earth's (seasonally varying) velocity which would have required a shift of 0.4 of a fringe, and the error was small enough that the value may have indeed been zero. Therefore, the null hypothesis, the hypothesis that there was no aether wind, could not be rejected. More modern experiments have since reduced the possible value to a number very close to zero, about 10−17.
A series of experiments using similar but increasingly sophisticated apparatuses all returned the null result as well. Conceptually different experiments that also attempted to detect the motion of the aether were the Trouton–Noble experiment (1903), whose objective was to detect torsion effects caused by electrostatic fields, and the experiments of Rayleigh and Brace (1902, 1904), to detect double refraction in various media. However, all of them obtained a null result, like Michelson–Morley (MM) previously did.
These "aether-wind" experiments led to a flurry of efforts to "save" aether by assigning to it ever more complex properties, while only few scientists, like Emil Cohn or Alfred Bucherer, considered the possibility of the abandonment of the aether hypothesis. Of particular interest was the possibility of "aether entrainment" or "aether drag", which would lower the magnitude of the measurement, perhaps enough to explain the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment. However, as noted earlier, aether dragging already had problems of its own, notably aberration. In addition, the interference experiments of Lodge (1893, 1897) and Ludwig Zehnder (1895), aimed to show whether the aether is dragged by various, rotating masses, showed no aether drag. A more precise measurement was made in the Hammar experiment (1935), which ran a complete MM experiment with one of the "legs" placed between two massive lead blocks. If the aether was dragged by mass then this experiment would have been able to detect the drag caused by the lead, but again the null result was achieved. The theory was again modified, this time to suggest that the entrainment only worked for very large masses or those masses with large magnetic fields. This too was shown to be incorrect by the Michelson–Gale–Pearson experiment, which detected the Sagnac effect due to Earth's rotation (see Aether drag hypothesis).
Another, completely different attempt to save "absolute" aether was made in the Lorentz–FitzGerald contraction hypothesis, which posited that everything was affected by travel through the aether. In this theory the reason the Michelson–Morley experiment "failed" was that the apparatus contracted in length in the direction of travel. That is, the light was being affected in the "natural" manner by its travel through the aether as predicted, but so was the apparatus itself, cancelling out any difference when measured. FitzGerald had inferred this hypothesis from a paper by Oliver Heaviside. Without referral to an aether, this physical interpretation of relativistic effects was shared by Kennedy and Thorndike in 1932 as they concluded that the interferometer's arm contracts and also the frequency of its light source "very nearly" varies in the way required by relativity.
Similarly the Sagnac effect, observed by G. Sagnac in 1913, was immediately seen to be fully consistent with special relativity. In fact, the Michelson-Gale-Pearson experiment in 1925 was proposed specifically as a test to confirm the relativity theory, although it was also recognized that such tests, which merely measure absolute rotation, are also consistent with non-relativistic theories.
During the 1920s, the experiments pioneered by Michelson were repeated by Dayton Miller, who publicly proclaimed positive results on several occasions, although they were not large enough to be consistent with any known aether theory. However, other researchers were unable to duplicate Miller's claimed results. Over the years the experimental accuracy of such measurements has been raised by many orders of magnitude, and no trace of any violations of Lorentz invariance has been seen. (A later re-analysis of Miller's results concluded that he had underestimated the variations due to temperature.)
Since the Miller experiment and its unclear results there have been many more experimental attempts to detect the aether. Many experimenters have claimed positive results. These results have not gained much attention from mainstream science, since they contradict a large quantity of high-precision measurements, all the results of which were consistent with special relativity.
Lorentz aether theory
Between 1892 and 1904, Hendrik Lorentz developed an electron-aether theory, in which he introduced a strict separation between matter (electrons) and aether. In his model the aether is completely motionless, and won't be set in motion in the neighborhood of ponderable matter. Contrary to earlier electron models, the electromagnetic field of the aether appears as a mediator between the electrons, and changes in this field cannot propagate faster than the speed of light. A fundamental concept of Lorentz's theory in 1895 was the "theorem of corresponding states" for terms of order v/c. This theorem states that an observer moving relative to the aether makes the same observations as a resting observer, after a suitable change of variables. Lorentz noticed that it was necessary to change the space-time variables when changing frames and introduced concepts like physical length contraction (1892) to explain the Michelson–Morley experiment, and the mathematical concept of local time (1895) to explain the aberration of light and the Fizeau experiment. This resulted in the formulation of the so-called Lorentz transformation by Joseph Larmor (1897, 1900) and Lorentz (1899, 1904), whereby (it was noted by Larmor) the complete formulation of local time is accompanied by some sort of time dilation of electrons moving in the aether. As Lorentz later noted (1921, 1928), he considered the time indicated by clocks resting in the aether as "true" time, while local time was seen by him as a heuristic working hypothesis and a mathematical artifice. Therefore, Lorentz's theorem is seen by modern authors as being a mathematical transformation from a "real" system resting in the aether into a "fictitious" system in motion.
The work of Lorentz was mathematically perfected by Henri Poincaré, who formulated on many occasions the Principle of Relativity and tried to harmonize it with electrodynamics. He declared simultaneity only a convenient convention which depends on the speed of light, whereby the constancy of the speed of light would be a useful postulate for making the laws of nature as simple as possible. In 1900 and 1904 he physically interpreted Lorentz's local time as the result of clock synchronization by light signals. In June and July 1905 he declared the relativity principle a general law of nature, including gravitation. He corrected some mistakes of Lorentz and proved the Lorentz covariance of the electromagnetic equations. However, he used the notion of an aether as a perfectly undetectable medium and distinguished between apparent and real time, so most historians of science argue that he failed to invent special relativity.
End of aether
Special relativity
Aether theory was dealt another blow when the Galilean transformation and Newtonian dynamics were both modified by Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, giving the mathematics of Lorentzian electrodynamics a new, "non-aether" context. Unlike most major shifts in scientific thought, special relativity was adopted by the scientific community remarkably quickly, consistent with Einstein's later comment that the laws of physics described by the Special Theory were "ripe for discovery" in 1905. Max Planck's early advocacy of the special theory, along with the elegant formulation given to it by Hermann Minkowski, contributed much to the rapid acceptance of special relativity among working scientists.
Einstein based his theory on Lorentz's earlier work. Instead of suggesting that the mechanical properties of objects changed with their constant-velocity motion through an undetectable aether, Einstein proposed to deduce the characteristics that any successful theory must possess in order to be consistent with the most basic and firmly established principles, independent of the existence of a hypothetical aether. He found that the Lorentz transformation must transcend its connection with Maxwell's equations, and must represent the fundamental relations between the space and time coordinates of inertial frames of reference. In this way he demonstrated that the laws of physics remained invariant as they had with the Galilean transformation, but that light was now invariant as well.
With the development of the special theory of relativity, the need to account for a single universal frame of reference had disappeared – and acceptance of the 19th-century theory of a luminiferous aether disappeared with it. For Einstein, the Lorentz transformation implied a conceptual change: that the concept of position in space or time was not absolute, but could differ depending on the observer's location and velocity.
Moreover, in another paper published the same month in 1905, Einstein made several observations on a then-thorny problem, the photoelectric effect. In this work he demonstrated that light can be considered as particles that have a "wave-like nature". Particles obviously do not need a medium to travel, and thus, neither did light. This was the first step that would lead to the full development of quantum mechanics, in which the wave-like nature and the particle-like nature of light are both considered as valid descriptions of light. A summary of Einstein's thinking about the aether hypothesis, relativity and light quanta may be found in his 1909 (originally German) lecture "The Development of Our Views on the Composition and Essence of Radiation".
Lorentz on his side continued to use the aether hypothesis. In his lectures of around 1911, he pointed out that what "the theory of relativity has to say ... can be carried out independently of what one thinks of the aether and the time". He commented that "whether there is an aether or not, electromagnetic fields certainly exist, and so also does the energy of the electrical oscillations" so that, "if we do not like the name of 'aether', we must use another word as a peg to hang all these things upon". He concluded that "one cannot deny the bearer of these concepts a certain substantiality".
Other models
In later years there have been a few individuals who advocated a neo-Lorentzian approach to physics, which is Lorentzian in the sense of positing an absolute true state of rest that is undetectable and which plays no role in the predictions of the theory. (No violations of Lorentz covariance have ever been detected, despite strenuous efforts.) Hence these theories resemble the 19th century aether theories in name only. For example, the founder of quantum field theory, Paul Dirac, stated in 1951 in an article in Nature, titled "Is there an Aether?" that "we are rather forced to have an aether". However, Dirac never formulated a complete theory, and so his speculations found no acceptance by the scientific community.
Einstein's views on the aether
When Einstein was still a student in the Zurich Polytechnic in 1900, he was very interested in the idea of aether. His initial proposal of research thesis was to do an experiment to measure how fast the Earth was moving through the aether. "The velocity of a wave is proportional to the square root of the elastic forces which cause [its] propagation, and inversely proportional to the mass of the aether moved by these forces."
In 1916, after Einstein completed his foundational work on general relativity, Lorentz wrote a letter to him in which he speculated that within general relativity the aether was re-introduced. In his response Einstein wrote that one can actually speak about a "new aether", but one may not speak of motion in relation to that aether. This was further elaborated by Einstein in some semi-popular articles (1918, 1920, 1924, 1930).
In 1918 Einstein publicly alluded to that new definition for the first time. Then, in the early 1920s, in a lecture which he was invited to give at Lorentz's university in Leiden, Einstein sought to reconcile the theory of relativity with Lorentzian aether. In this lecture Einstein stressed that special relativity took away the last mechanical property of the aether: immobility. However, he continued that special relativity does not necessarily rule out the aether, because the latter can be used to give physical reality to acceleration and rotation. This concept was fully elaborated within general relativity, in which physical properties (which are partially determined by matter) are attributed to space, but no substance or state of motion can be attributed to that "aether" (by which he meant curved space-time).
In another paper of 1924, named "Concerning the Aether", Einstein argued that Newton's absolute space, in which acceleration is absolute, is the "Aether of Mechanics". And within the electromagnetic theory of Maxwell and Lorentz one can speak of the "Aether of Electrodynamics", in which the aether possesses an absolute state of motion. As regards special relativity, also in this theory acceleration is absolute as in Newton's mechanics. However, the difference from the electromagnetic aether of Maxwell and Lorentz lies in the fact that "because it was no longer possible to speak, in any absolute sense, of simultaneous states at different locations in the aether, the aether became, as it were, four-dimensional since there was no objective way of ordering its states by time alone". Now the "aether of special relativity" is still "absolute", because matter is affected by the properties of the aether, but the aether is not affected by the presence of matter. This asymmetry was solved within general relativity. Einstein explained that the "aether of general relativity" is not absolute, because matter is influenced by the aether, just as matter influences the structure of the aether.
The only similarity of this relativistic aether concept with the classical aether models lies in the presence of physical properties in space, which can be identified through geodesics. As historians such as John Stachel argue, Einstein's views on the "new aether" are not in conflict with his abandonment of the aether in 1905. As Einstein himself pointed out, no "substance" and no state of motion can be attributed to that new aether. Einstein's use of the word "aether" found little support in the scientific community, and played no role in the continuing development of modern physics.
Aether concepts
Aether theories
Aether (classical element)
Aether drag hypothesis
See also
Dirac sea
Galactic year
History of special relativity
Le Sage's theory of gravitation
One-way speed of light
Preferred frame
Superseded scientific theories
Virtual particle
Welteislehre
References
Footnotes
Citations
Primary sources
Experiments
Secondary sources
External links
Harry Bateman (1915) The Structure of the Aether, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 21(6):299–309.
The Aether of Space - Lord Rayleigh's address
ScienceWeek THEORETICAL PHYSICS: ON THE AETHER AND BROKEN SYMMETRY
The New Student's Reference Work/Ether
Aether theories | [
0.47429782152175903,
0.3625583350658417,
0.32376670837402344,
0.10196232795715332,
-0.39064231514930725,
0.3250841200351715,
-0.03933318331837654,
0.18413348495960236,
0.10540251433849335,
-0.4229445457458496,
-0.40622296929359436,
0.6070197820663452,
-0.3904113173484802,
0.669323444366455... |
18408 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAME | LAME | LAME is a software encoder that converts a digitized WAV audio file into the MP3 audio coding file format. LAME is a free software project that was first released in 1998, and has incorporated many improvements since then, including an improved psychoacoustic model. The LAME encoder outperforms early encoders like L3enc and possibly the "gold standard encoder" MP3enc, both marketed by Fraunhofer.
LAME was required by some programs released as free software in which LAME was linked for MP3 support, but the patent has expired. This avoided including LAME itself, which use patented techniques, and so required patent licenses in some countries. LAME is now bundled with Audacity, which previously required a separate download for LAME.
History
The name LAME is a recursive acronym for "LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder".
Around mid-1998, Mike Cheng created LAME 1.0 as a set of modifications against the "8Hz-MP3" encoder source code. After some quality concerns raised by others, he decided to start again from scratch based on the "dist10" MPEG reference software sources. His goal was only to speed up the dist10 sources, and leave its quality untouched. That branch (a patch against the reference sources) became Lame 2.0. The project quickly became a team project. Mike Cheng eventually left leadership and started working on tooLAME (an MP2 encoder).
Mark Taylor then started pursuing increased quality in addition to better speed, and released version 3.0 featuring gpsycho, a new psychoacoustic model he developed. A few key improvements since LAME 3.x, in chronological order:
May 1999 (LAME 3.0): a new psychoacoustic model (GPSYCHO) is released.
June 1999 (LAME 3.11): The first variable bitrate (VBR) implementation is released. Soon after this, LAME also became able to target lower sampling frequencies from MPEG-2. (LAME 3.99 also supports the technologically simpler average bitrate (ABR), but it is unclear whether it was added before or with VBR.)
November 1999 (LAME 3.52): LAME switches from a GPL license to an LGPL license, which allows using it with closed-source applications.
May 2000 (LAME 3.81): the last pieces of the original ISO demonstration code are removed. LAME is not a patch anymore, but a full encoder.
December 2003 (LAME 3.94): substantial improvement to default settings, along with improved speed. LAME no longer requires users to enter complicated parameters to produce good results.
May 2007 (LAME 3.98): default variable bitrate encoding speed is vastly improved.
Patents and legal issues
Like all MP3 encoders, LAME implemented techniques covered by patents owned by the Fraunhofer Society and others. The developers of LAME did not license the technology described by these patents. Distributing compiled binaries of LAME, its libraries, or programs that derive from LAME in countries where those patents have been granted may have constituted infringement, but since 23 April 2017, all of these patents have expired.
The LAME developers stated that, since their code was only released in source code form, it should only be considered as an educational description of an MP3 encoder, and thus did not infringe any patent in itself. They also advised users to obtain relevant patent licenses before including a compiled version of the encoder in a product. Some software was released using this strategy: companies used the LAME library, but obtained patent licenses.
In the course of the 2005 Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal, there were reports that the Extended Copy Protection rootkit included on some Sony Compact Discs had portions of the LAME library without complying with the terms of the LGPL.
See also
List of codecs
Lossy compression
MP3, ID3
References
External links
LAME binaries - RareWares
LAME binaries for Audacity - recommended for the Audacity free and GPL audio editor
LAME Wiki - HydrogenAudio (audiophile information)
LAME Mp3 Info Tag revision 1 Specifications
1998 software
Cross-platform software
Free audio codecs
MP3 | [
-0.09048335254192352,
0.1242753341794014,
-0.5460047125816345,
0.3436948359012604,
0.019532358273863792,
0.03017284721136093,
-0.2434421330690384,
-0.3397466838359833,
0.03920730948448181,
-0.2536431849002838,
-0.3828102648258209,
0.5151111483573914,
-0.2900453507900238,
0.0206462908536195... |
18414 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leszek%20Miller | Leszek Miller | {ban{Premier rencista 3 zł{Short description|Polish politician}}
Leszek Cezary Miller (Polish pronunciation: ; born 3 July 1946) is a Polish politician. He has served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) since July 2019.
From 1989 to 1990 was a member of the Politburo of the Polish United Workers' Party. From 2001 to 2004 was a Prime Minister of Poland. Miller was the leader of the Democratic Left Alliance from 1999 to 2004 and again from 2011 to 2016.
Childhood and youth
Leszek Miller is the great-grandson of Eliasz, son of Mośek and Sura Miller, born in 1840 in Kutno. Eliasz Miller converted from Judaism to Christianity in 1869 in Nieborów.
Leszek Miller was born in Żyrardów, Miller comes from a poor, working-class family: His father was a tailor and his mother a needlewoman. His parents broke up when Miller was six months old. His father, Florian Miller left the family and Leszek has never maintained any contact with him. His mother brought him up in a religious spirit – following her wish, he was even, for some time, an altar server in their church.
Due to hard living conditions, after graduation from a vocational school, 17-year-old Miller got a job in the Textile Linen Plant in Żyrardów, while continuing his education in the evenings at the Vocational Secondary School of Electric Power Engineering. He soon completed his military service on the ORP Bielik submarine.
In 1969, Miller married Aleksandra, three years his junior, in church. They had a son, Leszek Junior ( August 2018), and a granddaughter, Monika.
Political career
Before 1990
Miller started his political career as an activist of the Socialist Youth Union, where he held the position of Chairman of the Plant Board, soon becoming a member of the Town Committee. After the military service, in 1969, he joined the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), People's Poland's communist party.
Many people were pressured to join PZPR in order to advance in their careers or to pursue higher education. Miller used his affiliation with the Communist party to effectively advance in his studies and professional goals.
In 1973 and 1974, Miller was the Secretary of the PZPR Plant Committee. With the party's recommendation, he started political sciences studies at the party's Higher School of Political Sciences (Wyższa Szkoła Nauk Społecznych), graduating in 1977. After graduation, Miller worked at the PZPR Central Committee, supervising the Group, and later on the Department of Youth, Physical Education and Tourism.
In July 1986, Miller was elected as First Secretary of the PZPR Provincial Committee in Skierniewice. In December 1988, he returned to Warsaw, due to his promotion to the position of the Secretary of the PZPR Central Committee. As a representative of the government side, he took part in the session of the historic "Round Table", where, together with Andrzej Celiński, he co-chaired the sub-team for youth issues (the only one that closed the session without signing the agreement). In 1989, he became a member of the PZPR Political Bureau.
After 1990
After the PZPR was dissolved, Miller became a co-founder of the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic (till March 1993, he was Secretary General, then Deputy Chairman and, from December 1997, the Chairman of that party). In December 1999, at the Founding Congress of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), he was elected its Chairman, holding the function continuously until February 2004. In 1997-2001 he was the Chairman of the SLD’s caucus.
In 1989, he ran unsuccessfully for the Senate as a representative of Skierniewice Province. In subsequent elections (1991), Miller was a leader on the election list of the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic in Łódź and, following a considerable success in elections, he won a seat in the Sejm, becoming Chairman of the Parliamentary Group of the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic. In three subsequent elections to the Sejm, he ran each time from Łódź, each time gaining more and more votes (from 50 thousand in 1991 up to 146 thousand in 2001); he held a seat in Parliament until 2005.
Through all that time he remained one of the leading politicians on the left wing. In the early 1990s, together with Mieczysław Rakowski, he was suspected in the case of the so-called "Moscow loan". After revealing that affair in 1991, Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz called Miller to abstain from taking an MP's oath due to accusations laid against him. When Miller was cleared of the charges, Prime Minister Cimoszewicz appointed him later as the Minister in Charge of the Office of the Council of Ministers and in 1997 the Minister of Internal Affairs and Administration in his government. In turn, Cimoszewicz later became the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Miller’s cabinet.
From 1993 to 1996, Miller was the Minister of Labour and Social Policy in the governments of Waldemar Pawlak and Józef Oleksy respectively. In 1996, he was nominated as Senior Minister in charge of the Office of the Council of Ministers. He then got the nickname “The Chancellor”.
Miller played an important role in concluding the case of Colonel Ryszard Kukliński, for which he was severely criticised within his political circle. A similar disapproval was expressed after Miller’s support for the Concordat and the candidature of Leszek Balcerowicz to the position of President of the National Bank of Poland.
During the period of the Solidarity Electoral Action’s government, Miller was in charge of the parliamentary opposition, leading the political fight with the governing party. He was also consolidating the majority of significant left-wing groups around his person. In 1999, he succeeded in establishing one uniform political party – the Democratic Left Alliance – which turned out to be very successful in following elections.
Prime Minister (2001-2004)
Following the victory of the Left (41% vs. 12% of the subsequent party) in the Parliamentary Election in 2001, on 19 October 2001, President Aleksander Kwaśniewski appointed Miller Prime Minister and obliged to nominate the government. The new government won the parliamentary vote of confidence on 26 October 2001 (306:140 votes with one abstention). The 16-person cabinet of Prime Minister Miller has been the smallest government of the Polish Republic so far.
Miller’s government faced a difficult economic situation in Poland, including an unemployment rate above 18%, a high level of public debt, and economic stagnation. At the end of Miller’s term, economic growth exceeded 6%; still, it was too slow to reduce the unemployment rate. During his term, the unpopular program of cuts in public expenses was implemented, together with a hardly successful reform of health care financing. The reforms of the tax system and of the Social Insurance Institution were continued, and the attempt to settle the mass-media market failed. Taxes were significantly lowered – to 19% for companies and for persons running business activity – and the act of freedom in business activity was voted through. A radical, structural reform of secret services was implemented (the State Security Office was dissolved and replaced by the Internal Security Agency and the Intelligence Agency).
Simultaneously, institutional and legal adjustments were continued, resulting from the accession to the European Union. The Accession conditions were negotiated, being the main strategic goal of Miller’s cabinet. On 13 December 2002, at the summit in Copenhagen (Denmark), Prime Minister Leszek Miller completed the negotiations with the European Union. On 16 April 2003 in Athens, Miller, together with Cimoszewicz, signed the Accession Treaty, bringing Poland into the European Union. Miller’s government, in collaboration with various political and social forces, organized the accession referendum with a successful outcome. On 7 and 8 June 2003, 77.45% of the referendum participants voted in favor of Poland’s accession to the European Union. The referendum turn-out reached 58.85%.
Miller’s government, together with President Kwaśniewski, made a decision (March 2003) to join the international coalition and deploy Polish troops to Iraq, targeting at overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s government. Miller was also a co-signatory of "the letter of 8", signed by eight European prime ministers, supporting the US position on Iraq. Already in 2002, Miller gave permission to the U.S. government to run a secret CIA prison at Stare Kiejkuty military training center, three hours north of Warsaw. Years later he is facing accusations of acting anti-constitutionally by having tolerated the imprisonment and torture of prisoners.
On 4 December 2003, Leszek Miller suffered injuries in a helicopter crash near Warsaw.
At the end of its term of office, Miller’s government had the lowest public support of any government since 1989. It was mainly caused by the continuing high unemployment rate, corruption scandals, with Rywingate on top, and by the attempt of fulfilling the plan of reducing social spending (the Hausner’s plan). In result of criticism in his own party, the Democratic Left Alliance, in February 2004, Miller resigned from chairing the party. Miller was criticized for an excessively liberal approach and for stressing the role of free-market mechanisms in economy. He was reproached for his acceptance of a flat tax, which ran counter to the left-wing doctrine. He was also identified with the “chieftain-like style” of leadership. On 26 March 2004, following the decision of the Speaker of the Parliament, Marek Borowski, to found a new dissenting party, the Social Democracy of Poland, Miller decided to resign from the position of Prime Minister on 2 May 2004, a day after Poland’s accession to the EU. On 1 May 2004, together with President Kwaśniewski, he was in Dublin, taking part in the Grand Ceremony of the accession of 10 states, including Poland, to the European Union.
Later career
In 2005, despite the support of the Łódź Branch of the Democratic Left Alliance, Miller was not registered on the election list to the Parliament. At the same time, he was offered to run for Senate but refused. Retirement of the old activists was presented in media as “inflow of new blood into the Democratic Left Alliance”. After the election, Miller became active in journalism, writing mainly for the “Wprost” weekly on liberal economic concepts and current political issues. In the first half of 2005, he stayed at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., implementing a research project: “Status of the new Poland in the Eastern Europe’s space”.
In September 2007, the former Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller become affiliated with Samoobrona, when he decided to run for the Sejm from their lists.
References
Bibliography
J. Machejek, A. Machejek, Leszek Miller: dogońmy Europę!(wywiad-rzeka z liderem SLD)(Catch up with Europe! An extended interview with the Leader of the Democratic Left Alliance), Hamal Books, 2001.
L. Stomma, Leszek Miller WDK 2001
External links
Official site
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
1946 births
People from Żyrardów
Living people
Democratic Left Alliance politicians
Interior ministers of Poland
Members of the Polish Sejm 1991–1993
Members of the Polish Sejm 1993–1997
Members of the Polish Sejm 1997–2001
Members of the Polish Sejm 2001–2005
Members of the Polish Sejm 2011–2015
Members of the Politburo of the Polish United Workers' Party
MEPs for Poland 2019–2024
Polish Round Table Talks participants
Polish people of Jewish descent
Prime Ministers of Poland
Recipients of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana, 1st Class
Polish United Workers' Party members
Polish political scientists
Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland politicians
Members of the European Parliament for Poland | [
-0.03960937634110451,
0.11045684665441513,
-0.35376888513565063,
-0.327877938747406,
0.11700498312711716,
0.6925563216209412,
0.5786145329475403,
-0.16743290424346924,
-0.4027968645095825,
-0.1270938366651535,
0.10877145826816559,
0.3705967962741852,
-0.5195056796073914,
0.4997295141220093... |
18420 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basis%20%28linear%20algebra%29 | Basis (linear algebra) | In mathematics, a set of vectors in a vector space is called a basis if every element of may be written in a unique way as a finite linear combination of elements of . The coefficients of this linear combination are referred to as components or coordinates of the vector with respect to . The elements of a basis are called .
Equivalently, a set is a basis if its elements are linearly independent and every element of is a linear combination of elements of . In other words, a basis is a linearly independent spanning set.
A vector space can have several bases; however all the bases have the same number of elements, called the dimension of the vector space.
This article deals mainly with finite-dimensional vector spaces. However, many of the principles are also valid for infinite-dimensional vector spaces.
Definition
A basis of a vector space over a field (such as the real numbers or the complex numbers ) is a linearly independent subset of that spans . This means that a subset of is a basis if it satisfies the two following conditions:
linear independence
for every finite subset of , if for some in , then and
spanning property
for every vector in , one can choose in and in such that
The scalars are called the coordinates of the vector with respect to the basis , and by the first property they are uniquely determined.
A vector space that has a finite basis is called finite-dimensional. In this case, the finite subset can be taken as itself to check for linear independence in the above definition.
It is often convenient or even necessary to have an ordering on the basis vectors, for example, when discussing orientation, or when one considers the scalar coefficients of a vector with respect to a basis without referring explicitly to the basis elements. In this case, the ordering is necessary for associating each coefficient to the corresponding basis element. This ordering can be done by numbering the basis elements. In order to emphasize that an order has been chosen, one speaks of an ordered basis, which is therefore not simply an unstructured set, but a sequence, an indexed family, or similar; see below.
Examples
The set of the ordered pairs of real numbers is a vector space under the operations of component-wise addition
and scalar multiplication
where is any real number. A simple basis of this vector space consists of the two vectors and . These vectors form a basis (called the standard basis) because any vector of may be uniquely written as Any other pair of linearly independent vectors of , such as and , forms also a basis of .
More generally, if is a field, the set of -tuples of elements of is a vector space for similarly defined addition and scalar multiplication. Let be the -tuple with all components equal to 0, except the th, which is 1. Then is a basis of which is called the standard basis of
A different flavor of example is given by polynomial rings. If is a field, the collection of all polynomials in one indeterminate with coefficients in is an -vector space. One basis for this space is the monomial basis , consisting of all monomials: Any set of polynomials such that there is exactly one polynomial of each degree (such as the Bernstein basis polynomials or Chebyshev polynomials) is also a basis. (Such a set of polynomials is called a polynomial sequence.) But there are also many bases for that are not of this form.
Properties
Many properties of finite bases result from the Steinitz exchange lemma, which states that, for any vector space , given a finite spanning set and a linearly independent set of elements of , one may replace well-chosen elements of by the elements of to get a spanning set containing , having its other elements in , and having the same number of elements as .
Most properties resulting from the Steinitz exchange lemma remain true when there is no finite spanning set, but their proofs in the infinite case generally require the axiom of choice or a weaker form of it, such as the ultrafilter lemma.
If is a vector space over a field , then:
If is a linearly independent subset of a spanning set , then there is a basis such that
has a basis (this is the preceding property with being the empty set, and ).
All bases of have the same cardinality, which is called the dimension of . This is the dimension theorem.
A generating set is a basis of if and only if it is minimal, that is, no proper subset of is also a generating set of .
A linearly independent set is a basis if and only if it is maximal, that is, it is not a proper subset of any linearly independent set.
If is a vector space of dimension , then:
A subset of with elements is a basis if and only if it is linearly independent.
A subset of with elements is a basis if and only if it is spanning set of .
Coordinates
Let be a vector space of finite dimension over a field , and
be a basis of . By definition of a basis, every in may be written, in a unique way, as
where the coefficients are scalars (that is, elements of ), which are called the coordinates of over . However, if one talks of the set of the coefficients, one loses the correspondence between coefficients and basis elements, and several vectors may have the same set of coefficients. For example, and have the same set of coefficients , and are different. It is therefore often convenient to work with an ordered basis; this is typically done by indexing the basis elements by the first natural numbers. Then, the coordinates of a vector form a sequence similarly indexed, and a vector is completely characterized by the sequence of coordinates. An ordered basis is also called a frame, a word commonly used, in various contexts, for referring to a sequence of data allowing defining coordinates.
Let, as usual, be the set of the -tuples of elements of . This set is an -vector space, with addition and scalar multiplication defined component-wise. The map
is a linear isomorphism from the vector space onto . In other words, is the coordinate space of , and the -tuple is the coordinate vector of .
The inverse image by of is the -tuple all of whose components are 0, except the th that is 1. The form an ordered basis of , which is called its standard basis or canonical basis. The ordered basis is the image by of the canonical basis of
It follows from what precedes that every ordered basis is the image by a linear isomorphism of the canonical basis of and that every linear isomorphism from onto may be defined as the isomorphism that maps the canonical basis of onto a given ordered basis of . In other words it is equivalent to define an ordered basis of , or a linear isomorphism from onto .
Change of basis
Let be a vector space of dimension over a field . Given two (ordered) bases and of , it is often useful to express the coordinates of a vector with respect to in terms of the coordinates with respect to This can be done by the change-of-basis formula, that is described below. The subscripts "old" and "new" have been chosen because it is customary to refer to and as the old basis and the new basis, respectively. It is useful to describe the old coordinates in terms of the new ones, because, in general, one has expressions involving the old coordinates, and if one wants to obtain equivalent expressions in terms of the new coordinates; this is obtained by replacing the old coordinates by their expressions in terms of the new coordinates.
Typically, the new basis vectors are given by their coordinates over the old basis, that is,
If and are the coordinates of a vector over the old and the new basis respectively, the change-of-basis formula is
for .
This formula may be concisely written in matrix notation. Let be the matrix of the and
be the column vectors of the coordinates of in the old and the new basis respectively, then the formula for changing coordinates is
The formula can be proven by considering the decomposition of the vector on the two bases: one has
and
The change-of-basis formula results then from the uniqueness of the decomposition of a vector over a basis, here that is
for .
Related notions
Free module
If one replaces the field occurring in the definition of a vector space by a ring, one gets the definition of a module. For modules, linear independence and spanning sets are defined exactly as for vector spaces, although "generating set" is more commonly used than that of "spanning set".
Like for vector spaces, a basis of a module is a linearly independent subset that is also a generating set. A major difference with the theory of vector spaces is that not every module has a basis. A module that has a basis is called a free module. Free modules play a fundamental role in module theory, as they may be used for describing the structure of non-free modules through free resolutions.
A module over the integers is exactly the same thing as an abelian group. Thus a free module over the integers is also a free abelian group. Free abelian groups have specific properties that are not shared by modules over other rings. Specifically, every subgroup of a free abelian group is a free abelian group, and, if is a subgroup of a finitely generated free abelian group (that is an abelian group that has a finite basis), there is a basis of and an integer such that is a basis of , for some nonzero integers For details, see .
Analysis
In the context of infinite-dimensional vector spaces over the real or complex numbers, the term (named after Georg Hamel) or algebraic basis can be used to refer to a basis as defined in this article. This is to make a distinction with other notions of "basis" that exist when infinite-dimensional vector spaces are endowed with extra structure. The most important alternatives are orthogonal bases on Hilbert spaces, Schauder bases, and Markushevich bases on normed linear spaces. In the case of the real numbers R viewed as a vector space over the field Q of rational numbers, Hamel bases are uncountable, and have specifically the cardinality of the continuum, which is the cardinal number where is the smallest infinite cardinal, the cardinal of the integers.
The common feature of the other notions is that they permit the taking of infinite linear combinations of the basis vectors in order to generate the space. This, of course, requires that infinite sums are meaningfully defined on these spaces, as is the case for topological vector spaces – a large class of vector spaces including e.g. Hilbert spaces, Banach spaces, or Fréchet spaces.
The preference of other types of bases for infinite-dimensional spaces is justified by the fact that the Hamel basis becomes "too big" in Banach spaces: If X is an infinite-dimensional normed vector space which is complete (i.e. X is a Banach space), then any Hamel basis of X is necessarily uncountable. This is a consequence of the Baire category theorem. The completeness as well as infinite dimension are crucial assumptions in the previous claim. Indeed, finite-dimensional spaces have by definition finite bases and there are infinite-dimensional (non-complete) normed spaces which have countable Hamel bases. Consider the space of the sequences of real numbers which have only finitely many non-zero elements, with the norm Its standard basis, consisting of the sequences having only one non-zero element, which is equal to 1, is a countable Hamel basis.
Example
In the study of Fourier series, one learns that the functions are an "orthogonal basis" of the (real or complex) vector space of all (real or complex valued) functions on the interval [0, 2π] that are square-integrable on this interval, i.e., functions f satisfying
The functions are linearly independent, and every function f that is square-integrable on [0, 2π] is an "infinite linear combination" of them, in the sense that
for suitable (real or complex) coefficients ak, bk. But many square-integrable functions cannot be represented as finite linear combinations of these basis functions, which therefore do not comprise a Hamel basis. Every Hamel basis of this space is much bigger than this merely countably infinite set of functions. Hamel bases of spaces of this kind are typically not useful, whereas orthonormal bases of these spaces are essential in Fourier analysis.
Geometry
The geometric notions of an affine space, projective space, convex set, and cone have related notions of basis. An affine basis for an n-dimensional affine space is points in general linear position. A is points in general position, in a projective space of dimension n. A of a polytope is the set of the vertices of its convex hull. A consists of one point by edge of a polygonal cone. See also a Hilbert basis (linear programming).
Random basis
For a probability distribution in with a probability density function, such as the equidistribution in an n-dimensional ball with respect to Lebesgue measure, it can be shown that randomly and independently chosen vectors will form a basis with probability one, which is due to the fact that linearly dependent vectors , ..., in should satisfy the equation (zero determinant of the matrix with columns ), and the set of zeros of a non-trivial polynomial has zero measure. This observation has led to techniques for approximating random bases.
It is difficult to check numerically the linear dependence or exact orthogonality. Therefore, the notion of ε-orthogonality is used. For spaces with inner product, x is ε-orthogonal to y if (that is, cosine of the angle between and is less than ).
In high dimensions, two independent random vectors are with high probability almost orthogonal, and the number of independent random vectors, which all are with given high probability pairwise almost orthogonal, grows exponentially with dimension. More precisely, consider equidistribution in n-dimensional ball. Choose N independent random vectors from a ball (they are independent and identically distributed). Let θ be a small positive number. Then for
random vectors are all pairwise ε-orthogonal with probability . This growth exponentially with dimension and for sufficiently big . This property of random bases is a manifestation of the so-called .
The figure (right) illustrates distribution of lengths N of pairwise almost orthogonal chains of vectors that are independently randomly sampled from the n-dimensional cube as a function of dimension, n. A point is first randomly selected in the cube. The second point is randomly chosen in the same cube. If the angle between the vectors was within then the vector was retained. At the next step a new vector is generated in the same hypercube, and its angles with the previously generated vectors are evaluated. If these angles are within then the vector is retained. The process is repeated until the chain of almost orthogonality breaks, and the number of such pairwise almost orthogonal vectors (length of the chain) is recorded. For each n, 20 pairwise almost orthogonal chains were constructed numerically for each dimension. Distribution of the length of these chains is presented.
Proof that every vector space has a basis
Let be any vector space over some field . Let be the set of all linearly independent subsets of .
The set is nonempty since the empty set is an independent subset of , and it is partially ordered by inclusion, which is denoted, as usual, by .
Let be a subset of that is totally ordered by , and let be the union of all the elements of (which are themselves certain subsets of ).
Since is totally ordered, every finite subset of is a subset of an element of , which is a linearly independent subset of , and hence is linearly independent. Thus is an element of . Therefore, is an upper bound for in : it is an element of , that contains every element of .
As is nonempty, and every totally ordered subset of has an upper bound in , Zorn's lemma asserts that has a maximal element. In other words, there exists some element of satisfying the condition that whenever for some element of , then .
It remains to prove that is a basis of . Since belongs to , we already know that is a linearly independent subset of .
If there were some vector of that is not in the span of , then would not be an element of either. Let . This set is an element of , that is, it is a linearly independent subset of (because w is not in the span of Lmax, and is independent). As , and (because contains the vector that is not contained in ), this contradicts the maximality of . Thus this shows that spans .
Hence is linearly independent and spans . It is thus a basis of , and this proves that every vector space has a basis.
This proof relies on Zorn's lemma, which is equivalent to the axiom of choice. Conversely, it has been proved that if every vector space has a basis, then the axiom of choice is true. Thus the two assertions are equivalent.
See also
Basis of a matroid
Notes
References
General references
Historical references
, reprint:
External links
Instructional videos from Khan Academy
Introduction to bases of subspaces
Proof that any subspace basis has same number of elements
Articles containing proofs
Axiom of choice
Linear algebra | [
0.15429465472698212,
-0.01681549660861492,
-0.31166592240333557,
0.292780339717865,
-0.1966039091348648,
0.16595545411109924,
-0.2158391922712326,
-0.29945090413093567,
0.10277602821588516,
-0.4945357143878937,
-0.20941248536109924,
0.2557668089866638,
-0.26290279626846313,
-0.080112248659... |
18422 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear%20algebra | Linear algebra | Linear algebra is the branch of mathematics concerning linear equations such as:
linear maps such as:
and their representations in vector spaces and through matrices.
Linear algebra is central to almost all areas of mathematics. For instance, linear algebra is fundamental in modern presentations of geometry, including for defining basic objects such as lines, planes and rotations. Also, functional analysis, a branch of mathematical analysis, may be viewed as the application of linear algebra to spaces of functions.
Linear algebra is also used in most sciences and fields of engineering, because it allows modeling many natural phenomena, and computing efficiently with such models. For nonlinear systems, which cannot be modeled with linear algebra, it is often used for dealing with first-order approximations, using the fact that the differential of a multivariate function at a point is the linear map that best approximates the function near that point.
History
The procedure (using counting rods) for solving simultaneous linear equations now called Gaussian elimination appears in the ancient Chinese mathematical text Chapter Eight: Rectangular Arrays of The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art. Its use is illustrated in eighteen problems, with two to five equations.
Systems of linear equations arose in Europe with the introduction in 1637 by René Descartes of coordinates in geometry. In fact, in this new geometry, now called Cartesian geometry, lines and planes are represented by linear equations, and computing their intersections amounts to solving systems of linear equations.
The first systematic methods for solving linear systems used determinants, first considered by Leibniz in 1693. In 1750, Gabriel Cramer used them for giving explicit solutions of linear systems, now called Cramer's rule. Later, Gauss further described the method of elimination, which was initially listed as an advancement in geodesy.
In 1844 Hermann Grassmann published his "Theory of Extension" which included foundational new topics of what is today called linear algebra. In 1848, James Joseph Sylvester introduced the term matrix, which is Latin for womb.
Linear algebra grew with ideas noted in the complex plane. For instance, two numbers w and z in have a difference w – z, and the line segments and are of the same length and direction. The segments are equipollent. The four-dimensional system of quaternions was started in 1843. The term vector was introduced as v = x i + y j + z k representing a point in space. The quaternion difference p – q also produces a segment equipollent to
Other hypercomplex number systems also used the idea of a linear space with a basis.
Arthur Cayley introduced matrix multiplication and the inverse matrix in 1856, making possible the general linear group. The mechanism of group representation became available for describing complex and hypercomplex numbers. Crucially, Cayley used a single letter to denote a matrix, thus treating a matrix as an aggregate object. He also realized the connection between matrices and determinants, and wrote "There would be many things to say about this theory of matrices which should, it seems to me, precede the theory of determinants".
Benjamin Peirce published his Linear Associative Algebra (1872), and his son Charles Sanders Peirce extended the work later.
The telegraph required an explanatory system, and the 1873 publication of A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism instituted a field theory of forces and required differential geometry for expression. Linear algebra is flat differential geometry and serves in tangent spaces to manifolds. Electromagnetic symmetries of spacetime are expressed by the Lorentz transformations, and much of the history of linear algebra is the history of Lorentz transformations.
The first modern and more precise definition of a vector space was introduced by Peano in 1888; by 1900, a theory of linear transformations of finite-dimensional vector spaces had emerged. Linear algebra took its modern form in the first half of the twentieth century, when many ideas and methods of previous centuries were generalized as abstract algebra. The development of computers led to increased research in efficient algorithms for Gaussian elimination and matrix decompositions, and linear algebra became an essential tool for modelling and simulations.
Vector spaces
Until the 19th century, linear algebra was introduced through systems of linear equations and matrices. In modern mathematics, the presentation through vector spaces is generally preferred, since it is more synthetic, more general (not limited to the finite-dimensional case), and conceptually simpler, although more abstract.
A vector space over a field (often the field of the real numbers) is a set equipped with two binary operations satisfying the following axioms. Elements of are called vectors, and elements of F are called scalars. The first operation, vector addition, takes any two vectors and and outputs a third vector . The second operation, scalar multiplication, takes any scalar and any vector and outputs a new . The axioms that addition and scalar multiplication must satisfy are the following. (In the list below, and are arbitrary elements of , and and are arbitrary scalars in the field .)
The first four axioms mean that is an abelian group under addition.
An element of a specific vector space may have various nature; for example, it could be a sequence, a function, a polynomial or a matrix. Linear algebra is concerned with those properties of such objects that are common to all vector spaces.
Linear maps
Linear maps are mappings between vector spaces that preserve the vector-space structure. Given two vector spaces and over a field , a linear map (also called, in some contexts, linear transformation or linear mapping) is a map
that is compatible with addition and scalar multiplication, that is
for any vectors in and scalar in .
This implies that for any vectors in and scalars in , one has
When are the same vector space, a linear map is also known as a linear operator on .
A bijective linear map between two vector spaces (that is, every vector from the second space is associated with exactly one in the first) is an isomorphism. Because an isomorphism preserves linear structure, two isomorphic vector spaces are "essentially the same" from the linear algebra point of view, in the sense that they cannot be distinguished by using vector space properties. An essential question in linear algebra is testing whether a linear map is an isomorphism or not, and, if it is not an isomorphism, finding its range (or image) and the set of elements that are mapped to the zero vector, called the kernel of the map. All these questions can be solved by using Gaussian elimination or some variant of this algorithm.
Subspaces, span, and basis
The study of those subsets of vector spaces that are in themselves vector spaces under the induced operations is fundamental, similarly as for many mathematical structures. These subsets are called linear subspaces. More precisely, a linear subspace of a vector space over a field is a subset of such that and are in , for every , in , and every in . (These conditions suffice for implying that is a vector space.)
For example, given a linear map , the image of , and the inverse image of 0 (called kernel or null space), are linear subspaces of and , respectively.
Another important way of forming a subspace is to consider linear combinations of a set of vectors: the set of all sums
where are in , and are in form a linear subspace called the span of . The span of is also the intersection of all linear subspaces containing . In other words, it is the smallest (for the inclusion relation) linear subspace containing .
A set of vectors is linearly independent if none is in the span of the others. Equivalently, a set of vectors is linearly independent if the only way to express the zero vector as a linear combination of elements of is to take zero for every coefficient
A set of vectors that spans a vector space is called a spanning set or generating set. If a spanning set is linearly dependent (that is not linearly independent), then some element of is in the span of the other elements of , and the span would remain the same if one remove from . One may continue to remove elements of until getting a linearly independent spanning set. Such a linearly independent set that spans a vector space is called a basis of . The importance of bases lies in the fact that they are simultaneously minimal generating sets and maximal independent sets. More precisely, if is a linearly independent set, and is a spanning set such that then there is a basis such that
Any two bases of a vector space have the same cardinality, which is called the dimension of ; this is the dimension theorem for vector spaces. Moreover, two vector spaces over the same field are isomorphic if and only if they have the same dimension.
If any basis of (and therefore every basis) has a finite number of elements, is a finite-dimensional vector space. If is a subspace of , then . In the case where is finite-dimensional, the equality of the dimensions implies .
If U1 and U2 are subspaces of V, then
where denotes the span of
Matrices
Matrices allow explicit manipulation of finite-dimensional vector spaces and linear maps. Their theory is thus an essential part of linear algebra.
Let be a finite-dimensional vector space over a field , and be a basis of (thus is the dimension of ). By definition of a basis, the map
is a bijection from the set of the sequences of elements of , onto . This is an isomorphism of vector spaces, if is equipped of its standard structure of vector space, where vector addition and scalar multiplication are done component by component.
This isomorphism allows representing a vector by its inverse image under this isomorphism, that is by the coordinates vector or by the column matrix
If is another finite dimensional vector space (possibly the same), with a basis a linear map from to is well defined by its values on the basis elements, that is Thus, is well represented by the list of the corresponding column matrices. That is, if
for , then is represented by the matrix
with rows and columns.
Matrix multiplication is defined in such a way that the product of two matrices is the matrix of the composition of the corresponding linear maps, and the product of a matrix and a column matrix is the column matrix representing the result of applying the represented linear map to the represented vector. It follows that the theory of finite-dimensional vector spaces and the theory of matrices are two different languages for expressing exactly the same concepts.
Two matrices that encode the same linear transformation in different bases are called similar. It can be proved that two matrices are similar if and only if one can transform one into the other by elementary row and column operations. For a matrix representing a linear map from to , the row operations correspond to change of bases in and the column operations correspond to change of bases in . Every matrix is similar to an identity matrix possibly bordered by zero rows and zero columns. In terms of vector spaces, this means that, for any linear map from to , there are bases such that a part of the basis of is mapped bijectively on a part of the basis of , and that the remaining basis elements of , if any, are mapped to zero. Gaussian elimination is the basic algorithm for finding these elementary operations, and proving these results.
Linear systems
A finite set of linear equations in a finite set of variables, for example, or is called a system of linear equations or a linear system.
Systems of linear equations form a fundamental part of linear algebra. Historically, linear algebra and matrix theory has been developed for solving such systems. In the modern presentation of linear algebra through vector spaces and matrices, many problems may be interpreted in terms of linear systems.
For example, let
be a linear system.
To such a system, one may associate its matrix
and its right member vector
Let be the linear transformation associated to the matrix . A solution of the system () is a vector
such that
that is an element of the preimage of by .
Let () be the associated homogeneous system, where the right-hand sides of the equations are put to zero:
The solutions of () are exactly the elements of the kernel of or, equivalently, .
The Gaussian-elimination consists of performing elementary row operations on the augmented matrix
for putting it in reduced row echelon form. These row operations do not change the set of solutions of the system of equations. In the example, the reduced echelon form is
showing that the system () has the unique solution
It follows from this matrix interpretation of linear systems that the same methods can be applied for solving linear systems and for many operations on matrices and linear transformations, which include the computation of the ranks, kernels, matrix inverses.
Endomorphisms and square matrices
A linear endomorphism is a linear map that maps a vector space to itself.
If has a basis of elements, such an endomorphism is represented by a square matrix of size .
With respect to general linear maps, linear endomorphisms and square matrices have some specific properties that make their study an important part of linear algebra, which is used in many parts of mathematics, including geometric transformations, coordinate changes, quadratic forms, and many other part of mathematics.
Determinant
The determinant of a square matrix is defined to be
where is the group of all permutations of elements,
is a permutation, and the parity of the permutation.
A matrix is invertible if and only if the determinant is invertible (i.e., nonzero if the scalars belong to a field).
Cramer's rule is a closed-form expression, in terms of determinants, of the solution of a system of linear equations in unknowns. Cramer's rule is useful for reasoning about the solution, but, except for or , it is rarely used for computing a solution, since Gaussian elimination is a faster algorithm.
The determinant of an endomorphism is the determinant of the matrix representing the endomorphism in terms of some ordered basis. This definition makes sense, since this determinant is independent of the choice of the basis.
Eigenvalues and eigenvectors
If is a linear endomorphism of a vector space over a field , an eigenvector of is a nonzero vector of such that for some scalar in . This scalar is an eigenvalue of .
If the dimension of is finite, and a basis has been chosen, and may be represented, respectively, by a square matrix and a column matrix ; the equation defining eigenvectors and eigenvalues becomes
Using the identity matrix , whose entries are all zero, except those of the main diagonal, which are equal to one, this may be rewritten
As is supposed to be nonzero, this means that is a singular matrix, and thus that its determinant equals zero. The eigenvalues are thus the roots of the polynomial
If is of dimension , this is a monic polynomial of degree , called the characteristic polynomial of the matrix (or of the endomorphism), and there are, at most, eigenvalues.
If a basis exists that consists only of eigenvectors, the matrix of on this basis has a very simple structure: it is a diagonal matrix such that the entries on the main diagonal are eigenvalues, and the other entries are zero. In this case, the endomorphism and the matrix are said to be diagonalizable. More generally, an endomorphism and a matrix are also said diagonalizable, if they become diagonalizable after extending the field of scalars. In this extended sense, if the characteristic polynomial is square-free, then the matrix is diagonalizable.
A symmetric matrix is always diagonalizable. There are non-diagonalizable matrices, the simplest being
(it cannot be diagonalizable since its square is the zero matrix, and the square of a nonzero diagonal matrix is never zero).
When an endomorphism is not diagonalizable, there are bases on which it has a simple form, although not as simple as the diagonal form. The Frobenius normal form does not need of extending the field of scalars and makes the characteristic polynomial immediately readable on the matrix. The Jordan normal form requires to extend the field of scalar for containing all eigenvalues, and differs from the diagonal form only by some entries that are just above the main diagonal and are equal to 1.
Duality
A linear form is a linear map from a vector space over a field to the field of scalars , viewed as a vector space over itself. Equipped by pointwise addition and multiplication by a scalar, the linear forms form a vector space, called the dual space of , and usually denoted or .
If is a basis of (this implies that is finite-dimensional), then one can define, for , a linear map such that and if . These linear maps form a basis of called the dual basis of (If is not finite-dimensional, the may be defined similarly; they are linearly independent, but do not form a basis.)
For in , the map
is a linear form on This defines the canonical linear map from into the dual of called the bidual of . This canonical map is an isomorphism if is finite-dimensional, and this allows identifying with its bidual. (In the infinite dimensional case, the canonical map is injective, but not surjective.)
There is thus a complete symmetry between a finite-dimensional vector space and its dual. This motivates the frequent use, in this context, of the bra–ket notation
for denoting .
Dual map
Let
be a linear map. For every linear form on , the composite function is a linear form on . This defines a linear map
between the dual spaces, which is called the dual or the transpose of .
If and are finite dimensional, and is the matrix of in terms of some ordered bases, then the matrix of over the dual bases is the transpose of , obtained by exchanging rows and columns.
If elements of vector spaces and their duals are represented by column vectors, this duality may be expressed in bra–ket notation by
For highlighting this symmetry, the two members of this equality are sometimes written
Inner-product spaces
Besides these basic concepts, linear algebra also studies vector spaces with additional structure, such as an inner product. The inner product is an example of a bilinear form, and it gives the vector space a geometric structure by allowing for the definition of length and angles. Formally, an inner product is a map
that satisfies the following three axioms for all vectors u, v, w in V and all scalars a in F:
Conjugate symmetry:
In R, it is symmetric.
Linearity in the first argument:
Positive-definiteness:
with equality only for v = 0.
We can define the length of a vector v in V by
and we can prove the Cauchy–Schwarz inequality:
In particular, the quantity
and so we can call this quantity the cosine of the angle between the two vectors.
Two vectors are orthogonal if . An orthonormal basis is a basis where all basis vectors have length 1 and are orthogonal to each other. Given any finite-dimensional vector space, an orthonormal basis could be found by the Gram–Schmidt procedure. Orthonormal bases are particularly easy to deal with, since if , then .
The inner product facilitates the construction of many useful concepts. For instance, given a transform T, we can define its Hermitian conjugate T* as the linear transform satisfying
If T satisfies TT* = T*T, we call T normal. It turns out that normal matrices are precisely the matrices that have an orthonormal system of eigenvectors that span V.
Relationship with geometry
There is a strong relationship between linear algebra and geometry, which started with the introduction by René Descartes, in 1637, of Cartesian coordinates. In this new (at that time) geometry, now called Cartesian geometry, points are represented by Cartesian coordinates, which are sequences of three real numbers (in the case of the usual three-dimensional space). The basic objects of geometry, which are lines and planes are represented by linear equations. Thus, computing intersections of lines and planes amounts to solving systems of linear equations. This was one of the main motivations for developing linear algebra.
Most geometric transformation, such as translations, rotations, reflections, rigid motions, isometries, and projections transform lines into lines. It follows that they can be defined, specified and studied in terms of linear maps. This is also the case of homographies and Möbius transformations, when considered as transformations of a projective space.
Until the end of 19th century, geometric spaces were defined by axioms relating points, lines and planes (synthetic geometry). Around this date, it appeared that one may also define geometric spaces by constructions involving vector spaces (see, for example, Projective space and Affine space). It has been shown that the two approaches are essentially equivalent. In classical geometry, the involved vector spaces are vector spaces over the reals, but the constructions may be extended to vector spaces over any field, allowing considering geometry over arbitrary fields, including finite fields.
Presently, most textbooks, introduce geometric spaces from linear algebra, and geometry is often presented, at elementary level, as a subfield of linear algebra.
Usage and applications
Linear algebra is used in almost all areas of mathematics, thus making it relevant in almost all scientific domains that use mathematics. These applications may be divided into several wide categories.
Geometry of ambient space
The modeling of ambient space is based on geometry. Sciences concerned with this space use geometry widely. This is the case with mechanics and robotics, for describing rigid body dynamics; geodesy for describing Earth shape; perspectivity, computer vision, and computer graphics, for describing the relationship between a scene and its plane representation; and many other scientific domains.
In all these applications, synthetic geometry is often used for general descriptions and a qualitative approach, but for the study of explicit situations, one must compute with coordinates. This requires the heavy use of linear algebra.
Functional analysis
Functional analysis studies function spaces. These are vector spaces with additional structure, such as Hilbert spaces. Linear algebra is thus a fundamental part of functional analysis and its applications, which include, in particular, quantum mechanics (wave functions).
Study of complex systems
Most physical phenomena are modeled by partial differential equations. To solve them, one usually decomposes the space in which the solutions are searched into small, mutually interacting cells. For linear systems this interaction involves linear functions. For nonlinear systems, this interaction is often approximated by linear functions. In both cases, very large matrices are generally involved. Weather forecasting is a typical example, where the whole Earth atmosphere is divided in cells of, say, 100 km of width and 100 m of height.
Scientific computation
Nearly all scientific computations involve linear algebra. Consequently, linear algebra algorithms have been highly optimized. BLAS and LAPACK are the best known implementations. For improving efficiency, some of them configure the algorithms automatically, at run time, for adapting them to the specificities of the computer (cache size, number of available cores, ...).
Some processors, typically graphics processing units (GPU), are designed with a matrix structure, for optimizing the operations of linear algebra.
Extensions and generalizations
This section presents several related topics that do not appear generally in elementary textbooks on linear algebra, but are commonly considered, in advanced mathematics, as parts of linear algebra.
Module theory
The existence of multiplicative inverses in fields is not involved in the axioms defining a vector space. One may thus replace the field of scalars by a ring , and this gives a structure called module over , or -module.
The concepts of linear independence, span, basis, and linear maps (also called module homomorphisms) are defined for modules exactly as for vector spaces, with the essential difference that, if is not a field, there are modules that do not have any basis. The modules that have a basis are the free modules, and those that are spanned by a finite set are the finitely generated modules. Module homomorphisms between finitely generated free modules may be represented by matrices. The theory of matrices over a ring is similar to that of matrices over a field, except that determinants exist only if the ring is commutative, and that a square matrix over a commutative ring is invertible only if its determinant has a multiplicative inverse in the ring.
Vector spaces are completely characterized by their dimension (up to an isomorphism). In general, there is not such a complete classification for modules, even if one restricts oneself to finitely generated modules. However, every module is a cokernel of a homomorphism of free modules.
Modules over the integers can be identified with abelian groups, since the multiplication by an integer may identified to a repeated addition. Most of the theory of abelian groups may be extended to modules over a principal ideal domain. In particular, over a principal ideal domain, every submodule of a free module is free, and the fundamental theorem of finitely generated abelian groups may be extended straightforwardly to finitely generated modules over a principal ring.
There are many rings for which there are algorithms for solving linear equations and systems of linear equations. However, these algorithms have generally a computational complexity that is much higher than the similar algorithms over a field. For more details, see Linear equation over a ring.
Multilinear algebra and tensors
In multilinear algebra, one considers multivariable linear transformations, that is, mappings that are linear in each of a number of different variables. This line of inquiry naturally leads to the idea of the dual space, the vector space V∗ consisting of linear maps where F is the field of scalars. Multilinear maps can be described via tensor products of elements of V∗.
If, in addition to vector addition and scalar multiplication, there is a bilinear vector product , the vector space is called an algebra; for instance, associative algebras are algebras with an associate vector product (like the algebra of square matrices, or the algebra of polynomials).
Topological vector spaces
Vector spaces that are not finite dimensional often require additional structure to be tractable. A normed vector space is a vector space along with a function called a norm, which measures the "size" of elements. The norm induces a metric, which measures the distance between elements, and induces a topology, which allows for a definition of continuous maps. The metric also allows for a definition of limits and completeness - a metric space that is complete is known as a Banach space. A complete metric space along with the additional structure of an inner product (a conjugate symmetric sesquilinear form) is known as a Hilbert space, which is in some sense a particularly well-behaved Banach space. Functional analysis applies the methods of linear algebra alongside those of mathematical analysis to study various function spaces; the central objects of study in functional analysis are Lp spaces, which are Banach spaces, and especially the L2 space of square integrable functions, which is the only Hilbert space among them. Functional analysis is of particular importance to quantum mechanics, the theory of partial differential equations, digital signal processing, and electrical engineering. It also provides the foundation and theoretical framework that underlies the Fourier transform and related methods.
Homological algebra
See also
Fundamental matrix (computer vision)
Geometric algebra
Linear programming
Linear regression, a statistical estimation method
List of linear algebra topics
Numerical linear algebra
Transformation matrix
Notes
References
Sources
Further reading
History
Fearnley-Sander, Desmond, "Hermann Grassmann and the Creation of Linear Algebra", American Mathematical Monthly 86 (1979), pp. 809–817.
Introductory textbooks
Murty, Katta G. (2014) Computational and Algorithmic Linear Algebra and n-Dimensional Geometry, World Scientific Publishing, . Chapter 1: Systems of Simultaneous Linear Equations
The Manga Guide to Linear Algebra (2012), by Shin Takahashi, Iroha Inoue and Trend-Pro Co., Ltd.,
Advanced textbooks
Study guides and outlines
External links
Online Resources
MIT Linear Algebra Video Lectures, a series of 34 recorded lectures by Professor Gilbert Strang (Spring 2010)
International Linear Algebra Society
Linear Algebra on MathWorld
Matrix and Linear Algebra Terms on Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics
Earliest Uses of Symbols for Matrices and Vectors on Earliest Uses of Various Mathematical Symbols
Essence of linear algebra, a video presentation from 3Blue1Brown of the basics of linear algebra, with emphasis on the relationship between the geometric, the matrix and the abstract points of view
Online books
Sharipov, Ruslan, Course of linear algebra and multidimensional geometry
Treil, Sergei, Linear Algebra Done Wrong
Numerical analysis | [
-0.16924327611923218,
0.1501956731081009,
-0.1565992683172226,
0.2394954413175583,
-0.2897457480430603,
0.02168296091258526,
-0.4104841351509094,
-0.16144225001335144,
0.05651898309588432,
-0.38654518127441406,
-0.4108050763607025,
0.17300431430339813,
-0.4744684100151062,
-0.2540847063064... |
18423 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labia%20majora | Labia majora | The labia majora (singular: labium majus) are two prominent longitudinal cutaneous folds that extend downward and backward from the mons pubis to the perineum. Together with the labia minora they form the labia of the vulva.
The labia majora are homologous to the male scrotum.
Etymology
Labia majora is the Latin plural for big ("major") lips; the singular is labium majus. The Latin term labium/labia is used in anatomy for a number of usually paired parallel structures, but in English it is mostly applied to two pairs of parts of female external genitals (vulva)—labia majora and labia minora. Labia majora are commonly known as the outer lips, while labia minora (Latin for small lips), which run alongside between them, are referred to as the inner lips. Traditionally, to avoid confusion with other lip-like structures of the body, the labia of female genitals were termed by anatomists in Latin as labia majora (or minora) pudendi.
Embryology
Embryologically, they develop from labioscrotal folds. It means that they develop in the female foetus from the same previously sexually undifferentiated anatomical structure as the scrotum, the sac of skin below the penis in males.
The same process of sex differentiation concerns other male and female reproductive organs (see List of related male and female reproductive organs), with some organs of both sexes developing similar, yet not identical, structure and functions (like the gonads - male testicles and female ovaries, like male and female urethras, erectile corpus cavernosum penis and prepuce in the penis (foreskin) and the corpus cavernosum clitoridis in the clitoris and (clitoral hood) and their frenula). But other male and female sex organs become absolutely different and unique, like the internal female genitalia.
The scrotum and labia majora develop to have both similarities and crucial differences. Like the scrotum, labia majora after puberty may become of a darker color than the skin outside them, and, similarly, also grow pubic hair on their external surface (the female genitals on accompanying photos are shaved to show their structure clearer). But, during sexual differentiation of the foetus, labioscrotal folds in the males normally fuse longitudinally in the middle, forming a sack for male gonads (testicles) to descend into it from the pelvis, while in the females these folds normally do not fuse, forming the two labia majora and the pudendal cleft between them. Female gonads (ovaries) do not descend from the pelvis, thus the structure of labia majora may seem simpler (just fatty tissue covered with skin) and of lesser significance for functioning of the female body as a whole than the scrotum with testicles for males. The ridge or groove remaining of the fusion can be traced on the scrotum.
In some cases of intersex with disorders of sex development male/female genitalia may look ambiguous for either gender with phallus too small for a typical penis yet too big for a clitoris, with external urethral opening in an atypical location, and with labia/scrotum fully or partially fused but without descended gonads in them. Undescended testicles, though, may also occur in otherwise generally healthy male infants.
Anatomy
The labia majora constitute the lateral boundaries of the pudendal cleft, which contains the labia minora, interlabial sulci, clitoral hood, clitoral glans, frenulum clitoridis, the Hart's Line, and the vulval vestibule, which contains the external openings of the urethra and the vagina. Each labium majus has two surfaces, an outer, pigmented and covered with strong, pubic hair; and an inner, smooth and beset with large sebaceous follicles. The labia majora are covered with squamous epithelium. Between the two there is a considerable quantity of areolar tissue, fat, and a tissue resembling the dartos tunic of the scrotum, besides vessels, nerves, and glands. The labia majora are thicker in front, and form the anterior labial commissure where they meet below the mons pubis. Posteriorly, they are not really joined, but appear to become lost in the neighboring integument, ending close to, and nearly parallel to, each other. Together with the connecting skin between them, they form another commissure the posterior labial commissure which is also the posterior boundary of the pudendum. The interval between the posterior commissure and the anus, from 2.5 to 3 cm in length, constitutes the perineum. The anterior region of the perineum is known as the urogenital triangle which separates it from the anal region. Between the labia majora and the inner thighs are the labiocrural folds. Between the labia majora and labia minora are the interlabial sulci. Labia majora atrophy after menopause.
Use in grafting
The fat pad of the labia majora can be used as a graft, often as a so-called "Martius labial fat pad graft", and can be used, for example, in urethrolysis.
See also
Femalia
Labia
Labia minora
Labia pride
References
External links
Labia Majora Medical Definition
Mammal female reproductive system
de:Schamlippe#Die großen (äußeren) Schamlippen | [
-0.2991529107093811,
-0.34834665060043335,
-0.22655829787254333,
0.047586213797330856,
-0.17303389310836792,
1.0842005014419556,
0.5255417823791504,
1.0258841514587402,
-0.11433107405900955,
-1.0874673128128052,
-0.3758294880390167,
0.5136293768882751,
-0.486644446849823,
-0.37273606657981... |
18424 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labia%20minora | Labia minora | The labia minora (Latin for smaller lips, singular: labium minus "smaller lip"), also known as the inner labia, inner lips, vaginal lips or nymphae, are two flaps of skin on either side of the human vaginal opening in the vulva, situated between the labia majora (Latin for larger lips; also called outer labia, or outer lips). The labia minora vary widely in size, color and shape from individual to individual.
The labia minora are homologous to the male urethral surface of the penis.
Structure and functioning
The labia minora extend from the clitoris obliquely downward, laterally, and backward on either side of the vulval vestibule, ending between the bottom of the vulval vestibule and the labia majora. The posterior ends (bottom) of the labia minora are usually joined across the middle line by a flap of skin, named the frenulum of labia minora or fourchette.
On the front, each lip forks dividing into two portions surrounding the clitoris. The upper part of each lip passes above the clitoris to meet the upper part of the other lip—which will often be a little larger or smaller—forming a fold which overhangs the glans clitoridis (clitoral tip or head); this fold is named the clitoral hood. The lower part passes beneath the glans clitoridis and becomes united to its under surface, forming, with the inner lip of the opposite side, the frenulum clitoridis.
The clitoral hood, analogously to the foreskin of the penis in men and also termed, like the latter, by the Latin word prepuce, serves to cover most of the time the shaft and sometimes the glans (which is very sensitive to the touch) to protect the clitoris from mechanical irritation and from dryness. Yet the hood is movable and can slide during clitoral erection or be pulled upwards a little for greater exposure of the clitoris to sexual stimulation.
The frenulum (Latin for little bridle) is an elastic band of tissue attached by its one end to the clitoral shaft and glans and by its other end to the prepuce. It allows two-way shifting of the clitoral hood: firstly, it can extend to let the hood be moved upwards to expose the glans for stimulation or hygienic cleansing, and secondly, it contracts to pull the hood back to protect it.
Histology
On the opposed surfaces of the labia minora are numerous sebaceous glands not associated with hair follicles. They are lined by stratified squamous epithelium on those surfaces.
Like the whole area of the vulval vestibule, the mucus secreted by those glands protects the labia from dryness and mechanical irritation.
Variation
Being thinner than the outer labia, the inner labia can be also more narrow than the former, or wider than labia majora, thus protruding in the pudendal cleft and making the term minora (Latin for smaller) essentially inapplicable in these cases. They can also be smooth or frilled, the latter being more typical of longer or wider inner labia.
From 2003 to 2004, researchers from the Department of Gynaecology, Elizabeth Garret Anderson Hospital in London, measured the labia and other genital structures of 50 women from the age of 18 to 50, with a mean age of 35.6. The study has since been criticized for its "small and homogenous sample group" consisting primarily of white women. The results were:
Due to the frequent portrayal of the pudendal cleft without protrusion in art and pornography, there has been a rise in the popularity of labiaplasty, surgery to alter the labia - usually, to make them smaller. On the other hand, there is an opposite movement of labia stretching. Its proponents stress the beauty of long labia and their positive role in sexual stimulation of both partners.
Labiaplasty is also sometimes sought by women who have asymmetrical labia minora to adjust the shape of the structures towards identical size.
Labia stretching has traditionally been practised in some African nations in the East and South and the South Pacific.
Functioning
The inner lips serve to protect from mechanical irritation, dryness and infections of the highly sensitive area of the vulval vestibule with vaginal and urethral openings in it between them. During vaginal sexual intercourse they may contribute to stimulation of the whole vestibule area, the clitoris and the vagina of the woman and the penis of her partner. Stimulation of the clitoris may occur through tension of the clitoral hood and its frenulum by inner labia pulling at them. During sexual arousal they are lubricated by the mucus secreted in the vagina and around it to make penetration painless and protect them from irritation.
As the female external urethral opening (meatus) is also situated between labia minora, they may play a role in guiding the stream of the urine during female urination.
