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Oligopoly
An oligopoly (ολιγοπώλιο) (Greek: ὀλίγοι πωλητές ""few sellers"") is a market form wherein a market or industry is dominated by a small group of large sellers (oligopolists). Oligopolies can result from various forms of collusion that reduce market competition which then typically leads to higher prices for consumers. Oligopolies have their own market structure.
With few sellers, each oligopolist is likely to be aware of the actions of the others. According to game theory, the decisions of one firm therefore influence and are influenced by decisions of other firms. Strategic planning by oligopolists needs to take into account the likely responses of the other market participants. Entry barriers include high investment requirements, strong consumer loyalty for existing brands and economies of scale. In developed economies oligopolies dominate the economy as the perfectly competitive model is of negligible importance for consumers. Oligopolies differ from price takers in that they do not have a supply curve. Instead, they search for the best price-output combination.
Oligopoly is a common market form where only a limited number of firms are in competition. As a quantitative description of oligopoly, the four-firm concentration ratio is often utilized. This measure expresses, as a percentage, the market share of the four largest firms in any particular industry. For example, as of fourth quarter 2008, if we combine total market share of Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile, we see that these firms, together, control 97% of the U.S. cellular telephone market.
Oligopolistic competition can give rise to both wide-ranging and diverse outcomes. In some situations, particular companies may employ restrictive trade practices (collusion, market sharing etc.) in order to inflate prices and restrict production in much the same way that a monopoly does. Whenever there is a formal agreement for such collusion, between companies that usually compete with one another, this practice is known as a cartel. A prime example of such a cartel is OPEC, which has a profound influence on the international price of oil.
Firms often collude in an attempt to stabilize unstable markets, so as to reduce the risks inherent in these markets for investment and product development. There are legal restrictions on such collusion in most countries. There does not have to be a formal agreement for collusion to take place (although for the act to be illegal there must be actual communication between companies)–for example, in some industries there may be an acknowledged market leader which informally sets prices to which other producers respond, known as price leadership.
In other situations, competition between sellers in an oligopoly can be fierce, with relatively low prices and high production. This could lead to an efficient outcome approaching perfect competition. The competition in an oligopoly can be greater when there are more firms in an industry than if, for example, the firms were only regionally based and did not compete directly with each other.
Thus the welfare analysis of oligopolies is sensitive to the parameter values used to define the market's structure. In particular, the level of dead weight loss is hard to measure. The study of product differentiation indicates that oligopolies might also create excessive levels of differentiation in order to stifle competition.
Oligopoly theory makes heavy use of game theory to model the behavior of oligopolies:
Oligopolies become "mature" when competing entities realize they can maximize profits through joint efforts designed to maximize price control by minimizing the influence of competition. As a result of operating in countries with enforced antitrust laws, oligopolists will operate under tacit collusion, which is collusion through an understanding among the competitors of a market that by collectively raising prices, each participating competitor can achieve economic profits comparable to those achieved by a monopolist while avoiding the explicit breach of market regulations. Hence, the kinked demand curve for a joint profit-maximizing oligopoly industry can model the behaviors of oligopolists' pricing decisions other than that of the price leader (the price leader being the entity that all other entities follow in terms of pricing decisions). This is because if an entity unilaterally raises the prices of their good/service and competing entities do not follow, the entity that raised their price will lose a significant market as they face the elastic upper segment of the demand curve. As the joint profit-maximizing efforts achieve greater economic profits for all participating entities, there becomes an incentive for an individual entity to "cheat" by expanding output to gain greater market share and profit. In the case of oligopolist cheating, when the incumbent entity discovers this breach in collusion, competitors in the market will retaliate by matching or dropping prices lower than the original drop. Hence, the market share originally gained by having dropped the price will be minimised or eliminated. This is why on the kinked demand curve model the lower segment of the demand curve is inelastic. As a result, in such markets price rigidity prevails.
There is no single model describing the operation of an oligopolistic market. The variety and complexity of the models exist because you can have two to 10 firms competing on the basis of price, quantity, technological innovations, marketing, and reputation. However, there are a series of simplified models that attempt to describe market behavior by considering certain circumstances. Some of the better-known models are the dominant firm model, the Cournot–Nash model, the Bertrand model and the kinked demand model.
The Cournot–Nash model is the simplest oligopoly model. The model assumes that there are two "equally positioned firms"; the firms compete on the basis of quantity rather than price and each firm makes an "output of decision assuming that the other firm's behavior is fixed." The market demand curve is assumed to be linear and marginal costs are constant. To find the Cournot–Nash equilibrium one determines how each firm reacts to a change in the output of the other firm. The path to equilibrium is a series of actions and reactions. The pattern continues until a point is reached where neither firm desires "to change what it is doing, given how it believes the other firm will react to any change." The equilibrium is the intersection of the two firm's reaction functions. The reaction function shows how one firm reacts to the quantity choice of the other firm. For example, assume that the firm 1's demand function is "P" = ("M" − "Q"2) − "Q"1 where "Q"2 is the quantity produced by the other firm and Q1 is the amount produced by firm 1, and M=60 is the market. Assume that marginal cost is CM=12. Firm 1 wants to know its maximizing quantity and price. Firm 1 begins the process by following the profit maximization rule of equating marginal revenue to marginal costs. Firm 1's total revenue function is "R""T" = "Q"1 "P" = "Q"1("M" − "Q"2 − "Q"1) = "MQ"1 − "Q"1 "Q"2 − "Q"12. The marginal revenue function is formula_1.
Equation 1.1 is the reaction function for firm 1. Equation 1.2 is the reaction function for firm 2.
To determine the Cournot–Nash equilibrium you can solve the equations simultaneously. The equilibrium quantities can also be determined graphically. The equilibrium solution would be at the intersection of the two reaction functions. Note that if you graph the functions the axes represent quantities. The reaction functions are not necessarily symmetric. The firms may face differing cost functions in which case the reaction functions would not be identical nor would the equilibrium quantities.
The Bertrand model is essentially the Cournot–Nash model except the strategic variable is price rather than quantity.
The model assumptions are:
The only Nash equilibrium is PA = PB = MC.
Neither firm has any reason to change strategy. If the firm raises prices it will lose all its customers. If the firm lowers price P < MC then it will be losing money on every unit sold.
The Bertrand equilibrium is the same as the competitive result. Each firm will produce where P = marginal costs and there will be zero profits. A generalization of the Bertrand model is the Bertrand–Edgeworth model that allows for capacity constraints and more general cost functions.
According to this model, each firm faces a demand curve kinked at the existing price. The conjectural assumptions of the model are; if the firm raises its price above the current existing price, competitors will not follow and the acting firm will lose market share and second if a firm lowers prices below the existing price then their competitors will follow to retain their market share and the firm's output will increase only marginally.
If the assumptions hold then:
The gap in the marginal revenue curve means that marginal costs can fluctuate without changing equilibrium price and quantity. Thus prices tend to be rigid.
Many industries have been cited as oligopolistic, including civil aviation, agricultural pesticides, electricity, and platinum group metal mining. In most countries, the telecommunications sector is characterized by an oligopolistic market structure. Rail freight markets in the European Union have an oligopolistic structure. In the United States, industries that have identified as oligopolistic include food processing, funeral services, sugar refining, beer, and pulp and paper.
Market power and market concentration can be estimated or quantified using several different tools and measurements, including the Lerner index, stochastic frontier analysis, and New Empirical Industrial Organization (NEIO) modeling, as well as the Herfindahl-Hirschman index.
In an oligopoly, firms operate under imperfect competition. With the fierce price competitiveness created by this sticky-upward demand curve, firms use non-price competition in order to accrue greater revenue and market share.
"Kinked" demand curves are similar to traditional demand curves, as they are downward-sloping. They are distinguished by a hypothesized convex bend with a discontinuity at the bend–"kink". Thus the first derivative at that point is undefined and leads to a jump discontinuity in the marginal revenue curve.
Classical economic theory assumes that a profit-maximizing producer with some market power (either due to oligopoly or monopolistic competition) will set marginal costs equal to marginal revenue. This idea can be envisioned graphically by the intersection of an upward-sloping marginal cost curve and a downward-sloping marginal revenue curve (because the more one sells, the lower the price must be, so the less a producer earns per unit). In classical theory, any change in the marginal cost structure (how much it costs to make each additional unit) or the marginal revenue structure (how much people will pay for each additional unit) will be immediately reflected in a new price and/or quantity sold of the item. This result does not occur if a "kink" exists. Because of this jump discontinuity in the marginal revenue curve, marginal costs could change without necessarily changing the price or quantity.
The motivation behind this kink is the idea that in an oligopolistic or monopolistically competitive market, firms will not raise their prices because even a small price increase will lose many customers. This is because competitors will generally ignore price increases, with the hope of gaining a larger market share as a result of now having comparatively lower prices. However, even a large price decrease will gain only a few customers because such an action will begin a price war with other firms. The curve is therefore more price-elastic for price increases and less so for price decreases. Theory predicts that firms will enter the industry in the long run. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22204 |
Oboe
The oboe ( ) is a type of double reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin or hybrid composites. The most common oboe plays in the treble or soprano range. A soprano oboe measures roughly long, with metal keys, a conical bore and a flared bell. Sound is produced by blowing into the reed at a sufficient air pressure, causing it to vibrate with the air column. The distinctive tone is versatile and has been described as "bright". When the word "oboe" is used alone, it is generally taken to mean the treble instrument rather than other instruments of the family, such as the "bass oboe", the "cor anglais" (English horn), or oboe "d'amore".
A musician who plays the oboe is called an oboist.
Today, the oboe is commonly used as orchestral or solo instrument in symphony orchestras, concert bands and chamber ensembles. The oboe is especially used in classical music, chamber music, film music, some genres of folk music, and is occasionally heard in jazz, rock, pop, and popular music. The oboe is widely recognized as the instrument that tunes the orchestra with its distinctive 'A'.
In comparison to other modern woodwind instruments, the treble oboe is sometimes referred to as having a clear and penetrating voice. "The Sprightly Companion", an instruction book published by Henry Playford in 1695, describes the oboe as "Majestical and Stately, and not much Inferior to the Trumpet". In the play "Angels in America" the sound is described as like "that of a duck if the duck were a songbird". The rich timbre is derived from its conical bore (as opposed to the generally cylindrical bore of flutes and clarinets). As a result, oboes are easier to hear over other instruments in large ensembles due to its penetrating sound. The highest note is a semitone lower than the nominally highest note of the B clarinet. Since the clarinet has a wider range, the lowest note of the B clarinet is significantly deeper (a minor sixth) than the lowest note of the oboe.
Music for the standard oboe is written in concert pitch (i.e., it is not a transposing instrument), and the instrument has a soprano range, usually from B3 to G6. Orchestras tune to a concert A played by the first oboe. According to the League of American Orchestras, this is done because the pitch is secure and its penetrating sound makes it ideal for tuning. The pitch of the oboe is affected by the way in which the reed is made. The reed has a significant effect on the sound. Variations in cane and other construction materials, the age of the reed, and differences in scrape and length all affect the pitch. German and French reeds, for instance, differ in many ways, causing the sound to vary accordingly. Weather conditions such as temperature and humidity also affect the pitch. Skilled oboists adjust their embouchure to compensate for these factors. Subtle manipulation of embouchure and air pressure allows the oboist to express timbre and dynamics.
Most professional oboists make their reeds to suit their individual needs. By making their reeds, oboists can precisely control factors such as tone color, intonation, and responsiveness. They can also account for individual embouchure, oral cavity, oboe angle, and air support.
Novice oboists rarely make their own reeds, as the process is difficult and time consuming, and frequently purchase reeds from a music store instead. Commercially available cane reeds are available in several degrees of hardness; a medium reed is very popular, and most beginners use medium-soft reeds. These reeds, like clarinet, saxophone, and bassoon reeds, are made from "Arundo donax".
As oboists gain more experience, they may start making their own reeds after the model of their teacher or buying handmade reeds (usually from a professional oboist) and using special tools including gougers, pre-gougers, guillotines, knives, and other tools to make and adjusts reeds to their liking. According to John Mack, former principal oboist of the Cleveland Orchestra, an oboe student must fill a laundry basket with finished reeds in order to master the art. The reed is considered the part of oboe that makes the instrument so difficult because the individual nature of each reed means that it is hard to achieve a consistent sound. Slight variations in temperature, altitude, weather, and climate can also have an effect on the sound of the reed, as well as minute changes in the physique of the reed.
Plastic oboe reeds are rarely used, and are less readily available than plastic reeds for other instruments, such as the clarinet. However they do exist, and are produced by brands such as Legere.
In English, prior to 1770, the standard instrument was called a "hautbois", "hoboy", or "French hoboy" ( ). This was borrowed from the French name, ""hautbois"" (), which is a compound word made up of "haut" ("high", "loud") and "bois" ("wood", "woodwind"). The spelling of "oboe" was adopted into English c. 1770 from the Italian "oboè", a transliteration of the 17th-century pronunciation of the French name.
The regular oboe first appeared in the mid-17th century, when it was called a "hautbois". This name was also used for its predecessor, the shawm, from which the basic form of the "hautbois" was derived. Major differences between the two instruments include the division of the "hautbois" into three sections, or joints (which allowed for more precise manufacture), and the elimination of the "pirouette", the wooden ledge below the reed which allowed players to rest their lips.
The exact date and place of origin of the "hautbois" are obscure, as are the individuals who were responsible. Circumstantial evidence, such as the statement by the flautist composer Michel de la Barre in his "Memoire", points to members of the Philidor (Filidor) and Hotteterre families. The instrument may in fact have had multiple inventors. The "hautbois" quickly spread throughout Europe, including Great Britain, where it was called "hautboy", "hoboy", "hautboit", "howboye", and similar variants of the French name. It was the main melody instrument in early military bands, until it was succeeded by the clarinet.
The standard Baroque oboe is generally made of boxwood and has three keys: a "great" key and two side keys (the side key is often doubled to facilitate use of either the right or left hand on the bottom holes). In order to produce higher pitches, the player has to "overblow", or increase the air stream to reach the next harmonic. Notable oboe-makers of the period are the Germans Jacob Denner and J.H. Eichentopf, and the English Thomas Stanesby (died 1734) and his son Thomas Jr (died 1754). The range for the Baroque oboe comfortably extends from C4 to D6. With the resurgence of interest in early music in the mid 20th century, a few makers began producing copies to specifications taken from surviving historical instruments.
The Classical period brought a regular oboe whose bore was gradually narrowed, and the instrument became outfitted with several keys, among them those for the notes D, F, and G. A key similar to the modern octave key was also added called the "slur key", though it was at first used more like the "flick" keys on the modern German bassoon. Only later did French instrument makers redesign the octave key to be used in the manner of the modern key (i.e. held open for the upper register, closed for the lower). The narrower bore allows the higher notes to be more easily played, and composers began to more often utilize the oboe's upper register in their works. Because of this, the oboe's tessitura in the Classical era was somewhat broader than that found in Baroque works. The range for the Classical oboe extends from C4 to F6 (using the scientific pitch notation system), though some German and Austrian oboes are capable of playing one half-step lower. Classical-era composers who wrote concertos for oboe include Mozart (both the solo concerto in C major K. 314/285d and the lost original of Sinfonia Concertante in E major K. 297b, as well as a fragment of F major concerto K. 417f), Haydn (both the Sinfonia Concertante in B Hob. I:105 and the spurious concerto in C major Hob. VIIg:C1), Beethoven (the F major concerto, Hess 12, of which only sketches survive, though the second movement was reconstructed in the late 20th century), and numerous other composers including Johann Christian Bach, Johann Christian Fischer, Jan Antonín Koželuh, and Ludwig August Lebrun. Many solos exist for the regular oboe in chamber, symphonic, and operatic compositions from the Classical era.
The Wiener oboe (Viennese oboe) is a type of modern oboe that retains the essential bore and tonal characteristics of the historical oboe. The Akademiemodel Wiener Oboe, first developed in the late 19th century by Josef Hajek from earlier instruments by C. T. Golde of Dresden (1803–73), is now made by several makers such as André Constantinides, Karl Rado, Guntram Wolf, Christian Rauch and Yamaha. It has a wider internal bore, a shorter and broader reed and the fingering-system is very different than the conservatoire oboe. In "The Oboe", Geoffrey Burgess and Bruce Haynes write "The differences are most clearly marked in the middle register, which is reedier and more pungent, and the upper register, which is richer in harmonics on the Viennese oboe". Guntram Wolf describes them: "From the concept of the bore, the Viennese oboe is the last representative of the historical oboes, adapted for the louder, larger orchestra, and fitted with an extensive mechanism. Its great advantage is the ease of speaking, even in the lowest register. It can be played very expressively and blends well with other instruments." The Viennese oboe is, along with the Vienna horn, perhaps the most distinctive member of the Wiener Philharmoniker instrumentarium.
This oboe was developed further in the 19th century by the Triébert family of Paris. Using the Boehm flute as a source of ideas for key work, Guillaume Triébert and his sons, Charles and Frederic, devised a series of increasingly complex yet functional key systems. A variant form using large tone holes, the Boehm system oboe, was never in common use, though it was used in some military bands in Europe into the 20th century. F. Lorée of Paris made further developments to the modern instrument. Minor improvements to the bore and key work have continued through the 20th century, but there has been no fundamental change to the general characteristics of the instrument for several decades.
The modern standard oboe is most commonly made from grenadilla, also known as African blackwood, though some manufacturers also make oboes out of other members of the genus "Dalbergia", which includes cocobolo, rosewood, and violetwood (also known as kingwood). Ebony (genus Diospyros) has also been used. Student model oboes are often made from plastic resin, to avoid instrument cracking to which wood instruments are prone, but also to make the instrument more economical. The oboe has an extremely narrow conical bore. It is played with a double reed consisting of two thin blades of cane tied together on a small-diameter metal tube (staple) which is inserted into the reed socket at the top of the instrument. The commonly accepted range for the oboe extends from B3 to about G6, over two and a half octaves, though its common tessitura lies from C4 to E6. Some student oboes only extend down to B3 (the key for B is not present).
A modern oboe with the "full conservatoire" ("conservatory" in the US) or Gillet key system has 45 pieces of keywork, with the possible additions of a third-octave key and alternate (left little finger) F- or C-key. The keys are usually made of nickel silver, and are silver- or occasionally gold-plated. Besides the full conservatoire system, oboes are also made using the British thumbplate system. Most have "semi-automatic" octave keys, in which the second-octave action closes the first, and some have a fully automatic octave key system, as used on saxophones. Some full-conservatory oboes have finger holes covered with rings rather than plates ("open-holed"), and most of the professional models have at least the right-hand third key open-holed. Professional oboes used in the UK and Iceland frequently feature conservatoire system combined with a thumb plate. Releasing the thumb plate has the same effect as pressing down the right-hand index-finger key. This produces alternate options which eliminate the necessity for most of the common cross-intervals (intervals where two or more keys need to be released and pressed down simultaneously), but cross intervals are much more difficult to execute in such a way that the sound remains clear and continuous throughout the frequency change (a quality also called legato and often called-for in the oboe repertoire).
The standard oboe has several siblings of various sizes and playing ranges. The most widely known and used today is the cor anglais (English horn) the tenor (or alto) member of the family. A transposing instrument; it is pitched in F, a perfect fifth lower than the oboe. The oboe d'amore, the alto (or mezzo-soprano) member of the family, is pitched in A, a minor third lower than the oboe. J.S. Bach made extensive use of both the oboe d'amore as well as the "taille" and oboe da caccia, Baroque antecedents of the cor anglais. Even less common is the bass oboe (also called baritone oboe), which sounds one octave lower than the oboe. Delius and Holst both scored for the instrument. Similar to the bass oboe is the more powerful heckelphone, which has a wider bore and larger tone than the baritone oboe. Only 165 heckelphones have ever been made. Not surprisingly, competent heckelphone players are difficult to find due to the extreme rarity of this particular instrument. The least common of all are the musette (also called oboe musette or piccolo oboe), the sopranino member of the family (it is usually pitched in E or F above the oboe), and the contrabass oboe (typically pitched in C, two octaves deeper than the standard oboe).
Folk versions of the oboe, sometimes equipped with extensive keywork, are found throughout Europe. These include the musette (France) and the piston oboe and bombarde (Brittany), the piffero and ciaramella (Italy), and the xirimia (also spelled chirimia) (Spain). Many of these are played in tandem with local forms of bagpipe, particularly with the Italian müsa and zampogna or Breton biniou.
Although folk oboes are still used in many European folk music traditions, the modern oboe has been little used in folk music. One exception was Derek Bell, harpist for the Irish group The Chieftains, who used the regular instrument in some performances and recordings. The United States contra dance band Wild Asparagus, based in western Massachusetts, also uses the oboe, played by David Cantieni. The folk musician Paul Sartin plays the oboe in several English folk bands including Faustus and Bellowhead. Welsh bagpipe player and bagpipe maker Jonathan Shorland plays a 'rustic oboe' similar to the Breton 'piston' with the bands Primeaval and Juice. He formerly played with Fernhill, who play traditional Welsh music. The popular traditional music of Brittany boasts a significant professional class of musicians playing increasingly sophisticated double reed instruments, supported by professional instrument makers, reed manufacturers and the educational system.
The oboe remains uncommon in jazz music, but there have been notable uses of the instrument. Some early bands in the 1920s and '30s, most notably that of Paul Whiteman, included it for coloristic purposes. The multi-instrumentalist Garvin Bushell (1902–1991) played the oboe in jazz bands as early as 1924 and used the instrument throughout his career, eventually recording with John Coltrane in 1961. Gil Evans featured oboe in sections of his famous "Sketches of Spain" collaboration with trumpeter Miles Davis. Though primarily a tenor saxophone and flute player, Yusef Lateef was among the first (in 1961) to use the oboe as a solo instrument in modern jazz performances and recordings. Composer and double bassist Charles Mingus gave the oboe a brief but prominent role (played by Dick Hafer) in his composition "I.X. Love" on the 1963 album "Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus".
With the birth of jazz fusion in the late 1960s, and its continuous development through the following decade, the oboe became somewhat more prominent, replacing on some occasions the saxophone as the focal point. The oboe was used with great success by the Welsh multi-instrumentalist Karl Jenkins in his work with the groups Nucleus and Soft Machine, and by the American woodwind player Paul McCandless, co-founder of the Paul Winter Consort and later Oregon.
The 1980s saw an increasing number of oboists try their hand at non-classical work, and many players of note have recorded and performed alternative music on oboe. Some present-day jazz groups influenced by classical music, such as the Maria Schneider Orchestra, feature the oboe.
The oboe has been used sporadically in rock/pop recordings (e.g., Dion's "Abraham, Martin and John", 1968; The Carpenters' "For All We Know", 1970; Donovan's "Jennifer Juniper", 1968; Gerry And The Pacemakers' "Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying", 1964; Sonny and Cher's "I Got You Babe", 1965) generally by studio musicians on recordings of specific songs.
Peter Gabriel, during his period as lead singer in the progressive rock band Genesis, played oboe on some of the group's studio recordings. Andy Mackay played oboe for Roxy Music both in the studio and on stage.
Indie singer-songwriter and composer Sufjan Stevens, having studied the instrument in school, often includes the instrument in his arrangements and compositions, most frequently in his geographic tone-poems "Illinois", "Michigan".
The oboe is frequently featured in film music, often to underscore a particularly poignant or sad scene, for example in the motion picture "Born on the Fourth of July", where an oboe delicately takes the theme with a romantic and harmonic touch before the strings hand it over once again to the trumpet. One of the most prominent uses of the oboe in a film score is Ennio Morricone's "Gabriel's Oboe" theme from the 1986 film "The Mission".
It is featured as a solo instrument in the theme "Across the Stars" from the John Williams score to "". The oboe is also used in "The Search" from the Basil Poledouris score to "Conan the Barbarian". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22206 |
Organic chemistry
Organic chemistry is a branch of chemistry that studies the structure, properties and reactions of organic compounds, which contain carbon in covalent bonding. Study of structure determines their chemical composition and formula. Study of properties includes physical and chemical properties, and evaluation of chemical reactivity to understand their behavior. The study of organic reactions includes the chemical synthesis of natural products, drugs, and polymers, and study of individual organic molecules in the laboratory and via theoretical (in silico) study.
The range of chemicals studied in organic chemistry includes hydrocarbons (compounds containing only carbon and hydrogen) as well as compounds based on carbon, but also containing other elements, especially oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus (included in many biochemicals) and the halogens. Organometallic chemistry is the study of compounds containing carbon–metal bonds.
In addition, contemporary research focuses on organic chemistry involving other organometallics including the lanthanides, but especially the transition metals zinc, copper, palladium, nickel, cobalt, titanium and chromium.
Organic compounds form the basis of all earthly life and constitute the majority of known chemicals. The bonding patterns of carbon, with its valence of four—formal single, double, and triple bonds, plus structures with delocalized electrons—make the array of organic compounds structurally diverse, and their range of applications enormous. They form the basis of, or are constituents of, many commercial products including pharmaceuticals; petrochemicals and agrichemicals, and products made from them including lubricants, solvents; plastics; fuels and explosives. The study of organic chemistry overlaps organometallic chemistry and biochemistry, but also with medicinal chemistry, polymer chemistry, and materials science.
Before the nineteenth century, chemists generally believed that compounds obtained from living organisms were endowed with a vital force that distinguished them from inorganic compounds. According to the concept of vitalism (vital force theory), organic matter was endowed with a "vital force". During the first half of the nineteenth century, some of the first systematic studies of organic compounds were reported. Around 1816 Michel Chevreul started a study of soaps made from various fats and alkalis. He separated the acids that, in combination with the alkali, produced the soap. Since these were all individual compounds, he demonstrated that it was possible to make a chemical change in various fats (which traditionally come from organic sources), producing new compounds, without "vital force". In 1828 Friedrich Wöhler produced the "organic" chemical urea (carbamide), a constituent of urine, from "inorganic" starting materials (the salts potassium cyanate and ammonium sulfate), in what is now called the Wöhler synthesis. Although Wöhler himself was cautious about claiming he had disproved vitalism, this was the first time a substance thought to be organic was synthesized in the laboratory without biological (organic) starting materials. The event is now generally accepted as indeed disproving the doctrine of vitalism.
In 1856 William Henry Perkin, while trying to manufacture quinine accidentally produced the organic dye now known as Perkin's mauve. His discovery, made widely known through its financial success, greatly increased interest in organic chemistry.
A crucial breakthrough for organic chemistry was the concept of chemical structure, developed independently in 1858 by both Friedrich August Kekulé and Archibald Scott Couper. Both researchers suggested that tetravalent carbon atoms could link to each other to form a carbon lattice, and that the detailed patterns of atomic bonding could be discerned by skillful interpretations of appropriate chemical reactions.
The era of the pharmaceutical industry began in the last decade of the 19th century when the manufacturing of acetylsalicylic acidmore commonly referred to as aspirinin Germany was started by Bayer. By 1910 Paul Ehrlich and his laboratory group began developing arsenic-based arsphenamine, (Salvarsan), as the first effective medicinal treatment of syphilis, and thereby initiated the medical practice of chemotherapy. Ehrlich popularized the concepts of "magic bullet" drugs and of systematically improving drug therapies. His laboratory made decisive contributions to developing antiserum for diphtheria and standardizing therapeutic serums.
Early examples of organic reactions and applications were often found because of a combination of luck and preparation for unexpected observations. The latter half of the 19th century however witnessed systematic studies of organic compounds. The development of synthetic indigo is illustrative. The production of indigo from plant sources dropped from 19,000 tons in 1897 to 1,000 tons by 1914 thanks to the synthetic methods developed by Adolf von Baeyer. In 2002, 17,000 tons of synthetic indigo were produced from petrochemicals.
In the early part of the 20th century, polymers and enzymes were shown to be large organic molecules, and petroleum was shown to be of biological origin.
The multiple-step synthesis of complex organic compounds is called total synthesis. Total synthesis of complex natural compounds increased in complexity to glucose and terpineol. For example, cholesterol-related compounds have opened ways to synthesize complex human hormones and their modified derivatives. Since the start of the 20th century, complexity of total syntheses has been increased to include molecules of high complexity such as lysergic acid and vitamin B12.
The discovery of petroleum and the development of the petrochemical industry spurred the development of organic chemistry. Converting individual petroleum compounds into "types" of compounds by various chemical processes led to organic reactions enabling a broad range of industrial and commercial products including, among (many) others: plastics, synthetic rubber, organic adhesives, and various property-modifying petroleum additives and catalysts.
The majority of chemical compounds occurring in biological organisms are carbon compounds, so the association between organic chemistry and biochemistry is so close that biochemistry might be regarded as in essence a branch of organic chemistry. Although the history of biochemistry might be taken to span some four centuries, fundamental understanding of the field only began to develop in the late 19th century and the actual term "biochemistry" was coined around the start of 20th century. Research in the field increased throughout the twentieth century, without any indication of slackening in the rate of increase, as may be verified by inspection of abstraction and indexing services such as BIOSIS Previews and Biological Abstracts, which began in the 1920s as a single annual volume, but has grown so drastically that by the end of the 20th century it was only available to the everyday user as an online electronic database.
Since organic compounds often exist as mixtures, a variety of techniques have also been developed to assess purity, especially important being chromatography techniques such as HPLC and gas chromatography. Traditional methods of separation include distillation, crystallization, and solvent extraction.
Organic compounds were traditionally characterized by a variety of chemical tests, called "wet methods", but such tests have been largely displaced by spectroscopic or other computer-intensive methods of analysis. Listed in approximate order of utility, the chief analytical methods are:
Traditional spectroscopic methods such as infrared spectroscopy, optical rotation, and UV/VIS spectroscopy provide relatively nonspecific structural information but remain in use for specific classes of compounds. Refractive index and density were also important for substance identification.
The physical properties of organic compounds typically of interest include both quantitative and qualitative features. Quantitative information includes a melting point, boiling point, and index of refraction. Qualitative properties include odor, consistency, solubility, and color.
Organic compounds typically melt and many boil. In contrast, while inorganic materials generally can be melted, many do not boil, tending instead to degrade. In earlier times, the melting point (m.p.) and boiling point (b.p.) provided crucial information on the purity and identity of organic compounds. The melting and boiling points correlate with the polarity of the molecules and their molecular weight. Some organic compounds, especially symmetrical ones, sublime, that is they evaporate without melting. A well-known example of a sublimable organic compound is para-dichlorobenzene, the odiferous constituent of modern mothballs. Organic compounds are usually not very stable at temperatures above 300 °C, although some exceptions exist.
Neutral organic compounds tend to be hydrophobic; that is, they are less soluble in water than in organic solvents. Exceptions include organic compounds that contain ionizable (which can be converted in ions) groups as well as low molecular weight alcohols, amines, and carboxylic acids where hydrogen bonding occurs. Otherwise organic compounds tend to dissolve in organic solvents. Solubility varies widely with the organic solute and with the organic solvent.
Various specialized properties of molecular crystals and organic polymers with conjugated systems are of interest depending on applications, e.g. thermo-mechanical and electro-mechanical such as piezoelectricity, electrical conductivity (see conductive polymers and organic semiconductors), and electro-optical (e.g. non-linear optics) properties. For historical reasons, such properties are mainly the subjects of the areas of polymer science and materials science.
The names of organic compounds are either systematic, following logically from a set of rules, or nonsystematic, following various traditions. Systematic nomenclature is stipulated by specifications from IUPAC. Systematic nomenclature starts with the name for a parent structure within the molecule of interest. This parent name is then modified by prefixes, suffixes, and numbers to unambiguously convey the structure. Given that millions of organic compounds are known, rigorous use of systematic names can be cumbersome. Thus, IUPAC recommendations are more closely followed for simple compounds, but not complex molecules. To use the systematic naming, one must know the structures and names of the parent structures. Parent structures include unsubstituted hydrocarbons, heterocycles, and mono functionalized derivatives thereof.
Nonsystematic nomenclature is simpler and unambiguous, at least to organic chemists. Nonsystematic names do not indicate the structure of the compound. They are common for complex molecules, which include most natural products. Thus, the informally named lysergic acid diethylamide is systematically named
(6a"R",9"R")-"N","N"-diethyl-7-methyl-4,6,6a,7,8,9-hexahydroindolo-[4,3-"fg"] quinoline-9-carboxamide.
With the increased use of computing, other naming methods have evolved that are intended to be interpreted by machines. Two popular formats are SMILES and InChI.
Organic molecules are described more commonly by drawings or structural formulas, combinations of drawings and chemical symbols. The line-angle formula is simple and unambiguous. In this system, the endpoints and intersections of each line represent one carbon, and hydrogen atoms can either be notated explicitly or assumed to be present as implied by tetravalent carbon.
By 1880 an explosion in the number of chemical compounds being discovered occurred assisted by new synthetic and analytical techniques. Grignard described the situation as "chaos le plus complet" as due to the lack of convention it was possible to have multiple names for the same compound. This led to the creation of the Geneva rules in 1892.
The concept of functional groups is central in organic chemistry, both as a means to classify structures and for predicting properties. A functional group is a molecular module, and the reactivity of that functional group is assumed, within limits, to be the same in a variety of molecules. Functional groups can have a decisive influence on the chemical and physical properties of organic compounds. Molecules are classified based on their functional groups. Alcohols, for example, all have the subunit C-O-H. All alcohols tend to be somewhat hydrophilic, usually form esters, and usually can be converted to the corresponding halides. Most functional groups feature heteroatoms (atoms other than C and H). Organic compounds are classified according to functional groups, alcohols, carboxylic acids, amines, etc.
The aliphatic hydrocarbons are subdivided into three groups of homologous series according to their state of saturation:
The rest of the group is classed according to the functional groups present. Such compounds can be "straight-chain", branched-chain or cyclic. The degree of branching affects characteristics, such as the octane number or cetane number in petroleum chemistry.
Both saturated (alicyclic) compounds and unsaturated compounds exist as cyclic derivatives. The most stable rings contain five or six carbon atoms, but large rings (macrocycles) and smaller rings are common. The smallest cycloalkane family is the three-membered cyclopropane ((CH2)3). Saturated cyclic compounds contain single bonds only, whereas aromatic rings have an alternating (or conjugated) double bond. Cycloalkanes do not contain multiple bonds, whereas the cycloalkenes and the cycloalkynes do.
Aromatic hydrocarbons contain conjugated double bonds. This means that every carbon atom in the ring is sp2 hybridized, allowing for added stability. The most important example is benzene, the structure of which was formulated by Kekulé who first proposed the delocalization or resonance principle for explaining its structure. For "conventional" cyclic compounds, aromaticity is conferred by the presence of 4n + 2 delocalized pi electrons, where n is an integer. Particular instability (antiaromaticity) is conferred by the presence of 4n conjugated pi electrons.
The characteristics of the cyclic hydrocarbons are again altered if heteroatoms are present, which can exist as either substituents attached externally to the ring (exocyclic) or as a member of the ring itself (endocyclic). In the case of the latter, the ring is termed a heterocycle. Pyridine and furan are examples of aromatic heterocycles while piperidine and tetrahydrofuran are the corresponding alicyclic heterocycles. The heteroatom of heterocyclic molecules is generally oxygen, sulfur, or nitrogen, with the latter being particularly common in biochemical systems.
Heterocycles are commonly found in a wide range of products including aniline dyes and medicines. Additionally, they are prevalent in a wide range of biochemical compounds such as alkaloids, vitamins, steroids, and nucleic acids (e.g. DNA, RNA).
Rings can fuse with other rings on an edge to give polycyclic compounds. The purine nucleoside bases are notable polycyclic aromatic heterocycles. Rings can also fuse on a "corner" such that one atom (almost always carbon) has two bonds going to one ring and two to another. Such compounds are termed spiro and are important in several natural products.
One important property of carbon is that it readily forms chains, or networks, that are linked by carbon-carbon (carbon-to-carbon) bonds. The linking process is called polymerization, while the chains, or networks, are called polymers. The source compound is called a monomer.
Two main groups of polymers exist synthetic polymers and biopolymers. Synthetic polymers are artificially manufactured, and are commonly referred to as industrial polymers. Biopolymers occur within a respectfully natural environment, or without human intervention.
Biomolecular chemistry is a major category within organic chemistry which is frequently studied by biochemists. Many complex multi-functional group molecules are important in living organisms. Some are long-chain biopolymers, and these include peptides, DNA, RNA and the polysaccharides such as starches in animals and celluloses in plants. The other main classes are amino acids (monomer building blocks of peptides and proteins), carbohydrates (which includes the polysaccharides), the nucleic acids (which include DNA and RNA as polymers), and the lipids. Besides, animal biochemistry contains many small molecule intermediates which assist in energy production through the Krebs cycle, and produces isoprene, the most common hydrocarbon in animals. Isoprenes in animals form the important steroid structural (cholesterol) and steroid hormone compounds; and in plants form terpenes, terpenoids, some alkaloids, and a class of hydrocarbons called biopolymer polyisoprenoids present in the latex of various species of plants, which is the basis for making rubber.
See also: peptide synthesis, oligonucleotide synthesis and carbohydrate synthesis.
In pharmacology, an important group of organic compounds is small molecules, also referred to as 'small organic compounds'. In this context, a small molecule is a small organic compound that is biologically active but is not a polymer. In practice, small molecules have a molar mass less than approximately 1000 g/mol.
Fullerenes and carbon nanotubes, carbon compounds with spheroidal and tubular structures, have stimulated much research into the related field of materials science. The first fullerene was discovered in 1985 by Sir Harold W. Kroto of the United Kingdom and by Richard E. Smalley and Robert F. Curl, Jr., of the United States. Using a laser to vaporize graphite rods in an atmosphere of helium gas, these chemists and their assistants obtained cagelike molecules composed of 60 carbon atoms (C60) joined together by single and double bonds to form a hollow sphere with 12 pentagonal and 20 hexagonal faces—a design that resembles a football, or soccer ball. In 1996 the trio was awarded the Nobel Prize for their pioneering efforts. The C60 molecule was named buckminsterfullerene (or, more simply, the buckyball) after the American architect R. Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic dome is constructed on the same structural principles.
Organic compounds containing bonds of carbon to nitrogen, oxygen and the halogens are not normally grouped separately. Others are sometimes put into major groups within organic chemistry and discussed under titles such as organosulfur chemistry, organometallic chemistry, organophosphorus chemistry and organosilicon chemistry.
Organic reactions are chemical reactions involving organic compounds. Many of these reactions are associated with functional groups. The general theory of these reactions involves careful analysis of such properties as the electron affinity of key atoms, bond strengths and steric hindrance. These factors can determine the relative stability of short-lived reactive intermediates, which usually directly determine the path of the reaction.
The basic reaction types are: addition reactions, elimination reactions, substitution reactions, pericyclic reactions, rearrangement reactions and redox reactions. An example of a common reaction is a substitution reaction written as:
where X is some functional group and Nu is a nucleophile.
The number of possible organic reactions is infinite. However, certain general patterns are observed that can be used to describe many common or useful reactions. Each reaction has a stepwise reaction mechanism that explains how it happens in sequence—although the detailed description of steps is not always clear from a list of reactants alone.
The stepwise course of any given reaction mechanism can be represented using arrow pushing techniques in which curved arrows are used to track the movement of electrons as starting materials transition through intermediates to final products.
Synthetic organic chemistry is an applied science as it borders engineering, the "design, analysis, and/or construction of works for practical purposes". Organic synthesis of a novel compound is a problem-solving task, where a synthesis is designed for a target molecule by selecting optimal reactions from optimal starting materials. Complex compounds can have tens of reaction steps that sequentially build the desired molecule. The synthesis proceeds by utilizing the reactivity of the functional groups in the molecule. For example, a carbonyl compound can be used as a nucleophile by converting it into an enolate, or as an electrophile; the combination of the two is called the aldol reaction. Designing practically useful syntheses always requires conducting the actual synthesis in the laboratory. The scientific practice of creating novel synthetic routes for complex molecules is called total synthesis.
Strategies to design a synthesis include retrosynthesis, popularized by E.J. Corey, which starts with the target molecule and splices it to pieces according to known reactions. The pieces, or the proposed precursors, receive the same treatment, until available and ideally inexpensive starting materials are reached. Then, the retrosynthesis is written in the opposite direction to give the synthesis. A "synthetic tree" can be constructed because each compound and also each precursor has multiple syntheses. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22208 |
Orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language. It includes norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a system of writing, and for most such languages a standard orthography has been developed, often based on a standard variety of the language, and thus exhibiting less dialect variation than the spoken language. Sometimes there may be variation in a language's orthography, as between American and British spelling in the case of English orthography. In some languages orthography is regulated by language academies, although for many languages (including English) there are no such authorities, and orthography develops in a more natural way. Even in the latter languages, a significant amount of consensus arises naturally, although a maximum of consistency or standardization occurs only when prescriptively imposed according to style guides.
The English word "orthography" dates from the 15th century. It comes from the French "orthographie", from Latin "orthographia", which derives from Greek ὀρθός "orthós", "correct", and γράφειν "gráphein", "to write".
Orthography is largely concerned with matters of spelling, and in particular the relationship between phonemes and graphemes in a language. Other elements that may be considered part of orthography include hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Orthography thus describes or defines the set of symbols used in writing a language, and the rules regarding how to use those symbols.
Most natural languages developed as oral languages, and writing systems have usually been crafted or adapted as ways of representing the spoken language. The rules for doing this tend to become standardized for a given language, leading to the development of an orthography that is generally considered "correct". In linguistics the term "orthography" is often used to refer to any method of writing a language, without judgment as to right and wrong, with a scientific understanding that orthographic standardization exists on a spectrum of strength of convention. The original sense of the word, though, implies a dichotomy of correct and incorrect, and the word is still most often used to refer specifically to a thoroughly standardized, prescriptively correct, way of writing a language. A distinction may be made here between "etic" and "emic" viewpoints: the purely descriptive (etic) approach, which simply considers any system that is actually used—and the emic view, which takes account of language users' perceptions of correctness.
Orthographic units, such as letters of an alphabet, are technically called graphemes. These are a type of abstraction, analogous to the phonemes of spoken languages; different physical forms of written symbols are considered to represent the same grapheme if the differences between them are not significant for meaning. For example, different forms of the letter "b" are all considered to represent a single grapheme in the orthography of, say, English.
Graphemes or sequences of them are sometimes placed between angle brackets, as in or . This distinguishes them from phonemic transcription, which is placed between slashes (, ), and from phonetic transcription, which is placed between square brackets (, ).
The writing systems on which orthographies are based can be divided into a number of types, depending on what type of unit each symbol serves to represent. The principal types are "logographic" (with symbols representing words or morphemes), "syllabic" (with symbols representing syllables), and "alphabetic" (with symbols roughly representing phonemes). Many writing systems combine features of more than one of these types, and a number of detailed classifications have been proposed. Japanese is an example of a writing system that can be written using a combination of logographic kanji characters and syllabic hiragana and katakana characters; as with many non-alphabetic languages, alphabetic romaji characters may also be used as needed.
Orthographies that use alphabets and syllabaries are based on the principle that the written symbols (graphemes) correspond to units of sound of the spoken language: phonemes in the former case, and syllables in the latter. However, in virtually all cases, this correspondence is not exact. Different languages' orthographies offer different degrees of correspondence between spelling and pronunciation. English orthography, French orthography and Danish orthography, for example, are highly irregular, whereas the orthographies of languages such as Russian, German and Spanish represent pronunciation much more faithfully, although the correspondence between letters and phonemes is still not exact. Finnish, Turkish and Serbo-Croatian orthographies are remarkably consistent: approximation of the principle "one letter per sound".
An orthography in which the correspondences between spelling and pronunciation are highly complex or inconsistent is called a "deep orthography" (or less formally, the language is said to have "irregular spelling"). An orthography with relatively simple and consistent correspondences is called "shallow" (and the language has "regular spelling").
One of the main reasons for which spelling and pronunciation deviate is that sound changes taking place in the spoken language are not always reflected in the orthography, and hence spellings correspond to historical rather than present-day pronunciation. One consequence of this is that many spellings come to reflect a word's morphophonemic structure rather than its purely phonemic structure (for example, the English regular past tense morpheme is consistently spelled "-ed" in spite of its different pronunciations in various words). This is discussed further at .
The syllabary systems of Japanese (hiragana and katakana) are examples of almost perfectly shallow orthographies—the kana correspond with almost perfect consistency to the spoken syllables, although with a few exceptions where symbols reflect historical or morphophonemic features: notably the use of ぢ "ji" and づ "zu" (rather than じ "ji" and ず "zu", their pronunciation in standard Tokyo dialect) when the character is a voicing of an underlying ち or つ (see rendaku), and the use of は, を, and へ to represent the sounds わ, お, and え, as relics of historical kana usage.
The Korean "hangul" system was also originally an extremely shallow orthography, but as a representation of the modern language it frequently also reflects morphophonemic features.
For full discussion of degrees of correspondence between spelling and pronunciation in alphabetic orthographies, including reasons why such correspondence may break down, see Phonemic orthography.
An orthography based on the principle that symbols correspond to phonemes may, in some cases, lack characters to represent all the phonemes or all the phonemic distinctions in the language. This is called a defective orthography. An example in English is the lack of any indication of stress. Another is the digraph "th", which represents two different phonemes (as in "then" and "thin"). A more systematic example is that of abjads like the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets, in which the short vowels are normally left unwritten and must be inferred by the reader.
When an alphabet is borrowed from its original language for use with a new language—as has been done with the Latin alphabet for many languages, or Japanese Katakana for non-Japanese words—it often proves defective in representing the new language's phonemes. Sometimes this problem is addressed by the use of such devices as digraphs (such as "sh" and "ch" in English, where pairs of letters represent single sounds), diacritics (like the caron on the letters "š" and "č", which represent those same sounds in Czech), or the addition of completely new symbols (as some languages have introduced the letter "w" to the Latin alphabet) or of symbols from another alphabet, such as the rune "þ" in Icelandic.
After the classical period, Greek developed a lowercase letter system that introduced diacritic marks to enable foreigners to learn pronunciation and in some cases, grammatical features. However, as pronunciation of letters changed over time, the diacritic marks were reduced to representing the stressed syllable. In Modern Greek typesetting, this system has been simplified to only have a single accent to indicate which syllable is stressed. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22209 |
One-time pad
In cryptography, the one-time pad (OTP) is an encryption technique that cannot be cracked, but requires the use of a one-time pre-shared key the same size as, or longer than, the message being sent. In this technique, a plaintext is paired with a random secret key (also referred to as "a one-time pad"). Then, each bit or character of the plaintext is encrypted by combining it with the corresponding bit or character from the pad using modular addition.
The resulting ciphertext will be impossible to decrypt or break if the following four conditions are met:
It has also been proven that any cipher with the property of perfect secrecy must use keys with effectively the same requirements as OTP keys. Digital versions of one-time pad ciphers have been used by nations for critical diplomatic and military communication, but the problems of secure key distribution have made them impractical for most applications.
First described by Frank Miller in 1882, the one-time pad was re-invented in 1917. On July 22, 1919, U.S. Patent 1,310,719 was issued to Gilbert Vernam for the XOR operation used for the encryption of a one-time pad. Derived from his "Vernam cipher", the system was a cipher that combined a message with a key read from a punched tape. In its original form, Vernam's system was vulnerable because the key tape was a loop, which was reused whenever the loop made a full cycle. One-time use came later, when Joseph Mauborgne recognized that if the key tape were totally random, then cryptanalysis would be impossible.
The "pad" part of the name comes from early implementations where the key material was distributed as a pad of paper, allowing the current top sheet to be torn off and destroyed after use. For concealment the pad was sometimes so small that a powerful magnifying glass was required to use it. The KGB used pads of such size that they could fit in the palm of a hand, or in a walnut shell. To increase security, one-time pads were sometimes printed onto sheets of highly flammable nitrocellulose, so that they could easily be burned after use.
There is some ambiguity to the term "Vernam cipher" because some sources use "Vernam cipher" and "one-time pad" synonymously, while others refer to any additive stream cipher as a "Vernam cipher", including those based on a cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator (CSPRNG).
Frank Miller in 1882 was the first to describe the one-time pad system for securing telegraphy.
The next one-time pad system was electrical. In 1917, Gilbert Vernam (of AT&T Corporation) invented and later patented in 1919 () a cipher based on teleprinter technology. Each character in a message was electrically combined with a character on a punched paper tape key. Joseph Mauborgne (then a captain in the U.S. Army and later chief of the Signal Corps) recognized that the character sequence on the key tape could be completely random and that, if so, cryptanalysis would be more difficult. Together they invented the first one-time tape system.
The next development was the paper pad system. Diplomats had long used codes and ciphers for confidentiality and to minimize telegraph costs. For the codes, words and phrases were converted to groups of numbers (typically 4 or 5 digits) using a dictionary-like codebook. For added security, secret numbers could be combined with (usually modular addition) each code group before transmission, with the secret numbers being changed periodically (this was called superencryption). In the early 1920s, three German cryptographers (Werner Kunze, Rudolf Schauffler and Erich Langlotz), who were involved in breaking such systems, realized that they could never be broken if a separate randomly chosen additive number was used for every code group. They had duplicate paper pads printed with lines of random number groups. Each page had a serial number and eight lines. Each line had six 5-digit numbers. A page would be used as a work sheet to encode a message and then destroyed. The serial number of the page would be sent with the encoded message. The recipient would reverse the procedure and then destroy his copy of the page. The German foreign office put this system into operation by 1923.
A separate notion was the use of a one-time pad of letters to encode plaintext directly as in the example below. Leo Marks describes inventing such a system for the British Special Operations Executive during World War II, though he suspected at the time that it was already known in the highly compartmentalized world of cryptography, as for instance at Bletchley Park.
The final discovery was made by information theorist Claude Shannon in the 1940s who recognized and proved the theoretical significance of the one-time pad system. Shannon delivered his results in a classified report in 1945, and published them openly in 1949. At the same time, Soviet information theorist Vladimir Kotelnikov had independently proved absolute security of the one-time pad; his results were delivered in 1941 in a report that apparently remains classified.
Suppose Alice wishes to send the message "HELLO" to Bob. Assume two pads of paper containing identical random sequences of letters were somehow previously produced and securely issued to both. Alice chooses the appropriate unused page from the pad. The way to do this is normally arranged for in advance, as for instance "use the 12th sheet on 1 May", or "use the next available sheet for the next message".
The material on the selected sheet is the "key" for this message. Each letter from the pad will be combined in a predetermined way with one letter of the message. (It is common, but not required, to assign each letter a numerical value, e.g., "A" is 0, "B" is 1, and so on.)
In this example, the technique is to combine the key and the message using modular addition. The numerical values of corresponding message and key letters are added together, modulo 26. So, if key material begins with "XMCKL" and the message is "HELLO", then the coding would be done as follows:
If a number is larger than 25, then the remainder after subtraction of 26 is taken in modular arithmetic fashion. This simply means that if the computations "go past" Z, the sequence starts again at A.
The ciphertext to be sent to Bob is thus "EQNVZ". Bob uses the matching key page and the same process, but in reverse, to obtain the plaintext. Here the key is "subtracted" from the ciphertext, again using modular arithmetic:
Similar to the above, if a number is negative, then 26 is added to make the number zero or higher.
Thus Bob recovers Alice's plaintext, the message "HELLO". Both Alice and Bob destroy the key sheet immediately after use, thus preventing reuse and an attack against the cipher. The KGB often issued its agents one-time pads printed on tiny sheets of "flash paper"—paper chemically converted to nitrocellulose, which burns almost instantly and leaves no ash.
The classical one-time pad of espionage used actual pads of minuscule, easily concealed paper, a sharp pencil, and some mental arithmetic. The method can be implemented now as a software program, using data files as input (plaintext), output (ciphertext) and key material (the required random sequence). The XOR operation is often used to combine the plaintext and the key elements, and is especially attractive on computers since it is usually a native machine instruction and is therefore very fast. It is, however, difficult to ensure that the key material is actually random, is used only once, never becomes known to the opposition, and is completely destroyed after use. The auxiliary parts of a software one-time pad implementation present real challenges: secure handling/transmission of plaintext, truly random keys, and one-time-only use of the key.
To continue the example from above, suppose Eve intercepts Alice's ciphertext: "EQNVZ". If Eve had infinite time, she would find that the key "XMCKL" would produce the plaintext "HELLO", but she would also find that the key "TQURI" would produce the plaintext "LATER", an equally plausible message:
In fact, it is possible to "decrypt" out of the ciphertext any message whatsoever with the same number of characters, simply by using a different key, and there is no information in the ciphertext that will allow Eve to choose among the various possible readings of the ciphertext.
One-time pads are "information-theoretically secure" in that the encrypted message (i.e., the ciphertext) provides no information about the original message to a cryptanalyst (except the maximum possible length of the message). This is a very strong notion of security first developed during WWII by Claude Shannon and proved, mathematically, to be true for the one-time pad by Shannon about the same time. His result was published in the "Bell Labs Technical Journal" in 1949. Properly used, one-time pads are secure in this sense even against adversaries with infinite computational power.
Claude Shannon proved, using information theory considerations, that the one-time pad has a property he termed "perfect secrecy"; that is, the ciphertext "C" gives absolutely no additional information about the plaintext. This is because, given a truly random key that is used only once, a ciphertext can be translated into "any" plaintext of the same length, and all are equally likely. Thus, the "a priori" probability of a plaintext message "M" is the same as the "a posteriori" probability of a plaintext message "M" given the corresponding ciphertext.
Mathematically, this is expressed as formula_1, where formula_2 is the information entropy of the plaintext and formula_3 is the conditional entropy of the plaintext given the ciphertext "C". (Here, Η is the capital Greek letter eta.) This implies that for every message "M" and corresponding ciphertext "C", there must be at least one key "K" that binds them as a one-time pad. Mathematically speaking, this means formula_4, where formula_5 denotes the distinct quantity of keys, ciphers and messages. In other words, if you need to be able to go from any plaintext in message space "M" to any cipher in cipher-space "C" (encryption) and from any cipher in cipher-space "C" to a plain text in message space "M" (decryption), you need at least formula_6 keys (all keys used with equal probability of formula_7 to ensure perfect secrecy).
Another way of stating perfect secrecy is based on the idea that for all messages formula_8 in message space "M", and for all ciphers "c" in cipher space "C", we have formula_9, where formula_10 represents the probabilities, taken over a choice of formula_11 in key space formula_12 over the coin tosses of a probabilistic algorithm, formula_13. Perfect secrecy is a strong notion of cryptanalytic difficulty.
Conventional symmetric encryption algorithms use complex patterns of substitution and transpositions. For the best of these currently in use, it is not known whether there can be a cryptanalytic procedure that can reverse (or, usefully, partially reverse) these transformations without knowing the key used during encryption. Asymmetric encryption algorithms depend on mathematical problems that are thought to be difficult to solve, such as integer factorization and discrete logarithms. However, there is no proof that these problems are hard, and a mathematical breakthrough could make existing systems vulnerable to attack.
Given perfect secrecy, in contrast to conventional symmetric encryption, OTP is immune even to brute-force attacks. Trying all keys simply yields all plaintexts, all equally likely to be the actual plaintext. Even with known plaintext, like part of the message being known, brute-force attacks cannot be used, since an attacker is unable to gain any information about the parts of the key needed to decrypt the rest of the message. The parts that are known will reveal "only" the parts of the key corresponding to them, and they correspond on a strictly one-to-one basis; no part of the key is dependent on any other part.
Quantum computers have been shown by Peter Shor and others to be much faster at solving some of the difficult problems that grant some asymmetric encryption its security. If quantum computers are built with enough qubits, and overcoming some limitations to error-correction, some public key cryptography algorithms will become obsolete. One-time pads, however, will remain secure. See quantum cryptography and post-quantum cryptography for further discussion of the ramifications of quantum computers to information security.
Despite Shannon's proof of its security, the one-time pad has serious drawbacks in practice because it requires:
One-time pads solve few current practical problems in cryptography. High quality ciphers are widely available and their security is not considered a major worry at present. Such ciphers are almost always easier to employ than one-time pads; the amount of key material that must be properly and securely generated, securely distributed and securely stored is far smaller, and public key cryptography overcomes this problem.
High-quality random numbers are difficult to generate. The random number generation functions in most programming language libraries are not suitable for cryptographic use. Even those generators that are suitable for normal cryptographic use, including /dev/random and many hardware random number generators, may make some use of cryptographic functions whose security has not been proven. An example of how true randomness can be achieved is by measuring radioactive emissions.
In particular, one-time use is absolutely necessary. If a one-time pad is used just twice, simple mathematical operations can reduce it to a running key cipher. If both plaintexts are in a natural language (e.g., English or Russian) then, even though both are secret, each stands a very high chance of being recovered by heuristic cryptanalysis, with possibly a few ambiguities. Of course, a longer message can only be broken for the portion that overlaps a shorter message, plus perhaps a little more by completing a word or phrase. The most famous exploit of this vulnerability occurred with the Venona project.
Because the pad, like all shared secrets, must be passed and kept secure, and the pad has to be at least as long as the message, there is often no point in using one-time padding, as one can simply send the plain text instead of the pad (as both can be the same size and have to be sent securely). However, once a very long pad has been securely sent (e.g., a computer disk full of random data), it can be used for numerous future messages, until the sum of their sizes equals the size of the pad. Quantum key distribution also proposes a solution to this problem, assuming fault-tolerant quantum computers.
Distributing very long one-time pad keys is inconvenient and usually poses a significant security risk. The pad is essentially the encryption key, but unlike keys for modern ciphers, it must be extremely long and is much too difficult for humans to remember. Storage media such as thumb drives, DVD-Rs or personal digital audio players can be used to carry a very large one-time-pad from place to place in a non-suspicious way, but even so the need to transport the pad physically is a burden compared to the key negotiation protocols of a modern public-key cryptosystem, and such media cannot reliably be erased securely by any means short of physical destruction (e.g., incineration). A 4.7 GB DVD-R full of one-time-pad data, if shredded into particles in size, leaves over 4 megabits of (admittedly hard to recover, but not impossibly so) data on each particle. In addition, the risk of compromise during transit (for example, a pickpocket swiping, copying and replacing the pad) is likely to be much greater in practice than the likelihood of compromise for a cipher such as AES. Finally, the effort needed to manage one-time pad key material scales very badly for large networks of communicants—the number of pads required goes up as the square of the number of users freely exchanging messages. For communication between only two persons, or a star network topology, this is less of a problem.
The key material must be securely disposed of after use, to ensure the key material is never reused and to protect the messages sent. Because the key material must be transported from one endpoint to another, and persist until the message is sent or received, it can be more vulnerable to forensic recovery than the transient plaintext it protects (see data remanence).
As traditionally used, one-time pads provide no message authentication, the lack of which can pose a security threat in real-world systems. For example, an attacker who knows that the message contains "meet jane and me tomorrow at three thirty pm" can derive the corresponding codes of the pad directly from the two known elements (the encrypted text and the known plaintext). The attacker can then replace that text by any other text of exactly the same length, such as "three thirty meeting is canceled, stay home". The attacker's knowledge of the one-time pad is limited to this byte length, which must be maintained for any other content of the message to remain valid. This is a little different from malleability where it is not taken necessarily that the plaintext is known. "See also" stream cipher attack.
Standard techniques to prevent this, such as the use of a message authentication code can be used along with a one-time pad system to prevent such attacks, as can classical methods such as variable length padding and Russian copulation, but they all lack the perfect security the OTP itself has. Universal hashing provides a way to authenticate messages up to an arbitrary security bound (i.e., for any , a large enough hash ensures that even a computationally unbounded attacker's likelihood of successful forgery is less than "p"), but this uses additional random data from the pad, and removes the possibility of implementing the system without a computer.
Despite its problems, the one-time-pad retains some practical interest. In some hypothetical espionage situations, the one-time pad might be useful because it can be computed by hand with only pencil and paper. Indeed, nearly all other high quality ciphers are entirely impractical without computers. In the modern world, however, computers (such as those embedded in personal electronic devices such as mobile phones) are so ubiquitous that possessing a computer suitable for performing conventional encryption (for example, a phone that can run concealed cryptographic software) will usually not attract suspicion.
One-time pads have been used in special circumstances since the early 1900s. In 1923, it was employed for diplomatic communications by the German diplomatic establishment. The Weimar Republic Diplomatic Service began using the method in about 1920. The breaking of poor Soviet cryptography by the British, with messages made public for political reasons in two instances in the 1920s (ARCOS case), appear to have induced the Soviet Union to adopt one-time pads for some purposes by around 1930. KGB spies are also known to have used pencil and paper one-time pads more recently. Examples include Colonel Rudolf Abel, who was arrested and convicted in New York City in the 1950s, and the 'Krogers' (i.e., Morris and Lona Cohen), who were arrested and convicted of espionage in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s. Both were found with physical one-time pads in their possession.
A number of nations have used one-time pad systems for their sensitive traffic. Leo Marks reports that the British Special Operations Executive used one-time pads in World War II to encode traffic between its offices. One-time pads for use with its overseas agents were introduced late in the war. A few British one-time tape cipher machines include the Rockex and Noreen. The German Stasi Sprach Machine was also capable of using one time tape that East Germany, Russia, and even Cuba used to send encrypted messages to their agents.
The World War II voice scrambler SIGSALY was also a form of one-time system. It added noise to the signal at one end and removed it at the other end. The noise was distributed to the channel ends in the form of large shellac records that were manufactured in unique pairs. There were both starting synchronization and longer-term phase drift problems that arose and were solved before the system could be used.
The hotline between Moscow and Washington D.C., established in 1963 after the Cuban missile crisis, used teleprinters protected by a commercial one-time tape system. Each country prepared the keying tapes used to encode its messages and delivered them via their embassy in the other country. A unique advantage of the OTP in this case was that neither country had to reveal more sensitive encryption methods to the other.
U.S. Army Special Forces used one-time pads in Vietnam. By using Morse code with one-time pads and continuous wave radio transmission (the carrier for Morse code), they achieved both secrecy and reliable communications.
During the 1983 Invasion of Grenada, U.S. forces found a supply of pairs of one-time pad books in a Cuban warehouse.
Starting in 1988, the African National Congress (ANC) used disk-based one-time pads as part of a secure communication system between ANC leaders outside South Africa and in-country operatives as part of Operation Vula, a successful effort to build a resistance network inside South Africa. Random numbers on the disk were erased after use. A Belgian airline stewardess acted as courier to bring in the pad disks. A regular resupply of new disks was needed as they were used up fairly quickly. One problem with the system was that it could not be used for secure data storage. Later Vula added a stream cipher keyed by book codes to solve this problem.
A related notion is the one-time code—a signal, used only once; e.g., "Alpha" for "mission completed", "Bravo" for "mission failed" or even "Torch" for "Allied invasion of French Northern Africa" cannot be "decrypted" in any reasonable sense of the word. Understanding the message will require additional information, often 'depth' of repetition, or some traffic analysis. However, such strategies (though often used by real operatives, and baseball coaches) are not a cryptographic one-time pad in any significant sense.
At least into the 1970s, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) produced a variety of manual one-time pads, both general purpose and specialized, with 86,000 one-time pads produced in fiscal year 1972. Special purpose pads were produced for what NSA called "pro forma" systems, where “the basic framework, form or format of every message text is identical or nearly so; the same kind of information, message after message, is to be presented in the same order, and only specific values, like numbers, change with each message.” Examples included nuclear launch messages and radio direction finding reports (COMUS).
General purpose pads were produced in several formats, a simple list of random letters (DIANA) or just numbers (CALYPSO), tiny pads for covert agents (MICKEY MOUSE), and pads designed for more rapid encoding of short messages, at the cost of lower density. One example, ORION, had 50 rows of plaintext alphabets on one side and the corresponding random cipher text letters on the other side. By placing a sheet on top of a piece of carbon paper with the carbon face up, one could circle one letter in each row on one side and the corresponding letter one the other side would be circled by the carbon paper. Thus one ORION sheet could quickly encode or decode a message up to 50 characters long. Production of ORION pads required printing both sides in exact registration, a difficult process, so NSA switched to another pad format, MEDEA, with 25 rows of paired alphabets and random characters. ("See" for illustrations.)
The NSA also built automated systems for the "centralized headquarters of CIA and Special Forces units so that they can efficiently process the many separate one-time pad messages to and from individual pad holders in the field".
During World War II and into the 1950s, the U.S. made extensive use of one-time tape systems. In addition to providing confidentiality, circuits secured by one-time tape ran continually, even when there was no traffic, thus protecting against traffic analysis. In 1955, NSA produced some 1,660,000 rolls of one time tape. Each roll was 8 inches in diameter, contained 100,000 characters, lasted 166 minutes and cost $4.55 to produce. By 1972, only 55,000 rolls were produced, as one-time tapes were replaced by rotor machines such as SIGTOT, and later by electronic devices based on shift registers. The NSA describes one-time tape systems like 5-UCO and SIGTOT as being used for intelligence traffic until the introduction of the electronic cipher based KW-26 in 1957.
While one-time pads provide perfect secrecy if generated and used properly, small mistakes can lead to successful cryptanalysis: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22210 |
Oelde
Oelde () is a town in the district of Warendorf, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located near Beckum.
Oelde consists of 5 districts:
The neighboring municipalities and cities are clockwise, starting in the north:
Oelde is twinned with:
The name Oelde was first mentioned in a document around 890 as "Ulithi im Dreingau" in the Urbar of the Werden monastery.
In 1457 a conflagration destroyed the city. In 1498, after the reconstruction, Oelde had 750 citizens. Another fire raged in 1605 and destroyed a total of 18 houses, barns and the town hall.
In 1939, Oelde was given its own exit when the motorway A 2 was built.
In the 1950s and 1960s, a high number of visitors came to Oelde when diplomats accepted the invitation of the Federal Presidents Heuss and Lübke to hunt small game in the state forest "Geisterholz". These events were commonly known as "diplomatic hunts."
In 2001 Oelde hosted one of the most important flower shows ever organized in Westphalia with more than 2.2 million visitors. Since then, the city garden, included in the exhibition grounds and embellished for the occasion, has been commercially exploited under the name "Park of the four seasons" (Vier-Jahreszeiten-Park).
Oelde is a centre of metal and lumber production, publishing, and also higher education through its nursing college.
It is also home to the headquarters of GEA (Westfalia Separator), a manufacturer of centrifuges and dairy machines and the headquarters of Haver & Boecker, a manufacturer of wire weaving.
Oelde is connected to the Bundesautobahn 2.
The Hamm–Minden railway connects Oelde station to the German rail network. The line is served by the Rhein-Weser-Express and the Ems-Börde-Bahn every hour. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22211 |
Operator (mathematics)
In mathematics, an operator is generally a mapping or function that acts on elements of a space to produce elements of another space (possibly the same space, sometimes required to be the same space). There is no general definition of an "operator", but the term is often used in place of "function" when the domain is a set of functions or other structured objects. Also, the domain of an operator is often difficult to be explicitly characterized (for example in the case of an integral operator), and may be extended to related objects (an operator that acts on functions may act also on differential equations whose functions are solutions). See Operator (physics) for other examples.
The most basic operators (in some sense) are linear maps, which act on vector spaces. However, when using "linear operator" instead of "linear map", mathematicians often mean actions on vector spaces of functions, which also preserve other properties, such as continuity. For example, differentiation and indefinite integration are linear operators; operators that are built from them are called differential operators, integral operators or integro-differential operators.
Operator is also used for denoting the symbol of a mathematical operation. This is related with the meaning of "operator" in computer programming, see operator (computer programming).
The most common kind of operator encountered are "linear operators". Let "U" and "V" be vector spaces over a field "K". A mapping "A": "U" → "V" is linear if
for all x, y in "U" and for all "α, β" in "K".
This means that a linear operator preserves vector space operations, in the sense that it does not matter whether you apply the linear operator before or after the operations of addition and scalar multiplication. In more technical words, linear operators are morphisms between vector spaces.
In the finite-dimensional case linear operators can be represented by matrices in the following way. Let formula_2 be a field, and formula_3 and formula_4 be finite-dimensional vector spaces over formula_2. Let us select a basis formula_6 in formula_3 and formula_8 in formula_4. Then let formula_10 be an arbitrary vector in formula_3 (assuming Einstein convention), and formula_12 be a linear operator. Then
Then formula_14 is the matrix of the operator formula_15 in fixed bases. formula_16 does not depend on the choice of formula_17, and formula_18 if formula_19. Thus in fixed bases n-by-m matrices are in bijective correspondence to linear operators from formula_3 to formula_4.
The important concepts directly related to operators between finite-dimensional vector spaces are the ones of rank, determinant, inverse operator, and eigenspace.
Linear operators also play a great role in the infinite-dimensional case. The concepts of rank and determinant cannot be extended to infinite-dimensional matrices. This is why very different techniques are employed when studying linear operators (and operators in general) in the infinite-dimensional case. The study of linear operators in the infinite-dimensional case is known as functional analysis (so called because various classes of functions form interesting examples of infinite-dimensional vector spaces).
The space of sequences of real numbers, or more generally sequences of vectors in any vector space, themselves form an infinite-dimensional vector space. The most important cases are sequences of real or complex numbers, and these spaces, together with linear subspaces, are known as sequence spaces. Operators on these spaces are known as sequence transformations.
Bounded linear operators over Banach space form a Banach algebra in respect to the standard operator norm. The theory of Banach algebras develops a very general concept of spectra that elegantly generalizes the theory of eigenspaces.
Let "U" and "V" be two vector spaces over the same ordered field (for example, formula_22), and they are equipped with norms. Then a linear operator from "U" to "V" is called bounded if there exists "C > 0" such that
for all x in "U".
Bounded operators form a vector space. On this vector space we can introduce a norm that is compatible with the norms of "U" and "V":
In case of operators from "U" to itself it can be shown that
Any unital normed algebra with this property is called a Banach algebra. It is possible to generalize spectral theory to such algebras. C*-algebras, which are Banach algebras with some additional structure, play an important role in quantum mechanics.
In geometry, additional structures on vector spaces are sometimes studied. Operators that map such vector spaces to themselves bijectively are very useful in these studies, they naturally form groups by composition.
For example, bijective operators preserving the structure of a vector space are precisely the invertible linear operators. They form the general linear group under composition. They "do not" form a vector space under the addition of operators, e.g. both "id" and "-id" are invertible (bijective), but their sum, 0, is not.
Operators preserving the Euclidean metric on such a space form the isometry group, and those that fix the origin form a subgroup known as the orthogonal group. Operators in the orthogonal group that also preserve the orientation of vector tuples form the special orthogonal group, or the group of rotations.
Operators are also involved in probability theory, such as expectation, variance, and covariance. Indeed, every covariance is basically a dot product; every variance is a dot product of a vector with itself, and thus is a quadratic norm; every standard deviation is a norm (square root of the quadratic norm); the corresponding cosine to this dot product is the Pearson correlation coefficient; expected value is basically an integral operator (used to measure weighted shapes in the space).
From the point of view of functional analysis, calculus is the study of two linear operators: the differential operator formula_26, and the Volterra operator formula_27.
The Fourier transform is useful in applied mathematics, particularly physics and signal processing. It is another integral operator; it is useful mainly because it converts a function on one (temporal) domain to a function on another (frequency) domain, in a way effectively invertible. No information is lost, as there is an inverse transform operator. In the simple case of periodic functions, this result is based on the theorem that any continuous periodic function can be represented as the sum of a series of sine waves and cosine waves:
The tuple "(a0, a1, b1, a2, b2, ...)" is in fact an element of an infinite-dimensional vector space ℓ2, and thus Fourier series is a linear operator.
When dealing with general function R → C, the transform takes on an integral form:
The "Laplace transform" is another integral operator and is involved in simplifying the process of solving differential equations.
Given "f" = "f"("s"), it is defined by:
Three operators are key to vector calculus:
As an extension of vector calculus operators to physics, engineering and tensor spaces, Grad, Div and Curl operators also are often associated with Tensor calculus as well as vector calculus. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22213 |
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a 2000 crime comedy-drama film written, produced, co-edited and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, and starring George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson, with Chris Thomas King, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and Charles Durning in supporting roles.
The film is set in 1937 rural Mississippi during the Great Depression. Its story is a modern satire loosely based on Homer's epic Greek poem "The Odyssey" that incorporates mythology from the American South. The title of the film is a reference to the Preston Sturges 1941 film "Sullivan's Travels", in which the protagonist is a director who wants to film "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", a fictional book about the Great Depression.
Much of the music used in the film is period folk music, including that of Virginia bluegrass singer Ralph Stanley. The movie was one of the first to extensively use digital color correction to give the film an autumnal, sepia-tinted look. The film received positive reviews, and the soundtrack won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2002 using American folk music. The country and folk musicians who were dubbed into the film included John Hartford, Alison Krauss, Dan Tyminski, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Chris Sharp, Patty Loveless, and others. They joined together to perform the music from the film in a "Down from the Mountain" concert tour which was filmed for TV and DVD.
In 1937 Mississippi during the Great Depression, three convicts, Ulysses Everett McGill, Delmar O'Donnell and Pete, escape from a chain gang and set out to retrieve a treasure Everett claims to have buried from an armored truck robbery, before its locale is flooded to make a lake and provide electricity for the state. The three get a lift from a blind man driving a handcar on a railway. The man tells them a prophecy that they will find a fortune, but not the one they seek, along with other obstacles they will meet. The trio make their way to the house of Wash, Pete's cousin. They sleep in the barn, but because he needs the money, Wash reports them to Sheriff Cooley, who, along with his men, torches the barn. After Pete angrily blows up Cooley's police van, Wash's son helps them escape.
Pete and Delmar are baptized by a group of Christians at a river. The trio then picks up Tommy Johnson, a young black man, who claims he has sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the ability to play the guitar. In need of money, the four stop at a radio broadcast station where they record a song as the Soggy Bottom Boys. That night, the trio part ways with Tommy after their car is discovered by the police. Unbeknownst to them, the recording becomes a major hit.
The trio inadvertently fall in with bank robber George "Baby Face" Nelson, and help him with a heist, before he leaves them with his share of the loot. The next day, the group hears singing. They see three women washing clothes in a river and singing. The women drug them with corn liquor and they lose consciousness. Upon waking, Delmar finds Pete's clothes lying next to him, empty except for a toad. Delmar is convinced the women were Sirens and transformed Pete into the toad. Later, one-eyed Bible salesman Big Dan Teague invites them for a picnic lunch, then mugs them and kills the toad.
Everett and Delmar arrive in Everett's home town. Everett confronts his wife Penny, who has resumed her maiden name and told his daughters he was dead. He picks a fight with Vernon T. Waldrip, her new "bona fide" fiancé and ultimately loses. They next see Pete working on a chain gang and later that night sneak into Pete's holding cell and free him. As it turns out, the women at the river had dragged Pete away and turned him over to the authorities, at which, and under torture, Pete gave away the location of the treasure to the police. Everett then confesses that there is no treasure. He made it up to convince the others he was chained with to escape with him to stop his wife from getting married, and the real reason he was imprisoned was for practicing law unlicensed. Pete is enraged at Everett, because he had two weeks left on his original sentence, and must now serve 50 more years for the escape.
The trio stumble upon a night rally of the Ku Klux Klan, who are planning to hang Tommy. They disguise themselves as the Color Guard and attempt to rescue Tommy. Big Dan, who is revealed to be a Klansman, unmasks them. Chaos ensues, and the Grand Wizard reveals himself as Homer Stokes, a candidate in the upcoming gubernatorial election. The trio rush Tommy away and cut the supports of a large, flaming cross, leaving it to fall onto Big Dan.
Everett convinces Pete, Delmar and Tommy to help him win his wife back. They sneak into a Homer Stokes gala campaign dinner that she is attending, disguised as bearded musicians. The group begins a performance of "Man of Constant Sorrow", revealing themselves as the Soggy Bottom Boys, and the crowd goes wild. Stokes recognizes them as the group that interfered with his mob. Furious, he interrupts the group's performance and demands them to be arrested, but when he reveals his white supremacist views, the crowd runs him out of town on a rail. Pappy O'Daniel, the incumbent candidate, seizes the opportunity, endorses the Soggy Bottom Boys and grants them full pardons. Penny agrees to remarry Everett with the condition that he find her original ring.
The next morning, the group sets out to retrieve the ring, which she says is in a rolltop desk, at a cabin in the Tennessee Valley, which Everett had earlier said was the location of his treasure. Having forced the location out of Pete, Sheriff Cooley is waiting with ropes ready to hang them, callously dismissing their claims of having pardons from the governor. Just as Everett prays to God, the valley is flooded, and they are saved. Tommy finds the ring in the rolltop desk and the four return to town and go their separate ways. When Everett presents the ring to Penny, it turns out not to be the right ring. She continues to insist they need the real ring, despite Everett's protests that it was lost in the flood. The blind man is seen pushing his handcar once again.
Gillian Welch, who contributed to the soundtrack, appears as a record store customer asking for a copy of the Soggy Bottom Boys' record.
The idea of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" arose spontaneously. Work on the script began in December 1997, long before the start of production, and was at least half-written by May 1998. Despite the fact that Ethan Coen described the "Odyssey" as "one of my favorite storyline schemes", neither of the brothers had read the epic, and they were only familiar with its content through adaptations and numerous references to the "Odyssey" in popular culture. According to the brothers, Nelson (who has a degree in classics from Brown University) was the only person on the set who had read the "Odyssey".
The title of the film is a reference to the 1941 Preston Sturges film "Sullivan's Travels", in which the protagonist (a director) wants to direct a film about the Great Depression called "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" that will be a "commentary on modern conditions, stark realism, and the problems that confront the average man". Lacking any experience in this area, the director sets out on a journey to experience the human suffering of the average man but is sabotaged by his anxious studio. The film has some similarity in tone to Sturges's film, including scenes with prison gangs and a black church choir. The prisoners at the picture show scene is also a direct homage to a nearly identical scene in Sturges's film.
Joel Coen revealed in a 2000 interview that he traveled to Phoenix to offer the lead role to Clooney. Clooney agreed to do the role immediately, without reading the script. He stated that he liked even the Coens' least successful films. Clooney did not immediately understand his character and sent the script to his uncle Jack, who lived in Kentucky, asking him to read the entire script into a tape recorder. Unknown to Clooney, in his recording, Jack, a devout Baptist, omitted all instances of the words "damn" and "hell" from the Coens' script, which only became known to Clooney after the directors pointed this out to him during shooting.
This was the fourth film of the brothers in which John Turturro has starred. Other actors in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" who had worked previously with the Coens include John Goodman (three films), Holly Hunter (two), Charles Durning (two) and Michael Badalucco (one).
The Coens used digital color correction to give the film a sepia-tinted look. Joel stated this was because the actual set was "greener than Ireland". Cinematographer Roger Deakins stated, "Ethan and Joel favored a dry, dusty Delta look with golden sunsets. They wanted it to look like an old hand-tinted picture, with the intensity of colors dictated by the scene and natural skin tones that were all shades of the rainbow." Initially the crew tried to perform the color correction using a physical process, however after several tries with various chemical processes proved unsatisfactory, it became necessary to perform the process digitally.
This was the fifth film collaboration between the Coen Brothers and Deakins, and it was slated to be shot in Mississippi at a time of year when the foliage, grass, trees, and bushes would be a lush green. It was filmed near locations in Canton, Mississippi, and Florence, South Carolina, in the summer of 1999. After shooting tests, including film bipack and bleach bypass techniques, Deakins suggested digital mastering be used. Deakins spent 11 weeks fine-tuning the look, mainly targeting the greens, making them a burnt yellow and desaturating the overall image in the digital files. This made it the first feature film to be entirely color corrected by digital means, narrowly beating Nick Park's "Chicken Run".
"O Brother, Where Art Thou?" was the first time a digital intermediate was used on the entirety of a first-run Hollywood film that otherwise had very few visual effects. The work was done in Los Angeles by Cinesite using a Spirit DataCine for scanning at 2K resolution, a Pandora MegaDef to adjust the color, and a Kodak Lightning II recorder to put out to film.
A major theme of the film is the connection between old-time music and political campaigning in the Southern U.S. It makes reference to the traditions, institutions, and campaign practices of bossism and political reform that defined Southern politics in the first half of the 20th century.
The Ku Klux Klan, at the time a political force of white populism, is depicted burning crosses and engaging in ceremonial dance. The character Menelaus "Pappy" O'Daniel, the governor of Mississippi and host of the radio show "The Flour Hour", is similar in name and demeanor to W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel, one-time Governor of Texas and later U.S. Senator from that state. W. Lee O'Daniel was in the flour business, and used a backing band called the Light Crust Doughboys on his radio show. In one campaign, W. Lee O'Daniel carried a broom, an oft-used campaign device in the reform era, promising to sweep away patronage and corruption. His theme song had the hook, "Please pass the biscuits, Pappy", emphasizing his connection with flour.
While the film borrows from historical politics, differences are obvious between the characters in the film and historical political figures. The O'Daniel of the movie used "You Are My Sunshine" as his theme song (which was originally recorded by singer and Governor of Louisiana James Houston "Jimmie" Davis), and Homer Stokes, as the challenger to the incumbent O'Daniel, portrays himself as the "reform candidate", using a broom as a prop.
Music was originally conceived as a major component of the film, not merely as a background or a support. Producer and musician T Bone Burnett worked with the Coens while the script was still in its working phases and the soundtrack was recorded before filming commenced.
Much of the music used in the film is period-specific folk music, including that of Virginia bluegrass singer Ralph Stanley. The musical selection also includes religious music, including Primitive Baptist and traditional African American gospel, most notably the Fairfield Four, an "a cappella" quartet with a career extending back to 1921 who appear in the soundtrack and as gravediggers towards the film's end. Selected songs in the film reflect the possible spectrum of musical styles typical of the old culture of the American South: gospel, delta blues, country, swing and bluegrass.
The use of dirges and other macabre songs is a theme that often recurs in Appalachian music ("O Death", "Lonesome Valley", "Angel Band", "I Am Weary") in contrast to bright, cheerful songs ("Keep On the Sunny Side", "In the Highways") in other parts of the film.
The voices of the Soggy Bottom Boys were provided by Dan Tyminski (lead vocal on "Man of Constant Sorrow"), Nashville songwriter Harley Allen, and the Nashville Bluegrass Band's Pat Enright. The three won a CMA Award for Single of the Year and a Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals, both for the song "Man of Constant Sorrow". Tim Blake Nelson sang the lead vocal on "In the Jailhouse Now".
"Man of Constant Sorrow" has five variations: two are used in the film, one in the music video, and two in the soundtrack album. Two of the variations feature the verses being sung back-to-back, and the other three variations feature additional music between each verse. Though the song received little significant radio airplay, it reached #35 on the U.S. "Billboard" Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart in 2002. The version of "I'll Fly Away" heard in the film is performed not by Krauss and Welch (as it is on the CD and concert tour), but by the Kossoy Sisters with Erik Darling accompanying on long-neck five-string banjo, recorded in 1956 for the album "Bowling Green" on Tradition Records.
The film premiered at the AFI Film Festival on October 19, 2000. It grossed $71,868,327 worldwide off its $26 million budget.
Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives it a score of 77% based on 151 reviews and an average score of 7.12/10. The consensus reads: "Though not as good as Coen brothers' classics such as "Blood Simple", the delightfully loopy "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" is still a lot of fun." The film holds an average score of 69/100 on Metacritic based on 30 reviews.
Roger Ebert gave two and a half out of four stars to the film, saying all the scenes in the film were "wonderful in their different ways, and yet I left the movie uncertain and unsatisfied".
The film was selected into the main competition of the 2000 Cannes Film Festival.
The film also received two Academy Award nominations at the 73rd Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Cinematography. Cinematographer Roger Deakins was recognized with both Academy Award and ASC Outstanding Achievement Award nominations for his work on the film.
For his portrayal of Ulysses Everett McGill, George Clooney received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. The film was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.
The Soggy Bottom Boys is the (fictional) musical group that the main characters form to serve as accompaniment for the film. The name is in homage to the Foggy Mountain Boys, a bluegrass band led by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. In the film, the songs credited to the band are lip-synched by the actors, except that Tim Blake Nelson does sing his own vocals on "In the Jailhouse Now".
The band's hit single is Dick Burnett's "Man of Constant Sorrow", a song that had enjoyed much success prior to the movie's release. After the film's release, the fictitious band became so popular that the country and folk musicians who were dubbed into the film got together and performed the music from the film in a Down from the Mountain concert tour, which was filmed for TV and DVD. This included Ralph Stanley, John Hartford, Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Chris Sharp, and others. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22216 |
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University (commonly Ohio State or OSU) is a public research university in Columbus, Ohio. Founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and the ninth university in Ohio with the Morrill Act of 1862, the university was originally known as the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College. The college originally focused on various agricultural and mechanical disciplines but it developed into a comprehensive university under the direction of then-Governor (later, U.S. president) Rutherford B. Hayes, and in 1878 the Ohio General Assembly passed a law changing the name to "The Ohio State University". The main campus in Columbus, Ohio, has since grown into the third-largest university campus in the United States. The university also operates regional campuses in Lima, Mansfield, Marion, Newark, and Wooster.
The university has an extensive student life program, with over 1,000 student organizations; intercollegiate, club and recreational sports programs; student media organizations and publications, fraternities and sororities; and three student governments. Ohio State athletic teams compete in Division I of the NCAA and are known as the Ohio State Buckeyes. As of the 2016 Summer Olympics, athletes from Ohio State have won 104 Olympic medals (46 gold, 35 silver, and 23 bronze). The university is a member of the Big Ten Conference for the majority of sports.
The proposal of a manufacturing and agriculture university in central Ohio was initially met in the 1870s with hostility from the state's agricultural interests and competition for resources from Ohio University, which was chartered by the Northwest Ordinance, and Miami University. Championed by the Republican governor Rutherford B. Hayes, The Ohio State University was founded in 1870 as a land-grant university under the Morrill Act of 1862 as the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College. The school was originally within a farming community on the northern edge of Columbus. While some interests in the state had hoped the new university would focus on matriculating students of various agricultural and mechanical disciplines, Hayes manipulated both the university's location and its initial board of trustees towards a more comprehensive educational mission. The university opened its doors to 24 students on September 17, 1873. In 1878, the first class of six men graduated. The first woman graduated the following year.
Also in 1878, the Ohio legislature recognized an expanded scope for the university by changing its name to "The Ohio State University". The definite article "the" is part of Ohio State's legal name; since at least the 1990s, Ohio State alumni, especially NFL players, have emphasized the "The" when referring to their school (""The" Ohio State University"). In 2019, Ohio State filed for trademark protection of "the" when it is used to refer to Ohio State; the application was denied.
Ohio State began accepting graduate students in the 1880s, and in 1891, the school saw the founding of its law school, Moritz College of Law. It would later acquire colleges of medicine, dentistry, optometry, veterinary medicine, commerce, and journalism in subsequent years. In 1916, Ohio State was elected into membership in the Association of American Universities.
Michael V. Drake, former chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, became the 15th president of the Ohio State University on June 30, 2014. He announced on November 21, 2019 that he would be retiring at the end of the 2019–2020 academic year.
On June 3, 2020, the Ohio State Board of Trustees appointed Kristina M. Johnson, former Chancellor of State University of New York as the 16th president of The Ohio State University.
Ohio State's main campus is about north of the city's downtown. The historical center of campus is the Oval, a quad of about . Four buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places: Hale Hall (originally Enarson Hall), Hayes Hall, Ohio Stadium, and Orton Hall.
Unlike earlier public universities such as Ohio University and Miami University, whose campuses have a consistent architectural style, the Ohio State campus is a mix of traditional, modern and post-modern styles.
The William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library, anchoring the Oval's western end, is Ohio State library's main branch and largest repository. The Thompson Library was designed in 1913 by the Boston firm of Allen and Collens in the Italianate Renaissance Revival style, and its placement on the Oval was suggested by the Olmsted Brothers who had designed New York City's Central Park. In 2006, the Thompson Library began a $100-million renovation to maintain the building's classical Italian Renaissance architecture.
Ohio State operates the North America's 18th-largest university research library with a combined collection of over 5.8 million volumes. Additionally, the libraries regularly receive about 35,000 serial titles. Its recent acquisitions were 16th among university research libraries in North America. Along with 21 libraries on its Columbus campus, the university has eight branches at off-campus research facilities and regional campuses, and a book storage depository near campus. In all, the Ohio State library system encompasses 55 branches and specialty collections. Some more significant collections include The Byrd Polar Research Center Archival Program, which has the archives of Admiral Richard E. Byrd and other polar research materials; The Hilandar Research Library, which has the world's largest collection of medieval Slavic manuscripts on microform; the Ohio State Cartoon Library & Museum, the world's largest repository of original cartoons; The Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute; and the archives of Senator John Glenn.
Anchoring the traditional campus gateway at the eastern end of the Oval is the 1989 Wexner Center for the Arts. Designed by architects Peter Eisenman of New York and Richard Trott of Columbus, the center was funded in large part by Ohio State alumnus Leslie Wexner's gift of $25 million in the 1980s. The center was founded to encompass all aspects of visual and performing arts with a focus on new commissions and artist residencies. Part of its design was to pay tribute to the armory that formerly had the same location. Its groundbreaking deconstructivist architecture has resulted in it being lauded as one of the most important buildings of its generation. Its design has also been criticized as proving less than ideal for many of the art installations it has attempted to display. The centerpiece of The Wexner Center's permanent collection is Picasso's "Nude on a Black Armchair", which was purchased by alumnus Leslie Wexner at auction for $45 million.
To the south of the Oval is another, somewhat smaller, expanse of green space commonly referred to as the South Oval. At its eastern end, it is anchored by the Ohio Union. To the west are Hale Hall, the Kuhn Honors House, Browning Amphitheatre (a traditional stone Greek theatre) and Mirror Lake.
Knowlton Hall, dedicated in October 2004, is at the corner of West Woodruff Avenue and Tuttle Park Place, next to Ohio Stadium. Knowlton Hall along with the Fisher College of Business and Hitchcock Hall form an academic nucleus in the Northwestern corner of North campus. Knowlton Hall was designed by Mac Scogin Merril Elam from Atlanta along with WSA Studio from Columbus, Ohio, and is home to the KSA Café, the disciplines of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, City and Regional Planning, and about 550 undergraduate and graduate students. Knowlton Hall stands out from the general reddish-brown brick of Ohio State's campus with distinctive white marble tiles that cover the building's exterior. This unique wall cladding was requested by Austin E. Knowlton, the namesake of and main patron to the creation of Knowlton Hall. Knowlton also requested 5 white marble columns be erected on the site, each column representing one of the classical orders of Architecture.
The Ohio State College of Medicine is on the southern edge of the central campus. It is home to the James Cancer Hospital, a cancer research institute and one of the National Cancer Institute's forty-one comprehensive cancer centers, along with the Richard M. Ross Heart Hospital, a research institute for cardiovascular disease.
In 1916, Ohio State became the first university in Ohio to be extended membership into the Association of American Universities, and remains the only public university in Ohio among the organization's 60 members. "The Public Ivies: America's Flagship Public Universities" (2000) by Howard and Matthew Greene listed Ohio State as one of a select number of public universities offering the highest educational quality.
In its 2019 edition, "U.S. News & World Report" ranked Ohio State as tied for the 17th-best public university in the United States, and tied for 56th among all national universities.
The "Academic Ranking of World Universities" placed Ohio State 42nd nationally and 79th globally for 2016. In its 2015-16 rankings, "Times Higher Education World University Rankings" ranked it tied for 90th in the world. In 2016, "QS World University Rankings" ranked the university 88th in the world.
The "Washington Monthly" college rankings, which seek to evaluate colleges' contributions to American society based on factors of social mobility, research, and service to the country by their graduates, in 2018 placed Ohio State 105th among national universities.
Ohio State is also the only public university in Ohio to be classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Highest Research Activity" and have its undergraduate admissions classified as "more selective".
"Bloomberg Businessweek" ranked the undergraduate business program at Ohio State's Fisher College of Business as the 14th best in the nation in its 2016 rankings. "U.S. News & World Report" ranks the MBA program tied for 30th in America. Fisher's Executive MBA program was ranked 3rd nationally for return on investment by The Wall Street Journal in 2008 citing a 170 percent return on an average of $66,900 invested in tuition and expenses during the 18-month program.
The Ohio State linguistics department was recently ranked among the top 10 programs nationally, and top 20 internationally by "QS World University Rankings".
The Ohio State University is among the top 12 U.S. public research universities and 3rd among all universities in industry-sponsored research (National Science Foundation).
It is also named as one of the most innovative universities in the nation (U.S. News & World Report) and in the world (Reuters)). In a 2007 report released by the National Science Foundation, Ohio State's research expenditures for 2006 were $652 million, placing it 7th among public universities and 11th overall, also ranking 3rd among all American universities for private industry sponsored research. Research expenditures at Ohio State were $720 million in 2007. In 2006, Ohio State announced it would designate at least $110 million of its research efforts to what it termed "fundamental concerns" such as research towards a cure for cancer, renewable energy sources and sustainable drinking water supplies.
Research facilities include Aeronautical/Astronautical Research Laboratory, Byrd Polar Research Center, Center for Automotive Research (OSU CAR), Chadwick Arboretum, Biomedical Research Tower, Biological Sciences Building, CDME, Comprehensive Cancer Center, David Heart and Lung Research Institute, Electroscience Laboratory, Large Binocular Telescope ("LBT", originally named the Columbus Project), Mershon Center for International Security Studies, Museum of Biological Diversity, National Center for the Middle Market, Stone Laboratory on Gibraltar Island, OH, Center for Urban and Regional Analysis and Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center.
Undergraduate admissions to Ohio State are classified as "more selective" by "U.S. News & World Report" and "The Princeton Review" and according to the data are the most selective for any public university in Ohio. 67% of incoming freshmen in autumn 2017 were ranked in the top 10% of their high school class. The average GPA at Ohio State is 3.81, the middle 50% range of ACT scores is 27-31 (average 29), while the middle 50% SAT scores (critical reading and math only) is 1260–1450 (average 1344) Ohio State's freshman class has included at least 100 National Merit Scholars for nine of the last ten years.
Tuition and fees for full-time, Ohio residents enrolled at the Columbus campus for the 2014–2015 academic year were $10,037. For the 2006–2007 academic year, tuition at Ohio State for Ohio residents placed it as the fifth-most expensive public university and slightly beneath the weighted average tuition of $8,553 among Ohio's thirteen public four-year universities.
Ohio State was among the first group of four public universities to raise a $1 billion endowment when it passed the $1 billion mark in 1999. At the end of 2005, Ohio State's endowment stood at $1.73 billion, ranking it seventh among public universities and 27th among all American universities. In June 2006, the endowment passed the $2 billion mark.
In recent decades, and in response to continually shrinking state funding, Ohio State has conducted two significant multi-year fundraising campaigns. The first concluded in 1987 and raised $460 million—a record at the time for a public university. The "Affirm Thy Friendship Campaign" took place between 1995 and 2000. With an initial goal of raising $850 million, the campaign's final tally was $1.23 billion, placing Ohio State among the small group of public universities to have successfully conducted a $1 billion campaign. At his welcoming ceremony, returning President E. Gordon Gee announced, in the Fall of 2007, Ohio State would launch a $2.5 billion fund-raising campaign. In 2019, celebrating the university's 150th year, President Michael V. Drake announced the "Time and Change Campaign" with a goal of raising $4.5 billion from 1 million individual donors.
The Office of Student Life has partnership affiliations with the Schottenstein Center, the Blackwell Inn, and the Drake Events Center. Services supporting student wellness include the Wilce Student Health Center, named for university physician John Wilce, The Mary A. Daniels Student Wellness Center and the Counseling and Consultation Service.
The RPAC is the main recreational facility on campus. The Wellness Center within the RPAC offers services such as nutrition counseling, financial coaching, HIV and STI testing, sexual assault services, and alcohol and other drug education.
Ohio State's "Buckeye Bullet" electric car broke the world record for the fastest speed by an electric vehicle on October 3, 2004, with a speed of 271.737 mph (437.3 km/h) at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. The vehicle also holds the U.S. record for fastest electric vehicle with a speed of 314.958 mph (506.9 km/h), and peak timed mile speed of 321.834 mph (517.9 km/h). A team of engineering students from the university's "Center for Automotive Research-Intelligent Transportation" (CAR-IT) designed, built and managed the vehicle. In 2007, Buckeye Bullet 2 was launched. This follow-up effort was a collaboration between Ohio State engineering students and engineers from the Ford Motor Company and will seek to break the land speed record for hydrogen cell powered vehicles.
In June 2018, Ohio State dissolved its Sexual Civility and Empowerment unit and eliminated four positions in the unit due to concerns about mismanagement and a lack of support for survivors of sexual assault. This occurred after the unit was suspended in February 2018 and following an external review. "The Columbus Dispatch" and the school newspaper, "The Lantern" reported that "[SCE] failed to properly report students' sexual-assault complaints" and that some victims were told that they were lying', 'delusional', 'suffering from mental illness', 'have an active imagination', that they 'didn't understand their own experience' and also 'fabricated their story'." With help from the Philadelphia law firm Cozen O'Connor, the university will be creating a new framework to handle sexual assault cases and reevaluating its Title IX program.
On July 20, 2018, "BBC News" reported that over 100 male students, including athletes from 14 sports, had reported sexual misconduct by a deceased university team physician, Richard Strauss. The reports dated back to 1978 and included claims that he groped and took nude photographs of his patients. Four former wrestlers filed a lawsuit against Ohio State for ignoring complaints of "rampant sexual misconduct" by Strauss. U.S. representative Jim Jordan was named in the lawsuit and has since denied the former wrestlers' claims that he knew about the abuse while he was an assistant coach for eight years at the university. In May 2020, the university entered into a settlement and agreed to pay $40.9 million to the sexual abuse survivors.
"The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students" lists Ohio State as one of the 20 best campuses in America for LGBT students.
The Morrill Scholarship Program (MSP) is Ohio State's premier diversity/merit scholarship program, rewarding academically talented students who are actively engaged in diversity-based leadership, service and social justice activities. MSP seeks academically talented high school seniors who will contribute to campus diversity actively engage as advocates, and champions of diversity, inclusion, social justice and academic excellence on campus. There are three scholarship levels Prominence, Excellence, and Distinction.
The graduation rate of black males at The Ohio State University is higher than that of other Big Ten Schools. For the men who participate in the early arrival programs, like the Bell National Resource Center's Early Arrival Program, the freshman to sophomore retention rate is higher than that of the entire university with 95% matriculating to their second year.
Ohio State operates 41 on-campus residence halls divided into three geographic clusters: South Campus (site of the university's original dormitories), North Campus (largely constructed during the post-war enrollment boom), and West Campus ("The Towers"). The residence hall system has 40 smaller living and learning environments defined by social or academic considerations.
Separate housing for graduate and professional students is maintained on the Southern tier of campus within the Gateway Residential Complex and the William H. Hall Student Residential Complex. Family housing is maintained at Buckeye Village at the far northern edge of campus beyond the athletic complex.
Student Life University Housing also administers student residential housing on the OSU Newark, OSU Mansfield, and OSU Agricultural Technical Institute (ATI) campuses.
The Residence Hall Advisory Council (RHAC), which is a representative body of all students living in the University's residence halls, helps evaluate and improve the living conditions of the residence halls.
Ohio State offers two distinct honors programs for high ability undergraduates: Honors and Scholars. The Honors program is open to students in all majors. The Scholars program is centered on thirteen specific programs such as "Architecture Scholars", "Media, Marketing, and Communications Scholars", "Biological Sciences Scholars", "International Affairs Scholars", "Business Scholars" and "Politics, Society and Law Scholars." Students in the Scholars program are expected to live and take select classes with other members of the program. Additionally, Ohio State offers the Honors Collegium with membership extended to ten incoming freshmen and following the Spring of a student's first or second year to the university's top undergraduates. Collegium students try to compete for internships, graduate schools and nationally competitive awards, such as the Marshall, Rhodes, or Truman Scholarships.
Ohio State also administers two large-scale scholarship programs to ensure access to the university to high-ability students from low-income or traditionally underrepresented groups. The first, The Young Scholars Program, was initiated in 1988. 120 promising minority students from Ohio's nine largest urban public school districts are selected prior to entering high school. The program offers a series of academic camps each summer and counseling throughout the students' high school careers. Upon completion of the program, which also mandates a college preparatory curriculum and minimum grade point average, the students are guaranteed admission to Ohio State as well as any need-based financial aid. The Land Grant Scholarship was initiated in 2005. This program seeks to ensure access to Ohio State to high-ability students from low-income backgrounds. Ohio State has committed to offering a full-ride scholarship each academic year to at least one student from each of Ohio's 88 counties.
Ohio State maintains an honors center in the Kuhn Honors & Scholars House, which served as the university president's residence until 1972. Three residence halls are designated all or in part as honors residences: Bradley Hall, Lincoln Tower, and Taylor Tower.
Ohio State is rated at the #3 most amazing student union (Best College Reviews). The Ohio Union was the first student union built by an American public university. The Ohio Union is dedicated to the enrichment of the student experience, on and off the university campus. The first Ohio Union, on the south edge of the South Oval, was constructed in 1909 and was later renamed Enarson Hall. The second Ohio Union was completed in 1950 and was prominently along High Street, southeast of the Oval. It was a center of student life for more than 50 years, providing facilities for student activities, organizations and events and serving as an important meeting place for campus and community interaction. The union also housed many student services and programs, along with dining and recreational facilities. The second Ohio Union was demolished in February 2007 to make way for the new Ohio Union, which was finished in 2010. During this time, student activities were relocated to Ohio Stadium and other academic buildings.
Student organizations at Ohio State provide students with opportunities to get involved in a wide variety of interest areas including academic, social, religious, artistic, service-based, diversity and many more.
There are over 1,000 registered student organizations that involve many thousands of students. The university's forensics team has won the state National Forensics Association tournament several times.
Block "O" is currently the largest student-run organization on the campus of Ohio State. With over 2,400 annual members, Block "O" serves as the official student cheering section at athletic events for the University. According to the Student Organization Office in the Ohio Union, Agricultural Education Society is the oldest student organization on campus. The Men's Glee Club often disputes the claim, but after consultation with Ohio Union Staff, Agricultural Education Society was named as the university's oldest organization.
Each year, students may sign-up to participate in BuckeyeThon, Ohio State's student-led philanthropy. The organization hosts events throughout the year to support the hematology/oncology/bone marrow transplant unit at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Although BuckeyeThon is operated entirely by student volunteers, it is embedded within Student Life and the Ohio State University Foundation. The organization receives support, advising, and specialized leadership training from the University. Each February, thousands of students and community members attend BuckeyeThon's signature event, a Dance Marathon consisting of two separate 12-hour shifts. In the past 15 years, students have raised over $5 million to support treatment, research, and various therapies at the hospital. Unique to BuckeyeThon is the use of an operational fund separate from the main philanthropic cancer fund. As a registered non-profit, BuckeyeThon is subject to University audit and issues gift receipts through the Foundation. An annual operational fund relies on University grants, outside sponsors, and event registration fees. This allows the entirety of donations made to the cancer fund to solely support patients without hindrance from outside costs.
Ohio State has several student-managed publications and media outlets. "The Makio" is the official yearbook. "The Makio's" sales plummeted by 60% during the early 1970s; the organization went bankrupt and stopped publication during the late 1970s. The book was revived from 1985 to 1994 and revived again in 2000 thanks to several student organizations. "The Lantern" is the school's daily newspaper and has operated as a laboratory newspaper in the School of Communication (formerly the School of Journalism) since 1881. "Mosaic" is a literary magazine published by Ohio State, which features undergraduate fiction, poetry, and art. "The Sundial" is a student-written and published humor magazine. Founded in 1911, it is one of the oldest humor magazines in the country. After a 17-year hiatus in which no magazine was published it has recently been revived, first in print form, and now in an online humor blog, as well as multiple social media outlets. Ohio State has two improvisational comedy groups, "The 8th Floor Improv" and "Fishbowl Improv", who regularly perform long and short-form improv around campus and across the U.S. There are two student-run radio stations on campus. AROUSE, the music station, is home to over 100 student DJs, streaming music and independent content. Scarlet and Gray Sports Radio broadcasts eleven different Ohio State sports. Both stations broadcast on an Internet audio stream (no broadcast signals are available in Columbus). Students also operate a local cable TV channel known as Buckeye TV, which airs primarily on the campus closed cable system operated by the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO).
At the Ohio State University, three recognized student governments represent their constituents.
Ohio State's intercollegiate sports teams are called the "Buckeyes" (derived from the colloquial term for people from the state of Ohio and after the state tree, the Ohio Buckeye, "Aesculus glabra"), and participate in the NCAA's Division I in all sports (Division I FBS in football) and the Big Ten Conference in most sports. (The women's hockey program competes in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association). The school colors are scarlet and gray. Brutus Buckeye is the mascot. Ohio State currently has 36 varsity teams.
Ohio State is one of six universities (the University of Michigan, the University of Florida, Stanford University, UCLA, and the University of California at Berkeley being the others) to have won national championships in all three major men's sports (baseball, men's basketball, and football). Ohio State is also one of only two universities to appear in the national championship games in both football and men's basketball in the same calendar year (the other university is the University of Florida.) Ohio State has also won national championships in wrestling, men's volleyball, men's swimming and diving, men's outdoor track & field, men's golf, men's gymnastics, men's fencing, women's rowing, co-ed fencing, and multiple synchronized swimming championships. The Ohio State equestrian team has won eight Intercollegiate Horse Show Association national championships. Since the inception of the Athletic Director's Cup, Ohio State has finished in the top 25 each year, including top-six finishes in three of the last five years. During the 2005–2006 school year Ohio State became the first Big Ten team to win conference championships in football, men's basketball, and women's basketball. Ohio State repeated the feat during the 2006–2007 school year, winning solo championships in all three sports. In 2007, "Sports Illustrated" nicknamed Ohio State's athletic program as being "The Program" due to the unsurpassed facilities, an unparalleled number of men's and women's sports teams, their success, and the financial support of an impressive fan base.
Outstanding sports figures that were student athletes at Ohio State include 1936 Olympics gold medalist Jesse Owens "the Buckeye Bullet" (track and field), John Havlicek, Jerry Lucas, Bobby Knight, and Larry Siegfried (basketball), 2010 Olympics silver medalist Ryan Kesler (ice hockey), Katie Smith and the first three-time player of the year in Big Ten Basketball history Jessica Davenport (women's basketball), Frank Howard (basketball and baseball), Jack Nicklaus (golf); and Chic Harley (three-time All-American football running back). Ohio State football players have combined for seven Heisman Awards including the only two-time winner Archie Griffin in 1974 and 1975, Eddie George in 1995, and most recently Troy Smith in 2006. Hall of Fame coaches at Ohio State have included Paul Brown, Woody Hayes, and Jim Tressel in football, Fred Taylor in basketball, Larry Snyder in track and field, and Mike Peppe in swimming and diving. Hall of fame players, in pro-football, include Sid Gillman, Lou Groza, Dante Lavelli, Jim Parker, Paul Warfield, Dick LeBeau, and Bill Willis.
The marching band has also a longstanding tradition at Ohio State. The band is famous for "Script Ohio", during which the band marches single-file through the curves of the word "Ohio", much like a pen writes the word, all while playing the French march "Le Regiment de Sambre et Meuse".
"Across the Field", Ohio State's fight song, and "Buckeye Battle Cry" are commonly played and sung at athletic events, as well as commencement and convocation exercises.
Ohio State operates a public television station, WOSU-TV (virtual channel 34/DT 38, a local PBS TV station), as well as two public radio stations, WOSU-FM 89.7(NPR/BBC news/talk) and WOSA-FM 101.1 (classical, "Classical 101") in Columbus.
Ohio State's faculty currently includes 21 members of the National Academy of Sciences or National Academy of Engineering, four members of the Institute of Medicine, and 177 elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2009, 17 Ohio State faculty were elected as AAAS Fellows. Each year since 2002, Ohio State has either led or been second among all American universities in the number of their faculty elected as fellows to the AAAS.
In surveys conducted in 2005 and 2006 by the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE), Ohio State was rated as "exemplary" in four of the seven measured aspects of workplace satisfaction for junior faculty at 31 universities: overall tenure practices, policy effectiveness, compensation, and work-family balance.
In the last quarter century, 32 Ohio State faculty members have received the Guggenheim Fellowship, more than all other public and private Ohio universities combined. In 2008, three Ohio State faculty were awarded Guggenheim Fellowships, placing Ohio State among the top 15 universities in the United States. Since the 2000–2001 award year, 55 Ohio State faculty members have been named as Fulbright Fellows, the most of any Ohio university.
Ohio State has over 475,000 living alumni around the world. Ohio State alumni include Nobel Prize recipients, Pulitzer Prize recipients, Olympic Games gold medalists, UFC champions, and Medal of Honor recipients, ambassadors, as well as Fortune 500 CEOs and members of the Forbes 400 list of the world's wealthiest individuals. Numerous graduates have gone on to become U.S. governors, senators and members of Congress. Ohio State alumni have appeared on the cover of "Time" magazine twelve times, with the artwork of alumnus Roy Lichtenstein featured on an additional two "Time" covers. George Steinbrenner, former owner of the New York Yankees who won seven World Series with the team, earned his master's degree from Ohio State. Larry Sanger, one of the founders of Wikipedia, and Steve May, chief technology officer at Pixar, both graduated from Ohio State. Roboticist James S. Albus was named a "Hero of US Manufacturing" by "Fortune Magazine" in 1997.
Ohio State alumni have been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, the NFL Hall of Fame and the Basketball Hall of Fame. Its athletes have won a combined eighty-three Olympic medals and three times have received the Sullivan Award as the nation's top amateur athlete. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22217 |
Ontario
Ontario is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. Located in Central Canada, it is Canada's most populous province, with 38.3 percent of the country's population, and is the second-largest province in total area. Ontario is the fourth-largest jurisdiction in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are included. It is home to the nation's capital city, Ottawa, and the nation's most populous city, Toronto, which is also Ontario's provincial capital.
Ontario is bordered by the province of Manitoba to the west, Hudson Bay and James Bay to the north, and Quebec to the east and northeast, and to the south by the U.S. states of (from west to east) Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. Almost all of Ontario's border with the United States follows inland waterways: from the westerly Lake of the Woods, eastward along the major rivers and lakes of the Great Lakes/Saint Lawrence River drainage system. These include Rainy River, Pigeon River, Lake Superior, St. Marys River, Lake Huron, St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, Detroit River, Lake Erie, Niagara River, Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River from Kingston, to the Quebec boundary just east of Cornwall. There is only about of land border, made up of portages including Height of Land Portage on the Minnesota border.
Ontario is sometimes conceptually divided into two regions, Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario. The great majority of Ontario's population and arable land is in the south. In contrast, the larger, northern part of Ontario is sparsely populated with cold winters and heavy forestation.
The province is named after Lake Ontario, a term thought to be derived from ', a Huron (Wyandot) word meaning "great lake", or possibly ', which means "beautiful water" in the Iroquoian languages. Ontario has about 250,000 freshwater lakes.
The province consists of three main geographical regions:
Despite the absence of any mountainous terrain in the province, there are large areas of uplands, particularly within the Canadian Shield which traverses the province from northwest to southeast and also above the Niagara Escarpment which crosses the south. The highest point is Ishpatina Ridge at above sea level in Temagami, Northeastern Ontario. In the south, elevations of over are surpassed near Collingwood, above the Blue Mountains in the Dundalk Highlands and in hilltops near the Madawaska River in Renfrew County.
The Carolinian forest zone covers most of the southwestern region of the province. The temperate and fertile Great Lakes-Saint Lawrence Valley in the south is part of the Eastern Great Lakes lowland forests ecoregion where the forest has now been largely replaced by agriculture, industrial and urban development. A well-known geographic feature is Niagara Falls, part of the Niagara Escarpment. The Saint Lawrence Seaway allows navigation to and from the Atlantic Ocean as far inland as Thunder Bay in Northwestern Ontario. Northern Ontario covers approximately 87% of the province's surface area; conversely Southern Ontario contains 94% of the population.
Point Pelee is a peninsula of Lake Erie in southwestern Ontario (near Windsor and Detroit, Michigan) that is the southernmost extent of Canada's mainland. Pelee Island and Middle Island in Lake Erie extend slightly farther. All are south of 42°N – slightly farther south than the northern border of California.
Ontario's climate varies by season and location. Three air sources affect it: cold, dry, arctic air from the north (dominant factor during the winter months, and for a longer part of the year in far northern Ontario); Pacific polar air crossing in from the western Canadian Prairies/US Northern Plains; and warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. The effects of these major air masses on temperature and precipitation depend mainly on latitude, proximity to major bodies of water and to a small extent, terrain relief. In general, most of Ontario's climate is classified as humid continental.
Ontario has three main climatic regions:
In the northeastern parts of Ontario, extending south as far as Kirkland Lake, the cold waters of Hudson Bay depress summer temperatures, making it cooler than other locations at similar latitudes. The same is true on the northern shore of Lake Superior, which cools hot humid air from the south, leading to cooler summer temperatures. Along the eastern shores of Lake Superior and Lake Huron winter temperatures are slightly moderated but come with frequent heavy lake-effect snow squalls that increase seasonal snowfall totals to upwards of in some places. These regions have higher annual precipitation, in some places over .
Severe thunderstorms peak in summer. Windsor, in Southern (Southwestern) Ontario, has the most lightning strikes per year in Canada, averaging 33 days of thunderstorm activity per year. In a typical year, Ontario averages 11 confirmed tornado touchdowns. However, over the last 4 years, it has had upwards of 20 tornado touchdowns per year, with the highest frequency in the Windsor-Essex – Chatham Kent area, though few are very destructive (the majority between F0 to F2 on the Fujita scale). Ontario had a record 29 tornadoes in both 2006 and 2009. Tropical depression remnants occasionally bring heavy rains and winds in the south, but are rarely deadly. A notable exception was Hurricane Hazel which struck Southern Ontario centred on Toronto, in October 1954.
Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the region was inhabited by Algonquian (Ojibwe, Cree and Algonquin) in the northern/western portions, and Iroquois and Wyandot (Huron) people more in the south/east. During the 17th century, the Algonquians and Hurons fought the Beaver Wars against the Iroquois.
The French explorer Étienne Brûlé explored part of the area in 1610–12. The English explorer Henry Hudson sailed into Hudson Bay in 1611 and claimed the area for England.
Samuel de Champlain reached Lake Huron in 1615, and French missionaries began to establish posts along the Great Lakes. French settlement was hampered by their hostilities with the Iroquois, who allied themselves with the British. From 1634 to 1640, Hurons were devastated by European infectious diseases, such as measles and smallpox, to which they had no immunity. By 1700, the Iroquois had seceded from Ontario and the Mississaugas of the Ojibwa had settled the north shore of Lake Ontario. The remaining Huron settled north of Quebec.
The British established trading posts on Hudson Bay in the late 17th century and began a struggle for domination of Ontario with the French. After the French of New France were defeated during the Seven Years' War, the two powers awarded nearly all of France's North American possessions (New France) to Britain in the 1763 Treaty of Paris, including those lands of Ontario not already claimed by Britain. The British annexed the Ontario region to Quebec in 1774.
The first European settlements were in 1782–1784 when 5,000 American loyalists entered what is now Ontario following the American Revolution. The Kingdom of Great Britain granted them land and other items with which to rebuild their lives. The British also set up reserves in Ontario for the Mohawks who had fought for the British and had lost their land in New York state. Other Iroquois, also displaced from New York were resettled in 1784 at the Six Nations reserve at the west end of Lake Ontario. The Mississaugas, displaced by European settlements, would later move to Six Nations also.
The population of Canada west of the St. Lawrence-Ottawa River confluence substantially increased during this period, a fact recognized by the "Constitutional Act" of 1791, which split Quebec into the Canadas: Upper Canada southwest of the St. Lawrence-Ottawa River confluence, and Lower Canada east of it. John Graves Simcoe was appointed Upper Canada's first Lieutenant governor in 1793.
American troops in the War of 1812 invaded Upper Canada across the Niagara River and the Detroit River, but were defeated and pushed back by the British, Canadian fencibles and militias, and First Nations warriors. However, the Americans eventually gained control of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The 1813 Battle of York saw American troops defeat the garrison at the Upper Canada capital of York. The Americans looted the town and burned the Upper Canada Parliament Buildings during their brief occupation. The British would burn the American capital of Washington, D.C. in 1814.
After the War of 1812, relative stability allowed for increasing numbers of immigrants to arrive from Europe rather than from the United States. As was the case in the previous decades, this immigration shift was encouraged by the colonial leaders. Despite affordable and often free land, many arriving newcomers, mostly from Britain and Ireland, found frontier life with the harsh climate difficult, and some of those with the means eventually returned home or went south. However, population growth far exceeded emigration in the following decades. It was a mostly agrarian-based society, but canal projects and a new network of plank roads spurred greater trade within the colony and with the United States, thereby improving previously damaged relations over time.
Meanwhile, Ontario's numerous waterways aided travel and transportation into the interior and supplied water power for development. As the population increased, so did the industries and transportation networks, which in turn led to further development. By the end of the century, Ontario vied with Quebec as the nation's leader in terms of growth in population, industry, arts and communications.
Unrest in the colony began to chafe against the aristocratic Family Compact who governed while benefiting economically from the region's resources, and who did not allow elected bodies power. This resentment spurred republican ideals and sowed the seeds for early Canadian nationalism. Accordingly, rebellion in favour of responsible government rose in both regions; Louis-Joseph Papineau led the Lower Canada Rebellion and William Lyon Mackenzie, first Toronto mayor, led the Upper Canada Rebellion. In Upper Canada, the rebellion was quickly a failure. William Lyon Mackenzie escaped to the United States, where he declared the Republic of Canada on Navy Island on the Niagara River.
Although both rebellions were put down in short order, the British government sent Lord Durham to investigate the causes. He recommended self-government be granted and Lower and Upper Canada be re-joined in an attempt to assimilate the French Canadians. Accordingly, the two colonies were merged into the Province of Canada by the "Act of Union 1840", with the capital at Kingston, and Upper Canada becoming known as Canada West. Parliamentary self-government was granted in 1848. There were heavy waves of immigration in the 1840s, and the population of Canada West more than doubled by 1851 over the previous decade. As a result, for the first time, the English-speaking population of Canada West surpassed the French-speaking population of Canada East, tilting the representative balance of power.
An economic boom in the 1850s coincided with railway expansion across the province, further increasing the economic strength of Central Canada. With the repeal of the Corn Laws and a reciprocity agreement in place with the United States, various industries such as timber, mining, farming and alcohol distilling benefited tremendously.
A political stalemate between the French- and English-speaking legislators, as well as fear of aggression from the United States during and immediately after the American Civil War, led the political elite to hold a series of conferences in the 1860s to effect a broader federal union of all British North American colonies. The "British North America Act" took effect on July 1, 1867, establishing the Dominion of Canada, initially with four provinces: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. The Province of Canada was divided into Ontario and Quebec so that each linguistic group would have its own province. Both Quebec and Ontario were required by section 93 of the "British North America Act" to safeguard existing educational rights and privileges of Protestant and the Catholic minority. Thus, separate Catholic schools and school boards were permitted in Ontario. However, neither province had a constitutional requirement to protect its French- or English-speaking minority. Toronto was formally established as Ontario's provincial capital.
Once constituted as a province, Ontario proceeded to assert its economic and legislative power. In 1872, the lawyer Oliver Mowat became Premier of Ontario and remained as premier until 1896. He fought for provincial rights, weakening the power of the federal government in provincial matters, usually through well-argued appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. His battles with the federal government greatly decentralized Canada, giving the provinces far more power than John A. Macdonald had intended. He consolidated and expanded Ontario's educational and provincial institutions, created districts in Northern Ontario, and fought to ensure that those parts of Northwestern Ontario not historically part of Upper Canada (the vast areas north and west of the Lake Superior-Hudson Bay watershed, known as the District of Keewatin) would become part of Ontario, a victory embodied in the "Canada (Ontario Boundary) Act, 1889". He also presided over the emergence of the province into the economic powerhouse of Canada. Mowat was the creator of what is often called "Empire Ontario".
Beginning with Sir John A. Macdonald's National Policy (1879) and the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway (1875–1885) through Northern Ontario and the Canadian Prairies to British Columbia, Ontario manufacturing and industry flourished. However, population increase slowed after a large recession hit the province in 1893, thus slowing growth drastically but for only a few years. Many newly arrived immigrants and others moved west along the railway to the Prairie Provinces and British Columbia, sparsely settling Northern Ontario.
Mineral exploitation accelerated in the late 19th century, leading to the rise of important mining centres in the northeast, such as Sudbury, Cobalt and Timmins. The province harnessed its water power to generate hydro-electric power and created the state-controlled Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, later Ontario Hydro. The availability of cheap electric power further facilitated the development of industry. The Ford Motor Company of Canada was established in 1904 and the McLaughlin Motor Car Company (later General Motors Canada) was founded in 1907. The motor vehicle industry became the most lucrative industry for the Ontario economy during the 20th century.
In July 1912, the Conservative government of Sir James Whitney issued Regulation 17 which severely limited the availability of French-language schooling to the province's French-speaking minority. French Canadians reacted with outrage, journalist Henri Bourassa denouncing the "Prussians of Ontario". The regulation was eventually repealed in 1927.
Influenced by events in the United States, the government of Sir William Hearst introduced prohibition of alcoholic drinks in 1916 with the passing of the "Ontario Temperance Act". However, residents could distill and retain their own personal supply, and liquor producers could continue distillation and export for sale, allowing this already sizeable industry to strengthen further. Ontario became a hotbed for the illegal smuggling of liquor and the biggest supplier into the United States, which was under complete prohibition. Prohibition in Ontario came to an end in 1927 with the establishment of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario under the government of Howard Ferguson. The sale and consumption of liquor, wine, and beer are still controlled by some of the most extreme laws in North America to ensure strict community standards and revenue generation from the alcohol retail monopoly are upheld. In April 2007, Ontario Member of Provincial Parliament Kim Craitor suggested local brewers should be able to sell their beer in local corner stores; however, the motion was quickly rejected by Premier Dalton McGuinty.
The post-World War II period was one of exceptional prosperity and growth. Ontario has been the recipients of most immigration to Canada, largely immigrants from war-torn Europe in the 1950s and 1960s and following changes in federal immigration law, a massive influx of non-Europeans since the 1970s. From a largely ethnically British province, Ontario has rapidly become culturally very diverse.
The nationalist movement in Quebec, particularly after the election of the "Parti Québécois" in 1976, contributed to driving many businesses and English-speaking people out of Quebec to Ontario, and as a result, Toronto surpassed Montreal as the largest city and economic centre of Canada. Depressed economic conditions in the Maritime Provinces have also resulted in de-population of those provinces in the 20th century, with heavy migration into Ontario.
Ontario's official language is English, although there exists a number of French-speaking communities across Ontario. French-language services are made available for communities with a sizeable French-speaking population; a service that is ensured under the "French Language Services Act" of 1989.
Until 1763, most of Ontario was considered part of New France by French claim. Rupert's Land, defined as the drainage basin of Hudson Bay, was claimed by Britain, and included much of today's Northern Ontario. The British defeated the armies of the French colony and its indigenous allies in the French and Indian War, part of the Seven Years' War global conflict. Concluding the war, the peace treaty between the European powers, known as the Treaty of Paris 1763, assigned almost all of France's possessions in North America to Britain, including parts that would later become Ontario not already part of Rupert's Land. Britain established the first Province of Quebec, encompassing contemporary Quebec and southern Ontario.
