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restrictions on access to the Internet, but there are reports that the government blocks access to Web sites within the country that are critical of the government. In 2012 and 2013, some independent online news outlets and opposition blogs were intermittently inaccessible. It is uncertain whether the disruptions are due to government blocking, as was the case in past years, or to technical issues. Some opposition sites continue to be blocked on some ISPs in early 2013, including Umusingi and Inyenyeri News, which were first blocked in 2011. Social-networking sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and international blog hosting services are freely available. The websites of international human rights organizations such as Freedom House, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, as well as the online versions of media outlets such as the BBC, Le Monde, Radio France Internationale, The New York Times'', and many others are freely accessible. Websites of national news outlets are also easily accessible. These include the web versions of state-run media and pro-government outlets as well as independent outlets such as The Rwanda Focus, Rushyashya, The Chronicles, Umusanzu, and Rwanda Dispatch. The constitution provides for freedom of speech and press "in conditions prescribed by the law." The government at times restricts these rights. The government intimidates and arrests journalists who express views that are deemed critical on sensitive topics. Laws prohibit promoting divisionism, genocide ideology, and genocide denial, "spreading rumors aimed at inciting the population to rise against the regime", expressing contempt for the Head of State, other high-level public officials, administrative authorities or other public servants, and slander of foreign and international officials and dignitaries. These acts or expression of these viewpoints sometimes results in arrest, harassment, or intimidation. Numerous journalists practice self-censorship. In June 2011 a court convicted journalist Jean Bosco Gasasira in absentia of displaying contempt for the head of state and incitement to civil disobedience for his writings in the online publication Umuvugizi and sentenced him to two and a half years in prison. The constitution and law prohibit arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, or correspondence; however, there are numerous reports the government monitors homes, telephone calls, e-mail, Internet chat rooms, | since 2014 Airtel Rwanda Ltd controls over 80% of the market Mobile cellular: 9.53 million lines, 90th in the world (2019) Mobile cellular subscriptions have almost tripled over the past decade MTN Rwanda Ltd and Airtel Rwanda Ltd split the mobile cellular market roughly 60/40 Telephone system: a government-sponsored fiber-optic cable expansion project was completed improving telecommunication services throughout the country (2011); a well-developed mobile cellular network covers nearly 98 percent of the population (2013). a small, inadequate telephone system primarily serves business, education, and government; the capital, Kigali, is connected to the centers of the provinces by microwave radio relay and by cellular telephone service; much of the network depends on wire and HF radiotelephone; combined fixed-line and mobile-cellular telephone density has increased and now exceeds 40 telephones per 100 persons, international connections employ microwave radio relay to neighboring countries and satellite communications to more distant countries (2010). Satellite earth stations: 1 Intelsat (Indian Ocean) in Kigali includes telex and telefax service (2010). Internet Top-level domain: .rw Internet users: 2.65 million, 107th in the world; 21.77% of the population (2018) 450,000 users (2009), 118th in the world; 25,000 users (2002). Fixed broadband: 7,501 subscriptions, 175th in the world; less than 1% of population (2018) Wireless broadband: 379,331 subscriptions, 99th in the world; 3.2% of the population, 119th in the world (2012). Internet hosts: 1,447 hosts, 168th in the world (2012). IPv4: 195,840 addresses allocated, 117th in the world, less than 0.05% of the world total, 16.8 addresses per 1000 people (2012).Population, The World Factbook, United States Central Intelligence Agency. Accessed on 2 April 2012. Note: Data are mostly for 1 July 2012. Internet Service Providers: 4 ISPs (2005). Rwanda ranked in first place in Africa for broadband download speeds and 62nd globally with a speed of 7.88 Mbit/s in February 2013. The Internet has been available from mobile cellular phones since 2007, but the high cost of phones and limited bandwidth restrained its popularity for several years. With completion of the government-sponsored fiber-optic cable expansion project in 2011, telecommunication services throughout the country have improved and the amount of mobile cellular Internet access and use has increased. In 2009, RURA set up the Rwanda Internet Exchange (RINEX) to connect ISPs and enable the routing of local Internet traffic through a central exchange point without having to pass through international networks. ISPs can also opt to connect via RINEX to the international Internet. As of the end of 2013, only five ISPs exchange Internet traffic via RINEX, and the price for national access remained the same as for international access. Internet access is limited mostly to Kigali, the capital city, and remains beyond the economic capacity of most citizens, particularly those in rural areas who are limited by low disposable incomes and a low level of digital literacy. More than 90% of the population lives in rural areas, with most engaged in subsistence agriculture. Between 70% and 90% of the population speaks only Kinyarwanda, making Internet content in English unavailable to the majority of Rwandans. In 2015, the Internet penetration rate was about 25% of the population. Internet censorship and surveillance Rwanda was rated "partly free" in Freedom on the Net 2013 by Freedom House with a score of 48, somewhat past the midway point between the end of the range for "free" (30) and the start of the range for "not free" (60). The law does not provide for government restrictions on access to the Internet, but there are reports that the government blocks access to Web sites within the country that are critical of the government. In 2012 and 2013, some independent online news outlets and opposition blogs were intermittently inaccessible. It |
driving on the left. Paved roads Most of the main towns in the country are now connected by paved road. The condition of these roads was until recently very poor, with numerous pot-holes and vehicles often driving on the dirt verges since these were deemed smoother than the road itself. A recent government programme of upgrading and resurfacing means that most major routes are now in good condition. The major urban arteries of Kigali, as well as the high streets in Ruhengeri, Kibuye and Gisenyi are dual carriageways, but all national long distance roads are single carriageway. There are no motorways in Rwanda. The principal routes are (refer to map for number references): There is also one road which is currently a quite poor quality dirt road, but may soon be upgraded to paved status: The road running along Lake Kivu between Cyangugu, Kibuye and Gisenyi, since these towns are now linked politically in by the newly formed Western Province. Public transport International There are several daily coach services from Rwanda to destinations in the African Great Lakes: Jaguar Executive Coaches, which connects Kigali to Kampala, the Ugandan capital, via Gatuna (road 1 on the map above) or via Kayonza and Kagitumba (roads 2 and 2a). Regional Coach Services, which runs services to Kampala (8 hours), Nairobi, Kenya (20 hours) and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (36 hours), all via the Gatuna border crossing. These buses are usually air-conditioned. Trinity Coach - a Rwandan service using quite basic buses, running between Kigali and Kampala. Modern Coast, a Kenyan coach and courier service which connects Gisenyi/Goma and Kigali through Gatuna to Kampala and Nairobi. It offers online booking and payment, three seat classes and in some busses personal TVs and 240 V / USB sockets. Yahoo Car Express - A minibus service running between Kigali and Bujumbura, Burundi. This service has been subject to ambush in the past by rebels in Burundi, although the new government claim to have sorted out this problem now. In addition the national express share taxi services (see below) to Gisenyi and Cyangugu often cross the DRC border to carry passengers to Goma and Bukavu respectively. National The main form of public transport within Rwanda is the Express Bus, which has superseded the Share taxi on the main routes. Share Taxis Run between two termini (known as taxi parks), but stop frequently en route to pick up and set down passengers. They are known locally simply as taxi or, colloquially, twegerane, which means 'let's sit together' in the Kinyarwanda language (a conventional private taxi is referred to as a special hire or taxi voiture). They almost always wait until full before departing, and can also wait for long periods in locations along the route if not enough people are on board. The vehicles are usually Toyota minibuses owned by a private individual who employs a driver (Fr: chauffeur) and a conductor (Fr: convoyeur) to operate and maintain the vehicle on a day-to-day basis. Most have four rows of seats, each of which seats four adults (babies and children not being counted as they are expected to sit on the lap of an adult). Additionally there are two front passenger seats, so the vehicle can carry a total of up to eighteen passengers, in addition to the driver and the conductor. The conductor is responsible for opening and closing | the past by rebels in Burundi, although the new government claim to have sorted out this problem now. In addition the national express share taxi services (see below) to Gisenyi and Cyangugu often cross the DRC border to carry passengers to Goma and Bukavu respectively. National The main form of public transport within Rwanda is the Express Bus, which has superseded the Share taxi on the main routes. Share Taxis Run between two termini (known as taxi parks), but stop frequently en route to pick up and set down passengers. They are known locally simply as taxi or, colloquially, twegerane, which means 'let's sit together' in the Kinyarwanda language (a conventional private taxi is referred to as a special hire or taxi voiture). They almost always wait until full before departing, and can also wait for long periods in locations along the route if not enough people are on board. The vehicles are usually Toyota minibuses owned by a private individual who employs a driver (Fr: chauffeur) and a conductor (Fr: convoyeur) to operate and maintain the vehicle on a day-to-day basis. Most have four rows of seats, each of which seats four adults (babies and children not being counted as they are expected to sit on the lap of an adult). Additionally there are two front passenger seats, so the vehicle can carry a total of up to eighteen passengers, in addition to the driver and the conductor. The conductor is responsible for opening and closing the main sliding door and collecting money from passengers, and will stand in the space by the door if all seats re occupied. No tickets are issued on this form of taxi. Moto Taxis A large portion of the vehicles on roads in Rwanda, especially Kigali, are moto taxis. A motorbike or scooter is driven and a single passenger can hop on and off the back and pay the required fare. Express Bus These run to a set timetable (usually each 30 minutes) between major towns, only stopping at official stops near the destination(s). Even if alighting earlier, the price to the next major stop has to be paid. Almost all routes pass through Nyabugogo in Kigali. The buses are run by private companies and issue tickets in advance with a price set by the government. As tickets are paid and printed at the offices (major stops) or by an employee along the road (smaller stops), there is no need for a conductor to collect the money in the bus. Tickets can be issued in advance, so they might be sold out quickly at busy times (specially Fridays, Sundays and at the beginning/end of school holidays). In contrast to the Share Taxi, this form of transport respects the schedule rather than waiting to be full. Also, they are almost never overfilled and rather depart earlier. The size ranges from Toyota Coaster to big coaches. Most coaches are run by Ritco, on which the government holds a share. It is also the only company to have stops all across the country, while its private competitors are limited to specific regions. When it was founded it replaced Onatracom, another public company. Comparison As of 2018, Share Taxis are still the main form of transport in remote areas, while Express Busses are used wherever available. This is due to the almost equal price and increased comfort and speed of the Express. Urban Public transport in Kigali takes the form of the stopping share taxis mentioned above, but running much more frequently due to greater demand. While the national ones are typically unmarked, Kigali taxis have a yellow stripe running round the vehicle, on which is imprinted the start and end points of its route. Most services start or finish either in the city |
well known in advance by European, American, and UN officials. While formal foreign assistance evaporated at the height of the emergency, more than 200 non-governmental organizations were carrying out humanitarian operations. Several west European and African nations, Canada, People's Republic of China, Egypt, Libya, Russia, the Holy See, and the European Union maintain diplomatic missions in Kigali. Rwanda is a member of the United Nations, African Union, Commonwealth of Nations since November 2009; and the East African Community, which may become the East African Federation. The country is also a member of the Port Management Association of Eastern and Southern Africa (PMAESA). Bilateral relations See also List | international attention since the war and genocide of 1994. The country is an active member of the United Nations, having presided over the Security Council during part of 1995 and again in 2013–2014. The UN assistance mission in Rwanda, a UN Chapter 6 peace-keeping operation, involved personnel from more than a dozen countries. Most of the UN development and humanitarian agencies have had a large presence in Rwanda. During the height of the crisis, a three-month period in 1994, however, the UN removed most of its peacekeepers, and virtually all other formal foreign support fled as well. The only other nation to directly involve itself at that |
that may contain the element , meaning 'mountain'. It has also been suggested that the name is from the Norse , meaning 'foaming sea', and , meaning 'bald head'—a word which appears in other placenames in Scandinavian-speaking areas. Another idea is that it derives from the Gaelic , meaning 'skerry of roaring' or 'sea rock of roaring' (although can also be translated as 'tearing' or 'ripping'). The Dutch mapmakers Petrus Plancius and , show an island called Rookol northwest of Ireland on their Map of New France and the Northern Atlantic Ocean (Amsterdam, ). The first literary reference to the island, where it is called Rokol, is found in Martin Martin's A Description of the Western Isles of Scotland, published in 1703. This book gives an account of a voyage to the archipelago of St Kilda, and Martin states: "... and from it lies Rokol, a small rock to the westward of St Kilda; the inhabitants of this place call it Rokabarra." The name is also used in Scottish Gaelic folklore for a mythical rock which is supposed to appear three times, its last appearance being at the end of the world: "". ('When Rocabarra returns, the world will likely come to be destroyed'). Rockall's name has also been used in Irish mythology; one story describes how legendary giant Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool) scooped up a chunk of Ireland to fling at a Scottish rival. It instead missed and landed in the Irish Sea - the pebble left behind formed Rockall, while the clump became the Isle of Man and the void left behind filled with water and eventually became Lough Neagh. History The rock has been noted in written records since the late 16th century. In the 20th century, its location became relevant due to potential oil and fishing rights that might accrue to a nation recognized as having a legitimate claim to it. Lord Kennet said of Rockall in 1971, "There can be no place more desolate, despairing and awful." Rockall gives its name to one of the sea areas named in the shipping forecast provided by the British Meteorological Office. Rockall has been a point of interest for adventurers and amateur radio operators, who have variously landed on or briefly occupied the islet. Fewer than 20 individuals have ever been confirmed to have landed on Rockall, and the longest known continuous occupation is 45 days (achieved in 2014 by a solo person). In a House of Commons debate in 1971, William Ross, Labour MP for Kilmarnock, said: "More people have landed on the moon than have landed on Rockall." (In fact only twelve people have landed on the moon.) Geography Rockall is one of the few pinnacles of the surrounding Helen's Reef; it is located west of the island of Soay, St Kilda, Scotland, and northwest of Tory Island, County Donegal, Ireland. Its location was precisely determined by Nick Hancock during his 2014 expedition. The surrounding elevated seabed is called the Rockall Bank, lying directly south from an area known as the Rockall Plateau. It is separated from the Outer Hebrides by the Rockall Trough, itself located within the Rockall Basin (also known as the "Hatton Rockall Basin"). In 1956 the British scientist James Fisher referred to the island as "the most isolated small rock in the oceans of the world". The neighbouring Hasselwood Rock and several other pinnacles of the surrounding Helen's Reef are smaller, at half the size of Rockall or less, and equally remote, but those formations are legally not islands or points on land, as they are often submerged completely, only revealed momentarily above certain types of ocean surface waves. Rockall is about wide and long at its base and rises sheer to a height of . It is often washed over by large storm waves, particularly in winter. There is a small ledge of , known as Hall's Ledge, from the summit on the rock's western face. It is the only named geographical location on the rock. The nearest point on land from Rockall is , east at the uninhabited Scottish island of Soay in the St Kilda archipelago. The nearest inhabited area lies east at Hirta, the largest island in the St. Kilda group, which is populated intermittently at a single military base. The nearest permanently inhabited settlement is west of the headland of Aird an Rùnair, near the crofting township of Hogha Gearraidh on the island of North Uist at . North Uist is part of Na h-Eileanan Siar council area of Scotland. The exact position of Rockall and the size and shape of the Rockall Bank was first charted in 1831 by Captain A. T. E. Vidal, a Royal Navy surveyor. The first scientific expedition to Rockall was led by Miller Christie in 1896 when the Royal Irish Academy sponsored a study of the flora and fauna. They chartered the Granuaile. A detailed underwater mapping of the area around Rockall undertaken in 2011–2012 by Marine Scotland showed that Rockall itself is a minor pinnacle, whilst Helen's Reef extends in a sweeping arc of fissures and ridges to the north-west of the islet. Between the islet and Helen's Reef is a deeper trench much used by squid fishermen. Rockall is located in the pathway of the warming and moderating Gulf Stream. Although the rock does not sustain any weather station, the isolated nature of the setting dictates an extremely maritime climate without heat or cold extremes. Geology Rockall is made of a type of peralkaline granite that is relatively rich in sodium and potassium. Within this granite are darker bands richer in iron because they contain two iron-sodium silicate minerals called aegirine and riebeckite. The darker bands are a type of granite that geologists have named "rockallite", although use of this term is now discouraged. In 1975, a mineral new to science was discovered in a rock sample from Rockall. The mineral is called bazirite, named after the chemical elements barium and zirconium. Bazirite has the chemical composition BaZrSi3O9. Rockall forms part of the deeply eroded Rockall Igneous Centre that was formed as part of the North Atlantic Igneous Province. It was formed approximately 52 ± 8 millon years ago based on rubidium–strontium dating, as part of the breakup of Laurasia. Greenland and Europe separated and the northeast Atlantic Ocean was formed between them, eventually leaving Rockall as an isolated islet. The RV Celtic Explorer surveyed the Rockall Bank in 2003. The Irish Light Vessel Granuaile (the same name as the steamer on the RIA 1896 botany survey) was chartered by the Geological Survey of Ireland, on behalf of the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, to conduct a seismic survey of the Rockall Bank and the Hatton Bank in July 2004, as part of the Irish National Seabed Survey. Ecology The island's only permanent macro-organism inhabitants are common periwinkles and other marine molluscs. Small numbers of seabirds, mainly fulmars, northern gannets, black-legged kittiwakes, and common guillemots, use the rock for resting in summer, and gannets and guillemots occasionally breed successfully if the summer is calm with no storm waves washing over the rock. In total there have been just over twenty species of seabird and six other animal species observed (including the aforementioned molluscs) on or near the islet. Cold-water coral biogenic reefs have been identified on the wider Rockall Bank, which are contributing features for the East Rockall Bank and North-West Rockall Bank SACs. Discovery of new species In December 2013 surveys by Marine Scotland discovered four new species of animals in the sea around Rockall. These are believed to live in an area where hydrocarbons are released from the sea bed, known as a cold seep. The discovery has raised the issue of restricting some forms of fishery to protect the sea bed. The species are: Volutopsius scotiae Frussen, McKay & Drewery, 2013 – a sea snail about long Thyasira scotiana Zelaya, 2009 – a clam Isorropodon mackayi – a clam in the order Veneroida Antonbruunia sociabilis sp. – a marine worm in the order Phyllodocida Visits to Rockall The earliest recorded date of landing on the island is often given as 8 July 1810, when a Royal Navy officer named Basil Hall led a small landing party from the frigate to the summit. However, research by James Fisher (see below), in the log of Endymion and elsewhere, indicates that the actual date for this first landing was on Sunday 8 September 1811. The landing party left Endymion for the rock by boat. Whilst there, Endymion, which was taking depth measurements around Rockall, lost visual contact with the rock as a haze descended. The ship drifted away, leaving the landing party stranded. The expedition made a brief attempt to return to the ship, but could not find the frigate in the haze, and soon gave up and returned to Rockall. After the haze became a fog, the lookout sent to the top of Rockall spotted the ship again, but it turned away from Rockall before the expedition in their boats reached it. Finally, just before sunset, the frigate was again spotted from the top of Rockall, and the expedition was able to get back on board. The crew of Endymion reported that they had been searching for five or six hours, firing their cannon every ten minutes. Hall related this experience and other adventures in a book entitled Fragment of Voyages and Travels Including Anecdotes of a Naval Life. The next landing was by a Mr Johns of HMS Porcupine whilst the ship was on a mission, (between June and August 1862), to make a survey of the sea bed prior to the laying of a transatlantic telegraph cable. Johns managed to gain foothold on the island, but failed to reach the summit. On 18 September 1955, Rockall was annexed by the British Crown when Lieutenant-Commander Desmond Scott RN, Sergeant Brian Peel RM, Corporal AA Fraser RM, and James Fisher (a civilian naturalist and former Royal Marine), were winched onto the island by a Royal Navy helicopter from (coincidentally named after the man who first charted the island). The annexation of Rockall was announced by the Admiralty on 21 September 1955. The expedition team cemented in a brass plaque on Hall's Ledge and hoisted the Union Flag to stake the UK's claim. The inscription on the plaque read: It was the final territorial expansion of the British empire. The initial incentive for the annexation was the test-firing of the UK's first guided nuclear weapon, the American-made Corporal missile. The missile was to be launched from South Uist and sent over the North Atlantic. The Ministry of Defence was concerned that the unclaimed island would provide an opportunity for the Soviet Union to spy on the test. Consequently, in April 1955 an order was issued to the Admiralty to seize the island and declare UK sovereignty, lest it become an outpost for foreign observers. On 7 November 1955, J. Abrach Mackay, a member of the Clan Mackay, made a protest about the annexation; the 84-year-old local councillor declared: "My old father, God rest his soul, claimed that island for the Clan of Mackay in 1846 and I now demand that the Admiralty hand it back. It's no' theirs'." The British Government ignored the protests, which were soon forgotten. In 1971, Captain T R Kirkpatrick RE led the landing party on a government expedition named "Operation Top Hat" that was mounted from RFA Engadine to establish that the rock was part of the United Kingdom and to prepare the islet for the installation of a light beacon. The landing party included Royal Engineers, Royal Marines and civilian members from the Institute of Geological Sciences in London. The party was landed by winch line from the Wessex 5 helicopters of the Royal Naval Air Services Commando Headquarters Squadron, commanded by Lt Cmdr Neil Foster RN. As well as collecting samples of the aegerine granite, rockallite, for later analysis in London, the top of the rock was blown off using a newly developed blasting technique, Precision Pre-Splitting. This created a level area that was drilled to take the anchorages for the light beacon that was installed the following year. Two phosphor bronze plates were chased into the wall above Hall's Ledge, each | Rockall’s approximate distances from the closest islands in each direction are as follows: It is west of Soay, Scotland; northwest of Tory Island, Ireland; and south of Iceland. The nearest permanently inhabited place is North Uist, an island in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, to the east. The United Kingdom claimed Rockall in 1955 and incorporated it as a part of Scotland in 1972. The UK does not make a claim to extended EEZ based on Rockall, as it has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which says that "rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf". However, such features are entitled to a territorial sea extending . Ireland's position is that Rockall does not even generate a 12-nautical-mile territorial sea for the United Kingdom owing to the UK’s uncertain title to Rockall. Ireland does not recognise the UK's claim, although it has never sought to claim sovereignty of Rockall for itself. The consistent position of successive Irish governments has been that Rockall and similar rocks and skerries have no significance for establishing legal claims to mineral rights in the adjacent seabed or to fishing rights in the surrounding seas. Etymology The origin and meaning of the islet's name Rockall is uncertain. The Scottish Gaelic name for the islet, , may derive from an Old Norse name that may contain the element , meaning 'mountain'. It has also been suggested that the name is from the Norse , meaning 'foaming sea', and , meaning 'bald head'—a word which appears in other placenames in Scandinavian-speaking areas. Another idea is that it derives from the Gaelic , meaning 'skerry of roaring' or 'sea rock of roaring' (although can also be translated as 'tearing' or 'ripping'). The Dutch mapmakers Petrus Plancius and , show an island called Rookol northwest of Ireland on their Map of New France and the Northern Atlantic Ocean (Amsterdam, ). The first literary reference to the island, where it is called Rokol, is found in Martin Martin's A Description of the Western Isles of Scotland, published in 1703. This book gives an account of a voyage to the archipelago of St Kilda, and Martin states: "... and from it lies Rokol, a small rock to the westward of St Kilda; the inhabitants of this place call it Rokabarra." The name is also used in Scottish Gaelic folklore for a mythical rock which is supposed to appear three times, its last appearance being at the end of the world: "". ('When Rocabarra returns, the world will likely come to be destroyed'). Rockall's name has also been used in Irish mythology; one story describes how legendary giant Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool) scooped up a chunk of Ireland to fling at a Scottish rival. It instead missed and landed in the Irish Sea - the pebble left behind formed Rockall, while the clump became the Isle of Man and the void left behind filled with water and eventually became Lough Neagh. History The rock has been noted in written records since the late 16th century. In the 20th century, its location became relevant due to potential oil and fishing rights that might accrue to a nation recognized as having a legitimate claim to it. Lord Kennet said of Rockall in 1971, "There can be no place more desolate, despairing and awful." Rockall gives its name to one of the sea areas named in the shipping forecast provided by the British Meteorological Office. Rockall has been a point of interest for adventurers and amateur radio operators, who have variously landed on or briefly occupied the islet. Fewer than 20 individuals have ever been confirmed to have landed on Rockall, and the longest known continuous occupation is 45 days (achieved in 2014 by a solo person). In a House of Commons debate in 1971, William Ross, Labour MP for Kilmarnock, said: "More people have landed on the moon than have landed on Rockall." (In fact only twelve people have landed on the moon.) Geography Rockall is one of the few pinnacles of the surrounding Helen's Reef; it is located west of the island of Soay, St Kilda, Scotland, and northwest of Tory Island, County Donegal, Ireland. Its location was precisely determined by Nick Hancock during his 2014 expedition. The surrounding elevated seabed is called the Rockall Bank, lying directly south from an area known as the Rockall Plateau. It is separated from the Outer Hebrides by the Rockall Trough, itself located within the Rockall Basin (also known as the "Hatton Rockall Basin"). In 1956 the British scientist James Fisher referred to the island as "the most isolated small rock in the oceans of the world". The neighbouring Hasselwood Rock and several other pinnacles of the surrounding Helen's Reef are smaller, at half the size of Rockall or less, and equally remote, but those formations are legally not islands or points on land, as they are often submerged completely, only revealed momentarily above certain types of ocean surface waves. Rockall is about wide and long at its base and rises sheer to a height of . It is often washed over by large storm waves, particularly in winter. There is a small ledge of , known as Hall's Ledge, from the summit on the rock's western face. It is the only named geographical location on the rock. The nearest point on land from Rockall is , east at the uninhabited Scottish island of Soay in the St Kilda archipelago. The nearest inhabited area lies east at Hirta, the largest island in the St. Kilda group, which is populated intermittently at a single military base. The nearest permanently inhabited settlement is west of the headland of Aird an Rùnair, near the crofting township of Hogha Gearraidh on the island of North Uist at . North Uist is part of Na h-Eileanan Siar council area of Scotland. The exact position of Rockall and the size and shape of the Rockall Bank was first charted in 1831 by Captain A. T. E. Vidal, a Royal Navy surveyor. The first scientific expedition to Rockall was led by Miller Christie in 1896 when the Royal Irish Academy sponsored a study of the flora and fauna. They chartered the Granuaile. A detailed underwater mapping of the area around Rockall undertaken in 2011–2012 by Marine Scotland showed that Rockall itself is a minor pinnacle, whilst Helen's Reef extends in a sweeping arc of fissures and ridges to the north-west of the islet. Between the islet and Helen's Reef is a deeper trench much used by squid fishermen. Rockall is located in the pathway of the warming and moderating Gulf Stream. Although the rock does not sustain any weather station, the isolated nature of the setting dictates an extremely maritime climate without heat or cold extremes. Geology Rockall is made of a type of peralkaline granite that is relatively rich in sodium and potassium. Within this granite are darker bands richer in iron because they contain two iron-sodium silicate minerals called aegirine and riebeckite. The darker bands are a type of granite that geologists have named "rockallite", although use of this term is now discouraged. In 1975, a mineral new to science was discovered in a rock sample from Rockall. The mineral is called bazirite, named after the chemical elements barium and zirconium. Bazirite has the chemical composition BaZrSi3O9. Rockall forms part of the deeply eroded Rockall Igneous Centre that was formed as part of the North Atlantic Igneous Province. It was formed approximately 52 ± 8 millon years ago based on rubidium–strontium dating, as part of the breakup of Laurasia. Greenland and Europe separated and the northeast Atlantic Ocean was formed between them, eventually leaving Rockall as an isolated islet. The RV Celtic Explorer surveyed the Rockall Bank in 2003. The Irish Light Vessel Granuaile (the same name as the steamer on the RIA 1896 botany survey) was chartered by the Geological Survey of Ireland, on behalf of the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, to conduct a seismic survey of the Rockall Bank and the Hatton Bank in July 2004, as part of the Irish National Seabed Survey. Ecology The island's only permanent macro-organism inhabitants are common periwinkles and other marine molluscs. Small numbers of seabirds, mainly fulmars, northern gannets, black-legged kittiwakes, and common guillemots, use the rock for resting in summer, and gannets and guillemots occasionally breed successfully if the summer is calm with no storm waves washing over the rock. In total there have been just over twenty species of seabird and six other animal species observed (including the aforementioned molluscs) on or near the islet. Cold-water coral biogenic reefs have been identified on the wider Rockall Bank, which are contributing features for the East Rockall Bank and North-West Rockall Bank SACs. Discovery of new species In December 2013 surveys by Marine Scotland discovered four new species of animals in the sea around Rockall. These are believed to live in an area where hydrocarbons are released from the sea bed, known as a cold seep. The discovery has raised the issue of restricting some forms of fishery to protect the sea bed. The species are: Volutopsius scotiae Frussen, McKay & Drewery, 2013 – a sea snail about long Thyasira scotiana Zelaya, 2009 – a clam Isorropodon mackayi – a clam in the order Veneroida Antonbruunia sociabilis sp. – a marine worm in the order Phyllodocida Visits to Rockall The earliest recorded date of landing on the island is often given as 8 July 1810, when a Royal Navy officer named Basil Hall led a small landing party from the frigate to the summit. However, research by James Fisher (see below), in the log of Endymion and elsewhere, indicates that the actual date for this first landing was on Sunday 8 September 1811. The landing party left Endymion for the rock by boat. Whilst there, Endymion, which was taking depth measurements around Rockall, lost visual contact with the rock as a haze descended. The ship drifted away, leaving the landing party stranded. The expedition made a brief attempt to return to the ship, but could not find the frigate in the haze, and soon gave up and returned to Rockall. After the haze became a fog, the |
variants While irregular subtractive and additive notation has been used at least occasionally throughout history, some Roman numerals have been observed in documents and inscriptions that do not fit either system. Some of these variants do not seem to have been used outside specific contexts, and may have been regarded as errors even by contemporaries. was how people associated with the XXII Roman Legion used to write their number. The practice may have been due to a common way to say "twenty-second" in Latin, namely duo et vice(n)sima (literally "two and twentieth") rather than the "regular" vice(n)sima secunda (twenty second). Apparently, at least one ancient stonecutter mistakenly thought that the of "22nd Legion" stood for 18, and "corrected" it to . There are some examples of year numbers after 1000 written as two Roman numerals 1–99, e.g. 1613 as , corresponding to the common reading "sixteen thirteen" of such year numbers in English, or 1519 as as in French quinze-cent-dix-neuf (fifteen-hundred and nineteen), and similar readings in other languages. In some French texts from the 15th century and later one finds constructions like for 99, reflecting the French reading of that number as quatre-vingt-dix-neuf (four-score and nineteen). Similarly, in some English documents one finds, for example, 77 written as "" (which could be read "three-score and seventeen"). Another medieval accounting text from 1301 renders numbers like 13,573 as "", that is, "13×1000 + 5×100 + 3×20 + 13". Other numerals that do not fit the usual patterns – such as for 45, instead of the usual — may be due to scribal errors, or the writer's lack of familiarity with the system, rather than being genuine variant usage. Non-numeric combinations As Roman numerals are composed of ordinary alphabetic characters, there may sometimes be confusion with other uses of the same letters. For example, "XXX" and "XL" have other connotations in addition to their values as Roman numerals, while "IXL" more often than not is a gramogram of "I excel", and is in any case not an unambiguous Roman numeral. Zero "Place-keeping" zeros are alien to the system of Roman numerals - however the actual number zero (what remains after 1 is subtracted from 1) was also missing from the classical Roman numeral system. The word (the Latin word meaning "none") was used to represent 0, although the earliest attested instances are medieval. For instance Dionysius Exiguus used alongside Roman numerals in a manuscript from A.D.525. About 725, Bede or one of his colleagues used the letter , the initial of or of (the Latin word for "nothing") for 0, in a table of epacts, all written in Roman numerals. The use of to indicate "none" long survived in the historic apothecaries' system of measurement: used well into the 20th century to designate quantities in pharmaceutical prescriptions. Fractions The base "Roman fraction" is , indicating . The use of (as in to indicate 7) is attested in some ancient inscriptions and also in the now rare apothecaries' system (usually in the form ): but while Roman numerals for whole numbers are essentially decimal does not correspond to , as one might expect, but . The Romans used a duodecimal rather than a decimal system for fractions, as the divisibility of twelve makes it easier to handle the common fractions of and than does a system based on ten . Notation for fractions other than is mainly found on surviving Roman coins, many of which had values that were duodecimal fractions of the unit . Fractions less than are indicated by a dot (·) for each "twelfth", the source of the English words inch and ounce; dots are repeated for fractions up to five twelfths. Six twelfths (one half), is for "half". Uncia dots were added to for fractions from seven to eleven twelfths, just as tallies were added to for whole numbers from six to nine. The arrangement of the dots was variable and not necessarily linear. Five dots arranged like (⁙) (as on the face of a die) are known as a quincunx, from the name of the Roman fraction/coin. The Latin words and are the source of the English words sextant and quadrant. Each fraction from to had a name in Roman times; these corresponded to the names of the related coins: Other Roman fractional notations included the following: Large numbers During the centuries that Roman numerals remained the standard way of writing numbers throughout Europe, there were various extensions to the system designed to indicate larger numbers, none of which were ever standardised. Apostrophus One of these was the apostrophus, in which 500 was written as , while 1,000 was written as . This is a system of encasing numbers to denote thousands (imagine the s and s as parentheses), which has its origins in Etruscan numeral usage. The and used to represent 500 and 1,000 most likely preceded, and subsequently influenced, the adoption of "" and "" in conventional Roman numerals. Each additional set of and surrounding raises the value by a power of ten: represents 10,000 and represents 100,000. Similarly, each additional to the right of raises the value by a power of ten: represents 5,000 and represents 50,000. Numerals larger than do not occur. Sometimes was reduced to for 1,000. John Wallis is often credited for introducing the symbol for infinity (modern ∞), and one conjecture is that he based it on this usage, since 1,000 was hyperbolically used to represent very large numbers. Similarly, for 5,000 was reduced to ; for 10,000 to ; for 50,000 to (ↇ); and (ↈ) for 100,000 to . Vinculum Another system was the vinculum, in which conventional Roman numerals were multiplied by 1,000 by adding a "bar" or "overline". It was a common alternative to the apostrophic ↀ during the Imperial era: both systems were in simultaneous use around the Roman world (M for '1000' was not in use until the Medieval period). The use of vinculum for multiples of 1,000 can be observed, for example, on the milestones erected by Roman soldiers along the Antonine Wall in the mid-2nd century AD. There is some scope for confusion when an overline is meant to denote multiples of 1,000, and when not. The Greeks and Romans often overlined letters acting as numerals to highlight them from the general body of the text, without any numerical significance. This stylistic convention was, for example, also in use in the inscriptions of the Antonine Wall, and the reader is required to decipher the intended meaning of the overline from the context. The vinculum for marking 1,000s continued in use in the Middle Ages, though it became known more commonly as titulus. Some modern sources describe Vinculum as if it were a part of the current "standard". However, this is purely hypothetical, since no common modern usage requires numbers larger than the current year (). Nonetheless, here are some examples, to give an idea of how it might be used: = 4,000 = 4,627 = 25,000 = 25,459 Another inconsistent medieval usage was the addition of vertical lines (or brackets) before and after the numeral to multiply it by 10 (or 100): thus for 10,000 as an alternative form for . In combination with the overline the bracketed forms might be used to raise the multiplier to (say) ten (or one hundred) thousand, thus: for 80,000 (or 800,000) for 200,000 (or 2,000,000) This use of lines is distinct from the custom, once very common, of adding both underline and overline (or very large serifs) to a Roman numeral, simply to make it clear that it is a number, e.g. for 1967. Origin The system is closely associated with the ancient city-state of Rome and the Empire that it created. However, due to the scarcity of surviving examples, the origins of the system are obscure and there are several competing theories, all largely conjectural. Etruscan numerals Rome was founded sometime between 850 and 750 BC. At the time, the region was inhabited by diverse populations of which the Etruscans were the most advanced. The ancient Romans themselves admitted that the basis of much of their civilization was Etruscan. Rome itself was located next to the southern edge of the Etruscan domain, which covered a large part of north-central Italy. The Roman numerals, in particular, are directly derived from the Etruscan number symbols: "𐌠", "𐌡", "𐌢", "𐌣", and "𐌟" for 1, 5, 10, 50, and 100 (They had more symbols for larger numbers, but it is unknown which symbol represents which number). As in the basic Roman system, the Etruscans wrote the symbols that added to the desired number, from higher to lower value. Thus the number 87, for example, would be written 50 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 5 + 1 + 1 = 𐌣𐌢𐌢𐌢𐌡𐌠𐌠 (this would appear as 𐌠𐌠𐌡𐌢𐌢𐌢𐌣 since Etruscan was written from right to left.) The symbols "𐌠" and "𐌡" resembled letters of the Etruscan alphabet, but "𐌢", "𐌣", and "𐌟" did not. The Etruscans used the subtractive notation, too, but not like the Romans. They wrote 17, 18, and 19 as "𐌠𐌠𐌠𐌢𐌢", "𐌠𐌠𐌢𐌢", and 𐌠𐌢𐌢, mirroring the way they spoke those numbers ("three from twenty", etc.); and similarly for 27, 28, 29, 37, 38, etc. However they did not write "𐌠𐌡" for 4 (or "𐌢𐌣" for 40), and wrote "𐌡𐌠𐌠", "𐌡𐌠𐌠𐌠" and "𐌡𐌠𐌠𐌠𐌠" for 7, 8, and 9, respectively. Early Roman numerals The early Roman numerals for 1, 10, and 100 were the Etruscan ones: "", "", and "". The symbols for 5 and 50 changed from and "𐌣" to and ↆ at some point. The latter had flattened to (an inverted T) by the time of Augustus, and soon afterwards became identified with the graphically similar letter . The symbol for 100 was written variously as or , was then abbreviated to or , with (which matched a Latin letter) finally winning out. It may have helped that is the initial of centum, Latin for "hundred". The numbers 500 and 1000 were denoted by or overlaid with a box or circle. Thus 500 was like a superimposed on a . It became or by the time of Augustus, under the graphic influence of the letter . It was later identified as the letter ; an alternative symbol for "thousand" was a , and half of a thousand or "five hundred" is the right half of the symbol, , and this may have been converted into . The notation for 1000 was a circled or boxed : Ⓧ, , , and by Augustinian times was partially identified with the Greek letter phi. Over time, the symbol changed to and . The latter symbol further evolved into , then , and eventually changed to under the influence of the Latin word mille "thousand". According to Paul Kayser, the basic numerical symbols were , , and (or ) and the intermediate ones were derived by taking half of those (half an is , half a is and half a is ). Classical Roman numerals The Colosseum was constructed in Rome in CE 72–80, and while the original perimeter wall has largely disappeared, the numbered entrances from (23) to (54) survive, to demonstrate that in Imperial times Roman numerals had already assumed their classical form: as largely standardised in current use. The most obvious anomaly (a common one that persisted for centuries) is the inconsistent use of subtractive notation - while is used for 40, is avoided in favour of : in fact gate 44 is labelled . Use in the Middle Ages and Renaissance Lower case, or minuscule, letters were developed in the Middle Ages, well after the demise of the Western Roman Empire, and since that time lower-case versions of Roman numbers have also been commonly used: , , , , and so on. Since the Middle Ages, a "" has sometimes been substituted for the final "" of a "lower-case" Roman numeral, such as "" for 3 or "" for 7. This "" can be considered a swash variant of "". Into the early 20th century, the use of a final "" was still sometimes used in medical prescriptions to prevent tampering with or misinterpretation of a number after it was written. Numerals in documents and inscriptions from the Middle Ages sometimes include additional symbols, which today are called "medieval Roman numerals". Some simply substitute another letter for the standard one (such as "" for "", or "" for ""), while others serve as abbreviations for compound numerals ("" for "", or "" for ""). Although they are still listed today in some dictionaries, they are long out of use. Chronograms, messages with dates encoded into them, were popular during the Renaissance era. The chronogram would be a phrase containing the letters , , , , , , and . By putting these letters together, the reader would obtain a number, usually indicating a particular year. Modern use By the 11th century, Arabic numerals had been introduced into Europe from al-Andalus, by way of Arab traders and arithmetic treatises. Roman numerals, however, proved very persistent, remaining in common use in the West well into the 14th and 15th centuries, even in accounting and other business records (where the actual calculations would have been made using an abacus). Replacement by their more convenient "Arabic" equivalents was quite gradual, and Roman numerals are still used today in certain contexts. A few examples of their current use are: Names of monarchs and popes, e.g. Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Pope Benedict XVI. These are referred to as regnal numbers and are usually read as ordinals; e.g. is pronounced "the second". This tradition began in | most likely preceded, and subsequently influenced, the adoption of "" and "" in conventional Roman numerals. Each additional set of and surrounding raises the value by a power of ten: represents 10,000 and represents 100,000. Similarly, each additional to the right of raises the value by a power of ten: represents 5,000 and represents 50,000. Numerals larger than do not occur. Sometimes was reduced to for 1,000. John Wallis is often credited for introducing the symbol for infinity (modern ∞), and one conjecture is that he based it on this usage, since 1,000 was hyperbolically used to represent very large numbers. Similarly, for 5,000 was reduced to ; for 10,000 to ; for 50,000 to (ↇ); and (ↈ) for 100,000 to . Vinculum Another system was the vinculum, in which conventional Roman numerals were multiplied by 1,000 by adding a "bar" or "overline". It was a common alternative to the apostrophic ↀ during the Imperial era: both systems were in simultaneous use around the Roman world (M for '1000' was not in use until the Medieval period). The use of vinculum for multiples of 1,000 can be observed, for example, on the milestones erected by Roman soldiers along the Antonine Wall in the mid-2nd century AD. There is some scope for confusion when an overline is meant to denote multiples of 1,000, and when not. The Greeks and Romans often overlined letters acting as numerals to highlight them from the general body of the text, without any numerical significance. This stylistic convention was, for example, also in use in the inscriptions of the Antonine Wall, and the reader is required to decipher the intended meaning of the overline from the context. The vinculum for marking 1,000s continued in use in the Middle Ages, though it became known more commonly as titulus. Some modern sources describe Vinculum as if it were a part of the current "standard". However, this is purely hypothetical, since no common modern usage requires numbers larger than the current year (). Nonetheless, here are some examples, to give an idea of how it might be used: = 4,000 = 4,627 = 25,000 = 25,459 Another inconsistent medieval usage was the addition of vertical lines (or brackets) before and after the numeral to multiply it by 10 (or 100): thus for 10,000 as an alternative form for . In combination with the overline the bracketed forms might be used to raise the multiplier to (say) ten (or one hundred) thousand, thus: for 80,000 (or 800,000) for 200,000 (or 2,000,000) This use of lines is distinct from the custom, once very common, of adding both underline and overline (or very large serifs) to a Roman numeral, simply to make it clear that it is a number, e.g. for 1967. Origin The system is closely associated with the ancient city-state of Rome and the Empire that it created. However, due to the scarcity of surviving examples, the origins of the system are obscure and there are several competing theories, all largely conjectural. Etruscan numerals Rome was founded sometime between 850 and 750 BC. At the time, the region was inhabited by diverse populations of which the Etruscans were the most advanced. The ancient Romans themselves admitted that the basis of much of their civilization was Etruscan. Rome itself was located next to the southern edge of the Etruscan domain, which covered a large part of north-central Italy. The Roman numerals, in particular, are directly derived from the Etruscan number symbols: "𐌠", "𐌡", "𐌢", "𐌣", and "𐌟" for 1, 5, 10, 50, and 100 (They had more symbols for larger numbers, but it is unknown which symbol represents which number). As in the basic Roman system, the Etruscans wrote the symbols that added to the desired number, from higher to lower value. Thus the number 87, for example, would be written 50 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 5 + 1 + 1 = 𐌣𐌢𐌢𐌢𐌡𐌠𐌠 (this would appear as 𐌠𐌠𐌡𐌢𐌢𐌢𐌣 since Etruscan was written from right to left.) The symbols "𐌠" and "𐌡" resembled letters of the Etruscan alphabet, but "𐌢", "𐌣", and "𐌟" did not. The Etruscans used the subtractive notation, too, but not like the Romans. They wrote 17, 18, and 19 as "𐌠𐌠𐌠𐌢𐌢", "𐌠𐌠𐌢𐌢", and 𐌠𐌢𐌢, mirroring the way they spoke those numbers ("three from twenty", etc.); and similarly for 27, 28, 29, 37, 38, etc. However they did not write "𐌠𐌡" for 4 (or "𐌢𐌣" for 40), and wrote "𐌡𐌠𐌠", "𐌡𐌠𐌠𐌠" and "𐌡𐌠𐌠𐌠𐌠" for 7, 8, and 9, respectively. Early Roman numerals The early Roman numerals for 1, 10, and 100 were the Etruscan ones: "", "", and "". The symbols for 5 and 50 changed from and "𐌣" to and ↆ at some point. The latter had flattened to (an inverted T) by the time of Augustus, and soon afterwards became identified with the graphically similar letter . The symbol for 100 was written variously as or , was then abbreviated to or , with (which matched a Latin letter) finally winning out. It may have helped that is the initial of centum, Latin for "hundred". The numbers 500 and 1000 were denoted by or overlaid with a box or circle. Thus 500 was like a superimposed on a . It became or by the time of Augustus, under the graphic influence of the letter . It was later identified as the letter ; an alternative symbol for "thousand" was a , and half of a thousand or "five hundred" is the right half of the symbol, , and this may have been converted into . The notation for 1000 was a circled or boxed : Ⓧ, , , and by Augustinian times was partially identified with the Greek letter phi. Over time, the symbol changed to and . The latter symbol further evolved into , then , and eventually changed to under the influence of the Latin word mille "thousand". According to Paul Kayser, the basic numerical symbols were , , and (or ) and the intermediate ones were derived by taking half of those (half an is , half a is and half a is ). Classical Roman numerals The Colosseum was constructed in Rome in CE 72–80, and while the original perimeter wall has largely disappeared, the numbered entrances from (23) to (54) survive, to demonstrate that in Imperial times Roman numerals had already assumed their classical form: as largely standardised in current use. The most obvious anomaly (a common one that persisted for centuries) is the inconsistent use of subtractive notation - while is used for 40, is avoided in favour of : in fact gate 44 is labelled . Use in the Middle Ages and Renaissance Lower case, or minuscule, letters were developed in the Middle Ages, well after the demise of the Western Roman Empire, and since that time lower-case versions of Roman numbers have also been commonly used: , , , , and so on. Since the Middle Ages, a "" has sometimes been substituted for the final "" of a "lower-case" Roman numeral, such as "" for 3 or "" for 7. This "" can be considered a swash variant of "". Into the early 20th century, the use of a final "" was still sometimes used in medical prescriptions to prevent tampering with or misinterpretation of a number after it was written. Numerals in documents and inscriptions from the Middle Ages sometimes include additional symbols, which today are called "medieval Roman numerals". Some simply substitute another letter for the standard one (such as "" for "", or "" for ""), while others serve as abbreviations for compound numerals ("" for "", or "" for ""). Although they are still listed today in some dictionaries, they are long out of use. Chronograms, messages with dates encoded into them, were popular during the Renaissance era. The chronogram would be a phrase containing the letters , , , , , , and . By putting these letters together, the reader would obtain a number, usually indicating a particular year. Modern use By the 11th century, Arabic numerals had been introduced into Europe from al-Andalus, by way of Arab traders and arithmetic treatises. Roman numerals, however, proved very persistent, remaining in common use in the West well into the 14th and 15th centuries, even in accounting and other business records (where the actual calculations would have been made using an abacus). Replacement by their more convenient "Arabic" equivalents was quite gradual, and Roman numerals are still used today in certain contexts. A few examples of their current use are: Names of monarchs and popes, e.g. Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Pope Benedict XVI. These are referred to as regnal numbers and are usually read as ordinals; e.g. is pronounced "the second". This tradition began in Europe sporadically in the Middle Ages, gaining widespread use in England during the reign of Henry VIII. Previously, the monarch was not known by numeral but by an epithet such as Edward the Confessor. Some monarchs (e.g. Charles IV of Spain and Louis XIV of France) seem to have preferred the use of instead of on their coinage (see illustration). Generational suffixes, particularly in the U.S., for people sharing the same name across generations, for example William Howard Taft IV. In the French Republican Calendar, initiated during the French Revolution, years were numbered by Roman numerals – from the year (1792) when this calendar was introduced to the year (1805) when it was abandoned. The year of production of films, television shows and other works of art within the work itself. Outside reference to the work will use regular Arabic numerals. Hour marks on timepieces. In this context, 4 is often written . The year of construction on building faces and cornerstones. Page numbering of prefaces and introductions of books, and sometimes of appendices and annexes, too. Book volume and chapter numbers, as well as the several acts within a play (e.g. Act , Scene 2). Sequels to some films, video games, and other works (as in Rocky II, Grand Theft Auto V). Outlines that use numbers to show hierarchical relationships. Occurrences of a recurring grand event, for instance: The Summer and Winter Olympic Games (e.g. the XXI Olympic Winter Games; the Games of the XXX Olympiad) The Super Bowl, the annual championship game of the National Football League (e.g. Super Bowl XLII; Super Bowl 50 was a one-time exception) WrestleMania, the annual professional wrestling event for the WWE (e.g. WrestleMania XXX). This usage has also been inconsistent. Specific disciplines In astronomy, the natural satellites or "moons" of the planets are traditionally designated by capital Roman numerals appended to the planet's name. For example, Titan's designation is Saturn . In chemistry, Roman numerals are often used to denote the groups of the periodic table. They are also used in the IUPAC nomenclature of inorganic chemistry, for the oxidation number of cations which can take on several different positive charges. They are also used for naming phases of polymorphic crystals, such as ice. In education, school grades (in the sense of year-groups rather than test scores) are sometimes referred to by a Roman numeral; for example, "grade " is sometimes seen for "grade 9". In entomology, the broods of the thirteen and seventeen year periodical cicadas are identified by Roman numerals. In graphic design stylised Roman numerals may represent numeric values. In law, Roman numerals are commonly used to help organize legal codes as part of an alphanumeric outline. In advanced mathematics (including trigonometry, statistics, and calculus), when a graph includes negative numbers, its quadrants are named using , , , and . These quadrant names signify positive numbers on both axes, negative numbers on the X axis, negative numbers on both axes, and negative numbers on the Y axis, respectively. The use of Roman numerals to designate quadrants avoids confusion, since Arabic numerals are used for the actual data represented in the graph. In military unit designation, Roman numerals are often used to distinguish between units at different levels. This reduces possible confusion, especially when viewing operational or strategic level maps. In particular, army corps are often numbered using Roman numerals (for example the American XVIII Airborne Corps or the WW2-era German III Panzerkorps) with Arabic numerals being used for divisions and armies. In music, Roman numerals are used in several contexts: Movements are often numbered using Roman numerals. In Roman Numeral Analysis, harmonic function is identified using Roman Numerals. Individual strings of stringed instruments, such as the violin, are often denoted by Roman numerals, with higher numbers denoting lower strings. In pharmacy, Roman numerals were used with the now largely obsolete apothecaries' system of measurement: including to denote "one half" and to denote "zero". In photography, |
measurement, measurement of sound pressure level in a patient's ear canal developed when a hearing aid is worn People Jakob Rem (1546–1618), Austrian Jesuit Rem Koolhaas (born 1944), Dutch architect Rem Vyakhirev (1934–2013), Russian manager Priscilla Hamby, illustrator and comic book artist using the pen name Rem Rem - Soviet name Remu Aaltonen (born 1948), Finnish musician Fictional characters Rem, an android in Logan's Run Rem, in Dream Hunter Rem Rem Saverem, in Trigun Rem, in Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo Rem, a Shinigami in Death Note Rem Kaginuki, a devil in Dance with Devils Rem, a character in the light novel/anime series Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World Rem Galleu, in How Not to Summon a Demon Lord Other uses Rém, a village in Hungary Réseau express métropolitain, Greater Montreal rapid transit system REM (Real Estate Magazine), Canada Roentgen equivalent man In rem jurisdiction, a power of a court to grant a remedy against | as the Reich Education Ministry Reiss Engelhorn Museum, Germany Resource Extraction Monitoring, a UK-based non-profit organisation Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, California, United States REM Island, an offshore platform and home of the pirate stations Radio and TV Noordzee Science and technology Roentgen equivalent man (rem), a unit of radiation dose equivalent REM (BASIC), an inline comment (REMark) in BASIC and some other computer languages Rapid eye movement sleep, a phase of sleep Rare-earth metal Reflection electron microscope Reticular erythematous mucinosis, a skin disease Root em, a font-size measurement used with Cascading Style Sheets Real ear measurement, measurement of sound pressure level in a patient's ear canal developed when a hearing aid is worn People Jakob Rem (1546–1618), Austrian Jesuit Rem Koolhaas (born 1944), |
albums. Liebe ist für alle da (2007–2011) The band took a hiatus in 2006 and began work again in 2007. The recording process reportedly took two years. In July 2009, the title track "Liebe ist für alle da" leaked onto the internet, along with promotional materials. This led Universal Music to take action against certain fan sites. It was confirmed in August 2009 that the new album would have 11 tracks, and mixing of the album – which was taking place in Stockholm – had been completed. On 1 September 2009, it was confirmed on the band's website that "Pussy" would be the first single from the album. On the same day, The Gauntlet posted a promotional video for it. The video also confirmed the album title, Liebe ist für alle da. Later, the title was confirmed again in an interview with Paul Landers for RockOne magazine. 46,7 The music video for "Pussy" was released on 16 September 2009, at 20:30 GMT, released especially for the adult website Visit-x. The video contains graphic scenes of male and female nudity as well as women engaging in sexual acts with the band members, although the actual sex scenes were performed by body doubles. The women featured in the video are German pornographic stars. Metal Hammer released an edited version of the video onto their website. "Ich tu dir weh" was confirmed as the second single from the album by Landers and Lorenz in an interview for Radio Eins. Although censorship of the song in Germany prohibits any advertisement, broadcast or public display, the video to "Ich tu dir weh" was released on 21 December 2009 on the adult website Visit-x, just like the video to "Pussy", after advertisement on the band's official German website; it depicts the band on stage in a similar configuration as on their 2009/10 tour. Any references to the video on the official website have since been deleted. In Europe, the single was released on 15 January 2010, and in the U.S. on 19 January 2010. Like the video "Pussy," this video was also directed by Jonas Åkerlund. On 23 April 2010, Rammstein released their video "Haifisch". Unlike the video for "Ich tu dir weh", it contains more of a narrative rather than a performance. The single was released during May and June 2010. On 8 November 2009, Rammstein began the first leg of the Liebe ist für alle da Tour in Lisbon, Portugal. As part of their European summer tour, Rammstein performed at the 2010 Rock AM Ring Festival on 4–6 June 2010. They also headlined several shows across Europe on the Sonisphere Festival, including their first ever outdoor UK performance at Knebworth Park, performing the day before Iron Maiden. On Sunday 18 July 2010, Rammstein played in front of more than 130,000 people in Quebec City on the Plains of Abraham as the closing show for the Festival d'été de Québec. It was their first North American appearance in nine years. The band announced that their last tour dates of 2010 were to be in the Americas. After several South American dates, the band returned to the United States for a single show at the famous Madison Square Garden in New York City – their first US show in over ten years. The tickets sold out in a very short time (under 20 minutes). They also performed at Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada on 9 December. This concert sold out within the first hour of tickets going on sale, indicating a high demand to see Rammstein in North America. The band then played at Big Day Out 2011 from 21 January to 6 February in New Zealand and Australia. The band also visited South Africa for the first time in early 2011 and played two sold-out concerts in Cape Town and Johannesburg respectively, indicating another territory eager for the opportunity to enjoy the band live. On 16 February 2011, Rammstein announced that, after the massive success of their sold out Madison Square Garden show on 11 December 2010, they would be touring North America after ten years. Rammstein played in New Jersey (East Rutherford) Izod Center, Montreal Bell Centre, Toronto Air Canada Centre, Chicago Allstate Arena, Edmonton Rexall Place, Seattle Tacoma Dome, San Francisco (Oakland) Oracle Arena, Los Angeles The Forum, and Las Vegas Thomas and Mack Center, Mexico City's Palacio de los Deportes, Guadalajara's Arena VFG, and Monterrey's Auditorio Banamex to a total of six US dates, three Canadian dates, and four Mexican dates. Tickets went on sale 25 and 26 February to great response, with many shows completely selling out, making this tour a complete success. On 20 April 2011, the band also won the Revolver Golden God Award for Best Live Band, their first US award. Made in Germany, video releases, and side projects (2011–2017) Rammstein released a greatest hits album titled Made in Germany 1995–2011 on 2 December 2011. It contains one previously unreleased track, "Mein Land" which was released as a single on 11 November 2011 with another track, "Vergiss uns nicht", that was released at a later date. The compilation is available in three different editions: The standard edition; this includes a CD with normal songs from their back catalog. Special edition; has the same CD from the standard edition and an extra CD with Rammstein songs that have been remixed by different artists such as Scooter. Finally, the super deluxe edition; has the two previously mentioned CDs and three DVDs with interviews and the making of videos from different music videos. The video for the song "Mein Land" was filmed on 23 May 2011 at Sycamore Beach in Malibu, California. It premiered on the band's official website on 11 November 2011. A full European tour in support of Made in Germany began in November 2011 and spanned all the way to May 2012. It included a North American tour that began on 20 April 2012 in Sunrise, Florida and ended on 25 May 2012 in Houston, Texas that visited 21 cities throughout the US and Canada. The Swedish industrial band Deathstars supported the band during the first two legs of the European tour. DJ Joe Letz from Combichrist and Emigrate was the opening act for the North American Tour. Rammstein, minus Till Lindemann, performed "The Beautiful People" with Marilyn Manson at the Echo Awards on 22 March 2012. On 21 September 2012, it was announced that Rammstein would be headlining Download Festival 2013, along with Iron Maiden and Slipknot. Twelve additional festival performances for summer 2013 were announced the same day, including Wacken Open Air festival and Rock Werchter. Rammstein announced new tour dates starting for spring 2013 in Europe, including a 2-day return to Kindl-Bühne Wuhlheide, the location of their first (official) live DVD, Live Aus Berlin. On 22 November 2012, Rammstein announced via Facebook that they will be releasing a video collection featuring all music videos entitled Videos 1995–2012, plus two unreleased music videos for "Mein Herz Brennt", originally featured on the album Mutter. The first video premiered on the band's Vimeo, while the second premiered on a promotional website. Both videos were directed by Zoran Bihac. The first was released on 7 December 2012, and featured the newly recorded piano version of "Mein Herz Brennt". A single of the song was released on the same day, which included an edited version of the original and a new song titled 'Gib Mir Deine Augen' as a b-side. The explicit version's video leaked onto the internet on 11 December 2012 but was officially released on 14 December, in conjunction with the video collection DVD. In July 2013, guitarist Paul Landers revealed in an interview the possibility of a Rammstein documentary and a live DVD. He indicated that the band may "start thinking" about a new album in 2014. In September 2014, band co-founder Richard Kruspe (then working with his side band, Emigrate) said the band was preparing some more live DVDs and that they were taking some time off from the studio. The band would meet again in 2015 to decide if the time was right to return to the studio. In May 2015, Lindemann confirmed in an interview with MusikUniverse that Rammstein would start pre-production on a possible new album in September of that year, and that production would most likely go on until 2017. According to Peter Tägtgren – who works with frontman Till Lindemann on their side-project Lindemann – Till would be regrouping with his Rammstein bandmates later in 2015 to start pre-production on a new full-length album, which normally takes two years to be released. In early August 2015, Rammstein released a trailer for an upcoming project, titled "In Amerika". On 15 August, the band announced Rammstein in Amerika, a video release that includes a 2010 concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City and a documentary made from archived footage recorded during the band's career. Rammstein played several festivals in Europe and North America during 2016, and in November announced plans to perform at a similar string of European festivals in 2017. On 18 January 2017 Rammstein announced a new live video release titled Paris, a recording of a March 2012 concert that took place at Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy in Paris. It premiered on 23 March in selected cinemas, and was released worldwide on DVD/Blu-ray and CD on 19 May 2017. Untitled seventh album and upcoming eighth album (2017–present) In an interview in March 2017, Richard Kruspe said that Rammstein had about 35 new songs that were close to completion, though the release date of the band's seventh studio album was still an open question. In May, Rammstein started touring once again. Also in May, it was revealed that Sky van Hoff would be working with the band on their next album. On 18 June 2018, it was announced via StubHub's ticketing website that Rammstein would play songs at their Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, show from their forthcoming album, then set for release late in 2018. On 17 September 2018, the band announced through Facebook that they were "almost done" recording the album, as they were recording orchestra and choirs in Minsk. On 2 January 2019, guitarist Richard Kruspe announced that recording of the album wrapped in November 2018 and that the record would be released in April 2019, along with five music videos. Rammstein released the first single from their seventh album, "Deutschland", on 28 March 2019 and announced the release date of their untitled seventh studio album, 17 May 2019. Rammstein also revealed the album cover which consisted of a single, unlit match which fans say represents their love of fire and simplicity. On 26 April 2019, Rammstein released the second single from the new album, "Radio". Shortly after its release, the album reached No. 1 in fourteen different countries. On 28 May 2019, Rammstein released their third single and music video from the album, this time for "Ausländer". The band embarked on their Stadium Tour to support the album, beginning in May 2019. They were due to play shows in Europe and North America in 2020, but were forced to postpone them due to the COVID-19 pandemic impacting the two continents. The dates first were rescheduled for 2021 and, in March 2021, again rescheduled to 2022. During the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the band to remain sheltered during a lockdown in Germany, the band returned to writing music, which Christoph Schneider confirmed in a German podcast. It was reported in September 2020 that they had returned to La Fabrique Studios in France, where they recorded their untitled seventh album, to record new music, potentially for a new album. On 25 September, the 25th anniversary of their debut album Herzeleid, they announced a remastered anniversary edition for the album, for release on 4 December. The release was made available both digitally and physically, as a CD housed in a digipak as well as a double heavyweight, colored vinyl. In February 2021, Flake Lorenz confirmed to Motor Music that the band had finished recording an eighth studio album. Lorenz stated that the recording sessions were unplanned and that the quarantine caused by the pandemic allowed for "less distraction" and "more time to think of new things". In October 2021, a song from the album was premiered on the International Space Station to French astronaut Thomas Pesquet. The following month, Richard Kruspe stated in an interview that Rammstein's eighth studio album would be released in the first half of 2022, prior to the slated resumption of their Stadium Tour that had been postponed to 2022. Despite this, composer Sven Helbig, who worked on the album, stated that the release could be delayed due to the 2021–2022 global supply chain crisis, which impacts the album's physical releases. Heraldo de Aragón reported in January 2022 that Rammstein had recorded a cover version of "Entre dos tierras" ("Between Two Lands") by Spanish rock band Héroes del Silencio for the album. Musical style and lyrics Rammstein's sound has primarily been described as Neue Deutsche Härte, industrial metal, hard rock, and gothic metal, while also being described as nu metal, alternative metal, symphonic metal, progressive metal, and "techno-metal". Rammstein's style has received positive feedback from critics. New Zealand's Southland Times (17 December 1999) suggested that Till Lindemann's "booming, sub-sonic voice" would send "the peasants fleeing into their barns and bolting their doors", while The New York Times (9 January 2005) commented that on the stage, "Mr. Lindemann gave off an air of such brute masculinity and barely contained violence that it seemed that he could have reached into the crowd, snatched up a fan, and bitten off his head". Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic commented that "their blend of industrial noise, grinding metal guitars, and operatic vocals is staggeringly powerful". "We just push boundaries", said Till Lindemann in an interview with rock magazine Kerrang!, "We cannot help it if people don't like those boundaries being pushed". Nearly all of Rammstein's songs are in German. Educated in East Germany schools, the members were all taught Russian as a second language rather than English. In 2019, Flake commented: "I saw a lot of East German bands that sung in very bad English to people who didn't understand English – it was absolutely stupid. But if you really want to tell your emotions, you have to speak in your mother tongue." Songs they have recorded entirely or partly in English include: a cover of Depeche Mode's 1986 song "Stripped" and English renditions of "Engel", "Du hast", and "Amerika". The original version of "Amerika" as well as "Stirb nicht vor mir (Don't Die Before I Do)" and "Pussy" also contain some lyrics in English. The song "Moskau" ("Moscow") contains a chorus in Russian, and Till Lindemann has an unofficial song called "Schtiel" (cover of song "Штиль"("Shtil") by Russian popular heavy metal band "Aria") entirely in Russian. "Te quiero puta!" is entirely in Spanish, "Frühling in Paris" has a chorus in French, "Zeig dich" contains lyrics in Latin performed by a choir and "Ausländer" has lyrics in English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Russian. Oliver Riedel commented that "[the] German language suits heavy metal music. French might be the language of love, but German is the language of anger". In an interview with Ultimate Guitar, when asked whether Rammstein would ever create an original song entirely in English, Till Lindemann stated that 'Rammstein will never write a song in English, it's like asking Buddha to kill a pig'. The band's lyrics, as sung by Till Lindemann, are an essential element of their music, and shape the perception by fans and a wider public. Among other things that are seen as controversial, Rammstein also refers to classical German literature, e.g. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's famous poems Der Erlkönig (1778) and Das Heidenröslein (1771) for the songs "Dalai Lama" and "Rosenrot", respectively. Several of their songs are related to controversial and taboo subjects such as sadomasochism, homosexuality, intersexuality, incest, pedophilia, necrophilia, cannibalism, pyromania, religion and sexual violence. Also several of their songs are allegedly inspired by real-life events. These songs include "Rammstein" (Ramstein airshow disaster), "Mein Teil" (The Meiwes Case), "Wiener Blut" (Fritzl case) and "Donaukinder" (2000 Baia Mare cyanide spill). Their fourth album, Reise, Reise, is loosely inspired by the crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123. The band have also occasionally delved into politics with their lyrics. "Amerika" is a critic of the cultural and political imperialism of the United States all over the world. The lyrics of the song "Deutschland" contain the lines "Deutschland! / Meine Liebe / kann ich dir nicht geben" (Germany! / My love / [is what] I cannot give you), which conveys the band's inability to have unquestioned patriotic feelings. Live performances Since their early years, Rammstein are particularly known for their over-the-top live performances, making such extensive use of pyrotechnics that fans eventually coined the motto, "Other bands play, Rammstein burns!" (a play on Manowar's song "Kings of Metal", which states that "other bands play, Manowar kill"). Following an accident in Berlin on 27 September 1996, in which some burning decorative parts of the stage collapsed, the band started using professionals to handle the pyrotechnics. Lindemann subsequently qualified as a licensed pyrotechnician, and often spends entire songs engulfed in flames. He has suffered multiple burns on his ears, head, and arms. The band's stage costumes are also known for being outlandish. During the Reise, Reise Tour, they wore lederhosen, corsets, and military-inspired uniforms with German steel helmets; during the Mutter Tour, the group kept to the themes of the album artwork and descended onto the stage from a giant uterus while wearing diapers. During the Völkerball concert, among others, Lindemann changed costumes between songs and dressed accordingly for each. For example, for the song "Mein Teil", he was dressed as a blood-soaked chef; in "Reise, Reise", he dressed as a sailor. The rest of the band each wore their own preferred costume, but none quite as bizarre as Till's. The band's flair for costumes is evident in their music videos as well as their live shows. In the "Keine Lust" video, all members except Lorenz are dressed in fat suits. In the "Amerika" video, all members of the band wear astronaut costumes. Since the Mutter Tour in 2001, Rammstein have worked with stage designer Roy Bennett, who helped the band in developing the look of the stages. With the Ahoi Tour in 2004/2005, the band began using a two-level stage, with half the band playing the lower level and the other half on the upper level. At this tour, the upper level rose over 2 meters above the stage floor and had an oval entrance just beneath the drums. At both sides of the upper level, a special lift made it possible for the band members to access both stage levels. On the Liebe ist für alle da Tour in 2009, the new stage still had a two-level design. This time, however, the upper level only had about half the height as on the previous tour. Stage entrance was possible by a hydraulic ramp in the middle of the stage floor. At each end of the upper level, stairs were placed in order to gain access to both levels. This tour included not only the extensive use of pyrotechnics, but also a massive lighting show, such as the band's logo lit up as big lamps on four enormous collapsible towers, forming the industrial backdrop of the set and being capable of different lighting effects. During the arena shows of the Made in Germany 1995-2011 Tour, the stage was slightly altered with new set pieces such as a large industrial fan as well as new backdrops. The most noticeable addition was a long catwalk, connecting the main stage to a smaller stage in the middle of the audience. During the 2013 festival leg of the tour, the bridge and smaller stage were omitted. For the 2016 Festival Tour, the band kept the stage itself mostly unchanged, though had the entire lighting rig changed completely. According to Kruspe, the onstage antics are meant to get people's attention and have fun at the same time; Rammstein's motto, according to Schneider, is "do your own thing and overdo it". Kruspe said of the stage show in July 1999, "You have to understand that 99 per cent of the people don't understand the lyrics, so you have to come up with something to keep the drama in the show. We have to do something. We like to have a show; we like to play with fire. We do have a sense of humour. We do laugh about it; we have fun [...] but we're not Spinal Tap. We take the music and the lyrics seriously. It's a combination of humour, theatre, and our East German culture, you know?" Their antics have also garnered controversy. During the American Family Values Tour 1998, alongside acts such as rapper Ice Cube, Korn, and Limp Bizkit, the band was arrested for public indecency. In one of their more infamous moments, Lindemann engaged in simulated sodomy with Lorenz during their performance of "Bück dich" in Worcester, Massachusetts. They were subsequently arrested, fined $25 and spent one night in jail. Controversies Imagery The New York Times described Rammstein's music as a "powerful strain of brutally intense rock... bringing gale-force music and spectacular theatrics together". The members have not been shy about courting controversy and have periodically attracted condemnation from morality campaigners. Till and Flake's stage act earned them a night in jail in June 1999 after a liquid-ejecting dildo was used in a concert in Worcester, Massachusetts. Back home in Germany, the band faced repeated accusations of fascist sympathies because of the dark and sometimes militaristic imagery of their videos and concerts, including the use of excerpts from the film Olympia by Leni Riefenstahl in the video for their cover of Depeche Mode's song "Stripped". MTV Germany studied the lyrics, talked to the band and came away satisfied that Rammstein are apolitical; Peter Ruppert, then head of Music Programming at MTV Germany, stated that the band "aren't in any way connected with any right-wing activities". Their cover of their debut album Herzeleid, released in Germany in 1995, showed the band members bare-chested in a style that resembled Strength Through Joy in the eyes of some critics, who accused the band of trying to sell themselves as "poster boys for the Master Race". Rammstein have vehemently denied this and said they want nothing to do with politics or supremacy of any kind. Lorenz, annoyed by the claim, has remarked it is just a photo, and should be understood as such. Herzeleid has since been given a different cover in North America, depicting the band members' faces. The video of "Deutschland", released in 2019, sparked further controversy, as it portrays black German actress Ruby Commey appearing as Germania, which has been described as "a calculated affront to German nationalists". The video also portrays the band members both as Nazi concentration camp executioners and as Jewish prisoners, sparking the complaints of Holocaust survivors groups; however, others defended the video and the song lyrics, which have been interpreted as "express[ing] a love/hate relationship with Germany" Relation to violent events Rammstein were cited in relation to the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, when a photo of Eric Harris wearing a Rammstein T-shirt in the 11th grade was revealed. There was no evidence to correlate the band and the massacre. In response to the shooting, the band issued a statement: Coincidentally, on 10 September 2001, the single and video clip of Ich will ("I Want") was released which portrays the band as bank robbers who want to get a message across and receiving a Goldene Kamera (Golden Camera) award, a German version of the Emmy award, for their "actions". In the United States, the video clip was broadcast only late at night after the attacks of 11 September 2001, although many media officials and politicians requested the video to be pulled from broadcast completely. Following the conclusion of the Beslan | from June to August 2001. "Ich will", the third single from the album, was released on 10 September 2001 and a Tour edition of the Mutter album (the cover of which is red) was released, featuring alternative artwork and live versions of "Ich will", "Links 2 3 4", "Sonne" and "Spieluhr". From 8 to 12 January 2002, Rammstein traveled to Prague to participate in a minor scene for the film XXX. The band is seen in the opening scene, performing their song "Feuer frei!" in a concert. "Feuer frei!" was released across Europe as the first single from the XXX soundtrack on 14 October 2002. Rammstein released two remixes of the song. Furthermore, the single's track listing included "Du hast" and "Bück dich" cover versions by Battery. The video for the single was edited by Rob Cohen and contains part Rammstein performance at the beginning of the film and part snippets from the film itself. Reise, Reise, Rosenrot, and Völkerball (2003–2006) Rammstein recorded Reise, Reise (meaning "journey, journey", or as a command "travel, travel", but also an archaic Reveille) at the El Cortijo studio in southern Spain in November and December 2003; it was mixed at Toytown studio in Stockholm, Sweden in April and May 2004. The first single from the album was "Mein Teil", released on 26 July. The video was shot in the Arena, in the Treptow district of Berlin. Outdoor shooting took place at the Deutsche Oper (Opera House) U-Bahn station on Bismarckstrasse. The director was Zoran Bihac, who also filmed the "Links 2 3 4" video. The video for the second single, "Amerika", was filmed on 6 and 7 August 2004 in the ruins of the former cement works in Rüdersdorf, near Berlin, under the direction of Jörn Heitmann (who also directed the "Ich Will" music video, among others). The space suits for the moon scenes were borrowed from Hollywood and 240 tons of ash were needed to create the moon landscape. The video premiered on 20 August, while the single was released on 13 September. Reise, Reise was released on 27 September 2004 and went straight into top 10 charts throughout Europe. According to the Billboard charts, Rammstein were at that stage the most successful German-language band of all time. Rammstein toured Germany through November and some of December 2004, releasing the single "Ohne dich" on 22 November. In February 2005, Rammstein toured Europe again. By 28 February, Rammstein had played 21 concerts in front of more than 200,000 spectators in ten countries. It was on this tour that the band was faced with several lawsuits resulting from severe fire breathing accidents involving audience members. "Keine Lust" the fourth single from Reise, Reise, was released on 28 February 2005. From 27 May to 30 July 2005, Rammstein played music festivals across Europe. Footage from these concerts can be seen on Rammstein's live DVD Völkerball, released in November 2006. In August 2005, Rammstein revealed that the follow-up album to Reise, Reise would be called Rosenrot. Their first single from the album, "Benzin", was released on 5 October, with its video premiere on 16 September. Rosenrot was released worldwide on 28 October. Directly following the release, the album continued the success of its predecessor, Reise, Reise, placing on top 10 charts in 20 countries. 16 December 2005 marked the release of the title track on Rosenrot. The video for "Mann gegen Mann" was released on 6 February 2006, with the single being released on 3 March. On 19 February 2006, Rammstein had an asteroid named after them, 110393 Rammstein. On 17 November, the first Rammstein Live DVD since Live aus Berlin from 1998 was released. Völkerball shows concert performances by the band in England, France, Japan and Russia. The Special Edition is extended by a second DVD, which contains the documentaries "Anaconda in the net" by Mathilde Bonnefoy and the "Making of the album Reise, Reise" by the band's guitarist Paul Landers. The limited edition was released as a large black-and-white photo-book with photos by Frederic Batier, who had accompanied the band through their recent tours. The photo-book edition contains two DVDs and two live albums. Liebe ist für alle da (2007–2011) The band took a hiatus in 2006 and began work again in 2007. The recording process reportedly took two years. In July 2009, the title track "Liebe ist für alle da" leaked onto the internet, along with promotional materials. This led Universal Music to take action against certain fan sites. It was confirmed in August 2009 that the new album would have 11 tracks, and mixing of the album – which was taking place in Stockholm – had been completed. On 1 September 2009, it was confirmed on the band's website that "Pussy" would be the first single from the album. On the same day, The Gauntlet posted a promotional video for it. The video also confirmed the album title, Liebe ist für alle da. Later, the title was confirmed again in an interview with Paul Landers for RockOne magazine. 46,7 The music video for "Pussy" was released on 16 September 2009, at 20:30 GMT, released especially for the adult website Visit-x. The video contains graphic scenes of male and female nudity as well as women engaging in sexual acts with the band members, although the actual sex scenes were performed by body doubles. The women featured in the video are German pornographic stars. Metal Hammer released an edited version of the video onto their website. "Ich tu dir weh" was confirmed as the second single from the album by Landers and Lorenz in an interview for Radio Eins. Although censorship of the song in Germany prohibits any advertisement, broadcast or public display, the video to "Ich tu dir weh" was released on 21 December 2009 on the adult website Visit-x, just like the video to "Pussy", after advertisement on the band's official German website; it depicts the band on stage in a similar configuration as on their 2009/10 tour. Any references to the video on the official website have since been deleted. In Europe, the single was released on 15 January 2010, and in the U.S. on 19 January 2010. Like the video "Pussy," this video was also directed by Jonas Åkerlund. On 23 April 2010, Rammstein released their video "Haifisch". Unlike the video for "Ich tu dir weh", it contains more of a narrative rather than a performance. The single was released during May and June 2010. On 8 November 2009, Rammstein began the first leg of the Liebe ist für alle da Tour in Lisbon, Portugal. As part of their European summer tour, Rammstein performed at the 2010 Rock AM Ring Festival on 4–6 June 2010. They also headlined several shows across Europe on the Sonisphere Festival, including their first ever outdoor UK performance at Knebworth Park, performing the day before Iron Maiden. On Sunday 18 July 2010, Rammstein played in front of more than 130,000 people in Quebec City on the Plains of Abraham as the closing show for the Festival d'été de Québec. It was their first North American appearance in nine years. The band announced that their last tour dates of 2010 were to be in the Americas. After several South American dates, the band returned to the United States for a single show at the famous Madison Square Garden in New York City – their first US show in over ten years. The tickets sold out in a very short time (under 20 minutes). They also performed at Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada on 9 December. This concert sold out within the first hour of tickets going on sale, indicating a high demand to see Rammstein in North America. The band then played at Big Day Out 2011 from 21 January to 6 February in New Zealand and Australia. The band also visited South Africa for the first time in early 2011 and played two sold-out concerts in Cape Town and Johannesburg respectively, indicating another territory eager for the opportunity to enjoy the band live. On 16 February 2011, Rammstein announced that, after the massive success of their sold out Madison Square Garden show on 11 December 2010, they would be touring North America after ten years. Rammstein played in New Jersey (East Rutherford) Izod Center, Montreal Bell Centre, Toronto Air Canada Centre, Chicago Allstate Arena, Edmonton Rexall Place, Seattle Tacoma Dome, San Francisco (Oakland) Oracle Arena, Los Angeles The Forum, and Las Vegas Thomas and Mack Center, Mexico City's Palacio de los Deportes, Guadalajara's Arena VFG, and Monterrey's Auditorio Banamex to a total of six US dates, three Canadian dates, and four Mexican dates. Tickets went on sale 25 and 26 February to great response, with many shows completely selling out, making this tour a complete success. On 20 April 2011, the band also won the Revolver Golden God Award for Best Live Band, their first US award. Made in Germany, video releases, and side projects (2011–2017) Rammstein released a greatest hits album titled Made in Germany 1995–2011 on 2 December 2011. It contains one previously unreleased track, "Mein Land" which was released as a single on 11 November 2011 with another track, "Vergiss uns nicht", that was released at a later date. The compilation is available in three different editions: The standard edition; this includes a CD with normal songs from their back catalog. Special edition; has the same CD from the standard edition and an extra CD with Rammstein songs that have been remixed by different artists such as Scooter. Finally, the super deluxe edition; has the two previously mentioned CDs and three DVDs with interviews and the making of videos from different music videos. The video for the song "Mein Land" was filmed on 23 May 2011 at Sycamore Beach in Malibu, California. It premiered on the band's official website on 11 November 2011. A full European tour in support of Made in Germany began in November 2011 and spanned all the way to May 2012. It included a North American tour that began on 20 April 2012 in Sunrise, Florida and ended on 25 May 2012 in Houston, Texas that visited 21 cities throughout the US and Canada. The Swedish industrial band Deathstars supported the band during the first two legs of the European tour. DJ Joe Letz from Combichrist and Emigrate was the opening act for the North American Tour. Rammstein, minus Till Lindemann, performed "The Beautiful People" with Marilyn Manson at the Echo Awards on 22 March 2012. On 21 September 2012, it was announced that Rammstein would be headlining Download Festival 2013, along with Iron Maiden and Slipknot. Twelve additional festival performances for summer 2013 were announced the same day, including Wacken Open Air festival and Rock Werchter. Rammstein announced new tour dates starting for spring 2013 in Europe, including a 2-day return to Kindl-Bühne Wuhlheide, the location of their first (official) live DVD, Live Aus Berlin. On 22 November 2012, Rammstein announced via Facebook that they will be releasing a video collection featuring all music videos entitled Videos 1995–2012, plus two unreleased music videos for "Mein Herz Brennt", originally featured on the album Mutter. The first video premiered on the band's Vimeo, while the second premiered on a promotional website. Both videos were directed by Zoran Bihac. The first was released on 7 December 2012, and featured the newly recorded piano version of "Mein Herz Brennt". A single of the song was released on the same day, which included an edited version of the original and a new song titled 'Gib Mir Deine Augen' as a b-side. The explicit version's video leaked onto the internet on 11 December 2012 but was officially released on 14 December, in conjunction with the video collection DVD. In July 2013, guitarist Paul Landers revealed in an interview the possibility of a Rammstein documentary and a live DVD. He indicated that the band may "start thinking" about a new album in 2014. In September 2014, band co-founder Richard Kruspe (then working with his side band, Emigrate) said the band was preparing some more live DVDs and that they were taking some time off from the studio. The band would meet again in 2015 to decide if the time was right to return to the studio. In May 2015, Lindemann confirmed in an interview with MusikUniverse that Rammstein would start pre-production on a possible new album in September of that year, and that production would most likely go on until 2017. According to Peter Tägtgren – who works with frontman Till Lindemann on their side-project Lindemann – Till would be regrouping with his Rammstein bandmates later in 2015 to start pre-production on a new full-length album, which normally takes two years to be released. In early August 2015, Rammstein released a trailer for an upcoming project, titled "In Amerika". On 15 August, the band announced Rammstein in Amerika, a video release that includes a 2010 concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City and a documentary made from archived footage recorded during the band's career. Rammstein played several festivals in Europe and North America during 2016, and in November announced plans to perform at a similar string of European festivals in 2017. On 18 January 2017 Rammstein announced a new live video release titled Paris, a recording of a March 2012 concert that took place at Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy in Paris. It premiered on 23 March in selected cinemas, and was released worldwide on DVD/Blu-ray and CD on 19 May 2017. Untitled seventh album and upcoming eighth album (2017–present) In an interview in March 2017, Richard Kruspe said that Rammstein had about 35 new songs that were close to completion, though the release date of the band's seventh studio album was still an open question. In May, Rammstein started touring once again. Also in May, it was revealed that Sky van Hoff would be working with the band on their next album. On 18 June 2018, it was announced via StubHub's ticketing website that Rammstein would play songs at their Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, show from their forthcoming album, then set for release late in 2018. On 17 September 2018, the band announced through Facebook that they were "almost done" recording the album, as they were recording orchestra and choirs in Minsk. On 2 January 2019, guitarist Richard Kruspe announced that recording of the album wrapped in November 2018 and that the record would be released in April 2019, along with five music videos. Rammstein released the first single from their seventh album, "Deutschland", on 28 March 2019 and announced the release date of their untitled seventh studio album, 17 May 2019. Rammstein also revealed the album cover which consisted of a single, unlit match which fans say represents their love of fire and simplicity. On 26 April 2019, Rammstein released the second single from the new album, "Radio". Shortly after its release, the album reached No. 1 in fourteen different countries. On 28 May 2019, Rammstein released their third single and music video from the album, this time for "Ausländer". The band embarked on their Stadium Tour to support the album, beginning in May 2019. They were due to play shows in Europe and North America in 2020, but were forced to postpone them due to the COVID-19 pandemic impacting the two continents. The dates first were rescheduled for 2021 and, in March 2021, again rescheduled to 2022. During the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the band to remain sheltered during a lockdown in Germany, the band returned to writing music, which Christoph Schneider confirmed in a German podcast. It was reported in September 2020 that they had returned to La Fabrique Studios in France, where they recorded their untitled seventh album, to record new music, potentially for a new album. On 25 September, the 25th anniversary of their debut album Herzeleid, they announced a remastered anniversary edition for the album, for release on 4 December. The release was made available both digitally and physically, as a CD housed in a digipak as well as a double heavyweight, colored vinyl. In February 2021, Flake Lorenz confirmed to Motor Music that the band had finished recording an eighth studio album. Lorenz stated that the recording sessions were unplanned and that the quarantine caused by the pandemic allowed for "less distraction" and "more time to think of new things". In October 2021, a song from the album was premiered on the International Space Station to French astronaut Thomas Pesquet. The following month, Richard Kruspe stated in an interview that Rammstein's eighth studio album would be released in the first half of 2022, prior to the slated resumption of their Stadium Tour that had been postponed to 2022. Despite this, composer Sven Helbig, who worked on the album, stated that the release could be delayed due to the 2021–2022 global supply chain crisis, which impacts the album's physical releases. Heraldo de Aragón reported in January 2022 that Rammstein had recorded a cover version of "Entre dos tierras" ("Between Two Lands") by Spanish rock band Héroes del Silencio for the album. Musical style and lyrics Rammstein's sound has primarily been described as Neue Deutsche Härte, industrial metal, hard rock, and gothic metal, while also being described as nu metal, alternative metal, symphonic metal, progressive metal, and "techno-metal". Rammstein's style has received positive feedback from critics. New Zealand's Southland Times (17 December 1999) suggested that Till Lindemann's "booming, sub-sonic voice" would send "the peasants fleeing into their barns and bolting their doors", while The New York Times (9 January 2005) |
Shackleton and Edward Wilson, took them to a latitude of 82°17′S, about 530 miles (853 km) from the pole. A harrowing return journey brought about Shackleton's physical collapse and his early departure from the expedition. The second year showed improvements in technique and achievement, culminating in Scott's western journey which led to the discovery of the Polar Plateau. This has been described by one writer as "one of the great polar journeys". The scientific results of the expedition included important biological, zoological and geological findings. Some of the meteorological and magnetic readings, however, were later criticised as amateurish and inaccurate. At the end of the expedition it took the combined efforts of two relief ships and the use of explosives to free Discovery from the ice. Scott's insistence during the expedition on Royal Navy formalities had made for uneasy relations with the merchant navy contingent, many of whom departed for home with the first relief ship in March 1903. Second-in-command Albert Armitage, a merchant officer, was offered the chance to go home on compassionate grounds, but interpreted the offer as a personal slight, and refused. Armitage also promoted the idea that the decision to send Shackleton home on the relief ship arose from Scott's animosity rather than Shackleton's physical breakdown. Although there was later tension between Scott and Shackleton, when their polar ambitions directly clashed, mutual civilities were preserved in public; Scott joined in the official receptions that greeted Shackleton on his return in 1909 after the Nimrod Expedition, and the two exchanged polite letters about their respective ambitions in 1909–1910. Between expeditions Popular hero Discovery returned to Britain in September 1904. The expedition had caught the public imagination, and Scott became a popular hero. He was awarded a cluster of honours and medals, including many from overseas, and was promoted to the rank of captain. He was invited to Balmoral Castle, where King Edward VII promoted him a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order. Scott's next few years were crowded. For more than a year he was occupied with public receptions, lectures and the writing of the expedition record, The Voyage of the Discovery. In January 1906, he resumed his full-time naval career, first as an Assistant Director of Naval Intelligence at the Admiralty and, in August, as flag-captain to Rear-Admiral Sir George Egerton on . He was now moving in ever more exalted social circles—a telegram to Markham in February 1907 refers to meetings with Queen Amélie of Orléans and Luis Filipe, Prince Royal of Portugal, and a later letter home reports lunching with the Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet and Prince Heinrich of Prussia. The telegram related to a collision involving Scott's ship, . Scott was cleared of blame. , a battleship commanded by Scott, collided with the battleship on 11 February 1907, suffering minor bow damage. Dispute with Shackleton By early 1906, Scott queried the RGS about the possible funding of a future Antarctic expedition. It was therefore unwelcome news to him that Ernest Shackleton had announced his own plans to travel to Discoverys old McMurdo Sound base and launch a bid for the South Pole from there. Scott claimed, in the first of a series of letters to Shackleton, that the area around McMurdo was his own "field of work" to which he had prior rights until he chose to give them up, and that Shackleton should therefore work from an entirely different area. In this, he was strongly supported by Discoverys former zoologist, Edward Wilson, who asserted that Scott's rights extended to the entire Ross Sea sector. Shackleton refused to concede. According to a letter written to Stanfords bookshop owner Edward Stanford, Scott seemed to take offence with a map that was published that had shown how far south Scott and Shackleton had travelled during the Discovery Expedition. Scott implied in this letter, dated in 1907 and discovered in the shop archives in 2018, that having the two men's names together on this map indicated that there was "dual leadership" between Scott and Shackleton which was "not in accordance with fact." After the owner replied with an apology over the issue, Scott expressed his regret at the nature of the previous letter and stated, "I tried to be impartial in giving credit to my companions who one and all laboured honestly and well as I have endeavoured to record....I understand now of course that you had no personal knowledge of the wording and I must express regret that I failed to realise your identity when I first wrote." Finally, to end the impasse, Shackleton agreed, in a letter to Scott dated 17 May 1907, to work to the east of the 170°W meridian and therefore to avoid all the familiar Discovery ground. In the end it was a promise that he was unable to keep after his search for alternative landing grounds proved fruitless. With his only other option being to return home, he set up his headquarters at Cape Royds, close to the old Discovery base. For this he was roundly condemned by the British polar establishment at the time. Among modern polar writers, Ranulph Fiennes regards Shackleton's actions as a technical breach of honour, but adds: "My personal belief is that Shackleton was basically honest but circumstances forced his McMurdo landing, much to his distress." The polar historian Beau Riffenburgh states that the promise to Scott "should never ethically have been demanded," and compares Scott's intransigence on this matter unfavourably with the generous attitudes of the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who gave freely of his advice and expertise to all, whether they were potential rivals or not. Marriage Scott, who because of his Discovery fame had entered Edwardian society, first met Kathleen Bruce early in 1907 at a private luncheon party. She was a sculptor, socialite and cosmopolitan who had studied under Auguste Rodin and whose circle included Isadora Duncan, Pablo Picasso and Aleister Crowley. Her initial meeting with Scott was brief, but when they met again later that year, the mutual attraction was obvious. A stormy courtship followed; Scott was not her only suitor—his main rival was would-be novelist Gilbert Cannan—and his absences at sea did not assist his cause. However, Scott's persistence was rewarded and, on 2 September 1908, at the Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace, the wedding took place. Their only child, Peter Markham Scott, born 14 September 1909, was to found the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Terra Nova expedition, 1910–1913 Preparation Shackleton returned from the Antarctic having narrowly failed to reach the Pole, and this gave Scott the impetus to proceed with plans for his second Antarctic expedition. On 24 March 1909, he took the Admiralty-based appointment of naval assistant to the Second Sea Lord which placed him conveniently in London. In December, he was released on half-pay, to take up the full-time command of the British Antarctic Expedition 1910, to be known as the Terra Nova expedition from its ship, . It was the expressed hope of the RGS that this expedition would be "scientific primarily, with exploration and the Pole as secondary objects" but, unlike the Discovery expedition, neither they nor the Royal Society were in charge this time. In his expedition prospectus, Scott stated that its main objective was "to reach the South Pole, and to secure for the British Empire the honour of this achievement". Scott had, as Markham observed, been "bitten by the Pole mania". In a memorandum of 1908, Scott presented his view that man-hauling to the South Pole was impossible and that motor traction was needed. Snow vehicles did not yet exist however, and so his engineer Reginald Skelton developed the idea of a caterpillar track for snow surfaces. In the middle of 1909 Scott realised that motors were unlikely to get him all the way to the Pole, and decided additionally to take horses (based on Shackleton's near success in attaining the Pole, using ponies), and dogs and skis after consultation with Nansen during trials of the motors in Norway in March 1910. Man-hauling would still be needed on the Polar Plateau, on the assumption that motors and animals could not ascend the crevassed Beardmore Glacier. Dog expert Cecil Meares was going to Siberia to select the dogs, and Scott ordered that, while he was there, he should deal with the purchase of Manchurian ponies. Meares was not an experienced horse-dealer, and the ponies he chose proved mostly of poor quality, and ill-suited to prolonged Antarctic work. Meanwhile, Scott also recruited Bernard Day, from Shackleton's expedition, as his motor expert. First season On 15 June 1910, Scott's ship, Terra Nova, an old converted whaler, set sail from Cardiff, South Wales. Scott meanwhile was fundraising in Britain and joined the ship later in South Africa. Arriving in Melbourne, Australia in October 1910, Scott received a telegram from Amundsen stating: "Beg leave to inform you Fram proceeding Antarctic Amundsen," possibly indicating that Scott faced a race to the pole. The expedition suffered a series of early misfortunes which hampered the first season's work and impaired preparations for the main polar march. On its journey from New Zealand to the Antarctic, Terra Nova nearly sank in a storm and was then trapped in pack ice for 20 days, far longer than other ships had experienced, which meant a late-season arrival and less time for preparatory work before the Antarctic winter. At Cape Evans, Antarctica, one of the motor sledges was lost during its unloading from the ship, breaking through the sea ice and sinking. Deteriorating weather conditions and weak, unacclimatised ponies affected the initial depot-laying journey, so that the expedition's main supply point, One Ton Depot, was laid north of its planned location at 80°S. Lawrence Oates, in charge of the ponies, advised Scott to kill ponies for food and advance the depot to 80°S, which Scott refused to do. Oates is reported as saying to Scott, "Sir, I'm afraid you'll come to regret not taking my advice." Four ponies died during this journey either from the cold or because they slowed the team down and were shot. On its return to base, the expedition learned of the presence of Amundsen, camped with his crew and a large contingent of dogs in the Bay of Whales, 200 miles (322 km) to their east. Scott conceded that his ponies would not be able to start early enough in the season to compete with Amundsen's cold-tolerant dog teams for the pole, and also acknowledged that the Norwegian's base was closer to the pole by 69 miles (111 km). Wilson was more hopeful, whereas Gran shared Scott's concern. Shortly afterwards, the death toll among the ponies increased to six, three drowning when sea-ice unexpectedly disintegrated, casting in doubt the possibility of reaching the pole at all. However, during the 1911 winter Scott's confidence increased; on 2 August, after the return of a three-man party from their winter journey to Cape Crozier, Scott wrote, "I feel sure we are as near perfection as experience can direct". Journey to the Pole Scott outlined his plans for the southern journey to the entire shore party, leaving open who would form the final polar team, according to their performance during the polar travel. Eleven days before Scott's teams set off towards the pole, Scott gave the dog driver Meares the following written orders at Cape Evans dated 20 October 1911 to secure Scott's speedy return from the pole using dogs: The march south began on 1 November 1911, a caravan of mixed transport groups (motors, dogs, horses), with loaded sledges, travelling at different rates, all designed to support a final group of four men who would make a dash for the Pole. The southbound party steadily reduced in size as successive support teams turned back. Scott reminded the returning Surgeon-Lieutenant Atkinson of the order "to take the two dog-teams south in the event of Meares having to return home, as seemed likely". By 4 January 1912, the last two four-man groups had reached 87°34′S. Scott announced his decision: five men—himself, Wilson, Bowers, Oates and E. Evans) would go forward, the other three (Teddy Evans, William Lashly and Tom Crean) would return. The chosen group marched | formalities had made for uneasy relations with the merchant navy contingent, many of whom departed for home with the first relief ship in March 1903. Second-in-command Albert Armitage, a merchant officer, was offered the chance to go home on compassionate grounds, but interpreted the offer as a personal slight, and refused. Armitage also promoted the idea that the decision to send Shackleton home on the relief ship arose from Scott's animosity rather than Shackleton's physical breakdown. Although there was later tension between Scott and Shackleton, when their polar ambitions directly clashed, mutual civilities were preserved in public; Scott joined in the official receptions that greeted Shackleton on his return in 1909 after the Nimrod Expedition, and the two exchanged polite letters about their respective ambitions in 1909–1910. Between expeditions Popular hero Discovery returned to Britain in September 1904. The expedition had caught the public imagination, and Scott became a popular hero. He was awarded a cluster of honours and medals, including many from overseas, and was promoted to the rank of captain. He was invited to Balmoral Castle, where King Edward VII promoted him a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order. Scott's next few years were crowded. For more than a year he was occupied with public receptions, lectures and the writing of the expedition record, The Voyage of the Discovery. In January 1906, he resumed his full-time naval career, first as an Assistant Director of Naval Intelligence at the Admiralty and, in August, as flag-captain to Rear-Admiral Sir George Egerton on . He was now moving in ever more exalted social circles—a telegram to Markham in February 1907 refers to meetings with Queen Amélie of Orléans and Luis Filipe, Prince Royal of Portugal, and a later letter home reports lunching with the Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet and Prince Heinrich of Prussia. The telegram related to a collision involving Scott's ship, . Scott was cleared of blame. , a battleship commanded by Scott, collided with the battleship on 11 February 1907, suffering minor bow damage. Dispute with Shackleton By early 1906, Scott queried the RGS about the possible funding of a future Antarctic expedition. It was therefore unwelcome news to him that Ernest Shackleton had announced his own plans to travel to Discoverys old McMurdo Sound base and launch a bid for the South Pole from there. Scott claimed, in the first of a series of letters to Shackleton, that the area around McMurdo was his own "field of work" to which he had prior rights until he chose to give them up, and that Shackleton should therefore work from an entirely different area. In this, he was strongly supported by Discoverys former zoologist, Edward Wilson, who asserted that Scott's rights extended to the entire Ross Sea sector. Shackleton refused to concede. According to a letter written to Stanfords bookshop owner Edward Stanford, Scott seemed to take offence with a map that was published that had shown how far south Scott and Shackleton had travelled during the Discovery Expedition. Scott implied in this letter, dated in 1907 and discovered in the shop archives in 2018, that having the two men's names together on this map indicated that there was "dual leadership" between Scott and Shackleton which was "not in accordance with fact." After the owner replied with an apology over the issue, Scott expressed his regret at the nature of the previous letter and stated, "I tried to be impartial in giving credit to my companions who one and all laboured honestly and well as I have endeavoured to record....I understand now of course that you had no personal knowledge of the wording and I must express regret that I failed to realise your identity when I first wrote." Finally, to end the impasse, Shackleton agreed, in a letter to Scott dated 17 May 1907, to work to the east of the 170°W meridian and therefore to avoid all the familiar Discovery ground. In the end it was a promise that he was unable to keep after his search for alternative landing grounds proved fruitless. With his only other option being to return home, he set up his headquarters at Cape Royds, close to the old Discovery base. For this he was roundly condemned by the British polar establishment at the time. Among modern polar writers, Ranulph Fiennes regards Shackleton's actions as a technical breach of honour, but adds: "My personal belief is that Shackleton was basically honest but circumstances forced his McMurdo landing, much to his distress." The polar historian Beau Riffenburgh states that the promise to Scott "should never ethically have been demanded," and compares Scott's intransigence on this matter unfavourably with the generous attitudes of the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who gave freely of his advice and expertise to all, whether they were potential rivals or not. Marriage Scott, who because of his Discovery fame had entered Edwardian society, first met Kathleen Bruce early in 1907 at a private luncheon party. She was a sculptor, socialite and cosmopolitan who had studied under Auguste Rodin and whose circle included Isadora Duncan, Pablo Picasso and Aleister Crowley. Her initial meeting with Scott was brief, but when they met again later that year, the mutual attraction was obvious. A stormy courtship followed; Scott was not her only suitor—his main rival was would-be novelist Gilbert Cannan—and his absences at sea did not assist his cause. However, Scott's persistence was rewarded and, on 2 September 1908, at the Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace, the wedding took place. Their only child, Peter Markham Scott, born 14 September 1909, was to found the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Terra Nova expedition, 1910–1913 Preparation Shackleton returned from the Antarctic having narrowly failed to reach the Pole, and this gave Scott the impetus to proceed with plans for his second Antarctic expedition. On 24 March 1909, he took the Admiralty-based appointment of naval assistant to the Second Sea Lord which placed him conveniently in London. In December, he was released on half-pay, to take up the full-time command of the British Antarctic Expedition 1910, to be known as the Terra Nova expedition from its ship, . It was the expressed hope of the RGS that this expedition would be "scientific primarily, with exploration and the Pole as secondary objects" but, unlike the Discovery expedition, neither they nor the Royal Society were in charge this time. In his expedition prospectus, Scott stated that its main objective was "to reach the South Pole, and to secure for the British Empire the honour of this achievement". Scott had, as Markham observed, been "bitten by the Pole mania". In a memorandum of 1908, Scott presented his view that man-hauling to the South Pole was impossible and that motor traction was needed. Snow vehicles did not yet exist however, and so his engineer Reginald Skelton developed the idea of a caterpillar track for snow surfaces. In the middle of 1909 Scott realised that motors were unlikely to get him all the way to the Pole, and decided additionally to take horses (based on Shackleton's near success in attaining the Pole, using ponies), and dogs and skis after consultation with Nansen during trials of the motors in Norway in March 1910. Man-hauling would still be needed on the Polar Plateau, on the assumption that motors and animals could not ascend the crevassed Beardmore Glacier. Dog expert Cecil Meares was going to Siberia to select the dogs, and Scott ordered that, while he was there, he should deal with the purchase of Manchurian ponies. Meares was not an experienced horse-dealer, and the ponies he chose proved mostly of poor quality, and ill-suited to prolonged Antarctic work. Meanwhile, Scott also recruited Bernard Day, from Shackleton's expedition, as his motor expert. First season On 15 June 1910, Scott's ship, Terra Nova, an old converted whaler, set sail from Cardiff, South Wales. Scott meanwhile was fundraising in Britain and joined the ship later in South Africa. Arriving in Melbourne, Australia in October 1910, Scott received a telegram from Amundsen stating: "Beg leave to inform you Fram proceeding Antarctic Amundsen," possibly indicating that Scott faced a race to the pole. The expedition suffered a series of early misfortunes which hampered the first season's work and impaired preparations for the main polar march. On its journey from New Zealand to the Antarctic, Terra Nova nearly sank in a storm and was then trapped in pack ice for 20 days, far longer than other ships had experienced, which meant a late-season arrival and less time for preparatory work before the Antarctic winter. At Cape Evans, Antarctica, one of the motor sledges was lost during its unloading from the ship, breaking through the sea ice and sinking. Deteriorating weather conditions and weak, unacclimatised ponies affected the initial depot-laying journey, so that the expedition's main supply point, One Ton Depot, was laid north of its planned location at 80°S. Lawrence Oates, in charge of the ponies, advised Scott to kill ponies for food and advance the depot to 80°S, which Scott refused to do. Oates is reported as saying to Scott, "Sir, I'm afraid you'll come to regret not taking my advice." Four ponies died during this journey either from the cold or because they slowed the team down and were shot. On its return to base, the expedition learned of the presence of Amundsen, camped with his crew and a large contingent of dogs in the Bay of Whales, 200 miles (322 km) to their east. Scott conceded that his ponies would not be able to start early enough in the season to compete with Amundsen's cold-tolerant dog teams for the pole, and also acknowledged that the Norwegian's base was closer to the pole by 69 miles (111 km). Wilson was more hopeful, whereas Gran shared Scott's concern. Shortly afterwards, the death toll among the ponies increased to six, three drowning when sea-ice unexpectedly disintegrated, casting in doubt the possibility of reaching the pole at all. However, during the 1911 winter Scott's confidence increased; on 2 August, after the return of a three-man party from their winter journey to Cape Crozier, Scott wrote, "I feel sure we are as near perfection as experience can direct". Journey to the Pole Scott outlined his plans for the southern journey to the entire shore party, leaving open who would form the final polar team, according to their performance during the polar travel. Eleven days before Scott's teams set off towards the pole, Scott gave the dog driver Meares the following written orders at Cape Evans dated 20 October 1911 to secure Scott's speedy return from the pole using dogs: The march south began on 1 November 1911, a caravan of mixed transport groups (motors, dogs, horses), with loaded sledges, travelling at different rates, all designed to support a final group of four men who would make a dash for the Pole. The southbound party steadily reduced in size as successive support teams turned back. Scott reminded the returning Surgeon-Lieutenant Atkinson of the order "to take the two dog-teams south in the event of Meares having to return home, as seemed likely". By 4 January 1912, the last two four-man groups had reached 87°34′S. Scott announced his decision: five men—himself, Wilson, Bowers, Oates and E. Evans) would go forward, the other three (Teddy Evans, William Lashly and Tom Crean) would return. The chosen group marched on, reaching the Pole on 17 January, only to find a tent left in place by Amundsen, in it containing a letter dated 18 December. Scott's anguish is indicated in his diary: "The worst has happened [...] All the day dreams must go [...] Great God! This is an awful place". Last march The deflated party began the 862 mile (1387 km) return journey on 19 January. "I'm afraid the return journey is going to be dreadfully tiring and monotonous", wrote Scott on that day. The party made good progress despite poor weather, and had completed the Polar Plateau stage of their journey, approximately 300 miles (483 km), by 7 February. In the following days, as the party made the 100 mile (161 km) descent of the Beardmore Glacier, the physical condition of Edgar Evans, which Scott had noted with concern as early as 23 January, declined sharply. A fall on 4 February had left Evans "dull and incapable," and on 17 February, after another fall, he died near the glacier foot. With 400 miles (644 km) still to travel across the Ross Ice Shelf, Scott's party's prospects steadily worsened as, with deteriorating weather, a puzzling lack of fuel in the depots, hunger and exhaustion, they struggled northward. Meanwhile, back at Cape Evans, the Terra Nova arrived at the beginning of February, and Atkinson decided to unload the supplies from the ship with his own men rather than set out south with the dogs to meet Scott as ordered. When |
Parker subsequently wrote a sequel to The Big Sleep entitled Perchance to Dream, which was salted with quotes from the original novel. Chandler's final Marlowe short story, circa 1957, was entitled "The Pencil". It later provided the basis of an episode of the HBO miniseries (1983–86), Philip Marlowe, Private Eye, starring Powers Boothe as Marlowe. In 2014, "The Princess and the Pedlar" (1917), a previously unknown comic operetta, with libretto by Chandler and music by Julian Pascal, was discovered among the uncatalogued holdings of the Library of Congress. The work was never published or produced. It has been dismissed by the Raymond Chandler estate as "no more than… a curiosity." A small team under the direction of the actor and director Paul Sand is seeking permission to produce the operetta in Los Angeles. Later life and death Cissy Chandler died in 1954, after a long illness. Heartbroken and drunk, Chandler neglected to inter her cremated remains, and they sat for 57 years in a storage locker in the basement of Cypress View Mausoleum. After Cissy's death, Chandler's loneliness worsened his propensity for clinical depression; he returned to drinking alcohol, never quitting it for long, and the quality and quantity of his writing suffered. In 1955, he attempted suicide. In The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved, Judith Freeman says it was "a cry for help," given that he called the police beforehand, saying he planned to kill himself. Chandler's personal and professional life were both helped and complicated by the women to whom he was attracted—notably Helga Greene, his literary agent; Jean Fracasse, his secretary; Sonia Orwell (George Orwell's widow); and Natasha Spender (Stephen Spender's wife). Chandler regained his U.S. citizenship in 1956, while retaining his British rights too. After a respite in England, he returned to La Jolla. He died at Scripps Memorial Hospital of pneumonial peripheral vascular shock and prerenal uremia (according to the death certificate) in 1959. Helga Greene inherited Chandler's $60,000 estate, after prevailing in a 1960 lawsuit filed by Fracasse contesting Chandler's holographic codicil to his will. Chandler is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery, in San Diego, California. As Frank MacShane noted in his biography, The Life of Raymond Chandler, Chandler wished to be cremated and placed next to Cissy in Cypress View Mausoleum. Instead, he was buried in Mount Hope, because he had left no funeral or burial instructions. In 2010, Chandler historian Loren Latker, with the assistance of attorney Aissa Wayne (daughter of John Wayne), brought a petition to disinter Cissy's remains and reinter them with Chandler in Mount Hope. After a hearing in September 2010 in San Diego Superior Court, Judge Richard S. Whitney entered an order granting Latker's request. On February 14, 2011, Cissy's ashes were conveyed from Cypress View to Mount Hope and interred under a new grave marker above Chandler's, as they had wished. About 100 people attended the ceremony, which included readings by the Rev. Randal Gardner, Powers Boothe, Judith Freeman and Aissa Wayne. The shared gravestone reads, "Dead men are heavier than broken hearts", a quotation from The Big Sleep. Chandler's original gravestone, placed by Jean Fracasse and her children, is still at the head of his grave; the new one is at the foot. Views on pulp fiction In his introduction to Trouble Is My Business (1950), a collection of many of his short stories, Chandler provided insight on the formula for the detective story and how the pulp magazines differed from previous detective stories: Chandler also described the struggle that writers of pulp fiction had in following the formula demanded by the editors of the pulp magazines: Critical reception Critics and writers, including W. H. Auden, Evelyn Waugh and Ian Fleming, greatly admired Chandler's prose. In a radio discussion with Chandler, Fleming said that Chandler offered "some of the finest dialogue written in any prose today". Contemporary mystery writer Paul Levine has described Chandler's style as the "literary equivalent of a quick punch to the gut". Chandler's swift-moving, hardboiled style was inspired mostly by Dashiell Hammett, but his sharp and lyrical similes are original: "The muzzle of the Luger looked like the mouth of the Second Street tunnel"; "He had a heart as big as one of Mae West's hips"; "Dead men are heavier than broken hearts"; "I went back to the seasteps and moved down them as cautiously as a cat on a wet floor." Chandler's writing redefined the private eye fiction genre, led to the coining of the adjective "Chandleresque", and inevitably became the subject of parody and pastiche. Yet the detective Philip Marlowe is not a stereotypical tough guy, but a complex, sometimes sentimental man with few friends, who attended university, who speaks some Spanish and sometimes admires Mexicans and Blacks, and who is a student of chess and classical music. He is a man who refuses a prospective client's fee for a job he considers unethical. The high regard in which Chandler is generally held today is in contrast to the critical sniping that stung the author during his lifetime. In a March 1942 letter to Blanche Knopf, published in Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, he wrote, "The thing that rather gets me down is that when I write something that is tough and fast and full of mayhem and murder, I get panned for being tough and fast and full of mayhem and murder, and then when I try to tone down a bit and develop the mental and emotional side of a situation, I get panned for leaving out what I was panned for putting in the first time." Although his work enjoys general acclaim today, Chandler has been criticized for certain aspects of his writing. The Washington Post reviewer Patrick Anderson described his plots as "rambling at best and incoherent at worst" (notoriously, even Chandler did not know who murdered the chauffeur in The Big Sleep<ref>"Entertainment" in The Los Angeles Times, December 4, 1997</ref>) and Anderson criticized Chandler's treatment of black, female, and homosexual characters, calling him a "rather nasty man at times". Anderson nevertheless praised Chandler as "probably the most lyrical of the major crime writers". Chandler's short stories and novels are evocatively written, conveying the time, place and ambiance of Los Angeles and environs in the 1930s and 1940s. The places are real, if pseudonymous: Bay City is Santa Monica, Gray Lake is Silver Lake, and Idle Valley a synthesis of wealthy San Fernando Valley communities.Playback is the only one of his novels | few friends, who attended university, who speaks some Spanish and sometimes admires Mexicans and Blacks, and who is a student of chess and classical music. He is a man who refuses a prospective client's fee for a job he considers unethical. The high regard in which Chandler is generally held today is in contrast to the critical sniping that stung the author during his lifetime. In a March 1942 letter to Blanche Knopf, published in Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, he wrote, "The thing that rather gets me down is that when I write something that is tough and fast and full of mayhem and murder, I get panned for being tough and fast and full of mayhem and murder, and then when I try to tone down a bit and develop the mental and emotional side of a situation, I get panned for leaving out what I was panned for putting in the first time." Although his work enjoys general acclaim today, Chandler has been criticized for certain aspects of his writing. The Washington Post reviewer Patrick Anderson described his plots as "rambling at best and incoherent at worst" (notoriously, even Chandler did not know who murdered the chauffeur in The Big Sleep<ref>"Entertainment" in The Los Angeles Times, December 4, 1997</ref>) and Anderson criticized Chandler's treatment of black, female, and homosexual characters, calling him a "rather nasty man at times". Anderson nevertheless praised Chandler as "probably the most lyrical of the major crime writers". Chandler's short stories and novels are evocatively written, conveying the time, place and ambiance of Los Angeles and environs in the 1930s and 1940s. The places are real, if pseudonymous: Bay City is Santa Monica, Gray Lake is Silver Lake, and Idle Valley a synthesis of wealthy San Fernando Valley communities.Playback is the only one of his novels not to have been cinematically adapted. Arguably the most notable adaptation is The Big Sleep (1946), by Howard Hawks, with Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe. William Faulkner was a co-writer of the screenplay. Chandler's few screenwriting efforts and the cinematic adaptation of his novels proved stylistically and thematically influential on the American film noir genre. Notable for its revised take on the Marlowe character, transplanting the novel to the 1970s, is Robert Altman's 1973 neo-noir adaptation of The Long Goodbye. Chandler was also a perceptive critic of detective fiction; his essay "The Simple Art of Murder" is the canonical essay in the field. In popular culture British songwriter Robyn Hitchcock paid homage to Chandler in the song "Raymond Chandler Evening" on the 1986 album Element of Light. In the 11th issue of the influential Cyberpunk fanzine Cheap Truth, Vincent Omniaveritas conducted a fictitious interview with Chandler. The interview opines that Chandler's views towards the potential for respectability in pulp and genre fiction could also be applied to Science Fiction, specifically the Cyberpunk movement. It also derides Chandler's now-famous 1953 caricature of pulp Science Fiction. In the 2012 documentary, The Doors: Mr. Mojo Risin'- The Story Of L.A. Woman, keyboardist, Ray Manzarek describes Jim Morrison's lyrics to L.A. Woman, “Another lost angel in the city of night.” “The lyrics were so good. So Raymond Chandler, so Nathanael West, so 1930's, 40's, dark seamy side of Los Angeles. A place where Jim would easily go”. In the season 4 (1993) of the TV series Northern Exposure, episode 16 starts with Chris reading to Ed a book with visible cover showing "Midnight - Raymond Chandler" while sitting in the Brick bar in the fictional town of Cicely, Alaska. Chris reads a passage from a book about the hot dry unnerving desert wind which causes people to act unexpectedly aggressively. The episode itself has a similar premise, namely, the "bad wind" blows through Cicely. After hearing the passage, Ed, impressed, utters "Whoa". Chris winks and says:"Raymond Chandler!" In season 4, episode 18 of the sitcom Friends, during a debate over whether or not to name one of Phoebe's triplets "Chandler" or "Joey," Joey challenges Chandler to "name one famous person named Chandler." Chandler replies with "Raymond Chandler," to which Joey responds, "Someone you didn't make up!" The popular Japanese super hero show, Kamen Rider, referenced Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye in the 2009 series, Kamen Rider W. Kamen Rider W is a story of two detectives, Shotaro Hidari and Phillip, who become one when they transform into W, and battle criminals who are powered by drug like USBs called Gaia Memories. Phillip is named after Philip Marlowe, his name was chosen by Narumi Soukichi, Shotaro Hidari's mentor and fan of Chandler's The Long Goodbye. Many episodes of the show reference the hard-boiled style featured in Chandler's works. The Japanese version of the book can be seen prominently in "Kamen Rider X Kamen Rider W & Decade Movie Taisen 2010", as well as throughout the TV series on Shotaro's shelf, next to his desk where he writes his memoirs of cases in a wannabe hard-boiled, half-boiled style. Works References Works cited General references , Foreword by Powell, Lawrence Clark Further reading Bruccoli, Matthew J., ed. (1973). Chandler Before Marlowe: Raymond Chandler's Early Prose and Poetry, 1908–1912. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press. Chandler, Raymond (1976). The Blue Dahlia (screenplay). Carbondale and Edwardsville, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press. Chandler, Raymond (1985). Raymond Chandler's Unknown Thriller (unfilmed screenplay for Playback). New York: The Mysterious Press. Freeman, Judith (2007). The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved. N.Y.: Pantheon. . Gross, Miriam (1977). The World of Raymond Chandler. New York: A & W Publishers. Hiney, Tom and MacShane, Frank, eds. (2000). The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909–1959. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. Howe, Alexander N. "The Detective and the Analyst: Truth, Knowledge, and Psychoanalysis in the Hard-Boiled Fiction of Raymond Chandler." Clues: A Journal of Detection 24.4 |
Most recently Xiang et al. (2017) recovered these relationships using nuclear transcriptomes: Rosoideae basal Rosoideae has been identified as the earliest branching subfamily by Morgan et al. (1994), Evans (1999), Potter et al. (2002), Potter et al. (2007), Töpel et al. (2012), and Chen et al. (2016). The following is taken from Potter et al. (2007): The sister relationship between Amygdaloideae and Dryadoideae is supported by the following shared biochemical characters not found in Rosoideae: production of cyanogenic glycosides and production of sorbitol. Characteristics Rosaceae can be woody trees, shrubs, climbers or herbaceous plants. The herbs are mostly perennials, but some annuals also exist. Leaves The leaves are generally arranged spirally, but have an opposite arrangement in some species. They can be simple or pinnately compound (either odd- or even-pinnate). Compound leaves appear in around 30 genera. The leaf margin is most often serrate. Paired stipules are generally present, and are a primitive feature within the family, independently lost in many groups of Amygdaloideae (previously called Spiraeoideae). The stipules are sometimes adnate (attached surface to surface) to the petiole. Glands or extrafloral nectaries may be present on leaf margins or petioles. Spines may be present on the midrib of leaflets and the rachis of compound leaves. Flowers Flowers of plants in the rose family are generally described as "showy". They are radially symmetrical, and almost always hermaphroditic. Rosaceae generally have five sepals, five petals, and many spirally arranged stamens. The bases of the sepals, petals, and stamens are fused together to form a characteristic cup-like structure called a hypanthium. They can be arranged in spikes, or heads. Solitary flowers are rare. Rosaceae have a variety of color petals, but blue is almost completely absent. Fruits and seeds The fruits occur in many varieties and were once considered the main characters for the definition of subfamilies amongst Rosaceae, giving rise to a fundamentally artificial subdivision. They can be follicles, capsules, nuts, achenes, drupes (Prunus), and accessory fruits, like the pome of an apple, or the hip of a rose. Many fruits of the family are edible, but their seeds often contain amygdalin, which can release cyanide during digestion if the seed is damaged. Genera Identified clades include: Subfamily Rosoideae: Traditionally composed of those genera bearing aggregate fruits that are made up of small achenes or drupelets, and often the fleshy part of the fruit (e.g. strawberry) is the receptacle or the stalk bearing the carpels. The circumscription is now narrowed (excluding, for example, the Dryadoideae), but it still remains a diverse group containing five or six tribes and 20 or more genera, including rose, Rubus (blackberry, raspberry), Fragaria (strawberry), Potentilla, and Geum. Subfamily Amygdaloideae: Within this group remains an identified clade with a pome fruit, traditionally known as subfamily Maloideae (or Pyroideae) which included genera such as apple, Cotoneaster, and Crataegus (hawthorn). To separate it at the subfamily level would leave the remaining genera as a paraphyletic group, so it has been expanded to include the former Spiraeoideae and Amygdaloideae. The subfamily has sometimes been referred to by the name "Spiraeoideae", but this is not permitted by the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants. Subfamily Dryadoideae: Fruits are achenes with hairy styles, and includes five genera (Dryas, Cercocarpus, Chamaebatia, Cowania, and Purshia), most species of which form root nodules which host nitrogen-fixing bacteria from the genus Frankia. Economic importance The rose family | complex dog roses), Sorbus 100 to 200 species, Crataegus between 200 and 1,000, Alchemilla around 300 species, Potentilla roughly 500, and Rubus hundreds, or possibly even thousands of species. Phylogeny The phylogenetic relationships between the three subfamilies within Rosaceae are unresolved. There are three competing hypotheses: Amygdaloideae basal Amygdaloideae has been identified as the earliest branching subfamily by Chin et al. (2014), Li et al. (2015), Li et al. (2016), and Sun et al. (2016). Most recently Zhang et al. (2017) recovered these relationships using whole plastid genomes: The sister relationship between Dryadoideae and Rosoideae is supported by the following shared morphological characters not found in Amygdaloideae: presence of stipules, separation of the hypanthium from the ovary, and the fruits are usually achenes. Dryadoideae basal Dryadoideae has been identified as the earliest branching subfamily by Evans et al. (2002) and Potter (2003). Most recently Xiang et al. (2017) recovered these relationships using nuclear transcriptomes: Rosoideae basal Rosoideae has been identified as the earliest branching subfamily by Morgan et al. (1994), Evans (1999), Potter et al. (2002), Potter et al. (2007), Töpel et al. (2012), and Chen et al. (2016). The following is taken from Potter et al. (2007): The sister relationship between Amygdaloideae and Dryadoideae is supported by the following shared biochemical characters not found in Rosoideae: production of cyanogenic glycosides and production of sorbitol. Characteristics Rosaceae can be woody trees, shrubs, climbers or herbaceous plants. The herbs are mostly perennials, but some annuals also exist. Leaves The leaves are generally arranged spirally, but have an opposite arrangement in some species. They can be simple or pinnately compound (either odd- or even-pinnate). Compound leaves appear in around 30 genera. The leaf margin is most often serrate. Paired stipules are generally present, and are a primitive feature within the family, independently lost in many groups of Amygdaloideae (previously called Spiraeoideae). The stipules are sometimes adnate (attached surface to surface) to the petiole. Glands or extrafloral nectaries may be present on leaf margins or petioles. Spines may be present on the midrib of leaflets and the rachis of compound leaves. Flowers Flowers of plants in the rose family are generally described as "showy". They are radially symmetrical, and almost always hermaphroditic. Rosaceae generally have five sepals, five petals, and many spirally arranged stamens. The bases of the sepals, petals, and stamens are fused together to form a characteristic cup-like structure called a hypanthium. They can be arranged in spikes, or heads. Solitary flowers are rare. Rosaceae have a variety of color petals, but blue is almost completely absent. Fruits and seeds The fruits occur in many varieties and were once considered the main characters for the definition of subfamilies amongst Rosaceae, giving rise to a fundamentally artificial subdivision. They can be follicles, capsules, nuts, achenes, drupes (Prunus), and accessory fruits, like the pome of an apple, or the hip of a rose. Many fruits of the family are edible, but their seeds often contain amygdalin, which can release cyanide during digestion if the seed is damaged. Genera Identified clades include: Subfamily Rosoideae: Traditionally composed of those genera bearing aggregate fruits that are made up of small achenes or drupelets, and often the fleshy part of the fruit (e.g. strawberry) is the receptacle or the stalk bearing the carpels. The circumscription is now narrowed (excluding, for example, the Dryadoideae), but it still remains a diverse group containing five or six tribes and 20 or more genera, including rose, Rubus (blackberry, raspberry), Fragaria (strawberry), Potentilla, and Geum. Subfamily Amygdaloideae: Within this group remains an identified clade with a pome fruit, traditionally known as subfamily Maloideae (or Pyroideae) |
nominee, giving him a ballot line in the state. In October 2000, at the largest Super Rally of his campaign, held in New York City's Madison Square Garden, 15,000 people paid $20 each to hear Nader speak. Nader's campaign rejected both parties as institutions dominated by corporate interests, stating that Al Gore and George W. Bush were "Tweedledee and Tweedledum". A long list of notable celebrities spoke and performed at the event including Susan Sarandon, Ani DiFranco, Ben Harper, Tim Robbins, Michael Moore, Eddie Vedder and Patti Smith. The campaign also had some prominent union help: The California Nurses Association and the United Electrical Workers endorsed his candidacy and campaigned for him. Nader and LaDuke received 2,883,105 votes, for 2.74 percent of the popular vote (third place overall), missing the 5 percent needed to qualify the Green Party for federally distributed public funding in the next election, yet qualifying the party for ballot status in many states. Nader often openly expressed his hope for Bush's victory over Gore, saying it "would mobilize us", and that environmental and consumer regulatory agencies would fare better under Bush than Gore. When asked which of the two he'd vote for if forced, Nader answered "Bush ... If you want the parties to diverge from one another, have Bush win." As to whether he would feel regret if he caused Gore's defeat, Nader replied "I would not—not at all. I'd rather have a provocateur than an anesthetizer in the White House." On another occasion, Nader answered this question with: "No, not at all ... There may be a cold shower for four years that would help the Democratic Party ... It doesn't matter who is in the White House." Spoiler controversy In the 2000 presidential election in Florida, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by 537 votes. Nader received votes, which led to claims that he was responsible for Gore's defeat. Nader disputes that he helped Bush to win. A 2003 study found that Nader's candidacy was a critical factor in Bush's victory. A 2004 study found that Nader voters had the profile of likely voters with a preference for Democratic candidates. They were therefore likely to vote for Gore over Bush in the absence of Nader's candidacy. A study by Harvard Professor B.C. Burden in 2005 showed Nader did "play a pivotal role in determining who would become president following the 2000 election", but that: However, Jonathan Chait of The American Prospect and The New Republic notes that Nader did indeed focus on swing states disproportionately during the waning days of the campaign, and by doing so jeopardized his own chances of achieving the 5% of the vote he was aiming for. Then there was the debate within the Nader campaign over where to travel in the waning days of the campaign. Some Nader advisers urged him to spend his time in uncontested states such as New York and California. These states – where liberals and leftists could entertain the thought of voting Nader without fear of aiding Bush – offered the richest harvest of potential votes. But, Martin writes, Nader – who emerges from this account as the house radical of his own campaign – insisted on spending the final days of the campaign on a whirlwind tour of battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Florida. In other words, he chose to go where the votes were scarcest, jeopardizing his own chances of winning 5 percent of the vote, which he needed to gain federal funds in 2004. When Nader, in a letter to environmentalists, attacked Gore for "his role as broker of environmental voters for corporate cash," and "the prototype for the bankable, Green corporate politician," and what he called a string of broken promises to the environmental movement, Sierra Club president Carl Pope sent an open letter to Nader, dated 27 October 2000, defending Al Gore's environmental record and calling Nader's strategy "irresponsible." He wrote: You have also broken your word to your followers who signed the petitions that got you on the ballot in many states. You pledged you would not campaign as a spoiler and would avoid the swing states. Your recent campaign rhetoric and campaign schedule make it clear that you have broken this pledge ... Please accept that I, and the overwhelming majority of the environmental movement in this country, genuinely believe that your strategy is flawed, dangerous and reckless. 2004 Nader announced on December 24, 2003, that he would not seek the Green Party's nomination for president in 2004, but did not rule out running as an independent candidate. Ralph Nader and Democratic candidate John Kerry held a widely publicized meeting early in the 2004 presidential campaign. Nader said that John Kerry wanted to work to win Nader's support and the support of Nader's voters, prompting Nader to provide Kerry more than 20 pages of issues that he felt were important. According to Nader, he asked John Kerry to choose any three of the issues and highlight them in his campaign; should Kerry meet these conditions Nader would not contest the election. On February 22, 2004, having not heard back from Kerry, Nader announced that he would run for president as an independent. Due to concerns about a possible spoiler effect, many Democrats urged Nader to abandon his 2004 candidacy. Terry McAuliffe stated that Nader had a "distinguished career, fighting for working families", and that McAuliffe "would hate to see part of his legacy being that he got us eight years of George Bush". Theresa Amato, Nader's national campaign manager in 2000 and 2004, later alleged that McAuliffe offered to pay-off Nader if he would not campaign in certain states, an allegation confirmed by Nader and undisputed by McAuliffe. Nader received 463,655 votes, for 0.38 percent of the popular vote, placing him in third place overall. 2008 In February 2007, Nader criticized Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton as "a panderer and a flatterer," later describing her as someone who had "no political fortitude." During a February 2008 appearance on Meet the Press, Nader announced his intention to run for president as an independent, later naming Matt Gonzalez as his running-mate. Nader was endorsed by Howard Zinn, Jesse Ventura, Justin Jeffre, Tom Morello, Val Kilmer, Rocky Anderson, James Abourezk, Patti Smith, and Jello Biafra. The Nader campaign raised $8.4 million in campaign funds, primarily from small, individual donations. Nader/Gonzalez earned 738,475 votes and a third-place finish in the 2008 United States presidential election. Congressional Accountability Project Nader founded the Congressional Accountability Project to "oppose corruption in the U. S. Congress." Later activities Nader condemned the 2011 military intervention in Libya. He branded President Barack Obama as a "war criminal" and called for his impeachment. In June 2019, Nader, who lost his 24-year-old grandniece in the Ethiopian Airlines crash, claimed that the Boeing 737 Max "must never fly again... it's not a matter of software. It's a matter of structural design defect: the plane's engines are too much for the traditional fuselage". Nader also called for Boeing top leaders to resign and said that the Federal Aviation Administration "has been in the pockets of the Boeing company for years". D.C. Library Renaissance Project In 2002, Nader founded the D.C. Library Renaissance Project, which has sought to halt the development of the West End Library in Washington, D.C., alleging that it "violated affordable housing guidelines, undervalued the land, and didn't conform to the city's Comprehensive Plan." The legal obstacles presented by the Library Renaissance Project have cost the D.C. government over one million dollars in legal fees. Nader has opposed the privatized development of D.C. libraries despite community support, citing a lack of oversight and competitive bidding process. Only the Super Rich Can Save Us In 2009 Nader published his first work of fiction, Only the Super Rich Can Save Us. Many of the characters were fictionalized versions of real-life persons including Ted Turner and Warren Buffett. The book's principal villain, a "conservative evil genius" named Brovar Dortwist, represents Grover Norquist. According to Norquist, Nader had called him prior to the book's publication and said he "wouldn't be too unhappy, because the character was principled". The novel met with mixed reviews with The Wall Street Journal noting that the book "reads less like a novel ... than a dream journal" with a plot that victoriously concludes with "American society thoroughly Naderized", though The Globe and Mail called it "a powerful idea by the perfect person at a fortuitous time". He also branched out into fiction with the fable collection Animal Envy in 2016. 2012 debate moderator During the 2012 United States presidential election, Nader moderated a debate for third party candidates at Washington, D.C.'s Busboys and Poets. The debate was attended by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, Libertarian Gary Johnson, Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party and Constitution Party candidate Virgil Goode. He later moderated a similar debate in a studio appearance broadcast by Russia Today. Ralph Nader Radio Hour Since March 2014, Nader has co-hosted the weekly Ralph Nader Radio Hour, produced at KPFK-FM in Los Angeles and distributed via the Pacifica Radio Network. The program features "interviews with some of the nation's most influential movers and shakers" and discussion of current events. Nader's co-hosts are Steve Skrovan and David Feldman. American Museum of Tort Law In 2015, after a decade planning, Nader founded the American Museum of Tort Law in Winsted, Connecticut. The opening ceremonies were emceed by Phil Donahue. Nader personally donated $150,000 to the establishment of the museum, which was sited on two parcels of land rezoned by the town of | an interest in issues of automobile safety while a law student, Unsafe at Any Speed presented a critical dissection of the automotive industry by claiming that many American automobiles were generally unsafe to operate. Nader researched case files from more than 100 lawsuits then pending against General Motors' Chevrolet Corvair to support his assertions. The book became an immediate bestseller, but also prompted a vicious backlash from General Motors (GM) who attempted to discredit Nader by tapping his phone in an attempt to uncover salacious information and, when that failed, hiring prostitutes in an attempt to catch him in a compromising situation. Nader, by then working as an unpaid consultant to United States Senator Abe Ribicoff, reported to the senator that he suspected he was being followed. Ribicoff convened an inquiry that called GM CEO James Roche who admitted, when placed under oath, that the company had hired a private detective agency to investigate Nader. Nader sued GM for invasion of privacy, settling the case for $425,000 and using the proceeds to found the activist organization known as the Center for the Study of Responsive Law. A year following the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed, Congress unanimously enacted the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. Speaker of the United States House of Representatives John William McCormack said the passage of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act was due to the "crusading spirit of one individual who believed he could do something: Ralph Nader". "Nader's Raiders", Public Citizen and Center for Auto Safety In 1968, Nader recruited seven volunteer law students, dubbed "Nader's Raiders" by the Washington press corps, to evaluate the efficacy and operation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The group's ensuing report, which criticized the body as "ineffective" and "passive" led to an American Bar Association investigation of the FTC. Based on the results of that second study, Richard Nixon revitalized the agency and sent it on a path of vigorous consumer protection and antitrust enforcement for the rest of the 1970s. Following the publication of the report, Nader founded the watchdog group Public Citizen in 1971 to engage in public interest lobbying and activism on issues of consumer rights. He also served on its board of directors until 1980. 1970s–1990s By the early 1970s Nader had established himself as a household name. In a critical memo written by Lewis Powell to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Powell warned business representatives that Nader "has become a legend in his own time and an idol of millions of Americans". Ralph Nader's name appeared in the press as a potential candidate for president for the first time in 1971, when he was offered the opportunity to run as the presidential candidate for the New Party, a progressive split-off from the Democratic Party. Chief among his advocates was author Gore Vidal, who touted a 1972 Nader presidential campaign in a front-page article in Esquire magazine in 1971. Nader declined the advances. In 1973, Ralph Nader was plaintiff in the case against acting attorney general Robert Bork, who under orders of President Richard Nixon had fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox in the so-called Saturday Night Massacre, an action that was ultimately ruled illegal by federal judge Gerhard Gesell. In 1974, he received the S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen. In the 1970s, Nader turned his attention to environmental activism, becoming a key leader in the antinuclear power movement, described by one observer as the "titular head of opposition to nuclear energy". The Critical Mass Energy Project was formed by Nader in 1974 as a national anti-nuclear umbrella group, growing to become the largest national anti-nuclear group in the United States, with several hundred local affiliates and an estimated 200,000 supporters. The organization's main efforts were directed at lobbying activities and providing local groups with scientific and other resources to campaign against nuclear power. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, through his ongoing work with Public Citizen, Nader continued to be involved in issues of consumer rights and public accountability. His work testifying before Congress, drafting model legislation, and organizing citizen letter-writing and protest efforts, earned him direct credit for the enactment of the Freedom of Information Act, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Clean Water Act, Consumer Product Safety Act, and Whistleblower Protection Act. In the late 1990s, Nader would accuse Microsoft of being a monopoly. He would organize a conference featuring Microsoft's critics from the tech world. In 1999, Nader was unsuccessfully approached by Nike to appear in an advertisement. The firm offered Nader $25,000 to say "another shameless attempt by Nike to sell shoes" while holding Air 120 sneakers. After Nader turned down the offer, the corporation hired filmmaker Spike Lee. Presidential campaigns 1972 Ralph Nader's name appeared in the press as a potential candidate for president for the first time in 1971, when he was offered the opportunity to run as the presidential candidate for the New Party, a progressive split-off from the Democratic Party in 1972. Chief among his advocates was author Gore Vidal, who touted a 1972 Nader presidential campaign in a front-page article in Esquire magazine in 1971. Psychologist Alan Rockway organized a "draft Ralph Nader for President" campaign in Florida on the New Party's behalf. Nader declined their offer to run that year; the New Party ultimately joined with the People's Party in running Benjamin Spock in the 1972 presidential election. Spock had hoped Nader in particular would run, getting "some of the loudest applause of the evening" when mentioning him at the University of Alabama. Spock went on to try to recruit Nader for the party among over 100 others, and indicated he would be "delighted" to be replaced by any of them even after he accepted the nomination himself. Nader received one vote for the vice-presidential nomination at the 1972 Democratic National Convention. 1980 In the 1980 Presidential Election, the progressive oriented Citizens Party approached Nader with the prospect of running as their Presidential Nominee. Nader declined their offer stating "I will never run for president". The party ended up nominating biologist Barry Commoner instead. 1992 Nader stood in as a write-in for "none of the above" in both the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic and Republican Primaries and received 3,054 of the 170,333 Democratic votes and 3,258 of the 177,970 Republican votes cast. He was also a candidate in the 1992 Massachusetts Democratic Primary, where he appeared at the top of the ballot (in some areas, he appeared on the ballot as an independent). 1996 Nader was drafted as a candidate for President of the United States on the Green Party ticket during the 1996 presidential election. He was not formally nominated by the Green Party USA, which was, at the time, the largest national Green group; instead he was nominated independently by various state Green parties (in some states, he appeared on the ballot as an independent). However, many activists in the Green Party USA worked actively to campaign for Nader that year. Nader qualified for ballot status in 22 states, garnering 685,297 votes or 0.71% of the popular vote (fourth place overall), although the effort did make significant organizational gains for the party. He refused to raise or spend more than $5,000 on his campaign, presumably to avoid meeting the threshold for Federal Elections Commission reporting requirements; the unofficial Draft Nader committee could (and did) spend more than that, but the committee was legally prevented from coordinating in any way with Nader himself. Nader received some criticism from gay rights supporters for calling gay rights "gonadal politics" and stating that he was not interested in dealing with such matters. In July 2004, however, he publicly stated that he supported same-sex marriage. His 1996 running mates included: Anne Goeke (nine states), Deborah Howes (Oregon), Muriel Tillinghast (New York), Krista Paradise (Colorado), Madelyn Hoffman (New Jersey), Bill Boteler (Washington, D.C.), and Winona LaDuke (California and Texas). 2000 In the 2006 documentary An Unreasonable Man, Nader describes how he was unable to get the views of his public interest groups heard in Washington, even by the Clinton Administration. Nader cites this as one of the primary reasons that he decided to actively run in the 2000 election as candidate of the Green Party, which had been formed in the wake of his 1996 campaign. In June 2000, The Association of State Green Parties (ASGP) organized the national nominating convention that took place in Denver, Colorado, at which Green Party delegates nominated Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke to be their party's candidates for president and vice president. On July 9, the Vermont Progressive Party nominated Nader, giving him ballot access in the state. On August 12, the United Citizens Party of South Carolina chose Ralph Nader as its presidential nominee, giving him a ballot line in the state. In October 2000, at the largest Super Rally of his campaign, held in New York City's Madison Square Garden, 15,000 people paid $20 each to hear Nader speak. Nader's campaign rejected both parties as institutions dominated by corporate interests, stating that Al Gore and George W. Bush were "Tweedledee and Tweedledum". A long list of notable celebrities spoke and performed at the event including Susan Sarandon, Ani DiFranco, Ben Harper, Tim Robbins, Michael Moore, Eddie Vedder and Patti Smith. The campaign also had some prominent union help: The California Nurses Association and the United Electrical Workers endorsed his candidacy and campaigned for him. Nader and LaDuke received 2,883,105 votes, for 2.74 percent of the popular vote (third place overall), missing the 5 percent needed to qualify the Green Party for federally distributed public funding in the next election, yet qualifying the party for ballot status in many states. Nader often openly expressed his hope for Bush's victory over Gore, saying it "would mobilize us", and that environmental and consumer regulatory agencies would fare better under Bush than Gore. When asked which of the two he'd vote for if forced, Nader answered "Bush ... If you want the parties to diverge from one another, have Bush win." As to whether he would feel regret if he caused Gore's defeat, Nader replied "I would not—not at all. I'd rather have a provocateur than an anesthetizer in the White House." On another occasion, Nader answered this question with: "No, not at all ... There may be a cold shower for four years that would help the Democratic Party ... It doesn't matter who is in the White House." Spoiler controversy In the 2000 presidential election in Florida, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by 537 votes. Nader received votes, which led to claims that he was responsible for Gore's defeat. Nader disputes that he helped Bush to win. A 2003 study found that Nader's candidacy was a critical factor in Bush's victory. A 2004 study found that Nader voters had the profile of likely voters with a preference for Democratic candidates. They were therefore likely to vote for Gore over Bush in the absence of Nader's candidacy. A study by Harvard Professor B.C. Burden in 2005 showed Nader did "play a pivotal role in determining who would become president following the 2000 election", but that: However, Jonathan Chait of The American Prospect and The New Republic notes that Nader did indeed focus on swing states disproportionately during the waning days of the campaign, and by doing so jeopardized his own chances of achieving the 5% of the vote he was aiming for. Then there was the debate within the Nader campaign over where to travel in the waning days of the campaign. Some Nader advisers urged him to spend his time in uncontested states such as New York and California. These states – where liberals and leftists could entertain the thought of voting Nader without fear of aiding Bush – offered the richest harvest of potential votes. But, Martin writes, Nader – who emerges from this account as the house radical of his own campaign – insisted on spending the final days of the campaign on a whirlwind tour of battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Florida. In other words, he chose to go where the votes were scarcest, jeopardizing his own chances of winning 5 percent of the vote, which he needed to gain federal funds in 2004. When Nader, in a letter to environmentalists, attacked Gore for "his role as broker of environmental voters for corporate cash," and "the prototype for the bankable, Green corporate politician," and what he called a string of broken promises to the environmental movement, Sierra Club president Carl Pope sent an open letter to Nader, dated 27 October 2000, defending Al Gore's environmental record and calling Nader's strategy "irresponsible." He wrote: You have also broken your word to your followers who signed the petitions that got you on the ballot in many states. You pledged you would not campaign as a spoiler and would avoid the swing states. Your recent campaign rhetoric and campaign schedule make it clear that you have broken this pledge ... Please accept that I, and the overwhelming majority of the environmental movement in this country, genuinely believe that your strategy is flawed, dangerous and reckless. 2004 Nader announced on December 24, 2003, that he would not seek the Green Party's nomination for president in 2004, but did not rule out running as an independent candidate. Ralph Nader and Democratic candidate John Kerry held a widely publicized meeting early in the 2004 presidential campaign. Nader said that John Kerry wanted to work to win Nader's support and the support of Nader's voters, prompting Nader to provide Kerry more than 20 pages of issues that he felt were important. According to Nader, he asked John Kerry to choose any three of the issues and highlight them in his campaign; should Kerry meet these conditions Nader would not contest the election. On February 22, 2004, having not heard back from Kerry, Nader announced that he would run for president as an independent. Due to concerns about a possible spoiler effect, many Democrats urged Nader |
Jersey Air National Guard's 108th Fighter Wing, 141st Fighter Squadron (USAF), as a Republic F-84F Thunderstreak fighter pilot. He then worked at a variety of jobs, including as a technical writer for Douglas Aircraft and as a contributing editor for Flying magazine. He served in the USAF reserve and was deployed in France in 1960. He later became a barnstormer. During the summer of 1970, Bach and his friend Chris Cagle traveled to Ireland, where they participated in flying sequences for Roger Corman's film Von Richthofen and Brown. They flew a variety of World War I aircraft of the Blue Max collection owned by ex-RCAF pilot Lynn Garrison. Bach and Garrison first met when Bach wrote articles for Avian, Garrison's aviation publication. Most of Bach's books involve flight in some way, from the early stories which are purely about flying aircraft, to Stranger to the Ground, his first book, to his later works, in which he used flight as a philosophical metaphor. Literary career Richard Bach's first book, the autobiographical Stranger to the Ground (1963) described the deployment to France of his Air National Guard unit, and was received favorably, for example, by Edmund Fuller in The Wall Street Journal. In 1970, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a story about a seagull who flew for the love of flying rather than merely to catch food, was released by Macmillan Publishers after the manuscript was turned down by several others. It had first been published in Soaring, the magazine of the Soaring Society of America. The book, which included photos of seagulls in flight by photographer Russell Munson, became a number-one bestseller. Containing fewer than 10,000 words, the book sold more than one million copies in 1972 alone. The surprise success of the book was widely reported in the media in the early 1970s. In 1973, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was adapted into a film of the same name, produced by Paramount Pictures Corporation, with a soundtrack by Neil Diamond. In 1975, Bach was the driving force behind Nothing by Chance, a documentary film based on his book of the same name. The film centers on modern barnstorming around the United States in the 1970s. Bach recruited a group of his friends who were pilots to recreate the era of the barnstormer. A second novel, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, published in 1977, tells of an encounter with a modern-day messiah who has decided to quit. On August 31, 2012, Bach was injured in an aircraft landing accident on San Juan Island in Washington. He was landing a 2008 Easton Gilbert G Searey (N346PE) that he had nicknamed Puff at a private airport when the landing gear clipped some power lines. He crashed upside down in a field about two miles from Friday Harbor, taking down two poles and sparking a small grass fire. The day after the accident, Bach was reported to be in serious but stable condition with a head injury and broken shoulder. Bach was hospitalized for four months. He reported that his near-death experience inspired him to finish the fourth part of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which had been originally published in three parts. In December 2012, Publishers Weekly reported that Travels with Puff had been sent to his publisher the day before his accident. Travels with Puff was released on March | as the author of some of the 1970s' biggest sellers, including Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970) and Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977). Bach has written numerous works of fiction, and also non-fiction flight-related titles. Most of Bach's books have been semi-autobiographical, using actual or fictionalized events from his life to illustrate his philosophy. Bach's books espouse his philosophy that our apparent physical limits and mortality are merely appearance. Bach is noted for his love of aviation and for his books related to flying in a metaphorical context. Bach has flown as a hobby since the age of 17. In late August 2012, Bach was badly injured when on approach to landing at Friday Harbor, Washington, his aircraft clipped some power lines and crashed upside down in a field. Early life Bach was born in Oak Park, Illinois, to Roland R. and Ruth Shaw Bach. His father was an American Red Cross chapter manager. Bach attended Long Beach State College in 1955. Bach's first airplane flight occurred at age 14, when his mother was campaigning for a seat on the council of Long Beach, California. Her campaign manager, Paul Marcus, mentioned that he flew airplanes and invited Richard on a flight in his Globe Swift. Aviation career Bach served in the United States Navy Reserve, then in the New Jersey Air National Guard's 108th Fighter Wing, 141st Fighter Squadron (USAF), as a Republic F-84F Thunderstreak fighter pilot. He then worked at a variety of jobs, including as a technical writer for Douglas Aircraft and as a contributing editor for Flying magazine. He served in the USAF reserve and was deployed in France in 1960. He later became a barnstormer. During the summer of 1970, Bach and his friend Chris Cagle traveled to Ireland, where they participated in flying sequences for Roger Corman's film Von Richthofen and Brown. They flew a variety of World War I aircraft of the Blue Max collection owned by ex-RCAF pilot Lynn Garrison. Bach and Garrison first met when Bach wrote articles for Avian, Garrison's aviation publication. Most of Bach's books involve flight in some way, from the early stories which are purely about flying aircraft, to Stranger to the Ground, his first book, to his later works, in which he used flight as a philosophical metaphor. Literary career Richard Bach's first book, the autobiographical Stranger to the Ground (1963) described the deployment to France of his Air National Guard unit, and was received favorably, for example, by Edmund Fuller in The Wall Street Journal. In 1970, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a story about a seagull who flew for the love of flying rather than merely to catch food, was released by Macmillan Publishers after the manuscript was turned down by several others. It had first been published in Soaring, the magazine of the Soaring Society of America. The book, which included photos of seagulls in flight by photographer Russell Munson, became a number-one bestseller. Containing fewer than 10,000 words, the book sold more than one million copies in 1972 alone. The surprise success of the book was widely reported in the media in the early 1970s. In 1973, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was adapted into a film of the same name, produced by Paramount Pictures Corporation, with a soundtrack by Neil Diamond. In 1975, Bach was the driving force behind Nothing by Chance, a documentary film based on his book of the same name. The film centers on modern barnstorming around the United States in the 1970s. Bach recruited a group of his friends who were pilots to recreate the era of the barnstormer. A second novel, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, published in 1977, tells of an encounter with a modern-day messiah who has decided to quit. On August 31, 2012, Bach was injured in an aircraft landing accident on San Juan Island in Washington. He was landing a 2008 Easton Gilbert G Searey (N346PE) that he had nicknamed Puff at a private airport when the landing gear clipped some power lines. |
Wait Organizations RPG Group, Indian business group RPG Life Sciences, Indian pharmaceutical company Rally of the Guinean People (Rassemblement du Peuple Guinéen), Guinean political party Ryanair Pilot Group, Ryanair pilots' trade union Recycled Paper Greetings, greeting card company based in Chicago Science and technology IBM RPG, a computer programming language Retrograde pyelogram, a medical imaging procedure to visualize the urinary tract Ribosomal protein gene, see Ribosome Random plasma glucose, see Random glucose test Other uses Rebounds per | game, a type of video game RPG (film), a 2013 Portuguese science-fiction film "RPG", a song by Sekai no Owari "RPG", a song by Kehlani from her mixtape While We Wait Organizations RPG Group, Indian business group RPG Life Sciences, Indian pharmaceutical company Rally of the Guinean People (Rassemblement du Peuple Guinéen), Guinean political party Ryanair Pilot Group, Ryanair pilots' trade union Recycled Paper Greetings, greeting card company based in Chicago Science and technology IBM RPG, a |
frequency, thereby changing their range. The newest radars fire two pulses during one cell, one for short range (about ) and a separate signal for longer ranges (about ). Distance may also be measured as a function of time. The radar mile is the time it takes for a radar pulse to travel one nautical mile, reflect off a target, and return to the radar antenna. Since a nautical mile is defined as 1,852 m, then dividing this distance by the speed of light (299,792,458 m/s), and then multiplying the result by 2 yields a result of 12.36 μs in duration. Frequency modulation Another form of distance measuring radar is based on frequency modulation. In these systems, the frequency of the transmitted signal is changed over time. Since the signal takes a finite time to travel to and from the target, the received signal is a different frequency than what the transmitter is broadcasting at the time the reflected signal arrives back at the radar. By comparing the frequency of the two signals the difference can be easily measured. This is easily accomplished with very high accuracy even in 1940s electronics. A further advantage is that the radar can operate effectively at relatively low frequencies. This was important in the early development of this type when high-frequency signal generation was difficult or expensive. This technique can be used in continuous wave radar and is often found in aircraft radar altimeters. In these systems a "carrier" radar signal is frequency modulated in a predictable way, typically varying up and down with a sine wave or sawtooth pattern at audio frequencies. The signal is then sent out from one antenna and received on another, typically located on the bottom of the aircraft, and the signal can be continuously compared using a simple beat frequency modulator that produces an audio frequency tone from the returned signal and a portion of the transmitted signal. The modulation index riding on the receive signal is proportional to the time delay between the radar and the reflector. The frequency shift becomes greater with greater time delay. The frequency shift is directly proportional to the distance travelled. That distance can be displayed on an instrument, and it may also be available via the transponder. This signal processing is similar to that used in speed detecting Doppler radar. Example systems using this approach are AZUSA, MISTRAM, and UDOP. Terrestrial radar uses low-power FM signals that cover a larger frequency range. The multiple reflections are analyzed mathematically for pattern changes with multiple passes creating a computerized synthetic image. Doppler effects are used which allows slow moving objects to be detected as well as largely eliminating "noise" from the surfaces of bodies of water. Pulse compression The two techniques outlined above both have their disadvantages. The pulse timing technique has an inherent tradeoff in that the accuracy of the distance measurement is inversely related to the length of the pulse, while the energy, and thus direction range, is directly related. Increasing power for longer range while maintaining accuracy demands extremely high peak power, with 1960s early warning radars often operating in the tens of megawatts. The continuous wave methods spread this energy out in time and thus require much lower peak power compared to pulse techniques, but requires some method of allowing the sent and received signals to operate at the same time, often demanding two separate antennas. The introduction of new electronics in the 1960s allowed the two techniques to be combined. It starts with a longer pulse that is also frequency modulated. Spreading the broadcast energy out in time means lower peak energies can be used, with modern examples typically on the order of tens of kilowatts. On reception, the signal is sent into a system that delays different frequencies by different times. The resulting output is a much shorter pulse that is suitable for accurate distance measurement, while also compressing the received energy into a much higher energy peak and thus reducing the signal to noise ratio. The technique is largely universal on modern large radars. Speed measurement Speed is the change in distance to an object with respect to time. Thus the existing system for measuring distance, combined with a memory capacity to see where the target last was, is enough to measure speed. At one time the memory consisted of a user making grease pencil marks on the radar screen and then calculating the speed using a slide rule. Modern radar systems perform the equivalent operation faster and more accurately using computers. If the transmitter's output is coherent (phase synchronized), there is another effect that can be used to make almost instant speed measurements (no memory is required), known as the Doppler effect. Most modern radar systems use this principle into Doppler radar and pulse-Doppler radar systems (weather radar, military radar). The Doppler effect is only able to determine the relative speed of the target along the line of sight from the radar to the target. Any component of target velocity perpendicular to the line of sight cannot be determined by using the Doppler effect alone, but it can be determined by tracking the target's azimuth over time. It is possible to make a Doppler radar without any pulsing, known as a continuous-wave radar (CW radar), by sending out a very pure signal of a known frequency. CW radar is ideal for determining the radial component of a target's velocity. CW radar is typically used by traffic enforcement to measure vehicle speed quickly and accurately where the range is not important. When using a pulsed radar, the variation between the phase of successive returns gives the distance the target has moved between pulses, and thus its speed can be calculated. Other mathematical developments in radar signal processing include time-frequency analysis (Weyl Heisenberg or wavelet), as well as the chirplet transform which makes use of the change of frequency of returns from moving targets ("chirp"). Pulse-Doppler signal processing Pulse-Doppler signal processing includes frequency filtering in the detection process. The space between each transmit pulse is divided into range cells or range gates. Each cell is filtered independently much like the process used by a spectrum analyzer to produce the display showing different frequencies. Each different distance produces a different spectrum. These spectra are used to perform the detection process. This is required to achieve acceptable performance in hostile environments involving weather, terrain, and electronic countermeasures. The primary purpose is to measure both the amplitude and frequency of the aggregate reflected signal from multiple distances. This is used with weather radar to measure radial wind velocity and precipitation rate in each different volume of air. This is linked with computing systems to produce a real-time electronic weather map. Aircraft safety depends upon continuous access to accurate weather radar information that is used to prevent injuries and accidents. Weather radar uses a low PRF. Coherency requirements are not as strict as those for military systems because individual signals ordinarily do not need to be separated. Less sophisticated filtering is required, and range ambiguity processing is not normally needed with weather radar in comparison with military radar intended to track air vehicles. The alternate purpose is "look-down/shoot-down" capability required to improve military air combat survivability. Pulse-Doppler is also used for ground based surveillance radar required to defend personnel and vehicles. Pulse-Doppler signal processing increases the maximum detection distance using less radiation in close proximity to aircraft pilots, shipboard personnel, infantry, and artillery. Reflections from terrain, water, and weather produce signals much larger than aircraft and missiles, which allows fast moving vehicles to hide using nap-of-the-earth flying techniques and stealth technology to avoid detection until an attack vehicle is too close to destroy. Pulse-Doppler signal processing incorporates more sophisticated electronic filtering that safely eliminates this kind of weakness. This requires the use of medium pulse-repetition frequency with phase coherent hardware that has a large dynamic range. Military applications require medium PRF which prevents range from being determined directly, and range ambiguity resolution processing is required to identify the true range of all reflected signals. Radial movement is usually linked with Doppler frequency to produce a lock signal that cannot be produced by radar jamming signals. Pulse-Doppler signal processing also produces audible signals that can be used for threat identification. Reduction of interference effects Signal processing is employed in radar systems to reduce the radar interference effects. Signal processing techniques include moving target indication, Pulse-Doppler signal processing, moving target detection processors, correlation with secondary surveillance radar targets, space-time adaptive processing, and track-before-detect. Constant false alarm rate and digital terrain model processing are also used in clutter environments. Plot and track extraction A Track algorithm is a radar performance enhancement strategy. Tracking algorithms provide the ability to predict future position of multiple moving objects based on the history of the individual positions being reported by sensor systems. Historical information is accumulated and used to predict future position for use with air traffic control, threat estimation, combat system doctrine, gun aiming, and missile guidance. Position data is accumulated by radar sensors over the span of a few minutes. There are four common track algorithms. Nearest neighbour algorithm Probabilistic Data Association Multiple Hypothesis Tracking Interactive Multiple Model (IMM) Radar video returns from aircraft can be subjected to a plot extraction process whereby spurious and interfering signals are discarded. A sequence of target returns can be monitored through a device known as a plot extractor. The non-relevant real time returns can be removed from the displayed information and a single plot displayed. In some radar systems, or alternatively in the command and control system to which the radar is connected, a radar tracker is used to associate the sequence of plots belonging to individual targets and estimate the targets' headings and speeds. Engineering A radar's components are: A transmitter that generates the radio signal with an oscillator such as a klystron or a magnetron and controls its duration by a modulator. A waveguide that links the transmitter and the antenna. A duplexer that serves as a switch between the antenna and the transmitter or the receiver for the signal when the antenna is used in both situations. A receiver. Knowing the shape of the desired received signal (a pulse), an optimal receiver can be designed using a matched filter. A display processor to produce signals for human readable output devices. An electronic section that controls all those devices and the antenna to perform the radar scan ordered by software. A link to end user devices and displays. Antenna design Radio signals broadcast from a single antenna will spread out in all directions, and likewise a single antenna will receive signals equally from all directions. This leaves the radar with the problem of deciding where the target object is located. Early systems tended to use omnidirectional broadcast antennas, with directional receiver antennas which were pointed in various directions. For instance, the first system to be deployed, Chain Home, used two straight antennas at right angles for reception, each on a different display. The maximum return would be detected with an antenna at right angles to the target, and a minimum with the antenna pointed directly at it (end on). The operator could determine the direction to a target by rotating the antenna so one display showed a maximum while the other showed a minimum. One serious limitation with this type of solution is that the broadcast is sent out in all directions, so the amount of energy in the direction being examined is a small part of that transmitted. To get a reasonable amount of power on the "target", the transmitting aerial should also be directional. Parabolic reflector More modern systems use a steerable parabolic "dish" to create a tight broadcast beam, typically using the same dish as the receiver. Such systems often combine two radar frequencies in the same antenna in order to allow automatic steering, or radar lock. Parabolic reflectors can be either symmetric parabolas or spoiled parabolas: Symmetric parabolic antennas produce a narrow "pencil" beam in both the X and Y dimensions and consequently have a higher gain. The NEXRAD Pulse-Doppler weather radar uses a symmetric antenna to perform detailed volumetric scans of the atmosphere. Spoiled parabolic antennas produce a narrow beam in one dimension and a relatively wide beam in the other. This feature is useful if target detection over a wide range of angles is more important than target location in three dimensions. Most 2D surveillance radars use a spoiled parabolic antenna with a narrow azimuthal beamwidth and wide vertical beamwidth. This beam configuration allows the radar operator to detect an aircraft at a specific azimuth but at an indeterminate height. Conversely, so-called "nodder" height finding radars use a dish with a narrow vertical beamwidth and wide azimuthal beamwidth to detect an aircraft at a specific height but with low azimuthal precision. Types of scan Primary Scan: A scanning technique where the main antenna aerial is moved to produce a scanning beam, examples include circular scan, sector scan, etc. Secondary Scan: A scanning technique where the antenna feed is moved to produce a scanning beam, examples include conical scan, unidirectional sector scan, lobe switching, etc. Palmer Scan: A scanning technique that produces a scanning beam by moving the main antenna and its feed. A Palmer Scan is a combination of a Primary Scan and a Secondary Scan. Conical scanning: The radar beam is rotated in a small circle around the "boresight" axis, which is pointed at the target. Slotted waveguide Applied similarly to the parabolic reflector, the slotted waveguide is moved mechanically to scan and is particularly suitable for non-tracking surface scan systems, where the vertical pattern may remain constant. Owing to its lower cost and less wind exposure, shipboard, airport surface, and harbour surveillance radars now use this approach in preference to a parabolic antenna. Phased array Another method of steering is used in a phased array radar. Phased array antennas are composed of evenly spaced similar antenna elements, such as aerials or rows of slotted waveguide. Each antenna element or group of antenna elements incorporates a discrete phase shift that produces a phase gradient across the array. For example, array elements producing a 5 degree phase shift for each wavelength across the array face will produce a beam pointed 5 degrees away from the centerline perpendicular to the array face. Signals travelling along that beam will be reinforced. Signals offset from that beam will be cancelled. The amount of reinforcement is antenna gain. The amount of cancellation is side-lobe suppression. Phased array radars have been in use since the earliest years of radar in World War II (Mammut radar), but electronic device limitations led to poor performance. Phased array radars were originally used for missile defence (see for example Safeguard Program). They are the heart of the ship-borne Aegis Combat System and the Patriot Missile System. The massive redundancy associated with having a large number of array elements increases reliability at the expense of gradual performance degradation that occurs as individual phase elements fail. To a lesser extent, Phased array radars have been used in weather surveillance. As of 2017, NOAA plans to implement a national network of Multi-Function Phased array radars throughout the United States within 10 years, for meteorological studies and flight monitoring. Phased array antennas can be built to conform to specific shapes, like missiles, infantry support vehicles, ships, and aircraft. As the price of electronics has fallen, phased array radars have become more common. Almost all modern military | well as optical cameras. Reflection If electromagnetic waves travelling through one material meet another material, having a different dielectric constant or diamagnetic constant from the first, the waves will reflect or scatter from the boundary between the materials. This means that a solid object in air or in a vacuum, or a significant change in atomic density between the object and what is surrounding it, will usually scatter radar (radio) waves from its surface. This is particularly true for electrically conductive materials such as metal and carbon fibre, making radar well-suited to the detection of aircraft and ships. Radar absorbing material, containing resistive and sometimes magnetic substances, is used on military vehicles to reduce radar reflection. This is the radio equivalent of painting something a dark colour so that it cannot be seen by the eye at night. Radar waves scatter in a variety of ways depending on the size (wavelength) of the radio wave and the shape of the target. If the wavelength is much shorter than the target's size, the wave will bounce off in a way similar to the way light is reflected by a mirror. If the wavelength is much longer than the size of the target, the target may not be visible because of poor reflection. Low-frequency radar technology is dependent on resonances for detection, but not identification, of targets. This is described by Rayleigh scattering, an effect that creates Earth's blue sky and red sunsets. When the two length scales are comparable, there may be resonances. Early radars used very long wavelengths that were larger than the targets and thus received a vague signal, whereas many modern systems use shorter wavelengths (a few centimetres or less) that can image objects as small as a loaf of bread. Short radio waves reflect from curves and corners in a way similar to glint from a rounded piece of glass. The most reflective targets for short wavelengths have 90° angles between the reflective surfaces. A corner reflector consists of three flat surfaces meeting like the inside corner of a box. The structure will reflect waves entering its opening directly back to the source. They are commonly used as radar reflectors to make otherwise difficult-to-detect objects easier to detect. Corner reflectors on boats, for example, make them more detectable to avoid collision or during a rescue. For similar reasons, objects intended to avoid detection will not have inside corners or surfaces and edges perpendicular to likely detection directions, which leads to "odd" looking stealth aircraft. These precautions do not totally eliminate reflection because of diffraction, especially at longer wavelengths. Half wavelength long wires or strips of conducting material, such as chaff, are very reflective but do not direct the scattered energy back toward the source. The extent to which an object reflects or scatters radio waves is called its radar cross section. Radar range equation The power Pr returning to the receiving antenna is given by the equation: where Pt = transmitter power Gt = gain of the transmitting antenna Ar = effective aperture (area) of the receiving antenna; this can also be expressed as , where = transmitted wavelength Gr = gain of receiving antenna σ = radar cross section, or scattering coefficient, of the target F = pattern propagation factor Rt = distance from the transmitter to the target Rr = distance from the target to the receiver. In the common case where the transmitter and the receiver are at the same location, Rt = Rr and the term Rt² Rr² can be replaced by R4, where R is the range. This yields: This shows that the received power declines as the fourth power of the range, which means that the received power from distant targets is relatively very small. Additional filtering and pulse integration modifies the radar equation slightly for pulse-Doppler radar performance, which can be used to increase detection range and reduce transmit power. The equation above with F = 1 is a simplification for transmission in a vacuum without interference. The propagation factor accounts for the effects of multipath and shadowing and depends on the details of the environment. In a real-world situation, pathloss effects should also be considered. Doppler effect Frequency shift is caused by motion that changes the number of wavelengths between the reflector and the radar. This can degrade or enhance radar performance depending upon how it affects the detection process. As an example, Moving Target Indication can interact with Doppler to produce signal cancellation at certain radial velocities, which degrades performance. Sea-based radar systems, semi-active radar homing, active radar homing, weather radar, military aircraft, and radar astronomy rely on the Doppler effect to enhance performance. This produces information about target velocity during the detection process. This also allows small objects to be detected in an environment containing much larger nearby slow moving objects. Doppler shift depends upon whether the radar configuration is active or passive. Active radar transmits a signal that is reflected back to the receiver. Passive radar depends upon the object sending a signal to the receiver. The Doppler frequency shift for active radar is as follows, where is Doppler frequency, is transmit frequency, is radial velocity, and is the speed of light: . Passive radar is applicable to electronic countermeasures and radio astronomy as follows: . Only the radial component of the velocity is relevant. When the reflector is moving at right angle to the radar beam, it has no relative velocity. Vehicles and weather moving parallel to the radar beam produce the maximum Doppler frequency shift. When the transmit frequency () is pulsed, using a pulse repeat frequency of , the resulting frequency spectrum will contain harmonic frequencies above and below with a distance of . As a result, the Doppler measurement is only non-ambiguous if the Doppler frequency shift is less than half of , called the Nyquist frequency, since the returned frequency otherwise cannot be distinguished from shifting of a harmonic frequency above or below, thus requiring: Or when substituting with : As an example, a Doppler weather radar with a pulse rate of 2 kHz and transmit frequency of 1 GHz can reliably measure weather speed up to at most , thus cannot reliably determine radial velocity of aircraft moving . Polarization In all electromagnetic radiation, the electric field is perpendicular to the direction of propagation, and the electric field direction is the polarization of the wave. For a transmitted radar signal, the polarization can be controlled to yield different effects. Radars use horizontal, vertical, linear, and circular polarization to detect different types of reflections. For example, circular polarization is used to minimize the interference caused by rain. Linear polarization returns usually indicate metal surfaces. Random polarization returns usually indicate a fractal surface, such as rocks or soil, and are used by navigation radars. Limiting factors Beam path and range A radar beam follows a linear path in vacuum but follows a somewhat curved path in atmosphere due to variation in the refractive index of air, which is called the radar horizon. Even when the beam is emitted parallel to the ground, the beam rises above the ground as the curvature of the Earth sinks below the horizon. Furthermore, the signal is attenuated by the medium the beam crosses, and the beam disperses. The maximum range of conventional radar can be limited by a number of factors: Line of sight, which depends on the height above the ground. Without a direct line of sight, the path of the beam is blocked. The maximum non-ambiguous range, which is determined by the pulse repetition frequency. The maximum non-ambiguous range is the distance the pulse can travel to and return from before the next pulse is emitted. Radar sensitivity and the power of the return signal as computed in the radar equation. This component includes factors such as the environmental conditions and the size (or radar cross section) of the target. Noise Signal noise is an internal source of random variations in the signal, which is generated by all electronic components. Reflected signals decline rapidly as distance increases, so noise introduces a radar range limitation. The noise floor and signal to noise ratio are two different measures of performance that affect range performance. Reflectors that are too far away produce too little signal to exceed the noise floor and cannot be detected. Detection requires a signal that exceeds the noise floor by at least the signal to noise ratio. Noise typically appears as random variations superimposed on the desired echo signal received in the radar receiver. The lower the power of the desired signal, the more difficult it is to discern it from the noise. Noise figure is a measure of the noise produced by a receiver compared to an ideal receiver, and this needs to be minimized. Shot noise is produced by electrons in transit across a discontinuity, which occurs in all detectors. Shot noise is the dominant source in most receivers. There will also be flicker noise caused by electron transit through amplification devices, which is reduced using heterodyne amplification. Another reason for heterodyne processing is that for fixed fractional bandwidth, the instantaneous bandwidth increases linearly in frequency. This allows improved range resolution. The one notable exception to heterodyne (downconversion) radar systems is ultra-wideband radar. Here a single cycle, or transient wave, is used similar to UWB communications, see List of UWB channels. Noise is also generated by external sources, most importantly the natural thermal radiation of the background surrounding the target of interest. In modern radar systems, the internal noise is typically about equal to or lower than the external noise. An exception is if the radar is aimed upwards at clear sky, where the scene is so "cold" that it generates very little thermal noise. The thermal noise is given by kB T B, where T is temperature, B is bandwidth (post matched filter) and kB is Boltzmann's constant. There is an appealing intuitive interpretation of this relationship in a radar. Matched filtering allows the entire energy received from a target to be compressed into a single bin (be it a range, Doppler, elevation, or azimuth bin). On the surface it would appear that then within a fixed interval of time one could obtain perfect, error free, detection. To do this one simply compresses all energy into an infinitesimal time slice. What limits this approach in the real world is that, while time is arbitrarily divisible, current is not. The quantum of electrical energy is an electron, and so the best one can do is match filter all energy into a single electron. Since the electron is moving at a certain temperature (Planck spectrum) this noise source cannot be further eroded. We see then that radar, like all macro-scale entities, is profoundly impacted by quantum theory. Noise is random and target signals are not. Signal processing can take advantage of this phenomenon to reduce the noise floor using two strategies. The kind of signal integration used with moving target indication can improve noise up to for each stage. The signal can also be split among multiple filters for pulse-Doppler signal processing, which reduces the noise floor by the number of filters. These improvements depend upon coherence. Interference Radar systems must overcome unwanted signals in order to focus on the targets of interest. These unwanted signals may originate from internal and external sources, both passive and active. The ability of the radar system to overcome these unwanted signals defines its signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). SNR is defined as the ratio of the signal power to the noise power within the desired signal; it compares the level of a desired target signal to the level of background noise (atmospheric noise and noise generated within the receiver). The higher a system's SNR the better it is at discriminating actual targets from noise signals. Clutter Clutter refers to radio frequency (RF) echoes returned from targets which are uninteresting to the radar operators. Such targets include natural objects such as ground, sea, and when not being tasked for meteorological purposes, precipitation (such as rain, snow or hail), sand storms, animals (especially birds), atmospheric turbulence, and other atmospheric effects, such as ionosphere reflections, meteor trails, and Hail spike. Clutter may also be returned from man-made objects such as buildings and, intentionally, by radar countermeasures such as chaff. Some clutter may also be caused by a long radar waveguide between the radar transceiver and the antenna. In a typical plan position indicator (PPI) radar with a rotating antenna, this will usually be seen as a "sun" or "sunburst" in the center of the display as the receiver responds to echoes from dust particles and misguided RF in the waveguide. Adjusting the timing between when the transmitter sends a pulse and when the receiver stage is enabled will generally reduce the sunburst without affecting the accuracy of the range, since most sunburst is caused by a diffused transmit pulse reflected before it leaves the antenna. Clutter is considered a passive interference source, since it only appears in response to radar signals sent by the radar. Clutter is detected and neutralized in several ways. Clutter tends to appear static between radar scans; on subsequent scan echoes, desirable targets will appear to move, and all stationary echoes can be eliminated. Sea clutter can be reduced by using horizontal polarization, while rain is reduced with circular polarization (meteorological radars wish for the opposite effect, and therefore use linear polarization to detect precipitation). Other methods attempt to increase the signal-to-clutter ratio. Clutter moves with the wind or is stationary. Two common strategies to improve measure or performance in a clutter environment are: Moving target indication, which integrates successive pulses and Doppler processing, which uses filters to separate clutter from desirable signals. The most effective clutter reduction technique is pulse-Doppler radar. Doppler separates clutter from aircraft and spacecraft using a frequency spectrum, so individual signals can be separated from multiple reflectors located in the same volume using velocity differences. This requires a coherent transmitter. Another technique uses a moving target indicator that subtracts the receive signal from two successive pulses using phase to reduce signals from slow moving objects. This can be adapted for systems that lack a coherent transmitter, such as time-domain pulse-amplitude radar. Constant false alarm rate, a form of automatic gain control (AGC), is a method that relies on clutter returns far outnumbering |
behaving erratically, not responding to their radio calls, or note that it's transmitting a distress signal through its transponder. Rather than scramble Typhoons at the first hint of something abnormal, a controller has the option to put them on a higher level of alert, 'a call to cockpit'. In this scenario the pilot races to the hardened aircraft shelter and does everything short of starting his engines". On 4 October 2015, a final stand-down saw the end of more than 70 years of RAF Search and Rescue provision in the UK. The RAF and Royal Navy's Westland Sea King fleets, after over 30 years of service, were retired. A civilian contractor, Bristow Helicopters, took over responsibility for UK Search and Rescue, under a Private Finance Initiative with newly purchased Sikorsky S-92 and AgustaWestland AW189 aircraft. The new contract means that all UK SAR coverage is now provided by Bristow aircraft. In 2018, the RAF's vision of a future constellation of imagery satellites was initiated through the launch of the Carbonite-2 technology demonstrator. The 100 kg Carbonite-2 uses commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components to deliver high-quality imagery and 3D video footage from space. From March 2020, as part of Operation Rescript, the RAF has been assisting with the response efforts to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. This has seen the service provide repatriation flights and aeromedical evacuations of COVID-19 patients, drivers and call-handlers to support ambulance services and medics to assist with the staffing of hospitals, testing units and vaccination centres. Under Operation Broadshare, the RAF has also been involved with COVID-19 relief operations overseas, repatriating stranded nationals and delivering medical supplies and vaccines to British Overseas Territories and military installations. Structure Senior management The professional head and highest-ranking officer of the Royal Air Force is the Chief of the Air Staff (CAS). He reports to the Chief of the Defence Staff, who is the professional head of the British Armed Forces. The incumbent Chief of the Air Staff is Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston, who was appointed in July 2019. The management of the RAF is the responsibility of the Air Force Board, a sub-committee of the Defence Council which is part of the Ministry of Defence and body legally responsible for the defence of the United Kingdom and its overseas territories. The Chief of the Air Staff chairs the Air Force Board Standing Committee (AFBSC) which decides on the policy and actions required for the RAF to meet the requirements of the Defence Council and Her Majesty's Government. The Chief of the Air Staff is supported by several other senior commanders; the main positions are shown in the following table. Air Command Administrative and operational command of the RAF is delegated by the Air Force Board to Headquarters Air Command, based at RAF High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. Air Command was formed on 1 April 2007 by combining RAF Strike Command and RAF Personnel and Training Command, resulting in a single command covering the whole RAF, led by the Chief of the Air Staff. Through its subordinate groups, Air Command oversees the whole spectrum of RAF aircraft and operations. United Kingdom Space Command (UKSC), established 1 April 2021 under the command of Air Vice-Marshal Paul Godfrey is a joint command, but sits "under the Royal Air Force." Godfrey is of equal rank to the commanders of 1, 2, 11, and 22 Groups. The new command has "responsibility for not just operations, but also generating, training and growing the force, and also owning the money and putting all the programmatic rigour into delivering new ..capabilities." UKSC headquarters is at RAF High Wycombe co-located with Air Command. Groups Groups are the subdivisions of operational commands and are responsible for certain types of capabilities or for operations in limited geographical areas. There are five groups subordinate to Air Command, of which four are functional and one is geographically focused: No. 1 Group (Air Combat) No. 1 Group is responsible for combat aircraft (comprising the Lightning Force and Typhoon Force) and the RAF's intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance (ISTAR) capabilities. It oversees stations at RAF Coningsby and RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire, RAF Lossiemouth in Moray and RAF Marham in Norfolk. The group's Eurofighter Typhoon FGR4 aircraft protect UK and NATO airspace by providing a continuous Quick Reaction Alert capability. No. 2 Group (Air Combat Support) No. 2 Group controls the Air Mobility Force which provides strategic and tactical airlift, air-to-air refuelling and Command Support Air Transport. The group is also responsible for the RAF's Force Protection assets comprising the RAF Regiment and RAF Police. It oversees stations at RAF Benson and RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, RAF Henlow in Bedfordshire, RAF Honington in Suffolk, RAF Odiham in Hampshire and RAF Northolt in West London. No. 11 Group (Multi-domain operations) No. 11 Group is responsible for integrating operations across the air, cyber and space domains whilst responding to new and evolving threats. It includes the RAF's Battlespace Management Force which controls the UK Air Surveillance and Control System (ASACS). The group oversees stations at RAF Boulmer in Northumberland, RAF Fylingdales in North Yorkshire, RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire and RAF Spadeadam in Cumbria. No. 22 Group (Training) No. 22 Group is responsible for the supply of qualified and skilled personnel to the RAF and provides flying and non-flying training to all three British armed services. It is the end-user of the UK Military Flying Training System which is provided by civilian contractor Ascent Flight Training. The group oversees stations at RAF College Cranwell in Lincolnshire, RAF Cosford and RAF Shawbury in Shropshire, RAF Halton in Buckinghamshire, MOD St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan, RAF St Mawgan in Cornwall and RAF Valley on Angelsey. The No. 22 Group also manages the Royal Air Force Air Cadets. No. 83 Expeditionary Air Group No. 83 Expeditionary Air Group (No. 83 EAG) is the RAF's operational headquarters in the Middle East, based at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. It is responsible for UK air operations in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean (Operation Kipion), the military intervention against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Operation Shader) and wider UK defence objectives in the Middle East. Operations are delivered through four Expeditionary Air Wings (No. 901 EAW, No. 902 EAW, No. 903 EAW and No. 904 EAW). Stations An RAF station is ordinarily subordinate to a group and is commanded by a group captain. Each station typically hosts several flying and non-flying squadrons or units which are supported by administrative and support wings. United Kingdom Front-line flying operations are focussed at eight stations: RAF Coningsby, RAF Marham and RAF Lossiemouth (Air Combat) RAF Waddington (Intelligence, Surveillance Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR)) RAF Brize Norton and RAF Northolt (Air Transport) RAF Benson and RAF Odiham (Support Helicopter Force operating under Joint Helicopter Command) Flying training takes places at RAF Barkston Heath, RAF College Cranwell, RAF Shawbury and RAF Valley, each forming part of the UK Military Flying Training System which is dedicated to training aircrew for all three UK armed services. Specialist ground crew training is focused at RAF Cosford, RAF St Mawgan and MOD St. Athan. Operations are supported by numerous other flying and non-flying stations, with activity focussed at RAF Honington which coordinates Force Protection and RAF Leeming & RAF Wittering which have a support enabler role. A Control and Reporting Centre (CRC) at RAF Boulmer is tasked with compiling a Recognised Air Picture of UK air space and providing tactical control of the Quick Reaction Alert Force. In order to achieve this Boulmer is supported by a network of eight Remote Radar Heads (RRHs) spread the length of the UK. Overseas The UK operates permanent military airfields (known as Permanent Joint Operating Bases) in four British Overseas Territories. These bases contribute to the physical defence and maintenance of sovereignty of the British Overseas Territories and enable the UK to conduct expeditionary military operations. Although command and oversight of the bases is provided by Strategic Command, the airfield elements are known as RAF stations. RAF Akrotiri (Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia, Cyprus) RAF Ascension Island (Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cuhna) RAF Mount Pleasant (Falkland Islands) RAF Gibraltar (Gibraltar) Three RAF squadrons are based overseas. No. 84 Squadron is located at RAF Akrotiri, operating the Griffin HAR.2 for search and rescue. No. 17 Test and Evaluation Squadron and No. 39 Squadron are located within the United States to support close cooperation with the U.S. Air Force in the development of the F-35B Lightning (Edwards Air Force Base, California) and the operation of the MQ-9A Reaper (Creech Air Force Base, Nevada) respectively. Squadrons A flying squadron is an aircraft unit which carries out the primary tasks of the RAF. RAF squadrons are somewhat analogous to the regiments of the British Army in that they have histories and traditions going back to their formation, regardless of where they are based or which aircraft they are operating. They can be awarded standards and battle honours for meritorious service. Most flying squadrons are commanded by a wing commander and, for a fast-jet squadron, have an establishment of around twelve aircraft. Flights Independent flights are so designated because they are explicitly smaller in size than a squadron. Many independent flights are, or have been, front-line flying units. For example, No. 1435 Flight carries out air defence duties for the Falkland Islands, with four Eurofighter Typhoon fighters based at RAF Mount Pleasant. Support wings and units Support capabilities are provided by several specialist wings and other units. Air Warfare Centre (RAF Waddington) Airborne Delivery Wing (RAF Brize Norton) Mobile Meteorological Unit (RAF Scampton) Tactical Communications Wing (RAF Leeming) Tactical Medical Wing (RAF Brize Norton) Tactical Supply Wing (MOD Stafford) No. 1 Air Control Centre (RAF Scampton) No. 1 Air Mobility Wing (RAF Brize Norton) No. 1 Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing (RAF Waddington) No. 42 (Expeditionary Support) Wing (RAF Wittering) No. 85 (Expeditionary Logistics) Wing (RAF Wittering) No. 90 Signals Unit (RAF Leeming) Expeditionary Air Wings Command, control, and support for overseas operations is typically provided through Expeditionary Air Wings (EAWs). Each wing is brought together as and when required and comprises the deployable elements of its home station as well as other support elements from throughout the RAF. No. 34 Expeditionary Air Wing (RAF Waddington) – ISTAR operations No. 38 Expeditionary Air Wing (RAF Brize Norton) – air transport operations No. 121 Expeditionary Air Wing (RAF Coningsby) – multi-role operations No. 135 Expeditionary Air Wing (RAF Leeming) – fighter operations No. 138 Expeditionary Air Wing (RAF Marham) – fighter operations No. 140 Expeditionary Air Wing (RAF Lossiemouth) – fighter operations Several Expeditionary Air Wings are based overseas: No. 901 Expeditionary Air Wing (Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar) – Communication and information systems support No. 902 Expeditionary Air Wing (Middle East) – Helicopter support No. 903 Expeditionary Air Wing (RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus) – Supports Operation Shader No. 905 Expeditionary Air Wing (RAF Mount Pleasant, Falklands Islands) – Protection of British Overseas Territories in the South Atlantic No. 906 Expeditionary Air Wing (Middle East) – Air transport support Training schools Flying training The RAF Schools consist of the squadrons and support apparatus that train new aircrew to join front-line squadrons. The schools separate individual streams, but group together units with similar responsibility or that operate the same aircraft type. Some schools operate with only one squadron, and have an overall training throughput which is relatively small; some, like No. 3 Flying Training School, have responsibility for all Elementary Flying Training (EFT) in the RAF, and all RAF aircrew will pass through its squadrons when they start their flying careers. No. 2 Flying Training School and No. 6 Flying Training School do not have a front-line training responsibility – their job is to group the University Air Squadrons and the Volunteer Gliding Squadrons together. The commanding officer of No. 2 FTS holds the only full-time flying appointment for a Group Captain in the RAF, and is a reservist. Central Flying School (RAF Cranwell) – standardises flying training across the air force and ensures standards and safety are maintained. No. 1 Flying Training School (RAF Shawbury) – basic and advanced helicopter training. No. 2 Flying Training School (RAF Syerston) – gliding training provided by Volunteer Gliding Squadrons based at airfields throughout the UK. No. 3 Flying Training School (RAF Cranwell) – Elementary Flying Training (EFT) for RAF, Fleet Air Arm and Army Air Corps crews, also operates from RAF Wittering and RAF Barkston Heath. No. 4 Flying Training School (RAF Valley) – Basic Fast Jet Training (BFJT) and Advanced Fast Jet Training (AFJT). No. 6 Flying Training School (RAF Cranwell) – Initial training provided by University Air Squadrons and Air Experience Flights based at airfields throughout the UK. Non-flying training The British military operate a number of joint training organisations, with Air Command leading the provision of technical training through the Defence College of Technical Training (DCTT). It provides training in aeronautical engineering, electro and mechanical engineering, and communication and information systems. No. 1 School of Technical Training is based at RAF Cosford and provides RAF personnel with mechanical, avionics, weapons and survival equipment training. Also based at Cosford is the Aerosystems Engineer and Management Training School. Both are part of the Defence School of Aeronautical Engineering. No. 4 School of Technical Training is part of the Defence School of Electronic and Mechanical Engineering (DSEME) and is based at MOD St Athan. It provides training to non-aircraft ground engineering technicians. No. 1 Radio School and the Aerial Erectors School are based at Cosford and RAF Digby respectively and are part of the Defence School of Communications and Information Systems. Specialist training and education The Royal Air Force operates several units and centres for the provision of non-generic training and education. These include the Royal Air Force Leadership Centre and the RAF Centre for Air Power Studies, both based at RAF Cranwell, and the Air Warfare Centre, based at RAF Waddington and RAF Cranwell. Non-commissioned officer training and developmental courses occur at RAF Halton and officer courses occur at the Joint Services Command and Staff College at Shrivenham. Personnel At its height in 1944 during the Second World War, more than 1,100,000 personnel were serving in the RAF. The longest-lived founding member of the RAF was Henry Allingham, who died on 18 July 2009 aged 113. As of 1 January 2015, the RAF numbered some 34,200 Regular and 1,940 Royal Auxiliary Air Force personnel, giving a combined component strength of 36,140 personnel. In addition to the active elements of the RAF, (Regular and Royal Auxiliary Air Force), all ex-Regular personnel remain liable to be recalled for duty in a time of need, this is known as the Regular Reserve. In 2007, there were 33,980 RAF Regular Reserves, of which 7,950 served under a fixed-term reserve contract. Publications since April 2013 no-longer report the entire strength of the Regular Reserve, instead they only give a figure for Regular Reserves who serve under a fixed-term reserve contract. They had a strength of 7,120 personnel in 2014. Figures provided by the International Institute for Strategic Studies from 2012 showed that RAF pilots achieve a relatively high number of flying hours per year when compared with other major NATO allies such as France and Germany. RAF pilots achieve 210 to 290 flying hours per year. French and German Air Force pilots achieved 180 and 150 flying hours across their fleets respectively. Officers Officers hold a commission from the Sovereign, which provides the legal authority for them to issue orders to subordinates. The commission of a regular officer is granted after successfully completing the 24-week-long Initial Officer Training course at the RAF College, Cranwell, Lincolnshire. To emphasise the merger of both military and naval aviation when the RAF was formed, many of the titles of officers were deliberately chosen to be of a naval character, such as flight lieutenant, wing commander, group captain, and air commodore. Other ranks Other ranks attend the Recruit Training Squadron at RAF Halton for basic training. The titles and insignia of other ranks in the RAF were based on that of the Army, with some alterations in terminology. Over the years, this structure has seen significant changes: for example, there was once a separate system for those in technical trades, and the ranks of chief technician and junior technician continue to be held only by personnel in technical trades. RAF other ranks fall into four categories: Warrant Officers, Senior Non-Commissioned Officers, Junior Non-Commissioned Officers and Airmen. All Warrant Officers in the RAF are equal in terms of rank, but the most senior Non-Commissioned appointment is known as the Warrant Officer of the Royal Air Force. Ranks Aircraft Combat air Typhoon The Eurofighter Typhoon FGR4 is the RAF's primary multi-role air defence and ground attack fighter aircraft, following the retirement of the Panavia Tornado F3 in late March 2011. With the completion of 'Project Centurion' upgrades, the Typhoon FGR4 took over ground attack duties from the Panavia Tornado GR4, which was retired on 1 April 2019. The Typhoon is tasked to defend UK airspace, while also frequently deploying in support of NATO air defence missions in the Baltic (Operation Azotize), Black Sea (Operation Biloxi), and Iceland. The RAF has seven front-line Typhoon squadrons, plus an Operational Conversion Unit (OCU), and Operational Evaluation Unit (OEU); No. 3 (Fighter) Squadron, No. XI (Fighter) Squadron, No. 12 Squadron (joint RAF / Qatar Air Force), No. 29 Squadron (OCU), and No. 41 Test and Evaluation Squadron (OEU) based at RAF Coningsby; with No. 1 (F) Squadron, No. II (Army Cooperation) Squadron, No. 6 Squadron, and No. IX (Bomber) Squadron based at RAF Lossiemouth. Additionally, four Typhoons (Faith, Hope, Charity, and Desperation) are based at RAF Mount Pleasant on the Falkland Islands, forming No. 1435 Flight, where they provide air defence. It was originally suggested that an eighth front-line Typhoon squadron could be formed, however, the 2021 Defence Command Paper announced the retirement of 24 Tranche 1 Typhoons by 2025, and a commitment to seven front-line squadrons. The Typhoon made its combat debut in support of Operation Ellamy in 2011, and has been supporting Operation Shader since December 2015. Lightning The Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II is a single-seat, single-engine, all-weather stealth multirole combat aircraft. It is intended to perform both air superiority and strike missions while also providing electronic warfare and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. It will be jointly operated by the RAF and the Royal Navy and with its ability to perform short take-offs and vertical-landings (STOVL), can operate from the Royal Navy's Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers. Originally a total of 138 Lightnings were planned, however the 2021 Defence Command Paper amended this to a commitment to increase the fleet beyond the current order of 48. By October 2021, 24 F-35Bs had been delivered to the RAF (though one crashed in November 2021). The first RAF squadron to operate the F-35B was No. 17 Test and Evaluation Squadron at Edwards AFB, California, accepting its first aircraft in 2014. No. 617 (The Dambusters) Squadron officially reformed on 18 April 2018 as the first operational RAF Lightning squadron. The first four aircraft arrived at RAF Marham from the United States in June 2018, with a further five arriving in August 2018. The Lightning was declared combat ready in January 2019. The second UK based F-35B squadron to be formed was No. 207 Squadron on 1 August 2019 as the OCU for both RAF and Royal Navy pilots. Intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance (ISTAR) Six Hawker Beechcraft Shadow R1s (with two more to be converted) are operated by No. 14 Squadron from RAF Waddington, these aircraft are King Air 350CERs that have been specially converted for the ISTAR role. Four Shadow R1s were originally ordered in 2007 due to an Urgent Operational Requirement, and began the conversion process to the ISTAR role in 2009. ZZ416 was the first Shadow R1 to be delivered in May 2009 to No. V (AC) Squadron. A further Shadow was procured and delivered in December 2011. The Shadow fleet was transferred over to the newly reformed No. 14 Squadron in October 2011. Following the 2015 SDSR, three more Shadows were ordered and the fleet was given an OSD of 2030. Ten General Atomics MQ-9A Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles have been purchased to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are operated by No. 39 Squadron based at Creech Air Force Base and No. XIII Squadron at RAF Waddington. Three Boeing RC-135W Rivet Joints (also known in RAF service as Airseeker) replaced the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod R1 fleet in the signals intelligence role under the Airseeker Programme and are flown by No. 51 Squadron. The Nimrod fleet was retired in 2011, the RAF co-manned aircraft of the US Air Force until the three RC-135s entered service between 2014 and 2017. The aircraft were Boeing KC-135R Stratotanker tankers converted to RC-135W standard in the most complex combined Foreign Military Sales case and co-operative support arrangement that the UK had undertaken with the United States Air Force since the Second World War. The Rivet Joint received its first operational deployment in August 2014, when it was deployed to the Middle East to fly missions over Iraq and Syria as part of Operation Shader. The RC-135W's OSD is 2035. Based at RAF Waddington, No. 54 Squadron and No. 56 Squadron act as the OCU and OEU for the ISTAR fleet respectively. Maritime patrol Nine Boeing Poseidon MRA1 were ordered by the Government in November 2015 in its Strategic Defence and Security Review for surveillance, anti-submarine and anti-surface ship warfare, filling a capability gap in maritime patrol that had been left since the cancellation of the BAE Systems Nimrod MRA4 programme in the 2010 SDSR. On 13 July 2017, it was announced that No. 120 Squadron and No. 201 Squadron, both former Nimrod MR2 squadrons, would operate the Poseidon and be based at RAF Lossiemouth. No. 120 Squadron stood up on 1 April 2018, with No. 201 Squadron reforming on 7 August 2021. No. 54 Squadron acts as the OCU for the Poseidon fleet. The first production Poseidon MRA1 ZP801 made its initial flight on 13 July 2019. ZP801 arrived at Kinloss Barracks, the former home of the Nimrod, on 4 February 2020, filling a decade long gap in maritime capability. The Poseidon was declared combat ready in April 2020. The Poseidon carried out its first operational mission on 3 August 2020, when the Russian warship Vasily Bykov was tracked. A Poseidon MRA1 arrived at RAF Lossiemouth for the first time in October 2020. The ninth, and final Poseidon arrived at RAF Lossiemouth on 11 January 2022. Air mobility No. 99 Squadron operate eight Boeing C-17A Globemaster III | of war at first it was ineffectual; it was only later, particularly under the leadership of Air Chief Marshal Harris, that these attacks became increasingly devastating, from early 1943 onward, as new technology and greater numbers of superior aircraft became available. The RAF adopted night-time area bombing on German cities such as Hamburg and Dresden. Night time area bombing constituted the great bulk of the RAF's bombing campaign, mainly due to Harris, but it also developed precision bombing techniques for specific operations, such as the "Dambusters" raid by No. 617 Squadron, or the Amiens prison raid known as Operation Jericho. Cold War era Following victory in the Second World War, the RAF underwent significant re-organisation, as technological advances in air warfare saw the arrival of jet fighters and bombers. During the early stages of the Cold War, one of the first major operations undertaken by the RAF was the Berlin Airlift, codenamed Operation Plainfire. Between 26 June 1948 and the lifting of the Russian blockade of the city on 12 May 1949, the RAF provided 17% of the total supplies delivered, using Avro Yorks, Douglas Dakotas flying to Gatow Airport and Short Sunderlands flying to Lake Havel. Before Britain developed its own nuclear weapons, the RAF was provided with American nuclear weapons under Project E. However, following the development of its own arsenal, the British Government elected on 16 February 1960 to share the country's nuclear deterrent between the RAF and submarines of the Royal Navy, first deciding to concentrate solely on the air force's V bomber fleet. These were initially armed with nuclear gravity bombs, later being equipped with the Blue Steel missile. Following the development of the Royal Navy's Polaris submarines, the strategic nuclear deterrent passed to the navy's submarines on 30 June 1969. With the introduction of Polaris, the RAF's strategic nuclear role was reduced to a tactical one, using WE.177 gravity bombs. This tactical role was continued by the V bombers into the 1980s and until 1998 by the Panavia Tornado GR1. For much of the Cold War the primary role of the RAF was the defence of Western Europe against potential attack by the Soviet Union, with many squadrons based in West Germany. The main RAF bases in RAF(G) were RAF Brüggen, RAF Gutersloh, RAF Laarbruch and RAF Wildenrath – the only air defence base in RAF(G). With the decline of the British Empire, global operations were scaled back, and RAF Far East Air Force was disbanded on 31 October 1971. Despite this, the RAF fought in many battles in the Cold War period. In June 1948 the RAF commenced Operation Firedog against Malayan pro-independence fighters during the Malayan Emergency. Operations continued for the next 12 years until 1960 with aircraft flying out of RAF Tengah and RAF Butterworth. The RAF played a minor role in the Korean War, with flying boats taking part. From 1953 to 1956 the RAF Avro Lincoln squadrons carried out anti-Mau Mau operations in Kenya using its base at RAF Eastleigh. The Suez Crisis in 1956 saw a large RAF role, with aircraft operating from RAF Akrotiri and RAF Nicosia on Cyprus and RAF Luqa and RAF Hal Far on Malta as part of Operation Musketeer. The RAF suffered its most recent loss to an enemy aircraft during the Suez Crisis, when an English Electric Canberra PR7 was shot down over Syria. In 1957, the RAF participated heavily during the Jebel Akhdar War in Oman, operating both de Havilland Venom and Avro Shackleton aircraft. The RAF made 1,635 raids, dropping 1,094 tons and firing 900 rockets at the interior of Oman between July and December 1958, targeting insurgents, mountain top villages and water channels in a war that remained under low profile. The Konfrontasi against Indonesia in the early 1960s did see use of RAF aircraft, but due to a combination of deft diplomacy and selective ignoring of certain events by both sides, it never developed into a full-scale war. One of the largest actions undertaken by the RAF during the Cold War was the air campaign during the 1982 Falklands War, in which the RAF operated alongside the Fleet Air Arm. During the war, RAF aircraft were deployed in the mid-Atlantic at RAF Ascension Island and a detachment from No. 1 Squadron was deployed with the Royal Navy, operating from the aircraft carrier HMS Hermes. RAF pilots also flew missions using the Royal Navy's Sea Harriers in the air-to-air combat role, in particular Flight Lieutenant Dave Morgan the highest scoring pilot of the war. Following a British victory, the RAF remained in the South Atlantic to provide air defence to the Falkland Islands, with the McDonnell Douglas Phantom FGR2 based at RAF Mount Pleasant which was built in 1984. Post-Cold War With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the RAF's focus returned to expeditionary air power. Since 1990, the RAF has been involved in several large-scale operations, including the 1991 Gulf War, the 1999 Kosovo War, the 2001 War in Afghanistan, the 2003 invasion and war in Iraq and the 2011 intervention in Libya. The RAF's 90th anniversary was commemorated on 1 April 2008 by a flypast of the RAF's Aerobatic Display Team the Red Arrows and four Eurofighter Typhoons along the River Thames, in a straight line from just south of London City Airport Tower Bridge, the London Eye, the RAF Memorial and (at 13.00) the Ministry of Defence building. Four major defence reviews have been conducted since the end of the Cold War: the 1990 Options for Change, the 1998 Strategic Defence Review, the 2003 Delivering Security in a Changing World and the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR). All four defence reviews have resulted in steady reductions in manpower and numbers of aircraft, especially combat aircraft such as fast-jets. As part of the latest 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, the BAE Systems Nimrod MRA4 maritime patrol aircraft was cancelled due to over spending and missing deadlines. Other reductions saw total manpower reduced by 5,000 personnel to a trained strength of 33,000 and the early retirement of the Joint Force Harrier aircraft, the BAE Harrier GR7/GR9. In recent years, fighter aircraft on Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) have been increasingly required to scramble in response to Russian Air Force aircraft approaching British airspace. On 24 January 2014, in the Houses of Parliament, Conservative MP and Minister of State for the Armed Forces, Andrew Robathan, announced that the RAF's QRA force had been scrambled almost thirty times in the last three years: eleven times during 2010, ten times during 2011 and eight times during 2012.RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire and RAF Lossiemouth in Moray both provide QRA aircraft, and scramble their Typhoons within minutes to meet or intercept aircraft which give cause for concern. Lossiemouth generally covers the northern sector of UK airspace, while Coningsby covers the southern sector. Typhoon pilot Flight Lieutenant Noel Rees describes how QRA duty works. "At the start of the scaled QRA response, civilian air traffic controllers might see on their screens an aircraft behaving erratically, not responding to their radio calls, or note that it's transmitting a distress signal through its transponder. Rather than scramble Typhoons at the first hint of something abnormal, a controller has the option to put them on a higher level of alert, 'a call to cockpit'. In this scenario the pilot races to the hardened aircraft shelter and does everything short of starting his engines". On 4 October 2015, a final stand-down saw the end of more than 70 years of RAF Search and Rescue provision in the UK. The RAF and Royal Navy's Westland Sea King fleets, after over 30 years of service, were retired. A civilian contractor, Bristow Helicopters, took over responsibility for UK Search and Rescue, under a Private Finance Initiative with newly purchased Sikorsky S-92 and AgustaWestland AW189 aircraft. The new contract means that all UK SAR coverage is now provided by Bristow aircraft. In 2018, the RAF's vision of a future constellation of imagery satellites was initiated through the launch of the Carbonite-2 technology demonstrator. The 100 kg Carbonite-2 uses commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components to deliver high-quality imagery and 3D video footage from space. From March 2020, as part of Operation Rescript, the RAF has been assisting with the response efforts to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. This has seen the service provide repatriation flights and aeromedical evacuations of COVID-19 patients, drivers and call-handlers to support ambulance services and medics to assist with the staffing of hospitals, testing units and vaccination centres. Under Operation Broadshare, the RAF has also been involved with COVID-19 relief operations overseas, repatriating stranded nationals and delivering medical supplies and vaccines to British Overseas Territories and military installations. Structure Senior management The professional head and highest-ranking officer of the Royal Air Force is the Chief of the Air Staff (CAS). He reports to the Chief of the Defence Staff, who is the professional head of the British Armed Forces. The incumbent Chief of the Air Staff is Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston, who was appointed in July 2019. The management of the RAF is the responsibility of the Air Force Board, a sub-committee of the Defence Council which is part of the Ministry of Defence and body legally responsible for the defence of the United Kingdom and its overseas territories. The Chief of the Air Staff chairs the Air Force Board Standing Committee (AFBSC) which decides on the policy and actions required for the RAF to meet the requirements of the Defence Council and Her Majesty's Government. The Chief of the Air Staff is supported by several other senior commanders; the main positions are shown in the following table. Air Command Administrative and operational command of the RAF is delegated by the Air Force Board to Headquarters Air Command, based at RAF High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. Air Command was formed on 1 April 2007 by combining RAF Strike Command and RAF Personnel and Training Command, resulting in a single command covering the whole RAF, led by the Chief of the Air Staff. Through its subordinate groups, Air Command oversees the whole spectrum of RAF aircraft and operations. United Kingdom Space Command (UKSC), established 1 April 2021 under the command of Air Vice-Marshal Paul Godfrey is a joint command, but sits "under the Royal Air Force." Godfrey is of equal rank to the commanders of 1, 2, 11, and 22 Groups. The new command has "responsibility for not just operations, but also generating, training and growing the force, and also owning the money and putting all the programmatic rigour into delivering new ..capabilities." UKSC headquarters is at RAF High Wycombe co-located with Air Command. Groups Groups are the subdivisions of operational commands and are responsible for certain types of capabilities or for operations in limited geographical areas. There are five groups subordinate to Air Command, of which four are functional and one is geographically focused: No. 1 Group (Air Combat) No. 1 Group is responsible for combat aircraft (comprising the Lightning Force and Typhoon Force) and the RAF's intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance (ISTAR) capabilities. It oversees stations at RAF Coningsby and RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire, RAF Lossiemouth in Moray and RAF Marham in Norfolk. The group's Eurofighter Typhoon FGR4 aircraft protect UK and NATO airspace by providing a continuous Quick Reaction Alert capability. No. 2 Group (Air Combat Support) No. 2 Group controls the Air Mobility Force which provides strategic and tactical airlift, air-to-air refuelling and Command Support Air Transport. The group is also responsible for the RAF's Force Protection assets comprising the RAF Regiment and RAF Police. It oversees stations at RAF Benson and RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, RAF Henlow in Bedfordshire, RAF Honington in Suffolk, RAF Odiham in Hampshire and RAF Northolt in West London. No. 11 Group (Multi-domain operations) No. 11 Group is responsible for integrating operations across the air, cyber and space domains whilst responding to new and evolving threats. It includes the RAF's Battlespace Management Force which controls the UK Air Surveillance and Control System (ASACS). The group oversees stations at RAF Boulmer in Northumberland, RAF Fylingdales in North Yorkshire, RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire and RAF Spadeadam in Cumbria. No. 22 Group (Training) No. 22 Group is responsible for the supply of qualified and skilled personnel to the RAF and provides flying and non-flying training to all three British armed services. It is the end-user of the UK Military Flying Training System which is provided by civilian contractor Ascent Flight Training. The group oversees stations at RAF College Cranwell in Lincolnshire, RAF Cosford and RAF Shawbury in Shropshire, RAF Halton in Buckinghamshire, MOD St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan, RAF St Mawgan in Cornwall and RAF Valley on Angelsey. The No. 22 Group also manages the Royal Air Force Air Cadets. No. 83 Expeditionary Air Group No. 83 Expeditionary Air Group (No. 83 EAG) is the RAF's operational headquarters in the Middle East, based at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. It is responsible for UK air operations in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean (Operation Kipion), the military intervention against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Operation Shader) and wider UK defence objectives in the Middle East. Operations are delivered through four Expeditionary Air Wings (No. 901 EAW, No. 902 EAW, No. 903 EAW and No. 904 EAW). Stations An RAF station is ordinarily subordinate to a group and is commanded by a group captain. Each station typically hosts several flying and non-flying squadrons or units which are supported by administrative and support wings. United Kingdom Front-line flying operations are focussed at eight stations: RAF Coningsby, RAF Marham and RAF Lossiemouth (Air Combat) RAF Waddington (Intelligence, Surveillance Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR)) RAF Brize Norton and RAF Northolt (Air Transport) RAF Benson and RAF Odiham (Support Helicopter Force operating under Joint Helicopter Command) Flying training takes places at RAF Barkston Heath, RAF College Cranwell, RAF Shawbury and RAF Valley, each forming part of the UK Military Flying Training System which is dedicated to training aircrew for all three UK armed services. Specialist ground crew training is focused at RAF Cosford, RAF St Mawgan and MOD St. Athan. Operations are supported by numerous other flying and non-flying stations, with activity focussed at RAF Honington which coordinates Force Protection and RAF Leeming & RAF Wittering which have a support enabler role. A Control and Reporting Centre (CRC) at RAF Boulmer is tasked with compiling a Recognised Air Picture of UK air space and providing tactical control of the Quick Reaction Alert Force. In order to achieve this Boulmer is supported by a network of eight Remote Radar Heads (RRHs) spread the length of the UK. Overseas The UK operates permanent military airfields (known as Permanent Joint Operating Bases) in four British Overseas Territories. These bases contribute to the physical defence and maintenance of sovereignty of the British Overseas Territories and enable the UK to conduct expeditionary military operations. Although command and oversight of the bases is provided by Strategic Command, the airfield elements are known as RAF stations. RAF Akrotiri (Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia, Cyprus) RAF Ascension Island (Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cuhna) RAF Mount Pleasant (Falkland Islands) RAF Gibraltar (Gibraltar) Three RAF squadrons are based overseas. No. 84 Squadron is located at RAF Akrotiri, operating the Griffin HAR.2 for search and rescue. No. 17 Test and Evaluation Squadron and No. 39 Squadron are located within the United States to support close cooperation with the U.S. Air Force in the development of the F-35B Lightning (Edwards Air Force Base, California) and the operation of the MQ-9A Reaper (Creech Air Force Base, Nevada) respectively. Squadrons A flying squadron is an aircraft unit which carries out the primary tasks of the RAF. RAF squadrons are somewhat analogous to the regiments of the British Army in that they have histories and traditions going back to their formation, regardless of where they are based or which aircraft they are operating. They can be awarded standards and battle honours for meritorious service. Most flying squadrons are commanded by a wing commander and, for a fast-jet squadron, have an establishment of around twelve aircraft. Flights Independent flights are so designated because they are explicitly smaller in size than a squadron. Many independent flights are, or have been, front-line flying units. For example, No. 1435 Flight carries out air defence duties for the Falkland Islands, with four Eurofighter Typhoon fighters based at RAF Mount Pleasant. Support wings and units Support capabilities are provided by several specialist wings and other units. Air Warfare Centre (RAF Waddington) Airborne Delivery Wing (RAF Brize Norton) Mobile Meteorological Unit (RAF Scampton) Tactical Communications Wing (RAF Leeming) Tactical Medical Wing (RAF Brize Norton) Tactical Supply Wing (MOD Stafford) No. 1 Air Control Centre (RAF Scampton) No. 1 Air Mobility Wing (RAF Brize Norton) No. 1 Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing (RAF Waddington) No. 42 (Expeditionary Support) Wing (RAF Wittering) No. 85 (Expeditionary Logistics) Wing (RAF Wittering) No. 90 Signals Unit (RAF Leeming) Expeditionary Air Wings Command, control, and support for overseas operations is typically provided through Expeditionary Air Wings (EAWs). Each wing is brought together as and when required and comprises the deployable elements of its home station as well as other support elements from throughout the RAF. No. 34 Expeditionary Air Wing (RAF Waddington) – ISTAR operations No. 38 Expeditionary Air Wing (RAF Brize Norton) – air transport operations No. 121 Expeditionary Air Wing (RAF Coningsby) – multi-role operations No. 135 Expeditionary Air Wing (RAF Leeming) – fighter operations No. 138 Expeditionary Air Wing (RAF Marham) – fighter operations No. 140 Expeditionary Air Wing (RAF Lossiemouth) – fighter operations Several Expeditionary Air Wings are based overseas: No. 901 Expeditionary Air Wing (Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar) – Communication and information systems support No. 902 Expeditionary Air Wing (Middle East) – Helicopter support No. 903 Expeditionary Air Wing (RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus) – Supports Operation Shader No. 905 Expeditionary Air Wing (RAF Mount Pleasant, Falklands Islands) – Protection of British Overseas Territories in the South Atlantic No. 906 Expeditionary Air Wing (Middle East) – Air transport support Training schools Flying training The RAF Schools consist of the squadrons and support apparatus that train new aircrew to join front-line squadrons. The schools separate individual streams, but group together units with similar responsibility or that operate the same aircraft type. Some schools operate with only one squadron, and have an overall training throughput which is relatively small; some, like No. 3 Flying Training School, have responsibility for all Elementary Flying Training (EFT) in the RAF, and all RAF aircrew will pass through its squadrons when they start their flying careers. No. 2 Flying Training School and No. 6 Flying Training School do not have a front-line training responsibility – their job is to group the University Air Squadrons and the Volunteer Gliding Squadrons together. The commanding officer of No. 2 FTS holds the only full-time flying appointment for a Group Captain in the RAF, and is a reservist. Central Flying School (RAF Cranwell) – standardises flying training across the air force and ensures standards and safety are maintained. No. 1 Flying Training School (RAF Shawbury) – basic and advanced helicopter training. No. 2 Flying Training School (RAF Syerston) – gliding training provided by Volunteer Gliding Squadrons based at airfields throughout the UK. No. 3 Flying Training School (RAF Cranwell) – Elementary Flying Training (EFT) for RAF, Fleet Air Arm and Army Air Corps crews, also operates from RAF Wittering and RAF Barkston Heath. No. 4 Flying Training School (RAF Valley) – Basic Fast Jet Training (BFJT) and Advanced Fast Jet Training (AFJT). No. 6 Flying Training School (RAF Cranwell) – Initial training provided by University Air Squadrons and Air Experience Flights based at airfields throughout the UK. Non-flying training The British military operate a number of joint training organisations, with Air Command leading the provision of technical training through the Defence College of Technical Training (DCTT). It provides training in aeronautical engineering, electro and mechanical engineering, and communication and information systems. No. 1 School of Technical Training is based at RAF Cosford and provides RAF personnel with mechanical, avionics, weapons and survival equipment training. Also based at Cosford is the Aerosystems Engineer and Management Training School. Both are part of the Defence School of Aeronautical Engineering. No. 4 School of Technical Training is part of the Defence School of Electronic and Mechanical Engineering (DSEME) and is based at MOD St Athan. It provides training to non-aircraft ground engineering technicians. No. 1 Radio School and the Aerial Erectors School are based at Cosford and RAF Digby respectively and are part of the Defence School of Communications and Information Systems. Specialist training and education The Royal Air Force operates several units and centres for the provision of non-generic training and education. These include the Royal Air Force Leadership Centre and the RAF Centre for Air Power Studies, both based at RAF Cranwell, and the Air Warfare Centre, based at RAF Waddington and RAF Cranwell. Non-commissioned officer training and developmental courses occur at RAF Halton and officer courses occur at the Joint Services Command and Staff College at Shrivenham. Personnel At its height in 1944 during the Second World War, more than 1,100,000 personnel were serving in the RAF. The longest-lived founding member of the RAF was Henry Allingham, who died on 18 July 2009 aged 113. As of 1 January 2015, the RAF numbered some 34,200 Regular and 1,940 Royal Auxiliary Air Force personnel, giving a combined component strength of 36,140 personnel. In addition to the active elements of the RAF, (Regular and Royal Auxiliary Air Force), all ex-Regular personnel remain liable to be recalled for duty in a time of need, this is known as the Regular Reserve. In 2007, there were 33,980 RAF Regular Reserves, of which 7,950 served under a fixed-term reserve contract. Publications since April 2013 no-longer report the entire strength of the Regular Reserve, instead they only give a figure for Regular Reserves who serve under a fixed-term reserve contract. They had a strength of 7,120 personnel in 2014. Figures provided by the International Institute for Strategic Studies from 2012 showed that RAF pilots achieve a relatively high number of flying hours per year when compared with other major NATO allies such as France and Germany. RAF pilots achieve 210 to 290 flying hours per year. French and German Air Force pilots achieved 180 and 150 flying hours across their fleets respectively. Officers Officers hold a commission from the Sovereign, which provides the legal authority for them to issue orders to subordinates. The commission of a regular officer is granted after successfully completing the 24-week-long Initial Officer Training course at the RAF College, Cranwell, Lincolnshire. To emphasise the merger of both military and naval aviation when the RAF was formed, many of the titles of officers were deliberately chosen to be of a naval character, such as flight lieutenant, wing commander, group captain, and air commodore. Other ranks Other ranks attend the Recruit Training Squadron at RAF Halton for basic training. The titles and insignia of other ranks in the RAF were based on that of the Army, with some alterations in terminology. Over the years, this structure has seen significant changes: for example, there was once a separate system for those in technical trades, and the ranks of chief technician and junior technician continue to be held only by personnel in technical trades. RAF other ranks fall into four categories: Warrant Officers, Senior Non-Commissioned Officers, Junior Non-Commissioned Officers and Airmen. All Warrant Officers in the RAF are equal in terms of rank, but the most senior Non-Commissioned appointment is known as the Warrant Officer of the Royal Air Force. Ranks Aircraft Combat air Typhoon The Eurofighter Typhoon FGR4 is the RAF's primary multi-role air defence and ground attack fighter aircraft, following the retirement of the Panavia Tornado F3 in late March 2011. With the completion of 'Project Centurion' upgrades, the Typhoon FGR4 took over ground attack duties from the Panavia Tornado GR4, which was retired on 1 April 2019. The Typhoon is tasked to defend UK airspace, while also frequently deploying in support of NATO air defence missions in the Baltic (Operation Azotize), Black Sea (Operation Biloxi), and Iceland. The RAF has seven front-line Typhoon squadrons, plus an Operational |