Medical conditions
Being very sensitive by their structure to any irritation, and situated in the excretion area where traces of urine, vaginal discharge, smegma and even feces may be present, the inner lips may be susceptible to inflammatory infections of the vulva such as vulvitis.
The likelihood of inflammation may be reduced through appropriate regular hygienic cleansing of the whole vulval vestibule, using water and medically tested cleansing agents designed for vulvas. To avoid contamination of the vulva with fecal bacteria, it is recommended that the vulva is washed only from front to back, from mons pubis to the perineum and anus. Apart from water and special liquid cleansing agents (lotions), there are commercially available wet wipes for female intimate hygiene. Some women wipe the vulval vestibule dry with toilet tissue after urination to avoid irritation and infections from residual drops of the urine in the area.
However, incorrect choice of cleansing agents, or their incorrect application, may itself cause labial irritation and require medical attention. Over-vigorous rubbing of the labia of little girls while washing, combined with the lack of estrogen in their bodies, may lead to the mostly pediatric condition known as labial fusion. If fused labia prevent urination, urine may accumulate and cause pain and inflammation.
In adult females, irritation of the area may be caused by wearing too-tight underwear (especially where wider inner labia protrude in the pudendal cleft); while G-strings, which rub against the labia during body movements, may cause irritation or lead to infection from bacteria transferred from either the external environment or the anus.
Additional images
See also
Femalia
Labia pride
Labia stretching
Labiaplasty
References
External links
Mammal female reproductive system
sn:Hwabvu hutete
de:Schamlippe#Die kleinen (inneren) Schamlippen
pl:Wargi sromowe mniejsze | [
-0.24224241077899933,
-0.6009455919265747,
-0.21587049961090088,
0.11256364732980728,
-0.0050020064227283,
0.9706438779830933,
0.37735939025878906,
0.7159842252731323,
0.02531498484313488,
-0.9743594527244568,
-0.37731319665908813,
0.3888055086135864,
-0.22231397032737732,
-0.4279163777828... |
18425 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold%20von%20Sacher-Masoch | Leopold von Sacher-Masoch | Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (; 27 January 1836 – 9 March 1895) was an Austrian nobleman, writer and journalist, who gained renown for his romantic stories of Galician life. The term masochism is derived from his name, invented by his contemporary, the Austrian psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing. Masoch did not approve of this use of his name.
During his lifetime, Sacher-Masoch was well known as a man of letters, in particular a utopian thinker who espoused socialist and humanist ideals in his fiction and non-fiction. Most of his works remain untranslated into English. Until recently, his novella Venus in Furs was his only book commonly available in English, but an English translation by William Holmes of Die Gottesmutter was released in 2015 as The Mother of God.
Biography
Early life and education
Von Sacher-Masoch was born in the city of Lemberg (now Lviv, Ukraine), the capital of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, at the time a province of the Austrian Empire, into the Roman Catholic family of an Austrian civil servant, Leopold Johann Nepomuk Ritter von Sacher (1797-1874), and Charlotte Josepha von Masoch (1802–1870), a Ukrainian noblewoman. The father later combined his surname with his wife's von Masoch, at the request of her family (she was the last of the line). Von Sacher served as a Commissioner of the Imperial Police Forces in Lemberg, and he was recognised with a new title of nobility as Sacher-Masoch awarded by the Austrian Emperor.
Leopold studied law, history and mathematics at Graz University (where he obtained a doctorate in history in 1856), and after graduating he became a lecturer there.
Galician storyteller
His early, non-fictional publications dealt mostly with Austrian history. At the same time, Masoch turned to the folklore and culture of his homeland, Galicia. Soon he abandoned lecturing and became a free man of letters. Within a decade his short stories and novels prevailed over his historical non-fiction works, though historical themes continued to imbue his fiction.
Panslavist ideas were prevalent in Masoch's literary work, and he found a particular interest in depicting picturesque types among the various ethnicities that inhabited Galicia. From the 1860s to the 1880s he published a number of volumes of Jewish Short Stories, Polish Short Stories, Galician Short Stories, German Court Stories and Russian Court Stories.
The Legacy of Cain
In 1869, Sacher-Masoch conceived a grandiose series of short stories under the collective title Legacy of Cain that would represent the author's aesthetic Weltanschauung. The cycle opened with the manifesto The Wanderer that brought out misogynist themes that became peculiar to Masoch's writings. Of the six planned volumes, only the first two were ever completed. By the middle of the 1880s, Masoch abandoned the Legacy of Cain. Nevertheless, the published volumes of the series included Masoch's best-known stories, and of them, Venus in Furs (published 1870) is the most famous today. The novella expressed Sacher-Masoch's fantasies and fetishes (especially for dominant women wearing fur). He did his best to live out his fantasies with his mistresses and wives. In 1873 he married Angelika Aurora Rümelin.
Philosemitism
Sacher-Masoch edited the Leipzig-based monthly literary magazine Auf der Höhe. Internationale Review (At the pinnacle. International review), which was published from October 1881 to September 1885.
In his later years, he worked against local antisemitism through an association for adult education called the Oberhessischer Verein für Volksbildung (OVV), founded in 1893 with his second wife, Hulda Meister, who had also been his assistant for some years.
Private life and inspiration for Venus in Furs
Fanny Pistor was an emerging literary writer. She met Sacher-Masoch after she contacted him, under the assumed name and fictitious title of Baroness Bogdanoff, for suggestions on improving her writing to make it suitable for publication. She was the inspiration for Venus im Pelz.
Later years
In 1874, Masoch wrote the novel Die Ideale unserer Zeit (The Ideals of Our Time), an attempt to give a portrait of German society during its Gründerzeit period.
In his late fifties, his mental health began to deteriorate, and he spent the last years of his life under psychiatric care. According to official reports, he died in Lindheim near Altenstadt, in 1895. It is also claimed that he died in an asylum in Mannheim in 1905.
Sacher-Masoch is the great-uncle of Eva von Sacher-Masoch, Baroness Erisso, mother of British singer and actress Marianne Faithfull.
Masochism
The term masochism was coined in 1886 by the Austrian psychiatrist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) in his book Psychopathia Sexualis:
Sacher-Masoch was not pleased with Krafft-Ebing's assertions. Nevertheless, details of Masoch's private life were obscure until Aurora von Rümelin's memoirs, Meine Lebensbeichte (My Life Confession; 1906), were published in Berlin under the pseudonym Wanda v. Dunajew (the name of a leading character in his Venus in Furs). The following year, a French translation, Confession de Ma Vie (1907) by "Wanda von Sacher-Masoch", was printed in Paris by Mercure de France. An English translation of the French edition was published as The Confessions of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch (1991) by RE/Search Publications.
Selected bibliography
1858 A Galician Story 1846
1865 Kaunitz
1866 Don Juan of Kolomiya
1867 The Last King of Hungary
1870 The Divorcee
1870 Legacy of Cain. Vol. 1: Love (includes his most famous work Venus in Furs)
1872 Faux Ermine
1873 Female Sultan
1873 The Messalinas of Vienna
1873–74 Russian Court Stories: 4 Vols.
1873–77 Viennese Court Stories: 2 Vols.
1874/76 [Love Stories from Several Centuries], 3 volumes, includes "" ("Bloody Wedding in Kyiv"), "Ariella"
1874 Die Ideale unserer Zeit [The Ideals of Our Time]
1875 Galician Stories
1877 The Man Without Prejudice
1877 Legacy of Cain. Vol. 2: Property
1878 The New Hiob
1878 Jewish Stories
1878 The Republic of Women's Enemies
1879 Silhouettes
1881 New Jewish Stories
1883 (The Mother of God)
1886 Eternal Youth
1886 Stories from Polish Ghetto
1886 Little Mysteries of World History
1886 Bloody Wedding in Kyiv'
1887 Polish Stories 1890 The Serpent in Paradise 1891 The Lonesome 1894 Love Stories 1898 Entre nous 1900 Catherina II 1901 Afrikas Semiramis 1907 Fierce WomenSee also
BDSM
Marquis de Sade
Sadism and masochism in fiction
Story of ONotes
Further reading
Bach, Ulrich E, "Sacher-Masoch's Utopian Peripheries." In: The German Quarterly 80.2 (2007): 201–219.
Biale, David, "Masochism and Philosemitism: The Strange Case of Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch", Journal of Contemporary History 17 (1982), 305–323.
Deleuze, Gilles, "Coldness and Cruelty," in Masochism, New York: Zone Books (1991).
John K. Noyes, The Mastery of Submission. Inventions of Masochism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1997.
Carlo Di Mascio, Masoch sovversivo. Cinque studi su Venus im Pelz, Firenze, Phasar Edizioni, 2018.
Alison Moore, Recovering Difference in the Deleuzian Dichotomy of Masochism-without-Sadism. Angelaki 14 (3), November 2009, 27–43.
Alison M. Moore, Sexual Myths of Modernity: Sadism, Masochism and Historical Teleology. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016.
External links
Venus in Furs from Project Gutenberg
The Bookbinder of Hort, part of an anthology, Stories by Foreign Authors''
The Letawitza
The Independent Saturday, 23 July 1994
Stanislav Tsalyk: Don Juan of Lviv
1836 births
1895 deaths
Writers from Lviv
19th-century Austrian writers
19th-century Austrian novelists
Austro-Hungarian writers
Austrian journalists
Austrian male writers
Austrian socialists
German-language writers
Austrian erotica writers
BDSM writers
Austrian male novelists
19th-century male writers | [
-0.4843084514141083,
0.5720970630645752,
-0.2726946473121643,
-0.1842719167470932,
-0.1791224628686905,
0.8167208433151245,
0.6798996925354004,
0.4884374439716339,
-0.44992098212242126,
-0.40418916940689087,
-0.3718864321708679,
-0.38772836327552795,
-0.05278632789850235,
0.537303864955902... |
18426 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithography | Lithography | Lithography () is a method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German author and actor Alois Senefelder and was initially used mostly for musical scores and maps. Lithography can be used to print text or images onto paper or other suitable material. A lithograph is something printed by lithography, but this term is only used for fine art prints and some other, mostly older, types of printed matter, not for those made by modern commercial lithography.
Originally, the image to be printed was drawn with a greasy substance, such as oil, fat, or wax, onto the surface of a smooth and flat limestone plate. The stone was then treated with a mixture of weak acid and gum arabic ("etch") that made the parts of the stone's surface that were not protected by the grease more hydrophilic (water attracting). For printing, the stone was first moistened. The water only adhered to the gum-treated parts, making them even more oil-repellant. An oil-based ink was then applied, and would stick only to the original drawing. The ink would finally be transferred to a blank paper sheet, producing a printed page. This traditional technique is still used for fine art printmaking.
In modern commercial lithography, the image is transferred or created as a patterned polymer coating applied to a flexible plastic or metal plate. The printing plates, whether stone or metal, can be created by a photographic process, a method that may be referred to as "photolithography" (although the term usually refers to a vaguely similar microelectronics manufacturing process). Offset printing or "offset lithography" is an elaboration of lithography in which the ink is transferred from the plate to the paper by means of a rubber plate or cylinder, rather than by direct contact of the two. This technique keeps the paper dry and allows high speed fully automated operation. It has mostly replaced traditional lithography for medium- and high-volume printing: since the 1960s, most books and magazines, especially when illustrated in colour, are printed with offset lithography from photographically created metal plates.
As a printing technology, lithography is different from intaglio printing (gravure), wherein a plate is engraved, etched, or stippled to score cavities to contain the printing ink; and woodblock printing or letterpress printing, wherein ink is applied to the raised surfaces of letters or images.
The principle of lithography
Lithography uses simple chemical processes to create an image. For instance, the positive part of an image is a water-repelling ("hydrophobic") substance, while the negative image would be water-retaining ("hydrophilic"). Thus, when the plate is introduced to a compatible printing ink and water mixture, the ink will adhere to the positive image and the water will clean the negative image. This allows a flat print plate to be used, enabling much longer and more detailed print runs than the older physical methods of printing (e.g., intaglio printing, letterpress printing).
Lithography was invented by Alois Senefelder in the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1796. In the early days of lithography, a smooth piece of limestone was used (hence the name "lithography": "lithos" () is the Ancient Greek word for "stone"). After the oil-based image was put on the surface, a solution of gum arabic in water was applied, the gum sticking only to the non-oily surface. During printing, water adhered to the gum arabic surfaces and was repelled by the oily parts, while the oily ink used for printing did the opposite.
Lithography on limestone
Lithography works because of the mutual repulsion of oil and water. The image is drawn on the surface of the print plate with a fat or oil-based medium (hydrophobic) such as a wax crayon, which may be pigmented to make the drawing visible. A wide range of oil-based media is available, but the durability of the image on the stone depends on the lipid content of the material being used, and its ability to withstand water and acid. After the drawing of the image, an aqueous solution of gum arabic, weakly acidified with nitric acid () is applied to the stone. The function of this solution is to create a hydrophilic layer of calcium nitrate salt, , and gum arabic on all non-image surfaces. The gum solution penetrates into the pores of the stone, completely surrounding the original image with a hydrophilic layer that will not accept the printing ink. Using lithographic turpentine, the printer then removes any excess of the greasy drawing material, but a hydrophobic molecular film of it remains tightly bonded to the surface of the stone, rejecting the gum arabic and water, but ready to accept the oily ink.
When printing, the stone is kept wet with water. The water is naturally attracted to the layer of gum and salt created by the acid wash. Printing ink based on drying oils such as linseed oil and varnish loaded with pigment is then rolled over the surface. The water repels the greasy ink but the hydrophobic areas left by the original drawing material accept it. When the hydrophobic image is loaded with ink, the stone and paper are run through a press that applies even pressure over the surface, transferring the ink to the paper and off the stone.
Senefelder had experimented during the early 19th century with multicolor lithography; in his 1819 book, he predicted that the process would eventually be perfected and used to reproduce paintings. Multi-color printing was introduced by a new process developed by Godefroy Engelmann (France) in 1837 known as chromolithography. A separate stone was used for each color, and a print went through the press separately for each stone. The main challenge was to keep the images aligned (in register). This method lent itself to images consisting of large areas of flat color, and resulted in the characteristic poster designs of this period.
"Lithography, or printing from soft stone, largely took the place of engraving in the production of English commercial maps after about 1852. It was a quick, cheap process and had been used to print British army maps during the Peninsula War. Most of the commercial maps of the second half of the 19th century were lithographed and unattractive, though accurate enough."
Modern lithographic process
High-volume lithography is currently used to produce posters, maps, books, newspapers, and packaging—just about any smooth, mass-produced item with print and graphics on it. Most books, indeed all types of high-volume text, are now printed using offset lithography.
For offset lithography, which depends on photographic processes, flexible aluminum, polyester, mylar or paper printing plates are used instead of stone tablets. Modern printing plates have a brushed or roughened texture and are covered with a photosensitive emulsion. A photographic negative of the desired image is placed in contact with the emulsion and the plate is exposed to ultraviolet light. After development, the emulsion shows a reverse of the negative image, which is thus a duplicate of the original (positive) image. The image on the plate emulsion can also be created by direct laser imaging in a CTP (computer-to-plate) device known as a platesetter. The positive image is the emulsion that remains after imaging. Non-image portions of the emulsion have traditionally been removed by a chemical process, though in recent times, plates have become available that do not require such processing.
The plate is affixed to a cylinder on a printing press. Dampening rollers apply water, which covers the blank portions of the plate but is repelled by the emulsion of the image area. Hydrophobic ink, which is repelled by the water and only adheres to the emulsion of the image area, is then applied by the inking rollers.
If this image were transferred directly to paper, it would create a mirror-type image and the paper would become too wet. Instead, the plate rolls against a cylinder covered with a rubber blanket, which squeezes away the water, picks up the ink and transfers it to the paper with uniform pressure. The paper passes between the blanket cylinder and a counter-pressure or impression cylinder and the image is transferred to the paper. Because the image is first transferred, or offset to the rubber blanket cylinder, this reproduction method is known as offset lithography or offset printing.
Many innovations and technical refinements have been made in printing processes and presses over the years, including the development of presses with multiple units (each containing one printing plate) that can print multi-color images in one pass on both sides of the sheet, and presses that accommodate continuous rolls (webs) of paper, known as web presses. Another innovation was the continuous dampening system first introduced by Dahlgren, instead of the old method (conventional dampening) which is still used on older presses, using rollers covered with molleton (cloth) that absorbs the water. This increased control of the water flow to the plate and allowed for better ink and water balance. Current dampening systems include a "delta effect or vario", which slows the roller in contact with the plate, thus creating a sweeping movement over the ink image to clean impurities known as "hickies".
This press is also called an ink pyramid because the ink is transferred through several layers of rollers with different purposes. Fast lithographic 'web' printing presses are commonly used in newspaper production.
The advent of desktop publishing made it possible for type and images to be modified easily on personal computers for eventual printing by desktop or commercial presses. The development of digital imagesetters enabled print shops to produce negatives for platemaking directly from digital input, skipping the intermediate step of photographing an actual page layout. The development of the digital platesetter during the late 20th century eliminated film negatives altogether by exposing printing plates directly from digital input, a process known as computer-to-plate printing.
Lithography as an artistic medium
During the first years of the 19th century, lithography had only a limited effect on printmaking, mainly because technical difficulties remained to be overcome. Germany was the main center of production in this period. Godefroy Engelmann, who moved his press from Mulhouse to Paris in 1816, largely succeeded in resolving the technical problems, and during the 1820s lithography was adopted by artists such as Delacroix and Géricault. After early experiments such as Specimens of Polyautography (1803), which had experimental works by a number of British artists including Benjamin West, Henry Fuseli, James Barry, Thomas Barker of Bath, Thomas Stothard, Henry Richard Greville, Richard Cooper, Henry Singleton, and William Henry Pyne, London also became a center, and some of Géricault's prints were in fact produced there. Goya in Bordeaux produced his last series of prints by lithography—The Bulls of Bordeaux of 1828. By the mid-century the initial enthusiasm had somewhat diminished in both countries, although the use of lithography was increasingly favored for commercial applications, which included the prints of Daumier, published in newspapers. Rodolphe Bresdin and Jean-François Millet also continued to practice the medium in France, and Adolph Menzel in Germany. In 1862 the publisher Cadart tried to initiate a portfolio of lithographs by various artists, which was not successful but included several prints by Manet. The revival began during the 1870s, especially in France with artists such as Odilon Redon, Henri Fantin-Latour and Degas producing much of their work in this manner. The need for strictly limited editions to maintain the price had now been realized, and the medium became more accepted.
In the 1890s, color lithography gained success in part by the emergence of Jules Chéret, known as the father of the modern poster, whose work went on to inspire a new generation of poster designers and painters, most notably Toulouse-Lautrec, and former student of Chéret, Georges de Feure. By 1900 the medium in both color and monotone was an accepted part of printmaking.
During the 20th century, a group of artists, including Braque, Calder, Chagall, Dufy, Léger, Matisse, Miró, and Picasso, rediscovered the largely undeveloped artform of lithography thanks to the Mourlot Studios, also known as Atelier Mourlot, a Parisian printshop founded in 1852 by the Mourlot family. The Atelier Mourlot originally specialized in the printing of wallpaper; but it was transformed when the founder's grandson, Fernand Mourlot, invited a number of 20th-century artists to explore the complexities of fine art printing. Mourlot encouraged the painters to work directly on lithographic stones in order to create original artworks that could then be executed under the direction of master printers in small editions. The combination of modern artist and master printer resulted in lithographs that were used as posters to promote the artists' work.
Grant Wood, George Bellows, Alphonse Mucha, Max Kahn, Pablo Picasso, Eleanor Coen, Jasper Johns, David Hockney, Susan Dorothea White, and Robert Rauschenberg are a few of the artists who have produced most of their prints in the medium. M. C. Escher is considered a master of lithography, and many of his prints were created using this process. More than other printmaking techniques, printmakers in lithography still largely depend on access to good printers, and the development of the medium has been greatly influenced by when and where these have been established.
An American scene for lithography was founded by Robert Blackburn in New York City.
As a special form of lithography, the serilith or seriolithograph process is sometimes used. Seriliths are mixed-media original prints created in a process in which an artist uses the lithograph and serigraph (screen printing) Fine art prints of this type are published by numerous artists and publishers worldwide, and are widely accepted and collected. The separations for both processes are hand-drawn by the artist. The serilith technique is used primarily to create fine art limited print editions.
Gallery
See also
References
External links
About Lithography
Twyman, Michael. Early Lithographed Books. Pinner, Middlesex: Private Libraries Association, 1990
Museum of Modern Art information on printing techniques and examples of prints
The Invention of Lithography, Aloys Senefelder, (Eng. trans. 1911) (a searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries; DjVu and layered PDF format)
Theo De Smedt's website, author of "What's lithography"
Extensive information on Honoré Daumier and his life and work, including his entire output of lithographs
Digital work catalog to 4000 lithographs and 1000 wood engravings
Detailed examination of the processes involved in the creation of a typical scholarly lithographic illustration in the 19th century
Nederlands Steendrukmuseum
Delacroix's Faust lithographs at the Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University
A brief historic overview of Lithography. University of Delaware Library. Includes citations for 19th century books using early lithographic illustrations.
Philadelphia on Stone: The First Fifty Years of Commercial Lithography in Philadelphia. Library Company of Philadelphia. Provides an historic overview of the commercial trade in Philadelphia and links to a biographical dictionary of over 500 Philadelphia lithographers and catalog of more than 1300 lithographs documenting Philadelphia.
Prints & People: A Social History of Printed Pictures, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on lithography
1796 introductions
Communication design
Graphic design
Planographic printing
Printmaking
Visual arts media | [
0.49461615085601807,
0.5047765374183655,
-0.18724000453948975,
0.2679064869880676,
0.1014866754412651,
0.33110904693603516,
-0.46832987666130066,
-0.16113372147083282,
-0.3293084502220154,
-0.5697857737541199,
-0.3164658844470978,
0.12036903947591782,
-0.3520067036151886,
0.309482812881469... |
18430 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library%20management | Library management | Library management is a sub-discipline of institutional management that focuses on specific issues faced by libraries and library management professionals. Library management encompasses normal managerial tasks, as well as intellectual freedom and fundraising responsibilities. Issues faced in library management frequently overlap with those faced in managing non-profit organizations.
The basic functions of library management include,, overseeing all library operations,managing library budget , planning and negotiating the acquisition of materials, Interlibrary Loan [ILL] requests, stacks maintenance, over seeing fee collection, event planning, fundraising, and human resources.
Common library construct
Most of the libraries that store physical media like books, periodicals, film, and other objects adhere to some derivative of the Dewey Decimal System as their method for tagging, storing, and retrieving materials based on unique identifiers. The use of such systems have caused librarians to develop and leverage common constructs that act as tools for both library professionals and library users alike. These constructs include master catalogs, domain catalogs, indexes, unique identifiers, unique identifier tokens, and artifacts .
A master catalog acts as a catalog of all domain or topic-specific catalogs and often directs the user to a more specific area of a library, where the user can find a more specific domain catalog. For example, upon entering a very large library, one may find a master catalog that will direct a patron to a specific wing of the library that focuses on a specific subject, such as law, history, fiction, etc.
Domain catalogs are usually made up of a system of very large libraries, where a master catalog cannot hold all of the system's information. As a result, the master catalog leads the user to domain catalogs that contain homogeneous references to specific artifacts that fall within the category or domain assigned to that catalog. For example, a very large library may have many domain catalogs—one for law, one for history, one for fiction, etc. In the case of smaller libraries where the use of domain catalogs are unnecessary, the master catalog can contain all of the information.
Indexes represent a grouping of artifacts by some relevant grouping constraint. The most common index groupings are "by title," "by subject,", publisher" and "by author."
Unique identifiers, also known as IDs, represent a means of assigning and tagging an artifact with a readable string of characters that is unique to that single artifact. Such identifiers usually include the address or location of the artifact within the library, and a unique character set that helps to distinguish artifacts that have common traits like common titles. Such unique identifiers are also broken into tokens and are usually placed somewhere on the surface of the artifact being stored, such as on the binding of a book, to facilitate in easily locating that item.
Unique identification strings are broken into predefined and fixed position segments or sub-strings. Each segment is called a token and represents a mapping to something meaningful, hence the name unique identifier tokens. For example, one token may lead a user to a specific wing of a library, another might lead the user to a specific aisle within that wing, another to a specific bookcase within that aisle, etc., all ultimately leading to the artifact itself. Such tokens are often separated by a character that is often referred to as a tokenizer (e.g. "." or ":").
Artifacts represent those original things or authorized copies of things that are being categorized, stored within, and retrieved from libraries. Examples of artifacts include books, periodicals, research documentation, film, and computer disks.
Planning and maintaining library facilities
An important aspect of library management is planning and maintaining library facilities. Successful planning is defined as "active planning that ensures an organization will have the right people in the right place at the right time for right job" Planning the construction of new libraries or remodeling those that exist is integral since user needs are often changing. To supplement their operating budget, managers often secure funding through donor gifts and fundraising. Many facilities have begun including cafes, Friends of the Library spaces, and even exhibits to help generate additional revenue. These areas should be taken into account when planning for building expansions.
The site for new construction must be found, then the building must be designed, constructed, and eventually evaluated. Once established, it is important that the building is regularly maintained. This may be completed by delegating tasks to maintenance personnel or by hiring an outside company through bids.
Disaster planning must be taken into account in the library context as well: not only the impact of a disaster on the library, but the library's potential role as a support service just after a disaster.
Associations and publications
The Library Leadership and Management Association (LLAMA) is a division of the American Library Association that provides leaders with webinars, conferences, and a variety of industry publications, in addition to funding through awards and grants. LLAMA membership includes a free subscription to the online quarterly magazine Library Leadership & Management, as well as discounts on other publications and related conferences. In 2020 LLAMA merged with two other division of ALA to form Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures.
The Journal of Library Administration began in 1980 and is currently published by Routledge eight times per year. It is a peer-reviewed academic journal that discusses issues pertaining to library management.
References
Suggested reading
Ainslie, Karen. 2016. Internal Control for Public Libraries. Indiana State Library.
Gregory, Ruth W. and Lester L. Stoffel. Public Libraries in Cooperative Systems: Administrative Patters for Service. Chicago: American Library Association, 1971.
Lock, Reginald Northwood. Library Administration. London: C. Lockwood & Son, 1961. vi, 132, [1] p.
Lyle, Guy R. The Administration of the College Library, with the collaboration of Paul H. Bixler, Marjorie Hood, and Arnold H. Trotier. Third ed. New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1961. xiii, 419 p.
Vishwakarma M L.and Parashar V _Ed. Halkar Giriraj, Natrajan M, Singh,Hirdyesh Kumar et al_ Changing Role of Library Professionals & Libraries in the Digital Age. New Delhi_India: American Library Association,International Research Publication House,New Delhi, 2014.
Wofford, Azile. The School Library at Work: Acquisition, Organization, Use, and Maintenance of Materials in the School Library. New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1959.
Songphan Choemprayong,Fabio Crestani and Sally Jo Cunningham (Eds.)Digital Libraries: Data, Information, and Knowledge for Digital LivesCham, Switzerland:Springer,2017. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70232-2
External links
American Library Association, What Library Managers Need to Know
Library Instruction for Teachers, Blog by Michael Lorenzen
Library Leadership & Management Association
Library Management
RFID based Library Management Software, LIBSYS Press Release
UNESCO Adult Learning Documentation and Information Network, Managing A Library PDF | [
0.44090086221694946,
0.048325683921575546,
-0.2626149654388428,
0.2847113609313965,
0.17963796854019165,
0.01979297772049904,
0.09008636325597763,
0.13732706010341644,
-0.5065569877624512,
-0.5686841011047363,
-0.7139299511909485,
0.6409881114959717,
0.2539394795894623,
0.48903796076774597... |
18432 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English%20longbow | English longbow | The English longbow was a powerful medieval type of longbow (a tall bow for archery) about long used by the English for hunting and as a weapon in warfare. English use of longbows was effective against the French during the Hundred Years' War, particularly at the start of the war in the battles of Sluys (1340), Crécy (1346), and Poitiers (1356), and perhaps most famously at the Battle of Agincourt (1415).
However they were less successful after this, with longbowmen having their lines broken at the Battle of Verneuil (1424) though the English won a decisive victory, and being completely routed at the Battle of Patay (1429) when they were charged by the French mounted men-at-arms before they had prepared the terrain and finished defensive arrangements. The Battle of Pontvallain (1370) had also previously shown longbowmen were not particularly effective when not given the time to set up defensive positions.
No English longbows survive from the period when the longbow was dominant (c. 1250–1450), probably because bows became weaker, broke, and were replaced rather than being handed down through generations. More than 130 bows survive from the Renaissance period, however. More than 3,500 arrows and 137 whole longbows were recovered from the Mary Rose, a ship of Henry VIII's navy that sank at Portsmouth in 1545.
Description
Length
A longbow must be long enough to allow its user to draw the string to a point on the face or body, and the length therefore varies with the user. In continental Europe it was generally seen as any bow longer than . The Society of Antiquaries of London says it is of in length. Richard Bartelot, of the Royal Artillery Institution, said that the bow was of yew, long, with a arrow. Gaston III, Count of Foix, wrote in 1388 that a longbow should be "of yew or boxwood, seventy inches [] between the points of attachment for the cord". Historian Jim Bradbury said they were an average of about 5 feet and 8 inches. All but the last estimate were made before the excavation of the Mary Rose, where bows were found ranging in length from with an average length of .
Draw weights
Estimates for the draw of these bows varies considerably. Before the recovery of the Mary Rose, Count M. Mildmay Stayner, Recorder of the British Long Bow Society, estimated the bows of the Medieval period drew , maximum, and W. F. Paterson, Chairman of the Society of Archer-Antiquaries, believed the weapon had a supreme draw weight of only . Other sources suggest significantly higher draw weights. The original draw forces of examples from the Mary Rose are estimated by Robert Hardy at at a draw length; the full range of draw weights was between . The draw length was used because that is the length allowed by the arrows commonly found on the Mary Rose.
A modern longbow's draw is typically or less, and by modern convention measured at . Historically, hunting bows usually had draw weights of , which is enough for all but the very largest game and which most reasonably fit adults can manage with practice. Today, there are few modern longbow archers capable of using bows accurately.
A record of how boys and men trained to use the bows with high draw weights survives from the reign of Henry VII.
What Latimer meant when he describes laying his body into the bow was described thus:
Construction and materials
Bowstave
The preferred material to make the longbow was yew, although ash, elm and other woods were also used. Gerald of Wales speaking of the bows used by the Welsh men of Gwent, says: "They are made neither of horn, ash nor yew, but of elm; ugly unfinished-looking weapons, but astonishingly stiff, large and strong, and equally capable of use for long or short shooting". The traditional construction of a longbow consists of drying the yew wood for 1 to 2 years, then slowly working the wood into shape, with the entire process taking up to four years. The bow stave is shaped to have a D cross-section. The outer "back" of sapwood, approximately flat, follows the natural growth rings; modern bowyers often thin the sapwood, while in the Mary Rose bows the back of the bow was the natural surface of the wood, only the bark is removed. The inner side ("belly") of the bow stave consists of rounded heartwood. The heartwood resists compression and the outer sapwood performs better in tension. This combination in a single piece of wood (a self bow) forms a natural "laminate", somewhat similar in effect to the construction of a composite bow. Longbows will last a long time if protected with a water-resistant coating, traditionally of "wax, resin and fine tallow".
The trade of yew wood to England for longbows was such that it depleted the stocks of yew over a huge area. The first documented import of yew bowstaves to England was in 1294. In 1470 compulsory practice was renewed, and hazel, ash, and laburnum were specifically allowed for practice bows. Supplies still proved insufficient, until by the Statute of Westminster 1472, every ship coming to an English port had to bring four bowstaves for every tun. Richard III of England increased this to ten for every tun. This stimulated a vast network of extraction and supply, which formed part of royal monopolies in southern Germany and Austria. In 1483, the price of bowstaves rose from two to eight pounds per hundred, and in 1510 the Venetians obtained sixteen pounds per hundred.
In 1507 the Holy Roman Emperor asked the Duke of Bavaria to stop cutting yew, but the trade was profitable, and in 1532 the royal monopoly was granted for the usual quantity "if there are that many". In 1562, the Bavarian government sent a long plea to the Holy Roman Emperor asking him to stop the cutting of yew and outlining the damage done to the forests by its selective extraction, which broke the canopy and allowed wind to destroy neighbouring trees. In 1568, despite a request from Saxony, no royal monopoly was granted because there was no yew to cut, and the next year Bavaria and Austria similarly failed to produce enough yew to justify a royal monopoly.
Forestry records in this area in the 17th century do not mention yew, and it seems that no mature trees were to be had. The English tried to obtain supplies from the Baltic, but at this period bows were being replaced by guns in any case.
String
Bowstrings are made of hemp, flax or silk, and attached to the wood via horn "nocks" that fit onto the end of the bow. Modern synthetic materials (often Dacron) are now commonly also used for strings.
Arrows
A wide variety of arrows were shot from the English longbow. Variations in length, fletchings and heads are all recorded. Perhaps the greatest diversity lies in hunting arrows, with varieties like broad-arrow, wolf-arrow, dog-arrow, Welsh arrow and Scottish arrow being recorded. War arrows were ordered in the thousands for medieval armies and navies, supplied in sheaves normally of 24 arrows. For example, between 1341 and 1359 the English crown is known to have obtained 51,350 sheaves (1,232,400 arrows).
Only one significant group of arrows, found at the wreck of the Mary Rose, has survived. Over 3500 arrows were found, mainly made of poplar but also of ash, beech and hazel. Analysis of the intact specimens shows their length to vary from , with an average length of . Because of the preservation conditions of the Mary Rose, no arrowheads survived. However, many heads have survived in other places, which has allowed typologies of arrowheads to be produced, the most modern being the Jessop typology. The most common arrowheads in military use were the short bodkin point (Jessop M10) and a small barbed arrow (Jessop M4).
Use and performance
Training
Longbows were very difficult to master because the force required to deliver an arrow through the improving armour of medieval Europe was very high by modern standards. Although the draw weight of a typical English longbow is disputed, it was at least and possibly more than . Considerable practice was required to produce the swift and effective combat shooting required. Skeletons of longbow archers are recognisably affected, with enlarged left arms and often osteophytes on left wrists, left shoulders and right fingers.
It was the difficulty in using the longbow that led various monarchs of England to issue instructions encouraging their ownership and practice, including the Assize of Arms of 1252 and Edward III of England's declaration of 1363:
If the people practised archery, it would be that much easier for the king to recruit the proficient longbowmen he needed for his wars. Along with the improving ability of gunfire to penetrate plate armour, it was the long training needed by longbowmen that eventually led to their being replaced by musketeers.
Range
The range of the medieval weapon is not accurately known, with much depending on both the power of the bow and the type of arrow. It has been suggested that a flight arrow of a professional archer of Edward III's time would reach but the longest mark shot at on the London practice ground of Finsbury Fields in the 16th century was . In 1542, Henry VIII set a minimum practice range for adults using flight arrows of ; ranges below this had to be shot with heavy arrows. Modern experiments broadly concur with these historical ranges. A 667 N (150 lbf) Mary Rose replica longbow was able to shoot a arrow and a a distance of . In 2012, Joe Gibbs shot a livery arrow with a 170 lbf yew bow. The effective combat range of longbowmen was generally lower than what could be achieved on the practice range as sustained shooting was tiring and the rigors of campaigning would sap soldiers' strength. Writing thirty years after the ‘’Mary Rose’’ sank, Barnabe Rich estimated that if a thousand English archers were mustered then after one week only one hundred of them would be able to shoot farther than two hundred paces (), while two hundred of the others would not be able to shoot farther than 180 paces. In 2017, Hungarian master archer József Mónus set the new flight world record with a traditional English Longbow at 412.82 meters (541.76 paces, 451.46 yards).
Armour penetration
Modern testing
In an early modern test by Saxton Pope, a direct hit from a steel bodkin point penetrated Damascus mail armour.
A 2006 test was made by Matheus Bane using a draw (at 28") bow, shooting at 10 yards; according to Bane's calculations, this would be approximately equivalent to a bow at 250 yards. Measured against a replica of the thinnest contemporary gambeson (padded jacket) armour, a 905 grain needle bodkin and a 935 grain curved broadhead penetrated over . (gambeson armour could be up to twice as thick as the coat tested; in Bane's opinion such a thick coat would have stopped bodkin arrows but not the cutting force of broadhead arrows.) Against "high quality riveted maille", the needle bodkin and curved broadhead penetrated 2.8". Against a coat of plates, the needle bodkin achieved 0.3" penetration. The curved broadhead did not penetrate but caused 0.3" of deformation of the metal. Results against plate armour of "minimum thickness" (1.2mm) were similar to the coat of plates, in that the needle bodkin penetrated to a shallow depth, the other arrows not at all. In Bane's view, the plate armour would have kept out all the arrows if thicker or worn with more padding.
Other modern tests described by Bane include those by Williams (which concluded that longbows could not penetrate mail, but in Bane's view did not use a realistic arrow tip), Robert Hardy's tests (which achieved broadly similar results to Bane), and a Primitive Archer test which demonstrated that a longbow could penetrate a plate armour breastplate. However, the Primitive Archer test used a longbow at very short range, generating 160 joules (vs. 73 for Bane and 80 for Williams), so probably not representative of battles of the time.
Tests conducted by Mark Stretton examined the effects of heavier war shafts (as opposed to lighter hunting or distance-shooting 'flight arrows'). The quarrel-like 102-gram arrow from a yew 'self bow' (with a draw weight of 144lbs at 32 inches) while travelling at 47.23 metres per second yielded 113.76 joules, more kinetic energy than the lighter broad-heads while achieving 90% of the range. The short, heavy quarrel-form bodkin could penetrate a replica brigandine at up to 40° from perpendicular.
In 2011, Mike Loades conducted an experiment in which short bodkin arrows were shot at a range of by bows of - powerful bows at less than normal battlefield range. The target was covered in a riveted mail over a fabric armour of deerskin over 24 linen layers. While most arrows went through the mail layer, none fully penetrated the textile armour.
Other research has also concluded that later medieval armour, such as that of the Italian city-state mercenary companies, was effective at stopping contemporary arrows.
Computer analysis by Warsaw University of Technology in 2017 has estimated that heavy bodkin-point arrows could penetrate typical plate armour of the time at up to . However, the depth of penetration would be slight at that range, a mere 14mm on average; penetration increased as the range closed or against armour lesser than the best quality available at the time, but with 24mm being the highest penetration depth estimated at 25 m range, it was unlikely to be deadly.
In August 2019, the Blacksmith YouTube channel 'Tod's Workshop', together with historian Dr Tobias Capwell (curator at the Wallace collection), Joe Gibbs (archer), Will Sherman (fletcher) and Kevin Legg (armourer) ran a practical test using as close a recreation of 15th century plate armour (made with materials and techniques fitting to the time period) over a chainmail and gambeson against a 160 lbs longbow. They fired a variety of arrows at the target and the results showed that the arrows shot by a 160 lbs longbow were unable to penetrate the front of the armour at any range, but the arrow that struck below the harness went right through the underlying protection.
Contemporary accounts
Gerald of Wales commented on the power of the Welsh longbow in the 12th century:
Against massed men in armour, massed longbows were murderously effective on many battlefields.
Strickland and Hardy suggest that "even at a range of 240 yards, heavy war arrows shot from bows of poundages in the mid- to upper range possessed by the Mary Rose bows would have been capable of killing or severely wounding men equipped with armour of wrought iron. Higher-quality armour of steel would have given considerably greater protection, which accords well with the experience of Oxford's men against the elite French vanguard at Poitiers in 1356, and des Ursin's statement that the French knights of the first ranks at Agincourt, which included some of the most important (and thus best-equipped) nobles, remained comparatively unhurt by the English arrows".
Archery was described by contemporaries as ineffective against steel plate armour in the Battle of Neville's Cross (1346), the siege of Bergerac (1345), and the Battle of Poitiers (1356); such armour became available to European knights and men at arms of fairly modest means by the middle of the 14th century, though never to all soldiers in any army. Longbowmen were, however, effective at Poitiers, and this success stimulated changes in armour manufacture partly intended to make armoured men less vulnerable to archery. Nevertheless, at the battle of Agincourt in 1415 and for some decades thereafter, English longbowmen continued to be an effective battlefield force.
Shields
Following the Battle of Crécy, the longbow did not always prove as effective. For example, at the Battle of Poitiers (1356), the French men-at-arms formed a shield wall with which Geoffrey le Baker recounts "protecting their bodies with joined shields, [and] turned their faces away from the missiles. So the archers emptied their quivers in vain".
Summary
Modern tests and contemporary accounts agree therefore that well-made plate armour could protect against longbows. However, this did not necessarily make the longbow ineffective; thousands of longbowmen were deployed in the English victory at Agincourt against plate armoured French knights in 1415. Clifford Rogers has argued that while longbows might not have been able to penetrate steel breastplates at Agincourt they could still penetrate the thinner armour on the limbs. Most of the French knights advanced on foot but, exhausted by walking across wet muddy terrain in heavy armour enduring a "terrifying hail of arrow shot", they were overwhelmed in the melee.
Less heavily armoured soldiers were more vulnerable than knights. For example, enemy crossbowmen were forced to retreat at Crécy when deployed without their protecting pavises. Horses were generally less well protected than the knights themselves; shooting the French knights' horses from the side (where they were less well armoured) is described by contemporary accounts of the Battle of Poitiers (1356), and at Agincourt John Keegan has argued that the main effect of the longbow would have been in injuring the horses of the mounted French knights.
Shooting rate
A typical military longbow archer would be provided with between 60 and 72 arrows at the time of battle. Most archers would not shoot arrows at the maximum rate, as it would exhaust even the most experienced man. "With the heaviest bows [a modern war bow archer] does not like to try for more than six a minute." Not only do the arms and shoulder muscles tire from the exertion, but the fingers holding the bowstring become strained; therefore, actual rates of shooting in combat would vary considerably. Ranged volleys at the beginning of the battle would differ markedly from the closer, aimed shots as the battle progressed and the enemy neared. On the battlefield English archers stored their arrows stabbed upright into the ground at their feet, reducing the time it took to nock, draw and loose.
Arrows were not unlimited, so archers and their commanders took every effort to ration their use to the situation at hand. Nonetheless, resupply during battle was available. Young boys were often employed to run additional arrows to longbow archers while in their positions on the battlefield. "The longbow was the machine gun of the Middle Ages: accurate, deadly, possessed of a long range and rapid rate of fire, the flight of its missiles was likened to a storm".
In tests against a moving target simulating a galloping knight it took some approximately seven seconds to draw, aim and loose an armour-piercing heavy arrow using a replica war bow. It was found that in the seven seconds between the first and second shots the target advanced 70 yards and that the second shot occurred at such close range that, if it was a realistic contest, running away was the only option.
A Tudor English author expects eight shots from a longbow in the same time as five from a musket. He points out that the musket also shoots at a flatter trajectory, so is more likely to hit its target and its shot is likely to be more damaging in the event of a hit. The advantage of early firearms lay in the lower training requirements, the opportunity to take cover while shooting, flatter trajectory, and greater penetration.
Treating arrow wounds
Specialised medical tools designed for arrow wounds have existed since ancient times: Diocles (successor of Hippocrates) devised the graphiscos, a form of cannula with hooks, and the duck-billed forceps (allegedly invented by Heras of Cappadocia) was employed during the medieval period to extract arrows. While armour-piercing "bodkin" points were relatively easy (if painful) to remove, barbed points required the flesh to be cut or pulled aside. An arrow would be pushed through and taken out the other side of the body only in the worst cases, as this would cause even more tissue damage and risk cutting through major blood vessels.
Henry, Prince of Wales, later Henry V, was wounded in the face by an arrow at the Battle of Shrewsbury (1403). The royal physician John Bradmore had a tool made that consisted of a pair of smooth tongs. Once carefully inserted into the socket of the arrowhead, the tongs screwed apart until they gripped its walls and allowed the head to be extracted from the wound. Prior to the extraction, the hole made by the arrow shaft was widened by inserting larger and larger dowels of elder pith wrapped in linen down into the entry wound. The dowels were soaked in honey, now known to have antiseptic properties. The wound was then dressed with a poultice of barley and honey mixed in turpentine (pre-dating Ambroise Paré but whose therapeutic use of turpentine was inspired by Roman medical texts that may have been familiar to Bradmore). After 20 days, the wound was free of infection.
History
Etymology
The word may have been coined to distinguish the longbow from the crossbow. The first recorded use of the term longbow, as distinct from simply 'bow', is possibly in a 1386 administrative document which refers in Latin to arcus vocati longbowes, "bows called 'longbows'", though unfortunately the reading of the last word in the original document is not certain. A 1444 will proved in York bequeaths "a sadil, alle my longe bowis, a bedde".
Origins
The origins of the English longbow are disputed. While it is hard to assess the significance of military archery in pre-Norman Conquest Anglo-Saxon warfare, it is clear that archery played a prominent role under the Normans, as the story of the Battle of Hastings shows. Their Anglo-Norman descendants also made use of military archery, as exemplified by their victory at the Battle of the Standard in 1138. During the Anglo-Norman invasions of Wales, Welsh bowmen took a heavy toll of the invaders and Welsh archers would feature in English armies from this point on. However, historians dispute whether this archery used a different kind of bow from the later English Longbow. Traditionally it has been argued that prior to the beginning of the 14th century, the weapon was a self bow between four and five feet in length, known since the 19th century as the shortbow. This weapon, drawn to the chest rather than the ear, was much weaker. However, in 1985, Jim Bradbury reclassified this weapon as the ordinary wooden bow, reserving the term shortbow for short composite bows and arguing that longbows were a developed form of this ordinary bow. Strickland and Hardy in 2005 took this argument further, suggesting that the shortbow was a myth and all early English bows were a form of longbow. In 2011, Clifford Rogers forcefully restated the traditional case based upon a variety of evidence, including a large scale iconographic survey. In 2012, Richard Wadge added to the debate with an extensive survey of record, iconographic and archaeological evidence, concluding that longbows co-existed with shorter self-wood bows in England in the period between the Norman conquest and the reign of Edward III, but that powerful longbows shooting heavy arrows were a rarity until the later 13th century. Whether or not there was a technological revolution at the end of the 13th century therefore remains in dispute. What is agreed, however, is that the English longbow as an effective weapon system evolved in the late 13th and early 14th centuries.
In 1295, Edward I began to better organize his armed forces, creating uniformly-sized units and a clear chain of command. He introduced the combined use of an initial assault by archers followed by a cavalry attack and infantry. The technique was later used effectively at the Battle of Falkirk in 1298.
Fourteenth and fifteenth century
The longbow decided many medieval battles fought by the English and Welsh, the most significant of which were the Battle of Crécy (1346) and the Battle of Agincourt (1415), during the Hundred Years' War and followed earlier successes, notably at the Battle of Falkirk (1298) and the Battle of Halidon Hill (1333) during the Wars of Scottish Independence. They were less successful after this, with longbowmen having their lines broken at the Battle of Verneuil (1424), and being routed at the Battle of Patay (1429) when they were charged before they had set up their defences, and with the war-ending Battle of Castillon (1453) being decided by the French artillery.
The longbow was also used against the English by their Welsh neighbours. The Welsh used the longbow mostly in a different manner from the English. In many early period English campaigns, the Welsh used the longbow in ambushes, often at point blank range that allowed their missiles to penetrate armour and generally do a lot of damage.
Although longbows were much faster and more accurate than the black-powder weapons which replaced them, longbowmen always took a long time to train because of the years of practice necessary before a war longbow could be used effectively (examples of longbows from the Mary Rose typically had draws greater than ). In an era in which warfare was usually seasonal, and non-noble soldiers spent part of the year working at farms, the year-round training required for the effective use of the longbow was a challenge. A standing army was an expensive proposition to a medieval ruler. Mainland European armies seldom trained a significant longbow corps. Due to their specialized training, English longbowmen were sought as mercenaries in other European countries, most notably in the Italian city-states and in Spain.
The White Company, comprising men-at-arms and longbowmen and commanded by Sir John Hawkwood, is the best known English Free Company of the 14th century. The powerful Hungarian king, Louis the Great, is an example of someone who used longbowmen in his Italian campaigns.
Sixteenth century and later
Longbows remained in use until around the 16th century, when advances in firearms made gunpowder weapons a significant factor in warfare and such units as arquebusiers and grenadiers began appearing. Despite this, the English Crown made numerous efforts to continue to promote archery practice by banning other sports and fining people for not possessing bows. Indeed, just before the English Civil War, a pamphlet by William Neade entitled The Double-Armed Man advocated that soldiers be trained in both the longbow and pike; although this advice was disregarded by other writers of the day, who accepted that firearms had supplanted the role of archery.
At the Battle of Flodden in 1513, wind and rain may have contributed to the ineffectiveness of the English archers against the Scottish nobles in full armour who formed the front rank of their advance, but when the opportunity arose to shoot at less well protected foot soldiers, the result was devastating. Despite his armour, King James IV of Scotland received several arrow wounds in the fighting, one of which may have caused his death. Flodden was the last major British battle in which the longbow played a significant part, even if not a decisive one. Longbows remained the main weapon of the trained bands, the home-defence militia of the Tudor period, until they were disbanded by Queen Elizabeth I in 1598. The last recorded use of bows in an English battle may have been a skirmish at Bridgnorth, in October 1642, during the Civil War, when an impromptu town militia, armed with bows, proved effective against un-armoured musketeers. Longbowmen remained a feature of the Royalist Army, but were not used by the Roundheads.
Longbows have been in continuous production and use for sport and for hunting to the present day, but since 1642 they have been a minority interest, and very few have had the high draw weights of the medieval weapons. Other differences include the use of a stiffened non-bending centre section, rather than a continuous bend.
Serious military interest in the longbow faded after the seventeenth century but occasionally schemes to resurrect its military use were proposed. Benjamin Franklin was a proponent in the 1770s; the Honourable Artillery Company had an archer company between 1784 and 1794, and a man named Richard Mason wrote a book proposing the arming of militia with pike and longbow in 1798. Donald Featherstone also records a Lt. Col. Richard Lee of 44th Foot advocated the military use of the longbow in 1792. Winston Churchill, in A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, wrote:
The War Office has among its records a treatise written during the peace after Waterloo by a general officer of long experience in the Napoleonic wars recommending that muskets should be discarded in favor of the long-bow on account of its superior accuracy, rapid discharge, and effective range.
There is a record of the use of the longbow in action as late as WWII, when Jack Churchill is credited with a longbow kill in France in 1940. The weapon was certainly considered for use by Commandos during the war but it is not known whether it was used in action.
Tactics
Battle formations
The idea that there was a standard formation for English longbow armies was argued by Alfred Byrne in his influential work on the battles of the Hundred Years' War, The Crecy War. This view was challenged by Jim Bradbury in his book The Medieval Archer and more modern works are more ready to accept a variety of formations.
In summary, however, the usual English deployment in the 14th and 15th centuries was as follows:
Infantry (usually dismounted knights and armoured soldiers employed by the nobles and often armed with pole weapons such as pollaxes and bills) in the centre.
Longbowmen were usually deployed primarily on the flanks, sometimes to the front.
Cavalry was rarely used but, where deployed, either on the flanks (to make or protect against flank attacks), or in the centre in reserve, to be deployed as needed (for example, to counter any breakthroughs).
In the 16th century, these formations evolved in line with new technologies and techniques from the continent. Formations with a central core of pikes and bills were flanked by companies of "shot" made up of a mixture of archers and arquebusiers, sometimes with a skirmish screen of archers and arquebusiers in front.
Surviving bows and arrows
More than 3,500 arrows and 137 whole longbows were recovered from the Mary Rose, a ship of Henry VIII's navy that capsized and sank at Portsmouth in 1545. It is an important source for the history of the longbow, as the bows, archery implements and the skeletons of archers have been preserved. The bows range in length from with an average length of . The majority of the arrows were made of poplar, others were made of beech, ash and hazel. Draw lengths of the arrows varied between with the majority having a draw length of . The head would add 5–15 cm depending on type, though some 2–4.5 cm must be allowed for the insertion of the shaft into the socket.
The longbows on the Mary Rose were in excellent finished condition. There were enough bows to test some to destruction which resulted in draw forces of 450 N (100 lbf) on average. However, analysis of the wood indicated that they had degraded significantly in the seawater and mud, which had weakened their draw forces. Replicas were made and when tested had draw forces of from 445 N to 823 N (100 to 185 lbf).
In 1980, before the finds from the Mary Rose, Robert E. Kaiser published a paper stating that there were five known surviving longbows:
The first bow comes from the Battle of Hedgeley Moor in 1464, during the Wars of the Roses. A family who lived at the castle since the battle had preserved it to modern times. It is and a 270 N (60 lbf) draw force.
The second dates to the Battle of Flodden in 1513 ("a landmark in the history of archery, as the last battle on English soil to be fought with the longbow as the principal weapon..."). It hung in the rafters at the headquarters of the Royal Scottish Archers in Edinburgh. It has a draw force of 360 to 410 N (80 to 90 lbf).
The third and fourth were recovered in 1836 by John Deane from the Mary Rose. Both weapons are in the Tower of London Armoury and Horace Ford writing in 1887 estimated them to have a draw force of 280 to 320 N (65 to 70 lbf). A modern replica made in the early 1970s of these bows has a draw force of 460 N (102 lbf).
The fifth surviving longbow comes from the armoury of the church in the village of Mendlesham in Suffolk, and is believed to date either from the period of Henry VIII or Queen Elizabeth I. The Mendlesham Bow is broken but has an estimated length of and draw force of 350 N (80 lbf).
Social importance
The importance of the longbow in English culture can be seen in the legends of Robin Hood, which increasingly depicted him as a master archer, and also in the "Song of the Bow", a poem from The White Company by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
During the reign of Henry III the Assize of Arms of 1252 required that all "citizens, burgesses, free tenants, villeins and others from 15 to 60 years of age" should be armed. The poorest of them were expected to have a halberd and a knife, and a bow if they owned land worth more than £2.<ref>The right to keep and bear arms: report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Ninety-seventh Congress, second session, U.S. G.P.O., 1982 p. 46 (see also: David T. Hardy, Partner in the Law Firm Sando & Hardy Historical Bases of the Right To Keep and Bear Arms)</ref> This made it easier for the King to raise an army, but also meant that the bow was a weapon commonly used by rebels during the Peasants' Revolt. From the time that the yeoman class of England became proficient with the longbow, the nobility in England had to be careful not to push them into open rebellion. "The good yeoman archer 'whose limbs were made in England' was not a retrospective fancy of Shakespeare, but an unpleasant reality for French and Scots, and a formidable consideration for bailiffs and Justices trying to enforce servile dues or statutory rates of wages in the name of Law, which no one high or low, regarded with any great respect".
It has been conjectured that yew trees were commonly planted in English churchyards to have readily available longbow wood.
See also
Archery
Infantry in the Middle Ages
Notes
References
Journals
Other
Further reading
Books
A review by Bernard Cornwell in The Times
Journals
Thomas Esper The Replacement of the Longbow by Firearms in the English Army, Technology and Culture, Vol. VI, No. 3, 1965.
B.W. Kooi C.A. Bergman. PDF:An Approach to the Study of Ancient Archery using Mathematical Modelling, Antiquity 71:(271) 124–134 (1979)
Other
Rulon l. Hancock. PDF: United States National Archery Association Flight committee modern longbow flight rules , U.S. National Archery Association. September 2002.
Paul Lalonde. A Bundle of Tudor War Arrows, An article about the arrows found on the Mary Rose.
Liesl Wilhelmstochter. Ealdormere Archery Handbook: Section 11: Towards a more medieval archer Staff. Mary Rose historical ship'', The Mary Rose Trust – {note: BACK of bow faces enemy.}
The Great Northwood Bowmen Medieval Longbow Archery and re-enactment Society, re-enacting the 15th century, based in London.
Bows (archery)
Medieval archery
Medieval Wales
Archery in the United Kingdom
History of archery | [
-0.3688308596611023,
-0.3576570749282837,
-0.25838184356689453,
-0.40634721517562866,
-0.5326700210571289,
0.6811220645904541,
0.25038668513298035,
0.02838817425072193,
-0.18281032145023346,
0.08658263832330704,
-0.02160484343767166,
0.2882116436958313,
0.0898590236902237,
-0.0104894740507... |
18433 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee%20Marvin | Lee Marvin | Lee Marvin (February 19, 1924August 29, 1987) was an American film and television actor.
Known for his distinctive voice and premature white hair, Marvin initially appeared in supporting roles, mostly villains, soldiers, and other hardboiled characters. A prominent television role was that of Detective Lieutenant Frank Ballinger in the crime series M Squad (1957–1960). Marvin is best remembered for his lead roles as "tough guy" characters such as Charlie Strom in The Killers (1964), Rico Fardan in The Professionals (1966), Major John Reisman in The Dirty Dozen (1967), Walker in Point Blank (1967), and the Sergeant in The Big Red One (1980).
One of Marvin's more notable film projects was Cat Ballou (1965), a comedy Western in which he played a dual role. For portraying both gunfighter Kid Shelleen and criminal Tim Strawn, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, along with a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, an NBR Award, and the Silver Bear for Best Actor.
Early life
Lee Marvin was born in New York City to Lamont Waltman Marvin, an advertising executive, and Courtenay Washington (née Davidge), a fashion writer. As with his elder brother, Robert (1922–1999), he was named in honor of Civil War Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who was his first cousin, four times removed. His father was a direct descendant of Matthew Marvin Sr., who emigrated from Great Bentley, Essex, England in 1635, and helped found Hartford, Connecticut.
Marvin studied violin when he was young. As a teenager, Marvin "spent weekends and spare time hunting deer, puma, wild turkey, and bobwhite in the wilds of the then-uncharted Everglades".<ref name="hunting"> .</ref>
He attended Manumit School, a Christian socialist boarding school in Pawling, New York, during the late 1930s, and Peekskill Military Academy in Peekskill, New York. He later attended St. Leo College Preparatory School, a Catholic school in St. Leo, Florida, after being expelled from several other schools for bad behavior.
Military service
World War II
Marvin left school at 18 to enlist in the United States Marine Corps Reserve on August 12, 1942. He served with the 4th Marine Division in the Pacific Theater during World War II. While serving as a member of "I" Company, 3rd Battalion, 24th Marines, 4th Marine Division, he was wounded in action on June 18, 1944, during the assault on Mount Tapochau in the Battle of Saipan, during which most of his company were casualties. He was hit by machine gun fire, which severed his sciatic nerve, and then was hit again in the foot by a sniper. After over a year of medical treatment in naval hospitals, Marvin was given a medical discharge with the rank of private first class. He previously held the rank of corporal, but had been demoted for troublemaking.
Marvin's decorations include the Purple Heart Medal, the Presidential Unit Citation, the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, and the Combat Action Ribbon.
Medals and ribbons
Acting career
Early acting career
After the war, while working as a plumber's assistant at a local community theatre in upstate New York, Marvin was asked to replace an actor who had fallen ill during rehearsals. He caught the acting bug and got a job with the company at $7 a week. He moved to Greenwich Village and used the G.I. Bill to study at the American Theatre Wing.Epstein 2013, p. 67.
He appeared on stage in a production of Uniform of Flesh, the original version of Billy Budd (1949). It was performed at the Experimental Theatre, where a few months later, Marvin also appeared in The Nineteenth Hole of Europe (1949).
Marvin began appearing on television shows like Escape, The Big Story, and Treasury Men in Action.
He made it to Broadway with a small role in a production of Uniform of Flesh, now titled Billy Budd, in February 1951.
Hollywood
Marvin's film debut was in You're in the Navy Now (1951), directed by Henry Hathaway, a movie that also marked the debuts of Charles Bronson and Jack Warden. This required some filming in Hollywood. Marvin decided to stay in California.
He had a similar small part in Teresa (1951), directed by Fred Zinnemann. As a decorated combat veteran, Marvin was a natural in war dramas, where he frequently assisted the director and other actors in realistically portraying infantry movement, arranging costumes, and the use of firearms.
He guest starred on episodes of Fireside Theatre, Suspense and Rebound. Hathaway used him again on Diplomatic Courier (1952) and he could be seen in Down Among the Sheltering Palms (1952), directed by Edmund Goulding, We're Not Married! (1952), also for Goulding, The Duel at Silver Creek (1952) directed by Don Siegel, and Hangman's Knot (1952), directed by Roy Huggins.
He guest starred on Biff Baker, U.S.A. and Dragnet, and had a decent role in a feature with Eight Iron Men (1952), a war film produced by Stanley Kramer (Marvin's role had been played on Broadway by Burt Lancaster).
He was a sergeant in Seminole (1953), a Western directed by Budd Boetticher, and was a corporal in The Glory Brigade (1953), a Korean War film.
Marvin guest starred in The Doctor, The Revlon Mirror Theater , Suspense again and The Motorola Television Hour.
He was now in much demand for Westerns: The Stranger Wore a Gun (1953) with Randolph Scott, and Gun Fury (1953) with Rock Hudson.
The Big Heat and The Wild One
Marvin received much acclaim for his portrayal as villains in two films: The Big Heat (1953) where he played Gloria Grahame's vicious boyfriend, directed by Fritz Lang; and The Wild One (1953) opposite Marlon Brando (Marvin's gang in the film was named "The Beetles"), produced by Kramer.
He continued in TV shows such as The Plymouth Playhouse and The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse. He had support roles in Gorilla at Large (1954) and had a notable small role as smart-aleck sailor Meatball in The Caine Mutiny (1954), produced by Kramer.
Marvin was in The Raid (1954), Center Stage, Medic and TV Reader's Digest.
He had an excellent part as Hector, the small-town hood in Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) with Spencer Tracy. Also in 1955, he played a conflicted, brutal bank-robber in Violent Saturday. A latter-day critic wrote of the character, "Marvin brings a multi-faceted complexity to the role and gives a great example of the early promise that launched his long and successful career."
Marvin played Robert Mitchum's friend in Not as a Stranger (1955), a medical drama produced by Kramer. He had good supporting roles in A Life in the Balance (1955) (he was third billed), and Pete Kelly's Blues (1955) and appeared on TV in Jane Wyman Presents The Fireside Theatre and Studio One in Hollywood.Marvin was in I Died a Thousand Times (1955) with Jack Palance, Shack Out on 101 (1955), Kraft Theatre, and Front Row Center.Marvin was the villain in 7 Men from Now (1956) with Randolph Scott directed by Boetticher. He was second-billed to Palance in Attack (1956) directed by Robert Aldrich.
Marvin had good roles in Pillars of the Sky (1956) with Jeff Chandler, The Rack (1956) with Paul Newman, Raintree County (1956) and The Missouri Traveler (1958). He also guest starred on Climax! (several times), Studio 57, The United States Steel Hour and Schlitz Playhouse.
M Squad
Marvin finally got to be a leading man in M Squad as Chicago cop Frank Ballinger in 100 episodes of the successful 1957–1960 television series. One critic described the show as "a hyped-up, violent Dragnet ... with a hard-as-nails Marvin" playing a tough police lieutenant. Marvin received the role after guest-starring in a Dragnet episode as a serial killer.
When the series ended Marvin appeared on Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, Sunday Showcase, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, The Americans, Wagon Train, Checkmate, General Electric Theater, Alcoa Premiere, The Investigators, Route 66 (he was injured during a fight scene), Ben Casey, Bonanza, The Untouchables (several times), The Virginian, The Twilight Zone ("The Grave", and "Steel"), The Dick Powell Theatre, and The Investigators.
Early 1960s
Marvin returned to feature films with a prominent role in The Comancheros (1961) starring John Wayne. He played in two more films with Wayne, both directed by John Ford: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and Donovan's Reef (1963). As the vicious Liberty Valance, Marvin played his first title role and held his own with two of the screen's biggest stars (Wayne and James Stewart).
In 1962 Marvin appeared as Martin Kalig on the TV western The Virginian in the episode titled "It Tolls for Thee." He continued to guest star on shows like Combat!, Dr. Kildare and The Great Adventure. He did The Case Against Paul Ryker for Kraft Suspense Theatre.For director Don Siegel, Marvin appeared in The Killers (1964) playing an efficient professional assassin alongside Clu Gulager, grappling with villain Ronald Reagan and Angie Dickenson. The Killers was the first film in which Marvin received top billing.
He guest starred on Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre.
Cat Ballou and stardom
Marvin finally became a star for his comic role in the offbeat Western Cat Ballou (1965) starring Jane Fonda. This was a surprise hit and Marvin won the Academy Award for Best Actor. He also won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 15th Berlin International Film Festival in 1965.
Playing alongside Vivien Leigh and Simone Signoret, Marvin won the 1966 National Board of Review Award for male actors for his role in Ship of Fools (1965) directed by Kramer.
Marvin next performed in the Western The Professionals (1966), in which he played the leader of a small band of skilled mercenaries (Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, and Woody Strode) rescuing a kidnap victim (Claudia Cardinale) shortly after the Mexican Revolution.
He followed that film with the hugely successful World War II epic The Dirty Dozen (1967) in which top-billed Marvin again portrayed an intrepid commander of a colorful group (played by John Cassavetes, Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas, Jim Brown, and Donald Sutherland) performing an almost impossible mission. Robert Aldrich directed.
In the wake of these two films and after having received his Oscar, Marvin was a huge star, given enormous control over his next film Point Blank. In Point Blank, an influential film for director John Boorman, he portrayed a hard-nosed criminal bent on revenge. Marvin, who had selected Boorman for the director's slot, had a central role in the film's development, plot, and staging.
In 1968, Marvin also appeared in another Boorman film, the critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful World War II character study Hell in the Pacific, also starring famed Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. Boorman recounted his work with Lee Marvin on these two films and Marvin's influence on his career in the 1998 documentary Lee Marvin: A Personal Portrait by John Boorman. Paul Ryker, which Marvin shot for TV in 1963 was released theatrically as Sergeant Ryker.
Marvin was originally cast as Pike Bishop (later played by William Holden) in The Wild Bunch (1969), but fell out with director Sam Peckinpah and pulled out to star in the Western musical Paint Your Wagon (1969), in which he was top-billed over a singing Clint Eastwood. Despite his limited singing ability, he had a hit with the song "Wand'rin' Star". By this time, he was getting paid $1 million per film, $200,000 less than top star Paul Newman was making at the time, yet he was ambivalent about the movie business, even with its financial rewards:
You spend the first forty years of your life trying to get in this business, and the next forty years trying to get out. And then when you're making the bread, who needs it?
1970s
Marvin had a much greater variety of roles in the 1970s, with fewer 'bad-guy' roles than in earlier years. His 1970s movies included Monte Walsh (1970), a Western with Palance and Jeanne Moreau; the violent Prime Cut (1972) with Gene Hackman; Pocket Money (1972) with Paul Newman, for Stuart Rosenberg; Emperor of the North (1973) opposite Ernest Borgnine for Aldrich; as Hickey in The Iceman Cometh (1973) with Fredric March and Robert Ryan, for John Frankenheimer; The Spikes Gang (1974) with Noah Beery Jr. for Richard Fleischer; The Klansman (1974) with Richard Burton; Shout at the Devil (1976), a World War I adventure with Roger Moore, directed by Peter Hunt; The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday (1976), a comic Western with Oliver Reed; and Avalanche Express (1978), a Cold War thriller with Robert Shaw who died during production. None of these films were big box-office hits.
Marvin was offered the role of Quint in Jaws (1975) but declined, stating "What would I tell my fishing friends who'd see me come off a hero against a dummy shark?"
1980s
Marvin's last big role was in Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One (1980), a war film based on Fuller's own war experiences.
His remaining films were Death Hunt (1981), a Canadian action movie with Charles Bronson, directed by Hunt; Gorky Park (1983) with William Hurt; and Dog Day (1984), shot in France.
For TV he did The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission (1985; a sequel with Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, and Richard Jaeckel picking up where they had left off despite being 18 years older).
His final appearance was in The Delta Force (1986) with Chuck Norris, playing a role turned down by Charles Bronson.
Personal life
Marvin was a Democrat who opposed the Vietnam War. He publicly endorsed John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election.
Marriages, children and partners
Marvin married Betty Ebeling in February 1951 and together they had four children, son Christopher Lamont (1952–2013), and three daughters: Courtenay Lee (b. 1954), Cynthia Louise (b. 1956), and Claudia Leslie (1958–2012). Married 16 years, they divorced in 1967.
Marvin reunited with his high school sweetheart, Pamela Feeley, following his divorce. They married in October 1970. She had four children from three previous marriages; they had no children together and remained married until his death in 1987.
Community property caseSee also Marvin v. MarvinIn 1971, Marvin was sued by Michelle Triola, his live-in girlfriend from 1965 to 1970, who legally changed her surname to "Marvin". Although the couple never married, she sought financial compensation similar to that available to spouses under California's alimony and community property laws. Triola claimed Marvin made her pregnant three times and paid for two abortions, while one pregnancy ended in miscarriage. She claimed the second abortion left her unable to bear children. The result was the landmark "palimony" case, Marvin v. Marvin, 18 Cal. 3d 660 (1976).
