Split (1)

train · 41.2k rows

text stringlengths 151 4.06k
Bell's own home used a primitive form of air conditioning, in which fans blew currents of air across great blocks of ice. He also anticipated modern concerns with fuel shortages and industrial pollution. Methane gas, he reasoned, could be produced from the waste of farms and factories. At his Canadian estate in Nova Scotia, he experimented with composting toilets and devices to capture water from the atmosphere. In a magazine interview published shortly before his death, he reflected on the possibility of using solar panels to heat houses.
Bell and his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter jointly invented a wireless telephone, named a photophone, which allowed for the transmission of both sounds and normal human conversations on a beam of light. Both men later became full associates in the Volta Laboratory Association.
On June 21, 1880, Bell's assistant transmitted a wireless voice telephone message a considerable distance, from the roof of the Franklin School in Washington, D.C., to Bell at the window of his laboratory, some 213 metres (700 ft) away, 19 years before the first voice radio transmissions.
Bell believed the photophone's principles were his life's "greatest achievement", telling a reporter shortly before his death that the photophone was "the greatest invention [I have] ever made, greater than the telephone". The photophone was a precursor to the fiber-optic communication systems which achieved popular worldwide usage in the 1980s. Its master patent was issued in December 1880, many decades before the photophone's principles came into popular use.
Bell is also credited with developing one of the early versions of a metal detector in 1881. The device was quickly put together in an attempt to find the bullet in the body of U.S. President James Garfield. According to some accounts, the metal detector worked flawlessly in tests but did not find the assassin's bullet partly because the metal bed frame on which the President was lying disturbed the instrument, resulting in static. The president's surgeons, who were skeptical of the device, ignored Bell's requests to move the president to a bed not fitted with metal springs. Alternatively, although Bell had detected a slight sound on his first test, the bullet may have been lodged too deeply to be detected by the crude apparatus.
Bell's own detailed account, presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1882, differs in several particulars from most of the many and varied versions now in circulation, most notably by concluding that extraneous metal was not to blame for failure to locate the bullet. Perplexed by the peculiar results he had obtained during an examination of Garfield, Bell "...proceeded to the Executive Mansion the next morning...to ascertain from the surgeons whether they were perfectly sure that all metal had been removed from the neighborhood of the bed. It was then recollected that underneath the horse-hair mattress on which the President lay was another mattress composed of steel wires. Upon obtaining a duplicate, the mattress was found to consist of a sort of net of woven steel wires, with large meshes. The extent of the [area that produced a response from the detector] having been so small, as compared with the area of the bed, it seemed reasonable to conclude that the steel mattress had produced no detrimental effect." In a footnote, Bell adds that "The death of President Garfield and the subsequent post-mortem examination, however, proved that the bullet was at too great a distance from the surface to have affected our apparatus."
The March 1906 Scientific American article by American pioneer William E. Meacham explained the basic principle of hydrofoils and hydroplanes. Bell considered the invention of the hydroplane as a very significant achievement. Based on information gained from that article he began to sketch concepts of what is now called a hydrofoil boat. Bell and assistant Frederick W. "Casey" Baldwin began hydrofoil experimentation in the summer of 1908 as a possible aid to airplane takeoff from water. Baldwin studied the work of the Italian inventor Enrico Forlanini and began testing models. This led him and Bell to the development of practical hydrofoil watercraft.
During his world tour of 1910–11, Bell and Baldwin met with Forlanini in France. They had rides in the Forlanini hydrofoil boat over Lake Maggiore. Baldwin described it as being as smooth as flying. On returning to Baddeck, a number of initial concepts were built as experimental models, including the Dhonnas Beag, the first self-propelled Bell-Baldwin hydrofoil. The experimental boats were essentially proof-of-concept prototypes that culminated in the more substantial HD-4, powered by Renault engines. A top speed of 54 miles per hour (87 km/h) was achieved, with the hydrofoil exhibiting rapid acceleration, good stability and steering along with the ability to take waves without difficulty. In 1913, Dr. Bell hired Walter Pinaud, a Sydney yacht designer and builder as well as the proprietor of Pinaud's Yacht Yard in Westmount, Nova Scotia to work on the pontoons of the HD-4. Pinaud soon took over the boatyard at Bell Laboratories on Beinn Bhreagh, Bell's estate near Baddeck, Nova Scotia. Pinaud's experience in boat-building enabled him to make useful design changes to the HD-4. After the First World War, work began again on the HD-4. Bell's report to the U.S. Navy permitted him to obtain two 350 horsepower (260 kilowatts) engines in July 1919. On September 9, 1919, the HD-4 set a world marine speed record of 70.86 miles per hour (114.04 kilometres per hour), a record which stood for ten years.
In 1898, Bell experimented with tetrahedral box kites and wings constructed of multiple compound tetrahedral kites covered in maroon silk.[N 23] The tetrahedral wings were named Cygnet I, II and III, and were flown both unmanned and manned (Cygnet I crashed during a flight carrying Selfridge) in the period from 1907–1912. Some of Bell's kites are on display at the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site.
Bell was a supporter of aerospace engineering research through the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA), officially formed at Baddeck, Nova Scotia, in October 1907 at the suggestion of his wife Mabel and with her financial support after the sale of some of her real estate. The AEA was headed by Bell and the founding members were four young men: American Glenn H. Curtiss, a motorcycle manufacturer at the time and who held the title "world's fastest man", having ridden his self-constructed motor bicycle around in the shortest time, and who was later awarded the Scientific American Trophy for the first official one-kilometre flight in the Western hemisphere, and who later became a world-renowned airplane manufacturer; Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, an official observer from the U.S. Federal government and one of the few people in the army who believed that aviation was the future; Frederick W. Baldwin, the first Canadian and first British subject to pilot a public flight in Hammondsport, New York, and J.A.D. McCurdy —Baldwin and McCurdy being new engineering graduates from the University of Toronto.