on the Red Army for the first three months of the war while suffering very few losses themselves. Hostilities ceased in March 1940 with the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty. Finland ceded 8% of its pre-war territory and 30% of its economic assets to the Soviet Union. Soviet losses on the front were heavy, and the country's international reputation suffered. The Soviet forces did not accomplish their objective of the total conquest of Finland but did receive territory in Karelia, Petsamo, and Salla. The Finns retained their sovereignty and improved their international reputation, which bolstered their morale in the Continuation War. Second World War ("The Great Patriotic War") In accordance with the Soviet-Nazi Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939, the Red Army invaded Poland on 17 September 1939, after the Nazi invasion on 1 September 1939. On 30 November the Red Army also attacked Finland, in the Winter War of 1939–1940. By autumn 1940, after conquering its portion of Poland, Nazi Germany shared an extensive border with USSR, with whom it remained neutrally bound by their non-aggression pact and trade agreements. Another consequence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, carried out by the Southern Front in June–July 1940 and Soviet occupation of the Baltic states (1940). These conquests also added to the border the Soviet Union shared with Nazi-controlled areas. For Adolf Hitler, the circumstance was no dilemma, because the Drang nach Osten ("Drive towards the East") policy secretly remained in force, culminating on 18 December 1940 with Directive No. 21, Operation Barbarossa, approved on 3 February 1941, and scheduled for mid-May 1941. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, in Operation Barbarossa, the Red Army's ground forces had 303 divisions and 22 separate brigades (5.5 million soldiers) including 166 divisions and brigades (2.6 million) garrisoned in the western military districts. The Axis forces deployed on the Eastern Front consisted of 181 divisions and 18 brigades (3 million soldiers). Three Fronts, the Northwestern, Western, and Southwestern conducted the defense of the western borders of the USSR. In the first weeks of the Great Patriotic War, the Wehrmacht defeated many Red Army units. The Red Army lost millions of men as prisoners and lost much of its pre-war matériel. Stalin increased mobilization, and by 1 August 1941, despite 46 divisions lost in combat, the Red Army's strength was 401 divisions. The Soviet forces were apparently unprepared despite numerous warnings from a variety of sources. They suffered much damage in the field because of mediocre officers, partial mobilization, and an incomplete reorganization. The hasty pre-war forces expansion and the over-promotion of inexperienced officers (owing to the purging of experienced officers) favored the Wehrmacht in combat. The Axis's numeric superiority rendered the combatants' divisional strength approximately equal. A generation of Soviet commanders (notably Georgy Zhukov) learned from the defeats, and Soviet victories in the Battle of Moscow, at Stalingrad, Kursk and later in Operation Bagration proved decisive. In 1941, the Soviet government raised the bloodied Red Army's esprit de corps with propaganda stressing the defense of Motherland and nation, employing historic exemplars of Russian courage and bravery against foreign aggressors. The anti-Nazi Great Patriotic War was conflated with the Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon, and historical Russian military heroes, such as Alexander Nevski and Mikhail Kutuzov, appeared. Repression of the Russian Orthodox Church temporarily ceased, and priests revived the tradition of blessing arms before battle. To encourage the initiative of Red Army commanders, the CPSU temporarily abolished political commissars, reintroduced formal military ranks and decorations, and introduced the Guards unit concept. Exceptionally heroic or high-performing units earned the Guards title (for example 1st Guards Special Rifle Corps, 6th Guards Tank Army), an elite designation denoting superior training, materiel, and pay. Punishment also was used; slackers, malingerers, those avoiding combat with self-inflicted wounds cowards, thieves, and deserters were disciplined with beatings, demotions, undesirable/dangerous duties, and summary execution by NKVD punitive detachments. At the same time, the osobist (NKVD military counter-intelligence officers) became a key Red Army figure with the power to condemn to death and to spare the life of any soldier and (almost any) officer of the unit to which he was attached. In 1942, Stalin established the penal battalions composed of gulag inmates, Soviet PoWs, disgraced soldiers, and deserters, for hazardous front-line duty as tramplers clearing Nazi minefields, et cetera. Given the dangers, the maximum sentence was three months. Likewise, the Soviet treatment of Red Army personnel captured by the Wehrmacht was especially harsh. Per a 1941 Stalin directive, Red Army officers and soldiers were to "fight to the last" rather than surrender; Stalin stated: "There are no Soviet prisoners of war, only traitors". During and after World War II freed POWs went to special "filtration camps". Of these, by 1944, more than 90% were cleared, and about 8% were arrested or condemned to serve in penal battalions. In 1944, they were sent directly to reserve military formations to be cleared by the NKVD. Further, in 1945, about 100 filtration camps were set for repatriated POWs, and other displaced persons, which processed more than 4,000,000 people. By 1946, 80% civilians and 20% of POWs were freed, 5% of civilians, and 43% of POWs were re-drafted, 10% of civilians and 22% of POWs were sent to labor battalions, and 2% of civilians and 15% of the POWs (226,127 out of 1,539,475 total) were transferred to the Gulag. During the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army conscripted 29,574,900 men in addition to the 4,826,907 in service at the beginning of the war. Of this total of 34,401,807 it lost 6,329,600 killed in action (KIA), 555,400 deaths by disease and 4,559,000 missing in action (MIA) (most captured). Of these 11,444,000, however, 939,700 rejoined the ranks in the subsequently liberated Soviet territory, and a further 1,836,000 returned from German captivity. Thus the grand total of losses amounted to 8,668,400. This is the official total dead, but other estimates give the number of total dead up to almost 11 million men, including 7.7 million killed or missing in action and 2.6 million POW dead (out of 5.2 million total POWs), plus 400,000 paramilitary and Soviet partisan losses. The majority of the losses, excluding POWs, were ethnic Russians (5,756,000), followed by ethnic Ukrainians (1,377,400). However, as many as 8 million of the 34 million mobilized were non-Slavic minority soldiers, and around 45 divisions formed from national minorities served from 1941 to 1943. The German losses on the Eastern Front consisted of an estimated 3,604,800 KIA/MIA within the 1937 borders plus 900,000 ethnic Germans and Austrians outside the 1937 border (included in these numbers are men listed as missing in action or unaccounted for after the war) and 3,576,300 men reported captured (total 8,081,100); the losses of the German satellites on the Eastern Front approximated 668,163 KIA/MIA and 799,982 captured (total 1,468,145). Of these 9,549,245, the Soviets released 3,572,600 from captivity after the war, thus the grand total of the Axis losses came to an estimated 5,976,645. Regarding prisoners of war, both sides captured large numbers and had many die in captivity – one recent British figure says 3.6 of 6 million Soviet POWs died in German camps, while 300,000 of 3 million German POWs died in Soviet hands. Shortcomings In 1941 the rapid progress of the initial German air and land attacks into the Soviet Union made Red Army logistical support difficult because many depots (and most of the USSR's industrial manufacturing base) lay in the country's invaded western areas, obliging their re-establishment east of the Ural Mountains. Until then the Red Army was often required to improvise or go without weapons, vehicles, and other equipment. The 1941 decision to physically move their manufacturing capacity east of the Ural mountains kept the main Soviet support system out of German reach. In the later stages of the war, the Red Army fielded some excellent weaponry, especially artillery and tanks. The Red Army's heavy KV-1 and medium T-34 tanks outclassed most Wehrmacht armor, but in 1941 most Soviet tank units used older and inferior models. Administration Military administration after the October Revolution was taken over by the People's Commissariat of War and Marine affairs headed by a collective committee of Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko, Pavel Dybenko, and Nikolai Krylenko. At the same time, Nikolay Dukhonin was acting as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief after Alexander Kerensky fled from Russia. On 12 November 1917 the Soviet government appointed Krylenko as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, and because of an "accident" during the forceful displacement of the commander-in-chief, Dukhonin was killed on 20 November 1917. Nikolai Podvoisky was appointed as the Narkom of War Affairs, leaving Dybenko in charge of the Narkom of Marine Affairs and Ovseyenko – the expeditionary forces to the Southern Russia on 28 November 1917. The Bolsheviks also sent out their own representatives to replace front commanders of the Russian Imperial Army. After the signing of Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918, a major reshuffling took place in the Soviet military administration. On 13 March 1918 the Soviet government accepted the official resignation of Krylenko and the post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief was liquidated. On 14 March 1918 Leon Trotsky replaced Podvoisky as the Narkom of War Affairs. On 16 March 1918 Pavel Dybenko was relieved from the office of Narkom of Marine Affairs. On 8 May 1918 the All-Russian Chief Headquarters was created, headed by Nikolai Stogov and later Alexander Svechin. On 2 September 1918 the Revolutionary Military Council (RMC) was established as the main military administration under Leon Trotsky, the Narkom of War Affairs. On 6 September 1918 alongside the chief headquarters the Field Headquarters of RMC was created, initially headed by Nikolai Rattel. On the same day the office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces was created, and initially assigned to Jukums Vācietis (and from July 1919 to Sergey Kamenev). The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces existed until April 1924, the end of Russian Civil War. In November 1923, after the establishment of the Soviet Union, the Russian Narkom of War Affairs was transformed into the Soviet Narkom of War and Marine Affairs. Organization At the beginning of its existence, the Red Army functioned as a voluntary formation, without ranks or insignia. Democratic elections selected the officers. However, a decree of 29 May 1918 imposed obligatory military service for men of ages 18 to 40. To service the massive draft, the Bolsheviks formed regional military commissariats (voyennyy komissariat, abbr. voyenkomat), which as of 2006 still exist in Russia in this function and under this name. Military commissariats, however, should not be confused with the institution of military political commissars. In the mid-1920s the territorial principle of manning the Red Army was introduced. In each region able-bodied men were called up for a limited period of active duty in territorial units, which constituted about half the army's strength, each year, for five years. The first call-up period was for three months, with one month a year thereafter. A regular cadre provided a stable nucleus. By 1925 this system provided 46 of the 77 infantry divisions and one of the eleven cavalry divisions. The remainder consisted of regular officers and enlisted personnel serving two-year terms. The territorial system was finally abolished, with all remaining formations converted to the other cadre divisions, in 1937–1938. Mechanization The Soviet military received ample funding and was innovative in its technology. An American journalist wrote in 1941: Under Stalin's campaign for mechanization, the army formed its first mechanized unit in 1930. The 1st Mechanized Brigade consisted of a tank regiment, a motorized infantry regiment, as well as reconnaissance and artillery battalions. From this humble beginning, the Soviets would go on to create the first operational-level armored formations in history, the 11th and 45th Mechanized Corps, in 1932. These were tank-heavy formations with combat support forces included so they could survive while operating in enemy rear areas without support from a parent front. Impressed by the German campaign of 1940 against France, the Soviet People's Commissariat of Defence (Defence Ministry, Russian abbreviation NKO) ordered the creation of nine mechanized corps on 6 July 1940. Between February and March 1941 the NKO ordered another twenty to be created. All of these formations were larger than those theorized by Tukhachevsky. Even though the Red Army's 29 mechanized corps had an authorized strength of no less than 29,899 tanks by 1941, they proved to be a paper tiger. There were actually only 17,000 tanks available at the time, meaning several of the new mechanized corps were badly under strength. The pressure placed on factories and military planners to show production numbers also led to a situation where the majority of armored vehicles were obsolescent models, critically lacking in spare parts and support equipment, and nearly three-quarters were overdue for major maintenance. By 22 June 1941 there were only 1,475 of the modern T-34s and KV series tanks available to the Red Army, and these were too dispersed along the front to provide enough mass for even local success. To illustrate this, the 3rd Mechanized Corps in Lithuania was formed up of a total of 460 tanks; 109 of these were newer KV-1s and T-34s. This corps would prove to be one of the lucky few with a substantial number of newer tanks. However, the 4th Army was composed of 520 tanks, all of which were the obsolete T-26, as opposed to the authorized strength of 1,031 newer medium tanks. This problem was universal throughout the Red Army, and would play a crucial role in the initial defeats of the Red Army in 1941 at the hands of the German armed forces. Wartime War experience prompted changes to the way frontline forces were organised. After six months of combat against the Germans, the Stavka abolished the rifle corps which was intermediate between the army and division level because, while useful in theory, in the state of the Red Army in 1941, they proved ineffective in practice. Following the decisive victory in the Battle of Moscow in January 1942, the high command began to reintroduce rifle corps into its more experienced formations. The total number of rifle corps started at 62 on 22 June 1941, dropped to six by 1 January 1942, but then increased to 34 by February 1943, and 161 by New Year's Day 1944. Actual strengths of front-line rifle divisions, authorised to contain 11,000 men in July 1941, were mostly no more than 50% of establishment strengths during 1941, and divisions were often worn down, because of continuous operations, to hundreds of men or even less. On the outbreak of war, the Red Army deployed mechanised corps and tank divisions whose development has been described above. The initial German attack destroyed many and, in the course of 1941, virtually all of them,(barring two in the Transbaikal Military District). The remnants were disbanded. It was much easier to coordinate smaller forces, and separate tank brigades and battalions were substituted. It was late 1942 and early 1943 before larger tank formations of corps size were fielded to employ armour in mass again. By mid-1943, these corps were being grouped together into tank armies whose strength by the end of the war could be up to 700 tanks and 50,000 men. Personnel The Bolshevik authorities assigned to every unit of the Red Army a political commissar, or politruk, who had the authority to override unit commanders' decisions if they ran counter to the principles of the Communist Party. Although this sometimes resulted in inefficient command according to most historians, the Party leadership considered political control over the military absolutely necessary, as the army relied more and more on officers from the pre-revolutionary Imperial period and understandably feared a military coup. This system was abolished in 1925, as there were by that time enough trained Communist officers to render the counter-signing unnecessary. Ranks and titles The early Red Army abandoned the institution of a professional officer corps as a "heritage of tsarism" in the course of the Revolution. In particular, the Bolsheviks condemned the use of the word officer and used the word commander instead. The Red Army abandoned epaulettes and ranks, using purely functional titles such as "Division Commander", "Corps Commander" and similar titles. Insignia for these functional titles existed, consisting of triangles, squares and rhombuses (so-called "diamonds"). In 1924 (2 October) "personal" or "service" categories were introduced, from K1 (section leader, assistant squad leader, senior rifleman, etc.) to K14 (field commander, army commander, military district commander, army commissar and equivalent). Service category insignia again consisted of triangles, squares and rhombuses, but also rectangles (1 – 3, for categories from K7 to K9). On 22 September 1935 the Red Army abandoned service categories and introduced personal ranks. These ranks, however, used a unique mix of functional titles and traditional ranks. For example, the ranks included "Lieutenant" and "Comdiv" (Комдив, Division Commander). Further complications ensued from the functional and categorical ranks for political officers (e.g., "brigade commissar", "army commissar 2nd rank"), for technical corps (e.g., "engineer 3rd rank," "division engineer"), and for administrative, medical and other non-combatant branches. The Marshal of the Soviet Union (Маршал Советского Союза) rank was introduced on 22 September 1935. On 7 May 1940 further modifications to rationalise the system of ranks were made on the proposal by Marshal Voroshilov: the ranks of "General" and "Admiral" replaced the senior | ) was a war between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939—three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland, and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty. The League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union on 14 December 1939. The Soviet forces led by Semyon Timoshenko had three times as many soldiers as the Finns, thirty times as many aircraft, and a hundred times as many tanks. The Red Army, however, had been hindered by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's Great Purge of 1937, reducing the army's morale and efficiency shortly before the outbreak of the fighting. With over 30,000 of its army officers executed or imprisoned, most of whom were from the highest ranks, the Red Army in 1939 had many inexperienced senior officers. Because of these factors, and high commitment and morale in the Finnish forces, Finland was able to resist the Soviet invasion for much longer than the Soviets expected. Finnish forces inflicted stunning losses on the Red Army for the first three months of the war while suffering very few losses themselves. Hostilities ceased in March 1940 with the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty. Finland ceded 8% of its pre-war territory and 30% of its economic assets to the Soviet Union. Soviet losses on the front were heavy, and the country's international reputation suffered. The Soviet forces did not accomplish their objective of the total conquest of Finland but did receive territory in Karelia, Petsamo, and Salla. The Finns retained their sovereignty and improved their international reputation, which bolstered their morale in the Continuation War. Second World War ("The Great Patriotic War") In accordance with the Soviet-Nazi Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939, the Red Army invaded Poland on 17 September 1939, after the Nazi invasion on 1 September 1939. On 30 November the Red Army also attacked Finland, in the Winter War of 1939–1940. By autumn 1940, after conquering its portion of Poland, Nazi Germany shared an extensive border with USSR, with whom it remained neutrally bound by their non-aggression pact and trade agreements. Another consequence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, carried out by the Southern Front in June–July 1940 and Soviet occupation of the Baltic states (1940). These conquests also added to the border the Soviet Union shared with Nazi-controlled areas. For Adolf Hitler, the circumstance was no dilemma, because the Drang nach Osten ("Drive towards the East") policy secretly remained in force, culminating on 18 December 1940 with Directive No. 21, Operation Barbarossa, approved on 3 February 1941, and scheduled for mid-May 1941. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, in Operation Barbarossa, the Red Army's ground forces had 303 divisions and 22 separate brigades (5.5 million soldiers) including 166 divisions and brigades (2.6 million) garrisoned in the western military districts. The Axis forces deployed on the Eastern Front consisted of 181 divisions and 18 brigades (3 million soldiers). Three Fronts, the Northwestern, Western, and Southwestern conducted the defense of the western borders of the USSR. In the first weeks of the Great Patriotic War, the Wehrmacht defeated many Red Army units. The Red Army lost millions of men as prisoners and lost much of its pre-war matériel. Stalin increased mobilization, and by 1 August 1941, despite 46 divisions lost in combat, the Red Army's strength was 401 divisions. The Soviet forces were apparently unprepared despite numerous warnings from a variety of sources. They suffered much damage in the field because of mediocre officers, partial mobilization, and an incomplete reorganization. The hasty pre-war forces expansion and the over-promotion of inexperienced officers (owing to the purging of experienced officers) favored the Wehrmacht in combat. The Axis's numeric superiority rendered the combatants' divisional strength approximately equal. A generation of Soviet commanders (notably Georgy Zhukov) learned from the defeats, and Soviet victories in the Battle of Moscow, at Stalingrad, Kursk and later in Operation Bagration proved decisive. In 1941, the Soviet government raised the bloodied Red Army's esprit de corps with propaganda stressing the defense of Motherland and nation, employing historic exemplars of Russian courage and bravery against foreign aggressors. The anti-Nazi Great Patriotic War was conflated with the Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon, and historical Russian military heroes, such as Alexander Nevski and Mikhail Kutuzov, appeared. Repression of the Russian Orthodox Church temporarily ceased, and priests revived the tradition of blessing arms before battle. To encourage the initiative of Red Army commanders, the CPSU temporarily abolished political commissars, reintroduced formal military ranks and decorations, and introduced the Guards unit concept. Exceptionally heroic or high-performing units earned the Guards title (for example 1st Guards Special Rifle Corps, 6th Guards Tank Army), an elite designation denoting superior training, materiel, and pay. Punishment also was used; slackers, malingerers, those avoiding combat with self-inflicted wounds cowards, thieves, and deserters were disciplined with beatings, demotions, undesirable/dangerous duties, and summary execution by NKVD punitive detachments. At the same time, the osobist (NKVD military counter-intelligence officers) became a key Red Army figure with the power to condemn to death and to spare the life of any soldier and (almost any) officer of the unit to which he was attached. In 1942, Stalin established the penal battalions composed of gulag inmates, Soviet PoWs, disgraced soldiers, and deserters, for hazardous front-line duty as tramplers clearing Nazi minefields, et cetera. Given the dangers, the maximum sentence was three months. Likewise, the Soviet treatment of Red Army personnel captured by the Wehrmacht was especially harsh. Per a 1941 Stalin directive, Red Army officers and soldiers were to "fight to the last" rather than surrender; Stalin stated: "There are no Soviet prisoners of war, only traitors". During and after World War II freed POWs went to special "filtration camps". Of these, by 1944, more than 90% were cleared, and about 8% were arrested or condemned to serve in penal battalions. In 1944, they were sent directly to reserve military formations to be cleared by the NKVD. Further, in 1945, about 100 filtration camps were set for repatriated POWs, and other displaced persons, which processed more than 4,000,000 people. By 1946, 80% civilians and 20% of POWs were freed, 5% of civilians, and 43% of POWs were re-drafted, 10% of civilians and 22% of POWs were sent to labor battalions, and 2% of civilians and 15% of the POWs (226,127 out of 1,539,475 total) were transferred to the Gulag. During the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army conscripted 29,574,900 men in addition to the 4,826,907 in service at the beginning of the war. Of this total of 34,401,807 it lost 6,329,600 killed in action (KIA), 555,400 deaths by disease and 4,559,000 missing in action (MIA) (most captured). Of these 11,444,000, however, 939,700 rejoined the ranks in the subsequently liberated Soviet territory, and a further 1,836,000 returned from German captivity. Thus the grand total of losses amounted to 8,668,400. This is the official total dead, but other estimates give the number of total dead up to almost 11 million men, including 7.7 million killed or missing in action and 2.6 million POW dead (out of 5.2 million total POWs), plus 400,000 paramilitary and Soviet partisan losses. The majority of the losses, excluding POWs, were ethnic Russians (5,756,000), followed by ethnic Ukrainians (1,377,400). However, as many as 8 million of the 34 million mobilized were non-Slavic minority soldiers, and around 45 divisions formed from national minorities served from 1941 to 1943. The German losses on the Eastern Front consisted of an estimated 3,604,800 KIA/MIA within the 1937 borders plus 900,000 ethnic Germans and Austrians outside the 1937 border (included in these numbers are men listed as missing in action or unaccounted for after the war) and 3,576,300 men reported captured (total 8,081,100); the losses of the German satellites on the Eastern Front approximated 668,163 KIA/MIA and 799,982 captured (total 1,468,145). Of these 9,549,245, the Soviets released 3,572,600 from captivity after the war, thus the grand total of the Axis losses came to an estimated 5,976,645. Regarding prisoners of war, both sides captured large numbers and had many die in captivity – one recent British figure says 3.6 of 6 million Soviet POWs died in German camps, while 300,000 of 3 million German POWs died in Soviet hands. Shortcomings In 1941 the rapid progress of the initial German air and land attacks into the Soviet Union made Red Army logistical support difficult because many depots (and most of the USSR's industrial manufacturing base) lay in the country's invaded western areas, obliging their re-establishment east of the Ural Mountains. Until then the Red Army was often required to improvise or go without weapons, vehicles, and other equipment. The 1941 decision to physically move their manufacturing capacity east of the Ural mountains kept the main Soviet support system out of German reach. In the later stages of the war, the Red Army fielded some excellent weaponry, especially artillery and tanks. The Red Army's heavy KV-1 and medium T-34 tanks outclassed most Wehrmacht armor, but in 1941 most Soviet tank units used older and inferior models. Administration Military administration after the October Revolution was taken over by the People's Commissariat of War and Marine affairs headed by a collective committee of Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko, Pavel Dybenko, and Nikolai Krylenko. At the same time, Nikolay Dukhonin was acting as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief after Alexander Kerensky fled from Russia. On 12 November 1917 the Soviet government appointed Krylenko as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, and because of an "accident" during the forceful displacement of the commander-in-chief, Dukhonin was killed on 20 November 1917. Nikolai Podvoisky was appointed as the Narkom of War Affairs, leaving Dybenko in charge of the Narkom of Marine Affairs and Ovseyenko – the expeditionary forces to the Southern Russia on 28 November 1917. The Bolsheviks also sent out their own representatives to replace front commanders of the Russian Imperial Army. After the signing of Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918, a major reshuffling took place in the Soviet military administration. On 13 March 1918 the Soviet government accepted the official resignation of Krylenko and the post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief was liquidated. On 14 March 1918 Leon Trotsky replaced Podvoisky as the Narkom of War Affairs. On 16 March 1918 Pavel Dybenko was relieved from the office of Narkom of Marine Affairs. On 8 May 1918 the All-Russian Chief Headquarters was created, headed by Nikolai Stogov and later Alexander Svechin. On 2 September 1918 the Revolutionary Military Council (RMC) was established as the main military administration under Leon Trotsky, the Narkom of War Affairs. On 6 September 1918 alongside the chief headquarters the Field Headquarters of RMC was created, initially headed by Nikolai Rattel. On the same day the office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces was created, and initially assigned to Jukums Vācietis (and from July 1919 to Sergey Kamenev). The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces existed until April 1924, the end of Russian Civil War. In November 1923, after the establishment of the Soviet Union, the Russian Narkom of War Affairs was transformed into the Soviet Narkom of War and Marine Affairs. Organization At the beginning of its existence, the Red Army functioned as a voluntary formation, without ranks or insignia. Democratic elections selected the officers. However, a decree of 29 May 1918 imposed obligatory military service for men of ages 18 to 40. To service the massive draft, the Bolsheviks formed regional military commissariats (voyennyy komissariat, abbr. voyenkomat), which as of 2006 still exist in Russia in this function and under this name. Military commissariats, however, should not be confused with the institution of military political commissars. In the mid-1920s the territorial principle of manning the Red Army was introduced. In each region able-bodied men were called up for a limited period of active duty in territorial units, which constituted about half the army's strength, each year, for five years. The first call-up period was for three months, with one month a year thereafter. A regular cadre provided a stable nucleus. By 1925 this system provided 46 of the 77 infantry divisions and one of the eleven cavalry divisions. The remainder consisted of regular officers and enlisted personnel serving two-year terms. The territorial system was finally abolished, with all remaining formations converted to the other cadre divisions, in 1937–1938. Mechanization The Soviet military received ample funding and was innovative in its technology. An American journalist wrote in 1941: Under Stalin's campaign for mechanization, the army formed its first mechanized unit in 1930. The 1st Mechanized Brigade consisted of a tank regiment, a motorized infantry regiment, as well as reconnaissance and artillery battalions. From this humble beginning, the Soviets would go on to create the first operational-level armored formations in history, the 11th and 45th Mechanized Corps, in 1932. These were tank-heavy formations with combat support forces included so they could survive while operating in enemy rear areas without support from a parent front. Impressed by the German campaign of 1940 against France, the Soviet People's Commissariat of Defence (Defence Ministry, Russian abbreviation NKO) ordered the creation of nine mechanized corps on 6 July 1940. Between February and March 1941 the NKO ordered another twenty to be created. All of these formations were larger than those theorized by Tukhachevsky. Even though the Red Army's 29 mechanized corps had an authorized strength of no less than 29,899 tanks by 1941, they proved to be a paper tiger. There were actually only 17,000 tanks available at the time, meaning several of the new mechanized corps were badly under strength. The pressure placed on factories and military planners to show production numbers also led to a situation where the majority of armored vehicles were obsolescent models, critically lacking in spare parts and support equipment, and nearly three-quarters were overdue for major maintenance. By 22 June 1941 there were only 1,475 of the modern T-34s and KV series tanks available to the Red Army, and these were too dispersed along the front to provide enough mass for even local success. To illustrate this, the 3rd Mechanized Corps in Lithuania was formed up of a total of 460 tanks; 109 of these were newer KV-1s and T-34s. This corps |
later stage name used by professional wrestler Maxx Payne The Rock, (born Dwayne Johnson in 1972), American actor and wrestler Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional characters Rock (comics), a character in the DC Comics universe Rock (manga), a recurring, major character in most of Osamu Tezuka's manga series Rock Howard, the playable character in Garou: Mark of the Wolves Mega Man (character), also called Rock, from the Mega Man series Chuck Rock, the playable character in the 1991 self-titled side-scrolling platform video game Sgt. Rock, a DC Comics character Music Albums Rock (album), a 2003 nu-metal album by Pleymo Rocks (Aerosmith album) (1976) Rock (Casting Pearls EP) (2002) R.O.C.K., a 1986 hard rock/heavy metal album by Kirka Rock!!!!!, an album released by Violent Femmes in 1995 Rocks (Harem Scarem album) (2001) The Cosmos Rocks, a studio album by Queen and Paul Rodgers (2008) Songs "Rock" a 2017 song by hip hop artist Plies from his mixtape Ain't No Mixtape Bih 3 "Rock", one of the tracks on Soft/Rock, a single by Lemon Jelly "Rocks" (song), by Primal Scream (1994) Other uses in arts, entertainment, and media Rock (magazine), a former Yugoslav music magazine Rock, a novel by Hal Ellson Rocks (film), a British coming-of-age drama film Rocks (Das Rad), a German 2001 animated short Rock Records, a Taiwanese record label founded in 1980 Uprock or rock, a form of | hard rock/heavy metal album by Kirka Rock!!!!!, an album released by Violent Femmes in 1995 Rocks (Harem Scarem album) (2001) The Cosmos Rocks, a studio album by Queen and Paul Rodgers (2008) Songs "Rock" a 2017 song by hip hop artist Plies from his mixtape Ain't No Mixtape Bih 3 "Rock", one of the tracks on Soft/Rock, a single by Lemon Jelly "Rocks" (song), by Primal Scream (1994) Other uses in arts, entertainment, and media Rock (magazine), a former Yugoslav music magazine Rock, a novel by Hal Ellson Rocks (film), a British coming-of-age drama film Rocks (Das Rad), a German 2001 animated short Rock Records, a Taiwanese record label founded in 1980 Uprock or rock, a form of street dance Computing and technology Rock (processor), a microprocessor by Sun Microsystems Rocks (PHP) Rocks Cluster Distribution, Linux distribution for cluster computing Food Rock (confectionery), a type of stick-shaped boiled sugar confectionery Rock candy, also known as sugar candy or rock sugar Rock salmon, often referred to as rock Slang Crack cocaine or rock Diamond, or rock Gemstone, or rock Sports Teams and leagues "Rocks", a nickname of the Colorado Rockies Major League Baseball team Toronto Rock, of the National Lacrosse League Sports that use rocks Curling, a sport in which players slide a stone or rock on a sheet of ice, towards a target area which is segmented into four concentric circles Steinstossen, the Swiss variant of stone put, a competition in throwing a heavy stone or rock Stone put, a competition in throwing a heavy stone or rock Stone skipping (or stone skimming), the art of throwing a flat stone or rock Other Rock (ski course) in China, the downhill course for the 2022 Winter Olympics Other uses Alcatraz Prison, nicknamed "The |
yields the probability distribution of . The probability distribution "forgets" about the particular probability space used to define and only records the probabilities of various values of . Such a probability distribution can always be captured by its cumulative distribution function and sometimes also using a probability density function, . In measure-theoretic terms, we use the random variable to "push-forward" the measure on to a measure on . The underlying probability space is a technical device used to guarantee the existence of random variables, sometimes to construct them, and to define notions such as correlation and dependence or independence based on a joint distribution of two or more random variables on the same probability space. In practice, one often disposes of the space altogether and just puts a measure on that assigns measure 1 to the whole real line, i.e., one works with probability distributions instead of random variables. See the article on quantile functions for fuller development. Examples Discrete random variable In an experiment a person may be chosen at random, and one random variable may be the person's height. Mathematically, the random variable is interpreted as a function which maps the person to the person's height. Associated with the random variable is a probability distribution that allows the computation of the probability that the height is in any subset of possible values, such as the probability that the height is between 180 and 190 cm, or the probability that the height is either less than 150 or more than 200 cm. Another random variable may be the person's number of children; this is a discrete random variable with non-negative integer values. It allows the computation of probabilities for individual integer values – the probability mass function (PMF) – or for sets of values, including infinite sets. For example, the event of interest may be "an even number of children". For both finite and infinite event sets, their probabilities can be found by adding up the PMFs of the elements; that is, the probability of an even number of children is the infinite sum . In examples such as these, the sample space is often suppressed, since it is mathematically hard to describe, and the possible values of the random variables are then treated as a sample space. But when two random variables are measured on the same sample space of outcomes, such as the height and number of children being computed on the same random persons, it is easier to track their relationship if it is acknowledged that both height and number of children come from the same random person, for example so that questions of whether such random variables are correlated or not can be posed. If are countable sets of real numbers, and , then is a discrete distribution function. Here for , for . Taking for instance an enumeration of all rational numbers as , one gets a discrete distribution function that is not a step function or piecewise constant. Coin toss The possible outcomes for one coin toss can be described by the sample space . We can introduce a real-valued random variable that models a $1 payoff for a successful bet on heads as follows: If the coin is a fair coin, Y has a probability mass function given by: Dice roll A random variable can also be used to describe the process of rolling dice and the possible outcomes. The most obvious representation for the two-dice case is to take the set of pairs of numbers n1 and n2 from {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6} (representing the numbers on the two dice) as the sample space. The total number rolled (the sum of the numbers in each pair) is then a random variable X given by the function that maps the pair to the sum: and (if the dice are fair) has a probability mass function fX given by: Continuous random variable Formally, a continuous random variable is a random variable whose cumulative distribution function is continuous everywhere. There are no "gaps", which would correspond to numbers which have a finite probability of occurring. Instead, continuous random variables almost never take an exact prescribed value c (formally, ) but there is a positive probability that its value will lie in particular intervals which can be arbitrarily small. Continuous random variables usually admit probability density functions (PDF), which characterize their CDF and probability measures; such distributions are also called absolutely continuous; but some continuous distributions are singular, or mixes of an absolutely continuous part and a singular part. An example of a continuous random variable would be one based on a spinner that can choose a horizontal direction. Then the values taken by the random variable are directions. We could represent these directions by North, West, East, South, Southeast, etc. However, it is commonly more convenient to map the sample space to a random variable which takes values which are real numbers. This can be done, for example, by mapping a direction to a bearing in degrees clockwise from North. The random variable then takes values which are real numbers from the interval [0, 360), with all parts of the range being "equally likely". In this case, X = the angle spun. Any real number has probability zero of being selected, but a positive probability can be assigned to any range of values. For example, the probability of choosing a number in [0, 180] is . Instead of speaking of a probability mass function, we say that the probability density of X is 1/360. The probability of a subset of [0, 360) can be calculated by multiplying the measure of the set by 1/360. In general, the probability of a set for a given continuous random variable can be calculated by integrating the density over the given set. More formally, given | natural language processing, and other fields in discrete mathematics and computer science, where one is often interested in modeling the random variation of non-numerical data structures. In some cases, it is nonetheless convenient to represent each element of , using one or more real numbers. In this case, a random element may optionally be represented as a vector of real-valued random variables (all defined on the same underlying probability space , which allows the different random variables to covary). For example: A random word may be represented as a random integer that serves as an index into the vocabulary of possible words. Alternatively, it can be represented as a random indicator vector, whose length equals the size of the vocabulary, where the only values of positive probability are , , and the position of the 1 indicates the word. A random sentence of given length may be represented as a vector of random words. A random graph on given vertices may be represented as a matrix of random variables, whose values specify the adjacency matrix of the random graph. A random function may be represented as a collection of random variables , giving the function's values at the various points in the function's domain. The are ordinary real-valued random variables provided that the function is real-valued. For example, a stochastic process is a random function of time, a random vector is a random function of some index set such as , and random field is a random function on any set (typically time, space, or a discrete set). Distribution functions If a random variable defined on the probability space is given, we can ask questions like "How likely is it that the value of is equal to 2?". This is the same as the probability of the event which is often written as or for short. Recording all these probabilities of output ranges of a real-valued random variable yields the probability distribution of . The probability distribution "forgets" about the particular probability space used to define and only records the probabilities of various values of . Such a probability distribution can always be captured by its cumulative distribution function and sometimes also using a probability density function, . In measure-theoretic terms, we use the random variable to "push-forward" the measure on to a measure on . The underlying probability space is a technical device used to guarantee the existence of random variables, sometimes to construct them, and to define notions such as correlation and dependence or independence based on a joint distribution of two or more random variables on the same probability space. In practice, one often disposes of the space altogether and just puts a measure on that assigns measure 1 to the whole real line, i.e., one works with probability distributions instead of random variables. See the article on quantile functions for fuller development. Examples Discrete random variable In an experiment a person may be chosen at random, and one random variable may be the person's height. Mathematically, the random variable is interpreted as a function which maps the person to the person's height. Associated with the random variable is a probability distribution that allows the computation of the probability that the height is in any subset of possible values, such as the probability that the height is between 180 and 190 cm, or the probability that the height is either less than 150 or more than 200 cm. Another random variable may be the person's number of children; this is a discrete random variable with non-negative integer values. It allows the computation of probabilities for individual integer values – the probability mass function (PMF) – or for sets of values, including infinite sets. For example, the event of interest may be "an even number of children". For both finite and infinite event sets, their probabilities can be found by adding up the PMFs of the elements; that is, the probability of an even number of children is the infinite sum . In examples such as these, the sample space is often suppressed, since it is mathematically hard to describe, and the possible values of the random variables are then treated as a sample space. But when two random variables are measured on the same sample space of outcomes, such as the height and number of children being computed on the same random persons, it is easier to track their relationship if it is acknowledged that both height and number of children come from the same random person, for example so that questions of whether such random variables are correlated or not can be posed. If are countable sets of real numbers, and , then is a discrete distribution function. Here for , for . Taking for instance an enumeration of all rational numbers as , one gets a discrete distribution function that is not a step function or piecewise constant. Coin toss The possible outcomes for one coin toss can be described by the sample space . We can introduce a real-valued random variable that models a $1 payoff for a successful bet on heads as follows: If the coin is a fair coin, Y has a probability mass function given by: Dice roll A random variable can also be used to describe the process of rolling dice and the possible outcomes. The most obvious representation for the two-dice case is to take the set of pairs of numbers n1 and n2 from {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6} (representing the numbers on the two dice) as the sample space. The total number rolled (the sum of the numbers in each pair) is then a random variable X given by the function that maps the pair to the sum: and (if the dice are fair) has a probability mass function fX given by: Continuous random variable Formally, a continuous random variable is a random variable whose cumulative distribution function is continuous everywhere. There are no "gaps", which would correspond to numbers which have a finite probability of occurring. Instead, continuous random variables almost never take an exact prescribed value c (formally, ) but there is a positive probability that its value will lie in particular intervals which can be arbitrarily small. Continuous random variables usually admit probability density functions (PDF), which characterize their CDF and probability measures; such distributions are also called absolutely continuous; but some continuous distributions are singular, or mixes of an absolutely continuous part and a singular part. An example of a continuous random variable would be one based on a spinner that can choose a horizontal direction. Then the values taken by the random variable are directions. We could represent these directions by North, West, East, South, Southeast, etc. However, it is commonly more convenient to map the sample space to a random variable which takes values which are real numbers. This can be done, for example, by mapping a direction to a bearing in degrees clockwise from North. The random variable then takes values which are real numbers from the interval [0, 360), with all parts of the range being "equally likely". In this case, X = the angle spun. Any real number has probability zero of being selected, but a positive probability can be assigned to any range of values. For example, the probability of choosing a number in [0, 180] is . Instead of speaking of a probability mass function, we say that the probability density of X is 1/360. The probability of a subset of [0, 360) can be calculated by multiplying the measure of the set by 1/360. In general, the probability of a set for a given continuous random variable can be calculated by integrating the density over the given set. More formally, given any interval , a random variable is called a "continuous uniform random variable" (CURV) if the probability that it takes a value in a subinterval depends only on the length of the subinterval. This implies that the probability of falling in any subinterval is proportional to the length of the subinterval, that is, if , one has where the last equality results from the unitarity axiom of probability. The probability density function of a CURV is given by the indicator function of its interval of support normalized by the interval's length: Of particular interest is the uniform distribution on the unit interval . Samples of any desired probability distribution can be generated by calculating the quantile function of on a randomly-generated number distributed uniformly on the unit interval. This exploits properties of cumulative distribution functions, which are a unifying framework for all random variables. Mixed type A mixed random variable is a random variable whose cumulative distribution function is neither discrete nor everywhere-continuous. It can be realized as the sum of a discrete random variable and a continuous random variable; in which case the will be the weighted average of the CDFs of the component variables. An example of a random variable of mixed type would be based on an experiment where a coin is flipped and the spinner is spun only if the |
to be "as literal an English version of the Persian originals as readability and intelligibility permit", was published in 1979 by Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs. Their edition provides two versions of the thematic quatrain, the first (98) considered by the Persian writer Sadeq Hedayat to be a spurious attribution. 98. I need a jug of wine and a book of poetry, Half a loaf for a bite to eat, Then you and I, seated in a deserted spot, Will have more wealth than a Sultan's realm. 234. If chance supplied a loaf of white bread, Two casks of wine and a leg of mutton, In the corner of a garden with a tulip-cheeked girl, There'd be enjoyment no Sultan could outdo. In 1988, the Rubaiyat was translated by an Iranian for the first time. Karim Emami's translation of the Rubaiyat was published under the title The Wine of Nishapour in Paris. The Wine of Nishapour is the collection of Khayyam's poetry by Shahrokh Golestan, including Golestan's pictures in front of each poem. Example quatrain 160 (equivalent to FitzGerald's quatrain XI in his first edition, as above): In spring if a houri-like sweetheart Gives me a cup of wine on the edge of a green cornfield, Though to the vulgar this would be blasphemy, If I mentioned any other Paradise, I'd be worse than a dog. In 1991, Ahmad Saidi (1904–1994) produced an English translation of 165 quatrains grouped into 10 themes. Born and raised in Iran, Saidi went to the United States in 1931 and attended college there. He served as the head of the Persian Publication Desk at the U.S. Office of War Information during World War II, inaugurated the Voice of America in Iran, and prepared an English-Persian military dictionary for the Department of Defense. His quatrains include the original Persian verses for reference alongside his English translations. His focus was to faithfully convey, with less poetic license, Khayyam's original religious, mystical, and historic Persian themes, through the verses as well as his extensive annotations. Two example quatrains follow: Quatrain 16 (equivalent to FitzGerald's quatrain XII in his 5th edition, as above): Ah, would there were a loaf of bread as fare, A joint of lamb, a jug of vintage rare, And you and I in wilderness encamped— No Sultan's pleasure could with ours compare. Quatrain 75: The sphere upon which mortals come and go, Has no end nor beginning that we know; And none there is to tell us in plain truth: Whence do we come and whither do we go. Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) published an English translation and other translations of 75 quatrains in 1996, with a glossary, spiritual interpretation and practical applications. German Adolf Friedrich von Schack (1815–1894) published a German translation in 1878. Quatrain 151 (equivalent of FitzGerald's quatrain XI in his 1st edition, as above): Gönnt mir, mit dem Liebchen im Gartenrund Zu weilen bei süßem Rebengetränke, Und nennt mich schlimmer als einen Hund, Wenn ferner an's Paradies ich denke! Friedrich Martinus von Bodenstedt (1819–1892) published a German translation in 1881. The translation eventually consisted of 395 quatrains. Quatrain IX, 59 (equivalent of FitzGerald's quatrain XI in his 1st edition, as above): Im Frühling mag ich gern im Grüne weilen Und Einsamkeit mit einer Freundin teilen Und einem Kruge Wein. Mag man mich schelten: Ich lasse keinen andern Himmel gelten. French The first French translation, of 464 quatrains in prose, was made by J. B. Nicolas, chief interpreter at the French embassy in Persia in 1867. Prose stanza (equivalent of FitzGerald's quatrain XI in his 1st edition, as above): Au printemps j’aime à m’asseoir au bord d’une prairie, avec une idole semblable à une houri et une cruche de vin, s’il y en a, et bien que tout cela soit généralement blâmé, je veux être pire qu’un chien si jamais je songe au paradis. The best-known version in French is the free verse edition by Franz Toussaint (1879–1955) published in 1924. This translation consisting of 170 quatrains was done from the original Persian text, while most of the other French translations were themselves translations of FitzGerald's work. The Éditions d'art Henri Piazza published the book almost unchanged between 1924 and 1979. Toussaint's translation has served as the basis of subsequent translations into other languages, but Toussaint did not live to witness the influence his translation has had. Quatrain XXV (equivalent of FitzGerald's quatrain XI in his 1st edition, as above): Au printemps, je vais quelquefois m’asseoir à la lisière d’un champ fleuri. Lorsqu’une belle jeune fille m’apporte une coupe de vin, je ne pense guère à mon salut. Si j’avais cette préoccupation, je vaudrais moins qu’un chien. Russian Many Russian-language translations have been undertaken, reflecting the popularity of the Rubaiyat in Russia since the late 19th century and the increasingly popular tradition of using it for the purposes of bibliomancy. The earliest verse translation (by Vasily Velichko) was published in 1891. The version by Osip Rumer published in 1914 is a translation of FitzGerald's version. Rumer later published a version of 304 rubaiyat translated directly from Persian. A lot of poetic translations (some based on verbatim translations into prose by others) were also written by German Plisetsky, Konstantin Bal'mont, Cecilia Banu, I. I. Tkhorzhevsky (ru), L. Pen'kovsky, and others. Other languages Afrikaans: Poet Cornelis Jacobus Langenhoven (1873–1932, author of "Die Stem van Suid-Afrika") produced the first translation in Afrikaans. Herman Charles Bosman wrote a translation into Afrikaans published in 1948. Albanian: Fan Noli produced a translation in 1927, the melody and poetics of which are highly regarded. Arabic: Ahmed Rami, a famous late Egyptian poet, translated the work into Arabic. His translation was sung by Umm Kulthum. Armenian: Armenian poet Kevork Emin has translated several verses of the Rubaiyat. Assyrian: (see Syriac below). Belarusian: 172 rubaiyat were translated by Ryhor Baradulin in 1989. Bengali: Kantichandra Ghosh, Muhammad Shahidullah (in 1942), Kazi Nazrul Islam (in 1958) and Shakti Chattopadhyay (in 1978) produced translations into Bengali. Hemendra Kumar Roy translated the Rubaiyat into Bengali. Catalan: Ramon Vives Pastor published a verse translation (1907) from the Nicolas' French one and the Fitzgerald's; in 2010, two direct translations from the Persian were published: a rhytmic one by Àlex Queraltó, and the other by Ramon Gaja, in verse and maintaining the original rhyme. Chinese: Kerson Huang based a Chinese version on FitzGerald's version. Cornish: In 1990, Jowann Richards produced a Cornish translation. Czech: First Czech translator is Josef Štýbr. At first he translated from English (from FitzGerald's "translations") (1922), after that from original language (1931). Translation from the original can be found on Czech wikisource (770 poems). Subsequent translators are mentioned here. Dutch: The poet J. H. Leopold (1865–1925) rendered a number of rubaiyat into Dutch. Estonian: Haljand Udam produced an Estonian translation. Finnish: the first translations were made by Toivo Lyy in 1929. More recently Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila (1999 and 2008) and Kiamars Baghban with Leevi Lehto (2009) have translated Khayyam into Finnish. Galician: Xabier Correa Corredoira published a Galician translation in 2010. Greek: Christos Marketis translated 120 rubaiyat into Greek in 1975. Hindi : Maithili Sharan Gupt and Harivanshrai Bachchan translated the book into Hindi in 1959. Hungarian: The earliest translation in Hungarian consisted of a few stanzas taken from the French version of Nicolas, by Béla Erődi in 1919–20. Lőrinc Szabó finalized his translation of the FitzGerald version in 1943. Icelandic: Magnús Ásgeirsson translated the Rubaiyat in 1935. There was an earlier translation by Einar Benediktsson in 1921. Jochum M. Eggertsson (Skuggi) published a translation in 1946. All translations are of FitzGerald's version. Irish: Tadhg Ó Donnchadha (Torna) translated the Rubaiyat from English into Irish in 1920. Italian: Francesco Gabrieli produced an Italian translation (Le Rubaiyyàt di Omar Khayyàm) in 1944. A. Zazzaretta produced a translation in 1960, and Alessandro Bausani produced another translation in 1965. Japanese: In 1910, Kakise Hikozo translated 110 poems from the 5th edition of FitzGerald's translation. The first translation from Persian into the classical Japanese language was made by a linguist, Shigeru Araki, in 1920. Among various other translations, Ogawa highly evaluates Ryo Mori's (:ja:森亮), produced in 1931. In Japan, until 1949, more than 10 poets and/or scholars made translations into Japanese. The first complete translation from Persian into the modern Japanese language was made by Ryosaku Ogawa in 1949, which is still popular and has been published from Iwanami Shoten (it is now in the public domain and also freely available from Aozora Bunko). Historically, the first attempt was six poems translated by Kambara Ariake in 1908. Jèrriais: Fraînque Le Maistre produced a Jèrriais version (based on FitzGerald's 1st edition) during the German occupation of the Channel Islands (1940–1945). Kannada: D. V. Gundappa translated the work into Kannada as a collection of poems titled Umarana Osage in 1952. Kurdish: The Kurdish poet Hajar translated the Rubaiyat in his Chwar Parchakani Xayam. Latvian: It was translated into Latvian by Andrejs Kurcijs in 1970. Malayalam: G. Sankara Kurup produced a translation into Malayalam (1932). Thirunalloor Karunakaran translated the Rubaiyat in 1989. Odia: Gopal Chandra Kanungo illustrated and translated the FitzGerald's book into Odia in 1954. Devdas Chhotray adapted Edward FitzGerald's work into Oriya and recorded it in musical form in 2011. Radha Mohan Gadanayak translated the Rubaiyat into Odia Polish: Several collections of Rubaiyat have appeared, including ones by Professor Andrzej Gawroński (1933, 1969), regarded as the best. Romanian: In 2015 it was translated into Romanian for the first time by orientalist philologist Gheorghe Iorga. Sanskrit: Srimadajjada Adibhatla Narayana Das (1864–1945) translated the original Persian quatrains and Edward FitzGerald's English translations into Sanskrit and pure-Telugu. Pandit Narayana Das claimed his translation was more literal than that of FitzGerald. (See Ajjada Adibhatla Narayana Dasu.) Scots: Scottish poet Rab Wilson published a Scots version in 2004. Serbo-Croatian: The first translation of nine short poems into Serbo-Croatian was published in 1920, and was the work of Safvet beg Bašagić. In 1932, Jelena Skerlić Ćorović re-published these nine, alongside 75 more poems. In 1964, noted orientalist Fehim Bajraktarević published his translation of the Rubaiyat. Slovene: The first translator into Slovene was Alojz Gradnik, his translation being published in 1955. It was translated again by Slovene translator and poet Bert Pribac in 2007 from the French Toussaint edition. Sureth: The Assyrian author Eshaya Elisha Khinno translated the Rubaiyat into Sureth (Assyrian Neo-Aramaic) in 2012 Swahili: Robert Bin Shaaban produced a version in Swahili (dated 1948, published 1952). Swedish: Eric Hermelin translated the Rubaiyat into Swedish in 1928. Syriac: The Assyrian journalist and poet Naum Faiq translated the Rubaiyat into the Syriac. Tagalog: The Filipino poet and linguist Ildefonso Santos published his Tagalog translation in 1953. Telugu: Duvvoori Ramireddy translated the Rubaiyat in 1935. Srimadajjada Adibhatla Narayana Das (1864–1945) translated the original Persian quatrains and Edward FitzGerald's English translations into Sanskrit and pure-Telugu. Thai. At least four versions exist in Thai. These translations were made from the text of FitzGerald. Their respective authors are HRH Prince Narathip Prapanpong, Rainan Aroonrungsee (pen name: Naan Gitirungsi), Pimarn Jamjarus (pen name: Kaen Sungkeet), and Suriyachat Chaimongkol. Welsh: Sir John Morris-Jones translated directly from Persian into Welsh in 1928. Thomas Ifor Rees produced a Welsh translation, published in Mexico City in 1939. Vietnamese: Hồ Thượng Tuy translated from English into Vietnamese (from FitzGerald's 1st edition) in 1990. Nguyễn Viết Thắng produced a Vietnamese translation of 487 rubaiyat, translated from English and Russian in 1995, published in Hanoi in 2003. Influence FitzGerald rendered Omar's name as "Omar the Tentmaker", and this name resonated in English-speaking popular culture for a while. Thus, Nathan Haskell Dole published a novel called Omar, the Tentmaker: A Romance of Old Persia in 1898. Omar the Tentmaker of Naishapur is a historical novel by John Smith Clarke, published in 1910. "Omar the Tentmaker" is a 1914 play in an oriental setting by Richard Walton Tully, adapted as a silent film in 1922. US General Omar Bradley was given the nickname "Omar the Tent-Maker" in World War II, and the name has been recorded as a slang expression for "penis". FitzGerald's translations also reintroduced Khayyam to Iranians, "who had long ignored the Neishapouri poet". Literature The title of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novel Some Buried Caesar comes from one of the Tentmaker's quatrains (FitzGerald's XVIII), for example. Eugene O'Neill's drama Ah, Wilderness! derives its title from the first quoted quatrain above. Agatha Christie used The Moving Finger as a story title, as did Stephen King. See also And Having Writ.... Lan Wright used Dawn's Left Hand as the title of a science fiction story serialized in New Worlds Science Fiction (January–March 1963). The title of Allen Drury's science fiction novel The Throne of Saturn comes from a quatrain which appears as the book's epigraph. The title of Nevil Shute Norway's novel The Chequer Board is taken from Stanza LXIX, and that stanza appears as the book's epigraph. The titles of Mike Shupp's science fiction novels With Fate Conspire and Morning Of Creation, the first two books of the series The Destiny Makers, are taken from Stanzas LXXIII and LIII. These stanzas are quoted during the novels by the main character. The first quote in particular ties in with his mission as a time traveler trying to change past history to alter the outcome of a future war: Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would not we shatter it to bits - and then Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire! Equally noteworthy are these works likewise influenced: The satirist and short story writer Hector Hugh Munro took his pen name of 'Saki' from Edward FitzGerald's translation of the Rubaiyat. The American author O. Henry humorously referred to a book by "Homer KM" with the character "Ruby Ott" in his short story "The Handbook of Hymen. " O. Henry also quoted a quatrain from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in "The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball". Oliver Herford released a parody of the Rubaiyat called "The Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten" in 1904, which is notable for its charming illustrations of the kitten in question on his philosophical adventures. The artist/illustrator Edmund Dulac produced some much-beloved illustrations for the Rubaiyat, 1909. The play The Shadow of a Gunman (1923) by Seán O'Casey contains a reference to the Rubaiyat as the character Donal Davoren quotes "grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, and mould life nearer to the heart's desire". The Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges discusses The Rubaiyat and its history in an essay, "The Enigma of Edward FitzGerald" ("El enigma de Edward FitzGerald") in his book "Other Inquisitions" ("Otras Inquisiciones", 1952). He also references it in some of his poems, including "Rubaiyat" in "The Praise of the Shadow" ("Elogio de la Sombra", 1969), and "Chess" ("Ajedrez") in "The Maker" ("El Hacedor", 1960). Borges' father Jorge Guillermo Borges was the author of a Spanish translation of the FitzGerald version of The Rubaiyat. Science fiction author Paul Marlowe's story "Resurrection and Life" featured a character who could only communicate using lines from the Rubaiyat. Science fiction author Isaac Asimov quotes The Moving Finger in his time-travel novel The End of Eternity when a character discusses whether history could be changed. Charles Schultz wrote a strip in which Lucy reads the Jug of Wine passage, and Linus asks "No blanket?". Wendy Cope's poem "Strugnell's Rubiyat" is a close parody of the FitzGerald translation, relocated to modern day Tulse Hill. One of the title pages of Principia Discordia (1965), a co-author of which went by the pen-name Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst, features its own spin on the quatrain most quoted above: A jug of wine, A leg of lamb And thou! Beside me, Whistling in the darkness. The Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf based his novel Samarkand (1988) on the life of Omar Khayyam, and the creation of the Rubaiyat. It details the Assassin sect as well, and includes a fictional telling of how the (non-existent) original manuscript came to be on the RMS Titanic. In the opening chapter of his book God is Not Great (2007), Christopher Hitchens quotes from Richard Le Gallienne's translation of Khayyam's famous quatrain: And do you think that unto such as you A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew God gave the secret, and denied it me? Well, well—what matters it? Believe that, too! The title of Daphne du Maurier's memoir Myself when Young is a quote from quatrain 27 of FitzGerald's translation: Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument About it and about: but evermore Came out by the same Door as in I went. Rudyard Kipling composed the satirical poem The Rupaiyat of Omar Kal'vin, following the form of the original but with the content being primarily a complaint against an increase in income tax. Working as a pornographic illustrator, The main character in Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human appends Rupaiyat verses to his illustrations. Cinema Filmmaker D.W. Griffith planned a film based on the poems as a follow-up to Intolerance in 1916. It was to star Miriam Cooper, but when she left the Griffith company the plans were dropped; he would ultimately film Broken Blossoms instead. Text from the Rubaiyat appeared in intertitles of the lost film A Lover's Oath (1925) The lines "When Time lets slip a little perfect hour, O take it—for it will not come again." appear in the intertitles of Torrent, the 1926 film starring Greta Garbo and Ricardo Cortez. Part of the quatrain beginning "The Moving Finger writes ... " was quoted in Algiers, the 1938 movie starring Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr. A canto was quoted and used as an underlying theme of the 1945 screen adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray: "I sent my soul through the invisible, some letters of that after-life to spell, and by and by my soul did return, and answered, 'I myself am Heaven and Hell.'" The Rubaiyat was quoted in the 1946 King Vidor Western film Duel in the Sun, which starred Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones: "Oh threats of hell and hopes of paradise! One thing at least is certain: This life flies. One thing is certain and the rest is Lies; The Flower that once is blown for ever dies." The 1951 film Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, starring James Mason and Ava Gardner, opens with an illuminated manuscript of the quatrain beginning "The moving finger writes...". In the film The Music Man (based on the 1957 musical), town librarian Marian Paroo draws down the wrath of the mayor's wife for encouraging the woman's daughter to read a book of "dirty Persian poetry". Summarizing what she calls the "Ruby Hat of Omar Kayayayayay...I am appalled!!", the mayor's wife paraphrases FitzGerald's Quatrain XII from his 5th edition: "People lying out in the woods eating sandwiches, and drinking directly out of jugs with innocent young girls." The film Omar Khayyam, also known as The Loves Of Omar Khayyam, was released in 1957 by Paramount Pictures and includes excerpts from the Rubaiyat. In Back to the Future the character Lorraine Baines, played by Lea Thompson, is holding a copy of the book in 1955 at the high school when her son Marty McFly is trying to introduce her to his father. The Rubaiyat was quoted in the film 12 Monkeys (1995) around 11 minutes in. In Adrian Lyne's Unfaithful a copy of the text in French is quoted in English: "Drink wine, this is life eternal //This, all that youth will give to you//It is the season for wine, roses//And drunken friends//Be happy for this moment//This moment is your life." The book is a gift given flirtatiously to Diane Lane's character by Olivier Martinez who plays rare book dealer Paul Martel in the film. Music The British composer Granville Bantock produced a choral setting of FitzGerald's translation 1906–1909. Using FitzGerald's translation, the Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness set a dozen of the quatrains to music. This work, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Op. 308, calls for narrator, orchestra, and solo accordion. The Rubaiyat have also influenced Arabic music. In 1950 the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum recorded a song entitled "Rubaiyat Al-Khayyam". The Comedian Harmonists in "Wochenend und Sonnenschein". Woody Guthrie recorded an excerpt of the Rubaiyat set to music that was released on Hard Travelin' (The Asch Recordings Vol. 3). The Human Instinct's album Pins In It (1971) opens with a track called "Pinzinet", the lyrics of which are based on the Rubaiyat. Elektra Records released a compilation album named Rubáiyát in 1990 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Elektra Records record label. Coldcut produced an | the head of the Persian Publication Desk at the U.S. Office of War Information during World War II, inaugurated the Voice of America in Iran, and prepared an English-Persian military dictionary for the Department of Defense. His quatrains include the original Persian verses for reference alongside his English translations. His focus was to faithfully convey, with less poetic license, Khayyam's original religious, mystical, and historic Persian themes, through the verses as well as his extensive annotations. Two example quatrains follow: Quatrain 16 (equivalent to FitzGerald's quatrain XII in his 5th edition, as above): Ah, would there were a loaf of bread as fare, A joint of lamb, a jug of vintage rare, And you and I in wilderness encamped— No Sultan's pleasure could with ours compare. Quatrain 75: The sphere upon which mortals come and go, Has no end nor beginning that we know; And none there is to tell us in plain truth: Whence do we come and whither do we go. Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) published an English translation and other translations of 75 quatrains in 1996, with a glossary, spiritual interpretation and practical applications. German Adolf Friedrich von Schack (1815–1894) published a German translation in 1878. Quatrain 151 (equivalent of FitzGerald's quatrain XI in his 1st edition, as above): Gönnt mir, mit dem Liebchen im Gartenrund Zu weilen bei süßem Rebengetränke, Und nennt mich schlimmer als einen Hund, Wenn ferner an's Paradies ich denke! Friedrich Martinus von Bodenstedt (1819–1892) published a German translation in 1881. The translation eventually consisted of 395 quatrains. Quatrain IX, 59 (equivalent of FitzGerald's quatrain XI in his 1st edition, as above): Im Frühling mag ich gern im Grüne weilen Und Einsamkeit mit einer Freundin teilen Und einem Kruge Wein. Mag man mich schelten: Ich lasse keinen andern Himmel gelten. French The first French translation, of 464 quatrains in prose, was made by J. B. Nicolas, chief interpreter at the French embassy in Persia in 1867. Prose stanza (equivalent of FitzGerald's quatrain XI in his 1st edition, as above): Au printemps j’aime à m’asseoir au bord d’une prairie, avec une idole semblable à une houri et une cruche de vin, s’il y en a, et bien que tout cela soit généralement blâmé, je veux être pire qu’un chien si jamais je songe au paradis. The best-known version in French is the free verse edition by Franz Toussaint (1879–1955) published in 1924. This translation consisting of 170 quatrains was done from the original Persian text, while most of the other French translations were themselves translations of FitzGerald's work. The Éditions d'art Henri Piazza published the book almost unchanged between 1924 and 1979. Toussaint's translation has served as the basis of subsequent translations into other languages, but Toussaint did not live to witness the influence his translation has had. Quatrain XXV (equivalent of FitzGerald's quatrain XI in his 1st edition, as above): Au printemps, je vais quelquefois m’asseoir à la lisière d’un champ fleuri. Lorsqu’une belle jeune fille m’apporte une coupe de vin, je ne pense guère à mon salut. Si j’avais cette préoccupation, je vaudrais moins qu’un chien. Russian Many Russian-language translations have been undertaken, reflecting the popularity of the Rubaiyat in Russia since the late 19th century and the increasingly popular tradition of using it for the purposes of bibliomancy. The earliest verse translation (by Vasily Velichko) was published in 1891. The version by Osip Rumer published in 1914 is a translation of FitzGerald's version. Rumer later published a version of 304 rubaiyat translated directly from Persian. A lot of poetic translations (some based on verbatim translations into prose by others) were also written by German Plisetsky, Konstantin Bal'mont, Cecilia Banu, I. I. Tkhorzhevsky (ru), L. Pen'kovsky, and others. Other languages Afrikaans: Poet Cornelis Jacobus Langenhoven (1873–1932, author of "Die Stem van Suid-Afrika") produced the first translation in Afrikaans. Herman Charles Bosman wrote a translation into Afrikaans published in 1948. Albanian: Fan Noli produced a translation in 1927, the melody and poetics of which are highly regarded. Arabic: Ahmed Rami, a famous late Egyptian poet, translated the work into Arabic. His translation was sung by Umm Kulthum. Armenian: Armenian poet Kevork Emin has translated several verses of the Rubaiyat. Assyrian: (see Syriac below). Belarusian: 172 rubaiyat were translated by Ryhor Baradulin in 1989. Bengali: Kantichandra Ghosh, Muhammad Shahidullah (in 1942), Kazi Nazrul Islam (in 1958) and Shakti Chattopadhyay (in 1978) produced translations into Bengali. Hemendra Kumar Roy translated the Rubaiyat into Bengali. Catalan: Ramon Vives Pastor published a verse translation (1907) from the Nicolas' French one and the Fitzgerald's; in 2010, two direct translations from the Persian were published: a rhytmic one by Àlex Queraltó, and the other by Ramon Gaja, in verse and maintaining the original rhyme. Chinese: Kerson Huang based a Chinese version on FitzGerald's version. Cornish: In 1990, Jowann Richards produced a Cornish translation. Czech: First Czech translator is Josef Štýbr. At first he translated from English (from FitzGerald's "translations") (1922), after that from original language (1931). Translation from the original can be found on Czech wikisource (770 poems). Subsequent translators are mentioned here. Dutch: The poet J. H. Leopold (1865–1925) rendered a number of rubaiyat into Dutch. Estonian: Haljand Udam produced an Estonian translation. Finnish: the first translations were made by Toivo Lyy in 1929. More recently Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila (1999 and 2008) and Kiamars Baghban with Leevi Lehto (2009) have translated Khayyam into Finnish. Galician: Xabier Correa Corredoira published a Galician translation in 2010. Greek: Christos Marketis translated 120 rubaiyat into Greek in 1975. Hindi : Maithili Sharan Gupt and Harivanshrai Bachchan translated the book into Hindi in 1959. Hungarian: The earliest translation in Hungarian consisted of a few stanzas taken from the French version of Nicolas, by Béla Erődi in 1919–20. Lőrinc Szabó finalized his translation of the FitzGerald version in 1943. Icelandic: Magnús Ásgeirsson translated the Rubaiyat in 1935. There was an earlier translation by Einar Benediktsson in 1921. Jochum M. Eggertsson (Skuggi) published a translation in 1946. All translations are of FitzGerald's version. Irish: Tadhg Ó Donnchadha (Torna) translated the Rubaiyat from English into Irish in 1920. Italian: Francesco Gabrieli produced an Italian translation (Le Rubaiyyàt di Omar Khayyàm) in 1944. A. Zazzaretta produced a translation in 1960, and Alessandro Bausani produced another translation in 1965. Japanese: In 1910, Kakise Hikozo translated 110 poems from the 5th edition of FitzGerald's translation. The first translation from Persian into the classical Japanese language was made by a linguist, Shigeru Araki, in 1920. Among various other translations, Ogawa highly evaluates Ryo Mori's (:ja:森亮), produced in 1931. In Japan, until 1949, more than 10 poets and/or scholars made translations into Japanese. The first complete translation from Persian into the modern Japanese language was made by Ryosaku Ogawa in 1949, which is still popular and has been published from Iwanami Shoten (it is now in the public domain and also freely available from Aozora Bunko). Historically, the first attempt was six poems translated by Kambara Ariake in 1908. Jèrriais: Fraînque Le Maistre produced a Jèrriais version (based on FitzGerald's 1st edition) during the German occupation of the Channel Islands (1940–1945). Kannada: D. V. Gundappa translated the work into Kannada as a collection of poems titled Umarana Osage in 1952. Kurdish: The Kurdish poet Hajar translated the Rubaiyat in his Chwar Parchakani Xayam. Latvian: It was translated into Latvian by Andrejs Kurcijs in 1970. Malayalam: G. Sankara Kurup produced a translation into Malayalam (1932). Thirunalloor Karunakaran translated the Rubaiyat in 1989. Odia: Gopal Chandra Kanungo illustrated and translated the FitzGerald's book into Odia in 1954. Devdas Chhotray adapted Edward FitzGerald's work into Oriya and recorded it in musical form in 2011. Radha Mohan Gadanayak translated the Rubaiyat into Odia Polish: Several collections of Rubaiyat have appeared, including ones by Professor Andrzej Gawroński (1933, 1969), regarded as the best. Romanian: In 2015 it was translated into Romanian for the first time by orientalist philologist Gheorghe Iorga. Sanskrit: Srimadajjada Adibhatla Narayana Das (1864–1945) translated the original Persian quatrains and Edward FitzGerald's English translations into Sanskrit and pure-Telugu. Pandit Narayana Das claimed his translation was more literal than that of FitzGerald. (See Ajjada Adibhatla Narayana Dasu.) Scots: Scottish poet Rab Wilson published a Scots version in 2004. Serbo-Croatian: The first translation of nine short poems into Serbo-Croatian was published in 1920, and was the work of Safvet beg Bašagić. In 1932, Jelena Skerlić Ćorović re-published these nine, alongside 75 more poems. In 1964, noted orientalist Fehim Bajraktarević published his translation of the Rubaiyat. Slovene: The first translator into Slovene was Alojz Gradnik, his translation being published in 1955. It was translated again by Slovene translator and poet Bert Pribac in 2007 from the French Toussaint edition. Sureth: The Assyrian author Eshaya Elisha Khinno translated the Rubaiyat into Sureth (Assyrian Neo-Aramaic) in 2012 Swahili: Robert Bin Shaaban produced a version in Swahili (dated 1948, published 1952). Swedish: Eric Hermelin translated the Rubaiyat into Swedish in 1928. Syriac: The Assyrian journalist and poet Naum Faiq translated the Rubaiyat into the Syriac. Tagalog: The Filipino poet and linguist Ildefonso Santos published his Tagalog translation in 1953. Telugu: Duvvoori Ramireddy translated the Rubaiyat in 1935. Srimadajjada Adibhatla Narayana Das (1864–1945) translated the original Persian quatrains and Edward FitzGerald's English translations into Sanskrit and pure-Telugu. Thai. At least four versions exist in Thai. These translations were made from the text of FitzGerald. Their respective authors are HRH Prince Narathip Prapanpong, Rainan Aroonrungsee (pen name: Naan Gitirungsi), Pimarn Jamjarus (pen name: Kaen Sungkeet), and Suriyachat Chaimongkol. Welsh: Sir John Morris-Jones translated directly from Persian into Welsh in 1928. Thomas Ifor Rees produced a Welsh translation, published in Mexico City in 1939. Vietnamese: Hồ Thượng Tuy translated from English into Vietnamese (from FitzGerald's 1st edition) in 1990. Nguyễn Viết Thắng produced a Vietnamese translation of 487 rubaiyat, translated from English and Russian in 1995, published in Hanoi in 2003. Influence FitzGerald rendered Omar's name as "Omar the Tentmaker", and this name resonated in English-speaking popular culture for a while. Thus, Nathan Haskell Dole published a novel called Omar, the Tentmaker: A Romance of Old Persia in 1898. Omar the Tentmaker of Naishapur is a historical novel by John Smith Clarke, published in 1910. "Omar the Tentmaker" is a 1914 play in an oriental setting by Richard Walton Tully, adapted as a silent film in 1922. US General Omar Bradley was given the nickname "Omar the Tent-Maker" in World War II, and the name has been recorded as a slang expression for "penis". FitzGerald's translations also reintroduced Khayyam to Iranians, "who had long ignored the Neishapouri poet". Literature The title of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novel Some Buried Caesar comes from one of the Tentmaker's quatrains (FitzGerald's XVIII), for example. Eugene O'Neill's drama Ah, Wilderness! derives its title from the first quoted quatrain above. Agatha Christie used The Moving Finger as a story title, as did Stephen King. See also And Having Writ.... Lan Wright used Dawn's Left Hand as the title of a science fiction story serialized in New Worlds Science Fiction (January–March 1963). The title of Allen Drury's science fiction novel The Throne of Saturn comes from a quatrain which appears as the book's epigraph. The title of Nevil Shute Norway's novel The Chequer Board is taken from Stanza LXIX, and that stanza appears as the book's epigraph. The titles of Mike Shupp's science fiction novels With Fate Conspire and Morning Of Creation, the first two books of the series The Destiny Makers, are taken from Stanzas LXXIII and LIII. These stanzas are quoted during the novels by the main character. The first quote in particular ties in with his mission as a time traveler trying to change past history to alter the outcome of a future war: Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would not we shatter it to bits - and then Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire! Equally noteworthy are these works likewise influenced: The satirist and short story writer Hector Hugh Munro took his pen name of 'Saki' from Edward FitzGerald's translation of the Rubaiyat. The American author O. Henry humorously referred to a book by "Homer KM" with the character "Ruby Ott" in his short story "The Handbook of Hymen. " O. Henry also quoted a quatrain from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in "The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball". Oliver Herford released a parody of the Rubaiyat called "The Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten" in 1904, which is notable for its charming illustrations of the kitten in question on his philosophical adventures. The artist/illustrator Edmund Dulac produced some much-beloved illustrations for the Rubaiyat, 1909. The play The Shadow of a Gunman (1923) by Seán O'Casey contains a reference to the Rubaiyat as the character Donal Davoren quotes "grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, and mould life nearer to the heart's desire". The Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges discusses The Rubaiyat and its history in an essay, "The Enigma of Edward FitzGerald" ("El enigma de Edward FitzGerald") in his book "Other Inquisitions" ("Otras Inquisiciones", 1952). He also references it in some of his poems, including "Rubaiyat" in "The Praise of the Shadow" ("Elogio de la Sombra", 1969), and "Chess" ("Ajedrez") in "The Maker" ("El Hacedor", 1960). Borges' father Jorge Guillermo Borges was the author of a Spanish translation of the FitzGerald version of The Rubaiyat. Science fiction author Paul Marlowe's story "Resurrection and Life" featured a character who could only communicate using lines from the Rubaiyat. Science fiction author Isaac Asimov quotes The Moving Finger in his time-travel novel The End of Eternity when a character discusses whether history could be changed. Charles Schultz wrote a strip in which Lucy reads the Jug of Wine passage, and Linus asks "No blanket?". Wendy Cope's poem "Strugnell's Rubiyat" is a close parody of the FitzGerald translation, relocated to modern day Tulse Hill. One of the title pages of Principia Discordia (1965), a co-author of which went by the pen-name Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst, features its own spin on the quatrain most quoted above: A jug of wine, A leg of lamb And thou! Beside me, Whistling in the darkness. The Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf based his novel Samarkand (1988) on the life of Omar Khayyam, and the creation of the Rubaiyat. It details the Assassin sect as well, and includes a fictional telling of how the (non-existent) original manuscript came to be on the RMS Titanic. In the opening chapter of his book God is Not Great (2007), Christopher Hitchens quotes from Richard Le Gallienne's translation of Khayyam's famous quatrain: And do you think that unto such as you A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew God gave the secret, and denied it me? Well, well—what matters it? Believe that, too! The title of Daphne du Maurier's memoir Myself when Young is a quote from quatrain 27 of FitzGerald's translation: Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument About it and about: but evermore Came out by the same Door as in I went. Rudyard Kipling composed the satirical poem The Rupaiyat of Omar Kal'vin, following the form of the original but with the content being primarily a complaint against an increase in income tax. Working as a pornographic illustrator, The main character in Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human appends Rupaiyat verses to his illustrations. Cinema Filmmaker D.W. Griffith planned a film based on the poems as a follow-up to Intolerance in 1916. It was to star Miriam Cooper, but when she left the Griffith company the plans were dropped; he would ultimately film Broken Blossoms instead. Text from the Rubaiyat appeared in intertitles of the lost film A Lover's Oath (1925) The lines "When Time lets slip a little perfect hour, O take it—for it will not come again." appear in the intertitles of Torrent, the 1926 film starring Greta Garbo and Ricardo Cortez. Part of the quatrain beginning "The Moving Finger writes ... " was quoted in Algiers, the 1938 movie starring Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr. A canto was quoted and used as an underlying theme of the 1945 screen adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray: "I sent my soul through the invisible, some letters of that after-life to spell, and by and by my soul did return, and answered, 'I myself am Heaven and Hell.'" The Rubaiyat was quoted in the 1946 King Vidor Western film Duel in the Sun, which starred Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones: "Oh threats of hell and hopes of paradise! One thing at least is certain: This life flies. One thing is certain and the rest is Lies; The Flower that once is blown for ever dies." The 1951 film Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, starring James Mason and Ava Gardner, opens with an illuminated manuscript of the quatrain beginning "The moving finger writes...". In the film The Music Man (based on the 1957 musical), town librarian Marian Paroo draws down the wrath of the mayor's wife for encouraging the woman's daughter to read a book of "dirty Persian poetry". Summarizing what she calls the "Ruby Hat of Omar Kayayayayay...I am appalled!!", the mayor's wife paraphrases FitzGerald's Quatrain XII from his 5th edition: "People lying out in the woods eating sandwiches, and drinking directly out of jugs with innocent young girls." The film Omar Khayyam, also known as The Loves Of Omar Khayyam, was released in 1957 by Paramount Pictures and includes excerpts from the Rubaiyat. In Back to the Future the character Lorraine Baines, played by Lea Thompson, is holding a copy of the book in 1955 at the high school when her son Marty McFly is trying to introduce her to his father. The Rubaiyat was quoted in the film 12 Monkeys (1995) around 11 minutes in. In Adrian Lyne's Unfaithful a copy of the text in French is quoted in English: "Drink wine, this is life eternal //This, all that youth will give to you//It is the season for wine, roses//And drunken friends//Be happy for this moment//This moment is your life." The book is a gift given flirtatiously to Diane Lane's character by Olivier Martinez who plays rare |
Crowe played Jackknife in The Man with the Iron Fists, opposite RZA. He took on the role of Inspector Javert in the musical film of Les Misérables (2012), and portrayed Superman's biological father, Jor-El, in the Christopher Nolan-produced film, Man of Steel, released in the summer of 2013. In 2014, he played a gangster in the film adaptation of Mark Helprin's 1983 novel Winter's Tale, and the title role in the Darren Aronofsky film Noah. In June 2013, Crowe signed to make his directorial debut with an historical drama film The Water Diviner, which he also starred in alongside Jacqueline McKenzie, Olga Kurylenko, Jai Courtney. Set in the year 1919, the film was produced by Troy Lum, Andrew Mason and Keith Rodger. Crowe also starred in The Mummy (2017). Crowe will portray Zeus in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Thor: Love and Thunder, set to be released in 6 May 2022. Music In the 1980s, Crowe, under the name of "Russ le Roq", recorded a song titled "I Want to Be Like Marlon Brando". In the 1980s, Crowe and friend Billy Dean Cochran formed a band, Roman Antix, which later evolved into the Australian rock band Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts (abbreviated to TOFOG). Crowe performed lead vocals and guitar for the band, which formed in 1992. The band released The Photograph Kills EP in 1995, as well as three full-length records, Gaslight (1998), Bastard Life or Clarity (2001) and Other Ways of Speaking (2003). In 2000, TOFOG performed shows in London, Los Angeles and in Austin, Texas. In 2001, the band toured in the U.S. with dates in Austin, Boulder, Chicago, Portland, San Francisco, Hollywood, Philadelphia, New York City and the last show at The Stone Pony in Asbury Park, New Jersey. In early 2005, Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts as a group had "dissolved/evolved" with Crowe feeling his future music would take a new direction. He began a collaboration with Alan Doyle of the Canadian band Great Big Sea, and with it a new band emerged: The Ordinary Fear of God which also involved some members of the previous TOFOG line-up. A new single, Raewyn, was released in April 2005 and an album entitled My Hand, My Heart was released. The album includes a tribute song to actor Richard Harris, who became Crowe's friend during the making of Gladiator. Crowe and his new band The Ordinary Fear of God (keeping the TOFOG acronym) toured Australia in 2005, and then in the U.S. in 2006, returned to the US to promote their new release My Hand, My Heart. In March 2010, the group's version of the John Williamson song "Winter Green" was included on a new compilation album The Absolute Best of John Williamson: 40 Years True Blue, commemorating the singer-songwriter's milestone of 40 years in the Australian music industry. On 2 August 2011, the third collaboration between Crowe and Doyle was released on iTunes as The Crowe/Doyle Songbook Vol III, featuring nine original songs followed by their acoustic demo counterparts (for a total of 18 tracks). Danielle Spencer does guest vocals on most tracks. The release coincided with a pair of live performances at the LSPU Hall in St. John's, Newfoundland. The digital album was released as download versions only on Amazon.com, iTunes, Spotify. The album has since charted at No. 72 on the Canadian Albums Chart. On 26 September 2011, Crowe appeared onstage at Rogers Arena in Vancouver in the middle of Keith Urban's concert. He sang a cover of "Folsom Prison Blues", before joining the rest of the band in a rendition of "The Joker". On 18 August 2012, Crowe appeared along with Doyle at the Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavík, Iceland as part of the city's Menningarnótt program. By 2017 Crowe and Doyle had created a new act (with Samantha Barks, Scott Grimes and Carl Falk) called Indoor Garden Party who appeared on The One Show to promote their album called The Musical. Philanthropy During location filming of Cinderella Man, Crowe made a donation to a Jewish elementary school whose library had been damaged as a result of arson. A note with an anti-Semitic message had been left at the scene. Crowe called school officials to express his concern and wanted his message relayed to the students. The school's building fund received donations from throughout Canada and the amount of Crowe's donation was not disclosed. On another occasion, Crowe donated $200,000 to a struggling primary school near his home in rural Australia. The money went towards an $800,000 project to construct a swimming pool at the school. Crowe's sympathies were sparked when a pupil drowned at the nearby Coffs Harbour beach in 2001, and he felt the pool would help students become better swimmers and improve their water safety. At the opening ceremony, he dived into the pool fully clothed as soon as it was declared open. Nana Glen principal Laurie Renshall said, "The many things he does up here, people just don't know about. We've been trying to get a pool for 10 years." In August 2020, Crowe donated $5,000 to a fundraiser on GoFundMe by filmmaker Amanda Bailly and journalist Richard Hall to help rebuild Le Chef, a restaurant which was destroyed in the 2020 Beirut explosion. The fundraiser aimed to raise $15,000, but it raised approximately $19,000 as of August 16. In response to Hall noting the donation, Crowe tweeted: "On behalf of Anthony Bourdain. I thought he probably would have done so if he was still around. I wish you and Le Chef the best and hope things can be put back together soon." Personal life In 1989, Crowe met Australian singer Danielle Spencer while working on the film The Crossing and the two began an on-again, off-again relationship. In 2000, he became romantically involved with American actress Meg Ryan while working on their film Proof of Life. In 2001, Crowe and Spencer reconciled, and they married two years later in April 2003. The wedding took place at Crowe's cattle property in Nana Glen, New South Wales, with the ceremony taking place on Crowe's 39th birthday. The couple have two sons named Charles Spencer Crowe (born 21 December 2003) and Tennyson Spencer Crowe (born 7 July 2006). In October 2012, it was reported that Crowe and Spencer had separated. They divorced in April 2018. A longtime resident of Nana Glen, Crowe is well known in the community and is a frequent patron of the local rugby games. During the Australian bushfires in 2019 and 2020, he raised over $400,000 for the NSW RFS by selling his South Sydney Rabbitohs | Crowe won the best actor award for A Beautiful Mind at the 2002 BAFTA award ceremony, as well as the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards for the same performance. Although nominated for an Academy Award, he lost to Denzel Washington. All three films were also nominated for Best Picture, and both Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind won the award. Crowe became the first actor to star as the lead in back-to-back Best Picture winners since Walter Pidgeon (who starred in How Green Was My Valley and Mrs. Miniver). Within the six-year stretch from 1997 to 2003, he also starred in two other best picture nominees, L.A. Confidential and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. In 2005, he re-teamed with A Beautiful Mind director Ron Howard for Cinderella Man. In 2006, he re-teamed with Gladiator director Ridley Scott for A Good Year, the first of two consecutive collaborations (the second being American Gangster co-starring again with Denzel Washington, released in late 2007). Although the light romantic comedy of A Good Year was not greatly received, Crowe seemed pleased with the film, telling STV in an interview that he thought it would be enjoyed by fans of his other films. In recent years, Crowe's box office standing has declined. The Hollywood stock market (HSX) share Russell Crowe (RCROW), issued in 1998, however, maintains constant accretion. Crowe appeared in Robin Hood, a film based on the Robin Hood legend, directed by Ridley Scott and released on 14 May 2010. Crowe starred in the 2010 Paul Haggis film The Next Three Days, an adaptation of the 2008 French film Pour Elle. After a year off from acting, Crowe played Jackknife in The Man with the Iron Fists, opposite RZA. He took on the role of Inspector Javert in the musical film of Les Misérables (2012), and portrayed Superman's biological father, Jor-El, in the Christopher Nolan-produced film, Man of Steel, released in the summer of 2013. In 2014, he played a gangster in the film adaptation of Mark Helprin's 1983 novel Winter's Tale, and the title role in the Darren Aronofsky film Noah. In June 2013, Crowe signed to make his directorial debut with an historical drama film The Water Diviner, which he also starred in alongside Jacqueline McKenzie, Olga Kurylenko, Jai Courtney. Set in the year 1919, the film was produced by Troy Lum, Andrew Mason and Keith Rodger. Crowe also starred in The Mummy (2017). Crowe will portray Zeus in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Thor: Love and Thunder, set to be released in 6 May 2022. Music In the 1980s, Crowe, under the name of "Russ le Roq", recorded a song titled "I Want to Be Like Marlon Brando". In the 1980s, Crowe and friend Billy Dean Cochran formed a band, Roman Antix, which later evolved into the Australian rock band Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts (abbreviated to TOFOG). Crowe performed lead vocals and guitar for the band, which formed in 1992. The band released The Photograph Kills EP in 1995, as well as three full-length records, Gaslight (1998), Bastard Life or Clarity (2001) and Other Ways of Speaking (2003). In 2000, TOFOG performed shows in London, Los Angeles and in Austin, Texas. In 2001, the band toured in the U.S. with dates in Austin, Boulder, Chicago, Portland, San Francisco, Hollywood, Philadelphia, New York City and the last show at The Stone Pony in Asbury Park, New Jersey. In early 2005, Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts as a group had "dissolved/evolved" with Crowe feeling his future music would take a new direction. He began a collaboration with Alan Doyle of the Canadian band Great Big Sea, and with it a new band emerged: The Ordinary Fear of God which also involved some members of the previous TOFOG line-up. A new single, Raewyn, was released in April 2005 and an album entitled My Hand, My Heart was released. The album includes a tribute song to actor Richard Harris, who became Crowe's friend during the making of Gladiator. Crowe and his new band The Ordinary Fear of God (keeping the TOFOG acronym) toured Australia in 2005, and then in the U.S. in 2006, returned to the US to promote their new release My Hand, My Heart. In March 2010, the group's version of the John Williamson song "Winter Green" was included on a new compilation album The Absolute Best of John Williamson: 40 Years True Blue, commemorating the singer-songwriter's milestone of 40 years in the Australian music industry. On 2 August 2011, the third collaboration between Crowe and Doyle was released on iTunes as The Crowe/Doyle Songbook Vol III, featuring nine original songs followed by their acoustic demo counterparts (for a total of 18 tracks). Danielle Spencer does guest vocals on most tracks. The release coincided with a pair of live performances at the LSPU Hall in St. John's, Newfoundland. The digital album was released as download versions only on Amazon.com, iTunes, Spotify. The album has since charted at No. 72 on the Canadian Albums Chart. On 26 September 2011, Crowe appeared onstage at Rogers Arena in Vancouver in the middle of Keith Urban's concert. He sang a cover of "Folsom Prison Blues", before joining the rest of the band in a rendition of "The Joker". On 18 August 2012, Crowe appeared along with Doyle at the Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavík, Iceland as part of the city's Menningarnótt program. By 2017 Crowe and Doyle had created a new act (with Samantha Barks, Scott Grimes and Carl Falk) called Indoor Garden Party who appeared on The One Show to promote their album called The Musical. Philanthropy During location filming of Cinderella Man, Crowe made a donation to a Jewish elementary school whose library had been damaged as a result of arson. A note with an anti-Semitic message had been left at the scene. Crowe called school officials to express his concern and wanted his message relayed to the students. The school's building fund received donations from throughout Canada and the amount of Crowe's donation was not disclosed. On another occasion, Crowe donated $200,000 to a struggling primary school near his home in rural Australia. The money went towards an $800,000 project to construct a swimming pool at the school. Crowe's sympathies were sparked when a pupil drowned at the nearby Coffs Harbour beach in 2001, and he felt the pool would help students become better swimmers and improve their water safety. At the opening ceremony, he dived into the pool fully clothed as soon as it was declared open. Nana Glen principal Laurie Renshall said, "The many things he does up here, people just don't know about. We've been trying to get a pool for 10 years." In August 2020, Crowe donated $5,000 to a fundraiser on GoFundMe by filmmaker Amanda Bailly and journalist Richard Hall to help rebuild Le Chef, a restaurant which was destroyed in the 2020 Beirut explosion. The fundraiser aimed to raise $15,000, but it raised approximately $19,000 as of August 16. In response to Hall noting the donation, Crowe tweeted: "On behalf of Anthony Bourdain. I thought he probably would have done so if he was still around. I wish you and Le Chef the best and hope things can be put back together soon." Personal life In 1989, Crowe met Australian singer Danielle Spencer while working on the film The Crossing and the two began an on-again, off-again relationship. In 2000, he became romantically involved with American actress Meg Ryan while working on their film Proof of Life. In 2001, Crowe and Spencer reconciled, and they married two years later in April 2003. The wedding took place at Crowe's cattle property in Nana Glen, New South Wales, with the ceremony taking place on Crowe's 39th birthday. The couple have two sons named Charles Spencer Crowe (born 21 December 2003) and Tennyson Spencer Crowe (born 7 July 2006). In October 2012, it was reported that Crowe and Spencer had separated. They divorced in April 2018. A longtime resident of Nana Glen, Crowe is well known in the community and is a frequent patron of the local rugby games. During the Australian bushfires in 2019 and 2020, he raised over $400,000 for the NSW RFS by selling his South Sydney Rabbitohs hat in an online auction. On 9 March 2005, Crowe revealed to GQ magazine that FBI agents had approached him prior to the 2001 Academy Awards and told him that the terrorist group al-Qaeda wanted to kidnap him. He recalled, "It was something to do with some recording picked up by a French policewoman, I think, in either Libya or Algiers... it was about taking iconographic Americans out of the picture as a sort of cultural destabilisation plan." At the beginning of 2009, Crowe appeared in a series of special-edition postage stamps called "Legends of the Screen", featuring Australian actors. Crowe, Geoffrey Rush, Cate Blanchett, and Nicole Kidman each appear twice in the series, once as themselves and once as their Academy Award-nominated character. Crowe is the only non-Australian to appear in the stamps. In June 2010, Crowe, who started smoking when he was 10, announced he had quit for the sake of his two sons. In November, he told David Letterman that he had smoked more than 60 cigarettes a day for 36 years, and that he had "fallen off the wagon" the night before the interview and smoked heavily. Altercations and controversies Between 1999 and 2005, Crowe was involved in four altercations, which gave him a reputation for having a bad temper. In 1999, Crowe was involved in a scuffle at the Plantation Hotel in Coffs Harbour, which was caught on a security camera. Two men were acquitted of using the video in an attempt to blackmail him. In 2002, when part of Crowe's appearance at that year's BAFTA Awards was cut out to fit into the BBC's tape-delayed broadcast, Crowe used strong language during an argument with producer Malcolm Gerrie. The part cut was a Patrick Kavanagh poem in tribute to actor Richard Harris, which was cut for copyright reasons. Crowe later apologised, saying, "What I said to him may have been a little bit more passionate than now, in the cold light of day, I would have liked it to have been." Later that year, Crowe was alleged to have been involved in a brawl with businessman Eric Watson inside the London branch of Zuma, a Japanese restaurant chainthe fight was broken up by English actor Ross Kemp. In June 2005, Crowe was arrested and charged with second-degree assault by the NYPD after he threw a telephone at the concierge of the Mercer Hotel who had refused to help him place a call when the system did not work from Crowe's room. He was also charged with fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon (the telephone). The concierge was treated for a facial laceration. After his arrest, Crowe underwent a perp walk, a procedure customary in New York City, exposing the handcuffed suspect to the news media to take pictures. This procedure was under discussion as potentially violating Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Crowe later described the incident as "possibly the most shameful situation that I've ever gotten myself in". Crowe pleaded guilty and was conditionally discharged. Before the trial, he settled a lawsuit filed by the concierge, Nestor Estrada. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but amounts in the six-figure range have been reported. The telephone incident had a generally negative impact on Crowe's public image, an example of negative public relations in the mass media, although Crowe had made a point of befriending Australian journalists in an effort to influence his image. The South Park episode "The New Terrance and Phillip Movie Trailer" revolves around a lampooning of his aggressive tendencies. Crowe commented on the ongoing media coverage in November 2010, during an interview with American television talk show host and journalist Charlie Rose: "I think it indelibly changed me. It was a very, very minor situation that was made into something outrageous. More violence perpetuated me walking between the car to the courtroom |
published a special issue on The Philosophy of Robert Musil in 2014, edited by Bence Nanay. Timeline 1880 November 6, Robert Musil born in Klagenfurt. Mother Hermine, father engineer Alfred Musil. 1881–1882 The Musils move to Chomutov in Bohemia. 1882–1891 The Musils move to Steyr (Austria). Robert attends the elementary school and the first grade of the gymnasium. 1891–1892 Move to Brno. Attends the Realschule. 1892–1894 Attends the military boarding school in Eisenstadt. 1894–1897 Attends the military Militär-Oberrealschule in Hranice (present-day in the Czech Republic) during his working with artillery Musil discovers his interest in technique. 1897 Attends the in Vienna. 1898–1901 Quit officer training and starts studies at the Technical University in Brno. His father had been a professor there since 1890. First literary attempt and first diary notations. 1901 doctoral examinations. 1901–1902 Musil enlists in the infantry regiment of Freiherr von Hess Nr. 49 in Brno. 1902–1903 Move to Stuttgart to work at the University. Works on his first novel, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless 1903–1908 Takes up studies in philosophy; his majors are "logic and experimental psychology". 1905 In his diaries he makes the first notes that develop into Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften. 1906 Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Torless is published. Developed an apparatus to research colour experience in people. 1908 Beiträge zur Beurteilung der Lehren Machs is the title of his doctoral thesis. Declines an offer to upgrade his last military rank to an equal civilian rank in favour of writing. 1908–1910 Works in Berlin as an editor for the magazine Pan and on his Vereinigungen and Die Schwärmer. 1911–1914 Librarian at the Technical University of Vienna. 1911 on 15 April Musil marries Martha Marcovaldi. Vereinigungen is published. 1912–1914 Editor for several literary magazines, including Neue Rundschau. 1914–1918 During World War I, Musil is officer at the Italian front. Decorated several times. 1916–1917 July–April: publishes the "Soldaten-Zeitung". 1917 On 22 October, Alfred Musil was hereditary ennobled as Alfred Edler von Musil, making Robert Musil also a member of the nobility until it was abolished less than two years later. 1918 Takes up writing again. 1919–1920 Works for the Information Service of the Austrian foreign department in Vienna. 1920 April–June: lives in Berlin. Meets Ernst Rowohlt, who will become his publisher in 1923. 1920–1922 Adviser for army matters in Vienna. 1921–1931 Works as theatre critic, essayist, and writer in Vienna. Works on Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften. 1921 The play Die Schwärmer is published. 1923–1929 Is vice-president of Schutzverbandes deutscher Schriftsteller in Östereich. Meets Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who is president of the foundation. 1923 Awarded the Kleist Prize for Die Schwärmer. On 4 December Vinzenz und die Freundin bedeutender Männer is premièred in Berlin. 1924 on 24 January his mother died and on 1 October his father died. Awarded the art prize of the city of Vienna. Drei Frauen is published. 1927 Delivers a speech following the death the previous year of Rainer Maria Rilke in Berlin. 1929 4 April première of Die Schwärmer. Over Musil's objections, the play is shortened and, according to him, incomprehensible. In the autumn awarded the Gerhart Hauptmann award. 1930 The first two parts of Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften are published. In spite of critical support, Musil's financial situation is precarious. 1931–1933 Lives and works in Berlin. 1932 Foundation of a Musil-Gesellschaft by Kurt Glaser in Berlin. The foundation aims to provide Musil with the means necessary to continue working on his novel. At the end of the year the third part of Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften is published. 1933 in May Musil leaves Berlin with his wife, Martha. Via Karlovy Vary and Potštejn in Czechoslovakia they reach Vienna. 1934–1938 After the dismantling of the Berlin Musil-Gesellschaft, a new one is founded in Vienna. 1935 Lecture for the Internationalen Schriftstellerkongress für die Verteidigung der Kultur in Paris. 1936 Publishes his collection of thoughts, observations, and stories Nachlass zu Lebzeiten. Suffers a stroke. 1937 on 11 March invited by the Werkbund lecture "On stupidity" in Vienna 1938 Via northern Italy Musil and his wife flee to Zürich. Two days after their arrival, on 4 September, they have tea at Thomas Mann's home in Küsnacht. 1939 In July moves to Geneva. Musil continues to work on his novel and grows lonelier with exile. Thanks to the Zürich vicar Robert Lejeune, Musil receives some financial support, including from the American couple, Henry Hall and Barbara Church. In Germany and Austria Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften and Nachlaß zu Lebzeiten are banned. All his works are banned in 1941. 1942 April 15, Musil dies in Geneva. 1943 Martha Musil publishes the unfinished remains of Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften. 1952–1957 Adolf Frisé publishes the complete works of Robert Musil at Rowohlt. Bibliography Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß (1906). The Confusions of Young Törless, novel Vereinigungen (1911). A collection of two short stories: "The Temptation of Quiet Veronica" and "The Perfecting of Love" Unions: Two Stories, translated with an introduction by Genese Grill (New York: Contra Mundum Press: 2019) Intimate Ties: Two Novellas, trans. Peter Wortsman (Archipelago, 2019) Die Schwärmer (1921). The Enthusiasts, play Vinzenz und die Freundin bedeutender Männer (1924). Vinzenz and the Girlfriend of Important Men, play Drei Frauen (1924). Three Women, a collection of three novellas "Grigia", "The Portuguese Lady", and "Tonka" Nachlaß zu Lebzeiten (1936). Posthumous Papers of a Living Author, trans. Peter Wortsman (Eridanos Press, 1988) A collection of short prose pieces. Über die Dummheit (1937). About Stupidity, lecture Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (1930, 1933, 1943). The Man Without Qualities Thought Flights, translated | the fall of 1897, but then switched to mechanical engineering, joining his father's department at the Technical University in Brno. During his university studies, he studied engineering by day, and at night, read literature and philosophy and went to the theatre and art exhibitions. Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Ernst Mach were particular interests of his university years. Musil finished his studies in three years and, in 1902–1903, served as an unpaid assistant to Professor of Mechanical Engineering , in Stuttgart. During that time, he began work on Young Törless. He also invented , the Musil color top, a motorised device for producing mixed colours by additive colour-mixing with two differently colored, sectored, rotating discs. This was an improvement over earlier models, allowing a user to vary the proportions of the two colors during rotation and to read off those proportions precisely. Musil's sexual life around the turn of the century, according to his own records, was mainly with a prostitute, which he treated partly as an experimental self-experience. But he also was infatuated with the pianist and mountaineer Valerie Hilpert, who assumed mystical features. In March 1902, Musil underwent treatment for syphilis with mercurial ointment. During this time, his several years of relationship began with Hermine Dietz, the 'Tonka' of his own novel, published in 1923. Hermine's syphilitic miscarriage in 1906 and her death in 1907 may have been due to infection from Musil. Musil grew tired of engineering and what he perceived as the limited world-view of the engineer. He launched a new round of doctoral studies (1903–1908) in psychology and philosophy at the University of Berlin under Professor Carl Stumpf. In 1905, Musil met his future wife, Martha Marcovaldi (née Heimann, 21 January 1874 – 6 November 1949). She had been widowed and remarried, with two children, and was seven years older than Musil. His first novel, Alumnus Törless, was published in 1906. Author In 1909, Musil completed his doctorate and Professor Alexius Meinong offered him a position at the University of Graz, which he turned down to concentrate on writing of novels. Over the next two years, he wrote and published two stories, ("The Temptation of Quiet Veronica" and "The Perfecting of a Love") collected in Vereinigungen (Unions) published in 1911. During the same year, Martha's divorce was completed, and Musil married her. As she was Jewish and Musil Roman Catholic, they both converted to Protestantism as a sign of their union. Until then, Musil had been supported by his family, but he now found employment first as a librarian in the Technical University of Vienna and then in an editorial role with the Berlin literary journal Die neue Rundschau. He also worked on a play entitled Die Schwärmer (The Enthusiasts), which was published in 1921. When World War I began, Musil joined the army and was stationed first in Tirol and then at Austria's Supreme Army Command in Bolzano. In 1916, Musil visited Prague and met Franz Kafka, whose work he held in high esteem. After the end of the war and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Musil returned to his literary career in Vienna. He published a collection of short stories, Drei Frauen (Three Women), in 1924. He also admired the Bohemian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whom Musil called "great and not always understood" at his memorial service in 1927 in Berlin. According to Musil, Rilke "did nothing but perfect the German poem for the first time", but by the time of his death, Rilke had turned into "a delicate, well-matured liqueur suitable for grown-up ladies". However, his work is "too demanding" to be "considered relaxing". In 1930 and 1933, his masterpiece, The Man Without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften) was published in two volumes consisting of three parts, from Berlin, running into 1,074 pages. Volume 1 (Part I: A Sort of Introduction, and Part II: The Like of It Now Happens) and 605-page unfinished Volume 2 (Part III: Into the Millennium (The Criminals)). Part III did not include 20 chapters withdrawn from Volume 2 of 1933 in printer's galley proofs. The novel deals with the moral and intellectual decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire through the eyes of the book's protagonist, Ulrich, an ex-mathematician who has failed to engage with the world around him in a manner that would allow him to possess qualities. It is set in Vienna on the eve of World War I. The Man Without Qualities brought Musil only mediocre commercial success. Although he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he felt that he did not receive the recognition he deserved. He sometimes expressed annoyance at the success of better known colleagues such as Thomas Mann or Hermann Broch, who admired his work deeply and tried to shield him from economic difficulties and encouraged his writing even though Musil initially, was critical of Mann. In the early 1920s, Musil lived mostly in Berlin. In Vienna, Musil was a frequent visitor to Eugenie Schwarzwald's salon (the model for Diotima in The Man Without Qualities). In 1932, the Robert Musil Society was founded in Berlin on the initiative of Mann. In the same year, Mann was asked to name outstanding contemporary novels, and he cited only one, The Man Without Qualities. In 1936, Musil suffered his first stroke. Thought The fundamental problem Musil confronts in his essays and fiction is the crisis of Enlightenment values that engulfed Europe during the early twentieth century. He endorses the Enlightenment project of emancipation, while at the same time, examining its shortcomings with a questioning irony. Musil believed that the crisis required a renewal in social and individual values that, accepting science and reason, could liberate humanity in beneficent ways. Musil wrote:After the Enlightenment most of us lost courage. A minor failure was enough to turn us away from reason, and we allowed every barren enthusiast to inveigh against the intentions of a d'Alembert or a Diderot as mere rationalism. We beat the drums for feeling against intellect and forgot that without intellect... feeling is as dense as a blockhead (dick wie ein Mops ist). He took aim at the ideological chaos and misleading generalizations about culture and society promoted by nationalist reactionaries. Musil wrote a withering critique of Oswald Spengler entitled, "Mind and Experience: Notes for Readers Who Have Escaped the Decline of the West (Geist und Erfahrung: Anmerkung für Leser, welche dem Untergang des Abendlandes entronnen sind)", in which he dismantles the latter's misunderstanding of science and misuse of axiomatic thinking to try to understand human complexity and promote a deterministic philosophy. He deplored the social conditions under the Austro-Hungarian Empire and foresaw its disappearance. Surveying the upheavals of the 1910s and 1920s, Musil hoped that Europe could find an internationalist solution to the "dead end of imperial nationalism." In 1927, he signed a declaration of support for the Austrian Social Democratic Party. Musil was a staunch individualist who opposed the authoritarianism of both right and left. A recurring theme in his speeches and essays through the 1930s is the defense of the autonomy of the individual against the authoritarian and collectivist concepts then prevailing in Germany, Italy, Austria, and Russia. He participated in the anti-fascist International Writers' Congress for the Defense of Culture in 1935 in which he spoke in favor of artistic independence against the claims of the state, class, nation, and religion. Later life The last years of Musil's life were dominated by Nazism and World War II: the Nazis banned his books. He saw early Nazism first-hand while he was living in Berlin from 1931 to 1933. In 1938, when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, Musil and his Jewish wife, Martha, left for exile in Switzerland, where he died at the age of 61. Martha wrote to Franz Theodor Csokor that he had suffered a stroke. Only eight people attended his cremation. Martha cast his ashes into the woods of Mont Salève. From 1933 to his death, Musil was working on Part III of The Man Without Qualities. In 1943 in Lausanne, Martha published a 462-page collection of material from his literary remains, including the 20 galley chapters withdrawn from Part III before Volume 2 appeared in 1933, as well as drafts of the final incomplete chapters and notes on the development and direction of the novel. She died in Rome in 1949. Legacy After his death, Musil's work was almost forgotten. His writings began to reappear during the early 1950s. The first translation of The Man Without Qualities in English was published by Ernst |
Siberia. A number of other rivers drain Siberia from eastern mountain ranges into the Pacific Ocean. The Amur River and its main tributary, the Ussuri, form a long stretch of the winding boundary between Russia and China. The Amur system drains most of southeastern Siberia. Three basins drain European Russia. The Dnieper, which flows mainly through Belarus and Ukraine, has its headwaters in the hills west of Moscow. The 1,860-kilometer Don, which is the fifth-longest river in Europe, originates in the Central Russian Upland south of Moscow and then flows into the Sea of Azov at Rostov-on-Don. The Volga, widely seen as Russia's national river due to its historical and cultural importance, is the longest river in Europe, it rises in the Valdai Hills west of Moscow and meandering southeastward for 3,510 kilometers before emptying into the Caspian Sea. Altogether, the Volga system drains about 1.4 million square kilometers. Linked by several canals, western Russia's rivers long have been a vital transportation system; the Volga remains the country's most commercial river, and carries about two-thirds of Russia's inland water traffic. Agriculture geography One billion acres of land is arable in Russia, but only about 0.1 percent is permanent agriculture. The landscapes of region have extremely varied environments because of the following: Tundra landscapes cover most of the region, where conditions are harsh because of the cold climates, and plant life is not very well supported to grow because of the harsh conditions. This has become a problem, as the unfavorable conditions make agriculture more difficult. Mountain ranges are spread through the region, such as the Ural Mountains, which have become the dividing line between European Russia and Eurasian Russia. European Russia also has the European plains which extend about 2,000 miles. The workforce involved in agriculture workforce was reported to be about 9.4% of the population in 2016. The main export of Russia is grain, which is about 6% of the world trade. Other exported products include fish and oil with 3%, meals with 2%, and meat which accounts for less than 1%. Pre-industrial agriculture Agriculture has always been important for Russia. The land was worked by its peasant class. Climate The sheer size of Russia and the remoteness of many areas from the sea result in the dominance of the humid continental climate, which is prevalent in all parts of the country except for the tundra and the extreme southwest. Mountains in the south and east obstruct the flow of warm air masses from the Indian and Pacific oceans, while the plain of the west and north makes the country open to Arctic and Atlantic influences. Most of Northwest Russia and Siberia has a subarctic climate, with extremely severe winters in the inner regions of Northeast Siberia (mostly Sakha, where the Northern Pole of Cold is located with the record low temperature of ), and more moderate winters elsewhere. Russia's vast stretch of land along the Arctic Ocean and the Russian Arctic islands have a polar climate. The coastal part of Krasnodar Krai on the Black Sea, most notably Sochi, and some coastal and interior strips of the North Caucasus possess a humid subtropical climate with mild and wet winters. In many regions of East Siberia and the Russian Far East, winter is dry compared to summer; while other parts of the country experience more even precipitation across seasons. Winter precipitation in most parts of the country usually falls as snow. The westernmost parts of Kaliningrad Oblast on the Vistula Spit, and some parts in the south of Krasnodar Krai and the North Caucasus have an oceanic climate. The region along the Lower Volga and Caspian Sea coast, as well as some southernmost silvers of Siberia, possess a semi-arid climate. Throughout much of the territory, there are only two distinct seasons—winter and summer—as spring and autumn are usually brief periods of change between extremely low and extremely high temperatures. The coldest month is January (February on the coastline); the warmest is usually July. Great ranges of temperature are typical. In winter, temperatures get colder both from south to north and from west to east. Summers can be quite hot, even in Siberia. Area and boundaries Area (excluding Crimea): Total: 17,098,242 km2 Land: 17,021,900 km2 Water: 79,400 km2 Area - comparative: Slightly larger than twice the size of Brazil Land boundaries: Total (excluding Crimea): 19,917 km Kaliningrad forms the westernmost part of Russia, having no land connection to the rest of the country. It is bounded by Poland, Lithuania, and the Baltic Sea. Crimea, a peninsula on the Black Sea, is claimed and de facto administered by the Russian Federation since Russia annexed it in March 2014. It is recognized as a territory of Ukraine by most of the international community. Border countries: Coastline excluding Crimea: 37,653 km (23,396 mi) Maritime claims: Russian continental shelf: 200 m depth or to the depth of exploitation Exclusive economic zone: with Territorial sea: Elevation extremes: Lowest point: Caspian Sea: −28 m Highest point: Mount Elbrus: 5,642 m Natural resources and land use Russia holds the greatest reserves of mineral resources of any country in the world. Though they are abundant, they are in remote areas with extreme climates, making them expensive to mine. The country is the most abundant in mineral fuels. It may hold as much as half of the world's coal reserves and even larger reserves of petroleum. Deposits of coal are scattered throughout the region, but the largest are located in central and eastern Siberia. The most developed fields lie in western Siberia, in the northeastern European region, in the area around Moscow, and in the Urals. The major petroleum deposits are located in western Siberia and in the Volga-Urals. Smaller deposits are found throughout the country. Natural gas, a resource of which Russia holds around forty percent of the world's reserves, can be found along Siberia's Arctic coast, in the North Caucasus, and in northwestern Russia. Major iron-ore deposits are located south of Moscow, near the Ukrainian border in the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly; this area contains vast deposits of iron ore that have caused a deviation in the Earth's magnetic field. There are smaller deposits in other parts of the country. The Ural mountains hold small deposits of manganese. nickel, tungsten, cobalt, molybdenum and other iron alloying elements occur in adequate quantities. Russia also contains most of the nonferrous metals. Aluminium ores are scarce and are found primarily in the Ural region, northwestern European Russia, and south-central Siberia. Copper is more abundant and major reserves are located in the Urals, the Norilsk area near the mouth of the Yenisey in eastern Siberia, and the Kola Peninsula. Another vast deposit located east of Lake Baikal only became exploited when the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) railroad was finished in 1989. The North Caucasus, far eastern Russia, and the western edge of the Kuznetsk Basin in southern Siberia contain an abundance of lead and zinc ores. These are commonly found along with copper, gold, silver, and a large amount of other rare metals. The country has one of the largest gold reserves in the world; mostly in Siberia and the Urals. Mercury deposits can be found in the central and southern Urals and in south-central Siberia. Raw materials are abundant as well, including potassium and magnesium salt deposits in the Kama River region of the western Urals. Russia also contains one of the world's largest deposits of apatite found in the central Kola Peninsula. Rock salt is located in the southwestern Urals and the southwest of Lake Baikal. Surface deposits of salt are found in salt lakes along the lower Volga Valley. Sulfur can be found in the Urals and the middle Volga Valley. Eight percent of the land is used for arable farming, four percent—for permanent pastures, forty-six percent of the land is forests and woodland, and forty-two percent is used for other purposes. A recent global remote sensing analysis suggested that there were 1,002 km² | metropolitan area. Moscow is among the world's largest cities, being the most populous city entirely within Europe, the most populous urban area in Europe, the most populous metropolitan area in Europe, and also the largest city by land area on the European continent. Saint Petersburg, the cultural capital, is the second-largest city, with a population of roughly 5.4 million inhabitants. Other major urban areas are Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, and Chelyabinsk. Physiography and hydrography Geographers traditionally divide the vast territory of Russia into five natural zones: the tundra zone; the Taiga, or forest, zone; the steppe, or plains, zone; the arid zone; and the mountain zone. Most of Russia consists of two plains (the East European Plain and the West Siberian Plain), three lowlands (the North Siberian, the Central Yakutian and the East Siberian), two plateaus (the Central Siberian Plateau and the Lena Plateau), and two systems of mountainous areas (the East Siberian Mountains in far northeastern Siberia and the South Siberian Mountains along the southern border). Ecoregions East European plain The East European Plain encompasses most of European Russia. The West Siberian Plain, which is the world's largest, extends east from the Urals to the Yenisei River. Because the terrain and vegetation are relatively uniform in each of the natural zones, Russia presents an illusion of uniformity. Nevertheless, Russian territory contains all the major vegetation zones of the world except a tropical rain forest. Icecaps The Russian Arctic stretches for close to west to east, from Karelia and the Kola Peninsula to Nenetsia, the Gulf of Ob, the Taymyr Peninsula and the Chukchi Peninsula (Kolyma, Anadyr River, Cape Dezhnev). Russian islands and archipelagos in the Arctic Sea include Novaya Zemlya, Severnaya Zemlya, and the New Siberian Islands. About 10 percent of Russia is tundra—a treeless, marshy plain. The tundra is Russia's northernmost zone, stretching from the Finnish border in the west to the Bering Strait in the east, then running south along the Pacific coast to the northern Kamchatka Peninsula. The zone is known for its herds of wild reindeer, for so-called white nights (dusk at midnight, dawn shortly thereafter) in summer, and for days of total darkness in winter. The long, harsh winters and lack of sunshine allow only mosses, lichens, and dwarf willows and shrubs to sprout low above the barren permafrost. Although several powerful Siberian rivers traverse this zone as they flow northward to the Arctic Ocean, partial and intermittent thawing hamper drainage of the numerous lakes, ponds, and swamps of the tundra. Frost weathering is the most important physical process here, gradually shaping a landscape that was severely modified by glaciation in the last ice age. Less than one percent of Russia's population lives in this zone. The fishing and port industries of the northwestern Kola Peninsula and the huge oil and gas fields of northwestern Siberia are the largest employers in the tundra. With a population of 180,000, the industrial frontier city of Norilsk is second in population to Murmansk among Russia's settlements above the Arctic Circle. From here you can also see the auroras (northern lights). Taiga Taiga, the most extensive natural area of Russia, stretches from the western borders of Russia to the Pacific. It occupies the territory of the Eastern Europe and West Siberian plains to the north of ° N and most of the territory east of Yenisei River taiga forests reach the southern borders of Russia in Siberia taiga only accounts for over 60% of Russia. In the north–south direction the eastern taiga is divided (east of the Yenisei River), with a continental climate, and west, with a milder climate, in general, the climate zone is moist, moderately warm (cool in the north) in the summer and harsh winter, there is a steady snow cover in the winter. In the latitudinal direction, the taiga is divided into three subzones - northern, middle and southern taiga. In the western taiga dense spruce and fir forests on wetlands alternate with pine forests, shrubs, and meadows on the lighter soils. Such vegetation is typical of the eastern taiga, but it plays an important role not fir and larch. Coniferous forest, however, does not form a continuous array and sparse areas of birch, alder, willow (mainly in river valleys), the wetlands - marshes. Within the taiga are widespread fur-bearing animals - sable, marten, ermine, moose, brown bear, Wolverine, wolf, and muskrat. In the taiga is dominated by podzolic and cryogenic taiga soils, characterized by clearly defined horizontal structure (only in the southern taiga there is sod-podzolic soil). Formed in a leaching regime and in poor humus. Groundwater is normally found in the forest close to the surface, washing calcium from the upper layers, resulting in the top layer of soil of the taiga being discolored and oxidized. Few areas of the taiga, suitable for farming, are located mainly in the European part of Russia. Large areas are occupied by sphagnum marshes (here is dominated by podzolic-boggy soil). To enrich the soil for agricultural purposes lime and other fertilizers should be used. Russian Taiga has the world's largest reserves of coniferous wood, but from year to year - as a result of intensive logging - they decrease. Development of hunting, farming (mainly in river valleys). Mixed and deciduous forests The mixed and deciduous forest belt is triangular, widest along the western border and narrower towards the Ural Mountains. The main trees are Oak and Spruce, but many other growths of vegetation such as ash, aspen, birch, hornbeam, maple, and pine reside there. Separating the taiga from the wooded steppe is a narrow belt of birch and aspen woodland located east of the Urals as far as the Altay Mountains. Much of the forested zone has been cleared for agriculture, especially in European Russia. Wildlife is more scarce as a result of this, but the roe deer, wolf, fox, and squirrel are very common. Steppe The steppe has long been depicted as the typical Russian landscape. It is a broad band of treeless, grassy plains, interrupted by mountain ranges, extending from Hungary across Ukraine, southern Russia, and Kazakhstan before ending in Manchuria. In a country of extremes, the steppe zone provides the most favorable conditions for human settlement and agriculture because of its moderate temperatures and normally adequate levels of sunshine and moisture. Even here, however, agricultural yields are sometimes adversely affected by unpredictable levels of precipitation and occasional catastrophic droughts. The soil is very dry. Topography Russia's mountain ranges are located principally along its continental dip (the Ural Mountains), along the southwestern border (the Caucasus), along the border with Mongolia (the eastern and western Sayan Mountains and the western extremity of the Altay Mountains), and in eastern Siberia (a complex system of ranges in the northeastern corner of the country and forming the spine of the Kamchatka Peninsula, and lesser mountains extending along the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan). Russia has nine major mountain ranges. In general, the eastern half of the country is much more mountainous than the western half, the interior of which is dominated by low plains. The traditional dividing line between the east and the west is the Yenisei River valley. In delineating the western edge of the Central Siberian Plateau from the West Siberian Plain, the Yenisey runs from near the Mongolian border northward into the Arctic Ocean west of the Taymyr Peninsula. Ural Mountains The Ural Mountains form the natural boundary between Europe and Asia; the range extends about from the Arctic Ocean to the northern border of Kazakhstan. Several low passes provide major transportation routes through the Urals eastward from Europe. The highest peak, Mount Narodnaya, is . The Urals also contain valuable deposits of minerals. West Siberian Plain To the east of the Urals is the West Siberian Plain, stretching about 1,900 kilometers from west to east and about 2,400 kilometers from north to south. With more than half its territory below 200 meters in elevation, the plain contains some of the world's largest swamps and floodplains. Most of the plain's population lives in the drier section south of 77 north latitude. Central Siberian plateau The region directly east of the West Siberian Plain is the Central Siberian Plateau, which extends eastward from the Yenisei River valley to the Lena River valley. The region is divided into several plateaus, with elevations ranging between 320 and 740 meters; the highest elevation is about 1,800 meters, in the northern Putoran Mountains. The plain is bounded on the south by the Primorsky Range and the Baikal Mountains, and on the north by the North Siberian Lowland, an extension of the West Siberian Plain extending into the Taymyr Peninsula on the Arctic Ocean. Sayan and Stanovoy Mountains In the mountain system west of Lake Baikal in south-central Siberia, the highest elevations are 3,300 meters in the Western Sayan, 3,200 meters in the Eastern Sayan, and 4,500 meters at Belukha Mountain in the Altay Mountains. The Eastern Sayan reach nearly to the southern shore of Lake Baikal; at the lake, there is an elevation difference of more than 4,500 meters between the nearest mountain, 2,840 meters high, and the deepest part of the lake, which is 1,700 meters below sea level. The mountain systems east of Lake Baikal are lower, forming a complex of minor ranges and valleys that reaches from the lake to the Pacific coast. The maximum height of the Stanovoy Range, which runs west to east from northern Lake Baikal to the Sea of Okhotsk, is 2,550 meters. To the south of that range is southeastern Siberia, whose mountains reach 800 meters. Across the Strait of Tartary from that region is Sakhalin Island, Russia's largest island, where the highest elevation is about 1,700 meters. The small Moneron Island, the site of the shootdown of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, is found to its west. Caucasus Mountains Truly alpine terrain appears in the southern mountain ranges. Between the Black and Caspian seas, the Caucasus Mountains rise to impressive heights, forming a boundary between Europe and Asia. One of the peaks, Mount Elbrus, is the highest point in Europe, at 5,642 meters. The geological structure of the Caucasus extends to the northwest as the Crimean and Carpathian Mountains and southeastward into Central Asia as the Tian Shan and Pamirs. The Caucasus Mountains create an imposing natural barrier between Russia and its neighbors to the southwest, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Northeast Siberia and Kamchatka Northeastern Siberia, north of the Stanovoy Range, is an extremely mountainous region. The long Kamchatka Peninsula, |
estimated to be 1.6 children born per woman, which is below the replacement rate of 2.1, and is one of the world's lowest fertility rates. Subsequently, the nation has one of the world's oldest populations, with a median age of 40.3 years. In 2009, Russia recorded annual population growth for the first time in fifteen years; and during the mid 2010s, Russia had seen increased population growth due to declining death rates, increased birth rates and increased immigration. However, since 2020, due to excess deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia's population has undergone its largest peacetime decline in recorded history. Russia is a multinational state, home to over 193 ethnic groups nationwide. In the 2010 Census, roughly 81% of the population were ethnic Russians, and the remaining 19% of the population were ethnic minorities, and over four-fifths of Russia's population was of European descent, of which the vast majority were Slavs, with a substantial minority of Finnic and Germanic peoples. According to the United Nations, Russia's immigrant population is the world's third-largest, numbering over 11.6 million; most of whom are from other post-Soviet states. History Total fertility rate, 1840–1926 The total fertility rate is the number of children born to each woman. It is based on fairly good data for the entire period. Sources: Our World In Data and Gapminder Foundation. In many of the following years, Russia had the highest total fertility rate in the world. These elevated fertility rates did not lead to population growth due to the casualties of the Russian Revolution, the two world wars and political killings. Historical crude birth rates After WWII Note: Russian data includes Crimea starting in 2014. Current vital statistics Demographic statistics Demographic statistics according to the latest Rosstat vital statistics and the World Population Review in 2019. One birth every 22 seconds One death every 13 seconds Net loss of one person every 30 seconds One net migrant every 4 minutes Demographic statistics according to the US based CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated. Population 142,122,776 (July 2018 est.) 142,257,519 (July 2017 est.) Age structure 0–14 years: 17.21% (male 12,566,314 /female 11,896,416) 15–24 years: 9.41% (male 6,840,759 /female 6,530,991) 25–54 years: 44.21% (male 30,868,831 /female 31,960,407) 55–64 years: 14.51% (male 8,907,031 /female 11,709,921) 65 years and over: 14.66% (male 6,565,308 /female 14,276,798) (2018 est.) 0–14 years: 17.12% (male 12,509,563/female 11,843,254) 15–24 years: 9.46% (male 6,881,880/female 6,572,191) 25–54 years: 44.71% (male 31,220,990/female 32,375,489) 55–64 years: 14.44% (male 8,849,707/female 11,693,131) 65 years and over: 14.28% (male 6,352,557/female 13,958,757) (2017 est.) Median age total: 39.8 years. Country comparison to the world: 52nd male: 36.9 years female: 42.7 years (2018 est.) total: 39.6 years male: 36.6 years female: 42.5 years (2017 est.) total: 39.6 years male: 36.7 years female: 41.6 years (2009) Birth rate 10.7 births/1,000 population (2018 est.) Country comparison to the world: 184th 11 births/1,000 population (2017 est.) Death rate 13.4 deaths/1,000 population (2018 est.) Country comparison to the world: 8th Total fertility rate 1.61 children born/woman (2018 est.) Country comparison to the world: 179th Net migration rate 1.7 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2017 est.) Country comparison to the world: 52nd Population growth rate –0.11% (2018 est.) Country comparison to the world: 205th –0.08% (2017 est.) +0.19% (2014 est.) Mother's mean age at first birth 24.6 years (2009 est.) Life expectancy at birth total population: 71.3 years. Country comparison to the world: 155th male: 65.6 years female: 77.3 years (2018 est.) Infant mortality rate total: 6.8 deaths/1,000 live births male: 7.6 deaths/1,000 live births female: 5.9 deaths/1,000 live births (2017 est.) Country comparison to the world: 163rd Literacy definition: age 15 and over can read and write (2015 est.) total population: 99.7% male: 99.7% female: 99.6% (2015 est.) School life expectancy (primary to tertiary education) total: 16 years male: 15 years female: 16 years (2016) Unemployment, youth ages 15–24 total: 16%. Country comparison to the world: 83rd male: 15.3% female: 16.9% (2015 est.) Ethnic groups Russian 80.9%, Tatar 3.9%, Ukrainian 1.4%, Bashkir 1.1%, Chuvash 1%, Chechen 1%, other 10.2%, unspecified 3.9% note: nearly 200 national and/or ethnic groups are represented in Russia's 2010 census (2010 est.) Religions Russian Orthodox 15–20%, Muslim 10–15%, other Christian 2% (2006 est.) Note: estimates are of practicing worshipers; Russia has large populations of non-practicing believers and non-believers, a legacy of over seven decades of Soviet rule; Russia officially recognizes Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism as traditional religions. Languages Russian (official) 85.7%, Tatar 3.2%, Chechen 1%, other 10.1%. Note: data represent native language spoken (2010 est.) Population distribution Population is heavily concentrated in the westernmost fifth of the country extending from the Baltic Sea, south to the Caspian Sea, and eastward parallel to the Kazakh border; elsewhere, sizeable pockets are isolated and generally found in the south Urbanization urban population: 74.4% of total population (2018) rate of urbanization: 0.18% annual rate of change (2015–20 est.) 74% urban, 26% rural (2010 Russian Census) Population density 8.4 people per square kilometer (2010 Russian Census) Sex ratio at birth: 1.06 /female under 15 years: 1.05 /female 15–64 years: 0.92 /female 65 years and over: 0.46 /female total population: 0.86 /female (2009) Immigration In 2006, in a bid to compensate for the country's demographic decline, the Russian government started simplifying immigration laws and launched a state program "for providing assistance to voluntary immigration of ethnic Russians from former Soviet republics". In August 2012, as the country saw its first demographic growth since the 1990s, President Putin declared that Russia's population could reach 146 million by 2025, mainly as a result of immigration. New citizenship rules introduced in April 2014 allowing eligible citizens from former Soviet republics to obtain Russian citizenship, have gained strong interest among Russian-speaking residents of those countries (i.e. Russians, Germans, Belarusians and Ukrainians). There are an estimated four million undocumented immigrants from the ex-Soviet states in Russia. In 2012, the Russian Federal Security Service's Border Service stated there had been an increase in undocumented migration from the Middle East and Southeast Asia (Note that these were Temporary Contract Migrants) Under legal changes made in 2012, undocumented immigrants who are caught will be banned from reentering the country for 10 years. Since the collapse of the USSR, most immigrants have come from Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Belarus, and China. Worker migration Temporary migrant workers in Russia consists of about 7 million people, most of the temporary workers come from Central Asia, the Balkans and East Asia. Most of them work in the construction, cleaning and in the household industries. They primarily live in cities such as Moscow, Sochi and Blagoveshchensk. The mayor of Moscow said that Moscow cannot do without worker migrants. New laws are in place that require worker migrants to be fluent in Russian, know Russian history and laws. The Russian Opposition and most of the Russian population opposes worker migration. The hate of worker migration has become so severe it has caused a rise in Russian nationalism, and spawned groups like Movement Against Illegal Immigration. Health Russia, by constitution, guarantees free, universal health care for all Russian citizens, through a compulsory state health insurance program. The Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation oversees the Russian public healthcare system, and the sector employs more than two million people. Federal regions also have their own departments of health that oversee local administration. A separate private health insurance plan is needed to access private healthcare in Russia. Russia spent 5.32% of its GDP on healthcare in 2018. Its healthcare expenditure is notably lower than other developed nations. Russia has one of the world's most female-biased sex ratios, with 0.859 males to every female, due to its high male mortality rate. In 2019, the overall life expectancy in Russia at birth was 73.2 years (68.2 years for males and 78.0 years for females), and it had a very low infant mortality rate (5 per 1,000 live births). The principle cause of death in Russia are cardiovascular diseases. Obesity is a prevalent health issue in Russia; 61.1% of Russian adults were overweight or obese in 2016. However, Russia's historically high alcohol consumption rate is the biggest health issue in the country, as it remains one of the world's highest, despite a stark decrease in the last decade. Smoking is another health issue in the country. The country's high suicide rate, although on the decline, remains a significant social issue. Ethnic groups Russia is a multinational and multiethnic state, with more than 193 ethnic groups | Christian 2% (2006 est.) Note: estimates are of practicing worshipers; Russia has large populations of non-practicing believers and non-believers, a legacy of over seven decades of Soviet rule; Russia officially recognizes Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism as traditional religions. Languages Russian (official) 85.7%, Tatar 3.2%, Chechen 1%, other 10.1%. Note: data represent native language spoken (2010 est.) Population distribution Population is heavily concentrated in the westernmost fifth of the country extending from the Baltic Sea, south to the Caspian Sea, and eastward parallel to the Kazakh border; elsewhere, sizeable pockets are isolated and generally found in the south Urbanization urban population: 74.4% of total population (2018) rate of urbanization: 0.18% annual rate of change (2015–20 est.) 74% urban, 26% rural (2010 Russian Census) Population density 8.4 people per square kilometer (2010 Russian Census) Sex ratio at birth: 1.06 /female under 15 years: 1.05 /female 15–64 years: 0.92 /female 65 years and over: 0.46 /female total population: 0.86 /female (2009) Immigration In 2006, in a bid to compensate for the country's demographic decline, the Russian government started simplifying immigration laws and launched a state program "for providing assistance to voluntary immigration of ethnic Russians from former Soviet republics". In August 2012, as the country saw its first demographic growth since the 1990s, President Putin declared that Russia's population could reach 146 million by 2025, mainly as a result of immigration. New citizenship rules introduced in April 2014 allowing eligible citizens from former Soviet republics to obtain Russian citizenship, have gained strong interest among Russian-speaking residents of those countries (i.e. Russians, Germans, Belarusians and Ukrainians). There are an estimated four million undocumented immigrants from the ex-Soviet states in Russia. In 2012, the Russian Federal Security Service's Border Service stated there had been an increase in undocumented migration from the Middle East and Southeast Asia (Note that these were Temporary Contract Migrants) Under legal changes made in 2012, undocumented immigrants who are caught will be banned from reentering the country for 10 years. Since the collapse of the USSR, most immigrants have come from Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Belarus, and China. Worker migration Temporary migrant workers in Russia consists of about 7 million people, most of the temporary workers come from Central Asia, the Balkans and East Asia. Most of them work in the construction, cleaning and in the household industries. They primarily live in cities such as Moscow, Sochi and Blagoveshchensk. The mayor of Moscow said that Moscow cannot do without worker migrants. New laws are in place that require worker migrants to be fluent in Russian, know Russian history and laws. The Russian Opposition and most of the Russian population opposes worker migration. The hate of worker migration has become so severe it has caused a rise in Russian nationalism, and spawned groups like Movement Against Illegal Immigration. Health Russia, by constitution, guarantees free, universal health care for all Russian citizens, through a compulsory state health insurance program. The Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation oversees the Russian public healthcare system, and the sector employs more than two million people. Federal regions also have their own departments of health that oversee local administration. A separate private health insurance plan is needed to access private healthcare in Russia. Russia spent 5.32% of its GDP on healthcare in 2018. Its healthcare expenditure is notably lower than other developed nations. Russia has one of the world's most female-biased sex ratios, with 0.859 males to every female, due to its high male mortality rate. In 2019, the overall life expectancy in Russia at birth was 73.2 years (68.2 years for males and 78.0 years for females), and it had a very low infant mortality rate (5 per 1,000 live births). The principle cause of death in Russia are cardiovascular diseases. Obesity is a prevalent health issue in Russia; 61.1% of Russian adults were overweight or obese in 2016. However, Russia's historically high alcohol consumption rate is the biggest health issue in the country, as it remains one of the world's highest, despite a stark decrease in the last decade. Smoking is another health issue in the country. The country's high suicide rate, although on the decline, remains a significant social issue. Ethnic |
Council. The Federation Council has established fewer committees because of the part-time status of its members, who also hold political office in the subnational jurisdictions. In 1996 most of the committees in both houses were retained in basic form from the previous parliament. According to internal procedure, no deputy may sit on more than one committee. By 1996 many State Duma committees had established subcommittees. Committee positions are allocated when new parliaments are seated. The general policy calls for allocation of committee chairmanships and memberships among parties and factions roughly in proportion to the size of their representation. In 1994, however, Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (Liberal'no-demokraticheskaya partiya Rossii—LDPR), which had won the second largest number of seats in the recent election, was denied all but one key chairmanship, that of the State Duma's Committee on Geopolitics. Legislative Powers The two chambers of the Federal Assembly possess different powers and responsibilities, with the State Duma the more powerful. The Federation Council, as its name and composition implies, deals primarily with issues of concern to the subnational jurisdictions, such as adjustments to internal borders and decrees of the president establishing martial law or states of emergency. As the upper chamber, it also has responsibilities in confirming and removing the procurator general and confirming justices of the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, and the Superior Court of Arbitration, upon the recommendation of the president. The Federation Council also is entrusted with the final decision if the State Duma recommends removing the president from office. The constitution also directs that the Federation Council examine bills passed by the lower chamber dealing with budgetary, tax, and other fiscal measures, as well as issues dealing with war and peace and with treaty ratification. In the consideration and disposition of most legislative matters, however, the Federation Council has less power than the State Duma. All bills, even those proposed by the Federation Council, must first be considered by the State Duma. If the Federation Council rejects a bill passed by the State Duma, the two chambers may form a conciliation commission to work out a compromise version of the legislation. The State Duma then votes on the compromise bill. If the State Duma objects to the proposals of the upper chamber in the conciliation process, it may vote by a two-thirds majority to send its version to the president for signature. The part-time character of the Federation Council's work, its less developed committee structure, and its lesser powers vis-à-vis the State Duma make it more a consultative and reviewing body than a law-making chamber. Because the Federation Council initially included many regional administrators appointed by Yeltsin, that body often supported the president and objected to bills approved by the State Duma, which had more anti-Yeltsin deputies. The power of the upper house to consider bills passed by the lower chamber resulted in its disapproval of about one-half of such bills, necessitating concessions by the State Duma or votes to override upper-chamber objections. In February 1996, the heads of the two chambers pledged to try to break this habit, but wrangling appeared to intensify in the months that followed. The State Duma confirms the appointment of the prime minister, although it does not have the power to confirm Government ministers. The power to confirm or reject the prime minister is severely limited. According to the 1993 constitution, the State Duma must decide within one week to confirm or reject a candidate once the president has placed that person's name in nomination. If it rejects three candidates, the president is empowered to appoint a prime minister, dissolve the parliament, and schedule new legislative elections. The State Duma's power to force the resignation of the Government also is severely limited. It may express a vote of no-confidence in the Government by a majority vote of all members of the State Duma, but the president is allowed to disregard this vote. If, however, the State Duma repeats the no-confidence vote within three months, the president may dismiss the Government. But the likelihood of a second no-confidence vote is virtually precluded by the constitutional provision allowing the president to dissolve the State Duma rather than the Government in such a situation. The Government's position is further buttressed by another constitutional provision that allows the Government at any time to demand a vote of confidence from the State Duma; refusal is grounds for the president to dissolve the Duma. The legislative process The legislative process in Russia includes three hearings in the State Duma, then approvals by the Federation Council, the upper house and sign into law by the President. Draft laws may originate in either legislative chamber, or they may be submitted by the president, the Government, local legislatures and the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court, or the Superior Court of Arbitration within their respective competences. Draft laws are first considered in the State Duma. Upon adoption by a majority of the full State Duma membership, a draft law is considered by the Federation Council, which has fourteen days to place the bill on its calendar. Conciliation commissions are the prescribed procedure to work out differences in bills considered by both chambers. A constitutional provision dictating that draft laws dealing with revenues and expenditures may be considered "only when the Government's findings are known" substantially limits the Federal Assembly's control of state finances. However, the legislature may alter finance legislation submitted by the Government at a later time, a power that provides a degree of traditional legislative control over the purse. The two chambers of the legislature also have the power to override a presidential veto of legislation. The constitution requires at least a two-thirds vote of the total number of members of both chambers. Judicial branch The Judiciary of Russia is defined under the Constitution and law of Russia with a hierarchical structure with the Constitutional Court, Supreme Court, and Supreme Court of Arbitration at the apex. As of 2014, the Supreme Court of Arbitration has merged with the Supreme Court. The district courts are the primary criminal trial courts, and the regional courts are the primary appellate courts. The judiciary is governed by the All-Russian Congress of Judges and its Council of Judges, and its management is aided by the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court, the Judicial Qualification Collegia, the Ministry of Justice, and the various courts' chairpersons. There are many officers of the court, including jurors, but the Prosecutor General remains the most powerful component of the Russian judicial system. Many judges appointed by the regimes of Leonid Brezhnev (in office 1964-82) and Yuri Andropov (in office 1982-84) remained in place in the mid-1990s. Such arbiters were trained in "socialist law" and had become accustomed to basing their verdicts on telephone calls from local CPSU bosses rather than on the legal merits of cases. For court infrastructure and financial support, judges must depend on the Ministry of Justice, and for housing they must depend on local authorities in the jurisdiction where they sit. In 1995 the average salary for a judge was US$160 per month, substantially less than the earnings associated with more menial positions in Russian society. These circumstances, combined with irregularities in the appointment process and the continued strong position of the procurators, deprived judges in the lower jurisdictions of independent authority. Numerous matters which are dealt with by administrative authority in European countries remain subject to political influence in Russia. The Constitutional Court of Russia was reconvened in March 1995 following its suspension by President Yeltsin during the October 1993 constitutional crisis. The 1993 constitution empowers the court to arbitrate disputes between the executive and legislative branches and between Moscow and the regional and local governments. The court also is authorized to rule on violations of constitutional rights, to examine appeals from various bodies, and to participate in impeachment proceedings against the president. The July 1994 Law on the Constitutional Court prohibits the court from examining cases on its own initiative and limits the scope of issues the court can hear. The State Duma passed a Criminal Procedure Code and other judicial reforms during its 2001 session. These reforms help make the Russian judicial system more compatible with its Western counterparts and are seen by most as an accomplishment in human rights. The reforms have reintroduced jury trials in certain criminal cases and created a more adversarial system of criminal trials that protect the rights of defendants more adequately. In 2002, the introduction of the new code led to significant reductions in time spent in detention for new detainees, and the number of suspects placed in pretrial detention declined by 30%. Another significant advance in the new Code is the transfer from the Procuracy to the courts of the authority to issue search and arrest warrants. Local and regional government In the Soviet period, some of Russia's approximately 100 nationalities were granted their own ethnic enclaves, to which varying formal federal rights were attached. Other smaller or more dispersed nationalities did not receive such recognition. In most of these enclaves, ethnic Russians constituted a majority of the population, although the titular nationalities usually enjoyed disproportionate representation in local government bodies. Relations between the central government and the subordinate jurisdictions, and among those jurisdictions, became a political issue in the 1990s. The Russian Federation has made few changes in the Soviet pattern of regional jurisdictions. The 1993 constitution establishes a federal government and enumerates eighty-nine subnational jurisdictions, including twenty-one ethnic enclaves with the status of republics. There are ten autonomous regions, or okruga (sing., okrug ), and the Jewish Autonomous Oblast (Yevreyskaya avtonomnaya oblast', also known as Birobidzhan). Besides the ethnically identified jurisdictions, there are six territories (kraya ; sing., kray ) and forty-nine oblasts (provinces). The cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg are independent of surrounding jurisdictions. Termed "cities of federal significance," they have the same status as the oblasts. The ten autonomous regions and Birobidzhan are part of larger jurisdictions, either an oblast or a territory. As the power and influence of the central government have become diluted, governors and mayors have become the only relevant government authorities in many jurisdictions. The Federation Treaty and regional power The Federation Treaty was signed in March 1992 by President Yeltsin and most leaders of the autonomous republics and other ethnic and geographical subunits. The treaty consisted of three separate documents, each pertaining to one type of regional jurisdiction. It outlined powers reserved for the central government, shared powers, and residual powers to be exercised primarily by the subunits. Because Russia's new constitution remained in dispute in the Federal Assembly at the time of ratification, the Federation Treaty and provisions based on the treaty were incorporated as amendments to the 1978 constitution. A series of new conditions were established by the 1993 constitution and by bilateral agreements. Local jurisdictions under the constitution The constitution of 1993 resolved many of the ambiguities and contradictions concerning the degree of decentralization under the much-amended 1978 constitution of the Russian Republic; most such solutions favored the concentration of power in the central government. When the constitution was ratified, the Federation Treaty was demoted to the status of a subconstitutional document. A transitional provision of the constitution provided that in case of discrepancies between the federal constitution and the Federation Treaty, or between the constitution and other treaties involving a subnational jurisdiction, all other documents would defer to the constitution. The 1993 constitution presents a daunting list of powers reserved to the center. Powers shared jointly between the federal and local authorities are less numerous. Regional jurisdictions are only allocated powers not specifically reserved to the federal government or exercised jointly. Those powers include managing municipal property, establishing and executing regional budgets, establishing and collecting regional taxes, and maintaining law and order. Some of the boundaries between joint and exclusively federal powers are vaguely prescribed; presumably, they would become clearer through the give and take of federal practice or through adjudication, as has occurred in other federal systems. Meanwhile, bilateral power-sharing treaties between the central government and the subunits have become an important means of clarifying the boundaries of shared powers. Many subnational jurisdictions have their own constitutions, however, and often those documents allocate powers to the jurisdiction inconsistent with provisions of the federal constitution. As of 1996, no process had been devised for adjudication of such conflicts. Under the 1993 constitution, the republics, territories, oblasts, autonomous oblast, autonomous regions, and cities of federal designation are held to be "equal in their relations with the federal agencies of state power"; this language represents an attempt to end the complaints of the nonrepublic jurisdictions about their inferior status. In keeping with this new equality, republics no longer receive the epithet "sovereign," as they did in the 1978 constitution. Equal representation in the Federation Council for all eighty-nine jurisdictions furthers the equalization process by providing them meaningful input into legislative activities, particularly those of special local concern. However, Federation Council officials have criticized the State Duma for failing to represent regional interests adequately. In mid-1995 Vladimir Shumeyko, then speaker of the Federation Council, criticized the current electoral system's party-list provision for allowing some parts of Russia to receive disproportionate representation in the lower house. (In the 1995 elections, Moscow Oblast received nearly 38 percent of the State Duma's seats based on the concentration of party-list candidates in the national capital.) Shumeyko contended that such misallocation fed potentially dangerous popular discontent with the parliament and politicians. Despite constitutional language equalizing the regional jurisdictions in their relations with the center, vestiges of Soviet-era multitiered federalism remain in a number of provisions, including those allowing for the use of non-Russian languages in the republics but not in other jurisdictions, and in the definitions of the five categories of subunit. On most details of the federal system, the constitution is vague, and clarifying legislation had not been passed by mid-1996. However, some analysts have pointed out that this vagueness facilitates the resolution of individual conflicts between the center and the regions. Power sharing Flexibility is a goal of the constitutional provision allowing bilateral treaties or charters between the central government and the regions on power sharing. For instance, in the bilateral treaty signed with the Russian government in February 1994, the Republic of Tatarstan gave up its claim to sovereignty and accepted Russia's taxing authority, in return for Russia's acceptance of Tatar control over oil and other resources and the republic's right to sign economic agreements with other countries. This treaty has particular significance because Tatarstan was one of the two republics that did not sign the Federation Treaty in 1992. By mid-1996 almost one-third of the federal subunits had concluded power-sharing treaties or charters. The first power-sharing charter negotiated by the central government and an oblast was signed in December 1995 with Orenburg Oblast. The charter divided power in the areas of economic and agricultural policy, natural resources, international economic relations and trade, and military industries. According to Prime Minister Chernomyrdin, the charter gave Orenburg full power over its budget and allowed the oblast to participate in privatization decisions. By early 1996, similar charters had been signed with Krasnodar Territory and Kaliningrad and Sverdlovsk oblasts. In the summer of 1996, Yeltsin wooed potential regional supporters of his reelection by signing charters with Perm', Rostov, Tver', and Leningrad oblasts and with the city of St. Petersburg, among others, granting these regions liberal tax treatment and other economic advantages. By the mid-1990s, regional jurisdictions also had become bolder in passing local legislation to fill gaps in federation statutes rather than waiting for the Federal Assembly to act. For example, Volgograd Oblast passed laws regulating local pensions, the issuance of promissory notes, and credit unions. The constitution upholds regional legislative authority to pass laws that accord with the constitution and existing federal laws. List of power-sharing treaties During Boris Yeltin's presidency, he signed a total of 46 power-sharing treaties with Russia's various subjects starting with Tatarstan on 15 February 1994 and ending with Moscow on 16 June 1998, giving them greater autonomy from the federal government. According to Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, the government intended to sign power-sharing agreements with all of Russia's 89 subjects. Following the election of Vladimir Putin on 26 March 2000 and his subsequent overhaul of the federal system, the power-sharing treaties began to be abolished. The vast majority of treaties were terminated between 2001 and 2002 while others were forcibly annulled on 4 July 2003. Bashkortstan, Moscow, and Tatarstan's treaties expired on their own individual dates. On 24 July 2017, Tatarstan's power-sharing treaty expired, making it the last subject to lose its autonomy. Republics Krais Oblasts Autonomous Okrugs Federal Cities Presidential power in the regions The president retains the power to appoint and remove presidential representatives, who act as direct emissaries to the jurisdictions in overseeing local administrations' implementation of presidential policies. The power to appoint these overseers was granted by the Russian Supreme Soviet to Yeltsin in late 1991. The parliament attempted several times during 1992-93 to repeal or curtail the activities of these appointees, whose powers are only alluded to in the constitution. The presence of Yeltsin's representatives helped bring out the local vote on his behalf in the 1996 presidential election. The governments of the republics include a president or prime minister (or | electoral system's party-list provision for allowing some parts of Russia to receive disproportionate representation in the lower house. (In the 1995 elections, Moscow Oblast received nearly 38 percent of the State Duma's seats based on the concentration of party-list candidates in the national capital.) Shumeyko contended that such misallocation fed potentially dangerous popular discontent with the parliament and politicians. Despite constitutional language equalizing the regional jurisdictions in their relations with the center, vestiges of Soviet-era multitiered federalism remain in a number of provisions, including those allowing for the use of non-Russian languages in the republics but not in other jurisdictions, and in the definitions of the five categories of subunit. On most details of the federal system, the constitution is vague, and clarifying legislation had not been passed by mid-1996. However, some analysts have pointed out that this vagueness facilitates the resolution of individual conflicts between the center and the regions. Power sharing Flexibility is a goal of the constitutional provision allowing bilateral treaties or charters between the central government and the regions on power sharing. For instance, in the bilateral treaty signed with the Russian government in February 1994, the Republic of Tatarstan gave up its claim to sovereignty and accepted Russia's taxing authority, in return for Russia's acceptance of Tatar control over oil and other resources and the republic's right to sign economic agreements with other countries. This treaty has particular significance because Tatarstan was one of the two republics that did not sign the Federation Treaty in 1992. By mid-1996 almost one-third of the federal subunits had concluded power-sharing treaties or charters. The first power-sharing charter negotiated by the central government and an oblast was signed in December 1995 with Orenburg Oblast. The charter divided power in the areas of economic and agricultural policy, natural resources, international economic relations and trade, and military industries. According to Prime Minister Chernomyrdin, the charter gave Orenburg full power over its budget and allowed the oblast to participate in privatization decisions. By early 1996, similar charters had been signed with Krasnodar Territory and Kaliningrad and Sverdlovsk oblasts. In the summer of 1996, Yeltsin wooed potential regional supporters of his reelection by signing charters with Perm', Rostov, Tver', and Leningrad oblasts and with the city of St. Petersburg, among others, granting these regions liberal tax treatment and other economic advantages. By the mid-1990s, regional jurisdictions also had become bolder in passing local legislation to fill gaps in federation statutes rather than waiting for the Federal Assembly to act. For example, Volgograd Oblast passed laws regulating local pensions, the issuance of promissory notes, and credit unions. The constitution upholds regional legislative authority to pass laws that accord with the constitution and existing federal laws. List of power-sharing treaties During Boris Yeltin's presidency, he signed a total of 46 power-sharing treaties with Russia's various subjects starting with Tatarstan on 15 February 1994 and ending with Moscow on 16 June 1998, giving them greater autonomy from the federal government. According to Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, the government intended to sign power-sharing agreements with all of Russia's 89 subjects. Following the election of Vladimir Putin on 26 March 2000 and his subsequent overhaul of the federal system, the power-sharing treaties began to be abolished. The vast majority of treaties were terminated between 2001 and 2002 while others were forcibly annulled on 4 July 2003. Bashkortstan, Moscow, and Tatarstan's treaties expired on their own individual dates. On 24 July 2017, Tatarstan's power-sharing treaty expired, making it the last subject to lose its autonomy. Republics Krais Oblasts Autonomous Okrugs Federal Cities Presidential power in the regions The president retains the power to appoint and remove presidential representatives, who act as direct emissaries to the jurisdictions in overseeing local administrations' implementation of presidential policies. The power to appoint these overseers was granted by the Russian Supreme Soviet to Yeltsin in late 1991. The parliament attempted several times during 1992-93 to repeal or curtail the activities of these appointees, whose powers are only alluded to in the constitution. The presence of Yeltsin's representatives helped bring out the local vote on his behalf in the 1996 presidential election. The governments of the republics include a president or prime minister (or both) and a regional council or legislature. The chief executives of lower jurisdictions are called governors or administrative heads. Generally, in jurisdictions other than republics the executive branches have been more sympathetic to the central government, and the legislatures (called soviets until late 1993, then called dumas or assemblies) have been the center of whatever separatist sentiment exists. Under the power given him in 1991 to appoint the chief executives of territories, oblasts, autonomous regions, and the autonomous oblast, Yeltsin had appointed virtually all of the sixty-six leaders of those jurisdictions. By contrast, republic presidents have been popularly elected since 1992. Some of Yeltsin's appointees have encountered strong opposition from their legislatures; in 1992 and 1993, in some cases, votes of no-confidence brought about popular elections for the position of chief executive. After the Moscow confrontation of October 1993, Yeltsin sought to bolster his regional support by dissolving the legislatures of all federal subunits except the republics (which were advised to "reform" their political systems). Accordingly, in 1994 elections were held in all the jurisdictions whose legislatures had been dismissed. In some cases, that process placed local executives at the head of legislative bodies, eliminating checks and balances between the branches at the regional level. Election results in the subnational jurisdictions held great significance for the Yeltsin administration because the winners would fill the ex officio seats in the Federation Council, which until 1996 was a reliable bastion of support. The election of large numbers of opposition candidates would end the Federation Council's usefulness as a balance against the anti-Yeltsin State Duma and further impede Yeltsin's agenda. In 1995 some regions held gubernatorial elections to fill the administrative posts originally granted to Yeltsin appointees in 1991. Faced with an escalating number of requests for such elections, Yeltsin decreed December 1996 as the date for most gubernatorial and republic presidential elections. This date was confirmed by a 19 95 Federation Council law. The decree also set subnational legislative elections for June or December 1997. (In July 1996, the State Duma advanced these elections to late 1996.) Observers noted that by calling for most of these elections to take place after the presidential election, Yeltsin prevented unfavorable outcomes from possibly reducing his reelection chances—even though voter apathy after the presidential election had the potential to help opposition candidates. Political parties and elections Formerly seats in Russia the Duma were elected half by proportional representation (with at least 5% of the vote to qualify for seats) and half by single member districts. However, President Putin passed a law that all seats are to be elected by proportional representation ( with at least 7% of the vote to qualify for seats) to take effect in the December 2007 elections. By doing this Putin has eliminated independents and made it more difficult for small parties to be elected to the Duma.. Executive-legislative power struggles, 1993–1996 Although the 1993 constitution weakened their standing vis-à-vis the presidency, the parliaments elected in 1993 and 1995 nonetheless used their powers to shape legislation according to their own precepts and to defy Yeltsin on some issues. An early example was the February 1994 State Duma vote to grant amnesty to the leaders of the 1991 Moscow coup. Yeltsin vehemently denounced this action, although it was within the constitutional purview of the State Duma. In October 1994, both legislative chambers passed a law over Yeltsin's veto requiring the Government to submit quarterly reports on budget expenditures to the State Duma and adhere to other budgetary guidelines. In the most significant executive-legislative clash since 1993, the State Duma overwhelmingly voted no confidence in the Government in June 1995. The vote was triggered by a Chechen rebel raid into the neighboring Russian town of Budenovsk, where the rebels were able to take more than 1,000 hostages. Dissatisfaction with Yeltsin's economic reforms also was a factor in the vote. A second motion of no confidence failed to carry in early July. In March 1996, the State Duma again incensed Yeltsin by voting to revoke the December 1991 resolution of the Russian Supreme Soviet abrogating the 1922 treaty under which the Soviet Union had been founded. That resolution had prepared the way for formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. In his February 1996 State of the Union speech, Yeltsin commended the previous parliament for passing a number of significant laws, and he noted with relief the "civil" resolution of the June 1995 no-confidence conflict. He complained, however, that the Federal Assembly had not acted on issues such as the private ownership of land, a tax code, and judicial reform. Yeltsin also was critical of legislation that he had been forced to return to the parliament because it contravened the constitution and existing law, and of legislative attempts to pass fiscal legislation in violation of the constitutional stricture that such bills must be preapproved by the Government. He noted that he would continue to use his veto power against ill-drafted bills and his power to issue decrees on issues he deemed important, and that such decrees would remain in force until suitable laws were passed. The State Duma passed a resolution in March 1996 demanding that Yeltsin refrain from returning bills to the parliament for redrafting, arguing that the president was obligated either to sign bills or to veto them. Separatism In the first half of the 1990s, observers speculated about the possibility that some of the jurisdictions in the federation might emulate the former Soviet republics and demand full independence. Several factors militate against such an outcome, however. Russia is more than 80 percent ethnic Russian, and most of the thirty-two ethnically based jurisdictions are demographically dominated by ethnic Russians, as are all of the territories and oblasts. Many of the subnational jurisdictions are in the interior of Russia, meaning that they could not break away without joining a bloc of seceding border areas, and the economies of all such jurisdictions were thoroughly integrated with the national economy in the Soviet system. The 1993 constitution strengthens the official status of the central government in relation to the various regions, although Moscow has made significant concessions in bilateral treaties. Finally, most of the differences at the base of separatist movements are economic and geographic rather than ethnic. Advocates of secession, who are numerous in several regions, generally appear to be in the minority and are unevenly dispersed. Some regions have even advocated greater centralization on some matters. By 1996 most experts believed that the federation would hold together, although probably at the expense of additional concessions of power by the central government. The trend is not toward separatism so much as the devolution of central powers to the localities on trade, taxes, and other matters. Some experts observe that the Russia's ethnically distinct Republics pressing claims for greater subunit rights fall into three groups. The first is composed of those jurisdictions most vociferous in pressing ethnic separatism, including Chechnya and perhaps other republics of the North Caucasus, and the Republic of Tuva. The second group consists of large, resource-rich republics, including Karelia, Komi Republic, and Sakha (Yakutia). Their differences with Moscow center on resource control and taxes rather than demands for outright independence. A third, mixed group consists of republics along the Volga River, which straddle strategic water, rail, and pipeline routes, possess resources such as oil, and include large numbers of Russia's Muslim and Buddhist populations. These republics include Bashkortostan, Kalmykia, Mari El, Mordovia, Tatarstan, and Udmurtia. In addition to the republics, several other jurisdictions have lobbied for greater rights, mainly on questions of resource control and taxation. These include Sverdlovsk Oblast, which in 1993 proclaimed itself an autonomous republic as a protest against receiving fewer privileges in taxation and resource control than the republics, and strategically vital Primorsky Krai ("Maritime Territory") on the Pacific coast, whose governor in the mid-1990s, Yevgeniy Nazdratenko, defied central economic and political policies on a number of well-publicized issues. Some limited cooperation has occurred among Russia's regional jurisdictions, and experts believe there is potential for even greater coordination. Eight regional cooperation organizations have been established, covering all subnational jurisdictions except Chechnya: the Siberian Accord Association; the Central Russia Association; the Northwest Association; the Black Earth Association; the Cooperation Association of North Caucasus Republics, Territories, and Oblasts; the Greater Volga Association; the Ural Regional Association; and the Far East and Baikal Association. The Federation Council formally recognized these interjurisdictional organizations in 1994. Expansion of the organizations' activities is hampered by economic inequalities among their members and by inadequate interregional transportation infrastructure, but in 1996 they began increasing their influence in Moscow. Regional and ethnic conflicts have encouraged proposals to abolish the existing subunits and resurrect the tsarist-era guberniya, or large province, which would incorporate several smaller subunits on the basis of geography and population rather than ethnic considerations. Russian ultranationalists such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky have been joined in supporting this proposal by some officials of the national Government and oblast and territory leaders who resent the privileges of the republics. Some have called for these new subunits to be based on the eight interregional economic associations. Putin administration Russian politics are now dominated by President Vladimir Putin, his United Russia party, and Prime minister Mikhail Mishustin. At the 2003 legislative elections, United Russia reduced all other parties to minority status. Other parties retaining seats in the State Duma, the lower house of the legislature, are the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and A Just Russia. The first presidential elections were held on 26 March 2000. Putin, who had previously been made Prime Minister of Russia and following Yeltsin's resignation was acting president of Russia, won in the first round with 53% of the vote in what were judged generally free and fair elections. (see 2000 Russian presidential election). Putin won a second full term without difficulty in the March 2004 presidential election. While the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe reported that the elections were generally organized professionally, there was criticism of unequal treatment of candidates by State-controlled media among other issues. After the election, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and his cabinet were dismissed by Putin. However, pundits in Russia believed this not to be due to the president's displeasure with the government, but with Mikhail Kasyanov himself, as the Russian constitution does not allow the prime minister to be removed without firing the whole cabinet. Kasyanov later went on to become a stark Putin critic. Although Russia's regions enjoy a degree of autonomous self-government, the election of regional governors was substituted by direct appointment by the president in 2005. In September 2007, Putin accepted the resignation of Prime minister Mikhail Fradkov, appointing Viktor Zubkov as the new Prime minister. In the 2008 Russian Presidential election, Dmitry Medvedev—whose nomination was supported by the popular outgoing President Vladimir Putin—scored a landslide victory. According to analysts, the country was now effectively ruled by a "tandem", with a constitutionally powerful President and an influential and popular Prime Minister. Russia has suffered democratic backsliding during Putin's and Medvedev's tenures. Freedom House has listed Russia as being "not free" since 2005. In 2004, Freedom House warned that Russia's "retreat from freedom marks a low point not registered since 1989, when the country was part of the Soviet Union." Alvaro Gil-Robles (then head of the Council of Europe human rights division) stated in 2004 that "the fledgling Russian democracy is still, of course, far from perfect, but its existence and its successes cannot be denied." The Economist Intelligence Unit has rated Russia as "authoritarian" since 2011, whereas it had previously been considered a "hybrid regime" (with "some form of democratic government" in place) as late as 2007. The Russian Federation states that Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government, which has been proven of not being acted upon today. According to political scientist, Larry Diamond, writing in 2015, "no serious scholar would consider Russia today a democracy". The arrest of prominent oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky on charges of fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion was met with domestic and Western criticism that the arrest was political and that his trial was highly flawed. However, the move was met positively by the Russian public and has largely undeterred investment from the country, which continued to grow at double digit rates. In 2005, Russia started steadily increasing the price it sold heavily subsidized gas to ex-Soviet republics. Russia has recently been accused of using its natural resources as a political weapon. Russia, in turn, accuses the West of applying double standards relating to market principles, pointing out that Russia has been supplying gas to the states in question at prices that were significantly below world market levels, and in most cases remain so even after the increases. Politicians in Russia argued that it is not obligated to effectively subsidize the economies of post-Soviet states by offering them resources at below-market prices. Regardless of alleged political motivation, observers have noted that charging market prices is Russia's legitimate right, and point out that Russia has raised the price even for its close ally, Belarus. Other issues The constitution guarantees citizens the right to choose their place of residence and to travel abroad. Some big-city governments, however, have restricted this right through residential registration rules that closely resemble the Soviet-era "propiska" regulations. Although the rules were touted as a notification device rather than a control system, their implementation has produced many of the same results as the propiska system. The freedom to travel abroad and emigrate is respected although restrictions may apply to those who have had access to state secrets. See also Law of the Russian Federation Federation Council of Russia Foreign relations of Russia Human rights in Russia Corruption in Russia History of post-Soviet Russia Economy |
the world's fourth-largest electricity producer, and the ninth-largest renewable energy producer in 2019. Russia was also the world's first country to develop civilian nuclear power, and to construct the world's first nuclear power plant. In 2019, It was the world's fourth-largest nuclear energy producer. Mining Russia is also a leading producer and exporter of minerals and gold. Russia is the largest diamond-producing nation in the world, estimated to produce over 33 million carats in 2013, or 25% of global output valued at over $3.4 billion, with state-owned ALROSA accounting for approximately 95% of all Russian production. In 2019, the country was the 3rd world producer of gold; 2nd worldwide producer of platinum; 4th worldwide producer of silver; 9th largest world producer of copper; 3rd largest world producer of nickel; 6th largest world producer of lead; 9th largest world producer of bauxite; 10th largest world producer of zinc; 2nd worldwide producer of vanadium; 2nd largest world producer of cobalt; 5th largest world producer of iron ore; 7th largest world producer of boron; 9th largest world producer of molybdenum; 13th largest world producer of tin; 3rd largest world producer of sulfur; 4th largest world producer of phosphate; 8th largest world producer of gypsum; in addition to being the world's 10th largest producer of salt. It was the world's 6th largest producer of uranium in 2018. Agriculture Russia's agriculture sector contributes about 5% of the country's total GDP, although the sector employs about one-eighth of the total labour force. It has the world's third-largest cultivated area, at . However, due to the harshness of its environment, about 13.1% of its land is agricultural, and only 7.4% of its land is arable. The main product of Russian farming has always been grain, which occupies considerably more than half of the cropland. Russia is the world's largest exporter of wheat, and is the largest producer of barley, buckwheat, oats, and rye, and the second-largest producer of sunflower seed. Various analysts of climate change adaptation foresee large opportunities for Russian agriculture during the rest of the 21st century as arability increases in Siberia, which would lead to both internal and external migration to the region. More than one-third of the sown area is devoted to fodder crops, and the remaining farmland is devoted to industrial crops, vegetables, and fruits. Owing to its large coastline along three oceans, Russia maintains one of the world's largest fishing fleets, ranking sixth in the world in tonnage of fish caught; capturing 4,773,413 tons of fish in 2018. It is also home to the world's finest caviar (the beluga), and produces about one-third of all canned fish, and some one-fourth of the world's total fresh and frozen fish. Industry Defense industry The defense industry of Russia is a strategically important sector and a large employer in the country. Russia has a large and sophisticated arms industry, capable of designing and manufacturing high-tech military equipment, including a fifth-generation fighter jet, nuclear powered submarines, firearms, and short range/long range ballistic missiles. It is the world's second-largest exporter of arms, behind only the United States. Aerospace Aircraft manufacturing is an important industry sector in Russia, employing around 355,300 people. The Russian aircraft industry offers a portfolio of internationally competitive military aircraft such as MiG-29 and Su-30, while new projects such as the Sukhoi Superjet 100 are hoped to revive the fortunes of the civilian aircraft segment. In 2009, companies belonging to the United Aircraft Corporation delivered 95 new fixed-wing aircraft to its customers, including 15 civilian models. In addition, the industry produced over 141 helicopters. It is one of the most science-intensive hi-tech sectors and employs the largest number of skilled personnel. The production and value of the military aircraft branch far outstrips other defense industry sectors, and aircraft products make up more than half of the country's arms exports. The Space industry of Russia consists of over 100 companies and employs 250,000 people. The largest company of the industry is RKK Energia, the main manned space flight contractor. Leading launch vehicle producers are Khrunichev and TsSKB Progress. Largest satellite developer is Reshetnev Information Satellite Systems, while NPO Lavochkin is the main developer of interplanetary probes. Automotive industry Automotive production is a significant industry in Russia, directly employing around 600,000 people or 1% of the country's total workforce. Russia produced 1,767,674 vehicles in 2018, ranking 13th among car-producing nations in 2018, and accounting for 1.8% of the worldwide production. The main local brands are light vehicle producers AvtoVAZ and GAZ, while KamAZ is the leading heavy vehicle producer. Eleven foreign carmakers have production operations or are constructing their plants in Russia. Electronics Russia is experiencing a regrowth of microelectronics, with the revival of JCS Mikron. Services Retail As of 2013, Russians spent 60% of their pre-tax income on shopping, the highest percentage in Europe. This is possible because many Russians pay no rent or house payments, owning their own home after privatization of state-owned Soviet housing. Shopping malls were popular with international investors and shoppers from the emerging middle class. Eighty-two malls had been built near major cities including a few that were very large. A supermarket selling groceries is a typical anchor store in a Russian mall. Retail sales in Russia Telecommunications Russia's telecommunications industry is growing in size and maturity. As of December 2007, there were an estimated 4,900,000 broadband lines in Russia. In 2006, there were more than 300 BWA operator networks, accounting for 5% of market share, with dial-up accounting for 30%, and Broadband Fixed Access accounting for the remaining 65%. In December 2006, Tom Phillips, chief government and regulatory affairs officer of the GSM Association stated: "Russia has already achieved more than 100% mobile penetration thanks to the huge popularity of wireless communications among Russians and the government's good work in fostering a market driven mobile sector based on strong competition." The financial crisis, which had already hit the country at the end of 2008, caused a sharp reduction of the investments by the business sectors and a notable reduction of IT budget made by government in 2008–2009. As a consequence, in 2009 the IT market in Russia declined by more than 20% in ruble terms and by one-third in euro terms. Among the particular segments, the biggest share of the Russian IT market still belongs to hardware. Key data on the telecommunications market in Russia Transportation Railway transport in Russia is mostly under the control of the state-run Russian Railways. The total length of common-used railway tracks is the world's third-longest, and exceeds . , Russia has 1,452.2 thousand km of roads, and its road density is among the world's lowest. Russia's inland waterways are the world's second-longest, and total . Among Russia's 1,218 airports, the busiest is Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow. Russia's largest post is the Port of Novorossiysk in Krasnodar Krai along the Black Sea. It is the world's sole country to operate nuclear-powered icebreakers, which advance the economic exploitation of the Arctic continental shelf of Russia, and the development of sea trade through the Northern Sea Route. Construction In 2009 the Russian construction industry survived its most difficult year in more than a decade. The 0.8% reduction recorded by the industry for the first three quarters of 2010 looked remarkably healthy in comparison with the 18.4% slump recorded the previous year, and construction firms became much more optimistic about the future than in previous months. The most successful construction firms concluded contracts worth billions of dollars and planned to take on employees and purchase new building machinery. The downturn served to emphasise the importance of the government to the construction market. Insurance According to the Central Bank of Russia 422 insurance companies operate on the Russian insurance market by the end of 2013. The concentration of insurance business is significant across all major segments except compulsory motor third party liability market (CMTPL), as the top 10 companies in 2013 charged 58.1% premiums in total without compulsory health insurance (CHI). Russian insurance market in 2013 demonstrated quite significant rate of growth in operations. Total amount of premiums charged (without CHI) in 2013 is RUB 904.9 bln (increase on 11.8% compared to 2012), total amount of claims paid is RUB 420.8 bln (increase on 13.9% compared to 2012). Premiums to GDP ratio (total without CHI) in 2013 increased to 1.36% compared to 1.31 a year before. The share of premiums in household spending increased to 1.39%. Level of claims paid on the market total without CHI is 46.5%, an insufficient increase compared to 2012. The number of policies in 2013 increased on 0.1% compared to 2012, to 139.6 mln policies. Although relative indicators of the Russian insurance market returned to pre-crisis levels, the progress is achieved mainly by the increase of life insurance and accident insurance, the input of these two market segments in premium growth in 2013 largely exceeds their share on the market. As before, life insurance and accident insurance are often used by banks as an appendix to a credit contract protecting creditors from the risk of credit default in case of borrower’s death or disability. The rise of these lines is connected, evidently, with the increase in consumer loans, as the total sum of credit obligations of population in 2013 increased by 28% to RUB 9.9 trillion. At the same time premium to GDP ratio net of life and accident insurance remained at the same level of 1.1% as in 2012. Thus, if "banking" lines of business are excluded, Russian insurance market is in stagnation stage for the last four years, as premiums to GDP ratio net of life and accident insurance remains at the same level of 1.1% since 2010. Information technology The IT market is one of the most dynamic sectors of the Russian economy. Russian software exports have risen from just $120 million in 2000 to $3.3 billion in 2010. Since the year 2000 the IT market has started growth rates of 30–40% a year, growing by 54% in 2006 alone. The biggest sector in terms of revenue is system and network integration, which accounts for 28.3% of the total market revenues. Meanwhile, the fastest growing segment of the IT market is offshore programming. Currently, Russia controls 3% of the offshore software development market and is the third leading country (after India and China) among software exporters. Such growth of software outsourcing in Russia is caused by a number of factors. One of them is the supporting role of the Russian Government. The government has launched a program promoting construction of IT-oriented technology parks (Technoparks)—special zones that have an established infrastructure and enjoy a favorable tax and customs regime, in seven different places around the country: Moscow, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaluga, Tumen, Republic of Tatarstan and St. Peterburg Regions. Another factor stimulating the IT sector growth in Russia is the presence of global technology corporations such as Intel, Google, Motorola, Boeing, Nortel, Hewlett-Packard, SAP AG, and others, which have intensified their software development activities and opened their R&D centers in Russia. Under a government decree signed On June 2013, a special "roadmap" is expected to ease business suppliers’ access to the procurement programs of state-owned infrastructure monopolies, including such large ones as Gazprom, Rosneft, Russian Railways, Rosatom, and Transneft. These companies will be expected to increase the proportion of domestic technology solutions they use in their operations. The decree puts special emphasis on purchases of innovation products and technologies. According to the new decree, by 2015, government-connected companies must double their purchases of Russian technology solutions compared to the 2013 level and their purchasing levels must quadruple by 2018. Russia is one of the few countries in the world with a home grown internet search engine who owns a relevant marketshare as the Russian-based search engine Yandex is used by 53.8% of internet users in the country. Known Russian IT companies are ABBYY (FineReader OCR system and Lingvo dictionaries), Kaspersky Lab (Kaspersky Anti-Virus, Kaspersky Internet Security), Mail.Ru (portal, search engine, mail service, Mail.ru Agent messenger, ICQ, Odnoklassniki social network, online media sources). Tourism According to a UNWTO report, Russia is the sixteenth-most visited country in the world, and the tenth-most visited country in Europe, as of 2018, with 24.6 million visits. Russia is ranked 39th in the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2019. According to Federal Agency for Tourism, the number of inbound trips of foreign citizens to Russia amounted to 24.4 million in 2019. Russia's international tourism receipts in 2018 amounted to $11.6 billion. In 2020, tourism accounted for about 4% of country's GDP. Major tourist routes in Russia include a journey around the Golden Ring theme route of ancient cities, cruises on the big rivers like the Volga, and journeys on the famous Trans-Siberian Railway. Russia's most visited and popular landmarks include Red Square, the Peterhof Palace, the Kazan Kremlin, the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius and Lake Baikal. External trade and investment Trade Russia recorded a trade surplus of USD$15.8 billion in 2013. Balance of trade in Russia is reported by the Central Bank of Russia. Historically, from 1997 until 2013, Russia balance of trade averaged 8338.23 USD million reaching an all-time high of 20647 USD million in December 2011 and a record low of −185 USD million in February 1998. Russia runs regular trade surpluses primarily due to exports of commodities. In 2015, Russia main exports are oil and natural gas (62.8% of total exports), ores and metals (5.9%), chemical products (5.8%), machinery and transport equipment (5.4%) and food (4.7%). Others include: agricultural raw materials (2.2%) and textiles (0.2%). Russia imports food, ground transports, pharmaceuticals and textile and footwear. Main trading partners are: China (7% of total exports and 10% of imports), Germany (7% of exports and 8% of imports) and Italy. This page includes a chart with historical data for Russia balance of trade. Exports in Russia decreased to 39038 USD million in January 2013 from 48568 USD million in December 2012. Exports in Russia is reported by the Central Bank of Russia. Historically, from 1994 until 2013, Russia Exports averaged 18668.83 USD million reaching an all-time high of 51338 USD million in December 2011 and a record low of 4087 USD million in January 1994. Russia is the 16th largest export economy in the world (2016) and is a leading exporter of oil and natural gas. In Russia, services are the biggest sector of the economy and account for 58% of GDP. Within services the most important segments are: wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles, motorcycles and personal and household goods (17% of total GDP); public administration, health and education (12%); real estate (9%) and transport storage and communications (7%). Industry contributes 40% to total output. Mining (11% of GDP), manufacturing (13%) and construction (4%) are the most important industry segments. Agriculture accounts for the remaining 2%. This page includes a chart with historical data for Russia Exports. Imports in Russia decreased to 21296 USD million in January 2013 from 31436 USD million in December 2012. Imports in Russia is reported by the Central Bank of Russia. Historically, from 1994 until 2013, Russia imports averaged 11392.06 USD million reaching an all-time high of 31553 USD million in October 2012 and a record low of 2691 USD million in January 1999. Russia main imports are food (13% of total imports) and ground transports (12%). Others include: pharmaceuticals, textile and footwear, plastics and optical instruments. Main import partners are China (10% of total imports) and Germany (8%). Others include: Italy, France, Japan and United States. This page includes a chart with historical data for Russia Imports. Foreign trade of Russia - Russian export and import Foreign trade rose 34% to $151.5 billion in the first half of 2005, mainly due to the increase in oil and gas prices which now | mining. Richard Connolly argues that for the last four centuries, there are four main characteristics of the Russian economy that have shaped the system and persisted despite the political upheavals. First of all the weakness of the legal system means that impartial courts do not rule and contracts are problematic. Second is the underdevelopment of modern economic activities, with very basic peasant agriculture dominant into the 1930s. Third is technological underdevelopment, eased somewhat by borrowing from the West in the 1920s. And fourth lower living standards compared to Western Europe and North America.<ref>Richard Connolly, The Russian economy: a very short introduction' (2020) pp 2–11.</ref> Soviet economy Industrialization under Stalin Beginning in 1928, the course of the Soviet Union's economy was guided by a series of five-year plans. By the 1950s, the Soviet Union had rapidly evolved from a mainly agrarian society into a major industrial power. By the 1970s the Soviet Union was in an Era of Stagnation. The complex demands of the modern economy and inflexible administration overwhelmed and constrained the central planners. The volume of decisions facing planners in Moscow became overwhelming. The cumbersome procedures for bureaucratic administration foreclosed the free communication and flexible response required at the enterprise level for dealing with worker alienation, innovation, customers, and suppliers. From 1975 to 1985, corruption and data fiddling became common practice among bureaucracy to report satisfied targets and quotas thus entrenching the crisis. Starting in 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to address economic problems by moving towards a market-oriented socialist economy. Gorbachev's policies of Perestroika failed to rejuvenate the Soviet economy; instead, a process of political and economic disintegration culminated in the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Transition to market economy (1991–98) Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia underwent a radical transformation, moving from a centrally planned economy to a globally integrated market economy. Corrupt and haphazard privatization processes turned over major state-owned firms to politically connected "oligarchs", which has left equity ownership highly concentrated. Yeltsin's program of radical, market-oriented reform came to be known as a "shock therapy". It was based on the policies associated with the Washington Consensus, recommendations of the IMF and a group of top American economists, including Larry Summers. With deep corruption afflicting the process, the result was disastrous, with real GDP falling by more than 40% by 1999, hyperinflation which wiped out personal savings, crime and destitution spreading rapidly. This was accompanied by a drop in the standard of living, including surging economic inequality and poverty, along with increased excess mortality and a decline in life expectancy. Likewise, the consumption of meat decreased: in 1990, an average citizen of the RSFSR consumed 63 kg of meat a year; by 1999, it had decreased to 45 kg. The majority of state enterprises were privatized amid great controversy and subsequently came to be owned by insiders for far less than they were worth. For example, the director of a factory during the Soviet regime would often become the owner of the same enterprise. Under the government's cover, outrageous financial manipulations were performed that enriched a narrow group of individuals at key positions of business and government. Many of them promptly invested their newfound wealth abroad, producing an enormous capital flight. Difficulties in collecting government revenues amid the collapsing economy and dependence on short-term borrowing to finance budget deficits led to the 1998 Russian financial crisis. In the 1990s Russia was "the largest borrower" from the International Monetary Fund, with loans totaling $20 billion. The IMF was criticised for lending so much, as Russia introduced little of the reforms promised for the money and a large part of these funds could have been "diverted from their intended purpose and included in the flows of capital that left the country illegally". Recovery and growth (1999–2008) Russia bounced back from the August 1998 financial crash quickly, partly because of a devaluation of the ruble, which made domestic producers more competitive nationally and internationally. Between 2000 and 2002, significant pro-growth economic reforms included a comprehensive tax reform, which introduced a flat income tax of 13%; and a broad effort at deregulation which benefited small and medium-sized enterprises. Between 2000 and 2008, Russian economy got a major boost from rising commodity prices. GDP grew on average 7% per year. Disposable incomes more than doubled and in dollar-denominated terms increased eightfold. The volume of consumer credit between 2000–2006 increased 45 times, fuelling a boom in private consumption. The number of people living below poverty line declined from 30% in 2000 to 14% in 2008. Inflation remained a problem however, as the central bank aggressively expanded money supply to combat appreciation of the ruble. Nevertheless, in 2007 the World Bank declared that the Russian economy achieved "unprecedented macroeconomic stability". Until October 2007, Russia maintained impressive fiscal discipline with budget surpluses every year from 2000. 2009–14 Russian banks were hit by the global credit crunch in 2008, though no long term damage was done thanks to proactive and timely response by the government and central bank, which shielded the banking system from effects of the global financial crisis. A sharp, but brief recession in Russia was followed by a strong recovery beginning in late 2009. Between 2000 and 2012 Russia's energy exports fueled a rapid growth in living standards, with real disposable income rising by 160%. In dollar-denominated terms this amounted to a more than sevenfold increase in disposable incomes since 2000. In the same period, unemployment and poverty more than halved and Russians' self-assessed life satisfaction also rose significantly. This growth was a combined result of the 2000s commodities boom, high oil prices, as well as prudent economic and fiscal policies. However, these gains have been distributed unevenly, as the 110 wealthiest individuals were found in a report by Credit Suisse to own 35% of all financial assets held by Russian households. Russia also has the second-largest volume of illicit money outflows, having lost over $880 billion between 2002 and 2011 in this way. Since 2008 Forbes has repeatedly named Moscow the "billionaire capital of the world". After eighteen years of negotiations, Russia's membership to the WTO was accepted in 2011. In 2013, Russia was labeled a high-income economy by the World Bank. Russian leaders repeatedly spoke of the need to diversify the economy away from its dependence on oil and gas and foster a high-technology sector. In 2012 oil, gas and petroleum products accounted for over 70% of total exports. This economic model appeared to show its limits, when after years of strong performance, the Russian economy expanded by a mere 1.3% in 2013. Several reasons were proposed to explain the slowdown, including a prolonged recession in the EU, which is Russia's largest trading partner, stagnant oil prices, lack of spare industrial capacity and demographic problems. Political turmoil in neighboring Ukraine added to the uncertainty and suppressed investment. 2014–present Following the annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and Russia's involvement in the ongoing War in Donbass, the United States, the European Union, Canada and Japan imposed sanctions on Russia. This led to the decline of the Russian ruble and sparked fears of a Russian financial crisis. Russia responded with sanctions against a number of countries, including a one-year period of total ban on food imports from the European Union and the United States. According to the Russian economic ministry in July 2014, GDP growth in the first half of 2014 was 1%. The ministry projected growth of 0.5% for 2014. The Russian economy grew by a better than expected 0.6% in 2014. Russia is rated one of the most unequal of the world’s major economies. The Russian economy risked going into recession from early 2014, mainly due to falling oil prices, sanctions, and the subsequent capital flight. While in 2014 GDP growth remained positive at 0.6%, in 2015 the Russian economy shrunk by 3.7% and was expected to shrink further in 2016. By 2016, the Russian economy rebounded with 0.3% GDP growth and officially exited recession. The growth continued in 2017, with an increase of 1.5%. In January 2016, Bloomberg rated Russia's economy as the 12th most innovative in the world, up from 14th in January 2015 and 18th in January 2014. Russia has the world's 15th highest patent application rate, the 8th highest concentration of high-tech public companies, such as internet and aerospace and the third highest graduation rate of scientists and engineers. In 2019 Russia’s Natural Resources and Environment Ministry estimated the value of natural resources to $844 billion or 60% of the country's GDP. Data The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2020 (with IMF staff estimates in 2021–2026). Inflation below 5% is in green. Public policy Fiscal policy Russia was expected to have a Government Budget deficit of $21 billion in 2016. The budget deficit narrowed to 0.6% of GDP in 2017 from 2.8% in 2016. National wealth fund and debt On 1 January 2004, the Government of Russia established the Stabilization fund of the Russian Federation as part of the federal budget to balance it if price of oil falls. On 1 February 2008 the Stabilization fund was divided into two parts. The first is a reserve fund equal to 10% of GDP (10% of GDP equals to about $200 billion now), and was to be invested in a similar way as the Stabilization Fund. The second is the National Prosperity Fund of the Russian Federation. Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak estimated it would reach 600–700 billion rubles by 1 February 2008. The National Prosperity Fund is to be invested in more risky instruments, including the shares of foreign companies. Russia has one of the lowest foreign debts among major economies. Corruption Russia was the lowest rated European country in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2020; ranking 129th out of 180 countries. Corruption is perceived as a significant problem in Russia, impacting various aspects of life, including the economy, business, public administration, law enforcement, healthcare, and education. The phenomenon of corruption is strongly established in the historical model of public governance in Russia and attributed to general weakness of rule of law in Russia. As of 2020, the percentage of business owners who distrust law enforcement agencies rose to 70% (from 45% in 2017); 75% don't believe in impartiality of courts and 79% do not believe that legal institutions protect them from abuse of law such as racketeering or arrest on dubious grounds. Sectors Primary Energy The mineral-packed Ural Mountains and the vast fossil fuel (oil, gas, coal), and timber reserves of Siberia and the Russian Far East make Russia rich in natural resources, which dominate Russian exports. Oil and gas exports, specifically, continue to be the main source of hard currency. Russia has been widely described as an energy superpower; as it has the world's largest natural gas reserves, the second-largest coal reserves, the eighth-largest oil reserves, and the largest oil shale reserves in Europe. It is the world's leading natural gas exporter, the second-largest natural gas producer, and the second-largest oil exporter, and producer. Fossil fuels cause most of the greenhouse gas emissions by Russia. The country is the world's fourth-largest electricity producer, and the ninth-largest renewable energy producer in 2019. Russia was also the world's first country to develop civilian nuclear power, and to construct the world's first nuclear power plant. In 2019, It was the world's fourth-largest nuclear energy producer. Mining Russia is also a leading producer and exporter of minerals and gold. Russia is the largest diamond-producing nation in the world, estimated to produce over 33 million carats in 2013, or 25% of global output valued at over $3.4 billion, with state-owned ALROSA accounting for approximately 95% of all Russian production. In 2019, the country was the 3rd world producer of gold; 2nd worldwide producer of platinum; 4th worldwide producer of silver; 9th largest world producer of copper; 3rd largest world producer of nickel; 6th largest world producer of lead; 9th largest world producer of bauxite; 10th largest world producer of zinc; 2nd worldwide producer of vanadium; 2nd largest world producer of cobalt; 5th largest world producer of iron ore; 7th largest world producer of boron; 9th largest world producer of molybdenum; 13th largest world producer of tin; 3rd largest world producer of sulfur; 4th largest world producer of phosphate; 8th largest world producer of gypsum; in addition to being the world's 10th largest producer of salt. It was the world's 6th largest producer of uranium in 2018. Agriculture Russia's agriculture sector contributes about 5% of the country's total GDP, although the sector employs about one-eighth of the total labour force. It has the world's third-largest cultivated area, at . However, due to the harshness of its environment, about 13.1% of its land is agricultural, and only 7.4% of its land is arable. The main product of Russian farming has always been grain, which occupies considerably more than half of the cropland. Russia is the world's largest exporter of wheat, and is the largest producer of barley, buckwheat, oats, and rye, and the second-largest producer of sunflower seed. Various analysts of climate change adaptation foresee large opportunities for Russian agriculture during the rest of the 21st century as arability increases in Siberia, which would lead to both internal and external migration to |
revenue. These funds are the Federal Communications Agency (Rossvyaz) distributes between 21 universal operator. These operators money comes to the budget, and Rossvâz receives from the budget for compensation and still these amounts roughly coincided, employee profile departments. But universal operators recently complained that they themselves lack the money to compensate for losses in the implementation of social projects. In February 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed amendments to the federal law "On Communications", which set Rostelecom a single operator of universal communication services. The company must commit itself to support the existing infrastructure of Universal Service, including payphones and access points (VRM) on the Internet. In addition to these duties, a single operator will also fight the digital divide by providing broadband at speeds of at least 10 Mbit / s settlements up to 250 people. Landline telephony Telephones – main lines in use: 32.277 million (2016) Telephones – mobile cellular: 229.126 million (2016) The telephone system employs an extensive system of modern network elements such as digital telephone exchanges, mobile switching centres, media gateways and signalling gateways at the core, interconnected by a wide variety of transmission systems using fibre-optics or Microwave radio relay networks. The access network, which connects the subscriber to the core, is highly diversified with different copper-pair, optic-fibre and wireless technologies.; cellular services, both analog and digital, are available in many areas. In the rural areas, the telephone services are still outdated, inadequate, and low density. The Tsarist government of Russia issued its first decree on the development of urban telephone networks in 1881 and, as already discussed, the first exchanges in the Empire opened the following year. Initially, telephone exchanges were granted to private developers as concessions in the major cities, but in 1884 the government began to construct the first of its own exchanges and subsequently suspended the award of new concessions. Intercity telephone communications grew very slowly, with only a dozen lines in place by the start of the 20th century, most serving Moscow-Saint Petersburg traffic. After 1900, when the initial concessions had expired, the government eased control over private concessionaires and a burst of new construction took place. Included in the expansion during this period was the slow growth of exchanges built and operated by rural Zemstva, which were treated essentially as private concessionaires by the Imperial government. Telephones played a significant role during the upheavals of 1917. In February, according to the last tsarist Chief of Police, 'neither the military authorities nor the mutineers thought of occupying the Telephone Exchange'; consequently it continued to function, serving both sides, until the operators finally left their positions amidst the growing confusion. In early July, however, the Provisional Government, fearing a Bolshevik coup, reportedly ordered the central telephone exchange to boycott calls requested by Bolsheviks (automatic switching systems had not yet been introduced). In 1918, when the Soviet government moved to Moscow and war conditions were producing extreme shortages, Sovnarkom ordered a reduction of 50% in the volume of telephone communications in the new capital, to ensure that official needs of the new government would be served. The primary consequence of this decree for individuals was the 'communalisation' of telephones in private houses and flats. According to the decree, restrictions were focused on the 'parasitic stratum' of society, in the interest of the 'working population'. With the exception of personal phones belonging to high government officials, doctors and midwives, telephones in private flats were placed at the disposal of 'house committees', to be made available for 'general use' free of charge. Houses without telephones were entitled to free use of the communal phone of a neighbouring house; the decree further ordered the immediate installation of at least 150 telephones in public squares, particularly in outlying regions. One year later Sovnarkom nationalized all telephone systems in the Russian Republic-including all intercity, urban, concessionary and zemstvo exchangesand assigned their administration and operation to the People's Commissariat for Posts and Telegraphs of the RSFSR. Beginning with the nationalization of telephones in 1919, Soviet policy exhibited two main characteristics: telephones increasingly became instruments for the bureaucracy and bureaucrats, and telephones in general were accorded a low investment priority. In March 1920, for instance, government institutions were exempted from the telephone tariff, receiving the right to use the telephone without payment, albeit for sharply restricted periods. Until the end of 1991 (the end of the USSR), the sole fixed-line telephone operator in the country was the Ministry of Communications of the USSR. The state possessed all telecommunications structure and access networks. In 1994, the investment communication company (OJSC “Sviazinvest”) was established by the Presidential Decree No.1989 dated 10 October 1994 “On the specific features of the state management of the electric communication network for public use in Russian Federation”. The authorised capital of OJSC “Sviazinvest” was formed by the consolidation of federal shares of joint stock companies acting in the area of electric communications and established during the privatisation of the state enterprises for electric communications. The seven regional incumbents which make up Svyazinvest, majority-owned by the government, in early 2011 merged with the key subsidiary Rostelecom. The move created an integrated company based on Rostelecom which will be better placed to exploit economies of scale in coming years. Cross-country digital trunk lines run from Saint Petersburg to Vladivostok, and from Moscow to Novorossiysk. Liberalization of the long-distance communication market is another market driver. In January 2006, Russia passed a new law in relation to long-distance telecommunications, which partially broke up the monopolization that Rostelecom had been enjoying in the toll market. The law now allows other carriers to operate toll services. Currently, there are about 32 active companies in this space, including Interregional TransitTelekom (MTT), Golden Telecom, TransTelekom and Synterra Media. share of fixed-line business of Rostelecom's main competitors varied in 2012 from 6% (Megafon) to 19% (MTS). Still, At the beginning of the 2010s, Rostelecom is de facto a monopoly local telephony provider to households in Russia, except for few regions, where incumbents were not part of Svyazinvest holding after the privatization in the early 1990s (the cities of Moscow, Pskov, Kostroma, the republics of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, as well as Tuva, Chukotka, Chechnya, and Ingushetia). The substitution of long-distance fixed-line voice services by mobile and IP traffic sped up after 2008, when mobile operators shifted to the fixed-line segment (Vimpelcom was the first company out of the Big 3 to acquire Golden Telecom in early 2008) and simultaneously increased investments into own trunk network infrastructure to support rapid 3G traffic growth. In February 2014 Megafon, through its subsidiary NetByNet purchased Tele-MIG Besides a company founded in 2003 which provides fixed telephony, IP-telephony and data transmission in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Russian regulation stipulates that new players must build their own networks. The growth of traffic between Europe and Asia is an additional opportunity; more than 6,000 km of international communication cables were built during the first nine months of 2007, representing a 48.5% increase on 2006, according to the Russian Ministry of Communication and Mass Media. Tariffs Tariffs in the fixed-line segment are determined by the Federal Tariff Service on an annual basis, taking into consideration inflation and the operators' expenses. The price competition in the long-distance segment increased as mobile operators began implementing promotional tariffs to stimulate voice traffic growth after the crisis (long-distance traffic is predominantly built by corporate clients). At the same time, traditional operators had limited room for maneuver as intra-zonal and domestic LD tariffs, which are subject to regulation by the government, remained flat over the last three years. As a result, mobile operators managed to bite off a heavy share of intraregional and long-distance market from traditional fixed-line operators, first of all regional operators of Svyazinvest, which are now united under Rostelecom. Public switched telephone network Russian public switched telephone network (PSTN) has specific features. The lowest part of this model is example of the local network in the middle and large cities. The central office (CO) is connected to the tandem exchange (TE). In some cases, COs are connected by the directly. Such possibility is shown by the dotted lines for three COs connected to the TEIII. COs may be directly connected with the toll exchange. This option is shown by the dotted line for the COII1. Automatic Branch Exchange (PABX) is served by the nearest CO. All TEs are forming the meshed network. Up to the 1990s, TE was independent element of the local network. Operators did not use the equipment combined functions Tandem and Toll Exchanges. So, TE provided connections between COs of the local network, and access to the toll exchange. A function of the toll exchange is to establish connections for the long-distance and international calls. Last type of calls is served by the Gateway (GW). Processing of the local calls is performed by the COs and TEs. If a subscriber dials digit "8" (prefix of the long-distance connection in the national PSTN) all further processing of the call is a function of a toll exchange. The numbering plan for the cellular networks based on the Area Code (three digits) and number of mobile terminal (seven digits). In this case, the Area Code defines the concrete cellular network. Mobile phone There are four mobile phone service brands that cover all Russia: Beeline, MegaFon, Mobile TeleSystems and Tele2. At the end of 2013 there were about 239 million SIM cards in use in the country, which is equal to 168% of the population. The access points (AP) are built in long-distance telephone exchanges (LDTEs), Russian fixed-line communication infrastructure which is present in every province. As a result, interconnecting mobile operator only needs to create "last kilometer" circuits to the regional LDTE, the requirement already imposed by its mobile license. Rostelecom, the leading fixed-line operator in the country has regional subsidiaries who provide cellular services. In May 2008, 3G network was deployed in St. Petersburg, in Kazan in June of that year, and in Sochi in July of that year. By 2010, 3G networks covered largely most of Russia. In April 2011, MegaFon deployed high-definition voice services on its Moscow and Sochi GSM and UMTS networks. As the key supplier of core and access networks to MegaFon, Nokia Siemens Networks was responsible for the HD voice implementation, which is also a world first for a commercial GSM network. In early 2011, Rostelecom signed a memorandum of understanding with the three main MNOs to develop a joint LTE network using the infrastructure to be built by Yota. The network will expand LTE availability to 70 million Russians in 180 cities by 2014, vastly improving regional broadband availability in coming years. In December 2011, Rostelecom signed an agreement with Yota, a Russian mobile broadband provider, to jointly develop and use 4G wireless networks. The agreement facilitated the development and expansion of | period was the slow growth of exchanges built and operated by rural Zemstva, which were treated essentially as private concessionaires by the Imperial government. Telephones played a significant role during the upheavals of 1917. In February, according to the last tsarist Chief of Police, 'neither the military authorities nor the mutineers thought of occupying the Telephone Exchange'; consequently it continued to function, serving both sides, until the operators finally left their positions amidst the growing confusion. In early July, however, the Provisional Government, fearing a Bolshevik coup, reportedly ordered the central telephone exchange to boycott calls requested by Bolsheviks (automatic switching systems had not yet been introduced). In 1918, when the Soviet government moved to Moscow and war conditions were producing extreme shortages, Sovnarkom ordered a reduction of 50% in the volume of telephone communications in the new capital, to ensure that official needs of the new government would be served. The primary consequence of this decree for individuals was the 'communalisation' of telephones in private houses and flats. According to the decree, restrictions were focused on the 'parasitic stratum' of society, in the interest of the 'working population'. With the exception of personal phones belonging to high government officials, doctors and midwives, telephones in private flats were placed at the disposal of 'house committees', to be made available for 'general use' free of charge. Houses without telephones were entitled to free use of the communal phone of a neighbouring house; the decree further ordered the immediate installation of at least 150 telephones in public squares, particularly in outlying regions. One year later Sovnarkom nationalized all telephone systems in the Russian Republic-including all intercity, urban, concessionary and zemstvo exchangesand assigned their administration and operation to the People's Commissariat for Posts and Telegraphs of the RSFSR. Beginning with the nationalization of telephones in 1919, Soviet policy exhibited two main characteristics: telephones increasingly became instruments for the bureaucracy and bureaucrats, and telephones in general were accorded a low investment priority. In March 1920, for instance, government institutions were exempted from the telephone tariff, receiving the right to use the telephone without payment, albeit for sharply restricted periods. Until the end of 1991 (the end of the USSR), the sole fixed-line telephone operator in the country was the Ministry of Communications of the USSR. The state possessed all telecommunications structure and access networks. In 1994, the investment communication company (OJSC “Sviazinvest”) was established by the Presidential Decree No.1989 dated 10 October 1994 “On the specific features of the state management of the electric communication network for public use in Russian Federation”. The authorised capital of OJSC “Sviazinvest” was formed by the consolidation of federal shares of joint stock companies acting in the area of electric communications and established during the privatisation of the state enterprises for electric communications. The seven regional incumbents which make up Svyazinvest, majority-owned by the government, in early 2011 merged with the key subsidiary Rostelecom. The move created an integrated company based on Rostelecom which will be better placed to exploit economies of scale in coming years. Cross-country digital trunk lines run from Saint Petersburg to Vladivostok, and from Moscow to Novorossiysk. Liberalization of the long-distance communication market is another market driver. In January 2006, Russia passed a new law in relation to long-distance telecommunications, which partially broke up the monopolization that Rostelecom had been enjoying in the toll market. The law now allows other carriers to operate toll services. Currently, there are about 32 active companies in this space, including Interregional TransitTelekom (MTT), Golden Telecom, TransTelekom and Synterra Media. share of fixed-line business of Rostelecom's main competitors varied in 2012 from 6% (Megafon) to 19% (MTS). Still, At the beginning of the 2010s, Rostelecom is de facto a monopoly local telephony provider to households in Russia, except for few regions, where incumbents were not part of Svyazinvest holding after the privatization in the early 1990s (the cities of Moscow, Pskov, Kostroma, the republics of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, as well as Tuva, Chukotka, Chechnya, and Ingushetia). The substitution of long-distance fixed-line voice services by mobile and IP traffic sped up after 2008, when mobile operators shifted to the fixed-line segment (Vimpelcom was the first company out of the Big 3 to acquire Golden Telecom in early 2008) and simultaneously increased investments into own trunk network infrastructure to support rapid 3G traffic growth. In February 2014 Megafon, through its subsidiary NetByNet purchased Tele-MIG Besides a company founded in 2003 which provides fixed telephony, IP-telephony and data transmission in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Russian regulation stipulates that new players must build their own networks. The growth of traffic between Europe and Asia is an additional opportunity; more than 6,000 km of international communication cables were built during the first nine months of 2007, representing a 48.5% increase on 2006, according to the Russian Ministry of Communication and Mass Media. Tariffs Tariffs in the fixed-line segment are determined by the Federal Tariff Service on an annual basis, taking into consideration inflation and the operators' expenses. The price competition in the long-distance segment increased as mobile operators began implementing promotional tariffs to stimulate voice traffic growth after the crisis (long-distance traffic is predominantly built by corporate clients). At the same time, traditional operators had limited room for maneuver as intra-zonal and domestic LD tariffs, which are subject to regulation by the government, remained flat over the last three years. As a result, mobile operators managed to bite off a heavy share of intraregional and long-distance market from traditional fixed-line operators, first of all regional operators of Svyazinvest, which are now united under Rostelecom. Public switched telephone network Russian public switched telephone network (PSTN) has specific features. The lowest part of this model is example of the local network in the middle and large cities. The central office (CO) is connected to the tandem exchange (TE). In some cases, COs are connected by the directly. Such possibility is shown by the dotted lines for three COs connected to the TEIII. COs may be directly connected with the toll exchange. This option is shown by the dotted line for the COII1. Automatic Branch Exchange (PABX) is served by the nearest CO. All TEs are forming the meshed network. Up to the 1990s, TE was independent element of the local network. Operators did not use the equipment combined functions Tandem and Toll Exchanges. So, TE provided connections between COs of the local network, and access to the toll exchange. A function of the toll exchange is to establish connections for the long-distance and international calls. Last type of calls is served by the Gateway (GW). Processing of |