After the American War of Independence, the first reserves for First Nations were established. These are situated at Six Nations (1784), Tyendinaga (1793) and Akwesasne (1795). Six Nations and Tyendinaga were established by the British for those indigenous groups who had fought on the side of the British, and were expelled from the new United States. Akwesasne was a pre-existing Mohawk community and its borders were formalized under the 1795 Jay Treaty.
In 1788, while part of the Province of Quebec, southern Ontario was divided into four districts: Hesse, Lunenburg, Mecklenburg, and Nassau. In 1792, the four districts were renamed: Hesse became the Western District, Lunenburg became the Eastern District, Mecklenburg became the Midland District, and Nassau became the Home District. Counties were created within the districts.
By 1798, there were eight districts: Eastern, Home, Johnstown, London, Midland, Newcastle, Niagara, and Western. By 1826, there were eleven districts: Bathurst, Eastern, Gore, Home, Johnstown, London, Midland, Newcastle, Niagara, Ottawa, and Western. By 1838, there were twenty districts: Bathurst, Brock, Colbourne, Dalhousie, Eastern, Gore, Home, Huron, Johnstown, London, Midland, Newcastle, Niagara, Ottawa, Prince Edward, Simcoe, Talbot, Victoria, Wellington, and Western.
In 1849, the districts of southern Ontario were abolished by the Province of Canada, and county governments took over certain municipal responsibilities. The Province of Canada also began creating "districts" in sparsely populated Northern Ontario with the establishment of Algoma District and Nipissing District in 1858.
The borders of Ontario, its new name in 1867, were provisionally expanded north and west. When the Province of Canada was formed, its borders were not entirely clear, and Ontario claimed eventually to reach all the way to the Rocky Mountains and Arctic Ocean. With Canada's acquisition of Rupert's Land, Ontario was interested in clearly defining its borders, especially since some of the new areas in which it was interested were rapidly growing. After the federal government asked Ontario to pay for construction in the new disputed area, the province asked for an elaboration on its limits, and its boundary was moved north to the 51st parallel north.
The northern and western boundaries of Ontario were in dispute after Canadian Confederation. Ontario's right to Northwestern Ontario was determined by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in 1884 and confirmed by the "Canada (Ontario Boundary) Act, 1889" of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. By 1899, there were seven northern districts: Algoma, Manitoulin, Muskoka, Nipissing, Parry Sound, Rainy River, and Thunder Bay. Four more northern districts were created between 1907 and 1912: Cochrane, Kenora, Sudbury and Timiskaming.
In the 2016 census, Ontario had a population of 13,448,494 living in 5,169,174 of its 5,598,391 total dwellings, a 4.6 percent change from its 2011 population of 12,851,821. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2016. The largest population centres in Ontario are Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, Kitchener, London and Oshawa which all have more than 300,000 inhabitants.
The percentages given below add to more than 100 per cent because of dual responses (e.g., "French and Canadian" response generates an entry both in the category "French Canadian" and in the category "Canadian").
The majority of Ontarians are of English or other European descent including large Scottish, Irish and Italian communities. Slightly less than 5 per cent of the population of Ontario is Franco-Ontarian, that is those whose native tongue is French, although those with French ancestry account for 11 per cent of the population. In relation to natural increase or inter-provincial migration, immigration is a huge population growth force in Ontario, as it has been over the last two centuries. More recent sources of immigrants with large or growing communities in Ontario include South Asians, Caribbeans, Latin Americans, Europeans, Asians, and Africans. Most populations have settled in the larger urban centres.
In 2011, 25.9 per cent of the population consisted of visible minorities and 2.4 per cent of the population was Indigenous, mostly of First Nations and Métis descent. There was also a small number of Inuit people in the province. The number of Aboriginal people and visible minorities has been increasing at a faster rate than the general population of Ontario.
In 2011, the largest religious denominations in Ontario were the Roman Catholic Church (with 31.4% of the population), the United Church of Canada (7.5%), and the Anglican Church (6.1%). 23.1% of Ontarians had no religious affiliation, making it the second-largest religious grouping in the province after Roman Catholics.
The major religious groups in Ontario in 2011 were:
In Ontario, Catholics are represented by the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario and the Anglican Protestants by the Ecclesiastical Province of Ontario. The Ecclesiastical Province covers most of the geographical province of Ontario
The principal language of Ontario is English, the province's "de facto" official language, with approximately 97.2 per cent of Ontarians having proficiency in the language, although only 69.5 per cent of Ontarians reported English as their mother tongue in the 2016 Census. English is one of two official languages of Canada, with the other being French. English and French are the official languages of the courts in Ontario. Approximately 4.6 per cent of the population were identified as francophones, with 11.5 per cent of Ontarians having proficiency in French. Approximately 11.2 per cent of the Ontarians reported being bilingual in both official languages of Canada. Approximately 2.5 per cent of Ontarians have no proficiency in either English or French.
Franco-Ontarians are concentrated in the northeastern, eastern, and extreme Southern parts of the province, where under the "French Language Services Act", provincial government services are required to be available in French if at least 10 per cent of a designated area's population report French as their native language or if an urban centre has at least 5,000 francophones.
Other languages spoken by residents include Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, Dutch, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Hebrew, Italian, Korean, Malayalam, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Sinhalese, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Tamil, Tibetan, Ukrainian, Urdu, and Vietnamese.
Ontario is Canada's leading manufacturing province, accounting for 52% of the total national manufacturing shipments in 2004. Ontario's largest trading partner is the American state of Michigan. , Moody's bond-rating agency rated Ontario debt at AA2/stable, while S&P rated it AA-. Dominion Bond Rating Service rated it AA(low) in January 2013. Long known as a bastion of Canadian manufacturing and financial solvency, Ontario's public debt-to-GDP ratio is projected to be 38.4% in fiscal year 2023–2024.
Mining and the forest products industry, notably pulp and paper, are vital to the economy of Northern Ontario. As of 2011, roughly 200,000 ha are clearcut each year; herbicides for hardwood suppression are applied to a third of the total. There has been controversy over the Ring of Fire mineral deposit, and whether the province can afford to spend CAD$2.25 billion on a road from the Trans-Canada Highway near Kenora to the deposit, currently valued at CAD$60 billion.
An abundance of natural resources, excellent transportation links to the North American heartland and the inland Great Lakes making ocean access possible via container ships, have all contributed to making manufacturing the principal industry of the province, found mainly in the Golden Horseshoe region, which is the largest industrialized area in Canada, the southern end of the region being part of the North American Rust Belt. Important products include motor vehicles, iron, steel, food, electrical appliances, machinery, chemicals, and paper.
Hamilton is the largest steel manufacturing city in Canada followed closely by Sault Ste. Marie, and Sarnia is the centre for petrochemical production. Construction employed more than 6.5% of the province's work force in June 2011. Ontario's steel industry was once centred in Hamilton. Hamilton harbour, which can be seen from the QEW Skyway bridge, is an industrial wasteland; U.S. Steel-owned Stelco announced in the autumn of 2013 that it would close in 2014, with the loss of 875 jobs. The move flummoxed a union representative, who seemed puzzled why a plant with capacity of 2 million tons per annum would be shut while Canada imported 8 million tons of steel the previous year. Algoma Steel maintains a plant in Sault Ste Marie.
Ontario surpassed Michigan in car production, assembling 2.696 million vehicles in 2004. Ontario has Chrysler plants in Windsor and Bramalea, two GM plants in Oshawa and one in Ingersoll, a Honda assembly plant in Alliston, Ford plants in Oakville and St. Thomas and Toyota assembly plants in Cambridge and Woodstock. However, as a result of steeply declining sales, in 2005, General Motors announced massive layoffs at production facilities across North America, including two large GM plants in Oshawa and a drive train facility in St. Catharines, that resulted in 8,000 job losses in Ontario alone. In 2006, Ford Motor Company announced between 25,000 and 30,000 layoffs phased until 2012; Ontario was spared the worst, but job losses were announced for the St Thomas facility and the Windsor Casting plant. However, these losses will be offset by Ford's recent announcement of a hybrid vehicle facility slated to begin production in 2007 at its Oakville plant and GM's re-introduction of the Camaro which will be produced in Oshawa. On December 4, 2008 Toyota announced the grand opening of the RAV4 plant in Woodstock, and Honda also plans to add an engine plant at its facility in Alliston. Despite these new plants coming online, Ontario has not yet fully recovered following massive layoffs caused by the global recession; its unemployment rate was 7.3% in May 2013, compared to 8.7 percent in January 2010 and approximately 6% in 2007. In September 2013, the Ontario government committed CAD$70.9 million to the Ford plant in Oakville, while the federal government committed CAD$71.1mn, to secure 2,800 jobs. The province has lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs in the decade from 2003, and the Bank of Canada noted that "while the energy and mining industries have benefitted from these movements, the pressure on the manufacturing sector has intensified, since many firms in this sector were already dealing with growing competition from low-cost economies such as China."
Toronto, the capital of Ontario, is the centre of Canada's financial services and banking industry. Neighbouring cities are home to product distribution, IT centres, and manufacturing industries. Canada's Federal Government is the largest single employer in the National Capital Region, which centres on the border cities of Ontario's Ottawa and Quebec's Gatineau.
The information technology sector is important, particularly in the "Silicon Valley North" section of Ottawa, home to Canada's largest technology park. IT is also important in the Waterloo Region, where the headquarters of BlackBerry is located.
Tourism contributes heavily to the economy of Central Ontario, peaking during the summer months owing to the abundance of fresh water recreation and wilderness found there in reasonable proximity to the major urban centres. At other times of the year, hunting, skiing and snowmobiling are popular. This region has some of the most vibrant fall colour displays anywhere on the continent, and tours directed at overseas visitors are organized to see them. Tourism also plays a key role in border cities with large casinos, among them Windsor, Cornwall, Sarnia and Niagara Falls, the latter of which attracts millions of US and other international visitors.
Once the dominant industry, agriculture occupies a small percentage of the population. However, much of the land in southern Ontario is given over to agriculture. As the following table shows, while the number of individual farms has steadily decreased and their overall size has shrunk at a lower rate, greater mechanization has supported increased supply to satisfy the ever-increasing demands of a growing population base; this has also meant a gradual increase in the total amount of land used for growing crops.
Common types of farms reported in the 2001 census include those for cattle, small grains and dairy. The fruit- and wine industry is primarily on the Niagara Peninsula, Prince Edward County, and along the northern shore of Lake Erie, where tobacco farms are also situated. Market vegetables grow in the rich soils of the Holland Marsh near Newmarket. The area near Windsor is also very fertile. The Heinz plant in Leamington was taken over in these autumn of 2013 by Warren Buffett and a Brazilian partner, following which it put 740 people out of work. Government subsidies followed shortly; Premier Kathleen Wynne offered CAD$200,000 to cushion the blow, and promised that another processed-food operator would soon be found. On December 10, 2013, Kellogg's announced layoffs for more than 509 workers at a cereal manufacture plant in London.
The area defined as the Corn Belt covers much of the southwestern area of the province, extending as far north as close to Goderich, but corn and soy are grown throughout the southern portion of the province. Apple orchards are a common sight along the southern shore of Nottawasaga Bay (part of Georgian Bay) near Collingwood and along the northern shore of Lake Ontario near Cobourg. Tobacco production, centred in Norfolk County, has decreased, allowing an increase in alternative crops such as hazelnuts and ginseng. The Ontario origins of Massey Ferguson, once one of the largest farm-implement manufacturers in the world, indicate the importance agriculture once had to the Canadian economy.
Southern Ontario's limited supply of agricultural land is going out of production at an increasing rate. Urban sprawl and farmland severances contribute to the loss of thousands of acres of productive agricultural land in Ontario each year. Over 2,000 farms and of farmland in the GTA alone were lost to production in the two decades between 1976 and 1996. This loss represented approximately 18%". of Ontario's Class 1 farmland being converted to urban purposes. In addition, increasing rural severances provide ever-greater interference with agricultural production. In an effort to protect the farmland and green spaces of the National Capital Region, and Greater Toronto Area, the Federal and Provincial Governments introduced greenbelts around Ottawa and the Golden Horseshoe, limiting urban development in these areas.
Ontario's rivers make it rich in hydroelectric energy. In 2009, Ontario Power Generation generated 70 percent of the province's electricity, of which 51 percent is nuclear, 39% is hydroelectric and 10% is fossil-fuel derived. By 2025, nuclear power is projected to supply 42%, while fossil-fuel-derived generation is projected to decrease slightly over the next 20 years. Much of the newer power generation coming online in the last few years is natural gas or combined-cycle natural gas plants. OPG is not, however, responsible for the transmission of power, which is under the control of Hydro One.
Despite its diverse range of power options, problems related to increasing consumption, lack of energy efficiency and aging nuclear reactors, Ontario has been forced in recent years to purchase power from its neighbours Quebec and Michigan to supplement its power needs during peak consumption periods. Ontario's basic domestic rate in 2010 was 11.17 cents per kWh; by contrast. Quebec's was 6.81. In December 2013, the government projected a 42 percent hike by 2018, and 68 percent by 2033. Industrial rates are projected to rise by 33% by 2018, and 55% in 2033.
The "Green Energy and Green Economy Act", 2009 (GEA), takes a two-pronged approach to commercializing renewable energy; first, it aims to bring more renewable energy sources to the province; and secondly, it aims to adopt more energy-efficiency measures to help conserve energy. The bill envisaged appointing a Renewable Energy Facilitator to provide "one-window" assistance and support to project developers to facilitate project approvals.
The approvals process for transmission projects would also be streamlined and (for the first time in Ontario) the bill would enact standards for renewable energy projects. Homeowners would have access to incentives to develop small-scale renewables such as low- or no-interest loans to finance the capital cost of renewable energy generating facilities like solar panels.
Ontario is home to Niagara Falls, which supplies a large amount of electricity to the province. The Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, the largest operational nuclear power plant in the world, is also in Ontario and uses 8 CANDU reactors to generate electricity for the province.
Ontario had the most wind energy capacity of the country with 4,900 MW of power (41% of Canada capacity).
The "British North America Act 1867" section 69 stipulated "There shall be a Legislature for Ontario consisting of the Lieutenant Governor and of One House, styled the Legislative Assembly of Ontario." The assembly currently has 124 seats (increased from 107 as of the 42nd Ontario general election) representing ridings elected in a first-past-the-post system across the province.
The legislative buildings at Queen's Park are the seat of government. Following the Westminster system, the leader of the party holding the most seats in the assembly is known as the "Premier and President of the Council" (Executive Council Act R.S.O. 1990). The Premier chooses the cabinet or Executive Council whose members are deemed ministers of the Crown.
Although the "Legislative Assembly Act (R.S.O. 1990)" refers to "members of the assembly", the legislators are now commonly called MPPs (Members of the Provincial Parliament) in English and "députés de l'Assemblée législative" in French, but they have also been called MLAs (Members of the Legislative Assembly), and both are acceptable. The title of Prime Minister of Ontario, correct in French ("le Premier ministre"), is permissible in English but now generally avoided in favour of the title "Premier" to avoid confusion with the Prime Minister of Canada.
Ontario has grown, from its roots in Upper Canada, into a modern jurisdiction. The old titles of the chief law officers, the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General, remain in use. They both are responsible to the Legislature. The Attorney-General drafts the laws and is responsible for criminal prosecutions and the administration of justice, while the Solicitor-General is responsible for law enforcement and the police services of the province.
The Municipal Act, 2001 (Ontario) is the main statute governing the creation, administration and government of municipalities in the Canadian province of Ontario, other than the City of Toronto. After being passed in 2001, it came into force on January 1, 2003, replacing the previous "Municipal Act". Effective January 1, 2007, the Municipal Act, 2001 (the Act) was significantly amended by the Municipal Statute Law Amendment Act, 2006 (Bill 130).
Ontario has numerous political parties which run for election. The three main parties are the centre-right Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, the social democratic Ontario New Democratic Party (NDP), the centre-left Ontario Liberal Party. The Progressive Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats have each governed the province, while the Greens elected their first-ever member to the Legislative Assembly in 2018.
The 2018 provincial election resulted in a Progressive Conservative majority under Doug Ford, who was sworn in to office on June 29.
Statistics Canada's measure of a "metro area", the Census Metropolitan Area (CMA), roughly bundles together population figures from the core municipality with those from "commuter" municipalities.
*Parts of Quebec (including Gatineau) are included in the Ottawa CMA. The population of the Ottawa CMA, in both provinces, is shown.
In Canada, education falls under provincial jurisdiction. Publicly funded elementary and secondary schools are administered by the Ontario Ministry of Education, while colleges and universities are administered by the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities. The Minister of Education is Stephen Lecce, and the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities is Ross Romano.
Higher education in Ontario includes postsecondary education and skills training regulated by the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities and provided by universities, colleges of applied arts and technology, and private career colleges. The minister is Merrilee Fullerton. The ministry administers laws covering 22 public universities, 24 public colleges (21 Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATs) and three Institutes of Technology and Advanced Learning (ITALs)), 17 privately funded religious universities, and over 500 private career colleges. The Canadian constitution provides each province with the responsibility for higher education and there is no corresponding national federal ministry of higher education. Within Canadian federalism the division of responsibilities and taxing powers between the Ontario and Canadian governments creates the need for co-operation to fund and deliver higher education to students. Each higher education system aims to improve participation, access, and mobility for students. There are two central organizations that assist with the process of applying to Ontario universities and colleges: the Ontario Universities' Application Centre and Ontario College Application Service. While application services are centralized, admission and selection processes vary and are the purview of each institution. Admission to many Ontario postsecondary institutions can be highly competitive. Upon admission, students may get involved with regional student representation with the Canadian Federation of Students, the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, or through the College Student Alliance in Ontario.
In 2019, the government of Ontario passed legislation that established the Poet Laureate of Ontario.
In 1973 the first slogan to appear on licence plates in Ontario was "Keep It Beautiful". This was replaced by "Yours to Discover" in 1982, apparently inspired by a tourism slogan, "Discover Ontario", dating back to 1927. Plates with the French equivalent, "Tant à découvrir", were made available to the public beginning in May 2008. (From 1988 to 1990, "Ontario Incredible" gave "Yours to Discover" a brief respite.)
In 2007, a new song replaced "A Place to Stand" after four decades. "There's No Place Like This" is featured in television advertising, performed by Ontario artists including Molly Johnson, Brian Byrne, Keshia Chanté, as well as Tomi Swick and Arkells.
The province has professional sports teams in baseball, basketball, Canadian football, ice hockey, lacrosse, rugby and soccer.
Transportation routes in Ontario evolved from early waterway travel and First Nations paths followed by European explorers. Ontario has two major east–west routes, both starting from Montreal in the neighbouring province of Quebec. The northerly route, which was a major fur trade route, travels west from Montreal along the Ottawa River, then continues northwestward towards Manitoba. Major cities on or near the route include Ottawa, North Bay, Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie, and Thunder Bay. The southerly route, which was driven by growth in settlements originated by the United Empire Loyalists and later other European immigrants, travels southwest from Montreal along the St. Lawrence River, Lake Ontario, and Lake Erie before entering the United States in Michigan. Major cities on or near the route include Kingston, Belleville, Peterborough, Oshawa, Toronto, Mississauga, Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton, London, Sarnia, and Windsor. This route was also heavily used by immigrants to the Midwestern US particularly in the late 19th century.
Important airports in the province include Toronto Pearson International Airport, which is the busiest airport in Canada, handling nearly 50 million passengers in 2018. Ottawa Macdonald–Cartier International Airport is Ontario's second largest airport. Toronto/Pearson and Ottawa/Macdonald-Cartier form two of the three points in Canada's busiest set of air routes (the third point being Montréal–Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport). In addition to airports in Ottawa, and Toronto, the province also operates three other international airports, the John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport in Hamilton, the Thunder Bay International Airport in Thunder Bay and the London International Airport in London. John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport serves as cargo hub, reliever for Pearson, and a hub for ULCC Swoop.
Most Ontario cities have regional airports, many of which have scheduled commuter flights from Air Canada Jazz or smaller airlines and charter companies – flights from the mid-size cities such as Thunder Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, Sudbury, North Bay, Timmins, Windsor, London, and Kingston feed directly into larger airports in Toronto and Ottawa. Bearskin Airlines also runs flights along the northerly east–west route, connecting Ottawa, North Bay, Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie, Kitchener and Thunder Bay directly.
Isolated towns and settlements in the northern areas of the province rely partly or entirely on air service for travel, goods, and even ambulance services (MEDIVAC), since much of the far northern area of the province cannot be reached by road or rail.
Via Rail operates the inter-regional passenger train service on the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor, along with "The Canadian", a transcontinental rail service from Southern Ontario to Vancouver, and the Sudbury–White River train. Additionally, Amtrak rail connects Ontario with key New York cities including Buffalo, Albany, and New York City. Ontario Northland provides rail service to destinations as far north as Moosonee near James Bay, connecting them with the south.
Freight rail is dominated by the founding cross-country Canadian National Railway and CP Rail companies, which during the 1990s sold many short rail lines from their vast network to private companies operating mostly in the south.
Regional commuter rail is limited to the provincially owned GO Transit, and serves a train-bus network spanning the Golden Horseshoe region, with Union Station in Toronto serving as the transport hub.
There are several city rail-transit systems in the Province. The Toronto Transit Commission operates subways, as well as streetcars (being one of the busiest streetcar systems in North America). OC Transpo operates a light rail metro system in Ottawa. In addition, Waterloo region operates a surface light rail system. Plans to build a light rail line is also underway in the Regional Municipality of Peel.
400-series highways make up the primary vehicular network in the south of province, and they connect at a number of points to border crossings to the United States, and Quebec, the busiest being the Detroit–Windsor Tunnel and Ambassador Bridge and the Blue Water Bridge (via Highway 402). Some of the primary highways along the southern route are Highway 401, Highway 417, and Highway 400, Highway 401 being the busiest highway in North America. Other provincial highways and regional roads inter-connect the remainder of the province.
The Saint Lawrence Seaway, which extends across most of the southern portion of the province and connects to the Atlantic Ocean, is the primary water transportation route for cargo, particularly iron ore and grain. In the past, the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River were also a major passenger transportation route, but over the past half century passenger travel has been reduced to ferry services and sightseeing cruises. Ontario's three largest ports are the Port of Hamilton, Port of Thunder Bay and the Port of Windsor. Ontario's only saltwater port is located in the town of Moosonee on James Bay. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22218 |
Ottawa
Ottawa (, ; Canadian ) is the capital city of Canada. It stands on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of southern Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core of the Ottawa–Gatineau census metropolitan area (CMA) and the National Capital Region (NCR). As of 2016, Ottawa had a city population of 934,243 and a metropolitan population of 1,323,783 making it the fourth-largest city and the fifth-largest CMA in Canada. In June 2019, the City of Ottawa estimated it had surpassed a population of a million.
Founded in 1826 as Bytown, and incorporated as Ottawa in 1855, the city has evolved into the political centre of Canada. Its original boundaries were expanded through numerous annexations and were ultimately replaced by a new city incorporation and amalgamation in 2001 which significantly increased its land area. The city name "Ottawa" was chosen in reference to the Ottawa River, the name of which is derived from the Algonquin "Odawa", meaning "to trade".
Ottawa has the most educated population among Canadian cities and is home to a number of post-secondary, research, and cultural institutions, including the National Arts Centre, the National Gallery, and numerous national museums.
With the draining of the Champlain Sea around ten thousand years ago, the Ottawa Valley became habitable. Local populations used the area for wild edible harvesting, hunting, fishing, trade, travel, and camps for over 6500 years. The Ottawa river valley has archeological sites with arrow heads, pottery, and stone tools. Three major rivers meet within Ottawa, making it an important trade and travel area for thousands of years. The Algonquins called the Ottawa River "Kichi Sibi" or "Kichissippi" meaning "Great River" or "Grand River".
Étienne Brûlé, widely regarded as the first European to travel up the Ottawa River, passed by Ottawa in 1610 on his way to the Great Lakes. Three years later, Samuel de Champlain wrote about the waterfalls in the area and about his encounters with the Algonquins, who had been using the Ottawa River for centuries. Many missionaries would follow the early explorers and traders. The first maps of the area used the word Ottawa, derived from the Algonquin word "adawe" ("to trade", used in reference to the area's importance to First Nations traders), to name the river. Philemon Wright, a New Englander, created the first European settlement in the area on 7 March 1800 on the north side of the river, across from the present-day city of Ottawa in Hull. He, with five other families and twenty-five labourers, set about to create an agricultural community called Wrightsville. Wright pioneered the Ottawa Valley timber trade (soon to be the area's most significant economic activity) by transporting timber by river from the Ottawa Valley to Quebec City. Bytown, Ottawa's original name, was founded as a community in 1826 when hundreds of land speculators were attracted to the south side of the river when news spread that British authorities were immediately constructing the northerly end of the Rideau Canal military project at that location. The following year, the town was named after British military engineer Colonel John By who was responsible for the entire Rideau Waterway construction project.
The canal's military purpose was to provide a secure route between Montreal and Kingston on Lake Ontario, bypassing a particularly vulnerable stretch of the St. Lawrence River bordering the state of New York that had left re-supply ships bound for southwestern Ontario easily exposed to enemy fire during the War of 1812. Colonel By set up military barracks on the site of today's Parliament Hill. He also laid out the streets of the town and created two distinct neighbourhoods named "Upper Town" west of the canal and "Lower Town" east of the canal. Similar to its Upper Canada and Lower Canada namesakes, historically "Upper Town" was predominantly English speaking and Protestant whereas "Lower Town" was predominantly French, Irish and Catholic. Bytown's population grew to 1,000 as the Rideau Canal was being completed in 1832. Bytown encountered some impassioned and violent times in her early pioneer period that included Irish labour unrest that attributed to the Shiners' War from 1835 to 1845 and political dissension evident from the 1849 Stony Monday Riot. In 1855 Bytown was renamed "Ottawa" and incorporated as a city. William Pittman Lett was installed as the first city clerk guiding it through 36 years of development.
On New Year's Eve 1857, Queen Victoria, as a symbolic and political gesture, was presented with the responsibility of selecting a location for the permanent capital of the Province of Canada. In reality, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald had assigned this selection process to the Executive Branch of the Government, as previous attempts to arrive at a consensus had ended in deadlock. The "Queen's choice" turned out to be the small frontier town of Ottawa for two main reasons: Firstly, Ottawa's isolated location in a backcountry surrounded by dense forest far from the Canada–US border and situated on a cliff face would make it more defensible from attack. Secondly, Ottawa was approximately midway between Toronto and Kingston (in Canada West) and Montreal and Quebec City (in Canada East). Additionally, despite Ottawa's regional isolation, it had seasonal water transportation access to Montreal over the Ottawa River and to Kingston via the Rideau Waterway. By 1854 it also had a modern all-season Bytown and Prescott Railway that carried passengers, lumber and supplies the 82-kilometres to Prescott on the Saint Lawrence River and beyond. Ottawa's small size, it was thought, would make it less prone to rampaging politically motivated mobs, as had happened in the previous Canadian capitals. The government already owned the land that would eventually become Parliament Hill which they thought would be an ideal location for the Parliament Buildings. Ottawa was the only settlement of any substantial size that was already directly on the border of French populated former Lower Canada and English populated former Upper Canada thus additionally making the selection an important political compromise. Queen Victoria made her "Queen's choice" very quickly just before welcoming in the New Year.
Starting in the 1850s, entrepreneurs known as lumber barons began to build large sawmills, which became some of the largest mills in the world. Rail lines built in 1854 connected Ottawa to areas south and to the transcontinental rail network via Hull and Lachute, Quebec in 1886. The original Parliament buildings which included the Centre, East and West Blocks were constructed between 1859 and 1866 in the Gothic Revival style. At the time, this was the largest North American construction project ever attempted and Public Works Canada and its architects were not initially well prepared. The Library of Parliament and Parliament Hill landscaping would not be completed until 1876. By 1885 Ottawa was the only city in Canada whose downtown street lights were powered entirely by electricity. In 1889 the Government developed and distributed 60 "water leases" (still currently in use) to mainly local industrialists which gave them permission to generate electricity and operate hydroelectric generators at Chaudière Falls. Public transportation began in 1870 with a horsecar system, overtaken in the 1890s by a vast electric streetcar system that lasted until 1959.
The Hull–Ottawa fire of 1900 destroyed two-thirds of Hull, including 40 percent of its residential buildings and most of its largest employers along the waterfront. It also spread across the Ottawa River and destroyed about one fifth of Ottawa from the Lebreton Flats south to Booth Street and down to Dow's Lake. On 1 June 1912 the Grand Trunk Railway opened both the Château Laurier hotel and its neighbouring downtown Union Station. On 3 February 1916 the Centre Block of the Parliament buildings was destroyed by a fire. The House of Commons and Senate was temporarily relocated to the then recently constructed Victoria Memorial Museum, now the Canadian Museum of Nature until the completion of the new Centre Block in 1922, the centrepiece of which is a dominant Gothic revival styled structure known as the Peace Tower. The current location of what is now Confederation Square was a former commercial district centrally located in a triangular area downtown surrounded by historically significant heritage buildings which includes the Parliament buildings. It was redeveloped as a ceremonial centre in 1938 as part of the City Beautiful Movement and became the site of the National War Memorial in 1939 and designated a National Historic Site in 1984. A new Central Post Office (now the Privy Council of Canada) was constructed in 1939 beside the War Memorial because the original post office building on the proposed Confederation Square grounds had to be demolished.
Ottawa's former industrial appearance was vastly altered by the 1950 Greber Plan. Prime Minister Mackenzie King hired French architect-planner Jacques Greber to design an urban plan for managing development in the National Capital Region, to make it more esthetically pleasing and more befitting a location for Canada's political centre. Greber's plan included the creation of the National Capital Greenbelt, the Parkway, the Queensway highway system, the relocation of downtown Union Station (now the Government Conference Centre) to the suburbs, the removal of the street car system, the decentralization of selected government offices, the relocation of industries and removal of substandard housing from the downtown and the creation of the Rideau Canal and Ottawa River pathways to name just a few of its recommendations. In 1958 the National Capital Commission was established as a Crown Corporation from the passing of the National Capital Act to implement the Greber Plan recommendations-which it accomplished during the 1960s and 1970s.
In the previous 50 years, other commissions, plans and projects had failed to implement plans to improve the capital such as the 1899 Ottawa Improvement Commission (OIC), The Todd Plan in 1903, The Holt Report in 1915 and The Federal District Commission (FDC) established in 1927. In 1958 a new City Hall opened on Green Island near Rideau falls where urban renewal had recently transformed this former industrial location into green space. Until then, City Hall had temporarily been for 27 years (1931–1958) at the Transportation Building adjacent to Union Station and now part of the Rideau Centre. In 2001, Ottawa City Hall returned downtown to a relatively new building (1990) on 110 Laurier Avenue West, the prior home of the now defunct Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton. This new location was close to Ottawa's first (1849–1877) and second (1877–1931) City Halls. This new city hall complex also contained an adjacent 19th century restored heritage building formerly known as the Ottawa Normal School.
From the 1960s until the 1980s, the National Capital Region experienced a building boom, which was followed by large growth in the high-tech industry during the 1990s and 2000s. Ottawa became one of Canada's largest high tech cities and was nicknamed Silicon Valley North. By the 1980s, Bell Northern Research (later Nortel) employed thousands, and large federally assisted research facilities such as the National Research Council contributed to an eventual technology boom. The early adopters led to offshoot companies such as Newbridge Networks, Mitel and Corel.
Ottawa's city limits had been increasing over the years, but it acquired the most territory on 1 January 2001, when it amalgamated all the municipalities of the Regional Municipality of Ottawa–Carleton into one single city. Regional Chair Bob Chiarelli was elected as the new city's first mayor in the 2000 municipal election, defeating Gloucester mayor Claudette Cain. The city's growth led to strains on the public transit system and on road bridges. On 15 October 2001, a diesel-powered light rail transit (LRT) line was introduced on an experimental basis. Known today as the Trillium Line, it was dubbed the O-Train and connected downtown Ottawa to the southern suburbs via Carleton University. The decision to extend the O-Train, and to replace it with an electric light rail system was a major issue in the 2006 municipal elections where Chiarelli was defeated by businessman Larry O'Brien. After O'Brien's election transit plans were changed to establish a series of light rail stations from the east side of the city into downtown, and for using a tunnel through the downtown core. Jim Watson, the last mayor of Ottawa prior to amalgamation, was re-elected in the 2010 election.
In October 2012, City Council approved the final Lansdowne Park plan, an agreement with the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group that saw a new stadium, increased green space, and housing and retail added to the site. In December 2012, City Council voted unanimously to move forward with the Confederation Line, a light rail transit line, which was opened on 14 September 2019.
Ottawa is on the south bank of the Ottawa River and contains the mouths of the Rideau River and Rideau Canal. The older part of the city (including what remains of Bytown) is known as "Lower Town", and occupies an area between the canal and the rivers. Across the canal to the west lies "Centretown" and "Downtown Ottawa", which is the city's financial and commercial hub and home to the Parliament of Canada and numerous federal government department headquarters, notably the Privy Council Office. On 29 June 2007, the Rideau Canal, which stretches to Kingston, Fort Henry and four Martello towers in the Kingston area, was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Located within the major, yet mostly dormant Western Quebec Seismic Zone, Ottawa is occasionally struck by earthquakes. Examples include the 2000 Kipawa earthquake, a magnitude-4.5 earthquake on 24 February 2006, the 2010 Central Canada earthquake, and a magnitude-5.2 earthquake on 17 May 2013.
Ottawa sits at the confluence of three major rivers: the Ottawa River, the Gatineau River and the Rideau River. The Ottawa and Gatineau rivers were historically important in the logging and lumber industries and the Rideau as part of the Rideau Canal system for military, commercial and, subsequently, recreational purposes. The Rideau Canal (Rideau Waterway) first opened in 1832 and is long. It connects the Saint Lawrence River on Lake Ontario at Kingston to the Ottawa River near Parliament Hill. It was able to bypass the unnavigable sections of the Cataraqui and Rideau rivers and various small lakes along the waterway due to flooding techniques and the construction of 47 water transport locks.The Rideau River got its name from early French explorers who thought the waterfalls at the point where the Rideau River empties into the Ottawa River resembled a "curtain". Hence they began naming the falls and river "rideau" which is the French equivalent of the English word for curtain. During part of the winter season the Ottawa section of the canal forms the world's largest skating rink, thereby providing both a recreational venue and a transportation path to downtown for ice skaters (from Carleton University and Dow's Lake to the Rideau Centre and National Arts Centre).
Across the Ottawa River, which forms the border between Ontario and Quebec, lies the city of Gatineau, itself the result of amalgamation of the former Quebec cities of Hull and Aylmer together with Gatineau. Although formally and administratively separate cities in two separate provinces, Ottawa and Gatineau (along with a number of nearby municipalities) collectively constitute the National Capital Region, which is considered a single metropolitan area. One federal crown corporation, the National Capital Commission, or NCC, has significant land holdings in both cities, including sites of historical and touristic importance. The NCC, through its responsibility for planning and development of these lands, is an important contributor to both cities. Around the main urban area is an extensive greenbelt, administered by the NCC for conservation and leisure, and comprising mostly forest, farmland and marshland.
Ottawa has a humid continental climate (Köppen "Dfb") with four distinct seasons and is between Zones 5a and 5b on the Canadian Plant Hardiness Scale. The average July maximum temperature is . The average January minimum temperature is
Summers are warm and humid in Ottawa. On average 11 days of the three summer months have temperatures exceeding , or 37 days if the humidex is considered. Average relative humidity averages 54% in the afternoon and 84% by morning.
Snow and ice are dominant during the winter season. On average Ottawa receives of snowfall annually but maintains an average of snowpack throughout the three winter months. An average 16 days of the three winter months experience temperatures below , or 41 days if the wind chill is considered.
Spring and fall are variable, prone to extremes in temperature and unpredictable swings in conditions. Hot days above have occurred as early as April or as late as October. Annual precipitation averages around .
Ottawa experiences about 2,130 hours of average sunshine annually (46% of possible). Winds in Ottawa are generally Westerlies averaging but tend to be slightly more dominant during the winter.
The highest temperature ever recorded in Ottawa was on 4 July 1913, 1 August 1917 and 11 August 1944. The coldest temperature ever recorded was on 29 December 1933.
Ottawa is bounded on the east by the United Counties of Prescott and Russell; by Renfrew County and Lanark County in the west; on the south by the United Counties of Leeds and Grenville and the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry; and on the north by the Regional County Municipality of Les Collines-de-l'Outaouais and the City of Gatineau. Modern Ottawa is made up of eleven historic townships, ten of which are from Carleton County and one from Russell.
The city has a main urban area but many other urban, suburban and rural areas exist within the modern city's limits. The main suburban area extends a considerable distance to the east, west and south of the centre, and it includes the former cities of Gloucester, Nepean and Vanier, the former village of Rockcliffe Park (a high-income neighbourhood which is adjacent to the Prime Minister's official residence at 24 Sussex and the Governor General's residence), and the communities of Blackburn Hamlet and Orléans. The Kanata suburban area includes the former village of Stittsville to the southwest. Nepean is another major suburb which also includes Barrhaven. The communities of Manotick and Riverside South are on the other side of the Rideau River, and Greely, southeast of Riverside South.
A number of rural communities (villages and hamlets) lie beyond the greenbelt but are administratively part of the Ottawa municipality. Some of these communities are Burritts Rapids; Ashton; Fallowfield; Kars; Fitzroy Harbour; Munster; Carp; North Gower; Metcalfe; Constance Bay and Osgoode and Richmond. Several towns are within the federally defined National Capital Region but outside the city of Ottawa municipal boundaries; including the urban communities of Almonte, Carleton Place, Embrun, Kemptville, Rockland, and Russell.
In 2016, the populations of the City of Ottawa and the Ottawa–Gatineau census metropolitan area (CMA) were 934,243 and 1,323,783 respectively. The city had a population density of in 2016, while the CMA had a population density of . It is the second-largest city in Ontario, fourth-largest city in the country, and the fourth-largest CMA in the country.
Ottawa's median age of 40.1 is both below the provincial and national averages as of 2016. Youths under 15 years constituted 16.7% of the total population in 2016, while those of retirement age (65 years and older) made up 15.4%.
Over 20 percent of the city's population is foreign-born, with the most common non-Canadian countries of origin being the United Kingdom (8.8% of those foreign-born), China (8.0%), and Lebanon (4.8%). About 6.1% of residents are not Canadian citizens.
Around 65% of Ottawa residents describe themselves as Christian , with Catholics accounting for 38.5% of the population and members of Protestant churches 25%. Non-Christian religions are also very well established in Ottawa, the largest being Islam (6.7%), Hinduism (1.4%), Buddhism (1.3%), and Judaism (1.2%). Those with no religious affiliation represent 22.8%.
Bilingualism became official policy for the conduct of municipal business in 2002, and 37.6% of the population can speak both languages as of 2016, making it the largest city in Canada with both English and French as co-official languages. Those who identify their mother tongue as English constitute 62.4 percent, while those with French as their mother tongue make up 14.2 percent of the population. In terms of respondents' knowledge of one or both official languages, 59.9 percent and 1.5 percent of the population have knowledge of English only and French only, respectively; while 37.2 percent have a knowledge of both official languages. The overall Ottawa–Gatineau census metropolitan area (CMA) has a larger proportion of French speakers than Ottawa itself, since Gatineau is overwhelmingly French speaking. An additional 20.4 percent of the population list languages other than English and French as their mother tongue. These include Arabic (3.2%), Chinese (3.0%), Spanish (1.2%), Italian (1.1%), and many others.
As of 2016, approximately 69.1% of Ottawa's population was white, while 4.6% were aboriginal and 26.3% were visible minorities (higher than the national percentage of 22.3%). Below is a breakdown of the demographics.
As of 2015, the region of Ottawa-Gatineau has the sixth highest total household income of all Canadian metropolitan areas ($82,052). The median household income after taxes is $73,745 which is higher than the national median of $61,348. The unemployment rate in Ottawa in 2016 was 7.2%, lower than the national rate of 7.7%. In 2019 Mercer ranks Ottawa with the third highest quality of living of any Canadian city, and 19th highest in the world. It is also rated the second cleanest city in Canada, and third cleanest city in the world.
Ottawa's primary employers are the Public Service of Canada and the high-tech industry, although tourism and healthcare also represent increasingly sizeable economic activities. The Federal government is the city's largest employer, employing over 110,000 individuals from the National Capital region. The national headquarters for many federal departments are in Ottawa, particularly throughout Centretown and in the Terrasses de la Chaudière and Place du Portage complexes in Hull. The National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa is the main command centre for the Canadian Armed Forces and hosts the Department of National Defence. The Ottawa area includes CFS Leitrim and the former CFB Rockcliffe. During the summer, the city hosts the Ceremonial Guard, which performs functions such as the Changing the Guard. As the national capital of Canada, tourism is an important part of Ottawa's economy, particularly after the 150th anniversary of Canada which was centred in Ottawa. The lead-up to the festivities saw much investment in civic infrastructure, upgrades to tourist infrastructure and increases in national cultural attractions. The National Capital Region annually attracts an estimated 7.3 million tourists, who spend about 1.18 billion dollars.
In addition to the economic activities that come with being the national capital, Ottawa is an important technology centre; in 2015, its 1800 companies employed approximately 63,400 people. The concentration of companies in this industry earned the city the nickname of "Silicon Valley North". Most of these companies specialize in telecommunications, software development and environmental technology. Large technology companies such as Nortel, Corel, Mitel, Cognos, Halogen Software, Shopify and JDS Uniphase were founded in the city. Ottawa also has regional locations for Nokia, 3M, Adobe Systems, Bell Canada, IBM and Hewlett-Packard. Many of the telecommunications and new technology are in the western part of the city (formerly Kanata). The "tech sector" was doing particularly well in 2015/2016.
Another major employer is the health sector, which employs over 18,000 people. Four active general hospitals are in the Ottawa area: Queensway Carleton Hospital, The Ottawa Hospital, Montfort Hospital, and Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario. Several specialized hospital facilities are also present, such as the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre. Nordion, i-Stat and the National Research Council of Canada and OHRI are part of the growing life science sector. Business, finance, administration, and sales and service rank high among types of occupations. Approximately ten percent of Ottawa's GDP is derived from finance, insurance and real estate whereas employment in goods-producing industries is only half the national average. The City of Ottawa is the second largest employer with over 15,000 employees.
In 2006, Ottawa experienced an increase of 40,000 jobs over 2001 with a five-year average growth that was relatively slower than in the late 1990s. While the number of employees in the federal government stagnated, the high-technology industry grew by 2.4%. The overall growth of jobs in Ottawa-Gatineau was 1.3% compared to the previous year, down to sixth place among Canada's largest cities. In 2016, the unemployment rate in Ottawa was 7.2%, which was below the national unemployment rate of 7.7%. The economic downturn resulted in an increase in the unemployment rate between April 2008 and April 2009 from 4.7 to 6.3%. In the province, however, this rate increased over the same period from 6.4 to 9.1%.
Traditionally the ByWard Market (in Lower Town), Parliament Hill and the Golden Triangle (both in Centretown – Downtown) have been the focal points of the cultural scenes in Ottawa. Modern thoroughfares such as Wellington Street, Rideau Street, Sussex Drive, Elgin Street, Bank Street, Somerset Street, Preston Street, Richmond Road in Westboro, and Sparks Street are home to many boutiques, museums, theatres, galleries, landmarks and memorials in addition to eating establishments, cafes, bars and nightclubs.
Ottawa hosts a variety of annual seasonal activities—such as Winterlude, the largest festival in Canada, and Canada Day celebrations on Parliament Hill and surrounding downtown area, as well as Bluesfest, Canadian Tulip Festival, Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival, Ottawa International Jazz Festival, Fringe Festival and Folk Music Festival, that have grown to become some of the largest festivals of their kind in the world. In 2010, Ottawa's Festival industry received the IFEA "World Festival and Event City Award" for the category of North American cities with a population between 500,000 and 1,000,000.
As Canada's capital, Ottawa has played host to a number of significant cultural events in Canadian history, including the first visit of the reigning Canadian sovereign—King George VI, with his consort, Queen Elizabeth—to his parliament, on 19 May 1939. VE Day was marked with a large celebration on 8 May 1945, the first raising of the country's new national flag took place on 15 February 1965, and the centennial of Confederation was celebrated on 1 July 1967. Elizabeth II was in Ottawa on 17 April 1982, to issue a royal proclamation of the enactment of the Constitution Act. In 1983, Prince Charles and Diana Princess of Wales came to Ottawa for a state dinner hosted by then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. In 2011, Ottawa was selected as the first city to receive Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge during their tour of Canada.
Influenced by government structures, much of the city's architecture tends to be formalistic and functional; however, the city is also marked by Romantic and Picturesque styles of architecture such as the Parliament Buildings' gothic revival architecture. Ottawa's domestic architecture is dominated by single family homes, but also includes smaller numbers of semi-detached houses, rowhouses, and apartment buildings. Many domestic buildings are clad in brick, with small numbers covered in wood, stone, or siding of different materials; variations are common, depending on neighbourhoods and the age of dwellings within them.
The skyline has been controlled by building height restrictions originally implemented to keep Parliament Hill and the Peace Tower at visible from most parts of the city. Today, several buildings are slightly taller than the Peace Tower, with the tallest on Albert Street being the 29-storey Place de Ville (Tower C) at . Federal buildings in the National Capital Region are managed by Public Works Canada, while most of the federal land in the region is managed by the National Capital Commission; its control of much undeveloped land gives the NCC a great deal of influence over the city's development.
Amongst the city's national museums and galleries is the National Gallery of Canada; designed by famous architect Moshe Safdie, it is a permanent home to the Maman sculpture. The Canadian War Museum houses over 3.75 million artifacts and was moved to an expanded facility in 2005. The Canadian Museum of Nature was built in 1905, and underwent a major renovation between 2004 and 2010. Across the Ottawa river in Gatineau is the most visited museum in Canada, the Canadian Museum of History. Designed by Canadian Aboriginal architect Douglas Cardinal, the curving-shaped complex, built at a cost of US$340 million, also houses the Canadian Children's Museum, the Canadian Postal Museum and a 3D IMAX theatre.
The city is also home to the Canada Agriculture Museum, the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, the Canada Science and Technology Museum, Billings Estate Museum, Bytown Museum, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Bank of Canada Museum, and the Portrait Gallery of Canada.
The Ottawa Little Theatre, originally called the Ottawa Drama League at its inception in 1913, is the longest-running community theatre company in Ottawa. Since 1969, Ottawa has been the home of the National Arts Centre, a major performing arts venue that houses four stages and is home to the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra and Opera Lyra Ottawa. Established in 1975, the Great Canadian Theatre Company specializes in the production of Canadian plays at a local level.
The Rideau Canal is the oldest continuously operated canal system in North America, and in 2007, it was registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In addition, 24 other National Historic Sites of Canada are in Ottawa, including: the Central Chambers, the Central Experimental Farm, the Château Laurier, Confederation Square, the former Ottawa Teachers' College, Office of the Prime Minister and Privy Council, Laurier House and the Parliament Buildings. Many other properties of cultural value have been designated as having "heritage elements" by the City of Ottawa under Part IV of the "Ontario Heritage Act".
Sport in Ottawa has a history dating back to the 19th century. Ottawa is home to six professional sports teams. The Ottawa Senators are a professional ice hockey team playing in the National Hockey League. The Senators play their home games at the Canadian Tire Centre. The Ottawa Redblacks are a professional Canadian Football team playing in the Canadian Football League. A professional soccer club, Atlético Ottawa, will play in the Canadian Premier League, following the dissolution of Ottawa Fury FC. A new rugby league team called the Ottawa Aces will play in the 2021 RFL League 1 competition. The Redblacks, Atlético, and the Aces all play their home games at TD Place Stadium. The city is once again home to a professional basketball team, with the Ottawa Blackjacks beginning to play in the Canadian Elite Basketball League, out of the TD Place Arena. Previously, Ottawa was home to the Ottawa SkyHawks basketball team, of the National Basketball League of Canada. The Ottawa Champions play professional baseball at Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton Park, most recently in the Can-Am League. They are currently league-less, however, following the merger of the Can-Am League and the Frontier League.
Several non-professional teams also play in Ottawa, including the Ottawa 67's junior ice hockey team.
Collegiate teams in various sports compete in Canadian Interuniversity Sport. The Carleton Ravens are nationally ranked in basketball, and the Ottawa Gee-Gees are nationally ranked in football and basketball. Algonquin College has also won numerous national championships. The city is home to an assortment of amateur organized team sports such as soccer, basketball, baseball, curling, rowing, hurling and horse racing. Casual recreational activities, such as skating, cycling, hiking, sailing, golfing, skiing, and fishing/ice fishing are also popular.
The City of Ottawa is a single-tier municipality, meaning it is in itself a census division and has no county or regional municipality government above it. As a single-tier municipality, Ottawa has responsibility for all municipal services, including fire, emergency medical services, police, parks, roads, sidewalks, public transit, drinking water, storm water, sanitary sewage and solid waste. Ottawa is governed by the 24-member Ottawa City Council consisting of 23 councillors each representing one ward and the mayor, currently Jim Watson, elected in a citywide vote.
Along with being the capital of Canada, Ottawa is politically diverse in local politics. Most of the city has traditionally supported the Liberal Party. Perhaps the safest areas for the Liberals are the ones dominated by Francophones, especially in Vanier and central Gloucester. Central Ottawa is usually more left-leaning, and the New Democratic Party have won ridings there. Some of Ottawa's suburbs are swing areas, notably central Nepean and, despite its francophone population, Orléans. The southern and western parts of the old city of Ottawa are generally moderate and swing to the Conservative Party. The farther one goes outside the city centre like to Kanata and Barrhaven and rural areas, the voters tend to be increasingly conservative, both fiscally and socially. This is especially true in the former Townships of West Carleton, Goulbourn, Rideau and Osgoode, which are more in line with the conservative areas in the surrounding counties. However, not all rural areas support the Conservative Party. Rural parts of the former township of Cumberland, with a large number of Francophones, traditionally support the Liberal Party, though their support has recently weakened.
At present, Ottawa is host to 130 embassies. A further 49 countries accredit their embassies and missions in the United States to Canada.
Ottawa is served by a number of airlines that fly into the Ottawa Macdonald–Cartier International Airport , as well as two main regional airports Gatineau-Ottawa Executive Airport, and the Ottawa/Carp Airport.
Ottawa station (IATA: XDS), is the main inter-city train station operated by Via Rail. It is located 4 km to the east of downtown in Eastway Gardens and serves Via Rail's Corridor Route. The city is also served by inter-city passenger rail service at Fallowfield station in Barrhaven.
Inter-city bus services operate out of Ottawa Central Station, 1.5 km south of downtown in Centretown and just north of Highway 417.
OC Transpo, a department of the city, operates the public transit system. OC Transpo operates an integrated, multi-modal Rapid Transit system which includes:
The Rapid bus service network operates all day, 7 days a week, reaching Kanata to the West, Barrhaven to the South-West, Orléans to the East, and South Keys to the South. There are also several night bus routes that cover Line 1's downtown stations while it is shut off for the night, and backup service to downtown while the train is delayed.
Both OC Transpo and the Quebec-based Société de transport de l'Outaouais (STO) operate bus services between Ottawa and Gatineau.
OC Transpo also operates a door-to-door bus service for the differently-abled known as ParaTranspo.
Construction was recently completed on the Confederation Line, a light-rail transit line (LRT), which includes a tunnel through the downtown area featuring three underground stations. The project broke ground in 2013, and opened in September 2019. A further and 19 stations will be built by 2023, referred to as the Stage 2 plan. There is a proposed LRT system that would link Ottawa with Gatineau.
The city is served by two freeway corridors. The primary corridor is east-west and consists of provincial Highway 417 (designated as the Queensway) and Ottawa-Carleton Regional Road 174 (formerly Provincial Highway 17); a north-south corridor, Highway 416 (designated as Veterans' Memorial Highway), connects Ottawa to the rest of the 400-Series Highway network in Ontario at the 401. Highway 417 is also the Ottawa portion of the Trans-Canada Highway.
The city also has several scenic parkways (promenades), such as Colonel By Drive, Queen Elizabeth Driveway, the Sir John A. MacDonald Parkway, the Rockcliffe Parkway and the Aviation Parkway and has a freeway connection to Autoroute 5 and Autoroute 50, in Gatineau. In 2006, the National Capital Commission completed aesthetic enhancements to Confederation Boulevard, a ceremonial route of existing roads linking key attractions on both sides of the Ottawa River.
Numerous paved multi-use trails, mostly operated by the National Capital Commission, wind their way through much of the city, including along the Ottawa River, Rideau River, and Rideau Canal. These pathways are used for transportation, tourism, and recreation. Because many streets either have wide curb lanes or bicycle lanes, cycling is a popular mode of transportation throughout the year. As of 31 December 2015, of cycling facilities are found in Ottawa, including of multi use pathways, of cycle tracks, of on-road bicycle lanes, and of paved shoulders. of new cycling facilities were added between 2011 and 2014. A downtown street that is restricted to pedestrians only, Sparks Street was turned into a pedestrian mall in 1966. On Sundays (since 1960) and selected holidays and events additional avenues and streets are reserved for pedestrian and/or bicycle uses only. In May 2011, The NCC introduced the Capital Bixi bicycle-sharing system.
Ottawa is known as one of the most educated cities in Canada, with over half the population having graduated from college and/or university. Ottawa has the highest per capita concentration of engineers, scientists, and residents with PhDs in Canada.
The city has two main public universities:
Ottawa also has two main public colleges – Algonquin College and La Cité collégiale. It also has two Catholic universities – Dominican University College and Saint Paul University. Other colleges and universities in nearby areas (namely, the neighbouring city of Gatineau) include the University of Quebec en Outaouais, Cégep de l'Outaouais, and Heritage College.
Four main public school boards exist in Ottawa: English, English-Catholic, French, and French-Catholic. The English-language Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) is the largest board with 147 schools, followed by the English-Catholic Ottawa Catholic School Board with 85 schools. The two French-language boards are the French-Catholic "Conseil des écoles catholiques du Centre-Est" with 49 schools, and the French "Conseil des écoles publiques de l'Est de l'Ontario" with 37 schools. Ottawa also has numerous private schools which are not part of a board.
The Ottawa Public Library was created in 1906 as part of the famed Carnegie library system. The library system had 2.3 million items .
Three main daily local newspapers are printed in Ottawa: two English newspapers, the "Ottawa Citizen" established as "the Bytown Packet" in 1845 and the "Ottawa Sun", and one French newspaper, "Le Droit". Multiple Canadian television broadcast networks and systems, and an extensive number of radio stations, broadcast in both English and French.
In addition to the market's local media services, Ottawa is home to several national media operations, including CPAC (Canada's national legislature broadcaster) and the parliamentary bureau staff of virtually all of Canada's major newsgathering organizations in television, radio and print. The city is also home to the head office of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, although it is not the primary production location of most CBC radio or television programming.
Ottawa is twinned with: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22219 |
Objectivism
Objectivism is a philosophical system developed by Russian-American writer Ayn Rand. Rand first expressed Objectivism in her fiction, most notably "The Fountainhead" (1943) and "Atlas Shrugged" (1957), and later in non-fiction essays and books. Leonard Peikoff, a professional philosopher and Rand's designated intellectual heir, later gave it a more formal structure. Rand described Objectivism as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute". Peikoff characterizes Objectivism as a "closed system" insofar as its "fundamental principles" were set out by Rand and are not subject to change. However, he stated that "new implications, applications and integrations can always be discovered".
Objectivism's main tenets are that reality exists independently of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception (see direct and indirect realism), that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic, that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness (see rational egoism), that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in "laissez-faire" capitalism, and that the role of art in human life is to transform humans' metaphysical ideas by selective reproduction of reality into a physical form—a work of art—that one can comprehend and to which one can respond emotionally.
Academic philosophers have mostly ignored or rejected Rand's philosophy. Nonetheless, Objectivism has been a significant influence among libertarians and American conservatives. The Objectivist movement, which Rand founded, attempts to spread her ideas to the public and in academic settings.
Rand originally expressed her philosophical ideas in her novels, most notably, "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged". She further elaborated on them in her periodicals "The Objectivist Newsletter", "The Objectivist", and "The Ayn Rand Letter", and in non-fiction books such as "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" and "The Virtue of Selfishness".
The name "Objectivism" derives from the idea that human knowledge and values are objective: they exist and are determined by the nature of reality, to be discovered by one's mind, and are not created by the thoughts one has. Rand stated that she chose the name because her preferred term for a philosophy based on the primacy of existence—"existentialism"—had already been taken.
Rand characterized Objectivism as "a philosophy for living on earth", based on reality, and intended as a method of defining human nature and the nature of the world in which we live.
Rand's philosophy begins with three axioms: existence, consciousness, and identity. Rand defined an axiom as "a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it." As Objectivist philosopher Leonard Peikoff argued, Rand's argument for axioms "is not a proof that the axioms of existence, consciousness, and identity are true. It is proof that they are "axioms", that they are at the base of knowledge and thus inescapable."
Rand said that "existence" is the perceptually self-evident fact at the base of all other knowledge, i.e., that "existence exists". She further said that to be is to be "something", that "existence "is" identity". That is, to be is to be "an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes". That which has no nature or attributes does not and cannot exist. The axiom of existence is conceptualized as differentiating something from nothing, while the law of identity is conceptualized as differentiating one thing from another, i.e., one's first awareness of the law of non-contradiction, another crucial base for the rest of knowledge. As Rand wrote, "A leaf ... cannot be all red and green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time... A is A." Objectivism rejects belief in anything alleged to transcend existence.
Rand argued that consciousness is "the faculty of perceiving that which exists". As she put it, "to be conscious is to be conscious of "something"", that is consciousness itself cannot be distinguished or conceptualized except in relation to an independent reality. "It cannot be aware only of itself—there is no 'itself' until it is aware of something." Thus, Objectivism posits that the mind does not create reality, but rather, it is a means of discovering reality. Expressed differently, existence has "primacy" over consciousness, which must conform to it. Any other type of argument Rand termed "the primacy of consciousness", including any variant of metaphysical subjectivism or theism.
Objectivist philosophy derives its explanations of action and causation from the axiom of identity, referring to causation as "the law of identity applied to action". According to Rand, it is entities that act, and every action is the action of an entity. The way entities act is caused by the specific nature (or "identity") of those entities; if they were different they would act differently. As with the other axioms, an implicit understanding of causation is derived from one's primary observations of causal connections among entities even before it is verbally identified, and serves as the basis of further knowledge.
According to Rand, attaining knowledge beyond what is given by perception requires both volition (or the exercise of free will) and performing a specific method of validation by observation, concept-formation, and the application of inductive and deductive reasoning. For example, a belief in dragons, however sincere, does not mean that reality includes dragons. A process of proof identifying the basis in reality of a claimed item of knowledge is necessary to establish its truth.
Objectivist epistemology begins with the principle that "consciousness is identification". This is understood to be a direct consequence of the metaphysical principle that "existence is identity". Rand defined "reason" as "the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses". Rand wrote "The fundamental concept of method, the one on which all the others depend, is logic. The distinguishing characteristic of logic (the art of non-contradictory identification) indicates the nature of the actions (actions of consciousness required to achieve a correct identification) and their goal (knowledge)—while omitting the length, complexity or specific steps of the process of logical inference, as well as the nature of the particular cognitive problem involved in any given instance of using logic."
According to Rand, consciousness possesses a specific and finite identity, just like everything else that exists; therefore, it must operate by a specific method of validation. An item of knowledge cannot be "disqualified" by being arrived at by a specific process in a particular form. Thus, for Rand, the fact that consciousness must itself possess identity implies the rejection of both universal skepticism based on the "limits" of consciousness, as well as any claim to revelation, emotion or faith based belief.
Objectivist epistemology maintains that all knowledge is ultimately based on perception. "Percepts, not sensations, are the given, the self-evident." Rand considered the validity of the senses to be axiomatic, and said that purported arguments to the contrary all commit the fallacy of the "stolen concept" by presupposing the validity of concepts that, in turn, presuppose the validity of the senses. She said that perception, being determined physiologically, is incapable of error. For example, optical illusions are errors in the conceptual identification of what is seen, not errors of sight itself. The validity of sense perception, therefore, is not susceptible to proof (because it is presupposed by all proof as proof is only a matter of adducing sensory evidence) nor should its validity be denied (since the conceptual tools one would have to use to do this are derived from sensory data). Perceptual error, therefore, is not possible. Rand consequently rejected epistemological skepticism, as she said that the skeptics' claim to knowledge "distorted" by the form or the means of perception is impossible.
The Objectivist theory of perception distinguishes between the "form" and "object." The form in which an organism perceives is determined by the physiology of its sensory systems. Whatever form the organism perceives it in, what it perceives—the object of perception—is reality. Rand consequently rejected the Kantian dichotomy between "things as we perceive them" and "things as they are in themselves". Rand wrote
The aspect of epistemology given the most elaboration by Rand is the theory of concept-formation, which she presented in "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology". She argued that concepts are formed by a process of measurement omission. Peikoff described this as follows:
According to Rand, "the term 'measurements omitted' does not mean, in this context, that measurements are regarded as non-existent; it means that "measurements exist, but are not specified". That measurements "must" exist is an essential part of the process. The principle is: the relevant measurements must exist in "some" quantity, but may exist in "any" quantity."
Rand argued that concepts are organized hierarchically. Concepts such as 'dog,' which bring together "concretes" available in perception, can be differentiated (into the concepts of 'dachshund,' 'poodle,' etc.) or integrated (along with 'cat,' etc., into the concept of 'animal'). Abstract concepts such as 'animal' can be further integrated, via "abstraction from abstractions", into such concepts as 'living thing.' Concepts are formed in the context of knowledge available. A young child differentiates dogs from cats and chickens, but need not explicitly differentiate them from deep-sea tube worms, or from other types of animals not yet known to him, to form a concept 'dog'.
Because of its characterization of concepts as "open-ended" classifications that go well beyond the characteristics included in their past or current definitions, Objectivist epistemology rejects the analytic-synthetic distinction as a false dichotomy and denies the possibility of "a priori" knowledge.
Rand rejected "feeling" as sources of knowledge. Rand acknowledged the importance of emotion for human beings, but she maintained that emotions are a consequence of the conscious or subconscious ideas that a person already accepts, not a means of achieving awareness of reality. "Emotions are not tools of cognition." Rand also rejected all forms of faith or mysticism, terms that she used synonymously. She defined faith as "the acceptance of allegations without evidence or proof, either apart from or "against" the evidence of one's senses and reason... Mysticism is the claim to some non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable, non-identifiable means of knowledge, such as 'instinct,' 'intuition,' 'revelation,' or any form of 'just knowing.'" Reliance on revelation is like reliance on a Ouija board; it bypasses the need to show how it connects its results to reality. Faith, for Rand, is not a "short-cut" to knowledge, but a "short-circuit" destroying it.
Objectivism acknowledges the facts that human beings have limited knowledge, are vulnerable to error, and do not instantly understand all of the implications of their knowledge. According to Peikoff, one can be certain of a proposition if all of the available evidence verifies it, i.e., it can be logically integrated with the rest of one's knowledge; one is then certain within the context of the evidence.
Rand rejected the traditional rationalist/empiricist dichotomy, arguing that it embodies a false alternative: conceptually-based knowledge independent of perception (rationalism) versus perceptually-based knowledge independent of concepts (empiricism). Rand argued that neither is possible because the senses provide the material of knowledge while conceptual processing is also needed to establish knowable propositions.
The philosopher John Hospers, who was influenced by Rand and shared her moral and political opinions, disagreed with her concerning issues of epistemology. Some philosophers, such as Tibor Machan, have argued that the Objectivist epistemology is incomplete.
Psychology professor Robert L. Campbell writes that the relationship between Objectivist epistemology and cognitive science remains unclear because Rand made claims about human cognition and its development which belong to psychology, yet Rand also argued that philosophy is logically prior to psychology and in no way dependent on it.
The philosophers Randall Dipert and Roderick T. Long have argued that Objectivist epistemology conflates the perceptual process by which judgments are formed with the way in which they are to be justified, thereby leaving it unclear how sensory data can validate judgments structured propositionally.
Objectivism includes an extensive treatment of ethical concerns. Rand wrote on morality in her works "We the Living" (1936), "Atlas Shrugged" (1957) and "The Virtue of Selfishness" (1964). Rand defines morality as "a code of values to guide man's choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life". Rand maintained that the first question is not what should the code of values be, the first question is "Does man need values at all—and why?" According to Rand, "it is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible", and "the fact that a living entity "is", determines what it "ought" to do". Rand writes: "there is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or non-existence—and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. [...] It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death".
Rand argued that the primary emphasis of man's free will is the choice: 'to think or not to think'. "Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. Thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness. The act of focusing one's consciousness is volitional. Man can focus his mind to a full, active, purposefully directed awareness of reality—or he can unfocus it and let himself drift in a semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate moment, at the mercy of his undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and of any random, associational connections it might happen to make." According to Rand, therefore, possessing free will, human beings must "choose" their values: one does not "automatically" have one's own life as his ultimate value. Whether in fact a person's actions promote and fulfill his own life or not is a question of fact, as it is with all other organisms, but whether a person will act to promote his well-being is up to him, not hard-wired into his physiology. "Man has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history."
In "Atlas Shrugged", Rand wrote "Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive he must act and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch—or build a cyclotron—without a knowledge of his aim and the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think." In her novels, "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged", she also emphasizes the importance of productive work, romantic love and art to human happiness, and dramatizes the ethical character of their pursuit. The primary virtue in Objectivist ethics is rationality, as Rand meant it "the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values and one's only guide to action".
The purpose of a moral code, Rand said, is to provide the principles by reference to which man can achieve the values his survival requires. Rand summarizes:
Rand's explanation of values presents the proposition that an individual's primary moral obligation is to achieve his own well-being—it is for his life and his self-interest that an individual ought to obey a moral code. Ethical egoism is a corollary of setting man's life as the moral standard. Rand believed that rational egoism is the logical consequence of humans following evidence to its logical conclusion. The only alternative would be that they live without orientation to reality.
A corollary to Rand's endorsement of self-interest is her rejection of the ethical doctrine of altruism—which she defined in the sense of Auguste Comte's altruism (he invented the term), as a moral obligation to live for the sake of others. Rand also rejected subjectivism. A "whim-worshiper" or "hedonist", according to Rand, is not motivated by a desire to live his own human life, but by a wish to live on a sub-human level. Instead of using "that which promotes my (human) life" as his standard of value, he mistakes "that which I (mindlessly happen to) value" for a standard of value, in contradiction of the fact that, existentially, he is a human and therefore rational organism. The "I value" in whim-worship or hedonism can be replaced with "we value", "he values", "they value", or "God values", and still it would remain dissociated from reality. Rand repudiated the equation of rational selfishness with hedonistic or whim-worshiping "selfishness-without-a-self". She said that the former is good, and the latter bad, and that there is a fundamental difference between them.
For Rand, all of the principal virtues are applications of the role of reason as man's basic tool of survival: rationality, honesty, justice, independence, integrity, productiveness, and pride—each of which she explains in some detail in "The Objectivist Ethics". The essence of Objectivist ethics is summarized by the oath her "Atlas Shrugged" character John Galt adhered to: "I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
Some philosophers have criticized Objectivist ethics. The philosopher Robert Nozick argues that Rand's foundational argument in ethics is unsound because it does not explain why someone could not rationally prefer dying and having no values, in order to further some particular value. He argues that her attempt to defend the morality of selfishness is, therefore, an instance of begging the question. Nozick also argues that Rand's solution to David Hume's famous is-ought problem is unsatisfactory. In response, the philosophers Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl have argued that Nozick misstated Rand's case.
Charles King criticized Rand's example of an indestructible robot to demonstrate the value of life as incorrect and confusing. In response, Paul St. F. Blair defended Rand's ethical conclusions, while maintaining that his arguments might not have been approved by Rand.
Rand's defense of individual liberty integrates elements from her entire philosophy. Since reason is the means of human knowledge, it is therefore each person's most fundamental means of survival and is necessary to the achievement of values. The use or threat of force neutralizes the practical effect of an individual's reason, whether the force originates from the state or from a criminal. According to Rand, "man's mind will not function at the point of a gun". Therefore, the only type of organized human behavior consistent with the operation of reason is that of voluntary cooperation. Persuasion is the method of reason. By its nature, the overtly irrational cannot rely on the use of persuasion and must ultimately resort to force to prevail. Thus, Rand argued that reason and freedom are correlates, just as she argued that mysticism and force are corollaries. Based on this understanding of the role of reason, Objectivists claim that the initiation of physical force against the will of another is immoral, as are indirect initiations of force through threats, fraud, or breach of contract. The use of defensive or retaliatory force, on the other hand, is appropriate.
Objectivism claims that because the opportunity to use reason without the initiation of force is necessary to achieve moral values, each individual has an inalienable moral right to act as his own judgment directs and to keep the product of his effort. Peikoff, explaining the basis of rights, stated, "In content, as the founding fathers recognized, there is one fundamental right, which has several major derivatives. The fundamental right is the right to life. Its major derivatives are the right to liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness." "A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context." These rights are specifically understood to be rights to action, not to specific results or objects, and the obligations created by rights are negative in nature: each individual must refrain from violating the rights of others. Objectivists reject alternative notions of rights, such as positive rights, collective rights, or animal rights. Objectivism claims that the only social system which fully recognizes individual rights is capitalism, specifically what Rand described as "full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism". Objectivism regards capitalism as the social system which is most beneficial to the poor, but does not consider this its primary justification. Rather, it is the only moral social system. Objectivism maintains that only societies seeking to establish freedom (or free nations) have a right to self-determination.
Objectivism describes government as "the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control—i.e., under objectively defined laws"; thus, government is both legitimate and critically important in order to protect individual rights. Rand opposed anarchism because she considered that putting police and courts on the market is an inherent miscarriage of justice. Objectivism claims that the proper functions of a government are ""the police", to protect men from criminals—"the armed services", to protect men from foreign invaders—"the law courts", to settle disputes among men according to objective laws", the executive, and legislatures. Furthermore, in protecting individual rights, the government is acting as an agent of its citizens and "has no rights except the rights "delegated" to it by the citizens" and it must act in an impartial manner according to specific, objectively defined laws. Prominent Objectivists Peikoff and Yaron Brook have since expressed endorsement of other government functions.
Rand argued that limited intellectual property monopolies being granted to certain inventors and artists on a first-to-file basis are moral because she considered all property as fundamentally intellectual. Furthermore, the value of a commercial product derives in part from the necessary work of its inventors. However, Rand considered limits on patents and copyrights as important and said that if they were granted in perpetuity, it would necessarily result in "de facto" collectivism.
Rand opposed racism and any legal application of racism. She considered affirmative action to be an example of legal racism. Rand advocated the right to legal abortion. Rand believed capital punishment is morally justified as retribution against a murderer, but dangerous due to the risk of mistakenly executing innocent people and facilitating state murder. She therefore said she opposed capital punishment "on epistemological, not moral, grounds". She opposed involuntary military conscription. She opposed any form of censorship, including legal restrictions on pornography, opinion or worship, famously quipping; "In the transition to statism, every infringement of human rights has begun with a given right's least attractive practitioners".
Objectivists have also opposed a number of government activities commonly endorsed by both liberals and conservatives, including antitrust laws, the minimum wage, public education, and existing child labor laws. Objectivists have argued against faith-based initiatives, displaying religious symbols in government facilities, and the teaching of "intelligent design" in public schools. Rand opposed involuntary taxation and believed government could be financed voluntarily, although she thought this could only happen after other reforms of government were implemented.
Some critics, including economists and political philosophers such as Murray Rothbard, David D. Friedman, Roy Childs, Norman P. Barry, and Chandran Kukathas, have argued that Objectivist ethics are consistent with anarcho-capitalism instead of minarchism.
The Objectivist theory of art derives from its epistemology, by way of "psycho-epistemology" (Rand's term for an individual's characteristic mode of functioning in acquiring knowledge). Art, according to Objectivism, serves a human cognitive need: it allows human beings to understand concepts as though they were percepts. Objectivism defines "art" as a "selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments"—that is, according to what the artist believes to be ultimately true and important about the nature of reality and humanity. In this respect Objectivism regards art as a way of presenting abstractions concretely, in perceptual form.
The human need for art, according to this idea, derives from the need for cognitive economy. A concept is already a sort of mental shorthand standing for a large number of concretes, allowing a human being to think indirectly or implicitly of many more such concretes than can be kept explicitly in mind. But a human being cannot keep indefinitely many concepts explicitly in mind either—and yet, according to Objectivism, he or she needs a comprehensive conceptual framework to provide guidance in life. Art offers a way out of this dilemma by providing a perceptual, easily grasped means of communicating and thinking about a wide range of abstractions, including one's metaphysical value-judgments. Objectivism regards art as an effective way to communicate a moral or ethical ideal. Objectivism does not, however, regard art as propagandistic: even though art involves moral values and ideals, its purpose is not to educate, only to show or project. Moreover, art need not be, and usually is not, the outcome of a full-blown, explicit philosophy. Usually it stems from an artist's "sense of life" (which is preconceptual and largely emotional).
The end goal of Rand's own artistic endeavors was to portray the ideal man. "The Fountainhead" is the best example of this effort. Rand uses the character of Roark to embody the concept of the higher man which she believes is what great art should do – embody the characteristics of the best of humanity. This symbolism should be represented in all art; artistic expression should be an extension of the greatness in humanity.
Rand said that Romanticism was the highest school of literary art, noting that Romanticism was "based on the recognition of the principle that man possesses the faculty of volition", absent which, Rand believed, literature is robbed of dramatic power, adding:
The term "romanticism", however, is often affiliated with emotionalism, to which Objectivism is completely opposed. Historically, many romantic artists were philosophically subjectivist. Most Objectivists who are also artists subscribe to what they term romantic realism, which is how Rand described her own work.
Several authors have developed and applied Rand's ideas in their own work. Rand described Peikoff's "The Ominous Parallels" (1982), as "the first book by an Objectivist philosopher other than myself". During 1991, Peikoff published "", a comprehensive exposition of Rand's philosophy. Chris Matthew Sciabarra discusses Rand's ideas and theorizes about their intellectual origins in "" (1995). Surveys such as "On Ayn Rand" by Allan Gotthelf (1999), "Ayn Rand" by Tibor R. Machan (2000), and "Objectivism in One Lesson" by Andrew Bernstein (2009) provide briefer introductions to Rand's ideas.
Some scholars have emphasized applying Objectivism to more specific areas. Machan has developed Rand's contextual conception of human knowledge (while also drawing on the insights of J. L. Austin and Gilbert Harman) in works such as "Objectivity" (2004), and David Kelley has explicated Rand's epistemological ideas in works such as "The Evidence of the Senses" (1986) and "A Theory of Abstraction" (2001). Regarding the topic of ethics, Kelley has argued in works such as "Unrugged Individualism" (1996) and "The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand" (2000) that Objectivists should pay more attention to the virtue of benevolence and place less emphasis on issues of moral sanction. Kelley's claims have been controversial, and critics Peikoff and Peter Schwartz have argued that he contradicts important principles of Objectivism. Kelley has used the term "Open Objectivism" for a version of Objectivism that involves "a commitment to reasoned, non-dogmatic discussion and debate", "the recognition that Objectivism is open to expansion, refinement, and revision", and "a policy of benevolence toward others, including fellow-travelers and critics". Arguing against Kelley, Peikoff characterized Objectivism as a "closed system" that is not subject to change.
An author who emphasizes Rand's ethics, Tara Smith, retains more of Rand's original ideas in such works as "Moral Rights and Political Freedom" (1995), "Viable Values" (2000), and "Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics" (2006). In collaboration with Peikoff, David Harriman has developed a theory of scientific induction based upon Rand's theory of concepts in "The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics" (2010).
The political aspects of Rand's philosophy are discussed by Bernstein in "The Capitalist Manifesto" (2005). In "Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics" (1996), George Reisman attempts to integrate Objectivist methodology and insights with both Classical and Austrian economics. In psychology, Professor Edwin A. Locke and Ellen Kenner have explored Rand's ideas in the publication "The Selfish Path to Romance: How to Love with Passion & Reason". Other writers have explored the application of Objectivism to fields ranging from art, as in "What Art Is" (2000) by Louis Torres and Michelle Marder Kamhi, to teleology, as in "The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts" (1990) by Harry Binswanger.
According to one Rand biographer, most people first read Rand's works in their "formative years". Rand's former protégé Nathaniel Branden referred to Rand's "especially powerful appeal to the young", while Onkar Ghate of the Ayn Rand Institute said Rand "appeals to the idealism of youth". This appeal has alarmed a number of critics of the philosophy. Many of these young people later abandon their positive opinion of Rand and are often said to have "outgrown" her ideas. Endorsers of Rand's work recognize the phenomenon, but attribute it to the loss of youthful idealism and inability to resist social pressures for intellectual conformity. In contrast, historian Jennifer Burns, writing in "Goddess of the Market" (2009), writes some critics "dismiss Rand as a shallow thinker appealing only to adolescents", although she thinks the critics "miss her significance" as a "gateway drug" to right-wing politics.
Academic philosophers have generally dismissed Objectivism since Rand first presented it. Objectivism has been termed "fiercely anti-academic" because of Rand's criticism of contemporary intellectuals. David Sidorsky, a professor of moral and political philosophy at Columbia University, writes that Rand's work is "outside the mainstream" and is more of an ideology than a comprehensive philosophy. British philosopher Ted Honderich notes that he deliberately excluded an article on Rand from "The Oxford Companion to Philosophy" (Rand is, however, mentioned in the article on popular philosophy by Anthony Quinton). Rand is the subject of entries in the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy", "The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers", the "Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy", "The Routledge Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Political Thinkers", and "The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy". Chandran Kukathas writes in an entry about Rand in the "Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy", "The influence of Rand's ideas was strongest among college students in the USA but attracted little attention from academic philosophers." Kukathas also writes that her defenses of capitalism and selfishness "kept her out of the intellectual mainstream".
During recent decades, Rand's works are more likely to be encountered in classrooms. The Ayn Rand Society, dedicated to fostering the scholarly study of Objectivism, is affiliated with the American Philosophical Association's Eastern Division. Aristotle scholar and Objectivist Allan Gotthelf, late chairman of the Society, and his colleagues argued for more academic study of Objectivism, considering the philosophy as a unique and intellectually interesting defense of classical liberalism that is worth debating. In 1999, a refereed "Journal of Ayn Rand Studies" began. Programs and fellowships for the study of Objectivism have been supported at the University of Pittsburgh, University of Texas at Austin and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22256 |
Oath of office
An oath of office is an oath or affirmation a person takes before assuming the duties of an office, usually a position in government or within a religious body, although such oaths are sometimes required of officers of other organizations. Such oaths are often required by the laws of the state, religious body, or other organization before the person may actually exercise the powers of the office or organization. It may be administered at an inauguration, coronation, enthronement, or other ceremony connected with the taking up of office itself, or it may be administered privately. In some cases it may be administered privately and then repeated during a public ceremony.
Some oaths of office are statements of allegiance and loyalty to a constitution or other legal text or to a person or office-holder (e.g., an oath to support the constitution of the state, or of loyalty to the king) (see Oath of allegiance). Under the laws of a state, it may be considered treason or a high crime to betray a sworn oath of office.
The word 'oath' and the phrase 'I swear' refer to a solemn vow. For those who choose not to, the alternative terms 'solemn promise' and 'I promise' are sometimes used.
The Governor-General of Antigua and Barbuda, before entering into his duties, must make an oath of allegiance and oath of office in the form specified in the Constitution of Antigua and Barbuda; the same is required of the Prime Minister, other Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries, but they also take the oath of secrecy.
Members of the Public Service Commission for Antigua and Barbuda take the oath of allegiance and oath of office, while members of both Houses of Parliament are only required to make the oath of allegiance prior to participating in their respective House (save for the oath-taking itself). Any of these oaths may be taken as an affirmation; when doing so "So help me God" is omitted.
The oath of allegiance is set forth as follows:
I, ___________, do swear (or solemnly affirm) that I will faithfully bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Her Heirs and Successors, according to law.
So help me God.
The oath of office is set forth as follows:
I, ___________, do swear (or solemnly affirm) that I will honour, uphold and preserve the Constitution of Antigua and Barbuda and the law, that I will conscientiously, impartially and to the best of my ability discharge my duties as and do right to all manner of people without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.
So help me God.
The oath of secrecy is set forth as follows:
I, ___________, do swear (or solemnly affirm) that I will not on any account, at any time whatsoever, disclose any counsel, advice, opinion or vote given by any Minister as a member of the Cabinet and that I will not, except with the authority of the Cabinet and to such extent as may be required for the proper conduct of the government of Antigua and Barbuda, directly or indirectly reveal the business or proceedings of the Cabinet or any matter coming to my knowledge as a member of (or Secretary to) the Cabinet.
So help me God.
All members of the Australian Parliament are required to take before taking their seat in Parliament an Oath or Affirmation of Allegiance before the Governor-General of Australia. The requirement to take the oath is set out in section 42 of the Australian Constitution and the wording of the oath and affirmation are set out in a schedule to the Constitution. The oath is:
The affirmation is:
Upon taking office, the Governor-General of Australia is required to take the above Oath of Allegiance as well as a second Oath of Office:
In addition to swearing, the Oath of Allegiance upon becoming a Member of Parliament, the Prime Minister, Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries also recite an Oath of Office upon entering office. The wording of this oath is not prescribed within the Constitution and is ultimately determined by the Prime Minister of the day. Traditionally the oath has repeated the swearing of allegiance to the Sovereign, although this is not required. The current Oath of Office is:
The President, Prime Minister, Chief Justice, Speaker, Ministers take their oath of office. The oath is taken in Bengali.
The President takes oath from the Speaker:
"আমি, (নাম), ... সশ্রদ্ধচিত্তে শপথ (বা দৃঢ়ভাবে ঘোষণা) করিতেছি যে, আমি আইন-অনুযায়ী বাংলাদেশের রাষ্ট্রপতি-পদের কর্তব্য বিশ্বস্ততার সহিত পালন করিব; আমি বাংলাদেশের প্রতি অকৃত্রিম বিশ্বাস ও আনুগত্য পোষণ করিবঃ আমি সংবিধানের রক্ষণ, সমর্থন ও নিরাপত্তাবিধান করিব: এবং আমি ভীতি বা অনুগ্রহ, অনুরাগ বা বিরাগের বশবর্তী না হইয়া সকলের প্রতি আইন-অনুযায়ী যথাবিহীত আচরণ করিব।”
In English, "I, (name) do swear with honor (or solemnly affirm) that I, according to the laws, shall faithfully discharge the functions of the office of the President. I shall possess pure faith and obedience to Bangladesh. I shall preserve, support and secure the constitution and I shall deal with all with equity as suggested by laws, without being affected by fear or mercy, love or hatred."
The members of the cabinet is appointed and sworn in by the President:
" আমি, (নাম), ... * সশ্রদ্ধচিত্তে শপথ (বা দৃঢ়ভাবে ঘোষণা) করিতেছি যে, আমি আইন-অনুযায়ী সরকারের প্রধানমন্ত্রী (কিংবা ক্ষেত্রমত মন্ত্রী, প্রতি-মন্ত্রী, বা উপমন্ত্রী)-পদের কর্তব্য বিশ্বস্ততার সহিত পালন করিব: আমি বাংলাদেশের প্রতি অকৃত্রিম বিশ্বাস ও আনুগত্য পোষণ করিব; আমি সংবিধানের রক্ষণ, সমর্থন ও নিরাপত্তাবিধান করিব; এবং আমি ভীতি বা অনুগ্রহ, অনুরাগ বা বিরাগের বশবর্তী না হইয়া সকলের প্রতি আইন-অনুযায়ী যথাবিহীত আচরণ করিব।”
In English, "I, (name) do swear with honor (or solemnly affirm) that I, according to the laws, shall faithfully discharge the functions of the office of the Prime Minister (or Minister or State Minister or Sub-minister, as the circumstances allow). I shall possess pure faith and obedience to Bangladesh. I shall preserve, support and secure the constitution and I shall deal with all with equity as suggested by laws, without being affected by fear or mercy, love or hatred."
The Speaker of the Jatiya Sangsad, takes the oath of his or her office as well as the presidential oath, since the acts of president is practiced by the Speaker, whenever necessary:
"আমি, (নাম) ... সশ্রদ্ধচিত্তে শপথ (বা দৃঢ়ভাবে ঘোষণা) করিতেছি যে, আমি আইন-অনুযায়ী সংসদের স্পীকারের কর্তব্য (এবং কখনও আহুত হইলে রাষ্ট্রপতির কর্তব্য) বিশ্বস্ততার সহিত পালন করিব; আমি বাংলাদেশের প্রতি অকৃত্রিম বিশ্বাস ও আনুগত্য পোষণ করিবঃ আমি সংবিধানের রক্ষণ, সমর্থন ও নিরাপত্তাবিধান করিব; এবং আমি ভীতি বা অনুগ্রহ, অনুরাগ বা বিরাগের বশবর্তী না হইয়া সকলের প্রতি আইন-অনুযায়ী যথাবিহীত আচরণ করিব।”
In English: "I, (name) do swear with honor (or solemnly affirm) that I, according to the laws, shall faithfully discharge the functions of the office of the Speaker of the Jatiya Sangsad (and the office of the President, whenever called). I shall possess pure faith and obedience to Bangladesh. I shall preserve, support and secure the constitution and I shall deal with all with equity as suggested by laws, without being affected by fear or mercy, love or hatred." The deputy speaker takes a likely oath.
The Chief Justice, Justices of the Appellate Division and High Court Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh takes the following oath of office from the President:
"আমি (নাম), ..., প্রধান বিচারপতি (বা ক্ষেত্রমত সুপ্রীম কোর্টের আপীল/হাইকোর্ট বিভাগের বিচারক) নিযুক্ত হইয়া সশ্রদ্ধচিত্তে শপথ (বা দৃঢ়ভাবে ঘোষণা) করিতেছি যে, আমি আইন-অনুযায়ী ও বিশ্বস্থতার সহিত আমার পদের কর্তব্য পালন করিব; গণপ্রজাতন্ত্রী বাংলাদেশের সংবিধান আমি বাংলাদেশের প্রতি অকৃত্রিম বিশ্বাস ও আনুগত্য পোষণ করিবঃ আমি বাংলাদেশের সংবিধান ও আইনের রক্ষণ, সমর্থন ও নিরাপত্তাবিধান করিব; এবং আমি ভীতি বা অনুগ্রহ, অনুরাগ বা বিরাগের বশবর্তী না হইয়া সকলের প্রতি আইন-অনুযায়ী যথাবিহিত আচরণ করিব।"
In English, "I, (name) do swear with honor (or solemnly affirm) that I, according to the laws, shall faithfully discharge the functions of the office of the Chief Justice (or Justice of the Apealate Division or High Court Division of the Supreme Court, as the circumstances allow). I shall possess pure faith and obedience to Bangladesh. I shall preserve, support and secure the constitution and the laws and I shall deal with all with equity as suggested by laws, without being affected by fear or mercy, love or hatred."
The Election Commissioners, members of the Public Service Commission and the Comtroller and Auditor General takes a likely oath of office from the Chief Justice.
The representatives of the people in the local government takes oath from the Prime Minister or the minister in charge of the Local Government Division.
The Constitution of Belarus requires the president-elect to recite the following oath before taking office:
In Belgium, the King is not crowned but swears the constitutional oath in front of both Chambers of the federal parliament in the Palace of the Nation in Brussels. The assembly room is rebuilt for this occasion.
First, the parliamentary session of the Federal Chamber of Representatives and the Senate is opened. The joint session is presided over by the presidents of the Chamber and the Senate.
Afterwards, the King is announced by the usher in the country's three official languages: le Roi – de Koning – der König. The King enters the assembly room and sits on the throne in the center.
After a speech of the President of the Chamber, the King is invited to take the constitutional oath. This happens in the three official languages:
In English: I swear that I will observe the constitution and laws of the Belgian people, preserve the country's independence and protect its territorial integrity. (Article 91 of the Belgian Constitution)
The King makes his inaugural speech. The President of the Senate congratulates the King. The Royal Band of the Belgian Naval Component performs the Belgian national anthem and the European anthem.
The King leaves and the parliamentary session is closed.
101 cannon shots are fired.
The prime minister, the ministers and state secretaries of the Belgian federal government swear an oath in front of the Belgian King.
Also the minister-presidents of the Flemish government, of the Walloon government, of the government of the French community, of the government of the German-speaking community and of the Brussels-Capital region government swear the oath at the King. The other members of these governments do not take the oath at the King, but in front of their respective parliaments.
They may choose to take the oath in one or more of the country's languages.
In English: I swear fidelity to the King, obedience to the constitution and to the law of the Belgian people.
The members of the Chambers of Representatives, the Senate, the Flemish Parliament, the Walloon Parliament, the Parliament of the French Community, the Parliament of the German-speaking Community and the Parliament of the Brussels-Capital Region have to swear the following oath:
In English: I swear obedience to the constitution.
All public servants in judiciary and administration, officers of the civil guards and the army and servants in general of any public office have to swear the same oath as ministers.
Flemish mayors and the members of municipal executive and the city council in Flanders have following oath: "Ik zweer de verplichtingen van mijn mandaat trouw na te komen" (I swear to fulfill the duties of my office faithfully).
In Walloon the following version is used: "Je jure fidélité au Roi, obéissance à la Constitution et aux lois du peuple belge."
The affirmation required by the Constitution of Brazil to be taken by the president-elect upon entering into office is as follows:
In Portuguese:
In English
The vice-president is required to take the same pledge.
The affirmations of office required of members of the National Congress of Brazil are specified in the rules of procedure of each house (the Chamber of Deputies and Senate)
The Oath taken by the senators (In Portuguese):
In English:
The internal rules of the Supreme Federal Court set out the affirmation that must be taken by justices upon their investiture. Other judges make different affirmations, as provided for by law or in the internal rules of each Court.
The Constitution and laws of the several states and the organic laws of the municipalities also specify affirmations that must be made by the key officers of those entities.
In Brunei, it is known as Oath or Declaration of Allegiance which any person in the public services may require to take if His Majesty the King and the Head of Government (Yang Di-Pertuan Negara) wishes.
No formal oath is required to be taken by the monarch.
The Governor General of Canada is required to take the "Oath for the due execution of the Office of Our Governor General and Commander-in-Chief in and over Canada, and for the due impartial administration of justice", which includes swearing allegiance to the reigning Canadian monarch the viceroy is to represent. This oath must be administered by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada or a puisne justice and, though not demanded, this is usually done during a swearing-in ceremony in the Canadian Senate chamber.
All Ministers of the Crown, including the Prime Minister of Canada, must be sworn members of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada before taking office. The Clerk of the Privy Council administers the necessary oaths at Rideau Hall in the presence of the Governor General. The first oath taken is always the Oath of Allegiance:
The Oath of Allegiance is followed by the Privy Council Oath:
Privy Councillors who are Ministers-designate, including the Prime Minister-designate, become Ministers by taking the Oath of Office, which is administered by the Clerk of the Privy Council at Rideau Hall:
Ministers who choose to take the oath as an affirmation use "declare" instead of "swear" and omit "so help me God". After leaving Cabinet, former Ministers typically remain Privy Councillors for life, and as such retain the privilege of styling themselves "The Honourable" (or "The Right Honourable," in the case of the Prime Minister), and may use the post-nominals "P.C."
On July 1, 2015, the 15th Meeting of the 12th Standing Committee of the National People's Congress passed the Decision of the National People's Congress Standing Committee Regarding the Implementation of a Constitutional Oath System, with an effective date of January 1, 2016. The Decision requires state civil servants elected or appointed by the National People's Congress, its Standing Committee, the State Council, the Central Military Commission, the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, and other central government organs, as well as equivalent local government organs at or above the county level, to publicly swear an oath to the constitution upon formally taking office.
As prescribed by the decision, the oath is as follows (as amended in 2018):
Unofficial English translation:
The oath of office for the Chief Executive is as follows:
The oath of office for the Principal Officials is as follows:
The oath of office for the unofficial members of the Executive Council is as follows:
The oath of office for the members of the Legislative Council is as follows:
The oath of office of judges is as follows:
During the colonial era, the Governors of Hong Kong were required by Hong Kong Royal Instructions and Hong Kong Letters Patent to take the Oath of Allegiance, the Official Oath and the Judicial Oath of the United Kingdom before assuming the office.
In Costa Rica, the oath of office is administered to the President-elect on Inauguration Day, and to all other public officials on the day of the undertaking of their duties. The oath of office for the President of Costa Rica is administered to him, or her, by the President of the Asamblea Legislativa de Costa Rica. It is established in the Political Constitution of the Republic of Costa Rica (Article 194):
Before assuming duty, the President-elect of the Republic takes oath of office before the judges of the Constitutional Court swearing loyalty to the Constitution:
Before assuming duty, the President-elect of the Republic and the ministers takes oath of office :
In Fiji, the oath of office for the President of Fiji and Vice-President of Fiji are set out in .
In Finland, the oath of office is sworn by
The oath of office is:
Those who do not want to swear the religious oath may give an affirmation. In this case, the words "promise and swear before almighty and all-knowing God" are replaced by "promise and affirm by my honor and by my conscience".
Policemen and some other persons executing justice make a written affirmation of office instead of an oath. The text of the affirmation is
In Finnish practice, the oaths of office are given only once. If the person who has given an oath or affirmation moves to another duty where such oath is required, the oath is not given anew.
The President of Finland gives the following affirmation of office:
Finnish judges and justices of all courts are required to give the following oath:
Those taking an affirmation do not use the parts involving God.
All Finnish cabinet ministers are required to give both the general oath or affirmation of office and the oath of judge, unless they have given these oaths and affirmations before. Like the general oath of office, the oath of judge is given only once.
All Finnish conscripts are required to give the military oath or affirmation. The oath or affirmation is given in the end of the basic training using the formula:
The oath of office of the Federal President, Federal Chancellor, and other federal ministers in Germany is as follows:
The religious affirmation may be omitted. The first (and only) chancellor to do this was Gerhard Schröder in 1998.
Each of the 16 Länder (states) has its own oath of office for the Minister Presidents and other ministers, also for the Länder employees.
The oath for soldiers in Germany reads as follows:
Depending on the oath's interpretation, the following translation is also possible:
In both of the above, conscripts say "vow" instead of "swear", and the religious affirmation is not added for conscripts since the vow is not an actual oath.
The oath for federal "Beamte":
The oath of office of the President of Ghana is as follows:
For members of the Parliament of Ghana, the oath is:
Article 59 of the Constitution of Greece states that members of parliament must take the following oath:
Article 33 of the Constitution of Greece states that the President of the Hellenic Republic must take the following oath:
Article 181 of the Guatemalan Constitution provides that the incoming president of Guatemala should raises his or her right arm up to shoulder-level before the President of the Congress of Guatemala and say the following oath of office in Spanish:
Afterwards, the outgoing President passes him the Guatemalan flag (the Banda Presidential), which is worn from the left shoulder to the right rib, to the new President along with the presidential pin and with the Constitutional Collar.
The oath of office for the President of India is as follows:
The oath of office for the Vice-President of India is as follows:
The oath of office for Prime Minister and other members of the Union Council of Ministers:
The oath of office is as follows:
The oath of secrecy is as follows:
The oath of office for Chief Justice of Supreme Court or High Court is as follows:
Based on the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia Article 9 about the Oath of Office and Promise of the President and Vice President:
Before assuming office, the President and the Vice-President shall take the oath of office according to their religions, or solemnly promise before the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) or the People's Representative Council (DPR) session as follows:
The President's/Vice-President's Oath of Office (for Muslims):
The President's/Vice-President's Promise:
In case any sessions can not be held, like one in 1998 when the protesters took control of the parliament building, the oath can be performed before the MPR chairperson and vice chairpersons, as well as the Chief Justice and his/her deputies with presence of the chairperson of every chambers.
In the past, between the pronunciation of God according to each religions and "so help me God" expression, the oath will be like this (note that before the second and third sentence, they will be started with "I swear", regardless of the religions):
To refer the god in Hindu, the oath used to use sentence "In the name of Sang Hyang Widhi", and later "Om Swastiastu". There was also a time when Christian and Catholic ministers said "I swear" instead of promise at the beginning of the oath, did not mention any reference to God. The verses "to seek the welfare" was removed since it reflected the dictatorial New Order era.
For officers:
For enlisted personnel of the Armed Forces and new cadets to the military academies and the Army Officer Candidate School:
The oath of office for the President of Iran is as follows:
For members of the Majlis of Iran, the oath is as follows:
According to the Iranian Constitution, MPs belonging to religious minorities may swear by the holy books of their respective faiths.
Iranian judges of all courts are required to give the following oath:
The Constitution of Ireland specifies, for each of three offices, a "declaration" which the holder must "make and subscribe" before taking office.
The declarations' references to God were criticised in a 1993 report of the United Nations Human Rights Committee. The 1996 Constitution Review Group proposed that the President and members of the Council of State should be permitted to substitute a non-religious affirmation. In contrast, it recommended a uniform non-religious oath for all judges, on the basis that impartiality was more central to the judicial function and would be compromised by providing a choice of words.
The "solemn declaration" for members of the Garda Síochána was revised in 2005. Its reference to God may be omitted. Members pledge not to "belong to or subscribe to, any political party or secret society whatsoever". In the Defence Forces, the "Oath or Declaration" differs between permanent and reserve forces, and between commissioned officers and enlisted members. The wording makes no reference to God; it was changed in 1979 when women were first admitted.
Members of the Oireachtas and of the Government do not make any oath. From the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922, both had to make an oath of allegiance to the Constitution and of fidelity to King George V. This controversial provision of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty contributed to the Civil War of 1922–23. The Oath was abolished by Fianna Fáil in 1932–33. Since then, Oireachtas members are required by standing orders to sign the roll before first taking their seats. The Governor-General of the Irish Free State took the same Oath of Allegiance and Oath of Office as the Governor General of Canada. This did not take place in public.
In Israel, the Basic Laws specify oaths of office of high-ranking members of the government.
For the President of Israel, there is a "Declaration of Loyalty":
In the Knesset, the oath of office ("or" "declaration of allegiance") is as follows:
Each other member of the Knesset, in turn: I pledge myself.
The Prime Minister of Israel has to make the following "declaration of allegiance" upon taking office:
Each of the other Ministers has to swear:
In Italy, before taking office, the President is required by Article 91 of the Constitution to take an oath of allegiance to the Republic and swear to uphold the Constitution before Parliament in joint session. The oath of office of the President is the following:
Also, Article 54 of the Constitution requires public officials to fulfil their functions with discipline and honour, taking an oath to that effect in those cases established by the law. The Prime Minister and members of the Council are sworn in by the President with the following oath of office:
In Lebanon, the president must take the following oath before the Parliament:
Article 5 of the Constitution of Luxembourg prescribes the following oath for a new Grand Duke:
The oath for a Regent is:
A Lieutenant of the Grand Duke takes an oath to respect the Constitution, but no exact text is prescribed.
Deputies at the Chamber of Deputies (the Luxembourg parliament) take the following oath upon taking office:
All civil servants take the following oath:
Article 37 of the Federal Constitution requires the Yang di-Pertuan Agong (King) and his deputy to take the Oath of Office before the Conference of Rulers.
The Yang di-Pertuan Agong take the oath of office as follows:
Next, the Deputy Yang di-Pertuan Agong take the oath of office as follows:
Federal Constitution requires the various executive and legislative members to take the Oath of Office and Allegiance as follows:
The oath is read according to the various section of the Constitution:
The Members of Parliament and Senators take the Oath based on Article 59 (1) of the Federal Constitution as follows:
Article 124 of the Federal Constitution requires the Chief Justice, the President of the Appeal Court, Chief Judge of the High Court, higher court justice and judicial commissioners to take the Oath of Office and Allegiance as follows:
Article 87 of the Mexican Constitution provides that the incoming president of Mexico should raise his or her right arm up to shoulder-level before the Congress of Mexico and say the following oath of office in Spanish:
Afterwards, the outgoing President passes him the presidential sash (the "Banda Presidential"), which is worn from the left shoulder to the right rib, to the new President.
Article 79 of the Constitution of Moldova provides that the President, no more than 45 days after his election, and before the Parliament and Constitutional Court, gives the following oath:
The Fourth Schedule of the 2008 Constitution of Myanmar has outlined the text of the legislative oath that freshly elected or military-appointed Members of Parliament must read aloud before joining parliament:
As set out by the Swearing-in and Investiture Act, the oath of office for the monarch of the Netherlands, which in accordance with Article 32 of the Constitution is to be declared as soon as possible after the King or Queen takes office in a public united meeting of the States General in the capital of Amsterdam, is as follows:
After this declaration the chairman of the States General, in the name of the States General, the States of the Netherlands Antilles and the States of Aruba, pronounces the following solemn declaration:
The declaration shall then be sworn or confirmed by each of the members individually.
The oath of office for ministers and state secretaries, which shall be administered by the King, and for members of Parliament is as follows:
The oath of office for civil servants is as follows:
The chief justice of New Zealand administers the oath of office at the swearing-in of new governors-general of New Zealand. The oath is as follows:
An affirmation may be used instead of this oath.
As soon as the King, being of age, accedes to the Government, he shall take the following oath before the Storting (article 9 of the Constitution of Norway):
If the Storting is not in session at the time, the oath shall be made in writing in the Council of State and be repeated solemnly by the King at the first subsequent Storting.
The oath of office of the President of Pakistan is as follows:
The oath of office of the Prime Minister of Pakistan is as follows:
The oath of office of the President of the Philippines as written in the 1987 Constitution is as follows:
The oath from the Filipino language version of the constitution was used for the inauguration of Presidents Fidel V. Ramos, Joseph Estrada and Benigno Aquino III:
Prior to the 1987 Constitution the oath of office for the President of the Philippines is as follows:
During the second inauguration of President Ferdinand Marcos, a Filipino language version of the 1935 Constitution oath of office was used.
During the inauguration of President Corazon C. Aquino, this version was used:
The oath of office requirement for all public officers and employees of the government including every member of the armed forces is as follows:
The oath of office for all public officials and employees is as follows:
Filipino version:
If done for personnel of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, instead of "legal orders/mga katususang legal", the phrase "lawful orders/mga utos na ayon sa batas" is used.
"So help me God" ("Tak mi dopomóż Bóg") formula at the end is optional.
"So help me God" ("Tak mi dopomóż Bóg") formula at the end is optional.
The Constitution of Portugal requires that the following oath be taken by the President-elect upon entering into office:
"In Portuguese:"
"In English:"
Article 82 of the Constitution of Romania provides that the President, before the Chamber of Deputies and Senate in joint session, gives the following oath:
Article 32 of the Law 215 (23 April 2001) provides that all local officials (Local Councilors, Mayors, County Councilors and County Council Presidents), before the assembled Councils and the Prefect of the County, give, in Romanian the following oath.
The religious formula may be omitted.
The oath of office of the President of Russia is prescribed in the Constitution of Russia, in Chapter 4 (The President of the Russian Federation), Article 82:
1. When taking office the President of the Russian Federation shall take the following oath of loyalty to the people:
2. The oath shall be taken in a solemn atmosphere in the presence of members of the Council of the Federation, deputies of the State Duma and judges of the Constitution Court of the Russian Federation.
During the Coronation of the Russian monarch, after his anointing, but prior to partaking of Holy Communion, the Tsar recited a coronation oath, in which he swore to preserve the autocracy intact and to rule his realm with justice and fairness.
The oath of office of the President of Singapore is as follows:
The Prime Minister of Singapore swears 2 oaths: the Oaths of Office and Oath of Affirmation respectively:
For Ministers of the Cabinet of Singapore, they swear the Oaths of Allegiance and Execution of Office respectively:
For members of the Parliament of Singapore, it is:
The Captains Regent of San Marino are sworn into office by reciting the following oath:
of the Constitution of South Africa specifies the oaths or affirmations of office for the various high offices of state. These oaths are sworn before the Chief Justice or another judge designated by the Chief Justice.
The President and any Acting President swears the following oath:
The Deputy President swears the following oath:
Ministers and Deputy Ministers of the Cabinet swear the following oath:
Members of the National Assembly, the National Council of Provinces and the provincial legislatures swear the following oath:
Premiers, Acting Premiers and Members of the Executive Council of a province swear the following oath:
Judges and acting judges swear the following oath:
Article 61 of the Spanish Constitution requires the King to take the following oath as soon as practicable after ascending to the Throne and before performing any other official duty:
The heir to the Crown, upon becoming of age, and any Regents, upon taking office, are required by the Constitution to take the same oath, adding to it a vow of allegiance to the King.
In an inauguration ceremony a new Spanish Prime Minister takes an oath or affirmation of office over an open Constitution, which may be next to a cross and a Bible, and before the King of Spain and other dignitaries.
Other ministers take a similar oath.
In Sweden, a judge, whether a legally trained judge or a lay judge () shall take the following oath before assuming the duties of their office:
In Switzerland, according to the Federal Act on the Federal Assembly, people elected at the Swiss Federal Assembly or elected by it (such as the Swiss Federal Council) have to take an oath in front of the assembly.
The oath is as follows:
The solemn promise is as follows:
In the Republic of China (mostly Taiwan and surrounding islands), oath of office is required to be taken by the President-elect before he or she assumes office. The Oath of office for the President of the Republic of China is specified in the Constitution of the Republic of China (Article 48):
All members of the Turkish Parliament, as well as cabinet ministers that are not members of parliament are required to take the following oath in a parliamentary session before taking office. The Turkish President takes a slightly modified version of this oath:
All members of the Turkish Armed Forces should take the following oath before starting their service:
In Ukraine, the Chairman of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine administers the oath of office. The President-elect recites the oath with his hand on the Constitution and the Peresopnytsia Gospels. The Ukrainian text of the oath according to the article 104 is:
The official English translation:
In the United Kingdom, no formal oath is essential to be taken by the monarch in relation to his or her accession. He or she is, however, required to take an oath regarding the security of the Church of Scotland. At a coronation, the monarch usually takes an oath but as a coronation is inessential, Monarchs need not take a similar oath in order to discharge their duties, as with the case of Edward VIII. The exact wording of the coronation oath of various monarchs has altered throughout the years without statutory authority but remain based on the oath as prescribed by the Coronation Oath Act 1688.
The following was the oath taken by Queen Elizabeth II at her coronation on 2 June 1953:
Made by the Queen at her Accession Council, 8 February 1952, in accordance with the Protestant Religion and Presbyterian Church Act 1707:
A general Oath of Allegiance and Official Oath, are set out in the Promissory Oaths Act 1868 are required to be taken by various office-holders.
Members of the House of Commons or of the House of Lords are required to take the oath of allegiance in the House at the beginning of a new Parliament, as well as after a Demise of the Crown.
Section 84 of the Scotland Act 1998 requires members of the Scottish Parliament to take the Oath of Allegiance at a meeting of the Parliament. Members of the Scottish Executive and junior Scottish Ministers are additionally required to take the Official Oath.
Section 20 of the Government of Wales Act 1998 requires members of the National Assembly for Wales to take the oath of allegiance. A Welsh form of the Oath is prescribed by the National Assembly for Wales (Oath of Allegiance in Welsh) Order 1999.
The Oath of Allegiance is in the following form:
The Official Oath is in the following form:
The standard form of the judicial oath is set out in the Promissory Oaths Act 1868:
Those choosing affirm simply replace "do swear by Almighty God" with "solemnly sincerely and truly declare and affirm"
In Northern Ireland all references to the Sovereign were removed by the Justice (Northern Ireland) Act 2002.
Section 19(2) provides that the oath is —
Section 19(3) provides that the affirmation and declaration is —
All persons enlisting in the British Armed Forces are required to attest to the following oath or equivalent affirmation:
Privy Counsellors take office on being "sworn of the Privy Council". It was formerly regarded as criminal to disclose the form of Privy Council oath, which includes an undertaking of secrecy as to the proceedings in Council (where the Oath is taken). On 28 July 1964 it was published by the President of the Council in answer to a written parliamentary question.
A person appointed to the office of constable of a police force in Scotland is required to make the following declaration:
"I hereby do solemnly and sincerely and truly declare and affirm that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of constable."
While the oath-taking dates back to the First Congress in 1789, the current oath is a product of the 1860s, drafted by Civil War-era members of Congress intent on ensnaring traitors.
In 1789, the 1st United States Congress created an oath to fulfill the requirement of Article VI of the United States Constitution:
The outbreak of the Civil War quickly transformed the routine act of oath-taking into one of enormous significance. In April 1861, a time of uncertain and shifting loyalties, President Abraham Lincoln ordered all federal civilian employees within the executive branch to take an expanded oath. When Congress convened for a brief emergency session in July, members echoed the president's action by enacting legislation requiring employees to take the expanded oath in support of the Union. This oath is the earliest direct predecessor of the modern version of the oath.
When Congress returned for its regular session in December 1861, members who believed that the Union had as much to fear from northern traitors as southern soldiers again revised the oath, adding a new first section known as the "Ironclad Test Oath." The war-inspired Test Oath, signed into law on July 2, 1862, required "every person elected or appointed to any office ... under the Government of the United States ... excepting the President of the United States" to swear or affirm that they had never previously engaged in criminal or disloyal conduct. Those government employees who failed to take the 1862 Test Oath would not receive a salary; those who swore falsely would be prosecuted for perjury and forever denied federal employment.
The Iron Clad oath signed into law under President Johnson's term as mandatory for members of Congress as well as federal employees.
“I, A.B., do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I have never voluntarily borne arms against the United States since I have been a citizen thereof; that I have voluntarily given no aid, countenance, counsel or encouragement to person engaged in armed hostility thereto; that I have neither sought not accepted nor attempted to exercise the functions of any office whatever, under any authority or pretended authority in hostility to the United States; that I have not yielded a voluntary support to any pretended government, authority, power, or constitution within the United States, hostile or inimical thereto. And I do further swear (or affirm) that, to the best of my knowledge and ability, I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter, so help me God.”
The 1862 oath's second section incorporated a different rendering of the hastily drafted 1861 oath. Although Congress did not extend coverage of the Ironclad Test Oath to its own members, many took it voluntarily. Angered by those who refused this symbolic act during a wartime crisis, and determined to prevent the eventual return of prewar southern leaders to positions of power in the national government, congressional hard-liners eventually succeeded by 1864 in making the Test Oath mandatory for all members.
The Senate then revised its rules to require that members not only take the Test Oath orally, but also that they "subscribe" to it by signing a printed copy. This condition reflected a wartime practice in which military and civilian authorities required anyone wishing to do business with the federal government to sign a copy of the Test Oath. The current practice of newly sworn senators signing individual pages in an oath book dates from this period.
As tensions cooled during the decade following the Civil War, Congress enacted private legislation permitting particular former Confederates to take only the second section of the 1862 oath. An 1868 public law prescribed this alternative oath for "any person who has participated in the late rebellion, and from whom all legal disabilities arising therefrom have been removed by act of Congress." Northerners immediately pointed to the new law's unfair double standard that required loyal Unionists to take the Test Oath's harsh first section while permitting ex-Confederates to ignore it. In 1884, a new generation of lawmakers quietly repealed the first section of the Test Oath, leaving intact the current affirmation of constitutional allegiance.
In the United States, the oath of office for the President is specified in the Constitution ():
The oath may be sworn or affirmed (in which case it is called an "affirmation" instead of "oath"). Although not present in the text of the Constitution, it is customary for modern presidents to say "So help me God" after the end of the oath. For officers other than the President, the expression "So help me God" is explicitly prescribed, but the Judiciary Act of 1789 also explains when it can be omitted (specifically for oaths taken by court clerks): "Which words, so help me God, shall be omitted in all cases where an affirmation is admitted instead of an oath."
The Constitution (Article VI, clause 3) also specifies:
At the start of each new U.S. Congress, in January of every odd-numbered year, newly elected or re-elected Members of Congress – the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate – must recite an oath:
This oath is also taken by the Vice President, members of the Cabinet, federal judges and all other civil and military officers and federal employees other than the President.
In the United States, federal judges are required to take two oaths. The first oath is this:
The second is the same oath that members of Congress take:
Federal statute specifically says that the latter oath "does not affect other oaths required by law."
See "United States Uniformed Services Oath of Office".
The oaths of state and local officials are largely patterned on the federal oath of constitutional allegiance. Typical would be the oath taken by all New York government officials:
All elected county officials and the appointed officers such as clerk and master, and deputies to these officers, are required to take an oath of office which actually consists of two oaths: the
constitutional oath, and an oath for the particular office or fidelity oath (Tenn. Const. Art. X, Sec. 1). The following is combination fidelity and constitutional oath:
The simple constitutional oath and fidelity oath are taken by persons who do not have a more specific oath prescribed by law (T.C.A. § 8-18-111). This basic oath is used upon entering the
following offices:
County Executive/Mayor
County Clerk (or deputy county clerk by substituting the word "appointed" for "elected")
County Register (or deputy register by substituting the word "appointed" for "elected")
Chief administrative officer of the county highway department
County commissioners may use the same basic oath as noted above, but phrased as follows:
Clerks of court, deputy clerks of court, sheriffs, deputy sheriffs, assessors of property and deputy assessors, constables with law enforcement powers, constables without law enforcement powers, general sessions court judges, and school board members in Tennessee all have specific variations of their oaths of office.
The President of Venezuela, upon assumption of the office on his inauguration, is asked by the President of the National Assembly (until 1999, the Senate President, on behalf of the entire National Federal Congress), holding a copy of the Constitution of Venezuela, the following:
With the right hand on the shoulder level he answers with a "Yes I swear" and the President then responds: "If you do so, before God and the Fatherland your duties will be performed, and it will be demanded of you if you not. Therefore, in the name of the Republic and by the authority of the law, I investiture you as Constitutional President of the Republic as of this moment for this term period." Then the Presidential Sash (with the colors and coat of arms from the Flag of Venezuela and the collar of the Order of the Liberatiors is turned over to him from the outgoing President, but if the case is that of succession due to death of office of his predecessor both items are cased and are given to him by the National Assembly President instead. If reelected the method is the same as after the sudden death of the President while in office.
The Roman Catholic Church requires all of its clergy before ordination and most of those promoted to positions of authority to make a "Profession of Faith," as below. It is very similar to the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed (referred to as the Symbol of Faith).
Further, all of those promoted to positions of authority (vicars general, judicial vicars, episcopal vicars, pastors of parishes and superiors within religious orders) or with teaching responsibilities (rectors of seminaries, professors at seminaries, heads or Catholic universities or professors on the faculties of Catholic colleges and universities who teach subjects involving religion), and all those ordained deacons (and therefore all those who will also later be ordained priests) to take the following "Oath of Fidelity" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22258 |
Ontology
Ontology is the philosophical study of being. More broadly, it studies concepts that directly relate to being, in particular becoming, existence, reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, ontology often deals with questions concerning what entities exist or may be said to exist and how such entities may be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences.
The compound word "ontology" ('study of being') combines
While the etymology is Greek, the oldest extant records of the word itself, the New Latin form appeared
The first occurrence in English of "ontology", as recorded by the "Oxford English Dictionary," came in 1664 through "Archelogia philosophica nova..." by Gideon Harvey The word was first used, in its Latin form, by philosophers, and based on the Latin roots (and in turn on the Greek ones).
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is the only one of the great philosophers of that century to have used the term "ontology".
Some philosophers, notably in the traditions of the Platonic school, contend that all nouns (including abstract nouns) refer to existent entities. Other philosophers contend that nouns do not always name entities, but that some provide a kind of shorthand for reference to a collection either of objects or of events. In this latter view, "mind", instead of referring to an entity, refers to a collection of "mental events" experienced by a "person"; "society" refers to a collection of "persons" with some shared characteristics, and "geometry" refers to a collection of specific kinds of intellectual activities. Between these poles of realism and nominalism stand a variety of other positions.
Principal questions of ontology include:
Various philosophers have provided different answers to these questions. One common approach involves dividing the extant subjects and predicates into groups called categories. Such lists of categories differ widely from one another, and it is through the co-ordination of different categorical schemes that ontology relates to such fields as library science and artificial intelligence. Such an understanding of ontological categories, however, is merely taxonomic, classificatory. Aristotle's categories are the ways in which a being may be addressed simply as a being, such as:
Further examples of ontological questions include:
Essential ontological dichotomies include:
Philosophers can classify ontologies in various ways, using criteria such as the degree of abstraction and field of application:
Ontology features in the Samkhya school of Hindu philosophy from the first millennium BCE.
In the Greek philosophical tradition, Parmenides was among the first to propose an ontological characterization of the fundamental nature of existence. In the prologue (or "proem") to "On Nature", he describes two views of existence. Initially, nothing comes from nothing, thus existence is eternal. This posits that existence is what may be conceived of by thought, created, or possessed. Hence, there may be neither void nor vacuum; and true reality neither may come into being nor vanish from existence. Rather, the entirety of creation is eternal, uniform, and immutable, though not infinite (Parmenides characterized its shape as that of a perfect sphere). Parmenides thus posits that change, as perceived in everyday experience, is illusory. Everything that may be apprehended is but one part of a single entity. This idea somewhat anticipates the modern concept of an ultimate theory of everything that finally describes all of existence in terms of one inter-related sub-atomic reality which applies to everything. Most of western philosophy (especially the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza)—including the fundamental concepts of falsifiability—has emerged from this view.
Opposite to the Eleatic monism of Parmenides is the pluralistic conception of being. In the 5th century BC, Anaxagoras and Leucippus replaced the reality of "being" (unique and unchanging) with that of "becoming", therefore by a more fundamental and elementary "ontic" plurality. This thesis originated in the Hellenic world, stated in two different ways by Anaxagoras and by Leucippus. The first theory dealt with "seeds" (which Aristotle referred to as ""homeomeries"") of the various substances. The second was the atomistic theory, which dealt with reality as based on the vacuum, the atoms and their intrinsic movement in it.
The materialist "atomism" proposed by Leucippus was indeterminist, but Democritus ( 460 – 370 BC) subsequently developed it in a deterministic way. Later (4th century BC), Epicurus took the original "atomism" again as indeterministic. He saw reality as composed of an infinity of indivisible, unchangeable corpuscles or atoms ("atomon", lit. 'uncuttable'), but he gives weight to characterize atoms whereas for Leucippus they are characterized by a "figure", an "order" and a "position" in the cosmos. Atoms are, besides, creating the whole with the intrinsic movement in the "vacuum", producing the diverse flux of being. Their movement is influenced by the "parenklisis" (Lucretius names it clinamen) and that is determined by the chance. These ideas foreshadowed the understanding of traditional physics until the advent of 20th-century theories on the nature of atoms.
Plato developed the distinction between true reality and illusion, in arguing that what is real are eternal and unchanging forms or ideas (a precursor to "universals"), of which things experienced in sensation are at best merely copies, and real only in so far as they copy ("partake of") such forms. In general, Plato presumes that all nouns (e.g., "beauty") refer to real entities, whether sensible bodies or insensible forms. Hence, in "The Sophist", Plato argues that "being" is a "form" in which all existent things participate and which they have in common (though it is unclear whether "Being" is intended in the sense of existence, copula, or identity); and argues, against Parmenides, that forms must exist not only of "being", but also of Negation and of non-being (or "Difference").
In his "Categories", Aristotle (384–322 BCE) identifies ten possible kinds of things that may be the subject or the predicate of a proposition. For Aristotle there are four different ontological dimensions:
According to Avicenna ( 980 – 1037), and in an interpretation of Greek Aristotelian and Platonist ontological doctrines in medieval metaphysics, being is either necessary, contingent "qua" possible, or impossible. Necessary being is that which cannot but be, since its non-being entails a contradiction. Contingent "qua" possible being is neither necessary nor impossible for it to be or not to be. It is ontologically neutral, and is brought from potential existing into actual existence by way of a cause that is external to its essence. Its being is borrowed – unlike the necessary existent, which is self-subsisting and is impossible for it not to be. As for the impossible, it necessarily does not exist, and the affirmation of its being is a contradiction.
The concept of "ontological formations" refers to formations of social relations understood as dominant ways of living. Temporal, spatial, corporeal, epistemological, and performative relations are taken to be central to understanding a dominant formation. That is, a particular ontological formation is based on how ontological categories of time, space, embodiment, knowing and performing are lived—objectively and subjectively. Different ontological formations include the "customary" (including the tribal), the "traditional", the "modern", and the "postmodern". The concept was first introduced by Paul James in 2006, together with a series of writers including Damian Grenfell and Manfred Steger.
In the "engaged theory" approach, ontological formations are seen as layered and intersecting rather than singular formations. They are 'formations of being'. This approach avoids the usual problems of a Great Divide being posited between the modern and the pre-modern. From a philosophical distinction concerning different formations of being, the concept then provides a way of translating into practical understandings concerning how humans might design cities and communities that live creatively across different ontological formations, for example cities that are not completely dominated by modern valences of spatial configuration. Here the work of Tony Fry is important.
According to Edward N. Zalta, the ontology of fiction analyses such sentences as:
According to Amie L. Thomasson, fictional discourse can be of four sorts:
Jeremy Bentham distinguished three kinds of entities:
Francis Herbert Bradley thought that real things exist respectively at particular times and places. He recognised several kinds of entity:
Alexius Meinong would put fictional entities into the category which he called "subsistence". This category contains objects that neither exist spatially or non-spatially. However, they do have properties. The properties are given to these objects in the way they are said to be described. For example, we can talk about the tall unicorn even though the tall unicorn does not exist. We can say the unicorn is in fact tall because this follows from the properties in which the object is characterized.
René Descartes, with "cogito, ergo sum" ("je pense donc je suis," "I think, therefore I am"), argued that "the self" is something that we can know exists with epistemological certainty. Descartes argued further that this knowledge could lead to a proof of the certainty of the existence of God, using the ontological argument that had been formulated first by Anselm of Canterbury.
Certainty about the existence of "the self" and "the other", however, came under increasing criticism in the 20th century. Sociological theorists, most notably George Herbert Mead and Erving Goffman, saw the "Cartesian other" as a "Generalized other," the imaginary audience that individuals use when thinking about the self. According to Mead, "we do not assume there is a self to begin with. Self is not presupposed as a stuff out of which the world arises. Rather, the self arises in the world".
The Cartesian other was also used by Sigmund Freud, who saw the superego as an abstract regulatory force, and Émile Durkheim who viewed this as a psychologically manifested entity which represented God in society at large.
Schools of subjectivism, objectivism and relativism existed at various times in the 20th century, and the postmodernists and body philosophers tried to reframe all these questions in terms of bodies taking some specific action in an environment. This relied to a great degree on insights derived from scientific research into animals taking instinctive action in natural and artificial settings—as studied by biology, ecology, and cognitive science.