The AEA's work progressed to heavier-than-air machines, applying their knowledge of kites to gliders. Moving to Hammondsport, the group then designed and built the Red Wing, framed in bamboo and covered in red silk and powered by a small air-cooled engine. On March 12, 1908, over Keuka Lake, the biplane lifted off on the first public flight in North America.[N 24] [N 25] The innovations that were incorporated into this design included a cockpit enclosure and tail rudder (later variations on the original design would add ailerons as a means of control). One of the AEA's inventions, a practical wingtip form of the aileron, was to become a standard component on all aircraft. [N 26] The White Wing and June Bug were to follow and by the end of 1908, over 150 flights without mishap had been accomplished. However, the AEA had depleted its initial reserves and only a $15,000 grant from Mrs. Bell allowed it to continue with experiments. Lt. Selfridge had also become the first person killed in a powered heavier-than-air flight in a crash of the Wright Flyer at Fort Myer, Virginia, on September 17, 1908.
Their final aircraft design, the Silver Dart, embodied all of the advancements found in the earlier machines. On February 23, 1909, Bell was present as the Silver Dart flown by J.A.D. McCurdy from the frozen ice of Bras d'Or, made the first aircraft flight in Canada. Bell had worried that the flight was too dangerous and had arranged for a doctor to be on hand. With the successful flight, the AEA disbanded and the Silver Dart would revert to Baldwin and McCurdy who began the Canadian Aerodrome Company and would later demonstrate the aircraft to the Canadian Army.
Bell was connected with the eugenics movement in the United States. In his lecture Memoir upon the formation of a deaf variety of the human race presented to the National Academy of Sciences on November 13, 1883 he noted that congenitally deaf parents were more likely to produce deaf children and tentatively suggested that couples where both parties were deaf should not marry. However, it was his hobby of livestock breeding which led to his appointment to biologist David Starr Jordan's Committee on Eugenics, under the auspices of the American Breeders' Association. The committee unequivocally extended the principle to man. From 1912 until 1918 he was the chairman of the board of scientific advisers to the Eugenics Record Office associated with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, and regularly attended meetings. In 1921, he was the honorary president of the Second International Congress of Eugenics held under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Organisations such as these advocated passing laws (with success in some states) that established the compulsory sterilization of people deemed to be, as Bell called them, a "defective variety of the human race." By the late 1930s, about half the states in the U.S. had eugenics laws, and California's compulsory sterilization law was used as a model for that of Nazi Germany.
A large number of Bell's writings, personal correspondence, notebooks, papers and other documents reside at both the United States Library of Congress Manuscript Division (as the Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers), and at the Alexander Graham Bell Institute, Cape Breton University, Nova Scotia; major portions of which are available for online viewing.
In 1880, Bell received the Volta Prize with a purse of 50,000 francs (approximately US$250,000 in today's dollars) for the invention of the telephone from the Académie française, representing the French government. Among the luminaries who judged were Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas. The Volta Prize was conceived by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1801, and named in honor of Alessandro Volta, with Bell receiving the third grand prize in its history. Since Bell was becoming increasingly affluent, he used his prize money to create endowment funds (the 'Volta Fund') and institutions in and around the United States capital of Washington, D.C.. These included the prestigious 'Volta Laboratory Association' (1880), also known as the Volta Laboratory and as the 'Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory', and which eventually led to the Volta Bureau (1887) as a center for studies on deafness which is still in operation in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. The Volta Laboratory became an experimental facility devoted to scientific discovery, and the very next year it improved Edison's phonograph by substituting wax for tinfoil as the recording medium and incising the recording rather than indenting it, key upgrades that Edison himself later adopted. The laboratory was also the site where he and his associate invented his "proudest achievement", "the photophone", the "optical telephone" which presaged fibre optical telecommunications, while the Volta Bureau would later evolve into the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (the AG Bell), a leading center for the research and pedagogy of deafness.
In partnership with Gardiner Greene Hubbard, Bell helped establish the publication Science during the early 1880s. In 1898, Bell was elected as the second president of the National Geographic Society, serving until 1903, and was primarily responsible for the extensive use of illustrations, including photography, in the magazine. he also became a Regent of the Smithsonian Institution (1898–1922). The French government conferred on him the decoration of the Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honor); the Royal Society of Arts in London awarded him the Albert Medal in 1902; the University of Würzburg, Bavaria, granted him a PhD, and he was awarded the Franklin Institute's Elliott Cresson Medal in 1912. He was one of the founders of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1884, and served as its president from 1891–92. Bell was later awarded the AIEE's Edison Medal in 1914 "For meritorious achievement in the invention of the telephone".
Honors and tributes flowed to Bell in increasing numbers as his most famous invention became ubiquitous and his personal fame grew. Bell received numerous honorary degrees from colleges and universities, to the point that the requests almost became burdensome. During his life he also received dozens of major awards, medals and other tributes. These included statuary monuments to both him and the new form of communication his telephone created, notably the Bell Telephone Memorial erected in his honor in Alexander Graham Bell Gardens in Brantford, Ontario, in 1917.
In 1936 the US Patent Office declared Bell first on its list of the country's greatest inventors, leading to the US Post Office issuing a commemorative stamp honoring Bell in 1940 as part of its 'Famous Americans Series'. The First Day of Issue ceremony was held on October 28 in Boston, Massachusetts, the city where Bell spent considerable time on research and working with the deaf. The Bell stamp became very popular and sold out in little time. The stamp became, and remains to this day, the most valuable one of the series.