of Georgia – Yes – same gauge of Azerbaijan – Yes – same gauge of Kazakhstan – Yes – same gauge of China – Yes – break of gauge / Mongolia – Yes – same gauge of North Korea – Yes – break of gauge / Roads and highways As of 2006 Russia had 933,000 km of roads, of which 755,000 were paved. Some of these make up the Russian federal motorway system. With a large land area the road density is the lowest of all the G8 and BRIC countries. The state of Russia's road system ranks 136th out of 144 countries evaluated. Rustam Minnikhanov, the president of Tatarstan and head of the State Council working group on roads, told the Novosibirsk meeting that 53 percent of federal highways and 63 percent of regional ones are substandard and that the situation is growing worse: Every year, the number of cars in Russia rises by six percent, but the highway system expands only 2200 kilometers. The Kremlin leader blamed this on corruption, the lack of oversight, and the failure to update standards set 30 years ago. According to the Russian Federal State Statistics Service the road network expanded by 504,000 kilometers between 2003 and 2015, though this is largely due to the registration of previously ownerless roads. Road safety Road safety in Russia is poor, with a road accident rate higher than in Europe or the United States. In 2011, Russia was 4th by number of absolute recorded road deaths. Increasingly harsher penalties for traffic violations were imposed after 2008, but the level of corruption among traffic law enforcement authorities limits their effectiveness in reducing the number of accidents. Dashcams are widespread, inasmuch as Russian courts prefer video evidence to eyewitness testimony, but also as a guard against police corruption and insurance fraud. Fleet After World War II, trucks and buses were manufactured for the socialist countries of Eastern Europe: Ikarus urban, intercity and tourist buses, Skoda buses and trucks, Industriewerke Ludwigsfelde and Robur trucks, Tatra, LIAZ, Praga V3S, Csepel, Avia and ZSD Nysa passenger vans and Zuk cargo vans). During the late 1950s OAF trucks were imported from the West, and Berliet T60 dump trucks were imported in 1969 to open the mine and ore-processing plant of Ai in the Orenburg Oblast. Tractors from Volvo and Mercedes-Benz NG were imported during the 1970s for the road-transport organization Sovtransavto. Unic-Fiat tractors were imported in the mid-1970s for the port of Leningrad, and Unit Rig and International Harvester Paystar dump trucks and cement mixers were used for the construction of irrigation canals from 1979 to 1983. Fawn ballast tractors were imported from 1970 to the 1980s, and Komatsu dump trucks began to be imported in 1979. Magirus bonneted flatbed trucks and dump trucks were used in 1975 for the construction of the Baikal–Amur Mainline (BAM). By the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, priority was given to smaller cars (such as the Mercedes-Benz S-Class W116) as police cars, taxis and vans. However, most vehicles were Soviet-made cars: Moskvitch, GAZ-M20 Pobeda, GAZ, ZiL, VAZ, Izh and ZAZ automobiles, UAZ and LuAZ jeeps, RAF and ErAZ vans, GAZ, Kamaz, ZiL, MAZ, KrAZ, UralAZ, BelAZ and KAZ (Colkhides) trucks, KAvZ, PAZ, LiAZ and LAZ buses and ZiU trolleybuses. In 1988, the free sale of trucks and buses was permitted. Since the 1990s, many new and used cars have been imported. During the 2000s, foreign companies began to build factories in Russia or enter into agreements with existing assembly plants. Currently, European and Asian parts of Russia have different fleets. European Russia primarily contains Russian, European, Japanese, American, and Chinese cars and trucks; the Asian side contains used vehicles from the Japanese domestic market, concentrated in Vladivostok. The largest share of Russian auto brands is in the North Caucasus regions of Dagestan and Chechnya. GAZelle marshrutkas and Ford Transit, Peugeot Boxer, Fiat Ducato, Renault Master, Iveco Daily, Mercedes-Benz Sprinter and Volkswagen Crafter vans and Russian (PAZ), Ukrainian (Bogdan, South Korean (Hyundai County) and Chinese (BAW) minibuses, painted in one color, are used as share taxis. City buses are primarily the Russian (PAZ, KAvZ, LiAZ, MARZ, NefAZ, Volzhanin) and Belarusian MAZ. European buses are used in Vladivostok (51 MAN A78 Lion's City LE buses, Moscow (one Mercedes-Benz Turk O345 Connecto LF, four Ikarus 435, 71 Scania OmniLink assembled in Russia and | the lack of oversight, and the failure to update standards set 30 years ago. According to the Russian Federal State Statistics Service the road network expanded by 504,000 kilometers between 2003 and 2015, though this is largely due to the registration of previously ownerless roads. Road safety Road safety in Russia is poor, with a road accident rate higher than in Europe or the United States. In 2011, Russia was 4th by number of absolute recorded road deaths. Increasingly harsher penalties for traffic violations were imposed after 2008, but the level of corruption among traffic law enforcement authorities limits their effectiveness in reducing the number of accidents. Dashcams are widespread, inasmuch as Russian courts prefer video evidence to eyewitness testimony, but also as a guard against police corruption and insurance fraud. Fleet After World War II, trucks and buses were manufactured for the socialist countries of Eastern Europe: Ikarus urban, intercity and tourist buses, Skoda buses and trucks, Industriewerke Ludwigsfelde and Robur trucks, Tatra, LIAZ, Praga V3S, Csepel, Avia and ZSD Nysa passenger vans and Zuk cargo vans). During the late 1950s OAF trucks were imported from the West, and Berliet T60 dump trucks were imported in 1969 to open the mine and ore-processing plant of Ai in the Orenburg Oblast. Tractors from Volvo and Mercedes-Benz NG were imported during the 1970s for the road-transport organization Sovtransavto. Unic-Fiat tractors were imported in the mid-1970s for the port of Leningrad, and Unit Rig and International Harvester Paystar dump trucks and cement mixers were used for the construction of irrigation canals from 1979 to 1983. Fawn ballast tractors were imported from 1970 to the 1980s, and Komatsu dump trucks began to be imported in 1979. Magirus bonneted flatbed trucks and dump trucks were used in 1975 for the construction of the Baikal–Amur Mainline (BAM). By the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, priority was given to smaller cars (such as the Mercedes-Benz S-Class W116) as police cars, taxis and vans. However, most vehicles were Soviet-made cars: Moskvitch, GAZ-M20 Pobeda, GAZ, ZiL, VAZ, Izh and ZAZ automobiles, UAZ and LuAZ jeeps, RAF and ErAZ vans, GAZ, Kamaz, ZiL, MAZ, KrAZ, UralAZ, BelAZ and KAZ (Colkhides) trucks, KAvZ, PAZ, LiAZ and LAZ buses and ZiU trolleybuses. In 1988, the free sale of trucks and buses was permitted. Since the 1990s, many new and used cars have been imported. During the 2000s, foreign companies began to build factories in Russia or enter into agreements with existing assembly plants. Currently, European and Asian parts of Russia have different fleets. European Russia primarily contains Russian, European, Japanese, American, and Chinese cars and trucks; the Asian side contains used vehicles from the Japanese domestic market, concentrated in Vladivostok. The largest share of Russian auto brands is in the North Caucasus regions of Dagestan and Chechnya. GAZelle marshrutkas and Ford Transit, Peugeot Boxer, Fiat Ducato, Renault Master, Iveco Daily, Mercedes-Benz Sprinter and Volkswagen Crafter vans and Russian (PAZ), Ukrainian (Bogdan, South Korean (Hyundai County) and Chinese (BAW) minibuses, painted in one color, are used as share taxis. City buses are primarily the Russian (PAZ, KAvZ, LiAZ, MARZ, NefAZ, Volzhanin) and Belarusian MAZ. European buses are used in Vladivostok (51 MAN A78 Lion's City LE buses, Moscow (one Mercedes-Benz Turk O345 Connecto LF, four Ikarus 435, 71 Scania OmniLink assembled in Russia and one MAN |
and said that the British proposals were "a relic of a colonial-era mindset". When Litvinenko was dying from radiation poisoning, he allegedly accused Putin of directing the assassination in a statement which was released shortly after his death by his friend Alex Goldfarb. Critics have doubted that Litvinenko is the true author of the released statement. When asked about the Litvinenko accusations, Putin said that a statement released posthumously of its author "naturally deserves no comment". The expulsions were seen as "the biggest rift since the countries expelled each other's diplomats in 1996 after a spying dispute." In response to the situation, Putin stated "I think we will overcome this mini-crisis. Russian-British relations will develop normally. On both the Russian side and the British side, we are interested in the development of those relations." Despite this, British Ambassador Tony Brenton was told by the Russian Foreign Ministry that UK diplomats would be given 10 days before they were expelled in response. The Russian government also announced that it would suspend issuing visas to UK officials and froze cooperation on counterterrorism in response to Britain suspending contacts with their Federal Security Service. Alexander Shokhin, president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs warned that British investors in Russia will "face greater scrutiny from tax and regulatory authorities. [And] They could also lose out in government tenders". Some see the crisis as originating with Britain's decision to grant Putin's former patron, Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky, political asylum in 2003. Earlier in 2007, Berezovsky had called for the overthrow of Putin. On 10 December 2007, Russia ordered the British Council to halt work at its regional offices in what was seen as the latest round of a dispute over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko; Britain said Russia's move was illegal. Following the Peace Mission 2007 military exercises jointly conducted by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) member states, Putin announced on 17 August 2007 the resumption on a permanent basis of long-distance patrol flights of Russia's strategic bombers that were suspended in 1992. US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack was quoted as saying in response that "if Russia feels as though they want to take some of these old aircraft out of mothballs and get them flying again, that's their decision." The announcement made during the SCO summit in the light of joint Russian-Chinese military exercises, first-ever in history to be held on Russian territory, makes some believe that Putin is inclined to set up an anti-NATO bloc or the Asian version of OPEC. When presented with the suggestion that "Western observers are already likening the SCO to a military organisation that would stand in opposition to NATO", Putin answered that "this kind of comparison is inappropriate in both form and substance". Russian Chief of the General Staff Yury Baluyevsky was quoted as saying that "there should be no talk of creating a military or political alliance or union of any kind, because this would contradict the founding principles of SCO". The resumption of long-distance flights of Russia's strategic bombers was followed by the announcement by Russian Defense Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov during his meeting with Putin on 5 December 2007, that 11 ships, including the aircraft carrier Kuznetsov, would take part in the first major navy sortie into the Mediterranean since Soviet times. The sortie was to be backed up by 47 aircraft, including strategic bombers. According to Serdyukov, this is an effort to resume regular Russian naval patrols on the world's oceans, the view that is also supported by Russian media. The military analyst from Novaya Gazeta Pavel Felgenhauer believes that the accident-prone Kuznetsov is scarcely seaworthy and is more of a menace to her crew than any putative enemy. In September 2007, Putin visited Indonesia and in doing so became the first Russian leader to visit the country in more than 50 years. In the same month, Putin also attended the APEC meeting held in Sydney, Australia where he met with Australian Prime Minister John Howard and signed a uranium trade deal. This was the first visit of a Russian president to Australia. On 16 October 2007 Putin visited Tehran, Iran to participate in the Second Caspian Summit, where he met with Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Other participants were leaders of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. This is the first visit of a leader from the Kremlin to Iran since Joseph Stalin's participation in the Tehran Conference in 1943. At a press conference after the summit Putin said that "all our (Caspian) states have the right to develop their peaceful nuclear programmes without any restrictions". During the summit it was also agreed that its participants, under no circumstances, would let any third-party state use their territory as a base for aggression or military action against any other participant. On 26 October 2007, at a press conference following the 20th Russia-EU Summit in Portugal, Putin proposed to create a Russian-European Institute for Freedom and Democracy headquartered either in Brussels or in one of the European capitals, and added that "we are ready to supply funds for financing it, just as Europe covers the costs of projects in Russia". This newly proposed institution is expected to monitor human rights violations in Europe and contribute to development of European democracy. Russian President Vladimir Putin and ex-U.S. President George W. Bush failed to resolve their differences over U.S. plans for the planned missile defense system based in Poland and the Czech Republic, on their meeting in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi on 6 April 2008. Putin made clear that he does not agree with the decision to establish sites in the Eastern European countries, but said they had agreed a "strategic framework" to guide future U.S.-Russian relations, in which Russia and the U.S. said they recognized that the era in which each had considered the other to be a "strategic threat or enemy" was over. Putin expressed cautious optimism that the two sides could find a way to cooperate over missile defense and described his eight-year relationship as Russian president with Bush as "mostly positive". The summit was the final meeting between Bush and Putin as presidents and follows both leaders' attendance at last the NATO summit in Romania 2 April 2008 – 4 April 2008. That summit also highlighted differences between Washington and Moscow over U.S.-backed proposals to extend the military alliance to include the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia. Russia opposes the proposed expansion, fearing it will reduce its own influence over its neighbours. Fareed Zakaria suggests that the 2008 South Ossetia War turned out to be a diplomatic disaster for Russia. He suggests that it was a major strategic blunder, turning neighboring nations such as Ukraine to embrace the United States and other Western nations more. George Friedman, founder and CEO of private intelligence agency Stratfor, takes an opposite view, arguing that both the war and Russian foreign policy have been successful in expanding Russia's influence. In July 2012 Putin said in address during a meeting with Russian ambassadors in Moscow: Current issues The mid-2010s marked a dramatic downturn in Russian relations with the west, with some even considering it the start of a new Cold War. The United States and Russia back opposing sides in the Syrian Civil War, and Washington regarded Moscow as obstructionist regarding its support for the Bashar al-Assad government. In 2013, for the first time since 1960, the United States cancelled a summit with Russia after the latter granted asylum to Edward Snowden. The greatest increase in tensions, however, came during the Ukraine crisis that began in 2014, which saw the Crimean peninsula annexed by Russia. Russia also inflamed a separatist uprising in the Donbas region, though Moscow continues to deny its involvement. The United States responded to these events by putting forth sanctions against Russia, and most European countries followed suit, worrying about Russian interference in the affairs of central and Eastern Europe. October 2015 saw Russia, after years of supporting the Syrian government indirectly, directly intervene in the conflict, turning the tide in favor of the Assad regime. Russia's relations with Turkey, already strained over its support for the Assad regime, deteriorated further during this period, especially after the Turkish Air Force shot down a Russian jet fighter on 24 November 2015. In 2015, Russia also formed the Eurasian Economic Union with Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. The Russian government also remains bitter over the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe, arguing that western leaders promised that NATO would not expand beyond its 1990s borders. For decades, the dispute between Japan and Russia over the ownership of the Kuril Islands has hindered closer cooperation between the two countries, but since 2017 high level talks involving Prime Minister Shinzō Abe have been ongoing in an attempt to resolve the situation. Russia's power on the international stage depends on its petroleum revenue. If the world completes a transition to renewable energy and international demand for Russian oil, gas and coal resources is dramatically reduced, so will Russia's international power be. Russia is ranked 148 out of 156 countries in the index of Geopolitical Gains and Losses after energy transition (GeGaLo). Bilateral relations Africa Americas Asia Europe Oceania Perception Global opinion Pew Research Center indicated that (as of 2015) only four surveyed countries have a positive view (50% or above) of Russia. The top ten most approving countries are Vietnam (75%), Ghana (56%), China (51%), South Korea (46%), Lebanon (44%), Philippines (44%), India (43%), Nigeria (39%), Tanzania (38%), Ethiopia (37%), and Uganda (37%). The ten countries with the most negative views of Russia were Pakistan (12%), Turkey (15%), Poland (15%), United Kingdom (18%), Jordan (18%), Ukraine (21%), Japan (21%), United States (22%), Mexico (24%), and Australia (24%). Russians own view of Russia was overwhelmingly positive at 92%. Alleged aggressiveness The term has been used to refer to both Catherine the Great's 18th century agenda and 21st century Russian policies. In the 1990s supporters of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe claimed this would diminish "Russian aggression". The post-Maidan conflict in Ukraine is usually blamed on "Russian aggression". NATO-sponsored analysts have described what they call a cybernetic "Russian aggression" against Ukraine in the 2010s. Multilateral NATO and the European Union Russia is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Union of Russia and Belarus, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Paris Club, and the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC). It signed the NATO Partnership for Peace initiative on 22 June 1994. On 20 May 1997, NATO and Russia signed the NATO–Russia Founding Act, which the parties hoped would provide the basis for an enduring and robust partnership between the Alliance and Russia—one that could make an important contribution to European security architecture in the 21st century, though already at the time of its signing doubts were cast on whether this accord could deliver on these ambitious goals. This agreement was superseded by the NATO–Russia Council that was agreed at the Reykjavík Ministerial and unveiled at the Rome NATO Summit in May 2002. On 24 June 1994, Russia and the European Union (EU) signed a partnership and cooperation agreement. In recent years, tensions have heightened, as NATO members in Eastern Europe, especially Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland, feel threatened by Russia. European Union imposed sanctions on Russian businesses and individuals in 2014, regarding the annexation of Crimea and alleged support for separatists during War in Donbas. Former Soviet Republics and Warsaw Pact The non-Russian countries that were once part of the USSR have been termed the 'near abroad' by Russians. More recently, Russian leaders have been referring to all 15 countries collectively as "Post-Soviet Space," while asserting Russian foreign policy interest throughout the region. After the USSR was dissolved by the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, Russia tried to regain some sort of influence over the post-Soviet space by creating, on 8 December 1991, a regional organization – the Commonwealth of Independent States. The following years, Russia initiated a set of agreements with the Post-Soviet states which were designed to institutionalize the relations inside the CIS. However, most of these agreements were not fulfilled and the CIS republics began to drift away from Russia, which at that time was attempting to stabilize its broken economy and ties with the West. One of the major issues which had an influence on the foreign relations of Russia in FSU was the remaining large Russian minority populations in many countries of the near abroad. This issue has been dealt with in various ways by each individual country. They have posed a particular problem in countries where they live close to the Russian border, such as in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, with some of these Russians calling for these areas to be absorbed into Russia. By and large, however, Russians in the near-abroad do not favor active intervention of Russia into the domestic affairs of neighboring countries, even in defense of the interests of ethnic Russians. Moreover, the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) have clearly signaled their desire to be outside any claimed Russian sphere of influence, as is reflected by their joining both the NATO alliance and the European Union in 2004. Close cultural, ethnic and historical links exist between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. The traditional Russian perspective is that they are one ethnic group, with Russians called 'Great Russians', Belarusians 'White Russians' and Ukrainians 'Little Russians'. This manifested itself in lower levels of nationalism in these areas, particularly Belarus and Ukraine, during the disintegration of the Soviet Union. However, few Ukrainians accept a "younger brother" status relative to Russia, and Russia's efforts to insert itself into Ukrainian domestic politics, such as Putin's endorsement of a candidate for the Ukrainian presidency in the last election, are contentious. Russia maintains its military bases in Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Tajikistan. Russia's relationships with Georgia are at their lowest point in modern history due to the Georgian-Russian espionage controversy and due to the 2008 Russo-Georgian war, Georgia broke off diplomatic relations with Russia and has left the Commonwealth of Independent States. Russia's relations with Ukraine, since 2013, are also at their lowest point in history as a result of the pro-Western Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine, the 2014 Crimean Crisis and the pro-Russian insurgency in Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Ukraine, like Georgia, has introduced a bill to the Verkhovna Rada to withdraw from the Commonwealth of Independent States, and Kyiv has begun the process of doing so. In addition, Russia also maintains relations with Bulgaria, Czech Republic, part of the former East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, the countries that were once part of the former Warsaw Pact, and furthermore, Albania. Russia also continues to maintain friendly relations with Cuba, Mongolia and Vietnam as well as third world and non-aligned countries of Afghanistan, Angola, Benin, Cambodia, Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Grenada, Guinea-Bissau, India, Iraq, Laos, Mozambique, Serbia, Syria and the former Southern part of Yemen. International membership Membership in International Organizations: Russia holds a permanent seat, which grants it veto power, on the Security Council of the United Nations (UN). Prior to 1991, the Soviet Union held Russia's UN seat, but, after the breakup of the Soviet Union the Russian government informed the United Nations that Russia will continue the Soviet Union's membership at the United Nations and all other UN organs. Russia is an active member of numerous UN system organizations, including: UN General Assembly and Security Council Food and Agriculture Organization United Nations Conference on Trade and Development UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees United Nations Industrial Development Organization United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Russia also participates in some of the most important UN peacekeeping missions, including: Russia also holds memberships in: Mediation in international conflicts Russia has played an important role in helping mediate international conflicts and has been particularly actively engaged in trying to promote a peace following the Kosovo conflict. Russia's foreign minister claimed on 25 February 2008 that NATO and the European Union have been considering using force to keep Serbs from leaving Kosovo following the 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence. Russia is a co-sponsor of the Middle East peace process and supports UN and multilateral initiatives in the Persian Gulf, Cambodia, Burma, Angola, the former Yugoslavia, and Haiti. Russia is a | and signed a uranium trade deal. This was the first visit of a Russian president to Australia. On 16 October 2007 Putin visited Tehran, Iran to participate in the Second Caspian Summit, where he met with Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Other participants were leaders of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. This is the first visit of a leader from the Kremlin to Iran since Joseph Stalin's participation in the Tehran Conference in 1943. At a press conference after the summit Putin said that "all our (Caspian) states have the right to develop their peaceful nuclear programmes without any restrictions". During the summit it was also agreed that its participants, under no circumstances, would let any third-party state use their territory as a base for aggression or military action against any other participant. On 26 October 2007, at a press conference following the 20th Russia-EU Summit in Portugal, Putin proposed to create a Russian-European Institute for Freedom and Democracy headquartered either in Brussels or in one of the European capitals, and added that "we are ready to supply funds for financing it, just as Europe covers the costs of projects in Russia". This newly proposed institution is expected to monitor human rights violations in Europe and contribute to development of European democracy. Russian President Vladimir Putin and ex-U.S. President George W. Bush failed to resolve their differences over U.S. plans for the planned missile defense system based in Poland and the Czech Republic, on their meeting in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi on 6 April 2008. Putin made clear that he does not agree with the decision to establish sites in the Eastern European countries, but said they had agreed a "strategic framework" to guide future U.S.-Russian relations, in which Russia and the U.S. said they recognized that the era in which each had considered the other to be a "strategic threat or enemy" was over. Putin expressed cautious optimism that the two sides could find a way to cooperate over missile defense and described his eight-year relationship as Russian president with Bush as "mostly positive". The summit was the final meeting between Bush and Putin as presidents and follows both leaders' attendance at last the NATO summit in Romania 2 April 2008 – 4 April 2008. That summit also highlighted differences between Washington and Moscow over U.S.-backed proposals to extend the military alliance to include the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia. Russia opposes the proposed expansion, fearing it will reduce its own influence over its neighbours. Fareed Zakaria suggests that the 2008 South Ossetia War turned out to be a diplomatic disaster for Russia. He suggests that it was a major strategic blunder, turning neighboring nations such as Ukraine to embrace the United States and other Western nations more. George Friedman, founder and CEO of private intelligence agency Stratfor, takes an opposite view, arguing that both the war and Russian foreign policy have been successful in expanding Russia's influence. In July 2012 Putin said in address during a meeting with Russian ambassadors in Moscow: Current issues The mid-2010s marked a dramatic downturn in Russian relations with the west, with some even considering it the start of a new Cold War. The United States and Russia back opposing sides in the Syrian Civil War, and Washington regarded Moscow as obstructionist regarding its support for the Bashar al-Assad government. In 2013, for the first time since 1960, the United States cancelled a summit with Russia after the latter granted asylum to Edward Snowden. The greatest increase in tensions, however, came during the Ukraine crisis that began in 2014, which saw the Crimean peninsula annexed by Russia. Russia also inflamed a separatist uprising in the Donbas region, though Moscow continues to deny its involvement. The United States responded to these events by putting forth sanctions against Russia, and most European countries followed suit, worrying about Russian interference in the affairs of central and Eastern Europe. October 2015 saw Russia, after years of supporting the Syrian government indirectly, directly intervene in the conflict, turning the tide in favor of the Assad regime. Russia's relations with Turkey, already strained over its support for the Assad regime, deteriorated further during this period, especially after the Turkish Air Force shot down a Russian jet fighter on 24 November 2015. In 2015, Russia also formed the Eurasian Economic Union with Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. The Russian government also remains bitter over the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe, arguing that western leaders promised that NATO would not expand beyond its 1990s borders. For decades, the dispute between Japan and Russia over the ownership of the Kuril Islands has hindered closer cooperation between the two countries, but since 2017 high level talks involving Prime Minister Shinzō Abe have been ongoing in an attempt to resolve the situation. Russia's power on the international stage depends on its petroleum revenue. If the world completes a transition to renewable energy and international demand for Russian oil, gas and coal resources is dramatically reduced, so will Russia's international power be. Russia is ranked 148 out of 156 countries in the index of Geopolitical Gains and Losses after energy transition (GeGaLo). Bilateral relations Africa Americas Asia Europe Oceania Perception Global opinion Pew Research Center indicated that (as of 2015) only four surveyed countries have a positive view (50% or above) of Russia. The top ten most approving countries are Vietnam (75%), Ghana (56%), China (51%), South Korea (46%), Lebanon (44%), Philippines (44%), India (43%), Nigeria (39%), Tanzania (38%), Ethiopia (37%), and Uganda (37%). The ten countries with the most negative views of Russia were Pakistan (12%), Turkey (15%), Poland (15%), United Kingdom (18%), Jordan (18%), Ukraine (21%), Japan (21%), United States (22%), Mexico (24%), and Australia (24%). Russians own view of Russia was overwhelmingly positive at 92%. Alleged aggressiveness The term has been used to refer to both Catherine the Great's 18th century agenda and 21st century Russian policies. In the 1990s supporters of NATO expansion into Eastern Europe claimed this would diminish "Russian aggression". The post-Maidan conflict in Ukraine is usually blamed on "Russian aggression". NATO-sponsored analysts have described what they call a cybernetic "Russian aggression" against Ukraine in the 2010s. Multilateral NATO and the European Union Russia is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Union of Russia and Belarus, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Paris Club, and the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC). It signed the NATO Partnership for Peace initiative on 22 June 1994. On 20 May 1997, NATO and Russia signed the NATO–Russia Founding Act, which the parties hoped would provide the basis for an enduring and robust partnership between the Alliance and Russia—one that could make an important contribution to European security architecture in the 21st century, though already at the time of its signing doubts were cast on whether this accord could deliver on these ambitious goals. This agreement was superseded by the NATO–Russia Council that was agreed at the Reykjavík Ministerial and unveiled at the Rome NATO Summit in May 2002. On 24 June 1994, Russia and the European Union (EU) signed a partnership and cooperation agreement. In recent years, tensions have heightened, as NATO members in Eastern Europe, especially Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland, feel threatened by Russia. European Union imposed sanctions on Russian businesses and individuals in 2014, regarding the annexation of Crimea and alleged support for separatists during War in Donbas. Former Soviet Republics and Warsaw Pact The non-Russian countries that were once part of the USSR have been termed the 'near abroad' by Russians. More recently, Russian leaders have been referring to all 15 countries collectively as "Post-Soviet Space," while asserting Russian foreign policy interest throughout the region. After the USSR was dissolved by the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, Russia tried to regain some sort of influence over the post-Soviet space by creating, on 8 December 1991, a regional organization – the Commonwealth of Independent States. The following years, Russia initiated a set of agreements with the Post-Soviet states which were designed to institutionalize the relations inside the CIS. However, most of these agreements were not fulfilled and the CIS republics began to drift away from Russia, which at that time was attempting to stabilize its broken economy and ties with the West. One of the major issues which had an influence on the foreign relations of Russia in FSU was the remaining large Russian minority populations in many countries of the near abroad. This issue has been dealt with in various ways by each individual country. They have posed a particular problem in countries where they live close to the Russian border, such as in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, with some of these Russians calling for these areas to be absorbed into Russia. By and large, however, Russians in the near-abroad do not favor active intervention of Russia into the domestic affairs of neighboring countries, even in defense of the interests of ethnic Russians. Moreover, the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) have clearly signaled their desire to be outside any claimed Russian sphere of influence, as is reflected by their joining both the NATO alliance and the European Union in 2004. Close cultural, ethnic and historical links exist between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. The traditional Russian perspective is that they are one ethnic group, with Russians called 'Great Russians', Belarusians 'White Russians' and Ukrainians 'Little Russians'. This manifested itself in lower levels of nationalism in these areas, particularly Belarus and Ukraine, during the disintegration of the Soviet Union. However, few Ukrainians accept a "younger brother" status |
to mobilization secondarily. Mobilization of non-reservists is carried out taking into account the age category under the article 53 of Federal Law of 28 March 1998, No.53-FZ "About military duty and military service": in order from first category to third category. The first category includes: 1) the persons at the any military rank below that of a commissioned officer (enlisted personnel) and not reached the age of 35 years old; 2) the persons at the any rank from junior lieutenant to captain (captain-lieutenant in naval service) inclusively (junior commissioned officers) and not reached the age of 50 years old; 3) the persons at the any rank from major (captain 3rd rank in naval service) to lieutenant colonel (captain 2nd rank in naval service) inclusively and not reached the age of 55 years old; 4) the persons at the rank of colonel (captain 1st rank in naval service) and not reached the age of 60 years old; 5) the persons at the rank of major general (counter admiral in naval service) or higher (supreme officers) and not reached the age of 65 years old. The second category includes: 1) enlisted personnel in age from 35 but less than 45; 2) junior commissioned officers in the age from 50 but less than 55; 3) commissioned officers at the any rank from major (captain 3rd rank in naval service) to lieutenant colonel (captain 2nd rank in naval service) inclusively in the age from 55 but less than 60; 4) commissioned officers at the rank of colonel (captain 1st rank in naval service) in the age from 60 but less than 65; 5) supreme officers in age from 65 but less than 70. The third category includes: 1) enlisted personnel in the age from 45 but less than 50; 2) junior commissioned officers in the age from 55 but less than 60; 3) commissioned officers at the any rank from major (captain 3rd rank in naval service) to lieutenant colonel (captain 2nd rank in naval service) inclusively in the age from 60 but less than 65; 4) all females in the age less than 45 for enlisted personnel and less than 50 for commissioned officers. The person who has reached the age limit, established for the third category (the second category for persons at the rank of colonel (captain 1st rank in naval service) or higher), is retired and is not subject to mobilization. 2005–2008 reform of the reserve officer training system The reserve officer training system, inherited from the Soviet Union, involved selective conscription of graduates of civilian institutions of higher education, who have graduated the military departments of their almae matres and received a commission as an officer. Such person could be conscripted from the reserve of armed forces to active duty, but until the age of 27 only; the period of active duty of such officer was several years, and at the end of that period he was due to be enlisted in the reserve of armed forces again. Such officers were called "blazers" in army's slang (for example, Anatoly Kvashnin was a "blazer"). In 2005, minister of defence Sergei Ivanov announced the forthcoming significant reduction in the number of military departments carrying out the training commissioned officers from students of civilian institutions of higher education. By March 2008, 168 of 235 civilian universities, academies and institutions which previously had military departments had lost these units. In addition, 37 of 67 civilian universities, academies and institutions which retained military departments became the basis for establishment of new training military centers. In accordance with Government of Russia Decree of 6 March 2008 №152, the training military centers focused on training officers for active duty, whilst the military departments focused on training officers for reserve. In accordance with the amendments, contained in Federal Law of 6 July 2006 №104-FZ, the conscription of reserve officers was abolished, graduates of military departments were not subject to conscription to active duty no more (with exception of wartime mobilization) but all graduates of training military centers were due to be enrolled for 3 years active duty immediately upon the university graduation. 2018 beginning of formation of voluntary military reserve force In 2018, Russia started full-scale formation of military reserve force based on volunteers selected from among those who retired from active duty. Russian military reserve force () is a set of citizens who have signed a contracts to perform military service as a reservists, who were appointed to a military positions in particular military units in this capacity, and who are involved in all operational, mobilization, and combat activities of these military units, unlike other citizens who haven’t signed such contracts and who can be used for mobilization deployment of armed forces on involuntary basis only in cases stipulated by law (). The deployment of military units, composed of reservists, takes minimum time and do not requires any retraining of military personnel; furthermore, military units, composed of reservists, use the same weapons as used by military units, composed of active duty military personnel. Military units, staffed by reservists, are 100% manned up to wartime standards just like military units, staffed by active duty military personnel only. There is no possibility to define by military units designation what we're dealing with - reserve or not reserve military unit. The number of reservists is not presented in open sources and is not among the number of active duty military volunteers which is published by Ministry of Defence. This makes it difficult for establish real troop strength of new Russian military units and formations. 2019 reform of the reserve officer training system In accordance with the amendments, contained in Federal Law of 3 August 2018 №309-FZ, the military departments and the training military centers were abolished, from that moment on, students of civilian institutions of higher education were trained under both officers training programmes (for reserve and for active duty) in the Military Training Centers. In 2019, there were the military training centers in 93 civilian institutions of higher education. Budget Between 1991 and 1997 newly independent Russia's defence spending fell by a factor of eight in real prices. In 1998, when Russia experienced a severe financial crisis, its military expenditure in real terms reached its lowest point— barely one-quarter of the USSR's in 1991, and two-fifths of the level of 1992, the first year of Russia's independent existence. In the early 2000s, defence spending increased by at least a minimum of one-third year-on-year, leading to overall defence expenditure almost quadrupling over the past six years, and according to Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, this rate is to be sustained through 2010. Official government military spending for 2005 was US$32.4 billion, though various sources, have estimated Russia's military expenditures to be considerably higher than the reported amount. Estimating Russian military expenditure is beset with difficulty; the annual IISS Military Balance has underscored the problem numerous times within its section on Russia. The IISS Military Balance comments - 'By simple observation..[the military budget] would appear to be lower than is suggested by the size of the armed forces or the structure of the military–industrial complex, and thus neither of the figures is particularly useful for comparative analysis'. By some estimates, overall Russian defence expenditure is now at the second highest in the world after the USA. According to Alexander Kanshin, Chairman of the Public Chamber of Russia on affairs of veterans, military personnel, and their families, the Russian military is losing up to US$13 billion to corruption every year. On 16 September 2008 Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that in 2009, Russia's defence budget would be increased to a record amount of $50 billion. On 16 February 2009 Russia's deputy defence minister said state defence contracts would not be subject to cuts this year despite the ongoing financial crisis, and that there would be no decrease in 2009. The budget would still be 1,376 billion roubles and in the current exchange rates this would amount to $41.5 billion. Later in February 2009, due to the world financial crisis, the Russian Parliament's Defence Committee stated that the Russian defence budget would instead be slashed by 15 percent, from $40 billion to $34 billion, with further cuts to come. On 5 May 2009, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said that the defence budget for 2009 will be 1.3 trillion rubles (US$39.4 billion). 322 billion rubles are allocated to purchase weapons, and the rest of the fund will be spent on construction, fuel storage and food supply. According to the head of the Defence Committee of the State Duma Vladimir Komoyedov, Russia plans to spend 101.15 billion rubles on nuclear weapons in 2013–2015. "The budget provisions under 'The Nuclear Weapons Complex' section in 2013-2015 will amount to 29.28 billion rubles, 33.3 billion rubles and 38.57 billion rubles respectively," Komoyedov said, Vechernaya Moskva reports. Komoyedov added that in 2012 the spending on nuclear weapons made up 27.4 billion rubles. The draft law "On the Federal Budget for 2013 and for the planning period of 2014 and 2015" will be discussed in the first reading on 19 October 2012, The Voice of Russia reports. In a meeting in Sochi in November 2013, President Putin said the country's defence budget will reach 2.3 trillion roubles, stressing the huge amount in comparison to the 2003 budget, which stood on 600 billion rubles. The Russian government's published 2014 military budget is about 2.49 trillion rubles (approximately US$69.3 billion), the fourth largest in the world behind the US, China and Saudi Arabia. The official budget is set to rise to 3.03 trillion rubles (approximately US$83.7 billion) in 2015, and 3.36 trillion rubles (approximately US$93.9 billion) in 2016. As of 2014, Russia's military budget is higher than any other European nation, and approximately 1/7th (14 percent) of the US military budget. In 2015, SIPRI found that Russia was the world's second biggest exporter of major weapons for the period 2010–14, increasing exports by 37 per cent. India, China and Algeria accounted for almost 60 percent of total Russian exports. Asia and Oceania received 66 percent of Russian arms exports in 2010–14, Africa 12 percent and the Middle East 10 percent. In 2017, Russia was reported to have slashed its defense spending by 20%, due to calls by Vladimir Putin to spend money on other initiatives such as healthcare and education. The cut decreased Russia's military spending to $66.3 billion, in which Russia slumped to being the fourth-highest military spender. Russia's 2019 defense budget was US$48 billion and the 2020 figure was $61.7 billion. Procurement About 70 percent of the former Soviet Union's defence industries are located in the Russian Federation. Many defence firms have been privatised; some have developed significant partnerships with firms in other countries. The recent steps towards modernization of the Armed Forces have been made possible by Russia's economic resurgence based on oil and gas revenues as well a strengthening of its own domestic market. Currently, the military is in the middle of a major equipment upgrade, with the government in the process of spending about $200 billion (what equals to about $400 billion in PPP dollars) on development and production of military equipment between 2006 and 2015 under the State Armament Programme for 2007-2015 (GPV — госпрограмма вооружения). Mainly as a result of lessons learned during the Russo-Georgian War, the State Armament Programme for 2011-2020 was launched in December 2010. Prime Minister Putin announced that 20–21.5 trillion | end of 2021. Recruitment into the Russian military are also open to non-Russian citizens of the Commonwealth of Independent States, of which Russia is the largest member. By December 2003, the Russian parliament had approved a law in principle to permit the Armed Forces to employ foreign nationals on contract by offering them Russian citizenship after several years service yet, up to 2010, foreigners could only serve in Russia's armed forces after getting a Russian passport. Under a 2010 Defence Ministry plan, foreigners without dual citizenship would be able to sign up for five-year contracts and will be eligible for Russian citizenship after serving three years. The change could open the way for CIS citizens to get fast-track Russian citizenship, and counter the effects of Russia's demographic crisis on its army recruitment. Each soldier in duty receives an Identity Card of the Russian Armed Forces. Awards and decorations of the Armed Forces are covered at the Awards and Emblems of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation. On 17 November 2011, General Nikolai Makarov said that Russia had reached a crisis in the conscript service where there simply were not sufficient able bodied men to draft and was forced to halve its conscription. Military draft dodging declined 66% since 2012 and as of March 2019. It is reported that about 80% of the young people who were drafted into the ranks of the Russian Armed Forces in the autumn of 2018 were found fit for military service. According to the head of the mobilization, in recent years, the fitness of future recruits has increased by 7%. In March 2013, Defence Minister Sergey Shoygu promised that all army quarters would have showers by the end of the year. RIA also said that the shower plans were the latest in a series of creature-comfort improvements the Defence Ministry had recently announced. In mid-January, Shoygu said he would rid the army of its antiquated "footwraps," or portyanki, and a few days later the designer of Russia's new army uniform said that the ear-flap hats traditionally worn in winter would be replaced with more modern headgear. The Russian military's ushanka hats were improved between 2013 and 2015, when the Russian armed forces were being equipped with new uniforms. The new version of the traditional - and somewhat stereotypical - hat features better heat insulation and longer ear flaps. Russian military officers with top secret security clearance are now being issued domestically developed, ultra-secure, cryptographically protected Atlas M-663S cellphones, Russia's Izvestia newspaper has reported in early 2018. A new uniform for hot climates was introduced in mid-2018. Reserve components According to the article 51.2 of Federal Law of 28 March 1998, No.53-FZ "About military duty and military service", Russian Armed Forces have reserve (Russian: запас; transliteration: zapas) which includes 2 components: Mobilization human reserve (Russian: мобилизационный людской резерв; transliteration: mobilizatsionnyy lyudskoy reserv) Mobilization human resource (Russian: мобилизационный людской ресурс; transliteration: mobilizatsionnyy lyudskoy resurs) By default, at the end of active duty each military personnel is enrolled in mobilization human resource; this applies equally to conscripts and volunteers regardless of ranks. Furthermore, graduates of civilian institutions of higher education, who have graduated the military training centers of their almae matres, trained under reserve officer program, is enrolled in mobilization human resource after their promotion to officer's rank (unlike graduates of such centers, trained under active duty officer program, who are due to be enrolled for active duty after their promotion to officer's rank). Moreover, mobilization human resource is replenished with males who reached the age of 27 years old and, herewith, was not in military service for any reasons. Enrolling in mobilization human reserve is voluntary and implies the special contract; this possibility is available for each persons, who is in mobilization human resource already. The initial contract is concluded for 3 years period. Military personnel of mobilization human reserve (reservists) perform part-time duties in military units. Reservists are appointed to a military positions in particular military units and are involved in all operational, mobilization, and combat activities of these military units. As a rule, in peaceful time reservists perform their duties 2–3 days per month and also during annual military camp training for a duration from 20 to 30 days. The exact number of reservists is unknown because relevant paragraph of the Presidential Decree which determines the number of reserve troops is classified. The military units manned by reservists are determined by General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, and this information is classified too. The persons who are in mobilization human resource (non-reservists) may be enlisted to military camp trainings in peaceful time. According to the article 54 of Federal Law of 28 March 1998, No.53-FZ "About military duty and military service", the duration of each training can not exceed 2 months, herewith the total duration of such trainings for the entire period of being in mobilization human resource can not exceed 12 months, and person may be enlisted to such trainings no more than once every three years. As of 2009, the number of citizens who can be used for mobilization deployment on involuntary basis in the case of wartime mobilization was estimated at 31 million. Reservists are subject to mobilization in wartime first of all. Non-reservists are subject to mobilization secondarily. Mobilization of non-reservists is carried out taking into account the age category under the article 53 of Federal Law of 28 March 1998, No.53-FZ "About military duty and military service": in order from first category to third category. The first category includes: 1) the persons at the any military rank below that of a commissioned officer (enlisted personnel) and not reached the age of 35 years old; 2) the persons at the any rank from junior lieutenant to captain (captain-lieutenant in naval service) inclusively (junior commissioned officers) and not reached the age of 50 years old; 3) the persons at the any rank from major (captain 3rd rank in naval service) to lieutenant colonel (captain 2nd rank in naval service) inclusively and not reached the age of 55 years old; 4) the persons at the rank of colonel (captain 1st rank in naval service) and not reached the age of 60 years old; 5) the persons at the rank of major general (counter admiral in naval service) or higher (supreme officers) and not reached the age of 65 years old. The second category includes: 1) enlisted personnel in age from 35 but less than 45; 2) junior commissioned officers in the age from 50 but less than 55; 3) commissioned officers at the any rank from major (captain 3rd rank in naval service) to lieutenant colonel (captain 2nd rank in naval service) inclusively in the age from 55 but less than 60; 4) commissioned officers at the rank of colonel (captain 1st rank in naval service) in the age from 60 but less than 65; 5) supreme officers in age from 65 but less than 70. The third category includes: 1) enlisted personnel in the age from 45 but less than 50; 2) junior commissioned officers in the age from 55 but less than 60; 3) commissioned officers at the any rank from major (captain 3rd rank in naval service) to lieutenant colonel (captain 2nd rank in naval service) inclusively in the age from 60 but less than 65; 4) all females in the age less than 45 for enlisted personnel and less than 50 for commissioned officers. The person who has reached the age limit, established for the third category (the second category for persons at the rank of colonel (captain 1st rank in naval service) or higher), is retired and is not subject to mobilization. 2005–2008 reform of the reserve officer training system The reserve officer training system, inherited from the Soviet Union, involved selective conscription of graduates of civilian institutions of higher education, who have graduated the military departments of their almae matres and received a commission as an officer. Such person could be conscripted from the reserve of armed forces to active duty, but until the age of 27 only; the period of active duty of such officer was several years, and at the end of that period he was due to be enlisted in the reserve of armed forces again. Such officers were called "blazers" in army's slang (for example, Anatoly Kvashnin was a "blazer"). In 2005, minister of defence Sergei Ivanov announced the forthcoming significant reduction in the number of military departments carrying out the training commissioned officers from students of civilian institutions of higher education. By March 2008, 168 of 235 civilian universities, academies and institutions which previously had military departments had lost these units. In addition, 37 of 67 civilian universities, academies and institutions which retained military departments became the basis for establishment of new training military centers. In accordance with Government of Russia Decree of 6 March 2008 №152, the training military centers focused on training officers for active duty, whilst the military departments focused on training officers for reserve. In accordance with the amendments, contained in Federal Law of 6 July 2006 №104-FZ, the conscription of reserve officers was abolished, graduates of military departments were not subject to conscription to active duty no more (with exception of wartime mobilization) but all graduates of training military centers were due to be enrolled for 3 years active duty immediately upon the university graduation. 2018 beginning of formation of voluntary military reserve force In 2018, Russia started full-scale formation of military reserve force based on volunteers selected from among those who retired from active duty. Russian military reserve force () is a set of citizens who have signed a contracts to perform military service as a reservists, who were appointed to a military positions in particular military units in this capacity, and who are involved in all operational, mobilization, and combat activities of these military units, unlike other citizens who haven’t signed such contracts and who can be used for mobilization deployment of armed forces on involuntary basis only in cases stipulated by law (). The deployment of military units, composed of reservists, takes minimum time and do not requires any retraining of military personnel; furthermore, military units, composed of reservists, use the same weapons as used by military units, composed of active duty military personnel. Military units, staffed by reservists, are 100% manned up to wartime standards just like military units, staffed by active duty military personnel only. There is no possibility to define by military units designation what we're dealing with - reserve or not reserve military unit. The number of reservists is not presented in open sources and is not among the number of active duty military volunteers which is published by Ministry of Defence. This makes it difficult for establish real troop strength of new Russian military units and formations. 2019 reform of the reserve officer training system In accordance with the amendments, contained in Federal Law of 3 August 2018 №309-FZ, the military departments and the training military centers were abolished, from that moment on, students of civilian institutions of higher education were trained under both officers training programmes (for reserve and for active duty) in the Military Training Centers. In 2019, there were the military training centers in 93 civilian institutions of higher education. Budget Between 1991 and 1997 newly independent Russia's defence spending fell by a factor of eight in real prices. In 1998, when Russia experienced a severe financial crisis, its military expenditure in real terms reached its lowest point— barely one-quarter of the USSR's in 1991, and two-fifths of the level of 1992, the first year of Russia's independent existence. In the early 2000s, defence spending increased by at least a minimum of one-third year-on-year, leading to overall defence expenditure almost quadrupling over the past six years, and according to Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, this rate is to be sustained through 2010. Official government military spending for 2005 was US$32.4 billion, though various sources, have estimated Russia's military expenditures to be considerably higher than the reported amount. Estimating Russian military expenditure is beset with difficulty; the annual IISS Military Balance has underscored the problem numerous times within its section on Russia. The IISS Military Balance comments - 'By simple observation..[the military budget] would appear to be lower than is suggested by the size of the armed forces or the structure of the military–industrial complex, and thus neither of the figures is particularly useful for comparative analysis'. By some estimates, overall Russian defence expenditure is now at the second highest in the world after the USA. According to Alexander Kanshin, Chairman of the Public Chamber of Russia on affairs of veterans, military personnel, and their families, the Russian military is losing up to US$13 billion to corruption every year. On 16 September 2008 Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that in 2009, Russia's defence budget would be increased to a record amount of $50 billion. On 16 February 2009 Russia's deputy defence minister said state defence contracts would not be subject to cuts this year despite the ongoing financial crisis, and that there would be no decrease in 2009. The budget would still be 1,376 billion roubles and in the current exchange rates this would amount to $41.5 billion. Later in February 2009, due to the world financial crisis, the Russian Parliament's Defence Committee stated that the Russian defence budget would instead be slashed by 15 percent, from $40 billion to $34 billion, with further cuts to come. On 5 May 2009, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said that the defence budget for 2009 will be 1.3 trillion rubles (US$39.4 billion). 322 billion rubles are allocated to purchase weapons, and the rest of the fund will be spent on construction, fuel storage and food supply. According to the head of the Defence Committee of the State Duma Vladimir Komoyedov, Russia plans to spend 101.15 billion rubles on nuclear weapons in 2013–2015. "The budget provisions under 'The Nuclear Weapons Complex' section in 2013-2015 will amount to 29.28 billion rubles, 33.3 billion rubles and 38.57 billion rubles respectively," Komoyedov said, Vechernaya Moskva reports. Komoyedov added that in 2012 the spending on nuclear weapons made up 27.4 billion rubles. The draft law "On the Federal Budget for 2013 and for the planning period of 2014 and 2015" will be discussed in the first reading on 19 October 2012, The Voice of Russia reports. In a meeting in Sochi in November 2013, President Putin said the country's defence budget will reach 2.3 trillion roubles, stressing the huge amount in comparison to the 2003 budget, which stood on 600 billion rubles. The Russian government's published 2014 military budget is about 2.49 trillion rubles (approximately US$69.3 billion), the fourth largest in the world behind the US, China and Saudi Arabia. The official budget is set to rise to 3.03 trillion rubles (approximately US$83.7 billion) in 2015, and 3.36 trillion rubles (approximately US$93.9 billion) in 2016. As of 2014, Russia's military budget is higher than any other European nation, and approximately 1/7th (14 percent) of the US military budget. In 2015, SIPRI found that Russia was the world's second biggest exporter of major weapons for the period 2010–14, increasing exports by 37 per cent. India, China and Algeria accounted for almost 60 percent of total Russian exports. Asia and Oceania received 66 percent of Russian arms exports in 2010–14, Africa 12 percent and the Middle East 10 percent. In 2017, Russia was reported to have slashed its defense spending by 20%, due to calls by Vladimir Putin to spend money on other initiatives such as healthcare and education. The cut decreased Russia's military spending to $66.3 billion, in which Russia slumped to being the fourth-highest military spender. Russia's 2019 defense budget was US$48 billion and the 2020 figure was $61.7 billion. Procurement About 70 percent of the former Soviet Union's defence industries are located in the Russian Federation. Many defence firms have been privatised; some have developed significant partnerships with firms in other countries. The recent steps towards modernization of the Armed Forces have been made possible by Russia's economic resurgence based on oil and gas revenues as well a strengthening of its own domestic market. Currently, the military is in the middle of a major equipment upgrade, with the government in the process of spending about $200 billion (what equals to about $400 billion in PPP dollars) on development and production of military equipment between 2006 and 2015 under the State Armament Programme for 2007-2015 (GPV — госпрограмма вооружения). Mainly as a result of lessons learned during the Russo-Georgian War, the State Armament Programme for 2011-2020 was launched in December 2010. Prime Minister Putin announced that 20–21.5 trillion rubles (over $650 billion) will be allocated |
become general superintendent of the postal railway service. Armstrong served only two years as general superintendent before resigning because of failing health. He died in Chicago on May 5, 1871, two days after his resignation. Armstrong's successor in Chicago, George Bangs, was appointed as the second general superintendent of the postal railway service. Bangs encouraged the use of fast mail trains, trains made up entirely of mail cars, traveling on expedited schedules designed to accommodate the needs of the Post Office rather than the needs of the traveling public. In 1890, 5,800 postal railway clerks provided service over of railroad. By 1907, over 14,000 clerks were providing service over of railroad. When the post office began handling parcel post in 1913, Terminal Railway Post Office operations were established in major cities by the RMS to handle the large increase in mail volume. The Railway Mail Service reached its peak in the 1920s, then began a gradual decline with the discontinuance of RPO service on branchlines and secondary routes. After 1942, Highway Post Office (HPO) service was utilized to continue en route sorting after discontinuance of some railway post office operations. As highway mail transportation became more prevalent, the Railway Mail Service was redesignated as the Postal Transportation Service. Abandonment of routes accelerated in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and many of the remaining lines were discontinued in 1967. On June 30, 1974, the Cleveland and Cincinnati highway post office, the last HPO route, was discontinued. The last railway post office operated between New York and Washington, D.C. on June 30, 1977. A large bust and monument to Armstrong is displayed in the north side of Chicago's Loop Station Post Office. Preserved and restored RPO railway cars A restored RPO car is displayed as part of the Pioneer Zephyr at the Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. The restored 1927 AT&SF Railway #74 RPO car is displayed at the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum in Campo (San Diego County), CA. For the permanent exhibition, Mail by Rail, the Smithsonian National Postal Museum re-created a railway mail train in its Atrium. The interior fixtures are from a de-commissioned mail car. The exterior portion of the Railway Post Office train was created by Smithsonian artisans. Operating divisions – 1950 First Division: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts. Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts. Second Division: New York, New Jersey. Headquarters: New York City. Third Division: District of Columbia, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina. Headquarters: Washington, D.C. Fourth Division: Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Florida. Headquarters: Atlanta. Fifth Division: Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio. Headquarters: Cincinnati. Sixth Division: Illinois, Iowa. Headquarters: Chicago. Seventh Division: Missouri, Kansas. Headquarters: St. Louis, Missouri. Eighth Division: California, | Bangs encouraged the use of fast mail trains, trains made up entirely of mail cars, traveling on expedited schedules designed to accommodate the needs of the Post Office rather than the needs of the traveling public. In 1890, 5,800 postal railway clerks provided service over of railroad. By 1907, over 14,000 clerks were providing service over of railroad. When the post office began handling parcel post in 1913, Terminal Railway Post Office operations were established in major cities by the RMS to handle the large increase in mail volume. The Railway Mail Service reached its peak in the 1920s, then began a gradual decline with the discontinuance of RPO service on branchlines and secondary routes. After 1942, Highway Post Office (HPO) service was utilized to continue en route sorting after discontinuance of some railway post office operations. As highway mail transportation became more prevalent, the Railway Mail Service was redesignated as the Postal Transportation Service. Abandonment of routes accelerated in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and many of the remaining lines were discontinued in 1967. On June 30, 1974, the Cleveland and Cincinnati highway post office, the last HPO route, was discontinued. The last railway post office operated between New York and Washington, D.C. on June 30, 1977. A large bust and monument to Armstrong is displayed in the north side of Chicago's Loop Station Post Office. Preserved and restored RPO railway cars A restored RPO car is displayed as part of the Pioneer Zephyr at the Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. The restored 1927 AT&SF Railway #74 RPO car is displayed at the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum in Campo (San Diego County), CA. For the permanent exhibition, Mail by Rail, the Smithsonian National Postal Museum re-created a railway mail train in its Atrium. The interior fixtures are from a de-commissioned mail car. The exterior portion of the Railway Post Office train was created by Smithsonian artisans. Operating divisions – 1950 First Division: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts. Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts. Second Division: New York, New Jersey. Headquarters: New York City. Third Division: District of Columbia, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina. Headquarters: Washington, D.C. Fourth Division: Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Florida. Headquarters: Atlanta. Fifth Division: Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio. Headquarters: Cincinnati. Sixth Division: Illinois, Iowa. Headquarters: Chicago. Seventh Division: Missouri, Kansas. Headquarters: St. Louis, Missouri. Eighth Division: California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona. Headquarters: San Francisco. Ninth Division: Michigan, also lines of New York Central Railroad between New York City and Chicago. Headquarters: Cleveland. Tenth Division: North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Headquarters: St. Paul, Minnesota. Eleventh Division: New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma. Headquarters: Fort Worth. Twelfth Division: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi. Headquarters: New Orleans. Thirteenth Division: Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington. Headquarters: Seattle. Fourteenth Division: Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska. Headquarters: Omaha. Fifteenth Division: Pennsylvania, Delaware, also lines of Pennsylvania Railroad west of Pittsburgh. Headquarters: Pittsburgh. Effective August 15, 1955, the fifteen divisions of the Postal Transportation Service were eliminated and the mail routes divided |
rotary phase converter, enabling electric locomotives to use three-phase motors whilst supplied via a single overhead wire, carrying the simple industrial frequency (50 Hz) single phase AC of the high voltage national networks. An important contribution to the wider adoption of AC traction came from SNCF of France after World War II. The company conducted trials at AC 50 Hz, and established it as a standard. Following SNCF's successful trials, 50 Hz, now also called industrial frequency was adopted as standard for main-lines across the world. Diesel power introduced Earliest recorded examples of an internal combustion engine for railway use included a prototype designed by William Dent Priestman, which was examined by Sir William Thomson in 1888 who described it as a "[Priestman oil engine] mounted upon a truck which is worked on a temporary line of rails to show the adaptation of a petroleum engine for locomotive purposes.". In 1894, a two axle machine built by Priestman Brothers was used on the Hull Docks. In 1906, Rudolf Diesel, Adolf Klose and the steam and diesel engine manufacturer Gebrüder Sulzer founded Diesel-Sulzer-Klose GmbH to manufacture diesel-powered locomotives. Sulzer had been manufacturing diesel engines since 1898. The Prussian State Railways ordered a diesel locomotive from the company in 1909. The world's first diesel-powered locomotive was operated in the summer of 1912 on the Winterthur–Romanshorn railway in Switzerland, but was not a commercial success. The locomotive weight was 95 tonnes and the power was 883 kW with a maximum speed of 100 km/h. Small numbers of prototype diesel locomotives were produced in a number of countries through the mid-1920s. The Soviet Union operated three experimental units of different designs since late 1925, though only one of them (the E el-2) proved technically viable. A significant breakthrough occurred in 1914, when Hermann Lemp, a General Electric electrical engineer, developed and patented a reliable direct current electrical control system (subsequent improvements were also patented by Lemp). Lemp's design used a single lever to control both engine and generator in a coordinated fashion, and was the prototype for all diesel–electric locomotive control systems. In 1914, world's first functional diesel–electric railcars were produced for the Königlich-Sächsische Staatseisenbahnen (Royal Saxon State Railways) by Waggonfabrik Rastatt with electric equipment from Brown, Boveri & Cie and diesel engines from Swiss Sulzer AG. They were classified as DET 1 and DET 2 (de.wiki). The first regular use of diesel-electric locomotives was in switching (shunter) applications. General Electric produced several small switching locomotives in the 1930s (the famous "44-tonner" switcher was introduced in 1940) Westinghouse Electric and Baldwin collaborated to build switching locomotives starting in 1929. In 1929, the Canadian National Railways became the first North American railway to use diesels in mainline service with two units, 9000 and 9001, from Westinghouse. High-speed rail Although steam and diesel services reaching speeds up to 200 km/h were started before the 1960s in Europe, they were not very successful. The first electrified high-speed rail Tōkaidō Shinkansen was introduced in 1964 between Tokyo and Osaka in Japan. Since then high-speed rail transport, functioning at speeds up to and above 300 km/h, has been built in Japan, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the People's Republic of China, Taiwan (Republic of China), the United Kingdom, South Korea, Scandinavia, Belgium and the Netherlands. The construction of many of these lines has resulted in the dramatic decline of short-haul flights and automotive traffic between connected cities, such as the London–Paris–Brussels corridor, Madrid–Barcelona, Milan–Rome–Naples, as well as many other major lines. High-speed trains normally operate on standard gauge tracks of continuously welded rail on grade-separated right-of-way that incorporates a large turning radius in its design. While high-speed rail is most often designed for passenger travel, some high-speed systems also offer freight service. Preservation Since 1980, rail transport has changed dramatically, but a number of heritage railways continue to operate as part of living history to preserve and maintain old railway lines for services of tourist trains. Trains A train is a connected series of rail vehicles that move along the track. Propulsion for the train is provided by a separate locomotive or from individual motors in self-propelled multiple units. Most trains carry a revenue load, although non-revenue cars exist for the railway's own use, such as for maintenance-of-way purposes. The engine driver (engineer in North America) controls the locomotive or other power cars, although people movers and some rapid transits are under automatic control. Haulage Traditionally, trains are pulled using a locomotive. This involves one or more powered vehicles being located at the front of the train, providing sufficient tractive force to haul the weight of the full train. This arrangement remains dominant for freight trains and is often used for passenger trains. A push–pull train has the end passenger car equipped with a driver's cab so that the engine driver can remotely control the locomotive. This allows one of the locomotive-hauled train's drawbacks to be removed, since the locomotive need not be moved to the front of the train each time the train changes direction. A railroad car is a vehicle used for the haulage of either passengers or freight. A multiple unit has powered wheels throughout the whole train. These are used for rapid transit and tram systems, as well as many both short- and long-haul passenger trains. A railcar is a single, self-powered car, and may be electrically propelled or powered by a diesel engine. Multiple units have a driver's cab at each end of the unit, and were developed following the ability to build electric motors and other engines small enough to fit under the coach. There are only a few freight multiple units, most of which are high-speed post trains. Motive power Steam locomotives are locomotives with a steam engine that provides adhesion. Coal, petroleum, or wood is burned in a firebox, boiling water in the boiler to create pressurized steam. The steam travels through the smokebox before leaving via the chimney or smoke stack. In the process, it powers a piston that transmits power directly through a connecting rod (US: main rod) and a crankpin (US: wristpin) on the driving wheel (US main driver) or to a crank on a driving axle. Steam locomotives have been phased out in most parts of the world for economical and safety reasons, although many are preserved in working order by heritage railways. Electric locomotives draw power from a stationary source via an overhead wire or third rail. Some also or instead use a battery. In locomotives that are powered by high voltage alternating current, a transformer in the locomotive converts the high voltage, low current power to low voltage, high current used in the traction motors that power the wheels. Modern locomotives may use three-phase AC induction motors or direct current motors. Under certain conditions, electric locomotives are the most powerful traction. They are also the cheapest to run and provide less noise and no local air pollution. However, they require high capital investments both for the overhead lines and the supporting infrastructure, as well as the generating station that is needed to produce electricity. Accordingly, electric traction is used on urban systems, lines with high traffic and for high-speed rail. Diesel locomotives use a diesel engine as the prime mover. The energy transmission may be either diesel-electric, diesel-mechanical or diesel-hydraulic but diesel-electric is dominant. Electro-diesel locomotives are built to run as diesel-electric on unelectrified sections and as electric locomotives on electrified sections. Alternative methods of motive power include magnetic levitation, horse-drawn, cable, gravity, pneumatics and gas turbine. Passenger trains A passenger train travels between stations where passengers may embark and disembark. The oversight of the train is the duty of a guard/train manager/conductor. Passenger trains are part of public transport and often make up the stem of the service, with buses feeding to stations. Passenger trains provide long-distance intercity travel, daily commuter trips, or local urban transit services, operating with a diversity of vehicles, operating speeds, right-of-way requirements, and service frequency. Service frequencies are often expressed as a number of trains per hour (tph). Passenger trains can usually can be into two types of operation, intercity railway and intracity transit. Whereas intercity railway involve higher speeds, longer routes, and lower frequency (usually scheduled), intracity transit involves lower speeds, shorter routes, and higher frequency (especially during peak hours). Intercity trains are long-haul trains that operate with few stops between cities. Trains typically have amenities such as a dining car. Some lines also provide over-night services with sleeping cars. Some long-haul trains have been given a specific name. Regional trains are medium distance trains that connect cities with outlying, surrounding areas, or provide a regional service, making more stops and having lower speeds. Commuter trains serve suburbs of urban areas, providing a daily commuting service. Airport rail links provide quick access from city centres to airports. High-speed rail are special inter-city trains that operate at much higher speeds than conventional railways, the limit being regarded at . High-speed trains are used mostly for long-haul service and most systems are in Western Europe and East Asia. Magnetic levitation trains such as the Shanghai maglev train use under-riding magnets which attract themselves upward towards the underside of a guideway and this line has achieved somewhat higher peak speeds in day-to-day operation than conventional high-speed railways, although only over short distances. Due to their heightened speeds, route alignments for high-speed rail tend to have broader curves than conventional railways, but may have steeper grades that are more easily climbed by trains with large kinetic energy. Their high kinetic energy translates to higher horsepower-to-ton ratios (e.g. ); this allows trains to accelerate and maintain higher speeds and negotiate steep grades as momentum builds up and recovered in downgrades (reducing cut, fill, and tunnelling requirements). Since lateral forces act on curves, curvatures are designed with the highest possible radius. All these features are dramatically different from freight operations, thus justifying exclusive high-speed rail lines if it is economically feasible. Higher-speed rail services are intercity rail services that have top speeds higher than conventional intercity trains but the speeds are not as high as those in the high-speed rail services. These services are provided after improvements to the conventional rail infrastructure in order to support trains that can operate safely at higher speeds. Rapid transit is an intracity system built in large cities and has the highest capacity of any passenger transport system. It is usually grade-separated and commonly built underground or elevated. At street level, smaller trams can be used. Light rails are upgraded trams that have step-free access, their own right-of-way and sometimes sections underground. Monorail systems are elevated, medium-capacity systems. A people mover is a driverless, grade-separated train that serves only a few stations, as a shuttle. Due to the lack of uniformity of rapid transit systems, route alignment varies, with diverse rights-of-way (private land, side of road, street median) and geometric characteristics (sharp or broad curves, steep or gentle grades). For instance, the Chicago 'L' trains are designed with extremely short cars to negotiate the sharp curves in the Loop. New Jersey's PATH has similar-sized cars to accommodate curves in the trans-Hudson tunnels. San Francisco's BART operates large cars on its routes. Freight trains A freight train hauls cargo using freight cars specialized for the type of goods. Freight trains are very efficient, with economy of scale and high energy efficiency. However, their use can be reduced by lack of flexibility, if there is need of transshipment at both ends of the trip due to lack of tracks to the points of pick-up and delivery. Authorities often encourage the use of cargo rail transport due to its fame. Container trains have become the beta type in the US for bulk haulage. Containers can easily be transshipped to other modes, such as ships and trucks, using cranes. This has succeeded the boxcar (wagon-load), where the cargo had to be loaded and unloaded into the train manually. The intermodal containerization of cargo has revolutionized the supply chain logistics industry, reducing ship costs significantly. In Europe, the sliding wall wagon has largely superseded the ordinary covered wagons. Other types of cars include refrigerator cars, stock cars for livestock and autoracks for road vehicles. When rail is combined with road transport, a roadrailer will allow trailers to be driven onto the train, allowing for easy transition between road and rail. Bulk handling represents a key advantage for rail transport. Low or even zero transshipment costs combined with energy efficiency and low inventory costs allow trains to handle bulk much cheaper than by road. Typical bulk cargo includes coal, ore, grains and liquids. Bulk is transported in open-topped cars, hopper cars and tank cars. Infrastructure Right-of-way Railway tracks are laid upon land owned or leased by the railway company. Owing to the desirability of maintaining modest grades, rails will often be laid in circuitous routes in hilly or mountainous terrain. Route length and grade requirements can be reduced by the use of alternating cuttings, bridges and tunnels – all of which can greatly increase the capital expenditures required to develop a right-of-way, while significantly reducing operating costs and allowing higher speeds on longer radius curves. In densely urbanized areas, railways are sometimes laid in tunnels to minimize the effects on existing properties. Track Track consists of two parallel steel rails, anchored perpendicular to members called sleepers (ties) of timber, concrete, steel, or plastic to maintain a consistent distance apart, or rail gauge. Rail gauges are usually categorized as standard gauge (used on approximately 55% of the world's existing railway lines), broad gauge, and narrow gauge. In addition to the rail gauge, the tracks will be laid to conform with a Loading gauge which defines the maximum height and width for railway vehicles and their loads to ensure safe passage through bridges, tunnels and other structures. The track guides the conical, flanged wheels, keeping the cars on the track without active steering and therefore allowing trains to be much longer than road vehicles. The rails and ties are usually placed on a foundation made of compressed earth on top of which is placed a bed of ballast to distribute the load from the ties and to prevent the track from buckling as the ground settles over time under the weight of the vehicles passing above. The ballast also serves as a means of drainage. Some more modern track in special areas is attached directly without ballast. Track may be prefabricated or assembled in place. By welding rails together to form lengths of continuous welded rail, additional wear and tear on rolling stock caused by the small surface gap at the joints between rails can be counteracted; this also makes for a quieter ride. On curves, the outer rail may be at a higher level than the inner rail. This is called superelevation or cant. This reduces the forces tending to displace the track and makes for a more comfortable ride for standing livestock and standing or seated passengers. A given amount of superelevation is most effective over a limited range of speeds. Points and switches - also known as Turnouts - are the means of directing a train onto a diverging section of track. Laid similar to normal track, a point typically consists of a frog (common crossing), check rails and two switch rails. The switch rails may be moved left or right, under the control of the signalling system, to determine which path the train will follow. Spikes in wooden ties can loosen over time, but split and rotten ties may be individually replaced with new wooden ties or concrete substitutes. Concrete ties can also develop cracks or splits, and can also be replaced individually. Should the rails settle due to soil subsidence, they can be lifted by specialized machinery and additional ballast tamped under the ties to level the rails. Periodically, ballast must be removed and replaced with clean ballast to ensure adequate drainage. Culverts and other passages for water must be kept clear lest water is impounded by the trackbed, causing landslips. Where trackbeds are placed along rivers, additional protection is usually placed to prevent streambank erosion during times of high water. Bridges require inspection and maintenance, since they are subject to large surges of stress in a short period of time when a heavy train crosses. Train inspection systems The inspection of railway equipment is essential for the safe movement of trains. Many types of defect detectors are in use on the world's railroads. These devices utilize technologies that vary from a simplistic paddle and switch to infrared and laser scanning, and even ultrasonic audio analysis. Their use has avoided many rail accidents over the 70 years they have | a driving axle. Steam locomotives have been phased out in most parts of the world for economical and safety reasons, although many are preserved in working order by heritage railways. Electric locomotives draw power from a stationary source via an overhead wire or third rail. Some also or instead use a battery. In locomotives that are powered by high voltage alternating current, a transformer in the locomotive converts the high voltage, low current power to low voltage, high current used in the traction motors that power the wheels. Modern locomotives may use three-phase AC induction motors or direct current motors. Under certain conditions, electric locomotives are the most powerful traction. They are also the cheapest to run and provide less noise and no local air pollution. However, they require high capital investments both for the overhead lines and the supporting infrastructure, as well as the generating station that is needed to produce electricity. Accordingly, electric traction is used on urban systems, lines with high traffic and for high-speed rail. Diesel locomotives use a diesel engine as the prime mover. The energy transmission may be either diesel-electric, diesel-mechanical or diesel-hydraulic but diesel-electric is dominant. Electro-diesel locomotives are built to run as diesel-electric on unelectrified sections and as electric locomotives on electrified sections. Alternative methods of motive power include magnetic levitation, horse-drawn, cable, gravity, pneumatics and gas turbine. Passenger trains A passenger train travels between stations where passengers may embark and disembark. The oversight of the train is the duty of a guard/train manager/conductor. Passenger trains are part of public transport and often make up the stem of the service, with buses feeding to stations. Passenger trains provide long-distance intercity travel, daily commuter trips, or local urban transit services, operating with a diversity of vehicles, operating speeds, right-of-way requirements, and service frequency. Service frequencies are often expressed as a number of trains per hour (tph). Passenger trains can usually can be into two types of operation, intercity railway and intracity transit. Whereas intercity railway involve higher speeds, longer routes, and lower frequency (usually scheduled), intracity transit involves lower speeds, shorter routes, and higher frequency (especially during peak hours). Intercity trains are long-haul trains that operate with few stops between cities. Trains typically have amenities such as a dining car. Some lines also provide over-night services with sleeping cars. Some long-haul trains have been given a specific name. Regional trains are medium distance trains that connect cities with outlying, surrounding areas, or provide a regional service, making more stops and having lower speeds. Commuter trains serve suburbs of urban areas, providing a daily commuting service. Airport rail links provide quick access from city centres to airports. High-speed rail are special inter-city trains that operate at much higher speeds than conventional railways, the limit being regarded at . High-speed trains are used mostly for long-haul service and most systems are in Western Europe and East Asia. Magnetic levitation trains such as the Shanghai maglev train use under-riding magnets which attract themselves upward towards the underside of a guideway and this line has achieved somewhat higher peak speeds in day-to-day operation than conventional high-speed railways, although only over short distances. Due to their heightened speeds, route alignments for high-speed rail tend to have broader curves than conventional railways, but may have steeper grades that are more easily climbed by trains with large kinetic energy. Their high kinetic energy translates to higher horsepower-to-ton ratios (e.g. ); this allows trains to accelerate and maintain higher speeds and negotiate steep grades as momentum builds up and recovered in downgrades (reducing cut, fill, and tunnelling requirements). Since lateral forces act on curves, curvatures are designed with the highest possible radius. All these features are dramatically different from freight operations, thus justifying exclusive high-speed rail lines if it is economically feasible. Higher-speed rail services are intercity rail services that have top speeds higher than conventional intercity trains but the speeds are not as high as those in the high-speed rail services. These services are provided after improvements to the conventional rail infrastructure in order to support trains that can operate safely at higher speeds. Rapid transit is an intracity system built in large cities and has the highest capacity of any passenger transport system. It is usually grade-separated and commonly built underground or elevated. At street level, smaller trams can be used. Light rails are upgraded trams that have step-free access, their own right-of-way and sometimes sections underground. Monorail systems are elevated, medium-capacity systems. A people mover is a driverless, grade-separated train that serves only a few stations, as a shuttle. Due to the lack of uniformity of rapid transit systems, route alignment varies, with diverse rights-of-way (private land, side of road, street median) and geometric characteristics (sharp or broad curves, steep or gentle grades). For instance, the Chicago 'L' trains are designed with extremely short cars to negotiate the sharp curves in the Loop. New Jersey's PATH has similar-sized cars to accommodate curves in the trans-Hudson tunnels. San Francisco's BART operates large cars on its routes. Freight trains A freight train hauls cargo using freight cars specialized for the type of goods. Freight trains are very efficient, with economy of scale and high energy efficiency. However, their use can be reduced by lack of flexibility, if there is need of transshipment at both ends of the trip due to lack of tracks to the points of pick-up and delivery. Authorities often encourage the use of cargo rail transport due to its fame. Container trains have become the beta type in the US for bulk haulage. Containers can easily be transshipped to other modes, such as ships and trucks, using cranes. This has succeeded the boxcar (wagon-load), where the cargo had to be loaded and unloaded into the train manually. The intermodal containerization of cargo has revolutionized the supply chain logistics industry, reducing ship costs significantly. In Europe, the sliding wall wagon has largely superseded the ordinary covered wagons. Other types of cars include refrigerator cars, stock cars for livestock and autoracks for road vehicles. When rail is combined with road transport, a roadrailer will allow trailers to be driven onto the train, allowing for easy transition between road and rail. Bulk handling represents a key advantage for rail transport. Low or even zero transshipment costs combined with energy efficiency and low inventory costs allow trains to handle bulk much cheaper than by road. Typical bulk cargo includes coal, ore, grains and liquids. Bulk is transported in open-topped cars, hopper cars and tank cars. Infrastructure Right-of-way Railway tracks are laid upon land owned or leased by the railway company. Owing to the desirability of maintaining modest grades, rails will often be laid in circuitous routes in hilly or mountainous terrain. Route length and grade requirements can be reduced by the use of alternating cuttings, bridges and tunnels – all of which can greatly increase the capital expenditures required to develop a right-of-way, while significantly reducing operating costs and allowing higher speeds on longer radius curves. In densely urbanized areas, railways are sometimes laid in tunnels to minimize the effects on existing properties. Track Track consists of two parallel steel rails, anchored perpendicular to members called sleepers (ties) of timber, concrete, steel, or plastic to maintain a consistent distance apart, or rail gauge. Rail gauges are usually categorized as standard gauge (used on approximately 55% of the world's existing railway lines), broad gauge, and narrow gauge. In addition to the rail gauge, the tracks will be laid to conform with a Loading gauge which defines the maximum height and width for railway vehicles and their loads to ensure safe passage through bridges, tunnels and other structures. The track guides the conical, flanged wheels, keeping the cars on the track without active steering and therefore allowing trains to be much longer than road vehicles. The rails and ties are usually placed on a foundation made of compressed earth on top of which is placed a bed of ballast to distribute the load from the ties and to prevent the track from buckling as the ground settles over time under the weight of the vehicles passing above. The ballast also serves as a means of drainage. Some more modern track in special areas is attached directly without ballast. Track may be prefabricated or assembled in place. By welding rails together to form lengths of continuous welded rail, additional wear and tear on rolling stock caused by the small surface gap at the joints between rails can be counteracted; this also makes for a quieter ride. On curves, the outer rail may be at a higher level than the inner rail. This is called superelevation or cant. This reduces the forces tending to displace the track and makes for a more comfortable ride for standing livestock and standing or seated passengers. A given amount of superelevation is most effective over a limited range of speeds. Points and switches - also known as Turnouts - are the means of directing a train onto a diverging section of track. Laid similar to normal track, a point typically consists of a frog (common crossing), check rails and two switch rails. The switch rails may be moved left or right, under the control of the signalling system, to determine which path the train will follow. Spikes in wooden ties can loosen over time, but split and rotten ties may be individually replaced with new wooden ties or concrete substitutes. Concrete ties can also develop cracks or splits, and can also be replaced individually. Should the rails settle due to soil subsidence, they can be lifted by specialized machinery and additional ballast tamped under the ties to level the rails. Periodically, ballast must be removed and replaced with clean ballast to ensure adequate drainage. Culverts and other passages for water must be kept clear lest water is impounded by the trackbed, causing landslips. Where trackbeds are placed along rivers, additional protection is usually placed to prevent streambank erosion during times of high water. Bridges require inspection and maintenance, since they are subject to large surges of stress in a short period of time when a heavy train crosses. Train inspection systems The inspection of railway equipment is essential for the safe movement of trains. Many types of defect detectors are in use on the world's railroads. These devices utilize technologies that vary from a simplistic paddle and switch to infrared and laser scanning, and even ultrasonic audio analysis. Their use has avoided many rail accidents over the 70 years they have been used. Signalling Railway signalling is a system used to control railway traffic safely to prevent trains from colliding. Being guided by fixed rails which generate low friction, trains are uniquely susceptible to collision since they frequently operate at speeds that do not enable them to stop quickly or within the driver's sighting distance; road vehicles, which encounter a higher level of friction between their rubber tyres and the road surface, have much shorter braking distances. Most forms of train control involve movement authority being passed from those responsible for each section of a rail network to the train crew. Not all methods require the use of signals, and some systems are specific to single track railways. The signalling process is traditionally carried out in a signal box, a small building that houses the lever frame required for the signalman to operate switches and signal equipment. These are placed at various intervals along the route of a railway, controlling specified sections of track. More recent technological developments have made such operational doctrine superfluous, with the centralization of signalling operations to regional control rooms. This has been facilitated by the increased use of computers, allowing vast sections of track to be monitored from a single location. The common method of block signalling divides the track into zones guarded by combinations of block signals, operating rules, and automatic-control devices so that only one train may be in a block at any time. Electrification The electrification system provides electrical energy to the trains, so they can operate without a prime mover on board. This allows lower operating costs, but requires large capital investments along the lines. Mainline and tram systems normally have overhead wires, which hang from poles along the line. Grade-separated rapid transit sometimes use a ground third rail. Power may be fed as direct (DC) or alternating current (AC). The most common DC voltages are 600 and 750 V for tram and rapid transit systems, and 1,500 and 3,000 V for mainlines. The two dominant AC systems are 15 kV and 25 kV. Stations A railway station serves as an area where passengers can board and alight from trains. A goods station is a yard which is exclusively used for loading and unloading cargo. Large passenger stations have at least one building providing conveniences for passengers, such as purchasing tickets and food. Smaller stations typically only consist of a platform. Early stations were sometimes built with both passenger and goods facilities. Platforms are used to allow easy access to the trains, and are connected to each other via underpasses, footbridges and level crossings. Some large stations are built as culs-de-sac, with trains only operating out from one direction. Smaller stations normally serve local residential areas, and may have connection to feeder bus services. Large stations, in particular central stations, serve as the main public transport hub for the city, and have transfer available between rail services, and to rapid transit, tram or bus services. Operations Ownership Since the 1980s, there has been an increasing trend to split up railway companies, with companies owning the rolling stock separated from those owning the infrastructure. This is particularly true in Europe, where this arrangement is required by the European Union. This has allowed open access by any train operator to any portion of the European railway network. In the UK, the railway track is state owned, with a public controlled body (Network Rail) running, maintaining and developing the track, while Train Operating Companies have run the trains since privatization in the 1990s. In the U.S., virtually all rail networks and infrastructure outside the Northeast Corridor are privately owned by freight lines. Passenger lines, primarily Amtrak, operate as tenants on the freight lines. Consequently, operations must be closely synchronized and coordinated between freight and passenger railroads, with passenger trains often being dispatched by the host freight railroad. Due to this shared system, both are regulated by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and may follow the AREMA recommended practices for track work and AAR standards for vehicles. Financing The main source of income for railway companies is from ticket revenue (for passenger transport) and shipment fees for cargo. Discounts and monthly passes are sometimes available for frequent travellers (e.g. season ticket and rail pass). Freight revenue may be sold per container slot or for a whole train. Sometimes, the shipper owns the cars and only rents the haulage. For passenger transport, advertisement income can be significant. Governments may choose to give subsidies to rail operation, since rail transport has fewer externalities than other dominant modes of transport. If the railway company is state-owned, the state may simply provide direct subsidies in exchange for increased production. If operations have been privatized, several options are available. Some countries have a system where the infrastructure is owned by a government agency or company – with open access to the tracks for any company that meets safety requirements. In such cases, the state may choose to provide the tracks free of charge, or for a fee that does not cover all costs. This is seen as analogous to the government providing free access to roads. For passenger operations, a direct subsidy may be paid to a public-owned operator, or public service obligation tender may be held, and a time-limited contract awarded to the lowest bidder. Total EU rail subsidies amounted to €73 billion in 2005. Via Rail Canada and US passenger rail service Amtrak are private railroad companies chartered by their respective national governments. As private passenger services declined because of competition from automobiles and airlines, they became shareholders of Amtrak either with a cash entrance fee or relinquishing their locomotives and rolling stock. The government subsidizes Amtrak by supplying start-up capital and making up for losses at the end of the fiscal year. Safety Trains can travel at very high speeds, but they are heavy, unable to deviate from the track, and require great distances to stop. Possible accidents include: derailment (jumping the track); a collision with another train; or collision with automobiles, other vehicles, or pedestrians at level crossings, which accounts for the majority of all rail accidents and casualties. To minimize the risk of accidents, the most important safety measures are strict operating rules, e.g. railway signalling, and gates or grade separation at crossings. Train whistles, bells, or horns warn of the presence of a train, while trackside signals maintain the distances between trains. On many high-speed inter-city networks, such as Japan's Shinkansen, the trains run on dedicated railway lines without any level crossings. This is an important element in the safety of the system as it effectively eliminates the potential for collision with automobiles, other vehicles, or pedestrians, and greatly reduces the probability of collision with other trains. Another benefit is that services on the inter-city network remain punctual. Maintenance As in any infrastructure asset, railways must keep up with periodic inspection and maintenance in order to minimize the effect of infrastructure failures that can disrupt freight revenue operations and passenger services. Because passengers are considered the most crucial cargo and usually operate at higher speeds, steeper grades, and higher capacity/frequency, their lines are especially important. Inspection practices include track geometry cars or walking inspection. Curve maintenance especially for transit services includes gauging, fastener tightening, and rail replacement. Rail corrugation is a common issue with transit systems due to the high number of light-axle, wheel passages which result in grinding of the wheel/rail interface. Since maintenance may overlap with operations, maintenance windows (nighttime hours, off-peak hours, altering train schedules or routes) must be closely followed. In addition, passenger safety during maintenance work (inter-track fencing, proper storage of materials, track work notices, hazards of equipment near states) must be regarded at all times. At times, maintenance access problems can emerge due to tunnels, elevated structures, and congested cityscapes. Here, specialized equipment or smaller versions of conventional maintenance gear are used. Unlike highways or road networks where capacity is disaggregated |
braille terminal is an electro-mechanical device for displaying characters, usually by means of round-tipped pins raised through holes in a flat surface. Visually impaired computer users who cannot use a standard computer monitor can use it to read text output. Deafblind computer users may also use refreshable braille displays. Speech synthesizers are also commonly used for the same task, and a blind user may switch between the two systems or use both at the same time depending on circumstances. Mechanical details The base of a refreshable braille display often integrates a pure braille keyboard. Similar to the Perkins Brailler, the input is performed by two sets of four keys on each side, while output is via a refreshable braille display consisting of a row of electro-mechanical character cells, each of which can raise or lower a combination of eight round-tipped pins. Other variants exist that use a conventional QWERTY keyboard for input and braille pins for output, as well as input-only and output-only devices. The mechanism which raises the dots uses the piezo effect of some crystals, whereby they expand when a voltage is applied to them. Such a crystal is connected to a lever, which in turn raises the dot. There has to be a crystal for each dot of the display (i.e., eight per character). Because of the complexity of producing a reliable display that will cope with daily wear and tear, these displays are expensive. Usually, only 40 or 80 braille cells are displayed. Models with between 18 | operating systems are especially complex, because graphical elements like windows or slidebars have to be interpreted and described in text form. Modern operating systems usually have an API to help screen readers obtain this information, such as UI Automation (UIA) for Microsoft Windows, VoiceOver for macOS and iOS, and AT-SPI for GNOME. Rotation-wheel Braille display A rotating-wheel Braille display was developed in 2000 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and another at the Leuven University in Belgium. In these units, braille dots are put on the edge of a spinning wheel, which allows the user to read continuously with a stationary finger while the wheel spins at a selected speed. The braille dots are set in a simple scanning-style fashion as the dots on the wheel spin past a stationary actuator that sets the braille characters. As a result, manufacturing complexity is greatly reduced and rotating-wheel braille displays, when in actual production, should be less expensive than traditional braille displays. Braille e-book See also GNOME accessibility VoiceOver References External |
∪, +, or ∨ for alternation instead of the vertical bar. Examples: a|b* denotes {ε, "a", "b", "bb", "bbb", ...} (a|b)* denotes the set of all strings with no symbols other than "a" and "b", including the empty string: {ε, "a", "b", "aa", "ab", "ba", "bb", "aaa", ...} ab*(c|ε) denotes the set of strings starting with "a", then zero or more "b"s and finally optionally a "c": {"a", "ac", "ab", "abc", "abb", "abbc", ...} (0|(1(01*0)*1))* denotes the set of binary numbers that are multiples of 3: { ε, "0", "00", "11", "000", "011", "110", "0000", "0011", "0110", "1001", "1100", "1111", "00000", ... } Expressive power and compactness The formal definition of regular expressions is minimal on purpose, and avoids defining ? and +—these can be expressed as follows: a+ = aa*, and a? = (a|ε). Sometimes the complement operator is added, to give a generalized regular expression; here Rc matches all strings over Σ* that do not match R. In principle, the complement operator is redundant, because it doesn't grant any more expressive power. However, it can make a regular expression much more concise—eliminating a single complement operator can cause a double exponential blow-up of its length. Regular expressions in this sense can express the regular languages, exactly the class of languages accepted by deterministic finite automata. There is, however, a significant difference in compactness. Some classes of regular languages can only be described by deterministic finite automata whose size grows exponentially in the size of the shortest equivalent regular expressions. The standard example here is the languages Lk consisting of all strings over the alphabet {a,b} whose kth-from-last letter equals a. On the one hand, a regular expression describing L4 is given by . Generalizing this pattern to Lk gives the expression: On the other hand, it is known that every deterministic finite automaton accepting the language Lk must have at least 2k states. Luckily, there is a simple mapping from regular expressions to the more general nondeterministic finite automata (NFAs) that does not lead to such a blowup in size; for this reason NFAs are often used as alternative representations of regular languages. NFAs are a simple variation of the type-3 grammars of the Chomsky hierarchy. In the opposite direction, there are many languages easily described by a DFA that are not easily described by a regular expression. For instance, determining the validity of a given ISBN requires computing the modulus of the integer base 11, and can be easily implemented with an 11-state DFA. However, a regular expression to answer the same problem of divisibility by 11 is at least multiple megabytes in length. Given a regular expression, Thompson's construction algorithm computes an equivalent nondeterministic finite automaton. A conversion in the opposite direction is achieved by Kleene's algorithm. Finally, it is worth noting that many real-world "regular expression" engines implement features that cannot be described by the regular expressions in the sense of formal language theory; rather, they implement regexes. See below for more on this. Deciding equivalence of regular expressions As seen in many of the examples above, there is more than one way to construct a regular expression to achieve the same results. It is possible to write an algorithm that, for two given regular expressions, decides whether the described languages are equal; the algorithm reduces each expression to a minimal deterministic finite state machine, and determines whether they are isomorphic (equivalent). Algebraic laws for regular expressions can be obtained using a method by Gischer which is best explained along an example: In order to check whether (X+Y)* and (X* Y*)* denote the same regular language, for all regular expressions X, Y, it is necessary and sufficient to check whether the particular regular expressions (a+b)* and (a* b*)* denote the same language over the alphabet Σ={a,b}. More generally, an equation E=F between regular-expression terms with variables holds if, and only if, its instantiation with different variables replaced by different symbol constants holds. Every regular expression can be written solely in terms of the Kleene star and set unions. This is a surprisingly difficult problem. As simple as the regular expressions are, there is no method to systematically rewrite them to some normal form. The lack of axiom in the past led to the star height problem. In 1991, Dexter Kozen axiomatized regular expressions as a Kleene algebra, using equational and Horn clause axioms. Already in 1964, Redko had proved that no finite set of purely equational axioms can characterize the algebra of regular languages. Syntax A regex pattern matches a target string. The pattern is composed of a sequence of atoms. An atom is a single point within the regex pattern which it tries to match to the target string. The simplest atom is a literal, but grouping parts of the pattern to match an atom will require using ( ) as metacharacters. Metacharacters help form: atoms; quantifiers telling how many atoms (and whether it is a greedy quantifier or not); a logical OR character, which offers a set of alternatives, and a logical NOT character, which negates an atom's existence; and backreferences to refer to previous atoms of a completing pattern of atoms. A match is made, not when all the atoms of the string are matched, but rather when all the pattern atoms in the regex have matched. The idea is to make a small pattern of characters stand for a large number of possible strings, rather than compiling a large list of all the literal possibilities. Depending on the regex processor there are about fourteen metacharacters, characters that may or may not have their literal character meaning, depending on context, or whether they are "escaped", i.e. preceded by an escape sequence, in this case, the backslash \. Modern and POSIX extended regexes use metacharacters more often than their literal meaning, so to avoid "backslash-osis" or leaning toothpick syndrome it makes sense to have a metacharacter escape to a literal mode; but starting out, it makes more sense to have the four bracketing metacharacters ( ) and { } be primarily literal, and "escape" this usual meaning to become metacharacters. Common standards implement both. The usual metacharacters are {}[]()^$.|*+? and \. The usual characters that become metacharacters when escaped are dswDSW and N. Delimiters When entering a regex in a programming language, they may be represented as a usual string literal, hence usually quoted; this is common in C, Java, and Python for instance, where the regex re is entered as "re". However, they are often written with slashes as delimiters, as in /re/ for the regex re. This originates in ed, where / is the editor command for searching, and an expression /re/ can be used to specify a range of lines (matching the pattern), which can be combined with other commands on either side, most famously g/re/p as in grep ("global regex print"), which is included in most Unix-based operating systems, such as Linux distributions. A similar convention is used in sed, where search and replace is given by s/re/replacement/ and patterns can be joined with a comma to specify a range of lines as in /re1/,/re2/. This notation is particularly well known due to its use in Perl, where it forms part of the syntax distinct from normal string literals. In some cases, such as sed and Perl, alternative delimiters can be used to avoid collision with contents, and to avoid having to escape occurrences of the delimiter character in the contents. For example, in sed the command s,/,X, will replace a / with an X, using commas as delimiters. Standards The IEEE POSIX standard has three sets of compliance: BRE (Basic Regular Expressions), ERE (Extended Regular Expressions), and SRE (Simple Regular Expressions). SRE is deprecated, in favor of BRE, as both provide backward compatibility. The subsection below covering the character classes applies to both BRE and ERE. BRE and ERE work together. ERE adds ?, +, and |, and it removes the need to escape the metacharacters ( ) and { }, which are required in BRE. Furthermore, as long as the POSIX standard syntax for regexes is adhered to, there can be, and often is, additional syntax to serve specific (yet POSIX compliant) applications. Although POSIX.2 leaves some implementation specifics undefined, BRE and ERE provide a "standard" which has since been adopted as the default syntax of many tools, where the choice of BRE or ERE modes is usually a supported option. For example, GNU grep has the following options: "grep -E" for ERE, and "grep -G" for BRE (the default), and "grep -P" for Perl regexes. Perl regexes have become a de facto standard, having a rich and powerful set of atomic expressions. Perl has no "basic" or "extended" levels. As in POSIX EREs, ( ) and { } are treated as metacharacters unless escaped; other metacharacters are known to be literal or symbolic based on context alone. Additional functionality includes lazy matching, backreferences, named capture groups, and recursive patterns. POSIX basic and extended In the POSIX standard, Basic Regular Syntax (BRE) requires that the metacharacters ( ) and { } be designated \(\) and \{\}, whereas Extended Regular Syntax (ERE) does not. Examples: .at matches any three-character string ending with "at", including "hat", "cat", "bat", "4at", "#at" and " at" (starting with a space). [hc]at matches "hat" and "cat". [^b]at matches all strings matched by .at except "bat". [^hc]at matches all strings matched by .at other than "hat" and "cat". ^[hc]at matches "hat" and "cat", but only at the beginning of the string or line. [hc]at$ matches "hat" and "cat", but only at the end of the string or line. \[.\] matches any single character surrounded by "[" and "]" since the brackets are escaped, for example: "[a]", "[b]", "[7]", "[@]", "[]]", and "[ ]" (bracket space bracket). s.* matches s followed by zero or more characters, for example: "s", "saw", "seed", "s3w96.7", and "s6#h%(>>>m n mQ". POSIX extended The meaning of metacharacters escaped with a backslash is reversed for some characters in the POSIX Extended Regular Expression (ERE) syntax. With this syntax, a backslash causes the metacharacter to be treated as a literal character. So, for example, \( \) is now ( ) and \{ \} is now { }. Additionally, support is removed for \n backreferences and the following metacharacters are added: Examples: [hc]?at matches "at", "hat", and "cat". [hc]*at matches "at", "hat", "cat", "hhat", "chat", "hcat", "cchchat", and so on. [hc]+at matches "hat", "cat", "hhat", "chat", "hcat", "cchchat", and so on, but not "at". cat|dog matches "cat" or "dog". POSIX Extended Regular Expressions can often be used with modern Unix utilities by including the command line flag -E. Character classes The character class is the most basic regex concept after a literal match. It makes one small sequence of characters match a larger set of characters. For example, [A-Z] could stand for any uppercase letter in the English alphabet, and \d could mean any digit. Character classes apply to both POSIX levels. When specifying a range of characters, such as [a-Z] (i.e. lowercase a to uppercase Z), the computer's locale settings determine the contents by the numeric ordering of the character encoding. They could store digits in that sequence, or the ordering could be abc…zABC…Z, or aAbBcC…zZ. So the POSIX standard defines a character class, which will be known by the regex processor installed. Those definitions are in the following table: POSIX character classes can only be used within bracket expressions. For example, [[:upper:]ab] matches the uppercase letters and lowercase "a" and "b". An additional non-POSIX class understood by some tools is [:word:], which is usually defined as [:alnum:] plus underscore. This reflects the fact that in many programming languages these are the characters that may be used in identifiers. The editor Vim further distinguishes word and word-head classes (using the notation \w and \h) since in many programming languages the characters that can begin an identifier are not the same as those that can occur in other positions: numbers are generally excluded, so an identifier would look like \h\w* or [[:alpha:]_][[:alnum:]_]* in POSIX notation. Note that what the POSIX regex standards call character classes are commonly referred to as POSIX character classes in other regex flavors which support them. With most other regex flavors, the term character class is used to describe what POSIX calls bracket expressions. Perl and PCRE Because of its expressive power and (relative) ease of reading, many other utilities and programming languages have adopted syntax similar to Perl's — for example, Java, JavaScript, Julia, Python, Ruby, Qt, Microsoft's .NET Framework, and XML Schema. Some languages and tools such as Boost and PHP support multiple regex flavors. Perl-derivative regex implementations are not identical and usually implement a subset of features found in Perl 5.0, released in 1994. Perl sometimes does incorporate features initially found in other languages. For example, Perl 5.10 implements syntactic extensions originally developed in PCRE and Python. Lazy matching In Python and some other implementations (e.g. Java), the three common quantifiers (*, + and ?) are greedy by default because they match as many characters as possible. The regex ".+" (including the double-quotes) applied to the string "Ganymede," he continued, "is the largest moon in the Solar System." matches the entire line (because the entire line begins and ends with a double-quote) instead of matching only the first part, "Ganymede,". The aforementioned quantifiers may, however, be made lazy or minimal or reluctant, matching as few characters as possible, by appending a question mark: ".+?" matches only "Ganymede,". However, the whole sentence can still be matched in some circumstances. The question-mark operator does not change the meaning of the dot operator, so this still can match the double-quotes in the input. A pattern like ".*?" EOF will still match the whole input if this is the string: "Ganymede," he continued, "is the largest moon in the Solar System." EOF To ensure that the double-quotes cannot be part of the match, the dot has to be replaced (e.g. "[^"]*"). This will match a quoted text part without additional double-quotes in it. (By removing the possibility of matching the fixed suffix, i.e. ", this has also transformed the lazy-match to a greedy-match, so the ? is no longer needed.) Possessive matching In Java, quantifiers may be made possessive by appending a plus sign, which disables backing off (in a backtracking engine), even if doing so would allow the overall match to succeed: While the regex ".*" applied to the string "Ganymede," he continued, "is the largest moon in the Solar System." matches the entire line, the regex ".*+" does , because .*+ consumes the entire input, including the final ". Thus, possessive quantifiers are most useful with negated character classes, e.g. "[^"]*+", which matches "Ganymede," when applied to the same string. Another common extension serving the same function is atomic grouping, which disables backtracking for a parenthesized group. The typical syntax is . For example, while matches both and , only matches because the engine is forbidden from backtracking and try with setting the group as "w". Possessive quantifiers are easier to implement than greedy and lazy quantifiers, and are typically more efficient at runtime. Patterns for non-regular languages Many features found in virtually all modern regular expression libraries provide an expressive power that exceeds the regular languages. For example, many implementations | language theory; rather, they implement regexes. See below for more on this. Deciding equivalence of regular expressions As seen in many of the examples above, there is more than one way to construct a regular expression to achieve the same results. It is possible to write an algorithm that, for two given regular expressions, decides whether the described languages are equal; the algorithm reduces each expression to a minimal deterministic finite state machine, and determines whether they are isomorphic (equivalent). Algebraic laws for regular expressions can be obtained using a method by Gischer which is best explained along an example: In order to check whether (X+Y)* and (X* Y*)* denote the same regular language, for all regular expressions X, Y, it is necessary and sufficient to check whether the particular regular expressions (a+b)* and (a* b*)* denote the same language over the alphabet Σ={a,b}. More generally, an equation E=F between regular-expression terms with variables holds if, and only if, its instantiation with different variables replaced by different symbol constants holds. Every regular expression can be written solely in terms of the Kleene star and set unions. This is a surprisingly difficult problem. As simple as the regular expressions are, there is no method to systematically rewrite them to some normal form. The lack of axiom in the past led to the star height problem. In 1991, Dexter Kozen axiomatized regular expressions as a Kleene algebra, using equational and Horn clause axioms. Already in 1964, Redko had proved that no finite set of purely equational axioms can characterize the algebra of regular languages. Syntax A regex pattern matches a target string. The pattern is composed of a sequence of atoms. An atom is a single point within the regex pattern which it tries to match to the target string. The simplest atom is a literal, but grouping parts of the pattern to match an atom will require using ( ) as metacharacters. Metacharacters help form: atoms; quantifiers telling how many atoms (and whether it is a greedy quantifier or not); a logical OR character, which offers a set of alternatives, and a logical NOT character, which negates an atom's existence; and backreferences to refer to previous atoms of a completing pattern of atoms. A match is made, not when all the atoms of the string are matched, but rather when all the pattern atoms in the regex have matched. The idea is to make a small pattern of characters stand for a large number of possible strings, rather than compiling a large list of all the literal possibilities. Depending on the regex processor there are about fourteen metacharacters, characters that may or may not have their literal character meaning, depending on context, or whether they are "escaped", i.e. preceded by an escape sequence, in this case, the backslash \. Modern and POSIX extended regexes use metacharacters more often than their literal meaning, so to avoid "backslash-osis" or leaning toothpick syndrome it makes sense to have a metacharacter escape to a literal mode; but starting out, it makes more sense to have the four bracketing metacharacters ( ) and { } be primarily literal, and "escape" this usual meaning to become metacharacters. Common standards implement both. The usual metacharacters are {}[]()^$.|*+? and \. The usual characters that become metacharacters when escaped are dswDSW and N. Delimiters When entering a regex in a programming language, they may be represented as a usual string literal, hence usually quoted; this is common in C, Java, and Python for instance, where the regex re is entered as "re". However, they are often written with slashes as delimiters, as in /re/ for the regex re. This originates in ed, where / is the editor command for searching, and an expression /re/ can be used to specify a range of lines (matching the pattern), which can be combined with other commands on either side, most famously g/re/p as in grep ("global regex print"), which is included in most Unix-based operating systems, such as Linux distributions. A similar convention is used in sed, where search and replace is given by s/re/replacement/ and patterns can be joined with a comma to specify a range of lines as in /re1/,/re2/. This notation is particularly well known due to its use in Perl, where it forms part of the syntax distinct from normal string literals. In some cases, such as sed and Perl, alternative delimiters can be used to avoid collision with contents, and to avoid having to escape occurrences of the delimiter character in the contents. For example, in sed the command s,/,X, will replace a / with an X, using commas as delimiters. Standards The IEEE POSIX standard has three sets of compliance: BRE (Basic Regular Expressions), ERE (Extended Regular Expressions), and SRE (Simple Regular Expressions). SRE is deprecated, in favor of BRE, as both provide backward compatibility. The subsection below covering the character classes applies to both BRE and ERE. BRE and ERE work together. ERE adds ?, +, and |, and it removes the need to escape the metacharacters ( ) and { }, which are required in BRE. Furthermore, as long as the POSIX standard syntax for regexes is adhered to, there can be, and often is, additional syntax to serve specific (yet POSIX compliant) applications. Although POSIX.2 leaves some implementation specifics undefined, BRE and ERE provide a "standard" which has since been adopted as the default syntax of many tools, where the choice of BRE or ERE modes is usually a supported option. For example, GNU grep has the following options: "grep -E" for ERE, and "grep -G" for BRE (the default), and "grep -P" for Perl regexes. Perl regexes have become a de facto standard, having a rich and powerful set of atomic expressions. Perl has no "basic" or "extended" levels. As in POSIX EREs, ( ) and { } are treated as metacharacters unless escaped; other metacharacters are known to be literal or symbolic based on context alone. Additional functionality includes lazy matching, backreferences, named capture groups, and recursive patterns. POSIX basic and extended In the POSIX standard, Basic Regular Syntax (BRE) requires that the metacharacters ( ) and { } be designated \(\) and \{\}, whereas Extended Regular Syntax (ERE) does not. Examples: .at matches any three-character string ending with "at", including "hat", "cat", "bat", "4at", "#at" and " at" (starting with a space). [hc]at matches "hat" and "cat". [^b]at matches all strings matched by .at except "bat". [^hc]at matches all strings matched by .at other than "hat" and "cat". ^[hc]at matches "hat" and "cat", but only at the beginning of the string or line. [hc]at$ matches "hat" and "cat", but only at the end of the string or line. \[.\] matches any single character surrounded by "[" and "]" since the brackets are escaped, for example: "[a]", "[b]", "[7]", "[@]", "[]]", and "[ ]" (bracket space bracket). s.* matches s followed by zero or more characters, for example: "s", "saw", "seed", "s3w96.7", and "s6#h%(>>>m n mQ". POSIX extended The meaning of metacharacters escaped with a backslash is reversed for some characters in the POSIX Extended Regular Expression (ERE) syntax. With this syntax, a backslash causes the metacharacter to be treated as a literal character. So, for example, \( \) is now ( ) and \{ \} is now { }. Additionally, support is removed for \n backreferences and the following metacharacters are added: Examples: [hc]?at matches "at", "hat", and "cat". [hc]*at matches "at", "hat", "cat", "hhat", "chat", "hcat", "cchchat", and so on. [hc]+at matches "hat", "cat", "hhat", "chat", "hcat", "cchchat", and so on, but not "at". cat|dog matches "cat" or "dog". POSIX Extended Regular Expressions can often be used with modern Unix utilities by including the command line flag -E. Character classes The character class is the most basic regex concept after a literal match. It makes one small sequence of characters match a larger set of characters. For example, [A-Z] could stand for any uppercase letter in the English alphabet, and \d could mean any digit. Character classes apply to both POSIX levels. When specifying a range of characters, such as [a-Z] (i.e. lowercase a to uppercase Z), the computer's locale settings determine the contents by the numeric ordering of the character encoding. They could store digits in that sequence, or the ordering could be abc…zABC…Z, or aAbBcC…zZ. So the POSIX standard defines a character class, which will be known by the regex processor installed. Those definitions are in the following table: POSIX character classes can only be used within bracket expressions. For example, [[:upper:]ab] matches the uppercase letters and lowercase "a" and "b". An additional non-POSIX class understood by some tools is [:word:], which is usually defined as [:alnum:] plus underscore. This reflects the fact that in many programming languages these are the characters that may be used in identifiers. The editor Vim further distinguishes word and word-head classes (using the notation \w and \h) since in many programming languages the characters that can begin an identifier are not the same as those that can occur in other positions: numbers are generally excluded, so an identifier would look like \h\w* or [[:alpha:]_][[:alnum:]_]* in POSIX notation. Note that what the POSIX regex standards call character classes are commonly referred to as POSIX character classes in other regex flavors which support them. With most other regex flavors, the term character class is used to describe what POSIX calls bracket expressions. Perl and PCRE Because of its expressive power and (relative) ease of reading, many other utilities and programming languages have adopted syntax similar to Perl's — for example, Java, JavaScript, Julia, Python, Ruby, Qt, Microsoft's .NET Framework, and XML Schema. Some languages and tools such as Boost and PHP support multiple regex flavors. Perl-derivative regex implementations are not identical and usually implement a subset of features found in Perl 5.0, released in 1994. Perl sometimes does incorporate features initially found in other languages. For example, Perl 5.10 implements syntactic extensions originally developed in PCRE and Python. Lazy matching In Python and some other implementations (e.g. Java), the three common quantifiers (*, + and ?) are greedy by default because they match as many characters as possible. The regex ".+" (including the double-quotes) applied to the string "Ganymede," he continued, "is the largest moon in the Solar System." matches the entire line (because the entire line begins and ends with a double-quote) instead of matching only the first part, "Ganymede,". The aforementioned quantifiers may, however, be made lazy or minimal or reluctant, matching as few characters as possible, by appending a question mark: ".+?" matches only "Ganymede,". However, the whole sentence can still be matched in some circumstances. The question-mark operator does not change the meaning of the dot operator, so this still can match the double-quotes in the input. A pattern like ".*?" EOF will still match the whole input if this is the string: "Ganymede," he continued, "is the largest moon in the Solar System." EOF To ensure that the double-quotes cannot be part of the match, the dot has to be replaced (e.g. "[^"]*"). This will match a quoted text part without additional double-quotes in it. (By removing the possibility of matching the fixed suffix, i.e. ", this has also transformed the lazy-match to a greedy-match, so the ? is no longer needed.) Possessive matching In Java, quantifiers may be made possessive by appending a plus sign, which disables backing off (in a backtracking engine), even if doing so would allow the overall match to succeed: While the regex ".*" applied to the string "Ganymede," he continued, "is the largest moon in the Solar System." matches the entire line, the regex ".*+" does , because .*+ consumes the entire input, including the final ". Thus, possessive quantifiers are most useful with negated character classes, e.g. "[^"]*+", which matches "Ganymede," when applied to the same string. Another common extension serving the same function is atomic grouping, which disables backtracking for a parenthesized group. The typical syntax is . For example, while matches both and , only matches because the engine is forbidden from backtracking and try with setting the group as "w". Possessive quantifiers are easier to implement than greedy and lazy quantifiers, and are typically more efficient at runtime. Patterns for non-regular languages Many features found in virtually all modern regular expression libraries provide an expressive power that exceeds the regular languages. For example, many implementations allow grouping subexpressions with parentheses and recalling the value they match in the same expression (). This means that, among other things, a pattern can match strings of repeated words like "papa" or "WikiWiki", called squares in formal language theory. The pattern for these strings is (.+)\1. The language of squares is not regular, nor is it context-free, due to the pumping lemma. However, pattern matching with an unbounded number of backreferences, as supported by numerous modern tools, is still context sensitive. The general problem of matching any number of backreferences is NP-complete, growing exponentially by the number of backref groups used. However, many tools, libraries, and engines that provide such constructions still use the term regular expression for their patterns. This has led to a nomenclature where the term regular expression has different meanings in formal language theory and pattern matching. For this reason, some people have taken to using the term regex, regexp, or simply pattern to describe the latter. Larry Wall, author of the Perl programming language, writes in an essay about the design of Raku: Other features not found in describing regular languages include assertions. These include the ubiquitous and , as well as some more sophisticated extensions like lookaround. They define the surrounding of a match and don't spill into the match itself, a feature only relevant for the use case of string searching. Some of them can be simulated in a regular language by treating the surroundings as a part of the language as well. Implementations and running times There are at least three different algorithms that decide whether and how a given regex matches a string. The oldest and fastest relies on a result in formal language theory that allows every nondeterministic finite automaton (NFA) to be transformed into a deterministic finite automaton (DFA). The DFA can be constructed explicitly and then run on the resulting input string one symbol at a time. Constructing the DFA for a regular expression of size m has the time and memory cost of O(2m), but it can be run on a string of size n in time O(n). Note that the size of the expression is the size after abbreviations, such as numeric quantifiers, have been expanded. An alternative approach is to simulate the NFA directly, essentially building each DFA state on demand and then discarding it at the next step. This keeps the DFA implicit and avoids the exponential construction cost, but running cost rises to O(mn). The explicit approach is called the DFA algorithm and the implicit approach the NFA algorithm. Adding caching to the NFA algorithm is often called the "lazy DFA" algorithm, or just the DFA algorithm without making a distinction. These algorithms are fast, but using them for recalling grouped subexpressions, lazy quantification, and similar features is tricky. Modern implementations include the re1-re2-sregex family based on Cox's code. The third algorithm is to match the pattern against the input string by backtracking. This algorithm is commonly called NFA, but this terminology can be confusing. Its running time can be exponential, which simple implementations exhibit when matching against expressions like that contain both alternation and unbounded quantification and force the algorithm to consider an exponentially increasing number of sub-cases. This behavior can cause a security problem called Regular expression Denial of Service (ReDoS). Although backtracking implementations only give an exponential guarantee in the worst case, they provide much greater flexibility and expressive power. For example, any implementation which allows the use of backreferences, or implements the various extensions introduced by Perl, must include some kind of backtracking. Some implementations try to provide the best of both algorithms by first running a fast DFA algorithm, and revert to a potentially slower backtracking algorithm only when a backreference is encountered during the match. GNU grep (and the underlying gnulib DFA) uses such a strategy. Sublinear runtime algorithms have been achieved using Boyer-Moore (BM) based algorithms and related DFA optimization techniques such as the reverse scan. GNU grep, which supports a wide variety of POSIX syntaxes and extensions, uses BM for a first-pass prefiltering, and then uses an implicit DFA. Wu agrep, which implements |
a good heart but is also very lazy, he has a long-standing desire to return to Earth and start a farm and/or diner on Fiji (which is under three feet of water following a volcanic eruption), but is left impossibly far away by the accident, which renders him the last known surviving member of the human race. He likes Indian food, especially chicken vindaloo, which is a recurring theme in the series. Chris Barrie as Arnold Judas Rimmer:A second-class technician on the Red Dwarf who is Lister's bunkmate and direct superior. The second-lowest-ranking member of the original crew, he is responsible for the accident that killed the entire crew except for Lister; although Rimmer himself did not survive, Holly, considering him to be the person most likely to keep Lister sane, selects him to be the ship's one available hologram, recreating Rimmer's appearance and personality as he was before his death. Now the de facto leader of the Red Dwarf, he is despised by the rest of the crew due to his fussy, bureaucratic, neurotic, insecure, and cowardly personality, and has a particularly conflictual relationship with Lister. During Series 7, Rimmer leaves the dimension shared by his crewmates to become his swashbuckling dimensional counterpart, Ace Rimmer. However, pre-hologram Rimmer, along with the rest of the original crew, is resurrected by nanobots at the start of Series 8; after coming face to face with Death at the end of the series, whom he kicks in the groin, he is once again a hologram from series 9 onwards, although the circumstances that led to this are never fully explained. Danny John-Jules as the Cat:A humanoid creature with cat-like teeth who evolved from the offspring of Lister's smuggled pet cat Frankenstein. The Cat or simply "Cat" (who is never given an actual name) is self-centered and concerned with little other than sleeping, eating, and fawning over his appearance, and tends not to socialise with other members of the crew in early episodes. Over time, he grows closer to his crewmates and becomes a useful part of the crew. Unlike his human companions, he has a "cool" sounding pulse, six nipples, and colour-coordinated internal organs. Norman Lovett (regular series 1-2, 8-9, The Promised Land; guest series 7, 12) and Hattie Hayridge (guest series 2; regular series 3-5) as Holly:The ship's computer who appears on screens as a floating head and originally had a functional IQ of 6000, although this is severely depleted during the three million years Lister is in stasis, during which Holly remained alone without any maintenance; has a result, they developed "computer senility". Although Holly is male during the first two series, they become female between series 2 and 3, taking the voice and appearance of Hilly, an alternative version of themselves encountered in the series 2 finale and with whom they had fallen in love. Following an unexplained absence in series 6, male Holly returns in the series 7 finale. Between series 8 and 9, Lister's bath overflows, and the water gets into Holly's circuitry, causing them to malfunction and go offline. In The Promised Land, the discovery of a backup drive allows the return of male Holly, originally with their memory and IQ rebooted, but eventually back to their usual dysfunctional self. David Ross (guest series 2) and Robert Llewellyn (regular series 3-present) as Kryten 2X4B-523P:A sanitation android rescued by the crew from the crashed spaceship Nova 5 in the first episode of series 2, after having spent countless years continuing to serve the ship's crew without realizing they had been long dead; bound by his "behavioural protocols", he is taught independent thinking by Lister and leaves the Red Dwarf on a space-bike to enjoy his newfound freedom. Between series 2 and 3, he is rescued by the crew after his space-bike crashed on an asteroid, and has become part of the Red Dwarf crew; however, the accident lead to his face appearing permanently different. Categorized as a "series 4000 service mechanoid", he keeps on maintaining the Red Dwarf, while also showing himself very resourceful due to his proficiency with technology and encyclopedic knowledge of the universe; he maintains a strong friendship with Lister throughout the series. Clare Grogan (recurring season 1; guest series 2, 6) and Chloë Annett (regular series 7-8; guest series 9) as Kristine Kochanski:A navigation officer in the original Red Dwarf crew whom Lister had a crush on (later retconned to be his ex-girlfriend) and whose memory he had cherished ever since. After appearing in several episodes following her death, once directly due to Lister time travelling and later as various individuals impersonating her, an alternate version of Kochanski from a universe in which she, not Lister, is the last living human, joins the series' main universe and the Red Dwarf crew in the series 7 episode "Ouroboros". As part of the crew, she progressively gets closer to Lister, while struggling to overcome her past romantic relationship with her original universe's Lister, and has a conflictual relationship with Kryten, who is jealous of the interest Lister has for her. Between series 8 and 9, she is no longer part of the crew, and is believed by Lister to be dead; it is later revealed that she had actually fled the ship when it became clear Lister's complete lack of self-respect and indulgence on excesses was slowly killing him, which greatly depressed her; Kryten, the only one aware of her departure, pretended to have witnessed her death to avoid hurting Lister's feelings even more. After learning the truth, Lister hopes to reunite with her one day. In addition to Grogan and Annett, Suzanne Rhatigan and Anastasia Hille portray false versions of Kochanski in episodes of series 4 and series 5 respectively, while Holly Earl portrays a younger version of her in an episode of series 8. Production The first series aired on BBC2 in 1988. Eleven full series and one miniseries have so far been produced, and a feature length special was released in 2020. Concept and commission The concept for the show was originally developed from the sketch series Dave Hollins: Space Cadet on the BBC Radio 4 show Son of Cliché in the mid-1980s, written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. Their influences came from films and television programmes such as Star Trek (1966), Silent Running (1972), Alien (1979), Dark Star (1974) and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981), but also had a large element of British-style comedy and satire thrown into the mix, ultimately moulded into the form of a sitcom. Many visual and character elements bear similarities to the Trident nuclear submarine BBC documentary Defence of the Realm. Having written the pilot script in 1983, the former Spitting Image writers pitched their unique concept to the BBC, but it was rejected on fears that a science fiction sitcom would not be popular. It was finally accepted by BBC North in 1986, a result of a spare budget being assigned for a second series of Happy Families that would never arise, and producer Paul Jackson's insistence that Red Dwarf should be filmed instead. The show was lucky to be remounted after an electricians' strike partway through rehearsals in early 1987 shut the entire production down (the title sequence was filmed in January 1987). The filming was rescheduled for September, and the pilot episode finally made it onto television screens on 15 February 1988. Despite the commission of further series, the cast felt like "outsiders" at the BBC. Co-creator Doug Naylor attributed this to the show getting commissioned by BBC Manchester, but filming at Shepperton Studios near where the cast lived in London. When the show won an International Emmy Award in 1994, Naylor's attempts to have the cast invited to a party thrown by the BBC proved futile when they objected to Craig Charles and Danny John-Jules's inclusion, claiming they were "fire risks". Casting Alan Rickman and Alfred Molina auditioned for roles in the series, with Molina being cast as Rimmer. However, after Molina had difficulties with the concept of the series, and of his role in particular, the role was recast and filled by Chris Barrie, a professional voice-actor and impressionist who had previously worked with both the writers on Spitting Image and with the producers on Happy Families and Jasper Carrott productions. Craig Charles, a Liverpudlian "punk poet", was given the role of Dave Lister. He was approached by the production team for his opinion about the "Cat" character, as they were concerned it may be considered by people as racist. Charles described "Cat" as 'pretty cool' and after reading the script he decided he wanted to audition for the part of Dave Lister. Laconic stand-up comedian Norman Lovett, who had originally tried out for the role of Rimmer, was kept in the show as Holly, the senile computer of the titular ship. A professional dancer and singer, Danny John-Jules, arriving half an hour late for his appointment, stood out as the Cat immediately. This was partly due to his "cool" exterior, dedicated research (reading Desmond Morris's book Catwatching), and his showing up in character, wearing his father's 1950s-style zoot suit. Writing, producing and directing Grant and Naylor wrote the first six series together (using the pseudonym Grant Naylor on the first two novels and later as the name of their production company, although never on the episodes themselves). Grant left in 1995, to pursue other projects, leaving Naylor to write series VII and VIII with a group of new writers, including Paul Alexander and actor Robert Llewellyn (who portrayed the character Kryten). For the most part, Ed Bye produced and directed the series. He left before series V due to a scheduling clash (he ended up directing a show starring his wife, Ruby Wax) so Juliet May took over as director. May parted ways with the show halfway through the series for personal and professional reasons and Grant and Naylor took over direction of the series, in addition to writing and producing. Series VI was directed by Andy de Emmony, and Ed Bye returned to direct series VII and VIII. Series I, II and III were made by Paul Jackson Productions, with subsequent series produced by the writers' own company Grant Naylor Productions for BBC North. All eight series were broadcast on BBC Two. At the beginning of series IV, production moved from BBC North's New Broadcasting House in Manchester to Shepperton. Theme song and music The opening theme tune, closing theme tune, and incidental music were written and performed by Howard Goodall, with the vocals on the closing theme tune by Jenna Russell. The first two series used a relatively sombre instrumental version of the closing theme for the opening titles; from series III onwards this switched to a more upbeat version, with Goodall singing on vocoder, the line "Red Dwarf" four times in the second half of the song. Goodall also wrote music for the show's various songs, including "Tongue Tied", with lyrics written by Grant and Naylor. Danny John-Jules (credited as 'The Cat') re-orchestrated and released "Tongue Tied" on 11 October 1993; it reached number 17 on the UK charts. Goodall himself sang "The Rimmer Song" heard during the series VII episode "Blue", to which Chris Barrie mimed. Remastered In 1998, on the tenth anniversary of the show's first airing (and between the broadcast of series VII and VIII), the first three series of Red Dwarf were remastered and released on VHS. The remastering included replacing model shots with computer graphics, cutting certain dialogue and scenes, re-filming Norman Lovett's Holly footage, creating a consistent set of opening titles, replacing music and creating ambient sound effects with a digital master. The remastered series were released in a 4-disc DVD box set "The Bodysnatcher Collection" in 2007. Hiatus Four years elapsed between series VI and VII, partly due to the dissolving of the Grant and Naylor partnership, but also due to cast and crew working on other projects. When the series eventually returned, it was filmised and no longer shot in front of a live audience, allowing for greater use of four-walled sets, location shooting, and single-camera techniques. When the show returned for its eighth series two years later, however, it had dropped use of the filmising process and returned to using a live audience. The show received a setback when the BBC rejected proposals for a series IX. Doug Naylor confirmed in 2007 that the BBC decided not to renew the series as they preferred to work on other projects. A short animated Christmas special was, however, made available to mobile phone subscribers the same year. Ultimately, however, fans had to wait a decade before the series finally returned to television. Revival Red Dwarf: Back to Earth In 2008, a three-episode production was commissioned by the digital channel Dave. Red Dwarf: Back to Earth was broadcast over the Easter weekend of 2009, along with a "making of" documentary. The episode was set nine years after the events of "Only the Good..." (with the cliffhanger ending of that episode left unresolved, a situation that would continue with series X). The storyline involves the characters arriving back on Earth, circa 2009, only to find that they are characters in a TV show called "Red Dwarf". Kochanski is supposedly dead and Holly is offline due to water damage caused by Lister leaving a tap running. Actress Sophie Winkleman played a character called Katerina, a resurrected hologram of a Red Dwarf science officer intent on replacing Rimmer. To achieve a more cinematic atmosphere, Back to Earth was not filmed in front of a studio audience. Some previous Red Dwarf episodes had been shot in that way ("Bodyswap" and all of the seventh series), but Back to Earth represented the first time that a laughter track was not added before broadcast. It was also the first episode of Red Dwarf to be filmed in high definition. The specials were televised over three nights, starting on Friday 10 April 2009. The broadcasts received record ratings for Dave; the first of the three episodes represented the UK's highest-ever viewing figures for a commissioned programme on a digital network. Back to Earth was released on DVD on 15 June 2009, and on Blu-ray on 31 August 2009. Back to Earth was subsequently described on the series' official website as "for all intents and purposes, the 'ninth series' of Red Dwarf". This placement was confirmed when Series X was commissioned and branded as the tenth series, although Back to Earth continues not to be referred to as "Series IX" on home media or digital releases. Red Dwarf X On 10 April 2011, Dave announced that it had commissioned a six-episode series X to be broadcast on Dave in late 2012. Filming dates for the new series Red Dwarf X were announced on 11 November 2011, along with confirmation that the series would be shot at Shepperton Studios in front of an audience. Principal filming began on 16 December 2011 and ended on 27 January 2012, and the cast and crew subsequently returned for six days filming pick-ups. Discounting guest stars, only the core cast of Charles, Barrie, Llewellyn and John-Jules returned for Series X, with Annett and Lovett absent, though the scripts include references to Kochanski and Holly. On 20 July 2012, a 55-second trailer for series X was released on Facebook, followed by a new "teaser" every Friday. The new series debuted on Thursday 4 October 2012. Red Dwarf XI and XII Following series X, which attracted high viewing figures, Dave, Doug Naylor and the cast showed strong interest in making another series. During the Dimension Jump fan convention in May 2013, Doug Naylor stated that discussions were ongoing with all involved parties and while arrangements had not been finalised, he hoped shooting could begin in February 2014. In October 2013, Robert Llewellyn posted on his blog, stating that "an eleventh series would happen" and that it would be "sometime in 2014". Llewellyn later removed the post from his blog and Doug Naylor issued a statement on Twitter, saying: "Getting tweets claiming Red Dwarf XI is commissioned. Not true. Not yet." However, in January 2014, Danny John-Jules stated that the eleventh series of Red Dwarf was in the process of being written. At the April 2014 Sci-Fi Scarborough Festival, during the Red Dwarf cast panel, Danny John-Jules stated that filming of the eleventh series would commence in October 2014, with an expected release of Autumn 2015 on Dave. On 2 May 2015, at the Dimension Jump XVIII convention, Naylor announced that an eleventh and a twelfth series had been commissioned. The two series would be shot back-to-back towards the end of 2015 for broadcast on Dave in 2016 and 2017, respectively, and would be co-produced by Baby Cow Productions, with company CEO, Henry Normal, executive producing the new episodes. Series XI and XII were filmed back-to-back at Pinewood Studios between November 2015 and March 2016. The eleventh series premiered on UKTV's video on demand service UKTV Play on 15 September 2016, a week ahead of its broadcast transmission on 22 September. On 8 September 2017, it was announced that Red Dwarf XII would begin broadcasting on Dave on 12 October 2017, and on 15 September 2017 it was further announced that each episode would preview a week earlier via the UKTV Play video on demand service, effectively meaning that series 12 would be starting on 5 October 2017. Red Dwarf: The Promised Land In late May 2019, in a radio interview, Robert Llewellyn stated that a thirteenth series was happening and in June of that year, Danny John-Jules stated that it was expected to be wrapped up by the end of 2019. However, in October 2019, UKTV announced that a 90-minute feature-length special would be produced instead, to be filmed from December 2019 to January 2020, with location filming scheduled for November. Three 60-minute documentaries were also announced to accompany it, intended to act as a retrospective of all previous 12 series. In January 2020, the first publicity photos of the special were released, with Ray Fearon revealed as the first confirmed guest actor portraying Rodon, the "leader of the feral cats". In February 2020, the day before the 32nd anniversary of when Red Dwarf first aired, a synopsis was given by the official Red Dwarf website: "The special will see the posse meet three cat clerics (Tom Bennett, Mandeep Dhillon, Lucy Pearman) who worship Lister as their God. Lister vows to help them as they're being hunted by Rodon, the ruthless feral cat leader (Ray Fearon) who has vowed to wipe out all cats who worship anyone but him." Al Roberts was also added to the cast in an undisclosed role and Norman Lovett officially announced to be returning as Holly following his one-off guest spot in Series XII. On 10 March 2020, in an exclusive with Radio Times, a teaser trailer was released. A rough release date of sometime in April was given and, a day later on 11 March 2020, the official Twitter account for Dave revealed the title of the television film: Red Dwarf: The Promised Land. Themes Red Dwarf was founded on the standard sitcom focus of a disparate and frequently dysfunctional group of individuals living together in a restricted setting. With the main characters routinely displaying their cowardice, incompetence and laziness, while exchanging insulting and sarcastic dialogue, the series provided a humorous antidote to the fearless and morally upright space explorers typically found in science-fiction series, with its main characters acting bravely only when there was no other possible alternative. The increasing science-fiction elements of the series were treated seriously by creators Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. Satire, parody and drama were alternately woven into the episodes, referencing other television series, films and books. These have included references to the likes of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Top Gun (1986), RoboCop (1987), Star Wars (1977), Citizen Kane (1942), The Wild One (1953), High Noon (1952), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Casablanca (1942), Easy Rider (1969), The Terminator (1984), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Isaac Asimov's Robot series (1939–85) and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The writers based the whole theme of some episodes on the plots of feature films. The series III episode "Polymorph" references and parodies key moments from Alien (1979); from series IV, "Camille" echoes key scenes from Casablanca (1942), while "Meltdown" borrows the main plot from Westworld (1973). For series IX, "Back to Earth" was partially inspired by Blade Runner (1982). The series' themes are not limited to films or television, having also incorporated historical events and figures. Religion also plays a part in the series, as a significant factor in the ultimate fate of the Cat race, and the perception of Lister as their 'God', both within the episode "Waiting for God" (whose title makes a literary reference to the Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot), as well as the crew meeting a man who they believe to be Jesus Christ in series X episode "Lemons". The series VII episode titled "Ouroboros" derives its name and theme from the ancient mythological snake by the same name. The third episode of series VI, "Gunmen of the Apocalypse", was based on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The series explores many science-fiction staples such as time-travel paradoxes (including the grandfather paradox), the question of determinism and free will (on several episodes), the pursuit of happiness in virtual reality and, crucially to the show's premise of Lister being the last human, the near-certainty of the human species' extinction some time in the far future. Aliens do not feature in the series, as Grant and Naylor decided very early in the process that they did not want aliens involved. This is usually addressed with Rimmer's belief in extraterrestrial life being shot down, such as a vessel he believes to be an alien ship turning out to be a garbage pod. However, there are non-human life forms such as evolutions of Earth species (e.g. the Cat race), robotic or holo-life forms created by humans, and a kind of 'Genetically Engineered Life Form' (GELF), an artificially created creature. Simulants and GELFs frequently serve as antagonists among the later series of the show. Hallmarks The series developed its own distinct vocabulary. Words and phrases such as hologrammatic, dollarpound, Felis sapiens, Simulants, GELF, space weevil, and Zero Gee Football appear throughout the series, highlighting a development in language, political climate, technology, evolution and culture in the future. The creators also employed a vocabulary of fictional expletives to avoid using potentially offensive words in the show and to give nuance to futuristic colloquial language; in particular, "smeg" (and variants such as "smegging", "smegger", and "smeg-head") features prominently, alongside the terms "gimboid", "goit" and "Gwenlan". Episodes Ratings Red Dwarf I Red Dwarf VIII Back to Earth Red Dwarf X Red Dwarf XI Red Dwarf XII The Promised Land Reception and achievements Critical reception The changes that were made to the series' cast, setting, creative teams and even production values from series to series have meant that opinions differ greatly between fans and critics as to the quality of certain series. In the "Great Red Dwarf Debate", published in volume 2 issue 3 of the Red Dwarf Smegazine, science-fiction writers Steve Lyons and Joe Nazzaro both argued on the pros and cons of the early series against the later series. Lyons stated that what the show "once had was a unique balance of sci-fi comedy, which worked magnificently." Nazarro agreed that "the first two series are very original and very funny", but went on to say that "it wasn't until series III that the show hit its stride." Series VI is regarded as a continuation of the "monster of the week" philosophy of series V, which was nevertheless considered to be visually impressive. Discussions revolve around the quality of series VI, seen by one reviewer as just as good as the earlier series', but criticised by another reviewer as a descent into formulaic comedy with an unwelcome change of setting. The changes seen in series VII were seen by some as a disappointment; while much slicker and higher-budget in appearance, the shift away from outright sitcom and into something approaching comedy drama was seen by one reviewer as a move in the wrong direction. Furthermore, the attempt to shift back into traditional sitcom format for series VIII was greeted with a response that was similarly lukewarm. There was criticism aimed at the decision to resurrect the entire crew of Red Dwarf, as it was felt this detracted from the series' central premise of Lister being the last human being alive. There are other critics who feel that series VII and VIII are no weaker than the earlier series, however, and the topic is the subject of constant fervent debate among the show's fanbase. The return of the series on Dave has been met with a mostly positive reception. Achievements Although the pilot episode of the show gathered over four million viewers, viewing figures dipped in successive episodes and the first series had generally poor ratings. Through | and immediate superior Arnold Judas Rimmer (a character plagued by failure) is resurrected by Holly as a hologram to keep Lister sane. They are joined by a creature known only as Cat, the last member of a race of humanoid felines that evolved in the ship's hold from Lister's pregnant cat during the 3 million years that Lister was in stasis. The series revolves around Lister being the last human alive, 3 million years from Earth, with his companions. The crew encounter phenomena such as time distortions, faster-than-light travel, mutant diseases and strange lifeforms (all evolved from Earth, because the series has no aliens) that had developed in the intervening millions of years. Though it has a science fiction setting, much of the humour comes from the interactions of the characters, particularly the laid-back Lister and the stuck-up Rimmer. Despite the pastiche of science fiction used as a backdrop, Red Dwarf is primarily a character-driven comedy, with science fiction elements used as complementary plot devices. Especially in the early episodes, a recurring source of comedy was the Odd Couple-style relationship between the two central characters of the show, who have an intense dislike for each other, yet are trapped together deep in space. In Series III, the computer Holly changes from male (Norman Lovett) to female (Hattie Hayridge), and the mechanoid Kryten (who had appeared in one episode in Series II) joins the crew and becomes a regular character. In Series VI, a story arc is introduced where Red Dwarf has been stolen, and the crew pursue it in the smaller Starbug craft, with the side effect that the character Holly disappears. Series VII is also set in Starbug. Early in series VII, Rimmer departs (due to actor Chris Barrie's commitments) and is replaced by Kristine Kochanski, Lister's long-term love interest, from an alternate universe. Kochanski becomes a regular character for Series VII and VIII. At the end of Series VII, we learn that Kryten's service nanobots, which had abandoned him years earlier, were behind the theft of the Red Dwarf at the end of series five. At the beginning of the eighth series, Kryten's nanobots reconstruct the Red Dwarf, which they had broken down into its constituent atoms. As a consequence, Series VIII features the entire original crew of Red Dwarf resurrected (except for the already-alive Lister and Kochanski), including a pre-accident Rimmer; and the original male Holly. The series ends with a metal-eating virus loose on Red Dwarf. The entire crew evacuate save the main cast (Lister, Rimmer, Cat, Kryten and Kochanski), whose fates are unresolved in a cliffhanger ending. Series IX onwards revert to the same four main characters of Series 3–6 (Lister, Rimmer, Cat and Kryten), on Red Dwarf and without Kochanski or Holly; Rimmer reappears as a hologram once again. While it was left unmentioned whether the Rimmer on board ship is the one who originally left, the revived version, or a third incarnation entirely (episodes have alluded to him remembering events from both previous incarnations' lives); with the release of The Promised Land, series-creator, Doug Naylor, confirmed in 2020 that the Rimmer from Back To Earth onwards is the original Rimmer having returned from his time being Ace Rimmer. Characters and actors Craig Charles as David "Dave" Lister:A third-class technician on the Red Dwarf, who was the lowest-ranking of the 169 original crew members, and alone survived the accident due to being in stasis as punishment for smuggling an unquarantined cat on board. A Scouser and self-described bum who has a good heart but is also very lazy, he has a long-standing desire to return to Earth and start a farm and/or diner on Fiji (which is under three feet of water following a volcanic eruption), but is left impossibly far away by the accident, which renders him the last known surviving member of the human race. He likes Indian food, especially chicken vindaloo, which is a recurring theme in the series. Chris Barrie as Arnold Judas Rimmer:A second-class technician on the Red Dwarf who is Lister's bunkmate and direct superior. The second-lowest-ranking member of the original crew, he is responsible for the accident that killed the entire crew except for Lister; although Rimmer himself did not survive, Holly, considering him to be the person most likely to keep Lister sane, selects him to be the ship's one available hologram, recreating Rimmer's appearance and personality as he was before his death. Now the de facto leader of the Red Dwarf, he is despised by the rest of the crew due to his fussy, bureaucratic, neurotic, insecure, and cowardly personality, and has a particularly conflictual relationship with Lister. During Series 7, Rimmer leaves the dimension shared by his crewmates to become his swashbuckling dimensional counterpart, Ace Rimmer. However, pre-hologram Rimmer, along with the rest of the original crew, is resurrected by nanobots at the start of Series 8; after coming face to face with Death at the end of the series, whom he kicks in the groin, he is once again a hologram from series 9 onwards, although the circumstances that led to this are never fully explained. Danny John-Jules as the Cat:A humanoid creature with cat-like teeth who evolved from the offspring of Lister's smuggled pet cat Frankenstein. The Cat or simply "Cat" (who is never given an actual name) is self-centered and concerned with little other than sleeping, eating, and fawning over his appearance, and tends not to socialise with other members of the crew in early episodes. Over time, he grows closer to his crewmates and becomes a useful part of the crew. Unlike his human companions, he has a "cool" sounding pulse, six nipples, and colour-coordinated internal organs. Norman Lovett (regular series 1-2, 8-9, The Promised Land; guest series 7, 12) and Hattie Hayridge (guest series 2; regular series 3-5) as Holly:The ship's computer who appears on screens as a floating head and originally had a functional IQ of 6000, although this is severely depleted during the three million years Lister is in stasis, during which Holly remained alone without any maintenance; has a result, they developed "computer senility". Although Holly is male during the first two series, they become female between series 2 and 3, taking the voice and appearance of Hilly, an alternative version of themselves encountered in the series 2 finale and with whom they had fallen in love. Following an unexplained absence in series 6, male Holly returns in the series 7 finale. Between series 8 and 9, Lister's bath overflows, and the water gets into Holly's circuitry, causing them to malfunction and go offline. In The Promised Land, the discovery of a backup drive allows the return of male Holly, originally with their memory and IQ rebooted, but eventually back to their usual dysfunctional self. David Ross (guest series 2) and Robert Llewellyn (regular series 3-present) as Kryten 2X4B-523P:A sanitation android rescued by the crew from the crashed spaceship Nova 5 in the first episode of series 2, after having spent countless years continuing to serve the ship's crew without realizing they had been long dead; bound by his "behavioural protocols", he is taught independent thinking by Lister and leaves the Red Dwarf on a space-bike to enjoy his newfound freedom. Between series 2 and 3, he is rescued by the crew after his space-bike crashed on an asteroid, and has become part of the Red Dwarf crew; however, the accident lead to his face appearing permanently different. Categorized as a "series 4000 service mechanoid", he keeps on maintaining the Red Dwarf, while also showing himself very resourceful due to his proficiency with technology and encyclopedic knowledge of the universe; he maintains a strong friendship with Lister throughout the series. Clare Grogan (recurring season 1; guest series 2, 6) and Chloë Annett (regular series 7-8; guest series 9) as Kristine Kochanski:A navigation officer in the original Red Dwarf crew whom Lister had a crush on (later retconned to be his ex-girlfriend) and whose memory he had cherished ever since. After appearing in several episodes following her death, once directly due to Lister time travelling and later as various individuals impersonating her, an alternate version of Kochanski from a universe in which she, not Lister, is the last living human, joins the series' main universe and the Red Dwarf crew in the series 7 episode "Ouroboros". As part of the crew, she progressively gets closer to Lister, while struggling to overcome her past romantic relationship with her original universe's Lister, and has a conflictual relationship with Kryten, who is jealous of the interest Lister has for her. Between series 8 and 9, she is no longer part of the crew, and is believed by Lister to be dead; it is later revealed that she had actually fled the ship when it became clear Lister's complete lack of self-respect and indulgence on excesses was slowly killing him, which greatly depressed her; Kryten, the only one aware of her departure, pretended to have witnessed her death to avoid hurting Lister's feelings even more. After learning the truth, Lister hopes to reunite with her one day. In addition to Grogan and Annett, Suzanne Rhatigan and Anastasia Hille portray false versions of Kochanski in episodes of series 4 and series 5 respectively, while Holly Earl portrays a younger version of her in an episode of series 8. Production The first series aired on BBC2 in 1988. Eleven full series and one miniseries have so far been produced, and a feature length special was released in 2020. Concept and commission The concept for the show was originally developed from the sketch series Dave Hollins: Space Cadet on the BBC Radio 4 show Son of Cliché in the mid-1980s, written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. Their influences came from films and television programmes such as Star Trek (1966), Silent Running (1972), Alien (1979), Dark Star (1974) and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981), but also had a large element of British-style comedy and satire thrown into the mix, ultimately moulded into the form of a sitcom. Many visual and character elements bear similarities to the Trident nuclear submarine BBC documentary Defence of the Realm. Having written the pilot script in 1983, the former Spitting Image writers pitched their unique concept to the BBC, but it was rejected on fears that a science fiction sitcom would not be popular. It was finally accepted by BBC North in 1986, a result of a spare budget being assigned for a second series of Happy Families that would never arise, and producer Paul Jackson's insistence that Red Dwarf should be filmed instead. The show was lucky to be remounted after an electricians' strike partway through rehearsals in early 1987 shut the entire production down (the title sequence was filmed in January 1987). The filming was rescheduled for September, and the pilot episode finally made it onto television screens on 15 February 1988. Despite the commission of further series, the cast felt like "outsiders" at the BBC. Co-creator Doug Naylor attributed this to the show getting commissioned by BBC Manchester, but filming at Shepperton Studios near where the cast lived in London. When the show won an International Emmy Award in 1994, Naylor's attempts to have the cast invited to a party thrown by the BBC proved futile when they objected to Craig Charles and Danny John-Jules's inclusion, claiming they were "fire risks". Casting Alan Rickman and Alfred Molina auditioned for roles in the series, with Molina being cast as Rimmer. However, after Molina had difficulties with the concept of the series, and of his role in particular, the role was recast and filled by Chris Barrie, a professional voice-actor and impressionist who had previously worked with both the writers on Spitting Image and with the producers on Happy Families and Jasper Carrott productions. Craig Charles, a Liverpudlian "punk poet", was given the role of Dave Lister. He was approached by the production team for his opinion about the "Cat" character, as they were concerned it may be considered by people as racist. Charles described "Cat" as 'pretty cool' and after reading the script he decided he wanted to audition for the part of Dave Lister. Laconic stand-up comedian Norman Lovett, who had originally tried out for the role of Rimmer, was kept in the show as Holly, the senile computer of the titular ship. A professional dancer and singer, Danny John-Jules, arriving half an hour late for his appointment, stood out as the Cat immediately. This was partly due to his "cool" exterior, dedicated research (reading Desmond Morris's book Catwatching), and his showing up in character, wearing his father's 1950s-style zoot suit. Writing, producing and directing Grant and Naylor wrote the first six series together (using the pseudonym Grant Naylor on the first two novels and later as the name of their production company, although never on the episodes themselves). Grant left in 1995, to pursue other projects, leaving Naylor to write series VII and VIII with a group of new writers, including Paul Alexander and actor Robert Llewellyn (who portrayed the character Kryten). For the most part, Ed Bye produced and directed the series. He left before series V due to a scheduling clash (he ended up directing a show starring his wife, Ruby Wax) so Juliet May took over as director. May parted ways with the show halfway through the series for personal and professional reasons and Grant and Naylor took over direction of the series, in addition to writing and producing. Series VI was directed by Andy de Emmony, and Ed Bye returned to direct series VII and VIII. Series I, II and III were made by Paul Jackson Productions, with subsequent series produced by the writers' own company Grant Naylor Productions for BBC North. All eight series were broadcast on BBC Two. At the beginning of series IV, production moved from BBC North's New Broadcasting House in Manchester to Shepperton. Theme song and music The opening theme tune, closing theme tune, and incidental music were written and performed by Howard Goodall, with the vocals on the closing theme tune by Jenna Russell. The first two series used a relatively sombre instrumental version of the closing theme for the opening titles; from series III onwards this switched to a more upbeat version, with Goodall singing on vocoder, the line "Red Dwarf" four times in the second half of the song. Goodall also wrote music for the show's various songs, including "Tongue Tied", with lyrics written by Grant and Naylor. Danny John-Jules (credited as 'The Cat') re-orchestrated and released "Tongue Tied" on 11 October 1993; it reached number 17 on the UK charts. Goodall himself sang "The Rimmer Song" heard during the series VII episode "Blue", to which Chris Barrie mimed. Remastered In 1998, on the tenth anniversary of the show's first airing (and between the broadcast of series VII and VIII), the first three series of Red Dwarf were remastered and released on VHS. The remastering included replacing model shots with computer graphics, cutting certain dialogue and scenes, re-filming Norman Lovett's Holly footage, creating a consistent set of opening titles, replacing music and creating ambient sound effects with a digital master. The remastered series were released in a 4-disc DVD box set "The Bodysnatcher Collection" in 2007. Hiatus Four years elapsed between series VI and VII, partly due to the dissolving of the Grant and Naylor partnership, but also due to cast and crew working on other projects. When the series eventually returned, it was filmised and no longer shot in front of a live audience, allowing for greater use of four-walled sets, location shooting, and single-camera techniques. When the show returned for its eighth series two years later, however, it had dropped use of the filmising process and returned to using a live audience. The show received a setback when the BBC rejected proposals for a series IX. Doug Naylor confirmed in 2007 that the BBC decided not to renew the series as they preferred to work on other projects. A short animated Christmas special was, however, made available to mobile phone subscribers the same year. Ultimately, however, fans had to wait a decade before the series finally returned to television. Revival Red Dwarf: Back to Earth In 2008, a three-episode production was commissioned by the digital channel Dave. Red Dwarf: Back to Earth was broadcast over the Easter weekend of 2009, along with a "making of" documentary. The episode was set nine years after the events of "Only the Good..." (with the cliffhanger ending of that episode left unresolved, a situation that would continue with series X). The storyline involves the characters arriving back on Earth, circa 2009, only to find that they are characters in a TV show called "Red Dwarf". Kochanski is supposedly dead and Holly is offline due to water damage caused by Lister leaving a tap running. Actress Sophie Winkleman played a character called Katerina, a resurrected hologram of a Red Dwarf science officer intent on replacing Rimmer. To achieve a more cinematic atmosphere, Back to Earth was not filmed in front of a studio audience. Some previous Red Dwarf episodes had been shot in that way ("Bodyswap" and all of the seventh series), but Back to Earth represented the first time that a laughter track was not added before broadcast. It was also the first episode of Red Dwarf to be filmed in high definition. The specials were televised over three nights, starting on Friday 10 April 2009. The broadcasts received record ratings for Dave; the first of the three episodes represented the UK's highest-ever viewing figures for a commissioned programme on a digital network. Back to Earth was released on DVD on 15 June 2009, and on Blu-ray on 31 August 2009. Back to Earth was subsequently described on the series' official website as "for all intents and purposes, the 'ninth series' of Red Dwarf". This placement was confirmed when Series X was commissioned and branded as the tenth series, although Back to Earth continues not to be referred to as "Series IX" on home media or digital releases. Red Dwarf X On 10 April 2011, Dave announced that it had commissioned a six-episode series X to be broadcast on Dave in late 2012. Filming dates for the new series Red Dwarf X were announced on 11 November 2011, along with confirmation that the series would be shot at Shepperton Studios in front of an audience. Principal filming began on 16 December 2011 and ended on 27 January 2012, and the cast and crew subsequently returned for six days filming pick-ups. Discounting guest stars, only the core cast of Charles, Barrie, Llewellyn and John-Jules returned for Series X, with Annett and Lovett absent, though the scripts include references to Kochanski and Holly. On 20 July 2012, a 55-second trailer for series X was released on Facebook, followed by a new "teaser" every Friday. The new series debuted on Thursday 4 October 2012. Red Dwarf XI and XII Following series X, which attracted high viewing figures, Dave, Doug Naylor and the cast showed strong interest in making another series. During the Dimension Jump fan convention in May 2013, Doug Naylor stated that discussions were ongoing with all involved parties and while arrangements had not been finalised, he hoped shooting could begin in February 2014. In October 2013, Robert Llewellyn posted on his blog, stating that "an eleventh series would happen" and that it would be "sometime in 2014". Llewellyn later removed the post from his blog and Doug Naylor issued a statement on Twitter, saying: "Getting tweets claiming Red Dwarf XI is commissioned. Not true. Not yet." However, in January 2014, Danny John-Jules stated that the eleventh series of Red Dwarf was in the process of being written. At the April 2014 Sci-Fi Scarborough Festival, during the Red Dwarf cast panel, Danny John-Jules stated that filming of the eleventh series would commence in October 2014, with an expected release of Autumn 2015 on Dave. On 2 May 2015, at the Dimension Jump XVIII convention, Naylor announced that an eleventh and a twelfth series had been commissioned. The two series would be shot back-to-back towards the end of 2015 for broadcast on Dave in 2016 and 2017, respectively, and would be co-produced by Baby Cow Productions, with company CEO, Henry Normal, executive producing the new episodes. Series XI and XII were filmed back-to-back at Pinewood Studios between November 2015 and March 2016. The eleventh series premiered on UKTV's video on demand service UKTV Play on 15 September 2016, a week ahead of its broadcast transmission on 22 September. On 8 September 2017, it was announced that Red Dwarf XII would begin broadcasting on Dave on 12 October 2017, and on 15 September 2017 it was further announced that each episode would preview a week earlier via the UKTV Play video on demand service, effectively meaning that series 12 would be starting on 5 October 2017. Red Dwarf: The Promised Land In late May 2019, in a radio interview, Robert Llewellyn stated that a thirteenth series was happening and in June of that year, Danny John-Jules stated that it was expected to be wrapped up by the end of 2019. However, in October 2019, UKTV announced that a 90-minute feature-length special would be produced instead, to be filmed from December 2019 to January 2020, with location filming scheduled for November. Three 60-minute documentaries were also announced to accompany it, intended to act as a retrospective of all previous 12 series. In January 2020, the first publicity photos of the special were released, with Ray Fearon revealed as the first confirmed guest actor portraying Rodon, the "leader of the feral cats". In February 2020, the day before the 32nd anniversary of when Red Dwarf first aired, a synopsis was given by the official Red Dwarf website: "The special will see the posse meet three cat clerics (Tom Bennett, Mandeep Dhillon, Lucy Pearman) who worship Lister as their God. Lister vows to help them as they're being hunted by Rodon, the ruthless feral cat leader (Ray Fearon) who has vowed to wipe out all cats who worship anyone but him." Al Roberts was also added to the cast in an undisclosed role and Norman Lovett officially announced to be returning as Holly following his one-off guest spot in Series XII. On 10 March 2020, in an exclusive with Radio Times, a teaser trailer was |
to what is called "Chomsky normal form" today), but noticed that his "finite state languages" were equivalent to Kleene's "regular events". Closure properties The regular languages are closed under various operations, that is, if the languages K and L are regular, so is the result of the following operations: the set-theoretic Boolean operations: union , intersection , and complement , hence also relative complement . the regular operations: , concatenation , and Kleene star . the trio operations: string homomorphism, inverse string homomorphism, and intersection with regular languages. As a consequence they are closed under arbitrary finite state transductions, like quotient K / L with a regular language. Even more, regular languages are closed under quotients with arbitrary languages: If L is regular then L / K is regular for any K. the reverse (or mirror image) LR. Given a nondeterministic finite automaton to recognize L, an automaton for LR can be obtained by reversing all transitions and interchanging starting and finishing states. This may result in multiple starting states; ε-transitions can be used to join them. Decidability properties Given two deterministic finite automata A and B, it is decidable whether they accept the same language. As a consequence, using the above closure properties, the following problems are also decidable for arbitrarily given deterministic finite automata A and B, with accepted languages LA and LB, respectively: Containment: is LA ⊆ LB ? Disjointness: is LA ∩ LB = {} ? Emptiness: is LA = {} ? Universality: is LA = Σ* ? Membership: given a ∈ Σ*, is a ∈ LB ? For regular expressions, the universality problem is NP-complete already for a singleton alphabet. For larger alphabets, that problem is PSPACE-complete. If regular expressions are extended to allow also a squaring operator, with "A2" denoting the same as "AA", still just regular languages can be described, but the universality problem has an exponential space lower bound, and is in fact complete for exponential space with respect to polynomial-time reduction. Complexity results In computational complexity theory, the complexity class of all regular languages is sometimes referred to as REGULAR or REG and equals DSPACE(O(1)), the decision problems that can be solved in constant space (the space used is independent of the input size). REGULAR ≠ AC0, since it (trivially) contains the parity problem of determining whether the number of 1 bits in the input is even or odd and this problem is not in AC0. On the other hand, REGULAR does not contain AC0, because the nonregular language of palindromes, or the nonregular language can both be recognized in AC0. If a language is not regular, it requires a machine with at least Ω(log log n) space to recognize (where n is the input size). In other words, DSPACE(o(log log n)) equals the class of regular languages. In practice, most nonregular problems are solved by machines taking at least logarithmic space. Location in the Chomsky hierarchy To locate the regular languages in the Chomsky hierarchy, one notices that every regular language is context-free. The converse is not true: for example the language consisting of all strings having the same number of a's as b's is context-free but not regular. To prove that a language is not regular, one often uses the Myhill–Nerode theorem and the pumping lemma. Other approaches include using the closure properties of regular languages or quantifying Kolmogorov complexity. Important subclasses of regular languages include Finite languages, those containing only a finite number of words. These are regular languages, as one can create a regular expression that is the union of every word in the language. Star-free languages, those that can be described by a regular expression constructed from the empty symbol, letters, concatenation and all boolean operators (see algebra of sets) including complementation but not the Kleene star: this class includes all finite languages. The number of words in a regular language Let denote the number of words of length in . The ordinary generating function for L is the formal power series The generating function of a language L is a rational function if L is regular. Hence for every regular language the sequence is constant-recursive; that is, there exist an integer constant , complex constants and complex polynomials such that for every the number of words of length in is . Thus, non-regularity of certain languages can be proved by counting the words of a given length in . Consider, for example, the Dyck language of strings of balanced parentheses. The number of words of length in the Dyck language is equal to the Catalan number , which is not of the form , witnessing the non-regularity of the Dyck language. Care must be taken since some of the eigenvalues could have the same magnitude. For example, the number of words of length in the language of all even binary words is not of the form , but the number of words of even or odd length are of this form; the corresponding eigenvalues are . In general, for every regular language there exists a constant such that for all , the number of words of length is asymptotically . The zeta function of a language L is The zeta function of a regular language is not in general rational, but that of an arbitrary cyclic language is. Generalizations The notion of a regular language has been generalized to infinite words (see ω-automata) and to trees (see tree automaton). Rational set generalizes the notion (of regular/rational language) to monoids that are not necessarily free. Likewise, the notion of a recognizable language (by a finite automaton) has namesake as recognizable set over a monoid that is not necessarily free. Howard Straubing notes | NFAs, calls the languages generated by (any of) these "regular", after which it introduces regular expressions which it terms to describe "rational languages", and finally states "Kleene's theorem" as the coincidence of regular and rational languages. Other authors simply define "rational expression" and "regular expressions" as synonymous and do the same with "rational languages" and "regular languages". Apparently, the term "regular" originates from a 1951 technical report where Kleene introduced "regular events" and explicitly welcomed "any suggestions as to a more descriptive term". Noam Chomsky, in his 1959 seminal article, used the term "regular" in a different meaning at first (referring to what is called "Chomsky normal form" today), but noticed that his "finite state languages" were equivalent to Kleene's "regular events". Closure properties The regular languages are closed under various operations, that is, if the languages K and L are regular, so is the result of the following operations: the set-theoretic Boolean operations: union , intersection , and complement , hence also relative complement . the regular operations: , concatenation , and Kleene star . the trio operations: string homomorphism, inverse string homomorphism, and intersection with regular languages. As a consequence they are closed under arbitrary finite state transductions, like quotient K / L with a regular language. Even more, regular languages are closed under quotients with arbitrary languages: If L is regular then L / K is regular for any K. the reverse (or mirror image) LR. Given a nondeterministic finite automaton to recognize L, an automaton for LR can be obtained by reversing all transitions and interchanging starting and finishing states. This may result in multiple starting states; ε-transitions can be used to join them. Decidability properties Given two deterministic finite automata A and B, it is decidable whether they accept the same language. As a consequence, using the above closure properties, the following problems are also decidable for arbitrarily given deterministic finite automata A and B, with accepted languages LA and LB, respectively: Containment: is LA ⊆ LB ? Disjointness: is LA ∩ LB = {} ? Emptiness: is LA = {} ? Universality: is LA = Σ* ? Membership: given a ∈ Σ*, is a ∈ LB ? For regular expressions, the universality problem is NP-complete already for a singleton alphabet. For larger alphabets, that problem is PSPACE-complete. If regular expressions are extended to allow also a squaring operator, with "A2" denoting the same as "AA", still just regular languages can be described, but the universality problem has an exponential space lower bound, and is in fact complete for exponential space with respect to polynomial-time reduction. Complexity results In computational complexity theory, the complexity class of all regular languages is sometimes referred to as REGULAR or REG and equals DSPACE(O(1)), the decision problems that can be solved in constant space (the space used is independent of the input size). REGULAR ≠ AC0, since it (trivially) contains the parity problem of determining whether the number of 1 bits in the input is even or odd and this problem is not in AC0. On the other hand, REGULAR does not contain AC0, because the nonregular language of palindromes, or the nonregular language can both be recognized in AC0. If a language is not regular, it requires a machine with at least Ω(log log n) space to recognize (where n is the input size). In other words, DSPACE(o(log log n)) equals the class of regular languages. In practice, most nonregular problems are solved by machines taking at least logarithmic space. Location in the Chomsky hierarchy To locate the regular languages in the Chomsky hierarchy, one notices that every regular language is context-free. The converse is not true: for example the language consisting of all strings having the same number of a's as b's is context-free but not regular. To prove that a language is not regular, one often uses the Myhill–Nerode theorem and the pumping lemma. Other approaches include using the closure properties of regular languages or quantifying Kolmogorov complexity. Important subclasses of regular languages include Finite languages, those containing only a finite number of words. These are regular languages, as one can create a regular expression that is the union of every word in the language. Star-free languages, those that can be described by a regular expression constructed from the empty symbol, letters, concatenation and all boolean operators (see algebra of sets) including complementation but not the Kleene star: this class includes all finite languages. The number of words in a regular language Let denote the number of words of length in . The ordinary generating function for L is the formal power series The generating function of a language L is a rational function if L is regular. Hence for every regular language the sequence is constant-recursive; that is, there exist an integer constant , complex constants and complex polynomials such that for every the number of words of length in is . Thus, non-regularity of certain languages can be proved by counting the words of a given length in . Consider, for example, the Dyck language of strings of balanced parentheses. The number of words of length in the Dyck language is equal to the Catalan number , which is not of the form , witnessing the non-regularity of the Dyck language. Care must be taken since some of the eigenvalues could have the same magnitude. For example, the number of words of length in the language of all even binary words is not of the form , but the number of words of even or odd length are of this form; |
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fight against Britain in the cause of Irish independence. American Ambassador to Germany James W. Gerard mentioned the effort in his memoir "Four Years in Germany": The Germans collected all the soldier prisoners of Irish nationality in one camp at Limburg not far from Frankfurt a. M. There efforts were made to induce them to join the German army. The men were well treated and were often visited by Sir Roger Casement who, working with the German authorities, tried to get these Irishmen to desert their flag and join the Germans. A few weaklings were persuaded by Sir Roger who finally discontinued his visits, after obtaining about thirty recruits, because the remaining Irishmen chased him out of the camp. On 27 December 1914 Casement signed an agreement in Berlin to this effect with Arthur Zimmermann in the German Foreign Office. Fifty-two of the 2000 prisoners volunteered for the Brigade. Contrary to German promises, they received no training in the use of machine guns, which at the time were relatively new and unfamiliar weapons. During World War I, Casement is known to have been involved in the German-backed plan by Indians to win their freedom from the British Raj, the "Hindu–German Conspiracy", recommending Joseph McGarrity to Franz von Papen as an intermediary. The Indian nationalists may also have followed Casement's strategy of trying to recruit prisoners of war to fight for Indian independence. Both efforts proved unsuccessful. In addition to finding it difficult to ally with the Germans while held as prisoners, potential recruits to Casement's brigade knew they would be liable to the death penalty as traitors if Britain won the war. In April 1916, Germany offered the Irish 20,000 Mosin–Nagant 1891 rifles, ten machine guns and accompanying ammunition, but no German officers; it was a fraction of the quantity of the arms Casement had hoped for, with no military expertise on offer. Casement did not learn about the Easter Rising until after the plan was fully developed. The German weapons never landed in Ireland; the Royal Navy intercepted the ship transporting them, a German cargo vessel named the Libau, disguised as a Norwegian vessel, Aud-Norge. All the crew were German sailors, but their clothes and effects, even the charts and books on the bridge, were Norwegian. As John Devoy had either misunderstood or disobeyed Pearse's instructions that the arms were under no circumstances to land before Easter Sunday, the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU) members set to unload the arms under the command of Irish Citizen Army officer and trade unionist William Partridge were not ready. The IRB men sent to meet the boat drove off a pier and drowned. The British had intercepted German communications coming from Washington and suspected that there was going to be an attempt to land arms at Ireland, although they were not aware of the precise location. The arms ship, under Captain Karl Spindler, was apprehended by HMS Bluebell on the late afternoon of Good Friday. About to be escorted into Queenstown (present-day Cobh), County Cork on the morning of Saturday 22 April, Captain Spindler scuttled the ship by pre-set explosive charges. It now lies at a depth of 40 metres. Its surviving crew became prisoners of war. Capture, trial, and execution Casement confided his personal papers to Dr Charles Curry, with whom he had stayed at Riederau on the Ammersee, before he left Germany. He departed with Robert Monteith and Sergeant Daniel Beverley (Bailey) of the Irish Brigade in a submarine, initially the , which developed engine trouble, and then the , shortly after the Aud sailed. According to Monteith, Casement believed the Germans were toying with him from the start and providing inadequate aid that would doom a rising to failure. He wanted to reach Ireland before the shipment of arms and to convince Eoin MacNeill (who he believed was still in control) to cancel the rising. Casement sent John McGoey, a recently arrived Irish-American, through Denmark to Dublin, ostensibly to advise what military aid was coming from Germany and when, but with Casement's orders "to get the Heads in Ireland to call off the rising and merely try to land the arms and distribute them". McGoey did not reach Dublin, nor did his message. His fate was unknown until recently. Evidently abandoning the Irish Nationalist cause, he joined the Royal Navy in 1916, survived the war, and later returned to the United States, where he died in an accident on a building site in 1925. In the early hours of 21 April 1916, three days before the rising began, the German submarine put Casement ashore at Banna Strand in Tralee Bay, County Kerry. Suffering from a recurrence of the malaria that had plagued him since his days in the Congo, and too weak to travel, he was discovered by a sergeant of the Royal Irish Constabulary at McKenna's Fort (an ancient ring fort now called Casement's Fort) in Rahoneen, Ardfert, and arrested on charges of high treason, sabotage and espionage against the Crown. He sent word to Dublin about the inadequate German assistance. The Kerry Brigade of the Irish Volunteers might have tried to rescue him over the next three days, but had been ordered by its leadership in Dublin to "do nothing" —not a shot was to be fired in Ireland before the Easter Rising was in train. "He was taken to Brixton Prison to be placed under special observation for fear of an attempt of suicide. There was no staff at the Tower [of London] to guard suicidal cases." At Casement's highly publicised trial for high treason, the prosecution had trouble arguing its case. Casement's crimes had been carried out in Germany and the Treason Act 1351 seemed to apply only to activities carried out on English (or arguably British) soil. A close reading of the Act allowed for a broader interpretation: the court decided that a comma should be read in the unpunctuated original Norman-French text, crucially altering the sense so that "in the realm or elsewhere" referred to where acts were done and not just to where the "King's enemies" might be. Afterwards, Casement himself wrote that he was to be "hanged on a comma", leading to the well-used epigram. During his trial, the prosecution (F. E. Smith), who had admired some of Casement's work before he went over to the Germans, informally suggested to the defence barrister (A. M. Sullivan) that they should jointly produce what are now called the "Black Diaries" in evidence, as this would most likely cause the court to find Casement "guilty but insane" and save his life. Casement refused to agree to this and was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. Before and during the trial and appeal, the British government secretly circulated some excerpts from Casement's journals, exposing Casement as a "sexual deviant". These included numerous explicit accounts of sexual activity. This aroused public opinion against him and influenced those notables who might otherwise have tried to intervene. Given societal norms and the illegality of homosexuality at the time, support for Casement's reprieve declined in some quarters. The journals became known in the 1950s as the Black Diaries. Casement unsuccessfully appealed against his conviction and death sentence. Those who pleaded for clemency for Casement included Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was acquainted with Casement through the work of the Congo Reform Association, poet W. B. Yeats, and playwright George Bernard Shaw. Joseph Conrad could not forgive Casement, nor could Casement's longtime friend, the sculptor Herbert Ward, whose son Charles had been killed on the Western Front that January, and who would change the name of Casement's godson, who had been named after him. Members of the Casement family in Antrim contributed discreetly to the defence fund, although they had sons in the British Army and Navy. A United States Senate appeal against the death sentence was rejected by the British cabinet on the insistence of prosecutor F. E. Smith, an opponent of Irish independence. Casement's knighthood was forfeited on 29 June 1916. On the day of his execution, Casement was received into the Catholic Church at his request. He was attended by two Catholic priests, Dean Timothy Ring and Father James Carey, from the East London parish of SS Mary and Michael. The latter, also known as James McCarroll, said of Casement that he was "a saint ... we should be praying to him [Casement] instead of for him". Casement was hanged at Pentonville Prison in London on 3 August 1916. He was 51 years old. The Black Diaries British officials have claimed that Casement kept the Black Diaries, a set of diaries covering the years 1903, 1910 and 1911 (twice). Jeffrey Dudgeon, who published an edition of all the diaries said, "His homosexual life was almost entirely out of sight and disconnected from his career and political work". If genuine, the diaries reveal Casement was a homosexual who had many partners, had a fondness for young men and mostly paid for sex. In 1916 after Casement's conviction for high treason, the British government circulated alleged photographs of pages of the diary to individuals campaigning for the commutation of Casement's death sentence. At a time of strong conservatism, not least among Irish Catholics, publicising the Black Diaries and Casement's alleged homosexuality undermined support for him. The question of whether the diaries are genuine or forgeries has been much debated. The diaries were declassified for limited inspection (by persons approved by the Home Office) in August 1959. The original diaries may be seen at the British National Archives in Kew. Historians and biographers of Casement's life have taken opposing views. Roger McHugh (in 1976) and Angus Mitchell (in 2000 and later) regard the diaries as forged. In 2012, Mitchell published several articles in the Field Day Review of Notre Dame University. In 2005 the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin published The Giles Report, a private report on the Black Diaries written in 2002. Two US forensic-document examiners reviewed the Giles Report; both were critical of it. James Horan stated, "As editor of the Journal of Forensic Sciences and The Journal of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners, I would not recommend publication of the Giles Report because the report does not show how its conclusion was reached. To the question, 'Is the writing Roger Casement's?' on the basis of the Giles Report as it stands, my answer would have to be I cannot tell." Marcel Matley, a second document examiner, stated, "Even if every document examined were the authentic writing of Casement, this report does nothing to establish the fact." A very brief expert opinion in 1959 by a Home Office employee failed to identify Casement as author of the diaries. This opinion is almost unknown and does not appear in the Casement literature. As late as July 2015 the UK National Archives ambiguously described the Black Diaries as "attributed to Roger Casement", while at the same time unambiguously declaring their satisfaction with the result of the private Giles Report. Mario Vargas Llosa presented a mixed account of Casement's sexuality in his 2010 novel, The Dream of the Celt, suggesting that Casement wrote partially fictional diaries of what he wished had taken place in homosexual encounters. Dudgeon suggested in a 2013 article that Casement needed to be "sexless" to fit his role as a Catholic martyr in the nationalist movement of the time.<ref name="dudgeon">{{cite web|last= Dudgeon|first= Jeffrey|url= http://www.fupress.com/bsfm-sijis|title= Cult of the Sexless Casement with Special Reference to the Novel The Dream of the Celt by Mario Vargas Llosa, Studi irlandesi. A Journal of Irish Studies no. 3 (2013), pp. 35–58.}}</ref> Dudgeon writes, "The evidence that Casement was a busy homosexual is in his own words and handwriting in the diaries, and is colossally convincing because of its detail and extent."Mitchell's argument that has persistently argued that the question of Casement's sexuality has nothing to do with whether or not the diaries are forged has largely debunked Dudgeon's argument. See "The Black Stain", Gay Community News, April 2016. Available here Research published in 2016 again casts doubt on the Black Diaries. "The Casement Secret" by Paul R. Hyde argues that there is no evidence of the existence of the diaries during Casement's lifetime since only typescript pages – allegedly copies – were circulated; no-one was shown the diaries now in the National Archives. An official memorandum by the British Secretary of State dated 6 March 1959 states: "There is no record on the Home Office papers of the diaries or the copies having been shown to anyone outside the Government service before Casement's trial". This argument reflects the question raised in 1955 by Lord Russell of Liverpool concerning the existence of the diaries at the time of Casement's trial. Anatomy of a Lie, by Paul R. Hyde proposes a paradigm shift – the diaries were fabricated after Casement's execution as forged versions of the original typescripts. It is also demonstrated that the homosexual dimension was originally the invention of British Envoy Mansfeldt Findlay in Christiania (present-day Oslo in Norway) in a false memorandum on 29 October 1914. The rarely-seen document containing the first innuendo has never been analysed before and is unmentioned by all Casement authors save one. Hyde also demonstrates that in the following months Findlay amplified his allegations because he feared exposure of his written bribe through a threatened lawsuit against him by Casement; a subsequent diplomatic scandal might have destroyed his career. It is argued that the prosecution offered the diaries to the defence at the start of Casement's trial on 16 May, as part of a plea bargain that would save his life. He had been arrested on 21 April, giving the authorities only 3 weeks in which to forge the diaries, including rare up-country Congolese dialect phrases, which seems impossible. Against this, however, are the verified facts that only police typescripts were offered by prosecutor F. E. Smith and that there was no trial on that date, merely a preliminary hearing to decide about the trial. Therefore, on 16 May no diaries had been forged. Smith had earlier tried to save Casement's life, but he blocked his appeal to the House of Lords and threatened to resign to prevent the cabinet advising the monarch to grant a reprieve as he did not wish to help Irish Independence. It has been suggested that Smith's motive in the original attempt to avoid the death penalty was to compromise the defence by inducing a tacit authentication of the police typescripts. Hyde's book Anatomy of a Lie, published in April 2019 demonstrated that the diary controversy has been framed by various biographers to promote authenticity by skillful use of innuendo, omission and misinformation. The book demonstrates that there is no independent witness evidence for the material existence of the diaries before Casement's execution and that only police typescripts were shown to selected persons including King George V, journalists, politicians, diplomats etc. Hyde's book states that the UK National Archives confirmed that there is no witness evidence. In July 2020, a five-page article titled "Who Framed Roger Casement?" by Paul R. Hyde appeared in the Dublin current affairs magazine Village. The article relates for the first time how a retired British naval commander revealed in private conversation that he knew the diaries had been fabricated by Captain Hall, head of Naval Intelligence during World War I. Commander Clipperton's revelation was passed on to president de Valera in January 1966. The article analyses Kevin MacDonnell's report of the conversation and concludes that the revelation by Clipperton leaves no reasonable doubt as to its veracity. "MacDonnell, a man with no interest in and little time for Casement, found himself by chance listening to insider knowledge spontaneously related to him by someone who otherwise admired and esteemed Hall but who decades later still felt that 'this was an evil piece of work'".Naming the nameless one by Paul Hyde appeared in Village magazine in October 2021. This exposed the forgery in 1957 of a compromising and hitherto unknown poem attributed to Casement and published in the Sunday Times to combat the arguments in Alfred Noyes’ book The Accusing Ghost. Belfast MP H. Montgomery Hyde alleged the manuscript poem was in the National Library of Ireland but no such manuscript has ever been found by anyone. Hyde's article reveals that the typed poem was sent to the newspaper by retired journalist Frank MacDermot who gave no source. The absence of evidence for authenticity of the diaries made it necessary to forge evidence but it is axiomatic that a forgery cannot be evidence for the authenticity of other documents. State funeral Casement's body was buried in quicklime in the prison cemetery at the rear of Pentonville Prison, where he had been hanged. During the decades after | musical." The eyes were "kindly", but not given to laughter: "a sense of humour might have saved him from many things". Joseph Conrad's first impressions of Casement, from an encounter in the Congo he judged "a positive piece of good luck", was "thinks, speaks, well, most intelligent and very sympathetic". Later, after Casement's arrest and trial, Conrad had more critical thoughts: "Already in Africa, I judged he was a man, properly speaking, of no mind at all. I don't mean stupid. I mean that he was all emotion. By emotional force (Putumayo, Congo report etc) he made his way, and sheer temperament--a truly tragic figure." The Congo and the Casement Report Casement worked in the Congo for Henry Morton Stanley and the African International Association from 1884; this association became known as a front for King Leopold II of Belgium in his takeover of what became the so-called Congo Free State. Casement worked on a survey to improve communication and recruited and supervised workmen in building a railroad to bypass the lower 220 miles of the Congo River, which is made unnavigable by cataracts, in order to improve transportation and trade to the Upper Congo. During his commercial work, he learned African languages. In 1890 Casement met Joseph Conrad, who had come to the Congo to pilot a merchant ship, Le Roi des Belges ("King of the Belgians"). Both were inspired by the idea that "European colonisation would bring moral and social progress to the continent and free its inhabitants 'from slavery, paganism and other barbarities.' Each would soon learn the gravity of his error." Conrad published his short novel Heart of Darkness in 1899, exploring the colonial ills. Casement later exposed the conditions he found in the Congo during an official investigation for the British government. In these formative years, he also met Herbert Ward, and they became longtime friends. Ward left Africa in 1889, and devoted his time to becoming an artist, but his experience there strongly influenced his work. Casement joined the Colonial Service, under the authority of the Colonial Office, first serving overseas as a clerk in British West Africa. In August 1901 he transferred to the Foreign Office service as British consul in the eastern part of the French Congo. In 1903 the Balfour Government commissioned Casement, then its consul at Boma in the Congo Free State, to investigate the human rights situation in that colony of the Belgian king, Leopold II. Setting up a private army known as the Force Publique, Leopold had squeezed revenue out of the people of the territory through a reign of terror in the harvesting and export of rubber and other resources. In trade, Belgium shipped guns, whips (chicotte) and other materials to the Congo, used chiefly to suppress the local people. Casement travelled for weeks in the upper Congo Basin to interview people throughout the region, including workers, overseers, and mercenaries. He delivered a long, detailed eyewitness report to the Crown that exposed abuses: "the enslavement, mutilation, and torture of natives on the rubber plantations." It became known as the Casement Report of 1904. King Leopold had held the Congo Free State since 1885, when the Berlin Conference of European powers and the United States effectively gave him free rein in the area. Leopold had exploited the territory's natural resources (mostly rubber) as a private entrepreneur, not as king of the Belgians. Using violence and murder against men and their families, Leopold's private Force Publique had decimated many native villages in the course of forcing the men to gather rubber and abusing them to increase productivity. Casement's report provoked controversy, and some companies with a business interest in the Congo rejected its findings, as did Casement's former boss, Alfred Lewis Jones. When the report was made public, opponents of Congolese conditions formed interest groups, such as the Congo Reform Association, founded by E. D. Morel with Casement's support, and demanded action to relieve the situation of the Congolese. Other European nations followed suit, as did the United States. The British Parliament demanded a meeting of the 14 signatory powers to review the 1885 Berlin Agreement defining interests in Africa. The Belgian Parliament, pushed by Socialist leader Emile Vandervelde and other critics of the king's Congolese policy, forced Léopold to set up an independent commission of inquiry. In 1905, despite Léopold's efforts, it confirmed the essentials of Casement's report. On 15 November 1908, the parliament of Belgium took over the Congo Free State from Léopold and organised its administration as the Belgian Congo. Peru: Abuses against the Putumayo Indians In 1906 the Foreign Office sent Casement to Brazil: first as consul in Santos, then transferred to Pará, and lastly promoted to consul-general in Rio de Janeiro. He was attached as a consular representative to a commission investigating rubber slavery by the Peruvian Amazon Company (PAC), which had been registered in Britain in 1908 and had a British board of directors and numerous stockholders. In September 1909, a journalist named Sidney Paternoster, wrote in Truth, a British magazine, of abuses against PAC workers and competing Colombians in the disputed region of the Peruvian Amazon. In addition, the British consul at Iquitos had said that Barbadians, considered British subjects as part of the empire, had been ill-treated while working for PAC, which gave the government a reason to intervene. Ordinarily it could not investigate the internal affairs of another country. American civil engineer Walter Hardenburg had told Paternoster of witnessing a joint PAC and Peruvian military action against a Colombian rubber station, which they destroyed, stealing the rubber. He also saw Peruvian Indians whose backs were marked by severe whipping, in a pattern called the Mark of Arana (the head of the rubber company), and reported other abuses. PAC, with its operational headquarters in Iquitos, dominated the city and the region. The area was separated from the main population of Peru by the Andes, and it was 1900 miles from the Amazon's mouth at Pará. The British-registered company was effectively controlled by the archetypal rubber baron Julio César Arana and his brother. Born in Lima, Arana had climbed out of poverty to own and operate a company harvesting great quantities of rubber in the Peruvian Amazon, which was much in demand on the world market. The rubber boom had led to expansion in Iquitos as a trading center, as all the company rubber was shipped down the Amazon River from there to the Atlantic port. Numerous foreigners had flocked to the area seeking their fortunes in the rubber boom, or at least some piece of the business. The rough frontier city, both respectable businesses and the vice district, was highly dependent on the PAC. Casement traveled to the Putumayo District, where the rubber was harvested deep in the Amazon Basin, and explored the treatment of the local Indians of Peru. The isolated area was outside the reach of the national government and near the border with Colombia, which periodically made incursions in competition for the rubber. For years, the Indians had been forced into unpaid labor by field staff of the PAC, who exerted absolute power over them and subjected them to near starvation, severe physical abuse, rape of women and girls by the managers and overseers, branding and casual murder. Casement found conditions as inhumane as those in the Congo. He interviewed both the Putumayo and men who had abused them, including three Barbadians who had also suffered from conditions of the company. When the report was publicised, there was public outrage in Britain over the abuses. Casement made two lengthy visits to the region, first in 1910 with a commission of investigators. Casement's report has been described as a "brilliant piece of journalism", as he wove together first-person accounts by both "victims and perpetrators of atrocities ... Never before had distant colonial subjects been given such personal voices in an official document." After his report was made to the British government, some wealthy board members of the PAC were horrified by what they learned. Arana and the Peruvian government promised to make changes. In 1911, the British government asked Casement to return to Iquitos and Putumayo to see if promised changes in treatment had occurred. In a report to the British foreign secretary, dated 17 March 1911, Casement detailed the rubber company's continued use of pillories to punish the Indians:Men, women, and children were confined in them for days, weeks, and often months. ... Whole families ... were imprisoned—fathers, mothers, and children, and many cases were reported of parents dying thus, either from starvation or from wounds caused by flogging, while their offspring were attached alongside of them to watch in misery themselves the dying agonies of their parents. After his return to Britain, Casement repeated his extra-consular campaigning work by organising interventions by the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines' Protection Society and Catholic missions in the region. Some of the company men exposed as killers in his 1910 report were charged by Peru, while most fled the region and were never captured. Some entrepreneurs had smuggled out cuttings from rubber plants and began cultivation in southeast Asia in colonies of the British Empire. The scandal of the PAC caused major losses in business to the company, and rubber demand began to be met by farmed rubber in other parts of the world. With the collapse of business for PAC, most foreigners left Iquitos and it quickly returned to its former status as an isolated backwater. For a period, the Putumayo Indians were largely left alone. Arana was never prosecuted as head of the company. He lived in London for years, then returned to Peru. Despite the scandal associated with Casement's report and international pressure on the Peruvian government to change conditions, Arana later had a successful political career. He was elected a senator and died in Lima, Peru in 1952, aged 88. Casement wrote extensively for his private record (as always) in those two years. During this period he continued to write in his diaries, and the one for 1911 was described as being unusually discursive. He kept them in London along with the 1903 diary and other papers of the period, presumably so they could be consulted in his continuing work as "Congo Casement" and as the saviour of the Putumayo Indians. In 1911 Casement received a knighthood for his efforts on behalf of the Amazonian Indians, having been appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in 1905 for his Congo work. Irish revolutionary In Ireland in 1904, on leave from Africa from that year until 1905, Casement joined the Gaelic League, an organisation established in 1893 to preserve and revive the spoken and literary use of the Irish language. He met the leaders of the powerful Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) to lobby for his work in the Congo. He did not support those, like the IPP, who proposed Home Rule, as he believed that the House of Lords would veto such efforts. Casement was more impressed by Arthur Griffith's new Sinn Féin party (founded 1905), which called for an independent Ireland (through a non-violent series of strikes and boycotts). Its sole imperial tie would be a dual monarchy between Britain and Ireland, modeled on the policy example of Ferenc Deák in Hungary. Casement joined the party in 1905. Casement retired from the British consular service in the summer of 1913. In November of that year he was among those who helped form the Irish Volunteers. He and Eoin MacNeill, later the organisation's chief of staff, co-wrote the Volunteers' manifesto. In July 1914, Casement journeyed to the United States to promote and raise money for the Volunteers among the large and numerous Irish community there. Through his friendship with men such as Bulmer Hobson, a member both of the Volunteers and of the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), Casement established connections with exiled Irish nationalists, particularly Clan na Gael. Elements of the suspicious Clan did not trust Casement completely, as he was not a member of the IRB and held views they considered too moderate. But others, such as John Quinn, regarded him as extreme. Devoy, initially hostile to Casement for his part in conceding control of the Irish Volunteers to John Redmond, was won over in June, and Joseph McGarrity, another Clan leader, became devoted to Casement and remained so from then on. The Howth gun-running in late July 1914, which Casement had helped to organise and finance, further enhanced his reputation. In August 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Casement and John Devoy arranged a meeting in New York with the western hemisphere's top-ranking German diplomat, Count Bernstorff, to propose a mutually beneficial plan: if Germany would sell guns to the Irish revolutionaries and provide military leaders, the Irish would revolt against England, diverting troops and attention from the war with Germany. Bernstorff appeared sympathetic. Casement and Devoy sent an envoy, Clan na Gael president John Kenny, to present their plan personally. Kenny, while unable to meet the German Emperor, did receive a warm reception from Flotow, the German ambassador to Italy, and from Prince von Bülow. In October 1914, Casement sailed for Germany via Norway, traveling in disguise and seeing himself as an ambassador of the Irish nation. While the journey was his idea, Clan na Gael financed the expedition. During their stop in Christiania, his companion Adler Christensen was taken to the British legation, where a reward was allegedly offered if Casement were "knocked on the head". British diplomat Mansfeldt Findlay, in contrast, advised London that Christensen had "implied that their relations were of an unnatural nature and that consequently he had great power over this man". Findlay provided no evidence to support this insinuation. Findlay's handwritten letter of 1914 is kept in University College, Dublin, and is viewable online. This letter—written on official notepaper by Minister Findlay at the British Legation in Oslo—offers to Christensen the sum of £5,000 plus immunity from prosecution and free passage to the United States in return for information leading to the capture of Roger Casement. That amount would be approximately £2,616,000 in 2014. In November 1914, Casement negotiated a declaration by Germany which stated:The Imperial Government formally declares that under no circumstances would Germany invade Ireland with a view to its conquest or the overthrow of any native institutions in that country. Should the fortune of this Great War, that was not of Germany's seeking, ever bring in its course German troops to the shores of Ireland, they would land there not as an army of invaders to pillage and destroy but as the forces of a Government that is inspired by goodwill towards a country and people for whom Germany desires only national prosperity and national freedom. Casement spent most of his time in Germany seeking to recruit an Irish Brigade from among more than 2,000 Irish prisoners-of-war taken in the early months of the war and held in the prison camp of Limburg an der Lahn. His plan was that they would be trained to fight against Britain in the cause of Irish independence. American Ambassador to Germany James W. Gerard mentioned the effort in his memoir "Four Years in Germany": The Germans collected all the soldier prisoners of Irish nationality in one camp at Limburg not far from Frankfurt a. M. There efforts were made to induce them to join the German army. The men were well treated and were often visited by Sir Roger Casement who, working with the German authorities, tried to get these Irishmen to desert their flag and join the Germans. A few weaklings were persuaded by Sir Roger who finally discontinued his visits, after obtaining about thirty recruits, because the remaining Irishmen chased him out of the camp. On 27 December 1914 Casement signed an agreement in Berlin to this effect with Arthur Zimmermann in the German Foreign Office. Fifty-two of the 2000 prisoners volunteered for the Brigade. Contrary to German promises, they received no training in the use of machine guns, which at the time were relatively new and unfamiliar weapons. During World War I, Casement is known to have been involved in the German-backed plan by Indians to win their freedom from the British Raj, the "Hindu–German Conspiracy", recommending Joseph McGarrity to Franz von Papen as an |
the RIRA. McKevitt refused, stating that members would be left defenceless against attacks by the Provisional IRA. In 1999 the RIRA began preparations for a renewed campaign, and in May three members travelled to Split in Croatia to purchase arms, which were smuggled back to Ireland. On 20 October, ten people were arrested when Gardaí raided a RIRA training camp near Stamullen, County Meath. Officers found a firing range inside a disused wine cellar being used as an underground bunker, and seized weapons including an assault rifle, a submachine gun, a semi-automatic pistol and an RPG-18 rocket launcher. An earlier version of the rocket launcher, the RPG-7, had been in the possession of the Provisional IRA from as early as 1972, but this was the first time the RPG-18 had been found in the possession of a paramilitary organisation in Ireland. Return to activity On 20 January 2000 the RIRA issued a call-to-arms in a statement to the Irish News. The statement condemned the Northern Ireland Executive, and stated: "Once again, Óglaigh na hÉireann declares the right of the Irish people to the ownership of Ireland. We call on all volunteers loyal to the Irish Republic to unite to uphold the Republic and establish a permanent national parliament representative of all the people." The RIRA launched its new campaign on 25 February with an attempted bombing of Shackleton Army Barracks in Ballykelly. The bombers were disturbed as they were assembling the device, which would have caused mass murder if detonated, according to soldiers. On 29 February a rocket launcher similar to one seized in the 1999 raid was found near an army base in Dungannon, County Tyrone, and on 15 March three men were arrested following the discovery of 500 lb of home-made explosives when the RUC searched two cars in Hillsborough, County Down. On 6 April a bomb attack took place at Ebrington Barracks in Derry. RIRA members lowered a device consisting of 5 lb of homemade explosives over the perimeter fence using ropes, and the bomb subsequently exploded damaging the fence and an unmanned guardhouse. Bombings in England After the Omagh bombing, the RIRA leadership were unwilling to launch a full-scale campaign in Northern Ireland due to the possibility of civilians being killed. Instead they decided to launch a series of attacks in England, in particular London, which they hoped would attract disenchanted Provisional IRA members to join the RIRA. On 1 June 2000 a bomb damaged Hammersmith Bridge, a symbolic target for Irish republican paramilitary groups. The bridge had been targeted by the Irish Republican Army on 29 March 1939 as part of its Sabotage Campaign, and by the Provisional IRA on 24 April 1996. On 19 July, security forces carried out a controlled explosion on a bomb left at Ealing Broadway station and public transport was disrupted when the Metropolitan Police closed Victoria and Paddington train stations and halted services on the London Underground. On 21 September a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at the MI6 headquarters using an RPG-22 rocket launcher, which generated headlines around the world. In November 2000, security forces foiled a plot to drive 500 lb of homemade explosives to central London that month, a bomb twice as powerful as the one in Omagh. At the time police were warning for weeks that a terrorist attack in London could be imminent. On 21 February 2001 a bomb disguised as a torch left outside a Territorial Army base in Shepherd's Bush seriously injured a 14-year-old cadet, who was blinded and had his hand blown off. A second attack in Shepherd's Bush, the 4 March BBC bombing, injured a civilian outside the BBC Television Centre. The explosion was captured by a BBC cameraman, and the footage was broadcast on TV stations worldwide, and gained mass publicity for the group. On 14 April a bomb exploded at a postal sorting office in Hendon, causing minor damage but no injuries. Three weeks later on 6 May a second bomb exploded at the same building, causing slight injuries to a passer-by. The 3 August 2001 Ealing bombing injured seven people, and on 3 November a car bomb containing 60 lb of home-made explosives was planted in the centre of Birmingham. The bomb did not fully detonate and no one was injured. Renewed campaign in Northern Ireland The successful attack on Hammersmith Bridge encouraged the RIRA leadership to launch further attacks in Northern Ireland. On 19 June 2000 a bomb was found in the grounds of Hillsborough Castle, home of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Peter Mandelson. On 30 June a bomb exploded on the Dublin-to-Belfast railway line near the village of Meigh in County Armagh. The explosion damaged the tracks, and caused disruption to train services. On 9 July a car bomb damaged buildings in Stewartstown, County Tyrone including an RUC station, and on 10 August an attack in Derry was thwarted by the RUC after a van containing a 500 lb bomb failed to stop at a police checkpoint. Following a car chase the bombers escaped across the Irish border, and the Irish Army carried out a controlled explosion on the bomb after the van was found abandoned in County Donegal. On 13 September 2000, two 80 lb bombs were planted at the Magilligan army camp in County Londonderry, one of which was planted in a wooden hut and partially exploded when a soldier opened the door to the hut. The second bomb was found during a follow-up search and made safe by bomb disposal experts. On 11 November the RUC and British Army prevented a mortar attack after stopping a van near Derrylin, County Fermanagh, and the RUC prevented a further attack on 13 January 2001 when an 1100 lb bomb was found in Armagh – the largest bomb found in several years according to the RUC. On 23 January the RIRA attacked Ebrington Army Barracks in Derry for a second time, firing a mortar over a perimeter fence. A mortar similar to the one used in the attack was found by Gardaí near Newtowncunningham on 13 February, and British army bomb disposal experts made safe another mortar found between Dungannon and Carrickmore on 12 April. On 1 August a 40 lb bomb was discovered in a car at the long-stay car park of Belfast International Airport following a telephone warning, and was made safe with two controlled explosions by bomb disposal experts. In December a six-day security operation ended when a 70 lb bomb found under railway tracks at Killeen Bridge near Newry was defused. The operation began following telephone warnings, and the road and railway line connecting Newry to Dundalk were closed due to security alerts. A pipe bomb was discovered at a police officer's home in Annalong, County Down on 3 January 2002, and two teenage boys were injured in County Armagh on 2 March when a bomb hidden in a traffic cone exploded. On 29 March 2002 the RIRA targeted a former member of the Royal Irish Regiment from Sion Mills, County Tyrone, with a bomb attached to his car that failed to explode. On 1 August 2002 a civilian worker was killed by an explosion at a Territorial Army base in Derry. The man, a 51-year-old former member of the Ulster Defence Regiment, was the thirtieth person killed by the RIRA. Arrests Despite the RIRA's renewed activity, the organisation was weakened by the arrest of key members and continued infiltration by informers. McKevitt was arrested on 29 March 2001 and charged with membership of an illegal organisation and directing terrorism, and remanded into custody. In July 2001, following the arrests of McKevitt and other RIRA members, British and Irish government sources hinted that the organisation was now in disarray. Other key figures were jailed, including the RIRA's Director of Operations, Liam Campbell, who was convicted of membership of an illegal organisation, and Colm Murphy who was convicted of conspiring to cause the Omagh bombing, although this conviction was overturned on appeal. On 10 April 2002 Ruairi Convey, from Donaghmede, Dublin, was jailed for three years for membership of the RIRA. During a search of his home a list of names and home addresses of members of the Gardaí's Emergency Response Unit was found. Five RIRA members were also convicted in connection with the 2001 bombing campaign in England, and received sentences varying from 16 years to 22 years' imprisonment. In October 2002, McKevitt and other RIRA members imprisoned in Portlaoise Prison issued a statement calling for the organisation to stand down. After a two-month trial, McKevitt was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment in August 2003 after being convicted of directing terrorism. 2002–2007 After McKevitt's imprisonment, the RIRA regrouped and claimed responsibility for a series of firebomb attacks against premises in Belfast in November 2004, and an attack on a Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) patrol in Ballymena during March 2006 was attributed to the RIRA by the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC). On 9 August 2006, fire bomb attacks by the RIRA hit businesses in Newry, County Down. Buildings belonging to JJB Sports and Carpetright were destroyed, and ones belonging to MFI and TK Maxx were badly damaged. On 27 October 2006, a large amount of explosives was found in Kilbranish, Mount Leinster, County Carlow by police, who believe the RIRA were trying to derail the peace process with a bomb attack. The IMC believe the RIRA were also responsible for a failed mortar attack on Craigavon PSNI Station on 4 December 2006. The IMC's October 2006 report stated that the RIRA remains "active and dangerous" and that it seeks to "sustain its position as a terrorist organisation". The RIRA has stated it has no | responsibility for an attack on Massereene Barracks which killed two British soldiers, the first to be killed in Northern Ireland since 1997. The Real IRA has also been involved in attacks on drug dealers. In July 2012, it was reported that Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD) and other small republican militant groups were merging with the Real IRA. This new entity was named the New IRA (NIRA) by the media but members continue to identify themselves as simply "the Irish Republican Army". Small pockets of the Real IRA that did not merge with the New IRA continue to have a presence in the Republic of Ireland, particularly in Cork and to a lesser extent in Dublin. Origins In July 1997 the Provisional IRA called a ceasefire. On 10 October 1997 a Provisional IRA General Army Convention was held in Falcarragh, County Donegal. At the convention, Provisional IRA Quartermaster General Michael McKevitt—also a member of the 12-person Provisional IRA Executive—denounced the leadership and called for an end to the group's ceasefire and to its participation in the Northern Ireland peace process. He was backed by his partner and fellow Executive member Bernadette Sands McKevitt. The two dissidents were outmanoeuvred by the leadership and were left isolated. The convention backed the pro-ceasefire line, and on 26 October McKevitt and Sands McKevitt resigned from the Executive along with other members. In November 1997 McKevitt and other dissidents held a meeting in a farmhouse in Oldcastle, County Meath, and a new organisation, styling itself Óglaigh na hÉireann, was formed. The organisation attracted disaffected Provisional IRA members from the republican stronghold of South Armagh, as well as Dublin, Belfast, Limerick, Tipperary, County Louth, County Tyrone and County Monaghan. The name "Real IRA" entered common usage when in early 1998 members set up a roadblock in Jonesborough, County Armagh, and told motorists "We're from the IRA. The real IRA". Objectives The RIRA's objective is a united Ireland by forcing the end of British sovereignty over Northern Ireland through the use of physical force. The organisation rejects the Mitchell Principles and the Good Friday Agreement, comparing the latter to the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty which resulted in the partition of Ireland. The organisation aims to uphold an uncompromising form of Irish republicanism and opposes any political settlement that falls short of Irish unity and independence. Bernadette Sands McKevitt, sister of hunger striker Bobby Sands and a founder of the RIRA's political wing, the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, said in an interview that her brother "did not die for cross-border bodies with executive powers. He did not die for nationalists to be equal British citizens within the Northern Ireland state". The RIRA adopted a tactic of bombing town centres to damage the economic infrastructure of Northern Ireland. The organisation also attacks members of the security forces using land mines, home-made mortars and car bombs, and has also targeted England using incendiary devices and car bombs to "spread terror and disruption". Campaign Early campaign The organisation's first action was an attempted bombing in Banbridge, County Down on 7 January 1998. The intention was to explode a car bomb, but this was thwarted when the bomb was defused by security forces. The RIRA continued its campaign in late February with bombings in Moira, County Down and Portadown, County Armagh. On 9 May the organisation announced its existence, in a coded telephone call to Belfast media claiming responsibility for a mortar attack on a police station in Belleek, County Fermanagh. The RIRA also carried out attacks in Newtownhamilton and Newry, and a second attack in Banbridge on 1 August injured 35 people and caused £3.5 million of damage when a car bomb exploded. Despite these attacks the organisation lacked a significant base and was heavily infiltrated by informers. This led to a series of high-profile arrests and seizures by the Garda Síochána in the first half of 1998; these involved the death of RIRA member Rónán Mac Lochlainn who was shot dead trying to escape from police, following an attempted robbery of a security van in County Wicklow. Omagh bombing On 15 August 1998 the RIRA left a car containing 500 lb of home-made explosives in the centre of Omagh, County Tyrone. The bombers could not find a parking space near the intended target of the courthouse, and the car was left 400 metres away. As a result, three inaccurate telephone warnings were issued, and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) believed the bomb was located outside the courthouse. They attempted to establish a security cordon to keep civilians clear of the area, which inadvertently pushed people closer to the location of the bomb. Shortly after, the bomb exploded killing 29 people and injuring 220 others, in what became the single deadliest strike of the Troubles. The bombing caused a major outcry throughout the world, and the Irish and British governments introduced new legislation in an attempt to destroy the organisation. The RIRA also came under pressure from the Provisional IRA, when Provisional IRA members visited the homes of 60 people connected with the RIRA and ordered them to disband and stop interfering with Provisional IRA arms dumps. With the organisation under intense pressure, which included McKevitt and Sands-McKevitt being forced from their home after the media named McKevitt in connection with the bombing, the RIRA called a ceasefire on 8 September. Ceasefire Following the declaration of the ceasefire the RIRA began to regroup, and by the end of October had elected a new leadership and were planning their future direction. In late December Irish government representative Martin Mansergh held a meeting with McKevitt in Dundalk, in an attempt to convince McKevitt to disband the RIRA. McKevitt refused, stating that members would be left defenceless against attacks by the Provisional IRA. In 1999 the RIRA began preparations for a renewed campaign, and in May three members travelled to Split in Croatia to purchase arms, which were smuggled back to Ireland. On 20 October, ten people were arrested when Gardaí raided a RIRA training camp near Stamullen, County Meath. Officers found a firing range inside a disused wine cellar being used as an underground bunker, and seized weapons including an assault rifle, a submachine gun, a semi-automatic pistol and an RPG-18 rocket launcher. An earlier version of the rocket launcher, the RPG-7, had been in the possession of the Provisional IRA from as early as 1972, but this was the first time the RPG-18 had been found in the possession of a paramilitary organisation in Ireland. Return to activity On 20 January 2000 the RIRA issued a call-to-arms in a statement to the Irish News. The statement condemned the Northern Ireland Executive, and stated: "Once again, Óglaigh na hÉireann declares the right of the Irish people to the ownership of Ireland. We call on all volunteers loyal to the Irish Republic to unite to uphold the Republic and establish a permanent national parliament representative of all the people." The RIRA launched its new campaign on 25 February with an attempted bombing of Shackleton Army Barracks in Ballykelly. The bombers were disturbed as they were assembling the device, which would have caused mass murder if detonated, according to soldiers. On 29 February a rocket launcher similar to one seized in the 1999 raid was found near an army base in Dungannon, County Tyrone, and on 15 March three men were arrested following the discovery of 500 lb of home-made explosives when the RUC searched two cars in Hillsborough, County Down. On 6 April a bomb attack took place at Ebrington Barracks in Derry. RIRA members lowered a device consisting of 5 lb of homemade explosives over the perimeter fence using ropes, and the bomb subsequently exploded damaging the fence and an unmanned guardhouse. Bombings in England After the Omagh bombing, the RIRA leadership were unwilling to launch a full-scale campaign in Northern Ireland due to the possibility of civilians being killed. Instead they decided to launch a series of attacks in England, in particular London, which they hoped would attract disenchanted Provisional IRA members to join the RIRA. On 1 June 2000 a bomb damaged Hammersmith Bridge, a symbolic target for Irish republican paramilitary groups. The bridge had been targeted by the Irish Republican Army on 29 March 1939 as part of its Sabotage Campaign, and by the Provisional IRA on 24 April 1996. On 19 July, security forces carried out a controlled explosion on a bomb left at Ealing Broadway station and public transport was disrupted when the Metropolitan Police closed Victoria and Paddington train stations and halted services on the London Underground. On 21 September a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at the MI6 headquarters using an RPG-22 rocket launcher, which generated headlines around the world. In November 2000, security forces foiled a plot to drive 500 lb of homemade explosives to central London that month, a bomb twice as powerful as the one in Omagh. At the time police were warning for weeks that a terrorist attack in London could be imminent. On 21 February 2001 a bomb disguised as a torch left outside a Territorial Army base in Shepherd's Bush seriously injured a 14-year-old cadet, who was blinded and had his hand blown off. A second attack in Shepherd's Bush, the 4 March BBC bombing, injured a civilian outside the BBC Television Centre. The explosion was captured by a BBC cameraman, and the footage was broadcast on TV stations worldwide, and gained mass publicity for the group. On 14 April a bomb exploded at a postal sorting office in Hendon, causing minor damage but no injuries. Three weeks later on 6 May a second bomb exploded at the same building, causing slight injuries to a passer-by. The 3 August 2001 Ealing bombing injured seven people, and on 3 November a car bomb containing 60 lb of home-made explosives was planted in the centre of Birmingham. The bomb did not fully detonate and no one was injured. Renewed campaign in Northern Ireland The successful attack on Hammersmith Bridge encouraged the RIRA leadership to launch further attacks in Northern Ireland. On 19 June 2000 a bomb was found in the grounds of Hillsborough Castle, home of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Peter Mandelson. On 30 June a bomb exploded on the Dublin-to-Belfast railway line near the village of Meigh in County Armagh. The explosion damaged the tracks, and caused disruption to train services. On 9 July a car bomb damaged buildings in Stewartstown, County Tyrone including an RUC station, and on 10 August an attack in Derry was thwarted by the RUC after a van containing a 500 lb bomb failed to stop at a police checkpoint. Following a car chase the bombers escaped across the Irish border, and the Irish Army carried out a controlled explosion on the bomb after the van was found abandoned in County Donegal. On 13 September 2000, two 80 lb bombs were planted at the Magilligan army camp in County Londonderry, one of which was planted in a wooden hut and partially exploded when a soldier opened the door to the hut. The second bomb was found during a follow-up search and made safe by bomb disposal experts. On 11 November the RUC and British Army prevented a mortar attack after stopping a van near Derrylin, County Fermanagh, and the RUC prevented a further attack on 13 January 2001 when an 1100 lb bomb was found in Armagh – the largest bomb found in several years according to the RUC. On 23 January the RIRA attacked Ebrington Army Barracks in Derry for a second time, firing a mortar over a perimeter fence. A mortar similar to the one used in the attack was found by Gardaí near Newtowncunningham on 13 February, and British army bomb disposal experts made safe another mortar found between Dungannon and Carrickmore on 12 April. On 1 August a 40 lb bomb was discovered in a car at the long-stay car park of Belfast International Airport following a telephone warning, and was made safe with two controlled explosions by bomb disposal experts. In December a six-day security operation ended when a 70 lb bomb found under railway tracks at Killeen Bridge near Newry was defused. The operation began following telephone warnings, and the road and railway line connecting Newry to Dundalk were closed due to security alerts. A pipe bomb was discovered at a police officer's home in Annalong, County Down on 3 January 2002, and two teenage boys were injured in County Armagh on |