The processes by which bodies related to environments became of great concern, and the idea of being itself became difficult to really define. What did people mean when they said "A is B", "A must be B", "A was B"...? Some linguists advocated dropping the verb "to be" from the English language, leaving "E Prime", supposedly less prone to bad abstractions. Others, mostly philosophers, tried to dig into the word and its usage. Martin Heidegger distinguished "human being" as "existence" from the being of things in the world. Heidegger proposes that our way of being human and the way the world is for us are cast historically through a fundamental ontological questioning. These fundamental ontological categories provide the basis for communication in an age: a horizon of unspoken and seemingly unquestionable background meanings, such as human beings understood unquestioningly as subjects and other entities understood unquestioningly as objects. Because these basic ontological meanings both generate and are regenerated in everyday interactions, the locus of our way of being in a historical epoch is the communicative event of language in use. For Heidegger, however, communication in the "first" place is not among human beings, but language itself shapes up in response to questioning (the inexhaustible meaning of) being. Even the focus of traditional ontology on the 'whatness' or "quidditas" of beings in their substantial, standing presence can be shifted to pose the question of the 'whoness' of human being itself.
Some philosophers suggest that the question of "What is?" is (at least in part) an issue of "usage" rather than a question about facts. This perspective is conveyed by an analogy made by Donald Davidson: Suppose a person refers to a 'cup' as a 'chair' and makes some comments pertinent to a cup, but uses the word 'chair' consistently throughout instead of 'cup'. One might readily catch on that this person simply calls a 'cup' a 'chair' and the oddity is explained. Analogously, if we find people asserting 'there are' such-and-such, and we do not ourselves think that 'such-and-such' exist, we might conclude that these people are not nuts (Davidson calls this assumption 'charity'), they simply use 'there are' differently than we do. The question of "What is?" is at least partially a topic in the philosophy of language, and is not entirely about ontology itself. This viewpoint has been expressed by Eli Hirsch.
Hirsch interprets Hilary Putnam as asserting that different concepts of "the existence of something" can be correct. This position does not contradict the view that some things do exist, but points out that different 'languages' will have different rules about assigning this property. How to determine the 'fitness' of a 'language' to the world then becomes a subject for investigation.
Common to all Indo-European copula languages is the double use of the verb "to be" in both stating that entity X exists ("X is.") as well as stating that X has a property ("X is P"). It is sometimes argued that a third use is also distinct, stating that X is a member of a class ("X is a C"). In other language families these roles may have completely different verbs and are less likely to be confused with one another. For example they might say something like "the car has redness" rather than "the car is red." Hence any discussion of "being" in Indo-European language philosophy may need to make distinctions between these senses.
In human geography there are two types of ontology: small "o" which accounts for the practical orientation, describing functions of being a part of the group, thought to oversimplify and ignore key activities. The other "o", or big "O", systematically, logically, and rationally describes the essential characteristics and universal traits. This concept relates closely to Plato's view that the human mind can only perceive a bigger world if they continue to live within the confines of their "caves". However, in spite of the differences, ontology relies on the symbolic agreements among members. That said, ontology is crucial for the axiomatic language frameworks.
According to Alfred N. Whitehead, for ontology, it is useful to distinguish the terms 'reality' and 'actuality'. In this view, an 'actual entity' has a philosophical status of fundamental ontological priority, while a 'real entity' is one which may be actual, or may derive its reality from its logical relation to some actual entity or entities. For example, an occasion in the life of Socrates is an actual entity. But Socrates' being a man does not make 'man' an actual entity, because it refers indeterminately to many actual entities, such as several occasions in the life of Socrates, and also to several occasions in the lives of Alcibiades, and of others. But the notion of man is real; it derives its reality from its reference to those many actual occasions, each of which is an actual entity. An actual occasion is a concrete entity, while terms such as 'man' are abstractions from many concrete relevant entities.
According to Whitehead, an actual entity must earn its philosophical status of fundamental ontological priority by satisfying several philosophical criteria, as follows:
Whitehead proposed that his notion of an occasion of experience satisfies the criteria for its status as the philosophically preferred definition of an actual entity. From a purely logical point of view, each occasion of experience has in full measure the characters of both objective and subjective reality. Subjectivity and objectivity refer to different aspects of an occasion of experience, and in no way do they exclude each other.
Examples of other philosophical proposals or candidates as actual entities, in this view, are Aristotle's 'substances', Leibniz' monads, and Descartes " ′res verae' ", and the more modern 'states of affairs'. Aristotle's substances, such as Socrates, have behind them as more fundamental the 'primary substances', and in this sense do not satisfy Whitehead's criteria. Whitehead is not happy with Leibniz' monads as actual entities because they are "windowless" and do not cause each other. 'States of affairs' are often not closely defined, often without specific mention of extension in physical Minkowski space; they are therefore not necessarily processes of becoming, but may be as their name suggests, simply static states in some sense. States of affairs are contingent on particulars, and therefore have something behind them. One summary of the Whiteheadian actual entity is that it is a process of becoming. Another summary, referring to its causal linkage to other actual entities, is that it is "all window", in contrast with Leibniz' windowless monads.
This view allows philosophical entities other than actual entities to really exist, but not as fundamentally and primarily factual or causally efficacious; they have existence as abstractions, with reality only derived from their reference to actual entities. A Whiteheadian actual entity has a unique and completely definite place and time. Whiteheadian abstractions are not so tightly defined in time and place, and in the extreme, some are timeless and placeless, or 'eternal' entities. All abstractions have logical or conceptual rather than efficacious existence; their lack of definite time does not make them unreal if they refer to actual entities. Whitehead calls this 'the ontological principle'.
There is an established and long philosophical history of the concept of atoms as microscopic physical objects. They are far too small to be visible to the naked eye. It was as recent as the nineteenth century that precise estimates of the sizes of putative physical atoms began to become plausible. Almost direct empirical observation of atomic effects was due to the theoretical investigation of Brownian motion by Albert Einstein in the very early twentieth century. But even then, the real existence of atoms was debated by some. Such debate might be labeled 'microcosmic ontology'. Here the word 'microcosm' is used to indicate a physical world of small entities, such as for example atoms.
Subatomic particles are usually considered to be much smaller than atoms. Their real or actual existence may be very difficult to demonstrate empirically. A distinction is sometimes drawn between actual and virtual subatomic particles. Reasonably, one may ask, in what sense, if any, do virtual particles exist as physical entities? For atomic and subatomic particles, difficult questions arise, such as do they possess a precise position, or a precise momentum? A question that continues to be controversial is 'to what kind of physical thing, if any, does the quantum mechanical wave function refer?'.
In the Western Christian tradition, in his 1078 work "Proslogion", Anselm of Canterbury proposed what is known as 'the ontological argument' for the existence of God. Anselm defined God as "that than which nothing greater can be thought", and argued that this being must exist in the mind, even in the mind of the person who denies the existence of God. He suggested that, if the greatest possible being exists in the mind, it must also exist in reality. If it only exists in the mind, then an even greater being must be possible—one which exists both in the mind and in reality. Therefore, this greatest possible being must exist in reality. Seventeenth century French philosopher René Descartes deployed a similar argument. Descartes published several variations of his argument, each of which centred on the idea that God's existence is immediately inferable from a "clear and distinct" idea of a supremely perfect being. In the early eighteenth century, Gottfried Leibniz augmented Descartes' ideas in an attempt to prove that a "supremely perfect" being is a coherent concept. Norman Malcolm revived the ontological argument in 1960 when he located a second, stronger ontological argument in Anselm's work; Alvin Plantinga challenged this argument and proposed an alternative, based on modal logic. Attempts have also been made to validate Anselm's proof using an automated theorem prover.
More recently, Kurt Gödel proposed a formal argument for God's existence. Other arguments for God's existence have been advanced, including those made by Islamic philosophers Mulla Sadra and Allama Tabatabai.
Jaakko Hintikka puts the view that a useful explication of the notion of existence is in the words "one can find," implicitly in some world or universe of discourse.
[[Category:Ontology| ]]
[[Category:Metaphysics|*]]
[[Category:Meaning (philosophy of language)]] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22261 |
Ordovician
The Ordovician ( ) is a geologic period and system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years from the end of the Cambrian Period million years ago (Mya) to the start of the Silurian Period Mya.
The Ordovician, named after the Welsh tribe of the Ordovices, was defined by Charles Lapworth in 1879 to resolve a dispute between followers of Adam Sedgwick and Roderick Murchison, who were placing the same rock beds in northern Wales into the Cambrian and Silurian systems, respectively. Lapworth recognized that the fossil fauna in the disputed strata were different from those of either the Cambrian or the Silurian systems, and placed them in a system of their own. The Ordovician received international approval in 1960 (forty years after Lapworth's death), when it was adopted as an official period of the Paleozoic Era by the International Geological Congress.
Life continued to flourish during the Ordovician as it did in the earlier Cambrian period, although the end of the period was marked by the Ordovician–Silurian extinction events. Invertebrates, namely molluscs and arthropods, dominated the oceans. The Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event considerably increased the diversity of life. Fish, the world's first true vertebrates, continued to evolve, and those with jaws may have first appeared late in the period. Life had yet to diversify on land. About 100 times as many meteorites struck the Earth per year during the Ordovician compared with today.
A number of regional terms have been used to subdivide the Ordovician Period. In 2008, the ICS erected a formal international system of subdivisions. There exist Baltoscandic, British, Siberian, North American, Australian, Chinese Mediterranean and North-Gondwanan regional stratigraphic schemes.
The Ordovician Period in Britain was traditionally broken into Early (Tremadocian and Arenig), Middle (Llanvirn (subdivided into Abereiddian and Llandeilian) and Llandeilo) and Late (Caradoc and Ashgill) epochs. The corresponding rocks of the Ordovician System are referred to as coming from the Lower, Middle, or Upper part of the column. The faunal stages (subdivisions of epochs) from youngest to oldest are:
Late Ordovician
Middle Ordovician
Early Ordovician
The Tremadoc corresponds to the (modern) Tremadocian. The Floian corresponds to the lower Arenig; the Arenig continues until the early Darriwilian, subsuming the Dapingian. The Llanvirn occupies the rest of the Darriwilian, and terminates with it at the base of the Late Ordovician.
The Sandbian represents the first half of the Caradoc; the Caradoc ends in the mid-Katian, and the Ashgill represents the last half of the Katian, plus the Hirnantian.
During the Ordovician, the southern continents were collected into Gondwana. Gondwana started the period in equatorial latitudes and, as the period progressed, drifted toward the South Pole.
Early in the Ordovician, the continents of Laurentia (in present-day North America), Siberia, and Baltica (present-day northern Europe) were still independent continents (since the break-up of the supercontinent Pannotia earlier), but Baltica began to move towards Laurentia later in the period, causing the Iapetus Ocean between them to shrink. The small continent Avalonia separated from Gondwana and began to move north towards Baltica and Laurentia, opening the Rheic Ocean between Gondwana and Avalonia.
The Taconic orogeny, a major mountain-building episode, was well under way in Cambrian times. In the early and middle Ordovician, temperatures were mild, but at the beginning of the Late Ordovician, from 460 to 450 Ma, volcanoes along the margin of the Iapetus Ocean spewed massive amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere, turning the planet into a hothouse.
Initially, sea levels were high, but as Gondwana moved south, ice accumulated into glaciers and sea levels dropped. At first, low-lying sea beds increased diversity, but later glaciation led to mass extinctions as the seas drained and continental shelves became dry land. During the Ordovician, in fact during the Tremadocian, marine transgressions worldwide were the greatest for which evidence is preserved.
These volcanic island arcs eventually collided with proto North America to form the Appalachian mountains. By the end of the Late Ordovician the volcanic emissions had stopped. Gondwana had by that time neared the South Pole and was largely glaciated.
The Ordovician meteor event is a proposed shower of meteors that occurred during the Middle Ordovician period, about 467.5±0.28 million years ago due to the break-up of the L chondrite parent body. It is not associated with any major extinction event.
The Ordovician was a time of calcite sea geochemistry in which low-magnesium calcite was the primary inorganic marine precipitate of calcium carbonate. Carbonate hardgrounds were thus very common, along with calcitic ooids, calcitic cements, and invertebrate faunas with dominantly calcitic skeletons. Biogenic aragonite, like that composing the shells of most molluscs, dissolved rapidly on the sea floor after death.
Unlike Cambrian times, when calcite production was dominated by microbial and non-biological processes, animals (and macroalgae) became a dominant source of calcareous material in Ordovician deposits.
The Ordovician saw the highest sea levels of the Paleozoic, and the low relief of the continents led to many shelf deposits being formed under hundreds of metres of water. The sea level rose more or less continuously throughout the Early Ordovician, leveling off somewhat during the middle of the period. Locally, some regressions occurred, but sea level rise continued in the beginning of the Late Ordovician. Sea levels fell steadily in accord with the cooling temperatures for ~30 million years leading up to the Hirnantian glaciation. During this icy stage, sea level seems to have risen and dropped somewhat, but despite much study the details remain unresolved.
As with North America and Europe, Gondwana was largely covered with shallow seas during the Ordovician. Shallow clear waters over continental shelves encouraged the growth of organisms that deposit calcium carbonates in their shells and hard parts. The Panthalassic Ocean covered much of the northern hemisphere, and other minor oceans included Proto-Tethys, Paleo-Tethys, Khanty Ocean, which was closed off by the Late Ordovician, Iapetus Ocean, and the new Rheic Ocean.
As the Ordovician progressed, there is evidence of glaciers on the land we now know as Africa and South America, which were near the South Pole at the time, resulting in the ice caps of the Late Ordovician glaciation.
For most of the Late Ordovician life continued to flourish, but at and near the end of the period there were mass-extinction events that seriously affected conodonts and planktonic forms like graptolites. The trilobites Agnostida and Ptychopariida completely died out, and the Asaphida were much reduced. Brachiopods, bryozoans and echinoderms were also heavily affected, and the endocerid cephalopods died out completely, except for possible rare Silurian forms. The Ordovician–Silurian extinction events may have been caused by an ice age that occurred at the end of the Ordovician period, due to the expansion of the first terrestrial plants, as the end of the Late Ordovician was one of the coldest times in the last 600 million years of Earth's history.
On the whole, the fauna that emerged in the Ordovician were the template for the remainder of the Palaeozoic. The fauna was dominated by tiered communities of suspension feeders, mainly with short food chains. The ecological system reached a new grade of complexity far beyond that of the Cambrian fauna, which has persisted until the present day.
Though less famous than the Cambrian explosion, the Ordovician radiation was no less remarkable; marine faunal genera increased fourfold, resulting in 12% of all known Phanerozoic marine fauna. Another change in the fauna was the strong increase in filter-feeding organisms. The trilobite, inarticulate brachiopod, archaeocyathid, and eocrinoid faunas of the Cambrian were succeeded by those that dominated the rest of the Paleozoic, such as articulate brachiopods, cephalopods, and crinoids. Articulate brachiopods, in particular, largely replaced trilobites in shelf communities. Their success epitomizes the greatly increased diversity of carbonate shell-secreting organisms in the Ordovician compared to the Cambrian.
In North America and Europe, the Ordovician was a time of shallow continental seas rich in life. Trilobites and brachiopods in particular were rich and diverse. Although solitary corals date back to at least the Cambrian, reef-forming corals appeared in the early Ordovician, corresponding to an increase in the stability of carbonate and thus a new abundance of calcifying animals.
Molluscs, which appeared during the Cambrian or even the Ediacaran, became common and varied, especially bivalves, gastropods, and nautiloid cephalopods.
Now-extinct marine animals called graptolites thrived in the oceans. Some new cystoids and crinoids appeared.
It was long thought that the first true vertebrates (fish — Ostracoderms) appeared in the Ordovician, but recent discoveries in China reveal that they probably originated in the Early Cambrian. The very first gnathostome (jawed fish) appeared in the Late Ordovician epoch.
During the Middle Ordovician there was a large increase in the intensity and diversity of bioeroding organisms. This is known as the Ordovician Bioerosion Revolution. It is marked by a sudden abundance of hard substrate trace fossils such as "Trypanites", "Palaeosabella", "Petroxestes" and "Osprioneides". Several groups of endobiotic symbionts appeared in the Ordovician.
In the Early Ordovician, trilobites were joined by many new types of organisms, including tabulate corals, strophomenid, rhynchonellid, and many new orthid brachiopods, bryozoans, planktonic graptolites and conodonts, and many types of molluscs and echinoderms, including the ophiuroids ("brittle stars") and the first sea stars. Nevertheless, the arthropods remained abundant, all the Late Cambrian orders continued, and were joined by the new group Phacopida. The first evidence of land plants also appeared (see evolutionary history of life).
In the Middle Ordovician, the trilobite-dominated Early Ordovician communities were replaced by generally more mixed ecosystems, in which brachiopods, bryozoans, molluscs, cornulitids, tentaculitids and echinoderms all flourished, tabulate corals diversified and the first rugose corals appeared. The planktonic graptolites remained diverse, with the Diplograptina making their appearance. Bioerosion became an important process, particularly in the thick calcitic skeletons of corals, bryozoans and brachiopods, and on the extensive carbonate hardgrounds that appear in abundance at this time. One of the earliest known armoured agnathan ("ostracoderm") vertebrate, "Arandaspis", dates from the Middle Ordovician.
Trilobites in the Ordovician were very different from their predecessors in the Cambrian. Many trilobites developed bizarre spines and nodules to defend against predators such as primitive eurypterids and nautiloids while other trilobites such as "Aeglina prisca" evolved to become swimming forms. Some trilobites even developed shovel-like snouts for ploughing through muddy sea bottoms. Another unusual clade of trilobites known as the trinucleids developed a broad pitted margin around their head shields. Some trilobites such as "Asaphus kowalewski" evolved long eyestalks to assist in detecting predators whereas other trilobite eyes in contrast disappeared completely. Molecular clock analyses suggest that early arachnids started living on land by the end of the Ordovician.
The earliest-known octocorals date from the Ordovician.
Green algae were common in the Late Cambrian (perhaps earlier) and in the Ordovician. Terrestrial plants probably evolved from green algae, first appearing as tiny non-vascular forms resembling liverworts. Fossil spores from land plants have been identified in uppermost Ordovician sediments.
Among the first land fungi may have been arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi (Glomerales), playing a crucial role in facilitating the colonization of land by plants through mycorrhizal symbiosis, which makes mineral nutrients available to plant cells; such fossilized fungal hyphae and spores from the Ordovician of Wisconsin have been found with an age of about 460 million years ago, a time when the land flora most likely only consisted of plants similar to non-vascular bryophytes.
The Ordovician came to a close in a series of extinction events that, taken together, comprise the second largest of the five major extinction events in Earth's history in terms of percentage of genera that became extinct. The only larger one was the Permian–Triassic extinction event.
The extinctions occurred approximately 447–444 million years ago and mark the boundary between the Ordovician and the following Silurian Period. At that time all complex multicellular organisms lived in the sea, and about 49% of genera of fauna disappeared forever; brachiopods and bryozoans were greatly reduced, along with many trilobite, conodont and graptolite families.
The most commonly accepted theory is that these events were triggered by the onset of cold conditions in the late Katian, followed by an ice age, in the Hirnantian faunal stage, that ended the long, stable greenhouse conditions typical of the Ordovician.
The ice age was possibly not long-lasting. Oxygen isotopes in fossil brachiopods show its duration may have been only 0.5 to 1.5 million years. Other researchers (Page et al.) estimate more temperate conditions did not return until the late Silurian.
The late Ordovician glaciation event was preceded by a fall in atmospheric carbon dioxide (from 7000 ppm to 4400 ppm). The dip was triggered by a burst of volcanic activity that deposited new silicate rocks, which draw CO2 out of the air as they erode. This selectively affected the shallow seas where most organisms lived. As the southern supercontinent Gondwana drifted over the South Pole, ice caps formed on it, which have been detected in Upper Ordovician rock strata of North Africa and then-adjacent northeastern South America, which were south-polar locations at the time.
As glaciers grew, the sea level dropped, and the vast shallow intra-continental Ordovician seas withdrew, which eliminated many ecological niches. When they returned, they carried diminished founder populations that lacked many whole families of organisms. They then withdrew again with the next pulse of glaciation, eliminating biological diversity with each change. Species limited to a single epicontinental sea on a given landmass were severely affected. Tropical lifeforms were hit particularly hard in the first wave of extinction, while cool-water species were hit worst in the second pulse.
Those species able to adapt to the changing conditions survived to fill the ecological niches left by the extinctions.
At the end of the second event, melting glaciers caused the sea level to rise and stabilise once more. The rebound of life's diversity with the permanent re-flooding of continental shelves at the onset of the Silurian saw increased biodiversity within the surviving Orders.
An alternate extinction hypothesis suggested that a ten-second gamma-ray burst could have destroyed the ozone layer and exposed terrestrial and marine surface-dwelling life to deadly ultraviolet radiation and initiated global cooling.
Recent work considering the sequence stratigraphy of the Late Ordovician argues that the mass extinction was a single protracted episode lasting several hundred thousand years, with abrupt changes in water depth and sedimentation rate producing two pulses of last occurrences of species. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22265 |
Oregano
Oregano (, ; Origanum vulgare) is a flowering plant in the mint family (Lamiaceae). It is native to temperate Western and Southwestern Eurasia and the Mediterranean region.
Oregano is a perennial herb, growing from tall, with opposite leaves long. The flowers are purple, long, produced in erect spikes. It is sometimes called wild marjoram, and its close relative, "O. majorana", is known as sweet marjoram.
The word is derived from Classical Greek ("orī́ganon"), from which the Spanish "orégano", and Latin "orīganum". This is a compound Greek term that consists of ("óros") meaning "mountain", and ("gános") meaning "brightness", thus, "brightness of the mountain".
Oregano is related to the herb marjoram, sometimes being referred to as wild marjoram. Oregano has purple flowers and spade-shaped, olive-green leaves. It is a perennial, although it is grown as an annual in colder climates, as it often does not survive the winter.
Oregano is planted in early spring, the plants being spaced apart in fairly dry soil, with full sun. Oregano will grow in a pH range between 6.0 (mildly acidic) and 9.0 (strongly alkaline), with a preferred range between 6.0 and 8.0. It prefers a hot, relatively dry climate, but does well in other environments.
Many subspecies and strains of oregano have been developed by humans over centuries for their unique flavours or other characteristics. Tastes range from spicy or astringent to more complicated and sweet. Simple oregano sold in garden stores as "Origanum vulgare" may have a bland taste and larger, less-dense leaves, and is not considered the best for culinary use, with a taste less remarkable and pungent. It can pollinate other more sophisticated strains, but the offspring are rarely better in quality.
The related species, "Origanum onites" (Greece, Turkey) and "O. syriacum" (West Asia), have similar flavours. A closely related plant is marjoram from Turkey, which differs significantly in taste though, because phenolic compounds are missing from its essential oil. Some varieties show a flavour intermediate between oregano and marjoram.
Accepted subspecies:
Example cultivars of oregano include:
Cultivars traded as Italian, Sicilian, etc. are usually hardy sweet marjoram ("O." ×"majoricum"), a hybrid between the southern Adriatic "O. v." subsp. "hirtum" and sweet marjoram ("O. majorana"). They have a reputation for sweet and spicy tones, with little bitterness, and are prized for their flavor and compatibility with various recipes and sauces.
Oregano is a culinary herb, used for the flavor of its leaves, which can be more flavorful when dried than fresh. It has an aromatic, warm, and slightly bitter taste, which can vary in intensity. Good-quality oregano may be strong enough almost to numb the tongue, but cultivars adapted to colder climates may have a lesser flavor. Factors such as climate, season, and soil composition may affect the aromatic oils present, and this effect may be greater than the differences between the various species of plants. Among the chemical compounds contributing to the flavour are carvacrol, thymol, limonene, pinene, ocimene, and caryophyllene.
Oregano's most prominent modern use is as the staple herb of Italian cuisine. Its popularity in the U.S. began when soldiers returning from World War II brought back with them a taste for the "pizza herb", which had probably been eaten in southern Italy for centuries. There, it is most frequently used with roasted, fried, or grilled vegetables, meat, and fish. Oregano combines well with spicy foods popular in southern Italy. It is less commonly used in the north of the country, as marjoram generally is preferred.
The herb is widely used in cuisines of the Mediterranean Basin, the Philippines, and Latin America, especially in Argentine cuisine.
In Turkish cuisine, oregano is mostly used for flavoring meat, especially for mutton and lamb. In barbecue and kebab restaurants, it can be usually found as a condiment, together with paprika, salt, and pepper.
During the summer, generous amounts of dried oregano are often added as the aromatic and flavorful topping to a tomato and cucumber salad in Portugal, but it can be used to season meat and fish dishes as well.
The dried and ground leaves are most often used in Greece to add flavor to Greek salad, and is usually added to the lemon-olive oil sauce that accompanies fish or meat grills and casseroles.
Oregano oil has been used in folk medicine over centuries. Oregano essential oil is extracted from the leaves of the oregano plant. Although oregano or its oil may be used as a dietary supplement, there is no clinical evidence to indicate that either has any effect on human health.
In 2014, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned a Utah company, Young Living, that its herbal products, including oregano essential oil, were being promoted to have numerous unproven anti-disease effects, and so were being sold as unauthorized misbranded drugs subject to seizure and federal penalties. Similar FDA warning letters for false advertising and unproven health claims about oregano essential oil products were published in 2017 and 2018.
Oregano contains polyphenols, including numerous flavones.
The essential oil of oregano is composed primarily of monoterpenoids and monoterpenes, with the relative concentration of each compound varying widely across geographic origin and other factors. Over 60 different compounds have been identified, with the primary ones being carvacrol and thymol ranging to over 80%, while lesser abundant compounds include p-cymene, γ-terpinene, caryophyllene, spathulenol, germacrene-D, β-fenchyl alcohol and δ-terpineol.
Drying of the plant material affects both quantity and distribution of volatile compounds, with methods using higher heat and longer drying times having greater negative impact. A sample of fresh whole plant material found to contain 33 g/kg dry weight (3.1 g/kg wet) decreased to below a third after warm-air convection drying. Much higher concentrations of volatile compounds are achieved towards the end of the growing season. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22266 |
Obituary (band)
Obituary is an American death metal band formed in Tampa, Florida, in 1984. Initially called Executioner, the band changed its name to Xecutioner in 1986 to avoid confusion with the thrash metal band Executioner from Boston, and then changed its name once again to Obituary in 1988. The band's current lineup consists of vocalist John Tardy, drummer Donald Tardy, rhythm guitarist Trevor Peres, bassist Terry Butler, and lead guitarist Kenny Andrews. Obituary has gone through several lineup changes, with the Tardy brothers and Peres being the only constant members. The band was a fundamental act in the development of death metal music, and is one of the most successful death metal bands of all time. To date, Obituary has released ten studio albums, and with the exception of their 1997–2003 split, they continue to perform live around the world. Their music is based around heavily groove based riffs and drumming along with John Tardy's growling vocals, which create their signature brand of death metal.
Obituary is one of the pioneering bands of the death metal genre. Founded as Executioner in Seffner, Florida in 1984, they soon dropped the "E" from their name after discovering another band of the same name, becoming Xecutioner. The band's first lineup was composed of John Tardy (lead vocals), Donald Tardy (drums), Trevor Peres (rhythm guitar), Jerome Grable (bass) and Jerry Tidwell (lead guitar). The band released demos in 1985, 1986, and 1987, (the 1985 demo as Executioner and the 1986 and 1987 demos as Xecutioner). They made their vinyl debut in 1987 with two tracks ("Find the Arise" and "Like the Dead") on the "Raging Death" compilation.
Not long after the release of the compilation, bassist Grable was replaced by Daniel Tucker and guitarist Tidwell was replaced by Allen West. The following year, shortly before the release of the band's first album "Slowly We Rot", they changed their name to Obituary. Right after the release of "Slowly We Rot", however, Tucker and West quit the band and were respectively replaced by Frank Watkins and then-Death guitarist James Murphy. This new lineup recorded the band's second album "Cause of Death", which was released in September 1990, and is often considered to be one of the most important death metal albums of all time. Obituary supported "Cause of Death" with its first world tour, first the US with Sacred Reich and Forced Entry, Europe with Demolition Hammer and Morgoth and then back to the US with Sepultura and Sadus.
In 1991, just prior to the writing and recording sessions of their third album, Murphy left Obituary to join Cancer and was replaced by a returning Allen West. The lineup of Peres, Watkins, West and the Tardy brothers recorded the band's next three albums, starting with "The End Complete" (1992). "The End Complete" was a moderate success for Obituary, having sold more than a hundred thousand copies, and it was the band's first album to chart in the US and Europe. This success also resulted in the release of Obituary's first-ever music video "The End Complete", which received significant airplay on MTV's "Headbangers Ball", and the band toured behind the album in over year, going from playing clubs to theaters and arenas.
Obituary's fourth studio album, "World Demise", was released in September 1994. Although the album did not sell as well as "The End Complete", it still managed to reach the top 100 in several territories, including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, and a video for "Don't Care" was shot. In support of "World Demise", the band toured the US with Napalm Death and a then-unknown Machine Head, and Europe with Pitchshifter and Eyehategod.
After the release of their fifth album "Back from the Dead" (1997), the band had grown tired of touring, which led to the group disbanding. During this time period, Donald Tardy played in Andrew W.K.'s touring band (during W.K.'s appearance on "Saturday Night Live" Tardy wore an Obituary shirt). Allen West focused on his two projects, Lowbrow and Six Feet Under. Trevor Peres formed Catastrophic in 2001, which released one album, "The Cleansing", in that same year. Obituary reformed in 2003 and Catastrophic continued to exist alongside the reformed Obituary. A reunion album, "Frozen in Time", was released in 2005. The band's first live DVD, "Frozen Alive", was released in January 2007.
Obituary was signed with Candlelight Records for its next three releases, "Xecutioner's Return" (2007), "Darkest Day" (2009), and the EP "Left to Die" (2008). A concert DVD release was also announced for January 2010. Since 2012, the band have been highly involved with the promotion of a new social networking site called Unation, as well as Donald Tardy beginning a Cat Sanctuary organization called Metal Meowlisha, an organization practicing "trap-neuter-vaccinate-return", and caring for 25 cat colonies (200 cats).
In April 2010, Obituary began work on new material for their ninth studio album "Inked in Blood", which was not released until 2014. It was the first Obituary album not to be recorded with longtime bassist Frank Watkins since their 1989 debut album "Slowly We Rot". In 2013, the band rebuilt their studio, and continued work on the new album. On Friday, August 2, 2013, the band launched a Kickstarter campaign with a goal of raising $10,000.00; the money raised was promised to allow Obituary to record and release their ninth album independently. The goal was met on August 3. When interviewed by metal webzine All About The Rock, John Tardy said of the Kickstarter campaign, "This campaign has been awesome and just confirms again what we already know and that is that we have the greatest fans in the world. We are using Kickstarter to raise enough money to release an album on our own. This is not a bash against record companies, it is just what we want to do. Years ago this would not even be a thought, but today we feel everything is in place for us, for better or worse, give it a shot.". Though the band raised enough money to self-released, they were still signed to Relapse Records and partnered with the label for distribution of "Inked In Blood", their first Relapse release.
On October 18, 2015, former and longtime Obituary bassist Frank Watkins died from cancer.
On August 24, 2016, Obituary streamed a new song called "Loathe", a B-side to their then-upcoming single "Ten Thousand Ways to Die", which was released on October 21. The band released their self-titled tenth studio album on March 17, 2017. A month prior to its release, the band released a song called "No", which appeared on Decibel Magazine's flexi disc series.
In November and December 2018, Obituary embarked on a European tour as part of Slayer's farewell tour, also featuring Lamb of God and Anthrax. When asked in a June 2018 interview about the next Obituary album, drummer Donald Tardy said, "We're always thinking about new songs and writing riffs and this and that. But at this time of our lives and this time of the music industry… This new album has only been out for just over a year now, so we're in no hurry to try and push another album out of us as quick as we can; there's no sense." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22276 |
Spider-Man
Spider-Man is a fictional superhero created by writer-editor Stan Lee and writer-artist Steve Ditko. He first appeared in the anthology comic book "Amazing Fantasy" #15 (August 1962) in the Silver Age of Comic Books. He appears in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, as well as in a number of movies, television shows, and video game adaptations set in the Marvel Universe. In the stories, Spider-Man is the alias of Peter Parker, an orphan raised by his Aunt May and Uncle Ben in New York City after his parents Richard and Mary Parker were killed in a plane crash. Lee and Ditko had the character deal with the struggles of adolescence and financial issues, and accompanied him with many supporting characters, such as J. Jonah Jameson, Harry Osborn, Max Modell, romantic interests Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson, and foes such as Doctor Octopus, the Green Goblin and Venom. His origin story has him acquiring spider-related abilities after a bite from a radioactive spider; these include clinging to surfaces, shooting spider-webs from wrist-mounted devices, and detecting danger with his "spider-sense".
When Spider-Man first appeared in the early 1960s, teenagers in superhero comic books were usually relegated to the role of sidekick to the protagonist. The Spider-Man series broke ground by featuring Peter Parker, a high school student from Queens behind Spider-Man's secret identity and with whose "self-obsessions with rejection, inadequacy, and loneliness" young readers could relate. While Spider-Man had all the makings of a sidekick, unlike previous teen heroes such as Bucky and Robin, Spider-Man had no superhero mentor like Captain America and Batman; he thus had to learn for himself that "with great power there must also come great responsibility"—a line included in a text box in the final panel of the first Spider-Man story but later retroactively attributed to his guardian, the late Uncle Ben.
Marvel has featured Spider-Man in several comic book series, the first and longest-lasting of which is "The Amazing Spider-Man". Over the years, the Peter Parker character developed from a shy, nerdy New York City high school student to troubled but outgoing college student, to married high school teacher to, in the late 2000s, a single freelance photographer. In the 2010s, he joins the Avengers, Marvel's flagship superhero team. Spider-Man's nemesis Doctor Octopus also took on the identity for a story arc spanning 2012–2014, following a body swap plot in which Peter appears to die. Marvel has also published books featuring alternate versions of Spider-Man, including "Spider-Man 2099", which features the adventures of Miguel O'Hara, the Spider-Man of the future; "Ultimate Spider-Man", which features the adventures of a teenaged Peter Parker in an alternate universe; and "Ultimate Comics Spider-Man", which depicts the teenager Miles Morales, who takes up the mantle of Spider-Man after Ultimate Peter Parker's supposed death. Miles is later brought into mainstream continuity, where he works alongside Peter.
Spider-Man is one of the most popular and commercially successful superheroes. As Marvel's flagship character and company mascot, he has appeared in countless forms of media, including several animated and live action television series, syndicated newspaper comic strips, and in a series of films. The character was first portrayed in live action by Danny Seagren in "Spidey Super Stories", a "The Electric Company" skit which ran from 1974 to 1977. In films, Spider-Man has been portrayed by actors Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and in the Marvel Cinematic Universe by Tom Holland. He was voiced by Chris Pine and Jake Johnson in the animated film "". Reeve Carney starred originally as Spider-Man in the 2010 Broadway musical "". Spider-Man has been well received as a superhero and comic book character, and he is often ranked as one of the most popular and iconic comic book characters of all time and one of the most popular characters in all fiction.
In 1962, with the success of the Fantastic Four, Marvel Comics editor and head writer Stan Lee was casting about for a new superhero idea. He said the idea for Spider-Man arose from a surge in teenage demand for comic books, and the desire to create a character with whom teens could identify. In his autobiography, Lee cites the non-superhuman pulp magazine crime fighter the Spider as a great influence, and in a multitude of print and video interviews, Lee stated he was further inspired by seeing a spider climb up a wall—adding in his autobiography that he has told that story so often he has become unsure of whether or not this is true. Although at the time teenage superheroes were usually given names ending with "boy", Lee says he chose "Spider-Man" because he wanted the character to age as the series progressed, and moreover felt the name "Spider-Boy" would have made the character sound inferior to other superheroes. He also decided to insert a hyphen in the name, as he felt it looked too similar to Superman, another superhero with a red and blue costume which starts with an "S" and ends with "man". At that time Lee had to get only the consent of Marvel publisher Martin Goodman for the character's approval. In a 1986 interview, Lee described in detail his arguments to overcome Goodman's objections. Goodman eventually agreed to a Spider-Man tryout in what Lee in numerous interviews recalled as what would be the final issue of the science-fiction and supernatural anthology series "Amazing Adult Fantasy," which was renamed "Amazing Fantasy" for that single issue, #15 (cover-dated August 1962, on sale June 5, 1962). In particular, Lee stated that the fact that it had already been decided that "Amazing Fantasy" would be canceled after issue #15 was the only reason Goodman allowed him to use Spider-Man. While this was indeed the final issue, its editorial page anticipated the comic continuing and that "The Spiderman ... will appear every month in "Amazing"."
Regardless, Lee received Goodman's approval for the name Spider-Man and the "ordinary teen" concept and approached artist Jack Kirby. As comics historian Greg Theakston recounts, Kirby told Lee about an unpublished character on which he had collaborated with Joe Simon in the 1950s, in which an orphaned boy living with an old couple finds a magic ring that granted him superhuman powers. Lee and Kirby "immediately sat down for a story conference", Theakston writes, and Lee afterward directed Kirby to flesh out the character and draw some pages. Steve Ditko would be the inker. When Kirby showed Lee the first six pages, Lee recalled, "I "hated" the way he was doing it! Not that he did it badly—it just wasn't the character I wanted; it was too heroic". Lee turned to Ditko, who developed a visual style Lee found satisfactory. Ditko recalled:
Although the interior artwork was by Ditko alone, Lee rejected Ditko's cover art and commissioned Kirby to pencil a cover that Ditko inked. As Lee explained in 2010, "I think I had Jack sketch out a cover for it because I always had a lot of confidence in Jack's covers."
In an early recollection of the character's creation, Ditko described his and Lee's contributions in a mail interview with Gary Martin published in "Comic Fan" #2 (Summer 1965): "Stan Lee thought the name up. I did costume, web gimmick on wrist & spider signal." At the time, Ditko shared a Manhattan studio with noted fetish artist Eric Stanton, an art-school classmate who, in a 1988 interview with Theakston, recalled that although his contribution to Spider-Man was "almost nil", he and Ditko had "worked on storyboards together and I added a few ideas. But the whole thing was created by Steve on his own... I think I added the business about the webs coming out of his hands."
Kirby disputed Lee's version of the story and claimed Lee had minimal involvement in the character's creation. According to Kirby, the idea for Spider-Man had originated with Kirby and Joe Simon, who in the 1950s had developed a character called the Silver Spider for the Crestwood Publications comic "Black Magic", who was subsequently not used. Simon, in his 1990 autobiography, disputed Kirby's account, asserting that "Black Magic" was not a factor, and that he (Simon) devised the name "Spider-Man" (later changed to "The Silver Spider"), while Kirby outlined the character's story and powers. Simon later elaborated that his and Kirby's character conception became the basis for Simon's Archie Comics superhero the Fly. Artist Steve Ditko stated that Lee liked the name Hawkman from DC Comics, and that "Spider-Man" was an outgrowth of that interest.
Simon concurred that Kirby had shown the original Spider-Man version to Lee, who liked the idea and assigned Kirby to draw sample pages of the new character but disliked the results—in Simon's description, "Captain America with cobwebs". Writer Mark Evanier notes that Lee's reasoning that Kirby's character was too heroic seems unlikely—Kirby still drew the covers for "Amazing Fantasy" #15 and the first issue of "The Amazing Spider-Man". Evanier also disputes Kirby's given reason that he was "too busy" to draw Spider-Man in addition to his other duties since Kirby was, said Evanier, "always busy". Neither Lee's nor Kirby's explanation explains why key story elements like the magic ring were dropped; Evanier states that the most plausible explanation for the sudden change was that Goodman, or one of his assistants, decided that Spider-Man, as drawn and envisioned by Kirby, was too similar to the Fly.
Author and Ditko scholar Blake Bell writes that it was Ditko who noted the similarities to the Fly. Ditko recalled that "Stan called Jack about the Fly", adding that "[d]ays later, Stan told me I would be penciling the story panel breakdowns from Stan's synopsis". It was at this point that the nature of the strip changed. "Out went the magic ring, adult Spider-Man and whatever legend ideas that Spider-Man story would have contained". Lee gave Ditko the premise of a teenager bitten by a spider and developing powers, a premise Ditko would expand upon to the point he became what Bell describes as "the first work for hire artist of his generation to create and control the narrative arc of his series". On the issue of the initial creation, Ditko states, "I still don't know whose idea was Spider-Man". Kirby noted in a 1971 interview that it was Ditko who "got "Spider-Man" to roll, and the thing caught on because of what he did". Lee, while claiming credit for the initial idea, has acknowledged Ditko's role, stating, "If Steve wants to be called co-creator, I think he deserves [it]". He has further commented that Ditko's costume design was key to the character's success; since the costume completely covers Spider-Man's body, people of all races could visualize themselves inside the costume and thus more easily identify with the character.
A few months after Spider-Man's introduction, publisher Goodman reviewed the sales figures for that issue and was shocked to find it was one of the nascent Marvel's highest-selling comics. A solo ongoing series followed, beginning with "The Amazing Spider-Man" #1 (cover-dated March 1963). The title eventually became Marvel's top-selling series with the character swiftly becoming a cultural icon; a 1965 "Esquire" poll of college campuses found that college students ranked Spider-Man and fellow Marvel hero the Hulk alongside Bob Dylan and Che Guevara as their favorite revolutionary icons. One interviewee selected Spider-Man because he was "beset by woes, money problems, and the question of existence. In short, he is one of us." Following Ditko's departure after issue #38 (July 1966), John Romita Sr. replaced him as penciller and would draw the series for the next several years. In 1968, Romita would also draw the character's extra-length stories in the comics magazine "The Spectacular Spider-Man", a proto-graphic novel designed to appeal to older readers. It only lasted for two issues, but it represented the first Spider-Man spin-off publication, aside from the original series' summer "Annual"s that began in 1964.
An early 1970s Spider-Man story ultimately led to the revision of the Comics Code. Previously, the Code forbade the depiction of the use of illegal drugs, even negatively. However, in 1970, the Nixon administration's Department of Health, Education, and Welfare asked Stan Lee to publish an anti-drug message in one of Marvel's top-selling titles. Lee chose the top-selling "The Amazing Spider-Man;" issues #96–98 (May–July 1971) feature a story arc depicting the negative effects of drug use. In the story, Peter Parker's friend Harry Osborn becomes addicted to pills. When Spider-Man fights the Green Goblin (Norman Osborn, Harry's father), Spider-Man defeats him by revealing Harry's drug addiction. While the story had a clear anti-drug message, the Comics Code Authority refused to issue its seal of approval. Marvel nevertheless published the three issues without the Comics Code Authority's approval or seal. The issues sold so well that the industry's self-censorship was undercut and the Code was subsequently revised.
In 1972, a second monthly ongoing series starring Spider-Man began: "Marvel Team-Up", in which Spider-Man was paired with other superheroes and supervillains. From that point on, there have generally been at least two ongoing Spider-Man series at any time. In 1976, his second solo series, "Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man" began running parallel to the main series. A third series featuring Spider-Man, "Web of Spider-Man", launched in 1985 to replace "Marvel Team-Up". The launch of a fourth monthly title in 1990, the "adjectiveless" "" (with the storyline "Torment"), written and drawn by popular artist Todd McFarlane, debuted with several different covers, all with the same interior content. The various versions combined sold over 3 million copies, an industry record at the time. Several miniseries, one-shot issues, and loosely related comics have also been published, and Spider-Man makes frequent cameos and guest appearances in other comic book series. In 1996, "The Sensational Spider-Man" was created to replace "Web of Spider-Man".
In 1998 writer-artist John Byrne revamped the origin of Spider-Man in the 13-issue limited series "" (December 1998 – October 1999), similar to Byrne's adding details and some revisions to Superman's origin in DC Comics' "The Man of Steel". At the same time, the original "The Amazing Spider-Man" was ended with issue #441 (November 1998), and "The Amazing Spider-Man" was restarted with (vol. 2) #1 (January 1999). In 2003, Marvel reintroduced the original numbering for "The Amazing Spider-Man" and what would have been (vol. 2) #59 became issue #500 (December 2003).
When the primary series "The Amazing Spider-Man" reached issue #545 (December 2007), Marvel dropped its spin-off ongoing series and instead began publishing "The Amazing Spider-Man" three times monthly, beginning with #546–548 (all January 2008). The three times-monthly scheduling of "The Amazing Spider-Man" lasted until November 2010, when the comic book was increased from 22 pages to 30 pages each issue and published only twice a month, beginning with #648–649 (both November 2010). The following year, Marvel launched "Avenging Spider-Man" as the first spin-off ongoing series in addition to the still-twice monthly "The Amazing Spider-Man" since the previous ones were canceled at the end of 2007. The "Amazing" series temporarily ended with issue #700 in December 2012, and was replaced by "The Superior Spider-Man", which had Doctor Octopus serve as the new Spider-Man, his mind having taken over Peter Parker's body. "Superior" was an enormous commercial success for Marvel, and ran for 31 issues before the real Peter Parker returned in a newly relaunched "The Amazing Spider-Man" #1 in April 2014.
Following the 2015 "Secret Wars" crossover event, a number of Spider-Man-related titles were either relaunched or created as part of the "All-New, All-Different Marvel" event. Among them, "The Amazing Spider-Man" was relaunched as well and primarily focuses on Peter Parker continuing to run Parker Industries, and becoming a successful businessman who is operating worldwide.
In Forest Hills, Queens, New York, Midtown High School student Peter Benjamin Parker is a science-whiz orphan living with his Uncle Ben and Aunt May. As depicted in "Amazing Fantasy" #15 (August 1962), he is bitten by a radioactive spider (erroneously classified as an insect in the panel) at a science exhibit and "acquires the agility and proportionate strength of an arachnid". Along with heightened athletic abilities, Parker gains the ability to adhere to walls and ceilings. Through his native knack for science, he develops a gadget that lets him fire adhesive webbing of his own design through small, wrist-mounted barrels. Initially seeking to capitalize on his new abilities, Parker dons a costume and, as "Spider-Man", becomes a novelty television star. However, "He blithely ignores the chance to stop a fleeing thief, [and] his indifference ironically catches up with him when the same criminal later robs and kills his Uncle Ben." Spider-Man tracks and subdues the killer and learns, in the story's next-to-last caption, "With great power there must also come—great responsibility!"
Despite his superpowers, Parker struggles to help his widowed aunt pay the rent, is taunted by his peers—particularly football star Flash Thompson—and, as Spider-Man, engenders the editorial wrath of newspaper publisher J. Jonah Jameson. As he battles his enemies for the first time, Parker finds juggling his personal life and costumed adventures difficult. In time, Peter graduates from high school, and enrolls at Empire State University (a fictional institution evoking the real-life Columbia University and New York University), where he meets roommate and best friend Harry Osborn, and girlfriend Gwen Stacy, and Aunt May introduces him to Mary Jane Watson. As Peter deals with Harry's drug problems, and Harry's father is revealed to be Spider-Man's nemesis the Green Goblin, Peter even attempts to give up his costumed identity for a while. Gwen Stacy's father, New York City Police detective captain George Stacy is accidentally killed during a battle between Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus (issue #90, November 1970).
In issue #121 (June 1973), the Green Goblin throws Gwen Stacy from a tower of either the Brooklyn Bridge (as depicted in the art) or the George Washington Bridge (as given in the text). She dies during Spider-Man's rescue attempt; a note on the letters page of issue #125 states: "It saddens us to say that the whiplash effect she underwent when Spidey's webbing stopped her so suddenly was, in fact, what killed her." The following issue, the Goblin appears to kill himself accidentally in the ensuing battle with Spider-Man.
Working through his grief, Parker eventually develops tentative feelings toward Watson, and the two "become confidants rather than lovers". A romantic relationship eventually develops, with Parker proposing to her in issue #182 (July 1978), and being turned down an issue later. Parker went on to graduate from college in issue #185, and becomes involved with the shy Debra Whitman and the extroverted, flirtatious costumed thief Felicia Hardy, a.k.a. the Black Cat, whom he meets in issue #194 (July 1979).
From 1984 to 1988, Spider-Man wore a black costume with a white spider design on his chest. The new costume originated in the "Secret Wars" miniseries, on an alien planet where Spider-Man participates in a battle between Earth's major superheroes and supervillains. He continues wearing the costume when he returns, starting in "The Amazing Spider-Man" #252. The change to a longstanding character's design met with controversy, "with many hardcore comics fans decrying it as tantamount to sacrilege. Spider-Man's traditional red and blue costume was iconic, they argued, on par with those of his D.C. rivals Superman and Batman." The creators then revealed the costume was an alien symbiote which Spider-Man is able to reject after a difficult struggle, though the symbiote returns several times as Venom for revenge.
Parker proposes to Watson in "The Amazing Spider-Man" #290 (July 1987), and she accepts two issues later, with the wedding taking place in "The Amazing Spider-Man Annual" #21 (1987)—promoted with a real-life mock wedding using actors at Shea Stadium, with Stan Lee officiating, on June 5, 1987. David Michelinie, who scripted based on a plot by editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, said in 2007, "I didn't think they actually should [have gotten] married. ... I had actually planned another version, one that wasn't used." Parker published a book of Spider-Man photographs called "Webs". and returned to his Empire State University graduate studies in biochemistry in #310 (Dec. 1988).
In the controversial 1990s storyline the "Clone Saga", a clone of Parker, created in 1970s comics by insane scientist Miles Warren, a.k.a. the Jackal, returns to New York City upon hearing of Aunt May's health worsening. The clone had lived incognito as "Ben Reilly", but now assumes the superhero guise the Scarlet Spider and allies with Parker. To the surprise of both, new tests indicate "Reilly" is the original and "Parker" the clone. Complicating matters, Watson announces in "The Spectacular Spider-Man" #220 (Jan. 1995) that she is pregnant with Parker's baby. Later, however, a resurrected Green Goblin (Norman Osborn) has Watson poisoned, causing premature labor and the death of her and Parker's unborn daughter. The Green Goblin had switched the results of the clone test in an attempt to destroy Parker's life by making him believe himself to be the clone. Reilly is killed while saving Parker, in "Peter Parker: Spider-Man" #75 (Dec. 1996), and his body immediately crumbles into dust, confirming Reilly was the clone.
In issue #97 (Nov. 1998) of the second series titled "Peter Parker: Spider-Man", Parker learns his Aunt May was kidnapped by Norman Osborn and her apparent death in "The Amazing Spider-Man" #400 (April 1995) had been a hoax. Shortly afterward, in "The Amazing Spider-Man" (vol. 2) #13 (#454, Jan. 2000), Watson is apparently killed in an airplane explosion. She turns up alive and well in (vol. 2) #28 (#469, April 2001), but she and Peter become separated in the following issue.
"Babylon 5" creator J. Michael Straczynski began writing "The Amazing Spider-Man", illustrated by John Romita Jr., beginning with (vol. 2) #30 (#471, June 2001). Two issues later, Parker, now employed as a teacher at his old high school, meets the enigmatic Ezekiel, who possesses similar spider powers and suggests that Parker having gained such abilities might not have been a fluke—that Parker has a connection to a totemic spider spirit. In (vol. 2) #37 (#478, Jan. 2002), May discovers her nephew Parker is Spider-Man, leading to a new openness in their relationship. Parker and Watson reconcile in (vol. 2) #50 (#491, April 2003), and in #512 (Nov. 2004)—the original issue numbering having returned with #500—Parker learns his late girlfriend Gwen Stacy had had two children with Norman Osborn.
He joins the superhero team the Avengers in "New Avengers" #1-2. After their respective homes are destroyed by a deranged, superpowered former high-school classmate, Parker, Watson, and May move into Stark Tower, and Parker begins working as Tony Stark's assistant while again freelancing for "The Daily Bugle" and continuing his teaching. In the 12-part 2005 story arc "", Parker undergoes a transformation that evolves his powers. In the comic "Civil War" #2 (June 2006), part of the company-wide crossover arc of that title, the U.S. government's Superhuman Registration Act leads Spider-Man to reveal his true identity publicly. A growing unease about the Registration Act prompts him to escape with May and Watson and join the anti-registration underground.
In issue #537 (Dec. 2006), May is critically wounded by a sniper and enters into a coma. Parker, desperate to save her, exhausts all possibilities and makes a pact with the demon-lord Mephisto, who saves May's life in exchange for Parker and Watson agreeing to have their marriage and all memory of it disappear. In this changed reality, Spider-Man's identity is secret once again, and in #545 (Jan. 2008), Watson returns and is cold toward him.
That controversial storyline, "One More Day", rolled back much of the fictional continuity at the behest of editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, who said, "Peter being single is an intrinsic part of the very foundation of the world of Spider-Man". It caused unusual public friction between Quesada and writer Straczynski, who "told Joe that I was going to take my name off the last two issues of the [story] arc", but was talked out of doing so. At issue with Straczynski's climax to the arc, Quesada said, was
In this new continuity, designed to have very limited repercussions throughout the remainder of the Marvel Universe, Parker returns to work at the "Daily Bugle", which has been renamed "The DB" under a new publisher. He soon switches to the alternative press paper "The Front Line". J. Jonah Jameson becomes the Mayor of New York City in issue #591 (June 2008). Jameson's estranged father, J. Jonah Jameson, Sr., marries May in issue #600 (Sept. 2009).
After Osborn's fall and the Registration Act's abolition following the Siege of Asgard, MJ invited Peter over so the two of them could gain closure over the marriage that did not happen and the breakup. Later, a massive war ensued between Doctor Octopus and Spider-Man to get Lily Hollister's and Norman Osborn's son, in which Spider-Man found that the child was actually Harry's, who later leaves town to raise him. Peter then finally starts a relationship with police officer Carlie Cooper.
Spider-Man's heroic career rose up again, he joined the reassembled Avengers and also stayed with the New Avengers, who were outlaws no more. He learned that Michele was moving and he could not maintain his apartment anymore. However, Peter found a dream job, thanks to Jameson's wife Marla Madison, as a compensation for Jameson firing him, as a scientist at Horizon Labs where he had access to much more technology and resources while also giving him freedom to come and go as he liked so long as he delivered good results. Spider-Man assisted the Avengers in defeating Doctor Octopus' army of Macro-Octobots. He then faced a new Hobgoblin and the Kingpin, but days later, he lamentably lost Marla in a fight between Alistair Alphonso Smythe's Spider-Slayers.
After helping Anti-Venom (Eddie Brock) to reveal Mr. Negative's identity (as well as learning that Aunt May was moving to Boston with Jay) Spider-Man found himself with a new problem: the Jackal returned and gave the majority of New Yorkers spider-powers.
The Queen was revealed as the true mastermind: she wanted to turn the whole human race into spiders. Mr. Fantastic created a cure using the Anti-Venom Symbiote, and after battling Peter (under the Jackal's influence), Peter's clone Kaine was accidentally cured from his mutations, turning him into a perfect clone.
While he and the Avengers battled the Spider-Queen in Central Park, Kaine killed her and Peter managed to get the cure to every citizen via Doctor Octopus's (mentally controlled) Octobots. He met with Jay and May while they were leaving for Boston. Peter then ran into Kaine, who told Peter that he was leaving New York and with Peter's stealth suit, since Madame Web had told Kaine he may need it. Also, because of revealing he had spider-powers during the Spider-Island event, Peter's psychic blind spot was weakened, letting Carlie know he was Spider-Man, which caused her to break up with him. Before giving a last cure sample to MJ, who briefly attempted to keep some spider-powers, Spider-Man met with Madame Web on the roof of Horizon Labs. She told him that he could de-power himself with the cure sample and someone else will step in to take his place. Peter refuses, saying that throwing his gift away would be the most irresponsible thing he has ever done. Madame Web warns that he is to suffer a loss. He then cures MJ and they look at the Empire State Building, lit in red and blue in his honor.
While adjusting to his new status quo, especially his position as the CEO of his very own company, Peter learned of the existence of Cindy Moon, a second person to have been bit by the same radioactive spider which granted Peter his powers. Spider-Man tracked her down and freed her from a bunker owned by the late Ezekiel Simms, where Cindy had spent over a decade in voluntary confinement shortly after getting her powers, in order to avoid drawing Morlun's attention. While Peter notified Cindy that Morlun was dead, he had in fact survived his last encounter against Spider-Man.
Not long after rescuing Cindy, who went on to adopt her own superheroic identity as Silk, Spider-Man was approached by a contingent of spider-people from all over the Multiverse that banded together to fight the Inheritors, a group of psychic vampires and the family of Morlun that had begun to hunt down the spider-totems of other realities. During a mission to gather more recruits in A.D. 2099, the Spider-Army stumbled upon another party of spider-people led by Otto Octavius, or rather a version of him from the recent past who had been plucked out of time.
The combined Spider-Army were forced to retreat to Earth-3145 after their safe zone in Earth-13 had been compromised by the Inheritors, namely Morlun, his brother Jennix, and his father and leader of the Inheritors, Solus. With the help of Spider-Woman, who had previously infiltrated the Inheritor's base on Earth-001, the Spider-Army learned of a prophecy in which the Inheritors planned to sacrifice three key spiders: the Other, the Bride, and the Scion. These individuals were Kaine Parker, Cindy Moon, and Benjamin "Benjy" Parker of Earth-982, respectively.
With the help of even more recruits from other realities and even a deviant Inheritor named Karn, the Spider-Army, including a version of Gwen Stacy with spider-powers known as "Spider-Gwen", launched one final attack on the Inheritors' home of Earth-001. The ritual was stopped, and the Inheritors were exiled with no means to return home to the radioactive wasteland that had become the world of Earth-3145. With the Inheritors neutralized, most of the spider-totems were sent home. Spider-Man and a few others stayed on Earth-001 for a little while longer to defeat the time-displaced Octavius, who had gone rogue after learning that Parker would eventually regain control of his body. Octavius was defeated and returned to the time he had come from, losing memory of the recent events in the process. With no more problems to confront, Spider-Man and the rest of the spiders were sent back home.
Unbeknownst to anyone, Otto Octavius had created a digital back-up of his own mind, which ended up inhabiting the metallic body of Parker Industries' robotic assistant, the Living Brain. Over the course of the following months, Octavius routinely hacked into the systems of the market share to manipulate its numbers in favor of Parker Industries. As a consequence of this, the company managed to expand into a global conglomerate with numerous bases in different countries, with the company's trademark invention being a mobile device called the Webware. This change in Peter's life impacted his superheroic alter ego as well. Spider-Man officially became the mascot of Parker Industries under the guise of being Peter's bodyguard.
One of Peter's biggest challenges during his tenure as a billionaire C.E.O was the emergence of a mysterious biotech company, operating out of the Transamerica Pyramid, called New U. Peter discovered it was a front for the operations of the Jackal, who claimed to have found a way to bring people back from the dead using cloning technology. In an attempt to persuade Peter to put Parker Industries' resources to help his plan, the Jackal created numerous clones of his late friends and foes, including Gwen Stacy. In a turn of events, the Jackal was revealed to be Ben Reilly, who had been brought to life by the original Jackal before taking his place. The Jackal's plan eventually fell apart following the triggering of cellular decay in the clones created by New U, which led to the release of the Carrion Virus worldwide. The crisis was adverted when Spider-Man had his Webwares transmit an audio frequency in a global scale which halted the cellular degeneration, but not before most of the clones died. The Jackal, being a clone himself, was left for dead, though he secretly escaped and returned to the mantle of the Scarlet Spider.
Following Osborn's latest defeat, Peter's life was plagued with problems on both sides. As Spider-Man, now-Mayor Wilson Fisk, a.k.a the Kingpin, decided to be publicly accepting of him, while condemning all other vigilantes in order to isolate him from his superhero peers. As Peter Parker, his academic credentials were revoked after being accused of plagiarizing his doctoral dissertion from Octavius (and unable to defend himself without revealing his secret identity), resulting in his firing from the "Daily Bugle" again. On the other hand, Peter became romantically involved again with Mary Jane, and was given an opportunity to re-apply for his doctoral thesis on the recommendation of Dr. Curt Connors. For a brief time, Peter Parker and Spider-Man were split into separate beings due to an accident involving the reverse-engineered Isotope Genome Accelerator. However, the separation split Peter down the middle, so both individuals did not share Peter's sense of responsibility, resulting in a reckless and vain Spider-Man. Peter eventually managed to reverse the process, and merge his two halves back together before the side-effects could worsen and result in their death.
More recently, Spider-Man has been plagued by visions of a mysterious villain named Kindred who has seemingly been working with Mysterio. As this happened, villains the Black Ant and the Taskmaster captured animal-themed supervillains for Kraven the Hunter as part of a plan to destroy unworthy hunters. In the process, Dr. Connors' child Billy was kidnapped alongside the Black Cat and were forced to fight for their survival in New York's Central Park which was, at that time, surrounded by an energy field. Meanwhile, the Vulture brainwashed a group of fellow supervillains and led an attack against the unworthy hunters. Spider-Man was tasked with finding Kraven the Hunter, whose ultimate goal through the hunt was to anger Spider-Man and lead him to kill him, ending his curse. After Spider-Man refused and Dr. Connors saved his child, Kraven lifted the force field from Central Park, allowing Spider-Man, Connors and Billy, and the Black Cat to escape while the Avengers rounded up all the loose criminals. The "Hunted" story arc ended with Kraven donning a Spider-Man disguise, effectively becoming the Spider, and allowing his cloned son to kill him.
Sally Kempton for the "Village Voice" opined in 1965 that "Spider-Man has a terrible identity problem, a marked inferiority complex, and a fear of women. He is anti-social, castration-ridden, racked with Oedipal guilt, and accident-prone ... [a] functioning neurotic". Agonizing over his choices, always attempting to do right, he is nonetheless viewed with suspicion by the authorities, who seem unsure as to whether he is a helpful vigilante or a clever criminal.
Notes cultural historian Bradford W. Wright,
The mid-1960s stories reflected the political tensions of the time, as early 1960s Marvel stories had often dealt with the Cold War and Communism. As Wright observes,
A bite from a radioactive spider triggers mutations in Peter Parker's body, granting him superpowers. Since the original Lee-Ditko stories, Spider-Man has had the ability to cling to walls. This has been speculated to be based on a distance-dependent interaction between his body and surfaces, known as the van der Waals force, but other sources, such as the 2002 "Spider-Man" film, suggest instead that his hands and feet are lined with tiny clinging cilia in the manner of a real spider's feet. Spider-Man's other powers include significantly superhuman strength, a precognitive sixth sense famously referred to as his "spider-sense" or "spidey-sense" that alerts him to danger, perfect balance and equilibrium, as well as superhuman speed and agility. The character was originally conceived by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko as intellectually gifted, but later writers have depicted his intellect at genius level. Academically brilliant, Parker has expertise in the fields of applied science, chemistry, physics, biology, engineering, mathematics, and mechanics. With his talents, he sews his own costume to conceal his identity, and he constructs many devices that complement his powers, most notably mechanical web-shooters, to help navigate and trap his enemies along with a spider-signal as a flashlight and a warning beacon to criminals.
Spider-Man has had a large range of supporting characters introduced in the comics that are essential in the issues and storylines that star him. After his parents died, Peter Parker was raised by his loving aunt, May Parker, and his uncle and father figure, Ben Parker. After Uncle Ben is murdered by a burglar, Aunt May is virtually Peter's only family, and she and Peter are very close.
J. Jonah Jameson is the publisher of the "Daily Bugle" and is Peter Parker's boss. A harsh critic of Spider-Man, he constantly features negative articles about the superhero in his newspaper.
Despite his role as Jameson's editor and confidant, Robbie Robertson is always depicted as a supporter of both Peter Parker and Spider-Man.
Eugene "Flash" Thompson is commonly depicted as Parker's high school tormentor and bully, but in later comic issues he becomes a friend to Peter. Meanwhile, Harry Osborn, son of Norman Osborn, is most commonly recognized as Peter's best friend, but has also been depicted sometimes as his rival in the comics.
Peter Parker's romantic interests range between his first crush, fellow high-school student Liz Allan, to having his first date with Betty Brant,secretary to the "Daily Bugle" newspaper publisher J. Jonah Jameson. After his breakup with Betty Brant, Parker eventually falls in love with his college girlfriend Gwen Stacy, daughter of New York City Police Department detective captain George Stacy, both of whom are later killed by supervillain enemies of Spider-Man. Mary Jane Watson eventually became Peter's best friend and then his wife. Felicia Hardy, the Black Cat, is a reformed cat burglar who had been Spider-Man's sole superhuman girlfriend and partner at one point.
Writers and artists over the years have established a rogues gallery of supervillains to face Spider-Man, in comics and in other media. As with the hero, the majority of the villains' powers originate with scientific accidents or the misuse of scientific technology, and many have animal-themed costumes or powers. Examples are listed down below in the ordering of their original chronological appearance:
Unlike a lot of well-known rivalries in comics book depictions, Spider-Man is cited to have more than one archenemy and it can be debated or disputed as to which one is worse:
Within the Marvel Universe there exists a multiverse with many variations of Spider-Men. An early character included in the 1980s is the fictional anthropomorphic funny animal parody of Spider-Man in pig form named Spider-Ham (Peter Porker). Many imprints of Spider-Men were created, like the futuristic version of Spider-Man in Marvel 2099 named Miguel O'Hara. In the MC2 imprint, Peter marries Mary Jane and has a daughter named Mayday Parker, who carries on Spider-Man's legacy and Marvel Noir has a 1930s version of Peter Parker. Other themed versions exist within the early 2000s, such as a Marvel Mangaverse version and an Indian version from "" named Pavitr Prabhakar.
"Ultimate Spider-Man" was a popular modern retelling of Peter Parker. The version of Parker would later be depicted as being killed off and replaced by an Afro-Latino Spider-Man named Miles Morales.
The storyline "Spider-Verse" brought back many alternate takes on Spider-Man and introduced many newly inspired ones, such as an alternate world where Gwen Stacy gets bitten by a radioactive spider instead, along with a British-themed version named Spider-UK called Billy Braddock from the Captain Britain Corps.
In "The Creation of Spider-Man", comic book writer-editor and historian Paul Kupperberg calls the character's superpowers "nothing too original"; what was original was that outside his secret identity, he was a "nerdy high school student". Going against typical superhero fare, Spider-Man included "heavy doses of soap-opera and elements of melodrama". Kupperberg feels that Lee and Ditko had created something new in the world of comics: "the flawed superhero with everyday problems". This idea spawned a "comics revolution". The insecurity and anxieties in Marvel's early 1960s comic books, such as "The Amazing Spider-Man", "The Incredible Hulk", "The Fantastic Four", and "The X-Men" ushered in a new type of superhero, very different from the certain and all-powerful superheroes before them, and changed the public's perception of them. Spider-Man has become one of the most recognizable fictional characters in the world, and has been used to sell toys, games, cereal, candy, soap, and many other products.
Spider-Man has become Marvel's flagship character and has often been used as the company mascot. When Marvel became the first comic book company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1991, "The Wall Street Journal" announced "Spider-Man is coming to Wall Street"; the event was in turn promoted with an actor in a Spider-Man costume accompanying Stan Lee to the Stock Exchange. Since 1962, hundreds of millions of comics featuring the character have been sold around the world. Spider-Man is the world's most profitable superhero. In 2014, global retail sales of licensed products related to Spider-Man reached approximately $1.3 billion. Comparatively, this amount exceeds the global licensing revenue of Batman, Superman, and the Avengers combined.
Spider-Man is also one of the highest-grossing franchise titles being the highest-grossing American comic book superhero worldwide.
Spider-Man joined the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from 1987 to 1998 as one of the balloon floats, designed by John Romita Sr., one of the character's signature artists. A new, different Spider-Man balloon float also appeared from 2009 to 2014.
When Marvel wanted to issue a story dealing with the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the company chose the December 2001 issue of "The Amazing Spider-Man".
In 2006, Spider-Man garnered major media coverage with the revelation of the character's secret identity, an event detailed in a full-page story in the "New York Post" before the issue containing the story was even released.
In 2008, Marvel announced plans to release a series of educational comics the following year in partnership with the United Nations, depicting Spider-Man alongside the UN Peacekeeping Forces to highlight UN peacekeeping missions. A "BusinessWeek" article listed Spider-Man as one of the top 10 most intelligent fictional characters in American comics.
Rapper Eminem has cited Spider-Man as one of his favorite comic book superheroes.
In 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States decided "Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC", a case concerning royalties on a patent for an imitation web-shooter. The opinion for the Court, by Justice Elena Kagan, included several Spider-Man references, concluding with the statement that "with great power there must also come—great responsibility".
Spider-Man has become a subject of scientific inquiry. In 1987, researchers at Loyola University conducted a study into the utility of Spider-Man comics for informing children and parents about issues relating to child abuse. In 2019, an Israeli study from Ariel University and Bar-Ilan University suggested that exposure to short clips from the Spider-Man movies could help to reduce an individual's arachnophobia.
Spider-Man was declared the number 1 superhero on Bravo's Ultimate Super Heroes, Vixens, and Villains TV series in 2005. "Empire" magazine placed him as the fifth-greatest comic book character of all time. "Wizard" magazine placed Spider-Man as the third-greatest comic book character on their website. In 2011, Spider-Man placed third on IGN's Top 100 Comic Book Heroes of All Time, behind DC Comics characters Superman and Batman. and sixth in their 2012 list of "The Top 50 Avengers". In 2014, IGN identified Spider-Man the greatest Marvel Comics character of all time. A 2015 poll at Comic Book Resources named Spider-Man the greatest Marvel character of all time. IGN described him as the common everyman that represents many normal people, but also noting his uniqueness compared to many top-tiered superheroes with his many depicted flaws as a superhero. IGN noted that, despite being one of the most tragic superheroes of all time, he is "one of the most fun and snarky superheroes in existence." "Empire" noted and praised that, despite the many tragedies that Spider-Man faces, he retains his sense of humor at all times with his witty wisecracks. The magazine website appraised the depiction of his "iconic" superhero poses describing it as "a top artist's dream".
George Marston of "Newsarama" placed Spider-Man's origin story as the greatest origin story of all time opining that "Spider-Man's origin combines all of the most classic aspects of pathos, tragedy and scientific wonder into the perfect blend for a superhero origin."
Real-life people who have been compared to Spider-Man for their climbing feats include:
From the character's inception, Spider-Man stories have won numerous awards, including:
Spider-Man has appeared in comics, cartoons, films, video games, coloring books, novels, records, children's books, and theme park rides. On television, he first starred in the ABC animated series "Spider-Man" (1967–1970); "Spidey Super Stories" (1974–1977) on PBS; and the CBS live action series "The Amazing Spider-Man" (1978–1979), starring Nicholas Hammond. Other animated series featuring the superhero include the syndicated "Spider-Man" (1981–1982), "Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends" (1981–1983), Fox Kids' "Spider-Man" (1994–1998), "Spider-Man Unlimited" (1999–2000), "" (2003), "The Spectacular Spider-Man" (2008–2009), "Ultimate Spider-Man" (2012–2017)and "Spider-Man"(2017-present).
A tokusatsu series featuring Spider-Man was produced by Toei and aired in Japan. It is commonly referred to by its Japanese pronunciation "Supaidā-Man". Spider-Man also appeared in other print forms besides the comics, including novels, children's books, and the daily newspaper comic strip "The Amazing Spider-Man", which debuted in January 1977, with the earliest installments written by Stan Lee and drawn by John Romita Sr. Spider-Man has been adapted to other media including games, toys, collectibles, and miscellaneous memorabilia, and has appeared as the main character in numerous computer and video games on over 15 gaming platforms.
Spider-Man was featured in a trilogy of live-action films directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire as the titular superhero. The first "Spider-Man" film of the trilogy was released on May 3, 2002; followed by "Spider-Man 2" (2004) and "Spider-Man 3" (2007). A third sequel was originally scheduled to be released in 2011; however, Sony later decided to reboot the franchise with a new director and cast. The reboot, titled "The Amazing Spider-Man", was released on July 3, 2012; directed by Marc Webb and starring Andrew Garfield as the new Spider-Man. It was followed by "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" (2014). In 2015, Sony and Disney made a deal for Spider-Man to appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Tom Holland made his debut as Spider-Man in the MCU film "" (2016), before later starring in his standalone film "" (2017); directed by Jon Watts. Holland reprised his role as Spider-Man in "" (2018), "" (2019), and "" (2019). Jake Johnson voiced an alternate universe version of Spider-Man in the animated film "". Chris Pine also voiced another version of Peter Parker in the film.
Spider-Man will once again be seen in the MCU, as Sony and Disney have re-united for the production of the Spider-universe films.
A Broadway musical, "", began previews on November 14, 2010, at the Foxwoods Theatre on Broadway, with the official opening night on June 14, 2011. The music and lyrics were written by Bono and The Edge of the rock group U2, with a book by Julie Taymor, Glen Berger, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. "Turn Off the Dark" is currently the most expensive musical in Broadway history, costing an estimated $70 million. In addition, the show's unusually high running costs are reported to have been about $1.2 million per week. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27936 |
History of Stockholm
The history of Stockholm, capital of Sweden, for many centuries coincided with the development of what is today known as Gamla stan, the Stockholm Old Town. Stockholm's "raison d'être" always was to be the Swedish capital and by far the largest city in the country.
The name 'Stockholm' easily splits into two distinct parts – Stock-holm, "Log-islet", but as no serious explanation to the name has been produced, various myths and legends have attempted to fill in the gap. According to a 17th-century myth the population at the viking settlement Birka decided to found a new settlement, and to determine its location had a log bound with gold drifting in Lake Mälaren. It landed on present day Riddarholmen where today the Tower of Birger Jarl stands, a building, as a consequence, still often erroneously mentioned as the oldest building in Stockholm. The most established explanation for the name are logs driven into the strait passing north of today's old town which dendrochronological examinations in the late 1970s dated to around 1000. While no solid proofs exists, it is often assumed the Three Crown Castle, which preceded the present Stockholm Palace, originated from these wooden structures, and that the medieval city quickly expanded around it in the mid 13th century. In a wider historical context, Stockholm can be thought of as the capital of the Lake Mälaren Region, and as such can trace its origin back to at least two much older cities: Birka (c. 790–975) and Sigtuna, which still exists but dominated the region c. 1000–1240 — a capital which has simply been relocated at a number of occasions.
The name Stockholm first appears in historical records in letters written by Birger Jarl and King Valdemar dated 1252. However, the two letters give no information about the appearance of the city and events during the following decades remain diffuse. While the absence of a perpendicular city plan in medieval Stockholm seems to indicate a spontaneous growth, it is known German merchants invited by Birger jarl played an important role in the foundation of the city. Under any circumstance, during the end of the 13th century, Stockholm quickly grew to become not only the largest city in Sweden, but also the "de facto" Swedish political centre and royal residence. Thus, from its foundation, Stockholm has been the largest and most important Swedish city, inseparable from and dependent on the Swedish government. However, as late as the 16th century reigns of Kings Eric XIV and John III, whose Swedish government often travelled with them elsewhere (see below), the city was still not what could be called a national capital in modern terms.
During the Kalmar Union (1397–1523), controlling Stockholm was crucial to anyone aspiring to control the kingdom, and the city was consequently repeatedly besieged by various Swedish-Danish factions. In 1471, Sten Sture the Elder defeated Christian I of Denmark at the Battle of Brunkeberg only to lose the city to Hans of Denmark in 1497. Sten Sture managed to seize power again in 1501 which resulted in a Danish blockade lasting 1502–1509 and eventually a short peace. Hans' son Christian II of Denmark finally conquered it in 1520 and had many leading nobles and burghers of Stockholm beheaded in the so-called Stockholm Bloodbath. When King Gustav Vasa finally besieged and conquered the city three years later, an event which ended the Kalmar Union and the Swedish Middle Ages, he noted every second building in the city was abandoned.
By the end of the 15th century, the population in Stockholm can be estimated to 5,000–7,000 people, which made it a relatively small town compared to several other contemporary European cities. On the other hand, it was far larger than any other city in Sweden. Many of its inhabitants were Germans and Finns, with the former forming a political and economic elite in the city.
During the Middle Ages, export was administered mostly by German merchants living by the squares Kornhamnstorg ("Grain Harbour Square") and Järntorget ("Iron Square") on the southern corner of the city. Regional peasantry supplied the city with food and raw materials, while the craftsmen in the city produced handicrafts, most of whom lived by the central square Stortorget or by the oldest two streets in Stockholm, the names of which still reflects their trade: Köpmangatan ("Merchant Street") and Skomakargatan ("Shoemaker Street") in the central part of the city. Other groups lived by the eastern or western thoroughfares, Västerlånggatan and Österlånggatan.
After Gustav Vasa's siege of Stockholm, he restored the privileges of the city which was beneficiary to the burghers of the city. The king maintained his control over the city by controlling the elections of aldermen and magistrates. By the mid-century, the numbers of officials increased in order to make the management of the city more professional and to ensure the state-controlled trade. Stockholm thus lost much of the independence it had had during the Middle Ages and became politically and financially bound to the state. During the reign of his sons (1561–1611), the city council remained escorted by a royal representative and both magistrates and aldermen were appointed by the king.
Gustav Vasa invited the clergyman Olaus Petri (1493–1552) to become the city secretary of Stockholm. With the two side-by-side, the new ideas of the Protestant Reformation could be quickly implemented, and sermons in the church where held in Swedish starting in 1525 and Latin abolished in 1530. A consequence of this development was a need for separate churches for the numerous German and Finnish-speaking citizens and during the 1530 the still-existent German and Finnish parishes were created. The king was, however, not favourably disposed to older chapels and churches in the city, and he ordered churches and monasteries on the ridges surrounding the city to be demolished, together with the numerous charitable institutions.
Because Stockholm had a city wall, it was exempted from the tax paid by other Swedish cities. During the reign of Gustav Vasa the city's fortifications were reinforced and in the Stockholm Archipelago, Vaxholm was created to guard the inlet from the Baltic. While the medieval structure of Stockholm remained mostly unaltered during the 16th century, the city's social and economic importance grew to the extent that no king could permit the city to determine its own faith – the most important export item being bar iron and the most important destination Lübeck. During the reign of Vasa's sons, trade led many Swedes to settle in the city, but the trade and the capital needed to control it was largely in the hands of the king and German merchants from Lübeck and Danzig. Throughout the era, Sweden could hardly claim the level of government and bureaucracy requisite to a capital in the modern sense, but Stockholm was the kingdom's strongest bastion and the king's main residence. As Eric XIV's pretensions were on par with those of Renaissance princes on the continent, he afforded himself the largest court his finances could possibly support, and the royal castle was thus the biggest employer in the city.
Around 1560–80, most of the citizens, some 8.000 people, still lived on Stadsholmen. This central island was at this time densely settled and the city was now expanding on the ridges surrounding the city. Stockholm had no private palaces at this time and the only larger buildings were the castle, the church, and the former Greyfriars monastery on Riddarholmen. The surrounding ridges, unable to boast a single timber framed building, were mostly used for activities that either required a lot of space, produced odours, or could cause fire. Even though some burghers had secondary residences outside the city, the population living on the ridges, perhaps a quarter of the city's population, were mostly poor, including the royal personnel occupying the ridges north of the city.
Following the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), Sweden was determined never to repeat the embarrassment experienced following the death of Gustavus II Adolphus (1594–1632) when Stockholm, still medieval in character, caused hesitation on whether to invite foreign statesmen for fear the lamentable appearance might undermine the nation's authority. Therefore, Stockholm saw many ambitious city plans during the era, of which those for the ridges surrounding today's old town still stands. In accordance to the mercantilism of the era, trade and industry was concentrated to cities where it was easier to control, and Stockholm was of central importance. In a letter in 1636, Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna (1583–1654) wrote that evolving the Swedish capital was a prerequisite for the nation's power and strength and that this would bring all the other cities on their feet. Increased state intervention on city level was not unique to Sweden at this time, but it was probably more prominent in the case of Stockholm than anywhere else in Europe. To this end, the government of the city was reformed and the former volunteered magistrates gradually replaced by professionals with a theoretical education.
The process of reshaping Stockholm was initiated by a major fire in 1625 which destroyed the south-western part of today's old town. As a result, two new boulevard-like streets were created — Stora Nygatan and Lilla Nygatan — and along the eastern waterfront the medieval wall was replaced by a row of prestigious palaces — Skeppsbron.
For the ridges surrounding the city – Norrmalm, Östermalm, Kungsholmen, and Södermalm – new city plans were worked out to create wide and straight artery streets. The project was implemented so thoroughly, in several parts of the city no traces exist of the previous medieval structures. Many of the streets from this era are still extant, and some of those proposed have been realised with some minor modifications.
The population grew from less than 10,000 in the early 17th century to more than 50,000 in the mid-1670s.
The city's income rose from 18,595 daler in 1635–36 to 81,480 daler in 1644. In 1642, approximately 60 per cent of that sum was spent on construction works.
Other Swedish cities were deprived of their export privileges by the so-called "Bothnian Trade Coercion" ("Bottniska handelstvånget"). Most Swedish cities were granted a trade monopoly over a limited surrounding area, but for Stockholm most of the lands surrounding the Gulf of Bothnia formed part of the city's trade territory. However, the state-granted monopoly was not the only thing that favoured Stockholm at that time. It was one of the best natural harbours of the era and throughout the 17th century, countless foreign visitors marvelled at the sight of large ships "with 60 or 70 cannons" moored along the eastern quay next to the royal castle.
In contrast with other Swedish cities, all of which were self-supporting, Stockholm was completely dependent of the transit passing through the city—it had, for example, about the same number of domestic animals as Uppsala, which only had ten per cent the population of the capital. All goods brought into Stockholm had to pass through one of six customs stations, and approximately three-fourths of them were exported from the city. Half of the remaining items, mostly fishery products, were delivered from the Baltic, and corn came from the Lake Mälaren region. However, during the latter half of the century, the rapidly growing capital could not be supported by the Lake Mälaren region alone and therefore became dependent of corn imported from the provinces.
Sweden had played a passive role in international trade during the 16th century; German merchants and ships managed the export of Swedish primary products such as osmond iron, raw copper, and butter. This export was largely regarded as a means of securing the import of items not available in Sweden, such as salt, wine, and luxury goods demanded at the court. With the introduction of a mercantile doctrine around 1620, trade became a keystone to governmental income and the Swedish economy subsequently focused on export, not of raw materials, but of refined products. Over the entire period (c. 1590–1685), Stockholm's share of the national economy remained stable at around two-thirds, but during the first half of the 17th century, export grew fourfold and import fivefold. Most goods were delivered to the Netherlands in the mid-17th century and to the UK in the early 18th century.
In the 17th-century, the textile industry was developed with the establishments of the textile manufactures "Paulinska manufakturerna" (active 1673–1776) and the "Barnängens manufaktur" (active 1691–1826), which became two of the greatest sources of employments in the Swedish capital during the entire 18th-century.
Following the Greater Wrath and the Treaty of Nystad in 1722, Sweden's role as a major European power was over, and the decades that followed brought even more disasters. Black death and the sufferings caused by the Great Northern Wars made Stockholm the capital of a shrinking nation, despair which would deepen even further when Sweden lost Finland in 1809. Notwithstanding Sweden's partial recover of spirit with the union with Norway in 1814, during the period 1750–1850, Stockholm was a stagnating city, with a dwindling population and widespread unemployment, marked by ill-health, poverty, alcoholism, and rampant mortality. The Mälaren region lost in influence to the benefit of south-western Sweden, and as population and welfare dwindled in the capital, there was a leveling of social classes. Wars and alcohol abuse resulted in a surplus of women during the period, with widows outnumbering widowers six to one in 1850. Stockholm was marked by an absence of children, caused by the number of unmarried people and high infant mortality. Average length of life was limited to 44, but those who survived infancy were likely to get about as old as people do today, except those born to a life of hard labour.
A stratification into three social groups can be made for this era :
Women were associated with their husband's status. However, as craftsmen saw their status sink with the introduction of industrialism, the proletarian class grew during the period. There also was an economic segregation in the city, with the present old town and the lower parts of Norrmalm being the wealthiest (more than 150% above average); the suburbs (today part of central Stockholm) were poor (50% below average).
During the 18th century the Mercantile model introduced the previous century was further developed, with domestic production promoted by loans and bounties and import limited to raw materials not available in Sweden by tolls. The era saw the rise of the so-called "Skeppsbro Nobility" ("Skeppsbroadeln"), the wealthy wholesalers at Skeppsbron who made a fortune by delivering bar iron to the international market and by controlling the chartered companies. The most successful of them was the Swedish East India Company (1731–1813) which had its headquarters in Gothenburg, but was of significant importance to Stockholm because of the shipbuilding yards, the trade houses, and the exotic products imported by the company. Furthermore, before these ships left Stockholm some 100–150 men per ship were recruited, most of them in the city, and as a single trip to China would take 1–2 years the company had a huge impact on Stockholm during this era.
During the 18th century, several devastating fires destroyed entire neighbourhoods which resulted in building codes being introduced. They improved fire safety by prohibiting wooden buildings and further embellished the city by implementing the 17th century city plans. In the old town, the new royal palace was gradually completed and the exterior of the Storkyrkan church was adopted to it. The skilled artists and craftsmen working for the royal court formed an elite which considerably raised the artistic standards in the capital.
During the enlightened absolute monarchy of Gustav III Stockholm managed to maintain its role as the political centre of Sweden and developed culturally.
The king had a great interest for the city's development. He created the Gustav Adolf square and had the Royal Opera inaugurated there in 1782 — in accordance to the original intentions of Tessin the Younger for a monumental square north of the palace. The façade of Arvfurstens palats on the opposite side is identical to the now replaced façade of the opera.
The neoclassical bridge Norrbro, designed by Erik Palmstedt (1741–1807) and was completed in ten years. It was a very ambitious project that caused the centre of the city to gradually move out of the medieval city.
The colourful and often burlesque descriptions of Stockholm by troubadour and composer Carl Michael Bellman are still popular.
The period ended as King Gustav IV Adolf was deposed in 1809 in a coup d'état. The loss of Finland that same year meant Stockholm ceased to be the geographical centre of the Swedish kingdom.
For Stockholm, the early 19th century meant the only larger-scale projects to be realised were those initiated by the military which favoured a more stiff classicism, the local Swedish version of the Empire style (in Sweden named "Karl Johansstil" after King Charles XIV John). The architects dominating the era, Fredrik Blom and Carl Christoffer Gjörwell, both were commissioned by the military. Due to the general stagnation, few other constructions were realised — in average ten smaller residential buildings per year — additions which the ambitious city plans of the 17th century could easily handle.
During the later half of the 18th century real income dwindled to reach an all-time low in 1810 when it corresponded to roughly half that of the 1730s; public officials being those worst affected. Norrköping became the greatest manufacturing city of Sweden and Gothenburg developed into the key trading port because of its location on the North Sea.
Most people still lived within the present Old Town, with a growth along the eastern shore. Population also grew on the surrounding ridges, more so in the wealthy district Norrmalm and less so in the poor district Södermalm. However, many of the ridges surrounding the city were slums mostly rural in character without water and sewage and frequently ravaged by cholera.
In the second half of the century, Stockholm regained its leading economic role. New industries emerged, and Stockholm transformed into an important trade and service centre, as well as a key gateway point within Sweden.
While steam engines were introduced in Stockholm in 1806 with the Eldkvarn mill, it took until the mid-19th century for industrialization to take off. Two factories, Ludvigsberg and Bolinder, constructed in the 1840s were followed by many others, and the economic development that succeeded resulted in some 800 new buildings being constructed 1850–70 — many of which were located in the Klara district and subsequently demolished in the Redevelopment of Norrmalm 1950–70.
During the 1850s and 1860s, gas works, sewage, and running water was introduced. Many streets were paved, including Skeppsbron and Strandvägen, and the railway brought Stockholm closer to continental Europe — an event which additionally lead to the creation of the first suburb Liljeholmen where railway workshops were located. As the railway was extended further north, Stockholm Central Station was inaugurated in 1871. The first horse-pulled trams were introduced in 1877. Long before the railway, steam engines became common on boats which resulted in many summertime residences being built around Stockholm. But the booming urban development was also notable in central Stockholm where several prominent Neo-Renaissance buildings were built, including the Academy of Music and Södra Teatern.
In 1866, a commission led by Albert Lindhagen produced a city plan for the ridges ("malmarna") designed to offer citizens light, fresh air and access to Swedish nature by mean of parks and plantations. To this goal, he proposed a system of esplanades culminating in Sveavägen, a 2 km long and 70 m wide boulevard inspired by Champs Elysées. 1877–80 new city plans were finally passed for central Stockholm, which made the city well-prepared for the major expansion that followed. During the 1880s more than 2.000 buildings were added on the ridges and the population grew from 168.000 to 245.000. At the end of the century, less than 40 per cent of the residents were born in Stockholm.
While this demand for housing was mostly dealt with by private entrepreneurs who built on pure speculation, street width and building heights were strictly regulated by the new city plans which ensured the city that evolved was given a uniform design. A trend initiated by the Bünsow House at Strandvägen, the 1880s saw many monumental brick buildings evolve, including Gamla Riksarkivet and the Norstedt Building on Riddarholmen. Before the end of the decade most new buildings were equipped with electricity and telephones were increasingly common. During the 1890, the Neo-Renaissance plaster architecture was replaced by structures in brick and natural stone, largely inspired by French Renaissance architecture. Around what still was factories outside the customs of Stockholm, shacks whose sanitary conditions defied all description evolved. Before the end of the century, however, these were transformed into municipal societies, which facilitated regulation of health and construction, and by the turn of the century the expansion had continued far beyond the city limits, with villa suburbs initiated by individuals adding a mix of purely speculative structures and more qualitative ambitions. The new century saw the introduction of Art Nouveau with the Central Post Office Building by Boberg (1898–1904) and Neo-Baroque with the Riksdag (1894–1906). Throughout the 1910s, trams were electrified and cars were rolling on the streets of Stockholm.
During this period, Stockholm further developed as a cultural and educational centre. In the 19th century, a number of scientific institutes opened in Stockholm, for example the Karolinska Institutet. The General Art and Industrial Exposition, an international exhibition of World's Fair status, was held on the island of Djurgården in 1897.
In the late 20th century, Stockholm became a modern, technologically advanced and ethnically diverse city. Throughout the century, many industries shifted away from work-intensive activities into more high-technology and service-industry knowledge-based areas.
The city continued to expand and new districts were created, some with high proportions of immigrants. Meanwhile, the inner city (Norrmalm) went through a criticised as well as admired wave of modernisation in the post-war period, the Redevelopment of Norrmalm, securing the city's geographical center as the political and business center for the future.
In 1923 the Stockholm municipal government moved to a new building, the Stockholm City Hall. The Stockholm International Exhibition was held in 1930. In 1967 the city of Stockholm was integrated into Stockholm County. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27939 |
Culture in Stockholm
Apart from being a large city with an active cultural life, Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, houses many national cultural institutions. There are two UNESCO World Heritage sites in the Stockholm County area: the Royal Palace Drottningholm (within Ekerö Municipality) and the Skogskyrkogården (The Woodland Cemetery).
Stockholm was the 1998 European City of Culture.
Authors connected to Stockholm include the poet and songwriter Carl Michael Bellman (1740–1795), novelist and dramatist August Strindberg (1849–1912), and novelist Hjalmar Söderberg (1869–1941), all of whom made Stockholm part of their works. Other authors with notable heritage in Stockholm were the Nobel Prize laureate Eyvind Johnson (1900–1976) and the popular poet and composer Evert Taube (1890–1976). The novelist Per Anders Fogelström (1917–1998) wrote a popular series of historical novels depicting life in Stockholm from the 19th to the mid-20th century.
The city's oldest section is Gamla stan (Old Town), located on the original small islands of the city's earliest settlements and still featuring the medieval street layout. Some notable buildings of Gamla Stan are the large German Church ("Tyska kyrkan") and several mansions and palaces: the "Riddarhuset" (the House of Nobles), the Bonde Palace, the Tessin Palace and the Oxenstierna Palace. The oldest building in Stockholm is the Riddarholmskyrkan from the late 13th century. After a fire in 1697 when the original medieval castle was destroyed, Stockholm Palace was erected in a baroque style. Storkyrkan Cathedral, the episcopal seat of the Bishop of Stockholm, stands next to the castle. It was founded in the 13th century but is clad in a baroque exterior dating to the 18th century.
As early as the 15th century, the city had expanded outside of its original borders. Some pre-industrial, small-scale buildings from this era can still be found in Södermalm. During the 19th century and the age of industrialization Stockholm grew rapidly, with plans and architecture inspired by the large cities of the continent such as Berlin and Vienna. Notable works of this time period include public buildings such as the Royal Swedish Opera and private developments such as the luxury housing developments on Strandvägen.
In the 20th century, a nationalistic push spurred a new architectural style inspired by medieval and renaissance ancestry as well as influences of the Jugend / Art Nouveau style. A key landmark of Stockholm, the Stockholm City Hall, was erected 1911–1923 by architect Ragnar Östberg. Other notable works of these times are the Stockholm Public Library and the Forest Cemetery, Skogskyrkogården
Modernism characterized the style of the Stockholm International Exhibition (1930) and the development of the city as it grew in that decade. New residential areas sprang up such as the development on Gärdet while industrial development added to the growth, such as the KF manufacturing industries on Kvarnholmen located in the Nacka Municipality. In the 1950s, suburban development entered a new phase with the introduction of the Stockholm metro. The modernist developments of Vällingby and Farsta where internationally praised. In the 1960s this suburban development continued but with the aesthetic of the times, the industrialised and mass-produced blocks of flats received a large amount of criticism.
At the same time that this suburban development was happening the most central areas of the inner city were being redesigned. Sergels Torg, with its five high-rise office towers was created in the 1960s, followed by the total clearance of large areas to make room for new development projects. The most notable buildings from this period is the ensemble of the House of Culture, City Theatre and National Bank building, designed by architect Peter Celsing.
Stockholm boasts some 70 museums, making the city host one of the largest numbers of museums in the world. Collectively, these museums are visited by over 9 million people per year.
One of the most renowned museums is the Nationalmuseum, with the largest national collection of art: 16,000 paintings and 30,000 objects of art handicraft. The collection dates back to the days of Gustav Vasa in the 16th century, and has since been expanded with works by artists such as Rembrandt, and Antoine Watteau, as well as constituting a main part of Sweden's art heritage, manifested in the works of Alexander Roslin, Anders Zorn, Johan Tobias Sergel, Carl Larsson, Carl Fredrik Hill and Ernst Josephson.
The Museum of Modern Art, or Moderna Museet, is Sweden's national museum of modern art. It has works by famous modern artists such as Picasso and Salvador Dalí.
Other notable museums in Stockholm include:
Distinguished among Stockholm's many theatres are the Royal Dramatic Theatre ("Dramaten"), one of Europe's most renowned theatres, and the Royal Swedish Opera, inaugurated in 1773.
Other notable theatres are the Stockholm City Theatre, the Peoples Opera ("Folkoperan"), the Modern Theatre of Dance ("Moderna dansteatern"), the China Theatre, the Göta Lejon Theatre, the Mosebacke Theatre, and the Oscar Theatre.
The stages of Stockholm number in their fifties at the least, and a wide variety of plays are constantly on, from classical to newly written.
Stockholm is basically the media center of Sweden. It has four nationwide daily newspapers, is also the central location of the publicly funded radio (SR) and television (SVT); in addition, all other major television channels have their base in Stockholm (TV4 TV3, TV6 and Kanal 5). All major magazines are also located to Stockholm, as are the largest literature publisher, the Bonnier group.
The most popular spectator sports are football and ice hockey. The three most popular football teams are AIK, Hammarby IF and Djurgårdens IF.
Historically, the city was the host of the 1912 Summer Olympics. From those days stem the Stockholms Olympiastadion which has since hosted numerous sports events, notably football and athletics. Stadion is the previous home arena of AIK and is the current home arena of Djurgårdens IF. For Sweden men's national ice hockey team, the home arena is Ericsson Globe, one of the largest spherical building in the world, but it is also hosting concerts and other events.
Stockholm also hosted all but one of the Nordic Games, a winter multi-sport event that predated the Winter Olympics. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27940 |
Stephen R. Lawhead
Stephen R. Lawhead (born 2 July 1950) is a UK–based American writer known for his works of fantasy, science fiction, and historical fiction, particularly Celtic historical fiction. He has written over 28 novels and numerous children's and non-fiction books.
He was born to Robert Eugene Lawhead and Lois Rowena Bissell Lawhead at Good Samaritan Hospital, Kearney, Nebraska. In 1968, Lawhead graduated from Kearney High and entered Kearney State College as an Art major. In 1969, while at Kearney State College, he wrote a weekly humour column for the college newspaper and was a frequent contributor of poetry and short stories to "The Shore Anthology" and "The Antler". He paid his way through college largely through playing lead guitar in a college rock band named Mother Rush. Lawhead met Alice Slaikeu in 1971, and married her in 1972. He graduated from Kearney State College in 1973 with BA in Art and then went on to enroll in Northern Baptist Theological Seminary. During this time Lawhead also enrolled in a number of writing courses at nearby Wheaton College. His professional writing career began with five busy years as an editor and staff writer for Campus Life magazine. In 1980, Lawhead became the manager of the successful Christian rock act DeGarmo and Key and formed his own record company, Ariel Records. The demise of Ariel Records in 1981 prompted the beginning of Lawhead's fiction-writing career.
In 1981, Lawhead began to author novels, initially fantasy and science fiction, completing his first trilogy, the "Dragon King trilogy". In 1986, he moved to Oxford, England to do research for The Pendragon Cycle, a reinterpretation of the legend of King Arthur in a Celtic setting combined with elements of Atlantis. Heavily rooted in the original Celtic source material which gave rise to the later and more familiar versions of the Arthurian legend, the series has received critical acclaim for its creative retelling of the Arthur legend and historical credibility.
The first book in the series, "Taliesin", won the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association's Gold Medallion Award for Fiction in 1988. Lawhead's research for The Pendragon Cycle sparked an interest in Celtic history and culture, especially Celtic Christianity, topics which have featured prominently in his work ever since.
"The Song of Albion" trilogy prompted a return to England (Lawhead having left in 1987). This was a series of books set between the Celtic Otherworld and present-day Britain. In the 1990s, he published "Byzantium", a work of pure historical fiction, followed by "The Celtic Crusades" trilogy, set at the time of the Crusades, and then "", a stand-alone related to the "Pendragon Cycle".
In 2003, Lawhead published the novel "", a fictionalized account of the early years of Saint Patrick. In 2006, he published "Hood", the first book in the "King Raven Trilogy" – a retelling of the Robin Hood legend, transferred to Wales. In 2008, the second book in the trilogy, "Scarlet", won a Christy Award in the category of Visionary Fiction.
In 2003, Lawhead received an honorary doctorate from the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
Lawhead and his wife reside in Oxford, UK. He has two sons, Ross Lawhead, and Drake Lawhead.
Many of his books are in series following a common theme:
Dragon King trilogy:
Empyrion Saga:
The Pendragon Cycle:
The Song of Albion:
The Celtic Crusades:
King Raven Trilogy:
Hero (With Ross Lawhead):
Bright Empires:
Eirlandia:
Stand-alone novels:
The Brown Ears Books:
The Howard Books
The Riverbank Series
Lawhead has also contributed essays or chapters to several books. His essay "", which describes the impact J.R.R. Tolkien's writings had on him, is featured in the following titles:
Lawhead has contributed to one fictional compilation, writing a chapter in the serial mystery novel "Carnage at Christhaven" (1989 – ed. William Griffin). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27946 |
Servius Tullius
Servius Tullius was the legendary sixth king of Rome, and the second of its Etruscan dynasty. He reigned from 575 to 535 BC. Roman and Greek sources describe his servile origins and later marriage to a daughter of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, Rome's first Etruscan king, who was assassinated in 579 BC. Servius is said to have been the first Roman king to accede without election by the Senate, having gained the throne by popular support; and the first to be elected by the Senate alone, without reference to the people.
Several traditions describe Servius' father as divine. Livy depicts Servius' mother as a captured Latin princess enslaved by the Romans; her child is chosen as Rome's future king after a ring of fire is seen around his head. The Emperor Claudius discounted such origins and described him as an originally Etruscan mercenary, named Mastarna, who fought for Caelius Vibenna.
Servius was a popular king, and one of Rome's most significant benefactors. He had military successes against Veii and the Etruscans, and expanded the city to include the Quirinal, Viminal and Esquiline hills. He is traditionally credited with the institution of the Compitalia festivals, the building of temples to Fortuna and Diana and, less plausibly, the invention of Rome's first true coinage.
Despite the opposition of Rome's patricians, he expanded the Roman franchise and improved the lot and fortune of Rome's lowest classes of citizens and non-citizens. According to Livy, he reigned for 44 years, until murdered by his daughter Tullia and son-in-law Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. In consequence of this "tragic crime" and his hubristic arrogance as king, Tarquinius was eventually removed. This cleared the way for the abolition of Rome's monarchy and the founding of the Roman Republic, whose groundwork had already been laid by Servius' reforms.
Before its establishment as a Republic, Rome was ruled by kings (Latin "reges", singular "rex"). In Roman tradition, Rome's founder Romulus was the first. Servius Tullius was the sixth, and his successor Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud) was the last. The nature of Roman kingship is unclear; most Roman kings were elected by the senate, as to a lifetime magistracy, but some claimed succession through dynastic or divine right. Some were native Romans, others were foreign. Later Romans had a complex ideological relationship with this distant past. In Republican mores and institutions kingship was abhorrent; and remained so, in name at least, during the Empire. On the one hand, Romulus was held to have brought Rome into being more-or-less at a stroke, so complete and purely Roman in its essentials that any acceptable change or reform thereafter must be clothed as restoration. On the other, Romans of the Republic and Empire saw each king as contributing in some distinctive and novel way to the city's fabric and territories, or its social, military, religious, legal or political institutions. Servius Tullius has been described as Rome's "second founder", "the most complex and enigmatic" of all its kings, and a kind of "proto-Republican magistrate".
The oldest surviving source for the overall political developments of the Roman kingdom and Republic is Cicero's "De republica" ("On the State"), written in 44 BC. The main literary sources for Servius' life and achievements are the Roman historian Livy (59 BC – AD 17), whose Ab urbe condita was generally accepted by the Romans as the standard, most authoritative account; Livy's near contemporary Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Plutarch (c. 46 – 120 AD); their own sources included works by Quintus Fabius Pictor, Diocles of Peparethus, Quintus Ennius and Cato the Elder. Livy's sources probably included at least some official state records, he excluded what seemed implausible or contradictory traditions, and arranged his material within an overarching chronology. Dionysius and Plutarch offer various alternatives not found in Livy, and Livy's own pupil, the etruscologist, historian and emperor Claudius, offered yet another, based on Etruscan tradition.
Most Roman sources name Servius' mother as Ocrisia, a young noblewoman taken at the Roman siege of Corniculum and brought to Rome, either pregnant by her husband, who was killed at the siege: or as a virgin. She was given to Tanaquil, wife of king Tarquinius, and though slave, was treated with the respect due her former status. In one variant, she became wife to a noble client of Tarquinius. In others, she served the domestic rites of the royal hearth as a Vestal Virgin, and on one such occasion, having damped the hearth flames with a sacrificial offering, she was penetrated by a disembodied phallus that rose from the hearth. According to Tanaquil, this was a divine manifestation, either of the household Lar or Vulcan himself. Thus Servius was divinely fathered and already destined for greatness, despite his mother's servile status; for the time being, Tanaquil and Ocrisia kept this a secret.
Servius' birth to a slave of the royal household made him part of Tarquin's extended "familia". Ancient sources infer him as protégé, rather than adopted son, as he married Tarquinius' and Tanaquil's daughter, Tarquinia (named by some sources as Gegania). All sources agree that before his accession, either in his early childhood or later, members of the royal household witnessed a nimbus of fire about his head while he slept, a sign of divine favour, and a great portent. He proved a loyal, responsible son-in-law. When given governmental and military responsibilities, he excelled in both.
In Livy's account, Tarquinius Priscus had been elected king on the death of the previous king, Ancus Marcius, whose two sons were too young to inherit or offer themselves for election. When Servius' popularity and his marriage to Tarquinius' daughter made him a likely successor to the throne, these sons attempted to seize the throne for themselves. They hired two assassins, who attacked and severely wounded Tarquinius. Tanaquil immediately ordered the palace to be shut, and publicly announced from a palace window that Tarquinius had appointed Servius as regent; meanwhile, Tarquinius died of his wounds. When his death became public knowledge, the senate elected Servius as king, and the sons of Ancus fled to exile in Suessa Pometia. Livy describes this as the first occasion that the people of Rome were not involved in the election of the king. In Plutarch, Servius reluctantly consented to the kingship at the death-bed insistence of Tanaquil.
Early in his reign, Servius warred against Veii and the Etruscans. He is said to have shown valour in the campaign, and to have routed a great army of the enemy. His success helped him to cement his position at Rome. According to the "Fasti Triumphales", Servius celebrated three triumphs over the Etruscans, including on 25 November 571 BC and 25 May 567 BC (the date of the third triumph is not legible on the "Fasti").
Most of the reforms credited to Servius extended voting rights to certain groups — in particular to Rome's citizen-commoners (known in the Republican era as plebs), minor landholders were disqualified from voting by ancestry, status or ethnicity. The same reforms simultaneously defined the fiscal and military obligations of all Roman citizens. As a whole, the so-called Servian reforms probably represent a long-drawn, complex and piecemeal process of populist policy and reform, extending from Servius' predecessors, Ancus Marcius and Tarquinius Priscus, to his successor Tarquinius Superbus, and into the Middle and Late Republic. Rome's military and territorial expansion and consequent changes in its population would have made franchise regulation and reform an ongoing necessity, and their wholesale attribution to Servius "cannot be taken at face value".
Until the Servian reforms, the passing of laws and judgment was the prerogative of the "comitia curiata" (curiate assembly), made up from thirty curiae; Roman sources describe ten curiae for each of three aristocratic tribes or clans, each supposedly based on one of Rome's central hills, and claiming patrician status by virtue of their descent from Rome's founding families. These tribes comprised approximately 200 "gentes" (clans), each of which contributed one senator ("elder") to the Senate. The senate advised the king, devised laws in his name, and was held to represent the entire "populus Romanus" (Roman people); but it could only debate and discuss. Its decisions had no force unless approved by the "comitia curiata". By the time of Servius, if not long before, the tribes of the "comitia" were a minority of the population, ruling a multitude who had no effective voice in their own government.
Rome's far more populous citizen-commoners could participate in this assembly in limited fashion, and perhaps offer their opinions on decisions but only the "comitia curiata" could vote. A minority thus exercised power and control over the majority. Roman tradition held that Servius formed a comitia centuriata of commoners to displace the "comitia curiata" as Rome's central legislative body. This required his development of the first Roman census, making Servius the first Roman censor. For the purposes of the census, citizens assembled by tribe in the Campus Martius to register their social rank, household, property and income. This established an individual's tax obligations, his ability to muster arms for military service when required to do so, and his assignment to a particular voting bloc.
The institution of the census and the "comitia centuriata" are speculated as Servius' attempt to erode the civil and military power of the Roman aristocracy, and seek the direct support of his newly enfranchised citizenry in civil matters; if necessary, under arms. The "comitia curiata" continued to function through the Regal and Republican eras, but the Servian reform had reduced its powers to those of a largely symbolic "upper house"; its noble members were expected to do no more than ratify decisions of the "comitia centuriata".
The census grouped Rome's male citizen population in classes, according to status, wealth and age. Each class was subdivided into groups called "centuriae" (centuries), nominally of 100 men (Latin "centum" = 100) but in practice of variable number, further divided as "seniores" (men aged 46 – 60, of a suitable age to serve as "home guards" or city police) and "iuniores" (men aged 17 – 45, to serve as front-line troops when required). Adult male citizens were obliged, when called upon, to fulfill military service according to their means, which was supposedly assessed in archaic "asses". A citizen's wealth and class would, therefore, have defined their position in the civil hierarchies, and up to a point, within the military; but despite its apparent military character, and its possible origins as the mustering of the citizenry-at-arms, the system would have primarily served to determine the voting qualifications and wealth of individual citizens for taxation purposes, and the weight of their vote — wars were occasional but taxation was a constant necessity — and the comitia centuriata met whenever required to do so, in peace or war. Though each century had voting rights, the wealthiest had the most centuries, and voted first. Those beneath them were convened only in the event of deadlock or indecision; the lowest class was unlikely to vote at all.
The Roman army's "centuria" system and its order of battle are thought to be based on the civilian classifications established by the census. The military selection process picked men from civilian "centuriae" and slipped them into military ones. Their function depended on their age, experience, and the equipment they could afford. The wealthiest class of "iuniores" (aged 17 – 45) were armed as hoplites, heavy infantry with helmet, greaves, breastplate, shields ("clipeus"), and spears ("hastae"). Each battle line in the phalanx formation was composed of a single class. Military specialists, such as trumpeters, were chosen from the 5th class. The highest officers were of aristocratic origin until the early Republic, when the first plebeian tribunes were elected by the plebeians from their own number. Cornell suggests that this centuriate system made the equites, who "consisted mainly, if not exclusively, of patricians" but voted after infantry of the first class, subordinate to the relatively low-status infantry.
The Servian reforms increased the number of tribes and expanded the city, which was protected by a new rampart, moat and wall. The enclosed area was divided into four administrative "regiones" (regions, or quarters); the Suburana, Esquilana, Collina and Palatina. Servius himself is said to have taken a new residence, on the Esquiline. The situation beyond the walls is unclear, but thereafter, membership of a Roman voting-tribe would have depended on residence rather than kinship, ancestry and inheritance. This would have brought significant numbers of urban and rural "plebs" into active political life; and a significant number of these would have been allocated to centuries of the first class, and therefore likely to vote. The city of Rome's division into "quarters" remained in use until 7 BC, when Augustus divided the city into 14 new "regiones". In modern Rome, an ancient portion of surviving wall is attributed to Servius, the remainder supposedly being rebuilt after the sack of Rome in 390/387 BC by the Gauls.
Some Roman historians believed Servius Tullius responsible for Rome's earliest true, minted coinage, replacing an earlier and less convenient currency of raw bullion. This is unlikely, though he may have introduced the official stamping of raw currency. Money played a minimal role in the Roman economy, which was almost entirely agrarian at this time. Debt and debt bondage, however, were probably rife. The form of such debts had little resemblance to those of cash-debtors, compelled to pay interest to money-lenders on an advance of capital. Rather, wealthy landowners would make an "advance loan" of seed, foodstuffs or other essentials to tenants, clients and smallholders, in return for a promise of labour services. The terms of such "loans" compelled defaulters to sell themselves, or their dependants, to their creditor; or, if smallholders, to surrender their farm. Wealthy aristocratic landholders thus acquired additional farms and service for very little outlay. Dionysius claims that Servius paid such debts "from his own purse", and forbade voluntary and compulsory debt bondage. In reality, these practices persisted well into the Republican era. Livy describes the distribution of land grants to poor and landless citizens by Servius and others as the political pursuit of popular support from citizens of little merit or worth.
Servius is credited with the construction of Diana's temple on the Aventine Hill, to mark the foundation of the so-called Latin League; His servile birth-mythos, his populist leanings and his reorganisation of the "vici" appear to justify the Roman belief that he founded or reformed the Compitalia festivals (held to celebrate the Lares that watched over each local community), or allowed for the first time their attendance and service by non-citizens and slaves. His personal reputation and achievements may have led to his historical association with temples and shrines to Fortuna; some sources suggest that the two were connected during Servius' lifetime, via some form of "sacred marriage". Plutarch explicitly identifies the "Porta Fenestella" ("window gate") of the Royal palace as the window from which Tanaquil announced Servius' regency to the people; the goddess Fortuna was said to have passed through the same window, to become Servius' consort.
In Livy's history, Servius Tullius had two daughters, Tullia the Elder and Tullia the Younger. He arranged their marriage to the two sons of his predecessor, Lucius Tarquinius and Arruns Tarquinius. The younger Tullia and Lucius procured the murders of their respective siblings, married, and conspired to remove Servius Tullius. Tullia encouraged Lucius Tarquinius to secretly persuade or bribe senators, and Tarquinius went to the senate-house with a group of armed men. Then he summoned the senators and gave a speech criticising Servius: for being a slave born of a slave; for failing to be elected by the Senate and the people during an interregnum, as had been the tradition for the election of kings of Rome; for being gifted the throne by a woman; for favouring the lower classes of Rome over the wealthy; for taking the land of the upper classes for distribution to the poor; and for instituting the census, which exposed the wealthy upper classes to popular envy.
When Servius Tullius arrived at the senate-house to defend his position, Tarquinius threw him down the steps and Servius was murdered in the street by Tarquin's men. Soon after, Tullia drove her chariot over her father's body. For Livy, Tarquinius' impious refusal to permit his father-in-law's burial earned him the sobriquet "Superbus" (“arrogant” or “proud”), and Servius' death is a "tragic crime" ("tragicum scelus"), a dark episode in Rome's history and just cause for the abolition of the monarchy. Servius thus becomes the last of Rome's benevolent kings; the place of this outrage – which Livy seems to suggest as a crossroads – is known thereafter as "Vicus Sceleratus" (street of shame, infamy or crime). His murder is parricide, the worst of all crimes. This morally justifies Tarquin's eventual expulsion and the abolition of Rome's aberrant, "un-Roman" monarchy. Livy's Republic is partly founded on the achievements and death of Rome's last benevolent king.
Claims of divine ancestry and divine favour were often attached to charismatic individuals who rose "as if from nowhere" to become dynasts, tyrants and hero-founders in the ancient Mediterranean world. Yet all these legends offer the father as divine, the mother – virgin or not – as princess of a ruling house, never as slave. The disembodied phallus and its impregnation of a virgin slave of Royal birth are unique to Servius. Livy and Dionysius ignore or reject the tales of Servius' supernatural virgin birth; though his parents came from a conquered people, both are of noble stock. His ancestry is an accident of fate, and his character and virtues are entirely Roman. He acts on behalf of the Roman people, not for personal gain; these Roman virtues are likely to find favour with the gods, and win the rewards of good fortune.
The details of Servius' servile birth, miraculous conception and links with divine Fortuna were doubtless embellished after his own time, but the core may have been propagated during his reign. His unconstitutional and seemingly reluctant accession, and his direct appeal to the Roman masses over the heads of the senate may have been interpreted as signs of tyranny. Under these circumstances, an extraordinary personal charisma must have been central to his success. When Servius expanded Rome's influence and boundaries, and reorganised its citizenship and armies, his "new Rome" was still centered on the "Comitium", the "Casa Romuli" or "hut" of Romulus. Servius became a second Romulus, a benefactor to his people, part human, part divine; but his slave origins remain without parallel, and make him all the more remarkable: for Cornell, this is "the most important single fact about him". The story of his servile birth evidently circulated far beyond Rome; Mithridates VI of Pontus sneered that Rome had made kings of "servos vernasque Tuscorum" (Etruscan slaves and domestic servants).
Claudius' story of Servius as an Etruscan named "Macstarna" (title for "dictator" in Etruscan) was published as an incidental scholarly comment within the "Oratio Claudii Caesaris" of the Lugdunum Tablet. There is some support for this Etruscan version of Servius, in wall paintings at the François Tomb in Etruscan Vulci. They were commissioned some time in the second half of the 4th century BC. One panel shows heroic Etruscans putting foreign captives to the sword. The victims include an individual named Gneve Tarchunies Rumach, interpreted as a Roman named Gnaeus Tarquinius, although known Roman history records no Tarquinius of that praenomen. The victors include Aule and Caile Vipinas – known to the Romans as the Vibenna brothers – and their ally Macstrna [Macstarna], who seems instrumental in winning the day. Claudius was certain that Macstarna was simply another name for Servius Tullius, who started his career as an Etruscan ally of the Vibenna brothers and helped them settle Rome's Caelian Hill. Claudius' account evidently drew on sources unavailable to his fellow-historians, or rejected by them. There may have been two different, Servius-like figures, or two different traditions about the same figure. "Macstarna" may have been the name of a once celebrated Etruscan hero, or more speculatively, an Etruscan rendering of Roman "magister" (magistrate). Claudius' "Etruscan Servius" seems less a monarch than a freelance Roman "magister", an "archaic condottiere" who placed himself and his own band of armed clients at Vibenna's service, and may later have seized, rather than settled Rome's Caelian Hill. If the Etruscan Macstarna was identical with the Roman Servius, the latter may have been less monarch than some kind of proto-Republican magistrate given permanent office, perhaps a "magister populi", a war-leader, or in Republican parlance, a "dictator".
Servius' political reforms and those of his successor Tarquinius Superbus undermined the bases of aristocratic power and transferred them in part to commoners. Rome's ordinary citizens became a distinct force within Roman politics, entitled to participate in government and bear arms on its behalf, despite the opposition and resentment of Rome's patricians and senate. Tarquinius was ousted by a conspiracy of patricians, not plebeians. Once in existence, the "comitia centuriata" could not be unmade, or its powers reduced: as Republican Rome's highest court of appeal, it had the capacity to overturn court decisions, and the Republican senate was constitutionally obliged to seek its approval. In time, the "comitia centuriata" legitimized the rise to power of a plebeian nobility, and plebeian consuls.
Servius' connections to the Lar and his reform of the vici connect him directly to the founding of Compitalia, instituted to publicly and piously honour his divine parentage – assuming the Lar as his father – to extend his domestic rites into the broader community, to mark his maternal identification with the lower ranks of Roman society and to assert his regal sponsorship and guardianship of their rights. Some time before the Augustan Compitalia reforms of 7 BC, Dionysius of Halicarnassus reports Servius' fathering by a Lar and his founding of Compitalia as ancient Roman traditions. In Servius, Augustus found ready association with a popular benefactor and refounder of Rome, whose reluctance to adopt kingship distanced him from its taints. Augustus brought the Compitalia and its essentially plebeian festivals, customs and political factions under his patronage and if need be, his censorial powers. He did not, however, trace his lineage and his re-founding to Servius – who even with part-divine ancestry still had servile connections – but with Romulus, patrician founding hero, ancestor of the divine Julius Caesar, descendant of Venus and Mars. Plutarch admires the Servian reforms for their imposition of good order in government, the military and public morality, and Servius himself as the wisest, most fortunate and best of all Rome's kings. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27951 |
Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony (February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906) was an American social reformer and women's rights activist who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, she collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. In 1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.
In 1851, she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who became her lifelong friend and co-worker in social reform activities, primarily in the field of women's rights. In 1852, they founded the New York Women's State Temperance Society after Anthony was prevented from speaking at a temperance conference because she was female. In 1863, they founded the Women's Loyal National League, which conducted the largest petition drive in United States history up to that time, collecting nearly 400,000 signatures in support of the abolition of slavery. In 1866, they initiated the American Equal Rights Association, which campaigned for equal rights for both women and African Americans. In 1868, they began publishing a women's rights newspaper called "The Revolution". In 1869, they founded the National Woman Suffrage Association as part of a split in the women's movement. In 1890, the split was formally healed when their organization merged with the rival American Woman Suffrage Association to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association, with Anthony as its key force. In 1876, Anthony and Stanton began working with Matilda Joslyn Gage on what eventually grew into the six-volume "History of Woman Suffrage". The interests of Anthony and Stanton diverged somewhat in later years, but the two remained close friends.
In 1872, Anthony was arrested for voting in her hometown of Rochester, New York, and convicted in a widely publicized trial. Although she refused to pay the fine, the authorities declined to take further action. In 1878, Anthony and Stanton arranged for Congress to be presented with an amendment giving women the right to vote. Introduced by Sen. Aaron A. Sargent (R-CA), it later became known colloquially as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. It was eventually ratified as the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.
Anthony traveled extensively in support of women's suffrage, giving as many as 75 to 100 speeches per year and working on many state campaigns. She worked internationally for women's rights, playing a key role in creating the International Council of Women, which is still active. She also helped to bring about the World's Congress of Representative Women at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.
When she first began campaigning for women's rights, Anthony was harshly ridiculed and accused of trying to destroy the institution of marriage. Public perception of her changed radically during her lifetime, however. Her 80th birthday was celebrated in the White House at the invitation of President William McKinley. She became the first female citizen to be depicted on U.S. coinage when her portrait appeared on the 1979 dollar coin.
Susan Anthony was born on February 15, 1820, to Daniel Anthony and Lucy Read in Adams, Massachusetts, the second-oldest of seven children. She was named for her mother's mother Susanah, and for her father's sister Susan. In her youth, she and her sisters responded to a "great craze for middle initials" by adding middle initials to their own names. Anthony adopted "B." as her middle initial because her namesake aunt Susan had married a man named Brownell. Anthony never used the name Brownell herself, and did not like it.
Her family shared a passion for social reform. Her brothers Daniel and Merritt moved to Kansas to support the anti-slavery movement there. Merritt fought with John Brown against pro-slavery forces during the Bleeding Kansas crisis. Daniel eventually owned a newspaper and became mayor of Leavenworth. Anthony's sister Mary, with whom she shared a home in later years, became a public school principal in Rochester, and a woman's rights activist.
Anthony's father was an abolitionist and a temperance advocate. A Quaker, he had a difficult relationship with his traditionalist congregation, which rebuked him for marrying a non-Quaker and then disowned him for allowing a dance school to operate in his home. He continued to attend Quaker meetings anyway and became even more radical in his beliefs. Anthony's mother was a Methodist and helped raise their children in a more tolerant version of her husband's religious tradition. Their father encouraged them all, girls as well as boys, to be self-supporting, teaching them business principles and giving them responsibilities at an early age.
When Anthony was six years old, her family moved to Battenville, New York, where her father managed a large cotton mill. Previously he had operated his own small cotton factory.
When she was seventeen, Anthony was sent to a Quaker boarding school in Philadelphia, where she unhappily endured its severe atmosphere. She was forced to end her studies after one term because her family was financially ruined during an economic downturn known as the Panic of 1837. They were forced to sell everything they had at an auction, but they were rescued by her maternal uncle, who bought most of their belongings and restored them to the family. To assist her family financially, Anthony left home to teach at a Quaker boarding school.
In 1845, the family moved to a farm on the outskirts of Rochester, New York, purchased partly with the inheritance of Anthony's mother. There they associated with a group of Quaker social reformers who had left their congregation because of the restrictions it placed on reform activities, and who in 1848 formed a new organization called the Congregational Friends. The Anthony farmstead soon became the Sunday afternoon gathering place for local activists, including Frederick Douglass, a former slave and a prominent abolitionist who became Anthony's lifelong friend.
As several others in that group were already doing, the Anthony family began to attend services at the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, which was associated with social reform. The Rochester Women's Rights Convention of 1848 was held at that church in 1848, inspired by the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights convention, which was held two weeks earlier in a nearby town. Anthony's parents and her sister Mary attended the Rochester convention and signed the Declaration of Sentiments that had been first adopted by the Seneca Falls Convention.
Anthony did not take part in either of these conventions because she had moved to Canajoharie in 1846 to be headmistress of the female department of the Canajoharie Academy. Away from Quaker influences for the first time in her life, at the age of 26 she began to replace her plain clothing with more stylish dresses, and she quit using "thee" and other forms of speech traditionally used by Quakers. She was interested in social reform, and she was distressed at being paid much less than men with similar jobs, but she was amused at her father's enthusiasm over the Rochester women's rights convention. She later explained, "I wasn't ready to vote, didn't want to vote, but I did want equal pay for equal work."
When the Canajoharie Academy closed in 1849, Anthony took over the operation of the family farm in Rochester so her father could devote more time to his insurance business. She worked at this task for a couple of years but found herself increasingly drawn to reform activity. With her parents' support, she was soon fully engaged in reform work. For the rest of her life, she lived almost entirely on fees she earned as a speaker.