In 1979, Marvin was ordered to pay $104,000 to Triola for "rehabilitation purposes", but the court denied her community property claim for one-half of the $3.6 million which Marvin had earned during their six years of cohabitation – distinguishing nonmarital relationship contracts from marriage, with community property rights only attaching to the latter by operation of law. Rights equivalent to community property only apply in nonmarital relationship contracts when the parties expressly, whether orally or in writing, contract for such rights to operate between them. In August 1981, the California Court of Appeal found that no such contract existed between them and nullified the award she had received. Michelle Triola died of lung cancer on October 30, 2009, having been with actor Dick Van Dyke since 1976.
Later there was controversy after Marvin characterized the trial as a "circus", saying "everyone was lying, even I lied". There were official comments about possibly charging Marvin with perjury, but no charges were filed.
This case was used as fodder for a mock debate skit on Saturday Night Live called "Point Counterpoint", and on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson as a skit with Carson as Adam, and Betty White as Eve.
Death
In December 1986, Marvin was hospitalized for more than two weeks because of a condition related to coccidioidomycosis. He went into respiratory distress and was administered steroids to help his breathing. He had major intestinal ruptures as a result, and underwent a colectomy. Marvin died of a heart attack on August 29, 1987, aged 63. He was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.
Filmography
Film
Television
See also
The Sons of Lee Marvin, a tongue-in-cheek secret society dedicated to MarvinWelcome to Night Vale, which features Lee Marvin as an integral piece of its mythology and supporting cast.
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Bailey, Mark. Of All the Gin Joints: Stumbling through Hollywood History. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books, 2014. .
Bean, Kendra. Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Running Press, 2013. .
David, Catherine. Simone Signoret. New York: Overlook Press, 1995. .
Epstein, Dwayne. Lee Marvin: Point Blank. Tucson, Arizona: Schaffner Press, Inc., 2013. .
Lentz, Robert J. Lee Marvin: His Films and Career. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2000. .
Marvin, Pamela. Lee: A Romance. London: Faber & Faber Limited, 1997. .
Walker, Alexander. Vivien: The Life of Vivien Leigh. New York: Grove Press, 1987. .
Wise, James E. and Anne Collier Rehill. Stars in the Corps: Movie Actors in the United States Marines. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1999. .
Zec, Donald. Marvin: The Story of Lee Marvin. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980. .
External links
Profile of Marvin in Film Comment''
1924 births
1987 deaths
20th-century American male actors
American male film actors
American male television actors
American people of English descent
American shooting survivors
Best Actor Academy Award winners
Best Foreign Actor BAFTA Award winners
Best Musical or Comedy Actor Golden Globe (film) winners
Burials at Arlington National Cemetery
Male Western (genre) film actors
Male actors from New York City
New York (state) Democrats
People from Woodstock, New York
Saint Leo College Preparatory School alumni
Saint Leo University alumni
Silver Bear for Best Actor winners
United States Marine Corps personnel of World War II
United States Marines | [
-0.09233065694570541,
0.1971212476491928,
-0.6563926339149475,
0.017854835838079453,
0.6699080467224121,
0.34520381689071655,
0.47781506180763245,
0.18486467003822327,
-0.37058737874031067,
-0.003116365522146225,
-0.5961542725563049,
0.5941241979598999,
-0.1218261793255806,
0.3128586709499... |
18434 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%20Belly | Lead Belly | Huddie William Ledbetter (; January 23, 1888 – December 6, 1949), better known by the stage name Lead Belly, was an American folk and blues singer, musician, and songwriter notable for his strong vocals, virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the folk standards he introduced, including his renditions of "In The Pines", "Goodnight, Irene", "Midnight Special", "Cotton Fields", and "Boll Weevil".
Lead Belly usually played a twelve-string guitar, but he also played the piano, mandolin, harmonica, violin, and windjammer. In some of his recordings, he sang while clapping his hands or stomping his foot.
Lead Belly's songs covered a wide range of genres and topics including gospel music; blues about women, liquor, prison life, and racism; and folk songs about cowboys, prison, work, sailors, cattle herding, and dancing. He also wrote songs about people in the news, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Jean Harlow, Jack Johnson, the Scottsboro Boys and Howard Hughes. Lead Belly was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2008.
Though many releases credit him as "Leadbelly", he himself wrote it as "Lead Belly", which is also the spelling on his tombstone and the spelling used by the Lead Belly Foundation.
Biography
Personal life
The younger of two children, Lead Belly was born Huddie William Ledbetter to Sallie Brown and Wesley Ledbetter on a plantation near Mooringsport, Louisiana. On his World War II draft registration card in 1942, he gave his birthplace as Freeport, Louisiana ("Shreveport"). There is uncertainty over his precise date and year of birth. The Lead Belly Foundation gives his birth date as January 20, 1889, his grave marker gives the year 1889, and his 1942 draft registration card states January 23, 1889. However, the 1900 United States Census lists "Hudy Ledbetter" as 12 years old, born January 1888, and the 1910 and 1930 censuses also give his age as corresponding to a birth in 1888. The 1940 census lists his age as 51, with information supplied by wife Martha. The books Blues: A Regional Experience by Eagle and LeBlanc and Encyclopedia of Louisiana Musicians by Tomko give January 23, 1888, while the Encyclopedia of the Blues gives January 20, 1888.
His parents had cohabited for several years, but they legally married on February 26, 1888. When Huddie was five years old, the family settled in Bowie County, Texas. The 1910 census of Harrison County, Texas, shows "Hudy Ledbetter" living next door to his parents with his first wife, Aletha "Lethe" Henderson. Aletha is registered as age 19 and married one year. Others say she was 15 when they married in 1908. It was in Texas that Ledbetter received his first instrument, an accordion, from his uncle Terrell. By his early twenties, having fathered at least two children, Ledbetter left home to make his living as a guitarist and occasional laborer.
Music career
By 1903, Huddie was already a "musicianer", a singer and guitarist of some note. He performed for nearby Shreveport audiences in St. Paul's Bottoms, a notorious red-light district there. He began to develop his own style of music after exposure to various musical influences on Shreveport's Fannin Street, a row of saloons, brothels, and dance halls in the Bottoms, now referred to as Ledbetter Heights. Between 1915 and 1939, Ledbetter served several prison and jail terms for a variety of criminal charges. He was "discovered" in prison during a visit by folklorists John Lomax and his son Alan Lomax thirty years after his music career started.After one prison release in 1934, the United States was in the Great Depression, and jobs were scarce. In September of that year, in need of regular work in order to avoid cancellation of his release from prison, Lead Belly asked John Lomax to take him on as a driver. For three months, he assisted the 67-year-old in his folk song collecting around the South. Alan Lomax, his son, was ill and did not accompany him on this trip. While in prison, Lead Belly may have first heard the traditional prison song "Midnight Special".
Deeply impressed by Ledbetter's vibrant tenor and extensive repertoire, the Lomaxes recorded him in 1933 on portable aluminum disc recording equipment for the Library of Congress. They returned with new and better equipment in July 1934, recording hundreds of his songs. On August 1, Ledbetter was released after having again served nearly all of his minimum sentence, following a petition the Lomaxes had taken to Louisiana Governor Oscar K. Allen at his urgent request. It was on the other side of a recording of his signature song, "Goodnight Irene".
A prison official later wrote to John Lomax denying that Ledbetter's singing had anything to do with his release from Angola (state prison records confirm he was eligible for early release due to good behavior). However, both Ledbetter and the Lomaxes believed that the record they had taken to the governor had hastened his release from prison.
In December 1934, Lead Belly participated in a "smoker" (group sing) at a Modern Language Association meeting at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where the senior Lomax had a prior lecturing engagement. He was written up in the press as a convict who had sung his way out of prison. On New Year's Day, 1935, the pair arrived in New York City, where Lomax was scheduled to meet with his publisher, Macmillan, about a new collection of folk songs. The newspapers were eager to write about the "singing convict", and Time magazine made one of its first March of Time newsreels about him. Lead Belly attained fame—although not fortune.
On January 23–25, 1935, Lead Belly had the first of several recording sessions with American Record Corporation (ARC). These sessions, combined with two others on February 5 and March 25, yielded 53 takes. Of those recordings, only six were ever released during Lead Belly's lifetime. ARC decided to simultaneously release these songs on six different labels they owned: Banner, Melotone, Oriole, Perfect, Romeo, and Paramount. Unfortunately, these recordings achieved little commercial success. Part of the reason for the poor sales may have been that ARC released only his blues songs rather than the folk songs for which he would later become better known. Lead Belly continued to struggle financially. Like many performers, what income he made during his career would come from touring, not from record sales. In February 1935, he married his girlfriend, Martha Promise, who came North from Louisiana to join him.
The month of February was spent recording his repertoire and those of other African Americans and interviews about his life with Alan Lomax for their forthcoming book, Negro Folk Songs As Sung by Lead Belly (1936). Concert appearances were slow to materialize. In March 1935, Lead Belly accompanied John Lomax on a previously scheduled two-week lecture tour of colleges and universities in the Northeast, culminating at Harvard.
At the end of the month, John Lomax decided he could no longer work with Lead Belly and gave him and Martha money to go back to Louisiana by bus. He gave Martha the money her husband had earned during three months of performing, but in installments, on the pretext Lead Belly would spend it all on drinking if given a lump sum. From Louisiana, Lead Belly successfully sued Lomax for both the full amount and release from his management contract. The quarrel was bitter, with hard feelings on both sides. Curiously, in the midst of the legal wrangling, Lead Belly wrote to Lomax proposing they team up again, but it was not to be. Further, the book about Lead Belly published by the Lomaxes in the fall of the following year proved a commercial failure.
In January 1936, Lead Belly returned to New York on his own, without John Lomax, in an attempted comeback. He performed twice a day at Harlem's Apollo Theater during the Easter season in a live dramatic recreation of the March of Time newsreel (itself a recreation) about his prison encounter with John Lomax, where he had worn stripes, though by this time he was no longer associated with Lomax.
Life magazine ran a three-page article titled "Lead Belly: Bad Nigger Makes Good Minstrel" in its issue of April 19, 1937. It included a full-page, color (rare in those days) picture of him sitting on grain sacks playing his guitar and singing. Also included was a striking picture of Martha Promise (identified in the article as his manager) and photos showing Lead Belly's hands playing the guitar (with the caption "these hands once killed a man"), Texas Governor Pat M. Neff, and the "ramshackle" Texas State Penitentiary. The article attributes both of his pardons to his singing of his petitions to the governors, who were so moved that they pardoned him. The text of the article ends with "he... may well be on the brink of a new and prosperous period."
Lead Belly failed to stir the enthusiasm of Harlem audiences. Instead, he attained success playing at concerts and benefits for an audience of folk music aficionados. He developed his own style of singing and explaining his repertoire in the context of Southern black culture having learned from his participation in Lomax's college lectures. He was especially successful with his repertoire of children's game songs (as a younger man in Louisiana he had sung regularly at children's birthday parties in the black community). He was written about as a heroic figure by the black novelist Richard Wright in the columns of the Daily Worker, of which Wright was the Harlem editor. The two men became personal friends, though some say Lead Belly himself was apolitical, and later was a supporter of Wendell Willkie, the centrist Republican candidate for president, for whom he wrote a campaign song. However, he also wrote the song "Bourgeois Blues", which has radical or left-wing lyrics.
In 1939, Lead Belly returned to prison. Alan Lomax, then 24, took him under his wing and helped raise money for his legal expenses, dropping out of graduate school to do so. After his release, Lead Belly appeared as a regular on Lomax and Nicholas Ray's groundbreaking CBS radio show Back Where I Come From, broadcast nationwide. He also appeared in nightclubs with Josh White, becoming a fixture in New York City's surging folk music scene and befriending the likes of Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger, all fellow performers on Back Where I Come From. During the first half of the decade, he recorded for the Library of Congress, and Moe Asch (future founder of Folkways Records) and in 1944 went to California, where he recorded strong sessions for Capitol Records. He lodged with a studio guitar player on Merrywood Drive in Laurel Canyon. Lead Belly was the first American country blues musician to achieve success in Europe.
In 1940, Lead Belly recorded for one of the biggest record companies at the time, RCA Victor. These sessions were held on June 15 and 17, with the Golden Gate Quartet accompanying some songs. The recordings resulted in the album, The Midnight Special and Other Southern Prison Songs, being issued by Victor Records, which contained extensive notes and song texts prepared by Alan Lomax. According to Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell, "it was one of the finest public presentations of Leadbelly's music: well recorded, well advertised, well documented. And the album justified its reputation as a landmark in African American folk music." Several of the recordings from these sessions were also issued as singles by Bluebird Records.
In 1941, Lead Belly was introduced to Moses "Moe" Asch by mutual friends. Asch owned a recording studio and small record label, which mainly released folk records for the local New York City market. Between 1941 and 1944, Lead Belly released three albums under the Asch Recordings label.
In 1949, Lead Belly had a regular radio show, Folk Songs of America, broadcast on station WNYC in New York, on Henrietta Yurchenco's show on Sunday nights. Later in the year he began his first European tour with a trip to France, but fell ill before its completion and was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease (a motor neuron disease). His final concert was at the University of Texas at Austin in a tribute to his former mentor, John Lomax, who had died the previous year. Martha also performed at that concert, singing spirituals with her husband.
Lead Belly died later that year in New York City and was buried in the Shiloh Baptist Church cemetery, in Mooringsport, Louisiana, west of Blanchard, in Caddo Parish. He is honored with a statue across from the Caddo Parish Courthouse, in Shreveport.
Legal issues
Lead Belly was imprisoned multiple times beginning in 1915 when he was convicted of carrying a pistol and sentenced to time on the Harrison County chain gang. He later escaped and found work in nearby Bowie County under the assumed name of Walter Boyd. Later, in January 1918, he was imprisoned at the Imperial Farm (now Central Unit) in Sugar Land, Texas, after killing one of his relatives, Will Stafford, in a fight over a woman. During his second prison term, another inmate stabbed him in the neck (leaving him with a fearsome scar he subsequently covered with a bandana); Lead Belly nearly killed his attacker with his own knife.
In 1925 he was pardoned and released after writing a song to Governor Pat Morris Neff seeking his freedom, having served the minimum seven years of a 7-to-35-year sentence. Combined with his good behavior, which included entertaining the guards and fellow prisoners, his appeal to Neff's strong religious beliefs proved sufficient. It was a testament to his persuasive powers, as Neff had run for governor on a pledge not to issue pardons (the only recourse for prisoners, since in most Southern prisons there was no provision for parole). After their initial meeting in 1924, Neff came back several times and regularly brought guests to the prison on Sunday picnics to hear Ledbetter perform.
In 1930, Ledbetter was sentenced to Louisiana State Penitentiary after a summary trial for attempted homicide for stabbing a man in a fight. In 1939, Lead Belly served his final jail term for assault after stabbing a man in a fight in Manhattan.
Nicknamed "Lead Belly"
There are several conflicting stories about how Ledbetter acquired the nickname "Lead Belly", but he probably acquired it while in prison. Some claim his fellow inmates called him "Lead Belly" as a play on his family name and his physical toughness. Others say he earned the name after being wounded in the stomach with buckshot. Another theory is that the name refers to his ability to drink moonshine, the homemade liquor that Southern farmers, black and white, made to supplement their incomes.
Blues singer Big Bill Broonzy thought it came from a supposed tendency to lie about as if "with a stomach weighted down by lead" in the shade when the chain gang was supposed to be working. Yet another theory is that it may be a corruption of his last name pronounced with a Southern accent.
Technique
Lead Belly styled himself "King of the Twelve-String Guitar", and despite his use of other instruments like the accordion, the most enduring image of Lead Belly as a performer is wielding his unusually large Stella twelve-string. This guitar had a slightly longer scale length than a standard guitar, increasing the tension on the instrument, which, given the added tension of the six extra strings, meant that a trapeze-style tailpiece was needed to help resist bridge lifting. It had slotted tuners and ladder bracing.
Lead Belly played with finger picks much of the time, using a thumb pick to provide walking bass lines described as "tricky" and "inventive" and occasionally to strum. This technique, combined with low tunings and heavy strings, gives many of his recordings a piano-like sound. In fact, scholars have suggested much of his guitar playing was inspired equally by barrelhouse piano and the Mexican Bajo sexto, an instrument he encountered in Texas and Louisiana.
Lead Belly's tunings are debated by both modern and contemporary musicians and blues enthusiasts alike exacerbated by the lack of film footage of his performing rendering chord decoding difficult but it seems to be a down-tuned variant of standard tuning; it is likely that he tuned his guitar strings relative to one another, so that the actual notes shifted as the strings wore. Such down-tuning was a common technique before the development of truss rods, and was intended to prevent the instrument's neck from warping. Lead Belly's playing style was popularized by Pete Seeger, who adopted the twelve-string guitar in the 1950s and released an instructional LP and book using Lead Belly as an exemplar of technique.
In some of the recordings in which Lead Belly accompanied himself, he would make an unusual type of grunt between his verses, sometimes described as "haah!" Songs such as "Looky Looky Yonder", "Take This Hammer", "Linin' Track" and "Julie Ann Johnson" feature this unusual vocalization. In "Take This Hammer", Lead Belly explained, "Every time the men say, 'Haah,' the hammer falls. The hammer rings, and we swing, and we sing." The "haah" sound can be heard in work chants sung by Southern railroad section workers, "gandy dancers", in which it was used to coordinate work crews as they laid and maintained tracks.
Legacy
In 1976, a biopic titled Leadbelly was released, directed by Gordon Parks and featuring Roger E. Mosley as Lead Belly.
Kurt Cobain promoted the legacy of Lead Belly, and some modern rock audiences owe their familiarity with Lead Belly to Nirvana's performance of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" on a televised concert later released as MTV Unplugged in New York. Cobain refers to his attempt to convince David Geffen to purchase Lead Belly's guitar for him in an interval before the song is played. In his notebooks, Cobain listed Lead Belly's Last Session Vol. 1 as one of the 50 albums most influential in the formation of Nirvana's sound. It was included in NME's "The 100 Greatest Albums You've Never Heard list".
Bob Dylan credits Lead Belly for getting him into folk music. In his Nobel Prize Lecture, Dylan said "somebody – somebody I’d never seen before – handed me a Lead Belly record with the song 'Cotton Fields' on it. And that record changed my life right then and there. Transported me into a world I’d never known. It was like an explosion went off. Like I’d been walking in darkness and all of the sudden the darkness was illuminated. It was like somebody laid hands on me. I must have played that record a hundred times." Dylan also pays homage to him in "Song to Woody" on his self-titled debut album.
Lonnie Donegan's recording of "Rock Island Line", released as a single in late 1955, signaled the start of the UK skiffle craze. George Harrison of The Beatles was quoted as saying, “if there was no Lead Belly, there would have been no Lonnie Donegan; no Lonnie Donegan, no Beatles. Therefore no Lead Belly, no Beatles.” In a BBC tribute in 1999, which marked the 50th anniversary of Lead Belly's death, Van Morrison – while sitting alongside Ronnie Wood of The Rolling Stones – claimed that the British popular music scene of the 1960s wouldn't have happened if it weren't for Lead Belly's influence. “I’d put my money on that,” he said. Wood concurred.
Indian singer Bhupen Hazarika who was in general influenced by spirituals during his days as a student in the US, transcreated Lead Belly's singing of "We're in the Same Boat Brother" into the Assamese language as "Ami ekekhon nawore zatri" (আমি একেখন নাৱৰে যাত্ৰী). Later, he also released a Bengali language version as "Mora jatri eki toronir" (মোরা যাত্রী একই তরণীর).
In 2001 English-Canadian blues singer Long John Baldry released his final studio album, Remembering Leadbelly. It contains cover versions of Lead Belly songs, and features a six-minute Alan Lomax interview.
George Ezra developed his singing style from trying to sing like Lead Belly. "On the back of the record, it said his voice was so big, you had to turn your record player down," Ezra says. "I liked the idea of singing with a big voice, so I tried it, and I could."
In 2015, in celebration of Lead Belly's 125th birthday, several events were held. The Kennedy Center, in collaboration with the Grammy Museum held Lead Belly at 125: A Tribute to an American Songster, a musical event featuring Robert Plant, Alison Krauss, and Buddy Miller with Viktor Krauss as headliners and Dom Flemons as host, with special appearances by Lucinda Williams, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Billy Hector, Valerie June, Shannon McNally, Josh White Jr., and Dan Zanes, among others Also in Washington, D.C., Bourgeois Town: Lead Belly in Washington DC by the Library of Congress was held where Todd Harvey interviewed Lead Belly family members about their relative, his contributions to American culture and world music and an overview of the significant Lead Belly materials in the center's archive In London, England, the Royal Albert Hall held Lead Belly Fest, a musical event featuring Van Morrison, Eric Burdon, Jools Holland, Billy Bragg, Paul Jones, and more.
The Titanic
Influenced by the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912, Ledbetter wrote the song "The Titanic", his first composition on the twelve-string guitar, which later became his signature instrument. Initially played when performing with Blind Lemon Jefferson (1893–1929) in and around Dallas, Texas, the song is about champion African-American boxer Jack Johnson's being denied passage on the Titanic. Johnson had in fact been denied passage on a ship for being black, but it was not the Titanic. Still, the song includes the lyric "Jack Johnson tried to get on board. The Captain, he says, 'I ain't haulin' no coal!' Fare thee, Titanic! Fare thee well!" Ledbetter later noted he had to leave out this passage when playing in front of white audiences.
Discography
Singles
Albums
Posthumous discography
The Library of Congress recordings
The Library of Congress recordings, made by John and Alan Lomax from 1934 to 1943, were released in a six-volume series by Rounder Records:
Midnight Special (1991)
Gwine Dig a Hole to Put the Devil In (1991)
Let It Shine on Me (1991)
The Titanic (1994)
Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen (1994)
Go Down Old Hannah (1995)
Folkways recordings
The Folkways recordings, done for Moses Asch from 1941 to 1947, were released in a three-volume series by Smithsonian Folkways:
Where Did You Sleep Last Night, Lead Belly Legacy, Vol. 1 (1996)
Bourgeois Blues, Lead Belly Legacy, Vol. 2 (1997)
Shout On, Lead Belly Legacy, Vol. 3 (1998)
Smithsonian Folkways has released several other collections of his recordings:
Leadbelly Sings Folk Songs (1989)
Lead Belly's Last Sessions (4-CD box set, 1994), recorded late 1948 in New York City; his only commercial recordings on magnetic tape
Lead Belly Sings for Children (1999)
Folkways: The Original Vision, Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly (2004), expanded version of the 1989 compilation
Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection (2015)
Live recordings
Leadbelly Recorded in Concert, University of Texas, Austin, June 15, 1949 (1973, Playboy Records PB 119)
Other compilations
Huddie Ledbetter's Best (1989, BGO Records), containing recordings made for Capitol Records in 1944 in California
King of the 12-String Guitar (1991, Sony/Legacy Records), a collection of blues songs and prison ballads recorded in 1935 in New York City for the American Record Company, including previously unreleased alternate takes
Private Party November 21, 1948 (2000, Document Records), containing Lead Belly's intimate performance at a private party in late 1948 in Minneapolis
Take This Hammer, When the Sun Goes Down series, vol. 5 (2003, RCA Victor/Bluebird Jazz), CD collection of all 26 songs Lead Belly recorded for Victor Records in 1940, half of which feature the Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet (a 1968 LP released by RCA Victor included about half of these recordings)
A Leadbelly Memorial, Vol II (1963, Stinson Records, SLP 19), red vinyl pressing
The Definitive Lead Belly (2008, Not Now Music), a 50-song retrospective on two CDs
Leadbelly - American Folk & Blues Anthology (2013, Not Now Music), 75 songs on three CDs
American Epic: The Best of Lead Belly (2017, Lo-Max, Sony Legacy, Third Man)
References
Sources
White, Gary; Stuart, David; Aviva, Elyn (2001). Music in Our World. p. 196. .
Wolfe, Charles; Lornell, Kip (1992). The Life and Legend of Leadbelly . New York City: HarperCollins Publishers.
External links
The Lead Belly Foundation
The Official Lead Belly Website
"Ledbetter, Huddie (Leadbelly)" in the Handbook of Texas Online
[ AllMusic]
Discography for Lead Belly on Folkways
Leadbelly and Lomax Together at the American Music Festival on WNYC
Lead Belly And The Lomaxes: Myths and Realities A FAQ and Timeline Lead Belly's relationship with John and Alan Lomax
Louisiana Music Hall of Fame Induction Page
Lead Belly: Entries|KnowLA, Encyclopedia of Louisiana
Huddie William "Lead Belly" Ledbetter at Find A Grave
1888 births
1949 deaths
American accordionists
American acoustic guitarists
American blues guitarists
American blues singers
American street performers
American folk guitarists
American male guitarists
American folk singers
American multi-instrumentalists
American people convicted of attempted murder
American people convicted of murder
American male criminals
Country blues musicians
Criminals from Louisiana
Criminals from Texas
Deaths from motor neuron disease
Neurological disease deaths in New York (state)
Musicians from Dallas
Singers from Louisiana
People from Mooringsport, Louisiana
Prison music
Songster musicians
Guitarists from Louisiana
Guitarists from Texas
20th-century American guitarists
20th-century accordionists
20th-century American criminals
Folkways Records artists
African-American guitarists
Prisoners and detainees of Texas
Prisoners and detainees of Louisiana
20th-century African-American male singers | [
-0.2093006670475006,
0.3475647270679474,
-0.49269697070121765,
-0.459383100271225,
0.5886688232421875,
0.44767123460769653,
0.46719029545783997,
0.12472917884588242,
-0.8175672888755798,
-0.25017857551574707,
0.24338220059871674,
0.03758423030376434,
-0.7076876163482666,
0.4570671021938324... |
18435 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower%20Saxony | Lower Saxony | Lower Saxony ( ; ; ) is a German state (Land) situated in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (7.9 million) among the 16 Länder federated as the Federal Republic of Germany. In rural areas, Northern Low Saxon and Saterland Frisian are still spoken, in declining numbers.
Lower Saxony borders on (from north and clockwise) the North Sea, the states of Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia, and the Netherlands. Furthermore, the state of Bremen forms two enclaves within Lower Saxony, one being the city of Bremen, the other its seaport, Bremerhaven (which is a semi-enclave, as it has a coastline). Lower Saxony thus borders more neighbours than any other single Bundesland. The state's largest cities are state capital Hanover, Braunschweig (Brunswick), Lüneburg, Osnabrück, Oldenburg, Hildesheim, Wolfenbüttel, Wolfsburg, and Göttingen.
Lower Saxony is the only Bundesland that encompasses both maritime and mountainous areas. The northwestern area of the state, on the coast of the North Sea, is called East Frisia and the seven East Frisian Islands offshore are popular with tourists. In the extreme west of Lower Saxony is the Emsland, an economically emerging but rather sparsely populated area, once dominated by inaccessible swamps. The northern half of Lower Saxony, also known as the North German Plain, is almost invariably flat except for the gentle hills around the Bremen geestland. Towards the south and southwest lie the northern parts of the German Central Uplands: the Weser Uplands and the Harz Mountains. Between these two lie the Lower Saxon Hills, a range of low ridges.
Lower Saxony's major cities and economic centres are mainly situated in its central and southern parts, namely Hanover, Braunschweig, Osnabrück, Wolfsburg, Salzgitter, Hildesheim, and Göttingen. Oldenburg, near the northwestern coastline, is another economic centre. The region in the northeast, the Lüneburg Heath (Lüneburger Heide), is the largest heathland area of Germany. In the Middle Ages, it was wealthy due to salt-mining and the salt trade, as well as, to a lesser degree, the exploitation of its peat bogs, which went on until the 1960s. To the north the Elbe River separates Lower Saxony from Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Brandenburg. The banks just south of the Elbe are known as the Altes Land (Old Country). Due to its gentle local climate and fertile soil, it is the state's largest area of fruit farming, its chief produce being apples.
Most of the state's territory was part of the historic Kingdom of Hanover, and the state of Lower Saxony has adopted the coat of arms and other symbols of the former kingdom. It was created by the merger of the State of Hanover with three smaller states on 1 November 1946.
Geography
Location
Lower Saxony has a natural boundary in the north in the North Sea and the lower and middle reaches of the River Elbe, although parts of the city of Hamburg lie south of the Elbe. The state and city of Bremen is an enclave entirely surrounded by Lower Saxony. The Bremen/Oldenburg Metropolitan Region is a cooperative body for the enclave area. To the southeast, the state border runs through the Harz, low mountains that are part of the German Central Uplands. The northeast and west of the state, which form roughly three-quarters of its land area, belong to the North German Plain, while the south is in the Lower Saxon Hills, including the Weser Uplands, Leine Uplands, Schaumburg Land, Brunswick Land, Untereichsfeld, Elm, and Lappwald. In the northeast, Lower Saxony is Lüneburg Heath. The heath is dominated by the poor, sandy soils of the geest, whilst in the central-east and southeast in the loess börde zone, productive soils with high natural fertility occur. Under these conditions—with loam and sand-containing soils—the land is well-developed agriculturally. In the west lie the County of Bentheim, Osnabrück Land, Emsland, Oldenburg Land, Ammerland, Oldenburg Münsterland, and on the coast East Frisia.
The state is dominated by several large rivers running northwards through the state: the Ems, Weser, Aller, and the Elbe.
The highest mountain in Lower Saxony is the Wurmberg (971 m) in the Harz. For other significant elevations see: List of mountains and hills in Lower Saxony. Most of the mountains and hills are found in the southeastern part of the state. The lowest point in the state, at about 2.5 m below sea level, is a depression near Freepsum in East Frisia.
The state's economy, population, and infrastructure are centred on the cities and towns of Hanover, Stadthagen, Celle, Braunschweig, Wolfsburg, Hildesheim, and Salzgitter. Together with Göttingen in southern Lower Saxony, they form the core of the Hannover–Braunschweig–Göttingen–Wolfsburg Metropolitan Region.
Regions
General
Lower Saxony has clear regional divisions that manifest themselves geographically, as well as historically and culturally. In the regions that used to be independent, especially the heartlands of the former states of Brunswick, Hanover, Oldenburg and Schaumburg-Lippe, a marked local regional awareness exists. By contrast, the areas surrounding the Hanseatic cities of Bremen and Hamburg are much more oriented towards those centres.
List of regions
Sometimes, overlaps and transition areas happen between the various regions of Lower Saxony. Several of the regions listed here are part of other, larger regions, that are also included in the list.
Altes Land
Ammerland
Artland
County of Bentheim
Bramgau
Brunswick Land
Calenberg Land
Eastphalia
East Frisia
Eichsfeld
Elbe-Weser Triangle
Emsland
Grönegau
Land Hadeln
Land Wursten
Hannover
Harz Mountains
Hildesheim Börde
Hümmling
Kehdingen
Leine Uplands
Lüneburg Heath
Middle Weser Region
Oldenburg Land
Oldenburg Münsterland
Osnabrück Land
Schaumburg Land
Solling
South Lower Saxony
Stade Geest
Wendland
Weser Uplands
Wesermarsch
Wümme Depression
Just under 20% of the land area of Lower Saxony is designated as nature parks, i.e.: Dümmer, Elbhöhen-Wendland, Elm-Lappwald, Harz, Lüneburger Heide, Münden, Terra.vita, Solling-Vogler, Lake Steinhude, Südheide, Weser Uplands, Wildeshausen Geest, Bourtanger Moor-Bargerveen.
Climate
Lower Saxony falls climatically into the north temperate zone of central Europe that is affected by prevailing Westerlies and is located in a transition zone between the maritime climate of Western Europe and the continental climate of Eastern Europe. This transition is clearly noticeable within the state: whilst the northwest experiences an Atlantic (North Sea coastal) to Sub-Atlantic climate, with comparatively low variations in temperature during the course of the year and a surplus water budget, the climate towards the southeast is increasingly affected by the Continent. This is clearly shown by greater temperature variations between the summer and winter halves of the year and in lower and more variable amounts of precipitation across the year. This sub-continental effect is most sharply seen in the Wendland, in the Weser Uplands (Hamelin to Göttingen) and in the area of Helmstedt. The highest levels of precipitation are experienced in the Harz because the Lower Saxon part forms the windward side of this mountain range against which orographic rain falls. The average annual temperature is 8 °C (7.5 °C in the Altes Land and 8.5 °C in the district of Cloppenburg).
Administration
Lower Saxony is divided into 37 districts (Landkreise or simply Kreise):
Furthermore, there are eight urban districts and two cities with special status:
Braunschweig
Delmenhorst
Emden
Göttingen ¹
Hanover ²
Oldenburg
Osnabrück
Salzgitter
Wilhelmshaven
Wolfsburg
¹ following the "Göttingen Law" of 1 January 1964, the town of Göttingen is incorporated into the rural district (Landkreis) of Göttingen, but is treated as an urban district unless other rules apply. On 1 November 2016 the districts of Osterode and Göttingen were merged under the name Göttingen, not influencing the city's special status.
² following the "Law on the region of Hanover", Hanover merged with the district of Hanover to form the Hanover Region, which has been treated mostly as a rural district, but Hanover is treated as an urban district since 1 November 2001 unless other rules apply.
History
Regional history prior to foundation of Lower Saxony
The name of Saxony derives from that of the Germanic confederation of tribes called the Saxons. Before the late medieval period, there was a single Duchy of Saxony. The term "Lower Saxony" was used after the dissolution of the stem duchy in the late 13th century to disambiguate the parts of the former duchy ruled by the House of Welf from the Electorate of Saxony on one hand, and from the Duchy of Westphalia on the other.
Period to the Congress of Vienna (1814/1815)
The name and coat of arms of the present state go back to the Germanic tribe of Saxons. During the Migration Period some of the Saxon peoples left their homeland in Holstein about the 3rd century and pushed southwards over the Elbe, where they expanded into the sparsely populated regions in the rest of the lowlands, in present-day Northwest Germany and the northeastern part of what is now the Netherlands. From about the 7th century the Saxons had occupied a settlement area that roughly corresponds to the present state of Lower Saxony, of Westphalia and a number of areas to the east, for example, in what is now west and north Saxony-Anhalt. The land of the Saxons was divided into about 60 Gaue. The Frisians had not moved into this region; for centuries they preserved their independence in the most northwesterly region of the present-day Lower Saxon territory. The original language of the folk in the area of Old Saxony was West Low German, one of the varieties of language in the Low German dialect group.
The establishment of permanent boundaries between what later became Lower Saxony and Westphalia began in the 12th century. In 1260, in a treaty between the Archbishopric of Cologne and the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg the lands claimed by the two territories were separated from each other. The border ran along the Weser to a point north of Nienburg. The northern part of the Weser-Ems region was placed under the rule of Brunswick-Lüneburg.
The word Niedersachsen was first used before 1300 in a Dutch rhyming chronicle (Reimchronik). From the 14th century it referred to the Duchy of Saxe-Lauenburg (as opposed to Saxe-Wittenberg). On the creation of the imperial circles in 1500, a Lower Saxon Circle was distinguished from a Lower Rhenish–Westphalian Circle. The latter included the following territories that, in whole or in part, belong today to the state of Lower Saxony: the Bishopric of Osnabrück, the Bishopric of Münster, the County of Bentheim, the County of Hoya, the Principality of East Frisia, the Principality of Verden, the County of Diepholz, the County of Oldenburg, the County of Schaumburg and the County of Spiegelberg. At the same time a distinction was made with the eastern part of the old Saxon lands from the central German principalities later called Upper Saxony for dynastic reasons.
The close historical links between the domains of the Lower Saxon Circle now in modern Lower Saxony survived for centuries especially from a dynastic point of view. The majority of historic territories whose land now lies within Lower Saxony were sub-principalities of the medieval, Welf estates of the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg. All the Welf princes called themselves dukes "of Brunswick and Lüneburg" despite often ruling parts of a duchy that was forever being divided and reunited as various Welf lines multiplied or died out.
To the end of the Second World War
Over the course of time two great principalities survived east of the Weser: the Kingdom of Hanover and the Duchy of Brunswick (after 1866 Hanover became a Prussian province; after 1919 Brunswick became a free state). Historically a close tie existed between the royal house of Hanover (Electorate of Hanover) and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland as a result of their personal union in the 18th century (the personal union was dissolved when Victoria became the Queen of the United Kingdom in 1837 because Hanover did not allow female rulers).
West of the River Hunte a "de-Westphalianising process" began in 1815. After the Congress of Vienna the territories of the later administrative regions (Regierungsbezirke) of Osnabrück and Aurich transferred to the Kingdom of Hanover. Until 1946, the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg and the Principality of Schaumburg-Lippe retained state autonomy. Nevertheless, the entire Weser-Ems region (including the city of Bremen) were grouped in 1920 into a Lower Saxon Constituency Association (Wahlkreisverband IX (Niedersachsen)). This indicates that at that time the western administrations of the Prussian Province of Hanover and the state of Oldenburg were perceived as being "Lower Saxon".
The forerunners of today's state of Lower Saxony were lands that were geographically and, to some extent, institutionally interrelated from very early on. The County of Schaumburg (not to be confused with the Principality of Schaumburg-Lippe) around the towns of Rinteln and Hessisch Oldendorf did indeed belong to the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau until 1932, a province that also included large parts of the present state of Hesse, including the cities of Kassel, Wiesbaden and Frankfurt am Main; but in 1932 the County of Schaumburg became part of the Prussian Province of Hanover. Also in 1937 the city of Cuxhaven had been fully integrated into the Prussian Province of Hanover by the Greater Hamburg Act, so that in 1946, when the state of Lower Saxony was founded, only four states needed to be merged. With the exception of Bremen and the areas that were ceded to the Soviet Occupation Zone in 1945, all those areas allocated to the new state of Lower Saxony in 1946, had already been merged into the "Constituency Association of Lower Saxony" in 1920.
In a lecture on 14 September 2007, Dietmar von Reeken described the emergence of a "Lower Saxony consciousness" in the 19th century, the geographical basis of which was used to invent a territorial construct: the resulting local heritage societies (Heimatvereine) and their associated magazines routinely used the terms "Lower Saxony" or "Lower Saxon" in their names. At the end of the 1920s in the context of discussions about a reform of the Reich, and promoted by the expanding local heritage movement (Heimatbewegung), a 25-year conflict started between "Lower Saxony" and "Westphalia". The supporters of this dispute were administrative officials and politicians, but regionally focussed scientists of various disciplines were supposed to have fuelled the arguments. In the 1930s, a real Lower Saxony did not yet exist, but there were a plethora of institutions that would have called themselves "Lower Saxon". The motives and arguments in the disputes between "Lower Saxony" and "Westphalia" were very similar on both sides: economic interests, political aims, cultural interests and historical aspects.
Post–Second World War
After the Second World War most of Northwest Germany lay within the British Zone of Occupation. On 23 August 1946, the British Military Government issued Ordinance No. 46 "Concerning the dissolution of the provinces of the former state of Prussia in the British Zone and their reconstitution as independent states", which initially established the State of Hanover on the territory of the former Prussian Province of Hanover. Its minister president, Hinrich Wilhelm Kopf, had already suggested in June 1945 the formation of a state of Lower Saxony, that was to include the largest possible region in the middle of the British Zone. In addition to the regions that actually became Lower Saxony subsequently, Kopf asked, in a memorandum dated April 1946, for the inclusion of the former Prussian district of Minden-Ravensberg (i.e. the Westphalian city of Bielefeld as well as the Westphalian districts of Minden, Lübbecke, Bielefeld, Herford and Halle), the district of Tecklenburg and the state of Lippe. Kopf's plan was ultimately based on a draft for the reform of the German Empire from the late 1920s by Georg Schnath and Kurt Brüning. The strong Welf connotations of this draft, according to Thomas Vogtherr, did not simplify the development of a Lower Saxon identity after 1946.
An alternative model, proposed by politicians in Oldenburg and Brunswick, envisaged the foundation of the independent state of "Weser-Ems", that would be formed from the state of Oldenburg, the Hanseatic City of Bremen and the administrative regions of Aurich and Osnabrück. Several representatives of the state of Oldenburg even demanded the inclusion of the Hanoverian districts of Diepholz, Syke, Osterholz-Scharmbeck and Wesermünde in the proposed state of "Weser-Ems". Likewise an enlarged State of Brunswick was proposed in the southeast to include the Regierungsbezirk of Hildesheim and the district of Gifhorn. Had this plan come to fruition, the territory of the present Lower Saxony would have consisted of three states of roughly equal size.
The district council of Vechta protested on 12 June 1946 against being incorporated into the metropolitan area of Hanover (Großraum Hannover). If the State of Oldenburg was to be dissolved, Vechta District would much rather be included in the Westphalian region. Particularly in the districts where there was a political Catholicism the notion was widespread, that Oldenburg Münsterland and the Regierungsbezirk of Osnabrück should be part of a newly formed State of Westphalia.
Since the foundation of the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Hanover on 23 August 1946 the northern and eastern border of North Rhine-Westphalia has largely been identical with that of the Prussian Province of Westphalia. Only the Free State of Lippe was not incorporated into North Rhine-Westphalia until January 1947. With that the majority of the regions left of the Upper Weser became North Rhine-Westphalian.
In the end, at the meeting of the Zone Advisory Board on 20 September 1946, Kopf's proposal with regard to the division of the British occupation zone into three large states proved to be capable of gaining a majority. Because this division of their occupation zone into relatively large states also met the interests of the British, on 8 November 1946 Regulation No. 55 of the British military government was issued, by which the State of Lower Saxony with its capital Hanover were founded, backdated to 1 November 1946. The state was formed by a merger of the Free States of Brunswick, of Oldenburg and of Schaumburg-Lippe with the previously formed State of Hanover. But there were exceptions:
In the Free State of Brunswick, the eastern part of the district of Blankenburg and the exclave of Calvörde, which belonged to the district of Helmstedt fell into the Soviet Zone of Occupation and were later integrated into the state of Saxony-Anhalt.
In the State of Hanover, Amt Neuhaus and the villages of Neu Bleckede and Neu Wendischthun were allotted to the Soviet Zone and thus the subsequent East Germany. They were not returned to Lower Saxony until 1993.
The city of Wesermünde that then lay in the Regierungsbezirk Stade was renamed in 1947 to Bremerhaven and incorporated into the new city-state of Bremen, which became one of the federated German states.
The demands of Dutch politicians that the Netherlands should be given the German regions east of the Dutch-German border as war reparations, were roundly rejected at the London Conference of 26 March 1949. In fact only about of west Lower Saxony was transferred to the Netherlands, in 1949.
→ see main article Dutch annexation of German territory after World War II
History of Lower Saxony as a state
The first Lower Saxon parliament or Landtag met on 9 December 1946. It was not elected; rather it was established by the British Occupation Administration (a so-called "appointed parliament"). That same day the parliament elected the Social Democrat, Hinrich Wilhelm Kopf, the former Hanoverian president (Regierungspräsident) as their first minister-president. Kopf led a five-party coalition, whose basic task was to rebuild a state afflicted by the war's rigours. Kopf's cabinet had to organise an improvement of food supplies and the reconstruction of the cities and towns destroyed by Allied air raids during the war years. Hinrich Wilhelm Kopf remained – interrupted by the time in office of Heinrich Hellwege (1955–1959) – as the head of government in Lower Saxony until 1961.
The greatest problem facing the first state government in the immediate post-war years was the challenge of integrating hundreds of thousands of refugees from Germany's former territories in the east (such as Silesia and East Prussia), which had been annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union. Lower Saxony was at the western end of the direct escape route from East Prussia and had the longest border with the Soviet Zone. On 3 October 1950 Lower Saxony took over the sponsorship of the very large number of refugees from Silesia. In 1950 there was still a shortage of 730,000 homes according to official figures.
During the period when Germany was divided, the Lower Saxon border crossing at Helmstedt found itself on the main transport artery to West Berlin and, from 1945 to 1990 was the busiest European border crossing point.
Of economic significance for the state was the Volkswagen concern, that restarted the production of civilian vehicles in 1945, initially under British management, and in 1949 transferred into the ownership of the newly founded country of West Germany and state of Lower Saxony. Overall, Lower Saxony, with its large tracts of rural countryside and few urban centres, was one of the industrially weaker regions of the federal republic for a long time. In 1960, 20% of the working population worked on the land. In the rest of the federal territory the figure was just 14%. Even in economically prosperous times the jobless totals in Lower Saxony are constantly higher than the federal average.
In 1961 Georg Diederichs took office as the minister president of Lower Saxony as the successor to Hinrich Wilhelm Kopf. He was replaced in 1970 by Alfred Kubel. The arguments about the Gorleben Nuclear Waste Repository, that began during the time in office of minister president Ernst Albrecht (1976–1990), have played an important role in state and federal politics since the end of the 1970s.
In 1990 Gerhard Schröder entered the office of minister-president. On 1 June 1993, the new Lower Saxon constitution entered force, replacing the "Provisional Lower Saxon Constitution" of 1951. It enables referenda and plebiscites and establishes environmental protection as a fundamental state principle.
The former Hanoverian Amt Neuhaus with its parishes of Dellien, Haar, Kaarßen, Neuhaus (Elbe), Stapel, Sückau, Sumte and Tripkau as well as the villages of Neu Bleckede, Neu Wendischthun and Stiepelse in the parish of Teldau and the historic Hanoverian region in the forest district of Bohldamm in the parish of Garlitz transferred with effect from 30 June 1993 from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to Lower Saxony (Lüneburg district). From these parishes the new municipality of Amt Neuhaus was created on 1 October 1993.
In 1998 Gerhard Glogowski succeeded Gerhard Schröder who became Federal Chancellor. Because he had been linked with various scandals in his home city of Brunswick, he resigned in 1999 and was replaced by Sigmar Gabriel.
From 2003 to his election as Federal President in 2010 Christian Wulff was minister president in Lower Saxony. The Osnabrücker headed a CDU-led coalition with the FDP as does his successor, David McAllister. After the elections on 20 January 2013 McAllister was deselected.
Administrative subdivisions
Between 1946 and 2004, the state's districts and independent towns were grouped into eight regions, with a different status for two regions (Verwaltungsbezirke), comprising the formerly free states of Brunswick and Oldenburg. In 1978 these regions were merged into four governorates (Regierungsbezirke): Since 2004 the Bezirksregierungen (regional governments) have separated up again.
1946–1978:
Governorate of Aurich
Administrative Region of Brunswick (Braunschweig)
Governorate of Hanover (Hannover)
Governorate of Hildesheim
Governorate of Lunenburg (Lüneburg)
Administrative Region of Oldenburg
Administrative Region of Osnabrück
Governorate of Stade
1978–2004:
Governorate of Brunswick (Braunschweig)
Governorate of Hanover (Hannover)
Governorate of Lunenburg (Lüneburg)
Governorate of Weser-Ems
On 1 January 2005 the four administrative regions or governorates (Regierungsbezirke), into which Lower Saxony had been hitherto divided, were dissolved. These were the governorates of Braunschweig, Hanover, Lüneburg and Weser-Ems.
Archaeology
The 300,000-year-old and nearly complete remains of a female straight-tusked elephant were revealed by University of Tübingen researchers and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution in May 2020. According to the archaeozoologist Ivo Verheijen, the skeleton with battered teeth had a shoulder height of about . Researchers also uncovered two long bones and 30 small flint flakes that were used as tools for knapping among the elephant bones.
"We found both tusks, the complete lower jaw, numerous vertebrae and ribs as well as large bones belonging to three of the legs and even all five delicate hyoid bones" said archaeologist Jordi Serangeli.
Demographics
At the end of 2014, there were almost 571,000 non-German citizens in Lower Saxony. The following table illustrates the largest minority groups in Lower Saxony:
Vital statistics
Births from January–October 2016 = 62,761
Births from January–October 2017 = 61,314
Deaths from January–October 2016 = 75,733
Deaths from January–October 2017 = 75,804
Natural growth from January–October 2016 = -12,972
Natural growth from January–October 2017 = -14,490
Religion
The 2011 census stated that a majority of the population were Christians (71.93%); 51.48% of the total population were members of the Evangelical Church in Germany, 18.34% were Catholics, 2.11% were members of other Christian denominations, 2.27% were members of other religions. 25.8% have no denomination. Even though there is a high level of official belonging to a Christian denomination, the people, especially in the cities, are highly secular in faith and behavior.
As of 2020, the Evangelical Church in Germany was the faith of 41.1% of the population. It is organised in the five Landeskirchen named Evangelical Lutheran State Church in Brunswick (comprising the former Free State of Brunswick), Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover (comprising the former Province of Hanover), Evangelical Lutheran Church in Oldenburg (comprising the former Free State of Oldenburg), Evangelical Lutheran Church of Schaumburg-Lippe (comprising the former Free State of Schaumburg-Lippe), and Evangelical Reformed Church (covering all the state).
Together, these member churches of the Evangelical Church in Germany gather a substantial part of the Protestant population in Germany.
The Catholic Church was the faith of 16.3% of the population in 2020. It is organised in the three dioceses of Osnabrück (western part of the state), Münster (comprising the former Free State of Oldenburg) and Hildesheim (northern and eastern part of the state). The Catholic faith is mainly concentrated to the regions of Oldenburger Münsterland, the region of Osnabrück, the region of Hildesheim and in the Western Eichsfeld.
42.6% of the Low Saxons were irreligious or adhere to other religions. Judaism, Islam and Buddhism are minority faiths.
Economy
The Gross domestic product (GDP) of the state was 229.5 billion euros in 2018, accounting for 8.7% of German economic output. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was 33,700 euros or 112% of the EU27 average in the same year. The GDP per employee was 100% of the EU average.
Agriculture, strongly weighted towards the livestock sector, has always been a very important economic factor in the state. The north and northwest of Lower Saxony are mainly made up of coarse sandy soil that makes crop farming difficult and therefore grassland and cattle farming are more prevalent in those areas. Lower Saxony is home, in 2017, to one in five of Germany's cattle, one in three of the country's pigs, and 50% of its hens. Wheat, potatoes, rye, and oats are among the state's present-day arable crops. Towards the south and southeast, extensive loess layers in the soil left behind by the last ice age allow high-yield crop farming. One of the principal crops there is sugar beet. Consequently, the Land has a big food industry, mainly organized in small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). Big players are Deutsches Milchkontor and PHW Group (biggest German poultry farmer and producer).
Mining has also been an important source of income in Lower Saxony for centuries. Silver ore became a foundation of notable economic prosperity in the Harz Mountains as early as the 12th century, while iron mining in the Salzgitter area and salt mining in various areas of the state became another important economic backbone. Although overall yields are comparatively low, Lower Saxony is also an important supplier of crude oil in the European Union. Mineral products still mined today include iron and lignite.
Radioactive waste is frequently transported in the area to the city of Salzgitter, for the deep geological repository Schacht Konrad and between Schacht Asse II in the Wolfenbüttel district and Lindwedel and Höfer.
Manufacturing is another large part of the regional economy. Despite decades of gradual downsizing and restructuring, the carmaker Volkswagen with its five production plants within the state's borders still remains the single biggest private-sector employer, its world headquarters in Wolfsburg. Due to the Volkswagen Law, which has recently been ruled illegal by the European Union's high court, the state of Lower Saxony is still the second-largest shareholder, owning 20.3% of the company. Thanks to the importance of car manufacturing in Lower Saxony, a thriving supply industry is centred around its regional focal points. Other mainstays of the Lower Saxon industrial sector include aviation (the region of Stade is called CFK-Valley), shipbuilding (such as Meyer Werft), biotechnology, and steel. Medicine plays a major role; Hanover and Göttingen have two large University Medical Schools and hospitals, and Otto Bock in Duderstadt is the largest producer of prosthetics and associated componentry in the world.
The service sector has gained importance following the demise of manufacturing in the 1970s and 1980s. Important branches today are the tourism industry with TUI AG in Hanover, one of Europe's largest travel companies, as well as trade and telecommunication. Hanover is one of Germany's main hubs for insurance and financial-services companies, for example Talanx and Hannover Re.
In October 2018, the Lower Saxony unemployment rate stood at 5.0% and was marginally higher than the national average.
World Heritage Sites
Lower Saxony has four World Heritage Sites.
Politics
Cabinets of Lower Saxony
Since 1948, politics in the state has been dominated by the rightist Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the leftist Social Democratic Party. Lower Saxony was one of the origins of the German environmentalist movement in reaction to the state government's support for underground nuclear waste disposal. This led to the formation of the German Green Party in 1980.
The former Minister-President, Christian Wulff, led a coalition of his CDU with the Free Democratic Party between 2003 and 2010. In the 2008 election, the ruling CDU held on to its position as the leading party in the state, despite losing votes and seats. The CDU's coalition with the Free Democratic Party retained its majority although it was cut from 29 to 10. The election also saw the entry into the state parliament for the first time of the leftist The Left party. On 1 July 2010 David McAllister was elected Minister-President.
After the state election on 20 January 2013, Stephan Weil of the Social Democrats was elected as the new Minister-President. He governed in coalition with the Greens.
After the state election in September 2017, Stephan Weil of the Social Democrats was again elected as the new Minister-President. He governs in coalition with the CDU.
Constitution
The state of Lower Saxony was formed after World War II by merging the former states of Hanover, Oldenburg, Brunswick and Schaumburg-Lippe. Hanover, a former kingdom, is by far the largest of these contributors by area and population and has been a province of Prussia since 1866. The city of Hanover is the largest and capital city of Lower Saxony.
The constitution states that Lower Saxony be a free, republican, democratic, social and environmentally sustainable state inside the Federal Republic of Germany; universal human rights, peace and justice are preassigned guidelines of society, and the human rights and civil liberties proclaimed by the constitution of the Federal Republic are genuine constituents of the constitution of Lower Saxony. Each citizen is entitled to education and there is universal compulsory school attendance.
All government authority is to be sanctioned by the will of the people, which expresses itself via elections and plebiscites. The legislative assembly is a unicameral parliament elected for terms of five years. The composition of the parliament obeys the principle of proportional representation of the participating political parties, but it is also ensured that each constituency delegates one directly elected representative. If a party wins more constituency delegates than their statewide share among the parties would determine, it can keep all these constituency delegates.
The governor of the state (prime minister) and his ministers are elected by the parliament. As there is a system of five political parties in Germany and so also in Lower Saxony, it is usually the case that two or more parties negotiate for a common political agenda and a commonly determined composition of government where the party with the biggest share of the electorate fills the seat of the governor.
The states of the Federal Republic of Germany, and so Lower Saxony, have legislative responsibility and power mainly reduced to the policy fields of the school system, higher education, culture and media and police, whereas the more important policy fields like economic and social policies, foreign policy are a prerogative of the federal government. Hence the probably most important function of the federal states is their representation in the Federal Council (Bundesrat), where their approval on many crucial federal policy fields, including the tax system, is required for laws to become enacted.
Minister-President of Lower Saxony
The Minister-President heads the state government, acting as a head of state (even if the federated states have the status of a state don't establish the office of a head of state but merge the functions with the head of the executive branch) as well as the government leader. They are elected by the Landtag of Lower Saxony.
Coat of arms
The coat of arms shows a white horse (Saxon Steed) against a red background, which is an old symbol of the Saxon people. Legend has it that the horse was a symbol of the Saxon leader Widukind, albeit a black horse against a yellow background. The colours changed after the Christian baptism of Widukind. White and red are colours (besides black and gold) of the Holy Roman Empire symbolizing Christ as the saviour, who is still shown with a red cross against a white background.
See also
List of places in Lower Saxony
Straße der Megalithkultur - tourist route from Osnabrück to Oldenburg via some 33 Megalithic sites.
Niedersächsische Spargelstraße - tourist route around the Asparagus growing areas.
Straße der Weserrenaissance - tourist route that passes through Lower Saxony
Outline of Germany
References
External links
Official governmental portal
Official website for tourism, holiday and leisure in Lower Saxony
map with tourist highlights, notepad and personal guide
States of Germany
1946 establishments in Germany
States and territories established in 1946
NUTS 1 statistical regions of the European Union | [
0.2024431824684143,
0.06296949088573456,
0.1636095941066742,
-0.028132731094956398,
0.2179584801197052,
0.4718136489391327,
0.3927413523197174,
0.2311125099658966,
-0.012133889831602573,
-0.10159149020910263,
0.2818230986595154,
-0.553532600402832,
0.45962414145469666,
0.41379082202911377,... |
18439 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTJ%20Bukem | LTJ Bukem | Daniel Williamson (born 20 September 1967), better known as LTJ Bukem (), is a British drum and bass musician, producer and DJ. He and his record label Good Looking are most associated with the jazzy, atmospheric side of drum and bass music.
Life and career
Bukem was trained as a classical pianist and discovered jazz fusion in his teenage years, having a jazz funk band at one stage. By the late 1980s, he decided to become a DJ and gained fame in the rave scene of the early 1990s. His stage name came from his nickname "Book 'em" which derived from the TV show Hawaii Five-O where the character Steve McGarrett would say "Book 'em Danno" when someone was arrested. As a producer, he released a series of drum and bass tracks such as "Logical Progression" (1991), "Demon's Theme" (1992), "Atlantis" and "Music" (1993). His most notable release was the track "Horizons" (1995) which attained considerable popularity, using the main melody from Lemon Sol's song "Sunflash".
He then dipped in visibility as a producer, with his work running the London club night Speed and his record label Good Looking Records, coming to the fore. A series of compilations entitled Logical Progression highlighted a jazz and ambient influenced side of drum and bass; the style became widely known as intelligent drum and bass. Bukem also explored the downtempo end of electronic lounge music, with sister label Cookin' and the Earth series of compilations. Some of the artists who rose to fame under Good Looking in this period include Blame, Seba, Big Bud, Blu Mar Ten, DJ Dream (Aslan Davis), Future Engineers, Tayla, Aquarius (an alias of Photek), Peshay, Source Direct and Artemis.
On 16 July 1995, he did an Essential Mix alongside MC Conrad. In 1997, he remixed the James Bond theme for David Arnold's concept album of James Bond music Shaken and Stirred: The David Arnold James Bond Project. In 2000, he finally released a debut solo album, the double-CD Journey Inwards. The album heavily emphasised his jazz fusion influences. 2001 saw a remix of Herbie Hancock.
He ran the Speed clubnight in London with fellow drum and bass DJ Fabio.
He DJs extensively around the world, often under the 'Progression Sessions' or 'Bukem in Session' banners. However, his former companion and vocalist, MC Conrad left the label and ultimately their musical partnership in 2012.
Daniel Williamson was adopted from birth. In 2007, he revealed that he had found his biological birth mother, a Ugandan woman living in Paris. She told him that his father was Egyptian.
Style and influences
Viewed as an innovator in the drum and bass style, Bukem is known for developing an accessible alternative to that hardcore genre's speedy, assaultive energies. His style pays homage to the Detroit-based sound of early techno, but Bukem also incorporates still earlier influences, particularly the mellow, melodic sonorities of 1970s era jazz fusion as exemplified by Lonnie Liston Smith and Roy Ayers. Early in his career, Bukem was identified for his response to the "almost paranoid hyperkinesis" of breakbeat-based house music, and specifically for his reservations regarding the overbearing force of the hardcore mentality.
Bukem's music from the early 1990s onward represents his efforts to map out an alternative future for drum and bass by incorporating softer-edged influences culled from London's 1980s rare groove and acid jazz scenes. Music on Logical Progression reveals these influences, as does his approach on 1993's Music / Enchanted, which features string arrangements and sounds from nature. His use of keyboards, live vocals and slow-motion breaks on these and future releases earned Bukem's music the tag intelligent drum and bass. While this designation caused controversy within the drum and bass community, it also influenced the popularization of hardcore music in the UK during the mid-1990s.
Discography
Albums
Journey Inwards (2000)
Compilations/mixes
Mixmag Live! Volume 21 (MixMag, 1996)
Logical Progression Vols 1–4 (1996–2001)
Progression Sessions Vols 1–10 (1998–2003)
Earth Vols 1–7 (1996–2004)
Producer 01 (2001)
Producer 05: Rarities (2002)
Some Blue Notes of Drum 'N Bass (2004)
FabricLive.46 (2009)
Bukem in Session (2013)
Singles/EPs
"Delitefol" (1991)
"Logical Progression" (1991)
"Teach Me to Fly" (with DJ Trace) (1992)
"Demon's Theme / A Couple of Beats" (1992)
Who Knows Vol 1 (as the Bookworm) (1993)
"Bang the Drums / Remnants" (with Tayla) (1993)
"Return to Atlantis" (with Apollo Two) (1993)
"Music / Enchanted" (1993)
"Atmospherical Jubilancy" (1993)
"19.5" (with Peshay) (1994)
"Horizons" (1995)
"The Journey" (with Mystic Moods) (1996)
Mystical Realms EP (1998)
Suspended Space EP (2000)
Remixes
"Sweetness (Mellow Drum n Bass Mix)" – Michelle Gayle (1994)
"Feenin' (LTJ Bukem Remix)" – Jodeci (1995)
"Transamazonia (LTJ Bukem Remix)" – The Shamen (1995)
"If I Could Fly (LTJ Bukem Remix)" – Grace (1996)
"The James Bond Theme (LTJ Bukem Remix)" – David Arnold (1997)
"The Essence (LTJ Bukem Remix)" – Herbie Hancock (with Chaka Khan) (2001)
References
External links
1967 births
Living people
English drum and bass musicians
English DJs
English record producers
Breakbeat hardcore musicians
Black British musicians
People from Watford
Musicians from Hertfordshire
British trip hop musicians
English funk musicians
Breakbeat musicians
Electronic dance music DJs | [
0.29250574111938477,
0.21707986295223236,
0.028909916058182716,
-0.8923436999320984,
0.21142886579036713,
0.5420686602592468,
0.3095889687538147,
-0.16047298908233643,
-0.39142167568206787,
0.48521673679351807,
-0.8122393488883972,
0.6720852255821228,
-0.6376564502716064,
0.240425959229469... |
18443 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindsay%20Anderson | Lindsay Anderson | Lindsay Gordon Anderson (17 April 1923 – 30 August 1994) was a British feature-film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading-light of the Free Cinema movement and of the British New Wave. He is most widely remembered for his 1968 film if...., which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival in 1969 and marked Malcolm McDowell's cinematic debut.
He is also notable, though not a professional actor, for playing a minor role in the Academy Award-winning 1981 film Chariots of Fire. McDowell produced a 2007 documentary about his experiences with Anderson, Never Apologize.
Early life
Lindsay Gordon Anderson was born in Bangalore, South India, where his father had been stationed with the Royal Engineers, on 17 April 1923. His father Captain (later Major General) Alexander Vass Anderson was a British Army Officer who had been born in North India, and his mother Estelle Bell Gasson was born in Queenstown, South Africa, the daughter of a wool merchant. Lindsay's parents separated in 1926 and Estelle returned to England with her sons; however, they tried to reconcile in 1932 in Bangalore, and when Estelle returned to England she was pregnant with her third son, Alexander Vass Anderson. The Andersons divorced and Estelle remarried Major Cuthbert Sleigh in 1936. Lindsay's father remarried in India; although Gavin Lambert writes, in 'Mainly About Lindsay Anderson: A Memoir' (Faber and Faber, 2000, p. 18), that Alexander Vass Anderson 'cut (his first family) out of his life', making no reference to them in his 'Who's Who' entry, Lindsay often saw his father and looked after his house and dogs when he was away.
Both Lindsay and his older brother Murray Anderson (1919–2016) were educated at Saint Ronan's School in Worthing, West Sussex, and at Cheltenham College. It was at Cheltenham that Lindsay had met his lifelong friend and biographer, the screenwriter and novelist Gavin Lambert. Lindsay won a scholarship for classical studies at Wadham College at the University of Oxford, in 1942.
Anderson served in the Army from 1943 until 1946, first with the 60th King's Royal Rifle Corps, and then in the final year of World War II as a cryptographer for the Intelligence Corps, at the Wireless Experimental Centre in Delhi. Anderson assisted in nailing the Red flag to the roof of the Junior Officers' mess in Annan Parbat, in August 1945, after the victory of the Labour Party in the general election was confirmed. The colonel did not approve, he recalled a decade later, but no disciplinary action was taken against them.
Lindsay returned to Oxford in 1946 but changed from classical studies to English; he graduated with an MA in 1948.
Career
Film criticism
Before going into film-making, Anderson was a prominent film critic writing for the influential Sequence magazine (1947–52), which he co-founded with Gavin Lambert, Peter Ericsson and Karel Reisz; later writing for the British Film Institute's journal Sight and Sound and the left-wing political weekly the New Statesman. In a 1956 polemical article, "Stand Up, Stand Up" for Sight and Sound, he attacked contemporary critical practices, in particular the pursuit of objectivity. Taking as an example some comments made by Alistair Cooke in 1935, where Cooke claimed to be without politics as a critic, Anderson responded:
Following a series of screenings which he and the National Film Theatre programmer Karel Reisz organized for the venue of independently produced short films by himself and others, he developed a philosophy of cinema which found expression in what became known, by the late-1950s, as the Free Cinema movement. This was the belief that the British cinema must break away from its class-bound attitudes and that non-metropolitan Britain ought to be shown on the nation's screens. He had already begun to make films himself, starting in 1948 with Meet the Pioneers, a documentary about a conveyor-belt factory.
Filmmaking
Along with Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson, and others, he secured funding from a variety of sources (including Ford of Britain) and they each made a series of short documentaries on a variety of subjects. One of Anderson's early short films, Thursday's Children (1954), concerning the education of deaf children, made in collaboration with Guy Brenton, a friend from his Oxford days, won an Oscar for Best Documentary Short in 1954. Thursday's Children was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2005.
These films, influenced by one of Anderson' heroes, the French filmmaker Jean Vigo, and made in the tradition of the British documentaries of Humphrey Jennings, foreshadowed much of the social realism of British cinema that emerged in the next decade, with Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), Richardson's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) and Anderson's own This Sporting Life (1963), produced by Reisz. Anderson's film met with mixed reviews at the time, and was not a commercial success.
Anderson is perhaps best remembered as a filmmaker for his "Mick Travis trilogy", all of which star Malcolm McDowell as the title character: if.... (1968), a satire on public schools; O Lucky Man! (1973) a Pilgrim's Progress inspired road movie; and Britannia Hospital (1982), a fantasia taking stylistic influence from the populist wing of British cinema represented by Hammer horror films and Carry On comedies.
In 1981, Anderson played the role of the Master of Caius College at Cambridge University in the film Chariots of Fire.
Anderson developed an acquaintance from 1950 with John Ford, which led to what has come to be regarded as one of the standard books on that director, Anderson's About John Ford (1983). Based on half a dozen meetings over more than two decades, and a lifetime's study of the man's work, the book has been described as "One of the best books published by a film-maker on a film-maker".
In 1985, producer Martin Lewis invited Anderson to chronicle Wham!'s visit to China, among the first-ever visits by Western pop artists, which resulted in Anderson's film Foreign Skies: Wham! In China. He admitted in his diary on 31 March 1985, to having "no interest in Wham!", or China, and he was simply "'doing this for the money'". In 1986, he was a member of the jury at the 36th Berlin International Film Festival.
Anderson was also a significant British theatre director. He was long associated with London's Royal Court Theatre, where he was Co-Artistic Director 1969–70, and Associate Artistic Director 1971–75, directing premiere productions of plays by David Storey, among others.
In 1992, as a close friend of actresses Jill Bennett and Rachel Roberts, Anderson included a touching episode in his autobiographical BBC film Is That All There Is?, with a boat trip down the River Thames (several of their professional colleagues and friends aboard) to scatter their ashes on the waters while musician Alan Price sang the song "Is That All There Is?".
Every year, the International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA) gives an acclaimed filmmaker the chance to screen his or her personal Top 10 favorite films. In 2007, Iranian filmmaker Maziar Bahari selected O Dreamland and Every Day Except Christmas (1957), a record of a day in the old Covent Garden market, for his top 10 classics from the history of documentary.[3]
Personal life
Gavin Lambert's memoir, Mainly About Lindsay Anderson, in which he wrote that Anderson repressed his homosexuality, was seen as a betrayal by his other friends. In November 2006 Malcolm McDowell told The Independent:
Death
Anderson died from a heart attack on 30 August 1994 at the age of 71.