"PondOWoods". He wrote most of his autobiographical books of life and adventures here. Around 1958, Andrews moved to Carmel Valley, California. He died on March 11, 1960, of heart failure at Peninsula Community Hospital in Carmel, California. He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in his hometown of Beloit. Association with character "Indiana Jones" Douglas Preston of the American Museum of Natural History wrote: "Andrews is allegedly the person that the movie character of Indiana Jones was patterned after. However, neither George Lucas nor the other creators of the films have confirmed this. Other candidates have been suggested, including Colonel Percy Fawcett. The 120-page transcript of the story conferences for the movie does not mention Andrews." An analysis by the Smithsonian Channel concludes that the linkage was indirect, with Andrews (and other explorers) serving as the model for heroes in adventure films of the 1940s and 1950s, who in turn inspired Lucas and his fellow writers. Bibliography Books listed on Worldcat Monographs of the Pacific Cetacea (1914–16) Whale Hunting With Gun and Camera (1916) Camps and Trails in China (1918) Across Mongolian Plains (1921) On The Trail of Ancient Man (1926) Ends of the Earth (1929) The New Conquest of Central Asia (1932) This Business of Exploring (1935) Exploring with Andrews (1938) This Amazing Planet (1939) Under a Lucky Star (1943)Meet your Ancestors, A Biography of Primitive Man (1945)An Explorer Comes Home (1947)My Favorite Stories of the Great Outdoors Editor (1950)Quest in the Desert (1950)Heart of Asia: True Tales of the Far East (1951)Nature's Way: How Nature Takes Care of Her Own (1951)All About Dinosaurs (1953)All About Whales (1954)Beyond Adventure: The Lives of Three Explorers (1954)Quest of the Snow Leopard (1955)All About Strange Beasts of the Past (1956)In the Days of the Dinosaurs (1959) References Further readingDragon Hunter; biography by Charles Gallenkamp (2001) External links Roy Chapman Andrews Society official website 1929 Popular Mechanics'' article about Andrews expedition to Mongolia This | to search for the earliest human remains in Asia. The expeditions did not find human remains. However, Andrews and his team made many other finds, including dinosaur bones and fossil mammals and the first nests full of dinosaur eggs ever discovered. Andrews' account of these expeditions can be found in his book The New Conquest of Central Asia. In his preface to Andrews's 1926 book, On the Trail of the Ancient Man, Henry Fairfield Osborn predicted that the birthplace of modern humans would be found in Asia and stated that he had predicted this decades earlier, even before the Asiatic expeditions. On July 13, 1923, the party was the first in the world to discover dinosaur eggs. Initially thought to be eggs of a ceratopsian, Protoceratops, they were determined in 1995 actually to belong to the theropod Oviraptor. During that same expedition, Walter W. Granger discovered a skull from the Cretaceous period. In 1925, the museum sent a letter back informing the party that the skull was that of a mammal, and therefore even more rare and valuable; more were uncovered. Expeditions in the area stopped during 1926 and 1927. In 1928, the expedition's finds were seized by Chinese authorities but were eventually returned. The 1929 expedition was cancelled. In 1930, Andrews made one final trip and discovered some mastodon fossils. A cinematographer, James B. Shackelford, made filmed records of many of Andrews' expeditions. (Sixty years after Andrews' initial expedition, the American Museum of Natural History sent a new expedition to Mongolia on the invitation of its government to continue exploration.) Later that year, Andrews returned to the United States and divorced his wife, with whom he had two sons. He married his second wife, Wilhelmina Christmas, in 1935. In 1927, the Boy Scouts of America made Andrews an Honorary Scout, a new category of Scout created that same year. This distinction was given to "American citizens whose achievements in outdoor activity, exploration and worthwhile adventure are of such an exceptional character as to capture the imagination of boys...". Andrews was President of The Explorers Club from 1931 to 1934. In 1934, he became the director of the Natural History museum. In his 1935 book The Business of Exploring, he wrote "I was born to be an explorer...There was never any decision to make. I couldn't do anything else and be happy." In 1942, Andrews retired to North Colebrook, Connecticut. He and Wilhelmina lived on a country estate of 160 acres, "PondOWoods". He wrote most of his autobiographical books of life and adventures here. Around 1958, Andrews |
responsible for the National Human Rights Commission. The Examination Yuan is in charge of validating the qualification of civil servants. It is based on the old imperial examination system used in dynastic China. It can be compared to the European Personnel Selection Office of the European Union or the Office of Personnel Management of the United States. It was downsized in 2019, and there have been calls for its abolition. Constitution The constitution was drafted in by the KMT while the ROC still governed the Chinese mainland, went into effect on 25 December 1947. The ROC remained under martial law from 1948 until 1987 and much of the constitution was not in effect. Political reforms beginning in the late 1970s resulted in the end of martial law in 1987, and Taiwan transformed into a multiparty democracy in the early 1990s. The constitutional basis for this transition to democracy was gradually laid in the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China. In addition, these articles localized the Constitution by suspending portions of the Constitution designed for governance of China and replacing them with articles adapted for the governance of and guaranteeing the political rights of residents of the Taiwan Area, as defined in the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area. National boundaries were not explicitly prescribed by the 1947 Constitution, and the Constitutional Court declined to define these boundaries in a 1993 interpretation, viewing the question as a political question to be resolved by the Executive and Legislative Yuans. The 1947 Constitution included articles regarding representatives from former Qing dynasty territories including Tibet and Mongolia (though it did not specify whether this excluded Outer Mongolia). The ROC recognized Mongolia as an independent country in 1946 after signing the 1945 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, but after retreating to Taiwan in 1949 it reneged on its agreement in order to preserve its claim over China. The Additional Articles of the 1990s did not alter national boundaries, but suspended articles regarding Mongolian and Tibetan representatives. The ROC began to accept the Mongolian passport and removed clauses referring to Outer Mongolia from the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area in 2002. In 2012 the Mainland Affairs Council issued a statement clarifying that Outer Mongolia was not part of the ROC's national territory in 1947, and that the termination of the Sino-Soviet Treaty had not altered national territory according to the Constitution. The Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission in the Executive Yuan was abolished in 2017. Major camps Taiwan's political scene is divided into two major camps in terms of cross-Strait relations, i.e. how Taiwan should relate to China or the PRC. The Pan-Green Coalition (e.g. the Democratic Progressive Party) leans pro-independence, and the Pan-Blue Coalition (e.g. the Kuomintang) leans pro-unification. Moderates in both camps regard the Republic of China as a sovereign independent state, but the Pan-Green Coalition regard the ROC as synonymous with Taiwan, while moderates in the Pan-Blue Coalition view it as synonymous with China. These positions formed against the backdrop of the PRC's Anti-Secession Law, which threatens invasion in the event of formal independence. The Pan-Green Coalition is mainly led by the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party and Taiwan Statebuilding Party (TSP). They oppose the idea that Taiwan is part of China, and seeks wide diplomatic recognition and an eventual declaration of formal Taiwan independence. In September 2007, the then ruling Democratic Progressive Party approved a resolution asserting separate identity from China and called for the enactment of a new constitution for a "normal country". It called also for general use of "Taiwan" as the country's name, without abolishing its formal name, the "Republic of China". The name "Taiwan" has been used increasingly often after the emergence of the Taiwanese independence movement. Some members of the coalition, such as former President Chen Shui-bian, argue that it is unnecessary to proclaim independence because "Taiwan is already an independent, sovereign country" and the Republic of China is the same as Taiwan. Despite being a member of KMT prior to and during his presidency, Lee Teng-hui also held a similar view and was a supporter of the Taiwanization movement. The Pan-Blue Coalition, composed of the pro-unification Kuomintang, People First Party (PFP) and New Party generally support the spirit of the 1992 Consensus, where the KMT claimed that there is one China, but that the ROC and PRC have different interpretations of what "China" means. They favour eventual re-unification of China. Regarding independence, the mainstream Pan-Blue position is to maintain the status quo, while refusing immediate reunification. President Ma Ying-jeou stated that there will be no unification nor declaration of independence during his presidency. , Pan-Blue members usually seek to improve relationships with PRC, with a current focus on improving economic ties. National identity Roughly 84 per cent of Taiwan's population are descendants of Han Chinese immigrants from Qing China between 1683 and 1895. Another significant fraction descends from Han Chinese who immigrated from mainland China in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The shared cultural origin combined with several hundred years of geographical separation, some hundred years of political separation and foreign influences, as well as hostility between the rival ROC and PRC have resulted in national identity being a contentious issue with political overtones. Since democratic reforms and the lifting of martial law, a distinct Taiwanese identity (as opposed to Taiwanese identity as a subset of a Chinese identity) is often at the heart of political debates. Its acceptance makes the island distinct from mainland China, and therefore may be seen as a step towards forming a consensus for de jure Taiwan independence. The Pan-Green camp supports a predominantly Taiwanese identity (although "Chinese" may be viewed as cultural heritage), while the Pan-Blue camp supports a predominantly Chinese identity (with "Taiwanese" as a regional/diasporic Chinese identity). The KMT has downplayed this stance in the recent years and now supports a Taiwanese identity as part of a Chinese identity. In annual polls conducted by National Chengchi University, Taiwanese identification has increased substantially since the early 1990s, while Chinese identification has fallen to a low level, and identification as both has also seen a reduction. In 1992, 17.6 percent of respondents identified as Taiwanese, 25.5 percent as Chinese, 46.4 percent as both, and 10.5 percent non-response. In June 2021, 63.3 percent identified as Taiwanese, 2.6 percent as Chinese, 31.4 percent as both, and 2.7 percent non-response. A survey conducted in Taiwan by Global Views Survey Research Center in July 2009 showed that 82.8 percent of respondents consider the ROC and the PRC as two separate countries with each developing on its own but 80.2 percent think they are members of the Chinese. Administrative divisions Taiwan is, in practice, divided into 22 subnational divisions, each with a self-governing body led by an elected leader and a legislative body with elected members. Duties of local governments include social services, education, urban planning, public construction, water management, environmental protection, transport, public safety, and more. There are three types of subnational divisions: special municipalities, counties, and cities. Special municipalities and cities are further divided into districts for local administration. Counties are further divided into townships and county-administered cities which have elected mayors and councils, and share duties with the county. Some divisions are indigenous divisions which have different degrees of autonomy to standard ones. In addition, districts, cities and townships are further divided into villages and neighbourhoods. Military The Republic of China Army takes its roots in the National Revolutionary Army, which was established by Sun Yat-sen in 1925 in Guangdong with a goal of reunifying China under the Kuomintang. When the People's Liberation Army won the Chinese Civil War, much of the National Revolutionary Army retreated to Taiwan along with the government. It was later reformed into the Republic of China Army. Units which surrendered and remained in mainland China were either disbanded or incorporated into the People's Liberation Army. The ROC and the United States signed the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty in 1954, and established the United States Taiwan Defense Command. About 30,000 US troops were stationed in Taiwan, until the United States established diplomatic relations with the PRC in 1979. Today, Taiwan maintains a large and technologically advanced military, mainly as a defence to the constant threat of invasion by the People's Liberation Army using the Anti-Secession Law of the People's Republic of China as a pretext. This law authorizes the use of military force when certain conditions are met, such as a danger to mainlanders. From 1949 to the 1970s, the primary mission of the Taiwanese military was to "retake mainland China" through Project National Glory. As this mission has transitioned away from attack because the relative strength of the PRC has massively increased, the ROC military has begun to shift emphasis from the traditionally dominant Army to the air force and navy. Control of the armed forces has also passed into the hands of the civilian government. As the ROC military shares historical roots with the KMT, the older generation of high-ranking officers tends to have Pan-Blue sympathies. However, many have retired and there are many more non-mainlanders enlisting in the armed forces in the younger generations, so the political leanings of the military have moved closer to the public norm in Taiwan. The ROC began a force reduction plan, Jingshi An (translated to streamlining program), to scale down its military from a level of 450,000 in 1997 to 380,000 in 2001. , the armed forces of the ROC number approximately 300,000, with nominal reserves totalling 3.6 million . Conscription remains universal for qualified males reaching age eighteen, but as a part of the reduction effort many are given the opportunity to fulfill their draft requirement through alternative service and are redirected to government agencies or arms related industries. Current plans call for a transition to a predominantly professional army over the next decade. Conscription periods are planned to decrease from 14 months to 12. In the last months of the Bush administration, Taipei took the decision to reverse the trend of declining military spending, at a time when most Asian countries kept on reducing their military expenditures. It also decided to strengthen both defensive and offensive capabilities. Taipei still keeps a large military apparatus relative to the island's population: military expenditures for 2008 were NTD 334 billion (approximately US $10.5 billion), which accounted for 2.94 per cent of GDP. The armed forces' primary concern at this time, according to the National Defense Report, is the possibility of an invasion by the PRC, consisting of a naval blockade, airborne assault or missile bombardment. Four upgraded Kidd-class destroyers were purchased from the United States, and commissioned into the Republic of China Navy in 2005–2006, significantly upgrading Taiwan's protection from aerial attack and submarine hunting abilities. The Ministry of National Defense planned to purchase diesel-powered submarines and Patriot anti-missile batteries from the United States, but its budget has been stalled repeatedly by the opposition-Pan-Blue Coalition controlled legislature. The military package was stalled from 2001 to 2007 where it was finally passed through the legislature and the US responded on 3 October 2008, with a $6.5 billion arms package including PAC III Anti-Air systems, AH-64D Apache Attack helicopters and other arms and parts. A significant amount of military hardware has been bought from the United States, and, , continues to be legally guaranteed by the Taiwan Relations Act. In the past, France and the Netherlands have also sold military weapons and hardware to the ROC, but they almost entirely stopped in the 1990s under pressure of the PRC. The first line of protection against invasion by the PRC is the ROC's own armed forces. Current ROC military doctrine is to hold out against an invasion or blockade until the US military responds. There is, however, no guarantee in the Taiwan Relations Act or any other treaty that the United States will defend Taiwan, even in the event of invasion. The joint declaration on security between the US and Japan signed in 1996 may imply that Japan would be involved in any response. However, Japan has refused to stipulate whether the "area surrounding Japan" mentioned in the pact includes Taiwan, and the precise purpose of the pact is unclear. The Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS Treaty) may mean that other US allies, such as Australia, could theoretically be involved. While this would risk damaging economic ties with China, a conflict over Taiwan could lead to an economic blockade of China by a greater coalition. Economy The quick industrialization and rapid growth of Taiwan during the latter half of the 20th century has been called the "Taiwan Miracle". Taiwan is one of the "Four Asian Tigers" alongside Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore. Japanese rule prior to and during World War II brought changes in the public and private sectors, most notably in the area of public works, which enabled rapid communications and facilitated transport throughout much of the island. The Japanese also improved public education and made it compulsory for all residents of Taiwan. By 1945, hyperinflation was in progress in mainland China and Taiwan as a result of the war with Japan. To isolate Taiwan from it, the Nationalist government created a new currency area for the island, and began a price stabilization programme. These efforts significantly slowed inflation. When the KMT government fled to Taiwan it brought millions of taels (where 1 tael = 37.5 g or ~1.2 ozt) of gold and the foreign currency reserve of mainland China, which, according to the KMT, stabilized prices and reduced hyperinflation. Perhaps more importantly, as part of its retreat to Taiwan, the KMT brought the intellectual and business elites from mainland China. The KMT government instituted many laws and land reforms that it had never effectively enacted on mainland China. The government also implemented a policy of import-substitution, attempting to produce imported goods domestically. In 1950, with the outbreak of the Korean War, the United States began an aid programme which resulted in fully stabilized prices by 1952. Economic development was encouraged by American economic aid and programmes such as the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, which turned the agricultural sector into the basis for later growth. Under the combined stimulus of the land reform and the agricultural development programmes, agricultural production increased at an average annual rate of 4 per cent from 1952 to 1959, which was greater than the population growth, 3.6 per cent. In 1962, Taiwan had a (nominal) per-capita gross national product (GNP) of $170, placing its economy on a par with those of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. On a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis, its GDP per capita in the early 1960s was $1,353 (in 1990 prices). By 2011 per-capita GNP, adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP), had risen to $37,000, contributing to a Human Development Index (HDI) equivalent to that of other developed countries. In 2019, the HDI calculated by Taiwan's government was the seventh-highest in the Asia-Pacific region. In 1974, Chiang Ching-kuo implemented the Ten Major Construction Projects, the beginning foundations that helped Taiwan transform into its current export driven economy. Since the 1990s, a number of Taiwan-based technology firms have expanded their reach around the world. Well-known international technology companies headquartered in Taiwan include personal computer manufacturers Acer Inc. and Asus, mobile phone maker HTC, as well as electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn, which makes products for Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. Computex Taipei is a major computer expo, held since 1981. Today Taiwan has a dynamic, capitalist, export-driven economy with gradually decreasing state involvement in investment and foreign trade. In keeping with this trend, some large government-owned banks and industrial firms are being privatized. Real growth in GDP has averaged about 8 per cent during the past three decades. Exports have provided the primary impetus for industrialization. The trade surplus is substantial, and foreign reserves are the world's fifth largest. The currency of Taiwan is the New Taiwan dollar. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the economic ties between Taiwan and the People's Republic of China have been very prolific. , more than US$150 billion have been invested in the PRC by Taiwanese companies. Although the economy of Taiwan benefits from this situation, some have expressed the view that the island has become increasingly dependent on the mainland Chinese economy. A 2008 white paper by the Department of Industrial Technology states that "Taiwan should seek to maintain stable relation with China while continuing to protect national security, and avoiding excessive 'Sinicization' of Taiwanese economy." Others argue that close economic ties between Taiwan and mainland China would make any military intervention by the PLA against Taiwan very costly, and therefore less probable. Taiwan's total trade in 2010 reached an all-time high of US$526.04 billion, according to Taiwan's Ministry of Finance. Both exports and imports for the year reached record levels, totalling US$274.64 billion and US$251.4 billion, respectively. In 2001, agriculture constituted only 2 per cent of GDP, down from 35 per cent in 1952. Traditional labour-intensive industries are steadily being moved offshore and with more capital and technology-intensive industries replacing them. High-technology industrial parks have sprung up in every region in Taiwan. The ROC has become a major foreign investor in the PRC, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam. It is estimated that some 50,000 Taiwanese businesses and 1,000,000 businesspeople and their dependents are established in the PRC. Because of its conservative financial approach and its entrepreneurial strengths, Taiwan suffered little compared with many of its neighbours in the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Unlike its neighbours, South Korea and Japan, the Taiwanese economy is dominated by small and medium-sized businesses, rather than the large business groups. The global economic downturn, however, combined with poor policy co-ordination by the new administration and increasing bad debts in the banking system, pushed Taiwan into recession in 2001, the first whole year of negative growth since 1947. Due to the relocation of many manufacturing and labour-intensive industries to the PRC, unemployment also reached a level not seen since the 1970s oil crisis. This became a major issue in the 2004 presidential election. Growth averaged more than 4 per cent in the 2002–2006 period and the unemployment rate fell below 4 per cent. The ROC often joins international organizations (especially ones that also include the People's Republic of China) under a politically neutral name. The ROC has been a member of governmental trade organizations such as the World Trade Organization under the name Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu (Chinese Taipei) since 2002. Transport The Ministry of Transportation and Communications of the Republic of China is the cabinet-level governing body of the transport network in Taiwan. Civilian transport in Taiwan is characterised by extensive use of scooters. In March 2019, 13.86 million were registered, twice that of cars. Both highways and railways are concentrated near the coasts, where the majority of the population resides, with of motorway. Railways in Taiwan are primarily used for passenger services, with Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) operating a circular route and Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR) running high speed services on the west coast. Urban transit systems include Taipei Metro, Kaohsiung Rapid Transit, Taoyuan Metro and New Taipei Metro. Major airports include Taiwan Taoyuan, Kaohsiung, Taipei Songshan and Taichung. There are currently seven airlines in Taiwan, the largest ones being China Airlines and EVA Air. There are four international seaports: Keelung, Kaohsiung, Taichung, and Hualien. Education Taiwan's higher education system was established by Japan during the colonial period. However, after the Republic of China took over in 1945, the system was promptly replaced by the same system as in mainland China which mixed features of the Chinese and American educational systems. Taiwan is well known for adhering to the Confucian paradigm of valuing education as a means to improve one's socioeconomic position in society. Heavy investment and a cultural valuing of education has catapulted the resource-poor nation consistently to the top of global education rankings. Taiwan is one of the top-performing countries in reading literacy, mathematics and sciences. In 2015, Taiwanese students achieved one of the world's best results in mathematics, science and literacy, as tested by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), with the average student scoring 519, compared with the OECD average of 493, placing it seventh in the world. The Taiwanese education system has been praised for various reasons, including its comparatively high test results and its major role in promoting Taiwan's economic development while creating one of the world's most highly educated workforces. Taiwan has also been praised for its high university entrance rate where the university acceptance rate has increased from around 20 per cent before the 1980s to 49 per cent in 1996 and over 95 per cent since 2008, among the highest in Asia. The nation's high university entrance rate has created a highly skilled workforce making Taiwan one of the most highly educated countries in the world with 68.5 per cent of Taiwanese high school students going on to attend university. Taiwan has a high percentage of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree where 45 per cent of Taiwanese aged 25–64 hold a bachelor's degree or higher compared with the average of 33 per cent among member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). On the other hand, the system has been criticised for placing excessive pressure on students while eschewing creativity and producing an excess supply of over-educated university graduates and a high graduate unemployment rate. With a large number of university graduates seeking a limited number of prestigious white collar jobs in an economic environment that is increasingly losing its competitive edge, this has led many graduates to be employed in lower-end jobs with salaries far beneath their expectations. Taiwan's universities have also been under criticism for not being able to fully meet the requirements and demands of Taiwan's 21st-century fast-moving labour market, citing a skills mismatch among a large number of self-assessed, overeducated university graduates who don't fit the demands of the modern Taiwanese labour market. The Taiwanese government has also received criticism for undermining the economy as it has been unable to produce enough jobs to meet the demands of numerous underemployed university graduates. As the Taiwanese economy is largely science and technology based, the labour market demands people who have achieved some form of higher education, particularly related to science and engineering to gain a competitive edge when searching for employment. Although current Taiwanese law mandates only nine years of schooling, 95 per cent of junior high graduates go on to attend a senior vocational high school, university, junior college, trade school, or other higher education institution. Since Made in China 2025 was announced in 2015, aggressive campaigns to recruit Taiwanese chip industry talent to support its mandates resulted in the loss of more than 3,000 chip engineers to mainland China, and raised concerns of a "brain drain" in Taiwan. Many Taiwanese students attend cram schools, or buxiban, to improve skills and knowledge on problem solving against exams of subjects like mathematics, nature science, history and many others. Courses are available for most popular subjects and include lectures, reviews, private tutorial sessions, and recitations. , the literacy rate in Taiwan was 99.03 percent. Demographics Taiwan has a population of about 23.4 million, most of whom are on the island of Taiwan. The remainder live on the outlying islands of Penghu (101,758), Kinmen (127,723), and Matsu (12,506). Largest cities and counties The figures below are the March 2019 estimates for the twenty most populous administrative divisions; a different ranking exists when considering the total metropolitan area populations (in such rankings the Taipei-Keelung metro area is by far the largest agglomeration). The figures reflect the number of household registrations in each city, which may differ from the number of actual residents. Ethnic groups The ROC government reports that over 95 per cent of the population is Han Chinese, including descendants of those who arrived in large numbers starting in the 18th century, 2 percent indigenous Malayo-Polynesian peoples, and 2 percent new immigrants primarily from China and Southeast Asia. The Hoklo people are the largest ethnic group (70 per cent of the total population), whose Han ancestors migrated from the coastal southern Fujian region across the Taiwan Strait starting in the 17th century. The Hakka comprise about 15 per cent of the total population, and descend from Han migrants from eastern Guangdong. The indigenous Taiwanese aborigines number about 533,600 and are divided into 16 groups. The Ami, Atayal, Bunun, Kanakanavu, Kavalan, Paiwan, Puyuma, Rukai, Saisiyat, Saaroa, Sakizaya, Sediq, Thao, Truku and Tsou live mostly in the eastern half of the island, while the Yami inhabit Orchid Island. Languages Mandarin is the primary language used in business and education, and is spoken by the vast majority of the population. Traditional Chinese is used as the writing system. The Republic of China does not have any legally designated official language, but Mandarin plays the role of the de facto official language. Since the May Fourth Movement, written vernacular Chinese had replaced Classical Chinese and emerged as the mainstream written Chinese in the Republic of China. But Classical Chinese continued to be widely used in the Government of the Republic of China. Most government documents in the Republic of China were written in Classical Chinese until reforms in the 1970s, in a reform movement spearheaded by President Yen Chia-kan to shift the written style to a more integrated vernacular Chinese and Classical Chinese style (文白合一行文). After 1 January 2005, the Executive Yuan also changed the long-standing official document writing habit from vertical writing style to horizontal writing style. Today, pure Classical Chinese is occasionally used in formal or ceremonial occasions, religious or cultural rites in Taiwan. The National Anthem of the Republic of China (), for example, is in Classical Chinese. Taoist texts are still preserved in Classical Chinese from the time they were composed. Buddhist texts, or sutras, are still preserved in Classical Chinese from the time they were composed or translated from Sanskrit sources. In practice there is a socially accepted continuum between vernacular Chinese and Classical Chinese. Most official government documents, legal, courts rulings and judiciary documents use a combined vernacular Chinese and Classical Chinese style (文白合一行文). For example, most official notices and formal letters are written with a number of stock Classical Chinese expressions (e.g. salutation, closing). Personal letters, on the other hand, are mostly written in vernacular, but with some Classical phrases, depending on the subject matter, the writer's level of education, etc. As many legal documents are still written in Classical Chinese, which is not easily understood by the general public, a group of Taiwanese had launched the Legal Vernacular Movement hoping to bring more Vernacular Chinese into the legal writings of the Republic of China. 70 per cent of the population belong to the Hoklo ethnic group and speak Hokkien natively in addition to Mandarin. The Hakka group, comprising some 14–18 per cent of the population, speak Hakka. Although Mandarin is the language of instruction in schools and dominates television and radio, non-Mandarin Chinese varieties have undergone a revival in public life in Taiwan, particularly since restrictions on their use were lifted in the 1990s. Formosan languages are spoken primarily by the indigenous peoples of Taiwan. They do not belong to the Chinese or Sino-Tibetan language family, but to the Austronesian language family, and are written in Latin alphabet. Their use among aboriginal minority groups has been in decline as usage of Mandarin has risen. Of the 14 extant languages, five are considered moribund. Taiwan is officially multilingual. A national language in Taiwan is legally defined as "a natural language used by an original people group of Taiwan and the Taiwan Sign Language". As of 2019, policies on national languages are in early stages of implementation, with Hakka and indigenous languages designated as such. Religion The Constitution of the Republic of China protects people's freedom of religion and the practices of belief. Freedom of religion in Taiwan is strong and ranks high at 9.2 in 2018 according to world bank. In 2005, the census reported that the five largest religions were: Buddhism, Taoism, Yiguandao, Protestantism, and Roman Catholicism. According to Pew Research, the religious composition of Taiwan in 2020 is estimated to be 43.8 per cent Folk religions, 21.2 per cent Buddhist, 15.5 Others (including Taoism), 13.7 per cent Unaffiliated, 5.8 per cent Christian and 1% Muslim. Taiwanese aborigines comprise a notable subgroup among professing Christians: "...over 64 per cent identify as Christian... Church buildings are the most obvious markers of Aboriginal villages, distinguishing them from Taiwanese or Hakka villages". There has been a small Muslim community of Hui people in Taiwan since the 17th century. Confucianism is a philosophy that deals with secular moral ethics, and serves as the foundation of both Chinese and Taiwanese culture. The majority of Taiwanese people usually combine the secular moral teachings of Confucianism with whatever religions they are affiliated with. , there were 15,175 religious buildings in Taiwan, approximately one place of worship per 1,572 residents. 12,279 temples were dedicated to Taoism and Buddhism. There were 9,684 Taoist Temples and 2,317 Buddhist Temples. In Taiwan's 36,000 square kilometers of land, there are more than 33,000 places for religious (believers) to worship and gather. On average, there is one temple or church (church) or religious building for every square kilometer. The high density of place of worship is rare in the world, and it is the area with the highest density of religious buildings in the Chinese-speaking world. Taiwan is also the most religious region in the Chinese-speaking world. Even for Christianity, there are 2,845 Churches. A significant percentage of the population of Taiwan is non-religious. Taiwan's strong human rights protections, lack of state-sanctioned discrimination, and generally high regard for freedom of religion or belief earned it a joint #1 ranking in the 2018 Freedom of Thought Report, alongside the Netherlands and Belgium. LGBT On 24 May 2017, the Constitutional Court ruled that then-current marriage laws had been violating the Constitution by denying Taiwanese same-sex couples the right to marry. The Court ruled that if the Legislative Yuan did not pass adequate amendments to Taiwanese marriage laws within two years, same-sex marriages would automatically become lawful in Taiwan. In a referendum question in 2018, however, voters expressed overwhelming opposition to same-sex marriage and supported the removal of content about homosexuality from primary school textbooks. According to the New York Times, the aforementioned referendum questions were subject to a "well-funded and highly organized campaign led by conservative Christians and other groups" involving the use of "misinformation, the bulk of which was spread online". Nevertheless, the vote against same-sex marriage does not affect the court ruling, and on 17 May 2019, Taiwan's parliament approved a bill legalising same-sex marriage, making it the first country in Asia to do so. Public health The current healthcare system in Taiwan, known as National Health Insurance (NHI, ), was instituted in 1995. NHI is a single-payer compulsory social insurance plan that centralizes the disbursement of healthcare funds. The system promises equal access to healthcare for all citizens, and the population coverage had reached 99 per cent by the end of 2004. NHI is mainly financed through premiums, which are based on the payroll tax, and is supplemented with out-of-pocket co-payments and direct government funding. Preventative health service, low-income families, veterans, children under three years old, and catastrophic diseases are exempt from co-payment. Low income households maintain 100 per cent premium coverage by the NHI and co-pays are reduced for disabled or certain elderly people. Early in the program, the payment system was predominantly fee-for-service. Most health providers operate in the private sector and form a competitive market on the health delivery side. However, many healthcare providers took advantage of the system by offering unnecessary services to a larger number of patients and then billing the government. In the face of increasing loss and the need for cost containment, NHI changed the payment system from fee-for-service to a global budget, a kind of prospective payment system, in 2002. The implementation of universal healthcare created fewer health disparities for lower-income citizens in Taiwan. According to a recently published survey, out of 3,360 patients surveyed at a randomly chosen hospital, 75.1 per cent of the patients said they are "very satisfied" with the hospital service; 20.5 per cent said they are "okay" with the service. Only 4.4 per cent of the patients said they are either "not satisfied" or "very not satisfied" with the service or care provided. The Taiwanese disease control authority is the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and during the SARS outbreak in March 2003 there were 347 confirmed cases. During the outbreak the CDC and local governments set up monitoring stations throughout public transportation, recreational sites and other public areas. With full containment in July 2003, there has not been a case of SARS since. Owing to the lessons from SARS, a National Health Command Center was established in 2004, which includes the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC). The CECC has since played a central role in Taiwan's approach to epidemics, including the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, the infant mortality rate was 4.2 deaths per 1,000 live births, with 20 physicians and 71 hospital beds per 10,000 people. Life expectancy at birth in 2020 is 77.5 years and 83.9 years for males and females, respectively. Culture The cultures of Taiwan are a hybrid blend from various sources, incorporating elements of the majority traditional Chinese culture, aboriginal cultures, Japanese cultural influence, traditional Confucianist beliefs, and increasingly, Western values. During the martial law period in which the Republic of China was officially anti-communist, the Kuomintang promoted an official traditional Chinese culture over Taiwan in order to emphasize that the Republic of China represents the true orthodoxy to Chinese Culture (and therefore the "real and legitimate China") as opposed to Communist China. The government launched what's known as the Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement in Taiwan in opposition to the cultural destructions caused by the Chinese Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution. The General Assembly of Chinese Culture (中華文化總會) was established as a movement promotion council to help promote Chinese Culture in Taiwan and overseas. It was Kuomintang's first structured plan for cultural development on Taiwan. Chiang himself was the head of the General Assembly of Chinese Culture. Subsequent President of the Republic of China also became the head of this General Assembly. The Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement in Taiwan coupled with Chinese Cultural education in Taiwan had helped to elevate the cultural refinement, mannerism and politeness of many Taiwanese, in contrast to the cultural destruction (uncultured behaviour) of many mainland Chinese due to the Cultural Revolution. This has also led to Chinese Culture (especially its soft culture) being better preserved in Taiwan than in mainland China. An example of this preservation is the continued use of Traditional Chinese. The influence of Confucianism can be found in the behaviour of Taiwanese people, known for their friendliness and politeness. The uplifting of martial law ushered a period of democratization whereby Freedom of Speech and Expression led to a flourishing Taiwanese literature and Mass media in Taiwan. Reflecting the continuing controversy surrounding the political status of Taiwan, politics continues to play a role in the conception and development of a Taiwanese cultural identity, especially in its relationship to Chinese culture. In recent years, the concept of Taiwanese multiculturalism has been proposed as a relatively apolitical alternative view, which has allowed for the inclusion of mainlanders and other minority groups into the continuing re-definition of Taiwanese culture as collectively held systems of meaning and customary patterns of thought and behaviour shared by the people of Taiwan. Identity politics, along with the over one hundred years of political separation from mainland China, has led to distinct traditions in many areas, including cuisine and music. Arts Acclaimed classical musicians include violinist Cho-Liang Lin, pianist Ching-Yun Hu, and the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society artist director Wu Han. Other musicians include Jay Chou and groups such as Mayday and heavy metal band Chthonic, led by singer Freddy Lim, which has been referred to as the "Black Sabbath of Asia". Taiwanese films have won various international awards at film festivals around the world. Ang Lee, a Taiwanese director, has directed critically acclaimed films such as: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Eat Drink Man Woman; Sense and Sensibility; Brokeback Mountain; Life of Pi; and Lust, Caution. Other famous Taiwanese directors include Tsai Ming-liang, Edward Yang, and Hou Hsiao-hsien. Taiwan has hosted the Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards since 1962. Taiwan hosts the National Palace Museum, which houses more than 650,000 pieces | the support of US funds and demand for Taiwanese products. In the 1970s, Taiwan was economically the second fastest growing state in Asia after Japan. In particular, foreign trade reached $39 billion in 1980, generating a surplus of $46.5 million. The income ratio of the highest to the lowest 20 percent of wage earners decreased from 15:1 in 1952 to 4:1 in 1978, less than that of the United States. Taiwan, along with Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore, became known as one of the Four Asian Tigers. Because of the Cold War, most Western nations and the United Nations regarded the ROC as the sole legitimate government of China until the 1970s. Later, especially after the termination of the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, most nations switched diplomatic recognition to the PRC (see United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758). Until the 1970s the government was regarded by Western critics as undemocratic for upholding martial law, for severely repressing any political opposition, and for controlling media. The KMT did not allow the creation of new parties and those that existed did not seriously compete with the KMT. Thus, competitive democratic elections did not exist. From the late 1970s to the 1990s, however, Taiwan went through reforms and social changes that transformed it from an authoritarian state to a democracy. In 1979, a pro-democracy protest known as the Kaohsiung Incident took place in Kaohsiung to celebrate Human Rights Day. Although the protest was rapidly crushed by the authorities, it is today considered as the main event that united Taiwan's opposition. Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek's son and successor as the ROC president and chairman of the KMT, began reforms to the political system in the mid-1980s. He sought to move more authority to "bensheng ren" (residents of Taiwan before Japan's surrender in World War II and their descendants) instead of continuing to promote "waisheng ren" (residents who came to the island in the 1940s and 50s after Japan's surrender and their descendants) as his father had. In 1984, the younger Chiang selected Lee Teng-hui, a Taiwan-born, US-educated technocrat, to be his vice-president. In 1986, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was formed and inaugurated as the first opposition party in the ROC to counter the KMT. A year later, Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law on the main island of Taiwan (martial law was lifted on Penghu in 1979, Matsu island in 1992 and Kinmen island in 1993). With the KMT lifting martial law, moving toward democracy, and choosing the native Taiwanese Lee Teng-hui to lead the country, the opposition DPP groped for a message; it would go on to lose the first direct presidential election in 1996. Post-martial law era (1987–present) After the death of Chiang Ching-kuo in January 1988, Lee Teng-hui succeeded him and became the first president born in Taiwan. Lee continued the democratic reforms to the government and replaced many "waisheng ren" in government positions with "bensheng ren". Under Lee, Taiwan underwent a process of localization in which Taiwanese culture and history were promoted over a pan-China viewpoint in contrast to earlier KMT policies which had promoted a Chinese identity. Lee's reforms included printing banknotes from the Central Bank rather than the Provincial Bank of Taiwan, and streamlining the Taiwan Provincial Government with most of its functions transferred to the Executive Yuan. Under Lee, the original members of the Legislative Yuan and National Assembly (a former supreme legislative body defunct in 2005), elected in 1947 to represent mainland Chinese constituencies and having held the seats without re-election for more than four decades, were forced to resign in 1991. The previously nominal representation in the Legislative Yuan was brought to an end, reflecting the reality that the ROC had no jurisdiction over mainland China, and vice versa. Restrictions on the use of Taiwanese Hokkien in the broadcast media and in schools were also lifted. Reforms continued in the 1990s. The Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China and the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area defined the status of the ROC, making Taiwan its de facto territory. Lee Teng-hui was re-elected as the KMT candidate in 1996, in the first direct presidential election in the history of the ROC, defeating DDP candidate Peng Ming-min. With democratization, the issue of the political status of Taiwan gradually resurfaced as a controversial issue where, previously, the discussion of anything other than unification under the ROC was taboo. During the later years of Lee's administration, he was involved in corruption controversies relating to government release of land and weapons purchase, although no legal proceedings commenced. In 1997, "To meet the requisites of the nation prior to national unification", the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China was passed and then the former "constitution of five powers" turns to be more tripartite. In 2000, Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party was elected as the first non-Kuomintang (KMT) President and was re-elected to serve his second and last term since 2004, even after he backtracked on the need to declare Taiwan's independence. Meanwhile, polarized politics emerged in Taiwan with the formation of the Pan-Blue Coalition, led by the KMT, and the Pan-Green Coalition, led by the DPP. The former prefers eventual Chinese unification, while the latter prefers Taiwanese independence. In 2004, the Chen administration pushed for a referendum on cross-Strait relations. In early 2006, Chen Shui-bian remarked: "The National Unification Council will cease to function. No budget will be ear-marked for it and its personnel must return to their original posts...The National Unification Guidelines will cease to apply." On 30 September 2007, the ruling DPP approved a resolution asserting a separate identity from China and called for the enactment of a new constitution for a "normal country". It also called for general use of "Taiwan" as the country's name, without abolishing its formal name, the Republic of China. However, Chen alienated moderate constituents who supported the status quo and those with cross-strait economic ties, as well as creating tension with the mainland and disagreements with the United States. In 2008, referendums were held on the same day as the presidential election asking whether Taiwan should join the UN under "Taiwan" (DPP's motion) or "Republic of China"/any other suitable name (KMT's motion). Both failed because only 35 percent of the electorate, below the required threshold of 50 percent, voted. The Chen administration was also dogged by public concerns over reduced economic growth, legislative gridlock due to a pan-blue, opposition-controlled Legislative Yuan, and corruption investigations involving the First Family as well as government officials, lowering the President's ratings to the 20s near the end of his second term. In the January 2008 legislative elections, the KMT's majority in the Legislative Yuan increased. Its nominee Ma Ying-jeou went on to win the presidency in March of the same year, campaigning on a platform of increased economic growth and better ties with the PRC under a policy of "mutual non-denial". Under Ma, Taiwan and China opened up direct flights and cargo shipments, with the latter country even making it possible for Taiwan to participate in the annual World Health Assembly. Threats from China faded from the public's mind, although U.S. analysts Richard Fisher and Richard Bush argued that military tensions with the PRC had not been reduced. In 2014, a group of university students successfully occupied the Legislative Yuan and prevented the ratification of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement in what became known as the Sunflower Student Movement. The movement gave rise to youth-based third parties such as the New Power Party, and is viewed to have contributed to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) victories the 2016 presidential and legislative elections. This marked the first time in Taiwanese history that the KMT lost its legislative majority. In 2016, Tsai Ing-wen of the DPP became the president of Taiwan. In 2020, she called on the international community to defend the self-ruled island's democracy in the face of renewed threats from China and called on the latter to democratize and renounce the use of military force against Taiwan. Chinese leader Xi Jinping had earlier expressed that Taiwan was part of China, who reserves the right to use force but will strive to achieve peaceful "reunification". Xi also offered to discuss unification with parties or individuals under the precondition of "one China", but both Tsai and the KMT rejected Xi's proposal. In January 2020, Tsai was re-elected and in the simultaneous legislative election President Tsai's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won a majority with 61 out of 113 seats. The Kuomintang (KMT) got 38 seats. In the 2020 Democracy Index published by the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit, Taiwan was upgraded from a "flawed democracy" to a "full democracy", after rising from the 31st place to the 11th, more improvement than any other country. It was ranked below Canada but above Germany, Japan, and the United States. Geography The area controlled by the ROC consists of several islands with a combined area of . The main island, known historically as Formosa, makes up 99 per cent of this area, measuring and lying some across the Taiwan Strait from the southeastern coast of mainland China. The East China Sea lies to its north, the Philippine Sea to its east, the Luzon Strait directly to its south and the South China Sea to its southwest. Smaller islands include the Penghu Islands in the Taiwan Strait, the Kinmen, Matsu and Wuqiu islands near the Chinese coast, and some of the South China Sea islands. The main island is a tilted fault block, characterized by the contrast between the eastern two-thirds, consisting mostly of five rugged mountain ranges parallel to the east coast, and the flat to gently rolling plains of the western third, where the majority of Taiwan's population reside. There are several peaks over 3,500 metres, the highest being Yu Shan at , making Taiwan the world's fourth-highest island. The tectonic boundary that formed these ranges is still active, and the island experiences many earthquakes, a few of them highly destructive. There are also many active submarine volcanoes in the Taiwan Straits. Taiwan contains four terrestrial ecoregions: Jian Nan subtropical evergreen forests, South China Sea Islands, South Taiwan monsoon rain forests, and Taiwan subtropical evergreen forests. The eastern mountains are heavily forested and home to a diverse range of wildlife, while land use in the western and northern lowlands is intensive. The country had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.38/10, ranking it 76th globally out of 172 countries. Climate Taiwan lies on the Tropic of Cancer, and its general climate is marine tropical. The northern and central regions are subtropical, whereas the south is tropical and the mountainous regions are temperate. The average rainfall is per year for the island proper; the rainy season is concurrent with the onset of the summer East Asian Monsoon in May and June. The entire island experiences hot, humid weather from June through September. Typhoons are most common in July, August and September. During the winter (November to March), the northeast experiences steady rain, while the central and southern parts of the island are mostly sunny. Due to climate change, the average temperature in Taiwan has risen in the last 100 years, which is twice of the worldwide temperature rise. The goal of the Taiwanese government is to cut carbon emissions by 20 per cent in 2030 compared to 2005 levels, and by 50 per cent in 2050 compared to 2005 levels. Carbon emissions increased by 0.92 per cent between 2005 and 2016. Geology The island of Taiwan lies in a complex tectonic area between the Yangtze Plate to the west and north, the Okinawa Plate on the north-east, and the Philippine Mobile Belt on the east and south. The upper part of the crust on the island is primarily made up of a series of terranes, mostly old island arcs which have been forced together by the collision of the forerunners of the Eurasian Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate. These have been further uplifted as a result of the detachment of a portion of the Eurasian Plate as it was subducted beneath remnants of the Philippine Sea Plate, a process which left the crust under Taiwan more buoyant. The east and south of Taiwan are a complex system of belts formed by, and part of the zone of, active collision between the North Luzon Trough portion of the Luzon Volcanic Arc and South China, where accreted portions of the Luzon Arc and Luzon forearc form the eastern Coastal Range and parallel inland Longitudinal Valley of Taiwan, respectively. The major seismic faults in Taiwan correspond to the various suture zones between the various terranes. These have produced major quakes throughout the history of the island. On 21 September 1999, a 7.3 quake known as the "921 earthquake" killed more than 2,400 people. The seismic hazard map for Taiwan by the USGS shows 9/10 of the island at the highest rating (most hazardous). Political and legal status The political and legal statuses of Taiwan are contentious issues. The People's Republic of China (PRC) claims that Taiwan is Chinese territory and that itself has replaced the ROC government in 1949, becoming the sole legal government of China. The ROC has its own currency, widely accepted passport, postage stamps, internet TLD, armed forces and constitution with an independently elected president. It has not formally renounced its claim to the mainland, but ROC government publications have increasingly downplayed this historical claim. Though it was a founding member of United Nations, the ROC now has neither official membership nor observer status in the organization. Relations with the PRC The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) of Taiwan is responsible for relations with the PRC, while the Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) of the PRC is responsible for relations with Taiwan. Exchanges are conducted through private organizations both founded in 1991: the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) of Taiwan and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) of the PRC. The political environment is complicated by the potential for military conflict should events outlined in the PRC's anti-secession law occur, such as Taiwan declaring de jure independence. While it aims for peaceful reunification, the PRC does not rule out the use of force. There is a substantial military presence on the Fujian coast as well as PRC sorties into Taiwan's ADIZ. The PRC's One-China principle states that Taiwan and mainland China are both part of China, and that the PRC is the only legitimate government of China. meaning that Taiwan participates in many international forums as a non-state member under names such as "Chinese Taipei". For almost 60 years, there were no direct transportation links, including direct flights, between Taiwan and the PRC. This was a problem for many Taiwanese businesses that had opened factories or branches in mainland China. In the 2006 Lunar New Year Speech, President Chen Shui-bian called for managed opening of links. Direct weekend charter flights between Taiwan and mainland China began in July 2008 under the KMT government, and the first direct daily charter flights took off in December 2008. In November 1992, the ARATS and SEF held a meeting which would later become known as the 1992 Consensus. The SEF announced that both sides agreed that that there was only one China, but disagreed on the definition of China (i.e. the ROC vs. PRC), while the AARTS announced that the two agreed on the One China Principle, but did not mention differences regarding its definition made in the SEF statement. This discrepancy between the two statements was criticized by the DPP and former president Lee Teng-hui. The PRC has since viewed it as a prerequisite for dialogue between the ROC and PRC. In February 2000, the PRC suggested the "one country, two systems" employed in Hong Kong as a model for peaceful unification with Taiwan. President Chen Shui-bian of the DPP, elected in March 2000, initially indicated a willingness to accept the 1992 Consensus, but later backed down due to pressure within his party and sought a middle ground by attempting dialogue with the PRC on the basis of the 1992 Consensus without explicitly accepting the One China Principle; this was not well-received by the PRC and official dialogue was suspended. On 29 April 2005, Kuomintang Chairman Lien Chan travelled to Beijing and met with Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Hu Jintao, the first meeting between the leaders of the two parties since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. According to US sources, Hu said in 2008 that talks between Taiwan and the mainland should be restored on the basis of the 1992 Consensus. Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT fully endorsed the 1992 Consensus, though he stated that there would be neither unification nor declaration of independence during his presidency. After becoming elected president in 2008, talks between the ROC and PRC resumed. On 11 February 2014, Mainland Affairs Council head Wang Yu-chi travelled to Nanjing and met with Taiwan Affairs Office head Zhang Zhijun, the first meeting between high-ranking officials from either side. Zhang paid a reciprocal visit to Taiwan and met Wang on 25 June 2014, making Zhang the first minister-level PRC official to ever visit Taiwan. On 7 November 2015, Ma Ying-jeou and Xi Jinping had a face-to-face meeting in Singapore, the first time two ROC and PRC leaders had met since 1945. During the 2016 Taiwanese presidential election, Tsai Ing-wen of the DPP initially pursued a similar strategy as Chen Shui-bian, but after winning the election she received a similarly frosty reception from the PRC. In 2019, Tsai, who supported the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, pledged that as long as she is Taiwan's president, she will never accept "one country, two systems", and that since the PRC equated the 1992 Consensus with "one country, two systems", she could not accept the 1992 Consensus as well. Foreign relations Before 1928, the foreign policy of Republican China was complicated by a lack of internal unity—competing centres of power all claimed legitimacy. This situation changed after the defeat of the Peiyang Government by the Kuomintang (KMT), which led to widespread diplomatic recognition of the Republic of China. After the KMT's retreat to Taiwan, most countries, notably the countries in the Western Bloc, continued to maintain relations with the ROC, but recognition gradually eroded and many countries switched recognition to the People's Republic of China in the 1970s. On 25 October 1971, UN Resolution 2758 was adopted by 76 votes to 35 with 17 abstensions, recognizing the PRC, founded in 1949 on the mainland, as China's sole representative in the United Nations; countries in support included France, India, the UK, and the USSR, and countries in opposition included Japan and the United States. The PRC refuses to have diplomatic relations with any nation that has diplomatic relations with the ROC, and requires all nations with which it has diplomatic relations to make a statement recognizing its claims to Taiwan. As a result, only and the Holy See maintain official diplomatic relations with the Republic of China. The ROC maintains unofficial relations with most countries via de facto embassies and consulates called Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Offices (TECRO), with branch offices called "Taipei Economic and Cultural Offices" (TECO). Both TECRO and TECO are "unofficial commercial entities" of the ROC in charge of maintaining diplomatic relations, providing consular services (i.e. visa applications), and serving the national interests of the ROC in other countries. From 1954 to 1979, the United States was a partner with Taiwan in a mutual defense treaty. The United States remains one of the main supporters of Taiwan and, through the Taiwan Relations Act passed in 1979, has continued selling arms and providing military training to the Armed Forces. This situation continues to be an issue for the People's Republic of China, which considers US involvement disruptive to the stability of the region. In January 2010, the US announced its intention to sell $6.4 billion worth of military hardware to Taiwan. As a consequence, the PRC warned that its co-operation with the US on international and regional issues could suffer and that the companies involved, namely Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and United Technologies, could face Chinese sanctions. The official position of the United States is that the PRC is expected to "use no force or threat[en] to use force against Taiwan" and the ROC is to "exercise prudence in managing all aspects of Cross-Strait relations." Both are to refrain from performing actions or espousing statements "that would unilaterally alter Taiwan's status". On 16 December 2015, the Obama administration announced a deal to sell $1.83 billion worth of arms to the armed forces of the ROC. The foreign ministry of the PRC had expressed its disapproval for the sales and issued the US a "stern warning", saying it would hurt PRC–US relations. In response to US support for Taiwan, the PRC defense minister Wei Fenghe said in 2019 that "If anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, the Chinese military has no choice but to fight at all costs". Participation in international events and organizations The ROC was a founding member of the United Nations, and held the seat of China on the Security Council and other UN bodies until 1971, when it was expelled by Resolution 2758 and replaced in all UN organs with the PRC. Each year since 1992, the ROC has petitioned the UN for entry, but its applications have not made it past committee stage. Due to its limited international recognition, the Republic of China has been a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) since the foundation of the organization in 1991, represented by a government-funded organization, the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD), under the name "Taiwan". Also due to its One China policy, the PRC only participates in international organizations where the ROC does not participate as a sovereign country. Most member states, including the United States, do not wish to discuss the issue of the ROC's political status for fear of souring diplomatic ties with the PRC. However, both the US and Japan publicly support the ROC's bid for membership in the World Health Organization (WHO) as an observer. However, though the ROC sought to participate in the WHO since 1997, their efforts were rejected until 2009, when they participated under the name "Chinese Taipei" after reaching an agreement with Beijing. In 2017, Taiwan again began to be excluded from the WHO even in an observer capacity. This exclusion caused a number of scandals during the COVID-19 outbreak. The Nagoya Resolution in 1979 between Taiwan (ROC), China (PRC), and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) provided a compromise for the ROC to use the name "Chinese Taipei" in international events where the PRC is also a party, such as the Olympic Games. Under the IOC charter, ROC flags cannot be flown at any official Olympic venue or gathering; this caused some concern in 2002 when residents of a downtown condominium in Salt Lake City hung two flags from Taiwan. The ROC also participates in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (since 1991) and the World Trade Organization (since 2002) under the name "Chinese Taipei". It was a founding member of the Asian Development Bank, but since China's ascension in 1986 has participated under the name "Taipei,China". The ROC is able to participate as "China" in organizations in which the PRC does not participate, such as the World Organization of the Scout Movement. A referendum question in 2018 asked if Taiwan's athletes should compete under "Taiwan" in the 2020 Summer Olympics but did not pass; the New York Times attributed the failure to a campaign cautioning that a name change might lead to Taiwan being banned "under Chinese pressure". Domestic opinion Broadly speaking, domestic public opinion has preferred maintaining the status quo, though pro-independence sentiment has steadily risen since 1994. In June 2021, an annual poll run by the National Chengchi University found that 28.2 percent of respondents supported the status quo and postponing a decision, 27.5 percent supported maintaining the status quo indefinitely, 25.8 percent supported the status quo with a move toward independence, 5.9 percent supported the status quo with a move toward unification, 5.7 percent gave no response, 5.6 percent supported independence as soon as possible, and 1.5 percent supported unification as soon as possible. The KMT, the largest Pan-Blue party, supports the status quo for the indefinite future with a stated ultimate goal of unification. However, it does not support unification in the short term with the PRC as such a prospect would be unacceptable to most of its members and the public. Ma Ying-jeou, chairman of the KMT and former president of the ROC, has set out democracy, economic development to a level near that of Taiwan, and equitable wealth distribution as the conditions that the PRC must fulfill for reunification to occur. The Democratic Progressive Party, the largest Pan-Green party, officially seeks independence, but in practice also supports the status quo because neither independence nor re-unification seems likely in the short or even medium term. On 2 September 2008, the Mexican newspaper El Sol de México asked President Ma of the KMT about his views on the subject of "two Chinas" and if there was a solution for the sovereignty issues between the two. The president replied that the relations are neither between two Chinas nor two states. It is a special relationship. Further, he stated that the sovereignty issues between the two cannot be resolved at present, but he quoted the "1992 Consensus", accepted by both the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party, as a temporary measure until a solution becomes available. However, the consensus was rejected by former president Lee Teng-hui, as well as President Tsai Ing-wen and most of the Pan-Green Coalition. On 27 September 2017, Taiwanese premier William Lai of the Democratic Progressive Party said that he was a "political worker who advocates Taiwan independence", but that as Taiwan was already an independent country called the Republic of China, it had no need to declare independence. Government and politics The government of the Republic of China was founded on the 1947 Constitution of the ROC and its Three Principles of the People, which states that the ROC "shall be a democratic republic of the people, to be governed by the people and for the people". It underwent significant revisions in the 1990s, known collectively as the Additional Articles. The government is divided into five branches (Yuan): the Executive Yuan (cabinet), the Legislative Yuan (Congress or Parliament), the Judicial Yuan, the Control Yuan (audit agency), and the Examination Yuan (civil service examination agency). The head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces is the president, who is elected by popular vote for a maximum of 2 four-year terms on the same ticket as the vice-president. The president appoints the members of the Executive Yuan as their cabinet, including a premier, who is officially the President of the Executive Yuan; members are responsible for policy and administration. The main legislative body is the unicameral Legislative Yuan with 113 seats. Seventy-three are elected by popular vote from single-member constituencies; thirty-four are elected based on the proportion of nationwide votes received by participating political parties in a separate party list ballot; and six are elected from two three-member aboriginal constituencies. Members serve four-year terms. Originally the unicameral National Assembly, as a standing constitutional convention and electoral college, held some parliamentary functions, but the National Assembly was abolished in 2005 with the power of constitutional amendments handed over to the Legislative Yuan and all eligible voters of the Republic via referendums. The premier is selected by the president without the need for approval from the legislature, but the legislature can pass laws without regard for the president, as neither he nor the Premier wields veto power. Thus, there is little incentive for the president and the legislature to negotiate on legislation if they are of opposing parties. After the election of the pan-Green's Chen Shui-bian as President in 2000, legislation repeatedly stalled because of deadlock with the Legislative Yuan, which was controlled by a pan-Blue majority. Historically, the ROC has been dominated by strongman single party politics. This legacy has resulted in executive powers currently being concentrated in the office of the president rather than the premier, even though the constitution does not explicitly state the extent of the president's executive power. The Judicial Yuan is the highest judicial organ. It interprets the constitution and other laws and decrees, judges administrative suits, and disciplines public functionaries. The president and vice-president of the Judicial Yuan and additional thirteen justices form the Council of Grand Justices. They are nominated and appointed by the president, with the consent of the Legislative Yuan. The highest court, the Supreme Court, consists of a number of civil and criminal divisions, each of which is formed by a presiding judge and four associate judges, all appointed for life. In 1993, a separate constitutional court was established to resolve constitutional disputes, regulate the activities of political parties and accelerate the democratization process. There is no trial by jury but the right to a fair public trial is protected by law and respected in practice; many cases are presided over by multiple judges. The Control Yuan is a watchdog agency that monitors (controls) the actions of the executive. It can be considered a standing commission for administrative inquiry and can be compared to the Court of Auditors of the European Union or the Government Accountability Office of the United States. It is also responsible for the National Human Rights Commission. The Examination Yuan is in charge of validating the qualification of civil servants. It is based on the old imperial examination system used in dynastic China. It can be compared to the European Personnel Selection Office of the European Union or the Office of Personnel Management of the United States. It was downsized in 2019, and there have been calls for its abolition. Constitution The constitution was drafted in by the KMT while the ROC still governed the Chinese mainland, went into effect on 25 December 1947. The ROC remained under martial law from 1948 until 1987 and much of the constitution was not in effect. Political reforms beginning in the late 1970s resulted in the end of martial law in 1987, and Taiwan transformed into a multiparty democracy in the early 1990s. The constitutional basis for this transition to democracy was gradually laid in the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China. In addition, these articles localized the Constitution by suspending portions of the Constitution designed for governance of China and replacing them with articles adapted for the governance of and guaranteeing the political rights of residents of the Taiwan Area, as defined in the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area. National boundaries were not explicitly prescribed by the 1947 Constitution, and the Constitutional Court declined to define these boundaries in a 1993 interpretation, viewing the question as a political question to be resolved by the Executive and Legislative Yuans. The 1947 Constitution included articles regarding representatives from former Qing dynasty territories including Tibet and Mongolia (though it did not specify whether this excluded Outer Mongolia). The ROC recognized Mongolia as an independent country in 1946 after signing the 1945 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, but after retreating to Taiwan in 1949 it reneged on its agreement in order to preserve its claim over China. The Additional Articles of the 1990s did not alter national boundaries, but suspended articles regarding Mongolian and Tibetan representatives. The ROC began to accept the Mongolian passport and removed clauses referring to Outer Mongolia from the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area in 2002. In 2012 the Mainland Affairs Council issued a statement clarifying that Outer Mongolia was not part of the ROC's national territory in 1947, and that the termination of the Sino-Soviet Treaty had not altered national territory according to the Constitution. The Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission in the Executive Yuan was abolished in 2017. Major camps Taiwan's political scene is divided into two major camps in terms of cross-Strait relations, i.e. how Taiwan should relate to China or the PRC. The Pan-Green Coalition (e.g. the Democratic Progressive Party) leans pro-independence, and the Pan-Blue Coalition (e.g. the Kuomintang) leans pro-unification. Moderates in both camps regard the Republic of China as a sovereign independent state, but the Pan-Green Coalition regard the ROC as synonymous with Taiwan, while moderates in the Pan-Blue Coalition view it as synonymous with China. These positions formed against the backdrop of the PRC's Anti-Secession Law, which threatens invasion in the |
are drawing, a draw may be declared, or the game may enter extra time under the golden point rule, depending on the relevant competition's format. The try is the most common form of scoring, and a team will usually attempt to score one by running and kicking the ball further upfield or passing from player-to-player in order to manoeuvre around the opposition's defence. A try involves touching the ball to the ground on or beyond the defending team's goal-line and is worth four points. A goal is worth two points and may be gained from a conversion or a penalty. A field goal, or drop goal, is only worth one point and is gained by dropping and then kicking the ball on the half volley between the uprights in open play. Field position is crucial in rugby league, achieved by running with or kicking the ball. Passing in rugby league may only be in a backward or sideways direction. Teammates, therefore, have to remain on-side by not moving ahead of the player with the ball. The ball may be kicked ahead, but if teammates are in front of the kicker when the ball is kicked, they are deemed off-side. Tackling is a key component of rugby league play. Only the player holding the ball may be tackled. A tackle is complete, for example, when the player is held by one or more opposing players in such a manner that he can make no further progress and cannot part with the ball, or when the player is held by one or more opposing players and the ball or the hand or arm holding the ball comes into contact with the ground. An attacking team gets a maximum of six tackles to progress up the field before possession is changed over. Once the tackle is completed, the ball-carrier must be allowed to get to his feet to 'play-the-ball'. Ball control is also important in rugby league, as a fumble of the ball on the ground forces a handover, unless the ball is fumbled backwards. The ball can also be turned over by going over the sideline. Comparison with rugby union Rugby league and rugby union are distinct sports with many similarities and a shared origin. Both have the same fundamental rules, are played for 80 minutes and feature an oval-shaped ball and H-shaped goalposts. Both have rules that the ball cannot be passed forward, and dropping it forwards leads to a scrum. Both use tries as the central scoring method and conversion kicks, penalty goals and drop goals as additional scoring methods. However, there are differences in how many points each method is worth. One of the main differences is the rules of possession. When the ball goes into touch, possession in rugby union is contested through a line-out, while in rugby league a scrum restarts play. The lesser focus on contesting possession means that play focuses more on powerful running, hard tackling, forward progression and the contest for field position (commonly compared to an "arm wrestle") ; as a result play stops much less frequently in rugby league, with the ball typically in play for 50 out of the 80 minutes compared to around 35 minutes for professional rugby union. Other differences include that there are fewer players in rugby league (13 compared to 15) and different rules for tackling. Rugby union has more detailed rules than rugby league and has changed less since the 1895 schism. Rugby league historian Tony Collins has written that since rugby union turned professional in the mid-1990s, it has increasingly borrowed techniques, tactics and even laws from rugby league, while high profile players and coaches from the league game have increasingly gone on to success in the union code in those countries where both codes are popular (e.g. Andy Farrell, Jason Robinson and Henry Paul). The inherent similarities between rugby league and rugby union have at times led to experimental hybrid games being played that use a mix of the two sports' rules. Comparison with gridrion codes Much more so than rugby union, rugby league shares significant similarities with North American gridiron codes. Although described as evolving from both rugby and association football, the basic structures of American and Canadian football are remarkably similar to rugby league through a process of parallel evolution: a try-and-goal based scoring system, a set number of plays before handover of the football, each play restarting from a set piece position and ended by a tackle. The introduction of the forward pass and unlimited substitution in North America, however, created a fundamentally different game from either original rugby code. Positions Players on the pitch are divided into forwards and backs, although the game's rules apply to all players the same way. Each position has a designated number to identify himself from other players. These numbers help to identify which position a person is playing. The system of numbering players is different depending on which country the match is played in. In Australia and New Zealand, each player is usually given a number corresponding to their playing position on the field. However, since 1996 European teams have been able to grant players specific squad numbers, which they keep without regard to the position they play, similarly to association football. Substitutes (generally referred to as "the bench") are allowed in the sport, and are typically used when a player gets tired or injured, although they can also be used tactically. Each team is currently allowed four substitutes, and in Australia and New Zealand, these players occupy shirt numbers 14 to 22. There are no limitations on which players must occupy these interchangeable slots. Generally, twelve interchanges are allowed in any game from each team, although in the National Rugby League, this was reduced to ten prior to the 2008 season and further reduced to eight prior to the 2016 season. If a team has to interchange a player due to the blood bin rule or due to injury, and this was the result of misconduct from the opposing team, the compromised team does not have to use one of its allocated interchanges to take the player in question off the field. Backs The backs are generally smaller, faster and more agile than the forwards. They are often the most creative and evasive players on the field, relying on running, kicking and handling skills, as well as tactics and set plays, to break the defensive line, instead of brute force. Generally forwards do the majority of the work (hit-ups/tackling). The title of fullback (numbered 1) comes from the fullback's defensive position where the player drops out of the defensive line to cover the rear from kicks and runners breaking the line. They therefore usually are good ball catchers and clinical tacklers. In attack, the fullback will typically make runs into the attack or support a runner in anticipation of a pass out of the tackle. Fullbacks can play a role in attack similar to a halfback or five-eighth and the fact that the fullback does not have to defend in the first defensive line means that a coach can keep a playmaker from the tackling responsibilities of the first line whilst allowing them to retain their attacking role. The wingers (numbered 2 and 5) are normally the fastest players in a team and play on the far left and right fringes of the field (the wings). Their main task is to receive passes and score tries. The wingers also drop back on the last tackle to cover the left and right sides of the field for kicks while the fullback covers the middle. The centres (numbered 3 and 4) are positioned one in from the wings and together complete what is known as the three-quarter line. Usually the best mixture of power and vision, their main role is to try to create attacking opportunities for their team and defend against those of the opposition. Along with the wingers, the centres score plenty of tries throughout a season. They usually have a large build and therefore can often play in the . Usually, the stand-off/five-eighth and scrum-half/half-back are a team's creative unit or 'playmakers'. During the interactions between a team's 'key' players (five-eighth, half-back, fullback, lock forward, and hooker), the five-eighth and half-back will usually be involved in most passing moves. These two positions are commonly called the "halves". The stand-off half, or five-eighth (numbered 6): There is not much difference between the stand-off half and the scrum half (halfback), in that both players may operate in front of the pack during 'forward play' (as prime receiver [7] and shadow receiver [6], one on each side of the ruck, or both on same side of the ruck), and both players may operate in front of the backs during 'back play' (as prime pivot [6] and shadow pivot [7], one on each side of the pack, or both on same side of the ruck / pack). The Five-Eighth position is named with regard to the distance that the player stands in relevance to the team. The halfback (numbered 7): There is not much difference between the halfback and the five-eighth, in that both players may operate in front of the pack during 'forward play' (as prime receiver [7] and shadow receiver [6], one on each side of the ruck, or both on same side of the ruck). Both players may operate in front of the backs during 'back play' (as prime pivot [6] and shadow pivot [7], one on each side of the ruck/pack, or both on same side of the ruck/pack). The halfback position is named with regard to halfway between the fullback and the forwards. Forwards The forwards' two responsibilities can be broken into "normal play" and "scrum play". For information on a forward's role in the scrum see rugby league scrummage. Forward positions are traditionally named after the player's position in the scrum yet are equal with respect to "normal play" with the exception of the hooker. Forward positions are traditionally assigned as follows: The props or front-row forwards (numbered 8 and 10) are normally the largest players on field. They are positioned in the centre of the line. The prop will be an "enforcer", dissuading the opposition from attacking the centre of the defensive line and, in attack, will give the team momentum by taking the ball up to the defence aggressively. The hooker (numbered 9) is most likely to play the role of dummy half. In defence the hooker usually defends in the middle of the line against the opposition's props and second-rowers. The hooker will be responsible for organising the defence in the middle of the field. In attack as dummy-half this player is responsible for starting the play from every play-the-ball by either passing the ball to the right player, or, at opportune moments, running from dummy-half. It is vital that the hooker can pass very well. Traditionally, hookers "hooked" the ball in the scrum. Hookers also make probably more tackles than any other player on the field. The hooker is always involved in the play and needs to be very fit. They need to have a very good knowledge of the game and the players around them. The forwards (numbered 11 and 12) The modern day second row is very similar to a centre and is expected to be faster, more mobile and have more skills than the prop and will play amongst the three-quarters, providing strength in attack and defence when the ball is passed out to the wings. Good second-rowers combine the skills and responsibilities of props and centres in the course of the game. The Loose forward or Lock (numbered 13) is the only forward in the third (last) row of the scrum. They are usually among the fittest players on the field, covering the entire field on both attacking and defending duties. Typically they are big ball-runners who can occasionally slot in as a passing link or kick option; it is not uncommon for locks to have the skills of a five-eighth and to play a similar role in the team. Rugby league worldwide Rugby league is played in over 70 nations throughout the world. Seven countries – Australia, Canada, England, France, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Wales – have teams that play at a professional level, while the rest are semi-professional or amateur. 45 national teams are ranked by the RLIF and a further 32 are officially recognized and unranked. The strongest rugby league nations are Australia, England, New Zealand and Tonga. World Cup The Rugby League World | itself became known as "rugby league" football. History In 1895, a schism in Rugby football resulted in the formation of the Northern Rugby Football Union (NRFU). The success of working class northern teams led to some compensating players who otherwise would be on their job and earning income on Saturdays. This led to the RFU reacting to enforce the amateur principle of the sport, preventing "broken time payments" to players who had taken time off work to play rugby. Northern teams typically had more working class players (coal miners, mill workers etc.) who could not afford to play without this compensation, in contrast to affluent southern teams who had other sources of income to sustain the amateur principle. In 1895, a decree by the RFU banning the playing of rugby at grounds where entrance fees were charged led to twenty-two clubs (including Stockport, who negotiated by telephone) meeting at the George Hotel, Huddersfield on 29 August 1895 and forming the "Northern Rugby Football Union". Within fifteen years of that first meeting in Huddersfield, more than 200 RFU clubs had left to join the rugby league. In 1897, the line-out was abolished and in 1898 professionalism introduced. In 1906, the Northern Union changed its rules, reducing teams from 15 to 13 a side and replacing the ruck formed after tackles with the play-the-ball. A similar schism to that which occurred in England took place in Sydney, Australia. There, on 8 August 1907 the New South Wales Rugby Football League was founded at Bateman's Hotel in George Street. Rugby league then went on to displace rugby union as the primary football code in New South Wales and Queensland. On 5 May 1954 over 100,000 (official figure 102,569) spectators watched the 1953–54 Challenge Cup Final replay at Odsal Stadium, Bradford, England, setting a new record for attendance at a rugby football match of either code. Also in 1954 the Rugby League World Cup, the first for either code of rugby, was formed at the instigation of the French. In 1966, the International Board introduced a rule that a team in possession was allowed three play-the-balls and on the fourth tackle a scrum was to be formed. This was increased to six tackles in 1972 and in 1983 the scrum was replaced by a handover. 1967 saw the first professional Sunday matches of rugby league played. The first sponsors, Joshua Tetley and John Player, entered the game for the 1971–72 Northern Rugby Football League season. Television had an enormous impact on the sport of rugby league in the 1990s, when News Corporation paid for worldwide broadcasting rights. The media giant's "Super League" movement created changes for the traditional administrators of the game. In Europe, it resulted in a move from Rugby League being a winter sport to a summer one, as the new Super League competition tried to expand its market. In Australasia, the Super League war resulted in long and costly legal battles and changing loyalties, causing significant damage to the code in an extremely competitive sporting market. In 1997 two competitions were run alongside each other in Australia, after which a peace deal in the form of the National Rugby League was formed. The NRL has since become recognised as the sport's flagship competition and since that time has set record TV ratings and crowd figures. Rules Laws of the game The objective in rugby league is to score more points through tries, goals and field goals (also known as drop goals) than the opposition within the 80 minutes of play. If after two-halves of play, each consisting of forty minutes, the two teams are drawing, a draw may be declared, or the game may enter extra time under the golden point rule, depending on the relevant competition's format. The try is the most common form of scoring, and a team will usually attempt to score one by running and kicking the ball further upfield or passing from player-to-player in order to manoeuvre around the opposition's defence. A try involves touching the ball to the ground on or beyond the defending team's goal-line and is worth four points. A goal is worth two points and may be gained from a conversion or a penalty. A field goal, or drop goal, is only worth one point and is gained by dropping and then kicking the ball on the half volley between the uprights in open play. Field position is crucial in rugby league, achieved by running with or kicking the ball. Passing in rugby league may only be in a backward or sideways direction. Teammates, therefore, have to remain on-side by not moving ahead of the player with the ball. The ball may be kicked ahead, but if teammates are in front of the kicker when the ball is kicked, they are deemed off-side. Tackling is a key component of rugby league play. Only the player holding the ball may be tackled. A tackle is complete, for example, when the player is held by one or more opposing players in such a manner that he can make no further progress and cannot part with the ball, or when the player is held by one or more opposing players and the ball or the hand or arm holding the ball comes into contact with the ground. An attacking team gets a maximum of six tackles to progress up the field before possession is changed over. Once the tackle is completed, the ball-carrier must be allowed to get to his feet to 'play-the-ball'. Ball control is also important in rugby league, as a fumble of the ball on the ground forces a handover, unless the ball is fumbled backwards. The ball can also be turned over by going over the sideline. Comparison with rugby union Rugby league and rugby union are distinct sports with many similarities and a shared origin. Both have the same fundamental rules, are played for 80 minutes and feature an oval-shaped ball and H-shaped goalposts. Both have rules that the ball cannot be passed forward, and dropping it forwards leads to a scrum. Both use tries as the central scoring method and conversion kicks, penalty goals and drop goals as additional scoring methods. However, there are differences in how many points each method is worth. One of the main differences is the rules of possession. When the ball goes into touch, possession in rugby union is contested through a line-out, while in rugby league a scrum restarts play. The lesser focus on contesting possession means that play focuses more on powerful running, hard tackling, forward progression and the contest for field position (commonly compared to an "arm wrestle") ; as a result play stops much less frequently in rugby league, with the ball typically in play for 50 out of the 80 minutes compared to around 35 minutes for professional rugby union. Other differences include that there are fewer players in rugby league (13 compared to 15) and different rules for tackling. Rugby union has more detailed rules than rugby league and has changed less since the 1895 schism. Rugby league historian Tony Collins has written that since rugby union turned professional in the mid-1990s, it has increasingly borrowed techniques, tactics and even laws from rugby league, while high profile players and coaches from the league game have increasingly gone on to success in the union code in those countries where both codes are popular (e.g. Andy Farrell, Jason Robinson and Henry Paul). The inherent similarities between rugby league and rugby union have at times led to experimental hybrid games being played that use a mix of the two sports' rules. Comparison with gridrion codes Much more so than rugby union, rugby league shares significant similarities with North American gridiron codes. Although described as evolving from both rugby and association football, the basic structures of American and Canadian football are remarkably similar to rugby league through a process of parallel evolution: a try-and-goal based scoring system, a set number of plays before handover of the football, each play restarting from a set piece position and ended by a tackle. The introduction of the forward pass and unlimited substitution in North America, however, created a fundamentally different game from either original rugby code. Positions Players on the pitch are divided into forwards and backs, although the game's rules apply to all players the same way. Each position has a designated number to identify himself from other players. These numbers help to identify which position a person is playing. The system of numbering players is different depending on which country the match is played in. In Australia and New Zealand, each player is usually given a number corresponding to their playing position on the field. However, since 1996 European teams have been able to grant players specific squad numbers, which they keep without regard to the position they play, similarly to association football. Substitutes (generally referred to as "the bench") are allowed in the sport, and are typically used when a player gets tired or injured, although they can also be used tactically. Each team is currently allowed four substitutes, and in Australia and New Zealand, these players occupy shirt numbers 14 to 22. There are no limitations on which players must occupy these interchangeable slots. Generally, twelve interchanges are allowed in any game from each team, although in the National Rugby League, this was |
the rest of the stroke, which affords the rower a moment to recover, and allows the boat to glide through the water. The gliding of the boat through the water during recovery is often called run. A controlled slide is necessary to maintain momentum and achieve optimal boat run. However, various teaching methods disagree about the optimal relation in timing between drive and recovery. Near the end of the recovery, the rower squares the blade into perpendicular orientation with respect to the water and begins another stroke. Boat classes Broadly, there are two ways to row, sometimes called disciplines: In sweep rowing, each rower has one oar, held with both hands. There are usually an even number of rowers – two, four or eight. Each rower's oar will extend to their port or starboard. In the United Kingdom, the port side is referred to as stroke side and the starboard side as bow side; this applies even if the stroke oarsman is rowing on the bow side and/or the bow oarsman on the stroke side. In sculling each rower has two oars (or sculls), one in each hand. Sculling is usually done without a coxswain in quads, doubles or singles. The oar in the sculler's right hand extends to port and the oar in the left hand extends to starboard. Within each discipline, there are several boat classes. A single regatta (series of races) will often feature races for many boat classes. They are classified using: Number of rowers: in all forms of modern competition the number is either 1, 2, 4, or 8. Whether there is a coxswain (also referred to as cox). Coxless sweep boats are sometimes called "straight", while sculling boats are assumed to be coxless unless stated otherwise. Although sculling and sweep boats are generally identical to each other (except having different riggers), they are referred to using different names: Sculling boat classes: Sweep boat classes: Equipment Racing shell Racing boats (often called shells) are long, narrow, and broadly semi-circular in cross-section in order to reduce drag in the water. There is some trade off between boat speed and stability in choice of hull shape. They usually have a fin towards the rear, to help prevent roll and yaw and to increase the effectiveness of the rudder. Originally made from wood, shells are now almost always made from a composite material (usually a double skin of carbon-fiber reinforced plastic with a sandwich of honeycomb material) for strength and weight advantages. World Rowing rules specify minimum weights for each class of boat so that no individual team will gain a great advantage from the use of expensive materials or technology. Smaller sculling boats are usually steered by the scullers pulling harder on one side or the other while larger boats often have a rudder, controlled by the coxswain, if present, or by one of the crew using a cable attached to one of the shoes. With the smaller boats, specialist versions of the shells for sculling can be made lighter. The riggers in sculling apply the forces symmetrically to each side of the boat, whereas in sweep oared racing these forces are staggered alternately along the boat. The sweep oared boat has to be stiffer to handle these unmatched forces, so consequently requires more bracing and is usually heavier – a pair (2-) is usually a more robust boat than a double scull (2x) for example, and being heavier is also slower when used as a double scull. In theory, this could also apply to the 4x and 8x, but most rowing clubs cannot afford to have a dedicated large hull which might be rarely used and instead generally opt for versatility in their fleet by using stronger shells which can be rigged for either sweep rowing or sculling. The symmetrical forces also make sculling more efficient than rowing: the double scull is faster than the coxless pair, and the quadruple scull is faster than the coxless four. Many adjustments can be made to the equipment to accommodate the physiques of the crew. Collectively these adjustments are known as the boat's rigging. Oar Oars, sometimes referred to as blades, are used to propel the boat. They are long (sculling: 250–300 cm; sweep oar: 340–360 cm) poles with one flat end about 50 cm long and 25 cm wide, called the blade. Classic blades were made out of wood, but modern blades are made from more expensive and durable synthetic material, the most common being carbon fiber. An 'oar' is often referred to as a blade in the case of sweep oar rowing and as a scull in the case of sculling. A sculling oar is shorter and has a smaller blade area than the equivalent sweep oar. The combined blade area of a pair of sculls is however greater than that of a single sweep oar, so the oarsman when sculling is working against more water than when rowing sweep-oared. He is able to do this because the body action in sculling is more anatomically efficient (due to the symmetry). The spoon of oars is normally painted with the colours of the club to which they belong. This greatly simplifies identification of boats at a distance. As many sports teams have logos printed on their jerseys, rowing clubs have specifically painted blades that each team is associated with. Training equipment Indoor rowing (on indoor rower, or rowing tank) is a way to train technique and strength by going through the same motions as rowing, with resistance(usually a large tank of water). Indoor rowing is helpful when there are no rowable bodies of water near by, or weather conditions don't permit rowing. A rowing tank is an indoor facility which attempts to mimic the conditions rowers face on open water. Rowing tanks are used primarily for off-season rowing, muscle-specific conditioning and technique training, or simply when bad weather prevents open-water training. Ergometer rowing machines (colloquially ergs or ergo) simulate the rowing action and provide a means of training on land when waterborne training is restricted, and of measuring rowing fitness. Ergometers do not simulate the lateral balance challenges, the exact resistance of water, or the exact motions of true rowing including the sweep of the oar handles. For that reason ergometer scores are generally not used as the sole selection criterion for crews (colloquially "ergs don't float"), and technique training is limited to the basic body position and movements. However, this action can still allow a workout comparable to those experienced on the water. Indoor rowing has become popular as a sport in its own right with numerous indoor competitions (and the annual World Championship CRASH-B Sprints in Boston) during the winter off-season. Race formats There are several formats for rowing races, often called "regattas". The two most common are side by side and head races. <duv type=("#Side-by-side") Most races that are held in the spring and summer feature side-by-side, or sprint racing; all the boats start at the same time from a stationary position, and the winner is the boat that crosses the finish line first. The number of boats in a race typically varies between two (which is sometimes referred to as a dual race) to eight, but any number of boats can start together if the course is wide enough. The standard length races for the Olympics and the World Rowing Championships is long. In the United States, some scholastic (high school) races are , while many youth races are the standard 2 kilometres. Masters rowers (rowers older than 27) often race 1,000 m. However the race distance can and does vary from dashes or sprints, which may be long, to longer dual races like the Boat Race. Two traditional non-standard distance shell races are the annual Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge and the Harvard-Yale Boat Race which cover courses of approximately . The Henley Royal Regatta is also raced upon a non-standard distance at 2,112 meters (1 mile, 550 yards). In general, multi-boat competitions are organized in a series of rounds, with the fastest boats in each heat qualifying for the next round. The losing boats from each heat may be given a second chance to qualify through a repechage. The World Rowing Championships offers multi-lane racing in heats, finals and repechages. At Henley Royal Regatta two crews compete side by side in each round, in a straightforward knock-out format, with no repechages. Head races Head races are time trial / processional races that take place from autumn (fall) to early spring (depending on local conditions). Boats begin with a rolling start at intervals of 10 – 20 seconds, and are timed over a set distance. Head courses usually vary in length from to , though there are longer races such as the Boston Rowing Marathon and shorter such as Pairs Head. The oldest, and arguably most famous, head race is the Head of the River Race, founded by Steve Fairbairn in 1926 which takes place each March on the river Thames in London, United Kingdom. Head racing was exported to the United States in the 1950s, and the Head of the Charles Regatta held each October on the Charles River in Boston, Massachusetts, United States is now the largest rowing event in the world. The Head of the Charles, along with the Head of the Schuylkill in Philadelphia and the Head of the Connecticut, are considered to be the three "fall classics." These processional races are known as Head Races, because, as with bumps racing, the fastest crew is awarded the title Head of the River (as in "head of the class"). It was not deemed feasible to run bumps racing on the Tideway, so a timed format was adopted and soon caught on. Time trials are sometimes used to determine who competes in an event where there is a limited number of entries, for example, the qualifying races for Henley Royal Regatta, and rowing on and getting on for the Oxford and Cambridge Bumps races respectively. Other race formats A bumps race is a multi-day race beginning with crews lined up along the river at set intervals. They start simultaneously and all pursue the boat ahead while avoiding being bumped by a boat from behind. If a crew overtakes or makes physical contact with the crew ahead, a bump is awarded. As a result, damage to boats and equipment is common during bumps racing. To avoid damage the cox of the crew being bumped may concede the bump before contact is actually made. The next day, the bumping crew will start ahead of any crews that have been bumped. The positions at the end of the last race are used to set the positions on the first day of the races the next year. Oxford and Cambridge Universities hold bumps races for their respective colleges twice a year, and there are also Town Bumps races in both cities, open to non-university crews. Oxford's races are organised by City of Oxford Rowing Club and Cambridge's are organised by the Cambridgeshire Rowing Association. The stake format was often used in early American races. Competitors line up at the start, race to a stake, moored boat, or buoy some distance away, and return. The 180° turn requires mastery of steering. These races are popular with spectators because one may watch both the start and finish. Usually only two boats would race at once to avoid collision. The Green Mountain Head Regatta continues to use the stake format, but it is run as a head race with an interval start. A similar type of racing is found in UK and Irish coastal rowing, where a number of boats race out to a given point from the coast and then return fighting rough water all the way. In Irish coastal rowing the boats are in individual lanes with the races consisting of up to 3 turns to make the race distance 2.3 km. Boat positions Rowers in multi-rower boats are numbered sequentially from the bow aft. The number-one rower is called the bowman, or just 'bow', whilst the rower closest to the stern is called the 'strokeman' or just 'stroke'. There are some exceptions to this – some UK coastal rowers, and in France, Spain, and Italy rowers number from stern to bow. In addition to this, certain crew members have other titles and roles. In an 8+ the stern pair are responsible for setting the stroke rate and rhythm for the rest of the boat to follow. The middle four (sometimes called the "engine room" or "power house") are usually the less technical, but more powerful rowers in the crew, whilst the bow pair are the more technical and generally regarded as the pair to set up the balance of the boat. They also have most influence on the line the boat steers. Coxswain The coxswain (or simply the cox) is the member who steers the boat using rudder strings, and coordinates the power and rhythm of the rowers, by communicating to the crew, often through a device called a cox box and speakers. The cox usually sits in the stern of the boat facing the rowers but in bowloaders, usually seen in the coxed four and coxed pair types of boat,the coxswain lies in the bow. It is an advantage for the coxswain to be light as this requires less effort for the crew to propel the boat. In many competitive events there is a minimum weight, under World Rowing rules, set for the coxswain to prevent unfair advantage. If a coxswain is under the minimum weight allowance (underweight), they may have to carry weights in the boat such as sandbags. Athlete categories Age At the elite level, the World Rowing Federation recognizes an under 19 category for athletes who are age 18 or less by the end of the calendar year for a given event. The World Rowing Junior Championships is the world championship event for this category. Athletes under 23 years of age by the end of the calendar year may compete in the under 23 category, and the World Rowing U23 Championships is held for these athletes. World Rowing uses the term "Senior" for events open to any age. Under World Rowing rules, athletes may compete in "Masters" categories when they reach age 27. World Rowing holds the World Rowing Masters Regatta for these athletes, at which there are several age subcategories. Weight Lightweight boat classes are restricted by the rowers' weight. According to the World Rowing Federation, this weight category was introduced "to encourage more universality in the sport especially among nations with less statuesque people". The first lightweight events were held at the World Championships in 1974 for men and 1985 for women. Lightweight rowing was added to the Olympics in 1996. As of 2021, the only Olympic lightweight boat classes are the men's and women's double sculls. The World Rowing Federation lightweight standards are: Men: Crew average – no rower over Women: Crew average – no rower over At the collegiate level in the United States, the lightweight weight requirements can be different depending on competitive season. For fall regattas (typically head races), the lightweight cutoff for men is 165.0 lb. and 135.0 lb. for women. In the spring season (typically sprint races), the lightweight cutoff for men is 160.0 | paddle to the boat. The rowing stroke may be characterized by two fundamental reference points: the catch, which is placement of the oar blade in the water, and the extraction, also known as the finish or release, when the rower removes the oar blade from the water. After the blade is placed in the water at the catch, the rower applies pressure to the oar levering the boat forward which is called the drive phase of the stroke. Once the rower extracts the oar from the water, the recovery phase begins, setting up the rower's body for the next stroke. At the catch, the rower places the blade in the water and applies pressure to the oar by pushing the seat toward the bow of the boat by extending the legs, thus pushing the boat through the water. The point of placement of the blade in the water is a relatively fixed point about which the oar serves as a lever to propel the boat. As the rower's legs approach full extension, the rower pivots the torso toward the bow of the boat and then finally pulls the arms towards his or her chest. The hands meet the chest right above the diaphragm. At the end of the stroke, with the blade still in the water, the hands drop slightly to unload the oar so that spring energy stored in the bend of the oar gets transferred to the boat which eases removing the oar from the water and minimizes energy wasted on lifting water above the surface (splashing). The recovery phase follows the drive. The recovery starts with the extraction and involves coordinating the body movements with the goal to move the oar back to the catch position. In extraction, the rower pushes down on the oar handle to quickly lift the blade from the water and rapidly rotates the oar so that the blade is parallel to the water. This process is sometimes referred to as feathering the blade. Simultaneously, the rower pushes the oar handle away from the chest. The blade emerges from the water square and feathers immediately once clear of the water. After feathering and extending the arms, the rower pivots the body forward. Once the hands are past the knees, the rower compresses the legs which moves the seat towards the stern of the boat. The leg compression occurs relatively slowly compared to the rest of the stroke, which affords the rower a moment to recover, and allows the boat to glide through the water. The gliding of the boat through the water during recovery is often called run. A controlled slide is necessary to maintain momentum and achieve optimal boat run. However, various teaching methods disagree about the optimal relation in timing between drive and recovery. Near the end of the recovery, the rower squares the blade into perpendicular orientation with respect to the water and begins another stroke. Boat classes Broadly, there are two ways to row, sometimes called disciplines: In sweep rowing, each rower has one oar, held with both hands. There are usually an even number of rowers – two, four or eight. Each rower's oar will extend to their port or starboard. In the United Kingdom, the port side is referred to as stroke side and the starboard side as bow side; this applies even if the stroke oarsman is rowing on the bow side and/or the bow oarsman on the stroke side. In sculling each rower has two oars (or sculls), one in each hand. Sculling is usually done without a coxswain in quads, doubles or singles. The oar in the sculler's right hand extends to port and the oar in the left hand extends to starboard. Within each discipline, there are several boat classes. A single regatta (series of races) will often feature races for many boat classes. They are classified using: Number of rowers: in all forms of modern competition the number is either 1, 2, 4, or 8. Whether there is a coxswain (also referred to as cox). Coxless sweep boats are sometimes called "straight", while sculling boats are assumed to be coxless unless stated otherwise. Although sculling and sweep boats are generally identical to each other (except having different riggers), they are referred to using different names: Sculling boat classes: Sweep boat classes: Equipment Racing shell Racing boats (often called shells) are long, narrow, and broadly semi-circular in cross-section in order to reduce drag in the water. There is some trade off between boat speed and stability in choice of hull shape. They usually have a fin towards the rear, to help prevent roll and yaw and to increase the effectiveness of the rudder. Originally made from wood, shells are now almost always made from a composite material (usually a double skin of carbon-fiber reinforced plastic with a sandwich of honeycomb material) for strength and weight advantages. World Rowing rules specify minimum weights for each class of boat so that no individual team will gain a great advantage from the use of expensive materials or technology. Smaller sculling boats are usually steered by the scullers pulling harder on one side or the other while larger boats often have a rudder, controlled by the coxswain, if present, or by one of the crew using a cable attached to one of the shoes. With the smaller boats, specialist versions of the shells for sculling can be made lighter. The riggers in sculling apply the forces symmetrically to each side of the boat, whereas in sweep oared racing these forces are staggered alternately along the boat. The sweep oared boat has to be stiffer to handle these unmatched forces, so consequently requires more bracing and is usually heavier – a pair (2-) is usually a more robust boat than a double scull (2x) for example, and being heavier is also slower when used as a double scull. In theory, this could also apply to the 4x and 8x, but most rowing clubs cannot afford to have a dedicated large hull which might be rarely used and instead generally opt for versatility in their fleet by using stronger shells which can be rigged for either sweep rowing or sculling. The symmetrical forces also make sculling more efficient than rowing: the double scull is faster than the coxless pair, and the quadruple scull is faster than the coxless four. Many adjustments can be made to the equipment to accommodate the physiques of the crew. Collectively these adjustments are known as the boat's rigging. Oar Oars, sometimes referred to as blades, are used to propel the boat. They are long (sculling: 250–300 cm; sweep oar: 340–360 cm) poles with one flat end about 50 cm long and 25 cm wide, called the blade. Classic blades were made out of wood, but modern blades are made from more expensive and durable synthetic material, the most common being carbon fiber. An 'oar' is often referred to as a blade in the case of sweep oar rowing and as a scull in the case of sculling. A sculling oar is shorter and has a smaller blade area than the equivalent sweep oar. The combined blade area of a pair of sculls is however greater than that of a single sweep oar, so the oarsman when sculling is working against more water than when rowing sweep-oared. He is able to do this because the body action in sculling is more anatomically efficient (due to the symmetry). The spoon of oars is normally painted with the colours of the club to which they belong. This greatly simplifies identification of boats at a distance. As many sports teams have logos printed on their jerseys, rowing clubs have specifically painted blades that each team is associated with. Training equipment Indoor rowing (on indoor rower, or rowing tank) is a way to train technique and strength by going through the same motions as rowing, with resistance(usually a large tank of water). Indoor rowing is helpful when there are no rowable bodies of water near by, or weather conditions don't permit rowing. A rowing tank is an indoor facility which attempts to mimic the conditions rowers face on open water. Rowing tanks are used primarily for off-season rowing, muscle-specific conditioning and technique training, or simply when bad weather prevents open-water training. Ergometer rowing machines (colloquially ergs or ergo) simulate the rowing action and provide a means of training on land when waterborne training is restricted, and of measuring rowing fitness. Ergometers do not simulate the lateral balance challenges, the exact resistance of water, or the exact motions of true rowing including the sweep of the oar handles. For that reason ergometer scores are generally not used as the sole selection criterion for crews (colloquially "ergs don't float"), and technique training is limited to the basic body position and movements. However, this action can still allow a workout comparable to those experienced on the water. Indoor rowing has become popular as a sport in its own right with numerous indoor competitions (and the annual World Championship CRASH-B Sprints in Boston) during the winter off-season. Race formats There are several formats for rowing races, often called "regattas". The two most common are side by side and head races. <duv type=("#Side-by-side") Most races that are held in the spring and summer feature side-by-side, or sprint racing; all the boats start at the same time from a stationary position, and the winner is the boat that crosses the finish line first. The number of boats in a race typically varies between two (which is sometimes referred to as a dual race) to eight, but any number of boats can start together if the course is wide enough. The standard length races for the Olympics and the World Rowing Championships is long. In the United States, some scholastic (high school) races are , while many youth races are the standard 2 kilometres. Masters rowers (rowers older than 27) often race 1,000 m. However the race distance can and does vary from dashes or sprints, which may be long, to longer dual races like the Boat Race. Two traditional non-standard distance shell races are the annual Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge and the Harvard-Yale Boat Race which cover courses of approximately . The Henley Royal Regatta is also raced upon a non-standard distance at 2,112 meters (1 mile, 550 yards). In general, multi-boat competitions are organized in a series of rounds, with the fastest boats in each heat qualifying for the next round. The losing boats from each heat may be given a second chance to qualify through a repechage. The World Rowing Championships offers multi-lane racing in heats, finals and repechages. At Henley Royal Regatta two crews compete side by side in each round, in a straightforward knock-out format, with no repechages. Head races Head races are time trial / processional races that take place from autumn (fall) to early spring (depending on local conditions). Boats begin with a rolling start at intervals of 10 – 20 seconds, and are timed over a set distance. Head courses usually vary in length from to , though there are longer races such as the Boston Rowing Marathon and shorter such as Pairs Head. The oldest, and arguably most famous, head race is the Head of the River Race, founded by Steve Fairbairn in 1926 which takes place each March on the river Thames in London, United Kingdom. Head racing was exported to the United States in the 1950s, and the Head of the Charles Regatta held each October on the Charles River in Boston, Massachusetts, United States is now the largest rowing event in the world. The Head of the Charles, along with the Head of the Schuylkill in Philadelphia and the Head of the Connecticut, are considered to be the three "fall classics." These processional races are known as Head Races, because, as with bumps racing, the fastest crew is awarded the title Head of the River (as in "head of the class"). It was not deemed feasible to run bumps racing on the Tideway, so a timed format was adopted and soon caught on. Time trials are sometimes used to determine who competes in an event where there is a limited number of entries, for example, the qualifying races for Henley Royal Regatta, and rowing on and getting on for the Oxford and Cambridge Bumps races respectively. Other race formats A bumps race is a multi-day race beginning with crews lined up along the river at set intervals. They start simultaneously and all pursue the boat ahead while avoiding being bumped by a boat from behind. If a crew overtakes or makes physical contact with the crew ahead, a bump is awarded. As a result, damage to boats and equipment is common during bumps racing. To avoid damage the cox of the crew being bumped may concede the bump before contact is actually made. The next day, the bumping crew will start ahead of any crews that have been bumped. The positions at the end of the last race are used to set the positions on the first day of the races the next year. Oxford and Cambridge Universities hold bumps races for their respective colleges twice a year, and there are also Town Bumps races in both cities, open to non-university crews. Oxford's races are organised by City of Oxford Rowing Club and Cambridge's are organised by the Cambridgeshire Rowing Association. The stake format was often used in early American races. Competitors line up at the start, race to a stake, moored boat, or buoy some distance away, and return. The 180° turn requires mastery of steering. These races are popular with spectators because one may watch both the start and finish. Usually only two boats would race at once to avoid collision. The Green Mountain Head Regatta continues to use the stake format, but it is run as a head race with an interval start. A similar type of racing is found in UK and Irish coastal rowing, where a number of boats race out |
largely-rural setting. This combination of geography and culture creates the backdrop of the Hero Wars, the original setting for the Dragon Pass board game that RuneQuest was created for. Cults and religion A key element of RuneQuest's flavor is an adventurer's membership of religious societies. Referred to as cults, these usually have three levels of membership. Lay members are informal members with no insight in to the true nature of the cult. Initiates are directly connected to a god or greater power of the cult. They received magic in return. Rune levels are priestly, martial leaders or shaman, working for the god's ideals and goals. The basic rules describe 21 cults, whose availability is related to an adventurer's rune affinities, homeland, and occupation. Supplements Supplements published for RuneQuest second edition include Plunder, Runemasters, Foes, The Gateway Bestiary, Griffin Mountain, City of Lei Tabor, Cults of Prax and Cults of Terror. Reception In the September–October 1978 edition of The Space Gamer (Issue No. 19), Dana Holm commented that "Since this game contains a logical system, almost anything can be added to the matrix it presents. A gem of a game. You won't be disappointed." In the February–March 1979 edition of White Dwarf (Issue 11), Jim Donohoe thought the rulebook was "116 pages of well thought-out and comprehensive rules," but he found the character generation system "quite complex." He advised new referees to use the monster loot tables with caution, since the treasure was randomly generated, which meant "the amount of treasure a monster can have can vary wildly using these tables, and a weak monster can have a fortune while a tough one is impoverished. This is one area of the rules which could use some revision." He concluded by giving the game an excellent rating of 9 out of 10, saying, "These are a set of rules which I can recommend as a good alternative to Dungeons & Dragons. Using the Runequest rules, a campaign can be set up simply and quickly with little effort to the referee." In the March 1980 edition of Ares (Issue #1), Greg Costikyan commented that "RuneQuest is the most playable and elegant fantasy role-playing designed to date. Its only drawback is that it does not cover enough ground for a full-scale role-playing campaign, and is, perhaps, a bit simpler than experienced frp'ers would desire." He concluded by giving it a slightly better than average rating of 7 out of 9. In the July 1980 issue of Ares, Eric Goldberg reviewed the second edition and commented "When RQ came out, it was well-organized by the FRP standards of that time. The rules are not painful to read, and a second edition, in which the charts are easier to find, has helped matters considerably. The drawbacks of the game are that the foundation of the game (combat) has play problems and that the individual systems do not mesh together as nicely as one would hope. Among the strengths are its freshness of design concepts, the elimination of the odious 'level' progressions for characters, and the detailed background." In the July 1981 edition of The Space Gamer (Issue No. 35), Forrest Johnson reviewed the 1980 boxed edition of RuneQuest, and commented "An experienced gamer, who probably bought the rules separately [...] has no need of this edition. However, it might be of use to a newcomer." In the April 1985 edition of White Dwarf (Issue 64), Oliver Dickinson reviewed the third edition produced by Avalon Hill, and found "Everything is well laid out and clearly expressed." The major difference he found with previous editions of rules was that most items "cost a great deal more [...] Acquiring good armour, magic items, etc is going to be more of a struggle and so, I feel, more satisfying. I hope this will bring the days of the overmighty PC/NPC to an end; but the difficulties may be precisely what put some players off." Dickinson concluded by giving the new edition an excellent rating of 9 out of 10, saying, "the revised rules deserve a proper trial; they are well thought out and explained, though quite complex, and I suspect will in many cases be welcomed with the words, 'That makes better sense!'" Oliver Dickinson reviewed RuneQuest 3 for White Dwarf #75, and stated that "Personally, I take very seriously Greg Stafford's comment that RQ3 reflects his conception of Glorantha better, and I welcome most of the changes and innovations, particularly Fatigue Points." In the March 1987 edition of White Dwarf (Issue 87), Peter Green reviewed a new hardcover version of the third edition, and generally liked it, although he did find "a few irritations", notably that reference was made to sections of the 1st- or 2nd-edition rules that no longer existed. He concluded by warning that "beginners should perhaps leave it until they are familiar with a more introductory system [...] Experienced players of other games will find much in Runequest to recommend it [...] it is superb value and well worth getting even if you never intend to play it." In the August 1987 edition of White Dwarf (Issue 92), Paul Cockburn reviewed Advanced Runequest, a streamlined version of the 3rd edition rules, and liked what he saw. He concluded, "It's a very good package [...] | game, Chaosium made a deal with Avalon Hill, who published the third edition in 1984. Under the agreement, Avalon Hill took ownership of trademark for RuneQuest, while all Glorantha-related content required approval by Chaosium, who also retained the copyright of the rules text. As such, the default setting for the third edition was the "Dark Ages of fantasy Europe", but it also included a booklet allowing play in Glorantha. A range of supplements were produced for this edition; generic fantasy was left unbranded, but others were marked as Earth, Glorantha, or Gateway (alternative fantasy) to differentiate them. A proposed fourth edition developed by Avalon Hill, titled RuneQuest: Adventures in Glorantha, was intended to return the tight RuneQuest/Glorantha relationship, but it was shelved mid-project in 1994 after Stafford refused permission, unhappy with Avalon Hill's stewardship of the third edition. In response, Avalon Hill, as owners of the trademark, began development of a mechanically unrelated game originally titled RuneQuest: Slayers. However, when Avalon Hill was acquired by Hasbro in 1998, the project was canceled despite being near completion. The copyrights to the rules reverted to the authors, who released it for free as RuneSlayers. In 1998, following the financial failure of the collectible card game Mythos, Stafford, along with fellow shareholder Sandy Petersen, left the management of Chaosium (though they remained shareholders in the company). Stafford had formed a subsidiary company, Issaries, Inc., to manage the Glorantha property and took ownership of that company with him. He partnered with Robin D. Laws to publish an all-new game system set in Glorantha called Hero Wars in 2000. It was later renamed HeroQuest in 2003 after the rights to that name, along with the RuneQuest trademark, were acquired from Hasbro by Issaries. Mongoose Publishing released a new edition of RuneQuest in August 2006 under a license from Issaries. This required that Mongoose recreate much of the function of prior editions without reusing the prior texts (the copyrights of which were retained by Chaosium). The new rules were developed by a team led by Mongoose co-founder Matthew Sprange, and were released under the Open Game License. The official setting takes place during the Second Age of Glorantha (previous editions covered the Third Age). In January 2010, Mongoose published a much-revised edition written by Pete Nash and Lawrence Whitaker called RuneQuest II, simply known as "MRQ2" by fans. In May 2011, Mongoose Publishing announced that they had parted company with Issaries, and announced the rebranding of RuneQuest II as Legend. Legend was released in late 2011 under the Open Gaming License. Mongoose titles for RuneQuest II were re-released as Legend-compatible books. In July 2011, The Design Mechanism, a company formed by Nash and Whitaker, announced that they had entered a licensing agreement with Issaries and would be producing a 6th edition of RuneQuest. Released in July 2012, it was largely an expansion of Mongoose's RuneQuest II and aimed at providing rules that could be adapted to many fantasy or historical settings, and did not contain any specifically Gloranthan content (though it did use the Gloranthan runes). In 2013, Stafford sold Issaries outright, and with it the Glorantha setting and RuneQuest and HeroQuest trademarks, to Moon Design Publications, which had published the second edition of HeroQuest under license in 2009. Moon Design maintained the Design Mechanism's RuneQuest license. In June 2015, following a series of financial issues at Chaosium, Stafford and Petersen retook control of the company. They in turn arranged a merger with Moon Design, which saw the Moon Design management team take over Chaosium. In 2015 they successfully raised funds through Kickstarter to produce a hardcover reprint of the second edition and PDFs of its supplements as RuneQuest Classic. In 2016, it was announced that The Design Mechanism had parted ways with Moon Design and that RuneQuest 6th edition would continue to be published under the name Mythras. Shortly thereafter a new edition, RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, was announced. It is based heavily on the Chaosium second edition, drawing upon ideas from later editions. The new edition of the game, officially referred to as RQG for short, was previewed on Free RPG Day 2017 with the release of a quickstart module. The PDF of the full rules was released in May 2018, with the printed book following later that year. System RuneQuest has developed in many different ways over its 40-year history. This section focuses on the current edition RuneQuest Glorantha (RQG). Character creation As with most RPGs, players begin by making an adventurer. Starting by creating a family history, adventurers are then developed through a number of dice rolls to represent physical, mental and spiritual characteristics. RuneQuest adventurers gain power as they are used in play, but not to the degree that they do in other fantasy RPGs. It is still possible for a weak adventurer to slay a strong one through luck, tactics, or careful planning. Task resolution Tasks are resolved using three basic systems, simple, opposed, or resistance rolls. All three use a roll-under percentile system to determine success of actions. Bonuses can increase or decrease the target |
{\b bold} text.\par } would be rendered as follows: This is some bold text. Character encoding A standard RTF file can only consist of 7-bit ASCII characters, but can use escape sequences to encode other characters. The two character escapes are code page escapes and, starting with RTF 1.5, Unicode escapes. In a code page escape, two hexadecimal digits following a backslash and typewriter apostrophe denote a character taken from a Windows code page. For example, if the code page is set to Windows-1256, the sequence \'c8 will encode the Arabic letter bāʼ ب. It is also possible to specify a "Character Set" in the preamble of the RTF document and associate it to a header. For example, the preamble has the text \f3\fnil\fcharset128, then, in the body of the document, the text \f3\'bd\'f0 will represent the code point 0xbd 0xf0 from the Character Set 128 (which corresponds to the Shift-JIS code page), which encodes "金". For a Unicode escape, the control word \u is used, followed by a 16-bit signed integer which corresponds to the Unicode UTF-16 code unit number. For the benefit of programs without Unicode support, this must be followed by the nearest representation of this character in the specified code page. For example, \u1576? would give the Arabic letter bāʼ ب, but indicates that older programs which do not support Unicode should render it as a question mark instead. The control word \uc0 can be used to indicate that subsequent Unicode escape sequences within the current group do not specify the substitution character. Until RTF specification version 1.5 release in 1997, RTF only handled 7-bit characters directly and 8-bit characters encoded as hexadecimal (using \'xx). Since RTF 1.5, however, RTF control words generally accept signed 16-bit numbers as arguments. Unicode values greater than 32767 must be expressed as negative numbers. If a Unicode character is outside BMP, it is encoded with a surrogate pair. Support for Unicode was made due to text handling changes in Microsoft Word – Microsoft Word 97 is a partially Unicode-enabled application and it handles text using the 16-bit Unicode character encoding scheme. Microsoft Word 2000 and later versions are Unicode-enabled applications that handle text using the 16-bit Unicode character encoding scheme. Because RTF files are usually 7-bit ASCII plain text, they can be easily transmitted between PC-based operating systems. Converters that communicate with Microsoft Word for MS Windows or Macintosh generally expect data transfer as 8-bit characters and binary data which can contain any 8-bit values. Human readability RTF is a data format for saving and sharing documents, not a markup language; it is not intended for intuitive and easy typing. Nonetheless, unlike many word processing formats, RTF code can be human-readable. When an RTF file containing mostly Latin characters without diacritics is viewed as a plain text file, the underlying ASCII text is readable, provided that the author has kept formatting concise. When RTF was released, most word processors used binary file formats; Microsoft Word, for example, used the .DOC file format. RTF was unique in its simple formatting control which allowed non-RTF aware programs like Microsoft Notepad to open and provide readable files. Today, the most word processors have moved to XML-based file formats (Word has switched to the .docx file format). Regardless, these files contain large amounts of formatting code, so are often ten or more times larger than the corresponding plain text. To be standard-compliant RTF, non-ASCII characters must be escaped. Thus, even with concise formatting, text that uses certain dashes and quotation marks is less legible. Latin languages with many diacritics are particularly difficult to read in RTF, as they result in substitutions like \'f1 for ñ and \'e9 for é. Non-Latin scripts are illegible in RTF — \u21563, for example, is used for 吻. From the beginning, RTF has also supported Microsoft OLE embedded objects and Macintosh Edition Manager subscriber objects, which are not human-readable. Common uses and interoperability Most word processing software support either RTF format importing and exporting for some RTF specification or direct editing, which makes it a "common" format between otherwise incompatible word processing software and operating systems. Most applications that read RTF files silently ignore unknown RTF control words. These factors contribute to its interoperability, though it is still dependent on the specific RTF version in use. There are several consciously designed or accidentally born RTF dialects. RTF is the internal markup language used by Microsoft Word. Since 1987, RTF files have been able to be transferred back and forth between many old and new computer systems (and now over the Internet), despite differences between operating systems and their versions. This makes it a useful format for basic formatted text documents such as instruction manuals, résumés, letters, and modest information documents. These documents, at minimum, support bold, italic and underline text formatting. Also typically supported are left-, center- and right-aligned text, font specification and document margins. Font and margin defaults, style presets and other functions vary according to program defaults. There may also be incompatibilities between different RTF versions, e.g. between RTF 1.0 1987 and later specifications, or between RTF 1.0-1.4 and RTF 1.5+ in use of Unicode characters. And though RTF supports metadata like title and author, not all implementations support this. Nevertheless, the RTF format is consistent enough to be considered highly portable and acceptable for cross-platform use. Objects Microsoft Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) objects and Macintosh Edition Manager subscriber objects allow embedding of other files inside the RTF, such as tables or charts | page. For example, if the code page is set to Windows-1256, the sequence \'c8 will encode the Arabic letter bāʼ ب. It is also possible to specify a "Character Set" in the preamble of the RTF document and associate it to a header. For example, the preamble has the text \f3\fnil\fcharset128, then, in the body of the document, the text \f3\'bd\'f0 will represent the code point 0xbd 0xf0 from the Character Set 128 (which corresponds to the Shift-JIS code page), which encodes "金". For a Unicode escape, the control word \u is used, followed by a 16-bit signed integer which corresponds to the Unicode UTF-16 code unit number. For the benefit of programs without Unicode support, this must be followed by the nearest representation of this character in the specified code page. For example, \u1576? would give the Arabic letter bāʼ ب, but indicates that older programs which do not support Unicode should render it as a question mark instead. The control word \uc0 can be used to indicate that subsequent Unicode escape sequences within the current group do not specify the substitution character. Until RTF specification version 1.5 release in 1997, RTF only handled 7-bit characters directly and 8-bit characters encoded as hexadecimal (using \'xx). Since RTF 1.5, however, RTF control words generally accept signed 16-bit numbers as arguments. Unicode values greater than 32767 must be expressed as negative numbers. If a Unicode character is outside BMP, it is encoded with a surrogate pair. Support for Unicode was made due to text handling changes in Microsoft Word – Microsoft Word 97 is a partially Unicode-enabled application and it handles text using the 16-bit Unicode character encoding scheme. Microsoft Word 2000 and later versions are Unicode-enabled applications that handle text using the 16-bit Unicode character encoding scheme. Because RTF files are usually 7-bit ASCII plain text, they can be easily transmitted between PC-based operating systems. Converters that communicate with Microsoft Word for MS Windows or Macintosh generally expect data transfer as 8-bit characters and binary data which can contain any 8-bit values. Human readability RTF is a data format for saving and sharing documents, not a markup language; it is not intended for intuitive and easy typing. Nonetheless, unlike many word processing formats, RTF code can be human-readable. When an RTF file containing mostly Latin characters without diacritics is viewed as a plain text file, the underlying ASCII text is readable, provided that the author has kept formatting concise. When RTF was released, most word processors used binary file formats; Microsoft Word, for example, used the .DOC file format. RTF was unique in its simple formatting control which allowed non-RTF aware programs like Microsoft Notepad to open and provide readable files. Today, the most word processors have moved to XML-based file formats (Word has switched to the .docx file format). Regardless, these files contain large amounts of formatting code, so are often ten or more times larger than the corresponding plain text. To be standard-compliant RTF, non-ASCII characters must be escaped. Thus, even with concise formatting, text that uses certain dashes and quotation marks is less legible. 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to return to Arlington, Lee told them that "he would teach us a lesson we would not soon forget." According to Norris, Lee then had the three of them firmly tied to posts by the overseer, and ordered them whipped with fifty lashes for the men and twenty for Mary Norris. Norris claimed that Lee encouraged the whipping, and that when the overseer refused to do it, called in the county constable to do it instead. Unlike the anonymous letter writers, he does not state that Lee himself whipped any of the slaves. According to Norris, Lee "frequently enjoined [Constable] Williams to 'lay it on well,' an injunction which he did not fail to heed; not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done." The Norris men were then sent by Lee's agent to work on the railroads in Virginia and Alabama. According to the interview, Norris was sent to Richmond in January 1863 "from which place I finally made my escape through the rebel lines to freedom." But Federal authorities reported that Norris came within their lines on September 5, 1863, and that he "left Richmond ... with a pass from General Custis Lee." Lee freed the Custis slaves, including Wesley Norris, after the end of the five-year period in the winter of 1862, filing the deed of manumission on December 29, 1862. Biographers of Lee have differed over the credibility of the account of the punishment as described in the letters in the Tribune and in Norris's personal account. They broadly agree that Lee had a group of escaped slaves recaptured, and that, after recapturing them, he hired them out off of the Arlington plantation as a punishment; however, they disagree over the likelihood that Lee flogged them, and over the charge that he personally whipped Mary Norris. In 1934, Douglas S. Freeman described them as "Lee's first experience with the extravagance of irresponsible antislavery agitators" and asserted that "There is no evidence, direct or indirect, that Lee ever had them or any other Negroes flogged. The usage at Arlington and elsewhere in Virginia among people of Lee's station forbade such a thing." In 2000, Michael Fellman, in The Making of Robert E. Lee, found the claims that Lee had personally whipped Mary Norris "extremely unlikely," but found it not at all unlikely that Lee had ordered the runaways whipped: "corporal punishment (for which Lee substituted the euphemism 'firmness') was (believed to be) an intrinsic and necessary part of slave discipline. Although it was supposed to be applied only in a calm and rational manner, overtly physical domination of slaves, unchecked by law, was always brutal and potentially savage." In 2003, Bernice-Marie Yates's The Perfect Gentleman, cited Freeman's denial and followed his account in holding that, because of Lee's family connections to George Washington, he "was a prime target for abolitionists who lacked all the facts of the situation." Lee biographer Elizabeth Brown Pryor concluded in 2008 that "the facts are verifiable," based on "the consistency of the five extant descriptions of the episode (the only element that is not repeatedly corroborated is the allegation that Lee gave the beatings himself), as well as the existence of an account book that indicates the constable received compensation from Lee on the date that this event occurred." In 2014, Michael Korda wrote that "Although these letters are dismissed by most of Lee's biographers as exaggerated, or simply as unfounded abolitionist propaganda, it is hard to ignore them. ... It seems incongruously out of character for Lee to have whipped a slave woman himself, particularly one stripped to the waist, and that charge may have been a flourish added by the two correspondents; it was not repeated by Wesley Norris when his account of the incident was published in 1866. ... [A]lthough it seems unlikely that he would have done any of the whipping himself, he may not have flinched from observing it to make sure his orders were carried out exactly." Lee's views on race and slavery Several historians have noted what they consider the contradictory nature of Lee's beliefs and actions concerning race and slavery. While Lee protested he had sympathetic feelings for blacks, they were subordinate to his own racial identity. While Lee held slavery to be an evil institution, he also saw some benefit to blacks held in slavery. While Lee helped assist individual slaves to freedom in Liberia, and provided for their emancipation in his own will, he believed the enslaved should be eventually freed in a general way only at some unspecified future date as a part of God's purpose. Slavery for Lee was a moral and religious issue, and not one that would yield to political solutions. Emancipation would sooner come from Christian impulse among slave masters before "storms and tempests of fiery controversy" such as was occurring in "Bleeding Kansas". Countering Southerners who argued for slavery as a positive good, Lee in his well-known analysis of slavery from an 1856 letter (see below) called it a moral and political evil. While both Lee and his wife were disgusted with slavery, they also defended it against abolitionist demands for immediate emancipation for all enslaved. Lee argued that slavery was bad for white people but good for black people, claiming that he found slavery bothersome and time-consuming as an everyday institution to run. In an 1856 letter to his wife, he maintained that slavery was a great evil, but primarily due to adverse impact that it had on white people: In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Lee's father-in-law G. W. Parke Custis freed his slaves in his will. In the same tradition, before leaving to serve in Mexico, Lee had written a will providing for the manumission of the slaves he owned, "a woman and her children inherited from his mother and apparently leased to his father-in-law and later sold to him." Parke Custis was a member of the American Colonization Society, which was formed to gradually end slavery by establishing a free republic in Liberia for African-Americans, and Lee assisted several ex-slaves to emigrate there. Also, according to historian Richard B. McCaslin, Lee was a gradual emancipationist, denouncing extremist proposals for the immediate abolition of slavery. Lee rejected what he called evilly motivated political passion, fearing a civil and servile war from precipitous emancipation. Historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor offered an alternative interpretation of Lee's voluntary manumission of slaves in his will, and assisting slaves to a life of freedom in Liberia, seeing Lee as conforming to a "primacy of slave law". She wrote that Lee's private views on race and slavery, "which today seem startling, were entirely unremarkable in Lee's world. No visionary, Lee nearly always tried to conform to accepted opinions. His assessment of black inferiority, of the necessity of racial stratification, the primacy of slave law, and even a divine sanction for it all, was in keeping with the prevailing views of other moderate slaveholders and a good many prominent Northerners." On taking on the role of administrator for the Parke Custis will, Lee used a provision to retain them in slavery to produce income for the estate to retire debt. Lee did not welcome the role of planter while administering the Custis properties at Romancoke, another nearby the Pamunkey River and Arlington; he rented the estate's mill. While all the estates prospered under his administration, Lee was unhappy at direct participation in slavery as a hated institution. Even before what Michael Fellman called a "sorry involvement in actual slave management", Lee judged the experience of white mastery to be a greater moral evil to the white man than blacks suffering under the "painful discipline" of slavery which introduced Christianity, literacy and a work ethic to the "heathen African". Columbia University historian Eric Foner notes that: Lee "was not a pro-slavery ideologue. But I think equally important is that, unlike some white southerners, he never spoke out against slavery" By the time of Lee's career in the U.S. Army, the officers of West Point stood aloof from political-party and sectional strife on such issues as slavery, as a matter of principle, and Lee adhered to the precedent. He considered it his patriotic duty to be apolitical while in active Army service, and Lee did not speak out publicly on the subject of slavery prior to the Civil War. Before the outbreak of the War, in 1860, Lee voted for John C. Breckinridge, who was the extreme pro-slavery candidate in the 1860 presidential election, not John Bell, the more moderate Southerner who won Virginia. Lee himself owned a small number of slaves in his lifetime and considered himself a paternalistic master. There are various historical and newspaper hearsay accounts of Lee personally whipping a slave, but they are not direct eyewitness accounts. He was definitely involved in administering the day-to-day operations of a plantation and was involved in the recapture of runaway slaves. One historian noted that Lee separated slave families, something that prominent slave-holding families in Virginia such as Washington and Custis did not do. In 1862, Lee freed the slaves that his wife inherited, but that was in accordance with his father-in-law's will. Foner writes that "Lee's code of gentlemanly conduct did not seem to apply to blacks" during the War, as he did not stop his soldiers from kidnapping free black farmers and selling them into slavery. Princeton University historian James M. McPherson noted that Lee initially rejected a prisoner exchange between the Confederacy and the Union when the Union demanded that black Union soldiers be included. Lee did not accept the swap until a few months before the Confederacy's surrender. After the War, Lee told a congressional committee that blacks were "not disposed to work" and did not possess the intellectual capacity to vote and participate in politics. Lee also said to the committee that he hoped that Virginia could "get rid of them," referring to blacks. While not politically active, Lee defended Lincoln's successor Andrew Johnson's approach to Reconstruction, which according to Foner, "abandoned the former slaves to the mercy of governments controlled by their former owners." According to Foner, "A word from Lee might have encouraged white Southerners to accord blacks equal rights and inhibited the violence against the freed people that swept the region during Reconstruction, but he chose to remain silent." Lee was also urged to condemn the white-supremacy organization Ku Klux Klan, but opted to remain silent. In the generation following the war, Lee, though he died just a few years later, became a central figure in the Lost Cause interpretation of the war. The argument that Lee had always somehow opposed slavery, and freed his wife's slaves, helped maintain his stature as a symbol of Southern honor and national reconciliation. Harpers Ferry and return to Texas, 1859–1861 Both Harpers Ferry and the secession of Texas were monumental events leading up to the Civil War. Robert E. Lee was at both events. Lee initially remained loyal to the Union after Texas seceded. Harpers Ferry John Brown led a band of 21 abolitionists who seized the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859, hoping to incite a slave rebellion. President James Buchanan gave Lee command of detachments of militia, soldiers, and United States Marines, to suppress the uprising and arrest its leaders. By the time Lee arrived that night, the militia on the site had surrounded Brown and his hostages. At dawn, Brown refused the demand for surrender. Lee attacked, and Brown and his followers were captured after three minutes of fighting. Lee's summary report of the episode shows Lee believed it "was the attempt of a fanatic or madman". Lee said Brown achieved "temporary success" by creating panic and confusion and by "magnifying" the number of participants involved in the raid. Texas In 1860, Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee relieved Major Heintzelman at Fort Brown, and the Mexican authorities offered to restrain "their citizens from making predatory descents upon the territory and people of Texas ... this was the last active operation of the Cortina War". Rip Ford, a Texas Ranger at the time, described Lee as "dignified without hauteur, grand without pride ... he evinced an imperturbable self-possession, and a complete control of his passions ... possessing the capacity to accomplish great ends and the gift of controlling and leading men." When Texas seceded from the Union in February 1861, General David E. Twiggs surrendered all the American forces (about 4,000 men, including Lee, and commander of the Department of Texas) to the Texans. Twiggs immediately resigned from the U.S. Army and was made a Confederate general. Lee went back to Washington and was appointed Colonel of the First Regiment of Cavalry in March 1861. Lee's colonelcy was signed by the new president, Abraham Lincoln. Three weeks after his promotion, Colonel Lee was offered a senior command (with the rank of Major General) in the expanding Army to fight the Southern States that had left the Union. Fort Mason, Texas, was Lee's last command with the United States Army. Civil War Resignation from United States Army Unlike many Southerners who expected a glorious war, Lee correctly predicted it as protracted and devastating. He privately opposed the new Confederate States of America in letters in early 1861, denouncing secession as "nothing but revolution" and an unconstitutional betrayal of the efforts of the Founding Fathers. Writing to George Washington Custis in January, Lee stated: Despite opposing secession, Lee said in January that "we can with a clear conscience separate" if all peaceful means failed. He agreed with secessionists in most areas, rejecting the Northern abolitionists' criticisms and their prevention of the expansion of slavery to the new western territories, and fear of the North's larger population. Lee supported the Crittenden Compromise, which would have constitutionally protected slavery. Lee's objection to secession was ultimately outweighed by a sense of personal honor, reservations about the legitimacy of a strife-ridden "Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets", and his duty to defend his native Virginia if attacked. He was asked while leaving Texas by a lieutenant if he intended to fight for the Confederacy or the Union, to which Lee replied, "I shall never bear arms against the Union, but it may be necessary for me to carry a musket in the defense of my native state, Virginia, in which case I shall not prove recreant to my duty". Although Virginia had the most slaves of any state, it was more similar to Maryland, which stayed in the Union, than to the Deep South; a convention voted against secession in early 1861. Scott, commanding general of the Union Army and Lee's mentor, told Lincoln he wanted him for a top command, telling Secretary of War Simon Cameron that he had "entire confidence" in Lee. Lee accepted a promotion to colonel of the 1st Cavalry Regiment on March 28, again swearing an oath to the United States. Meanwhile, Lee ignored an offer of command from the Confederacy. After Lincoln's call for troops to put down the rebellion, a second Virginia convention in Richmond voted to secede on April 17, and a May 23 referendum would likely ratify the decision. That night Lee dined with brother Smith and cousin Phillips, naval officers. Because of Lee's indecision, Phillips went to the War Department the next morning to warn that the Union might lose his cousin if the government did not act quickly. In Washington that day, Lee was offered by presidential advisor Francis P. Blair a role as major general to command the defense of the national capital. He replied: Lee immediately went to Scott, who tried to persuade him that Union forces would be large enough to prevent the South from fighting, so he would not have to oppose his state; Lee disagreed. When Lee asked if he could go home and not fight, the fellow Virginian said that the army did not need equivocal soldiers and that if he wanted to resign, he should do so before receiving official orders. Scott told him that Lee had made "the greatest mistake of your life". Lee agreed that to avoid dishonor he had to resign before receiving unwanted orders. While historians have usually called his decision inevitable ("the answer he was born to make", wrote Douglas Southall Freeman; another called it a "no-brainer") given the ties to family and state, an 1871 letter from his eldest daughter, Mary Custis Lee, to a biographer described Lee as "worn and harassed" yet calm as he deliberated alone in his office. People on the street noticed Lee's grim face as he tried to decide over the next two days, and he later said that he kept the resignation letter for a day before sending it on April 20. Two days later the Richmond convention invited Lee to the city. It elected him as commander of Virginia state forces before his arrival on April 23, and almost immediately gave him George Washington's sword as symbol of his appointment; whether he was told of a decision he did not want without time to decide, or did want the excitement and opportunity of command, is unclear. A cousin on Scott's staff told the family that Lee's decision so upset Scott that he collapsed on a sofa and mourned as if he had lost a son, and asked to not hear Lee's name. When Lee told family his decision, he said "I suppose you will all think I have done very wrong", as the others were mostly pro-Union; only Mary Custis was a secessionist, and her mother especially wanted to choose the Union, but told her husband that she would support whatever he decided. Many younger men like nephew Fitzhugh wanted to support the Confederacy, but Lee's three sons joined the Confederate military only after their father's decision. Most family members, like brother Smith, also reluctantly chose the South, but Smith's wife and Anne, Lee's sister, still supported the Union; Anne's son joined the Union Army, and no one in his family ever spoke to Lee again. Many cousins fought for the Confederacy, but Phillips and John Fitzgerald told Lee in person that they would uphold their oaths; John H. Upshur stayed with the Union military despite much family pressure; Roger Jones stayed in the Union army after Lee refused to advise him on what to do; and two of Philip Fendall's sons fought for the Union. Forty percent of Virginian officers stayed with the North. Early role At the outbreak of war, Lee was appointed to command all of Virginia's forces, which then encompassed the Provisional Army of Virginia and the Virginia State Navy. He was appointed a Major General by the Virginia Governor, but upon the formation of the Confederate States Army, he was named one of its first five full generals. Lee did not wear the insignia of a Confederate general, but only the three stars of a Confederate colonel, equivalent to his last U.S. Army rank. He did not intend to wear a general's insignia until the Civil War had been won and he could be promoted, in peacetime, to general in the Confederate Army. Lee's first field assignment was commanding Confederate forces in western Virginia, where he was defeated at the Battle of Cheat Mountain and was widely blamed for Confederate setbacks. He was then sent to organize the coastal defenses along the Carolina and Georgia seaboard, appointed commander, "Department of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida" on November 5, 1861. Between then and the fall of Fort Pulaski, April 11, 1862, he put in place a defense of Savannah that proved successful in blocking Federal advance on Savannah. Confederate fort and naval gunnery dictated nighttime movement and construction by the besiegers. Federal preparations required four months. In those four months, Lee developed a defense in depth. Behind Fort Pulaski on the Savannah River, Fort Jackson was improved, and two additional batteries covered river approaches. In the face of the Union superiority in naval, artillery and infantry deployment, Lee was able to block any Federal advance on Savannah, and at the same time, well-trained Georgia troops were released in time to meet McClellan's Peninsula Campaign. The city of Savannah would not fall until Sherman's approach from the interior at the end of 1864. At first, the press spoke to the disappointment of losing Fort Pulaski. Surprised by the effectiveness of large caliber Parrott Rifles in their first deployment, it was widely speculated that only betrayal could have brought overnight surrender to a Third System Fort. Lee was said to have failed to get effective support in the Savannah River from the three sidewheeler gunboats of the Georgia Navy. Although again blamed by the press for Confederate reverses, he was appointed military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, the former U.S. Secretary of War. While in Richmond, Lee was ridiculed as the 'King of Spades' for his excessive digging of trenches around the capitol. These trenches would later play a pivotal role in battles near the end of the war. Commander, Army of Northern Virginia (June 1862 – June 1863) In the spring of 1862, in the Peninsula Campaign, the Union Army of the Potomac under General George B. McClellan advanced on Richmond from Fort Monroe to the east. McClellan forced Gen. Joseph E. Johnston and the Army of Virginia to retreat to just north and east of the Confederate capital. Then Johnston was wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines, on June 1, 1862. Lee now got his first opportunity to lead an army in the field – the force he renamed the Army of Northern Virginia, signalling his confidence that the Union army would be driven away from Richmond. Early in the war, Lee had been called "Granny Lee" for his allegedly timid style of command. Confederate newspaper editorials objected to him replacing Johnston, opining that Lee would be passive, waiting for Union attack. And for the first three weeks of June, he did not attack, instead strengthening Richmond's defenses. But then he launched a series of bold attacks against McClellan's forces, the Seven Days Battles. Despite superior Union numbers and some clumsy tactical performances by his subordinates, Lee's attacks derailed McClellan's plans and drove back part of his forces. Confederate casualties were heavy, but McClellan was unnerved, retreated to the lower James River, and abandoned the Peninsula Campaign. This success completely changed Confederate morale and the public's regard for Lee. After the Seven Days Battles, and until the end of the war, his men called him simply "Marse Robert", a term of respect and affection. The setback, and the resulting drop in Union morale, impelled Lincoln to adopt a new policy of relentless, committed warfare. After the Seven Days, Lincoln decided he would move to emancipate most Confederate slaves by executive order, as a military act, using his authority as commander-in-chief. But he needed a Union victory first. Meanwhile, Lee defeated another Union army under Gen. John Pope at the Second Battle of Bull Run. In less than 90 days after taking command, Lee had run McClellan off the Peninsula, defeated Pope, and moved the battle lines north, from just outside Richmond to south of Washington. Lee now invaded Maryland and Pennsylvania, hoping to collect supplies in Union territory, and possibly win a victory that would sway the upcoming Union elections in favor of ending the war. But McClellan's men found a lost Confederate dispatch, Special Order 191, that revealed Lee's plans and movements. McClellan always exaggerated Lee's numerical strength, but now he knew the Confederate army was divided and could be destroyed in detail. However, McClellan moved slowly, not realizing a spy had informed Lee that McClellan had the plans. Lee quickly concentrated his forces west of Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, where McClellan attacked on September 17. The Battle of Antietam was the single bloodiest day of the war, with both sides suffering enormous losses. Lee's army barely withstood the Union assaults, then retreated to Virginia the next day. This narrow Confederate defeat gave President Abraham Lincoln the opportunity to issue his Emancipation Proclamation, which put the Confederacy on the diplomatic and moral defensive. Disappointed by McClellan's failure to destroy Lee's army, Lincoln named Ambrose Burnside as commander of the Army of the | Navy. He was appointed a Major General by the Virginia Governor, but upon the formation of the Confederate States Army, he was named one of its first five full generals. Lee did not wear the insignia of a Confederate general, but only the three stars of a Confederate colonel, equivalent to his last U.S. Army rank. He did not intend to wear a general's insignia until the Civil War had been won and he could be promoted, in peacetime, to general in the Confederate Army. Lee's first field assignment was commanding Confederate forces in western Virginia, where he was defeated at the Battle of Cheat Mountain and was widely blamed for Confederate setbacks. He was then sent to organize the coastal defenses along the Carolina and Georgia seaboard, appointed commander, "Department of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida" on November 5, 1861. Between then and the fall of Fort Pulaski, April 11, 1862, he put in place a defense of Savannah that proved successful in blocking Federal advance on Savannah. Confederate fort and naval gunnery dictated nighttime movement and construction by the besiegers. Federal preparations required four months. In those four months, Lee developed a defense in depth. Behind Fort Pulaski on the Savannah River, Fort Jackson was improved, and two additional batteries covered river approaches. In the face of the Union superiority in naval, artillery and infantry deployment, Lee was able to block any Federal advance on Savannah, and at the same time, well-trained Georgia troops were released in time to meet McClellan's Peninsula Campaign. The city of Savannah would not fall until Sherman's approach from the interior at the end of 1864. At first, the press spoke to the disappointment of losing Fort Pulaski. Surprised by the effectiveness of large caliber Parrott Rifles in their first deployment, it was widely speculated that only betrayal could have brought overnight surrender to a Third System Fort. Lee was said to have failed to get effective support in the Savannah River from the three sidewheeler gunboats of the Georgia Navy. Although again blamed by the press for Confederate reverses, he was appointed military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, the former U.S. Secretary of War. While in Richmond, Lee was ridiculed as the 'King of Spades' for his excessive digging of trenches around the capitol. These trenches would later play a pivotal role in battles near the end of the war. Commander, Army of Northern Virginia (June 1862 – June 1863) In the spring of 1862, in the Peninsula Campaign, the Union Army of the Potomac under General George B. McClellan advanced on Richmond from Fort Monroe to the east. McClellan forced Gen. Joseph E. Johnston and the Army of Virginia to retreat to just north and east of the Confederate capital. Then Johnston was wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines, on June 1, 1862. Lee now got his first opportunity to lead an army in the field – the force he renamed the Army of Northern Virginia, signalling his confidence that the Union army would be driven away from Richmond. Early in the war, Lee had been called "Granny Lee" for his allegedly timid style of command. Confederate newspaper editorials objected to him replacing Johnston, opining that Lee would be passive, waiting for Union attack. And for the first three weeks of June, he did not attack, instead strengthening Richmond's defenses. But then he launched a series of bold attacks against McClellan's forces, the Seven Days Battles. Despite superior Union numbers and some clumsy tactical performances by his subordinates, Lee's attacks derailed McClellan's plans and drove back part of his forces. Confederate casualties were heavy, but McClellan was unnerved, retreated to the lower James River, and abandoned the Peninsula Campaign. This success completely changed Confederate morale and the public's regard for Lee. After the Seven Days Battles, and until the end of the war, his men called him simply "Marse Robert", a term of respect and affection. The setback, and the resulting drop in Union morale, impelled Lincoln to adopt a new policy of relentless, committed warfare. After the Seven Days, Lincoln decided he would move to emancipate most Confederate slaves by executive order, as a military act, using his authority as commander-in-chief. But he needed a Union victory first. Meanwhile, Lee defeated another Union army under Gen. John Pope at the Second Battle of Bull Run. In less than 90 days after taking command, Lee had run McClellan off the Peninsula, defeated Pope, and moved the battle lines north, from just outside Richmond to south of Washington. Lee now invaded Maryland and Pennsylvania, hoping to collect supplies in Union territory, and possibly win a victory that would sway the upcoming Union elections in favor of ending the war. But McClellan's men found a lost Confederate dispatch, Special Order 191, that revealed Lee's plans and movements. McClellan always exaggerated Lee's numerical strength, but now he knew the Confederate army was divided and could be destroyed in detail. However, McClellan moved slowly, not realizing a spy had informed Lee that McClellan had the plans. Lee quickly concentrated his forces west of Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, where McClellan attacked on September 17. The Battle of Antietam was the single bloodiest day of the war, with both sides suffering enormous losses. Lee's army barely withstood the Union assaults, then retreated to Virginia the next day. This narrow Confederate defeat gave President Abraham Lincoln the opportunity to issue his Emancipation Proclamation, which put the Confederacy on the diplomatic and moral defensive. Disappointed by McClellan's failure to destroy Lee's army, Lincoln named Ambrose Burnside as commander of the Army of the Potomac. Burnside ordered an attack across the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg, Virginia. Delays in bridging the river allowed Lee's army ample time to organize strong defenses, and the Union frontal assault on December 13, 1862, was a disaster. There were 12,600 Union casualties to 5,000 Confederate; one of the most one-sided battles in the Civil War. After this victory, Lee reportedly said, "It is well that war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it." At Fredericksburg, according to historian Michael Fellman, Lee had completely entered into the "spirit of war, where destructiveness took on its own beauty." After the bitter Union defeat at Fredericksburg, President Lincoln named Joseph Hooker commander of the Army of the Potomac. In May 1863, Hooker maneuvered to attack Lee's army via Chancellorsville, Virginia. But Hooker was defeated by Lee's daring maneuver: dividing his army and sending Stonewall Jackson's corps to attack Hooker's flank. Lee won a decisive victory over a larger force, but with heavy casualties, including Jackson, his finest corps commander, who was accidentally killed by his own troops. Battle of Gettysburg The critical decisions came in May–June 1863, after Lee's smashing victory at the Battle of Chancellorsville. The western front was crumbling, as multiple uncoordinated Confederate armies were unable to handle General Ulysses S. Grant's campaign against Vicksburg. The top military advisers wanted to save Vicksburg, but Lee persuaded Davis to overrule them and authorize yet another invasion of the North. The immediate goal was to acquire urgently needed supplies from the rich farming districts of Pennsylvania; a long-term goal was to stimulate peace activity in the North by demonstrating the power of the South to invade. Lee's decision proved a significant strategic blunder and cost the Confederacy control of its western regions, and nearly cost Lee his own army as Union forces cut him off from the South. In the summer of 1863, Lee invaded the North again, marching through western Maryland and into south central Pennsylvania. He encountered Union forces under George G. Meade at the three-day Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania in July; the battle would produce the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War. With some of his subordinates being new and inexperienced in their commands, J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry being out of the area, and Lee being slightly ill, he was less than comfortable with how events were unfolding. While the first day of battle was controlled by the Confederates, key terrain that should have been taken by General Ewell was not. The second day ended with the Confederates unable to break the Union position, and the Union being more solidified. Lee's decision on the third day, against the judgment of his best corps commander General Longstreet, to launch a massive frontal assault on the center of the Union line turned out to be disastrous. The assault known as Pickett's Charge was repulsed and resulted in heavy Confederate losses. The general rode out to meet his retreating army and proclaimed, "All this has been my fault." Lee was compelled to retreat. Despite flooded rivers that blocked his retreat, he escaped Meade's ineffective pursuit. Following his defeat at Gettysburg, Lee sent a letter of resignation to President Davis on August 8, 1863, but Davis refused Lee's request. That fall, Lee and Meade met again in two minor campaigns that did little to change the strategic standoff. The Confederate Army never fully recovered from the substantial losses incurred during the three-day battle in southern Pennsylvania. The historian Shelby Foote stated, "Gettysburg was the price the South paid for having Robert E. Lee as commander." Ulysses S. Grant and the Union offensive In 1864 the new Union general-in-chief, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, sought to use his large advantages in manpower and material resources to destroy Lee's army by attrition, pinning Lee against his capital of Richmond. Lee successfully stopped each attack, but Grant with his superior numbers kept pushing each time a bit farther to the southeast. These battles in the Overland Campaign included the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House and Cold Harbor. Grant eventually was able to stealthily move his army across the James River. After stopping a Union attempt to capture Petersburg, Virginia, a vital railroad link supplying Richmond, Lee's men built elaborate trenches and were besieged in Petersburg, a development which presaged the trench warfare of World War I. Lee attempted to break the stalemate by sending Jubal A. Early on a raid through the Shenandoah Valley to Washington, D.C., but Early was defeated early on by the superior forces of Philip Sheridan. The Siege of Petersburg lasted from June 1864 until March 1865, with Lee's outnumbered and poorly supplied army shrinking daily because of desertions by disheartened Confederates. General in Chief On February 6, 1865, Lee was appointed General in Chief of the Armies of the Confederate States. As the South ran out of manpower the issue of arming the slaves became paramount. Lee explained, "We should employ them without delay ... [along with] gradual and general emancipation". The first units were in training as the war ended. As the Confederate army was devastated by casualties, disease and desertion, the Union attack on Petersburg succeeded on April 2, 1865. Lee abandoned Richmond and retreated west. Lee then made an attempt to escape to the southwest and join up with Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee in North Carolina. However, his forces were soon surrounded and he surrendered them to Grant on April 9, 1865, at the Battle of Appomattox Court House. Other Confederate armies followed suit and the war ended. The day after his surrender, Lee issued his Farewell Address to his army. Lee resisted calls by some officers to reject surrender and allow small units to melt away into the mountains, setting up a lengthy guerrilla war. He insisted the war was over and energetically campaigned for inter-sectional reconciliation. "So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interests of the South." Summaries of Lee's Civil War battles The following are summaries of Civil War campaigns and major battles where Robert E. Lee was the commanding officer: Postbellum life After the war, Lee was not arrested or punished (although he was indicted), but he did lose the right to vote as well as some property. Lee's prewar family home, the Custis-Lee Mansion, was seized by Union forces during the war and turned into Arlington National Cemetery, and his family was not compensated until more than a decade after his death. In 1866 Lee counseled southerners not to resume fighting, of which Grant said Lee was "setting an example of forced acquiescence so grudging and pernicious in its effects as to be hardly realized". Lee joined with Democrats in opposing the Radical Republicans who demanded punitive measures against the South, distrusted its commitment to the abolition of slavery and, indeed, distrusted the region's loyalty to the United States. Lee supported a system of free public schools for blacks but forthrightly opposed allowing blacks to vote. "My own opinion is that, at this time, they [black Southerners] cannot vote intelligently, and that giving them the [vote] would lead to a great deal of demagogism, and lead to embarrassments in various ways," Lee stated. Emory Thomas says Lee had become a suffering Christ-like icon for ex-Confederates. President Grant invited him to the White House in 1869, and he went. Nationally he became an icon of reconciliation between the North and South, and the reintegration of former Confederates into the national fabric. Lee hoped to retire to a farm of his own, but he was too much a regional symbol to live in obscurity. From April to June 1865, he and his family resided in Richmond at the Stewart-Lee House. He accepted an offer to serve as the president of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia, and served from October 1865 until his death. The Trustees used his famous name in large-scale fund-raising appeals and Lee transformed Washington College into a leading Southern college, expanding its offerings significantly, adding programs in commerce and journalism, and incorporating the Lexington Law School. Lee was well liked by the students, which enabled him to announce an "honor system" like that of West Point, explaining that "we have but one rule here, and it is that every student be a gentleman." To speed up national reconciliation Lee recruited students from the North and made certain they were well treated on campus and in town. Several glowing appraisals of Lee's tenure as college president have survived, depicting the dignity and respect he commanded among all. Previously, most students had been obliged to occupy the campus dormitories, while only the most mature were allowed to live off-campus. Lee quickly reversed this rule, requiring most students to board off-campus, and allowing only the most mature to live in the dorms as a mark of privilege; the results of this policy were considered a success. A typical account by a professor there states that "the students fairly worshipped him, and deeply dreaded his displeasure; yet so kind, affable, and gentle was he toward them that all loved to approach him. ... No student would have dared to violate General Lee's expressed wish or appeal." While at Washington College, Lee told a colleague that the greatest mistake of his life was taking a military education. He also defended his father in a biographical sketch. President Johnson's amnesty pardons On May 29, 1865, President Andrew Johnson issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon to persons who had participated in the rebellion against the United States. There were fourteen excepted classes, though, and members of those classes had to make special application to the President. Lee sent an application to Grant and wrote to President Johnson on June 13, 1865: On October 2, 1865, the same day that Lee was inaugurated as president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, he signed his Amnesty Oath, thereby complying fully with the provision of Johnson's proclamation. Lee was not pardoned, nor was his citizenship restored. Three years later, on December 25, 1868, Johnson proclaimed a second amnesty which removed previous exceptions, such as the one that affected Lee. Postwar politics Lee, who had opposed secession and remained mostly indifferent to politics before the Civil War, supported President Andrew Johnson's plan of Presidential Reconstruction that took effect in 1865–66. However, he opposed the Congressional Republican program that took effect in 1867. In February 1866, he was called to testify before the Joint Congressional Committee on Reconstruction in Washington, where he expressed support for Johnson's plans for quick restoration of the former Confederate states, and argued that restoration should return, as far as possible, to the status quo ante in the Southern states' governments (with the exception of slavery). Lee told the committee that "every one with whom I associate expresses kind feelings towards the freedmen. They wish to see them get on in the world, and particularly to take up some occupation for a living, and to turn their hands to some work." Lee also expressed his "willingness that blacks should be educated, and ... that it would be better for the blacks and for the whites." Lee forthrightly opposed allowing blacks to vote: "My own opinion is that, at this time, they [black Southerners] cannot vote intelligently, and that giving them the [vote] would lead to a great deal of demagogism, and lead to embarrassments in various ways." In an interview in May 1866, Lee said: "The Radical party are likely to do a great deal of harm, for we wish now for good feeling to grow up between North and South, and the President, Mr. Johnson, has been doing much to strengthen the feeling in favor of the Union among us. The relations between the Negroes and the whites were friendly formerly, and would remain so if legislation be not passed in favor of the blacks, in a way that will only do them harm." In 1868, Lee's ally Alexander H. H. Stuart drafted a public letter of endorsement for the Democratic Party's presidential campaign, in which Horatio Seymour ran against Lee's old foe Republican Grant. Lee signed it along with thirty-one other ex-Confederates. The Democratic campaign, eager to publicize the endorsement, published the statement widely in newspapers. Their letter claimed paternalistic concern for the welfare of freed Southern blacks, stating that "The idea that the Southern people are hostile to the negroes and would oppress them, if it were in their power to do so, is entirely unfounded. They have grown up in our midst, and we have been accustomed from childhood to look upon them with kindness." However, it also called for the restoration of white political rule, arguing that "It is true that the people of the South, in common with a large majority of the people of the North and West, are, for obvious reasons, inflexibly opposed to any system of laws that would place the political power of the country in the hands of the negro race. But this opposition springs from no feeling of enmity, but from a deep-seated conviction that, at present, the negroes have neither the intelligence nor the other qualifications which are necessary to make them safe depositories of political power." In his public |
systems. Many raster manipulations map directly onto the mathematical formalisms of linear algebra, where mathematical objects of matrix structure are of central concern. Etymology The word "raster" has its origins in the Latin rastrum (a rake), which is derived from radere (to scrape). It originates from the raster scan of cathode ray tube (CRT) video monitors, which paint the image line by line by magnetically or electrostatically steering a focused electron beam. By association, it can also refer to a rectangular grid of pixels. The word rastrum is now used to refer to a device for drawing musical staff lines. Data Model The fundamental strategy underlying the raster model is the tessellation of a plane, into a two dimensional array of squares, each called a cell or pixel (from "picture element"). In digital photography, the plane is the Visual field as projected onto the CCD sensor; in computer art, the plane is a virtual canvas; in Geographic information systems, the plane is a projection of the Earth's surface. The size of each square pixel, known as the resolution or support, is constant across the grid. A single numeric value is then stored for each pixel. For most images, this value is a visible color, but other measurements are possible, even numeric codes for qualitative categories. Each raster grid has a specified pixel format, the data type for each number. Common pixel formats are binary, gray scale, palettized, and full color, where color depth determines the fidelity of the colors represented and color space determines the range of color coverage (which is often less than the full range of human color vision). Most modern color raster formats represent color using 24 bits (over 16 million distinct colors), 8 each (0-255) for red, green, and blue. The digital sensors used for remote sensing and astronomy are often able to detect and store wavelengths beyond the visible spectrum; the large CCD bitmapped sensor at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory captures 3.2 gigapixels in a single image (6.4 GB raw), over six color channels which exceed the spectral range of human color vision. Applications Image storage Most computer images are stored in raster graphics formats or compressed variations, including GIF, JPEG, and PNG, which are popular on the World Wide Web. A raster data structure is based on a (usually rectangular, square-based) tessellation of the 2D plane into cells, each containing a single value. To store the data in a file, the two-dimensional array must be serialized. The most common way to do this is a row-major format, in which the cells along the first (usually top) row are listed left to right, followed immediately by those of the second row, and so on. In the example at right, the cells of tessellation A are overlaid on the point pattern B resulting in an array C of quadrant counts representing the number of points in each cell. For purposes of visualization a lookup table has been used to color each of the cells in an image D. Here are the numbers as a serial row-major array: 1 3 0 0 1 12 8 0 1 4 3 3 0 2 0 2 1 7 4 1 5 4 2 2 0 3 1 2 2 2 2 3 0 5 1 9 3 3 3 4 5 0 8 0 2 4 3 2 8 4 3 2 2 7 2 3 2 10 1 5 2 1 3 7 To reconstruct the two-dimensional grid, the file must include a header section at the beginning that contains at least the number of columns, and the pixel datatype (especially the number of bits or bytes per value) so the reader knows where each value ends to start reading the next one. Headers may also include the number of rows, georeferencing parameters for geographic data, or other metadata tags, such as those specified in the Exif standard. Compression High-resolution raster grids contain a large number of pixels, and thus consume a large amount of memory. This has led to multiple approaches to compressing the data volume into smaller files. The most common strategy is to look for patterns or trends in the pixel values, then store a parameterized form of the pattern instead of the original data. Common raster compression algorithms include run-length encoding (RLE), JPEG, LZ (the basis for PNG and ZIP), LZW (the basis for GIF), and others. For example, Run length encoding looks for repeated values in | this approach, the computer contains an area of memory that holds all the data that are to be displayed. The central processor writes data into this region of memory and the video controller collects them from there. The bits of data stored in this block of memory are related to the eventual pattern of pixels that will be used to construct an image on the display. An early scanned display with raster computer graphics was invented in the late 1960s by A. Michael Noll at Bell Labs, but its patent application filed February 5, 1970 was abandoned at the Supreme Court in 1977 over the issue of the patentability of computer software. Printing During the 1970s and 1980s, pen plotters, using Vector graphics, were common for creating precise drawings, especially on large format paper. However, since then almost all printers create the printed image as a raster grid, including both laser and inkjet printers. When the source information is vector, rendering specifications and software such as PostScript are used to create the raster image. Three-dimensional rasters Three-dimensional voxel raster graphics are employed in video games and are also used in medical imaging such as MRI scanners. Geographic information systems Geographic phenomena are commonly represented in a raster format in GIS. The raster grid is georeferenced, so that each pixel (commonly called a cell in GIS because the "picture" part of "pixel" is not relevant) represents a square region of geographic space. The value of each cell then represents some measurable (qualitative or quantitative) property of that region, typically conceptualized as a field. Examples of fields commonly represented in raster include: temperature, population density, soil moisture, land cover, surface elevation, etc. Two sampling models are used do derive cell values from the field: in a lattice, the value is measured at the center point of each cell; in a grid, the value is a summary (usually a mean or mode) of the value over the entire cell. Resolution Raster graphics are resolution dependent, meaning they cannot scale up to an arbitrary resolution without loss of apparent quality. This property contrasts with the capabilities of vector graphics, which easily scale up to the quality of the device rendering them. Raster graphics deal more practically than vector graphics with photographs and photo-realistic images, while vector graphics often serve better for typesetting or for graphic design. Modern computer-monitors typically display about 72 to 130 pixels per inch (PPI), and some modern consumer printers can resolve 2400 dots per inch (DPI) or more; determining the most appropriate image resolution for a given printer-resolution can pose difficulties, since printed output may have a greater level of detail than a viewer can discern on a monitor. Typically, a resolution of 150 to 300 PPI works well for 4-color process (CMYK) printing. However, for printing technologies that perform color mixing through dithering (halftone) rather than through overprinting (virtually all home/office inkjet and laser printers), printer DPI and image PPI have a very different meaning, and this can be misleading. Because, through the dithering process, the printer builds a single image pixel out of several printer dots to increase color depth, the printer's DPI setting must be set far higher than the desired PPI to ensure sufficient color depth without sacrificing image resolution. Thus, for instance, printing an image at 250 PPI may actually require a printer setting of 1200 DPI. |
not make it onto the fall schedule to see how they fare with the public. These series usually run six to 13 episodes. If they do well with the public, they may get a renewal for a half (13 weeks) or full season in the new schedule. Shows that are already popular will return from February sweeps until the end of the season (which sometimes ends before May sweeps) with only limited reruns used. The number of episodes per season, originally well over 30 episodes during the 1950s and 1960s, dropped below 26 (the number of episodes required to fill a time slot for a year without rerunning any episode more than once) in the 1970s. Specials typically pad out the remainder of the schedule. Television specials Often, if a television special such as Peter Pan or a network television broadcast of a classic film like The Wizard of Oz is especially well-received, it will be rerun from time to time. Before the VCR era, this would be the only opportunity audiences had of seeing a program more than once. Seasonal programming such as How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Ten Commandments, It's A Wonderful Life or the Charlie Brown television specials are normally re-shown each year, in the appropriate timeframe. Syndication A television program goes into syndication when many episodes of the program are sold as a package. Generally the buyer is either a cable channel or an owner of local television stations. Often, programs are not particularly profitable until they are sold for syndication. Since local television stations often need to sell more commercial airtime than network affiliates, syndicated shows are usually edited to make room for extra commercials. Often about 100 episodes (four to five seasons' worth) are required for a weekly series to be rerun in daily syndication (at least four times a week). Very popular series running more than four seasons may start daily reruns of the first seasons, while production and airings continue of the current season's episodes; until approximately the early 1980s, shows that aired in syndication while still in production had the reruns aired under an alternate name (or multiple alternate names, as was the case with Death Valley Days) to differentiate the reruns from the first-run episodes. Few people anticipated the long life that a popular television series would eventually see in syndication, so most performers signed contracts that limited residual payments to about six repeats. After that, the actors received nothing and the production company would keep 100% of any income until the copyright expired; many shows did not even have their copyrights renewed and others were systematically destroyed, such was the lack of awareness of the potential for revenue from them. This situation went unchanged until the mid-1970s, when contracts for new shows extended residual payments for the performers, regardless of the number of reruns, while tape recycling effectively came to an end (rapid advancements in digital video in the 1990s made preservation far more economical) and the Copyright Act of 1976 extended copyright terms to much longer lengths, eliminating the need for renewal. Once a series is no longer performing well enough to be sold in syndication, it may still remain in barter syndication, in which television stations are offered the program for free in exchange for a requirement to air additional advertisements (without compensation) bundled with the free program during other shows (barter syndication is far more common, if not the norm, in radio, where only the most popular programs charge rights fees). The Program Exchange was once the most prominent barter syndicator in United States television, offering mostly older series from numerous network libraries. Barter syndicated series may be seen on smaller, independent stations with small budgets or as short-term filler on larger stations; they tend not to be as widely syndicated as programs syndicated with a rights fee. Classic television With the growing availability of cable and satellite television channels as well as over-the-air digital subchannels, combined with a growing body of available post-syndication programming, a handful of specialty channels have been built solely or primarily to run former network programming which otherwise would no longer be in syndication. Branded as | do well with the public, they may get a renewal for a half (13 weeks) or full season in the new schedule. Shows that are already popular will return from February sweeps until the end of the season (which sometimes ends before May sweeps) with only limited reruns used. The number of episodes per season, originally well over 30 episodes during the 1950s and 1960s, dropped below 26 (the number of episodes required to fill a time slot for a year without rerunning any episode more than once) in the 1970s. Specials typically pad out the remainder of the schedule. Television specials Often, if a television special such as Peter Pan or a network television broadcast of a classic film like The Wizard of Oz is especially well-received, it will be rerun from time to time. Before the VCR era, this would be the only opportunity audiences had of seeing a program more than once. Seasonal programming such as How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Ten Commandments, It's A Wonderful Life or the Charlie Brown television specials are normally re-shown each year, in the appropriate timeframe. Syndication A television program goes into syndication when many episodes of the program are sold as a package. Generally the buyer is either a cable channel or an owner of local television stations. Often, programs are not particularly profitable until they are sold for syndication. Since local television stations often need to sell more commercial airtime than network affiliates, syndicated shows are usually edited to make room for extra commercials. Often about 100 episodes (four to five seasons' worth) are required for a weekly series to be rerun in daily syndication (at least four times a week). Very popular series running more than four seasons may start daily reruns of the first seasons, while production and airings continue of the current season's episodes; until approximately the early 1980s, shows that aired in syndication while still in production had the reruns aired under an alternate name (or multiple alternate names, as was the case with Death Valley Days) to differentiate the reruns from the first-run episodes. Few people anticipated the long life that a popular television series would eventually see in syndication, so most performers signed contracts that limited residual payments to about six repeats. After that, the actors received nothing and the production company would keep 100% of any income until the copyright expired; many shows did not even have their copyrights renewed and others were systematically destroyed, such was the lack of awareness of the potential for revenue from them. This situation went unchanged until the mid-1970s, when contracts for new shows extended residual payments for the performers, regardless of the number of reruns, while tape recycling effectively came to an end (rapid advancements in digital video in the 1990s made preservation far more economical) and the Copyright Act of 1976 extended copyright terms to much longer lengths, eliminating the need for renewal. Once a series is no longer performing well enough to be sold in syndication, it may still remain in barter syndication, in which television stations are offered the program for free in exchange for a requirement to air additional advertisements (without compensation) bundled with the free program during other shows (barter syndication is far more common, if not the norm, in radio, where only the most popular programs charge rights fees). The Program Exchange was once the most prominent barter syndicator in United States television, offering mostly older series from numerous network libraries. Barter syndicated series may be seen on smaller, independent stations with small budgets or as short-term filler on larger stations; they tend not to be as widely syndicated as programs syndicated with a rights fee. Classic television With the growing availability of cable and satellite television channels as well as over-the-air digital subchannels, combined with a growing body of available post-syndication programming, a handful of specialty channels have been built solely or primarily to run former network programming which otherwise would no longer be in syndication. Branded |
Data sent through the internet, such as a web page or email, is in the form of data packets. A packet is typically forwarded from one router to another router through the networks that constitute an internetwork (e.g. the Internet) until it reaches its destination node. A router is connected to two or more data lines from different IP networks. When a data packet comes in on one of the lines, the router reads the network address information in the packet header to determine the ultimate destination. Then, using information in its routing table or routing policy, it directs the packet to the next network on its journey. The most familiar type of IP routers are home and small office routers that simply forward IP packets between the home computers and the Internet. More sophisticated routers, such as enterprise routers, connect large business or ISP networks up to the powerful core routers that forward data at high speed along the optical fiber lines of the Internet backbone. Operation When multiple routers are used in interconnected networks, the routers can exchange information about destination addresses using a routing protocol. Each router builds up a routing table, a list of routes, between two computer systems on the interconnected networks. The software that runs the router is composed of two functional processing units that operate simultaneously, called planes: Control plane: A router maintains a routing table that lists which route should be used to forward a data packet, and through which physical interface connection. It does this using internal pre-configured directives, called static routes, or by learning routes dynamically using a routing protocol. Static and dynamic routes are stored in the routing table. The control-plane logic then strips non-essential directives from the table and builds a forwarding information base (FIB) to be used by the forwarding plane. Forwarding plane: This unit forwards the data packets between incoming and outgoing interface connections. It reads the header of each packet as it comes in, matches the destination to entries in the FIB supplied by the control plane, and directs the packet to the outgoing network specified in the FIB. Applications A router may have interfaces for different types of physical layer connections, such as copper cables, fiber optic, or wireless transmission. It can also support different network layer transmission standards. Each network interface is used to enable data packets to be forwarded from one transmission system to another. Routers may also be used to connect two or more logical groups of computer devices known as subnets, each with a different network prefix. Routers may provide connectivity within enterprises, between enterprises and the Internet, or between internet service providers' (ISPs') networks. The largest routers (such as the Cisco CRS-1 or Juniper PTX) interconnect the various ISPs, or may be used in large enterprise networks. Smaller routers usually provide connectivity for typical home and office networks. All sizes of routers may be found inside enterprises. The most powerful routers are usually found in ISPs, academic and research facilities. Large businesses may also need more powerful routers to cope with ever-increasing demands of intranet data traffic. A hierarchical internetworking model for interconnecting routers in large networks is in common use. Access, core and distribution Access routers, including small office/home office (SOHO) models, are located at home and customer sites such as branch offices that do not need hierarchical routing of their own. Typically, they are optimized for low cost. Some SOHO routers are capable of running alternative free Linux-based firmware like Tomato, OpenWrt, or DD-WRT. Distribution routers aggregate traffic from multiple access routers. Distribution routers are often responsible for enforcing quality of service across a wide area network (WAN), so they may have considerable memory installed, multiple WAN interface connections, and substantial onboard data processing routines. They may also provide connectivity to groups of file servers or other external networks. In enterprises, a core router may provide a collapsed backbone interconnecting the distribution tier routers from multiple buildings of a campus, or large enterprise locations. They tend to be optimized for high bandwidth, but lack some of the features of edge routers. Security External networks must be carefully considered as part of the overall security strategy of the local network. A router may include a firewall, VPN handling, and other security functions, or they may be handled by separate devices. Routers also commonly perform network address translation which restricts connections initiated from external connections but is not recognized as a security feature by all experts. Some experts argue that open source routers are more secure and reliable than closed source routers because open-source routers allow mistakes to be quickly found and corrected. Routing different networks Routers are also often distinguished on the basis of the network in which they operate. A router in a local area network (LAN) of a single organisation is called an interior router. A router that is operated in the Internet backbone is described as exterior router. While a router that connects a LAN with the Internet or a wide area | business or ISP networks up to the powerful core routers that forward data at high speed along the optical fiber lines of the Internet backbone. Operation When multiple routers are used in interconnected networks, the routers can exchange information about destination addresses using a routing protocol. Each router builds up a routing table, a list of routes, between two computer systems on the interconnected networks. The software that runs the router is composed of two functional processing units that operate simultaneously, called planes: Control plane: A router maintains a routing table that lists which route should be used to forward a data packet, and through which physical interface connection. It does this using internal pre-configured directives, called static routes, or by learning routes dynamically using a routing protocol. Static and dynamic routes are stored in the routing table. The control-plane logic then strips non-essential directives from the table and builds a forwarding information base (FIB) to be used by the forwarding plane. Forwarding plane: This unit forwards the data packets between incoming and outgoing interface connections. It reads the header of each packet as it comes in, matches the destination to entries in the FIB supplied by the control plane, and directs the packet to the outgoing network specified in the FIB. Applications A router may have interfaces for different types of physical layer connections, such as copper cables, fiber optic, or wireless transmission. It can also support different network layer transmission standards. Each network interface is used to enable data packets to be forwarded from one transmission system to another. Routers may also be used to connect two or more logical groups of computer devices known as subnets, each with a different network prefix. Routers may provide connectivity within enterprises, between enterprises and the Internet, or between internet service providers' (ISPs') networks. The largest routers (such as the Cisco CRS-1 or Juniper PTX) interconnect the various ISPs, or may be used in large enterprise networks. Smaller routers usually provide connectivity for typical home and office networks. All sizes of routers may be found inside enterprises. The most powerful routers are usually found in ISPs, academic and research facilities. Large businesses may also need more powerful routers to cope with ever-increasing demands of intranet data traffic. A hierarchical internetworking model for interconnecting routers in large networks is in common use. Access, core and distribution Access routers, including small office/home office (SOHO) models, are located at home and customer sites such as branch offices that do not need hierarchical routing of their own. Typically, they are optimized for low cost. Some SOHO routers are capable of running alternative free Linux-based firmware like Tomato, OpenWrt, or DD-WRT. Distribution routers aggregate traffic from multiple access routers. Distribution routers are often responsible for enforcing quality of service across a wide area network (WAN), so they may have considerable memory installed, multiple WAN interface connections, and substantial onboard data processing routines. They may also provide connectivity to groups of file servers or other external networks. In enterprises, a core router may provide a collapsed backbone interconnecting the distribution tier routers from multiple buildings of a campus, or large enterprise locations. They tend to be optimized for high bandwidth, but lack some of the features of edge routers. Security External networks must be carefully considered as part of the overall security strategy of the local network. A router may include a firewall, VPN handling, and other security functions, or they may be handled by separate devices. Routers also commonly perform network address translation which restricts connections initiated from external connections but is not recognized as a security feature by all experts. Some experts argue that open source routers are more secure and reliable than closed source routers because open-source routers allow mistakes to be quickly found and corrected. Routing different networks Routers are also often distinguished on the basis of the network in which they operate. A |
a preferred route. Because a routing metric is specific to a given routing protocol, multi-protocol routers must use some external heuristic to select between routes learned from different routing protocols. Cisco routers, for example, attribute a value known as the administrative distance to each route, where smaller administrative distances indicate routes learned from a protocol assumed to be more reliable. A local administrator can set up host-specific routes that provide more control over network usage, permits testing, and better overall security. This is useful for debugging network connections or routing tables. In some small systems, a single central device decides ahead of time the complete path of every packet. In some other small systems, whichever edge device injects a packet into the network decides ahead of time the complete path of that particular packet. In either case, the route-planning device needs to know a lot of information about what devices are connected to the network and how they are connected to each other. Once it has this information, it can use an algorithm such as A* search algorithm to find the best path. In high-speed systems, there are so many packets transmitted every second that it is infeasible for a single device to calculate the complete path for each and every packet. Early high-speed systems dealt with this with circuit switching by setting up a path once for the first packet between some source and some destination; later packets between that same source and that same destination continue to follow the same path without recalculating until the circuit teardown. Later high-speed systems inject packets into the network without any one device ever calculating a complete path for packets. In large systems, there are so many connections between devices, and those connections change so frequently, that it is infeasible for any one device to even know how all the devices are connected to each other, much less calculate a complete path through them. Such systems generally use next-hop routing. Most systems use a deterministic dynamic routing algorithm. When a device chooses a path to a particular final destination, that device always chooses the same path to that destination until it receives information that makes it think some other path is better. A few routing algorithms do not use a deterministic algorithm to find the best link for a packet to get from its original source to its final destination. Instead, to avoid congestion hot spots in packet systems, a few algorithms use a randomized algorithm—Valiant's paradigm—that routes a path to a randomly picked intermediate destination, and from there to its true final destination. In many early telephone switches, a randomizer was often used to select the start of a path through a multistage switching fabric. Depending on the application for which path selection is performed, different metrics can be used. For example, for web requests one can use minimum latency paths to minimize web page load time, or for bulk data transfers one can choose the least utilized path to balance load across the network and increase throughput. A popular path selection objective is to reduce the average completion times of traffic flows and the total network bandwidth consumption. Recently, a path selection metric was proposed that computes the total number of bytes scheduled on the edges per path as selection metric. An empirical analysis of several path selection metrics, including this new proposal, has been made available. Multiple agents In some networks, routing is complicated by the fact that no single entity is responsible for selecting paths; instead, multiple entities are involved in selecting paths or even parts of a single path. Complications or inefficiency can result if these entities choose paths to optimize their own objectives, which may conflict with the objectives of other participants. A classic example involves traffic in a road system, in which each driver picks a path that minimizes their travel time. With such routing, the equilibrium routes can be longer than optimal for all drivers. In particular, Braess's paradox shows that adding a new road can lengthen travel times for all drivers. In a single-agent model used, for example, for routing automated guided vehicles (AGVs) on a terminal, reservations are made for each vehicle to prevent simultaneous use of the same part of an infrastructure. This approach is also referred to as context-aware routing. The Internet is partitioned into autonomous systems (ASs) such as internet service providers (ISPs), each of which controls routes involving its network. Routing occurs at multiple levels. First, AS-level paths are selected via the BGP protocol that produces a sequence of ASs through which packets flow. Each AS may have multiple paths, offered by neighboring ASs, from which to choose. These routing decisions often correlate with business relationships with these neighboring ASs, which may be unrelated to path quality or latency. Second, once an AS-level path has been selected, there are often multiple corresponding router-level paths to choose from. This is due, in part, because two ISPs may be connected through multiple connections. In choosing the single router-level path, it is common practice for each ISP to employ hot-potato routing: sending traffic along the path that minimizes the distance through the ISP's own network—even if that path lengthens the total distance to the destination. For example, consider two ISPs, A and B. Each has a presence in New York, connected by a fast link with latency —and each has a presence in London connected by a 5 ms link. Suppose both ISPs have trans-Atlantic links that connect their two networks, but A's link has latency 100 ms and B's has latency 120 ms. When routing a message from a source in A's London network to a destination in B's New York network, A may choose to immediately send the message to B in London. This saves A the work of sending it along an expensive trans-Atlantic link, but causes the message to experience latency 125 ms when the other route would have been 20 ms faster. A 2003 measurement study of Internet routes found that, between pairs of neighboring ISPs, more than 30% of paths have inflated latency due to hot-potato routing, with 5% of paths being delayed by at least 12 ms. Inflation due to AS-level path selection, while substantial, was attributed primarily to BGP's lack of a mechanism to directly optimize for latency, rather than to selfish routing policies. It was also suggested that, were an appropriate mechanism in place, ISPs would be willing to cooperate to reduce latency rather than use hot-potato routing. Such a mechanism was later published by the same authors, first for the case of two ISPs and then for the global case. Route analytics As the Internet and IP networks have become mission critical business tools, there has been increased interest in techniques and methods to monitor the routing posture of networks. Incorrect routing or routing issues cause undesirable performance degradation, flapping or downtime. Monitoring routing in a network is achieved using route analytics tools and techniques. Centralized routing In networks where a logically centralized control is available over the forwarding state, for example, using software-defined networking, routing techniques can be used that aim to optimize global and network-wide performance metrics. This has been used by large internet companies that operate many data centers in different geographical locations attached using private optical links, examples of which include Microsoft's Global WAN, Facebook's Express Backbone, and Google's B4. Global performance metrics to optimize include maximizing network utilization, minimizing traffic flow completion times, maximizing the traffic | have complex topologies that can change rapidly, making the manual construction of routing tables unfeasible. Nevertheless, most of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) uses pre-computed routing tables, with fallback routes if the most direct route becomes blocked (see routing in the PSTN). Dynamic routing attempts to solve this problem by constructing routing tables automatically, based on information carried by routing protocols, allowing the network to act nearly autonomously in avoiding network failures and blockages. Dynamic routing dominates the Internet. Examples of dynamic-routing protocols and algorithms include Routing Information Protocol (RIP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP). Distance vector algorithms Distance vector algorithms use the Bellman–Ford algorithm. This approach assigns a cost number to each of the links between each node in the network. Nodes send information from point A to point B via the path that results in the lowest total cost (i.e. the sum of the costs of the links between the nodes used). When a node first starts, it only knows of its immediate neighbors and the direct cost involved in reaching them. (This information — the list of destinations, the total cost to each, and the next hop to send data to get there — makes up the routing table, or distance table.) Each node, on a regular basis, sends to each neighbor node its own current assessment of the total cost to get to all the destinations it knows of. The neighboring nodes examine this information and compare it to what they already know; anything that represents an improvement on what they already have, they insert in their own table. Over time, all the nodes in the network discover the best next hop and total cost for all destinations. When a network node goes down, any nodes that used it as their next hop discard the entry and convey the updated routing information to all adjacent nodes, which in turn repeat the process. Eventually, all the nodes in the network receive the updates and discover new paths to all the destinations that don't involve the down node. Link-state algorithms When applying link-state algorithms, a graphical map of the network is the fundamental data used for each node. To produce its map, each node floods the entire network with information about the other nodes it can connect to. Each node then independently assembles this information into a map. Using this map, each router independently determines the least-cost path from itself to every other node using a standard shortest paths algorithm such as Dijkstra's algorithm. The result is a tree graph rooted at the current node, such that the path through the tree from the root to any other node is the least-cost path to that node. This tree then serves to construct the routing table, which specifies the best next hop to get from the current node to any other node. Optimized Link State Routing algorithm A link-state routing algorithm optimized for mobile ad hoc networks is the optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR). OLSR is proactive; it uses Hello and Topology Control (TC) messages to discover and disseminate link-state information through the mobile ad hoc network. Using Hello messages, each node discovers 2-hop neighbor information and elects a set of multipoint relays (MPRs). MPRs distinguish OLSR from other link-state routing protocols. Path-vector protocol Distance vector and link-state routing are both intra-domain routing protocols. They are used inside an autonomous system, but not between autonomous systems. Both of these routing protocols become intractable in large networks and cannot be used in inter-domain routing. Distance vector routing is subject to instability if there are more than a few hops in the domain. Link state routing needs significant resources to calculate routing tables. It also creates heavy traffic due to flooding. Path-vector routing is used for inter-domain routing. It is similar to distance vector routing. Path-vector routing assumes that one node (there can be many) in each autonomous system acts on behalf of the entire autonomous system. This node is called the speaker node. The speaker node creates a routing table and advertises it to neighboring speaker nodes in neighboring autonomous systems. The idea is the same as distance vector routing except that only speaker nodes in each autonomous system can communicate with each other. The speaker node advertises the path, not the metric, of the nodes in its autonomous system or other autonomous systems. The path-vector routing algorithm is similar to the distance vector algorithm in the sense that each border router advertises the destinations it can reach to its neighboring router. However, instead of advertising networks in terms of a destination and the distance to that destination, networks are advertised as destination addresses and path descriptions to reach those destinations. The path, expressed in terms of the domains (or confederations) traversed so far, is carried in a special path attribute that records the sequence of routing domains through which the reachability information has passed. A route is defined as a pairing between a destination and the attributes of the path to that destination, thus the name, path-vector routing; The routers receive a vector that contains paths to a set of destinations. Path selection Path selection involves applying a routing metric to multiple routes to select (or predict) the best route. Most routing algorithms use only one network path at a time. Multipath routing and specifically equal-cost multi-path routing techniques enable the use of multiple alternative paths. In computer networking, the metric is computed by a routing algorithm, and can cover information such as bandwidth, network delay, hop count, path cost, load, maximum transmission unit, reliability, and communication cost. The routing table stores only the best possible routes, while link-state or topological databases may store all other information as well. In case of overlapping or equal routes, algorithms consider the following elements in priority order to decide which routes to install into the routing table: Prefix length: A matching route table entry with a longer subnet mask is always preferred as it specifies the destination more exactly. Metric: When comparing routes learned via the same routing protocol, a lower metric is preferred. Metrics cannot be compared between routes learned from different routing protocols. Administrative distance: When comparing route table entries from different sources such as different routing protocols and static configuration, a lower administrative distance indicates a more reliable source and thus a preferred route. Because a routing metric is specific to a given routing protocol, multi-protocol routers must use some external heuristic to select between routes learned from different routing protocols. Cisco routers, for example, attribute a value known as the administrative distance to each route, where smaller administrative distances indicate routes learned from a protocol assumed to be more reliable. A local administrator can set up host-specific routes that provide more control over network usage, permits testing, and better overall security. This is useful for debugging network connections or routing tables. In some small systems, a single central device decides ahead of time the complete path of every packet. In some other small systems, whichever edge device injects a packet into the network decides ahead of time the complete path of that particular packet. In either case, the route-planning device needs to know a lot of information about what devices are connected to the network and how they are connected to each other. Once it has this information, it can use an algorithm such as A* search algorithm to find the best path. In high-speed systems, there are so many packets transmitted every second that it is infeasible for a single device to calculate the complete path for each and every packet. Early high-speed systems dealt |
thrash metal) R.I.P. (Murder City Devils album) (2003; live) R.I.P. (Rocket from the Crypt album) R.I.P. (The Zombies album) Songs "R.I.P." (Rita Ora song) "R.I.P." (Sofía Reyes song) "R.I.P." (Young Jeezy song) "R.I.P. (Rock in Peace)", on the album Backtracks "R.I.P. (Rest in Pain)", by Sepultura from 1987 album Schizophrenia "R.I.P." (2007), by September on album Dancing Shoes "R.I.P." (2019), by Brooke Candy featuring Ashnikko from the album Sexorcism "RIP" (2017), by Olivia O'Brien "R.I.P." (2018), by Playboi Carti from the album Die Lit Other uses in arts, entertainment, and media "R.I.P." (story) (1998), by Poppy Z. Brite RiP!: A Remix Manifesto (2008), open-source documentary film Biology Repeat-induced point mutation, a process by which DNA in some fungi accumulates mutations Ribosome-inactivating protein, a type of protein that controls ribosomes RNA immunoprecipitation, with an | metal) R.I.P. (Murder City Devils album) (2003; live) R.I.P. (Rocket from the Crypt album) R.I.P. (The Zombies album) Songs "R.I.P." (Rita Ora song) "R.I.P." (Sofía Reyes song) "R.I.P." (Young Jeezy song) "R.I.P. (Rock in Peace)", on the album Backtracks "R.I.P. (Rest in Pain)", by Sepultura from 1987 album Schizophrenia "R.I.P." (2007), by September on album Dancing Shoes "R.I.P." (2019), by Brooke Candy featuring Ashnikko from the album Sexorcism "RIP" (2017), by |
their tight tolerance, low temperature coefficient and long-term stability. Metal oxide film Metal-oxide film resistors are made of metal oxides which results in a higher operating temperature and greater stability and reliability than metal film. They are used in applications with high endurance demands. Wire wound Wirewound resistors are commonly made by winding a metal wire, usually nichrome, around a ceramic, plastic, or fiberglass core. The ends of the wire are soldered or welded to two caps or rings, attached to the ends of the core. The assembly is protected with a layer of paint, molded plastic, or an enamel coating baked at high temperature. These resistors are designed to withstand unusually high temperatures of up to 450 °C. Wire leads in low power wirewound resistors are usually between 0.6 and 0.8 mm in diameter and tinned for ease of soldering. For higher power wirewound resistors, either a ceramic outer case or an aluminum outer case on top of an insulating layer is used – if the outer case is ceramic, such resistors are sometimes described as "cement" resistors, though they do not actually contain any traditional cement. The aluminum-cased types are designed to be attached to a heat sink to dissipate the heat; the rated power is dependent on being used with a suitable heat sink, e.g., a 50 W power rated resistor overheats at a fraction of the power dissipation if not used with a heat sink. Large wirewound resistors may be rated for 1,000 watts or more. Because wirewound resistors are coils they have more undesirable inductance than other types of resistor, although winding the wire in sections with alternately reversed direction can minimize inductance. Other techniques employ bifilar winding, or a flat thin former (to reduce cross-section area of the coil). For the most demanding circuits, resistors with Ayrton–Perry winding are used. Applications of wirewound resistors are similar to those of composition resistors with the exception of the high frequency. The high frequency response of wirewound resistors is substantially worse than that of a composition resistor. Foil resistor In 1960, Felix Zandman and Sidney J. Stein presented a development of resistor film of very high stability. The primary resistance element of a foil resistor is a chromium nickel alloy foil several micrometers thick. Chromium nickel alloys are characterized by having a large electrical resistance (about 58 times that of copper), a small temperature coefficient and high resistance to oxidation. Examples are Chromel A and Nichrome V, whose typical composition is 80 Ni and 20 Cr, with a melting point of 1420 °C. When iron is added, the chromium nickel alloy becomes more ductile. The Nichrome and Chromel C are examples of an alloy containing iron. The composition typical of Nichrome is 60 Ni, 12 Cr, 26 Fe, 2 Mn and Chromel C, 64 Ni, 11 Cr, Fe 25. The melting temperature of these alloys are 1350 °C and 1390 °C, respectively. Since their introduction in the 1960s, foil resistors have had the best precision and stability of any resistor available. One of the important parameters of stability is the temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR). The TCR of foil resistors is extremely low, and has been further improved over the years. One range of ultra-precision foil resistors offers a TCR of 0.14 ppm/°C, tolerance ±0.005%, long-term stability (1 year) 25 ppm, (3 years) 50 ppm (further improved 5-fold by hermetic sealing), stability under load (2000 hours) 0.03%, thermal EMF 0.1 μV/°C, noise −42 dB, voltage coefficient 0.1 ppm/V, inductance 0.08 μH, capacitance 0.5 pF. The thermal stability of this type of resistor also has to do with the opposing effects of the metal's electrical resistance increasing with temperature, and being reduced by thermal expansion leading to an increase in thickness of the foil, whose other dimensions are constrained by a ceramic substrate. Ammeter shunts An ammeter shunt is a special type of current-sensing resistor, having four terminals and a value in milliohms or even micro-ohms. Current-measuring instruments, by themselves, can usually accept only limited currents. To measure high currents, the current passes through the shunt across which the voltage drop is measured and interpreted as current. A typical shunt consists of two solid metal blocks, sometimes brass, mounted on an insulating base. Between the blocks, and soldered or brazed to them, are one or more strips of low temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) manganin alloy. Large bolts threaded into the blocks make the current connections, while much smaller screws provide volt meter connections. Shunts are rated by full-scale current, and often have a voltage drop of 50 mV at rated current. Such meters are adapted to the shunt full current rating by using an appropriately marked dial face; no change need to be made to the other parts of the meter. Grid resistor In heavy-duty industrial high-current applications, a grid resistor is a large convection-cooled lattice of stamped metal alloy strips connected in rows between two electrodes. Such industrial grade resistors can be as large as a refrigerator; some designs can handle over 500 amperes of current, with a range of resistances extending lower than 0.04 ohms. They are used in applications such as dynamic braking and load banking for locomotives and trams, neutral grounding for industrial AC distribution, control loads for cranes and heavy equipment, load testing of generators and harmonic filtering for electric substations. The term grid resistor is sometimes used to describe a resistor of any type connected to the control grid of a vacuum tube. This is not a resistor technology; it is an electronic circuit topology. Special varieties Cermet Phenolic Tantalum Water resistor Variable resistors Adjustable resistors A resistor may have one or more fixed tapping points so that the resistance can be changed by moving the connecting wires to different terminals. Some wirewound power resistors have a tapping point that can slide along the resistance element, allowing a larger or smaller part of the resistance to be used. Where continuous adjustment of the resistance value during operation of equipment is required, the sliding resistance tap can be connected to a knob accessible to an operator. Such a device is called a rheostat and has two terminals. Potentiometers A potentiometer (colloquially, pot) is a three-terminal resistor with a continuously adjustable tapping point controlled by rotation of a shaft or knob or by a linear slider. The name potentiometer comes from its function as an adjustable voltage divider to provide a variable potential at the terminal connected to the tapping point. Volume control in an audio device is a common application of a potentiometer. A typical low power potentiometer (see drawing) is constructed of a flat resistance element (B) of carbon composition, metal film, or conductive plastic, with a springy phosphor bronze wiper contact (C) which moves along the surface. An alternate construction is resistance wire wound on a form, with the wiper sliding axially along the coil. These have lower resolution, since as the wiper moves the resistance changes in steps equal to the resistance of a single turn. High-resolution multiturn potentiometers are used in precision applications. These have wire-wound resistance elements typically wound on a helical mandrel, with the wiper moving on a helical track as the control is turned, making continuous contact with the wire. Some include a conductive-plastic resistance coating over the wire to improve resolution. These typically offer ten turns of their shafts to cover their full range. They are usually set with dials that include a simple turns counter and a graduated dial, and can typically achieve three digit resolution. Electronic analog computers used them in quantity for setting coefficients, and delayed-sweep oscilloscopes of recent decades included one on their panels. Resistance decade boxes A resistance decade box or resistor substitution box is a unit containing resistors of many values, with one or more mechanical switches which allow any one of various discrete resistances offered by the box to be dialed in. Usually the resistance is accurate to high precision, ranging from laboratory/calibration grade accuracy of 20 parts per million, to field grade at 1%. Inexpensive boxes with lesser accuracy are also available. All types offer a convenient way of selecting and quickly changing a resistance in laboratory, experimental and development work without needing to attach resistors one by one, or even stock each value. The range of resistance provided, the maximum resolution, and the accuracy characterize the box. For example, one box offers resistances from 0 to 100 megohms, maximum resolution 0.1 ohm, accuracy 0.1%. Special devices There are various devices whose resistance changes with various quantities. The resistance of NTC thermistors exhibit a strong negative temperature coefficient, making them useful for measuring temperatures. Since their resistance can be large until they are allowed to heat up due to the passage of current, they are also commonly used to prevent excessive current surges when equipment is powered on. Similarly, the resistance of a humistor varies with humidity. One sort of photodetector, the photoresistor, has a resistance which varies with illumination. The strain gauge, invented by Edward E. Simmons and Arthur C. Ruge in 1938, is a type of resistor that changes value with applied strain. A single resistor may be used, or a pair (half bridge), or four resistors connected in a Wheatstone bridge configuration. The strain resistor is bonded with adhesive to an object that is subjected to mechanical strain. With the strain gauge and a filter, amplifier, and analog/digital converter, the strain on an object can be measured. A related but more recent invention uses a Quantum Tunnelling Composite to sense mechanical stress. It passes a current whose magnitude can vary by a factor of 1012 in response to changes in applied pressure. Measurement The value of a resistor can be measured with an ohmmeter, which may be one function of a multimeter. Usually, probes on the ends of test leads connect to the resistor. A simple ohmmeter may apply a voltage from a battery across the unknown resistor (with an internal resistor of a known value in series) producing a current which drives a meter movement. The current, in accordance with Ohm's law, is inversely proportional to the sum of the internal resistance and the resistor being tested, resulting in an analog meter scale which is very non-linear, calibrated from infinity to 0 ohms. A digital multimeter, using active electronics, may instead pass a specified current through the test resistance. The voltage generated across the test resistance in that case is linearly proportional to its resistance, which is measured and displayed. In either case the low-resistance ranges of the meter pass much more current through the test leads than do high-resistance ranges, in order for the voltages present to be at reasonable levels (generally below 10 volts) but still measurable. Measuring low-value resistors, such as fractional-ohm resistors, with acceptable accuracy requires four-terminal connections. One pair of terminals applies a known, calibrated current to the resistor, while the other pair senses the voltage drop across the resistor. Some laboratory quality ohmmeters, especially milliohmmeters, and even some of the better digital multimeters sense using four input terminals for this purpose, which may be used with special test leads. Each of the two so-called Kelvin clips has a pair of jaws insulated from each other. One side of each clip applies the measuring current, while the other connections are only to sense the voltage drop. The resistance is again calculated using Ohm's Law as the measured voltage divided by the applied current. Standards Production resistors Resistor characteristics are quantified and reported using various national standards. In the US, MIL-STD-202 contains the relevant test methods to which other standards refer. There are various standards specifying properties of resistors for use in equipment: IEC 60062 (IEC 62) / DIN 40825 / BS 1852 / IS 8186 / JIS C 5062 etc. (Resistor color code, RKM code, date code) EIA RS-279 / DIN 41429 (Resistor color code) IEC 60063 (IEC 63) / JIS C 5063 (Standard E series values) MIL-PRF-26 MIL-PRF-39007 (Fixed power, established reliability) MIL-PRF-55342 (Surface-mount thick and thin film) MIL-PRF-914 MIL-R-11 Standard Canceled MIL-R-39017 (Fixed, General Purpose, Established Reliability) MIL-PRF-32159 (zero ohm jumpers) UL 1412 (fusing and temperature limited resistors) There are other United States military procurement MIL-R- standards. Resistance standards The primary standard for resistance, the "mercury ohm" was initially defined in 1884 in as a column of mercury 106.3 cm long and in cross-section, at . Difficulties in precisely measuring the physical constants to replicate this standard result in variations of as much as 30 ppm. From 1900 the mercury ohm was replaced with a precision machined plate of manganin. Since 1990 the international resistance standard has been based on the quantized Hall effect discovered by Klaus von Klitzing, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1985. Resistors of extremely high precision are manufactured for calibration and laboratory use. They may have four terminals, using one pair to carry an operating current and the other pair to measure the voltage drop; this eliminates errors caused by voltage drops across the lead resistances, because no charge flows through voltage sensing leads. It is important in small value resistors (100–0.0001 ohm) where lead resistance is significant or even comparable with respect to resistance standard value. Resistor marking Axial resistors' cases are usually tan, brown, blue, or green (though other colors are occasionally found as well, such as dark red or dark gray), and display 3–6 colored stripes that indicate resistance (and by extension tolerance), and may be extended to indicate the temperature coefficient and reliability class. The first two stripes represent the first two digits of the resistance in ohms, the third represents a multiplier, and the fourth the tolerance (which if absent, denotes ±20%). For five- and six- striped resistors the third is the third digit, the fourth the multiplier and the fifth is the tolerance; a sixth stripe represents the temperature coefficient. The power rating of the resistor is usually not marked and is deduced from the size. Surface-mount resistors are marked numerically. Early 20th century resistors, essentially uninsulated, were dipped in paint to cover their entire body for color-coding. A second color of paint was applied to one end of the element, and a color dot (or band) in the middle provided the third digit. The rule was "body, tip, dot", providing two significant digits for value and the decimal multiplier, in that sequence. Default tolerance was ±20%. Closer-tolerance resistors had silver (±10%) or gold-colored (±5%) paint on the other end. Preferred values Early resistors were made in more or less arbitrary round numbers; a series might have 100, 125, 150, 200, 300, etc. Resistors as manufactured are subject to a certain percentage tolerance, and it makes sense to manufacture values that correlate with the tolerance, so that the actual value of a resistor overlaps slightly with its neighbors. Wider spacing leaves gaps; narrower spacing increases manufacturing and inventory | a knob accessible to an operator. Such a device is called a rheostat and has two terminals. Potentiometers A potentiometer (colloquially, pot) is a three-terminal resistor with a continuously adjustable tapping point controlled by rotation of a shaft or knob or by a linear slider. The name potentiometer comes from its function as an adjustable voltage divider to provide a variable potential at the terminal connected to the tapping point. Volume control in an audio device is a common application of a potentiometer. A typical low power potentiometer (see drawing) is constructed of a flat resistance element (B) of carbon composition, metal film, or conductive plastic, with a springy phosphor bronze wiper contact (C) which moves along the surface. An alternate construction is resistance wire wound on a form, with the wiper sliding axially along the coil. These have lower resolution, since as the wiper moves the resistance changes in steps equal to the resistance of a single turn. High-resolution multiturn potentiometers are used in precision applications. These have wire-wound resistance elements typically wound on a helical mandrel, with the wiper moving on a helical track as the control is turned, making continuous contact with the wire. Some include a conductive-plastic resistance coating over the wire to improve resolution. These typically offer ten turns of their shafts to cover their full range. They are usually set with dials that include a simple turns counter and a graduated dial, and can typically achieve three digit resolution. Electronic analog computers used them in quantity for setting coefficients, and delayed-sweep oscilloscopes of recent decades included one on their panels. Resistance decade boxes A resistance decade box or resistor substitution box is a unit containing resistors of many values, with one or more mechanical switches which allow any one of various discrete resistances offered by the box to be dialed in. Usually the resistance is accurate to high precision, ranging from laboratory/calibration grade accuracy of 20 parts per million, to field grade at 1%. Inexpensive boxes with lesser accuracy are also available. All types offer a convenient way of selecting and quickly changing a resistance in laboratory, experimental and development work without needing to attach resistors one by one, or even stock each value. The range of resistance provided, the maximum resolution, and the accuracy characterize the box. For example, one box offers resistances from 0 to 100 megohms, maximum resolution 0.1 ohm, accuracy 0.1%. Special devices There are various devices whose resistance changes with various quantities. The resistance of NTC thermistors exhibit a strong negative temperature coefficient, making them useful for measuring temperatures. Since their resistance can be large until they are allowed to heat up due to the passage of current, they are also commonly used to prevent excessive current surges when equipment is powered on. Similarly, the resistance of a humistor varies with humidity. One sort of photodetector, the photoresistor, has a resistance which varies with illumination. The strain gauge, invented by Edward E. Simmons and Arthur C. Ruge in 1938, is a type of resistor that changes value with applied strain. A single resistor may be used, or a pair (half bridge), or four resistors connected in a Wheatstone bridge configuration. The strain resistor is bonded with adhesive to an object that is subjected to mechanical strain. With the strain gauge and a filter, amplifier, and analog/digital converter, the strain on an object can be measured. A related but more recent invention uses a Quantum Tunnelling Composite to sense mechanical stress. It passes a current whose magnitude can vary by a factor of 1012 in response to changes in applied pressure. Measurement The value of a resistor can be measured with an ohmmeter, which may be one function of a multimeter. Usually, probes on the ends of test leads connect to the resistor. A simple ohmmeter may apply a voltage from a battery across the unknown resistor (with an internal resistor of a known value in series) producing a current which drives a meter movement. The current, in accordance with Ohm's law, is inversely proportional to the sum of the internal resistance and the resistor being tested, resulting in an analog meter scale which is very non-linear, calibrated from infinity to 0 ohms. A digital multimeter, using active electronics, may instead pass a specified current through the test resistance. The voltage generated across the test resistance in that case is linearly proportional to its resistance, which is measured and displayed. In either case the low-resistance ranges of the meter pass much more current through the test leads than do high-resistance ranges, in order for the voltages present to be at reasonable levels (generally below 10 volts) but still measurable. Measuring low-value resistors, such as fractional-ohm resistors, with acceptable accuracy requires four-terminal connections. One pair of terminals applies a known, calibrated current to the resistor, while the other pair senses the voltage drop across the resistor. Some laboratory quality ohmmeters, especially milliohmmeters, and even some of the better digital multimeters sense using four input terminals for this purpose, which may be used with special test leads. Each of the two so-called Kelvin clips has a pair of jaws insulated from each other. One side of each clip applies the measuring current, while the other connections are only to sense the voltage drop. The resistance is again calculated using Ohm's Law as the measured voltage divided by the applied current. Standards Production resistors Resistor characteristics are quantified and reported using various national standards. In the US, MIL-STD-202 contains the relevant test methods to which other standards refer. There are various standards specifying properties of resistors for use in equipment: IEC 60062 (IEC 62) / DIN 40825 / BS 1852 / IS 8186 / JIS C 5062 etc. (Resistor color code, RKM code, date code) EIA RS-279 / DIN 41429 (Resistor color code) IEC 60063 (IEC 63) / JIS C 5063 (Standard E series values) MIL-PRF-26 MIL-PRF-39007 (Fixed power, established reliability) MIL-PRF-55342 (Surface-mount thick and thin film) MIL-PRF-914 MIL-R-11 Standard Canceled MIL-R-39017 (Fixed, General Purpose, Established Reliability) MIL-PRF-32159 (zero ohm jumpers) UL 1412 (fusing and temperature limited resistors) There are other United States military procurement MIL-R- standards. Resistance standards The primary standard for resistance, the "mercury ohm" was initially defined in 1884 in as a column of mercury 106.3 cm long and in cross-section, at . Difficulties in precisely measuring the physical constants to replicate this standard result in variations of as much as 30 ppm. From 1900 the mercury ohm was replaced with a precision machined plate of manganin. Since 1990 the international resistance standard has been based on the quantized Hall effect discovered by Klaus von Klitzing, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1985. Resistors of extremely high precision are manufactured for calibration and laboratory use. They may have four terminals, using one pair to carry an operating current and the other pair to measure the voltage drop; this eliminates errors caused by voltage drops across the lead resistances, because no charge flows through voltage sensing leads. It is important in small value resistors (100–0.0001 ohm) where lead resistance is significant or even comparable with respect to resistance standard value. Resistor marking Axial resistors' cases are usually tan, brown, blue, or green (though other colors are occasionally found as well, such as dark red or dark gray), and display 3–6 colored stripes that indicate resistance (and by extension tolerance), and may be extended to indicate the temperature coefficient and reliability class. The first two stripes represent the first two digits of the resistance in ohms, the third represents a multiplier, and the fourth the tolerance (which if absent, denotes ±20%). For five- and six- striped resistors the third is the third digit, the fourth the multiplier and the fifth is the tolerance; a sixth stripe represents the temperature coefficient. The power rating of the resistor is usually not marked and is deduced from the size. Surface-mount resistors are marked numerically. Early 20th century resistors, essentially uninsulated, were dipped in paint to cover their entire body for color-coding. A second color of paint was applied to one end of the element, and a color dot (or band) in the middle provided the third digit. The rule was "body, tip, dot", providing two significant digits for value and the decimal multiplier, in that sequence. Default tolerance was ±20%. Closer-tolerance resistors had silver (±10%) or gold-colored (±5%) paint on the other end. Preferred values Early resistors were made in more or less arbitrary round numbers; a series might have 100, 125, 150, 200, 300, etc. Resistors as manufactured are subject to a certain percentage tolerance, and it makes sense to manufacture values that correlate with the tolerance, so that the actual value of a resistor overlaps slightly with its neighbors. Wider spacing leaves gaps; narrower spacing increases manufacturing and inventory costs to provide resistors that are more or less interchangeable. A logical scheme is to produce resistors in a range of values which increase in a geometric progression, so that each value is greater than its predecessor by a fixed multiplier or percentage, chosen to match the tolerance of the range. For example, for a tolerance of ±20% it makes sense to have each resistor about 1.5 times its predecessor, covering a decade in 6 values. More precisely, the factor used is 1.4678 ≈ , giving values of 1.47, 2.15, 3.16, 4.64, 6.81, 10 for the 1–10-decade (a decade is a range increasing by a factor of 10; 0.1–1 and 10–100 are other examples); these are rounded in practice to 1.5, 2.2, 3.3, 4.7, 6.8, 10; followed by 15, 22, 33, ... and preceded by ... 0.47, 0.68, 1. This scheme has been adopted as the E6 series of the IEC 60063 preferred number values. There are also E12, E24, E48, E96 and E192 series for components of progressively finer resolution, with 12, 24, 48, 96, and 192 different values within each decade. The actual values used are in the IEC 60063 lists of preferred numbers. A resistor of 100 ohms ±20% would be expected to have a value between 80 and 120 ohms; its E6 neighbors are 68 (54–82) and 150 (120–180) ohms. A sensible spacing, E6 is used for ±20% components; E12 for ±10%; E24 for ±5%; E48 for ±2%, E96 for ±1%; E192 for ±0.5% or better. Resistors are manufactured in values from a few milliohms to about a gigaohm in IEC60063 ranges appropriate for their tolerance. Manufacturers may sort resistors into tolerance-classes based on measurement. Accordingly, a selection of 100 ohms resistors with a tolerance of ±10%, might not lie just around 100 ohm (but no more than 10% off) as one would expect (a bell-curve), but rather be in two groups – either between 5 and 10% too high or 5 to 10% too low (but not closer to 100 ohm than that) because any resistors the factory had measured as being less than 5% off would have been marked and sold as resistors with only ±5% tolerance or better. When designing a circuit, this may become a consideration. This process of sorting parts based on post-production measurement is known as "binning", and can be applied to other components than resistors (such as speed grades for CPUs). Earlier power wirewound resistors, such as brown vitreous-enameled types, however, were made with a different system of preferred values, such as some of those mentioned in the first sentence of this section. SMT resistors Surface mounted resistors of larger sizes (metric 1608 and above) are printed with numerical values in a code related to that used on axial resistors. Standard-tolerance surface-mount technology (SMT) resistors are marked with a three-digit code, in which the first two digits are the first two significant digits of the value and the third digit is the power of ten (the number of zeroes). For example: 334 = 33 × 104 Ω = 330 kΩ 222 = 22 × 102 Ω = 2.2 kΩ 473 = 47 × 103 Ω = 47 kΩ 105 = 10 × 105 Ω = 1 MΩ Resistances less than 100 Ω are written: 100, 220, 470. The final zero represents ten to the power zero, which is 1. For example: 100 = 10 × 100 Ω = 10 Ω 220 = 22 × 100 Ω = 22 Ω Sometimes these values are marked as 10 or 22 to prevent a mistake. Resistances less than 10 Ω have 'R' to indicate the position of the decimal point (radix point). For example: 4R7 = 4.7 Ω R300 = 0.30 Ω 0R22 = 0.22 Ω 0R01 = 0.01 Ω 000 and 0000 sometimes appear as values on surface-mount zero-ohm links, since these have (approximately) zero resistance. More recent surface-mount resistors are too small, physically, to permit practical markings to be applied. Precision resistor markings Many precision resistors, including surface mount and axial-lead types, are marked with a four-digit code. The first three digits are the significant figures and the fourth is the power of ten. For example: 1001 = 100 × 101 Ω = 1.00 kΩ 4992 = 499 × 102 Ω = 49.9 kΩ 1000 = 100 × 100 Ω = 100 Ω Axial-lead precision resistors often use color code bands to represent |