Anthony embarked on her career of social reform with energy and determination. Schooling herself in reform issues, she found herself drawn to the more radical ideas of people like William Lloyd Garrison, George Thompson and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Soon she was wearing the controversial Bloomer dress, consisting of pantaloons worn under a knee-length dress. Although she felt it was more sensible than the traditional heavy dresses that dragged the ground, she reluctantly quit wearing it after a year because it gave her opponents the opportunity to focus on her apparel rather than her ideas.
In 1851, Anthony was introduced to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who had been one of the organizers of the Seneca Falls Convention and had introduced the controversial resolution in support of women's suffrage. Anthony and Stanton were introduced by Amelia Bloomer, a feminist and mutual acquaintance who had not signed the Declaration of Sentiments and subsequent resolutions despite her attendance at the Seneca Falls Convention. Anthony and Stanton soon became close friends and co-workers, forming a relationship that was pivotal for them and for the women's movement as a whole. After the Stantons moved from Seneca Falls to New York City in 1861, a room was set aside for Anthony in every house they lived in. One of Stanton's biographers estimated that over her lifetime, Stanton spent more time with Anthony than with any other adult, including her own husband.
The two women had complementary skills. Anthony excelled at organizing, while Stanton had an aptitude for intellectual matters and writing. Anthony was dissatisfied with her own writing ability and wrote relatively little for publication. When historians illustrate her thoughts with direct quotes, they usually take them from her speeches, letters, and diary entries.
Because Stanton was homebound with seven children while Anthony was unmarried and free to travel, Anthony assisted Stanton by supervising her children while Stanton wrote. One of Anthony's biographers said, "Susan became one of the family and was almost another mother to Mrs. Stanton's children." A biography of Stanton says that during the early years of their relationship, "Stanton provided the ideas, rhetoric, and strategy; Anthony delivered the speeches, circulated petitions, and rented the halls. Anthony prodded and Stanton produced."
Stanton's husband said, "Susan stirred the puddings, Elizabeth stirred up Susan, and then Susan stirs up the world!"
Stanton herself said, "I forged the thunderbolts, she fired them."
By 1854, Anthony and Stanton "had perfected a collaboration that made the New York State movement the most sophisticated in the country", according to Ann D. Gordon, a professor of women's history.
Temperance was very much a women's rights issue at that time because of laws that gave husbands complete control of the family and its finances. A woman with a drunken husband had little legal recourse even if his alcoholism left the family destitute and he was abusive to her and their children. If she obtained a divorce, which was difficult to do, he could easily end up with guardianship of the children.
While teaching in Canajoharie, Anthony joined the Daughters of Temperance and in 1849 gave her first public speech at one of its meetings.
In 1852, she was elected as a delegate to the state temperance convention, but the chairman stopped her when she tried to speak, saying that women delegates were there only to listen and learn. Anthony and some other women immediately walked out and announced a meeting of their own, which created a committee to organize a women's state convention. Largely organized by Anthony, the convention of 500 women met in Rochester in April and created the Women's State Temperance Society, with Stanton as president and Anthony as state agent.
Anthony and her co-workers collected 28,000 signatures on a petition for a law to prohibit the sale of alcohol in New York State. She organized a hearing on that law before the New York legislature, the first that had been initiated in that state by a group of women. At the organization's convention the following year, however, conservative members attacked Stanton's advocacy of the right of a wife of an alcoholic to obtain a divorce. Stanton was voted out as president, whereupon she and Anthony resigned from the organization.
In 1853, Anthony attended the World's Temperance Convention in New York City, which bogged down for three chaotic days in a dispute about whether women would be allowed to speak there.
Years later, Anthony observed, "No advanced step taken by women has been so bitterly contested as that of speaking in public. For nothing which they have attempted, not even to secure the suffrage, have they been so abused, condemned and antagonized." After this period, Anthony focused her energy on abolitionist and women's rights activities.
When Anthony tried to speak at the New York State Teachers' Association meeting in 1853, her attempt sparked a half-hour debate among the men about whether it was proper for women to speak in public. Finally allowed to continue, Anthony said, "Do you not see that so long as society says a woman is incompetent to be a lawyer, minister, or doctor, but has ample ability to be a teacher, that every man of you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledges that he has no more brains than a woman."
At the 1857 teacher's convention, she introduced a resolution calling for the admission of black people to public schools and colleges, but it was rejected as "not a proper subject for discussion." When she introduced another resolution calling for males and females to be educated together at all levels, including colleges, it was fiercely opposed and decisively rejected. One opponent called the idea "a vast social evil... the first step in the school which seeks to abolish marriage, and behind this picture I see a monster of social deformity."
Anthony continued to speak at state teachers' conventions for several years, insisting that women teachers should receive equal pay with men and serve as officers and committee members within the organization.
Anthony's work for the women's rights movement began at a time when that movement was already gathering momentum. Stanton had helped organize the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, a local event that was the first women's rights convention. In 1850, the first in a series of National Women's Rights Conventions was held in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1852, Anthony attended her first National Women's Rights Convention, which was held in Syracuse, New York, where she served as one of the convention's secretaries. According to Ida Husted Harper, Anthony's authorized biographer, "Miss Anthony came away from the Syracuse convention thoroughly convinced that the right which woman needed above every other, the one indeed which would secure to her all others, was the right of suffrage." Suffrage, however, did not become the main focus of her work for several more years.
A major hindrance to the women's movement was a lack of money. Few women at that time had an independent source of income, and even those with employment generally were required by law to turn over their pay to their husbands.
Partly through the efforts of the women's movement, a law had been passed in New York in 1848 that recognized some rights for married women, but that law was limited. In 1853, Anthony worked with William Henry Channing, her activist Unitarian minister, to organize a convention in Rochester to launch a state campaign for improved property rights for married women, which Anthony would lead. She took her lecture and petition campaign into almost every county in New York during the winter of 1855 despite the difficulty of traveling in snowy terrain in horse and buggy days.
When she presented the petitions to the New York State Senate Judiciary Committee, its members told her that men were actually the oppressed sex because they did such things as giving women the best seats in carriages. Noting cases in which the petition had been signed by both husbands and wives (instead of the husband signing for both, which was the standard procedure), the committee's official report sarcastically recommended that the petitioners seek a law authorizing the husbands in such marriages to wear petticoats and the wives trousers.
The campaign finally achieved success in 1860 when the legislature passed an improved Married Women's Property Act that gave married women the right to own separate property, enter into contracts and be joint guardian of their children. The legislature rolled back much of this law in 1862, however, during a period when the women's movement was largely inactive because of the American Civil War.
The women's movement was loosely structured at that time, with few state organizations and no national organization other than a coordinating committee that arranged annual conventions.
Lucy Stone, who did much of the organizational work for the national conventions, encouraged Anthony to take over some of the responsibility for them. Anthony resisted at first, feeling that she was needed more in the field of anti-slavery activities. After organizing a series of anti-slavery meetings in the winter of 1857, Anthony told a friend that, "the experience of the last winter is worth more to me than all my temperance and woman's rights work, though the latter were the school necessary to bring me into the antislavery work."
During a planning session for the 1858 women's rights convention, Stone, who had recently given birth, told Anthony that her new family responsibilities would prevent her from organizing conventions until her children were older. Anthony presided at the 1858 convention, and when the planning committee for national conventions was reorganized, Stanton became its president and Anthony its secretary.
Anthony continued to be heavily involved in anti-slavery work at the same time.
In 1837, at age 16, Anthony collected petitions against slavery as part of organized resistance to the newly established gag rule that prohibited anti-slavery petitions in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In 1851, she played a key role in organizing an anti-slavery convention in Rochester.
She was also part of the Underground Railroad. An entry in her diary in 1861 read, "Fitted out a fugitive slave for Canada with the help of Harriet Tubman."
In 1856, Anthony agreed to become the New York State agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society with the understanding that she would also continue her advocacy of women's rights.
Anthony organized anti-slavery meetings throughout the state under banners that read "No compromise with slaveholders. Immediate and Unconditional Emancipation."
In 1859, John Brown was executed for leading a violent raid on the U.S. arsenal at Harper's Ferry in what was intended to be the beginning of an armed slave uprising. Anthony organized a meeting of "mourning and indignation" in Corinthian Hall in Rochester on the day he was executed. She also presided over the meeting, which raised money for Brown's family.
She developed a reputation for fearlessness in facing down attempts to disrupt her meetings, but opposition became overwhelming on the eve of the Civil War. Mob action shut down her meetings in every town from Buffalo to Albany in early 1861. In Rochester, the police had to escort Anthony and other speakers from the building for their own safety. In Syracuse, according to a local newspaper, "Rotten eggs were thrown, benches broken, and knives and pistols gleamed in every direction."
Anthony expressed a vision of a racially integrated society that was radical for a time when abolitionists were debating the question of what was to become of the slaves after they were freed, and when people like Abraham Lincoln were calling for African Americans to be shipped to newly established colonies in Africa. In a speech in 1861, Anthony said, "Let us open to the colored man all our schools ... Let us admit him into all our mechanic shops, stores, offices, and lucrative business avocations ... let him rent such pew in the church, and occupy such seat in the theatre ... Extend to him all the rights of Citizenship."
The relatively small women's rights movement of that time was closely associated with the American Anti-Slavery Society led by William Lloyd Garrison. The women's movement depended heavily on abolitionist resources, with its articles published in their newspapers and some of its funding provided by abolitionists. There was tension, however, between leaders of the women's movement and male abolitionists who, although supporters of increased women's rights, believed that a vigorous campaign for women's rights would interfere with the campaign against slavery. In 1860, when Anthony sheltered a woman who had fled an abusive husband, Garrison insisted that the woman give up the child she had brought with her, pointing out that the law gave husbands complete control of children. Anthony reminded Garrison that he helped slaves escape to Canada in violation of the law and said, "Well, the law which gives the father ownership of the children is just as wicked and I'll break it just as quickly."
When Stanton introduced a resolution at the National Woman's Rights Convention in 1860 favoring more lenient divorce laws, leading abolitionist Wendell Phillips not only opposed it but attempted to have it removed from the record. When Stanton, Anthony, and others supported a bill before the New York legislature that would permit divorce in cases of desertion or inhuman treatment, Horace Greeley, an abolitionist newspaper publisher, campaigned against it in the pages of his newspaper.
Garrison, Phillips and Greeley had all provided valuable help to the women's movement. In a letter to Lucy Stone, Anthony said, "The Men, even the "best" of them, seem to think the Women's Rights question should be waived for the present. So let us do our own work, and in our own way."
Anthony and Stanton organized the Women's Loyal National League in 1863 to campaign for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would abolish slavery.
It was the first national women's political organization in the United States. In the largest petition drive in the nation's history up to that time, the League collected nearly 400,000 signatures to abolish slavery, representing approximately one out of every twenty-four adults in the Northern states.
The petition drive significantly assisted the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery. Anthony was the chief organizer of this effort, which involved recruiting and coordinating some 2000 petition collectors.
The League provided the women's movement with a vehicle for combining the fight against slavery with the fight for women's rights by reminding the public that petitioning was the only political tool available to women at a time when only men were allowed to vote.
With a membership of 5000, it helped develop a new generation of women leaders, providing experience and recognition for not only Stanton and Anthony but also newcomers like Anna Dickinson, a gifted teenaged orator.
The League demonstrated the value of formal structure to a women's movement that had resisted being anything other than loosely organized up to that point.
The widespread network of women activists who assisted the League expanded the pool of talent that was available to reform movements, including the women's suffrage movement, after the war.
Anthony stayed with her brother Daniel in Kansas for eight months in 1865 to assist with his newspaper. She headed back east after she learned that an amendment to the U.S. Constitution had been proposed that would provide citizenship for African Americans but would also for the first time introduce the word "male" into the constitution. Anthony supported citizenship for blacks but opposed any attempt to link it with a reduction in the status of women. Her ally Stanton agreed, saying "if that word 'male' be inserted, it will take us a century at least to get it out."
Anthony and Stanton worked to revive the women's rights movement, which had become nearly dormant during the Civil War. In 1866, they organized the Eleventh National Women's Rights Convention, the first since the Civil War began.
Unanimously adopting a resolution introduced by Anthony, the convention voted to transform itself into the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), whose purpose was to campaign for the equal rights of all citizens, especially the right of suffrage. The leadership of the new organization included such prominent activists as Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone and Frederick Douglass.
The AERA's drive for universal suffrage was resisted by some abolitionist leaders and their allies in the Republican Party. During the period before the 1867 convention to revise the New York state constitution, Horace Greeley, a prominent newspaper editor, told Anthony and Stanton, "This is a critical period for the Republican Party and the life of our Nation... I conjure you to remember that this is 'the negro's hour,' and your first duty now is to go through the State and plead his claims." Abolitionist leaders Wendell Phillips and Theodore Tilton met with Anthony and Stanton in the office of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, a leading abolitionist newspaper. The two men tried to convince the two women that the time had not yet come for women's suffrage, that they should campaign not for voting rights for both women and African Americans in the revised state constitution but for voting rights for black men only. According to Ida Husted Harper, Anthony's authorized biographer, Anthony "was highly indignant and declared that she would sooner cut off her right hand than ask the ballot for the black man and not for woman." Anthony and Stanton continued to work for the inclusion of suffrage for both African Americans and women.
In 1867, the AERA campaigned in Kansas for referenda that would enfranchise both African Americans and women. Wendell Phillips, who opposed mixing those two causes, blocked the funding that the AERA had expected for their campaign.
After an internal struggle, Kansas Republicans decided to support suffrage for black men only and formed an "Anti Female Suffrage Committee" to oppose the AERA's efforts.
By the end of summer, the AERA campaign had almost collapsed, and its finances were exhausted.
Anthony and Stanton created a storm of controversy by accepting help during the last days of the campaign from George Francis Train, a wealthy businessman who supported women's rights. Train antagonized many activists by attacking the Republican Party and openly disparaging the integrity and intelligence of African Americans.
There is reason to believe, however, that Anthony and Stanton hoped to draw the volatile Train away from his cruder forms of racism, and that he had actually begun to do so.
After the Kansas campaign, the AERA increasingly divided into two wings, both advocating universal suffrage but with different approaches. One wing, whose leading figure was Lucy Stone, was willing for black men to achieve suffrage first and wanted to maintain close ties with the Republican Party and the abolitionist movement. The other, whose leading figures were Anthony and Stanton, insisted that women and black men should be enfranchised at the same time and worked toward a politically independent women's movement that would no longer be dependent on abolitionists. The AERA effectively dissolved after an acrimonious meeting in May 1869, and two competing woman suffrage organizations were created in its aftermath.
Anthony and Stanton began publishing a weekly newspaper called "The Revolution" in New York City in 1868. It focused primarily on women's rights, especially suffrage for women, but it also covered other topics, including politics, the labor movement and finance. Its motto was "Men, their rights and nothing more: women, their rights and nothing less."
One of its goals was to provide a forum in which women could exchange opinions on key issues from a variety of viewpoints. Anthony managed the business aspects of the paper while Stanton was co-editor along with Parker Pillsbury, an abolitionist and a supporter of women's rights. Initial funding was provided by George Francis Train, the controversial businessman who supported women's rights but who alienated many activists with his political and racial views.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, major periodicals associated with the radical social reform movements had either become more conservative or had quit publishing or soon would.
Anthony intended for "The Revolution" to partially fill that void, hoping to grow it eventually into a daily paper with its own printing press, all owned and operated by women. The funding Train had arranged for the newspaper, however, was less than Anthony had expected. Moreover, Train sailed for England after "The Revolution" published its first issue and was soon jailed for supporting Irish independence.
Train's financial support eventually disappeared entirely. After twenty-nine months, mounting debts forced Anthony to transfer the paper to Laura Curtis Bullard, a wealthy women's rights activist who gave it a less radical tone. The paper published its last issue less than two years later.
Despite its short life, "The Revolution" gave Anthony and Stanton a means for expressing their views during the developing split within the women's movement. It also helped them promote their wing of the movement, which eventually became a separate organization.
The National Labor Union (NLU), which was formed in 1866, began reaching out to farmers, African Americans and women, with the intention of forming a broad-based political party. "The Revolution" responded enthusiastically, declaring, "The principles of the National Labor Union are our principles." It predicted that "The producers—the working-men, the women, the negroes—are destined to form a triple power that shall speedily wrest the sceptre of government from the non-producers—the land monopolists, the bond-holders, the politicians."
Anthony and Stanton were seated as delegates to the NLU Congress in 1868, with Anthony representing the Working Women's Association (WWA), which had recently been formed in the offices of "The Revolution".
The attempted alliance did not last long. During a printers' strike in 1869, Anthony voiced approval of an employer-sponsored training program that would teach women skills that would enable them in effect to replace the strikers. Anthony viewed the program as an opportunity to increase employment of women in a trade from which women were often excluded by both employers and unions. At the next NLU Congress, Anthony was first seated as a delegate but then unseated because of strong opposition from those who accused her of supporting strikebreakers.
Anthony worked with the WWA to form all-female labor unions, but with little success. She accomplished more in her work with the joint campaign by the WWA and "The Revolution" to win a pardon for Hester Vaughn, a domestic worker who had been found guilty of infanticide and sentenced to death. Charging that the social and legal systems treated women unfairly, the WWA petitioned, organized a mass meeting at which Anthony was one of the speakers, and sent delegations to visit Vaughn in prison and to speak with the governor. Vaughn was eventually pardoned.
Originally with a membership that included over a hundred wage-earning women, the WWA evolved into an organization consisting almost entirely of journalists, doctors and other middle-class working women. Its members formed the core of the New York City portion of the new national suffrage organization that Anthony and Stanton were in the process of forming.
In May 1869, two days after the final AERA convention, Anthony, Stanton and others formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). In November 1869, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and others formed the competing American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). The hostile nature of their rivalry created a partisan atmosphere that endured for decades, affecting even professional historians of the women's movement.
The immediate cause for the split was the proposed Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would prohibit the denial of suffrage because of race. In one of her most controversial actions, Anthony campaigned against the amendment. She and Stanton called for women and African Americans to be enfranchised at the same time. They said that by effectively enfranchising all men while excluding all women, the amendment would create an "aristocracy of sex" by giving constitutional authority to the idea that men were superior to women. In 1873, Anthony said, "An oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor; an oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant; or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but surely this oligarchy of sex, which makes the men of every household sovereigns, masters; the women subjects, slaves; carrying dissension, rebellion into every home of the Nation, cannot be endured."
The AWSA supported the amendment, but Lucy Stone, who became its most prominent leader, also made it clear that she believed that suffrage for women would be more beneficial to the country than suffrage for black men.
The two organizations had other differences as well. The NWSA was politically independent, but the AWSA at least initially aimed for close ties with the Republican Party, hoping that the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment would lead to a Republican push for women's suffrage. The NWSA focused primarily on winning suffrage at the national level while the AWSA pursued a state-by-state strategy. The NWSA initially worked on a wider range of women's issues than the AWSA, including divorce reform and equal pay for women.
Events soon removed much of the basis for the split in the women's movement. In 1870, debate about the Fifteenth Amendment was made irrelevant when that amendment was officially ratified. In 1872, disgust with corruption in government led to a mass defection of abolitionists and other social reformers from the Republicans to the short-lived Liberal Republican Party. As early as 1875, Anthony began urging the NWSA to focus more exclusively on women's suffrage rather than a variety of women's issues. The rivalry between the two women's groups was so bitter, however, that a merger proved to be impossible for twenty years. The AWSA, which was especially strong in New England, was the larger of the two organizations, but it began to decline in strength during the 1880s.
In 1890, the two organizations merged as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), with Stanton as president but with Anthony as its effective leader. When Stanton retired from her post in 1892, Anthony became NAWSA's president.
"By the end of the Civil War," according to historian Ann D. Gordon, "Susan B. Anthony occupied new social and political territory. She was emerging on the national scene as a female leader, something new in American history, and she did so as a single woman in a culture that perceived the spinster as anomalous and unguarded ... By the 1880s, she was among the senior political figures in the United States."
After the formation of the NWSA, Anthony dedicated herself fully to the organization and to women's suffrage. She did not draw a salary from either it or its successor, the NAWSA, but on the contrary used her lecture fees to fund those organizations. There was no national office, the mailing address being simply that of one of the officers.
That Anthony had remained unmarried gave her an important business advantage in this work. A married woman at that time had the legal status of "feme covert", which, among other things, excluded her from signing contracts (her husband could do that for her, if he chose). As Anthony had no husband, she was a "feme sole" and could freely sign contracts for convention halls, printed materials, etc.
Using fees she earned by lecturing, she paid off the debts she had accumulated while supporting "The Revolution". With the press treating her as a celebrity, she proved to be a major draw. Over her career she estimated that she averaged 75 to 100 speeches per year. Travel conditions in the earlier days were sometimes appalling. Once she gave a speech from the top of a billiard table. On another occasion her train was snowbound for days, and she survived on crackers and dried fish.
Both Anthony and Stanton joined the lecture circuit about 1870, usually traveling from mid-autumn to spring. The timing was right because the nation was beginning to discuss women's suffrage as a serious matter. Occasionally they traveled together but most often not. Lecture bureaus scheduled their tours and handled the travel arrangements, which generally involved traveling during the day and speaking at night, sometimes for weeks at a time, including weekends. Their lectures brought new recruits into the movement who strengthened suffrage organizations at the local, state and national levels. Their journeys during that decade covered a distance that was unmatched by any other reformer or politician.
Anthony's other suffrage work included organizing national conventions, lobbying Congress and state legislatures, and participating in a seemingly endless series of state suffrage campaigns.
A special opportunity arose in 1876 when the U.S. celebrated its 100th birthday as an independent country. The NWSA asked permission to present a Declaration of Rights for Women at the official ceremony in Philadelphia, but was refused. Undaunted, five women, headed by Anthony, walked onto the platform during the ceremony and handed their Declaration to the startled official in charge. As they left, they handed out copies of it to the crowd. Spotting an unoccupied bandstand outside the hall, Anthony mounted it and read the Declaration to a large crowd. Afterwards she invited everyone to a NWSA convention at the nearby Unitarian church where speakers like Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton awaited them.
The work of all segments of the women's suffrage movement began to show clear results. Women won the right to vote in Wyoming in 1869 and in Utah in 1870. Her lectures in Washington and four other states led directly to invitations for her to address the state legislatures there.
The Grange, a large advocacy group for farmers, officially supported women's suffrage as early as 1885. The Women's Christian Temperance Union, the largest women's organization in the country, also supported suffrage.
Anthony's commitment to the movement, her spartan lifestyle, and the fact that she did not seek personal financial gain, made her an effective fund-raiser and won her the admiration of many who did not agree with her goals. As her reputation grew, her working and travel conditions improved. She sometimes had the use of the private railroad car of Jane Stanford, a sympathizer whose husband owned a major railroad. While lobbying and preparing for the annual suffrage conventions in Washington, she was provided with a free suite of rooms in the Riggs Hotel, whose owners supported her work.
To ensure continuity, Anthony trained a group of younger activists, who were known as her "nieces," to assume leadership roles within the organization. Two of them, Carrie Chapman Catt and Anna Howard Shaw, served as presidents of the NAWSA after Anthony retired from that position.
The NWSA convention of 1871 adopted a strategy of urging women to attempt to vote, and then, after being turned away, to file suits in federal courts to challenge laws that prevented women from voting. The legal basis for the challenge would be the recently adopted Fourteenth Amendment, part of which reads: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States".
Following the example set by Anthony and her sisters shortly before election day, a total of nearly fifty women in Rochester registered to vote in the presidential election of 1872. On election day, Anthony and fourteen other women from her ward convinced the election inspectors to allow them to cast ballots, but women in other wards were turned back. Anthony was arrested on November 18, 1872, by a U.S. Deputy Marshal and charged with illegally voting. The other women who had voted were also arrested but released pending the outcome of Anthony's trial.
Anthony's trial generated a national controversy and became a major step in the transition of the broader women's rights movement into the women's suffrage movement.
Anthony spoke throughout Monroe County, New York, where her trial was to be held and from where the jurors for her trial would be chosen. Her speech was entitled "Is it a Crime for a U.S. Citizen to Vote?" She said, "We no longer petition Legislature or Congress to give us the right to vote. We appeal to women everywhere to exercise their too long neglected 'citizen's right to vote.'"
The U.S. Attorney arranged for the trial to be moved to the federal circuit court, which would soon sit in neighboring Ontario County with a jury drawn from that county's inhabitants. Anthony responded by speaking throughout that county also before the trial began.
Responsibility for that federal circuit was in the hands of Justice Ward Hunt, who had recently been appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Hunt had never served as a trial judge; originally a politician, he had begun his judicial career by being elected to the New York Court of Appeals.
The trial, "United States v. Susan B. Anthony", began on June 17, 1873 and was closely followed by the national press. Following a rule of common law at that time which prevented criminal defendants in federal courts from testifying, Hunt refused to allow Anthony to speak until the verdict had been delivered. On the second day of the trial, after both sides had presented their cases, Justice Hunt delivered his lengthy opinion, which he had put in writing. In the most controversial aspect of the trial, Hunt directed the jury to deliver a guilty verdict.
On the second day of the trial, Hunt asked Anthony if she had anything to say. She responded with "the most famous speech in the history of the agitation for woman suffrage", according to Ann D. Gordon, a historian of the women's movement.
Repeatedly ignoring the judge's order to stop talking and sit down, she protested what she called "this high-handed outrage upon my citizen's rights", saying, "you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored."
She castigated Justice Hunt for denying her a trial by jury, but said that even if he had allowed the jury to discuss the case, she still would have been denied a trial by a jury of her peers because women were not allowed to be jurors.
When Justice Hunt sentenced Anthony to pay a fine of $100, she responded, "I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty", and she never did.
If Hunt had ordered her to be jailed until she paid the fine, Anthony could have taken her case to the Supreme Court. Hunt instead announced he would not order her taken into custody, closing off that legal avenue.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 1875 put an end to the strategy of trying to achieve women's suffrage through the court system when it ruled in "Minor v. Happersett" that "the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone". The NWSA decided to pursue the far more difficult strategy of campaigning for a constitutional amendment to achieve voting rights for women.
Anthony and Stanton initiated the project of writing a history of the women's suffrage movement in 1876. Anthony had for years saved letters, newspaper clippings, and other materials of historical value to the women's movement. In 1876, she moved into the Stanton household in New Jersey along with several trunks and boxes of these materials to begin working with Stanton on the "History of Woman Suffrage".
Anthony hated this type of work. In her letters, she said the project "makes me feel growly all the time ... No warhorse ever panted for the rush of battle more than I for outside work. I love to make history but hate to write it."
The work absorbed much of her time for several years although she continued to work on other women's suffrage activities. She acted as her own publisher, which presented several problems, including finding space for the inventory. She was forced to limit the number of books she was storing in the attic of her sister's house because the weight was threatening to collapse the structure.
Originally envisioned as a modest publication that could be produced quickly, the history evolved into a six-volume work of more than 5700 pages written over a period of 41 years. The first three volumes, which cover the movement up to 1885, were published between 1881 and 1886 and were produced by Stanton, Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage. Anthony handled the production details and the extensive correspondence with contributors. Anthony published Volume 4, which covers the period from 1883 to 1900, in 1902, after Stanton's death, with the help of Ida Husted Harper, Anthony's designated biographer. The last two volumes, which bring the history up to 1920, were completed in 1922 by Harper after Anthony's death.
The "History of Woman Suffrage" preserves an enormous amount of material that might have been lost forever. Written by leaders of one wing of the divided women's movement (Lucy Stone, their main rival, refused to have anything to do with the project), it does not, however, give a balanced view of events where their rivals are concerned. It overstates the role of Anthony and Stanton, and it understates or ignores the roles of Stone and other activists who did not fit into the historical narrative that Anthony and Stanton developed. Because it was for years the main source of documentation about the suffrage movement, historians have had to uncover other sources to provide a more balanced view.
Anthony traveled to Europe in 1883 for a nine-month stay, linking up with Stanton, who had arrived a few months earlier. Together they met with leaders of European women's movements and began the process of creating an international women's organization.
The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) agreed to host its founding congress. The preparatory work was handled primarily by Anthony and two of her younger colleagues in the NWSA, Rachel Foster Avery and May Wright Sewall. Delegates from fifty-three women's organizations in nine countries met in Washington in 1888 to form the new association, which was called the International Council of Women (ICW). The delegates represented a wide variety of organizations, including suffrage associations, professional groups, literary clubs, temperance unions, labor leagues and missionary societies. The American Woman Suffrage Association, which had for years been a rival to the NWSA, participated in the congress. Anthony opened the first session of the ICW and presided over most events.
The ICW commanded respect at the highest levels. President Cleveland and his wife sponsored a reception at the White House for delegates to the ICW's founding congress. The ICW's second congress was an integral part of the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893. At its third congress in London in 1899, a reception for the ICW was held at Windsor Castle at the invitation of Queen Victoria. At its fourth congress in Berlin in 1904, Augusta Victoria, the German Empress, received the ICW leaders at her palace. Anthony played a prominent role on all four occasions.
Still active, ICW is associated with the United Nations.
The World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, was held in 1893. It hosted several world congresses, each dealing with a specialized topic, such as religion, medicine and science. At almost the last moment, the U.S. Congress decided that the Exposition should also recognize the role of women. After it was over, one of the organizers of the Exposition's congress of women revealed that Anthony had played a pivotal but hidden role in that last-minute decision. Fearing that a public campaign would rouse opposition, Anthony had worked quietly to organize support for this project among women of the political elite. Anthony increased the pressure by covertly initiating a petition that was signed by wives and daughters of Supreme Court judges, senators, cabinet members and other dignitaries.
A large structure called the Woman's Building, designed by Sophia Hayden Bennett, was constructed to provide meeting and exhibition spaces for women at the Exposition. Two of Anthony's closest associates were appointed to organize the women's congress. They arranged for the International Council of Women to make its upcoming meeting part of the Exposition by expanding its scope and calling itself the World's Congress of Representative Women. This week-long congress seated delegates from 27 countries. Its 81 sessions, many held simultaneously, were attended by over 150,000 people, and women's suffrage was discussed at almost every session. Anthony spoke to large crowds at the Exposition.
"Buffalo Bill" Cody invited her as a guest to his Wild West Show, located just outside the Exposition. When the show opened, he rode his horse directly to her and greeted her with dramatic flair. According to a co-worker, Anthony, "for the moment as enthusiastic as a girl, waved her handkerchief at him, while the big audience, catching the spirit of the scene, wildly applauded."
After Anthony retired as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Carrie Chapman Catt, her chosen successor, began working toward an international women's suffrage association, one of Anthony's long-time goals. The existing International Council of Women could not be expected to support a campaign for women's suffrage because it was a broad alliance whose more conservative members would object. In 1902, Catt organized a preparatory meeting in Washington, with Anthony as chair, that was attended by delegates from several countries. Organized primarily by Catt, the International Woman Suffrage Alliance was created in Berlin in 1904. The founding meeting was chaired by Anthony, who was declared to be the new organization's honorary president and first member.
According to Anthony's authorized biographer, "no event ever gave Miss Anthony such profound satisfaction as this one".
Later renamed the International Alliance of Women, the organization is still active and is affiliated with the United Nations.
Anthony and Stanton worked together in a close and productive relationship. From 1880 to 1886 they were together almost every day working on the "History of Woman Suffrage".
They referred to each other as "Susan" and "Mrs. Stanton".
Anthony deferred to Stanton in other ways also, not accepting an office in any organization that would place her above Stanton.
In practice this generally meant that Anthony, although ostensibly holding a less important office, handled most of the organization's daily activities.
Stanton sometimes felt the weight of Anthony's determination and drive. When Stanton arrived at an important meeting in 1888 with her speech not yet written, Anthony insisted that Stanton stay in her hotel room until she had written it, and she placed a younger colleague outside her door to make sure she did so.
At Anthony's 70th birthday celebration, Stanton teased her by saying, "Well, as all women are supposed to be under the thumb of some man, I prefer a tyrant of my own sex, so I shall not deny the patent fact of my subjection."
Their interests began to diverge somewhat as they grew older. As the drive for women's suffrage gained momentum, Anthony began to form alliances with more conservative groups, such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the nation's largest women's organization and a supporter of women's suffrage.
Such moves irritated Stanton, who said, "I get more radical as I get older, while she seems to grow more conservative." In 1895 Stanton published "The Woman's Bible", which attacked the use of the "Bible" to relegate women to an inferior status. It became a highly controversial best-seller. The NAWSA voted to disavow any connection with it despite Anthony's strong objection that such a move was unnecessary and hurtful.
Even so, Anthony refused to assist with the book's preparation, telling Stanton: "You say 'women must be emancipated from their superstitions before enfranchisement will have any benefit,' and I say just the reverse, that women must be enfranchised before they can be emancipated from their superstitions."
Despite such friction, their relationship continued to be close. When Stanton died in 1902, Anthony wrote to a friend: "Oh, this awful hush! It seems impossible that voice is stilled which I have loved to hear for fifty years. Always I have felt I must have Mrs. Stanton's opinion of things before I knew where I stood myself. I am all at sea..."
Having lived for years in hotels and with friends and relatives, Anthony agreed to settle into her sister Mary Stafford Anthony's house in Rochester in 1891, at the age of 71.
Her energy and stamina, which sometimes exhausted her co-workers, continued at a remarkable level. At age 75, she toured Yosemite National Park on the back of a mule.
She remained as leader of the NAWSA and continued to travel extensively on suffrage work. She also engaged in local projects. In 1893, she initiated the Rochester branch of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union. In 1898, she called a meeting of 73 local women's societies to form the Rochester Council of Women. She played a key role in raising the funds required by the University of Rochester before they would admit women students, pledging her life insurance policy to close the final funding gap.
In 1896, she spent eight months on the California suffrage campaign, speaking as many as three times per day in more than 30 localities. In 1900, she presided over her last NAWSA convention. During the six remaining years of her life, Anthony spoke at six more NAWSA conventions and four congressional hearings, completed the fourth volume of the "History of Woman Suffrage", and traveled to eighteen states and to Europe. As Anthony's fame grew, some politicians (certainly not all of them) were happy to be publicly associated with her. Her seventieth birthday was celebrated at a national event in Washington with prominent members of the House and Senate in attendance. Her eightieth birthday was celebrated at the White House at the invitation of President William McKinley.
Susan B. Anthony died at the age of 86 of heart failure and pneumonia in her home in Rochester, New York, on March 13, 1906. She was buried at Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester. At her birthday celebration in Washington D.C. a few days earlier, Anthony had spoken of those who had worked with her for women's rights: "There have been others also just as true and devoted to the cause — I wish I could name every one — but with such women consecrating their lives, failure is impossible!" "Failure is impossible" quickly became a watchword for the women's movement.
Anthony did not live to see the achievement of women's suffrage at the national level, but she still expressed pride in the progress the women's movement had made. At the time of her death, women had achieved suffrage in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and Idaho, and several larger states followed soon after. Legal rights for married women had been established in most states, and most professions had at least a few women members. 36,000 women were attending colleges and universities, up from zero a few decades earlier." Two years before she died, Anthony said, "The world has never witnessed a greater revolution than in the sphere of woman during this fifty years".
Part of the revolution, in Anthony's view, was in ways of thinking. In a speech in 1889, she noted that women had always been taught that their purpose was to serve men, but "Now, after 40 years of agitation, the idea is beginning to prevail that women were created for themselves, for their own happiness, and for the welfare of the world." Anthony was sure that women's suffrage would be achieved, but she also feared that people would forget how difficult it was to achieve it, as they were already forgetting the ordeals of the recent past:
Anthony's death was widely mourned. Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, said just before Anthony's death, "A few days ago someone said to me that every woman should stand with bared head before Susan B. Anthony. 'Yes,' I answered, 'and every man as well.' ... For ages he has been trying to carry the burden of life's responsibilities alone... Just now it is new and strange and men cannot comprehend what it would mean but the change is not far away."
In her history of the women's suffrage movement, Eleanor Flexner wrote, "If Lucretia Mott typified the moral force of the movement, if Lucy Stone was its most gifted orator and Mrs. Stanton its most outstanding philosopher, Susan Anthony was its incomparable organizer, who gave it force and direction for half a century."
The Nineteenth Amendment, which guaranteed the right of American women to vote, was colloquially known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. After it was ratified in 1920, the National American Woman Suffrage Association, whose character and policies were strongly influenced by Anthony, was transformed into the League of Women Voters, which is still an active force in U.S. politics.
Anthony's papers are held in library collections of Harvard University and its Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Rutgers University, the Library of Congress, and Smith College.
Anthony was raised a Quaker, but her religious heritage was mixed. On her mother's side, her grandmother was a Baptist and her grandfather was a Universalist. Her father was a radical Quaker who chafed under the restrictions of his more conservative congregation. When the Quakers split in the late 1820s into Orthodox and Hicksites, her family sided with the Hicksites, which Anthony described as "the radical side, the Unitarian".
In 1848, three years after the Anthony family moved to Rochester, a group of about 200 Quakers withdrew from the Hicksite organization in western New York, partly because they wanted to work in social reform movements without interference from that organization. Some of them, including the Anthony family, began attending services at the First Unitarian Church of Rochester. When Susan B. Anthony returned home from teaching in 1849, she joined her family in attending services there, and she remained with the Rochester Unitarians for the rest of her life. Her sense of spirituality was strongly influenced by William Henry Channing, a nationally known minister of that church who also assisted her with several of her reform projects. Anthony was listed as a member of First Unitarian in a church history written in 1881.
Anthony, proud of her Quaker roots, continued to describe herself as a Quaker, however. She maintained her membership in the local Hicksite body but did not attend its meetings. She joined the Congregational Friends, an organization that was created by Quakers in western New York after the 1848 split among Quakers there. This group soon ceased to operate as a religious body, however, and changed its name to the Friends of Human Progress, organizing annual meetings in support of social reform that welcomed everyone, including "Christians, Jews, Mahammedans, and Pagans". Anthony served as secretary of this group in 1857.
In 1859, during a period when Rochester Unitarians were gravely impaired by factionalism, Anthony unsuccessfully attempted to start a "Free church in Rochester ... where no doctrines should be preached and all should be welcome."
She used as her model the Boston church of Theodore Parker, a Unitarian minister who helped to set the direction of his denomination by rejecting the authority of the Bible and the validity of miracles. Anthony later became close friends with William Channing Gannett, who became the minister of the Unitarian Church in Rochester in 1889, and with his wife Mary, who came from a Quaker background. William had been a national leader of the successful movement within the Unitarian denomination to end the practice of binding it by a formal creed, thereby opening its membership to non-Christians and even non-theists, a goal for the denomination that resembled Anthony's goal for her proposed Free church.
After Anthony reduced her arduous travel schedule and made her home in Rochester in 1891, she resumed regular attendance at First Unitarian and also worked with the Gannetts on local reform projects. Her sister Mary Stafford Anthony, whose home had provided a resting place for Anthony during her years of frequent travel, had long played an active role in this church.
Her first public speech, delivered at a temperance meeting as a young woman, contained frequent references to God. She soon took a more distant approach, however. While in Europe in 1883, Anthony helped a desperately poor Irish mother of six children. Noting that "the evidences were that 'God' was about to add a No. 7 to her flock", she later commented, "What a dreadful creature their God must be to keep sending hungry mouths while he withholds the bread to fill them!"
Elizabeth Cady Stanton said that Anthony was an agnostic, adding, "To her, work is worship ... Her belief is not orthodox, but it is religious."
Anthony herself said, "Work and worship are one with me. I can not imagine a God of the universe made happy by my getting down on my knees and calling him 'great.'"
When Anthony's sister Hannah was on her death bed, she asked Susan to talk about the great beyond, but, Anthony later wrote, "I could not dash her faith with my doubts, nor could I pretend a faith I had not; so I was silent in the dread presence of death."
When an organization offered to sponsor a women's rights convention on the condition that "no speaker should say anything which would seem like an attack on Christianity", Anthony wrote to a friend, "I wonder if they'll be as particular to warn all other speakers not to say anything which shall sound like an attack on liberal religion. They never seem to think we have any feelings to be hurt when we have to sit under their reiteration of orthodox cant and dogma."
As a teen, Anthony went to parties, and she had offers of marriage when she was older, but there is no record of her ever having a serious romance.
Anthony loved children, however, and helped raise the children in the Stanton household. Referring to her niece, she wrote, "The dear little Lucy engrosses most of my time and thoughts. A child one loves is a constant benediction to the soul, whether or not it helps to the accomplishment of great intellectual feats."
As a young worker in the women's rights movement, Anthony expressed frustration when some of her co-workers began to marry and have children, sharply curtailing their ability to work for the understaffed movement. When Lucy Stone abandoned her pledge to stay single, Anthony's scolding remarks caused a temporary rupture in their friendship. Journalists repeatedly asked Anthony to explain why she never married. She answered one by saying, "It always happened that the men I wanted were those I could not get, and those who wanted me I wouldn't have." To another she answered, "I never found the man who was necessary to my happiness. I was very well as I was." To a third she said, "I never felt I could give up my life of freedom to become a man's housekeeper. When I was young, if a girl married poor, she became a housekeeper and a drudge. If she married wealth she became a pet and a doll. Just think, had I married at twenty, I would have been a drudge or a doll for fifty-nine years. Think of it!"
Anthony fiercely opposed laws that gave husbands complete control over the marriage. Blackstone's "Commentaries", the basis for the legal systems in most states at that time, stated that, "By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage".
In a speech in 1877, Anthony predicted ""an epoch of single women". If women will not accept marriage "with subjugation", nor men proffer it "without", there is, there can be, "no alternative". The woman who "will not be ruled" must live without marriage."
Anthony showed little interest in the topic of abortion. Ann D. Gordon, who led the Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Papers project, an undertaking to collect and document materials written by those two co-workers, said that Anthony "never voiced an opinion about the sanctity of fetal life ... and she never voiced an opinion about using the power of the state to require that pregnancies be brought to term." Lynn Sherr, author of a biography of Anthony, said that Anthony never stated her views on abortion, saying, "I looked desperately for some kind of evidence one way or the other as to what her position was, and it just wasn’t there."
A dispute over Anthony's views on abortion developed after 1989 when some members of the anti-abortion movement began to portray Anthony as "an outspoken critic of abortion", citing various statements they said she had made. Gordon, Sherr and others contested this portrayal, saying these statements either were not made by Anthony, were not about abortion, or had been taken out of context.
The first memorial to Anthony was established by African Americans. In 1907, a year after Anthony's death, a stained-glass window was installed at the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church in Rochester that featured her portrait and the words "Failure is Impossible", a quote from her that had become a watchword for the women's suffrage movement. It was installed through the efforts of Hester C. Jeffrey, the president of the Susan B. Anthony Club, an organization of African American women in Rochester. Speaking at the window's dedication, Jeffrey said, "Miss Anthony had stood by the Negroes when it meant almost death to be a friend of the colored people." This church had a history of involvement in issues of social justice: in 1847, Frederick Douglass printed the first editions of "The North Star", his abolitionist newspaper, in its basement.
Anthony is commemorated along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott in a sculpture by Adelaide Johnson at the United States Capitol, unveiled in 1921. Originally kept on display in the crypt of the US Capitol, the sculpture was moved to its current location and more prominently displayed in the rotunda in 1997.
In 1922, sculptor Leila Usher donated a bas-relief of Susan B. Anthony to the National Woman's Party, which was installed at their headquarters near Washington, D.C. Usher was also responsible for the creation of a similar bronze medallion donated to Bryn Mawr College in 1901.
The U.S. Post Office issued its first postage stamp honoring Anthony in 1936 on the 16th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which ensured women's right to vote. A second stamp honoring Anthony was issued in April 1958.
In 1950, she was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans; a bust of her was placed there in 1952 that had been sculpted by Brenda Putnam.
New York Radical Feminists, founded in 1969, was organized into small cells or "brigades" named after notable feminists of the past; Anne Koedt and Shulamith Firestone led the Stanton-Anthony Brigade.
Since 1970, the Susan B. Anthony Award is given annually by the NYC chapter of the National Organization for Women to honor "grassroots activists dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls in New York City."
In 1971, Zsuzsanna Budapest founded the Susan B. Anthony Coven #1 – the first feminist, women-only, witches' coven.
In 1973, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
In 1979, the United States Mint began issuing the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin, the first U.S. coin to honor a female citizen.
The artwork "The Dinner Party", first exhibited in 1979, features a place setting for Anthony.
The Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Papers project was an academic undertaking to collect and document all available materials written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Anthony, which began in 1982. The project has since been ended.
In 1999, Ken Burns and others produced the documentary "Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony".
Also in 1999, a sculpture by Ted Aub was unveiled commemorating when on May 12, 1851, Amelia Bloomer introduced Anthony to Elizabeth Cady Stanton. This sculpture, called "When Anthony Met Stanton", consists of the three women depicted as life-size bronze statues, and is placed overlooking Van Cleef Lake in Seneca Falls, New York, where the introduction occurred.
In 2007, the Troup–Howell bridge in Rochester, NY, was redesigned and renamed the Frederick Douglass–Susan B. Anthony Memorial Bridge.
The place where Anthony and other women led by her voted in 1872 now has a bronze sculpture of a locked ballot box flanked by two pillars, which is called the 1872 Monument, and was dedicated in August 2009, on the 89th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment. Leading away from the 1872 Monument there is the Susan B. Anthony Trail, which runs beside the 1872 Café, named for the year of Anthony's vote. Nearby is the “Let’s Have Tea” sculpture of Anthony and Frederick Douglass.
The U.S. Treasury Department announced on April 20, 2016, that an image of Anthony would appear on the back of a newly designed $10 bill along with Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul. The original plan was for a woman to appear on the front of the $10 bill, with Anthony under consideration for that position. The final plan, however, calls for Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, to retain his current position there. Designs for new $5, $10 and $20 bills will be unveiled in 2020 in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of American women winning the right to vote via the 19th Amendment.
In 2016, Lovely Warren, the mayor of Rochester, put a red, white and blue sign next to Anthony's grave the day after Hillary Clinton obtained the nomination at the Democratic National Convention; the sign stated, "Dear Susan B., we thought you might like to know that for the first time in history, a woman is running for president representing a major party. 144 years ago, your illegal vote got you arrested. It took another 48 years for women to finally gain the right to vote. Thank you for paving the way." The city of Rochester put pictures of the message on Twitter and requested that residents go to Anthony's grave to sign it.
Anthony's home in Rochester is now a National Historic Landmark called the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House. The house of her birth in Adams, Massachusetts, and her childhood home in Battenville, New York, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan, one of the world's largest, has a sculpture honoring four spiritual heroes of the twentieth century: Anthony, Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein, and Mohandas Gandhi.
Susan B. Anthony Day is a commemorative holiday to celebrate the birth of Anthony and women's suffrage in the United States. The holiday is February 15—Anthony's birthday.
The Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List) is a non-profit organization that seeks to reduce and ultimately end abortion in the U.S.
On February 15, 2020, Google celebrated her 200th birthday with a Google Doodle. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27954 |
South Carolina
South Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern United States and the easternmost of the Deep South. It is bordered to the north by North Carolina, to the southeast by the Atlantic Ocean, and to the southwest by Georgia across the Savannah River.
South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution on May 23, 1788. It also became the first state to vote in favor of secession from the Union on December 20, 1860. After the American Civil War, it was readmitted into the United States on June 25, 1868.
South Carolina is the 40th most extensive and 23rd most populous U.S. state. Its GDP as of 2013 was $183.6 billion, with an annual growth rate of 3.13%. South Carolina is composed of 46 counties. The capital is Columbia with a population of 133,451 in 2018; while its largest city is Charleston with a 2018 population of 136,208. The Greenville–Anderson–Mauldin metropolitan area is the largest in the state, with a 2018 population estimate of 906,626.
South Carolina is named in honor of King Charles I of England, who first formed the English colony, with "Carolus" being Latin for "Charles".
The state can be divided into three geographic areas. From east to west: the Atlantic coastal plain, the Piedmont, and the Blue Ridge Mountains. Locally, the coastal plain is referred to as the Low Country, and the other two regions as the Midlands and the Upstate respectively. The Atlantic Coastal Plain makes up two-thirds of the state. Its eastern border is the Sea Islands, a chain of tidal and barrier islands. The border between the low country and the up country is defined by the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, which marks the limit of navigable rivers.
The Atlantic Coastal Plain consists of sediments and sedimentary rocks that range in age from Cretaceous to Present. The terrain is relatively flat and the soil is composed predominantly of sand, silt, and clay. Areas with better drainage make excellent farmland, though some land is swampy. An unusual feature of the coastal plain is a large number of low-relief topographic depressions named Carolina bays. The bays tend to be oval, lining up in a northwest to southeast orientation. The eastern portion of the coastal plain contains many salt marshes and estuaries, as well as natural ports such as Georgetown and Charleston. The natural areas of the coastal plain are part of the Middle Atlantic coastal forests ecoregion.
The Sandhills or Carolina Sandhills is a wide region within the Atlantic Coastal Plain province, along the inland margin of this province. The Carolina Sandhills are interpreted as eolian (wind-blown) sand sheets and dunes that were mobilized episodically from approximately 75,000 to 6,000 years ago. Most of the published luminescence ages from the sand are coincident with the last glaciation, a time when the southeastern United States was characterized by colder air temperatures and stronger winds.
Much of Piedmont consists of Paleozoic metamorphic and igneous rocks, and the landscape has relatively low relief. Due to the changing economics of farming, much of the land is now reforested in Loblolly pine for the lumber industry. These forests are part of the Southeastern mixed forests ecoregion. At the southeastern edge of Piedmont is the fall line, where rivers drop to the coastal plain. The fall line was an important early source of water power. Mills built to harness this resource encouraged the growth of several cities, including the capital, Columbia. The larger rivers are navigable up to the fall line, providing a trade route for mill towns.
The northwestern part of Piedmont is also known as the Foothills. The Cherokee Parkway is a scenic driving route through this area. This is where Table Rock State Park is located.
The Blue Ridge consists primarily of Precambrian metamorphic rocks, and the landscape has relatively high relief. The Blue Ridge Region contains an escarpment of the Blue Ridge Mountains that continues into North Carolina and Georgia as part of the southern Appalachian Mountains. Sassafras Mountain, South Carolina's highest point at , is in this area. Also in this area is Caesars Head State Park. The environment here is that of the Appalachian-Blue Ridge forests ecoregion. The Chattooga River, on the border between South Carolina and Georgia, is a favorite whitewater rafting destination.
South Carolina has several major lakes covering over . All major lakes in South Carolina are man-made. The following are the lakes listed by size.
Earthquakes in South Carolina demonstrate the greatest frequency along the central coastline of the state, in the Charleston area. South Carolina averages 10–15 earthquakes a year below magnitude3 (FEMA). The Charleston earthquake of 1886 was the largest quake ever to hit the eastern United States. The 7.0–7.3 magnitude earthquake killed 60 people and destroyed much of the city. Faults in this region are difficult to study at the surface due to thick sedimentation on top of them. Many of the ancient faults are within plates rather than along plate boundaries.
South Carolina has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification "Cfa"), although high-elevation areas in the Upstate area have fewer subtropical characteristics than areas on the Atlantic coastline. In the summer, South Carolina is hot and humid, with daytime temperatures averaging between in most of the state and overnight lows averaging on the coast and from inland. Winter temperatures are much less uniform in South Carolina.
Coastal areas of the state have very mild winters, with high temperatures approaching an average of and overnight lows around 40 °F (5–8 °C). Inland, the average January overnight low is around in Columbia and temperatures well below freezing in the Upstate. While precipitation is abundant the entire year in almost the entire state, the coast tends to have a slightly wetter summer, while inland, the spring and autumn transitions tend to be the wettest periods and winter the driest season, with November being the driest month. The highest recorded temperature is in Johnston and Columbia on June 29, 2012, and the lowest recorded temperature is at Caesars Head on January 21, 1985.
Snowfall in South Carolina is somewhat uncommon in most of the state, while coastal areas receive less than an inch (2.5 cm) annually on average. It is not uncommon for the state (especially the southern coast) to receive no recordable snowfall in a given year. The interior receives a little more snow, although nowhere in the state averages more than of snow annually. The mountains of extreme northwestern South Carolina tend to have the most substantial snow accumulation. Freezing rain and ice tend to be more common than snow in many areas of the state. Road bridges in South Carolina are commonly marked, "Bridge ices before road".
South Carolina is also prone to tropical cyclones and tornadoes. Two of the strongest hurricanes to strike South Carolina in recent history were Hurricane Hazel (1954) and Hurricane Hugo (1989).
The state is occasionally affected by tropical cyclones. This is an annual concern during hurricane season, which lasts from June1 to November 30. The peak time of vulnerability for the southeast Atlantic coast is from early August to early October, during the Cape Verde hurricane season. Memorable hurricanes to hit South Carolina include Hazel (1954), Florence (2018), and Hugo (1989), all Category 4 hurricanes.
South Carolina averages around 50 days of thunderstorm activity a year. This is less than some of the states further south, and it is slightly less vulnerable to tornadoes than the states which border on the Gulf of Mexico. Some notable tornadoes have struck South Carolina, and the state averages around 14 tornadoes annually. Hail is common with many of the thunderstorms in the state, as there is often a marked contrast in temperature of warmer ground conditions compared to the cold air aloft.
The United States Census Bureau estimates the population of South Carolina was 5,148,714 on July 1, 2019, an 11.31 percentage increase since the 2010 census.
As of the 2017 census estimate, the racial make up of the state is 68.5% White (63.8% non-Hispanic white), 27.3% Black or African American, 0.5% American Indian and Alaska Native, 1.7% Asian, 0.1% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, 1.9% from two or more races. 5.7% of the total population was of Hispanic or Latino origin of any race.
According to the United States Census Bureau, as of 2019, South Carolina had an estimated population of 5,148,714, which is an increase of 64,587 from the prior year and an increase of 523,350, or 11.31%, since the year 2010. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 36,401 people, and migration within the country produced a net increase of 115,084 people. According to the University of South Carolina's Arnold School of Public Health, Consortium for Latino Immigration Studies, South Carolina's foreign-born population grew faster than any other state between 2000 and 2005. South Carolina has banned sanctuary cities.
Historical South Carolina Racial Breakdown of Population
Some Primary Statistical Areas of South Carolina overlap with neighbouring states of North Carolina and Georgia
The following table shows the major metropolitan areas of South Carolina.
In 2019, the U.S. Census Bureau released 2018 population estimates for South Carolina's most populous cities.
South Carolina's state government consists of the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches. Also relevant are the state constitution, law enforcement agencies, federal representation, state finances, and state taxes.
South Carolina has historically had a weak executive branch and a strong legislature. Before 1865, governors in South Carolina were appointed by the General Assembly, and held the title "President of State". The 1865 Constitution changed this process, requiring a popular election. Local governments were also weak. But, the 1867 Constitution, passed during the Reconstruction era, extended democratization by establishing home rule for counties, which were established from the formerly designated districts of the state.
The 1895 state constitution overturned this, reducing the role of counties and strengthening the relative role of the state legislature; essentially the counties were agents of the state and ruled by the General Assembly through the legislative delegation for each county. They are geographically comprehensive; all areas of the state are included in counties. As each county had one state senator, that position was particularly powerful. This status continued until 1973, when the state constitution was amended to provide for home rule for the counties. During this time the state had changed, with increasing urbanization, but rural counties retained proportionally more power as the legislature was based in representatives elected from counties rather than population districts.
The federal court case, "Reynolds v. Sims" (1964), "established the one-man, one-vote
concept for electoral representation at the state level. Legislators were now supposed to represent
more or less equal numbers of people." Residents of urban areas had been found to be markedly underrepresented in the legislature under the county-based system. Reapportionment made obvious the need for other changes to county structure, leading to the legislature passing the constitutional amendment. The Home Rule Act of 1975 implemented the amendment giving more power to the counties. With urbanization, their governments have become increasingly important in the state.
Several changes to the state constitution have affected the office of the governor and the cabinet. In 1926 the governor's term was extended from two to four years; in 1982 the governor was allowed to run for a second succeeding term. In 1993, the state passed an amendment requiring a limited cabinet (all of whom must be popularly elected).
As of January 2, 2016, there were 2,948,772 registered voters.
There is evidence of human activity in the area about 40,000 years ago. At the time Europeans arrived, marking the end of the Pre-Columbian era around 1600, there were many separate Native American tribes, the largest being the Cherokee, and the Catawba, and the total population being up to 20,000.
Up the rivers of the eastern coastal plain lived about a dozen tribes of Siouan background. Along the Savannah River were the Apalachee, Yuchi, and the Yamasee. Further west were the Cherokee, and along the Catawba River, the Catawba. These tribes were village-dwellers, relying on agriculture as their primary food source. The Cherokee lived in wattle and daub houses made with wood and clay, roofed with wood or thatched grass.
About a dozen separate small tribes summered on the coast harvesting oysters and fish, and cultivating corn, peas and beans. Travelling inland as much as mostly by canoe, they wintered on the coastal plain, hunting deer and gathering nuts and fruit. The names of these tribes survive in place names like Edisto Island, Kiawah Island, and the Ashepoo River.
The Spanish were the first Europeans in the area. From June 24 to July 14, 1521, they explored the land around Winyah Bay. On October 8, 1526, they founded San Miguel de Gualdape, near present-day Georgetown, South Carolina. It was the first European settlement in what is now mainland USA. Established with five hundred settlers, it was abandoned eight months later by one hundred and fifty survivors. In 1540, Hernando de Soto explored the region and the main town of Cofitachequi, where he captured the queen of the Maskoki (Muscogee) and the Chelaque (Cherokee) who had welcomed him.
In 1562 French Huguenots established a settlement at what is now the Charlesfort-Santa Elena archaeological site on Parris Island. Many of these settlers preferred a natural life far from civilization and the atrocities of the Wars of Religion. The garrison lacked supplies, however, and the soldiers (as in the France Antarctique) soon ran away. The French returned two years later but settled in present-day Florida rather than South Carolina.
Sixty years later, in 1629, King of England Charles I established the Province of Carolina, an area covering what is now South and North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. In 1663, Charles II granted the land to eight Lords Proprietors in return for their financial and political assistance in restoring him to the throne in 1660. Anthony Ashley Cooper, one of the Lord Proprietors, planned the Grand Model for the Province of Carolina and wrote the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which laid the basis for the future colony. His utopia was inspired by John Locke, an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism".
In the 1670s, English planters from Barbados established themselves near what is now Charleston. Settlers from all over Europe built rice plantations in the South Carolina Lowcountry, east of the Atlantic Seaboard fall line. Plantation labor was done by African slaves who formed the majority of the population by 1720. Another cash crop was the Indigo plant, a plant source of blue dye, developed by Eliza Lucas.
Meanwhile, Upstate South Carolina, west of the Fall Line, was settled by small farmers and traders, who displaced Native American tribes westward. Colonists overthrew the proprietors' rule, seeking more direct representation. In 1719, the colony was officially made a crown colony. In 1729, North Carolina was split off into a separate colony.
South Carolina prospered from the fertility of the Low Country and the harbors, such as at Charleston. It allowed religious toleration, encouraging Settlements spread, and trade in deerskin, lumber, and beef thrived. Rice cultivation was developed on a large scale.
By the second half of the 1700s, South Carolina was one of the richest of the Thirteen Colonies.
On March 26, 1776, the colony adopted the Constitution of South Carolina, electing John Rutledge as the state's first president. In February, 1778, South Carolina became the first state to ratify the Articles of Confederation, the initial governing document of the United States, and in May 1788, South Carolina ratified the United States Constitution, becoming the eighth state to enter the union.
During the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), about a third of combat action took place in South Carolina, more than in any other state. Inhabitants of the state endured being invaded by English forces and an ongoing civil war between loyalists and partisans that devastated the backcountry. It is estimated 25,000 slaves (30% of those in South Carolina) fled, migrated or died during the war.
America's first census in 1790 put the state's population at nearly 250,000. By the 1800 census the population had increased 38 per cent to nearly 340,000 of which 146,000 were slaves. At that time South Carolina had the largest population of Jews in the 16 United States, mostly based in Savannah and Charleston, the latter being the country's fifth largest city.
In the Antebellum period (before the Civil War) the state's economy and population grew. Cotton became an important crop after the invention of the cotton gin. While nominally democratic, from 1790 until 1865, wealthy landowners were in control of South Carolina. For example, a man was not eligible to sit in the State House of Representatives unless he possessed an estate of 500 acres of land and 10 Negroes, or at least 150 pounds sterling, diminishing the electorate. Further, the state maintained indirect election of electors by the state legislature until 1868, the last state to do so. Voters thus did not participate in presidential elections, other than through state-wide elections.
Columbia, the new state capital was founded in the center of the state, and the State Legislature first met there in 1790. The town grew after it was connected to Charleston by the Santee Canal in 1800, one of the first canals in the United States.
As dissatisfaction with the federal government grew, in the 1820s John C. Calhoun became a leading proponent of states' rights, limited government, nullification of the U.S. Constitution, and free trade. In 1832, the Ordinance of Nullification declared federal tariff laws unconstitutional and not to be enforced in the state, leading to the Nullification Crisis. The federal Force Bill was enacted to use whatever military force necessary to enforce federal law in the state, bringing South Carolina back into line.
In the United States presidential election of 1860 voting was sharply divided, with the south voting for the Southern Democrats and the north for Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party. Lincoln was anti-slavery, did not acknowledge the right to secession, and would not yield federal property in Southern states. Southern secessionists believed Lincoln's election meant long-term doom for their slavery-based agrarian economy and social system.
Lincoln was elected president on November 6, 1860. The state House of Representatives three days later passed the "Resolution to Call the Election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. President a Hostile Act", and within weeks South Carolina became the first state to secede.
On April 12, 1861, Confederate (southern) batteries began shelling the Union (northern) Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, and the American Civil War began. In November of that year the Union attacked Port Royal Sound and soon occupied Beaufort County and the neighboring Sea Islands. For the rest of the war this area served as a Union base and staging point for other operations. Whites abandoned their plantations, leaving behind about ten thousand slaves. Several Northern charities partnered with the federal government to help these people run the cotton farms themselves under the Port Royal Experiment. Workers were paid by the pound harvested and thus became the first former slaves freed by the Union forces to earn wages.
Although the state was not a major battleground, the war ruined the economy. Under conscription, all men aged 18–35 (later 45) were drafted for Confederate service. More than 60,000 served, and the state lost nearly one-third of the white male population of fighting age.
At the end of the war in early 1865, the troops of General William Tecumseh Sherman marched across the state devastating plantations and most of Columbia.
After the war, South Carolina was restored to the United States during Reconstruction. Under presidential Reconstruction (1865–66), freedmen (former slaves) were given limited rights. Under Radical reconstruction (1867–1877), a Republican coalition of freedmen, carpetbaggers and scalawags was in control, supported by Union Army forces. They established public education, welfare institutions, and home rule for counties, expanding democracy.
In "Texas vs. White" (1869), the Supreme Court ruled the ordinances of secession (including that of South Carolina) were invalid, and thus those states had never left the Union. However, South Carolina did not regain representation in Congress until that date.
Until the 1868 presidential election, South Carolina's legislature, not the voters, chose the state's electors for the presidential election. South Carolina was the last state to choose its electors in this manner. On October 19, 1871 President Ulysses S. Grant suspended habeas corpus in nine South Carolina counties under the authority of the Ku Klux Klan Act. Led by Grant's Attorney General Amos T. Akerman, hundreds of Klansmen were arrested while 2000 Klansmen fled the state. This was done to suppress Klan violence against African-American and white voters in the South. In the mid to late 1870s, white Democrats used paramilitary groups such as the Red Shirts to intimidate and terrorize black voters. They regained political control of the state under conservative white "Redeemers" and pro-business Bourbon Democrats. In 1877, the federal government withdrew its troops as part of the Compromise of 1877 that ended Reconstruction.
The state became a hotbed of racial and economic tensions during the Populist and Agrarian movements of the 1890s. A Republican-Populist biracial coalition took power away from White Democrats temporarily. To prevent that from happening again, Democrats gained passage of a new constitution in 1895 which effectively disenfranchised almost all blacks and many poor whites by new requirements for poll taxes, residency, and literacy tests that dramatically reduced the voter rolls. By 1896, only 5,500 black voters remained on the voter registration rolls, although they constituted a majority of the state's population. The 1900 census demonstrated the extent of disenfranchisement: the 782,509 African American citizens comprised more than 58% of the state's population, but they were essentially without any political representation in the Jim Crow society.
The 1895 constitution overturned local representative government, reducing the role of the counties to agents of state government, effectively ruled by the General Assembly, through the legislative delegations for each county. As each county had one state senator, that person had considerable power. The counties lacked representative government until home rule was passed in 1975.
Governor "Pitchfork Ben Tillman", a Populist, led the effort to disenfranchise the blacks and poor whites, although he controlled Democratic state politics from the 1890s to 1910 with a base among poor white farmers. During the constitutional convention in 1895, he supported another man's proposal that the state adopt a one-drop rule, as well as prohibit marriage between whites and anyone with any known African ancestry.
Some members of the convention realized prominent white families with some African ancestry could be affected by such legislation. In terms similar to a debate in Virginia in 1853 on a similar proposal (which was dropped), George Dionysius Tillman said in opposition:
If the law is made as it now stands respectable families in Aiken, Barnwell, Colleton, and Orangeburg will be denied the right to intermarry among people with whom they are now associated and identified. At least one hundred families would be affected to my knowledge. They have sent good soldiers to the Confederate Army, and are now landowners and taxpayers. Those men served creditably, and it would be unjust and disgraceful to embarrass them in this way. It is a scientific fact that there is not one full-blooded Caucasian on the floor of this convention. Every member has in him a certain mixture of... colored blood. The pure-blooded white has needed and received a certain infusion of darker blood to give him readiness and purpose. It would be a cruel injustice and the source of endless litigation, of scandal, horror, feud, and bloodshed to undertake to annul or forbid marriage for a remote, perhaps obsolete trace of Negro blood. The doors would be open to scandal, malice and greed; to statements on the witness stand that the father or grandfather or grandmother had said that A or B had Negro blood in their veins. Any man who is half a man would be ready to blow up half the world with dynamite to prevent or avenge attacks upon the honor of his mother in the legitimacy or purity of the blood of his father.
The state postponed such a one-drop law for years. Virginian legislators adopted a one-drop law in 1924, forgetting that their state had many people of mixed ancestry among those who identified as white.
Early in the 20th century, South Carolina developed a thriving textile industry. The state also converted its agricultural base from cotton to more profitable crops; attracted large military bases through its powerful Democratic congressional delegation, part of the one-party South following disfranchisement of blacks at the turn of the century; and created tourism industries. During the early part of the 20th Century, millions of African Americans left South Carolina and other southern states for jobs, opportunities and relative freedom in U.S. cities outside the former Confederate states. In total from 1910 to 1970, 6.5 million blacks left the South in the Great Migration. By 1930 South Carolina had a white majority for the first time since 1708.
South Carolina was one of several states that initially rejected the Nineteenth Amendment (1920) giving women the right to vote. The South Carolina legislature later ratified the amendment on July 1, 1969.
"See also: Civil Rights movement in South Carolina"
The struggle of the civil rights movement took place in South Carolina as they did in other Southern states. However, South Carolina experienced a much less violent movement than other Southern states. This tranquil transition from a Jim Crow society occurred because the state's white and black leaders were willing to accept slow change rather than being utterly unwilling to accept change at all. Other South Carolinians, like Sen. Strom Thurmond, on the other hand, were among the nation's most radical and effective opponents of social equality and integration.
As of 2015, South Carolina had one of the lowest percentages among all states of women in state legislature, at 13.5% (only Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Wyoming had a lower percentage; the national average is 24.3%; with the highest percentage being in Colorado at 41%). In 2011, South Carolina ranked first in the country in the rate of women killed by men.
As the 21st century progresses, South Carolina attracts new business by having a 5% corporate income tax rate, no state property tax, no local income tax, no inventory tax, no sales tax on manufacturing equipment, industrial power or materials for finished products; no wholesale tax, no unitary tax on worldwide profits.
South Carolina was one of the first states to stop paying for 'early elective' deliveries of babies, under either Medicaid and private insurance. The term early elective is defined as a labor induction or Cesarean section between 37–39 weeks that is not medically based. This change is intended to result in healthier babies and fewer unnecessary costs for South Carolina.
On November 20, 2014, South Carolina became the 35th state to legalize same-sex marriages, when a federal court ordered the change.
South Carolina has many venues for visual and performing arts. The Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, the Greenville County Museum of Art, the Columbia Museum of Art, Spartanburg Art Museum, and the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia among others provide access to visual arts to the state. There are also numerous historic sites and museums scattered throughout the state paying homage to many events and periods in the state's history from Native American inhabitation to the present day.
South Carolina also has performing art venues including the Peace Center in Greenville, the Koger Center for the Arts in Columbia, and the Newberry Opera House, among others to bring local, national, and international talent to the stages of South Carolina. Several large venues can house major events, including Colonial Life Arena in Columbia, Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, and North Charleston Coliseum.
One of the nation's major performing arts festivals, Spoleto Festival USA, is held annually in Charleston. There are also countless local festivals throughout the state highlighting many cultural traditions, historical events, and folklore.
According to the South Carolina Arts Commission, creative industries generate $9.2 billion annually and support over 78,000 jobs in the state. A 2009 statewide poll by the University of South Carolina Institute for Public Service and Policy Research found that 67% of residents had participated in the arts in some form during the past year and on average citizens had participated in the arts 14 times in the previous year.
According to the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA), in 2010 the largest denominations were the Southern Baptist Convention with 913,763 adherents, the United Methodist Church with 274,111 adherents, and the Roman Catholic Church with 181,743 adherents. Fourth largest is the African Methodist Episcopal Church with 564 congregations and 121,000 members and fifth largest is the Presbyterian Church (USA) with 320 congregations and almost 100,000 members.
As of 2010, South Carolina is the American state with the highest per capita proportion of Baha'is with 17,559 adherents, making the Baha'i Faith the second largest religion in the state.
Although no major league professional sports teams are based in South Carolina, the Carolina Panthers do have training facilities in the state and played their inaugural season's home games at Clemson's Memorial Stadium, however, they currently play in North Carolina. The Panthers consider themselves "The Carolinas' Team" and refrained from naming themselves after Charlotte or either of the Carolinas. The state is also home to numerous minor league professional teams. College teams represent their particular South Carolina institutions, and are the primary options for football, basketball and baseball attendance in the state. South Carolina is also a top destination for golf and water sports.
South Carolina is also home to one of NASCAR's first tracks and its first paved speedway, Darlington Raceway northwest of Florence.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, South Carolina's gross state product (GSP) in current dollars was $97 billion in 1997 and $153 billion in 2007. Its per-capita real gross domestic product (GDP) in chained 2000 dollars was $26,772 in 1997 and $28,894 in 2007; that represents 85% of the $31,619 per-capita real GDP for the United States overall in 1997, and 76% of the $38,020 for the U.S. in 2007. The state debt in 2012 was calculated by one source to be $22.9bn, or $7,800 per taxpayer.
Major agricultural outputs of the state are tobacco, poultry, cotton, cattle, dairy products, soybeans, hay, rice, and swine. Industrial outputs include textile goods, chemical products, paper products, machinery, automobiles, automotive products and tourism. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of March 2012, South Carolina had 1,852,700 nonfarm jobs of which 12% are in manufacturing, 11.5% are in leisure and hospitality, 19% are in trade, transportation, and utilities, and 11.8% are in education and health services. The service sector accounts for 83.7% of the South Carolina economy.
Many large corporations have moved their locations to South Carolina. Boeing opened an aircraft manufacturing facility in Charleston in 2011, which serves as one of two final assembly sites for the 787 Dreamliner. South Carolina is a right-to-work state and many businesses utilize staffing agencies to temporarily fill positions. Domtar, in Rock Hill, is the only Fortune 500 company headquartered in South Carolina. The Fortune 1000 list includes SCANA, Sonoco Products and ScanSource.
South Carolina also benefits from foreign investment. There are 1,950 foreign-owned firms operating in South Carolina employing almost 135,000 people. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) brought 1.06 billion dollars to the state economy in 2010. Since 1994, BMW has had a production facility in Spartanburg County near Greer and since 1996 the Zapp Group operates in Summerville near Charleston.
There are 36 TV stations (including PBS affiliates) serving South Carolina with terrestrial, and some online streaming access. Markets in which the stations are located include Columbia, Florence, Allendale, Myrtle Beach, Greenville, Charleston, Conway, Beaufort, Hardeeville, Spartanburg, Greenwood, Anderson and Sumter.
The state has the fourth largest state-maintained system in the country, consisting of 11 Interstates, numbered highways, state highways, and secondary roads, totalling approximately 41,500 miles.
On secondary roads, South Carolina uses a numbering system to keep track of all non-interstate and primary highways that the South Carolina Department of Transportation maintains. Secondary roads are numbered by the number of the county followed by a unique number for the particular road.
Passenger rail
Amtrak operates four passenger routes in South Carolina: the "Crescent", the "Palmetto", the "Silver Meteor", and the "Silver Star". The "Crescent" route serves the Upstate cities, the "Silver Star" serves the Midlands cities, and the "Palmetto" and "Silver Meteor" routes serve the low country cities.
Station stops
Freight
CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern are the only Class I railroad companies in South Carolina, as other freight companies in the state are short lines.
There are seven significant airports in South Carolina, all of which act as regional airport hubs. The busiest by passenger volume is Charleston International Airport. Just across the border in North Carolina is Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, the 30th busiest airport in the world, in terms of passengers.
As of 2010, South Carolina is one of three states that have not agreed to use competitive international math and language standards.
In 2014, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled the state had failed to provide a "minimally adequate" education to children in all parts of the state as required by the state's constitution.
South Carolina has 1,144 K–12 schools in 85 school districts with an enrollment of 712,244 as of fall 2009. As of the 2008–2009 school year, South Carolina spent $9,450 per student which places it 31st in the country for per student spending.
In 2015, the national average SAT score was 1490 and the South Carolina average was 1442, 48 points lower than the national average.
South Carolina is the only state which owns and operates a statewide school bus system. As of December 2016, the state maintains a 5,582-bus fleet with the average vehicle in service being fifteen years old (the national average is six) having logged 236,000 miles. Half of the state's school buses are more than 15 years old and some are reportedly up to 30 years old. In 2017 in the budget proposal, Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman requested the state lease to purchase 1,000 buses to replace the most decrepit vehicles. An additional 175 buses could be purchased immediately through the State Treasurer's master lease program. On January 5, 2017, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded South Carolina more than $1.1 million to replace 57 school buses with new cleaner models through its Diesel Emissions Reduction Act program.
South Carolina has diverse institutions from large state-funded research universities to small colleges that cultivate a liberal arts, religious or military tradition.
For overall health care, South Carolina is ranked 33rd out of the 50 states, according to the Commonwealth Fund, a private health foundation working to improve the health care system. The state's teen birth rate was 53 births per 1,000 teens, compared to the national average of 41.9 births, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The state's infant mortality rate was 9.4 deaths per 1,000 births compared to the national average of 6.9 deaths.
There were 2.6 physicians per 1,000 people compared to the national average of 3.2 physicians. There was $5,114 spent on health expenses per capita in the state, compared to the national average of $5,283. There were 26 percent of children and 13 percent of elderly living in poverty in the state, compared to 23 percent and 13 percent, respectively, doing so in the U.S. And, 34 percent of children were overweight or obese, compared to the national average of 32 percent.
List of TV stations in South Carolina: Television Stations - Station Index | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27956 |
Sikhism
Sikhi (', or Sikhism (); , from ), is a monotheistic religion that originated in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent around the end of the 15th century.
It is one of the youngest of the major religions and world's fifth largest organized religion, as well as the world's ninth-largest overall religion, with about 30 million Sikhs as of the early 21st century.
Sikhism is based on the spiritual teachings of Guru Nanak, the first Guru (1469–1539), and the nine Sikh Gurus that succeeded him. The tenth Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, named the Sikh scripture "Guru Granth Sahib" as his successor, terminating the line of human Gurus and establishing the scripture as the eternal, religious spiritual guide for Sikhs. Guru Nanak taught that living an "active, creative, and practical life" of "truthfulness, fidelity, self-control and purity" is above the metaphysical truth, and that the ideal man is one who "establishes union with God, knows His Will, and carries out that Will." Guru Hargobind, the sixth Sikh Guru, established the "miri" (political/temporal) and "piri" (spiritual) realms to be mutually coexistent.
The Sikh scripture opens with the "Mul Mantar" (), fundamental prayer about "ik onkar" (). The core beliefs of Sikhism, articulated in the "Guru Granth Sahib", include faith and meditation on the name of the one creator; divine unity and equality of all humankind; engaging in "seva" ('selfless service'); striving for justice for the benefit and prosperity of all; and honest conduct and livelihood while living a householder's life. Following this standard, Sikhism rejects claims that any particular religious tradition has a monopoly on Absolute Truth.
Sikhism emphasizes "simran" (, meditation and remembrance of the words of God), which can be expressed musically through "kirtan", or internally through "naam japna" ('meditation on His name') as a means to feel God's presence. It teaches followers to transform the "Five Thieves" (i.e. lust, rage, greed, attachment, and ego).
The religion developed and evolved in times of religious persecution, gaining converts from both Hinduism and Islam. Two of the Sikh gurus—Guru Arjan (1563–1605) and Guru Tegh Bahadur (1621–1675)—were tortured and executed by the Mughal rulers after they refused to convert to Islam. The persecution of Sikhs triggered the founding of the "Khalsa", by Guru Gobind Singh, as an order to protect the freedom of conscience and religion, with qualities of a "Sant-Sipāhī"—a 'saint-soldier'.
The majority of Sikh scriptures were originally written in the alphabet of "Gurmukhī", a script standardised by Guru Angad out of Laṇḍā scripts used in North India. Adherents of Sikhism are known as "Sikhs", meaning 'students' or 'disciples' of the Guru. The anglicised word "Sikhism" derives from the Punjabi verb "Sikhi", which connotes the "temporal path of learning" and is rooted in the word "sikhana" ('to learn').
Sikhism is classified as an Indian religion along with Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism.
The basis of Sikhism lies in the teachings of Guru Nanak and his successors. Many sources call Sikhism a monotheistic religion, while others call it a monistic and panentheistic religion. According to Nesbitt (2005), English renderings of Sikhism as a monotheistic religion "tend misleadingly to reinforce a Semitic understanding of monotheism, rather than Guru Nanak's mystical awareness of the one that is expressed through the many. However, what is not in doubt is the emphasis on 'one'."
In Sikhism, the concept of "God" is "Waheguru" ('wondrous Lord') considered to be "nirankar" ('shapeless'), "akal" ('timeless'), "karta purakh" ('The Creator'), and "agam agochar" ('incomprehensible and invisible'). The Sikh scripture begins with "ik onkar" (ੴ), which refers to the "formless one", understood in the Sikh tradition as monotheistic unity of God. Sikh ethics emphasize the congruence between spiritual development and everyday moral conduct. Its founder Guru Nanak summarized this perspective:Truth is the highest virtue, but higher still is truthful living.
Sikhism lays emphasis on "Ėk nūr te sab jag upjiā", 'From the one light, the entire universe welled up.'
God in Sikhism is known as "ik onkar" (), the One Supreme Reality, the One Creator or the all-pervading spirit (i.e. God). This spirit has no gender in Sikhism, though translations may present it as masculine. It is also "akaal purkh" ('beyond time and space') and "nirankar" ('without form'). In addition, Nanak wrote that there are many worlds on which it has created life.
The traditional "Mul Mantar" goes from "ik onkar" until "Nanak hosee bhee sach". The opening line of the Guru Granth Sahib and each subsequent "raga", mentions "ik onkar":
"Māyā", defined as a temporary illusion or "unreality", is one of the core deviations from the pursuit of God and salvation: where worldly attractions which give only illusory temporary satisfaction and pain which distract the process of the devotion of God. However, Nanak emphasised māyā as not a reference to the unreality of the world, but of its values. In Sikhism, the influences of ego, anger, greed, attachment, and lust, known as the "pānj chor" ('five thieves'), are believed to be particularly distracting and hurtful. Sikhs believe the world is currently in a state of "kali yuga" ('age of darkness') because the world is led astray by the love of and attachment to maya. The fate of people vulnerable to the five thieves, is separation from God, and the situation may be remedied only after intensive and relentless devotion.
According to Guru Nanak the supreme purpose of human life is to reconnect with "Akal" ('The Timeless One;), however, egotism is the biggest barrier in doing this. Using the Guru's teaching remembrance of "nām" (the divine Name of the Lord) leads to the end of egotism. Guru Nanak designated the word "Guru" ('teacher') to mean the voice of "the spirit": the source of knowledge and the guide to salvation. As "ik onkar" is universally immanent, "Guru" is indistinguishable from "Akal" and are one and the same. One connects with "Guru" only with accumulation of selfless search of truth. Ultimately the seeker realises that it is the consciousness within the body which is seeker/follower of the Word that is the true "Guru". The human body is just a means to achieve the reunion with Truth. Once truth starts to shine in a person's heart, the essence of current and past holy books of all religions is understood by the person.
Guru Nanak's teachings are founded not on a final destination of heaven or hell but on a spiritual union with the "Akal" which results in salvation or "jivanmukti" ('enlightenment/liberation within one's lifetime'), a concept also found in Hinduism. Guru Gobind Singh makes it clear that human birth is obtained with great fortune, therefore one needs to be able to make the most of this life.
Sikhs believe in reincarnation and karma concepts found in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. However, in Sikhism, both karma and liberation "is modified by the concept of God's grace" ("nadar, mehar, kirpa, karam", etc.). Guru Nanak states that "the body takes birth because of karma, but salvation is attained through grace." To get closer to God, Sikhs: avoid the evils of "maya"; keep the everlasting truth in mind; practice "shabad kirtan" (musical recitation of hymns); meditate on "naam"; and serve humanity. Sikhs believe that being in the company of the "satsang" (association with "sat", 'true', people) or "sadh sangat" is one of the key ways to achieve liberation from the cycles of reincarnation.
Sikhism was influenced by the Bhakti movement, but it was not simply an extension of Bhakti.
Guru Nanak, the first Sikh Guru and the founder of Sikhism, was a Bhakti saint. He taught that the most important form of worship is "Bhakti" (devotion to Bhagvan). Guru Arjan, in the "Sukhmani Sahib", recommended the true religion is one of loving devotion to God. The "Guru Granth Sahib" includes suggestions on how a Sikh should perform constant Bhakti. Some scholars call Sikhism a Bhakti sect of Indian traditions, adding that it emphasises ""nirguni Bhakti"," i.e. loving devotion to a divine without qualities or physical form. However, Sikhism also accepts the concept of "saguni", i.e. a divine with qualities and form. While Western scholarship generally places Sikhism as arising primarily within a Hindu Bhakti movement milieu while recognizing some Sufi Islamic influences, Indian Sikh scholars disagree and state that Sikhism transcended the environment it emerged from.
Some Sikh sects outside the Punjab-region of India, such as those found in Maharashtra and Bihar, practice Aarti with lamps during bhakti in a Sikh Gurdwara. But, most Sikh Gurdwaras forbid "aarti" (the ceremonial use of lamps) during their bhakti practices.
While emphasizing Bhakti, the Sikh Gurus also taught that the spiritual life and secular householder life are intertwined. In Sikh worldview, the everyday world is part of the Infinite Reality, increased spiritual awareness leads to increased and vibrant participation in the everyday world. Guru Nanak described living an "active, creative, and practical life" of "truthfulness, fidelity, self-control and purity" as being higher than the metaphysical truth.
The 6th Sikh Guru, Guru Hargobind, after Guru Arjan martyrdom and faced with oppression by the Islamic Mughal Empire, affirmed the philosophy that the political/temporal ("Miri") and spiritual ("Piri") realms are mutually coexistent. According to the 9th Sikh Guru, Tegh Bahadur, the ideal Sikh should have both "Shakti" (power that resides in the temporal), and "Bhakti" (spiritual meditative qualities). This was developed into the concept of the Saint Soldier by the 10th Sikh Guru, Gobind Singh.
The concept of man as elaborated by Guru Nanak refines and negates the "monotheistic concept of self/God," and "monotheism becomes almost redundant in the movement and crossings of love." The goal of man, taught the Sikh Gurus, is to end all dualities of "self and other, I and not-I," attain the "attendant balance of separation-fusion, self-other, action-inaction, attachment-detachment, in the course of daily life."
Sikhs refer to the hymns of the Gurus as "Gurbani" ('The Guru's word'). Shabad Kirtan is the singing of Gurbani. The entire verses of Guru Granth Sahib are written in a form of poetry and rhyme to be recited in thirty one Ragas of the Classical Indian Music as specified. However, the exponents of these are rarely to be found amongst the Sikhs who are conversant with all the Ragas in the Guru Granth Sahib. Guru Nanak started the Shabad Kirtan tradition and taught that listening to kirtan is a powerful way to achieve tranquility while meditating; Singing of the glories of the Supreme Timeless One (God) with devotion is the most effective way to come in communion with the Supreme Timeless One. The three morning prayers for Sikhs consist of Japji Sahib, Jaap Sahib and Tav-Prasad Savaiye. Baptised Sikhs – Amritdharis, rise early and meditate and then recite all the Five Banis of Nitnem before breakfast.
A key practice by Sikhs is remembrance of the Divine Name WaheGuru (Naam – the Name of the Lord). This contemplation is done through "Nām Japna" (repetition of the divine name) or "Naam Simran" (remembrance of the divine Name through recitation). The verbal repetition of the name of God or a sacred syllable has been an ancient established practice in religious traditions in India, however, Sikhism developed "Naam-simran" as an important Bhakti practice. Guru Nanak's ideal is the total exposure of one's being to the divine Name and a total conforming to Dharma or the "Divine Order". Nanak described the result of the disciplined application of "nām simraṇ" as a "growing towards and into God" through a gradual process of five stages. The last of these is "sach khaṇḍ" ("The Realm of Truth")the final union of the spirit with God.
The Sikh Gurus taught that by constantly remembering the divine name ("naam simran") and through selfless service, or "sēvā", the devotee overcomes egotism ("Haumai"). This, it states, is the primary root of five evil impulses and the cycle of rebirth.
Service in Sikhism takes three forms: "Tan" – physical service; "Man" – mental service (such as studying to help others); and "Dhan" – material service. Sikhism stresses "kirat karō": that is "honest work". Sikh teachings also stress the concept of sharing, or "vaṇḍ chakkō", giving to the needy for the benefit of the community.
Sikhism regards God as the true king, the king of all kings, the one who dispenses justice through the law of "karma", a retributive model and divine grace.
The term for justice in the Sikh tradition is "Niau". It is related to the term "dharam" which in Sikhism connotes 'moral order' and righteousness. According to the Tenth Sikh Guru Guru Gobind Singh, states Pashaura Singh – a professor of Sikh Studies, "one must first try all the peaceful means of negotiation in the pursuit of justice" and if these fail then it is legitimate to "draw the sword in defense of righteousness". Sikhism considers "an attack on dharam is an attack on justice, on righteousness, and on the moral order generally" and the dharam "must be defended at all costs". The divine name is its antidote for all pain and vices. Forgiveness is taught as a virtue in Sikhism, yet it also teaches its faithful to shun those with evil intentions and to pick up the sword to fight injustice and religious persecution.
Sikhism does not differentiate religious obligations by gender. God in Sikhism has no gender, and the Sikh scripture does not discriminate against women, nor bar them from any roles. Women in Sikhism have led battles and issued hukamnamas.
The term Guru comes from the Sanskrit "gurū", meaning teacher, guide, or mentor. The traditions and philosophy of Sikhism were established by ten Gurus from 1469 to 1708. Each Guru added to and reinforced the message taught by the previous, resulting in the creation of the Sikh religion. Guru Nanak was the first Guru and appointed a disciple as successor. Guru Gobind Singh was the final Guru in human form. Before his death, Guru Gobind Singh decreed in 1708, that the Gurū Granth Sāhib would be the final and perpetual Guru of the Sikhs.
Guru Nanak stated that his Guru is God who is the same from the beginning of time to the end of time. Nanak claimed to be God's mouthpiece, God's slave and servant, but maintained that he was only a guide and teacher. Nanak stated that the human Guru is mortal, who is to be respected and loved but not worshipped. When Guru, or SatGuru (The true Guru) is used in "Gurbani" it is often referring to the highest expression of truthfulness – God.
Guru Angad succeeded Guru Nanak. Later, an important phase in the development of Sikhism came with the third successor, Guru Amar Das. Guru Nanak's teachings emphasised the pursuit of salvation; Guru Amar Das began building a cohesive community of followers with initiatives such as sanctioning distinctive ceremonies for birth, marriage, and death. Amar Das also established the "manji" (comparable to a diocese) system of clerical supervision.
Guru Amar Das's successor and son-in-law Guru Ram Das founded the city of Amritsar, which is home of the Harimandir Sahib and regarded widely as the holiest city for all Sikhs. Guru Arjan was arrested by Mughal authorities who were suspicious and hostile to the religious order he was developing. His persecution and death inspired his successors to promote a military and political organization of Sikh communities to defend themselves against the attacks of Mughal forces.
The Sikh Gurus established a mechanism which allowed the Sikh religion to react as a community to changing circumstances. The sixth Guru, Guru Hargobind, was responsible for the creation of the concept of Akal Takht ("throne of the timeless one"), which serves as the supreme decision-making centre of Sikhism and sits opposite the Harmandir Sahib. The Akal Takht is located in the city of Amritsar. The leader is appointed by the Shiromani Gurdwara Pabandhak Committee (SPGC). The "Sarbat Ḵẖālsā" (a representative portion of the Khalsa Panth) historically gathers at the Akal Takht on special festivals such as Vaisakhi or Hola Mohalla and when there is a need to discuss matters that affect the entire Sikh nation. A "gurmatā" (literally, "Guru's intention") is an order passed by the Sarbat Ḵẖālsā in the presence of the Gurū Granth Sāhib. A gurmatā may only be passed on a subject that affects the fundamental principles of Sikh religion; it is binding upon all Sikhs. The term "hukamnāmā" (literally, "edict" or "royal order") is often used interchangeably with the term gurmatā. However, a hukamnāmā formally refers to a hymn from the Gurū Granth Sāhib which is a given order to Sikhs.
The word Guru in Sikhism also refers to "Akal Purkh" (God), and God and Guru are often synonymous in "Gurbani" (Sikh writings).
There is one primary scripture for the Sikhs: the Gurū Granth Sāhib. It is sometimes synonymously referred to as the Ādi Granth. Chronologically, however, the Ādi Granth – literally, "The First Volume", refers to the version of the scripture created by Guru Arjan in 1604. The Gurū Granth Sāhib is the final expanded version of the scripture compiled by Guru Gobind Singh. While the Guru Granth Sahib is an unquestioned scripture in Sikhism, another important religious text, the Dasam Granth, does not enjoy universal consensus, and is considered a secondary scripture by many Sikhs.
The Ādi Granth was compiled primarily by Bhai Gurdas under the supervision of Guru Arjan between the years 1603 and 1604. It is written in the Gurmukhī script, which is a descendant of the Laṇḍā script used in the Punjab at that time. The Gurmukhī script was standardised by Guru Angad, the second Guru of the Sikhs, for use in the Sikh scriptures and is thought to have been influenced by the Śāradā and Devanāgarī scripts. An authoritative scripture was created to protect the integrity of hymns and teachings of the Sikh Gurus, and thirteen Hindu and two Muslim bhagats of the Bhakti movement sant tradition in medieval India. The thirteen Hindu bhagats whose teachings were entered into the text included Ramananda, Namdev, Pipa, Ravidas, Beni, Bhikhan, Dhanna, Jaidev, Parmanand, Sadhana, Sain, Sur, Trilochan, while the two Muslim bhagats were Kabir and Sufi saint Farid. However the bhagats in context often spoke of transcending their religious labels, Kabir often attributed to being a Muslim states in the Adi Granth "I am not Hindu nor Muslim. The Gurus following on this message taught that different methods of devotion are for the same infinite God.
The Guru Granth Sahib is the holy scripture of the Sikhs, and regarded as the living Guru.
The Guru Granth started as a volume of Guru Nanak's poetic compositions. Prior to his death, he passed on his volume to Guru Angad (Guru 1539–1551). The final version of the Gurū Granth Sāhib was compiled by Guru Gobind Singh in 1678. It consists of the original Ādi Granth with the addition of Guru Tegh Bahadur's hymns. The predominant bulk of Guru Granth Sahib is compositions by seven Sikh Gurus – Guru Nanak, Guru Angad, Guru Amar Das, Guru Ram Das, Guru Arjan, Guru Teg Bahadur and Guru Gobind Singh. It also contains the traditions and teachings of thirteen Hindu Bhakti movement "sants" (saints) such as Ramananda, Namdev among others, and two Muslim saints namely Kabir and the Sufi Sheikh Farid.
The text comprises 6,000 "śabads" (line compositions), which are poetically rendered and set to rhythmic ancient north Indian classical music. The bulk of the scripture is classified into thirty one "rāgas", with each Granth rāga subdivided according to length and author. The hymns in the scripture are arranged primarily by the "rāgas" in which they are read.
The main language used in the scripture is known as "Sant Bhāṣā", a language related to both Punjabi and Hindi and used extensively across medieval northern India by proponents of popular devotional religion (bhakti). The text is printed in Gurumukhi script, believed to have been developed by Guru Angad, but it shares the Indo-European roots found in numerous regional languages of India.
The vision in the Guru Granth Sahib, states Torkel Brekke, is a society based on divine justice without oppression of any kind.
The Granth begins with the "Mūl Mantra", an iconic verse which received Guru Nanak directly from Akal Purakh (God).
The traditional Mul Mantar goes from Ik Oankar until Nanak Hosee Bhee Sach.
The Tenth Guru, Guru Gobind Singh ji, named the Sikh scripture Guru Granth Sahib as his successor, terminating the line of human Gurus and making the scripture the literal embodiment of the eternal, impersonal Guru, where Gods/Gurus word serves as the spiritual guide for Sikhs.
The Guru Granth Sahib is installed in Sikh "Gurdwara" (temple); many Sikhs bow or prostrate before it on entering the temple. The Guru Granth Sahib is installed every morning and put to bed at night in many "Gurdwaras". The Granth is revered as eternal "gurbānī" and the spiritual authority.
The copies of the Guru Granth Sahib are not regarded as material objects, but as living subjects which are alive. According to Myrvold, the Sikh scripture is treated with respect like a living person, in a manner similar to the Gospel in early Christian worship. Old copies of the Sikh scripture are not thrown away, rather funerary services are performed.
In India the Guru Granth Sahib is even officially recognised by the Supreme Court of India as a judicial person which can receive donations and own land. Yet, some Sikhs also warn that, without true comprehension of the text, veneration for the text can lead to bibliolatry, with the concrete form of the teachings becoming the object of worship instead of the teachings themselves.
The Sikh scriptures use Hindu terminology, with references to the Vedas, and the names of gods and goddesses in Hindu bhakti movement traditions, such as Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma, Parvati, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Rama, Krishna, but not to worship. It also refers to the spiritual concepts in Hinduism ("Ishvara, Bhagavan, Brahman") and the concept of God in Islam ("Allah") to assert that these are just "alternate names for the Almighty One".
While the Guru Granth Sahib acknowledges the Vedas, Puranas and Qur'an, it does not imply a syncretic bridge between Hinduism and Islam, but emphasises focusing on nitnem banis like Japu (repeating mantra of the divine Name of God – WaheGuru), instead of Muslim practices such as circumcision or praying on a carpet, or Hindu rituals such as wearing thread or praying in a river.
The Dasam Granth is a scripture of Sikhs which contains texts attributed to the Guru Gobind Singh. The "Dasam Granth" is important to a great number of Sikhs, however it does not have the same authority as the "Guru Granth Sahib". Some compositions of the "Dasam Granth" like Jaap Sahib, (Amrit Savaiye), and Benti Chaupai are part of the daily prayers (Nitnem) for Sikhs. The "Dasam Granth" is largely versions of Hindu mythology from the Puranas, secular stories from a variety of sources called "Charitro Pakhyan" – tales to protect careless men from perils of lust.
Five versions of "Dasam Granth" exist, and the authenticity of the "Dasam Granth" is amongst the most debated topics within Sikhism. The text played a significant role in Sikh history, but in modern times parts of the text have seen antipathy and discussion among Sikhs.
The Janamsākhīs (literally "birth stories"), are writings which profess to be biographies of Guru Nanak. Although not scripture in the strictest sense, they provide a hagiographic look at Guru Nanak's life and the early start of Sikhism. There are several – often contradictory and sometimes unreliable – Janamsākhīs and they are not held in the same regard as other sources of scriptural knowledge.
Observant Sikhs adhere to long-standing practices and traditions to strengthen and express their faith. The daily recitation of the divine name of God VaheGuru and from memory of specific passages from the Gurū Granth Sāhib, like the "Japu" (or "Japjī", literally "chant") hymns is recommended immediately after rising and bathing. Baptized Sikhs recite the five morning prayers, the evening and night prayer. Family customs include both reading passages from the scripture and attending the gurdwara (also "gurduārā", meaning "the doorway to God"; sometimes transliterated as "Gurudwara"). There are many gurdwaras prominently constructed and maintained across India, as well as in almost every nation where Sikhs reside. Gurdwaras are open to all, regardless of religion, background, caste, or race.
Worship in a gurdwara consists chiefly of singing of passages from the scripture. Sikhs will commonly enter the gurdwara, touch the ground before the holy scripture with their foreheads. The recitation of the eighteenth century "ardās" is also customary for attending Sikhs. The ardās recalls past sufferings and glories of the community, invoking divine grace for all humanity.
The gurdwara is also the location for the historic Sikh practice of "Langar" or the community meal. All gurdwaras are open to anyone of any faith for a free meal, always vegetarian. People eat together, and the kitchen is maintained and serviced by Sikh community volunteers.
Guru Amar Das chose festivals for celebration by Sikhs like Vaisakhi, wherein he asked Sikhs to assemble and share the festivities as a community.
Vaisakhi is one of the most important festivals of Sikhs, while other significant festivals commemorate the birth, lives of the Gurus and Sikh martyrs. Historically, these festivals have been based on the moon calendar Bikrami calendar. In 2003, the SGPC, the Sikh organisation in charge of upkeep of the historical gurdwaras of Punjab, adopted Nanakshahi calendar. The new calendar is highly controversial among Sikhs and is not universally accepted. Sikh festivals include the following:
Khalsa Sikhs have also supported and helped develop major pilgrimage traditions to sacred sites such as Harmandir Sahib, Anandpur Sahib, Fatehgarh Sahib, Patna Sahib, Hazur Nanded Sahib, Hemkund Sahib and others. Sikh pilgrims and Sikhs of other sects customarily consider these as holy and a part of their "Tirath". The Hola Mohalla around the festival of Holi, for example, is a ceremonial and customary gathering every year in Anandpur Sahib attracting over 100,000 Sikhs. Major Sikh temples feature a "sarovar" where some Sikhs take a customary dip. Some take home the sacred water of the tank particularly for sick friends and relatives, believing that the waters of such sacred sites have restorative powers and the ability to purify one's "karma". The various Gurus of Sikhism have had different approach to pilgrimage.
Upon a child's birth, the Guru Granth Sahib is opened at a random point and the child is named using the first letter on the top left hand corner of the left page. All boys are given the last name Singh, and all girls are given the last name Kaur (this was once a title which was conferred on an individual upon joining the Khalsa).
The Sikh marriage ritual includes the "anand kāraj" ceremony. The marriage ceremony is performed in front of the Guru Granth Sahib by a baptized Khalsa, Granthi of the Gurdwara. The tradition of circling the Guru Granth Sahib and Anand Karaj among Khalsa is practised since the fourth Guru, Guru Ram Das. Its official recognition and adoption came in 1909, during the Singh Sabha Movement.
Upon death, the body of a Sikh is usually cremated. If this is not possible, any respectful means of disposing the body may be employed. The "kīrtan sōhilā" and "ardās" prayers are performed during the funeral ceremony (known as "antim sanskār").
Khalsa (meaning "pure and sovereign") is the collective name given by Guru Gobind Singh to those Sikhs who have been fully initiated by taking part in a ceremony called "ammrit sañcār" (nectar ceremony). During this ceremony, sweetened water is stirred with a double-edged sword while liturgical prayers are sung; it is offered to the initiating Sikh, who ritually drinks it. Many Sikhs are not formally and fully initiated, as they do not undergo this ceremony, but do adhere to some components of Sikhism and identify as Sikhs. The initiated Sikh, who is believed to be reborn, is referred to as Amritdhari or Khalsa Sikh, while those who are not initiated or baptised are referred to as Kesdhari or Sahajdhari Sikhs.
The first time that this ceremony took place was on Vaisakhi, which fell on 30 March 1699 at Anandpur Sahib in Punjab. It was on that occasion that Gobind Singh baptised the Pañj Piārē – the five beloved ones, who in turn baptised Guru Gobind Singh himself. To males who initiated, the last name Singh, meaning "lion", was given, while the last name Kaur, meaning "princess", was given to baptised Sikh females.
Baptised Sikhs wear five items, called the Five Ks (in Punjabi known as "pañj kakkē" or "pañj kakār"), at all times. The five items are: "kēs" (uncut hair), "kaṅghā" (small wooden comb), "kaṛā" (circular steel or iron bracelet), "kirpān" (sword/dagger), and "kacchera" (special undergarment). The Five Ks have both practical and symbolic purposes.
Guru Nanak (1469–1539), the founder of Sikhism, was born in the village of "Rāi Bhōi dī Talwandī", now called Nankana Sahib (in present-day Pakistan). His parents were Punjabi Khatri Hindus. According to the hagiography "Puratan Janamsakhi" composed more than two centuries after his death and probably based on oral tradition, Nanak as a boy was fascinated by religion and spiritual matters, spending time with wandering ascetics and holy men. His friend was Mardana, a Muslim. Together they would sing devotional songs all night in front of the public, and bathe in the river in the morning. One day, at the usual bath, Nanak went missing and his family feared he had drowned. Three days later he returned home, and declared: "There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim" (""nā kōi hindū nā kōi musalmān""). Thereafter, Nanak started preaching his ideas that form the tenets of Sikhism. In 1526, Guru Nanak at age 50, started a small commune in Kartarpur and his disciples came to be known as "Sikhs". Although the exact account of his itinerary is disputed, hagiographic accounts state he made five major journeys, spanning thousands of miles, the first tour being east towards Bengal and Assam, the second south towards Andhra and Tamil Nadu, the third north to Kashmir, Ladakh, and Mount Sumeru in Tibet, and the fourth to Baghdad. In his last and final tour, he returned to the banks of the Ravi River to end his days.
There are two competing theories on Guru Nanak's teachings. One, according to Cole and Sambhi, is based on hagiographical Janamsakhis, and states that Nanak's teachings and Sikhism were a revelation from God, and not a social protest movement nor any attempt to reconcile Hinduism and Islam in the 15th century. The other states, Nanak was a Guru. According to Singha, "Sikhism does not subscribe to the theory of incarnation or the concept of prophethood. But it has a pivotal concept of Guru. He is not an incarnation of God, not even a prophet. He is an illumined soul." The hagiographical "Janamsakhis" were not written by Nanak, but by later followers without regard for historical accuracy, and contain numerous legends and myths created to show respect for Nanak. The term revelation, clarify Cole and Sambhi, in Sikhism is not limited to the teachings of Nanak, they include all Sikh Gurus, as well as the words of past, present and future men and women, who possess divine knowledge intuitively through meditation. The Sikh revelations include the words of non-Sikh bhagats, some who lived and died before the birth of Nanak, and whose teachings are part of the Sikh scriptures. The Adi Granth and successive Sikh Gurus repeatedly emphasised, states Mandair, that Sikhism is "not about hearing voices from God, but it is about changing the nature of the human mind, and anyone can achieve direct experience and spiritual perfection at any time".
The roots of the Sikh tradition are, states Louis Fenech, perhaps in the Sant-tradition of India whose ideology grew to become the Bhakti tradition. Furthermore, adds Fenech, "Indic mythology permeates the Sikh sacred canon, the "Guru Granth Sahib" and the secondary canon, the "Dasam Granth" and adds delicate nuance and substance to the sacred symbolic universe of the Sikhs of today and of their past ancestors".
The development of Sikhism was influenced by the Bhakti movement; and Vaishnawa Hinduism. however, Sikhism was not simply an extension of the Bhakti movement. Sikhism developed while the region was being ruled by the Mughal Empire. Two of the Sikh Gurus – Guru Arjan and Guru Tegh Bahadur, after they refused to convert to Islam, were tortured and executed by the Mughal rulers. The Islamic era persecution of Sikhs triggered the founding of the Khalsa, as an order for freedom of conscience and religion. A Sikh is expected to embody the qualities of a "Sant-Sipāhī" a saint-soldier.
In 1539, Guru Nanak chose his disciple "Lahiṇā" as a successor to the Guruship rather than either of his sons. Lahiṇā was named Guru Angad and became the second Guru of the Sikhs. Nanak conferred his choice at the town of Kartarpur on the banks of the river Ravi. Sri Chand, Guru Nanak's son was also a religious man, and continued his own commune of Sikhs. His followers came to be known as the Udasi Sikhs, the first parallel sect of Sikhism that formed in Sikh history. The Udasis believe that the Guruship should have gone to Sri Chand, since he was a man of pious habits in addition to being Nanak's son.
Guru Angad, before joining Guru Nanak's commune, worked as a "pujari" (priest) and religious teacher centered around Hindu goddess Durga. On Nanak's advice, Guru Angad moved from Kartarpur to Khadur, where his wife Khivi and children were living, until he was able to bridge the divide between his followers and the Udasis. Guru Angad continued the work started by Guru Nanak and is widely credited for standardising the Gurmukhī script as used in the sacred scripture of the Sikhs.
Guru Amar Das became the third Sikh Guru in 1552 at the age of 73. He adhered to the Vaishnavism tradition of Hinduism for much of his life, before joining the commune of Guru Angad. Goindval became an important centre for Sikhism during the Guruship of Guru Amar Das. He was a reformer, and discouraged veiling of women's faces (a Muslim custom) as well as sati (a Hindu custom). He encouraged the Kshatriya people to fight in order to protect people and for the sake of justice, stating this is Dharma. Guru Amar Das started the tradition of appointing "manji" (zones of religious administration with an appointed chief called "sangatias"), introduced the "dasvandh" ("the tenth" of income) system of revenue collection in the name of Guru and as pooled community religious resource, and the famed "langar" tradition of Sikhism where anyone, without discrimination of any kind, could get a free meal in a communal seating. The collection of revenue from Sikhs through regional appointees helped Sikhism grow.
Guru Amar Das named his disciple and son-in-law "Jēṭhā" as the next Guru, who came to be known as Guru Ram Das. The new Guru faced hostilities from the sons of Guru Amar Das and therefore shifted his official base to lands identified by Guru Amar Das as Guru-ka-Chak. He moved his commune of Sikhs there and the place then was called Ramdaspur, after him. This city grew and later became Amritsar – the holiest city of Sikhism. Guru Ram Das expanded the "manji" organization for clerical appointments in Sikh temples, and for revenue collections to theologically and economically support the Sikh movement.
In 1581, Guru Arjan – youngest son of Guru Ram Das, became the fifth Guru of the Sikhs. The choice of successor, as throughout most of the history of Sikh Guru successions, led to disputes and internal divisions among the Sikhs. The elder son of Guru Ram Das named Prithi Chand is remembered in the Sikh tradition as vehemently opposing Guru Arjan, creating a faction Sikh community which the Sikhs following Guru Arjan called as "Minas" (literally, "scoundrels").
Guru Arjan is remembered in the Sikh for many things. He built the first Harimandir Sahib (later to become the Golden Temple). He was a poet and created the first edition of Sikh sacred text known as the Ādi Granth (literally "the first book") and included the writings of the first five Gurus and other enlightened 13 Hindu and 2 Muslim Sufi saints. In 1606, he was tortured and killed by the Mughal emperor Jahangir, for refusing to convert to Islam. His martyrdom is considered a watershed event in the history of Sikhism.
After the martyrdom of Guru Arjan, his son Guru Hargobind at age eleven became the sixth Guru of the Sikhs and Sikhism dramatically evolved to become a political movement in addition to being religious. Guru Hargobind carried two swords, calling one spiritual and the other for temporal purpose (known as "mīrī" and "pīrī" in Sikhism). According to the Sikh tradition, Guru Arjan asked his son Hargobind to start a military tradition to protect the Sikh people and always keep himself surrounded by armed Sikhs. The building of an armed Sikh militia began with Guru Hargobind. Guru Hargobind was soon arrested by the Mughals and kept in jail in Gwalior. It is unclear how many years he served in prison, with different texts stating it to be between 2 and 12 years. He married three women, built a fort to defend Ramdaspur and created a formal court called Akal Takht, now the highest Khalsa Sikh religious authority.
In 1644, Guru Hargobind named his grandson Har Rai as the Guru. The Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan attempted political means to undermine the Sikh tradition, by dividing and influencing the succession. The Mughal ruler gave land grants to Dhir Mal, a grandson of Guru Hargobind living in Kartarpur, and attempted to encourage Sikhs to recognise Dhir Mal as the rightful successor to Guru Hargobind. Dhir Mal issued statements in favour of the Mughal state, and critical of his grandfather Guru Arjan. Guru Hargobind rejected Dhir Mal, the later refused to give up the original version of the Adi Granth he had, and the Sikh community was divided.
Guru Har Rai is famed to have met Dara Shikoh during a time Dara Shikoh and his younger brother Aurangzeb were in a bitter succession fight. Aurangzeb summoned Guru Har Rai, who refused to go and sent his elder son Ram Rai instead. The emperor found a verse in the Sikh scripture insulting to Muslims, and Ram Rai agreed it was a mistake then changed it. Ram Rai thus pleased Aurangzeb, but displeased Guru Har Rai who excommunicated his elder son. He nominated his younger son Guru Har Krishan to succeed him in 1661. Aurangzeb responded by granting Ram Rai a jagir (land grant). Ram Rai founded a town there and enjoyed Aurangzeb's patronage, the town came to be known as Dehradun, after "Dehra" referring to Ram Rai's shrine. Sikhs who followed Ram Rai came to be known as Ramraiya Sikhs. Guru Har Krishan became the eighth Guru at the age of five, and died of smallpox before reaching the age of eight. No hymns composed by these three Gurus are included in the Guru Granth Sahib.
Guru Tegh Bahadur, the uncle of Guru Har Krishan, became Guru in 1665. Tegh Bahadur resisted the forced conversions of Kashmiri Pandits and non-Muslims to Islam, and was publicly beheaded in 1675 on the orders of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in Delhi for refusing to convert to Islam. His beheading traumatized the Sikhs. His body was cremated in Delhi, the head was carried secretively by Sikhs and cremated in Anandpur. He was succeeded by his son, Gobind Rai who militarised his followers by creating the Khalsa in 1699, and baptising the "Pañj Piārē". From then on, he was known as Guru Gobind Singh, and Sikh identity was redefined into a political force resisting religious persecution.
Guru Gobind Singh inaugurated the Khalsa (the collective body of all initiated Sikhs) as the Sikh temporal authority in the year 1699. It created a community that combines its spiritual purpose and goals with political and military duties. Shortly before his death, Guru Gobind Singh proclaimed the Gurū Granth Sāhib (the Sikh Holy Scripture) to be the ultimate spiritual authority for the Sikhs.
The Sikh Khalsa's rise to power began in the 17th century during a time of growing militancy against Mughal rule. The creation of a Sikh Empire began when Guru Gobind Singh sent a Sikh general, Banda Singh Bahadur, to fight the Mughal rulers of India and those who had committed atrocities against Pir Buddhu Shah. Banda Singh advanced his army towards the main Muslim Mughal city of Sirhind and, following the instructions of the Guru, punished all the culprits. Soon after the invasion of Sirhind, while resting in his chamber after the Rehras prayer Guru Gobind Singh was stabbed by a Pathan assassin hired by Mughals. Gobind Singh killed the attacker with his sword. Though a European surgeon stitched the Guru's wound, the wound re-opened as the Guru tugged at a hard strong bow after a few days, causing profuse bleeding that led to Gobind Singh's death.
After the Guru's death, Baba Banda Singh Bahadur became the commander-in-chief of the Khalsa. He organised the civilian rebellion and abolished or halted the Zamindari system in time he was active and gave the farmers proprietorship of their own land. Banda Singh was executed by the emperor Farrukh Siyar after refusing the offer of a pardon if he converted to Islam. The confederacy of Sikh warrior bands known as "misls" emerged, but these fought between themselves. Ranjit Singh achieved a series of military victories and created a Sikh Empire in 1799.
The Sikh empire had its capital in Lahore, spread over almost comprising what is now northwestern Indian subcontinent. The Sikh Empire entered into a treaty with the colonial British powers, with each side recognizing Sutlej River as the line of control and agreeing not to invade the other side. Ranjit Singh's most lasting legacy was the restoration and expansion of the Harmandir Sahib, most revered Gurudwara of the Sikhs, with marble and gold, from which the popular name of the "Golden Temple" is derived. After the death of Ranjit Singh in 1839, the Sikh Empire fell into disorder. Ranjit Singh had failed to establish a lasting structure for Sikh government or stable succession, and the Sikh Empire rapidly declined after his death. Factions divided the Sikhs, and led to Anglo-Sikh wars. The British easily defeated the confused and demoralised Khalsa forces, then disbanded them into destitution. The youngest son of Ranjit Singh named Duleep Singh ultimately succeeded, but he was arrested and exiled after the defeat of Sikh Khalsa.
The Singh Sabha movement, a movement to revitalize Sikhism, also saw the resurgence of the Khalsa after their defeat by the British in the Anglo-Sikh wars, and the subsequent decline and corruption of Sikh institutions during colonial rule, and the proselytization of other faith groups in the Punjab. It was started in the 1870s, and after a period of interfactional rivalry, united under the Tat Khalsa to reinvigorate Sikh practice and institutions.
The last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire Duleep Singh converted to Christianity in 1853, a controversial but influential event in Sikh history. Along with his conversion, and after Sikh Empire had been dissolved and the region made a part of the colonial British Empire, proselytising activities of Christians, Brahmo Samajis, Arya Samaj, Muslim Anjuman-i-Islamia and Ahmadiyah sought to convert the Sikhs in northwestern Indian subcontinent into their respective faiths. These developments launched the Singh Sabha Movement.
The first meeting of the movement was in the Golden Temple, Amritsar in 1873, and it was largely launched by the Sanatan Sikhs, Gianis, priests, and granthis. Shortly thereafter, Nihang Sikhs began influencing the movement, followed by a sustained campaign by the Tat Khalsa, which had quickly gained dominance by the early 1880s. The movement became a struggle between Sanatan Sikhs and Tat Khalsa in defining and interpreting Sikhism.
Sanatan Sikhs led by Khem Singh Bedi – who claimed to be a direct descendant of Guru Nanak, Avtar Singh Vahiria and others supported a more inclusive approach which considered Sikhism as a reformed tradition of Hinduism, while Tat Khalsa campaigned for an exclusive approach to the Sikh identity, disagreeing with Sanatan Sikhs and seeking to modernize Sikhism. The Sikh Sabha movement expanded in north and northwest Indian subcontinent, leading to more than 100 Singh Sabhas. By the early decades of the 20th century, the influence of Tat Khalsa increased in interpreting the nature of Sikhism and their control over the Sikh Gurdwaras. The Tat Khalsa banished Brahmanical practices including the use of the "yagna" fire, replaced by the "Anand Karaj" marriage ceremony in accordance with Sikh scripture, and the idols and the images of Sikh Gurus from the Golden Temple in 1905, traditions which had taken root during the administration of the "mahants" during the 1800s. They undertook a sustained campaign to standardize how Sikh Gurdwaras looked and ran, while looking to Sikh scriptures and the early Sikh tradition to purify the Sikh identity.
The spiritual successors of the Singh Sabha include the Akali movement of the 1920s, as well as the modern-day Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), a gurdwara administration body, and the Akali Dal political party.
Sikhs participated and contributed to the decades-long Indian independence movement from the colonial rule in the first half of the 20th century. Ultimately when the British Empire recognized independent India, the land was partitioned into Hindu majority India and Muslim majority Pakistan (East and West) in 1947. This event, states Banga, was a watershed event in Sikh history. The Sikhs had historically lived in northwestern region of Indian subcontinent on both sides of the partition line ("Radcliffe Line"). According to Banga and other scholars, the Sikhs had strongly opposed the Muslim League demands and saw it as "perpetuation of Muslim domination" and anti-Sikh policies in what just a hundred years before was a part of the Sikh Empire. As such, Sikh organizations, including the Chief Khalsa Dewan and Shiromani Akali Dal led by Master Tara Singh, condemned the Lahore Resolution and the movement to create Pakistan, viewing it as inviting possible persecution; the Sikhs largely thus strongly opposed the partition of India. During the discussions with the colonial authorities, Tara Singh emerged as an important leader who campaigned to prevent the partition of colonial India and for the recognition of Sikhs as the third community. In 1940, a few Sikhs such as the victims of Komagata Maru in Canada proposed the idea of Khalistan as a buffer state between Pakistan and India. These leaders, however, were largely ignored. Many other Sikh leaders supported the partition along religious and demographic lines.
When partition was announced, the newly created line divided the Sikh population into two halves. The Sikhs suffered organized violence and riots against them in West Pakistan, and Sikhs moved en masse to the Indian side leaving behind their property and the sacred places of Sikhism. This reprisals on Sikhs were not one sided, because as Sikhs entered the Indian side, the Muslims in East Punjab experienced reprisals and they moved to West Pakistan. Before the partition, Sikhs constituted about 15% of the population in West Punjab that became a part of Pakistan, the majority being Muslims (55%). The Sikhs were the economic elite and wealthiest in West Punjab, with them having the largest representation in West Punjab's aristocracy, nearly 700 Gurdwaras and 400 educational institutions that served the interests of the Sikhs. Prior to the partition, there were a series of disputes between the majority Muslims and minority Sikhs, such as on the matters of jhatka versus halal meat, the disputed ownership of Gurdwara Sahidganj in Lahore which Muslims sought as a mosque and Sikhs as a Gurdwara, and the insistence of the provincial Muslim government in switching from Indian Gurmukhi script to Arabic-Persian Nastaliq script in schools. During and after the Simla Conference in June 1945, headed by Lord Wavell, the Sikh leaders initially expressed their desire to be recognized as the third party, but ultimately relegated their demands and sought a United India where Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims would live together, under a Swiss style constitution. The Muslim League rejected this approach, demanding that entire Punjab should be granted to Pakistan. The Sikh leaders then sought the partition instead, and Congress Working Committee passed a resolution in support of partitioning Punjab and Bengal.
Between March and August 1947, a series of riots, arson, plunder of Sikh property, assassination of Sikh leaders, and killings in Jhelum districts, Rawalpindi, Attock and other places made Tara Singh call the situation in Punjab as "civil war", while Lord Mountbatten stated "civil war preparations were going on". The riots had triggered the early waves of migration in April, with some 20,000 people leaving northwest Punjab and moving to Patiala. In Rawalpindi, 40,000 people became homeless. The Sikh leaders made desperate petitions, but all religious communities were suffering in the political turmoil. Sikhs, states Banga, were "only 4 million out of a total of 28 million in Punjab, and 6 million out of nearly 400 million in India; they did not constitute the majority, not even in a single district".
When the partition line was formally announced in August 1947, the violence was unprecedented, with Sikhs being one of the most affected religious community both in terms of deaths, as well as property loss, injury, trauma and disruption. Sikhs and Muslims were both victims and perpetrators of retaliatory violence against each other. Estimates range between 200,000 and 2 million deaths of Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims. There were numerous rapes of and mass suicides by Sikh women, they being taken captives, their rescues and above all a mass exodus of Sikhs from newly created Pakistan into newly created India. The partition created the "largest foot convoy of refugees recorded in [human] history, stretching over 100 kilometer long", states Banga, with nearly 300,000 people consisting of mostly "distraught, suffering, injured and angry Sikhs". Sikh and Hindu refugees from Pakistan flooded into India, Muslim refugees from India flooded into Pakistan, each into their new homeland.
The early 1980s witnessed some Sikh groups seeking an independent nation named Khalistan carved out from India and Pakistan. The Golden Temple and Akal Takht were occupied by various militant groups in 1982. These included the Dharam Yudh Morcha led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the Babbar Khalsa, the AISSF and the National Council of Khalistan. Between 1982 and 1983, there were Anandpur Resolution demand-related terrorist attacks against civilians in parts of India. By late 1983, the Bhindranwale led group had begun to build bunkers and observations posts in and around the Golden Temple, with militants involved in weapons training. In June 1984, the then Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi ordered Indian Army to begin Operation Blue Star against the militants. The fierce engagement took place in the precincts of Darbar Sahib and resulted in many deaths, including Bhindranwale, the destruction of the Sikh Reference Library, which was considered a national treasure that contained over a thousand rare manuscripts, and destroyed Akal Takht. Numerous soldiers, civilians and militants died in the cross fire. Within days of the Operation Bluestar, some 2,000 Sikh soldiers in India mutinied and attempted to reach Amritsar to liberate the Golden Temple. Within six months, on 31 October 1984, Indira Gandhi's Sikh bodyguards assassinated her. The assassination triggered the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. According to Donald Horowitz, while anti-Sikh riots led to much damage and deaths, many serious provocations by militants also failed to trigger ethnic violence in many cases throughout the 1980s. The Sikhs and their neighbors, for most part, ignored attempts to provoke riots and communal strife.
Estimates state that Sikhism has some 25 million followers worldwide. According to Pew Research, a religion demographics and research group in Washington DC, "more than nine-in-ten Sikhs are in India, but there are also sizable Sikh communities in the United States, the United kingdom and Canada." Within India, the Sikh population is found in every state and union territory, but it is predominantly found in the northwestern and northern states. Only in the state of Punjab, Sikhs constitute a majority (58% of the total, per 2011 census). The states and union territories of India where Sikhs constitute more than 1.5% of its population are Punjab, Chandigarh, Haryana, Delhi, Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir. Forming 4.7% of the total population, the western Canadian province of British Columbia is home to over 200,000 Sikhs and is the only province or state in the world outside India with Sikhism as the second most followed religion among the population.
Sikhism was founded in northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent in what is now Pakistan. Some of the Gurus were born near Lahore and in other parts of Pakistan. Prior to 1947, in British India, millions of Sikhs lived in what later became Pakistan. During the partition, Sikhs and Hindus left the newly created Muslim-majority Pakistan and mostly moved to Hindu-majority India - with some moving to Muslim-majority Afghanistan), - while Muslims in India left and moved to Pakistan. According to 2017 news reports, only about 20,000 Sikhs remain in Pakistan and their population is dwindling (0.01% of its estimated 200 million population). The Sikhs in Pakistan, like others in the region, have been "rocked by an Islamist insurgency for more than a decade".
Sikh sects are sub-traditions within Sikhism that believe in an alternate lineage of Gurus, or have a different interpretation of the Sikh scriptures, or believe in following a living Guru, or other concepts that differ from the orthodox Khalsa Sikhs. The major historic sects of Sikhism, states Harjot Oberoi, have included Udasi, Nirmala, Nanakpanthi, Khalsa, Sahajdhari, Namdhari Kuka, Nirankari and Sarvaria.