Theatre productions
All Royal Court, London, unless otherwise indicated:
The Waiting of Lester Abbs (Kathleen Sully, 1957)
The Long and the Short and the Tall (Willis Hall, 1959)
Progress to the Park (Alun Owen, 1959)
The Trial of Cob and Leach/Jazzetry (Christopher Logue, 1959)
Serjeant Musgrave's Dance (John Arden, 1959)
The Lily White Boys (Harry Cookson and Christopher Logue, 1960)
Trials by Logue: Antigone/Cob and Leach (Christopher Logue, 1960)
Diary of a Madman (Gogol adaptation, 1963)
Box and Cox (John Maddison Morton, 1961)
The Fire Raisers (Max Frisch, 1961)
Julius Caesar (William Shakespeare, 1964)
Andorra (Max Frisch, National Theatre at the Old Vic, 1964)
The Cherry Orchard (Anton Chekhov, Chichester Festival Theatre, 1966)
Inadmissible Evidence (John Osborne, Teatr Współczesny, Warsaw, 1966)
The Contractor (David Storey, 1969)
Home (David Storey, also Morosco Theatre NY, 1970)
The Changing Room (David Storey, 1971)
The Farm (David Storey, 1973)
Life Class (David Storey, 1974)
In Celebration (David Storey 1974)
What the Butler Saw (Joe Orton, 1975)
The Seagull (Anton Chekhov, Lyric Theatre, 1975); in repertory with
The Bed Before Yesterday (Ben Travers, Lyric Theatre, 1975)
The Kingfisher (William Douglas Home, Lyric Theatre 1977, Biltmore NY, 1978)
Alice's Boys (Felicity Brown and Jonathan Hayes, Savoy Theatre, 1978)
Early Days (David Storey, National Cottesloe Theatre, 1980)
The Holly and the Ivy (Wynyard Browne, Roundabout New York, 1982)
The Cherry Orchard (Anton Chekhov, Theatre Royal Haymarket, 1983)
The Playboy of the Western World (John Millington Synge, 1984)
In Celebration revival (David Storey, Manhattan Theatre Club, NY, 1984)
Holiday (Philip Barry, Old Vic, 1987)
The March on Russia (David Storey, National Lyttelton Theatre, 1989)
The Fishing Trip (Frank Grimes, Warehouse Theatre, 1991)
Stages (David Storey, National Cottesloe Theatre, 1992)
Filmography
Feature films
Television
Documentary short films
Acting
See also
Kitchen sink realism
Jill Bennett
References
Bibliography
About John Ford (1983)
The Diaries of Lindsay Anderson ed. Paul Sutton (2004)
Never Apologise: The Collected Writings of Lindsay Anderson (2004)
Six English Filmmakers (2014) - Anderson and his colleagues in conversation with Sutton.
External links
Lindsay Anderson - A Celebration
The Lindsay Anderson Memorial Foundation
Watch O Dreamland on FourDocs
The BFI's "screenonline" on Free Cinema
The BFI's "screenonline" for Lindsay Anderson
The Lindsay Anderson Archive at Stirling University, Scotland
Lindsay Anderson Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)
1923 births
1994 deaths
English people of Scottish descent
British film directors
British experimental filmmakers
British film critics
British gay writers
LGBT film directors
People educated at Cheltenham College
Alumni of Wadham College, Oxford
British Army personnel of World War II
Film directors from Bangalore
Directors of Palme d'Or winners
King's Royal Rifle Corps soldiers
Intelligence Corps soldiers
LGBT theatre directors
20th-century LGBT people
Military personnel of British India | [
0.14869816601276398,
0.21800431609153748,
-0.7635073661804199,
-0.02009173296391964,
-0.26593759655952454,
0.5375913381576538,
0.3558119535446167,
-0.5789429545402527,
-0.2989466190338135,
0.3840502202510834,
-0.6896130442619324,
0.10499762743711472,
-0.2913925349712372,
0.5761330127716064... |
18444 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch | Loch | Loch () is the Scottish Gaelic, Scots and Irish word for a lake or sea inlet. It is cognate with the Manx lough, Cornish logh, and one of the Welsh words for lake, llwch.
In English English and Hiberno-English, the anglicised spelling lough is commonly found in place names; in Lowland Scots and Scottish English, the spelling "loch" is always used. Many loughs are connected to stories of lake-bursts, signifying their mythical origin.
Sea-inlet lochs are often called sea lochs or sea loughs. Some such bodies of water could also be called firths, fjords, estuaries, straits or bays.
Background
This name for a body of water is Insular Celtic in origin and is applied to most lakes in
Scotland and to many sea inlets in the west and north of Scotland. The word comes from Proto-Indo-European *lókus ("lake, pool") and is related to Latin lacus ("lake, pond") and English lay ("lake").
Lowland Scots orthography, like Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and Irish, represents with ch, so the word was borrowed with identical spelling.
English borrowed the word separately from a number of loughs in the previous Cumbric language areas of Northumbria and Cumbria. Earlier forms of English included the sound as gh (compare Scots bricht with English bright). However, by the time Scotland and England joined under a single parliament, English had lost the sound. This form was therefore used when the English settled Ireland. The Scots convention of using ch remained, hence the modern Scottish English loch.
In Welsh, what corresponds to lo is lu in Old Welsh and llw in Middle Welsh such as in today's Welsh placenames Llanllwchaiarn, Llwchwr, Llyn Cwm Llwch, Amlwch, Maesllwch, the Goidelic lo being taken into Scottish Gaelic by the gradual replacement of much Brittonic orthography with Goidelic orthography in Scotland.
Many of the loughs in Northern England have also previously been called "meres" (a Northern English dialect word for "lake" and an archaic Standard English word meaning "a lake that is broad in relation to its depth") such as the Black Lough in Northumberland. However, reference to the latter as loughs (lower case initial), rather than as lakes, inlets and so on, is unusual.
Some lochs in Southern Scotland have a Brythonic rather than Goidelic etymology, such as Loch Ryan where the Gaelic loch has replaced a Cumbric equivalent of Welsh llwch. The same is perhaps the case for water bodies in Northern England named with 'Low' or 'Lough' or otherwise it represents a borrowing of the Brythonic word into the Northumbrian dialect of Old English.
Although there is no strict size definition, a small loch is often known as a lochan (so spelled also in Scottish Gaelic; in Irish it is spelled lochán).
Perhaps the most famous Scottish loch is Loch Ness, although there are other large examples such as Loch Awe, Loch Lomond and Loch Tay.
Examples of sea lochs in Scotland include Loch Long, Loch Fyne, Loch Linnhe, and Loch Eriboll.
Uses of lochs
Some new reservoirs for hydroelectric schemes have been given names faithful to the names for natural bodies of water—for example, the Loch Sloy scheme, and Lochs Laggan and Treig (which form part of the Lochaber hydroelectric scheme near Fort William). Other expanses are simply called reservoirs, e.g. Blackwater Reservoir above Kinlochleven.
Scottish lakes
Scotland has very few bodies of water called lakes. The Lake of Menteith, an Anglicisation of the Scots Laich o Menteith meaning a "low-lying bit of land in Menteith", is applied to the loch there because of the similarity of the sounds of the words laich and lake. Until the 19th century the body of water was known as the Loch of Menteith. The Lake of the Hirsel, Pressmennan Lake and Lake Louise are man-made bodies of water in Scotland known as lakes.
The word "loch" is sometimes used as a shibboleth to identify natives of England, because the fricative sound is used in Scotland whereas most English people mispronounce the word as "lock".
Lochs outside Scotland and Ireland
As "loch" is a common Gaelic word, it is found as the root of several Manx place names.
The United States naval port of Pearl Harbor, on the south coast of the main Hawaiian island of Oahu, is one of a complex of sea inlets. Several are named as lochs, including South East Loch, Merry Loch, East Loch, Middle Loch and West Loch.
Loch Raven Reservoir is a reservoir in Baltimore County, Maryland.
Brenton Loch in the Falkland Islands is a sea loch, near Lafonia, East Falkland.
In the Scottish settlement of Glengarry County in present-day Eastern Ontario, there is a lake called Loch Garry. Loch Garry was named by those who settled in the area, Clan MacDonell of Glengarry, after the well-known loch their clan is from, Loch Garry in Scotland. Similarly, lakes named Loch Broom, Big Loch, Greendale Loch, and Loch Lomond can be found in Nova Scotia, along with Loch Leven in Newfoundland, and Loch Leven in Saskatchewan.
Loch Fyne is a fjord in Greenland named by Douglas Clavering in 1823.
See also
List of lochs of Scotland
List of loughs of Ireland
List of loughs of England
Ria
Lake-burst
References
Highlands and Islands of Scotland
Scottish coast and countryside
Hydronymy
Shibboleths
Lakes of Northern Ireland | [
-0.16485239565372467,
0.0653025209903717,
0.09852451831102371,
-0.4871682822704315,
0.06896881014108658,
0.16218790411949158,
0.5704739689826965,
0.24240390956401825,
-0.32294973731040955,
-0.0437081977725029,
-0.889491081237793,
0.16665291786193848,
-0.26086631417274475,
0.716823101043701... |
18446 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo%20Marks | Leo Marks | Leopold Samuel Marks, (24 September 1920 – 15 January 2001) was an English writer, screenwriter, and cryptographer. During the Second World War he headed the codes office supporting resistance agents in occupied Europe for the secret Special Operations Executive organisation. After the war, Marks became a playwright and screenwriter, writing scripts that frequently utilised his war-time cryptographic experiences. He wrote the script for Peeping Tom, the controversial film directed by Michael Powell which had a disastrous effect on Powell's career, but was later described by Martin Scorsese as a masterpiece. In 1998, towards the end of his life, Marks published a personal history of his experiences during the war, Between Silk and Cyanide, which was critical of the leadership of SOE.
Early life
Marks was born into a devout Jewish family. He was the son of Benjamin Marks, the joint owner of Marks & Co, an antiquarian bookseller in Charing Cross Road, London. He was introduced at an early age to cryptography when his father showed him Edgar Allan Poe's story, The Gold-Bug.
From this early interest, he demonstrated his skill at codebreaking by deciphering the secret price codes which his father wrote inside the covers of books. The bookshop subsequently became famous as a result of the book 84, Charing Cross Road, which was based on correspondence between American writer Helene Hanff and the shop's chief buyer, Frank Doel.
Work in cryptography
Marks was conscripted in January 1942 and trained as a cryptographer; apparently he demonstrated the ability to complete one week's work in decipherment exercise in a few hours. Unlike the rest of his intake, who were sent to the main British codebreaking centre at Bletchley Park, Marks was regarded as a misfit and he was assigned to the newly formed Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Baker Street, which was set up to train agents to operate behind enemy lines in occupied Europe and to assist local resistance groups. SOE has been described as "a mixture of brilliant brains and bungling amateurs". Marks wrote that he had an inauspicious arrival at SOE when it took him all day to decipher a code he had been expected to finish in 20 minutes, because, not atypically, SOE had forgotten to supply the cipher key, and he had to break the code which SOE had regarded as secure.
Marks briefed many Allied agents sent into occupied Europe, including Noor Inayat Khan, the Grouse/Swallow team of four Norwegian Telemark saboteurs and his own close friend 'Tommy' Yeo-Thomas, nicknamed "the White Rabbit." In an interview which accompanied the DVD of the film Peeping Tom, Marks quoted General Eisenhower as saying that his group's work shortened the war by three months, saving countless lives.
Marks was portrayed by Anton Lesser in David Morley's BBC Radio drama A Cold Supper Behind Harrods. The fictional play was inspired by conversations between Marks and David Morley and real events in SOE. It featured David Jason, and Stephanie Cole as Vera Atkins.
Developments of cryptographic practice
One of Marks's first challenges was to phase out double transposition ciphers using keys based on poems. These poem ciphers had the limited advantage of being easy to memorise, but significant disadvantages, including limited cryptographic security, substantial minimum message sizes (short ones were easy to crack), and the fact that the method's complexity caused encoding errors. Cryptographic security was enhanced by Marks's innovations, especially "worked-out keys." He was credited with inventing the letter one-time pad, but while he did independently discover the method, he later found it already in use at Bletchley.
Preference for original code poems
While attempting to relegate poem codes to emergency use, he enhanced their security by promoting the use of original poems in preference to widely known ones, forcing a cryptanalyst to work it out the hard way for each message instead of guessing an agent's entire set of keys after breaking the key to a single message (or possibly just part of the key.) Marks wrote many poems later used by agents, the most famous being one he gave to the agent Violette Szabo, The Life That I Have, which gained popularity when it was used in the 1958 film about her, Carve Her Name With Pride. According to his book, Marks wrote the poem in Christmas 1943 about a girlfriend, Ruth, who had recently died in an air crash in Canada; supposedly the god-daughter of the head of SOE, Sir Charles Jocelyn Hambro.
The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours.
The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.
A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause.
For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.
Gestapo activities and "Indecipherables"
Gestapo signal tracers endangered clandestine radio operators, and their life expectancy in occupied France averaged about six weeks. Therefore, short and less frequent transmissions from the codemaster were of value. The pressure could cause agents to make mistakes encoding messages, and the practice was for the home station to tell them to recode it (usually a safe activity) and retransmit it (dangerous, and increasingly so the longer it took). In response to this problem, Marks established, staffed and trained a group based at Grendon Underwood, Buckinghamshire to cryptanalyse garbled messages ("indecipherables") so they could be dealt with in England without forcing the agent to risk retransmitting from the field. Other innovations of his simplified encoding in the field, which reduced errors and made shorter messages possible, both of which reduced transmission time.
"Das Englandspiel" in the Netherlands
The Germans generally did not execute captured radio operators out of hand. The goal was to turn and use them, or to extract enough information to imitate them. For the safety of entire underground "circuits", it was important to determine if an operator was genuine and still free, but means of independently checking were primitive. Marks claims that he became convinced (but was unable to prove) that their agents in the Netherlands had been compromised by the German counter-intelligence Abwehr. The Germans referred to their operation as "a game"—Das Englandspiel. Marks's warnings fell on deaf ears and perhaps as many as 50 further agents were sent to meet their deaths in Holland. The other side of this story was published in 1953 by Marks's German opposite number in the Netherlands, Hermann Giskes, in his book London Calling North Pole.
Reporting to Brigadier Gubbins
In his book (pp. 222–3), Marks describes the memorandum he wrote detailing his conviction that messages from the Netherlands were being sent either by Germans or by agents who had been turned. He argued that, despite harrowing circumstances, "not a single Dutch agent has been so overwrought that he's made a mistake in his coding...." Marks had to face Brigadier (later Sir) Colin Gubbins:
Gubbins grills Marks. In particular he wants to know who has seen this report, who typed it (Marks did):
Later life
After the war, Marks went on to write plays and films, including The Girl Who Couldn't Quite! (1947), Cloudburst (1951), The Best Damn Lie (1957), Guns at Batasi (co-writer) (1964), Sebastian (1968), and Twisted Nerve (1968).
Marks wrote the script for Michael Powell's film Peeping Tom (1960), the story of a serial killer who films his victims while stabbing them. The film provoked critical revulsion at the time, and was described as "evil and pornographic." The film was critically rehabilitated when younger directors, including Martin Scorsese, expressed admiration for Marks's script. Scorsese subsequently asked Marks to supply the voice of Satan in his 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ.
In 1998, Marks published his account of his work in SOE – Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's Story 1941–1945. The book was written in the early 1980s, but didn't receive UK Government approval for publication until 1998. Three of the poems published in the book were scrambled into the song "Dead Agents" by John Cale performed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, in April 1999.
Marks describes himself as an agnostic in Between Silk and Cyanide, but frequently refers to his Jewish heritage.
Marriage and death
He married the portrait painter Elena Gaussen in 1966. The marriage lasted until shortly before his death at home from cancer in January 2001.
References
Sources
Leo Marks (1998), Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's Story 1941–1945. HarperCollins.
Philippe Ganier-Raymond (1968), The Tangled Web, (Arthur Barker; [reprint]: Warner Paperback , originally published in French as Le Réseau Étranglé). One of the central stories in Marks's book, the betrayal of the SOE Dutch network, is told from the Dutch and German points of view.
External links
Leo Marks at the Powell & Pressburger pages
Imperial War Museum Interview
British cryptographers
Pre-computer cryptographers
British Special Operations Executive personnel
British Army officers
British Army personnel of World War II
English agnostics
English Jews
Jewish agnostics
Jewish scientists
1920 births
2001 deaths
English male screenwriters
English dramatists and playwrights
Writers from London
English male voice actors
English male dramatists and playwrights
20th-century British dramatists and playwrights
20th-century English male writers
20th-century English screenwriters | [
0.1330450177192688,
0.5352843999862671,
-0.6546453237533569,
0.07525720447301865,
0.30635371804237366,
0.6114128232002258,
0.2775091230869293,
-0.4448583126068115,
0.17896100878715515,
0.24756817519664764,
-0.6484787464141846,
0.21243120729923248,
0.0415208637714386,
-0.12971919775009155,
... |
18448 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livonia | Livonia | Livonia (, , , German and Scandinavian languages: , archaic German: Liefland, , Latvian and , , archaic English: Livland, Liwlandia; ) is a historical region on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. It is named after the Livonians, who lived on the shores of present-day Latvia.
By the end of the 13th century, the name was extended to most of present-day Estonia and Latvia that had been conquered during the Livonian Crusade (1193–1290) by the Livonian Brothers of the Sword. Medieval Livonia, or Terra Mariana, reached its greatest extent after Saint George's Night Uprising that in 1346 forced Denmark to sell the Duchy of Estonia (northern Estonia conquered by Denmark in the 13th century) to the State of the Teutonic Order. Livonia, as understood after the retreat of Denmark in 1346, bordered on the Gulf of Finland in the north, Lake Peipus and Russia to the east, and Lithuania to the south.
As a consequence of the Livonian War in the 16th century, the territory of Livonia was reduced to the southern half of Estonia and the northern half of Latvia.
The indigenous inhabitants of Livonia were various Finnic tribes in the north and Baltic tribes in the south. The descendants of the crusaders formed the nucleus of the new ruling class of Livonia after the Livonian Crusade, and eventually became known as Baltic Germans.
History
Beginning in the 12th century CE, Livonia became a target for economic and political expansion by Danes and Germans, particularly for the Hanseatic League and the Cistercian Order.
Around 1160, Hanseatic traders from Lübeck established a trading post on the site of the future city of Riga, which Bishop Albrecht von Buxthoeven founded in 1201. He ordered (1215) the construction of a cathedral and became the first Prince-Bishop of Livonia.
Livonian Brothers of the Sword 1204–1237
Bishop Albert of Riga (Albert of Buxhoeveden) founded the military order of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword (, ) in 1202; Pope Innocent III sanctioned the establishment in 1204. The membership of the order comprised German "warrior monks". Alternative names of the order include the Christ Knights, Sword Brethren, and the Militia of Christ of Livonia. Following their defeat by Lithuanian forces in the Battle of Saule in 1236, the surviving Brothers merged into the Teutonic Order as an autonomous branch (1237) and became known as the Livonian Order.
Albert, bishop of Riga (or Prince-Bishop of Livonia), founded the Brotherhood to aid the Bishopric of Riga in the conversion of the pagan Curonians, Livonians, Semigallians, and Latgalians living on the shores of the Gulf of Riga. From its foundation, the undisciplined Order tended to ignore its supposed vassalage to the bishops. In 1218 Albert asked King Valdemar II of Denmark for assistance, but Valdemar instead arranged a deal with the Brotherhood and conquered the north of Estonia for Denmark. The Brotherhood had its headquarters at Fellin (Viljandi) in present-day Estonia, where the walls of the Master's castle stand. Other strongholds included Wenden (Cēsis), Segewold (Sigulda) and Ascheraden (Aizkraukle). The commanders of Fellin, Goldingen (Kuldīga), Marienburg (Alūksne), Reval (Tallinn), and the bailiff of Weißenstein (Paide) belonged to the five-member entourage of the Order's Master.
Pope Gregory IX asked the Brothers to defend Finland from Novgorodian attacks in his letter of 24 November 1232;
however, no known information regarding the knights' possible activities in Finland has survived. (Sweden eventually took over Finland after the Second Swedish Crusade in 1249.) In the Battle of Saule in 1236 the Lithuanians and Semigallians decimated the Order. This disaster led the surviving Brothers to become incorporated into the Order of Teutonic Knights in the following year, and from that point on they became known as the Livonian Order. They continued, however, to function in all respects (rule, clothing and policy) as an autonomous branch of the Teutonic Order, headed by their own Master (himself de jure subject to the Teutonic Order's Grand Master).
Livonian Crusade 1198–1227
The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia from the 1220s gives a firsthand account of the Christianization of Livonia, granted as a fief by the Hohenstaufen (de facto but not known as) the King of Germany, Philip of Swabia (), to Bishop Albert of Buxthoeven, nephew of the Hartwig II, Archbishop of Bremen, who sailed (1200) with a convoy of ships filled with armed crusaders to carve out a Catholic territory in the east as part of the Livonian Crusade.
Monastic state of the Teutonic Knights 1237–1561
Livonia consisted of the following subdivisions:
a state ruled by the Livonian Order (founded by Albert in 1202, assimilated into the Teutonic Knights in 1237);
the Bishopric of Riga (an archbishopric from 1255);
the Bishoprics of Courland, Ösel-Wiek, and Dorpat, where Albert's brother Hermann established himself as the prince-bishop (Terra Mariana).
The Livonian Rhymed Chronicle describes the conquest of Livonia by the Germans.
Livonian Order 1237–1561
The Livonian Order was a largely autonomous branch of the Teutonic Knights (or Teutonic Order) and a member of the Livonian Confederation from 1418 to 1561. After being defeated by Lithuanian forces in the 1236 Battle of Saule, the remnants of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword were incorporated into the Teutonic Knights as the Livonian Order in 1237. Between 1237 and 1290, the Livonian Order conquered all of Courland, Livonia, and Semigallia, but their attack on northern Russia was repelled in the Battle of Rakvere (1268). In 1346, after the St. George's Night Uprising the Order purchased the rest of Estonia from King Valdemar IV of Denmark. The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia and the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle describe conditions within the Order's territory. The Teutonic Order fell into decline following its defeat in the Battle of Grunwald in 1410 and the secularization of its Prussian territories by Albert of Brandenburg in 1525, but the Livonian Order managed to maintain an independent existence. During the many years of the Livonian War (1558–1582), however, they suffered a decisive defeat at the hands of troops of Muscovite Russia in the Battle of Ergeme in 1560 and continued living under great threat. Letters to the Holy Roman Emperor arrived from many European countries, warning, that Moscow has its eyes on much more than only a few harbors or the province of Liefland ... the East Sea (Ostsee-Baltic Sea) and the West Sea (Atlantic) are equally in danger. Duke Barnim the Elder, 50 years duke of Pomerania, warned, that never before did he experience the fear than now, where even in his land, where people send by Moscow are everywhere. At stake was the Narva-trade-route and practically all trade in the North, and with that all of Europe. Due to the religious upheavals of the Reformation the distant Holy Roman Empire could not send troops, which it could not afford anyway. The Duchy of Prussia was not able to help for much of the same reason, and Duke Albrecht () was under continuous ban by the Empire. The Hanseatic League was greatly weakened by this and the city state of Luebeck fought its last great war. The emperor Maximilian II () diffused the greatest threat by remaining on friendly terms with Tsar Ivan IV of Russia (), but not sending Ivan IV troops as requested in his struggles with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
In 1570 Tsar Ivan IV of Russia installed Duke Magnus as King of Livonia. The other forces opposed this appointment. The Livonian Order saw no other way than to seek protection from Sigismund II Augustus (King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania), who had intervened in a war between Bishop William of Riga and the Brothers in 1557. After coming to an agreement with Sigismund II Augustus and his representatives (especially Mikołaj "the Black" Radziwiłł), the last Livonian Master, Gotthard Kettler, secularized the Order and converted to Lutheranism. In the southern part of the Brothers' lands he set up the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia for his family. Most of the remaining lands were seized by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Denmark and Sweden re-occupied the north of Estonia.
From the 14th to the 16th centuries, Middle Low German - as spoken in the towns of the Hanseatic League - functioned as the established language of the Livonian lands, but High German subsequently succeeded it as the official language in the course of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Livonian Confederation 1418–1561
In 1418, the Archbishop of Riga, Johannes Ambundii, organised the five ecclesiastical states of the Holy Roman Empire in Medieval Livonia (Livonian Order, Courland, Ösel–Wiek, Dorpat and Riga) into the Livonian Confederation.
A diet or Landtag was formed in 1419. The city of Walk was chosen as the site of the diet.
Livonian War 1558–1583
Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor once again asked for help of Gustav I of Sweden, and the Kingdom of Poland also began direct negotiations with Gustav, but nothing resulted because on 29 September 1560, Gustav I Vasa died. The chances for success of Magnus, (who had become Bishop of Courland and of Ösel-Wiek) in 1560 and his supporters looked particularly good in 1560 (and in 1570). In 1560 he had been recognised as their sovereign by the Bishopric of Ösel-Wiek and by the Bishopric of Courland, and as their prospective ruler by the authorities of the Bishopric of Dorpat; the Bishopric of Reval with the Harrien-Wierland gentry were on his side; the Livonian Order conditionally recognised his right of ownership of Estonia (Principality of Estonia). Then along with Archbishop Wilhelm von Brandenburg of the Archbishopric of Riga and his Coadjutor Christoph von Mecklenburg, Kettler, the last Master of the Teutonic Order, gave to Magnus the portions of the Kingdom of Livonia which he had taken possession of, but they refused to give him any more land.
Once Eric XIV of Sweden became king in September 1560 he took quick actions to get involved in the war. He negotiated a continued peace with Muscovy and spoke to the burghers of Reval city. He offered them goods to submit to him as well as threatening them. By 6 June 1561 they submitted to him contrary to the persuasions of Kettler to the burghers. King Eric's brother and future King Johan married the Polish princess Catherine Jagiellon in 1562. Wanting to obtain his own land in Livonia, he loaned Poland money and then claimed the castles they had pawned as his own instead of using them to pressure Poland. After Johan returned to Finland, Erik XIV forbade him to deal with any foreign countries without his consent.
Shortly after that Erik XIV quickly lost any allies he was about to obtain, either in the form of Magnus or of the Archbishop of Riga. Magnus was upset he had been tricked out of his inheritance of Holstein. After Sweden occupied Reval, Frederick II of Denmark made a treaty with Erik XIV of Sweden in August 1561. Magnus and his brother Frederick II were in great disagreement, and Frederick II negotiated a treaty with Ivan IV on 7 August 1562 to help his brother obtain more land and to stall further Swedish advances. Erik XIV did not like this and the Northern Seven Years' War (1563-1570) broke out, with Sweden pitted against the Free City of Lübeck, Denmark, and Poland. While only losing land and trade, Frederick II and Magnus were not faring well. But in 1568 Erik XIV became insane and his brother Johan took his place as King John III of Sweden.
Johan III, due to his friendship with Poland, began a policy against Muscovy. He would try to obtain more land in Livonia and to dominate Denmark. After all parties had been financially drained, Frederick II let his ally, King Sigismund II Augustus of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, know that he was ready for peace. On 15 December 1570, the Treaty of Stettin concluded the Northern Seven Years' War.
It is, however, more difficult to estimate the scope and magnitude of the support Magnus received in Livonian cities. Compared to the Harrien-Wierland gentry, the Reval city council, and hence probably the majority of citizens, demonstrated a much more reserved attitude towards Denmark and towards King Magnus of Livonia. Nevertheless, there is no reason to speak about any strong pro-Swedish sentiments among the residents of Reval. The citizens who had fled to the Bishopric of Dorpat or had been deported to Muscovy hailed Magnus as their saviour until 1571. Analysis indicates that during the Livonian War a pro-independence wing emerged among the Livonian gentry and townspeople, forming the so-called "Peace Party". Dismissing hostilities, these forces perceived an agreement with Muscovy as a chance to escape the atrocities of war and to avoid the division of Livonia. Thus Magnus, who represented Denmark and later struck a deal with Ivan IV, proved a suitable figurehead for this faction.
The Peace Party, however, had its own armed forces – scattered bands of household troops (Hofleute) under diverse command, which only united in action in 1565 (Battle of Pärnu and Siege of Reval), in 1570–1571 (Siege of Reval; 30 weeks), and in 1574–1576 (first on Sweden's side, then came the sale of Ösel–Wiek to the Danish Crown, and the loss of territory to Tsardom of Russia). In 1575, after Muscovy attacked Danish claims in Livonia, Frederick II dropped out of the competition, as did the Holy Roman Emperor. After this Johan III held off on his pursuit for more land due to Muscovy obtaining lands that Sweden controlled. He used the next two years of truce to get in a better position. In 1578 he resumed the fight, not only for Livonia, but also for everywhere due to an understanding he made with the Rzeczpospolita. In 1578 Magnus retired to the Rzeczpospolita and his brother all but gave up the land in Livonia.
Duchy of Livonia 1561–1621
In 1561, during the Livonian War, Livonia fell to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and became a dependent vassal of Lithuania. Eight years later, in 1569, when the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Livonia became a joint domain administered directly by the king and grand duke.
Having rejected peace proposals from its enemies, Ivan the Terrible found himself in a difficult position by 1579, when Crimean Khanate devastated Muscovian territories and burnt down Moscow (see Russo-Crimean Wars), the drought and epidemics have fatally affected the economy, Oprichnina had thoroughly disrupted the government, while The Grand Principality of Lithuania had united with The Kingdom of Poland (1385–1569) and acquired an energetic leader, Stefan Batory, supported by Ottoman Empire (1576). Stefan Batory replied with a series of three offensives against Muscovy, trying to cut The Kingdom of Livonia from Muscovian territories. During his first offensive in 1579, with 22,000 men, he retook Polotsk; during the second, in 1580, with 29,000-strong army, he took Velikie Luki, and in 1581 with a 100,000-strong army he started the Siege of Pskov. Frederick II of Denmark and Norway had trouble continuing the fight against Muscovy unlike Sweden and Poland. He came to an agreement with John III in 1580 giving him the titles in Livonia. That war would last from 1577 to 1582. Muscovy recognized Polish–Lithuanian control of Ducatus Ultradunensis only in 1582. After Magnus von Lyffland died in 1583, Poland invaded his territories in The Duchy of Courland and Frederick II decided to sell his rights of inheritance. Except for the island of Œsel, Denmark was out of the Baltic by 1585. As of 1598 Inflanty Voivodeship was divided onto:
Wenden Voivodeship (województwo wendeńskie, Kieś)
Dorpat Voivodeship (województwo dorpackie, Dorpat)
Parnawa Voivodeship (województwo parnawskie, Parnawa)
Based on a guarantee by Sigismund II Augustus from the 1560s, the German language retained its official status.
Kingdom of Livonia 1570–1578
The armies of Ivan the Terrible were initially successful, taking Polotsk (1563) and Parnawa (1575) and overrunning much of Grand Duchy of Lithuania up to some proximity of Vilnius. Eventually, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Kingdom of Poland formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569 under the Union of Lublin. Eric XIV of Sweden did not like this and the Northern Seven Years' War between the Free City of Lübeck, Denmark, Poland, and Sweden broke out. While only losing land and trade, Frederick II of Denmark and Magnus von Lyffland of the Œsel-Wiek did not fare well. But in 1569, Erik XIV became insane and his brother John III of Sweden took his place. After all parties had been financially drained, Frederick II let his ally, King Zygmunt II August, know that he was ready for peace. On 15 December 1570, the Treaty of Stettin was concluded.
In the next phase of the conflict, in 1577 Ivan IV took advantage of the Commonwealth's internal strife (called the war against Gdańsk in Polish historiography), and during the reign of Stefan Batory in Poland, invaded Livonia, quickly taking almost the entire territory, with the exception of Riga and Reval. In 1578, Magnus of Livonia recognized the sovereignty of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (not ratified by the Sejm of Poland-Lithuania, or recognized by Denmark). The Kingdom of Livonia was beaten back by Muscovy on all fronts. In 1578, Magnus of Livonia retired to The Bishopric of Courland and his brother all but gave up the land in Livonia.
Swedish Livonia 1629–1721
Sweden was given roughly the same area as the former Duchy of Livonia after the 1626–1629 Polish–Swedish War. The area, usually known as Swedish Livonia, became a very important Swedish dominion, with Riga being the second largest Swedish city and Livonia paying for one third of the Swedish war costs. Sweden lost Swedish Livonia, Swedish Estonia and Ingria to the Russian Empire almost 100 years later, by the Capitulation of Estonia and Livonia in 1710 and the Treaty of Nystad in 1721.
Livonian Voivodeship 1620s–1772
The Livonian Voivodeship (; ) was a unit of administrative division and local government in the Duchy of Livonia, part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, since it was formed in the 1620s out of the Wenden Voivodeship till the First Partition of Poland in 1772.
Riga Governorate 1721–1796
The Russian Empire conquered Swedish Livonia during the course of the Great Northern War and acquired the province in the Capitulation of Estonia and Livonia in 1710, confirmed by the Treaty of Nystad in 1721. Peter the Great confirmed German as the exclusive official language. Russia then added Polish Livonia in 1772 during the Partitions of Poland.
Governorate of Livonia 1796–1918
In 1796 the Riga Governorate was renamed as the Governorate of Livonia ( / , , ). Livonia remained within the Russian Empire until the end of World War I, when it was split between the newly independent states of Latvia and Estonia. In 1918–1920, both Soviet troops and German Freikorps fought against Latvian and Estonian troops for control over Livonia, but their attempts were defeated.
Governors-General of Estonia, Livonia, and Courland 1845–1876
From 1845 to 1876, the Baltic governorates of Estonia, Livonia, and Courland—an area roughly corresponding to the historical medieval Livonia—were administratively subordinated to a common Governor-General. Amongst the holders of this post were Count Alexander Arkadyevich Suvorov and Count Pyotr Andreyevich Shuvalov.
Vidzeme in Independent Latvia 1918–1940
In independent Latvia between the World Wars, southern Livonia became an administrative region under the traditional Latvian name Vidzeme, encompassing the then much larger counties of Riga, Cēsis, Valmiera, and Valka.
Ostland 1941–1944
Ostland was one of the Reichskommissariats established, by a Decree of the Führer dated 17 July 1941, as administrative units of the "Großdeutsches Reich" (Greater Germanic Reich). The structure of the Reichskommissariats was defined by the same decree. Local administration in the Reichskommissariats was to be organized under a "National Director" (Reichskomissar) in Estonia, a "General Director" in Latvia and a "General Adviser" in Lithuania. The local administration of the Reichskommissariat Ostland was under Reichskomissar Hinrich Lohse. Below him there was an administrative hierarchy: a Generalkomissar led each Generalbezirke, Gebietskomissars and Hauptkommissars administered Kreigsbietes and Hauptgenbietes, respectively. Alfred Rosenberg's (Minister für die besetzten Ostgebiete (Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories)) ministerial authority was, in practice, severely limited. The first reason was that many of the practicalities were commanded elsewhere: the Wehrmacht and the SS managed the military and security aspects, Fritz Sauckel (Reich Director of Labour) had control over manpower and working areas, Hermann Göring and Albert Speer had total management of economic aspects in the territories and the Reich postal service administered the East territories' postal services. These German central government interventions in the affairs of Ostland, overriding the appropriate ministries was known as "Sonderverwaltungen" (special administration). Later, from September, the civil administration that had been decreed in the previous July was actually set up. Lohse and, for that matter, Koch would not bow to his authority seeking to administer their territories with the independence and authority of gauleiters. on 1 April 1942 an arbeitsbereich (lit. "working sphere", a name for the party cadre organisation outside the reich proper) was established in the civil administration part of the occupied Soviet territories, whereupon Koch and Lohse gradually ceased communication with him, preferring to deal directly with Hitler through Martin Bormann and the party chancellery. In the process they also displaced all other actors including notably the SS, except in central Belarus where HSSPF Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski had a special command encompassing both military and civil administration territories and engaged in "anti-partisan" atrocities.
Baltic countries since 1990
The historical land of Livonia has been split between Latvia and Estonia ever since. The Livonian language is spoken by fewer than 100 individuals as a second language, and is understood to be fast approaching extinction. The last native Livonian speaker died in June 2013.
The anthem (unofficial) of Livonians is Min izāmō, min sindimō sharing the melody of Finnish and Estonian anthems.
See also
Notes and references
External links
Virtual Livonia
Deutsch-Baltische Ritterschaften in Livland, Kurland, Estland, Oesel
Joann Portantiuse Liivimaa kaart 1573. aastast
Estonian Manors Portal the English version includes the description of 438 well-preserved historical manors of nowadays Estonia (historically – northern part of Old-Livonia/Alt-Livland)
Atlas of Livonia, or of the Two Governments and Duchies Livonia and Estonia, and of the Province of Oesel from the World Digital Library
Geography of Latvia
Historical regions
Historical regions in Latvia
Historical regions in Estonia | [
-0.19565919041633606,
-0.8309738636016846,
0.2661376893520355,
0.06005163490772247,
0.3207297921180725,
0.4644392728805542,
0.21041147410869598,
0.5308651924133301,
-0.6137674450874329,
-0.38992318511009216,
-0.22776907682418823,
-0.435260534286499,
-0.11017268151044846,
0.6048302054405212... |
18450 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lung%20cancer | Lung cancer | Lung cancer, also known as lung carcinoma, since about 98–99% of all lung cancers are carcinomas, is a malignant lung tumor characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. Lung carcinomas derive from transformed, malignant cells that originate as epithelial cells, or from tissues composed of epithelial cells. Other lung cancers, such as the rare sarcomas of the lung, are generated by the malignant transformation of connective tissues (i.e. nerve, fat, muscle, bone), which arise from mesenchymal cells. Lymphomas and melanomas (from lymphoid and melanocyte cell lineages) can also rarely result in lung cancer.
In time, this uncontrolled growth can spread beyond the lung – either by direct extension, by entering the lymphatic circulation, or via the hematogenous, bloodborne spread – the process called metastasis – into nearby tissue or other, more distant parts of the body. Most cancers that start in the lung, known as primary lung cancers, are carcinomas. The two main types are small-cell lung carcinoma (SCLC) and non-small-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). The most common symptoms are coughing (including coughing up blood), weight loss, shortness of breath, and chest pains.
The vast majority (85%) of cases of lung cancer are due to long-term tobacco smoking. About 10–15% of cases occur in people who have never smoked. These cases are often caused by a combination of genetic factors and exposure to radon gas, asbestos, second-hand smoke, or other forms of air pollution. Lung cancer may be seen on chest radiographs and computed tomography (CT) scans. The diagnosis is confirmed by biopsy, which is usually performed by bronchoscopy or CT-guidance.
The major method of prevention is the avoidance of risk factors, including smoking and air pollution. Treatment and long-term outcomes depend on the type of cancer, the stage (degree of spread), and the person's overall health. Most cases are not curable. Common treatments include surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. NSCLC is sometimes treated with surgery, whereas SCLC usually responds better to chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
Worldwide in 2020, lung cancer occurred in 2.2 million people and resulted in 1.8 million deaths. It is the most common cause of cancer-related death in both men and women. The most common age at diagnosis is 70 years. In most countries the five-year survival rate is around 10 to 20%, while in Japan it is 33%, in Israel 27%, and in the Republic of Korea 25%. Outcomes typically are worse in the developing world.
Signs and symptoms
Signs and symptoms that may suggest lung cancer include:
Respiratory symptoms: coughing, coughing up blood, wheezing, or shortness of breath
Systemic symptoms: weight loss, weakness, fever, or clubbing of the fingernails
Symptoms due to the cancer mass pressing on adjacent structures: chest pain, bone pain, superior vena cava obstruction, or difficulty swallowing
If the cancer grows in the airways, it may obstruct airflow causing breathing difficulties. The obstruction can also lead to accumulation of secretions behind the blockage, and increase the risk of pneumonia.
Many of the symptoms of lung cancer (poor appetite, weight loss, fever, fatigue) are not specific. In many people, the cancer has already spread beyond the original site by the time they have symptoms and seek medical attention. Symptoms that suggest the presence of metastatic disease include weight loss, bone pain, and neurological symptoms (headaches, fainting, convulsions, or limb weakness). Common sites of spread include the brain, bone, adrenal glands, opposite lung, liver, pericardium, and kidneys. About 10% of people with lung cancer do not have symptoms at diagnosis; these cancers are incidentally found on routine chest radiography.
Depending on the type of tumor, paraneoplastic phenomena – symptoms not due to the local presence of cancer – may initially attract attention to the disease. In lung cancer, these phenomena may include hypercalcemia, syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone (abnormally concentrated urine and diluted blood), ectopic ACTH production, or Lambert–Eaton myasthenic syndrome (muscle weakness due to autoantibodies). Tumors in the top of the lung, known as Pancoast tumors, may invade the local part of the sympathetic nervous system, resulting in Horner's syndrome (dropping of the eyelid and a small pupil on that side), as well as damage to the brachial plexus.
Causes
Cancer develops after genetic damage to DNA and epigenetic changes. Those changes affect the cell's normal functions, including cell proliferation, programmed cell death (apoptosis), and DNA repair. As more damage accumulates, the risk for cancer increases.
Smoking
Tobacco smoking is by far the main contributor to lung cancer. Cigarette smoke contains at least 73 known carcinogens, including benzo[a]pyrene, NNK, 1,3-butadiene, and a radioactive isotope of polonium – polonium-210. Across the developed world, 90% of lung cancer deaths in men and 70% of those in women during 2000 were attributed to smoking. Smoking accounts for about 85% of lung cancer cases. Vaping may be a risk factor for lung cancer, but less than that of cigarettes, and further research is necessary due to the length of time it can take for lung cancer to develop following an exposure to carcinogens.
Passive smoking – the inhalation of smoke from another's smoking – is a cause of lung cancer in nonsmokers. A passive smoker can be defined as someone either living or working with a smoker. Studies from the US, the UK and other European countries have consistently shown a significantly-increased risk among those exposed to passive smoking. The risk of developing lung cancer increases by 25–28%. Investigations of sidestream smoke (the main component of second-hand smoke; around 85%) suggest that it is more dangerous than direct mainstream smoke.
Cannabis smoke contains many of the same carcinogens as those found in tobacco smoke, but the effect of smoking cannabis on lung cancer risk is not clear. A 2013 review did not find an increased risk from light to moderate use. A 2014 review found that smoking cannabis doubled the risk of lung cancer, though cannabis is in many countries commonly mixed with tobacco.
Radon gas
Radon is a colorless and odorless gas generated by the breakdown of radioactive radium, which in turn is the decay product of uranium, found in the Earth's crust. The radiation decay products ionize genetic material, causing mutations that sometimes become cancerous. Radon is the second-most common cause of lung cancer in the US, causing about 21,000 deaths each year. The risk increases 8–16% for every 100 Bq/m³ increase in the radon concentration. Radon gas levels vary by locality and the composition of the underlying soil and rocks. About one in 15 homes in the US has radon levels above the recommended guideline of 4 picocuries per liter (pCi/l) (148 Bq/m³).
Asbestos
Asbestos can cause a variety of lung diseases such as lung cancer. Tobacco smoking and exposure to asbestos together have synergistic effects on the development of lung cancer. In smokers who work with asbestos, the risk of lung cancer is increased 45-fold compared to the general population. Asbestos can also cause cancer of the pleura, called mesothelioma – which actually is different from lung cancer.
Air pollution
Outdoor air pollutants, especially chemicals released from the burning of fossil fuels, increase the risk of lung cancer. Fine particulates (PM2.5) and sulfate aerosols, which may be released in traffic exhaust fumes, are associated with a slightly increased risk. For nitrogen dioxide, an incremental increase of 10 parts per billion increases the risk of lung cancer by 14%. Outdoor air pollution is estimated to cause 1–2% of lung cancers.
Tentative evidence supports an increased risk of lung cancer from indoor air pollution in relation to the burning of wood, charcoal, dung, or crop residue for cooking and heating. Women who are exposed to indoor coal smoke have roughly twice the risk, and many of the by-products of burning biomass are known or suspected carcinogens. This risk affects about 2.4 billion people worldwide, and it is believed to result in 1.5% of lung cancer deaths.
Genetics
About 8% of lung cancer cases are caused by inherited (genetic) factors. In relatives of people who are diagnosed with lung cancer, the risk is doubled, likely due to a combination of genes. Polymorphisms on chromosomes 5, 6, and 15 have been identified and are associated with an increased risk of lung cancer. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms of the genes encoding the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) – CHRNA5, CHRNA3, and CHRNB4 – are of those associated with an increased risk of lung cancer, as well as RGS17 – a gene regulating G-protein signaling. Newer genetic studies, have identified 18 susceptibility loci achieving genome-wide significance. These loci highlight a heterogeneity in genetic susceptibility across the histological subtypes of lung cancer, again identifying the cholinergic nicotinic receptors, e.g. CHRNA2.
Other causes
Numerous other substances, occupations, and environmental exposures have been linked to lung cancer. The International Agency for Research on Cancer states that "sufficient evidence" exists to show that the following are carcinogenic in the lungs:
Some metals (aluminium production, cadmium and cadmium compounds, chromium(VI) compounds, beryllium and beryllium compounds, iron and steel founding, nickel compounds, arsenic and inorganic arsenic compounds, and underground hematite mining)
Some products of combustion (incomplete combustion, coal (indoor emissions from household coal burning), coal gasification, coal-tar pitch, coke production, soot, and diesel engine exhaust)
Ionizing radiation (X-ray and gamma)
Some toxic gases (methyl ether (technical grade), and bis-(chloromethyl) ether, sulfur mustard, MOPP (vincristine-prednisone-nitrogen mustard-procarbazine mixture) and fumes from painting)
Rubber production and crystalline silica dust
A small increase in the risk of lung cancer is seen in people affected by systemic sclerosis.
Pathogenesis
Similar to many other cancers, lung cancer is initiated by either the activation of oncogenes or the inactivation of tumor suppressor genes. Carcinogens cause mutations in these genes that induce the development of cancer.
Mutations in the K-ras proto-oncogene contribute to roughly 10–30% of lung adenocarcinomas. Nearly 4% of non-small-cell lung carcinomas involve an EML4-ALK tyrosine kinase fusion gene.
Epigenetic changes such as alteration of DNA methylation, histone tail modification, or microRNA regulation may result in the inactivation of tumor suppressor genes. Importantly, cancer cells develop resistance to oxidative stress, which enables them to withstand and exacerbate inflammatory conditions that inhibit the activity of the immune system against the tumor.
The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) regulates cell proliferation, apoptosis, angiogenesis, and tumor invasion. Mutations and amplification of EGFR are common in NSCLC, and they provide the basis for treatment with EGFR inhibitors. Her2/neu is affected less frequently. Other genes that are often mutated or amplified include c-MET, NKX2-1, LKB1, PIK3CA, and BRAF.
The cell lines of origin are not fully understood. The mechanism may involve the abnormal activation of stem cells. In the proximal airways, stem cells that express keratin 5 are more likely to be affected, typically leading to squamous-cell lung carcinoma. In the middle airways, implicated stem cells include club cells and neuroepithelial cells that express club-cell secretory protein. SCLC may originate from these cell lines or neuroendocrine cells, and it may express CD44.
Metastasis of lung cancer requires transition from epithelial to mesenchymal cell type. This may occur through the activation of signaling pathways such as Akt/GSK3Beta, MEK-ERK, Fas, and Par6.
Diagnosis
Performing a chest radiograph (x-ray) is one of the first investigative steps if a person reports symptoms that may be suggestive of lung cancer. The x-ray may reveal an obvious mass, the widening of the mediastinum (suggestive of spread to lymph nodes there), atelectasis (lung collapse), consolidation (pneumonia), or pleural effusion. Computed tomography (CT) imaging of the chest is often used for diagnosis and may reveal a spiculated mass which is highly suggestive of lung cancer. CT imaging is also used to provide more information about the type and extent of disease. Bronchoscopic or CT-guided biopsy is often used to sample the tumor for histopathology.
Lung cancer can often appear as a solitary pulmonary nodule on a chest radiograph. However, the differential diagnosis is wide and many other diseases can also give this appearance, including metastatic cancer, hamartomas, and infectious granulomas caused by tuberculosis, histoplasmosis, or coccidioidomycosis. Lung cancer can also be an incidental finding, as a solitary pulmonary nodule on a chest radiograph or CT scan done for an unrelated reason. The definitive diagnosis of lung cancer is based on the histological examination of the suspicious tissue in the context of the clinical and radiological features.
Clinical practice guidelines recommend specific frequencies (suggested intervals of time between tests) for pulmonary nodule surveillance. CT imaging is not suggested to be used for longer or more frequently than indicated in the clinical guidelines, as any additional surveillance exposes people to increased radiation and is costly.
Classification
Lung cancers are classified according to histological type. This classification is important for determining both the management and predicting outcomes of the disease. Lung cancers are carcinomas – malignancies that arise from epithelial cells. Lung carcinomas are categorized by the size and appearance of the malignant cells seen by a histopathologist under a microscope. For therapeutic purposes, two broad classes are distinguished: non-small-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) and small-cell lung carcinoma (SCLC).
Non-small-cell lung carcinoma
The three main subtypes of NSCLC are adenocarcinoma, squamous-cell carcinoma, and large-cell carcinoma. Rare subtypes include pulmonary enteric adenocarcinoma.
Nearly 40% of lung cancers are adenocarcinomas, which usually come from peripheral lung tissue. Although most cases of adenocarcinoma are associated with smoking, it is also the most common form of lung cancer among people who have smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetimes ("never-smokers") and ex-smokers with a modest smoking history. A subtype of adenocarcinoma, the bronchioloalveolar carcinoma, is more common in female never-smokers, and may have a better long-term survival.
Squamous-cell carcinoma causes about 30% of lung cancers. They typically occur close to large airways. A hollow cavity and associated cell death are commonly found at the center of the tumor.
About 10 to 15% of lung cancers are large-cell carcinoma. These are so named because the cancer cells are large, with excess cytoplasm, large nuclei, and conspicuous nucleoli.
Small-cell lung carcinoma
In SCLC, the cells contain dense neurosecretory granules (vesicles containing neuroendocrine hormones), which give this tumor an endocrine or paraneoplastic syndrome association. Most cases arise in the larger airways (primary and secondary bronchi). About 60–70% have extensive disease (which cannot be targeted within a single radiation therapy field) at presentation.
Others
Four main histological subtypes are recognised, although some cancers may contain a combination of different subtypes, such as adenosquamous carcinoma. Rare subtypes include carcinoid tumors, bronchial gland carcinomas, and sarcomatoid carcinomas.
Metastasis
The lungs are a common place for the spread of tumors from other parts of the body. These tumors are called metastases or secondary tumors. The most common appearance on chest x-ray is the presence of multiple nodules in the lower lobes.
Primary lung cancers also most commonly metastasize to the brain, bones, liver, and adrenal glands. Immunostaining of a biopsy usually helps determine the original source. The presence of Napsin-A, TTF-1, CK7, and CK20 help confirm the subtype of lung carcinoma. SCLC that originates from neuroendocrine cells may express CD56, neural cell adhesion molecule, synaptophysin, or chromogranin.
Staging
Lung cancer staging is an assessment of the degree of spread of the cancer from its original source. It is one of the factors affecting both the prognosis and the potential treatment of lung cancer.
The evaluation of NSCLC staging uses the TNM classification (tumor, node, metastasis). This is based on the size of the primary tumor, lymph node involvement, and distant metastasis.
Using the TNM descriptors, a group is assigned, ranging from occult cancer, through stages 0, IA (one-A), IB, IIA, IIB, IIIA, IIIB, and IV (four). This stage group assists with the choice of treatment and estimation of prognosis.
SCLC has traditionally been classified as "limited stage" (confined to one-half of the chest and within the scope of a single tolerable radiotherapy field) or "extensive stage" (more widespread disease). However, the TNM classification and grouping are useful in estimating prognosis.
For both NSCLC and SCLC, the two general types of staging evaluations are clinical staging and surgical staging. Clinical staging is performed before definitive surgery. It is based on the results of imaging studies (such as CT scans and PET scans) and biopsy results. Surgical staging is evaluated either during or after the operation. It is based on the combined results of surgical and clinical findings, including surgical sampling of thoracic lymph nodes.
Prevention
Smoking prevention and smoking cessation are effective ways of reducing the risk of lung cancer.
Tobacco control
While in most countries industrial and domestic carcinogens have been identified and banned, tobacco smoking is still widespread. Eliminating tobacco smoking is a primary goal in the prevention of lung cancer, and smoking cessation is an important preventive tool in this process.
Policy interventions to decrease passive smoking in public areas such as restaurants and workplaces have become more common in many Western countries. Bhutan has had a complete smoking ban since 2005 while India introduced a ban on smoking in public in October 2008. The World Health Organization has called for governments to institute a total ban on tobacco advertising to prevent young people from taking up smoking. They assess that such bans have reduced tobacco consumption by 16% where instituted.
Screening
Cancer screening uses medical tests to detect disease in large groups of people who have no symptoms. For individuals with high risk of developing lung cancer, computed tomography (CT) screening can detect cancer and give a person options to respond to it in a way that prolongs life. This form of screening reduces the chance of death from lung cancer by an absolute amount of 0.3% (relative amount of 20%). High-risk people are those age 55–74 who have smoked equivalent amount of a pack of cigarettes daily for 30 years including time within the past 15 years.
CT screening is associated with a high rate of falsely positive tests, which may result in unneeded treatment. For each accurate positive scan there are about 19 false positive scans. Other concerns include radiation exposure and the cost of testing along with follow up. Research has not found two other available testssputum cytology or chest radiograph (CXR) screening teststo have any benefit.
The United States Preventive Services Task Force recommends yearly screening using low-dose CT in those who have a total smoking history of 30 pack-years and are between 55 and 80 years old until a person has not been smoking for more than 15 years. Their recommendation excludes those with other health problems that would make treatment of lung cancer if found not an option. The English National Health Service was in 2014 re-examining the evidence for screening.
Other prevention strategies
The long-term use of supplemental vitamin A, B vitamins, vitamin D or vitamin E does not reduce the risk of lung cancer. Vitamin C supplementation might reduce the risk of lung cancer. Some studies have found vitamins A, B, and E may increase the risk of lung cancer in those who have a history of smoking.
Some studies suggest that people who eat food with a higher proportion of vegetables and fruit tend to have a lower risk, but this may be due to confoundingwith the lower risk actually due to the association of a high fruit and vegetables diet with less smoking. Several rigorous studies have not demonstrated a clear association between diet and lung cancer risk, although meta-analysis that accounts for smoking status may show benefit from a healthy diet.
Management
Treatment for lung cancer depends on the cancer's specific cell type, how far it has spread, and the person's performance status. Common treatments include palliative care, surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. Targeted therapy of lung cancer is growing in importance for advanced lung cancer. In addition, smoking cessation and exercise is sometimes suggested.
Surgery
If investigations confirm NSCLC, the stage is assessed to determine whether the disease is localized and amenable to surgery or if it has spread to the point where it cannot be cured surgically. CT scan and PET-CT, noninvasive tests, can be used to help rule out malignancy or mediastinal lymph node involvement. If mediastinal lymph node involvement is suspected using PET-CT, the nodes can be sampled (using a biopsy) to assist staging, a PET-CT scan is not accurate enough to be used alone. Techniques used for obtaining a sample include transthoracic needle aspiration, transbronchial needle aspiration (with or without endobronchial ultrasound), endoscopic ultrasound with needle aspiration, mediastinoscopy, and thoracoscopy. Blood tests and pulmonary function testing are used to assess whether a person is well enough for surgery. If pulmonary function tests reveal poor respiratory reserve, surgery may not be possible.
In most cases of early-stage NSCLC, removal of a lobe of lung (lobectomy) is the surgical treatment of choice. In people who are unfit for a full lobectomy, a smaller sublobar excision (wedge resection) may be performed. However, wedge resection has a higher risk of recurrence than lobectomy. Radioactive iodine brachytherapy at the margins of wedge excision may reduce the risk of recurrence. Rarely, removal of a whole lung (pneumonectomy) is performed. Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) and VATS lobectomy use a minimally invasive approach to lung cancer surgery. VATS lobectomy is equally effective compared to conventional open lobectomy, with less postoperative illness.
In SCLC, chemotherapy or radiotherapy is typically used, or sometimes both. However, the role of surgery in SCLC is being reconsidered. Surgery might improve outcomes when added to chemotherapy and radiation in early-stage SCLC.
The effectiveness of lung cancer surgery (resection) for people with stage I – IIA NSCLC is not clear, but weak evidence suggests that a combined approach of lung cancer resection and removing the mediastinal lymph nodes (mediastinal lymph node dissection) may improve survival compared to lung resection and a sample of mediastinal nodes (not a complete node dissection).
Radiotherapy
Radiotherapy is often given together with chemotherapy, and may be used with curative intent in people with NSCLC who are not eligible for surgery. This form of high-intensity radiotherapy is called radical radiotherapy. A refinement of this technique is continuous hyperfractionated accelerated radiotherapy (CHART), in which a high dose of radiotherapy is given in a short time period. Radiosurgery refers to the radiotherapy technique of giving a precise high-dose of radiotherapy that is guided by a computer. Postoperative (adjuvant) thoracic radiotherapy generally is not used after curative-intent surgery for NSCLC. Some people with mediastinal N2 lymph node involvement might benefit from post-operative radiotherapy.
For potentially curable SCLC cases treated with surgery, post-operative chest radiotherapy is recommended. The ideal timing of these therapies (the optimal time to give radiotherapy and chemotherapy for improving survival) is not known.
If cancer growth blocks a short section of bronchus, brachytherapy (localized radiotherapy) may be given directly inside the airway to open the passage. Compared to external beam radiotherapy, brachytherapy allows a reduction in treatment time and reduced radiation exposure to healthcare staff. Evidence for brachytherapy, however, is less than that for external beam radiotherapy.
Prophylactic cranial irradiation is a type of radiotherapy to the brain, used to reduce the risk of metastasis. PCI is used in SCLC. In limited-stage disease, PCI increases three-year survival from 15% to 20%; in extensive disease, one-year survival increases from 13% to 27%. For people who have NSCLC and a single brain metastasis, it is not clear if surgery is more effective than radiosurgery.
Recent improvements in targeting and imaging have led to the development of stereotactic radiation in the treatment of early-stage lung cancer. In this form of radiotherapy, high doses are delivered over a number of sessions using stereotactic targeting techniques. Its use is primarily in patients who are not surgical candidates due to medical comorbidities.
For both NSCLC and SCLC patients, smaller doses of radiation to the chest may be used for symptom control (palliative radiotherapy). The use of higher doses of radiotherapy for palliative care are not shown to prolong survival.
Chemotherapy
The chemotherapy regimen depends on the tumor type. SCLC, even relatively early-stage disease, is treated primarily with chemotherapy and radiation. In SCLC, cisplatin and etoposide are most commonly used. Combinations with carboplatin, gemcitabine, paclitaxel, vinorelbine, topotecan, and irinotecan are also used. In advanced NSCLC, chemotherapy improves survival and is used as first-line treatment, provided the person is well enough for the treatment. Typically, two drugs are used, of which one is often platinum-based (either cisplatin or carboplatin). Other commonly used drugs are gemcitabine, paclitaxel, docetaxel, pemetrexed, etoposide or vinorelbine. Platinum-based drugs and combinations that include platinum therapy do not appear to be more beneficial for prolonging survival compared to other nonplatinum medications, and may lead to a higher risk of serious adverse effects, such as nausea, vomiting, anaemia, and thrombocytopenia, especially in people over the age of 70. Evidence is insufficient to determine which chemotherapy approach is associated with the highest quality of life. Also, evidence is lacking to determine if treating people with NSCLC a second time when the first round of chemotherapy was not successful (second-line chemotherapy) causes more benefit or harm.
Adjuvant chemotherapy refers to the use of chemotherapy after apparently curative surgery to improve the outcome. In NSCLC, samples are taken of nearby lymph nodes during surgery to assist staging. If stage-II or -III disease is confirmed, adjuvant chemotherapy (including or not including postoperative radiotherapy) improves survival by 4% at five years. The combination of vinorelbine and cisplatin is more effective than older regimens. Adjuvant chemotherapy for people with stage IB cancer is controversial, as clinical trials have not clearly demonstrated a survival benefit. Chemotherapy before surgery in NSCLC that can be removed surgically may improve outcomes.
Chemotherapy may be combined with palliative care in the treatment of the NSCLC. In advanced cases, appropriate chemotherapy improves average survival over supportive care alone, as well as improving quality of life. With adequate physical fitness maintaining chemotherapy during lung cancer palliation offers 1.5 to 3 months of prolongation of survival, symptomatic relief, and an improvement in quality of life, with better results seen with modern agents. The NSCLC Meta-Analyses Collaborative Group recommends if the recipient wants and can tolerate treatment, then chemotherapy can be considered in advanced NSCLC.
Targeted and immunotherapy
Several drugs that target molecular pathways in lung cancer are available, especially for the treatment of advanced disease. Erlotinib, gefitinib, and afatinib inhibit tyrosine kinase at the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). These EGFR inhibitors may help delay the spread of cancer cells for people with EGFR M+ lung cancer and may improve a person's quality of life. EGFR inhibitors have not been shown to help people survive longer. For people with EGFR mutations, treatment with gefitinib may result in an improved quality of life compared to treatment with chemotherapy. Denosumab, a monoclonal antibody directed against receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa-B ligand, may be useful in the treatment of bone metastases.
Immunotherapy may be used for both SCLC and NSCLC. NSCLC cells expressing programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) could interact with programmed death receptor 1 (PD-1) expressed on the surface of T cells, and result in decreased tumor cell kill by the immune system. Atezolizumab is an anti PD-L1 monoclonal antibody. Nivolumab and Pembrolizumab are anti PD-1 monoclonal antibodies. Ipilimumab is a monoclonal antibody that targets Cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein 4 (CTLA-4) on the surface of T cells. Bevacizumab is a monoclonal antibody that targets vascular endothelial growth factor in the circulation, and functions as an angiogenesis inhibitor. Multiple phase 3 clinical trials utilizing immunotherapy in the first line for treatment of NSCLC were published, including Pembrolizumab in KEYNOTE-024, KEYNOTE-042, KEYNOTE-189 and KEYNOTE-407; Nivolumab and Ipilimumab in CHECKMATE-227 and CHECKMATE 9LA; and Atezolizumab in IMpower110, IMpower130 and IMpower150.
Vaccine-based immunotherapy treatment after surgery or radiotherapy may not lead to improved survival for people with stages I-III NSCLC.
Bronchoscopy
Several treatments can be provided via bronchoscopy for the management of airway obstruction or bleeding. If an airway becomes obstructed by cancer growth, options include rigid bronchoscopy, balloon bronchoplasty, stenting, and microdebridement. Laser photosection involves the delivery of laser light inside the airway via a bronchoscope to remove the obstructing tumor.
Palliative care
Palliative care when added to usual cancer care benefits people even when they are still receiving chemotherapy. These approaches allow additional discussion of treatment options and provide opportunities to arrive at well-considered decisions. Palliative care may avoid unhelpful but expensive care not only at the end of life, but also throughout the course of the illness. For individuals who have more advanced disease, hospice care may also be appropriate.
Noninvasive interventions
The most effective intervention for avoiding death from lung cancer is to stop smoking; even people who already have lung cancer are encouraged to stop smoking. There is no clear evidence which smoking cessation program is most effective for people who have been diagnosed with lung cancer.
Some weak evidence suggests that certain supportive care interventions (noninvasive) that focus on well-being for people with lung cancer may improve quality of life. Interventions such as nurse follow-ups, psychotherapy, psychosocial therapy, and educational programs may be beneficial, however, the evidence is not strong (further research is needed). Counseling may help people cope with emotional symptoms related to lung cancer. Reflexology may be effective in the short-term, however more research is needed. No evidence has been found to suggest that nutritional interventions or exercise programs for a person with lung cancer result in an improvement in the quality of life that are relevant or last very long.
Exercise training may benefit people with NSCLC who are recovering from lung surgery. In addition, exercise training may benefit people with NSCLC who have received radiotherapy, chemotherapy, chemoradiotherapy, or palliative care. Exercise training before lung cancer surgery may also improve outcomes. It is unclear if exercise training or exercise programs are beneficial for people who have advanced lung cancer. A home-based component in a personalized physical rehabilitation program may be useful for recovery. It is unclear if home-based prehabilitation (before surgery) leads to less adverse events or hospitalization time. Physical rehabilitation with a home-based component may improve recovery after treatment and overall lung health.
Prognosis
Of all people with lung cancer in the US, around 17% to 20% survive for at least five years after diagnosis. In England and Wales, between 2013 and 2017, overall five-year survival for lung cancer was estimated at 13.8%. Outcomes are generally worse in the developing world. Due to late detection, the stage of lung cancer is often advanced at the time of diagnosis. At presentation, about one-third of cases of NSCLC have metastatic disease, and 60–70% of SCLC have extensive-stage disease. Survival for lung cancer falls as the stage at diagnosis becomes more advanced; the English data suggest that around 70% of patients survive at least a year when diagnosed at the earliest stage, but this falls to just 14% for those diagnosed with the most advanced disease (stage IV).
Prognostic factors in NSCLC include presence of pulmonary symptoms, large tumor size (>3 cm), nonsquamous cell type (histology), degree of spread (stage) and metastases to multiple lymph nodes, and vascular invasion. For people with inoperable disease, outcomes are worse in those with poor performance status and weight loss of more than 10%. Prognostic factors in small cell lung cancer include performance status, biological sex, stage of disease, and involvement of the central nervous system or liver at the time of diagnosis.
For NSCLC, the best prognosis is achieved with complete surgical resection of stage-IA disease, with up to 70% five-year survival. People with extensive-stage SCLC have an average five-year survival rate less than 1%. The average survival time for limited-stage disease is 20 months, with a five-year survival rate of 20%. The prognosis of patients with NSCLC improved significantly in the last years with the introduction of immunotherapy. Patients with tumor PDL-1 expressed over half or more of the tumor cells achieved a median overall survival of 30 months with pembrolizumab. Multiple phase 3 trials providing immunotherapy in the first line for patients with non-small cell lung cancer have been published.
According to data provided by the National Cancer Institute, the median age at diagnosis of lung cancer in the US is 70 years, and the median age at death is 72 years. In the US, people with medical insurance are more likely to have a better outcome.
Epidemiology
Worldwide, lung cancer is the most common cancer among men for both incidence and mortality, and among women has the third-highest incidence (after breast and colorectal cancers) and second-highest mortality (after breast cancer). In 2020, 2.2 million new cases were found worldwide, and 1.8 million deaths were due to lung cancer, representing 18.0% of all deaths from cancer. The highest rates are in Micronesia, Polynesia, Europe, Asia, North America and Europe. Rates in Africa and Central America are much lower.
People who have a long history of smoking have the highest risk of developing lung cancer, with the risk increasing with duration of smoking. The incidence in men rose until the mid 1980s, and has declined since then. In women, the incidence rose until the late 1990s, and has since been stable.
For every 3–4 million cigarettes smoked, one lung cancer death can occur. The influence of "Big Tobacco" plays a significant role in smoking. Young nonsmokers who see tobacco advertisements are more likely to smoke. The role of passive smoking is increasingly being recognized as a risk factor for lung cancer, resulting in policy interventions to decrease the undesired exposure of nonsmokers to others' tobacco smoke.
From the 1960s, the rates of lung adenocarcinoma started to rise in relation to other kinds of lung cancer, partially due to the introduction of filter cigarettes. The use of filters removes larger particles from tobacco smoke, thus reducing deposition in larger airways. However, the smoker has to inhale more deeply to receive the same amount of nicotine, increasing particle deposition in small airways where adenocarcinoma tends to arise. Rates of lung adenocarcinoma continues to rise.
United States
In the US, both black men and black women have a higher incidence. The lifetime risk of developing lung cancer is 8% in men and 6% in women.
Also in the US, military veterans have a 25–50% higher rate of lung cancer primarily due to higher rates of smoking. During World War II and the Korean War, asbestos also played a role, and Agent Orange may have caused some problems during the Vietnam War.
United Kingdom
Lung cancer is the third-most common cancer in the UK (47,968 people were diagnosed with the disease in 2017), and it is the most common cause of cancer-related death (around 34,600 people died in 2018).
Other countries
Lung cancer rates are currently lower in developing countries. With increased smoking in developing countries, the rates are expected to increase in the next few years, notably in both China and India.
History
Lung cancer was uncommon before the advent of cigarette smoking; it was not even recognized as a distinct disease until 1761. Different aspects of lung cancer were described further in 1810. Malignant lung tumors made up only 1% of all cancers seen at autopsy in 1878, but had risen to 10–15% by the early 1900s. Case reports in the medical literature numbered only 374 worldwide in 1912, but a review of autopsies showed the incidence of lung cancer had increased from 0.3% in 1852 to 5.66% in 1952. In Germany in 1929, physician Fritz Lickint recognized the link between smoking and lung cancer, which led to an aggressive antismoking campaign. The British Doctors' Study, published in the 1950s, was the first solid epidemiological evidence of the link between lung cancer and smoking. As a result, in 1964, the Surgeon General of the United States recommended smokers should stop smoking.
The connection with radon gas was first recognized among miners in the Ore Mountains near Schneeberg, Saxony. Silver has been mined there since 1470, and these mines are rich in uranium, with its accompanying radium and radon gas. Miners developed a disproportionate amount of lung disease, eventually recognized as lung cancer in the 1870s. Despite this discovery, mining continued into the 1950s, due to the USSR's demand for uranium. Radon was confirmed as a cause of lung cancer in the 1960s.
The first successful pneumonectomy for lung cancer was performed in 1933. Palliative radiotherapy has been used since the 1940s. Radical radiotherapy, initially used in the 1950s, was an attempt to use larger radiation doses in patients with relatively early-stage lung cancer, but who were otherwise unfit for surgery. In 1997, CHART was seen as an improvement over conventional radical radiotherapy. With SCLC, initial attempts in the 1960s at surgical resection and radical radiotherapy were unsuccessful. In the 1970s, successful chemotherapy regimens were developed.