of the rising of 1798 the United Irishman, John Daly Burk, an émigré in the United States in his The History of the Late War in Ireland written in 1799, was most emphatic in its identification of the Irish, French and American causes. Modern republicanism During the Enlightenment, anti-monarchism extended beyond the civic humanism of the Renaissance. Classical republicanism, still supported by philosophers such as Rousseau and Montesquieu, was only one of several theories seeking to limit the power of monarchies rather than directly opposing them. Liberalism and socialism departed from classical republicanism and fueled the development of the more modern republicanism. Theory Neo-republicanism Neorepublicanism is the effort by current scholars to draw on a classical republican tradition in the development of an attractive public philosophy intended for contemporary purposes. Neorepublicanism emerges as an alternative postsocialist critique of market society from the left. Prominent theorists in this movement are Philip Pettit and Cass Sunstein, who have each written several works defining republicanism and how it differs from liberalism. Michael Sandel, a late convert to republicanism from communitarianism, advocates replacing or supplementing liberalism with republicanism, as outlined in his Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy. Contemporary work from a neorepublican include jurist K. Sabeel Rahman's book Democracy Against Domination, which seeks to create a neorepublican framework for economic regulation grounded in the thought of Louis Brandeis and John Dewey and popular control, in contrast to both New Deal-style managerialism and neoliberal deregulation. Philosopher Elizabeth Anderson's Private Government traces the history of republican critiques of private power, arguing that the classical free market policies of the 18th and 19th centuries intended to help workers only lead to their domination by employers. In From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth, political scientist Alex Gourevitch examines a strain of late 19th century American republicanism known as labour republicanism that was the producerist labour union The Knights of Labor, and how republican concepts were used in service of workers rights, but also with a strong critique of the role of that union in supporting the Chinese Exclusion Act. Democracy In the late 18th century there was convergence of democracy and republicanism. Republicanism is a system that replaces or accompanies inherited rule. There is an emphasis on liberty, and a rejection of corruption. It strongly influenced the American Revolution and the French Revolution in the 1770s and 1790s, respectively. Republicans, in these two examples, tended to reject inherited elites and aristocracies, but left open two questions: whether a republic, to restrain unchecked majority rule, should have an unelected upper chamber—perhaps with members appointed as meritorious experts—and whether it should have a constitutional monarch. Though conceptually separate from democracy, republicanism included the key principles of rule by consent of the governed and sovereignty of the people. In effect, republicanism held that kings and aristocracies were not the real rulers, but rather the whole people were. Exactly how the people were to rule was an issue of democracy: republicanism itself did not specify a means. In the United States, the solution was the creation of political parties that reflected the votes of the people and controlled the government (see Republicanism in the United States). Many exponents of republicanism, such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson were strong promoters of representative democracy. Other supporters of republicanism, such as John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, were more distrustful of majority rule and sought a government with more power for elites. In Federalist No. 10, James Madison rejected democracy in favor of republicanism. There were similar debates in many other democratizing nations. In contemporary usage, the term democracy refers to a government chosen by the people, whether it is direct or representative. Today the term republic usually refers to representative democracy with an elected head of state, such as a president, who serves for a limited term; in contrast to states with a hereditary monarch as a head of state, even if these states also are representative democracies, with an elected or appointed head of government such as a prime minister. The Founding Fathers of the United States rarely praised and often criticized democracy, which in their time tended to specifically mean direct democracy and which they equated with mob rule; James Madison argued that what distinguished a democracy from a republic was that the former became weaker as it got larger and suffered more violently from the effects of faction, whereas a republic could get stronger as it got larger and combatted faction by its very structure. What was critical to American values, John Adams insisted, was that the government should be "bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend." Constitutional monarchs and upper chambers Some countries (such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Scandinavian countries, and Japan) turned powerful monarchs into constitutional ones with limited, or eventually merely symbolic, powers. Often the monarchy was abolished along with the aristocratic system, whether or not they were replaced with democratic institutions (such as in France, China, Iran, Russia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Greece, Turkey and Egypt). In Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Papua New Guinea, and some other countries the monarch, or its representative, is given supreme executive power, but by convention acts only on the advice of his or her ministers. Many nations had elite upper houses of legislatures, the members of which often had lifetime tenure, but eventually these houses lost much power (as the UK House of Lords), or else became elective and remained powerful. See also Christian republic Democratic republic Islamic republic Kemalism People's republic Republican Party GOP ("Grand Old Party") Tacitean studies – differing interpretations whether Tacitus defended republicanism ("red Tacitists") or the contrary ("black Tacitists"). Venizelism Category:Republicanism by country References Further reading General Becker, Peter, Jürgen Heideking and James A. Henretta, eds. Republicanism and Liberalism in America and the German States, 1750–1850. Cambridge University Press. 2002. Deudney, Daniel. 2007. Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village. Princeton University Press. Everdell, William R., "From State to Free-State: The Meaning of the word Republic from Jean Bodin to John Adams" 7th International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference, Budapest, 7/31/87; Valley Forge Journal (June 1991); http://dhm.pdp6.org/archives/wre-republics.html Pocock, J. G. A. The Machiavellian Moment (1975). Pocock, J. G. A. "The Machiavellian Moment Revisited: a Study in History and Ideology.: Journal of Modern History 1981 53(1): 49–72. Fulltext: in Jstor. Summary of Pocock's influential ideas that traces the Machiavellian belief in and emphasis upon Greco-Roman ideals of unspecialized civic virtue and liberty from 15th century Florence through 17th century England and Scotland to 18th century America. Pocock argues that thinkers who shared these ideals tended to believe that the function of property was to maintain an individual's independence as a precondition of his virtue. Therefore they were disposed to attack the new commercial and financial regime that was beginning to develop. Pettit, Philip. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government Oxford UP, 1997, . Snyder, R. Claire. Citizen-Soldiers and Manly Warriors: Military Service and Gender in the Civic Republican Tradition (1999) online review. Viroli, Maurizio. Republicanism (2002), New York, Hill and Wang. Europe Berenson, Edward, et al. eds. The French Republic: History, Values, Debates (2011) essays by 38 scholars from France, Britain and US covering topics since the 1790s Bock, Gisela; Skinner, Quentin; and Viroli, Maurizio, ed. Machiavelli and Republicanism. Cambridge U. Press, 1990. 316 pp. Brugger, Bill. Republican Theory in Political Thought: Virtuous or Virtual? St. Martin's Press, 1999. Castiglione, Dario. "Republicanism and its Legacy," European Journal of Political Theory (2005) v 4 #4 pp. 453–65. online version. Everdell, William R., The End of Kings: A History of Republics and Republicans, NY: The Free Press, 1983; 2nd ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000 (condensed at http://dhm.pdp6.org/archives/wre-republics.html). Fink, Zera. The Classical Republicans: An Essay in the Recovery of a Pattern of Thought in Seventeenth-Century England. Northwestern University Press, 1962. Foote, Geoffrey. The Republican Transformation of Modern British Politics Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Martin van Gelderen & Quentin Skinner, eds., Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, v 1: Republicanism and Constitutionalism in Early Modern Europe; vol 2: The Value of Republicanism in Early Modern Europe Cambridge U.P., 2002. Haakonssen, Knud. "Republicanism." A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy. Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit. eds. Blackwell, 1995. Kramnick, Isaac. Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism: Political Ideology in Late Eighteenth-Century England and America. Cornell University Press, 1990. Mark McKenna, The Traditions of Australian Republicanism (1996) Maynor, John W. Republicanism in the Modern World. Cambridge: Polity, 2003. Moggach, Douglas. "Republican Rigorism and Emancipation in Bruno Bauer", The New Hegelians, edited by Douglas Moggach, Cambridge University Press, 2006. (Looks at German Republicanism with contrasts and criticisms of Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit). Robbins, Caroline. The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman: Studies in the Transmission, Development, and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of Charles II until the War with the Thirteen Colonies (1959, 2004). table of contents online. United States Appleby, Joyce Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination. 1992. Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Harvard University Press, 1967. Banning, Lance. The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology. 1980. Colbourn, Trevor. The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution. 1965. online version Everdell, William R., The End of Kings: A History of Republics and Republicans, NY: The Free Press, 1983; 2nd ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Kerber, Linda K. Intellectual History of | the interest of another country, whose instrument is corruption, and whose strength is the weakness of Ireland..." They adopted three central positions: (i) to seek out a cordial union among all the people of Ireland, to maintain that balance essential to preserve liberties and extend commerce; (ii) that the sole constitutional mode by which English influence can be opposed, is by a complete and radical reform of the representation of the people in Parliament; (iii) that no reform is practicable or efficacious, or just which shall not include Irishmen of every religious persuasion. The declaration, then, urged constitutional reform, union among Irish people and the removal of all religious disqualifications. The movement was influenced, at least in part, by the French Revolution. Public interest, already strongly aroused, was brought to a pitch by the publication in 1790 of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, and Thomas Paine's response, Rights of Man, in February 1791. Theobald Wolfe Tone wrote later that, "This controversy, and the gigantic event which gave rise to it, changed in an instant the politics of Ireland." Paine himself was aware of this commenting on sales of Part I of Rights of Man in November 1791, only eight months after publication of the first edition, he informed a friend that in England "almost sixteen thousand has gone off – and in Ireland above forty thousand". Paine may have been inclined to talk up sales of his works but what is striking in this context is that Paine believed that Irish sales were so far ahead of English ones before Part II had appeared. On 5 June 1792, Thomas Paine, author of the Rights of Man was proposed for honorary membership of the Dublin Society of the United Irishmen. The fall of the Bastille was to be celebrated in Belfast on 14 July 1791 by a Volunteer meeting. At the request of Thomas Russell, Tone drafted suitable resolutions for the occasion, including one favouring the inclusion of Catholics in any reforms. In a covering letter to Russell, Tone wrote, "I have not said one word that looks like a wish for separation, though I give it to you and your friends as my most decided opinion that such an event would be a regeneration of their country". By 1795, Tone's republicanism and that of the society had openly crystallized when he tells us: "I remember particularly two days thae we passed on Cave Hill. On the first Russell, Neilson, Simms, McCracken and one or two more of us, on the summit of McArt's fort, took a solemn obligation...never to desist in our efforts until we had subverted the authority of England over our country and asserted her independence." The culmination was an uprising against British rule in Ireland lasting from May to September 1798 – the Irish Rebellion of 1798 – with military support from revolutionary France in August and again October 1798. After the failure of the rising of 1798 the United Irishman, John Daly Burk, an émigré in the United States in his The History of the Late War in Ireland written in 1799, was most emphatic in its identification of the Irish, French and American causes. Modern republicanism During the Enlightenment, anti-monarchism extended beyond the civic humanism of the Renaissance. Classical republicanism, still supported by philosophers such as Rousseau and Montesquieu, was only one of several theories seeking to limit the power of monarchies rather than directly opposing them. Liberalism and socialism departed from classical republicanism and fueled the development of the more modern republicanism. Theory Neo-republicanism Neorepublicanism is the effort by current scholars to draw on a classical republican tradition in the development of an attractive public philosophy intended for contemporary purposes. Neorepublicanism emerges as an alternative postsocialist critique of market society from the left. Prominent theorists in this movement are Philip Pettit and Cass Sunstein, who have each written several works defining republicanism and how it differs from liberalism. Michael Sandel, a late convert to republicanism from communitarianism, advocates replacing or supplementing liberalism with republicanism, as outlined in his Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy. Contemporary work from a neorepublican include jurist K. Sabeel Rahman's book Democracy Against Domination, which seeks to create a neorepublican framework for economic regulation grounded in the thought of Louis Brandeis and John Dewey and popular control, in contrast to both New Deal-style managerialism and neoliberal deregulation. Philosopher Elizabeth Anderson's Private Government traces the history of republican critiques of private power, arguing that the classical free market policies of the 18th and 19th centuries intended to help workers only lead to their domination by employers. In From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth, political scientist Alex Gourevitch examines a strain of late 19th century American republicanism known as labour republicanism that was the producerist labour union The Knights of Labor, and how republican concepts were used in service of workers rights, but also with a strong critique of the role of that union in supporting the Chinese Exclusion Act. Democracy In the late 18th century there was convergence of democracy and republicanism. Republicanism is a system that replaces or accompanies inherited rule. There is an emphasis on liberty, and a rejection of corruption. It strongly influenced the American Revolution and the French Revolution in the 1770s and 1790s, respectively. Republicans, in these two examples, tended to reject inherited elites and aristocracies, but left open two questions: whether a republic, to restrain unchecked majority rule, should have an unelected upper chamber—perhaps with members appointed as meritorious experts—and whether it should have a constitutional monarch. Though conceptually separate from democracy, republicanism included the key principles of rule by consent of the governed and sovereignty of the people. In effect, republicanism held that kings and aristocracies were not the real rulers, but rather the whole people were. Exactly how the people were to rule was an issue of democracy: republicanism itself did not specify a means. In the United States, the solution was the creation of political parties that reflected the votes of the people and controlled the government (see Republicanism in the United States). Many exponents of republicanism, such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson were strong promoters of representative democracy. Other supporters of republicanism, such as John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, were more distrustful of majority rule and sought a government with more power for elites. In Federalist No. 10, James Madison rejected democracy in favor of republicanism. There were similar debates in many other democratizing nations. In contemporary usage, the term democracy refers to a government chosen by the people, whether it is direct or representative. Today the term republic usually refers to representative democracy with an elected head of state, such as a president, who serves for a limited term; in contrast to states with a hereditary monarch as a head of state, even if these states also are representative democracies, with an elected or appointed head of government such as a prime minister. The Founding Fathers of the United States rarely praised and often criticized democracy, which in their time tended to specifically mean direct democracy and which they equated with mob rule; James Madison argued that what distinguished a democracy from a republic was that the former became weaker as it got larger and suffered more violently from the effects of faction, whereas a republic could get stronger as it got larger and combatted faction by its very structure. What was critical to American values, John Adams insisted, was that the government should be "bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend." Constitutional monarchs and upper chambers Some countries (such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Scandinavian countries, and Japan) turned powerful monarchs into constitutional ones with limited, or eventually merely symbolic, powers. Often the monarchy was abolished along with the aristocratic system, whether or not they were replaced with democratic institutions (such as in France, China, Iran, Russia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Greece, Turkey and Egypt). In Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Papua New Guinea, and some other countries the monarch, or its representative, is given supreme executive power, but by convention acts only on the advice of his or her ministers. Many nations had elite upper houses of legislatures, the members of which often had lifetime tenure, but eventually these houses lost much power (as the UK House of Lords), or else became elective and remained powerful. See also Christian republic Democratic republic Islamic republic Kemalism People's republic Republican Party GOP ("Grand Old Party") Tacitean studies – differing interpretations whether Tacitus defended republicanism ("red Tacitists") or the contrary ("black Tacitists"). Venizelism Category:Republicanism by country References Further reading General Becker, Peter, Jürgen Heideking and James A. Henretta, eds. Republicanism and Liberalism in America and the German States, 1750–1850. Cambridge University Press. 2002. Deudney, Daniel. 2007. Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village. Princeton University Press. Everdell, William R., "From State to Free-State: The Meaning of the word Republic from Jean Bodin to John Adams" 7th International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference, Budapest, 7/31/87; Valley Forge Journal (June 1991); http://dhm.pdp6.org/archives/wre-republics.html Pocock, J. G. A. The Machiavellian Moment (1975). Pocock, J. G. A. "The Machiavellian Moment Revisited: a Study in History and Ideology.: Journal of Modern History 1981 53(1): 49–72. Fulltext: in Jstor. Summary of Pocock's influential ideas that traces the Machiavellian belief in and emphasis upon Greco-Roman ideals of unspecialized civic virtue and liberty from 15th century Florence through 17th century England and Scotland to 18th century America. Pocock argues that thinkers who shared these ideals tended to believe that the function of property was to maintain an individual's independence as a precondition of his virtue. Therefore they were disposed to attack the new commercial and financial regime that was beginning to develop. Pettit, Philip. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government Oxford UP, 1997, . Snyder, R. Claire. Citizen-Soldiers and Manly Warriors: Military Service and Gender in the Civic Republican Tradition (1999) online review. Viroli, Maurizio. Republicanism (2002), New York, Hill and Wang. Europe Berenson, Edward, et al. eds. The French Republic: History, Values, Debates (2011) essays by 38 scholars from France, Britain and US covering topics since the 1790s Bock, Gisela; Skinner, Quentin; and Viroli, Maurizio, ed. Machiavelli and Republicanism. Cambridge U. Press, 1990. 316 pp. Brugger, Bill. Republican Theory in Political Thought: Virtuous or Virtual? St. Martin's Press, 1999. Castiglione, Dario. "Republicanism and its Legacy," European Journal of Political Theory (2005) v 4 #4 pp. 453–65. online version. Everdell, William R., The End of Kings: A History of Republics and Republicans, NY: The Free Press, 1983; 2nd ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000 (condensed at http://dhm.pdp6.org/archives/wre-republics.html). Fink, Zera. The Classical Republicans: An Essay in the Recovery of a Pattern of Thought in Seventeenth-Century England. Northwestern University Press, 1962. Foote, Geoffrey. The Republican Transformation of Modern British Politics Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Martin van Gelderen & Quentin Skinner, eds., Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, v 1: Republicanism and Constitutionalism in Early Modern Europe; vol 2: The Value of Republicanism in Early Modern Europe Cambridge U.P., 2002. Haakonssen, Knud. "Republicanism." A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy. Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit. eds. Blackwell, 1995. Kramnick, Isaac. Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism: Political Ideology in Late Eighteenth-Century England and America. Cornell University Press, 1990. Mark McKenna, The Traditions of Australian Republicanism (1996) Maynor, John W. Republicanism in the Modern World. Cambridge: Polity, 2003. Moggach, Douglas. "Republican Rigorism and Emancipation in Bruno Bauer", The New Hegelians, edited by Douglas Moggach, Cambridge University Press, 2006. (Looks at German Republicanism with contrasts and criticisms of Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit). Robbins, Caroline. The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman: Studies in the Transmission, Development, and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of Charles II until the War with the Thirteen Colonies (1959, 2004). table of contents online. United States Appleby, Joyce Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination. 1992. Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Harvard University Press, 1967. Banning, Lance. The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology. 1980. Colbourn, Trevor. The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution. 1965. online version Everdell, William R., The End of Kings: A History of Republics and Republicans, NY: The Free Press, 1983; 2nd ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Kerber, Linda K. Intellectual History of Women: Essays by Linda K. Kerber. 1997. Kerber, Linda K. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America. 1997. Klein, Milton, et al., eds., The Republican Synthesis Revisited. Essays in Honor of George A. Billias. 1992. Kloppenberg, James T. The Virtues of Liberalism. 1998. Norton, Mary Beth. Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800. 1996. Greene, Jack, and J. R. Pole, eds. Companion to the American Revolution. 2004. (many articles look at republicanism, esp. |
the thoracic outlet and cervico-brachial areas. Utilization of routine imaging is useful in early detection and treatment of overuse injuries in at risk populations, which is important in preventing long term adverse effects. Treatment There are no quick fixes for RSI. Early diagnosis is critical to limiting damage. For Upper Limb Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI), Occupational Therapists create interventions that include education to facilitate ergonomics. This will minimize the possibility of an upper limb strain injury by learning the correct approach during facilitating functional task movements. The RICE treatment is used as the first treatment for many muscle strains, ligament sprains, or other bruises and injuries. RICE is used immediately after an injury happens and for the first 24 to 48 hours after the injury. These modalities can help reduce the swelling and pain. Commonly prescribed treatments for early-stage RSIs include analgesics, myofeedback, biofeedback, physical therapy, relaxation, and ultrasound therapy. Low-grade RSIs can sometimes resolve themselves if treatments begin shortly after the onset of symptoms. However, some RSIs may require more aggressive intervention including surgery and can persist for years. Although there are no "quick fixes" for RSI, there are effective approaches to its treatment and prevention. One is that of ergonomics, the changing of one's environment (especially workplace equipment) to minimize repetitive strain. General exercise has been shown to decrease the risk of developing RSI. Doctors sometimes recommend that RSI sufferers engage in specific strengthening exercises, for example to improve sitting posture, reduce excessive kyphosis, and potentially thoracic outlet syndrome. Modifications of posture and arm use are often recommended. History Although seemingly a modern phenomenon, RSIs have long been documented in the medical literature. In 1700, the Italian physician Bernardino Ramazzini first described RSI in more than 20 categories of industrial workers in Italy, including musicians and clerks. Carpal tunnel syndrome was first identified by the British surgeon James Paget in 1854. The April 1875 issue of | help reduce the swelling and pain. Commonly prescribed treatments for early-stage RSIs include analgesics, myofeedback, biofeedback, physical therapy, relaxation, and ultrasound therapy. Low-grade RSIs can sometimes resolve themselves if treatments begin shortly after the onset of symptoms. However, some RSIs may require more aggressive intervention including surgery and can persist for years. Although there are no "quick fixes" for RSI, there are effective approaches to its treatment and prevention. One is that of ergonomics, the changing of one's environment (especially workplace equipment) to minimize repetitive strain. General exercise has been shown to decrease the risk of developing RSI. Doctors sometimes recommend that RSI sufferers engage in specific strengthening exercises, for example to improve sitting posture, reduce excessive kyphosis, and potentially thoracic outlet syndrome. Modifications of posture and arm use are often recommended. History Although seemingly a modern phenomenon, RSIs have long been documented in the medical literature. In 1700, the Italian physician Bernardino Ramazzini first described RSI in more than 20 categories of industrial workers in Italy, including musicians and clerks. Carpal tunnel syndrome was first identified by the British surgeon James Paget in 1854. The April 1875 issue of The Graphic describes "telegraphic paralysis." The Swiss surgeon Fritz de Quervain first identified De Quervain's tendinitis in Swiss factory workers in 1895. The French neurologist Jules Tinel (1879–1952) developed his percussion test for compression of the median nerve in 1900. The American surgeon George Phalen improved the understanding of the aetiology of carpal tunnel syndrome with his clinical experience of several hundred patients during the 1950s and 1960s. Society Specific sources of discomfort have been popularly referred to by terms such as Blackberry thumb, PlayStation thumb, Rubik's wrist or "cuber's thumb", stylus finger, and raver's wrist, and Emacs pinky. See also Computer vision syndrome Ergonomic keyboard List of repetitive strain injury software Maltron Microsoft ergonomic keyboards Citations External links Musculoskeletal disorders from the European Agency for Safety and |
Stratford Shakespearean Festival of Canada. He served on the Festival's board of governors, and collaborated with the Festival's director, Sir Tyrone Guthrie, in publishing three books about the Festival's early years. Although his first love was drama and he had achieved some success with his occasional humorous essays, Davies found his greatest success in fiction. His first three novels, which later became known as The Salterton Trilogy, were Tempest-Tost (1951, originally conceived as a play), Leaven of Malice (1954, also the basis of the unsuccessful play Love and Libel) which won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour, and A Mixture of Frailties (1958). These novels explored the difficulty of sustaining a cultural life in Canada, and life on a small-town newspaper, subjects of which Davies had first-hand knowledge. 1960s In 1960, Davies joined Trinity College at the University of Toronto, where he would teach literature until 1981. The following year he published a collection of essays on literature, A Voice From the Attic, and was awarded the Lorne Pierce Medal for his literary achievements. In 1963, he became the Master of Massey College, the University of Toronto's new graduate college. During his stint as Master, he initiated a tradition of writing and telling ghost stories at the yearly Christmas celebrations. These stories were later collected in the book High Spirits (1982). 1970s Davies drew on his interest in Jungian psychology to create Fifth Business (1970), a novel that relies heavily on Davies's own experiences, his love of myth and magic and his knowledge of small-town mores. The narrator, like Davies, is of immigrant Canadian background, with a father who runs the town paper. The book's characters act in roles that roughly correspond to Jungian archetypes according to Davies's belief in the predominance of spirit over the things of the world. Davies built on the success of Fifth Business with two more novels: The Manticore (1972), a novel cast largely in the form of a Jungian analysis (for which he received that year's Governor General's Literary Award), and World of Wonders (1975). Together these three books came to be known as The Deptford Trilogy. 1980s and 1990s When Davies retired from his position at the university, his seventh novel, a satire of academic life, The Rebel Angels (1981), was published, followed by What's Bred in the Bone (1985) which was short-listed for the Booker Prize for fiction in 1986. The Lyre of Orpheus (1988) follows these two books in what became known as The Cornish Trilogy. During his retirement from academe he continued to write novels which further established him as a major figure in the literary world: Murther and Walking Spirits (1991) and The Cunning Man (1994). A third novel in what would have been a further trilogy – the Toronto Trilogy – was in progress at the time of Davies's death. He also realized a long-held dream when he penned the libretto to Randolph Peters' opera: The Golden Ass, based on The Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius, just like that written by one of the characters in Davies's 1958 A Mixture of Frailties. The opera was performed by the Canadian Opera Company at the Hummingbird Centre in Toronto, in April 1999, several years after Davies's death. In its obituary, The Times wrote: "Davies encompassed all the great elements of life ... His novels combined deep seriousness and psychological | roughly correspond to Jungian archetypes according to Davies's belief in the predominance of spirit over the things of the world. Davies built on the success of Fifth Business with two more novels: The Manticore (1972), a novel cast largely in the form of a Jungian analysis (for which he received that year's Governor General's Literary Award), and World of Wonders (1975). Together these three books came to be known as The Deptford Trilogy. 1980s and 1990s When Davies retired from his position at the university, his seventh novel, a satire of academic life, The Rebel Angels (1981), was published, followed by What's Bred in the Bone (1985) which was short-listed for the Booker Prize for fiction in 1986. The Lyre of Orpheus (1988) follows these two books in what became known as The Cornish Trilogy. During his retirement from academe he continued to write novels which further established him as a major figure in the literary world: Murther and Walking Spirits (1991) and The Cunning Man (1994). A third novel in what would have been a further trilogy – the Toronto Trilogy – was in progress at the time of Davies's death. He also realized a long-held dream when he penned the libretto to Randolph Peters' opera: The Golden Ass, based on The Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius, just like that written by one of the characters in Davies's 1958 A Mixture of Frailties. The opera was performed by the Canadian Opera Company at the Hummingbird Centre in Toronto, in April 1999, several years after Davies's death. In its obituary, The Times wrote: "Davies encompassed all the great elements of life ... His novels combined deep seriousness and psychological inquiry with fantasy and exuberant mirth." He remained close friends with John Kenneth Galbraith, attending Galbraith's eighty-fifth birthday party in Boston in 1993, and became so close a friend and colleague of the American novelist John Irving that Irving gave one of the scripture readings at Davies's funeral in the chapel of Trinity College, Toronto. He also wrote in support of Salman Rushdie when the latter was threatened by a fatwā from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran in reaction to supposed anti-Islam expression in his novel The Satanic Verses. Personal life Davies was married to Brenda Ethel Davies (1917–2013) in 1940 and survived by four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren from his three daughters Miranda Davies, Rosamond Bailey and author Jennifer Surridge. Davies never learned to drive. His wife Brenda routinely drove him to events and other excursions. Awards and recognition Won the Dominion Drama Festival Award for best Canadian play in 1948 for Eros at Breakfast. Won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1955 for Leaven of Malice. Won the Lorne Pierce Medal for his literary achievements in 1961. Won the Governor-General's Literary Award in the English language fiction category in 1972 for The Manticore. Short-listed for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1986 for What's Bred in the Bone. Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of Oxford, 1991. First Canadian to become an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Companion of the Order of Canada. Park in Toronto named after him in 2007. Works Novels The Salterton Trilogy Tempest-Tost (1951) Leaven of Malice (1954) A Mixture of Frailties (1958) The Deptford Trilogy Fifth Business (1970) The Manticore (1972) World of Wonders (1975) The Cornish Trilogy The Rebel Angels (1981) What's Bred in the Bone (1985) The Lyre of Orpheus (1988) The "Toronto Trilogy" (incomplete) Murther and Walking Spirits (1991) The Cunning Man (1994) Essays Fictional essays The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947) The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949) Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack (1967) edited by the author into: The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks (1985) Criticism Shakespeare's Boy Actors (1939) (as W. Robertson Davies) Shakespeare for Young Players: A Junior Course (1942) Renown at Stratford (1953) (with Tyrone Guthrie) Twice Have the Trumpets Sounded (1954) (with Tyrone Guthrie) Thrice the Brindled Cat Hath Mew'd (1955) (with Tyrone Guthrie) A Voice From the Attic (1960) also published as The Personal Art A Feast of Stephen (1970) Stephen Leacock (1970) One Half of Robertson Davies (1977) The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies (1979; revised 1990) (edited by Judith Skelton Grant) The Well-Tempered Critic (1981) (edited by Judith Skelton Grant) The Mirror of Nature (1983) Reading and Writing (1993) (two essays, later collected in The Merry Heart) The Merry Heart (1996) Happy Alchemy (1997) (edited by Jennifer Surridge and Brenda Davies) Plays Overlaid (1948) |
complementary base to adenine in DNA is thymine, whereas in RNA, it is uracil, which is an unmethylated form of thymine. Like DNA, most biologically active RNAs, including mRNA, tRNA, rRNA, snRNAs, and other non-coding RNAs, contain self-complementary sequences that allow parts of the RNA to fold and pair with itself to form double helices. Analysis of these RNAs has revealed that they are highly structured. Unlike DNA, their structures do not consist of long double helices, but rather collections of short helices packed together into structures akin to proteins. In this fashion, RNAs can achieve chemical catalysis (like enzymes). For instance, determination of the structure of the ribosome—an RNA-protein complex that catalyzes peptide bond formation—revealed that its active site is composed entirely of RNA. Structure Each nucleotide in RNA contains a ribose sugar, with carbons numbered 1' through 5'. A base is attached to the 1' position, in general, adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), or uracil (U). Adenine and guanine are purines, cytosine and uracil are pyrimidines. A phosphate group is attached to the 3' position of one ribose and the 5' position of the next. The phosphate groups have a negative charge each, making RNA a charged molecule (polyanion). The bases form hydrogen bonds between cytosine and guanine, between adenine and uracil and between guanine and uracil. However, other interactions are possible, such as a group of adenine bases binding to each other in a bulge, or the GNRA tetraloop that has a guanine–adenine base-pair. An important structural component of RNA that distinguishes it from DNA is the presence of a hydroxyl group at the 2' position of the ribose sugar. The presence of this functional group causes the helix to mostly take the A-form geometry, although in single strand dinucleotide contexts, RNA can rarely also adopt the B-form most commonly observed in DNA. The A-form geometry results in a very deep and narrow major groove and a shallow and wide minor groove. A second consequence of the presence of the 2'-hydroxyl group is that in conformationally flexible regions of an RNA molecule (that is, not involved in formation of a double helix), it can chemically attack the adjacent phosphodiester bond to cleave the backbone. RNA is transcribed with only four bases (adenine, cytosine, guanine and uracil), but these bases and attached sugars can be modified in numerous ways as the RNAs mature. Pseudouridine (Ψ), in which the linkage between uracil and ribose is changed from a C–N bond to a C–C bond, and ribothymidine (T) are found in various places (the most notable ones being in the TΨC loop of tRNA). Another notable modified base is hypoxanthine, a deaminated adenine base whose nucleoside is called inosine (I). Inosine plays a key role in the wobble hypothesis of the genetic code. There are more than 100 other naturally occurring modified nucleosides. The greatest structural diversity of modifications can be found in tRNA, while pseudouridine and nucleosides with 2'-O-methylribose often present in rRNA are the most common. The specific roles of many of these modifications in RNA are not fully understood. However, it is notable that, in ribosomal RNA, many of the post-transcriptional modifications occur in highly functional regions, such as the peptidyl transferase center and the subunit interface, implying that they are important for normal function. The functional form of single-stranded RNA molecules, just like proteins, frequently requires a specific tertiary structure. The scaffold for this structure is provided by secondary structural elements that are hydrogen bonds within the molecule. This leads to several recognizable "domains" of secondary structure like hairpin loops, bulges, and internal loops. In order create, i.e., design, a RNA for any given secondary structure, two or three bases would not be enough, but four bases are enough. This is likely why nature has "chosen" a four base alphabet: less than four does not allow to create all structures, while more than four bases are not necessary. Since RNA is charged, metal ions such as Mg2+ are needed to stabilise many secondary and tertiary structures. The naturally occurring enantiomer of RNA is D-RNA composed of D-ribonucleotides. All chirality centers are located in the D-ribose. By the use of L-ribose or rather L-ribonucleotides, L-RNA can be synthesized. L-RNA is much more stable against degradation by RNase. Like other structured biopolymers such as proteins, one can define topology of a folded RNA molecule. This is often done based on arrangement of intra-chain contacts within a folded RNA, termed as circuit topology. Synthesis Synthesis of RNA is usually catalyzed by an enzyme—RNA polymerase—using DNA as a template, a process known as transcription. Initiation of transcription begins with the binding of the enzyme to a promoter sequence in the DNA (usually found "upstream" of a gene). The DNA double helix is unwound by the helicase activity of the enzyme. The enzyme then progresses along the template strand in the 3’ to 5’ direction, synthesizing a complementary RNA molecule with elongation occurring in the 5’ to 3’ direction. The DNA sequence also dictates where termination of RNA synthesis will occur. Primary transcript RNAs are often modified by enzymes after transcription. For example, a poly(A) tail and a 5' cap are added to eukaryotic pre-mRNA and introns are removed by the spliceosome. There are also a number of | RNA is found in nature as a single strand folded onto itself, rather than a paired double strand. Cellular organisms use messenger RNA (mRNA) to convey genetic information (using the nitrogenous bases of guanine, uracil, adenine, and cytosine, denoted by the letters G, U, A, and C) that directs synthesis of specific proteins. Many viruses encode their genetic information using an RNA genome. Some RNA molecules play an active role within cells by catalyzing biological reactions, controlling gene expression, or sensing and communicating responses to cellular signals. One of these active processes is protein synthesis, a universal function in which RNA molecules direct the synthesis of proteins on ribosomes. This process uses transfer RNA (tRNA) molecules to deliver amino acids to the ribosome, where ribosomal RNA (rRNA) then links amino acids together to form coded proteins. Comparison with DNA The chemical structure of RNA is very similar to that of DNA, but differs in three primary ways: Unlike double-stranded DNA, RNA is usually a single-stranded molecule (ssRNA) in many of its biological roles and consists of much shorter chains of nucleotides. However, double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) can form and (moreover) a single RNA molecule can, by complementary base pairing, form intrastrand double helixes, as in tRNA. While the sugar-phosphate "backbone" of DNA contains deoxyribose, RNA contains ribose instead. Ribose has a hydroxyl group attached to the pentose ring in the 2' position, whereas deoxyribose does not. The hydroxyl groups in the ribose backbone make RNA more chemically labile than DNA by lowering the activation energy of hydrolysis. The complementary base to adenine in DNA is thymine, whereas in RNA, it is uracil, which is an unmethylated form of thymine. Like DNA, most biologically active RNAs, including mRNA, tRNA, rRNA, snRNAs, and other non-coding RNAs, contain self-complementary sequences that allow parts of the RNA to fold and pair with itself to form double helices. Analysis of these RNAs has revealed that they are highly structured. Unlike DNA, their structures do not consist of long double helices, but rather collections of short helices packed together into structures akin to proteins. In this fashion, RNAs can achieve chemical catalysis (like enzymes). For instance, determination of the structure of the ribosome—an RNA-protein complex that catalyzes peptide bond formation—revealed that its active site is composed entirely of RNA. Structure Each nucleotide in RNA contains a ribose sugar, with carbons numbered 1' through 5'. A base is attached to the 1' position, in general, adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), or uracil (U). Adenine and guanine are purines, cytosine and uracil are pyrimidines. A phosphate group is attached to the 3' position of one ribose and the 5' position of the next. The phosphate groups have a negative charge each, making RNA a charged molecule (polyanion). The bases form hydrogen bonds between cytosine and guanine, between adenine and uracil and between guanine and uracil. However, other interactions are possible, such as a group of adenine bases binding to each other in a bulge, or the GNRA tetraloop that has a guanine–adenine base-pair. An important structural component of RNA that distinguishes it from DNA is the presence of a hydroxyl group at the 2' position of the ribose sugar. The presence of this functional group causes the helix to mostly take the A-form geometry, although in single strand dinucleotide contexts, RNA can rarely also adopt the B-form most commonly observed in DNA. The A-form geometry results in a very deep and narrow major groove and a shallow and wide minor groove. A second consequence of the presence of the 2'-hydroxyl group is that in conformationally flexible regions of an RNA molecule (that is, not involved in formation of a double helix), it can chemically attack the adjacent phosphodiester bond to cleave the backbone. RNA is transcribed with only four bases (adenine, cytosine, guanine and uracil), but these bases and attached sugars can be modified in numerous ways as the RNAs mature. Pseudouridine (Ψ), in which the linkage between uracil and ribose is changed from a C–N bond to a C–C bond, and ribothymidine (T) are found in various places (the most notable ones being in the TΨC loop of tRNA). Another notable modified base is hypoxanthine, a deaminated adenine base whose nucleoside is called inosine (I). Inosine plays a key role in the wobble hypothesis of the genetic code. There are more than 100 other naturally occurring modified nucleosides. The greatest structural diversity of modifications can be found in tRNA, while pseudouridine and nucleosides with 2'-O-methylribose often present in rRNA are the most common. The specific roles of many of these modifications in RNA are not fully understood. However, it is notable that, in ribosomal RNA, many of the post-transcriptional modifications occur in highly functional regions, such as the peptidyl transferase center and the subunit interface, implying that they are important for normal function. The functional form of single-stranded RNA molecules, just like proteins, frequently requires a specific tertiary structure. The scaffold for this structure is provided by secondary structural elements that are hydrogen bonds within the molecule. This leads to several recognizable "domains" of secondary structure like hairpin loops, bulges, and internal loops. In order create, i.e., design, a RNA for any given secondary structure, two or three bases would not be enough, but four bases are enough. This is likely why nature has "chosen" a four base alphabet: less than four does not allow to create all structures, while more than four bases are not necessary. Since RNA is charged, metal ions such as Mg2+ are needed to stabilise many secondary and tertiary structures. The naturally occurring enantiomer of RNA is D-RNA composed of D-ribonucleotides. All chirality centers are located in the D-ribose. By the use of L-ribose or rather L-ribonucleotides, L-RNA can be synthesized. L-RNA is much more stable against degradation by RNase. Like other structured biopolymers such as proteins, one can define topology of a folded RNA molecule. This is often done based on arrangement of intra-chain contacts within a folded RNA, termed as circuit topology. Synthesis Synthesis of RNA is usually catalyzed by an enzyme—RNA polymerase—using DNA as a template, a process known as transcription. Initiation of transcription begins with the binding of the enzyme to a promoter sequence in the DNA (usually found "upstream" of a gene). The DNA double helix is unwound by the helicase activity of the enzyme. The enzyme then progresses along the template strand in the 3’ to 5’ direction, synthesizing a complementary RNA molecule with elongation occurring in the 5’ to 3’ direction. The DNA sequence also dictates where termination of RNA synthesis will occur. Primary transcript RNAs are often modified by enzymes after transcription. For example, a poly(A) tail and a 5' cap are added to eukaryotic pre-mRNA and introns are removed by the spliceosome. There are also a number of RNA-dependent RNA polymerases that use RNA as their template for synthesis of a new strand of RNA. For instance, a number of RNA viruses (such as poliovirus) use this type of enzyme to replicate their genetic material. Also, RNA-dependent RNA polymerase is part of the RNA interference pathway in many organisms. Types of RNA Overview Messenger RNA (mRNA) is the RNA that carries information from DNA to the ribosome, the sites of protein synthesis (translation) in the cell. The mRNA is a copy of DNA. The coding sequence of the mRNA determines the amino acid sequence in the protein that is produced. However, many RNAs do not code for protein (about 97% of the transcriptional output is non-protein-coding in eukaryotes). These so-called non-coding RNAs ("ncRNA") can be encoded by their own genes (RNA genes), but can also derive from mRNA introns. The most prominent examples of non-coding RNAs are transfer RNA (tRNA) and ribosomal RNA (rRNA), both of which are involved in the process of translation. There are also non-coding RNAs involved in gene regulation, RNA processing and other roles. Certain RNAs are able to catalyse chemical reactions such as cutting and ligating other RNA molecules, and the catalysis of peptide bond formation in the ribosome; these are known as ribozymes. In length According to the length of RNA chain, RNA includes small RNA and long RNA. Usually, small RNAs are shorter than 200 nt in length, and long RNAs are greater than 200 nt long. Long RNAs, also called large RNAs, mainly include long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) and mRNA. Small RNAs mainly include 5.8S ribosomal RNA (rRNA), 5S rRNA, transfer RNA (tRNA), microRNA (miRNA), small interfering RNA (siRNA), small nucleolar RNA (snoRNAs), Piwi-interacting RNA (piRNA), tRNA-derived small RNA (tsRNA) and small rDNA-derived RNA (srRNA). There are certain exceptions as in the case of the 5S rRNA of the members of the genus Halococcus (Archaea), which have |
to defend their land and their lives did not necessarily translate into enthusiasm for the Tsar or the government. Russia's first major battle of the war was a disaster; in the 1914 Battle of Tannenberg, over 30,000 Russian troops were killed or wounded and 90,000 captured, while Germany suffered just 12,000 casualties. However, Austro-Hungarian forces allied to Germany were driven back deep into the Galicia region by the end of the year. In the autumn of 1915, Nicholas had taken direct command of the army, personally overseeing Russia's main theatre of war and leaving his ambitious but incapable wife Alexandra in charge of the government. Reports of corruption and incompetence in the Imperial government began to emerge, and the growing influence of Grigori Rasputin in the Imperial family was widely resented. In 1915, things took a critical turn for the worse when Germany shifted its focus of attack to the Eastern Front. The superior German Army – better led, better trained, and better supplied – was quite effective against the ill-equipped Russian forces, driving the Russians out of Galicia, as well as Russian Poland during the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive campaign. By the end of October 1916, Russia had lost between 1,600,000 and 1,800,000 soldiers, with an additional 2,000,000 prisoners of war and 1,000,000 missing, all making up a total of nearly 5,000,000 men. These staggering losses played a definite role in the mutinies and revolts that began to occur. In 1916, reports of fraternizing with the enemy began to circulate. Soldiers went hungry, lacked shoes, munitions, and even weapons. Rampant discontent lowered morale, which was further undermined by a series of military defeats. Casualty rates were the most vivid sign of this disaster. By the end of 1914, only five months into the war, around 390,000 Russian men had lost their lives and nearly 1,000,000 were injured. Far sooner than expected, inadequately trained recruits were called for active duty, a process repeated throughout the war as staggering losses continued to mount. The officer class also saw remarkable changes, especially within the lower echelons, which were quickly filled with soldiers rising up through the ranks. These men, usually of peasant or working-class backgrounds, were to play a large role in the politicization of the troops in 1917. The army quickly ran short of rifles and ammunition (as well as uniforms and food), and by mid-1915, men were being sent to the front bearing no arms. It was hoped that they could equip themselves with arms recovered from fallen soldiers, of both sides, on the battlefields. The soldiers did not feel as if they were valuable, rather they felt as if they were expendable. By the spring of 1915, the army was in steady retreat, which was not always orderly; desertion, plundering, and chaotic flight were not uncommon. By 1916, however, the situation had improved in many respects. Russian troops stopped retreating, and there were even some modest successes in the offensives that were staged that year, albeit at great loss of life. Also, the problem of shortages was largely solved by a major effort to increase domestic production. Nevertheless, by the end of 1916, morale among soldiers was even worse than it had been during the great retreat of 1915. The fortunes of war may have improved, but the fact of war remained which continually took Russian lives. The crisis in morale (as was argued by Allan Wildman, a leading historian of the Russian army in war and revolution) "was rooted fundamentally in the feeling of utter despair that the slaughter would ever end and that anything resembling victory could be achieved." The war did not only devastate soldiers. By the end of 1915, there were manifold signs that the economy was breaking down under the heightened strain of wartime demand. The main problems were food shortages and rising prices. Inflation dragged incomes down at an alarmingly rapid rate, and shortages made it difficult for an individual to sustain oneself. These shortages were a problem especially in the capital, St. Petersburg, where distance from supplies and poor transportation networks made matters particularly worse. Shops closed early or entirely for lack of bread, sugar, meat, and other provisions, and lines lengthened massively for what remained. Conditions became increasingly difficult to afford food and physically obtain it. Strikes increased steadily from the middle of 1915, and so did crime, but, for the most part, people suffered and endured, scouring the city for food. Working-class women in St. Petersburg reportedly spent about forty hours a week in food lines, begging, turning to prostitution or crime, tearing down wooden fences to keep stoves heated for warmth, and continued to resent the rich. Government officials responsible for public order worried about how long people's patience would last. A report by the St. Petersburg branch of the security police, the Okhrana, in October 1916, warned bluntly of "the possibility in the near future of riots by the lower classes of the empire enraged by the burdens of daily existence." Tsar Nicholas was blamed for all of these crises, and what little support he had left began to crumble. As discontent grew, the State Duma issued a warning to Nicholas in November 1916, stating that, inevitably, a terrible disaster would grip the country unless a constitutional form of government was put in place. Nicholas ignored these warnings and Russia's Tsarist regime collapsed a few months later during the February Revolution of 1917. One year later, the Tsar and his entire family were executed. February Revolution At the beginning of February, Petrograd workers began several strikes and demonstrations. On , workers at Putilov, Petrograd's largest industrial plant was closed by a strike. The next day, a series of meetings and rallies were held for International Women's Day, which gradually turned into economic and political gatherings. Demonstrations were organised to demand bread, and these were supported by the industrial working force who considered them a reason for continuing the strikes. The women workers marched to nearby factories bringing out over 50,000 workers on strike. By , virtually every industrial enterprise in Petrograd had been shut down, together with many commercial and service enterprises. Students, white-collar workers, and teachers joined the workers in the streets and at public meetings. To quell the riots, the Tsar looked to the army. At least 180,000 troops were available in the capital, but most were either untrained or injured. Historian Ian Beckett suggests around 12,000 could be regarded as reliable, but even these proved reluctant to move in on the crowd, since it included so many women. It was for this reason that on , when the Tsar ordered the army to suppress the rioting by force, troops began to revolt. Although few actively joined the rioting, many officers were either shot or went into hiding; the ability of the garrison to hold back the protests was all but nullified, symbols of the Tsarist regime were rapidly torn down around the city, and governmental authority in the capital collapsed – not helped by the fact that Nicholas had prorogued the Duma that morning, leaving it with no legal authority to act. The response of the Duma, urged on by the liberal bloc, was to establish a Temporary Committee to restore law and order; meanwhile, the socialist parties established the Petrograd Soviet to represent workers and soldiers. The remaining loyal units switched allegiance the next day. The Tsar directed the royal train back towards Petrograd, which was stopped on , by a group of revolutionaries at Malaya Vishera. When the Tsar finally arrived at in Pskov, the Army Chief Nikolai Ruzsky, and the Duma deputies Alexander Guchkov and Vasily Shulgin suggested in unison that he abdicate the throne. He did so on , on behalf of himself, and then, having taken advice on behalf of his son, the Tsarevich. Nicholas nominated his brother, the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, to succeed him. But the Grand Duke realised that he would have little support as ruler, so he declined the crown on , stating that he would take it only if that was the consensus of democratic action. Six days later, Nicholas, no longer Tsar and addressed with contempt by the sentries as "Nicholas Romanov", was reunited with his family at the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo. He was placed under house arrest with his family by the Provisional Government. The immediate effect of the February Revolution was a widespread atmosphere of elation and excitement in Petrograd. On , a provisional government was announced. The center-left was well represented, and the government was initially chaired by a liberal aristocrat, Prince Georgy Yevgenievich Lvov, a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party (KD). The socialists had formed their rival body, the Petrograd Soviet (or workers' council) four days earlier. The Petrograd Soviet and the Provisional Government competed for power over Russia. Dvoyevlastiye The effective power of the Provisional Government was challenged by the authority of an institution that claimed to represent the will of workers and soldiers and could, in fact, mobilize and control these groups during the early months of the revolution – the Petrograd Soviet Council of Workers' Deputies. The model for the Soviets were workers' councils that had been established in scores of Russian cities during the 1905 Revolution. In February 1917, striking workers elected deputies to represent them and socialist activists began organizing a citywide council to unite these deputies with representatives of the socialist parties. On 27 February, socialist Duma deputies, mainly Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, took the lead in organizing a citywide council. The Petrograd Soviet met in the Tauride Palace, the same building where the new government was taking shape. The leaders of the Petrograd Soviet believed that they represented particular classes of the population, not the whole nation. They also believed Russia was not ready for socialism. They viewed their role as limited to pressuring hesitant "bourgeoisie" to rule and to introduce extensive democratic reforms in Russia (the replacement of the monarchy by a republic, guaranteed civil rights, a democratic police and army, abolition of religious and ethnic discrimination, preparation of elections to a constituent assembly, and so on). They met in the same building as the emerging Provisional Government not to compete with the Duma Committee for state power, but to best exert pressure on the new government, to act, in other words, as a popular democratic lobby. The relationship between these two major powers was complex from the beginning and would shape the politics of 1917. The representatives of the Provisional Government agreed to "take into account the opinions of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies", though they were also determined to prevent interference which would create an unacceptable situation of dual power. In fact, this was precisely what was being created, though this "dual power" (dvoyevlastiye) was the result less of the actions or attitudes of the leaders of these two institutions than of actions outside their control, especially the ongoing social movement taking place on the streets of Russia's cities, factories, shops, barracks, villages, and in the trenches. A series of political crises – see the chronology below – in the relationship between population and government and between the Provisional Government and the Soviets (which developed into a nationwide movement with a national leadership). The All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets (VTsIK) undermined the authority of the Provisional Government but also of the moderate socialist leaders of the Soviets. Although the Soviet leadership initially refused to participate in the "bourgeois" Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, a young, popular lawyer and a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SRP), agreed to join the new cabinet, and became an increasingly central figure in the government, eventually taking leadership of the Provisional Government. As minister of war and later Prime Minister, Kerensky promoted freedom of speech, released thousands of political prisoners, continued the war effort, even organizing another offensive (which, however, was no more successful than its predecessors). Nevertheless, Kerensky still faced several great challenges, highlighted by the soldiers, urban workers, and peasants, who claimed that they had gained nothing by the revolution: Other political groups were trying to undermine him. Heavy military losses were being suffered on the front. The soldiers were dissatisfied and demoralised and had started to defect. (On arrival back in Russia, these soldiers were either imprisoned or sent straight back into the front.) There was enormous discontent with Russia's involvement in the war, and many were calling for an end to it. There were great shortages of food and supplies, which was difficult to remedy because of the wartime economic conditions. The political group that proved most troublesome for Kerensky, and would eventually overthrow him, was the Bolshevik Party, led by Vladimir Lenin. Lenin had been living in exile in neutral Switzerland and, due to democratization of politics after the February Revolution, which legalized formerly banned political parties, he perceived the opportunity for his Marxist revolution. Although return to Russia had become a possibility, the war made it logistically difficult. Eventually, German officials arranged for Lenin to pass through their territory, hoping that his activities would weaken Russia or even – if the Bolsheviks came to power – lead to Russia's withdrawal from the war. Lenin and his associates, however, had to agree to travel to Russia in a sealed train: Germany would not take the chance that he would foment revolution in Germany. After passing through the front, he arrived in Petrograd in April 1917. On the way to Russia, Lenin prepared the April Theses, which outlined central Bolshevik policies. These included that the Soviets take power (as seen in the slogan "all power to the Soviets") and denouncing the liberals and social revolutionaries in the Provisional Government, forbidding co-operation with it. Many Bolsheviks, however, had supported the Provisional Government, including Lev Kamenev. With Lenin's arrival, the popularity of the Bolsheviks increased steadily. Over the course of the spring, public dissatisfaction with the Provisional Government and the war, in particular among workers, soldiers and peasants, pushed these groups to radical parties. Despite growing support for the Bolsheviks, buoyed by maxims that called most famously for "all power to the Soviets", the party held very little real power in the moderate-dominated Petrograd Soviet. In fact, historians such as Sheila Fitzpatrick have asserted that Lenin's exhortations for the Soviet Council to take power were intended to arouse indignation both with the Provisional Government, whose policies were viewed as conservative, and the Soviets themselves, which were viewed as subservients to the conservative government. By some other historians' accounts, Lenin and his followers were unprepared for how their groundswell of support, especially among influential worker and soldier groups, would translate into real power in the summer of 1917. On 18 June, the Provisional Government launched an attack against Germany that failed miserably. Soon after, the government ordered soldiers to go to the front, reneging on a promise. The soldiers refused to follow the new orders. The arrival of radical Kronstadt sailors – who had tried and executed many officers, including one admiral – further fueled the growing revolutionary atmosphere. Sailors and soldiers, along with Petrograd workers, took to the streets in violent protest, calling for "all power to the Soviets". The revolt, however, was disowned by Lenin and the Bolshevik leaders and dissipated within a few days. In the aftermath, Lenin fled to Finland under threat of arrest while Trotsky, among other prominent Bolsheviks, was arrested. The July Days confirmed the popularity of the anti-war, radical Bolsheviks, but their unpreparedness at the moment of revolt was an embarrassing gaffe that lost them support among their main constituent groups: soldiers and workers. The Bolshevik failure in the July Days proved temporary. The Bolsheviks had undergone a spectacular growth in membership. Whereas, in February 1917, the Bolsheviks were limited to only 24,000 members, by September 1917 there were 200,000 members of the Bolshevik faction. Previously, the Bolsheviks had been in the minority in the two leading cities of Russia—St. Petersburg and Moscow behind the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries, by September the Bolsheviks were in the majority in both cities. Furthermore, the Bolshevik-controlled Moscow Regional Bureau of the Party also controlled the Party organizations of the 13 provinces around Moscow. These 13 provinces held 37% of Russia's population and 20% of the membership of the Bolshevik faction. In August, poor and misleading communication led General Lavr Kornilov, the recently appointed Supreme Commander of Russian military forces, to believe that the Petrograd government had already been captured by radicals, or was in serious danger thereof. In response, he ordered troops to Petrograd to pacify the city. To secure his position, Kerensky had to ask for Bolshevik assistance. He also sought help from the Petrograd Soviet, which called upon armed Red Guards to "defend the revolution". The Kornilov Affair failed largely due to the efforts of the Bolsheviks, whose influence over railroad and telegraph workers | strikes. The women workers marched to nearby factories bringing out over 50,000 workers on strike. By , virtually every industrial enterprise in Petrograd had been shut down, together with many commercial and service enterprises. Students, white-collar workers, and teachers joined the workers in the streets and at public meetings. To quell the riots, the Tsar looked to the army. At least 180,000 troops were available in the capital, but most were either untrained or injured. Historian Ian Beckett suggests around 12,000 could be regarded as reliable, but even these proved reluctant to move in on the crowd, since it included so many women. It was for this reason that on , when the Tsar ordered the army to suppress the rioting by force, troops began to revolt. Although few actively joined the rioting, many officers were either shot or went into hiding; the ability of the garrison to hold back the protests was all but nullified, symbols of the Tsarist regime were rapidly torn down around the city, and governmental authority in the capital collapsed – not helped by the fact that Nicholas had prorogued the Duma that morning, leaving it with no legal authority to act. The response of the Duma, urged on by the liberal bloc, was to establish a Temporary Committee to restore law and order; meanwhile, the socialist parties established the Petrograd Soviet to represent workers and soldiers. The remaining loyal units switched allegiance the next day. The Tsar directed the royal train back towards Petrograd, which was stopped on , by a group of revolutionaries at Malaya Vishera. When the Tsar finally arrived at in Pskov, the Army Chief Nikolai Ruzsky, and the Duma deputies Alexander Guchkov and Vasily Shulgin suggested in unison that he abdicate the throne. He did so on , on behalf of himself, and then, having taken advice on behalf of his son, the Tsarevich. Nicholas nominated his brother, the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, to succeed him. But the Grand Duke realised that he would have little support as ruler, so he declined the crown on , stating that he would take it only if that was the consensus of democratic action. Six days later, Nicholas, no longer Tsar and addressed with contempt by the sentries as "Nicholas Romanov", was reunited with his family at the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo. He was placed under house arrest with his family by the Provisional Government. The immediate effect of the February Revolution was a widespread atmosphere of elation and excitement in Petrograd. On , a provisional government was announced. The center-left was well represented, and the government was initially chaired by a liberal aristocrat, Prince Georgy Yevgenievich Lvov, a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party (KD). The socialists had formed their rival body, the Petrograd Soviet (or workers' council) four days earlier. The Petrograd Soviet and the Provisional Government competed for power over Russia. Dvoyevlastiye The effective power of the Provisional Government was challenged by the authority of an institution that claimed to represent the will of workers and soldiers and could, in fact, mobilize and control these groups during the early months of the revolution – the Petrograd Soviet Council of Workers' Deputies. The model for the Soviets were workers' councils that had been established in scores of Russian cities during the 1905 Revolution. In February 1917, striking workers elected deputies to represent them and socialist activists began organizing a citywide council to unite these deputies with representatives of the socialist parties. On 27 February, socialist Duma deputies, mainly Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, took the lead in organizing a citywide council. The Petrograd Soviet met in the Tauride Palace, the same building where the new government was taking shape. The leaders of the Petrograd Soviet believed that they represented particular classes of the population, not the whole nation. They also believed Russia was not ready for socialism. They viewed their role as limited to pressuring hesitant "bourgeoisie" to rule and to introduce extensive democratic reforms in Russia (the replacement of the monarchy by a republic, guaranteed civil rights, a democratic police and army, abolition of religious and ethnic discrimination, preparation of elections to a constituent assembly, and so on). They met in the same building as the emerging Provisional Government not to compete with the Duma Committee for state power, but to best exert pressure on the new government, to act, in other words, as a popular democratic lobby. The relationship between these two major powers was complex from the beginning and would shape the politics of 1917. The representatives of the Provisional Government agreed to "take into account the opinions of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies", though they were also determined to prevent interference which would create an unacceptable situation of dual power. In fact, this was precisely what was being created, though this "dual power" (dvoyevlastiye) was the result less of the actions or attitudes of the leaders of these two institutions than of actions outside their control, especially the ongoing social movement taking place on the streets of Russia's cities, factories, shops, barracks, villages, and in the trenches. A series of political crises – see the chronology below – in the relationship between population and government and between the Provisional Government and the Soviets (which developed into a nationwide movement with a national leadership). The All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets (VTsIK) undermined the authority of the Provisional Government but also of the moderate socialist leaders of the Soviets. Although the Soviet leadership initially refused to participate in the "bourgeois" Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, a young, popular lawyer and a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SRP), agreed to join the new cabinet, and became an increasingly central figure in the government, eventually taking leadership of the Provisional Government. As minister of war and later Prime Minister, Kerensky promoted freedom of speech, released thousands of political prisoners, continued the war effort, even organizing another offensive (which, however, was no more successful than its predecessors). Nevertheless, Kerensky still faced several great challenges, highlighted by the soldiers, urban workers, and peasants, who claimed that they had gained nothing by the revolution: Other political groups were trying to undermine him. Heavy military losses were being suffered on the front. The soldiers were dissatisfied and demoralised and had started to defect. (On arrival back in Russia, these soldiers were either imprisoned or sent straight back into the front.) There was enormous discontent with Russia's involvement in the war, and many were calling for an end to it. There were great shortages of food and supplies, which was difficult to remedy because of the wartime economic conditions. The political group that proved most troublesome for Kerensky, and would eventually overthrow him, was the Bolshevik Party, led by Vladimir Lenin. Lenin had been living in exile in neutral Switzerland and, due to democratization of politics after the February Revolution, which legalized formerly banned political parties, he perceived the opportunity for his Marxist revolution. Although return to Russia had become a possibility, the war made it logistically difficult. Eventually, German officials arranged for Lenin to pass through their territory, hoping that his activities would weaken Russia or even – if the Bolsheviks came to power – lead to Russia's withdrawal from the war. Lenin and his associates, however, had to agree to travel to Russia in a sealed train: Germany would not take the chance that he would foment revolution in Germany. After passing through the front, he arrived in Petrograd in April 1917. On the way to Russia, Lenin prepared the April Theses, which outlined central Bolshevik policies. These included that the Soviets take power (as seen in the slogan "all power to the Soviets") and denouncing the liberals and social revolutionaries in the Provisional Government, forbidding co-operation with it. Many Bolsheviks, however, had supported the Provisional Government, including Lev Kamenev. With Lenin's arrival, the popularity of the Bolsheviks increased steadily. Over the course of the spring, public dissatisfaction with the Provisional Government and the war, in particular among workers, soldiers and peasants, pushed these groups to radical parties. Despite growing support for the Bolsheviks, buoyed by maxims that called most famously for "all power to the Soviets", the party held very little real power in the moderate-dominated Petrograd Soviet. In fact, historians such as Sheila Fitzpatrick have asserted that Lenin's exhortations for the Soviet Council to take power were intended to arouse indignation both with the Provisional Government, whose policies were viewed as conservative, and the Soviets themselves, which were viewed as subservients to the conservative government. By some other historians' accounts, Lenin and his followers were unprepared for how their groundswell of support, especially among influential worker and soldier groups, would translate into real power in the summer of 1917. On 18 June, the Provisional Government launched an attack against Germany that failed miserably. Soon after, the government ordered soldiers to go to the front, reneging on a promise. The soldiers refused to follow the new orders. The arrival of radical Kronstadt sailors – who had tried and executed many officers, including one admiral – further fueled the growing revolutionary atmosphere. Sailors and soldiers, along with Petrograd workers, took to the streets in violent protest, calling for "all power to the Soviets". The revolt, however, was disowned by Lenin and the Bolshevik leaders and dissipated within a few days. In the aftermath, Lenin fled to Finland under threat of arrest while Trotsky, among other prominent Bolsheviks, was arrested. The July Days confirmed the popularity of the anti-war, radical Bolsheviks, but their unpreparedness at the moment of revolt was an embarrassing gaffe that lost them support among their main constituent groups: soldiers and workers. The Bolshevik failure in the July Days proved temporary. The Bolsheviks had undergone a spectacular growth in membership. Whereas, in February 1917, the Bolsheviks were limited to only 24,000 members, by September 1917 there were 200,000 members of the Bolshevik faction. Previously, the Bolsheviks had been in the minority in the two leading cities of Russia—St. Petersburg and Moscow behind the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries, by September the Bolsheviks were in the majority in both cities. Furthermore, the Bolshevik-controlled Moscow Regional Bureau of the Party also controlled the Party organizations of the 13 provinces around Moscow. These 13 provinces held 37% of Russia's population and 20% of the membership of the Bolshevik faction. In August, poor and misleading communication led General Lavr Kornilov, the recently appointed Supreme Commander of Russian military forces, to believe that the Petrograd government had already been captured by radicals, or was in serious danger thereof. In response, he ordered troops to Petrograd to pacify the city. To secure his position, Kerensky had to ask for Bolshevik assistance. He also sought help from the Petrograd Soviet, which called upon armed Red Guards to "defend the revolution". The Kornilov Affair failed largely due to the efforts of the Bolsheviks, whose influence over railroad and telegraph workers proved vital in stopping the movement of troops. With his coup failing, Kornilov surrendered and was relieved of his position. The Bolsheviks' role in stopping the attempted coup further strengthened their position. In early September, the Petrograd Soviet freed all jailed Bolsheviks and Trotsky became chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. Growing numbers of socialists and lower-class Russians viewed the government less as a force in support of their needs and interests. The Bolsheviks benefited as the only major organized opposition party that had refused to compromise with the Provisional Government, and they benefited from growing frustration and even disgust with other parties, such as the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, who stubbornly refused to break with the idea of national unity across all classes. In Finland, Lenin had worked on his book State and Revolution and continued to lead his party, writing newspaper articles and policy decrees. By October, he returned to Petrograd (present-day St. Petersburg), aware that the increasingly radical city presented him no legal danger and a second opportunity for revolution. Recognising the strength of the Bolsheviks, Lenin began pressing for the immediate overthrow of the Kerensky government by the Bolsheviks. Lenin was of the opinion that taking power should occur in both St. Petersburg and Moscow simultaneously, parenthetically stating that it made no difference which city rose up first, but expressing his opinion that Moscow may well rise up first. The Bolshevik Central Committee drafted a resolution, calling for the dissolution of the Provisional Government in favor of the Petrograd Soviet. The resolution was passed 10–2 (Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev prominently dissenting) promoting the October Revolution. October Revolution The October Revolution, night to Wednesday 7 November 1917 according to the modern Gregorian calendar and night to Wednesday 25 October according to the Julian calendar at the time in tsarist Russia, was organized by the Bolshevik party. Lenin did not have any direct role in the revolution and due to his personal security he was hiding. The Revolutionary Military Committee established by the Bolshevik party was organizing the insurrection and Leon Trotsky was the chairman. However, Lenin played a crucial role in the debate in the leadership of the Bolshevik party for a revolutionary insurrection as the party in the autumn of 1917 received a majority in the soviets. An ally in the left fraction of the Revolutionary-Socialist Party, with huge support among the peasants who opposed Russia's participation in the war, supported the slogan 'All power to the Soviets'. Liberal and monarchist forces, loosely organized into the White Army, immediately went to war against the Bolsheviks' Red Army, in a series of battles that would become known as the Russian Civil War. This did not happen in 1917. The Civil War began in early 1918 with domestic anti-Bolshevik forces confronting the nascent Red Army. In autumn of 1918 Allied countries needed to block German access to Russian supplies. They sent troops to support the "Whites" with supplies of weapons, ammunition and logistic equipment being sent from the main Western countries but this was not at all coordinated. Germany did not participate in the civil war as it surrendered to the Allied. The provisional government with its second and third coalition was led by a right wing fraction of the Socialist-Revolutionary party, SR. This non-elected provisional government faced the revolutionary situation and the growing mood against the war by avoiding elections to the state Duma. However, the October revolution forced the political parties behind the newly dissolved provisional government to move and move fast for immediate elections. All happened so fast that the left SR fraction did not have time to reach out and be represented in ballots of the SR party which was part of the coalition in the provisional government. This non-elected government supported continuation of the war on the side of the allied forces. The elections to the State Duma 25 November 1917 therefore did not mirror the true political situation among peasants even if we don't know how the outcome would be if the anti-war left SR fraction had a fair chance to challenge the party leaders. In the elections the Bolshevik party received 25% of the votes and the Socialist-Revolutionaries as much as 58%. It is possible the left SR had a good chance to reach more than 25% of the votes and thereby legitimate the October revolution but we can only guess. Lenin did not believe as Karl Marx that a socialist revolution presupposed a developed capitalist economy and not in a semi-capitalist country as Russia. Russia was backward, but not that backward, with a working class population of more than some 4-5% of the population. Though Lenin was the leader of the Bolshevik Party, it has been argued that since Lenin was not present during the actual takeover of the Winter Palace, it was really Trotsky's organization and direction that led the revolution, merely spurred by the motivation Lenin instigated within his party. Critics on the Right have long argued that the financial and logistical assistance of German intelligence via their key agent, Alexander Parvus was a key component as well, though historians are divided, since there is little evidence supporting that claim. Soviet membership was initially freely elected, but many members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, anarchists, and other leftists created opposition to the Bolsheviks through the Soviets themselves. The elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly took place 25 November 1917. The Bolsheviks gained 25% of the vote. When it became clear that the Bolsheviks had little support outside of the industrialized areas of Saint Petersburg and Moscow, they simply barred non-Bolsheviks from membership in the Soviets. The Bolsheviks dissolved the Constituent Assembly in January 1918. Russian Civil War The Russian Civil War, which broke out in 1918 shortly after the October Revolution, resulted in the deaths and suffering of millions of people regardless of their political orientation. The war was fought mainly between the Red Army ("Reds"), consisting of the uprising majority led by the Bolshevik minority, and the "Whites" – army officers and cossacks, the "bourgeoisie", and political groups ranging from the far Right, to the Socialist Revolutionaries who opposed the drastic restructuring championed by the Bolsheviks following the collapse of the Provisional Government, to the Soviets (under clear Bolshevik dominance). The Whites had backing from other countries such as the United Kingdom, France, the United States, and Japan, while the Reds possessed internal support, proving to be much more effective. Though the Allied nations, using external interference, provided substantial military aid to the loosely knit anti-Bolshevik forces, they were ultimately defeated. The Bolsheviks firstly assumed power in Petrograd, expanding their rule outwards. They eventually reached the Easterly Siberian Russian coast in Vladivostok, four years after the war began, an occupation that is believed to have ended all significant military campaigns in the nation. Less than one year later, the last area controlled by the White Army, the Ayano-Maysky District, directly to the north of the Krai containing Vladivostok, was given up when General Anatoly Pepelyayev capitulated in 1923. Several revolts were initiated against the Bolsheviks and their army near the end of the war, notably the Kronstadt Rebellion. This was a naval mutiny engineered by Soviet Baltic sailors, former Red Army soldiers, and the people of Kronstadt. This armed uprising was fought against the antagonizing Bolshevik economic policies that farmers were subjected to, including seizures of grain crops by the Communists. This all amounted to large-scale discontent. When delegates representing the Kronstadt sailors arrived at Petrograd for negotiations, they raised 15 demands primarily pertaining to the Russian right to freedom. The Government firmly denounced the rebellions and labelled the requests as a reminder of the Social Revolutionaries, a political party that was popular among Soviets before Lenin, but refused to cooperate with the Bolshevik Army. The Government then responded with an armed suppression of these revolts and suffered ten thousand casualties before entering the city of Kronstadt. This ended the rebellions fairly quickly, causing many of the rebels to flee seeking political exile. During the Civil War, Nestor Makhno led a Ukrainian anarchist movement, the Black Army allied to the Bolsheviks thrice, one of the powers ending the alliance each time. However, a Bolshevik force under Mikhail Frunze destroyed the Makhnovist movement, when the Makhnovists refused to merge into the Red Army. In addition, the so-called "Green Army" (peasants defending their property against the opposing forces) played a secondary role in the war, mainly in the Ukraine. Revolutionary Tribunals Revolutionary tribunals were present during both the Revolution and the Civil War, intended for the purpose of combatting forces of counter-revolution. At the Civil War's zenith, it is reported that upwards of 200,000 cases were investigated by approximately 200 tribunals. These tribunals established themselves more so from the Cheka as a more moderate force that acted under the banner of revolutionary justice, rather than a utilizer of strict brute force as the former did. However, these tribunals did come with their own set of inefficiencies, such as responding to cases in a matter of months and not having a concrete definition of "counter-revolution" that was determined on a case-by-case basis. The "Decree on Revolutionary Tribunals" used by the People's Commissar of Justice, states in article 2 that "In fixing the penalty, the Revolutionary Tribunal shall be guided by the circumstances of the case and the dictates of the revolutionary conscience." Revolutionary tribunals ultimately demonstrated that a form of justice was still prevalent in Russian society where the Russian Provisional Government failed. This, in part, triggered the political transition of the October Revolution and the Civil War that followed in its aftermath. Execution of the imperial family The Bolsheviks executed the tsar and his family on 16 July 1918. In early March, the Provisional Government had placed Nicholas and his family under house arrest in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, south of Petrograd. But in August 1917, they evacuated the Romanovs to Tobolsk in the Urals to protect them from the rising tide of revolution. After the Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917, the conditions of their imprisonment grew stricter and talk of putting Nicholas on trial increased. In April and May 1918, the looming civil war led the Bolsheviks to move the family to the stronghold of Yekaterinburg. During the early morning of 16 July, Nicholas, Alexandra, their children, their physician, and several servants were taken into the basement and shot. According to Edvard Radzinsky and Dmitrii Volkogonov, the order came directly from Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov in Moscow. That the order came from the top has long been believed, although there is a lack of hard evidence. The execution may have been carried out on the initiative of local Bolshevik officials, or it may have been an option pre-approved in Moscow should White troops approach Yekaterinburg. Radzinsky noted that Lenin's bodyguard personally delivered the telegram ordering the execution and that he was ordered to destroy the evidence. Symbolism The Russian Revolution became the site for many instances of symbolism, both physical and non-physical. Communist symbolism is perhaps the most notable of this time period, such as the debut of the iconic hammer and sickle as a representation of the October Revolution in 1917, eventually becoming the official symbol of the USSR in 1924. Although the Bolsheviks did not have extensive political experience, their portrayal of the revolution itself as both a political and symbolic order resulted in Communism's portrayal as a messianic faith, formally known as communist messianism. Portrayals of notable revolutionary figures such as Lenin were done in iconographic methods, equating them similarly to religious figures, though religion itself was banned in the USSR and groups such as the Russian Orthodox Church were persecuted. The revolution and the world The revolution ultimately led to the establishment of the future Soviet Union as an ideocracy; however, the establishment of such a state came as an ideological paradox, as Marx's ideals of how a socialist state ought to be created were based on the formation being natural and not artificially incited (i.e. by means of revolution). Leon Trotsky said that the goal of socialism in Russia would not be realized without the success of the world revolution. A revolutionary wave caused by the Russian Revolution lasted until 1923, but despite initial hopes for success in the German Revolution of 1918–19, the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic, and others like it, no other Marxist movement at the time succeeded in keeping power in its hands. This issue is subject to conflicting views on communist history by various Marxist groups and parties. Joseph Stalin later rejected this idea, stating that socialism was possible in one country. The confusion regarding Stalin's position on the issue stems from the fact that, after Lenin's death in 1924, he successfully used Lenin's argument – the argument that socialism's success needs the support of workers of other countries in order to happen – to defeat his competitors within the party by accusing them of betraying Lenin and, therefore, the ideals of the October Revolution. Other communist revolutions The Russian Revolution inspired other communist movements around the world in regions such as South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. China The Chinese Communist Revolution began in 1946 and was part of the ongoing Chinese Civil War. Marx had envisioned European revolutions to be intertwined with Asian revolutions in the mid-19th century with his 1853 New York Tribune article, "Revolution in China and Europe," in which he references the Chinese as people in "revolutionary convulsion," brought about by British economic control. The May Fourth Movement is considered a turning point where Communism took root in Chinese society, especially among intellectuals. China was officially made a communist country on 1 October 1949, resulting in the establishment of the People's Republic of China (which still remains to this day) with Chairman Mao Zedong at its head. China's current leaders retain that Mao "developed the theory of revolutionary socialism" whilst reformer Deng Xiopeng "developed the theory of building socialism with Chinese characteristics." Cuba Cuba experienced its own communist revolution as well, known as the Cuban Revolution, which began in July 1953 under the leadership of revolutionary Fidel Castro. Castro's 26th of July Movement and Cuban Revolution followed in the footsteps of the Sergeant's Revolt in Cuba in 1933, similarly to how the 1905 Revolution in Russia preceded the October Revolution. Castro's movement sought "political democracy, political and economic nationalism, agrarian reform, industrialization, social security, and education." Similarly to the October Revolution, the Cuban Revolution removed a more traditional, hierarchical regime with the aim of establishing greater overall equality, specifically in the removal of former authoritarian president Fulgencio Batista. Cuba's revolution contributed to escalating tensions between the United States and USSR during Cold War, such as the CIA's failed Bay of Pigs Invasion by Cuban exiles in April 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Today, Cuba is moving more towards Capitalism and a free-market economy, as the Center for Democracy in the Americas (CDA) believes Castro's policies during his rule fostered "an acceptance that market forces can play a role in economic policy and that economic growth must be the central criterion to judge economic success." Vietnam The August Revolution took place on 14 August 1945, led by revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh with the aid of his Viet Minh. During the Second World War, the French and Japanese fascists in French Indochina (now known as Southeast Asia) began to experience significant resistance to their colonial rule. Due to the fact that both France and Japan were engaged in World War II, the Vietnamese people realized an opportunity to engage in an uprising, resulting in the bloody August Insurrection, ending colonial rule in Vietnam. Marxism was manifested in Vietnam as early as the Spring of 1925 when the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League was established, with the league being described as "first truly Marxist organization in Indochina" The domino effect caused more concern among Western countries in regards to Communism in Southeast Asia. One interpretation of the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War is "America had lost a guerrilla war in Asia, a loss of caused by failure to appreciate the nuances of counterinsurgency war." Since the Fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975, Vietnam has remained a communist country. Historiography Few events in historical research have been as conditioned by political influences as the October Revolution. The historiography of the Revolution generally divides into three camps: the Soviet-Marxist view, the Western-Totalitarian view, and the Revisionist view. Since the fall of Communism (and the USSR) in Russia in 1991, the Western-Totalitarian view has again become dominant and the Soviet-Marxist view has practically vanished. While the Soviet-Marxist view has been largely discredited, an "anti-Stalinist" version of it attempts to draw a distinction between the "Lenin period" (1917–23) and the "Stalin period" (1923–53). A Lenin biographer, Robert Service, states he "laid the foundations of dictatorship and lawlessness. Lenin had consolidated the principle of state penetration of the whole society, its economy and its culture. Lenin had practised terror and advocated revolutionary amoralism." Cultural portrayal George Orwell's classic novella Animal Farm is an allegory of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. It describes the dictator Joseph Stalin as a big Berkshire boar named, "Napoleon." Trotsky is represented by a pig called Snowball who is a brilliant talker and makes magnificent speeches. However, Napoleon overthrows Snowball as Stalin overthrew Trotsky and Napoleon takes over the farm the animals live on. Napoleon becomes a tyrant and uses force and propaganda to oppress the animals, while culturally teaching them that they are free. Film The Russian Revolution has been portrayed in or served as backdrop for many films. Among them, in order of release date: The White Guard, Mikhail Bulgakov, 1926. Partially autobiographical novel, portraying the life of one family torn apart by uncertainty of the Civil War times. The End of Saint Petersburg. 1927. Directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin and Mikhail Doller, USSR. October: Ten Days That Shook the World. 1927. Directed by Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov. Soviet Union. Black and White. Silent. Scarlet Dawn, a 1932 Pre-Code American romantic drama starring Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Nancy Carroll caught up in the fallout of the Russian Revolution. Knight Without Armour. 1937. A British historical drama starring Marlene Dietrich and Robert Donat, with Dietrich as an imperiled aristocrat on the eve of the Russian Revolution. Lenin in 1918. 1939. Directed by Mikhail Romm, E. Aron, and I. Simkov. Historical-revolutionary film about Lenin's activities in the first years of Soviet power. Doctor Zhivago. 1965. A drama-romance-war film directed by David Lean, filmed in Europe with a largely European cast, loosely based on the famous novel of the same name by Boris Pasternak. Reds. 1981. Directed by Warren Beatty, it is based on the book Ten Days that Shook the World. Anastasia. 1997. An American animated feature, directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. Video games The Russian Revolution has been used as a direct backdrop for select video games. Among them, in order of release date: Assassin's |
with Raven to make games using their game engine beginning with ShadowCaster. Raven then started making games with id Software and even briefly moved to the same street as id Software. They used id's engines for many of their games, such as Heretic, Hexen: Beyond Heretic and Hexen II. In 2005 and 2009, Raven developed two games from id's catalog: Quake 4 and Wolfenstein respectively. Activision The company was independent until 1997 when it was acquired by Activision for $12 million. They were still collaborating with id Software but at the same time developed other titles as well such as Soldier of Fortune in 2000, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy in 2003, X-Men Legends in 2004 and many more. In August 2009, following poor performance and possible over-budget of Wolfenstein, the company made a major layoff of 30-35 staff, leaving two development teams. This was reduced to one after more layoffs in October 2010, after delays with Singularity; as many as 40 staff were released. Following the layoffs and after id Software was bought over by ZeniMax Media, Raven has since become a primary developer for the Call of Duty series. In December 2021, Activision fired several members of the QA department. One | collaborating with id Software but at the same time developed other titles as well such as Soldier of Fortune in 2000, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy in 2003, X-Men Legends in 2004 and many more. In August 2009, following poor performance and possible over-budget of Wolfenstein, the company made a major layoff of 30-35 staff, leaving two development teams. This was reduced to one after more layoffs in October 2010, after delays with Singularity; as many as 40 staff were released. Following the layoffs and after id Software was bought over by ZeniMax Media, Raven has since become a primary developer for the Call of Duty series. In December 2021, Activision fired several members of the QA department. One of the associate managers said that "valuable members" were fired although they "were promised, for months, that Activision was working towards a pay restructure to increase their wages". Following these firings as well as other controversies revolving Activision Blizzard, a strike has been initiated. On January 21, 2022, Raven's QA team formed a union named the Game Workers Alliance with Communications Workers of America. Games In 2012, Raven began hiring employees for a game, and were announced as collaborating with Infinity Ward on Call of Duty: Ghosts in May 2013. On April 3, 2013 following the closure of LucasArts, Raven Software released the source code for Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy on SourceForge under the GPL-2.0-only license. In April 2014, the company became lead developer of the now shutdown free-to-play Chinese Call |
Because it can carry out the types of tasks now performed by proteins and DNA, RNA is believed to have once been capable of supporting independent life on its own. Some viruses use RNA as their genetic material, rather than DNA. Further, while nucleotides were not found in experiments based on Miller-Urey experiment, their formation in prebiotically plausible conditions was reported in 2009; a purine base, adenine, is merely a pentamer of hydrogen cyanide. Experiments with basic ribozymes, like Bacteriophage Qβ RNA, have shown that simple self-replicating RNA structures can withstand even strong selective pressures (e.g., opposite-chirality chain terminators). Since there were no known chemical pathways for the abiogenic synthesis of nucleotides from pyrimidine nucleobases cytosine and uracil under prebiotic conditions, it is thought by some that nucleic acids did not contain these nucleobases seen in life's nucleic acids. The nucleoside cytosine has a half-life in isolation of 19 days at and 17,000 years in freezing water, which some argue is too short on the geologic time scale for accumulation. Others have questioned whether ribose and other backbone sugars could be stable enough to be found in the original genetic material, and have raised the issue that all ribose molecules would have had to be the same enantiomer, as any nucleotide of the wrong chirality acts as a chain terminator. Pyrimidine ribonucleosides and their respective nucleotides have been prebiotically synthesised by a sequence of reactions that by-pass free sugars and assemble in a stepwise fashion by including nitrogenous and oxygenous chemistries. In a series of publications, John Sutherland and his team at the School of Chemistry, University of Manchester, have demonstrated high yielding routes to cytidine and uridine ribonucleotides built from small 2- and 3-carbon fragments such as glycolaldehyde, glyceraldehyde or glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate, cyanamide, and cyanoacetylene. One of the steps in this sequence allows the isolation of enantiopure ribose aminooxazoline if the enantiomeric excess of glyceraldehyde is 60% or greater, of possible interest toward biological homochirality. This can be viewed as a prebiotic purification step, where the said compound spontaneously crystallised out from a mixture of the other pentose aminooxazolines. Aminooxazolines can react with cyanoacetylene in a mild and highly efficient manner, controlled by inorganic phosphate, to give the cytidine ribonucleotides. Photoanomerization with UV light allows for inversion about the 1' anomeric centre to give the correct beta stereochemistry; one problem with this chemistry is the selective phosphorylation of alpha-cytidine at the 2' position. However, in 2009, they showed that the same simple building blocks allow access, via phosphate controlled nucleobase elaboration, to 2',3'-cyclic pyrimidine nucleotides directly, which are known to be able to polymerise into RNA. Organic chemist Donna Blackmond described this finding as "strong evidence" in favour of the RNA world. However, John Sutherland said that while his team's work suggests that nucleic acids played an early and central role in the origin of life, it did not necessarily support the RNA world hypothesis in the strict sense, which he described as a "restrictive, hypothetical arrangement". The Sutherland group's 2009 paper also highlighted the possibility for the photo-sanitization of the pyrimidine-2',3'-cyclic phosphates. A potential weakness of these routes is the generation of enantioenriched glyceraldehyde, or its 3-phosphate derivative (glyceraldehyde prefers to exist as its keto tautomer dihydroxyacetone). On August 8, 2011, a report, based on NASA studies with meteorites found on Earth, was published suggesting building blocks of RNA (adenine, guanine, and related organic molecules) may have been formed in outer space. In 2017, a numerical model suggests that the RNA world may have emerged in warm ponds on the early Earth, and that meteorites were a plausible and probable source of the RNA building blocks (ribose and nucleic acids) to these environments. On August 29, 2012, astronomers at Copenhagen University reported the detection of a specific sugar molecule, glycolaldehyde, in a distant star system. The molecule was found around the protostellar binary IRAS 16293-2422, which is located 400 light years from Earth. Because glycolaldehyde is needed to form RNA, this finding suggests that complex organic molecules may form in stellar systems prior to the formation of planets, eventually arriving on young planets early in their formation. Prebiotic RNA synthesis Nucleotides are the fundamental molecules that combine in series to form RNA. They consist of a nitrogenous base attached to a sugar-phosphate backbone. RNA is made of long stretches of specific nucleotides arranged so that their sequence of bases carries information. The RNA world hypothesis holds that in the primordial soup (or sandwich), there existed free-floating nucleotides. These nucleotides regularly formed bonds with one another, which often broke because the change in energy was so low. However, certain sequences of base pairs have catalytic properties that lower the energy of their chain being created, enabling them to stay together for longer periods of time. As each chain grew longer, it attracted more matching nucleotides faster, causing chains to now form faster than they were breaking down. These chains have been proposed by some as the first, primitive forms of life. In an RNA world, different sets of RNA strands would have had different replication outputs, which would have increased or decreased their frequency in the population, i.e. natural selection. As the fittest sets of RNA molecules expanded their numbers, novel catalytic properties added by mutation, which benefitted their persistence and expansion, could accumulate in the population. Such an autocatalytic set of ribozymes, capable of self replication in about an hour, has been identified. It was produced by molecular competition (in vitro evolution) of candidate enzyme mixtures. Competition between RNA may have favored the emergence of cooperation between different RNA chains, opening the way for the formation of the first protocell. Eventually, RNA chains developed with catalytic properties that help amino acids bind together (a process called peptide-bonding). These amino acids could then assist with RNA synthesis, giving those RNA chains that could serve as ribozymes the selective advantage. The ability to catalyze one step in protein synthesis, aminoacylation of RNA, has been demonstrated in a short (five-nucleotide) segment of RNA. 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 conditions found only in outer space, using starting chemicals, like pyrimidine, found in meteorites. Pyrimidine, like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), may have been formed in red giant stars or in interstellar dust and gas clouds, according to the scientists. In 2018, researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology identified three molecular candidates for the bases that might have formed an earliest version of proto-RNA: barbituric acid, melamine, and 2,4,6-triaminopyrimidine (TAP). These three molecules are simpler versions of the four bases in current RNA, which could have been present in larger amounts and could still be forward-compatible with them, but may have been discarded by evolution in exchange for more optimal base pairs. Specifically, TAP can form nucleotides with a large range of sugars. Both TAP and melamine base pair with barbituric acid. All three spontaneously form nucleotides with ribose. Evolution of DNA One of the challenges posed by the RNA world hypothesis is to discover the pathway by which an RNA-based system transitioned to one based on DNA. Geoffrey Diemer and Ken Stedman, at Portland State University in Oregon, may have found a solution. While conducting a survey of viruses in a hot acidic lake in Lassen Volcanic National Park, California, they uncovered evidence that a simple DNA virus had acquired a gene from a completely unrelated RNA-based virus. Virologist Luis Villareal of the University of California Irvine also suggests that viruses capable of converting an RNA-based gene into DNA and then incorporating it into a more complex DNA-based genome might have been common in the Virus world during the RNA to DNA transition some 4 billion years ago. This finding bolsters the argument for the transfer of information from the RNA world to the emerging DNA world before the emergence of the last universal common ancestor. From the research, the diversity of this virus world is still with us. Viroids Additional evidence supporting the concept of an RNA world has resulted from research on viroids, the first representatives of a novel domain of "subviral pathogens". Viroids infect plants, where most are pathogens, and consist of short stretches of highly complementary, circular, single-stranded and non-coding RNA without a protein coat. They are extremely small, ranging from 246 to 467 nucleobases, compared to the smallest known viruses capable of causing an infection, with genomes about 2,000 nucleobases in length. Based on their characteristic properties, in 1989 plant biologist Theodor Diener argued that viroids are more plausible living relics of the RNA world than introns and other RNAs considered candidates at the time. Diener's hypothesis would be expanded by the research group of Ricardo Flores, and gained a broader audience when in 2014, a New York Times science writer published a popularized version of the proposal. The characteristics of viroids highlighted as consistent with an RNA world were their small size, high guanine and cytosine content, circular structure, structural periodicity, the lack of protein-coding ability and, in some cases, ribozyme-mediated replication. One aspect critics of the hypothesis have focused on is that the exclusive hosts of all known viroids, angiosperms, did not evolve until billions of years after the RNA world was replaced, making viroids more likely to have arisen through later evolutionary mechanisms unrelated to the RNA world than to have survived via a cryptic host over that extended period. Whether they are relics of that world or of more recent origin, their function as autonomous naked RNA is seen as analogous to that envisioned for an RNA world. Origin of sexual reproduction Eigen et al. and Woese proposed that the genomes of early protocells were composed of single-stranded RNA, and that individual genes corresponded to separate RNA segments, rather than being linked end-to-end as in present-day DNA genomes. A protocell that was haploid (one copy of each RNA gene) would be vulnerable to damage, since a single lesion in any RNA segment would be potentially lethal to the protocell (e.g. by blocking replication or inhibiting the function of an essential gene). Vulnerability to damage could be reduced by maintaining two or more copies of each RNA segment in each protocell, i.e. by maintaining diploidy or polyploidy. Genome redundancy would allow a damaged RNA segment to be replaced by an additional replication of its homolog. However, for such a simple organism, the proportion of available resources tied up in the genetic material would be a large fraction of the total resource budget. Under limited resource conditions, the protocell reproductive rate would likely be inversely related to ploidy number. The protocell's fitness would be reduced by the costs of redundancy. Consequently, coping with damaged RNA genes while minimizing the costs of redundancy would likely have been a fundamental problem for early protocells. A cost-benefit analysis was carried out in which the costs of maintaining redundancy | which self-replicating RNA molecules proliferated before the evolution of DNA and proteins. The term also refers to the hypothesis that posits the existence of this stage. Alexander Rich first proposed the concept of the RNA world in 1962, and Walter Gilbert coined the term in 1986. Alternative chemical paths to life have been proposed, and RNA-based life may not have been the first life to exist. Even so, the evidence for an RNA world is strong enough that the hypothesis has gained wide acceptance. The concurrent formation of all four RNA building blocks further strengthened the hypothesis. Regardless of its plausibility in a prebiotic scenario, the RNA world can serve as a model system for studying the origin of life. Like DNA, RNA can store and replicate genetic information; like protein enzymes, RNA enzymes (ribozymes) can catalyze (start or accelerate) chemical reactions that are critical for life. One of the most critical components of cells, the ribosome, is composed primarily of RNA. Ribonucleotide moieties in many coenzymes, such as acetyl-CoA, NADH, FADH, and F420, may be surviving remnants of covalently bound coenzymes in an RNA world. Although RNA is fragile, some ancient RNAs may have evolved the ability to methylate other RNAs to protect them. If the RNA world existed, it was probably followed by an age characterized by the evolution of ribonucleoproteins (RNP world), which in turn ushered in the era of DNA and longer proteins. DNA has greater stability and durability than RNA; this may explain why it became the predominant information storage molecule. Protein enzymes may have come to replace RNA-based ribozymes as biocatalysts because their greater abundance and diversity of monomers makes them more versatile. As some co-factors contain both nucleotide and amino-acid characteristics, it may be that amino acids, peptides and finally proteins initially were co-factors for ribozymes. History One of the challenges in studying abiogenesis is that the system of reproduction and metabolism utilized by all extant life involves three distinct types of interdependent macromolecules (DNA, RNA, and protein). This suggests that life could not have arisen in its current form, which has led researchers to hypothesize mechanisms whereby the current system might have arisen from a simpler precursor system. American molecular biologist Alexander Rich was the first to posit a coherent hypothesis on the origin of nucleotides as precursors of life. In an article he contributed to a volume issued in honor of Nobel-laureate physiologist Albert Szent-Györgyi, he explained that the primitive Earth's environment could have produced RNA molecules (polynucleotide monomers) that eventually acquired enzymatic and self-replicating functions. Further concept of RNA as a primordial molecule can be found in papers by Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel, as well as in Carl Woese's 1967 book The Genetic Code.Hans Kuhn in 1972 laid out a possible process by which the modern genetic system might have arisen from a nucleotide-based precursor, and this led Harold White in 1976 to observe that many of the cofactors essential for enzymatic function are either nucleotides or could have been derived from nucleotides. He proposed a scenario whereby the critical electrochemistry of enzymatic reactions would have necessitated retention of the specific nucleotide moieties of the original RNA-based enzymes carrying out the reactions, while the remaining structural elements of the enzymes were gradually replaced by protein, until all that remained of the original RNAs were these nucleotide cofactors, "fossils of nucleic acid enzymes". The phrase "RNA World" was first used by Nobel laureate Walter Gilbert in 1986, in a commentary on how recent observations of the catalytic properties of various forms of RNA fit with this hypothesis. Properties of RNA The properties of RNA make the idea of the RNA world hypothesis conceptually plausible, though its general acceptance as an explanation for the origin of life requires further evidence. RNA is known to form efficient catalysts and its similarity to DNA makes clear its ability to store information. Opinions differ, however, as to whether RNA constituted the first autonomous self-replicating system or was a derivative of a still-earlier system. One version of the hypothesis is that a different type of nucleic acid, termed pre-RNA, was the first one to emerge as a self-reproducing molecule, to be replaced by RNA only later. On the other hand, the discovery in 2009 that activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides can be synthesized under plausible prebiotic conditions suggests that it is premature to dismiss the RNA-first scenarios. Suggestions for 'simple' pre-RNA nucleic acids have included peptide nucleic acid (PNA), threose nucleic acid (TNA) or glycol nucleic acid (GNA). Despite their structural simplicity and possession of properties comparable with RNA, the chemically plausible generation of "simpler" nucleic acids under prebiotic conditions has yet to be demonstrated. RNA as an enzyme RNA enzymes, or ribozymes, are found in today's DNA-based life and could be examples of living fossils. Ribozymes play vital roles, such as that of the ribosome. The large subunit of the ribosome includes an rRNA responsible for the peptide bond-forming peptidyl transferase activity of protein synthesis. Many other ribozyme activities exist; for example, the hammerhead ribozyme performs self-cleavage and an RNA polymerase ribozyme can synthesize a short RNA strand from a primed RNA template. Among the enzymatic properties important for the beginning of life are: Self-replication The ability to self-replicate, or synthesize other RNA molecules; relatively short RNA molecules that can synthesize others have been artificially produced in the lab. The shortest was 165 bases long, though it has been estimated that only part of the molecule was crucial for this function. One version, 189 bases long, had an error rate of just 1.1% per nucleotide when synthesizing an 11 nucleotide long RNA strand from primed template strands. This 189 base pair ribozyme could polymerize a template of at most 14 nucleotides in length, which is too short for self replication, but is a potential lead for further investigation. The longest primer extension performed by a ribozyme polymerase was 20 bases. In 2016, researchers reported the use of in vitro evolution to improve dramatically the activity and generality of an RNA polymerase ribozyme by selecting variants that can synthesize functional RNA molecules from an RNA template. Each RNA polymerase ribozyme was engineered to remain linked to its new, synthesized RNA strand; this allowed the team to isolate successful polymerases. The isolated RNA polymerases were again used for another round of evolution. After several rounds of evolution, they obtained one RNA polymerase ribozyme called 24-3 that was able to copy almost any other RNA, from small catalysts to long RNA-based enzymes. Particular RNAs were amplified up to 10,000 times, a first RNA version of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Catalysis The ability to catalyze simple chemical reactions—which would enhance creation of molecules that are building blocks of RNA molecules (i.e., a strand of RNA that would make creating more strands of RNA easier). Relatively short RNA molecules with such abilities have been artificially formed in the lab. A recent study showed that almost any nucleic acid can evolve into a catalytic sequence under appropriate selection. For instance, an arbitrarily chosen 50-nucleotide DNA fragment encoding for the Bos taurus (cattle) albumin mRNA was subjected to test-tube evolution to derive a catalytic DNA (Deoxyribozyme, also called DNAzyme) with RNA-cleavage activity. After only a few weeks, a DNAzyme with significant catalytic activity had evolved. In general, DNA is much more chemically inert than RNA and hence much more resistant to obtaining catalytic properties. If in vitro evolution works for DNA it will happen much more easily with RNA. Amino acid-RNA ligation The ability to conjugate an amino acid to the 3'-end of an RNA in order to use its chemical groups or provide a long-branched aliphatic side-chain. Peptide bond formation The ability to catalyse the formation of peptide bonds between amino acids to produce short peptides or longer proteins. This is done in modern cells by ribosomes, a complex of several RNA molecules known as rRNA together with many proteins. The rRNA molecules are thought responsible for its enzymatic activity, as no amino-acid residues lie within 18Å of the enzyme's active site, and, when the majority of the amino-acid residues in the ribosome were stringently removed, the resulting ribosome retained its full peptidyl transferase activity, fully able to catalyze the formation of peptide bonds between amino acids. A much shorter RNA molecule has been synthesized in the laboratory with the ability to form peptide bonds, and it has been suggested that rRNA has evolved from a similar molecule. It has also been suggested that amino acids may have initially been involved with RNA molecules as cofactors enhancing or diversifying their enzymatic capabilities, before evolving into more complex peptides. Similarly, tRNA is suggested to have evolved from RNA molecules that began to catalyze amino acid transfer. RNA in information storage RNA is a very similar molecule to DNA, with only two major chemical differences (the backbone of RNA uses ribose instead of deoxyribose and its nucleobases include uracil instead of thymine). The overall structure of RNA and DNA are immensely similar—one strand of DNA and one of RNA can bind to form a double helical structure. This makes the storage of information in RNA possible in a very similar way to the storage of information in DNA. However, RNA is less stable, being more prone to hydrolysis due to the presence of a hydroxyl group at the ribose 2' position. Comparison of DNA and RNA structure The major difference between RNA and DNA is the presence of a hydroxyl group at the 2'-position of the ribose sugar in RNA (illustration, right). This group makes the molecule less stable because, when not constrained in a double helix, the 2' hydroxyl can chemically attack the adjacent phosphodiester bond to cleave the phosphodiester backbone. The hydroxyl group also forces the ribose into the C3'-endo sugar conformation unlike the C2'-endo conformation of the deoxyribose sugar in DNA. This forces an RNA double helix to change from a B-DNA structure to one more closely resembling A-DNA. RNA also uses a different set of bases than DNA—adenine, guanine, cytosine and uracil, instead of adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine. Chemically, uracil is similar to thymine, differing only by a methyl group, and its production requires less energy. In terms of base pairing, this has no effect. Adenine readily binds uracil or thymine. Uracil is, however, one product of damage to cytosine that makes RNA particularly susceptible to mutations that can replace a GC base pair with a GU (wobble) or AU base pair. RNA is thought to have preceded DNA, because of their ordering in the biosynthetic pathways. The deoxyribonucleotides used to make DNA are made from ribonucleotides, the building blocks of RNA, by removing the 2'-hydroxyl group. As a consequence a cell must have the ability to make RNA before it can make DNA. Limitations of information storage in RNA The chemical properties of RNA make large RNA molecules inherently fragile, and they can easily be broken down into their constituent nucleotides through hydrolysis. These limitations do not make use of RNA as an information storage system impossible, simply energy intensive (to repair or replace damaged RNA molecules) and prone to mutation. While this makes it unsuitable for current 'DNA optimised' life, it may have been acceptable for more primitive life. RNA as a regulator Riboswitches have been found to act as regulators of gene expression, particularly in bacteria, but also in plants and archaea. Riboswitches alter their secondary structure in response to the binding of a metabolite. This change in structure can result in the formation or disruption of a terminator, truncating or permitting transcription respectively. Alternatively, riboswitches may bind or occlude the Shine–Dalgarno sequence, affecting translation. It has been suggested that these originated in an RNA-based world. In addition, RNA thermometers regulate gene expression in response to temperature changes. Support and difficulties The RNA world hypothesis is supported by RNA's ability both to store, transmit, and duplicate genetic information, as DNA does, and to perform enzymatic reactions, like protein-based enzymes. Because it can carry out the types of tasks now performed by proteins and DNA, RNA is believed to have once been capable of supporting independent life on its own. Some viruses use RNA as their genetic material, rather than DNA. Further, while nucleotides were not found in experiments based on Miller-Urey experiment, their formation in prebiotically plausible conditions was reported in 2009; a purine base, adenine, is merely a pentamer of hydrogen cyanide. Experiments with basic ribozymes, like Bacteriophage Qβ RNA, have shown that simple self-replicating RNA structures can withstand even strong selective pressures (e.g., opposite-chirality chain terminators). Since there were no known chemical pathways for the abiogenic synthesis of nucleotides from pyrimidine nucleobases cytosine and uracil under prebiotic conditions, it is thought by some that nucleic acids did not contain these nucleobases seen in life's nucleic acids. The nucleoside cytosine has a half-life in isolation of 19 days at and 17,000 years in freezing water, which some argue is too short on the geologic time scale for accumulation. Others have questioned whether ribose and other backbone sugars could be stable enough to be found in the original genetic material, and have raised the issue that all ribose molecules would have had to be the same enantiomer, as any nucleotide of the wrong chirality acts as a chain terminator. Pyrimidine ribonucleosides and their respective nucleotides have been prebiotically synthesised by a sequence of reactions that by-pass free sugars and assemble in a stepwise fashion by including nitrogenous and oxygenous chemistries. In a series of publications, John Sutherland and his team at the School of Chemistry, University of Manchester, have demonstrated high yielding routes to cytidine and uridine ribonucleotides built from small 2- and 3-carbon fragments such as glycolaldehyde, glyceraldehyde or glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate, cyanamide, and cyanoacetylene. One of the steps in this sequence allows the isolation of enantiopure ribose aminooxazoline if the enantiomeric excess of glyceraldehyde is 60% or greater, of possible interest toward biological homochirality. This can be viewed as a prebiotic purification step, where the said compound spontaneously crystallised out from a mixture of the other pentose aminooxazolines. Aminooxazolines can react with cyanoacetylene in a mild and highly efficient manner, controlled by inorganic phosphate, to give the cytidine ribonucleotides. Photoanomerization with UV light allows for inversion about the 1' anomeric centre to give the correct beta stereochemistry; one problem with this chemistry is the selective phosphorylation of alpha-cytidine at the 2' position. However, in 2009, they showed that the same simple building blocks allow access, via phosphate controlled nucleobase elaboration, to 2',3'-cyclic pyrimidine nucleotides directly, which are known to be able to polymerise into RNA. Organic chemist Donna Blackmond described this finding as "strong evidence" in favour of the RNA world. However, John Sutherland said that while his team's work suggests that nucleic acids played an early and central role in the origin of life, it did not necessarily support the RNA world hypothesis in the strict sense, which he described as a "restrictive, hypothetical arrangement". The Sutherland group's 2009 paper also highlighted the possibility for the |
allowed the identification of A and P site proteins most likely associated with the peptidyltransferase activity; labelled proteins are L27, L14, L15, L16, L2; at least L27 is located at the donor site, as shown by E. Collatz and A.P. Czernilofsky. Additional research has demonstrated that the S1 and S21 proteins, in association with the 3′-end of 16S ribosomal RNA, are involved in the initiation of translation. Archaeal ribosomes Archaeal ribosomes share the same general dimensions of bacteria ones, being a 70S ribosome made up from a 50S large subunit, a 30S small subunit, and containing three rRNA chains. However, on the sequence level, they are much closer to eukaryotic ones than to bacterial ones. Every extra ribosomal protein archaea have compared to bacteria has a eukaryotic counterpart, while no such relation applies between archaea and bacteria. Eukaryotic ribosomes Eukaryotes have 80S ribosomes located in their cytosol, each consisting of a small (40S) and large (60S) subunit. Their 40S subunit has an 18S RNA (1900 nucleotides) and 33 proteins. The large subunit is composed of a 5S RNA (120 nucleotides), 28S RNA (4700 nucleotides), a 5.8S RNA (160 nucleotides) subunits and 46 proteins. {| class="wikitable float-right" style="text-align:center" |+ eukaryotic cytosolic ribosomes (R. norvegicus) |- ! width="25%"| ribosome ! width="25%"| subunit ! width="25%"| rRNAs ! width="25%"| r-proteins |- | rowspan="4" | 80S || rowspan="3" | 60S || 28S (4718 nt) || rowspan="3" | 49 |- | 5.8S (160 nt) |- | 5S (120 nt) |- | 40S || 18S (1874 nt) || 33 |} During 1977, Czernilofsky published research that used affinity labeling to identify tRNA-binding sites on rat liver ribosomes. Several proteins, including L32/33, L36, L21, L23, L28/29 and L13 were implicated as being at or near the peptidyl transferase center. Plastoribosomes and mitoribosomes In eukaryotes, ribosomes are present in mitochondria (sometimes called mitoribosomes) and in plastids such as chloroplasts (also called plastoribosomes). They also consist of large and small subunits bound together with proteins into one 70S particle. These ribosomes are similar to those of bacteria and these organelles are thought to have originated as symbiotic bacteria Of the two, chloroplastic ribosomes are closer to bacterial ones than mitochrondrial ones are. Many pieces of ribosomal RNA in the mitochrondria are shortened, and in the case of 5S rRNA, replaced by other structures in animals and fungi. In particular, Leishmania tarentolae has a minimalized set of mitochondrial rRNA. In contrast, plant mitoribosomes have both extended rRNA and additional proteins as compared to bacteria, in particular, many pentatricopetide repeat proteins. The cryptomonad and chlorarachniophyte algae may contain a nucleomorph that resembles a vestigial eukaryotic nucleus. Eukaryotic 80S ribosomes may be present in the compartment containing the nucleomorph. Making use of the differences The differences between the bacterial and eukaryotic ribosomes are exploited by pharmaceutical chemists to create antibiotics that can destroy a bacterial infection without harming the cells of the infected person. Due to the differences in their structures, the bacterial 70S ribosomes are vulnerable to these antibiotics while the eukaryotic 80S ribosomes are not. Even though mitochondria possess ribosomes similar to the bacterial ones, mitochondria are not affected by these antibiotics because they are surrounded by a double membrane that does not easily admit these antibiotics into the organelle. A noteworthy counterexample, however, includes the antineoplastic antibiotic chloramphenicol, which successfully inhibits bacterial 50S and eukaryotic mitochondrial 50S ribosomes. The same of mitochondria cannot be said of chloroplasts, where antibiotic resistance in ribosomal proteins is a trait to be introduced as a marker in genetic engineering. Common properties The various ribosomes share a core structure, which is quite similar despite the large differences in size. Much of the RNA is highly organized into various tertiary structural motifs, for example pseudoknots that exhibit coaxial stacking. The extra RNA in the larger ribosomes is in several long continuous insertions, such that they form loops out of the core structure without disrupting or changing it. All of the catalytic activity of the ribosome is carried out by the RNA; the proteins reside on the surface and seem to stabilize the structure. High-resolution structure The general molecular structure of the ribosome has been known since the early 1970s. In the early 2000s, the structure has been achieved at high resolutions, of the order of a few ångströms. The first papers giving the structure of the ribosome at atomic resolution were published almost simultaneously in late 2000. The 50S (large prokaryotic) subunit was determined from the archaeon Haloarcula marismortui and the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans, and the structure of the 30S subunit was determined from Thermus thermophilus. These structural studies were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009. In May 2001 these coordinates were used to reconstruct the entire T. thermophilus 70S particle at 5.5 Å resolution. Two papers were published in November 2005 with structures of the Escherichia coli 70S ribosome. The structures of a vacant ribosome were determined at 3.5 Å resolution using X-ray crystallography. Then, two weeks later, a structure based on cryo-electron microscopy was published, which depicts the ribosome at 11–15 Å resolution in the act of passing a newly synthesized protein strand into the protein-conducting channel. The first atomic structures of the ribosome complexed with tRNA and mRNA molecules were solved by using X-ray crystallography by two groups independently, at 2.8 Å and at 3.7 Å. These structures allow one to see the details of interactions of the Thermus thermophilus ribosome with mRNA and with tRNAs bound at classical ribosomal sites. Interactions of the ribosome with long mRNAs containing Shine-Dalgarno sequences were visualized soon after that at 4.5–5.5 Å resolution. In 2011, the first complete atomic structure of the eukaryotic 80S ribosome from the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae was obtained by crystallography. The model reveals the architecture of eukaryote-specific elements and their interaction with the universally conserved core. At the same time, the complete model of a eukaryotic 40S ribosomal structure in Tetrahymena thermophila was published and described the structure of the 40S subunit, as well as much about the 40S subunit's interaction with eIF1 during translation initiation. Similarly, the eukaryotic 60S subunit structure was also determined from Tetrahymena thermophila in complex with eIF6. Function Ribosomes are minute particles consisting of RNA and associated proteins that function to synthesize proteins. Proteins are needed for many cellular functions such as repairing damage or directing chemical processes. Ribosomes can be found floating within the cytoplasm or attached to the endoplasmic reticulum. Their main function is to convert genetic code into an amino acid sequence and to build protein polymers from amino acid monomers. Ribosomes act as catalysts in two extremely important biological processes called peptidyl transfer and peptidyl hydrolysis The "PT center is responsible for producing protein bonds during protein elongation". Translation Ribosomes are the workplaces of protein biosynthesis, the process of translating mRNA into protein. The mRNA comprises a series of codons which are decoded by the ribosome so as to make the protein. Using the mRNA as a template, the ribosome traverses each codon (3 nucleotides) of the mRNA, pairing it with the appropriate amino acid provided by an aminoacyl-tRNA. Aminoacyl-tRNA contains a complementary anticodon on one end and the appropriate amino acid on the other. For fast and accurate recognition of the appropriate tRNA, the ribosome utilizes large conformational changes (conformational proofreading). The small ribosomal subunit, typically bound to an aminoacyl-tRNA containing the first amino acid methionine, binds to an AUG codon on the mRNA and recruits the large ribosomal subunit. The ribosome contains three RNA binding sites, designated A, P and E. The A-site binds an aminoacyl-tRNA or termination release factors; the P-site binds a peptidyl-tRNA (a tRNA bound to the poly-peptide chain); and the E-site (exit) binds a free tRNA. Protein synthesis begins at a start codon AUG near the 5' end of the mRNA. mRNA binds to the P site of the ribosome first. The ribosome recognizes the start codon by using the Shine-Dalgarno sequence of the mRNA in prokaryotes and Kozak box in eukaryotes. Although catalysis of the peptide bond involves the C2 hydroxyl of RNA's P-site adenosine in a proton shuttle mechanism, other steps in protein synthesis (such as translocation) are caused by changes in protein conformations. Since their catalytic core is made of RNA, ribosomes are classified as "ribozymes," and it is thought that they might be remnants of the RNA world. In Figure 5, both ribosomal subunits (small and large) assemble at the start codon (towards the 5' end of the mRNA). The ribosome uses tRNA that matches the current codon (triplet) on the mRNA to append an amino acid to the polypeptide chain. This is done for each triplet on the mRNA, while the ribosome moves towards the 3' end of the mRNA. Usually in bacterial cells, several ribosomes are working parallel on a single mRNA, forming what is called a polyribosome or polysome. Cotranslational folding The ribosome is known to actively participate in the protein folding. The structures obtained in this way are usually identical to the ones obtained during protein chemical refolding; however, the pathways leading to the final product may be different. In some cases, the ribosome is crucial in obtaining the functional protein form. For example, one of the possible mechanisms of folding of the deeply knotted proteins relies on the ribosome pushing the chain through the attached loop. Addition of translation-independent amino acids Presence of a ribosome quality control protein Rqc2 is associated with mRNA-independent protein elongation. This elongation is a result of ribosomal addition (via tRNAs brought by Rqc2) of CAT tails: ribosomes extend the C-terminus of a stalled protein with random, translation-independent sequences of alanines and threonines. Ribosome locations Ribosomes are classified as being either "free" or "membrane-bound". Free and membrane-bound ribosomes differ only in their spatial distribution; they are identical in structure. Whether the ribosome exists in a free or membrane-bound state depends on the presence of an ER-targeting signal sequence on the protein being synthesized, so an individual ribosome might be membrane-bound when it is making one protein, but free in the cytosol when it makes another protein. Ribosomes are sometimes referred to as organelles, but the use of the term organelle is often restricted to describing sub-cellular components that include a phospholipid | prokaryotes and Kozak box in eukaryotes. Although catalysis of the peptide bond involves the C2 hydroxyl of RNA's P-site adenosine in a proton shuttle mechanism, other steps in protein synthesis (such as translocation) are caused by changes in protein conformations. Since their catalytic core is made of RNA, ribosomes are classified as "ribozymes," and it is thought that they might be remnants of the RNA world. In Figure 5, both ribosomal subunits (small and large) assemble at the start codon (towards the 5' end of the mRNA). The ribosome uses tRNA that matches the current codon (triplet) on the mRNA to append an amino acid to the polypeptide chain. This is done for each triplet on the mRNA, while the ribosome moves towards the 3' end of the mRNA. Usually in bacterial cells, several ribosomes are working parallel on a single mRNA, forming what is called a polyribosome or polysome. Cotranslational folding The ribosome is known to actively participate in the protein folding. The structures obtained in this way are usually identical to the ones obtained during protein chemical refolding; however, the pathways leading to the final product may be different. In some cases, the ribosome is crucial in obtaining the functional protein form. For example, one of the possible mechanisms of folding of the deeply knotted proteins relies on the ribosome pushing the chain through the attached loop. Addition of translation-independent amino acids Presence of a ribosome quality control protein Rqc2 is associated with mRNA-independent protein elongation. This elongation is a result of ribosomal addition (via tRNAs brought by Rqc2) of CAT tails: ribosomes extend the C-terminus of a stalled protein with random, translation-independent sequences of alanines and threonines. Ribosome locations Ribosomes are classified as being either "free" or "membrane-bound". Free and membrane-bound ribosomes differ only in their spatial distribution; they are identical in structure. Whether the ribosome exists in a free or membrane-bound state depends on the presence of an ER-targeting signal sequence on the protein being synthesized, so an individual ribosome might be membrane-bound when it is making one protein, but free in the cytosol when it makes another protein. Ribosomes are sometimes referred to as organelles, but the use of the term organelle is often restricted to describing sub-cellular components that include a phospholipid membrane, which ribosomes, being entirely particulate, do not. For this reason, ribosomes may sometimes be described as "non-membranous organelles". Free ribosomes Free ribosomes can move about anywhere in the cytosol, but are excluded from the cell nucleus and other organelles. Proteins that are formed from free ribosomes are released into the cytosol and used within the cell. Since the cytosol contains high concentrations of glutathione and is, therefore, a reducing environment, proteins containing disulfide bonds, which are formed from oxidized cysteine residues, cannot be produced within it. Membrane-bound ribosomes When a ribosome begins to synthesize proteins that are needed in some organelles, the ribosome making this protein can become "membrane-bound". In eukaryotic cells this happens in a region of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) called the "rough ER". The newly produced polypeptide chains are inserted directly into the ER by the ribosome undertaking vectorial synthesis and are then transported to their destinations, through the secretory pathway. Bound ribosomes usually produce proteins that are used within the plasma membrane or are expelled from the cell via exocytosis. Biogenesis In bacterial cells, ribosomes are synthesized in the cytoplasm through the transcription of multiple ribosome gene operons. In eukaryotes, the process takes place both in the cell cytoplasm and in the nucleolus, which is a region within the cell nucleus. The assembly process involves the coordinated function of over 200 proteins in the synthesis and processing of the four rRNAs, as well as assembly of those rRNAs with the ribosomal proteins. Origin The ribosome may have first originated in an RNA world, appearing as a self-replicating complex that only later evolved the ability to synthesize proteins when amino acids began to appear. Studies suggest that ancient ribosomes constructed solely of rRNA could have developed the ability to synthesize peptide bonds. In addition, evidence strongly points to ancient ribosomes as self-replicating complexes, where the rRNA in the ribosomes had informational, structural, and catalytic purposes because it could have coded for tRNAs and proteins needed for ribosomal self-replication. Hypothetical cellular organisms with self-replicating RNA but without DNA are called ribocytes (or ribocells). As amino acids gradually appeared in the RNA world under prebiotic conditions, their interactions with catalytic RNA would increase both the range and efficiency of function of catalytic RNA molecules. Thus, the driving force for the evolution of the ribosome from an ancient self-replicating machine into its current form as a translational machine may have been the selective pressure to incorporate proteins into the ribosome's self-replicating mechanisms, so as to increase its capacity for self-replication. Heterogeneous ribosomes Ribosomes are compositionally heterogeneous between species and even within the same cell, as evidenced by the existence of cytoplasmic and mitochondria ribosomes within the same eukaryotic cells. Certain researchers have suggested that heterogeneity in the composition of ribosomal proteins in mammals is important for gene regulation, i.e., the specialized ribosome hypothesis. However, this hypothesis is controversial and the topic of ongoing research. Heterogeneity in ribosome composition was first proposed to be involved in translational control of protein synthesis by Vince Mauro and Gerald Edelman. They proposed the ribosome filter hypothesis to explain the regulatory functions of ribosomes. Evidence has suggested that specialized ribosomes specific to different cell populations may affect how genes are translated. Some ribosomal proteins exchange from the assembled complex with cytosolic copies suggesting that the structure of the in vivo ribosome can be modified without synthesizing an entire new ribosome. Certain ribosomal proteins are absolutely critical for cellular life while others are not. In budding yeast, 14/78 ribosomal proteins are non-essential for growth, while in humans this depends on the cell of study. Other forms of heterogeneity include post-translational modifications to ribosomal proteins such as acetylation, methylation, and phosphorylation. Arabidopsis, Viral internal ribosome entry sites (IRESs) may mediate translations by compositionally distinct ribosomes. For example, 40S ribosomal units without eS25 in yeast and mammalian cells are unable to recruit the CrPV IGR IRES. Heterogeneity of ribosomal RNA modifications plays an important role in structural maintenance and/or function and most mRNA modifications are found in highly conserved regions. The most common rRNA modifications are pseudouridylation and 2’-O methylation of ribose. See also Aminoglycosides Biological machines Posttranslational modification Protein dynamics RNA tertiary structure |
deadline first, which, ignoring the overhead of context switching, is sufficient for system loads of less than 100%. New overlay scheduling systems, such as an adaptive partition scheduler assist in managing large systems with a mixture of hard real-time and non real-time applications. Firm real-time systems are more nebulously defined, and some classifications do not include them, distinguishing only hard and soft real-time systems. Some examples of firm real-time systems: The assembly line machine described earlier as hard real-time could instead be considered firm real-time. A missed deadline still causes an error which needs to be dealt with: there might be machinery to mark a part as bad or eject it from the assembly line, or the assembly line could be stopped so an operator can correct the problem. However, as long as these errors are infrequent, they may be tolerated. Soft real-time systems are typically used to solve issues of concurrent access and the need to keep a number of connected systems up-to-date through changing situations. Some examples of soft real-time systems: Software that maintains and updates the flight plans for commercial airliners. The flight plans must be kept reasonably current, but they can operate with the latency of a few seconds. Live audio-video systems are also usually soft real-time. A frame of audio that's played late may cause a brief audio glitch (and may cause all subsequent audio to be delayed correspondingly, causing a perception that the audio is being played slower than normal), but this may be better than the alternatives of continuing to play silence, static, a previous audio frame, or estimated data. A frame of video that's delayed typically causes even less disruption for viewers. The system can continue to operate and also recover in the future using workload prediction and reconfiguration methodologies. Similarly, video games are often soft real-time, particularly as they try to meet a target frame rate. As the next image cannot be computed in advance, since it depends on inputs from the player, only a short time is available to perform all the computing needed to generate a frame of video before that frame must be displayed. If the deadline is missed, the game can continue at a lower frame rate; depending on the game, this may only affect its graphics (while the gameplay continues at normal speed), or the gameplay itself may be slowed down (which was common on older third- and fourth-generation consoles). Real-time in digital signal processing In a real-time digital signal processing (DSP) process, the analyzed (input) and generated (output) samples can be processed (or generated) continuously in the time it takes to input and output the same set of samples independent of the processing delay. It means that the processing delay must be bounded even if the processing continues for an unlimited time. That means that the mean processing time per sample, including overhead, is no greater than the sampling period, which is the reciprocal of the sampling rate. This is the criterion whether the samples are grouped together in large segments and processed as blocks or are processed individually and whether there are long, short, or non-existent input and output buffers. Consider an audio DSP example; if a process requires 2.01 seconds to analyze, synthesize, or process 2.00 seconds of sound, it is not real-time. However, if it takes 1.99 seconds, it is or can be made into a real-time DSP process. A common life analogy is standing in a line or queue waiting for the checkout in a grocery store. If the line asymptotically grows longer and longer without bound, the checkout process is not real-time. If the length of the line is bounded, customers are being "processed" and output as rapidly, on average, as they are being inputted then that process is real-time. The grocer might go out of business or must at least lose business if they cannot make their checkout process real-time; thus, it is fundamentally important that this process is real-time. A signal processing algorithm that cannot keep up with the flow of input data with output falling farther and farther behind the input, is not real-time. But if the delay of the output (relative to the input) is bounded regarding a process that operates over an unlimited time, then that signal processing algorithm is real-time, even if the throughput delay may be very long. Live vs. real-time Real-time signal processing is necessary, but not sufficient in and of itself, for live signal processing such as what is required in live event support. Live audio digital signal processing requires both real-time operation and a sufficient limit to throughput delay so as to be tolerable to performers using stage monitors or in-ear monitors and not noticeable as lip sync error by the audience also directly watching the performers. Tolerable limits to latency for live, real-time processing is a subject of investigation and debate but is estimated to be between 6 and 20 milliseconds. Real-time bidirectional telecommunications delays of less than 300 ms ("round trip" or twice the unidirectional delay) are considered "acceptable" to avoid undesired "talk-over" in conversation. Real-time and high-performance Real-time computing is sometimes misunderstood to be high-performance computing, but this is not an accurate classification. For example, a massive supercomputer executing a scientific simulation may offer impressive performance, yet it is not executing a real-time computation. Conversely, once the hardware and software for an anti-lock braking system have been designed to meet its required deadlines, no further performance gains are obligatory or even useful. Furthermore, if a network server is highly loaded with network traffic, its response time may be slower but will (in most cases) still succeed before it times out (hits its deadline). Hence, such a network server would not be considered a real-time system: temporal failures (delays, time-outs, etc.) are typically small and compartmentalized (limited in effect) but are not catastrophic failures. In a real-time system, such as the FTSE 100 Index, a slow-down beyond limits would often be considered catastrophic in its application context. The most important requirement of a real-time system is consistent output, not high throughput. Some kinds of software, such as many chess-playing programs, can fall into either category. For instance, a chess program designed to play in a tournament with a clock will need to decide on a move before a certain deadline or lose the game, and is therefore a real-time computation, but a chess program that is allowed to run indefinitely before moving is not. In both of these cases, however, high performance is desirable: the more work a tournament chess program can do in the allotted time, the better its moves will be, and the faster an unconstrained chess program runs, the sooner it will be able to move. This example also illustrates the essential difference between real-time computations and other computations: if the tournament chess program does not make a decision about its next move in its allotted time it loses the game—i.e., it fails as a real-time computation—while in the other scenario, meeting the deadline is assumed not to be necessary. High-performance is | been described as one which "controls an environment by receiving data, processing them, and returning the results sufficiently quickly to affect the environment at that time". The term "real-time" is also used in simulation to mean that the simulation's clock runs at the same speed as a real clock, and in process control and enterprise systems to mean "without significant delay". Real-time software may use one or more of the following: synchronous programming languages, real-time operating systems (RTOSes), and real-time networks, each of which provide essential frameworks on which to build a real-time software application. Systems used for many safety-critical applications must be real-time, such as for control of fly-by-wire aircraft, or anti-lock brakes, both of which demand immediate and accurate mechanical response. History The term real-time derives from its use in early simulation, in which a real-world process is simulated at a rate that matched that of the real process (now called real-time simulation to avoid ambiguity). Analog computers, most often, were capable of simulating at a much faster pace than real-time, a situation that could be just as dangerous as a slow simulation if it were not also recognized and accounted for. Minicomputers, particularly in the 1970s onwards, when built into dedicated embedded systems such as DOG (Digital on-screen graphic) scanners, increased the need for low-latency priority-driven responses to important interactions with incoming data and so operating systems such as Data General's RDOS (Real-Time Disk Operating System) and RTOS with background and foreground scheduling as well as Digital Equipment Corporation's RT-11 date from this era. Background-foreground scheduling allowed low priority tasks CPU time when no foreground task needed to execute, and gave absolute priority within the foreground to threads/tasks with the highest priority. Real-time operating systems would also be used for time-sharing multiuser duties. For example, Data General Business Basic could run in the foreground or background of RDOS and would introduce additional elements to the scheduling algorithm to make it more appropriate for people interacting via dumb terminals. Once when the MOS Technology 6502 (used in the Commodore 64 and Apple II), and later when the Motorola 68000 (used in the Macintosh, Atari ST, and Commodore Amiga) were popular, anybody could use their home computer as a real-time system. The possibility to deactivate other interrupts allowed for hard-coded loops with defined timing, and the low interrupt latency allowed the implementation of a real-time operating system, giving the user interface and the disk drives lower priority than the real-time thread. Compared to these the programmable interrupt controller of the Intel CPUs (8086..80586) generates a very large latency and the Windows operating system is neither a real-time operating system nor does it allow a program to take over the CPU completely and use its own scheduler, without using native machine language and thus surpassing all interrupting Windows code. However, several coding libraries exist which offer real time capabilities in a high level language on a variety of operating systems, for example Java Real Time. The Motorola 68000 and subsequent family members (68010, 68020 etc.) also became popular with manufacturers of industrial control systems. This application area is one in which real-time control offers genuine advantages in terms of process performance and safety. Criteria for real-time computing A system is said to be real-time if the total correctness of an operation depends not only upon its logical correctness, but also upon the time in which it is performed. Real-time systems, as well as their deadlines, are classified by the consequence of missing a deadline: Hard missing a deadline is a total system failure. Firm infrequent deadline misses are tolerable, but may degrade the system's quality of service. The usefulness of a result is zero after its deadline. Soft the usefulness of a result degrades after its deadline, thereby degrading the system's quality of service. Thus, the goal of a hard real-time system is to ensure that all deadlines are met, but for soft real-time systems the goal becomes meeting a certain subset of deadlines in order to optimize some application-specific criteria. The particular criteria optimized depend on the application, but some typical examples include maximizing the number of deadlines met, minimizing the lateness of tasks and maximizing the number of high priority tasks meeting their deadlines. Hard real-time systems are used when it is imperative that an event be reacted to within a strict deadline. Such strong guarantees are required of systems for which not reacting in a certain interval of time would cause great loss in some manner, especially damaging the surroundings physically or threatening human lives (although the strict definition is simply that missing the deadline constitutes failure of the system). Some examples |
removed from stdlib. Other notable changes include: The ability to mark all string literals as frozen by default with a consequently large performance increase in string operations. Hash comparison to allow direct checking of key/value pairs instead of just keys. A new safe navigation operator &. that can ease nil handling (e.g. instead of , we can use if obj&.foo&.bar). The did_you_mean gem is now bundled by default and required on startup to automatically suggest similar name matches on a NameError or NoMethodError. Hash#dig and Array#dig to easily extract deeply nested values (e.g. given , the value Foo Baz can now be retrieved by profile.dig(:social, :wikipedia, :name)). .grep_v(regexp) which will match all negative examples of a given regular expression in addition to other new features. Ruby 2.4.0 includes performance improvements to hash table, Array#max, Array#min, and instance variable access. Other notable changes include: Binding#irb: Start a REPL session similar to binding.pry Unify Fixnum and Bignum into Integer class String supports Unicode case mappings, not just ASCII A new method, Regexp#match?, which is a faster boolean version of Regexp#match Thread deadlock detection now shows threads with their backtrace and dependency A few notable changes in Ruby 2.5.0 include rescue and ensure statements automatically use a surrounding do-end block (less need for extra begin-end blocks), method-chaining with yield_self, support for branch coverage and method coverage measurement, and easier Hash transformations with Hash#slice and Hash#transform_keys On top of that come a lot of performance improvements like faster block passing (3 times faster), faster Mutexes, faster ERB templates and improvements on some concatenation methods. A few notable changes in Ruby 2.6.0 include an experimental just-in-time compiler (JIT), and RubyVM::AbstractSyntaxTree (experimental). A few notable changes in Ruby 2.7.0 include pattern Matching (experimental), REPL improvements, a compaction GC, and separation of positional and keyword arguments. Ruby 3 Ruby 3.0.0 was released on Christmas Day in 2020. It is known as Ruby 3x3 which means that programs would run three times faster in Ruby 3.0 comparing to Ruby 2.0. and some had already implemented in intermediate releases on the road from 2 to 3. To achieve 3x3, Ruby 3 equips with MJIT, a Just-In-Time Compiler, to make programs faster, but it is still not ready for optimizing workloads like Ruby on Rails and programmers have to wait for Ruby 3.1 for further improvement. MJIT is disabled by default and could be enabled by flags at runtime. Another goal of Ruby 3.0 is to improve concurrency and two more utilities Fibre Scheduler, and experimental Ractor facilitate the goal. Ractor is light-weight and thread-safe as it is achieved by exchanging messages rather than shared objects. Ruby 3.0 introduces RBS language to describe the types of Ruby programs for static analysis. It is separated from general Ruby programs. There are some syntax enhancements and library changes in Ruby 3.0 as well. Ruby 3.1 was released on Christmas Day in 2021. It includes YJIT, a new Just-In-Time Compiler developed by Shopify, to enhance the performance of real world business applications. A new debugger is also included. There are some syntax enhancements and other improvements in this release. Network libraries for FTP, SMTP, IMAP, and POP are moved from default gems to bundled gems. Table of versions Semantics and philosophy Matsumoto has said that Ruby is designed for programmer productivity and fun, following the principles of good user interface design. At a Google Tech Talk in 2008 Matsumoto further stated, "I hope to see Ruby help every programmer in the world to be productive, and to enjoy programming, and to be happy. That is the primary purpose of Ruby language." He stresses that systems design needs to emphasize human, rather than computer, needs: Matsumoto has said his primary design goal was to make a language that he himself enjoyed using, by minimizing programmer work and possible confusion. He has said that he had not applied the principle of least astonishment (POLA) to the design of Ruby; in a May 2005 discussion on the newsgroup comp.lang.ruby, Matsumoto attempted to distance Ruby from POLA, explaining that because any design choice will be surprising to someone, he uses a personal standard in evaluating surprise. If that personal standard remains consistent, there would be few surprises for those familiar with the standard. Matsumoto defined it this way in an interview: Ruby is object-oriented: every value is an object, including classes and instances of types that many other languages designate as primitives (such as integers, booleans, and "null"). Variables always hold references to objects. Every function is a method and methods are always called on an object. Methods defined at the top level scope become methods of the Object class. Since this class is an ancestor of every other class, such methods can be called on any object. They are also visible in all scopes, effectively serving as "global" procedures. Ruby supports inheritance with dynamic dispatch, mixins and singleton methods (belonging to, and defined for, a single instance rather than being defined on the class). Though Ruby does not support multiple inheritance, classes can import modules as mixins. Ruby has been described as a multi-paradigm programming language: it allows procedural programming (defining functions/variables outside classes makes them part of the root, 'self' Object), with object orientation (everything is an object) or functional programming (it has anonymous functions, closures, and continuations; statements all have values, and functions return the last evaluation). It has support for introspection, reflection and metaprogramming, as well as support for interpreter-based threads. Ruby features dynamic typing, and supports parametric polymorphism. According to the Ruby FAQ, the syntax is similar to Perl's and the semantics are similar to Smalltalk's, but the design philosophy differs greatly from Python's. Features Thoroughly object-oriented with inheritance, mixins and metaclasses Dynamic typing and duck typing Everything is an expression (even statements) and everything is executed imperatively (even declarations) Succinct and flexible syntax that minimizes syntactic noise and serves as a foundation for domain-specific languages Dynamic reflection and alteration of objects to facilitate metaprogramming Lexical closures, iterators and generators, with a block syntax Literal notation for arrays, hashes, regular expressions and symbols Embedding code in strings (interpolation) Default arguments Four levels of variable scope (global, class, instance, and local) denoted by sigils or the lack thereof Garbage collection First-class continuations Strict boolean coercion rules (everything is true except false and nil) Exception handling Operator overloading Built-in support for rational numbers, complex numbers and arbitrary-precision arithmetic Custom dispatch behavior (through method_missing and const_missing) Native threads and cooperative fibers (fibers are a 1.9/YARV feature) Support for Unicode and multiple character encodings. Native plug-in API in C Interactive Ruby Shell, an interactive command-line interpreter that can be used to test code quickly (REPL) Centralized package management through RubyGems Implemented on all major platforms Large standard library, including modules for YAML, JSON, XML, CGI, OpenSSL, HTTP, FTP, RSS, curses, zlib and Tk Just-in-time compilation Syntax The syntax of Ruby is broadly similar to that of Perl and Python. Class and method definitions are signaled by keywords, whereas code blocks can be defined by either keywords or braces. In contrast to Perl, variables are not obligatorily prefixed with a sigil. When used, the sigil changes the semantics of scope of the variable. For practical purposes there is no distinction between expressions and statements. Line breaks are significant and taken as the end of a statement; a semicolon may be equivalently used. Unlike Python, indentation is not significant. One of the differences from Python and Perl is that Ruby keeps all of its instance variables completely private to the class and only exposes them through accessor methods (attr_writer, attr_reader, etc.). Unlike the "getter" and "setter" methods of other languages like C++ or Java, accessor methods in Ruby can be created with a single line of code via metaprogramming; however, accessor methods can also be created in the traditional fashion of C++ and Java. As invocation of these methods does not require the use of parentheses, it is trivial | evaluation). It has support for introspection, reflection and metaprogramming, as well as support for interpreter-based threads. Ruby features dynamic typing, and supports parametric polymorphism. According to the Ruby FAQ, the syntax is similar to Perl's and the semantics are similar to Smalltalk's, but the design philosophy differs greatly from Python's. Features Thoroughly object-oriented with inheritance, mixins and metaclasses Dynamic typing and duck typing Everything is an expression (even statements) and everything is executed imperatively (even declarations) Succinct and flexible syntax that minimizes syntactic noise and serves as a foundation for domain-specific languages Dynamic reflection and alteration of objects to facilitate metaprogramming Lexical closures, iterators and generators, with a block syntax Literal notation for arrays, hashes, regular expressions and symbols Embedding code in strings (interpolation) Default arguments Four levels of variable scope (global, class, instance, and local) denoted by sigils or the lack thereof Garbage collection First-class continuations Strict boolean coercion rules (everything is true except false and nil) Exception handling Operator overloading Built-in support for rational numbers, complex numbers and arbitrary-precision arithmetic Custom dispatch behavior (through method_missing and const_missing) Native threads and cooperative fibers (fibers are a 1.9/YARV feature) Support for Unicode and multiple character encodings. Native plug-in API in C Interactive Ruby Shell, an interactive command-line interpreter that can be used to test code quickly (REPL) Centralized package management through RubyGems Implemented on all major platforms Large standard library, including modules for YAML, JSON, XML, CGI, OpenSSL, HTTP, FTP, RSS, curses, zlib and Tk Just-in-time compilation Syntax The syntax of Ruby is broadly similar to that of Perl and Python. Class and method definitions are signaled by keywords, whereas code blocks can be defined by either keywords or braces. In contrast to Perl, variables are not obligatorily prefixed with a sigil. When used, the sigil changes the semantics of scope of the variable. For practical purposes there is no distinction between expressions and statements. Line breaks are significant and taken as the end of a statement; a semicolon may be equivalently used. Unlike Python, indentation is not significant. One of the differences from Python and Perl is that Ruby keeps all of its instance variables completely private to the class and only exposes them through accessor methods (attr_writer, attr_reader, etc.). Unlike the "getter" and "setter" methods of other languages like C++ or Java, accessor methods in Ruby can be created with a single line of code via metaprogramming; however, accessor methods can also be created in the traditional fashion of C++ and Java. As invocation of these methods does not require the use of parentheses, it is trivial to change an instance variable into a full function, without modifying a single line of calling code or having to do any refactoring achieving similar functionality to C# and VB.NET property members. Python's property descriptors are similar, but come with a trade-off in the development process. If one begins in Python by using a publicly exposed instance variable, and later changes the implementation to use a private instance variable exposed through a property descriptor, code internal to the class may need to be adjusted to use the private variable rather than the public property. Ruby's design forces all instance variables to be private, but also provides a simple way to declare set and get methods. This is in keeping with the idea that in Ruby, one never directly accesses the internal members of a class from outside the class; rather, one passes a message to the class and receives a response. Implementations Matz's Ruby interpreter The original Ruby interpreter is often referred to as Matz's Ruby Interpreter or MRI. This implementation is written in C and uses its own Ruby-specific virtual machine. The standardized and retired Ruby 1.8 implementation was written in C, as a single-pass interpreted language. Starting with Ruby 1.9, and continuing with Ruby 2.x and above, the official Ruby interpreter has been YARV ("Yet Another Ruby VM"), and this implementation has superseded the slower virtual machine used in previous releases of MRI. Alternate implementations , there are a number of alternative implementations of Ruby, including JRuby, Rubinius, and mruby. Each takes a different approach, with JRuby and Rubinius providing just-in-time compilation and mruby also providing ahead-of-time compilation. Ruby has three major alternate implementations: JRuby, a mixed Java and Ruby implementation that runs on the Java virtual machine. JRuby currently targets Ruby 2.5. TruffleRuby, a Java implementation using the Truffle language implementation framework with GraalVM Rubinius, a C++ bytecode virtual machine that uses LLVM to compile to machine code at runtime. The bytecode compiler and most core classes are written in pure Ruby. Rubinius currently targets Ruby 2.3.1. Other Ruby implementations include: MagLev, a Smalltalk implementation that runs on GemTalk Systems' GemStone/S VM mruby, an implementation designed to be embedded into C code, in a similar vein to Lua. It is currently being developed by Yukihiro Matsumoto and others RGSS, or Ruby Game Scripting System, a proprietary implementation that is used by the RPG Maker series of software for game design and modification of the RPG Maker engine julializer, a transpiler (partial) from Ruby to Julia. It can be used for a large speedup over e.g. Ruby or JRuby implementations (may only be useful for numerical code). Topaz, a Ruby implementation written in Python Opal, a web-based interpreter that compiles Ruby to JavaScript Other now defunct Ruby implementations were: MacRuby, a Mac OS X implementation on the Objective-C runtime. Its iOS counterpart is called RubyMotion IronRuby an implementation on the .NET Framework Cardinal, an implementation for the Parrot virtual machine Ruby Enterprise Edition, often shortened to ree, an implementation optimized to handle large-scale Ruby on Rails projects HotRuby, a JavaScript and ActionScript implementation of the Ruby programming language The maturity of Ruby implementations tends to be measured by their ability to run the Ruby on Rails (Rails) framework, because it is complex to implement and uses many Ruby-specific features. The point when a particular implementation achieves this goal is called "the Rails singularity". The reference implementation, JRuby, and Rubinius are all able to run Rails unmodified in a production environment. Platform support Matsumoto originally developed Ruby on the 4.3BSD-based Sony NEWS-OS 3.x, but later migrated his work to SunOS 4.x, and finally to Linux. By 1999, Ruby was known to work across many different operating systems, including NEWS-OS, SunOS, AIX, SVR4, Solaris, NEC UP-UX, NeXTSTEP, BSD, Linux, Mac OS, DOS, Windows, and BeOS. Modern Ruby versions and implementations are available on many operating systems, such as Linux, BSD, Solaris, AIX, macOS, Windows, Windows Phone, Windows CE, Symbian OS, BeOS, OpenVMS, and IBM i. Ruby programming language is supported across a number of cloud hosting platforms like Jelastic, Heroku, Google Cloud Platform and others. Repositories and libraries RubyGems is Ruby's package manager. A Ruby package is called a "gem" and can be |
the product manager for the software (Bob Bennett) joked that what Clay was doing was farming the frames and at that moment he named the collection of computers a render farm. In the second release of the software, Autodesk introduced network rendering, making the task of running a render farm significantly easier. A BTS of The Bored Room doesn't show Clay in the overalls but does give a glimpse of the production environment. A render farm is different from a render wall, which is a networked, tiled display used for real-time rendering. The rendering of images is a highly parallelizable activity, as frames and sometimes tiles can be calculated independently of the others, with the main communication between processors being the upload of the initial source material, such as models and textures, and the download of the finished images. Render capacity Over the decades, advances in computer capability have allowed an image to take less time to render. However, the increased computation is appropriated to meet demands to achieve state-of-the-art image quality. While simple images can be produced rapidly, more realistic and complicated higher-resolution images can now be produced in more reasonable amounts of time. The time spent producing images can be limited by production time-lines and deadlines, and the desire to create high-quality work drives the need for increased computing power, rather than simply wanting the same images created faster. Project such as the Big and Ugly Rendering Project have been available for rendering images using Blender across both widely distributed networks and local networks. Management To manage large farms, a queue manager is required that automatically distributes processes to the many processors. Each "process" could be the rendering of one full image, a few images, or even a sub-section (or tile) of an image. The software is typically a client–server package that facilitates communication between the processors and the queue manager, although some queues have no central manager. Some common features of queue managers | decades, advances in computer capability have allowed an image to take less time to render. However, the increased computation is appropriated to meet demands to achieve state-of-the-art image quality. While simple images can be produced rapidly, more realistic and complicated higher-resolution images can now be produced in more reasonable amounts of time. The time spent producing images can be limited by production time-lines and deadlines, and the desire to create high-quality work drives the need for increased computing power, rather than simply wanting the same images created faster. Project such as the Big and Ugly Rendering Project have been available for rendering images using Blender across both widely distributed networks and local networks. Management To manage large farms, a queue manager is required that automatically distributes processes to the many processors. Each "process" could be the rendering of one full image, a few images, or even a sub-section (or tile) of an image. The software is typically a client–server package that facilitates communication between the processors and the queue manager, although some queues have no central manager. Some common features of queue managers are: re-prioritization of the queue, management of software licenses, and algorithms to best optimize throughput based on various types of hardware in the farm. Software licensing handled by a queue manager might involve dynamic allocation of licenses to available CPUs or even cores within CPUs. A tongue-in-cheek job title for systems engineers who work primarily in the maintenance and monitoring of a render farm is a render wrangler to further the "farm" theme. This job title can be seen in film credits. Beyond on-site render farms, cloud-based render farm options have been facilitated by the rise of high-speed Internet access. Many cloud computing services, including some dedicated to rendering, offer render farm services which bill only for processor time used. Understanding the cost or processing time required to complete rendering is unpredictable so render farms bill using GHz per hour. Those considering outsourcing |
of a proposed architectural design Artistic rendering, creating, shading, and texturing of an image Typesetting, composition of text for visual display Rendering engine, the software that transforms (renders) data into a picture 3D rendering, generating image or motion picture from virtual 3D models Browser engine, component of a web browser that renders web pages High-dynamic-range rendering, allows preservation of details that may be lost due to limiting contrast ratios Non-photorealistic rendering, focuses on enabling a wide variety of expressive styles for digital art Scanline rendering, algorithm for visible surface determination Volume rendering, used to display a 2D projection of a 3D discretely sampled data set Ray tracing (graphics) and Physically based rendering, | High-dynamic-range rendering, allows preservation of details that may be lost due to limiting contrast ratios Non-photorealistic rendering, focuses on enabling a wide variety of expressive styles for digital art Scanline rendering, algorithm for visible surface determination Volume rendering, used to display a 2D projection of a 3D discretely sampled data set Ray tracing (graphics) and Physically based rendering, uses lighting equations based on physics for more realistic images. Arts, entertainment, and media Rendered (radio program), an independent radio program about the DIY (do-it-yourself) movement Rendered in Vain, a 2006 album by Zonaria Rendered Waters, a 2011 album by |
serve as president of the Aberdeen Association, vice-president of the Women's Work Exchange in Halifax, and corresponding secretary of the Associated Charities of the United States. The Bordens spend several weeks vacationing in England and Europe in the summers of 1891 and 1893. In 1894, Borden bought a large property and home on the south side of Quinpool Road, which the couple called Pinehurst. In 1893, Borden successfully argued the first of two cases which he took to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. He represented many of the important Halifax businesses and sat on the boards of Nova Scotian companies, including the Bank of Nova Scotia and the Crown Life Insurance Company. By the mid-1890s, Borden's firm was so prominent that it attracted notable clients, such as the Bank of Nova Scotia, Canada Atlantic Steamship, and the Nova Scotia Telephone Company. Borden had several court cases in Ottawa, and while in that city he would frequently meet with Prime Minister John Sparrow David Thompson, a fellow Nova Scotian. In 1896, Borden became president of the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society and took the initiative in organizing the founding meetings of the Canadian Bar Association in Montreal. On April 27, 1896, Borden went to Charles Tupper's home for a dinner party. Tupper, who was about to succeed Mackenzie Bowell as prime minister, asked Borden to run for the federal electoral district of Halifax for the upcoming election. Borden accepted the request. Early political career (1896–1901) Campaigning in favour of his party's National Policy, Borden was elected as a member of Parliament (MP) in the 1896 federal election as a Conservative. However, the Conservative Party as a whole was defeated by the Liberals led by Wilfrid Laurier. Though an MP in Ottawa, Borden still practised law back in Halifax. He also remained loyal to Tupper. Borden participated in many House committees and over time emerged as a key figure in the party. Leader of the Official Opposition (1901–1911) Tupper announced his resignation as party leader after he led the Conservatives to their second consecutive defeat at the polls in 1900. Tupper, and his son Charles Hibbert Tupper (who was Borden's former colleague at the Halifax law firm) asked Borden to become leader, citing his work in Parliament and lack of enemies within the Conservative caucus. Borden at first was not keen to become leader, stating, "I have not either the experience or the qualifications which would enable me to successfully lead the party...It would be an absurdity for the party and madness for me." However, he later changed his position and on February 6, 1901, he was selected by the Conservative caucus as party leader. The Liberal prime minister, Wilfrid Laurier, proposed the building of the Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk railways. Borden proposed for the railways to be government-owned and government-operated, stating the people would have a choice between "a government-owned railway or a railway-owned government." This position did not resonate with voters in the 1904 federal election; the Liberals won a slightly stronger majority, while the Conservatives lost a few seats. Borden himself was defeated in his Halifax seat but re-entered the House of Commons the next year via a by-election in Carleton (Ontario). In 1907, Borden announced the Halifax Platform. The Conservative Party's new policy called for reform of the Senate and the civil service, a more selective immigration policy, free rural mail delivery, and government regulation of telegraphs, telephones, and railways and eventually national ownership of telegraphs and telephones. In the 1908 federal election, Laurier's Liberals won for the fourth consecutive time. However, the Liberals experienced a drop in support as they won a slightly reduced majority. The Conservatives experienced a modest boost, gaining 10 seats. In 1910 and 1911, Laurier proposed a reciprocity free trade agreement with the United States. Borden opposed the treaty, stating that it would weaken ties with Britain, lead to Canadian identity being influenced by the US, and lead to American annexation of Canada. In the 1911 federal election, the Conservatives countered with a revised version of John A. Macdonald's National Policy, campaigned on fears of American influence on Canada and disloyalty to Britain, and ran on the slogan "Canadianism or Continentalism". The Conservatives triumphed; they won a strong majority, ending over 15 years of Liberal rule. Prime Minister (1911–1920) Pre-war Canada To aid the farmers who would have benefited had the reciprocity treaty been implemented, Borden's government passed the Canada Grain Act of 1912 to establish a board of grain commissioners that would supervise grain inspection and regulate the grain trade. This law would also allow the federal government to build or acquire and operate grain elevators at key points in the grain marketing and export system. Also in 1912, the provinces of Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec were expanded through the Manitoba Boundaries Extension Act, the Ontario Boundaries Extension Act, and the Quebec Boundaries Extension Act. These three provinces would take up the southern portion of the Northwest Territories. In 1912 and 1913, Borden's government sought to pass a naval bill that would have sent $35 million for the construction of three dreadnoughts for the British Navy. Laurier, now Opposition leader, argued that the bill would threaten Canadian autonomy. In May 1913, the bill was blocked by the Liberal-controlled Senate. On June 22, 1914, Borden was knighted; King George V awarded him the Order of St Michael and St George. First World War In late July, Borden and his wife, Laura, went for a vacation to the Muskoka District Municipality. However, the trip was cut short after World War I broke out in Europe. On July 31, the Bordens were on a train for Toronto. The next day, he returned back to Ottawa. The British declaration of war on August 4, 1914 automatically brought Canada into the war, because of Canada's legal status as a British Dominion which left foreign policy decisions in the hands of the British parliament. Major reforms Within just five days after the declaration of war, Borden's government passed the controversial War Measures Act which gave the government extraordinary and emergency powers, including the right to censor and suppress communications, the right to arrest, detain, and deport people without charges or trials, the right to control transportation, trade and manufacturing, and the right to seize private property during times of "war, invasion or insurrection". The act also allowed Borden to govern by Order in Council, in which his Cabinet was allowed to implement pieces of legislation without the need for a vote in the House of Commons and Senate. Borden's government also created the Canadian Patriotic Fund to give financial and social assistance to the families of soldiers. The government also raised tariffs on some high-demand consumer items to boost the economy. In 1916, Borden's government established the National Research Council Canada for scientific and industrial research. In 1918, in order to gain information on Canada's population, social structure, and economy, the government established the Dominion Bureau of Statistics through the Statistics Act. It was replaced by Statistics Canada in 1971. Borden's government set up the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF). The force posted several combat formations of the Western Front during the war. In December 1914, Borden stated, "there has not been, there will not be, compulsion or conscription." As the war dragged on, more troops for the CEF were deployed through the voluntary force. In July 1915, the number of CEF soldiers increased to 150,000 before being increased to 250,000 in October 1915 before doubling to 500,000 in January 1916. By mid-1916, the rate of volunteers enlisting started to slow down. Economy Despite the threat of an economic collapse and the need for more national revenue to fund the war effort, Borden's finance minister, William Thomas White, rejected calls for direct taxation on Canadian citizens in 1914, though this position would be shortly reversed. White cited his beliefs that taxation would cost too much to implement and interfere with provincial taxation systems. Borden and White instead opted for "business as usual" with Britain by assuming that the country would cover the costs incurred by Canada. However, at the end of 1914, it was realized that Britain was not able to lend money to Canada due to their own economic priorities. By 1917, Britain had become unable to pay for wartime shipments from Canada. During the war, Canada drastically increased imports of specialized metals and machinery needed for production of ammunition from the United States. This led Borden and White to successfully negotiate a $50 million loan from New York City in 1915. Canada also succeeded in negotiating larger bond issues with New York in 1916 and 1917. In 1918, a Victory Bond of $300 million brought in $660 million. Overall, Victory Bond campaigns raised around $2 billion. American investment in Canada significantly increased whereas British investment declined. By 1918, imports of goods from the United States were 1,000 percent of British exports to Canada. In 1917, facing skyrocketing prices, Borden's government established the Board of Grain Supervisors of Canada to distance the marketing of crops grown in 1917 and 1918 away from the private grain companies. It was succeeded by the Canadian Wheat Board for the 1919 crop. The board was dissolved in 1920, despite the concept being popular among farm organizations. In 1915, 1916, and 1917, Borden's government began to reverse their anti-taxation position, not least because of the need for more government revenue. The government introducing wartime savings bonds and raising import tariffs was not enough. In 1915, a luxury tax on tobacco and alcohol and taxes on transport tickets, telegrams, money orders, cheques, and patent medicines were introduced. By the end of the war, staple items were taxed. In a politically motivated move in 1916, the government introduced the Business Profits War Tax to address increasing concerns about businesses practising war profiteering. The tax expired in 1920 but was brought back in the Second World War. In 1917, the government introduced the income tax. Though the government declared the income tax to be temporary, the tax remains in place today. Conscription, Unionist Party, and 1917 election In Spring 1917, Borden visited Europe and attended the Imperial Conference. There, he participated in discussions that included possible peace terms and helped spearhead the passage of Resolution IX which called for a post-war constitutional conference to "provide effective arrangements for continuous consultation in all important matters of common Imperial concern, and for such necessary concerted action, founded on consultation, as the several Governments may determine." He also assured leaders of the Allied countries that Canada was committed to the war. Also during his trip, Borden made visits to the hospital to meet wounded and shell shocked soldiers and became deterimined that the soldiers' sacrifices should not be in vain, and that therefore, the war must end. With volunteer enlistment slowing down, Borden believed that the war should finish through only one method: conscription. Reversing their pledge to not introduce the policy, Borden's government passed the Military Service Act to introduce conscription. The Act became law on August 29, 1917. The disputes over conscription triggered the Conscription Crisis of 1917; most English Canadians supported the policy whereas most French Canadians opposed it, as seen by protests in Quebec. In a bid to settle Quebec opposition towards the policy, Borden proposed forming a wartime coalition government composed of both Conservatives and Liberals. Despite Borden offering the Liberals equal seats in the Cabinet in exchange for Liberal support for conscription, the proposal was rejected by Liberal leader Laurier. In October, Borden formed the Unionist Party, a coalition of Conservatives and pro-conscription Liberals (known as Liberal–Unionists). Laurier, maintaining his anti-conscription position, refused to join the Unionist government and instead created the "Laurier Liberals", a party of Liberals opposed to conscription. The 1917 federal election was held on December 17. The election was Canada's first in six years; it was supposed to be held in 1916 due to the constitutional requirement that Parliament last no longer than five years, but was delayed by one year due to the war. Months before the election was called, Borden's government introduced the Military Voters Act that allowed all 400,000 conscripted Canadian soldiers — including those who were underage and born in Britain, to vote. The Act also allowed current and former Indigenous veterans to vote. In addition, the Wartime Elections Act allowed female relatives of soldiers (excluding Indigenous women) to vote. However, this law confiscated voting rights from German and Austrian immigrants (i.e. immigrants from "enemy nations") who moved to Canada during and after 1902 as well as those who exempted from the coming conscription draft, including conscientious objectors. Some believe that these laws put the Unionists in a favourable position. The Unionist election campaign criticized French Canada for its low enlistment rate to fight in the war. Fearing the possible event of a Liberal victory, one of the Unionist pamphlets highlighted ethnic differences, stating, "the French Canadians who have shirked their duty in this war will be the dominating force in the government of this country. Are the English-speaking people prepared to stand for that?" The Unionist campaign was an overwhelming success; the government won a powerful majority (114 Conservatives and 39 Liberals), won the highest share of the popular vote in Canadian history, and won the largest percentage of seats in Canadian history at the time (at 65.1%). The Liberals on the other hand lost seats and won their smallest share of the popular vote since the 1882 federal election. The election revealed ethnic divides in the country; the Conservatives won over English Canadians whereas the Liberals swept French-Canadian-dominated Quebec. The process of conscripting soldiers began in January 1918. Only 124,588 out of the | before Confederation, Robert Laird Borden was born and educated in Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia, a farming community at the eastern end of the Annapolis Valley. His great-grandfather, Perry Borden Sr. of Tiverton, Rhode Island, had taken up Acadian land in this region in 1760 as one of the New England Planters. The Borden family had immigrated from Headcorn, Kent, England, to New England in the 1600s. Also arriving in this group was a great-great-grandfather, Robert Denison, who had come from Connecticut at about the same time. Perry had accompanied his father, Samuel Borden, the chief surveyor chosen by the government of Massachusetts to survey the former Acadian land and draw up new lots for the Planters in Nova Scotia. Through the marriage of his patrilineal ancestor Richard Borden to Innocent Cornell, Borden is descendant from Thomas Cornell of Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Borden's father, Andrew Borden, was judged by his son to be "a man of good ability and excellent judgement" and of a "calm, contemplative and philosophical" turn of mind, but "he lacked energy and had no great aptitude for affairs." His mother Eunice Jane Laird was more driven, possessing "very strong character, remarkable energy, high ambition and unusual ability". Her ambition was transmitted to her first-born child, who applied himself to his studies while assisting his parents with the farm work he found so disagreeable. Borden's cousin, Frederick Borden, was a prominent Liberal politician. At age nine, Borden became a day student for the local private academy, Acacia Villa School. The school sought to "fit boys physically, morally, and intellectually, for the responsibilities of life." There, Borden developed an interest in the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew languages. At age 14, Borden became the assistant master for classical studies. In late 1873, Borden began working as a professor for classics and mathematics at the Glenwood Institute in Matawan, New Jersey. Seeing no future in teaching, he returned to Nova Scotia in 1874. Lawyer Despite having no formal university education, Borden went to serve his articles of clerkship for four years at a Halifax law firm. Borden also attended the School of Military Instruction in the city during the winter of 1878. In August 1878, Borden was called to the Nova Scotia Bar, placing first in the bar examinations. He went to Kentville, Nova Scotia, as the junior partner of the Conservative lawyer John P. Chipman. In 1880, Borden was inducted into the Freemasons St Andrew's lodge #1. In 1882, Borden, despite being a Liberal, accepted Wallace Graham's request to move to Halifax and join the Conservative law firm headed by Graham and Charles Hibbert Tupper. In 1886, Borden broke with the Liberal Party after he disagreed with Premier William Stevens Fielding's campaign to withdraw Nova Scotia from Confederation. In the autumn of 1889, when he was only 35, Borden became the senior partner following the departure of Graham and Tupper for the bench and politics, respectively. His financial future guaranteed, on September 25, 1889, Borden married Laura Bond, the daughter of a Halifax hardware merchant. They would have no children. Bond would later serve as president of the Local Council of Women of Halifax, until her resignation in 1901. She also would later serve as president of the Aberdeen Association, vice-president of the Women's Work Exchange in Halifax, and corresponding secretary of the Associated Charities of the United States. The Bordens spend several weeks vacationing in England and Europe in the summers of 1891 and 1893. In 1894, Borden bought a large property and home on the south side of Quinpool Road, which the couple called Pinehurst. In 1893, Borden successfully argued the first of two cases which he took to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. He represented many of the important Halifax businesses and sat on the boards of Nova Scotian companies, including the Bank of Nova Scotia and the Crown Life Insurance Company. By the mid-1890s, Borden's firm was so prominent that it attracted notable clients, such as the Bank of Nova Scotia, Canada Atlantic Steamship, and the Nova Scotia Telephone Company. Borden had several court cases in Ottawa, and while in that city he would frequently meet with Prime Minister John Sparrow David Thompson, a fellow Nova Scotian. In 1896, Borden became president of the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society and took the initiative in organizing the founding meetings of the Canadian Bar Association in Montreal. On April 27, 1896, Borden went to Charles Tupper's home for a dinner party. Tupper, who was about to succeed Mackenzie Bowell as prime minister, asked Borden to run for the federal electoral district of Halifax for the upcoming election. Borden accepted the request. Early political career (1896–1901) Campaigning in favour of his party's National Policy, Borden was elected as a member of Parliament (MP) in the 1896 federal election as a Conservative. However, the Conservative Party as a whole was defeated by the Liberals led by Wilfrid Laurier. Though an MP in Ottawa, Borden still practised law back in Halifax. He also remained loyal to Tupper. Borden participated in many House committees and over time emerged as a key figure in the party. Leader of the Official Opposition (1901–1911) Tupper announced his resignation as party leader after he led the Conservatives to their second consecutive defeat at the polls in 1900. Tupper, and his son Charles Hibbert Tupper (who was Borden's former colleague at the Halifax law firm) asked Borden to become leader, citing his work in Parliament and lack of enemies within the Conservative caucus. Borden at first was not keen to become leader, stating, "I have not either the experience or the qualifications which would enable me to successfully lead the party...It would be an absurdity for the party and madness for me." However, he later changed his position and on February 6, 1901, he was selected by the Conservative caucus as party leader. The Liberal prime minister, Wilfrid Laurier, proposed the building of the Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk railways. Borden proposed for the railways to be government-owned and government-operated, stating the people would have a choice between "a government-owned railway or a railway-owned government." This position did not resonate with voters in the 1904 federal election; the Liberals won a slightly stronger majority, while the Conservatives lost a few seats. Borden himself was defeated in his Halifax seat but re-entered the House of Commons the next year via a by-election in Carleton (Ontario). In 1907, Borden announced the Halifax Platform. The Conservative Party's new policy called for reform of the Senate and the civil service, a more selective immigration policy, free rural mail delivery, and government regulation of telegraphs, telephones, and railways and eventually national ownership of telegraphs and telephones. In the 1908 federal election, Laurier's Liberals won for the fourth consecutive time. However, the Liberals experienced a drop in support as they won a slightly reduced majority. The Conservatives experienced a modest boost, gaining 10 seats. In 1910 and 1911, Laurier proposed a reciprocity free trade agreement with the United States. Borden opposed the treaty, stating that it would weaken ties with Britain, lead to Canadian identity being influenced by the US, and lead to American annexation of Canada. In the 1911 federal election, the Conservatives countered with a revised version of John A. Macdonald's National Policy, campaigned on fears of American influence on Canada and disloyalty to Britain, and ran on the slogan "Canadianism or Continentalism". The Conservatives triumphed; they won a strong majority, ending over 15 years of Liberal rule. Prime Minister (1911–1920) Pre-war Canada To aid the farmers who would have benefited had the reciprocity treaty been implemented, Borden's government passed the Canada Grain Act of 1912 to establish a board of grain commissioners that would supervise grain inspection and regulate the grain trade. This law would also allow the federal government to build or acquire and operate grain elevators at key points in the grain marketing and export system. Also in 1912, the provinces of Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec were expanded through the Manitoba Boundaries Extension Act, the Ontario Boundaries Extension Act, and the Quebec Boundaries Extension Act. These three provinces would take up the southern portion of the Northwest Territories. In 1912 and 1913, Borden's government sought to pass a naval bill that would have sent $35 million for the construction of three dreadnoughts for the British Navy. Laurier, now Opposition leader, argued that the bill would threaten Canadian autonomy. In May 1913, the bill was blocked by the Liberal-controlled Senate. On June 22, 1914, Borden was knighted; King George V awarded him the Order of St Michael and St George. First World War In late July, Borden and his wife, Laura, went for a vacation to the Muskoka District Municipality. However, the trip was cut short after World War I broke out in Europe. On July 31, the Bordens were on a train for Toronto. The next day, he returned back to Ottawa. The British declaration of war on August 4, 1914 automatically brought Canada into the war, because of Canada's legal status as a British Dominion which left foreign policy decisions in the hands of the British parliament. Major reforms Within just five days after the declaration of war, Borden's government passed the controversial War Measures Act which gave the government extraordinary and emergency powers, including the right to censor and suppress communications, the right to arrest, detain, and deport people without charges or trials, the right to control transportation, trade and manufacturing, and the right to seize private property during times of "war, invasion or insurrection". The act also allowed Borden to govern by Order in Council, in which his Cabinet was allowed to implement pieces of legislation without the need for a vote in the House of Commons and Senate. Borden's government also created the Canadian Patriotic Fund to give financial and social assistance to the families of soldiers. The government also raised tariffs on some high-demand consumer items to boost the economy. In 1916, Borden's government established the National Research Council Canada for scientific and industrial research. In 1918, in order to gain information on Canada's population, social structure, and economy, the government established the Dominion Bureau of Statistics through the Statistics Act. It was replaced by Statistics Canada in 1971. Borden's government set up the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF). The force posted several combat formations of the Western Front during the war. In December 1914, Borden stated, "there has not been, there will not be, compulsion or conscription." As the war dragged on, more troops for the CEF were deployed through the voluntary force. In July 1915, the number of CEF soldiers increased to 150,000 before being increased to 250,000 in October 1915 before doubling to 500,000 in January 1916. By mid-1916, the rate of volunteers enlisting started to slow down. Economy Despite the threat of an economic collapse and the need for more national revenue to fund the war effort, Borden's finance minister, William Thomas White, rejected calls for direct taxation on Canadian citizens in 1914, though this position would be shortly reversed. White cited his beliefs that taxation would cost too much to implement and interfere with provincial taxation systems. Borden and White instead opted for "business as usual" with Britain by assuming that the country would cover the costs incurred by Canada. However, at the end of 1914, it was realized that Britain was not able to lend money to Canada due to their own economic priorities. By 1917, Britain had become unable to pay for wartime shipments from Canada. During the war, Canada drastically increased imports of specialized metals and machinery needed for production of ammunition from the United States. This led Borden and White to successfully negotiate a $50 million loan from New York City in 1915. Canada also succeeded in negotiating larger bond issues with New York in 1916 and 1917. In 1918, a Victory Bond of $300 million brought in $660 million. Overall, Victory Bond campaigns raised around $2 billion. American investment in Canada significantly increased whereas British investment declined. By 1918, imports of goods from the United States were 1,000 percent of British exports to Canada. In 1917, facing skyrocketing prices, Borden's government established the Board of Grain Supervisors of Canada to distance the marketing of crops grown in 1917 and 1918 away from the private grain companies. It was succeeded by the Canadian Wheat Board for the 1919 crop. The board was dissolved in 1920, despite the concept being popular among farm organizations. In 1915, 1916, and 1917, Borden's government began to reverse their anti-taxation position, not least because of the need for more government revenue. The government introducing wartime savings bonds and raising import tariffs was not enough. In 1915, a luxury tax on tobacco and alcohol and taxes on transport tickets, telegrams, money orders, cheques, and patent medicines were introduced. By the end of the war, staple items were taxed. In a politically motivated move in 1916, the government introduced the Business Profits War Tax to address increasing concerns about businesses practising war profiteering. The tax expired in 1920 but was brought back in the Second World War. In 1917, the government introduced the income tax. Though the government declared the income tax to be temporary, the tax remains in place today. Conscription, Unionist Party, and 1917 election In Spring 1917, Borden visited Europe and attended the Imperial Conference. There, he participated in discussions that included possible peace terms and helped spearhead the passage of Resolution IX which called for a post-war constitutional conference to "provide effective arrangements for continuous consultation in all important matters of common Imperial concern, and for such necessary concerted action, founded on consultation, as the several Governments may determine." He also assured leaders of the Allied countries that Canada was committed to the war. Also during his trip, Borden made visits to the hospital to meet wounded and shell shocked soldiers and became deterimined that the soldiers' sacrifices should not be in vain, and that therefore, the war must end. With volunteer enlistment slowing down, Borden believed that the war should finish through only one method: conscription. Reversing their pledge to not introduce the policy, Borden's government passed the Military Service Act to introduce conscription. The Act became law on August 29, 1917. The disputes over conscription triggered the Conscription Crisis of 1917; most English Canadians supported the policy whereas most French Canadians opposed |
it will have. L-shaped modules can also be designed in a chain, and must become increasingly smaller as the size of the chain increases, as payloads attached to the end of the chain place a greater strain on modules that are further from the base. ANAT H-shaped modules do not suffer from this problem, as their design allows a modular robot to distribute pressure and impacts evenly amongst other attached modules, and therefore payload-carrying capacity does not decrease as the length of the arm increases. Modular robots can be manually or self-reconfigured to form a different robot, that may perform different applications. Because modular robots of the same architecture type are composed of modules that compose different modular robots, a snake-arm robot can combine with another to form a dual or quadra-arm robot, or can split into several mobile robots, and mobile robots can split into multiple smaller ones, or combine with others into a larger or different one. This allows a single modular robot the ability to be fully specialized in a single task, as well as the capacity to be specialized to perform multiple different tasks. Modular robotic technology is currently being applied in hybrid transportation, industrial automation, duct cleaning and handling. Many research centres and universities have also studied this technology, and have developed prototypes. Collaborative robots A collaborative robot or cobot is a robot that can safely and effectively interact with human workers while performing simple industrial tasks. However, end-effectors and other environmental conditions may create hazards, and as such risk assessments should be done before using any industrial motion-control application. The collaborative robots most widely used in industries today are manufactured by Universal Robots in Denmark. Rethink Robotics—founded by Rodney Brooks, previously with iRobot—introduced Baxter in September 2012; as an industrial robot designed to safely interact with neighboring human workers, and be programmable for performing simple tasks. Baxters stop if they detect a human in the way of their robotic arms and have prominent off switches. Intended for sale to small businesses, they are promoted as the robotic analogue of the personal computer. , 190 companies in the US have bought Baxters and they are being used commercially in the UK. Robots in society Roughly half of all the robots in the world are in Asia, 32% in Europe, and 16% in North America, 1% in Australasia and 1% in Africa. 40% of all the robots in the world are in Japan, making Japan the country with the highest number of robots. Autonomy and ethical questions As robots have become more advanced and sophisticated, experts and academics have increasingly explored the questions of what ethics might govern robots' behavior, and whether robots might be able to claim any kind of social, cultural, ethical or legal rights. One scientific team has said that it was possible that a robot brain would exist by 2019. Others predict robot intelligence breakthroughs by 2050. Recent advances have made robotic behavior more sophisticated. The social impact of intelligent robots is subject of a 2010 documentary film called Plug & Pray. Vernor Vinge has suggested that a moment may come when computers and robots are smarter than humans. He calls this "the Singularity". He suggests that it may be somewhat or possibly very dangerous for humans. This is discussed by a philosophy called Singularitarianism. In 2009, experts attended a conference hosted by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) to discuss whether computers and robots might be able to acquire any autonomy, and how much these abilities might pose a threat or hazard. They noted that some robots have acquired various forms of semi-autonomy, including being able to find power sources on their own and being able to independently choose targets to attack with weapons. They also noted that some computer viruses can evade elimination and have achieved "cockroach intelligence." They noted that self-awareness as depicted in science-fiction is probably unlikely, but that there were other potential hazards and pitfalls. Various media sources and scientific groups have noted separate trends in differing areas which might together result in greater robotic functionalities and autonomy, and which pose some inherent concerns. In 2015, the Nao alderen robots were shown to have a capability for a degree of self-awareness. Researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute AI and Reasoning Lab in New York conducted an experiment where a robot became aware of itself, and corrected its answer to a question once it had realised this. Military robots Some experts and academics have questioned the use of robots for military combat, especially when such robots are given some degree of autonomous functions. There are also concerns about technology which might allow some armed robots to be controlled mainly by other robots. The US Navy has funded a report which indicates that, as military robots become more complex, there should be greater attention to implications of their ability to make autonomous decisions. One researcher states that autonomous robots might be more humane, as they could make decisions more effectively. However, other experts question this. One robot in particular, the EATR, has generated public concerns over its fuel source, as it can continually refuel itself using organic substances. Although the engine for the EATR is designed to run on biomass and vegetation specifically selected by its sensors, which it can find on battlefields or other local environments, the project has stated that chicken fat can also be used. Manuel De Landa has noted that "smart missiles" and autonomous bombs equipped with artificial perception can be considered robots, as they make some of their decisions autonomously. He believes this represents an important and dangerous trend in which humans are handing over important decisions to machines. Relationship to unemployment For centuries, people have predicted that machines would make workers obsolete and increase unemployment, although the causes of unemployment are usually thought to be due to social policy. A recent example of human replacement involves Taiwanese technology company Foxconn who, in July 2011, announced a three-year plan to replace workers with more robots. At present the company uses ten thousand robots but will increase them to a million robots over a three-year period. Lawyers have speculated that an increased prevalence of robots in the workplace could lead to the need to improve redundancy laws. Kevin J. Delaney said "Robots are taking human jobs. But Bill Gates believes that governments should tax companies’ use of them, as a way to at least temporarily slow the spread of automation and to fund other types of employment." The robot tax would also help pay a guaranteed living wage to the displaced workers. The World Bank's World Development Report 2019 puts forth evidence showing that while automation displaces workers, technological innovation creates more new industries and jobs on balance. Contemporary uses At present, there are two main types of robots, based on their use: general-purpose autonomous robots and dedicated robots. Robots can be classified by their specificity of purpose. A robot might be designed to perform one particular task extremely well, or a range of tasks less well. All robots by their nature can be re-programmed to behave differently, but some are limited by their physical form. For example, a factory robot arm can perform jobs such as cutting, welding, gluing, or acting as a fairground ride, while a pick-and-place robot can only populate printed circuit boards. General-purpose autonomous robots General-purpose autonomous robots can perform a variety of functions independently. General-purpose autonomous robots typically can navigate independently in known spaces, handle their own re-charging needs, interface with electronic doors and elevators and perform other basic tasks. Like computers, general-purpose robots can link with networks, software and accessories that increase their usefulness. They may recognize people or objects, talk, provide companionship, monitor environmental quality, respond to alarms, pick up supplies and perform other useful tasks. General-purpose robots may perform a variety of functions simultaneously or they may take on different roles at different times of day. Some such robots try to mimic human beings and may even resemble people in appearance; this type of robot is called a humanoid robot. Humanoid robots are still in a very limited stage, as no humanoid robot can, as of yet, actually navigate around a room that it has never been in. Thus, humanoid robots are really quite limited, despite their intelligent behaviors in their well-known environments. Factory robots Car production Over the last three decades, automobile factories have become dominated by robots. A typical factory contains hundreds of industrial robots working on fully automated production lines, with one robot for every ten human workers. On an automated production line, a vehicle chassis on a conveyor is welded, glued, painted and finally assembled at a sequence of robot stations. Packaging Industrial robots are also used extensively for palletizing and packaging of manufactured goods, for example for rapidly taking drink cartons from the end of a conveyor belt and placing them into boxes, or for loading and unloading machining centers. Electronics Mass-produced printed circuit boards (PCBs) are almost exclusively manufactured by pick-and-place robots, typically with SCARA manipulators, which remove tiny electronic components from strips or trays, and place them on to PCBs with great accuracy. Such robots can place hundreds of thousands of components per hour, far out-performing a human in speed, accuracy, and reliability. Automated guided vehicles (AGVs) Mobile robots, following markers or wires in the floor, or using vision or lasers, are used to transport goods around large facilities, such as warehouses, container ports, or hospitals. Early AGV-style robots Limited to tasks that could be accurately defined and had to be performed the same way every time. Very little feedback or intelligence was required, and the robots needed only the most basic exteroceptors (sensors). The limitations of these AGVs are that their paths are not easily altered and they cannot alter their paths if obstacles block them. If one AGV breaks down, it may stop the entire operation. Interim AGV technologies Developed to deploy triangulation from beacons or bar code grids for scanning on the floor or ceiling. In most factories, triangulation systems tend to require moderate to high maintenance, such as daily cleaning of all beacons or bar codes. Also, if a tall pallet or large vehicle blocks beacons or a bar code is marred, AGVs may become lost. Often such AGVs are designed to be used in human-free environments. Intelligent AGVs (i-AGVs) Such as SmartLoader, SpeciMinder, ADAM, Tug Eskorta, and MT 400 with Motivity are designed for people-friendly workspaces. They navigate by recognizing natural features. 3D scanners or other means of sensing the environment in two or three dimensions help to eliminate cumulative errors in dead-reckoning calculations of the AGV's current position. Some AGVs can create maps of their environment using scanning lasers with simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and use those maps to navigate in real time with other path planning and obstacle avoidance algorithms. They are able to operate in complex environments and perform non-repetitive and non-sequential tasks such as transporting photomasks in a semiconductor lab, specimens in hospitals and goods in warehouses. For dynamic areas, such as warehouses full of pallets, AGVs require additional strategies using three-dimensional sensors such as time-of-flight or stereovision cameras. Dirty, dangerous, dull, or inaccessible tasks There are many jobs that humans would rather leave to robots. The job may be boring, such as domestic cleaning or sports field line marking, or dangerous, such as exploring inside a volcano. Other jobs are physically inaccessible, such as exploring another planet, cleaning the inside of a long pipe, or performing laparoscopic surgery. Space probes Almost every unmanned space probe ever launched was a robot. Some were launched in the 1960s with very limited abilities, but their ability to fly and land (in the case of Luna 9) is an indication of their status as a robot. This includes the Voyager probes and the Galileo probes, among others. Telerobots Teleoperated robots, or telerobots, are devices remotely operated from a distance by a human operator rather than following a predetermined sequence of movements, but which has semi-autonomous behaviour. They are used when a human cannot be present on site to perform a job because it is dangerous, far away, or inaccessible. The robot may be in another room or another country, or may be on a very different scale to the operator. For instance, a laparoscopic surgery robot allows the surgeon to work inside a human patient on a relatively small scale compared to open surgery, significantly shortening recovery time. They can also be used to avoid exposing workers to the hazardous and tight spaces such as in duct cleaning. When disabling a bomb, the operator sends a small robot to disable it. Several authors have been using a device called the Longpen to sign books remotely. Teleoperated robot aircraft, like the Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, are increasingly being used by the military. These pilotless drones can search terrain and fire on targets. Hundreds of robots such as iRobot's Packbot and the Foster-Miller TALON are being used in Iraq and Afghanistan by the U.S. military to defuse roadside bombs or improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in an activity known as explosive ordnance disposal (EOD). Automated fruit harvesting machines Robots are used to automate picking fruit on orchards at a cost lower than that of human pickers. Domestic robots Domestic robots are simple robots dedicated to a single task work in home use. They are used in simple but often disliked jobs, such as vacuum cleaning, floor washing, and lawn mowing. An example of a domestic robot is a Roomba. Military robots Military robots include the SWORDS robot which is currently used in ground-based combat. It can use a variety of weapons and there is some discussion of giving it some degree of autonomy in battleground situations. Unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs), which are an upgraded form of UAVs, can do a wide variety of missions, including combat. UCAVs are being designed such as the BAE Systems Mantis which would have the ability to fly themselves, to pick their own course and target, and to make most decisions on their own. The BAE Taranis is a UCAV built by Great Britain which can fly across continents without a pilot and has new means to avoid detection. Flight trials are expected to begin in 2011. The AAAI has studied this topic in depth and its president has commissioned a study to look at this issue. Some have suggested a need to build "Friendly AI", meaning that the advances which are already occurring with AI should also include an effort to make AI intrinsically friendly and humane. Several such measures reportedly already exist, with robot-heavy countries such as Japan and South Korea having begun to pass regulations requiring robots to be equipped with safety systems, and possibly sets of 'laws' akin to Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. An official report was issued in 2009 by the Japanese government's Robot Industry Policy Committee. Chinese officials and researchers have issued a report suggesting a set of ethical rules, and a set of new legal guidelines referred to as "Robot Legal Studies." Some concern has been expressed over a possible occurrence of robots telling apparent falsehoods. Mining robots Mining robots are designed to solve a number of problems currently facing the mining industry, including skills shortages, improving productivity from declining ore grades, and achieving environmental targets. Due to the hazardous nature of mining, in particular underground mining, the prevalence of autonomous, semi-autonomous, and tele-operated robots has greatly increased in recent times. A number of vehicle manufacturers provide autonomous trains, trucks and loaders that will load material, transport it on the mine site to its destination, and unload without requiring human intervention. One of the world's largest mining corporations, Rio Tinto, has recently expanded its autonomous truck fleet to the world's largest, consisting of 150 autonomous Komatsu trucks, operating in Western Australia. Similarly, BHP has announced the expansion of its autonomous drill fleet to the world's largest, 21 autonomous Atlas Copco drills. Drilling, longwall and rockbreaking machines are now also available as autonomous robots. The Atlas Copco Rig Control System can autonomously execute a drilling plan on a drilling rig, moving the rig into position using GPS, set up the drill rig and drill down to specified depths. Similarly, the Transmin Rocklogic system can automatically plan a path to position a rockbreaker at a selected destination. These systems greatly enhance the safety and efficiency of mining operations. Healthcare Robots in healthcare have two main functions. Those which assist an individual, such as a sufferer of a disease like Multiple Sclerosis, and those which aid in the overall systems such as pharmacies and hospitals. Home automation for the elderly and disabled Robots used in home automation have developed over time from simple basic robotic assistants, such as the Handy 1, through to semi-autonomous robots, such as FRIEND which can assist the elderly and disabled with common tasks. The population is aging in many countries, especially Japan, meaning that there are increasing numbers of elderly people to care for, but relatively fewer young people to care for them. Humans make the best carers, but where they are unavailable, robots are gradually being introduced. FRIEND is a semi-autonomous robot designed to support disabled and elderly people in their daily life activities, like preparing and serving a meal. FRIEND make it possible for patients who are paraplegic, have muscle diseases or serious paralysis (due to strokes etc.), to perform tasks without help from other people like therapists or nursing staff. Pharmacies Script Pro manufactures a robot designed to help pharmacies fill prescriptions that consist of oral solids or medications in pill form. The pharmacist or pharmacy technician enters the prescription information into its information system. The system, upon determining whether or not the drug is in the robot, will send the information to the robot for filling. The robot has 3 different size vials to fill determined by the size of the pill. The robot technician, user, or pharmacist determines the needed size of the vial based on the tablet when the robot is stocked. Once the vial is filled it is brought up to a conveyor belt that delivers it to a holder that spins the vial and attaches the patient label. Afterwards it is set on another conveyor that delivers the patient's medication vial to a slot labeled with the patient's name on an LED read out. The pharmacist or technician then checks the contents of the vial to ensure it's the correct drug for the correct patient and then seals the vials and sends it out front to be picked up. McKesson's Robot RX is another healthcare robotics product that helps pharmacies dispense thousands of medications daily with little or no errors. The robot can be ten feet wide and thirty feet long and can hold hundreds of different kinds of medications and thousands of doses. The pharmacy saves many resources like staff members that are otherwise unavailable in a resource scarce industry. It uses an electromechanical head coupled with a pneumatic system to capture each dose and deliver it to either its stocked or dispensed location. The head moves along a single axis while it rotates 180 degrees to pull the medications. During this process it uses barcode technology to verify it's pulling the correct drug. It then delivers the drug to a patient specific bin on a conveyor belt. Once the bin is filled with all of the drugs that a particular patient needs and that the robot stocks, the bin is then released and returned out on the conveyor belt to a technician waiting to load it into a cart for delivery to the floor. Research robots While most robots today are installed in factories or homes, performing labour or life saving jobs, many new types of robot are being developed in laboratories around the world. Much of the research in robotics focuses not on specific industrial tasks, but on investigations into new types of robot, alternative ways to think about or design robots, and new ways to manufacture them. It is expected that these new types of robot will be able to solve real world problems when they are finally realized. Bionic and biomimetic robots One approach to designing robots is to base them on animals. BionicKangaroo was designed and engineered by studying and applying the physiology and methods of locomotion of a kangaroo. Nanorobots Nanorobotics is the emerging technology field of creating machines or robots whose components are at or close to the microscopic scale of a nanometer (10−9 meters). Also known as "nanobots" or "nanites", they would be constructed from molecular machines. So far, researchers have mostly produced only parts of these complex systems, such as bearings, sensors, and synthetic molecular motors, but functioning robots have also been made such as the entrants to the Nanobot Robocup contest. Researchers also hope to be able to create entire robots as small as viruses or bacteria, which could perform tasks on a tiny scale. Possible applications include micro surgery (on the level of individual cells), utility fog, manufacturing, weaponry and cleaning. Some people have suggested that if there were nanobots which could reproduce, the earth would turn into "grey goo", while others argue that this hypothetical outcome is nonsense. Reconfigurable robots A few researchers have investigated the possibility of creating robots which can alter their physical form to suit a particular task, like the fictional T-1000. Real robots are nowhere near that sophisticated however, and mostly consist of a small number of cube shaped units, which can move relative to their neighbours. Algorithms have been designed in case any such robots become a reality. Robotic, mobile laboratory operators In July 2020 scientists reported the development of a mobile robot chemist and demonstrate that it can assist in experimental searches. According to the scientists their strategy was automating the researcher rather than the instruments – freeing up time for the human researchers to think creatively – and could identify photocatalyst mixtures for hydrogen production from water that were six times more active than initial formulations. The modular robot can operate laboratory instruments, work nearly around the clock, and autonomously make decisions on his next actions depending on experimental results. Soft-bodied robots Robots with silicone bodies and flexible actuators (air muscles, electroactive polymers, and ferrofluids) look and feel different from robots with rigid skeletons, and can have different behaviors. Soft, flexible (and sometimes even squishy) robots are often designed to mimic the biomechanics of animals and other things found in nature, which is leading to new applications in medicine, care giving, search and rescue, food handling and manufacturing, and scientific exploration. Swarm robots Inspired by colonies of insects such as ants and bees, researchers are modeling the behavior of swarms of thousands of tiny robots which together perform a useful task, such as finding something hidden, cleaning, or spying. Each robot is quite simple, but the emergent behavior of the swarm is more complex. The whole set of robots can be considered as one single distributed system, in the same way an ant colony can be considered a superorganism, exhibiting swarm intelligence. The largest swarms so far created include the iRobot swarm, the SRI/MobileRobots CentiBots project and the Open-source Micro-robotic Project swarm, which are being used to research collective behaviors. Swarms are also more resistant to failure. | Predator, and even microscopic nano robots. By mimicking a lifelike appearance or automating movements, a robot may convey a sense of intelligence or thought of its own. Autonomous things are expected to proliferate in the future, with home robotics and the autonomous car as some of the main drivers. The branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, and application of robots, as well as computer systems for their control, sensory feedback, and information processing is robotics. These technologies deal with automated machines that can take the place of humans in dangerous environments or manufacturing processes, or resemble humans in appearance, behavior, or cognition. Many of today's robots are inspired by nature contributing to the field of bio-inspired robotics. These robots have also created a newer branch of robotics: soft robotics. From the time of ancient civilization, there have been many accounts of user-configurable automated devices and even automata resembling humans and other animals, designed primarily as entertainment. As mechanical techniques developed through the Industrial age, there appeared more practical applications such as automated machines, remote-control and wireless remote-control. The term comes from a Slavic root, robot-, with meanings associated with labor. The word 'robot' was first used to denote a fictional humanoid in a 1920 Czech-language play R.U.R. (Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti – Rossum's Universal Robots) by Karel Čapek, though it was Karel's brother Josef Čapek who was the word's true inventor. Electronics evolved into the driving force of development with the advent of the first electronic autonomous robots created by William Grey Walter in Bristol, England in 1948, as well as Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine tools in the late 1940s by John T. Parsons and Frank L. Stulen. The first modern digital and programmable robot was invented by George Devol in 1954 and spawned his seminal robotics company, Unimation. The first Unimate was sold to General Motors in 1961 where it lifted pieces of hot metal from die casting machines at the Inland Fisher Guide Plant in the West Trenton section of Ewing Township, New Jersey. Robots have replaced humans in performing repetitive and dangerous tasks which humans prefer not to do, or are unable to do because of size limitations, or which take place in extreme environments such as outer space or the bottom of the sea. There are concerns about the increasing use of robots and their role in society. Robots are blamed for rising technological unemployment as they replace workers in increasing numbers of functions. The use of robots in military combat raises ethical concerns. The possibilities of robot autonomy and potential repercussions have been addressed in fiction and may be a realistic concern in the future. Summary The word robot can refer to both physical robots and virtual software agents, but the latter are usually referred to as bots. There is no consensus on which machines qualify as robots but there is general agreement among experts, and the public, that robots tend to possess some or all of the following abilities and functions: accept electronic programming, process data or physical perceptions electronically, operate autonomously to some degree, move around, operate physical parts of itself or physical processes, sense and manipulate their environment, and exhibit intelligent behavior, especially behavior which mimics humans or other animals. Closely related to the concept of a robot is the field of Synthetic Biology, which studies entities whose nature is more comparable to beings than to machines. History The idea of automata originates in the mythologies of many cultures around the world. Engineers and inventors from ancient civilizations, including Ancient China, Ancient Greece, and Ptolemaic Egypt, attempted to build self-operating machines, some resembling animals and humans. Early descriptions of automata include the artificial doves of Archytas, the artificial birds of Mozi and Lu Ban, a "speaking" automaton by Hero of Alexandria, a washstand automaton by Philo of Byzantium, and a human automaton described in the Lie Zi. Early beginnings Many ancient mythologies, and most modern religions include artificial people, such as the mechanical servants built by the Greek god Hephaestus (Vulcan to the Romans), the clay golems of Jewish legend and clay giants of Norse legend, and Galatea, the mythical statue of Pygmalion that came to life. Since circa 400 BC, myths of Crete include Talos, a man of bronze who guarded the island from pirates. In ancient Greece, the Greek engineer Ctesibius (c. 270 BC) "applied a knowledge of pneumatics and hydraulics to produce the first organ and water clocks with moving figures." In the 4th century BC, the Greek mathematician Archytas of Tarentum postulated a mechanical steam-operated bird he called "The Pigeon". Hero of Alexandria , a Greek mathematician and inventor, created numerous user-configurable automated devices, and described machines powered by air pressure, steam and water. The 11th century Lokapannatti tells of how the Buddha's relics were protected by mechanical robots (bhuta vahana yanta), from the kingdom of Roma visaya (Rome); until they were disarmed by King Ashoka. In ancient China, the 3rd-century text of the Lie Zi describes an account of humanoid automata, involving a much earlier encounter between Chinese emperor King Mu of Zhou and a mechanical engineer known as Yan Shi, an 'artificer'. Yan Shi proudly presented the king with a life-size, human-shaped figure of his mechanical 'handiwork' made of leather, wood, and artificial organs. There are also accounts of flying automata in the Han Fei Zi and other texts, which attributes the 5th century BC Mohist philosopher Mozi and his contemporary Lu Ban with the invention of artificial wooden birds (ma yuan) that could successfully fly. In 1066, the Chinese inventor Su Song built a water clock in the form of a tower which featured mechanical figurines which chimed the hours. His mechanism had a programmable drum machine with pegs (cams) that bumped into little levers that operated percussion instruments. The drummer could be made to play different rhythms and different drum patterns by moving the pegs to different locations. Samarangana Sutradhara, a Sanskrit treatise by Bhoja (11th century), includes a chapter about the construction of mechanical contrivances (automata), including mechanical bees and birds, fountains shaped like humans and animals, and male and female dolls that refilled oil lamps, danced, played instruments, and re-enacted scenes from Hindu mythology. 13th century Muslim Scientist Ismail al-Jazari created several automated devices. He built automated moving peacocks driven by hydropower. He also invented the earliest known automatic gates, which were driven by hydropower, created automatic doors as part of one of his elaborate water clocks. One of al-Jazari's humanoid automata was a waitress that could serve water, tea or drinks. The drink was stored in a tank with a reservoir from where the drink drips into a bucket and, after seven minutes, into a cup, after which the waitress appears out of an automatic door serving the drink. Al-Jazari invented a hand washing automaton incorporating a flush mechanism now used in modern flush toilets. It features a female humanoid automaton standing by a basin filled with water. When the user pulls the lever, the water drains and the female automaton refills the basin. Mark E. Rosheim summarizes the advances in robotics made by Muslim engineers, especially al-Jazari, as follows:Unlike the Greek designs, these Arab examples reveal an interest, not only in dramatic illusion, but in manipulating the environment for human comfort. Thus, the greatest contribution the Arabs made, besides preserving, disseminating and building on the work of the Greeks, was the concept of practical application. This was the key element that was missing in Greek robotic science. In Renaissance Italy, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) sketched plans for a humanoid robot around 1495. Da Vinci's notebooks, rediscovered in the 1950s, contained detailed drawings of a mechanical knight now known as Leonardo's robot, able to sit up, wave its arms and move its head and jaw. The design was probably based on anatomical research recorded in his Vitruvian Man. It is not known whether he attempted to build it. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, Leonardo da Vinci may have been influenced by the classic automata of al-Jazari. In Japan, complex animal and human automata were built between the 17th to 19th centuries, with many described in the 18th century Karakuri zui (Illustrated Machinery, 1796). One such automaton was the karakuri ningyō, a mechanized puppet. Different variations of the karakuri existed: the Butai karakuri, which were used in theatre, the Zashiki karakuri, which were small and used in homes, and the Dashi karakuri which were used in religious festivals, where the puppets were used to perform reenactments of traditional myths and legends. In France, between 1738 and 1739, Jacques de Vaucanson exhibited several life-sized automatons: a flute player, a pipe player and a duck. The mechanical duck could flap its wings, crane its neck, and swallow food from the exhibitor's hand, and it gave the illusion of digesting its food by excreting matter stored in a hidden compartment. Remote-controlled systems Remotely operated vehicles were demonstrated in the late 19th century in the form of several types of remotely controlled torpedoes. The early 1870s saw remotely controlled torpedoes by John Ericsson (pneumatic), John Louis Lay (electric wire guided), and Victor von Scheliha (electric wire guided). The Brennan torpedo, invented by Louis Brennan in 1877, was powered by two contra-rotating propellors that were spun by rapidly pulling out wires from drums wound inside the torpedo. Differential speed on the wires connected to the shore station allowed the torpedo to be guided to its target, making it "the world's first practical guided missile". In 1897 the British inventor Ernest Wilson was granted a patent for a torpedo remotely controlled by "Hertzian" (radio) waves and in 1898 Nikola Tesla publicly demonstrated a wireless-controlled torpedo that he hoped to sell to the US Navy. In 1903, the Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres y Quevedo demonstrated a radio control system called "Telekino", which he wanted to use to control an airship of his own design. Unlike the previous systems, which carried out actions of the 'on/off' type, Torres device was able to memorize the signals received to execute the operations on its own and could carry out to 19 different orders. Archibald Low, known as the "father of radio guidance systems" for his pioneering work on guided rockets and planes during the First World War. In 1917, he demonstrated a remote controlled aircraft to the Royal Flying Corps and in the same year built the first wire-guided rocket. Origin of the term 'robot' 'Robot' was first applied as a term for artificial automata in the 1920 play R.U.R. by the Czech writer, Karel Čapek. However, Josef Čapek was named by his brother Karel as the true inventor of the term robot. The word 'robot' itself was not new, having been in the Slavic language as robota (forced labor), a term applied to peasants obligated to compulsory service under the feudal system (see: Robot Patent). Čapek's fictional story postulated the technological creation of artificial human bodies without souls, and the old theme of the feudal robota class eloquently fit the imagination of a new class of manufactured, artificial workers. English pronunciation of the word has evolved relatively quickly since its introduction. In the U.S. during the late '30s to early '40s the second syllable was pronounced with a long "O" like "row-boat." By the late '50s to early '60s, some were pronouncing it with a short "U" like "row-but" while others used a softer "O" like "row-bought." By the '70s, its current pronunciation "row-bot" had become predominant. Early robots In 1928, one of the first humanoid robots, Eric, was exhibited at the annual exhibition of the Model Engineers Society in London, where it delivered a speech. Invented by W. H. Richards, the robot's frame consisted of an aluminium body of armour with eleven electromagnets and one motor powered by a twelve-volt power source. The robot could move its hands and head and could be controlled through remote control or voice control. Both Eric and his "brother" George toured the world. Westinghouse Electric Corporation built Televox in 1926; it was a cardboard cutout connected to various devices which users could turn on and off. In 1939, the humanoid robot known as Elektro was debuted at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Seven feet tall (2.1 m) and weighing 265 pounds (120.2 kg), it could walk by voice command, speak about 700 words (using a 78-rpm record player), smoke cigarettes, blow up balloons, and move its head and arms. The body consisted of a steel gear, cam and motor skeleton covered by an aluminum skin. In 1928, Japan's first robot, Gakutensoku, was designed and constructed by biologist Makoto Nishimura. Modern autonomous robots The first electronic autonomous robots with complex behaviour were created by William Grey Walter of the Burden Neurological Institute at Bristol, England in 1948 and 1949. He wanted to prove that rich connections between a small number of brain cells could give rise to very complex behaviors – essentially that the secret of how the brain worked lay in how it was wired up. His first robots, named Elmer and Elsie, were constructed between 1948 and 1949 and were often described as tortoises due to their shape and slow rate of movement. The three-wheeled tortoise robots were capable of phototaxis, by which they could find their way to a recharging station when they ran low on battery power. Walter stressed the importance of using purely analogue electronics to simulate brain processes at a time when his contemporaries such as Alan Turing and John von Neumann were all turning towards a view of mental processes in terms of digital computation. His work inspired subsequent generations of robotics researchers such as Rodney Brooks, Hans Moravec and Mark Tilden. Modern incarnations of Walter's turtles may be found in the form of BEAM robotics. The first digitally operated and programmable robot was invented by George Devol in 1954 and was ultimately called the Unimate. This ultimately laid the foundations of the modern robotics industry. Devol sold the first Unimate to General Motors in 1960, and it was installed in 1961 in a plant in Trenton, New Jersey to lift hot pieces of metal from a die casting machine and stack them. Devol's patent for the first digitally operated programmable robotic arm represents the foundation of the modern robotics industry. The first palletizing robot was introduced in 1963 by the Fuji Yusoki Kogyo Company. In 1973, a robot with six electromechanically driven axes was patented by KUKA robotics in Germany, and the programmable universal manipulation arm was invented by Victor Scheinman in 1976, and the design was sold to Unimation. Commercial and industrial robots are now in widespread use performing jobs more cheaply or with greater accuracy and reliability than humans. They are also employed for jobs which are too dirty, dangerous or dull to be suitable for humans. Robots are widely used in manufacturing, assembly and packing, transport, earth and space exploration, surgery, weaponry, laboratory research, and mass production of consumer and industrial goods. Future development and trends Various techniques have emerged to develop the science of robotics and robots. One method is evolutionary robotics, in which a number of differing robots are submitted to tests. Those which perform best are used as a model to create a subsequent "generation" of robots. Another method is developmental robotics, which tracks changes and development within a single robot in the areas of problem-solving and other functions. Another new type of robot is just recently introduced which acts both as a smartphone and robot and is named RoboHon. As robots become more advanced, eventually there may be a standard computer operating system designed mainly for robots. Robot Operating System is an open-source set of programs being developed at Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Technical University of Munich, Germany, among others. ROS provides ways to program a robot's navigation and limbs regardless of the specific hardware involved. It also provides high-level commands for items like image recognition and even opening doors. When ROS boots up on a robot's computer, it would obtain data on attributes such as the length and movement of robots' limbs. It would relay this data to higher-level algorithms. Microsoft is also developing a "Windows for robots" system with its Robotics Developer Studio, which has been available since 2007. Japan hopes to have full-scale commercialization of service robots by 2025. Much technological research in Japan is led by Japanese government agencies, particularly the Trade Ministry. Many future applications of robotics seem obvious to people, even though they are well beyond the capabilities of robots available at the time of the prediction. As early as 1982 people were confident that someday robots would: 1. Clean parts by removing molding flash 2. Spray paint automobiles with absolutely no human presence 3. Pack things in boxes—for example, orient and nest chocolate candies in candy boxes 4. Make electrical cable harness 5. Load trucks with boxes—a packing problem 6. Handle soft goods, such as garments and shoes 7. Shear sheep 8. prosthesis 9. Cook fast food and work in other service industries 10. Household robot. Generally such predictions are overly optimistic in timescale. New functionalities and prototypes In 2008, Caterpillar Inc. developed a dump truck which can drive itself without any human operator. Many analysts believe that self-driving trucks may eventually revolutionize logistics. By 2014, Caterpillar had a self-driving dump truck which is expected to greatly change the process of mining. In 2015, these Caterpillar trucks were actively used in mining operations in Australia by the mining company Rio Tinto Coal Australia. Some analysts believe that within the next few decades, most trucks will be self-driving. A literate or 'reading robot' named Marge has intelligence that comes from software. She can read newspapers, find and correct misspelled words, learn about banks like Barclays, and understand that some restaurants are better places to eat than others. Baxter is a new robot introduced in 2012 which learns by guidance. A worker could teach Baxter how to perform a task by moving its hands in the desired motion and having Baxter memorize them. Extra dials, buttons, and controls are available on Baxter's arm for more precision and features. Any regular worker could program Baxter and it only takes a matter of minutes, unlike usual industrial robots that take extensive programs and coding to be used. This means Baxter needs no programming to operate. No software engineers are needed. This also means Baxter can be taught to perform multiple, more complicated tasks. Sawyer was added in 2015 for smaller, more precise tasks. Prototype cooking robots have been developed and could be programmed for autonomous, dynamic and adjustable preparation of discrete meals. Etymology The word robot was introduced to the public by the Czech interwar writer Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), published in 1920. The play begins in a factory that uses a chemical substitute for protoplasm to manufacture living, simplified people called robots. The play does not focus in detail on the technology behind the creation of these living creatures, but in their appearance they prefigure modern ideas of androids, creatures who can be mistaken for humans. These mass-produced workers are depicted as efficient but emotionless, incapable of original thinking and indifferent to self-preservation. At issue is whether the robots are being exploited and the consequences of human dependence upon commodified labor (especially after a number of specially-formulated robots achieve self-awareness and incite robots all around the world to rise up against the humans). Karel Čapek himself did not coin the word. He wrote a short letter in reference to an etymology in the Oxford English Dictionary in which he named his brother, the painter and writer Josef Čapek, as its actual originator. In an article in the Czech journal Lidové noviny in 1933, he explained that he had originally wanted to call the creatures laboři ("workers", from Latin labor). However, he did not like the word, and sought advice from his brother Josef, who suggested "roboti". The word robota means literally "corvée", "serf labor", and figuratively "drudgery" or "hard work" in Czech and also (more general) "work", "labor" in many Slavic languages (e.g.: Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Polish, Macedonian, Ukrainian, archaic Czech, as well as robot in Hungarian). Traditionally the robota (Hungarian robot) was the work period a serf (corvée) had to give for his lord, typically 6 months of the year. The origin of the word is the Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian) rabota "servitude" ("work" in contemporary Bulgarian and Russian), which in turn comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *orbh-. Robot is cognate with the German root Arbeit (work). The word robotics, used to describe this field of study, was coined by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Asimov created the "Three Laws of Robotics" which are a recurring theme in his books. These have since been used by many others to define laws used in fiction. (The three laws are pure fiction, and no technology yet created has the ability to understand or follow them, and in fact most robots serve military purposes, which run quite contrary to the first law and often the third law. "People think about Asimov's laws, but they were set up to point out how a simple ethical system doesn't work. If you read the short stories, every single one is about a failure, and they are totally impractical," said Dr. Joanna Bryson of the University of Bath.) Modern robots Mobile robot Mobile robots have the capability to move around in their environment and are not fixed to one physical location. An example of a mobile robot that is in common use today is the automated guided vehicle or automatic guided vehicle (AGV). An AGV is a mobile robot that follows markers or wires in the floor, or uses vision or lasers. AGVs are discussed later in this article. Mobile robots are also found in industry, military and security environments. They also appear as consumer products, for entertainment or to perform certain tasks like vacuum cleaning. Mobile robots are the focus of a great deal of current research and almost every major university has one or more labs that focus on mobile robot research. Mobile robots are usually used in tightly controlled environments such as on assembly lines because they have difficulty responding to unexpected interference. Because of this most humans rarely encounter robots. However domestic robots for cleaning and maintenance are increasingly common in and around homes in developed countries. Robots can also be found in military applications. Industrial robots (manipulating) Industrial robots usually consist of a jointed arm (multi-linked manipulator) and an end effector that is attached to a fixed surface. One of the most common type of end effector is a gripper assembly. The International Organization for Standardization gives a definition of a manipulating industrial |