The 150th anniversary of Bell's birth in 1997 was marked by a special issue of commemorative £1 banknotes from the Royal Bank of Scotland. The illustrations on the reverse of the note include Bell's face in profile, his signature, and objects from Bell's life and career: users of the telephone over the ages; an audio wave signal; a diagram of a telephone receiver; geometric shapes from engineering structures; representations of sign language and the phonetic alphabet; the geese which helped him to understand flight; and the sheep which he studied to understand genetics. Additionally, the Government of Canada honored Bell in 1997 with a C$100 gold coin, in tribute also to the 150th anniversary of his birth, and with a silver dollar coin in 2009 in honor of the 100th anniversary of flight in Canada. That first flight was made by an airplane designed under Dr. Bell's tutelage, named the Silver Dart. Bell's image, and also those of his many inventions have graced paper money, coinage and postal stamps in numerous countries worldwide for many dozens of years.
Alexander Graham Bell was ranked 57th among the 100 Greatest Britons (2002) in an official BBC nationwide poll, and among the Top Ten Greatest Canadians (2004), and the 100 Greatest Americans (2005). In 2006 Bell was also named as one of the 10 greatest Scottish scientists in history after having been listed in the National Library of Scotland's 'Scottish Science Hall of Fame'. Bell's name is still widely known and used as part of the names of dozens of educational institutes, corporate namesakes, street and place names around the world.
Bell died of complications arising from diabetes on August 2, 1922, at his private estate, Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, at age 75. Bell had also been afflicted with pernicious anemia. His last view of the land he had inhabited was by moonlight on his mountain estate at 2:00 a.m.[N 29][N 30] While tending to him after his long illness, Mabel, his wife, whispered, "Don't leave me." By way of reply, Bell traced the sign for "no" in the air —and then he died.
Bell's coffin was constructed of Beinn Bhreagh pine by his laboratory staff, lined with the same red silk fabric used in his tetrahedral kite experiments. To help celebrate his life, his wife asked guests not to wear black (the traditional funeral color) while attending his service, during which soloist Jean MacDonald sang a verse of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Requiem":
Dr. Alexander Graham Bell was buried atop Beinn Bhreagh mountain, on his estate where he had resided increasingly for the last 35 years of his life, overlooking Bras d'Or Lake. He was survived by his wife Mabel, his two daughters, Elsie May and Marian, and nine of his grandchildren.
The bel (B) and the smaller decibel (dB) are units of measurement of sound intensity invented by Bell Labs and named after him. [N 28] Since 1976 the IEEE's Alexander Graham Bell Medal has been awarded to honor outstanding contributions in the field of telecommunications.
A pub /pʌb/, or public house is, despite its name, a private house, but is called a public house because it is licensed to sell alcohol to the general public. It is a drinking establishment in Britain, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Denmark and New England. In many places, especially in villages, a pub can be the focal point of the community. The writings of Samuel Pepys describe the pub as the heart of England.
The history of pubs can be traced back to Roman taverns, through the Anglo-Saxon alehouse to the development of the modern tied house system in the 19th century.
Historically, pubs have been socially and culturally distinct from cafés, bars and German beer halls. Most pubs offer a range of beers, wines, spirits, and soft drinks and snacks. Traditionally the windows of town pubs were of smoked or frosted glass to obscure the clientele from the street but from the 1990s onwards, there has been a move towards clear glass, in keeping with brighter interiors.
The owner, tenant or manager (licensee) of a pub is properly known as the "pub landlord". The term publican (in historical Roman usage a public contractor or tax farmer) has come into use since Victorian times to designate the pub landlord. Known as "locals" to regulars, pubs are typically chosen for their proximity to home or work, the availability of a particular beer, as a place to smoke (or avoid it), hosting a darts team, having a pool or snooker table, or appealing to friends.
Until the 1970s most of the larger pubs also featured an off-sales counter or attached shop for the sales of beers, wines and spirits for home consumption. In the 1970s the newly built supermarkets and high street chain stores or off-licences undercut the pub prices to such a degree that within ten years all but a handful of pubs had closed their off-sale counters, which had often been referred to colloquially as the jug and bottle.
The inhabitants of the British Isles have been drinking ale since the Bronze Age, but it was with the arrival of the Roman Empire in its shores in the 1st Century, and the construction of the Roman road networks that the first inns, called tabernae, in which travellers could obtain refreshment began to appear. After the departure of Roman authority in the 5th Century and the fall of the Romano-British kingdoms, the Anglo-Saxons established alehouses that grew out of domestic dwellings, the Anglo-Saxon alewife would put a green bush up on a pole to let people know her brew was ready. These alehouses quickly evolved into meeting houses for the folk to socially congregate, gossip and arrange mutual help within their communities. Herein lies the origin of the modern public house, or "Pub" as it is colloquially called in England. They rapidly spread across the Kingdom, becoming so commonplace that in 965 King Edgar decreed that there should be no more than one alehouse per village.
A traveller in the early Middle Ages could obtain overnight accommodation in monasteries, but later a demand for hostelries grew with the popularity of pilgrimages and travel. The Hostellers of London were granted guild status in 1446 and in 1514 the guild became the Worshipful Company of Innholders.
Inns are buildings where travellers can seek lodging and, usually, food and drink. They are typically located in the country or along a highway. In Europe, they possibly first sprang up when the Romans built a system of roads two millennia ago.[citation needed] Some inns in Europe are several centuries old. In addition to providing for the needs of travellers, inns traditionally acted as community gathering places.