Research directions
The search for new treatment options continues. Many clinical trials involving radiotherapy, surgery, EGFR inhibitors, microtubule inhibitors and immunotherapy are currently underway.
Research directions for lung cancer treatment include immunotherapy, which encourages the body's immune system to attack the tumor cells, epigenetics, and new combinations of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, both on their own and together. Many of these new treatments work through immune checkpoint blockade, disrupting cancer's ability to evade the immune system.
Ipilimumab blocks signaling through a receptor on T cells known as CTLA-4, which dampens down the immune system. It has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for treatment of melanoma, and is undergoing clinical trials for both NSCLC and SCLC.
Other immunotherapy treatments interfere with the binding of programmed cell death 1 (PD-1) protein with its ligand PD-1 ligand 1 (PD-L1), and have been approved as first- and subsequent-line treatments for various subsets of lung cancers. Signaling through PD-1 inactivates T cells. Some cancer cells appear to exploit this by expressing PD-L1 in order to switch off T cells that might recognise them as a threat. Monoclonal antibodies targeting both PD-1 and PD-L1, such as pembrolizumab, nivolumab, atezolizumab, and durvalumab are currently in clinical trials for treatment for lung cancer.
Epigenetics is the study of small molecular modificationsor "tags"that bind to DNA and modify gene expression levels. Targeting these tags with drugs can kill cancer cells. Early-stage research in NSCLC using drugs aimed at epigenetic modifications shows that blocking more than one of these tags can kill cancer cells with fewer side effects. Studies also show that giving people these drugs before standard treatment can improve its effectiveness. Clinical trials are underway to evaluate how well these drugs kill lung cancer cells in humans. Several drugs that target epigenetic mechanisms are in development. Histone deacetylase inhibitors in development include valproic acid, vorinostat, belinostat, panobinostat, entinostat, and romidepsin. DNA methyltransferase inhibitors in development include decitabine, azacytidine, and hydralazine.
The TRACERx project is looking at how NSCLC develops and evolves, and how these tumors become resistant to treatment. The project will look at tumor samples from 850 people with NSCLC at various stages including diagnosis, after first treatment, post-treatment, and relapse. By studying samples at different points of tumor development, the researchers hope to identify the changes that drive tumor growth and resistance to treatment. The results of this project will help scientists and doctors gain a better understanding of NSCLC and potentially lead to the development of new treatments for the disease.
For lung cancer cases that develop resistance to epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) tyrosine kinase inhibitors, new drugs are in development. EGFR inhibitors include erlotinib, gefitinib, afatinib and icotinib (the last one is only available in China). An alternative signaling pathway, c-Met, can be inhibited by tivantinib and onartuzumab. New ALK inhibitors include crizotinib and ceritinib. If the MAPK/ERK pathway is involved, the BRAF kinase inhibitor dabrafenib and the MAPK/MEK inhibitor trametinib may be beneficial.
The PI3K pathway has been investigated as a target for lung cancer therapy. The most promising strategies for targeting this pathway seem to be selective inhibition of one or more members of the class I PI3Ks, and co-targeted inhibition of this pathway with others such as MEK.
Lung cancer stem cells are often resistant to conventional chemotherapy and radiotherapy. This may lead to relapse after treatment. New approaches target protein or glycoprotein markers that are specific to the stem cells. Such markers include CD133, CD90, ALDH1A1, CD44, and ABCG2. Signaling pathways such as Hedgehog, Wnt, and Notch are often implicated in the self-renewal of stem cell lines. Thus, treatments targeting these pathways may help to prevent relapse.
See also
Recurrence of lung cancer
References
External links
Causes of death
Health effects of tobacco
Wikipedia medicine articles ready to translate (full) | [
0.16506582498550415,
0.49112990498542786,
-0.5778369307518005,
-0.12627315521240234,
0.8552151322364807,
-0.21360990405082703,
-0.11847105622291565,
0.3865961730480194,
-0.07845861464738846,
-0.717165470123291,
-0.21670085191726685,
0.45111319422721863,
-0.43893375992774963,
0.495716333389... |
18452 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists%20of%20office-holders | Lists of office-holders | These are lists of incumbents (individuals holding offices or positions), including heads of states or of subnational entities.
A historical discipline, archontology, focuses on the study of past and current office holders.
Incumbents may also be found in the countries' articles (main article and "Politics of") and the list of national leaders, recent changes in 2020 in politics and government, and past leaders on State leaders by year and Colonial governors by year.
Various articles group lists by title, function or topic: e.g. abdication, assassinated persons, cabinet (government), chancellor, ex-monarchs (20th century), head of government, head of state, lieutenant governor, mayor, military commanders, minister (and ministers by portfolio below), order of precedence, peerage, president, prime minister, Reichstag participants (1792), secretary of state.
Heads of international organizations
President of the European Council
President of the European Commission
United Nations Secretary-General
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
International Monetary Fund Managing Directors
Director-General of the World Trade Organization
NATO Secretaries General
FIFA presidents
International Olympic Committee Presidents
Heads of state or government
Africa
Eastern Africa
Burundi: Rulers of Burundi
Comoros:
Rulers of Comoros
Sultans on the Comoros
Kenya: Rulers of Kenya
Madagascar: Rulers of Madagascar
Monarchs of Madagascar (until 1897)
Colonial Heads of Madagascar
List of presidents of Madagascar
Malawi (former Nyasaland, former British Central Africa Protectorate)
Heads of state of Malawi
Heads of government of Malawi
Colonial heads of Malawi (Nyasaland)
Rulers of Malawi
Rulers of Nkamanga
Rulers of the Ngoni Dynasty of Jere (Qeko)
Rulers of the Ngoni Dynasty of Maseko (Gomani)
Mauritius
Queen of Mauritius
Presidents of Mauritius
Governors-General of Mauritius
Prime Ministers of Mauritius
Mozambique
Heads of state of Mozambique
Heads of government of Mozambique
Heads of National Resistance Government of Mozambique
Colonial heads of Mozambique
Colonial heads of Delagoa Bay
Rwanda
Kings of Rwanda
Presidents of Rwanda
Prime Ministers of Rwanda
Seychelles
Presidents of Seychelles
Tanzania
Presidents of Tanzania
Prime Ministers of Tanzania
Presidents of Zanzibar
Prime Ministers of Zanzibar
Governors-General of Tanganyika
Presidents of Tanganyika
Sultans of Zanzibar
Uganda
Governors-General of Uganda
Presidents of Uganda
Prime Ministers of Uganda
Kings of Nkole
Kings of Buganda
Zambia
Presidents of Zambia
Zimbabwe
Munhumutapa emperors
Prime Ministers of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland
Prime Ministers of Rhodesia
Presidents of Rhodesia
Presidents of Zimbabwe
Horn of Africa
Djibouti: Rulers of Djibouti
Eritrea: Rulers of Eritrea
Ethiopia: Rulers of Ethiopia
Somalia: Presidents of Somalia
Somaliland: Presidents of Somaliland
Middle Africa
Angola
Heads of state of Angola (see also: Presidents of Angola
Heads of government of Angola (see also: Prime Minister of Angola
List of current Angolan ministers
Colonial heads of Angola
Heads of state of the Democratic People's Republic of Angola
Heads of government of the Democratic People's Republic of Angola
Heads of state of Cabinda
Heads of government of Cabinda
Colonial and provincial heads of Cabinda
Cameroon
Heads of state of Cameroon
Heads of government of Cameroon
Colonial heads of British Cameroon (Cameroons)
Heads of government of British Cameroon (Cameroons)
Colonial heads of French Cameroon (Cameroun)
Heads of government of French Cameroon (Cameroun)
Colonial heads of German Cameroon (Kamerun)
Colonial heads of Ambas Bay (Victoria Colony)
Rulers of Bamoun (Mum)
Rulers of Mandara
Central African Republic
Heads of state of the Central African Republic (and Central African Empire)
Heads of government of the Central African Republic (and Central African Empire)
Colonial heads of Central Africa (Oubangui-Chari)
Chad
Heads of state of Chad
Heads of government of Chad
Colonial heads of Chad
Rulers of Baguirmi
Rulers of Wada’i
Kanem-Bornu emperors
Congo, Democratic Republic of the (Zaire/'Congo-Kinshasa')
Heads of state of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Heads of government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Heads of state of the Congo Free State
Colonial heads of Congo
Rulers of Katanga
Rulers of Kuba
Rulers of Luba
Rulers of Ruund (Luunda)
Rulers of Kasongo Luunda (Yaka)
Rulers of Kongo
Kongo
Rulers of Kongo
Congo, Republic of the (Congo-Brazzaville)
Heads of state of the Republic of the Congo
Heads of government of the Republic of the Congo
Colonial heads of French Equatorial Africa
Equatorial Guinea
Heads of state of Equatorial Guinea
Heads of government of Equatorial Guinea
Colonial heads of Equatorial Guinea (Fernando Poo/Spanish Guinea)
Gabon
Heads of state of Gabon
Heads of government of Gabon
Colonial heads of Gabon
Rulers of Orungu
São Tomé and Príncipe
Heads of state of São Tomé and Príncipe
Heads of government of São Tomé and Príncipe
Presidents of the Regional Government of Príncipe
Colonial Heads of São Tomé and Príncipe
Northern Africa
Algeria
People's Democratic Republic of Algeria
Heads of state of Algeria
Heads of government of Algeria (see also: Prime Ministers of Algeria
French Algeria (French departements)
French Governors of Algeria
Ottoman regency of Algiers
Ottoman Pashas and Deys of the Regency of Algiers
Tlemcen (Western Algeria) before the Ottomans
Ziyanid dynasty
Western Ifriqiya (Eastern Algeria) before the Ottomans
Hammadid dynasty
Egypt
Rulers of Egypt
Heads of government of Egypt
Colonial heads of Egypt
Pharaohs
Egyptian dynasties
Bahri dynasty of Egypt
Burji dynasty of Egypt
Ayyubid dynasty
Fatimid Caliphs
Monarchs of the Muhammad Ali Dynasty
Libya
Heads of state of Libya
Heads of government of Libya
Colonial heads of Libya
Colonial Heads of Tripolitania
Colonial heads of Cyrenaica
Colonial heads of Fezzan
Governors of Spanish and Hospitaller Tripoli
Rulers of Ottoman Libya
Chiefs of the Senussi order
Cyrene: Kings of Cyrene
Morocco
List of rulers of Morocco
Heads of government of Morocco
French Resident Ministers in Morocco
Spanish High Commissioners in Morocco
Administrators of the Tangier International Zone
Alaouite dynasty
Saadi dynasty
Wattasid dynasty
Marinid dynasty
Almohad dynasty
Almoravid dynasty
Idrisid dynasty
Presidents of Western Sahara
Sudan (formerly Anglo-Egyptian -)
Presidents of Sudan
Prime Ministers of Sudan
Presidents of Southern Sudan
Vice-Presidents of Southern Sudan
Kings of Makuria
Kings of Sennar
Kush
Kushite Kings
List of Egyptian viceroys of Kush
Tunisia
Presidents of Tunisia
Prime Ministers of Tunisia
Beys of Tunis
Hafsid dynasty
Zirid dynasty
Aghlabid dynasty
Carthage: Kings of Carthage
Southern Africa
Botswana
Heads of state of Botswana
Heads of government of Botswana
Colonial heads of Botswana (Bechuanaland)
Rulers of baKgatla
Rulers of baKwêna
Rulers of Balete (baMalete)
Rulers of baNgwaketse
Rulers of Bangwato (bamaNgwato)
Rulers of baRôlông
Rulers of baTawana
Rulers of baTlôkwa
Lesotho
Kings of Lesotho
Heads of government of Lesotho
Namibia
Presidents of Namibia
Prime Ministers of Namibia
South Africa
List of Bhaca kings
List of Hlubi Kings
List of Mpondo Kings
List of Mpondomise Kings
List of Ndebele Kings
List of Thembu Kings
List of Xhosa Kings & Chiefs
List of Zulu kings
Governors-General of South Africa
State President of South Africa
Prime Ministers of South Africa
Homelands Leaders:
Heads of state of Bophuthatswana
Heads of state of Ciskei
Chief Ministers of Gazankulu
Chief Ministers of KaNgwane
Chief Ministers of KwaNdebele
Chief Ministers of KwaZulu
Chief Ministers of Lebowa
Chief Ministers of QwaQwa
Heads of government of Transkei
Heads of state of Transkei
Heads of state of Venda
President of South Africa
South African Premiers
Swaziland
Kings of Swaziland
Heads of government of Swaziland
Western Africa
Benin (former Dahomey)
Heads of state of Benin
Heads of government of Benin
Colonial heads of Benin (Dahomey and Porto-Novo)
Colonial heads of São João Baptista de Ajudá
Rulers of Hogbonu (Ajashe/Porto-Novo)
Bariba (Borgu) states
Rulers of the Bariba state of Kandi
Rulers of the Bariba state of Kwande
Rulers of the Bariba state of Nikki
Rulers of the Bariba state of Paraku
Berba states
Rulers of the Berba state of Gwande
Ewe states
Rulers of the Ewe state of Agwe
Fon states
Rulers of the Fon state of Alada (Allada)
Rulers of the Fon state of Danhome (Agbome) (Dahomey)
Rulers of the Fon state of Savi Hweda
Gurmanche states
Rulers of the Gurmanche state of Jugu (Sugu)
Mahi states
Rulers of the Mahi state of Fitta
Rulers of the Mahi state of Savalu
Yoruba states
Rulers of the Yoruba state of Dassa
Rulers of the Yoruba state of Icha
Rulers of the Yoruba state of Ketu
Rulers of the Yoruba state of Sabe
Burkina Faso (former Upper Volta)
Heads of state of Burkina Faso
Heads of government of Burkina Faso (see also: Prime Minister of Burkina Faso )
Colonial heads of Burkina Faso (Upper Volta)
List of rulers of Liptako
Mossi States:-
Rulers of the Mossi state of Gurunsi
Rulers of the Mossi state of Gwiriko
Rulers of the Mossi state of Tenkodogo
Rulers of the Mossi state of Wogodogo
Rulers of the Mossi state of Yatenga
Rulers of the Gurma Mossi state of Bilanga
Rulers of the Gurma Mossi state of Bilayanga
Rulers of the Gurma Mossi state of Bongandini
Rulers of the Gurma Mossi state of Con
Rulers of the Gurma Mossi state of Macakoali
Rulers of the Gurma Mossi state of Nungu
Rulers of the Gurma Mossi state of Piela
Cape Verde
Heads of state of Cape Verde
Heads of government of Cape Verde (see also: Prime Minister of Cape Verde )
Colonial heads of Cape Verde
Ivory Coast
Heads of state of Ivory Coast
Heads of government of Ivory Coast
Colonial heads of Ivory Coast
The Gambia
Heads of state of the Gambia (see also Governors-General of the Gambia)
Heads of government of the Gambia
Colonial Heads of the Gambia
Ghana: Rulers of Ghana
Heads of state of Ghana
Emperors of Ghana
Guinea
Heads of state of Guinea
Heads of government of Guinea
Colonial heads of Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Heads of state of Guinea-Bissau
Heads of government of Guinea-Bissau
Colonial heads of Portuguese Guinea
Colonial heads of Bissau
Colonial heads of Cacheu
Liberia
Presidents of Liberia
Agents and Governors of Liberia
Colonial heads of Maryland
Colonial heads of Mississippi
Colonial Heads of Port Cresson and Bassa Cove
Mali (former French Sudan)
Heads of state of Mali
Heads of government of Mali
Colonial heads of Mali
Emperors of Mali, see Mali Empire
Kings of Mali, see Mansa
Songhai emperors, see Songhai Empire
Mauritania
Heads of state of Mauritania
Heads of government of Mauritania
Colonial heads of Mauritania
Niger
Heads of state of Niger
Heads of government of Niger
Nigeria
Governors-General of Nigeria
Presidents of Nigeria
Heads of State of Biafra
List of Sultans of Sokoto
Senegal
Presidents of Senegal
Sierra Leone
Governors-General of Sierra Leone
Presidents of Sierra Leone
Heads of government of Sierra Leone
Togo
Heads of State of Togo
Heads of government of Togo
Americas
Caribbean
Antigua and Barbuda
Governors-General of Antigua and Barbuda
Prime Ministers of Antigua and Barbuda
Bahamas
Governors-General of the Bahamas
Heads of government of the Bahamas
Colonial heads of the Bahamas
Barbados
Presidents of Barbados
Prime Ministers of Barbados
Cuba
First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (de facto leader)
Presidents of Cuba
Premiers of Cuba
Colonial heads of Cuba
Dominica
Presidents of Dominica
Prime Ministers of Dominica
Dominican Republic
Presidents of the Dominican Republic
Grenada
Governors-General of Grenada
Prime Ministers of Grenada
Colonial heads of Grenada
Colonial heads of the Windward Islands
Haiti
List of colonial governors of Saint-Domingue
Presidents of Haiti
Jamaica
Governors-General of Jamaica
Prime Ministers of Jamaica
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Governors-General of Saint Kitts and Nevis
Prime Ministers of Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Governors-General of Saint Lucia
Prime Ministers of Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Governors-General of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Prime Ministers of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Trinidad and Tobago
Presidents of Trinidad and Tobago
Prime Ministers of Trinidad and Tobago
Central America
Belize
Governors-General of Belize
Prime Ministers of Belize
Maya rulers of Caracol, see Caracol
Costa Rica
Presidents of Costa Rica
El Salvador
Presidents of El Salvador
Guatemala
Presidents of Guatemala
Maya rulers of Tikal, see Tikal
Honduras
Presidents of Honduras
Maya kings of Xukpi, see Copán
Nicaragua
Presidents of Nicaragua
Panama
Presidents of Panama
North America
Canada
Office-holders of Canada
Mexico
Presidents of Mexico
Mexican monarchs
Aztec emperors, see Hueyi Tlatoani
Maya rulers of Calakmul, see Calakmul
Maya rulers of Palenque, see Palenque
Maya rulers of Tonina, see Tonina
Toltec rulers
Viceroys of New Spain
United States
Office-holders of the United States
South America
Argentina
Presidents of Argentina
Bolivia
Presidents of Bolivia
Brazil
Brazilian monarchs
Presidents of Brazil
Governors of Distrito Federal
Governors of Minas Gerais
Mayors of Belo Horizonte
Governors of Rio de Janeiro
Mayors of Rio de Janeiro
Governors of São Paulo
Chile
Presidents of Chile
Governors of Cardenal Caro
Mayors of Pichilemu
Kings of Easter Island
Royal Governors of Chile
Colombia
Presidents of Colombia
List of Governors of the Department of Quindío
Ecuador
Presidents of Ecuador
Heads of State of Ecuador
Guyana
Governors-General of Guyana
Presidents of Guyana
Prime Ministers of Guyana
Paraguay
Presidents of Paraguay
Peru
Presidents of Peru
Incan emperors, see Inca Empire
Viceroys of Peru
Suriname
Presidents of Suriname
Uruguay
Presidents of Uruguay
Venezuela
Presidents of Venezuela
Asia
Central Asia
Kazakhstan
Göktürk kagans
Presidents of Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Khans of Kara-Khitai, see Kara-Khitan Khanate
Presidents of Kyrgyzstan
Tajikistan
Presidents of Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Presidents of Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan
Presidents of Uzbekistan
Eastern Asia
China & dependencies
Chinese sovereigns
Table of Chinese monarchs
People's Republic of China
General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (paramount leader)
President of the People's Republic of China
Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China
Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress
Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference
Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China
Hong Kong
Governor of Hong Kong (under British rule, now replaced by Chief Executive)
Chief Executive of Hong Kong
Macau
Governor of Macau (under Portuguese rule, now replaced by Chief Executive)
Chief Executive of Macau
Republic of China (Taiwan)
President of the Republic of China
Premier of the Republic of China
Governors and Chairpersons of Taiwan, see Taiwan Province
Tibet
List of imperial ambans in Tibet
The Table of Chinese monarchs China
List of kings of Tibet China
Japan
Rulers of Japan (Emperors, Regents, Shōguns and Prime Ministers)
Emperors of Japan
Prime Ministers of Japan
Ashikaga shogunate
Kamakura shogunate
Tokugawa shogunate
Mongolia
Grand Khan of Mongolia
Presidents of Mongolia
Prime Minister of Mongolia
Korea
Rulers of Korea
North Korea
First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea (supreme leader)
Heads of state of North Korea
Premiers of North Korea
South Korea
Presidents of South Korea
Prime Ministers of South Korea
Rulers of Korea
Southeastern Asia
Brunei
Sultans of Brunei
Cambodia
King of Cambodia
Khmer emperors, see Khmer Empire
Presidents of Cambodia
Prime Ministers of Cambodia
East Timor
Presidents of East Timor
Prime Ministers of East Timor
Indonesia
Majapahit
Sailendra
Srivijaya
Kings of Mataram, see Kingdom of Mataram
Presidents of Indonesia
Prime Ministers of Indonesia
Laos
Kings of Laos
General Secretary of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party (de facto leader)
Presidents of Laos
Prime Ministers of Laos
Malaysia
Yang di-Pertuan Agong
Prime Ministers of Malaysia
Sultans of Malay states, example see Sultanate of Malacca
Myanmar
Kings of Myanmar
Presidents of Myanmar
Prime Ministers of Myanmar
State Counsellor of Myanmar
Philippines
Spanish Royal Governor of the Philippines
American Governor-General of the Philippines
Presidents of the Philippines
Datus, Rajas, and Sultans of various historical polities within the Philippine Islands, see History of the Philippines
Sultans of the Sulu Sultanate
List of sovereign state leaders in the Philippines
Singapore
President of Singapore
Prime Minister of Singapore
Thailand
Kings of Thailand
Chakri dynasty
Kings of Ayutthaya, see Ayutthaya kingdom
Kings of Haripunchai, see Haripunchai
Kings of Lanna, see Lanna
Kings of Sukhothai, see Sukhothai kingdom
Prime Ministers of Thailand
Presidents of the National Assembly of Thailand
Leaders of the Opposition of Thailand
Governors of Bangkok
Vietnam
Vietnamese dynasties
Kings of Vietnam
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (de facto leader)
President of Vietnam
Prime Minister of Vietnam
Chairman of National Assembly of Vietnam
Chief Justice of Vietnam
South Asia
Afghanistan
Afghan Transitional Administration personnel
Leaders of Afghanistan
Heads of Government of Afghanistan
Rulers of Kabul
Rulers of Herat
Rulers of Kandahar
Rulers of Peshawar
Rulers of Ghazni
Ghaznavid emperors, see Ghaznavid Empire
Kabul Shahi dynasty
Turk Shahi dynasty
Hindu Shahi dynasty
Bangladesh
Presidents of Bangladesh
Prime Ministers of Bangladesh
Bhutan
Kings of Bhutan
Prime Ministers of Bhutan
India
List of Indian monarchs
List of presidents of India
List of prime ministers of India
Governors, Lieutenant Governors and Administrators of Indian States and Union Territories
Chief Ministers of Indian States
Maldives
Sultans of the Maldives
Presidents of the Maldives
Nepal
List of monarchs of Nepal
Prime Ministers of Nepal
Pakistan
Presidents of Pakistan
Prime Ministers of Pakistan
Sri Lanka
Presidents of Sri Lanka
Prime Ministers of Sri Lanka
Western Asia
Armenia
Kings of Urartu
List of Armenian Kings
Kings of Kommagene
Shaddadid dynasty
President of Armenia
Prime Minister of Armenia
Azerbaijan
Arsacid dynasty of Caucasian Albania
Mihranids
Presidents of Azerbaijan
Prime Ministers of Azerbaijan
Presidents of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic
Bahrain
Monarchs of Bahrain
Cyprus
Kings of Cyprus
Officers of the Kingdom of Cyprus
Presidents of Cyprus
Presidents of Northern Cyprus
Prime Ministers of Northern Cyprus
Georgia
Lists of Georgian monarchs
Colchis
Kingdom of Abkhazia
Divan of the Abkhazian Kings
List of sovereigns of Kakheti
Kingdom of Imereti
Gurieli
Emirs of Tbilisi
List of leaders of Georgia
Prime Minister of Georgia
Chairman of the Government of Adjara
Presidents of Abkhazia
Prime Ministers of Abkhazia
Presidents of South Ossetia
Prime Ministers of South Ossetia
Iran
List of heads of state of Iran
List of monarchs of Persia
Supreme Leader of Iran
List of presidents of Iran
List of premiers of Iran
List of prime ministers of Iran
Iraq
Sumer
List of Mesopotamian dynasties
Akkad
Kings of Akkad
Gutian kings
Kings of Assyria
Kings of Babylon
Rulers of Adiabene
Abbasid Caliphs
Annazid dynasty
Kings of Iraq
Presidents of Iraq
Prime Ministers of Iraq
Civilian Administrator of Iraq
Israel
Prime Minister of Israel
President of Israel
Rulers of Israel and Judah
Kings of Israel
Kings of Judah
High Priests of Israel
Crusader States
Kings of Jerusalem
Vassals of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
Princes of Galilee
Lords of Toron
Counts of Jaffa and Ascalon
Lords of Ramla
Lords of Ibelin
Lords of Oultrejordain
Lords of Sidon
Officers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
Presidents of the Palestinian National Authority
Prime Ministers of the Palestinian National Authority
Jordan (formerly Transjordan)
Kings of Jordan
Rulers of Nabatea
Kuwait
Emirs of Kuwait
Al-Sabah
Lebanon
Presidents of Lebanon
Prime Ministers of Lebanon
Speakers of the Parliament of Lebanon
Oman (formerly Muscat (and Oman))
Sultans of Oman
Qatar
Emirs of Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Sharif of Mecca
Kings of Saudi Arabia
Syria
Presidents of Syria
Prime Ministers of Syria
Kings of Syria
Osroene
Rulers of Damascus
Zengid dynasty
Counts of Edessa
Princes of Antioch
Officers of the Principality of Antioch
Emirs of Shaizar
Ghassanid kings
Rulers of Aleppo
Hanilgalbat: Kings of Hanilgabat, see Hanilgalbat and Mitanni
Kings of Ugarit
Turkey
List of Hittite kings
Kings of Arzawa
Kings of Lydia
Kings of Bithynia
Kings of Cappadocia
Attalid Kings of Pergamon
Kings of Pontus
Pharnacid Dynasty
Kings of Galatia
Byzantine Emperors
Tetrarchy
List of Latin Emperors
Empire of Trebizond
Seljuk sultans of Rüm
Anatolian beyliks
List of Sultans of the Ottoman Empire
Prime Ministers of Turkey
Presidents of Turkey
United Arab Emirates
Prime Ministers of the United Arab Emirates
Presidents of the United Arab Emirates
Yemen
Presidents of Yemen
Prime Ministers of Yemen
Presidents of North Yemen
Prime Ministers of North Yemen
Presidents of South Yemen
Prime Ministers of South Yemen
Europe
Eastern Europe
Belarus
List of Belarusian rulers
Moldova
Presidents of Moldova
Prime Ministers of Moldova
Governors of Gagauzia
Presidents of Transnistria
Prime Ministers of Transnistria
Romania
Dacian kings
Rulers of Wallachia
Rulers of Moldavia
Rulers of Transylvania
List of heads of state of Romania
Prime Ministers of Romania
Russia and the Soviet Union
List of leaders of Russia
List of Russian monarchs
Leaders of the Soviet Union
President of the Soviet Union
Premier of the Soviet Union
Presidents of Russia
Prime Ministers of Russia
Khans of the Golden Horde
List of Kazan khans
List of Khazar rulers
Rulers of Kievan Rus'
Grand Prince of Tver
Ukraine
Rulers of Kievan Rus'
List of rulers of Halych and Volhynia
Hetmans of Ukrainian Cossacks
List of Crimean khans
Presidents of Ukraine
Prime Ministers of Ukraine
Northern Europe
Denmark
Danish monarchs
Prime Ministers of Denmark
List of legendary kings of Denmark
Faroe Islands
Faroese monarchs
Prime Ministers of the Faroe Islands
Governor of the Faroe Islands
Greenland
Prime Ministers of Greenland
Governors of Greenland
Inspectors of Greenland
Estonia
Estonian rulers
Heads of government of Estonia
Presidents of Estonia
State Elders of Estonia
Finland
Prime Ministers of Finland
Presidents of Finland
Finnish rulers
Provincial Governors of Finland
Premiers of Åland
Iceland
Presidents of Iceland
Prime Ministers of Iceland
Icelandic rulers
List of lawspeakers, see Lawspeaker
Ireland: Rulers of Ireland
Latvia
Presidents of Latvia
Prime Ministers of Latvia
Lithuania
List of Lithuanian rulers
Presidents of Lithuania
Prime Ministers of Lithuania
Norway
Norwegian monarchs
Line of succession to the Norwegian Throne
Legendary kings of Norway
Norwegian Prime Ministers
Sweden
Swedish monarchs
Prime Ministers of Sweden
Swedish Field Marshals
County Governors of Sweden
Swedish semi-legendary kings
Mythological kings of Sweden
Kings of Geatland
Blekinge Governors
Dalarna Governors
Gävleborg Governors
Gotland Governors
Halland Governors
Jämtland Governors
Jönköping Governors
Kalmar Governors
Kronoberg Governors
Norrbotten Governors
Skåne Governors
Stockholm Governors
Södermanland Governors
Uppsala Governors
Värmland Governors
Västerbotten Governors
Västernorrland Governors
Västmanland Governors
Västra Götaland Governors
Örebro Governors
Östergötland Governors
United Kingdom: List of rulers of the United Kingdom and predecessor states
Central Europe
Austria
Rulers of Austria
Emperors of Austria
Foreign Ministers of Austria-Hungary
Ministers-President of Austria
Federal Presidents of Austria
Chancellors of Austria (Vice Chancellors of Austria)
Habsburg
Babenberg
Margraves, dukes, and archdukes of Austria
Dukes of Styria, see Styria (duchy)
Dukes of Carinthia, see Carinthia (duchy)
Czech Republic
Rulers of Bohemia (Czech lands)
List of presidents of Czechoslovakia
List of prime ministers of Czechoslovakia
List of rulers of the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia
Presidents of the Czech Republic
Prime Ministers of the Czech Republic
Germany: Rulers of Germany
Hungary
List of Hungarian rulers
List of heads of state of Hungary
Prime Ministers of Hungary
Liechtenstein
Princes of Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein Heads of Government
Poland
Polish rulers
Dukes of Silesia
Dukes of Mazovia
Dukes of Greater Poland
Dukes of Łęczyca
Dukes of Sieradz
Duchy of Cieszyn
Dukes of Pomerania
List of prime ministers of Poland
List of Polish presidents
Slovakia
Presidents of Slovakia
Prime Ministers of Slovakia
Parliament leaders of Slovakia
Switzerland
Members of the Swiss Federal Council
Presidents of the Confederation
Heads of the Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sports, see Military of Switzerland
Heads of the Department of Foreign Affairs: see International relations of Switzerland
Heads of the Department of Home Affairs
Heads of the Federal Department of Finance
Heads of the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications
Heads of the Federal Department of Economic Affairs
Heads of the Federal Department of Justice and Police
Federal Chancellors of Switzerland
Presidents of the Swiss National Council
Presidents of the Swiss Council of States
Members of the Swiss National Council
Members of the Swiss Council of States
Chief Justices of the Swiss Supreme Court
Presidents of the Swiss Diet (before 1848)
Southern Europe
Albania
List of rulers of Illyria
Monarchs of Albania
Prime Ministers of Albania
Presidents of Albania
Andorra
Co-Princes of Andorra
Bishop of Urgell
Prime Ministers of Andorra
Bosnia and Herzegovina
List of rulers of Bosnia
Members of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Prime Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Thracian kings
Kings of Odrysia
Moesia: Roman governors of Lower Moesia
Bulgarian monarchs
Prime Ministers of Bulgaria
Presidents of Bulgaria
Croatia
List of rulers of Croatia
Presidents of Croatia
Prime Ministers of Croatia
Governors and Heads of State of Fiume
Heads of state of Krajina
Heads of government of Krajina
Greece: Rulers of Greece
Italy: Rulers of Italy
Kosovo
Presidents of Kosovo
Prime Minister of Kosovo
North Macedonia
Presidents of North Macedonia
Prime Ministers of North Macedonia
Malta
Presidents of Malta, 1974–present
Prime Ministers of Malta, 1921–1933, 1947–1958, 1962–present
Monarchs of Malta, 1091–1798, 1800–1974
Grand Masters of Malta, 1530–1798
Civil Commissioners of Malta, 1799–1813
Governors of Malta, 1813–1964
Governors-General of Malta, 1964–1974
Montenegro
Rulers of Montenegro
List of presidents of Montenegro
Prime Minister of Montenegro
Portugal
Portuguese monarchs
Dukes of Braganza
Princes of Beira
Prime Ministers of Portugal
Presidents of Portugal
List of Portuguese monarchs
San Marino
Captains Regent of San Marino, 1900–present
Captains Regent of San Marino, 1700–1900
Captains Regent of San Marino, 1500–1700
Captains Regent of San Marino, 1243–1500
Serbia
Presidents of Serbia
Prime Ministers of Serbia
President of the Government of Vojvodina
List of heads of state of Yugoslavia
Prime Minister of Yugoslavia
President of Serbia and Montenegro
Prime Minister of Serbia and Montenegro
Monarchs of Serbia
Princes of Zeta
Slovenia
Presidents of Slovenia
Prime Minister of Slovenia
Spain
Rulers of Spain
Presidents of Spain
Prime Ministers of Spain
Vatican City
Popes
Cardinal Secretary of State
Western Europe
Belgium
Belgian monarchs
Prime Ministers of Belgium
Governors of the Habsburg Netherlands
Minister-President of the Brussels-Capital Region
List of Ministers-President of the Flemish Community
List of Ministers-President of the Walloon Region
List of Ministers-President of the French Community
List of Ministers-President of the German-speaking Community
France: Rulers of France
Luxembourg
Prime Ministers of Luxembourg
Grand Duke of Luxembourg
List of Counts and Dukes of Luxembourg
Monaco
Princes of Monaco
Succession to the Monegasque Throne
Ministers of State
Prime Ministers of Monaco
Netherlands
Dutch monarchy
Prime Ministers of the Netherlands
List of rulers of the Netherlands
Governors of the Habsburg Netherlands
Low Countries (Netherlands, Belgium):
Rulers of East Frisia
Rulers of Frisia
Prince of Orange
Duke of Brabant
Lords and margraves of Bergen op Zoom
Dukes and counts of Guelders
Duke of Lower Lorraine
Count of Bouillon
Count of Flanders
Count of Hainaut
Count of Holland
Counts of Leuven
Bishop of Utrecht
Marquis of Namur
Oceania
Australasia
Australia
Monarchs of Australia
Governors-General of Australia
Cabinet of Australia
Prime Ministers of Australia
Deputy Prime Ministers of Australia
Attorneys General for Australia
Ministers for Defence
Ministers for Foreign Affairs
Treasurers of Australia
Premiers of New South Wales
Premiers of Queensland
Premiers of South Australia
Premiers of Tasmania
Premiers of Victoria
Premier of Western Australia
Heads of government of Norfolk Island
Chief Minister of the Northern Territory
Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory
Governors of New South Wales
Governors of Queensland
Governors of South Australia
Governors of Tasmania
Governors of Victoria
Governor of Western Australia
Administrative Heads of Norfolk Island
Administrator of the Northern Territory
Administrative Heads of Jervis Bay
Administrative Heads of Australian Antarctic Territory
Administrative Heads of Macquarie Island
Cocos Islands
King of the Cocos Islands
New Zealand
Governors-General of New Zealand
New Zealand Cabinet
Prime Ministers of New Zealand
Deputy Prime Ministers of New Zealand
Ministers of Finance
Ministers of Foreign Affairs
Speakers of the House of Representatives
Māori Kings and Queens
Mayors of Auckland
Mayors of Christchurch
Mayors of Dunedin
Mayors of Wellington
Melanesia
Fiji
Chairmen of Fiji's Great Council of Chiefs
Chief Justice of Fiji
Colonial Governors of Fiji
Fijian Heads of State
Foreign Ministers of Fiji
Governors-General of Fiji
House of Representatives of Fiji (abolished in 2013)
Ministers for Fijian Affairs
Presidents of Fiji
Prime Ministers of Fiji
Senate of Fiji (abolished in 2013)
Speakers of the Fijian House of Representatives
Vice-Presidents of Fiji
Papua New Guinea
Governor-General of Papua New Guinea
Prime Ministers of Papua New Guinea
Solomon Islands
Governor-General of Solomon Islands
Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands
Vanuatu
President of Vanuatu
Prime Minister of Vanuatu
Micronesia
Kiribati
President of Kiribati
Marshall Islands
Presidents of the Marshall Islands
Federated States of Micronesia
President of the Federated States of Micronesia
Nauru
President of Nauru
Palau
President of Palau
Polynesia
Cook Islands
Prime Ministers of the Cook Islands
Niue
Premiers of Niue
Samoa
Samoan Heads of State
Malietoa
Members of the Council of Deputies of Samoa
Prime Ministers of Samoa
Chief Justice of Samoa
Finance Ministers of Samoa
Foreign Affairs Ministers of Samoa
Health Ministers of Samoa
Education Ministers of Samoa
Public Works Ministers of Samoa
Fono Aoao Faitulafono o Samoa - current membership (2006)
Tonga
Kings of Tonga
Prime Ministers of Tonga
Tuvalu
Governor-Generals of Tuvalu
Prime Ministers of Tuvalu
Religious leaders
Christian
List of current Christian leaders
List of Patriarchs, Archbishops and Bishops
Catholic Church
List of popes
Grand Masters of the Knights Hospitaller
Priors of St John of Jerusalem in England
Anglican Communion
List of Archbishops of Canterbury
Anglican Primates
Other denominations
General of The Salvation Army
Moderator of the United Church of Canada
President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Patriarchs of Constantinople
Judaism
Chief Rabbis of the United Kingdom
Chief Rabbis of Israel
Hinduism
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
Arya Samaja
Islam
Caliphate
Shi'a Imam
Buddhist
Dalai Lama
Panchen Lama
Karmapa
Shamarpa
Sakya Trizin
Supreme Patriarch of Thailand
Supreme Patriarch of Cambodia
Other lists
List of the oldest living state leaders
Ministers by portfolio
Defence minister
Finance minister
Foreign minister
Interior minister
Justice minister
Municipal leaders
External links
Current Heads of State
Archontology, by Oleg Schultz
Rulers, by B. Schemmel - detailed lists (including regional and religious leaders) from 1700.
World Statesmen, by Ben Cahoon
World Political Leaders, by Roberto Ortiz de Zárate | [
0.15931254625320435,
0.39253243803977966,
-0.0810946375131607,
0.45193514227867126,
-0.27189165353775024,
0.10874253511428833,
0.11313866823911667,
0.5965561866760254,
-1.0012421607971191,
-0.21355316042900085,
-0.6591350436210632,
-0.029624080285429955,
0.02820584364235401,
0.390019893646... |
18453 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal%20Party%20of%20Australia | Liberal Party of Australia | The Liberal Party of Australia is a major centre-right political party in Australia, one of the two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-left Australian Labor Party. It was founded in 1944 as the successor to the United Australia Party.
The Liberal Party is the largest and dominant party in the Coalition with the National Party of Australia. Except for a few short periods, the Liberal Party and its predecessors have operated in similar coalitions at federal level since the 1920s. The party's leader is Scott Morrison, the incumbent prime minister, and its deputy leader is Josh Frydenberg. The pair were elected to their positions at the August 2018 Liberal leadership ballot, with Morrison and Frydenberg replacing Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop respectively. The Coalition has been in power since the 2013 federal election, forming the Abbott (2013–2015), Turnbull (2015–2018) and Morrison Governments.
The Liberal Party has a federal structure, with autonomous divisions in all six states and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). The Country Liberal Party (CLP) of the Northern Territory is an affiliate. Both the CLP and the Liberal National Party (LNP), the Queensland state division, were formed through mergers of the local Liberal and National parties. At state and territory level, the Liberal Party is in office in three states: New South Wales since 2011, Tasmania since 2014 and South Australia since 2018. The party is in opposition in the states of Victoria, Queensland, and Western Australia, and in both the ACT and Northern Territory.
The party's ideology has been referred to as conservative, liberal-conservative, conservative-liberal, and classical liberal. The Liberal Party tends to promote economic liberalism (which in the Australian usage refers to free markets and small government), and social conservatism. Two past leaders of the party, Sir Robert Menzies and John Howard, are Australia's two longest-serving Prime Ministers.
History
Party Foundation
The Liberals' immediate predecessor was the United Australia Party (UAP). More broadly, the Liberal Party's ideological ancestry stretched back to the anti-Labor groupings in the first Commonwealth parliaments. The Commonwealth Liberal Party was a fusion of the Free Trade (Anti-socialist) Party and the Protectionist Party in 1909 by the second prime minister, Alfred Deakin, in response to Labor's growing electoral prominence. The Commonwealth Liberal Party merged with several Labor dissidents (including Billy Hughes) to form the Nationalist Party of Australia in 1917. That party, in turn, merged with Labor dissidents to form the UAP in 1931.
The UAP had been formed as a new conservative alliance in 1931, with Labor defector Joseph Lyons as its leader. The stance of Lyons and other Labor rebels against the more radical proposals of the Labor movement to deal the Great Depression had attracted the support of prominent Australian conservatives. With Australia still suffering the effects of the Great Depression, the newly formed party won a landslide victory at the 1931 Election, and the Lyons Government went on to win three consecutive elections. It largely avoided Keynesian pump-priming and pursued a more conservative fiscal policy of debt reduction and balanced budgets as a means of stewarding Australia out of the Depression. Lyons' death in 1939 saw Robert Menzies assume the Prime Ministership on the eve of war. Menzies served as Prime Minister from 1939 to 1941 but resigned as leader of the minority World War II government amidst an unworkable parliamentary majority. The UAP, led by Billy Hughes, disintegrated after suffering a heavy defeat in the 1943 election. In New South Wales, the party merged with the Commonwealth Party to form the Democratic Party, In Queensland the state party was absorbed into the Queensland People's Party.
From 1942 onward Menzies had maintained his public profile with his series of "The Forgotten People" radio talks—similar to Franklin D. Roosevelt's "fireside chats" of the 1930s—in which he spoke of the middle class as the "backbone of Australia" but as nevertheless having been "taken for granted" by political parties.
Menzies called a conference of conservative parties and other groups opposed to the ruling Australian Labor Party, which met in Canberra on 13 October 1944 and again in Albury, New South Wales in December 1944. Outlining his vision for a new political movement, Menzies said:
The formation of the party was formally announced at Sydney Town Hall on 31 August 1945. It took the name "Liberal" in honour of the old Commonwealth Liberal Party. The new party was dominated by the remains of the old UAP; with few exceptions, the UAP party room became the Liberal party room. The Australian Women's National League, a powerful conservative women's organisation, also merged with the new party. A conservative youth group Menzies had set up, the Young Nationalists, was also merged into the new party. It became the nucleus of the Liberal Party's youth division, the Young Liberals. By September 1945 there were more than 90,000 members, many of whom had not previously been members of any political party.
In New South Wales, the New South Wales division of the Liberal Party replaced the Liberal Democratic Party and Democratic Party between January and April 1945. In Queensland, the Queensland People's Party did not become part of the Liberal Party until July 1949, when it became the Queensland division of the Liberal Party.
Menzies Era
After an initial loss to Labor at the 1946 election, Menzies led the Liberals to victory at the 1949 election, and the party stayed in office for a record 23 years— the longest unbroken run ever in government at the federal level. Australia experienced prolonged economic growth during the post-war boom period of the Menzies Government (1949–1966) and Menzies fulfilled his promises at the 1949 election to end rationing of butter, tea and petrol and provided a five-shilling endowment for first-born children, as well as for others. While himself an unashamed anglophile, Menzies' government concluded a number of major defence and trade treaties that set Australia on its post-war trajectory out of Britain's orbit; opened up Australia to multi-ethnic immigration; and instigated important legal reforms regarding Aboriginal Australians.
Menzies was strongly opposed to Labor's plans to nationalise the Australian banking system and, following victory at the 1949 election, secured a double dissolution election for April 1951, after the Labor-controlled Senate rejected his banking legislation. The Liberal-Country Coalition was returned with control of the Senate. The Government was re-elected again at the 1954 election; the formation of the anti-Communist Democratic Labor Party (DLP) and the consequent split in the Australian Labor Party early in 1955 helped the Liberals to secure another victory in December 1955. John McEwen replaced Arthur Fadden as leader of the Country Party in March 1958 and the Menzies-McEwen Coalition was returned again at elections in November 1958—their third victory against Labor's H. V. Evatt. The Coalition was narrowly returned against Labor's Arthur Calwell in the December 1961 election, in the midst of a credit squeeze. Menzies stood for office for the last time at the November 1963 election, again defeating Calwell, with the Coalition winning back its losses in the House of Representatives. Menzies went on to resign from parliament on 26 January 1966.
Menzies came to power the year the Communist Party of Australia had led a coal strike to improve pit miners' working conditions. That same year Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb, and Mao Zedong led the Communist Party of China to power in China; a year later came the invasion of South Korea by Communist North Korea. Anti-communism was a key political issue of the 1950s and 1960s. Menzies was firmly anti-Communist; he committed troops to the Korean War and attempted to ban the Communist Party of Australia in an unsuccessful referendum during the course of that war. The Labor Party split over concerns about the influence of the Communist Party over the Trade Union movement, leading to the foundation of the breakaway Democratic Labor Party whose preferences supported the Liberal and Country parties.
In 1951, during the early stages of the Cold War, Menzies spoke of the possibility of a looming third world war. The Menzies Government entered Australia's first formal military alliance outside of the British Commonwealth with the signing of the ANZUS Treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the United States in San Francisco in 1951. External Affairs Minister Percy Spender had put forward the proposal to work along similar lines to the NATO Alliance. The Treaty declared that any attack on one of the three parties in the Pacific area would be viewed as a threat to each, and that the common danger would be met in accordance with each nation's constitutional processes. In 1954, the Menzies Government signed the South East Asia Collective Defence Treaty (SEATO) as a South East Asian counterpart to NATO. That same year, Soviet diplomat Vladimir Petrov and his wife defected from the Soviet embassy in Canberra, revealing evidence of Russian spying activities; Menzies called a Royal Commission to investigate.
In 1956, a committee headed by Sir Keith Murray was established to inquire into the financial plight of Australia's universities, and Menzies injected funds into the sector under conditions which preserved the autonomy of universities.
Menzies continued the expanded immigration program established under Chifley, and took important steps towards dismantling the White Australia Policy. In the early-1950s, external affairs minister Percy Spender helped to establish the Colombo Plan for providing economic aid to underdeveloped nations in Australia's region. Under that scheme many future Asian leaders studied in Australia. In 1958, the government replaced the Immigration Act's arbitrarily applied European language dictation test with an entry permit system, that reflected economic and skills criteria. In 1962, Menzies' Commonwealth Electoral Act provided that all Indigenous Australians should have the right to enrol and vote at federal elections (prior to this, indigenous people in Queensland, Western Australia and some in the Northern Territory had been excluded from voting unless they were ex-servicemen). In 1949, the Liberals appointed Dame Enid Lyons as the first woman to serve in an Australian Cabinet. Menzies remained a staunch supporter of links to the monarchy and British Commonwealth but formalised an alliance with the United States and concluded the Agreement on Commerce between Australia and Japan which was signed in July 1957 and launched post-war trade with Japan, beginning a growth of Australian exports of coal, iron ore and mineral resources that would steadily climb until Japan became Australia's largest trading partner.
Menzies retired in 1966 as Australia's longest-serving Prime Minister.
Holt Government
Harold Holt replaced the retiring Robert Menzies in 1966 and the Holt Government went on to win 82 seats to Labor's 41 at the 1966 election. Holt remained Prime Minister until 19 December 1967, when he was declared presumed dead two days after disappearing in rough surf in which he had gone for a swim. As of 2020, his body has still not been found.
Holt increased Australian commitment to the growing War in Vietnam, which met with some public opposition. His government oversaw conversion to decimal currency. Holt faced Britain's withdrawal from Asia by visiting and hosting many Asian leaders and by expanding ties to the United States, hosting the first visit to Australia by an American president, his friend Lyndon B. Johnson. Holt's government introduced the Migration Act 1966, which effectively dismantled the White Australia Policy and increased access to non-European migrants, including refugees fleeing the Vietnam War. Holt also called the 1967 Referendum which removed the discriminatory clause in the Australian Constitution which excluded Aboriginal Australians from being counted in the census – the referendum was one of the few to be overwhelmingly endorsed by the Australian electorate (over 90% voted "Yes"). By the end of 1967, the Liberals' initially popular support for the war in Vietnam was causing increasing public protest.
Gorton Government
The Liberals chose John Gorton to replace Holt. Gorton, a former World War II Royal Australian Air Force pilot, with a battle scarred face, said he was "Australian to the bootheels" and had a personal style which often affronted some conservatives.
The Gorton Government increased funding for the arts, setting up the Australian Council for the Arts, the Australian Film Development Corporation and the National Film and Television Training School. The Gorton Government passed legislation establishing equal pay for men and women and increased pensions, allowances and education scholarships, as well as providing free health care to 250,000 of the nation's poor (but not universal health care). Gorton's government kept Australia in the Vietnam War but stopped replacing troops at the end of 1970.
Gorton maintained good relations with the United States and Britain, but pursued closer ties with Asia. The Gorton government experienced a decline in voter support at the 1969 election. State Liberal leaders saw his policies as too Centralist, while other Liberals didn't like his personal behaviour. In 1971, Defence Minister Malcolm Fraser, resigned and said Gorton was "not fit to hold the great office of Prime Minister". In a vote on the leadership the Liberal Party split 50/50, and although this was insufficient to remove him as the leader, Gorton decided this was also insufficient support for him, and he resigned.
McMahon Government and Snedden leadership
Former treasurer, William McMahon, replaced Gorton as Prime Minister. Gorton remained a front bencher but relations with Fraser remained strained. The McMahon Government ended when Gough Whitlam led the Australian Labor Party out of its 23-year period in Opposition at the 1972 election.
The economy was weakening. McMahon maintained Australia's diminishing commitment to Vietnam and criticised Opposition leader, Gough Whitlam, for visiting Communist China in 1972—only to have the US President Richard Nixon announce a planned visit soon after.
During McMahon's period in office, Neville Bonner joined the Senate and became the first Indigenous Australian in the Australian Parliament. Bonner was chosen by the Liberal Party to fill a Senate vacancy in 1971 and celebrated his maiden parliamentary speech with a boomerang throwing display on the lawns of Parliament. Bonner went on to win election at the 1972 election and served as a Liberal Senator for 12 years. He worked on Indigenous and social welfare issues and proved an independent minded Senator, often crossing the floor on Parliamentary votes.
Following Whitlam's victory, John Gorton played a further role in reform by introducing a Parliamentary motion from Opposition supporting the legalisation of same-gender sexual relations. Billy Snedden led the party against Whitlam in the 1974 federal election, which saw a return of the Labor government. When Malcolm Fraser won the Liberal Party leadership from Snedden in 1975, Gorton walked out of the Party Room.
Fraser years
Following the 1974–75 Loans Affair, the Malcolm Fraser led Liberal-Country Party Coalition argued that the Whitlam Government was incompetent and delayed passage of the Government's money bills in the Senate, until the government would promise a new election. Whitlam refused, yet Fraser insisted leading to the divisive 1975 Australian constitutional crisis. The deadlock came to an end when the Whitlam government was controversially dismissed by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr on 11 November 1975 and Fraser was installed as caretaker Prime Minister, pending an election. Fraser won in a landslide at the resulting 1975 election.
Fraser maintained some of the social reforms of the Whitlam era, while seeking increased fiscal restraint. His government included the first Aboriginal federal parliamentarian, Neville Bonner, and in 1976, Parliament passed the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976, which, while limited to the Northern Territory, affirmed "inalienable" freehold title to some traditional lands. Fraser established the multicultural broadcaster SBS, accepted Vietnamese refugees, opposed minority white rule in apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia and opposed Soviet expansionism. A significant program of economic reform, however, was not pursued. By 1983, the Australian economy was suffering with the early 1980s recession and amidst the effects of a severe drought. Fraser had promoted "states' rights" and his government refused to use Commonwealth powers to stop the construction of the Franklin Dam in Tasmania in 1982. Liberal minister Don Chipp split off from the party to form a new social liberal party, the Australian Democrats in 1977. Fraser won further substantial majorities at the 1977 and 1980 elections, before losing to the Bob Hawke-led Australian Labor Party in the 1983 election.
Federal opposition, state success
A period of division for the Liberals followed, with former Treasurer John Howard competing with former Foreign Minister Andrew Peacock for supremacy. The Australian economy was facing the early 1990s recession. Unemployment reached 11.4% in 1992. Under Dr John Hewson, in November 1991, the opposition launched the 650-page Fightback! policy document—a radical collection of "dry", economic liberal measures including the introduction of a Goods and Services Tax (GST), various changes to Medicare including the abolition of bulk billing for non-concession holders, the introduction of a nine-month limit on unemployment benefits, various changes to industrial relations including the abolition of awards, a $13 billion personal income tax cut directed at middle and upper income earners, $10 billion in government spending cuts, the abolition of state payroll taxes and the privatisation of a large number of government owned enterprises − representing the start of a very different future direction to the keynesian economic policies practised by previous Liberal/National Coalition governments. The 15 percent GST was the centerpiece of the policy document. Through 1992, Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating mounted a campaign against the Fightback package, and particularly against the GST, which he described as an attack on the working class in that it shifted the tax burden from direct taxation of the wealthy to indirect taxation as a broad-based consumption tax. Pressure group activity and public opinion was relentless, which led Hewson to exempt food from the proposed GST—leading to questions surrounding the complexity of what food was and wasn't to be exempt from the GST. Hewson's difficulty in explaining this to the electorate was exemplified in the infamous birthday cake interview, considered by some as a turning point in the election campaign. Keating won a record fifth consecutive Labor term at the 1993 election. A number of the proposals were later adopted into law in some form, to a small extent during the Keating Labor government, and to a larger extent during the Howard Liberal government (most famously the GST), while unemployment benefits and bulk billing were re-targeted for a time by the Abbott Liberal government.
At the state level, the Liberals have been dominant for long periods in all states except Queensland, where they have always held fewer seats than the National party (not to be confused with the old Nationalist Party). The Liberals were in power in Victoria from 1955 to 1982. Jeff Kennett led the party back to office in that state in 1992, and remained Premier until 1999.
In South Australia, initially a Liberal and Country Party affiliated party, the Liberal and Country League (LCL), mostly led by Premier of South Australia Tom Playford, was in power from the 1933 election to the 1965 election, though with assistance from an electoral malapportionment, or gerrymander, known as the Playmander. The LCL's Steele Hall governed for one term from the 1968 election to the 1970 election and during this time began the process of dismantling the Playmander. David Tonkin, as leader of the South Australian Division of the Liberal Party of Australia, became Premier at the 1979 election for one term, losing office at the 1982 election. The Liberals returned to power at the 1993 election, led by Premiers Dean Brown, John Olsen and Rob Kerin through two terms, until their defeat at the 2002 election. They remained in opposition for 16 years, under a record five Opposition Leaders, until Steven Marshall led the party to victory in 2018.
The dual aligned Country Liberal Party ruled the Northern Territory from 1978 to 2001.
The party has held office in Western Australia intermittently since 1947. Liberal Richard Court was Premier of the state for most of the 1990s.
In New South Wales, the Liberal Party has not been in office as much as its Labor rival, and just three leaders have led the party from opposition to government in that state: Sir Robert Askin, who was premier from 1965 to 1975, Nick Greiner, who came to office in 1988 and resigned in 1992, and Barry O'Farrell who would lead the party out of 16 years in opposition in 2011.
The Liberal Party does not officially contest most local government elections, although many members do run for office in local government as independents. An exception is the Brisbane City Council, where both Sallyanne Atkinson and Campbell Newman have been elected Lord Mayor of Brisbane.
Howard Government
Labor's Paul Keating lost the 1996 Election to the Liberals' John Howard. The Liberals had been in Opposition for 13 years. With John Howard as Prime Minister, Peter Costello as Treasurer and Alexander Downer as Foreign Minister, the Howard Government remained in power until their electoral defeat to Kevin Rudd in 2007.
Howard generally framed the Liberals as being conservative on social policy, debt reduction and matters like maintaining Commonwealth links and the American Alliance but his premiership saw booming trade with Asia and expanding multiethnic immigration. His government concluded the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement with the Bush Administration in 2004.
Howard differed from his Labor predecessor Paul Keating in that he supported traditional Australian institutions like the Monarchy in Australia, the commemoration of ANZAC Day and the design of the Australian flag, but like Keating he pursued privatisation of public utilities and the introduction of a broad based consumption tax (although Keating had dropped support for a GST by the time of his 1993 election victory). Howard's premiership coincided with Al Qaeda's 11 September attacks on the United States. The Howard Government invoked the ANZUS treaty in response to the attacks and supported America's campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In the 2004 Federal elections the party strengthened its majority in the Lower House and, with its coalition partners, became the first federal government in twenty years to gain an absolute majority in the Senate. This control of both houses permitted their passing of legislation without the need to negotiate with independents or minor parties, exemplified by industrial relations legislation known as WorkChoices, a wide-ranging effort to increase deregulation of industrial laws in Australia.
In 2005, Howard reflected on his government's cultural and foreign policy outlook in oft repeated terms:
The 2007 federal election saw the defeat of the Howard federal government, and the Liberal Party was in opposition throughout Australia at the state and federal level; the highest Liberal office-holder at the time was Lord Mayor of Brisbane Campbell Newman. This ended after the 2008 Western Australian state election, when Colin Barnett became Premier of that state.
After Howard
Following the 2007 federal election, Dr Brendan Nelson was elected leader by the Parliamentary Liberal Party. On 16 September 2008, in a second contest following a spill motion, Nelson lost the leadership to Malcolm Turnbull. On 1 December 2009, a subsequent leadership election saw Turnbull lose the leadership to Tony Abbott by 42 votes to 41 on the second ballot. Abbott led the party to the 2010 federal election, which saw an increase in the Liberal Party vote and resulted in the first hung parliament since the 1940 election.
Through 2010, the party remained in opposition at the Tasmanian and South Australian state elections and achieved state government in Victoria. In March 2011, the New South Wales Liberal-National Coalition led by Barry O'Farrell won government with the largest election victory in post-war Australian history at the State Election. In Queensland, the Liberal and National parties merged in 2008 to form the new Liberal National Party of Queensland (registered as the Queensland Division of the Liberal Party of Australia). In March 2012, the new party achieved Government in an historic landslide, led by former Brisbane Lord Mayor, Campbell Newman.
In March 2013, the Western Australian Liberal-National government won re-election while the party won government in Tasmania in 2014 and lost their fourth election in a row at the South Australian election. However, the Victorian Liberal-National government, now led by Denis Napthine, became the first one term government in Victoria in 60 years. Similarly, just two months later, the Liberal National government in Queensland was defeated just three years after its historic landslide victory. The New South Wales Liberal-National Coalition, however, managed to win re-election in March 2015. In 2016 the Federal Liberals narrowly won re-election in July 2016 while the Liberal-affiliated Country Liberals suffered a historic defeat in the Northern Territory and Canberra Liberals lost their fifth election in a row in October 2016. The Liberals fared little better in 2017 with the Barnett-led Liberal-National government in Western Australia also suffered a landslide defeat in March.
Abbott government
Turnbull government
Turnbull's time in office saw tensions between Moderate and Conservative factions within the Liberal Party.
On 21 August 2018 after a week of mounting pressure on Turnbull's leadership over his handling of energy policy and election strategy, the prime minister used the regular party-room meeting to spill the party leadership in an attempt to head off a growing conservative-led move against him by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton. Turnbull survived the challenge, winning 48 votes to Dutton's 35.
A further spill was called by Turnbull, in which he declined to stand and the leadership of the party was decided in favour of Treasurer Scott Morrison, over Dutton.
Morrison government
In August 2018, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton unsuccessfully challenged Turnbull for the leadership of the Liberal Party. Leadership tension continued, and the party voted to hold a second leadership ballot on 24 August, with Turnbull choosing not to stand. In that ballot, Morrison was seen as a compromise candidate and defeated both Dutton and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to become leader of the Liberal Party. He was sworn in as prime minister by the governor-general later that day. Morrison went on to lead the Coalition to an unexpected victory in the 2019 election.
Ideology and factions
As of 2022, the Liberal Party currently consists of three broad factional groupings: a Moderate wing, a Centre-Right wing and a Right wing, led by Simon Birmingham, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton respectively.
The Liberal Party generally advocates conservative policies including economic liberalism. Historically, the party has supported a higher degree of economic protectionism and interventionism than it has in recent decades. However, from its foundation the party has identified itself as an anti-socialist grouping of liberals and conservatives. Strong opposition to socialism and communism in Australia and abroad was one of its founding principles. The party's founder and longest-serving leader Robert Menzies envisaged that Australia's middle class would form its main constituency.
Towards the end of his term as Prime Minister of Australia and in a final address to the Liberal Party Federal Council in 1964, Menzies spoke of the "Liberal Creed" as follows:
Soon after the election of the Howard Government the new Prime Minister John Howard, who was to become the second-longest serving Liberal Prime Minister, spoke of his interpretation of the "Liberal Tradition" in a Robert Menzies Lecture in 1996:
Throughout their history, the Liberals have been in electoral terms largely the party of the middle class (whom Menzies, in the era of the party's formation called "The forgotten people"), though such class-based voting patterns are no longer as clear as they once were. In the 1970s a left-wing middle class emerged that no longer voted Liberal. One effect of this was the success of a breakaway party, the Australian Democrats, founded in 1977 by former Liberal minister Don Chipp and members of minor liberal parties. On the other hand, the Liberals have done increasingly well in recent years among socially conservative working-class voters. However, the Liberal Party's key support base remains the upper-middle classes—16 of the 20 richest federal electorates are held by the Liberals, most of which are safe seats. In country areas they either compete with or have a truce with the Nationals, depending on various factors.
Menzies was an ardent constitutional monarchist, who supported the monarchy in Australia and links to the Commonwealth of Nations. Today the party is divided on the question of republicanism, with some (such as incumbent leader Scott Morrison) being monarchists, while others (such as his predecessor Malcolm Turnbull) are republicans. The Menzies Government formalised Australia's alliance with the United States in 1951 and the party has remained a strong supporter of the mutual defence treaty.
Domestically, Menzies presided over a fairly regulated economy in which utilities were publicly owned, and commercial activity was highly regulated through centralised wage-fixing and high tariff protection. Liberal leaders from Menzies to Malcolm Fraser generally maintained Australia's high tariff levels. At that time the Liberals' coalition partner, the Country Party, the older of the two in the coalition (now known as the "National Party"), had considerable influence over the government's economic policies. It was not until the late 1970s and through their period out of power federally in the 1980s that the party came to be influenced by what was known as the "New Right"—a conservative liberal group who advocated market deregulation, privatisation of public utilities, reductions in the size of government programs and tax cuts.
Socially, while liberty and freedom of enterprise form the basis of its beliefs, elements of the party have wavered between what is termed "small-l liberalism" and social conservatism. Historically, Liberal Governments have been responsible for the carriage of a number of notable "socially liberal" reforms, including the opening of Australia to multiethnic immigration under Menzies and Harold Holt; Holt's 1967 Referendum on Aboriginal Rights; John Gorton's support for cinema and the arts; selection of the first Aboriginal Senator, Neville Bonner, in 1971; and Malcolm Fraser's Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976. A West Australian Liberal, Ken Wyatt, became the first Indigenous Australian elected to the House of Representatives in 2010.
The Prime Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison, stated the following in his 2019 victory speech;
This is, this is the best country in the world in which to live. It is those Australians that we have been working for, for the last five and a half years since we came to Government, under Tony Abbott's leadership back in 2013. It has been those Australians who have worked hard every day, they have their dreams, they have their aspirations; to get a job, to get an apprenticeship, to start a business, to meet someone amazing. To start a family, to buy a home, to work hard and provide the best you can for your kids. To save your retirement and to ensure that when you're in your retirement, that you can enjoy it because you've worked hard for it. These are The Quiet Australians who have won a great victory tonight.
The Liberal Party is a member of the International Democrat Union and the Asia Pacific Democrat Union.
Organisation
The Liberal Party's organisation is dominated by the six state divisions, reflecting the party's original commitment to a federalised system of government (a commitment which was strongly maintained by all Liberal governments bar the Gorton government until 1983, but was to a large extent abandoned by the Howard Government, which showed strong centralising tendencies). Menzies deliberately created a weak national party machine and strong state divisions. Party policy is made almost entirely by the parliamentary parties, not by the party's rank-and-file members, although Liberal party members do have a degree of influence over party policy.
The Liberal Party's basic organisational unit is the branch, which consists of party members in a particular locality. For each electorate there is a conference—notionally above the branches—which coordinates campaigning in the electorate and regularly communicates with the member (or candidate) for the electorate. As there are three levels of government in Australia, each branch elects delegates to a local, state, and federal conference.
All the branches in an Australian state are grouped into a Division. The ruling body for the Division is a State Council. There is also one Federal Council which represents the entire organisational Liberal Party in Australia. Branch executives are delegates to the Councils ex-officio and additional delegates are elected by branches, depending on their size.
Preselection of electoral candidates is performed by a special electoral college convened for the purpose. Membership of the electoral college consists of head office delegates, branch officers, and elected delegates from branches.
Federal parliamentary leaders
State and territory divisions
For a brief period between 27 October 2020 (appointment of Elizabeth Lee as leader of Canberra Liberals) and 12 November 2020 (resignation of Deb Frecklington as leader of the LNP), five Liberal Party state and territory divisions were led by women, the highest number in Liberal Party history. The leaders were:
ACT: Elizabeth Lee
Queensland: Deb Frecklington
New South Wales: Gladys Berejiklian
Western Australia: Liza Harvey
Northern Territory: Lia Finocchiaro
Federal presidents
Shown in chronological order of presidency
1945: Sir Malcolm Ritchie (first term)
1947: Richard Casey (later, The Lord Casey)
1950: Sir Malcolm Ritchie (second term)
1951: Sir William Anderson
1956: Lyle Moore
1960: Sir Philip McBride
1965: Sir Jock Pagan
1970: Sir Robert Southey
1975: Sir John Atwill
1982: Dr Jim Forbes
1985: John Valder
1987: John Elliott
1990: Professor Ashley Goldsworthy
1993: Tony Staley
1999: Shane Stone
2005: Chris McDiven
2008: Alan Stockdale
2014: Richard Alston
2017: Nick Greiner
2020: John Olsen
Federal election results
House of Representatives
Donors
For the 2015–2016 financial year, the top ten disclosed donors to the Liberal Party were: Paul Marks (Nimrod resources) ($1,300,000), Pratt Holdings ($790,000), Hong Kong Kingson Investment Company ($710,000), Aus Gold Mining Group ($410,000), Village Roadshow ($325,000), Waratah Group ($300,000), Walker Corporation ($225,000), Australian Gypsum Industries ($196,000), National Automotive Leasing and Salary Packaging Association ($177,000) and Westfield Corporation ($150,000).
The Liberal Party also receives undisclosed funding through several methods, such as "associated entities". Cormack Foundation, Eight by Five, Free Enterprise Foundation, Federal Forum and Northern Sydney Conservative forum are entities which have been used to funnel donations to the Liberal Party without disclosing the source.
See also
Country Liberal Party (Northern Territory)
Liberal National Party (Queensland)
Liberal Party of Australia (New South Wales Division)
Liberal Party of Australia (South Australian Division)
Liberal Party of Australia (Tasmanian Division)
List of political parties in Australia
Turnbull Government
Abbott Government
Liberalism in Australia
Moderates
Young Liberal Movement of Australia
Notes
References
Further reading
Henderson, Gerard (1994). Menzies' Child: The Liberal Party of Australia 1944–1994, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, New South Wales.
Jaensch, Dean (1994) The Liberals, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, New South Wales.
Nethercote, John (ed.)(2001), Liberalism and the Australian Federation, Federation Press, Annandale, New South Wales.
Simms, Marian (1982) A Liberal Nation: The Liberal Party and Australian Politics, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney, New South Wales.
Starr, Graeme (1980) The Liberal Party of Australia: A Documentary History, Drummond/Heinemann, Richmond, Victoria.
Tiver, P.G. (1978), The Liberal Party. Principles and Performance, Jacaranda, Milton, Queensland.
External links
Liberal Party of Australia official site
Liberal Party of Australia ephemera digitised and held by the National Library of Australia
Records of the Victorian division of the Liberal Party held at the University of Melbourne Archives
1945 establishments in Australia
Classical liberal parties
Conservative liberal parties
Conservative parties in Australia
International Democrat Union member parties
Liberal conservative parties
Liberal parties in Australia
Centre-right parties
Political parties established in 1945 | [
0.1826559156179428,
-0.48199760913848877,
-0.06578998267650604,
-0.033624205738306046,
-0.7215026617050171,
0.216694176197052,
-0.21620985865592957,
0.4234525263309479,
-0.721369206905365,
-0.4464064836502075,
-0.17978523671627045,
0.10246352106332779,
-0.04372275248169899,
0.5831731557846... |
18454 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindisfarne | Lindisfarne | Lindisfarne, also called Holy Island, is a tidal island off the northeast coast of England, which constitutes the civil parish of Holy Island in Northumberland. Holy Island has a recorded history from the 6th century AD; it was an important centre of Celtic Christianity under Saints Aidan of Lindisfarne, Cuthbert, Eadfrith of Lindisfarne and Eadberht of Lindisfarne. After the Viking invasions and the Norman conquest of England, a priory was reestablished. A small castle was built on the island in 1550.