The early Sikh sects were Udasis and Minas founded by Sri Chand – the elder son of Guru Nanak, and Prithi Chand – the elder son of Guru Ram Das respectively, in parallel to the official succession of the Sikh Gurus. Later on Ramraiya sect grew in Dehradun with the patronage of Aurangzeb. Many splintered Sikh communities formed during the Mughal Empire era. Some of these sects were financially and administratively supported by the Mughal rulers in the hopes of gaining a more favorable and compliant citizenry.
After the collapse of Mughal Empire, and particularly during the rule of Ranjit Singh, Udasi Sikhs protected Sikh shrines, preserved the Sikh scripture and rebuilt those that were desecrated or destroyed during the Muslim–Sikh wars. However, Udasi Sikhs kept idols and images inside these Sikh temples. In the 19th century, Namdharis and Nirankaris sects were formed in Sikhism, seeking to reform and return to what each believed was the pure form of Sikhism.
All these sects differ from Khalsa orthodox Sikhs in their beliefs and practices, such as continuing to solemnize their weddings around fire and being strictly vegetarian. Many accept the concept of living Gurus such as Guru Baba Dyal Singh. The Nirankari sect though unorthodox was influential in shaping the views of Tat Khalsa and the contemporary era Sikh beliefs and practices. Another significant Sikh sect of the 19th century was the Radhasoami movement in Punjab led by Baba Shiv Dyal. Other contemporary era Sikhs sects include the 3HO, formed in 1971, which exists outside India, particularly in North America and Europe.
According to Surinder Jodhka, the state of Punjab with a Sikh majority has the "largest proportion of scheduled caste population in India". Although decried by Sikhism, Sikhs have practiced a caste system. The system, along with untouchability, has been more common in rural parts of Punjab.The landowning dominant Sikh castes, states Jodhka, "have not shed all their prejudices against the lower castes or dalits; while dalits would be allowed entry into the village gurdwaras they would not be permitted to cook or serve langar." The Sikh dalits of Punjab have tried to build their own gurdwara, other local level institutions and sought better material circumstances and dignity. According to Jodhka, due to economic mobility in contemporary Punjab, castes no longer mean an inherited occupation nor are work relations tied to a single location.
In 1953, the government of India acceded to the demands of the Sikh leader, Master Tara Singh, to include Sikh dalit castes in the list of scheduled castes. In the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee, 20 of the 140 seats are reserved for low-caste Sikhs.
Over 60% of Sikhs belong to the Jat caste, which is an agrarian caste. Despite being very small in numbers, the Kshatriya Khatri and Arora castes wield considerable influence within the Sikh community. Other common Sikh castes include Sainis, Ramgarhias (artisans), Ahluwalias (formerly brewers), Kambojs (rural caste), Labanas, Kumhars and the two Dalit castes, known in Sikh terminology as the Mazhabis (the Chuhras) and the Ravidasias (the Chamars).
Sikhism is the fifth-largest amongst the major world religions, and one of the youngest. Worldwide, there are 25.8 million Sikhs, which makes up 0.39% of the world's population. Approximately 75% of Sikhs live in Punjab, where they constitute over 50% of the state's population. Large communities of Sikhs migrate to the neighboring states such as Indian State of Haryana which is home to the second largest Sikh population in India with 1.1 million Sikhs as per 2001 census, and large immigrant communities of Sikhs can be found across India. However, Sikhs only comprise about 2% of the Indian population.
Sikh migration to Canada began in the 19th century and led to the creation of significant Sikh communities, predominantly in South Vancouver, British Columbia, Surrey, British Columbia, and Brampton, Ontario. Today temples, newspapers, radio stations, and markets cater to these large, multi-generational Indo-Canadian groups. Sikh festivals such as Vaisakhi and Bandi Chhor are celebrated in those Canadian cities by the largest groups of followers in the world outside the Punjab.
Sikhs also migrated to East Africa, West Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia. These communities developed as Sikhs migrated out of Punjab to fill in gaps in imperial labour markets. In the early twentieth century a significant community began to take shape on the west coast of the United States. Smaller populations of Sikhs are found within many countries in Western Europe, Mauritius, Malaysia, Philippines, Fiji, Nepal, China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Singapore, United States, and many other countries.
Some major prohibitions include: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27964 |
Structural isomer
A structural isomer, or constitutional isomer (per IUPAC), is a type of isomer in which molecules with the same molecular formula have different bonding patterns and atomic organization, as opposed to stereoisomers, in which molecular bonds are always in the same order and only spatial arrangement differs. There are multiple synonyms for structural isomers.
Three categories of structural isomers are skeletal, positional, and functional isomers. Positional isomers are also called regioisomers.
In chain isomerism, or skeletal isomerism, components of the (usually carbon) skeleton are distinctly re-ordered to create different structures. Pentane exists as three isomers: "n"-pentane (often called simply "pentane"), isopentane (2-methylbutane) and neopentane (dimethylpropane).
In position isomerism (regioisomerism) a functional group or other substituent changes position on a parent structure. In the table below, the hydroxyl group can occupy three different positions on an n-pentane chain forming three different compounds.
Many aromatic isomers exist because substituents can be positioned on different parts of the benzene ring. Only one isomer of phenol or hydroxybenzene exists, but cresol or methylphenol has three isomers where the additional methyl group can be placed on three different positions on the ring relative to the position of the hydroxyl. Xylenol has one hydroxyl group and two methyl groups and a total of 6 isomers exist.
Functional isomers are structural isomers that have the same molecular formula (that is, the same number of atoms of the same elements), but the atoms are connected in different ways so that the groupings are dissimilar. These groups of atoms are called functional groups, functionalities.
For example, cyclohexane and 1-hexene both have the formula C6H12. These two are considered functional group isomers because cyclohexane is a cycloalkane and 1-hexene is an alkene.
For two molecules to be functional isomers, they must contain key groups of atoms arranged in particular ways. Some of the best examples come from organic chemistry. C2H6O is a molecular formula. Depending on how the atoms are arranged, it can represent two different compounds dimethyl ether CH3-O-CH3 or ethanol CH3CH2-O-H. Dimethyl ether and ethanol are functional isomers. The first is an ether. The carbon chain-oxygen-carbon chain functionality is called an ether. The second is an alcohol. The carbon chain-oxygen-hydrogen functionality is called an alcohol.
If the functionalities stay the same, but their locations change, the structural isomers are not functional isomers. 1-Propanol and 2-propanol are structural isomers, but they are not functional isomers. Both of them are alcohols. The functional group (carbon chain-O-H) is present in both of these compounds, but they are not the same.
While some chemists use the terms structural isomer and functional isomer interchangeably, not all structural isomers are functional isomers.
Functional isomers are most often identified in chemistry using infrared spectroscopy. Infrared radiation corresponds to the energies associated primarily with molecular vibration. The alcohol functionality has a very distinct vibration called OH-stretch that is due to hydrogen bonding. All alcohols in liquid and solid form absorb infrared radiation at certain wavelengths.
Compounds with the same functional groups will all absorb certain wavelengths of infrared light because of the vibrations associated with those groups. In fact, the infrared spectrum is divided into two regions. The first part is called the functional group region. Dimethyl ether and ethanol would have dissimilar infrared spectra in the functional group region.
The second part of the infrared spectrum is called the fingerprint region; it is associated with types of motion allowed by the symmetry of the molecule and influenced by the bond energies. The fingerprint region is more specific to an individual compound. Even though 1-propanol and 2-propanol have similar infrared spectra in the functional group region, they differ in the fingerprint region.
In simple terms, functional isomers are structural isomers that have different functional groups like alcohol and ether.
As an example of isomer counting, there are nine structural isomers with molecular formula C3H6O having different bond connectivities. Seven of them are air-stable at room temperature, and these are given in the table below. An additional two structural isomers are the enol tautomers of the carbonyl isomers (propionaldehyde and acetone), but these are not stable. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27969 |
Stereoisomerism
In stereochemistry, stereoisomerism, or spatial isomerism, is a form of isomerism in which molecules have the same molecular formula and sequence of bonded atoms (constitution), but differ in the three-dimensional orientations of their atoms in space. This contrasts with structural isomers, which share the same molecular formula, but the bond connections or their order differs. By definition, molecules that are stereoisomers of each other represent the same structural isomer.
Enantiomers, also known as optical isomers, are two stereoisomers that are related to each other by a reflection: they are mirror images of each other that are non-superposable. Human hands are a macroscopic analog of this. Every stereogenic center in one has the opposite configuration in the other. Two compounds that are enantiomers of each other have the same physical properties, except for the direction in which they rotate polarized light and how they interact with different optical isomers of other compounds. As a result, different enantiomers of a compound may have substantially different biological effects. Pure enantiomers also exhibit the phenomenon of optical activity and can be separated only with the use of a chiral agent. In nature, only one enantiomer of most chiral biological compounds, such as amino acids (except glycine, which is achiral), is present. An optically active compound shows two forms: D-(+) form and L-(−) form.
Diastereomers are stereoisomers not related through a reflection operation. They are not mirror images of each other. These include meso compounds, "cis"–"trans" isomers, E-Z isomers, and non-enantiomeric optical isomers. Diastereomers seldom have the same physical properties. In the example shown below, the meso form of tartaric acid forms a diastereomeric pair with both levo and dextro tartaric acids, which form an enantiomeric pair.
The D- and L- labeling of the isomers above is not the same as the "d"- and "l"- labeling more commonly seen, explaining why these may appear reversed to those familiar with only the latter naming convention.
Stereoisomerism about double bonds arises because rotation about the double bond is restricted, keeping the substituents fixed relative to each other. If the two substituents on at least one end of a double bond are the same, then there is no stereoisomer and the double bond is not a stereocenter, e.g. propene, CH3CH=CH2 where the two substituents at one end are both H.
Traditionally, double bond stereochemistry was described as either "cis" (Latin, on this side) or "trans" (Latin, across), in reference to the relative position of substituents on either side of a double bond. The simplest examples of "cis"-"trans" isomerism are the 1,2-disubstituted ethenes, like the dichloroethene (C2H2Cl2) isomers shown below.
Molecule I is "cis"-1,2-dichloroethene and molecule II is "trans"-1,2-dichloroethene. Due to occasional ambiguity, IUPAC adopted a more rigorous system wherein the substituents at each end of the double bond are assigned priority based on their atomic number. If the high-priority substituents are on the same side of the bond, it is assigned Z (Ger. "zusammen", together). If they are on opposite sides, it is E (Ger. "entgegen", opposite). Since chlorine has a larger atomic number than hydrogen, it is the highest-priority group. Using this notation to name the above pictured molecules, molecule I is (Z)-1,2-dichloroethene and molecule II is (E)-1,2-dichloroethene. It is not the case that Z and "cis" or E and "trans" are always interchangeable. Consider the following fluoromethylpentene:
The proper name for this molecule is either "trans"-2-fluoro-3-methylpent-2-ene because the alkyl groups that form the backbone chain (i.e., methyl and ethyl) reside across the double bond from each other, or (Z)-2-fluoro-3-methylpent-2-ene because the highest-priority groups on each side of the double bond are on the same side of the double bond. Fluoro is the highest-priority group on the left side of the double bond, and ethyl is the highest-priority group on the right side of the molecule.
The terms "cis" and "trans" are also used to describe the relative position of two substituents on a ring; "cis" if on the same side, otherwise "trans".
Conformational isomerism is a form of isomerism that describes the phenomenon of molecules with the same structural formula but with different shapes due to rotations about one or more bonds. Different conformations can have different energies, can usually interconvert, and are very rarely isolatable. For example, cyclohexane can exist in a variety of different conformations including a chair conformation and a boat conformation, but, for cyclohexane itself, these can never be separated. The boat conformation represents the energy maximum on a conformational itinerary between the two equivalent chair forms; however, it does not represent the transition state for this process, because there are lower-energy pathways.
There are some molecules that can be isolated in several conformations, due to the large energy barriers between different conformations. 2,2',6,6'-Tetrasubstituted biphenyls can fit into this latter category.
Anomerism is an identity for single bonded ring structures where "cis" or "E" and "trans" or "Z" (geometric isomerism) needs to name the substitutions on a carbon atom that also displays the identity of chirality; so anomers have carbon atoms that have geometric isomerism and optical isomerism (Enantiomerism) on one or more of the carbons of the ring. Anomers are named "alpha" or "axial" and "beta" or "equatorial" when substituting a cyclic ring structure that has single bonds between the carbon atoms of the ring for example, a hydroxyl group, a methyl hydroxyl group, a methoxy group or another pyranose or furanose group which are typical single bond substitutions but not limited to these. Axial geometric isomerism will be perpendicular (90 degrees) to a reference plane and equatorial will be 120 degrees away from the axial bond or deviate 30 degrees from the reference plane.
Atropisomers are stereoisomers resulting from hindered rotation about single bonds where the steric strain barrier to rotation is high enough to allow for the isolation of the conformers.
Le Bel-van't Hoff rule states that for a structure with "n" asymmetric carbon atoms, there is a maximum of 2"n" different stereoisomers possible. As an example, D-glucose is an aldohexose and has the formula C6H12O6. Four of its six carbon atoms are stereogenic, which means D-glucose is one of 24=16 possible stereoisomers. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27970 |
Sylvia Sayer
Sylvia Olive Pleadwell Sayer, Lady Sayer (6 March 1904 – 4 January 2000), was a passionate conservationist and environmental campaigner on behalf of Dartmoor, an area of mostly granite moorland in Devon in the south-west of England. She was chairman of the Dartmoor Preservation Association from 1951 to 1973, and remained deeply involved with the organisation until her death.
Sayer's grandfather was Robert Burnard (1848–1920), who with Sabine Baring-Gould performed the first scientific excavations of ancient monuments on Dartmoor, including Grimspound; and who was one of the founding members in 1883 of the Dartmoor Preservation Association. He leased Huccaby House, on the West Dart River, near Hexworthy, from the Duchy of Cornwall and Sayer used to visit as a child.
Her mother was Olive Louise Munday (born Burnard; 1873–1960), Robert Burnard's eldest daughter. Her father was the Principal Medical Officer at the Naval Hospital School in Greenwich. She attended Princess Helena College in Ealing, and then the Central School of Art in London. In 1925 she married Guy Sayer, who was a midshipman in the Royal Navy, and they spent some time in China. Three years later they bought Old Middle Cator, a dilapidated Dartmoor longhouse about two miles west of the village of Widecombe-in-the-Moor in Dartmoor. They had twin sons, Geoffrey and Oliver, born in 1930, and until World War Two the family travelled widely to meet the needs of Guy's navy career. After VE Day, Guy was posted to the Far East and Sylvia settled at Cator and became interested in local politics, at first as a parish councillor for Widecombe, then as a Rural District Councillor and a member of the Dartmoor Sub-Committee of Devon County Council.
Lady Sayer acquired her title in 1959 when her husband was knighted on his retirement as the vice-admiral commanding the Reserve Fleet. After his retirement he spent much of his time helping his wife with her conservation work. She was chairman of the Dartmoor Preservation Association between 1951 and 1973, and after that, as its patron, she continued to attend virtually every meeting of its executive committee until 1999.
She lived at Cator almost until her death, moving to a nursing home in Chagford two weeks before. On 10 February 2000 a service of celebration for her life was held in the parish church of Widecombe-in-the-Moor. It was attended by over 300 people, including representatives of the Dartmoor National Park Authority, the Association of National Park Authorities, the Council for National Parks, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), the Ramblers' Association, and the Duchy of Cornwall.
Sayer was described in "The Times" newspaper in 1971 as "a militant conservationist, who is a full-time thorn in the sides of those authorities and others who want to flood, fence, dig up, knock down and otherwise damage the Dartmoor national park." Crispin Gill wrote about her in his introduction to "Dartmoor – A New Study" published in 1970 as having "roused the conscience of a [vast] number of people" and he described her as an indefatigable worker with an enormous knowledge; he also referred to Henry Slesser's description of her as "the shield of the moor".
She regularly wrote letters to newspapers, both local and national, about matters related to Dartmoor. In her first published letter to "The Times", in 1948, she expressed concerns about local authorities (specifically Devon County Council) seeking to subvert the implementation of Arthur Hobhouse's recommendations for the creation of national parks by demanding that they retain their own planning powers. She noted that local authorities had been unable to control development by Government departments in areas such as Dartmoor, referring to the 32,800 acres held by the Admiralty and War Department and the 3,763 acres that had been taken by the Forestry Commission. She also referred to Dartmoor's uniqueness in that most of it was owned by the Duchy of Cornwall which, as a department of the Crown, could basically do what it liked with its land. She urged that control of the soon-to-be-formed National Parks should be at the highest possible level within the Government so there would be a chance of exercising control over the Duchy and other Government departments.
The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 created the National Parks Commission whose first chairman was Sir Patrick Duff. Ten National Parks were created in the 1950s under this Act – Dartmoor National Park was the fourth to be created, in October 1951. It was administered by Dartmoor National Park Authority which was a special committee of Devon County Council and subsidiary to the County Planning Committee which could veto its recommendations. Sayer was a member of the committee from its formation, but she resigned in 1957 in protest at its failure to protect the moor as she would wish.
As chairman of the Dartmoor Preservation Association (DPA), Sayer was heavily involved in all that organisation's fights for what it saw as conservation issues. The first of these was against the proposed installation of a television transmitting mast on North Hessary Tor in the centre of the moor. When the Dartmoor Standing Committee voted in June 1952 to approve the application, Sayer complained that it had relied on the casting vote of the chairman in the absence of three members who would have voted against.
Continued objection from Sayer and the DPA, and the CPRE, led to a public enquiry which took place in September 1953. Sir Patrick Duff, the National Parks Commission chairman, was well briefed by Sayer and at the enquiry his case was mainly based on the damage the mast would do to the scenery of the moor. Although congratulatory letters were passed between all the main objectors after the enquiry, the ministry granted the planning application in January 1954, though with some minor provisos to minimise the impact. Although Duff had failed to stop the installation of the mast, Sayer rewarded him for his efforts with a painting of North Hessary Tor saying it was "almost the last representation of that landscape that can be made while it is still unshadowed and unspoiled".
From 1955 onwards Sayer kept up a correspondence about the military roads that lead across the northern moor from Okehampton Camp.
In 1966 she and her husband deliberately interrupted live-firing exercises on Dartmoor's Royal Marines firing range to inspect and photograph any damage done to a prehistoric stone row. In February 1967 she disrupted a large-scale mock battle at Ringmoor Down that involved low-flying helicopters. She told the press that she did this to exercise her rights and to ensure that no damage was caused to ancient monuments, pointing out that the public could not be excluded from the area involved because it was not a firing area, and that sheep and ponies had been frightened away as the helicopters converged – "it could have been pony trekkers and hikers and might have resulted in a serious accident", she said.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s she was involved, as DPA chairman, with the disputes over the proposed construction of two new reservoirs on Dartmoor. The largest, which was to supply Plymouth, was known as "Swincombe" after the small River Swincombe that flows through Foxtor Mires, the proposed site of the reservoir. The proposal was eventually rejected in December 1970 at the Bill's committee stage, and a reservoir known as Roadford Lake was built west of the moor near the village of Broadwoodwidger instead.
However, the other reservoir at Meldon on the north west edge of the moor was passed, despite claims that the water would be poisoned by arsenic and lead because of the presence of three disused metalliferous mines and their spoil heaps in the area to be flooded. The dam was built in 1972, and in that year Sayer wrote a 62-page booklet entitled "The Meldon Story" that was published by the DPA. After expounding at length all the arguments made against building a dam at Meldon and in favour of an alternative site at Gorhuish, and the responses from the establishment, it ended with this statement:
Following these efforts, she concentrated on the two companies involved in the extraction of china clay in the south west of the moor. They had permission dating from 1951 to expand their pits and tips. Shaugh Moor is an adjacent area that is rich in ancient monuments and it was there that the companies planned to tip the vast quantities of spoil that is generated from clay extraction. At the time the area became known as "Area Y", from an explanatory diagram that Sayer had drawn. The activism culminated in an adjournment debate in the House of Commons in which Janet Fookes, a Plymouth MP, argued against irreparably damaging the ancient landscape. In June 1978, the two companies agreed to share their waste tips, as Sayer had recommended, saving Shaugh Moor.
In the early 1980s there were plans to create a bypass for the A30 road around the town of Okehampton on the northern edge of Dartmoor. Two alternative routes were proposed: a northern one through agricultural land, or a southern one which would encroach on the National Park. After a public enquiry was held in 1980 arguments continued for over five years with Sayer vigorously opposing the route through the moor. The matter was finally settled when the southern route was approved in December 1985 by the House of Lords. After the decision had been made, Sayer wrote a letter to Peter Bottomley, the then Minister of Transport that included the following extract:
She opposed proposals to build a new Dartmoor Prison at Princetown in the centre of the moor in 1959. In the 1960s she complained about off-road car parking, and the poor treatment of Dartmoor ponies by those who only keep them for the subsidies they can obtain.
In 1983 she refused an invitation from the Prince of Wales to attend the launch of the Duchy of Cornwall's management plan for Dartmoor, since it allowed for a continuance of military usage. She was also one of a deputation who met the Prince in 1990 to explain to him why they thought he should not renew the military licences for a further term. However, the licences were renewed that year until 2011.
The DPA set up a Lady Sayer Land Purchase Fund after her retirement as chairman in 1973. It was used in 1984 to purchase 32 acres of land at Sharpitor, near Burrator Reservoir, in celebration of the successful fight against the Swincombe reservoir. As of March 2013 the fund held about £29,400.
On the centenary of her birth in 2004 John Bainbridge, the then chief executive of the DPA, revealed plans to memorialise Sayer by organising annual walks to some part of Dartmoor that she had saved, and also by holding an annual Sylvia Sayer lecture given by a prominent speaker.
Writing in 2009 in "Dartmoor – A Statement of its Time", one of the New Naturalist series of books, Professor Ian Mercer (former Chief Officer of the Dartmoor National Park Authority), said of Sayer: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27972 |
South Park
South Park is an American animated sitcom created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone and developed by Brian Graden for the Comedy Central television network. The series revolves around four boys—Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormick—and their exploits in and around the titular Colorado town. The show became infamous for its profanity and dark, surreal humor that satirizes a wide range of topics towards a mature audience.
Parker and Stone developed the show from "The Spirit of Christmas", two consecutive animated shorts. The latter became one of the first Internet viral videos, ultimately leading to "South Park"s production. The pilot episode was produced using cutout animation, leading to all subsequent episodes being produced with computer animation that emulated the cutout technique. "South Park" features a very large ensemble cast of recurring characters.
Since its debut on August 13, 1997, episodes of "South Park" have been broadcast. It debuted with great success, consistently earning the highest ratings of any basic cable program. Subsequent ratings have varied but it remains one of Comedy Central's highest-rated shows and is slated to air new episodes through 2022. Since 2000, each episode has typically been written and produced in the week preceding its broadcast, with Parker serving as the primary writer and director. The show's twenty-third season premiered on September 25, 2019.
"South Park" has received numerous accolades, including five Primetime Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and numerous inclusions in various publications' lists of greatest television shows. The show's popularity resulted in a feature-length theatrical film, "" which was released in June 1999, less than two years after the show's premiere, and became a commercial and critical success, and garnered a nomination for an Academy Award. In 2013, "TV Guide" ranked "South Park" the tenth Greatest TV Cartoon of All Time.
The show follows the exploits of four boys, Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman and Kenny McCormick. The boys live in the fictional small town of South Park, located within the real-life South Park basin in the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado. The town is also home to an assortment of frequent characters such as students, families, elementary school staff, and other various residents, who tend to regard South Park as a bland, quiet place to live. Prominent settings on the show include the local elementary school, bus stop, various neighborhoods and the surrounding snowy landscape, actual Colorado landmarks, and the shops and businesses along the town's main street, all of which are based on the appearance of similar locations in Fairplay, Colorado.
Stan is portrayed as the everyman of the group, as the show's website describes him as an "average, American 4th grader". Kyle is the lone Jew among the group, and his portrayal in this role is often dealt with satirically. Stan is modeled after Parker, while Kyle is modeled after Stone. They are best friends, and their friendship, symbolically intended to reflect Parker and Stone's friendship, is a common topic throughout the series. Eric Cartman (usually nicknamed by his surname only) is loud, obnoxious, and amoral, often portrayed as an antagonist. His anti-Semitic attitude has resulted in a progressive rivalry with Kyle, although the deeper reason is the strong clash between Kyle's strong morality and Cartman's complete lack of such. Kenny, who comes from a poor family, wears his parka hood so tightly that it covers most of his face and muffles his speech. During the show's first five seasons, Kenny would die in nearly every episode before returning in the next with little-to-no definitive explanation given. He was written out of the show's sixth season in 2002, re-appearing in the season finale. Since then, Kenny's death has been seldom used by the show's creators. During the show's first 58 episodes, the boys were in the third grade. In the season four episode "4th Grade" (2000), they entered the fourth grade, and have remained there ever since.
Plots are often set in motion by events, ranging from the fairly typical to the supernatural and extraordinary, which frequently happen in the town. The boys often act as the voice of reason when these events cause panic or incongruous behavior among the adult populace, who are customarily depicted as irrational, gullible, and prone to vociferation. The boys are also frequently confused by the contradictory and hypocritical behavior of their parents and other adults, and often perceive them as having distorted views on morality and society.
Each episode opens with a tongue-in-cheek all persons fictitious disclaimer: "All characters and events in this show—even those based on real people—are entirely fictional. All celebrity voices are impersonated...poorly. The following program contains coarse language and due to its content it should not be viewed by anyone."
"South Park" was the first weekly program to be rated TV-MA, and is generally intended for adult audiences. The boys and most other child characters use strong profanity, with only the most taboo words being bleeped during a typical broadcast. Parker and Stone perceive this as the manner in which real-life small boys speak when they are alone.
"South Park" commonly makes use of carnivalesque and absurdist techniques, numerous running gags, violence, sexual content, offhand pop-cultural references, and satirical portrayal of celebrities.
Early episodes tended to be shock value-oriented and featured more slapstick-style humor. While social satire had been used on the show occasionally earlier on, it became more prevalent as the series progressed, with the show retaining some of its focus on the boys' fondness of scatological humor in an attempt to remind adult viewers "what it was like to be eight years old." Parker and Stone also began further developing other characters by giving them larger roles in certain storylines, and began writing plots as parables based on religion, politics, and numerous other topics. This provided the opportunity for the show to spoof both extreme sides of contentious issues, while lampooning both liberal and conservative points of view. Parker and Stone describe themselves as "equal opportunity offenders", whose main purpose is to "be funny" and "make people laugh", while stating that no particular topic or group of people be exempt from mockery and satire.
Parker and Stone insist that the show is still more about "kids being kids" and "what it's like to be in [elementary school] in America", stating that the introduction of a more satirical element to the series was the result of the two adding more of a "moral center" to the show so that it would rely less on simply being crude and shocking in an attempt to maintain an audience. While profane, Parker notes that there is still an "underlying sweetness" aspect to the child characters, and "Time" described the boys as "sometimes cruel but with a core of innocence." Usually, the boys or other characters ponder over what has transpired during an episode and convey the important lesson taken from it with a short monologue. During earlier seasons, this speech would commonly begin with a variation of the phrase "You know, I've learned something today...".
Parker and Stone met in film class at the University of Colorado in 1992 and discovered a shared love of Monty Python, which they often cite as one of their primary inspirations. They created an animated short entitled "The Spirit of Christmas". The film was created by animating construction paper cutouts with stop motion, and features prototypes of the main characters of "South Park", including a character resembling Cartman but named "Kenny", an unnamed character resembling what is today Kenny, and two near-identical unnamed characters who resemble Stan and Kyle. Fox Broadcasting Company (FOX) executive and mutual friend Brian Graden commissioned Parker and Stone to create a second short film as a video Christmas card. Created in 1995, the second "The Spirit of Christmas" short resembled the style of the later series more closely. To differentiate between the two homonymous shorts, the first short is often referred to as "Jesus vs. Frosty", and the second short as "Jesus vs. Santa". Graden sent copies of the video to several of his friends, and from there it was copied and distributed, including on the internet, where it became one of the first viral videos.
As "Jesus vs. Santa" became more popular, Parker and Stone began talks of developing the short into a television series about four children residing in the fictional Colorado town of South Park. FOX eagerly agreed to meet with the duo about the show's premise, having pride itself with edgier products such as "Cops", "The Simpsons", and "The X-Files". However, during the meeting at the FOX office in Century City, disagreements between the two creators and the network began to arise, mainly over the latter's refusal to air a show that included a supporting talking stool character named Mr. Hankey. Some executives at 20th Century Fox Television (which was to produce the series) agreed with its sister network's stance on Mr. Hankey and repeatedly requested Parker and Stone to remove the character in order for the show to proceed. Refusing to their demands, the duo cut ties with FOX and its sister companies all together and began shipping the series somewhere else.
The two then entered negotiations with both MTV and Comedy Central. Parker preferred the show be produced by Comedy Central, fearing that MTV would turn it into a kids show. When Comedy Central executive Doug Herzog watched the short, he commissioned for it to be developed into a series. Parker and Stone assembled a small staff and spent three months creating the pilot episode "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe". "South Park" was in danger of being canceled before it even aired when the show fared poorly with test audiences, particularly with women. However, the shorts were still gaining more popularity over the Internet, and Comedy Central ordered a run of six episodes. "South Park" debuted with "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" on August 13, 1997.
Except for the pilot episode, which was produced using cutout animation, all episodes of "South Park" are created with the use of software, primarily Autodesk Maya. As opposed to the pilot, which took three months to complete, and other animated sitcoms, which are traditionally hand-drawn by companies in South Korea in a process that takes roughly eight to nine months, individual episodes of "South Park" take significantly less time to produce. Using computers as an animation method, the show's production staff were able to generate an episode in about three weeks during the first seasons. Now, with a staff of about 70 people, episodes are typically completed in one week, with some in as little as three to four days. Nearly the entire production of an episode is accomplished within one set of offices, which were originally at a complex in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, and are now part of South Park Studios in Culver City, California. Parker and Stone have been the show's executive producers throughout its entire history. Debbie Liebling, who was Senior Vice President of original programming and development for Comedy Central, also served as an executive producer during the show's first five seasons, coordinating the show's production efforts between South Park Studios and Comedy Central's headquarters in New York City. During its early stages, finished episodes of "South Park" were hastily recorded to D-2 to be sent to Comedy Central for airing in just a few days' time.
Scripts are not written before a season begins. Production of an episode begins on a Thursday, with the show's writing consultants brainstorming with Parker and Stone. Former staff writers include Pam Brady, who has since written scripts for the films "Hot Rod", "Hamlet 2" and "" (with Parker and Stone), and Nancy Pimental, who served as co-host of "Win Ben Stein's Money" and wrote the film "The Sweetest Thing" after her tenure with the show during its first three seasons. Television producer and writer Norman Lear, an idol of both Parker and Stone, served as a guest writing consultant for the season seven (2003) episodes "Cancelled" and "I'm a Little Bit Country". During the 12th and 13th seasons, "Saturday Night Live" actor and writer Bill Hader served as a creative consultant and co-producer.
After exchanging ideas, Parker will write a script, and from there the entire team of animators, editors, technicians, and sound engineers will each typically work 100–120 hours in the ensuing week. Since the show's fourth season (2000), Parker has assumed most of the show's directorial duties, while Stone relinquished his share of the directing to focus on handling the coordination and business aspects of the production. On Wednesday, a completed episode is sent to Comedy Central's headquarters via satellite uplink, sometimes just a few hours before its air time of 10 PM Eastern Time.
Parker and Stone state that subjecting themselves to a one-week deadline creates more spontaneity amongst themselves in the creative process, which they feel results in a funnier show. The schedule also allows "South Park" to both stay more topical and respond more quickly to specific current events than other satiric animated shows. One of the earliest examples of this was in the season four (2000) episode "Quintuplets 2000", which references the United States Border Patrol's raid of a house during the Elián González affair, an event which occurred only four days before the episode originally aired. The season nine (2005) episode "Best Friends Forever" references the Terri Schiavo case, and originally aired in the midst of the controversy and less than 12 hours before she died. A scene in the season seven (2003) finale "It's Christmas in Canada" references the discovery of dictator Saddam Hussein in a "spider hole" and his subsequent capture, which happened a mere three days prior to the episode airing. The season 12 (2008) episode "About Last Night..." revolves around Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election, and aired less than 24 hours after Obama was declared the winner, using segments of dialogue from Obama's real victory speech.
On October 16, 2013, the show failed to meet their production deadline for the first time ever, after a power outage on October 15 at the production studio prevented the episode, season 17's "", from being finished in time. The episode was rescheduled to air a week later on October 23, 2013. In July 2015, "South Park" was renewed through 2019; extending the show through season 23 with 307 episodes overall. On September 12, 2019, the show was renewed for seasons 24 through 26 until 2022.
The show's style of animation is inspired by the paper cut-out cartoons made by Terry Gilliam for "Monty Python's Flying Circus", of which Parker and Stone have been lifelong fans. Construction paper and traditional stop motion cutout animation techniques were used in the original animated shorts and in the pilot episode. Subsequent episodes have been produced by computer animation, providing a similar look to the originals while requiring a fraction of the time to produce. Before computer artists begin animating an episode, a series of animatics drawn in Toon Boom are provided by the show's storyboard artists.
The characters and objects are composed of simple geometrical shapes and primary and secondary colors. Most child characters are the same size and shape, and are distinguished by their clothing, hair and skin colors, and headwear. Characters are mostly presented two-dimensionally and from only one angle. Their movements are animated in an intentionally jerky fashion, as they are purposely not offered the same free range of motion associated with hand-drawn characters. Occasionally, some non-fictional characters are depicted with photographic cutouts of their actual head and face in lieu of a face reminiscent of the show's traditional style. Canadians on the show are often portrayed in an even more minimalist fashion; they have simple beady eyes, and the top halves of their heads simply flap up and down when the characters speak.
When the show began using computers, the cardboard cutouts were scanned and re-drawn with CorelDRAW, then imported into PowerAnimator, which was used with SGI workstations to animate the characters. The workstations were linked to a 54-processor render farm that could render 10 to 15 shots an hour. Beginning with season five, the animators began using Maya instead of PowerAnimator. The studio now runs a 120-processor render farm that can produce 30 or more shots an hour.
PowerAnimator and Maya are high-end programs mainly used for 3D computer graphics, while co-producer and former animation director Eric Stough notes that PowerAnimator was initially chosen because its features helped animators retain the show's "homemade" look. PowerAnimator was also used for making some of the show's visual effects, which are now created using Motion, a newer graphics program created by Apple, Inc. for their Mac OS X operating system. The show's visual quality has improved in recent seasons, though several other techniques are used to intentionally preserve the cheap cutout animation look.
A few episodes feature sections of live-action footage, while others have incorporated other styles of animation. Portions of the season eight (2004) premiere "Good Times with Weapons" are done in anime style, while the season 10 episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" is done partly in machinima. The season 12 episode "Major Boobage", a homage to the 1981 animated film "Heavy Metal", implements scenes accomplished with rotoscoping.
Parker and Stone voice most of the male "South Park" characters. Mary Kay Bergman voiced the majority of the female characters until her death in November 1999. Mona Marshall and Eliza Schneider succeeded Bergman, with Schneider leaving the show after its seventh season (2003). She was replaced by April Stewart, who, along with Marshall, continues to voice most of the female characters. Bergman was originally listed in the credits under the alias Shannen Cassidy to protect her reputation as the voice of several Disney and other kid-friendly characters. Stewart was originally credited under the name Gracie Lazar, while Schneider was sometimes credited under her rock opera performance pseudonym Blue Girl.
Other voice actors and members of "South Park"'s production staff have voiced minor characters for various episodes, while a few staff members voice recurring characters; supervising producer Jennifer Howell voices student Bebe Stevens, co-producer and storyboard artist Adrien Beard voices Token Black, who was the school's only African-American student until the introduction of Nichole in "Cartman Finds Love", writing consultant Vernon Chatman voices an anthropomorphic towel named Towelie, and production supervisor John Hansen voices Mr. Slave, the former gay lover of Mr. Garrison. Throughout the show's run, the voices for toddler and kindergarten characters have been provided by various small children of the show's production staff.
When voicing child characters, the voice actors speak within their normal vocal range while adding a childlike inflection. The recorded audio is then edited with Pro Tools, and the pitch is altered to make the voice sound more like that of a fourth grader.
Isaac Hayes voiced the character of Chef, an African-American, soul-singing cafeteria worker who was one of the few adults the boys consistently trusted. Hayes agreed to voice the character after being among Parker and Stone's ideal candidates, which also included Lou Rawls and Barry White. Hayes, who lived and hosted a radio show in New York during his tenure with "South Park", would record his dialogue on a digital audio tape while a respective episode's director would give directions over the phone, then the tape would be shipped to the show's production studio in California. After Hayes left the show in early 2006, the character of Chef was killed off in the season 10 (2006) premiere "The Return of Chef".
Celebrities who are depicted on the show are usually impersonated, though some celebrities do their own voices for the show. Celebrities who have voiced themselves include Michael Buffer, Brent Musburger, Jay Leno, Robert Smith, and the bands Radiohead and Korn.
Comedy team Cheech & Chong voiced characters representing their likenesses for the season four (2000) episode "Cherokee Hair Tampons", which was the duo's first collaborative effort in 20 years. Malcolm McDowell appears in live-action sequences as the narrator of the season four episode "Pip".
Jennifer Aniston, Richard Belzer,
Natasha Henstridge, Norman Lear, and Peter Serafinowicz have guest starred as other speaking characters. During "South Park"'s earliest seasons, several high-profile celebrities inquired about guest-starring on the show. As a joke, Parker and Stone responded by offering low-profile, non-speaking roles, most of which were accepted; George Clooney provided the barks for Stan's dog Sparky in the season one (1997) episode "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride", Leno provided the meows for Cartman's cat in the season one finale "Cartman's Mom Is a Dirty Slut", and Henry Winkler voiced the various growls and grunts of a kid-eating monster in the season two (1998) episode "City on the Edge of Forever". Jerry Seinfeld offered to lend his voice for the Thanksgiving episode "Starvin' Marvin", but declined to appear when he was only offered a role as "Turkey #2".
Parker says that the varying uses of music is of utmost importance to "South Park". Several characters often play or sing songs in order to change or influence a group's behavior, or to educate, motivate, or indoctrinate others. The show also frequently features scenes in which its characters have disapproving reactions to the performances of certain popular musicians.
Adam Berry, the show's original score composer, used sound synthesis to simulate a small orchestra, and frequently alluded to existing famous pieces of music. Berry also used signature acoustic guitar and mandolin cues as leitmotifs for the show's establishing shots. After Berry left in 2001, Jamie Dunlap and Scott Nickoley of the Los Angeles-based Mad City Production Studios provided the show's original music for the next seven seasons. Berry would go on to create music for the Disney Channel animated series "Kim Possible". Since 2008, Dunlap has been credited as the show's sole score composer. Dunlap's contributions to the show are one of the few that are not achieved at the show's own production offices. Dunlap reads a script, creates a score using digital audio software, and then e-mails the audio file to South Park Studios, where it is edited to fit with the completed episode.
In addition to singing in an effort to explain something to the children, Chef would also sing about things relevant to what had transpired in the plot. These songs were original compositions written by Parker, and performed by Hayes in the same sexually suggestive R&B style he had utilized during his own music career. The band DVDA, which consists of Parker and Stone, along with show staff members Bruce Howell and D.A. Young, would perform the music for these compositions, and, until the character's death on the show, were listed as "Chef's Band" in the closing credits.
Rick James, Elton John, Meat Loaf, Joe Strummer, Ozzy Osbourne, Primus, Rancid, and Ween all guest starred and briefly performed in the season two (1998) episode "Chef Aid". Korn debuted their single "Falling Away from Me" as guest stars on the season three (1999) episode "Korn's Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery".
The show's theme song was a musical score performed by the band Primus, with the lyrics alternately sung by the band's lead singer, Les Claypool, and the show's four central characters during the opening title sequence. Kenny's muffled lines are altered after every few seasons. His lines are usually sexually explicit in nature, such as his original lines, "I like girls with big fat titties, I like girls with deep vaginas".
The original unaired opening composition was originally slower and had a length of 40 seconds. It was deemed too long for the opening sequence. So Parker and Stone sped up it for the show's opening, having the band's lead singer Claypool re-record his vocals. The instrumental version of the original composition, though, is often played during the show's closing credits and is wordless.
The opening song played in the first four seasons (and the end credits in all seasons) has a folk rock instrumentation with bass guitar, trumpets and rhythmic drums. Its beat is fast in the opening and leisurely in the closing credits. It is in the minor key and it features a tritone or a diminished fifth, creating a melodic dissonance, which captures the show's surrealistic nature. In the latter parts of season 4 and season 5, the opening tune has an electro funk arrangement with pop qualities. Seasons 6-9 have a sprightly bluegrass instrumentation with a usage of banjo and is set in the major key. For the later seasons, the arrangement is electro rock with a breakbeat influence, which feature electric guitars backed up by synthesized, groovy drumbeats.
The opening theme song has been remixed three times during the course of the series, including a remix performed by Paul Robb. In 2006, the theme music was remixed with the song "Whamola" by Colonel Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade, from the album "Purple Onion".
Internationally, "South Park" is broadcast in India, New Zealand, and several countries throughout Europe and Latin America on channels that are divisions of Comedy Central and ViacomCBS Domestic Media Networks, both subsidiaries of ViacomCBS. In distribution deals with Comedy Central, other independent networks also broadcast the series in other international markets. In Australia, the show is broadcast on The Comedy Channel, Comedy Central and free-to-air channel SBS Viceland (before 2009, it was aired on SBS). The series is broadcast uncensored in Canada in English on The Comedy Network and, later, Much. "South Park" also airs in Irish on TG4 in Ireland, STV in Scotland, Comedy Central and MTV in the UK (previously on Channel 4 and Viva, with 5Star recently picking up where Viva left off), B92 in Serbia, and on Game One and NRJ 12 in France.
"South Park" entered broadcast syndication in 2003. Episodes further edited for content began running in syndication on September 19, 2005, and are aired in the United States with the TV-14 rating.
Complete seasons of "South Park" have been regularly released on their entirety on DVD since 2002, with season twenty-one being the most recently released. Several other themed DVD compilations have been released by Rhino Entertainment and Comedy Central, while the three-episode "" story arc was reissued straight-to-DVD as a full-length feature in 2008. Blu-ray releases started in 2008 with the release of season twelve. Subsequent seasons have been released in this format alongside the longer-running DVD releases. The first eleven seasons were released on Blu-ray for the first time in December 2017.
In March 2008, Comedy Central made every episode of "South Park" available for free full-length on-demand legal streaming on the official South Park Studios website. From March 2008 until December 2013 new episodes were added to the site the day following their debut, and an uncensored version was posted the following day. The episode stayed up for the remainder of the week, then taken down, and added to the site three weeks later.
Within a week, the site served more than a million streams of full episodes, and the number grew to 55 million by October 2008. Legal issues prevent the U.S. content from being accessible outside the U.S., so local servers have been set up in other countries. In September 2009, a South Park Studios website with streaming episodes was launched in the UK and Ireland. In Canada, episodes were available for streaming from The Comedy Network's website, though due to digital rights restrictions, they are no longer available.
In July 2014 it was announced that Hulu had signed a three-year deal purchasing exclusive online streaming rights to the "South Park" for a reported 80 million dollars. Following the announcement every episode remained available for free on the South Park Studios website, using the Hulu player. As of September 2014, following the premiere of the eighteenth season, only 30 select episodes are featured for free viewing at a time on a rationing basis on the website, with new episodes being available for an entire month starting the day following their original airings. The entire series is available for viewing on Hulu.
In April 2010, the season five episode "Super Best Friends" and the season fourteen episodes "200" and "201" were removed from the site; additionally, these episodes no longer air in reruns and are only available exclusively on DVD. These episodes remain unavailable following the 2014 purchase by Hulu.
As of July 1, 2015, all episodes of "South Park" are available for streaming in Canada on the service CraveTV, which first consisted of seasons 1–18. Subsequent seasons were released the following July.
In early October 2019, industry rumors suggested that the streaming rights for "South Park" were being offered to various services, creating an intense bidding war that was estimated to be as high as . HBO and South Park Digital Studios announced that HBO had secured a multi-year deal for the exclusive streaming rights for "South Park" on their HBO Max service starting June 24, 2020. While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, "Variety" reported the deal feel between .
From its debut in 1997 to the season twelve finale in 2008 the series had been natively produced in 480i standard definition. In 2009 the series switched to being natively produced in 1080i high definition with the beginning of the thirteenth season. Since this, all seasons originally produced in standard definition with 4:3 aspect ratio have been remastered by South Park Studios, being fully re-rendered in 1080i 16:9 high definition. The re-rendered versions were also released on Blu-ray. Several of the re-rendered episodes from the earlier seasons have their original uncensored audio tracks; they had previously been released in censored form.
The fifth-season episode "Super Best Friends", which was pulled from syndication and online streams following the controversy surrounding episode "201", was not released alongside the rest of the season when it was released in HD on iTunes in 2011. The episode was later re-rendered and made available for the Blu-ray release of the season that was released on December 5, 2017. The episode is presented in its original presentation, without Muhammad's image being obscured as in later episodes of the series.
When "South Park" debuted, it was a huge ratings success for Comedy Central and is seen as being largely responsible for the success of the channel, with Herzog crediting it for putting the network "on the map".
The show's first episode, "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe", earned a Nielsen rating of 1.3 (980,000 viewers), at the time considered high for a cable program. The show instantly generated buzz among television viewers, and mass viewing parties began assembling on college campuses. By the time the eighth episode, "Starvin' Marvin", aired — three months after the show debuted — ratings and viewership had tripled, and "South Park" was already the most successful show in Comedy Central's history. When the tenth episode "Damien" aired the following February, viewership increased another 33 percent. The episode earned a 6.4 rating, which at the time was over 10 times the average rating earned by a cable show aired in prime time. The ratings peaked with the second episode of season two, "Cartman's Mom Is Still a Dirty Slut", which aired on April 22, 1998. The episode earned an 8.2 rating (6.2 million viewers) and, at the time, set a record as the highest-rated non-sports show in basic cable history. During the spring of 1998, eight of the ten highest-rated shows on basic cable were "South Park" episodes.
The success of "South Park" prompted more cable companies to carry Comedy Central and led it to its becoming one of the fastest-growing cable channels. The number of households that had Comedy Central jumped from 9.1 million in 1997 to 50 million in June 1998. When the show debuted, the most Comedy Central had earned for a 30-second commercial was US$7,500. Within a year, advertisers were paying an average of US$40,000 for 30 seconds of advertising time during airings of "South Park" in its second season, while some paid as much as US$80,000.
By the third season (1999), the series' ratings began to decrease. The third-season premiere episode drew 3.4 million viewers, a dramatic drop from the 5.5 million of the previous season's premiere. Stone and Parker attributed this drop in the show's ratings to the media hype that surrounded the show in the previous year, adding that the third season ratings reflected the show's "true" fan base. The show's ratings dropped further in its fourth season (2000), with episodes averaging just above 1.5 million viewers. The ratings eventually increased, and seasons five through nine consistently averaged about 3 million viewers per episode. Though its viewership is lower than it was at the height of its popularity in its earliest seasons, "South Park" remains one of the highest-rated series on Comedy Central. The season 14 (2010) premiere gained 3.7 million viewers, the show's highest-rated season premiere since 1998. In 2016, a "New York Times" study of the 50 TV shows with the most Facebook Likes found that "perhaps unsurprisingly, South Park ... is most popular in Colorado".
In 2004, Channel 4 voted "South Park" the third-greatest cartoon of all time. In 2007, "Time" magazine included the show on its list of the "100 Best TV Shows of All Time", proclaiming it as "America's best source of rapid-fire satire for [the past] decade". The same year, "Rolling Stone" declared it to be the funniest show on television since its debut 10 years prior. In 2008, "South Park" was named the 12th-greatest TV show of the past 25 years by "Entertainment Weekly", while AOL declared it as having the "most astute" characters of any show in history when naming it the 16th-best television comedy series of all time. In 2011, "South Park" was voted number one in the "25 Greatest Animated TV Series" poll by "Entertainment Weekly". The character of Cartman ranked 10th on TV Guide's 2002 list of the "Top 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters", 198th on VH1's "200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons", 19th on Bravo's "100 Greatest TV Characters" television special in 2004, and second on MSNBC's 2005 list of TV's scariest characters behind Mr. Burns from "The Simpsons". In 2006, Comedy Central received a Peabody Award for "South Park"'s "stringent social commentary" and "undeniably fearless lampooning of all that is self-important and hypocritical in American life". In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked "South Park" at number 63 among the "101 Best-Written Shows Ever". Also in 2013, TV Guide listed the show at number 10 among the "60 Greatest Cartoons of All Time". In 2019, the series was ranked 42nd on "The Guardian" newspaper's list of the 100 best TV shows of the 21st century.
"South Park" won the CableACE Award for Best Animated Series in 1997, the last year the awards were given out. In 1998, "South Park" was nominated for the Annie Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Animated Primetime or Late Night Television Program. It was also nominated for the 1998 GLAAD Award for Outstanding TV – Individual Episode for "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride".
"South Park" has been nominated for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program sixteen times (1998, 2000, 2002, 2004–2011, and 2013–2017). The show has won the award for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming Less Than One Hour) four times, for the 2005 episode "Best Friends Forever", the 2006 episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft", the 2009 episode "Margaritaville", and the 2012 episode "Raising the Bar". The "Imaginationland" trilogy of episodes won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming One Hour or More) in 2008.
The show's frequent depiction of taboo subject matter, general toilet humor, accessibility to younger viewers, disregard for conservative sensibilities, negative depiction of liberal causes, and portrayal of religion for comic effect have generated controversy and debate over the course of its run.
As the series became popular, students in two schools were barred from wearing "South Park"-related T-shirts, and the headmaster of a UK public school asked parents not to let their children watch the programme after eight- and nine-year-old children voted the "South Park" character Cartman as their favorite personality in a 1999 poll. Parker and Stone assert that the show is not meant to be viewed by young children, and the show is certified with TV ratings that indicate its intention for mature audiences.
Parents Television Council founder L. Brent Bozell III and Action for Children's Television founder Peggy Charren have both condemned the show, with the latter claiming it is "dangerous to the democracy". Several other activist groups have protested the show's parodies of Christianity and portrayal of Jesus Christ. Stone has stated that parents who disapprove of "South Park" for its portrayal of how kids behave are upset because they "have an idyllic vision of what kids are like", adding "[kids] don't have any kind of social tact or etiquette, they're just complete little raging bastards".
The show further lampooned the controversy surrounding its use of profanity, as well as the media attention surrounding the network show "Chicago Hope"'s singular use of the word "shit", with the season five premiere "It Hits the Fan", in which the word "shit" is said 162 times without being bleeped for censorship purposes, while also appearing uncensored in written form. In the days following the show's original airing, 5,000 disapproving e-mails were sent to Comedy Central. Despite its 43 uncensored uses of the racial slur "nigger", the season 11 episode "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson" generated relatively little controversy, as most in the black community and the NAACP praised the episode for its context and its comedic way of conveying other races' perceptions of how black people feel when hearing the word.
Specific controversies regarding the show have included an April Fools' Day prank played on its viewers in 1998, its depiction of the Virgin Mary in the season nine (2005) finale "Bloody Mary" that angered several Catholics, its depiction of Steve Irwin with a stingray barb stuck in his chest in the episode "Hell on Earth 2006", which originally aired less than two months after Irwin was killed in the same fashion, and Comedy Central's censorship of the depiction of Muhammad in the season 10 episode "Cartoon Wars Part II" in the wake of the "Jyllands-Posten" Muhammad cartoons controversy.
The season nine (2005) episode "Trapped in the Closet" denounces Scientology as nothing more than "a big fat global scam", while freely divulging church information that Scientology normally only reveals to members who make significant monetary contributions to the church. The episode also ambiguously parodies the rumors involving the sexual orientation of Scientologist Tom Cruise, who allegedly demanded any further reruns of the episode be canceled. Isaac Hayes, a Scientologist, later quit "South Park" because of his objection to the episode.
The season fourteen episodes "200" and "201" were mired in controversy for satirizing issues surrounding the depiction of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad. The website for the organization Revolution Muslim, a New York-based radical Muslim organization, posted an entry that included a warning to creators Parker and Stone that they risk violent retribution for their depictions of Muhammad. It said that they "will probably wind up like Theo van Gogh for airing this show". The posting provided the addresses to Comedy Central in New York and the production company in Los Angeles. The author of the post, Zachary Adam Chesser (who prefers to be called Abu Talhah al-Amrikee), said it was meant to serve as a warning to Parker and Stone, not a threat, and that providing the addresses was meant to give people the opportunity to protest.
Despite al-Amrikee's claims that the website entry was a warning, several media outlets and observers interpreted it as a threat. Support for the episode has come in the form of Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, a movement started on Facebook that encourages people to draw Muhammad on May 20. The "200" episode, which also depicted the Buddha snorting cocaine, prompted the government of Sri Lanka to ban the series outright.
Due to many topics forbidden in China, such as Dalai Lama, Winnie-the-Pooh and organ transplants being involved in the season 23 (2019) episode "Band in China", "South Park" was entirely banned in China after the episode's broadcast. The series' Baidu Baike article, Baidu Tieba forum, Douban page, Zhihu page and Bilibili videos have been deleted or inaccessible to the public, all related keywords and topics have been prohibited from being searched and discussed on China-based search engines and social media sites including Baidu, Sina Weibo and on WeChat public platforms. Parker and Stone issued a sarcastic apology in response.
Commentary made in episodes has been interpreted as statements Parker and Stone are attempting to make to the viewing public, and these opinions have been subject to much critical analysis in the media and literary world within the framework of popular philosophical, theological, social, and political concepts. Since "South Park" debuted, college students have written term papers and doctoral theses analyzing the show, while Brooklyn College offers a course called ""South Park" and Political Correctness".
Soon after one of Kenny's trademark deaths on the show, other characters would typically shout "Oh my God, they killed Kenny!". The exclamation quickly became a popular catchphrase, while the running gag of Kenny's recurring deaths are one of the more recognized hallmarks among viewers of modern television. Cartman's exclamations of "Respect my authori-tah!" and "Screw you guys ...I'm going home!" became catchphrases as well, and during the show's earlier seasons, were highly popular in the lexicon of viewers. Cartman's eccentric intonation of "Hey!" was included in the 2002 edition of "The Oxford Dictionary of Catchphrases".
In the season two episode "Chef Aid", attorney Johnnie Cochran uses what's called in the show the Chewbacca defense, which is a legal strategy that involves addressing plot holes related to Chewbacca in the film "Return of the Jedi" rather than discussing the trial at hand during a closing argument in a deliberate attempt to confuse jurors into thinking there is reasonable doubt. The term "Chewbacca defense" has been documented as being used by criminologists, forensic scientists, and political commentators in their various discussions of similar methods used in legal cases and public forums.
Another season two episode, "Gnomes", revolves around a group of "underpants gnomes" who, as their name suggests, run a corporation stealing people's underpants. When asked about their business model, various gnomes reply that theirs is a three-step process: Phase 1 is "collect underpants". Phase 3 is "profit". However, the gnomes are unable to explain what is to occur between the first and final steps, and "Phase 2" is accompanied by a large question mark on their corporate flow chart. Using "????" and "PROFIT!" as the last two steps in a process (usually jokingly) has become a widely popular Internet meme because of this. Especially in the context of politics and economics, "underpants gnomes" has been used by some commentators to characterize a conspicuous gap of logic or planning.
When Sophie Rutschmann of the University of Strasbourg discovered a mutated gene that causes an adult fruit fly to die within two days after it is infected with certain bacteria, she named the gene "kep1" in honor of Kenny.
While some conservatives have condemned "South Park" for its vulgarity, a growing population of people who hold center-right political beliefs, including teenagers and young adults, have embraced the show for its tendency to mock liberal viewpoints and lampoon liberal celebrities and icons. Political commentator Andrew Sullivan dubbed the group "South Park" Republicans, or "South Park" conservatives. Sullivan averred that members of the group are "extremely skeptical of political correctness but also are socially liberal on many issues", though he says the phrase applied to them is meant to be more of a casual indication of beliefs than a strong partisan label. Brian C. Anderson describes the group as "generally characterized by holding strong libertarian beliefs and rejecting more conservative social policy", and notes that although the show makes "wicked fun of conservatives", it is "at the forefront of a conservative revolt against liberal media."
Parker and Stone reject the idea that the show has any underlying political position, and deny having a political agenda when creating an episode.
The two claim the show's higher proportion of instances lampooning liberal rather than conservative orthodoxies stems simply from their preference for making fun of liberals. While Stone has been quoted saying, "I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals", Stone and Parker have explained that their drive to lampoon a given target comes first from the target's insistence on telling other people how to behave. The duo explain that they regard liberals as having both delusions of entitlement to remain free from satire, and a propensity to enforce political correctness while patronizing the citizens of Middle America. Parker and Stone are uncomfortable with the idea of themselves or "South Park" being assigned any kind of partisan classification. Parker said he rejects the ""South Park" Republican" and ""South Park" conservative" labels, feeling that either tag implies that one only adheres to strictly conservative or liberal viewpoints. Canadian columnist Jaime J. Weinman observes that the most die-hard conservatives who identified themselves as ""South Park" Republicans" began turning away from the label when the show ridiculed Republicans in the season nine (2005) episode "Best Friends Forever."
In 1999, less than two years after the series first aired, a was released. The film, a musical comedy, was directed by Parker, who co-wrote the script with Stone and Pam Brady. The film was generally well received by critics, and earned a combined US$83.1 million at the domestic and foreign box office. The film satirizes the controversy surrounding the show itself and gained a spot in the 2001 edition of "Guinness World Records" for "Most Swearing in an Animated Film". The song "Blame Canada" from earned song co-writers Parker and Marc Shaiman an Academy Award nomination for Best Music, Original Song.
As a tribute to the Dead Parrot sketch, a short that features Cartman attempting to return a dead Kenny to a shop run by Kyle aired during a 1999 BBC television special commemorating the 30th anniversary of "Monty Python's Flying Circus". "South Park" parodied Scientology in a short that aired as part of the 2000 MTV Movie Awards. The short was entitled "The Gauntlet" and also poked fun at John Travolta, a Scientologist. The four main characters were featured in the documentary film "The Aristocrats", listening to Cartman tell his version of the film's titular joke. Short clips of Cartman introducing the starting lineup for the University of Colorado football team were featured during ABC's coverage of the 2007 matchup between the University of Colorado and the University of Nebraska. In 2008, Parker, as Cartman, gave answers to a Proust Questionnaire conducted by Julie Rovner of NPR. The Snakes & Arrows Tour for Rush in 2007 used an intro from Cartman, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny preceding "Tom Sawyer". As Parker, Stone and producer Frank Agnone are Los Angeles Kings fans, special "South Park" pre-game videos have been featured at Kings home games at Staples Center, and the club even sent the Stanley Cup to visit South Park Studios after winning the 2012 finals. Parker and Stone have also created Denver Broncos and Denver Nuggets-themed shorts, featuring Cartman, for home games at Pepsi Center.
"", a compilation of original songs from the show, characters performing cover songs, and tracks performed by guest artists was released in 1998, while "Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics", a compilation of songs performed by the characters in the episode of the same name as well as other Christmas-themed songs was released in 1999, as was the to the feature film. The song "Chocolate Salty Balls" (performed by Hayes as Chef) was released as a single in the UK in 1998 to support the "Chef Aid: The South Park Album" and became a number one hit.
Merchandising related to the show is an industry which generates several million dollars a year. In 1998, the top-selling specialty T-shirt in the United States was based on "South Park", and US$30 million in T-shirt sales was reached during the show's first season.
A "South Park" pinball machine was released in 1999 by Sega Pinball. The companies Fun 4 All, Mezco Toyz, and Mirage have produced various South Park action figures, collectibles, and plush dolls.
Comedy Central entered into an agreement with Frito-Lay to sell 1.5 million bags of Cheesy Poofs, Cartman's favorite snack from the show, at Walmart until the premiere of the second half of the fifteenth season on October 5, 2011.
Further Reading | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27977 |
Skin
Skin is the layer of usually soft, flexible outer tissue covering the body of a vertebrate animal, with three main functions: protection, regulation, and sensation.
Other animal coverings, such as the arthropod exoskeleton, have different developmental origin, structure and chemical composition. The adjective cutaneous means "of the skin" (from Latin "cutis", skin). In mammals, the skin is an organ of the integumentary system made up of multiple layers of ectodermal tissue, and guards the underlying muscles, bones, ligaments and internal organs. Skin of a different nature exists in amphibians, reptiles, and birds. All mammals have some hair on their skin, even marine mammals like whales, dolphins, and porpoises which appear to be hairless.
The skin interfaces with the environment and is the first line of defense from external factors. For example, the skin plays a key role in protecting the body against pathogens and excessive water loss. Its other functions are insulation, temperature regulation, sensation, and the production of vitamin D folates. Severely damaged skin may heal by forming scar tissue. This is sometimes discoloured and depigmented. The thickness of skin also varies from location to location on an organism. In humans for example, the skin located under the eyes and around the eyelids is the thinnest skin in the body at 0.5 mm thick, and is one of the first areas to show signs of aging such as "crows feet" and wrinkles. The skin on the palms and the soles of the feet is 4 mm thick and is the thickest skin on the body. The speed and quality of wound healing in skin is promoted by the reception of estrogen.
Fur is dense hair. Primarily, fur augments the insulation the skin provides but can also serve as a secondary sexual characteristic or as camouflage. On some animals, the skin is very hard and thick, and can be processed to create leather. Reptiles and most fish have hard protective scales on their skin for protection, and birds have hard feathers, all made of tough β-keratins. Amphibian skin is not a strong barrier, especially regarding the passage of chemicals via skin and is often subject to osmosis and diffusive forces. For example, a frog sitting in an anesthetic solution would be sedated quickly, as the chemical diffuses through its skin. Amphibian skin plays key roles in everyday survival and their ability to exploit a wide range of habitats and ecological conditions.
Mammalian skin is composed of two primary layers:
The epidermis is composed of the outermost layers of the skin. It forms a protective barrier over the body's surface, responsible for keeping water in the body and preventing pathogens from entering, and is a stratified squamous epithelium, composed of proliferating basal and differentiated suprabasal keratinocytes.
Keratinocytes are the major cells, constituting 95% of the epidermis, while Merkel cells, melanocytes and Langerhans cells are also present. The epidermis can be further subdivided into the following "strata" or layers (beginning with the outermost layer):
Keratinocytes in the stratum basale proliferate through mitosis and the daughter cells move up the strata changing shape and composition as they undergo multiple stages of cell differentiation to eventually become anucleated. During that process, keratinocytes will become highly organized, forming cellular junctions (desmosomes) between each other and secreting keratin proteins and lipids which contribute to the formation of an extracellular matrix and provide mechanical strength to the skin. Keratinocytes from the stratum corneum are eventually shed from the surface (desquamation).
The epidermis contains no blood vessels, and cells in the deepest layers are nourished by diffusion from blood capillaries extending to the upper layers of the dermis.
The epidermis and dermis are separated by a thin sheet of fibers called the basement membrane, which is made through the action of both tissues.
The basement membrane controls the traffic of the cells and molecules between the dermis and epidermis but also serves, through the binding of a variety of cytokines and growth factors, as a reservoir for their controlled release during physiological remodeling or repair processes.
The dermis is the layer of skin beneath the epidermis that consists of connective tissue and cushions the body from stress and strain.
The dermis provides tensile strength and elasticity to the skin through an extracellular matrix composed of collagen fibrils, microfibrils, and elastic fibers, embedded in hyaluronan and proteoglycans. Skin proteoglycans are varied and have very specific locations. For example, hyaluronan, versican and decorin are present throughout the dermis and epidermis extracellular matrix, whereas biglycan and perlecan are only found in the epidermis.
It harbors many mechanoreceptors (nerve endings) that provide the sense of touch and heat through nociceptors and thermoreceptors. It also contains the hair follicles, sweat glands, sebaceous glands, apocrine glands, lymphatic vessels and blood vessels. The blood vessels in the dermis provide nourishment and waste removal from its own cells as well as for the epidermis.
The dermis is tightly connected to the epidermis through a basement membrane and is structurally divided into two areas: a superficial area adjacent to the epidermis, called the "papillary region", and a deep thicker area known as the "reticular region".
The papillary region is composed of loose areolar connective tissue. This is named for its fingerlike projections called "papillae" that extend toward the epidermis. The papillae provide the dermis with a "bumpy" surface that interdigitates with the epidermis, strengthening the connection between the two layers of skin.
The reticular region lies deep in the papillary region and is usually much thicker. It is composed of dense irregular connective tissue and receives its name from the dense concentration of collagenous, elastic, and reticular fibers that weave throughout it. These protein fibers give the dermis its properties of strength, extensibility, and elasticity.
Also located within the reticular region are the roots of the hair, sweat glands, sebaceous glands, receptors, nails, and blood vessels.
The subcutaneous tissue (also hypodermis) is not part of the skin, and lies below the dermis. Its purpose is to attach the skin to underlying bone and muscle as well as supplying it with blood vessels and nerves. It consists of loose connective tissue and elastin. The main cell types are fibroblasts, macrophages and adipocytes (the subcutaneous tissue contains 50% of body fat). Fat serves as padding and insulation for the body.
Microorganisms like "Staphylococcus epidermidis" colonize the skin surface. The density of skin flora depends on region of the skin. The disinfected skin surface gets recolonized from bacteria residing in the deeper areas of the hair follicle, gut and urogenital openings.
The epidermis of fish and of most amphibians consists entirely of live cells, with only minimal quantities of keratin in the cells of the superficial layer. It is generally permeable, and in the case of many amphibians, may actually be a major respiratory organ. The dermis of bony fish typically contains relatively little of the connective tissue found in tetrapods. Instead, in most species, it is largely replaced by solid, protective bony scales. Apart from some particularly large dermal bones that form parts of the skull, these scales are lost in tetrapods, although many reptiles do have scales of a different kind, as do pangolins. Cartilaginous fish have numerous tooth-like denticles embedded in their skin, in place of true scales.
Sweat glands and sebaceous glands are both unique to mammals, but other types of skin gland are found in other vertebrates. Fish typically have a numerous individual mucus-secreting skin cells that aid in insulation and protection, but may also have poison glands, photophores, or cells that produce a more watery, serous fluid. In amphibians, the mucus cells are gathered together to form sac-like glands. Most living amphibians also possess "granular glands" in the skin, that secrete irritating or toxic compounds.
Although melanin is found in the skin of many species, in the reptiles, the amphibians, and fish, the epidermis is often relatively colorless. Instead, the color of the skin is largely due to chromatophores in the dermis, which, in addition to melanin, may contain guanine or carotenoid pigments. Many species, such as chameleons and flounders may be able to change the color of their skin by adjusting the relative size of their chromatophores.
"See also: amphibians"
Amphibians possess two types of glands, mucous and granular (serous). Both of these glands are part of the integument and thus considered cutaneous. Mucous and granular glands are both divided into three different sections which all connect to structure the gland as a whole. The three individual parts of the gland are the duct, the intercalary region, and lastly the alveolar gland (sac). Structurally, the duct is derived via keratinocytes and passes through to the surface of the epidermal or outer skin layer thus allowing external secretions of the body. The gland alveolus is a sac shaped structure that is found on the bottom or base region of the granular gland. The cells in this sac specialize in secretion. Between the alveolar gland and the duct is the intercalary system which can be summed up as a transitional region connecting the duct to the grand alveolar beneath the epidermal skin layer. In general, granular glands are larger in size than the mucous glands, however mucous glands hold a much greater majority in overall number.
Granular glands can be identified as venomous and often differ in the type of toxin as well as the concentrations of secretions across various orders and species within the amphibians. They are located in clusters differing in concentration depending on amphibian taxa. The toxins can be fatal to most vertebrates or have no effect against others. These glands are alveolar meaning they structurally have little sacs in which venom is produced and held before it is secreted upon defensive behaviors.
Structurally, the ducts of the granular gland initially maintain a cylindrical shape. However, when the ducts become mature and full of toxic fluid, the base of the ducts become swollen due to the pressure from the inside. This causes the epidermal layer to form a pit like opening on the surface of the duct in which the inner fluid will be secreted in an upwards fashion.
The intercalary region of granular glands is more developed and mature in comparison with mucous glands. This region resides as a ring of cells surrounding the basal portion of the duct which are argued to have an ectodermal muscular nature due to their influence over the lumen (space inside the tube) of the duct with dilation and constriction functions during secretions. The cells are found radially around the duct and provide a distinct attachment site for muscle fibers around the gland's body.
The gland alveolus is a sac that is divided into three specific regions/layers. The outer layer or tunica fibrosa is composed of densely packed connective-tissue which connects with fibers from the spongy intermediate layer where elastic fibers, as well as nerves, reside. The nerves send signals to the muscles as well as the epithelial layers. Lastly, the epithelium or tunica propria encloses the gland.
Mucous glands are non-venomous and offer a different functionality for amphibians than granular. Mucous glands cover the entire surface area of the amphibian body and specialize in keeping the body lubricated. There are many other functions of the mucous glands such as controlling the pH, thermoregulation, adhesive properties to the environment, anti-predator behaviors (slimy to the grasp), chemical communication, even anti-bacterial/viral properties for protection against pathogens.
The ducts of the mucous gland appear as cylindrical vertical tubes that break through the epidermal layer to the surface of the skin. The cells lining the inside of the ducts are oriented with their longitudinal axis forming 90-degree angles surrounding the duct in a helical fashion.
Intercalary cells react identically to those of granular glands but on a smaller scale. Among the amphibians, there are taxa which contain a modified intercalary region (depending on the function of the glands), yet the majority share the same structure.
The alveolor of mucous glands are much more simple and only consist of an epithelium layer as well as connective tissue which forms a cover over the gland. This gland lacks a tunica propria and appears to have delicate and intricate fibers which pass over the gland's muscle and epithelial layers.
The epidermis of birds and reptiles is closer to that of mammals, with a layer of dead keratin-filled cells at the surface, to help reduce water loss. A similar pattern is also seen in some of the more terrestrial amphibians such as toads. However, in all of these animals there is no clear differentiation of the epidermis into distinct layers, as occurs in humans, with the change in cell type being relatively gradual. The mammalian epidermis always possesses at least a stratum germinativum and stratum corneum, but the other intermediate layers found in humans are not always distinguishable.
Hair is a distinctive feature of mammalian skin, while feathers are (at least among living species) similarly unique to birds.
Birds and reptiles have relatively few skin glands, although there may be a few structures for specific purposes, such as pheromone-secreting cells in some reptiles, or the uropygial gland of most birds.
Skin performs the following functions:
Skin is a soft tissue and exhibits key mechanical behaviors of these tissues. The most pronounced feature is the J-curve stress strain response, in which a region of large strain and minimal stress exists and corresponds to the microstructural straightening and reorientation of collagen fibrils. In some cases the intact skin is prestreched, like wetsuits around the diver's body, and in other cases the intact skin is under compression. Small circular holes punched on the skin may widen or close into ellipses, or shrink and remain circular, depending on preexisting stresses.
Tissue homeostasis generally declines with age, in part because stem/progenitor cells fail to self-renew or differentiate. In the skin of mice, mitochondrial oxidative stress can promote cellular senescence and aging phenotypes. Ordinarily mitochondrial superoxide dismutase (SOD2) protects against oxidative stress. Using a mouse model of genetic SOD2 deficiency, it was shown that failure to express this important antioxidant enzyme in epidermal cells caused cellular senescence, nuclear DNA damage, and irreversible arrest of proliferation of a fraction of keratinocytes.
Skin aging is caused in part by TGF-β, which reduces the subcutaneous fat that gives skin a pleasant appearance and texture. TGF-β does this by blocking the conversion of dermal fibroblasts into fat cells; with fewer fat cells underneath to provide support, the skin becomes saggy and wrinkled. Subcutaneous fat also produces cathelicidin, which is a peptide that fights bacterial infections.
The term "skin" may also refer to the covering of a small animal, such as a sheep, goat (goatskin), pig, snake (snakeskin) etc. or the young of a large animal.
The term hides or rawhide refers to the covering of a large adult animal such as a cow, buffalo, horse etc.
Skins and hides from the different animals are used for clothing, bags and other consumer products, usually in the form of leather, but also as furs.
Skin from sheep, goat and cattle was used to make parchment for manuscripts.
Skin can also be cooked to make pork rind or crackling. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27978 |
Sunlight
Sunlight is a portion of the electromagnetic radiation given off by the Sun, in particular infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light. On Earth, sunlight is scattered and filtered through Earth's atmosphere, and is obvious as daylight when the Sun is above the horizon. When direct solar radiation is not blocked by clouds, it is experienced as sunshine, a combination of bright light and radiant heat. When blocked by clouds or reflected off other objects, sunlight is diffused. The World Meteorological Organization uses the term "sunshine duration" to mean the cumulative time during which an area receives direct irradiance from the Sun of at least 120 watts per square meter. Other sources indicate an "Average over the entire earth" of "164 Watts per square meter over a 24 hour day".
The ultraviolet radiation in sunlight has both positive and negative health effects, as it is both a requisite for vitamin D3 synthesis and a mutagen.
Sunlight takes about 8.3 minutes to reach Earth from the surface of the Sun. A photon starting at the center of the Sun and changing direction every time it encounters a charged particle would take between 10,000 and 170,000 years to get to the surface.
Sunlight is a key factor in photosynthesis, the process used by plants and other autotrophic organisms to convert light energy, normally from the Sun, into chemical energy that can be used to synthesize carbohydrates and to fuel the organisms' activities.
Researchers can measure the intensity of sunlight using a sunshine recorder, pyranometer, or pyrheliometer. To calculate the amount of sunlight reaching the ground, both the eccentricity of Earth's elliptic orbit and the attenuation by Earth's atmosphere have to be taken into account. The extraterrestrial solar illuminance (), corrected for the elliptic orbit by using the day number of the year (dn), is given to a good approximation by | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27979 |
Stellar evolution
Stellar evolution is the process by which a star changes over the course of time. Depending on the mass of the star, its lifetime can range from a few million years for the most massive to trillions of years for the least massive, which is considerably longer than the age of the universe. The table shows the lifetimes of stars as a function of their masses. All stars are formed from collapsing clouds of gas and dust, often called nebulae or molecular clouds. Over the course of millions of years, these protostars settle down into a state of equilibrium, becoming what is known as a main-sequence star.
Nuclear fusion powers a star for most of its existence. Initially the energy is generated by the fusion of hydrogen atoms at the core of the main-sequence star. Later, as the preponderance of atoms at the core becomes helium, stars like the Sun begin to fuse hydrogen along a spherical shell surrounding the core. This process causes the star to gradually grow in size, passing through the subgiant stage until it reaches the red giant phase. Stars with at least half the mass of the Sun can also begin to generate energy through the fusion of helium at their core, whereas more-massive stars can fuse heavier elements along a series of concentric shells. Once a star like the Sun has exhausted its nuclear fuel, its core collapses into a dense white dwarf and the outer layers are expelled as a planetary nebula. Stars with around ten or more times the mass of the Sun can explode in a supernova as their inert iron cores collapse into an extremely dense neutron star or black hole. Although the universe is not old enough for any of the smallest red dwarfs to have reached the end of their existence, stellar models suggest they will slowly become brighter and hotter before running out of hydrogen fuel and becoming low-mass white dwarfs.
Stellar evolution is not studied by observing the life of a single star, as most stellar changes occur too slowly to be detected, even over many centuries. Instead, astrophysicists come to understand how stars evolve by observing numerous stars at various points in their lifetime, and by simulating stellar structure using computer models.
Stellar evolution starts with the gravitational collapse of a giant molecular cloud. Typical giant molecular clouds are roughly across and contain up to . As it collapses, a giant molecular cloud breaks into smaller and smaller pieces. In each of these fragments, the collapsing gas releases gravitational potential energy as heat. As its temperature and pressure increase, a fragment condenses into a rotating sphere of superhot gas known as a protostar.
A protostar continues to grow by accretion of gas and dust from the molecular cloud, becoming a pre-main-sequence star as it reaches its final mass. Further development is determined by its mass. Mass is typically compared to the mass of the Sun: means 1 solar mass.
Protostars are encompassed in dust, and are thus more readily visible at infrared wavelengths.
Observations from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have been especially important for unveiling numerous Galactic protostars and their parent star clusters.
Protostars with masses less than roughly never reach temperatures high enough for nuclear fusion of hydrogen to begin. These are known as brown dwarfs. The International Astronomical Union defines brown dwarfs as stars massive enough to fuse deuterium at some point in their lives (13 Jupiter masses (), 2.5 × 1028 kg, or ). Objects smaller than are classified as sub-brown dwarfs (but if they orbit around another stellar object they are classified as planets). Both types, deuterium-burning and not, shine dimly and fade away slowly, cooling gradually over hundreds of millions of years.
For a more-massive protostar, the core temperature will eventually reach 10 million kelvin, initiating the proton–proton chain reaction and allowing hydrogen to fuse, first to deuterium and then to helium. In stars of slightly over , the carbon–nitrogen–oxygen fusion reaction (CNO cycle) contributes a large portion of the energy generation. The onset of nuclear fusion leads relatively quickly to a hydrostatic equilibrium in which energy released by the core maintains a high gas pressure, balancing the weight of the star's matter and preventing further gravitational collapse. The star thus evolves rapidly to a stable state, beginning the main-sequence phase of its evolution.
A new star will sit at a specific point on the main sequence of the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram, with the main-sequence spectral type depending upon the mass of the star. Small, relatively cold, low-mass red dwarfs fuse hydrogen slowly and will remain on the main sequence for hundreds of billions of years or longer, whereas massive, hot O-type stars will leave the main sequence after just a few million years. A mid-sized yellow dwarf star, like the Sun, will remain on the main sequence for about 10 billion years. The Sun is thought to be in the middle of its main sequence lifespan.
Eventually the core exhausts its supply of hydrogen and the star begins to evolve off of the main sequence. Without the outward radiation pressure generated by the fusion of hydrogen to counteract the force of gravity the core contracts until either electron degeneracy pressure becomes sufficient to oppose gravity or the core becomes hot enough (around 100 MK) for helium fusion to begin. Which of these happens first depends upon the star's mass.
What happens after a low-mass star ceases to produce energy through fusion has not been directly observed; the universe is around 13.8 billion years old, which is less time (by several orders of magnitude, in some cases) than it takes for fusion to cease in such stars.
Recent astrophysical models suggest that red dwarfs of may stay on the main sequence for some six to twelve trillion years, gradually increasing in both temperature and luminosity, and take several hundred billion years more to collapse, slowly, into a white dwarf. Such stars will not become red giants as the whole star is a convection zone and it will not develop a degenerate helium core with a shell burning hydrogen. Instead, hydrogen fusion will proceed until almost the whole star is helium.
Slightly more massive stars do expand into red giants, but their helium cores are not massive enough to reach the temperatures required for helium fusion so they never reach the tip of the red giant branch. When hydrogen shell burning finishes, these stars move directly off the red giant branch like a post-asymptotic-giant-branch (AGB) star, but at lower luminosity, to become a white dwarf. A star with an initial mass about will be able to reach temperatures high enough to fuse helium, and these "mid-sized" stars go on to further stages of evolution beyond the red giant branch.
Stars of roughly become red giants, which are large non-main-sequence stars of stellar classification K or M. Red giants lie along the right edge of the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram due to their red color and large luminosity. Examples include Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus and Arcturus in the constellation of Boötes.
Mid-sized stars are red giants during two different phases of their post-main-sequence evolution: red-giant-branch stars, with inert cores made of helium and hydrogen-burning shells, and asymptotic-giant-branch stars, with inert cores made of carbon and helium-burning shells inside the hydrogen-burning shells. Between these two phases, stars spend a period on the horizontal branch with a helium-fusing core. Many of these helium-fusing stars cluster towards the cool end of the horizontal branch as K-type giants and are referred to as red clump giants.
When a star exhausts the hydrogen in its core, it leaves the main sequence and begins to fuse hydrogen in a shell outside the core. The core increases in mass as the shell produces more helium. Depending on the mass of the helium core, this continues for several million to one or two billion years, with the star expanding and cooling at a similar or slightly lower luminosity to its main sequence state. Eventually either the core becomes degenerate, in stars around the mass of the sun, or the outer layers cool sufficiently to become opaque, in more massive stars. Either of these changes cause the hydrogen shell to increase in temperature and the luminosity of the star to increase, at which point the star expands onto the red giant branch.
The expanding outer layers of the star are convective, with the material being mixed by turbulence from near the fusing regions up to the surface of the star. For all but the lowest-mass stars, the fused material has remained deep in the stellar interior prior to this point, so the convecting envelope makes fusion products visible at the star's surface for the first time. At this stage of evolution, the results are subtle, with the largest effects, alterations to the isotopes of hydrogen and helium, being unobservable. The effects of the CNO cycle appear at the surface during the first dredge-up, with lower 12C/13C ratios and altered proportions of carbon and nitrogen. These are detectable with spectroscopy and have been measured for many evolved stars.
The helium core continues to grow on the red giant branch. It is no longer in thermal equilibrium, either degenerate or above the Schoenberg-Chandrasekhar limit, so it increases in temperature which causes the rate of fusion in the hydrogen shell to increase. The star increases in luminosity towards the tip of the red-giant branch. Red giant branch stars with a degenerate helium core all reach the tip with very similar core masses and very similar luminosities, although the more massive of the red giants become hot enough to ignite helium fusion before that point.
In the helium cores of stars in the 0.6 to 2.0 solar mass range, which are largely supported by electron degeneracy pressure, helium fusion will ignite on a timescale of days in a helium flash. In the nondegenerate cores of more massive stars, the ignition of helium fusion occurs relatively slowly with no flash. The nuclear power released during the helium flash is very large, on the order of 108 times the luminosity of the Sun for a few days and 1011 times the luminosity of the Sun (roughly the luminosity of the Milky Way Galaxy) for a few seconds. However, the energy is consumed by the thermal expansion of the initially degenerate core and thus cannot be seen from outside the star. Due to the expansion of the core, the hydrogen fusion in the overlying layers slows and total energy generation decreases. The star contracts, although not all the way to the main sequence, and it migrates to the horizontal branch on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram, gradually shrinking in radius and increasing its surface temperature.
Core helium flash stars evolve to the red end of the horizontal branch but do not migrate to higher temperatures before they gain a degenerate carbon-oxygen core and start helium shell burning. These stars are often observed as a red clump of stars in the colour-magnitude diagram of a cluster, hotter and less luminous than the red giants. Higher-mass stars with larger helium cores move along the horizontal branch to higher temperatures, some becoming unstable pulsating stars in the yellow instability strip (RR Lyrae variables), whereas some become even hotter and can form a blue tail or blue hook to the horizontal branch. The morphology of the horizontal branch depends on parameters such as metallicity, age, and helium content, but the exact details are still being modelled.
After a star has consumed the helium at the core, hydrogen and helium fusion continues in shells around a hot core of carbon and oxygen. The star follows the asymptotic giant branch on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram, paralleling the original red giant evolution, but with even faster energy generation (which lasts for a shorter time). Although helium is being burnt in a shell, the majority of the energy is produced by hydrogen burning in a shell further from the core of the star. Helium from these hydrogen burning shells drops towards the center of the star and periodically the energy output from the helium shell increases dramatically. This is known as a thermal pulse and they occur towards the end of the asymptotic-giant-branch phase, sometimes even into the post-asymptotic-giant-branch phase. Depending on mass and composition, there may be several to hundreds of thermal pulses.
There is a phase on the ascent of the asymptotic-giant-branch where a deep convective zone forms and can bring carbon from the core to the surface. This is known as the second dredge up, and in some stars there may even be a third dredge up. In this way a carbon star is formed, very cool and strongly reddened stars showing strong carbon lines in their spectra. A process known as hot bottom burning may convert carbon into oxygen and nitrogen before it can be dredged to the surface, and the interaction between these processes determines the observed luminosities and spectra of carbon stars in particular clusters.
Another well known class of asymptotic-giant-branch stars is the Mira variables, which pulsate with well-defined periods of tens to hundreds of days and large amplitudes up to about 10 magnitudes (in the visual, total luminosity changes by a much smaller amount). In more-massive stars the stars become more luminous and the pulsation period is longer, leading to enhanced mass loss, and the stars become heavily obscured at visual wavelengths. These stars can be observed as OH/IR stars, pulsating in the infra-red and showing OH maser activity. These stars are clearly oxygen rich, in contrast to the carbon stars, but both must be produced by dredge ups.
These mid-range stars ultimately reach the tip of the asymptotic-giant-branch and run out of fuel for shell burning. They are not sufficiently massive to start full-scale carbon fusion, so they contract again, going through a period of post-asymptotic-giant-branch superwind to produce a planetary nebula with an extremely hot central star. The central star then cools to a white dwarf. The expelled gas is relatively rich in heavy elements created within the star and may be particularly oxygen or carbon enriched, depending on the type of the star. The gas builds up in an expanding shell called a circumstellar envelope and cools as it moves away from the star, allowing dust particles and molecules to form. With the high infrared energy input from the central star, ideal conditions are formed in these circumstellar envelopes for maser excitation.
It is possible for thermal pulses to be produced once post-asymptotic-giant-branch evolution has begun, producing a variety of unusual and poorly understood stars known as born-again asymptotic-giant-branch stars. These may result in extreme horizontal-branch stars (subdwarf B stars), hydrogen deficient post-asymptotic-giant-branch stars, variable planetary nebula central stars, and R Coronae Borealis variables.
In massive stars, the core is already large enough at the onset of the hydrogen burning shell that helium ignition will occur before electron degeneracy pressure has a chance to become prevalent. Thus, when these stars expand and cool, they do not brighten as dramatically as lower-mass stars; however, they were more luminous on the main sequence and they evolve to highly luminous supergiants. Their cores become massive enough that they cannot support themselves by electron degeneracy and will eventually collapse to produce a neutron star or black hole.
Extremely massive stars (more than approximately ), which are very luminous and thus have very rapid stellar winds, lose mass so rapidly due to radiation pressure that they tend to strip off their own envelopes before they can expand to become red supergiants, and thus retain extremely high surface temperatures (and blue-white color) from their main-sequence time onwards. The largest stars of the current generation are about because the outer layers would be expelled by the extreme radiation. Although lower-mass stars normally do not burn off their outer layers so rapidly, they can likewise avoid becoming red giants or red supergiants if they are in binary systems close enough so that the companion star strips off the envelope as it expands, or if they rotate rapidly enough so that convection extends all the way from the core to the surface, resulting in the absence of a separate core and envelope due to thorough mixing.
The core of a massive star, defined as the region depleted of hydrogen, grows hotter and more dense as it accretes material from the fusion of hydrogen outside the core. In sufficiently massive stars, the core reaches temperatures and densities high enough to fuse carbon and heavier elements via the alpha process. At the end of helium fusion, the core of a star consists primarily of carbon and oxygen. In stars heavier than about , the carbon ignites and fuses to form neon, sodium, and magnesium. Stars somewhat less massive may partially ignite carbon, but are unable to fully fuse the carbon before electron degeneracy sets in, and these stars will eventually leave an oxygen-neon-magnesium white dwarf.
The exact mass limit for full carbon burning depends on several factors such as metallicity and the detailed mass lost on the asymptotic giant branch, but is approximately . After carbon burning is complete, the core of these stars reaches about and becomes hot enough for heavier elements to fuse. Before oxygen starts to fuse, neon begins to capture electrons which triggers neon burning. For a range of stars of approximately , this process is unstable and creates runaway fusion resulting in an electron capture supernova.
In more massive stars, the fusion of neon proceeds without a runaway deflagration. This is followed in turn by complete oxygen burning and silicon burning, producing a core consisting largely of iron-peak elements. Surrounding the core are shells of lighter elements still undergoing fusion. The timescale for complete fusion of a carbon core to an iron core is so short, just a few hundred years, that the outer layers of the star are unable to react and the appearance of the star is largely unchanged. The iron core grows until it reaches an "effective Chandrasekhar mass", higher than the formal Chandrasekhar mass due to various corrections for the relativistic effects, entropy, charge, and the surrounding envelope. The effective Chandrasekhar mass for an iron core varies from about in the least massive red supergiants to more than or more in more massive stars. Once this mass is reached, electrons begin to be captured into the iron-peak nuclei and the core becomes unable to support itself. The core collapses and the star is destroyed, either in a supernova or direct collapse to a black hole.
When the core of a massive star collapses, it will form a neutron star, or in the case of cores that exceed the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit, a black hole. Through a process that is not completely understood, some of the gravitational potential energy released by this core collapse is converted into a Type Ib, Type Ic, or Type II supernova. It is known that the core collapse produces a massive surge of neutrinos, as observed with supernova SN 1987A. The extremely energetic neutrinos fragment some nuclei; some of their energy is consumed in releasing nucleons, including neutrons, and some of their energy is transformed into heat and kinetic energy, thus augmenting the shock wave started by rebound of some of the infalling material from the collapse of the core. Electron capture in very dense parts of the infalling matter may produce additional neutrons. Because some of the rebounding matter is bombarded by the neutrons, some of its nuclei capture them, creating a spectrum of heavier-than-iron material including the radioactive elements up to (and likely beyond) uranium. Although non-exploding red giants can produce significant quantities of elements heavier than iron using neutrons released in side reactions of earlier nuclear reactions, the abundance of elements heavier than iron (and in particular, of certain isotopes of elements that have multiple stable or long-lived isotopes) produced in such reactions is quite different from that produced in a supernova. Neither abundance alone matches that found in the Solar System, so both supernovae and ejection of elements from red giants are required to explain the observed abundance of heavy elements and isotopes thereof.
The energy transferred from collapse of the core to rebounding material not only generates heavy elements, but provides for their acceleration well beyond escape velocity, thus causing a Type Ib, Type Ic, or Type II supernova. Current understanding of this energy transfer is still not satisfactory; although current computer models of Type Ib, Type Ic, and Type II supernovae account for part of the energy transfer, they are not able to account for enough energy transfer to produce the observed ejection of material. However, neutrino oscillations may play an important role in the energy transfer problem as they not only affect the energy available in a particular flavour of neutrinos but also through other general-relativistic effects on neutrinos.
Some evidence gained from analysis of the mass and orbital parameters of binary neutron stars (which require two such supernovae) hints that the collapse of an oxygen-neon-magnesium core may produce a supernova that differs observably (in ways other than size) from a supernova produced by the collapse of an iron core.
The most massive stars that exist today may be completely destroyed by a supernova with an energy greatly exceeding its gravitational binding energy. This rare event, caused by pair-instability, leaves behind no black hole remnant. In the past history of the universe, some stars were even larger than the largest that exists today, and they would immediately collapse into a black hole at the end of their lives, due to photodisintegration.
After a star has burned out its fuel supply, its remnants can take one of three forms, depending on the mass during its lifetime.
For a star of , the resulting white dwarf is of about , compressed into approximately the volume of the Earth. White dwarfs are stable because the inward pull of gravity is balanced by the degeneracy pressure of the star's electrons, a consequence of the Pauli exclusion principle. Electron degeneracy pressure provides a rather soft limit against further compression; therefore, for a given chemical composition, white dwarfs of higher mass have a smaller volume. With no fuel left to burn, the star radiates its remaining heat into space for billions of years.
A white dwarf is very hot when it first forms, more than 100,000 K at the surface and even hotter in its interior. It is so hot that a lot of its energy is lost in the form of neutrinos for the first 10 million years of its existence, but will have lost most of its energy after a billion years.
The chemical composition of the white dwarf depends upon its mass. A star of a few solar masses will ignite carbon fusion to form magnesium, neon, and smaller amounts of other elements, resulting in a white dwarf composed chiefly of oxygen, neon, and magnesium, provided that it can lose enough mass to get below the Chandrasekhar limit (see below), and provided that the ignition of carbon is not so violent as to blow the star apart in a supernova. A star of mass on the order of magnitude of the Sun will be unable to ignite carbon fusion, and will produce a white dwarf composed chiefly of carbon and oxygen, and of mass too low to collapse unless matter is added to it later (see below). A star of less than about half the mass of the Sun will be unable to ignite helium fusion (as noted earlier), and will produce a white dwarf composed chiefly of helium.
In the end, all that remains is a cold dark mass sometimes called a black dwarf. However, the universe is not old enough for any black dwarfs to exist yet.
If the white dwarf's mass increases above the Chandrasekhar limit, which is for a white dwarf composed chiefly of carbon, oxygen, neon, and/or magnesium, then electron degeneracy pressure fails due to electron capture and the star collapses. Depending upon the chemical composition and pre-collapse temperature in the center, this will lead either to collapse into a neutron star or runaway ignition of carbon and oxygen. Heavier elements favor continued core collapse, because they require a higher temperature to ignite, because electron capture onto these elements and their fusion products is easier; higher core temperatures favor runaway nuclear reaction, which halts core collapse and leads to a Type Ia supernova. These supernovae may be many times brighter than the Type II supernova marking the death of a massive star, even though the latter has the greater total energy release. This instability to collapse means that no white dwarf more massive than approximately can exist (with a possible minor exception for very rapidly spinning white dwarfs, whose centrifugal force due to rotation partially counteracts the weight of their matter). Mass transfer in a binary system may cause an initially stable white dwarf to surpass the Chandrasekhar limit.
If a white dwarf forms a close binary system with another star, hydrogen from the larger companion may accrete around and onto a white dwarf until it gets hot enough to fuse in a runaway reaction at its surface, although the white dwarf remains below the Chandrasekhar limit. Such an explosion is termed a nova.
Ordinarily, atoms are mostly electron clouds by volume, with very compact nuclei at the center (proportionally, if atoms were the size of a football stadium, their nuclei would be the size of dust mites). When a stellar core collapses, the pressure causes electrons and protons to fuse by electron capture. Without electrons, which keep nuclei apart, the neutrons collapse into a dense ball (in some ways like a giant atomic nucleus), with a thin overlying layer of degenerate matter (chiefly iron unless matter of different composition is added later). The neutrons resist further compression by the Pauli exclusion principle, in a way analogous to electron degeneracy pressure, but stronger.
These stars, known as neutron stars, are extremely small—on the order of radius 10 km, no bigger than the size of a large city—and are phenomenally dense. Their period of rotation shortens dramatically as the stars shrink (due to conservation of angular momentum); observed rotational periods of neutron stars range from about 1.5 milliseconds (over 600 revolutions per second) to several seconds. When these rapidly rotating stars' magnetic poles are aligned with the Earth, we detect a pulse of radiation each revolution. Such neutron stars are called pulsars, and were the first neutron stars to be discovered. Though electromagnetic radiation detected from pulsars is most often in the form of radio waves, pulsars have also been detected at visible, X-ray, and gamma ray wavelengths.
If the mass of the stellar remnant is high enough, the neutron degeneracy pressure will be insufficient to prevent collapse below the Schwarzschild radius. The stellar remnant thus becomes a black hole. The mass at which this occurs is not known with certainty, but is currently estimated at between 2 and .
Black holes are predicted by the theory of general relativity. According to classical general relativity, no matter or information can flow from the interior of a black hole to an outside observer, although quantum effects may allow deviations from this strict rule. The existence of black holes in the universe is well supported, both theoretically and by astronomical observation.
Because the core-collapse mechanism of a supernova is, at present, only partially understood, it is still not known whether it is possible for a star to collapse directly to a black hole without producing a visible supernova, or whether some supernovae initially form unstable neutron stars which then collapse into black holes; the exact relation between the initial mass of the star and the final remnant is also not completely certain. Resolution of these uncertainties requires the analysis of more supernovae and supernova remnants.
A stellar evolutionary model is a mathematical model that can be used to compute the evolutionary phases of a star from its formation until it becomes a remnant. The mass and chemical composition of the star are used as the inputs, and the luminosity and surface temperature are the only constraints. The model formulae are based upon the physical understanding of the star, usually under the assumption of hydrostatic equilibrium. Extensive computer calculations are then run to determine the changing state of the star over time, yielding a table of data that can be used to determine the evolutionary track of the star across the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram, along with other evolving properties. Accurate models can be used to estimate the current age of a star by comparing its physical properties with those of stars along a matching evolutionary track. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27980 |
Snake River
The Snake River is a major river of the greater Pacific Northwest region in the United States. At long, it is the largest tributary of the Columbia River, in turn the largest North American river that empties into the Pacific Ocean. The Snake River rises in western Wyoming, then flows through the Snake River Plain of southern Idaho, the rugged Hells Canyon on the Oregon–Idaho border and the rolling Palouse Hills of Washington, emptying into the Columbia River at the Tri-Cities, Washington.
The Snake River drainage basin encompasses parts of six U.S. states and is known for its varied geologic history. The Snake River Plain was created by a volcanic hotspot which now lies underneath the Snake River headwaters in Yellowstone National Park. Gigantic glacial-retreat flooding episodes that occurred during the previous Ice Age carved out canyons, cliffs and waterfalls along the middle and lower Snake River. Two of these catastrophic flooding events, the Missoula Floods and Bonneville Flood, significantly affected the river and its surroundings.
Prehistoric Native Americans lived along the Snake starting more than 11,000 years ago. Salmon from the Pacific Ocean spawned by the millions in the river, and were a vital resource for people living on the Snake downstream of Shoshone Falls. By the time Lewis and Clark explored the area, the Nez Perce and Shoshone were the dominant Native American groups in the region. Later explorers and fur trappers further changed and used the resources of the Snake River basin. At one point, sign language used by the Shoshones representing weaving baskets was misinterpreted to represent a snake, giving the Snake River its name.
By the middle 19th century, the Oregon Trail had become well established, bringing numerous settlers to the Snake River region. Steamboats and railroads moved agricultural products and minerals along the river throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Starting in the 1890s, fifteen major dams have been built on the Snake River to generate hydroelectricity, enhance navigation, and provide irrigation water. However, these dams blocked salmon migration above Hells Canyon and have led to water quality and environmental issues in certain parts of the river. The removal of several dams on the lower Snake River has been proposed, in order to restore some of the river's once-tremendous salmon runs.
Formed by the confluence of three tiny streams on the southwest flank of Two Oceans Plateau in Yellowstone National Park, western Wyoming, the Snake starts out flowing west and south into Jackson Lake. Its first run through Jackson Hole, a wide valley between the Teton Range and the Gros Ventre Range. Below the tourist town of Jackson, the river turns west and flows through Snake River Canyon, cutting through the Snake River Range and into eastern Idaho. It receives the Hoback and Greys Rivers before entering Palisades Reservoir, where the Salt River joins at the mouth of Star Valley. Below Palisades Dam, the Snake River flows through the Snake River Plain, a vast arid physiographic province extending through southern Idaho southwest of the Rocky Mountains and underlain by the Snake River Aquifer, one of the most productive aquifers in the United States.
Southwest of Rexburg, Idaho, the Snake is joined from the north by Henrys Fork. The Henrys Fork is sometimes called the North Fork of the Snake River, with the main Snake above their confluence known as the "South Fork". From there it turns south, flowing through downtown Idaho Falls, then past the Fort Hall Indian Reservation and into American Falls Reservoir, where it is joined by the Portneuf River. The Portneuf River Valley is an overflow channel that in the last glacial period carried floodwaters from pluvial Lake Bonneville into the Snake River, significantly altering the landscape of the Snake River Plain through massive erosion. From there the Snake resumes its journey west, entering the Snake River Canyon of Idaho. It is interrupted by several major cataracts, the largest being Shoshone Falls, which historically marked the upriver limit of migrating salmon. A short distance downstream it passes under the Perrine Bridge. Near Twin Falls, the Snake approaches the southernmost point in its entire course, after which it starts to flow west-northwest.
The Snake continues through its canyon, receiving the Malad River from the east near Bliss and then the Bruneau River from the south in C.J. Strike Reservoir. It passes through an agricultural valley about southwest of Boise and flows briefly west into Oregon, before turning north to define the Idaho–Oregon border. Here the Snake River almost doubles in size as it receives several major tributaries – the Owyhee from the southwest, then the Boise and Payette rivers from the east, and further downstream the Malheur River from the west and Weiser River from the east. North of Boise, the Snake enters Hells Canyon, a steep, spectacular, rapid-strewn gorge that cuts through the Salmon River Mountains and Blue Mountains of Idaho and Oregon. Hells Canyon is one of the most rugged and treacherous portions of the course of the Snake River, posing a major obstacle for 19th-century American explorers. Here the Snake is also impounded by Hells Canyon, Oxbow, and Brownlee Dams, which together make up the Hells Canyon Hydroelectric Project.
At the halfway point in Hells Canyon, in one of the most remote and inaccessible sections of its course, the Snake River is joined from the east by its largest tributary, the Salmon River. From there, the Snake begins to form the Washington–Idaho border, receiving the Grande Ronde River from the west before receiving the Clearwater River from the east at Lewiston, which marks the head of navigation on the Snake. The river leaves Hells Canyon and turns west, winding through the Palouse Hills of eastern Washington. The Lower Snake River Project's four dams and navigation locks have transformed this part of the Snake River into a series of reservoirs. The confluence of the Snake and Columbia rivers at Burbank, Washington is part of Lake Wallula, the reservoir of McNary Dam. The Columbia River flows about further west to the Pacific Ocean near Astoria, Oregon.
As recently as 165 million years ago, most of western North America was still part of the Pacific Ocean. The nearly complete subduction of the Farallon Plate underneath the westward-moving North American Plate created the Rocky Mountains, which were pushed up by rising magma trapped between the sinking Farallon plate and the North American plate. As the North American Plate moved westwards over a stationary hotspot beneath the crust, a series of tremendous lava flows and volcanic eruptions carved out the Snake River Plain beginning about 12 million years ago, west of the Continental Divide. Even larger lava flows of Columbia River basalts issued over eastern Washington, forming the Columbia Plateau southeast of the Columbia River and the Palouse Hills in the lower Snake. Separate volcanic activity formed the northwestern portion of the plain, an area far from the path of the hotspot which now lies beneath Yellowstone National Park. At this point, the Snake River watershed was beginning to take shape.
The Snake River Plain and the gap between the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Range together formed a "moisture channel," opening the way for Pacific storms to travel more than inland to the headwaters of the Snake River. When the Teton Range uplifted about 9 million years ago along a detachment fault running north–south through the central Rockies, the river maintained its original course and cut through the southern end of the mountains, forming the Snake River Canyon of Wyoming. About 6 million years ago, the Salmon River Mountains and Blue Mountains at the far end of the plain began to rise; the river cut through these mountains as well, forming Hells Canyon. Lake Idaho, formed during the Miocene, covered a large portion of the Snake River Plain between Twin Falls and Hells Canyon, and its lava dam was finally breached about 2 million years ago.
Lava flowing from Cedar Butte in present southeast Idaho blocked the Snake River at Eagle Rock about 42,000 years ago, near the present-day site of American Falls Dam. A lake, known as American Falls Lake, formed behind the barrier. The lake was stable and survived for nearly 30,000 years. About 14,500 years ago, pluvial Lake Bonneville in the Great Salt Lake area, formed in the last glacial period, spilled catastrophically down the Portneuf River into the Snake in an event known as the Bonneville Flood. This was one of the first in a series of catastrophic flooding events in the Northwest known as the Ice Age Floods.
The deluge caused American Falls Lake to breach its natural lava dam, which was rapidly eroded with only the American Falls left in the end. The flood waters of Lake Bonneville, approximately twenty times the flow of the Columbia River or 5 million ft3/s (140,000 m3/s), swept down the Snake River and across the entirety of southern Idaho. For miles on either side of the river, flood waters stripped away soils and scoured the underlying basalt bedrock, forming the Snake River Canyon and creating Shoshone Falls, Twin Falls, Crane Falls, Swan Falls and other waterfalls along the Idaho section of the river. The Bonneville flood waters continued through Hells Canyon and eventually reached the Columbia River. The flood widened Hells Canyon but did not deepen it.
As the Bonneville Floods rushed down the Snake River, the Missoula Floods occurred in the same period, but originating farther north. The Missoula Floods, which occurred more than 40 times between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago, were caused by Glacial Lake Missoula on the Clark Fork repeatedly being impounded by ice dams then breaking through, with the lake's water rushing over much of eastern Washington in massive surges far larger than the Lake Bonneville Flood. These floods pooled behind the Cascade Range into enormous lakes and spilled over the northern drainage divide of the Snake River watershed, carving deep canyons through the Palouse Hills including the Palouse River canyon and Palouse Falls. The Lake Bonneville Floods and the Missoula Floods helped widen and deepen the Columbia River Gorge, a giant water gap which allows water from the Columbia and Snake rivers to take a direct route through the Cascade Range to the Pacific.
The massive amounts of sediment deposited by the Lake Bonneville Floods in the Snake River Plain also had a lasting effect on most of the middle Snake River. The high hydraulic conductivity of the mostly-basalt rocks in the plain led to the formation of the Snake River Aquifer, one of the most productive aquifers in North America. Many rivers and streams flowing from the north side of the plain sink into the aquifer instead of flowing into the Snake River, a group of watersheds called the lost streams of Idaho. The aquifer filled to hold nearly of water, underlying about in a plume thick. In places, water exits from rivers at rates of nearly . Much of the water lost by the Snake River as it transects the plain issues back into the river at its western end, by way of many artesian springs.
The Snake River is the thirteenth longest river in the United States. Its watershed is the 10th largest among North American rivers, and covers almost in portions of six U.S. states: Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Oregon, and Washington, with the largest portion in Idaho. Most of the Snake River watershed lies between the Rocky Mountains on the east and the Columbia Plateau on the northwest. The largest tributary of the Columbia River, the Snake River watershed makes up about 41% of the entire Columbia River Basin. Its average discharge at the mouth constitutes 31% of the Columbia's flow at that point. Above the confluence, the Snake is slightly longer than the Columbia— compared to —and its drainage basin is slightly larger—4% bigger than the upstream Columbia River watershed.
The mostly semi-arid, even desert climate of the Snake River watershed on average, receives less than of precipitation per year. However, precipitation in the Snake River watershed varies widely. At Twin Falls, in the center of the Snake River Plain, the climate is nearly desert, with an annual rainfall of just , although the average snowfall is . This desert climate occupies the majority of the basin of the Snake River, so although it is longer than the Columbia River above the Tri-Cities, its discharge is on average significantly less. However, in the high Rockies of Wyoming, in the upper Jackson Hole area, the average precipitation is over , and snowfall averages . Most of the Snake River basin consists of wide, arid plains and rolling hills, bordered by high mountains. In the upper parts of the watershed, however, the river flows through an area with a distinct alpine climate. There are also stretches where the river and its tributaries have incised themselves into tight gorges. The Snake River watershed includes parts of Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Hells Canyon National Recreation Area, and many other national and state parks.
Much of the area along the river, within a few miles of its banks, is irrigated farmland, especially in its middle and lower course. Irrigation dams include American Falls Dam, Minidoka Dam, and C.J. Strike Dam. Aside from water from the river, water is also pulled from the Snake River Aquifer for irrigation. Major cities along the river include Jackson in Wyoming, Twin Falls, Idaho Falls, Boise, and Lewiston in Idaho, and the Tri-Cities in Washington (Kennewick, Pasco and Richland). There are fifteen dams in total along the Snake River, which aside from irrigation, also produce electricity, maintain a navigation channel along part of the river's route, and provide flood control. However, fish passage is limited to the stretch below Hells Canyon.
The Snake River watershed is bounded by several other major North American watersheds, which drain both to the Atlantic or the Pacific, or into endorheic basins. On the southwest side a divide separates the Snake watershed from Oregon's Harney Basin, which is endorheic. On the south, the Snake watershed borders that of the Humboldt River in Nevada, and the watershed of the Great Salt Lake (the Bear, Jordan and Weber rivers) on the south.
The Snake River also shares a boundary with the Green River to the southeast; the Green River drains parts of Wyoming and Utah and is the largest tributary of the Colorado River. On the western extremity for a short stretch the Continental Divide separates the Snake watershed from the Bighorn River, a tributary of the Yellowstone River, which the Snake begins near. On the north the Snake River watershed is bounded by the Red Rock River, a tributary of the Beaverhead River, which flows into the Jefferson River and into the Missouri River, part of the Gulf of Mexico drainage basin.
The rest of the Snake River watershed borders on several other major Columbia River tributaries - mostly the Spokane River to the north, but also Clark Fork in Montana to the northeast and the John Day River to the west. Of these, the Clark Fork (via the Pend Oreille River) and the Spokane join the Columbia above the Snake, while the John Day joins downstream of the Snake, in the Columbia River Gorge. It is of note that the northeastern divide of the Snake River watershed forms the Idaho-Montana boundary, so the Snake River watershed does not extend into Montana.
Mountain ranges in the Snake watershed include the Teton Range, Bitterroot Range, Clearwater Mountains, Seven Devils Mountains, and the extreme northwestern end of the Wind River Range. Grand Teton is the highest point in the Snake River watershed, reaching in elevation. The elevation of the Snake River is when it joins the Columbia River.
Agricultural runoff from farms and ranches in the Snake River Plain and many other areas has severely damaged the ecology of the river throughout the 20th century. After the first irrigation dams on the river began operation in the first decade of the 20th century, much of the arable land in a strip a few miles wide along the Snake River was cultivated or turned to pasture, and agricultural return flows began to pollute the Snake. Runoff from several feedlots was dumped into the river until laws made the practice illegal. Fertilizer, manure and other chemicals and pollutants washed into the river greatly increase the nutrient load, especially of phosphorus, fecal coliforms and nitrogen. During low water, algae blooms occur throughout the calm stretches of the river, depleting its oxygen supply.
Much of the return flows do not issue directly back into the Snake River, but rather feed the Snake River Aquifer underneath the Snake River Plain. Water diverted from the river for irrigation, after absorbing any surface pollutants, re-enters the ground and feeds the aquifer. Although the aquifer has maintained its level, it has become increasingly laced with contaminants. Water in the aquifer eventually travels to the west side of the Snake River Plain and re-enters the river as springs. Throughout much of the Snake River Plain and Hells Canyon, excessive sediment is also a recurring problem. In December 2007, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a permit requiring owners of fish farms along the Snake River to reduce their phosphorus discharge by 40%. Pollutant levels in Hells Canyon upstream of the Salmon River confluence, including that of water temperature, dissolved nutrients, and sediment, are required to meet certain levels.
The Snake River's average flow is . The United States Geological Survey recorded the river's discharge from a period of 1963–2000 at a stream gauge below Ice Harbor Dam. In that period, the largest average annual flow recorded was in 1997, and the lowest was in 1992. The lowest recorded daily mean flow was on February 4, 1979. On August 27, 1965, there was temporarily no flow as a result of testing at Ice Harbor Dam. The highest recorded flow was on June 19, 1974. The highest flow ever recorded on the Snake River was at a different USGS stream gauge near Clarkston, which operated from 1915 to 1972. This gauge recorded a maximum flow of —more than the Columbia's average discharge—on May 29, 1948. An even larger peak discharge, estimated at , occurred during the flood of June 1894.
The river's flow is also measured at several other points in its course. Above Jackson Lake, Wyoming, the discharge is about from a drainage area of . At Minidoka, Idaho, about halfway through the Snake River Plain, the river's discharge rises to . However, at Buhl, Idaho, only about downstream, the river's flow decreases to because of agricultural diversions and seepage. But at the border of Idaho and Oregon, near Weiser at the beginning of Hells Canyon, the Snake's flow rises to after receiving several major tributaries such as the Payette, Owyhee and Malheur. The discharge further increases to at Hells Canyon Dam on the border of Idaho and Oregon. At Anatone, Washington, downstream of the confluence with the Salmon, one of the Snake's largest tributaries, the mean discharge is .
Canadian explorer David Thompson first recorded the Native American name of the Snake River as "Shawpatin" when he arrived at its mouth by boat in 1800. When the Lewis and Clark Expedition crossed westwards into the Snake River watershed in 1805, they first gave it the name "Lewis River", "Lewis Fork" or "Lewis's Fork", as Meriwether Lewis was the first of their group to sight the river.
They also made note of the "Snake Indians" who lived along the river, who were actually the Shoshone tribe, and learned that the Native Americans called the river ' or ' (for an herb that grew prolifically along its banks).
Later American explorers, some of whom were originally part of the Lewis and Clark expedition, journeyed into the Snake River watershed and records show a variety of names have been associated with the river. The explorer Wilson Price Hunt of the Astor Expedition named the river as "Mad River". Others gave the river names including "Shoshone River" (after the tribe) and "Saptin River". Eventually, the name "Snake River" was derived from an S-shaped gesture the Shoshone tribe made with their hands to represent swimming salmon. Explorers misinterpreted it to represent a snake, giving the river its present-day name.
People have been living along the Snake River for at least 11,000 years. Historian Daniel S. Meatte divides the prehistory of the western Snake River Basin into three main phases or "adaptive systems". The first he calls "Broad Spectrum Foraging", dating from 11,500 to 4,200 years before present. During this period people drew upon a wide variety of food resources. The second period, "Semisedentary Foraging", dates from 4,200–250 years before present and is distinctive for an increased reliance upon fish, especially salmon, as well as food preservation and storage. The third phase, from 250 to 100 years before present, he calls "Equestrian Foragers". It is characterized by large horse-mounted tribes that spent long amounts of time away from their local foraging range hunting bison. In the eastern Snake River Plain there is some evidence of Clovis, Folsom, and Plano cultures dating back over 10,000 years ago.
Early fur traders and explorers noted regional trading centers, and archaeological evidence has shown some to be of considerable antiquity. One such trading center in the Weiser area existed as early as 4,500 years ago. The Fremont culture may have contributed to the historic Shoshones, but it is not well understood. Another poorly understood early cultural component is called the Midvale Complex. The introduction of the horse to the Snake River Plain around 1700 helped in establishing the Shoshone and Northern Paiute cultures.
On the Snake River in southeastern Washington there are several ancient sites. One of the oldest and most well-known is called the Marmes Rockshelter, which was used from over 11,000 years ago to relatively recent times. The Marmes Rockshelter was flooded in 1968 by Lake Herbert G. West, the Lower Monumental Dam's reservoir.
Eventually, two large Native American groups controlled most of the Snake River: the Nez Perce, whose territory stretched from the southeastern Columbia Plateau into northern Oregon and western Idaho, and the Shoshone, who occupied the Snake River Plain both above and below Shoshone Falls. Lifestyles along the Snake River varied widely. Below Shoshone Falls, the economy centered on salmon, who often came up the river in enormous numbers. Salmon were the mainstay of the Nez Perce and most of the other tribes below Shoshone Falls. Above the falls, life was significantly different. The Snake River Plain forms one of the only relatively easy paths across the main Rocky Mountains for many hundreds of miles, allowing Native Americans both east and west of the mountains to interact. As a result, the Shoshone centered on a trading economy.
According to legend, the Nez Perce tribe was first founded in the valley of the Clearwater River, one of the Snake River's lowermost major tributaries. At its height, there were at least 27 Nez Perce settlements along the Clearwater River and 11 more on the Snake between the mouth of the Clearwater and Imnaha Rivers. There were also villages on the Salmon River, Grande Ronde River, Tucannon River, and the lower Hells Canyon area. The Snake River's annual salmon run, which was estimated at that time to exceed four million in good years, supported the Nez Perce, who lived in permanent, well-defined villages, unlike the nomadic southeastern tribes along the Snake River. The Nez Perce also were involved in trade with the Flathead tribe to the north and other middle Columbia River tribes. However, they were enemies to the Shoshone and the other upstream Snake River tribes.
The Shoshone or Shoshoni were characterized by nomadic groups that took their culture from the earlier Bitterroot culture and Great Basin tribes that migrated north via the Owyhee River. They were the most powerful tribe in the Rocky Mountains area, and were known to many Great Plains tribes as the "Snakes". In the 18th century, Shoshone territory extended beyond the Snake River Plain, extending over the Continental Divide into the upper Missouri River watershed and even further north into Canada. A smallpox epidemic brought by European explorers and fur trappers was responsible for wiping out much of the Shoshone east of the Rocky Mountains, but the Shoshone continued to occupy the Snake River Plain. Eventually, the Shoshone culture merged with that of the Paiute and Bannock tribes, which came from the Great Basin and the Hells Canyon area, respectively. The Bannock brought with them the skill of buffalo hunting and horses they had acquired from Europeans, changing the Shoshone way of life significantly.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–06) was the first American group to cross the Rocky Mountains and sail down the Snake and Columbia rivers to the Pacific Ocean. Meriwether Lewis supposedly became the first American to sight the drainage basin of the Snake River after he crossed the mountains a few days ahead of his party on August 12, 1805, and sighted the Salmon River valley (a major Snake tributary) from Lemhi Pass, a few miles from the present-day site of Salmon, Idaho. The party later traveled north, descended the Lemhi River to the Salmon and attempted to descend it to the Snake, but found it impassable because of its violent rapids. The expedition named the Snake River the "Lewis River", "Lewis's River", or "Lewis Fork", in his honor, and they traveled northwards to the Lochsa River, which they traveled via the Clearwater River into the lower Snake, and into the Columbia. They also referred to the Shoshone Indians as the "Snake Indians", which became the present-day name of the river. The name "Lewis Fork", however, did not last.
Later American explorers traveled throughout the Snake River area and up its major tributaries beginning in 1806, just after Lewis and Clark had returned. The first was John Ordway in 1806, who also explored the lower Salmon River. John Colter in 1808 was the first to sight the upper headwaters of the Snake River, including the Jackson Hole area.
In 1810, Andrew Henry, along with a party of fur trappers, discovered the Henrys Fork of the Snake River, which is now named after him. Donald Mackenzie sailed the lower Snake River in 1811, and later explorers included Wilson Price Hunt of the Astor Expedition (who gave the river the name "Mad River"), Ramsay Crooks, Francisco Payelle, John Grey, Thyery Goddin, and many others after the 1830s. Many of these later explorers were original members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition who had returned to map and explore the area in greater detail. Even later, American fur trappers scouted the area for beaver streams, but Canadian trappers from the British Hudson's Bay Company were by now a major competitor.
The Hudson's Bay Company first sent fur trappers into the Snake River watershed in 1819. The party of three traveled into the headwaters of the Owyhee River, a major southern tributary of the Snake, but disappeared. Meanwhile, as American fur trappers kept coming to the region, the Hudson's Bay Company ordered the Canadian trappers to kill as many beavers as they could, eventually nearly eradicating the species from the Snake River watershed, under the "rationale [that] if there are no beavers, there will be no reason for the Yanks ([Americans]) to come." Their goal was to eventually gain rights over the Oregon Territory, a region covering Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and parts of Montana and Wyoming (most of the present-day region called the Pacific Northwest). However, the area was eventually annexed into the United States.
By the middle 19th century, the Oregon Trail had been established, generally following much of the Snake River. One crossing the trail made over the Snake River was near the present-day site of Glenns Ferry. Several years later, a ferry was established at the site, replacing the old system where pioneers had to ford the wide, powerful and deep Snake. Another place where pioneers crossed the Snake was further upstream, at a place called "Three Island Crossing", near the mouth of the Boise River. This area has a group of three islands (hence the name) that splits the Snake into four channels each about wide. Some emigrants chose to ford the Snake and proceed down the west side and recross the river near Fort Boise into Hells Canyon, continue down the drier east side into the gorge, or float the Snake and Columbia to the Willamette River, the destination of the Oregon Trail. The reason for the Three Island Crossing was the better availability of grass and water access. Numerous ferries have provided crossings of the upper Snake from the Brownlee Ferry at the head of Hell's Canyon to Menor's Ferry, which operates today at Moose, Wyoming. Sophistication varied from reed boats pulled by Indians on horse back at Snake Fort, Fort Boise, as described by Narcissa Whitman in 1836 to an electric operated ferry, the Swan Falls Ferry, at Swan Falls Dam of the early 20th century.
One contemporary diarist crossing near Salmon Falls complains of "exorbitant" fees at the crossings that were a "constant drain" on the travelers purse. She writes that this particular route was controlled by Mormons who had "built bridges where they were not needed-most unmercifully fleecing the poor emigrants". The diarist expresses regret at having made the crossing describing the landscape as "desolate country". Another writer similarly notes several days travel through "a desert so desolate and rocky that we almost regretted that we had not continued on the south side of that stream".
Unlike the Columbia River, it was far more difficult for steamboats to navigate on the Snake. The Columbia River drops from source to mouth, while the Snake drops over in elevation over a length more than shorter. Still, from the 1860s to the 1940s, steamboats traveled on the Snake River from its mouth at the Columbia River to near the mouth of the Imnaha River in lower Hells Canyon. However, most of the steamboats only sailed from the river's mouth to Lewiston, located at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers. This stretch of the river is the easiest to navigate for watercraft since it has the least elevation change, although it still contained over 60 sets of rapids.
Passenger and freight service downstream of Lewiston lasted throughout the late 19th century and persisted until the introduction of railroads in the Palouse Hills grain-growing region and ultimately, the construction of dams on the lower Snake to facilitate barge traffic, which caused the demise of both the steamboats and the railroad. Lewiston, from the confluence of the Snake and Columbia and from the mouth of the Columbia on the Pacific Ocean, became connected with Portland and other Pacific ports via steamboat service from the mouth of the Snake through the Columbia River Gorge. A commonly traveled route was from Wallula, Washington, downstream of the Snake River's mouth, upstream to Lewiston. The Oregon Steam Navigation Company launched the Shoshone at Fort Boise in 1866 which provided passenger and freight service on the upper Snake for the Boise and Owyhee mines.
By the 1870s, the OSN Company, owned by the Northern Pacific Railroad, was operating seven steamboats for transporting wheat and grain from the productive Palouse region along the Snake and Columbia to lower Columbia River ports. These boats were the "Harvest Queen", "John Gates", "Spokane", "Annie Faxon", "Mountain Queen", "R.R. Thompson", and "Wide West", all of which were built on the Columbia River. However, there were more resources along the Snake River than wheat and grain. In the 1890s, a huge copper deposit was discovered at Eureka Bar in Hells Canyon. Several ships were built specifically to transport ore from there to Lewiston: these included "Imnaha", "Mountain Gem", and "Norma". In 1893 the "Annie Faxon" suffered a boiler explosion and sank on the Snake below Lewiston.
A total of fifteen dams have been constructed along the Snake River for a multitude of different purposes, from its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains to its mouth on Lake Wallula, the reservoir formed behind McNary Dam on the Columbia River. Dams on the Snake can be grouped into three major categories. From its headwaters to the beginning of Hells Canyon, many small dams block the Snake to provide irrigation water. Between here and Hells Canyon, the first dam on the Snake, Swan Falls Dam, was built in 1901. In Hells Canyon, a cascade of dams produce hydroelectricity from the river's steep fall over a comparatively short distance. Finally, a third cascade of dams, from Hells Canyon to the mouth, facilitates navigation. Many different government and private agencies have worked to build dams on the Snake River, which now serve an important purpose for people living in the drainage basin and trade of agricultural products to Pacific seaports.