In Europe, it is the provision of accommodation, if anything, that now distinguishes inns from taverns, alehouses and pubs. The latter tend to provide alcohol (and, in the UK, soft drinks and often food), but less commonly accommodation. Inns tend to be older and grander establishments: historically they provided not only food and lodging, but also stabling and fodder for the traveller's horse(s) and on some roads fresh horses for the mail coach. Famous London inns include The George, Southwark and The Tabard. There is however no longer a formal distinction between an inn and other kinds of establishment. Many pubs use "Inn" in their name, either because they are long established former coaching inns, or to summon up a particular kind of image, or in many cases simply as a pun on the word "in", as in "The Welcome Inn", the name of many pubs in Scotland.
The original services of an inn are now also available at other establishments, such as hotels, lodges, and motels, which focus more on lodging customers than on other services, although they usually provide meals; pubs, which are primarily alcohol-serving establishments; and restaurants and taverns, which serve food and drink. In North America, the lodging aspect of the word "inn" lives on in hotel brand names like Holiday Inn, and in some state laws that refer to lodging operators as innkeepers.
The Inns of Court and Inns of Chancery in London started as ordinary inns where barristers met to do business, but became institutions of the legal profession in England and Wales.
Traditional English ale was made solely from fermented malt. The practice of adding hops to produce beer was introduced from the Netherlands in the early 15th century. Alehouses would each brew their own distinctive ale, but independent breweries began to appear in the late 17th century. By the end of the century almost all beer was brewed by commercial breweries.
The 18th century saw a huge growth in the number of drinking establishments, primarily due to the introduction of gin. Gin was brought to England by the Dutch after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and became very popular after the government created a market for "cuckoo grain" or "cuckoo malt" that was unfit to be used in brewing and distilling by allowing unlicensed gin and beer production, while imposing a heavy duty on all imported spirits. As thousands of gin-shops sprang up all over England, brewers fought back by increasing the number of alehouses. By 1740 the production of gin had increased to six times that of beer and because of its cheapness it became popular with the poor, leading to the so-called Gin Craze. Over half of the 15,000 drinking establishments in London were gin shops.
The drunkenness and lawlessness created by gin was seen to lead to ruination and degradation of the working classes. The distinction[clarification needed] was illustrated by William Hogarth in his engravings Beer Street and Gin Lane. The Gin Act 1736 imposed high taxes on retailers and led to riots in the streets. The prohibitive duty was gradually reduced and finally abolished in 1742. The Gin Act 1751 however was more successful. It forced distillers to sell only to licensed retailers and brought gin shops under the jurisdiction of local magistrates.
By the early 19th century, encouraged by lower duties on gin, the gin houses or "Gin Palaces" had spread from London to most cities and towns in Britain, with most of the new establishments illegal and unlicensed. These bawdy, loud and unruly drinking dens so often described by Charles Dickens in his Sketches by Boz (published 1835–1836) increasingly came to be held as unbridled cesspits of immorality or crime and the source of much ill-health and alcoholism among the working classes.
Under a banner of "reducing public drunkenness" the Beer Act of 1830 introduced a new lower tier of premises permitted to sell alcohol, the Beer Houses. At the time beer was viewed as harmless, nutritious and even healthy. Young children were often given what was described as small beer, which was brewed to have a low alcohol content, as the local water was often unsafe. Even the evangelical church and temperance movements of the day viewed the drinking of beer very much as a secondary evil and a normal accompaniment to a meal. The freely available beer was thus intended to wean the drinkers off the evils of gin, or so the thinking went.
Under the 1830 Act any householder who paid rates could apply, with a one-off payment of two guineas (roughly equal in value to £168 today), to sell beer or cider in his home (usually the front parlour) and even to brew his own on his premises. The permission did not extend to the sale of spirits and fortified wines, and any beer house discovered selling those items was closed down and the owner heavily fined. Beer houses were not permitted to open on Sundays. The beer was usually served in jugs or dispensed directly from tapped wooden barrels on a table in the corner of the room. Often profits were so high the owners were able to buy the house next door to live in, turning every room in their former home into bars and lounges for customers.
In the first year, 400 beer houses opened and within eight years there were 46,000 across the country, far outnumbering the combined total of long-established taverns, pubs, inns and hotels. Because it was so easy to obtain permission and the profits could be huge compared to the low cost of gaining permission, the number of beer houses was continuing to rise and in some towns nearly every other house in a street could be a beer house. Finally in 1869 the growth had to be checked by magisterial control and new licensing laws were introduced. Only then was it made harder to get a licence, and the licensing laws which operate today were formulated.
Although the new licensing laws prevented new beer houses from being created, those already in existence were allowed to continue and many did not close until nearly the end of the 19th century. A very small number remained into the 21st century. The vast majority of the beer houses applied for the new licences and became full pubs. These usually small establishments can still be identified in many towns, seemingly oddly located in the middle of otherwise terraced housing part way up a street, unlike purpose-built pubs that are usually found on corners or road junctions. Many of today's respected real ale micro-brewers in the UK started as home based Beer House brewers under the 1830 Act.
The beer houses tended to avoid the traditional pub names like The Crown, The Red Lion, The Royal Oak etc. and, if they did not simply name their place Smith's Beer House, they would apply topical pub names in an effort to reflect the mood of the times.
There was already regulation on public drinking spaces in the 17th and 18th centuries,[citation needed] and the income earned from licences was beneficial to the crown. Tavern owners were required to possess a licence to sell ale, and a separate licence for distilled spirits.
From the mid-19th century on the opening hours of licensed premises in the UK were restricted. However licensing was gradually liberalised after the 1960s, until contested licensing applications became very rare, and the remaining administrative function was transferred to Local Authorities in 2005.