volatile situation. As an "alternative to bloodshed on the streets", the stop-gap solution for unemployment chosen by the Bennett government was to establish military-run and -styled relief camps in remote areas throughout the country, where single unemployed men toiled for twenty cents a day. Any relief beyond this was left to provincial and municipal governments, many of which were either insolvent or on the brink of bankruptcy, and which railed against the inaction of other levels of government. Partisan differences began to sharpen on the question of government intervention in the economy, since lower levels of government were largely in Liberal hands, and protest movements were beginning to send their own parties into the political mainstream, notably the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and William Aberhart's Social Credit Party in Alberta. In July 1931, Bennett's government passed the Unemployment and Farm Relief Act in an effort to stanch the depression, but events were rapidly falling out of their control. Hosts, dominates 1932 Imperial Conference Bennett hosted the 1932 Imperial Economic Conference in Ottawa; this was the first time Canada had hosted the meetings. It was attended by the leaders of the independent dominions of the British Empire (which later became the Commonwealth of Nations). Bennett dominated the meetings, which were ultimately unproductive, due to the inability of leaders to agree on policies, mainly to combat the economic woes dominating the world at the time. Anti-communism A nickname that would stick with Bennett for the remainder of his political career, "Iron Heel Bennett", came from a 1932 speech he gave in Toronto that ironically, if unintentionally, alluded to Jack London's socialist novel: What do they offer you in exchange for the present order? Socialism, Communism, dictatorship. They are sowing the seeds of unrest everywhere. Right in this city such propaganda is being carried on and in the little out of the way places as well. And we know that throughout Canada this propaganda is being put forward by organizations from foreign lands that seek to destroy our institutions. And we ask that every man and woman put the iron heel of ruthlessness against a thing of that kind. Reacting to fears of communist subversion, Bennett invoked the controversial Section 98 of the Criminal Code. Enacted in the aftermath of the Winnipeg general strike, section 98 dispensed with the presumption of innocence in outlawing potential threats to the state: specifically, anyone belonging to an organization that officially advocated the violent overthrow of the government. Even if the accused had never committed an act of violence or personally supported such an action, they could be incarcerated merely for attending meetings of such an organization, publicly speaking in its defence, or distributing its literature. Despite the broad power authorized under section 98, it targeted specifically the Communist Party of Canada. Eight of the top party leaders, including Tim Buck, were arrested on 11 August 1931 and convicted under section 98. This plan to stamp out communism backfired, however, and proved to be a damaging embarrassment for the government, especially after Buck was the target of an apparent assassination attempt. While confined to his cell during a prison riot, despite not participating in the riot, shots were fired into his cell. When an agit-prop play depicting these events, Eight Men Speak, was suppressed on 4 December 1933 by the Toronto police, a protest meeting was held where Communist politician A. E. Smith repeated the play's allegations, and he was consequently arrested for sedition. This created a storm of public protest, compounded when Buck was called as a witness to the trial and repeated the allegations in open court. Although the remarks were stricken from the record, they still discredited the prosecution's case and Smith was acquitted. As a result, the government's case against Buck lost any credibility, and Buck and his comrades were released early and fêted as heroic champions of civil liberties. Relief camp protest Having survived section 98, and benefiting from the public sympathy wrought by persecution, Communist Party members set out to organize workers in the relief camps set up by the Unemployment and Farm Relief Act. Camp workers laboured on a variety of infrastructure projects, including such things as municipal airports, roads, and park facilities, along with a number of other make-work schemes. Conditions in the camps were poor, not only because of the low pay, but also the lack of recreational facilities, isolation from family and friends, poor quality food, and the use of military discipline. Communists thus had ample grounds on which to organize camp workers, although the workers were there of their own volition. The Relief Camp Workers' Union was formed and affiliated with the Workers' Unity League, the trade union umbrella of the Communist Party. Camp workers in BC struck on 4 April 1935, and, after two months of protesting in Vancouver, began the On-to-Ottawa Trek to bring their grievances to Bennett's doorstep. The Prime Minister and his Minister of Justice, Hugh Guthrie, treated the trek as an attempted insurrection, and ordered it to be stopped. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) read the Riot Act to a crowd of 3,000 strikers and their supporters in Regina on 1 July 1935, resulting in two deaths and dozens of injured. All told, Bennett's anti-Communist policy would not bode well for his political career. Bennett's New Deal In January 1934, Bennett told the provinces that they were "wasteful and extravagant", and even told Quebec and Ontario that they were wealthy enough to manage their own problems. One year later, he had changed his tune. Following the lead of President Roosevelt's New Deal in the United States, Bennett, under the advice of William Duncan Herridge, who was Canada's Envoy to the United States, the government eventually began to follow the Americans' lead. In a series of five radio speeches to the nation in January 1935, Bennett introduced a Canadian version of the "New Deal", involving unprecedented public spending and federal intervention in the economy. Progressive income taxation, a minimum wage, a maximum number of working hours per week, unemployment insurance, health insurance, an expanded pension program, and grants to farmers were all included in the plan. In one of his addresses to the nation, Bennett said: Bennett's conversion, however, was seen as too little too late, and he faced criticism that his reforms either went too far, or did not go far enough, including from one of his cabinet ministers H. H. Stevens, who bolted the government to form the Reconstruction Party of Canada. Some of the measures were alleged to have encroached on provincial jurisdictions laid out in section 92 of the British North America Act, 1867. The courts, including the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, agreed and eventually struck down virtually all of Bennett's reforms. However, some of Bennett's initiatives, such as the Bank of Canada, which he founded in 1934, remain in place to this day, and the Canadian Wheat Board remained in place until 2011 when the government of Stephen Harper abolished it. Defeat Although there was no unity among the motley political groups that constituted Bennett's opposition, a consensus emerged that his handling of the economic crisis was insufficient and inappropriate, even from Conservative quarters. Bennett personally became a symbol of the political failings underscoring the depression. Car owners, for example, who could no longer afford gasoline, had horses pull their vehicles, which they named "Bennett buggies". Unity in his own administration suffered, notably by the defection of his Minister of Trade, Henry Herbert Stevens. Stevens left the Conservatives and formed the Reconstruction Party of Canada, after Bennett refused to implement Stevens' plan for drastic economic reform to deal with the economic crisis. The beneficiary of the overwhelming opposition during Bennett's tenure was the Liberal Party. The Tories were decimated in the October 1935 general election, winning only 40 seats to 173 for Mackenzie King's Liberals. The Tories would not form a majority government again in Canada until 1958. King's government soon implemented its own moderate reforms, including the replacement of relief camps with a scaled down provincial relief project scheme, and the repeal of section 98. Ultimately, Canada pulled out of the depression as a result of government-funded jobs associated with the preparation for and onset of the Second World War. Other measures Bennett launched the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission, laid the ground for a national air transport system, passed the Natural Products Marketing Act in 1934, cut the salaries of the federal civil service by 10%, and established the Bank of Canada. Retirement, House of Lords, and death (1935–1947) Bennett retired to Britain in 1938, and, on June 12, 1941, became the first and only former Canadian Prime Minister to be elevated to the peerage as Viscount Bennett, of Mickleham in the County of Surrey and of Calgary and Hopewell in the Dominion of Canada. The honour, conferred by British PM Winston Churchill, was in recognition for Bennett's valuable unsalaried work in the Ministry of Aircraft Production, managed by his lifelong friend Lord Beaverbrook. Bennett took an active role in the House of Lords, and attended frequently until his death. Bennett's interest in increasing public awareness and accessibility to Canada's historical records, led him to serve as vice-president of The Champlain Society from 1933 until his death. He died after suffering a heart attack while taking a bath on June 26, 1947, at Mickleham. He was exactly one week shy of his 77th birthday. He is buried there in St. Michael's Churchyard, Mickleham. The tomb, and Government of Canada marker outside, are steps from the front doors of the church. He is the only deceased former Canadian Prime Minister not buried in Canada. Unmarried, Bennett was survived by nephews William Herridge, Jr., and Robert Coats, and by brother Ronald V. Bennett. The viscountcy became extinct on his death. Legacy and assessments While Bennett was, and is still, often criticized for lack of compassion for the impoverished masses, he stayed up through many nights reading and responding to personal letters from ordinary citizens asking for his help, and often dipped into his personal fortune to send a five-dollar bill to a starving family. The total amount he gave personally is uncertain, although he personally estimated that in 1927–37 he spent well over 2.3 million dollars. Bennett was a controlling owner of the E. B. Eddy match company, which was the largest safety match manufacturer in Canada, and he was one of the richest Canadians at that time. Bennett helped put many poor, struggling young men through university. Relative to the times he lived in, he was likely the wealthiest Canadian to become prime minister. Bennett worked an exhausting schedule throughout his years as prime minister, often more than 14 hours per day, and dominated his government, usually holding several cabinet posts. He lived in a suite in the Château Laurier hotel, a short walk from Parliament Hill. The respected author Bruce Hutchison wrote that had the economic times been more normal, Bennett would likely have been regarded as a good, perhaps great, Canadian prime minister. Bennett was also a noted talent spotter. He took note of and encouraged the young Lester Pearson in the early 1930s, and appointed Pearson to significant roles on two major government inquiries: the 1931 Royal Commission on Grain Futures, and the 1934 Royal Commission on Price Spreads. Bennett saw that Pearson was recognized with an OBE after he shone in that work, arranged a bonus of $1,800, and invited him to a London conference. Former Prime Minister John Turner, who as a child, knew Bennett while he was prime minister, praised Bennett's promotion of Turner's economist mother to the highest civil service post held by a Canadian woman to that time. Criticisms Most historians consider his premiership to have been a failure at a time of severe economic crisis. H. Blair Neatby says categorically that "as a politician he was a failure". Jack Granatstein and Norman Hillmer, comparing him to all other Canadian prime ministers concluded, "Bennett utterly failed as a leader. Everyone was alienated by the end—Cabinet, caucus, party, voter and foreigner." Bennett was ranked #12 by a survey of Canadian historians out of the then 20 Prime Ministers of Canada through Jean Chrétien. The results of the survey were included in the book Prime Ministers: Ranking Canada's Leaders by J. L. Granatstein and Norman Hillmer. A 2001 book by Quebec nationalist writer Normand Lester, Le Livre noir du Canada anglais (later translated as The Black Book of English Canada) accused Bennett of having a political affiliation with, and of having provided financial support to, fascist Quebec writer Adrien Arcand. This is based on a series of letters sent to Bennett following his election as Prime Minister by Arcand, his colleague Ménard and two Conservative caucus members asking for financial support for Arcand's antisemitic newspaper Le Goglu. The book also claims that in a 1936 letter to Bennett, A. W. Reid, a Conservative organizer, estimated that Conservative Party members gave Arcand a total of $27,000 (the modern equivalent $359,284). Supreme Court appointments | Hopewell Cape. He studied law at Dalhousie University, graduating in 1893, and in 1897 moved to Calgary to establish a law firm in partnership with James Lougheed. Bennett served in the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories from 1898 to 1905, and later in the Alberta Legislature from 1909 to 1911. He was the inaugural leader of the Alberta Conservative Party from 1905, resigning upon his election to the House of Commons in 1911. Bennett briefly served as minister of justice under Arthur Meighen. He also served briefly as minister of finance in Meighen's second government in 1926. Meighen resigned the Conservative Party's leadership after his defeat in the 1926 election, with Bennett elected as his replacement in 1927. Thus, Bennett became leader of the Opposition. Bennett became prime minister after the 1930 election, where the Conservatives won a majority government over William Lyon Mackenzie King's Liberal Party. Bennett's premiership was marked primarily by the Great Depression. He and his party initially tried to combat the crisis with laissez-faire policies, but these were largely ineffective. He was also unsuccessful in establishing an imperial preference free trade agreement. Over time, Bennett's government became increasingly interventionist, attempting to replicate the popular "New Deal" enacted by Franklin Roosevelt in the United States. This about-face prompted a split within Conservative ranks, and was regarded by the general public as evidence of incompetence. Still, he left lasting legacies in the form of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and the Bank of Canada, and was regarded even by his political opponents as instrumental in mitigating the worst potential effects of the economic depression in Canada. Bennett suffered a landslide defeat in the 1935 election, with King returning to power. Bennett remained leader of the Conservative Party until 1938, when he retired to England. He was created Viscount Bennett, the only Canadian prime minister to be honoured with elevation to the peerage. Bennett is ranked as a below-average prime minister among historians and the public. Early life Bennett was born on July 3, 1870, when his mother, Henrietta Stiles, was visiting her parents' home in Hopewell Hill, New Brunswick, Canada. He was the eldest of six children and grew up nearby at the Bay of Fundy home of his father, Henry John Bennett, in Hopewell Cape, the shire town of Albert County, then a town of 1,800 people. His father descended from English ancestors who had emigrated to Connecticut in the 17th century. His great-great-grandfather, Zadock Bennett, migrated from New London, Connecticut, to Nova Scotia c. 1760, before the American Revolution, as one of the New England Planters who took the lands forcibly removed from the deported Acadians during the Great Upheaval. R. B. Bennett's family was poor, subsisting mainly on the produce of a small farm. His early days inculcated a lifelong habit of thrift. The driving force in his family was his mother. She was a Wesleyan Methodist and passed this faith and the Protestant ethic on to her son. Bennett's father does not appear to have been a good provider for his family, though the reason is unclear. He operated a general store for a while and tried to develop some gypsum deposits. The Bennetts had previously been a relatively prosperous family, operating a shipyard in Hopewell Cape, but the change to steam-powered vessels in the mid-19th century meant the gradual winding down of their business. However, the household was a literate one, subscribing to three newspapers. They were strong Conservatives; indeed one of the largest and last ships launched by the Bennett shipyard (in 1869) was the Sir John A. Macdonald. Educated in the local school, Bennett was a very good student but something of a loner. In addition to his Protestant faith, Bennett grew up with an abiding love of the British Empire, then at its apogee. A small legacy his mother received opened the doors for him to attend the normal school in Fredericton, where he trained to be a teacher; he then taught for several years at Irishtown, north of Moncton, saving his money for law school. University, early legal career Bennett started at Dalhousie University in 1890, graduating in 1893 with a law degree and very high standing. He worked his way through with a job as assistant in the library, being recommended by the Dean, Dr. Richard Chapman Weldon, MP, and participated in debating and moot court activities. He was then a partner in the Chatham law firm of Tweedie and Bennett. Max Aitken (later to become Lord Beaverbrook) was his office boy, while articling as a lawyer, acting as a stringer for the Montreal Gazette and selling life insurance. Aitken persuaded Bennett to run for alderman in the first Town Council of Chatham, and managed his campaign. Bennett was elected by one vote, and was later furious with Aitken when he heard all the promises he had made on Bennett's behalf. Moving west Despite his election to the Chatham town council, Bennett's days in the town were numbered. He was ambitious and saw that the small community was too narrow a field for him. He was already negotiating with James Lougheed to move to the North-West Territories and become his law partner in Calgary, on Weldon's recommendation. Lougheed was Calgary's richest man and most successful lawyer. Bennett moved to Calgary in 1897. A lifelong bachelor and teetotaler (although Bennett was known by select associates to occasionally drink alcohol when the press was not around to observe this), he led a rather lonely life in a hotel and later, in a boarding house. For a while a younger brother roomed with him. He ate his noon meal on workdays at the Alberta Hotel. Social life, such as it was, centred on church. There was, however, no scandal attached to his personal life. Bennett worked hard and gradually built up his legal practice. In 1908 he was one of five people appointed to the first Library Board for the city of Calgary and was instrumental in establishing the Calgary Public Library. In 1910, Bennett became a director of Calgary Power Ltd. (now formally TransAlta Corporation) and just a year later he became president. During his leadership projects completed included the first storage reservoir at Lake Minnewanka, a second transmission line to Calgary and the construction of the Kananaskis Falls hydro station. At that time, he was also director of Rocky Mountains Cement Company and Security Trust. Bennett developed an extensive legal practice in Calgary. In 1922, he started the partnership Bennett, Hannah & Sanford, which would eventually become Bennett Jones LLP. In 1929–30, he served as national President of the Canadian Bar Association. His successor in that office was Louis St. Laurent, another future Prime Minister. Early political career (1898–1921) Bennett was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the North-West Territories in the 1898 general election, representing the riding of West Calgary. He was re-elected to a second term in office in 1902 as an Independent in the North-West Territories legislature. In 1905, when Alberta was carved out of the Territories and made a province, Bennett became the first leader of the Alberta Conservative Party. In 1909, he won a seat in the provincial legislature, before resigning and switching to federal politics. He was elected to the House of Commons of Canada in 1911. At age 44, he tried to enlist in the Canadian military once World War I broke out, but was turned down as being medically unfit. In 1916, Bennett was appointed director general of the National service Board, which was in charge of identifying the number of potential recruits in the country. While Bennett supported the Conservatives, he opposed Prime Minister Robert Borden's proposal for a Union Government that would include both Conservatives and Liberals, fearing that this would ultimately hurt the Conservative Party; he was proven to be correct in this analysis. While he campaigned for Conservative candidates in the 1917 federal election he did not stand for re-election himself. Cabinet minister, leader of the Conservative Party (1921–1930) Nevertheless, Borden's successor, Arthur Meighen appointed Bennett Minister of Justice in his government, as it headed into the 1921 federal election in which both the government and Bennett were defeated. Bennett won the seat of Calgary West in the 1925 federal election and was returned to government as Minister of Finance in Meighen's short-lived government in 1926. The government was defeated in the 1926 federal election. Meighen stepped down as Tory leader, and Bennett became the party's leader in 1927 at the first Conservative leadership convention. As Opposition leader, Bennett faced off against the more experienced Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King in Commons debates, and took some time to acquire enough experience to hold his own with King. In 1930, King blundered badly when he made overly partisan statements in response to criticism over his handling of the economic downturn, which was hitting Canada very hard. King's worst error was in stating that he "would not give Tory provincial governments a five-cent piece!" This serious mistake, which drew wide press coverage, gave Bennett his needed opening to attack King, which he did successfully in the election campaign which followed. Prime Minister (1930–1935) As the leader of the Conservative party, Bennett adapted its program, organization image to promote more rapid modernization of Canada. The "New Deal" was largely a mirror of the American program. The party was torn between reaction and reform, with deep internal factionalism that led to its defeat in 1935. Bennett's critics on the left had the last word, and textbooks typically portray him as a hard-driving capitalist, pushing for American-style high tariffs and British-style imperialism, while ignoring his reform efforts. Confronting the depression Bennett defeated Prime Minister Mackenzie King in the 1930 federal election. Although Bennett was the first Prime Minister representing a constituency in Alberta, his party only won four of the province's sixteen seats. Bennett had the misfortune of taking office during the Great Depression. Bennett tried to combat the depression by increasing trade within the British Empire and imposing tariffs for imports from outside the Empire, promising that his measures would "blast" Canadian exports into world markets. His success was limited however, and his own wealth (often openly displayed) and impersonal style alienated many struggling Canadians. When his "Imperial Preference" policy failed to generate the desired result, Bennett's government had no real contingency plan. The party's pro-business and pro-banking inclinations provided little relief to the millions of increasingly desperate and agitated unemployed. Despite the economic crisis, "laissez-faire" persisted as the guiding economic principle of Conservative Party ideology; similar attitudes dominated worldwide as well during this era. Government relief to the unemployed was considered a disincentive to individual initiative, and was therefore only granted in the most minimal amounts and attached to work programs. An additional concern of the federal government was that large numbers of disaffected unemployed men concentrating in urban centres created a volatile situation. As an "alternative to bloodshed on the streets", the stop-gap solution for unemployment chosen by the Bennett government was to establish military-run and -styled relief camps in remote areas throughout the country, where single unemployed men toiled for twenty cents a day. Any relief beyond this was left to provincial and municipal governments, many of which were either insolvent or on the brink of bankruptcy, and which railed against the inaction of other levels of government. Partisan differences began to sharpen on the question of government intervention in the economy, since lower levels of government were largely in Liberal hands, and protest movements were beginning to send their own parties into the political mainstream, notably the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and William Aberhart's Social Credit Party in Alberta. In July 1931, Bennett's government passed the Unemployment and Farm Relief Act in an effort to stanch the depression, but events were rapidly falling out of their control. Hosts, dominates 1932 Imperial Conference Bennett hosted the 1932 Imperial Economic Conference in Ottawa; this was the first time Canada had hosted the meetings. It was attended by the leaders of the independent dominions of the British Empire (which later became the Commonwealth of Nations). Bennett dominated the meetings, which were ultimately unproductive, due to the inability of leaders to agree on policies, mainly to combat the economic woes dominating the world at the time. Anti-communism A nickname that would stick with Bennett for the remainder of his political career, "Iron Heel Bennett", came from a 1932 speech he gave in Toronto that ironically, if unintentionally, alluded to Jack London's socialist novel: What do they offer you in exchange for the present order? Socialism, Communism, dictatorship. They are sowing the seeds of unrest everywhere. Right in this city such propaganda is being carried on and in the little out of the way places as well. And we know that throughout Canada this propaganda is being put forward by organizations from foreign lands that seek to destroy our institutions. And we ask that every man and woman put the iron heel of ruthlessness against a thing of that kind. Reacting to fears |
1911 Scientific American article: "in the far distant future, natural fuels having been exhausted [solar power] will remain as the only means of existence of the human race". The theory of peak oil was published in 1956. In the 1970s environmentalists promoted the development of renewable energy both as a replacement for the eventual depletion of oil, as well as for an escape from dependence on oil, and the first electricity-generating wind turbines appeared. Solar had long been used for heating and cooling, but solar panels were too costly to build solar farms until 1980. Since the 21st century, many parts of the world have transitioned to sources of renewable energy from fossil fuels. Mainstream technologies Hydropower Since water is about 800 times denser than air, even a slow flowing stream of water, or moderate sea swell, can yield considerable amounts of energy. There are many forms of water energy: Historically, hydroelectric power came from constructing large hydroelectric dams and reservoirs, which are still popular in developing countries. The largest of them are the Three Gorges Dam (2003) in China and the Itaipu Dam (1984) built by Brazil and Paraguay. Small hydro systems are hydroelectric power installations that typically produce up to of power. They are often used on small rivers or as a low-impact development on larger rivers. China is the largest producer of hydroelectricity in the world and has more than 45,000 small hydro installations. Run-of-the-river hydroelectricity plants derive energy from rivers without the creation of a large reservoir. The water is typically conveyed along the side of the river valley (using channels, pipes and/or tunnels) until it is high above the valley floor, whereupon it can be allowed to fall through a penstock to drive a turbine. This style of generation may still produce a large amount of electricity, such as the Chief Joseph Dam on the Columbia River in the United States. Many run-of-the-river hydro power plants are micro hydro or pico hydro plants. Hydropower is produced in 150 countries, with the Asia-Pacific region generating 32 percent of global hydropower in 2010. Of the top 50 countries by percentage of electricity generated from renewables, 46 are primarily hydroelectric. China is the largest hydroelectricity producer, with 721 terawatt-hours of production in 2010, representing around 17 percent of domestic electricity use. There are now three hydroelectricity stations larger than 10 GW: the Three Gorges Dam in China, Itaipu Dam across the Brazil/Paraguay border, and Guri Dam in Venezuela. Wave power, which captures the energy of ocean surface waves, and tidal power, converting the energy of tides, are two forms of hydropower with future potential; however, they are not yet widely employed commercially. According to the Energy Information Administration, the theoretical annual energy potential of waves off the coasts of the United States is estimated to be as much as 2.64 trillion kilowatthours, or the equivalent of about 66% of U.S. electricity generation in 2020. A demonstration project operated by the Ocean Renewable Power Company on the coast of Maine, and connected to the grid, harnesses tidal power from the Bay of Fundy, location of the world's highest tidal flow. Ocean thermal energy conversion, which uses the temperature difference between cooler deep and warmer surface waters, currently has no economic feasibility. Wind power Air flow can be used to run wind turbines. Modern utility-scale wind turbines range from around 600 kW to 9 MW of rated power. The power available from the wind is a function of the cube of the wind speed, so as wind speed increases, power output increases up to the maximum output for the particular turbine. Areas where winds are stronger and more constant, such as offshore and high-altitude sites, are preferred locations for wind farms. Typically, full load hours of wind turbines vary between 16 and 57 percent annually but might be higher in particularly favorable offshore sites. Wind-generated electricity met nearly 4% of global electricity demand in 2015, with nearly 63 GW of new wind power capacity installed. Wind energy was the leading source of new capacity in Europe, the US and Canada, and the second largest in China. In Denmark, wind energy met more than 40% of its electricity demand while Ireland, Portugal and Spain each met nearly 20%. Globally, the long-term technical potential of wind energy is believed to be five times total current global energy production, or 40 times current electricity demand, assuming all practical barriers needed were overcome. This would require wind turbines to be installed over large areas, particularly in areas of higher wind resources, such as offshore. As offshore wind speeds average ~90% greater than that of land, so offshore resources can contribute substantially more energy than land-stationed turbines. Solar energy Solar energy, radiant light and heat from the sun, is harnessed using a range of ever-evolving technologies such as solar heating, photovoltaics, concentrated solar power (CSP), concentrator photovoltaics (CPV), solar architecture and artificial photosynthesis. Solar technologies are broadly characterized as either passive solar or active solar depending on the way they capture, convert, and distribute solar energy. Passive solar techniques include orienting a building to the Sun, selecting materials with favorable thermal mass or light dispersing properties, and designing spaces that naturally circulate air. Active solar technologies encompass solar thermal energy, using solar collectors for heating, and solar power, converting sunlight into electricity either directly using photovoltaics (PV), or indirectly using concentrated solar power (CSP). A photovoltaic system converts light into electrical direct current (DC) by taking advantage of the photoelectric effect. Solar PV has turned into a multi-billion, fast-growing industry, continues to improve its cost-effectiveness, and has the most potential of any renewable technologies together with CSP. Concentrated solar power (CSP) systems use lenses or mirrors and tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight into a small beam. Commercial concentrated solar power plants were first developed in the 1980s. CSP-Stirling has by far the highest efficiency among all solar energy technologies. In 2011, the International Energy Agency said that "the development of affordable, inexhaustible and clean solar energy technologies will have huge longer-term benefits. It will increase countries' energy security through reliance on an indigenous, inexhaustible and mostly import-independent resource, enhance sustainability, reduce pollution, lower the costs of mitigating climate change, and keep fossil fuel prices lower than otherwise. These advantages are global. Hence the additional costs of the incentives for early deployment should be considered learning investments; they must be wisely spent and need to be widely shared". Solar power accounts for 505 GW annually, which is about 2% of the world's electricity. Solar energy can be harnessed anywhere that receives sunlight; however, the amount of solar energy that can be harnessed for electricity generation is influenced by weather conditions, geographic location and time of day. Australia has the largest proportion of solar electricity in the world, supplying 9.9% of the country's electrical demand in 2020. Bioenergy Biomass is biological material derived from living, or recently living organisms. It most often refers to plants or plant-derived materials which are specifically called lignocellulosic biomass. As an energy source, biomass can either be used directly via combustion to produce heat, or indirectly after converting it to various forms of biofuel. Conversion of biomass to biofuel can be achieved by different methods which are broadly classified into: thermal, chemical, and biochemical methods. Wood was the largest biomass energy source as of 2012; examples include forest residues – such as dead trees, branches and tree stumps –, yard clippings, wood chips and even municipal solid waste. In the second sense, biomass includes plant or animal matter that can be converted into fibers or other industrial chemicals, including biofuels. Industrial biomass can be grown from numerous types of plants, including miscanthus, switchgrass, hemp, corn, poplar, willow, sorghum, sugarcane, bamboo, and a variety of tree species, ranging from eucalyptus to oil palm (palm oil). Plant energy is produced by crops specifically grown for use as fuel that offer high biomass output per hectare with low input energy. The grain can be used for liquid transportation fuels while the straw can be burned to produce heat or electricity. Plant biomass can also be degraded from cellulose to glucose through a series of chemical treatments, and the resulting sugar can then be used as a first-generation biofuel. Biomass can be converted to other usable forms of energy such as methane gas or transportation fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. Rotting garbage, and agricultural and human waste, all release methane gasalso called landfill gas or biogas. Crops, such as corn and sugarcane, can be fermented to produce the transportation fuel, ethanol. Biodiesel, another transportation fuel, can be produced from left-over food products such as vegetable oils and animal fats. There is a great deal of research involving algal fuel or algae-derived biomass due to the fact that it is a non-food resource and can be produced at rates 5 to 10 times those of other types of land-based agriculture, such as corn and soy. Once harvested, it can be fermented to produce biofuels such as ethanol, butanol, and methane, as well as biodiesel and hydrogen. The biomass used for electricity generation varies by region. Forest by-products, such as wood residues, are common in the United States. Agricultural waste is common in Mauritius (sugar cane residue) and Southeast Asia (rice husks). Animal husbandry residues, such as poultry litter, are common in the United Kingdom. Biofuels include a wide range of fuels which are derived from biomass. The term covers solid, liquid, and gaseous fuels. Liquid biofuels include bioalcohols, such as bioethanol, and oils, such as biodiesel. Gaseous biofuels include biogas, landfill gas and synthetic gas. Bioethanol is an alcohol made by fermenting the sugar components of plant materials and it is made mostly from sugar and starch crops. These include maize, sugarcane and, more recently, sweet sorghum. The latter crop is particularly suitable for growing in dryland conditions, and is being investigated by International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics for its potential to provide fuel, along with food and animal feed, in arid parts of Asia and Africa. With advanced technology being developed, cellulosic biomass, such as trees and grasses, are also used as feedstocks for ethanol production. Ethanol can be used as a fuel for vehicles in its pure form, but it is usually used as a gasoline additive to increase octane and improve vehicle emissions. Bioethanol is widely used in the United States and in Brazil. The energy costs for producing bio-ethanol are almost equal to, the energy yields from bio-ethanol. However, according to the European Environment Agency, biofuels do not address global warming concerns. Biodiesel is made from vegetable oils, animal fats or recycled greases. It can be used as a fuel for vehicles in its pure form, or more commonly as a diesel additive to reduce levels of particulates, carbon monoxide, and hydrocarbons from diesel-powered vehicles. Biodiesel is produced from oils or fats using transesterification and is the most common biofuel in Europe. Biofuels provided 2.7% of the world's transport fuel in 2010. Biomass, biogas and biofuels are burned to produce heat/power and in doing so harm the environment. Pollutants such as sulphurous oxides (SOx), nitrous oxides (NOx), and particulate matter (PM) are produced from the combustion of biomass. The World Health Organization estimates that 3.7 million prematurely died from outdoor air pollution in 2012 while indoor pollution from biomass burning effects over 3 billion people worldwide. Geothermal energy High temperature geothermal energy is from thermal energy generated and stored in the Earth. Thermal energy is the energy that determines the temperature of matter. Earth's geothermal energy originates from the original formation of the planet and from radioactive decay of minerals (in currently uncertain but possibly roughly equal proportions). The geothermal gradient, which is the difference in temperature between the core of the planet and its surface, drives a continuous conduction of thermal energy in the form of heat from the core to the surface. The adjective geothermal originates from the Greek roots geo, meaning earth, and thermos, meaning heat. The heat that is used for geothermal energy can be from deep within the Earth, all the way down to Earth's core – down. At the core, temperatures may reach over 9,000 °F (5,000 °C). Heat conducts from the core to the surrounding rock. Extremely high temperature and pressure cause some rock to melt, which is commonly known as magma. Magma convects upward since it is lighter than the solid rock. This magma then heats rock and water in the crust, sometimes up to . Low temperature geothermal refers to the use of the outer crust of the Earth as a thermal battery to facilitate renewable thermal energy for heating and cooling buildings, and other refrigeration and industrial uses. In this form of geothermal, a geothermal heat pump and ground-coupled heat exchanger are used together to move heat energy into the Earth (for cooling) and out of the Earth (for heating) on a varying seasonal basis. Low-temperature geothermal (generally referred to as "GHP") is an increasingly important renewable technology because it both reduces total annual energy loads associated with heating and cooling, and it also flattens the electric demand curve eliminating the extreme summer and winter peak electric supply requirements. Thus low temperature geothermal/GHP is becoming an increasing national priority with multiple tax credit support and focus as part of the ongoing movement toward net zero energy. Emerging technologies There are also other renewable energy technologies that are still under development, including cellulosic ethanol, hot-dry-rock geothermal power, and marine energy. These technologies are not yet widely demonstrated or have limited commercialization. Many are on the horizon and may have potential comparable to other renewable energy technologies, but still depend on attracting sufficient attention and research, development and demonstration (RD&D) funding. There are numerous organizations within the academic, federal, and commercial sectors conducting large-scale advanced research in the field of renewable energy. This research spans several areas of focus across the renewable energy spectrum. Most of the research is targeted at improving efficiency and increasing overall energy yields. Multiple federally supported research organizations have focused on renewable energy in recent years. Two of the most prominent of these labs are Sandia National Laboratories and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), both of which are funded by the United States Department of Energy and supported by various corporate partners. Sandia has a total budget of $2.4 billion while NREL has a budget of $375 million. Enhanced geothermal system Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) are a new type of geothermal power technology that does not require natural convective hydrothermal resources. The vast majority of geothermal energy within drilling reach is in dry and non-porous rock. EGS technologies "enhance" and/or create geothermal resources in this "hot dry rock (HDR)" through hydraulic fracturing. EGS and HDR technologies, such as hydrothermal geothermal, are expected to be baseload resources that produce power 24 hours a day like a fossil plant. Distinct from hydrothermal, HDR and EGS may be feasible anywhere in the world, depending on the economic limits of drill depth. Good locations are over deep granite covered by a thick (3–5 km) layer of insulating sediments which slow heat loss. There are HDR and EGS systems currently being developed and tested in France, Australia, Japan, Germany, the U.S., and Switzerland. The largest EGS project in the world is a 25 megawatt demonstration plant currently being developed in the Cooper Basin, Australia. The Cooper Basin has the potential to generate 5,000–10,000 MW. Cellulosic ethanol Several refineries that can process biomass and turn it into ethanol are built by companies such as Iogen, POET, and Abengoa, while other companies such as the Verenium Corporation, Novozymes, and Dyadic International are producing enzymes which could enable future commercialization. The shift from food crop feedstocks to waste residues and native grasses offers significant opportunities for a range of players, from farmers to biotechnology firms, and from project developers to investors. Marine energy Marine energy (also sometimes referred to as ocean energy) is the energy carried by ocean waves, tides, salinity, and ocean temperature differences. The movement of water in the world's oceans creates a vast store of kinetic energy, or energy in motion. This energy can be harnessed to generate electricity to power homes, transport and industries. The term marine energy encompasses both wave powerpower from surface waves, and tidal powerobtained from the kinetic energy of large bodies of moving water. Reverse electrodialysis (RED) is a technology for generating electricity by mixing fresh river water and salty sea water in large power cells designed for this purpose; as of 2016, it is being tested at a small scale (50 kW). Offshore wind power is not a form of marine energy, as wind power is derived from the wind, even if the wind turbines are placed over water. The oceans have a tremendous amount of energy and are close to many if not most concentrated populations. Ocean energy has the potential of providing a substantial amount of new renewable energy around the world. Solar energy developments Experimental solar power Concentrated photovoltaics (CPV) systems employ sunlight concentrated onto photovoltaic surfaces for the purpose of electricity generation. Thermoelectric, or "thermovoltaic" devices convert a temperature difference between dissimilar materials into an electric current. Floating solar arrays Floating solar arrays are PV systems that float on the surface of drinking water reservoirs, quarry lakes, irrigation canals or remediation and tailing ponds. A small number of such systems exist in France, India, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and the United States. The systems are said to have advantages over photovoltaics on land. The cost of land is more expensive, and there are fewer rules and regulations for structures built on bodies of water not used for recreation. Unlike most land-based solar plants, floating arrays can be unobtrusive because they are hidden from public view. They achieve higher efficiencies than PV panels on land, because water cools the panels. The panels have a special coating to prevent rust or corrosion. In May 2008, the Far Niente Winery in Oakville, California, pioneered the world's first floatovoltaic system by installing 994 solar PV modules with a total capacity of | the sugar components of plant materials and it is made mostly from sugar and starch crops. These include maize, sugarcane and, more recently, sweet sorghum. The latter crop is particularly suitable for growing in dryland conditions, and is being investigated by International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics for its potential to provide fuel, along with food and animal feed, in arid parts of Asia and Africa. With advanced technology being developed, cellulosic biomass, such as trees and grasses, are also used as feedstocks for ethanol production. Ethanol can be used as a fuel for vehicles in its pure form, but it is usually used as a gasoline additive to increase octane and improve vehicle emissions. Bioethanol is widely used in the United States and in Brazil. The energy costs for producing bio-ethanol are almost equal to, the energy yields from bio-ethanol. However, according to the European Environment Agency, biofuels do not address global warming concerns. Biodiesel is made from vegetable oils, animal fats or recycled greases. It can be used as a fuel for vehicles in its pure form, or more commonly as a diesel additive to reduce levels of particulates, carbon monoxide, and hydrocarbons from diesel-powered vehicles. Biodiesel is produced from oils or fats using transesterification and is the most common biofuel in Europe. Biofuels provided 2.7% of the world's transport fuel in 2010. Biomass, biogas and biofuels are burned to produce heat/power and in doing so harm the environment. Pollutants such as sulphurous oxides (SOx), nitrous oxides (NOx), and particulate matter (PM) are produced from the combustion of biomass. The World Health Organization estimates that 3.7 million prematurely died from outdoor air pollution in 2012 while indoor pollution from biomass burning effects over 3 billion people worldwide. Geothermal energy High temperature geothermal energy is from thermal energy generated and stored in the Earth. Thermal energy is the energy that determines the temperature of matter. Earth's geothermal energy originates from the original formation of the planet and from radioactive decay of minerals (in currently uncertain but possibly roughly equal proportions). The geothermal gradient, which is the difference in temperature between the core of the planet and its surface, drives a continuous conduction of thermal energy in the form of heat from the core to the surface. The adjective geothermal originates from the Greek roots geo, meaning earth, and thermos, meaning heat. The heat that is used for geothermal energy can be from deep within the Earth, all the way down to Earth's core – down. At the core, temperatures may reach over 9,000 °F (5,000 °C). Heat conducts from the core to the surrounding rock. Extremely high temperature and pressure cause some rock to melt, which is commonly known as magma. Magma convects upward since it is lighter than the solid rock. This magma then heats rock and water in the crust, sometimes up to . Low temperature geothermal refers to the use of the outer crust of the Earth as a thermal battery to facilitate renewable thermal energy for heating and cooling buildings, and other refrigeration and industrial uses. In this form of geothermal, a geothermal heat pump and ground-coupled heat exchanger are used together to move heat energy into the Earth (for cooling) and out of the Earth (for heating) on a varying seasonal basis. Low-temperature geothermal (generally referred to as "GHP") is an increasingly important renewable technology because it both reduces total annual energy loads associated with heating and cooling, and it also flattens the electric demand curve eliminating the extreme summer and winter peak electric supply requirements. Thus low temperature geothermal/GHP is becoming an increasing national priority with multiple tax credit support and focus as part of the ongoing movement toward net zero energy. Emerging technologies There are also other renewable energy technologies that are still under development, including cellulosic ethanol, hot-dry-rock geothermal power, and marine energy. These technologies are not yet widely demonstrated or have limited commercialization. Many are on the horizon and may have potential comparable to other renewable energy technologies, but still depend on attracting sufficient attention and research, development and demonstration (RD&D) funding. There are numerous organizations within the academic, federal, and commercial sectors conducting large-scale advanced research in the field of renewable energy. This research spans several areas of focus across the renewable energy spectrum. Most of the research is targeted at improving efficiency and increasing overall energy yields. Multiple federally supported research organizations have focused on renewable energy in recent years. Two of the most prominent of these labs are Sandia National Laboratories and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), both of which are funded by the United States Department of Energy and supported by various corporate partners. Sandia has a total budget of $2.4 billion while NREL has a budget of $375 million. Enhanced geothermal system Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) are a new type of geothermal power technology that does not require natural convective hydrothermal resources. The vast majority of geothermal energy within drilling reach is in dry and non-porous rock. EGS technologies "enhance" and/or create geothermal resources in this "hot dry rock (HDR)" through hydraulic fracturing. EGS and HDR technologies, such as hydrothermal geothermal, are expected to be baseload resources that produce power 24 hours a day like a fossil plant. Distinct from hydrothermal, HDR and EGS may be feasible anywhere in the world, depending on the economic limits of drill depth. Good locations are over deep granite covered by a thick (3–5 km) layer of insulating sediments which slow heat loss. There are HDR and EGS systems currently being developed and tested in France, Australia, Japan, Germany, the U.S., and Switzerland. The largest EGS project in the world is a 25 megawatt demonstration plant currently being developed in the Cooper Basin, Australia. The Cooper Basin has the potential to generate 5,000–10,000 MW. Cellulosic ethanol Several refineries that can process biomass and turn it into ethanol are built by companies such as Iogen, POET, and Abengoa, while other companies such as the Verenium Corporation, Novozymes, and Dyadic International are producing enzymes which could enable future commercialization. The shift from food crop feedstocks to waste residues and native grasses offers significant opportunities for a range of players, from farmers to biotechnology firms, and from project developers to investors. Marine energy Marine energy (also sometimes referred to as ocean energy) is the energy carried by ocean waves, tides, salinity, and ocean temperature differences. The movement of water in the world's oceans creates a vast store of kinetic energy, or energy in motion. This energy can be harnessed to generate electricity to power homes, transport and industries. The term marine energy encompasses both wave powerpower from surface waves, and tidal powerobtained from the kinetic energy of large bodies of moving water. Reverse electrodialysis (RED) is a technology for generating electricity by mixing fresh river water and salty sea water in large power cells designed for this purpose; as of 2016, it is being tested at a small scale (50 kW). Offshore wind power is not a form of marine energy, as wind power is derived from the wind, even if the wind turbines are placed over water. The oceans have a tremendous amount of energy and are close to many if not most concentrated populations. Ocean energy has the potential of providing a substantial amount of new renewable energy around the world. Solar energy developments Experimental solar power Concentrated photovoltaics (CPV) systems employ sunlight concentrated onto photovoltaic surfaces for the purpose of electricity generation. Thermoelectric, or "thermovoltaic" devices convert a temperature difference between dissimilar materials into an electric current. Floating solar arrays Floating solar arrays are PV systems that float on the surface of drinking water reservoirs, quarry lakes, irrigation canals or remediation and tailing ponds. A small number of such systems exist in France, India, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and the United States. The systems are said to have advantages over photovoltaics on land. The cost of land is more expensive, and there are fewer rules and regulations for structures built on bodies of water not used for recreation. Unlike most land-based solar plants, floating arrays can be unobtrusive because they are hidden from public view. They achieve higher efficiencies than PV panels on land, because water cools the panels. The panels have a special coating to prevent rust or corrosion. In May 2008, the Far Niente Winery in Oakville, California, pioneered the world's first floatovoltaic system by installing 994 solar PV modules with a total capacity of 477 kW onto 130 pontoons and floating them on the winery's irrigation pond. Utility-scale floating PV farms are starting to be built. Kyocera will develop the world's largest, a 13.4 MW farm on the reservoir above Yamakura Dam in Chiba Prefecture using 50,000 solar panels. Salt-water resistant floating farms are also being constructed for ocean use. The largest so far announced floatovoltaic project is a 350 MW power station in the Amazon region of Brazil. Perovskite solar cells Solar-assisted heat pump A heat pump is a device that provides heat energy from a source of heat to a destination called a "heat sink". Heat pumps are designed to move thermal energy opposite to the direction of spontaneous heat flow by absorbing heat from a cold space and releasing it to a warmer one. A solar-assisted heat pump represents the integration of a heat pump and thermal solar panels in a single integrated system. Typically these two technologies are used separately (or only placing them in parallel) to produce hot water. In this system the solar thermal panel performs the function of the low temperature heat source and the heat produced is used to feed the heat pump's evaporator. The goal of this system is to get high COP and then produce energy in a more efficient and less expensive way. It is possible to use any type of solar thermal panel (sheet and tubes, roll-bond, heat pipe, thermal plates) or hybrid (mono/polycrystalline, thin film) in combination with the heat pump. The use of a hybrid panel is preferable because it allows covering a part of the electricity demand of the heat pump and reduces the power consumption and consequently the variable costs of the system. Solar aircraft An electric aircraft is an aircraft that runs on electric motors rather than internal combustion engines, with electricity coming from fuel cells, solar cells, ultracapacitors, power beaming, or batteries. Currently, flying manned electric aircraft are mostly experimental demonstrators, though many small unmanned aerial vehicles are powered by batteries. Electrically powered model aircraft have been flown since the 1970s, with one report in 1957. The first man-carrying electrically powered flights were made in 1973. Between 2015 and 2016, a manned, solar-powered plane, Solar Impulse 2, completed a circumnavigation of the Earth. Solar updraft tower A solar updraft tower is a renewable-energy power plant for generating electricity from low-temperature solar heat. Sunshine heats the air beneath a very wide greenhouse-like roofed collector structure surrounding the central base of a very tall chimney tower. The resulting convection causes a hot air updraft in the tower by the chimney effect. This airflow drives wind turbines placed in the chimney updraft or around the chimney base to produce electricity. Plans for scaled-up versions of demonstration models will allow significant power generation and may allow the development of other applications, such as water extraction or distillation, and agriculture or horticulture. A more advanced version of a similarly themed technology is the Vortex engine which aims to replace large physical chimneys with a vortex of air created by a shorter, less-expensive structure. Space-based solar power For either photovoltaic or thermal systems, one option is to loft them into space, particularly Geosynchronous orbit. To be competitive with Earth-based solar power systems, the specific mass (kg/kW) times the cost to loft mass plus the cost of the parts needs to be $2400 or less. I.e., for a parts cost plus rectenna of $1100/kW, the product of the $/kg and kg/kW must be $1300/kW or less. Thus for 6.5 kg/kW, the transport cost cannot exceed $200/kg. While that will require a 100 to one reduction, SpaceX is targeting a ten to one reduction, Reaction Engines may make a 100 to one reduction possible. Artificial photosynthesis Artificial photosynthesis uses techniques including nanotechnology to store solar electromagnetic energy in chemical bonds by splitting water to produce hydrogen and then using carbon dioxide to make methanol. Researchers in this field are striving to design molecular mimics of photosynthesis that use a wider region of the solar spectrum, employ catalytic systems made from abundant, inexpensive materials that are robust, readily repaired, non-toxic, stable in a variety of environmental conditions and perform more efficiently allowing a greater proportion of photon energy to end up in the storage compounds, i.e., carbohydrates (rather than building and sustaining living cells). However, prominent research faces hurdles, Sun Catalytix a MIT spin-off stopped scaling up their prototype fuel-cell in 2012, because it offers few savings over other ways to make hydrogen from sunlight. Others Algae fuels Producing liquid fuels from oil-rich varieties of algae is an ongoing research topic. Various microalgae grown in open or closed systems are being tried including some systems that can be set up in brownfield and desert lands. Water vapor Collection of static electricity charges from water droplets on metal surfaces is an experimental technology that would be especially useful in low-income countries with relative air humidity over 60%. Crop wastes AuREUS devices (Aurora Renewable Energy & UV Sequestration), which are based on crop wastes can absorb ultraviolet light from the sun and turn it into renewable energy. Integration into the energy system Renewable energy production from some sources such as wind and solar is more variable and more geographically spread than technology based on fossil fuels and nuclear. While integrating it into the wider energy system is feasible, it does lead to some additional challenges such as increased production volatility and decreased system inertia. Implementation of energy storage, using a wide variety of renewable energy technologies, and implementing a smart grid in which energy is automatically used at the moment it is produced can reduce risks and costs of renewable energy implementation. Electrical energy storage Electrical energy storage is a collection of methods used to store electrical energy. Electrical energy is stored during times when production (especially from intermittent sources such as wind power, tidal power, solar power) exceeds consumption, and returned to the grid when production falls below consumption. Pumped-storage hydroelectricity accounts for more than 85% of all grid power storage. Costs of lithium-ion batteries are dropping rapidly, and are increasingly being deployed grid ancillary services and for domestic storage. Additionally, power can be stored in hydrogen fuel cells. Market and industry trends Renewable power has been more effective in creating jobs than coal or oil in the United States. In 2016, employment in the sector increased 6% in the United States while employment in the oil and gas sector decreased 18%. Worldwide, renewables employ about 8.1 million people as of 2016. Growth of renewables From the end of 2004, worldwide renewable energy capacity grew at rates of 10–60% annually for many technologies. In 2015 global investment in renewables rose 5% to $285.9 billion, breaking the previous record of $278.5 billion in 2011. 2015 was also the first year that saw renewables, excluding large hydro, account for the majority of all new power capacity (134 GW, making up 54% of the total). Of the renewables total, wind accounted for 72 GW and solar photovoltaics 56 GW; both record-breaking numbers and sharply up from 2014 figures (49 GW and 45 GW respectively). In financial terms, solar made up 56% of total new investment and wind accounted for 38%. In 2014 global wind power capacity expanded 16% to 369,553 MW. Yearly wind energy production is also growing rapidly and has reached around 4% of worldwide electricity usage, 11.4% in the EU, and it is widely used in Asia, and the United States. In 2015, worldwide installed photovoltaics capacity increased to 227 gigawatts (GW), sufficient to supply 1 percent of global electricity demands. Solar thermal energy stations operate in the United States and Spain, and as of 2016, the largest of these is the 392 MW Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California. The world's largest geothermal power installation is The Geysers in California, with a rated capacity of 750 MW. Brazil has one of the largest renewable energy programs in the world, involving production of ethanol fuel from sugar cane, and ethanol now provides 18% of the country's automotive fuel. Ethanol fuel is also widely available in the United States. In 2017, investments in renewable energy amounted to US$279.8 billion worldwide, with China accounting for US$126.6 billion or 45% of the global investments, the United States for US$40.5 billion, and Europe for US$40.9 billion. The results of a recent review of the literature concluded that as greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters begin to be held liable for damages resulting from GHG emissions resulting in climate change, a high value for liability mitigation would provide powerful incentives for deployment of renewable energy technologies. In the decade of 2010–2019, worldwide investment in renewable energy capacity excluding large hydropower amounted to US$2.7 trillion, of which the top countries China contributed US$818 billion, the United States contributed US$392.3 billion, Japan contributed US$210.9 billion, Germany contributed US$183.4 billion, and the United Kingdom contributed US$126.5 billion. This was an increase of over three and possibly four times the equivalent amount invested in the decade of 2000–2009 (no data is available for 2000–2003). Future projections Renewable energy technologies are getting cheaper, through technological change and through the benefits of mass production and market competition. A 2018 report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), found that the cost of renewable energy is quickly falling, and will likely be equal to or less than the cost of non-renewables such as fossil fuels by 2020. The report found that solar power costs have dropped 73% since 2010 and onshore wind costs have dropped by 23% in that same timeframe. Current projections concerning the future cost of renewables vary, however. The EIA has predicted that almost two-thirds of net additions to power capacity will come from renewables by 2020 due to the combined policy benefits of local pollution, decarbonisation and energy diversification. According to a 2018 report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, wind and solar power are expected to generate roughly 50% of the world's energy needs by 2050, while coal powered electricity plants are expected to drop to just 11%. Renewable energy costs continue to drop, and the levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) is declining for wind power, solar photovoltaic (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP) and some biomass technologies. Renewable energy is also the most economic solution for new grid-connected capacity in areas with good resources. As the cost of renewable power falls, the scope of economically viable applications increases. Renewable technologies are now often the most economic solution for new generating capacity. Where "oil-fired generation is the predominant power generation source (e.g. on islands, off-grid and in some countries) a lower-cost renewable solution almost always exists today". Demand In July 2014, WWF and the World Resources Institute convened a discussion among a number of major US companies who had declared their intention to increase their use of renewable energy. These discussions identified a number of "principles" which companies seeking greater access to renewable energy considered important market deliverables. These principles included choice (between suppliers and between products), cost competitiveness, longer term fixed price supplies, access to third-party financing vehicles, and collaboration. UK statistics released in September 2020 noted that "the proportion of demand met from renewables varies from a low of 3.4 per cent (for transport, mainly from biofuels) to highs of over 20 per cent for 'other final users', which is largely the service and commercial sectors that consume relatively large quantities of electricity, and industry". In some locations, individual households can opt to purchase renewable energy through a consumer green energy program. Trends for individual technologies Hydroelectricity In 2017 the world renewable hydropower capacity was 1,154 GW. Only a quarter of the worlds estimated hydroelectric potential of 14,000 TWh/year has been developed, the regional potentials for the growth of hydropower around the world are, 71% Europe, 75% North America, 79% South America, 95% Africa, 95% Middle East, 82% Asia Pacific. New hydropower projects face opposition from local communities due to their large impact, including relocation of communities and flooding of wildlife habitats and farming land. High cost and lead times from permission process, including environmental and risk assessments, with lack of environmental and social acceptance are therefore the primary challenges for new developments. In addition, economic limitations in the third world and the lack of a transmission system in undeveloped areas result in the possibility of developing 25% of the remaining potential before 2050, with the bulk of that being in the Asia Pacific area. There is slow growth taking place in Western counties, but not in the conventional dam and reservoir style of the past. New projects take the form of run-of-the-river and small hydro, neither using large reservoirs. It is popular to repower old dams thereby increasing their efficiency and capacity as well as quicker responsiveness on the grid. Where circumstances permit existing dams such as the Russell Dam built in 1985 may be updated with "pump back" facilities for pumped-storage which is useful for peak loads or to support intermittent wind and solar power. Countries with large hydroelectric developments such as Canada and Norway are spending billions to expand their grids to trade with neighboring countries having limited hydro. Wind power development Wind power is widely used in Europe, China, and the United States. From 2004 to 2017, worldwide installed capacity of wind power has been growing from 47 GW to 514 GW—a more than tenfold increase within 13 years As of the end of 2014, China, the United States and Germany combined accounted for half of total global capacity. Several other countries have achieved relatively high levels of wind power penetration, such as 21% of stationary electricity production in Denmark, 18% in Portugal, 16% in Spain, and 14% in Ireland in 2010 and have since continued to expand their installed capacity. More than 80 countries around the world are using wind power on a commercial basis. Wind turbines are increasing in power with some commercially deployed models generating over 8MW per turbine. More powerful models are in development, see list of most powerful wind turbines. Offshore wind power As of 2017, offshore wind power amounted to 18.7 GW of global installed capacity, accounting for only 3.6% of the total wind power capacity. List of offshore and onshore wind farms As of 2013, the Alta Wind Energy Center (California, 1.5 GW) is the world's largest single wind farm. The Walney Extension (London, 0.7 GW) is the largest offshore wind farm in the world. Gansu Wind Farm (China, 7.9 GW) is the largest wind energy project generating project consisting of 18 wind farms. Solar thermal Solar thermal energy capacity has increased from 1.3 GW in 2012 to 5.0 GW in 2017. Spain is the world leader in solar thermal power deployment with 2.3 GW deployed. The United States has 1.8 GW, most of it in California where 1.4 GW of solar thermal power projects are operational. Several power plants have been constructed in the Mojave Desert, Southwestern United States. As of 2017 only 4 other countries have deployments above 100 MW: South Africa (300 MW) India (229 MW) Morocco (180 MW) and United Arab Emirates (100 MW). The United States conducted much early research in photovoltaics and concentrated solar power. The U.S. is among the top countries in the world in electricity generated by the Sun and several of the world's largest utility-scale installations are located in the desert Southwest. The oldest solar thermal power plant in the world is the 354 megawatt (MW) SEGS thermal power plant, in California. The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is a solar thermal power project in the California Mojave Desert, 40 miles (64 km) southwest of Las Vegas, with a gross capacity of 377 MW. The 280 MW Solana Generating Station is a solar power plant near Gila Bend, Arizona, about southwest of Phoenix, completed in 2013. When commissioned it was the largest parabolic trough plant in the world and the first U.S. solar plant with molten salt thermal energy storage. In developing countries, three World Bank projects for integrated solar thermal/combined-cycle gas-turbine power plants in Egypt, Mexico, and Morocco have been approved. Photovoltaic development Photovoltaics (PV) is rapidly-growing with global capacity increasing from 177 GW at the end of 2014 to 385 GW in 2017. PV uses solar cells assembled into solar panels to convert sunlight into electricity. PV systems range from small, residential and commercial rooftop or building integrated installations, to large utility-scale photovoltaic power station. The predominant PV technology is crystalline silicon, while thin-film solar cell technology accounts for about 10 percent of global photovoltaic deployment. In recent years, PV technology has improved its electricity generating efficiency, reduced the installation cost per watt as well as its energy payback time, and reached grid parity in at least 30 different markets by 2014. Building-integrated photovoltaics or "onsite" PV systems use existing land and structures and generate power close to where it is consumed. Photovoltaics grew fastest in China, followed by Japan and the United States. Solar power is forecasted to become the world's largest source of electricity by 2050, with solar photovoltaics and concentrated solar power contributing 16% and 11%, respectively. This requires an increase of installed PV capacity to 4,600 GW, of which more |
by the name of Romulus, attested as alive in 449, when he was sent on an embassy to Attila by the general Aetius. Orestes and Romulus Augustus' mother married at some point before 449. It is believed that Romulus' mother, and thus perhaps her immediate family, were, like Orestes, from Roman Pannonia. It is possible that Romulus Augustus had older siblings, especially given that Romulus was born several years after the marriage of his parents. In ancient Rome, it was customary for the eldest son to be named after his grandfather. That Romulus was not named Tatulus thus indicates that he was not the firstborn boy. Reign After an interregnum in the west lasting two months, Romulus, perhaps as young as ten years old, was proclaimed emperor in Nepos' stead by Orestes on 31 October 475. He was the last emperor to be proclaimed in the west. Why the interregnum since Nepos lasted so long and why Orestes, a high-ranking military official and a Roman by birth, did not take the imperial title for himself is not known. It is possible that Orestes was waiting for some form of formal recognition or response from emperor Zeno in the east, which never came. Romulus would throughout his brief ten-month reign be little more than a figurehead, with his father, who retained the position of magister militum, actually running much of the imperial administration. Zeno never recognised the rule of Romulus as emperor in the west, given that Nepos, invested as emperor by Zeno's predecessor Leo I, still ruled in exile in Dalmatia. Problems with the Western Roman army, mainly composed of barbarian foederati, had escalated throughout the 470s. The issues the army had with the central government had been what allowed Orestes to depose Nepos. In 476, the barbarian foederati in Italy, composed mainly of the Herules, Scirians and Turcilingians, demanded land in Italy to settle on. Orestes refused. The leader of the foederati was Odoacer, a barbarian officer of undetermined tribal affiliation. Orestes had once worked alongside Odoacer's father Edeko at the court of Attila. On 28 August 476, Odoacer defeated Orestes in battle at Ticinum, captured him and had him executed. On 4 September, Odoacer captured Ravenna, killing Orestes' deputy and brother Paulus during the fighting. Romulus was captured and deposed, whereafter Odoacer assumed control of Italy as its first king. Odoacer sent Romulus' western imperial regalia to emperor Zeno in the east, and swore allegiance to him, ruling without further imperial successors in the west. According to the 5th-century Eastern Roman writer and historian Malchus, Odoacer may have forced Romulus himself, as his last official act as emperor, to send the imperial regalia and a "letter of resignation" to Zeno, writing that the Roman Empire from this point only required a single emperor, ruling from Constantinople. Though Zeno granted Odoacer the distinction of patrician, he also urged the king to accept Julius Nepos back as emperor in Italy. Though Odoacer nominally accepted Nepos as his sovereign, minting coins in his name, Nepos was never able to reoccupy Italy. Later life Life in exile Odoacer spared the life of the young Romulus on account of his "youth and beauty". Romulus was granted an annual pension of 6,000 solidi (the normal income of a wealthy Roman senator) and granted an estate in Campania near Naples called the castellum Lucullanum (today called Castel dell'Ovo), originally built by the consul and general Lucius Licinius Lucullus in the 60s BC. Castellum Lucullanum had once served as the retirement villa of Tiberius (14–37), Rome's second emperor. By late antiquity, castellum Lucullanum must have been fortified, and it likely functioned as a small administrative and military centre in Campania. Romulus was accompanied to Campania by a large retinue and some of his surviving relatives. Romulus may have been alive as late as 507 or 511, when Theodoric the Great, Odoacer's successor as king of Italy, wrote to a "Romulus" to confirm a grant made to him and his mother by Petrus Marcellinus Felix Liberius, the praetorian prefect of Italy, on Theoderic's authority. Per Thomas Hodgkin, who translated the letter in 1886, the identification of Romulus in the letter as Romulus Augustus is strengthened by the name "Romulus" by this point not being very common and by the letter not giving the Romulus in question any titles or honorifics. The absence of titles differentiates the letter from the vast majority of other letters preserved from Theodoric, as if neither the king nor his scribe were quite sure how to address a former emperor. If the Romulus in the letter is the same person as Romulus Augustulus, it is possible that the letter indicates that Romulus and his family had to renegotiate their financial arrangements and pension with the king, seeing as they had been drawn up under the reign of a different king. Given that Romulus is not mentioned in accounts of the later eastern Roman invasion of Italy in the mid-530s, he had likely died some time before the conflict. Romulus may have played a role in founding a monastery around the remains of Saint Severinus of Noricum at castellum Lucullanum in the 480s or early 490s. A Roman noblewoman by the name of Barbaria, possibly Romulus' mother, also aided in founding the monastery. This monastery became prominent under Pope Gregory I (590–604) and was active until the 10th century. Legacy Very few records survive of Romulus' reign. Any policies that he might have pursued are not known. The scant narrative record and few known coins, in addition to there not being any known inscriptions of significance or laws issued by the emperor, make him a shadowy and relatively inconsequential figure. Ralph W. Mathisen considered him in 1997 to have been the "perhaps even the least significant" of the short-lived emperors near the end of the Western Roman Empire. When not seen as only inconsequential, opinions by historians on Romulus Augustus have been negative. In The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1788), Edward Gibbon wrote that he "assumed | to Salona in Dalmatia. Ancestry and family There is little surviving concrete evidence in regards to Romulus' ancestry beyond Orestes being known to have been a Roman citizen from Pannonia and sparse information on his immediate family. Orestes' father was a Pannonian Roman officer by the name of Tatulus, and Tatulus had at least one other son, Paulus, who served as a comes. The name of Romulus' mother is not known, but it might have been Barbaria. The name Barbaria, otherwise rarely attested, may derive either from the gens (family) Barbii, attested in Roman Pannonia, or it may simply be the feminine version of the name Barbarius, attested from a few Roman individuals in southern Gaul. Romulus' maternal grandfather was a comes, also by the name of Romulus, attested as alive in 449, when he was sent on an embassy to Attila by the general Aetius. Orestes and Romulus Augustus' mother married at some point before 449. It is believed that Romulus' mother, and thus perhaps her immediate family, were, like Orestes, from Roman Pannonia. It is possible that Romulus Augustus had older siblings, especially given that Romulus was born several years after the marriage of his parents. In ancient Rome, it was customary for the eldest son to be named after his grandfather. That Romulus was not named Tatulus thus indicates that he was not the firstborn boy. Reign After an interregnum in the west lasting two months, Romulus, perhaps as young as ten years old, was proclaimed emperor in Nepos' stead by Orestes on 31 October 475. He was the last emperor to be proclaimed in the west. Why the interregnum since Nepos lasted so long and why Orestes, a high-ranking military official and a Roman by birth, did not take the imperial title for himself is not known. It is possible that Orestes was waiting for some form of formal recognition or response from emperor Zeno in the east, which never came. Romulus would throughout his brief ten-month reign be little more than a figurehead, with his father, who retained the position of magister militum, actually running much of the imperial administration. Zeno never recognised the rule of Romulus as emperor in the west, given that Nepos, invested as emperor by Zeno's predecessor Leo I, still ruled in exile in Dalmatia. Problems with the Western Roman army, mainly composed of barbarian foederati, had escalated throughout the 470s. The issues the army had with the central government had been what allowed Orestes to depose Nepos. In 476, the barbarian foederati in Italy, composed mainly of the Herules, Scirians and Turcilingians, demanded land in Italy to settle on. Orestes refused. The leader of the foederati was Odoacer, a barbarian officer of undetermined tribal affiliation. Orestes had once worked alongside Odoacer's father Edeko at the court of Attila. On 28 August 476, Odoacer defeated Orestes in battle at Ticinum, captured him and had him executed. On 4 September, Odoacer captured Ravenna, killing Orestes' deputy and brother Paulus during the fighting. Romulus was captured and deposed, whereafter Odoacer assumed control of Italy as its first king. Odoacer sent Romulus' western imperial regalia to emperor Zeno in the east, and swore allegiance to him, ruling without further imperial successors in the west. According to the 5th-century Eastern Roman writer and historian Malchus, Odoacer may have forced Romulus himself, as his last official act as emperor, to send the imperial regalia and a "letter of resignation" to Zeno, writing that the Roman Empire from this point only required a single emperor, ruling from Constantinople. Though Zeno granted Odoacer the distinction of patrician, he also urged the king to accept Julius Nepos back as emperor in Italy. Though Odoacer nominally accepted Nepos as his sovereign, minting coins in his name, Nepos was never able to reoccupy Italy. Later life Life in exile Odoacer spared the life of the young Romulus on account of his "youth and beauty". Romulus was granted an annual pension of 6,000 solidi (the normal income of a wealthy Roman senator) and granted |
was deposed by the Germanic Herulians led by Odoacer, or the de jure date of 480, on the death of Julius Nepos, when Eastern emperor Zeno ended recognition of a separate Western court. Historians typically refer to the empire in the centuries that followed as the "Byzantine Empire", oriented towards Hellenic culture and governed by the Byzantine emperors. Given that "Byzantine" is a later historiographical designation and the inhabitants and emperors of the empire continually maintained Roman identity, this designation is not used universally and continues to be a subject of specialist debate. Under Justinian I, in the sixth century, a large portion of the western empire was retaken, including Italy, Africa, and part of Spain. Over the course of the centuries thereafter, most of the imperial territories were lost, which eventually restricted the empire to Anatolia and the Balkans. The line of emperors continued until the death of Constantine XI Palaiologos at the fall of Constantinople in 1453, when the remaining territories were conquered by the Ottoman Turks led by Sultan Mehmed II. In the aftermath of the conquest, Mehmed II proclaimed himself kayser-i Rûm ("Caesar of Rome"), thus claiming to be the new emperor, a claim maintained by succeeding sultans. Competing claims of succession to the Roman Empire have also been forwarded by various other states and empires, and by numerous later pretenders. Legitimacy While the imperial government of the Roman Empire was rarely called into question during its five centuries in the west and fifteen centuries in the east, individual emperors often faced unending challenges in the form of usurpation and perpetual civil wars. From the rise of Augustus, the first Roman emperor, in 27 BC to the sack of Rome in AD 455, there were over a hundred usurpations or attempted usurpations (an average of one usurpation or attempt about every four years). From the murder of Commodus in 192 until the fifth century, there was scarcely a single decade without succession conflicts and civil war. Very few emperors died of natural causes, with regicide in practical terms having become the expected end of a Roman emperor by late antiquity. The distinction between a usurper and a legitimate emperor is a blurry one, given that a large numer of emperors commonly considered legitimate began their rule as usurpers, revolting against the previous legitimate emperor. True legitimizing structures and theories were weak, or wholly absent, in the Roman Empire, and there were no true objective legal criteria for being acclaimed emperor beyond acceptance by the Roman army. Dynastic succession was not legally formalized, but also not uncommon, with powerful rulers sometimes succeeding in passing power on to their children or other relatives. While dynastic ties could bring someone to the throne, they were not a guarantee that their rule would not be challenged. With the exception of Titus (79–81; son of Vespasian), no son of an emperor who ruled after the death of their father died a natural death until Constantine I in 337. Control of Rome itself and approval of the Roman Senate held some importance as legitimising factors, but was mostly symbolical. Emperors who began their careers as usurpers had often been deemed public enemies by the senate before they managed to take the city. Emperors did not need to be acclaimed or crowned in Rome itself, as demonstrated in the Year of the Four Emperors (69), when claimants were crowned by armies in the Roman provinces, and the senate's role in legitimising emperors had almost faded into insignificance | a second capital in Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople. Historians consider the Dominate period of the empire to have begun with either Diocletian or Constantine, depending on the author. For most of the period from 286 to 480, there was more than one recognized senior emperor, with the division usually based on geographic regions. This division was consistently in place after the death of Theodosius I in 395, which historians have dated as the division between the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. However, formally the Empire remained a single polity, with separate co-emperors in the separate courts. The fall of the Western Roman Empire is dated either from the de facto date of 476, when Romulus Augustulus was deposed by the Germanic Herulians led by Odoacer, or the de jure date of 480, on the death of Julius Nepos, when Eastern emperor Zeno ended recognition of a separate Western court. Historians typically refer to the empire in the centuries that followed as the "Byzantine Empire", oriented towards Hellenic culture and governed by the Byzantine emperors. Given that "Byzantine" is a later historiographical designation and the inhabitants and emperors of the empire continually maintained Roman identity, this designation is not used universally and continues to be a subject of specialist debate. Under Justinian I, in the sixth century, a large portion of the western empire was retaken, including Italy, Africa, and part of Spain. Over the course of the centuries thereafter, most of the imperial territories were lost, which eventually restricted the empire to Anatolia and the Balkans. The line of emperors continued until the death of Constantine XI Palaiologos at the fall of Constantinople in 1453, when the remaining territories were conquered by the Ottoman Turks led by Sultan Mehmed II. In the aftermath of the conquest, Mehmed II proclaimed himself kayser-i Rûm ("Caesar of Rome"), thus claiming to be the new emperor, a claim maintained by succeeding sultans. Competing claims of succession to the Roman Empire have also been forwarded by various other states and empires, and by numerous later pretenders. Legitimacy While the imperial government of the Roman Empire was rarely called into question during its five centuries in the west and fifteen centuries in the east, individual emperors often faced unending challenges in the form of usurpation and perpetual civil wars. From the rise of Augustus, the first Roman emperor, in 27 BC to the sack of Rome in AD 455, there were over a hundred usurpations or attempted usurpations (an average of one usurpation or attempt about every four years). From the murder of Commodus in 192 until the fifth century, there was scarcely a single decade without succession conflicts and civil war. Very few emperors died of natural causes, with regicide in practical terms having become the expected end of a Roman emperor by late antiquity. The distinction between a usurper and a legitimate emperor is a blurry one, given that a large numer of emperors commonly considered legitimate began their rule as usurpers, revolting against the previous legitimate emperor. True legitimizing structures and theories were weak, or wholly absent, in the Roman Empire, and there were no true objective legal criteria for being acclaimed emperor beyond acceptance by the Roman army. Dynastic succession was not legally formalized, but also not uncommon, with powerful rulers sometimes succeeding in passing power on to their children or other relatives. While dynastic ties could bring someone to the throne, they were not a guarantee that their rule would not be challenged. With the exception of Titus (79–81; son of Vespasian), no son of an emperor who ruled after the death of their father died a natural death until Constantine I in 337. Control of Rome itself and approval of the Roman Senate held some importance as legitimising factors, but was mostly symbolical. Emperors who began their careers as usurpers had often been deemed public enemies by the senate before they managed to take the city. Emperors did not need to be acclaimed or crowned in Rome itself, as demonstrated in the Year of the Four Emperors (69), |
Periochae, the beginning of the consular year changed from March to January1 in 153BC to respond to a rebellion in Hispania. Plutarch believed Numa was responsible for placing January and February first in the calendar; Ovid states January began as the first month and February the last, with its present order owing to the Decemvirs. W. Warde Fowler believed the Roman priests continued to treat January and February as the last months of the calendar throughout the Republican period. According to the later writers Censorinus and Macrobius, to correct the mismatch of the correspondence between months and seasons due to the excess of one day of the Roman average year over the tropical year, the insertion of the intercalary month was modified according to the scheme: common year (355 days), leap year with 23-day February followed by 27-day Mercedonius (377 days), common year, leap year with 23-day February followed by 28-day Mercedonius (378 days), and so on for the first 16 years of a 24-year cycle. In the last 8 years, the intercalation took place with the month of Mercedonius only 27 days, except the last intercalation which did not happen. Hence, there would be a typical common year followed by a leap year of 377 days for the next 6 years and the remaining 2 years would sequentially be common years. The result of this twenty-four-year pattern was of great precision for the time: 365.25 days, as shown by the following calculation: The consuls' terms of office were not always a modern calendar year, but ordinary consuls were elected or appointed annually. The traditional list of Roman consuls used by the Romans to date their years began in 509BC. Flavian reform Gnaeus Flavius, a secretary (scriba) to censor App. Claudius Caecus, introduced a series of reforms in 304BC. Their exact nature is uncertain, although he is thought to have begun the custom of publishing the calendar in advance of the month, depriving the priests of some of their power but allowing for a more consistent calendar for official business. Julian reform Julius Caesar, following his victory in his civil war and in his role as pontifex maximus, ordered a reformation of the calendar in 46BC. This was undertaken by a group of scholars apparently including the Alexandrian Sosigenes and the Roman M. Flavius. Its main lines involved the insertion of ten additional days throughout the calendar and regular intercalation of a single leap day every fourth year to bring the Roman calendar into close agreement with the solar year. The year 46BC was the last of the old system and included 3 intercalary months, the first inserted in February and two more— and —before the kalends of December. Later reforms After Caesar's assassination, Mark Antony had Caesar's birth month Quintilis renamed July () in his honor. After Antony's defeat at Actium, Augustus assumed control of Rome and, finding the priests had (owing to their inclusive counting) been intercalating every third year instead of every fourth, suspended the addition of leap days to the calendar for one or two decades until its proper position had been restored. See Julian calendar: Leap year error. In 8BC, the plebiscite Lex Pacuvia de Mense Augusto renamed Sextilis August () in his honor. In large part, this calendar continued unchanged under the Roman Empire. (Egyptians used the related Alexandrian calendar, which Augustus had adapted from their wandering ancient calendar to maintain its alignment with Rome's.) A few emperors altered the names of the months after themselves or their family, but such changes were abandoned by their successors. Diocletian began the 15-year indiction cycles beginning from the AD297 census; these became the required format for official dating under Justinian. Constantine formally established the 7-day week by making Sunday an official holiday in 321. Consular dating became obsolete following the abandonment of appointing nonimperial consuls in AD541. The Roman method of numbering the days of the month never became widespread in the Hellenized eastern provinces and was eventually abandoned by the Byzantine Empire in its calendar. Days Roman dates were counted inclusively forward to the next one of three principal days within each month: Kalends ( or ), the 1st day of each month Nones ( or ), the 7thday of full months and 5thday of hollow ones, 8days—"nine" by Roman reckoning—before the Ides in every month Ides (, variously or ), the 15thday of full months and the 13thday of hollow ones, one day earlier than the middle of each month. These are thought to reflect a prehistoric lunar calendar, with the kalends proclaimed after the sighting of the first sliver of the new crescent moon a day or two after the new moon, the nones occurring on the day of the first-quarter moon, and the ides on the day of the full moon. The kalends of each month were sacred to Juno and the ides to Jupiter. The day before each was known as its eve (); the day after each () was considered particularly unlucky. The days of the month were expressed in early Latin using the ablative of time, denoting points in time, in the contracted form "the 6thDecember Kalends" (). In classical Latin, this use continued for the three principal days of the month but other days were idiomatically expressed in the accusative case, which usually expressed a duration of time, and took the form "6th day before the December Kalends" (). This anomaly may have followed the treatment of days in Greek, reflecting the increasing use of such date phrases as an absolute phrase able to function as the object of another preposition, or simply originated in a mistaken agreement of with the preposition once it moved to the beginning of the expression. In late Latin, this idiom was sometimes abandoned in favor of again using the ablative of time. The kalends were the day for payment of debts and the account books () kept for them gave English its word calendar. The public Roman calendars were the fasti, which designated the religious and legal character of each month's days. The Romans marked each day of such calendars with the letters: F (fastus, "permissible") on days when it was legal to initiate action in the courts of civil law (, "allowed days") C (comitialis) on fasti days during which the Roman people could hold assemblies () N (nefastus) on days when political and judicial activities were prohibited () NP (uncertain) on public holidays (feriae) QRCF (uncertain) on days when the "king" (rex sacrorum) could convene an assembly EN (, an archaic form of , "halved") on days when most political and religious activities were prohibited in the morning and evening due to sacrifices being prepared or offered but were acceptable for a period in the middle of the day Each day was also marked by a letter from A to H to indicate its place within the nundinal cycle of market days. Weeks The nundinae were the market days which formed a kind of weekend in Rome, Italy, and some other parts of Roman territory. By Roman inclusive counting, they were reckoned as "ninth days" although they actually occurred every eighth day. Because the republican and Julian years were not evenly divisible into eight-day periods, Roman calendars included a column giving every day of the year a nundinal letter from A to H marking its place in the cycle of market days. Each year, the letter used for the markets would shift along the cycle. As a day when the city swelled with rural plebeians, they were overseen by the aediles and took on an important role in Roman legislation, which was supposed to be announced for three nundinal weeks (between ) in advance of its coming to a vote. The patricians and their clients sometimes exploited this fact as a kind of filibuster, since the tribunes of the plebs were required to wait another three-week period if their proposals could not receive a vote before dusk on the day they were introduced. Superstitions arose concerning the bad luck that followed a nundinae on the nones of a month or, later, on the first day of January. Intercalation was supposedly used to avoid such coincidences, even after the Julian reform of the calendar. The 7-day week began to be observed in Italy in the early imperial period, as practitioners and converts to eastern religions introduced Hellenistic and Babylonian astrology, the Jewish Saturday sabbath, and the Christian Lord's Day. The system was originally used for private worship and astrology but had replaced the nundinal week by the time Constantine made Sunday () an official day of rest in AD 321. The hebdomadal week was also reckoned as a cycle of letters from A to G; these were adapted for Christian use as the dominical letters. Months The names of Roman months originally functioned as adjectives (e.g., the January kalends occur in the January month) before being treated as substantive nouns in their own right (e.g., the kalends of January occur in January). Some of their etymologies are well-established: January and March honor the gods Janus and Mars; July and August honor Julius Caesar and his successor, the emperor Augustus; and the months Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December are archaic adjectives formed from the ordinal numbers from , their position in the calendar when it began around the spring equinox in March. Others are uncertain. February may derive from the Februa festival or its eponymous ("purifications, expiatory offerings"), whose name may be either Sabine or preserve an archaic word for sulphuric. April may relate to the Etruscan goddess Apru or the verb ("to open"). May and June may honor Maia and Juno or derive from archaic terms for "senior" and "junior". A few emperors attempted to add themselves to the calendar after Augustus, but without enduring success. In classical Latin, the days of each month were usually reckoned as: Dates after the ides count forward to the kalends of the next month and are expressed as such. For example, March19 was expressed as "the 14th day before the April Kalends" (), without a mention of March itself. The day after a kalends, nones, or ides was also often expressed as the "day after" () owing to their special status as particularly unlucky "black days". The anomalous status of the new 31-day months under the Julian calendar was an effect of Caesar's desire to avoid affecting the festivals tied to the nones and ides of various months. However, because the dates at the ends of the month all counted forward to the next kalends, they were all shifted by one or two days by the change. This created confusion with regard to certain anniversaries. For instance, Augustus's birthday on the 23rdday of September was in the old calendar but under the new system. The ambiguity caused honorary festivals to be held on either or both dates. Intercalation The Republican calendar only had 355days, which meant that it would quickly unsynchronize from the solar year, causing, for example, agricultural festivals to occur out of season. The Roman solution to this problem was to periodically lengthen the calendar by adding extra days within February. February was broken into two parts, each with an odd number of days. The first part ended with the Terminalia on the 23rd (), which was considered the end of the religious year; the five remaining days beginning with the Regifugium on the 24th () formed the second part; and the intercalary month Mercedonius was inserted between them. In such years, the days between the ides and the Regifugium were counted down to either the Intercalary Kalends or to the Terminalia. The intercalary month counted down to nones and ides on its 5th and 13th day in the manner of the other short months. The remaining days of the month counted down towards the March Kalends, so that the end of Mercedonius and the second part of February were indistinguishable to the Romans, one ending on and the other picking up at and bearing the normal festivals of such dates. Apparently because of the confusion of these changes or uncertainty as to whether an intercalary month would be ordered, dates after the February ides are attested as sometimes counting down towards the Quirinalia (Feb.17), the Feralia (Feb.21), or the Terminalia (Feb.23) rather than the intercalary or March kalends. The third-century writer Censorinus says: When it was thought necessary to add (every two years) an intercalary month of , so that the civil year should correspond to the natural (solar) year, this intercalation was in preference made in February, between the Terminalia [23rd] and Regifugium [24th]. The fifth-century writer Macrobius says that the Romans intercalated in alternate years (Saturnalia, 1.13.12); the intercalation was placed after 23February and the remaining five days of February followed (Saturnalia, 1.13.15). To avoid the nones falling on a nundine, where necessary an intercalary day was inserted "in the middle of the Terminalia, where they placed the intercalary month". This is historically correct. In 167BC Intercalaris began on the day after 23February and in 170BC it began on the second day after 23February. Varro, writing in the first centuryBC, says "the twelfth month was February, and when intercalations take place the five last days of this month are removed." Since all the days after the Ides of Intercalaris were counted down to the beginning of March Intercalaris had either 27days (making 377 for the year) or 28 (making 378 for the year). There is another theory which says that in intercalary years February had and Intercalaris had 27. No date is offered for the Regifugium in 378-day years. Macrobius describes a further refinement whereby, in one 8-year period within a 24-year cycle, there were only three | or more. Republican calendar The attested calendar of the Roman Republic was quite different. It followed Greek calendars in assuming a lunar cycle of days and a solar year of synodic months ( days), which align every fourth year after the addition of two intercalary months. Two months were added at the end of the year to complete the cycle during winter, January and February, before the intercalary month inserted every two years; the intercalary month was sometimes known as Mercedonius. The inequality between the lunar year of 355 days and the tropical year of days led to a shortfall over four years of ( × 4) = 41 days. Theoretically, 22 days were interpolated into the calendar in the second year of the four-year cycle and 23 days in the fourth. This produced an excess of four days over the four years in line with the normal one day excess over one year. The method of correction was to truncate February by five days and follow it with the which thus commenced (normally) on the day after 23 February and had either 27 or 28 days. It did not acquire the alternative name Mercedonius until post-classical times. 23 February was the Terminalia and in a normal year it was Thus the dates of the festivals of the last five days of February were preserved on account of them being actually named and counted inclusively in days before the calends of March; they were traditionally part of the celebration for the new year. There was occasionally a delay of one day (a being inserted between 23 February and the start of the ) for the purpose of avoiding a clash between a particular festival and a particular day of the week (see for another example). The Roman superstitions concerning the numbering and order of the months seem to have arisen from Pythagorean superstitions concerning the luckiness of odd numbers. These Pythagorean-based changes to the Roman calendar were generally credited by the Romans to Numa Pompilius, Romulus's successor and the second of Rome's seven kings, as were the two new months of the calendar. Most sources thought he had established intercalation with the rest of his calendar. Although Livy's Numa instituted a lunar calendar, the author claimed the king had instituted a 19-year system of intercalation equivalent to the Metonic cycle centuries before its development by Babylonian and Greek astronomers. Plutarch's account claims he ended the former chaos of the calendar by employing 12months totalling 354days—the length of the lunar and Greek years—and biennial intercalary months of 22days. According to Livy's Periochae, the beginning of the consular year changed from March to January1 in 153BC to respond to a rebellion in Hispania. Plutarch believed Numa was responsible for placing January and February first in the calendar; Ovid states January began as the first month and February the last, with its present order owing to the Decemvirs. W. Warde Fowler believed the Roman priests continued to treat January and February as the last months of the calendar throughout the Republican period. According to the later writers Censorinus and Macrobius, to correct the mismatch of the correspondence between months and seasons due to the excess of one day of the Roman average year over the tropical year, the insertion of the intercalary month was modified according to the scheme: common year (355 days), leap year with 23-day February followed by 27-day Mercedonius (377 days), common year, leap year with 23-day February followed by 28-day Mercedonius (378 days), and so on for the first 16 years of a 24-year cycle. In the last 8 years, the intercalation took place with the month of Mercedonius only 27 days, except the last intercalation which did not happen. Hence, there would be a typical common year followed by a leap year of 377 days for the next 6 years and the remaining 2 years would sequentially be common years. The result of this twenty-four-year pattern was of great precision for the time: 365.25 days, as shown by the following calculation: The consuls' terms of office were not always a modern calendar year, but ordinary consuls were elected or appointed annually. The traditional list of Roman consuls used by the Romans to date their years began in 509BC. Flavian reform Gnaeus Flavius, a secretary (scriba) to censor App. Claudius Caecus, introduced a series of reforms in 304BC. Their exact nature is uncertain, although he is thought to have begun the custom of publishing the calendar in advance of the month, depriving the priests of some of their power but allowing for a more consistent calendar for official business. Julian reform Julius Caesar, following his victory in his civil war and in his role as pontifex maximus, ordered a reformation of the calendar in 46BC. This was undertaken by a group of scholars apparently including the Alexandrian Sosigenes and the Roman M. Flavius. Its main lines involved the insertion of ten additional days throughout the calendar and regular intercalation of a single leap day every fourth year to bring the Roman calendar into close agreement with the solar year. The year 46BC was the last of the old system and included 3 intercalary months, the first inserted in February and two more— and —before the kalends of December. Later reforms After Caesar's assassination, Mark Antony had Caesar's birth month Quintilis renamed July () in his honor. After Antony's defeat at Actium, Augustus assumed control of Rome and, finding the priests had (owing to their inclusive counting) been intercalating every third year instead of every fourth, suspended the addition of leap days to the calendar for one or two decades until its proper position had been restored. See Julian calendar: Leap year error. In 8BC, the plebiscite Lex Pacuvia de Mense Augusto renamed Sextilis August () in his honor. In large part, this calendar continued unchanged under the Roman Empire. (Egyptians used the related Alexandrian calendar, which Augustus had adapted from their wandering ancient calendar to maintain its alignment with Rome's.) A few emperors altered the names of the months after themselves or their family, but such changes were abandoned by their successors. Diocletian began the 15-year indiction cycles beginning from the AD297 census; these became the required format for official dating under Justinian. Constantine formally established the 7-day week by making Sunday an official holiday in 321. Consular dating became obsolete following the abandonment of appointing nonimperial consuls in AD541. The Roman method of numbering the days of the month never became widespread in the Hellenized eastern provinces and was eventually abandoned by the Byzantine Empire in its calendar. Days Roman dates were counted inclusively forward to the next one of three principal days within each month: Kalends ( or ), the 1st day of each month Nones ( or ), the 7thday of full months and 5thday of hollow ones, 8days—"nine" by Roman reckoning—before the Ides in every month Ides (, variously or ), the 15thday of full months and the 13thday of hollow ones, one day earlier than the middle of each month. These are thought to reflect a prehistoric lunar calendar, with the kalends proclaimed after the sighting of the first sliver of the new crescent moon a day or two after the new moon, the nones occurring on the day of the first-quarter moon, and the ides on the day of the full moon. The kalends of each month were sacred to Juno and the ides to Jupiter. The day before each was known as its eve (); the day after each () was considered particularly unlucky. The days of the month were expressed in early Latin using the ablative of time, denoting points in time, in the contracted form "the 6thDecember Kalends" (). In classical Latin, this use continued for the three principal days of the month but other days were idiomatically expressed in the accusative case, which usually expressed a duration of time, and took the form "6th day before the December Kalends" (). This anomaly may have followed the treatment of days in Greek, reflecting the increasing use of such date phrases as an absolute phrase able to function as the object of another preposition, or simply originated in a mistaken agreement of with the preposition once it moved to the beginning of the expression. In late Latin, this idiom was sometimes abandoned in favor of again using the ablative of time. The kalends were the day for payment of debts and the account books () kept for them gave English its word calendar. The public Roman calendars were the fasti, which designated the religious and legal character of each month's days. The Romans marked each day of such calendars with the letters: F (fastus, "permissible") on days when it was legal to initiate action in the courts of civil law (, "allowed days") C (comitialis) on fasti days during which the Roman people could hold assemblies () N (nefastus) on days when political and judicial activities were prohibited () NP (uncertain) on public holidays (feriae) QRCF (uncertain) on days when the "king" (rex sacrorum) could convene an assembly EN (, an archaic form of , "halved") on days when most political and religious activities were prohibited in the morning and evening due to sacrifices being prepared or offered but were acceptable for a period in the middle of the day Each day was also marked by a letter from A to H to indicate its place within the nundinal cycle of market days. Weeks The nundinae were the market days which formed a kind of weekend in Rome, Italy, and some other parts of Roman territory. By Roman inclusive counting, they were reckoned as "ninth days" although they actually occurred every eighth day. Because the republican and Julian years were not evenly divisible into eight-day periods, Roman calendars included a column giving every day of the year a nundinal letter from A to H marking its place in the cycle of market days. Each year, the letter used for the markets would shift along the cycle. As a day when the city swelled with rural plebeians, they were overseen by the aediles and took on an important role in Roman legislation, which was supposed to be announced for three nundinal weeks (between ) in advance of its coming to a vote. The patricians and their clients sometimes exploited this fact as a kind of filibuster, since the tribunes of the plebs were required to wait another three-week period if their proposals could not receive a vote before dusk on the day they were introduced. Superstitions arose concerning the bad luck that followed a nundinae on the nones of a month or, later, on the first day of January. Intercalation was supposedly used to avoid such coincidences, even after the Julian reform of the calendar. The 7-day week began to be observed in Italy in the early imperial period, as practitioners and converts to eastern religions introduced Hellenistic and Babylonian astrology, the Jewish Saturday sabbath, and the Christian Lord's Day. The system was originally used for private worship and astrology but had replaced the nundinal week by the time Constantine made Sunday () an official day of rest in AD 321. The hebdomadal week was also reckoned as a cycle of letters from A to G; these were adapted for Christian use as the dominical letters. Months The names of Roman months originally functioned as adjectives (e.g., the January kalends occur in the January month) before being treated as substantive nouns in their own right (e.g., the kalends of January occur in January). Some of their etymologies are well-established: January and March honor the gods Janus and Mars; July and August honor Julius Caesar and his successor, the emperor Augustus; and the months Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December are archaic adjectives formed from the ordinal numbers from , their position in the calendar when it began around the spring equinox in March. Others are uncertain. February may derive from the Februa festival or its eponymous ("purifications, expiatory offerings"), whose name may be either Sabine or preserve an archaic word for sulphuric. April may relate to the Etruscan goddess Apru or the verb ("to open"). May and June may honor Maia and Juno or derive from archaic terms for "senior" and "junior". A few emperors attempted to add themselves to the calendar after Augustus, but without enduring success. In classical Latin, the days of each month were usually reckoned as: Dates after the ides count forward to the kalends of the next month and are expressed as such. For example, March19 was expressed as "the 14th day before the April Kalends" (), without a mention of March itself. The day after a kalends, nones, or ides was also often expressed as the "day after" () owing to their special status as particularly unlucky "black days". The anomalous status of the new 31-day months under the Julian calendar was an effect of Caesar's desire to avoid affecting the festivals tied to the nones and ides of various months. However, because the dates at the ends of the month all counted forward to the next |
an improvement over the Colt 1889 design since they incorporated a combined center-pin and ejector rod to lock the cylinder in position. The 1889 did not use a center pin and the cylinder was prone to move out of alignment. Revolvers have remained popular to the present day in many areas, although in the military and law enforcement, they have largely been supplanted by magazine-fed semi-automatic pistols such as the Beretta M9 and the SIG Sauer M17, especially in circumstances where reload time and higher cartridge capacity are deemed important. Patents Elisha Collier of Boston, Massachusetts, patented a flintlock revolver in Britain in 1818, and significant numbers were being produced in London by 1822. The origination of this invention is in doubt, as similar designs were patented in the same year by Artemus Wheeler in the United States, and by Cornelius Coolidge in France. Samuel Colt submitted a British patent for his revolver in 1835 and an American patent (number 138) on February 25, 1836, for a Revolving gun, and made the first production model on March 5 of that year. Another revolver patent was issued to Samuel Colt on August 29, 1839. The February 25, 1836, patent was then reissued as entitled Revolving gun on October 24, 1848. This was followed by on September 3, 1850, for a Revolver, and by on September 10, 1850, for a Revolver. was issued to Roger C. Field for an economical device for minimizing the flash gap of a revolver between the barrel and the cylinder. In 1855, Rollin White patented the bored-through cylinder entitled Improvement in revolving fire-arms . In 1856, Horace Smith & Daniel Wesson formed a partnership (S&W), developed and manufactured a revolver chambered for a self-contained metallic cartridge. Design A revolver works by having several firing chambers arranged in a circle in a cylindrical block that are brought into alignment with the firing mechanism and barrel one at a time. In contrast, other repeating firearms, such as bolt-action, lever-action, pump-action, and semi-automatic, have a single firing chamber and a mechanism to load and extract cartridges into it. A single-action revolver requires the hammer to be pulled back by hand before each shot, which also revolves the cylinder. This leaves the trigger with just one "single action" left to perform - releasing the hammer to fire the shot - so the force and distance required to pull the trigger can be minimal. In contrast, with a self-cocking revolver, one long squeeze of the trigger pulls back the hammer and revolves the cylinder, then finally fires the shot. They can generally be fired faster than a single-action, but with reduced accuracy in the hands of most shooters. Most modern revolvers are "traditional double-action", which means they may operate either in single-action or self-cocking mode. The accepted meaning of "double-action" has, confusingly, come to be the same as "self-cocking", so modern revolvers that cannot be pre-cocked are called "double-action-only". These are intended for concealed carry, because the hammer of a traditional design is prone to snagging on clothes when drawn. Most revolvers do not come with accessory rails, which are used for mounting lights and lasers, except for the Smith & Wesson M&P R8 (.357 Magnum), Smith & Wesson Model 325 Thunder Ranch (.45 ACP), and all versions of the Chiappa Rhino (.357 Magnum, 9×19mm, .40 S&W, or 9×21mm) except for the 2" and 3" models, respectively. However, certain revolvers, such as the Taurus Judge and Charter Arms revolvers, can be fitted with accessory rails. Most commonly, such revolvers have 5 or 6 chambers, hence the common names of "six-gun" or "six-shooter". However, some revolvers have 7, 8, 9, or 10 chambers, often depending on the caliber, and at least one revolver has 12 chambers (the US Fire Arms Model 12/22). Each chamber has to be reloaded manually, which makes reloading a revolver a much slower procedure than reloading a semi-automatic pistol. Compared to autoloading handguns, a revolver is often much simpler to operate and may have greater reliability. For example, should a semiautomatic pistol fail to fire, clearing the chamber requires manually cycling the action to remove the errant round, as cycling the action normally depends on the energy of a cartridge firing. With a revolver, this is not necessary as none of the energy for cycling the revolver comes from the firing of the cartridge, but is supplied by the user either through cocking the hammer or, in a double-action design, by just squeezing the trigger. Another significant advantage of revolvers is superior ergonomics, particularly for users with small hands. A revolver's grip does not hold a magazine, and it can be designed or customized much more than the grip of a typical semi-automatic. Partially because of these reasons, revolvers still hold significant market share as concealed carry and home-defense weapons. A revolver can be kept loaded and ready to fire without fatiguing any springs and is not very dependent on lubrication for proper firing. Additionally, in the case of double-action-only revolvers there is no risk of accidental discharge from dropping alone, as the hammer is cocked by the trigger pull. However, the revolver's clockwork-like internal parts are relatively delicate and can become misaligned after a severe impact, and its revolving cylinder can become jammed by excessive dirt or debris. Over the long period of development of the revolver, many calibers have been used. Some of these have proved more durable during periods of standardization and some have entered general public awareness. Among these are the .22 rimfire, a caliber popular for target shooting and teaching novice shooters; .38 Special and .357 Magnum, known for police use; the .44 Magnum, famous from Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry films; and the .45 Colt, used in the Colt revolver of the Wild West. Introduced in 2003, the Smith & Wesson Model 500 is one of the most powerful revolvers, utilizing the .500 S&W Magnum cartridge. Because the rounds in a revolver are headspaced on the rim, some revolvers are capable of chambering more than one type of ammunition. The .44 Magnum round will also chamber the .44 Special and .44 Russian, likewise the .357 Magnum will safely chamber .38 Special, .38 Long Colt, and .38 Short Colt. In 1996, a revolver known as the Medusa M47 was made that could chamber 25 different cartridges with bullet diameters between .355" and .357". Revolver technology lives on in other weapons used by the military. Some autocannons and grenade launchers use mechanisms similar to revolvers, and some riot shotguns use spring-loaded cylinders holding up to 12 rounds. In addition to serving as backup guns, revolvers still fill the specialized niche role as a shield gun; law enforcement personnel using a "bulletproof" gun shield sometimes opt for a revolver instead of a self-loading pistol, because the slide of a pistol may strike the front of the shield when fired. Revolvers do not suffer from this disadvantage. A second revolver may be secured behind the shield to provide a quick means of continuity of fire. Many police also still use revolvers as their duty weapon due to their relative mechanical simplicity and user friendliness. With the advancement of technology and design in 2010, major revolver manufacturers started producing polymer frame revolvers like the Ruger LCR, Smith & Wesson Bodyguard 38, and Taurus Protector Polymer. The new innovative design incorporates advanced polymer technology that lowers weight significantly, helps absorbs recoil, and strong enough to handle .38 Special +P and .357 Magnum loads. The polymer is only used on the lower frame and joined to a metal alloy upper frame, barrel, and cylinder. Polymer technology is considered one of the major advancements in revolver history because the frame has always been metal alloy and mostly a one piece frame design. Another recent development in revolver technology is the Chiappa Rhino, a revolver introduced by Italian manufacturer Chiappa in 2009, and first sold in the U.S. in 2010. The Rhino, built with the U.S. concealed carry market in mind, is designed so the bullet fires from the bottom chamber of the cylinder instead of the top chamber as in standard revolvers. This is intended to reduce muzzle flip, allowing for faster and more accurate repeat shots. In addition, the cylinder cross-section is hexagonal instead of circular, further reducing the weapon's profile. Loading and unloading Front-loading cylinder The first revolvers were front loading (also referred to as muzzleloading), and were a bit like muskets in that the powder and bullet were loaded separately. These were caplocks or "cap and ball" revolvers, because the caplock method of priming was the first to be compact enough to make a practical revolver feasible. When loading, each chamber in the cylinder was rotated out of line with the barrel, and charged from the front with loose powder and an oversized bullet. Next, the chamber was aligned with the ramming lever underneath the barrel. Pulling the lever would drive a rammer into the chamber, pushing the ball securely in place. Finally, the user would place percussion caps on the nipples on the rear face of the cylinder. After each shot, a user was advised to raise his revolver vertically while cocking back the hammer so as to allow the fragments of the spent percussion cap to fall out safely. Otherwise, the fragments could fall into the revolver's mechanism and jam it. Caplock revolvers were vulnerable to "chain fires", wherein hot gas from a shot ignited the powder in the other chambers. This could be prevented by sealing the chambers with cotton, wax, or grease. Chain fire led to the shots hitting the shooters hand, which is one of the main reasons why revolver rifles were uncommon. By the time metallic cartridges became common, more effective mechanisms for a repeating rifle, such as lever-action, had been developed. Loading a cylinder in this manner was a slow and awkward process and generally could not be done in the midst of battle. Some soldiers solved this by carrying multiple revolvers in the field. Another solution was to use a revolver with a detachable cylinder design. These revolvers allowed the shooter to quickly remove a cylinder and replace it with a full one. Fixed cylinder designs In many of the first generation of cartridge revolvers (especially those that were converted after manufacture), the base pin on which the cylinder revolved was removed, and the cylinder taken from the revolver for loading. Most revolvers using this method of loading are single-action revolvers, although Iver Johnson produced double-action models with removable cylinders. The removable-cylinder design is employed in some modern "micro-revolvers" (usually chambered in .22 rimfire), in order to simplify their design. These weapons are small enough to fit in the palm of the hand. Later single-action revolver models with a fixed cylinder used a loading gate at the rear of the cylinder that allowed insertion of one cartridge at a time for loading, while a rod under the barrel could be pressed rearward to eject the fired case. The loading gate on the original Colt designs (and on nearly all single-action revolvers since, such as the famous Colt Single Action Army) is on the right side, which was done to facilitate loading while on horseback; with the revolver held in the left hand with the reins of the horse, the cartridges can be ejected and loaded with the right hand. Because the cylinders in these types of revolvers are firmly attached at the front and rear of the frame, and the frame is typically full thickness all the way around, fixed cylinder revolvers are inherently strong designs. Accordingly, many modern large caliber hunting revolvers tend to be based on the fixed cylinder design. Fixed cylinder revolvers can fire the strongest and most powerful cartridges, but at the price of being the slowest to load or unload, as they cannot use speedloaders or moon clips for loading, as only one chamber is exposed at a time to the loading gate. Top-break cylinder In a top-break revolver, the frame is hinged at the bottom front of the cylinder. Releasing the lock and pushing the barrel down exposes the rear face of the cylinder. In most top-break revolvers, this act also operates an extractor that pushes the cartridges in the chambers back far enough that they will fall free, or can be removed easily. Fresh rounds are then inserted into the cylinder. The barrel and cylinder are then rotated back and locked in place, and the revolver is ready to fire. Top-break revolvers are able to be loaded more rapidly than fixed frame revolvers, especially with the aid of a speedloader or moon clip. However, this design is much weaker and cannot handle high pressure rounds. While this design is mostly obsolete today, supplanted by the stronger yet equally convenient swing-out cylinder design, manufacturers have begun making reproductions of late 19th century designs for use in cowboy action shooting. The first top-break revolver was patented in France and Britain at the end of December in 1858 by Devisme. The most commonly found top-break revolvers were manufactured by Smith & Wesson, Webley & Scott, Iver Johnson, Harrington & Richardson, Manhattan Fire Arms, Meriden Arms and Forehand & Wadsworth. Tip-up cylinder The tip-up revolver was the first design to be used with metallic cartridges in the Smith & Wesson Model 1, on which the barrel pivoted upwards, hinged on the forward end of the topstrap. On the S&W tip-up revolvers, the barrel release catch is located on both sides of the frame in front of the trigger. Smith & Wesson discontinued it in the third series of the Smith & Wesson Model 1 1/2 but it was fairly widely used in Europe in the 19th century, after a patent by Spirlet in 1870, which also included an ejector star. Swing-out cylinder The most modern method of loading and unloading a revolver is by means of the swing-out cylinder. The first swing-out cylinder revolver was patented in France and Britain at the end of December in 1858 by Devisme. The cylinder is mounted on a pivot that is parallel to the chambers, and the cylinder swings out and down (to the left in most cases). An extractor is fitted, operated by a rod projecting from the front of the cylinder assembly. When pressed, it will push all fired rounds free simultaneously (as in top-break models, the travel is designed to not completely extract longer, unfired rounds). The cylinder may then be loaded, individually or again with the use of a speedloader, closed, and latched in place. The pivoting part that supports the cylinder is called the crane; it is the weak point of swing-out cylinder designs. Using the method often portrayed in movies and television of flipping the cylinder open and closed with a flick of the wrist can in fact cause the crane to bend over time, throwing the cylinder out of alignment with the barrel. Lack of alignment between chamber and barrel is a dangerous condition, as it can impede the bullet's transition from chamber to barrel. This gives rise to higher pressures in the chamber, bullet damage, and the potential for an explosion if the bullet becomes stuck. The shock of firing can exert a great deal of stress on the crane, as in most designs the cylinder is only held closed at one point, the rear of the cylinder. Stronger designs, such as the Ruger Super Redhawk, use a lock in the crane as well as the lock at the rear of the cylinder. This latch provides a more secure bond between cylinder and frame, and allows the use of larger, more powerful cartridges. Swing-out cylinders are rather strong, but not as strong as fixed cylinders, and great care must be taken with the cylinder when loading, so as not to damage the crane. Other designs One unique design was designed by Merwin Hulbert in which the barrel and cylinder assembly were rotated 90° and pulled forward to eject shells from the cylinder. Action Single-action In a single-action revolver, the hammer is manually cocked, usually with the thumb of the firing or | while on horseback; with the revolver held in the left hand with the reins of the horse, the cartridges can be ejected and loaded with the right hand. Because the cylinders in these types of revolvers are firmly attached at the front and rear of the frame, and the frame is typically full thickness all the way around, fixed cylinder revolvers are inherently strong designs. Accordingly, many modern large caliber hunting revolvers tend to be based on the fixed cylinder design. Fixed cylinder revolvers can fire the strongest and most powerful cartridges, but at the price of being the slowest to load or unload, as they cannot use speedloaders or moon clips for loading, as only one chamber is exposed at a time to the loading gate. Top-break cylinder In a top-break revolver, the frame is hinged at the bottom front of the cylinder. Releasing the lock and pushing the barrel down exposes the rear face of the cylinder. In most top-break revolvers, this act also operates an extractor that pushes the cartridges in the chambers back far enough that they will fall free, or can be removed easily. Fresh rounds are then inserted into the cylinder. The barrel and cylinder are then rotated back and locked in place, and the revolver is ready to fire. Top-break revolvers are able to be loaded more rapidly than fixed frame revolvers, especially with the aid of a speedloader or moon clip. However, this design is much weaker and cannot handle high pressure rounds. While this design is mostly obsolete today, supplanted by the stronger yet equally convenient swing-out cylinder design, manufacturers have begun making reproductions of late 19th century designs for use in cowboy action shooting. The first top-break revolver was patented in France and Britain at the end of December in 1858 by Devisme. The most commonly found top-break revolvers were manufactured by Smith & Wesson, Webley & Scott, Iver Johnson, Harrington & Richardson, Manhattan Fire Arms, Meriden Arms and Forehand & Wadsworth. Tip-up cylinder The tip-up revolver was the first design to be used with metallic cartridges in the Smith & Wesson Model 1, on which the barrel pivoted upwards, hinged on the forward end of the topstrap. On the S&W tip-up revolvers, the barrel release catch is located on both sides of the frame in front of the trigger. Smith & Wesson discontinued it in the third series of the Smith & Wesson Model 1 1/2 but it was fairly widely used in Europe in the 19th century, after a patent by Spirlet in 1870, which also included an ejector star. Swing-out cylinder The most modern method of loading and unloading a revolver is by means of the swing-out cylinder. The first swing-out cylinder revolver was patented in France and Britain at the end of December in 1858 by Devisme. The cylinder is mounted on a pivot that is parallel to the chambers, and the cylinder swings out and down (to the left in most cases). An extractor is fitted, operated by a rod projecting from the front of the cylinder assembly. When pressed, it will push all fired rounds free simultaneously (as in top-break models, the travel is designed to not completely extract longer, unfired rounds). The cylinder may then be loaded, individually or again with the use of a speedloader, closed, and latched in place. The pivoting part that supports the cylinder is called the crane; it is the weak point of swing-out cylinder designs. Using the method often portrayed in movies and television of flipping the cylinder open and closed with a flick of the wrist can in fact cause the crane to bend over time, throwing the cylinder out of alignment with the barrel. Lack of alignment between chamber and barrel is a dangerous condition, as it can impede the bullet's transition from chamber to barrel. This gives rise to higher pressures in the chamber, bullet damage, and the potential for an explosion if the bullet becomes stuck. The shock of firing can exert a great deal of stress on the crane, as in most designs the cylinder is only held closed at one point, the rear of the cylinder. Stronger designs, such as the Ruger Super Redhawk, use a lock in the crane as well as the lock at the rear of the cylinder. This latch provides a more secure bond between cylinder and frame, and allows the use of larger, more powerful cartridges. Swing-out cylinders are rather strong, but not as strong as fixed cylinders, and great care must be taken with the cylinder when loading, so as not to damage the crane. Other designs One unique design was designed by Merwin Hulbert in which the barrel and cylinder assembly were rotated 90° and pulled forward to eject shells from the cylinder. Action Single-action In a single-action revolver, the hammer is manually cocked, usually with the thumb of the firing or supporting hand. This action advances the cylinder to the next round and locks the cylinder in place with the chamber aligned with the barrel. The trigger, when pulled, releases the hammer, which fires the round in the chamber. To fire again, the hammer must be manually cocked again. This is called "single-action" because the trigger only performs a single action, of releasing the hammer. Because only a single action is performed and trigger pull is lightened, firing a revolver in this way allows most shooters to achieve greater accuracy. Additionally, the need to cock the hammer manually acts as a safety. Unfortunately with some revolvers, since the hammer rests on the primer or nipple, accidental discharge from impact is more likely if all 6 chambers are loaded. The Colt Paterson Revolver, the Walker Colt, the Colt's Dragoon and the Colt Single Action Army pistol of the American Frontier era are all good examples of this system. Double-action In double-action (DA), the stroke of the trigger pull generates two actions: The hammer is pulled back to the cocked position which also indexes the cylinder to the next round. The hammer is released to strike the firing pin. Thus, DA means that a cocking action separate from the trigger pull is unnecessary; every trigger pull will result in a complete cycle. This allows uncocked carry, while also allowing draw-and-fire using only the trigger. A longer and harder trigger stroke is the trade-off. However, this drawback can also be viewed as a safety feature, as the gun is safer against accidental discharges from being dropped. Most double-action revolvers may be fired in two ways. The first way is single-action; that is, exactly the same as a single-action revolver; the hammer is cocked with the thumb, which indexes the cylinder, and when the trigger is pulled, the hammer is tripped. The second way is double-action, or from a hammer-down position. In this case, the trigger first cocks the hammer and revolves the cylinder, then trips the hammer at the rear of the trigger stroke, firing the round in the chamber. Certain revolvers, called double-action-only (DAO) or, more correctly but less commonly, self-cocking, lack the latch that enables the hammer to be locked to the rear, and thus can only be fired in the double-action mode. With no way to lock the hammer back, DAO designs tend to have bobbed or spurless hammers, and may even have the hammer completely covered by the revolver's frame (i.e., shrouded or hooded). These are generally intended for concealed carrying, where a hammer spur could snag when the revolver is drawn. The potential reduction in accuracy in aimed fire is offset by the increased capability for concealment. DA and DAO revolvers were the standard-issue sidearm of countless police departments for many decades. Only in the 1980s and 1990s did the semiautomatic pistol begin to make serious inroads after the advent of safe actions. The reasons for these choices are the modes of carry and use. Double action is good for high-stress situations because it allows a mode of carry in which "draw and pull the trigger" is the only requirement—no safety catch release nor separate cocking stroke is required. Other In the cap-and-ball days of the mid 19th century, two revolver models, the English Tranter and the American Savage "Figure Eight", used a method whereby the hammer was cocked by the shooter's middle finger pulling on a second trigger below the main trigger. Iver Johnson made an unusual model from 1940 to 1947 called the Trigger Cocking Double Action. If the hammer was down, pulling the trigger would cock the hammer. If the trigger was pulled with the hammer cocked, it would then fire. This meant that to fire the revolver from a hammer down state, the trigger must be pulled twice. 3D printed revolver The Zig zag revolver is a 3D printed .38 Revolver made public in May 2014. It was created by a $500 3D-printer using plastic filament, but the name of the printer was not revealed by the creator. It was created by a Japanese citizen from Kawasaki named Yoshitomo Imura. He was arrested in May 2014 after he had posted a video online of himself firing a 3D printed Zig Zag revolver. It is the first 3D printed Japanese gun in the world which can discharge live cartridges. Use with suppressors As a general rule, revolvers cannot be effective with a sound suppressor ("silencer"), as there is usually a small gap between the revolving cylinder and the barrel which a bullet must traverse or jump when fired. From this opening, a rather loud report is produced. A suppressor can only suppress noise coming from the muzzle. A suppressible revolver design does exist in the Nagant M1895, a Belgian designed revolver used by Imperial Russia and later the Soviet Union from 1895 through World War II. This revolver uses a unique cartridge whose case extends beyond the tip of the bullet, and a cylinder that moves forward to place the end of the cartridge inside the barrel when ready to fire. This bridges the gap between the cylinder and the barrel, and expands to seal the gap when fired. While the tiny gap between cylinder and barrel on most revolvers is insignificant to the internal ballistics, the seal is especially effective when used with a suppressor, and a number of suppressed Nagant revolvers have been used since its invention. There is a modern revolver of Russian design, the OTs-38, which uses ammunition that incorporates the silencing mechanism into the cartridge case, making the gap between cylinder and barrel irrelevant as far as the suppression issue is concerned. The OTs-38 does need an unusually close and precise fit between the cylinder and barrel due to the shape of bullet in the special ammunition (Soviet SP-4), which was originally designed for use in a semi-automatic. Additionally, the US Military experimented with designing a special version of the Smith & Wesson Model 29 for Tunnel Rats, called the Quiet Special Purpose Revolver or QSPR. Using special .40 caliber ammunition, it never entered official service. Automatic revolvers The term "automatic revolver" has two different meanings, the first being used in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when "automatic" referred not to the operational mechanism of firing, but of extraction and ejection of spent casings. An "automatic revolver" in this context is one which extracts empty fired cases "automatically", i.e., upon breaking open the action, rather than requiring manual extraction of each case individually with a sliding rod or pin (as in the Colt Single Action Army design). This term was widely used in the advertising of the period as a way to distinguish such revolvers from the far more common rod-extraction types. In the second sense, "automatic revolver" refers to the mechanism of firing rather than extraction. Double-action revolvers use a long trigger pull to cock the hammer, thus negating the need to manually cock the hammer between shots. The disadvantage of this is that the long, heavy pull cocking the hammer makes the double-action revolver much harder to shoot accurately than a single-action revolver (although cocking the hammer of a double-action reduces the length and weight of the trigger pull). A rare class of revolvers, called automatic for its firing design, attempts to overcome this restriction, giving the high speed of a double-action with the trigger effort of a single-action. The Webley-Fosbery Automatic Revolver is the most famous commercial example. It was recoil-operated, and the cylinder and barrel recoiled backwards to cock the hammer and revolve the cylinder. Cam grooves were milled on the outside of the cylinder to provide a means of advancing to the next chamber—half a turn as the cylinder moved back, and half a turn as it moved forward. .38 caliber versions held eight shots, .455 caliber versions six. At the time, the few available automatic pistols were larger, less reliable, and more expensive. The automatic revolver was popular when it first came out, but was quickly superseded by the creation |
Career Freitas holds a 1974 Bachelor's degree major in both physics and psychology from Harvey Mudd College, and a 1978 Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Santa Clara University School of Law. He has been wrote more than 150 technical papers, book chapters, or popular articles on a diverse set of scientific, engineering, and legal topics. Freitas began writing his Nanomedicine book series in 1994. Volume I, published in October 1999 by Landes | popular articles on a diverse set of scientific, engineering, and legal topics. Freitas began writing his Nanomedicine book series in 1994. Volume I, published in October 1999 by Landes Bioscience while Freitas was a Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing. Volume IIA was published in October 2003 by Landes Bioscience. In 2004, Freitas and Ralph Merkle coauthored and published Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines, a comprehensive survey of the field of physical and hypothetical self-replicating machines. In 2009, Freitas was awarded the Feynman Prize in theoretical nanotechnology. Bibliography Robert A. Freitas Jr., Nanomedicine, Volume I: Basic Capabilities (Landes |
1943), British-American composer Robert Morris-Nunn (born 1949), Australian architect Robert Morris (author) (born 1950), American author Colonel Robert Morris (1954–2013), American musician Bob Morris (musician) (born 1985), songwriter, singer, and guitarist of Stamps Robert Lee Morris, German-born jewelry designer Robert Michael Morris (1940–2017), American actor Sports Rob Morris (American football) (born 1975), retired American football linebacker Robbie Morris (born 1982), English rugby union player Robert Morris (basketball) (1902–1986), collegiate and professional basketball head coach Robert Morris Colonials, the athletic program of Robert Morris University in Pennsylvania Bob Morris (racing driver) (born 1948), touring car racer, winner of 1976 Bathurst 1000 Robert Morris (Welsh footballer) (1875–?), Welsh international Robert Morris (English footballer) (1913–?), English footballer Robert Morris (cricketer) (1926–2007), Welsh cricketer Bob Morris (football manager), Papua New Guinean football manager Universities Robert Morris University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, named after financier Robert Morris Robert Morris University Illinois, Chicago, Illinois, named after financier Robert | in Pennsylvania Bob Morris (racing driver) (born 1948), touring car racer, winner of 1976 Bathurst 1000 Robert Morris (Welsh footballer) (1875–?), Welsh international Robert Morris (English footballer) (1913–?), English footballer Robert Morris (cricketer) (1926–2007), Welsh cricketer Bob Morris (football manager), Papua New Guinean football manager Universities Robert Morris University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, named after financier Robert Morris Robert Morris University Illinois, Chicago, Illinois, named after financier Robert Morris Others Robert L. Morris (1942–2004), first holder of the Koestler Chair of Parapsychology at the University of Edinburgh Robert Morris (cryptographer) (1932–2011), American cryptographer and former chief scientist of the National Security Agency Robert Tappan Morris (born 1965), son of the cryptographer, creator of the first Internet worm Robert Morris (lawyer) (1823–1882), early African-American attorney Robert Morris (mathematician) Robert Murray Morris (1824–1896), officer in the U.S. Army and Union Army Robert |
of the Danish Crown, and Danish traders continued to dominate trade in Iceland. Over the following decades, their business in Iceland expanded. After 1880, free trade was expanded to all nationalities, and the influence of Icelandic merchants started to grow. Rise of nationalism Icelandic nationalist sentiment gained influence in the 19th century, and the idea of Icelandic independence became widespread. Reykjavík, as Iceland's only city, was central to such ideas. Advocates of an independent Iceland realized that a strong Reykjavík was fundamental to that objective. All the important events in the history of the independence struggle were important to Reykjavík as well. In 1845 Alþingi, the general assembly formed in 930 AD, was re-established in Reykjavík; it had been suspended a few decades earlier when it was located at Þingvellir. At the time it functioned only as an advisory assembly, advising the king about Icelandic affairs. The location of Alþingi in Reykjavík effectively established the city as the capital of Iceland. In 1874, Iceland was given a constitution; with it, Alþingi gained some limited legislative powers and in essence became the institution that it is today. The next step was to move most of the executive power to Iceland: Home Rule was granted in 1904 when the office of Minister For Iceland was established in Reykjavík. The biggest step towards an independent Iceland was taken on 1 December 1918 when Iceland became a sovereign country under the Crown of Denmark, the Kingdom of Iceland. By the 1920s and 1930s, most of the growing Icelandic fishing trawler fleet sailed from Reykjavík; cod production was its main industry, but the Great Depression hit Reykjavík hard with unemployment, and labour union struggles sometimes became violent. World War II On the morning of 10 May 1940, following the German occupation of Denmark and Norway on 9 April 1940, four British warships approached Reykjavík and anchored in the harbour. In a few hours, the allied occupation of Reykjavík was complete. There was no armed resistance, and taxi and truck drivers even assisted the invasion force, which initially had no motor vehicles. The Icelandic government had received many requests from the British government to consent to the occupation, but it always declined on the basis of the Neutrality Policy. For the remaining years of World War II, British and later American soldiers occupied camps in Reykjavík, and the number of foreign soldiers in Reykjavík became about the same as the local population of the city. The Royal Regiment of Canada formed part of the garrison in Iceland during the early part of the war. The economic effects of the occupation were positive for Reykjavík: the unemployment of the Depression years vanished, and construction work began. The British built Reykjavík Airport, which remains in service today, mostly for short haul flights (to domestic destinations and Greenland). The Americans, meanwhile, built Keflavík Airport, situated west of Reykjavík, which became Iceland's primary international airport. In 1944, the Republic of Iceland was founded and a president, elected by the people, replaced the king; the office of the president was placed in Reykjavík. Post-war development In the post-war years, the growth of Reykjavík accelerated. An exodus from the rural countryside began, largely because improved technology in agriculture reduced the need for manpower, and because of a population boom resulting from better living conditions in the country. A once-primitive village was rapidly transformed into a modern city. Private cars became common, and modern apartment complexes rose in the expanding suburbs. In 1972, Reykjavík hosted the world chess championship between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. The 1986 Reykjavík Summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev underlined Reykjavík's international status. Deregulation in the financial sector and the computer revolution of the 1990s again transformed Reykjavík. The financial and IT sectors are now significant employers in the city. The city has fostered some world-famous musicians and artists in recent decades, such as Björk, Ólafur Arnalds and bands Múm, Sigur Rós and Of Monsters and Men, poet Sjón and visual artist Ragnar Kjartansson. Geography Reykjavík is located in the southwest of Iceland. The Reykjavík area coastline is characterized by peninsulas, coves, straits, and islands. During the Ice Age (up to 10,000 years ago) a large glacier covered parts of the city area, reaching as far out as Álftanes. Other parts of the city area were covered by sea water. In the warm periods and at the end of the Ice Age, some hills like Öskjuhlíð were islands. The former sea level is indicated by sediments (with clams) reaching (at Öskjuhlíð, for example) as far as above the current sea level. The hills of Öskjuhlíð and Skólavörðuholt appear to be the remains of former shield volcanoes which were active during the warm periods of the Ice Age. After the Ice Age, the land rose as the heavy load of the glaciers fell away, and began to look as it does today. The capital city area continued to be shaped by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, like the one 4,500 years ago in the mountain range Bláfjöll, when the lava coming down the Elliðaá valley reached the sea at the bay of Elliðavogur. The largest river to run through Reykjavík is the Elliðaá River, which is non-navigable. It offers salmon fishing within the city limits. Mount Esja, at , is the highest mountain in the vicinity of Reykjavík. The city of Reykjavík is mostly located on the Seltjarnarnes peninsula, but the suburbs reach far out to the south and east. Reykjavík is a spread-out city: most of its urban area consists of low-density suburbs, and houses are usually widely spaced. The outer residential neighbourhoods are also widely spaced from each other; in between them are the main traffic arteries and a lot of empty space. The city's latitude is 64°08' N, making it the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state (Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, is slightly further north at 64°10' (about 80 km) but Greenland is a constituent country, not an independent state). Climate Reykjavík has a subpolar oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfc). The city has had its present climate classification since the beginning of the 20th century. At 64° north, Reykjavik is characterized by extremes of day and night length over the course of the year. From 20 May to 24 July, daylight is essentially permanent as the sun never gets more than 5° below the horizon. Day length drops to less than five hours between 2 December and 10 January. The sun climbs just 3° above the horizon during this time. However, day length begins increasing rapidly during January and by month's end there are seven hours of daylight. Despite its northern latitude, temperatures very rarely drop below in the winter. The proximity to the Arctic Circle and the strong moderation of the Atlantic Ocean in the Icelandic coast (influence of North Atlantic Current, an extension of the Gulf Stream) shape a relatively mild winter and cool summer. The city's coastal location does make it prone to wind, however, and gales are common in winter (influence of the Icelandic Low). Summers are cool, with temperatures fluctuating between , rarely exceeding . This is a result of the location on an island in the North Atlantic away from warm summer continental air, making it cooler in summer than similar latitudes in mainland Scandinavia. Reykjavík averages 147 days of rain (more than 1 mm) per year. Droughts are uncommon, although they occur in some summers. July and August are the warmest months of the year on average and January and February the coldest. In the summer of 2007, no rain was measured for one month. Summer tends to be the sunniest season, although May averages the most sunshine of any individual month. May 2021 recorded 335 sunhours, making it the sunniest month on record. Overall, the city receives around 1,300 annual hours of sunshine, which is comparable with other places in northern and north-western Europe such as Ireland and Scotland. Nonetheless, Reykjavík is one of the cloudiest and coolest capitals in the world. The highest temperature recorded in Reykjavík was , reported on 30 July 2008, while the lowest-ever recorded temperature was , recorded on 21 January 1918. The coldest month on record is January 1918, with a mean temperature of . The warmest is July 2019, with a mean temperature of . Cityscape City administration The Reykjavík City Council governs the city of Reykjavík and is directly elected by those aged over 18 domiciled in the city. The council has 23 members who are elected using the open list method for four-year terms. The council selects members of boards, and each board controls a different field under the city council's authority. The most important board is the City Board that wields the executive rights along with the City Mayor. The City Mayor is the senior public official and also the director of city operations. Other public officials control city institutions under the mayor's authority. Thus, the administration consists of two different parts: The political power of City Council cascading down to other boards Public officials under the authority of the city mayor who administer and manage implementation of policy. Political control The Independence Party was historically the city's ruling party; it had an overall majority from its establishment in 1929 until 1978, when it narrowly lost. From 1978 until 1982, there was a three-party coalition composed of the People's Alliance, the Social Democratic Party, and the Progressive Party. In 1982, the Independence Party regained an overall majority, which it held for three consecutive terms. The 1994 election was won by Reykjavíkurlistinn (the R-list), an alliance of Icelandic socialist parties, led by Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir. This alliance won a majority in three consecutive elections, but was dissolved for the 2006 election when five different parties were on the ballot. The Independence Party won seven seats, and together with the one Progressive Party they were able to form a new majority in the council which took over in June 2006. In October 2007 a new majority was formed on the council, consisting of members of the Progressive Party, the Social Democratic Alliance, the Left-Greens and the F-list (liberals and independents), after controversy regarding REI, a subsidiary of OR, the city's energy company. However, three months later the F-list formed a new majority together with the Independence Party. Ólafur F. Magnússon, the leader of the F-list, | level. The hills of Öskjuhlíð and Skólavörðuholt appear to be the remains of former shield volcanoes which were active during the warm periods of the Ice Age. After the Ice Age, the land rose as the heavy load of the glaciers fell away, and began to look as it does today. The capital city area continued to be shaped by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, like the one 4,500 years ago in the mountain range Bláfjöll, when the lava coming down the Elliðaá valley reached the sea at the bay of Elliðavogur. The largest river to run through Reykjavík is the Elliðaá River, which is non-navigable. It offers salmon fishing within the city limits. Mount Esja, at , is the highest mountain in the vicinity of Reykjavík. The city of Reykjavík is mostly located on the Seltjarnarnes peninsula, but the suburbs reach far out to the south and east. Reykjavík is a spread-out city: most of its urban area consists of low-density suburbs, and houses are usually widely spaced. The outer residential neighbourhoods are also widely spaced from each other; in between them are the main traffic arteries and a lot of empty space. The city's latitude is 64°08' N, making it the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state (Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, is slightly further north at 64°10' (about 80 km) but Greenland is a constituent country, not an independent state). Climate Reykjavík has a subpolar oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfc). The city has had its present climate classification since the beginning of the 20th century. At 64° north, Reykjavik is characterized by extremes of day and night length over the course of the year. From 20 May to 24 July, daylight is essentially permanent as the sun never gets more than 5° below the horizon. Day length drops to less than five hours between 2 December and 10 January. The sun climbs just 3° above the horizon during this time. However, day length begins increasing rapidly during January and by month's end there are seven hours of daylight. Despite its northern latitude, temperatures very rarely drop below in the winter. The proximity to the Arctic Circle and the strong moderation of the Atlantic Ocean in the Icelandic coast (influence of North Atlantic Current, an extension of the Gulf Stream) shape a relatively mild winter and cool summer. The city's coastal location does make it prone to wind, however, and gales are common in winter (influence of the Icelandic Low). Summers are cool, with temperatures fluctuating between , rarely exceeding . This is a result of the location on an island in the North Atlantic away from warm summer continental air, making it cooler in summer than similar latitudes in mainland Scandinavia. Reykjavík averages 147 days of rain (more than 1 mm) per year. Droughts are uncommon, although they occur in some summers. July and August are the warmest months of the year on average and January and February the coldest. In the summer of 2007, no rain was measured for one month. Summer tends to be the sunniest season, although May averages the most sunshine of any individual month. May 2021 recorded 335 sunhours, making it the sunniest month on record. Overall, the city receives around 1,300 annual hours of sunshine, which is comparable with other places in northern and north-western Europe such as Ireland and Scotland. Nonetheless, Reykjavík is one of the cloudiest and coolest capitals in the world. The highest temperature recorded in Reykjavík was , reported on 30 July 2008, while the lowest-ever recorded temperature was , recorded on 21 January 1918. The coldest month on record is January 1918, with a mean temperature of . The warmest is July 2019, with a mean temperature of . Cityscape City administration The Reykjavík City Council governs the city of Reykjavík and is directly elected by those aged over 18 domiciled in the city. The council has 23 members who are elected using the open list method for four-year terms. The council selects members of boards, and each board controls a different field under the city council's authority. The most important board is the City Board that wields the executive rights along with the City Mayor. The City Mayor is the senior public official and also the director of city operations. Other public officials control city institutions under the mayor's authority. Thus, the administration consists of two different parts: The political power of City Council cascading down to other boards Public officials under the authority of the city mayor who administer and manage implementation of policy. Political control The Independence Party was historically the city's ruling party; it had an overall majority from its establishment in 1929 until 1978, when it narrowly lost. From 1978 until 1982, there was a three-party coalition composed of the People's Alliance, the Social Democratic Party, and the Progressive Party. In 1982, the Independence Party regained an overall majority, which it held for three consecutive terms. The 1994 election was won by Reykjavíkurlistinn (the R-list), an alliance of Icelandic socialist parties, led by Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir. This alliance won a majority in three consecutive elections, but was dissolved for the 2006 election when five different parties were on the ballot. The Independence Party won seven seats, and together with the one Progressive Party they were able to form a new majority in the council which took over in June 2006. In October 2007 a new majority was formed on the council, consisting of members of the Progressive Party, the Social Democratic Alliance, the Left-Greens and the F-list (liberals and independents), after controversy regarding REI, a subsidiary of OR, the city's energy company. However, three months later the F-list formed a new majority together with the Independence Party. Ólafur F. Magnússon, the leader of the F-list, was elected mayor on 24 January 2008, and in March 2009 the Independence Party was due to appoint a new mayor. This changed once again on 14 August 2008 when the fourth coalition of the term was formed, by the Independence Party and the Social Democratic Alliance, with Hanna Birna Kristjánsdóttir becoming mayor. The City Council election in May 2010 saw a new political party, The Best Party, win six of 15 seats, and they formed a coalition with the Social Democratic Alliance; comedian Jón Gnarr became mayor. At the 2014 election, the Social Democratic Alliance had its best showing yet, gaining five seats in the council, while Bright Future (successor to the Best Party) received two seats and the two parties formed a coalition with the Left-Green movement and the Pirate Party, which won one seat each. The Independence Party had its worst election ever, with only four seats. Mayor The mayor is appointed by the city council; usually one of the council members is chosen, but they may also appoint a mayor who is not a member of the council. The post was created in 1907 and advertised in 1908. Two applications were received, from Páll Einarsson, sheriff and town mayor of Hafnarfjörður and from Knud Zimsen, town councillor in Reykjavík. Páll was appointed on 7 May and was mayor for six years. At that time the city mayor received a salary of 4,500 ISK per year and 1,500 ISK for office expenses. The current mayor is Dagur B. Eggertsson. Demographics Reykjavík is by far the largest and most populous settlement in Iceland. The municipality of Reykjavík had a population of 131,136 on 1 January 2020; that is 36% of the country's population. The Capital Region, which includes the capital and six municipalities around it, was home to 233,034 people; that is about 64% of the country's population. On 1 January 2019, of the city's population of 128,793, immigrants of the first and second generation numbered 23,995 (18.6%), increasing from 12,352 (10.4%) in 2008 and 3,106 (2.9%) in 1998. The most common foreign citizens are Poles, Lithuanians, and Latvians. About 80% of the city's foreign residents originate in European Union and EFTA member states, and over 58% are from the new member states of the EU, mainly former Eastern Bloc countries, which joined in 2004, 2007 and 2013. Children of foreign origin form a more considerable minority in the city's schools: as many as a third in places. The city is also visited by thousands of |
or fuse into larger polyprotein chains. Some viruses contain additional genes. The lentivirus genus, the spumavirus genus, the HTLV / bovine leukemia virus (BLV) genus, and a newly introduced fish virus genus are retroviruses classified as complex. These viruses have genes called accessory genes, in addition to gag, pro, pol and env genes. Accessory genes are located between pol and env, downstream from the env, including the U3 region of LTR, or in the env and overlapping portions. While accessory genes have auxiliary roles, they also coordinate and regulate viral gene expression. In addition, some retroviruses may carry genes called oncogenes or onc genes from another class. Retroviruses with these genes (also called transforming viruses) are known for their ability to quickly cause tumors in animals and transform cells in culture into an oncogenic state. The polyproteins are cleaved into smaller proteins each with their own function. The nucleotides encoding them are known as subgenes. Multiplication When retroviruses have integrated their own genome into the germ line, their genome is passed on to a following generation. These endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), contrasted with exogenous ones, now make up 5–8% of the human genome. Most insertions have no known function and are often referred to as "junk DNA". However, many endogenous retroviruses play important roles in host biology, such as control of gene transcription, cell fusion during placental development in the course of the germination of an embryo, and resistance to exogenous retroviral infection. Endogenous retroviruses have also received special attention in the research of immunology-related pathologies, such as autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis, although endogenous retroviruses have not yet been proven to play any causal role in this class of disease. While transcription was classically thought to occur only from DNA to RNA, reverse transcriptase transcribes RNA into DNA. The term "retro" in retrovirus refers to this reversal (making DNA from RNA) of the usual direction of transcription. It still obeys the central dogma of molecular biology, which states that information can be transferred from nucleic acid to nucleic acid but cannot be transferred back from protein to either protein or nucleic acid. Reverse transcriptase activity outside of retroviruses has been found in almost all eukaryotes, enabling the generation and insertion of new copies of retrotransposons into the host genome. These inserts are transcribed by enzymes of the host into new RNA molecules that enter the cytosol. Next, some of these RNA molecules are translated into viral proteins. The proteins encoded by the gag and pol genes are translated from genome-length mRNAs into Gag and Gag–Pol polyproteins. In example, for the gag gene; it is translated into molecules of the capsid protein, and for the pol gene; it is translated into molecules of reverse transcriptase. Retroviruses need a lot more amount of the Gag proteins than the Pol proteins and have developed advanced systems to synthesize the required amount of each. As an example, after Gag synthesis nearly 95 percent of the ribosomes terminate translation, while other ribosomes continue translation to synthesize Gag–Pol. In the rough endoplasmic reticulum glycosylation begins and the env gene is translated from spliced mRNAs in the rough endoplasmic reticulum, into molecules of the envelope protein. When the envelope protein molecules are carried to the Golgi complex, they are divided into surface glycoprotein and transmembrane glycoprotein by a host protease. These two glycoprotein products stay in close affiliation, and they are transported to the plasma membrane after further glycosylation. It is important to note that a retrovirus must "bring" its own reverse transcriptase in its capsid, otherwise it is unable to utilize the enzymes of the infected cell to carry out the task, due to the unusual nature of producing DNA from RNA. Industrial drugs that are designed as protease and reverse-transcriptase inhibitors are made such that they target specific sites and sequences within their respective enzymes. However these drugs can quickly become ineffective due to the fact that the gene sequences that code for the protease and the reverse transcriptase quickly mutate. These changes in bases cause specific codons and sites with the enzymes to change and thereby avoid drug targeting by losing the sites that the drug actually targets. Because reverse transcription lacks the usual proofreading of DNA replication, a retrovirus mutates very often. This enables the virus to grow resistant to antiviral pharmaceuticals quickly, and impedes the development of effective vaccines and inhibitors for the retrovirus. One difficulty faced with some retroviruses, such as the Moloney retrovirus, involves the requirement for cells to be actively dividing for transduction. As a result, cells such as neurons are very resistant to infection and transduction by retroviruses. This gives rise to a concern that insertional mutagenesis due to integration into the host genome might lead to cancer or leukemia. This is unlike Lentivirus, a genus of Retroviridae, which are able to integrate their RNA into the genome of non-dividing host cells. Recombination Two RNA genomes are packaged into each retrovirus particle, but, after an infection, each virus generates only one provirus. After infection, reverse transcription occurs and this process is accompanied by recombination. Recombination involves template strand switching between the two genome copies (copy choice recombination) during reverse transcription. From 5 to 14 recombination events per genome occur at each replication cycle. Genetic recombination appears to be necessary for maintaining genome integrity and as a repair mechanism for salvaging damaged genomes. Transmission Cell-to-cell Fluids Airborne, like the Jaagsiekte sheep retrovirus. Provirus The DNA formed after reverse transcription (the provirus) is longer than the RNA genome because each of the terminals have the U3 - R - U5 sequences called long terminal repeat (LTR). Thus, 5' terminal has the extra U3 sequence, while the other terminal has the U5 sequence. LTRs are able to send signals for vital tasks to be carried out such as initiation of RNA production or management of the rate of transcription. This way, LTRs can control replication, hence, the entire progress of the viral cycle. Although located in the nucleus, the non-integrated retroviral cDNA is a very weak substrate for transcription. For this reason, an integrated provirus is a necessary for permanent and an effective expression of retroviral genes. This DNA can be incorporated into host genome as a provirus that can be passed on to progeny cells. The retrovirus DNA is inserted at random into the host genome. Because of this, it can be inserted into | retroviruses (ERVs), contrasted with exogenous ones, now make up 5–8% of the human genome. Most insertions have no known function and are often referred to as "junk DNA". However, many endogenous retroviruses play important roles in host biology, such as control of gene transcription, cell fusion during placental development in the course of the germination of an embryo, and resistance to exogenous retroviral infection. Endogenous retroviruses have also received special attention in the research of immunology-related pathologies, such as autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis, although endogenous retroviruses have not yet been proven to play any causal role in this class of disease. While transcription was classically thought to occur only from DNA to RNA, reverse transcriptase transcribes RNA into DNA. The term "retro" in retrovirus refers to this reversal (making DNA from RNA) of the usual direction of transcription. It still obeys the central dogma of molecular biology, which states that information can be transferred from nucleic acid to nucleic acid but cannot be transferred back from protein to either protein or nucleic acid. Reverse transcriptase activity outside of retroviruses has been found in almost all eukaryotes, enabling the generation and insertion of new copies of retrotransposons into the host genome. These inserts are transcribed by enzymes of the host into new RNA molecules that enter the cytosol. Next, some of these RNA molecules are translated into viral proteins. The proteins encoded by the gag and pol genes are translated from genome-length mRNAs into Gag and Gag–Pol polyproteins. In example, for the gag gene; it is translated into molecules of the capsid protein, and for the pol gene; it is translated into molecules of reverse transcriptase. Retroviruses need a lot more amount of the Gag proteins than the Pol proteins and have developed advanced systems to synthesize the required amount of each. As an example, after Gag synthesis nearly 95 percent of the ribosomes terminate translation, while other ribosomes continue translation to synthesize Gag–Pol. In the rough endoplasmic reticulum glycosylation begins and the env gene is translated from spliced mRNAs in the rough endoplasmic reticulum, into molecules of the envelope protein. When the envelope protein molecules are carried to the Golgi complex, they are divided into surface glycoprotein and transmembrane glycoprotein by a host protease. These two glycoprotein products stay in close affiliation, and they are transported to the plasma membrane after further glycosylation. It is important to note that a retrovirus must "bring" its own reverse transcriptase in its capsid, otherwise it is unable to utilize the enzymes of the infected cell to carry out the task, due to the unusual nature of producing DNA from RNA. Industrial drugs that are designed as protease and reverse-transcriptase inhibitors are made such that they target specific sites and sequences within their respective enzymes. However these drugs can quickly become ineffective due to the fact that the gene sequences that code for the protease and the reverse transcriptase quickly mutate. These changes in bases cause specific codons and sites with the enzymes to change and thereby avoid drug targeting by losing the sites that the drug actually targets. Because reverse transcription lacks the usual proofreading of DNA replication, a retrovirus mutates very often. This enables the virus to grow resistant to antiviral pharmaceuticals quickly, and impedes the development of effective vaccines and inhibitors for the retrovirus. One difficulty faced with some retroviruses, such as the Moloney retrovirus, involves the requirement for cells to be actively dividing for transduction. As a result, cells such as neurons are very resistant to infection and transduction by retroviruses. This gives rise to a concern that insertional mutagenesis due to integration into the host genome might lead to cancer or leukemia. This is unlike Lentivirus, a genus of Retroviridae, which are able to integrate their RNA into the genome of non-dividing host cells. Recombination Two RNA genomes are packaged into each retrovirus particle, but, after an infection, each virus generates only one provirus. After infection, reverse transcription occurs and this process is accompanied by recombination. Recombination involves template strand switching between the two genome copies (copy choice recombination) during reverse transcription. From 5 to 14 recombination events per genome occur at each replication cycle. Genetic recombination appears to be necessary for maintaining genome integrity and as a repair mechanism for salvaging damaged genomes. Transmission Cell-to-cell Fluids Airborne, like the Jaagsiekte sheep retrovirus. Provirus The DNA formed after reverse transcription (the provirus) is longer than the RNA genome because each of the terminals have the U3 - R - U5 sequences called long terminal repeat (LTR). Thus, 5' terminal has the extra U3 sequence, while the other terminal has the U5 sequence. LTRs are able to send signals for vital tasks to be carried out such as initiation of RNA production or management of the rate of transcription. This way, LTRs can control replication, hence, the entire progress of the viral cycle. Although located in the nucleus, the non-integrated retroviral cDNA is a very weak substrate for transcription. For this reason, an integrated provirus is a necessary for permanent and an effective expression of retroviral genes. This DNA can be incorporated into host genome as a provirus that can be passed on to progeny cells. The retrovirus DNA is inserted at random into the host genome. Because of this, it can be inserted into oncogenes. In this way some retroviruses can convert normal cells into cancer cells. Some provirus remains latent in the cell for a long period of time before it is activated by the change in cell environment. Early evolution Studies of retroviruses led to the first demonstrated synthesis of DNA from RNA templates, a fundamental mode for transferring genetic material that occurs in both eukaryotes and prokaryotes. It has been speculated that the RNA to DNA transcription processes used by retroviruses may have first caused DNA to be used as genetic material. In this model, the RNA world hypothesis, cellular organisms adopted the more chemically stable DNA when retroviruses evolved to create |
rondellus. Later, an alternative term was "roundel" (e.g., David Melvill's manuscript Ane Buik off Roundells, Aberdeen, 1612). Special types of rounds are the "catch" (a comic English form found from about 1580 to 1800), and a specialized use of the word "canon", in 17th- and 18th-century England designating rounds with religious texts. The oldest surviving round in English is "Sumer Is Icumen In" , which is for four voices, plus two bass voices singing a ground (that is, a never-changing repeating part), also in canon. However, the earliest known rounds are two works with Latin texts found in the eleventh fascicle of the Notre Dame manuscript Pluteo 29.1. They are Leto leta concio (a two-voice round) and O quanto consilio (a four-voice round). The former dates from before 1180 and may be of German origin. The first published rounds in English were printed by Thomas Ravenscroft in 1609... "Three Blind Mice" appears in this collection, although in a somewhat different form from today's children's round: Mechanics What makes a round work is that after the work is divided into equal-sized blocks of a few measures each, corresponding notes in each block either are the same, or are different notes in the same chord. This is easiest with one chord, as in "Row, Row, Row Your Boat": A new part can join the singing by starting at the beginning whenever another part reaches any asterisk in the above music. If one ignores the sixteenth notes that pass between the main chords, every single note is in the tonic triad—in this case, a C, E, or G. Many rounds involve more than one chord, as | may be repeated as many times as possible, although many do have "fixed" endings, often indicated by a fermata. "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" is a well-known children's round for four voices. Other well-known examples are "Frère Jacques", "Three Blind Mice", and, more recently, the outro of "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys (the first usage in contemporary pop music). A catch is a round in which a phrase that is not apparent in a single line of lyrics emerges when the lyrics are split between the different voices. "Perpetual canon" refers to the end of the melody leading back to the beginning, allowing easy and immediate repetition. Often, "the final cadence is the same as the first measure". History The term "round" first appears in English in the early 16th century, though the form was found much earlier. In medieval England, they were called rota or rondellus. Later, an alternative term was "roundel" (e.g., David Melvill's manuscript Ane Buik off Roundells, Aberdeen, 1612). Special types of rounds are the "catch" (a comic English form found from about 1580 to 1800), and a specialized use of the word "canon", in 17th- and 18th-century England designating rounds with religious texts. The oldest surviving round in English is "Sumer Is Icumen In" , which is for four voices, plus two bass voices singing a ground (that is, a never-changing repeating part), also in canon. However, the earliest known rounds are two works with Latin |
using various terms. Reincarnation, or Punarjanman (, 'rebirth, transmigration'), is discussed in the ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, with many alternate terms such as punarāvṛtti (), punarājāti (), punarjīvātu (), punarbhava (), āgati-gati (, common in Buddhist Pali text), nibbattin (), upapatti (), and uppajjana (). These religions believe that this reincarnation is cyclic and an endless Saṃsāra, unless one gains spiritual insights that ends this cycle leading to liberation. The reincarnation concept is considered in Indian religions as a step that starts each "cycle of aimless drifting, wandering or mundane existence," but one that is an opportunity to seek spiritual liberation through ethical living and a variety of meditative, yogic (marga), or other spiritual practices. They consider the release from the cycle of reincarnations as the ultimate spiritual goal, and call the liberation by terms such as moksha, nirvana, mukti and kaivalya. However, the Buddhist, Hindu and Jain traditions have differed, since ancient times, in their assumptions and in their details on what reincarnates, how reincarnation occurs and what leads to liberation. Gilgul, Gilgul neshamot, or Gilgulei Ha Neshamot () is the concept of reincarnation in Kabbalistic Judaism, found in much Yiddish literature among Ashkenazi Jews. Gilgul means 'cycle' and neshamot is 'souls'. Kabbalistic reincarnation says that humans reincarnate only to humans unless YHWH/Ein Sof/God chooses. History Origins The origins of the notion of reincarnation are obscure. Discussion of the subject appears in the philosophical traditions of India. The Greek Pre-Socratics discussed reincarnation, and the Celtic druids are also reported to have taught a doctrine of reincarnation. Early Jainism, Buddhism, and Hinduism The concepts of the cycle of birth and death, samsara, and liberation partly derive from ascetic traditions that arose in India around the middle of the first millennium BCE. The first textual references to the idea of reincarnation appear in the Upanishads of the late Vedic period (c. 1100 – c. 500 BCE), predating the Buddha and the Mahavira. Though no direct evidence of this has been found, the tribes of the Ganges valley or the Dravidian traditions of South India have been proposed as another early source of reincarnation beliefs. The idea of reincarnation, saṃsāra, did not exist in the early Vedic religions. The early Vedas do not mention the doctrine of Karma and rebirth but mention the belief in an afterlife. It is in the early Upanishads, which are pre-Buddha and pre-Mahavira, where these ideas are developed and described in a general way. Detailed descriptions first appear around the mid-1st millennium BCE in diverse traditions, including Buddhism, Jainism and various schools of Hindu philosophy, each of which gave unique expression to the general principle. The texts of ancient Jainism that have survived into the modern era are post-Mahavira, likely from the last centuries of the first millennium BCE, and extensively mention rebirth and karma doctrines. The Jaina philosophy assumes that the soul (jiva in Jainism; atman in Hinduism) exists and is eternal, passing through cycles of transmigration and rebirth. After death, reincarnation into a new body is asserted to be instantaneous in early Jaina texts. Depending upon the accumulated karma, rebirth occurs into a higher or lower bodily form, either in heaven or hell or earthly realm. No bodily form is permanent: everyone dies and reincarnates further. Liberation (kevalya) from reincarnation is possible, however, through removing and ending karmic accumulations to one's soul. From the early stages of Jainism on, a human being was considered the highest mortal being, with the potential to achieve liberation, particularly through asceticism. The early Buddhist texts discuss rebirth as part of the doctrine of Saṃsāra. This asserts that the nature of existence is a "suffering-laden cycle of life, death, and rebirth, without beginning or end." Also referred to as the wheel of existence (Bhavacakra), it is often mentioned in Buddhist texts with the term punarbhava (rebirth, re-becoming). Liberation from this cycle of existence, Nirvana, is the foundation and the most important purpose of Buddhism. Buddhist texts also assert that an enlightened person knows his previous births, a knowledge achieved through high levels of meditative concentration. Tibetan Buddhism discusses death, bardo (an intermediate state), and rebirth in texts such as the Tibetan Book of the Dead. While Nirvana is taught as the ultimate goal in the Theravadin Buddhism, and is essential to Mahayana Buddhism, the vast majority of contemporary lay Buddhists focus on accumulating good karma and acquiring merit to achieve a better reincarnation in the next life. In early Buddhist traditions, Saṃsāra cosmology consisted of five realms through which the wheel of existence cycled. This included hells (niraya), hungry ghosts (pretas), animals (tiryak), humans (manushya), and gods (devas, heavenly). In latter Buddhist traditions, this list grew to a list of six realms of rebirth, adding demigods (asuras). Rationale The earliest layers of Vedic text incorporate the concept of life, followed by an afterlife in heaven and hell based on cumulative virtues (merit) or vices (demerit). However, the ancient Vedic Rishis challenged this idea of afterlife as simplistic, because people do not live equally moral or immoral lives. Between generally virtuous lives, some are more virtuous; while evil too has degrees, and the texts assert that it would be unfair for people, with varying degrees of virtue or vices, to end up in heaven or hell, in "either or" and disproportionate manner irrespective of how virtuous or vicious their lives were. They introduced the idea of an afterlife in heaven or hell in proportion to one's merit. Comparison Early texts of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism share the concepts and terminology related to reincarnation. They also emphasize similar virtuous practices and karma as necessary for liberation and what influences future rebirths. For example, all three discuss various virtues—sometimes grouped as Yamas and Niyamas—such as non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, non-possessiveness, compassion for all living beings, charity and many others. Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism disagree in their assumptions and theories about rebirth. Hinduism relies on its foundational assumption that 'soul, Self exists' (atman or attā), in contrast to Buddhist assumption that there is 'no soul, no Self' (anatta or anatman). Hindu traditions consider soul to be the unchanging eternal essence of a living being, and what journeys across reincarnations until it attains self-knowledge. Buddhism, in contrast, asserts a rebirth theory without a Self, and considers realization of non-Self or Emptiness as Nirvana (nibbana). Thus Buddhism and Hinduism have a very different view on whether a self or soul exists, which impacts the details of their respective rebirth theories. The reincarnation doctrine in Jainism differs from those in Buddhism, even though both are non-theistic Sramana traditions. Jainism, in contrast to Buddhism, accepts the foundational assumption that soul exists (Jiva) and asserts this soul is involved in the rebirth mechanism. Further, Jainism considers asceticism as an important means to spiritual liberation that ends all reincarnation, while Buddhism does not. Classical antiquity Early Greek discussion of the concept dates to the sixth century BCE. An early Greek thinker known to have considered rebirth is Pherecydes of Syros (fl. 540 BCE). His younger contemporary Pythagoras (c. 570–c. 495 BCE), its first famous exponent, instituted societies for its diffusion. Some authorities believe that Pythagoras was Pherecydes' pupil, others that Pythagoras took up the idea of reincarnation from the doctrine of Orphism, a Thracian religion, or brought the teaching from India. Plato (428/427–348/347 BCE) presented accounts of reincarnation in his works, particularly the Myth of Er, where Plato makes Socrates tell how Er, the son of Armenius, miraculously returned to life on the twelfth day after death and recounted the secrets of the other world. There are myths and theories to the same effect in other dialogues, in the Chariot allegory of the Phaedrus, in the Meno, Timaeus and Laws. The soul, once separated from the body, spends an indeterminate amount of time in "formland" (see The Allegory of the Cave in The Republic) and then assumes another body. In Phaedo, Plato has his teacher Socrates, prior to his death, state: "I am confident that there truly is such a thing as living again, and that the living spring from the dead." However, Xenophon does not mention Socrates as believing in reincarnation, and Plato may have systematised Socrates' thought with concepts he took directly from Pythagoreanism or Orphism. Mystery cults The Orphic religion, which taught reincarnation, about the sixth century BC, organized itself into mystery schools at Eleusis and elsewhere, and produced a copious literature. Orpheus, its legendary founder, is said to have taught that the immortal soul aspires to freedom while the body holds it prisoner. The wheel of birth revolves, the soul alternates between freedom and captivity round the wide circle of necessity. Orpheus proclaimed the need of the grace of the gods, Dionysus in particular, and of self-purification until the soul has completed the spiral ascent of destiny to live forever. An association between Pythagorean philosophy and reincarnation was routinely accepted throughout antiquity, as Pythagoras also taught about reincarnation. However, unlike the Orphics, who considered metempsychosis a cycle of grief that could be escaped by attaining liberation from it, Pythagoras seems to postulate an eternal, neutral reincarnation where subsequent lives would not be conditioned by any action done in the previous. Late authors In later Greek literature the doctrine is mentioned in a fragment of Menander and satirized by Lucian. In Roman literature it is found as early as Ennius, who, in a lost passage of his Annals, told how he had seen Homer in a dream, who had assured him that the same soul which had animated both the poets had once belonged to a peacock. Persius in his satires (vi. 9) laughs at this, it is referred to also by Lucretius and Horace. Virgil works the idea into his account of the Underworld in the sixth book of the Aeneid. It persists down to the late classic thinkers, Plotinus and the other Neoplatonists. In the Hermetica, a Graeco-Egyptian series of writings on cosmology and spirituality attributed to Hermes Trismegistus/Thoth, the doctrine of reincarnation is central. Celtic paganism In the first century BCE Alexander Cornelius Polyhistor wrote: Julius Caesar recorded that the druids of Gaul, Britain and Ireland had metempsychosis as one of their core doctrines: Diodorus also recorded the Gaul belief that human souls were immortal, and that after a prescribed number of years they would commence upon a new life in another body. He added that Gauls had the custom of casting letters to their deceased upon the funeral pyres, through which the dead would be able to read them. Valerius Maximus also recounted they had the custom of lending sums of money to each other which would are repayable in the next world. This was mentioned by Pomponius Mela, who also recorded Gauls buried or burnt with them things they would need in a next life, to the point some would jump into the funeral piles of their relatives in order to cohabite in the new life with them. Hippolytus of Rome believed the Gauls had been taught the doctrine of reincarnation by a slave of Pythagoras named Zalmoxis. Conversely, Clement of Alexandria believed Pythagoras himself had learned it from the Celts and not the opposite, claiming he had been taught by Galatian Gauls, Hindu priests and Zoroastrians. However, author T. D. Kendrick rejected a real connection between Pythagoras and the Celtic idea reincarnation, noting their beliefs to have substantial differences, and any contact to be historically unlikely. Nonetheless, he proposed the possibility of an ancient common source, also related to the Orphic religion and Thracian systems of belief. Germanic paganism Surviving texts indicate that there was a belief in rebirth in Germanic paganism. Examples include figures from eddic poetry and sagas, potentially by way of a process of naming and/or through the family line. Scholars have discussed the implications of these attestations and proposed theories regarding belief in reincarnation among the Germanic peoples prior to Christianization and potentially to some extent in folk belief thereafter. Judaism The belief in reincarnation developed among Jewish mystics in the Medieval World, among whom differing explanations were given of the afterlife, although with a universal belief in an immortal soul. Today, reincarnation is an esoteric belief within many streams of modern Judaism. Kabbalah teaches a belief in gilgul, transmigration of souls, and hence the belief in reincarnation is universal in Hasidic Judaism, which regards the Kabbalah as sacred and authoritative, and is also held as an esoteric belief within Modern Orthodox Judaism. In Judaism, the Zohar, first published in the 13th century, discusses reincarnation at length, especially in the Torah portion "Balak." The most comprehensive kabbalistic work on reincarnation, Shaar HaGilgulim, was written by Chaim Vital, based on the teachings of his mentor, the 16th century kabbalist Isaac Luria, who was said to know the past lives of each person through his semi-prophetic abilities. The 18th century Lithuanian master scholar and kabbalist, Elijah of Vilna, known as the Vilna Gaon, authored a commentary on the biblical Book of Jonah as an allegory of reincarnation. The practice of conversion to Judaism is sometimes understood within Orthodox Judaism in terms of reincarnation. According to this school of thought in Judaism, when non-Jews are drawn to Judaism, it is because they had been Jews in a former life. Such souls may "wander among nations" through multiple lives, until they find their way back to Judaism, including through finding themselves born in a gentile family with a "lost" Jewish ancestor. There is an extensive literature of Jewish folk and traditional stories that refer to reincarnation. Christianity In Greco-Roman thought, the concept of metempsychosis disappeared with the rise of Early Christianity, reincarnation being incompatible with the Christian core doctrine of salvation of the faithful after death. It has been suggested that some of the early Church Fathers, especially Origen, still entertained a belief in the possibility of reincarnation, but evidence is tenuous, and the writings of Origen as they have come down to us speak explicitly against it. Gnosticism Several Christian Gnostic sects professed reincarnation. The Sethians and followers of Valentinus believed in it. The followers of Bardaisan of Mesopotamia, a sect of the second century deemed heretical by the Catholic Church, drew upon Chaldean astrology, to which Bardaisan's son Harmonius, educated in Athens, added Greek ideas including a sort of metempsychosis. Another such teacher was Basilides (132–? CE/AD), known to us through the criticisms of Irenaeus and the work of Clement of Alexandria (see also Neoplatonism and Gnosticism and Buddhism and Gnosticism). In the third Christian century Manichaeism spread both east and west from Babylonia, then within the Sassanid Empire, where its founder Mani lived about 216–276. Manichaean monasteries existed in Rome in 312 AD. Noting Mani's early travels to the Kushan Empire and other Buddhist influences in Manichaeism, Richard Foltz attributes Mani's teaching of reincarnation to Buddhist influence. However the inter-relation of Manicheanism, Orphism, Gnosticism and neo-Platonism is far from clear. Taoism Taoist documents from as early as the Han Dynasty claimed that Lao Tzu appeared on earth as different persons in different times beginning in the legendary era of Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. The (ca. third century BC) Chuang Tzu states: "Birth is not a beginning; death is not an end. There is existence without limitation; there is continuity without a starting-point. Existence without limitation is Space. Continuity without a starting point is Time. There is birth, there is death, there is issuing forth, there is entering in." European Middle Ages Around the 11–12th century in Europe, several reincarnationist movements were persecuted as heresies, through the establishment of the Inquisition in the Latin west. These included the Cathar, Paterene or Albigensian church of western Europe, the Paulician movement, which arose in Armenia, and the Bogomils in Bulgaria. Christian sects such as the Bogomils and the Cathars, who professed reincarnation and other gnostic beliefs, were referred to as "Manichaean", and are today sometimes described by scholars as "Neo-Manichaean". As there is no known Manichaean mythology or terminology in the writings of these groups there has been some dispute among historians as to whether these groups truly were descendants of Manichaeism. Renaissance and Early Modern period While reincarnation has been a matter of faith in some communities from an early date it has also frequently been argued for on principle, as Plato does when he argues that the number of souls must be finite because souls are indestructible, Benjamin Franklin held a similar view. Sometimes such convictions, as in Socrates' case, arise from a more general personal faith, at other times from anecdotal evidence such as Plato makes Socrates offer in the Myth of Er. During the Renaissance translations of Plato, the Hermetica and other works fostered new European interest in reincarnation. Marsilio Ficino argued that Plato's references to reincarnation were intended allegorically, Shakespeare alluded to the doctrine of reincarnation but Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake by authorities after being found guilty of heresy by the Roman Inquisition for his teachings. But the Greek philosophical works remained available and, particularly in north Europe, were discussed by groups such as the Cambridge Platonists. 19th to 20th centuries By the 19th century the philosophers Schopenhauer and Nietzsche could access the Indian scriptures for discussion of the doctrine of reincarnation, which recommended itself to the American Transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson and was adapted by Francis Bowen into Christian Metempsychosis. By the early 20th century, interest in reincarnation had been introduced into the nascent discipline of psychology, largely due to the influence of William James, who raised aspects of the philosophy of mind, comparative religion, the psychology of religious experience and the nature of empiricism. James was influential in the founding of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) in New York City in 1885, three years after the British Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was inaugurated in London, leading to systematic, critical investigation of paranormal phenomena. Famous World War II American General George Patton was a strong believer in reincarnation, believing, among other things, he was a reincarnation of the Carthaginian General Hannibal. At this time popular awareness of the idea of reincarnation was boosted by the Theosophical Society's dissemination of systematised and universalised Indian concepts and also by the influence of magical societies like The Golden Dawn. Notable personalities like Annie Besant, W. B. Yeats and Dion Fortune made the subject almost as familiar an element of the popular culture of the west as of the east. By 1924 the subject could be satirised in popular children's books. Humorist Don Marquis created a fictional cat named Mehitabel who claimed to be a reincarnation of Queen Cleopatra. Théodore Flournoy was among the first to study a claim of past-life recall in the course of his investigation of the medium Hélène Smith, published in 1900, in which he defined the possibility of cryptomnesia in such accounts. Carl Gustav Jung, like Flournoy based in Switzerland, also emulated him in his thesis based on a study of cryptomnesia in psychism. Later Jung would emphasise the importance of the persistence of memory and ego in psychological study of reincarnation: "This concept of rebirth necessarily implies the continuity of personality... (that) one is able, at least potentially, to remember that one has lived through previous existences, and that these existences were one's own...." Hypnosis, used in psychoanalysis for retrieving forgotten memories, was eventually tried as a means of studying the phenomenon of past life recall. Religions and philosophies Buddhism According to various Buddhist scriptures, Gautama Buddha believed in the existence of an afterlife in another world and in reincarnation, The Buddha also asserted that karma influences rebirth, and that the cycles of repeated births and deaths are endless. Before the birth of Buddha, ancient Indian scholars had developed competing theories of afterlife, including the materialistic school such as Charvaka, which posited that | (merit) or vices (demerit). However, the ancient Vedic Rishis challenged this idea of afterlife as simplistic, because people do not live equally moral or immoral lives. Between generally virtuous lives, some are more virtuous; while evil too has degrees, and the texts assert that it would be unfair for people, with varying degrees of virtue or vices, to end up in heaven or hell, in "either or" and disproportionate manner irrespective of how virtuous or vicious their lives were. They introduced the idea of an afterlife in heaven or hell in proportion to one's merit. Comparison Early texts of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism share the concepts and terminology related to reincarnation. They also emphasize similar virtuous practices and karma as necessary for liberation and what influences future rebirths. For example, all three discuss various virtues—sometimes grouped as Yamas and Niyamas—such as non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, non-possessiveness, compassion for all living beings, charity and many others. Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism disagree in their assumptions and theories about rebirth. Hinduism relies on its foundational assumption that 'soul, Self exists' (atman or attā), in contrast to Buddhist assumption that there is 'no soul, no Self' (anatta or anatman). Hindu traditions consider soul to be the unchanging eternal essence of a living being, and what journeys across reincarnations until it attains self-knowledge. Buddhism, in contrast, asserts a rebirth theory without a Self, and considers realization of non-Self or Emptiness as Nirvana (nibbana). Thus Buddhism and Hinduism have a very different view on whether a self or soul exists, which impacts the details of their respective rebirth theories. The reincarnation doctrine in Jainism differs from those in Buddhism, even though both are non-theistic Sramana traditions. Jainism, in contrast to Buddhism, accepts the foundational assumption that soul exists (Jiva) and asserts this soul is involved in the rebirth mechanism. Further, Jainism considers asceticism as an important means to spiritual liberation that ends all reincarnation, while Buddhism does not. Classical antiquity Early Greek discussion of the concept dates to the sixth century BCE. An early Greek thinker known to have considered rebirth is Pherecydes of Syros (fl. 540 BCE). His younger contemporary Pythagoras (c. 570–c. 495 BCE), its first famous exponent, instituted societies for its diffusion. Some authorities believe that Pythagoras was Pherecydes' pupil, others that Pythagoras took up the idea of reincarnation from the doctrine of Orphism, a Thracian religion, or brought the teaching from India. Plato (428/427–348/347 BCE) presented accounts of reincarnation in his works, particularly the Myth of Er, where Plato makes Socrates tell how Er, the son of Armenius, miraculously returned to life on the twelfth day after death and recounted the secrets of the other world. There are myths and theories to the same effect in other dialogues, in the Chariot allegory of the Phaedrus, in the Meno, Timaeus and Laws. The soul, once separated from the body, spends an indeterminate amount of time in "formland" (see The Allegory of the Cave in The Republic) and then assumes another body. In Phaedo, Plato has his teacher Socrates, prior to his death, state: "I am confident that there truly is such a thing as living again, and that the living spring from the dead." However, Xenophon does not mention Socrates as believing in reincarnation, and Plato may have systematised Socrates' thought with concepts he took directly from Pythagoreanism or Orphism. Mystery cults The Orphic religion, which taught reincarnation, about the sixth century BC, organized itself into mystery schools at Eleusis and elsewhere, and produced a copious literature. Orpheus, its legendary founder, is said to have taught that the immortal soul aspires to freedom while the body holds it prisoner. The wheel of birth revolves, the soul alternates between freedom and captivity round the wide circle of necessity. Orpheus proclaimed the need of the grace of the gods, Dionysus in particular, and of self-purification until the soul has completed the spiral ascent of destiny to live forever. An association between Pythagorean philosophy and reincarnation was routinely accepted throughout antiquity, as Pythagoras also taught about reincarnation. However, unlike the Orphics, who considered metempsychosis a cycle of grief that could be escaped by attaining liberation from it, Pythagoras seems to postulate an eternal, neutral reincarnation where subsequent lives would not be conditioned by any action done in the previous. Late authors In later Greek literature the doctrine is mentioned in a fragment of Menander and satirized by Lucian. In Roman literature it is found as early as Ennius, who, in a lost passage of his Annals, told how he had seen Homer in a dream, who had assured him that the same soul which had animated both the poets had once belonged to a peacock. Persius in his satires (vi. 9) laughs at this, it is referred to also by Lucretius and Horace. Virgil works the idea into his account of the Underworld in the sixth book of the Aeneid. It persists down to the late classic thinkers, Plotinus and the other Neoplatonists. In the Hermetica, a Graeco-Egyptian series of writings on cosmology and spirituality attributed to Hermes Trismegistus/Thoth, the doctrine of reincarnation is central. Celtic paganism In the first century BCE Alexander Cornelius Polyhistor wrote: Julius Caesar recorded that the druids of Gaul, Britain and Ireland had metempsychosis as one of their core doctrines: Diodorus also recorded the Gaul belief that human souls were immortal, and that after a prescribed number of years they would commence upon a new life in another body. He added that Gauls had the custom of casting letters to their deceased upon the funeral pyres, through which the dead would be able to read them. Valerius Maximus also recounted they had the custom of lending sums of money to each other which would are repayable in the next world. This was mentioned by Pomponius Mela, who also recorded Gauls buried or burnt with them things they would need in a next life, to the point some would jump into the funeral piles of their relatives in order to cohabite in the new life with them. Hippolytus of Rome believed the Gauls had been taught the doctrine of reincarnation by a slave of Pythagoras named Zalmoxis. Conversely, Clement of Alexandria believed Pythagoras himself had learned it from the Celts and not the opposite, claiming he had been taught by Galatian Gauls, Hindu priests and Zoroastrians. However, author T. D. Kendrick rejected a real connection between Pythagoras and the Celtic idea reincarnation, noting their beliefs to have substantial differences, and any contact to be historically unlikely. Nonetheless, he proposed the possibility of an ancient common source, also related to the Orphic religion and Thracian systems of belief. Germanic paganism Surviving texts indicate that there was a belief in rebirth in Germanic paganism. Examples include figures from eddic poetry and sagas, potentially by way of a process of naming and/or through the family line. Scholars have discussed the implications of these attestations and proposed theories regarding belief in reincarnation among the Germanic peoples prior to Christianization and potentially to some extent in folk belief thereafter. Judaism The belief in reincarnation developed among Jewish mystics in the Medieval World, among whom differing explanations were given of the afterlife, although with a universal belief in an immortal soul. Today, reincarnation is an esoteric belief within many streams of modern Judaism. Kabbalah teaches a belief in gilgul, transmigration of souls, and hence the belief in reincarnation is universal in Hasidic Judaism, which regards the Kabbalah as sacred and authoritative, and is also held as an esoteric belief within Modern Orthodox Judaism. In Judaism, the Zohar, first published in the 13th century, discusses reincarnation at length, especially in the Torah portion "Balak." The most comprehensive kabbalistic work on reincarnation, Shaar HaGilgulim, was written by Chaim Vital, based on the teachings of his mentor, the 16th century kabbalist Isaac Luria, who was said to know the past lives of each person through his semi-prophetic abilities. The 18th century Lithuanian master scholar and kabbalist, Elijah of Vilna, known as the Vilna Gaon, authored a commentary on the biblical Book of Jonah as an allegory of reincarnation. The practice of conversion to Judaism is sometimes understood within Orthodox Judaism in terms of reincarnation. According to this school of thought in Judaism, when non-Jews are drawn to Judaism, it is because they had been Jews in a former life. Such souls may "wander among nations" through multiple lives, until they find their way back to Judaism, including through finding themselves born in a gentile family with a "lost" Jewish ancestor. There is an extensive literature of Jewish folk and traditional stories that refer to reincarnation. Christianity In Greco-Roman thought, the concept of metempsychosis disappeared with the rise of Early Christianity, reincarnation being incompatible with the Christian core doctrine of salvation of the faithful after death. It has been suggested that some of the early Church Fathers, especially Origen, still entertained a belief in the possibility of reincarnation, but evidence is tenuous, and the writings of Origen as they have come down to us speak explicitly against it. Gnosticism Several Christian Gnostic sects professed reincarnation. The Sethians and followers of Valentinus believed in it. The followers of Bardaisan of Mesopotamia, a sect of the second century deemed heretical by the Catholic Church, drew upon Chaldean astrology, to which Bardaisan's son Harmonius, educated in Athens, added Greek ideas including a sort of metempsychosis. Another such teacher was Basilides (132–? CE/AD), known to us through the criticisms of Irenaeus and the work of Clement of Alexandria (see also Neoplatonism and Gnosticism and Buddhism and Gnosticism). In the third Christian century Manichaeism spread both east and west from Babylonia, then within the Sassanid Empire, where its founder Mani lived about 216–276. Manichaean monasteries existed in Rome in 312 AD. Noting Mani's early travels to the Kushan Empire and other Buddhist influences in Manichaeism, Richard Foltz attributes Mani's teaching of reincarnation to Buddhist influence. However the inter-relation of Manicheanism, Orphism, Gnosticism and neo-Platonism is far from clear. Taoism Taoist documents from as early as the Han Dynasty claimed that Lao Tzu appeared on earth as different persons in different times beginning in the legendary era of Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. The (ca. third century BC) Chuang Tzu states: "Birth is not a beginning; death is not an end. There is existence without limitation; there is continuity without a starting-point. Existence without limitation is Space. Continuity without a starting point is Time. There is birth, there is death, there is issuing forth, there is entering in." European Middle Ages Around the 11–12th century in Europe, several reincarnationist movements were persecuted as heresies, through the establishment of the Inquisition in the Latin west. These included the Cathar, Paterene or Albigensian church of western Europe, the Paulician movement, which arose in Armenia, and the Bogomils in Bulgaria. Christian sects such as the Bogomils and the Cathars, who professed reincarnation and other gnostic beliefs, were referred to as "Manichaean", and are today sometimes described by scholars as "Neo-Manichaean". As there is no known Manichaean mythology or terminology in the writings of these groups there has been some dispute among historians as to whether these groups truly were descendants of Manichaeism. Renaissance and Early Modern period While reincarnation has been a matter of faith in some communities from an early date it has also frequently been argued for on principle, as Plato does when he argues that the number of souls must be finite because souls are indestructible, Benjamin Franklin held a similar view. Sometimes such convictions, as in Socrates' case, arise from a more general personal faith, at other times from anecdotal evidence such as Plato makes Socrates offer in the Myth of Er. During the Renaissance translations of Plato, the Hermetica and other works fostered new European interest in reincarnation. Marsilio Ficino argued that Plato's references to reincarnation were intended allegorically, Shakespeare alluded to the doctrine of reincarnation but Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake by authorities after being found guilty of heresy by the Roman Inquisition for his teachings. But the Greek philosophical works remained available and, particularly in north Europe, were discussed by groups such as the Cambridge Platonists. 19th to 20th centuries By the 19th century the philosophers Schopenhauer and Nietzsche could access the Indian scriptures for discussion of the doctrine of reincarnation, which recommended itself to the American Transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson and was adapted by Francis Bowen into Christian Metempsychosis. By the early 20th century, interest in reincarnation had been introduced into the nascent discipline of psychology, largely due to the influence of William James, who raised aspects of the philosophy of mind, comparative religion, the psychology of religious experience and the nature of empiricism. James was influential in the founding of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) in New York City in 1885, three years after the British Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was inaugurated in London, leading to systematic, critical investigation of paranormal phenomena. Famous World War II American General George Patton was a strong believer in reincarnation, believing, among other things, he was a reincarnation of the Carthaginian General Hannibal. At this time popular awareness of the idea of reincarnation was boosted by the Theosophical Society's dissemination of systematised and universalised Indian concepts and also by the influence of magical societies like The Golden Dawn. Notable personalities like Annie Besant, W. B. Yeats and Dion Fortune made the subject almost as familiar an element of the popular culture of the west as of the east. By 1924 the subject could be satirised in popular children's books. Humorist Don Marquis created a fictional cat named Mehitabel who claimed to be a reincarnation of Queen Cleopatra. Théodore Flournoy was among the first to study a claim of past-life recall in the course of his investigation of the medium Hélène Smith, published in 1900, in which he defined the possibility of cryptomnesia in such accounts. Carl Gustav Jung, like Flournoy based in Switzerland, also emulated him in his thesis based on a study of cryptomnesia in psychism. Later Jung would emphasise the importance of the persistence of memory and ego in psychological study of reincarnation: "This concept of rebirth necessarily implies the continuity of personality... (that) one is able, at least potentially, to remember that one has lived through previous existences, and that these existences were one's own...." Hypnosis, used in psychoanalysis for retrieving forgotten memories, was eventually tried as a means of studying the phenomenon of past life recall. Religions and philosophies Buddhism According to various Buddhist scriptures, Gautama Buddha believed in the existence of an afterlife in another world and in reincarnation, The Buddha also asserted that karma influences rebirth, and that the cycles of repeated births and deaths are endless. Before the birth of Buddha, ancient Indian scholars had developed competing theories of afterlife, including the materialistic school such as Charvaka, which posited that death is the end, there is no afterlife, no soul, no rebirth, no karma, and they described death to be a state where a living being is completely annihilated, dissolved. Buddha rejected this theory, adopted the alternate existing theories on rebirth, criticizing the materialistic schools that denied rebirth and karma, states Damien Keown. Such beliefs are inappropriate and dangerous, stated Buddha, because such annihilationism views encourage moral irresponsibility and material hedonism; he tied moral responsibility to rebirth. The Buddha introduced the concept that there is no permanent self (soul), and this central concept in Buddhism is called anattā. Major contemporary Buddhist traditions such as Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions accept the teachings of Buddha. These teachings assert there is rebirth, there is no permanent self and no irreducible ātman (soul) moving from life to another and tying these lives together, there is impermanence, that all compounded things such as living beings are aggregates dissolve at death, but every being reincarnates. The rebirth cycles continue endlessly, states Buddhism, and it is a source of duhkha (suffering, pain), but this reincarnation and duhkha cycle can be stopped through nirvana. The anattā doctrine of Buddhism is a contrast to Hinduism, the latter asserting that "soul exists, it is involved in rebirth, and it is through this soul that everything is connected." Different traditions within Buddhism have offered different theories on what reincarnates and how reincarnation happens. One theory suggests that it occurs through consciousness (Sanskrit: vijñāna; Pali: samvattanika-viññana) or stream of consciousness (Sanskrit: citta-santāna, vijñāna-srotām, or vijñāna-santāna; Pali: viññana-sotam) upon death, which reincarnates into a new aggregation. This process, states this theory, is similar to the flame of a dying candle lighting up another. The consciousness in the newly born being is neither identical to nor entirely different from that in the deceased but the two form a causal continuum or stream in this Buddhist theory. Transmigration is influenced by a being's past karma (Pali: kamma). The root cause of rebirth, states Buddhism, is the abiding of consciousness in ignorance (Sanskrit: avidya; Pali: avijja) about the nature of reality, and when this ignorance is uprooted, rebirth ceases. Buddhist traditions also vary in their mechanistic details on rebirth. Most Theravada Buddhists assert that rebirth is immediate while the Tibetan and most Chinese and Japanese schools hold to the notion of a bardo (intermediate state) that can last up to 49 days. The bardo rebirth concept of Tibetan Buddhism, originally developed in India but spread to Tibet and other Buddhist countries, and involves 42 peaceful deities, and 58 wrathful deities. These ideas led to maps on karma and what form of rebirth one takes after death, discussed in texts such as The Tibetan Book of the Dead. The major Buddhist traditions accept that the reincarnation of a being depends on the past karma and merit (demerit) accumulated, and that there are six realms of existence in which the rebirth may occur after each death. Within Japanese Zen, reincarnation is accepted by some, but rejected by others. A distinction can be drawn between 'folk Zen', as in the Zen practiced by devotional lay people, and 'philosophical Zen'. Folk Zen generally accepts the various supernatural elements of Buddhism such as rebirth. Philosophical Zen, however, places more emphasis on the present moment. Some schools conclude that karma continues to exist and adhere to the person until it works out its consequences. For the Sautrantika school, each act "perfumes" the individual or "plants a seed" that later germinates. Tibetan Buddhism stresses the state of mind at the time of death. To die with a peaceful mind will stimulate a virtuous seed and a fortunate rebirth; a disturbed mind will stimulate a non-virtuous seed and an unfortunate rebirth. Christianity In the major Christian denominations, the concept of reincarnation is not present and it is nowhere explicitly referred to in the Bible. However, the impossibility of a second earthly death is stated by , where it affirms that the messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, died once forever for the sins of all the human kind. mentions that king Herod Antipas took Jesus to be a risen John the Baptist, when introducing the story of John's execution at Herod's orders. In a survey by the Pew Forum in 2009, 22% of American Christians expressed a belief in reincarnation, and in a 1981 survey 31% of regular churchgoing European Catholics expressed a belief in reincarnation. Some Christian theologians interpret certain Biblical passages as referring to reincarnation. These passages include the questioning of Jesus as to whether he is Elijah, John the Baptist, Jeremiah, or another prophet (Matthew 16:13–15 and John 1:21–22) and, less clearly (while Elijah was said not to have died, but to have been taken up to heaven), John the Baptist being asked if he is not Elijah (John 1:25). Geddes MacGregor, an Episcopalian priest and professor of philosophy, has made a case for the compatibility of Christian doctrine and reincarnation. Early There is evidence that Origen, a Church father in early Christian times, taught reincarnation in his lifetime but that when his works were translated into Latin these references were concealed. One of the epistles written by St. Jerome, "To Avitus" (Letter 124; Ad Avitum. Epistula CXXIV), which asserts that Origen's On the First Principles (Latin: De Principiis; Greek: Περὶ Ἀρχῶν) was mistranscribed: Under the impression that Origen was a heretic like Arius, St. Jerome criticizes ideas described in On the First Principles. Further in "To Avitus" (Letter 124), St. Jerome writes about "convincing proof" that Origen teaches reincarnation in the original version of the book: The original text of On First Principles has almost completely disappeared. It remains extant as De Principiis in fragments faithfully translated into Latin by St. Jerome and in "the not very reliable Latin translation of Rufinus." Belief in reincarnation was rejected by Augustine of Hippo in The City of God. Druze Reincarnation is a paramount tenet in the Druze faith. There is an eternal duality of the body and the soul and it is impossible for the soul to exist without the body. Therefore, reincarnations occur instantly at one's death. While in the Hindu and Buddhist belief system a soul can be transmitted to any living creature, in the Druze belief system this is not possible and a human soul will only transfer to a human body. Furthermore, souls cannot be divided into different or separate parts and the number of souls existing is finite. Few Druzes are able to recall their past but, if they are able to they are called a Nateq. Typically souls who have died violent deaths in their previous incarnation will be able to recall memories. Since death is seen as a quick transient state, mourning is discouraged. Unlike other Abrahamic faiths, heaven and hell are spiritual. Heaven is the ultimate happiness received when |