The Minidoka Irrigation Project of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, created with the passage of the Reclamation Act of 1902, involved the diversion of Snake River water into the Snake River Plain upstream of Shoshone Falls in order to irrigate approximately in the Snake River Plain and store of water in Snake River reservoirs.
The first studies for irrigation in the Snake River Plain were conducted by the United States Geological Survey in the late 19th century, and the project was authorized on April 23, 1904. The first dam constructed for the project was Minidoka Dam in 1904; its power plant began operating in 1909, producing 7 MW of electricity. This capacity was revised to 20 MW in 1993.
Jackson Lake Dam, far upstream in Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park, was built in 1907 to raise Jackson Lake for providing additional water storage in dry years. American Falls Dam, upstream of Minidoka, was completed in 1927 and replaced in 1978. As the dams were constructed above Shoshone Falls, the historical upriver limit of salmon and also a total barrier to boats and ships, no provisions were made for fish passage or navigation. Several other irrigation dams were also built - including Twin Falls Dam and Palisades Dam.
The Hells Canyon Project was built and maintained by Idaho Power Company starting in the 1940s, and was the second of the three major water projects on the river. The three dams of the project, Brownlee Dam, Oxbow Dam and Hells Canyon Dam, are located in upper Hells Canyon. All three dams are primarily for power generation and flood control, and do not have fish passage or navigation locks.
Brownlee Dam, the most upriver dam, was constructed in 1959, and generates 728 megawatts (MW). Oxbow Dam, the second dam in the project, was built in 1961 and generates 220 MW. The dam was named for a bend in the Snake River, shaped like an oxbow. Hells Canyon Dam was the last and most downriver of the three. It was constructed in 1967 and generates 450 MW.
Downriver of Hells Canyon is the Lower Snake River Project, authorized by the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1945 for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to create a navigable channel on the Snake River from its mouth to the beginning of Hells Canyon. These dams are, from upstream to downstream: Lower Granite Lock and Dam, Little Goose Lock and Dam, Lower Monumental Lock and Dam, and Ice Harbor Lock and Dam. Dredging work was also done throughout the length of the navigation channel to facilitate ship passage. These dams form a cascade of reservoirs with no stretches of free-flowing river in between. Immediately below Ice Harbor Dam is Lake Wallula, formed by the construction of the McNary Dam on the Columbia River. (McNary Dam is not part of the Lower Snake River Project.) Above Lower Granite Dam, the river channel from Lewiston to Johnson Bar, just below Hells Canyon, is also maintained for jet-boats as this section is too rugged for ships.
These dams have been proposed for removal, and if they were to be removed, it would be the largest dam removal project ever undertaken in the United States. The removal has been proposed on the grounds that it would restore salmon runs to the lower Snake River and the Clearwater River and other smaller tributaries. Idaho's Snake river once teemed with sockeye salmon. However, there are almost no wild sockeye salmon left in the river due to a number of factors.
There are many reasons why Sockeye Salmon in the Snake River are reduced in number. One reason is that the river runs through three different states, and is over long. Salmon swimming upstream in this river are faced with predators and dams. The Snake River has fifteen dams and is extremely difficult for salmon to access because of hydroelectric dams. Hell's Canyon Dam blocks passage to the entire upper Snake River. The Grand Coulee Dam also blocks spawning grounds to the famous "June Hogs" (legendary Chinook salmon that weighed over ).
Between 1985 and 2007, only an average of 18 sockeye salmon returned to Idaho each year. Serious conservation efforts by wildlife biologists and fish hatcheries have captured the few remaining wild sockeye salmon, collected their sperm and eggs, and in a laboratory, have them spawn. Instead of spawning naturally, these sockeye begin their lives in an incubator in a fishery biologist's laboratory. These baby salmon then are transported by ship, bypassing the dams. (The dams can hurt juvenile baby sockeye salmon with their powerful tides and currents, which suck the baby salmon down.) Another conservation effort that has helped the salmon recover, is the destruction of old, outdated dams, such as the Lewiston Dam on the Clearwater River, a tributary of the Snake. After destroying the dam, salmon populations noticeably recovered.
Another interesting recovery method conservationists and biologists are using is called Fish Transportation. Since many juvenile salmon perish at each dam while swimming out to the ocean, massive ships filter and collect these baby salmon by size and take them out to the ocean for a ride, where they can be guaranteed to make it alive to saltwater. This method raises controversy to the effectiveness and costs, since this method is extremely expensive, almost costing $15 million. Another possible upstream passage solution is the Whooshh Fish Transport System. Engineers at Whooshh Innovations have developed a fish passage system that allows for the safe and timely transportation of fish over barriers through a flexible tube system via volitional entry into the system. It is found that over 60% of fisherman are in favor of dam removal on the snake river.
Overall, these combined efforts have had good success. In the summer of 2006, the Snake River reportedly only had 3 sockeye salmon that returned to their spawning grounds. In the summer of 2013, more than 13,000 sockeye salmon returned to the spawning grounds.
In the 1960s and 1970s the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built four dams and locks on the lower Snake River to facilitate shipping. The lower Columbia River has likewise been dammed for navigation. Thus a deep shipping channel through locks and slackwater reservoirs for heavy barges exists from the Pacific Ocean to Lewiston, Idaho. Most barge traffic originating on the Snake River goes to deep-water ports on the lower Columbia River, such as Portland. Grain, mostly wheat, is the main product shipped from the Snake, and nearly all of it is exported internationally from the lower Columbia River ports.
The shipping channel is authorized to be at least deep and wide. Where river depths were less than , the shipping channel has been dredged in most places. Dredging and redredging work is ongoing and actual depths vary over time. With a channel about deeper than the Mississippi River system, the Columbia and Snake rivers can float barges twice as heavy. Agricultural products from Idaho and eastern Washington are among the main goods transported by barge on the Snake and Columbia rivers. Grain, mainly wheat, accounts for more than 85% of the cargo barged on the lower Snake River. In 1998, over of grain were barged on the Snake. Before the completion of the lower Snake dams, grain from the region was transported by truck or rail to Columbia River ports around the Tri-Cities. Other products barged on the lower Snake River include peas, lentils, forest products, and petroleum.
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) divides the Snake River's watershed into two freshwater ecoregions: the "Columbia Unglaciated" ecoregion and the "Upper Snake" ecoregion. Shoshone Falls marks the boundary between the two. The WWF placed the ecoregion boundary about downriver from Shoshone Falls in order to include the Big Wood River (the main tributary of the Malad River) in the Upper Snake ecoregion, because the Wood River is biologically distinct from the rest of the downriver Snake. Shoshone Falls has presented a total barrier to the upstream movement of fish for 30,000 to 60,000 years. As a result, only 35% of the fish fauna above the falls, and 40% of the Wood River's fish fauna, are shared with the lower Snake River.
The Upper Snake freshwater ecoregion includes most of southeastern Idaho and extends into small portions of Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada, including major freshwater habitats such as Jackson Lake. Compared to the lower Snake River and the rest of the Columbia River's watershed, the Upper Snake ecoregion has a high level of endemism, especially among freshwater molluscs such as snails and clams. There are at least 21 snail and clam species of special concern, including 15 that appear to exist only in single clusters. There are 14 fish species found in the Upper Snake region that do not occur elsewhere in the Columbia's watershed, but which do occur in Bonneville freshwater ecoregion of western Utah, part of the Great Basin and related to the prehistoric Lake Bonneville. The Wood River sculpin ("Cottus leiopomus") is endemic to the Wood River. The Shoshone sculpin ("Cottus greenei") is endemic to the small portion of the Snake River between Shoshone Falls and the Wood River.
The Snake River below Shoshone Falls is home to thirty-five native fish species, of which twelve are also found in the Columbia River and four of which are endemic to the Snake: the relict sand roller ("Percopsis transmontana") of the family Percopsidae, the shorthead sculpin ("Cottus confusus"), the maginated sculpin ("Cottus marginatus"), and the Oregon chub ("Oregonichthys crameri"). The Oregon chub is also found in the Umpqua River and nearby basins. The lower Snake River also supports seven species of Pacific salmon and trout ("Oncorhynchus"). There are also high, often localized levels of mollusc endemism, especially in Hells Canyon and the basins of the Clearwater River, Salmon River, and middle Snake River. The mollusc richness extends into the lower Columbia River and tributaries such as the Deschutes River.
Aside from aquatic species, much of the Snake River watershed supports larger animals including numerous species of mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles. Especially in the headwaters and the other mountainous areas strewn throughout the watershed, the gray wolf, grizzly bear, wolverine, mountain lion and Canada lynx are common. It has been determined that there are 97 species of mammals in the upper part of the Snake River, upstream from the Henrys Fork confluence. Pronghorn and bighorn sheep are common in the area drained by the "lost streams of Idaho", several rivers and large creeks that flow south from the Rocky Mountains and disappear into the Snake River Aquifer. About 274 bird species, some endangered or threatened, use the Snake River watershed, including bald eagle, peregrine falcon, whooping crane, greater sage-grouse, and yellow-billed cuckoo. Barrow's goldeneye are a species of bird that occurs commonly along the lower section of the Snake River.
Ten amphibian and twenty species of reptiles inhabit the upper Snake River's wetland and riparian zones. Several species of frogs are common in the "lost streams" basin and the northeasternmost part of the Snake River watershed, including the inland tailed frog, northern leopard frog, western toad, Columbia spotted frog, long-toed salamander, spadefoot toad. However, in the lower and middle portions of the Snake River watershed, several native species have been severely impacted by agriculture practices and the resulting non-native species supported by them. Introduced birds include the gray partridge, ring-necked pheasant, and chukar. Other non-native species include the bullfrog, brown-headed cowbird, and European starling, attracted by the construction of cities and towns.
The Snake River watershed includes a diversity of vegetation zones both past and present. A majority of the watershed was once covered with shrub-steppe grassland, most common in the Snake River Plain and also the Columbia Plateau in southeastern Washington. Riparian zones, wetlands and marshes once occurred along the length of the Snake River and its tributaries. In higher elevations, conifer forests, of which ponderosa pine is most common, dominate the landscape. The basin ranges from semi-desert to alpine climates, providing habitat for hundreds of species of plants. In the lowermost part of the watershed, in southeastern Washington, the Snake River is surrounded by an area called the Columbia Plateau Ecoprovince, which is now mostly occupied by irrigated farms. The rest of the Plateau area is characterized by low hills, dry lakes, and an arid, nearly desert climate.
The headwaters of the Snake River and the high mountains elsewhere in the watershed were historically heavily forested. These include aspen, Douglas fir, and spruce fir, comprising about 20% of the historic watershed. At the base of mountains and in the Lost River basin, sagebrush was and is the predominant vegetation cover. Because of deforestation, up to one quarter of the forests have been taken over by sagebrush, leaving the remaining forests to cover about 15% of the watershed. However, the lodgepole pine has increased in number, taking over historic stands of other conifers. There are also up to 118 species of rare or endemic plants that occur in the Snake River watershed.
The Snake River was once one of the most important rivers for the spawning of anadromous fish—which are hatched in the headwaters of rivers, live in the ocean for most of their lives, and return to the river to spawn—in the United States.
The river supported species including chinook salmon, coho salmon, and sockeye salmon, as well as steelhead, white sturgeon, and Pacific lamprey. It is known that before the construction of dams on the river, there were three major chinook salmon runs in the Snake River; in the spring, summer and fall, totaling about 120,000 fish, and the sockeye salmon run was about 150,000. The historical barrier to fish migration on the Snake River was Shoshone Falls, a waterfall that occurs as the Snake River passes through the Snake River Plain.
Since the early 20th century, when Swan Falls Dam was constructed on the middle Snake River upstream of Hells Canyon, the fifteen dams and reservoirs on the river have posed an increasing problem for migrating salmon. Agricultural lands and their resulting runoff have also had a significant impact on the success rate of migrating fish. Salmon can travel up the Snake River as far as Hells Canyon Dam, using the fish passage facilities of the four lower Snake River dams, leaving the Clearwater, Grande Ronde and Salmon river to sustain spawning salmon. Rising in several forks in the Clearwater Mountains of central Idaho, the Clearwater and Salmon River watersheds are nearly undeveloped with the enormous exception of Dworshak Dam on the North Fork Clearwater River. The watershed of the Grande Ronde in northeastern Oregon is also largely undeveloped. The four reservoirs formed by the lower Snake River dams—Lake Sacagawea, Lake Herbert G. West, Lake Bryan, and Lower Granite Lake—have also formed problems, as the downstream current in the pools is often not enough for the fish to sense, confusing their migration routes.
At the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater Rivers, young salmon that swim down from spawning gravels in the headwaters of the Clearwater River often delay their migrations because of a significant temperature difference. (Prior to the removal of Lewiston Dam on the main Clearwater and Grangeville Dam on the South Fork Clearwater, the Clearwater was completely unusable by migrating salmon.) Agricultural runoff and water held in reservoirs higher upstream on the Snake warm its waters as it flows through the Snake River Plain, so as the Snake meets the Clearwater, its average temperature is much higher. Directly below the confluence, the river flows into Lower Granite Lake, formed by Lower Granite Dam, the uppermost dam of the Lower Snake River Project. Paradoxically, the combination of these factors gives the young salmon further time to grow and to feed in Lower Granite Lake, so when they begin the migration to the Pacific Ocean, they often have a higher chance at survival, compared to those salmon who migrate to the ocean earlier.
A controversy has erupted since the late 20th century over the four lower Snake River dams, with the primary argument being that removing the dams would allow anadromous fish to reach the lower Snake River tributaries—the Clearwater River, the Tucannon River and the Grande Ronde River—and spawn in much higher numbers. However, removal of the dams has been fiercely opposed by some groups in the Pacific Northwest. Because much of the electricity in the Northwest comes from dams, removing the four dams would create a hole in the energy grid that would not be immediately replaceable. Navigation on the lower Snake would also suffer, as submerged riffles, rapids and islands would be exposed by the removal of the dams. Irrigation pumps for fields in southeastern Washington would also have to reach further to access the water of the Snake River. However, aside from restoring salmon runs, dam removal proponents argue that the power is replaceable, that the grain transportation system could be replaced by railroads, and that only one of the four reservoirs supplies irrigation water. Irrigators in the Snake River Plain would likely need to allow less water into the Snake River during low flow in order to create a current in the four lower reservoirs, and recreation and tourism would likely benefit.
The Salmon River is the second largest tributary. Although the Salmon has a larger drainage than the Clearwater, the Salmon drains much drier country and therefore has a smaller discharger than the Clearwater, about annually compared to about annually for the Clearwater River.
The Snake River has over 20 major tributaries, most of which are in the mountainous regions of the basin. The largest by far is the Clearwater River, which drains in north central Idaho. Many of the rivers that flow into the Snake River Plain from the north sink into the Snake River Aquifer, but still contribute their water to the river. Aside from rivers, the Snake is fed by many significant springs, many of which arise from the aquifer on the west side of the plain. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27982 |
Strong interaction
In nuclear physics and particle physics, the strong interaction is the mechanism responsible for the strong nuclear force, and is one of the four known fundamental interactions, with the others being electromagnetism, the weak interaction, and gravitation. At the range of 10−15 m (1 femtometer), the strong force is approximately 137 times as strong as electromagnetism, a million times as strong as the weak interaction, and 1038 times as strong as gravitation. The strong nuclear force holds most ordinary matter together because it confines quarks into hadron particles such as the proton and neutron. In addition, the strong force binds these neutrons and protons to create atomic nuclei. Most of the mass of a common proton or neutron is the result of the strong force field energy; the individual quarks provide only about 1% of the mass of a proton.
The strong interaction is observable at two ranges and mediated by two force carriers. On a larger scale (about 1 to 3 fm), it is the force (carried by mesons) that binds protons and neutrons (nucleons) together to form the nucleus of an atom. On the smaller scale (less than about 0.8 fm, the radius of a nucleon), it is the force (carried by gluons) that holds quarks together to form protons, neutrons, and other hadron particles. In the latter context, it is often known as the color force. The strong force inherently has such a high strength that hadrons bound by the strong force can produce new massive particles. Thus, if hadrons are struck by high-energy particles, they give rise to new hadrons instead of emitting freely moving radiation (gluons). This property of the strong force is called color confinement, and it prevents the free "emission" of the strong force: instead, in practice, jets of massive particles are produced.
In the context of atomic nuclei, the same strong interaction force (that binds quarks within a nucleon) also binds protons and neutrons together to form a nucleus. In this capacity it is called the nuclear force (or "residual strong force"). So the residuum from the strong interaction within protons and neutrons also binds nuclei together. As such, the residual strong interaction obeys a distance-dependent behavior between nucleons that is quite different from that when it is acting to bind quarks within nucleons. Additionally, distinctions exist in the binding energies of the nuclear force of nuclear fusion vs nuclear fission. Nuclear fusion accounts for most energy production in the Sun and other stars. Nuclear fission allows for decay of radioactive elements and isotopes, although it is often mediated by the weak interaction. Artificially, the energy associated with the nuclear force is partially released in nuclear power and nuclear weapons, both in uranium or plutonium-based fission weapons and in fusion weapons like the hydrogen bomb.
The strong interaction is mediated by the exchange of massless particles called gluons that act between quarks, antiquarks, and other gluons. Gluons are thought to interact with quarks and other gluons by way of a type of charge called color charge. Color charge is analogous to electromagnetic charge, but it comes in three types (±red, ±green, ±blue) rather than one, which results in a different type of force, with different rules of behavior. These rules are detailed in the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), which is the theory of quark-gluon interactions.
Before the 1970s, physicists were uncertain as to how the atomic nucleus was bound together. It was known that the nucleus was composed of protons and neutrons and that protons possessed positive electric charge, while neutrons were electrically neutral. By the understanding of physics at that time, positive charges would repel one another and the positively charged protons should cause the nucleus to fly apart. However, this was never observed. New physics was needed to explain this phenomenon.
A stronger attractive force was postulated to explain how the atomic nucleus was bound despite the protons' mutual electromagnetic repulsion. This hypothesized force was called the "strong force", which was believed to be a fundamental force that acted on the protons and neutrons that make up the nucleus.
It was later discovered that protons and neutrons were not fundamental particles, but were made up of constituent particles called quarks. The strong attraction between nucleons was the side-effect of a more fundamental force that bound the quarks together into protons and neutrons. The theory of quantum chromodynamics explains that quarks carry what is called a color charge, although it has no relation to visible color. Quarks with unlike color charge attract one another as a result of the strong interaction, and the particle that mediated this was called the gluon.
The word "strong" is used since the strong interaction is the "strongest" of the four fundamental forces. At a distance of 1 femtometer (1 fm = 10−15 meters) or less, its strength is around 137 times that of the electromagnetic force, some 106 times as great as that of the weak force, and about 1038 times that of gravitation.
The strong force is described by quantum chromodynamics (QCD), a part of the standard model of particle physics. Mathematically, QCD is a non-Abelian gauge theory based on a local (gauge) symmetry group called SU(3).
The force carrier particle of the strong interaction is the gluon, a massless boson. Unlike the photon in electromagnetism, which is neutral, the gluon carries a color charge. Quarks and gluons are the only fundamental particles that carry non-vanishing color charge, and hence they participate in strong interactions only with each other. The strong force is the expression of the gluon interaction with other quark and gluon particles.
All quarks and gluons in QCD interact with each other through the strong force. The strength of interaction is parameterized by the strong coupling constant. This strength is modified by the gauge color charge of the particle, a group theoretical property.
The strong force acts between quarks. Unlike all other forces (electromagnetic, weak, and gravitational), the strong force does not diminish in strength with increasing distance between pairs of quarks. After a limiting distance (about the size of a hadron) has been reached, it remains at a strength of about 10,000 newtons (N), no matter how much farther the distance between the quarks. As the separation between the quarks grows, the energy added to the pair creates new pairs of matching quarks between the original two; hence it is impossible to create separate quarks. The explanation is that the amount of work done against a force of 10,000 newtons is enough to create particle–antiparticle pairs within a very short distance of that interaction. The very energy added to the system required to pull two quarks apart would create a pair of new quarks that will pair up with the original ones. In QCD, this phenomenon is called color confinement; as a result only hadrons, not individual free quarks, can be observed. The failure of all experiments that have searched for free quarks is considered to be evidence of this phenomenon.
The elementary quark and gluon particles involved in a high energy collision are not directly observable. The interaction produces jets of newly created hadrons that are observable. Those hadrons are created, as a manifestation of mass–energy equivalence, when sufficient energy is deposited into a quark–quark bond, as when a quark in one proton is struck by a very fast quark of another impacting proton during a particle accelerator experiment. However, quark–gluon plasmas have been observed.
It is not the case that every quark in the universe attracts every other quark in the above distance independent manner. Color confinement implies that the strong force acts without distance-diminishment only between pairs of quarks, and that in collections of bound quarks (hadrons), the net color-charge of the quarks essentially cancels out, resulting in a limit of the action of the forces. Collections of quarks (hadrons) therefore appear nearly without color-charge, and the strong force is therefore nearly absent between those hadrons. However, the cancellation is not quite perfect, and a residual force (described below) remains. This residual force "does" diminish rapidly with distance, and is thus very short-range (effectively a few femtometers). It manifests as a force between the "colorless" hadrons, and is sometimes known as the strong nuclear force or simply nuclear force.
The nuclear force acts between hadrons, known as mesons and baryons. This "residual strong force", acting indirectly, transmits gluons that form part of the virtual "π" and "ρ" mesons, which, in turn, transmit the force between nucleons that holds the nucleus (beyond protium) together.
The residual strong force is thus a minor residuum of the strong force that binds quarks together into protons and neutrons. This same force is much weaker "between" neutrons and protons, because it is mostly neutralized "within" them, in the same way that electromagnetic forces between neutral atoms (van der Waals forces) are much weaker than the electromagnetic forces that hold electrons in association with the nucleus, forming the atoms.
Unlike the strong force itself, the residual strong force, "does" diminish in strength, and it in fact diminishes rapidly with distance. The decrease is approximately as a negative exponential power of distance, though there is no simple expression known for this; see Yukawa potential. The rapid decrease with distance of the attractive residual force and the less-rapid decrease of the repulsive electromagnetic force acting between protons within a nucleus, causes the instability of larger atomic nuclei, such as all those with atomic numbers larger than 82 (the element lead).
Although the nuclear force is weaker than strong interaction itself, it is still highly energetic: transitions produce gamma rays. The mass of nuclei is significantly different from the masses of the individual nucleons. This mass defect is due to the potential energy associated with the nuclear force. Differences between mass defects power nuclear fusion and nuclear fission.
The so-called Grand Unified Theories (GUT) aim to describe the strong interaction and the electroweak interaction as aspects of a single force, similarly to how the electromagnetic and weak interactions were unified by the Glashow–Weinberg–Salam model into the electroweak interaction. The strong interaction has a property called asymptotic freedom, wherein the strength of the strong force diminishes at higher energies (or temperatures). The theorized energy where its strength becomes equal to the electroweak interaction is the grand unification energy. However, no Grand Unified Theory has yet been successfully formulated to describe this process, and Grand Unification remains an unsolved problem in physics.
If GUT is correct, after the Big Bang and during the electroweak epoch of the universe, the electroweak force separated from the strong force. Accordingly, a grand unification epoch is hypothesized to have existed prior to this. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27984 |
Stout
Stout is a dark, top-fermented beer with a number of variations, including dry stout, Baltic porter, milk stout, and imperial stout.
The first known use of the word "stout" for beer was in a document dated 1677 found in the Egerton Manuscripts, the sense being that a "stout beer" was a "strong" beer, not a "dark" beer. The name "porter" was first used in 1721 to describe a dark brown beer that had been made with roasted malts. Because of the huge popularity of porters, brewers made them in a variety of strengths. The stronger beers, typically 7% or 8% alcohol by volume (ABV), were called "stout porters", so the history and development of stout and porter are intertwined, and the term stout has become firmly associated with dark beer, rather than just strong beer.
Porter originated in London, England in the early 1720s. The style quickly became popular in the City especially with porters (hence its name): it had a strong flavour, took longer to spoil than other beers, was significantly cheaper than other beers, and was not easily affected by heat. Within a few decades, porter breweries in London had grown "beyond any previously known scale". Large volumes were exported to Ireland and by 1776 it was being brewed by Arthur Guinness at his St. James's Gate Brewery. In the 19th century, the beer gained its customary black colour through the use of black patent malt, and became stronger in flavour.
Originally, the adjective "stout" meant "proud" or "brave", but later, after the 14th century, it took on the connotation of "strong". The first known use of the word "stout" for beer was in a document dated 1677 found in the Egerton Manuscript, the sense being that a stout beer was a strong beer. The expression "stout porter" was applied during the 18th century to strong versions of porter. "Stout" still meant only "strong" and it could be related to any kind of beer, as long as it was strong: in the UK it was possible to find "stout pale ale", for example. Later, "stout" was eventually to be associated only with porter, becoming a synonym of dark beer.
Because of the huge popularity of porters, brewers made them in a variety of strengths. The beers with higher gravities were called "Stout Porters". There is still division and debate on whether stouts should be a separate style from porter. Usually the only deciding factor is strength.
"Nourishing" and sweet "milk" stouts became popular in Great Britain in the years following the First World War, though their popularity declined towards the end of the 20th century, apart from pockets of local interest such as in Glasgow with Sweetheart Stout.
Beer writer Michael Jackson wrote about stouts and porters in the 1970s, but in the mid 1980s a survey by "What’s Brewing" found just 29 brewers in the UK and Channel Islands still making stout, most of them milk stouts. In the 21st century, stout is making a comeback with a new generation of drinkers, thanks to new products from burgeoning craft and regional brewers.
"Milk stout" (also called "sweet stout" or "cream stout") is a stout containing lactose, a sugar derived from milk. Because lactose cannot be fermented by beer yeast, it adds sweetness and body to the finished beer. Milk stout was claimed to be nutritious, and was given to nursing mothers, along with other stouts. Milk stout was also said to be prescribed by doctors to help nursing mothers increase their milk production. The classic surviving example of milk stout is Mackeson's, for which the original brewers advertised that "each pint contains the energising carbohydrates of 10 ounces [280 ml] of pure dairy milk". The style was rare until being revived by a number of craft breweries during the craft beer boom of the twenty-first century.
It is widely reported that, in the period just after the Second World War when rationing was in place, the British government required brewers to remove the word "milk" from labels and adverts, and any imagery associated with milk. However, no specific legislation or orders have been found to support this, though there were some prosecutions in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1944 under the Food and Drugs Act 1938 regarding misleading labelling.
With milk or sweet stout becoming the dominant stout in the UK in the early 20th century, it was mainly in Ireland that the non-sweet or standard stout was being made. As standard stout has a drier taste than the English and American sweet stouts, they came to be called "dry stout" or "Irish stout" to differentiate them from stouts with added lactose or oatmeal. This is the style that represents a typical stout to most people. The best selling stouts worldwide are Irish stouts made by Guinness (currently owned by Diageo) at St. James's Gate Brewery (also known as the Guinness Brewery) in Dublin. Guinness makes a number of different varieties of its Irish stouts. Other examples of Irish dry stout include Murphy's and Beamish. Draught Irish stout is normally served with a nitrogen propellant, (rather than carbon dioxide as most beers use) to create a creamy texture with a long-lasting head. Some canned and bottled stouts include a special device called a "widget" to nitrogenate the beer in the container to replicate the experience of the keg varieties.
While there is a great deal of disagreement in the brewing world on this subject, there are no differences between stout and porter historically, though there has been a tendency for breweries to differentiate the strengths of their dark beers with the words "extra", "double" and "stout". The term "stout" was initially used to indicate a stronger porter than other porters issued by an individual brewery. Though not consistent, this is the usage that was most commonly employed. More recently, "stout" tends to be used to describe dry stouts, (containing a small amount of unmalted roast barley), or sweet stouts, (such as milk stouts), whilst "porter" describes a beer flavoured with roast malted barley.
"Oatmeal stout" is a stout with a proportion of oats, normally a maximum of 30%, added during the brewing process. Even though a larger proportion of oats in beer can lead to a bitter or astringent taste, during the medieval period in Europe, oats were a common ingredient in ale, and proportions up to 35% were standard. Despite some areas of Europe, such as Norway, still clinging to the use of oats in brewing until the early part of the 20th century, the practice had largely died out by the 16th century, so much so that in 1513 Tudor sailors refused to drink oat beer offered to them because of the bitter flavour.
There was a revival of interest in using oats during the end of the 19th century, when (supposedly) restorative, nourishing and invalid beers, such as the later milk stout, were popular, because of the association of porridge with health. Maclay of Alloa produced an Original Oatmalt Stout in 1895 which used 70% "oatmalt", and a 63/- Oatmeal Stout in 1909, which used 30% "flaked (porridge) oats".
In the 20th century many oatmeal stouts contained only a minimal amount of oats. For example, in 1936 Barclay Perkins Oatmeal Stout used only 0.5% oats. As the oatmeal stout was parti-gyled with their porter and standard stout, these two also contained the same proportion of oats. (Parti-gyle brewing involves blending the worts drawn from multiple mashes or sparges after the boil to produces beers of different gravities.) The name seems to have been a marketing device more than anything else. In the 1920s and 1930s Whitbread's London Stout and Oatmeal Stout were identical, just packaged differently. The amount of oats Whitbread used was minimal, again around 0.5%. With such a small quantity of oats used, it could only have had little impact on the flavour or texture of these beers.
Many breweries were still brewing oatmeal stouts in the 1950s, for example Brickwoods in Portsmouth, Matthew Brown in Blackburn and Ushers in Trowbridge. When Michael Jackson mentioned the defunct Eldrige Pope "Oat Malt Stout" in his 1977 book "The World Guide to Beer", oatmeal stout was no longer being made anywhere, but Charles Finkel, founder of Merchant du Vin, was curious enough to commission Samuel Smith to produce a version. Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout then became the template for other breweries' versions.
Oatmeal stouts do not usually taste specifically of oats. The smoothness of oatmeal stouts comes from the high content of proteins, lipids (includes fats and waxes), and gums imparted by the use of oats. The gums increase the viscosity and body adding to the sense of smoothness.
Oysters have had a long association with stout. When stouts were emerging in the 18th century, oysters were a commonplace food often served in public houses and taverns. By the 20th century, oyster beds were in decline, and stout had given way to pale ale. Ernest Barnes came up with the idea of combining oysters with stout using an oyster concentrate made by Thyrodone Development Ltd. in Bluff, New Zealand, where he was factory manager. It was first sold by the Dunedin Brewery Company in New Zealand in 1938, with the Hammerton Brewery in London, UK, beginning production using the same formula the following year. Hammerton Brewery was re-established in 2014 and is once again brewing an oyster stout.
Modern "oyster stouts" may be made with a handful of oysters in the barrel, hence the warning by one establishment, the Porterhouse Brewery in Dublin, that their award-winning Oyster Stout was not suitable for vegetarians. Others, such as Marston's Oyster Stout, use the name with the implication that the beer would be suitable for drinking with oysters.
"Chocolate stout" is a name brewers sometimes give to certain stouts having a noticeable dark chocolate flavour through the use of darker, more aromatic malt; particularly chocolate malt—a malt that has been roasted or kilned until it acquires a chocolate colour. Sometimes, as with Muskoka Brewery's Double Chocolate Cranberry Stout, Young's Double Chocolate Stout, and Rogue Brewery's Chocolate Stout, the beers are also brewed with a small amount of chocolate or chocolate flavouring.
Imperial stout, also known as "Russian Imperial stout", is a strong dark beer in the style that was brewed in the 18th century by Thrale's Anchor Brewery in London for export to the court of Catherine II of Russia. In 1781 the brewery changed hands and the beer became known as "Barclay Perkins Imperial Brown Stout". It was shipped to Russia by Albert von Le Coq who was awarded a Russian royal warrant which entitled him to use the name "Imperial". A recipe from 1856 shows it had an original gravity of 1.107 (almost certainly over 10% abv) and over 10 pounds of hops to the barrel. When Barclay's brewery was taken over by Courage in 1955, the beer was renamed "Courage Imperial Russian Stout" and it was brewed sporadically until 1993.
In Canada, Imperial Stout was produced in Prince Albert first by Fritz Sick, and then by Molson following a 1958 takeover. Denmark's Wiibroe Brewery launched its 8.2 percent Imperial Stout in 1930. The first brewery to brew an Imperial Stout in the United States was Bert Grant's Yakima Brewing.
Imperial stouts have a high alcohol content, usually over 9% abv, and are among the darkest available beer styles. Samuel Smith's brewed a version for export to the United States in the early 1980s, and today imperial stout is among the most popular beer styles with U.S. craft brewers. American interpretations of the style often include ingredients such as vanilla beans, chili powder, maple syrup, coffee, and marshmallows. Many are aged in bourbon barrels to add additional layers of flavour. The word "Imperial" is now commonly added to other beer styles to denote a stronger version, hence Imperial IPAs, Imperial pilsners etc.
Baltic porter is a version of imperial stout which originated in the Baltic region in the 19th century. Imperial stouts imported from Britain were recreated locally using local ingredients and brewing traditions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27991 |
Slavery
Slavery is any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals, as a "de jure" form of property. An enslaved person is unable to withdraw unilaterally from such an arrangement and works without remuneration. Many scholars now use the term chattel slavery to refer to this specific sense of legalized, "de jure" slavery. In a broader sense, however, the word slavery may also refer to any situation in which an individual is "de facto" forced to work against their own will. Scholars also use the more generic terms such as unfree labour or forced labour to refer to such situations. However, and especially under slavery in broader senses of the word, slaves may have some rights and protections according to laws or customs.
Slavery has existed in many cultures, dating back to early human civilizations. It was legal in most societies at some time in the past but is now outlawed in all recognized countries. The last country to officially abolish slavery was Mauritania in 1981. Nevertheless, as of 2016 there were an estimated 40.3 million people worldwide subject to some form of slavery. A person can be enslaved from the time of their birth, capture, or purchase. The most common form of modern slave trade is commonly referred to as human trafficking. In some areas of the world, slavery continues through practices such as debt bondage, the most widespread form of slavery today; serfdom; domestic servants kept in captivity; certain adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves; child soldiers; and forced marriage.
The word "slave" is derived from the ethnonym (ethnic name) Slav. It arrived in English via the Old French "sclave". In Medieval Latin the word was "sclavus" and in Byzantine Greek σκλάβος. Use of the word arose during the Early Medieval Period, when Slavs from Eastern Europe were frequently enslaved by Moors from the Iberian Peninsula. An older interpretation connected "slave" to the Greek verb "skyleúo" 'to strip a slain enemy'.
There is a dispute among historians about whether terms such as "unfree labourer" or enslaved person, rather than "slave", should be used when describing the victims of slavery. According to those proposing a change in terminology, "slave" perpetuates the crime of slavery in language; by reducing its victims to a nonhuman noun instead of "carry[ing] them forward as people, not the property that they were". Other historians prefer "slave" because the term is familiar and shorter, or because it accurately reflects the inhumanity of slavery, with "person" implying a degree of autonomy that slavery does not allow.
Indenture, otherwise known as bonded labour or debt bondage, is a form of unfree labour under which a person pledges himself or herself against a loan. The services required to repay the debt, and their duration, may be undefined. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their progenitors' debt. It is the most widespread form of slavery today. Debt bondage is most prevalent in South Asia.
Chattel slavery, also called traditional slavery, is so named because people are treated as the chattel (personal property) of the owner and are bought and sold as commodities. Typically, under the chattel slave system, children inherited slave status via the mother (partus sequitur ventrem). Although it dominated many different societies throughout human history, this form of slavery has been formally abolished and is very rare today. Even when it can be said to survive, it is not upheld by the legal system of any internationally recognized government.
"Slavery" has also been used to refer to a legal state of dependency to somebody else. For example, in Persia, the situations and lives of such slaves could be better than those of common citizens.
Forced labour, or unfree labour, is sometimes used to describe an individual who is forced to work against their own will, under threat of violence or other punishment, but the generic term unfree labour is also used to describe chattel slavery, as well as any other situation in which a person is obliged to work against their own will, and a person's ability to work productively is under the complete control of another person. This may also include institutions not commonly classified as slavery, such as serfdom, conscription and penal labour. While some unfree labourers, such as serfs, have substantive, "de jure" legal or traditional rights, they also have no ability to terminate the arrangements under which they work and are frequently subject to forms of coercion, violence, and restrictions on their activities and movement outside their place of work.
Human trafficking primarily involves women and children forced into prostitution and is the fastest growing form of forced labour, with Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil and Mexico having been identified as leading hotspots of commercial sexual exploitation of children. Examples of sexual slavery, often in military contexts, include detention in "rape camps" or "comfort stations," "comfort women", forced "marriages" to soldiers and other practices involving the treatment of women or men as chattel and, as such, violations of the peremptory norm prohibiting slavery.
In 2007, Human Rights Watch estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children served as soldiers in current conflicts. More girls under 16 work as domestic workers than any other category of child labor, often sent to cities by parents living in rural poverty such as in restaveks in Haiti.
Forced marriages or early marriages are often considered types of slavery. Forced marriage continues to be practiced in parts of the world including some parts of Asia and Africa and in immigrant communities in the West. Sacred prostitution is where girls and women are pledged to priests or those of higher castes, such as the practice of Devadasi in South Asia or fetish slaves in West Africa. Marriage by abduction occurs in many places in the world today, with a national average of 69% of marriages in Ethiopia being through abduction.
Economists have attempted to model the circumstances under which slavery (and variants such as serfdom) appear and disappear. One observation is that slavery becomes more desirable for landowners where land is abundant but labour is scarce, such that rent is depressed and paid workers can demand high wages. If the opposite holds true, then it becomes more costly for landowners to have guards for the slaves than to employ paid workers who can only demand low wages because of the amount of competition. Thus, first slavery and then serfdom gradually decreased in Europe as the population grew but were reintroduced in the Americas and in Russia as large areas of new land with few people became available.
Slavery is more common when the labor done is relatively simple and thus easy to supervise, such as large-scale growing of a single crop, like sugar and cotton, in which output was based on economies of scale. This enables such systems of labor, such as the gang system in the United States, to become prominent on large plantations where field hands were monitored and worked with factory-like precision. For example, each work gang was based on an internal division of labour that assigned every member of the gang to a precise task and simultaneously made their own performance dependent on the actions of the others. The hoe hands chopped out the weeds that surrounded the cotton plants as well as excessive sprouts. The plow gangs followed behind, stirring the soil near the rows of cotton plants and tossing it back around the plants. Thus, the gang system worked like an assembly line.
Since the 18th century, critics have argued that slavery tends to retard technological advancement because the focus is on increasing the number of slaves doing simple tasks rather than upgrading the efficiency of labour. For example, it is sometime argued that, because of this narrow focus, theoretical knowledge and learning in Greece – and later in Rome – was not applied to ease physical labour or improve manufacturing.
Scottish economist Adam Smith states that free labour was economically better than slave labour, and that it is nearly impossible to end slavery in a free, democratic, or republican form of government since many of its legislators or political figures were slave owners, and would not punish themselves. He further states that slaves would be better able to gain their freedom when there was centralized government, or a central authority like a king or the church. Similar arguments appear later in the works of Auguste Comte, especially when it comes to Smith's belief in the separation of powers, or what Comte called the "separation of the spiritual and the temporal" during the Middle Ages and the end of slavery, and Smith's criticism of masters, past and present. As Smith states in the "Lectures on Jurisprudence", "The great power of the clergy thus concurring with that of the king set the slaves at liberty. But it was absolutely necessary both that the authority of the king and of the clergy should be great. Where ever any one of these was wanting, slavery still continues..."
Worldwide, slavery is a criminal offense but slave owners can get very high returns for their risk. According to researcher Siddharth Kara, the profits generated worldwide by all forms of slavery in 2007 were $91.2 billion. That is second only to drug trafficking, in terms of global criminal enterprises. Currently, the weighted average global sales price of a slave is calculated to be approximately $340, with a high of $1,895 for the average trafficked sex slave, and a low of $40 to $50 for debt bondage slaves in part of Asia and Africa. The weighted average annual profits generated by a slave in 2007 was $3,175, with a low of an average $950 for bonded labor and $29,210 for a trafficked sex slave. Approximately 40% of slave profits each year are generated by trafficked sex slaves, representing slightly more than 4% of the world's 29 million slaves.
Throughout history, slaves were clothed in a distinctive fashion, particularly with respect to the frequent lack of footwear, as they were rather commonly forced to go barefoot. This was partly because of economic reasons but also served as a distinguishing feature, especially in South Africa and South America. For example, the Cape Town slave code stated that "Slaves must go barefoot and must carry passes." It also puts slaves at a physical disadvantage because of the lack of protection against environmental adversities and also in situations of possible confrontation, thereby making it more difficult to escape or to rebel against their owners.
This was the case in the majority of states that abolished slavery later in history, as most images from the respective historical period suggest that slaves were barefoot.
To quote Brother Riemer (1779): "[the slaves] are, even in their most beautiful suit, obliged to go barefoot. Slaves were forbidden to wear shoes. This was a prime mark of distinction between the free and the bonded and no exceptions were permitted."
According to the Bible, shoes have been considered badges of freedom since antiquity: "But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put [it] on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on [his] feet" (). This aspect can be viewed as an informal law in areas where slavery existed as any person sighted barefoot in public would be conclusively regarded as a slave.
In certain societies this rule is valid to this day. As with the Tuareg, where slavery is still unofficially practiced, their slaves are constantly forced to remain barefoot as a recognition mark. Mainly through their bare feet their societal status and rank opposite their owners is displayed to the public in a plainly visible way.
Another widespread practice was branding the slaves either to generally mark them as property or as punishment usually reserved for fugitives.
Evidence of slavery predates written records and has existed in many cultures. Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer populations because it requires economic surpluses and a high population density to be viable. Thus, although it has existed among unusually resource-rich hunter gatherers, such as the American Indian peoples of the salmon-rich rivers of the Pacific Northwest Coast, slavery became widespread only with the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution about 11,000 years ago.
In the earliest known records, slavery is treated as an established institution. The Code of Hammurabi (c. 1760 BC), for example, prescribed death for anyone who helped a slave escape or who sheltered a fugitive. The Bible mentions slavery as an established institution. Slavery was known in almost every ancient civilization and society. Such institutions included debt bondage, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war, child abandonment, and the birth of slave children to slaves.
Slavery existed in Pharaonic Egypt, but studying it is complicated by terminology used by the Egyptians to refer to different classes of servitude over the course of history. Interpretation of the textual evidence of classes of slaves in ancient Egypt has been difficult to differentiate by word usage alone. There were three apparent types of enslavement in Ancient Egypt: chattel slavery, bonded labor, and forced labor.
Slavery is known to have existed in ancient China as early as the Shang dynasty. Slavery was largely employed by governments as a means of maintaining a public labor force.
Records of slavery in Ancient Greece date as far back as Mycenaean Greece. It is certain that Classical Athens had the largest slave population, with as many as 80,000 in the 6th and 5th centuries BC. As the Roman Republic expanded outward, entire populations were enslaved, thus creating an ample supply from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Slaves were used for labour, as well as for amusement (e.g. gladiators and sex slaves). This oppression by an elite minority eventually led to slave revolts (see Roman Servile Wars); the Third Servile War, led by Spartacus, (a Thracian) being the most famous.
By the late Republican era, slavery had become a vital economic pillar in the wealth of Rome, as well as a very significant part of Roman society. It is estimated that 25% or more of the population of Ancient Rome was enslaved, although the actual percentage is debated by scholars and varied from region to region. Slaves represented 15–25% of Italy's population, mostly captives in war, especially from Gaul and Epirus. Estimates of the number of slaves in the Roman Empire suggest that the majority of slaves were scattered throughout the provinces outside of Italy. Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians, with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) born outside of Italy estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest. Those from outside of Europe were predominantly of Greek descent, while the Jewish ones never fully assimilated into Roman society, remaining an identifiable minority. These slaves (especially the foreigners) had higher death rates and lower birth rates than natives and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions. The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).
Slavery was widespread in Africa, with both internal and external slave trade. In the Senegambia region, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the western Sahel, including Ghana, Mali, Segou, and Songhai, about a third of the population were enslaved.
The Arab slave trade, across the Sahara desert and across the Indian Ocean, began after Muslim Arab and Swahili traders won control of the Swahili Coast and sea routes during the 9th century (see Sultanate of Zanzibar). These traders captured Bantu peoples (Zanj) from the interior in present-day Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania and brought them to the coast. There, the slaves gradually assimilated in the rural areas, particularly on the Unguja and Pemba islands.
Slavery in Mexico can be traced back to the Aztecs. Other Amerindians, such as the Inca of the Andes, the Tupinambá of Brazil, the Creek of Georgia, and the Comanche of Texas, also owned slaves.
Many Han Chinese were enslaved in the process of the Mongol invasion of China proper. According to Japanese historians Sugiyama Masaaki (杉山正明) and Funada Yoshiyuki (舩田善之), there were also a certain number of Mongolian slaves owned by Han Chinese during the Yuan dynasty. Moreover, there is no evidence that the Han Chinese, who were at the bottom of Yuan society according to some research, suffered particularly cruel abuse.
Slavery in Korea existed since before the Three Kingdoms of Korea period, approximately 2,000 years ago. Slavery has been described as "very important in medieval Korea, probably more important than in any other East Asian country, but by the 16th century, population growth was making [it] unnecessary". Slavery went into decline around the 10th century but came back in the late Goryeo period when Korea also experienced a number of slave rebellions.
In the Joseon period of Korea, members of the slave class were known as "nobi". The nobi were socially indistinct from freemen (i.e., the middle and common classes) other than the ruling yangban class, and some possessed property rights, legal entities and civil rights. Hence, some scholars argue that it is inappropriate to call them "slaves", while some scholars describe them as serfs. The nobi population could fluctuate up to about one-third of the population, but on average the nobi made up about 10% of the total population. In 1801, the vast majority of government nobi were emancipated, and by 1858 the nobi population stood at about 1.5 percent of the total population of Korea.
Slavery largely disappeared from Western Europe in the Middle Ages but persisted longer in Eastern Europe. Large-scale trading in slaves was mainly confined to the South and East of early medieval Europe: the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world were the destinations, while pagan Central and Eastern Europe (along with the Caucasus and Tartary) were important sources. Viking, Arab, Greek, and Radhanite Jewish merchants were all involved in the slave trade during the Early Middle Ages. The trade in European slaves reached a peak in the 10th century following the Zanj Rebellion which dampened the use of African slaves in the Arab world.
Slavery in early medieval Europe was so common that the Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it, or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands, as for example at the Council of Koblenz (922), the Council of London (1102) (which aimed mainly at the sale of English slaves to Ireland) and the Council of Armagh (1171). Serfdom, on the contrary, was widely accepted. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, granting the kings of Spain and Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens (Muslims), pagans and any other unbelievers" to perpetual slavery, legitimizing the slave trade as a result of war. The approval of slavery under these conditions was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455.
In Britain, slavery continued to be practiced following the fall of Rome, and sections of Hywel the Good's laws dealt with slaves in medieval Wales. The trade particularly picked up after the Viking invasions, with major markets at Chester and Bristol supplied by Danish, Mercian, and Welsh raiding of one another's borderlands. At the time of the "Domesday Book", nearly 10% of the English population were slaves. William the Conqueror introduced a law preventing the sale of slaves overseas. According to historian John Gillingham, by 1200 slavery in the British Isles was non-existent. The slave trade was abolished by the Slave Trade Act 1807, although slavery remained legal in possessions outside Europe until the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 and the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.
The Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe brought large numbers of slaves into the Islamic world. To staff its bureaucracy, the Ottoman Empire established a janissary system which seized hundreds of thousands of Christian boys through the devşirme system. They were well cared for but were legally slaves owned by the government and were not allowed to marry. They were never bought or sold. The empire gave them significant administrative and military roles. The system began about 1365; there were 135,000 janissaries in 1826, when the system ended.
After the Battle of Lepanto, 12,000 Christian galley slaves were recaptured and freed from the Ottoman fleet. Eastern Europe suffered a series of Tatar invasions, the goal of which was to loot and capture slaves into "jasyr". Seventy-five Crimean Tatar raids were recorded into Poland–Lithuania between 1474 and 1569.
Slavery in Poland was forbidden in the 15th century; in Lithuania, slavery was formally abolished in 1588; they were replaced by the second serfdom.
Medieval Spain and Portugal were the scene of almost constant Muslim invasion of the predominantly Christian area. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In a raid against Lisbon in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves, Portugal, in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves. From the 11th to the 19th century, North African Barbary Pirates engaged in "Razzias", raids on European coastal towns, to capture Christian slaves to sell at slave markets in places such as Algeria and Morocco.
The maritime town of Lagos was the first slave market created in Portugal (one of the earliest colonizers of the Americas) for the sale of imported African slaves – the "Mercado de Escravos", opened in 1444. In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania.
By 1552, black African slaves made up 10% of the population of Lisbon. In the second half of the 16th century, the Crown gave up the monopoly on slave trade, and the focus of European trade in African slaves shifted from import to Europe to slave transports directly to tropical colonies in the Americas – especially Brazil. In the 15th century one-third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold.
In Kievan Rus and Muscovy, slaves were usually classified as kholops. According to David P. Forsythe, "In 1649 up to three-quarters of Muscovy's peasants, or 13 to 14 million people, were serfs whose material lives were barely distinguishable from slaves. Perhaps another 1.5 million were formally enslaved, with Russian slaves serving Russian masters." Slavery remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter the Great converted the household slaves into house serfs. Russian agricultural slaves were formally converted into serfs earlier in 1679.
In Scandinavia, thralldom was abolished in the mid-14th century.
During the Second World War Nazi Germany effectively enslaved about 12 million people, both those considered undesirable and citizens of conquered countries, with the avowed intention of treating these "Untermenschen" (sub-humans) as a permanent slave-class of inferior beings who could be worked until they died, and who possessed neither the rights nor the legal status of members of the Aryan race.
The Arab slave trade lasted more than a millennium. As recently as the early 1960s, Saudi Arabia's slave population was estimated at 300,000. Along with Yemen, the Saudis abolished slavery in 1962. Historically, slaves in the Arab World came from many different regions, including Sub-Saharan Africa (mainly "Zanj"), the Caucasus (mainly Circassians), Central Asia (mainly Tartars), and Central and Eastern Europe (mainly "Saqaliba").
Some historians assert that as many as 17 million people were sold into slavery on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and approximately 5 million African slaves were bought by Muslim slave traders and taken from Africa across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert between 1500 and 1900. The captives were sold throughout the Middle East. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year. The Indian Ocean slave trade was multi-directional and changed over time. To meet the demand for menial labor, Bantu slaves bought by Arab slave traders from southeastern Africa were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries to customers in Egypt, Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, European colonies in the Far East, the Indian Ocean islands, Ethiopia and Somalia.
According to the "Encyclopedia of African History", "It is estimated that by the 1890s the largest slave population of the world, about 2 million people, was concentrated in the territories of the Sokoto Caliphate. The use of slave labor was extensive, especially in agriculture." The Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2 million slaves in Ethiopia in the early 1930s out of an estimated population of 8 to 16 million.
Slave labor in East Africa was drawn from the "Zanj," Bantu peoples that lived along the East African coast. The Zanj were for centuries shipped as slaves by Arab traders to all the countries bordering the Indian Ocean. The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs recruited many Zanj slaves as soldiers and, as early as 696, there were slave revolts of the Zanj against their Arab enslavers in Iraq. The Zanj Rebellion, a series of uprisings that took place between 869 and 883 near Basra (also known as Basara), situated in present-day Iraq, is believed to have involved enslaved Zanj that had originally been captured from the African Great Lakes region and areas further south in East Africa. It grew to involve over 500,000 slaves and free men who were imported from across the Muslim empire and claimed over "tens of thousands of lives in lower Iraq".
The Zanj who were taken as slaves to the Middle East were often used in strenuous agricultural work. As the plantation economy boomed and the Arabs became richer, agriculture and other manual labor work was thought to be demeaning. The resulting labor shortage led to an increased slave market.
In Algiers, the capital of Algeria, captured Christians and Europeans were forced into slavery. In about 1650, there were as many as 35,000 Christian slaves in Algiers. By one estimate, raids by Barbary pirates on coastal villages and ships extending from Italy to Iceland, enslaved an estimated 1 to 1.25 million Europeans between the 16th and 19th centuries. However, to this estimate is extrapolated by assuming the number of European, slaves captured by Barbary pirates, was constant for 250 years period:
Davis' numbers have been refuted by other historians, such as David Earle, who cautions that true picture of Europeans slaves is clouded by the fact the corsairs also seized non-Christian whites from eastern Europe. In addition, the number of slaves traded was hyperactive, with exaggerated estimates relying on peak years to calculate averages for entire centuries, or millennia. Hence, there were wide fluctuations year-to-year, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, given slave imports, and also given the fact that, prior to the 1840s, there are no consistent records. Middle East expert, John Wright, cautions that modern estimates are based on back-calculations from human observation. Such observations, across the late 16th and early 17th century observers, account for around 35,000 European Christian slaves held throughout this period on the Barbary Coast, across Tripoli, Tunis, but mostly in Algiers. The majority were sailors (particularly those who were English), taken with their ships, but others were fishermen and coastal villagers. However, most of these captives were people from lands close to Africa, particularly Spain and Italy. This eventually led to the bombardment of Algiers by an Anglo-Dutch fleet in 1816.
Under Omani Arabs, Zanzibar became East Africa's main slave port, with as many as 50,000 enslaved Africans passing through every year during the 19th century. Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million African slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900 AD. Eduard Rüppell described the losses of Sudanese slaves being transported on foot to Egypt: "after the Daftardar bey's 1822 campaign in the southern Nuba mountains, nearly 40,000 slaves were captured. However, through bad treatment, disease and desert travel barely 5,000 made it to Egypt.." W.A. Veenhoven wrote: "The German doctor, Gustav Nachtigal, an eye-witness, believed that for every slave who arrived at a market three or four died on the way ... Keltie ("The Partition of Africa", London, 1920) believes that for every slave the Arabs brought to the coast at least six died on the way or during the slavers' raid. Livingstone puts the figure as high as ten to one."
Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient world. In many African societies where slavery was prevalent, the enslaved people were not treated as chattel slaves and were given certain rights in a system similar to indentured servitude elsewhere in the world. The forms of slavery in Africa were closely related to kinship structures. In many African communities, where land could not be owned, enslavement of individuals was used as a means to increase the influence a person had and expand connections. This made slaves a permanent part of a master's lineage and the children of slaves could become closely connected with the larger family ties. Children of slaves born into families could be integrated into the master's kinship group and rise to prominent positions within society, even to the level of chief in some instances. However, stigma often remained attached and there could be strict separations between slave members of a kinship group and those related to the master. Slavery was practiced in many different forms: debt slavery, enslavement of war captives, military slavery, and criminal slavery were all practiced in various parts of Africa. Slavery for domestic and court purposes was widespread throughout Africa.
When the Atlantic slave trade began, many of the local slave systems began supplying captives for chattel slave markets outside Africa. Although the Atlantic slave trade was not the only slave trade from Africa, it was the largest in volume and intensity. As Elikia M’bokolo wrote in "Le Monde diplomatique":
The trans-Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves were captured on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa. These expeditions were typically carried out by African kingdoms, such as the Oyo Empire (Yoruba), the Ashanti Empire, the kingdom of Dahomey, and the Aro Confederacy. It is estimated that about 15 percent of slaves died during the voyage, with mortality rates considerably higher in Africa itself in the process of capturing and transporting indigenous peoples to the ships.
Slavery in America remains a contentious issue and played a major role in the history and evolution of some countries, triggering a revolution, a civil war, and numerous rebellions.
In order to establish itself as an American empire, Spain had to fight against the relatively powerful civilizations of the New World. The Spanish conquest of the indigenous peoples in the Americas included using the Natives as forced labour. The Spanish colonies were the first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola. Bartolomé de las Casas, a 16th-century Dominican friar and Spanish historian, participated in campaigns in Cuba (at Bayamo and Camagüey) and was present at the massacre of Hatuey; his observation of that massacre led him to fight for a social movement away from the use of natives as slaves. Also, the alarming decline in the native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting the native population. The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501. England played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade. The "slave triangle" was pioneered by Francis Drake and his associates.
Many Africans who arrived in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries came under contract as indentured servants. The transformation from indentured servitude to slavery was a gradual process in Virginia. The earliest legal documentation of such a shift was in 1640 where a negro, John Punch, was sentenced to lifetime slavery, forcing him to serve his master, Hugh Gwyn, for the remainder of his life, for attempting to run away. This case was significant because it established the disparity between his sentence as a black man and that of the two white indentured servants who escaped with him (one described as Dutch and one as a Scotchman). It is the first documented case of a black man sentenced to lifetime servitude and is considered one of the first legal cases to make a racial distinction between black and white indentured servants.
After 1640, planters started to ignore the expiration of indentured contracts and keep their servants as slaves for life. This was demonstrated by the 1655 case "Johnson v. Parker", where the court ruled that a black man, Anthony Johnson of Virginia, was granted ownership of another black man, John Casor, as the result of a civil case. This was the first instance of a judicial determination in the Thirteen Colonies holding that a person who had committed no crime could be held in servitude for life.
In the early 17th century, the majority of the labour in Barbados was provided by European indentured servants, mainly English, Irish and Scottish, with enslaved Africans and enslaved Amerindians providing little of the workforce. The introduction of sugar cane from Dutch Brazil in 1640 completely transformed society and the economy. Barbados eventually had one of the world's largest sugar industries.
As the effects of the new crop increased, so did the shift in the ethnic composition of Barbados and surrounding islands. The workable sugar plantation required a large investment and a great deal of heavy labour. At first, Dutch traders supplied the equipment, financing, and enslaved Africans, in addition to transporting most of the sugar to Europe. In 1644, the population of Barbados was estimated at 30,000, of which about 800 were of African descent, with the remainder mainly of English descent. These English smallholders were eventually bought out, and the island filled up with large sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans. By 1660, there was near parity with 27,000 blacks and 26,000 whites. By 1666, at least 12,000 white smallholders had been bought out, died, or left the island. Many of the remaining whites were increasingly poor. By 1680, there were 17 slaves for every indentured servant. By 1700, there were 15,000 free whites and 50,000 enslaved Africans.
Because of the increased implementation of slave codes, which created differential treatment between Africans and the white workers and ruling planter class, the island became increasingly unattractive to poor whites. Black or slave codes were implemented in 1661, 1676, 1682, and 1688. In response to these codes, several slave rebellions were attempted or planned during this time, but none succeeded. Nevertheless, poor whites who had or acquired the means to emigrate often did so. Planters expanded their importation of enslaved Africans to cultivate sugar cane.
Slavery in Brazil began long before the first Portuguese settlement was established in 1532, as members of one tribe would enslave captured members of another.
Later, Portuguese colonists were heavily dependent on indigenous labor during the initial phases of settlement to maintain the subsistence economy, and natives were often captured by expeditions called "". The importation of African slaves began midway through the 16th century, but the enslavement of indigenous peoples continued well into the 17th and 18th centuries.
During the Atlantic slave trade era, Brazil imported more African slaves than any other country. Nearly 5 million slaves were brought from Africa to Brazil during the period from 1501 to 1866. Until the early 1850s, most enslaved Africans who arrived on Brazilian shores were forced to embark at West Central African ports, especially in Luanda (present-day Angola). Today, with the exception of Nigeria, the largest population of people of African descent is in Brazil.
Slave labor was the driving force behind the growth of the sugar economy in Brazil, and sugar was the primary export of the colony from 1600 to 1650. Gold and diamond deposits were discovered in Brazil in 1690, which sparked an increase in the importation of African slaves to power this newly profitable market. Transportation systems were developed for the mining infrastructure, and population boomed from immigrants seeking to take part in gold and diamond mining. Demand for African slaves did not wane after the decline of the mining industry in the second half of the 18th century. Cattle ranching and foodstuff production proliferated after the population growth, both of which relied heavily on slave labor. 1.7 million slaves were imported to Brazil from Africa from 1700 to 1800, and the rise of coffee in the 1830s further enticed expansion of the slave trade.
Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery. Forty percent of the total number of slaves brought to the Americas were sent to Brazil. For reference, the United States received 10 percent. Despite being abolished, there are still people working in slavery-like conditions in Brazil in the 21st century.
In 1789 the Spanish Crown led an effort to reform slavery, as the demand for slave labor in Cuba was growing. The Crown issued a decree, "Código Negro Español" (Spanish Black Codex), that specified food and clothing provisions, put limits on the number of work hours, limited punishments, required religious instruction, and protected marriages, forbidding the sale of young children away from their mothers. The British made other changes to the institution of slavery in Cuba. But planters often flouted the laws and protested against them, considering them a threat to their authority and an intrusion into their personal lives.
The slaveowners did not protest against all the measures of the codex, many of which they argued were already common practices. They objected to efforts to set limits on their ability to apply physical punishment. For instance, the Black Codex limited whippings to 25 and required the whippings "not to cause serious bruises or bleeding". The slave-owners thought that the slaves would interpret these limits as weaknesses, ultimately leading to resistance. Another contested issue was the work hours that were restricted "from sunrise to sunset"; plantation owners responded by explaining that cutting and processing of cane needed 20-hour days during the harvest season.
Those slaves who worked on sugar plantations and in sugar mills were often subject to the harshest of conditions. The field work was rigorous manual labor which the slaves began at an early age. The work days lasted close to 20 hours during harvest and processing, including cultivating and cutting the crops, hauling wagons, and processing sugarcane with dangerous machinery. The slaves were forced to reside in barracoons, where they were crammed in and locked in by a padlock at night, getting about three to four hours of sleep. The conditions of the barracoons were harsh; they were highly unsanitary and extremely hot. Typically there was no ventilation; the only window was a small barred hole in the wall.
Cuba's slavery system was gendered in a way that some duties were performed only by male slaves, some only by female slaves. Female slaves in Havana from the 16th century onwards performed duties such as operating the town taverns, eating houses, and lodges, as well as being laundresses and domestic laborers and servants. Female slaves also served as the town prostitutes.
Some Cuban women could gain freedom by having children with white men. As in other Latin cultures, there were looser borders with the mulatto or mixed-race population. Sometimes men who took slaves as wives or concubines freed both them and their children. As in New Orleans and Saint-Domingue, mulattos began to be classified as a third group between the European colonists and African slaves. Freedmen, generally of mixed race, came to represent 20% of the total Cuban population and 41% of the non-white Cuban population.
Planters encouraged Afro-Cuban slaves to have children in order to reproduce their work force. The masters wanted to pair strong and large-built black men with healthy black women. They were placed in the barracoons and forced to have sex and create offspring of “breed stock” children, who would sell for around 500 pesos. The planters needed children to be born to replace slaves who died under the harsh regime. Sometimes if the overseers did not like the quality of children, they separate the parents and sent the mother back to working in the fields.
Both women and men were subject to the punishments of violence and humiliating abuse. Slaves who misbehaved or disobeyed their masters were often placed in stocks in the depths of the boiler houses where they were abandoned for days at a time, and oftentimes two to three months. These wooden stocks were made in two types: lying-down or stand-up types. women were punished, even when pregnant. They were subjected to whippings: they had to lie "face down over a scooped-out piece of round [earth] to protect their bellies." Some masters reportedly whipped pregnant women in the belly, often causing miscarriages. The wounds were treated with “compresses of tobacco leaves, urine and salt."
Slavery in Haiti started with the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the island in 1492. The practice was devastating to the native population. Following the indigenous Taíno's near decimation from forced labour, disease and war, the Spanish, under advisement of the Catholic priest Bartolomeu de las Casas, and with the blessing of the Catholic church began engaging in earnest in the kidnapped and forced labour of enslaved Africans. During the French colonial period beginning in 1625, the economy of Haiti (then known as Saint-Domingue) was based on slavery, and the practice there was regarded as the most brutal in the world.
Following the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697, Hispaniola was divided between France and Spain. France received the western third and subsequently named it Saint-Domingue. To develop it into sugarcane plantations, the French imported thousands of slaves from Africa. Sugar was a lucrative commodity crop throughout the 18th century. By 1789, approximately 40,000 white colonists lived in Saint-Domingue. The whites were vastly outnumbered by the tens of thousands of African slaves they had imported to work on their plantations, which were primarily devoted to the production of sugarcane. In the north of the island, slaves were able to retain many ties to African cultures, religion and language; these ties were continually being renewed by newly imported Africans. Blacks outnumbered whites by about ten to one.
The French-enacted "Code Noir" ("Black Code"), prepared by Jean-Baptiste Colbert and ratified by Louis XIV, had established rules on slave treatment and permissible freedoms. Saint-Domingue has been described as one of the most brutally efficient slave colonies; one-third of newly imported Africans died within a few years. Many slaves died from diseases such as smallpox and typhoid fever. They had birth rates around 3 percent, and there is evidence that some women aborted fetuses, or committed infanticide, rather allow their children to live within the bonds of slavery.
As in its Louisiana colony, the French colonial government allowed some rights to free people of color: the mixed-race descendants of white male colonists and black female slaves (and later, mixed-race women). Over time, many were released from slavery. They established a separate social class. White French Creole fathers frequently sent their mixed-race sons to France for their education. Some men of color were admitted into the military. More of the free people of color lived in the south of the island, near Port-au-Prince, and many intermarried within their community. They frequently worked as artisans and tradesmen, and began to own some property. Some became slave holders. The free people of color petitioned the colonial government to expand their rights.
Slaves that made it to Haiti from the trans-Atlantic journey and slaves born in Haiti were first documented in Haiti's archives and transferred to France's Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. , these records are in The National Archives of France. According to the 1788 Census, Haiti's population consisted of nearly 40,000 whites, 30,000 free coloureds and 450,000 slaves.
The Haitian Revolution of 1804, the only successful slave revolt in human history, precipitated the end of slavery in all French colonies.
Jamaica was colonized by the Taino tribes prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1494. The Spanish enslaved many of the Taino; some escaped, but most died from European diseases and overwork. The Spaniards also introduced the first African slaves.
The Spanish colonists did not bring women in the first expeditions and took Taíno women for their common-law wives, resulting in mestizo children. Sexual violence with the Taíno women by the Spanish was also common.
Although the African slave population in the 1670s and 1680s never exceeded 10,000, by 1800 it had increased to over 300,000.
In 1519, Hernán Cortés brought the first modern slave to the area. In the mid-16th century, the second viceroy to Mexico, Luis de Velasco, prohibited slavery of the Aztecs. A labor shortage resulted as the Aztecs were either killed or died from disease. This led to the African slaves being imported, as they were not susceptible to smallpox. In exchange, many Africans were afforded the opportunity to buy their freedom, while eventually others were granted their freedom by their masters.
When Ponce de León and the Spaniards arrived on the island of Borikén (Puerto Rico), they enslaved Taíno tribes on the island, forcing them to work in the gold mines and in the construction of forts. Many Taíno died, particularly from smallpox, of which they had no immunity. Other Taínos committed suicide or left the island after the failed Taíno revolt of 1511. The Spanish colonists, fearing the loss of their labor force, complained the courts that they needed manpower. As an alternative, Las Casas suggested the importation and use of African slaves. In 1517, the Spanish Crown permitted its subjects to import twelve slaves each, thereby beginning the slave trade on the colonies.
African slaves were legally branded with a hot iron on the forehead, prevented their "theft" or lawsuits that challenged their captivity. The colonists continued this branding practice for more than 250 years. They were sent to work in the gold mines, or in the island's ginger and sugar fields. They were allowed to live with their families in a hut on the master's land, and given a patch of land where they could farm, but otherwise were subjected to harsh treatment; including sexual abuse as the majority of colonists had arrived without women; many of them intermarried with the Africans or Taínos. Their mixed-race descendants formed the first generations of the early Puerto Rican population.
The slaves faced heavy discrimination and had no opportunity for advancement, though they were educated by their masters. The Spaniards considered the Africans superior to the Taíno, since the latter were unwilling to assimilate. The slaves, in contrast, had little choice but to adapt. Many converted to Christianity and were given their masters' surnames.
By 1570, the colonists found that the gold mines were depleted, relegating the island to a garrison for passing ships. The cultivation of crops such as tobacco, cotton, cocoa, and ginger became the cornerstone of the economy. With rising demand for sugar on the international market, major planters increased their labor-intensive cultivation and processing of sugar cane. Sugar plantations supplanted mining as Puerto Rico's main industry and kept demand high for African slavery.
After 1784, Spain provided five ways by which slaves could obtain freedom. Five years later, the Spanish Crown issued the "Royal Decree of Graces of 1789", which set new rules related to the slave trade and added restrictions to the granting of freedman status. The decree granted its subjects the right to purchase slaves and to participate in the flourishing slave trade in the Caribbean. Later that year a new slave code, also known as "El Código Negro" (The Black Code), was introduced.
Under "El Código Negro", a slave could buy his freedom, in the event that his master was willing to sell, by paying the price sought in installments. Slaves were allowed to earn money during their spare time by working as shoemakers, cleaning clothes, or selling the produce they grew on their own plots of land. For the freedom of their newborn child, not yet baptized, they paid at half the going price for a baptized child. Many of these freedmen started settlements in the areas which became known as Cangrejos (Santurce), Carolina, Canóvanas, Loíza, and Luquillo. Some became slave owners themselves. Despite these paths to freedom, from 1790 onwards, the number of slaves more than doubled in Puerto Rico as a result of the dramatic expansion of the sugar industry in the island.
On March 22, 1873, slavery was legally abolished in Puerto Rico. However, slaves were not emancipated but rather had to buy their own freedom, at whatever price was set by their last masters. They were also required to work for another three years for their former masters, for other colonists interested in their services, or for the state in order to pay some compensation. Between 1527 and 1873, slaves in Puerto Rico had carried out more than twenty revolts.
The planters of the Dutch colony relied heavily on African slaves to cultivate, harvest and process the commodity crops of coffee, cocoa, sugar cane and cotton plantations along the rivers. Planters' treatment of the slaves was notoriously bad. Historian C. R. Boxer wrote that "man's inhumanity to man just about reached its limits in Surinam."
Many slaves escaped the plantations. With the help of the native South Americans living in the adjoining rain forests, these runaway slaves established a new and unique culture in the interior that was highly successful in its own right. They were known collectively in English as Maroons, in French as "Nèg'Marrons" (literally meaning "brown negroes", that is "pale-skinned negroes"), and in Dutch as "Marrons." The Maroons gradually developed several independent tribes through a process of ethnogenesis, as they were made up of slaves from different African ethnicities. These tribes include the Saramaka, Paramaka, Ndyuka or Aukan, Kwinti, Aluku or Boni, and Matawai.
The Maroons often raided plantations to recruit new members from the slaves and capture women, as well as to acquire weapons, food and supplies. They sometimes killed planters and their families in the raids. The colonists also mounted armed campaigns against the Maroons, who generally escaped through the rain forest, which they knew much better than did the coloniss. To end hostilities, in the 18th century the European colonial authorities signed several peace treaties with different tribes. They granted the Maroons sovereign status and trade rights in their inland territories, giving them autonomy.
In 1861–63, President Abraham Lincoln of the United States and his administration looked abroad for places to relocate freed slaves who wanted to leave the United States. It opened negotiations with the Dutch government regarding African-American emigration to and colonization of the Dutch colony of Suriname in South America. Nothing came of it and after 1864, the proposal was dropped.
The Netherlands abolished slavery in Suriname, in 1863, under a gradual process that required slaves to work on plantations for 10 transition years for minimal pay, which was considered as partial compensation for their masters. After 1873, most freedmen largely abandoned the plantations where they had worked for several generations in favor of the capital city, Paramaribo.
Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of human chattel enslavement, primarily of Africans and African Americans, that existed in the United States of America in the 18th and 19th centuries after it gained independence from the British and before the end of the American Civil War. Slavery had been practiced in British America from early colonial days and was legal in all Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
By the time of the American Revolution, the status of slave had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry. The United States became polarized over the issue of slavery, represented by the slave and free states divided by the Mason–Dixon line, which separated free Pennsylvania from slave Maryland and Delaware.
Congress, during the Jefferson administration prohibited the importation of slaves, effective 1808, although smuggling (illegal importing) was not unusual. Domestic slave trading, however, continued at a rapid pace, driven by labor demands from the development of cotton plantations in the Deep South. Those states attempted to extend slavery into the new western territories to keep their share of political power in the nation. Such laws proposed to Congress to continue the spread of slavery into newly ratified states include the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
The treatment of slaves in the United States varied widely depending on conditions, times, and places. The power relationships of slavery corrupted many whites who had authority over slaves, with children showing their own cruelty. Masters and overseers resorted to physical punishments to impose their wills. Slaves were punished by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding and imprisonment. Punishment was most often meted out in response to disobedience or perceived infractions, but sometimes abuse was carried out to re-assert the dominance of the master or overseer of the slave. Treatment was usually harsher on large plantations, which were often managed by overseers and owned by absentee slaveholders.
William Wells Brown, who escaped to freedom, reported that on one plantation, slave men were required to pick 80 pounds of cotton per day, while women were required to pick 70 pounds per day; if any slave failed in his or her quota, they were subject to whip lashes for each pound they were short. The whipping post stood next to the cotton scales. A New York man who attended a slave auction in the mid-19th century reported that at least three-quarters of the male slaves he saw at sale had scars on their backs from whipping. By contrast, small slave-owning families had closer relationships between the owners and slaves; this sometimes resulted in a more humane environment but was not a given.
More than one million slaves were sold from the Upper South, which had a surplus of labor, and taken to the Deep South in a forced migration, splitting up many families. New communities of African-American culture were developed in the Deep South, and the total slave population in the South eventually reached 4 million before liberation. In the 19th century, proponents of slavery often defended the institution as a "necessary evil". White people of that time feared that emancipation of black slaves would have more harmful social and economic consequences than the continuation of slavery. The French writer and traveler Alexis de Tocqueville, in "Democracy in America" (1835), expressed opposition to slavery while observing its effects on American society. He felt that a multiracial society without slavery was untenable, as he believed that prejudice against black people increased as they were granted more rights. Others, like James Henry Hammond argued that slavery was a "positive good" stating: "Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement."
The Southern state governments wanted to keep a balance between the number of slave and free states to maintain a political balance of power in Congress. The new territories acquired from Britain, France, and Mexico were the subject of major political compromises. By 1850, the newly rich cotton-growing South was threatening to secede from the Union, and tensions continued to rise. Many white Southern Christians, including church ministers, attempted to justify their support for slavery as modified by Christian paternalism. The largest denominations, the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, split over the slavery issue into regional organizations of the North and South.
When Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery, according to the 1860 U.S. census, roughly 400,000 individuals, representing 8% of all U.S. families, owned nearly 4,000,000 slaves. One-third of Southern families owned slaves. The South was heavily invested in slavery. As such, upon Lincoln's election, seven states broke away to form the Confederate States of America. The first six states to secede held the greatest number of slaves in the South. Shortly after, over the issue of slavery, the United States erupted into an all out Civil War, with slavery legally ceasing as an institution following the war in December 1865.
In 2018, the "Orlando Sentinel" reported some private Christian schools in Florida as teaching students a creationist curriculum which includes assertions such as, “most black and white southerners had long lived together in harmony” and that “power-hungry individuals stirred up the people” leading to the Civil Rights Movement.
Slavery has existed all throughout Asia, and forms of slavery still exist today.
Slavery has taken various forms throughout China's history. It was reportedly abolished as a legally recognized institution, including in a 1909 law fully enacted in 1910, although the practice continued until at least 1949.
The Tang dynasty purchased Western slaves from the Radhanite Jews. Tang Chinese soldiers and pirates enslaved Koreans, Turks, Persians, Indonesians, and people from Inner Mongolia, central Asia, and northern India. The greatest source of slaves came from southern tribes, including Thais and aboriginals from the southern provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Guizhou. Malays, Khmers, Indians, and "black skinned" peoples (who were either Austronesian Negritos of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, or Africans, or both) were also purchased as slaves in the Tang dynasty.
In the 17th century Qing Dynasty, there was a hereditarily servile people called "Booi Aha" (Manchu:booi niyalma; Chinese transliteration: 包衣阿哈), which is a Manchu word literally translated as "household person" and sometimes rendered as "nucai." The Manchu was establishing close personal and paternalist relationship between masters and their slaves, as Nurhachi said, "The Master should love the slaves and eat the same food as him". However, booi aha "did not correspond exactly to the Chinese category of "bond-servant slave" (Chinese:奴僕); instead, it was a relationship of personal dependency on a master which in theory guaranteed close personal relationships and equal treatment, even though many western scholars would directly translate "booi" as "bond-servant" (some of the "booi" even had their own servant).
Chinese Muslim (Tungans) Sufis who were charged with practicing xiejiao (heterodox religion), were punished by exile to Xinjiang and being sold as a slave to other Muslims, such as the Sufi begs. Han Chinese who committed crimes such as those dealing with opium became slaves to the begs, this practice was administered by Qing law. Most Chinese in Altishahr were exile slaves to Turkestani Begs. While free Chinese merchants generally did not engage in relationships with East Turkestani women, some of the Chinese slaves belonging to begs, along with Green Standard soldiers, Bannermen, and Manchus, engaged in affairs with the East Turkestani women that were serious in nature.
Slavery in India was widespread by the 6th century BC, and perhaps even as far back as the Vedic period. Slavery intensified during the Muslim domination of northern India after the 11th-century. Slavery existed in Portuguese India after the 16th century. The Dutch, too, largely dealt in Abyssian slaves, known in India as Habshis or Sheedes. Arakan/Bengal, Malabar, and Coromandel remained the largest sources of forced labour until the 1660s.
Between 1626 and 1662, the Dutch exported on an average 150–400 slaves annually from the Arakan-Bengal coast. During the first 30 years of Batavia's existence, Indian and Arakanese slaves provided the main labour force of the Dutch East India Company, Asian headquarters. An increase in Coromandel slaves occurred during a famine following the revolt of the Nayaka Indian rulers of South India (Tanjavur, Senji, and Madurai) against Bijapur overlordship (1645) and the subsequent devastation of the Tanjavur countryside by the Bijapur army. Reportedly, more than 150,000 people were taken by the invading Deccani Muslim armies to Bijapur and Golconda. In 1646, 2,118 slaves were exported to Batavia, the overwhelming majority from southern Coromandel. Some slaves were also acquired further south at Tondi, Adirampatnam, and Kayalpatnam. Another increase in slaving took place between 1659 and 1661 from Tanjavur as a result of a series of successive Bijapuri raids. At Nagapatnam, Pulicat, and elsewhere, the company purchased 8,000–10,000 slaves, the bulk of whom were sent to Ceylon, while a small portion were exported to Batavia and Malacca. Finally, following a long drought in Madurai and southern Coromandel, in 1673, which intensified the prolonged Madurai-Maratha struggle over Tanjavur and punitive fiscal practices, thousands of people from Tanjavur, mostly children, were sold into slavery and exported by Asian traders from Nagapattinam to Aceh, Johor, and other slave markets.
In September 1687, 665 slaves were exported by the English from Fort St. George, Madras. And, in 1694–96, when warfare once more ravaged South India, a total of 3,859 slaves were imported from Coromandel by private individuals into Ceylon.
The volume of the total Dutch Indian Ocean slave trade has been estimated to be about 15–30% of the Atlantic slave trade, slightly smaller than the trans-Saharan slave trade, and one-and-a-half to three times the size of the Swahili and Red Sea coast and the Dutch West India Company slave trades.
According to Sir Henry Bartle Frere (who sat on the Viceroy's Council), there were an estimated 8 or 9 million slaves in India in 1841. About 15% of the population of Malabar were slaves. Slavery was legally abolished in the possessions of the East India Company by the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.
The hill tribe people in Indochina were "hunted incessantly and carried off as slaves by the Siamese (Thai), the Anamites (Vietnamese), and the Cambodians". A Siamese military campaign in Laos in 1876 was described by a British observer as having been "transformed into slave-hunting raids on a large scale". The census, taken in 1879, showed that 6% of the population in the Malay sultanate of Perak were slaves. Enslaved people made up about two-thirds of the population in part of North Borneo in the 1880s.
After the Portuguese first made contact with Japan in 1543, a large scale slave trade developed in which Portuguese purchased Japanese as slaves in Japan and sold them to various locations overseas, including Portugal, throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. Many documents mention the large slave trade along with protests against the enslavement of Japanese. Japanese slaves are believed to be the first of their nation to end up in Europe, and the Portuguese purchased large numbers of Japanese slave girls to bring to Portugal for sexual purposes, as noted by the Church in 1555. Japanese slave women were even sold as concubines to Asian lascar and African crew members, along with their European counterparts serving on Portuguese ships trading in Japan, mentioned by Luis Cerqueira, a Portuguese Jesuit, in a 1598 document. Japanese slaves were brought by the Portuguese to Macau, where they were enslaved to Portuguese or became slaves to other slaves.
Some Korean slaves were bought by the Portuguese and brought back to Portugal from Japan, where they had been among the tens of thousands of Korean prisoners of war transported to Japan during the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–98). Historians pointed out that at the same time Hideyoshi expressed his indignation and outrage at the Portuguese trade in Japanese slaves, he was engaging in a mass slave trade of Korean prisoners of war in Japan.
Fillippo Sassetti saw some Chinese and Japanese slaves in Lisbon among the large slave community in 1578, although most of the slaves were black.
The Portuguese "highly regarded" Asian slaves from the East much more "than slaves from sub-Saharan Africa". The Portuguese attributed qualities like intelligence and industriousness to Chinese and Japanese slaves.
King Sebastian of Portugal feared rampant slavery was having a negative effect on Catholic proselytization, so he commanded that it be banned in 1571.Hideyoshi was so disgusted that his own Japanese people were being sold "en masse" into slavery on Kyushu, that he wrote a letter to Jesuit Vice-Provincial Gaspar Coelho on July 24, 1587, to demand the Portuguese, Siamese (Thai), and Cambodians stop purchasing and enslaving Japanese and return Japanese slaves who ended up as far as India. Hideyoshi blamed the Portuguese and Jesuits for this slave trade and banned Christian proselytizing as a result. In 1595, a law was passed by Portugal banning the selling and buying of Chinese and Japanese slaves.
During the Joseon period, the nobi population could fluctuate up to about one-third of the population, but on average the nobi made up about 10% of the total population. The nobi system declined beginning in the 18th century. Since the outset of the Joseon dynasty and especially beginning in the 17th century, there was harsh criticism among prominent thinkers in Korea about the nobi system. Even within the Joseon government, there were indications of a shift in attitude toward the nobi. King Yeongjo implemented a policy of gradual emancipation in 1775, and he and his successor King Jeongjo made many proposals and developments that lessened the burden on nobi, which led to the emancipation of the vast majority of government nobi in 1801. In addition, population growth, numerous escaped slaves, growing commercialization of agriculture, and the rise of the independent small farmer class contributed to the decline in the number of nobi to about 1.5% of the total population by 1858. The hereditary nobi system was officially abolished around 1886–87, and the rest of the nobi system was abolished with the Gabo Reform of 1894. However, slavery did not completely disappear in Korea until 1930, during Imperial Japanese rule.
During the Imperial Japanese occupation of Korea around World War II, some Koreans were used in forced labor by the Imperial Japanese, in conditions which have been compared to slavery. These included women forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army before and during World War II, known as "comfort women".
Slaves ("he mōkai") had a recognised social role in traditional Māori society in New Zealand.
Blackbirding occurred in the Pacific, especially in the 19th century.
In Constantinople, about one-fifth of the population consisted of slaves. The city was a major centre of the slave trade in the 15th and later centuries.
Slaves were provided by Tatar raids on Slavic villages but also by conquest and the suppression of rebellions, in the aftermath of which entire populations were sometimes enslaved and sold across the Empire, reducing the risk of future rebellion. The Ottomans also purchased slaves from traders who brought slaves into the Empire from Europe and Africa. It has been estimated that some 200,000 slaves – mainly Circassians – were imported into the Ottoman Empire between 1800 and 1909. As late as 1908, women slaves were still sold in the Ottoman Empire.
Until the late 18th century, the Crimean Khanate (a Muslim Tatar state) maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East. The slaves were captured in southern Russia, Poland-Lithuania, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Circassia by Tatar horsemen and sold in the Crimean port of Kaffa. About 2 million mostly Christian slaves were exported over the 16th and 17th centuries until the Crimean Khanate was destroyed by the Russian Empire in 1783.
A slave market for captured Russian and Persian slaves was centred in the Central Asian khanate of Khiva. In the early 1840s, the population of the Uzbek states of Bukhara and Khiva included about 900,000 slaves. Darrel P. Kaiser wrote, "Kazakh-Kirghiz tribesmen kidnapped 1573 settlers from colonies [German settlements in Russia] in 1774 alone and only half were successfully ransomed. The rest were killed or enslaved."
Even though slavery is now outlawed in every country, the number of slaves today is estimated as between 12 million and 29.8 million. According to a broad definition of slavery, there were 27 million people in slavery in 1999, spread all over the world. In 2005, the International Labour Organization provided an estimate of 12.3 million forced labourers. Siddharth Kara has also provided an estimate of 28.4 million slaves at the end of 2006 divided into three categories: bonded labour/debt bondage (18.1 million), forced labour (7.6 million), and trafficked slaves (2.7 million). Kara provides a dynamic model to calculate the number of slaves in the world each year, with an estimated 29.2 million at the end of 2009.
According to a 2003 report by Human Rights Watch, an estimated 15 million children in debt bondage in India work in slavery-like conditions to pay off their family's debts.
A report by the Walk Free Foundation in 2013, found India had the highest number of slaves, nearly 14 million, followed by China (2.9 million), Pakistan (2.1 million), Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, Thailand, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Bangladesh; while the countries with the highest proportions of slaves were Mauritania, Haiti, Pakistan, India and Nepal.
In June 2013, U.S. State Department released a report on slavery. It placed Russia, China, and Uzbekistan in the worst offenders category. Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and Zimbabwe were at the lowest level. The list also included Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait among a total of 21 countries.
The Walk Free Foundation reported in 2018 that slavery in wealthy Western societies is much more prevalent than previously known, in particular the United States and Great Britain, which have 403,000 (one in 800) and 136,000 slaves respectively. Andrew Forrest, founder of the organization, said that "The United States is one of the most advanced countries in the world yet has more than 400,000 modern slaves working under forced labor conditions." An estimated 40.3 million are enslaved globally, with North Korea having the most slaves at 2.6 million (one in 10). The foundation defines contemporary slavery as "situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power, or deception."
During the Second Libyan Civil War, Libyans started capturing Sub-Saharan African migrants trying to get to Europe through Libya and selling them on slave markets or holding them hostage for ransom Women are often raped, used as sex slaves, or sold to brothels. Child migrants suffer from abuse and child rape in Libya.
In Mauritania, the last country to abolish slavery (in 1981), it is estimated that 20% of its 3 million population, are enslaved as bonded laborers. Slavery in Mauritania was criminalized in August 2007. However, although slavery, as a practice, was legally banned in 1981, it was not a crime to own a slave until 2007. Although many slaves have escaped or have been freed since 2007, , only one slave owner had been sentenced to serve time in prison.
While American slaves in 1809 were sold for around $40,000 (in inflation adjusted dollars), a slave nowadays can be bought for just $90, making replacement more economical than providing long-term care. Slavery is a multibillion-dollar industry with estimates of up to $35 billion generated annually.
Victims of human trafficking are typically recruited through deceit or trickery (such as a false job offer, false migration offer, or false marriage offer), sale by family members, recruitment by former slaves, or outright abduction. Victims are forced into a "debt slavery" situation by coercion, deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat, physical force, debt bondage or even force-feeding with drugs to control their victims. "Annually, according to U.S. government-sponsored research completed in 2006, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders, which does not include millions trafficked within their own countries. Approximately 80% of transnational victims are women and girls, and up to 50% are minors, reports the U.S. State Department in a 2008 study.
While the majority of trafficking victims are women who are forced into prostitution (in which case the practice is called sex trafficking), victims also include men, women and children who are forced into manual labour. Because of the illegal nature of human trafficking, its extent is unknown. A U.S. government report, published in 2005, estimates that about 700,000 people worldwide are trafficked across borders each year. This figure does not include those who are trafficked internally. Another research effort revealed that roughly 1.5 million individuals are trafficked either internally or internationally each year, of which about 500,000 are sex trafficking victims.
Slavery has existed, in one form or another, throughout recorded human history – as have, in various periods, movements to free large or distinct groups of slaves.
Ashoka, who ruled the Maurya Empire from 269–232 BCE, abolished the slave trade but not slavery. The Qin dynasty, which ruled China from 221 to 206 BC, abolished slavery and discouraged serfdom. However, many of its laws were overturned when the dynasty was overthrown. Slavery was again abolished by Wang Mang in China in 17 CE but was reinstituted after his assassination.
The Spanish colonization of the Americas sparked a discussion about the right to enslave Native Americans. A prominent critic of slavery in the Spanish New World colonies was Bartolomé de las Casas, who opposed the enslavement of Native Americans, and as well as Africans in America.
One of the first protests against slavery came from German and Dutch Quakers in Pennsylvania in 1688. In 1777, Vermont, at the time an independent nation, became the first portion of what would become the United States to abolish slavery.
In the United States, all of the northern states had abolished slavery by 1804, with New Jersey being the last to act. Abolitionist pressure produced a series of small steps towards emancipation. After the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves went into effect on January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited, but not the internal slave trade, nor involvement in the international slave trade externally. Legal slavery persisted; most of those slaves already in the U.S. were legally emancipated only in 1863. Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting the Underground Railroad. Violent clashes between anti-slavery and pro-slavery Americans included Bleeding Kansas, a series of political and armed disputes in 1854–1861 as to whether Kansas would join the United States as a slave or free state. By 1860, the total number of slaves reached almost four million, and the American Civil War, beginning in 1861, led to the end of slavery in the United States. In 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves held in the Confederate States; the 13th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution prohibited most forms of slavery throughout the country.
Many of the freed slaves became sharecroppers and indentured servants. In this manner, some became tied to the very parcel of land into which they had been born a slave having little freedom or economic opportunity because of Jim Crow laws which perpetuated discrimination, limited education, promoted persecution without due process and resulted in continued poverty. Fear of reprisals such as unjust incarcerations and lynchings deterred upward mobility further.
France abolished slavery in 1794.
One of the most significant milestones in the campaign to abolish slavery throughout the world occurred in England in 1772, with British Judge Lord Mansfield, whose opinion in Somersett's Case was widely taken to have held that slavery was illegal in England. This judgement also laid down the principle that slavery contracted in other jurisdictions could not be enforced in England.
Sons of Africa was a late 18th-century British group that campaigned to end slavery. Its members were Africans in London, freed slaves who included Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano and other leading members of London's black community. It was closely connected to the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, a non-denominational group founded in 1787, whose members included Thomas Clarkson. British Member of Parliament William Wilberforce led the anti-slavery movement in the United Kingdom, although the groundwork was an anti-slavery essay by Clarkson. Wilberforce was urged by his close friend, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, to make the issue his own and was also given support by reformed Evangelical John Newton. The Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 25, 1807, making the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire, Wilberforce also campaigned for abolition of slavery in the British Empire, which he lived to see in the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
After the 1807 act abolishing the slave trade was passed, these campaigners switched to encouraging other countries to follow suit, notably France and the British colonies. Between 1808 and 1860, the British West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard. Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping King of Lagos", deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers.
In 1839, the world's oldest international human rights organization, Anti-Slavery International, was formed in Britain by Joseph Sturge, which campaigned to outlaw slavery in other countries. There were celebrations in 2007 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom through the work of the British Anti-Slavery Society.
In the 1860s, David Livingstone's reports of atrocities within the Arab slave trade in Africa stirred up the interest of the British public, reviving the flagging abolitionist movement. The Royal Navy throughout the 1870s attempted to suppress "this abominable Eastern trade", at Zanzibar in particular. In 1905, the French abolished indigenous slavery in most of French West Africa.
On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which declared freedom from slavery is an internationally recognized human right. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
In 2014, for the first time in history, major leaders of many religions, Buddhist, Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim met to sign a shared commitment against modern-day slavery; the declaration they signed calls for the elimination of slavery and human trafficking by 2020. The signatories were: Pope Francis, Mātā Amṛtānandamayī, Bhikkhuni Thich Nu Chân Không (representing Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh), Datuk K Sri Dhammaratana, Chief High Priest of Malaysia, Rabbi Abraham Skorka, Rabbi David Rosen, Abbas Abdalla Abbas Soliman, Undersecretary of State of Al Azhar Alsharif (representing Mohamed Ahmed El-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar), Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi al-Modarresi, Sheikh Naziyah Razzaq Jaafar, Special advisor of Grand Ayatollah (representing Grand Ayatollah Sheikh Basheer Hussain al Najafi), Sheikh Omar Abboud, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Metropolitan Emmanuel of France (representing Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.)
Groups such as the American Anti-Slavery Group, Anti-Slavery International, Free the Slaves, the Anti-Slavery Society, and the Norwegian Anti-Slavery Society continue to campaign to eliminate slavery.
On May 21, 2001, the National Assembly of France passed the Taubira law, recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity. Apologies on behalf of African nations, for their role in trading their countrymen into slavery, remain an open issue since slavery was practiced in Africa even before the first Europeans arrived and the Atlantic slave trade was performed with a high degree of involvement of several African societies. The black slave market was supplied by well-established slave trade networks controlled by local African societies and individuals.
There is adequate evidence citing case after case of African control of segments of the trade. Several African nations such as the Calabar and other southern parts of Nigeria had economies depended solely on the trade. African peoples such as the Imbangala of Angola and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania would serve as middlemen or roving bands warring with other African nations to capture Africans for Europeans.
Several historians have made important contributions to the global understanding of the African side of the Atlantic slave trade. By arguing that African merchants determined the assemblage of trade goods accepted in exchange for slaves, many historians argue for African agency and ultimately a shared responsibility for the slave trade.
In 1999, President Mathieu Kerekou of Benin issued a national apology for the central role Africans played in the Atlantic slave trade. Luc Gnacadja, minister of environment and housing for Benin, later said: "The slave trade is a shame, and we do repent for it." Researchers estimate that 3 million slaves were exported out of the Slave Coast bordering the Bight of Benin. President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana also apologized for his country's involvement in the slave trade.
The issue of an apology is linked to reparations for slavery and is still being pursued by entities across the world. For example, the Jamaican Reparations Movement approved its declaration and action plan. In 2007, British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a formal apology for Great Britain's involvement in slavery.
On February 25, 2007, the Commonwealth of Virginia resolved to 'profoundly regret' and apologize for its role in the institution of slavery. Unique and the first of its kind in the U.S., the apology was unanimously passed in both Houses as Virginia approached the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown.
On August 24, 2007, Mayor Ken Livingstone of London apologized publicly for Britain's role in colonial slave trade. "You can look across there to see the institutions that still have the benefit of the wealth they created from slavery," he said, pointing towards the financial district. He claimed that London was still tainted by the horrors of slavery. Specifically, London outfitted, financed, and insured many of the ships, which helped fund the building of London's docks. Officials in Liverpool, which was a large slave trading port, apologized in 1999.
On July 30, 2008, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution apologizing for American slavery and subsequent discriminatory laws. In June 2009, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery". The news was welcomed by President Barack Obama, the nation's first president of African descent. Some of President Obama's ancestors may have been slave owners.
In 2010, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi apologized for Arab involvement in the slave trade, saying: "I regret the behavior of the Arabs… They brought African children to North Africa, they made them slaves, they sold them like animals, and they took them as slaves and traded them in a shameful way."
There have been movements to achieve reparations for those formerly held as slaves or for their descendants. Claims for reparations for being held in slavery are handled as a civil law matter in almost every country. This is often decried as a serious problem, since former slaves' relatives lack of money means they often have limited access to a potentially expensive and futile legal process. Mandatory systems of fines and reparations paid to an as yet undetermined group of claimants from fines, paid by unspecified parties, and collected by authorities have been proposed by advocates to alleviate this "civil court problem." Since in almost all cases there are no living ex-slaves or living ex-slave owners these movements have gained little traction. In nearly all cases the judicial system has ruled that the statute of limitations on these possible claims has long since expired.
The word "slavery" is often used as a pejorative to describe any activity in which one is coerced into performing. Some argue that military drafts and other forms of coerced government labour constitute "state-operated slavery." Some libertarians and anarcho-capitalists view government taxation as a form of slavery.
"Slavery" has been used by some anti-psychiatry proponents to define involuntary psychiatric patients, claiming there are no unbiased physical tests for mental illness and yet the psychiatric patient must follow the orders of the psychiatrist. They assert that instead of chains to control the slave, the psychiatrist uses drugs to control the mind. Drapetomania was a psychiatric diagnosis for a slave who did not want to be a slave.
Some proponents of animal rights have applied the term "slavery" to the condition of some or all human-owned animals, arguing that their status is comparable to that of human slaves.
The labor market, as institutionalized under today's market economic systems, has been criticized by mainstream socialists and by anarcho-syndicalists, who utilise the term wage slavery as a pejorative or dysphemism for wage labour. Socialists draw parallels between the trade of labour as a commodity and slavery. Cicero is also known to have suggested such parallels.
Film has been the most influential medium in the presentation of the history of slavery to the general public around the world. The American film industry has had a complex relationship with slavery and until recent decades often avoided the topic. Films such as "Birth of a Nation" (1915) and "Gone with the Wind" (1939) became controversial because they gave a favourable depiction. In 1940 "The Santa Fe Trail" gave a liberal but ambiguous interpretation of John Brown's attacks on slavery. "Song of the South" gave a favorable outlook on slavery in the United States in 1946.
The Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s made defiant slaves into heroes. The question of slavery in American memory necessarily involves its depictions in feature films.
Most Hollywood films used American settings, although "Spartacus" (1960), dealt with an actual revolt in the Roman Empire known as the Third Servile War. The revolt failed, and all the rebels were executed, but their spirit lived on according to the film. "Spartacus" stays surprisingly close to the historical record.
"The Last Supper" ("La última cena" in Spanish) was a 1976 film directed by Cuban Tomás Gutiérrez Alea about the teaching of Christianity to slaves in Cuba, and emphasizes the role of ritual and revolt. "Burn!" takes place on the imaginary Portuguese island of Queimada (where the locals speak Spanish) and it merges historical events that took place in Brazil, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Jamaica, and elsewhere.
Historians agree that films have largely shaped historical memories, but they debate issues of accuracy, plausibility, moralism, sensationalism, how facts are stretched in search of broader truths, and suitability for the classroom. Berlin argues that critics complain if the treatment emphasizes historical brutality, or if it glosses over the harshness to highlight the emotional impact of slavery. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27992 |
Supply chain management
In commerce, supply chain management (SCM), the management of the flow of goods and services, involves the movement and storage of raw materials, of work-in-process inventory, and of finished goods as well as end to end order fulfillment from point of origin to point of consumption. Interconnected, interrelated or interlinked networks, channels and node businesses combine in the provision of products and services required by end customers in a supply chain. Supply-chain management has been defined as the "design, planning, execution, control, and monitoring of supply-chain activities with the objective of creating net value, building a competitive infrastructure, leveraging worldwide logistics, synchronizing supply with demand and measuring performance globally."
SCM practice draws heavily from the areas of industrial engineering, systems engineering, operations management, logistics, procurement, information technology, and marketing and strives for an integrated approach. Marketing channels play an important role in supply-chain management. Current research in supply-chain management is concerned with topics related to sustainability and risk management, among others. Some suggest that the “people dimension” of SCM, ethical issues, internal integration, transparency/visibility, and human capital/talent management are topics that have, so far, been underrepresented on the research agenda.
Although it has the same goals as supply chain engineering, supply chain management is focused on a more traditional management and business based approach, whereas supply chain engineering is focused on a mathematical model based one.
Supply-chain management, techniques with the aim of coordinating all parts of SC from supplying raw materials to delivering and/or resumption of products, tries to minimize total costs with respect to existing conflicts among the chain partners. An example of these conflicts is the interrelation between the sale department desiring to have higher inventory levels to fulfill demands and the warehouse for which lower inventories are desired to reduce holding costs.
In 1982, Oscar Gomes, a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton introduced the term "supply chain management" to the public domain in an interview for the Financial Times. In 1983 WirtschaftsWoche in Germany published for the first time the results of an implemented and so called "Supply Chain Management project", led by Wolfgang Partsch.
In the mid-1990s, more than a decade later, the term "supply chain management" gained currency when a flurry of articles and books came out on the subject. Supply chains were originally defined as encompassing all activities associated with the flow and transformation of goods from raw materials through to the end user, as well as the associated information flows. Supply-chain management was then further defined as the integration of supply chain activities through improved supply-chain relationships to achieve a competitive advantage.
In the late 1990s, "supply-chain management" (SCM) rose to prominence, and operations managers began to use it in their titles with increasing regularity.
Other commonly accepted definitions of supply-chain management include:
A supply chain, as opposed to supply-chain management, is a set of organizations directly linked by one or more upstream and downstream flows of products, services, finances, or information from a source to a customer. Supply-chain management is the management of such a chain.
Supply-chain-management software includes tools or modules used to execute supply chain transactions, manage supplier relationships, and control associated business processes.
Supply-chain event management (SCEM) considers all possible events and factors that can disrupt a supply chain. With SCEM, possible scenarios can be created and solutions devised.
In many cases, the supply chain includes the collection of goods after consumer use for recycling. Including third-party logistics or other gathering agencies as part of the RM re-patriation process is a way of illustrating the new endgame strategy.
Supply-chain management is a cross-functional approach that includes managing the movement of raw materials into an organization, certain aspects of the internal processing of materials into finished goods, and the movement of finished goods out of the organization and toward the end consumer. As organizations strive to focus on core competencies and become more flexible, they reduce their ownership of raw materials sources and distribution channels. These functions are increasingly being outsourced to other firms that can perform the activities better or more cost effectively. The effect is to increase the number of organizations involved in satisfying customer demand, while reducing managerial control of daily logistics operations. Less control and more supply-chain partners lead to the creation of the concept of supply-chain management. The purpose of supply-chain management is to improve trust and collaboration among supply-chain partners thus improving inventory visibility and the velocity of inventory movement. in this section we have to communicate with all the vendors, suppliers and after that we have to take some comparisons after that we have to place the order.
Organizations increasingly find that they must rely on effective supply chains, or networks, to compete in the global market and networked economy. In Peter Drucker's (1998) new management paradigms, this concept of business relationships extends beyond traditional enterprise boundaries and seeks to organize entire business processes throughout a value chain of multiple companies.
In recent decades, globalization, outsourcing, and information technology have enabled many organizations, such as Dell and Hewlett Packard, to successfully operate collaborative supply networks in which each specialized business partner focuses on only a few key strategic activities. This inter-organisational supply network can be acknowledged as a new form of organisation. However, with the complicated interactions among the players, the network structure fits neither "market" nor "hierarchy" categories. It is not clear what kind of performance impacts different supply-network structures could have on firms, and little is known about the coordination conditions and trade-offs that may exist among the players. From a systems perspective, a complex network structure can be decomposed into individual component firms. Traditionally, companies in a supply network concentrate on the inputs and outputs of the processes, with little concern for the internal management working of other individual players. Therefore, the choice of an internal management control structure is known to impact local firm performance.
In the 21st century, changes in the business environment have contributed to the development of supply-chain networks. First, as an outcome of globalization and the proliferation of multinational companies, joint ventures, strategic alliances, and business partnerships, significant success factors were identified, complementing the earlier "just-in-time", lean manufacturing, and agile manufacturing practices. Second, technological changes, particularly the dramatic fall in communication costs (a significant component of transaction costs), have led to changes in coordination among the members of the supply chain network.
Many researchers have recognized supply network structures as a new organisational form, using terms such as "Keiretsu", "Extended Enterprise", "Virtual Corporation", "Global Production Network", and "Next Generation Manufacturing System". In general, such a structure can be defined as "a group of semi-independent organisations, each with their capabilities, which collaborate in ever-changing constellations to serve one or more markets in order to achieve some business goal specific to that collaboration".
The importance of supply chain management proved crucial in the 2019-2020 fight against the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that swept across the world. During that event, governments in countries that had in place an effective domestic supply chain management had enough medical supplies to support their needs and enough to donate their surplus to front-line health workers in other jurisdictions. Some organizations were able to quickly develop foreign supply chains in order to import much needed medical supplies.
Supply-chain management is also important for organizational learning. Firms with geographically more extensive supply chains connecting diverse trading cliques tend to become more innovative and productive.
The security-management system for supply chains is described in ISO/IEC 28000 and ISO/IEC 28001 and related standards published jointly by the ISO and the IEC. Supply-Chain Management draws heavily from the areas of operations management, logistics, procurement, and information technology, and strives for an integrated approach.
Six major movements can be observed in the evolution of supply-chain management studies: creation, integration, and globalization, specialization phases one and two, and SCM 2.0.
The term "supply chain management" was first coined by Keith Oliver in 1982. However, the concept of a supply chain in management was of great importance long before, in the early 20th century, especially with the creation of the assembly line. The characteristics of this era of supply-chain management include the need for large-scale changes, re-engineering, downsizing driven by cost reduction programs, and widespread attention to Japanese management practices. However, the term became widely adopted after the publication of the seminal book "Introduction to Supply Chain Management" in 1999 by Robert B. Handfield and Ernest L. Nichols, Jr., which published over 25,000 copies and was translated into Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Russian.
This era of supply-chain-management studies was highlighted with the development of electronic data interchange (EDI) systems in the 1960s, and developed through the 1990s by the introduction of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. This era has continued to develop into the 21st century with the expansion of Internet-based collaborative systems. This era of supply-chain evolution is characterized by both increasing value added and reducing costs through integration.
A supply chain can be classified as a stage 1, 2 or 3 network. In a stage 1–type supply chain, systems such as production, storage, distribution, and material control are not linked and are independent of each other. In a stage 2 supply chain, these are integrated under one plan and enterprise resource planning (ERP) is enabled. A stage 3 supply chain is one that achieves vertical integration with upstream suppliers and downstream customers. An example of this kind of supply chain is Tesco.
It is the third movement of supply-chain-management development, the globalization era, can be characterized by the attention given to global systems of supplier relationships and the expansion of supply chains beyond national boundaries and into other continents. Although the use of global sources in organisations' supply chains can be traced back several decades (e.g., in the oil industry), it was not until the late 1980s that a considerable number of organizations started to integrate global sources into their core business. This era is characterized by the globalization of supply-chain management in organizations with the goal of increasing their competitive advantage, adding value, and reducing costs through global sourcing.
In the 1990s, companies began to focus on "core competencies" and specialization. They abandoned vertical integration, sold off non-core operations, and outsourced those functions to other companies. This changed management requirements, as the supply chain extended beyond the company walls and management was distributed across specialized supply-chain partnerships.
This transition also refocused the fundamental perspectives of each organization. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) became brand owners that required visibility deep into their supply base. They had to control the entire supply chain from above, instead of from within. Contract manufacturers had to manage bills of material with different part-numbering schemes from multiple OEMs and support customer requests for work-in-process visibility and vendor-managed inventory (VMI).
The specialization model creates manufacturing and distribution networks composed of several individual supply chains specific to producers, suppliers, and customers that work together to design, manufacture, distribute, market, sell, and service a product. This set of partners may change according to a given market, region, or channel, resulting in a proliferation of trading partner environments, each with its own unique characteristics and demands.
Specialization within the supply chain began in the 1980s with the inception of transportation brokerages, warehouse management (storage and inventory), and non-asset-based carriers, and has matured beyond transportation and logistics into aspects of supply planning, collaboration, execution, and performance management.
Market forces sometimes demand rapid changes from suppliers, logistics providers, locations, or customers in their role as components of supply-chain networks. This variability has significant effects on supply-chain infrastructure, from the foundation layers of establishing and managing electronic communication between trading partners, to more complex requirements such as the configuration of processes and work flows that are essential to the management of the network itself.
Supply-chain specialization enables companies to improve their overall competencies in the same way that outsourced manufacturing and distribution has done; it allows them to focus on their core competencies and assemble networks of specific, best-in-class partners to contribute to the overall value chain itself, thereby increasing overall performance and efficiency. The ability to quickly obtain and deploy this domain-specific supply-chain expertise without developing and maintaining an entirely unique and complex competency in house is a leading reason why supply-chain specialization is gaining popularity.
Outsourced technology hosting for supply-chain solutions debuted in the late 1990s and has taken root primarily in transportation and collaboration categories. This has progressed from the application service provider (ASP) model from roughly 1998 through 2003, to the on-demand model from approximately 2003 through 2006, to the software as a service (SaaS) model currently in focus today.
Building on globalization and specialization, the term "SCM 2.0" has been coined to describe both changes within supply chains themselves as well as the evolution of processes, methods, and tools to manage them in this new "era". The growing popularity of collaborative platforms is highlighted by the rise of TradeCard's supply-chain-collaboration platform, which connects multiple buyers and suppliers with financial institutions, enabling them to conduct automated supply-chain finance transactions.
Web 2.0 is a trend in the use of the World Wide Web that is meant to increase creativity, information sharing, and collaboration among users. At its core, the common attribute of Web 2.0 is to help navigate the vast information available on the Web in order to find what is being bought. It is the notion of a usable pathway. SCM 2.0 replicates this notion in supply chain operations. It is the pathway to SCM results, a combination of processes, methodologies, tools, and delivery options to guide companies to their results quickly as the complexity and speed of the supply-chain increase due to global competition; rapid price fluctuations; changing oil prices; short product life cycles; expanded specialization; near-, far-, and off-shoring; and talent scarcity.
Successful SCM requires a change from managing individual functions to integrating activities into key supply-chain processes. In an example scenario, a purchasing department places orders as its requirements become known. The marketing department, responding to customer demand, communicates with several distributors and retailers as it attempts to determine ways to satisfy this demand. Information shared between supply-chain partners can only be fully leveraged through process integration.
Supply-chain business-process integration involves collaborative work between buyers and suppliers, joint product development, common systems, and shared information. According to Lambert and Cooper (2000), operating an integrated supply chain requires a continuous information flow.
However, in many companies, management has concluded that optimizing product flows cannot be accomplished without implementing a process approach. The key supply-chain processes stated by Lambert (2004) are:
Much has been written about demand management. Best-in-class companies have similar characteristics, which include the following:
One could suggest other critical supply business processes that combine these processes stated by Lambert, such as:
Integration of suppliers into the new product development process was shown to have a major impact on product target cost, quality, delivery, and market share. Tapping into suppliers as a source of innovation requires an extensive process characterized by development of technology sharing, but also involves managing intellectual property issues.
There are gaps in the literature on supply-chain management studies at present (2015): there is no theoretical support for explaining the existence or the boundaries of supply-chain management. A few authors, such as Halldorsson et al., Ketchen and Hult (2006), and Lavassani et al. (2009), have tried to provide theoretical foundations for different areas related to supply chain by employing organizational theories, which may include the following:
However, the unit of analysis of most of these theories is not the supply chain but rather another system, such as the firm or the supplier-buyer relationship. Among the few exceptions is the relational view, which outlines a theory for considering dyads and networks of firms as a key unit of analysis for explaining superior individual firm performance (Dyer and Singh, 1998).
The management of supply chains involve a number of specific challenges regarding the organization of relationships among the different partners along the value chain. Formal and informal governance mechanisms are central elements in the management of supply chain. Research in supply chain management has noted the importance of using the appropriate combination of contracts and relational norms to mitigate the risks and prevent conflicts between supply chain partners. In turn, particular combinations of governance mechanisms may impact the relational dynamics within the supply chain.
In the study of supply-chain management, the concept of centroids has become an important economic consideration. A centroid is a location that has a high proportion of a country's population and a high proportion of its manufacturing, generally within . In the US, two major supply chain centroids have been defined, one near Dayton, Ohio, and a second near Riverside, California.
The centroid near Dayton is particularly important because it is closest to the population center of the US and Canada. Dayton is within 500 miles of 60% of the US population and manufacturing capacity, as well as 60% of Canada's population. The region includes the interchange between I-70 and I-75, one of the busiest in the nation, with 154,000 vehicles passing through per day, of which 30–35% are trucks hauling goods. In addition, the I-75 corridor is home to the busiest north-south rail route east of the Mississippi River.
In 2010, Wal-Mart announced a big change in its sourcing strategy. Initially, Wal-Mart relied on intermediaries in the sourcing process. It bought only 20% of its stock directly, but the rest were bought through the intermediaries. Therefore, the company came to realize that the presence of many intermediaries in the product sourcing was actually increasing the costs in the supply chain. To cut these costs, Wal-Mart decided to do away with intermediaries in the supply chain and started direct sourcing of its goods from the suppliers. Eduardo Castro-Wright, the then Vice President of Wal-Mart, set an ambitious goal of buying 80% of all Wal-Mart goods directly from the suppliers. Walmart started purchasing fruits and vegetables on a global scale, where it interacted directly with the suppliers of these goods. The company later engaged the suppliers of other goods, such as cloth and home electronics appliances, directly and eliminated the importing agents. The purchaser, in this case Wal-Mart, can easily direct the suppliers on how to manufacture certain products so that they can be acceptable to the consumers. Thus, Wal-Mart, through direct sourcing, manages to get the exact product quality as it expects, since it engages the suppliers in the producing of these products, hence quality consistency. Using agents in the sourcing process in most cases lead to inconsistency in the quality of the products, since the agent's source the products from different manufacturers that have varying qualities.
Wal-Mart managed to source directly 80% profit its stock; this has greatly eliminated the intermediaries and cut down the costs between 5-15%, as markups that are introduced by these middlemen in the supply chain are cut. This saves approximately $4–15 billion. This strategy of direct sourcing not only helped Wal-Mart in reducing the costs in the supply chain but also helped in the improvement of supply chain activities through boosting efficiency throughout the entire process. In other words, direct sourcing reduced the time that takes the company to source and stocks the products in its stock. The presence of the intermediaries elongated the time in the process of procurement, which sometimes led to delays in the supply of the commodities in the stores, thus, customers finding empty shelves. Wal-Mart adopted this strategy of sourcing through centralizing the entire process of procurement and sourcing by setting up four global merchandising points for general goods and clothing. The company instructed all the suppliers to bring their products to these central points that are located in different markets. The procurement team assesses the quality brought by the suppliers, buys the goods, and distributes them to various regional markets. The procurement and sourcing at centralized places helped the company to consolidate the suppliers.
The company has established four centralized points, including an office in Mexico City and Canada. Just a mere piloting test on combining the purchase of fresh apples across the United States, Mexico, and Canada led to the savings of about 10%. As a result, the company intended to increase centralization of its procurement in North America for all its fresh fruits and vegetables. Thus, centralization of the procurement process to various points where the suppliers would be meeting with the procurement team is the latest strategy which the company is implementing, and signs show that this strategy is going to cut costs and also improve the efficiency of the procumbent process.
Strategic vendor partnerships is another strategy the company is using in the sourcing process. Wal-Mart realized that in order for it to ensure consistency in the quality of the products it offers to the consumers and also maintain a steady supply of goods in its stores at a lower cost, it had to create strategic vendor partnerships with the suppliers. Wal-Mart identified and selected the suppliers who met its demand and at the same time offered it the best prices for the goods. It then made a strategic relationship with these vendors by offering and assuring the long-term and high volume of purchases in exchange for the lowest possible prices. Thus, the company has managed to source its products from same suppliers as bulks, but at lower prices. This enables the company to offer competitive prices for its products in its stores, hence, maintaining a competitive advantage over its competitors whose goods are a more expensive in comparison.
Another sourcing strategy Wal-Mart uses is implementing efficient communication relationships with the vendor networks; this is necessary to improve the material flow. The company has all the contacts with the suppliers whom they communicate regularly and make dates on when the goods would be needed, so that the suppliers get ready to deliver the goods in time. The efficient communication between the company's procurement team and the inventory management team enables the company to source goods and fill its shelves on time, without causing delays and empty shelves. In other words, the company realized that in ensuring a steady flow of the goods into the store, the suppliers have to be informed early enough, so that they can act accordingly to avoid delays in the delivery of goods. Thus, efficient communication is another tool which Wal-Mart is using to make the supply chain be more efficient and to cut costs.
Cross-docking is another strategy that Wal-Mart is using to cut costs in its supply chain. Cross-docking is the process of transferring goods directly from inbound trucks to outbound trucks. When the trucks from the suppliers arrive at the distribution centers, most of the trucks are not offloaded to keep the goods in the distribution centers or warehouses; they are transferred directly to another truck designated to deliver goods to specific retail stores for sale. Cross-docking helps in saving the storage costs. Initially, the company was incurring considerable costs of storing the suppliers from the suppliers in its warehouses and the distributions centers to await the distribution trucks to the retail stores in various regions.
Tax-efficient supply-chain management is a business model that considers the effect of tax in the design and implementation of supply-chain management. As the consequence of globalization, cross-national businesses pay different tax rates in different countries. Due to these differences, they may legally optimize their supply chain and increase profits based on tax efficiency.
Supply-chain sustainability is a business issue affecting an organization's supply chain or logistics network, and is frequently quantified by comparison with SECH ratings, which uses a triple bottom line incorporating economic, social, and environmental aspects. SECH ratings are defined as social, ethical, cultural, and health' footprints. Consumers have become more aware of the environmental impact of their purchases and companies' SECH ratings and, along with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), are setting the agenda for transitions to organically grown foods, anti-sweatshop labor codes, and locally produced goods that support independent and small businesses. Because supply chains may account for over 75% of a company's carbon footprint, many organizations are exploring ways to reduce this and thus improve their SECH rating.
For example, in July 2009, Wal-Mart announced its intentions to create a global sustainability index that would rate products according to the environmental and social impacts of their manufacturing and distribution. The index is intended to create environmental accountability in Wal-Mart's supply chain and to provide motivation and infrastructure for other retail companies to do the same.
It has been reported that companies are increasingly taking environmental performance into account when selecting suppliers. A 2011 survey by the Carbon Trust found that 50% of multinationals expect to select their suppliers based upon carbon performance in the future and 29% of suppliers could lose their places on 'green supply chains' if they do not have adequate performance records on carbon.
The US Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed into law by President Obama in July 2010, contained a supply chain sustainability provision in the form of the Conflict Minerals law. This law requires SEC-regulated companies to conduct third party audits of their supply chains in order to determine whether any tin, tantalum, tungsten, or gold (together referred to as "conflict minerals") is mined or sourced from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and create a report (available to the general public and SEC) detailing the due diligence efforts taken and the results of the audit. The chain of suppliers and vendors to these reporting companies will be expected to provide appropriate supporting information.
Incidents like the 2013 Savar building collapse with more than 1,100 victims have led to widespread discussions about corporate social responsibility across global supply chains. Wieland and Handfield (2013) suggest that companies need to audit products and suppliers and that supplier auditing needs to go beyond direct relationships with first-tier suppliers. They also demonstrate that visibility needs to be improved if supply cannot be directly controlled and that smart and electronic technologies play a key role to improve visibility. Finally, they highlight that collaboration with local partners, across the industry and with universities is crucial to successfully managing social responsibility in supply chains.
Circular Supply-Chain Management (CSCM) is "the configuration and coordination of the organisational functions marketing, sales, R&D, production, logistics, IT, finance, and customer service within and across business units and organizations to close, slow, intensify, narrow, and dematerialise material and energy loops to minimise resource input into and waste and emission leakage out of the system, improve its operative effectiveness and efficiency and generate competitive advantages". By reducing resource input and waste leakage along the supply chain and configure it to enable the recirculation of resources at different stages of the product or service lifecycle, potential economic and environmental benefits can be achieved. These comprise e.g. a decrease in material and waste management cost and reduced emissions and resource consumption.
SCM components are the third element of the four-square circulation framework. The level of integration and management of a business process link is a function of the number and level of components added to the link. Consequently, adding more management components or increasing the level of each component can increase the level of integration of the business process link.
Literature on business process reengineering buyer-supplier relationships, and SCM suggests various possible components that should receive managerial attention when managing supply relationships. Lambert and Cooper (2000) identified the following components:
However, a more careful examination of the existing literature leads to a more comprehensive understanding of what should be the key critical supply chain components, or "branches" of the previously identified supply chain business processes—that is, what kind of relationship the components may have that are related to suppliers and customers. Bowersox and Closs (1996) state that the emphasis on cooperation represents the synergism leading to the highest level of joint achievement. A primary-level channel participant is a business that is willing to participate in responsibility for inventory ownership or assume other financial risks, thus including primary level components. A secondary-level participant (specialized) is a business that participates in channel relationships by performing essential services for primary participants, including secondary level components, which support primary participants. Third-level channel participants and components that support primary-level channel participants and are the fundamental branches of secondary-level components may also be included.
Consequently, Lambert and Cooper's framework of supply chain components does not lead to any conclusion about what are the primary- or secondary-level (specialized) supply chain components —that is, which supply chain components should be viewed as primary or secondary, how these components should be structured in order to achieve a more comprehensive supply chain structure, and how to examine the supply chain as an integrative one.
Reverse logistics is the process of managing the return of goods. It is also referred to as "aftermarket customer services". Any time money is taken from a company's warranty reserve or service logistics budget, one can speak of a reverse logistics operation.
Reverse logistics is also the process of managing the return of goods from store, which the returned goods are sent back to warehouse and after that either warehouse scrap the goods or send them back to supplier for replacement depending on the warranty of the merchandise.
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Consultancies and media expect the performance efficacy of digitalisation in supply chains to be very high. Renowned journals such as the Journal of Business Logistics, the Journal of Operations Management and the International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management have already published several special issues for various aspects of digitalisation in supply chain management. Additive manufacturing and blockchain technology have emerged as the two technologies with some of the highest economic relevance. The potential of additive manufacturing is particularly high in the production of spare parts, since its introduction can reduce warehousing costs of slowly rotating spare parts. Yet, the technology bears the potential to completely disrupt and restructure supply chains and hitherto existing production routes.
In comparison, research on the influence of blockchain technology on the supply chain is still in its early stages. The conceptual literature has argued for a considerably long time that the highest performance efficacy is expected in the technology’s potential for automatic contract creation. However, latest empirical findings contradict this hypothesis. The highest potential is currently expected in the arenas of verified customer reviews and certifications of product quality and standards. Companies like DNVG-L have already developed blockchain products such as MY STORY that can be used to create more secure supply chains. Further empirical results are expected soon.
In addition, the technological features of blockchains support transparency and traceability of information as well as high levels of reliability and immutability of records. Blockchains thus offer opportunities to foster collaboration in the supply chain.
Supply chain systems configure value for those that organize the networks. Value is the additional revenue over and above the costs of building the network. Co-creating value and sharing the benefits appropriately to encourage effective participation is a key challenge for any supply system. Tony Hines defines value as follows: "Ultimately it is the customer who pays the price for service delivered that confirms value and not the producer who simply adds cost until that point".
Global supply chains pose challenges regarding both quantity and value. Supply and value chain trends include:
These trends have many benefits for manufacturers because they make possible larger lot sizes, lower taxes, and better environments (e.g., culture, infrastructure, special tax zones, or sophisticated OEM) for their products. There are many additional challenges when the scope of supply chains is global. This is because with a supply chain of a larger scope, the lead time is much longer, and because there are more issues involved, such as multiple currencies, policies, and laws. The consequent problems include different currencies and valuations in different countries, different tax laws, different trading protocols, vulnerability to natural disasters and cyber threats, and lack of transparency of cost and profit.
Supply-chain consulting is the providing of expert knowledge in order to assess the productivity of a supply-chain and, ideally, to enhance the productivity.