Name and etymology
Name
Both the Parker and Peterborough versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 793 record the Old English name for Lindisfarne, .
In the 9th century the island appears under its Old Welsh name . The philologist Andrew Breeze, following up on a suggestion by Richard Coates, proposes that the name ultimately derives from Latin (English: Healing [Island]), owing perhaps to the island's reputation for medicinal herbs.
The name Holy Island was in use by the 11th century when it appears in Latin as . The reference was to Saints Aidan and Cuthbert.
In the present day, Holy Island is the name of the civil parish and native inhabitants are known as Islanders. The Ordnance Survey uses Holy Island for both the island and the village, with Lindisfarne listed either as an alternative name for the island or as a name of 'non-Roman antiquity'. "Locally the island is rarely referred to by its Anglo-Saxon name of Lindisfarne" (according to the local community website). More widely, the two names are used somewhat interchangeably. Lindisfarne is invariably used when referring to the pre-conquest monastic settlement, the priory ruins and the castle. The combined phrase The Holy Island of Lindisfarne has begun to be used more frequently in recent times, particularly when promoting the island as a tourist or pilgrim destination.
Etymology
The name Lindisfarne has an uncertain origin. The -farne part of the name may be Old English meaning traveller. The first part, Lindis-, may refer to people from the Kingdom of Lindsey in modern Lincolnshire, referring to either regular visitors or settlers. Another possibility is that Lindisfarne is Brittonic in origin, containing the element Lind- meaning stream or pool (Welsh ), with the nominal morpheme -as(t) and an unknown element identical to that in the Farne Islands. Further suggested is that the name may be a wholly Old Irish formation, from corresponding , plus meaning land, domain, territory. Such an Irish formation, however, could have been based on a pre-existing Brittonic name.
There is also a supposition that the nearby Farne Islands are fern-like in shape and the name may have come from there.
Geography and population
The island of Lindisfarne is located along the northeast coast of England, close to the border with Scotland. It measures from east to west and from north to south, and comprises approximately at high tide. The nearest point to the mainland is about . It is accessible at low tide by a modern causeway and an ancient pilgrims' path that run over sand and mudflats and which are covered with water at high tide. Lindisfarne is surrounded by the Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve, which protects the island's sand dunes and the adjacent intertidal habitats. , the island had a population of 180.
Community
A February 2020 report provided an update on the island. At the time, three pubs and a hotel were operating; the store had closed but the post office remained in operation. No professional or medical services were available and residents were driving to Berwick-upon-Tweed for groceries and other supplies. Points of interest for visitors included Lindisfarne Castle operated by the National Trust, the priory, the historic church, the nature reserve and the beaches. At certain times of year, numerous migratory birds can be seen.
Causeway safety
Warning signs urge visitors walking to the island to keep to the marked path, to check tide times and weather carefully, and to seek local advice if in doubt. For drivers, tide tables are prominently displayed at both ends of the causeway and also where the Holy Island road leaves the A1 Great North Road at Beal. The causeway is generally open from about three hours after high tide until two hours before the next high tide, but the period of closure may be extended during stormy weather. Tide tables giving the safe crossing periods are published by Northumberland County Council.
Despite these warnings, about one vehicle each month is stranded on the causeway, requiring rescue by HM Coastguard and/or Seahouses RNLI lifeboat. A sea rescue costs approximately £1,900 (quoted in 2009, ), while an air rescue costs more than £4,000 (also quoted in 2009, ). Local people have opposed a causeway barrier primarily on convenience grounds.
History
Early
The north-east of England was largely not settled by Roman civilians apart from the Tyne valley and Hadrian's Wall. The area had been little affected during the centuries of nominal Roman occupation. The countryside had been subject to raids from both Scots and Picts and was "not one to attract early Germanic settlement". The Anglian King Ida (reigned from 547) started the sea-borne settlement of the coast, establishing an (meaning "royal settlement") at Bamburgh across the bay from Lindisfarne. The conquest was not straightforward, however. The recounts how, in the 6th century, Urien, prince of Rheged, with a coalition of North Brittonic kingdoms, besieged Angles led by Theodric of Bernicia on the island for three days and nights, until internal power struggles led to the Britons' defeat.
Lindisfarne Priory
The monastery of Lindisfarne was founded around 634 by Irish monk Saint Aidan, who had been sent from Iona off the west coast of Scotland to Northumbria at the request of King Oswald. The priory was founded before the end of 634 and Aidan remained there until his death in 651. The priory remained the only seat of a bishopric in Northumbria for nearly thirty years. Finian (bishop 651–661) built a timber church "suitable for a bishop's seat". St Bede, however, was critical of the fact that the church was not built of stone but only of hewn oak thatched with reeds. A later bishop, Eadbert, removed the thatch and covered both walls and roof in lead. An abbot, who could be the bishop, was elected by the brethren and led the community. Bede comments on this:
Lindisfarne became the base for Christian evangelism in the North of England, and also sent a successful mission to Mercia. Monks from the Irish community of Iona settled on the island. Northumbria's patron saint, Saint Cuthbert, was a monk and later abbot of the monastery, and his miracles and life are recorded by the Venerable Bede. Cuthbert later became Bishop of Lindisfarne. An anonymous life of Cuthbert written at Lindisfarne is the oldest extant piece of English historical writing. From its reference to "Aldfrith, who now reigns peacefully", it is considered to date to between 685 and 704. Cuthbert was buried here, his remains later translated to Durham Cathedral (along with the relics of Saint Eadfrith of Lindisfarne). Eadberht of Lindisfarne, the next bishop (and later saint), was buried in the place from which Cuthbert's body was exhumed earlier the same year, when the priory was abandoned in the late 9th century.
Cuthbert's body was carried with the monks, eventually settling in Chester-le-Street before a final move to Durham. The saint's shrine was the major pilgrimage centre for much of the region until its despoliation by Henry VIII's commissioners in 1539 or 1540. The grave was preserved, however, and when opened in 1827 yielded a number of artefacts dating back to Lindisfarne. The innermost of three coffins was of incised wood, the only decorated wood to survive from the period. It shows Jesus surrounded by the Four Evangelists. Within the coffin was a pectoral cross measuring across, made of gold and mounted with garnets and intricate designs; a comb, made of elephant ivory, was also found, an item that would have been exceedingly rare and expensive in Northern England, as well as an embossed, silver-covered travelling altar, all of which were contemporary with the original burial on the island. The most impressive find within the coffins was a gospel (known as the St Cuthbert Gospel or Stonyhurst Gospel from its association with Stonyhurst College): the manuscript, a relatively early and likely original one, was bound with embossed leather. When the body was placed in the shrine in 1104, other items were removed: a paten, scissors and a chalice of gold and onyx.
Following Finian's death, Colman became Bishop of Lindisfarne. Up to this point the Northumbrian (and latterly Mercian) churches had looked to Lindisfarne as the mother church. There were significant liturgical and theological differences with the fledgling Roman party based at Canterbury. According to Stenton: "There is no trace of any intercourse between these bishops [the Mercians] and the see of Canterbury". The Synod of Whitby in 663 changed this, as allegiance switched southwards to Canterbury and then to Rome. Colman departed his see for Iona, and Lindisfarne no longer held its previous importance.
In 735, the northern ecclesiastical province of England was established, with the archbishopric at York. There were only three bishops under York: Hexham, Lindisfarne and Whithorn, whereas Canterbury had the 12 envisaged by St Augustine. The Diocese of York roughly encompassed the counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire. Hexham covered County Durham and the southern part of Northumberland up to the River Coquet, and eastwards into the Pennines. Whithorn covered most of Dumfries and Galloway region west of Dumfries itself. The remainder, Cumbria, northern Northumbria, Lothian and much of the Kingdom of Strathclyde formed the diocese of Lindisfarne.
In 737, Saint Ceolwulf of Northumbria abdicated as King of Northumbria and entered the priory at Lindisfarne. He died in 764 and was buried alongside Cuthbert. In 830, his body was moved to Norham-upon-Tweed, and later his head was translated to Durham Cathedral.
Lindisfarne Gospels
At some point in the early 8th century the illuminated manuscript known as the Lindisfarne Gospels, an illustrated Latin copy of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, was made, probably at Lindisfarne. The artist was possibly Eadfrith, who later became Bishop of Lindisfarne. It is also speculated that a team of illuminators and calligraphers (monks of Lindisfarne Priory) worked on the text, but if so, their identities are unknown. Some time in the second half of the 10th century, a monk named Aldred added an Anglo-Saxon (Old English) gloss to the Latin text, producing the earliest surviving Old English copies of the Gospels. Aldred attributed the original to Eadfrith (bishop 698–721). The Gospels were written with a good hand, but it is the illustrations, done in an insular style containing a fusion of Celtic, Germanic and Roman elements, that are considered to be of the most value. According to Aldred, Eadfrith's successor Æthelwald was responsible for pressing and binding the book, before it was covered with a fine metal case made by a hermit known as Billfrith. The Lindisfarne Gospels now reside in the British Library in London, a location which has caused some controversy amongst some Northumbrians. In 1971, professor Suzanne Kaufman of Rockford, Illinois presented a facsimile copy of the Gospels to the clergy of the island.
Viking raid on the monastery (793)
In 793, a Viking raid on Lindisfarne caused much consternation throughout the Christian west, and is now often taken as the beginning of the Viking Age. There had been some other Viking raids, but according to English Heritage this one was particularly significant, because "it attacked the sacred heart of the Northumbrian kingdom, desecrating 'the very place where the Christian religion began in our nation'".The D and E versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle record:
("In this year fierce, foreboding omens came over the land of the Northumbrians, and the wretched people shook; there were excessive whirlwinds, lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the sky. These signs were followed by great famine, and a little after those, that same year on 6th ides of January, the ravaging of wretched heathen men destroyed God's church at Lindisfarne.")
The generally accepted date for the Viking raid on Lindisfarne is 8 June; Michael Swanton writes: ", presumably [is] an error for (8 June) which is the date given by the Annals of Lindisfarne (p. 505), when better sailing weather would favour coastal raids."
Alcuin, a Northumbrian scholar in Charlemagne's court at the time, wrote: "Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race ... The heathens poured out the blood of saints around the altar, and trampled on the bodies of saints in the temple of God, like dung in the streets."
During the attack many of the monks were killed, or captured and enslaved. As the English population became more settled, they seemed to have turned their back on the sea. Many monasteries were established on islands, peninsulas, river mouths and cliffs, as isolated communities were less susceptible to interference and the politics of the heartland. These preliminary raids, despite their brutal nature, were not followed up. The main body of the raiders passed north around Scotland. The 9th century invasions came not from Norway, but from the Danes from around the entrance to the Baltic. The first Danish raids into England were in the Isle of Sheppey, Kent during 835 and from there their influence spread north. During this period religious art continued to flourish on Lindisfarne, and the of Durham began in the priory. By 866, the Danes were in York, and in 873 the army was moving into Northumberland. With the collapse of the Northumbrian kingdom, the monks of Lindisfarne fled the island in 875 taking with them St Cuthbert's bones (which are now buried at the cathedral in Durham), who during his life had been prior and bishop of Lindisfarne; his body was buried on the island in the year 698.
Prior to the 9th century, Lindisfarne Priory had, in common with other such establishments, held large tracts of land which were managed directly or leased to farmers with a life interest only. Following the Danish occupation, land was increasingly owned by individuals, and could be bought, sold and inherited. Following the Battle of Corbridge in 914 Ragnald seized the land giving some to his followers Scula and Onlafbal.
Middle Ages
William of St Calais, the first Norman Bishop of Durham, endowed his new Benedictine monastery at Durham with land and property in Northumberland, including Holy Island and much of the surrounding mainland. Durham Priory re-established a monastic house on the island in 1093, as a cell of Durham, administered from Norham. The standing remains date from this time (whereas the site of the original priory is now occupied by the parish church).
Monastic records from the 14th to the 16th century provide evidence of an already well-established fishing economy on the island. Both line fishing and net fishing were practised, inshore in shallow waters and in the deep water offshore, using a variety of vessels: contemporary accounts differentiate between small 'cobles' and larger 'boats', as well as singling out certain specialised vessels (such as a 'herynger', sold for £2 in 1404). As well as supplying food for the monastic community, the island's fisheries (together with those of nearby Farne) provided the mother house at Durham with fish, on a regular (sometimes weekly) basis. Fish caught included cod, haddock, herring, salmon, porpoise and mullet, among others. Shellfish of various types were also fished for, with lobster nets and oyster dredges being mentioned in the accounts. Fish surplus to the needs of the monastery was traded, but subject to a tithe. There is also evidence that the monks operated a lime kiln on the island.
In 1462, during the Wars of the Roses, Margaret of Anjou made an abortive attempt to seize the Northumbrian castles. Following a storm at sea 400 troops had to seek shelter on Holy Island, where they surrendered to the Yorkists.
The Benedictine monastery continued until its suppression in 1536 under Henry VIII, after which the buildings surrounding the church were used as a naval storehouse. In 1613 ownership of the island (and other land in the area formerly pertaining to Durham Priory) was transferred to the Crown.
An early scholarly description of the priory was compiled by Dr Henry George Charles Clarke (presumed son of Admiral Sir Erasmus Gower) in 1838 during his term as president of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club. Dr Clarke surmised that this Norman priory was unique in that the centre aisle had a vault of stone. Of the six arches, Dr Clarke stated "as if the architect had not previously calculated the space to be occupied by his arcade. The effect here has been to produce a horse-shoe instead of a semicircular arch, from its being of the same height, but lesser span, than the others. This arch is very rare, even in Norman buildings". The Lindisfarne Priory (ruin) is a grade I listed building, List Entry Number 1042304. Other parts of the priory are a Scheduled ancient monument, List Entry Number 1011650. The latter are described as "the site of the pre-Conquest monastery of Lindisfarne and the Benedictine cell of Durham Cathedral that succeeded it in the 11th century".
Recent work by archeologists was continuing in 2019, for the fourth year. Artifacts recovered included a rare board game piece, copper-alloy rings and Anglo-Saxon coins from both Northumbria and Wessex. The discovery of a cemetery led to finding commemorative markers "unique to the 8th and 9th centuries". The group also found evidence of an early medieval building, "which seems to have been constructed on top of an even earlier industrial oven" which was used to make copper or glass.
St. Mary the Virgin
When the abbey was rebuilt by the Normans, the site was moved. The site of the original priory church was redeveloped in stone as the parish church. As such it is now the oldest building on the island still with a roof on. Remains of the Saxon church exist as the chancel wall and arch. A Norman apse (subsequently replaced in the 13th century) led eastwards from the chancel. The nave was extended in the 12th century with a northern arcade, and in the following century with a southern arcade.
After the Reformation the church slipped into disrepair until the restoration of 1860. The church is built of coloured sandstone which has had the Victorian plaster removed from it. The north aisle is known as the "fishermen's aisle" and houses the altar of St. Peter. The south aisle used to hold the altar of St. Margaret of Scotland, but now houses the organ.
The church is a Grade I listed building number 1042304, listed as part of the whole priory. The church forms most of the earliest part of the site and is a scheduled ancient monument number 1011650.
For several years in the late 20th century ( 1980~1990), religious author and cleric David Adam ministered to thousands of pilgrims and other visitors as rector of Holy Island.
Lindisfarne Castle
Lindisfarne Castle was built in 1550, around the time that Lindisfarne Priory went out of use, and stones from the priory were used as building material. It is very small by the usual standards, and was more of a fort. The castle sits on the highest point of the island, a whinstone hill called Beblowe.
After Henry VIII suppressed the priory, his troops used the remains as a naval store. In 1542 Henry VIII ordered the Earl of Rutland to fortify the site against possible Scottish invasion. Sir John Harington and the Master Mason of Berwick started to plan to build two earth bulwarks, although the Rutland advised the use of stone from the abbey. In September 1544 a Scottish fleet led by John Barton in the Mary Willoughby theatened the English coast. It was thought the Scottish ships might try to burn Lindisfarne, so orders were given to repair the old decayed bulwark or blockhouse at Holy Island.
By December 1547, Ralph Cleisbye, Captain of the fort, had guns including a wheel-mounted demi-culverin, two brass sakers, a falcon, and another fixed demi-culverin. However, Beblowe Crag itself was not fortified until 1549 and Sir Richard Lee saw only a decayed platform and turf rampart there in 1565. Elizabeth I then had work carried out on the fort, strengthening it and providing gun platforms for the new developments in artillery technology. When James VI and I came to power in England, he combined the Scottish and English thrones, and the need for the castle declined. At that time the castle was still garrisoned from Berwick and protected the small Lindisfarne Harbour.
During the Jacobite Rising of 1715, Lancelot Errington, one of a number of locals who supported the Jacobite cause, visited the castle. Some sources say that he asked the Master Gunner, who also served as the unit's barber, for a shave. Once Errington was inside, it became clear that most of the garrison were away; later that day he returned with his nephew Mark Errington, claiming that he had lost the key to his watch. They were allowed in, overpowered the three soldiers present, and claimed the castle as a landing site for the Jacobite group led by Thomas Forster, Member of Parliament for the county of Northumberland. Reinforcements did not arrive to support the Erringtons, so when a detachment of 100 men arrived from Berwick to retake the castle they were only able to hold out for one day. Fleeing, they were captured at the tollbooth at Berwick and imprisoned, but were later able to tunnel out of their gaol and escape.
The castle was later refurbished in the Arts and Crafts style by Sir Edwin Lutyens for the editor of Country Life, Edward Hudson. Lutyens also designed the island's Celtic-cross war-memorial on the Heugh. Lutyens' upturned herring busses near the foreshore provided the inspiration for Spanish architect Enric Miralles' Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh.
One of the most celebrated gardeners of modern times, Gertrude Jekyll (1843–1932), laid out a tiny garden just north of the castle in 1911. The castle, garden and nearby lime kilns are in the care of the National Trust and open to visitors.
Lighthouses
Trinity House operates two light beacons (which it lists as lighthouses) to guide vessels entering Holy Island Harbour. Until 1 November 1995 both were operated by Newcastle-upon-Tyne Trinity House (a separate corporation, which formerly had responsibility for navigation marks along the coast from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Whitby). On that day, responsibility for marking the approach to the harbour was assumed by the London-based Corporation.
Heugh Hill Light is a metal framework tower with a black triangular day mark, situated on Heugh Hill (a ridge on the south edge of Lindisfarne). Prior to its installation, a wooden beacon with a triangle topmark had stood on the centre of Heugh Hill for many decades. Nearby is a former coastguard station, recently refurbished and opened to the public as a viewing platform. An adjacent ruin is known as the Lantern Chapel; its origin is unknown, but the name may indicate an earlier navigation light on this site.
Guile Point East and Guile Point West are a pair of stone obelisks standing on a small tidal island on the other side of the channel. The obelisks are leading marks which, when aligned, indicate the safe channel over the bar. When Heugh Hill bears 310° (in line with the church belfry) the bar is cleared and there is a clear run into the harbour. The beacons were established in 1826 by Newcastle-upon-Tyne Trinity House (in whose ownership they remain). Since the early 1990s, a sector light has been fixed about one-third of the way up Guile Point East.
Not a lighthouse but simply a daymark for maritime navigation, a white brick pyramid, 35 feet high and built in 1810, stands at Emmanuel Head, the north-eastern point of Lindisfarne. It is said to be Britain's earliest purpose-built daymark.
Modern
A Dundee firm built lime kilns on Lindisfarne in the 1860s, and lime was burnt on the island until at least the end of the 19th century. The kilns are among the most complex in Northumberland. Horses carried limestone, along the Holy Island Waggonway, from a quarry on the north side of the island to the lime kilns, where it was burned with coal transported from Dundee on the east coast of Scotland. There are still some traces of the jetties by which the coal was imported and the lime exported close by at the foot of the crags. The remains of the waggonway between the quarries and the kilns makes for a pleasant and easy walk. At its peak over 100 men were employed. Crinoid columnals extracted from the quarried stone and threaded into necklaces or rosaries became known as St Cuthbert's beads. The large-scale quarrying in the 19th century had a devastating effect on the interesting limestone caves, but eight sea caves remain at Coves Haven.
Workings on the lime kilns stopped by the start of the 20th century. The lime kilns on Lindisfarne are among the few being actively preserved in Northumberland.
Holy Island Golf Club was founded in 1907 but later closed in the 1960s.
Present day
The island is within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty on the Northumberland Coast. The ruined monastery is in the care of English Heritage, which also runs a museum/visitor centre nearby. The neighbouring parish church is still in use.
Turner, Thomas Girtin and Charles Rennie Mackintosh all painted on Holy Island.
Holy Island was considered part of the Islandshire unit along with several mainland parishes. This came under the jurisdiction of the County Palatine of Durham until the Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844.
Lindisfarne was mainly a fishing community for many years, with farming and the production of lime also of some importance.
The Holy Island of Lindisfarne is well known for mead. In the medieval days when monks inhabited the island, it was thought that if the soul was in God's keeping, the body must be fortified with Lindisfarne mead. The monks have long vanished, and the mead's recipe remains a secret of the family which still produces it; Lindisfarne Mead is produced at St Aidan's Winery, and sold throughout the UK and elsewhere.
Even today it is possible to see old wooden boats turned upside down on the land, looking like sheds. It is possible that this type of settlement was used by seafaring Vikings that exploited their ships as protection while away from home.
The isle of Lindisfarne was featured on the television programme Seven Natural Wonders as one of the wonders of the north. The Lindisfarne Gospels have also featured on television among the top few Treasures of Britain. It also features in an ITV Tyne Tees programme Diary of an Island which started on 19 April 2007 and on a DVD of the same name.
Community Trust Fund/Holy Island Partnership
In response to the perceived lack of affordable housing on the isle of Lindisfarne, in 1996 a group of islanders established a charitable foundation known as the Holy Island of Lindisfarne Community Development Trust. They built a visitor centre on the island using the profits from sales. In addition, eleven community houses were built and are rented out to community members who want to continue to live on the island. The trust is also responsible for management of the inner harbour. The Holy Island Partnership was formed in 2009 by members of the community as well as organisations and groups operating on the island.
Tourism
Tourism grew steadily throughout the 20th century, and the isle of Lindisfarne is now a popular destination for visitors. Those tourists staying on the island while it is cut off by the tide experience the island in a much quieter state, as most day trippers leave before the tide rises. At low tide it is possible to walk across the sands following an ancient route known as the Pilgrims' Way (see the note about safety, above). This route is marked with posts and has refuge boxes for stranded walkers, just as the road has a refuge box for those who have left their crossing too late. The isle of Lindisfarne is surrounded by the Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve which attracts bird-watchers to the tidal island. The island's prominent position and varied habitat make it particularly attractive to tired avian migrants, and 330 bird species had been recorded on the island.
Notes
Citations
References
Further reading
External links
Holy Island Safe Crossing Times
Lindisfarne Priory – English Heritage
Video: Holy Island Causeway information
Lindisfarne Castle – National Trust
Lindisfarne Visitor Information Official visitor information site
Visit Lindisfarne Locally-run information site
Anglo-Norse England
History of Northumberland
Ramsar sites in England
Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Northumberland
Ports and harbours of Northumberland
Celtic Christianity
Populated coastal places in Northumberland
Tidal islands of England
Islands of Northumberland
Monasteries dissolved under the English Reformation
Lime kilns in the United Kingdom
Civil parishes in Northumberland | [
0.1947919726371765,
0.14127713441848755,
1.240979552268982,
-0.7485917210578918,
0.577480673789978,
-0.01496006827801466,
0.13726459443569183,
0.16891857981681824,
-0.9019478559494019,
-0.011115225031971931,
0.07061681151390076,
0.28008711338043213,
-0.41968393325805664,
-0.052023682743310... |
18456 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy | Literacy | Literacy is popularly understood as an ability to read and write in at least one method of writing, an understanding reflected by mainstream dictionaries. In this view, illiteracy would be considered to be the inability to read and write.
Some researchers suggest that the history of interest in the concept of “literacy” can be divided into two periods. Firstly is the period before 1950, when literacy was understood solely as alphabetical literacy (word and letter recognition). Secondly is the period after 1950, when literacy slowly began to be considered as a wider concept and process, including the social and cultural aspects of reading and writing, and functional literacy (Dijanošić, 2009).
Other definitions and uses of the term "literacy"
The diversity among the definitions of literacy used by NGOs, think tanks, and advocacy groups since the 1990s suggests that this shift in understanding from "discrete skill" to "social practice" is both ongoing and uneven. Some of the definitions below remain fairly closely aligned with the traditional "ability to read and write" connotation, whereas others take a broader view:
The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (USA) included "quantitative literacy" (numeracy) in its treatment of literacy. It defined literacy as "the ability to use printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential". It included three types of adult literacy: prose (e.g., a newspaper article), documents (e.g., a bus schedule), and quantitative literacy (e.g., using arithmetic operations in a product advertisement).
In 2015 the United Nations Statistics Division defined the youth literacy rate as "the percentage of the population aged 15–24 years who can both read and write with understanding a short simple statement on everyday life".
In 2016, the European Literacy Policy Network defined literacy as "the ability to read and write ... in all media (print or electronic), including digital literacy".
In 2018, UNESCO includes "printed and written materials" and "varying contexts" in its definition of literacy; e.g. "the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts".
In 2019, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in its PIAAC adult skills surveys, includes "written texts" in its definition of literacy; e.g. "the ability to understand, evaluate, use and engage with written texts in order to participate in society, achieve one's goals, and develop one's knowledge and potential". And, it treats numeracy and problem solving using technology as separate considerations.
In 2021, Education Scotland and the National Literacy Trust in the UK included oral communication skills (listening and speaking) under the umbrella of literacy.
As of 2021, the International Literacy Association (Newark, Delaware, USA) includes "audible materials", "across disciplines" and "in any context" in its definition of literacy; e.g. "the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, compute, and communicate using visual, audible, and digital materials across disciplines and in any context".
The expression "reading literacy" is used by the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) that has monitored international trends in reading achievement at the fourth grade since 2001.
Other organizations might include numeracy skills and technology skills separately but alongside of literacy skills. And still others emphasize the increasing involvement of computers and other digital technologies in communication that necessitates additional skills (e.g. interfacing with web browsers and word processing programs; organizing and altering the configuration of files, etc.).
Some concerns over the perceived diminishment of traditional instruction in reading notwithstanding, the concept of "multiliteracies" has gained currency, particularly in English Language Arts curricula, on the grounds that reading "is interactive and informative, and occurs in ever-increasingly technological settings where information is part of spatial, audio, and visual patterns (Rhodes & Robnolt, 2009)".
In addition, since the 1940s the term literacy is often used to mean having knowledge or skill in a particular field (e.g., computer literacy, statistical literacy, critical literacy, media literacy, ecological literacy, disaster literacy, health literacy, linguistic (i.e. language) literacy social literacy, quantitative literacy (numeracy) and visual literacy, e.g. body language, pictures, maps, and video).
For more about reading and learning to read see Reading.
Social and cultural elements of literacy
The widening of the traditional concept of literacy took place as consensus emerged among researchers in composition studies, education research, and anthropological linguistics that it makes little sense to speak of reading or writing outside of some specific context—a position James Paul Gee describes as "simply incoherent." For example, even extremely early stages of acquiring mastery over symbol-shapes take place in particular social contexts (even if that context is simply "school"), and after print acquisition, any instance of reading and writing will always be enacted for a particular purpose and occasion and with particular readers and writers in mind. Reading and writing, therefore, are never separable from social and cultural elements. A corollary point, made by David Barton and Rosalind (Roz) Ivanic, among others, is that the effects of literacy acquisition on cognition and social relations are not easily predictable, since, as Brian Street has argued, "the ways in which people address reading and writing are themselves rooted in conceptions of knowledge, identity, [and] being."
Functional illiteracy
Functional illiteracy relates to adults and has been defined in different ways; for example a) the inability to use reading, writing, and calculation skills for their own and the community's development, b) the inability to read well enough to manage daily living and employment tasks that require reading skills beyond a basic level, and c) the inability to understand complex texts despite adequate schooling, age, language skills, elementary reading skills, and IQ. It is distinguished from primary illiteracy (i.e. the inability to read and write a short simple statement concerning one's own everyday life) and learning difficulties (e.g. dyslexia).
History
Prehistoric and ancient literacy
Origins of literacy
Between 3,500 BC and 3,000 BC, the ancient Sumerians invented writing. Script is thought to have developed independently at least five times in human history Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus civilization, lowland Mesoamerica, and China.
The earliest forms of written communication originated in Sumer, located in southern Mesopotamia about 3500-3000 BCE. During this era, literacy was "a largely functional matter, propelled by the need to manage the new quantities of information and the new type of governance created by trade and large scale production". Writing systems in Mesopotamia first emerged from a recording system in which people used impressed token markings to manage trade and agricultural production. The token system served as a precursor to early cuneiform writing once people began recording information on clay tablets. Proto-cuneiform texts exhibit not only numerical signs, but also ideograms depicting objects being counted. Though the traditional view had been that cuneiform literacy was restricted to a class of scribes, assyriologists including Claus Wilcke and Dominique Charpin have argued that functional literacy was somewhat widespread by the Old Babylonian period.
Egyptian hieroglyphs emerged from 3300 to 3100 BCE and depicted royal iconography that emphasized power amongst other elites. The Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system was the first notation system to have phonetic values.
Writing in lowland Mesoamerica was first put into practice by the Olmec and Zapotec civilizations in 900-400 BCE. These civilizations used glyphic writing and bar-and-dot numerical notation systems for purposes related to royal iconography and calendar systems.
The earliest written notations in China date back to the Shang Dynasty in 1200 BCE. These systematic notations were found inscribed on bones and recorded sacrifices made, tributes received, and animals hunted, which were activities of the elite. These oracle-bone inscriptions were the early ancestors of modern Chinese script and contained logosyllabic script and numerals.
Indus script is largely pictorial and has not been deciphered yet. It may or may not include abstract signs. It is thought that they wrote from right to left and that the script is thought to be logographic. Because it has not been deciphered, linguists disagree on whether it is a complete and independent writing system; however, it is genuinely thought to be an independent writing system that emerged in the Harappa culture.
These examples indicate that early acts of literacy were closely tied to power and chiefly used for management practices, and probably less than 1% of the population was literate, as it was confined to a very small ruling elite.
Origins of the alphabet
According to social anthropologist Jack Goody, there are two interpretations that regard the origin of the alphabet. Many classical scholars, such as historian Ignace Gelb, credit the Ancient Greeks for creating the first alphabetic system (c. 750 BCE) that used distinctive signs for consonants and vowels. But Goody contests, "The importance of Greek culture of the subsequent history of Western Europe has led to an over-emphasis, by classicists and others, on the addition of specific vowel signs to the set of consonantal ones that had been developed earlier in Western Asia".
Thus, many scholars argue that the ancient Semitic-speaking peoples of northern Canaan (modern-day Syria) invented the consonantal alphabet as early as 1500 BCE. Much of this theory's development is credited to English archeologist Flinders Petrie, who, in 1905, came across a series of Canaanite inscriptions located in the turquoise mines of Serabit el-Khadem. Ten years later, English Egyptologist Alan Gardiner reasoned that these letters contain an alphabet, as well as references to the Canaanite goddess Asherah. In 1948, William F. Albright deciphered the text using additional evidence that had been discovered subsequent to Goody's findings. This included a series of inscriptions from Ugarit, discovered in 1929 by French archaeologist Claude F. A. Schaeffer. Some of these inscriptions were mythological texts (written in an early Canaanite dialect) that consisted of a 32-letter cuneiform consonantal alphabet.
Another significant discovery was made in 1953 when three arrowheads were uncovered, each containing identical Canaanite inscriptions from twelfth century BCE. According to Frank Moore Cross, these inscriptions consisted of alphabetic signs that originated during the transitional development from pictographic script to a linear alphabet. Moreover, he asserts, "These inscriptions also provided clues to extend the decipherment of earlier and later alphabetic texts".
The consonantal system of the Canaanite script inspired alphabetical developments in subsequent systems. During the Late Bronze Age, successor alphabets appeared throughout the Mediterranean region and were employed for Phoenician, Hebrew and Aramaic.
According to Goody, these cuneiform scripts may have influenced the development of the Greek alphabet several centuries later. Historically, the Greeks contended that their writing system was modeled after the Phoenicians. However, many Semitic scholars now believe that Ancient Greek is more consistent with an early form Canaanite that was used c. 1100 BCE. While the earliest Greek inscriptions are dated c. eighth century BCE, epigraphical comparisons to Proto-Canaanite suggest that the Greeks may have adopted the consonantal alphabet as early as 1100 BCE, and later "added in five characters to represent vowels".
Phoenician, which is considered to contain the first "linear alphabet", rapidly spread to the Mediterranean port cities in northern Canaan. Some archeologists believe that Phoenician scripture had some influence on the developments of the Hebrew and Aramaic alphabets based on the fact that these languages evolved during the same time period, share similar features, and are commonly categorized into the same language group.
When the Israelites migrated to Canaan between 1200 and 1001 BCE, they also adopted a variation of the Canaanite alphabet. Baruch ben Neriah, Jeremiah's scribe, used this alphabet to create the later scripts of the Old Testament. The early Hebrew alphabet was prominent in the Mediterranean region until Chaldean Babylonian rulers exiled the Jews to Babylon in the sixth century BCE. It was then that the new script ("Square Hebrew") emerged and the older one rapidly died out.
The Aramaic alphabet also emerged sometime between 1200 and 1000 BCE. Although early evidence of this writing is scarce, archeologists have uncovered a wide range of later Aramaic texts, written as early as the seventh century BCE. Although in the Near East, it was common to record events on clay using the cuneiform script, writing Aramaic on leather parchments became common during the Neo-Assyrian empire. With the rise of the Persians in the 5th century B.C., Achaemenid rulers adapted Aramaic as the "diplomatic language". Darius the Great standardised Aramaic which became the Imperial Aramaic script. This Imperial Aramaic alphabet rapidly spread to both the west, to the Kingdom of Nabataea, then to Sinai and the Arabian Peninsula, eventually making its way to Africa, and to the east, where it later influenced the development of the Brahmi script in India. Over the next few centuries, Imperial Aramaic script in Persia evolved in Pahlavi, "as well as for a range of alphabets used by early Turkish and Mongol tribes in Siberia, Mongolia and Turkestan". Literacy at this period spread with the merchant classes and may have grown to number 15-20% of the total population.
The Aramaic language declined with the spread of Islam, which was accompanied by the spread of Arabic.
Classical and post-classical literacy
Until recently it was thought that the majority of people were illiterate in ancient times. However, recent work challenges this perception. Anthony DiRenzo asserts that Roman society was "a civilization based on the book and the register", and "no one, either free or slave, could afford to be illiterate". Similarly Dupont points out, "The written word was all around them, in both public and private life: laws, calendars, regulations at shrines, and funeral epitaphs were engraved in stone or bronze. The Republic amassed huge archives of reports on every aspect of public life". The imperial civilian administration produced masses of documentation used in judicial, fiscal and administrative matters as did the municipalities. The army kept extensive records relating to supply and duty rosters and submitted reports. Merchants, shippers, and landowners (and their personal staffs) especially of the larger enterprises must have been literate.
In the late fourth century the Desert Father Pachomius would expect literacy of a candidate for admission to his monasteries:
they shall give him twenty Psalms or two of the Apostles' epistles or some other part of Scripture. And if he is illiterate he shall go at the first, third and sixth hours to someone who can teach and has been appointed for him. He shall stand before him and learn very studiously and with all gratitude. The fundamentals of a syllable, the verbs and nouns shall all be written for him and even if he does not want to he shall be compelled to read.
In the course of the 4th and 5th century the Churches made efforts to ensure a better clergy in particular among the bishops who were expected to have a classical education, which was the hallmark of a socially acceptable person in higher society (and possession of which allayed the fears of the pagan elite that their cultural inheritance would be destroyed). Even after the remnants of the Western Roman Empire fell in the 470s, literacy continued to be a distinguishing mark of the elite as communications skills were still important in political and Church life (bishops were largely drawn from the senatorial class) in a new cultural synthesis that made "Christianity the Roman religion". However, these skills were less needed than previously in the absence of the large imperial administrative apparatus whose middle and top echelons the elite had dominated as if by right. Even so, in pre-modern times it is unlikely that literacy was found in more than about 30-40% of the population. The highest percentage of literacy during the Dark Ages was among the clergy and monks who supplied much of the staff needed to administer the states of western Europe.
An abundance of graffiti written in the Nabataean script dating back to the beginning of the first millennium CE has been taken to imply a relatively high degree of literacy among non-specialists in the ancient Arabic-speaking world.
Post-Antiquity illiteracy was made much worse by the lack of a suitable writing medium. When the Western Roman Empire collapsed, the import of papyrus to Europe ceased. Since papyrus perishes easily and does not last well in the wetter European climate, parchment was used, which was expensive and accessible only by the Church and the wealthy. Paper was introduced into Europe in Spain in the 11th century. Its use spread north slowly over the next four centuries. Literacy saw a resurgence as a result, and by the 15th century paper had largely replaced parchment except for luxury manuscripts.
The Reformation stressed the importance of literacy and being able to read the Bible. The Protestant countries were the first to attain full literacy; Scandinavian countries were fully literate in the early 17th century.
Literacy and industrialization
Modern industrialization began in England and Scotland in the 18th century, where there were relatively high levels of literacy among farmers, especially in Scotland. This permitted the recruitment of literate craftsman, skilled workers, foremen and managers who supervised the emerging textile factories and coal mines. Much of a labor was unskilled, and especially in textile mills children as young as eight proved useful in handling chores and adding to the family income. Indeed, children were taken out of school to work alongside their parents in the factories. However, by the mid-nineteenth century, unskilled labor forces were common in Western Europe, and British industry moved upscale, needing many more engineers and skilled workers who could handle technical instructions and complex situations. Literacy was essential to be hired. A senior government official told Parliament in 1870:
Upon the speedy provision of elementary education depends our industrial prosperity. It is of no use trying to give technical teaching to our citizens without elementary education; uneducated labourers—and many of our labourers are utterly uneducated—are, for the most part, unskilled labourers, and if we leave our work–folk any longer unskilled, notwithstanding their strong sinews and determined energy, they will become overmatched in the competition of the world.
Modern literacy
Spread of literacy since the mid-twentieth century
Literacy data published by UNESCO displays that since 1950, the adult literacy rate at the world level has increased by 5 percentage points every decade on average, from 55.7 per cent in 1950 to 86.2 per cent in 2015. However, for four decades, the population growth was so rapid that the number of illiterate adults kept increasing, rising from 700 million in 1950 to 878 million in 1990. Since then, the number has fallen markedly to 745 million in 2015, although it remains higher than in 1950 despite decades of universal education policies, literacy interventions and the spread of print material and information and communications technology (ICT). However, these trends have been far from uniform across regions.
Regional disparities
Available global data indicates significant variations in literacy rates between world regions. North America, Europe, West Asia, and Central Asia have achieved almost full adult literacy (individuals at or over the age of 15) for both men and women. Most countries in East Asia and the Pacific, as well as Latin America and the Caribbean, are above a 90% literacy rate for adults. Illiteracy persists to a greater extent in other regions: 2013 UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) data indicates adult literacy rates of only 67.55% in South Asia and North Africa, 59.76% in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In much of the world, high youth literacy rates suggest that illiteracy will become less and less common as younger generations with higher educational attainment levels replace older ones. However, in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where the vast majority of the world's illiterate youth live, lower school enrollment implies that illiteracy will persist to a greater degree. According to 2013 UIS data, the youth literacy rate (individuals ages 15 to 24) is 84.03% in South Asia and North Africa, and 70.06% in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet the literate/illiterate distinction is not clear-cut: for example, given that a large part of the benefits of literacy can be obtained by having access to a literate person in the household, some recent literature in economics, starting with the work of Kaushik Basu and James Foster, distinguishes between a "proximate illiterate" and an "isolated illiterate". The former refers to an illiterate person who lives in a household with literates and the latter to an illiterate who lives in a household of all illiterates. What is of concern is that many people in poor nations are not proximate illiterates but rather isolated illiterates.
That being said, literacy has rapidly spread in several regions in the last twenty-five years (see image). The global initiative of the United Nations to actualize the Sustainable Development Goal 4 is also gaining momentum.
Gender disparities
According to 2015 UIS data collected by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, about two-thirds (63%) of the world's illiterate adults are women. This disparity was even starker in previous decades: from 1970 to 2000, the global gender gap in literacy would decrease by roughly 50%. In recent years, however, this progress has stagnated, with the remaining gender gap holding almost constant over the last two decades. In general, the gender gap in literacy is not as pronounced as the regional gap; that is, differences between countries in overall literacy are often larger than gender differences within countries. However, the gap between men and women would narrow from 1990 onwards, after the increase of male adult literacy rates at 80 per cent (see image).
Sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the lowest overall literacy rates, also features the widest gender gap: just 52% of adult females are literate, and 68% among adult men. Similar gender disparity persists in two other regions, North Africa (86% adult male literacy, 70% adult female literacy) and South Asia (77% adult male literacy, 58% adult female literacy).
The 1990 World Conference on Education for All, held in Jomtien, Thailand, would bring attention to the literacy gender gap and prompt many developing countries to prioritize women's literacy.
In many contexts, female illiteracy co-exists with other aspects of gender inequality. Martha Nussbaum suggests illiterate women are more vulnerable to becoming trapped in an abusive marriage, given that illiteracy limits their employment opportunities and worsens their intra-household bargaining position. Moreover, Nussbaum links literacy to the potential for women to effectively communicate and collaborate with one another in order "to participate in a larger movement for political change."
Challenges of increasing female literacy
Social barriers prevent expanding literacy skills among women and girls. Making literacy classes available can be ineffective when it conflicts with the use of the valuable limited time of women and girls. School age girls, in many contexts, face stronger expectations than their male counterparts to perform household work and care after younger siblings. Generational dynamics can also perpetuate these disparities: illiterate parents may not readily appreciate the value of literacy for their daughters, particularly in traditional, rural societies with expectations that girls will remain at home.
A 2015 World Bank and the International Center for Research on Women review of academic literature would conclude that child marriage, which predominantly impacts girls, tends to reduce literacy levels. A 2008 analysis of the issue in Bangladesh found that for every additional year of delay in a girl's marriage, her likelihood of literacy would increase by 5.6 percent. Similarly, a 2014 study found that in sub-Saharan Africa, marrying early would significantly decrease a girl's probability of literacy, holding other variables constant. A 2015 review of the child marriage literature therefore would recommend marriage postponement as part of a strategy to increase educational attainment levels, including female literacy in particular.
Gender gap for boys in developed countries
While women and girls comprise the majority of the global illiterate population, in many developed countries a literacy gender gap exists in the opposite direction. Data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has consistently indicated the literacy underachievement of boys within member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In view of such findings, many education specialists have recommended changes in classroom practices to better accommodate boys' learning styles, and to remove any gender stereotypes that may create a perception of reading and writing as feminine activities.
Socioeconomic impact
Many policy analysts consider literacy rates as a crucial measure of the value of a region's human capital. For example, literate people can be more easily trained than illiterate people, and generally have a higher socioeconomic status; thus they enjoy better health and employment prospects. The international community has come to consider literacy as a key facilitator and goal of development. In regard to the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the UN in 2015, the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning has declared the "central role of literacy in responding to sustainable development challenges such as health, social equality, economic empowerment and environmental sustainability." A majority of prisoners have been found to be illiterate: In Edinburgh prison, winner of the 2010 Libraries Change Lives Award, "the library has become the cornerstone of the prison's literacy strategy" and thus recidivism and reoffending can be reduced, and incarcerated persons can work toward attaining higher socioconomic status once released.
Health impacts
Print illiteracy generally corresponds with less knowledge about modern hygiene and nutritional practices, an unawareness which can exacerbate a wide range of health issues. Within developing countries in particular, literacy rates also have implications for child mortality; in these contexts, children of literate mothers are 50% more likely to live past age 5 than children of illiterate mothers. Public health research has thus increasingly concerned itself with the potential for literacy skills to allow women to more successfully access health care systems, and thereby facilitate gains in child health.
For example, a 2014 descriptive research survey project correlates literacy levels with the socioeconomic status of women in Oyo State, Nigeria. The study claims that developing literacy in this area will bring "economic empowerment and will encourage rural women to practice hygiene, which will in turn lead to the reduction of birth and death rates."
Economic impacts
Literacy can increase job opportunities and access to higher education. In 2009, the National Adult Literacy Agency (NALA) in Ireland commissioned a cost benefit analysis of adult literacy training. This concluded that there were economic gains for the individuals, the companies they worked for, and the Exchequer, as well as the economy and the country as a whole—for example, increased GDP. Korotayev and coauthors have revealed a rather significant correlation between the level of literacy in the early 19th century and successful modernization and economic breakthroughs in the late 20th century, as "literate people could be characterized by a greater innovative-activity level, which provides opportunities for modernization, development, and economic growth".
Literacy promotion efforts
While informal learning within the home can play an important role in literacy development, gains in childhood literacy often occur in primary school settings. Continuing the global expansion of public education is thus a frequent focus of literacy advocates. These kinds of broad improvements in education often require centralized efforts undertaken by national governments; alternatively, local literacy projects implemented by NGOs can play an important role, particularly in rural contexts.
Funding for both youth and adult literacy programs often comes from large international development organizations. USAID, for example, steered donors like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Global Partnership for Education toward the issue of childhood literacy by developing the Early Grade Reading Assessment. Advocacy groups like the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education have frequently called upon international organizations such as UNESCO, the International Labour Organization, the World Health Organization, and the World Bank to prioritize support for adult women's literacy. Efforts to increase adult literacy often encompass other development priorities as well; for example, initiatives in Ethiopia, Morocco, and India have combined adult literacy programs with vocational skills trainings in order to encourage enrollment and address the complex needs of women and other marginalized groups who lack economic opportunity.
In 2013, the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning published a set of case studies on programs that successfully improved female literacy rates. The report features countries from a variety of regions and of differing income levels, reflecting the general global consensus on "the need to empower women through the acquisition of literacy skills." Part of the impetus for UNESCO's focus on literacy is a broader effort to respond to globalization and "the shift towards knowledge-based societies" that it has produced. While globalization presents emerging challenges, it also provides new opportunities: many education and development specialists are hopeful that new ICTs will have the potential to expand literacy learning opportunities for children and adults, even those in countries that have historically struggled to improve literacy rates through more conventional means.
In 2007, the nonprofit organization LitWorld was founded to promote literacy around the world. Based in the United States, the organization has developed programs to be applied internationally with the goal to teach children to speak, read, and write, regardless of ethnicity, gender, and economic status.
Literacy as a development indicator
The Human Development Index, produced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), uses education as one of its three indicators; originally, adult literacy represented two-thirds of this education index weight. In 2010, however, the UNDP replaced the adult literacy measure with mean years of schooling. A 2011 UNDP research paper framed this change as a way to "ensure current relevance", arguing that gains in global literacy already achieved between 1970 and 2010 meant that literacy would be "unlikely to be as informative of the future."
Other scholars, however, have since warned against overlooking the importance of literacy as an indicator and a goal for development, particularly for marginalized groups such as women and rural populations.
The World Bank, along with the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, has developed the Learning Poverty concept and associated measure, which measures the proportion of students who are unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10. This research found that 53% of children in low- and middle-income countries cannot read and understand a simple story by the end of primary school. In poor countries, the level is as high as 80 percent. Thus, it may be too soon to argue that literacy rates are less informative.
In fact, these new measures indicate that these startlingly high rates of illiteracy are an "early warning sign that SDG 4 for education and all related global goals are in jeopardy." Current progress in improving literacy rates is much too slow to meet the SDG goals. At the current rate, approximately 43% of children will still be learning poor by 2030.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) assesses children on reading and math skills at age 15. PISA-D encourages and facilitates PISA testing in low- and middle-income countries. In 2019, "PISA-D results reveal exceptionally low scores for participating countries. Only 23 percent of students tested achieved the minimum level of proficiency in reading, compared with 80 percent of OECD". Minimum proficiency requires students to read "simple and familiar texts and understand them literally”, as well as demonstrating some ability to connect pieces of information and draw inferences, which is a relatively low bar for literacy.
Measuring literacy
In 2019, UNESCO Institute for Statistics estimated the global literacy rate at 86.5 percent. It is important to understand how literacy rates have been measured in the past, as well as how they are currently being measured. From 1975 until 1988, all countries that reported literacy rates did so through self-reports from heads of households. This meant the head of a household answered a simple simple yes/no question asking whether household members could read and write. From 1988 to 2007, all countries that reported literacy data did so through self-reports from either heads of household or the individual themselves. Self-reported data is subjective and has several limitations. First, a simple yes/no question does not capture the continuum of literacy. Second, self-reports are dependent on what each individual interprets "reading" and "writing" to mean. In some cultures, drawing a picture may be understood as "writing" one's name. Lastly, many of the surveys asked one individual to report literacy on behalf of others, "introducing further noise, in particular when it comes to estimating literacy among women and children, since these groups are less often considered heads of household".
In 2007, several countries began introducing literacy tests to determine a more accurate measurement of literacy rates, including Liberia, South Korea, Guyana, Kenya, and Bangladesh. However, in 2016, the majority of counties still reported literacy through either self-reported measures or other indirect estimates.These indirect measurements are potentially problematic, as many countries measure literacy based on years of schooling. In Greece, an individual is considered literate if they have finished six years of primary education, while in Paraguay individuals are considered literate if they have completed just two years of primary school.
However, emerging research reveals that educational attainment, or years of schooling, does not correlate with literacy. Literacy tests show that in many low-income countries, a large proportion of students who have attended two years of primary school cannot read a single word of a short text. These rates are as high as 90% of second-grade students in Malawi, 85.4% in India, 83% in Ghana, and 64% in Uganda. In India, over 50% of Grade 5 students have not mastered Grade 2 literacy. In Nigeria, only about 1 in 10 women who completed Grade 6 can read a single sentence in their native language. This data reveals that literacy rates measured by years of schooling as a proxy are potentially unreliable and do not reflect the true literacy rates of populations.
Literacy as a human right
Unlike medieval times, when reading and writing skills were restricted to a few elites and the clergy, these literacy skills are now expected from every member of a society. Literacy is therefore considered human right essential for lifelong learning and social change. As supported by the 1996 Report of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century, and the 1997 Hamburg Declaration: ‘Literacy, broadly conceived as the basic knowledge and skills needed by all in a rapidly changing world, is a fundamental human right. (...) There are millions, the majority of whom are women, who lack opportunities to learn or who have insufficient skills to be able to assert this right. The challenge is to enable them to do so. This will often imply the creation of preconditions for learning through awareness raising and empowerment. Literacy is also a catalyst for participation in social, cultural, political and economic activities, and for learning throughout life’.
In 2016, the European Literacy Policy Network (ELINET) (an association of European literacy professionals) published a document entitled European Declaration of the right to literacy. It states that “Everyone in Europe has the right to acquire literacy. EU Member States should ensure that people of all ages, regardless of social class, religion, ethnicity, origin and gender, are provided with the necessary resources and opportunities to develop sufficient and sustainable literacy skills in order to effectively understand and use written communication be in handwritten, in print or digital form.”
Teaching literacy
The teaching of literacy involves the both the teaching of reading and the teaching of writing. In schooling reading and writing are often taught as separate skills, but children show curiosity about the written word and begin to experiment with both in a process of emergent literacy and they learn to make sense of and use the local writing system they see used around them. Indeed, every new piece of writing draws on reading previously done by the writer, through a process of intertextuality. Sometimes the intertextuality is made explicit through citation, as in academic writing, and writing about reading is one of the major approaches for teaching writing in higher education. Intertextuality, however, also can be implicit through well-known recognizable phrases from specific works or genres and writing styles that suggest larger collections of works.
Critiques of autonomous models of literacy notwithstanding, the belief that reading development is key to literacy remains dominant, at least in the United States, where it is understood as progression of skills that begins with the ability to understand spoken words and decode written words, and that culminates in the deep understanding of text. Reading development involves a range of complex language-underpinnings including awareness of speech sounds (phonology), spelling patterns (orthography), word meaning (semantics), syntax and patterns of word formation (morphology), all of which provide a necessary platform for reading fluency and comprehension.
Once these skills are acquired, it is maintained, a reader can attain full language literacy, which includes the abilities to apply to printed material critical analysis, inference and synthesis; to write with accuracy and coherence; and to use information and insights from text as the basis for informed decisions and creative thought.
For this reason, teaching English literacy in the United States is dominated by a focus on a set of discrete decoding skills. From this perspective, literacy—or, rather, reading—comprises a number of subskills that can be taught to students. These skill sets include phonological awareness, phonics (decoding), fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. Mastering each of these subskills is necessary for students to become proficient readers.
From this same perspective, readers of alphabetic languages must understand the alphabetic principle to master basic reading skills. For this purpose a writing system is "alphabetic" if it uses symbols to represent individual language sounds, though the degree of correspondence between letters and sounds varies between alphabetic languages. Syllabic writing systems (such as Japanese kana) use a symbol to represent a single syllable, and logographic writing systems (such as Chinese) use a symbol to represent a morpheme.
There are any number of approaches to teaching literacy; each is shaped by its informing assumptions about what literacy is and how it is best learned by students. Phonics instruction, for example, focuses on reading at the level of letters or symbols and their sounds (i.e. sublexical),. It teaches readers to decode the letters or groups of letters that make up words. A common method of teaching phonics is synthetic phonics, in which a novice reader pronounces each individual sound and "blends" them to pronounce the whole word. Another approach is embedded phonics instruction, used more often in whole language reading instruction, in which novice readers learn about the individual letters in words on a just-in-time, just-in-place basis that is tailored to meet each student's reading and writing learning needs. That is, teachers provide phonics instruction opportunistically, within the context of stories or student writing that feature many instances of a particular letter or group of letters. Embedded instruction combines letter-sound knowledge with the use of meaningful context to read new and difficult words. Techniques such as directed listening and thinking activities can be used to aid children in learning how to read and reading comprehension. Students at both primary and secondary levels learning to write as well as writing about their reading have also been found to be effective in improving their reading skills.
Out of all the approaches to literacy instruction, the two that are the most commonly used in schools are structured literacy instruction and balanced literacy instruction. The structured literacy approach explicitly and systematically focuses on phonological awareness, word recognition, phonics and decoding, spelling, and syntax at both the sentence and paragraph levels. The balanced literacy approach, on the other hand, does not put much emphasis on phonics and decoding, and instead focuses on shared, guided, and independent reading as well as Grapheme representations along with context and imagery. Both approaches have their critics - those who oppose structured literacy claim that by restricting students to phonemes, their fluency development is limited. Critics of balanced literacy claim that if phonics and decoding instruction is neglected, students will have to rely on compensatory strategies when confronted with unfamiliar text. These strategies include memorizing words, using context to guess words, and even skipping ones they do not know. These strategies are taught to students as part of the balanced literacy approach based on a theory about reading development called the three cueing system. The three-cueing system is used to determine the meaning of words by using grapho-phonetic cues (letter-sound relationships), syntactic cues (grammatical structure), and semantic cues (a word making sense in context). However, cognitive neuroscientists Mark Seidenberg and professor Timothy Shanahan do not support the theory. They say the three-cueing system's value in reading instruction "is a magnificent work of the imagination", and it developed not because teachers lack integrity, commitment, motivation, sincerity, or intelligence, but because they "were poorly trained and advised" about the science of reading. In England, the simple view of reading and synthetic phonics are intended to replace "the searchlights multi-cueing model".
In a 2012 hypothesis, it has been proposed that reading might be acquired naturally if print is constantly available at an early age in the same manner as spoken language. If an appropriate form of written text is made available before formal schooling begins, reading should be learned inductively, emerge naturally, and with no significant negative consequences. This proposal challenges the commonly held belief that written language requires formal instruction and schooling. Its success would change current views of literacy and schooling. Using developments in behavioral science and technology, an interactive system (Technology Assisted Reading Acquisition, TARA) would enable young pre-literate children to accurately perceive and learn properties of written language by simple exposure to the written form.
On the other hand, in his 2009 book, Reading in the brain, cognitive neuroscientist, Stanislas Dehaene, said "cognitive psychology directly refutes any notion of teaching via a 'global' or 'whole language' method." He goes on to talk about "the myth of whole-word reading", saying it has been refuted by recent experiments. "We do not recognize a printed word through a holistic grasping of its contours, because our brain breaks it down into letters and graphemes."
In Australia a number of State governments have introduced Reading Challenges to improve literacy. The Premier's Reading Challenge in South Australia, launched by Premier Mike Rann has one of the highest participation rates in the world for reading challenges. It has been embraced by more than 95% of public, private and religious schools.
Post-conflict settings
Programs have been implemented in regions that have an ongoing conflict or in a post-conflict stage. The Norwegian Refugee Council Pack program has been used in 13 post-conflict countries since 2003. The program organizers believe that daily routines and other wise predictable activities help the transition from war to peace. Learners can select one area in vocational training for a year-long period. They complete required courses in agriculture, life skills, literacy and numeracy. Results have shown that active participation and management of the members of the program are important to the success of the program. These programs share the use of integrated basic education, e.g. literacy, numeracy, scientific knowledge, local history and culture, native and mainstream language skills, and apprenticeships.
Teaching non-native users
Although there is considerable awareness that language deficiencies (lacking proficiency) are disadvantageous to immigrants settling in a new country, there appears to be a lack of pedagogical approaches that address the instruction of literacy to migrant English language learners (ELLs). Harvard scholar Catherine Snow (2001) called for a gap to be addresses: "The TESOL field needs a concerted research effort to inform literacy instruction for such children ... to determine when to start literacy instruction and how to adapt it to the LS reader's needs". The scenario becomes more complex when there is no choice in such decisions as in the case of the current migration trends with citizens from the Middle East and Africa being relocated to English majority nations due to various political or social reasons. Recent developments to address the gap in teaching literacy to second or foreign language learners has been ongoing and promising results have been shown by Pearson and Pellerine (2010) which integrates Teaching for Understanding, a curricular framework from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. A series of pilot projects had been carried out in the Middle East and Africa (see Patil, 2016). In this work significant interest from the learners perspective have been noticed through the integration of visual arts as springboards for literacy oriented instruction. In one case migrant women had been provided with cameras and a walking tour of their local village was provided to the instructor as the women photographed their tour focusing on places and activities that would later be used for writings about their daily life. In essence a narrative of life. Other primers for writing activities include: painting, sketching, and other craft projects (e.g. gluing activities).
A series of pilot studies were carried out to investigate alternatives to instructing literacy to migrant ELLs, starting from simple trials aiming to test the teaching of photography to participants with no prior photography background, to isolating painting and sketching activities that could later be integrated into a larger pedagogical initiative. In efforts to develop alternative approaches for literacy instruction utilising visual arts, work was carried out with Afghan labourers, Bangladeshi tailors, Emirati media students, internal Ethiopian migrants (both labourers and university students), and a street child.
It should be pointed out that in such challenging contexts sometimes the teaching of literacy may have unforeseen barriers. The EL Gazette reported that in the trials carried out in Ethiopia, for example, it was found that all ten of the participants had problems with vision. In order to overcome this, or to avoid such challenges, preliminary health checks can help inform pre-teaching in order to better assist in the teaching/learning of literacy.
In a visual arts approach to literacy instruction a benefit can be the inclusion of both a traditional literacy approach (reading and writing) while at the same time addressing 21st Century digital literacy instruction through the inclusion of digital cameras and posting images onto the web. Many scholars feel that the inclusion of digital literacy is necessary to include under the traditional umbrella of literacy instruction specifically when engaging second language learners. (Also see: Digital literacy.)
Other ways in which visual arts have been integrated into literacy instruction for migrant populations include integrating aspects of visual art with the blending of core curricular goals.
Teaching migrant/immigrant language users
A more pressing challenge in education is the instruction of literacy to Migrant English Language Learners (MELLs), a term coined by Pellerine. It is not just limited to English. "Due to the growing share of immigrants in many Western societies, there has been increasing concern for the degree to which immigrants acquire language that is spoken in the destination country". Remembering that teaching literacy to a native in their L1 can be challenging, and the challenge becomes more cognitively demanding when in a second language (L2), the task can become considerably more difficult when confronted with a migrant who has made a sudden change (migrated) and requires the second language upon arrival in the country of destination. In many instances a migrant will not have the opportunity, for many obvious reasons, to start school again at grade one and acquire the language naturally. In these situations alternative interventions need to take place.
In working with illiterate people (and individuals with low-proficiency in an L2) following the composition of some artifact like in taking a photo, sketching an event, or painting an image, a stage of orality has been seen as an effective way to understand the intention of the learner.
In the accompanying image from left to right a) an image taken during a phototour of the participant's village. This image is of the individual at her shop, and this is one of her products that she sells, dung for cooking fuel. The image helps the interlocutor understand the realities of the participants daily life and most importantly it allows the participant the opportunity to select what they feel is important to them. b) This is an image of a student explaining and elaborating the series of milestones in her life to a group. In this image the student had a very basic ability and with some help was able to write brief captions under the images. While she speaks a recording of her story takes place to understand her story and to help develop it in the L2. The third image is of a painting that had been used with a composite in Photoshop. With further training participants can learn how to blend images they would like to therefore introducing elements of digital literacies, beneficial in many spheres of life in the 21st century.
In the following image (see right) you can see two samples 1) One in Ethiopia from stencil to more developed composition based on a village tour, photography, and paintings. 2) In the Middle East at a tailor's shop focusing English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and in this example the writing has evolved from photography, sketching, and in situ exposure for the instructor (much like the village tour in sample one).
From the work based in Ethiopia, participants were asked to rate preference of activity, on a scale of 1-10. The survey prompt was: On a scale of 1 - 10 how would you rate photography as an activity that helped you get inspiration for your writing activities (think of enjoyment and usefulness). The following activities were rated, in order of preference - activities used as primers for writing:
Photography 97%
Oral presentations sharing your art 92%
Process painting 84%
Painting 82%
Sketching 78%
Gluing activities 72%
Stencil/tracing activities 60%
More research would need to be conducted to confirm such trends.
In bringing work together from students in culminating projects, authorship programs have been successful in bringing student work together in book format. Such artifacts can be used to both document learning, but more importantly reinforce language and content goals.
The culmination of such writings, into books can evoke both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Form feedback by students involved in such initiatives the responses have indicated that the healthy pressures of collective and collaborative work was beneficial.
Importance
Teaching people to read and write, the traditional meaning of literacy, is a very complex task in a native language. To do this in a second language becomes increasingly more complex, and in the case of migrants relocating to another country there can be legal and policy driven boundaries that prohibit the naturalization and acquisition of citizenship based on language proficiency. In Canada for example despite a debate, language tests are required years after settling into Canada. Similar exists globally, see:, and for example.
The EL Gazette reviewed Pellerine's work with migrant English language learners and commented: "Handing English language learners a sponge and some paint and asking them to ‘paint what comes’ might not appear like a promising teaching method for a foreign language. But Canadian EL instructor and photographer Steve Pellerine has found that the technique, along with others based around the visual arts, has helped some of his most challenging groups to learn". Visual arts have been viewed as an effective way to approach literacy instruction - the art being primers for subsequent literacy tasks within a scaffolded curricular design, such at Teaching for Understanding (TfU) or Understanding by Design (UbD).
By continent
Europe
United Kingdom
Nearly one in ten young adult women have poor reading and writing skills in the UK in the 21st century. This seriously damages their employment prospects and many are trapped in poverty. Lack of reading skill is a social stigma and women tend to hide their difficulty rather than seeking help. Girls on average do better than boys at English in school.
England
Literacy is first documented in the area of modern England on 24 September 54 BCE, on which day Julius Caesar and Quintus Cicero wrote to Cicero "from the nearest shores of Britain". Literacy was widespread under Roman rule, but became very rare, limited almost entirely to churchmen, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. In 12th and 13th century England, the ability to recite a particular passage from the Bible in Latin entitled a common law defendant to the so-called benefit of clergy: i.e. trial before an ecclesiastical court, where sentences were more lenient, instead of a secular one, where hanging was a likely sentence. Thus literate lay defendants often claimed benefit of clergy, while an illiterate person who had memorized the psalm used as the literacy test, Psalm 51 ("O God, have mercy upon me..."), could also claim benefit of clergy. Despite lacking a system of free and compulsory primary schooling, England reached near universal literacy in the 19th century as a result of shared, informal learning provided by family members, fellow workers, and/or benevolent employers. Even with near universal literacy rates, the gap between male and female literacy rates persisted until the early 20th century. Many women in the West during the 19th century were able to read, but unable to write.
Wales
Formal higher education in the arts and sciences in Wales, from the Middle Ages to the 18th century, was the preserve of the wealthy and the clergy. As in England, Welsh history and archaeological finds dating back to the Bronze Age reveal not only reading and writing, but also alchemy, botany, advanced maths and science. Following the Roman occupation and the conquest by the English, education in Wales was at a very low ebb in the early modern period; in particular, formal education was only available in English while the majority of the population spoke only Welsh. The first modern grammar schools were established in Welsh towns such as Ruthin, Brecon, and Cowbridge. One of the first modern national education methods to use the native Welsh language was started by Griffith Jones in 1731. Jones was the rector of Llanddowror from 1716 and remained there for the rest of his life. He organized and introduced a Welsh medium circulating school system, which was attractive and effective for Welsh speakers, while also teaching them English, which gave them access to broader educational sources. The circulating schools may have taught half the country's population to read. Literacy rates in Wales by the mid-18th century were one of the highest.
Continental Europe
The ability to read did not necessarily imply the ability to write. The 1686 church law (kyrkolagen) of the Kingdom of Sweden (which at the time included all of modern Sweden, Finland, Latvia and Estonia) enforced literacy on the people, and by 1800 the ability to read was close to 100%. This was directly dependent on the need to read religious texts in the Lutheran faith in Sweden and Finland. As a result, literacy in these countries was inclined towards reading, specifically. But as late as the 19th century, many Swedes, especially women, could not write. The exception to this rule were the men and women of Iceland who achieved widespread literacy without formal schooling, libraries, or printed books via informal tuition by religious leaders and peasant teachers. Historian Ernest Gellner argues that Continental European countries were far more successful in implementing educational reform precisely because their governments were more willing to invest in the population as a whole. Government oversight allowed countries to standardize curriculum and secure funding through legislation thus enabling educational programs to have a broader reach.
Although the present-day concepts of literacy have much to do with the 15th-century invention of the movable type printing press, it was not until the Industrial Revolution of the mid-19th century that paper and books became affordable to all classes of industrialized society. Until then, only a small percentage of the population were literate as only wealthy individuals and institutions could afford the materials. Even , the cost of paper and books is a barrier to universal literacy in some less-industrialized nations.
On the other hand, historian Harvey Graff argues that the introduction of mass schooling was in part an effort to control the type of literacy that the working class had access to. According to Graff, literacy learning was increasing outside of formal settings (such as schools) and this uncontrolled, potentially critical reading could lead to increased radicalization of the populace. In his view, mass schooling was meant to temper and control literacy, not spread it. Graff also points out, using the example of Sweden, that mass literacy can be achieved without formal schooling or instruction in writing.
North America
Canada
Colonialism (1600s–1762)
Research on the literacy rates of Canadians in the colonial days rested largely on examinations of the proportion of signatures to marks on parish acts (birth, baptismal, and marriage registrations). Although some researchers have concluded that signature counts drawn from marriage registers in nineteenth century France corresponded closely with literacy tests given to military conscripts, others regard this methodology as a "relatively unimaginative treatment of the complex practices and events that might be described as literacy" (Curtis, 2007, p. 1-2). But censuses (dating back to 1666) and official records of New France offer few clues of their own on the population's levels of literacy, therefore leaving few options in terms of materials from which to draw literary rate estimates.
In his research of literacy rates of males and females in New France, Trudel found that in 1663, of 1,224 persons in New France who were of marriageable age, 59% of grooms and 46% of brides wrote their name; however, of the 3,000-plus colony inhabitants, less than 40% were native born. Signature rates were therefore likely more reflective of rates of literacy among French immigrants. Magnuson's (1985) research revealed a trend: signature rates for the period of 1680–1699 were 42% for males, 30% for females; in 1657–1715, they were 45% for males and 43% for females; in 1745–1754, they were higher for females than for males. He believed that this upward trend in rates of females’ ability to sign documents was largely attributed to the larger number of female religious orders, and to the proportionately more active role of women in health and education, while the roles of male religious orders were largely to serve as parish priests, missionaries, military chaplains and explorers. 1752 marked the date that Canada's first newspaper—the Halifax Gazette—began publication.