Ted Hoff's invention of the microprocessor, which was his second revolution. Personal life In 1953, Noyce married Elizabeth Bottomley, who was a 1951 graduate of Tufts University. While living in Los Altos, California they had four children: William B., Pendred, Priscilla, and Margaret. Elizabeth loved New England, so the family acquired a 50-acre coastal summer home in Bremen, Maine. Elizabeth and the children would summer there. Robert would visit during the summer, but he continued working at Intel during the summer. They divorced in 1974. On November 27, 1974, Noyce married Ann Schmeltz Bowers. Bowers, a graduate of Cornell University, also received an honorary Ph.D. from Santa Clara University, where she was a trustee for nearly 20 years. She was the first Director of Personnel for Intel Corporation and the first Vice President of Human Resources for Apple Inc. She currently serves as chair of the Board and the founding trustee of the Noyce Foundation. Noyce kept active his entire life. He enjoyed reading Hemingway, and he flew his own airplane and also participated in hang-gliding and scuba diving. Noyce believed that microelectronics would continue to advance in complexity and sophistication well beyond its current state; this led to the question of what use society would make of the technology. In his last interview, Noyce was asked what he would do if he were "emperor" of the United States. He said that he would, among other things, "…make sure we are preparing our next generation to flourish in a high-tech age. And that means education of the lowest and the poorest, as well as at the graduate school level." Death Noyce suffered a heart attack at age 62 at home on June 3, 1990, and later died at the Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas. Awards and honors In July 1959, he filed for "Semiconductor Device and Lead Structure", a type of integrated circuit. This independent effort was recorded only a few months after the key findings of inventor Jack Kilby. For his co-invention of the integrated circuit and its world-transforming impact, three presidents of the United States honored him. Noyce was a holder of many honors and awards. President Ronald Reagan awarded him the National Medal of Technology in 1987. Two years later, he was inducted into the U.S. Business Hall of Fame sponsored by Junior Achievement, during a black tie ceremony keynoted by President George H. W. Bush. In 1990 Noycealong with, among others, Jack Kilby and transistor inventor John Bardeenreceived a "Lifetime Achievement Medal" during the bicentennial celebration of the Patent Act. Noyce received the Franklin Institute's Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1966. He was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor in 1978 "for his contributions to the silicon integrated circuit, a cornerstone of modern electronics." In 1979, he was awarded the National Medal of Science. He also received Faraday Medal in 1979. Noyce was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1980. The National Academy of Engineering awarded him its 1989 Charles Stark Draper Prize. The science building at his alma mater, Grinnell College, is named after him. On December 12, 2011, Noyce was honored with a Google Doodle celebrating the 84th anniversary of his birth. In 2000, Kilby received the Nobel Prize in Physics; in his acceptance ("Nobel Lecture"), he mentions a small number of people whose work contributed to the success of integrated circuits, mentioning Noyce three times. Legacy The Noyce Foundation was founded in 1990 by his family. The foundation was dedicated to improving public education in mathematics and science in grades K-12. The foundation announced that it would end operations in 2015. In 1990, Congress established the Robert Noyce National Math and Science Teachers Corps Act which authorizes awards up to 5,000 scholarships annually to assist individuals in obtaining a teaching degree. These awards are granted to institutions of higher education who administer the projects after successful proposal submissions through the National Science Foundation's Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program ("Noyce"). Pre-service teachers are recruited by their college/university and must be STEM majors. Scholarship recipients to agree to teach science or mathematics in a high-need school districts for at least two years for each fiscal year the recipient received such a scholarship. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) works with the NSF Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program to identify and disseminate information about effective practices and strategies for attracting, selecting, and preparing new K-12 STEM teachers and retaining them in the STEM teacher workforce. Patents Noyce was granted 15 patents. Patents are listed in order issued, not filed. Method and apparatus for forming semiconductor structures, filed August 1954, issued February 1959, assigned to Philco Corporation Transistor structure and method, filed April 1957, issued March 1960, assigned to Beckmann Instruments Semiconductor scanning device, filed June 1959, issued November 1960, assigned to Fairchild Semiconductor Transistor structure and method of making the same, filed March 1957, issued January 1961, assigned to Clevite Corporation Semiconductor switching device, filed June 1959, issued February 1961, assigned to Fairchild Semiconductor Semiconductor Device and Lead Structure, filed July 1959, issued April 1961, assigned to Fairchild Semiconductor Field effect transistor, filed January 1958, issued November 1961, assigned | ever produced by Bell Labs and showed them off to his class. Noyce was hooked. Gale suggested that he apply to the doctoral program in physics at MIT, which he did. Noyce had a mind so quick that his graduate school friends called him "Rapid Robert." He received his doctorate in physics from MIT in 1953. Career After graduating from MIT in 1953, Noyce took a job as a research engineer at the Philco Corporation in Philadelphia. He left in 1956 to join William Shockley, a co-inventor of the transistor and eventual Nobel Prize winner, at the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View, California. Noyce left a year later with the "traitorous eight" upon having issues with Shockley's management style, and co-founded the influential Fairchild Semiconductor corporation. According to Sherman Fairchild, Noyce's impassioned presentation of his vision was the reason Fairchild had agreed to create the semiconductor division for the traitorous eight. After Jack Kilby invented the first hybrid integrated circuit (hybrid IC) in 1958, Noyce in 1959 independently invented a new type of integrated circuit, the monolithic integrated circuit (monolithic IC). It was more practical than Kilby's implementation. Noyce's design was made of silicon, whereas Kilby's chip was made of germanium. Noyce's invention was the first monolithic integrated circuit chip. Unlike Kilby's IC which had external wire connections and could not be mass-produced, Noyce's monolithic IC chip put all components on a chip of silicon and connected them with copper lines. The basis for Noyce's monolithic IC was the planar process, developed in early 1959 by Jean Hoerni. In turn, the basis for Hoerni's planar process were the silicon surface passivation and thermal oxidation methods developed by Mohamed Atalla in 1957. Noyce and Gordon Moore founded Intel in 1968 when they left Fairchild Semiconductor. Arthur Rock, the chairman of Intel's board and a major investor in the company, said that for Intel to succeed, the company needed Noyce, Moore and Andrew Grove. And it needed them in that order. Noyce: the visionary, born to inspire; Moore: the virtuoso of technology; and Grove: the technologist turned management scientist. The relaxed culture that Noyce brought to Intel was a carry-over from his style at Fairchild Semiconductor. He treated employees as family, rewarding and encouraging teamwork. Noyce's management style could be called "roll up your sleeves". He shunned fancy corporate cars, reserved parking spaces, private jets, offices, and furnishings in favor of a less-structured, relaxed working environment in which everyone contributed and no one received lavish benefits. By declining the usual executive perks he stood as a model for future generations of Intel CEOs. At Intel, he oversaw Ted Hoff's invention of the microprocessor, which was his second revolution. Personal life In 1953, Noyce married Elizabeth Bottomley, who was a 1951 graduate of Tufts University. While living in Los Altos, California they had four children: William B., Pendred, Priscilla, and Margaret. Elizabeth loved New England, so the family acquired a 50-acre coastal summer home in Bremen, Maine. Elizabeth and the children would summer there. Robert would visit during the summer, but he continued working at Intel during the summer. They divorced in 1974. On November 27, 1974, Noyce married Ann Schmeltz Bowers. Bowers, a graduate of Cornell University, also received an honorary Ph.D. from Santa Clara University, where she was a trustee for nearly 20 years. She was the first Director of Personnel for Intel Corporation and the first Vice President of Human Resources for Apple Inc. She currently serves as chair of the Board and the founding trustee of the Noyce Foundation. Noyce kept active his entire life. He enjoyed reading Hemingway, and he flew his own airplane and also participated in hang-gliding and scuba diving. Noyce believed that microelectronics would continue to advance in complexity and sophistication well beyond its current state; this led to the question of what use society would make of the technology. In his last interview, Noyce was asked what he would do if he were "emperor" of the United States. He said that he would, among other things, "…make sure we are preparing our next generation to flourish in a high-tech age. And that means education of the lowest and the poorest, as well as at the graduate school level." Death Noyce suffered a heart attack at age 62 at home on June 3, 1990, and later died at the Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas. Awards and honors In July 1959, he filed for "Semiconductor Device and Lead Structure", a type of integrated circuit. This independent effort was recorded only a few months after the key findings of inventor Jack Kilby. For his co-invention of the integrated circuit and its world-transforming impact, three presidents of the United States honored him. Noyce was a holder of many honors and awards. President Ronald Reagan awarded him the National Medal of Technology in 1987. Two years later, he was |
in the theory of modular forms. Many generalizations of the Riemann zeta function, such as Dirichlet series, Dirichlet -functions and -functions, are known. Definition The Riemann zeta function is a function of a complex variable . (The notation , , and is used traditionally in the study of the zeta function, following Riemann.) When , the function can be written as a converging summation or integral: where is the gamma function. The Riemann zeta function is defined for other complex values via analytic continuation of the function defined for . Leonhard Euler considered the above series in 1740 for positive integer values of , and later Chebyshev extended the definition to The above series is a prototypical Dirichlet series that converges absolutely to an analytic function for such that and diverges for all other values of . Riemann showed that the function defined by the series on the half-plane of convergence can be continued analytically to all complex values . For , the series is the harmonic series which diverges to , and Thus the Riemann zeta function is a meromorphic function on the whole complex plane, which is holomorphic everywhere except for a simple pole at with residue . Euler's product formula In 1737, the connection between the zeta function and prime numbers was discovered by Euler, who proved the identity where, by definition, the left hand side is and the infinite product on the right hand side extends over all prime numbers (such expressions are called Euler products): Both sides of the Euler product formula converge for . The proof of Euler's identity uses only the formula for the geometric series and the fundamental theorem of arithmetic. Since the harmonic series, obtained when , diverges, Euler's formula (which becomes ) implies that there are infinitely many primes. The Euler product formula can be used to calculate the asymptotic probability that randomly selected integers are set-wise coprime. Intuitively, the probability that any single number is divisible by a prime (or any integer) is . Hence the probability that numbers are all divisible by this prime is , and the probability that at least one of them is not is . Now, for distinct primes, these divisibility events are mutually independent because the candidate divisors are coprime (a number is divisible by coprime divisors and if and only if it is divisible by , an event which occurs with probability ). Thus the asymptotic probability that numbers are coprime is given by a product over all primes, Riemann's functional equation The zeta function satisfies the functional equation where is the gamma function. This is an equality of meromorphic functions valid on the whole complex plane. The equation relates values of the Riemann zeta function at the points and , in particular relating even positive integers with odd negative integers. Owing to the zeros of the sine function, the functional equation implies that has a simple zero at each even negative integer , known as the trivial zeros of . When is an even positive integer, the product on the right is non-zero because has a simple pole, which cancels the simple zero of the sine factor. The functional equation was established by Riemann in his 1859 paper "On the Number of Primes Less Than a Given Magnitude" and used to construct the analytic continuation in the first place. An equivalent relationship had been conjectured by Euler over a hundred years earlier, in 1749, for the Dirichlet eta function (the alternating zeta function): Incidentally, this relation gives an equation for calculating in the region 0 < < 1, i.e. where the η-series is convergent (albeit non-absolutely) in the larger half-plane (for a more detailed survey on the history of the functional equation, see e.g. Blagouchine). Riemann also found a symmetric version of the functional equation applying to the xi-function: which satisfies: (Riemann's original was slightly different.) Zeros, the critical line, and the Riemann hypothesis The functional equation shows that the Riemann zeta function has zeros at . These are called the trivial zeros. They are trivial in the sense that their existence is relatively easy to prove, for example, from being 0 in the functional equation. The non-trivial zeros have captured far more attention because their distribution not only is far less understood but, more importantly, their study yields important results concerning prime numbers and related objects in number theory. It is known that any non-trivial zero lies in the open strip , which is called the critical strip. The set is called the critical line. The Riemann hypothesis, considered one of the greatest unsolved problems in mathematics, asserts that all non-trivial zeros are on the critical line. In 1989, Conrey proved that more than 40% of the non-trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function are on the critical line. For the Riemann zeta function on the critical line, see -function. Number of zeros in the critical strip Let be the number of zeros of in the critical strip , whose imaginary parts are in the interval . Trudgian proved that, if , then . The Hardy–Littlewood conjectures In 1914, Godfrey Harold Hardy proved that has infinitely many real zeros. Hardy and John Edensor Littlewood formulated two conjectures on the density and distance between the zeros of on intervals of large positive real numbers. In the following, is the total number of real zeros and the total number of zeros of odd order of the function lying in the interval . These two conjectures opened up new directions in the investigation of the Riemann zeta function. Zero-free region The location of the Riemann zeta function's zeros is of great importance in number theory. The prime number theorem is equivalent to the fact that there are no zeros of the zeta function on the line. A better result that follows from an effective form of Vinogradov's mean-value theorem is that whenever and In 2015, Mossinghoff and Trudgian proved that zeta has no zeros in the region for . This is the largest known zero-free region in the critical strip for . The strongest result of this kind one can hope for is the truth of the Riemann hypothesis, which would have many profound consequences in the theory of numbers. Other results It is known that there are infinitely many zeros on the critical line. Littlewood showed that if the sequence () contains the imaginary parts of all zeros in the upper half-plane in ascending order, then The critical line theorem asserts that a positive proportion of the nontrivial zeros lies on the critical line. (The Riemann hypothesis would imply that this proportion is 1.) In the critical strip, the zero with smallest non-negative imaginary part is (). The fact that for all complex implies that the zeros of the Riemann zeta function are symmetric about the real axis. Combining this symmetry with the functional equation, furthermore, one sees that the non-trivial zeros are symmetric about the critical line . It is also known that no zeros lie on a line with real part 1. Specific values For any positive even integer , where is the -th Bernoulli number. For odd positive integers, no such simple expression is known, although these values are thought to be related to the algebraic -theory of the integers; see Special values of -functions. For nonpositive integers, one has for (using the convention that ). In particular, vanishes at the negative even integers because for all odd other than 1. These are the so-called "trivial zeros" of the zeta function. Via analytic continuation, one can show that This gives a pretext for assigning a finite value to the divergent series 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ⋯, which has been used in certain contexts (Ramanujan summation) such as string theory. Analogously, the particular value can be viewed as assigning a finite result to the divergent series 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + ⋯. The value is employed in calculating kinetic boundary layer problems of linear kinetic equations. Although diverges, its Cauchy principal value exists and is equal to the Euler–Mascheroni constant . The demonstration of the particular value is known as the Basel problem. The reciprocal of this sum answers the question: What is the probability that two numbers selected at random are relatively prime? The value is Apéry's constant. Taking the limit through the real numbers, one obtains . But at complex infinity on the Riemann sphere, the zeta function has an essential singularity. Various properties For sums involving the zeta function at integer and half-integer values, see rational zeta series. Reciprocal The reciprocal of the zeta function may be expressed as a | total number of zeros of odd order of the function lying in the interval . These two conjectures opened up new directions in the investigation of the Riemann zeta function. Zero-free region The location of the Riemann zeta function's zeros is of great importance in number theory. The prime number theorem is equivalent to the fact that there are no zeros of the zeta function on the line. A better result that follows from an effective form of Vinogradov's mean-value theorem is that whenever and In 2015, Mossinghoff and Trudgian proved that zeta has no zeros in the region for . This is the largest known zero-free region in the critical strip for . The strongest result of this kind one can hope for is the truth of the Riemann hypothesis, which would have many profound consequences in the theory of numbers. Other results It is known that there are infinitely many zeros on the critical line. Littlewood showed that if the sequence () contains the imaginary parts of all zeros in the upper half-plane in ascending order, then The critical line theorem asserts that a positive proportion of the nontrivial zeros lies on the critical line. (The Riemann hypothesis would imply that this proportion is 1.) In the critical strip, the zero with smallest non-negative imaginary part is (). The fact that for all complex implies that the zeros of the Riemann zeta function are symmetric about the real axis. Combining this symmetry with the functional equation, furthermore, one sees that the non-trivial zeros are symmetric about the critical line . It is also known that no zeros lie on a line with real part 1. Specific values For any positive even integer , where is the -th Bernoulli number. For odd positive integers, no such simple expression is known, although these values are thought to be related to the algebraic -theory of the integers; see Special values of -functions. For nonpositive integers, one has for (using the convention that ). In particular, vanishes at the negative even integers because for all odd other than 1. These are the so-called "trivial zeros" of the zeta function. Via analytic continuation, one can show that This gives a pretext for assigning a finite value to the divergent series 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ⋯, which has been used in certain contexts (Ramanujan summation) such as string theory. Analogously, the particular value can be viewed as assigning a finite result to the divergent series 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + ⋯. The value is employed in calculating kinetic boundary layer problems of linear kinetic equations. Although diverges, its Cauchy principal value exists and is equal to the Euler–Mascheroni constant . The demonstration of the particular value is known as the Basel problem. The reciprocal of this sum answers the question: What is the probability that two numbers selected at random are relatively prime? The value is Apéry's constant. Taking the limit through the real numbers, one obtains . But at complex infinity on the Riemann sphere, the zeta function has an essential singularity. Various properties For sums involving the zeta function at integer and half-integer values, see rational zeta series. Reciprocal The reciprocal of the zeta function may be expressed as a Dirichlet series over the Möbius function : for every complex number with real part greater than 1. There are a number of similar relations involving various well-known multiplicative functions; these are given in the article on the Dirichlet series. The Riemann hypothesis is equivalent to the claim that this expression is valid when the real part of is greater than . Universality The critical strip of the Riemann zeta function has the remarkable property of universality. This zeta function universality states that there exists some location on the critical strip that approximates any holomorphic function arbitrarily well. Since holomorphic functions are very general, this property is quite remarkable. The first proof of universality was provided by Sergei Mikhailovitch Voronin in 1975. More recent work has included effective versions of Voronin's theorem and extending it to Dirichlet L-functions. Estimates of the maximum of the modulus of the zeta function Let the functions and be defined by the equalities Here is a sufficiently large positive number, , , , . Estimating the values and from below shows, how large (in modulus) values can take on short intervals of the critical line or in small neighborhoods of points lying in the critical strip . The case was studied by Kanakanahalli Ramachandra; the case , where is a sufficiently large constant, is trivial. Anatolii Karatsuba proved, in particular, that if the values and exceed certain sufficiently small constants, then the estimates hold, where and are certain absolute constants. The argument of the Riemann zeta function The function is called the argument of the Riemann zeta function. Here is the increment of an arbitrary continuous branch of along the broken line joining the points , and . There are some theorems on properties of the function . Among those results are the mean value theorems for and its first integral on intervals of the real line, and also the theorem claiming that every interval for contains at least points where the function changes sign. Earlier similar results were obtained by Atle Selberg for the case Representations Dirichlet series An extension of the area of convergence can be obtained by rearranging the original series. The series converges for , while converges even for . In this way, the area of convergence can be extended to for any negative integer . Mellin-type integrals The Mellin transform of a function is defined as in the region where the integral is defined. There are various expressions for the zeta function as Mellin transform-like integrals. If the real part of is greater than one, we have where denotes the gamma function. By modifying the contour, Riemann showed that for all (where denotes the Hankel contour). Starting with the integral formula one can show by substitution and iterated differentation for natural using the notation of umbral calculus where each power is to be replaced by , so e.g. for we have while for this becomes We can also find expressions which relate to prime numbers and the prime number theorem. If is the prime-counting function, then for values with . A similar Mellin transform involves the Riemann function , which counts prime powers with a weight of , so that Now These expressions can be used to prove the prime number theorem by means of the inverse Mellin transform. Riemann's prime-counting function is easier to work with, and can be recovered from it by Möbius inversion. Theta functions The Riemann zeta function can be given by a Mellin transform in terms of Jacobi's theta function However, this integral only converges if the real part of is greater than 1, but it can be regularized. This gives the following expression for the zeta function, which is well defined for all except 0 and 1: Laurent series The Riemann zeta function is meromorphic with a single pole of order one at . It can therefore be expanded as a Laurent series about ; the series development is then The constants here are called the Stieltjes constants and can be defined by the limit The constant term is the Euler–Mascheroni constant. Integral For all , , the integral relation (cf. Abel–Plana formula) holds true, which may be used for a numerical evaluation of the zeta function. Rising factorial Another series development using the rising factorial valid for the entire complex plane is This can be used recursively to extend the Dirichlet series definition to all complex numbers. The Riemann zeta function also appears in a form similar to the Mellin transform in an integral over the Gauss–Kuzmin–Wirsing operator acting on ; that context gives rise to a series expansion in terms of the falling factorial. Hadamard product On the basis of Weierstrass's factorization theorem, Hadamard gave the infinite product expansion where the product is over the non-trivial zeros of and the letter again denotes the Euler–Mascheroni constant. A simpler infinite product expansion is This form clearly displays the simple pole at , the trivial zeros at −2, −4, ... due to the gamma function term in the denominator, and the non-trivial zeros at . (To ensure convergence in the latter formula, the product should be taken over "matching pairs" of zeros, i.e. the factors for a pair of zeros of the form and should be combined.) Globally convergent series A globally convergent series for the zeta function, valid for all complex numbers except for some integer , was conjectured by Konrad Knopp and proven by Helmut Hasse in 1930 (cf. Euler summation): The series appeared in an appendix to Hasse's paper, and was published for the second time by Jonathan Sondow in 1994. Hasse also proved the globally converging series in the same publication. Research by Iaroslav Blagouchine has found that a similar, equivalent series was published by Joseph Ser in 1926. Peter Borwein has developed an algorithm that applies Chebyshev polynomials to the Dirichlet eta function to produce a very rapidly convergent series suitable for high precision numerical calculations. Series representation at positive integers via the primorial Here is the primorial sequence and is Jordan's totient function. Series representation by the incomplete poly-Bernoulli numbers The function can be represented, for , by the infinite series where , is the th branch of the Lambert -function, and is an incomplete poly-Bernoulli number. The Mellin transform of the Engel map The function is iterated to find the coefficients appearing in Engel expansions. The Mellin |
and contribution of research. In 2013 the university was again ranked first globally for quality of research in natural sciences and engineering, and 6th globally for all sciences. In 2014, The Daily Beast ranked Rice 14th out of nearly 2,000 schools it evaluated. In 2019, Money Magazine ranked Rice 24th in the nation. Student life Situated on nearly in the center of Houston's Museum District and across the street from the city's Hermann Park, Rice is a closed campus filled with greenery and close to amenities in the nation's fourth-largest city. Rice's campus adjoins Hermann Park, the Texas Medical Center, and a neighborhood commercial center called Rice Village. Hermann Park includes the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the Houston Zoo, Miller Outdoor Theatre and an 18-hole municipal golf course. NRG Park, home of NRG Stadium and the Astrodome, is two miles (3 km) south of the campus. Among the dozen or so museums in the Museum District was (until May 14, 2017) the Rice University Art Gallery, open during the school year from 1995 until it closed in 2017. Easy access to downtown's theater and nightlife district and to Reliant Park is provided by the Houston METRORail system, with a station adjacent to the campus's main gate. The campus recently joined the Zipcar program with two vehicles to increase the transportation options for students and staff who need but do not otherwise have access to a vehicle. Residential colleges In 1957, Rice University implemented a residential college system, which was proposed by the university's first president, Edgar Odell Lovett. The system was inspired by existing systems in place at Oxford and Cambridge in England and at several other universities in the United States, most notably Yale University. The existing residences known as East, South, West, and Wiess Halls became Baker, Will Rice, Hanszen, and Wiess Colleges, respectively. List of residential colleges Below is a list of residential colleges in order of founding: Baker College, named in honor of Captain James A. Baker, friend and attorney of William Marsh Rice, and first chair of the Rice Board of Governors. Will Rice College, named for William M. Rice, Jr., the nephew of the university's founder, William Marsh Rice. Hanszen College, named for Harry Clay Hanszen, benefactor to the university and chairman of the Rice Board of Governors from 1946 to 1950. Wiess College, named for Harry Carothers Wiess (1887–1948), one of the founders and one-time president of Humble Oil, now ExxonMobil. Jones College, named for Mary Gibbs Jones, wife of prominent Houston philanthropist Jesse Holman Jones. Brown College, named for Margarett Root Brown by her in-laws, George R. Brown. Lovett College, named after the university's first president, Edgar Odell Lovett. Sid Richardson College, named for the Sid Richardson Foundation, which was established by Texas oilman, cattleman, and philanthropist Sid W. Richardson. Martel College, named for Marian and Speros P. Martel, was built in 2002. McMurtry College, named for Rice alumni Burt and Deedee McMurtry, Silicon Valley venture capitalists. Duncan College, named for Charles Duncan, Jr., Secretary of Energy. Much of the social and academic life as an undergraduate student at Rice is centered around residential colleges. Each residential college has its own cafeteria (serveries) and each residential college has study groups and its own social practices. Although each college is composed of a full cross-section of students at Rice, they have over time developed their own traditions and "personalities". When students matriculate they are randomly assigned to one of the eleven colleges, although "legacy" exceptions are made for students whose siblings or parents have attended Rice. Students generally remain members of the college that they are assigned to for the duration of their undergraduate careers, even if they move off-campus at any point. Students are guaranteed on-campus housing for freshman year and two of the next three years; each college has its own system for determining allocation of the remaining spaces, collectively known as "Room Jacking". Students develop strong loyalties to their college and maintain friendly rivalry with other colleges, especially during events such as Beer Bike and O-Week. Colleges keep their rivalries alive by performing "jacks," or pranks, on each other, especially during O-Week and Willy Week. During Matriculation, Commencement, and other formal academic ceremonies, the colleges process in the order in which they were established. Baker 13 Baker 13 is a tradition in which students run around campus wearing nothing but shoes and shaving cream at 10 p.m. on the 13th and the 31st of every month, as well as the 26th on months with fewer than 31 days. The event, long sponsored by Baker College, usually attracts a small number of students, but Halloween night and the first and last relevant days of the school year both attract large numbers of revelers. Beer Bike Race According to the official website, "Beer Bike is a combination intramural bicycle race and drinking competition dating back to 1957. Ten riders and ten chuggers make up a team. Elaborate rules include details such as a prohibition of "bulky or wet clothing articles designed to absorb beer/water or prevent spilled beer/water from being seen" and regulations for chug can design. Each residential college as well as the Graduate Student Association participates with a men's team, a women's team, and alumni (co-ed) team. Each leg of the race is a relay in which a team's "chugger" must chug of beer or water for the men's division and for women before the team's "rider" may begin to ride. Participants who both ride and chug are referred to as "Ironmen". Willy Week is a term coined in the 1990s to refer to the week preceding Beer Bike, a time of general energy and excitement on campus. Jacks (pranks) are especially common during Willy Week; some examples in the past include removing showerheads and encasing the Hanszen guardian." The morning of the Beer Bike race itself begins with what is by some estimations the largest annual water balloon fight in the world. Beer Bike is Rice's most prominent student event, and for younger alumni it serves as an unofficial reunion weekend on par with Homecoming. The 2009 Beer Bike race was dedicated to the memory of Dr. Bill Wilson, a popular professor and long-time resident associate of Wiess College who died earlier that year. In the event of inclement weather, Beer Bike becomes a Beer Run. The rules are nearly identical, except that the Bikers must instead run the length of the track. Campus institutions A number of on-campus institutions form an integral part of student life at Rice. Many of these organizations have been operating for several decades. Rice Coffeehouse Rice Coffeehouse began in Hanszen College, where students would serve coffee in the Weenie Loft, a study room in the old section's fourth floor. Later, the coffee house moved to the Hanszen basement to accommodate more student patrons. That coffeehouse became known as Breadsticks and Pomegranates, and closed due to flooding. Demand for an on-campus Coffeehouse grew and in 1990, the Rice Coffeehouse was founded. The Rice Coffeehouse is a not-for-profit student-run organization serving Rice University and the greater Houston community. Over the past few years, it has introduced fair-trade and organic coffee and loose-leaf teas. Coffeehouse baristas are referred to as K.O.C.'s, or Keepers of the Coffee. Rice Coffeehouse has also adopted an unofficial mascot, the squirrel, which can be found on T-shirts, mugs, and bumper stickers stuck on laptops across campus. The logo pays tribute to Rice's squirrel population, claimed by students to be unusually plump and frighteningly tame. The Pub at Rice Formerly known as Willy's Pub, The Pub at Rice is Rice's student-run pub located in the basement of the Rice Memorial Center. It opened on April 11, 1975, with Rice President Norman Hackerman pouring the first beer. The original name was chosen by students in tribute to the university's founder, William Marsh Rice. After the drinking age in Texas was raised in 1986, the pub entered a period of financial difficulties and in April 1995, was destroyed in a fire. The space was gutted but renovated and remains open. On February 15th, 2022, the Rice Thresher announced the rebranding of Willy's Pub as The Pub at Rice. Rice Bikes Rice Bikes is a full-service on-campus bicycle sale, rental, and repair shop. It originated in the basement of Sid Richardson College in February 2011. In 2012, Rice Bikes officially became the university's third student-run business. Rice Bikes merged with a student-run bicycle rental business in 2013, and operations moved to the Rice Memorial Center in 2014. In 2017, the business moved to the garage of the Rice Housing and Dining department's headquarters. Rice Bikes sells refurbished bicycles bought from students and functions as a full bicycle repair shop. Student-run media Rice has a weekly student newspaper (The Rice Thresher), a yearbook (The Campanile), college radio station (KTRU Rice Radio), and now defunct, campus-wide student television station (RTV5). They are based out of the RMC student center. In addition, Rice hosts several student magazines dedicated to a range of different topics; in fact, the spring semester of 2008 saw the birth of two such magazines, a literary sex journal called Open and an undergraduate science research magazine entitled Catalyst. The Rice Thresher is published every Wednesday and is ranked by Princeton Review as one of the top campus newspapers nationally for student readership. It is distributed around campus, and at a few other local businesses and has a website. The Thresher has a small, dedicated staff and is known for its coverage of campus news, open submission opinion page, and the satirical Backpage, which has often been the center of controversy. The newspaper has won several awards from the College Media Association, Associated Collegiate Press and Texas Intercollegiate Press Association. The Rice Campanile was first published in 1916 celebrating Rice's first graduating class. It has published continuously since then, publishing two volumes in 1944 since the university had two graduating classes due to World War II. The website was created sometime in the early to mid 2000s. The 2015 won the first place Pinnacle for best yearbook from College Media Association. KTRU Rice Radio is the student-run radio station. Though most DJs are Rice students, anyone is allowed to apply. It is known for playing genres and artists of music and sound unavailable on other radio stations in Houston, and often, the US. The station takes requests over the phone or online. In 2000 and 2006, KTRU won Houston Press' Best Radio Station in Houston. In 2003, Rice alum and active KTRU DJ DL's hip-hip show won Houston Press' Best Hip-hop Radio Show. On August 17, 2010, it was announced that Rice University had been in negotiations to sell the station's broadcast tower, FM frequency and license to the University of Houston System to become a full-time classical music and fine arts programming station. The new station, KUHA, would be operated as a not-for-profit outlet with listener supporters. The FCC approved the sale and granted the transfer of license to the University of Houston System on April 15, 2011, however, KUHA proved to be an even larger failure and so after four and a half years of operation, The University of Houston System announced that KUHA's broadcast tower, FM frequency and license were once again up for sale in August 2015. KTRU continued to operate much as it did previously, streaming live on the Internet, via apps, and on HD2 radio using the 90.1 signal. Under student leadership, KTRU explored the possibility of returning to FM radio for a number of years. In spring 2015, KTRU was granted permission by the FCC to begin development of a new broadcast signal via LPFM radio. On October 1, 2015, KTRU made its official return to FM radio on the 96.1 signal. While broadcasting on HD2 radio has been discontinued, KTRU continues to broadcast via internet in addition to its LPFM signal. RTV5 is a student-run television network available as channel 5 on campus. RTV5 was created initially as Rice Broadcast Television in 1997; RBT began to broadcast the following year in 1998, and aired its first live show across campus in 1999. It experienced much growth and exposure over the years with successful programs like "Drinking with Phil”, “The Meg & Maggie Show”, which was a variety and call-in show, a weekly news show, and extensive live coverage in December 2000 of the shut down of KTRU by the administration. In spring 2001, the Rice undergraduate community voted in the general elections to support RBT as a blanket tax organization, effectively providing a yearly income of $10,000 to purchase new equipment and provide the campus with a variety of new programming. In the spring of 2005, RBT members decided the station needed a new image and a new name: Rice Television 5. One of RTV5's most popular shows was the 24-hour show, where a camera and couch placed in the RMC stayed on air for 24 hours. One such show is held in fall and another in spring, usually during a weekend allocated for visits by prospective students. RTV5 has a video on demand site at rtv5.rice.edu. The station went off the air in 2014 and changed its name to Rice Video Productions. In 2015 the group's funding was threatened, but ultimately maintained. In 2016 the small student staff requested to no longer be a blanket-tax organization. In the fall of 2017, the club did not register as a club. The Rice Review, also known as R2, is a yearly student-run literary journal at Rice University that publishes prose, poetry, and creative nonfiction written by undergraduate students, as well as interviews. The journal was founded in 2004 by creative writing professor and author Justin Cronin. The Rice Standard was an independent, student-run variety magazine modeled after such publications as The New Yorker and Harper's. Prior to fall 2009, it was regularly published three times a semester with a wide array of content, running from analyses of current events and philosophical pieces to personal essays, short fiction and poetry. In August 2009, the Standard transitioned to a completely online format with the launch of their redesigned website, ricestandard.org. The first website of its kind on Rice's campus, the Standard featured blog-style content written by and for Rice students. The Rice Standard had around 20 regular contributors, and the site features new content every day (including holidays). In 2017 no one registered The Rice Standard as a club within the university. Open, a magazine dedicated to "literary sex content," predictably caused a stir on campus with its initial publication in spring 2008. A mixture of essays, editorials, stories and artistic photography brought Open attention both on campus and in the Houston Chronicle. The third and last annual edition of Open was released in spring of 2010. Vahalla is the Graduate Student Association on-campus bar under the steps of the chemistry building. Athletics Rice plays in NCAA Division I athletics and is part of Conference USA. Rice was a member of the Western Athletic Conference before joining Conference USA in 2005. Rice is the second-smallest school, measured by undergraduate enrollment, competing in NCAA Division I FBS football, only ahead of Tulsa. The Rice baseball team won the 2003 College World Series, defeating Stanford, giving Rice its only national championship in a team sport. The victory made Rice University the smallest school in 51 years to win a national championship at the highest collegiate level of the sport. The Rice baseball team has played on campus at Reckling Park since the 2000 season. As of 2010, the baseball team has won 14 consecutive conference championships in three different conferences: the final championship of the defunct Southwest Conference, all nine championships while a member of the Western Athletic Conference, and five more championships in its first five years as a member of Conference USA. Additionally, Rice's baseball team has finished third in both the 2006 and 2007 College World Series tournaments. Rice now has made six trips to Omaha for the CWS. In 2004, Rice became the first school ever to have three players selected in the first eight picks of the MLB draft when Philip Humber, Jeff Niemann, and Wade Townsend were selected third, fourth, and eighth, respectively. In 2007, Joe Savery was selected as the 19th overall pick. Rice has been very successful in women's sports in recent years. In 2004–05, Rice sent its women's volleyball, soccer, and basketball teams to their respective NCAA tournaments. The women's swim team has consistently brought at least one member of their team to the NCAA championships since 2013. In 2005–06, the women's soccer, basketball, and tennis teams advanced, with five individuals competing in track and field. In 2006–07, the Rice women's basketball team made the NCAA tournament, while again five Rice track and field athletes received individual NCAA berths. In 2008, the women's volleyball team again made the NCAA tournament. In 2011 the Women's Swim team won their first conference championship in the history of the university. This was an impressive feat considering they won without having a diving team. The team repeated their C-USA success in 2013 and 2014. In 2017, the women's basketball team, led by second-year head coach Tina Langley, won the Women's Basketball Invitational, defeating UNC-Greensboro 74–62 in the championship game at Tudor Fieldhouse. Though not a varsity sport, Rice's ultimate frisbee women's team, named Torque, won consecutive Division III national championships in 2014 and 2015. In 2006, the football team qualified for its first bowl game since 1961, ending the second-longest bowl drought in the country at the time. On December 22, 2006, Rice played in the New Orleans Bowl in New Orleans, Louisiana against the Sun Belt Conference champion, Troy. The | surrounded by McNair Hall of the Jones Business School, the Baker Institute, and Alice Pratt Brown Hall of the Shepherd School of Music. These two quads are surrounded by the university's main access road, a one-way loop referred to as the "inner loop". In the Engineering Quad, a trinity of sculptures by Michael Heizer, collectively entitled 45 Degrees, 90 Degrees, 180 Degrees, are flanked by Abercrombie Laboratory, the Cox Building, and the Mechanical Laboratory, housing the Electrical, Mechanical, and Earth Science/Civil Engineering departments, respectively. Duncan Hall is the latest addition to this quad, providing new offices for the Computer Science, Computational and Applied Math, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Statistics departments. Roughly three-quarters of Rice's undergraduate population lives on campus. Housing is divided among eleven residential colleges, which form an integral part of student life at the university (see Residential colleges of Rice University). The colleges are named for university historical figures and benefactors, and while there is wide variation in their appearance, facilities, and dates of founding, are an important source of identity for Rice students, functioning as dining halls, residence halls, sports teams, among other roles. Rice does not have or endorse a Greek system, with the residential college system taking its place. Five colleges, McMurtry, Duncan, Martel, Jones, and Brown are located on the north side of campus, across from the "South Colleges", Baker, Will Rice, Lovett, Hanszen, Sid Richardson, and Wiess, on the other side of the Academic Quadrangle. Of the eleven colleges, Baker is the oldest, originally built in 1912, and the twin Duncan and McMurtry colleges are the newest, and opened for the first time for the 2009–10 school year. Will Rice, Baker, and Lovett colleges are undergoing renovation to expand their dining facilities as well as the number of rooms available for students. The on-campus football facility, Rice Stadium, opened in 1950 with a capacity of 70,000 seats. After improvements in 2006, the stadium is currently configured to seat 47,000 for football but can readily be reconfigured to its original capacity of 70,000, more than the total number of Rice alumni, living and deceased. The stadium was the site of Super Bowl VIII and a speech by John F. Kennedy on September 12, 1962, in which he challenged the nation to send a man to the moon by the end of the decade. The recently renovated Tudor Fieldhouse, formerly known as Autry Court, is home to the basketball and volleyball teams. Other stadia include the Rice Track/Soccer Stadium and the Jake Hess Tennis Stadium. A new Rec Center now houses the intramural sports offices and provide an outdoor pool, training and exercise facilities for all Rice students, while athletics training will solely be held at Tudor Fieldhouse and the Rice Football Stadium. The university and Houston Independent School District jointly established The Rice School, a kindergarten through 8th grade public magnet school in Houston. The school opened in August 1994. Through Cy-Fair ISD Rice University offers a credit course based summer school for grades 8 through 12. They also have skills based classes during the summer in the Rice Summer School. Innovation District In early 2019, Rice announced the site where the abandoned Sears building in Midtown Houston stood, along with its surrounding area, would be transformed into "The Ion," the hub of the 16-acre South Main Innovation District. President of Rice, David Leebron stated "We chose the name Ion because it's from the Greek ienai, which means 'go'. We see it as embodying the ever-forward motion of discovery, the spark at the center of a truly original idea." Students of Rice and other Houston-area colleges and universities making up the Student Coalition for a Just and Equitable Innovation Corridor are advocating for a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA), a contractual agreement between a developer and a community coalition. Residents of neighboring Third Ward and other members of the Houston Coalition for Equitable Development Without Displacement (HCEDD) have faced consistent opposition from the City of Houston and Rice Management Company to a CBA as traditionally defined, in favor of an agreement between the latter two entities without a community coalition signatory. In August of 2021, an economic development agreement that would provide Rice Management Company with up to $65 million in cost reimbursement from local taxes was given initial approval by the Midtown Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone. The agreement does not require a Community Benefits Agreement in exchange for funding. Final approval will require a vote by the Houston City Council. Organization Rice University is chartered as a non-profit organization and is governed by a privately appointed board of trustees. The board consists of a maximum of 25 voting members who serve four-year terms. The trustees serve without compensation and a simple majority of trustees must reside in Texas, including at least four within the greater Houston area. The board of trustees delegates its power by appointing a president to serve as the chief executive of the university. David W. Leebron was appointed president in 2004 and succeeded Malcolm Gillis who served since 1993. The provost, six vice presidents, and other university officials report to the president. The president is advised by a University Council composed of the provost, eight members of the Faculty Council, two staff members, one graduate student, and two undergraduate students. The president presides over a Faculty Council which has the authority to alter curricular requirements, establish new degree programs, and approve candidates for degrees. The university's academics are organized into several schools. Schools that have undergraduate and graduate programs include: The Rice University School of Architecture The George R. Brown School of Engineering The School of Humanities The Shepherd School of Music The Wiess School of Natural Sciences The Rice University School of Social Sciences Two schools have only graduate programs: The Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management The Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies Rice's undergraduate students benefit from a centralized admissions process, which admits new students to the university as a whole, rather than a specific school (the schools of Music and Architecture are decentralized). Students are encouraged to select the major path that best suits their desires; a student can later decide that they would rather pursue study in another field, or continue their current coursework and add a second or third major. These transitions are designed to be simple at Rice, with students not required to decide on a specific major until their sophomore year of study. Rice offers 360 degrees in over 60 departments. There are 40 undergraduate degree programs, 51 masters programs, and 29 doctoral programs. Undergraduate tuition for the 2011–2012 school year was $34,900. $651 was charged for fees, and Rice projected an $800 budget for books and $1550 for personal expenses. Rice students were charged $12,270 for room and board. Per year, the total cost of a Rice University education was $50,171. Faculty members of each of the departments elect chairs to represent the department to each School's dean and the deans report to the Provost who serves as the chief officer for academic affairs. Rice Management Company The Rice Management Company manages the $6.5 billion Rice University endowment (June 2019) and $957 million debt. The endowment provides 40% of Rice's operating revenues. Allison Thacker is the President and Chief Investment Officer of the Rice Management Company, having joined the university in 2011. Academics Rice is a medium-sized, highly residential research university. The majority of enrollments are in the full-time, four-year undergraduate program emphasizing arts & sciences and professions. There is a high graduate coexistence with the comprehensive graduate program and a very high level of research activity. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools as well as the professional accreditation agencies for engineering, management, and architecture. Each of Rice's departments is organized into one of three distribution groups, and students whose major lies within the scope of one group must take at least 3 courses of at least 3 credit hours each of approved distribution classes in each of the other two groups, as well as completing one physical education course as part of the LPAP (Lifetime Physical Activity Program) requirement. All new students must take a Freshman Writing Intensive Seminar (FWIS) class, and for students who do not pass the university's writing composition examination (administered during the summer before matriculation), FWIS 100, a writing class, becomes an additional requirement. The majority of Rice's undergraduate degree programs grant B.S. or B.A. degrees. Rice has recently begun to offer minors in areas such as business, energy and water sustainability, and global health. Student body As of fall 2014, men make up 52% of the undergraduate body and 64% of the professional and post-graduate student body. The student body consists of students from all 50 states, including the District of Columbia, two U.S. Territories, and 83 foreign countries. Forty percent of degree-seeking students are from Texas. Honor Code The Rice Honor Code plays an integral role in academic affairs. Almost all Rice exams are unproctored and professors give timed, closed-book exams that students take home and complete at their own convenience. Potential infractions are reported to the student Honor Council, elected by popular vote. The penalty structure is established every year by Council consensus; typically, penalties have ranged from a letter of reprimand to an 'F' in the course and a two semester suspension. During Orientation Week, students must take and pass a test demonstrating that they understand the Honor System's requirements and sign a Matriculation Pledge. On assignments, Rice students affirm their commitment to the Honor Code by writing On my honor, I have neither given nor received any unauthorized aid on this (examination, quiz or paper). Research centers and resources Rice is noted for its applied science programs in the fields of nanotechnology, artificial heart research, structural chemical analysis, signal processing and space science, being ranked 1st in the world in materials science research by the Times Higher Education (THE) in 2010. Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship - supports entrepreneurs and early-stage technology ventures in Houston and Texas through education, collaboration, and research, ranked No. 1 among university business incubators. Baker Institute for Public Policy - a leading nonpartisan public policy think-tank BioScience Research Collaborative (BRC) - interdisciplinary, cross-campus, and inter-institutional resource between Rice University and Texas Medical Center Boniuk Institute - dedicated to religious tolerance and advancing religious literacy, respect and mutual understanding Center for African and African American Studies - fosters conversations on topics such as critical approaches to race and racism, the nature of diasporic histories and identities, and the complexity of Africa's past, present and future Chao Center for Asian Studies - research hub for faculty, students and post-doctoral scholars working in Asian studies Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality (CSWGS) - interdisciplinary academic programs and research opportunities, including the journal Feminist Economics Data to Knowledge Lab (D2K) - campus hub for experiential learning in data science Digital Signal Processing (DSP) - center for education and research in the field of digital signal processing Humanities Research Center (HRC) - identifies, encourages, and funds innovative research projects by faculty, visiting scholars, graduate, and undergraduate students in the School of Humanities and beyond Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering (IBB) - facilitates the translation of interdisciplinary research and education in biosciences and bioengineering Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology - advances applied interdisciplinary research in the areas of computation and information technology Kinder Institute for Urban Research - conducts the Houston Area Survey, "the nation's longest running study of any metropolitan region's economy, population, life experiences, beliefs and attitudes" Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) - a resource for education and research breakthroughs and advances in the broad, multidisciplinary field of nanophotonics Moody Center for the Arts - experimental arts space featuring studio classrooms, maker space, audiovisual editing booths, and a gallery and office space for visiting national and international artists OpenStax CNX (formerly Connexions) and OpenStax - an open source platform and open access publisher, respectively, of open educational resources Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) - space for undergraduate students to design, prototype and deploy solutions to real-world engineering challenges Rice Cinema - an independent theater run by the Visual and Dramatic Arts department at Rice which screens documentaries, foreign films, and experimental cinema and hosts film festivals and lectures since 1970 Rice Center for Engineering Leadership (RCEL) Religion and Public Life Program (RPLP) - a research, training and outreach program working to advance understandings of the role of religion in public life Rice Design Alliance (RDA) - outreach and public programs of the Rice School of Architecture Rice Center for Quantum Materials (RCQM) - organization dedicated to research and higher education in areas relating to quantum phenomena Rice Neuroengineering Initiative (NEI) - fosters research collaborations in neural engineering topics Rice Space Institute (RSI) - fosters programs in all areas of space research Smalley-Curl Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology (SCI) - the nation's first nanotechnology center Welch Institute for Advanced Materials - collaborative research institute to support the foundational research for discoveries in materials science, similar to the model of Salk Institute and Broad Institute Woodson Research Center Special Collections & Archives - publisher of print and web-based materials highlighting the department's primary source collections such as the Houston African American, Asian American, and Jewish History Archives, University Archives, rare books, and hip hop/rap music-related materials from the Swishahouse record label and Houston Folk Music Archive, etc. Admissions Admission to Rice is rated as "most selective" by U.S. News & World Report. For fall 2020, Rice received 23,443 freshmen applications of which 2,346 were admitted (10.0%) up from a record-low 8.7% acceptance rate in 2019. The middle 50% range of SAT scores for the class of 2023 were 1470–1560; the middle 50% range of the ACT Composite score was 33–35. Rankings Rice was ranked tied at 17th among national universities and 108th among global universities, 6th for "best undergraduate teaching", 5th for "Best Value", and tied for 16th "Most Innovative" among national universities in the U.S. by U.S. News & World Report in its 2022 edition. Forbes magazine ranked Rice University 21st nationally among 650 liberal arts colleges, universities and service academies in 2019, 19th among research universities and 2nd in the South. Kiplinger's Personal Finance places Rice 7th in its 2019 ranking of best value private universities in the United States. In 2020, Rice was ranked 105th in the world by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In 2020, Rice was ranked tied for 95th internationally (41st nationally) by the Academic Ranking of World Universities. Rice University was also ranked 85th globally in 2020 by QS World University Rankings. Rice is noted for its entrepreneurial activity, and has been recognized as the top ranked business incubator in the world by the Stockholm-based UBI Index for both 2013 and 2014. The Princeton Review ranked Rice 4th for "Best Quality of Life", 8th for "Happiest Students", 10th among the most LGBT friendliest colleges, and one of the top 50 best value private colleges in its 2020 edition. Rice was ranked 41st among research universities by the Center for Measuring University Performance in 2007. Consumer's Digest ranked Rice 3rd on the list of top 5 values in private colleges in its June 2011 issue. Fiske Guide to Colleges ranked Rice as one of the top 25 private "best buy" schools in its 2012 edition. In 2011 the Leiden Ranking, which measures the performance of 500 major research universities worldwide, using metrics designed to measure research impact ranked Rice 4th Globally, for effectiveness and contribution of research. In 2013 the university was again ranked first globally for quality of research in natural sciences and engineering, and 6th globally for all sciences. In 2014, The Daily Beast ranked Rice 14th out of nearly 2,000 schools it evaluated. In 2019, Money Magazine ranked Rice 24th in the nation. Student life Situated on nearly in the center of Houston's Museum District and across the street from the city's Hermann Park, Rice is a closed campus filled with greenery and close to amenities in the nation's fourth-largest city. Rice's campus adjoins Hermann Park, the Texas Medical Center, and a neighborhood commercial center called Rice Village. Hermann Park includes the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the Houston Zoo, Miller Outdoor Theatre and an 18-hole municipal golf course. NRG Park, home of NRG Stadium and the Astrodome, is two miles (3 km) south of the campus. Among the dozen or so museums in the Museum District was (until May 14, 2017) the Rice University Art Gallery, open during the school year from 1995 until it closed in 2017. Easy access to downtown's theater and nightlife district and to Reliant Park is provided by the Houston METRORail system, with a station adjacent to the campus's main gate. The campus recently joined the Zipcar program with two vehicles to increase the transportation options for students and staff who need but do not otherwise have access to a vehicle. Residential colleges In 1957, Rice University implemented a residential college system, which was proposed by the university's first president, Edgar Odell Lovett. The system was inspired by existing systems in place at Oxford and Cambridge in England and at several other universities in the United States, most notably Yale University. The existing residences known as East, South, West, and Wiess Halls became Baker, Will Rice, Hanszen, and Wiess Colleges, respectively. List of residential colleges Below is a list of residential colleges in order of founding: Baker College, named in honor of Captain James A. Baker, friend and attorney of William Marsh Rice, and first chair of the Rice Board of Governors. Will Rice College, named for William M. Rice, Jr., the nephew of the university's founder, William Marsh Rice. Hanszen College, named for Harry Clay Hanszen, benefactor to the university and chairman of the Rice Board of Governors from 1946 to 1950. Wiess College, named for Harry Carothers Wiess (1887–1948), one of the founders and one-time president of Humble Oil, now ExxonMobil. Jones College, named for Mary Gibbs Jones, wife of prominent Houston philanthropist Jesse Holman Jones. Brown College, named for Margarett Root Brown by her in-laws, George R. Brown. Lovett College, named after the university's first president, Edgar Odell Lovett. Sid Richardson College, named for the Sid Richardson Foundation, which was established by Texas oilman, cattleman, and philanthropist Sid W. Richardson. Martel College, named for Marian and Speros P. Martel, was built in 2002. McMurtry College, named for Rice alumni Burt and Deedee McMurtry, Silicon Valley venture capitalists. Duncan College, named for Charles Duncan, Jr., Secretary of Energy. Much of the social and academic life as an undergraduate student at Rice is centered around residential colleges. Each residential college has its own cafeteria (serveries) and each residential college has study groups and its own social practices. Although each college is composed of a full cross-section of students at Rice, they have over time developed their own traditions and "personalities". When students matriculate they are randomly assigned to one of the eleven colleges, although "legacy" exceptions are made for students whose siblings or parents have attended Rice. Students generally remain members of the college that they are assigned to for the duration of their undergraduate careers, even if they move off-campus at any point. Students are guaranteed on-campus housing for freshman year and two of the next three years; each college has its own system for determining allocation of the remaining spaces, collectively known as "Room Jacking". Students develop strong loyalties to their college and maintain friendly rivalry with other colleges, especially during events such as Beer Bike and O-Week. Colleges keep their rivalries alive by performing "jacks," or pranks, on each other, especially during O-Week and Willy Week. During Matriculation, Commencement, and other formal academic ceremonies, the colleges process in the order in which they were established. Baker 13 Baker 13 is a tradition in which students run around campus wearing nothing but shoes and shaving cream at 10 p.m. on the 13th and the 31st of every month, as well as the 26th on months with fewer than 31 days. The event, long sponsored by Baker College, usually attracts a small number of students, but Halloween night and the first and last relevant days of the school year both attract large numbers of revelers. Beer Bike Race According to the official website, "Beer Bike is a combination intramural bicycle race and drinking competition dating back to 1957. Ten riders and ten chuggers make up a team. Elaborate rules include details such as a prohibition of "bulky or wet clothing articles designed to absorb beer/water or prevent spilled beer/water from being seen" and regulations for chug can design. Each residential college as well as the Graduate Student Association participates with a men's team, a women's team, and alumni (co-ed) team. Each leg of the race is a relay in which a team's "chugger" must chug of beer or water for the men's division and for women before the team's "rider" may begin to ride. Participants who both ride and chug are referred to as "Ironmen". Willy Week is a term coined in the 1990s to refer to the week preceding Beer Bike, a time of general energy and excitement on campus. Jacks (pranks) are especially common during Willy Week; some examples in the past include removing showerheads and encasing the Hanszen guardian." The morning of the Beer Bike race itself begins with what is by some estimations the largest annual water balloon fight in the world. Beer Bike is Rice's most prominent student event, and for younger alumni it serves as an unofficial reunion weekend on par with Homecoming. The 2009 Beer Bike race was dedicated to the memory of Dr. Bill Wilson, a popular professor and long-time resident associate of Wiess College who died earlier that year. In the event of inclement weather, Beer Bike becomes a Beer Run. The rules are nearly identical, except that the Bikers must instead run the length of the track. Campus institutions A number of on-campus institutions form an integral part of student life at Rice. Many of these organizations have been operating for several decades. Rice Coffeehouse Rice Coffeehouse began in Hanszen College, where students would serve coffee in the Weenie Loft, a study room in the old section's fourth floor. Later, the coffee house moved to the Hanszen basement to accommodate more student patrons. That coffeehouse became known as Breadsticks and Pomegranates, and closed due to flooding. Demand for an on-campus Coffeehouse grew and in 1990, the Rice Coffeehouse was founded. The |
found the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology. In 1996, he was appointed its Director. He became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1990, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991. Fullerenes Smalley's research in physical chemistry investigated the formation of inorganic and semiconductor clusters using pulsed molecular beams and time-of-flight mass spectrometry. As a consequence of this expertise, Robert Curl introduced him to Harry Kroto in order to investigate a question about the constituents of astronomical dust. These are carbon-rich grains expelled by old stars such as R Coronae Borealis. The result of this collaboration was the discovery of C60 (known as Buckyballs) and the fullerenes as the third allotropic form of carbon. The research that earned Kroto, Smalley and Curl the Nobel Prize mostly comprised three articles. First was the discovery of C60 in the Nov. 14, 1985, issue of Nature, "C60: Buckminsterfullerene". The second article detailed the discovery of the endohedral fullerenes in "Lanthanum Complexes of Spheroidal Carbon Shells" in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (1985). The third announced the discovery of the fullerenes in "Reactivity of Large Carbon Clusters: Spheroidal Carbon Shells and Their Possible Relevance to the Formation and Morphology of Soot" in the Journal of Physical Chemistry (1986). Although only three people can be cited for a Nobel Prize, graduate students James R. Heath, Yuan Liu, and Sean C. O'Brien participated in the work. Smalley mentioned Heath and O'Brien in his Nobel Lecture. Heath went on to become a professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and O'Brien joined Texas Instruments and is now at MEMtronics. Yuan Liu is a Senior Staff Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This research is significant for the discovery of a new allotrope of carbon known as a fullerene. Other allotropes of carbon include graphite, diamond and graphene. Harry Kroto's 1985 paper entitled "C60: Buckminsterfullerine", published with colleagues J. R. Heath, S. C. O'Brien, R. F. Curl, and R. E. Smalley, was honored by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, presented to Rice University in 2015. The discovery of fullerenes was recognized in 2010 by the designation of a National Historic Chemical Landmark by the American Chemical Society at the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Nanotechnology Following nearly a decade's worth of research into the formation of alternate fullerene compounds (e.g. C28, C70), as well as the synthesis of endohedral metallofullerenes (M@C60), reports of the identification of carbon nanotube structures led Smalley to begin investigating their iron-catalyzed synthesis. As a consequence of this research, Smalley was able to persuade the administration of Rice University, under then-president Malcolm Gillis, to create Rice's Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST) focusing on any aspect of molecular nanotechnology. It was renamed The Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology after Smalley's death in 2005, and has since merged with the Rice Quantum Institute, becoming the Smalley-Curl Institute (SCI) in 2015. Smalley's latest research was focused on carbon nanotubes, specifically focusing on the chemical synthesis side of nanotube research. He is well known for his group's invention of the high-pressure carbon monoxide (HiPco) method of producing large batches of high-quality nanotubes. Smalley spun off his work into a company, Carbon Nanotechnologies Inc. and associated nanotechnologies. Dispute on molecular assemblers He was an outspoken skeptic of the idea of molecular assemblers, as advocated by K. Eric Drexler. His main scientific objections, which he termed the "fat fingers problem" and the "sticky fingers problem", argued against the feasibility of molecular assemblers being able to precisely select and place individual atoms. He also believed that Drexler's speculations about apocalyptic dangers of molecular assemblers threatened the public support for development of nanotechnology. He debated Drexler in an exchange of letters which were published in Chemical & Engineering News as a point-counterpoint feature. Advocacy Starting in the late 1990s, Smalley advocated for the need for cheap, clean energy, which he described as the number one problem facing humanity in the 21st century. He described what he called "The Terawatt Challenge", the need to develop a new power source capable of increasing "our energy output by a minimum factor of two, the generally agreed-upon number, certainly by the middle of the century, but preferably well before that." He also presented a list entitled "Top Ten Problems of Humanity for Next 50 Years". It can be interesting to compare his list, in order of priority, to the Ten Threats formulated by the U.N.'s High Level Threat Panel in 2004. Smalley's list, in order of priority, was: Energy Water Food Environment Poverty Terrorism & war Disease Education Democracy Population Smalley regarded several problems as interlinked: the lack of people entering the fields | became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1990, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991. Fullerenes Smalley's research in physical chemistry investigated the formation of inorganic and semiconductor clusters using pulsed molecular beams and time-of-flight mass spectrometry. As a consequence of this expertise, Robert Curl introduced him to Harry Kroto in order to investigate a question about the constituents of astronomical dust. These are carbon-rich grains expelled by old stars such as R Coronae Borealis. The result of this collaboration was the discovery of C60 (known as Buckyballs) and the fullerenes as the third allotropic form of carbon. The research that earned Kroto, Smalley and Curl the Nobel Prize mostly comprised three articles. First was the discovery of C60 in the Nov. 14, 1985, issue of Nature, "C60: Buckminsterfullerene". The second article detailed the discovery of the endohedral fullerenes in "Lanthanum Complexes of Spheroidal Carbon Shells" in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (1985). The third announced the discovery of the fullerenes in "Reactivity of Large Carbon Clusters: Spheroidal Carbon Shells and Their Possible Relevance to the Formation and Morphology of Soot" in the Journal of Physical Chemistry (1986). Although only three people can be cited for a Nobel Prize, graduate students James R. Heath, Yuan Liu, and Sean C. O'Brien participated in the work. Smalley mentioned Heath and O'Brien in his Nobel Lecture. Heath went on to become a professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and O'Brien joined Texas Instruments and is now at MEMtronics. Yuan Liu is a Senior Staff Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This research is significant for the discovery of a new allotrope of carbon known as a fullerene. Other allotropes of carbon include graphite, diamond and graphene. Harry Kroto's 1985 paper entitled "C60: Buckminsterfullerine", published with colleagues J. R. Heath, S. C. O'Brien, R. F. Curl, and R. E. Smalley, was honored by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, presented to Rice University in 2015. The discovery of fullerenes was recognized in 2010 by the designation of a National Historic Chemical Landmark by the American Chemical Society at the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Nanotechnology Following nearly a decade's worth of research into the formation of alternate fullerene compounds (e.g. C28, C70), as well as the synthesis of endohedral metallofullerenes (M@C60), reports of the identification of carbon nanotube structures led Smalley to begin investigating their iron-catalyzed synthesis. As a consequence of this research, Smalley was able to persuade the administration of Rice University, under then-president Malcolm Gillis, to create Rice's Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST) focusing on any aspect of molecular nanotechnology. It was renamed The Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology after Smalley's death in 2005, and has since merged with the Rice Quantum Institute, becoming the Smalley-Curl Institute (SCI) in 2015. Smalley's latest research was focused on carbon nanotubes, specifically focusing on the chemical synthesis side of nanotube research. He is well known for his group's invention of the high-pressure carbon monoxide (HiPco) method of producing large batches of high-quality nanotubes. Smalley spun off his work into a company, Carbon Nanotechnologies Inc. and associated nanotechnologies. Dispute on molecular assemblers He was an outspoken skeptic of the idea of molecular assemblers, as advocated by K. Eric Drexler. His main scientific objections, which he termed the "fat fingers problem" and the "sticky fingers problem", argued against the feasibility of molecular assemblers being able to precisely select and place individual atoms. He also believed that Drexler's speculations about apocalyptic dangers of molecular assemblers threatened the public support for development of nanotechnology. He debated Drexler in an exchange of letters which were published in Chemical & Engineering News as a point-counterpoint feature. Advocacy Starting in the late 1990s, Smalley advocated for the need for cheap, clean energy, which he described as the number one problem facing humanity in the 21st century. He described what he called "The Terawatt Challenge", the need to develop a new power source capable of increasing "our energy output by a minimum factor of two, the generally agreed-upon number, certainly by the middle of the century, but preferably well before that." He also presented a list entitled "Top Ten Problems of Humanity for Next 50 Years". It can be interesting to compare his list, in order of priority, to the Ten Threats formulated by the U.N.'s High Level Threat Panel in 2004. Smalley's list, in order of priority, was: Energy Water Food Environment Poverty Terrorism & war Disease Education Democracy Population Smalley regarded several problems as interlinked: the lack of people entering the fields of science and engineering, the need for an alternative to fossil fuels, and the need to address global warming. He felt that improved science education was essential, and strove to encourage young students to consider careers in science. His slogan for this effort was "Be a scientist, save the world." Smalley was a leading advocate of the National Nanotechnology Initiative in 2003. Suffering from hair loss and weakness as a result of his chemotherapy treatments, Smalley testified before the congressional testimonies, arguing for the potential benefits of nanotechnology in the development of targeted cancer therapies. Bill 189, the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, was introduced in the Senate on January 16, 2003 by Senator Ron Wyden, passed the Senate on November 18, 2003, and at the House of Representatives the next day with a 405–19 vote. President George W. Bush signed the act into law on December 3, 2003, as Public Law 108- 153. Smalley was invited to attend. Personal life Smalley was married four times, to Judith Grace Sampieri (1968-1978), Mary L. Chapieski (1980-1994), JoNell M. Chauvin (1997-1998) and Deborah Sheffield (2005), |
spectroscopy to study the bond rotation barriers of molecules. After that, he joined the faculty of Rice University in 1958. He inherited the equipment and graduate students of George Bird, a professor who was leaving for a job at Polaroid. Curl's early research involved the microwave spectroscopy of chlorine dioxide. His research program included both experiment and theory, mainly focused on detection and analysis of free radicals using microwave spectroscopy and tunable lasers. He used these observations to develop the theory of their fine structure and hyperfine structure, as well as information about their structure and the kinetics of their reactions. Nobel Prize Curl's research at Rice involved the fields of infrared and microwave spectroscopy. Curl's research inspired Richard Smalley to come to Rice in 1976 with the intention of collaborating with Curl. In 1985, Curl was contacted by Harold Kroto, who wanted to use a laser beam apparatus built by Smalley to simulate and study the formation of carbon chains in red giant stars. Smalley and Curl had previously used this apparatus to study semiconductors such as silicon and germanium. They were initially reluctant to interrupt their experiments on these semiconductor materials to use their apparatus for Kroto's experiments on carbon, but eventually gave in. They indeed found the long carbon chains they were looking for, but also found an unexpected product that had 60 carbon atoms. Over the course of 11 days, the team studied and determined its structure and named it buckminsterfullerene after noting its similarity to the geodesic domes for which the architect Buckminster Fuller was known. This discovery was based solely on the single prominent peak on the mass spectrograph, implying a chemically inert substance that was geometrically closed with no dangling bonds. Curl was responsible for determining the optimal conditions of the carbon vapor in the apparatus, and examining the spectrograph. Curl noted that James R. Heath and Sean C. O'Brien deserve equal recognition in the work to Smalley and Kroto. The existence of this type of molecule had earlier been theorized by others, but Curl and his colleagues were at the time unaware of this. Later experiments confirmed their proposed structure, and the team moved on to synthesize endohedral fullerenes that had a metal atom inside the hollow carbon shell. The fullerenes, a class of molecules of which buckminsterfullerene was the first member discovered, are now considered to have potential applications in nanomaterials and molecular scale electronics. Robert Curl's 1985 paper entitled "C60: Buckminsterfullerine", published with colleagues H. Kroto, J. R. Heath, S. C. O’Brien, and R. E. Smalley, was honored by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, presented to Rice University in 2015. The discovery of fullerenes was recognized in 2010 by the designation of a National Historic Chemical Landmark by the American Chemical Society at the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology at Rice University in Houston, Texas. After winning the Nobel Prize in 1996, Curl took a quieter path than Smalley, who became an outspoken advocate of nanotechnology, and Kroto, who used his fame to further his interest in science education, saying, "After winning a Nobel, you can either become a scientific pontificator, or you can have some idea for a new science project and you can use your newfound notoriety to get the resources to do it. Or you can say, 'Well, I enjoy what I was doing, and I want to keep doing that.'" Later research Curl's later research interests involved physical chemistry, developing DNA genotyping and sequencing instrumentation, and creating photoacoustic sensors for trace gases using quantum cascade lasers. He is known in the residential college life at Rice University for being the first master of Lovett College. Curl retired in 2008 | honored by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, presented to Rice University in 2015. The discovery of fullerenes was recognized in 2010 by the designation of a National Historic Chemical Landmark by the American Chemical Society at the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology at Rice University in Houston, Texas. After winning the Nobel Prize in 1996, Curl took a quieter path than Smalley, who became an outspoken advocate of nanotechnology, and Kroto, who used his fame to further his interest in science education, saying, "After winning a Nobel, you can either become a scientific pontificator, or you can have some idea for a new science project and you can use your newfound notoriety to get the resources to do it. Or you can say, 'Well, I enjoy what I was doing, and I want to keep doing that.'" Later research Curl's later research interests involved physical chemistry, developing DNA genotyping and sequencing instrumentation, and creating photoacoustic sensors for trace gases using quantum cascade lasers. He is known in the residential college life at Rice University for being the first master of Lovett College. Curl retired in 2008 at the age of 74, becoming a University Professor Emeritus, Pitzer-Schlumberger Professor of Natural Sciences Emeritus, and Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at Rice University. Personal life Curl married Jonel Whipple in 1955, with whom he had two children. He plays bridge every week with the Rice Bridge Brigade. Awards and honors Clayton Prize, Institute of Mechanical Engineers, 1957 Alexander von Humboldt Senior US Scientist Award, University of Bonn, Germany, 1984 Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, 1997 Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, 1997 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1998 International Prize for New Materials, American Physical Society, 1992 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 1996 Johannes Marcus Marci Award in Spectroscopy, 1998 Centenary Medal, Royal Society of Chemistry, 1999 Honorary Fellow, The Royal Society of New Zealand, 2001 University of Bochum Research Prize, 2004 National Historic Chemical |
flouted convention by re-electing Marius consul several times without observing the customary ten-year interval between offices. They also transgressed the established oligarchy by advancing unelected individuals to magisterial office, and by substituting magisterial edicts for popular legislation. Sulla soon made peace with Mithridates. In 83, he returned to Rome, overcame all resistance, and recaptured the city. In the Battle of the Colline Gate at the very door of the city of Rome, a Roman army under Sulla bested an army of the Marius supporters and entered the city. Sulla's actions marked a watershed in the willingness of Roman troops to wage war against one another that was to pave the way for the wars which ultimately overthrew the Republic, and caused the founding of the Roman Empire. Sulla and his supporters then slaughtered most of Marius' supporters. Sulla, having observed the violent results of radical popular reforms, was naturally tyrannical. As such, he sought to strengthen the aristocracy, and by extension the senate. Sulla made himself dictator, passed a series of constitutional reforms, resigned the dictatorship, and served one last term as consul. He died in 78. Pompey's dominance The third and final slave uprising was the most serious, involving ultimately between 120,000 and 150,000 slaves under the command of the gladiator Spartacus. Mithridates the Great was the ruler of Pontus, a large kingdom in Asia Minor (modern Turkey), from 120 to 63. Mithridates antagonised Rome by seeking to expand his kingdom, and Rome for its part seemed equally eager for war and the spoils and prestige that it might bring. In 88, Mithridates ordered the killing of a majority of the 80,000 Romans living in his kingdom. The massacre was the official reason given for the commencement of hostilities in the First Mithridatic War. The Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla forced Mithridates out of Greece proper, but then had to return to Italy to answer the internal threat posed by his rival, Gaius Marius. A peace was made between Rome and Pontus, but this proved only a temporary lull. The Second Mithridatic War began when Rome tried to annex a province that Mithridates claimed as his own. In the Third Mithridatic War, first Lucius Licinius Lucullus and then one of Sulla's former lieutenants, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, later known as Pompey the Great, were sent against Mithridates and his Armenian ally Tigranes the Great. Mithridates was finally defeated by Pompey in the night-time Battle of the Lycus. The Mediterranean had at this time fallen into the hands of pirates, largely from Cilicia. The pirates not only strangled shipping lanes but also plundered many cities on the coasts of Greece and Asia. Pompey was nominated as commander of a special naval task force to campaign against the pirates. It took Pompey just forty days to clear the western portion of the sea of pirates and restore communication between Iberia (Spain), Africa, and Italy. In 77, the senate sent Pompey to put down an uprising in Hispania. By 71, Pompey returned to Rome after having completed his mission. Around the same time, another of Sulla's former lieutenants, Marcus Licinius Crassus, had just put down the Spartacus-led gladiator/slave revolt in Italy. Upon their return, Pompey and Crassus found the populares party fiercely attacking Sulla's constitution. They attempted to forge an agreement with the populares party. If both Pompey and Crassus were elected consul in 70, they would dismantle the more obnoxious components of Sulla's constitution. The two were soon elected, and quickly rolled back most of Sulla's constitution. Around 66, a movement to use constitutional, or at least peaceful, means to address the plight of various classes began. After several failures, the movement's leaders decided to use any means that were necessary to accomplish their goals. The movement coalesced under an aristocrat named Lucius Sergius Catilina. The movement was based in the town of Faesulae, which was a natural hotbed of agrarian agitation. The rural malcontents were to advance on Rome, and be aided by an uprising within the city. After assassinating the consuls and most of the senators, Catiline would be free to enact his reforms. The conspiracy was set in motion in 63. The consul for the year, Marcus Tullius Cicero, intercepted messages that Catiline had sent in an attempt to recruit more members. As a result, the top conspirators in Rome (including at least one former consul) were executed by authorisation (of dubious constitutionality) of the senate, and the planned uprising was disrupted. Cicero then sent an army, which cut Catiline's forces to pieces. The most important result of the Catilinarian conspiracy was that the populares party became discredited. The prior 70 years had witnessed a gradual erosion in senatorial powers. The violent nature of the conspiracy, in conjunction with the senate's skill in disrupting it, did a great deal to repair the senate's image. Triumvirates and end of the Republic First Triumvirate In 62, Pompey returned victorious from Asia. The Senate, elated by its successes against Catiline, refused to ratify the arrangements that Pompey had made. Pompey, in effect, became powerless. Thus, when Julius Caesar returned from a governorship in Spain in 61, he found it easy to make an arrangement with Pompey. Caesar and Pompey, along with Marcus Licinius Crassus, established a private agreement, now known as the First Triumvirate. Under the agreement, Pompey's arrangements would be ratified. Caesar would be elected consul in 59, and would then serve as governor of Gaul for five years. Crassus was promised a future consulship. Caesar's consular colleague in 59, Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, was an extreme aristocrat. Caesar submitted the laws that he had promised Pompey to the assemblies. Bibulus attempted to obstruct the enactment of these laws, and so Caesar used violent means to ensure their passage. Caesar was then made governor of three provinces. He facilitated the election of the former patrician Publius Clodius Pulcher to the tribunate for 58. Clodius set about depriving Caesar's senatorial enemies of two of their more obstinate leaders in Cato and Cicero. Clodius was a bitter opponent of Cicero because Cicero had testified against him in a sacrilege case. Clodius attempted to try Cicero for executing citizens without a trial during the Catiline conspiracy, resulting in Cicero going into self-imposed exile and his house in Rome being burnt down. Clodius also passed a bill that forced Cato to lead the invasion of Cyprus which would keep him away from Rome for some years. Clodius also passed a law to expand the previous partial grain subsidy to a fully free grain dole for citizens. During his term as praetor in the Iberian Peninsula (modern Portugal and Spain), Pompey's contemporary Julius Caesar defeated two local tribes in battle. After his term as consul in 59, he was appointed to a five-year term as the proconsular Governor of Cisalpine Gaul (part of current northern Italy), Transalpine Gaul (current southern France) and Illyria (part of the modern Balkans). Not content with an idle governorship, Caesar strove to find reason to invade Gaul (modern France and Belgium), which would give him the dramatic military success he sought. When two local tribes began to migrate on a route that would take them near (not into) the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul, Caesar had the barely sufficient excuse he needed for his Gallic Wars, fought between 58 and 49. Caesar defeated large armies at major battles 58 and 57. In 55 and 54 he made two expeditions into Britain, the first Roman to do so. Caesar then defeated a union of Gauls at the Battle of Alesia, completing the Roman conquest of Transalpine Gaul. By 50, all of Gaul lay in Roman hands. Clodius formed armed gangs that terrorised the city and eventually began to attack Pompey's followers, who in response funded counter-gangs formed by Titus Annius Milo. The political alliance of the triumvirate was crumbling. Domitius Ahenobarbus ran for the consulship in 55 promising to take Caesar's command from him. Eventually, the triumvirate was renewed at Lucca. Pompey and Crassus were promised the consulship in 55, and Caesar's term as governor was extended for five years. Beginning in the summer of 54, a wave of political corruption and violence swept Rome. This chaos reached a climax in January of 52 BC, when Clodius was murdered in a gang war by Milo. In 53, Crassus launched a Roman invasion of the Parthian Empire (modern Iraq and Iran). After initial successes, he marched his army deep into the desert; but here his army was cut off deep in enemy territory, surrounded and slaughtered at the Battle of Carrhae in which Crassus himself perished. The death of Crassus removed some of the balance in the Triumvirate and, consequently, Caesar and Pompey began to move apart. While Caesar was fighting in Gaul, Pompey proceeded with a legislative agenda for Rome that revealed that he was at best ambivalent towards Caesar and perhaps now covertly allied with Caesar's political enemies. Pompey's wife, Julia, who was Caesar's daughter, died in childbirth. This event severed the last remaining bond between Pompey and Caesar. In 51, some Roman senators demanded that Caesar not be permitted to stand for consul unless he turned over control of his armies to the state, which would have left Caesar defenceless before his enemies. Caesar chose civil war over laying down his command and facing trial. Caesar's Civil War and dictatorship On 1 January 49, an agent of Caesar presented an ultimatum to the senate. The ultimatum was rejected, and the senate then passed a resolution which declared that if Caesar did not lay down his arms by July of that year, he would be considered an enemy of the Republic. Meanwhile, the senators adopted Pompey as their new champion against Caesar. On 7 January of 49, the senate passed a senatus consultum ultimum, which vested Pompey with dictatorial powers. Pompey's army, however, was composed largely of untested conscripts. On 10 January, Caesar with his veteran army crossed the river Rubicon, the legal boundary of Roman Italy beyond which no commander might bring his army, in violation of Roman laws, and by the spring of 49 swept down the Italian peninsula towards Rome. Caesar's rapid advance forced Pompey, the consuls and the senate to abandon Rome for Greece. Caesar entered the city unopposed. Afterwards Caesar turned his attention to the Pompeian stronghold of Hispania (modern Spain) but decided to tackle Pompey himself in Greece. Pompey initially defeated Caesar, but failed to follow up on the victory, and was decisively defeated at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48, despite outnumbering Caesar's forces two to one, albeit with inferior quality troops. Pompey fled again, this time to Egypt, where he was murdered. Pompey's death did not end the civil war, as Caesar's many enemies fought on. In 46 Caesar lost perhaps as much as a third of his army, but ultimately came back to defeat the Pompeian army of Metellus Scipio in the Battle of Thapsus, after which the Pompeians retreated yet again to Hispania. Caesar then defeated the combined Pompeian forces at the Battle of Munda. With Pompey defeated and order restored, Caesar wanted to achieve undisputed control over the government. The powers which he gave himself were later assumed by his imperial successors. His assumption of these powers decreased the authority of Rome's other political institutions. Caesar held both the dictatorship and the tribunate, and alternated between the consulship and the proconsulship. In 48, Caesar was given permanent tribunician powers. This made his person sacrosanct, gave him the power to veto the senate, and allowed him to dominate the Plebeian Council. In 46, Caesar was given censorial powers, which he used to fill the senate with his own partisans. Caesar then raised the membership of the Senate to 900. This robbed the senatorial aristocracy of its prestige, and made it increasingly subservient to him. While the assemblies continued to meet, he submitted all candidates to them for election, as well as all bills for enactment. Thus, the group became powerless and were unable to oppose him. Caesar's assassination Caesar began to prepare for a war against the Parthian Empire. Since his absence from Rome would limit his ability to install his own consuls, he passed a law that allowed him to appoint all magistrates, and later all consuls and tribunes. This transformed the magistrates from representatives of the people to representatives of the dictator. Caesar was now the primary figure of the Roman state, enforcing and entrenching his powers. His enemies feared that he had ambitions to become an autocratic ruler. Arguing that the Roman Republic was in danger, a group of senators led by Gaius Cassius and Marcus Brutus hatched a conspiracy and assassinated Caesar at a meeting of the Senate on 15 March 44. Most of the conspirators were senators, who had a variety of economic, political, or personal motivations for carrying out the assassination. Many were afraid that Caesar would soon resurrect the monarchy and declare himself king. Others feared loss of property or prestige as Caesar carried out his land reforms in favor of the landless classes. Virtually all the conspirators fled the city after Caesar's death in fear of retaliation. Second Triumvirate The civil wars that followed destroyed what was left of the Republic. After the assassination, Caesar's three most important supporters, Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), Caesar's co-consul, Gaius Octavianus (Octavian), Caesar's adopted son and great-nephew, and Marcus Lepidus, Caesar's magister equitum, formed an alliance. Known as the Second Triumvirate, they held powers that were nearly identical to the powers that Caesar had held under his constitution. As such, the Senate and assemblies remained powerless, even after Caesar had been assassinated. The conspirators were then defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42. Although Brutus defeated Octavian, Antony defeated Cassius, who committed suicide. Brutus did likewise soon afterwards. Following Philippi, Rome's territories were divided between the triumvirs but the agreement was fragile and could not withstand internal jealousies and ambitions. Antony detested Octavian and spent most of his time in the East, while Lepidus favoured Antony but felt himself obscured by both his colleagues. Following the defeat of Sextus Pompeius, a dispute between Lepidus and Octavian regarding the allocation of lands broke out. Octavian accused Lepidus of usurping power in Sicily and of attempted rebellion and, in 36 BC, Lepidus was forced into exile in Circeii and stripped of all his offices except that of pontifex maximus. His former provinces were awarded to Octavian. Antony, meanwhile, married Caesar's lover, Cleopatra of Ptolemaic Egypt, intending to use the fabulously wealthy Egypt as a base to dominate Rome. The ambitious Octavian built a power base of patronage and then launched a campaign against Antony. Another civil war subsequently broke out between Octavian on one hand and Antony and Cleopatra on the other. This final civil war culminated in the latter's defeat at Actium in 31 BC; Octavian's forces would then chase Antony and Cleopatra to Alexandria, where they would both commit suicide in 30 BC. Octavian was granted a series of special powers including sole "imperium" within the city of Rome, permanent consular powers and credit for every Roman military victory, since all future generals were assumed to be acting under his command. In 27 Octavian was granted the use of the names "Augustus", indicating his primary status above all other Romans, "Princeps", which he used to refer to himself as in public, and he adopted the title "Imperator Caesar" making him the first Roman Emperor. Constitutional system The constitutional history of the Roman Republic began with the revolution which overthrew the monarchy in 509 BC, and ended with constitutional reforms that transformed the Republic into what would effectively be the Roman Empire, in 27 BC. The Constitution of the Roman Republic was a constantly-evolving, unwritten set of guidelines and principles passed down mainly through precedent, by which the government and its politics operated. Throughout the history of the Republic, changes in the constitution were driven by conflicts of interest between the aristocracy and ordinary citizens. Senate The senate's ultimate authority derived from the esteem and prestige of the senators. This esteem and prestige was based on both precedent and custom, as well as the caliber and reputation of the senators. The senate passed decrees, which were called senatus consulta. These were officially "advice" from the senate to a magistrate. In practice, however, they were usually followed by the magistrates. The focus of the Roman senate was usually directed towards foreign policy. Though it technically had no official role in the management of military conflict, the senate ultimately was the force that oversaw such affairs. This was due to the senate's explicit power over the state's budget and in military affairs. The power of the senate expanded over time as the power of the legislative assemblies declined, and the senate took a greater role in ordinary law-making. Its members were usually appointed by Roman Censors, who ordinarily selected newly elected magistrates for membership in the senate, making the senate a partially elected body. During times of military emergency, such as the civil wars of the 1st century, this practice became less prevalent, as the Roman Dictator, Triumvir or the senate itself would select its members. Towards the end of the Republic, the senate could enact a senatus consultum ultimum in times of emergency, instead of appointing a dictator. Legislative assemblies The legal status of Roman citizenship was limited and was a vital prerequisite to possessing many important legal rights such as the right to trial and appeal, to marry, to vote, to hold office, to enter binding contracts, and to special tax exemptions. An adult male citizen with the full complement of legal and political rights was called "optimo jure." The optimo jure elected their assemblies, whereupon the assemblies elected magistrates, enacted legislation, presided over trials in capital cases, declared war and peace, and forged or dissolved treaties. There were two types of legislative assemblies. The first was the comitia ("committees"), which were assemblies of all optimo jure. The second was the concilia ("councils"), which were assemblies of specific groups of optimo jure. Citizens were organized on the basis of centuries and tribes, which would each gather into their own assemblies. The Comitia Centuriata ("Centuriate Assembly") was the assembly of the centuries (i.e., soldiers). The president of the Comitia Centuriata was usually a consul. The centuries would vote, one at a time, until a measure received support from a majority of the centuries. The Comitia Centuriata would elect magistrates who had the imperium powers (consuls and praetors). It also elected censors. Only the Comitia Centuriata could declare war, and ratify the results of a census. It also served as the highest court of appeal in certain judicial cases. The assembly of the tribes (i.e., the citizens of Rome), the Comitia Tributa, was presided over by a consul, and was composed of 35 tribes. The tribes were not ethnic or kinship groups, but rather geographical subdivisions. The order that the thirty-five tribes would vote in was selected randomly by lot. Once a measure received support from a majority of the tribes, the voting would end. While it did not pass many laws, the Comitia Tributa did elect quaestors, curule aediles, and military tribunes. The Plebeian Council was identical to the assembly of the tribes, but excluded the patricians. They elected their own officers, plebeian tribunes and plebeian aediles. Usually a plebeian tribune would preside over the assembly. This assembly passed most laws, and could also act as a court of appeal. Magistrates Each republican magistrate held certain constitutional powers. Each was assigned a provincia by the Senate. This was the scope of that particular office holder's authority. It could apply to a geographic area or to a particular responsibility or task. The powers of a magistrate came from the people of Rome (both plebeians and patricians). The imperium was held by both consuls and praetors. Strictly speaking, it was the authority to command a military force. In reality, however, it carried broad authority in the other public spheres such as diplomacy, and the justice system. In extreme cases, those with the imperium power were able to sentence Roman Citizens to death. All magistrates also had the power of coercitio (coercion). This was used by magistrates to maintain public order by imposing punishment for crimes. Magistrates also had both the power and the duty to look for omens. This power could also be used to obstruct political opponents. One check on a magistrate's power was called Collega (collegiality). Each magisterial office would be held concurrently by at least two people. Another such check was provocatio. While in Rome, all citizens were protected from coercion, by provocatio, which was an early form of due process. It was a precursor to habeas corpus. If any magistrate tried to use the powers of the state against a citizen, that citizen could appeal the decision of the magistrate to a tribune. In addition, once a magistrate's one-year term of office expired, he would have to wait ten years before serving in that office again. This created problems for some consuls and praetors, and these magistrates would occasionally have their imperium extended. In effect, they would retain the powers of the office (as a promagistrate), without officially holding that office. The consuls of the Roman Republic were the highest ranking ordinary magistrates. Each served for one year. They retained several elements of the former kingly regalia, such as the toga praetexta, and the fasces, which represented the power to inflict physical punishment. Consular powers included the kings' former "power to command" (imperium) and appointment of new senators. Consuls had supreme power in both civil and military matters. While in the city of Rome, the consuls were the head of the Roman government. They would preside over the senate and the assemblies. While abroad, each consul would command an army. His authority abroad would be nearly absolute. Praetors administered civil law and commanded provincial armies. Every five years, two censors were elected for an 18-month term, during which they would conduct a census. During the census, they could enroll citizens in the senate, or purge them from the senate. Aediles were officers elected to conduct domestic affairs in Rome, such as managing public games and shows. The quaestors would usually assist the consuls in Rome, and the governors in the provinces. Their duties were often financial. Since the tribunes were considered to be the embodiment of the plebeians, they were sacrosanct. Their sacrosanctity was enforced by a pledge, taken by the plebeians, to kill any person who harmed or interfered with a tribune during his term of office. It was a capital offense to harm a tribune, to disregard his veto, or to otherwise interfere with him. In times of military emergency, a dictator would be appointed for a term of six months. Constitutional government would be dissolved, and the dictator would be the absolute master of the state. When the dictator's term ended, constitutional government would be restored. Military Rome's military secured Rome's territory and borders, and helped to impose tribute on conquered peoples. Rome's armies had a formidable reputation; but Rome also "produced [its] share of incompetents" and catastrophic defeats. Nevertheless, it was generally the fate of Rome's greatest enemies, such as Pyrrhus and Hannibal, to win early battles but lose the war. Hoplite armies During this period, Roman soldiers seem to have been modelled after those of the Etruscans to the north, who themselves are believed to have copied their style of warfare from the Greeks. Traditionally, the introduction of the phalanx formation into the Roman army is ascribed to the city's penultimate king, Servius Tullius (ruled 578–534). The front rank was composed of the wealthiest citizens, who were able to purchase the best equipment. Each subsequent rank consisted of those with less wealth and poorer equipment than the one before it. The phalanx was effective in large, open spaces, but not on the hilly terrain of the central Italian peninsula. In the 4th century, the Romans replaced it with the more flexible manipular formation. This change is sometimes attributed to Marcus Furius Camillus and placed shortly after the Gallic invasion of 390; more likely, it was copied from Rome's Samnite enemies to the south, following the Second Samnite War (326–304). Manipular legion During this period, an army formation of around 5,000 men (of both heavy and light infantry) was known as a legion. The manipular army was based upon social class, age and military experience. Maniples were units of 120 men each drawn from a single infantry class. They were typically deployed into three discrete lines based on the three heavy infantry types: The first line maniple were the hastati, leather-armoured infantry soldiers who wore a bronze breastplate and a bronze helmet adorned with 3 feathers approximately in height and carried an iron-clad wooden shield. They were armed with a sword and two throwing spears. The second line were the principes. They were armed and armoured in the same manner as the hastati, but wore a lighter coat of mail rather than a solid brass breastplate. The triarii formed the third line. They were the last remnant of the hoplite-style troops in the Roman army. They were armed and armoured like the principes, with the exception that they carried a lighter spear. The three infantry classes may have retained some slight parallel to social divisions within Roman society, but at least officially the three lines were based upon age and experience rather than social class. Young, unproven men would serve in the first line, older men with some military experience would serve in the second line, and veteran troops of advanced age and experience would serve in the third line. The heavy infantry of the maniples were supported by a number of light infantry and cavalry troops, typically 300 horsemen per manipular legion. The cavalry was drawn primarily from the richest class of equestrians. There was an additional class of troops who followed the army without specific martial roles and were deployed to the rear of the third line. Their role in accompanying the army was primarily to supply any vacancies that might occur in the maniples. The light infantry consisted of 1,200 unarmoured skirmishing troops drawn from the youngest and lower social classes. They were armed with a sword and a small shield, as well as several light javelins. Rome's military confederation with the other peoples of the Italian peninsula meant that half of Rome's army was provided by the Socii, such as the Etruscans, Umbrians, Apulians, Campanians, Samnites, Lucani, Bruttii, and the various southern Greek cities. Polybius states that Rome could draw on 770,000 men at the beginning of the Second Punic War, of which 700,000 were infantry and 70,000 met the requirements for cavalry. Rome's Italian allies would be organized in alae, or wings, roughly equal in manpower to the Roman legions, though with 900 cavalry instead of 300. A small navy had operated at a fairly low level after about 300, but it was massively upgraded about forty years later, during the First Punic War. After a period of frenetic construction, the navy mushroomed to a size of more than 400 ships on the Carthaginian ("Punic") pattern. Once completed, it could accommodate up to 100,000 sailors and embarked troops for battle. The navy thereafter declined in size. The extraordinary demands of the Punic Wars, in addition to a shortage of manpower, exposed the tactical weaknesses of the manipular legion, at least in the short term. In 217, near the beginning of the Second Punic War, Rome was forced to effectively ignore its long-standing principle that its soldiers must be both citizens and property owners. During the 2nd century, Roman territory saw an overall decline in population, partially due to the huge losses incurred during various wars. This was accompanied by severe social stresses and the greater collapse of the middle classes. As a result, the Roman state was forced to arm its soldiers at the expense of the state, which it did not have to do in the past. The distinction between the heavy infantry types began to blur, perhaps because the state was now assuming the responsibility of providing standard-issue equipment. In addition, the shortage of available manpower led to a greater burden being placed upon Rome's allies for the provision of allied troops. Eventually, the Romans were forced to begin hiring mercenaries to fight alongside the legions. Legion after the reforms of Gaius Marius In a process known as the Marian reforms, Roman consul Gaius Marius carried out a programme of reform of the Roman military. In 107, all citizens, regardless of their wealth or social class, were made eligible for entry into the Roman army. This move formalised and concluded a gradual process that had been growing for centuries, of removing property requirements for military service. The distinction among the three heavy infantry classes, which had already become blurred, had collapsed into a single class of heavy legionary infantry. The heavy infantry legionaries were drawn from citizen stock, while non-citizens came to dominate the ranks of the light infantry. The army's higher-level officers and commanders were still drawn exclusively from the Roman aristocracy. Unlike earlier in the Republic, legionaries were no longer fighting on a seasonal basis to protect their land. Instead, they received standard pay, and were employed by the state on a fixed-term basis. As a consequence, military duty began to appeal most to the poorest sections of society, to whom a salaried pay was attractive. A destabilising consequence of this development was that the proletariat "acquired a stronger and more elevated position" within the state. The legions of the late Republic were almost entirely heavy infantry. The main legionary sub-unit was a cohort of approximately 480 infantrymen, further divided into six centuries of 80 men each. Each century comprised 10 "tent groups" of 8 men. Cavalry were used as scouts and dispatch riders, rather than as battlefield forces. Legions also contained a dedicated group of artillery crew of perhaps 60 men. Each legion was normally partnered with an approximately equal number of allied (non-Roman) troops. The army's most obvious deficiency lay in its shortage of cavalry, especially heavy cavalry. Particularly in the East, Rome's slow-moving infantry legions were often confronted by fast-moving cavalry-troops, and found themselves at a tactical disadvantage. Following Rome's subjugation of the Mediterranean, its navy declined in size although it would undergo short-term upgrading and revitalisation in the late Republic to meet several new demands. Julius Caesar assembled a fleet to cross the English Channel and invade Britannia. Pompey raised a fleet to deal with the Cilician pirates who threatened Rome's Mediterranean trading routes. During the civil war that followed, | colleagues. Following the defeat of Sextus Pompeius, a dispute between Lepidus and Octavian regarding the allocation of lands broke out. Octavian accused Lepidus of usurping power in Sicily and of attempted rebellion and, in 36 BC, Lepidus was forced into exile in Circeii and stripped of all his offices except that of pontifex maximus. His former provinces were awarded to Octavian. Antony, meanwhile, married Caesar's lover, Cleopatra of Ptolemaic Egypt, intending to use the fabulously wealthy Egypt as a base to dominate Rome. The ambitious Octavian built a power base of patronage and then launched a campaign against Antony. Another civil war subsequently broke out between Octavian on one hand and Antony and Cleopatra on the other. This final civil war culminated in the latter's defeat at Actium in 31 BC; Octavian's forces would then chase Antony and Cleopatra to Alexandria, where they would both commit suicide in 30 BC. Octavian was granted a series of special powers including sole "imperium" within the city of Rome, permanent consular powers and credit for every Roman military victory, since all future generals were assumed to be acting under his command. In 27 Octavian was granted the use of the names "Augustus", indicating his primary status above all other Romans, "Princeps", which he used to refer to himself as in public, and he adopted the title "Imperator Caesar" making him the first Roman Emperor. Constitutional system The constitutional history of the Roman Republic began with the revolution which overthrew the monarchy in 509 BC, and ended with constitutional reforms that transformed the Republic into what would effectively be the Roman Empire, in 27 BC. The Constitution of the Roman Republic was a constantly-evolving, unwritten set of guidelines and principles passed down mainly through precedent, by which the government and its politics operated. Throughout the history of the Republic, changes in the constitution were driven by conflicts of interest between the aristocracy and ordinary citizens. Senate The senate's ultimate authority derived from the esteem and prestige of the senators. This esteem and prestige was based on both precedent and custom, as well as the caliber and reputation of the senators. The senate passed decrees, which were called senatus consulta. These were officially "advice" from the senate to a magistrate. In practice, however, they were usually followed by the magistrates. The focus of the Roman senate was usually directed towards foreign policy. Though it technically had no official role in the management of military conflict, the senate ultimately was the force that oversaw such affairs. This was due to the senate's explicit power over the state's budget and in military affairs. The power of the senate expanded over time as the power of the legislative assemblies declined, and the senate took a greater role in ordinary law-making. Its members were usually appointed by Roman Censors, who ordinarily selected newly elected magistrates for membership in the senate, making the senate a partially elected body. During times of military emergency, such as the civil wars of the 1st century, this practice became less prevalent, as the Roman Dictator, Triumvir or the senate itself would select its members. Towards the end of the Republic, the senate could enact a senatus consultum ultimum in times of emergency, instead of appointing a dictator. Legislative assemblies The legal status of Roman citizenship was limited and was a vital prerequisite to possessing many important legal rights such as the right to trial and appeal, to marry, to vote, to hold office, to enter binding contracts, and to special tax exemptions. An adult male citizen with the full complement of legal and political rights was called "optimo jure." The optimo jure elected their assemblies, whereupon the assemblies elected magistrates, enacted legislation, presided over trials in capital cases, declared war and peace, and forged or dissolved treaties. There were two types of legislative assemblies. The first was the comitia ("committees"), which were assemblies of all optimo jure. The second was the concilia ("councils"), which were assemblies of specific groups of optimo jure. Citizens were organized on the basis of centuries and tribes, which would each gather into their own assemblies. The Comitia Centuriata ("Centuriate Assembly") was the assembly of the centuries (i.e., soldiers). The president of the Comitia Centuriata was usually a consul. The centuries would vote, one at a time, until a measure received support from a majority of the centuries. The Comitia Centuriata would elect magistrates who had the imperium powers (consuls and praetors). It also elected censors. Only the Comitia Centuriata could declare war, and ratify the results of a census. It also served as the highest court of appeal in certain judicial cases. The assembly of the tribes (i.e., the citizens of Rome), the Comitia Tributa, was presided over by a consul, and was composed of 35 tribes. The tribes were not ethnic or kinship groups, but rather geographical subdivisions. The order that the thirty-five tribes would vote in was selected randomly by lot. Once a measure received support from a majority of the tribes, the voting would end. While it did not pass many laws, the Comitia Tributa did elect quaestors, curule aediles, and military tribunes. The Plebeian Council was identical to the assembly of the tribes, but excluded the patricians. They elected their own officers, plebeian tribunes and plebeian aediles. Usually a plebeian tribune would preside over the assembly. This assembly passed most laws, and could also act as a court of appeal. Magistrates Each republican magistrate held certain constitutional powers. Each was assigned a provincia by the Senate. This was the scope of that particular office holder's authority. It could apply to a geographic area or to a particular responsibility or task. The powers of a magistrate came from the people of Rome (both plebeians and patricians). The imperium was held by both consuls and praetors. Strictly speaking, it was the authority to command a military force. In reality, however, it carried broad authority in the other public spheres such as diplomacy, and the justice system. In extreme cases, those with the imperium power were able to sentence Roman Citizens to death. All magistrates also had the power of coercitio (coercion). This was used by magistrates to maintain public order by imposing punishment for crimes. Magistrates also had both the power and the duty to look for omens. This power could also be used to obstruct political opponents. One check on a magistrate's power was called Collega (collegiality). Each magisterial office would be held concurrently by at least two people. Another such check was provocatio. While in Rome, all citizens were protected from coercion, by provocatio, which was an early form of due process. It was a precursor to habeas corpus. If any magistrate tried to use the powers of the state against a citizen, that citizen could appeal the decision of the magistrate to a tribune. In addition, once a magistrate's one-year term of office expired, he would have to wait ten years before serving in that office again. This created problems for some consuls and praetors, and these magistrates would occasionally have their imperium extended. In effect, they would retain the powers of the office (as a promagistrate), without officially holding that office. The consuls of the Roman Republic were the highest ranking ordinary magistrates. Each served for one year. They retained several elements of the former kingly regalia, such as the toga praetexta, and the fasces, which represented the power to inflict physical punishment. Consular powers included the kings' former "power to command" (imperium) and appointment of new senators. Consuls had supreme power in both civil and military matters. While in the city of Rome, the consuls were the head of the Roman government. They would preside over the senate and the assemblies. While abroad, each consul would command an army. His authority abroad would be nearly absolute. Praetors administered civil law and commanded provincial armies. Every five years, two censors were elected for an 18-month term, during which they would conduct a census. During the census, they could enroll citizens in the senate, or purge them from the senate. Aediles were officers elected to conduct domestic affairs in Rome, such as managing public games and shows. The quaestors would usually assist the consuls in Rome, and the governors in the provinces. Their duties were often financial. Since the tribunes were considered to be the embodiment of the plebeians, they were sacrosanct. Their sacrosanctity was enforced by a pledge, taken by the plebeians, to kill any person who harmed or interfered with a tribune during his term of office. It was a capital offense to harm a tribune, to disregard his veto, or to otherwise interfere with him. In times of military emergency, a dictator would be appointed for a term of six months. Constitutional government would be dissolved, and the dictator would be the absolute master of the state. When the dictator's term ended, constitutional government would be restored. Military Rome's military secured Rome's territory and borders, and helped to impose tribute on conquered peoples. Rome's armies had a formidable reputation; but Rome also "produced [its] share of incompetents" and catastrophic defeats. Nevertheless, it was generally the fate of Rome's greatest enemies, such as Pyrrhus and Hannibal, to win early battles but lose the war. Hoplite armies During this period, Roman soldiers seem to have been modelled after those of the Etruscans to the north, who themselves are believed to have copied their style of warfare from the Greeks. Traditionally, the introduction of the phalanx formation into the Roman army is ascribed to the city's penultimate king, Servius Tullius (ruled 578–534). The front rank was composed of the wealthiest citizens, who were able to purchase the best equipment. Each subsequent rank consisted of those with less wealth and poorer equipment than the one before it. The phalanx was effective in large, open spaces, but not on the hilly terrain of the central Italian peninsula. In the 4th century, the Romans replaced it with the more flexible manipular formation. This change is sometimes attributed to Marcus Furius Camillus and placed shortly after the Gallic invasion of 390; more likely, it was copied from Rome's Samnite enemies to the south, following the Second Samnite War (326–304). Manipular legion During this period, an army formation of around 5,000 men (of both heavy and light infantry) was known as a legion. The manipular army was based upon social class, age and military experience. Maniples were units of 120 men each drawn from a single infantry class. They were typically deployed into three discrete lines based on the three heavy infantry types: The first line maniple were the hastati, leather-armoured infantry soldiers who wore a bronze breastplate and a bronze helmet adorned with 3 feathers approximately in height and carried an iron-clad wooden shield. They were armed with a sword and two throwing spears. The second line were the principes. They were armed and armoured in the same manner as the hastati, but wore a lighter coat of mail rather than a solid brass breastplate. The triarii formed the third line. They were the last remnant of the hoplite-style troops in the Roman army. They were armed and armoured like the principes, with the exception that they carried a lighter spear. The three infantry classes may have retained some slight parallel to social divisions within Roman society, but at least officially the three lines were based upon age and experience rather than social class. Young, unproven men would serve in the first line, older men with some military experience would serve in the second line, and veteran troops of advanced age and experience would serve in the third line. The heavy infantry of the maniples were supported by a number of light infantry and cavalry troops, typically 300 horsemen per manipular legion. The cavalry was drawn primarily from the richest class of equestrians. There was an additional class of troops who followed the army without specific martial roles and were deployed to the rear of the third line. Their role in accompanying the army was primarily to supply any vacancies that might occur in the maniples. The light infantry consisted of 1,200 unarmoured skirmishing troops drawn from the youngest and lower social classes. They were armed with a sword and a small shield, as well as several light javelins. Rome's military confederation with the other peoples of the Italian peninsula meant that half of Rome's army was provided by the Socii, such as the Etruscans, Umbrians, Apulians, Campanians, Samnites, Lucani, Bruttii, and the various southern Greek cities. Polybius states that Rome could draw on 770,000 men at the beginning of the Second Punic War, of which 700,000 were infantry and 70,000 met the requirements for cavalry. Rome's Italian allies would be organized in alae, or wings, roughly equal in manpower to the Roman legions, though with 900 cavalry instead of 300. A small navy had operated at a fairly low level after about 300, but it was massively upgraded about forty years later, during the First Punic War. After a period of frenetic construction, the navy mushroomed to a size of more than 400 ships on the Carthaginian ("Punic") pattern. Once completed, it could accommodate up to 100,000 sailors and embarked troops for battle. The navy thereafter declined in size. The extraordinary demands of the Punic Wars, in addition to a shortage of manpower, exposed the tactical weaknesses of the manipular legion, at least in the short term. In 217, near the beginning of the Second Punic War, Rome was forced to effectively ignore its long-standing principle that its soldiers must be both citizens and property owners. During the 2nd century, Roman territory saw an overall decline in population, partially due to the huge losses incurred during various wars. This was accompanied by severe social stresses and the greater collapse of the middle classes. As a result, the Roman state was forced to arm its soldiers at the expense of the state, which it did not have to do in the past. The distinction between the heavy infantry types began to blur, perhaps because the state was now assuming the responsibility of providing standard-issue equipment. In addition, the shortage of available manpower led to a greater burden being placed upon Rome's allies for the provision of allied troops. Eventually, the Romans were forced to begin hiring mercenaries to fight alongside the legions. Legion after the reforms of Gaius Marius In a process known as the Marian reforms, Roman consul Gaius Marius carried out a programme of reform of the Roman military. In 107, all citizens, regardless of their wealth or social class, were made eligible for entry into the Roman army. This move formalised and concluded a gradual process that had been growing for centuries, of removing property requirements for military service. The distinction among the three heavy infantry classes, which had already become blurred, had collapsed into a single class of heavy legionary infantry. The heavy infantry legionaries were drawn from citizen stock, while non-citizens came to dominate the ranks of the light infantry. The army's higher-level officers and commanders were still drawn exclusively from the Roman aristocracy. Unlike earlier in the Republic, legionaries were no longer fighting on a seasonal basis to protect their land. Instead, they received standard pay, and were employed by the state on a fixed-term basis. As a consequence, military duty began to appeal most to the poorest sections of society, to whom a salaried pay was attractive. A destabilising consequence of this development was that the proletariat "acquired a stronger and more elevated position" within the state. The legions of the late Republic were almost entirely heavy infantry. The main legionary sub-unit was a cohort of approximately 480 infantrymen, further divided into six centuries of 80 men each. Each century comprised 10 "tent groups" of 8 men. Cavalry were used as scouts and dispatch riders, rather than as battlefield forces. Legions also contained a dedicated group of artillery crew of perhaps 60 men. Each legion was normally partnered with an approximately equal number of allied (non-Roman) troops. The army's most obvious deficiency lay in its shortage of cavalry, especially heavy cavalry. Particularly in the East, Rome's slow-moving infantry legions were often confronted by fast-moving cavalry-troops, and found themselves at a tactical disadvantage. Following Rome's subjugation of the Mediterranean, its navy declined in size although it would undergo short-term upgrading and revitalisation in the late Republic to meet several new demands. Julius Caesar assembled a fleet to cross the English Channel and invade Britannia. Pompey raised a fleet to deal with the Cilician pirates who threatened Rome's Mediterranean trading routes. During the civil war that followed, as many as a thousand ships were either constructed or pressed into service from Greek cities. Social structure Citizen families were headed by the family's oldest male, the pater familias, who was lawfully entitled to exercise complete authority (patria potestas) over family property and all family members. Brutus, co-founder of the Republic, is supposed to have exercised the extreme form of this right when he executed his own sons for treachery. Citizenship offered legal protection and rights, but citizens who offended Rome's traditional moral code could be declared infamous, and lose certain legal and social privileges. Citizenship was also taxable, and undischarged debt was potentially a capital offence. A form of limited, theoretically voluntary slavery (debt bondage, or nexum) allowed wealthy creditors to negotiate payment of debt through bonded service. Poor, landless citizens of the lowest class (proletarii) might contract their sons to a creditor, patron or third party employer to obtain an income, or to pay off family debts. Nexum was only abolished when slave labour became more readily available, most notably during the Punic wars. Slaves were simultaneously family members and family property. They could be bought, sold, acquired through warfare, or born and raised within their master's household,. They could also buy their freedom with money saved or the offer of future services as a freedman or woman, and their sons could be eligible for citizenship; this degree of social mobility was unusual in the ancient world. Freed slaves and the master who freed them retained certain legal and moral mutual obligations. This was the bottom rung of one of Rome's fundamental social and economic institutions, the client-patron relationship. At the top rung were the senatorial families of the landowning nobility, both patrician and plebeian, bound by shifting allegiances and mutual competition. A plebiscite of 218 forbade senators and their sons to engage in substantial trade or money-lending. A wealthy equestrian class emerged, not subject to the same trading constraints as senators. Citizen men and citizen women were expected to marry, produce as many children as possible, and improve – or at worst, conserve – their family's wealth, fortune, and public profile. Marriage offered opportunities for political alliance and social advancement. Patricians usually married in a form known as confarreatio, which transferred the bride from her father's absolute control or "hand" (manus) to that of her husband. Patrician status could only be inherited through birth; an early law, introduced by the reactionary Decemviri but rescinded in 445, sought to prevent marriages between patricians and plebeians; any resulting offspring may not have been legally recognised. Among ordinary plebeians, different marriage forms offered married women considerable more freedom than their patrician counterparts, until manus marriage was replaced by free marriage, in which the wife remained under the legal authority of her absent father, not her husband. Infant mortality was high. Towards the end of the Republic, the birthrate began to fall among the elite. Some wealthy, childless citizens resorted to adoption to provide male heirs for their estates, and to forge political alliances. Adoption was subject to the senate's approval; the notoriously unconventional patrician politician Publius Clodius Pulcher had himself and his family adopted into a plebeian clan, so that he could hold a plebeian tribunate. Trade and economy Farming The Republic was created during a time of warfare, economic recession, food shortages, and plebeian debt. In wartime, plebeian farmers were liable to conscription. In peacetime, most depended on whatever cereal crops they could produce on small farming plots, allotted to them by the state, or by patrons. Soil fertility varied from place to place, and natural water sources were unevenly distributed throughout the landscape. In good years, a pleb small-holder might trade a small surplus, to meet his family's needs, or to buy the armatures required for his military service. In other years, crop failure through soil exhaustion, adverse weather, disease or military incursions could lead to poverty, unsupported borrowing, and debt. Nobles invested much of their wealth in ever-larger, more efficient farming units, exploiting a range of soil conditions through mixed farming techniques. As farming was labour-intensive, and military conscription reduced the pool of available manpower, over time the wealthy became ever more reliant upon the increasingly plentiful slave-labour provided by successful military campaigns. Large, well managed agricultural estates helped provide for clients and dependents, support an urban family home, and fund the owner's public and military career, in the form of cash for bribes and security for loans. Later Roman moralists idealised farming as an intrinsically noble occupation: Cincinnatus left off his ploughing reluctantly, to serve as dictator, and returned once his state duties were done. In law, land taken by conquest was ager publicus (public land). In practise, much of it was exploited by the nobility, using slaves rather than free labour. Rome's expansionist wars and colonisations were at least partly driven by the land-hunger of displaced peasants, who must otherwise join the swelling, dependent population of urban plebs. At the end of the second Punic War, Rome added the fertile ager Campanus, suitable for intense cultivation of vines, olives and cereals. Like the grain-fields of Sicily – seized after the same conflict – it was likely farmed extra-legally by leading landowners, using slave-gangs. A portion of Sicily's grain harvest was sent to Rome as tribute, for redistribution by the aediles. The urban plebs increasingly relied on firstly subsidised, then free grain. With the introduction of aqueducts (from 312), suburban market-farms could be supplied with run-off or waste aqueduct water. Perishable commodities such as flowers (for perfumes, and festival garlands), fresh grapes, vegetables and orchard fruits, and small livestock such as pigs and chickens, could be farmed close to municipal and urban markets. In the early 2nd century Cato the Elder tried to block the illicit tapping of rural aqueducts by the elite, who thus exploited the increased productivity of cheaply bought, formerly "dry" farmland; a law was duly passed, but fines for abuses, and taxes on profits, proved more realistic solutions than an outright ban. Food surpluses, no matter how obtained, kept prices low. Faced with increasing competition from provincial and allied grain suppliers, many Roman farmers turned to more profitable crops, especially grapes for wine production. By the late Republican era, Roman wine had been transformed from an indifferent local product for local consumption, to a major domestic and export commodity, with some renowned, costly and collectable vintages. Roman writers have little to say about large-scale stock-breeding, but make passing references to its profitability. Drummond speculates that this focus on agriculture rather than livestock might reflect elite preoccupations with historical grain famines, or long-standing competition between agriculturalists and pastoralists. While agriculture was a seasonal practise, pasturage was a year-round requirement. Some of Republican Rome's early agricultural legislation sought to balance the competing public grazing rights of small farmers, the farming elite, and transhumant pastoralists, who maintained an ancient right to herd, graze and water their animals between low-lying winter pastures and upland summer pastures. From the early second century, transhumance was practised on a vast scale, as an investment opportunity. Though meat and hides were valuable by products of stock-raising, cattle were primarily reared to pull carts and ploughs, and sheep were bred for their wool, the mainstay of the Roman clothing industry. Horses, mules and donkeys were bred as civil and military transport. Pigs bred prolifically, and could be raised at little cost by any small farmer with rights to pannage. Their central dietary role is reflected by their use as sacrificial victims in domestic cults, funerals, and cults to agricultural deities. Religion Republican Rome's religious practises harked back to Rome's quasi-mythical history. Romulus, a son of Mars, founded Rome after Jupiter granted him favourable bird-signs regarding the site. Numa Pompilius, second king of Rome, had established Rome's basic religious and political institutions after direct instructions from the gods, given through augury, dreams and oracle. Each king thereafter was credited with some form of divinely approved innovation, adaptation or reform. An Imperial-era source claims that the Republic's first consul, Brutus, effectively abolished human sacrifice to the goddess Mania, instituted by the last king, Tarquinius. Romans acknowledged the existence of innumerable deities who controlled the natural world and human affairs. Every individual, occupation and location had a protective tutelary deity, or sometimes several. Each was associated with a particular, highly prescriptive form of prayer and sacrifice. Piety (pietas) was the correct, dutiful and timely performance of such actions. The well-being of each Roman household was thought to depend on daily cult to its Lares and Penates (guardian deities, or spirits), ancestors, and the divine generative essence embodied within its pater familias. A family which neglected its religious responsibilities could not expect to prosper. The well-being of the Roman state depended on its state deities, whose opinions and will could be discerned by priests and magistrates, trained in augury, haruspicy, oracles and the interpretation of omens. Impieties in state religion could produce expressions of divine wrath such as social unrest, wars, famines and epidemics, vitiate the political process, render elections null and void, and lead to the abandonment of planned treaties, wars and any government business. Accidental errors could be remedied by repeating the rite correctly, or by an additional sacrifice; outright sacrilege threatened the bonds between the human and divine, and carried the death penalty. As divine retribution was invoked in the lawful swearing of oaths and vows, oath-breakers forfeited their right to divine protection, and might be killed with impunity. Roman religious authorities were unconcerned with personal beliefs or privately funded cults, unless they offended natural or divine laws, or undermined the mos maiorum (roughly, "the way of the ancestors"); the relationship between gods and mortals should be sober, contractual, and of mutual benefit. Undignified grovelling, excessive enthusiasm (superstitio) and secretive practises were "weak minded" and morally suspect. Magical practises were officially banned, as attempts to subvert the will of the gods for personal gain, but were probably common among all classes. Private cult organisations that seemed to threaten Rome's political and priestly hierarchy were investigated by the Senate, with advice from the priestly colleges. The Republic's most notable religious suppression was that of the Bacchanalia, a widespread, unofficial, enthusiastic cult to the Greek wine-god Bacchus. The cult organisation was ferociously suppressed, and its deity was absorbed within the official cult to Rome's own wine-god, Liber. The official recognition, adoption and supervision of foreign deities and practices, whether Etruscan, Sabine, Latin or colonial Greek, had been an important unitary feature in Rome's territorial expansion and dominance since the days of the kings. For example, king Servius Tullius had established an Aventine temple to Diana as a Roman focus for the Latin League. The gods were thought to communicate their wrath (ira deorum) through prodigies (unnatural or aberrant phenomena). During the crisis of the Second Punic War an unprecedented number of reported prodigies were expiated, in more than twenty days of public ritual and sacrifices. In the same period, Rome recruited the "Trojan" Magna Mater (Great Mother of the Gods) to the Roman cause, "Hellenised" the native Roman cult to Ceres; and took control of the Bacchanalia festival in Rome and its allied territories. Following Rome's disastrous defeat at Cannae, the State's most prominent written oracle recommended the living burial of human victims in the Forum Boarium to placate the gods. Livy describes this "bloodless" human sacrifice as an abhorrent but pious necessity; Rome's eventual victory confirmed the gods' approval. Starting in the mid-Republican era, some leading Romans publicly displayed special, sometimes even intimate relationships with particular deities. For instance, Scipio Africanus claimed Jupiter as a personal mentor. Some gentes claimed a divine descent, often thanks to a false etymology of their name; the Caecilii Metelli pretended to descend from Vulcan through his son Caeculus, the Mamilii from Circe through her granddaughter Mamilia, the Julii Caesares and the Aemilii from Venus through her grandsons Iulus and Aemylos. In the 1st century, Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar made competing claims for Venus' favour. Priesthoods With the abolition of monarchy, some of its sacral duties were shared by the consuls, while others passed to a Republican rex sacrorum (king of the sacred rites"), a patrician "king", elected for life, with great prestige but no executive or kingly powers. Rome had no specifically priestly class or caste. As every family's pater familias was responsible for his family's cult activities, he was effectively the senior priest of his own household. Likewise, most priests of public cult were expected to marry, produce children, and support their families. In the early Republic the patricians, as "fathers" to the Roman people, claimed the right of seniority to lead and control the state's relationship with the divine. Patrician families, in particular the Cornelii, Postumii and Valerii, monopolised the leading state priesthoods: the flamines of Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus, as well as the pontifices. The patrician Flamen Dialis employed the "greater auspices" (auspicia maiora) to consult with Jupiter on significant matters of State. Twelve "lesser flaminates" (Flamines minores), were open to plebeians, or reserved to them. They included a Flamen Cerealis in service of Ceres, goddess of grain and growth, and protector of plebeian laws and tribunes. The plebs had their own forms of augury, which they credited to Marsyas, a satyr or silen in the entourage of Liber, plebeian god of grapes, wine, freedom and male fertility. The priesthoods of local urban and rustic Compitalia street-festivals, dedicated to the Lares of local communities, were open to freedmen and slaves, to whom "even the heavy-handed Cato recommended liberality during the festival"; so that the slaves, "being softened by this instance of humanity, which has something great and solemn about it, may make themselves more agreeable to their masters and be less sensible of the severity of their condition". The Lex Ogulnia (300) gave patricians and plebeians more-or-less equal representation in the augural and pontifical colleges; other important priesthoods, such as the Quindecimviri ("The Fifteen"), and the epulones were opened to any member of the senatorial class. To restrain the accumulation and potential abuse of priestly powers, each gens was permitted one priesthood at any given time, and the religious activities of senators were monitored by the censors. Magistrates who held an augurate could claim divine authority for their position and policies. In the late Republic, augury came under the control of the pontifices, whose powers were increasingly woven into the civil and military cursus honorum. Eventually, the office of pontifex maximus became a de facto consular prerogative. Some cults may have been exclusively female; for example, the rites of the Good Goddess (Bona Dea). Towards the end of the second Punic War, Rome rewarded priestesses of Demeter from Graeca Magna with Roman citizenship for training respectable, leading matrons assacerdotes of "Greek rites" to Ceres. Every matron of a family (the wife of its pater familias) had a religious duty to maintain the household fire, which was considered an extension of Vesta's sacred fire, tended in perpetuity by the chaste Vestal Virgins. The Vestals also made the sacrificial mola salsa employed in many State rituals, and represent an essential link between domestic and state religion. Rome's survival was thought to depend on their sacred status and ritual purity. Vestals found guilty of inchastity were "willingly" buried alive, to expiate their offence and avoid the imposition of blood-guilt on those who inflicted the punishment. Temples and festivals Rome's major public temples were contained within the city's sacred, augural boundary (pomerium), which had supposedly been marked out by Romulus, with Jupiter's approval. The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus ("Jupiter, Best and Greatest") stood on the Capitoline Hill. Among the settled areas outside the pomerium was the nearby Aventine Hill. It was traditionally associated with Romulus' unfortunate twin, Remus, and in later history with the Latins, and the Roman plebs. The Aventine seems to have functioned as a place for the introduction of "foreign" deities. In 392, Camillus established a temple there to Juno Regina, Etruscan Veii's protective goddess. Later introductions include Summanus, c. 278, Vortumnus c. 264, and at some time before the end of the 3rd century, Minerva. While Ceres' Aventine temple was most likely built at patrician expense, to mollify the plebs, the patricians brought the Magna Mater ("Great mother of the Gods") to Rome as their own "Trojan" ancestral goddess, and installed her on the Palatine, along with her distinctively "un-Roman" Galli priesthood. Romulus was said to have pitched his augural tent atop the Palatine. Beneath its southern slopes ran the sacred way, next to the former palace of the kings (Regia), the House of the Vestals and Temple of Vesta. Close by were the Lupercal shrine and the cave where Romulus and Remus were said to have been suckled by the she-wolf. On the flat area between the Aventine and Palatine was the Circus Maximus, which hosted chariot races and religious games. Its several shrines and temples included those to Rome's indigenous sun god, Sol, the moon-goddess Luna, the grain-storage god, Consus, and the obscure goddess Murcia. A temple to Hercules stood in the Forum Boarium, near the Circus starting gate. Every district (Vicus) of the city had a crossroads shrine to its own protective Lares. Whereas Republican (and thereafter, Imperial) Romans marked the passage of years with the names of their ruling consuls, their calendars marked the anniversaries of religious foundations to particular deities, the days when official business was permitted (fas), and those when it was not (nefas). The Romans observed an eight-day week; markets were held on the ninth day. Each month was presided over by a particular, usually major deity. The oldest calendars were lunar, structured around the most significant periods in the agricultural cycle, and the religious duties required to yield a good harvest. In the military Before any campaign or battle, Roman commanders took auspices, or haruspices, to seek the gods' opinion regarding the likely outcome. Military success was achieved through a combination of personal and collective virtus (roughly, "manly virtue") and divine will. Triumphal generals dressed as Jupiter Capitolinus, and laid their victor's laurels at his feet. Religious negligence, or lack of virtus, provoked divine wrath and led to military disaster. Military oaths dedicated the oath-takers life to Rome's gods and people; defeated soldiers were expected to take their own lives, rather than survive as captives. Examples of devotio, as performed by the Decii Mures, in which soldiers offered and gave their lives to the Di inferi (gods of the underworld) in exchange for Roman victory were celebrated as the highest good. Some of Republican Rome's leading deities were acquired through military actions. In the earliest years of the Republic, Camillus promised Veii's goddess Juno a temple in Rome as incentive for her desertion (evocatio). He conquered the city in her name, brought her cult statue to Rome "with miraculous ease" and dedicated a temple to her on the Aventine Hill. The first known temple to Venus was built to fulfil a vow made by Q. Fabius Gurges during battle against the Samnites. Following Rome's disastrous defeat by Carthage in the Battle of Lake Trasimene (217), Rome laid siege to Eryx, a Sicillian ally of Carthage. The city's patron deity, whom the Romans recognised as a warlike version of Venus, was "persuaded" to change her allegiance and was rewarded with a magnificent temple on the Capitoline Hill, as one of Rome's twelve Dii consentes. Venus Victrix was thought to grant her favourites a relatively easy victory, worthy of an ovation and myrtle crown. Cities, towns and villas City of Rome Life in the Roman Republic revolved around the city of Rome, and its seven hills. The most important governing, administrative and religious institutions were concentrated at its heart, on and around the Capitoline and Palatine Hills. The city rapidly |
Ruf Automobile, a German automobile manufacturer Ruf Beats, a British hip hop record label Ruf Records, a German blues record label Reformed University Fellowship, a Christian campus ministry of the Presbyterian Church in | of unknown function Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone Darin Ruf (born 1986), American baseball player Wolfgang Ruf (born 1941), German musicologist Rapid Urban Flexible, dual-mode transit system Ruf, a Japanese |
He subsequently formed the Dobro Manufacturing Corporation, later called Dobro Corporation, Ltd, and began to manufacture his own line of resonator-equipped instruments (dobros). Patent infringement disagreements between National and Dobro led to a lawsuit in 1929, with Dobro suing National for $2 million in damages. Problems within National's management, as well as pressure from the deepening Great Depression, led to a production slowdown at National. This ultimately resulted in part of the company's fractured management structure organizing support for George Beauchamp's newest project: development of a fully electric guitar. By the late twenties, the idea for electrified string instruments had been around for some time, and experimental banjo, violin, and guitar pickups had been developed. George Beauchamp had experimented with electric amplification as early as 1925, but his early efforts, which used microphones, did not produce the effect he desired. Beauchamp also pursued the idea, building a one-string test guitar out of a 2X4 piece of lumber and an electric phonograph pickup. As problems at National became more apparent, Beauchamp's home experiments became more rigorous, and he began to attend night classes in electronics and collaborate with fellow National employee Paul Barth. When they finally developed a prototype electric pickup that met their satisfaction, Beauchamp asked former National shop craftsman Harry Watson to make a wooden neck and body to hold the pickup. Somebody nicknamed it the "fry-pan" because of its shape, though Rickenbacker liked to call it the pancake. The final design Beauchamp and Barth developed was an electric pickup consisting of a pair of horseshoe-shaped magnets that enclosed the pickup coil and completely surrounded the strings. Fry-pan & Electro-Spanish At the end of 1931, Beauchamp, Barth, Rickenbacker and several other individuals banded together and formed the Ro-Pat-In Corporation (elektRO-PATent-INstruments) to manufacture and distribute electrically amplified musical instruments, with an emphasis on their newly developed A-25 Hawaiian Guitar, often referred to as the "fry-pan" lap-steel electric guitar as well as an Electric Spanish (standard) model and companion amplifiers. In the summer of 1932, Ro-Pat-In began to manufacture cast aluminum production versions of the Fry-Pan as well as a lesser number of standard Spanish Electrics also known as "Electro-Spanish" models, built from wooden bodies similar to those made in Chicago for the National Company. These instruments constitute the origin of the electric guitar by virtue of their string-driven electro-magnetic pick-ups. In 1933 the Ro-Pat-In company's name was changed to Electro String Instrument Corporation and its instruments were labeled simply as "Electro". In 1934 the name of "Rickenbacker" was added in honor of the company's principal partner, Adolph Rickenbacker. During the early production of the A-22 Fry-Pan, Beauchamp and Rickenbacker would experiment with wooden-bodied Spanish guitars and solid body prototypes; ultimately giving birth to the Electro-Spanish Model B and the Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts. Both models had been experimental, produced as early as 1931, and officially released in 1935. The Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts model was subject to a limited production of forty-six. There were several new design elements found on the Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts. The instrument was the first of its kind to be named for an endorser. While most arch-top guitars had 14-fret neck joints, the Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts fingerboard joined the body at the 17th fret allowing much greater access to the higher frets, creating a full 25-1/2" inch scale. This addition made the Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts the first production full-scale (25-1/2") electrified guitar. Another new feature on the Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts is the stock Kauffman Vib-rola tailpiece, the world's first patented tremolo (US Patent: US2241911A). The Ken Roberts is the first instrument of any type to feature a hand-operated vibrato as standard equipment. It also marks Rickenbacker's first link to the unit's originator, Clayton Doc Kauffman, who would become a design collaborator for the company a couple of years later. Model B Electric In 1935, the company introduced several new models including the Model "B" Electric Spanish guitar, which is the first known solid-body electric guitar. Because the original aluminum Fry-Pans were susceptible to tuning problems from expansion of the metal under hot performing lights, they made many of the new models from cast Bakelite, an early synthetic plastic used in bowling balls. Rickenbacker continued to specialize in steel guitars well into the 1950s, but with the advent of rock and roll, F.C. Hall, owner of Radio & Television Equipment Co. (Radio-Tel), purchased the Electro String Company from Adolph Rickenbacker in 1953. Hall overhauled the business and began focusing on standard electric and acoustic guitars rather than the steel guitars the company pioneered. In 1956, Rickenbacker introduced two instruments with the "neck through body" construction that became a standard feature of many of the company's products, including the Combo 400 guitar, the model 4000 bass, and, later, the 600 series. Neck Thru consists of a single wooden piece from the neck through the central body section. In 1958, Hall introduced prototype called "capris" (the same name of Hall family's cat from the pronunciation of the French noun for whim). In 1963, Rickenbacker developed an electric twelve-string guitar with an innovative headstock design that fit all twelve machine heads onto a standard-length headstock by mounting alternate pairs of machine heads at right-angles to each other. After including the twelve-string guitar in the Rickenbacker 300 Series. Guitars and 1960s rock and roll In the 1960s, Rickenbacker benefited tremendously when a couple of Rickenbacker guitar models became permanently intertwined with the sound and look of The Beatles. In Hamburg, in 1960, Beatles guitarist John Lennon bought a Rickenbacker 325, which he used throughout the early days of The Beatles. He eventually had the guitar's natural alder body refinished in black, and made other modifications, including adding a Bigsby vibrato tailpiece and regularly changing the control knobs. Lennon played this guitar for the Beatles' 1964 debut on The Ed Sullivan Show (as well as for their third Sullivan appearance, pre-taped the same day but broadcast two weeks later). During Lennon's post-Beatles years in New York, he had this guitar restored to its original natural wood finish and the cracked gold pickguard replaced with a white one. Rickenbacker made two new 325s for Lennon and shipped them to him while the Beatles were in Miami Beach, Florida, on the same 1964 visit to the United States: a one-off custom 12-string 325 model and an updated six-string model with modified electronics and vibrato. He used this newer six-string model on the Beatles' sequentially "second" appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Lennon accidentally dropped the second 325 model during a 1964 Christmas show, breaking the headstock. While it was being repaired, Rickenbacker's UK distributor Rose Morris gave Lennon a model 1996 (the export version of a 325, available exclusively in a red finish and with an F-hole). Lennon later gave the 1996 to fellow Beatle Ringo Starr. Beatles guitarist George Harrison bought a 420 during a brief visit to the United States in 1963. In February 1964, while in New York City, F.C. Hall of Rickenbacker met with the band and their manager, and gave Harrison a model 360/12 (the second electric twelve-string built by Rickenbacker). This instrument became a key part of the Beatles' sound on their LP A Hard Day's Night and other Beatles songs through late 1964. Harrison played this guitar sporadically throughout the remainder of his life. On August 21, 1965, during a Beatles concert tour, Randy Resnick of B-Sharp, a Minnesota music store, presented Harrison with a second model 360/12 FG "New Style" 12-string electric guitar, distinguishable from Harrison's first 12-string by its rounded cutaways and edges. A television documentary produced by KSTP-TV in Minneapolis documents the event. Harrison used this guitar on the song "If I Needed Someone" and during the Beatles' 1966 tours. This 12-string's whereabouts are unknown, as it was stolen at some point after the band ceased touring. After the Beatles' 1965 summer tour, Paul McCartney frequently used a left-handed 1964 4001S FG Rickenbacker bass rather than the lightweight Höfner basses he had used previously. The instrument became popular with other bassists influenced by McCartney's highly melodic style. In 1967, McCartney gave | machinist. Adolph Rickenbacker became a shareholder in National and, with the assistance of his Rickenbacker Manufacturing Company, National boosted production to fifty guitars a day. Unfortunately, National's line of instruments was not well diversified and, as demand for the expensive and hard-to-manufacture tri-cone guitars began to slip, the company realized that it would need to produce instruments with a lower production cost to remain competitive. Dissatisfaction with what John Dopyera felt was mismanagement led him to resign from National in January 1929. He subsequently formed the Dobro Manufacturing Corporation, later called Dobro Corporation, Ltd, and began to manufacture his own line of resonator-equipped instruments (dobros). Patent infringement disagreements between National and Dobro led to a lawsuit in 1929, with Dobro suing National for $2 million in damages. Problems within National's management, as well as pressure from the deepening Great Depression, led to a production slowdown at National. This ultimately resulted in part of the company's fractured management structure organizing support for George Beauchamp's newest project: development of a fully electric guitar. By the late twenties, the idea for electrified string instruments had been around for some time, and experimental banjo, violin, and guitar pickups had been developed. George Beauchamp had experimented with electric amplification as early as 1925, but his early efforts, which used microphones, did not produce the effect he desired. Beauchamp also pursued the idea, building a one-string test guitar out of a 2X4 piece of lumber and an electric phonograph pickup. As problems at National became more apparent, Beauchamp's home experiments became more rigorous, and he began to attend night classes in electronics and collaborate with fellow National employee Paul Barth. When they finally developed a prototype electric pickup that met their satisfaction, Beauchamp asked former National shop craftsman Harry Watson to make a wooden neck and body to hold the pickup. Somebody nicknamed it the "fry-pan" because of its shape, though Rickenbacker liked to call it the pancake. The final design Beauchamp and Barth developed was an electric pickup consisting of a pair of horseshoe-shaped magnets that enclosed the pickup coil and completely surrounded the strings. Fry-pan & Electro-Spanish At the end of 1931, Beauchamp, Barth, Rickenbacker and several other individuals banded together and formed the Ro-Pat-In Corporation (elektRO-PATent-INstruments) to manufacture and distribute electrically amplified musical instruments, with an emphasis on their newly developed A-25 Hawaiian Guitar, often referred to as the "fry-pan" lap-steel electric guitar as well as an Electric Spanish (standard) model and companion amplifiers. In the summer of 1932, Ro-Pat-In began to manufacture cast aluminum production versions of the Fry-Pan as well as a lesser number of standard Spanish Electrics also known as "Electro-Spanish" models, built from wooden bodies similar to those made in Chicago for the National Company. These instruments constitute the origin of the electric guitar by virtue of their string-driven electro-magnetic pick-ups. In 1933 the Ro-Pat-In company's name was changed to Electro String Instrument Corporation and its instruments were labeled simply as "Electro". In 1934 the name of "Rickenbacker" was added in honor of the company's principal partner, Adolph Rickenbacker. During the early production of the A-22 Fry-Pan, Beauchamp and Rickenbacker would experiment with wooden-bodied Spanish guitars and solid body prototypes; ultimately giving birth to the Electro-Spanish Model B and the Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts. Both models had been experimental, produced as early as 1931, and officially released in 1935. The Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts model was subject to a limited production of forty-six. There were several new design elements found on the Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts. The instrument was the first of its kind to be named for an endorser. While most arch-top guitars had 14-fret neck joints, the Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts fingerboard joined the body at the 17th fret allowing much greater access to the higher frets, creating a full 25-1/2" inch scale. This addition made the Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts the first production full-scale (25-1/2") electrified guitar. Another new feature on the Electro-Spanish Ken Roberts is the stock Kauffman Vib-rola tailpiece, the world's first patented tremolo (US Patent: US2241911A). The Ken Roberts is the first instrument of any type to feature a hand-operated vibrato as standard equipment. It also marks Rickenbacker's first link to the unit's originator, Clayton Doc Kauffman, who would become a design collaborator for the company a couple of years later. Model B Electric In 1935, the company introduced several new models including the Model "B" Electric Spanish guitar, which is the first known solid-body electric guitar. Because the original aluminum Fry-Pans were susceptible to tuning problems from expansion of the metal under hot performing lights, they made many of the new models from cast Bakelite, an early synthetic plastic used in bowling balls. Rickenbacker continued to specialize in steel guitars well into the 1950s, but with the advent of rock and roll, F.C. Hall, owner of Radio & Television Equipment Co. (Radio-Tel), purchased the Electro String Company from Adolph Rickenbacker in 1953. Hall overhauled the business and began focusing on standard electric and acoustic guitars rather than the steel guitars the company pioneered. In 1956, Rickenbacker introduced two instruments with the "neck through body" construction that became a standard feature of many of the company's products, including the Combo 400 guitar, the model 4000 bass, and, later, the 600 series. Neck Thru consists of a single wooden piece from the neck through the central body section. In 1958, Hall introduced prototype called "capris" (the same name of Hall family's cat from the pronunciation of the French noun for whim). In 1963, Rickenbacker developed an electric twelve-string guitar with an innovative headstock design that fit all twelve machine heads onto a standard-length headstock by mounting alternate pairs of machine heads at right-angles to each other. After including the twelve-string guitar in the Rickenbacker 300 Series. Guitars and 1960s rock and roll In the 1960s, Rickenbacker benefited tremendously when a couple of Rickenbacker guitar models became permanently intertwined with the sound and look of The Beatles. In Hamburg, in 1960, Beatles guitarist John Lennon bought a Rickenbacker 325, which he used throughout the early days of The Beatles. He eventually had the guitar's natural alder body refinished in black, and made other modifications, including adding a Bigsby vibrato tailpiece and regularly changing the control knobs. Lennon played this guitar for the Beatles' 1964 debut on The Ed Sullivan Show (as well as for their third Sullivan appearance, pre-taped the same day but broadcast two weeks later). During Lennon's post-Beatles years in New York, he had this guitar restored to its original natural wood finish and the cracked gold pickguard replaced with a white one. Rickenbacker made two new 325s for Lennon and shipped them to him while the Beatles were in Miami Beach, Florida, on the same 1964 visit to the United States: a one-off custom 12-string 325 model and an updated six-string model with modified electronics and vibrato. He used this newer six-string model on the Beatles' sequentially "second" appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Lennon accidentally dropped the second 325 model during a 1964 Christmas show, breaking the headstock. While it was being repaired, Rickenbacker's UK distributor Rose Morris gave Lennon a model 1996 (the export version of a 325, available exclusively in a red finish and with an F-hole). Lennon later gave the 1996 to fellow Beatle Ringo Starr. Beatles guitarist George Harrison bought a 420 during a brief visit to the United States in 1963. In February 1964, while in New York City, F.C. Hall of Rickenbacker met with the band and their manager, and gave Harrison a model 360/12 (the second electric twelve-string built by Rickenbacker). This instrument became a |
records the name of the family Montague as being lent to such a political party in Verona, but that of the Capulets as from a Cremonese family, both of whom play out their conflict in Lombardy as a whole rather than within the confines of Verona. Allied to rival political factions, the parties are grieving ("One lot already grieving") because their endless warfare has led to the destruction of both parties, rather than a grief from the loss of their ill-fated offspring as the play sets forth, which appears to be a solely poetic creation within this context. The earliest known version of the Romeo and Juliet tale akin to Shakespeare's play is the story of Mariotto and Ganozza by Masuccio Salernitano, in the 33rd novel of his Il Novellino published in 1476. Salernitano sets the story in Siena and insists its events took place in his own lifetime. His version of the story includes the secret marriage, the colluding friar, the fray where a prominent citizen is killed, Mariotto's exile, Ganozza's forced marriage, the potion plot, and the crucial message that goes astray. In this version, Mariotto is caught and beheaded and Ganozza dies of grief. Luigi da Porto (1485–1529) adapted the story as Giulietta e Romeo and included it in his Historia novellamente ritrovata di due nobili amanti (A Newly-Discovered History of two Noble Lovers), written in 1524 and published posthumously in 1531 in Venice. Da Porto drew on Pyramus and Thisbe, Boccaccio's Decameron, and Salernitano's Mariotto e Ganozza, but it is likely that his story is also autobiographical: He was a soldier present at a ball on 26 February 1511, at a residence of the pro-Venice Savorgnan clan in Udine, following a peace ceremony attended by the opposing pro-Imperial Strumieri clan. There, Da Porto fell in love with Lucina, a Savorgnan daughter, but the family feud frustrated their courtship. The next morning, the Savorgnans led an attack on the city, and many members of the Strumieri were murdered. Years later, still half-paralyzed from a battle-wound, Luigi wrote Giulietta e Romeo in Montorso Vicentino (from which he could see the "castles" of Verona), dedicating the novella to the bellisima e leggiadra (the beautiful and graceful) Lucina Savorgnan. Da Porto presented his tale as historically factual and claimed it took place at least a century earlier than Salernitano had it, in the days Verona was ruled by Bartolomeo della Scala (anglicized as Prince Escalus). Da Porto presented the narrative in close to its modern form, including the names of the lovers, the rival families of Montecchi and Capuleti (Cappelletti) and the location in Verona. He named the friar Laurence (frate Lorenzo) and introduced the characters Mercutio (Marcuccio Guertio), Tybalt (Tebaldo Cappelletti), Count Paris (conte (Paride) di Lodrone), the faithful servant, and Giulietta's nurse. Da Porto originated the remaining basic elements of the story: the feuding families, Romeo—left by his mistress—meeting Giulietta at a dance at her house, the love scenes (including the balcony scene), the periods of despair, Romeo killing Giulietta's cousin (Tebaldo), and the families' reconciliation after the lovers' suicides. In da Porto's version, Romeo takes poison and Giulietta keeps her breath until she dies. In 1554, Matteo Bandello published the second volume of his Novelle, which included his version of Giuletta e Romeo, probably written between 1531 and 1545. Bandello lengthened and weighed down the plot while leaving the storyline basically unchanged (though he did introduce Benvolio). Bandello's story was translated into French by Pierre Boaistuau in 1559 in the first volume of his Histories Tragiques. Boaistuau adds much moralising and sentiment, and the characters indulge in rhetorical outbursts. In his 1562 narrative poem The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, Arthur Brooke translated Boaistuau faithfully but adjusted it to reflect parts of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. There was a trend among writers and playwrights to publish works based on Italian novelle—Italian tales were very popular among theatre-goers—and Shakespeare may well have been familiar with William Painter's 1567 collection of Italian tales titled Palace of Pleasure. This collection included a version in prose of the Romeo and Juliet story named "The goodly History of the true and constant love of Romeo and Juliett". Shakespeare took advantage of this popularity: The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Romeo and Juliet are all from Italian novelle. Romeo and Juliet is a dramatization of Brooke's translation, and Shakespeare follows the poem closely but adds detail to several major and minor characters (the Nurse and Mercutio in particular). Christopher Marlowe's Hero and Leander and Dido, Queen of Carthage, both similar stories written in Shakespeare's day, are thought to be less of a direct influence, although they may have helped create an atmosphere in which tragic love stories could thrive. Date and text It is unknown when exactly Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. Juliet's Nurse refers to an earthquake she says occurred 11 years ago. This may refer to the Dover Straits earthquake of 1580, which would date that particular line to 1591. Other earthquakes—both in England and in Verona—have been proposed in support of the different dates. But the play's stylistic similarities with A Midsummer Night's Dream and other plays conventionally dated around 1594–95, place its composition sometime between 1591 and 1595. One conjecture is that Shakespeare may have begun a draft in 1591, which he completed in 1595. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was published in two quarto editions prior to the publication of the First Folio of 1623. These are referred to as Q1 and Q2. The first printed edition, Q1, appeared in early 1597, printed by John Danter. Because its text contains numerous differences from the later editions, it is labelled a so-called 'bad quarto'; the 20th-century editor T. J. B. Spencer described it as "a detestable text, probably a reconstruction of the play from the imperfect memories of one or two of the actors", suggesting that it had been pirated for publication. An alternative explanation for Q1's shortcomings is that the play (like many others of the time) may have been heavily edited before performance by the playing company. However, "the theory, formulated by [Alfred] Pollard," that the 'bad quarto' was "reconstructed from memory by some of the actors is now under attack. Alternative theories are that some or all of 'the bad quartos' are early versions by Shakespeare or abbreviations made either for Shakespeare's company or for other companies." In any event, its appearance in early 1597 makes 1596 the latest possible date for the play's composition. The superior Q2 called the play The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet. It was printed in 1599 by Thomas Creede and published by Cuthbert Burby. Q2 is about 800 lines longer than Q1. Its title page describes it as "Newly corrected, augmented and amended". Scholars believe that Q2 was based on Shakespeare's pre-performance draft (called his foul papers) since there are textual oddities such as variable tags for characters and "false starts" for speeches that were presumably struck through by the author but erroneously preserved by the typesetter. It is a much more complete and reliable text and was reprinted in 1609 (Q3), 1622 (Q4) and 1637 (Q5). In effect, all later Quartos and Folios of Romeo and Juliet are based on Q2, as are all modern editions since editors believe that any deviations from Q2 in the later editions (whether good or bad) are likely to have arisen from editors or compositors, not from Shakespeare. The First Folio text of 1623 was based primarily on Q3, with clarifications and corrections possibly coming from a theatrical prompt book or Q1. Other Folio editions of the play were printed in 1632 (F2), 1664 (F3), and 1685 (F4). Modern versions—that take into account several of the Folios and Quartos—first appeared with Nicholas Rowe's 1709 edition, followed by Alexander Pope's 1723 version. Pope began a tradition of editing the play to add information such as stage directions missing in Q2 by locating them in Q1. This tradition continued late into the Romantic period. Fully annotated editions first appeared in the Victorian period and continue to be produced today, printing the text of the play with footnotes describing the sources and culture behind the play. Themes and motifs Scholars have found it extremely difficult to assign one specific, overarching theme to the play. Proposals for a main theme include a discovery by the characters that human beings are neither wholly good nor wholly evil, but instead are more or less alike, awaking out of a dream and into reality, the danger of hasty action, or the power of tragic fate. None of these have widespread support. However, even if an overall theme cannot be found it is clear that the play is full of several small thematic elements that intertwine in complex ways. Several of those most often debated by scholars are discussed below. Love Romeo and Juliet is sometimes considered to have no unifying theme, save that of young love. Romeo and Juliet have become emblematic of young lovers and doomed love. Since it is such an obvious subject of the play, several scholars have explored the language and historical context behind the romance of the play. On their first meeting, Romeo and Juliet use a form of communication recommended by many etiquette authors in Shakespeare's day: metaphor. By using metaphors of saints and sins, Romeo was able to test Juliet's feelings for him in a non-threatening way. This method was recommended by Baldassare Castiglione (whose works had been translated into English by this time). He pointed out that if a man used a metaphor as an invitation, the woman could pretend she did not understand him, and he could retreat without losing honour. Juliet, however, participates in the metaphor and expands on it. The religious metaphors of "shrine", "pilgrim", and "saint" were fashionable in the poetry of the time and more likely to be understood as romantic rather than blasphemous, as the concept of sainthood was associated with the Catholicism of an earlier age. Later in the play, Shakespeare removes the more daring allusions to Christ's resurrection in the tomb he found in his source work: Brooke's Romeus and Juliet. In the later balcony scene, Shakespeare has Romeo overhear Juliet's soliloquy, but in Brooke's version of the story, her declaration is done alone. By bringing Romeo into the scene to eavesdrop, Shakespeare breaks from the normal sequence of courtship. Usually, a woman was required to be modest and shy to make sure that her suitor was sincere, but breaking this rule serves to speed along the plot. The lovers are able to skip courting and move on to plain talk about their relationship—agreeing to be married after knowing each other for only one night. In the final suicide scene, there is a contradiction in the message—in the Catholic religion, suicides were often thought to be condemned to Hell, whereas people who die to be with their loves under the "Religion of Love" are joined with their loves in Paradise. Romeo and Juliet's love seems to be expressing the "Religion of Love" view rather than the Catholic view. Another point is that, although their love is passionate, it is only consummated in marriage, which keeps them from losing the audience's sympathy. The play arguably equates love and sex with death. Throughout the story, both Romeo and Juliet, along with the other characters, fantasise about it as a dark being, often equating it with a lover. Capulet, for example, when he first discovers Juliet's (faked) death, describes it as having deflowered his daughter. Juliet later erotically compares Romeo and death. Right before her suicide, she grabs Romeo's dagger, saying "O happy dagger! This is thy sheath. There rust, and let me die." Fate and chance Scholars are divided on the role of fate in the play. No consensus exists on whether the characters are truly fated to die together or whether the events take place by a series of unlucky chances. Arguments in favour of fate often refer to the description of the lovers as "star-cross'd". This phrase seems to hint that the stars have predetermined the lovers' future. John W. Draper points out the parallels between the Elizabethan belief in the four humours and the main characters of the play (for example, Tybalt as a choleric). Interpreting the text in the light of humours reduces the amount of plot attributed to chance by modern audiences. Still, other scholars see the play as a series of unlucky chances—many to such a degree that they do not see it as a tragedy at all, but an emotional melodrama. Ruth Nevo believes the high degree to which chance is stressed in the narrative makes Romeo and Juliet a "lesser tragedy" of happenstance, not of character. For example, Romeo's challenging Tybalt is not impulsive; it is, after Mercutio's death, the expected action to take. In this scene, Nevo reads Romeo as being aware of the dangers of flouting social norms, identity, and commitments. He makes the choice to kill, not because of a tragic flaw, but because of circumstance. Duality (light and dark) Scholars have long noted Shakespeare's widespread use of light and dark imagery throughout the play. Caroline Spurgeon considers the theme of light as "symbolic of the natural beauty of young love" and later critics have expanded on this interpretation. For example, both Romeo and Juliet see the other as light in a surrounding darkness. Romeo describes Juliet as being like the sun, brighter than a torch, a jewel sparkling in the night, and a bright angel among dark clouds. Even when she lies apparently dead in the tomb, he says her "beauty makes / This vault a feasting presence full of light." Juliet describes Romeo as "day in night" and "Whiter than snow upon a raven's back." This contrast of light and dark can be expanded as symbols—contrasting love and hate, youth and age in a metaphoric way. Sometimes these intertwining metaphors create dramatic irony. For example, Romeo and Juliet's love is a light in the midst of the darkness of the hate around them, but all of their activity together is done in night and darkness while all of the feuding is done in broad daylight. This paradox of imagery adds atmosphere to the moral dilemma facing the two lovers: loyalty to family or loyalty to love. At the end of the story, when the morning is gloomy and the sun hiding its face for sorrow, light and dark have returned to their proper places, the outward darkness reflecting the true, inner darkness of the family feud out of sorrow for the lovers. All characters now recognise their folly in light of recent events, and things return to the natural order, thanks to the love and death of Romeo and Juliet. The "light" theme in the play is also heavily connected to the theme of time since light was a convenient way for Shakespeare to express the passage of time through descriptions of the sun, moon, and stars. Time Time plays an important role in the language and plot of the play. Both Romeo and Juliet struggle to maintain an imaginary world void of time in the face of the harsh realities that surround them. For instance, when Romeo swears his love to Juliet by the moon, she protests "O swear not by the moon, th'inconstant moon, / That monthly changes in her circled orb, / Lest that thy love prove likewise variable." From the very beginning, the lovers are designated as "star-cross'd" referring to an astrologic belief associated with time. Stars were thought to control the fates of humanity, and as time passed, stars would move along their course in the sky, also charting the course of human lives below. Romeo speaks of a foreboding he feels in the stars' movements early in the play, and when he learns of Juliet's death, he defies the stars' course for him. Another central theme is haste: Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet spans a period of four to six days, in contrast to Brooke's poems spanning nine months. Scholars such as G. Thomas Tanselle believe that time was "especially important to Shakespeare" in this play, as he used references to "short-time" for the young lovers as opposed to references to "long-time" for the "older generation" to highlight "a headlong rush towards doom". Romeo and Juliet fight time to make their love last forever. In the end, the only way they seem to defeat time is through a death that makes them immortal through art. Time is also connected to the theme of light and dark. In Shakespeare's day, plays were most often performed at noon or in the afternoon in broad daylight. This forced the playwright to use words to create the illusion of day and night in his plays. Shakespeare uses references to the night and day, the stars, the moon, and the sun to create this illusion. He also has characters frequently refer to days of the week and specific hours to help the audience understand that time has passed in the story. All in all, no fewer than 103 references to time are found in the play, adding to the illusion of its passage. Criticism and interpretation Critical history The earliest known critic of the play was diarist Samuel Pepys, who wrote in 1662: "it is a play of itself the worst that I ever heard in my life." Poet John Dryden wrote 10 years later in praise of the play and its comic character Mercutio: "Shakespear show'd the best of his skill in his Mercutio, and he said himself, that he was forc'd to kill him in the third Act, to prevent being killed by him." Criticism of the play in the 18th century was less sparse but no less divided. Publisher Nicholas Rowe was the first critic to ponder the theme of the play, which he saw as the just punishment of the two feuding families. In mid-century, writer Charles Gildon and philosopher Lord Kames argued that the play was a failure in that it did not follow the classical rules of drama: the tragedy must occur because of some character flaw, not an accident of fate. Writer and critic Samuel Johnson, however, considered it one of Shakespeare's "most pleasing" plays. In the later part of the 18th and through the 19th century, criticism centred on debates over the moral message of the play. Actor and playwright David Garrick's 1748 adaptation excluded Rosaline: Romeo abandoning her for Juliet was seen as fickle and reckless. Critics such as Charles Dibdin argued that Rosaline had been included in the play in order to show how reckless the hero was and that this was the reason for his tragic end. Others argued that Friar Laurence might be Shakespeare's spokesman in his warnings against undue haste. At the beginning of the 20th century, these moral arguments were disputed by critics such as Richard Green Moulton: he argued that accident, and not some character flaw, led to the lovers' deaths. Dramatic structure In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare employs several dramatic techniques that have garnered praise from critics, most notably the abrupt shifts from comedy to tragedy (an example is the punning exchange between Benvolio and Mercutio just before Tybalt arrives). Before Mercutio's death in Act III, the play is largely a comedy. After his accidental demise, the play suddenly becomes serious and takes on a tragic tone. When Romeo is banished, rather than executed, and Friar Laurence offers Juliet a plan to reunite her with Romeo, the audience can still hope that all will end well. They are in a "breathless state of suspense" by the opening of the last scene in the tomb: If Romeo is delayed long enough for the Friar to arrive, he and Juliet may yet be saved. These shifts from hope to despair, reprieve, and new hope serve to emphasise the tragedy when the final hope fails and both the lovers die at the end. Shakespeare also uses sub-plots to offer a clearer view of the actions of the main characters. For example, when the play begins, Romeo is in love with Rosaline, who has refused all of his advances. Romeo's infatuation with her stands in obvious contrast to his later love for Juliet. This provides a comparison through which the audience can see the seriousness of Romeo and Juliet's love and marriage. Paris' love for Juliet also sets up a contrast between Juliet's feelings for him and her feelings for Romeo. The formal language she uses around Paris, as well as the way she talks about him to her Nurse, show that her feelings clearly lie with Romeo. Beyond this, the sub-plot of the Montague–Capulet feud overarches the whole play, providing an atmosphere of hate that is the main contributor to the play's tragic end. Language Shakespeare uses a variety of poetic forms throughout the play. He begins with a 14-line prologue in the form of a | is from Dante's Divine Comedy, who mentions the Montecchi (Montagues) and the Cappelletti (Capulets) in canto six of Purgatorio: However, the reference is part of a polemic against the moral decay of Florence, Lombardy, and the Italian Peninsula as a whole; Dante, through his characters, chastises German King Albert I for neglecting his responsibilities towards Italy ("you who are negligent"), and successive popes for their encroachment from purely spiritual affairs, thus leading to a climate of incessant bickering and warfare between rival political parties in Lombardy. History records the name of the family Montague as being lent to such a political party in Verona, but that of the Capulets as from a Cremonese family, both of whom play out their conflict in Lombardy as a whole rather than within the confines of Verona. Allied to rival political factions, the parties are grieving ("One lot already grieving") because their endless warfare has led to the destruction of both parties, rather than a grief from the loss of their ill-fated offspring as the play sets forth, which appears to be a solely poetic creation within this context. The earliest known version of the Romeo and Juliet tale akin to Shakespeare's play is the story of Mariotto and Ganozza by Masuccio Salernitano, in the 33rd novel of his Il Novellino published in 1476. Salernitano sets the story in Siena and insists its events took place in his own lifetime. His version of the story includes the secret marriage, the colluding friar, the fray where a prominent citizen is killed, Mariotto's exile, Ganozza's forced marriage, the potion plot, and the crucial message that goes astray. In this version, Mariotto is caught and beheaded and Ganozza dies of grief. Luigi da Porto (1485–1529) adapted the story as Giulietta e Romeo and included it in his Historia novellamente ritrovata di due nobili amanti (A Newly-Discovered History of two Noble Lovers), written in 1524 and published posthumously in 1531 in Venice. Da Porto drew on Pyramus and Thisbe, Boccaccio's Decameron, and Salernitano's Mariotto e Ganozza, but it is likely that his story is also autobiographical: He was a soldier present at a ball on 26 February 1511, at a residence of the pro-Venice Savorgnan clan in Udine, following a peace ceremony attended by the opposing pro-Imperial Strumieri clan. There, Da Porto fell in love with Lucina, a Savorgnan daughter, but the family feud frustrated their courtship. The next morning, the Savorgnans led an attack on the city, and many members of the Strumieri were murdered. Years later, still half-paralyzed from a battle-wound, Luigi wrote Giulietta e Romeo in Montorso Vicentino (from which he could see the "castles" of Verona), dedicating the novella to the bellisima e leggiadra (the beautiful and graceful) Lucina Savorgnan. Da Porto presented his tale as historically factual and claimed it took place at least a century earlier than Salernitano had it, in the days Verona was ruled by Bartolomeo della Scala (anglicized as Prince Escalus). Da Porto presented the narrative in close to its modern form, including the names of the lovers, the rival families of Montecchi and Capuleti (Cappelletti) and the location in Verona. He named the friar Laurence (frate Lorenzo) and introduced the characters Mercutio (Marcuccio Guertio), Tybalt (Tebaldo Cappelletti), Count Paris (conte (Paride) di Lodrone), the faithful servant, and Giulietta's nurse. Da Porto originated the remaining basic elements of the story: the feuding families, Romeo—left by his mistress—meeting Giulietta at a dance at her house, the love scenes (including the balcony scene), the periods of despair, Romeo killing Giulietta's cousin (Tebaldo), and the families' reconciliation after the lovers' suicides. In da Porto's version, Romeo takes poison and Giulietta keeps her breath until she dies. In 1554, Matteo Bandello published the second volume of his Novelle, which included his version of Giuletta e Romeo, probably written between 1531 and 1545. Bandello lengthened and weighed down the plot while leaving the storyline basically unchanged (though he did introduce Benvolio). Bandello's story was translated into French by Pierre Boaistuau in 1559 in the first volume of his Histories Tragiques. Boaistuau adds much moralising and sentiment, and the characters indulge in rhetorical outbursts. In his 1562 narrative poem The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, Arthur Brooke translated Boaistuau faithfully but adjusted it to reflect parts of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. There was a trend among writers and playwrights to publish works based on Italian novelle—Italian tales were very popular among theatre-goers—and Shakespeare may well have been familiar with William Painter's 1567 collection of Italian tales titled Palace of Pleasure. This collection included a version in prose of the Romeo and Juliet story named "The goodly History of the true and constant love of Romeo and Juliett". Shakespeare took advantage of this popularity: The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Romeo and Juliet are all from Italian novelle. Romeo and Juliet is a dramatization of Brooke's translation, and Shakespeare follows the poem closely but adds detail to several major and minor characters (the Nurse and Mercutio in particular). Christopher Marlowe's Hero and Leander and Dido, Queen of Carthage, both similar stories written in Shakespeare's day, are thought to be less of a direct influence, although they may have helped create an atmosphere in which tragic love stories could thrive. Date and text It is unknown when exactly Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. Juliet's Nurse refers to an earthquake she says occurred 11 years ago. This may refer to the Dover Straits earthquake of 1580, which would date that particular line to 1591. Other earthquakes—both in England and in Verona—have been proposed in support of the different dates. But the play's stylistic similarities with A Midsummer Night's Dream and other plays conventionally dated around 1594–95, place its composition sometime between 1591 and 1595. One conjecture is that Shakespeare may have begun a draft in 1591, which he completed in 1595. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was published in two quarto editions prior to the publication of the First Folio of 1623. These are referred to as Q1 and Q2. The first printed edition, Q1, appeared in early 1597, printed by John Danter. Because its text contains numerous differences from the later editions, it is labelled a so-called 'bad quarto'; the 20th-century editor T. J. B. Spencer described it as "a detestable text, probably a reconstruction of the play from the imperfect memories of one or two of the actors", suggesting that it had been pirated for publication. An alternative explanation for Q1's shortcomings is that the play (like many others of the time) may have been heavily edited before performance by the playing company. However, "the theory, formulated by [Alfred] Pollard," that the 'bad quarto' was "reconstructed from memory by some of the actors is now under attack. Alternative theories are that some or all of 'the bad quartos' are early versions by Shakespeare or abbreviations made either for Shakespeare's company or for other companies." In any event, its appearance in early 1597 makes 1596 the latest possible date for the play's composition. The superior Q2 called the play The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet. It was printed in 1599 by Thomas Creede and published by Cuthbert Burby. Q2 is about 800 lines longer than Q1. Its title page describes it as "Newly corrected, augmented and amended". Scholars believe that Q2 was based on Shakespeare's pre-performance draft (called his foul papers) since there are textual oddities such as variable tags for characters and "false starts" for speeches that were presumably struck through by the author but erroneously preserved by the typesetter. It is a much more complete and reliable text and was reprinted in 1609 (Q3), 1622 (Q4) and 1637 (Q5). In effect, all later Quartos and Folios of Romeo and Juliet are based on Q2, as are all modern editions since editors believe that any deviations from Q2 in the later editions (whether good or bad) are likely to have arisen from editors or compositors, not from Shakespeare. The First Folio text of 1623 was based primarily on Q3, with clarifications and corrections possibly coming from a theatrical prompt book or Q1. Other Folio editions of the play were printed in 1632 (F2), 1664 (F3), and 1685 (F4). Modern versions—that take into account several of the Folios and Quartos—first appeared with Nicholas Rowe's 1709 edition, followed by Alexander Pope's 1723 version. Pope began a tradition of editing the play to add information such as stage directions missing in Q2 by locating them in Q1. This tradition continued late into the Romantic period. Fully annotated editions first appeared in the Victorian period and continue to be produced today, printing the text of the play with footnotes describing the sources and culture behind the play. Themes and motifs Scholars have found it extremely difficult to assign one specific, overarching theme to the play. Proposals for a main theme include a discovery by the characters that human beings are neither wholly good nor wholly evil, but instead are more or less alike, awaking out of a dream and into reality, the danger of hasty action, or the power of tragic fate. None of these have widespread support. However, even if an overall theme cannot be found it is clear that the play is full of several small thematic elements that intertwine in complex ways. Several of those most often debated by scholars are discussed below. Love Romeo and Juliet is sometimes considered to have no unifying theme, save that of young love. Romeo and Juliet have become emblematic of young lovers and doomed love. Since it is such an obvious subject of the play, several scholars have explored the language and historical context behind the romance of the play. On their first meeting, Romeo and Juliet use a form of communication recommended by many etiquette authors in Shakespeare's day: metaphor. By using metaphors of saints and sins, Romeo was able to test Juliet's feelings for him in a non-threatening way. This method was recommended by Baldassare Castiglione (whose works had been translated into English by this time). He pointed out that if a man used a metaphor as an invitation, the woman could pretend she did not understand him, and he could retreat without losing honour. Juliet, however, participates in the metaphor and expands on it. The religious metaphors of "shrine", "pilgrim", and "saint" were fashionable in the poetry of the time and more likely to be understood as romantic rather than blasphemous, as the concept of sainthood was associated with the Catholicism of an earlier age. Later in the play, Shakespeare removes the more daring allusions to Christ's resurrection in the tomb he found in his source work: Brooke's Romeus and Juliet. In the later balcony scene, Shakespeare has Romeo overhear Juliet's soliloquy, but in Brooke's version of the story, her declaration is done alone. By bringing Romeo into the scene to eavesdrop, Shakespeare breaks from the normal sequence of courtship. Usually, a woman was required to be modest and shy to make sure that her suitor was sincere, but breaking this rule serves to speed along the plot. The lovers are able to skip courting and move on to plain talk about their relationship—agreeing to be married after knowing each other for only one night. In the final suicide scene, there is a contradiction in the message—in the Catholic religion, suicides were often thought to be condemned to Hell, whereas people who die to be with their loves under the "Religion of Love" are joined with their loves in Paradise. Romeo and Juliet's love seems to be expressing the "Religion of Love" view rather than the Catholic view. Another point is that, although their love is passionate, it is only consummated in marriage, which keeps them from losing the audience's sympathy. The play arguably equates love and sex with death. Throughout the story, both Romeo and Juliet, along with the other characters, fantasise about it as a dark being, often equating it with a lover. Capulet, for example, when he first discovers Juliet's (faked) death, describes it as having deflowered his daughter. Juliet later erotically compares Romeo and death. Right before her suicide, she grabs Romeo's dagger, saying "O happy dagger! This is thy sheath. There rust, and let me die." Fate and chance Scholars are divided on the role of fate in the play. No consensus exists on whether the characters are truly fated to die together or whether the events take place by a series of unlucky chances. Arguments in favour of fate often refer to the description of the lovers as "star-cross'd". This phrase seems to hint that the stars have predetermined the lovers' future. John W. Draper points out the parallels between the Elizabethan belief in the four humours and the main characters of the play (for example, Tybalt as a choleric). Interpreting the text in the light of humours reduces the amount of plot attributed to chance by modern audiences. Still, other scholars see the play as a series of unlucky chances—many to such a degree that they do not see it as a tragedy at all, but an emotional melodrama. Ruth Nevo believes the high degree to which chance is stressed in the narrative makes Romeo and Juliet a "lesser tragedy" of happenstance, not of character. For example, Romeo's challenging Tybalt is not impulsive; it is, after Mercutio's death, the expected action to take. In this scene, Nevo reads Romeo as being aware of the dangers of flouting social norms, identity, and commitments. He makes the choice to kill, not because of a tragic flaw, but because of circumstance. Duality (light and dark) Scholars have long noted Shakespeare's widespread use of light and dark imagery throughout the play. Caroline Spurgeon considers the theme of light as "symbolic of the natural beauty of young love" and later critics have expanded on this interpretation. For example, both Romeo and Juliet see the other as light in a surrounding darkness. Romeo describes Juliet as being like the sun, brighter than a torch, a jewel sparkling in the night, and a bright angel among dark clouds. Even when she lies apparently dead in the tomb, he says her "beauty makes / This vault a feasting presence full of light." Juliet describes Romeo as "day in night" and "Whiter than snow upon a raven's back." This contrast of light and dark can be expanded as symbols—contrasting love and hate, youth and age in a metaphoric way. Sometimes these intertwining metaphors create dramatic irony. For example, Romeo and Juliet's love is a light in the midst of the darkness of the hate around them, but all of their activity together is done in night and darkness while all of the feuding is done in broad daylight. This paradox of imagery adds atmosphere to the moral dilemma facing the two lovers: loyalty to family or loyalty to love. At the end of the story, when the morning is gloomy and the sun hiding its face for sorrow, light and dark have returned to their proper places, the outward darkness reflecting the true, inner darkness of the family feud out of sorrow for the lovers. All characters now recognise their folly in light of recent events, and things return to the natural order, thanks to the love and death of Romeo and Juliet. The "light" theme in the play is also heavily connected to the theme of time since light was a convenient way for Shakespeare to express the passage of time through descriptions of the sun, moon, and stars. Time Time plays an important role in the language and plot of the play. Both Romeo and Juliet struggle to maintain an imaginary world void of time in the face of the harsh realities that surround them. For instance, when Romeo swears his love to Juliet by the moon, she protests "O swear not by the moon, th'inconstant moon, / That monthly changes in her circled orb, / Lest that thy love prove likewise variable." From the very beginning, the lovers are designated as "star-cross'd" referring to an astrologic belief associated with time. Stars were thought to control the fates of humanity, and as time passed, stars would move along their course in the sky, also charting the course of human lives below. Romeo speaks of a foreboding he feels in the stars' movements early in the play, and when he learns of Juliet's death, he defies the stars' course for him. Another central theme is haste: Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet spans a period of four to six days, in contrast to Brooke's poems spanning nine months. Scholars such as G. Thomas Tanselle believe that time was "especially important to Shakespeare" in this play, as he used references to "short-time" for the young lovers as opposed to references to "long-time" for the "older generation" to highlight "a headlong rush towards doom". Romeo and Juliet fight time to make their love last forever. In the end, the only way they seem to defeat time is through a death that makes them immortal through art. Time is also connected to the theme of light and dark. In Shakespeare's day, plays were most often performed at noon or in the afternoon in broad daylight. This forced the playwright to use words to create the illusion of day and night in his plays. Shakespeare uses references to the night and day, the stars, the moon, and the sun to create this illusion. He also has characters frequently refer to days of the week and specific hours to help the audience understand that time has passed in the story. All in all, no fewer than 103 references to time are found in the play, adding to the illusion of its passage. Criticism and interpretation Critical history The earliest known critic of the play was diarist Samuel Pepys, who wrote in 1662: "it is a play of itself the worst that I ever heard in my life." Poet John Dryden wrote 10 years later in praise of the play and its comic character Mercutio: "Shakespear show'd the best of his skill in his Mercutio, and he said himself, that he was forc'd to kill him in the third Act, to prevent being killed by him." Criticism of the play in the 18th century was less sparse but no less divided. Publisher Nicholas Rowe was the first critic to ponder the theme of the play, which he saw as the just punishment of the two feuding families. In mid-century, writer Charles Gildon and philosopher Lord Kames argued that the play was a failure in that it did not follow the classical rules of drama: the tragedy must occur because of some character flaw, not an accident of fate. Writer and critic Samuel Johnson, however, considered it one of Shakespeare's "most pleasing" plays. In the later part of the 18th and through the 19th century, criticism centred on debates over the moral message of the play. Actor and playwright David Garrick's 1748 adaptation excluded Rosaline: Romeo abandoning her for Juliet was seen as fickle and reckless. Critics such as Charles Dibdin argued that Rosaline had been included in the play in order to show how reckless the hero was and that this was the reason for his tragic end. Others argued that Friar Laurence might be Shakespeare's spokesman in his warnings against undue haste. At the beginning of the 20th century, these moral arguments were disputed by critics such as Richard Green Moulton: he argued that accident, and not some character flaw, led to the lovers' deaths. Dramatic structure In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare employs several dramatic techniques that have garnered praise from critics, most notably the abrupt shifts from comedy to tragedy (an example is the punning exchange between Benvolio and Mercutio just before Tybalt arrives). Before Mercutio's death in Act III, the play is largely a comedy. After his accidental demise, the play suddenly becomes serious and takes on a tragic tone. When Romeo is banished, rather than executed, and Friar Laurence offers Juliet a plan to reunite her with Romeo, the audience can still hope that all will end well. They are in a "breathless state of suspense" by the opening of the last scene in the tomb: If Romeo is delayed long enough for the Friar to arrive, he and Juliet may yet be saved. These shifts from hope to despair, reprieve, and new hope serve to emphasise the tragedy when the final hope fails and both the lovers die at the end. Shakespeare also uses sub-plots to offer a clearer view of the actions of the main characters. For example, when the play begins, Romeo is in love with Rosaline, who has refused all of his advances. Romeo's infatuation with her stands in obvious contrast to his later love for Juliet. This provides a comparison through which the audience can see the seriousness of Romeo and Juliet's love and marriage. Paris' love for Juliet also sets up a contrast between Juliet's feelings for him and her feelings for Romeo. The formal language she uses around Paris, as well as the way she talks about him to her Nurse, show that her feelings clearly lie with Romeo. Beyond this, the sub-plot of the Montague–Capulet feud overarches the whole play, providing an atmosphere of hate that is the main contributor to the play's tragic end. Language Shakespeare uses a variety of poetic forms throughout the play. He begins with a 14-line prologue in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet, spoken by a Chorus. Most of Romeo and Juliet is, however, written in blank verse, and much of it in strict iambic pentameter, with less rhythmic variation than in most of Shakespeare's later plays. In choosing forms, Shakespeare matches the poetry to the character who uses it. Friar Laurence, for example, uses sermon and sententiae forms and the Nurse uses a unique blank verse form that closely matches colloquial speech. Each of these forms is also moulded and matched to the emotion of the scene the character occupies. For example, when Romeo talks about Rosaline earlier in the play, he attempts to use the Petrarchan sonnet form. Petrarchan sonnets were often used by men to exaggerate the beauty of women who were impossible for them to attain, as in Romeo's situation with Rosaline. This sonnet form is used by Lady Capulet to describe Count Paris to Juliet as a handsome man. When Romeo and Juliet meet, the poetic form changes from the Petrarchan (which was becoming archaic in Shakespeare's day) to a then more contemporary sonnet form, using "pilgrims" and "saints" as metaphors. Finally, when the two meet on the balcony, Romeo attempts to use the sonnet form to pledge his love, but Juliet breaks it by saying "Dost thou love |
Strip Classics series of U.S. postage stamps. The Rube Goldberg Machine Contest originated in 1949 as a competition at Purdue University between two fraternities. It ran until 1956, and was revived in 1983 as a university-wide competition. In 1989 it became a national competition, with a high school division added in 1996. Devices must complete a simple task in a minimum of twenty steps and a maximum of seventy-five in the style of Goldberg. The contest is hosted nationwide by Rube Goldberg Inc., a not-for-profit 501(c)(3), founded by Rube's son George W. George, and currently managed by Rube's granddaughter, Jennifer George. In 1998, Justice Scalia remarked in a dissent in a habeas case that "Rube Goldberg would envy the scheme the Court has created." Film and television Rube Goldberg wrote the first feature film for the pre-Curly Howard version of The Three Stooges called Soup to Nuts, which was released in 1930 and starred Ted Healy. The film featured his machines and included cameos of Rube himself. In the 1962 John Wayne movie Hatari!, an invention to catch monkeys by character Pockets, played by Red Buttons, is described as a "Rube Goldberg." In the late 1960s and early '70s, educational shows like Sesame Street, Vision On and The Electric Company routinely showed bits that involved Rube Goldberg devices, including the Rube Goldberg Alphabet Contraption, and the What Happens Next Machine. Various other films and cartoons have included highly complicated machines that perform simple tasks. Among these are Flåklypa Grand Prix, Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, Wallace and Gromit, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, The Way Things Go, Edward Scissorhands, Back to the Future, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Goonies, Gremlins, the Saw film series, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Cat from Outer Space, Malcolm, Hotel for Dogs, the Home Alone film series, Family Guy, American Dad!, Casper, and Waiting... Also in the Final Destination film series the characters often die in Rube Goldberg-esque ways. In the film The Great Mouse Detective, the villain Ratigan attempts to kill the film's heroes, Basil of Baker Street and David Q. Dawson, with a Rube Goldberg style device. The classic video in this genre was done by the artist duo Peter Fischli & David Weiss in 1987 with their 30-minute video Der Lauf der Dinge or The Way Things Go. Honda produced a video in 2003 called "The Cog" using many of the same principles that Fischli and Weiss had done in 1987. In 2005, the American alternative rock/indie band The Bravery released a video for their debut single, "An Honest Mistake," which features the band performing the song in the middle of a Rube Goldberg machine. In 1999, an episode of The X-Files was titled "The Goldberg Variation". The episode intertwined characters FBI agents Mulder and Scully, a simple apartment super, Henry Weems (Willie Garson) and an ailing young boy, Ritchie Lupone (Shia LaBeouf) in a real-life Goldberg device. The 2010 music video "This Too Shall Pass – RGM Version" by the rock band OK Go features a machine that, after four minutes of kinetic activity, shoots the band members in the face with paint. "RGM" presumably stands for Rube Goldberg Machine. 2012 The CBS show Elementary features a machine in its opening sequence. The 2012 Discovery Channel show Unchained Reaction pitted two teams against each other to create an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine. It was judged and executive-produced by Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, known for hosting the science entertainment series MythBusters. The 2014 web series Deadbeat on Hulu features an episode titled "The Ghost in the Machine," which features the protagonist Kevin helping the ghost of Rube Goldberg complete a contraption. It will bring his grandchildren together after they make a collection of random items into a machine that ends up systematically injuring two of his grandchildren so they end up in the same hospital and finally meet. Games Both board games and video games have been inspired by Goldberg's creations, such as the '60s board game Mouse Trap, the 1990s series of The Incredible Machine games, and Crazy Machines. The Humongous Entertainment game Freddi Fish 2: The Case of the Haunted Schoolhouse involves searching for the missing pieces to a Rube Goldberg machine to complete the game. In 1909 Goldberg invented the "Foolish Questions" game based on his successful cartoon by the same name. The game was published in many versions from 1909 to 1934. Rube Works: The Official Rube Goldberg Invention Game, the first game authorized by The Heirs of Rube Goldberg, was published by Unity Games (the publishing arm of Unity Technologies) in November 2013. See also Chindōgu Deathtrap (plot device) Domino effect Domino show Frederick Rowland Emett Jean Tinguely, Swiss artist who created Rube Goldberg–like sculptures Mickey One PythagoraSwitch References External links Official Rube Goldberg website Toonopedia entry Smithsonian's Archives of American Art: Oral History Interview with Rube Goldberg, 1970 NCS Awards Guide to the Rube Goldberg Papers at The Bancroft Library Rube Goldberg interviewed by Edward Murrow, 1959 Rube Works: The Official Rube Goldberg Invention Game 1883 births 1970 deaths American editorial cartoonists Engineers from California UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni American humorists American male journalists Journalists from California Artists from New York | an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor. Goldberg is best known for his popular cartoons depicting complicated gadgets performing simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. The cartoons led to the expression "Rube Goldberg machines" to describe similar gadgets and processes. Goldberg received many honors in his lifetime, including a Pulitzer Prize for political cartooning in 1948, the National Cartoonists Society's Gold T-Square Award in 1955, and the Banshees' Silver Lady Award in 1959. He was a founding member and first president of the National Cartoonists Society, which hosts the annual Reuben Award, honoring the top cartoonist of the year and named after Goldberg, who won the award in 1967. He is the inspiration for international competitions known as Rube Goldberg Machine Contests, which challenge participants to create a complicated machine to perform a simple task. Personal life Goldberg was born in San Francisco, California, to Jewish parents Max and Hannah (Cohn) Goldberg. He was the third of seven children, three of whom died as children; older brother Garrett, younger brother Walter, and younger sister Lillian also survived. Goldberg began tracing illustrations when he was four years old, and took his only drawing lessons with a local sign painter. Goldberg married Irma Seeman on 17 October 1916. They lived at 98 Central Park West in New York City and had sons Thomas and George. During World War II, as each of his sons were heading off to college, Goldberg insisted that they change their surname because of anti-semitic sentiment towards him stemming from the political nature of his cartoons. Thomas chose the surname of George, and his brother, also named George, followed suit. In adopting the same surname, George wanted to keep a sense of family cohesiveness. Career Goldberg's father was a San Francisco police and fire commissioner, who encouraged the young Reuben to pursue a career in engineering. Rube graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1904 with a degree in Engineering and was hired by the city of San Francisco as an engineer for the Water and Sewers Department. After six months he resigned his position with the city to join the San Francisco Chronicle where he became a sports cartoonist. The following year, he took a job with the San Francisco Bulletin, where he remained until he moved to New York City in 1907, finding employment as a sports cartoonist with the New York Evening Mail. Goldberg's first public hit was a comic strip called Foolish Questions, beginning in 1908. The invention cartoons began in 1912. The New York Evening Mail was syndicated to the first newspaper syndicate, the McClure Newspaper Syndicate, giving Goldberg's cartoons a wider distribution, and by 1915 he was earning $25,000 per year and being billed by the paper as America's most popular cartoonist. Arthur Brisbane had offered Goldberg $2,600 per year in 1911 in an unsuccessful attempt to get him to move to William Randolph Hearst's newspaper chain, and in 1915 raised the offer to $50,000 per year. Rather than lose Goldberg to Hearst, the New York Evening Mail matched the salary offer and formed the Evening Mail Syndicate to syndicate Goldberg's cartoons nationally. In 1916, Goldberg created a series of seven short animated films which focus on humorous aspects of everyday situations in the form of an animated newsreel. The seven films were released on these dates in 1916: May 8, The Boob Weekly; May 22, Leap Year; June 5, The Fatal Pie; Jun 19, From Kitchen Mechanic to Movie Star; July 3, Nutty News; July 17, Home Sweet Home; July 31, Losing Weight. Goldberg was syndicated by the McNaught Syndicate from 1922 until 1934. A prolific artist, it has been estimated that Goldberg created 50,000 cartoons during his lifetime. Some of these cartoons include Mike and Ike (They Look Alike), Boob McNutt, Foolish Questions, What Are You Kicking About, Telephonies, Lala Palooza, The Weekly Meeting of the Tuesday Women's Club, and the uncharacteristically serious soap-opera strip, Doc Wright, which ran for 10 months beginning January 29, 1933. The cartoon series that brought him lasting fame was The Inventions of Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts, A.K., which ran in Collier's Weekly from 26 January 1929 to 26 December 1931. In that series, Goldberg drew labeled schematics in the form of patent applications of the comically intricate "inventions" that would later bear his name. The character of Professor Butts was based on Rube's professor Frederick Slate at the College of Mining and Engineering at the University of California, where Rube attended from 1901 to 1903. Frederick Slate gave his engineering students the task of building a scale that |
cognition, dreaming, and conscious states. He has been a proponent of the role of sleep in memory consolidation. Additional research has focused on dreaming. In one experiment, participants played the computer game Tetris for three days and reported dreaming about falling geometric shapes—a phenomenon now known as the Tetris effect. Even patients with anterograde amnesia, who did not remember playing the game, had similar dreams as normal participants. Similar results were found in another study utilizing the video game Alpine Racer 2. Participants reported dreaming about skiing. Stickgold lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and has four children. Dr. Stickgold is also a published science fiction author. In 1973 Robert "Bob" Stickgold had his novelette "Susies Reality" published in the May/June issue of "Worlds of IF Science Fiction" anthology magazine. With Mark Noble, they wrote "Gloryhits" in 1978. And in 1979 "Bob" created "our children will be | and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. A sleep researcher, his work focuses on the relationship between sleep and learning. His articles in the popular press are intended to illustrate the dangers of sleep deprivation. Stickgold was born in Chicago. He graduated from Harvard University before attending the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he received his doctorate in biochemistry. He worked with the sleep researcher J. Allan Hobson for many years and has been known to quote Hobson's quip: "The only known function of sleep is to cure sleepiness". Stickgold's research has focused on sleep and cognition, dreaming, and conscious states. He has been a proponent of the role of sleep in memory consolidation. Additional research has focused on dreaming. In one experiment, participants played the computer game Tetris for three days and reported dreaming about falling geometric shapes—a phenomenon now known as the Tetris effect. Even patients with anterograde amnesia, who |
that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God's myth where the others are men's myths: i. e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call real things. Another Christian writer, the Catholic priest Father Andrew Greeley, freely applies the term "myth" to Christianity. In his book Myths of Religion, he defends this terminology: Many Christians have objected to my use of this word [myth] even when I define it specifically. They are terrified by a word which may even have a slight suggestion of fantasy. However, my usage is the one that is common among historians of religion, literary critics, and social scientists. It is a valuable and helpful usage; there is no other word which conveys what these scholarly traditions mean when they refer to myth. The Christian would be well advised to get over his fear of the word and appreciate how important a tool it can be for understanding the content of his faith. At a "Consultation on the Relationship Between the Wesleyan Tradition and the Natural Sciences" in Kansas City, Missouri, on October 19, 1991, Dennis Bratcher presented a discussion of the adaptation of Near Eastern mythical thought by the Israelites. Bratcher argued that the Old Testament absorbed Near Eastern pagan mythology (although he drew a sharp distinction between the literally-interpreted myths of the Near Eastern pagans and the "mythopoetic" use of imagery from pagan myths by the Hebrews). During this presentation, he gave the following disclaimer: the term "myth" as used here does not mean "false" or "fiction." Even in my old and yellowed Webster's, "fiction" is the third meaning of the word. In its primary and more technical meaning "myth" refers to a story or group of stories that serve to explain how a particular society views their world. Judaism Some Jewish scholars, including Dov Noy, a professor of folklore at Hebrew University and founder of the Israel Folktale Archives, and Howard Schwartz, Jewish anthologist and English professor at the University of Missouri – St. Louis, have discussed traditional Jewish stories as "mythology". Schwartz authored the book Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism. It consists of myths and belief statements excerpted from—and, in some cases, synthesized from a number of excerpts from—both Biblical and non-Biblical Jewish texts. According to Schwartz, the Jewish people continue to elaborate on, and compose additions to, their traditional mythology. In the book's introduction, Schwartz states that the word "myth", as used in the book, "is not offered to mean something that is not true, as in the current popular usage". Neopaganism Neopagans frequently refer to their sacred stories as "myths". Asatru, a modern-day revival of Germanic Paganism, holds "that the Eddas, Myths and Norse Sagas are the divinely inspired wisdom of [its] religion". Wicca, another Neopagan movement, also applies the term "mythology" to its stories. Miscellaneous The Dewey Decimal system covers religion in the 200 range, with books on "Religious mythology & social theology", a subset listed under 201. See also General Comparative mythology Creation myth Esotericism Magic and religion Myth and ritual Mythical theology Theosophical Society Mythology of world religions Buddhist mythology Christian mythology Hindu mythology Islamic mythology Jewish mythology References Citations Sources "About Us". Ásatrú Utah. 30 December 2007 <http://asatruutah.org/about_us/>. "Religion". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. File retrieved 8 June 2007 . "Myth", Oxford English Dictionary ("OED"). File retrieved 2 June 2007. [] Bierlein, J.F. Parallel Myths. New York: Ballantine, 1994. Bratcher, Dennis. "Speaking the Language of Canaan: The Old Testament and the Israelite Perception of the Physical World". The Voice. CRI/Voice, Institute. 30 December 2007 <http://www.cresourcei.org/langcaan.html#symbol>. Brown, Dave. "Real Joy and True Myth". Dave Brown's C. S. Lewis Page. 31 December 2007 <https://web.archive.org/web/20091026222931/http://www.geocities.com/athens/forum/3505/LewisJoy.html>. Buxton, Richard. The Complete World of Greek Mythology. London: Thames & Hudson, 2004. "Myth", Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. File retrieved June 18, 2007. Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology. NY: Penguin, 1991. Eliade, Mircea: Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism". Trans. Philip Mairet. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991.Myth and Reality. Trans. Willard R. Trask. NY: Harper & Row, 1968.Myths, Dreams and Mysteries. Trans. Philip Mairet. NY: Harper & Row, 1967.Myths, Rites, Symbols: A Mircea Eliade Reader. Ed. Wendell C. Beane and William G. Doty. Vol 2. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Trans. Willard R. Trask. NY Harper & Row, 1961. Dundes, Alan. "Binary Opposition in Myth: The Propp/Levi-Strauss Debate in Retrospect". Western Folklore 56 (Winter, 1997): pp. 39–50. Frazer, J. G. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. NY: Macmillan, 1930. Kirk, G. S. Myth: Its Meaning and Function in Ancient and Other Cultures. Berkeley: Cambridge UP, 1973. Graves, Robert, "Introduction," New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology (trans. Richard Aldington and Delano Ames), London: Hamlyn, 1968, pp. v-viii. Hardon, John A. "The Resurrection of Jesus". Real Presence Eucharistic Education and Adoration Association. 30 December 2007 <http://www.therealpresence.org/archives/Prayer/Prayer_029.htm>. Menion, Michael. Tolkien Elves and Art, in J.R.R. Tolkien's Aesthetics. 2003/2004 (commentary on Mythopoeia the poem). Mohler, Albert. "The Mythology of Star Wars: The Faith versus the Force". AlbertMohler.com. 30 December 2007 <http://www.albertmohler.com/commentary_read.php?cdate=2005-05-25>. Muthuraj, Joseph. "The Significance of Mircea Eliade for Christian Theology". Religion Online. 15 January 2008 <https://web.archive.org/web/20080413053729/http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1901>. This article was previously published in Bangalore Theological Forum 33.2 (2001): 38-59. Pearce, Joseph. "J.R.R. Tolkien: Truth and Myth". Catholic Education Research Center. 31 December 2007 <http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/arts/al0107.html>. Robinson, B. A. "Deism: About the God who went away". ReligiousTolerance.org. 30 December 2007 <http://www.religioustolerance.org/deism.htm>. Segal, Robert A. Myth: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. Schram, Peninnah. Review: Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism. University of Missouri – St. Louis. 30 December 2007 <http://www.umsl.edu/~schwartzh/bookworld.htm>. Schwartz, Howard. Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. "The Parable of the Arrow" (adapted from the Majjhima-nikaya). Staffordshire Learning Net. File retrieved 2 June 2007. "The Wheel of the Year / the Sabbats". Wicca for the Rest of Us. 30 December 2007 <https://web.archive.org/web/20070701140411/http://wicca.timerift.net/sabbat.shtml>. "What is Wicca?" Greywing's Wicca Basics. Manor House for Wiccan Studies. 30 December 2007 <https://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/athens/4177/wiccab.html%23Wicca&date=2009-10-25+12:46:39>. Wood, Ralph C. "Biography of J.R.R. Tolkien". Leadership University. 31 December 2007 <http://www.leaderu.com/humanities/wood-biography.html>. "Workshops and Talks". Deborah Lipp. Nightowls Webspace. 30 December 2007 <http://www.deborahlipp.com/workshop_talks.htm>. Further reading Campbell, Joseph, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Princeton University Press, 1949. Girard, René, Jean-Michel Oughourlian, and Guy Lefort, "Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World". Stanford University Press, 1987 Goodwin, J., "Mystery Religions of the Ancient World". Thames & Hudson, 1981. Heidel, Alexander, "The Epic of Gilgamesh and Old Testament parallels". University of Chicago Press, 1963. Redford, Donald, "Similarity Between Egyptian and Biblical Texts—Indirect Influence?" Biblical Archaeology Review, 1987. (13[3]:18-32, May/June) Wright L.M. Christianity, Astrology and Myth. USA: Oak Hill Free Press, 2002. Robinson, B. A.,"Parallels between Christianity and ancient Pagan religions". Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, 2004. External links "Mythology". The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2005. | myths. Opposition to categorizing all sacred stories as myths Modern-day opposition Some religious believers take offense when what they consider to be historical aspects of their faith are labeled as "myth". Such believers distinguish between religious fables or myths, on one hand, and those sacred narratives which are described by their tradition as being history or revelation, on the other. For instance, Catholic priest Father John A. Hardon insists that "Christianity is not mythology. What we believe in is not religious fantasies, no matter how pious." Evangelical Christian theologian Carl F. H. Henry insisted that "Judeo-Christian revelation has nothing in common with the category of myth". The roots of the popular meaning of "myth" Especially within Christianity, objection to the word "myth" rests on a historical basis. By the time of Christ, the Greco-Roman world had started to use the term "myth" (Greek muthos) to mean "fable, fiction, lie"; as a result, the early Christian theologians used "myth" in this sense. Thus, the derogatory meaning of the word "myth" is the traditional Christian meaning, and the expression "Christian mythology", as used in academic discourse, may offend Christians for this reason. In addition, this early Christian use of the term "myth" passed into popular usage. Thus, when essential sacred mysteries and teachings are described as myth, in modern English, the word often still implies that it is "idle fancy, fiction, or falsehood". This description could be taken as a direct attack on religious belief, quite contrary to the meaning ostensibly intended by the academic use of the term. Further, in academic writing, though "myth" usually means a fundamental worldview story, even there it is occasionally ambiguous or clearly denotes "falsehood", as in the "Christ myth theory". The original term "mythos" (which has no pejorative connotation in English) may be a better word to distinguish the positive definition from the negative. Non-opposition to categorizing sacred stories as myths Modern day clergy and practitioners within some religious movements have no problem classifying the religion's sacred stories as "myths". They see the sacred texts as indeed containing religious truths, divinely inspired but delivered in the language of mankind. Some examples follow. Christianity J.R.R. Tolkien's love of myths and devout Catholic faith came together in his assertion that mythology is the divine echo of "the Truth". Tolkien wrote that myths held "fundamental things". He expressed these beliefs in his poem Mythopoeia circa 1931, which describes myth-making as an act of "sub-creation" within God's primary creation. The poem in part says creation is "myth-woven and elf-patterned": Tolkien's opinion was adopted by another Christian writer, C. S. Lewis, in their conversations: "Tolkien explained to Lewis that the story of Christ was the true myth at the very heart of history and at the very root of reality." C. S. Lewis freely called the Christ story a "true myth", and he believed that even pagan myths express spiritual truths. In his opinion, the difference between the Christ story and pagan myths is that the Christ story is historically as well as spiritually true. Lewis writes, The story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God's myth where the others are men's myths: i. e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call real things. Another Christian writer, the Catholic priest Father Andrew Greeley, freely applies the term "myth" to Christianity. In his book Myths of Religion, he defends this terminology: Many Christians have objected to my use of this word [myth] even when I define it specifically. They are terrified by a word which may even have a slight suggestion of fantasy. However, my usage is the one that is common among historians of religion, literary critics, and social scientists. It is a valuable and helpful usage; there is no other word which conveys what these scholarly traditions mean when they refer to myth. The Christian would be well advised to get over his fear of the word and appreciate how important a tool it can be for understanding the content of his faith. At a "Consultation on the Relationship Between the Wesleyan Tradition and the Natural Sciences" in Kansas City, Missouri, on October 19, 1991, Dennis Bratcher presented a discussion of the adaptation of Near Eastern mythical thought by the Israelites. Bratcher argued that the Old Testament absorbed Near Eastern pagan mythology (although he drew a sharp distinction between the literally-interpreted myths of the Near Eastern pagans and the "mythopoetic" use of imagery from pagan myths by the Hebrews). During this presentation, he gave the following disclaimer: the term "myth" as used here does not mean "false" or "fiction." Even in my old and yellowed Webster's, "fiction" is the third meaning of the word. In its primary and more technical meaning "myth" refers to a story or group of stories that serve to explain how a particular society views their world. Judaism Some Jewish scholars, including Dov Noy, a professor of folklore at Hebrew University and founder of the Israel Folktale Archives, and Howard Schwartz, Jewish anthologist and English professor at the University of Missouri – St. Louis, have discussed traditional Jewish stories as "mythology". Schwartz authored the book Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism. It consists of myths and belief statements excerpted from—and, in some cases, synthesized from a number of excerpts from—both Biblical and non-Biblical Jewish texts. According to Schwartz, the Jewish people continue to elaborate on, and compose additions to, their traditional mythology. In the book's introduction, Schwartz states that the word "myth", as used in the book, "is not offered to mean something that is not true, as in the current popular usage". Neopaganism Neopagans frequently refer to their sacred stories as "myths". Asatru, a modern-day revival of Germanic Paganism, holds "that the Eddas, Myths and Norse Sagas are the divinely inspired wisdom of [its] religion". Wicca, another Neopagan movement, also applies the term "mythology" to its stories. Miscellaneous The Dewey Decimal system covers religion in the 200 range, with books on "Religious mythology & social theology", a subset listed under 201. See also General Comparative mythology Creation myth Esotericism Magic and religion Myth and ritual Mythical theology Theosophical Society Mythology of world religions Buddhist mythology Christian mythology Hindu mythology Islamic mythology Jewish mythology References Citations Sources "About Us". Ásatrú Utah. 30 December 2007 <http://asatruutah.org/about_us/>. "Religion". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. File retrieved 8 June 2007 . "Myth", Oxford English Dictionary ("OED"). File retrieved 2 June 2007. [] Bierlein, J.F. Parallel Myths. New York: Ballantine, 1994. Bratcher, Dennis. "Speaking the Language of Canaan: The Old Testament and the Israelite Perception of the Physical World". The Voice. CRI/Voice, Institute. 30 December 2007 <http://www.cresourcei.org/langcaan.html#symbol>. Brown, Dave. "Real Joy and True Myth". Dave Brown's C. S. Lewis Page. 31 December 2007 <https://web.archive.org/web/20091026222931/http://www.geocities.com/athens/forum/3505/LewisJoy.html>. Buxton, Richard. The Complete World of Greek Mythology. London: Thames & Hudson, 2004. "Myth", Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. File retrieved June 18, 2007. Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology. NY: Penguin, 1991. Eliade, Mircea: Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism". Trans. Philip Mairet. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991.Myth and Reality. Trans. Willard R. Trask. NY: Harper & Row, 1968.Myths, Dreams and Mysteries. Trans. Philip Mairet. NY: Harper & Row, 1967.Myths, Rites, Symbols: A Mircea Eliade Reader. Ed. Wendell C. Beane and William G. Doty. Vol 2. New |