The Wine and Beerhouse Act 1869 reintroduced the stricter controls of the previous century. The sale of beers, wines or spirits required a licence for the premises from the local magistrates. Further provisions regulated gaming, drunkenness, prostitution and undesirable conduct on licensed premises, enforceable by prosecution or more effectively by the landlord under threat of forfeiting his licence. Licences were only granted, transferred or renewed at special Licensing Sessions courts, and were limited to respectable individuals. Often these were ex-servicemen or ex-policemen; retiring to run a pub was popular amongst military officers at the end of their service. Licence conditions varied widely, according to local practice. They would specify permitted hours, which might require Sunday closing, or conversely permit all-night opening near a market. Typically they might require opening throughout the permitted hours, and the provision of food or lavatories. Once obtained, licences were jealously protected by the licensees (who were expected to be generally present, not an absentee owner or company), and even "Occasional Licences" to serve drinks at temporary premises such as fêtes would usually be granted only to existing licensees. Objections might be made by the police, rival landlords or anyone else on the grounds of infractions such as serving drunks, disorderly or dirty premises, or ignoring permitted hours.
Detailed licensing records were kept, giving the Public House, its address, owner, licensee and misdemeanours of the licensees, often going back for hundreds of years[citation needed]. Many of these records survive and can be viewed, for example, at the London Metropolitan Archives centre.
The restrictions were tightened by the Defence of the Realm Act of August 1914, which, along with the introduction of rationing and the censorship of the press for wartime purposes, restricted pubs' opening hours to 12 noon–2:30 pm and 6:30 pm–9:30 pm. Opening for the full licensed hours was compulsory, and closing time was equally firmly enforced by the police; a landlord might lose his licence for infractions. Pubs were closed under the Act and compensation paid, for example in Pembrokeshire.
There was a special case established under the State Management Scheme where the brewery and licensed premises were bought and run by the state until 1973, most notably in Carlisle. During the 20th century elsewhere, both the licensing laws and enforcement were progressively relaxed, and there were differences between parishes; in the 1960s, at closing time in Kensington at 10:30 pm, drinkers would rush over the parish boundary to be in good time for "Last Orders" in Knightsbridge before 11 pm, a practice observed in many pubs adjoining licensing area boundaries. Some Scottish and Welsh parishes remained officially "dry" on Sundays (although often this merely required knocking at the back door of the pub). These restricted opening hours led to the tradition of lock-ins.
However, closing times were increasingly disregarded in the country pubs. In England and Wales by 2000 pubs could legally open from 11 am (12 noon on Sundays) through to 11 pm (10:30 pm on Sundays). That year was also the first to allow continuous opening for 36 hours from 11 am on New Year's Eve to 11 pm on New Year's Day. In addition, many cities had by-laws to allow some pubs to extend opening hours to midnight or 1 am, whilst nightclubs had long been granted late licences to serve alcohol into the morning. Pubs near London's Smithfield market, Billingsgate fish market and Covent Garden fruit and flower market could stay open 24 hours a day since Victorian times to provide a service to the shift working employees of the markets.
Scotland's and Northern Ireland's licensing laws have long been more flexible, allowing local authorities to set pub opening and closing times. In Scotland, this stemmed out of[clarification needed] a late repeal of the wartime licensing laws, which stayed in force until 1976.
The Licensing Act 2003, which came into force on 24 November 2005, consolidated the many laws into a single Act. This allowed pubs in England and Wales to apply to the local council for the opening hours of their choice. It was argued that this would end the concentration of violence around 11.30 pm, when people had to leave the pub, making policing easier. In practice, alcohol-related hospital admissions rose following the change in the law, with alcohol involved in 207,800 admissions in 2006/7. Critics claimed that these laws would lead to "24-hour drinking". By the time the law came into effect, 60,326 establishments had applied for longer hours and 1,121 had applied for a licence to sell alcohol 24 hours a day. However nine months later many pubs had not changed their hours, although some stayed open longer at the weekend, but rarely beyond 1:00 am.
A "lock-in" is when a pub owner lets drinkers stay in the pub after the legal closing time, on the theory that once the doors are locked, it becomes a private party rather than a pub. Patrons may put money behind the bar before official closing time, and redeem their drinks during the lock-in so no drinks are technically sold after closing time. The origin of the British lock-in was a reaction to 1915 changes in the licensing laws in England and Wales, which curtailed opening hours to stop factory workers from turning up drunk and harming the war effort. Since 1915, the UK licensing laws had changed very little, with comparatively early closing times. The tradition of the lock-in therefore remained. Since the implementation of Licensing Act 2003, premises in England and Wales may apply to extend their opening hours beyond 11 pm, allowing round-the-clock drinking and removing much of the need for lock-ins. Since the smoking ban, some establishments operated a lock-in during which the remaining patrons could smoke without repercussions but, unlike drinking lock-ins, allowing smoking in a pub was still a prosecutable offence.
In March 2006, a law was introduced to forbid smoking in all enclosed public places in Scotland. Wales followed suit in April 2007, with England introducing the ban in July 2007. Pub landlords had raised concerns prior to the implementation of the law that a smoking ban would have a negative impact on sales. After two years, the impact of the ban was mixed; some pubs suffered declining sales, while others developed their food sales. The Wetherspoon pub chain reported in June 2009 that profits were at the top end of expectations; however, Scottish & Newcastle's takeover by Carlsberg and Heineken was reported in January 2008 as partly the result of its weakness following falling sales due to the ban. Similar bans are applied in Australian pubs with smoking only allowed in designated areas.