Supply chain Consulting is a service involved in transfer of knowledge on how to exploit existing assets through improved coordination and can hence be a source of competitive advantage; Hereby the role of the consultant is to help management by adding value to the whole process through the various sectors from the ordering of the raw materials to the final product.
On this regard, firms either build internal teams of consultants to tackle the issue or use external ones, (companies choose between these two approaches taking into consideration various factors).
The use of external consultants is a common practice among companies. The whole consulting process generally involves the analysis of the entire supply-chain process, including the countermeasures or correctives to take to achieve a better overall performance.
Supply chain professionals need to have knowledge of managing supply chain functions such as transportation, warehousing, inventory management, and production planning. In the past, supply chain professionals emphasized logistics skills, such as knowledge of shipping routes, familiarity with warehousing equipment and distribution center locations and footprints, and a solid grasp of freight rates and fuel costs. More recently, supply-chain management extends to logistical support across firms and management of global supply chains. Supply chain professionals need to have an understanding of business continuity basics and strategies.
Supply chain professionals play major roles in the design and management of supply chains. In the design of supply chains, they help determine whether a product or service is provided by the firm itself (insourcing) or by another firm elsewhere (outsourcing). In the management of supply chains, supply chain professionals coordinate production among multiple providers, ensuring that production and transport of goods happen with minimal quality control or inventory problems. One goal of a well-designed and maintained supply chain for a product is to successfully build the product at minimal cost. Such a supply chain could be considered a competitive advantage for a firm.
Beyond design and maintenance of a supply chain itself, supply chain professionals participate in aspects of business that have a bearing on supply chains, such as sales forecasting, quality management, strategy development, customer service, and systems analysis. Production of a good may evolve over time, rendering an existing supply chain design obsolete. Supply chain professionals need to be aware of changes in production and business climate that affect supply chains and create alternative supply chains as the need arises.
Individuals working in supply-chain management can attain a professional certification by passing an exam developed by a third party certification organizations. The purpose of certification is to guarantee a certain level of expertise in the field.
The knowledge needed to pass a certification exam may be gained from several sources. Some knowledge may come from college courses, but most of it is acquired from a mix of on-the-job learning experiences, attending industry events, learning best practices with their peers, and reading books and articles in the field. Certification organizations may provide certification workshops tailored to their exams. There are also free websites that provide a significant amount of educational articles, as well as blogs that are internationally recognized which provide good sources of news and updates.
The following North American universities rank high in their master's education in the SCM World University 100 ranking, which was published in 2017 and which is based on the opinions of supply chain managers: Michigan State University, Penn State University, University of Tennessee, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Arizona State University, University of Texas at Austin and Western Michigan University. In the same ranking, the following European universities rank high: Cranfield School of Management, Vlerick Business School, INSEAD, Cambridge University, Eindhoven University of Technology, London Business School and Copenhagen Business School. In the 2016 Eduniversal Best Masters Ranking Supply Chain and Logistics the following universities rank high: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, KEDGE Business School, Purdue University, Rotterdam School of Management, Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Vienna University of Economics and Business and Copenhagen Business School.
There are a number of organizations that provide certification exams, such as CSCMP (Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals), IIPMR (International Institute for Procurement and Market Research), APICS (the Association for Operations Management), ISCEA (International Supply Chain Education Alliance) and IoSCM (Institute of Supply Chain Management). APICS' certification is called "Certified Supply Chain Professional", or CSCP, and ISCEA's certification is called the "Certified Supply Chain Manager" (CSCM), CISCM (Chartered Institute of Supply Chain Management) awards certificate as "Chartered Supply Chain Management Professional" (CSCMP). Another, the Institute for Supply Management, is developing one called the "Certified Professional in Supply Management" (CPSM) focused on the procurement and sourcing areas of supply-chain management. The Supply Chain Management Association (SCMA) is the main certifying body for Canada with the designations having global reciprocity. The designation Supply Chain Management Professional (SCMP) is the title of the supply chain leadership designation.
The following table compares topics addressed by selected professional supply chain certification programmes. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27995 |
Synchronised swimming
Synchronised swimming (in American English, synchronized swimming) or artistic swimming is a hybrid form of swimming, dance, and gymnastics, consisting of swimmers performing a synchronised routine (either solo, duet, trio, mixed duet, free team, free combination, and highlight) of elaborate moves in the water, accompanied by music. Artistic swimming is governed internationally by FINA, and has been part of the Summer Olympics programme since 1984.
Synchronised swimming demands advanced water skills, requires great strength, endurance, flexibility, grace, artistry and precise timing, as well as exceptional breath control when upside down underwater. Competitors show off their strength, flexibility, and aerobic endurance required to perform difficult routines. Swimmers perform two routines for judges, one technical and one free, as well as age group routines and figures. Synchronized swimming is both an individual and team sport. Swimmers compete individually during figures, and then as a team during the routine. Figures are made up of a combination of skills and positions that often require control, strength, and flexibility. Swimmers are ranked individually for this part of the competition. The routine involves teamwork and synchronisation. It is choreographed to music and often has a theme.
Since the 20th century, synchronised swimming has predominantly been considered a women's sport, with the Summer Olympics only featuring women's duet and team events. However, international, national and regional competitions may allow men to compete, and FINA introduced a new mixed duet competition at the 2015 World Aquatics Championships. FINA officially renamed the sport from "synchronized swimming" to "artistic swimming" in 2017—a decision that faced mixed reception.
At the turn of the 20th century, synchronised swimming was known as water ballet. The first recorded competition was in 1891 in Berlin, Germany. Many swim clubs were formed around that time, and the sport simultaneously developed in Canada. As well as existing as a sport, it often constituted a popular addition to Music Hall evenings, in the larger variety theatres of London or Glasgow which were equipped with on-stage water tanks for the purpose.
In 1907, Australian Annette Kellerman popularised the sport when she performed in a glass tank as an underwater ballerina (the first water ballet in a glass tank) in the New York Hippodrome. After experimenting with various diving actions and stunts in the water, Katherine Curtis started one of the first water ballet clubs at the University of Chicago, where the team began executing strokes, "tricks," and floating formations. On May 27, 1939, the first U.S. synchronised swimming competition took place at Wright Junior College between Wright and the Chicago Teachers' College.
In 1924, the first competition in North America was in Montreal, with Peg Seller as the first champion.
Other important pioneers for the sport are Beulah Gundling, Käthe Jacobi, Marion Kane Elston, Dawn Bean, Billie MacKellar, Teresa Anderson, Gail Johnson, Gail Emery, Charlotte Davis, Mary Derosier, Norma Olsen and Clark Leach. Charlotte Davis coached Tracie Ruiz and Candy Costie, who won the gold medal in duet synchronised swimming at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
In 1933 and 1934, Katherine Whitney Curtis organised a show, "The Kay Curtis Modern Mermaids", for the World Exhibition in Chicago. The announcer, Norman Ross, introduced the sport as "synchronised swimming" for the first time. The term eventually became standardised through the AAU, but Curtis still used the term "rhythmic swimming" in her book, "Rhythmic Swimming: A Source Book of Synchronised Swimming and Water Pageantry" (Minneapolis: Burgess Publishing Co., 1936).
Curtis persuaded the AAU to make synchronised swimming an officially recognised sport in December 1941, but she herself transferred overseas in 1943. She served as the Recreation Director of the Red Cross under Generals Patton and Eisenhower, during which time she produced the first international aquacade in Caserta, Italy. She was the Director of Travel in post-war Europe until 1962. In 1959 the Helms Hall of Fame officially recognised Curtis (along with Annette Kellerman) – ascribing to her the primary development of synchronised swimming. In 1979 the International Swimming Hall of Fame inducted Curtis with similar accolades.
The first Official National Team Championships were held in Chicago at Riis Pool on August 11, 1946. The Town Club 'C' team were the first national champions. The team was composed of: Polly Wesner, Nancy Hanna, Doris Dieskow, Marion Mittlacher, Shirley Brown, Audrey Huettenrauch, Phyllis Burrell and Priscilla Hirsch.
Esther Williams, a national AAU champion swimmer, popularized synchronised swimming during WWII and after, through (often elaborately staged) scenes in Hollywood films such as "Bathing Beauty" (1944), "Million Dollar Mermaid" (1952), and "Jupiter's Darling" (1955). In the 1970s and 1980s, Ft. Lauderdale swimming champion Charkie Phillips revived water ballet on television with The Krofftettes in "The Brady Bunch Hour" (1976–1977), NBC's "The Big Show" (1980), and then on screen with Miss Piggy in "The Great Muppet Caper" (1981).
Margaret Swan Forbes published "Coaching Synchronized Swimming Effectively" in 1984; it was the first official teaching manual for synchronized swimming.
In the late 19th century, synchronised swimming was a male-only event. However, in the 20th century it became a women's sport, with men banned from many competitions. In the U.S., men were allowed to participate with women until 1941, when synchronised swimming became part of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU). The AAU required men and women to compete separately, which resulted in a decline of male participants. In the 1940s and 1950s, Bert Hubbard and Donn Squire were among the top US male competitors.
In 1978, the U.S. changed their rules to allow men to once again compete with women. Rules in other countries varied; in the UK, men were prohibited from competing until 2014, while in France, Benoît Beaufils was allowed to competed at national events in the 1990s. American Bill May was a top competitor in the late-1990s and early-2000s. He medalled in several international events, including the 1998 Goodwill Games. However, male competitors were barred from top competitions, including the World Aquatics Championships and the Olympics. However, at the 2015 World Aquatics Championships, FINA introduced a new mixed duet discipline. Both May and Beaufils returned from decade-long retirements to represent their countries. Among their competitors were Russian Aleksandr Maltsev and Italian Giorgio Minisini, both over 15 years younger than May and Beaufils. Pairs from ten countries competed in the inaugural events. The 2016 European Aquatics Championships was the first time men were allowed to compete at the European Championships. While men are allowed in more events, they were still barred from competing in the 2016 Summer Olympics. FINA did propose adding the mixed duet competition to the 2020 Summer Olympics.
In July 2017, following a request by the IOC, FINA approved changes to its constitution that renamed synchronised swimming to artistic swimming. FINA justified the change by stating that it would help to clarify the nature of the sport (with the new name being similar to artistic gymnastics), and would help "enhance its popularity". The changes received criticism, with some swimmers and coaches arguing that the name "artistic swimming" diminishes the athleticism of the sport, and that rebranding federations and other groups involved in the sport would be costly. Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Vitaly Mutko vowed that the country would still refer to the sport as synchronised swimming, stating that "to keep the name synchronised swimming is our right, and if the Federation itself, the coaches will want it, we will do it". Most national governing bodies have adopted the new name, with the CEO of USA Artistic Swimming stating in 2020 that "19 of the top 25 countries in the world are either partially or fully using the name artistic swimming". Competitions where the new name was first used include the 2019 World Aquatics Championships and the 2018 Asian Games. It will also be used at the 2020 Summer Olympics and the 2020 European Aquatics Championships.
The first Olympic demonstration was at the 1952 Olympic Games, where the Helsinki officials welcomed Kay Curtis and lit a torch in her honor. Curtis died in 1980, but synchronised swimming did not become an official Olympic sport until the 1984 Summer Olympic Games. It was not until 1968 that synchronised swimming became officially recognized by FINA as the fourth water sport next to swimming, platform diving and water polo.
From 1984 through 1992, the Summer Olympic Games featured solo and duet competitions, but they were both dropped in 1996 in favor of team competition. At the 2000 Olympic Games, however, the duet competition was restored and is now featured alongside the team competition.
Artistic swimming has been part of the World Aquatics Championships since the beginning. From 1973 through 2001, the World Aquatics Championships featured solo, duet and team competitions. In 2003, a free routine combination, comprising elements of solo, duet and team, was added. In 2005, it was renamed free combination. In 2007, solo, duet and team events were split between technical and free routines. Since 2007, seven World championship titles are at stake. In 2015, the mixed duet (technical and free) were added to the competition program.
Sculls (hand movements used to propel the body) are some of the most essential part to synchronised swimming. Commonly used sculls include support scull, stationary scull, propeller scull, alligator scull, torpedo scull, split scull, barrel scull, spinning scull and paddle scull. The support scull is used most often to support the body while a swimmer is performing upside down.
The support scull or "American Scull" was invented by Marion Kane Elston and propelled the sport to new heights. The sport was transformed from water ballet to the athleticism of modern-day synchronized swimming. See the International Swimming Hall of Fame as a reference.
Support scull is performed by holding the upper arms against the sides of the body and the fore arms at 90-degree angles to the body, with hands facing the bottom of the pool. The fore arms are then moved back and forth while maintaining the right angle. The resulting pressure against the hands allows the swimmer to hold their legs above water while upside down.
The "eggbeater kick" is another important skill of synchronised swimming. It is a form of treading water that allows for stability and height above the water while leaving the hands free to perform arm motions. An average eggbeater height is usually around collarbone level. Eggbeater is used in all "arm" sections, a piece of choreography in which the swimmer is upright, often with one or both arms in the air. Another variation is a body boost, which is executed through an eggbeater buildup and a strong whip kick, propelling the swimmer out of the water vertically. A body boost can raise a swimmer out of the water to hip level.
A lift or highlight is when members of the team propel another teammate relatively high out of the water. They are quite common in routines of older age groups and higher skill levels.
There are many variations on lifts and these can include partner lifts, float patterns or other areas of unique, artistic choreography intended to exceptionally impress the judges and audience.
There are three parts to every lift in artistic swimming: The top (or "flyer"), the base, and the pushers. *Sometimes there is no base and the pushers push the flyer directly*
There are hundreds of different regular positions that can be used to create seemingly infinite combinations. These are a few basic and commonly used ones:
Further descriptions of technical positions can be found on the International Olympic Committee website.
Routines are composed of "figures" (leg movements), arm sections and highlights. Swimmers are synchronised both to each other and to the music. During a routine swimmers can never use the bottom of the pool for support, but rather depend on sculling motions with the arms, and eggbeater kick to keep afloat. After the performance, the swimmers are judged and scored on their performance based on execution, artistic impression, and difficulty. Execution of technical skill, difficulty, patterns, choreography, and synchronization are all critical to achieving a high score.
Depending on the competition level, swimmers will perform a "technical" routine with predetermined elements that must be performed in a specific order. The technical routine acts as a replacement for the figure event. In addition to the technical routine, the swimmers will perform a longer "free" routine, which has no requirements and is a chance for the swimmers to get creative and innovative with their choreography.
The type of routine and competition level determines the length of routines. Routines typically last two to four minutes, the shortest being the technical solo, with length added as the number of swimmers is increased (duets, teams, combos and highlight). Age and skill level are other important factors in determining the required routine length.
Routines are scored on a scale of 100, with points for execution, artistic impression, and difficulty.
In group routines a group consists of 8 competitors for World Championships and FINA events, each missing participant brings penalty points to the team. A group can consist of a minimum of 4 competitors and a maximum of 10 (for Free Combination and Highlight). If a swimmer uses the bottom, they will be disqualified.
When performing routines in competition and practice, competitors wear a rubber noseclip to keep water from entering their nose when submerged. Some swimmers wear ear-plugs to keep the water out of their ears. Hair is worn in a bun and flavorless gelatin, Knox, is applied to keep hair in place; a decorative headpiece is bobby-pinned to the bun. Occasionally, swimmers wear custom-made swimming caps in place of their hair in buns.
Competitors wear custom swimsuits, usually elaborately decorated with bright fabric and sequins to reflect the music to which they are swimming. The costume and music are not judged but create and aesthetic appeal to the audience.
Makeup is also worn in this sport, but FINA has required a more natural look. No "theatrical make-up" is allowed, only makeup that provides a natural, clean and healthy glow is acceptable. In Canada, eye makeup must be smaller than a circle made by the swimmers thumb and forefinger, and be used solely for "natural enhancement".
Underwater speakers ensure that swimmers can hear the music and aid their ability to synchronize with each other. Routines are prepared and set to counts in the music, to further ensure synchronization. Coaches use underwater speakers to communicate with the swimmers during practice. Goggles, though worn during practice, are not permitted during routine competition.
A standard meet begins with the swimmers doing "figures", which are progressions between positions performed individually without music. All swimmers must compete wearing the standard black swimsuit and white swimcap, as well as goggles and a noseclip. Figures are performed in front of a panel of 5 judges who score individual swimmers from 1 to 10 (10 being the best). The figure competition prefaces the routine events.
In the United States, competitors are divided into groups by age. The eight age groups are: 12 and under, 13–15, 16–17, 18–19, Junior (elite 15–18), Senior (elite 15+), Collegiate, and Master. In addition to these groups, younger swimmers may be divided by ability into 3 levels: Novice, Intermediate, and Junior Olympic. Certain competitions require the athlete(s) to pass a certain Grade Level. Grades as of now range from Level one to Level five, and will soon go to Level ten. Seasons range in length, and some swimmers participate year-round in competitions. There are many levels of competition, including but not limited to: State, Regional, Zone, Junior Olympic, and US Junior and Senior Opens. Each swimmer may compete in up to four of the following routine events: solo, duet, combo (consisting of four to ten swimmers), and team (consisting of four to eight swimmers). In the 12 & under and 13-15 age groups, figure scores are combined with routines to determine the final rankings. The 16-17 and 18-19 age groups combine the scores of the technical and free routines to determine the final rankings. USA Synchro's annual intercollegiate championships have been dominated by The Ohio State University, Stanford University, Lindenwood University, and The University of the Incarnate Word.
In Canada, synchronized swimming has an age-based Structure system as of 2010 with age groups 10 & under, 12 & under, and 13–15 for the provincial levels. There is also a skill level which is 13–15 and juniors (16–18) known as national stream, as well as competition at the Masters and University levels. 13–15 age group and 16–18 age group are national stream athletes that fall in line with international age groups – 15 and Under and Junior (16–18) and Senior (18+) level athletes.
There are also the Wildrose age group. This is for competitors before they reach 13–15 national stream. Wildrose ranges from Tier 8 and under to 16 and over provincial/wildrose. These are also competitive levels. There are also the recreational levels which are called "stars". Synchro Canada requires that a competitor must pass Star 3 before entering Tier 1. To get into a Tier a swimmer must take a test for that Tier. In these tests, the swimmer must be able to perform the required movements for the level. (Canada no longer uses Tiers as a form of level placement).
The Canadian University Artistic Swimming League (CUASL) is intended for Canadian Swimmers who wish to continue their participation in the sport during their university studies, as well as offering a "Novice" category for those new to the sport. Traditionally, the top teams hail from McGill University, Queens University and the University of Ottawa.
In their 2012 book "Concussions and Our Kids", Dr. Robert Cantu and Mark Hyman quoted Dr. Bill Moreau, the medical director for the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC), as saying, "These women are superior athletes. They're in the pool eight hours a day. Literally, they're within inches of one another, sculling and paddling. As they go through their various routines, they're literally kicking each other in the head." Dr. Moreau said that during a two-week training session in Colorado Springs, the female athletes suffered a 50% concussion rate. As a result, the USOC began reassessing concussion awareness and prevention for all sports.
Others believe the incidence of concussions among synchronized swimmers is much higher, especially among the sport's elite athletes. "I would say 100 percent of my athletes will get a concussion at some point," said Myriam Glez, chief executive of U.S.A. Synchro, the sport's national organizing body. "It might be minor, might be more serious, but at some point or another, they will get hit."
Synchronised swimmers often suffer from tendon injuries, as the sport tends to cause muscle imbalances. Common joint injuries include the rotator cuff and the knees. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27998 |
Swimming
Swimming is the self-propulsion of a person through water, usually for recreation, sport, exercise, or survival. Locomotion is achieved through coordinated movement of the limbs, the body, or both. Humans can hold their breath underwater and undertake rudimentary locomotive swimming within weeks of birth, as a survival response.
Swimming is consistently among the top public recreational activities, and in some countries, swimming lessons are a compulsory part of the educational curriculum. As a formalized sport, swimming features in a range of local, national, and international competitions, including every modern Summer Olympics.
Swimming relies on the nearly neutral buoyancy of the human body. On average, the body has a relative density of 0.98 compared to water, which causes the body to float. However, buoyancy varies on the basis of body composition, lung inflation, and the salinity of the water. Higher levels of body fat and saltier water both lower the relative density of the body and increase its buoyancy.
Since the human body is only slightly less dense than water, water supports the weight of the body during swimming. As a result, swimming is “low-impact” compared to land activities such as running. The density and viscosity of water also create resistance for objects moving through the water. Swimming strokes use this resistance to create propulsion, but this same resistance also generates drag on the body.
Hydrodynamics is important to stroke technique for swimming faster, and swimmers who want to swim faster or exhaust less try to reduce the drag of the body's motion through the water. To be more hydrodynamic, swimmers can either increase the power of their strokes or reduce water resistance, though power must increase by a factor of three to achieve the same effect as reducing resistance. Efficient swimming by reducing water resistance involves a horizontal water position, rolling the body to reduce the breadth of the body in the water, and extending the arms as far as possible to reduce wave resistance.
Just before plunging into the pool, swimmers may perform exercises such as squatting. Squatting helps in enhancing a swimmer's start by warming up the thigh muscles.
Human babies demonstrate an innate swimming or diving reflex from newborn until the age of approximately 6 months. Other mammals also demonstrate this phenomenon (see mammalian diving reflex). The diving response involves apnea, reflex bradycardia, and peripheral vasoconstriction; in other words, babies immersed in water spontaneously hold their breath, slow their heart rate, and reduce blood circulation to the extremities (fingers and toes).
Because infants are innately able to swim, classes for babies of about 6 months old are offered in many locations. This helps build muscle memory and makes strong swimmers from a young age.
Swimming can be undertaken using a wide range of styles, known as 'strokes,' and these strokes are used for different purposes, or to distinguish between classes in competitive swimming. It is not necessary to use a defined stroke for propulsion through the water, and untrained swimmers may use a 'doggy paddle' of arm and leg movements, similar to the way four-legged animals swim.
There are four main strokes used in competition and recreation swimming: the front crawl, also known as freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke and butterfly. Competitive swimming in Europe started around 1800, mostly using the breaststroke. In 1873, John Arthur Trudgen introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions. Butterfly was developed in the 1930s, and was considered a variant of the breaststroke until accepted as a separate style in 1953. Butterfly is considered the hardest stroke by many people, but it is the most effective for all-around toning and the building of muscles. It also burns the most calories and can be the second fastest stroke if practiced regularly.
Other strokes exist for specific purposes, such as training or rescue, and it is also possible to adapt strokes to avoid using parts of the body, either to isolate certain body parts, such as swimming with arms only or legs only to train them harder, or for use by amputees or those affected by paralysis.
Swimming has been recorded since prehistoric times, and the earliest records of swimming date back to Stone Age paintings from around 7,000 years ago. Written references date from 2000 BC. Some of the earliest references include the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Bible (Ezekiel 47:5, Acts 27:42, Isaiah 25:11), Beowulf, and other sagas.
The coastal tribes living in the volatile Low Countries were known as excellent swimmers by the Romans. Men and horses of the Batavi tribe could cross the Rhine without losing formation, according to Tacitus. Dio Cassius describes one surprise tactic employed by Aulus Plautius against the Celts at the Battle of the Medway:
The [British Celts] thought that Romans would not be able to cross it without a bridge, and consequently bivouacked in rather careless fashion on the opposite bank; but he sent across a detachment of [Batavii], who were accustomed to swim easily in full armour across the most turbulent streams. . . . Thence the Britons retired to the river Thames at a point near where it empties into the ocean and at flood-tide forms a lake. This they easily crossed because they knew where the firm ground and the easy passages in this region were to be found, but the Romans in attempting to follow them were not so successful. However, the [Batavii] swam across again and some others got over by a bridge a little way up-stream, after which they assailed the barbarians from several sides at once and cut down many of them."
In 1538, Nikolaus Wynmann, a Swiss–German professor of languages, wrote the earliest known complete book about swimming, "Colymbetes, sive de arte natandi dialogus et festivus et iucundus lectu" ("The Swimmer, or A Dialogue on the Art of Swimming and Joyful and Pleasant to Read").
There are many reasons why people swim, from swimming as a recreational pursuit to swimming as a necessary part of a job or other activity. Swimming may also be used to rehabilitate injuries, especially various cardiovascular and muscle injuries. People may also pursue swimming as a career or field of interest. Some may be gifted and choose to compete professionally and go onto claim fame.
Many swimmers swim for recreation, with swimming consistently ranking as one of the physical activities people are most likely to take part in. Recreational swimming can also be used for exercise, relaxation or rehabilitation. The support of the water, and the reduction in impact, make swimming accessible for people who are unable to undertake activities such as running.
Swimming is primarily a cardiovascular/aerobic exercise due to the long exercise time, requiring a constant oxygen supply to the muscles, except for short sprints where the muscles work anaerobically. Furthermore, swimming can help tone and strengthen muscles. Swimming allows sufferers of arthritis to exercise affected joints without worsening their symptoms. However, swimmers with arthritis may wish to avoid swimming breaststroke, as improper technique can exacerbate arthritic knee pain. As with most aerobic exercise, swimming reduces the harmful effects of stress. Swimming is also effective in improving health for people with cardiovascular problems and chronic illnesses. It is proven to positively impact the mental health of pregnant women and mothers. Swimming can even improve mood.
As of 2020, the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that swimming pools in the United States be accessible to disabled swimmers.
"Water-based exercise can benefit older adults by improving quality of life and decreasing disability. It also improves or maintains the bone health of post-menopausal women."
Swimming is an ideal workout for the elderly, mainly because it presents little risk of injury and is also low impact. Exercise in the water works out all muscle groups, helping with conditions such as muscular dystrophy which is common in seniors.
Swimming as a sport predominantly involves participants competing to be the fastest over a given distance in a certain period of time. Competitors swim different distances in different levels of competition. For example, swimming has been an Olympic sport since 1896, and the current program includes events from 50 m to 1500 m in length, across all four main strokes and medley. During the season competitive swimmers typically train several times a week, this is in order to preserve fitness as well as promoting overload in training. Furthermore when the cycle of work is completed swimmers go through a stage called taper where intensity is reduce in preparation for racing, during taper power and feel in the water are concentrated.
The sport is governed internationally by the Fédération Internationale de Natation (FINA), and competition pools for FINA events are 25 or 50 meters in length. In the United States, a pool 25 yards in length is commonly used for competition.
Other swimming and water-related sporting disciplines include open water swimming, diving, synchronized swimming, water polo, triathlon, and the modern pentathlon.
As a popular leisure activity done all over the world, one of the primary risks of swimming is drowning. Drowning may occur from a variety of factors, from swimming fatigue to simply inexperience in the water. From 2005 to 2014, an average of 3,536 fatal unintentional drownings occurred in the United States, approximating 10 deaths a day.
To minimize the risk and prevent potential drownings from occurring, lifeguards are often employed to supervise swimming locations such as pools and beaches. Different lifeguards receive different training depending on the sites that they are employed at; i.e. a waterfront lifeguard receives more rigorous training than a poolside lifeguard. Well-known aquatic training services include the National Lifesaving Society and the Canadian Red Cross, which specialize in training lifeguards in North America.
Some occupations require workers to swim, such as abalone and pearl diving, and spearfishing.
Swimming is used to rescue people in the water who are in distress, including exhausted swimmers, non-swimmers who have accidentally entered the water, and others who have come to harm on the water. Lifeguards or volunteer lifesavers are deployed at many pools and beaches worldwide to fulfill this purpose, and they, as well as rescue swimmers, may use specific swimming styles for rescue purposes.
Swimming is also used in marine biology to observe plants and animals in their natural habitat. Other sciences use swimming; for example, Konrad Lorenz swam with geese as part of his studies of animal behavior.
Swimming also has military purposes. Military swimming is usually done by special operation forces, such as Navy SEALs and US Army Special Forces. Swimming is used to approach a location, gather intelligence, engage in sabotage or combat, and subsequently depart. This may also include airborne insertion into water or exiting a submarine while it is submerged. Due to regular exposure to large bodies of water, all recruits in the United States Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard are required to complete basic swimming or water survival training.
Swimming is also a professional sport. Companies sponsor swimmers who have the skills to compete at the international level. Many swimmers compete competitively to represent their home countries in the Olympics. Professional swimmers may also earn a living as entertainers, performing in water ballets.
Locomotion by swimming over brief distances is frequent when alternatives are precluded. There have been cases of political refugees swimming in the Baltic Sea and of people jumping in the water and swimming ashore from vessels not intended to reach land where they planned to go.
There are many risks associated with voluntary or involuntary human presence in water, which may result in death directly or through drowning asphyxiation. Swimming is both the goal of much voluntary presence and the prime means of regaining land in accidental situations.
Most recorded water deaths fall into these categories:
Adverse effects of swimming can include:
Around any pool area, safety equipment is often important, and is a zoning requirement for most residential pools in the United States. Supervision by personnel trained in rescue techniques is required at most competitive swimming meets and public pools.
Traditionally, children were considered not able to swim independently until 4 years of age,
although now infant swimming lessons are recommended to prevent drowning.
In Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Estonia and Finland, the curriculum for the fifth grade (fourth grade in Estonia) states that all children should learn how to swim as well as how to handle emergencies near water. Most commonly, children are expected to be able to swim —of which at least on their back – after first falling into deep water and getting their head under water. Even though about 95 percent of Swedish school children know how to swim, drowning remains the third most common cause of death among children.
In both the Netherlands and Belgium swimming lessons under school time ("schoolzwemmen", school swimming) are supported by the government. Most schools provide swimming lessons. There is a long tradition of swimming lessons in the Netherlands and Belgium, the Dutch translation for the breaststroke swimming style is even "schoolslag" (schoolstroke). In France, swimming is a compulsory part of the curriculum for primary schools. Children usually spend one semester per year learning swimming during CP/CE1/CE2/CM1 (1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade).
In many places, swimming lessons are provided by local swimming pools, both those run by the local authority and by private leisure companies. Many schools also include swimming lessons into their Physical Education curricula, provided either in the schools' own pool or in the nearest public pool.
In the UK, the "Top-ups scheme" calls for school children who cannot swim by the age of 11 to receive intensive daily lessons. Children who have not reached Great Britain's National Curriculum standard of swimming 25 meters by the time they leave primary school receive a half-hour lesson every day for two weeks during term-time.
In Canada and Mexico there has been a call to include swimming in public school curriculum.
In the United States there is the Infant Swimming Resource (ISR) initiative that provides lessons for infant children, to cope with an emergency where they have fallen into the water. They are taught how to roll-back-to-float (hold their breath underwater, to roll onto their back, to float unassisted, rest and breathe until help arrives).
In Switzerland, swimming lessons for babies are popular, to help them getting used to be in another element. At the competition level, unlike in other countries - such as the Commonwealth countries, swimming teams are not related to educational institutions (high-schools and universities), but rather to cities or regions.
Standard everyday clothing is usually impractical for swimming and is unsafe under some circumstances. Most cultures today expect swimmers to wear swimsuits.
Men's swimsuits commonly resemble shorts, or briefs. Casual men's swimsuits (for example, boardshorts) are rarely skintight, unlike competitive swimwear, like jammers or diveskins. In most cases, boys and men swim with their upper body exposed, except in countries where custom or law prohibits it in a public setting, or for practical reasons such as sun protection.
Modern women's swimsuits are generally skintight, covering the pubic region and the breasts (See bikini). Women's swimwear may also cover the midriff as well. Women's swimwear is often a fashion statement, and whether it is modest or not is a subject of debate by many groups, religious and secular.
Competitive swimwear is built so that the wearer can swim faster and more efficiently. Modern competitive swimwear is skintight and lightweight. There are many kinds of competitive swimwear for each gender. It is used in aquatic competitions, such as water polo, swim racing, diving, and rowing.
Wetsuits provide both thermal insulation and flotation. Many swimmers lack buoyancy in the leg. The wetsuit reduces density and therefore improves buoyancy while swimming. It provides insulation by absorbing some of the surrounding water, which then heats up when in direct contact with skin. The wetsuit is the usual choice for those who swim in cold water for long periods of time, as it reduces susceptibility to hypothermia.
Some people also choose to wear no clothing while swimming; this is known as skinny dipping. In some European countries public pools have naturist sessions to allow clothes-free swimming and many countries have naturist beaches where one can swim naked. It is legal to swim naked in the sea at all UK beaches. It was common for males to swim naked in a public setting up to the early 20th century. Today, skinny dipping can be a rebellious activity or merely a casual one. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27999 |
Simple machine
A simple machine is a mechanical device that changes the direction or magnitude of a force. In general, they can be defined as the simplest mechanisms that use mechanical advantage (also called leverage) to multiply force. Usually the term refers to the six classical simple machines that were defined by Renaissance scientists:
A simple machine uses a single applied force to do work against a single load force. Ignoring friction losses, the work done on the load is equal to the work done by the applied force. The machine can increase the amount of the output force, at the cost of a proportional decrease in the distance moved by the load. The ratio of the output to the applied force is called the "mechanical advantage".
Simple machines can be regarded as the elementary "building blocks" of which all more complicated machines (sometimes called "compound machines") are composed. For example, wheels, levers, and pulleys are all used in the mechanism of a bicycle. The mechanical advantage of a compound machine is just the product of the mechanical advantages of the simple machines of which it is composed.
Although they continue to be of great importance in mechanics and applied science, modern mechanics has moved beyond the view of the simple machines as the ultimate building blocks of which all machines are composed, which arose in the Renaissance as a neoclassical amplification of ancient Greek texts. The great variety and sophistication of modern machine linkages, which arose during the Industrial Revolution, is inadequately described by these six simple categories. Various post-Renaissance authors have compiled expanded lists of "simple machines", often using terms like "basic machines", "compound machines", or "machine elements" to distinguish them from the classical simple machines above. By the late 1800s, Franz Reuleaux had identified hundreds of machine elements, calling them "simple machines". Modern machine theory analyzes machines as kinematic chains composed of elementary linkages called kinematic pairs.
The idea of a simple machine originated with the Greek philosopher Archimedes around the 3rd century BC, who studied the Archimedean simple machines: lever, pulley, and screw. He discovered the principle of mechanical advantage in the lever. Archimedes' famous remark with regard to the lever: "Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth," () expresses his realization that there was no limit to the amount of force amplification that could be achieved by using mechanical advantage. Later Greek philosophers defined the classic five simple machines (excluding the inclined plane) and were able to calculate their (ideal) mechanical advantage. For example, Heron of Alexandria (c. 10–75 AD) in his work "Mechanics" lists five mechanisms that can "set a load in motion"; lever, windlass, pulley, wedge, and screw, and describes their fabrication and uses. However the Greeks' understanding was limited to the statics of simple machines (the balance of forces), and did not include dynamics, the tradeoff between force and distance, or the concept of work.
During the Renaissance the dynamics of the "Mechanical Powers", as the simple machines were called, began to be studied from the standpoint of how far they could lift a load, in addition to the force they could apply, leading eventually to the new concept of mechanical work. In 1586 Flemish engineer Simon Stevin derived the mechanical advantage of the inclined plane, and it was included with the other simple machines. The complete dynamic theory of simple machines was worked out by Italian scientist Galileo Galilei in 1600 in "Le Meccaniche" ("On Mechanics"), in which he showed the underlying mathematical similarity of the machines as force amplifiers. He was the first to explain that simple machines do not create energy, only transform it.
The classic rules of sliding friction in machines were discovered by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), but were unpublished and merely documented in his notebooks, and were based on pre-Newtonian science such as believing friction was an ethereal fluid. They were rediscovered by Guillaume Amontons (1699) and were further developed by Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (1785).
If a simple machine does not dissipate energy through friction, wear or deformation, then energy is conserved and it is called an ideal simple machine. In this case, the power into the machine equals the power out, and the mechanical advantage can be calculated from its geometric dimensions.
Although each machine works differently mechanically, the way they function is similar mathematically. In each machine, a force formula_1 is applied to the device at one point, and it does work moving a load, formula_2 at another point. Although some machines only change the direction of the force, such as a stationary pulley, most machines multiply the magnitude of the force by a factor, the mechanical advantage
that can be calculated from the machine's geometry and friction.
Simple machines do not contain a source of energy, so they cannot do more work than they receive from the input force. A simple machine with no friction or elasticity is called an "ideal machine". Due to conservation of energy, in an ideal simple machine, the power output (rate of energy output) at any time formula_4 is equal to the power input formula_5
The power output equals the velocity of the load formula_7 multiplied by the load force formula_8. Similarly the power input from the applied force is equal to the velocity of the input point formula_9 multiplied by the applied force formula_10.
Therefore,
So the mechanical advantage of an ideal machine formula_12 is equal to the "velocity ratio", the ratio of input velocity to output velocity
The "velocity ratio" is also equal to the ratio of the distances covered in any given period of time
Therefore the mechanical advantage of an ideal machine is also equal to the "distance ratio", the ratio of input distance moved to output distance moved
This can be calculated from the geometry of the machine. For example, the mechanical advantage and distance ratio of the lever is equal to the ratio of its lever arms.
The mechanical advantage can be greater or less than one:
In the screw, which uses rotational motion, the input force should be replaced by the torque, and the velocity by the angular velocity the shaft is turned.
All real machines have friction, which causes some of the input power to be dissipated as heat. If formula_19 is the power lost to friction, from conservation of energy
The mechanical efficiency formula_21 of a machine (where formula_22) is defined as the ratio of power out to the power in, and is a measure of the frictional energy losses
As above, the power is equal to the product of force and velocity, so
Therefore,
So in non-ideal machines, the mechanical advantage is always less than the velocity ratio by the product with the efficiency "η". So a machine that includes friction will not be able to move as large a load as a corresponding ideal machine using the same input force.
A "compound machine" is a machine formed from a set of simple machines connected in series with the output force of one providing the input force to the next. For example, a bench vise consists of a lever (the vise's handle) in series with a screw, and a simple gear train consists of a number of gears (wheels and axles) connected in series.
The mechanical advantage of a compound machine is the ratio of the output force exerted by the last machine in the series divided by the input force applied to the first machine, that is
Because the output force of each machine is the input of the next, formula_27, this mechanical advantage is also given by
Thus, the mechanical advantage of the compound machine is equal to the product of the mechanical advantages of the series of simple machines that form it
Similarly, the efficiency of a compound machine is also the product of the efficiencies of the series of simple machines that form it
In many simple machines, if the load force "Fout" on the machine is high enough in relation to the input force "Fin", the machine will move backwards, with the load force doing work on the input force. So these machines can be used in either direction, with the driving force applied to either input point. For example, if the load force on a lever is high enough, the lever will move backwards, moving the input arm backwards against the input force. These are called ""reversible"", ""non-locking"" or ""overhauling"" machines, and the backward motion is called ""overhauling"".
However, in some machines, if the frictional forces are high enough, no amount of load force can move it backwards, even if the input force is zero. This is called a ""self-locking"", ""nonreversible"", or ""non-overhauling"" machine. These machines can only be set in motion by a force at the input, and when the input force is removed will remain motionless, "locked" by friction at whatever position they were left.
Self-locking occurs mainly in those machines with large areas of sliding contact between moving parts: the screw, inclined plane, and wedge:
A machine will be self-locking if and only if its efficiency "η" is below 50%:
Whether a machine is self-locking depends on both the friction forces (coefficient of static friction) between its parts, and the distance ratio "din/dout" (ideal mechanical advantage). If both the friction and ideal mechanical advantage are high enough, it will self-lock.
When a machine moves in the forward direction from point 1 to point 2, with the input force doing work on a load force, from conservation of energy the input work formula_32 is equal to the sum of the work done on the load force formula_33 and the work lost to friction formula_34
If the efficiency is below 50%
formula_35
From
When the machine moves backward from point 2 to point 1 with the load force doing work on the input force, the work lost to friction formula_34 is the same
So the output work is
Thus the machine self-locks, because the work dissipated in friction is greater than the work done by the load force moving it backwards even with no input force
Machines are studied as mechanical systems consisting of actuators and mechanisms that transmit forces and movement, monitored by sensors and controllers. The components of actuators and mechanisms consist of links and joints that form kinematic chains.
Simple machines are elementary examples of kinematic chains that are used to model mechanical systems ranging from the steam engine to robot manipulators. The bearings that form the fulcrum of a lever and that allow the wheel and axle and pulleys to rotate are examples of a kinematic pair called a hinged joint. Similarly, the flat surface of an inclined plane and wedge are examples of the kinematic pair called a sliding joint. The screw is usually identified as its own kinematic pair called a helical joint.
Two levers, or cranks, are combined into a planar four-bar linkage by attaching a link that connects the output of one crank to the input of another. Additional links can be attached to form a six-bar linkage or in series to form a robot.
The identification of simple machines arises from a desire for a systematic method to invent new machines. Therefore, an important concern is how simple machines are combined to make more complex machines. One approach is to attach simple machines in series to obtain compound machines.
However, a more successful strategy was identified by Franz Reuleaux, who collected and studied over 800 elementary machines. He realized that a lever, pulley, and wheel and axle are in essence the same device: a body rotating about a hinge. Similarly, an inclined plane, wedge, and screw are a block sliding on a flat surface.
This realization shows that it is the joints, or the connections that provide movement, that are the primary elements of a machine. Starting with four types of joints, the revolute joint, sliding joint, cam joint and gear joint, and related connections such as cables and belts, it is possible to understand a machine as an assembly of solid parts that connect these joints.
The design of mechanisms to perform required movement and force transmission is known as kinematic synthesis. This is a collection of geometric techniques for the mechanical design of linkages, cam and follower mechanisms and gears and gear trains. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28002 |
Semi-Automatic Ground Environment
The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) was a system of large computers and associated networking equipment that coordinated data from many radar sites and processed it to produce a single unified image of the airspace over a wide area. SAGE directed and controlled the NORAD response to a Soviet air attack, operating in this role from the late 1950s into the 1980s. Its enormous computers and huge displays remain a part of cold war lore, and a common prop in movies such as "Dr. Strangelove" and .
The processing power behind SAGE was supplied by the largest discrete component-based computer ever built, the IBM-manufactured AN/FSQ-7. Each SAGE Direction Center (DC) housed an FSQ-7 which occupied an entire floor, approximately not including supporting equipment. Information was fed to the DCs from a network of radar stations as well as readiness information from various defence sites. The computers, based on the raw radar data, developed "tracks" for the reported targets, and automatically calculated which defences were within range. Operators used light guns to select targets on-screen for further information, select one of the available defences, and issue commands to attack. These commands would then be automatically sent to the defence site via teleprinter.
Connecting the various sites was an enormous network of telephones, modems and teleprinters. Later additions to the system allowed SAGE's tracking data to be sent directly to CIM-10 Bomarc missiles and some of the US Air Force's interceptor aircraft in-flight, directly updating their autopilots to maintain an intercept course without operator intervention. Each DC also forwarded data to a Combat Center (CC) for "supervision of the several sectors within the division" ("each combat center [had] the capability to coordinate defense for the whole nation").
SAGE became operational in the late 1950s and early 1960s at a combined cost of billions of dollars. It was noted that the deployment cost more than the Manhattan Project—which it was, in a way, defending against. Throughout its development, there were continual concerns about its real ability to deal with large attacks, and the Operation Skyshield tests showed that only about one-fourth of enemy bombers would have been intercepted. Nevertheless, SAGE was the backbone of NORAD's air defense system into the 1980s, by which time the tube-based FSQ-7's were increasingly costly to maintain and completely outdated. Today the same command and control task is carried out by microcomputers, based on the same basic underlying data.
Just prior to World War II, Royal Air Force tests with the new Chain Home (CH) radars had demonstrated that relaying information to the fighter aircraft directly from the radar sites was not feasible. The radars determined the map coordinates of the enemy, but could generally not see the fighters at the same time. This meant the fighters had to be able to determine where to fly to perform an interception but were often unaware of their own exact location and unable to calculate an interception while also flying their aircraft.
The solution was to send all of the radar information to a central control station where operators collated the reports into single "tracks", and then reported these tracks out to the airbases, or "sectors". The sectors used additional systems to track their own aircraft, plotting both on a single large map. Operators viewing the map could then easily see what direction their fighters would have to fly to approach their targets and relay that simply by telling them to fly along a certain heading or "vector". This Dowding system was the first ground-controlled interception (GCI) system of large scale, covering the entirety of the UK. It proved enormously successful during the Battle of Britain, and is credited as being a key part of the RAF's success.
The system was slow, often providing information that was up to five minutes out of date. Against propeller driven bombers flying at perhaps this was not a serious concern, but it was clear the system would be of little use against jet-powered bombers flying at perhaps . The system was extremely expensive in manpower terms, requiring hundreds of telephone operators, plotters and trackers in addition to the radar operators. This was a serious drain on manpower reserves, making it difficult to expand the network.
The idea of using a computer to handle the task of taking reports and developing tracks had been explored beginning late in the war. By 1944, analog computers had been installed at the CH stations to automatically convert radar readings into map locations, eliminating two people. Meanwhile, the Royal Navy began experimenting with the Comprehensive Display System (CDS), another analog computer that took X and Y locations from a map and automatically generated tracks from repeated inputs. Similar systems began development with the Royal Canadian Navy, DATAR, and the US Navy, the Naval Tactical Data System. A similar system was also specified for the Nike SAM project, specifically referring to a US version of CDS, coordinating the defense over a battle area so that multiple batteries did not fire on a single target. All of these systems were relatively small in geographic scale, generally tracking within a city-sized area.
When the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in August 1949, the topic of air defense of the US became important for the first time. A study group, the "Air Defense Systems Engineering Committee" was set up under the direction of Dr. George Valley to consider the problem, and is known to history as the Valley Committee.
Their December report noted a key problem in air defense using ground-based radars. A bomber approaching a radar station would detect the signals from the radar long before the reflection off the bomber was strong enough to be detected by the station. The committee suggested that when this occurred, the bomber would descend to low altitude, thereby greatly limiting the radar horizon, allowing the bomber to fly past the station undetected. Although flying at low altitude greatly increased fuel consumption, the team calculated that the bomber would only need to do this for about 10% of its flight, making the fuel penalty acceptable.
The only solution to this problem was to build a huge number of stations with overlapping coverage. At that point the problem became one of managing the information. Manual plotting was immediately ruled out as too slow, and a computerized solution was the only possibility. To handle this task, the computer would need to be fed information directly, eliminating any manual translation by phone operators, and it would have to be able to analyze that information and automatically develop tracks. A system tasked with defending cities against the predicted future Soviet bomber fleet would have to be dramatically more powerful that the models used in the NTDS or DATAR.
The Committee then had to consider whether or not such a computer was possible. Valley was introduced to Jerome Wiesner, associate director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. Wiesner noted that the Servomechanisms Laboratory had already begun development of a machine that might be fast enough. This was the Whirlwind I, originally developed for the Office of Naval Research as a general purpose flight simulator that could simulate any current or future aircraft simply by changing its software.
Wiesner introduced Valley to Whirlwind's project lead, Jay Forrester, who convinced him that Whirlwind was sufficiently capable. In September 1950, an early microwave early-warning radar system at Hanscom Field was connected to Whirlwind using a custom interface developed by Forrester's team. An aircraft was flown past the site, and the system digitized the radar information and successfully sent it to Whirlwind. With this demonstration, the technical concept was proven. Forrester was invited to join the committee.
With this successful demonstration, Louis Ridenour, chief scientist of the Air Force, wrote a memo stating "It is now apparent that the experimental work necessary to develop, test, and evaluate the systems proposals made by ADSEC will require a substantial amount of laboratory and field effort." Ridenour approached MIT President James Killian with the aim of beginning a development lab similar to the war-era Radiation Laboratory that made enormous progress in radar technology. Killian was initially uninterested, desiring to return the school to its peacetime civilian charter. Ridenour eventually convinced Killian the idea was sound by describing the way the lab would lead to the development of a local electronics industry based on the needs of the lab and the students who would leave the lab to start their own companies. Killian agreed to at least consider the issue, and began Project Charles to consider the size and scope of such a lab.
Project Charles was placed under the direction of Francis Wheeler Loomis and included 28 scientists, about half of whom were already associated with MIT. Their study ran from February to August 1951, and in their final report they stated that "We endorse the concept of a centralized system as proposed by the Air Defense Systems Engineering Committee, and we agree that the central coordinating apparatus of this system should be a high-speed electronic digital computer." The report went on to describe a new lab that would be used for generic technology development for the Air Force, Army and Navy, and would be known as Project Lincoln.
Loomis took over direction of Project Lincoln and began planning by following the lead of the earlier RadLab. By September 1951, only months after the Charles report, Project Lincoln had more than 300 employees. By the end of the summer of 1952 this had risen to 1300, and after another year, 1800. The only building suitable for classified work at that point was Building 22, suitable for a few hundred people at most, although some relief was found by moving the non-classified portions of the project, administration and similar, to Building 20. But this was clearly not enough space, and after considering a variety of suitable locations, a site at Laurence G. Hanscom Field was selected, with the official groundbreaking taking place in 1951.
The terms of the National Security Act were formulated during 1947, leading to the creation of the US Air Force out of the former US Army Air Force. During April of the same year, US Air Force staff were identifying specifically the requirement for the creation of automatic equipment for radar-detection which would relay information to an air defence control system, a system which would function without the inclusion of persons for its operation. The December 1949 "Air Defense Systems Engineering Committee" led by Dr. George Valley had recommended computerized networking for "radar stations guarding the northern air approaches to the United States" (e.g., in Canada). After a January 1950 meeting, Valley and Jay Forrester proposed using the Whirlwind I (completed 1951) for air defense. On August 18, 1950, when the "1954 Interceptor" requirements were issued, the USAF "noted that manual techniques of aircraft warning and control would impose "intolerable" delays" (Air Material Command (AMC) published "Electronic Air Defense Environment for 1954" in December .) During February–August 1951 at the new Lincoln Laboratory, the USAF conducted Project Claude which concluded an improved air defense system was needed.
In a test for the US military at Bedford on 20 April 1951, data produced by a radar was transmitted through telephone lines to a computer for the first time, showing the detection of a mock enemy aircraft. This first test was directed by C. Robert Wieser.
The "Summer Study Group" of scientists in 1952 recommended "computerized air direction centers…to be ready by 1954."
IBM's "Project High" assisted under their October 1952 Whirlwind subcontract with Lincoln Laboratory, and a 1952 USAF Project Lincoln "fullscale study" of "a large scale integrated ground control system" resulted in the SAGE approval "first on a trial basis in 1953". The USAF had decided by April 10, 1953, to cancel the competing ADIS (based on CDS), and the University of Michigan's Aeronautical Research Center withdrew in the spring. Air Research and Development Command (ARDC) planned to "finalize a production contract for the Lincoln Transition System". Similarly, the July 22, 1953, report by the Bull Committee (NSC 159) identified completing the Mid-Canada Line radars as the top priority and "on a second-priority-basis: the Lincoln automated system" (the decision to control Bomarc with the automated system was also in 1953.)
The Priority Permanent System with the initial (priority) radar stations was completed in 1952 as a "manual air defense system" (e.g., NORAD/ADC used a "Plexiglas plotting board" at the Ent command center.) The Permanent System radar stations included 3 subsequent phases of deployments and by June 30, 1957, had 119 "Fixed CONUS" radars, 29 "Gap-filler low altitude" radars, and 23 control centers". At "the end of 1957, ADC operated 182 radar stations [and] 17 control centers … 32 [stations] had been added during the last half of the year as low-altitude, unmanned gap-filler radars. The total consisted of 47 gap-filler stations, 75 Permanent System radars, 39 semimobile radars, 19 Pinetree stations,…1 Lashup -era radar and a single Texas Tower". "On 31 December 1958, USAF ADC had 187 operational land-based radar stations" (74 were "P-sites", 29 "M-sites", 13 "SM-sites", & 68 "ZI Gap Fillers").
Jay Forrester was instrumental in directing the development of the key concept of an interception system during his work at Servomechanisms Laboratory of MIT. The concept of the system, according to the Lincoln Laboratory site was to:
The AN/FSQ-7 was developed by the Lincoln Laboratory's Digital Computer Laboratory and Division 6, working closely with IBM as the manufacturer. Each FSQ-7 actually consisted of two nearly identical computers operating in "duplex" for redundancy. The design used an improved version of the Whirlwind I magnetic core memory and was an extension of the Whirlwind II computer program, renamed AN/FSQ-7 in 1953 to comply with Air Force nomenclature. It has been suggested the FSQ-7 was based on the IBM 701 but, while the 701 was investigated by MIT engineers, its design was ultimately rejected due to high error rates and generally being "inadequate to the task." IBM's contributions were essential to the success of the FSQ-7 but IBM benefited immensely from its association with the SAGE project, most evidently during development of the IBM 704.
On October 28, 1953, the Air Force Council recommended 1955 funding for "ADC to convert to the Lincoln automated system" ("redesignated the SAGE System in 1954"). The ""experimental SAGE subsector, located in Lexington, Mass., was completed in 1955…with a prototype AN/FSQ-7…known as XD-1"" (single computer system in Building F). In 1955, Air Force personnel began IBM training at the Kingston, New York, prototype facility, and the "4620th Air Defense Wing (experimental SAGE) was established at Lincoln Laboratory"
On May 3, 1956, General Partridge presented "CINCNORAD's Operational Concept for Control of Air Defense Weapons" to the Armed Forces Policy Council, and a June 1956 symposium presentation identified advanced programming methods of SAGE code. For SAGE consulting Western Electric and Bell Telephone Laboratories formed the Air Defense Engineering Service (ADES), which was contracted in January 1954. IBM delivered the FSQ-7 computer's prototype in June 1956, and Kingston's XD-2 with dual computers guided a Cape Canaveral BOMARC to a successful aircraft intercept on August 7, 1958. Initially contracted to RCA, the AN/FSQ-7 production units were started by IBM in 1958 (32 DCs were planned for networking NORAD regions.) IBM's production contract developed 56 SAGE computers for $½ billion (~$18 million per computer pair in each FSQ-7)—cf. the $2 billion WWII Manhattan Project.
General Operational Requirements (GOR) 79 and 97 were "the basic USAF documents guiding development and improvement of [the semi-automatic] ground environment. Prior to fielding the AN/FSQ-7 centrals, the USAF initially deployed "pre-SAGE semiautomatic intercept systems" (AN/GPA-37) to Air Defense Direction Centers, ADDCs (e.g., at "NORAD Control Centers"). On April 22, 1958, NORAD approved Nike AADCPs to be collocated with the USAF manual ADDCs at Duncanville Air Force Station TX, Olathe Air Force Station KS, Belleville Air Force Station IL, and Osceola Air Force Station KS.
In 1957, SAGE System groundbreaking at McChord AFB was for DC-12 where the "electronic brain" began arriving in November 1958, and the "first SAGE regional battle post [CC-01] began operating in Syracuse, New York in early 1959". BOMARC "crew training was activated January 1, 1958", and AT&T "hardened many of its switching centers, putting them in deep underground bunkers", The North American Defense Objectives Plan (NADOP 59-63) submitted to Canada in December 1958 scheduled 5 Direction Centers and 1 Combat Center to be complete in Fiscal Year 1959, 12 DCs and 3 CCs complete at the end of FY 60, 19 DC/4 CC FY 61, 25/6 FY 62, and 30/10 FY 63. On June 30 NORAD ordered that "Air Defense Sectors (SAGE) were to be designated as NORAD sectors", (the military reorganization had begun when effective April 1, 1958, CONAD "designated four SAGE sectors – New York, Boston, Syracuse, and Washington – as CONAD Sectors".)
SAGE Geographic Reorganization: The SAGE Geographic Reorganization Plan of July 25, 1958, by NORAD was "to provide a means for the orderly transition and phasing from the manual to the SAGE system." The plan identified deactivation of the Eastern, Central, and Western Region/Defense Forces on July 1, 1960, and "current manual boundaries" were to be moved to the new "eight SAGE divisions" (1 in Canada, "the 35th") as soon as possible. Manual divisions "not to get SAGE computers were to be phased out" along with their Manual Air Defense Control Centers at the headquarters base: "9th [at] Geiger Field… 32d, Syracuse AFS… 35th, Dobbins AFB… 58th, Wright-Patterson AFB… 85th, Andrews AFB". The 26th SAGE Division (New York, Boston, Syracuse & Bangor SAGE sectors)--the 1st of the SAGE divisions—became operational at Hancock Field on 1 January 1959 after the redesignation started for AC&W Squadrons (e.g., the Highlands P-9 unit became the 646th Radar Squadron (SAGE) October 1.) Additional sectors included the Los Angeles Air Defense Sector (SAGE) designated in February 1959. A June 23 JCS memorandum approved the new "March 1959 Reorganization Plan" for HQ NORAD/CONAD/ADC.
Project Wild Goose teams of Air Material Command personnel installed the Ground Air Transmit Receive stations for the SAGE TDDL (in April 1961, Sault Ste Marie was the first operational sector with TDDL.) ... By the middle of 1960, AMC had determined that about 800,000 man-hours (involving 130 changes) would be required to bring the F-106 fleet to the point where it would be a valuable adjunct to the air defense system. Part of the work (Project Broad Jump) was accomplished by Sacramento Air Materiel Area. The remainder (Project Wild Goose) was done at ADC bases by roving AMC field assistance teams supported by ADC maintenance personnel. (cited by Volume I p. 271 & Schaffel p. 325) After a September 1959 experimental ATABE test between an "abbreviated" AN/FSQ-7 staged at Fort Banks and the Lexington XD-1, the 1961 "SAGE/Missile Master test program" conducted large-scale field testing of the ATABE "mathematical model" using radar tracks of actual SAC and ADC aircraft flying mock penetrations into defense sectors. Similarly conducted was the joint SAC-NORAD Sky Shield II exercise followed by Sky Shield III on 2 September 1962 On July 15, 1963, ESD's CMC Management Office assumed "responsibilities in connection with BMEWS, Space Track, SAGE, and BUIC." The Chidlaw Building's computerized NORAD/ADC Combined Operations Center in 1963 became the highest echelon of the SAGE computer network when operations moved from Ent AFB's 1954 manual Command Center to the partially underground "war room". Also in 1963, radar stations were renumbered (e.g., Cambria AFS was redesignated from P-2 to Z-2 on July 31) and the vacuum-tube SAGE System was completed (and obsolete).
On "June 26, 1958,…the New York sector became operational" and on December 1, 1958, the Syracuse sector's DC-03 was operational ("the SAGE system [did not] become operational until January 1959.") Construction of CFB North Bay in Canada was started in 1959 for a bunker ~ underground (operational October 1, 1963), and by 1963 the system had 3 Combat Centers. The 23 SAGE centers included 1 in Canada, and the "SAGE control centers reached their full 22 site deployments in 1961 (out of 46 originally planned)." The completed Minot AFB blockhouse received an AN/FSQ-7, but never received the FSQ-8 (the April 1, 1959, Minot Air Defense Sector consolidated with the Grand Forks ADS on March 1, 1963).
The SAGE system included a direction center (DC) assigned to air defense sectors as they were defined at the time.
*Some of the originally planned 32 DCswere never completed and DCs were planned at installations for additional sectors: Calypso/Raleigh NC, England/Shreveport LA, Fort Knox KY, Kirtland/Albuquerque NM, Robins/Miami, Scott/St. Louis, Webb/San Antonio TX.
The environment allowed radar station personnel to monitor the radar data and systems' status (e.g., Arctic Tower radome pressure) and to use the range height equipment to process height requests from Direction Center (DC) personnel. DCs received the Long Range Radar Input from the sector's radar stations, and DC personnel monitored the radar tracks and IFF data provided by the stations, requested height-finder radar data on targets, and monitored the computer's evaluation of which fighter aircraft or Bomarc missile site could reach the threat first. The DC's "NORAD sector commander's operational staff" could designate fighter intercept of a target or, using the Senior Director's keyed console in the Weapons Direction room, launch a Bomarc intercept with automatic Q-7 guidance of the surface-to-air missile to a final homing dive (equipped fighters eventually were automatically guided to intercepts).
The "NORAD sector direction center (NSDC) [also had] air defense artillery director (ADAD) consoles [and an Army] ADA battle staff officer", and the NSDC automatically communicated crosstelling of "SAGE reference track data" to/from adjacent sectors' DCs and to 10 Nike Missile Master AADCPs. Forwardtelling automatically communicated data from multiple DCs to a 3-story Combat Center (CC) usually at one of the sector's DCs (cf. planned Hamilton AFB CC-05 near the Beale AFB DC-18) for coordinating the air battle in the NORAD region (multiple sectors) and which forwarded data to the NORAD Command Center (Ent AFB, 1963 Chidlaw Building, & 1966 Cheyenne Mountain). NORAD's integration of air warning data (at the ADOC) along with space surveillance, intelligence, and other data allowed attack assessment of an Air Defense Emergency for alerting the SAC command centers (465L SACCS nodes at Offutt AFB & The Notch), The Pentagon/Raven Rock NMCC/ANMCC, and the public via CONELRAD radio stations.
The Burroughs 416L SAGE component (ESD Project 416L, Semi Automatic Ground Environment System) was the Cold War network connecting IBM supplied computer system at the various DC and that created the display and control environment for operation of the separate radars and to provide outbound command guidance for ground-controlled interception by air defense aircraft in the "SAGE Defense System" ("Air Defense Weapons System"). Burroughs Corporation was a prime contractor for SAGE network interface equipment which included 134 Burroughs AN/FST-2 Coordinate Data Transmitting Sets (CDTS) at radar stations and other sites, the IBM supplied AN/FSQ-7 at 23 Direction Centers, and the AN/FSQ-8 Combat Control Computers at 8 Combat Centers. The 2 computers of each AN/FSQ-7 together weighing used about ⅓ of the DC's 2nd floor space and at ~$50 per instruction had approximately 125,000 "computer instructions support[ing] actual operational air-defense mission" processing. The AN/FSQ-7 at Luke AFB had additional memory (32K total) and was used as a "computer center for all other" DCs. Project 416L was the USAF predecessor of NORAD, SAC, and other military organizations' "Big L" computer systems (e.g., 438L Air Force Intelligence Data Handling System & 496L Space Detection and Tracking System).
Network communications: The SAGE network of computers connected by a "Digital Radar Relay" (SAGE data system) used AT&T voice lines, microwave towers, switching centers (e.g., SAGE NNX 764 was at Delta, Utah & 759 at Mounds, Oklahoma), etc.; and AT&T's "main underground station" was in Kansas (Fairview) with other bunkers in Connecticut (Cheshire), California (Santa Rosa), Iowa (Boone) and Maryland (Hearthstone Mountain). CDTS modems at automated radar stations transmitted range and azimuth, and the Air Movements Identification Service (AMIS) provided air traffic data to the SAGE System. Radar tracks by telephone calls (e.g., from Manual Control Centers in the Albuquerque, Minot, and Oklahoma City sectors) could be entered via consoles of the 4th floor "Manual Inputs" room adjacent to the "Communication Recording-Monitoring and VHF" room. In 1966, SAGE communications were integrated into the AUTOVON Network.
SAGE Sector Warning Networks (cf. NORAD Division Warning Networks) provided the radar netting communications for each DC and eventually also allowed transfer of command guidance to autopilots of TDDL-equipped interceptors for vectoring to targets via the Ground to Air Data Link Subsystem and the Ground Air Transmit Receive (GATR) network of radio sites for "HF/VHF/UHF voice & TDDL" each generally co-located at a CDTS site. SAGE Direction Centers and Combat Centers were also nodes of NORAD's Alert Network Number 1, and SAC Emergency War Order Traffic included "Positive Control/Noah's Ark instructions" through northern NORAD radio sites to confirm or recall SAC bombers if "SAC decided to launch the alert force before receiving an execution order from the JCS".
A SAGE System ergonomic test at Luke AFB in 1964 ""showed conclusively that the wrong timing of human and technical operations was leading to frequent truncation of the flight path tracking system"" (Harold Sackman). SAGE software development was "grossly underestimated" (60,000 lines in September 1955): "the biggest mistake [of] the SAGE computer program was [underestimating the] jump from the 35,000 [WWI] instructions … to the more than 100,000 instructions on the" AN/FSQ-8. NORAD conducted a "Sage/Missile Master Integration/ECM-ECCM Test" in 1963, and although SAGE used AMIS input of air traffic information, the 1959 plan developed by the July 1958 USAF Air Defense Systems Integration Division for SAGE Air Traffic Integration (SATIN) was cancelled by the DoD.
SAGE radar stations, including 78 DEW Line sites in December 1961, provided radar tracks to DCs and had frequency diversity (FD) radars United States Navy picket ships also provided radar tracks, and seaward radar coverage was provided. By the late 1960s EC-121 Warning Star aircraft based at Otis AFB MA and McClellan AFB CA provided radar tracks via automatic data link to the SAGE System. Civil Aeronautics Administration radars were at some stations (e.g., stations of the Joint Use Site System), and the ARSR-1 Air Route Surveillance Radar rotation rate had to be modified "for SAGE [IFF/SIF] Modes III and IV" ("antenna gear box modification" for compatibility with FSQ-7 & FSG-1 centrals.)
ADC aircraft such as the F-94 Starfire, F-89 Scorpion, F-101B Voodoo, and F-4 Phantom were controlled by SAGE GCI. The F-104 Starfighter was "too small to be equipped with [SAGE] data link equipment" and used voice-commanded GCI, but the F-106 Delta Dart was equipped for the automated data link (ADL). The ADL was designed to allow Interceptors that reached targets to transmit real-time tactical friendly and enemy movements and to determine whether sector defence reinforcement was necessary.
Familiarization flights allowed SAGE weapons directors to fly on two-seat interceptors to observe GCI operations. Surface-to-air missile installations for CIM-10 Bomarc interceptors were displayed on SAGE consoles.
Partially solid-state AN/FST-2B and later AN/FYQ-47 computers replaced the AN/FST-2, and sectors without AN/FSQ-7 centrals requiring a "weapon direction control device" for USAF air defense used the solid-state AN/GSG-5 CCCS instead of the AN/GPA-73 recommended by ADC in June 1958. Back-Up Interceptor Control (BUIC) with CCCS dispersed to radar stations for survivability allowed a diminished but functional SAGE capability. In 1962, Burroughs "won the contract to provide a military version of its D825" modular data processing system for BUIC II. BUIC II was 1st used at North Truro Z-10 in 1966, and the Hamilton AFB BUIC II was installed in the former MCC building when it was converted to a SAGE Combat Center in 1966 (CC-05). On June 3, 1963, the Direction Centers at Marysville CA, Marquette/K I Sawyer AFB (DC-14) MI, Stewart AFB NY (DC-02), and Moses Lake WA (DC-15) were planned for closing and at the end of 1969, only 6 CONUS SAGE DCs remained (DC-03, -04, -10, -12, -20, & -21) all with the vacuum tube AN/FSQ-7 centrals. In 1966, NORAD Combined Operations Center operations at Chidlaw transferred to the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center (425L System) and in December 1963, the DoD approved solid state replacement of Martin AN/FSG-1 centrals with the AN/GSG-5 and subsequent Hughes AN/TSQ-51. The "416L/M/N Program Office" at Hanscom Field had deployed the BUIC III by 1971 (e.g., to Fallon NAS), and the initial BUIC systems were phased out 1974–5. ADC had been renamed Aerospace Defense Command on January 15, 1968, and its general surveillance radar stations transferred to ADTAC in 1979 when the ADC major command was broken up (space surveillance stations went to SAC and the Aerospace Defense Center was activated as a DRU.)
For airborne command posts, "as early as 1962 the Air Force began exploring possibilities for an Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS)", and the Strategic Defense Architecture (SDA-2000) planned an integrated air defense and air traffic control network. The USAF declared full operational capability of the first seven Joint Surveillance System ROCCs on December 23, 1980, with Hughes AN/FYQ-93 systems, and many of the SAGE radar stations became Joint Surveillance System (JSS) sites (e.g., San Pedro Hill Z-39 became FAA Ground Equipment Facility J-31.) The North Bay AN/FSQ-7 was dismantled and sent to Boston's Computer Museum. In 1996, AN/FSQ-7 components were moved to Moffett Federal Airfield for storage and later moved to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. The last AN/FSQ-7 centrals were demolished at McChord AFB (August 1983) and Luke AFB (February 1984). Decommissioned AN/FSQ-7 equipment was also used as TV series props (e.g. in The Time Tunnel and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea).
SAGE histories include a 1983 special issue of the "Annals of the History of Computing", and various personal histories were published, e.g., Valley in 1985 and Jacobs in 1986. In 1998, the SAGE System was identified as 1 of 4 "Monumental Projects", and a SAGE lecture presented the vintage film "In Your Defense" followed by anecdotal information from Les Earnest, Jim Wong, and Paul Edwards. In 2013, a copy of a 1950s cover girl image programmed for SAGE display was identified as the "earliest known figurative computer art". Company histories identifying employees' roles in SAGE include the 1981 "System Builders: The Story of SDC" and the 1998 "Architects of Information Advantage: The MITRE Corporation Since 1958". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28005 |
Subgroup
In group theory, a branch of mathematics, given a group "G" under a binary operation ∗, a subset "H" of "G" is called a subgroup of "G" if "H" also forms a group under the operation ∗. More precisely, "H" is a subgroup of "G" if the restriction of ∗ to is a group operation on "H". This is usually denoted , read as ""H" is a subgroup of "G"".
The trivial subgroup of any group is the subgroup {"e"} consisting of just the identity element.
A proper subgroup of a group "G" is a subgroup "H" which is a proper subset of "G" (that is, ). This is usually represented notationally by , read as ""H" is a proper subgroup of "G"". Some authors also exclude the trivial group from being proper (that is, }).
If "H" is a subgroup of "G", then "G" is sometimes called an overgroup of "H".
The same definitions apply more generally when "G" is an arbitrary semigroup, but this article will only deal with subgroups of groups. The group "G" is sometimes denoted by the ordered pair , usually to emphasize the operation ∗ when "G" carries multiple algebraic or other structures.
Given a subgroup "H" and some "a" in G, we define the left coset "aH" = {"ah" : "h" in "H"}. Because "a" is invertible, the map φ : "H" → "aH" given by φ("h") = "ah" is a bijection. Furthermore, every element of "G" is contained in precisely one left coset of "H"; the left cosets are the equivalence classes corresponding to the equivalence relation "a"1 ~ "a"2 if and only if "a"1−1"a"2 is in "H". The number of left cosets of "H" is called the index of "H" in "G" and is denoted by ["G" : "H"].
Lagrange's theorem states that for a finite group "G" and a subgroup "H",
where |"G"| and |"H"| denote the orders of "G" and "H", respectively. In particular, the order of every subgroup of "G" (and the order of every element of "G") must be a divisor of |"G"|.
Right cosets are defined analogously: "Ha" = {"ha" : "h" in "H"}. They are also the equivalence classes for a suitable equivalence relation and their number is equal to ["G" : "H"].
If "aH" = "Ha" for every "a" in "G", then "H" is said to be a normal subgroup. Every subgroup of index 2 is normal: the left cosets, and also the right cosets, are simply the subgroup and its complement. More generally, if "p" is the lowest prime dividing the order of a finite group "G," then any subgroup of index "p" (if such exists) is normal.
Let "G" be the cyclic group Z8 whose elements are
and whose group operation is addition modulo eight. Its Cayley table is
This group has two nontrivial subgroups: "J"={0,4} and "H"={0,2,4,6}, where "J" is also a subgroup of "H". The Cayley table for "H" is the top-left quadrant of the Cayley table for "G". The group "G" is cyclic, and so are its subgroups. In general, subgroups of cyclic groups are also cyclic.
Every group has as many small subgroups as neutral elements on the main diagonal:
The trivial group and two-element groups Z2. These small subgroups are not counted in the following list. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28011 |
Series
Series may refer to: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28012 |
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and software. Founded in Mountain View, California in November 1981 by Jim Clark, its initial market was 3D graphics computer workstations, but its products, strategies and market positions developed significantly over time.
Early systems were based on the Geometry Engine that Clark and Marc Hannah had developed at Stanford University, and were derived from Clark's broader background in computer graphics. The Geometry Engine was the first very-large-scale integration (VLSI) implementation of a "geometry pipeline", specialized hardware that accelerated the "inner-loop" geometric computations needed to display three-dimensional images. For much of its history, the company focused on 3D imaging and was a major supplier of both hardware and software in this market.
Silicon Graphics reincorporated as a Delaware corporation in January 1990. Through the mid to late-1990s, the rapidly improving performance of commodity Wintel machines began to erode SGI's stronghold in the 3D market. The porting of Maya to other platforms was a major event in this process. SGI made several attempts to address this, including a disastrous move from their existing MIPS platforms to the Intel Itanium, as well as introducing their own Linux-based Intel IA-32 based workstations and servers that failed in the market. In the mid-2000s the company repositioned itself as a supercomputer vendor, a move that also failed.
On April 1, 2009, SGI filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced that it would sell substantially all of its assets to Rackable Systems, a deal finalized on May 11, 2009, with Rackable assuming the name Silicon Graphics International. The remains of Silicon Graphics, Inc. became Graphics Properties Holdings, Inc.
James H. Clark left his position as an electrical engineering associate professor at Stanford University to found SGI in 1982 along with a group of seven graduate students and research staff from Stanford: Kurt Akeley, David J. Brown, Tom Davis, Rocky Rhodes, Marc Hannah, Herb Kuta, and Mark Grossman; along with Abbey Silverstone and a few others.
Ed McCracken was CEO of Silicon Graphics from 1984 to 1997. During those years, SGI grew from annual revenues of $5.4 million to $3.7 billion.
The addition of 3D graphic capabilities to PCs, and the ability of clusters of Linux- and BSD-based PCs to take on many of the tasks of larger SGI servers, ate into SGI's core markets. The porting of Maya to Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows further eroded the low end of SGI's product line.
In response to challenges faced in the marketplace and a falling share price Ed McCracken was fired and SGI brought in Richard Belluzzo to replace him. Under Belluzzo's leadership a number of initiatives were taken which are considered to have accelerated the corporate decline.
One such initiative was trying to sell workstations running Windows NT called Visual Workstations in addition to workstations running IRIX, the company's version of UNIX. This put the company in even more direct competition with the likes of Dell, making it more difficult to justify a price premium. The product line was unsuccessful and abandoned a few years later.
SGI's premature announcement of its migration from MIPS to Itanium and its abortive ventures into IA-32 architecture systems (the Visual Workstation line, the ex-Intergraph Zx10 range and the SGI 1000-series Linux servers) damaged SGI's credibility in the market.
In 1999, in an attempt to clarify their current market position as more than a graphics company, Silicon Graphics Inc. changed its corporate identity to "SGI", although its legal name was unchanged.
At the same time, SGI announced a new logo consisting of only the letters "sgi" in a proprietary font called "SGI", created by branding and design consulting firm Landor Associates, in collaboration with designer Joe Stitzlein. SGI continued to use the "Silicon Graphics" name for its workstation product line, and later re-adopted the cube logo for some workstation models.
In November 2005, SGI announced that it had been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange because its common stock had fallen below the minimum share price for listing on the exchange. SGI's market capitalization dwindled from a peak of over seven billion dollars in 1995 to just $120 million at the time of delisting. In February 2006, SGI noted that it could run out of cash by the end of the year.
In mid-2005, SGI hired Alix Partners to advise it on returning to profitability and received a new line of credit. SGI announced it was postponing its scheduled annual December stockholders meeting until March 2006. It proposed a reverse stock split to deal with the de-listing from the New York Stock Exchange.
In January 2006, SGI hired Dennis McKenna as its new CEO and chairman of the board of directors. Mr. McKenna succeeded Robert Bishop, who remained vice chairman of the board of directors.
On May 8, 2006, SGI announced that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for itself and U.S. subsidiaries as part of a plan to reduce debt by $250 million. Two days later, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court approved its first day motions and its use of a $70 million financing facility provided by a group of its bondholders. Foreign subsidiaries were unaffected.
On September 6, 2006, SGI announced the end of development for the MIPS/IRIX line and the IRIX operating system. Production would end on December 29 and the last orders would be fulfilled by March 2007. Support for these products would end after December 2013.
SGI emerged from bankruptcy protection on October 17, 2006. Its stock symbol at that point, "SGID.pk", was canceled, and new stock was issued on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol "SGIC". This new stock was distributed to the company's creditors, and the SGID common stockholders were left with worthless shares. At the end of that year, the company moved its headquarters from Mountain View to Sunnyvale. Its earlier North Shoreline headquarters is now occupied by the Computer History Museum; the newer Amphitheater Parkway headquarters was sold to Google. Both of these locations were award-winning designs by Studios Architecture.
In April 2008, SGI re-entered the visualization market with the SGI Virtu range of visualization servers and workstations, which were re-badged systems from BOXX Technologies based on Intel Xeon or AMD Opteron processors and Nvidia Quadro graphics chipsets, running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server or Windows Compute Cluster Server.
In December 2008, SGI received a delisting notification from NASDAQ, as its market value had been below the minimum $35 million requirement for 10 consecutive trading days, and also did not meet NASDAQ's alternative requirements of a minimum stockholders' equity of $2.5 million or annual net income from continuing operations of $500,000 or more.
On April 1, 2009, SGI filed for Chapter 11 again, and announced that it would sell substantially all of its assets to Rackable Systems for $25 million. The sale, ultimately for $42.5 million, was finalized on May 11, 2009; at the same time, Rackable announced their adoption of "Silicon Graphics International" as their global name and brand. The Bankruptcy Court scheduled continuing proceedings and hearings for June 3 and 24, 2009, and July 22, 2009.
After the Rackable acquisition, "Vizworld" magazine published a series of six articles that chronicle the downfall of SGI.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise acquired SGI in November 2016 which allowed HPE to place the TOP500 NASA Ames Research Center, Pleiades SGI ICE supercomputer in its portfolio.
During the Silicon Graphics Inc.'s second bankruptcy phase, it was renamed to Graphics Properties Holdings, Inc.(GPHI) in June 2009.
In 2010, GPHI announced it had won a significant favorable ruling in its litigation with ATI Technologies and AMD in June 2010, following the patent lawsuit originally filed during the Silicon Graphics, Inc. era. Following the 2008 appeal by ATI over the validity of ('327) and Silicon Graphics Inc's voluntary dismissal of the ('376) patent from the lawsuit, the Federal Circuit upheld the jury verdict on the validity of GPHI's U.S. Patent No. 6,650,327, and furthermore found that AMD had lost its right to challenge patent validity in future proceedings. On January 31, 2011, the District Court entered an order that permits AMD to pursue its invalidity affirmative defense at trial and does not permit SGI to accuse AMD's Radeon R700 series of graphics products of infringement in this case. On April 18, 2011, GPHI and AMD had entered into a confidential Settlement and License Agreement that resolved this litigation matter for an immaterial amount and that provides immunity under all GPHI patents for alleged infringement by AMD products, including components, software and designs. On April 26, 2011, the Court entered an order granting the parties' agreed motion for dismissal and final judgment.
In November 2011, GPHI filed another patent infringement lawsuit against Apple Inc. in Delaware involving more patents than their original patent infringement case against Apple last November, for alleged violation of U.S. patents 6,650,327 ('327), ('145) and ('881).
In 2012, the GPHI filed lawsuit against Apple, Sony, HTC Corp, LG Electronics Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., Research in Motion Ltd. for allegedly violating patent relating to a computer graphics process that turns text and images into pixels to be displayed on screens. Affected devices include Apple iPhone, HTC EVO4G, LG Thrill, Research in Motion Torch, Samsung Galaxy S and Galaxy S II, and Sony Xperia Play smartphones.
SGI's first generation products, starting with the IRIS (Integrated Raster Imaging System) 1000 series of high-performance graphics terminals, were based on the Motorola 68000 family of microprocessors. The later IRIS 2000 and 3000 models developed into full UNIX workstations.
The first entries in the 1000 series (models 1000 and 1200, introduced in 1984) were graphics terminals, peripherals to be connected to a general-purpose computer such as a Digital Equipment Corporation VAX, to provide graphical raster display abilities. They used 8 MHz Motorola 68000 CPUs with of RAM and had no disk drives. They booted over the network (via an Excelan EXOS/101 Ethernet card) from their controlling computer. They used the "PM1" CPU board, which was a variant of the board that was used in Stanford University's SUN workstation and later in the Sun-1 workstation from Sun Microsystems. The graphics system was composed of the GF1 frame buffer, the UC3 "Update Controller", DC3 "Display Controller", and the BP2 bitplane. The 1000-series machines were designed around the Multibus standard.
Later 1000-series machines, the 1400 and 1500, ran at 10 MHz and had 1.5 MB of RAM. The 1400 had a 73 MB ST-506 disk drive, while the 1500 had a 474 MB SMD-based disk drive with a Xylogics 450 disk controller. They may have used the PM2 CPU and PM2M1 RAM board from the 2000 series. The usual monitor for the 1000 series ran at 30 Hz interlaced. Six beta-test units of the 1400 workstation were produced, and the first production unit (SGI's first commercial computer) was shipped to Carnegie-Mellon University's Electronic Imaging Laboratory in 1984.
SGI rapidly developed its machines into workstations with its second product line — the IRIS 2000 series, first released in August 1985. SGI began using the UNIX System V operating system. There were five models in two product ranges, the 2000/2200/2300/2400/2500 range which used 68010 CPUs (the PM2 CPU module), and the later "Turbo" systems, the 2300T, 2400T and 2500T, which had 68020s (the IP2 CPU module). All used the Excelan EXOS/201 Ethernet card, the same graphics hardware (GF2 Frame Buffer, UC4 Update Controller, DC4 Display Controller, BP3 Bitplane). Their main differences were the CPU, RAM, and Weitek Floating Point Accelerator boards, disk controllers and disk drives (both ST-506 and SMD were available). These could be upgraded, for example from a 2400 to a 2400T. The 2500 and 2500T had a larger chassis, a standard 6' 19" EIA rack with space at the bottom for two SMD disk drives weighing approximately each. The non-Turbo models used the Multibus for the CPU to communicate with the floating point accelerator, while the Turbos added a ribbon cable dedicated for this. 60 Hz monitors were used for the 2000 series.
The height of the machines using Motorola CPUs was reached with the IRIS 3000 series (models 3010/3020/3030 and 3110/3115/3120/3130, the 30s both being full-size rack machines). They used the same graphics subsystem and Ethernet as the 2000s, but could also use up to 12 "geometry engines", the first widespread use of hardware graphics accelerators. The standard monitor was a 19" 60 Hz non-interlaced unit with a tilt/swivel base; 19" 30 Hz interlaced and a 15" 60 Hz non-interlaced (with tilt/swivel base) were also available.
The IRIS 3130 and its smaller siblings were impressive for the time, being complete UNIX workstations. The 3130 was powerful enough to support a complete 3D animation and rendering package without mainframe support. With large capacity hard drives by standards of the day (two 300 MB drives), streaming tape and Ethernet, it could be the centerpiece of an animation operation.
The line was formally discontinued in November 1989, with about 3500 systems shipped of all 2000 and 3000 models combined.
With the introduction of the IRIS 4D series, SGI switched to MIPS microprocessors. These machines were more powerful and came with powerful on-board floating-point capability. As 3D graphics became more popular in television and film during this time, these systems were responsible for establishing much of SGI's reputation.
SGI produced a broad range of MIPS-based workstations and servers during the 1990s, running SGI's version of UNIX System V, now called IRIX. These included the massive Onyx visualization systems, the size of refrigerators and capable of supporting up to 64 processors while managing up to three streams of high resolution, fully realized 3D graphics.
In October 1991, MIPS announced the first commercially available 64-bit microprocessor, the R4000. SGI used the R4000 in its Crimson workstation. IRIX 6.2 was the first fully 64-bit IRIX release, including 64-bit pointers.
To secure the supply of future generations of MIPS microprocessors (the 64-bit R4000), SGI acquired the company in 1992 for $333 million and renamed it as MIPS Technologies Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of SGI.
In 1993, Silicon Graphics (SGI) signed a deal with Nintendo to develop the Reality Coprocessor (RCP) GPU used in the Nintendo 64 (N64) video game console. The deal was signed in early 1993, and it was later made public in August of that year. The console itself was later released in 1996. The RCP was developed by SGI's Nintendo Operations department, led by engineer Dr. Wei Yen. In 1997, twenty SGI employees, led by Yen, left SGI and founded ArtX (later acquired by ATI Technologies in 2000).
In 1998, SGI relinquished some ownership of MIPS Technologies, Inc in a Re-IPO, and fully divested itself in 2000.
In the late 1990s, when much of the industry expected the Itanium to replace both CISC and RISC architectures in non-embedded computers, SGI announced their intent to phase out MIPS in their systems. Development of new MIPS microprocessors stopped, and the existing R12000 design was extended multiple times until 2003 to provide existing customers more time to migrate to Itanium.
In August 2006, SGI announced the end of production for MIPS/IRIX systems, and by the end of the year MIPS/IRIX products were no longer generally available from SGI.
Until the second generation Onyx Reality Engine machines, SGI offered access to its high performance 3D graphics subsystems through a proprietary API known as "IRIS Graphics Language" (IRIS GL). As more features were added over the years, IRIS GL became harder to maintain and more cumbersome to use. In 1992, SGI decided to clean up and reform IRIS GL and made the bold move of allowing the resulting OpenGL API to be cheaply licensed by SGI's competitors, and set up an industry-wide consortium to maintain the OpenGL standard (the OpenGL Architecture Review Board).
This meant that for the first time, fast, efficient, cross-platform graphics programs could be written. To this day, OpenGL remains the only real-time 3D graphics standard to be portable across a variety of operating systems. OpenGL-ES even runs on many types of cell phones. Its main competitor (Direct3D from Microsoft) runs only on Microsoft Windows-based machines and some consoles.
SGI was part of the Advanced Computing Environment initiative, formed in the early 1990s with 20 other companies, including Compaq, Digital Equipment Corporation, MIPS Computer Systems, Groupe Bull, Siemens, NEC, NeTpower, Microsoft and Santa Cruz Operation. Its intent was to introduce workstations based on the MIPS architecture and able to run Windows NT and SCO UNIX. The group produced the Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) specification, but began to unravel little more than a year after its formation.
For eight consecutive years (1995–2002), all films nominated for an Academy Award for Distinguished Achievement in Visual Effects were created on Silicon Graphics computer systems. the technology was also used in commercials for Energizer, Benson & Hedges, Apple, Nike, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Budweiser, McDonald's, Nickelodeon, Canada Dry, Honey Comb, Gatorade, Reese's, Pillsbury Doughboy, "Bud Bowl", "Scrubbing Bubbles", Budweiser, Dodge, United Airlines, and DHL.
An SGI Crimson system with the fsn three-dimensional file system navigator appeared in the 1993 movie "Jurassic Park".
In the movie "Twister", protagonists can be seen using an SGI laptop computer; however, the unit shown was not an actual working computer, but rather a fake laptop shell built around an SGI Corona LCD flat screen display.
The 1995 film "Congo" also features an SGI laptop computer being used by Dr. Ross (Laura Linney) to communicate via satellite to TraviCom HQ.
The purple, lowercased "sgi" logo can be seen at the beginning of the opening credits of the HBO series "Silicon Valley", before being taken down and replaced by the Google logo as the intro graphics progress. Google leased the former SGI buildings in 2003 for their headquarters in Mountain View, CA until they purchased the buildings outright in 2006.
Once inexpensive PCs began to have graphics performance close to the more expensive specialized graphical workstations which were SGI's core business, SGI shifted its focus to high performance servers for digital video and the Web. Many SGI graphics engineers left to work at other computer graphics companies such as ATI and Nvidia, contributing to the PC 3D graphics revolution.
SGI was a promoter of free software, supporting several projects such as Linux and Samba, and opening some of its own previously proprietary code such as the XFS filesystem and the Open64 compiler.
SGI was also important in its contribution to the C++ Standard Template Library (STL) with many useful extensions in the MIT-like licensed SGI STL implementation. The extension keeps being carried by the direct descendant STLport and GNU's libstdc++.
In 1995, SGI purchased Alias Research, Kroyer Films, and Wavefront Technologies in a deal totaling approximately $500 million and merged the companies into Alias|Wavefront. In June 2004 SGI sold the business, later renamed to Alias/Wavefront, to the private equity investment firm Accel-KKR for $57.1 million. In October 2005, Autodesk announced that it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Alias for $182 million in cash.
In February 1996, SGI purchased the well-known supercomputer manufacturer Cray Research for $740 million, and began to use marketing names such as "CrayLink" for (SGI-developed) technology integrated into the SGI server line. Three months later, it sold the Cray Business Systems Division, responsible for the CS6400 SPARC/Solaris server, to Sun Microsystems for an undisclosed amount (acknowledged later by a Sun executive to be "significantly less than $100 million"). Many of the Cray T3E engineers designed and developed the SGI Altix and NUMAlink technology. SGI sold the Cray brand and product lines to Tera Computer Company on March 31, 2000, for $35 million plus one million shares. SGI also distributed its remaining interest in MIPS Technologies through a spin-off effective June 20, 2000.
In September 2000, SGI acquired the Zx10 series of Windows workstations and servers from Intergraph Computer Systems (for a rumored $100 million), and rebadged them as SGI systems. The product line was discontinued in June 2001.
Another attempt by SGI in the late 1990s to introduce its own family of Intel-based workstations running Windows NT or Red Hat Linux (see also SGI Visual Workstation) proved to be a financial disaster, and shook customer confidence in SGI's commitment to its own MIPS-based line.
In 1998, SGI announced that future generations of its machines would be based not on their own MIPS processors, but the upcoming "super-chip" from Intel, code-named "Merced" and later called Itanium. Funding for its own high-end processors was reduced, and it was planned that the R10000 would be the last MIPS mainstream processor. MIPS Technologies would focus entirely on the embedded market, where it was having some success, and SGI would no longer have to fund development of a CPU that, since the failure of ARC, found use only in their own machines. This plan quickly went awry. As early as 1999 it was clear the Itanium was going to be delivered very late and would have nowhere near the performance originally expected. As the production delays increased, MIPS' existing R10000-based machines grew increasingly uncompetitive. Eventually it was forced to introduce faster MIPS processors, the R12000, R14000 and R16000, which were used in a series of models from 2002 through 2006.
SGI's first Itanium-based system was the short-lived SGI 750 workstation, launched in 2001. SGI's MIPS-based systems were not to be superseded until the launch of the Itanium 2-based Altix servers and Prism workstations some time later. Unlike the MIPS systems, which ran IRIX, the Itanium systems used SuSE Linux Enterprise Server with SGI enhancements as their operating system. SGI used Transitive Corporation's QuickTransit software to allow their old MIPS/IRIX applications to run (in emulation) on the new Itanium/Linux platform.
In the server market the Itanium 2-based Altix eventually replaced the MIPS-based Origin product line. In the workstation market, the switch to Itanium was not completed before SGI exited the market.
The Altix was the most powerful computer in the world in 2006, assuming that a "computer" is defined as a collection of hardware running under a single instance of an operating system. The Altix had 512 Itanium processors running under a single instance of Linux. A cluster of 20 machines was then the eighth-fastest supercomputer. All faster supercomputers were clusters, but none have as many FLOPS per machine. However, more recent supercomputers are very large clusters of machines that are individually less capable. SGI acknowledged this and in 2007 moved away from the "massive NUMA" model to clusters.
Although SGI continued to market Itanium-based machines, its more recent machines were based on the Intel Xeon processor. The first Altix XE systems were relatively low-end machines, but by December 2006 the XE systems were more capable than the Itanium machines by some measures (e.g., power consumption in FLOPS/W, density in FLOPS/m3, cost/FLOPS). The XE1200 and XE1300 servers used a cluster architecture. This was a departure from the pure NUMA architectures of the earlier Itanium and MIPS servers.
In June 2007, SGI announced the Altix ICE 8200, a blade-based Xeon system with up to 512 Xeon cores per rack. An Altix ICE 8200 installed at New Mexico Computing Applications Center (with 14336 processors) ranked at number 3 on the TOP500 list of November 2007.
Conventional wisdom holds that SGI's core market has traditionally been Hollywood visual effects studios. In fact, SGI's largest revenue has always been generated by government and defense applications, energy, and scientific and technical computing. In one case Silicon Graphics' largest single sale ever was to the United States Postal Service. SGI's servers powered an artificial intelligence program to mechanically read, tag and sort the mail (hand-written and block) at a number of USPS's key mail centers. The rise of cheap yet powerful commodity workstations running Linux, Windows and Mac OS X, and the availability of diverse professional software for them, effectively pushed SGI out of the visual effects industry in all but the most niche markets.
SGI continued to enhance its line of servers (including some supercomputers) based on the SN architecture. SN, for Scalable Node, is a technology developed by SGI in the mid-1990s that uses cache-coherent non-uniform memory access (cc-NUMA). In an SN system, processors, memory, and a bus- and memory-controller are coupled together into an entity called a node, usually on a single circuit board. Nodes are connected by a high-speed interconnect called NUMAlink (originally marketed as CrayLink). There is no internal bus, and instead access between processors, memory, and I/O devices is done through a switched fabric of links and routers.
Thanks to the cache coherence of the distributed shared memory, SN systems scale along several axes at once: as CPU count increases, so does memory capacity, I/O capacity, and system bisection bandwidth. This allows the combined memory of all the nodes to be accessed under a single OS image using standard shared-memory synchronization methods. This makes an SN system far easier to program and able to achieve higher sustained-to-peak performance than non-cache-coherent systems like conventional clusters or massively parallel computers which require applications code to be written (or re-written) to do explicit message-passing communication between their nodes.
The first SN system, known as SN-0, was released in 1996 under the product name Origin 2000. Based on the MIPS R10000 processor, it scaled from 2 to 128 processors and a smaller version, the Origin 200 (SN-00), scaled from 1 to 4. Later enhancements enabled systems of as large as 512 processors.
The second generation system, originally called SN-1 but later SN-MIPS, was released in July 2000, as the Origin 3000. It scaled from 4 to 512 processors, and 1,024-processor configurations were delivered by special order to some customers. A smaller, less scalable implementation followed, called Origin 300.
In November 2002, SGI announced a repackaging of its SN system, under the name Origin 3900. It quadrupled the processor area density of the SN-MIPS system, from 32 up to 128 processors per rack while moving to a "fat tree" interconnect topology.
In January 2003, SGI announced a variant of the SN platform called the Altix 3000 (internally called SN-IA). It used Intel Itanium 2 processors and ran the Linux operating system kernel. At the time it was released, it was the world's most scalable Linux-based computer, supporting up to 64 processors in a single system node. Nodes could be connected using the same NUMAlink technology to form what SGI predictably termed "superclusters".
In February 2004, SGI announced general support for 128 processor nodes to be followed by 256 and 512 processor versions that year.
In April 2004, SGI announced the sale of its Alias software business for approximately $57 million.
In October 2004, SGI built the supercomputer Columbia, which broke the world record for computer speed, for the NASA Ames Research Center. It was a cluster of 20 Altix supercomputers each with 512 Intel Itanium 2 processors running Linux, and achieved sustained speed of 42.7 trillion floating-point operations per second (teraflops), easily topping Japan's famed Earth Simulator's record of 35.86 teraflops. (A week later, IBM's upgraded Blue Gene/L clocked in at 70.7 teraflops.)
In July 2006, SGI announced an SGI Altix 4700 system with 1,024 processors and 4 TB of memory running a single Linux system image.
Some 68k and MIPS-based models were also rebadged by other vendors, including CDC, Tandem Computers, Prime Computer and Siemens-Nixdorf.
SGI Onyx and SGI Indy series systems were used for game development for the Nintendo 64.
Donkey Kong Country developers used Silicon Graphics computers to pre-render graphics in their three games. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28013 |
Steiner system
In combinatorial mathematics, a Steiner system (named after Jakob Steiner) is a type of block design, specifically a with λ = 1 and "t" ≥ 2.
A Steiner system with parameters "t", "k", "n", written S("t","k","n"), is an "n"-element set "S" together with a set of "k"-element subsets of "S" (called blocks) with the property that each "t"-element subset of "S" is contained in exactly one block. In an alternate notation for block designs, an S("t","k","n") would be a "t"-("n","k",1) design.
This definition is relatively new. The classical definition of Steiner systems also required that "k" = "t" + 1. An S(2,3,"n") was (and still is) called a "Steiner triple" (or "triad") "system", while an S(3,4,"n") is called a "Steiner quadruple system", and so on. With the generalization of the definition, this naming system is no longer strictly adhered to.
Long-standing problems in design theory were whether there exist any nontrivial Steiner systems (nontrivial meaning "t" < "k" < "n") with "t" ≥ 6; also whether infinitely many have "t" = 4 or 5. Both existences were proved by Peter Keevash in 2014. His proof is non-constructive and, as of 2019, no actual Steiner systems are known for large values of "t".
A finite projective plane of order , with the lines as blocks, is an , since it has points, each line passes through points, and each pair of distinct points lies on exactly one line.
A finite affine plane of order , with the lines as blocks, is an . An affine plane of order can be obtained from a projective plane of the same order by removing one block and all of the points in that block from the projective plane. Choosing different blocks to remove in this way can lead to non-isomorphic affine planes.
An S(3,4,"n") is called a Steiner quadruple system. A necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of an S(3,4,"n") is that "n" formula_1 2 or 4 (mod 6). The abbreviation SQS("n") is often used for these systems. Up to isomorphism, SQS(8) and SQS(10) are unique, there are 4 SQS(14)s and 1,054,163 SQS(16)s.
An S(4,5,"n") is called a Steiner quintuple system. A necessary condition for the existence of such a system is that "n" formula_1 3 or 5 (mod 6) which comes from considerations that apply to all the classical Steiner systems. An additional necessary condition is that "n" formula_3 4 (mod 5), which comes from the fact that the number of blocks must be an integer. Sufficient conditions are not known. There is a unique Steiner quintuple system of order 11, but none of order 15 or order 17. Systems are known for orders 23, 35, 47, 71, 83, 107, 131, 167 and 243. The smallest order for which the existence is not known (as of 2011) is 21.
An S(2,3,"n") is called a Steiner triple system, and its blocks are called triples. It is common to see the abbreviation STS("n") for a Steiner triple system of order "n". The total number of pairs is "n(n-1)/2", of which three appear in a triple, and so the total number of triples is "n"("n"−1)/6. This shows that "n" must be of the form "6k+1" or "6k + 3" for some "k". The fact that this condition on "n" is sufficient for the existence of an S(2,3,"n") was proved by Raj Chandra Bose and T. Skolem. The projective plane of order 2 (the Fano plane) is an STS(7) and the affine plane of order 3 is an STS(9). Up to isomorphism, the STS(7) and STS(9) are unique, there are two STS(13)s, 80 STS(15)s, and 11,084,874,829 STS(19)s.
Some of the S(2,3,n) systems can have their blocks be partitioned into (n-1)/2 sets of (n/3) triples each. This is called "resolvable" and such systems are called "Kirkman triple systems" after Thomas Kirkman, who studied such resolvable systems before Steiner. Dale Mesner, Earl Kramer, and others investigated collections of Steiner triple systems that are mutually disjoint (i.e., no two Steiner systems in such a collection share a common triplet). It is known (Bays 1917, Kramer & Mesner 1974) that seven different S(2,3,9) systems can be generated to together cover all 84 triplets on a 9-set; it was also known by them that there are 15360 different ways to find such 7-sets of solutions, which reduce to two non-isomorphic solutions under relabeling, with multiplicities 6720 and 8640 respectively. The corresponding question for finding thirteen different disjoint S(2,3,15) systems was asked by James Sylvester in 1860 and answered by RHF Denniston in 1974. There is at least one such 13-set of S(2,3,15) but its isomorphism is not known.
We can define a multiplication on the set "S" using the Steiner triple system by setting "aa" = "a" for all "a" in "S", and "ab" = "c" if {"a","b","c"} is a triple. This makes "S" an idempotent, commutative quasigroup. It has the additional property that "ab" = "c" implies "bc" = "a" and "ca" = "b". Conversely, any (finite) quasigroup with these properties arises from a Steiner triple system. Commutative idempotent quasigroups satisfying this additional property are called "Steiner quasigroups".
It is clear from the definition of that formula_4. (Equalities, while technically possible, lead to trivial systems.)
If exists, then taking all blocks containing a specific element and discarding that element gives a "derived system" . Therefore, the existence of is a necessary condition for the existence of .
The number of -element subsets in is formula_5, while the number of -element subsets in each block is formula_6. Since every -element subset is contained in exactly one block, we have formula_7, or
where is the number of blocks. Similar reasoning about -element subsets containing a particular element gives us formula_9, or
where is the number of blocks containing any given element. From these definitions follows the equation formula_12. It is a necessary condition for the existence of that and are integers. As with any block design, Fisher's inequality formula_13 is true in Steiner systems.
Given the parameters of a Steiner system and a subset of size formula_14, contained in at least one block, one can compute the number of blocks intersecting that subset in a fixed number of elements by constructing a Pascal triangle. In particular, the number of blocks intersecting a fixed block in any number of elements is independent of the chosen block.
The number of blocks that contain any "i"-element set of points is:
It can be shown that if there is a Steiner system , where is a prime power greater than 1, then formula_1 1 or . In particular, a Steiner triple system must have . And as we have already mentioned, this is the only restriction on Steiner triple systems, that is, for each natural number , systems and exist.
Steiner triple systems were defined for the first time by Wesley S. B. Woolhouse in 1844 in the Prize question #1733 of Lady's and Gentlemen's Diary. The posed problem was solved by . In 1850 Kirkman posed a variation of the problem known as Kirkman's schoolgirl problem, which asks for triple systems having an additional property (resolvability). Unaware of Kirkman's work, reintroduced triple systems, and as this work was more widely known, the systems were named in his honor.
Several examples of Steiner systems are closely related to group theory. In particular, the finite simple groups called Mathieu groups arise as automorphism groups of Steiner systems:
There is a unique S(5,6,12) Steiner system; its automorphism group is the Mathieu group M12, and in that context it is denoted by W12.
This construction is due to Carmichael (1937).
Add a new element, call it , to the 11 elements of the finite field 11 (that is, the integers mod 11). This set, , of 12 elements can be formally identified with the points of the projective line over 11. Call the following specific subset of size 6,
a "block" (it contains together with the 5 nonzero squares in 11). From this block, we obtain the other blocks of the (5,6,12) system by repeatedly applying the linear fractional transformations:
where are in 11 and .
With the usual conventions of defining and , these functions map the set onto itself. In geometric language, they are projectivities of the projective line. They form a group under composition which is the projective special linear group (2,11) of order 660. There are exactly five elements of this group that leave the starting block fixed setwise, namely those such that and so that . So there will be 660/5 = 132 images of that block. As a consequence of the multiply transitive property of this group acting on this set, any subset of five elements of will appear in exactly one of these 132 images of size six.
An alternative construction of W12 is obtained by use of the 'kitten' of R.T. Curtis, which was intended as a "hand calculator" to write down blocks one at a time. The kitten method is based on completing patterns in a 3x3 grid of numbers, which represent an affine geometry on the vector space F3xF3, an S(2,3,9) system.
The relations between the graph factors of the complete graph K6 generate an S(5,6,12). A K6 graph has 6 vertices, 15 edges, 15 perfect matchings, and 6 different 1-factorizations (ways to partition the edges into disjoint perfect matchings). The set of vertices (labeled 123456) and the set of factorizations (labeled "ABCDEF") provide one block each. Every pair of factorizations has exactly one perfect matching in common. Suppose factorizations "A" and "B" have the common matching with edges 12, 34 and 56. Add three new blocks "AB"3456, 12"AB"56, and 1234"AB", replacing each edge in the common matching with the factorization labels in turn. Similarly add three more blocks 12"CDEF", 34"CDEF", and 56"CDEF", replacing the factorization labels by the corresponding edge labels of the common matching. Do this for all 15 pairs of factorizations to add 90 new blocks. Finally, take the full set of formula_19 combinations of 6 objects out of 12, and discard any combination that has 5 or more objects in common with any of the 92 blocks generated so far. Exactly 40 blocks remain, resulting in blocks of the S(5,6,12). This method works because there is an outer automorphism on the symmetric group "S"6, which maps the vertices to factorizations and the edges to partitions. Permuting the vertices causes the factorizations to permute differently, in accordance with the outer automorphism.
The Steiner system S(5, 8, 24), also known as the Witt design or Witt geometry, was first described by and rediscovered by . This system is connected with many of the sporadic simple groups and with the exceptional 24-dimensional lattice known as the Leech lattice. The automorphism group of S(5, 8, 24) is the Mathieu group M24, and in that context the design is denoted W24 ("W" for "Witt")
All 8-element subsets of a 24-element set are generated in lexicographic order, and any such subset which differs from some subset already found in fewer than four positions is discarded.
The list of octads for the elements 01, 02, 03, ..., 22, 23, 24 is then:
Each single element occurs 253 times somewhere in some octad. Each pair occurs 77 times. Each triple occurs 21 times. Each quadruple (tetrad) occurs 5 times. Each quintuple (pentad) occurs once. Not every hexad, heptad or octad occurs.
The 4096 codewords of the 24-bit binary Golay code are generated, and the 759 codewords with a Hamming weight of 8 correspond to the S(5,8,24) system.
The Golay code can be constructed by many methods, such as generating all 24-bit binary strings in lexicographic order and discarding those that differ from some earlier one in fewer than 8 positions. The result looks like this:
The codewords form a group under the XOR operation.
The Miracle Octad Generator (MOG) is a hand calculator to write down octads, such as those containing specified subsets. It consists of a 4x6 array with certain weights assigned to the rows. In particular, an 8-subset should obey three rules in order to be an octad of S(5,8,24). First, each of the 6 columns should have the same parity, that is, they should all have an odd number of cells or they should all have an even number of cells. Second, the top row should have the same parity as each of the columns. Third, the rows are assigned respectively the weights 0, 1, ω, and ω2, where ω is a complex cube root of unity and column sums are calculated for the 8 cells selected over the 6 columns. The resulting column sums should form a valid "hexacodeword" of the form where "a, b, c" are in }. If the column sums' parities don't match the row sum parity, or each other, or if there do not exist "a, b, c" such that the column sums form a valid hexacodeword, then that subset of 8 is not an octad of S(5,8,24).
The MOG is based on creating a bijection (Conwell 1910, "The three-space PG(3,2) and its group") between the 35 ways to partition an 8-set into two different 4-sets, and the 35 lines of the Fano 3-space PG(3,2).
It is also geometrically related (Cullinane, "Symmetry Invariance in a Diamond Ring", Notices of the AMS, pp A193-194, Feb 1979) to the 35 different ways to partition a 4x4 array into 4 different groups of 4 cells each, such that if the 4x4 array represents a four-dimensional finite affine space, then the groups form a set of parallel subspaces. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28016 |
Sirius
Sirius (, designated α Canis Majoris (Latinized to Alpha Canis Majoris, abbreviated Alpha CMa, α CMa)) is the brightest star in the night sky. Its name is derived from the Greek word "Seirios" "glowing" or "scorching". With a visual apparent magnitude of −1.46, Sirius is almost twice as bright as Canopus, the next brightest star. Sirius is a binary star consisting of a main-sequence star of spectral type A0 or A1, termed Sirius A, and a faint white dwarf companion of spectral type DA2, termed Sirius B. The distance between the two varies between 8.2 and 31.5 astronomical units as they orbit every 50 years.
Sirius appears bright because of its intrinsic luminosity and its proximity to the Solar System. At a distance of , the Sirius system is one of Earth's nearest neighbours. Sirius is gradually moving closer to the Solar System, so it will slightly increase in brightness over the next 60,000 years. After that time, its distance will begin to increase, and it will become fainter, but it will continue to be the brightest star in the Earth's night sky for the next 210,000 years.
Sirius A is about twice as massive as the Sun () and has an absolute visual magnitude of +1.42. It is 25 times more luminous than the Sun but has a significantly lower luminosity than other bright stars such as Canopus or Rigel. The system is between 200 and years old. It was originally composed of two bright bluish stars. The more massive of these, Sirius B, consumed its resources and became a red giant before shedding its outer layers and collapsing into its current state as a white dwarf around years ago.
Sirius is known colloquially as the "Dog Star", reflecting its prominence in its constellation, Canis Major (the Greater Dog). The heliacal rising of Sirius marked the flooding of the Nile in Ancient Egypt and the "dog days" of summer for the ancient Greeks, while to the Polynesians, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, the star marked winter and was an important reference for their navigation around the Pacific Ocean.
The brightest star in the night sky, Sirius is recorded in some of the earliest astronomical records. Its displacement from the ecliptic causes its heliacal rising to be remarkably regular compared to other stars, with a period of almost exactly 365.25 days holding it constant relative to the solar year. This rising occurs at Cairo on 19July (Julian), placing it just prior to the onset of the annual flooding of the Nile during antiquity. Owing to the flood's own irregularity, the extreme precision of the star's return made it important to the ancient Egyptians, who worshipped it as the goddess Sopdet (, "Triangle"; , "Sō̂this"), guarantor of the fertility of their land. The Egyptian civil calendar was apparently initiated to have its New Year "Mesori" coincide with the appearance of Sirius, although its lack of leap years meant that this congruence only held for four years until its date began to wander backwards through the months. The Egyptians continued to note the times of Sirius's annual return, which may have led them to the discovery of the 1460-year Sothic cycle and influenced the development of the Julian and Alexandrian calendars.
The ancient Greeks observed that the appearance of Sirius heralded the hot and dry summer and feared that it caused plants to wilt, men to weaken, and women to become aroused. Due to its brightness, Sirius would have been seen to twinkle more in the unsettled weather conditions of early summer. To Greek observers, this signified emanations that caused its malignant influence. Anyone suffering its effects was said to be "star-struck" (, "astrobólētos"). It was described as "burning" or "flaming" in literature. The season following the star's reappearance came to be known as the "dog days". The inhabitants of the island of Ceos in the Aegean Sea would offer sacrifices to Sirius and Zeus to bring cooling breezes and would await the reappearance of the star in summer. If it rose clear, it would portend good fortune; if it was misty or faint then it foretold (or emanated) pestilence. Coins retrieved from the island from the 3rd century BC feature dogs or stars with emanating rays, highlighting Sirius's importance. The Romans celebrated the heliacal setting of Sirius around April 25, sacrificing a dog, along with incense, wine, and a sheep, to the goddess Robigo so that the star's emanations would not cause wheat rust on wheat crops that year.
Ptolemy of Alexandria mapped the stars in Books VII and VIII of his "Almagest", in which he used Sirius as the location for the globe's central meridian. He depicted it as one of six red-coloured stars (see the Colour controversy section below). The other five are class M and K stars, such as Arcturus and Betelgeuse.
Bright stars were important to the ancient Polynesians for navigation of the Pacific Ocean. They also served as latitude markers; the declination of Sirius matches the latitude of the archipelago of Fiji at 17°S and thus passes directly over the islands each night. Sirius served as the body of a "Great Bird" constellation called "Manu", with Canopus as the southern wingtip and Procyon the northern wingtip, which divided the Polynesian night sky into two hemispheres. Just as the appearance of Sirius in the morning sky marked summer in Greece, it marked the onset of winter for the Māori, whose name "Takurua" described both the star and the season. Its culmination at the winter solstice was marked by celebration in Hawaii, where it was known as "Ka'ulua", "Queen of Heaven". Many other Polynesian names have been recorded, including "Tau-ua" in the Marquesas Islands, "Rehua" in New Zealand, and "Ta'urua-fau-papa" "Festivity of original high chiefs" and "Ta'urua-e-hiti-i-te-tara-te-feiai" "Festivity who rises with prayers and religious ceremonies" in Tahiti. The Hawaiian people had many names for Sirius, including "Aa" ("glowing"), "Hoku-kauopae", "Kau-ano-meha" (also "Kaulanomeha"), "Standing-alone-and-sacred", "Hiki-kauelia" or "Hiki-kauilia" (the navigational name), "Hiki-kau-lono-meha" ("star of solitary Lono", the astrological name), "Kaulua" (also "Kaulua-ihai-mohai", "flower of the heavens"), "Hiki-kauelia", "Hoku-hoo-kele-waa" ("star which causes the canoe to sail", a marine navigation name), and "Kaulua-lena" ("yellow star"). The people of the Society Islands called Sirius variously "Taurua-fau-papa", "Taurua-nui-te-amo-aha", and "Taurua-e-hiti-i-tara-te-feiai". Other names for Sirius included "Palolo-mua" (Futuna), "Mere" (Mangaia), "Apura" (Manihiki), "Taku-ua" (Marquesas Islands), and "Tokiva" (Pukapuka). In the cosmology of the Tuamotus, Sirius had various names, including "Takurua-te-upuupu", "Te Kaha" ("coconut fibre"), "Te Upuupu", "Taranga", and "Vero-ma-torutoru" ("flaming and diminishing").
The indigenous Boorong people of northwestern Victoria named Sirius as "Warepil".
In 1717, Edmond Halley discovered the proper motion of the hitherto presumed "fixed" stars after comparing contemporary astrometric measurements with those from the second century AD given in Ptolemy's "Almagest". The bright stars Aldebaran, Arcturus and Sirius were noted to have moved significantly; Sirius had progressed about 30 arc minutes (about the diameter of the Moon) to the southwest.
In 1868, Sirius became the first star to have its velocity measured, the beginning of the study of celestial radial velocities. Sir William Huggins examined the spectrum of the star and observed a red shift. He concluded that Sirius was receding from the Solar System at about 40 km/s. Compared to the modern value of −5.5 km/s, this was an overestimate and had the wrong sign; the minus sign (−) means that it is approaching the Sun. It is possible that Huggins did not account for the Earth's orbital velocity, which would cause an error of up to 30 km/s.
In his 1698 book, "Cosmotheoros", Christiaan Huygens estimated the distance to Sirius at 27664 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun (about 0.437 light years, translating to a parallax of roughly 7.5 arcseconds). There were several unsuccessful attempts to measure the parallax of Sirius: by Jacques Cassini (6 seconds); by some astronomers (including Nevil Maskelyne) using Lacaille's observations made at the Cape of Good Hope (4 seconds); by Piazzi (the same amount); using Lacaille's observations made at Paris, more numerous and certain than those made at the Cape (no sensible parallax); by Bessel (no sensible parallax).
Scottish astronomer Thomas Henderson used his observations made in 1832–1833 and South African astronomer Thomas Maclear's observations made in 1836–1837, to determine that the value of the parallax was 0.23 arcseconds, and error of the parallax was estimated not to exceed a quarter of a second, or as Henderson wrote in 1839, "On the whole we may conclude that the parallax of Sirius is not greater than half a second in space; and that it is probably much less." Astronomers adopted a value of 0.25 arcseconds for much of the 19th century. It is now known to have a parallax of arcseconds and therefore a distance of parsecs, showing Henderson's estimate to be accurate.
In 1844, the German astronomer Friedrich Bessel deduced from changes in the proper motion of Sirius that it had an unseen companion. On January 31, 1862, American telescope-maker and astronomer Alvan Graham Clark first observed the faint companion, which is now called Sirius B, or affectionately "the Pup". This happened during testing of an aperture great refractor telescope for Dearborn Observatory, which was one of the largest refracting telescope lenses in existence at the time, and the largest telescope in the United States. Sirius B's sighting was confirmed on March 8 with smaller telescopes.
The visible star is now sometimes known as Sirius A. Since 1894, some apparent orbital irregularities in the Sirius system have been observed, suggesting a third very small companion star, but this has never been confirmed. The best fit to the data indicates a six-year orbit around Sirius A and a mass of . This star would be five to ten magnitudes fainter than the white dwarf Sirius B, which would make it difficult to observe. Observations published in 2008 were unable to detect either a third star or a planet. An apparent "third star" observed in the 1920s is now believed to be a background object.
In 1915, Walter Sydney Adams, using a 60-inch (1.5 m) reflector at Mount Wilson Observatory, observed the spectrum of Sirius B and determined that it was a faint whitish star. This led astronomers to conclude that it was a white dwarf, the second to be discovered. The diameter of Sirius A was first measured by Robert Hanbury Brown and Richard Q. Twiss in 1959 at Jodrell Bank using their stellar intensity interferometer. In 2005, using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers determined that Sirius B has nearly the diameter of the Earth, , with a mass 102% of the Sun's.
Around the year 150 CE, the Greek astronomer of the Roman period, Claudius Ptolemy, described Sirius as reddish, along with five other stars, Betelgeuse, Antares, Aldebaran, Arcturus and Pollux, all of which are of orange or red hue. The discrepancy was first noted by amateur astronomer Thomas Barker, squire of Lyndon Hall in Rutland, who prepared a paper and spoke at a meeting of the Royal Society in London in 1760. The existence of other stars changing in brightness gave credibility to the idea that some may change in colour too; Sir John Herschel noted this in 1839, possibly influenced by witnessing Eta Carinae two years earlier. Thomas Jefferson Jackson See resurrected discussion on red Sirius with the publication of several papers in 1892, and a final summary in 1926. He cited not only Ptolemy but also the poet Aratus, the orator Cicero, and general Germanicus as calling the star red, though acknowledging that none of the latter three authors were astronomers, the last two merely translating Aratus's poem "Phaenomena". Seneca had described Sirius as being of a deeper red than Mars. Not all ancient observers saw Sirius as red. The 1st-century poet Marcus Manilius described it as "sea-blue", as did the 4th century Avienus. It was the standard white star in ancient China, and multiple records from the 2nd century BCE up to the 7th century CE all describe Sirius as white.
In 1985, German astronomers Wolfhard Schlosser and Werner Bergmann published an account of an 8th-century Lombardic manuscript, which contains "De cursu stellarum ratio" by St. Gregory of Tours. The Latin text taught readers how to determine the times of nighttime prayers from positions of the stars, and Sirius is described within as "rubeola" – "reddish". The authors proposed this was further evidence Sirius B had been a red giant at the time. Other scholars replied that it was likely St. Gregory had been referring to Arcturus.
The possibility that stellar evolution of either Sirius A or Sirius B could be responsible for this discrepancy has been rejected by astronomers on the grounds that the timescale of thousands of years is much too short and that there is no sign of the nebulosity in the system that would be expected had such a change taken place. An interaction with a third star, to date undiscovered, has also been proposed as a possibility for a red appearance. Alternative explanations are either that the description as red is a poetic metaphor for ill fortune, or that the dramatic scintillations of the star when rising left the viewer with the impression that it was red. To the naked eye, it often appears to be flashing with red, white, and blue hues when near the horizon.
With an apparent magnitude of −1.46, Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky, almost twice as bright as the second-brightest star, Canopus. From Earth, Sirius always appears dimmer than Jupiter and Venus, as well as Mercury and Mars at certain times. Sirius is visible from almost everywhere on Earth, except latitudes north of 73° N, and it does not rise very high when viewed from some northern cities (reaching only 13° above the horizon from Saint Petersburg). Due to its declination of roughly −17°, Sirius is a circumpolar star from latitudes south of 73° S. From the Southern Hemisphere in early July, Sirius can be seen in both the evening where it sets after the Sun and in the morning where it rises before the Sun.
Sirius, along with Procyon and Betelgeuse, forms one of the three vertices of the Winter Triangle to observers in the Northern Hemisphere.
Due to precession (and slight proper motion), Sirius will move further south in the future. Starting around the year 9000, Sirius will no longer be visible from northern and central Europe, and in 14,000 its declination will be −67° and thus it will be circumpolar throughout South Africa and in most parts of Australia.
Sirius can be observed in daylight with the naked eye under the right conditions. Ideally, the sky should be very clear, with the observer at a high altitude, the star passing overhead, and the Sun low on the horizon. These observing conditions are more easily met in the Southern Hemisphere, due to the southerly declination of Sirius.
The orbital motion of the Sirius binary system brings the two stars to a minimum angular separation of 3 arcseconds and a maximum of 11 arcseconds. At the closest approach, it is an observational challenge to distinguish the white dwarf from its more luminous companion, requiring a telescope with at least 300 mm (12 in) aperture and excellent seeing conditions. After a periastron occurred in 1994, the pair moved apart, making them easier to separate with a telescope. Apoastron occurred in 2019, but from the Earth's vantage point, the greatest observational separation will occur in 2023, with an angular separation of 11.333".
At a distance of 2.6 parsecs (8.6 ly), the Sirius system contains two of the eight nearest stars to the Sun, and it is the fifth closest stellar system to the Sun. This proximity is the main reason for its brightness, as with other near stars such as Alpha Centauri and in contrast to distant, highly luminous supergiants such as Canopus, Rigel or Betelgeuse. It is still around 25 times more luminous than the Sun. The closest large neighbouring star to Sirius is Procyon, 1.61 parsecs (5.24 ly) away. The "Voyager 2" spacecraft, launched in 1977 to study the four giant planets in the Solar System, is expected to pass within of Sirius in approximately 296,000 years.
Sirius is a binary star system consisting of two white stars orbiting each other with a separation of about 20 AU (roughly the distance between the Sun and Uranus) and a period of 50.1 years. The brighter component, termed Sirius A, is a main-sequence star of spectral type early A, with an estimated surface temperature of 9,940 K. Its companion, Sirius B, is a star that has already evolved off the main sequence and become a white dwarf. Currently 10,000 times less luminous in the visual spectrum, Sirius B was once the more massive of the two. The age of the system has been estimated at around 230 million years. Early in its life, it is thought to have been two bluish-white stars orbiting each other in an elliptical orbit every 9.1 years. The system emits a higher than expected level of infrared radiation, as measured by IRAS space-based observatory. This might be an indication of dust in the system, which is considered somewhat unusual for a binary star. The Chandra X-ray Observatory image shows Sirius B outshining its partner as an X-ray source.
In 2015, Vigan and colleagues used the VLT Survey Telescope to search for evidence of substellar companions, and were able to rule out the presence of giant planets 11 times more massive than Jupiter at 0.5 AU distance from Sirius A, 6–7
times the mass of Jupiter at 1–2 AU distance, and down to around 4 times the mass of Jupiter at 10 AU distance.
Sirius A has a mass of . The radius of this star has been measured by an astronomical interferometer, giving an estimated angular diameter of 5.936±0.016 mas. The projected rotational velocity is a relatively low 16 km/s, which does not produce any significant flattening of its disk. This is at marked variance with the similar-sized Vega, which rotates at a much faster 274 km/s and bulges prominently around its equator. A weak magnetic field has been detected on the surface of Sirius A.
Stellar models suggest that the star formed during the collapsing of a molecular cloud and that, after years, its internal energy generation was derived entirely from nuclear reactions. The core became convective and used the CNO cycle for energy generation. It is predicted that Sirius A will have completely exhausted the store of hydrogen at its core within a billion (109) years of its formation. At this point, it will pass through a red giant stage, then settle down to become a white dwarf.
Sirius A is classed as an Am star because the spectrum shows deep metallic absorption lines, indicating an enhancement in elements heavier than helium, such as iron. The spectral type has been reported as A0mA1 Va, which indicates that it would be classified as A1 from hydrogen and helium lines, but A0 from the metallic lines that cause it to be grouped with the Am stars. When compared to the Sun, the proportion of iron in the atmosphere of Sirius A relative to hydrogen is given by formula_1, meaning iron is 316% as abundant as in the Sun's atmosphere. The high surface content of metallic elements is unlikely to be true of the entire star; rather the iron-peak and heavy metals are radiatively levitated towards the surface.
Sirius B is one of the most massive white dwarfs known. With a mass of , it is almost double the average. This mass is packed into a volume roughly equal to the Earth's. The current surface temperature is 25,200 K. Because there is no internal heat source, Sirius B will steadily cool as the remaining heat is radiated into space over more than two billion years.