mars red, which was a synthetic red ochre, the color of the very first natural red pigment. Symbolism Courage and sacrifice Surveys show that red is the color most associated with courage. In western countries red is a symbol of martyrs and sacrifice, particularly because of its association with blood. Beginning in the Middle Ages, the Pope and Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church wore red to symbolize the blood of Christ and the Christian martyrs. The banner of the Christian soldiers in the First Crusade was a red cross on a white field, the St. George's Cross. According to Christian tradition, Saint George was a Roman soldier who was a member of the guards of the Emperor Diocletian, who refused to renounce his Christian faith and was martyred. The Saint George's Cross became the Flag of England in the 16th century, and now is part of the Union Flag of the United Kingdom, as well as the Flag of the Republic of Georgia. Hatred, anger, aggression, passion, heat and war While red is the color most associated with love, it also the color most frequently associated with hatred, anger, aggression and war. People who are angry are said to "." Red is the color most commonly associated with passion and heat. In ancient Rome, red was the color of Mars, the god of war—the planet Mars was named for him because of its red color. Warning and danger Red is the traditional color of warning and danger, and is therefore often used on flags. In the Middle Ages, a red flag shown in warfare indicated the intent to fight "mortal warfare," where the opposition would be slaughtered with none spared or prisoner taken for ransom. Similarly, a red flag hoisted by a pirate ship meant no mercy would be shown to their target. In Britain, in the early days of motoring, motor cars had to follow a man with a red flag who would warn horse-drawn vehicles, before the Locomotives on Highways Act 1896 abolished this law. In automobile races, the red flag is raised if there is danger to the drivers. In international football, a player who has made a serious violation of the rules is shown a red penalty card and ejected from the game. Several studies have indicated that red carries the strongest reaction of all the colors, with the level of reaction decreasing gradually with the colors orange, yellow, and white, respectively. For this reason, red is generally used as the highest level of warning, such as threat level of terrorist attack in the United States. In fact, teachers at a primary school in the UK have been told not to mark children's work in red ink because it encourages a "negative approach". Red is the international color of stop signs and stop lights on highways and intersections. It was standardized as the international color at the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals of 1968. It was chosen partly because red is the brightest color in daytime (next to orange), though it is less visible at twilight, when green is the most visible color. Red also stands out more clearly against a cool natural backdrop of blue sky, green trees or gray buildings. But it was mostly chosen as the color for stoplights and stop signs because of its universal association with danger and warning. The 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals of 1968 uses red color also for the margin of danger warning sign, give way signs and prohibitory signs, following the previous German-type signage (established by Verordnung über Warnungstafeln für den Kraftfahrzeugverkehr in 1927). The color that attracts attention Red is the color that most attracts attention. Surveys show it is the color most frequently associated with visibility, proximity, and extroverts. It is also the color most associated with dynamism and activity. Red is used in modern fashion much as it was used in Medieval painting; to attract the eyes of the viewer to the person who is supposed to be the center of attention. People wearing red seem to be closer than those dressed in other colors, even if they are actually the same distance away. Monarchs, wives of presidential candidates and other celebrities often wear red to be visible from a distance in a crowd. It is also commonly worn by lifeguards and others whose job requires them to be easily found. Because red attracts attention, it is frequently used in advertising, though studies show that people are less likely to read something printed in red because they know it is advertising, and because it is more difficult visually to read than black and white text. Seduction, sexuality and sin Red by a large margin is the color most commonly associated with seduction, sexuality, eroticism and immorality, possibly because of its close connection with passion and with danger. Red was long seen as having a dark side, particularly in Christian theology. It was associated with sexual passion, anger, sin, and the devil. In the Old Testament of the Bible, the Book of Isaiah said: "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow." In the New Testament, in the Book of Revelation, the Antichrist appears as a red monster, ridden by a woman dressed in scarlet, known as the Whore of Babylon. Satan is often depicted as colored red and/or wearing a red costume in both iconography and popular culture. By the 20th century, the devil in red had become a folk character in legends and stories. The devil in red appears more often in cartoons and movies than in religious art. In 17th-century New England, red was associated with adultery. In the 1850 novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, set in a Puritan New England community, a woman is punished for adultery with ostracism, her sin represented by a red letter 'A' sewn onto her clothes. Red is still commonly associated with prostitution. At various points in history, prostitutes were required to wear red to announce their profession. Houses of prostitution displayed a red light. Beginning in the early 20th century, houses of prostitution were allowed only in certain specified neighborhoods, which became known as red-light districts. Large red-light districts are found today in Bangkok and Amsterdam. In both Christian and Hebrew tradition, red is also sometimes associated with murder or guilt, with "having blood on one's hands", or "being caught red-handed. Red in cultures and traditions In China, red () is the symbol of fire and the south (both south in general and Southern China specifically). It carries a largely positive connotation, being associated with courage, loyalty, honor, success, fortune, fertility, happiness, passion, and summer. In Japan, red is a traditional color for a heroic figure. In the Indian subcontinent, red is the traditional color of bridal dresses, and is frequently represented in the media as a symbolic color for married women. In Central Africa, Ndembu warriors rub themselves with red paint during celebrations. Since their culture sees the color as a symbol of life and health, sick people are also painted with it. Like most Central African cultures, the Ndembu see red as ambivalent, better than black but not as good as white. In other parts of Africa, however, red is a color of mourning, representing death. In Vietnamese culture, red is the color of happiness, love, luck, and celebration. In Christianity, red is associated with the blood of Christ and the sacrifice of martyrs. In the Roman Catholic Church it is also associated with pentecost and the Holy Spirit. In Buddhism, red is one of the five colors which are said to have emanated from the Buddha when he attained enlightenment, or nirvana. In the Shinto religion of Japan, the gateways of temples, called torii, are traditionally painted vermilion red and black. The torii symbolizes the passage from the profane world to a sacred place. The bridges in the gardens of Japanese temples are also painted red. In Paganism, red represents passion, courage, strength, and intense emotions. It is used for love, physical energy, health, and willpower. Military uses NATO Military Symbols for Land Based Systems uses red to denote hostile forces, hence the terms "red team" and "Red Cell" to denote challengers during exercises. The red uniform The red military uniform was adopted by the English Parliament's New Model Army in 1645, and was still worn as a dress uniform by the British Army until the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. Ordinary soldiers wore red coats dyed with madder, while officers wore scarlet coats dyed with the more expensive cochineal. This led to British soldiers being known as red coats. In the modern British army, scarlet is still worn by the Foot Guards, the Life Guards, and by some regimental bands or drummers for ceremonial purposes. Officers and NCOs of those regiments which previously wore red retain scarlet as the color of their "mess" or formal evening jackets. The Royal Gibraltar Regiment has a scarlet tunic in its winter dress. Scarlet is worn for some full dress, military band or mess uniforms in the modern armies of a number of the countries that made up the former British Empire. These include the Australian, Jamaican, New Zealand, Fijian, Canadian, Kenyan, Ghanaian, Indian, Singaporean, Sri Lankan and Pakistani armies. The musicians of the United States Marine Corps Band wear red, following an 18th-century military tradition that the uniforms of band members are the reverse of the uniforms of the other soldiers in their unit. Since the US Marine uniform is blue with red facings, the band wears the reverse. Red Serge is the uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, created in 1873 as the North-West Mounted Police, and given its present name in 1920. The uniform was adapted from the tunic of the British Army. Cadets at the Royal Military College of Canada also wear red dress uniforms. The Brazilian Marine Corps wears a red dress uniform. In sports The first known team sport to feature red uniforms was chariot racing during the late Roman Empire. The earliest races were between two chariots, one driver wearing red, the other white. Later, the number of teams was increased to four, including drivers in light green and sky blue. Twenty-five races were run in a day, with a total of one hundred chariots participating. Today many sports teams throughout the world feature red on their uniforms. Along with blue, red is the most commonly used non-white color in sports. Numerous national sports teams wear red, often through association with their national flags. A few of these teams feature the color as part of their nickname such as Spain (with their association football (soccer) national team nicknamed La Furia Roja or "The Red Fury") and Belgium (whose football team bears the nickname Rode Duivels or "Red Devils"). In club association football (soccer), red is a commonly used color throughout the world. A number of teams' nicknames feature the color. A red penalty card is issued to a player who commits a serious infraction: the player is immediately disqualified from further play and his team must continue with one fewer player for the game's duration. Rosso Corsa is the red international motor racing color of cars entered by teams from Italy. Since the 1920s Italian race cars of Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Lancia, and later Ferrari and Abarth have been painted with a color known as rosso corsa ("racing red"). National colors were mostly replaced in Formula One by commercial sponsor liveries in 1968, but unlike most other teams, Ferrari always kept the traditional red, although the shade of the color varies. The color is commonly used for professional sports teams in Canada and the United States with eleven Major League Baseball teams, eleven National Hockey League teams, seven National Football League teams and eleven National Basketball Association teams prominently featuring some shade of the color. The color is also featured in the league logos of Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the National Basketball Association. In the National Football League, a red flag is thrown by the head coach to challenge a referee's decision during the game. During the 1950s when red was strongly associated with communism in the United States, the modern Cincinnati Reds team was known as the "Redlegs" and the term was used on baseball cards. After the red scare faded, the team was known as the "Reds" again. In boxing, red is often the color used on a fighter's gloves. George Foreman wore the same red trunks he used during his loss to Muhammad Ali when he defeated Michael Moorer 20 years later to regain the title he lost. Boxers named or nicknamed "red" include Red Burman, Ernie "Red" Lopez, and his brother Danny "Little Red" Lopez. On flags Red is one of the most common colors used on national flags. The use of red has similar connotations from country to country: the blood, sacrifice, and courage of those who defended their country; the sun and the hope and warmth it brings; and the sacrifice of Christ's blood (in some historically Christian nations) are a few examples. Red is the color of the flags of several countries that once belonged to the British Empire. The British flag bears the colors red, white and blue; it includes the cross of Saint George, patron saint of England, and the saltire of Saint Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, both of which are red on white. The flag of the United States bears the colors of Britain, the colors of the French tricolore include red as part of the old Paris coat of arms, and other countries' flags, such as those of Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji, carry a small inset of the British flag in memory of their ties to that country. Many former colonies of Spain, such as Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico and Venezuela, also feature red-one of the colors of the Spanish flag-on their own banners. Red flags are also used to symbolize storms, bad water conditions, and many other dangers. Navy flags are often red and yellow. Red is prominently featured in the flag of the United States Marine Corps. The red on the flag of Nepal represents the floral emblem of the country, the rhododendron. Red, blue, and white are also the Pan-Slavic colors adopted by the Slavic solidarity movement of the late nineteenth century. Initially these were the colors of the Russian flag; as the Slavic movement grew, they were adopted by other Slavic peoples including Slovaks, Slovenes, and Serbs. The flags of the Czech Republic and Poland use red for historic heraldic reasons (see Coat of arms of Poland and Coat of arms of the Czech Republic) & not due to Pan-Slavic connotations. In 2004 Georgia adopted a new white flag, which consists of four small and one big red cross in the middle touching all four sides. Red, white, and black were the colors of the German Empire from 1870 to 1918, and as such they came to be associated with German nationalism. In the 1920s they were adopted as the colors of the Nazi flag. In Mein Kampf, Hitler explained that they were "revered colors expressive of our homage to the glorious past." The red part of the flag was also chosen to attract attention – Hitler wrote: "the new flag ... should prove effective as a large poster" because "in hundreds of thousands of cases a really striking emblem may be the first cause of awakening interest in a movement." The red also symbolized the social program of the Nazis, aimed at German workers. Several designs by a number of different authors were considered, but the one adopted in the end was Hitler's personal design. Red, white, green and black are the colors of Pan-Arabism and are used by many Arab countries. Red, gold, green, and black are the colors of Pan-Africanism. Several African countries thus use the color on their flags, including South Africa, Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Ethiopia, Togo, Guinea, Benin, and Zimbabwe. The Pan-African colors are borrowed from the flag of Ethiopia, one of the oldest independent African countries. Rwanda, notably, removed red from its flag after the Rwandan genocide because of red's association with blood. The flags of Japan and Bangladesh both have a red circle in the middle of different colored backgrounds. The flag of the Philippines has a red trapezoid on the bottom signifying blood, courage, and valor (also, if the flag is inverted so that the red trapezoid is on top and the blue at the bottom, it indicates a state of war). The flag | is shown a red penalty card and ejected from the game. Several studies have indicated that red carries the strongest reaction of all the colors, with the level of reaction decreasing gradually with the colors orange, yellow, and white, respectively. For this reason, red is generally used as the highest level of warning, such as threat level of terrorist attack in the United States. In fact, teachers at a primary school in the UK have been told not to mark children's work in red ink because it encourages a "negative approach". Red is the international color of stop signs and stop lights on highways and intersections. It was standardized as the international color at the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals of 1968. It was chosen partly because red is the brightest color in daytime (next to orange), though it is less visible at twilight, when green is the most visible color. Red also stands out more clearly against a cool natural backdrop of blue sky, green trees or gray buildings. But it was mostly chosen as the color for stoplights and stop signs because of its universal association with danger and warning. The 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals of 1968 uses red color also for the margin of danger warning sign, give way signs and prohibitory signs, following the previous German-type signage (established by Verordnung über Warnungstafeln für den Kraftfahrzeugverkehr in 1927). The color that attracts attention Red is the color that most attracts attention. Surveys show it is the color most frequently associated with visibility, proximity, and extroverts. It is also the color most associated with dynamism and activity. Red is used in modern fashion much as it was used in Medieval painting; to attract the eyes of the viewer to the person who is supposed to be the center of attention. People wearing red seem to be closer than those dressed in other colors, even if they are actually the same distance away. Monarchs, wives of presidential candidates and other celebrities often wear red to be visible from a distance in a crowd. It is also commonly worn by lifeguards and others whose job requires them to be easily found. Because red attracts attention, it is frequently used in advertising, though studies show that people are less likely to read something printed in red because they know it is advertising, and because it is more difficult visually to read than black and white text. Seduction, sexuality and sin Red by a large margin is the color most commonly associated with seduction, sexuality, eroticism and immorality, possibly because of its close connection with passion and with danger. Red was long seen as having a dark side, particularly in Christian theology. It was associated with sexual passion, anger, sin, and the devil. In the Old Testament of the Bible, the Book of Isaiah said: "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow." In the New Testament, in the Book of Revelation, the Antichrist appears as a red monster, ridden by a woman dressed in scarlet, known as the Whore of Babylon. Satan is often depicted as colored red and/or wearing a red costume in both iconography and popular culture. By the 20th century, the devil in red had become a folk character in legends and stories. The devil in red appears more often in cartoons and movies than in religious art. In 17th-century New England, red was associated with adultery. In the 1850 novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, set in a Puritan New England community, a woman is punished for adultery with ostracism, her sin represented by a red letter 'A' sewn onto her clothes. Red is still commonly associated with prostitution. At various points in history, prostitutes were required to wear red to announce their profession. Houses of prostitution displayed a red light. Beginning in the early 20th century, houses of prostitution were allowed only in certain specified neighborhoods, which became known as red-light districts. Large red-light districts are found today in Bangkok and Amsterdam. In both Christian and Hebrew tradition, red is also sometimes associated with murder or guilt, with "having blood on one's hands", or "being caught red-handed. Red in cultures and traditions In China, red () is the symbol of fire and the south (both south in general and Southern China specifically). It carries a largely positive connotation, being associated with courage, loyalty, honor, success, fortune, fertility, happiness, passion, and summer. In Japan, red is a traditional color for a heroic figure. In the Indian subcontinent, red is the traditional color of bridal dresses, and is frequently represented in the media as a symbolic color for married women. In Central Africa, Ndembu warriors rub themselves with red paint during celebrations. Since their culture sees the color as a symbol of life and health, sick people are also painted with it. Like most Central African cultures, the Ndembu see red as ambivalent, better than black but not as good as white. In other parts of Africa, however, red is a color of mourning, representing death. In Vietnamese culture, red is the color of happiness, love, luck, and celebration. In Christianity, red is associated with the blood of Christ and the sacrifice of martyrs. In the Roman Catholic Church it is also associated with pentecost and the Holy Spirit. In Buddhism, red is one of the five colors which are said to have emanated from the Buddha when he attained enlightenment, or nirvana. In the Shinto religion of Japan, the gateways of temples, called torii, are traditionally painted vermilion red and black. The torii symbolizes the passage from the profane world to a sacred place. The bridges in the gardens of Japanese temples are also painted red. In Paganism, red represents passion, courage, strength, and intense emotions. It is used for love, physical energy, health, and willpower. Military uses NATO Military Symbols for Land Based Systems uses red to denote hostile forces, hence the terms "red team" and "Red Cell" to denote challengers during exercises. The red uniform The red military uniform was adopted by the English Parliament's New Model Army in 1645, and was still worn as a dress uniform by the British Army until the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. Ordinary soldiers wore red coats dyed with madder, while officers wore scarlet coats dyed with the more expensive cochineal. This led to British soldiers being known as red coats. In the modern British army, scarlet is still worn by the Foot Guards, the Life Guards, and by some regimental bands or drummers for ceremonial purposes. Officers and NCOs of those regiments which previously wore red retain scarlet as the color of their "mess" or formal evening jackets. The Royal Gibraltar Regiment has a scarlet tunic in its winter dress. Scarlet is worn for some full dress, military band or mess uniforms in the modern armies of a number of the countries that made up the former British Empire. These include the Australian, Jamaican, New Zealand, Fijian, Canadian, Kenyan, Ghanaian, Indian, Singaporean, Sri Lankan and Pakistani armies. The musicians of the United States Marine Corps Band wear red, following an 18th-century military tradition that the uniforms of band members are the reverse of the uniforms of the other soldiers in their unit. Since the US Marine uniform is blue with red facings, the band wears the reverse. Red Serge is the uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, created in 1873 as the North-West Mounted Police, and given its present name in 1920. The uniform was adapted from the tunic of the British Army. Cadets at the Royal Military College of Canada also wear red dress uniforms. The Brazilian Marine Corps wears a red dress uniform. In sports The first known team sport to feature red uniforms was chariot racing during the late Roman Empire. The earliest races were between two chariots, one driver wearing red, the other white. Later, the number of teams was increased to four, including drivers in light green and sky blue. Twenty-five races were run in a day, with a total of one hundred chariots participating. Today many sports teams throughout the world feature red on their uniforms. Along with blue, red is the most commonly used non-white color in sports. Numerous national sports teams wear red, often through association with their national flags. A few of these teams feature the color as part of their nickname such as Spain (with their association football (soccer) national team nicknamed La Furia Roja or "The Red Fury") and Belgium (whose football team bears the nickname Rode Duivels or "Red Devils"). In club association football (soccer), red is a commonly used color throughout the world. A number of teams' nicknames feature the color. A red penalty card is issued to a player who commits a serious infraction: the player is immediately disqualified from further play and his team must continue with one fewer player for the game's duration. Rosso Corsa is the red international motor racing color of cars entered by teams from Italy. Since the 1920s Italian race cars of Alfa Romeo, Maserati, Lancia, and later Ferrari and Abarth have been painted with a color known as rosso corsa ("racing red"). National colors were mostly replaced in Formula One by commercial sponsor liveries in 1968, but unlike most other teams, Ferrari always kept the traditional red, although the shade of the color varies. The color is commonly used for professional sports teams in Canada and the United States with eleven Major League Baseball teams, eleven National Hockey League teams, seven National Football League teams and eleven National Basketball Association teams prominently featuring some shade of the color. The color is also featured in the league logos of Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the National Basketball Association. In the National Football League, a red flag is thrown by the head coach to challenge a referee's decision during the game. During the 1950s when red was strongly associated with communism in the United States, the modern Cincinnati Reds team was known as the "Redlegs" and the term was used on baseball cards. After the red scare faded, the team was known as the "Reds" again. In boxing, red is often the color used on a fighter's gloves. George Foreman wore the same red trunks he used during his loss to Muhammad Ali when he defeated Michael Moorer 20 years later to regain the title he lost. Boxers named or nicknamed "red" include Red Burman, Ernie "Red" Lopez, and his brother Danny "Little Red" Lopez. On flags Red is one of the most common colors used on national flags. The use of red has similar connotations from country to country: the blood, sacrifice, and courage of those who defended their country; the sun and the hope and warmth it brings; and the sacrifice of Christ's blood (in some historically Christian nations) are a few examples. Red is the color of the flags of several countries that once belonged to the British Empire. The British flag bears the colors red, white and blue; it includes the cross of Saint George, patron saint of England, and the saltire of Saint Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, both of which are red on white. The flag of the United States bears the colors of Britain, the colors of the French tricolore include red as part of the old Paris coat of arms, and other countries' flags, such as those of Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji, carry a small inset of the British flag in memory of their ties to that country. Many former colonies of Spain, such as Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico and Venezuela, also feature red-one of the colors of the Spanish flag-on their own banners. Red flags are also used to symbolize storms, bad water conditions, and many other dangers. Navy flags are often red and yellow. Red is prominently featured in the flag of the United States Marine Corps. The red on the flag of Nepal represents the floral emblem of the country, the rhododendron. Red, blue, and white are also the Pan-Slavic colors adopted by the Slavic solidarity movement of the late nineteenth century. Initially these were the colors of the Russian flag; as the Slavic movement grew, they were adopted by other Slavic peoples including Slovaks, Slovenes, and Serbs. The flags of the Czech Republic and Poland use red for historic heraldic reasons (see Coat of arms of Poland and Coat of arms of the Czech Republic) & not due to Pan-Slavic connotations. In 2004 Georgia adopted a new white flag, which consists of four small and one big red cross in the middle touching all four sides. Red, white, and black were the colors of the German Empire from 1870 to 1918, and as such they came to be associated with German nationalism. In the 1920s they were adopted as the colors of the Nazi flag. In Mein Kampf, Hitler explained that they were "revered colors expressive of our homage to the glorious past." The red part of the flag was also chosen to attract attention – Hitler wrote: "the new flag ... should prove effective as a large poster" because "in hundreds of thousands of cases a really striking emblem may be the first cause of awakening interest in a movement." The red also symbolized the social program of the Nazis, aimed at German workers. Several designs by a number of different authors were considered, but the one adopted in the end was Hitler's personal design. Red, white, green and black are the colors of Pan-Arabism and are used by many Arab countries. Red, gold, green, and black are the colors of Pan-Africanism. Several African countries thus use the color on their flags, including South Africa, Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Ethiopia, Togo, Guinea, Benin, and Zimbabwe. The Pan-African colors are borrowed from the flag of Ethiopia, one of the oldest independent African countries. Rwanda, notably, removed red from its flag after the Rwandan genocide because of red's association with blood. The flags of Japan and Bangladesh both have a red circle in the middle of different colored backgrounds. The flag of the Philippines has a red trapezoid on the bottom signifying blood, courage, and valor (also, if the flag is inverted so that the red trapezoid is on top and the blue at the bottom, it indicates a state of war). The flag of Singapore has a red rectangle on the top. The field of the flag of Portugal is green and red. The Ottoman Empire adopted several different red flags during the six centuries of its rule, with the successor Republic of Turkey continuing the 1844 Ottoman Flag. Use by political movements In 18th-century Europe, red was usually associated with the monarchy and with those in power. The Pope wore red, as did the Swiss Guards of the Kings of France, the soldiers of the British Army and the Danish Army. The French Revolution saw red used by the Jacobins as a symbol of the martyrs of the Revolution. In the nineteenth century, with the Industrial Revolution and the rise of worker's movements, it became the color of socialism (especially the Marxist variant), and, with the Paris Commune of 1870, of revolution. In the 20th century, red was the color first of the Russian Bolsheviks and then, after the success of the Russian Revolution of 1917, of communist parties around the world. Red also became the color of many social democratic parties in Europe, including the Labour Party in Britain (founded 1900); the Social Democratic Party of Germany (whose roots went back to 1863) and the French Socialist Party, which dated back under different names, to 1879. The Socialist Party of America (1901–72) and the Communist Party USA (1919) both also chose red as their color. Members of the Christian-Social People's Party in Liechtenstein (founded 1918) advocated an expansion of democracy and progressive social policies, and were often referred to disparagingly as "Reds" for their social liberal leanings and party colors. The Communist Party of China, founded in 1920, adopted the red flag and hammer and sickle emblem of the Soviet Union, which became the national symbols when the Party took power in China in 1949. Under Party leader Mao Zedong, the Party anthem became "The East Is Red", and Mao Zedong himself was sometimes referred to as a "red sun". During the Cultural Revolution in China, Party ideology was enforced by the Red Guards, and the sayings of Mao Zedong were published as a small red book in hundreds of millions of copies. Today the Communist Party of China claims to be the largest political party in the world, with eighty million members. Beginning in the 1960s and the 1970s, paramilitary extremist groups such as the Red Army Faction in Germany, the Japanese Red Army and the Shining Path Maoist movement in Peru used red as their color. But in the 1980s, some European socialist and social democratic parties, such as the Labour Party in Britain and the Socialist Party in France, moved away from the symbolism of the far left, keeping the red color but changing their symbol to a less-threatening red rose. Red is used around the world by political parties of the left or center-left. In the United States, it is the color of the Communist Party USA, of the Social Democrats, USA, and in Puerto Rico, of the Popular Democratic Party. In the United States, political commentators often refer to the "red states", which traditionally vote for Republican candidates in presidential elections, and "blue states", which vote for the Democratic candidate. This convention is relatively recent: before the 2000 presidential election, media outlets assigned red and blue to both parties, sometimes alternating the allocation for each election. Fixed usage was established during the 39-day recount following the 2000 election, when the media began to discuss the contest in terms of "red states" versus "blue states". Social and special interest groups Such names as Red Club (a bar), Red Carpet (a discothèque) or Red Cottbus and Club Red (event locations) suggest liveliness and excitement. The Red Hat Society is a social group founded in 1998 for women 50 and over. Use of the color red to call attention to an emergency situation is evident in the names of such organizations as the Red Cross (humanitarian aid), Red Hot Organization (AIDS support), and the Red List of Threatened Species (of IUCN). In reference to humans, term "red" is often used in the West to describe the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Idioms Many idiomatic expressions exploit the various connotations of red: Expressing emotion "to see red" (to be angry or aggressive) "to have red ears / a red face" (to be embarrassed) "to paint the town red" (to have an enjoyable evening, usually with a generous amount of eating, drinking, dancing) Giving warning "to raise a red flag" (to signal that something is problematic) "like a red rag to a bull" (to cause someone to be enraged) "to be in the red" (to be losing money, from the accounting convention of writing deficits and losses in red ink) Calling attention "a red letter day" (a special or important event, from the medieval custom of printing the dates of saints' days and holy days in red ink.) "to print in red ink" (for emphasis or easy identification), more formally "to rubricate" "to lay out the red carpet" or "give red-carpet treatment" (to treat someone royally as a very special person) "to catch someone red-handed" (in the act of doing something wrong, such with blood on his hands after a murder or poaching game) Other idioms "to tie up in red tape". In England red tape was used by lawyers and government officials to identify important documents. It became a term for excessive bureaucratic regulation. It was popularized in the 19th century by the writer Thomas Carlyle, who complained about "red-tapism". "red herring." A |
to remain in the position of judge Retention rate Retention ratio, in company earnings Retention of vision, in magic Water retention (medicine), abnormal accumulation of fluid in the body Urinary retention, the lack or inability to urinate Variable retention, in land management and forestry conservation Information and records Retention (news server), in Usenet, the time a news server holds a newsgroup posting before deleting it as no longer relevant | in memory Memory and retention in learning Selective retention Cultural retention Customer retention University student retention Employee retention, the ability to keep employees within an organization Forced retention Grade retention, in schools, keeping a student in the same grade for another year (that is, not promoting the student to the next higher grade with his/her classmates) Retention basin, Retention election, in the United States court system, a process whereby a judge is periodically subject |
will arrive without a summer, and the sun will be useless. High details that, prior to these winters, three earlier winters will have occurred, marked with great battles throughout the world. During this time, greed will cause brothers to kill brothers, and fathers and sons will suffer from the collapse of kinship bonds. High then quotes stanza 45 of . Next, High describes that the wolf will swallow the sun, then his brother will swallow the moon, and mankind will consider the occurrence as a great disaster resulting in much ruin. The stars will disappear. The earth and mountains will shake so violently that the trees will come loose from the soil, the mountains will topple, and all restraints will break, causing Fenrir to break free from his bonds. High relates that the great serpent Jörmungandr, also described as a child of Loki in the same source, will breach land as the sea violently swells onto it. The ship Naglfar, described in the Prose Edda as being made from the human nails of the dead, is released from its mooring, and sets sail on the surging sea, steered by a named Hrym. At the same time, Fenrir, eyes and nostrils spraying flames, charges forward with his mouth wide open, his upper jaw reaching to the heavens, his lower jaw touching the earth. At Fenrir's side, Jörmungandr sprays venom throughout the air and the sea. During all of this, the sky splits into two. From the split, the "sons of Muspell" ride forth. Surtr rides first, surrounded by flames, his sword brighter than the sun. High says that "Muspell's sons" will ride across Bifröst, described in as a rainbow bridge, and that the bridge will then break. The sons of Muspell (and their shining battle troop) advance to the field of Vígríðr, described as an expanse that reaches "a hundred leagues in each direction," where Fenrir, Jörmungandr, Loki (followed by "Hel's own"), and Hrym (accompanied by all frost ) join them. While this occurs, Heimdallr stands and blows the Gjallarhorn with all his might. The gods awaken at the sound, and they meet. Odin rides to Mímisbrunnr in search of counsel from Mímir. Yggdrasil shakes, and everything, everywhere fears. High relates that the Æsir and the Einherjar dress for war and head to the field. Odin, wearing a gold helmet and an intricate coat of mail, carries his spear Gungnir and rides before them. Odin advances against Fenrir, while Thor moves at his side, though Thor is unable to assist Odin because he has engaged Jörmungandr in combat. According to High, Freyr fights fiercely with Surtr, but falls because he lacks the sword he once gave to his messenger, Skírnir. The hound Garmr (described here as the "worst of monsters") breaks free from his bonds in front of Gnipahellir, and fights the god Týr, resulting in both of their deaths. Thor kills Jörmungandr but is poisoned by the serpent, and manages to walk only nine steps before falling to the earth dead. Fenrir swallows Odin, though immediately afterward his son Víðarr kicks his foot into Fenrir's lower jaw, grips the upper jaw, and rips apart Fenrir's mouth, killing the great wolf. Loki fights Heimdallr and the two kill each other. Surtr covers the earth in fire, causing the entire world to burn. High quotes stanzas 46 to 47 of , and additionally stanza 18 of (the latter relating information about the battlefield Vígríðr). Gylfaginning chapters 52 and 53 At the beginning of chapter 52, Gangleri asks "what will be after heaven and earth and the whole world are burned? All the gods will be dead, together with the Einherjar and the whole of mankind. Didn't you say earlier that each person will live in some world throughout all ages?" The figure of Third, seated on the highest throne in the hall, responds that there will be many good places to live, but also many bad ones. Third states that the best place to be is Gimlé in the heavens, where a place exists called Okolnir that houses a hall called Brimir—where one can find plenty to drink. Third describes a hall made of red gold located in Niðafjöll called Sindri, where "good and virtuous men will live." Third further relates an unnamed hall in Náströnd, the beaches of the dead, that he describes as a large repugnant hall facing north that is built from the spines of snakes, and resembles "a house with walls woven from branches"; the heads of the snakes face the inside of the house and spew so much venom that rivers of it flow throughout the hall, in which oath breakers and murderers must wade. Third here quotes stanzas 38 to 39, with the insertion of original prose stating that the worst place of all to be is in Hvergelmir, followed by a quote from to highlight that the dragon Níðhöggr harasses the corpses of the dead there. Chapter 53 begins with Gangleri asking if any of the gods will survive, and if there will be anything left of the earth or the sky. High responds that the earth will appear once more from the sea, beautiful and green, where self-sown crops grow. The field Iðavöllr exists where Asgard once was, and, there, untouched by Surtr's flames, Víðarr and Váli reside. Now possessing their father's hammer Mjölnir, Thor's sons Móði and Magni will meet them there, and, coming from Hel, Baldr and Höðr also arrive. Together, they all sit and recount memories, later finding the gold game pieces the Æsir once owned. stanza 51 is then quoted. High reveals that two humans, Líf and Lífþrasir, will have also survived the destruction by hiding in the wood Hoddmímis holt. These two survivors consume the morning dew for sustenance, and from their descendants the world will be repopulated. stanza 45 is then quoted. The personified sun, Sól, will have a daughter at least as beautiful as she, and this daughter will follow the same path as her mother. stanza 47 is quoted, and so ends the foretelling of in . Archaeological record Various objects have been identified as depicting events from . Thorwald's Cross Thorwald's Cross, a partially surviving runestone erected at Kirk Andreas on the Isle of Man, depicts a bearded human holding a spear downward at a wolf, his right foot in its mouth, while a large bird sits at his shoulder. Rundata dates it to 940, while Pluskowski dates it to the 11th century. This depiction has been interpreted as Odin, with a raven or eagle at his shoulder, being consumed by Fenrir at . On the other side of the stone is a depiction of a large cross and another image parallel to the Odin figure that has been described as Christ triumphing over Satan. These combined elements have led to the cross as being described as "syncretic art," a mixture of pagan and Christian beliefs. Gosforth Cross The Gosforth Cross (920–950), in Cumbria, England, is a standing cross of a typical Anglo-Saxon form, carved on all sides of the long shaft, which is nearly square in section. Apart from panels of ornament, the scenes include a Christian crucifixion, and possibly another scene in Hell, but the other scenes are generally interpreted as narrative incidents from the story, even by a scholar as cautious of such interpretations as David M. Wilson. The battle itself may be depicted on the north side. The cross features various figures depicted in Borre style, including a man with a spear facing a monstrous head, with one foot thrust into the beast's forked tongue and on its lower jaw, and the other is against its upper jaw, a scene interpreted as Víðarr fighting Fenrir. Ledberg stone The 11th century Ledberg stone in Sweden, similarly to Thorwald's Cross, features a figure with his foot at the mouth of a four-legged beast, and this may also be a depiction of Odin being devoured by Fenrir at . Below the beast and the man is a depiction of a legless, helmeted man, with his arms in a prostrate position. The Younger Futhark inscription on the stone bears a commonly seen memorial dedication, but is followed by an encoded runic sequence that has been described as "mysterious," and "an interesting magic formula which is known from all over the ancient Norse world." Skarpåker stone On the early 11th century Skarpåker Stone, from Södermanland, Sweden, a father grieving his dead son used the same verse form, , as in the Poetic Edda in the following engraving: Jansson (1987) notes that at the time of the inscription, everyone who read the lines would have thought of and the allusion that the father found fitting as an expression of his grief. Theories and interpretations Cyclic time and Hoddmímis holt Rudolf Simek theorizes that the survival of Líf and Lífþrasir at the end of is "a case of reduplication of the anthropogeny, understandable from the cyclic nature of the Eddic eschatology." Simek says that Hoddmímis holt "should not be understood literally as a wood or even a forest in which the two keep themselves hidden, but rather as an alternative name for the world-tree Yggdrasill. Thus, the creation of mankind from tree trunks (Askr, Embla) is repeated after the as well." Simek says that in Germanic regions, the concept of mankind originating from trees is ancient, and additionally points out legendary parallels in a Bavarian legend of a shepherd who lives inside a tree, whose descendants repopulate the land after life there has been wiped out by plague (citing a retelling by F. R. Schröder). In addition, Simek points to an Old Norse parallel in the figure of Örvar-Oddr, "who is rejuvenated after living as a tree-man (Ǫrvar-Odds saga 24–27)." , , and Christianity Theories have been proposed about the relation between and the 9th century Old High German epic poem Muspilli about the Christian Last Judgment, where the word appears, and the 9th century Old Saxon epic poem about the life of Christ, where various other forms of the word appear. In both sources, the word is used to signify the end of the world through fire. Old Norse forms of the term also appear throughout accounts of , where the world is also consumed in flames, and, though various theories exist about the meaning and origins of the term, its etymology has not been solved. Proto-Indo-European basis Parallels have been pointed out between the of Norse religion and the beliefs of other related Indo-European peoples. Subsequently, theories have been put forth that represents a later evolution of a Proto-Indo-European belief along with other cultures descending from the Proto-Indo-Europeans. These parallels include comparisons of a cosmic winter motif between the Norse , the Iranian and . Víðarr's stride has been compared to the Vedic god Vishnu in that both have a "cosmic stride" with a special shoe used to tear apart a beastly wolf. Larger patterns have also been drawn between "final battle" events in Indo-European cultures, including the occurrence of a blind or semi-blind figure | his might. The gods awaken at the sound, and they meet. Odin rides to Mímisbrunnr in search of counsel from Mímir. Yggdrasil shakes, and everything, everywhere fears. High relates that the Æsir and the Einherjar dress for war and head to the field. Odin, wearing a gold helmet and an intricate coat of mail, carries his spear Gungnir and rides before them. Odin advances against Fenrir, while Thor moves at his side, though Thor is unable to assist Odin because he has engaged Jörmungandr in combat. According to High, Freyr fights fiercely with Surtr, but falls because he lacks the sword he once gave to his messenger, Skírnir. The hound Garmr (described here as the "worst of monsters") breaks free from his bonds in front of Gnipahellir, and fights the god Týr, resulting in both of their deaths. Thor kills Jörmungandr but is poisoned by the serpent, and manages to walk only nine steps before falling to the earth dead. Fenrir swallows Odin, though immediately afterward his son Víðarr kicks his foot into Fenrir's lower jaw, grips the upper jaw, and rips apart Fenrir's mouth, killing the great wolf. Loki fights Heimdallr and the two kill each other. Surtr covers the earth in fire, causing the entire world to burn. High quotes stanzas 46 to 47 of , and additionally stanza 18 of (the latter relating information about the battlefield Vígríðr). Gylfaginning chapters 52 and 53 At the beginning of chapter 52, Gangleri asks "what will be after heaven and earth and the whole world are burned? All the gods will be dead, together with the Einherjar and the whole of mankind. Didn't you say earlier that each person will live in some world throughout all ages?" The figure of Third, seated on the highest throne in the hall, responds that there will be many good places to live, but also many bad ones. Third states that the best place to be is Gimlé in the heavens, where a place exists called Okolnir that houses a hall called Brimir—where one can find plenty to drink. Third describes a hall made of red gold located in Niðafjöll called Sindri, where "good and virtuous men will live." Third further relates an unnamed hall in Náströnd, the beaches of the dead, that he describes as a large repugnant hall facing north that is built from the spines of snakes, and resembles "a house with walls woven from branches"; the heads of the snakes face the inside of the house and spew so much venom that rivers of it flow throughout the hall, in which oath breakers and murderers must wade. Third here quotes stanzas 38 to 39, with the insertion of original prose stating that the worst place of all to be is in Hvergelmir, followed by a quote from to highlight that the dragon Níðhöggr harasses the corpses of the dead there. Chapter 53 begins with Gangleri asking if any of the gods will survive, and if there will be anything left of the earth or the sky. High responds that the earth will appear once more from the sea, beautiful and green, where self-sown crops grow. The field Iðavöllr exists where Asgard once was, and, there, untouched by Surtr's flames, Víðarr and Váli reside. Now possessing their father's hammer Mjölnir, Thor's sons Móði and Magni will meet them there, and, coming from Hel, Baldr and Höðr also arrive. Together, they all sit and recount memories, later finding the gold game pieces the Æsir once owned. stanza 51 is then quoted. High reveals that two humans, Líf and Lífþrasir, will have also survived the destruction by hiding in the wood Hoddmímis holt. These two survivors consume the morning dew for sustenance, and from their descendants the world will be repopulated. stanza 45 is then quoted. The personified sun, Sól, will have a daughter at least as beautiful as she, and this daughter will follow the same path as her mother. stanza 47 is quoted, and so ends the foretelling of in . Archaeological record Various objects have been identified as depicting events from . Thorwald's Cross Thorwald's Cross, a partially surviving runestone erected at Kirk Andreas on the Isle of Man, depicts a bearded human holding a spear downward at a wolf, his right foot in its mouth, while a large bird sits at his shoulder. Rundata dates it to 940, while Pluskowski dates it to the 11th century. This depiction has been interpreted as Odin, with a raven or eagle at his shoulder, being consumed by Fenrir at . On the other side of the stone is a depiction of a large cross and another image parallel to the Odin figure that has been described as Christ triumphing over Satan. These combined elements have led to the cross as being described as "syncretic art," a mixture of pagan and Christian beliefs. Gosforth Cross The Gosforth Cross (920–950), in Cumbria, England, is a standing cross of a typical Anglo-Saxon form, carved on all sides of the long shaft, which is nearly square in section. Apart from panels of ornament, the scenes include a Christian crucifixion, and possibly another scene in Hell, but the other scenes are generally interpreted as narrative incidents from the story, even by a scholar as cautious of such interpretations as David M. Wilson. The battle itself may be depicted on the north side. The cross features various figures depicted in Borre style, including a man with a spear facing a monstrous head, with one foot thrust into the beast's forked tongue and on its lower jaw, and the other is against its upper jaw, a scene interpreted as Víðarr fighting Fenrir. Ledberg stone The 11th century Ledberg stone in Sweden, similarly to Thorwald's Cross, features a figure with his foot at the mouth of a four-legged beast, and this may also be a depiction of Odin being devoured by Fenrir at . Below the beast and the man is a depiction of a legless, helmeted man, with his arms in a prostrate position. The Younger Futhark inscription on the stone bears a commonly seen memorial dedication, but is followed by an encoded runic sequence that has been described as "mysterious," and "an interesting magic formula which is known from all over the ancient Norse world." Skarpåker stone On the early 11th century Skarpåker Stone, from Södermanland, Sweden, a father grieving his dead son used the same verse form, , as in the Poetic Edda in the following engraving: Jansson (1987) notes that at the time of the inscription, everyone who read the lines would have thought of and the allusion that the father found fitting as an expression of his grief. Theories and interpretations Cyclic time and Hoddmímis holt Rudolf Simek theorizes that the survival of Líf and Lífþrasir at the end of is "a case of reduplication of the anthropogeny, understandable from the cyclic nature of the Eddic eschatology." Simek says that Hoddmímis holt "should not be understood literally as a wood or even a forest in which the two keep themselves hidden, but rather as an alternative name for the world-tree Yggdrasill. Thus, the creation of mankind from tree trunks (Askr, Embla) is repeated after the as well." Simek says that in Germanic regions, the concept of mankind originating from trees is ancient, and additionally points out legendary parallels in a Bavarian legend of a shepherd who lives inside a tree, whose descendants repopulate the land after life there has been wiped out by plague (citing a retelling by F. R. Schröder). In addition, Simek points to an Old Norse parallel in the figure of Örvar-Oddr, "who is rejuvenated after living as a tree-man (Ǫrvar-Odds saga 24–27)." , , and Christianity Theories have been proposed about the relation between and the 9th century Old High German epic poem Muspilli about the Christian Last Judgment, where the word appears, and the 9th century Old Saxon epic poem about the life of Christ, where various other forms of the word appear. In both sources, the word is used to signify the end of the world through fire. Old Norse forms of the term also appear throughout accounts of , where the world is also consumed in flames, and, though various theories exist about the meaning and origins of the term, its etymology has not been solved. Proto-Indo-European basis Parallels have been pointed out between the of Norse religion and the beliefs of other related Indo-European peoples. Subsequently, theories have been put forth that represents a later evolution of a Proto-Indo-European belief along with other cultures descending from the Proto-Indo-Europeans. These parallels include comparisons of a cosmic winter motif between the Norse , the Iranian and . Víðarr's stride has been compared to the Vedic god Vishnu in that both have a "cosmic stride" with a special shoe used to tear apart a beastly wolf. Larger patterns have also been drawn between "final battle" events in Indo-European cultures, including the occurrence of a blind or semi-blind figure in "final battle" themes, and figures appearing suddenly with surprising skills. Volcanic eruptions Hilda Ellis Davidson theorizes that the events in occurring after the death of the gods (the sun turning black, steam rising, flames touching the heavens, etc.) may be inspired by the volcanic eruptions on Iceland. Records of eruptions on Iceland bear strong similarities to the sequence of events described in , especially the eruption at Laki that occurred in 1783. Bertha Phillpotts theorizes that the figure of Surtr was inspired by Icelandic eruptions, and that he was a volcano demon. Surtr's name occurs in some Icelandic place names, among them the lava tube Surtshellir, a number of dark caverns in the volcanic central region of Iceland. Parallels have been pointed out between a poem spoken by a found in the 13th century ("the tale of the mountain dweller"). In the tale, Thórd and his servant get lost while traveling to church in winter, and so take shelter for the night within a cave. Inside the cave they hear noises, witness a pair of immense burning eyes, and then the being with burning eyes recites a poem of 12 stanzas. The poem the being recites contains references to Norse mythology (including a mention of Thor) and also prophecies (including that "mountains will tumble, the earth will move, men will be scoured by hot water and burned by fire"). Surtr's fire receives a mention in stanza 10. John Lindow says that the poem may describe "a mix of the destruction of the race of giants and of humans, as in " but that "many of the predictions of disruption on earth could also fit the volcanic activity that is so common in Iceland." Modern influences The events of Ragnarok are dramatized, albeit briefly, in Hans Christian Andersen's |
each other or remaining silent for long periods of time. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead garnered acclaim. In 2017, Andy Propst of Time Out ranked the play the 22nd greatest of all time. Title The title is taken directly from the final scene of Shakespeare's Hamlet. In earlier scenes Prince Hamlet has been exiled to England by the treacherous King of Denmark (his uncle Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father to obtain the throne). En route to England, Hamlet discovers a letter from King Claudius which is being carried to England by Hamlet's old but now untrusted friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The letter commands that Hamlet be put to death upon his arrival in England. Hamlet rewrites the letter to command that instead, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern be put to death. He then escapes back to Denmark. By the end of Shakespeare's play, Prince Hamlet, Laertes, Ophelia, Polonius, King Claudius, and Queen Gertrude all lie dead. An ambassador from England arrives on the scene to bluntly report "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead" (Hamlet. Act V, Scene II, line 411); they join the stabbed, poisoned and drowned key characters. By the end of Hamlet, Horatio is the only main figure left alive. A previous, satirical play of a similar nature named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was written by W. S. Gilbert in 1874 and performed in 1891. Characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: childhood friends of Hamlet. The Player: a travelling actor. Hamlet: the Prince of Denmark, nephew to Claudius. Tragedians: travelling with the Player, including Alfred. King Claudius: the King of Denmark, Hamlet's uncle and stepfather. Gertrude: the Queen of Denmark, and Hamlet's mother. Polonius: Claudius's chief adviser. Laertes: Polonius's son Ophelia: Polonius's daughter. Horatio: friend of Hamlet. Fortinbras: nephew of the King of Norway. Synopsis With William Shakespeare's play Hamlet as the backdrop, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead concerns the musings and mishaps of the title characters. The play is structured as the inverse of Hamlet, in which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two minor characters who were childhood friends of the Prince; instead, the duo remains the focus and Hamlet himself is a minor role whose actions occur largely offstage, with the exception of a few short scenes in which the dramatic plays converge. In Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern operate under the King's command in an attempt to discover Hamlet's motives and plot against him. Hamlet, however, derisively mocks and outwits them, so that they, rather than he, are sentenced to death in the end. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead explores these events from the perspective of the duo; their actions seem largely nonsensical because they are superseded and, therefore, determined by Hamlet's plot. After witnessing a performance of The Murder of Gonzago – a story in the play Hamlet – they find themselves on a ship, transporting Prince Hamlet to the King in England, with the troupe that staged the performance also on board as stowaways. They are supposed to give him a letter with an instruction to execute Hamlet, who discovers this and replaces the letter with another one. During the voyage, the ship is hijacked by pirates, after which it is discovered that Hamlet has disappeared and the letter now instructs the English monarch to execute instead. The troupe recreates the duel scene from Hamlet with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, at the end, accepting quo fata ferunt ("whither the fates carry [us]"). The play concludes with the final scene from Hamlet in which the English Ambassador arrives and announces that "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead". Summary Act One Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are betting on coin flips. Rosencrantz, who bets heads each time, wins 92 flips in a row. The extreme unlikeliness of this event according to the laws of probability leads Guildenstern to suggest that they may be "within un-, sub- or supernatural forces". It is revealed that the duo are journeying to court on the orders of the King. Guildenstern theorizes on the nature of reality, focusing on how an event becomes increasingly real as more people witness it. A troupe of Tragedians arrives and offers the two men a show. They seem capable only of performances involving bloodbaths. The next two scenes at court are from the plot of Hamlet. The first, involving Hamlet and Ophelia, takes place offstage in Hamlet—the stage directions repeat exactly the words with which Ophelia describes the event to Polonius in Hamlet. The second is taken directly from Hamlet: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's first appearance in that play. The Danish king and queen, Claudius and Gertrude, ask the two to discover the nature of Hamlet's recent madness. The royal couple demonstrate an inability to distinguish the two courtiers from one another, as do the characters themselves (to their irritation). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern attempt to practise for their meeting with the Prince by one pretending to be Hamlet and the other asking him questions, but they glean no new information from it. The act closes with another scene from Hamlet in which they finally meet the Prince face to face. Act Two The conversation ends between Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Hamlet. Guildenstern tries to be optimistic, while Rosencrantz admits that the pair made no progress and Hamlet entirely outwitted them. The Player returns to the stage. He is angry that the pair did not stay to watch their play earlier because, without an audience, his Tragedians are nothing. He tells them to stop questioning their existence because life appears too chaotic to comprehend upon examination. The Player, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern lose themselves in another illogical conversation that demonstrates the limits of language. The Player leaves to prepare for his production of The Murder of Gonzago, set to be put on in front of Hamlet and the King and Queen. Claudius and Gertrude enter and begin another short scene taken directly from Hamlet: they ask about the duo's encounter with the Prince, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern inform them about his interest in the Tragedians' production. After Claudius and Gertrude leave, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern contemplate their job. They see Hamlet walk by but fail to seize the opportunity to interrogate him. The Tragedians return and perform their dress rehearsal of The Murder of Gonzago. Their play moves beyond the scope of what the reader sees in Hamlet; characters resembling Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are seen taking a sea voyage and meeting their deaths at the hands of English courtiers, foreshadowing the duo's true fate. Rosencrantz does not quite make the connection, but Guildenstern is frightened into a verbal attack on the Tragedians' inability to capture the real essence of death. The stage becomes dark. When the stage is once again visible, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern lie in the same position as had the actors portraying their deaths. The duo are upset that they have become the pawns of the royal couple. Claudius enters again and tells them to find where Hamlet has hidden Polonius' corpse. After many false starts, they eventually find Hamlet, who leaves with Claudius. Rosencrantz is delighted to find that his mission is complete, but Guildenstern knows it has not ended. Hamlet enters, speaking with a Norwegian soldier. Rosencrantz decides that he is happy to accompany Hamlet to England because it means freedom from the orders of the Danish court. Guildenstern understands that wherever they go, they are still trapped in this world. Act Three Rosencrantz and Guildenstern find themselves on a ship that has already set sail. The pair seems to have no knowledge of how they got there. At first, they try to determine whether they are still alive, before they recognize that they are not dead and are on board a boat. They remember that Claudius has given them a letter to deliver to England. After some brief confusion over who actually has the letter, they find it and eventually open it. They realize that Claudius has asked for Hamlet to be killed. While Rosencrantz seems hesitant to follow their orders now, Guildenstern convinces him that they are not worthy of interfering with fate and the plans of kings. The stage darkens and, presumably, the characters go to sleep. Hamlet switches the letter with one he has written himself, an act which takes place offstage in Hamlet. The pair discovers that the Tragedians are hidden ("impossibly", according to the stage directions) in several barrels on deck. They are fleeing Denmark because their play offended Claudius. When Rosencrantz complains that there is not enough action, pirates attack. Hamlet, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and the Player all hide in separate barrels. The lights dim. When the lights come on again, Hamlet has vanished (in Hamlet it is reported that he was kidnapped by pirates from the ship). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern panic, then re-read the letter to find that it now calls for them to be put to death instead of the prince. Guildenstern cannot understand why he and Rosencrantz are so important as to necessitate their executions. The Player tells Guildenstern that all paths end in death. Guildenstern snaps and draws the Player's dagger from his belt, shouting | who were childhood friends of the Prince; instead, the duo remains the focus and Hamlet himself is a minor role whose actions occur largely offstage, with the exception of a few short scenes in which the dramatic plays converge. In Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern operate under the King's command in an attempt to discover Hamlet's motives and plot against him. Hamlet, however, derisively mocks and outwits them, so that they, rather than he, are sentenced to death in the end. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead explores these events from the perspective of the duo; their actions seem largely nonsensical because they are superseded and, therefore, determined by Hamlet's plot. After witnessing a performance of The Murder of Gonzago – a story in the play Hamlet – they find themselves on a ship, transporting Prince Hamlet to the King in England, with the troupe that staged the performance also on board as stowaways. They are supposed to give him a letter with an instruction to execute Hamlet, who discovers this and replaces the letter with another one. During the voyage, the ship is hijacked by pirates, after which it is discovered that Hamlet has disappeared and the letter now instructs the English monarch to execute instead. The troupe recreates the duel scene from Hamlet with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, at the end, accepting quo fata ferunt ("whither the fates carry [us]"). The play concludes with the final scene from Hamlet in which the English Ambassador arrives and announces that "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead". Summary Act One Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are betting on coin flips. Rosencrantz, who bets heads each time, wins 92 flips in a row. The extreme unlikeliness of this event according to the laws of probability leads Guildenstern to suggest that they may be "within un-, sub- or supernatural forces". It is revealed that the duo are journeying to court on the orders of the King. Guildenstern theorizes on the nature of reality, focusing on how an event becomes increasingly real as more people witness it. A troupe of Tragedians arrives and offers the two men a show. They seem capable only of performances involving bloodbaths. The next two scenes at court are from the plot of Hamlet. The first, involving Hamlet and Ophelia, takes place offstage in Hamlet—the stage directions repeat exactly the words with which Ophelia describes the event to Polonius in Hamlet. The second is taken directly from Hamlet: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's first appearance in that play. The Danish king and queen, Claudius and Gertrude, ask the two to discover the nature of Hamlet's recent madness. The royal couple demonstrate an inability to distinguish the two courtiers from one another, as do the characters themselves (to their irritation). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern attempt to practise for their meeting with the Prince by one pretending to be Hamlet and the other asking him questions, but they glean no new information from it. The act closes with another scene from Hamlet in which they finally meet the Prince face to face. Act Two The conversation ends between Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Hamlet. Guildenstern tries to be optimistic, while Rosencrantz admits that the pair made no progress and Hamlet entirely outwitted them. The Player returns to the stage. He is angry that the pair did not stay to watch their play earlier because, without an audience, his Tragedians are nothing. He tells them to stop questioning their existence because life appears too chaotic to comprehend upon examination. The Player, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern lose themselves in another illogical conversation that demonstrates the limits of language. The Player leaves to prepare for his production of The Murder of Gonzago, set to be put on in front of Hamlet and the King and Queen. Claudius and Gertrude enter and begin another short scene taken directly from Hamlet: they ask about the duo's encounter with the Prince, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern inform them about his interest in the Tragedians' production. After Claudius and Gertrude leave, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern contemplate their job. They see Hamlet walk by but fail to seize the opportunity to interrogate him. The Tragedians return and perform their dress rehearsal of The Murder of Gonzago. Their play moves beyond the scope of what the reader sees in Hamlet; characters resembling Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are seen taking a sea voyage and meeting their deaths at the hands of English courtiers, foreshadowing the duo's true fate. Rosencrantz does not quite make the connection, but Guildenstern is frightened into a verbal attack on the Tragedians' inability to capture the real essence of death. The stage becomes dark. When the stage is once again visible, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern lie in the same position as had the actors portraying their deaths. The duo are upset that they have become the pawns of the royal couple. Claudius enters again and tells them to find where Hamlet has hidden Polonius' corpse. After many false starts, they eventually find Hamlet, who leaves with Claudius. Rosencrantz is delighted to find that his mission is complete, but Guildenstern knows it has not ended. Hamlet enters, speaking with a Norwegian soldier. Rosencrantz decides that he is happy to accompany Hamlet to England because it means freedom from the orders of the Danish court. Guildenstern understands that wherever they go, they are still trapped in this world. Act Three Rosencrantz and Guildenstern find themselves on a ship that has already set sail. The pair seems to have no knowledge of how they got there. At first, they try to determine whether they are still alive, before they recognize that they are not dead and are on board a boat. They remember that Claudius has given them a letter to deliver to England. After some brief confusion over who actually has the letter, they find it and eventually open it. They realize that Claudius has asked for Hamlet to be killed. While Rosencrantz seems hesitant to follow their orders now, Guildenstern convinces him that they are not worthy of interfering with fate and the plans of kings. The stage darkens and, presumably, the characters go to sleep. Hamlet switches the letter with one he has written himself, an act which takes place offstage in Hamlet. The pair discovers that the Tragedians are hidden ("impossibly", according to the stage directions) in several barrels on deck. They are fleeing Denmark because their play offended Claudius. When Rosencrantz complains that there is not enough action, pirates attack. Hamlet, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and the Player all hide in separate barrels. The lights dim. When the lights come on again, Hamlet has vanished (in Hamlet it is reported that he was kidnapped by pirates from the ship). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern panic, then re-read the letter to find that it now calls for them to be put to death instead of the prince. Guildenstern cannot understand why he and Rosencrantz are so important as to necessitate their executions. The Player tells Guildenstern that all paths end in death. Guildenstern snaps and draws the Player's dagger from his belt, shouting that his portrayals of death do not do justice to the real thing. He stabs the Player and the Player |
alleged RC4) to avoid trademark problems. RSA Security has never officially released the algorithm; Rivest has, however, linked to the English Wikipedia article on RC4 in his own course notes in 2008 and confirmed the history of RC4 and its code in a 2014 paper by him. RC4 became part of some commonly used encryption protocols and standards, such as WEP in 1997 and WPA in 2003/2004 for wireless cards; and SSL in 1995 and its successor TLS in 1999, until it was prohibited for all versions of TLS by RFC 7465 in 2015, due to the RC4 attacks weakening or breaking RC4 used in SSL/TLS. The main factors in RC4's success over such a wide range of applications have been its speed and simplicity: efficient implementations in both software and hardware were very easy to develop. Description RC4 generates a pseudorandom stream of bits (a keystream). As with any stream cipher, these can be used for encryption by combining it with the plaintext using bit-wise exclusive-or; decryption is performed the same way (since exclusive-or with given data is an involution). This is similar to the one-time pad except that generated pseudorandom bits, rather than a prepared stream, are used. To generate the keystream, the cipher makes use of a secret internal state which consists of two parts: A permutation of all 256 possible bytes (denoted "S" below). Two 8-bit index-pointers (denoted "i" and "j"). The permutation is initialized with a variable length key, typically between 40 and 2048 bits, using the key-scheduling algorithm (KSA). Once this has been completed, the stream of bits is generated using the pseudo-random generation algorithm (PRGA). Key-scheduling algorithm (KSA) The key-scheduling algorithm is used to initialize the permutation in the array "S". "keylength" is defined as the number of bytes in the key and can be in the range 1 ≤ keylength ≤ 256, typically between 5 and 16, corresponding to a key length of 40 – 128 bits. First, the array "S" is initialized to the identity permutation. S is then processed for 256 iterations in a similar way to the main PRGA, but also mixes in bytes of the key at the same time. for i from 0 to 255 S[i] := i endfor j := 0 for i from 0 to 255 j := (j + S[i] + key[i mod keylength]) mod 256 swap values of S[i] and S[j] endfor Pseudo-random generation algorithm (PRGA) For as many iterations as are needed, the PRGA modifies the state and outputs a byte of the keystream. In each iteration, the PRGA: increments looks up the th element of , , and adds that to exchanges the values of and then uses the sum as an index to fetch a third element of (the keystream value below) then bitwise exclusive ORed (XORed) with the next byte of the message to produce the next byte of either ciphertext or plaintext. Each element of S is swapped with another element at least once every 256 iterations. i := 0 j := 0 while GeneratingOutput: i := (i + 1) mod 256 j := (j + S[i]) mod 256 swap values of S[i] and S[j] K := S[(S[i] + S[j]) mod 256] output K endwhile Thus, this produces a stream of which are XOR'ed with the to obtain the . So . RC4-based random number generators Several operating systems include , an API originating in OpenBSD providing access to a random number generator originally based on RC4. In OpenBSD 5.5, released in May 2014, was modified to use ChaCha20. The implementations of arc4random in FreeBSD, NetBSD and Linux's libbsd also use ChaCha20. According to manual pages shipped with the operating system, in the 2017 release of its desktop and mobile operating systems, Apple replaced RC4 with AES in its implementation of arc4random. Man pages for the new arc4random include the backronym "A Replacement Call for Random" for ARC4 as a mnemonic, as it provides better random data than rand() does. Proposed new random number generators are often compared to the RC4 random number generator. Several attacks on RC4 are able to distinguish its output from a random sequence. Implementation Many stream ciphers are based on linear-feedback shift registers (LFSRs), which, while efficient in hardware, are less so in software. The design of RC4 avoids the use of LFSRs and is ideal for software implementation, as it requires only byte manipulations. It uses 256 bytes of memory for the state array, S[0] through S[255], k bytes of memory for the key, key[0] through key[k-1], and integer variables, i, j, and K. Performing a modular reduction of some value modulo 256 can be done with a bitwise AND with 255 (which is equivalent to taking the low-order byte of the value in question). Test vectors These test vectors are not official, but convenient for anyone testing their own RC4 program. The keys and plaintext are ASCII, the keystream and ciphertext are in hexadecimal. Security Unlike a modern stream cipher (such as those in eSTREAM), RC4 does not take a separate nonce alongside the key. This means that if a single long-term key is to be used to securely encrypt multiple streams, the protocol must specify how to combine the nonce and the long-term key to generate the stream key for RC4. One approach to addressing this is to generate a "fresh" RC4 key by hashing a long-term key with a nonce. However, many applications that use RC4 simply concatenate key and nonce; RC4's weak key schedule then gives rise to related key attacks, like the Fluhrer, Mantin and Shamir attack (which is famous for breaking the WEP standard). Because RC4 is a stream cipher, it is more malleable than common block ciphers. If not used together with a strong message | was immune to the 2011 BEAST attack on TLS 1.0. The attack exploits a known weakness in the way cipher block chaining mode is used with all of the other ciphers supported by TLS 1.0, which are all block ciphers. In March 2013, there were new attack scenarios proposed by Isobe, Ohigashi, Watanabe and Morii, as well as AlFardan, Bernstein, Paterson, Poettering and Schuldt that use new statistical biases in RC4 key table to recover plaintext with large number of TLS encryptions. The use of RC4 in TLS is prohibited by RFC 7465 published in February 2015. Roos' biases and key reconstruction from permutation In 1995, Andrew Roos experimentally observed that the first byte of the keystream is correlated to the first three bytes of the key and the first few bytes of the permutation after the KSA are correlated to some linear combination of the key bytes. These biases remained unexplained until 2007, when Goutam Paul, Siddheshwar Rathi and Subhamoy Maitra proved the keystream–key correlation and in another work Goutam Paul and Subhamoy Maitra proved the permutation–key correlations. The latter work also used the permutation–key correlations to design the first algorithm for complete key reconstruction from the final permutation after the KSA, without any assumption on the key or initialization vector. This algorithm has a constant probability of success in a time which is the square root of the exhaustive key search complexity. Subsequently, many other works have been performed on key reconstruction from RC4 internal states. Subhamoy Maitra and Goutam Paul also showed that the Roos-type biases still persist even when one considers nested permutation indices, like or . These types of biases are used in some of the later key reconstruction methods for increasing the success probability. Biased outputs of the RC4 The keystream generated by the RC4 is biased to varying degrees towards certain sequences making it vulnerable to distinguishing attacks. The best such attack is due to Itsik Mantin and Adi Shamir who showed that the second output byte of the cipher was biased toward zero with probability 1/128 (instead of 1/256). This is due to the fact that if the third byte of the original state is zero, and the second byte is not equal to 2, then the second output byte is always zero. Such bias can be detected by observing only 256 bytes. Souradyuti Paul and Bart Preneel of COSIC showed that the first and the second bytes of the RC4 were also biased. The number of required samples to detect this bias is 225 bytes. Scott Fluhrer and David McGrew also showed such attacks which distinguished the keystream of the RC4 from a random stream given a gigabyte of output. The complete characterization of a single step of RC4 PRGA was performed by Riddhipratim Basu, Shirshendu Ganguly, Subhamoy Maitra, and Goutam Paul. Considering all the permutations, they prove that the distribution of the output is not uniform given i and j, and as a consequence, information about j is always leaked into the output. Fluhrer, Mantin and Shamir attack In 2001, a new and surprising discovery was made by Fluhrer, Mantin and Shamir: over all the possible RC4 keys, the statistics for the first few bytes of output keystream are strongly non-random, leaking information about the key. If the nonce and long-term key are simply concatenated to generate the RC4 key, this long-term key can be discovered by analysing a large number of messages encrypted with this key. This and related effects were then used to break the WEP ("wired equivalent privacy") encryption used with 802.11 wireless networks. This caused a scramble for a standards-based replacement for WEP in the 802.11 market, and led to the IEEE 802.11i effort and WPA. Protocols can defend against this attack by discarding the initial portion of the keystream. Such a modified algorithm is traditionally called "RC4-drop[]", where is the number of initial keystream bytes that are dropped. The SCAN default is = 768 bytes, but a conservative value would be = 3072 bytes. The Fluhrer, Mantin and Shamir attack does not apply to RC4-based SSL, since SSL generates the encryption keys it uses for RC4 by hashing, meaning that different SSL sessions have unrelated keys. Klein's attack In 2005, Andreas Klein presented an analysis of the RC4 stream cipher showing more correlations between the RC4 keystream and the key. Erik Tews, Ralf-Philipp Weinmann, and Andrei Pychkine used this analysis to create aircrack-ptw, a tool which cracks 104-bit RC4 used in 128-bit WEP in under a minute. Whereas the Fluhrer, Mantin, and Shamir attack used around 10 million messages, aircrack-ptw can break 104-bit keys in 40,000 frames with 50% probability, or in 85,000 frames with 95% probability. Combinatorial problem A combinatorial problem related to the number of inputs and outputs of the RC4 cipher was first posed by Itsik Mantin and Adi Shamir in 2001, whereby, of the total 256 elements in the typical state of RC4, if x number of elements (x ≤ 256) are only known (all other elements can be assumed empty), then the maximum number of elements that can be produced deterministically is also in the next 256 rounds. This conjecture was put to rest in 2004 with a formal proof given by Souradyuti Paul and Bart Preneel. Royal Holloway attack In 2013, a group of security researchers at the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway, University of London reported an attack that can become effective using only 234 encrypted messages. While yet not a practical attack for most purposes, this result is sufficiently close to one that it has led to speculation that it is plausible that some state cryptologic agencies may already have better attacks that render RC4 insecure. Given that, , a large amount of TLS traffic uses RC4 to avoid attacks on block ciphers that use cipher block chaining, if these hypothetical better attacks exist, then this would make the TLS-with-RC4 combination insecure against such attackers in a large number of practical scenarios. In March 2015 researcher to Royal Holloway announced improvements to their attack, providing a 226 attack against passwords encrypted with RC4, as used in TLS. Bar-mitzvah attack On the Black Hat Asia 2015, Itsik Mantin presented another attack against SSL using RC4 cipher. NOMORE attack In 2015, security researchers from KU Leuven presented new attacks against RC4 in both TLS and WPA-TKIP. Dubbed the Numerous Occurrence MOnitoring & Recovery Exploit (NOMORE) attack, it is the first attack of its kind that was demonstrated in practice. Their attack against TLS can decrypt a secure HTTP cookie within 75 hours. The attack against WPA-TKIP can be completed within an hour, and allows an attacker to decrypt and inject arbitrary packets. RC4 variants As mentioned above, the most important weakness of RC4 comes |
now we were junkies dabbling in music." Starr, Nilsson and Moon were members of a drinking club, the Hollywood Vampires. From the late 1960s until the mid 1980s, Starr and the designer Robin Cruikshank ran a furniture and interior design company, ROR. ROR's designs were placed on sale in the department stores of Harvey Nichols and Liberty of London. The company designed the interiors of palaces in Abu Dhabi and Oman, and the apartments of Paul Raymond and Starr's friend Nilsson. In November 1976, Starr appeared as a guest at the Band's farewell concert, featured in the 1978 Martin Scorsese documentary The Last Waltz. Also in 1976, Starr issued Ringo's Rotogravure, the first release under his new contract with Atlantic Records for the North American market and Polydor for all other territories. The album was produced by Arif Mardin and featured compositions by Lennon, McCartney and Harrison. Starr promoted the release heavily, yet Rotogravure and its accompanying singles failed to chart in the UK. In America, the LP produced two minor hits, "A Dose of Rock 'n' Roll" (number 26) and a cover of "Hey! Baby" (number 74), and achieved moderate sales, reaching a chart position of 28. Its disappointing performance inspired Atlantic to revamp Starr's formula; the result was a blend of disco and 1970s pop, Ringo the 4th (1977). The album failed to chart in the UK and peaked at number 162 in the US. In 1978 Starr released Bad Boy, which reached number 129 in the US and again failed to place on the UK albums chart. In April 1979, Starr became seriously ill with intestinal problems relating to his childhood bout of peritonitis and was taken to the Princess Grace Hospital in Monte Carlo. He almost died and during an operation on 28 April, several feet of intestine had to be removed. Three weeks later he played with McCartney and Harrison at Eric Clapton's wedding. On 28 November, a fire destroyed his Hollywood home and much of his Beatles memorabilia. 1980s On 19 May 1980, Starr and Barbara Bach survived a car crash in Surrey, England. Following Lennon's murder in December 1980, Harrison modified the lyrics of a song he had originally written for Starr, "All Those Years Ago", as a tribute to their former bandmate. Released as a Harrison single in 1981, the track, which included Starr's drum part and overdubbed backing vocals by McCartney, peaked at number two in the US charts and number 13 in the UK. Later that year, Starr released Stop and Smell the Roses, featuring songs produced by Nilsson, McCartney, Harrison, Ronnie Wood and Stephen Stills. The album's lead single, the Harrison-composed "Wrack My Brain", reached number 38 in the US charts, but failed to chart in the UK. Lennon had offered a pair of songs for inclusion on the album – "Nobody Told Me" and "Life Begins at 40" – but following his death, Starr did not feel comfortable recording them. Soon after the murder, Starr and his girlfriend Barbara Bach flew to New York City to be with Lennon's widow Yoko Ono. Following Stop and Smell the Roses, Starr's recording projects were beset with problems. After completing Old Wave in 1982 with producer Joe Walsh, he was unable to find a record company willing to release the album in the UK or the US. In 1987, he abandoned sessions in Memphis for a planned country album, produced by Chips Moman, after which Moman was blocked by a court injunction from issuing the recordings. Starr narrated the 1984–86 series of the children's series Thomas & Friends, a Britt Allcroft production based on the books by the Reverend W. Awdry. For a single season in 1989, Starr also portrayed the character Mr. Conductor in the American Thomas & Friends spin-off, Shining Time Station. In 1985, Starr performed with his son Zak as part of Artists United Against Apartheid on the recording "Sun City", and, with Harrison and Eric Clapton, was among the special guests on Carl Perkins' TV special Blue Suede Shoes: A Rockabilly Session. In 1987, he played drums on Harrison's Beatles pastiche "When We Was Fab" and also appeared in Godley & Creme's innovative video clip for the song. The same year, Starr joined Harrison, Clapton, Jeff Lynne and Elton John in a performance at London's Wembley Arena for the Prince's Trust charity. In January 1988, he attended the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony in New York, with Harrison and Ono (the latter representing Lennon), to accept the Beatles' induction into the Hall of Fame. During October and November 1988, Starr and Bach attended a detox clinic in Tucson, Arizona; each received a six-week treatment for alcoholism. He later commented on his longstanding addiction: "Years I've lost, absolute years ... I've no idea what happened. I lived in a blackout." Having embraced sobriety, Starr focused on re-establishing his career by making a return to touring. On 23 July 1989, Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band gave their first performance to an audience of ten thousand in Dallas, Texas. Setting a pattern that would continue over the following decades, the band consisted of Starr and an assortment of musicians who had been successful in their own right at different times. The concerts interchanged Starr's singing, including selections of his Beatles and solo songs, with performances of each of the other artists' well-known material, the latter incorporating either Starr or another musician as drummer. 1990s The first All-Starr excursion led to the release of Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band (1990), a compilation of live performances from the 1989 tour. Also in 1990, Starr recorded a version of the song "I Call Your Name" for a television special marking the 10th anniversary of John Lennon's death and the 50th anniversary of Lennon's birth. The track, produced by Lynne, features a supergroup composed of Lynne, Tom Petty, Joe Walsh and Jim Keltner. The following year, Starr made a cameo appearance on The Simpsons episode "Brush with Greatness" and contributed an original song, "You Never Know", to the soundtrack of the John Hughes film Curly Sue. In 1992, he released his first studio album in nine years, Time Takes Time, which was produced by Phil Ramone, Don Was, Lynne and Peter Asher and featured guest appearances by various stars including Brian Wilson and Harry Nilsson. The album failed to achieve commercial success, although the single "Weight of the World" peaked at number 74 in the UK, marking his first appearance on the singles chart there since "Only You" in 1974. In 1994, he began a collaboration with the surviving former Beatles for the Beatles Anthology project. They recorded two new Beatles songs built around solo vocal and piano tapes recorded by Lennon and gave lengthy interviews about the Beatles' career. Released in December 1995, "Free as a Bird" was the first new Beatles single since 1970. In March 1996, they released a second single, "Real Love". The temporary reunion ended when Harrison refused to participate in the completion of a third song. Starr then played drums on McCartney's 1997 album Flaming Pie. Among the tracks to which he contributed, "Little Willow" was a song McCartney wrote about Starr's ex-wife Maureen, who died in 1994, while "Really Love You" was the first official release ever credited to McCartney–Starkey. In 1998, he released two albums on the Mercury label. The studio album Vertical Man marked the beginning of a nine-year partnership with Mark Hudson, who produced the album and, with his band the Roundheads, formed the core of the backing group on the recordings. In addition, many famous guests joined on various tracks, including Martin, Petty, McCartney and, in his final appearance on a Starr album, Harrison. Most of the songs were written by Starr and the band. Joe Walsh and the Roundheads joined Starr for his appearance on VH1 Storytellers, which was released as an album under the same name. During the show, he performed greatest hits and new songs and told anecdotes relating to them. Starr's final release for Mercury was the 1999 Christmas-themed I Wanna Be Santa Claus. The album was a commercial failure, although the record company chose not to issue it in Britain. 2000s Starr was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in 2002, joining an elite group of drummers and percussionists that include Buddy Rich, William F. Ludwig Sr. and William F. Ludwig Jr. On 29 November 2002 (the first anniversary of Harrison's death), he performed "Photograph" and a cover of Carl Perkins' "Honey Don't" at the Concert for George held in the Royal Albert Hall, London. Early the following year, he released the album Ringo Rama, which contained a song he co-wrote as a tribute to Harrison, "Never Without You". Also in 2003, he formed Pumkinhead Records with All-Starr Band member Mark Hudson. The label was not prolific, but their first signing was Liam Lynch, who produced a 2003 LP entitled Fake Songs. Starr served as an honorary Santa Tracker and voice-over personality in 2003 and 2004 during the London stop in Father Christmas's annual Christmas Eve journey, as depicted in the annual NORAD tracks Santa program. According to NORAD officials, he was "a Starr in the east" who helped guide North American Aerospace Defense Command's Santa-tracking tradition. His 2005 release Choose Love eschewed the star-guests approach of his last two studio albums but failed to chart in the UK or the US. That same year, Liverpool's City Council announced plans to demolish Starr's birthplace, 9Madryn Street, stating that it had "no historical significance". The LCC later announced that the building would be taken apart brick by brick and preserved. Starr released the album Liverpool 8 in January 2008, coinciding with the start of Liverpool's year as the European Capital of Culture. Hudson was the initial producer of the recordings, but after a falling out with Starr, he was replaced by David A. Stewart. Starr performed the title track at the opening ceremony for Liverpool's appointment, but thereafter attracted controversy over his seemingly unflattering comments about his city of birth. Later that year, he was the object of further criticism in the press for posting a video on his website in which he harangued fans and autograph hunters for sending him items to sign. In April 2009, he reunited with McCartney at the David Lynch Foundation's "Change Begins Within" benefit concert, held at New York's Radio City Music Hall. Having played his own set beforehand, Starr joined McCartney for the finale and performed "With a Little Help from My Friends", among other songs. Starr also appeared on-stage during Microsoft's June 2009 E3 press conference with Yoko Ono, McCartney and Olivia Harrison to promote The Beatles: Rock Band video game. 2010s In 2010, Starr self-produced and released his fifteenth studio album, Y Not, which included the track "Walk with You" and featured a vocal contribution from McCartney. Later that year, he appeared during Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief as a celebrity phone operator. On 7 July 2010, he celebrated his 70th birthday at Radio City Music Hall with another All-Starr Band concert, topped with friends and family joining him on stage including Ono, his son Zak, and McCartney. Starr recorded a cover of Buddy Holly's "Think It Over" for the 2011 tribute album Listen to Me: Buddy Holly. In January 2012, he released the album Ringo 2012. Later that year, he announced that his All-Starr Band would tour the Pacific Rim during 2013 with select dates in New Zealand, Australia and Japan; it was his first performance in Japan since 1996, and his debut in both New Zealand and Australia. In January 2014, Starr joined McCartney for a special performance at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, where they performed the song "Queenie Eye". That summer he toured Canada and the US with an updated version of the Twelfth All-Starr Band, featuring multi-instrumentalist Warren Ham instead of saxophonist Mark Rivera. In July, Starr became involved in "#peacerocks", an anti-violence campaign started by fashion designer John Varvatos, in conjunction with the David Lynch Foundation. In September 2014, he won at the GQ Men of the Year Awards for his humanitarian work with the David Lynch Foundation. In January 2015, Starr tweeted the title of his new studio album Postcards from Paradise. The album came a few weeks in advance of Starr's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and was released on 31 March 2015 to mixed to positive reviews. Later that month, Starr and his band announced a forthcoming Summer 2016 Tour of the US. Full production began in June 2016 in Syracuse. On 7 July 2017 (his 77th birthday), Starr released "Give More Love" as a single, which was followed two months later by his nineteenth studio album, also titled Give More Love and issued by UMe. The album includes appearances by McCartney, as well as frequent collaborators such as Joe Walsh, David A. Stewart, Gary Nicholson and members of the All-Starr Band. On 13 September 2019, Starr announced the upcoming release of his 20th album, What's My Name, to be released by UMe on 25 October 2019. He recorded the album in his home studio, Roccabella West in Los Angeles. 2020s In celebration of his 80th birthday in July 2020, Starr organised a live-streamed concert featuring appearances by many of his friends and collaborators including McCartney, Walsh, Ben Harper, Dave Grohl, Sheryl Crow, Sheila E. and Willie Nelson. The show replaced his annual public birthday celebration at the Capitol Records Building, which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 16 December 2020, Starr released a song entitled "Here's to the Nights". The video for the song was released on 18 December 2020. The song of peace, love and friendship was written by Diane Warren and features a group of his friends, including McCartney, Joe Walsh, Corinne Bailey Rae, Eric Burdon, Sheryl Crow, Finneas, Dave Grohl, Ben Harper, Lenny Kravitz, Jenny Lewis, Steve Lukather, Chris Stapleton and Yola. The song is the lead single from his EP Zoom In, which was recorded at Starr's home studio between April and October 2020 and was released on 19 March 2021 via UMe. The EP also includes the title track "Zoom In, Zoom Out" penned during the pandemic by Jeff Zobar (and featuring The Doors' Robbie Krieger on guitar), "Teach Me to Tango" written and produced by Sam Hollander, "Waiting for the Tide to Turn" co-written by Starr and his engineer Bruce Sugar (with the collaboration of Jamaican musician Tony Chin), and "Not Enough Love in the World" written by Joseph Williams and long time All Starr member Steve Lukather. On 24 September 2021, Starr released another EP, entitled Change the World. Musicianship Influences During his youth, Starr had been a devoted fan of skiffle and blues music, but by the time he joined the Texans in 1958, he had developed a preference for rock and roll. He was also influenced by country artists, including Hank Williams, Buck Owens and Hank Snow, and jazz artists such as Chico Hamilton and Yusef Lateef, whose compositional style inspired Starr's fluid and energetic drum fills and grooves. While reflecting on Buddy Rich, Starr commented: "He does things with one hand that I can't do with nine, but that's technique. Everyone I talk to says 'What about Buddy Rich?' Well, what about him? Because he doesn't turn me on." He stated that he "was never really into drummers", but identified Cozy Cole 1958 cover of Benny Goodman "Topsy Part Two" as "the one drum record" he bought. Starr's first musical hero was Gene Autry, about whom he commented: "I remember getting shivers up my back when he sang, 'South of the Border'". By the early 1960s he had become an ardent fan of Lee Dorsey. In November 1964, Starr told Melody Maker: "Our music is second-hand versions of negro music ... Ninety per cent of the music I like is coloured." Drums Starr said of his drumming: "I'm no good on the technical things ... I'm your basic offbeat drummer with funny fills ... because I'm really left-handed playing a right-handed kit. I can't roll around the drums because of that." Beatles producer George Martin said: "Ringo hit good and hard and used the tom-tom well, even though he couldn't do a roll to save his life", but later said, "He's got tremendous feel. He always helped us to hit the right tempo for a song, and gave it that support – that rock-solid back-beat – that made the recording of all the Beatles' songs that much easier." Starr said he did not believe the drummer's role was to "interpret the song". Instead, comparing his drumming to painting, he said: "I am the foundation, and then I put a bit of glow here and there ... If there's a gap, I want to be good enough to fill it." In 2011, Rolling Stone readers voted Starr the fifth-greatest drummer of all time. Journalist Robyn Flans wrote for the Percussive Arts Society: "I cannot count the number of drummers who have told me that Ringo inspired their passion for drums". Drummer Steve Smith said: Starr said his favourite drummer is Jim Keltner, with whom he first played at the Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971. The pair subsequently played drums together on some of Harrison's recordings during the 1970s, on Ringo and other albums by Starr, and on the early All-Starr Band tours. For Ringo's Rotogravure in 1976, Starr credited himself as "Thunder" and Keltner as "Lightnin'". Starr influenced Genesis drummer Phil Collins, who said: "I think he's vastly underrated, Ringo. The drum fills on 'A Day in the Life' are very, very complex things. You could take a great drummer from today and say, 'I want it like that', and they really wouldn't know what to do." Collins said his drumming on the 1983 Genesis song "That's All" was an affectionate attempt at a "Ringo Starr drum part". In an often-repeated but apocryphal story, when asked if Starr was the best drummer in the world, Lennon quipped that he "wasn't even the best drummer in the Beatles". The line actually comes from a 1981 episode of the BBC Radio comedy series Radio Active, although it gained more prominence when used by the television comedian Jasper Carrott in 1983, three years after Lennon's death. In September 1980, Lennon told Rolling Stone: Tjinder Singh of the indie rock band Cornershop has highlighted Starr as a pioneering drummer, adding: "There was a time when the common consensus was that Ringo couldn't play. What's that all about? He's totally unique, a one-off, and hip hop has a lot to thank him for." In his book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn says there were fewer than a dozen occasions in the Beatles' eight-year recording career where session breakdowns were caused by Starr making a mistake, while the vast majority of takes were stopped due to mistakes by the other Beatles. Starr influenced various modern drumming techniques, such as the matched grip, tuning the drums lower, and using muffling devices on tonal rings. According to Ken Micallef and Donnie Marshall, co-authors of Classic Rock Drummers: "Ringo's fat tom sounds and delicate cymbal work were imitated by thousands of drummers." In 2021, Starr announced a ten-part MasterClass course called "Drumming and Creative Collaboration". Vocals Starr sang lead vocals for a song on most of the Beatles' studio albums as part of an attempt to establish a vocal personality for each band member. In many cases, Lennon or McCartney wrote the lyrics and melody especially for him, as they did for "Yellow Submarine" from Revolver and "With a Little Help from My Friends" on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. These melodies were tailored to Starr's limited baritone vocal range. Because of his distinctive voice, Starr rarely performed backing vocals during his time with the Beatles, but they can be heard on songs such as "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and "Carry That Weight". He is also the lead vocalist on his compositions "Don't Pass Me By" and "Octopus's Garden". In addition, he sang lead on "I Wanna Be Your Man", "Boys", "Matchbox", "Honey Don't", "Act Naturally", "Good Night" and "What Goes On". Songwriting Starr's idiosyncratic turns of phrase or "Ringoisms", such as "a hard day's night" and "tomorrow never knows", were used as song titles by the Beatles, particularly by Lennon. McCartney commented: "Ringo would do these little malapropisms, he would say things slightly wrong, like people do, but his were always wonderful, very lyrical ... they were sort of magic." Starr also occasionally contributed lyrics to unfinished Lennon–McCartney songs, such as the line "darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there" in "Eleanor Rigby". Starr is credited as | in photography led to his billing as the movie's Director of Photography, and his participation in the film's editing was matched only by that of McCartney. In February 1968, Starr became the first Beatle to sing on another artist's show without the others. He sang the Buck Owens hit "Act Naturally", and performed a duet with Cilla Black, "Do You Like Me Just a Little Bit?" on her BBC One television programme, Cilla. In November 1968, Apple Records released The Beatles, commonly known as the "White Album". The album was partly inspired by the band's recent interactions with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. While attending the Maharishi's intermediate course at his ashram in Rishikesh, India, they enjoyed one of their most prolific writing periods, composing most of the album there. Starr left after ten days, but completed his first recorded Beatles song, "Don't Pass Me By". During the recording of the White Album, relations within the Beatles deteriorated; at times only one or two members were involved in the recording for a track. Starr had grown weary of McCartney's increasingly overbearing approach and Lennon's passive-aggressive behaviour, exacerbated by Starr's resentment of the near-constant presence of Lennon's wife, Yoko Ono. After one particularly difficult session during which McCartney harshly criticised his drumming, Starr quit the Beatles for two weeks, holidaying with his family in Sardinia on a boat loaned by actor Peter Sellers. During a lunch break the chef served octopus, which Starr refused to eat; a conversation with the ship's captain about the animal inspired Starr's Abbey Road composition "Octopus's Garden", which Starr wrote on guitar during the trip. He returned to the studio two weeks later to find that Harrison had covered his drum kit in flowers as a welcome-back gesture. Despite a temporary return to congeniality during the completion of the White Album, production of the Beatles' fourth feature film, Let It Be, and its accompanying LP, further strained band relationships. On 20 August 1969, the Beatles gathered for the final time at Abbey Road Studios for a mixing session for "I Want You". At a business meeting on 20 September, Lennon told the others that he had quit the Beatles, although the band's break-up would not become public knowledge until McCartney's announcement on 10 April 1970 that he was also leaving. Solo career 1970s Shortly before McCartney announced his exit from the Beatles in April 1970, he and Starr had a falling out due to McCartney's refusal to cede the release date of his eponymous solo album to allow for Starr's debut, Sentimental Journey, and the Beatles' Let It Be. Starr's album – composed of renditions of pre-rock standards that included musical arrangements by Quincy Jones, Maurice Gibb, George Martin and McCartney – peaked at number seven in the UK and number 22 in the US. Starr followed Sentimental Journey with the country-inspired Beaucoups of Blues, engineered by Scotty Moore and featuring renowned Nashville session musician Pete Drake. Despite favourable reviews, the album was a commercial failure. Starr subsequently combined his musical activities with developing a career as a film actor. Starr played drums on Lennon's John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970), Ono's Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band (1970), and on Harrison's albums All Things Must Pass (1970), Living in the Material World (1973) and Dark Horse (1974). In 1971, Starr participated in the Concert for Bangladesh, organised by Harrison, and with him co-wrote the hit single "It Don't Come Easy", which reached number four in both the US and the UK. The following year he released his most successful UK hit, "Back Off Boogaloo" (again produced and co-written by Harrison), which peaked at number two (US number nine). Having become friends with the English singer Marc Bolan, Starr made his directorial debut with the 1972 T. Rex documentary Born to Boogie. In 1973 and 1974, Starr had two number one hits in the US: "Photograph", a UK number eight hit co-written with Harrison, and "You're Sixteen", written by the Sherman Brothers. Starr's third million-selling single in the US, "You're Sixteen" was released in the UK in February 1974 where it peaked at number four. Both tracks appeared on Starr's debut rock album, Ringo, produced by Richard Perry and featuring further contributions from Harrison as well as a song each from Lennon and McCartney. A commercial and critical success, the LP also included "Oh My My", a US number five. The album reached number seven in the UK and number two in the US. Author Peter Doggett describes Ringo as a template for Starr's solo career, saying that, as a musician first rather than a songwriter, "he would rely on his friends and his charm, and if both were on tap, then the results were usually appealing". Goodnight Vienna followed in 1974 and was also successful, reaching number eight in the US and number 30 in the UK. Featuring contributions from Lennon, Elton John and Harry Nilsson, the album included a cover of the Platters' "Only You (And You Alone)", which peaked at number six in the US and number 28 in the UK, and Hoyt Axton's "No No Song", which was a US number three and Starr's seventh consecutive top-ten hit. The Elton John-written "Snookeroo" failed to chart in the UK, however. During this period Starr became romantically involved with Lynsey de Paul. He played tambourine on a song she wrote and produced for Vera Lynn, "Don't You Remember When", and he inspired another De Paul song, "If I Don't Get You the Next One Will", which she described as being about revenge after he missed a dinner appointment with her because he was asleep in his office. Starr founded the record label Ring O' Records in 1975. The company signed eleven artists and released fifteen singles and five albums between 1975 and 1978, including works by David Hentschel, Graham Bonnet and Rab Noakes. The commercial impact of Starr's own career diminished over the same period, however, although he continued to record and remained a familiar celebrity presence. Speaking in 2001, he attributed this downward turn to his "[not] taking enough interest" in music, saying of himself and friends such as Nilsson and Keith Moon: "We weren't musicians dabbling in drugs and alcohol; now we were junkies dabbling in music." Starr, Nilsson and Moon were members of a drinking club, the Hollywood Vampires. From the late 1960s until the mid 1980s, Starr and the designer Robin Cruikshank ran a furniture and interior design company, ROR. ROR's designs were placed on sale in the department stores of Harvey Nichols and Liberty of London. The company designed the interiors of palaces in Abu Dhabi and Oman, and the apartments of Paul Raymond and Starr's friend Nilsson. In November 1976, Starr appeared as a guest at the Band's farewell concert, featured in the 1978 Martin Scorsese documentary The Last Waltz. Also in 1976, Starr issued Ringo's Rotogravure, the first release under his new contract with Atlantic Records for the North American market and Polydor for all other territories. The album was produced by Arif Mardin and featured compositions by Lennon, McCartney and Harrison. Starr promoted the release heavily, yet Rotogravure and its accompanying singles failed to chart in the UK. In America, the LP produced two minor hits, "A Dose of Rock 'n' Roll" (number 26) and a cover of "Hey! Baby" (number 74), and achieved moderate sales, reaching a chart position of 28. Its disappointing performance inspired Atlantic to revamp Starr's formula; the result was a blend of disco and 1970s pop, Ringo the 4th (1977). The album failed to chart in the UK and peaked at number 162 in the US. In 1978 Starr released Bad Boy, which reached number 129 in the US and again failed to place on the UK albums chart. In April 1979, Starr became seriously ill with intestinal problems relating to his childhood bout of peritonitis and was taken to the Princess Grace Hospital in Monte Carlo. He almost died and during an operation on 28 April, several feet of intestine had to be removed. Three weeks later he played with McCartney and Harrison at Eric Clapton's wedding. On 28 November, a fire destroyed his Hollywood home and much of his Beatles memorabilia. 1980s On 19 May 1980, Starr and Barbara Bach survived a car crash in Surrey, England. Following Lennon's murder in December 1980, Harrison modified the lyrics of a song he had originally written for Starr, "All Those Years Ago", as a tribute to their former bandmate. Released as a Harrison single in 1981, the track, which included Starr's drum part and overdubbed backing vocals by McCartney, peaked at number two in the US charts and number 13 in the UK. Later that year, Starr released Stop and Smell the Roses, featuring songs produced by Nilsson, McCartney, Harrison, Ronnie Wood and Stephen Stills. The album's lead single, the Harrison-composed "Wrack My Brain", reached number 38 in the US charts, but failed to chart in the UK. Lennon had offered a pair of songs for inclusion on the album – "Nobody Told Me" and "Life Begins at 40" – but following his death, Starr did not feel comfortable recording them. Soon after the murder, Starr and his girlfriend Barbara Bach flew to New York City to be with Lennon's widow Yoko Ono. Following Stop and Smell the Roses, Starr's recording projects were beset with problems. After completing Old Wave in 1982 with producer Joe Walsh, he was unable to find a record company willing to release the album in the UK or the US. In 1987, he abandoned sessions in Memphis for a planned country album, produced by Chips Moman, after which Moman was blocked by a court injunction from issuing the recordings. Starr narrated the 1984–86 series of the children's series Thomas & Friends, a Britt Allcroft production based on the books by the Reverend W. Awdry. For a single season in 1989, Starr also portrayed the character Mr. Conductor in the American Thomas & Friends spin-off, Shining Time Station. In 1985, Starr performed with his son Zak as part of Artists United Against Apartheid on the recording "Sun City", and, with Harrison and Eric Clapton, was among the special guests on Carl Perkins' TV special Blue Suede Shoes: A Rockabilly Session. In 1987, he played drums on Harrison's Beatles pastiche "When We Was Fab" and also appeared in Godley & Creme's innovative video clip for the song. The same year, Starr joined Harrison, Clapton, Jeff Lynne and Elton John in a performance at London's Wembley Arena for the Prince's Trust charity. In January 1988, he attended the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony in New York, with Harrison and Ono (the latter representing Lennon), to accept the Beatles' induction into the Hall of Fame. During October and November 1988, Starr and Bach attended a detox clinic in Tucson, Arizona; each received a six-week treatment for alcoholism. He later commented on his longstanding addiction: "Years I've lost, absolute years ... I've no idea what happened. I lived in a blackout." Having embraced sobriety, Starr focused on re-establishing his career by making a return to touring. On 23 July 1989, Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band gave their first performance to an audience of ten thousand in Dallas, Texas. Setting a pattern that would continue over the following decades, the band consisted of Starr and an assortment of musicians who had been successful in their own right at different times. The concerts interchanged Starr's singing, including selections of his Beatles and solo songs, with performances of each of the other artists' well-known material, the latter incorporating either Starr or another musician as drummer. 1990s The first All-Starr excursion led to the release of Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band (1990), a compilation of live performances from the 1989 tour. Also in 1990, Starr recorded a version of the song "I Call Your Name" for a television special marking the 10th anniversary of John Lennon's death and the 50th anniversary of Lennon's birth. The track, produced by Lynne, features a supergroup composed of Lynne, Tom Petty, Joe Walsh and Jim Keltner. The following year, Starr made a cameo appearance on The Simpsons episode "Brush with Greatness" and contributed an original song, "You Never Know", to the soundtrack of the John Hughes film Curly Sue. In 1992, he released his first studio album in nine years, Time Takes Time, which was produced by Phil Ramone, Don Was, Lynne and Peter Asher and featured guest appearances by various stars including Brian Wilson and Harry Nilsson. The album failed to achieve commercial success, although the single "Weight of the World" peaked at number 74 in the UK, marking his first appearance on the singles chart there since "Only You" in 1974. In 1994, he began a collaboration with the surviving former Beatles for the Beatles Anthology project. They recorded two new Beatles songs built around solo vocal and piano tapes recorded by Lennon and gave lengthy interviews about the Beatles' career. Released in December 1995, "Free as a Bird" was the first new Beatles single since 1970. In March 1996, they released a second single, "Real Love". The temporary reunion ended when Harrison refused to participate in the completion of a third song. Starr then played drums on McCartney's 1997 album Flaming Pie. Among the tracks to which he contributed, "Little Willow" was a song McCartney wrote about Starr's ex-wife Maureen, who died in 1994, while "Really Love You" was the first official release ever credited to McCartney–Starkey. In 1998, he released two albums on the Mercury label. The studio album Vertical Man marked the beginning of a nine-year partnership with Mark Hudson, who produced the album and, with his band the Roundheads, formed the core of the backing group on the recordings. In addition, many famous guests joined on various tracks, including Martin, Petty, McCartney and, in his final appearance on a Starr album, Harrison. Most of the songs were written by Starr and the band. Joe Walsh and the Roundheads joined Starr for his appearance on VH1 Storytellers, which was released as an album under the same name. During the show, he performed greatest hits and new songs and told anecdotes relating to them. Starr's final release for Mercury was the 1999 Christmas-themed I Wanna Be Santa Claus. The album was a commercial failure, although the record company chose not to issue it in Britain. 2000s Starr was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in 2002, joining an elite group of drummers and percussionists that include Buddy Rich, William F. Ludwig Sr. and William F. Ludwig Jr. On 29 November 2002 (the first anniversary of Harrison's death), he performed "Photograph" and a cover of Carl Perkins' "Honey Don't" at the Concert for George held in the Royal Albert Hall, London. Early the following year, he released the album Ringo Rama, which contained a song he co-wrote as a tribute to Harrison, "Never Without You". Also in 2003, he formed Pumkinhead Records with All-Starr Band member Mark Hudson. The label was not prolific, but their first signing was Liam Lynch, who produced a 2003 LP entitled Fake Songs. Starr served as an honorary Santa Tracker and voice-over personality in 2003 and 2004 during the London stop in Father Christmas's annual Christmas Eve journey, as depicted in the annual NORAD tracks Santa program. According to NORAD officials, he was "a Starr in the east" who helped guide North American Aerospace Defense Command's Santa-tracking tradition. His 2005 release Choose Love eschewed the star-guests approach of his last two studio albums but failed to chart in the UK or the US. That same year, Liverpool's City Council announced plans to demolish Starr's birthplace, 9Madryn Street, stating that it had "no historical significance". The LCC later announced that the building would be taken apart brick by brick and preserved. Starr released the album Liverpool 8 in January 2008, coinciding with the start of Liverpool's year as the European Capital of Culture. Hudson was the initial producer of the recordings, but after a falling out with Starr, he was replaced by David A. Stewart. Starr performed the title track at the opening ceremony for Liverpool's appointment, but thereafter attracted controversy over his seemingly unflattering comments about his city of birth. Later that year, he was the object of further criticism in the press for posting a video on his website in which he harangued fans and autograph hunters for sending him items to sign. In April 2009, he reunited with McCartney at the David Lynch Foundation's "Change Begins Within" benefit concert, held at New York's Radio City Music Hall. Having played his own set beforehand, Starr joined McCartney for the finale and performed "With a Little Help from My Friends", among other songs. Starr also appeared on-stage during Microsoft's June 2009 E3 press conference with Yoko Ono, McCartney and Olivia Harrison to promote The Beatles: Rock Band video game. 2010s In 2010, Starr self-produced and released his fifteenth studio album, Y Not, which included the track "Walk with You" and featured a vocal contribution from McCartney. Later that year, he appeared during Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief as a celebrity phone operator. On 7 July 2010, he celebrated his 70th birthday at Radio City Music Hall with another All-Starr Band concert, topped with friends and family joining him on stage including Ono, his son Zak, and McCartney. Starr recorded a cover of Buddy Holly's "Think It Over" for the 2011 tribute album Listen to Me: Buddy Holly. In January 2012, he released the album Ringo 2012. Later that year, he announced that his All-Starr Band would tour the Pacific Rim during 2013 with select dates in New Zealand, Australia and Japan; it was his first performance in Japan since 1996, and his debut in both New Zealand and Australia. In January 2014, Starr joined McCartney for a special performance at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, where they performed the song "Queenie Eye". That summer he toured Canada and the US with an updated version of the Twelfth All-Starr Band, featuring multi-instrumentalist Warren Ham instead of saxophonist Mark Rivera. In July, Starr became involved in "#peacerocks", an anti-violence campaign started by fashion designer John Varvatos, in conjunction with the David Lynch Foundation. In September 2014, he won at the GQ Men of the Year Awards for his humanitarian work with the David Lynch Foundation. In January 2015, Starr tweeted the title of his new studio album Postcards from Paradise. The album came a few weeks in advance of Starr's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and was released on 31 March 2015 to mixed to positive reviews. Later that month, Starr and his band announced a forthcoming Summer 2016 Tour of the US. Full production began in June 2016 in Syracuse. On 7 July 2017 (his 77th birthday), Starr released "Give More Love" as a single, which was followed two months later by his nineteenth studio album, also titled Give More Love and issued by UMe. The album includes appearances by McCartney, as well as frequent collaborators such as Joe Walsh, David A. Stewart, Gary Nicholson and members of the All-Starr Band. On 13 September 2019, Starr announced the upcoming release of his 20th album, What's My Name, to be released by UMe on 25 October 2019. He recorded the album in his home studio, Roccabella West in Los Angeles. 2020s In celebration of his 80th birthday in July 2020, Starr organised a live-streamed concert featuring appearances by many of his friends and collaborators including McCartney, Walsh, Ben Harper, Dave Grohl, Sheryl Crow, Sheila E. and Willie Nelson. The show replaced his annual public birthday celebration at the Capitol Records Building, which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 16 December 2020, Starr released a song entitled "Here's to the Nights". The video for the song was released on 18 December 2020. The song of peace, love and friendship was written by Diane Warren and features a group of his friends, including McCartney, Joe Walsh, Corinne Bailey Rae, Eric Burdon, Sheryl Crow, Finneas, Dave Grohl, Ben Harper, Lenny Kravitz, Jenny Lewis, Steve Lukather, Chris Stapleton and Yola. The song is the lead single from his EP Zoom In, which was recorded at Starr's home studio between April and October 2020 and was released on 19 March 2021 via UMe. The EP also includes the title track "Zoom In, Zoom Out" penned during the pandemic by Jeff Zobar (and featuring The Doors' Robbie Krieger on guitar), "Teach Me to Tango" written and produced by Sam Hollander, "Waiting for the Tide to Turn" co-written by Starr and his engineer Bruce Sugar (with the collaboration of Jamaican musician Tony Chin), and "Not Enough Love in the World" written by Joseph Williams and long time All Starr member Steve Lukather. On 24 September 2021, Starr released another EP, entitled Change the World. Musicianship Influences During his youth, Starr had been a devoted fan of skiffle and blues music, but by the time he joined the Texans in 1958, he had developed a preference for rock and roll. He was also influenced by country artists, including Hank Williams, Buck Owens and Hank Snow, and jazz artists such as Chico Hamilton and Yusef Lateef, whose compositional style inspired Starr's fluid and energetic drum fills and grooves. While reflecting on Buddy Rich, Starr commented: "He does things with one hand that I can't do with nine, but that's technique. Everyone I talk to says 'What about Buddy Rich?' Well, what about him? Because he doesn't turn me on." He stated that he "was never really into drummers", but identified Cozy Cole 1958 cover of Benny Goodman "Topsy Part Two" as "the one drum record" he bought. Starr's first musical hero was Gene Autry, about whom he commented: "I remember getting shivers up my back when he sang, 'South of the Border'". By the early 1960s he had become an ardent fan of Lee Dorsey. In November 1964, Starr told Melody Maker: "Our music is second-hand versions of negro music ... Ninety per cent of the music I like is coloured." Drums Starr said of his drumming: "I'm no good on the technical things ... I'm your basic offbeat drummer with funny fills ... because I'm really left-handed playing a right-handed kit. I can't roll around the drums because of that." Beatles producer George Martin said: "Ringo hit good and hard and used the tom-tom well, even though he couldn't do a roll to save his life", but later said, "He's got tremendous feel. He always helped us to hit the right tempo for a song, and gave it that support – that rock-solid back-beat – that made the recording of all the Beatles' songs that much easier." Starr said he did not believe the drummer's role was to "interpret the song". Instead, comparing his drumming to painting, he said: "I am the foundation, and then I put a bit of glow here and there ... If there's a gap, I want to be good enough to fill it." In 2011, Rolling Stone readers voted Starr the fifth-greatest drummer of all time. Journalist Robyn Flans wrote for the Percussive Arts Society: "I cannot count the number of drummers who have told me that Ringo inspired their passion for drums". Drummer Steve Smith said: Starr said his favourite drummer is Jim Keltner, with whom he first played at the Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971. The pair subsequently played drums together on some of Harrison's recordings during the 1970s, on Ringo and other albums by Starr, and on the early All-Starr Band tours. For Ringo's Rotogravure in 1976, Starr credited himself as "Thunder" and Keltner as "Lightnin'". Starr influenced Genesis drummer Phil Collins, who said: "I think he's vastly underrated, Ringo. The drum fills on 'A Day in the Life' are very, very complex things. You could take a great drummer from today and say, 'I want it like that', and they really wouldn't know what to do." Collins said his drumming on the 1983 Genesis song "That's All" was an affectionate attempt at a "Ringo Starr drum part". In an often-repeated but apocryphal story, when asked if Starr was the best drummer in the world, Lennon quipped that he "wasn't even the best drummer in the Beatles". The line actually comes from a 1981 episode of the BBC Radio comedy series Radio Active, although it gained more prominence when used by the television comedian Jasper Carrott in 1983, three years after Lennon's death. In September 1980, Lennon told Rolling Stone: Tjinder Singh of the indie rock band Cornershop has highlighted Starr as a pioneering drummer, adding: "There was a time when the common consensus was that Ringo couldn't play. What's that all about? He's totally unique, a one-off, and hip hop has a lot to thank him for." In his book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn says there were fewer than a dozen occasions in the Beatles' eight-year recording career where session breakdowns were caused by Starr making a mistake, while the vast majority of takes were stopped due to mistakes by the other Beatles. Starr influenced various modern drumming techniques, such as the matched grip, tuning the drums lower, and using muffling devices on tonal rings. According to Ken Micallef and Donnie Marshall, co-authors of Classic Rock Drummers: "Ringo's fat tom sounds and delicate cymbal work were imitated by thousands of drummers." In 2021, Starr announced a ten-part MasterClass course called "Drumming and Creative Collaboration". Vocals Starr sang lead vocals for a song on most of the Beatles' studio albums as part of an attempt to establish a vocal personality for each band member. In many cases, Lennon or McCartney wrote the lyrics and melody especially for him, as they did for "Yellow Submarine" from Revolver and "With a Little Help from My Friends" on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. These melodies were tailored to Starr's limited baritone vocal range. Because of his distinctive voice, Starr rarely performed backing vocals during his time with the Beatles, but they can be heard on songs such as "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and "Carry That Weight". He is also the lead vocalist on his compositions "Don't Pass Me By" and "Octopus's Garden". In addition, he sang lead on "I Wanna Be Your Man", "Boys", "Matchbox", "Honey Don't", "Act Naturally", "Good Night" and "What Goes On". Songwriting Starr's idiosyncratic turns of phrase or "Ringoisms", such as "a hard day's night" and "tomorrow never knows", were used as song titles by the Beatles, particularly by Lennon. McCartney commented: "Ringo would do these little malapropisms, he would say things slightly wrong, like people do, but his were always wonderful, very lyrical ... they were sort of magic." Starr also occasionally contributed lyrics to unfinished Lennon–McCartney songs, such as the line "darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there" in "Eleanor Rigby". Starr is credited as the sole composer of two Beatles songs: "Don't Pass Me By" and "Octopus's Garden", the latter written with assistance from Harrison. While promoting the Abbey Road album in 1969, Harrison recognised Starr's lyrics to "Octopus's Garden" as an unwittingly profound message about finding inner peace, and therefore an example of how "Ringo writes his cosmic songs without knowing it." Starr is also credited as a co-writer of "What Goes On", "Flying" and "Dig It". On material issued after the band's break-up, he received a writing credit for "Taking a Trip to Carolina" and joint songwriting credits with the other Beatles for "12-Bar Original", "Los Paranoias", "Christmas Time (Is Here Again)", "Suzy Parker" (from the Let It Be film) and "Jessie's Dream" |
change in the user-interface model of previous news software; rather than requiring users to navigate menus or learn a distinct command vocabulary for every operating mode of the program, certain single-keystroke commands were repeated throughout the user interface, performing the most obviously appropriate function for the task at hand. The most important of these commands was the space character, which means "go on to the next thing", where the next thing could be the next page, the next article, or the next newsgroup, depending on where the user was in the process of reading news. Finally, automatic configuration was a feature for system administrators, not visible to users. Most Unix programs, and in particular all of the Usenet software, were distributed in source code form. Because different vendors of Unix systems (and in many cases, different versions of the Unix software) implemented slightly different behavior and names for important functions, a system administrator was required to have sufficient programming expertise to edit the source code before building the program executables to account for these differences. A particularly considerate programmer might have centralized these in a single source code file, but it still required manual editing. rn changed that by including a script called , which had enough intelligence on its own to examine the computer system it was running on and determine, of those functions and interfaces known to behave differently, which behavior the system implemented. Today, most open source software is distributed with a similar script, such as autoconf. History Like all of the original newsreaders and the Usenet software itself, rn was designed for the environment of a large time-shared minicomputer, which users connected to using terminals wired directly to the machine, and where the only networks available were accessed by slow and expensive dial-up modem connections. All of the articles in all of the newsgroups were stored in files on the local disk (known as the "news spool"), and rn could simply read those files directly when presenting them to the user. When local area networks became widespread, it was natural that administrators and users would desire remote access to the news spool, and NNTP, the Network News Transfer Protocol, was developed to serve that need. While working at Baylor College of Medicine, Stan O. Barber developed remote rn (rrn), a set of patches to rn which allowed it to communicate with an NNTP server over a local-area (or even wide-area) network. Barber later took over maintenance responsibility for rn itself from Larry Wall. As news volumes continued to | navigate menus or learn a distinct command vocabulary for every operating mode of the program, certain single-keystroke commands were repeated throughout the user interface, performing the most obviously appropriate function for the task at hand. The most important of these commands was the space character, which means "go on to the next thing", where the next thing could be the next page, the next article, or the next newsgroup, depending on where the user was in the process of reading news. Finally, automatic configuration was a feature for system administrators, not visible to users. Most Unix programs, and in particular all of the Usenet software, were distributed in source code form. Because different vendors of Unix systems (and in many cases, different versions of the Unix software) implemented slightly different behavior and names for important functions, a system administrator was required to have sufficient programming expertise to edit the source code before building the program executables to account for these differences. A particularly considerate programmer might have centralized these in a single source code file, but it still required manual editing. rn changed that by including a script called , which had enough intelligence on its own to examine the computer system it was running on and determine, of those functions and interfaces known to behave differently, which behavior the system implemented. Today, most open source software is distributed with a similar script, such as autoconf. History Like all of the original newsreaders and the Usenet software itself, rn was designed for the environment of a large time-shared minicomputer, which users connected to using terminals wired directly to the machine, and where the only networks available were accessed by slow and expensive dial-up modem connections. All of the articles in all of the newsgroups were stored in files on the local disk (known as the "news spool"), and rn could simply read those files directly when presenting them to the user. When local area networks became widespread, it was natural that administrators and users would desire remote access to the news spool, and NNTP, the Network News Transfer Protocol, was developed to serve that need. While working at Baylor College of Medicine, Stan O. Barber developed remote rn (rrn), a set of patches to rn which allowed it to communicate with an NNTP server over a local-area (or even wide-area) network. Barber later took over maintenance responsibility for rn itself from Larry Wall. As news |
to 1983, he was a representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, and he has worked on various other disarmament committees and commissions. Between 1991 and 1997 he was director of the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq, the United Nations disarmament observers in Iraq after the Gulf War. In late July 2002 he reportedly said in the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper that during his time in this position he attempted to resist attempts by the United States to use the commission to perform espionage. His successor as director was Richard Butler. The journalist Andrew Cockburn reported in The First Post that Ekéus told him how the former US President Bill Clinton attempted to prevent Saddam Hussein's Iraq from being certified as free of weapons of mass destruction. Despite Ekéus' belief that Iraq was nearly certifiable as being free of such weapons, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced that United Nations sanctions would not be lifted until such time as Hussein was no longer in power. Ekéus later became Sweden's ambassador to the United States and the chairman of the board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. According to the journalist Christopher Hitchens, Ekéus "told me that he'd been offered by Tariq Aziz in person, to his face, a bribe of a | Ekéus later became Sweden's ambassador to the United States and the chairman of the board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. According to the journalist Christopher Hitchens, Ekéus "told me that he'd been offered by Tariq Aziz in person, to his face, a bribe of a million and a half dollars to change his inspection report. That was going on throughout the entire process. Rolf wouldn't, of course, agree to take it, but if they were asking him, it means they were asking everybody." The story has also been covered by The Telegraph. In January 2000, Ekéus was nominated to head the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission (UNMOVIC), charged with investigating allegations that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. But Ekéus' name failed to receive the approval of the UN Security Council, due to the opposition of France, Russia and China, and so Hans Blix was appointed instead. Ekéus was High Commissioner on National Minorities at the OSCE from 2001 till 2007, as well as on the board of directors for the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). Since 2005, Ekéus has been a Commissioner of the International Commission on Missing Persons |
the Melbourne University Magazine. He wrote both prose and poetry for the magazine, and also contributed a song about "little Billy Hughes" to an end-of-year revue. Menzies was also president of the Students' Christian Union, a founding member of the Historical Society, and a prominent member of the Law Students' Society. He had "a reputation as an "unusually bright and articulate member of the undergraduate community", and was known as a skilful debater. However, he had also begun to develop the traits of pomposity and arrogance that would cause difficulties later in his career. His fellow law student and future parliamentary colleague Percy Joske noted Menzies as a student "did not suffer fools gladly [...] the trouble was that his opponents frequently were not fools and that he tended to say things that were not only cutting and unkind but that were unjustified". During World War I, Menzies served his compulsory militia service in the Melbourne University Rifles (a part-time militia unit) from 1915 to 1919. This unit was not efficient and Menzies noted in his diary that training in even basic skills such as rifle shooting was sub-standard. He was commissioned a second lieutenant on 6 January 1915. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not volunteer for overseas service, something that would later be used against him by political opponents; in 1939 he described it as "a stream of mud through which I have waded at every campaign in which I have participated". Menzies never publicly addressed the reasons for his decision not to enlist, stating only that they were "compelling" and related to his "intimate personal and family affairs". His two older brothers did serve overseas. In a 1972 interview, his brother Frank Menzies recalled that a "family conference" had determined that Robert should not enlist. They believed that having two of the family's three adult sons serving overseas was a sufficiently patriotic contribution to the war effort, and that the family's interests would be served best by Robert continuing his academic career. Another reason for keeping one of the elder sons home was the health of their father, James, who was physically unwell and emotionally unstable at the time. It has been noted that, as a student, Menzies supported the introduction of compulsory overseas conscription, which if implemented would have made him one of the first to be conscripted. Promoted to lieutenant, he resigned his commission with effect from 16 February 1921. Legal career After graduating from the University of Melbourne in 1916 with first-class honours in Law, Menzies was admitted to the Victorian Bar and to the High Court of Australia in 1918. Establishing his own practice in Melbourne, Menzies specialised chiefly in constitutional law which he had read with the leading Victorian jurist and future High Court judge, Sir Owen Dixon. In 1920, Menzies served as an advocate for the Amalgamated Society of Engineers which eventually took its appeal to the High Court of Australia. The case became a landmark authority for the positive reinterpretation of Commonwealth powers over those of the States. The High Court's verdict raised Menzies's profile as a skilled advocate, and eventually he was appointed a King's Counsel in 1929. Career in Victorian state politics, 1928–1934 In 1928, Menzies entered state parliament as a member of the Victorian Legislative Council from East Yarra Province, representing the Nationalist Party of Australia. He stood for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, the sanctity of contracts and the jealous preservation of existing institutions. Suspicious of the Labor Party, Menzies stressed the superiority of free enterprise except for certain public utilities such as the railways. His candidacy was nearly defeated when a group of ex-servicemen attacked him in the press for not having enlisted, but he survived this crisis. Within weeks of his entry to parliament, he was made a minister without portfolio in a new minority Nationalist State government led by Premier William McPherson. The new government had formed when the previous Labor government lost the support of the cross-bench Country Progressives. The following year he shifted to the Legislative Assembly as the member for Nunawading. In 1929, he founded the Young Nationalists as his party's youth wing and served as its first president. Holding the portfolios of Attorney-General and Minister for the Railways, Menzies served as Deputy Premier of Victoria from May 1932 until July 1934. Early career in federal politics, 1934–1939 In August 1934, Menzies resigned from state parliament to contest the federal seat of Kooyong in the upcoming general election for the United Australia Party (UAP—the Nationalists had merged with other non-Labor groups to form the UAP during his tenure as a state parliamentarian). The previous member, John Latham, had given up the seat in order to prepare for appointment as Chief Justice of Australia. Kooyong was a safely conservative seat based on Kew, and Menzies won easily. He was immediately appointed Attorney-General and Minister for Industry in the Lyons government. In 1937 he was appointed a Privy Counsellor. In late 1934 and early 1935 Menzies, then attorney-general, unsuccessfully prosecuted the government's highly controversial case for the attempted exclusion from Australia of Egon Kisch, a Czech Jewish communist. The initial prohibition on Kisch's entry to Australia, however, had not been imposed by Menzies but by the Country Party minister for the interior, Thomas Paterson. Menzies had extended discussions with British experts on Germany in 1935, but could not make up his mind whether Adolf Hitler was a "real German patriot" or a "mad swash-buckler". He expressed both views with an inclination to the former, says historian David Bird. In published essays in 1936, he called for a "live and let-live" attitude. He condemned Nazi antisemitism, in 1933 writing to the organisers of an anti-Nazi protest at the Melbourne Town Hall that "I hope that I may be associated with the protest of the meeting tonight against the barbaric and medieval persecution to which their fellow Jews in Europe are apparently being subjected". In 1939, Menzies described that "history will label Hitler as one of the great men of the century". In August 1938, while Attorney-General of Australia, Menzies spent several weeks on an official visit to Nazi Germany. He was strongly committed to democracy for the British peoples, but he initially thought that the Germans should take care of their own affairs. He strongly supported the appeasement policies of the Chamberlain government in London, and sincerely believed that war could and should be avoided at all costs. after the visit to Germany in 1938, Menzies wrote that the "abandonment by the Germans of individual liberty ... has something rather magnificent about it". Menzies also praised the "really spiritual quality in the willingness of Germans to devote themselves to the service and well-being of the state". Menzies supported British foreign policy, including appeasement, and was initially reticent about the prospect of going to war with Germany. However, by September 1939 the unfolding crisis in Europe changed his public stance that the diplomatic efforts by Chamberlain and other leaders to broker a peace agreement had failed, and that war was now an inevitability. In his Declaration of War broadcast on 3 September 1939, Menzies explained the dramatic turn of events over the past twelve months necessitating this change of course: In those past 12 months, what has happened? in cold-blooded breach of the solemn obligations implied in both the statements I have quoted, Hitler has annexed the whole of the Czechoslovak state. Has, without flickering an eyelid, made a pact with Russia, a country the denouncing and reviling of which has been his chief stock-in-trade ever since he became chancellor. And has now, under circumstances which I will describe to you, invaded with armed force and in defiance of civilised opinion, the independent nation of Poland. Your own comments on this dreadful history will need no reinforcement by me. All I need say is, that whatever the inflamed ambitions of the German Führer may be, he will undoubtedly learn, as other great enemies of freedom have learned before, that no empire, no dominion, can be soundly established upon a basis of broken promises or dishonoured agreements. Menzies went on to say that if Hitler's expansionist "policy were allowed to go unchecked there could be no security in Europe and there could be no just peace for the world". However, in a letter written by Menzies on 11 September 1939, he privately urged for peace negotiations and the continuation of appeasement with Hitler. Meanwhile, on the domestic front, animosity developed between Sir Earle Page and Menzies which was aggravated when Page became Acting Prime Minister during Lyons's illness after October 1938. Menzies and Page attacked each other publicly. He later became deputy leader of the UAP. His supporters began promoting him as Lyons's natural successor; his critics accused Menzies of wanting to push Lyons out, a charge he denied. In 1938, as part of the Dalfram dispute, he was ridiculed as Pig Iron Bob, the result of an industrial conflict with the Waterside Workers' Federation whose members had refused to load Australian pig iron being sold to an arms manufacturer in the Empire of Japan, for that country's war against China. In 1939, he resigned from the Cabinet in protest at postponement of the national insurance scheme and insufficient expenditure on defence. First period as prime minister, 1939–1941 With Lyons's sudden death on 7 April 1939, Page became caretaker prime minister until the UAP could elect a new leader. On 18 April 1939, Menzies was elected party leader over three other candidates. He was sworn in as prime minister eight days later. A crisis arose almost immediately, however, when Page refused to serve under him. In an extraordinary personal attack in the House, Page accused Menzies of cowardice for not having enlisted in the War, and of treachery to Lyons. Menzies then formed a minority government. When Page was deposed as Country Party leader a few months later, Menzies took the Country Party back into his government in a full-fledged Coalition, with Page's successor, Archie Cameron, as number-two-man in the government. On 3 September 1939 Britain and France declared war on Germany due to its invasion of Poland on 1 September, leading to the start of World War II. Menzies responded immediately by also declaring Australia to be at war in support of Britain, and delivered a radio broadcast to the nation on that same day, which began "Fellow Australians. It is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her and that, as a result, Australia is also at war." A couple of days after the declaration, Menzies recalled parliament and asked for general support as the government faced the enormous responsibility of leading the nation in war time. Page and Curtin, as party leaders, pledged their support for all that needed to be done for the defence of the country. Thus, Menzies at the age of 44 found himself a wartime leader of a small nation of 7 million people. He was especially worried about the military threat from Japan. Australia had very small forces, and depended on Britain for defence against the looming threat of the Japanese Empire, with its 100 million people, a very powerful Army and Navy and an aggressive foreign policy. He hoped that a policy of appeasement would head off a war with Japan, and repeatedly pressured London. Menzies did his best to rally the country, but the bitter memories of the disillusionment which followed World War I made his task difficult; this was compounded by his lack of a service record. Furthermore, as attorney-general and deputy prime minister, he had made an official visit to Germany in 1938, when the official policy of the Australian government, supported by the Opposition, was strong support for Neville Chamberlain's policy of Appeasement. Menzies, then also holding the responsibility for the Department of Munitions created a couple of months earlier, led the Coalition into the 1940 election and suffered an eight-seat swing, losing the slender majority he had inherited from Lyons. The result was a hung parliament, with the Coalition two seats short of a majority. Menzies managed to form a minority government with the support of two independent MPs, Arthur Coles and Alex Wilson. Labor, led by John Curtin, refused Menzies's offer to form a war coalition, and opposed using the Australian army for a European war, preferring to keep it at home to defend Australia. Labor agreed to participate in the Advisory War Council. Menzies sent the bulk of the army to help the British in the Middle East and Singapore, and told Winston Churchill the Royal Navy needed to strengthen its Far Eastern forces. Closely prior to the September 1940 election, on 13 August 1940, three members of Menzies's cabinet had been killed in an air crash—the Canberra air disaster—along with General Brudenell White, Chief of the General Staff; two other passengers and four crew. This event weakened Menzies's government. From 24 January 1941, Menzies spent four months in Britain discussing war strategy with Churchill and other Empire leaders, while his position at home deteriorated. En route to the UK he took the opportunity to stop over to visit Australian troops serving in the North African Campaign. Professor David Day, an Australian historian, has posited that Menzies might have replaced Churchill as British prime minister, and that he had some support in the UK for this. Support came from Viscount Astor, Lord Beaverbrook and former WWI Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who were trenchant critics of Churchill's purportedly autocratic style, and favoured replacing him with Menzies, who had some public support for staying on in the War Cabinet for the duration, which was strongly backed by Sir Maurice Hankey, former WWI Colonel and member of both the WWI and WWII War Cabinets. Writer Gerard Henderson has rejected this theory, but history professors Judith Brett and Joan Beaumont support Day, as does Menzies's daughter, Heather Henderson, who claimed Lady Astor "even offered all her sapphires if he would stay on in England". Menzies came home to a hero's welcome. However, his support in Parliament was less certain. Not only did some Coalition MPs doubt his popularity in the electorate, but they also believed that a national unity government was the only long-term solution. Matters came to a head in August, when the cabinet voted to have Menzies return to London to speak for Australia's interests in the War Cabinet. However, since Labor and the Coalition were level (both sides had 36 MPs), Menzies needed the support of the Labor Party in order to travel to Britain. Amid rumours that Menzies's real intention was to launch a political career in Britain, Labor insisted that the crisis was too dire for Menzies to leave the country. With Labor unwilling to support him travelling to London and his position within his own party room weakening, Menzies called an emergency cabinet meeting. He announced his intention to resign and advise the Governor-General, Lord Gowrie to commission Curtin as Prime Minister. The Cabinet instead urged Menzies to make another overture to Labor for a national unity government, but Labor turned the offer down. With his position now untenable, Menzies resigned the prime ministership on 27 August 1941. A joint UAP-Country Party conference chose Country Party leader Arthur Fadden as Coalition leader—and hence Prime Minister—even though the Country Party was the junior partner in the Coalition. Menzies was bitter about this treatment from his colleagues, and nearly left politics, but was persuaded to become Minister for Defence Co-ordination in Fadden's cabinet. The Fadden Government lasted only 40 days before being defeated on a confidence motion. On 9 October 1941, Menzies resigned as leader of the UAP after failing to convince his colleagues that he should become Leader of the Opposition in preference to Fadden. He was replaced as UAP leader by former prime minister Billy Hughes, who was 79 years old at the time. Formation of Liberal Party and Return to Power Menzies's Forgotten People During his time in the political wilderness Menzies built up a large popular base of support by his frequent appeals, often by radio, to ordinary non-elite working citizens whom he called 'the Forgotten People'—especially those who were not suburban and rich or members of organised labour. From November 1941, he began a series of weekly radio broadcasts reaching audiences across New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. A selection of these talks was edited into a book bearing the title of his most famous address, The Forgotten People, delivered on 22 May 1942. In this landmark address, Menzies appealed to his support base: I do not believe that the real life of this nation is to be found either in great luxury hotels and the petty gossip of so-called fashionable suburbs, or in the officialdom of the organised masses. It is to be found in the homes of people who are nameless and unadvertised, and who, whatever their individual religious conviction or dogma, see in their children their greatest contribution to the immortality of their race. The home is the foundation of sanity and sobriety; it is the indispensable condition of continuity; its health determines the health of society as a whole. Menzies himself described The Forgotten People collection as 'a summarised political philosophy'. Representing the blueprint of his liberal philosophy, The Forgotten People encompassed a wide range of topics including Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, the control of the war, the role of women in war and peace, the future of capitalism, the nature of democracy and especially the role of the middle class, 'the forgotten people' of the title and their importance to Australia's future as a democracy. The addresses frequently emphasised the values which Menzies regarded as critical to shaping Australia's wartime and postwar policies. These were essentially the principles of liberalism: individual freedom, personal and community responsibility, the rule of law, parliamentary government, economic prosperity and progress based on private enterprise and reward for effort. After losing the UAP leadership, Menzies moved to the backbench. Besides his overall sense of duty, the war would have made it nearly impossible for him to return to his legal practice in any event. Labor won a crushing victory at the 1943 election, taking 49 of 74 seats and 58.2 percent of the two-party-preferred vote as well as a Senate majority. The Coalition, which had sunk into near-paralysis in opposition, was knocked down to only 19 seats. Hughes resigned as UAP leader, and Menzies was elected as his successor on the second ballot, defeating three other candidates. The UAP also voted to end the joint opposition arrangement with the Country Party, allowing Menzies to replace Fadden as opposition leader. Formation of the Liberal Party of Australia Soon after his return, Menzies concluded that the UAP was at the end of its useful life. Menzies called a conference of anti-Labor parties with meetings in Canberra on 13 October 1944 and again in Albury (NSW) in December 1944. At the Canberra conference, the fourteen parties, with the UAP as the nucleus, decided to merge as one new non-Labor party—the Liberal Party of Australia. The organisational structure and constitutional framework of the new party was formulated at the Albury Conference. Officially launched at the Sydney Town Hall on 31 August 1945, the Menzies-led Liberal Party of Australia inherited the UAP's role as senior partner in the Coalition. Curtin died in office in 1945 and was succeeded by Ben Chifley. The reconfigured Coalition faced its first national test in the 1946 election. It won 26 of 74 seats on 45.9 percent of the two-party vote, and remained in minority in the Senate. Despite winning a seven-seat swing, the Coalition failed to make a serious dent in Labor's large majority. 1949 election campaign Over the next few years, however, the anti-communist atmosphere of the early Cold War began to erode Labor's support. In 1947, Chifley announced that he intended to nationalise Australia's private banks, arousing intense middle-class opposition which Menzies successfully exploited. In addition to campaigning against Chifley's bank nationalization proposal, Menzies successfully led the 'No' case for a referendum by the Chifley government in 1948 to extend commonwealth wartime powers to control rents and prices. In the election campaign of 1949, Menzies and his party were resolved to stamp out the communist movement and to fight in the interests of free enterprise against what they termed as Labor's 'socialistic measures'. If Menzies won office, he pledged to counter inflation, extend child endowment and end petrol rationing. With the lower house enlarged from 74 to 121 seats, the Menzies Liberal/Country Coalition won the 1949 election with 74 House seats and 51.0 percent of the two-party vote but remained in minority in the Senate. Whatever else Menzies's victory represented, his anti-communism and advocacy for free enterprise had captured a new and formidable support base in postwar Australian society. Second period as prime minister, 1949–1966 After his election victory, Menzies returned to the office of Prime Minister on 19 December 1949. Cold War and national security The spectre of communism and the threat it was deemed to pose to national security became the dominant preoccupation of the new government in its first phase. Menzies introduced legislation in 1950 to ban the Communist Party, hoping that the Senate would reject it and give him a trigger for a double dissolution election, but Labor let the bill pass. It was subsequently ruled unconstitutional by the High Court. But when the Senate rejected his banking bill, he called a double dissolution election. At that election, the Coalition suffered a five-seat swing, winning 69 of 121 seats and 50.7 percent of the two-party vote. However, it won six seats in the Senate, giving it control of both chambers. Later in 1951 Menzies decided to hold a referendum on the question of changing the Constitution to permit the parliament to make laws in respect of Communists and Communism where he said this was necessary for the security of the Commonwealth. If passed, this would have given a government the power to introduce a bill proposing to ban the Communist Party. Chifley died a few months after the 1951 election. The new Labor leader, Dr H. V. Evatt, campaigned against the referendum on civil liberties grounds, and it was narrowly defeated. Menzies sent Australian troops to the Korean War. Economic conditions deteriorated in the early 1950s and Labor was confident of winning the 1954 election. Shortly before the election, Menzies announced that a Soviet diplomat in Australia Vladimir Petrov, had defected, and that there was evidence of a Soviet spy ring in Australia, including members of Evatt's staff. Evatt felt compelled to state on the floor of Parliament that he'd personally written to Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, who assured him there were no Soviet spy rings in Australia, bringing the House into silence momentarily before both sides of Parliament laughed at Evatt's naivety. This Cold War scare was claimed by some to enable the Menzies government to win the election. The Menzies government won 64 of 121 seats and 49.3 percent of the two-party vote. Evatt accused Menzies of arranging Petrov's defection. The aftermath of the 1954 election caused a split in the Labor Party, with several anti-Communist members from Victoria defecting to form the Australian Labor Party (Anti-Communist). The new party directed its preferences to the Liberals, with the Menzies government re-elected with an increased majority at the 1955 election. Menzies was re-elected | the Parliament on Aboriginal voting rights and in 1962, Menzies's Commonwealth Electoral Act provided that all Indigenous Australians should have the right to enrol and vote at federal elections. In 1960, the Menzies Government introduced a new pharmaceutical benefits scheme, which expanded the range of prescribed medicines subsidised by the government. Other social welfare measures of the government included the extension of the Commonwealth Child Endowment scheme, the pensioner medical and free medicines service, the Aged Persons' Homes Assistance scheme, free provision of life-saving drugs; the provision of supplementary pensions to dependent pensioners paying rent; increased rates of pension, unemployment and sickness benefits, and rehabilitation allowances; and a substantial system of tax incentives and rewards. In 1961, the Matrimonial Causes Act introduced a uniform divorce law across Australia, provided funding for marriage counselling services and made allowances for a specified period of separation as sufficient grounds for a divorce. In response to the decision by the Catholic Diocese of Goulburn in July 1962 to close its schools in protest at the lack of government assistance, the Menzies Government announced a new package of state aid for independent and Catholic schools. Menzies promised five million pounds annually for the provision of buildings and equipment facilities for science teaching in secondary schools. Also promised were 10 000 scholarships to help students stay at school for the last two years with a further 2 500 scholarships for technical schools. Despite the historically firm Catholic support base of the Labor Party, the Opposition under Calwell opposed state aid before eventually supporting it with the ascension of Gough Whitlam as Labor leader. In 1965, the Menzies Government took the decision to end open discrimination against married women in the public service, by allowing them to become permanent public servants, and allowing female officers who were already permanent public servants to retain that status after marriage. Immigration policy The Menzies government maintained and indeed expanded the Chifley Labor government's postwar immigration scheme established by Immigration Minister, Arthur Calwell in 1947. Beginning in 1949, Immigration Minister Harold Holt decided to allow 800 non-European war refugees to remain in Australia, and Japanese war brides to be admitted to Australia. In 1950, External Affairs Minister Percy Spender instigated the Colombo Plan, under which students from Asian countries were admitted to study at Australian universities, then in 1957, non-Europeans with 15 years' residence in Australia were allowed to become citizens. In a watershed legal reform, a 1958 revision of the Migration Act introduced a simpler system for entry and abolished the "dictation test" which had permitted the exclusion of migrants on the basis of their ability to take down a dictation offered in any European language. Immigration Minister, Sir Alexander Downer, announced that 'distinguished and highly qualified Asians' might immigrate. Restrictions continued to be relaxed through the 1960s in the lead up to the Holt Government's watershed Migration Act, 1966. This was despite when in a discussion with radio 2UE's Stewart Lamb in 1955 he was a defender of the White Australia policy. (Menzies) "I don't want to see reproduced in Australia the kind of problem they have in South Africa or in America or increasingly in Great Britain. I think it's been a very good policy and it's been of great value to us and most of the criticism of it that I've ever heard doesn't come from these oriental countries it comes from wandering Australians. (Lamb) "For these years of course in the past Sir Robert you have been described as a racist." (Menzies) "Have I?" (Lamb) "I have read this, yes." (Menzies) "Well if I were not described as a racist I'd be the only public man who hasn't been." Higher education expansion The Menzies government extended Federal involvement in higher education and introduced the Commonwealth scholarship scheme in 1951, to cover fees and pay a generous means-tested allowance for promising students from lower socioeconomic groups. In 1956, a committee headed by Sir Keith Murray was established to inquire into the financial plight of Australia's universities, and Menzies's pumped funds into the sector under conditions which preserved the autonomy of universities. In its support for higher education, the Menzies government tripled Federal government funding and provided emergency grants, significant increases in academic salaries, extra funding for buildings, and the establishment of a permanent committee, from 1961, to oversee and make recommendations concerning higher education. Development of Canberra as a national capital The Menzies government developed the city of Canberra as the national capital. In 1957, the Menzies government established the National Capital Development Commission as independent statutory authority charged with overseeing the planning and development of Canberra. During Menzies time in office, the great bulk of the federal public service moved from the state capitals to Canberra. After politics Menzies turned 71 in December 1965 and began telling others of his intention to retire in the new year. He informed cabinet of his decision on 19 January 1966 and resigned as leader of the Liberal Party the following day; Harold Holt was elected unopposed as his successor. Holt's swearing-in was delayed by the death of Defence Minister Shane Paltridge on 21 January. Menzies and Holt were pall-bearers at Paltridge's state funeral in Perth on 25 January, before returning to Canberra where Menzies formally concluded his term on 26 January. Menzies's farewell press conference was the first political press conference telecast live in Australia. He resigned from Parliament on 17 February, ending 32 years in Parliament (most of them spent as either a cabinet minister or opposition frontbencher), a combined 25 years as leader of the non-Labor Coalition, and 38 years as an elected official. To date, Menzies is the last Australian prime minister to leave office on his or her own terms. He was succeeded as Liberal Party leader and prime minister by his former treasurer, Harold Holt. He left office at the age of 71 years, 1 month and 6 days, making him the oldest person ever to be prime minister. Although the coalition remained in power for almost another seven years (until the 1972 Federal election), it did so under four different prime ministers, largely due to his successor's death, only 22 months after taking office. On his retirement he became the thirteenth chancellor of the University of Melbourne and remained the head of the university from March 1967 until March 1972. Much earlier, in 1942, he had received the first honorary degree of Doctor of Laws of Melbourne University. His responsibility for the revival and growth of university life in Australia was widely acknowledged by the award of honorary degrees in the Universities of Queensland, Adelaide, Tasmania, New South Wales, and the Australian National University and by thirteen universities in Canada, the United States and Britain, including Oxford and Cambridge. Many learned institutions, including the Royal College of Surgeons (Hon. FRCS) and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (Hon. FRACP), elected him to Honorary Fellowships, and the Australian Academy of Science, for which he supported its establishment in 1954, made him a fellow (FAAS) in 1958. On 7 October 1965, Menzies was installed as the ceremonial office of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and Constable of Dover Castle as appointed by the Queen, which included an official residence at Walmer Castle during his annual visits to Britain. At the end of 1966 Menzies took up a scholar-in-residence position at the University of Virginia. He presented a series of lectures, published the following year as Central Power in the Australian Commonwealth. He later published two volumes of memoirs. In March 1967 he was elected Chancellor of Melbourne University, serving a five-year term. In 1971, Menzies suffered a severe stroke and was permanently paralysed on one side of his body for the remainder of his life. He suffered a second stroke in 1972. His official biographer, Lady McNicoll wrote after his death in The Australian that Menzies was "splendid and sharp right up until the end" also that "each morning he underwent physiotherapy and being helped to face the day." In March 1977, Menzies accepted his knighthood of the Order of Australia (AK) from Queen Elizabeth in a wheelchair in the Long Room of the Melbourne Cricket Ground during the Centenary Test. Personal life On 27 September 1920, Menzies married Pattie Leckie at Kew Presbyterian Church in Melbourne. Pattie Leckie was the eldest daughter of John Leckie, a Deakinite Commonwealth Liberal who was elected the member for Benambra in the Victorian Legislative Assembly in 1913. Soon after their marriage, the Menzies bought the house in Howard Street, Kew, which would become their family home for 25 years. They had three surviving children: Kenneth (1922–1993), Robert Jr (known by his middle name, Ian; 1923–1974) and a daughter, Margery (known by her middle name, Heather; born 1928). Another child died at birth. Kenneth was born in Hawthorn on 14 January 1922. He married Marjorie Cook on 16 September 1949, and had six children; Alec, Lindsay, Robert III, Diana, Donald, and Geoffrey. He died in Kooyong on 8 September 1993. Ian and Heather were both born in Kew, on 12 October 1923 and 3 August 1928, respectively. Ian was afflicted with an undisclosed illness for most of his life. He never married, nor had children, and died in 1974 in East Melbourne at the age of 50. Heather married Peter Henderson, a diplomat and public servant (working at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia at the time of their marriage, and serving as the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs from 1979 to 1984), on 1 May 1955. A daughter, Roberta, named after Menzies, was born in 1956. She was instrumental in the development of Canberra and the Australian Capital Territory, and lives in Canberra. According to Mungo MacCallum, Menzies as prime minister engaged in an extramarital affair with Betty Fairfax, the first wife of Sir Warwick Oswald Fairfax. That claim was subsequently disputed by Gerard Henderson and Menzies's own family. Death and funeral Menzies died from a heart attack while reading in his study at his Haverbrack Avenue home in Malvern, Melbourne on 15 May 1978. Tributes from across the world were sent to the Menzies family. Notably among those were from HM Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia: "I was distressed to hear of the death of Sir Robert Menzies. He was a distinguished Australian whose contribution to his country and the Commonwealth will long be remembered", and from Malcolm Fraser, Prime Minister of Australia: "All Australians will mourn his passing. Sir Robert leaves an enduring mark on Australian history." Menzies was accorded a state funeral, held in Scots' Church, Melbourne on 19 May, at which Prince Charles represented the Queen. Other dignitaries to attend included current and former Prime Ministers of Australia Malcolm Fraser, John McEwen, John Gorton and William McMahon (The two surviving Labor Prime Ministers Frank Forde and Gough Whitlam did not attend the funeral), as well as the Governor General of Australia, Sir Zelman Cowan. Former Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom Alec Douglas-Home and Harold Wilson also attended. The service was and is to this day one of the largest state funerals ever held in Australia, with over 100,000 people lining the streets of Melbourne from Scots' Church to Springvale Crematorium, where a private service was held for the Menzies family and a 19-gun salute was fired at the end of the ceremony. In July 1978, a memorial service was held for Menzies in the United Kingdom at Westminster Abbey. Sir Robert and Dame Pattie Menzies's ashes are interred in the 'Prime Ministers Garden' within the grounds of Melbourne General Cemetery. Some of Menzies's detractors also commemorated his passing in 1978, with a screenprinted poster, Pig Iron Bob / Dead at last, designed by Chips Mackinolty from the Earthworks Poster Collective. Religious views Menzies was the son of a Presbyterian-turned-Methodist lay preacher and imbibed his father's Protestant faith and values. During his studies at the University of Melbourne, Menzies served as president of the Students' Christian Union. Proud of his Scottish Presbyterian heritage with a living faith steeped in the Bible, Menzies nonetheless preached religious freedom and non-sectarianism as the norm for Australia. Indeed, his cooperation with Australian Catholics on the contentious state aid issue was recognised when he was invited as guest of honour to the annual Cardinal's Dinner in Sydney 1964, presided over by Cardinal Norman Gilroy. Legacy and assessment Menzies was by far the longest-serving Prime Minister of Australia, in office for a combined total of 18 years, five months and 12 days. His second period of 16 years, one month and seven days is by far the longest unbroken tenure in that office. During his second period he dominated Australian politics as no one else has ever done. He managed to live down the failures of his first period in office and to rebuild the conservative side of politics from the nadir it hit at the 1943 election. However, it can also be noted that while retaining government on each occasion, Menzies lost the two-party-preferred vote at three separate elections – in 1940, 1954 and 1961. He was the only Australian prime minister to recommend the appointment of four governors-general (Viscount Slim, and Lords Dunrossil, De L'Isle, and Casey). Only two other prime ministers have ever chosen more than one governor-general. The Menzies era saw Australia become an increasingly affluent society, with average weekly earnings in 1965 50% higher in real terms than in 1945. The increased prosperity enjoyed by most Australians during this period was accompanied by a general increase in leisure time, with the five-day workweek becoming the norm by the mid-Sixties, together with three weeks of paid annual leave. Several books have been filled with anecdotes about Menzies. While he was speaking in Williamstown, Victoria, in 1954, a heckler shouted, "I wouldn't vote for you if you were the Archangel Gabriel"to which Menzies coolly replied "If I were the Archangel Gabriel, I'm afraid you wouldn't be in my constituency." Jo Gullett, who first knew him as a family friend of his father, Henry Gullett, wartime Minister for External Affairs, and who later served under Menzies as a Liberal Party member of parliament himself in Canberra in the 1950s, offered this assessment. Planning for an official biography of Menzies began soon after his death, but it was long delayed by Dame Pattie Menzies's protection of her husband's reputation and her refusal to co-operate with the appointed biographer. In 1991, the Menzies family appointed A. W. Martin to write a biography, which appeared in two volumes, in 1993 and 1999. In 2019, Troy Bramston, a journalist for The Australian and a political historian, wrote the first biography of Menzies since Martin's two volumes, titled Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics. Bramston had access to previously unavailable Menzies family papers, conducted new interviews with Menzies' contemporaries and it was endorsed by Menzies' daughter, Heather Henderson. It was described as having "the most attractive combination of research and readability" of all the Menzies biographies. The National Museum of Australia in Canberra holds a significant collection of memorabilia relating to Robert Menzies, including a range of medals and civil awards received by Sir Robert such as his Jubilee and Coronation medals, Order of Australia, Companion of Honour and US Legion of Merit. There are also a number of special presentation items including a walking stick, cigar boxes, silver gravy boats from the Kooyong electorate and a silver inkstand presented by Queen Elizabeth II. Robert Menzies's personal library of almost 4,000 books is held at the University of Melbourne Library. Published works To the people of Britain at war from the Prime Minister of Australia. Speeches delivered in Great Britain in 1941. (Longmans Green and Co, 1941) The Forgotten People and Other Studies in Democracy (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1942) Speech is of Time: Selected Speeches and Writings (London: Cassell, 1958) Afternoon Light: Some Memories of Men and Events (Melbourne: Cassell Australia, 1967) Central Power in the Australian Commonwealth: An Examination of the Growth of Commonwealth Power in the Australian Federation (London: Cassell, 1967) The Measure of the Years (Melbourne: Cassell Australia, 1970) Dark and Hurrying Days: Menzies's 1941 Diary (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1993) Letters to My Daughter (Miller's Point: Murdoch Books, 2011) Titles and honours In 1950 Menzies was awarded the Legion of Merit (Chief Commander) by US President Harry S. Truman for "exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services 1941–1944 and December 1949 – July 1950". On 1 January 1951 he was appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) On 29 August 1952, the University of Sydney conferred the degree of Doctor of Laws (honoris causa) on Menzies. Similarly, He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws by the Universities of Bristol, Belfast, Melbourne, British Columbia, McGill, Montreal, Malta, Laval, Quebec, Tasmania, Cambridge, Harvard, Leeds, Adelaide, Queensland, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Drury and California. In 1954, the portrait painting Rt. Hon. R. G. Menzies, PC, CH, QC, MP by Sir Ivor Hele won the Archibald Prize On 4 April 1960, a portrait of Menzies by Sir William Dargie was the front cover of Time magazine. This portrait is held by the Art Gallery of New South Wales In 1963, Menzies was appointed a Knight of the Order of the Thistle (KT), the order being chosen in recognition of his Scottish heritage. He is the only Australian ever appointed to this order. He was the second of only two Australian prime ministers to be knighted during their term of office (the first prime minister, Edmund Barton, was knighted during his term in 1902). On 29 April 1964 Menzies was awarded the honorary degree of a Doctor of Letters (DLitt) by the University of Western Australia. Menzies was also awarded with an Honorary Doctor of Science by the University of New South Wales. In 1973 Menzies was awarded Japan's Order of the Rising Sun, Grand Cordon, First Class (other Australian prime ministers to be awarded this honour were Edmund Barton, John McEwen, Malcolm Fraser and Gough Whitlam). On 7 June 1976, he was appointed a Knight of the Order of Australia (AK). The category of Knight of the order had been created only on 24 May, and the Chancellor and Principal Knight of the Order, the Governor-General Sir John Kerr, became the first appointee, ex officio. Menzies's was the first appointment made after this. In 1984, the Australian Electoral Commission proclaimed at a redistribution on 14 September 1984, the Division of Menzies for representation in the Australian House of Representatives in honour of the former prime minister. The division neighbours Menzies's old division of Kooyong in metropolitan Melbourne, Victoria. In 1994, the year of the centenary of Menzies's birth, the Menzies Research Centre was created as an independent public policy think tank associated with the Liberal Party. In 2009, during the Australia Day celebrations, the R.G. Menzies Walk was officially opened by the then Governor-General, Quentin Bryce. The walk runs alongside the northern shore of Lake Burley Griffin in Australia's capital, Canberra. In 2012, a life-sized |
fourth. The movement from the G Major chord to the C Major chord is also an interval of a perfect fourth. This later developed into one of the defining characteristics of tonality during the Baroque era. The main characteristics of Renaissance music are.: Music based on modes. Richer texture, with four or more independent melodic parts being performed simultaneously. These interweaving melodic lines, a style called polyphony, is one of the defining features of Renaissance music. Blending, rather than contrasting, melodic lines in the musical texture. Harmony that placed a greater concern on the smooth flow of the music and its progression of chords. The development of polyphony produced the notable changes in musical instruments that mark the Renaissance from the Middle Ages musically. Its use encouraged the use of larger ensembles and demanded sets of instruments that would blend together across the whole vocal range. Background As in the other arts, the music of the period was significantly influenced by the developments which define the Early Modern period: the rise of humanistic thought; the recovery of the literary and artistic heritage of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome; increased innovation and discovery; the growth of commercial enterprises; the rise of a bourgeois class; and the Protestant Reformation. From this changing society emerged a common, unifying musical language, in particular, the polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish school. The invention of the printing press in 1439 made it cheaper and easier to distribute music and music theory texts on a wider geographic scale and to more people. Prior to the invention of printing, written music and music theory texts had to be hand-copied, a time-consuming and expensive process. Demand for music as entertainment and as a leisure activity for educated amateurs increased with the emergence of a bourgeois class. Dissemination of chansons, motets, and masses throughout Europe coincided with the unification of polyphonic practice into the fluid style which culminated in the second half of the sixteenth century in the work of composers such as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Orlande de Lassus, Thomas Tallis, William Byrd and Tomás Luis de Victoria. Relative political stability and prosperity in the Low Countries, along with a flourishing system of music education in the area's many churches and cathedrals allowed the training of large numbers of singers, instrumentalists, and composers. These musicians were highly sought throughout Europe, particularly in Italy, where churches and aristocratic courts hired them as composers, performers, and teachers. Since the printing press made it easier to disseminate printed music, by the end of the 16th century, Italy had absorbed the northern musical influences with Venice, Rome, and other cities becoming centers of musical activity. This reversed the situation from a hundred years earlier. Opera, a dramatic staged genre in which singers are accompanied by instruments, arose at this time in Florence. Opera was developed as a deliberate attempt to resurrect the music of ancient Greece. Genres Principal liturgical (church-based) musical forms, which remained in use throughout the Renaissance period, were masses and motets, with some other developments towards the end of the era, especially as composers of sacred music began to adopt secular (non-religious) musical forms (such as the madrigal) for religious use. The 15th and 16th century masses had two kinds of sources that were used: monophonic (a single melody line) and polyphonic (multiple, independent melodic lines), with two main forms of elaboration, based on cantus firmus practice or, beginning some time around 1500, the new style of "pervasive imitation", in which composers would write music in which the different voices or parts would imitate the melodic and/or rhythmic motifs performed by other voices or parts. Several main types of masses were used: Cyclic mass (tenor mass) Paraphrase mass Imitation mass Masses were normally titled by the source from which they borrowed. Cantus firmus mass uses the same monophonic melody, usually drawn from chant and usually in the tenor and most often in longer note values than the other voices. Other sacred genres were the madrigale spirituale and the laude. During the period, secular (non-religious) music had an increasing distribution, with a wide variety of forms, but one must be cautious about assuming an explosion in variety: since printing made music more widely available, much more has survived from this era than from the preceding Medieval era, and probably a rich store of popular music of the late Middle Ages is lost. Secular music was music that was independent of churches. The main types were the German Lied, Italian frottola, the French chanson, the Italian madrigal, and the Spanish villancico. Other secular vocal genres included the caccia, rondeau, virelai, bergerette, ballade, musique mesurée, canzonetta, villanella, villotta, and the lute song. Mixed forms such as the motet-chanson and the secular motet also appeared. Purely instrumental music included consort music for recorders or viols and other instruments, and dances for various ensembles. Common instrumental genres were the toccata, prelude, ricercar, and canzona. Dances played by instrumental ensembles (or sometimes sung) included the basse danse (It. bassadanza), tourdion, saltarello, pavane, galliard, allemande, courante, bransle, canarie, piva, and lavolta. Music of many genres could be arranged for a solo instrument such as the lute, vihuela, harp, or keyboard. Such arrangements were called intabulations (It. intavolatura, Ger. Intabulierung). Towards the end of the period, the early dramatic precursors of opera such as monody, the madrigal comedy, and the intermedio are heard. Theory and notation According to Margaret Bent: "Renaissance notation is under-prescriptive by our [modern] standards; when translated into modern form it acquires a prescriptive weight that overspecifies and distorts its original openness". Renaissance compositions were notated only in individual parts; scores were extremely rare, and barlines were not used. Note values were generally larger than are in use today; the primary unit of beat was the semibreve, or whole note. As had been the case since the Ars Nova (see Medieval music), there could be either two or three of these for each breve (a double-whole note), which may be looked on as equivalent to the modern "measure," though it was itself a note value and a measure is not. The situation can be considered this way: it is the same as the rule by which in modern music a quarter-note may equal either two eighth-notes or three, which would be written as a "triplet." By the same reckoning, there could be two or three of the next smallest note, the "minim," (equivalent to the modern "half note") to each semibreve. These different permutations were called "perfect/imperfect tempus" at the level of the breve–semibreve relationship, "perfect/imperfect prolation" at the level of the semibreve–minim, and existed in all possible combinations with each other. Three-to-one was called "perfect," and two-to-one "imperfect." Rules existed also whereby single notes could be halved or doubled in value ("imperfected" or "altered," respectively) when preceded or followed by other certain notes. Notes with black noteheads (such as quarter notes) occurred less often. This development of white mensural notation may be a result of the increased use of paper (rather than vellum), as the weaker paper was less able to withstand the scratching required to fill in solid noteheads; notation of previous times, written on vellum, had been black. Other colors, and later, filled-in notes, were used routinely as well, mainly to enforce the aforementioned imperfections or alterations and to call for other temporary rhythmical changes. Accidentals (e.g. added sharps, flats and naturals that change the notes) were not always specified, somewhat as in certain fingering notations for guitar-family instruments (tablatures) today. However, Renaissance musicians would have been highly trained in dyadic counterpoint and thus possessed this and other information necessary to read a score correctly, even if the accidentals were not written in. As such, "what modern notation requires [accidentals] would then have been perfectly apparent without notation to a singer versed in counterpoint." (See musica ficta.) A singer would interpret his or her part by figuring cadential formulas with other parts in mind, and when singing together, musicians would avoid parallel octaves and parallel fifths or alter their cadential parts in light of decisions by other musicians. It is through contemporary tablatures for various plucked instruments that we have gained much information about which accidentals were performed by the original practitioners. For information on specific theorists, see Johannes Tinctoris, Franchinus Gaffurius, Heinrich Glarean, Pietro Aron, Nicola Vicentino, Tomás de Santa María, Gioseffo Zarlino, Vicente Lusitano, Vincenzo Galilei, Giovanni Artusi, Johannes Nucius, and Pietro Cerone. Composers – timeline Early period (1400–1470) The key composers from the early Renaissance era also wrote in a late Medieval style, and as such, they are transitional figures. Leonel Power (c. 1370s or 1380s–1445) was an English composer of the late medieval and early Renaissance music eras. Along with John Dunstaple, he was one of the major figures in English music in the early 15th century.) Power is the composer best represented in the Old Hall Manuscript, one of the only undamaged sources of English music from the early 15th century. Power was one of the first composers to set separate movements of the ordinary of the mass which were thematically unified and intended for contiguous performance. The Old Hall Manuscript contains his mass based on the Marian antiphon, Alma Redemptoris Mater, in which the antiphon is stated literally in the tenor voice in each movement, without melodic ornaments. This is the only cyclic setting of the mass ordinary which can be attributed to him. He wrote mass cycles, fragments, and single movements and a variety of other sacred works. John Dunstaple (or Dunstable) (c. 1390–1453) was an English composer of polyphonic music of the late medieval era and early Renaissance periods. He was one of the most famous composers active in the early 15th century, a near-contemporary of Power, and was widely influential, not only in England but on the continent, especially in the developing style of the Burgundian School. Dunstaple's influence on the continent's musical vocabulary was enormous, particularly considering the relative paucity of his (attributable) works. He was recognized for possessing something never heard before in music of the Burgundian School: la contenance angloise ("the English countenance"), a term used by the poet Martin le Franc in his Le Champion des Dames. Le Franc added that the style influenced Dufay and Binchois. Writing a few decades later in about 1476, the Flemish composer and music theorist Tinctoris reaffirmed the powerful influence Dunstaple had, stressing the "new art" that Dunstaple had inspired. Tinctoris hailed Dunstaple as the fons et origo of the style, its "wellspring and origin." The contenance angloise, while not defined by Martin le Franc, was probably a reference to Dunstaple's stylistic trait of using full triadic harmony (three note chords), along with a liking for the interval of the third. Assuming that he had been on the continent with the Duke of Bedford, Dunstaple would have been introduced to French fauxbourdon; borrowing some of the sonorities, he created elegant harmonies in his own music using thirds and sixths (an example of a third interval is the notes C and E; an example of a sixth interval is the notes C and A). Taken together, these are seen as defining characteristics of early Renaissance music. Many of these traits may have originated in England, taking root in the Burgundian School around the middle of the century. Because numerous copies of Dunstaple's works have been found in Italian and German manuscripts, his fame across Europe must have been widespread. Of the works attributed to him only about fifty survive, among which are two complete masses, three connected mass sections, fourteen individual mass sections, twelve complete isorhythmic motets and seven settings of Marian antiphons, such as Alma redemptoris Mater and Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae. Dunstaple was one of the first to compose masses using a single melody as cantus firmus. A good example of this technique is his Missa Rex seculorum. He is believed to have written secular (non-religious) music, but no songs in the vernacular can be attributed to him with any degree of certainty. Oswald von Wolkenstein (c. 1376–1445) is one of the most important composers of the early German Renaissance. He is best known for his well-written melodies, and for his use of three themes: travel, God and sex. Gilles Binchois (c. 1400–1460) was a Netherlandish composer, one of the earliest members of the Burgundian school and one of the three most famous composers of the early 15th century. While often ranked behind his contemporaries Guillaume Dufay and John Dunstaple by contemporary scholars, his works were still cited, borrowed and used as source material after his death. Binchois is considered to be a fine melodist, writing carefully shaped lines which are easy to sing and memorable. His tunes appeared in copies decades after his death and were often used as sources for mass composition by later composers. Most of his music, even his sacred music, is simple and clear in outline, sometimes even ascetic (monk-like). A greater contrast between Binchois and the extreme complexity of the ars subtilior of the prior (fourteenth) century would be hard to imagine. Most of his secular songs are rondeaux, which became the most common song form during the century. He rarely wrote in strophic form, and his melodies are generally independent of the rhyme scheme of the verses they are set to. Binchois wrote music for the court, secular songs of love and chivalry that met the expectations and satisfied the taste of the Dukes of Burgundy who employed him, and evidently loved his music accordingly. About half of his extant secular music is found in the Oxford Bodleian Library. Guillaume Du Fay (c. 1397–1474) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. The central figure in the Burgundian School, he was regarded by his contemporaries as the leading composer in Europe in the mid-15th century. Du Fay composed in most of the common forms of the day, including masses, motets, Magnificats, hymns, simple chant settings in fauxbourdon, and antiphons within the area of sacred music, and rondeaux, ballades, virelais and a few other chanson types within the realm of secular music. None of his surviving music is specifically instrumental, although instruments were certainly used for some of his secular music, especially for the lower parts; all of his sacred music is vocal. Instruments may have been used to reinforce the voices in actual performance for almost any of his works. Seven complete masses, 28 individual mass movements, 15 settings of chant used in mass propers, three Magnificats, two Benedicamus Domino settings, 15 antiphon settings (six of them Marian antiphons), 27 hymns, 22 motets (13 of these isorhythmic in the more angular, austere 14th-century style which gave way to more melodic, sensuous treble-dominated part-writing with phrases ending in the "under-third" cadence in Du Fay's youth) and 87 chansons definitely by him have survived. Many of Du Fay's compositions were simple settings of chant, obviously designed for liturgical use, probably as substitutes for the unadorned chant, and can be seen as chant harmonizations. Often the harmonization used a technique of parallel writing known as fauxbourdon, as in the following example, a setting of the Marian antiphon Ave maris stella. Du Fay may have been the first composer to use the term "fauxbourdon" for this simpler compositional style, prominent in 15th-century liturgical music in general and that of the Burgundian school in particular. Most of Du Fay's secular (non-religious) songs follow the formes fixes (rondeau, ballade, and virelai), which dominated secular European music of the 14th and 15th centuries. He also wrote a handful of Italian ballate, almost certainly while he was in Italy. As is the case with his motets, many of the songs were written for specific occasions, and many are datable, thus supplying useful biographical information. Most of his songs are for three voices, using a texture dominated by the highest voice; the other two voices, unsupplied with text, were probably played by instruments. Du Fay was one of the last composers to make use of late-medieval polyphonic structural techniques such as isorhythm, and one of the first to employ the more mellifluous harmonies, phrasing and melodies characteristic of the early Renaissance. His compositions within the larger genres (masses, motets and chansons) are mostly similar to each other; his renown is largely due to what was perceived as his perfect control of the forms in which he worked, as well as his gift for memorable and singable melody. During the 15th century, he was universally regarded as the greatest composer of his time, an opinion that has largely survived to the present day. Middle period (1470–1530) During the 16th century, Josquin des Prez ( – 27 August 1521) gradually acquired the reputation as the greatest composer of the age, his mastery of technique and expression universally imitated and admired. Writers as diverse as Baldassare Castiglione and Martin Luther wrote about his reputation and fame. Late period (1530–1600) In Venice, from about 1530 until around 1600, an impressive polychoral style developed, which gave Europe some of the grandest, most sonorous music composed up until that time, with | and other information necessary to read a score correctly, even if the accidentals were not written in. As such, "what modern notation requires [accidentals] would then have been perfectly apparent without notation to a singer versed in counterpoint." (See musica ficta.) A singer would interpret his or her part by figuring cadential formulas with other parts in mind, and when singing together, musicians would avoid parallel octaves and parallel fifths or alter their cadential parts in light of decisions by other musicians. It is through contemporary tablatures for various plucked instruments that we have gained much information about which accidentals were performed by the original practitioners. For information on specific theorists, see Johannes Tinctoris, Franchinus Gaffurius, Heinrich Glarean, Pietro Aron, Nicola Vicentino, Tomás de Santa María, Gioseffo Zarlino, Vicente Lusitano, Vincenzo Galilei, Giovanni Artusi, Johannes Nucius, and Pietro Cerone. Composers – timeline Early period (1400–1470) The key composers from the early Renaissance era also wrote in a late Medieval style, and as such, they are transitional figures. Leonel Power (c. 1370s or 1380s–1445) was an English composer of the late medieval and early Renaissance music eras. Along with John Dunstaple, he was one of the major figures in English music in the early 15th century.) Power is the composer best represented in the Old Hall Manuscript, one of the only undamaged sources of English music from the early 15th century. Power was one of the first composers to set separate movements of the ordinary of the mass which were thematically unified and intended for contiguous performance. The Old Hall Manuscript contains his mass based on the Marian antiphon, Alma Redemptoris Mater, in which the antiphon is stated literally in the tenor voice in each movement, without melodic ornaments. This is the only cyclic setting of the mass ordinary which can be attributed to him. He wrote mass cycles, fragments, and single movements and a variety of other sacred works. John Dunstaple (or Dunstable) (c. 1390–1453) was an English composer of polyphonic music of the late medieval era and early Renaissance periods. He was one of the most famous composers active in the early 15th century, a near-contemporary of Power, and was widely influential, not only in England but on the continent, especially in the developing style of the Burgundian School. Dunstaple's influence on the continent's musical vocabulary was enormous, particularly considering the relative paucity of his (attributable) works. He was recognized for possessing something never heard before in music of the Burgundian School: la contenance angloise ("the English countenance"), a term used by the poet Martin le Franc in his Le Champion des Dames. Le Franc added that the style influenced Dufay and Binchois. Writing a few decades later in about 1476, the Flemish composer and music theorist Tinctoris reaffirmed the powerful influence Dunstaple had, stressing the "new art" that Dunstaple had inspired. Tinctoris hailed Dunstaple as the fons et origo of the style, its "wellspring and origin." The contenance angloise, while not defined by Martin le Franc, was probably a reference to Dunstaple's stylistic trait of using full triadic harmony (three note chords), along with a liking for the interval of the third. Assuming that he had been on the continent with the Duke of Bedford, Dunstaple would have been introduced to French fauxbourdon; borrowing some of the sonorities, he created elegant harmonies in his own music using thirds and sixths (an example of a third interval is the notes C and E; an example of a sixth interval is the notes C and A). Taken together, these are seen as defining characteristics of early Renaissance music. Many of these traits may have originated in England, taking root in the Burgundian School around the middle of the century. Because numerous copies of Dunstaple's works have been found in Italian and German manuscripts, his fame across Europe must have been widespread. Of the works attributed to him only about fifty survive, among which are two complete masses, three connected mass sections, fourteen individual mass sections, twelve complete isorhythmic motets and seven settings of Marian antiphons, such as Alma redemptoris Mater and Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae. Dunstaple was one of the first to compose masses using a single melody as cantus firmus. A good example of this technique is his Missa Rex seculorum. He is believed to have written secular (non-religious) music, but no songs in the vernacular can be attributed to him with any degree of certainty. Oswald von Wolkenstein (c. 1376–1445) is one of the most important composers of the early German Renaissance. He is best known for his well-written melodies, and for his use of three themes: travel, God and sex. Gilles Binchois (c. 1400–1460) was a Netherlandish composer, one of the earliest members of the Burgundian school and one of the three most famous composers of the early 15th century. While often ranked behind his contemporaries Guillaume Dufay and John Dunstaple by contemporary scholars, his works were still cited, borrowed and used as source material after his death. Binchois is considered to be a fine melodist, writing carefully shaped lines which are easy to sing and memorable. His tunes appeared in copies decades after his death and were often used as sources for mass composition by later composers. Most of his music, even his sacred music, is simple and clear in outline, sometimes even ascetic (monk-like). A greater contrast between Binchois and the extreme complexity of the ars subtilior of the prior (fourteenth) century would be hard to imagine. Most of his secular songs are rondeaux, which became the most common song form during the century. He rarely wrote in strophic form, and his melodies are generally independent of the rhyme scheme of the verses they are set to. Binchois wrote music for the court, secular songs of love and chivalry that met the expectations and satisfied the taste of the Dukes of Burgundy who employed him, and evidently loved his music accordingly. About half of his extant secular music is found in the Oxford Bodleian Library. Guillaume Du Fay (c. 1397–1474) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. The central figure in the Burgundian School, he was regarded by his contemporaries as the leading composer in Europe in the mid-15th century. Du Fay composed in most of the common forms of the day, including masses, motets, Magnificats, hymns, simple chant settings in fauxbourdon, and antiphons within the area of sacred music, and rondeaux, ballades, virelais and a few other chanson types within the realm of secular music. None of his surviving music is specifically instrumental, although instruments were certainly used for some of his secular music, especially for the lower parts; all of his sacred music is vocal. Instruments may have been used to reinforce the voices in actual performance for almost any of his works. Seven complete masses, 28 individual mass movements, 15 settings of chant used in mass propers, three Magnificats, two Benedicamus Domino settings, 15 antiphon settings (six of them Marian antiphons), 27 hymns, 22 motets (13 of these isorhythmic in the more angular, austere 14th-century style which gave way to more melodic, sensuous treble-dominated part-writing with phrases ending in the "under-third" cadence in Du Fay's youth) and 87 chansons definitely by him have survived. Many of Du Fay's compositions were simple settings of chant, obviously designed for liturgical use, probably as substitutes for the unadorned chant, and can be seen as chant harmonizations. Often the harmonization used a technique of parallel writing known as fauxbourdon, as in the following example, a setting of the Marian antiphon Ave maris stella. Du Fay may have been the first composer to use the term "fauxbourdon" for this simpler compositional style, prominent in 15th-century liturgical music in general and that of the Burgundian school in particular. Most of Du Fay's secular (non-religious) songs follow the formes fixes (rondeau, ballade, and virelai), which dominated secular European music of the 14th and 15th centuries. He also wrote a handful of Italian ballate, almost certainly while he was in Italy. As is the case with his motets, many of the songs were written for specific occasions, and many are datable, thus supplying useful biographical information. Most of his songs are for three voices, using a texture dominated by the highest voice; the other two voices, unsupplied with text, were probably played by instruments. Du Fay was one of the last composers to make use of late-medieval polyphonic structural techniques such as isorhythm, and one of the first to employ the more mellifluous harmonies, phrasing and melodies characteristic of the early Renaissance. His compositions within the larger genres (masses, motets and chansons) are mostly similar to each other; his renown is largely due to what was perceived as his perfect control of the forms in which he worked, as well as his gift for memorable and singable melody. During the 15th century, he was universally regarded as the greatest composer of his time, an opinion that has largely survived to the present day. Middle period (1470–1530) During the 16th century, Josquin des Prez ( – 27 August 1521) gradually acquired the reputation as the greatest composer of the age, his mastery of technique and expression universally imitated and admired. Writers as diverse as Baldassare Castiglione and Martin Luther wrote about his reputation and fame. Late period (1530–1600) In Venice, from about 1530 until around 1600, an impressive polychoral style developed, which gave Europe some of the grandest, most sonorous music composed up until that time, with multiple choirs of singers, brass and strings in different spatial locations in the Basilica San Marco di Venezia (see Venetian School). These multiple revolutions spread over Europe in the next several decades, beginning in Germany and then moving to Spain, France, and England somewhat later, demarcating the beginning of what we now know as the Baroque musical era. The Roman School was a group of composers of predominantly church music in Rome, spanning the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Many of the composers had a direct connection to the Vatican and the papal chapel, though they worked at several churches; stylistically they are often contrasted with the Venetian School of composers, a concurrent movement which was much more progressive. By far the most famous composer of the Roman School is Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. While best known as a prolific composer of masses and motets, he was also an important madrigalist. His ability to bring together the functional needs of the Catholic Church with the prevailing musical styles during the Counter-Reformation period gave him his enduring fame. The brief but intense flowering of the musical madrigal in England, mostly from 1588 to 1627, along with the composers who produced them, is known as the English Madrigal School. The English madrigals were a cappella, predominantly light in style, and generally began as either copies or direct translations of Italian models. Most were for three to six voices. Musica reservata is either a style or a performance practice in a cappella vocal music of the latter half of the 16th century, mainly in Italy and southern Germany, involving refinement, exclusivity, and intense emotional expression of sung text. The cultivation of European music in the Americas began in the 16th century soon after the arrival of the Spanish, and the conquest of Mexico. Although fashioned in European style, uniquely Mexican hybrid works based on native Mexican language and European musical practice appeared very early. Musical practices in New Spain continually coincided with European tendencies throughout the subsequent Baroque and Classical music periods. Among these New World composers were Hernando Franco, Antonio de Salazar, and Manuel de Zumaya. In addition, writers since 1932 have observed what they call a seconda prattica (an innovative practice involving monodic style and freedom in treatment of dissonance, both justified by the expressive setting of texts) during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Mannerism In the late 16th century, as the Renaissance era closed, an extremely manneristic style developed. In secular music, especially in the madrigal, there was a trend towards complexity and even extreme chromaticism (as exemplified in madrigals of Luzzaschi, Marenzio, and Gesualdo). The term mannerism derives from art history. Transition to the Baroque Beginning in Florence, there was an attempt to revive the dramatic and musical forms of Ancient Greece, through the means of monody, a form of declaimed music over a simple accompaniment; a more extreme contrast with the preceding polyphonic style would be hard to find; this was also, at least at the outset, a secular trend. These musicians were known as the Florentine Camerata. We have already noted some of the musical developments that helped to usher in the Baroque, but for further explanation of this transition, see antiphon, concertato, monody, madrigal, and opera, as well as the works given under "Sources and further reading." Instruments Many instruments originated during the Renaissance; others were variations of, or improvements upon, instruments that had existed previously. Some have survived to the present day; others have disappeared, only to be recreated in order to perform music of the period on authentic instruments. As in the modern day, instruments may be classified as brass, strings, percussion, and woodwind. Medieval instruments in Europe had most commonly been used singly, often self-accompanied with a drone, or occasionally in parts. From at least as early as the 13th century through the 15th century there was a division of instruments into haut (loud, shrill, outdoor instruments) and bas (quieter, more intimate instruments). Only two groups of instruments could play freely in both types of ensembles: the cornett and sackbut, and the tabor and tambourine. At the beginning of the 16th century, instruments were considered to be less important than voices. They were used for dances and to accompany vocal music. Instrumental music remained subordinated to vocal music, and much of its repertory was in varying ways derived from or dependent on vocal models. Organs Various kinds of organs were commonly used in the Renaissance, from large church organs to small portatives and reed organs called regals. Brass Brass instruments in the Renaissance were traditionally played by professionals. Some of the more common brass instruments that were played: Slide trumpet: Similar to the trombone of today except that instead of a section of the body sliding, only a small part of the body near the mouthpiece and the mouthpiece itself is stationary. Also, the body was an S-shape so it was rather unwieldy, but was suitable for the slow dance music which it was most commonly used for. Cornett: Made of wood and played like the recorder (by blowing in one end and moving the fingers up and down the outside) but using a cup mouthpiece like a trumpet. Trumpet: Early trumpets had no valves, and were limited to the tones present in the overtone series. They were also made in different sizes. Sackbut (sometimes sackbutt or sagbutt): A different name for the trombone, which replaced the slide trumpet by the middle of the 15th century. Strings As a family, strings were used in many circumstances, both sacred and secular. A few members of this family include: Viol: This instrument, developed in the 15th century, commonly has six strings. It was usually played with a bow. It has structural qualities similar to the Spanish plucked vihuela (called viola da mano in Italy); its main separating trait is its larger size. |
Rhine emerges from Lake Constance, flows generally westward, as the Hochrhein, passes the Rhine Falls, and is joined by its major tributary, the Aare. The Aare more than doubles the Rhine's water discharge, to an average of nearly , and provides more than a fifth of the discharge at the Dutch border. The Aare also contains the waters from the summit of Finsteraarhorn, the highest point of the Rhine basin. The Rhine roughly forms the German-Swiss border from Lake Constance with the exceptions of the canton of Schaffhausen and parts of the cantons of Zürich and Basel-Stadt, until it turns north at the so-called Rhine knee at Basel, leaving Switzerland. The High Rhine begins in Stein am Rhein at the western end of the Untersee. Unlike the Alpine Rhine and Upper Rhine, it flows to the west. It descends from 395 m to 252 m. Some stretches of the High Rhine between Stein am Rhein and Eglisau form the border between Switzerland on the south bank and Germany in the north. On other stretches, both sides are Swiss; in fact most of the canton of Schaffhausen is on the north bank. Between Eglisau and Basel, the High Rhine consistently forms the border. The Rhine Falls are situated below Schaffhausen. With an average water flow of 373 m³/s (mean summer discharge 700 m³/s) it is the largest waterfall in Europe in terms of potential energy. The High Rhine is characterized by numerous dams. On the few remaining natural sections, there are still several rapids. Near Koblenz in the canton of Aargau, the Aare joins the Rhine. With an average discharge of 557 m³/s, the Aare is more voluminous than the Rhine, which has an average discharge of 439 m³/s. Nevertheless, the Alpine Rhine is considered the main branch, because it is longer. Upper Rhine In the centre of Basel, the first major city in the course of the stream, is located the "Rhine knee"; this is a major bend, where the overall direction of the Rhine changes from west to north. Here the High Rhine ends. Legally, the Central Bridge is the boundary between High and Upper Rhine. The river now flows north as Upper Rhine through the Upper Rhine Plain, which is about 300 km long and up to 40 km wide. The most important tributaries in this area are the Ill below of Strasbourg, the Neckar in Mannheim and the Main across from Mainz. In Mainz, the Rhine leaves the Upper Rhine Valley and flows through the Mainz Basin. The southern half of the Upper Rhine forms the border between France (Alsace) and Germany (Baden-Württemberg). The northern part forms the border between the German states of Rhineland-Palatinate in the west on the one hand, and Baden-Württemberg and Hesse on the other hand, in the east and north. A curiosity of this border line is that the parts of the city of Mainz on the right bank of the Rhine were given to Hesse by the occupying forces in 1945. The Upper Rhine was a significant cultural landscape in Central Europe already in antiquity and during the Middle Ages. Today, the Upper Rhine area hosts many important manufacturing and service industries, particularly in the centers Basel, Strasbourg and Mannheim-Ludwigshafen. Strasbourg is the seat of the European Parliament, and so one of the three European capitals is located on the Upper Rhine. The Upper Rhine region was changed significantly by a Rhine straightening program in the 19th century. The rate of flow was increased and the ground water level fell significantly. Dead branches were removed by construction workers and the area around the river was made more habitable for humans on flood plains as the rate of flooding decreased sharply. On the French side, the Grand Canal d'Alsace was dug, which carries a significant part of the river water, and all of the traffic. In some places, there are large compensation pools, for example, the huge Bassin de compensation de Plobsheim in Alsace. The Upper Rhine has undergone significant human change since the 19th century. While it was slightly modified during the Roman occupation, it was not until the emergence of engineers such as Johann Gottfried Tulla that significant modernization efforts changed the shape of the river. Earlier work under Frederick the Great surrounded efforts to ease shipping and construct dams to serve coal transportation. Tulla is considered to have domesticated the Upper Rhine, a domestication that served goals such as reducing stagnant bogs that fostered waterborne diseases, making regions more habitable for human settlement, and reduce high frequency of floods. Not long before Tulla went to work on widening and straightening the river, heavy floods caused significant loss of life. Four diplomatic treaties were signed among German state governments and French regions dealing with the changes proposed along the Rhine, one was "the Treaty for the Rectification of the Rhine flow from Neuberg to Dettenheim"(1817), which surrounded states such as Bourbon France and the Bavarian Palatinate. Loops, oxbows, branches and islands were removed along the Upper Rhine so that there would be uniformity to the river. The engineering of the Rhine was not without protest, farmers and fishermen had grave concerns about valuable fishing areas and farmland being lost. While some areas lost ground, other areas saw swamps and bogs be drained and turned into arable land. Johann Tulla had the goal of shortening and straightening the Upper Rhine. Early engineering projects the Upper Rhine also had issues, with Tulla's project at one part of the river creating rapids, after the Rhine cut down from erosion to sheer rock. Engineering along the Rhine eased flooding and made transportation along the river less cumbersome. These state projects were part of the advanced and technical progress going on in the country alongside the industrial revolution. For the German state, making the river more predictable was to ensure development projects could easily commence. The section of the Upper Rhine downstream from Mainz is also known as the "Island Rhine". Here a number of river islands occur, locally known as "Rheinauen". Middle Rhine The Rhine is the longest river in Germany. It is here that the Rhine encounters some more of its main tributaries, such as the Neckar, the Main and, later, the Moselle, which contributes an average discharge of more than . Northeastern France drains to the Rhine via the Moselle; smaller rivers drain the Vosges and Jura Mountains uplands. Most of Luxembourg and a very small part of Belgium also drain to the Rhine via the Moselle. As it approaches the Dutch border, the Rhine has an annual mean discharge of and an average width of . Between Bingen am Rhein and Bonn, the Middle Rhine flows through the Rhine Gorge, a formation which was created by erosion. The rate of erosion equaled the uplift in the region, such that the river was left at about its original level while the surrounding lands raised. The gorge is quite deep and is the stretch of the river which is known for its many castles and vineyards. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (2002) and known as "the Romantic Rhine", with more than 40 castles and fortresses from the Middle Ages and many quaint and lovely country villages. The Mainz Basin ends in Bingen am Rhein; the Rhine continues as "Middle Rhine" into the Rhine Gorge in the Rhenish Slate Mountains. In this sections the river falls from 77.4 m above sea level to 50.4 m. On the left, is located the mountain ranges of Hunsrück and Eifel, on the right Taunus and Westerwald. According to geologists, the characteristic narrow valley form was created by erosion by the river while the surrounding landscape was lifted (see water gap). Major tributaries in this section are the Lahn and the Moselle. They join the Rhine near Koblenz, for the right and left respectively. Almost the entire length of the Middle Rhine runs in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The dominant economic sectors in the Middle Rhine area are viniculture and tourism. The Rhine Gorge between Rüdesheim am Rhein and Koblenz is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Near Sankt Goarshausen, the Rhine flows around the famous rock Lorelei. With its outstanding architectural monuments, the slopes full of vines, settlements crowded on the narrow river banks and scores of castles lined up along the top of the steep slopes, the Middle Rhine Valley can be considered the epitome of the Rhine romanticism. Lower Rhine In Bonn, where the Sieg flows into the Rhine, the Rhine enters the North German Plain and turns into the Lower Rhine. The Lower Rhine falls from 50 m to 12 m. The main tributaries on this stretch are the Ruhr and the Lippe. Like the Upper Rhine, the Lower Rhine used to meander until engineering created a solid river bed. Because the levees are some distance from the river, at high tide the Lower Rhine has more room for widening than the Upper Rhine. The Lower Rhine flows through North Rhine-Westphalia. Its banks are usually heavily populated and industrialized, in particular the agglomerations Cologne, Düsseldorf and Ruhr area. Here the Rhine flows through the largest conurbation in Germany, the Rhine-Ruhr region. One of the most important cities in this region is Duisburg with the largest river port in Europe (Duisport). The region downstream of Duisburg is more agricultural. In Wesel, 30 km downstream of Duisburg, is located the western end of the second east–west shipping route, the Wesel-Datteln Canal, which runs parallel to the Lippe. Between Emmerich and Cleves the Emmerich Rhine Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in Germany, crosses the river. Near Krefeld, the river crosses the Uerdingen line, the line which separates the areas where Low German and High German are spoken. Until the early 1980s, industry was a major source of water pollution. Although many plants and factories can be found along the Rhine up into Switzerland, it is along the Lower Rhine that the bulk of them are concentrated, as the river passes the major cities of Cologne, Düsseldorf and Duisburg. Duisburg is the home of Europe's largest inland port and functions as a hub to the sea ports of Rotterdam, Antwerp and Amsterdam. The Ruhr, which joins the Rhine in Duisburg, is nowadays a clean river, thanks to a combination of stricter environmental controls, a transition from heavy industry to light industry and cleanup measures, such as the reforestation of Slag and brownfields. The Ruhr currently provides the region with drinking water. It contributes to the Rhine. Other rivers in the Ruhr Area, above all, the Emscher, still carry a considerable degree of pollution. Delta The Dutch name for Rhine is "Rijn". The Rhine turns west and enters the Netherlands, where, together with the rivers Meuse and Scheldt, it forms the extensive Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta, with the largest river delta in Europe. Crossing the border into the Netherlands at Spijk, close to Nijmegen and Arnhem, the Rhine is at its widest, although the river then splits into three main distributaries: the Waal, Nederrijn ("Nether Rhine") and IJssel. From here, the situation becomes more complicated, as the Dutch name Rijn no longer coincides with the main flow of water. Two-thirds of the water flow volume of the Rhine flows farther west, through the Waal and then, via the Merwede and Nieuwe Merwede (De Biesbosch), merging with the Meuse, through the Hollands Diep and Haringvliet estuaries, into the North Sea. The Beneden Merwede branches off, near Hardinxveld-Giessendam and continues as the Noord, to join the Lek, near the village of Kinderdijk, to form the Nieuwe Maas; then flows past Rotterdam and continues via Het Scheur and the Nieuwe Waterweg, to the North Sea. The Oude Maas branches off, near Dordrecht, farther down rejoining the Nieuwe Maas to form Het Scheur. The other third of the water flows through the Pannerdens Kanaal and redistributes in the IJssel and Nederrijn. The IJssel branch carries one ninth of the water flow of the Rhine north into the IJsselmeer (a former bay), while the Nederrijn carries approximately two-ninths of the flow west along a route parallel to the Waal. However, at Wijk bij Duurstede, the Nederrijn changes its name and becomes the Lek. It flows farther west, to rejoin the Noord into the Nieuwe Maas and to the North Sea. The name Rijn, from here on, is used only for smaller streams farther to the north, which together formed the main river Rhine in Roman times. Though they retained the name, these streams no longer carry water from the Rhine, but are used for draining the surrounding land and polders. From Wijk bij Duurstede, the old north branch of the Rhine is called Kromme Rijn ("Bent Rhine") past Utrecht, first Leidse Rijn ("Rhine of Leiden") and then, Oude Rijn ("Old Rhine"). The latter flows west into a sluice at Katwijk, where its waters can be discharged into the North Sea. This branch once formed the line along which the Limes Germanicus were built. During periods of lower sea levels within the various ice ages, the Rhine took a left turn, creating the Channel River, the course of which now lies below the English Channel. The Rhine-Meuse Delta, the most important natural region of the Netherlands begins near Millingen aan de Rijn, close to the Dutch-German border with the division of the Rhine into Waal and Nederrijn. The region between the Dutch-German border and Rotterdam, where the Waal, Lek, and Meuse run more or less parallel, is colloquially known as the "Great Rivers". Since the Rhine contributes most of the water, the shorter term Rhine Delta is commonly used. However, this name is also used for the river delta where the Rhine flows into Lake Constance, so it is clearer to call the larger one Rhine-Meuse delta, or even Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, as the Scheldt ends in the same delta. The shape of the Rhine delta is determined by two bifurcations: first, at Millingen aan de Rijn, the Rhine splits into Waal and Pannerdens Kanaal, which changes its name to Nederrijn at Angeren, and second near Arnhem, the IJssel branches off from the Nederrijn. This creates three main flows, two of which change names rather often. The largest and southern main branch begins as Waal and continues as Boven Merwede ("Upper Merwede"), Beneden Merwede ("Lower Merwede"), Noord ("the North"), Nieuwe Maas ("New Meuse"), Het Scheur ("the Rip") and Nieuwe Waterweg ("New Waterway"). The middle flow begins as Nederrijn, then changes into Lek, then joins the Noord, thereby forming Nieuwe Maas. The northern flow keeps the name IJssel until it flows into Lake IJsselmeer. Three more flows carry significant amounts of water: the Nieuwe Merwede ("New Merwede"), which branches off from the southern branch where it changes from Boven to Beneden Merwede; the Oude Maas ("Old Meuse"), which branches off from the southern branch where it changes from Beneden Merwede into Noord, and Dordtse Kil, which branches off from Oude Maas. Before the St. Elizabeth's flood (1421), the Meuse flowed just south of today's line Merwede-Oude Maas to the North Sea and formed an archipelago-like estuary with Waal and Lek. This system of numerous bays, estuary-like extended rivers, many islands and constant changes of the coastline, is hard to imagine today. From 1421 to 1904, the Meuse and Waal merged further upstream at Gorinchem to form Merwede. For flood protection reasons, the Meuse was separated from the Waal through a lock and diverted into a new outlet called "Bergse Maas", then Amer and then flows into the former bay Hollands Diep. The northwestern part of the estuary (around Hook of Holland), is still called Maasmond ("Meuse Mouth"), ignoring the fact that it now carries only water from the Rhine. This might explain the confusing naming of the various branches. The hydrography of the current delta is characterized by the delta's main arms, disconnected arms (Hollandse IJssel, Linge, Vecht, etc.) and smaller rivers and streams. Many rivers have been closed ("dammed") and now serve as drainage channels for the numerous polders. The construction of Delta Works changed the Delta in the second half of the 20th century fundamentally. Currently Rhine water runs into the sea, or into former marine bays now separated from the sea, in five places, namely at the mouths of the Nieuwe Merwede, Nieuwe Waterway (Nieuwe Maas), Dordtse Kil, Spui and IJssel. The Rhine-Meuse Delta is a tidal delta, shaped not only by the sedimentation of the rivers, but also by tidal currents. This meant that high tide formed a serious risk because strong tidal currents could tear huge areas of land into the sea. Before the construction of the Delta Works, tidal influence was palpable up to Nijmegen, and even today, after the regulatory action of the Delta Works, the tide acts far inland. At the Waal, for example, the most landward tidal influence can be detected between Brakel and Zaltbommel. Geologic history Alpine orogeny The Rhine flows from the Alps to the North Sea Basin. The geography and geology of its present-day watershed has been developing since the Alpine orogeny began. In southern Europe, the stage was set in the Triassic Period of the Mesozoic Era, with the opening of the Tethys Ocean, between the Eurasian and African tectonic plates, between about 240 MBP and 220 MBP (million years before present). The present Mediterranean Sea descends from this somewhat larger Tethys sea. At about 180 MBP, in the Jurassic Period, the two plates reversed direction and began to compress the Tethys floor, causing it to be subducted under Eurasia and pushing up the edge of the latter plate in the Alpine Orogeny of the Oligocene and Miocene Periods. Several microplates were caught in the squeeze and rotated or were pushed laterally, generating the individual features of Mediterranean geography: Iberia pushed up the Pyrenees; Italy, the Alps, and Anatolia, moving west, the mountains of Greece and the islands. The compression and orogeny continue today, as shown by the ongoing raising of the mountains a small amount each year and the active volcanoes. In northern Europe, the North Sea Basin had formed during the Triassic and Jurassic periods and continued to be a sediment receiving basin since. In between the zone of Alpine orogeny and North Sea Basin subsidence, highlands resulting from an earlier orogeny (Variscan) remained, such as the Ardennes, Eifel and Vosges. From the Eocene onward, the ongoing Alpine orogeny caused a north–south rift system to develop in this zone. The main elements of this rift are the Upper Rhine Graben, in southwest Germany and eastern France and the Lower Rhine Embayment, in northwest Germany and the southeastern Netherlands. By the time of the Miocene, a river system had developed in the Upper Rhine Graben, that continued northward and is considered the first Rhine river. At that time, it did not yet carry discharge from the Alps; instead, the watersheds of the Rhone and Danube drained the northern flanks of the Alps. Stream capture The watershed of the Rhine reaches into the Alps today, but it did not start out that way. In the Miocene period, the watershed of the Rhine reached south, only to the Eifel and Westerwald hills, about north of the Alps. The Rhine then had the Sieg as a tributary, but not yet the Moselle. The northern Alps were then drained by the Danube. Through stream capture, the Rhine extended its watershed southward. By the Pliocene period, the Rhine had captured streams down to the Vosges Mountains, including the Main and the Neckar. The northern Alps were then drained by the Rhone. By the early Pleistocene period, the Rhine had captured most of its current Alpine watershed from the Rhône, including the Aare. Since that time, the Rhine has added the watershed above Lake Constance (Vorderrhein, Hinterrhein, Alpenrhein; captured from the Rhône), the upper reaches of the Main, beyond Schweinfurt and the Moselle in the Vosges Mountains, captured during the Saale Ice-age from the Meuse, to its watershed. Around 2.5 million years ago (ending 11,600 years ago) the Ice Ages began. Since approximately 600,000 years ago, six major glacial periods have occurred, in which sea level dropped as much as and much of the continental margins were exposed. In the Early Pleistocene, the Rhine followed a course to the northwest, through the present North Sea. During the so-called Anglian glaciation (~450,000 yr BP, marine oxygen isotope stage 12), the northern part of the present North Sea was blocked by the ice and a large lake developed, that overflowed through the English Channel. This caused the Rhine's course to be diverted through the English Channel. Since then, during glacial times, the river mouth was located offshore of Brest, France and rivers, like the River Thames and the Seine, became tributaries to the Rhine. During interglacials, when sea level rose to approximately the present level, the Rhine built deltas in what is now the Netherlands. The most recent glacial period ran from ~74,000 (BP = Before Present), until the end of the Pleistocene (~11,600 BP). In northwest Europe, it saw two very cold phases, peaking around 70,000 BP and around 29,000–24,000 BP. The last phase slightly predates the global last ice age maximum (Last Glacial Maximum). During this time, the lower Rhine flowed roughly west through the Netherlands and extended to the southwest, through the English Channel and finally, to the Atlantic Ocean. The English Channel, the Irish Channel and most of the North Sea were dry land, mainly because sea level was approximately lower than today. Most of the Rhine's current course was not under the ice during the last Ice Age; although, its source must still have been a glacier. A tundra, with Ice Age flora and fauna, stretched across middle Europe, from Asia to the Atlantic Ocean. Such was the case during the Last Glacial Maximum, ca. 22,000–14,000 yr BP, when ice-sheets covered Scandinavia, the Baltics, Scotland and the Alps, but left the space between as open tundra. Loess (wind-blown topsoil dust) arose from the south and North Sea plain settling on the slopes of the Alps, Urals and the Rhine Valley, rendering the valleys facing the prevailing winds especially fertile. End of the last glacial period As northwest Europe slowly began to warm up from 22,000 years ago onward, frozen subsoil and expanded alpine glaciers began to thaw and fall-winter snow covers melted in spring. Much of the discharge was routed to the Rhine and its downstream extension. Rapid warming and changes of vegetation, to open forest, began about 13,000 BP. By 9000 BP, Europe was fully forested. With globally shrinking ice-cover, ocean water levels rose and the English Channel and North Sea re-inundated. Meltwater, adding to the ocean and land subsidence, drowned the former coasts of Europe transgressionally. About 11000 years ago, the Rhine estuary was in the Strait of Dover. There remained some dry land in the southern North Sea, known as Doggerland, connecting mainland Europe to Britain. About 9000 years ago, that last divide was overtopped / dissected. Man was already resident in the area when these events happened. Since 7500 years ago the situation of tides, currents and land-forms has resembled the present. Rates of sea level rise dropped such that natural sedimentation by the Rhine and coastal processes widely compensate for transgression by the sea. In the southern North Sea, due to ongoing tectonic subsidence, the coastline and sea bed are sinking at the rate of about per century (1 metre or 39 inches in last 3000 years). About 7000–5000 BP, a general warming encouraged migration of all former ice-locked areas, including up the Danube and down the Rhine by peoples to the east. A sudden massive expansion of the Black Sea as the Mediterranean Sea burst into it through the Bosporus may have occurred about 7500 BP. Holocene delta At the beginning of the Holocene (~11,700 years ago), the Rhine occupied its Late-Glacial valley. As a meandering river, it reworked its ice-age floodplain. As sea-level rise continued in the Netherlands, the formation of the Holocene Rhine-Meuse delta began (~8,000 years ago). Coeval absolute sea-level rise and tectonic subsidence have strongly influenced delta evolution. Other factors of importance to the shape of the delta are the local tectonic activities of the Peel Boundary Fault, the substrate and geomorphology, as inherited from the Last Glacial period and the coastal-marine dynamics, such as barrier and tidal inlet formations. Since ~3000 yr BP (= years Before Present), human impact is seen in the delta. As a result of increasing land clearance (Bronze Age agriculture), in the upland areas (central Germany), the sediment load of the Rhine has strongly increased and delta growth has sped up. This has caused increased flooding and sedimentation, ending peat formation in the delta. In the geologically recent past the main process distributing sediment across the delta has been the shifting of river channels to new locations on the floodplain (termed avulsion). Over the past 6000 years, approximately 80 avulsions have occurred. Direct human impact in the delta began with the mining of peat for salt and fuel from Roman times onward. This was followed by embankment of the major distributaries and damming of minor distributaries, which took place in the 11–13th century AD. Thereafter, canals were dug, bends were straightened and groynes were built to prevent the river's channels from migrating or silting up. At present, the branches Waal and Nederrijn-Lek discharge to the North Sea through the former Meuse estuary, near Rotterdam. The river IJssel branch flows to the north and enters the IJsselmeer (formerly the Zuider Zee), initially a brackish lagoon but a freshwater lake since 1932. The discharge of the Rhine is divided into three branches: the Waal (6/9 of total discharge), the Nederrijn – Lek (2/9 of total discharge) and the IJssel (1/9 of total discharge). This discharge distribution has been maintained since 1709 by river engineering | inclusion of Lake Constance and the Alpine Rhine is more difficult to measure objectively; it was cited as by the Dutch Rijkswaterstaat in 2010. Its course is conventionally divided as follows: Headwaters and sources Sources The Rhine carries its name without distinctive accessories only from the confluence of the Rein Anteriur/Vorderrhein and Rein Posteriur/Hinterrhein next to Reichenau in Tamins. Above this point is the extensive catchment of the headwaters of the Rhine. It belongs almost exclusively to the Swiss canton of Graubünden, ranging from Saint-Gotthard Massif in the west via one valley lying in Ticino and Italy in the south to the Flüela Pass in the east. The Rhine is one of the four major rivers taking their source in the Gotthard region, along with the Ticino, Rhône and Reuss. Traditionally, Lake Toma near the Oberalp Pass in the Gotthard region is seen as the source of the Anterior Rhine and the Rhine as a whole. The Posterior Rhine rises in the Rheinwald below the Rheinwaldhorn. Anterior Rhine and Posterior Rhine The source of the river is generally considered north of Lai da Tuma/Tomasee on Rein Anteriur/Vorderrhein, although its southern tributary Rein da Medel is actually longer before its confluence with the Anterior Rhine near Disentis. The Anterior Rhine (, ) springs from Lai da Tuma/Tomasee, near the Oberalp Pass and passes the impressive Ruinaulta formed by the largest visible rock slide in the alps, the Flims Rockslide. The Posterior Rhine (, ) starts from the Paradies Glacier, near the Rheinwaldhorn. One of its tributaries, the Reno di Lei, drains the Valle di Lei on politically Italian territory. After three main valleys separated by the two gorges, Roflaschlucht and Viamala, it reaches Reichenau in Tamins. The Anterior Rhine arises from numerous source streams in the upper Surselva and flows in an easterly direction. One source is Lai da Tuma () with the Rein da Tuma, which is usually indicated as source of the Rhine, flowing through it. Into it flow tributaries from the south, some longer, some equal in length, such as the Rein da Medel, the Rein da Maighels, and the Rein da Curnera. The Cadlimo Valley in the canton of Ticino is drained by the Reno di Medel, which crosses the geomorphologic Alpine main ridge from the south. All streams in the source area are partially, sometimes completely, captured and sent to storage reservoirs for the local hydro-electric power plants. The culminating point of the Anterior Rhine's drainage basin is the Piz Russein of the Tödi massif of the Glarus Alps at above sea level. It starts with the creek Aua da Russein (lit.: "Water of the Russein"). In its lower course, the Anterior Rhine flows through a gorge named Ruinaulta (Flims Rockslide). The whole stretch of the Anterior Rhine to the Alpine Rhine confluence next to Reichenau in Tamins is accompanied by a long-distance hiking trail called Senda Sursilvana. The Posterior Rhine flows first east-northeast, then north. It flows through the three valleys named Rheinwald, Schams and Domleschg-Heinzenberg. The valleys are separated by the Rofla Gorge and Viamala Gorge. Its sources are located in the Adula Alps (Rheinwaldhorn, Rheinquellhorn, and Güferhorn). The Avers Rhine joins from the south. One of its headwaters, the Reno di Lei (stowed in the Lago di Lei), is partially located in Italy. Near Sils the Posterior Rhine is joined by the Albula, from the east, from the Albula Pass region. The Albula draws its water mainly from the Landwasser with the Dischmabach as the largest source stream, but almost as much from the Gelgia, which comes down from the Julier Pass. Numerous larger and smaller tributary rivers bear the name of the Rhine or equivalent in various Romansh idioms like Rein or Ragn. Examples: Anterior Rhine area: Rein Anteriur/Vorderrhein, Rein da Medel, Rein da Tuma, Rein da Curnera, Rein da Maighels, Rein da Cristallina, Rein da Nalps, Rein da Plattas, Rein da Sumvitg, Rein da Vigliuts, Valser Rhine Posterior Rhine basin: Rein Posteriur/Hinterrhein, Reno di Lei, Madrischer Rhein, Avers Rhine, Jufer Rhein Albula-Landwasser area: In the Dischma valley, near Davos, far east of the Rhine, there's a place called Am Rin ("Upon Rhine"). A tributary of the Dischma is called Riner Tälli. Nearby, on the other side of the Sertig, is the Rinerhorn. Alpine Rhine Next to Reichenau in Tamins the Anterior Rhine and the Posterior Rhine join and form the Alpine Rhine. The river makes a distinctive turn to the north near Chur. This section is nearly 86 km long, and descends from a height of 599 m to 396 m. It flows through a wide glacial Alpine valley known as the Rhine Valley (). Near Sargans a natural dam, only a few metres high, prevents it from flowing into the open Seeztal valley and then through Lake Walen and Lake Zurich into the Aare. The Alpine Rhine begins in the westernmost part of the Swiss canton of Graubünden, and later forms the border between Switzerland to the west and Liechtenstein and later Austria to the east. As an effect of human work, it empties into Lake Constance on Austrian territory and not on the border that follows its old natural river bed. The mouth of the Rhine into Lake Constance forms an inland delta. The delta is delimited in the west by the Alter Rhein ("Old Rhine") and in the east by a modern canalized section. Most of the delta is a nature reserve and bird sanctuary. It includes the Austrian towns of Gaißau, Höchst and Fußach. The natural Rhine originally branched into at least two arms and formed small islands by precipitating sediments. In the local Alemannic dialect, the singular is pronounced "Isel" and this is also the local pronunciation of Esel ("Donkey"). Many local fields have an official name containing this element. A regulation of the Rhine was called for, with an upper canal near Diepoldsau and a lower canal at Fußach, in order to counteract the constant flooding and strong sedimentation in the western Rhine Delta. The Dornbirner Ach had to be diverted, too, and it now flows parallel to the canalized Rhine into the lake. Its water has a darker color than the Rhine; the latter's lighter suspended load comes from higher up the mountains. It is expected that the continuous input of sediment into the lake will silt up the lake. This has already happened to the former Lake Tuggenersee. The cut-off Old Rhine at first formed a swamp landscape. Later an artificial ditch of about two km was dug. It was made navigable to the Swiss town of Rheineck. Lake Constance Lake Constance consists of three bodies of water: the Obersee ("upper lake"), the Untersee ("lower lake"), and a connecting stretch of the Rhine, called the Seerhein ("Lake Rhine"). The lake is situated in Germany, Switzerland and Austria near the Alps. Specifically, its shorelines lie in the German states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, the Austrian state of Vorarlberg, and the Swiss cantons of Thurgau and St. Gallen. The Rhine flows into it from the south following the Swiss-Austrian border. It is located at approximately . Obersee The flow of cold, grey mountain water continues for some distance into the lake. The cold water flows near the surface and at first doesn't mix with the warmer, green waters of Upper Lake. But then, at the so-called Rheinbrech, the Rhine water abruptly falls into the depths because of the greater density of cold water. The flow reappears on the surface at the northern (German) shore of the lake, off the island of Lindau. The water then follows the northern shore until Hagnau am Bodensee. A small fraction of the flow is diverted off the island of Mainau into Lake Überlingen. Most of the water flows via the Constance hopper into the Rheinrinne ("Rhine Gutter") and Seerhein. Depending on the water level, this flow of the Rhine water is clearly visible along the entire length of the lake. The Rhine carries very large amounts of debris into the lake. In the mouth region, it is therefore necessary to permanently remove gravel by dredging. The large sediment loads are partly due to the extensive land improvements upstream. Three countries border the Obersee, namely Switzerland in the south, Austria in the southeast and the German states of Bavaria in the northeast and Baden-Württemberg in the north and northwest. Seerhein The Seerhein is only four km long. It connects the Obersee with the 30 cm lower Untersee. Distance markers along the Rhine measure the distance from the bridge in the old city centre of Constance. For most of its length, the Seerhein forms the border between Germany and Switzerland. The exception is the old city centre of Constance, on the Swiss side of the river. The Seerhein emerged in the last thousands of years, when erosion caused the lake level to be lowered by about 10 metres. Previously, the two lakes formed a single lake, as the name still suggests. Untersee Like in the Obersee, the flow the Rhine can be traced in the Untersee. Here, too, the river water is hardly mixed with the lake water. The northern parts of the Untersee (Lake Zell and Gnadensee) remain virtually unaffected by the flow. The river traverses the southern, which, in isolation, is sometimes called Rhinesee ("Lake Rhine"). The Radolfzeller Aach adds large amounts of water from the Danube system to the Untersee. Reichenau Island was formed at the same time as the Seerhein, when the water level was lowered to its current level. Lake Untersee is part of the border between Switzerland and Germany, with Germany on the north bank and Switzerland on the south, except both sides are Swiss in Stein am Rhein, where the High Rhine flows out of the lake. High Rhine The Rhine emerges from Lake Constance, flows generally westward, as the Hochrhein, passes the Rhine Falls, and is joined by its major tributary, the Aare. The Aare more than doubles the Rhine's water discharge, to an average of nearly , and provides more than a fifth of the discharge at the Dutch border. The Aare also contains the waters from the summit of Finsteraarhorn, the highest point of the Rhine basin. The Rhine roughly forms the German-Swiss border from Lake Constance with the exceptions of the canton of Schaffhausen and parts of the cantons of Zürich and Basel-Stadt, until it turns north at the so-called Rhine knee at Basel, leaving Switzerland. The High Rhine begins in Stein am Rhein at the western end of the Untersee. Unlike the Alpine Rhine and Upper Rhine, it flows to the west. It descends from 395 m to 252 m. Some stretches of the High Rhine between Stein am Rhein and Eglisau form the border between Switzerland on the south bank and Germany in the north. On other stretches, both sides are Swiss; in fact most of the canton of Schaffhausen is on the north bank. Between Eglisau and Basel, the High Rhine consistently forms the border. The Rhine Falls are situated below Schaffhausen. With an average water flow of 373 m³/s (mean summer discharge 700 m³/s) it is the largest waterfall in Europe in terms of potential energy. The High Rhine is characterized by numerous dams. On the few remaining natural sections, there are still several rapids. Near Koblenz in the canton of Aargau, the Aare joins the Rhine. With an average discharge of 557 m³/s, the Aare is more voluminous than the Rhine, which has an average discharge of 439 m³/s. Nevertheless, the Alpine Rhine is considered the main branch, because it is longer. Upper Rhine In the centre of Basel, the first major city in the course of the stream, is located the "Rhine knee"; this is a major bend, where the overall direction of the Rhine changes from west to north. Here the High Rhine ends. Legally, the Central Bridge is the boundary between High and Upper Rhine. The river now flows north as Upper Rhine through the Upper Rhine Plain, which is about 300 km long and up to 40 km wide. The most important tributaries in this area are the Ill below of Strasbourg, the Neckar in Mannheim and the Main across from Mainz. In Mainz, the Rhine leaves the Upper Rhine Valley and flows through the Mainz Basin. The southern half of the Upper Rhine forms the border between France (Alsace) and Germany (Baden-Württemberg). The northern part forms the border between the German states of Rhineland-Palatinate in the west on the one hand, and Baden-Württemberg and Hesse on the other hand, in the east and north. A curiosity of this border line is that the parts of the city of Mainz on the right bank of the Rhine were given to Hesse by the occupying forces in 1945. The Upper Rhine was a significant cultural landscape in Central Europe already in antiquity and during the Middle Ages. Today, the Upper Rhine area hosts many important manufacturing and service industries, particularly in the centers Basel, Strasbourg and Mannheim-Ludwigshafen. Strasbourg is the seat of the European Parliament, and so one of the three European capitals is located on the Upper Rhine. The Upper Rhine region was changed significantly by a Rhine straightening program in the 19th century. The rate of flow was increased and the ground water level fell significantly. Dead branches were removed by construction workers and the area around the river was made more habitable for humans on flood plains as the rate of flooding decreased sharply. On the French side, the Grand Canal d'Alsace was dug, which carries a significant part of the river water, and all of the traffic. In some places, there are large compensation pools, for example, the huge Bassin de compensation de Plobsheim in Alsace. The Upper Rhine has undergone significant human change since the 19th century. While it was slightly modified during the Roman occupation, it was not until the emergence of engineers such as Johann Gottfried Tulla that significant modernization efforts changed the shape of the river. Earlier work under Frederick the Great surrounded efforts to ease shipping and construct dams to serve coal transportation. Tulla is considered to have domesticated the Upper Rhine, a domestication that served goals such as reducing stagnant bogs that fostered waterborne diseases, making regions more habitable for human settlement, and reduce high frequency of floods. Not long before Tulla went to work on widening and straightening the river, heavy floods caused significant loss of life. Four diplomatic treaties were signed among German state governments and French regions dealing with the changes proposed along the Rhine, one was "the Treaty for the Rectification of the Rhine flow from Neuberg to Dettenheim"(1817), which surrounded states such as Bourbon France and the Bavarian Palatinate. Loops, oxbows, branches and islands were removed along the Upper Rhine so that there would be uniformity to the river. The engineering of the Rhine was not without protest, farmers and fishermen had grave concerns about valuable fishing areas and farmland being lost. While some areas lost ground, other areas saw swamps and bogs be drained and turned into arable land. Johann Tulla had the goal of shortening and straightening the Upper Rhine. Early engineering projects the Upper Rhine also had issues, with Tulla's project at one part of the river creating rapids, after the Rhine cut down from erosion to sheer rock. Engineering along the Rhine eased flooding and made transportation along the river less cumbersome. These state projects were part of the advanced and technical progress going on in the country alongside the industrial revolution. For the German state, making the river more predictable was to ensure development projects could easily commence. The section of the Upper Rhine downstream from Mainz is also known as the "Island Rhine". Here a number of river islands occur, locally known as "Rheinauen". Middle Rhine The Rhine is the longest river in Germany. It is here that the Rhine encounters some more of its main tributaries, such as the Neckar, the Main and, later, the Moselle, which contributes an average discharge of more than . Northeastern France drains to the Rhine via the Moselle; smaller rivers drain the Vosges and Jura Mountains uplands. Most of Luxembourg and a very small part of Belgium also drain to the Rhine via the Moselle. As it approaches the Dutch border, the Rhine has an annual mean discharge of and an average width of . Between Bingen am Rhein and Bonn, the Middle Rhine flows through the Rhine Gorge, a formation which was created by erosion. The rate of erosion equaled the uplift in the region, such that the river was left at about its original level while the surrounding lands raised. The gorge is quite deep and is the stretch of the river which is known for its many castles and vineyards. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (2002) and known as "the Romantic Rhine", with more than 40 castles and fortresses from the Middle Ages and many quaint and lovely country villages. The Mainz Basin ends in Bingen am Rhein; the Rhine continues as "Middle Rhine" into the Rhine Gorge in the Rhenish Slate Mountains. In this sections the river falls from 77.4 m above sea level to 50.4 m. On the left, is located the mountain ranges of Hunsrück and Eifel, on the right Taunus and Westerwald. According to geologists, the characteristic narrow valley form was created by erosion by the river while the surrounding landscape was lifted (see water gap). Major tributaries in this section are the Lahn and the Moselle. They join the Rhine near Koblenz, for the right and left respectively. Almost the entire length of the Middle Rhine runs in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The dominant economic sectors in the Middle Rhine area are viniculture and tourism. The Rhine Gorge between Rüdesheim am Rhein and Koblenz is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Near Sankt Goarshausen, the Rhine flows around the famous rock Lorelei. With its outstanding architectural monuments, the slopes full of vines, settlements crowded on the narrow river banks and scores of castles lined up along the top of the steep slopes, the Middle Rhine Valley can be considered the epitome of the Rhine romanticism. Lower Rhine In Bonn, where the Sieg flows into the Rhine, the Rhine enters the North German Plain and turns into the Lower Rhine. The Lower Rhine falls from 50 m to 12 m. The main tributaries on this stretch are the Ruhr and the Lippe. Like the Upper Rhine, the Lower Rhine used to meander until engineering created a solid river bed. Because the levees are some distance from the river, at high tide the Lower Rhine has more room for widening than the Upper Rhine. The Lower Rhine flows through North Rhine-Westphalia. Its banks are usually heavily populated and industrialized, in particular the agglomerations Cologne, Düsseldorf and Ruhr area. Here the Rhine flows through the largest conurbation in Germany, the Rhine-Ruhr region. One of the most important cities in this region is Duisburg with the largest river port in Europe (Duisport). The region downstream of Duisburg is more agricultural. In Wesel, 30 km downstream of Duisburg, is located the western end of the second east–west shipping route, the Wesel-Datteln Canal, which runs parallel to the Lippe. Between Emmerich and Cleves the Emmerich Rhine Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in Germany, crosses the river. Near Krefeld, the river crosses the Uerdingen line, the line which separates the areas where Low German and High German are spoken. Until the early 1980s, industry was a major source of water pollution. Although many plants and factories can be found along the Rhine up into Switzerland, it is along the Lower Rhine that the bulk of them are concentrated, as the river passes the major cities of Cologne, Düsseldorf and Duisburg. Duisburg is the home of Europe's largest inland port and functions as a hub to the sea ports of Rotterdam, Antwerp and Amsterdam. The Ruhr, which joins the Rhine in Duisburg, is nowadays a clean river, thanks to a combination of stricter environmental controls, a transition from heavy industry to light industry and cleanup measures, such as the reforestation of Slag and brownfields. The Ruhr currently provides the region with drinking water. It contributes to the Rhine. Other rivers in the Ruhr Area, above all, the Emscher, still carry a considerable degree of pollution. Delta The Dutch name for Rhine is "Rijn". The Rhine turns west and enters the Netherlands, where, together with the rivers Meuse and Scheldt, it forms the extensive Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt |
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