By the end of the 18th century a new room in the pub was established: the saloon.[citation needed] Beer establishments had always provided entertainment of some sort—singing, gaming or sport.[citation needed] Balls Pond Road in Islington was named after an establishment run by a Mr Ball that had a duck pond at the rear, where drinkers could, for a fee, go out and take a potshot at the ducks. More common, however, was a card room or a billiard room.[citation needed] The saloon was a room where for an admission fee or a higher price of drinks, singing, dancing, drama or comedy was performed and drinks would be served at the table.[citation needed] From this came the popular music hall form of entertainment—a show consisting of a variety of acts.[citation needed] A most famous London saloon was the Grecian Saloon in The Eagle, City Road, which is still famous because of a nursery rhyme: "Up and down the City Road / In and out The Eagle / That's the way the money goes / Pop goes the weasel." This meant that the customer had spent all his money at The Eagle, and needed to pawn his "weasel" to get some more. The meaning of the "weasel" is unclear but the two most likely definitions are: a flat iron used for finishing clothing; or rhyming slang for a coat (weasel and stoat).
A few pubs have stage performances such as serious drama, stand-up comedy, musical bands, cabaret or striptease; however juke boxes, karaoke and other forms of pre-recorded music have otherwise replaced the musical tradition of a piano or guitar and singing.[citation needed]
By the 20th century, the saloon, or lounge bar, had become a middle-class room[citation needed]—carpets on the floor, cushions on the seats, and a penny or two on the prices,[citation needed] while the public bar, or tap room, remained working class with bare boards, sometimes with sawdust to absorb the spitting and spillages (known as "spit and sawdust"), hard bench seats, and cheap beer[citation needed]. This bar was known as the four-ale bar from the days when the cheapest beer served there cost 4 pence (4d) a quart.[citation needed]
Later, the public bars gradually improved until sometimes almost the only difference was in the prices, so that customers could choose between economy and exclusivity (or youth and age, or a jukebox or dartboard).[citation needed] With the blurring of class divisions in the 1960s and 1970s,[citation needed] the distinction between the saloon and the public bar was often seen as archaic,[citation needed] and was frequently abolished, usually by the removal of the dividing wall or partition.[citation needed] While the names of saloon and public bar may still be seen on the doors of pubs, the prices (and often the standard of furnishings and decoration) are the same throughout the premises, and many pubs now comprise one large room. However the modern importance of dining in pubs encourages some establishments to maintain distinct rooms or areas.
The "snug", sometimes called the smoke room, was typically a small, very private room with access to the bar that had a frosted glass external window, set above head height. A higher price was paid for beer in the snug and nobody could look in and see the drinkers. It was not only the wealthy visitors who would use these rooms. The snug was for patrons who preferred not to be seen in the public bar. Ladies would often enjoy a private drink in the snug in a time when it was frowned upon for women to be in a pub. The local police officer might nip in for a quiet pint, the parish priest for his evening whisky, or lovers for a rendezvous.
CAMRA have surveyed the 50,000 pubs in Britain and they believe that there are very few pubs that still have classic snugs. These are on a historic interiors list in order that they can be preserved.
It was the pub that first introduced the concept of the bar counter being used to serve the beer. Until that time beer establishments used to bring the beer out to the table or benches, as remains the practice in (for example) beer gardens and other drinking establishments in Germany. A bar might be provided for the manager to do paperwork while keeping an eye on his or her customers, but the casks of ale were kept in a separate taproom. When the first pubs were built, the main room was the public room with a large serving bar copied from the gin houses, the idea being to serve the maximum number of people in the shortest possible time. It became known as the public bar[citation needed]. The other, more private, rooms had no serving bar—they had the beer brought to them from the public bar. There are a number of pubs in the Midlands or the North which still retain this set up but these days the beer is fetched by the customer from the taproom or public bar. One of these is The Vine, known locally as The Bull and Bladder, in Brierley Hill near Birmingham, another the Cock at Broom, Bedfordshire a series of small rooms served drinks and food by waiting staff. In the Manchester district the public bar was known as the "vault", other rooms being the lounge and snug as usual elsewhere. By the early 1970s there was a tendency to change to one large drinking room and breweries were eager to invest in interior design and theming.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the British engineer and railway builder, introduced the idea of a circular bar into the Swindon station pub in order that customers were served quickly and did not delay his trains. These island bars became popular as they also allowed staff to serve customers in several different rooms surrounding the bar.
A "beer engine" is a device for pumping beer, originally manually operated and typically used to dispense beer from a cask or container in a pub's basement or cellar.
The first beer pump known in England is believed to have been invented by John Lofting (b. Netherlands 1659-d. Great Marlow Buckinghamshire 1742) an inventor, manufacturer and merchant of London.
The London Gazette of 17 March 1691 published a patent in favour of John Lofting for a fire engine, but remarked upon and recommended another invention of his, for a beer pump:
"Whereas their Majesties have been Graciously Pleased to grant Letters patent to John Lofting of London Merchant for a New Invented Engine for Extinguishing Fires which said Engine have found every great encouragement. The said Patentee hath also projected a Very Useful Engine for starting of beer and other liquors which will deliver from 20 to 30 barrels an hour which are completely fixed with Brass Joints and Screws at Reasonable Rates. Any Person that hath occasion for the said Engines may apply themselves to the Patentee at his house near St Thomas Apostle London or to Mr. Nicholas Wall at the Workshoppe near Saddlers Wells at Islington or to Mr. William Tillcar, Turner, his agent at his house in Woodtree next door to the Sun Tavern London."
Strictly the term refers to the pump itself, which is normally manually operated, though electrically powered and gas powered pumps are occasionally used. When manually powered, the term "handpump" is often used to refer to both the pump and the associated handle.