From the British Conquest (1763) to Confederation (1867)
The end of the Seven Years' War in 1763 allowed two Philadelphia printers to come to Québec City and to begin printing a bilingual Quebec Gazette in 1764, while in 1785 Fleury Mesplet started publication of the Montreal Gazette, which is now the oldest continuing newspaper in the country.
In the 19th century, printing became more affordable, and literature in its many forms became much more available. But educating the Canadian population in reading and writing was nevertheless a huge challenge. Concerned about the strong French Canadian presence in the colony, the British authorities repeatedly tried to help establish schools that were outside the control of religious authorities, but these efforts were largely undermined by the Catholic Church and later the Anglican clergy.
From the early 1820s in Lower Canada, classical college curriculum, which was monopolized by the Church, was also subject to growing liberal and lay criticism, arguing it was fit first and foremost to produce priests, when Lower Canadians needed to be able to compete effectively with foreign industry and commerce and with the immigrants who were monopolizing trade (Curtis, 1985). Liberal and lay attempts to promote parish schools generated a reaction from the Catholic and later the Anglican clergy in which the dangers of popular literacy figured centrally. Both churches shared an opposition to any educational plan that encouraged lay reading of the Bible, and spokesmen for both warned of the evil and demoralizing tendencies of unregulated reading in general. Granted the power to organize parish schooling through the Vestry School Act of 1824, the Catholic clergy did nothing effective.
Despite this, the invention of the printing press had laid the foundation for the modern era and universal social literacy, and so it is that with time, "technologically, literacy had passed from the hands of an elite to the populace at large. Historical factors and sociopolitical conditions, however, have determined the extent to which universal social literacy has come to pass".
1868–1986
In 1871 only about half of French Canadian men in Canada self-reported that they were literate, whereas 90 percent of other Canadian men said they could read and write, but information from the Canadian Families Project sample of the 1901 Census of Canada indicated that literacy rates for French Canadians and other Canadians increased, as measured by the ability of men between the ages of 16 and 65 to answer literacy questions. Compulsory attendance in schools was legislated in the late 19th century in all provinces but Quebec, but by then, a change in parental attitudes towards educating the new generation meant that many children were already attending regularly. Unlike the emphasis of school promoters on character formation, the shaping of values, the inculcation of political and social attitudes, and proper behaviour, many parents supported schooling because they wanted their children to learn to read, write, and do arithmetic. Efforts were made to exert power and religious, moral, economic/professional, and social/cultural influence over children who were learning to read by dictating the contents of their school readers accordingly. But educators broke from these spheres of influence and also taught literature from a more child-centred perspective: for the pleasure of it.
Educational change in Québec began as a result of a major commission of inquiry at the start of what came to be called the "Quiet Revolution" in the early 1960s. In response to the resulting recommendations, the Québec government revamped the school system in an attempt to enhance the francophone population's general educational level and to produce a better-qualified labour force. Catholic Church leadership was rejected in favour of government administration and vastly increased budgets were given to school boards across the province.
With time, and with continuing inquiry into the literacy achievement levels of Canadians, the definition of literacy moved from a dichotomous one (either a person could, or could not write his or her name, or was literate or illiterate), to ones that considered its multidimensionality, along with the qualitative and quantitative aspects of literacy. In the 1970s, organizations like the Canadian Association for Adult Education (CAAE) believed that one had to complete the 8th grade to achieve functional literacy. Examination of 1976 census data, for example, found that 4,376,655, or 28.4% of Canadians 15 years of age and over reported a level of schooling of less than grade 9 and were thus deemed not functionally literate. But in 1991, UNESCO formally acknowledged Canada's findings that assessment of educational attainment as proxy measure of literacy was not as reliable as was direct assessment. This dissatisfaction manifested itself in the development of actual proficiency tests that measure reading literacy more directly.
Direct systematic measures of literacy in Canada, 1987 to present
Canada conducted its first literacy survey in 1987 which discovered that there were more than five million functionally illiterate adults in Canada, or 24 per cent of the adult population. Statistics Canada then conducted three national and international literacy surveys of the adult population — the first one in 1989 commissioned by the Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) department.
This first survey was called the "Literacy Skills Used in Daily Activities" (LSUDA) survey, and was modeled on the 1985 U.S. survey of young adults (YALS). It represented a first attempt in Canada to produce skill measures deemed comparable across languages. Literacy, for the first time, was measured on a continuum of skills. The survey found that 16% of Canadians had literacy skills too limited to deal with most of the printed material encountered in daily life whereas 22% were considered "narrow" readers.
In 1994–95, Canada participated in the first multi-country, multi-language assessment of adult literacy, the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS). A stratified multi-stage probability sample design was used to select the sample from the Census Frame. The sample was designed to yield separate samples for the two Canadian official languages, English and French, and participants were measured on the dimensions of prose literacy, document literacy and quantitative literacy. The survey found that 42.2%, 43% and 42.2% of Canadians between the ages of 16 and 65 scored at the lowest two levels of Prose Literacy, Document Literacy and Quantitative Literacy, respectively. The survey presented many important correlations, among which was a strong plausible link between literacy and a country's economic potential.
In 2003, Canada participated in the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALL). This survey contained identical measures for assessing the prose and document literacy proficiencies, allowing for comparisons between survey results on these two measures and found that 41.9% and 42.6% of Canadians between the ages of 16 and 65 scored at the lowest two levels of Prose Literacy and document literacy respectively. Further, Canadians’ mean scores also improved on both the prose and the document literacy scales. Energy production:36%, transportation: 24%, homes and businesses: 12%, industry: 11%, agriculture: 10%, and waste: 7%.
The OECD's Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) is expected to produce new comparative skill profiles in late 2013.
Mexico
In the last 40 years, the rate of illiteracy in Mexico has been steadily decreasing. In the 1960s, because the majority of the residents of the federal capital were illiterate, the planners of the Mexico City Metro designed a system of unique icons to identify each station in the system in addition to its formal name. However, the INEGI's census data of 1970 showed a national average illiteracy rate of 25.8%; the last census data puts the national average at 6.9%. Mexico still has a gender educational bias. The illiteracy rate for women in the last census was 8.1% compared with 5.6% for men. Rates differ across regions and states. Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca, the states with the highest poverty rate, had greater than 15% illiteracy in 2010 (17.8%, 16.7% and 16.3 respectively). In contrast, the illiteracy rates in the Federal District (D.F. / Mexico City) and in some northern states like Nuevo León, Baja California, and Coahuila were below 3% in the 2010 census (2.1%, 2.2%, 2.6% and 2.6% respectively).
United States
See also: Teaching Writing in the United States
Before the 20th century white illiteracy was not uncommon and many of the slave states made it illegal to teach slaves to read. By 1900 the situation had improved somewhat, but 44% of black people remained illiterate. There were significant improvements for African American and other races in the early 20th century as the descendants of former slaves, who had had no educational opportunities, grew up in the post Civil War period and often had some chance to obtain a basic education. The gap in illiteracy between white and black adults continued to narrow through the 20th century, and in 1979 the rates were about the same.
Full prose proficiency, as measured by the ability to process complex and challenging material such as would be encountered in everyday life, is achieved by about 13% of the general, 17% of the white, and 2% of the African American population. However 86% of the general population had basic or higher prose proficiency as of 2003, with a decrease distributed across all groups in the full proficiency group vs. 1992 of more than 10% consistent with trends, observed results in the SAT reading score to the present (2015). According to the website of the museum Planet Word in Washington, DC, some 32 million adults in the U.S cannot read.
Cultural and westernized literacy for Native Americans in the United States
Before colonization, oral storytelling and communication composed most if not all Native American literacy. Native people communicated and retained their histories verbally—it was not until the beginning of American Indian boarding schools that reading and writing forms of literacy were forced onto Native Americans. Many students ran away in an attempt to hold on to their cultural identity and literary traditions that were relevant to their community. While these formalized forms of literacy prepared Native youth to exist in the changing society, they destroyed all traces of their cultural literacy. Native children would return to their families unable to communicate with them due to the loss of their indigenous language. In the 20th and 21st century, there is still a struggle to learn and maintain cultural language. But education initiatives and programs have increased overall—according to the 2010 census, 86 percent of the overall population of Native Americans and Alaska Natives have high school diplomas, and 28 percent have a bachelor's degree or higher.
U.S. public library efforts
The public library has long been a force promoting literacy in many countries. In the U.S. context, the American Library Association promotes literacy through the work of the Office for Literacy and Outreach Services. This committee's charge includes ensuring equitable access to information and advocating for adult new and non-readers. The Public Library Association recognizes the importance of early childhood in the role of literacy development and created, in collaboration with the Association for Library Service to Children, Every Child Ready to Read @your library in order to inform and support parents and caregivers in their efforts to raise children who become literate adults. The release of the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) report in 2005 revealed that approximately 14% of U.S. adults function at the lowest level of literacy; 29% of adults function at the basic functional literacy level and cannot help their children with homework beyond the first few grades. The lack of reading skills hinders adults from reaching their full potential. They might have difficulty getting and maintaining a job, providing for their families, or even reading a story to their children. For adults, the library might be the only source of a literacy program.
30 April: Dia! Diversity in Action
Dia!, which stands for Diversity in Action and is also known as "El Día de los Niños/El día de los libros (Children's Day/Book Day)", is a program which celebrates the importance of reading to children from all cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Dia! is celebrated every year on 30 April in schools, libraries, and homes, and this website provides tools and programs to encourage reading in children. Parents, caregivers, and educators can even start a book club.
READ/Orange County
This community literacy program was initiated in 1992 by the Orange County Public Library in California. The mission of READ/Orange County is to "create a more literate community by providing diversified services of the highest quality to all who seek them." Potential tutors train during an extensive 23-hour tutor training workshop in which they learn the philosophy, techniques and tools they will need to work with adult learns. After the training, the tutors invest at least 50 hours a year to tutoring their student.The organization builds on people's experience as well as education rather than trying to make up for what has not been learned. The program seeks to equip students with skills to continue learning in the future. The guiding philosophy is that an adult who learns to read creates a ripple effect in the community. The person becomes an example to children and grandchildren and can better serve the community.
BoulderReads!
Located in Boulder, Colorado, the program recognized the difficulty that students had in obtaining child care while attending tutoring sessions, and joined with the University of Colorado to provide reading buddies to the children of students. Reading Buddies matches children of adult literacy students with college students who meet with them once a week throughout the semester for an hour and a half. The college students receive course credit to try to enhance the quality and reliability of their time. Each Reading Buddies session focuses primarily on the college student reading aloud with the child. The goal is to help the child gain interest in books and feel comfortable reading aloud. Time is also spent on word games, writing letters, or searching for books in the library. Throughout the semester the pair work on writing and illustrating a book together. The college student's grade is partly dependent on the completion of the book. Although Reading Buddies began primarily as an answer to the lack of child care for literacy students, it has evolved into another aspect of the program. Participating children show marked improvement in their reading and writing skills throughout the semester.
Hillsborough Literacy Council (HLC)
Approximately 120,000 adults in Hillsborough County are illiterate or read below the fourth-grade level; According to 2003 Census statistics, 15 percent of Hillsborough County residents age 16 and older lacked basic prose literacy skills. Since 1986, the Hillsborough Literacy Council is "committed to improving literacy by empowering adults through education". Sponsored by the statewide Florida Literacy Coalition and affiliated with Tampa-Hillsborough Public Library System, HLC strives to improve the literacy ability of adults in Hillsborough County, Florida. Using library space, the HLC provides tutoring for English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) in small groups or one-on-one tutoring. Through one-on-one tutoring, the organization works to help adult students reach at least the fifth-grade level in reading. The organization also provides volunteer-run conversation groups for English practice.
South America
In 1964 in Brazil, Paulo Freire was arrested and exiled for teaching peasants to read. Since democracy returned to Brazil, however, there has been a steady increase in the percentage of literate people. Educators with the Axé project within the city of Salvador, Bahía attempt to improve literacy rates among urban youth, especially youth living on the streets, through the use of music and dances of the local culture. They are encouraged to continue their education and become professionals.
Africa
The literacy rates in Africa vary significantly between countries. The registered literacy rate in Libya was 86.1% in 2004 and UNESCO says that literacy rate in the region of Equatorial Guinea is approximately 95%, while the literacy rate is in South Sudan is approximately (27%). Poorer youth in sub-Saharan Africa have fewer educational opportunities to become literate compared with wealthier families. They often must leave school because of being needed at home to farm or care for siblings.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the rate of literacy has not improved enough to compensate for the effects of demographic growth. As a result, the number of illiterate adults has risen by 27% over the last 20 years, reaching 169 million in 2010. Thus, out of the 775 million illiterate adults in the world in 2010, more than one fifth were in sub- Saharan Africa – in other words, 20% of the adult population. The countries with the lowest levels of literacy in the world are also concentrated in this region. These include Niger (28.7%), Burkina Faso (28.7%), Mali (33.4%), Chad (35.4%) and Ethiopia (39%), where adult literacy rates are well below 50%. There are, however, certain exceptions, like Equatorial Guinea, with a literacy rate of 94%.
Algeria
The literacy rate of Algeria is around 92%: education is compulsory and free in Algeria up to age of 17.
Botswana
Botswana has among the highest literacy rates in the developing world with around 85% of its population being literate.
Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso has a very low literacy rate of 28.7%. The government defines literacy as anyone at least 15 years of age and up who can read and write. To improve the literacy rate, the government has received at least 80 volunteer teachers. A severe lack of primary school teachers causes problems for any attempt to improve the literacy rate and school enrollment.
Djibouti
Djibouti has an estimated literacy rate of 70%.
Egypt
Egypt has a relatively high literacy rate. The adult literacy rate in 2010 was estimated at 72%.
Education is compulsory from ages 6 to 15 and free for all children to attend. 93% of children enter primary school today, compared with 87% in 1994.
Eritrea
According to the Ministry of Information of Eritrea, the nation has an estimated literacy rate of 80%.
Ethiopia
The Ethiopians are among the first literate people in the world, having written, read, and created manuscripts in their ancient language of Ge'ez (Amharic) since the second century CE. All boys learned to read the Psalms around the age of 7. National literacy campaign introduced in 1978 increased literacy rates to between 37% (unofficial) and 63% (official) by 1984.
Guinea
Guinea has a literacy rate of 41%. The Guinea government defines literacy as anyone who can read or write who is at least 15 years old. Guinea was the first to use the Literacy, Conflict Resolution, and Peacebuilding project. This project was developed to increase agriculture production, develop key skills, resolve conflict, improve literacy, and numeracy skills. The LCRP worked within refugee camps near the border of Sierra Leone, however this project only lasted from 1999 to 2001. There are several other international projects working within the country that have similar goals.
Kenya
The literacy rate in Kenya among people below 20 years of age is over 70%, as the first 8 years of primary school are provided tuition-free by the government. In January 2008, the government began offering a restricted program of free secondary education. Literacy is much higher among the young than the old population, with the total being about 81.54% for the country. Most of this literacy, however, is elementary—not secondary or advanced.
Mali
Mali has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world, at 33.4%, with males having a 43.1% literacy rate and females having a 24.6% literacy rate. In 2015, the adult literacy rate was 33%. The government defines literacy as anyone who is at least 15 and over who can read or write. The government of Mali and international organizations in recent years has taken steps to improve the literacy rate. The government recognized the slow progress in literacy rates and began created ministries for basic education and literacy for their national languages in 2007. To also improve literacy the government planned to increase its education budget by 3%, when this was purposed it was at 35% in 2007. The lack of literate adults causes the programs to be slowed. The programs need qualified female trainers, which is a major problem because most men refuse to send female family members to be trained under male teachers.
Mauritius
Free education in Mauritius did not proceed beyond the primary level until 1976, so many women now in their 50s or older left school at age 12. The younger generation (below 50) are however extremely well educated with very high educational expectations placed upon pupils. Education is today free from pre-primary to tertiary (only admission fees remain at University level). Most professional people have at least a bachelor's degree. Mauritian students consistently rank top in the world each year for the Cambridge International O Level, International A and AS level examinations. Most Mauritian children, even at primary level, attend tuition after school and at weekends to cope with the highly competitive public school system where admission to prestigious public colleges (secondary) and most sought after university courses depend on merit based academic performance.
The adult literacy rate was estimated at 89.8% in 2011. Male literacy was 92.3% and Female literacy 87.3%.
Niger
Niger has an extremely low literacy rate at 28.7%. However, the gender gap between males and females is a major problem for the country, men have a literacy rate of 42.9% and women a literacy rate of 15.1%. The Nigerien government defines literacy as anyone who can read or write over the age of 15. The Niass Tijaniyya, a predominant group of the Sufi brotherhoods, has started anti-poverty, empowerment, and literacy campaigns. The women in Kiota had not attempted to improve their education, or economic standing. Saida Oumul Khadiri Niass, known as Maman, through talking to men and women throughout the community changed the community's beliefs on appropriate behavior for women because the community recognized she was married to a leader of the Niass Tijaniyya. Maman's efforts has allowed women in Kiota to own small businesses, sell in the market place, attend literacy classes, and organize small associations that can give micro loans. Maman personally teaches children in and around Kiota, with special attention to girls. Maman has her students require instructor permission to allow the girls' parents to marry their daughters early. This increases the amount of education these girls receive, as well as delaying marriage, pregnancy, and having children.
Senegal
Senegal has a literacy rate of 49.7%; the government defines literacy as anyone who is at least 15 years of age and over who can read and write. However, many students do not attend school long enough to be considered literate. The government did not begin actively attempting to improve the literacy rate until 1971 when it gave the responsibility to Department for Vocational Training at the Secretariat for Youth and Sports. This department and subsequent following departments had no clear policy on literacy until the Department of Literacy and Basic Education was formed in 1986. The government of Senegal relies heavily on funding from the World Bank to fund its school system.
Somalia
There is no reliable data on the nationwide literacy rate in Somalia. A 2013 FSNAU survey indicates considerable differences per region, with the autonomous northeastern Puntland region having the highest registered literacy rate at 72%.
Sierra Leone
The Sierra Leone government defines literacy as anyone over the age of 15 who can read and write in English, Mende, Temne, or Arabic. Official statistics put the literacy rate at 43.3%. Sierra Leone was the second country to use the Literacy, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding project. However, due to fighting near the city where the project was centered causing the project to be delayed until an arms amnesty was in place.
Uganda
Uganda has a literacy rate of 72.2%.
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe has a high literacy rate of 86.5% (2016 est.).
Asia
Afghanistan
According to UNESCO, Afghanistan has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world. As of 2020, over 10 million youth and adults in Afghanistan are illiterate. However, since 2016, the country has made significant progress. While in 2016/17 the literacy rate was at 34.8%, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics recently confirmed that it has increased to 43%. "That is a remarkable 8 per cent increase." In addition, the literacy rate for youths aged 15–24 has substantially increased and now stands at 65%.
However, there are a great number of people who lack literacy and opportunities for continuing education. There is also a substantial gender gap. The literacy rate for men stands at 55%, and for women it's only 29.8%. The UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning has provided technical support to the Government of Afghanistan since 2012 with the aim of improving the literacy skills of an estimated 1.2 million people.
To improve the literacy rate, U.S. military trainers have been teaching Afghan Army recruits how to read before teaching to fire a weapon. U.S. commanders in the region estimate that as many as 65% of recruits may be illiterate.
China
The PRC conducts standardized testing to assess proficiency in Standard Chinese, known as "putonghua," but it is primarily for foreigners or those needing to demonstrate professional proficiency in the Beijing dialect. Literacy in languages like Chinese can be assessed by reading comprehension tests, just as in other languages, but historically has often been graded on the number of Chinese characters introduced during the speaker's schooling, with a few thousand considered the minimum for practical literacy. Social science surveys in China have repeatedly found that just more than half the population of China is conversant in spoken putonghua. In classical Chinese civilization the access to literacy in all classes originated with Confucianism, where previously literacy was generally limited to the aristocracy, merchants, and priests.
India
Literacy is defined by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, as "[the ability of] a person aged 7 years and above [to]... both write and read with understanding in any language." According to the 2011 census, 74.04 percent.
Laos
Laos has the lowest level of adult literacy in all of Southeast Asia other than East Timor.
Obstacles to literacy vary by country and culture as writing systems, quality of education, availability of written material, competition from other sources (television, video games, cell phones, and family work obligations), and culture all influence literacy levels. In Laos, which has a phonetic alphabet, reading is relatively easy to learn—especially compared to English, where spelling and pronunciation rules are filled with exceptions, and Chinese, with thousands of symbols to be memorized. But a lack of books and other written materials has hindered functional literacy in Laos, where many children and adults read so haltingly that the skill is hardly beneficial.
A literacy project in Laos addresses this by using what it calls "books that make literacy fun!" The project, Big Brother Mouse, publishes colorful, easy-to-read books, then delivers them by holding book parties at rural schools. Some of the books are modeled on successful western books by authors such as Dr. Seuss; the most popular, however, are traditional Lao fairy tales. Two popular collections of folktales were written by Siphone Vouthisakdee, who comes from a village where only five children finished primary school.
Big Brother Mouse has also created village reading rooms, and published books for adult readers about subjects such as Buddhism, health, and baby care.
Pakistan
In Pakistan, the National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) aims to bring literacy to adults, especially women.
ISLAMABAD - UNESCO Islamabad Director Kozue Kay Nagata has said, "Illiteracy in Pakistan has fallen over two decades, thanks to the government and people of Pakistan for their efforts working toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals". "Today, 70 percent of Pakistani youths can read and write. In 20 years, illiterate population has been reduced significantly", she said while speaking at a function held in connection with International Literacy Day.
However, she also emphasised on the need to do more to improve literacy in the country and said, "The proportion of population in Pakistan lacking basic reading and writing is too high. This is a serious obstacle for individual fulfillment, to the development of societies, and to mutual understanding between peoples." Referring to the recent national survey carried out by the Ministry of Education, Trainings and Standards in Higher Education with support of UNESCO, UNICEF, and provincial and areas departments of education, Nagata pointed out that, in Pakistan, although primary school survival rate is 70 percent, gender gap still exists with only 68 percent of girls’ survival rate compared to 71 percent for boys. Specifically in the case of Punjab, she said, primary school survival rate today is better with 76 percent, but not without a gender gap of 8 percent points with 72 percent girls’ survival rate compared to 80 percent for boys. She also pointed out that average per student spending in primary level (age 5–9) was better in Punjab: Rs 6,998, compared to the national average. In Balochistan, although almost the same amount (Rs 6,985) as in Punjab is spent per child, the primary school survival rate is only 53 percent. Girls’ survival rate is slightly better with 54 percent than that of boys which is 52 percent. Literate Pakistan Foundation, a non-profit organization, which was established in 2003, is a case study, which brings to light the solutions for removing this menace from its roots. It works to improve rate of literacy in Pakistan.
The data of the survey shows that in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, primary school survival rate is 67 percent which is lower than the national average of 70 percent. Furthermore, gender gap also exists with only 65 percent of girls’ survival rate compared to that of boys which is 68 percent. Per-student education expenditure in primary level (age 5–9) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is Rs 8,638. In Sindh, primary school survival rate is 63percent, with a gender gap of only 67 percent of girls’ survival rate compared to 60 percent for boys. Per student education expenditure in primary level (age 5–9) in Sindh is Rs 5,019. Nagata made reference to the survey report and mentioned that the most common reason in Pakistan for children (both boys and girls) of age 10 to 18 years leaving school before completing primary grade is "the child not willing to go to school", which may be related to quality and learning outcome. She said, however, and sadly, for the girls living in rural communities the second highest reason for dropout is "parents did not allow" which might be related to prejudice and cultural norm against girls.
Philippines
About 91.6 percent Filipinos 10 to 64 years old were functionally literate in 2019, according to the results of the 2019 Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey (FLEMMS). This translates to around 73.0 million out of 79.7 million in the same age group who are considered literate on a functional level
Early Filipinos devised and used their own system of writings from 300 BC, which derived from the Brahmic family of scripts of Ancient India. Baybayin became the most widespread of these derived scripts by the 11th century. Early chroniclers, who came during the first Spanish expeditions to the islands, noted the proficiency of some of the natives, especially the chieftain and local kings, in Sanskrit, Old Javanese, Old Malay, and several other languages. During the Spanish colonization of the islands, reading materials were destroyed to a far much less extent compared to the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Education and literacy was introduced only to the Peninsulares and remained a privilege until the Americans came. The Americans introduced the public schools system to the country, English became the lingua franca in the Philippines. It was only during a brief period in the Japanese occupation of the Philippines that the Japanese were able to teach their language in the Philippines and teach the children their written language.
Sri Lanka
With a literacy rate of 92.5%, Sri Lanka has one of the most literate populations amongst developing nations. Its youth literacy rate stands at 98%, computer literacy rate at 35%, and primary school enrollment rate at over 99%. An education system which dictates 9 years of compulsory schooling for every child is in place. The free education system established in 1945, is a result of the initiative of C. W. W. Kannangara and A. Ratnayake. It is one of the few countries in the world that provide universal free education from primary to tertiary stage.
Oceania
Australia
Approximately 56% of Australians aged 15 to 74 achieve Level 3 literacy or above Australian Bureau of Statistics 2011–2012 and 83% of five-year-olds are on track to develop good language and cognitive skills Australian Early Development Census 2012 summary report. In 2012–2013, Australia had 1515 public library service points, lending almost 174 million items to 10 million members of Australian public library services, at an average per capita cost of just under AU$45 Australian Public Library Statistics 2012–2013.
See also
Sources
References
External links
UNESCO Literacy Portal
UNESCO Effective Literacy Practice Database
Our World In Data – Visualizations of how literacy around the world has changed historically (by Max Roser and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina). Includes literacy rates for different age groups. Charts for all countries, world maps, and links to more data sources.
Literacy Assessment
The National Strategies for Primary Literacy
The Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives
National Literacy Trust
Center for the study of adult literacy
Learning to read
Applied linguistics
Reading (process)
Social classes
Writing | [
0.39148932695388794,
0.26469364762306213,
-0.38758376240730286,
0.2876058518886566,
0.04581019654870033,
0.2674204111099243,
0.3520534336566925,
0.5972567200660706,
-0.16811078786849976,
-0.9187572002410889,
-0.27837175130844116,
0.5485312938690186,
0.26103153824806213,
-0.6341859102249146... |
18457 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local-loop%20unbundling | Local-loop unbundling | Local loop unbundling (LLU or LLUB) is the regulatory process of allowing multiple telecommunications operators to use connections from the telephone exchange to the customer's premises. The physical wire connection between the local exchange and the customer is known as a "local loop", and is owned by the incumbent local exchange carrier (also referred to as the "ILEC", "local exchange", or in the United States either a "Baby Bell" or an independent telephone company). To increase competition, other providers are granted unbundled access.
Policy background
LLU is generally opposed by the ILECs, which in most cases are either former investor-owned (North America) or state-owned monopoly enterprises forced to open themselves to competition. ILECs argue that LLU amounts to a regulatory taking, that they are forced to provide competitors with essential business inputs, that LLU stifles infrastructure-based competition and technical innovation because new entrants prefer to 'parasitise' the incumbent's network instead of building their own and that the regulatory interference required to make LLU work (e.g., to set the LLU access price) is detrimental to the market.
New entrants, on the other hand, argue that since they cannot economically duplicate the incumbent's local loop, they cannot actually provide certain services, such as ADSL without LLU, thus allowing the incumbent to monopolise the respective potentially competitive market(s) and stifle innovation. They point out that alternative access technologies, such as wireless local loop, have proven uncompetitive and/or impractical, and that under current pricing models, the incumbent is in many cases, depending on the regulatory model, guaranteed a fair price for the use of its facilities, including an appropriate return on investment. Finally, they argue that the ILECs generally did not construct their local loop in a competitive, risky, market environment, but under legal monopoly protection and using taxpayer's money, which means, according to the new entrants, that ILECs ought not to be entitled to continue to extract regulated rates of return, which often include monopoly rents from the local loop.
Most industrially developed nations, including the US, Australia and the European Union Member States, and India have introduced regulatory frameworks providing for LLU. Given the above-mentioned problems, regulators face the challenging task of regulating a market that is changing very rapidly, without stifling any type of innovation, and without improperly disadvantaging any competitor.
The process has been long - the first action in the EU resulted from a report written for the European Commission in 1993. It took several years for the EU legislation to require unbundling and then in individual EU countries the process took further time to mature to become practical and economic rather than simply being a legal possibility.
In 1996 the United States Telecommunication Act (in section 251) defined the unbundled access as:
The 1993 report referred to the logical requirement to unbundle optical fibre access but recommended deferral to a later date when fibre access had become more common. In 2006 there were the first signs that (as a result of the municipal fibre networks movement and example such as Sweden where unbundled local loop fibre is commercially available from both the incumbent and competitors) policy may yet evolve in this direction.
Unbundling developments around the world
World Trade Organisation
Some provisions of WTO telecommunications law can be read to require unbundling:
Sect. 5(a) of the GATS Annex on Telecommunications requires WTO Members to guarantee service suppliers "access to and use of public telecommunications transport networks ... for the supply of a service". New entrants argue that without LLU they cannot supply services such as ADSL.
Sect. 2.2(b) of the 1998 Reference Paper, to which some Members have subscribed, requires "sufficiently unbundled interconnection" with major providers. However, the Paper's definition of interconnection appears to exclude LLU.
Sect. 1 of the Reference Paper requires Members to maintain "appropriate measures ... for the purpose of preventing [major] suppliers ... from engaging in or continuing anti-competitive practices." New entrants argue that such practices include not giving competitors access to facilities essential to market entry, such as the local loop.
The question has not been settled before a WTO judicial body, and, at any rate, these obligations only apply where the respective WTO Member has committed itself to open its basic telecommunications market to competition. About 80 (mostly developed) Members have done so since 1998.
India
LLU has not been implemented in Indian cities yet. However, BSNL recently stated that it will open up its copper loops for private participation. In addition to this, the proliferation of WiMax and cable broadband has increased broadband penetration and market competition. By 2008 the price war had reduced basic broadband prices to INR 250 (US$6), including line rental without any long-term contracts. In rural areas, the state player, BSNL, is still the leading, and often the only supplier.
Although BSNL is a monopoly, it is used as a tool to ensure competition by the government.
European Union
The implementation of local loop unbundling is a requirement of European Union policy on competition in the telecommunications sector and has been introduced, at various stages of development, in all member states (Operators with Significant Market Power shall publish (from 31 December 2000, and keep updated) a postreference offer for unbundled access to their local loops and related facilities. The offer shall be sufficiently unbundled so that the beneficiary does not have to pay for network elements or facilities which are not necessary for the supply of its services, and shall contain a description of the components of the offer, associated terms and conditions, including charges).
European States that have been approved for membership to the EU have an obligation to introduce LLU as part of the liberalisation of their communications sector.
United Kingdom
By 14 January 2006, 210,000 local loop connections had been unbundled from BT operation under local loop unbundling. Ofcom had hoped that 1 million local loop connections would be unbundled by June 2006. However, as reported by The Register, on 15 June 2006, the figure had reached only 500,000, but was growing by 20,000 a week. Ofcom announced in November 2006 that 1,000,000 connections had been unbundled. By April 2007, the figure was 2,000,000.
By June 2006, AOL UK had unbundled 100,000 lines through its £120 million investment, making it the largest single LLU operator in the UK market.
On 10 October 2006, Carphone Warehouse announced the purchase of AOL UK, the leading LLU operator, for £370m.
This made Carphone Warehouse the third largest broadband provider and the largest LLU operator with more than 150,000 LLU customers.
On 8 May 2009, TalkTalk, who were owned by Carphone Warehouse, announced that they would purchase ailing Tiscali UK's assets for £235 million. On 30 June 2009, Tiscali sold its UK subsidiary to Carphone Warehouse following regulatory approval from the European Union. This purchase made TalkTalk the biggest home broadband supplier in the UK, with 4.25 million home broadband subscribers, compared with BT's 3.9 million. The service was rebranded as TalkTalk in January 2010.
Most LLU operators only unbundle the broadband service leaving the traditional telephone service using BT's core equipment (with or without the provision of carrier preselect). Where the traditional telephone service is also unbundled (full LLU), operators usually prohibit the facility where selected calls can be made using the networks of other telephone providers (i.e. accessed using a three- to five-digit prefix beginning with '1'). These calls can usually still be made by using an 0800 or other non-geographic (NGN) access code.
Although regulators in the UK admitted that the market could provide competitive offerings in due time, the purpose of mandatory local loop unbundling in the United Kingdom was to speed the delivery of advanced services to consumers.
United States
Pursuant to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requires that ILECs lease local loops to competitors (CLECs). Prices are set through a market mechanism.
New Zealand
The Commerce Commission recommended against local loop unbundling in late 2003 as Telecom New Zealand (now Spark New Zealand) offered a market-led solution. In May 2004 this was confirmed by the Government, despite the intense "call4change" campaign by some of Telecom's competitors. Part of Telecom's commitment to the Commerce Commission to avoid unbundling was a promise to deliver 250,000 new residential broadband connections by the end of 2005, one-third of which were to be wholesaled through other providers. Telecom failed to achieve the number of wholesale connections required, despite an attempt by management to claim that the agreement had been for only one-third of the growth rather than one-third of the total. That claim was rejected by the Commerce Commission, and the publicised figure of 83,333 wholesale connections out of 250,000 was held to be the true target. The achieved number was less than 50,000 wholesale connections, despite total connections exceeding 300,000.
On 3 May 2006 the Government announced it would require the unbundling of the local loop. This was in response to concerns about the low levels of broadband uptake. Regulatory action such as information disclosure, the separate accounting of Telecom New Zealand business operations, and enhanced Commerce Commission monitoring was announced.
On 9 August 2007 Telecom released the keys to exchanges in Glenfield and Ponsonby in Auckland. In March 2008 Telecom activated ADSL 2+ services from five Auckland exchanges – Glenfield, Browns Bay, Ellerslie, Mt Albert and Ponsonby – with further plans for the rest of Auckland and other major centres, allowing other ISPs to take advantage.
Switzerland
Switzerland is one of the last OECD nations to provide for unbundling, because the Swiss Federal Supreme Court held in 2001 that the 1996 Swiss Telecommunications Act did not require it. The government then enacted an ordinance providing for unbundling in 2003, and Parliament amended the act in 2006. While infrastructure-based access is now generally available, unbundled fast bitstream access is limited to a period of four years after the entry into force of the act.
Unbundling requests tend to be tied up before the courts, however, because unlike in the EU, Swiss law does not provide for an ex ante regulation of access conditions by the regulator. Instead, under the Swiss ex post regulation system, each new entrant must first try to reach an individual agreement with Swisscom, the state-owned ILEC.
Hong Kong
Mandatory local loop unbundling policy (termed Type II Interconnection (Traditional Chinese:第二類互連) in Hong Kong) started on July 1, 1995 (the same day of telephone market liberalisation), to ensure choice to customers. After 10 years, new operators have built their networks covering a large region of Hong Kong; the government considered it a good time to withdraw mandatory local loop unbundling policy, to persuade operators to build their own networks and let businesses run themselves with a minimum of government intervention. At the meeting of the Executive Council on 6 July 2004, the government decided that the regulatory intervention under the current Type II interconnection policy applicable to telephone exchanges for individual buildings covered by such exchanges should be withdrawn, subject to conditions documented in this Statement of the Telecommunications Authority. After that, the terms of interconnection will be negotiated between telephone operators. Hong Kong is the only advanced economy that has withdrawn the mandatory local loop unbundling policy.
South Africa
On 25 May 2006 the Minister of Communications of South Africa Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri established the Local Loop Unbundling Committee chaired by Professor Tshilidzi Marwala to recommend the appropriate local loop unbundling models. The Local Loop Unbundling Committee submitted a report to Minister Matsepe-Casaburri on 25 May 2007. This report recommends that models that permit customers to access both voice and data be offered by many different companies. The models recommended are Full Unbundling, Line Sharing and Bitstream Access. It is recommended that customers should exercise carrier pre-selection and thus be able to switch between service providers. It is also recommended that an organisation be created to manage the local loop and that this organisation should be under the guidance of the regulator Icasa and that Icasa be capacitated in terms of resources. The committee recommended that service providers approved by Icasa should have access to the telephone exchange infrastructure whenever necessary. The committee recommended that a regulatory guideline be established and be managed by Icasa to guarantee that strategic issues like quality of the local loop be optimised for regulation and delivery of services. Based on this report the Minister has issued policy directives to Icasa to move swiftly with the unbundling process. At the end of March 2010 nothing has happened yet, however a deadline of November 1, 2011 was set by the Minister of Communications for monopoly holder, Telkom SA to finalise the unbundling process.
See also
Forced-access regulation
Local number portability
Loop Management System
Mobile number portability
Product bundling
Sub-loop unbundling
Unbundling in France (in French)
References
Further reading
OECD, Universal Service and Rate Restructuring in Telecommunications, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Publishing, 1991.
External links
OECD, Developments in Local Loop Unbundling
LLU Exchange List
EU telecommunications liberalization framework
Local Loop Unbundling - What is it?
LLU Availability
MAC Codes - UK Guide for obtaining your MAC code
Local loop
Broadband
Telecommunications economics | [
0.33543696999549866,
-0.36237633228302,
-0.022158421576023102,
0.2368248701095581,
0.2818540036678314,
-0.1672694981098175,
0.19334734976291656,
0.19146406650543213,
-0.24869391322135925,
-0.2381501942873001,
-0.8183751702308655,
0.21164646744728088,
-0.5521389245986938,
-0.093635126948356... |
18459 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leda | Leda | Leda may refer to:
Mythology
Leda (mythology), queen of Sparta and mother of Helen of Troy in Greek mythology
Places
Leda, Western Australia, a suburb of Perth, Western Australia
Leda makeshift settlement, Bangladesh, a refugee camp for Rohingya refugees fleeing persecution in Myanmar
Leda, Burkina Faso, a town
Leda, Adamawa State, Nigeria, a village - see List of villages in Adamawa State
Leda (river), a tributary of the Ems in Germany
Leda Ridge, Antarctica
Astronomy
Leda (moon), a moon of Jupiter
38 Leda, an asteroid
Leda, the original proposed name for exoplanet Thestias
Lyon-Meudon Extragalactic Database, an astronomical catalog of galaxies
Large Aperture Experiment to Detect the Dark Ages, a radio interferometer
Entertainment
Leda: The Fantastic Adventure of Yohko, a 1985 Japanese OVA
Web of Passion, a French film released in the US as Leda
Project Leda, a set of female clones in the TV series Orphan Black
Ships
Leda-class frigate, a type of frigate in the British Royal Navy
HMS Leda, six ships of the British Royal Navy
TS Leda, a North Sea ferry
Leda (1807 ship), an English merchant ship and West Indiaman
Persons
Leda Cosmides (born 1957), American psychologist
Leda Gloria (1912–1997), Italian film actress
Leda Luss Luyken (born 1952), Greek/American conceptual artist, who lives and works in German
Leda Mileva (1920–2013), Bulgarian writer, translator and diplomat
Leda Nagle (born 1951), Brazilian journalist and TV presenter
Leda Sanford (born 1933), author, speaker, former publisher and former advertising director
Ferdinando Leda (born 1980), Brazilian football player
Other uses
Leda clay, also called quick clay, a unique form of marine clay
LEDA, ICAO code for Lleida–Alguaire Airport
Library of Efficient Data types and Algorithms (LEDA)
See also
Leda and the Swan (disambiguation) | [
0.27741825580596924,
0.200953871011734,
-0.19782176613807678,
-0.02201533131301403,
-0.1311860978603363,
1.0250979661941528,
0.4665183424949646,
0.105568066239357,
-0.8817915320396423,
0.0738668218255043,
-0.40371063351631165,
-0.4645552933216095,
-0.3006529211997986,
0.7645843029022217,
... |
18460 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysithea%20%28moon%29 | Lysithea (moon) | Lysithea is a prograde irregular satellite of Jupiter. It was discovered by Seth Barnes Nicholson in 1938 at Mount Wilson Observatory and is named after the mythological Lysithea, daughter of Oceanus and one of Zeus' lovers.
Lysithea did not receive its present name until 1975; before then, it was simply known as . It was sometimes called "Demeter" from 1955 to 1975.
It belongs to the Himalia group, five moons orbiting between 11 and 13 Gm from Jupiter at an inclination of about 28.3°. Its orbital elements are as of January 2000. They are continuously changing due to solar and planetary perturbations.
See also
Irregular satellites
Jupiter's moons in fiction
References
External links
Lysithea: Overview by NASA's Solar System Exploration
David Jewitt pages
Jupiter's Known Satellites (by Scott S. Sheppard)
Himalia group
Moons of Jupiter
Irregular satellites
19380706 | [
-0.00621636351570487,
0.428739458322525,
0.40742725133895874,
0.21748149394989014,
-0.49556833505630493,
0.20602008700370789,
-0.27618861198425293,
0.5899068713188171,
-0.28490138053894043,
-0.24411949515342712,
0.15434879064559937,
-0.152086541056633,
-0.41958025097846985,
0.7864559292793... |
18461 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leda%20and%20the%20Swan | Leda and the Swan | Leda and the Swan is a story and subject in art from Greek mythology in which the god Zeus, in the form of a swan, seduces or rapes Leda. According to later Greek mythology, Leda bore Helen and Polydeuces, children of Zeus, while at the same time bearing Castor and Clytemnestra, children of her husband Tyndareus, the King of Sparta. In the W. B. Yeats version, it is subtly suggested that Clytemnestra, although being the daughter of Tyndareus, has somehow been traumatized by what the swan has done to her mother (see below). According to many versions of the story, Zeus took the form of a swan and raped Leda on the same night she slept with her husband King Tyndareus. In some versions, she laid two eggs from which the children hatched. In other versions, Helen is a daughter of Nemesis, the goddess who personified the disaster that awaited those suffering from the pride of Hubris.
The subject was rarely seen in the large-scale sculpture of antiquity, although a representation of Leda in sculpture has been attributed in modern times to Timotheus (compare illustration, below left); small-scale sculptures survive showing both reclining and standing poses, in cameos and engraved gems, rings, and terracotta oil lamps. Thanks to the literary renditions of Ovid and Fulgentius it was a well-known myth through the Middle Ages, but emerged more prominently as a classicizing theme, with erotic overtones, in the Italian Renaissance.
Eroticism
The subject undoubtedly owed its sixteenth-century popularity to the paradox that it was considered more acceptable to depict a woman in the act of copulation with a swan than with a man. The earliest depictions show the pair love-making with some explicitness—more so than in any depictions of a human pair made by artists of high quality in the same period.
The fate of the erotic album I Modi some years later shows why this was so. The theme remained a dangerous one in the Renaissance, as the fates of the three best known paintings on the subject demonstrate. The earliest depictions were all in the more private medium of the old master print, and mostly from Venice. They were often based on the extremely brief account in the Metamorphoses of Ovid (who does not imply a rape), though Lorenzo de' Medici had both a Roman sarcophagus and an antique carved gem of the subject, both with reclining Ledas.
The earliest known explicit Renaissance depiction is one of the many woodcut illustrations to Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a book published in Venice in 1499. This shows Leda and the Swan making love with gusto, despite being on top of a triumphal car, being pulled along and surrounded by a considerable crowd. An engraving dating to 1503 at the latest, by Giovanni Battista Palumba, also shows the couple in coitus, but in deserted countryside. Another engraving, certainly from Venice and attributed by many to Giulio Campagnola, shows a love-making scene, but there Leda's attitude is highly ambiguous. Palumba made another engraving, perhaps in about 1512, presumably influenced by Leonardo's sketches for his earlier composition, showing Leda seated on the ground and playing with her children.
There were also significant depictions in the smaller decorative arts, also private media. Benvenuto Cellini made a medallion, now in Vienna, early in his career, and Antonio Abondio one on the obverse of a medal celebrating a Roman courtesan.
In painting
Leonardo da Vinci began making studies in 1504 for a painting, apparently never executed, of Leda seated on the ground with her children. In 1508 he painted a different composition of the subject, with a nude standing Leda cuddling the Swan, with the two sets of infant twins (also nude), and their huge broken egg-shells. The original of this is lost, probably deliberately destroyed, and was last recorded in the French royal Château de Fontainebleau in 1625 by Cassiano dal Pozzo. However it is known from many copies, of which the earliest are probably the Spiridon Leda, perhaps by a studio assistant and now in the Uffizi, and the one at Wilton House in the United Kingdom (illustrated).
Also lost, and probably deliberately destroyed, is Michelangelo's tempera painting of the pair making love, commissioned in 1529 by Alfonso d'Este for his palazzo in Ferrara, and taken to France for the royal collection in 1532; it was at Fontainebleau in 1536. Michelangelo's cartoon for the work—given to his assistant Antonio Mini, who used it for several copies for French patrons before his death in 1533—survived for over a century. This composition is known from many copies, including an ambitious engraving by Cornelis Bos, c. 1563; the marble sculpture by Bartolomeo Ammanati in the Bargello, Florence; two copies by the young Rubens on his Italian voyage, and the painting after Michelangelo, ca. 1530, in the National Gallery, London. The Michelangelo composition, of about 1530, shows Mannerist tendencies of elongation and twisted pose (the figura serpentinata) that were popular at the time. In addition, a sculptural group, similar to the Prado Roman group illustrated, was believed until at least the 19th century to be by Michelangelo.
The last very famous Renaissance painting of the subject is Correggio's elaborate composition of c. 1530 (Berlin); this too was damaged whilst in the collection of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, the Regent of France in the minority of Louis XV. His son Louis, though a great lover of painting, had periodic crises of conscience about his way of life, in one of which he attacked the figure of Leda with a knife. The damage has been repaired, though full restoration to the original condition was not possible. Both the Leonardo and Michelangelo paintings also disappeared when in the collection of the French Royal Family, and are believed to have been destroyed by more moralistic widows or successors of their owners.
There were many other depictions in the Renaissance, including cycles of book illustrations to Ovid, but most were derivative of the compositions mentioned above. The subject remained largely confined to Italy, and sometimes France – Northern versions are rare. After something of a hiatus in the 18th and early 19th centuries (apart from a very sensuous Boucher,), Leda and the Swan became again a popular motif in the later 19th and 20th centuries, with many Symbolist and Expressionist treatments.
Also from that era were sculptures of the theme by Antonin Mercié and Max Klinger.
In modern and contemporary art
Cy Twombly executed an abstract version of Leda and the Swan in 1962. It was purchased by Larry Gagosian for $52.9 million at Christie's May 2017 Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale.
Avant-garde filmmaker Kurt Kren along with other members of the Viennese Actionist movement, including Otto Muehl and Hermann Nitsch, made a film-performance called 7/64 Leda mit der Schwan in 1964. The film retains the classical motif, portraying, for most of its duration, a young woman embracing a swan.
There is a life-sized marble statue of Leda and the Swan at the Jai Vilas Palace Museum in Gwalior, Northern Madhya Pradesh, India.
American artist and photographer Carole Harmel created the "Bird" series (1983), a Jean Cocteau-influenced collection of photographs that explored the "Leda and the Swan" myth in tightly cropped, voyeuristic images of a nude female and an undefinable birdlike creature hinting at intimacy.
Bristol Museum and Art Gallery currently exhibits Karl Weschke's Leda and the Swan, painted in 1986. The Winnipeg Art Gallery in Canada has, in its permanent collection, a ceramic "Leda and the Swan" by Japanese-born American artist Akio Takamori. Genieve Figgis painted her version of Leda and the Swan in 2018 after an earlier work by François Boucher. Figgis’ contemporary version reinvents the idyllic romantic scene of lavish playfulness with a dark humor creating a scene of profanity and horror. There is a sculpture in neon lights depicting Leda and the Swan in Berlin, near Sonnenallee metro station and the Estrel hotel, designed by AES+F. Photographer Charlie White included a portrait of Leda in his "And Jeopardize the Integrity of the Hull" series. Zeus, as the swan, only appears metaphorically.
A statue of an egg depicting the union of Swan/Zeus with Leda, is placed on the island Pefnos of Agios Dimitrios village, in the region of Messenia on the coast of the southern Peloponnese peninsula in Greece.
In poetry
Ronsard wrote a poem on La Défloration de Lède, perhaps inspired by the Michelangelo, which he may well have known. Like many artists, he imagines the beak penetrating Leda's vagina.
"Leda and the Swan" is a sonnet by William Butler Yeats composed in 1923 and first published in the Dial in June, 1924, and later published in the collection 'The Cat the Moon and Certain Poems' in 1924. Combining psychological realism with a mystic vision, it describes the swan's rape of Leda. It also alludes to the Trojan war, which will be provoked by the abduction of Helen, who will be begotten by Zeus on Leda (along with Castor and Pollux, in some versions of the myth). Clytaemnestra, who killed her husband, Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks at Troy, was also supposed to have hatched from one of Leda's eggs. The poem is regularly praised as one of Yeats's masterpieces. Camille Paglia, who called the poem "the greatest poem of the twentieth century," and said "all human beings, like Leda, are caught up moment by moment in the 'white rush' of experience. For Yeats, the only salvation is the shapeliness and stillness of art." See external links for a bas relief arranged in the position as described by Yeats.
Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío's 1892 poem "Leda" contains an oblique description of the rape, watched over by the god Pan.
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) also wrote a poem called "Leda" in 1919, suggested to be from the perspective of Leda. The description of the sexual action going on makes it seem almost beautiful, as if Leda had given her consent.
In the song "Power and Glory" from Lou Reed's 1992 album Magic and Loss, Reed recalls the experience of seeing his friend dying of cancer and makes reference to the myth, "I saw isotopes introduced into his lungs / trying to stop the cancerous spread / And it made me think of Leda and The Swan / and gold being made from lead"
Sylvia Plath alludes to the myth in her radio play Three Women written for the BBC in 1962. The play features the voices of three women. The first is a married woman who keeps her baby. The second is a secretary who suffers a miscarriage. The third voice, a girl who is pregnant and leaves her baby, mentions "the great swan, with its terrible look,/ Coming at me," insinuating that the girl was raped. The play is about the disconnection of women in society and challenges societal expectations of childbirth.
In literature
Several references to the myth are presented in novels by Angela Carter, including Nights at the Circus and The Magic Toyshop. In the latter novel, the myth is brought to life in the form of a performance in which a frightened young girl is forced to act as Leda in accompaniment with a large mechanical swan.
There is a reference to Leda and the Swan in Dorothea Benton Frank's 2016 book All Summer Long.
The myth is also mentioned in Richard Yates' 1962 novel Revolutionary Road. The character Frank Wheeler, married to April Wheeler, after having had sex with an office secretary ponders what to say as he is leaving: "Did the swan apologize to Leda? Did an eagle apologize? Did a lion apologize? Hell no!"
There is also a mentioning in The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. The protagonist has been set up by his father to marry Leda's daughter.
In Robert Galbraith's 2020 novel, Troubled Blood, one of the main characters Robin Ellacott, visits a painting gallery where she sees a painting of Leda and the swan done by one character who is an artist in the novel.
In fashion
In 1935, German-born movie star Marlene Dietrich wore a dramatically designed Leda costume to a Hollywood costume party. Designed by the acclaimed costume designer Travis Banton, a longtime Dietrich collaborator, the white tulle and feather dress featured a thigh-slit, a mid-length train and, most characteristically, a fabric and feather "swan" neck which coiled around Dietrich's own neck, as well a pair of large feathered wings, one stretching downwards across her chest and the other one upwards across her left shoulder.
66 years later, at the 2001 Academy Awards, Icelandic singer Bjork wore a dress by Marjan Pejoski in nude mesh and a white tulle skirt. The skirt gradually narrowed upwards over the torso to turn into a swan-neck made out of fabric which coiled around the wearer's neck in exactly the same way as Dietrich's dress from 1935. Although Dietrich's costume remains largely unknown to the general public, Bjork's dress "attained cult status instantly" and became an icon of red carpet culture. Yet, the reference to Marlene Dietrich's costume was rarely (if ever) mentioned at the time.
In June 2021, Maria Grazia Chiuri as creative director for the French fashion house Dior, designed a collection strongly inspired by Hellenistic culture, the Olympic Games, and Ancient Greek Mythology, and showed it at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens as an homage to the Olympic tradition (the collection was shown a month before the beginning of the 2020 Summer Olympics). The collection's closing pièce de résistance was a Leda-inspired swan dress. The immediate visual similarity between Chiuri's swan Dress and Bjork's swan dress sparked excitement on social media as most people inevitably thought the Dior dress was directly inspired by Pejoski's iconic 2001 creation. However, only a few days later, Dior openly defended the inspiration of the dress referring to it on its Twitter account as a recreation of a costume worn by Marlene Dietrich, who was, famously, an important and loyal client of the French brand during the 40s and 50s. Notably, Chiuri's 2021 Dior dress featured feathered swan-wings spanning over the chest and shoulder. This dramatic detail, taken directly from Dietrich's costume from 1935, sets Chiuri's dress for Dior entirely apart from Bjork's red-carpet dress, and makes it, irrefutably, a reference to Dietrich's costume, and by extension, to the myth of Leda and the Swan.
In modern media
A version of the Leda and the Swan story is the foundation myth in the Canadian futuristic thriller television series Orphan Black which aired over 5 seasons from 2013 to 2017. A corporation uses genetic engineering to create a series of female clones (Leda) and a series of male clones (Castor) who are also brothers and sisters clones as they derive from one mother who is a chimera with male and female genomes.
In commerce
The Philadelphia cigar maker 'Bobrow Brothers' made a brand of cigars with the name 'Leda' which was sold at least into the 1940s. The cigar label depicted Leda and the Swan in a river.
Modern censorship
In April 2012 an art gallery in London, England, was instructed by the police to remove a modern exhibit of Leda and the Swan. The law concerned was Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, condemning 'violent pornography', brought in by the Labour Party government of 2005–2010.
Gallery
Notes
References
Bull, Malcolm, The Mirror of the Gods, How Renaissance Artists Rediscovered the Pagan Gods, Oxford UP, 2005,
External links
Version of Leda and the Swan myth, in the "Fabulae" of Hyginus
Bas relief from the British Museum that appears as the scene does in the Yeats sonnet
Ovid Illustrated – large site from the University of Virginia, where many depictions of Leda and the Swan from Renaissance and later editions of the Metamorphoses will (eventually) be found.
Yeats' "Leda and the Swan": an image's coming of age
Greek vase from the Getty
Samuelson blog with thoughts and pictures
16th century Venetian painting by Il Padovanino
Alternative detail view of the Getty vase
Roman statue from the Getty
Baroque bronze from the Getty
Sculpture c 1900
Leda and the swan – Bronze miniature
Leda and the Swan, by Tintoretto, from the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence; explore other depictions of Leda and the Swan and compare to similar themes
Jai Vilas Palace Museum, Gwalior, India
Irish poems
1924 poems
Greek mythology
Iconography
Swans
Mythological rape victims
Zoophilia in culture | [
-0.042447105050086975,
-0.1979822963476181,
-0.9325715899467468,
-0.043940264731645584,
-0.3213689923286438,
0.8507459163665771,
0.35586902499198914,
-0.2000921666622162,
-0.7789953351020813,
0.39057886600494385,
-0.23352722823619843,
0.05711742490530014,
-0.18616873025894165,
0.4951048195... |
18463 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions%20Clubs%20International | Lions Clubs International | The International Association of Lions Clubs, more commonly known as Lions Clubs International, is an international non-political service organization established originally in 1916 in Chicago, Illinois, by Melvin Jones. It is now headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois. , it had over 46,000 local clubs and more than 1.4 million members (including the youth wing Leo) in more than 200 countries and geographic areas around the world.
Introduction
Lions Clubs International was founded in Evansville, Indiana on 24 October 1916 by William Perry Woods and subsequently evolved as an international service organization under the guidance and supervision of its secretary, Melvin Jones.
In 1917, Jones was a 38-year-old Chicago business leader who told members of his local business club they should reach beyond business issues and address the betterment of their communities and the world. Jones' group, the Business Circle of Chicago, agreed. After contacting similar groups around the United States, an organizational meeting was held on June 7, 1917, in Chicago. The Business Circle subsequently joined one of the invited groups, the "International Association of Lions Clubs" and at a national convention held in Dallas, Texas, later that year, those who were assembled: (1) adopted a Constitution, By-Laws, Code of Ethics and an Emblem; (2) established as a main tenet "unselfish service to others", (3) unanimously elected Woods as its first president, effectively securing his leadership for the first two years of the existence of the International Association of Lions, and (4) selected Jones to serve as the organization's secretary-treasurer.
The Lions motto is "We Serve". Local Lions Club programs include sight conservation, hearing and speech conservation, diabetes awareness, youth outreach, international relations, environmental issues, and many other programs. The discussion of partisan politics and sectarian religion is forbidden. The LIONS acronym also stands for Liberty, Intelligence, Our Nations' Safety.
Aims
The stated purposes of Lions Clubs International are:
To Organize, charter and supervise service clubs to be known as Lions clubs.
To Coordinate the activities and standardize the administration of Lions clubs.
To Create and foster a spirit of understanding among the peoples of the world.
To Promote the principles of good government and good citizenship.
To Take an active interest in the civic, cultural, social and moral welfare of the community.
To Unite the clubs in the bonds of friendship, good fellowship and mutual understanding.
To Provide a forum for the open discussion of all matters of public interest; provided, however, that partisan politics and sectarian religion shall not be debated by club members.
To Encourage service-minded people to serve their community without personal financial reward, and to encourage efficiency and promote high ethical standards in commerce, industry, professions, public works and private endeavors.
Focus of Lions
Service projects
Lions Clubs plan and participate in a variety of service projects. Examples include donations to hospices, or community campaigns such as Message in a bottle, a United Kingdom and Ireland initiative which places a plastic bottle with critical medical information inside the refrigerators of vulnerable people. Money is also raised for international purposes. Some of this is donated in reaction to events such as the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and the 2013 Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda). Other money is used to support international campaigns, coordinated by the Lions Clubs International Foundation (LCIF), such as Sight First and Lions World Sight Day, which was launched in 1998 to draw world media attention to the plight of sight loss in the developing world. Lions take on all sorts of various fundraisers to fund these projects.
Lions focus on work for the blind and visually impaired began when Helen Keller addressed the international convention at Cedar Point, Ohio, on 30 June 1925 and charged Lions to be Knights of the Blind.
Lions also conduct community hearing- and cancer-screening projects. In Perth, Western Australia, they have conducted hearing screening for over 30 years and provided seed funding for the Lions Ear and Hearing Institute established September 9, 2001, a center of excellence in the diagnosis, management, and research of ear and hearing disorders. In Perth, Lions have also assisted in the establishment of the Lions Eye Institute. In Brisbane, Queensland, the Lions Medical Research Foundation provides funding to a number of researchers. Ian Frazer's initial work, leading to the development of a HPV vaccine for the human papillomavirus which could lead to cervical cancer, was funded by the Lions Medical Research Foundation.
Lions Clubs International has supported the work of the United Nations since that organization's inception in 1945, when it was one of the non-governmental organizations invited to assist in the drafting of the United Nations Charter in San Francisco, California.
Lions Clubs International Foundation
Lions Clubs International Foundation is "Lions helping Lions serve the world". Donations provide funding in the form of grants to financially assist Lions districts with large-scale humanitarian projects that are too expensive and costly for Lions to finance on their own.
The Foundation aids Lions in making a greater impact in their local communities, as well as around the world. Major initiatives of the foundation include the following:
SightFirst programs
Childhood Blindness Project
Lions Eye Health Program (LEHP, pronounced "leap")
River blindness/Trachoma
SightFirst China Action
Sight for Kids
Other sight programs
Core 4 Preschool
Vision Screening
Disability programs
Lions World Services for the Blind
Diabetes Prevention/Treatment
Habitat for Humanity Partnership
Lions Affordable Hearing Aid Project
Low Vision
Special Olympics Opening Eyes
Youth Programs
LEO Clubs
Lions Quest
Lion Cubs
Highest Club recognitions
Model Clubs
100|100 Clubs
SightFirst
Upon endorsing the biggest ever collaborative disease eradication program called the London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases launched on 30 January 2012 in London, the organization has implemented SightFirst program by which it aims to eradicate blindness due to trachoma, one of the neglected tropical diseases. It has allocated over US$11 million in 10 countries for eye surgeries, medical training, distribution of Zithromax and tetracycline, and sanitary services. It has also announced US$6.9 million funding to support the Government of China for the same cause.
Membership
Membership in the Lions Club is by "invitation only" as mandated by its constitution and by-laws. All member applicants need a sponsor who is an active member and of good standing in the club they intend to join. While sponsorship may be obtained by an applicant in order to become a legitimate member, sponsorship is no guarantee of membership. Acceptance of membership is still subject to the approval of the majority of the club's board of directors. A Lions Club chooses its members diligently as it requires time and financial commitments. Prospective applicants must be a person of good moral character in his or her community. Attendance at meetings is encouraged on a monthly or fortnightly basis. Due to the hierarchical nature of Lions Clubs International, members have the opportunity to advance from a local club to an office at the zone, district, multiple district, and international levels.
In 1987 the constitution of Lions Clubs International was amended to allow for women to become members. Since then many clubs have admitted women, but some all-male clubs still exist. In 2003, 8 out of 17 members at the Lions Club in Worcester, England, resigned when a woman joined the club. Women's membership numbers continue to grow throughout the association.
Among the famous and noteworthy members of Lions International are former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Her Royal Highness Sophie, Countess of Wessex, a member of the Wokingham Lions Club and Royal Patron of the Lions Clubs of the British Isles.
Awards
Lions Clubs International gives various awards for outstanding merits.
Medal of Merit
The Medal of Merit (MM) is the highest award from Lions Clubs International to non-members for outstanding contributions to Lions Clubs International and its goals.
District Governor Award
The District Governor Award (DGA) is one of the highest awards from Lions Clubs International to its members having done exceptional services.
President's Appreciation Award
The President's Appreciation Award (PAA) is the highest award that can be awarded to an outstanding club.
Melvin Jones Fellowship
The Melvin Jones Fellowship (MJF) Award is the highest recognition from the Lions Clubs International Foundation being given to members who have rendered outstanding community services.
Spread of Lions
Lions Clubs around the world
The organization became international on 12 March 1920, when the first club in Canada was established in Windsor, Ontario. In 1937, it was founded in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Lions Clubs have since spread across the globe and have a current membership roster of 1.4 million members worldwide.
Extensions of the Lions family
In addition to adult Lions Clubs, the Lions family includes Lioness Clubs, Leo Clubs, Campus Lions Clubs and Lion Cubs. These divisions are parts of Lions Clubs International.
Lioness Clubs
Lioness Club Membership is generally for women, with exceptions of men also becoming Lioness members nowadays. They are formed under a parent Lions Club. The Lions Club thus becomes the Parent Club for the Lioness Club. Naming of the Club is also like that of the Lions Club—e.g., Lions Club of Satara United Dist 323D-1 forming and sponsoring a Lioness Club Satara United District 323D-1. In many areas, particularly the United States, Lioness clubs have disbanded and merged into their parent clubs to make a more effective club as a whole.
Leo Clubs
Leo Clubs are an extension of the Lions service organization which aims to encourage community service and involvement from a young age. Much like Lioness Clubs, Leo Clubs are sponsored by a parent Lions Club. Leo Clubs are a common school-based organization with members between the ages of 12 and 18 from the same school, these are commonly referred to as Alpha Leo Clubs. Community based clubs also exist; these generally cater for 18- to 30-year-olds, and are referred to as Omega Leo Clubs. Leo Clubs are required to have a Leo Club Advisor, a member of the sponsoring Lions Club who attends meetings and provides general advice to the club. Lions International includes more than 250,000 Leo club members in over 150 countries.
Campus Lions Clubs
Many Leos join a Campus Lions Club if they attend a university or college after high school graduation. There are more than 600 Campus Lions clubs in the world including nearly 13,000 members on college and university campuses in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, England, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Mongolia, Nepal, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Uganda, United States, Venezuela, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Legion Lions Club in University of Ghana, KNUST Campus Lions and the University of KwaZulu-Natal Campus Lions Club which is the only active Campus Lions Club currently operating in the Republic of South Africa.
Specialty Lions Clubs
These are chartered to focus on a specific need. For instance, Diabetes Clubs, Champion Lions Clubs (Special Olympics), Vision, hearing, homeless/hunger etc. Specialty clubs may also be ethnic based or its members may have similar interests - for instance a gardening Lions Club whose members all have interests in gardening.
Lion Cubs
Lion Cubs is a youth service organization for the elementary aged students (ages eight to twelve). The first club was chartered in the Owen J. Roberts School District in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, United States. It was developed for students in 4th through 6th grade, and therefore too young to be a Leo Club member. The clubs (one club in each of five elementary schools) started their meetings and activities in September 2008 and were officially chartered March 24, 2009. The club is sponsored by the Coventry Lions Club of District 14P. The Lion Cubs first year (2008–09) had 179 charter members.
International convention
An international convention is held annually in cities across the globe for members to meet other Lions, elect the coming year's officers, and partake in the many activities planned. At the convention, Lions can participate in elections and parades, display and discuss fundraisers and service projects, and trade pins and other souvenirs. The first convention was held in 1917, the first year of the club's existence, in Dallas, Texas. The 2006 convention was due to be held in New Orleans, but damage sustained during Hurricane Katrina meant that the convention had to be relocated to Boston.
References
External links
Service organizations based in the United States
Chamblee, Georgia
Organizations established in 1917
Men's organizations in the United States
Clubs and societies in Canada | [
0.664138913154602,
0.548582136631012,
-0.5600315928459167,
-0.1530604064464569,
-0.2889990210533142,
-0.19352617859840393,
0.3337080478668213,
0.26350873708724976,
-0.6616299748420715,
0.1491387039422989,
-0.024889051914215088,
-0.011879962868988514,
-0.5775542259216309,
0.5108683705329895... |
18465 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches%20%28equity%29 | Laches (equity) | In common law legal systems, laches ( "latches", }; Law French: remissness, dilatoriness, from Old French laschesse) is a lack of diligence and activity in making a legal claim, or moving forward with legal enforcement of a right, particularly in regard to equity. This means that it is an unreasonable delay that can be viewed as prejudicing the opposing party. When asserted in litigation, it is an equity defense, that is, a defense to a claim for an equitable remedy.
The person invoking laches is asserting that an opposing party has "slept on its rights", and that, as a result of this delay, circumstances have changed, witnesses or evidence may have been lost or no longer available, etc., such that it is no longer a just resolution to grant the plaintiff's claim. Laches is associated with the maxim of equity, "Equity aids the vigilant, not the sleeping ones" who sleep on their rights. Put another way, failure to assert one's rights in a timely manner can result in a claim being barred by laches.
Origin, definition, overview
Laches is a legal term derived from the Old French laschesse, meaning "remissness" or "dilatoriness," and is viewed as the opposite of "vigilance." The United States Supreme Court case Costello v. United States 365 US 265, 282 (1961) is often cited for a definition of laches.Costello defined Laches as "Lack of diligence by the party against whom the defense is asserted combined with prejudice to the party asserting the defense".
Invoking laches is a reference to a lack of diligence and activity in making a legal claim, or moving forward with legal enforcement of a right, in particular with regard to equity, and so is an "unreasonable delay pursuing a right or claim, in a way that prejudices the [opposing] party". When asserted in litigation, it is an equitable defense, that is, a defense to a claim for an equitable remedy. The essential element of laches is an unreasonable delay by the plaintiff in bringing the claim; because laches is an equitable defense, it is ordinarily applied only to claims for equitable relief (such as injunctions), and not to claims for legal relief (such as damages). The person invoking laches is asserting that an opposing party has "slept on its rights", and that, as a result of this delay, witnesses and/or evidence may have been lost or no longer available, and circumstances have changed such that it is no longer just to grant the plaintiff's original claim; hence, laches is associated with the maxim of equity: Vigilantibus non dormientibus æquitas subvenit ("Equity aids the vigilant, not the sleeping ones [that is, those who sleep on their rights]"). Put another way, failure to assert one's rights in a timely manner can result in a claim being barred by laches. Sometimes courts will also require that the party invoking the doctrine has changed its position as a result of the delay, but that requirement is more typical of the related (but more stringent) defense and equally cause of action of estoppel.
Components
A claim of laches requires the following components:
a delay in bringing the action,
a delay that is unreasonable and
that prejudices the defendant.
Delay
The period of delay begins when the plaintiff knew, or reasonably ought to have known, that the cause of action existed; the period of delay ends only when the legal action is formally filed. Informing or warning the defendant of the cause of action (for example by sending a cease-and-desist letter or merely threatening a lawsuit) does not, by itself, end the period of delay.
Unreasonableness
In order to invoke laches, the delay by the opposing party in initiating the lawsuit must be unreasonable. The courts have recognized the following causes of delay as reasonable:
the exhaustion of remedies through the administrative process
the evaluation and preparation of a complicated claim
to determine whether the scope of proposed infringement will justify the cost of litigation
By contrast, it is not reasonable to delay a lawsuit to "capitalize on the value of the infringer's labor". In Danjaq v. Sony, the Ninth Circuit decided that a screenwriter who waited for a film studio to publicize and distribute a film based on a script he allegedly owned had delayed his lawsuit unreasonably.