After the development of the large London Porter breweries in the 18th century, the trend grew for pubs to become tied houses which could only sell beer from one brewery (a pub not tied in this way was called a Free house). The usual arrangement for a tied house was that the pub was owned by the brewery but rented out to a private individual (landlord) who ran it as a separate business (even though contracted to buy the beer from the brewery). Another very common arrangement was (and is) for the landlord to own the premises (whether freehold or leasehold) independently of the brewer, but then to take a mortgage loan from a brewery, either to finance the purchase of the pub initially, or to refurbish it, and be required as a term of the loan to observe the solus tie.
A trend in the late 20th century was for breweries to run their pubs directly, using managers rather than tenants. Most such breweries, such as the regional brewery Shepherd Neame in Kent and Young's and Fuller's in London, control hundreds of pubs in a particular region of the UK, while a few, such as Greene King, are spread nationally. The landlord of a tied pub may be an employee of the brewery—in which case he/she would be a manager of a managed house, or a self-employed tenant who has entered into a lease agreement with a brewery, a condition of which is the legal obligation (trade tie) only to purchase that brewery's beer. The beer selection is mainly limited to beers brewed by that particular company. The Beer Orders, passed in 1989, were aimed at getting tied houses to offer at least one alternative beer, known as a guest beer, from another brewery. This law has now been repealed but while in force it dramatically altered the industry. Some pubs still offer a regularly changing selection of guest beers.
Organisations such as Wetherspoons, Punch Taverns and O'Neill's were formed in the UK in the wake of the Beer Orders. A PubCo is a company involved in the retailing but not the manufacture of beverages, while a Pub chain may be run either by a PubCo or by a brewery.
Pubs within a chain will usually have items in common, such as fittings, promotions, ambience and range of food and drink on offer. A pub chain will position itself in the marketplace for a target audience. One company may run several pub chains aimed at different segments of the market. Pubs for use in a chain are bought and sold in large units, often from regional breweries which are then closed down. Newly acquired pubs are often renamed by the new owners, and many people resent the loss of traditional names, especially if their favourite regional beer disappears at the same time.
A brewery tap is the nearest outlet for a brewery's beers. This is usually a room or bar in the brewery itself, though the name may be applied to the nearest pub. The term is not applied to a brewpub which brews and sells its beer on the same premises.
A "country pub" by tradition is a rural public house. However, the distinctive culture surrounding country pubs, that of functioning as a social centre for a village and rural community, has been changing over the last thirty or so years. In the past, many rural pubs provided opportunities for country folk to meet and exchange (often local) news, while others—especially those away from village centres—existed for the general purpose, before the advent of motor transport, of serving travellers as coaching inns.
In more recent years, however, many country pubs have either closed down, or have been converted to establishments intent on providing seating facilities for the consumption of food, rather than a venue for members of the local community meeting and convivially drinking.
Pubs that cater for a niche clientele, such as sports fans or people of certain nationalities are known as theme pubs. Examples of theme pubs include sports bars, rock pubs, biker pubs, Goth pubs, strip pubs, gay bars, karaoke bars and Irish pubs.
In 1393 King Richard II compelled landlords to erect signs outside their premises. The legislation stated "Whosoever shall brew ale in the town with intention of selling it must hang out a sign, otherwise he shall forfeit his ale." This was to make alehouses easily visible to passing inspectors, borough ale tasters, who would decide the quality of the ale they provided. William Shakespeare's father, John Shakespeare, was one such inspector.
Another important factor was that during the Middle Ages a large proportion of the population would have been illiterate and so pictures on a sign were more useful than words as a means of identifying a public house. For this reason there was often no reason to write the establishment's name on the sign and inns opened without a formal written name, the name being derived later from the illustration on the pub's sign.
The earliest signs were often not painted but consisted, for example, of paraphernalia connected with the brewing process such as bunches of hops or brewing implements, which were suspended above the door of the pub. In some cases local nicknames, farming terms and puns were used. Local events were often commemorated in pub signs. Simple natural or religious symbols such as 'The Sun', 'The Star' and 'The Cross' were incorporated into pub signs, sometimes being adapted to incorporate elements of the heraldry (e.g. the coat of arms) of the local lords who owned the lands upon which the pub stood. Some pubs have Latin inscriptions.
Other subjects that lent themselves to visual depiction included the name of battles (e.g. Trafalgar), explorers, local notables, discoveries, sporting heroes and members of the royal family. Some pub signs are in the form of a pictorial pun or rebus. For example, a pub in Crowborough, East Sussex called The Crow and Gate has an image of a crow with gates as wings.
Most British pubs still have decorated signs hanging over their doors, and these retain their original function of enabling the identification of the pub. Today's pub signs almost always bear the name of the pub, both in words and in pictorial representation. The more remote country pubs often have stand-alone signs directing potential customers to their door.
Pub names are used to identify and differentiate each pub. Modern names are sometimes a marketing ploy or attempt to create "brand awareness", frequently using a comic theme thought to be memorable, Slug and Lettuce for a pub chain being an example. Interesting origins are not confined to old or traditional names, however. Names and their origins can be broken up into a relatively small number of categories.
As many pubs are centuries old, many of their early customers were unable to read, and pictorial signs could be readily recognised when lettering and words could not be read.
Pubs often have traditional names. A common name is the "Marquis of Granby". These pubs were named after John Manners, Marquess of Granby, who was the son of John Manners, 3rd Duke of Rutland and a general in the 18th century British Army. He showed a great concern for the welfare of his men, and on their retirement, provided funds for many of them to establish taverns, which were subsequently named after him. All pubs granted their licence in 1780 were called the Royal George[citation needed], after King George III, and the twentieth anniversary of his coronation.
Many names for pubs that appear nonsensical may have come from corruptions of old slogans or phrases, such as "The Bag o'Nails" (Bacchanals), "The Goat and Compasses" (God Encompasseth Us), "The Cat and the Fiddle" (Chaton Fidèle: Faithful Kitten) and "The Bull and Bush", which purportedly celebrates the victory of Henry VIII at "Boulogne Bouche" or Boulogne-sur-Mer Harbour.
Traditional games are played in pubs, ranging from the well-known darts, skittles, dominoes, cards and bar billiards, to the more obscure Aunt Sally, Nine Men's Morris and ringing the bull. In the UK betting is legally limited to certain games such as cribbage or dominoes, played for small stakes. In recent decades the game of pool (both the British and American versions) has increased in popularity as well as other table based games such as snooker or Table Football becoming common.
Increasingly, more modern games such as video games and slot machines are provided. Pubs hold special events, from tournaments of the aforementioned games to karaoke nights to pub quizzes. Some play pop music and hip-hop (dance bar), or show football and rugby union on big screen televisions (sports bar). Shove ha'penny and Bat and trap were also popular in pubs south of London.
Some pubs in the UK also have football teams composed of regular customers. Many of these teams are in leagues that play matches on Sundays, hence the term "Sunday League Football". Bowling is found in association with pubs in some parts of the country and the local team will play matches against teams invited from elsewhere on the pub's bowling green.
Pubs may be venues for pub songs and live music. During the 1970s pubs provided an outlet for a number of bands, such as Kilburn and the High Roads, Dr. Feelgood and The Kursaal Flyers, who formed a musical genre called Pub rock that was a precursor to Punk music.
Many pubs were drinking establishments, and little emphasis was placed on the serving of food, other than sandwiches and "bar snacks", such as pork scratchings, pickled eggs, salted crisps and peanuts which helped to increase beer sales. In South East England (especially London) it was common until recent times for vendors selling cockles, whelks, mussels, and other shellfish to sell to customers during the evening and at closing time. Many mobile shellfish stalls would set up near pubs, a practice that continues in London's East End. Otherwise, pickled cockles and mussels may be offered by the pub in jars or packets.
In the 1950s some British pubs would offer "a pie and a pint", with hot individual steak and ale pies made easily on the premises by the proprietor's wife during the lunchtime opening hours. The ploughman's lunch became popular in the late 1960s. In the late 1960s "chicken in a basket", a portion of roast chicken with chips, served on a napkin, in a wicker basket became popular due to its convenience.
Quality dropped but variety increased with the introduction of microwave ovens and freezer food. "Pub grub" expanded to include British food items such as steak and ale pie, shepherd's pie, fish and chips, bangers and mash, Sunday roast, ploughman's lunch, and pasties. In addition, dishes such as burgers, chicken wings, lasagne and chilli con carne are often served. Some pubs offer elaborate hot and cold snacks free to customers at Sunday lunchtimes, to prevent them getting hungry and leaving for their lunch at home.
Since the 1990s food has become a more important part of a pub's trade, and today most pubs serve lunches and dinners at the table in addition to (or instead of) snacks consumed at the bar. They may have a separate dining room. Some pubs serve meals to a higher standard, to match good restaurant standards; these are sometimes termed gastropubs.
A gastropub concentrates on quality food. The name is a portmanteau of pub and gastronomy and was coined in 1991 when David Eyre and Mike Belben took over The Eagle pub in Clerkenwell, London. The concept of a restaurant in a pub reinvigorated both pub culture and British dining, though has occasionally attracted criticism for potentially removing the character of traditional pubs.
CAMRA maintains a "National Inventory" of historical notability and of architecturally and decoratively notable pubs. The National Trust owns thirty-six public houses of historic interest including the George Inn, Southwark, London and The Crown Liquor Saloon, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
The highest pub in the United Kingdom is the Tan Hill Inn, Yorkshire, at 1,732 feet (528 m) above sea level. The remotest pub on the British mainland is The Old Forge in the village of Inverie, Lochaber, Scotland. There is no road access and it may only be reached by an 18-mile (29 km) walk over mountains, or a 7-mile (11 km) sea crossing. Likewise, The Berney Arms in Norfolk has no road access. It may be reached by foot or by boat, and by train as it is served by the nearby Berney Arms railway station, which likewise has no road access and serves no other settlement.
A number of pubs claim to be the oldest surviving establishment in the United Kingdom, although in several cases original buildings have been demolished and replaced on the same site. Others are ancient buildings that saw uses other than as a pub during their history. Ye Olde Fighting Cocks in St Albans, Hertfordshire, holds the Guinness World Record for the oldest pub in England, as it is an 11th-century structure on an 8th-century site. Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem in Nottingham is claimed to be the "oldest inn in England". It has a claimed date of 1189, based on the fact it is constructed on the site of the Nottingham Castle brewhouse; the present building dates from around 1650. Likewise, The Nags Head in Burntwood, Staffordshire only dates back to the 16th century, but there has been a pub on the site since at least 1086, as it is mentioned in the Domesday Book.
There is archaeological evidence that parts of the foundations of The Old Ferryboat Inn in Holywell may date to AD 460, and there is evidence of ale being served as early as AD 560.
The Bingley Arms, Bardsey, Yorkshire, is claimed to date to 905 AD. Ye Olde Salutation Inn in Nottingham dates from 1240, although the building served as a tannery and a private residence before becoming an inn sometime before the English Civil War. The Adam and Eve in Norwich was first recorded in 1249, when it was an alehouse for the workers constructing nearby Norwich Cathedral. Ye Olde Man & Scythe in Bolton, Lancashire, is mentioned by name in a charter of 1251, but the current building is dated 1631. Its cellars are the only surviving part of the older structure.
The town of Stalybridge in Cheshire is thought to have the pubs with both the longest and shortest names in the United Kingdom — The Old 13th Cheshire Rifleman Corps Inn and the Q Inn.

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.