Prejudice
Unreasonable delay must prejudice the defendant. Examples of such prejudice include:
evidence favorable to the defendant becoming lost or degraded
witnesses favorable to the defendant dying or losing their memories
the defendant making economic decisions (e.g. investing in a movie or a manufacturing process) that it would not have done, had the lawsuit been filed earlier.
Unreasonable delay may also prejudice the rights of third-parties who were unknown in the case, earlier but whose rights got created in the intervening period of the delay (e.g.: the defendant inducts new persons on a disputed property by sale, or by lease)
Procedure
A defense lawyer raising the defense of laches against a motion for injunctive relief (a form of equitable relief) might argue that the plaintiff comes "waltzing in at the eleventh hour" when it is now too late to grant the relief sought, at least not without causing great harm that the plaintiff could have avoided. In certain types of cases (for example, cases involving time-sensitive matters, such as elections), a delay of even a few days is likely to be met with a defense of laches, even where the applicable statute of limitations might allow the type of action to be commenced within a much longer time period. In courts in the United States, laches has often been applied even where a statute of limitations exists, although there is a division of authority on this point.
If a court does accept the laches defense, it can decide either to deny the request for equitable relief or to narrow the equitable relief that it would otherwise give. Even if the court denies equitable relief to a plaintiff because of laches, the plaintiff may still have a claim for legal relief if the statute of limitations has not run out.
Under the United States Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, laches is an affirmative defense, which means that the burden of asserting laches is on the party responding to the claim to which it applies.
The laches defense does not apply if the claimant was a minor during the time that the claim was not brought, so a party can bring a claim against an historical injustice when they reach their majority.
Compared to statute of limitations
The defense of laches resembles a statute of limitations since both are concerned with ensuring that plaintiffs bring their claims in a timely fashion.
However, a statute of limitations is concerned only with the time that has passed. Laches is concerned with the reasonableness of the delay in a particular situation and so is more case-specific and more focused on the equitable conduct of the plaintiff. Those considerations are not unique to the laches defense because they are characteristic of equitable reasoning and equitable remedies. Whereas, limitation is a statutory remedy.
In the US, the proper disposal of claims in light of those two areas of law has required attention through to the Supreme Court. In Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (2014), the US Supreme Court rebuffed a defendant's claim that laches barred a copyright infringement suit because Congress had established a detailed statutory scheme, including a statute of limitations.
Examples
In the Virginia Republican primary for the 2012 US presidential election, several candidates did not appear on the ballot because they failed to obtain sufficient petition signatures in time. Four of the unsuccessful candidates—Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum—sued, claiming that restrictions on the persons allowed to gather signatures were unconstitutional. Their claim was dismissed by the district court on the grounds of laches, because, in the words of the appellate court: The appeals court upheld the dismissal on grounds of laches, but it added that the challenge would likely have succeeded if it had been brought in a timely fashion.
In Grand Haven, Michigan, the Northwest Ottawa Community Health System sued Grand Haven Township and Health Pointe, which was in the process of building a competing medical facility in the township, arguing that the township ignored its own zoning ordinance in approving the project. On March 24, 2017, as part of the ruling dismissing the lawsuit, Circuit Court Judge Jon A. Van Allsburg noted that the Northwest Ottawa Community Health System delayed more than eight months from the date the project was approved before filing the lawsuit and that during that time, plaintiff Health Pointe had purchased construction materials. Therefore, the doctrine of laches invalidated a lawsuit that was filed so long after the fact.
See also
Adverse possession
Estoppel by acquiescence
Equitable tolling
Submarine patent
Statute of limitations
Notes
External links
Nair, Manisha Singh (2006) "Laches and Acquiescence" in Indian intellectual property law
Equity (law)
Equitable defenses
Legal doctrines and principles | [
-0.2723560929298401,
0.14388974010944366,
-0.22034889459609985,
0.15142978727817535,
0.1257999986410141,
0.5767688751220703,
0.1723427027463913,
-0.3011969029903412,
-0.34395408630371094,
-0.04526960849761963,
-0.5843068957328796,
0.35713493824005127,
-0.028440091758966446,
0.2126568257808... |
18467 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion | Legion | Legion may refer to:
Military
Roman legion, the basic military unit of the ancient Roman army
Spanish Legion, an elite military unit within the Spanish Army
Legion of the United States, a reorganization of the United States Army from 1792 to 1796
French Foreign Legion, a part of the French Army, created for foreign nationals willing to serve in the French Armed Forces
Various military legions, often composed of soldiers from a specific ethnic, national, religious or ideological background
HMS Legion, a British Royal Navy ship name
HMS Legion (1914), a Royal Navy ship sold for scrapping in 1921
HMS Legion (G74), a L-class destroyer of the Royal Navy sunk in March 1942
Veterans' organizations
American Legion, an organization of United States veterans
American Legion Auxiliary, a woman's service organization affiliated with the American Legion
Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, a post-Civil War fraternity of loyal service members
The Royal British Legion, the United Kingdom's leading charity providing support for members of the British Armed Forces and their dependents
Royal Canadian Legion, a non-profit Canadian ex-service organization (veterans organization) founded in 1925, with more than 400,000 members worldwide
South African Legion of Military Veterans, the oldest veterans organization organisation in South Africa formed at the 1921 Empire Conference
Society of the Cavaliers of the Order of Lāčplēsis & Freedom Fighters, also known as the Legion, a right-wing veterans organisation Voldemārs Ozols (1884–1949)
Political
Iron Guard or the Legion of Michael the Archangel, a nationalist 'fascist inspired' anti-communist, anti-Jewish, and Christian Legionary movement active in România
Silver Legion, an American fascist organization
Black Legion (disambiguation)
Religious
Legion, the collective name of the demon in the gospel account of the Gerasene demoniac
Legion in popular culture
Legion of Mary, a Catholic church organization
National Legion of Decency, American Catholic organization
Legion of Christ, Catholic Religious Institute
Arts and media
Comics
I Am Legion (comics), a French comic book series.
Legion (Marvel Comics), an antihero in Marvel Comics
Legion (DC Comics), a supervillain in DC Comics
Legion of Super-Heroes, a superhero team in DC Comics
The Legion (comics), one of the comic books where the Legion of Super-Heroes was published
Legion, a group of characters from the Spawn series
Legion (IDW Publishing), a comic book based on the 2010 film of the same name
Legion, a member of the Special Executive
L.E.G.I.O.N., a 1989 DC Comics title and a team of superheroes, the 20th Century forerunners to the Legion of Superheroes
Ghostbusters: Legion, a 2004 comic book series
Legion of Doom, villains in the DC Universe
Film and television
"Legion" (Law & Order: Criminal Intent), the eighteenth episode in the second season of Law & Order: Criminal Intent
"Legion" (Red Dwarf), the second episode of Red Dwarf Series VI
Legion (1998 film) a 1998 made-for-television film
Legion (2010 film) a 2010 apocalyptic supernatural action film
The Legion (film) a 2020 film starring Mickey Rourke
Legion (TV series), an FX TV series based on the Marvel Comics character
"Legion", an eighth-season episode of the television series Smallville
Legion, the alien kaiju seen in the film Gamera 2: Attack of Legion
Legion, a fictional company in the 2019 film Terminator: Dark Fate
Games
Legion Gold, or simply Legion, a turn-based strategy game with a historical setting of the European conquests by Rome
Legions (Magic: The Gathering), a set of cards in the game Magic: The Gathering
Legion (Mass Effect), the adopted name of a synthetic intelligence in Mass Effect 2
Legion, central villain of the video game Shadow Man
Legion, an artificial intelligence unit in Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath
Caesar's Legion, a faction of militant slavers in the Fallout series
World of Warcraft: Legion, the sixth World of Warcraft expansion set
The Legion, a group of killer characters in the horror video game Dead by Daylight
Watch Dogs: Legion, an action-adventure game and the third installment in the Watch Dogs series
Literature
Legion, a play by Hal Corley
Legion (novella series), a series of novellas by Brandon Sanderson
Legion, a unit in the army of the fictional The Domination
Legion (Blatty novel), a 1983 novel by William Peter Blatty
Legion (demon), a group of demons referred to in the Christian Bible
Legion, by Dan Abnett, Book 7 in the Horus Heresy book series
The Legion (novel), 2010 historical novel by Simon Scarrow
Music
Legion (album), a 1992 album by Deicide
Legion (band) a deathcore band from Columbus, Ohio
"Legion", a 1985 album by Mark Shreeve
Legion, stage name of Erik Hagstedt, Swedish vocalist in the black metal band Marduk
The Legion, a hip hop group from the Bronx, New York, associated with Black Sheep
Legion Records, started in 1997 by Michael Brosnan under the name Goatboy Records then changed to Goatboy Farms Recordings
"Legion" is a song by VNV Nation from the album Empires
"Legion", a song by Junkie XL from the album Big Sounds of the Drags
"Legion", a song by Saviour Machine from the album Saviour Machine I
"Legion", a song by HammerFall from the album No Sacrifice, No Victory
"Legion", a song by Slaughter Lord, covered by At the Gates in the 2002 re-issue of the album Slaughter of the Soul
Legions, a 2013 album by the Danish band Artillery
Places
Legion Field, a stadium in Birmingham, Alabama
Legion Park (disambiguation)
Legion Sports Complex, a complex in Wilmington, North Carolina
Legion Stadium, the main stadium in the Legion Sports Complex
Legion State Park, located in the red hill country of Louisville, Mississippi, and area originally inhabited by the Choctaw Indian Nation
Other
, an American cycling team
Legion (taxonomy), a taxonomic rank in biology
Legion (software), a computer software system
Legion Interactive, an Australian telecommunications company
Racine Legion/Tornadoes, an American football team
See also
Legionella, a bacterium
Lajjun, Palestinian village whose name is derived from "Legion"
Legionnaire (disambiguation)
Legion of Honor (disambiguation)
I Am Legion (disambiguation)
British Legion (disambiguation)
French Legion, several organizations
German Legion (disambiguation)
Polish Legions (disambiguation)
Roman legion (disambiguation) | [
0.17039689421653748,
-0.008306033909320831,
-0.6362574100494385,
0.18437428772449493,
-0.5703014731407166,
0.6923159956932068,
0.853243887424469,
0.389937162399292,
-0.7059236764907837,
-0.14446605741977692,
-0.42094406485557556,
0.2940976321697235,
0.011562185361981392,
0.6531162858009338... |
18470 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman%20Abbott | Lyman Abbott | Lyman J. Abbott (December 18, 1835 – October 22, 1922) was an American Congregationalist theologian, editor, and author.
Biography
Early years
Lyman J. Abbott was born at Roxbury, Massachusetts on December 18, 1835, the son of the prolific author, educator and historian Jacob Abbott. Lyman Abbott grew up in Farmington, Maine and later in New York City. Abbott's ancestors were from England, and came to America roughly twenty years after Plymouth Rock.
He graduated from the New York University in 1853, where he was a member of the Eucleian Society, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1856. Abbott soon abandoned the legal profession, however, and after studying theology with his uncle, John Stevens Cabot Abbott, was ordained a minister of the Congregational Church in 1860. He was married October 14, 1857, to Abby F., daughter of Hannibal Hamlin of Boston, Mass.
Career
He was pastor of the Congregational Church in Terre Haute, Indiana from 1860 to 1865 and of the New England Church in New York City in 1865–1869. From 1865 to 1868 he was secretary of the American Union Commission (later called the American Freedmen's Bureau). In 1869 he resigned his pastorate to devote himself to literature.
Abbot worked variously in the publishing profession as an associate editor of Harper's Magazine, and was the founder of a publication called the Illustrated Christian Weekly, which he edited for six years. He was also the co-editor of The Christian Union with Henry Ward Beecher from 1876 to 1881. Abbott later succeeded Beecher in 1888 as pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn. He also wrote the official biography of Beecher and edited his papers.
From 1881 Abbott was editor-in-chief of The Christian Union, renamed The Outlook in 1891; this periodical reflected his efforts toward social reform, and, in theology, a liberality, humanitarianism and nearly unitarian. The latter characteristics marked his published works also.
Abbott's opinions differed from those of Beecher. Abbott was a constant advocate of Industrial Democracy, and was an advocate of Theodore Roosevelt's progressivism for almost 20 years. He would later adopt a pronouncedly liberal theology. He was also a pronounced Christian Evolutionist. In two of his books, The Evolution of Christianity and The Theology of an Evolutionist, Abbott applied the concept of evolution in a Christian theological perspective. Although he himself objected to being called an advocate of Darwinism, he was an optimistic advocate of evolution who thought that "what Jesus saw, humanity is becoming."
Abbott was a religious figure of some public note and was called upon on October 30, 1897, to deliver an address in New York at the funeral of economist, Henry George. He ultimately resigned his pastorate in November 1898.
His son, Lawrence Fraser Abbott, accompanied President Roosevelt on a tour of Europe and Africa (1909–10). In 1913 Lyman Abbott was expelled from the American Peace Society because military preparedness was vigorously advocated in The Outlook, which he edited, and because he was a member of the Army and Navy League. During the World War I he was a strong supporter of the government's war policies.
He received the degree D.D. from the University of the City of New York in 1879; from Harvard in 1891, from Yale in 1903, and LL.D. from Western Reserve in 1900.
Death and legacy
Lyman Abbott died on October 22, 1922 and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery at New Windsor, New York.
The editors of The Outlook kept their normal routine, publishing without "departure from the normal course of publication" since that was what their departed colleague would have wanted. The issue asked readers for understanding as the paper "wait[ed] until [the] next week to give to his friends, known and unknown, a record of his life and of the tributes which marked his passing." A brief tribute appeared in that issue, but the November 8th edition contained the official remembrance and tributes. Fifteen pages in that issue dealt with Abbott, and the publishers included "several long essays in Abbott's honor from close relatives, shorter tributes from friends and past associates, and blurbs from many American press companies."
The many diverse and prominent author who contributed tributes "demonstrated the scope and magnitude of Lyman Abbott's influence within American religious and intellectual culture during his long career." Prominent examples include a re-published 1915 tribute from former United States president Theodore Roosevelt and articles from prestigious newspapers such as The New York Times and the New York Herald. Roosevelt praised Abbott for being "one of those men whose work and life give strength to all who believe in this country," and the New York Herald recalled Abbott's ability to "convey his valuable opinions to the entire intellectual public." Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin noted at a later memorial service, "Measured by the number of people he reached, Dr. Abbott was unquestionably the greatest teacher of religion of this generation."
Abbott's lasting influence and widespread appeal is readily apparent in later evaluations of his life. Abbott's one biographer, Ira V. Brown, confirmed Abbott's importance via "testimonials by the dozen," and added that Abbott "directly reached several hundred thousands of people" through his work as a "minister, lecturer, author, and editor." Abbott was "something of a national patriarch" by the time of his death, and according to Brown, he was "no less than a modern oracle" to thousands of followers. Abbott influenced hundreds every week through his sermons at the prestigious Plymouth Avenue Congregationalist Church. He also gave speeches at many American colleges, published several books that sold between five and ten thousand copies, and edited the Outlook that, at its peak, sold "about 125,000 copies a week." The magazine "was a prominent news source for Protestant ministers and laypeople all over the United States, demonstrating Abbott's lasting influence."
Works
Sermons of Henry Ward Beecher (Editor). (2 vols., 1868)
Jesus of Nazareth (1869)
Illustrated Commentary on the New Testament (4 vols., 1875)
A Study in Human Nature (1885)
What is Christianity? in: The Arena (1891)
Life of Christ (1894)
The Evolution of Christianity (1896) (Lowell Lectures, reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009, )
The Theology of an Evolutionist (1897)
Christianity and Social Problems (1897)
Life and Letters of Paul (1898)
The Life that Really is (1899)
Why Go To Church? (1900) (Published in "The Day's Work Series" by L. C. Page)
Problems of Life (1900)
The Rights of Man (1901)
Henry Ward Beecher (1903)
The Other Room (1903)
The Great Companion (1904) (New edition published September 1906)
The Christian Ministry (1905)
The Personality of God (1905)
Industrial Problems (1905)
"Impressions of a Careless Traveler" (1907)
Christ's Secret of Happiness (1907)
The Home Builder (1908)
The Temple (1909)
The Spirit of Democracy (1910)
America in the Making (1911) (Yale Lectures on the Responsibility of Citizenship)
Letters to Unknown Friends (1913)
Reminiscences (1915)
The Twentieth Century Crusade (1918)
What Christianity Means to Me (1921)
Footnotes
Further reading
Brown, Ira V. Lyman Abbott, Christian Evolutionist: A Study in Religious Liberalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953.
Lagerwey, Caleb. "Chaplain of Progress: The Role of Progress and Evolution in Lyman Abbott's Justification for American Expansion in 1898–1900." Thesis, Calvin College, 2012. Retrieved December 18, 2012.
Reid, Daniel G., et al. Dictionary of Christianity in America. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990.
Wetzel, Benjamin James. "A 'Scourge and Minister': Lyman Abbott, Liberal Protestantism, and American Warfare, 1861–1920" Master's thesis, Baylor University, 2011. Retrieved from PDF – Baylor University Retrieved December 18, 2012.
Wetzel, Benjamin James. "Onward Christian Soldiers: Lyman Abbott's Justification of the Spanish–American War." Journal of Church and State 53, no. 3 (Summer 2012): 406–425. PDF Retrieved January 22, 2013.
External links
Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, edited by James Grant Wilson, John Fiske and Stanley L. Klos. Six volumes, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887–1889
1835 births
1922 deaths
American Congregationalist ministers
New York University alumni
19th-century Christian clergy
19th-century Congregationalist ministers
19th-century American writers
20th-century American non-fiction writers
American religious writers
Abbott family
Writers from Boston
American Christian pacifists
People from Farmington, Maine
American male non-fiction writers
Activists from New York (state)
People from Roxbury, Boston
Theistic evolutionists
20th-century American male writers | [
-0.26574134826660156,
0.7876697182655334,
-0.8228870630264282,
0.009629099629819393,
-0.11548081040382385,
0.32204028964042664,
0.7137877345085144,
-0.10092365741729736,
-0.08388147503137589,
-0.1901647299528122,
0.14114104211330414,
-0.025438731536269188,
-0.20506058633327484,
0.739780426... |
18472 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap%20second | Leap second | A leap second is a one-second adjustment that is occasionally applied to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), to accommodate the difference between precise time (International Atomic Time (TAI), as measured by atomic clocks) and imprecise observed solar time (UT1), which varies due to irregularities and long-term slowdown in the Earth's rotation. The UTC time standard, widely used for international timekeeping and as the reference for civil time in most countries, uses TAI and consequently would run ahead of observed solar time unless it is reset to UT1 as needed. The leap second facility exists to provide this adjustment.
Because the Earth's rotation speed varies in response to climatic and geological events, UTC leap seconds are irregularly spaced and unpredictable. Insertion of each UTC leap second is usually decided about six months in advance by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS), to ensure that the difference between the UTC and UT1 readings will never exceed 0.9 seconds.
This practice has proven disruptive, particularly in the twenty-first century and especially in services that depend on precise timestamping or time-critical process control. The relevant international standards body has been debating whether or not to continue the practice.
History
About , Ptolemy, the Alexandrian astronomer, sexagesimally subdivided both the mean solar day and the true solar day to at least six places after the sexagesimal point, and he used simple fractions of both the equinoctial hour and the seasonal hour, none of which resemble the modern second. Muslim scholars, including al-Biruni in 1000, subdivided the mean solar day into 24 equinoctial hours, each of which was subdivided sexagesimally, that is into the units of minute, second, third, fourth and fifth, creating the modern second as of the mean solar day in the process. With this definition, the second was proposed in 1874 as the base unit of time in the CGS system of units. Soon afterwards Simon Newcomb and others discovered that Earth's rotation period varied irregularly, so in 1952, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) defined the second as a fraction of the sidereal year. In 1955, considering the tropical year to be more fundamental than the sidereal year, the IAU redefined the second as the fraction of the 1900.0 mean tropical year. In 1956, a slightly more precise value of was adopted for the definition of the second by the International Committee for Weights and Measures, and in 1960 by the General Conference on Weights and Measures, becoming a part of the International System of Units (SI).
Eventually, this definition too was found to be inadequate for precise time measurements, so in 1967, the SI second was again redefined as 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation emitted by a caesium-133 atom in the transition between the two hyperfine levels of its ground state. That value agreed to 1 part in 1010 with the astronomical (ephemeris) second then in use. It was also close to of the mean solar day as averaged between years 1750 and 1892.
However, for the past several centuries, the length of the mean solar day has been increasing by about 1.4–1.7 ms per century, depending on the averaging time. By 1961, the mean solar day was already a millisecond or two longer than SI seconds. Therefore, time standards that change the date after precisely SI seconds, such as the International Atomic Time (TAI), would become increasingly ahead of time standards tied to the mean solar day, such as Universal Time (UT).
When the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) standard was instituted in 1960, based on atomic clocks, it was felt necessary to maintain agreement with UT, which, until then, had been the reference for broadcast time services. From 1960 to 1971, the rate of UTC atomic clocks was slowed by the BIH to remain synchronized with UT2, a practice known as the "rubber second". The rate of UTC was decided at the start of each year, and was slower than the rate of atomic time by −150 parts per 10 for 1960–1962, by −130 parts per 10 for 1962–63, by −150 parts per 10 again for 1964–65, and by −300 parts per 10 for 1966–1971. Alongside the shift in rate, an occasional 0.1 s step (0.05 s before 1963) was needed. This predominantly frequency-shifted rate of UTC was broadcast by MSF, WWV, and CHU among other time stations. In 1966, the CCIR approved "stepped atomic time" (SAT), which adjusted atomic time with more frequent 0.2 s adjustments to keep it within 0.1 s of UT2, because it had no rate adjustments. SAT was broadcast by WWVB among other time stations.
In 1972, the leap-second system was introduced so that the UTC seconds could be set exactly equal to the standard SI second, while still maintaining the UTC time of day and changes of UTC date synchronized with those of UT1. By then, the UTC clock was already 10 seconds behind TAI, which had been synchronized with UT1 in 1958, but had been counting true SI seconds since then. After 1972, both clocks have been ticking in SI seconds, so the difference between their displays at any time is 10 seconds plus the total number of leap seconds that have been applied to UTC as of that time; , 27 leap seconds have been applied to UTC, so the difference is 10 + 27 = 37 seconds.
Insertion of leap seconds
The scheduling of leap seconds was initially delegated to the Bureau International de l'Heure (BIH), but passed to the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) on January 1, 1988. IERS usually decides to apply a leap second whenever the difference between UTC and UT1 approaches 0.6 s, in order to keep the difference between UTC and UT1 from exceeding
The UTC standard allows leap seconds to be applied at the end of any UTC month, with first preference to June and December and second preference to March and September. , all of them have been inserted at the end of either June 30 or December 31. IERS publishes announcements every six months, whether leap seconds are to occur or not, in its "Bulletin C". Such announcements are typically published well in advance of each possible leap second date – usually in early January for June 30 and in early July for December 31. Some time signal broadcasts give voice announcements of an impending leap second.
Between 1972 and 2020, a leap second has been inserted about every 21 months, on average. However, the spacing is quite irregular and apparently increasing: there were no leap seconds in the six-year interval between January 1, 1999 and December 31, 2004, but there were nine leap seconds in the eight years 1972–1979.
Unlike leap days, which begin after February 28 23:59:59 local time, UTC leap seconds occur simultaneously worldwide; for example, the leap second on December 31, 2005 23:59:60 UTC was December 31, 2005 18:59:60 (6:59:60 p.m.) in U.S. Eastern Standard Time and January 1, 2006 08:59:60 (a.m.) in Japan Standard Time.
Process
When it is mandated, a positive leap second is inserted between second 23:59:59 of a chosen UTC calendar date and second 00:00:00 of the following date. The definition of UTC states that the last day of December and June are preferred, with the last day of March or September as second preference, and the last day of any other month as third preference. All leap seconds (as of 2019) have been scheduled for either June 30 or December 31. The extra second is displayed on UTC clocks as 23:59:60. On clocks that display local time tied to UTC, the leap second may be inserted at the end of some other hour (or half-hour or quarter-hour), depending on the local time zone. A negative leap second would suppress second 23:59:59 of the last day of a chosen month so that second 23:59:58 of that date would be followed immediately by second 00:00:00 of the following date. Since the introduction of leap seconds, the mean solar day has outpaced atomic time only for very brief periods and has not triggered a negative leap second.
Slowing rotation of the Earth
Leap seconds are irregularly spaced because the Earth's rotation speed changes irregularly. Indeed, the Earth's rotation is quite unpredictable in the long term, which explains why leap seconds are announced only six months in advance.
A mathematical model of the variations in the length of the solar day was developed by F. R. Stephenson and L. V. Morrison, based on records of eclipses for the period to , telescopic observations of occultations for the period 1623 until 1967 and atomic clocks thereafter. The model shows a steady increase of the mean solar day by per century, plus a periodic shift of about 4 ms amplitude and period of about 1,500 yr. Over the last few centuries, rate of lengthening of the mean solar day has been about per century, being the sum of the periodic component and the overall rate.
The main reason for the slowing down of the Earth's rotation is tidal friction, which alone would lengthen the day by 2.3 ms/century. Other contributing factors are the movement of the Earth's crust relative to its core, changes in mantle convection, and any other events or processes that cause a significant redistribution of mass. These processes change the Earth's moment of inertia, affecting the rate of rotation due to the conservation of angular momentum. Some of these redistributions increase Earth's rotational speed, shorten the solar day and oppose tidal friction. For example, glacial rebound shortens the solar day by 0.6 ms/century and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake is thought to have shortened it by 2.68 microseconds.
It is a mistake, however, to consider leap seconds as indicators of a slowing of Earth's rotation rate; they are indicators of the accumulated difference between atomic time and time measured by Earth rotation. The plot at the top of this section shows that in 1972 the average length of day was approximately 86400.003 seconds and in 2016 it was approximately 86400.001 seconds, indicating an overall increase in Earth's rotation rate over that time period. Positive leap seconds were inserted during that time because the annual average length of day remained greater than 86400 SI seconds, not because of any slowing of Earth's rotation rate.
In 2021, it was reported that Earth was spinning faster in 2020 and experienced the 28 shortest days since 1960, each of which lasted less than 86399.999 seconds. This caused engineers worldwide to discuss a negative leap second and other possible timekeeping measures of which some could eliminate leap seconds.
Future of leap seconds
The TAI and UT1 time scales are precisely defined, the former by atomic clocks (and thus independent of Earth's rotation) and the latter by astronomical observations (that measure actual planetary rotation and thus the solar time at the Greenwich meridian). UTC (on which civil time is usually based) is a compromise, stepping with atomic seconds but periodically reset by a leap second to match UT1.
The irregularity and unpredictability of UTC leap seconds is problematic for several areas, especially computing (see below). With increasing requirements for accuracy in automation systems and high-speed trading, this raises a number of issues, since a leap second represents a jump as much as a million times larger than the accuracy required for industry clocks. Consequently, the long-standing practice of inserting leap seconds is under review by the relevant international standards body.
International proposals for elimination of leap seconds
On July 5, 2005, the Head of the Earth Orientation Center of the IERS sent a notice to IERS Bulletins C and D subscribers, soliciting comments on a U.S. proposal before the ITU-R Study Group 7's WP7-A to eliminate leap seconds from the UTC broadcast standard before 2008 (the ITU-R is responsible for the definition of UTC). It was expected to be considered in November 2005, but the discussion has since been postponed. Under the proposal, leap seconds would be technically replaced by leap hours as an attempt to satisfy the legal requirements of several ITU-R member nations that civil time be astronomically tied to the Sun.
A number of objections to the proposal have been raised. P. Kenneth Seidelmann, editor of the Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac, wrote a letter lamenting the lack of consistent public information about the proposal and adequate justification. Steve Allen of the University of California, Santa Cruz cited what he claimed to be the large impact on astronomers in a Science News article. He has an extensive online site devoted to the issues and the history of leap seconds, including a set of references about the proposal and arguments against it.
At the 2014 General Assembly of the International Union of Radio Scientists (URSI), Demetrios Matsakis, the United States Naval Observatory's Chief Scientist for Time Services, presented the reasoning in favor of the redefinition and rebuttals to the arguments made against it. He stressed the practical inability of software programmers to allow for the fact that leap seconds make time appear to go backwards, particularly when most of them do not even know that leap seconds exist. The possibility of leap seconds being a hazard to navigation was presented, as well as the observed effects on commerce.
The United States formulated its position on this matter based upon the advice of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which solicited comments from the general public. This position is in favor of the redefinition.
In 2011, Chunhao Han of the Beijing Global Information Center of Application and Exploration said China had not decided what its vote would be in January 2012, but some Chinese scholars consider it important to maintain a link between civil and astronomical time due to Chinese tradition. The 2012 vote was ultimately deferred. At an ITU/BIPM-sponsored workshop on the leap second, Han expressed his personal view in favor of abolishing the leap second, and similar support for the redefinition was again expressed by Han, along with other Chinese timekeeping scientists, at the URSI General Assembly in 2014.
At a special session of the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity Meeting on February 10, 2015, Chunhao Han indicated China was now supporting the elimination of future leap seconds, as were all the other presenting national representatives (from Australia, Japan, and the Republic of Korea). At this meeting, Bruce Warrington (NMI, Australia) and Tsukasa Iwama (NICT, Japan) indicated particular concern for the financial markets due to the leap second occurring in the middle of a workday in their part of the world. Subsequent to the CPM15-2 meeting in March/April 2015 the draft gives four methods which the WRC-15 might use to satisfy Resolution 653 from WRC-12.
Arguments against the proposal include the unknown expense of such a major change and the fact that universal time will no longer correspond to mean solar time. It is also answered that two timescales that do not follow leap seconds are already available, International Atomic Time (TAI) and Global Positioning System (GPS) time. Computers, for example, could use these and convert to UTC or local civil time as necessary for output. Inexpensive GPS timing receivers are readily available, and the satellite broadcasts include the necessary information to convert GPS time to UTC. It is also easy to convert GPS time to TAI, as TAI is always exactly 19 seconds ahead of GPS time. Examples of systems based on GPS time include the CDMA digital cellular systems IS-95 and CDMA2000. In general, computer systems use UTC and synchronize their clocks using Network Time Protocol (NTP). Systems that cannot tolerate disruptions caused by leap seconds can base their time on TAI and use Precision Time Protocol. However, the BIPM has pointed out that this proliferation of timescales leads to confusion.
At the 47th meeting of the Civil Global Positioning System Service Interface Committee in Fort Worth, Texas in September 2007, it was announced that a mailed vote would go out on stopping leap seconds. The plan for the vote was:
April 2008: ITU Working Party 7A will submit to ITU Study Group 7 project recommendation on stopping leap seconds
During 2008, Study Group 7 will conduct a vote through mail among member states
October 2011: The ITU-R released its status paper, Status of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) study in ITU-R, in preparation for the January 2012 meeting in Geneva; the paper reported that, to date, in response to the UN agency's 2010 and 2011 web based surveys requesting input on the topic, it had received 16 responses from the 192 Member States with "13 being in favor of change, 3 being contrary."
January 2012: The ITU makes a decision.
In January 2012, rather than decide yes or no per this plan, the ITU decided to postpone a decision on leap seconds to the World Radiocommunication Conference in November 2015. At this conference, it was again decided to continue using leap seconds, pending further study and consideration at the next conference in 2023.
In October 2014, Włodzimierz Lewandowski, chair of the timing subcommittee of the Civil GPS Interface Service Committee and a member of the ESA Navigation Program Board, presented a CGSIC-endorsed resolution to the ITU that supported the redefinition and described leap seconds as a "hazard to navigation".
Some of the objections to the proposed change have been answered by its opponents. For example, Felicitas Arias, who, as Director of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM)'s Time, Frequency, and Gravimetry Department, was responsible for generating UTC, noted in a press release that the drift of about one minute every 60–90 years could be compared to the 16-minute annual variation between true solar time and mean solar time, the one hour offset by use of daylight time, and the several-hours offset in certain geographically extra-large time zones.
Issues created by insertion (or removal) of leap seconds
Calculation of time differences and sequence of events
To compute the elapsed time in seconds between two given UTC dates requires the consultation of a table of leap seconds, which needs to be updated whenever a new leap second is announced. Since leap seconds are known only 6 months in advance, time intervals for UTC dates farther in the future cannot be computed.
Missing leap seconds announcement
Although BIPM announces a leap second 6 months in advance, most time distribution systems (SNTP, IRIG-B, PTP) announce leap seconds at most 12 hours in advance, sometimes only in the last minute and some even not at all (DNP 03). Clocks that are not regularly synchronized can miss a leap second, but still can claim to be perfectly synchronized.
Implementation differences
Not all clocks implement leap seconds in the same manner. Leap seconds in Unix time are commonly implemented by repeating 23:59:59 or adding 23:59:60. Network Time Protocol (SNTP) freezes time during the leap second, some time servers declare "alarm condition". Other schemes smear time in the vicinity of a leap second.
Textual representation of the leap second
The textual representation of leap seconds is defined by BIPM as "23:59:60". There are programs that are not familiar with this format and may report an error when dealing with such input.
Binary representation of the leap second
Most computer operating systems and most time distribution systems represent time with a binary counter indicating the number of seconds elapsed since an arbitrary epoch; for instance, since 00:00:00 in POSIX machines or since 00:00:00 in NTP. This counter does not count positive leap seconds, and has no indicator that a leap second has been inserted, therefore two seconds in sequence will have the same counter value. Some computer operating systems, in particular Linux, assign to the leap second the counter value of the preceding, 23:59:59 second ( sequence), while other computers (and the IRIG-B time distribution) assign to the leap second the counter value of the next, 00:00:00 second ( sequence). Since there is no standard governing this sequence, the timestamp of values sampled at exactly the same time can vary by one second. This may explain flaws in time-critical systems that rely on timestamped values.
Other reported software problems associated with the leap second
A number of organizations reported problems caused by flawed software following the June 30, 2012, leap second. Among the sites which reported problems were Reddit (Apache Cassandra), Mozilla (Hadoop), Qantas, and various sites running Linux.
Older versions of Motorola Oncore VP, UT, GT, and M12 GPS receivers had a software bug that would cause a single timestamp to be off by a day if no leap second was scheduled for 256 weeks. On November 28, 2003, this happened. At midnight, the receivers with this firmware reported November 29, 2003 for one second and then reverted to November 28, 2003.
Older Trimble GPS receivers had a software flaw that would insert a leap second immediately after the GPS constellation started broadcasting the next leap second insertion time (some months in advance of the actual leap second), rather than waiting for the next leap second to happen. This left the receiver's time off by a second in the interim.
Older Datum Tymeserve 2100 GPS receivers and Symmetricom Tymeserve 2100 receivers also have a similar flaw to that of the older Trimble GPS receivers, with the time being off by one second. The advance announcement of the leap second is applied as soon as the message is received, instead of waiting for the correct date. A workaround has been described and tested, but if the GPS system rebroadcasts the announcement, or the unit is powered off, the problem will occur again.
On January 21, 2015, several models of GPS receivers implemented the leap second as soon as the announcement was broadcast by GPS, instead of waiting until the implementation date of June 30.
The NTP protocol specifies a flag to inform the receiver that a leap second is imminent. However, some NTP servers have failed to set their leap second flag correctly. Some NTP servers have responded with the wrong time for up to a day after a leap second insertion.
Four different brands of marketed navigational receivers that use data from GPS or Galileo along with the Chinese BeiDou satellites, and even some receivers that use BeiDou satellites alone, were found to implement leap seconds one day early. This was traced to the fact that BeiDou numbers the days of the week from 0 to 6, while GPS and Galileo number them from 1 to 7.
The effect of leap seconds on the commercial sector has been described as "a nightmare". Because financial markets are vulnerable to both technical and legal leap second problems, the Intercontinental Exchange, parent body to 7 clearing houses and 11 stock exchanges including the New York Stock Exchange, ceased operations for 61 minutes at the time of the June 30, 2015 leap second.
Despite the publicity given to the 2015 leap second, a small number of network failures occurred due to leap second-related software errors of some routers. Also, interruptions of around 40 minutes' duration occurred with Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Netflix, Amazon, and Apple's music streaming series Beats 1.
Several older versions of the Cisco Systems NEXUS 5000 Series Operating System NX-OS (versions 5.0, 5.1, 5.2) are affected by leap second bugs.
Leap second software bugs have affected the Altea airlines reservation system used by Qantas and Virgin Australia.
Cloudflare was affected by a leap second software bug. Its DNS resolver implementation incorrectly calculated a negative number when subtracting two timestamps obtained from the Go programming language's time.Now() function, which then used only a real-time clock source. This could have been avoided by using a monotonic clock source, which has since been added to Go 1.9.
There were misplaced concerns that farming equipment using GPS during harvests occurring on December 31, 2016, would be affected by the 2016 leap second. GPS navigation makes use of GPS time, which is not impacted by the leap second.
Workarounds for leap second problems
The most obvious workaround is to use the TAI scale for all operational purposes and convert to UTC for human-readable text. UTC can always be derived from TAI with a suitable table of leap seconds. The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) video/audio industry standards body selected TAI for deriving timestamps of media.
IEC/IEEE 60802 (Time sensitive networks) specifies TAI for all operations. Grid automation is planning to switch to TAI for global distribution of events in electrical grids. Bluetooth mesh networking also uses TAI.
Instead of inserting a leap second at the end of the day, Google servers implement a "leap smear", extending seconds slightly over a 24-hour period centered on the leap second. Amazon followed a similar, but slightly different, pattern for the introduction of the June 30, 2015 leap second, leading to another case of the proliferation of timescales. They later released an NTP service for EC2 instances which performs leap smearing. UTC-SLS was proposed as a version of UTC with linear leap smearing, but it never became standard.
It has been proposed that media clients using the Real-time Transport Protocol inhibit generation or use of NTP timestamps during the leap second and the second preceding it.
NIST has established a special NTP time server to deliver UT1 instead of UTC. Such a server would be particularly useful in the event the ITU resolution passes and leap seconds are no longer inserted. Those astronomical observatories and other users that require UT1 could run off UT1 – although in many cases these users already download UT1-UTC from the IERS, and apply corrections in software.
See also
Clock drift, phenomenon where a clock gains or loses time compared to another clock
DUT1, which describes the difference between coordinated universal time (UTC) and universal time (UT1)
Dynamical time scale
Leap year, a year containing one extra day or month
Notes
References
Further reading
Ahuja, Anjana (October 30, 2005). "Savouring the last leap second in history". New Straits Times, p. F10.
Grossman, Wendy M. (November 2005). "Wait a Second". Scientific American, pp. 12–13.
McCarthy, Dennis D. & Seidelmann, P. Kenneth. (2009). TIME From Earth Rotation to Atomic Physics. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH.
External links
IERS Bulletin C (leap second announcements)
LeapSecond.com – A web site dedicated to precise time and frequency
NIST FAQ about leap year and leap second
The leap second: its history and possible future
Leap Seconds, U.S. Naval Observatory
Judah Levine's Everyday Time and Atomic Time series
Timekeeping
1972 introductions
1972 in science | [
0.12241654098033905,
-0.38543060421943665,
0.019613830372691154,
0.23989874124526978,
-0.0011536894598975778,
0.36886221170425415,
0.20857949554920197,
0.021177994087338448,
-0.4447779059410095,
-0.22080807387828827,
-0.22064246237277985,
0.04744754731655121,
-0.15051127970218658,
0.244196... |
18473 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luca%20Pacioli | Luca Pacioli | Fra Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli (sometimes Paccioli or Paciolo; 1447 – 19 June 1517) was an Italian mathematician, Franciscan friar, collaborator with Leonardo da Vinci, and an early contributor to the field now known as accounting. He is referred to as "The Father of Accounting and Bookkeeping" in Europe and he was the first person to publish a work on the double-entry system of book-keeping on the continent. He was also called Luca di Borgo after his birthplace, Borgo Sansepolcro, Tuscany.
Life
Luca Pacioli was born between 1446 and 1448 in the Tuscan town of Sansepolcro where he received an abbaco education. This was education in the vernacular (i.e., the local tongue) rather than Latin and focused on the knowledge required of merchants. His father was Bartolomeo Pacioli; however, Luca Pacioli was said to have lived with the Befolci family as a child in his birth town Sansepolcro. He moved to Venice around 1464, where he continued his own education while working as a tutor to the three sons of a merchant. It was during this period that he wrote his first book, a treatise on arithmetic for the boys he was tutoring. Between 1472 and 1475, he became a Franciscan friar. Thus, he could be referred to as Fra ('Friar') Luca.
In 1475, he started teaching in Perugia as a private teacher before becoming first chair in mathematics in 1477. During this time, he wrote a comprehensive textbook in the vernacular for his students. He continued to work as a private tutor of mathematics and was instructed to stop teaching at this level in Sansepolcro in 1491. In 1494, his first book, , was published in Venice. In 1497, he accepted an invitation from Duke Ludovico Sforza to work in Milan. There he met, taught mathematics to, collaborated, and lived with Leonardo da Vinci. In 1499, Pacioli and Leonardo were forced to flee Milan when Louis XII of France seized the city and drove out their patron. Their paths appear to have finally separated around 1506. Pacioli died at about the age of 70 on 19 June 1517, most likely in Sansepolcro, where it is thought that he had spent much of his final years.
Mathematics
Pacioli published several works on mathematics, including:
(Ms. Vatican Library, Lat. 3129), a nearly 600-page textbook dedicated to his students at the University of Perugia where Pacioli taught from 1477 to 1480. The manuscript was written between December 1477 and 29 April 1478. It contains 16 sections on merchant arithmetic, such as barter, exchange, profit, mixing metals, and algebra, though 25 pages from the chapter on algebra are missing. A modern transcription was published by Calzoni and Cavazzoni (1996) along with a partial translation of the chapter on partitioning problems.
(Venice 1494), a textbook for use in the schools of Northern Italy. It was a synthesis of the mathematical knowledge of his time and contained the first printed work on algebra written in the vernacular (i.e., the spoken language of the day). It is also notable for including one of the first published descriptions of the bookkeeping method that Venetian merchants used during the Italian Renaissance, known as the double-entry accounting system. The system he published included most of the accounting cycle as we know it today. He described the use of journals and ledgers and warned that a person should not go to sleep at night until the debits equalled the credits. His ledger had accounts for assets (including receivables and inventories), liabilities, capital, income, and expenses – the account categories that are reported on an organization's balance sheet and income statement, respectively. He demonstrated year-end closing entries and proposed that a trial balance be used to prove a balanced ledger. Additionally, his treatise touches on a wide range of related topics from accounting ethics to cost accounting. He introduced the Rule of 72, using an approximation of 100*ln 2 more than 100 years before Napier and Briggs.
(Ms. Università degli Studi di Bologna, 1496–1508), a treatise on mathematics and magic. Written between 1496 and 1508, it contains the first reference to card tricks as well as guidance on how to juggle, eat fire, and make coins dance. It is the first work to note that Leonardo was left-handed. De viribus quantitatis is divided into three sections: Mathematical problems, puzzles, and tricks, along with a collection of proverbs and verses. The book has been described as the "Foundation of modern magic and numerical puzzles," but it was never published and sat in the archives of the University of Bologna, where it was seen by only a small number of scholars during the Middle Ages. The book was rediscovered after David Singmaster, a mathematician, came across a reference to it in a 19th-century manuscript. An English translation was published for the first time in 2007.
Geometry (1509), a Latin translation of Euclid's Elements.
Divina proportione (written in Milan in 1496–98, published in Venice in 1509). Two versions of the original manuscript are extant, one in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, the other in the Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire in Geneva. The subject was mathematical and artistic proportion, especially the mathematics of the golden ratio and its application in architecture. Leonardo da Vinci drew the illustrations of the regular solids in Divina proportione while he lived with and took mathematics lessons from Pacioli. Leonardo's drawings are probably the first illustrations of skeletal solids, which allowed an easy distinction between front and back. The work also discusses the use of perspective by painters such as Piero della Francesca, Melozzo da Forlì, and Marco Palmezzano.
Translation of Piero della Francesca's work
The majority of the second volume of was a slightly rewritten version of one of Piero della Francesca's works. The third volume of Pacioli's Divina proportione was an Italian translation of Piero della Francesca's Latin book De quinque corporibus regularibus. In neither case did Pacioli include an attribution to Piero. He was severely criticized for this and accused of plagiarism by sixteenth-century art historian and biographer Giorgio Vasari. R. Emmett Taylor (1889–1956) said that Pacioli may have had nothing to do with the translated volume Divina proportione, and that it may just have been appended to his work. However, no such defense can be presented concerning the inclusion of Piero della Francesca's material in Pacioli's Summa.
Impact on accounting and business
Pacioli dramatically affected the practice of accounting by describing the double-entry accounting method used in parts of Italy. This revolutionized how businesses oversaw their operations, enabling improved efficiency and profitability. The Summas section on accounting was used internationally as an accounting textbook up to the mid-16th century. The essentials of double-entry accounting have for the most part remained unchanged for over 500 years. "Accounting practitioners in public accounting, industry, and not-for-profit organizations, as well as investors, lending institutions, business firms, and all other users for financial information are indebted to Luca Pacioli for his monumental role in the development of accounting."
The ICAEW Library's rare book collection at Chartered Accountants' Hall holds the complete published works of Luca Pacioli. Sections of two of Pacioli's books, 'Summa de arithmetica' and 'Divina proportione' can be viewed online using Turning the Pages, an interactive tool developed by the British Library.
Chess
Luca Pacioli also wrote an unpublished treatise on chess, De ludo scachorum (On the Game of Chess). Long thought to have been lost, a surviving manuscript was rediscovered in 2006, in the 22,000-volume library of Count Guglielmo Coronini-Cronberg in Gorizia. A facsimile edition of the book was published in Pacioli's home town of Sansepolcro in 2008. Based on Leonardo da Vinci's long association with the author and his having illustrated Divina proportione, some scholars speculate that Leonardo either drew the chess problems that appear in the manuscript or at least designed the chess pieces used in the problems.International Herald Tribune: Experts link Leonardo da Vinci to chess puzzles in long-lost Renaissance treatiseExperts link Leonardo da Vinci to chess puzzles
See also
List of Roman Catholic scientist-clerics
Della mercatura e del mercante perfetto
ReferencesFootnotesCitations'''
Sources
Calzoni, Giuseppe and Gianfranco Cavazzoni (eds.) (1996) Tractatus Mathematicus ad Discipulos Perusinos, Città di Castello, Perugia.
Galassi, Giuseppe. "Pacioli, Luca (c. 1445-c.1517)." In History of Accounting: an International Encyclopedia, edited by Michael Chatfield and Richard Vangermeersch. New York: Garland Publishing, 1996. pp. 445–447.
Gleeson-White, Jane, "Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance," New York: Norton, 2012.
Heeffer, Albrecht, "Algebraic partitioning problems from Luca Paccioli’s Perugia manuscript (Vat. Lat. 3129)" in Sources and Commentaries in Exact Sciences, (2010), 11, pp. 3–52.
Pacioli, Luca. De divina proportione (English: On the Divine Proportion), (Antonio Capella) Venice: Paganino Paganini (1509).
Smith, Murphy, Luca Pacioli: The Father of Accounting (2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2320658 or https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2320658.
Taylor, Emmet, R. No Royal Road: Luca Paccioli and his Times (1942)
Full Biography of Pacioli (St.Andrews)
Lucas Paccioli - Catholic Encyclopedia article
Libellus de quinque corporibus regularibus, corredato della versione volgare di Luca Paccioli [facsimile del Codice Vat. Urb. Lat. 632]; eds. Cecil Grayson,... Marisa Dalai Emiliani, Carlo Maccagni. Firenze, Giunti, 1995. 3 vol. (68 ff., XLIV-213, XXII-223 pp.).
Varisco, Alessio, Borgo Sansepolcro. Città di cavalieri e pellegrini Pessano con Bornago, Mimep-Docete (2012).
External links
Palladio's Literary Predecessors
The Enigma of Luca Paccioli's Portrait
Outline of Paccioli's Treatise - Particularis de Computis et Scripturis
Full text of De divina proportione
Luca Paccioli's economic research programme
Pacioli Institute for a true and fair view of the knowledge-based economy
Online Galleries, History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries High resolution images of works by and/or portraits of Luca Pacioli in .jpg and .tiff format.
Diuina proportione, Venice, 1509, digitized at , Biblioteca Nacional de España
Lauwers, Luc & Willekens, Marleen: Five Hundred Years of Bookkeeping: A Portrait of Luca Pacioli'' (Tijdschrift voor Economie en Management, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 1994, vol. XXXIX issue 3 pp. 289–304) pdf
1440s births
1517 deaths
People from Sansepolcro
15th-century Italian mathematicians
16th-century Italian mathematicians
Leonardo da Vinci
Italian accountants
Magic squares
Italian Franciscans
Catholic clergy scientists
Number theorists
History of accounting
15th-century Italian writers
16th-century Italian writers
16th-century male writers | [
-0.02197917178273201,
-0.05126279219985008,
-0.3587024211883545,
0.2825806140899658,
0.26038858294487,
1.1040856838226318,
0.05429212749004364,
0.014797904528677464,
-0.4620106816291809,
-0.48232030868530273,
-0.01685836911201477,
0.08471507579088211,
-0.531667172908783,
-0.485540539026260... |
18474 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower%20Mainland | Lower Mainland | The Lower Mainland is a geographic and cultural region of the mainland coast of British Columbia that generally comprises the regional districts of Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley. Home to approximately 3.05million people as of the 2021 Canadian census, the Lower Mainland contains sixteen of the province's 30 most populous municipalities and approximately 60% of the province's total population.
The region is the traditional territory of the Sto:lo, a Halkomelem-speaking people of the Coast Salish linguistic and cultural grouping.
Boundaries
While the term Lower Mainland has been recorded from the earliest period of colonization in British Columbia, it has never been officially defined in legal terms. The term has historically been in popular usage for over a century to describe a region that extends from Horseshoe Bay south to the Canada–United States border and east to Hope at the eastern end of the Fraser Valley. This definition makes the term Lower Mainland almost synonymous with the regional districts of Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley.
However, the British Columbia Geographical Names Information System (BCGNIS) comments that most residents of Vancouver might consider it to be only areas west of Mission and Abbotsford, while residents in the rest of the province consider it to be the Sea-to-Sky Corridor south of Whistler and west of Hope.
Geography
The region is bounded to the north by the Coast Mountains and to the southeast by the Cascade Mountains, and is traversed from east to west by the Fraser River. Due to its consistency of climate, flora and fauna, geology and land use, "Lower Mainland" is also the name of an ecoregion—a biogeoclimatic region—that comprises the eastern part of the Georgia Depression and extends from Powell River on the Sunshine Coast to Hope at the eastern end of the Fraser Valley.
Climate
One of the mildest climates in Canada, the region has a mean annual temperature of with a summer mean of and a winter mean of . Annual precipitation ranges from an annual mean of in the west end to in the eastern end of the Fraser Valley and at higher elevations. Maximum precipitation occurs as rain in winter. Less than ten percent falls as snow at sea level but the amount of snowfall increases significantly with elevation.
Demographics
Population
As of the 2016 census, the population of the Lower Mainland totals 2,759,385:
295,934 in the Fraser Valley Regional District
2,463,431 in Metro Vancouver Regional District
These figures are slightly inflated due to the inclusion of areas within the Regional Districts which are not normally considered to be part of the Lower Mainland, notably the lower Fraser Canyon and the heads of Harrison and Pitt Lakes, which are within the FVRD, and Lions Bay and Bowen Island, which are within the Greater Vancouver Regional District.
Ethnicity
The Lower Mainland is among the most diverse regions in Canada. Europeans form a slight majority at 51.5 percent, followed by East Asians at 20.8 percent and South Asians at 12.2 percent.
Language
Religion
The Lower Mainland includes large Christian, Irreligious, Sikh and Buddhist communities. The Sikh population, numbering 185,000 or 7.2 percent of the total population, is significant across Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley; proportionally, it is more than five times the national average of 1.4 percent.
Regional districts
Regional districts were first created across British Columbia in 1966–1967 to form bodies for inter-municipal coordination and to extend municipal-level powers to areas outside existing municipalities. Today, the Lower Mainland includes two regional districts: the Metro Vancouver Regional District (MVRD) and the Fraser Valley Regional District (FVRD). Both regional districts, however, include areas outside the traditional limits of the Lower Mainland. Metro Vancouver includes areas like Surrey and Langley that are geographically in the Fraser Valley.
The Metro Vancouver Regional District is made up of 21 municipalities. The MVRD is bordered on the west by the Strait of Georgia, to the north by the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District, on the east by the Fraser Valley Regional District, and to the south by Whatcom County, Washington, in the United States.
The Fraser Valley Regional District lies east of the Metro Vancouver Regional District, and comprises the cities of Abbotsford and Chilliwack, the district municipalities of Mission, Kent, and Hope, and the village of Harrison Hot Springs. It also includes many unincorporated areas in the Fraser Valley and along the west side of the Fraser Canyon (the Fraser Canyon is not in the Lower Mainland).
Regional district powers are very limited and other localized provincial government services are delivered through other regionalization systems.
Indigenous territories
The traditional territories of the Musqueam and Tsleil'waututh lie completely within the region; the southern portion of Squamish traditional territory is also in the region. Its claims overlap those of the Tsleil-waututh, Musqueam, and Kwikwetlem. Other peoples whose territories lie within the region are the Sto:lo, Chehalis, Katzie, Kwantlen, Tsawwassen, and Semiahmoo; many of their territories overlap with those of the Musqueam, and with each other. Many other peoples of the Georgia Strait region also frequented the lower Fraser, including those from Vancouver Island and what is now Whatcom County, Washington.
Sto:lo traditional territory, known as Solh Temexw in Halkomelem, more or less coincides with the traditional conception of the Lower Mainland, except for the inclusion of Port Douglas at the head of Harrison Lake, which is in In-SHUCK-ch territory, and the lands around Burrard Inlet.
Health regions
Health system services and governance in the Lower Mainland are provided by Vancouver Coastal Health, serving Vancouver, Richmond and the North Shore, and the mainland coast as far north as the Central Coast region, and Fraser Health, which serves the area of the Lower Mainland east of Vancouver and Richmond.
Natural threats
Flooding
The Lower Mainland is considered to have a high vulnerability to flood risk. There have been two major region-wide floods in 1894 and 1948, both associated with an extreme spring freshet of the Fraser River. Other major floods in the Lower Mainlandincluding June 1972, November 1990, and November 2021have been more localized, primarily impacting areas in the Fraser Valley like the Sumas Prairie, with comparatively minor impacts to Metro Vancouver. Prior to the 2021 flood, according to the Fraser Basin Council, scientists predicted a one-in-three chance of a similar-sized flood occurring in the next 50 years.
In the second quarter of 2007, the Lower Mainland was on high alert for flooding. Higher than normal snow packs in the British Columbia Interior prompted municipal governments to start taking emergency measures in the region. Dikes along the Fraser River are regulated to handle aapproximately at the Mission Gauge (the height above sea level of the dykes at Mission). Warmer than normal weather in the province's Interior region caused large amounts of snow to melt prematurely, resulting in higher-than-normal water levels, which, nevertheless, remained well below flood levels.
Flooding can cover much of the Lower Mainland. Cloverdale, Barnston Island, low-lying areas of Maple Ridge, areas west of Hope, White Rock, Richmond, parts of Vancouver, and parts of Surrey are potentially at risk. In 2007, the Lower Mainland was largely spared, although northern regions of the province, along the Skeena and Nechako Rivers, experienced floods. Climate scientists predict that increasing temperatures will mean wetter winters and more snow at the high elevations. This will increase the likelihood of snowmelt floods.
The provincial government maintains an integrated flood hazard management program and extensive flood protection infrastructure in the Lower Mainland. The infrastructure consists of dikes, pump stations, floodboxes, riprap, and relief wells.
Earthquakes
While earthquakes are common in British Columbia and adjacent coastal waters, most are minor in energy release or are sufficiently remote to have little effect on populated areas. Nevertheless, earthquakes with a magnitude of up to 7.3 have occurred within of the Lower Mainland.
Based on geological evidence, however, stronger earthquakes appear to have occurred at approximately 600-year intervals. Therefore, there is a probability that there will be a major earthquake in the region within the next 200 years.
In April 2008, the United States Geological Survey released information concerning a newly found fault south of downtown Abbotsford, called the Boulder Creek Fault. Scientists now believe this fault is active and capable of producing earthquakes in the 6.8 magnitude range.
Volcanoes
Much of the Lower Mainland is vulnerable to explosive eruptions from the Garibaldi Volcanic Belt. Volcanoes in this zone are capable of producing large quantities of volcanic ash that may cause short and long term water supply problems for Lower Mainland communities. All airports covered by the accompanying eruption column would be closed, heavy ash falls would damage electrical equipment and weak structures could collapse under the weight of the ash.
Communities
The Lower Mainland's communities includes large cities in Metro Vancouver, and smaller cities, towns and villages along both banks of the Fraser River. Neighbourhoods within cities are not listed unless historically or otherwise notable and/or separate. Only some of the many Indian Reserves are listed.
Upper Fraser Valley
Agassiz
Bridal Falls
Chehalis
Chilliwack
Cultus Lake
Greendale
Lake Errock
Kent
Harrison Hot Springs
Harrison Mills
Hope
Flood
Laidlaw
Popkum
Rosedale
Ruby Creek
Sardis
Yarrow
Central Fraser Valley
Abbotsford
Aldergrove
Bradner
Clayburn
Clearbrook
Deroche
Dewdney
Durieu
Hatzic
Huntingdon
Matsqui
Mission
Mount Lehman
Nicomen Island
Ruskin
Silverdale
Silverhill
Squamish
Stave Falls
Steelhead
Sumas (Sumas Prairie)
Whonnock
Lower Fraser Valley / Metro Vancouver
Albion
Anmore
Annieville
Barnston Island
Belcarra
Boundary Bay
Bridgeport
Brighouse
Burnaby
Burquitlam
Cloverdale
Coquitlam
Crescent Beach
Derby ("Old Derby")
Douglas
Delta
Fort Langley
Haney
Kanaka Creek
Langley City
Langley District
Lions Bay
Maillardville
Maple Ridge
New Westminster
Newton
North Vancouver City
North Vancouver District
Pitt Meadows
Port Coquitlam
Port Hammond (Hammond)
Port Kells
Port Moody
Queensborough
Richmond
Sapperton
Scottsdale
Steveston
Surrey
Tsawwassen
Vancouver
West Vancouver
Whalley
White Rock
Yennadon
See also
Fraser Lowland
List of provincial parks of the Lower Mainland
References
External links
South Coast of British Columbia
Geography of Vancouver | [
0.10557865351438522,
-0.15983761847019196,
-0.3342181146144867,
0.11170975863933563,
0.3145281970500946,
0.5251087546348572,
0.18311263620853424,
0.5580014586448669,
-0.30549052357673645,
-0.3965793550014496,
-0.3184686005115509,
-0.07719487696886063,
0.14197221398353577,
-0.04353443533182... |
18475 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius%20Afranius%20%28poet%29 | Lucius Afranius (poet) | Lucius Afranius was an ancient Roman comic poet, who lived at the beginning of the 1st century BC.
Life
Afranius' comedies described Roman scenes and manners (the genre called comoediae togatae) and the subjects were mostly taken from the life of the lower classes (comoediae tabernariae). They were considered by some ancients to be frequently polluted with disgraceful amours, which, according to Quintilian, were only a representation of the conduct of Afranius. He depicted, however, Roman life with such accuracy that he is classed with Menander, from whom indeed he borrowed largely. He imitated the style of Gaius Titius, and his language is praised by Cicero. His comedies are spoken of in the highest terms by the ancient writers, and under the Empire they not only continued to be read, but were even acted, of which an example occurs in the time of Nero. They seem to have been well known even at the latter end of the 4th century AD.
Quintilian's judgement
The Spanish-Roman teacher of rhetoric Quintilian wrote of Afranius's plays:
Togātīs excellit Afrānius: utinam non inquināsset argūmenta puerōrum foedīs amōribus, mōrēs suōs fassus.
("Afranius excelled in Roman-style comedies: if only he hadn't polluted his plots with unseemly sexual affairs with boys, confessing his own habits.")
Such is the generally accepted interpretation of this sentence. An alternative view is proposed by Welsh (2010), who, noting that there is no trace of pederasty or any lewdness in any of the quoted fragments of Afranius, proposed to translate the sentence "if only he hadn't polluted his plots with disreputable love affairs (conducted) by boys", something which Quintilian perhaps thought unsuited to the moralising tone of Roman comedies. A problem with this interpretation, as Welsh himself admits, is that in Roman literature the word pueri is usually used for the boys who are object of love affairs, not the young men who conduct them.
Surviving titles and fragments
Afranius wrote many comedies. The titles of forty-two of his plays are still preserved, along with associated fragments and quotations:
References
Attribution
1st-century BC people
1st-century BC Roman poets
Lucius
Golden Age Latin writers
Humorous poets
Roman-era poets
Year of birth unknown
Year of death unknown | [
-0.5183799266815186,
-0.11521643400192261,
-0.7896310091018677,
-0.4798334240913391,
-0.02609654888510704,
1.086447834968567,
0.556382954120636,
0.5027904510498047,
-0.26932698488235474,
-0.9303785562515259,
0.15996810793876648,
0.09050079435110092,
-1.0724939107894897,
-0.0876828134059906... |
18476 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London%20Post%20Office%20Railway | London Post Office Railway | The Post Office Railway, is a narrow gauge, driverless underground railway in London that was built by the Post Office with assistance from the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, to transport mail between sorting offices. Inspired by the Chicago Tunnel Company, it opened in 1927 and operated for 76 years until it closed in 2003. A museum within the former railway was opened in September 2017.
Geography
The line ran from Paddington Head District Sorting Office in the west to the Eastern Head District Sorting Office at Whitechapel in the east, a distance of . It had eight stations, the largest of which was underneath Mount Pleasant, but by 2003 only three stations remained in use because the sorting offices above the other stations had been relocated.
History
Use as post office railway
In 1911, a plan evolved to build an underground railway long from Paddington to Whitechapel serving the main sorting offices along the route; road traffic congestion was causing unacceptable delays. The contract to build the tunnels was won by John Mowlem and Co. Construction of the tunnels started in February 1915 from a series of shafts. Most of the line was constructed using the Greathead shield system, with limited amounts of hand-mining for connecting tunnels at stations.
The main line has a single diameter tube with two tracks. Just before stations, tunnels diverge into two single-track diameter tunnels leading to two parallel diameter station tunnels. The main tube is at a depth of around . Stations are at a much shallower depth, with a 1-in-20 gradient into the stations. The gradients assist in slowing the trains when approaching stations, and accelerating them away. There is also less distance to lift mail from the stations to the surface. At Oxford Circus the tunnel runs close to the Bakerloo line tunnel of the London Underground.
During 1917, work was suspended due to the shortage of labour and materials. By June 1924, track laying had started. In February 1927, the first section, between Paddington and the West Central District Office, was made available for training. The line became available for the Christmas parcel post in 1927 and letters were carried from February 1928.
In 1954, plans were developed for a new Western District Office at Rathbone Place, which required a diversion, opening in 1958. It was not until 3 August 1965 that the new station and office were opened by the Postmaster General, Tony Benn. The disused section was used as a store tunnel; some parts of it still have the track in place.
Closure
A Royal Mail press release in April 2003 said that the railway would be closed and mothballed at the end of May that year. Royal Mail had earlier stated that using the railway was five times more expensive than using road transport for the same task. The Communication Workers Union claimed the actual figure was closer to three times more expensive but argued that this was the result of a deliberate policy of running the railway down and using it at only one-third of its capacity. A local governmental report by the Greater London Authority stated that the "line carries an average of four million letters and parcels per day" and was in support of continued use and criticized the increase of lorries on local roads, estimated to be 80 more truck loads per week. The railway was closed on 31 May 2003.
In April 2011, an urban exploration group called the "Consolidation Crew" published accounts of illicit access to the tunnels. Detailed photography and text revealed that the railway is still largely in good condition, despite some natural decay. More recently, media have been admitted to the tunnels as part of the pre-launch publicity for the Postal Museum. Photographs show much of the infrastructure in place.
A team from the University of Cambridge has taken over a short, double track section of unused Post Office tunnel near Liverpool Street Station, where a newly built tunnel for Crossrail is situated some two metres beneath. The study is to establish how the original cast-iron lining sections, which are similar to those used for many miles of railway under London, resist possible deformation and soil movement caused by the new works. Digital cameras, fibre optic deformation sensors, laser scanners and other low-cost instruments, reporting in real time, have been installed in the vacated tunnel. As well as providing information about the behaviour of the old construction materials, the scheme can also provide an early warning if the new tunnel bores are creating dangerous soil movement.
Redevelopment and preservation
In October 2013, the British Postal Museum & Archive announced that it intended opening part of the network to the public. After approval was granted by Islington Council, work on the new museum and the railway began in 2014. Special tourist trains were installed in late 2016. It was planned to open a circular route, running beneath the depot at Mount Pleasant with a journey time of around 15 minutes, by mid-2017. The museum opened on 5 September.
In its first year of operation (2017–2018), the trains performed 9,000 trips totalling , with the railway and museum hosting over 198,000 visitors.
Rolling stock
The first stock was delivered in 1926 with the opening of the system. All stock used was electrically powered.
Electric locomotives
1926 Electric Locomotives — Original locomotives
Electric units
1927 Stock — Original stock
1930 & 1936 Stock — Replacement stock for 1927 Stock
1962 Stock — Prototype stock
1980 Stock — Replacement stock
Some trains have been preserved at the Launceston Steam Railway.
In fiction
The railway features in the novel The Horn of Mortal Danger by Lawrence Leonard in which there is a connecting tunnel to a secret railway to the North London network. The only other known connection is in the disused tunnel between Highgate and the disused Cranley Gardens.
A version of the railway is featured in the novel 'The Great Game' by Lavie Tidhar. It takes mail to Buckingham Palace, and is run by the book's featured Simulacra.
The railway appears in the film Hudson Hawk as 'Poste Vaticane' in the Vatican City. Bruce Willis (as Hawk) stows away in one of the mail containers.
A mail train system closely based on the railway is in Charlie Higson's third Young Bond book, Double or Die.
The railway is prominent in Oliver Harris's 2014 book Deep Shelter.
The railway features in Mark Leggatt's 2016 novel The London Cage, as a means for Connor Montrose to move about London. The International Thriller, a follow up to Names of the Dead, was published by Scottish-based publisher Fledgling Press in June 2016.
The railways make an appearance in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s 2020 novel The Doors of Eden as Khan and Lee are being led by Stig towards a door to escape from pursuit by Rove’s henchmen.
Similar railways
A pneumatic underground railway was used by the Post Office in London between 1863 and 1874 using individual wheeled capsules, operated by the London Pneumatic Despatch Company.
In 1910, a tunnel railway opened in Munich, Germany between München Hauptbahnhof and the nearby Post office. The tunnels were damaged in World War II, restored in 1948 and partially rebuilt in 1966 to allow for the first Munich S-Bahn tunnel. Operations ceased in 1988.
Postal Telegraph and Telephone (Switzerland) (de) opened the Post-U-Bahn (underground railway) in Zürich in 1938. It ran between Zürich Hauptbahnhof and the Sihlpost (de), Zürich's main post office. The track gauge was 60 cm, and the small electric railcar, which could carry 250 kg of mail, collected power from wires between the tracks. Operations ceased on 11 October 1980 when a rubber-tired system replaced the train.
The Chicago Tunnel Company, in operation between 1906 and 1959, delivered freight, parcels, and coal, and disposed of ash and excavation debris. It operated an elaborate network of narrow gauge track in tunnels running under the streets throughout the central business district including and surrounding the "Loop".
See also
Subterranean London
List of British heritage and private railways
Munich Post-U-Bahn (de)
Travelling Post Office
Zürich Post-U-Bahn (de)
References
Notes
Literature
Bradley Garrett (2013). "Explore Everything: Place-Hacking the City." Verso Books, London.
Further reading
External links
The British Postal Museum & Archive
Place Hacking A collective report of the trespass into the network by urban explorers in 2011.
Guardian article on proposed mothballing.
BBC article A video from the mothballed railway, detailing plans for future use.
Mail rail in openstreetmap.org
Electric railways in the United Kingdom
Industrial railways in England
Underground railways in the United Kingdom
2 ft gauge railways in England
Subterranean London
History of rail transport in London
Postal history of the United Kingdom
Railway lines opened in 1927
Railway lines closed in 2003
Postal infrastructure in the United Kingdom
Tunnels completed in 1927
Tunnels in London
1927 establishments in England
2003 disestablishments in England | [
0.2140798270702362,
0.003823094768449664,
0.16350342333316803,
-0.17749682068824768,
0.45719748735427856,
0.2554323375225067,
0.1321272999048233,
0.18069304525852203,
0.018993310630321503,
0.03590721637010574,
-0.5307005643844604,
-0.6687060594558716,
-0.3840264081954956,
0.441980689764022... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.