A white dwarf forms after a star has evolved from the main sequence and then passed through a red giant stage. This occurred when Sirius B was less than half its current age, around 120 million years ago. The original star had an estimated and was a B-type star (roughly B4–5) when it was still on the main sequence. While it passed through the red giant stage, Sirius B may have enriched the metallicity of its companion.
This star is primarily composed of a carbon–oxygen mixture that was generated by helium fusion in the progenitor star. This is overlaid by an envelope of lighter elements, with the materials segregated by mass because of the high surface gravity. The outer atmosphere of Sirius B is now almost pure hydrogen—the element with the lowest mass—and no other elements are seen in its spectrum.
Since 1894, irregularities have been observed in the orbits of Sirius A and B with an apparent periodicity of 6–6.4 years. A 1995 study concluded that such a companion likely exists, with a mass of roughly 0.05 solar masses- a small red dwarf or large brown dwarf, with an apparent magnitude of >15, and less than 3 arcseconds from Sirius A.
More recent (and accurate) astrometric observations by the Hubble Space Telescope ruled out the existence of such an object entirely. The 1995 study predicted an astrometric movement of roughly 90 mas (0.09 arcseconds), but Hubble was unable to detect any location anomaly to an accuracy of 5 mas (0.005 arcsec). This ruled out any objects orbiting Sirius A with more than 0.033 solar masses orbiting in 0.5 years, and 0.014 in 2 years. The study was also able to rule out any companions to Sirius B with more than 0.024 solar masses orbiting in 0.5 years, and 0.0095 orbiting in 1.8 years. Effectively, there are almost certainly no additional bodies in the Sirius system larger than a small brown dwarf or large exoplanet.
In 1909, Ejnar Hertzsprung was the first to suggest that Sirius was a member of the Ursa Major Moving Group, based on his observations of the system's movements across the sky. The Ursa Major Group is a set of 220 stars that share a common motion through space. It was once a member of an open cluster, but has since become gravitationally unbound from the cluster. Analyses in 2003 and 2005 found Sirius's membership in the group to be questionable: the Ursa Major Group has an estimated age of 500 ± 100 million years, whereas Sirius, with metallicity similar to the Sun's, has an age that is only half this, making it too young to belong to the group. Sirius may instead be a member of the proposed Sirius Supercluster, along with other scattered stars such as Beta Aurigae, Alpha Coronae Borealis, Beta Crateris, Beta Eridani and Beta Serpentis. This would be one of three large clusters located within of the Sun. The other two are the Hyades and the Pleiades, and each of these clusters consists of hundreds of stars.
In 2017, a massive star cluster was discovered only 10′ from Sirius. It was discovered during a statistical analysis of Gaia data. The cluster is over a thousand times further away from us than the star system.
The proper name "Sirius" comes from the Latin "Sīrius", from the Ancient Greek "Σείριος" ("Seirios", "glowing" or "scorcher"). The Greek word itself may have been imported from elsewhere before the Archaic period, one authority suggesting a link with the Egyptian god Osiris. The name's earliest recorded use dates from the 7th century BC in Hesiod's poetic work "Works and Days". In 2016, the International Astronomical Union organized a Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) to catalog and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN's first bulletin of July 2016 included a table of the first two batches of names approved by the WGSN; which included "Sirius" for the star α Canis Majoris A. It is now so entered in the IAU Catalog of Star Names.
Sirius has over 50 other designations and names attached to it. In Geoffrey Chaucer's essay "Treatise on the Astrolabe", it bears the name Alhabor and is depicted by a hound's head. This name is widely used on medieval astrolabes from Western Europe. In Sanskrit it is known as "Mrgavyadha" "deer hunter", or "Lubdhaka" "hunter". As Mrgavyadha, the star represents Rudra (Shiva). The star is referred as "Makarajyoti" in Malayalam and has religious significance to the pilgrim center Sabarimala. In Scandinavia, the star has been known as "Lokabrenna" ("burning done by Loki", or "Loki's torch"). In the astrology of the Middle Ages, Sirius was a Behenian fixed star, associated with beryl and juniper. Its astrological symbol was listed by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa.
Many cultures have historically attached special significance to Sirius, particularly in relation to dogs. It is often colloquially called the "Dog Star" as the brightest star of Canis Major, the "Great Dog" constellation. Canis Major was classically depicted as Orion's dog. The Ancient Greeks thought that Sirius's emanations could affect dogs adversely, making them behave abnormally during the "dog days", the hottest days of the summer. The Romans knew these days as , and the star Sirius was called Canicula, "little dog". The excessive panting of dogs in hot weather was thought to place them at risk of desiccation and disease. In extreme cases, a foaming dog might have rabies, which could infect and kill humans they had bitten. Homer, in the "Iliad", describes the approach of Achilles toward Troy in these words:
In Iranian mythology, especially in Persian mythology and in Zoroastrianism, the ancient religion of Persia, Sirius appears as "Tishtrya" and is revered as the rain-maker divinity (Tishtar of New Persian poetry). Beside passages in the sacred texts of the Avesta, the Avestan language "Tishtrya" followed by the version "Tir" in Middle and New Persian is also depicted in the Persian epic Shahnameh of Ferdowsi. Due to the concept of the yazatas, powers which are "worthy of worship", Tishtrya is a divinity of rain and fertility and an antagonist of apaosha, the demon of drought. In this struggle, Tishtrya is depicted as a white horse.
In Chinese astronomy Sirius is known as the star of the "celestial wolf" ( Chinese romanization: Tiānláng; Japanese romanization: Tenrō;) in the Mansion of Jǐng (井宿). Many nations among the indigenous peoples of North America also associated Sirius with canines; the Seri and Tohono O'odham of the southwest note the star as a dog that follows mountain sheep, while the Blackfoot called it "Dog-face". The Cherokee paired Sirius with Antares as a dog-star guardian of either end of the "Path of Souls". The Pawnee of Nebraska had several associations; the Wolf (Skidi) tribe knew it as the "Wolf Star", while other branches knew it as the "Coyote Star". Further north, the Alaskan Inuit of the Bering Strait called it "Moon Dog".
Several cultures also associated the star with a bow and arrows. The ancient Chinese visualized a large bow and arrow across the southern sky, formed by the constellations of Puppis and Canis Major. In this, the arrow tip is pointed at the wolf Sirius. A similar association is depicted at the Temple of Hathor in Dendera, where the goddess Satet has drawn her arrow at Hathor (Sirius). Known as "Tir", the star was portrayed as the arrow itself in later Persian culture.
Sirius is mentioned in "Surah", "An-Najm" ("The Star"), of the Qur'an, where it is given the name (transliteration: "aš-ši‘rā" or "ash-shira"; the leader). The verse is: "", "That He is the Lord of Sirius (the Mighty Star)." (An-Najm:49) Ibn Kathir said in his commentary "that it is the bright star, named Mirzam Al-Jawza' (Sirius), which a group of Arabs used to worship". The alternate name "Aschere", used by Johann Bayer, is derived from this.
In theosophy, it is believed the "Seven Stars of the Pleiades" transmit the spiritual energy of the Seven Rays from the "Galactic Logos" to the "Seven Stars of the Great Bear", then to Sirius. From there is it sent via the Sun to the god of Earth (Sanat Kumara), and finally through the seven Masters of the Seven Rays to the human race.
The Dogon people are an ethnic group in Mali, West Africa, reported by some researchers to have traditional astronomical knowledge about Sirius that would normally be considered impossible without the use of telescopes. According to Marcel Griaule, they knew about the fifty-year orbital period of Sirius and its companion prior to western astronomers. Robert Temple claims that the Dogon people have a tradition of contact with intelligent extraterrestrial beings from Sirius. This has been the subject of controversy and speculation.
Doubts have been raised about the validity of Griaule and Dieterlein's work. In 1991, anthropologist Walter van Beek concluded about the Dogon, "Though they do speak about "sigu tolo" [which is what Griaule claimed the Dogon called Sirius] they disagree completely with each other as to which star is meant; for some it is an invisible star that should rise to announce the "sigu" [festival], for another it is Venus that, through a different position, appears as "sigu tolo". All agree, however, that they learned about the star from Griaule."
Noah Brosch claims that the cultural transfer of relatively modern astronomical information could have taken place in 1893, when a French expedition arrived in Central West Africa to observe the total eclipse on April 16.
In the religion of the Serer people of Senegal, the Gambia and Mauritania, Sirius is called "Yoonir" from the Serer language (and some of the Cangin language speakers, who are all ethnically Serers). The star Sirius is one of the most important and sacred stars in Serer religious cosmology and symbolism. The Serer high priests and priestesses (Saltigues, the hereditary "rain priests") chart "Yoonir" in order to forecast rainfall and enable Serer farmers to start planting seeds. In Serer religious cosmology, it is the symbol of the universe.
Sirius is a frequent subject of science fiction, and has been the subject of poetry. Dante and John Milton reference the star, and it is the "powerful western fallen star" of Walt Whitman's "Then Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", while Tennyson's poem "The Princess" describes the star's scintillation:
Other modern references:
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Simon Magus
Simon Magus (Greek Σίμων ὁ μάγος, Latin: Simon Magus), also known as Simon the Sorcerer or Simon the Magician, was a religious figure whose confrontation with Peter is recorded in Acts . The act of simony, or paying for position and influence in the church, is named after Simon.
According to Acts, Simon was a Samaritan magus or religious figure of the 1st century AD and a convert to Christianity, baptised by Philip the Evangelist. Simon later clashed with Peter. Accounts of Simon by writers of the second century exist, but are not considered verifiable. Surviving traditions about Simon appear in orthodox texts, such as those of Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius, where he is often described as the founder of Gnosticism, which has been accepted by some modern scholars, while others reject that he was a Gnostic, just designated as one by the Church Fathers.
Justin, who was himself a 2nd-century native of Samaria, wrote that nearly all the Samaritans in his time were adherents of a certain Simon of Gitta, a village not far from Flavia Neapolis. According to Josephus, Gitta (also spelled Getta) was settled by the tribe of Dan. Irenaeus held him as being the founder of the sect of the Simonians. Hippolytus quotes from a work he attributes to Simon or his followers the Simonians, "Apophasis Megale", or "Great Declaration". According to the early church heresiologists, Simon is also supposed to have written several lost treatises, two of which bear the titles "The Four Quarters of the World" and "The Sermons of the Refuter".
In apocryphal works including the "Acts of Peter", Pseudo-Clementines, and the "Epistle of the Apostles", Simon also appears as a formidable sorcerer with the ability to levitate and fly at will. He is sometimes referred to as "the Bad Samaritan" due to his malevolent character. The "Apostolic Constitutions" also accuses him of "lawlessness" (antinomianism).
The canonical Acts of the Apostles features a short narrative about Simon Magus; this is his only appearance in the New Testament.
Josephus mentions a magician named [Atomus] (Simon in Latin manuscripts) as being involved with the procurator Felix, King Agrippa II and his sister Drusilla, where Felix has Simon convince Drusilla to marry him instead of the man she was engaged to. Some scholars have considered the two to be identical, although this is not generally accepted, as the Simon of Josephus is a Jew rather than a Samaritan.
Justin Martyr (in his "Apologies", and in a lost work against heresies, which Irenaeus used as his main source) and Irenaeus ("Adversus Haereses") record that after being cast out by the Apostles, Simon Magus came to Rome where, having joined to himself a profligate woman of the name of Helen, he gave out that it was he who appeared among the Jews as the Son, in Samaria as the Father and among other nations as the Holy Spirit. He performed such signs by magic acts during the reign of Claudius that he was regarded as a god and honored with a statue on the island in the Tiber which the two bridges cross, with the inscription "Simoni Deo Sancto", "To Simon the Holy God" (). However, in the 16th century, a statue was unearthed on the island in question, inscribed to Semo Sancus, a Sabine deity, leading most scholars to believe that Justin Martyr confused "Semoni Sancus" with Simon.
Justin and Irenaeus are the first to recount the myth of Simon and Helen, which became the center of Simonian doctrine. Epiphanius of Salamis also makes Simon speak in the first person in several places in his "Panarion", and the implication is that he is quoting from a version of it, though perhaps not verbatim.
As described by Epiphanius, in the beginning God had his first thought, his "Ennoia", which was female, and that thought was to create the angels. The First Thought then descended into the lower regions and created the angels. But the angels rebelled against her out of jealousy and created the world as her prison, imprisoning her in a female body. Thereafter, she was reincarnated many times, each time being shamed. Her many reincarnations included Helen of Troy, among others, and she finally was reincarnated as Helen, a slave and prostitute in the Phoenician city of Tyre. God then descended in the form of Simon Magus, to rescue his "Ennoia", and to confer salvation upon men through knowledge of himself.
For as the angels were mismanaging the world, owing to their individual lust for rule, he had come to set things straight, and had descended under a changed form, likening himself to the Principalities and Powers through whom he passed, so that among men he appeared as a man, though he was not a man, and was thought to have suffered in Judaea, though he had not suffered.
But the prophets had delivered their prophecies under the inspiration of the world-creating angels: wherefore those who had their hope in him and in Helen minded them no more, and, as being free, did what they pleased; for men were saved according to his grace, but not according to just works. For works were not just by nature, but only by convention, in accordance with the enactments of the world-creating angels, who by precepts of this kind sought to bring men into slavery. Wherefore he promised that the world should be dissolved, and that those who were his should be freed from the dominion of the world-creators.
In this account of Simon there is a large portion common to almost all forms of Gnostic myths, together with something special to this form. They have in common the place in the work of creation assigned to the female principle, the conception of the Deity; the ignorance of the rulers of this lower world with regard to the Supreme Power; the descent of the female (Sophia) into the lower regions, and her inability to return. Special to the Simonian tale is the identification of Simon himself with the Supreme, and of his consort Helena with the female principle.
In "Philosophumena", Hippolytus retells the narrative on Simon written by Irenaeus (who in his turn based it on the lost "Syntagma" of Justin). Upon the story of "the lost sheep," Hippolytus comments as follows:
Also, Hippolytus demonstrates acquaintance with the folk tradition on Simon which depicts him rather as a magician than Gnostic, and in constant conflict with Peter (also present in the apocrypha and Pseudo-Clementine literature). Reduced to despair by the curse laid upon him by Peter in the Acts, Simon soon abjured the faith and embarked on the career of a sorcerer:
Hippolytus gives a much more doctrinally detailed account of Simonianism, including a system of divine emanations and interpretations of the Old Testament, with extensive quotations from the "Apophasis Megale". Some believe that Hippolytus' account is of a later, more developed form of Simonianism, and that the original doctrines of the group were simpler, close to the account given by Justin Martyr and Irenaeus (this account however is also included in Hippolytus' work).
Hippolytus says the free love doctrine was held by them in its purest form, and speaks in language similar to that of Irenaeus about the variety of magic arts practiced by the Simonians, and also of their having images of Simon and Helen under the forms of Zeus and Athena. But he also adds, "if any one, on seeing the images either of Simon or Helen, shall call them by those names, he is cast out, as showing ignorance of the mysteries."
Epiphanius writes that there were some Simonians still in existence in his day (c. AD 367), but he speaks of them as almost extinct. Gitta, he says, had sunk from a town into a village. Epiphanius further charges Simon with having tried to wrest the words of St. Paul about the armour of God (Ephesians 6:14–16) into agreement with his own identification of the "Ennoia" with Athena. He tells us also that he gave barbaric names to the "principalities and powers," and that he was the beginning of the Gnostics. The Law, according to him, was not of God, but of "the sinister power." The same was the case with the prophets, and it was death to believe in the Old Testament.
Cyril of Jerusalem (346 AD) in the sixth of his Catechetical Lectures prefaces his history of the Manichaeans by a brief account of earlier heresies: Simon Magus, he says, had given out that he was going to be translated to heaven, and was actually careening through the air in a chariot drawn by demons when Peter and Paul knelt down and prayed, and their prayers brought him to earth a mangled corpse.
The apocryphal "Acts of Peter" gives a more elaborate tale of Simon Magus' death. Simon is performing magic in the Forum, and in order to prove himself to be a god, he levitates up into the air above the Forum. The apostle Peter prays to God to stop his flying, and he stops mid-air and falls into a place called "the "Sacra Via"" (meaning "Holy Way" in Latin), breaking his legs "in three parts". The previously non-hostile crowd then stones him. Now gravely injured, he had some people carry him on a bed at night from Rome to Ariccia, and was brought from there to Terracina to a person named Castor, who on accusations of sorcery was banished from Rome. The Acts then continue to say that he died "while being sorely cut by two physicians".
Another apocryphal document, the "Acts of Peter and Paul" gives a slightly different version of the above incident, which was shown in the context of a debate in front of the Emperor Nero. In this version, Paul the Apostle is present along with Peter, Simon levitates from a high wooden tower made upon his request, and dies "divided into four parts" due to the fall. Peter and Paul were then put in prison by Nero while ordering Simon's body be kept carefully for three days (thinking he would rise again).
The Pseudo-Clementine "Recognitions" and "Homilies" give an account of Simon Magus and some of his teachings in regards to the Simonians. They are of uncertain date and authorship, and seem to have been worked over by several hands in the interest of diverse forms of belief.
Simon was a Samaritan, and a native of Gitta. The name of his father was Antonius, that of his mother Rachel. He studied Greek literature in Alexandria, and, having in addition to this great power in magic, became so ambitious that he wished to be considered a highest power, higher even than the God who created the world. And sometimes he "darkly hinted" that he himself was Christ, calling himself the Standing One. Which name he used to indicate that he would stand for ever, and had no cause in him for bodily decay. He did not believe that the God who created the world was the highest, nor that the dead would rise. He denied Jerusalem, and introduced Mount Gerizim in its stead. In place of the Christ of the Christians he proclaimed himself; and the Law he allegorized in accordance with his own preconceptions. He did indeed preach righteousness and judgment to come.
There was one John the Baptist, who was the forerunner of Jesus in accordance with the law of parity; and as Jesus had twelve Apostles, bearing the number of the twelve solar months, so had he thirty leading men, making up the monthly tale of the moon. One of these thirty leading men was a woman called Helen, and the first and most esteemed by John was Simon. But on the death of John he was away in Egypt for the practice of magic, and one Dositheus, by spreading a false report of Simon's death, succeeded in installing himself as head of the sect. Simon on coming back thought it better to dissemble, and, pretending friendship for Dositheus, accepted the second place. Soon, however, he began to hint to the thirty that Dositheus was not as well acquainted as he might be with the doctrines of the school.
The encounter between Dositheus and Simon Magus was the beginnings of the sect of Simonians. The narrative goes on to say that Simon, having fallen in love with Helen, took her about with him, saying that she had come down into the world from the highest heavens, and was his mistress, inasmuch as she was Sophia, the Mother of All. It was for her sake, he said, that the Greeks and Barbarians fought the Trojan War, deluding themselves with an image of truth, for the real being was then present with the First God. By such allegories Simon deceived many, while at the same time he astounded them by his magic. A description is given of how he made a familiar spirit for himself by conjuring the soul out of a boy and keeping his image in his bedroom, and many instances of his feats of magic are given.
The Pseudo-Clementine writings were used in the 4th century by members of the Ebionite sect, one characteristic of which was hostility to Paul, whom they refused to recognize as an apostle. Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860), founder of the Tübingen School, drew attention to the anti-Pauline characteristic in the Pseudo-Clementines, and pointed out that in the disputations between Simon and Peter, some of the claims Simon is represented as making (e.g. that of having seen the Lord, though not in his lifetime, yet subsequently in vision) were really the claims of Paul; and urged that Peter's refutation of Simon was in some places intended as a polemic against Paul. The enmity between Peter and Simon is clearly shown. Simon's magical powers are juxtaposed with Peter's powers in order to express Peter's authority over Simon through the power of prayer, and in the the identification of Paul with Simon Magus is effected. Simon is there made to maintain that he has a better knowledge of the mind of Jesus than the disciples, who had seen and conversed with Jesus in person. His reason for this strange assertion is that visions are superior to waking reality, as divine is superior to human. Peter has much to say in reply to this, but the passage which mainly concerns us is as follows:
The anti-Pauline context of the Pseudo-Clementines is recognised, but the association with Simon Magus is surprising, according to Jozef Verheyden, since they have little in common. However the majority of scholars accept Baur's identification, though others, including Lightfoot, argued extensively that the "Simon Magus" of the Pseudo-Clementines was not meant to stand for Paul. Recently, Berlin pastor Hermann Detering (1995) has made the case that the veiled anti-Pauline stance of the Pseudo-Clementines has historical roots, that the Acts 8 encounter between Simon the magician and Peter is itself based on the conflict between Peter and Paul. Detering's belief has not found general support among scholars, but Robert M. Price argues much the same case in "The Amazing Colossal Apostle:The Search for the Historical Paul" (2012).
There are other features in the portrait which are reminiscent of Marcion. The first thing mentioned in the "Homilies" about Simon's opinions is that he denied that God was just.
By "God" he meant the creator god. But he undertakes to prove from the Jewish scriptures that there is a higher god, who really possesses the perfections which are falsely ascribed to the lower god.
On these grounds Peter complains that, when he was setting out for the gentiles to convert them from their worship of "many gods upon earth", Satan had sent Simon before him to make them believe that there were "many gods in heaven".
In Irish legend Simon Magus came to be associated with Druidism. He is said to have come to the aid of the Druid Mog Ruith. The fierce denunciation of Christianity by Irish Druids appears to have resulted in Simon Magus being associated with Druidism. The word Druid was sometimes translated into Latin as "magus", and Simon Magus was also known in Ireland as "Simon the Druid".
The church of Santa Francesca Romana, Rome, is claimed to have been built on the spot where Simon fell. Within the Church is a dented slab of marble that purports to bear the imprints of the knees of Peter and Paul during their prayer. The fantastic stories of Simon the Sorcerer persisted into the later Middle Ages, becoming a possible inspiration for the "Faustbuch" and Goethe's Faust.
The opening story in Danilo Kiš's 1983 collection "The Encyclopedia of the Dead", "Simon Magus", retells the confrontation between Simon and Peter agreeing with the account in the "Acts of Peter", and provides an additional alternative ending in which Simon asks to be buried alive in order to be resurrected three days later (after which his body is found putrefied). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28018 |
School
A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students (or "pupils") under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is commonly compulsory. In these systems, students progress through a series of schools. The names for these schools vary by country (discussed in the "Regional" section below) but generally include primary school for young children and secondary school for teenagers who have completed primary education. An institution where higher education is taught, is commonly called a university college or university, but these higher education institutions are usually not compulsory.
In addition to these core schools, students in a given country may also attend schools before and after primary (Elementary in the US) and secondary (Middle school in the US) education. Kindergarten or preschool provide some schooling to very young children (typically ages 3–5). University, vocational school, college or seminary may be available after secondary school. A school may be dedicated to one particular field, such as a school of economics or a school of dance. Alternative schools may provide nontraditional curriculum and methods.
Non-government schools, called also known as private schools may be required when the government does not supply adequate, or specific educational needs. Other private schools can also be religious, such as Christian schools, Gurukula,Hindu School, madrasa, hawzas (Shi'a schools), yeshivas (Jewish schools), and others; or schools that have a higher standard of education or seek to foster other personal achievements. Schools for adults include institutions of corporate training, military education and training and business schools.
In home schooling and online schools, teaching and learning take place outside a traditional school building. Schools are commonly organized in several different organizational models, including departmental, small learning communities, academies, integrated, and schools-within-a-school.
The word "school" derives from Greek " ("), originally meaning "leisure" and also "that in which leisure is employed", but later "a group to whom lectures were given, school".
The concept of grouping students together in a centralized location for learning has existed since Classical antiquity. Formal schools have existed at least since ancient Greece (see Academy), ancient Rome (see Education in Ancient Rome) ancient India (see Gurukul), and ancient China (see History of education in China). The Byzantine Empire had an established schooling system beginning at the primary level. According to "Traditions and Encounters", the founding of the primary education system began in 425 AD and "... military personnel usually had at least a primary education ...". The sometimes efficient and often large government of the Empire meant that educated citizens were a must. Although Byzantium lost much of the grandeur of Roman culture and extravagance in the process of surviving, the Empire emphasized efficiency in its war manuals. The Byzantine education system continued until the empire's collapse in 1453 AD.
In Western Europe a considerable number of cathedral schools were founded during the Early Middle Ages in order to teach future clergy and administrators, with the oldest still existing, and continuously operated, cathedral schools being The King's School, Canterbury (established 597 CE), King's School, Rochester (established 604 CE), St Peter's School, York (established 627 CE) and Thetford Grammar School (established 631 CE). Beginning in the 5th century CE monastic schools were also established throughout Western Europe, teaching both religious and secular subjects.
Islam was another culture that developed a school system in the modern sense of the word. Emphasis was put on knowledge, which required a systematic way of teaching and spreading knowledge, and purpose-built structures. At first, mosques combined both religious performance and learning activities, but by the 9th century, the madrassa was introduced, a school that was built independently from the mosque, such as al-Qarawiyyin, founded in 859 CE. They were also the first to make the "Madrassa" system a public domain under the control of the Caliph.
Under the Ottomans, the towns of Bursa and Edirne became the main centers of learning. The Ottoman system of Külliye, a building complex containing a mosque, a hospital, madrassa, and public kitchen and dining areas, revolutionized the education system, making learning accessible to a wider public through its free meals, health care and sometimes free accommodation.
In Europe, universities emerged during the 12th century; here, scholasticism was an important tool, and the academicians were called "schoolmen". During the Middle Ages and much of the Early Modern period, the main purpose of schools (as opposed to universities) was to teach the Latin language. This led to the term grammar school, which in the United States informally refers to a primary school, but in the United Kingdom means a school that selects entrants based on ability or aptitude. Following this, the school curriculum has gradually broadened to include literacy in the vernacular language as well as technical, artistic, scientific and practical subjects.
Obligatory school attendance became common in parts of Europe during the 18th century. In Denmark-Norway, this was introduced as early as in 1739–1741, the primary end being to increase the literacy of the "", i.e. the "regular people". Many of the earlier public schools in the United States and elsewhere were one-room schools where a single teacher taught seven grades of boys and girls in the same classroom. Beginning in the 1920s, one-room schools were consolidated into multiple classroom facilities with transportation increasingly provided by kid hacks and school buses.
The use of the term "school" varies by country, as do the names of the various levels of education within the country.
In the United Kingdom, the term "school" refers primarily to pre-university institutions, and these can, for the most part, be divided into pre-schools or nursery schools, primary schools (sometimes further divided into infant school and junior school), and secondary schools. Various types of secondary schools in England and Wales include grammar schools, comprehensives, secondary moderns, and city academies. In Scotland, while they may have different names, there is only one type of secondary school, although they may be funded either by the state or independently funded. School performance in Scotland is monitored by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education. Ofsted reports on performance in England and Estyn reports on performance in Wales.
In the United Kingdom, most schools are publicly funded and known as state schools or maintained schools in which tuition is provided for free. There are also private schools or independent schools that charge fees. Some of the most selective and expensive private schools are known as public schools, a usage that can be confusing to speakers of North American English. In North American usage, a public school is one that is publicly funded or run.
In much of the Commonwealth of Nations, including Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Kenya, and Tanzania, the term "school" refers primarily to pre-university institutions.
In ancient India, schools were in the form of Gurukuls. Gurukuls were traditional Hindu residential schools of learning; typically the teacher's house or a monastery. During the Mughal rule, Madrasahs were introduced in India to educate the children of Muslim parents. British records show that indigenous education was widespread in the 18th century, with a school for every temple, mosque or village in most regions of the country. The subjects taught included Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Theology, Law, Astronomy, Metaphysics, Ethics, Medical Science and Religion.
Under the British rule in India, Christian missionaries from England, USA and other countries established missionary and boarding schools throughout the country. Later as these schools gained in popularity, more were started and some gained prestige. These schools marked the beginning of modern schooling in India and the syllabus and calendar they followed became the benchmark for schools in modern India. Today most of the schools follow the missionary school model in terms of tutoring, subject / syllabus, governance etc.with minor changes. Schools in India range from schools with large campuses with thousands of students and hefty fees to schools where children are taught under a tree with a small / no campus and are totally free of cost. There are various boards of schools in India, namely Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE), Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), Madrasa Boards of various states, Matriculation Boards of various states, State Boards of various boards, Anglo Indian Board, and so on. The typical syllabus today includes Language(s), Mathematics, Science – Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geography, History, General Knowledge, Information Technology / Computer Science etc.. Extra curricular activities include physical education / sports and cultural activities like music, choreography, painting, theater / drama etc.
In much of continental Europe, the term "school" usually applies to primary education, with primary schools that last between four and nine years, depending on the country. It also applies to secondary education, with secondary schools often divided between "Gymnasiums" and vocational schools, which again depending on country and type of school educate students for between three and six years. In Germany students graduating from Grundschule are not allowed to directly progress into a vocational school, but are supposed to proceed to one of Germany's general education schools such as Gesamtschule, Hauptschule, Realschule or Gymnasium. When they leave that school, which usually happens at age 15–19 they are allowed to proceed to a vocational school. The term school is rarely used for tertiary education, except for some "upper" or "high" schools (German: Hochschule), which describe colleges and universities.
In Eastern Europe modern schools (after World War II), of both primary and secondary educations, often are combined, while secondary education might be split into accomplished or not. The schools are classified as middle schools of general education and for the technical purposes include "degrees" of the education they provide out of three available: the first – primary, the second – unaccomplished secondary, and the third – accomplished secondary. Usually the first two degrees of education (eight years) are always included, while the last one (two years) gives option for the students to pursue vocational or specialized educations.
In North America, the term "school" can refer to any educational institution at any level, and covers all of the following: preschool (for toddlers), kindergarten, elementary school, middle school (also called intermediate school or junior high school, depending on specific age groups and geographic region), high school (or in some cases senior high school), college, university, and graduate school.
In the United States, school performance through high school is monitored by each state's department of education. Charter schools are publicly funded elementary or secondary schools that have been freed from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools. The terms grammar school and "grade school" are sometimes used to refer to a primary school. In addition, there are tax-funded magnet schools which offer different programs and instruction not available in traditional schools.
In Western Africa, the term school can also refer to "bush" schools, Quranic schools, or apprenticeships. These schools include formal and informal learning.
Bush schools are training camps that pass down cultural skills, traditions, and knowledge to their students. Bush schools are semi similar to traditional western schools because they are separated from the larger community. These schools are located in forests outside of the towns and villages, and the space used is solely for these schools. Once the students have arrived in the forest, they are not allowed to leave until their training is complete. Visitors are absolutely prohibited from these areas.
Instead of being separated by age, Bush schools are separated by gender. Women and girls are not allowed to enter the territory of the boys' bush school and vice versa. Boys receive training in cultural crafts, fighting, hunting, and community laws among other subjects. Girls are trained in their own version of the boys' bush school. They practice domestic affairs such as cooking, childcare, as well as how to be a good wife. Their training is focused on how to be a proper woman by societal standards.
Qur’anic schools are the principle way of teaching the Quran and knowledge of the Islamic faith. These schools also fostered literacy and writing during the time of colonization. Today, the emphasis is on the different levels of reading, memorizing, and reciting the Quran. Attending a Qur’anic school is how children become recognized members of the Islamic faith. Children often attend state schools and a Qur’anic school.
In Mozambique, specifically, there are two kinds of Qur’anic schools. They are the tariqa based and the Wahhabi-based schools. What makes these schools different is who controls them. Tariqa schools are controlled at the local level while the Wahhabi are controlled by the Islamic Council. Within the Qur’anic school system, there are levels of education. They range from a basic level of understanding, called chuo and kioni in local languages, to the most advanced which is called ilimu.
In Nigeria, the term "school" broadly covers daycares, nursery schools, primary schools, secondary schools and tertiary institutions. Primary and secondary schools are either privately funded by religious institutions and corporate organisations, or government-funded. Government-funded schools are commonly referred to as public schools. Students spend 6 years in primary school, 3 years in junior secondary school and 3 years in senior secondary school. The first 9 years of formal schooling is compulsory under the Universal Basic Education Program (UBEC). Tertiary institutions include public and private universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education. Universities can be funded by the federal government, state governments, religious institutions or individuals and organisations.
Many schools are owned or funded by states. Private schools operate independently from the government. Private schools usually rely on fees from families whose children attend the school for funding; however, sometimes such schools also receive government support (for example, through School vouchers). Many private schools are affiliated with a particular religion; these are known as parochial schools.
The Toronto District School Board is an example of a school board that allows parents to design and propose new schools.
When designing a school, factors that need to be decided include:
Schools are organized spaces purposed for teaching and learning. The classrooms, where teachers teach and students learn, are of central importance. Classrooms may be specialized for certain subjects, such as laboratory classrooms for science education and workshops for industrial arts education.
Typical schools have many other rooms and areas, which may include:
In low-income countries, only 32% of primary, 43% of lower secondary and 52% of upper secondary schools have access to electricity. This affects access to the internet, which is just 37% in upper secondary schools in low-income countries, as compared to 59% in those in middle-income countries and 93% in those in high-income countries.
Access to basic water, sanitation and hygiene is also far from universal. Among upper secondary schools, only 53% in low-income countries and 84% in middle-income countries have access to basic drinking water. Access to water and sanitation is universal in high-income countries.
The safety of staff and students is increasingly becoming an issue for school communities, an issue most schools are addressing through improved security. Some have also taken measures such as installing metal detectors or video surveillance. Others have even taken measures such as having the children swipe identification cards as they board the school bus. For some schools, these plans have included the use of door numbering to aid public safety response.
Other security concerns faced by schools include bomb threats, gangs, and vandalism.
School health services are services from medical, teaching and other professionals applied in or out of school to improve the health and well-being of children and in some cases whole families. These services have been developed in different ways around the globe but the fundamentals are constant: the early detection, correction, prevention or amelioration of disease, disability and abuse from which school-aged children can suffer.
Some schools offer remote access to their classes over the Internet. Online schools also can provide support to traditional schools, as in the case of the School Net Namibia.
Some online classes also provide experience in a class, so that when people take them, they have already been introduced to the subject and know what to expect, and even more classes provide High School/College credit allowing people to take the classes at their own pace. Many online classes cost money to take but some are offered free.
Internet-based distance learning programs are offered widely through many universities. Instructors teach through online activities and assignments. Online classes are taught the same as physically being in class with the same curriculum. The instructor offers the syllabus with their fixed requirements like any other class. Students can virtually turn their assignments in to their instructors according to deadlines. This being through via email or in the course webpage. This allowing students to work at their own pace, yet meeting the correct deadline. Students taking an online class have more flexibility in their schedules to take their classes at a time that works best for them. Conflicts with taking an online class may include not being face to face with the instructor when learning or being in an environment with other students. Online classes can also make understanding the content difficult, especially when not able to get in quick contact with the instructor. Online students do have the advantage of using other online sources with assignments or exams for that specific class. Online classes also have the advantage of students not needing to leave their house for a morning class or worrying about their attendance for that class. Students can work at their own pace to learn and achieve within that curriculum.
The convenience of learning at home has been a major attractive point for enrolling online. Students can attend class anywhere a computer can go – at home, a library or while traveling internationally. Online school classes are designed to fit your needs, while allowing you to continue working and tending to your other obligations. Online school education is divided into three subcategories: Online Elementary School, Online Middle School, Online High school.
As a profession, teaching has levels of work-related stress (WRS) that are among the highest of any profession in some countries, such as the United Kingdom and the United States. The degree of this problem is becoming increasingly recognized and support systems are being put into place.
Stress sometimes affects students more severely than teachers, up to the point where the students are prescribed stress medication. This stress is claimed to be related to standardized testing, and the pressure on students to score above average. "See Cram school".
According to a 2008 mental health study by the Associated Press and mtvU, eight in 10 college students said they had sometimes or frequently experienced stress in their daily lives. This was an increase of 20% from a survey five years previously. 34 percent had felt depressed at some point in the past three months, 13 percent had been diagnosed with a mental health condition such as an anxiety disorder or depression, and 9 percent had seriously considered suicide.
Schools and their teachers have always been under pressure – for instance, pressure to cover the curriculum, to perform well in comparison to other schools, and to avoid the stigma of being "soft" or "spoiling" toward students. Forms of discipline, such as control over when students may speak, and normalized behaviour, such as raising a hand to speak, are imposed in the name of greater efficiency. Practitioners of critical pedagogy maintain that such disciplinary measures have no positive effect on student learning. Indeed, some argue that disciplinary practices detract from learning, saying that they undermine students' individual dignity and sense of self-worth – the latter occupying a more primary role in students' hierarchy of needs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28022 |
Sontaran
The Sontarans () ; are a fictional race of extraterrestrial humanoids created by Robert Holmes for the British science fiction television series "Doctor Who", also seen in spin-off series "The Sarah Jane Adventures". They are a warrior race characterised by their ruthlessness and fearlessness of death.
During rehearsals for their first appearance, Kevin Lindsay, who portrayed the original Sontaran, Linx, pronounced the race's name as ""son-TAR-an"." Alan Bromly, the director, tried to correct him by saying it should be pronounced with the stress on the first syllable. Lindsay declared "Well, I think it's ""son-TAR-an"", and since I'm from the place, I should know." His preferred pronunciation was retained.
The Sontarans made their first appearance in 1973 in the serial "The Time Warrior" by Robert Holmes, where Linx is stranded in the Middle Ages. Linx uses a projector to bring back human scientists from the future to fix his spacecraft.
Another Sontaran named Styre appears in "The Sontaran Experiment" (1975), experimenting on captured astronauts on a far future Earth. Their third appearance is in "The Invasion of Time", where they successfully invade Gallifrey, but are driven out again after less than a day. They appeared for the final time in the original series in "The Two Doctors". The Sontarans also appeared in a skit for the BBC children's programme "Jim'll Fix It" titled "A Fix with Sontarans", along with Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor and Janet Fielding as Tegan Jovanka. References are made in Sontaran episodes to the Rutan Host, an equally militaristic race with whom the Sontarans have been at war for thousands of years though the Rutans were not shown until the 1977 serial "Horror of Fang Rock".
Sporting an updated design, Sontarans returned to the revived series in the Series 4 episodes "The Sontaran Strategem" and "The Poison Sky" (2008). The Sontarans plan to terraform the Earth into a new clone world, but their plans are averted by the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant). It is also revealed that the race was excluded from the Last Great Time War of the revived series' backstory. In "Turn Left" (2008), the same events are depicted in a parallel universe, where Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) describes their plan as foiled by Torchwood (characters from the spin-off show of that name), at the cost of their lives, with Torchwood leader Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) being captured by the Sontarans. In "The Stolen Earth" (2008), UNIT is revealed to have developed a teleportation device based on Sontaran technology. A lone survivor from the events of "The Poison Sky", Commander Kaagh (Anthony O'Donnell), next appears in "The Last Sontaran" (2008), from spin-off series "The Sarah Jane Adventures". Kaagh appears again in "Enemy of the Bane" (2008). In "Doctor Who"s "The End of Time, Part Two" (2010), a Sontaran sniper (Dan Starkey) briefly appears pursuing the Doctor's former companions Mickey Smith (Noel Clarke) and his wife Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman), but is defeated by the Doctor before he can assassinate them. Alongside the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith), Sontarans battle fleets are seen in Series 5 finale episode, "The Pandorica Opens" (2010), as part of an alliance of the Doctor's enemies. Series 6 episode "A Good Man Goes to War" (2011) introduces Commander Strax (Starkey), a Sontaran nurse who has been assigned this role as a means of making penance. He fights on the side of the Doctor and his allies, which include the Silurian warrior Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh) and her wife, Jenny Flint (Catrin Stewart). Strax then appears alongside Vastra and Jenny in "The Snowmen" (2012), "The Crimson Horror", "The Name of the Doctor" (both 2013), and "Deep Breath" (2014). A troop of Sontarans is also shown among Trenzalore's invaders in the 2013 Christmas special "The Time of the Doctor". A Sontaran appears briefly in the 2015 episode "Face the Raven" as a refugee.
The origins of the Sontarans have not been revealed in the television series. The "Doctor Who" role-playing game published by FASA claimed that they were all descended from the genetic stock of General Sontar (or Sontaris), who used newly developed bioengineering techniques to clone millions of duplicates of himself and annihilated the non-clone population. He renamed the race after himself and turned the Sontarans into an expansionist and warlike society set on universal conquest. However, this origin has no basis in anything seen in the television series.
The Sontarans have also appeared as a character in the PC game "Destiny of the Doctors" released on 5 December 1997, by BBC Multimedia. They can be defeated by firing the occupants of an angry beehive at them.
The Sontarans appear in the "" episode, "The Gunpowder Plot".
Big Finish Productions first used the Sontarans for their audio drama "Heroes of Sontar", a 2011 Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) story, depicting the Doctor and his companions being forced to aid a Sontaran attack squad against a dangerous enemy that has threatened the Sontaran race by compromising their strategic methods. They next featured in The Five Companions and were stuck in an alternative version of the Death Zone with the Fifth Doctor and various companions. In 2012, "The First Sontarans" was released. A Sixth Doctor Lost Story from the mid-1980s, written by Andrew Smith, it features the Sontarans and the Rutans on nineteenth century Earth, tracking down a scientist named Jacob, who escaped through time and space. It is revealed that Jacob is from Sontar, and was responsible for genetically creating the Sontarans as a defence against a Rutan invasion. They were first developed on Sontar's gravity-heavy moon and quickly proved themselves to be at least on par with the unstoppable Rutan horde. However, believing themselves to be superior, the Sontarans turned on their creators to prevent their knowledge of Sontaran weaknesses being discovered and exploited by their enemies, conquering the planet Sontar and changing it to suit their biology. The audio ends with the Doctor and Peri helping Jacob and his wife fake their deaths so that they can go into hiding on a primitive, isolated planet to get away from their need for revenge on the Sontarans. The Sontarans also feature in the Early Adventures audio "The Sontarans", which depicts the First Doctor (William Hartnell), Steven Taylor and Sara Kingdom encountering the Sontarans during an invasion of an asteroid colony at some point before Sara's time, prompting Sara to observe that she is aware of how this confrontation will end from her own histories; this audio serves as the Doctor's chronologically earliest encounter with the Sontarans. The audio "Terror of the Sontarans" saw the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) and Mel Bush (Bonnie Langford) meet the Sontarans on an old mining colony that had been used as a Sontaran outpost, until a complex chain of events unintentionally created a new life form that was psychically tortured by the pain of the Sontarans' victims, forcing the Doctor to destroy the colony in the hope that the non-corporeal entity will reform into something more benevolent. They also appear in the 2014 story the sontaran ordeal as part of the classic doctors new monsters range. In this story the eight doctor (Played by Paul Mcgann comes against a group of sontarans led by General stenk (played by Christopher Ryan) try to get in to the greatest of all wars the time war.
Other appearances by the Sontarans include the spin-off videos "Mindgame", "" and "Do You Have A License To Save This Planet?"; three audio plays by BBV: "Silent Warrior", "Old Soldiers" and "Conduct Unbecoming"; the Faction Paradox audio "The Shadow Play"; and a cameo appearance in "Infidel's Comet". "Shakedown" marks the only occasion in which the Sontarans and their Rutan foes appear on screen together, and was adapted into a Virgin New Adventures novel where the Seventh Doctor must prevent the Sontarans gained a clear advantage in the conflict.
They have also appeared in several spin-off novels, including "Lords of the Storm" by David A. McIntee, where the Fifth Doctor and Turlough have to stop a Sontaran scheme to take control of a colony world where Tzun technology has been hidden. In "The Infinity Doctors" by Lance Parkin, an apparently alternate version of the Doctor negotiated a peace between the Sontarans and the Rutan Host when two of them were left trapped in a TARDIS for several hours and got to talking due to their inability to kill each other. General Sontar also made an appearance in that novel. In "The Crystal Bucephalus" by Craig Hinton, the name of their planet was given as Sontara. The Sontarans also briefly appear in "The Eight Doctors", sent to the Eye of Orion by an agent of the Celestial Intervention Agency to kill the Fifth and Eighth Doctors. The novel "Warmonger" sees the Sontarans join an alliance of alien races assembled by the Fifth Doctor to defeat the mercenary army of renegade Time Lord Morbius, although the Sontarans are unaware that they follow the Doctor as he adopts the alias of 'Supreme Coordinator', which is shortened to 'Supremo' by his Ogron bodyguards.
In 1982, Jean Airey's novella "The Doctor and the Enterprise" featured a crossover between the universes of "Doctor Who" and "Star Trek", in which the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) finds himself on the USS "Enterprise". The "Enterprise" is attacked by a Sontaran fleet (which is unrecognizable to Captain Kirk and crew), prompting the Doctor to urgently warn the crew to flee the area.
They appear in 2009, in the novella "The Sontaran Games" by Jacqueline Rayner, featuring the Tenth Doctor and appeared in the New Series Adventures (Doctor Who) book "The Taking of Chelsea 426" by David Llewellyn, featuring the Tenth Doctor, fighting both times against the Rutan Host.
In 2008, as part of Character options first series 4 2008 wave of action figures, they released some Sontaran action figures. These include General Staal, Commander Skorr and several Sontaran soldiers.
The Sontarans are mentioned in the audio book Wraith World, when Clyde Langer (Daniel Anthony) remarks he cannot understand why Luke Smith (Tommy Knight) and Rani Chandra (Anjli Mohindra) would want to read about made up adventures, when they have faced Sontarans.
The Sontarans have also appeared several times in the "Doctor Who Magazine" comic strip, both as adversaries of the Doctor and in strips not involving the Doctor. In "The Outsider" (DWM #25-26), by Steve Moore and David Lloyd, a Sontaran named Skrant invaded the world of Brahtilis with the unwitting help of Demimon, a local astrologer. The Fourth Doctor faced the Sontarans in "Dragon's Claw" (DWM #39-#45), by Steve Moore and Dave Gibbons, where a crew of Sontarans menaced China in 1522 AD.
In Steven Moffat's short story "What I Did on My Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow" (the basis for the Tenth Doctor episode "Blink"), the Ninth Doctor has a rooftop sword fight with two Sontarans in 21st century Istanbul, defeating them with the help of spy Sally Sparrow, apparently before the events of "Rose" in his personal timeline.
The Sontaran homeworld was destroyed in the future during the events of the Seventh Doctor strip "Pureblood" (DWM #193-196) but the Sontaran race pool survived, allowing for further cloning; the strip introduced the concept of "pureblood" Sontarans not born of cloning. The Sontarans also feature in the Kroton solo strip "Unnatural Born Killers" (DWM #277) and the Tenth Doctor's comic strip debut "The Betrothal of Sontar" (DWM #365-#368), by John Tomlinson and Nick Abadzis, where a Sontaran mining rig on the ice planet Serac comes under attack by a mysterious force.
The Sontarans are a race of humanoids with a stocky build, greenish brown skin, a distinctive dome-shaped head, and they have only three fingers on each hand, though some members of their species do have five fingers. Their musculature is designed for load-bearing rather than leverage, because of the significant amount of gravity on their home planet. Ross Jenkins in "The Sontaran Stratagem" describes a Sontaran as resembling "a talking baked potato". Sontarans come from a large, dense planet named Sontar in the "southern spiral arm of the galaxy" which has a very strong gravitational field, which explains their compact stocky form. They are far stronger than humans and, in the recent series, are shorter than the average human male.
The Sontarans have an extremely militaristic culture which prizes discipline and honour as its highest virtues; every aspect of their draconian society is geared toward warfare, and every experience is viewed in terms of its martial relevance. In "The Sontaran Experiment", the Fourth Doctor comments that "Sontarans never do anything without a military reason." In fact, to die heroically in battle is their ultimate goal. Aside from a ritualistic chant ("Son-tar-ha!") in "The Sontaran Strategem"/"The Poison Sky", they are never seen to engage in any activity that would be considered recreation, though a few offhand comments by Commander Skorr in "The Poison Sky" suggest they do consider hunting a sport. According to their creator Robert Holmes, Sontarans do have a highly developed artistic culture, but have put it on hold for the duration of the war, while the opening chapter of the novelisation of "The Time Warrior", based on Holmes' incomplete draft, refers to Linx listening to the Sontaran anthem while his spaceship is in flight.
The Sontarans depicted in the series have detached, smug personalities, and a highly developed sense of honour; on multiple occasions, the Doctor has used his knowledge of their pride in their species to manipulate them. In "The Sontaran Stratagem", the Doctor nevertheless referred to them as "the finest soldiers in the galaxy".
Although physically formidable, the Sontarans' weak spot is the "probic vent" at the back of their neck, through which they draw nutrition. It is also part of their cloning process. It provides incentive to continue moving forward in battle since retreat would expose this area to their enemies. They have been killed by targeting that location with a knife ("The Invasion of Time"), a screwdriver (""), and an arrow ("The Time Warrior"). Even something as simple as a squash ball aimed at that point ("The Sontaran Stratagem") or contact by the heel of a shoe ("The Last Sontaran") is capable of incapacitating them temporarily. They are also vulnerable to "coronic acid" ("The Two Doctors"). While the Sontarans wear protective helmets in battle, to fight without their helmets, or to be "open-skinned," is an honour for the Sontarans.
In the episode "The Poison Sky", it is revealed that the Sontaran Empire have been at war with the Rutan Host for more than 50,000 years, and which, at a time around 2008, they are losing. The war is still raging at least 20,000 years later, in the serial "The Sontaran Experiment".
Most of the Sontarans depicted in the television series have had monosyllabic names, many beginning with an initial 'st' sound (e.g. Styre ("The Sontaran Experiment"), Stor ("The Invasion of Time"), Stike ("The Two Doctors"), Staal ("The Sontaran Stratagem"), Skorr ("The Sontaran Stratagem"), Stark ("The Pandorica Opens"), and Strax ("A Good Man Goes To War"); exceptions are Linx ("The Time Warrior"), Varl ("The Two Doctors"), Jask ("The End of Time"), and Kaagh ("The Sarah Jane Adventures")). Elements of the Sontaran military structure mentioned in the series include the "Sontaran G3 Military Assessment Survey" and the "Grand Strategic Council", the Ninth Sontaran Battle Group, the "Fifth Army Space Fleet of the Sontaran Army Space Corps", and the "Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet". Military titles include Commander, Group Marshal, Field Major, and General. Agnomens include "the Undefeated", "the Bloodbringer", "the Avenger", and "the Slayer".
The Sontarans are a monogender-asexual (a "male gender-only" species); they reproduce by means of cloning rather than sexual reproduction, and thus for the most part are extremely similar in appearance. Human characters in both "The Sontaran Experiment" and "The Sontaran Stratagem" comment on how closely individual Sontarans resemble one another; however, their height, skin tone, facial features, vocal timbre and accent, hair, spacing of teeth and even number of fingers have varied from story to story, and sometimes within stories. When Luke Rattigan asks how they can tell each other apart in "The Sontaran Stratagem", General Staal remarks that they say the same of humans.
In "The Time Warrior", Linx states that "at the Sontaran Military Academy we have hatchings of a million cadets at each muster parade." The Doctor also comments in "The Invasion of Time" that Sontarans can mass-clone themselves at rates up to a million embryos every four minutes. Thereafter the clones take just ten minutes to grow to adulthood. When the Sontaran reach adulthood, under the charge of the Sontaran High Command, each warrior is immediately given a rank and dispatched on a battle mission. From day one, the Sontarans are sent to battle. The audio "The King of Sontar" introduces a unique occasion where one Sontaran is the only result of a clone batch, the resulting Sontaran being essentially a million Sontarans in one, making him far taller than the average for his species and lacking a probic vent.
Sontarans reproduce asexually and all the Sontarans depicted in the television series are of one gender; referred to with masculine pronouns, however it is not known if they possess distinctly male physiologies. General Staal comments that "words are the weapons of womenfolk" and that the clone of Martha Jones performed well "for a female" as commentary on the gender inequalities of other species. This typifies a Sontaran trait: interested only in the strongest fighters in any group or race. Despite this, Strax appeared perfectly comfortable with the prospect of wearing dresses in "The Battle of Demon's Run - Two Days Later"; he ultimately dressed in human gentleman's attire, nevertheless. In "The Time Warrior", when Linx examines Sarah Jane, he comments on how the human reproduction system is 'inefficient' and that humans 'should change it'. As multiple genders are foreign to them, Sontarans are known to confuse the human male and female sexes; Strax routinely addresses young women as "Boy" and vice versa, and claims not to have known that River Song was a woman.
In "The Sontaran Stratagem", the Sontarans are seen to create human clones by growing them in tubs of green fluid. "Enemy of the Bane" confirms that Sontarans are cloned in the same way. In a human clone, the umbilical corresponds to the probic vent on the back of a Sontaran's neck, suggesting that the vent is not unlike the human navel, albeit clearly more complex.
The Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet in the new series consists of a Command Ship and a number of capsules that can be moved into position when Battle Status is enjoined. Sontaran ships are impervious to nuclear missiles. In both the classic and new series, Sontarans are depicted using spherical or semi-spherical single-occupant spacecraft known as capsules. Each capsule is small enough to avoid detection by radar and is piloted by an individual Sontaran. "The Sontaran Stratagem" also saw the introduction of a large mothership from which the small Sontaran capsules could be seen to originate. The Doctor notes that the one ship by itself is enough to completely wipe out Earth.
The Sontarans have a variety of weapons. Their distinctive weapon is a small rod with two handles and a plunger at one end, giving it a syringe style. This is so it can be held and fired using three fingers. This weapon fires a disabling beam that can temporarily render a person useless and emits an energy pulse that can repair systems like the teleport, and has appeared in every Sontaran story except "The Sontaran Experiment". When first used by Commander Linx in "The Time Warrior", it shows the ability to fire a beam which can disarm by knocking the weapon out of the wielder's hand, hypnotise, as well as cutting through wood, disabling limbs and killing.
In "The Sontaran Experiment", Field Major Styre instead used a small red laser pistol which only killed (although it did not kill the Doctor, because of a small metal plate the Doctor had been keeping in his inside pocket). "The Invasion of Time" saw Commander Stor using the small rod again, but also in episode six, a Sontaran trooper uses a short black rifle-like laser to try to burn through a lock on a door inside the TARDIS. "The Two Doctors" introduced a weapon called the Meson Gun (as named in the Jim'll Fix It Sketch, "A Fix with Sontarans"), a large silver rifle with a red fuel tank in the centre which was used by Group Marshal Stike and Varl in the third episode. It seemed to be some kind of flamethrower as it fired a jet of flames very briefly. Group Marshal Stike was also seen carrying a baton.
It would not be until "The Sontaran Stratagem" that General Staal would show that the baton can fire an orange beam that could stun the target. In "The Poison Sky", Commander Skorr and his troops carry large laser rifles into battle. These rifles are the Sontaran gun of the Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet. Each rifle has a laser beam that kills instantly and is designed for a three-fingered grip. In "The Invasion of Time", their armour is shown to be resistant to Time Lord stasers and K-9's blaster. However, their armour is vulnerable to standard human firearms in "The Poison Sky", but the Sontarans in that episode used a 'cordolane signal' which caused the copper-lined bullets to expand, jamming most firearms instantly. UNIT troops overcame this by switching to steel-lined bullets.
"The Sarah Jane Adventures" story "The Last Sontaran" showed further technological advancements of the modern Sontarans. Commander Kaagh, a surviving pilot from the Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet, had slightly different armour due to being from the special forces. His suit featured no gloves, so his bare hands were visible, and on his left arm was a control panel for his suit and ship. His helmet could fold up and retract and both his suit and ship featured cloaking devices, turning them both invisible. While the soldiers of the Tenth Fleet were armed with large laser rifles, Kaagh has a smaller laser carbine. Rather than hypnotising humans (as Sarah pointed out they usually do), instead, Kaagh fixed neural control devices to the back of the necks of his human agents. A red light flashes when it is operational, and Kaagh can activate and deactivate them when he wants with his control panel.
A pair of Sontarans that tried to invade Trenzalore in "Time of the Doctor" used a two-man craft with an invisibility field. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28024 |
Skateboarding
Skateboarding is an action sport that involves riding and performing tricks using a skateboard, as well as a recreational activity, an art form, an entertainment industry job, and a method of transportation. Skateboarding has been shaped and influenced by many skateboarders throughout the years. A 2009 report found that the skateboarding market is worth an estimated $4.8 billion in annual revenue, with 11.08 million active skateboarders in the world. In 2016, it was announced that skateboarding will be represented at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
Since the 1970s, skateparks have been constructed specifically for use by skateboarders, freestyle BMXers, aggressive skaters, and very recently, scooters. However, skateboarding has become controversial in areas in which the activity, although illegal, has damaged curbs, stoneworks, steps, benches, plazas and parks.
The first skateboards started with wooden boxes, or boards, with roller skate wheels attached to the bottom. Crate scooters preceded skateboards, having a wooden crate attached to the nose (front of the board), which formed rudimentary handlebars. The boxes turned into planks, similar to the skateboard decks of today.
Skateboarding, as we know it, was probably born sometime in the late 1940s, or early 1950s, when surfers in California wanted something to do when the waves were flat. This was called "sidewalk surfing" – a new wave of surfing on the sidewalk as the sport of surfing became highly popular. No one knows who made the first board; it seems that several people came up with similar ideas at around the same time. The first manufactured skateboards were ordered by a Los Angeles, California surf shop, meant to be used by surfers in their downtime. The shop owner, Bill Richard, made a deal with the Chicago Roller Skate Company to produce sets of skate wheels, which they attached to square wooden boards. Accordingly, skateboarding was originally denoted "sidewalk surfing" and early skaters emulated surfing style and maneuvers, and performed barefoot.
By the 1960s a small number of surfing manufacturers in Southern California such as Jack's, Kips', Hobie, Bing's and Makaha started building skateboards that resembled small surfboards, and assembled teams to promote their products. One of the earliest Skateboard exhibitions was sponsored by Makaha's founder, Larry Stevenson, in 1963 and held at the Pier Avenue Junior High School in Hermosa Beach, California. Some of these same teams of skateboarders were also featured on a television show called "Surf's Up" in 1964, hosted by Stan Richards, that helped promote skateboarding as something new and fun to do.
As the popularity of skateboarding began expanding, the first skateboarding magazine, "The Quarterly Skateboarder" was published in 1964. John Severson, who published the magazine, wrote in his first editorial:
The magazine only lasted four issues, but resumed publication as "Skateboarder" in 1975. The first broadcast of an actual skateboarding competition was the 1965 National Skateboarding Championships, which were held in Anaheim, California and aired on ABC's "Wide World of Sports". Because skateboarding was a new sport during this time, there were only two original disciplines during competitions: flatland freestyle and slalom downhill racing.
One of the earliest sponsored skateboarders, Patti McGee, was paid by Hobie and Vita Pak to travel around the country to do skateboarding exhibitions and to demonstrate skateboarding safety tips. McGee made the cover of "Life" magazine in 1965 and was featured on several popular television programs—"The Mike Douglas Show", "What's My Line?" and "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson"—which helped make skateboarding even more popular at the time. Some other well known surfer-style skateboarders of the time were Danny Bearer, Torger Johnson, Bruce Logan, Bill and Mark Richards, Woody Woodward, & Jim Fitzpatrick.
The growth of the sport during this period can also be seen in sales figures for Makaha, which quoted $10 million worth of board sales between 1963 and 1965 (Weyland, 2002:28). By 1966 a variety of sources began to claim that skateboarding was dangerous, resulting in shops being reluctant to sell them, and parents being reluctant to buy them. In 1966 sales had dropped significantly (ibid) and Skateboarder Magazine had stopped publication. The popularity of skateboarding dropped and remained low until the early 1970s.
In the early 1970s, Frank Nasworthy started to develop a skateboard wheel made of polyurethane, calling his company Cadillac Wheels. Prior to this new material, skateboards wheels were metal or "clay" wheels. The improvement in traction and performance was so immense that from the wheel's release in 1972 the popularity of skateboarding started to rise rapidly again, causing companies to invest more in product development. Nasworthy commissioned artist Jim Evans to do a series of paintings promoting Cadillac Wheels, they were featured as ads and posters in the resurrected Skateboarder magazine, and proved immensely popular in promoting the new style of skateboarding.
In the early 1970s skateparks hadn't been invented yet, so skateboarders would flock and skateboard in such urban places as The Escondido reservoir in San Diego, California. Skateboarding magazine would publish the location and Skateboarders made up nicknames for each location such as the Tea Bowl, the Fruit Bowl, Bellagio, the Rabbit Hole, Bird Bath, the Egg Bowl, Upland Pool and the Sewer Slide. Some of the development concepts in the terrain of skateparks were actually taken from the Escondido reservoir. Many companies started to manufacture trucks (axles) specially designed for skateboarding, reached in 1976 by Tracker Trucks. As the equipment became more maneuverable, the decks started to get wider, reaching widths of and over, thus giving the skateboarder even more control. A banana board is a skinny, flexible skateboard made of polypropylene with ribs on the underside for structural support. These were very popular during the mid-1970s and were available in a myriad of colors, bright yellow probably being the most memorable, hence the name.
In 1975 skateboarding had risen back in popularity enough to have one of the largest skateboarding competitions since the 1960s, the Del Mar National Championships, which is said to have had up to 500 competitors. The competition lasted two days and was sponsored by Bahne Skateboards & Cadillac Wheels. While the main event was won by freestyle spinning skate legend Russ Howell, a local skate team from Santa Monica, California, the Zephyr team, ushered in a new era of surfer style skateboarding during the competition that would have a lasting impact on skateboarding's history. With a team of 12, including skating legends such as Jay Adams, Tony Alva, Peggy Oki & Stacy Peralta, they brought a new progressive style of skateboarding to the event, based on the style of Hawaiian surfers Larry Bertlemann, Buttons Kaluhiokalani and Mark Liddell. Craig Stecyk, a photo journalist for Skateboarder Magazine, wrote about and photographed the team, along with Glen E. Friedman, and shortly afterwards ran a series on the team called the Dogtown articles, which eventually immortalized the Zephyr skateboard team. The team became known as the Z-Boys and would go on to become one of the most influential teams in skateboarding's history.
Soon, skateboarding contests for cash and prizes, using a professional tier system, began to be held throughout California, such as the California Free Former World Professional Skateboard Championships, which featured Freestyle and Slalom competitions.
A precursor to the extreme sport of street luge, that was sanctioned by the United States Skateboarding Association (USSA), also took place during the 1970s in Signal Hill, California. The competition was called "The Signal Hill Skateboarding Speed Run", with several competitors earning entries into the Guinness Book of World Records, at the time clocking speeds of over 50 mph on a skateboard. Due to technology and safety concerns at the time, when many competitors crashed during their runs, the sport did not gain popularity or support during this time.
In March 1976, Skateboard City skatepark in Port Orange, Florida and Carlsbad Skatepark in San Diego County, California would be the first two skateparks to be opened to the public, just a week apart. They were the first of some 200 skateparks that would be built through 1982. This was due in part to articles that were running in the investment journals at the time, stating that skateparks were a good investment. Notable skateboarders from the 1970s also include Ty Page, Tom Inouye, Laura Thornhill, Ellen O'Neal, Kim Cespedes, Bob Biniak, Jana Payne, Waldo Autry, Robin Logan, Bobby Piercy, Russ Howell, Ellen Berryman, Shogo Kubo, Desiree Von Essen, Henry Hester, Robin Alaway, Paul Hackett, Michelle Matta, Bruce Logan, Steve Cathey, Edie Robertson, Mike Weed, David Hackett, Gregg Ayres, Darren Ho, and Tom Sims.
Manufacturers started to experiment with more exotic composites and metals, like fiberglass and aluminium, but the common skateboards were made of maple plywood. The skateboarders took advantage of the improved handling of their skateboards and started inventing new tricks. Skateboarders, most notably Ty Page, Bruce Logan, Bobby Piercy, Kevin Reed, and the Z-Boys started to skate the vertical walls of swimming pools that were left empty in the 1976 California drought. This started the "vert" trend in skateboarding. With increased control, vert skaters could skate faster and perform more dangerous tricks, such as slash grinds and frontside/backside airs. This caused liability concerns and increased insurance costs to skatepark owners, and the development (first by Norcon, then more successfully by Rector) of improved knee pads that had a hard sliding cap and strong strapping proved to be too-little-too-late. During this era, the "freestyle" movement in skateboarding began to splinter off and develop into a much more specialized discipline, characterized by the development of a wide assortment of flat-ground tricks.
As a result of the "vert" skating movement, skate parks had to contend with high liability costs that led to many park closures. In response, vert skaters started making their own ramps, while freestyle skaters continued to evolve their flatland style. Thus, by the beginning of the 1980s, skateboarding had once again declined in popularity.
This period was fueled by skateboard companies that were run by skateboarders. The focus was initially on vert ramp skateboarding. The invention of the no-hands aerial (later known as the ollie) by Alan Gelfand in Florida in 1976, and the almost parallel development of the grabbed aerial by George Orton and Tony Alva in California, made it possible for skaters to perform airs on vertical ramps. While this wave of skateboarding was sparked by commercialized vert ramp skating, a majority of people who skateboarded during this period didn't ride vert ramps. As most people could not afford to build vert ramps, or did not have access to nearby ramps, street skating increased in popularity.
Freestyle skating remained healthy throughout this period, with pioneers such as Rodney Mullen inventing many of the basic tricks that would become the foundation of modern street skating, such as the "Impossible" and the "kickflip". The influence that freestyle exerted upon street skating became apparent during the mid-1980s; however, street skating was still performed on wide vert boards with short noses, slide rails, and large soft wheels. In response to the tensions created by this confluence of skateboarding "genres", a rapid evolution occurred in the late 1980s to accommodate the street skater. Since few skateparks were available to skaters at this time, street skating pushed skaters to seek out shopping centers and public and private property as their "spot" to skate. (Public opposition, in which businesses, governments, and property owners have banned skateboarding on properties under their jurisdiction or ownership, would progressively intensify over the following decades.) By 1992, only a small fraction of skateboarders continuing to take part in a highly technical version of street skating, combined with the decline of vert skating, produced a sport that lacked the mainstream appeal to attract new skaters.
During this period, numerous skateboarders - as well as companies in the industry - paid tribute to the scenes of Marty McFly skateboarding in the film "Back to the Future" for its influence in this regard. Examples can be seen in promotional material, in interviews in which professional skateboarders cite the film as an initiation into the action sport, and in the public's recognition of the film's influence.
Skateboarding during the 1990s became dominated by street skateboarding. Most boards are about wide and long. The wheels are made of an extremely hard polyurethane, with hardness (durometer) approximately 99A. The wheel sizes are relatively small so that the boards are lighter, and the wheels' inertia is overcome quicker, thus making tricks more manageable. Board styles have changed dramatically since the 1970s but have remained mostly alike since the mid-1990s. The contemporary shape of the skateboard is derived from the freestyle boards of the 1980s with a largely symmetrical shape and relatively narrow width. This form had become standard by the mid '90s.
By 2001 skateboarding had gained so much popularity that more American people under the age of 18 rode skateboards (10.6 million) than played baseball (8.2 million), although traditional organized team sports still dominated youth programs overall. Skateboarding and skateparks began to be viewed and used in a variety of new ways to complement academic lessons in schools, including new non-traditional physical education skateboarding programs, like Skatepass and Skateistan, to encourage youth to have better attendance, self-discipline and confidence. This was also based on the healthy physical opportunities skateboarding was understood to bring participants for muscle & bone strengthening and balance, as well as the positive impacts it can have on youth in teaching them mutual respect, social networking, artistic expression and an appreciation of the environment.
In 2003 Go Skateboarding Day was founded in southern California by the International Association of Skateboard Companies to promote skateboarding throughout the world. It is celebrated annually on June 21 "to define skateboarding as the rebellious, creative celebration of independence it continues to be."
According to market research firm American Sports Data the number of skateboarders worldwide increased by more than 60 percent between 1999 and 2002—from 7.8 million to 12.5 million.
Many cities also began implementing recreation plans and statutes during this time period, as part of their vision for local parks and communities to make public lands more available, in particular, for skateboarding, inviting skateboarders to come in off of the city streets and into organized skateboarding activity areas. By 2006 there were over 2,400 skateparks worldwide and the design of skateparks themselves had made a transition, as skaters turned designers. Many new places to skateboard designed specifically for street skaters, such as the "Safe Spot Skate Spot" program, first initiated by professional skateboarder Rob Dyrdek throughout many cities, allowed for the creation of smaller alternative safe skate plazas to be built at a lower cost. One of the largest locations ever built to skateboard in the world, SMP Skatepark in China, at 12,000 square meters in size, was built complete with a 5,000-seat stadium.
In 2009 Skatelab opened the Skateboarding Hall of Fame & Skateboard Museum. Nominees are chosen by the International Association of Skateboard Companies (IASC).
Efforts have been taken to improve recognition of the cultural heritage as well as the positive effects of encouraging skateboarding within designated spaces. In 2015, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., hosted an event at which skateboarders accompanied by music did tricks on a ramp constructed for a festival of American culture. The event was the climax of a ten-day project that transformed a federal institution formerly off-limits to the skateboarding community into a platform for that community to show its relevance through shared cultural action in a cultural common space.
By raising £790,000, the Long Live Southbank initiative managed in 2017 to curb the destruction of a forty years old spot in London due to urban planning, a salvaging operation whose effect extends beyond skateboarding. The presence of a designated skating area within this public space keeps the space under nearly constant watch and drives homeless people away, increasing the feeling of safety in and near the space. The activity attracts artists such as photographers and film makers, as well as a significant number of tourists, which in turn drives economic activity in the neighborhood.
Recently, barefoot skating has been experiencing a revival. Many skaters ride barefoot, particularly in summer and in warmer countries, such as South Africa, Australia, Spain and South America. The plastic penny board is intended to be ridden barefoot, as is the surfboard-inspired hamboard.
In the 2010s, electric skateboards became popular, along with self-balancing unicycles in a board format.
The sport of skateboarding will make its olympic debut at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, with both men's and women's events. Competition will take place in two disciplines: street and park.
With the evolution of skateparks and ramp skating, the skateboard began to change. Early skate tricks had consisted mainly of two-dimensional freestyle manoeuvres like riding on only two wheels ("wheelie" or "manual"), spinning only on the back wheels (a "pivot"), high jumping over a bar and landing on the board again, also known as a "hippie jump", long jumping from one board to another, (often over small barrels or fearless teenagers), or slalom. Another popular trick was the Bertlemann slide, named after Larry Bertelemann's surfing manoeuvres.
In 1976, skateboarding was transformed by the invention of the ollie by Alan "Ollie" Gelfand. It remained largely a unique Florida trick until the summer of 1978, when Gelfand made his first visit to California. Gelfand and his revolutionary maneuvers caught the attention of the West Coast skaters and the media where it began to spread worldwide. The ollie was adapted to flat ground by Rodney Mullen in 1982. Mullen also invented the "Magic Flip," which was later renamed the kickflip, as well as many other tricks including, the 360 Kickflip, which is a 360 pop shove-it and a kickflip in the same motion. The flat ground ollie allowed skateboarders to perform tricks in mid-air without any more equipment than the skateboard itself, it has formed the basis of many street skating tricks. A recent development in the world of trick skating is the 1080, which was first ever landed by Tom Schaar in 2012.
Skateboarding was popularized by the 1986 skateboarding cult classic "Thrashin'". Directed by David Winters and starring Josh Brolin, it features appearances from many famous skaters such as Tony Alva, Tony Hawk, Christian Hosoi and Steve Caballero. "Thrashin'" also had a direct impact on "Lords of Dogtown", as Catherine Hardwicke, who directed "Lords of Dogtown", was hired by Winters to work on "Thrashin"' as a production designer where she met, worked with and befriended many famous skaters including the real Tony Alva, Tony Hawk, Christian Hosoi and Steve Caballero.
These films have helped improve the reputation of skateboarding youth, depicting individuals of this subculture as having a positive outlook on life, prone to poking harmless fun at each other, and engaging in healthy sportsman's competition. According to the film, lack of respect, egotism and hostility towards fellow skateboarders is generally frowned upon, albeit each of the characters (and as such, proxies of the "stereotypical" skateboarder) have a firm disrespect for authority and for rules in general. "Gleaming the Cube", a 1989 movie starring Christian Slater as a skateboarding teen investigating the death of his adopted Vietnamese brother, was somewhat of an iconic landmark to the skateboarding genre of the era.[""] Many well-known skaters had cameos in the film, including Tony Hawk and Rodney Mullen, where Mullen served as Slater's stunt double.
Skateboarding was, at first, tied to the culture of surfing. As skateboarding spread across the United States to places unfamiliar with surfing or surfing culture, it developed an image of its own. For example, the classic film short "Video Days" (1991) portrayed skateboarders as reckless rebels.
California duo Jan and Dean recorded the song "Sidewalk Surfin'" in 1964, which is the Beach Boys song "Catch a Wave" with new lyrics associated with skateboarding.
Certain cities still oppose the building of skate parks in their neighborhoods, for fear of increased crime and drugs in the area. The rift between the old image of skateboarding and a newer one is quite visible: magazines such as "Thrasher" portray skateboarding as dirty, rebellious, and still firmly tied to punk, while other publications, "Transworld Skateboarding" as an example, paint a more diverse and controlled picture of skateboarding. As more professional skaters use hip hop, reggae, or hard rock music accompaniment in their videos, many urban youths, hip-hop fans, reggae fans, and hard rock fans are also drawn to skateboarding, further diluting the sport's punk image.
Group spirit supposedly influences the members of this community. In presentations of this sort, showcasing of criminal tendencies is absent, and no attempt is made to tie extreme sports to any kind of illegal activity. Female based skateboarding groups also exist, such as Brujas which is based in New York City. Many women use their participation in skate crews to perform an alternative form of femininity. These female skate crews offer a safe haven for women and girls in cities, where they can skate and bond without male expectations or competition.
The increasing availability of technology is apparent within the skateboarding community. Many skateboarders record and edit videos of themselves and friends skateboarding. However, part of this culture is to not merely replicate but to innovate; emphasis is placed on finding new places and landing new tricks.
Skateboarding video games have also become very popular in skateboarding culture.[""] Some of the most popular are the "Tony Hawk" series and "Skate series" for various consoles (including hand-held) and personal computer.
Whilst early skateboarders generally rode barefoot, preferring direct foot-to-board contact, and some skaters continue to do so, one of the early leading trends associated with the sub-culture of skateboarding itself, was the sticky-soled slip-on skate shoe, most popularized by Sean Penn's skateboarding character from the film "Fast Times at Ridgemont High". Because early skateboarders were actually surfers trying to emulate the sport of surfing, at the time when skateboards first came out on the market, many skateboarded barefoot. But skaters often lacked traction, which led to foot injuries. This necessitated the need for a shoe that was specifically designed and marketed for skateboarding, such as the Randy "720", manufactured by the Randolph Rubber Company, and Vans sneakers, which eventually became cultural iconic signifiers for skateboarders during the 1970s and '80s as skateboarding became more widespread.
While the skate shoes design afforded better connection and traction with the deck, skaterboarders themselves could often be identified when wearing the shoes, with Tony Hawk once saying, "If you were wearing Vans shoes in 86, you were a skateboarder" Because of its connection with skateboarding, Vans financed the legendary skateboarding documentary "Dogtown and Z-Boys" and was the first sneaker company to endorse a professional skateboarder Stacy Peralta. Vans has a long history of being a major sponsor of many of skateboarding's competitions and events throughout skateboarding's history as well, including the Vans Warped Tour and the Vans Triple Crown Series.
As it eventually became more apparent that skateboarding had a particular identity with a style of shoe, other brands of shoe companies began to specifically design skate shoes for functionality and style to further enhance the experience and culture of skateboarding including such brands as; Converse, Nike, DC Shoes, Globe, Adidas, Zoo York and World Industries. Many professional skateboarders are designed a pro-model skate shoe, with their name on it, once they have received a skateboarding sponsorship after becoming notable skateboarders. Some shoe companies involved with skateboarding, like Sole Technology, an American footwear company that makes the Etnies skate shoe brand, further distinguish themselves in the market by collaborating with local cities to open public Skateparks, such as the etnies skatepark in Lake Forest, California.
Individuality and a self-expressed casual style have always been cultural values for skateboarders, as uniforms and jerseys are not typically worn. This type of personal style for skateboarders is often reflected in the graphical designs illustrated on the bottom of the deck of skateboards, since its initial conception in the mid seventies, when Wes Humpston and Jim Muri first began doing design work for Dogtown Skateboards out of their garage by hand, creating the very first iconic skateboard-deck art with the design of the "Dogtown Cross".
Prior to the mid-seventies many early skateboards were originally based upon the concept of “Sidewalk Surfing” and were tied to the surf culture, skateboards were surfboard like in appearance with little to no graphics located under the bottom of the skateboard-deck. Some of the early manufactured skateboards such as "Roller Derby", the "Duraflex Surfer" and the "Banana board" are characteristic. Some skateboards during that time were manufactured with company logo's or stickers across the top of the deck of the skateboard, as griptape was not initially used for construction. But as skateboarding progressed & evolved, and as artist began to design and add influence to the artwork of skateboards, designs and themes began to change.
There were several artistic skateboarding pioneers that had an influence on the culture of skateboarding during the 1980s, that transformed skateboard-deck art like Jim Phillips, whose edgy comic-book style "Screaming Hand", not only became the main logo for Santa Cruz Skateboards, but eventually transcended into tattoos of the same image for thousands of people and vinyl collectible figurines over the years. Artist Vernon Courtlandt Johnson is said to have used his artwork of skeletons and skulls, for Powell Peralta, during the same time that the music genres of punk rock and new wave music were beginning to mesh with the culture of skateboarding. Some other notable skateboard artists that made contribrutions to the culture of skateboarding also include Andy Jenkins, Todd Bratrud, Neil Blender, Marc McKee, Tod Swank, Mark Gonzales, Lance Mountain, Natas Kaupas and Jim Evans.
Over the years skateboard-deck art has continued to influence and expand the culture of skateboarding, as many people began collecting skateboards based on their artistic value and nostalgia. Productions of limited editions with particular designs and types of collectible prints that can be hung on the wall, have been created by such famous artists as Andy Warhol and Keith Haring. Most professional skateboarders today have their own signature skateboard decks, with their favorite artistic designs printed on them using computer graphics.
In January 2019, Sotheby's in New York auctioned the full set of the 248 skateboard deck designs ever sold by Supreme, collected by Ryan Fuller. The full set sold for $800,000 to 17 year old Carson Guo from Vancouver who plans to exhibit them in a local gallery.
New York based SHUT skateboards had a goldplated skateboard for sale at $15,000 in 2014, then the most expensive skateboard in the world.
In 2019, artist Adrian Wilson created the SUPREME Mundi, a cross between an artist palette and a skateboard as a commentary on the record bids at auction of the Supreme decks and the restored Salvatore Mundi which was sold by a New York art gallery for $20,000
Skateboards, along with other small-wheeled transportation such as in-line skates and scooters, suffer a safety problem: riders may easily be thrown from small cracks and outcroppings in pavement, especially where the cracks run across the direction of travel. Hitting such an irregularity is the major cause of falls and injuries. The risk may be reduced at higher travel speeds.
Severe injuries are relatively rare. Commonly, a skateboarder who falls suffers from scrapes, cuts, bruises, and sprains. Among injuries reported to a hospital, about half involve broken bones, usually the long bones in the leg or arm. One-third of skateboarders with reported injuries are very new to the sport, having started skating within one week of the injury. Although less common, involving 3.5–9 percent of reported injuries, traumatic head injuries and death are possible severe outcomes.
Skating as a form of transportation exposes the skateboarder to the dangers of other traffic. Skateboarders on the street may be hit by other vehicles or may fall into vehicular traffic.
Skateboarders also pose a risk to other pedestrians and traffic. If the skateboarder falls, the skateboard may roll or fly into another person. A skateboarder who collides with a person who is walking or biking may injure or, rarely, kill that person.
Many jurisdictions require skateboarders to wear bicycle helmets to reduce the risk of head injuries and death. Other protective gear, such as wrist guards, also reduce injury. Some medical researchers have proposed restricting skateboarding to designated, specially designed areas, to reduce the number and severity of injuries, and to eliminate injuries caused by motor vehicles or to other pedestrians.
The use, ownership and sale of skateboards were forbidden in Norway from 1978 to 1989 because of the high number of injuries caused by boards. The ban led skateboarders to construct ramps in the forest and other secluded areas to avoid the police. There was, however, one legal skatepark in the country in Frogner Park in Oslo.
The use of skateboards solely as a form of transportation is often associated with the longboard. Depending on local laws, using skateboards as a form of transportation outside residential areas may or may not be legal. Backers cite portability, exercise, and environmental friendliness as some of the benefits of skateboarding as an alternative to automobiles.
The United States Marine Corps tested the usefulness of commercial off-the-shelf skateboards during urban combat military exercises in the late 1990s in a program called Urban Warrior '99. Their special purpose was "for maneuvering inside buildings in order to detect tripwires and sniper fire".
Trampboarding is a variant of skateboarding that uses a board without the trucks and the wheels on a trampoline. Using the bounce of the trampoline gives height to perform tricks, whereas in skateboarding you need to make the height by performing an ollie. Trampboarding is seen on YouTube in numerous videos.
Swing boarding is the activity where a skateboard deck is suspended from a pivot point above the rider which allows the rider to swing about that pivot point. The board swings in an arc which is a similar movement to riding a half pipe. The incorporation of a harness and frame allows the rider to perform turns and spins all while flying through the air.
Skateboarding damages urban terrain features such as curbs, benches, and ledges when skateboarders perform "grinds" and other tricks on these surfaces. Private industry has responded to this problem by using skate deterrent devices, such as the Skatestopper, in efforts to prevent further damage and to reduce skateboarding on these surfaces.
The enactment of ordinances and the posting of signs stating "Skateboarding is not allowed" have also become common methods to discourage skateboarding in public areas in many cities, to protect pedestrians and property. In the area of street skating, tickets and arrest from police for trespassing and vandalism are not uncommon.
Skateboarding has become an important problem in Freedom Plaza, a National Park within the Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site in Washington, D.C. The Plaza contains copies of portions of Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant's 1791 plan for the nation's capital city that have been inscribed in the park's raised marble surface.
Freedom Plaza has become a popular location for skateboarding, although the activity is illegal and has resulted in police actions. A 2016 National Park Service management plan for the Historic Site states that skateboarding has damaged stonework, sculptures, walls, benches, steps, and other surfaces in some areas of the Plaza. The management plan further states that skateboarding presents a persistent law enforcement and management challenge, as popular websites advertise the Plaza's attractiveness for the activity. The plan notes that vandals have removed "No Skateboarding" signs and recommends the replacement of those signs.
A professional skateboarder promoted on Facebook the use of governmental sites for the prohibited activity during the 2013 federal government shutdown in the United States. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28027 |
Speed skating
Speed skating is a competitive form of ice skating in which the competitors race each other in travelling a certain distance on skates. Types of speed skating are long track speed skating, short track speed skating, and marathon speed skating. In the Olympic Games, long-track speed skating is usually referred to as just "speed skating", while short-track speed skating is known as "short track". The ISU, the governing body of both ice sports, refers to long track as "speed skating" and short track as "short track skating".
An international federation was founded in 1892, the first for any winter sport. The sport enjoys large popularity in the Netherlands, Norway and South Korea. There are top international rinks in a number of other countries, including Canada, the United States, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Kazakhstan, China, Belarus and Poland. A World Cup circuit is held with events in those countries plus two events in the Thialf ice hall in Heerenveen, Netherlands.
The standard rink for long track is 400 meters long, but tracks of 200, 250 and 333 meters are used occasionally. It is one of two Olympic forms of the sport and the one with the longer history.
International Skating Union rules allow some leeway in the size and radius of curves.
Short track speed skating takes place on a smaller rink, normally the size of an ice hockey rink, on a 111.12 m oval track. Distances are shorter than in long-track racing, with the longest Olympic individual race being 1500 meters (the women's relay is 3000 meters and the men's relay 5000 meters). Event are usually held with a knockout format, with the best two in heats of four or five qualifying for the final race, where medals are awarded. Disqualifications and falls are not uncommon.
There are variations on the mass-start races. In the regulations of roller sports, eight different types of mass starts are described. Among them are elimination races, where one or more competitors are eliminated at fixed points during the course; simple distance races, which may include preliminary races; endurance races with time limits instead of a fixed distance; points races; and individual pursuits.
Races usually have some rules about disqualification if an opponent is unfairly hindered; these rules vary between the disciplines. In long track speed skating, almost any infringement on the pairmate is punished, though skaters are permitted to change from the inner to the outer lane out of the final curve if they are not able to hold the inner curve, as long as they are not interfering with the other skater. In mass-start races, skaters will usually be allowed some physical contact.
Team races are also held; in long track speed skating, the only team race at the highest level of competition is the Team pursuit, though athletics-style relay races are held at children's competitions. Relay races are also held in short track and inline competitions, but here, exchanges may take place at any time during the race, though exchanges may be banned during the last couple of laps.
Most speed skating races are held on an oval course, but there are exceptions. Oval sizes vary; in short track speed skating, the rink must be an oval of 111.12 metres, while long track speed skating uses a similarly standardized 400 m rink. Inline skating rinks are between 125 and 400 metres, though banked tracks can only be 250 metres long. Inline skating can also be held on closed road courses between 400 and 1,000 metres, as well as open-road competitions where starting and finishing lines do not coincide. This is also a feature of outdoor marathons.
In the Netherlands, marathon competitions may be held on natural ice on canals, and bodies of water such as lakes and rivers, but may also be held on artificially frozen 400 m tracks, with skaters circling the track 100 times, for example.
The roots of speed skating date back over a millennium in the North of Europe, especially Scandinavia and the Netherlands, where the natives added bones to their shoes and used them to travel on frozen rivers, canals and lakes. In contrast to what people think, ice skating has always been an activity of joy and sports and not a matter of transport. For example, winters in the Netherlands have never been stable and cold enough to make ice skating a regular way of travelling or a mode of transport.
This has already been described in 1194 by William Fitzstephen, who described a sport in London.
Later, in Norway, King Eystein Magnusson, later King Eystein I of Norway, boasts of his skills racing on ice legs.
However, skating and speed skating was not limited to the Netherlands and Scandinavia; in 1592, a Scotsman designed a skate with an iron blade. It was iron-bladed skates that led to the spread of skating and, in particular, speed skating.
By 1642, the first official skating club, The Skating Club Of Edinburgh, was born, and, in 1763, the world saw its first official speed skating race, at Wisbech on the Fens in England for a prize sum of 70 guineas.
While in the Netherlands, people began touring the waterways connecting the 11 cities of Friesland, a challenge which eventually led to the Elfstedentocht.
The first known official speed skating competition for women was in Heerenveen, the Netherlands from 1 to 2 February 1805. The competition was won by Trijntje Pieters Westra.
By 1851, North Americans had discovered a love of the sport, and the all-steel blade was later developed there. In Norway speed skating also became popular, as there was a huge interest in the 1885 speed skating race at Frognerkilen between Axel Paulsen and Renke van der Zee.
The Netherlands came back to the fore in 1889 with the organization of the first world championships. The ISU (International Skating Union) was also born in the Netherlands in 1892.
By the start of the 20th century, skating and speed skating had come into its own as a major popular sporting activity.
Organized races on ice skates developed in the 19th century. Norwegian clubs hosted competitions from 1863, with races in Christiania drawing five-digit crowds. In 1884, the Norwegian Axel Paulsen was named Amateur Champion Skater of the World after winning competitions in the United States. Five years later, a sports club in Amsterdam held an ice-skating event they called a world championship, with participants from Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as the host country. The "Internationale Eislauf Vereinigung", now known as the International Skating Union, was founded at a meeting of 15 national representatives in Scheveningen in 1892, the first international winter sports federation. The Nederlandse Schaatsrijderbond was founded in 1882 and organised the world championships of 1890 and 1891. Competitions were held around tracks of varying lengths—the 1885 match between Axel Paulsen and Remke van der Zee was skated on a track of 6/7 mile (1400 metres)—but the 400 metre track was standardised by the ISU in 1892, along with the standard distances for world championships, 500 m, 1500 m, 5000 m and 10,000 m. Skaters started in pairs, each to their own lane, and changed lanes for every lap to ensure that each skater completed the same distance. This is what is now known as long track speed skating. Competitions were exclusively for amateur skaters, which was enforced. Peter Sinnerud was disqualified for professionalism in 1904 and lost his world title.
Long track world records were first registered in 1891 and improved rapidly, Jaap Eden lowering the world 5000-metre record by half a minute during the Hamar European Championships in 1894. The record stood for 17 years, and it took 50 years to lower it by further half a minute.
The Elfstedentocht was organized as a competition in 1909 and has been held at irregular intervals, whenever the ice on the course is deemed good enough. Other outdoor races developed later, with Friesland in the northern Netherlands hosting a race in 1917, but the Dutch natural ice conditions have rarely been conducive to skating. The Elfstedentocht has been held 15 times in the nearly 100 years since 1909, and, before artificial ice was available in 1962, national championships had been held in 25 of the years between 1887, when the first championship was held in Slikkerveer, and 1961. Since artificial ice became common in the Netherlands, Dutch speed skaters have been among the world top in long track ice skating and marathon skating. Another solution to still be able to skate marathons on natural ice became the Alternative Elfstedentocht. The Alternative Elfstedentocht races take part in other countries, such as Austria, Finland or Canada, and all top marathon skaters, as well as thousands of recreative skaters, travel from the Netherlands to the location where the race is held. According to the NRC Handelsblad journalist Jaap Bloembergen, the country "takes a carnival look" during international skating championships.
At the 1914 Olympic Congress, the delegates agreed to include ice speed skating in the 1916 Olympics, after figure skating had featured in the 1908 Olympics. However, World War I put an end to the plans of Olympic competition, and it was not until the winter sports week in Chamonix in 1924—retroactively awarded Olympic status—that ice speed skating reached the Olympic programme. Charles Jewtraw from Lake Placid, New York, won the first Olympic gold medal, though several Norwegians in attendance claimed Oskar Olsen had clocked a better time. Timing issues on the 500 were a problem within the sport until electronic clocks arrived in the 1960s; during the 1936 Olympic 500–metre race, it was suggested that Ivar Ballangrud's 500-metre time was almost a second too good. Finland won the remaining four gold medals at the 1924 Games, with Clas Thunberg winning 1,500 metres, 5,000 metres, and allround. It was the first and only time an allround Olympic gold medal has been awarded in speed skating. Speed Skating is also a sport in today's Olympics.
Norwegian and Finnish skaters won all the gold medals in world championships between the world wars, with Latvians and Austrians visiting the podium in the European Championships. However, North American races were usually conducted pack-style, similar to the marathon races in the Netherlands, but the Olympic races were to be held over the four ISU-approved distances. The ISU approved the suggestion that the speed skating at the 1932 Winter Olympics should be held as pack-style races, and Americans won all four gold medals. Canada won five medals, all silver and bronze, while defending World Champion Clas Thunberg stayed at home, protesting against this form of racing. At the World Championships held immediately after the games, without the American champions, Norwegian racers won all four distances and occupied the three top spots in the allround standings.
Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, and Japanese skating leaders protested to the USOC, condemning the manner of competition and expressing the wish that mass-start races were never to be held again at the Olympics. However, the ISU adopted the short track speed skating branch, with mass-start races on shorter tracks, in 1967, arranged international competitions from 1976, and brought them back to the Olympics in 1992.
Artificial ices entered the long track competitions with the 1960 Winter Olympics, and the competitions in 1956 on Lake Misurina were the last Olympic competitions on natural ice. 1960 also saw the first Winter Olympic competitions for women. Lidia Skoblikova won two gold medals in 1960 and four in 1964.
More aerodynamic skating suits were also developed, with Swiss skater Franz Krienbühl (who finished 8th on the Olympic 10,000 m at the age of 46) at the front of development. After a while, national teams took over development of body suits, which are also used in short track skating, though without headcover attached to the suit—short trackers wear helmets instead, as falls are more common in mass-start races. Suits and indoor skating, as well as the clap skate, has helped to lower long track world records considerably; from 1971 to 2009, the average speed on the men's 1500 metres has been raised from 45 to 52 km/h. Similar speed increases are shown in the other distances.
After the 1972 season, European long track skaters founded a professional league, International Speedskating League, which included Ard Schenk, three-time Olympic gold medallist in 1972, as well as five Norwegians, four other Dutchmen, three Swedes, and a few other skaters. Jonny Nilsson, 1963 world champion and Olympic gold medallist, was the driving force behind the league, which folded in 1974 for economic reasons, and the ISU also excluded tracks hosting professional races from future international championships. The ISU later organised its own World Cup circuit with monetary prizes, and full-time professional teams developed in the Netherlands during the 1990s, which led them to a dominance on the men's side only challenged by Japanese 500 m racers and American inline skaters who changed to long tracks to win Olympic gold.
During the 20th century, roller skating also developed as a competitive sport. Roller-skating races were professional from an early stage. Professional World Championships were arranged in North America between the competitors on that circuit. Later, roller derby leagues appeared, a professional contact sport that originally was a form of racing. FIRS World Championships of inline speed skating go back to the 1980s, but many world champions, such as Derek Parra and Chad Hedrick, have switched to ice in order to win Olympic medals.
Like roller skating, ice speed skating was also professional in North America. Oscar Mathisen, five-time ISU world champion and three-time European champion, renounced his amateur status in 1916 and travelled to America, where he won many races but was beaten by Bobby McLean of Chicago, four-time American champion, in one of the races. Chicago was a centre of ice speed skating in America; the "Chicago Tribune" sponsored a competition called the Silver Skates from 1912 to 2014.
In 1992, short track speed skating was accepted as an Olympic sport. Short track speed skating had little following in the long track speed skating countries of Europe, such as Norway, the Netherlands and the former Soviet Union, with none of these nations having won official medals (though the Netherlands won two gold medals when the sport was a demonstration event in 1988). The Norwegian publication "Sportsboken" spent ten pages detailing the long track speed skating events at the Albertville Games in 1993, but short track was not mentioned by word, though the results pages appeared in that section.
Although this form of speed skating is newer, it is growing faster than long-track speed skating, largely because short track can be done on an ice hockey rink rather than a long-track oval.
Races are run counter-clockwise on a 111-meter track. Short track races are almost always run in a mass start format in which two to six skaters may race at once. Skaters may be disqualified for false starts, impeding, and cutting inside the track. False starts occur when a skater moves before the gun goes off at the start of a race. Skaters are disqualified for impeding when one skater cuts in front of another skater and causes the first skater to stand up to avoid collision or fall. Cutting inside the track occurs when a skater's skates goes inside the blocks which mark the track on the ice. If disqualified the skater will be given last place in their heat or final.
Races are run counter-clockwise on a 400-meter oval. In all individual competition forms, only two skaters are allowed to race at once. Skaters must change lanes every lap. The skater changing from the outside lane to the inside has right-of-way. Skaters may be disqualified for false starts, impeding, and cutting inside the track. If a skater misses their race or falls they have the option to race their distance again. There are no heats or finals in long track, all rankings are by time.
The starting procedure in long-track speed skating consists of three parts. First, the referee tells the athletes to ""Go to the start"". Second, the referee cues the athletes to get "Ready", and waits until the skaters have stopped moving. Finally, the referee waits for a random duration between 1 and 1.5 seconds, and then fires the starting shot. Some argue that this inherent timing variability could disadvantage athletes that start after longer pauses, due to the alerting effect.
In the only non-individual competition form, the team pursuit, two teams of each three to four skaters are allowed to race at once. Both teams remain in the inner lane for the duration of the race; they start on opposite sides of the rink. If four skaters are racing one skater is allowed to drop off and stop racing. The clock stops when the third skater crosses the finish line.
Speed skates Speed skates differ greatly from hockey skates and figure skates. Unlike hockey skates and figure skates, speed skates cut off at the ankle and are built more like a shoe than a boot to allow for more ankle compression. The blades range in length from 30 to 45 cm depending on the age and height of the skater. Short track blades are fixed to the boot in two places once at the heel and the other right behind the ball of the foot. Long track skates, also called clap skates, attach firmly to the boot only at the front. The heel of the boot detaches from the blade on every stroke, through a spring mechanism located at the front connector. Speed skates are manually sharpened using a jig to hold them in place.
Short track
All short track skaters must have speed skates, a spandex skin suit, protective helmet, specific cut proof skating gloves, knee pads and shin pads (in suit), neck guard (bib style) and ankle protection. Protective eyewear is mandatory. Many skaters wear smooth ceramic or carbon fiber tips on the left hand glove to reduce friction when their hand is on the ice at corners. All skaters who race at a national level must wear a cutproof kevlar suit to protect against being cut from another skater's blade.
Long track
For long track skaters the same equipment should be worn as short track racers but with the exception of a helmet, shin pads, knee pads, and neck guard which are not required. Protective eyewear is not mandatory. The suit also does not need to be kevlar. Long track skaters wear a hood that is built into the suit. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28028 |
Scanning electron microscope
A scanning electron microscope (SEM) is a type of electron microscope that produces images of a sample by scanning the surface with a focused beam of electrons. The electrons interact with atoms in the sample, producing various signals that contain information about the surface topography and composition of the sample. The electron beam is scanned in a raster scan pattern, and the position of the beam is combined with the intensity of the detected signal to produce an image. In the most common SEM mode, secondary electrons emitted by atoms excited by the electron beam are detected using a secondary electron detector (Everhart-Thornley detector). The number of secondary electrons that can be detected, and thus the signal intensity, depends, among other things, on specimen topography. SEM can achieve resolution better than 1 nanometer.
Specimens are observed in high vacuum in conventional SEM, or in low vacuum or wet conditions in variable pressure or environmental SEM, and at a wide range of cryogenic or elevated temperatures with specialized instruments.
An account of the early history of SEM has been presented by McMullan. Although Max Knoll produced a photo with a 50 mm object-field-width showing channeling contrast by the use of an electron beam scanner, it was Manfred von Ardenne who in 1937 invented a microscope with high resolution by scanning a very small raster with a demagnified and finely focused electron beam. Ardenne applied scanning of the electron beam in an attempt to surpass the resolution of the transmission electron microscope (TEM), as well as to mitigate substantial problems with chromatic aberration inherent to real imaging in the TEM. He further discussed the various detection modes, possibilities and theory of SEM, together with the construction of the . Further work was reported by Zworykin's group, followed by the Cambridge groups in the 1950s and early 1960s headed by Charles Oatley, all of which finally led to the marketing of the first commercial instrument by Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company as the "Stereoscan" in 1965, which was delivered to DuPont.
The signals used by a scanning electron microscope to produce an image result from interactions of the electron beam with atoms at various depths within the sample. Various types of signals are produced including secondary electrons (SE), reflected or back-scattered electrons (BSE), characteristic X-rays and light (cathodoluminescence) (CL), absorbed current (specimen current) and transmitted electrons. Secondary electron detectors are standard equipment in all SEMs, but it is rare for a single machine to have detectors for all other possible signals.
Secondary electrons have very low energies on the order of 50 eV, which limits their mean free path in solid matter. Consequently, SEs can only escape from the top few nanometers of the surface of a sample. The signal from secondary electrons tends to be highly localized at the point of impact of the primary electron beam, making it possible to collect images of the sample surface with a resolution of below 1 nm. Back-scattered electrons (BSE) are beam electrons that are reflected from the sample by elastic scattering. They emerge from deeper locations within the specimen and, consequently, the resolution of BSE images is less than SE images. However, BSE are often used in analytical SEM, along with the spectra made from the characteristic X-rays, because the intensity of the BSE signal is strongly related to the atomic number (Z) of the specimen. BSE images can provide information about the distribution, but not the identity, of different elements in the sample. In samples predominantly composed of light elements, such as biological specimens, BSE imaging can image colloidal gold immuno-labels of 5 or 10 nm diameter, which would otherwise be difficult or impossible to detect in secondary electron images. Characteristic X-rays are emitted when the electron beam removes an inner shell electron from the sample, causing a higher-energy electron to fill the shell and release energy. The energy or wavelength of these characteristic X-rays can be measured by Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy or Wavelength-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and used to identify and measure the abundance of elements in the sample and map their distribution.
Due to the very narrow electron beam, SEM micrographs have a large depth of field yielding a characteristic three-dimensional appearance useful for understanding the surface structure of a sample. This is exemplified by the micrograph of pollen shown above. A wide range of magnifications is possible, from about 10 times (about equivalent to that of a powerful hand-lens) to more than 500,000 times, about 250 times the magnification limit of the best light microscopes.
SEM samples have to be small enough to fit on the specimen stage, and may need special preparation to increase their electrical conductivity and to stabilize them, so that they can withstand the high vacuum conditions and the high energy beam of electrons. Samples are generally mounted rigidly on a specimen holder or stub using a conductive adhesive. SEM is used extensively for defect analysis of semiconductor wafers, and manufacturers make instruments that can examine any part of a 300 mm semiconductor wafer. Many instruments have chambers that can tilt an object of that size to 45° and provide continuous 360° rotation.
Nonconductive specimens collect charge when scanned by the electron beam, and especially in secondary electron imaging mode, this causes scanning faults and other image artifacts. For conventional imaging in the SEM, specimens must be electrically conductive, at least at the surface, and electrically grounded to prevent the accumulation of electrostatic charge. Metal objects require little special preparation for SEM except for cleaning and conductively mounting to a specimen stub. Non-conducting materials are usually coated with an ultrathin coating of electrically conducting material, deposited on the sample either by low-vacuum sputter coating or by high-vacuum evaporation. Conductive materials in current use for specimen coating include gold, gold/palladium alloy, platinum, iridium, tungsten, chromium, osmium, and graphite. Coating with heavy metals may increase signal/noise ratio for samples of low atomic number (Z). The improvement arises because secondary electron emission for high-Z materials is enhanced.
An alternative to coating for some biological samples is to increase the bulk conductivity of the material by impregnation with osmium using variants of the OTO staining method (O-osmium tetroxide, T-thiocarbohydrazide, O-osmium).
Nonconducting specimens may be imaged without coating using an environmental SEM (ESEM) or low-voltage mode of SEM operation. In ESEM instruments the specimen is placed in a relatively high-pressure chamber and the electron optical column is differentially pumped to keep vacuum adequately low at the electron gun. The high-pressure region around the sample in the ESEM neutralizes charge and provides an amplification of the secondary electron signal. Low-voltage SEM is typically conducted in an instrument with a field emission guns (FEG) which is capable of producing high primary electron brightness and small spot size even at low accelerating potentials. To prevent charging of non-conductive specimens, operating conditions must be adjusted such that the incoming beam current is equal to sum of outgoing secondary and backscattered electron currents, a condition that is most often met at accelerating voltages of 0.3–4 kV.
Synthetic replicas can be made to avoid the use of original samples when they are not suitable or available for SEM examination due to methodological obstacles or legal issues. This technique is achieved in two steps: (1) a mold of the original surface is made using a silicone-based dental elastomer, and (2) a replica of the original surface is obtained by pouring a synthetic resin into the mold.
Embedding in a resin with further polishing to a mirror-like finish can be used for both biological and materials specimens when imaging in backscattered electrons or when doing quantitative X-ray microanalysis.
The main preparation techniques are not required in the environmental SEM outlined below, but some biological specimens can benefit from fixation.
For SEM, a specimen is normally required to be completely dry, since the specimen chamber is at high vacuum. Hard, dry materials such as wood, bone, feathers, dried insects, or shells (including egg shells) can be examined with little further treatment, but living cells and tissues and whole, soft-bodied organisms require chemical fixation to preserve and stabilize their structure.
Fixation is usually performed by incubation in a solution of a buffered chemical fixative, such as glutaraldehyde, sometimes in combination with formaldehyde and other fixatives, and optionally followed by postfixation with osmium tetroxide. The fixed tissue is then dehydrated. Because air-drying causes collapse and shrinkage, this is commonly achieved by replacement of water in the cells with organic solvents such as ethanol or acetone, and replacement of these solvents in turn with a transitional fluid such as liquid carbon dioxide by critical point drying. The carbon dioxide is finally removed while in a supercritical state, so that no gas–liquid interface is present within the sample during drying.
The dry specimen is usually mounted on a specimen stub using an adhesive such as epoxy resin or electrically conductive double-sided adhesive tape, and sputter-coated with gold or gold/palladium alloy before examination in the microscope. Samples may be sectioned (with a microtome) if information about the organism's internal ultrastructure is to be exposed for imaging.
If the SEM is equipped with a cold stage for cryo microscopy, cryofixation may be used and low-temperature scanning electron microscopy performed on the cryogenically fixed specimens. Cryo-fixed specimens may be cryo-fractured under vacuum in a special apparatus to reveal internal structure, sputter-coated and transferred onto the SEM cryo-stage while still frozen. Low-temperature scanning electron microscopy (LT-SEM) is also applicable to the imaging of temperature-sensitive materials such as ice and fats.
Freeze-fracturing, freeze-etch or freeze-and-break is a preparation method particularly useful for examining lipid membranes and their incorporated proteins in "face on" view. The preparation method reveals the proteins embedded in the lipid bilayer.
Back-scattered electron imaging, quantitative X-ray analysis, and X-ray mapping of specimens often requires grinding and polishing the surfaces to an ultra-smooth surface. Specimens that undergo WDS or EDS analysis are often carbon-coated. In general, metals are not coated prior to imaging in the SEM because they are conductive and provide their own pathway to ground.
Fractography is the study of fractured surfaces that can be done on a light microscope or, commonly, on an SEM. The fractured surface is cut to a suitable size, cleaned of any organic residues, and mounted on a specimen holder for viewing in the SEM.
Integrated circuits may be cut with a focused ion beam (FIB) or other ion beam milling instrument for viewing in the SEM. The SEM in the first case may be incorporated into the FIB.
Metals, geological specimens, and integrated circuits all may also be chemically polished for viewing in the SEM.
Special high-resolution coating techniques are required for high-magnification imaging of inorganic thin films.
In a typical SEM, an electron beam is thermionically emitted from an electron gun fitted with a tungsten filament cathode. Tungsten is normally used in thermionic electron guns because it has the highest melting point and lowest vapor pressure of all metals, thereby allowing it to be electrically heated for electron emission, and because of its low cost. Other types of electron emitters include lanthanum hexaboride () cathodes, which can be used in a standard tungsten filament SEM if the vacuum system is upgraded or field emission guns (FEG), which may be of the cold-cathode type using tungsten single crystal emitters or the thermally assisted Schottky type, that use emitters of zirconium oxide.
The electron beam, which typically has an energy ranging from 0.2 keV to 40 keV, is focused by one or two condenser lenses to a spot about 0.4 nm to 5 nm in diameter. The beam passes through pairs of scanning coils or pairs of deflector plates in the electron column, typically in the final lens, which deflect the beam in the "x" and "y" axes so that it scans in a raster fashion over a rectangular area of the sample surface.
When the primary electron beam interacts with the sample, the electrons lose energy by repeated random scattering and absorption within a teardrop-shaped volume of the specimen known as the interaction volume, which extends from less than 100 nm to approximately 5 µm into the surface. The size of the interaction volume depends on the electron's landing energy, the atomic number of the specimen and the specimen's density. The energy exchange between the electron beam and the sample results in the reflection of high-energy electrons by elastic scattering, emission of secondary electrons by inelastic scattering and the emission of electromagnetic radiation, each of which can be detected by specialized detectors. The beam current absorbed by the specimen can also be detected and used to create images of the distribution of specimen current. Electronic amplifiers of various types are used to amplify the signals, which are displayed as variations in brightness on a computer monitor (or, for vintage models, on a cathode ray tube). Each pixel of computer video memory is synchronized with the position of the beam on the specimen in the microscope, and the resulting image is, therefore, a distribution map of the intensity of the signal being emitted from the scanned area of the specimen. Older microscopes captured images on film, but most modern instrument collect digital images.
Magnification in an SEM can be controlled over a range of about 6 orders of magnitude from about 10 to 3,000,000 times. Unlike optical and transmission electron microscopes, image magnification in an SEM is not a function of the power of the objective lens. SEMs may have condenser and objective lenses, but their function is to focus the beam to a spot, and not to image the specimen. Provided the electron gun can generate a beam with sufficiently small diameter, a SEM could in principle work entirely without condenser or objective lenses, although it might not be very versatile or achieve very high resolution. In an SEM, as in scanning probe microscopy, magnification results from the ratio of the dimensions of the raster on the specimen and the raster on the display device. Assuming that the display screen has a fixed size, higher magnification results from reducing the size of the raster on the specimen, and vice versa. Magnification is therefore controlled by the current supplied to the x, y scanning coils, or the voltage supplied to the x, y deflector plates, and not by objective lens power.
The most common imaging mode collects low-energy (<50 eV) secondary electrons that are ejected from conduction or valence bands of the specimen atoms by inelastic scattering interactions with beam electrons. Due to their low energy, these electrons originate from within a few nanometers below the sample surface. The electrons are detected by an Everhart-Thornley detector, which is a type of collector-scintillator-photomultiplier system. The secondary electrons are first collected by attracting them towards an electrically biased grid at about +400 V, and then further accelerated towards a phosphor or scintillator positively biased to about +2,000 V. The accelerated secondary electrons are now sufficiently energetic to cause the scintillator to emit flashes of light (cathodoluminescence), which are conducted to a photomultiplier outside the SEM column via a light pipe and a window in the wall of the specimen chamber. The amplified electrical signal output by the photomultiplier is displayed as a two-dimensional intensity distribution that can be viewed and photographed on an analogue video display, or subjected to analog-to-digital conversion and displayed and saved as a digital image. This process relies on a raster-scanned primary beam. The brightness of the signal depends on the number of secondary electrons reaching the detector. If the beam enters the sample perpendicular to the surface, then the activated region is uniform about the axis of the beam and a certain number of electrons "escape" from within the sample. As the angle of incidence increases, the interaction volume increases and the "escape" distance of one side of the beam decreases, resulting in more secondary electrons being emitted from the sample. Thus steep surfaces and edges tend to be brighter than flat surfaces, which results in images with a well-defined, three-dimensional appearance. Using the signal of secondary electrons image resolution less than 0.5 nm is possible.
Backscattered electrons (BSE) consist of high-energy electrons originating in the electron beam, that are reflected or back-scattered out of the specimen interaction volume by elastic scattering interactions with specimen atoms. Since heavy elements (high atomic number) backscatter electrons more strongly than light elements (low atomic number), and thus appear brighter in the image, BSEs are used to detect contrast between areas with different chemical compositions. The Everhart-Thornley detector, which is normally positioned to one side of the specimen, is inefficient for the detection of backscattered electrons because few such electrons are emitted in the solid angle subtended by the detector, and because the positively biased detection grid has little ability to attract the higher energy BSE. Dedicated backscattered electron detectors are positioned above the sample in a "doughnut" type arrangement, concentric with the electron beam, maximizing the solid angle of collection. BSE detectors are usually either of scintillator or of semiconductor types. When all parts of the detector are used to collect electrons symmetrically about the beam, atomic number contrast is produced. However, strong topographic contrast is produced by collecting back-scattered electrons from one side above the specimen using an asymmetrical, directional BSE detector; the resulting contrast appears as illumination of the topography from that side. Semiconductor detectors can be made in radial segments that can be switched in or out to control the type of contrast produced and its directionality.
Backscattered electrons can also be used to form an electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) image that can be used to determine the crystallographic structure of the specimen.
The nature of the SEM's probe, energetic electrons, makes it uniquely suited to examining the optical and electronic properties of semiconductor materials. The high-energy electrons from the SEM beam will inject charge carriers into the semiconductor. Thus, beam electrons lose energy by promoting electrons from the valence band into the conduction band, leaving behind holes.
In a direct bandgap material, recombination of these electron-hole pairs will result in cathodoluminescence; if the sample contains an internal electric field, such as is present at a p-n junction, the SEM beam injection of carriers will cause electron beam induced current (EBIC) to flow. Cathodoluminescence and EBIC are referred to as "beam-injection" techniques, and are very powerful probes of the optoelectronic behavior of semiconductors, in particular for studying nanoscale features and defects.
Cathodoluminescence, the emission of light when atoms excited by high-energy electrons return to their ground state, is analogous to UV-induced fluorescence, and some materials such as zinc sulfide and some fluorescent dyes, exhibit both phenomena. Over the last decades, cathodoluminescence was most commonly experienced as the light emission from the inner surface of the cathode ray tube in television sets and computer CRT monitors. In the SEM, CL detectors either collect all light emitted by the specimen or can analyse the wavelengths emitted by the specimen and display an emission spectrum or an image of the distribution of cathodoluminescence emitted by the specimen in real color.
Characteristic X-rays that are produced by the interaction of electrons with the sample may also be detected in an SEM equipped for energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy or wavelength dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. Analysis of the x-ray signals may be used to map the distribution and estimate the abundance of elements in the sample.
SEM is not a camera and the detector is not continuously image-forming like a CCD array or film. Unlike in an optical system, the resolution is not limited by the diffraction limit, fineness of lenses or mirrors or detector array resolution. The focusing optics can be large and coarse, and the SE detector is fist-sized and simply detects current. Instead, the spatial resolution of the SEM depends on the size of the electron spot, which in turn depends on both the wavelength of the electrons and the electron-optical system that produces the scanning beam. The resolution is also limited by the size of the interaction volume, the volume of specimen material that interacts with the electron beam. The spot size and the interaction volume are both large compared to the distances between atoms, so the resolution of the SEM is not high enough to image individual atoms, as is possible with a transmission electron microscope (TEM). The SEM has compensating advantages, though, including the ability to image a comparatively large area of the specimen; the ability to image bulk materials (not just thin films or foils); and the variety of analytical modes available for measuring the composition and properties of the specimen. Depending on the instrument, the resolution can fall somewhere between less than 1 nm and 20 nm. As of 2009, The world's highest resolution conventional (≤30 kV) SEM can reach a point resolution of 0.4 nm using a secondary electron detector.
Conventional SEM requires samples to be imaged under vacuum, because a gas atmosphere rapidly spreads and attenuates electron beams. As a consequence, samples that produce a significant amount of vapour, e.g. wet biological samples or oil-bearing rock, must be either dried or cryogenically frozen. Processes involving phase transitions, such as the drying of adhesives or melting of alloys, liquid transport, chemical reactions, and solid-air-gas systems, in general cannot be observed with conventional high-vacuum SEM. In environmental SEM (ESEM), the chamber is evacuated of air, but water vapor is retained near its saturation pressure, and the residual pressure remains relatively high. This allows the analysis of samples containing water or other volatile substances. With ESEM, observations of living insects have been possible.
The first commercial development of the ESEM in the late 1980s allowed samples to be observed in low-pressure gaseous environments (e.g. 1–50 Torr or 0.1–6.7 kPa) and high relative humidity (up to 100%). This was made possible by the development of a secondary-electron detector capable of operating in the presence of water vapour and by the use of pressure-limiting apertures with differential pumping in the path of the electron beam to separate the vacuum region (around the gun and lenses) from the sample chamber. The first commercial ESEMs were produced by the ElectroScan Corporation in USA in 1988. ElectroScan was taken over by Philips (who later sold their electron-optics division to FEI Company) in 1996.
ESEM is especially useful for non-metallic and biological materials because coating with carbon or gold is unnecessary. Uncoated plastics and elastomers can be routinely examined, as can uncoated biological samples. This is useful because coating can be difficult to reverse, may conceal small features on the surface of the sample and may reduce the value of the results obtained. X-ray analysis is difficult with a coating of a heavy metal, so carbon coatings are routinely used in conventional SEMs, but ESEM makes it possible to perform X-ray microanalysis on uncoated non-conductive specimens; however some specific for ESEM artifacts are introduced in X-ray analysis. ESEM may be the preferred for electron microscopy of unique samples from criminal or civil actions, where forensic analysis may need to be repeated by several different experts. It is possible to study specimens in liquid with ESEM or with other liquid-phase electron microscopy methods.
The SEM can also be used in transmission mode by simply incorporating an appropriate detector below a thin specimen section. Detectors are available for bright field, dark field, as well as segmented detectors for mid-field to high angle annular dark-field. Despite the difference in instrumentation, this technique is still commonly referred to as scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM).
Electron microscopes do not naturally produce color images, as an SEM produces a single value per pixel; this value corresponds to the number of electrons received by the detector during a small period of time of the scanning when the beam is targeted to the (x, y) pixel position.
This single number is usually represented, for each pixel, by a grey level, forming a "black-and-white" image. However, several ways have been used to get color electron microscopy images.
The easiest way to get color is to associate to this single number an arbitrary color, using a color look-up table (i.e. each grey level is replaced by a chosen color). This method is known as false color. On a BSE image, false color may be performed to better distinguish the various phases of the sample.
As an alternative to simply replacing each grey level by a color, a sample observed by an oblique beam allows researchers to create an approximative topography image (see further section "Photometric 3D rendering from a single SEM image"). Such topography can then be processed by 3D-rendering algorithms for a more natural rendering of the surface texture
Very often, published SEM images are artificially colored. This may be done for aesthetic effect, to clarify structure or to add a realistic appearance to the sample and generally does not add information about the specimen.
Coloring may be performed manually with photo-editing software, or semi-automatically with dedicated software using feature-detection or object-oriented segmentation.
In some configurations more information is gathered per pixel, often by the use of multiple detectors.
As a common example, secondary electron and backscattered electron detectors are superimposed and a color is assigned to each of the images captured by each detector, with an end result of a combined color image where colors are related to the density of the components. This method is known as density-dependent color SEM (DDC-SEM). Micrographs produced by DDC-SEM retain topographical information, which is better captured by the secondary electrons detector and combine it to the information about density, obtained by the backscattered electron detector.
Measurement of the energy of photons emitted from the specimen is a common method to get analytical capabilities. Examples are the energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) detectors used in elemental analysis and cathodoluminescence microscope (CL) systems that analyse the intensity and spectrum of electron-induced luminescence in (for example) geological specimens. In SEM systems using these detectors it is common to color code these extra signals and superimpose them in a single color image, so that differences in the distribution of the various components of the specimen can be seen clearly and compared. Optionally, the standard secondary electron image can be merged with the one or more compositional channels, so that the specimen's structure and composition can be compared. Such images can be made while maintaining the full integrity of the original signal data, which is not modified in any way.
SEMs do not naturally provide 3D images contrary to SPMs. However 3D data can be obtained using an SEM with different methods as follows.
This method typically uses a four-quadrant BSE detector (alternatively for one manufacturer, a 3-segment detector). The microscope produces four images of the same specimen at the same time, so no tilt of the sample is required. The method gives metrological 3D dimensions as far as the slope of the specimen remains reasonable. Most SEM manufacturers now (2018) offer such a built-in or optional four-quadrant BSE detector, together with proprietary software to calculate a 3D image in real time.
Other approaches use more sophisticated (and sometimes GPU-intensive) methods like the optimal estimation algorithm and offer much better results at the cost of high demands on computing power.
In all instances, this approach works by integration of the slope, so vertical slopes and overhangs are ignored; for instance, if an entire sphere lies on a flat, little more than the upper hemisphere is seen emerging above the flat, resulting in wrong altitude of the sphere apex. The prominence of this effect depends on the angle of the BSE detectors with respect to the sample, but these detectors are usually situated around (and close to) the electron beam, so this effect is very common.
This method requires an SEM image obtained in oblique low angle lighting. The grey-level is then interpreted as the slope, and the slope integrated to restore the specimen topography. This method is interesting for visual enhancement and the detection of the shape and position of objects ; however the vertical heights cannot usually be calibrated, contrary to other methods such as photogrammetry.
One possible application is measuring the roughness of ice crystals. This method can combine variable-pressure environmental SEM and the 3D capabilities of the SEM to measure roughness on individual ice crystal facets, convert it into a computer model and run further statistical analysis on the model. Other measurements include fractal dimension, examining fracture surface of metals, characterization of materials, corrosion measurement, and dimensional measurements at the nano scale (step height, volume, angle, flatness, bearing ratio, coplanarity, etc.).
The following are examples of images taken using an SEM. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28034 |
Hijackers in the September 11 attacks
The hijackers in the September 11 attacks were 19 men affiliated with al-Qaeda. Fifteen of the 19 were citizens of Saudi Arabia, two were from the United Arab Emirates, one from Lebanon, and one from Egypt. The hijackers were organized into four teams, each led by a pilot-trained hijacker with three or four "muscle hijackers", who were trained to help subdue the pilots, passengers, and crew.
The first hijackers to arrive in the United States were Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who settled in San Diego County, California, in January 2000. They were followed by three hijacker-pilots, Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah in mid-2000 to undertake flight training in South Florida. The fourth hijacker-pilot, Hani Hanjour, arrived in San Diego in December 2000. The rest of the "muscle hijackers" arrived in early- and mid-2001.
Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi were both experienced and respected jihadists in the eyes of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
As for the pilots who would go on to participate in the attacks, three of them were original members of the Hamburg cell (Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah). Following their training at al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, they were chosen by Bin Laden and al-Qaeda's military wing due to their extensive knowledge of western culture and language skills, increasing the mission's operational security and its chances for success. The fourth intended pilot, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a member of the Hamburg cell, was also chosen to participate in the attacks yet was unable to obtain a visa for entry into the United States. He was later replaced by Hani Hanjour, a Saudi national.
Mihdhar and Hazmi were also potential pilot hijackers, but did not do well in their initial pilot lessons in San Diego. Both were kept on as "muscle" hijackers, who would help overpower the passengers and crew and allow the pilot hijackers to take control of the flights. In addition to Mihdhar and Hazmi, thirteen other muscle hijackers were selected in late 2000 or early 2001. All were from Saudi Arabia, with the exception of Fayez Banihammad, who was from the United Arab Emirates.
Hijackers: Mohamed Atta (Egyptian), Abdulaziz al-Omari (Saudi Arabian), Wail al-Shehri (Saudi Arabian), Waleed al-Shehri (Saudi Arabian), Satam al-Suqami (Saudi Arabian).
Two flight attendants called the American Airlines reservation desk during the hijacking. Betty Ong reported that "the five hijackers had come from first-class seats: 2A, 2B, 9A, 9C and 9B." Flight attendant Amy Sweeney called a flight services manager at Logan Airport in Boston and described them as Middle Eastern. She gave the staff the seat numbers and they pulled up the ticket and credit card information of the hijackers, identifying Mohamed Atta.
Mohamed Atta's voice was heard over the air traffic control system, broadcasting messages thought to be intended for the passengers.
Hijackers: Marwan al-Shehhi (United Arab Emirates), Fayez Banihammad (United Arab Emirates), Mohand al-Shehri (Saudi Arabian), Hamza al-Ghamdi (Saudi Arabian), Ahmed al-Ghamdi (Saudi Arabian).
A United Airlines mechanic was called by a flight attendant who stated the crew had been murdered and the plane hijacked.
Hijackers: Hani Hanjour (Saudi Arabian), Khalid al-Mihdhar (Saudi Arabian), Majed Moqed (Saudi Arabian), Nawaf al-Hazmi (Saudi Arabian), Salem al-Hazmi (Saudi Arabian).
Two hijackers, Hani Hanjour and Majed Moqed were identified by clerks as having bought single, first-class tickets for Flight 77 from Advance Travel Service in Totowa, New Jersey with $1,842.25 in cash. Renee May, a flight attendant on Flight 77, used a cell phone to call her mother in Las Vegas. She said her flight was being hijacked by six individuals who had moved them to the rear of the plane. Unlike the other flights, there was no report of stabbings or bomb threats. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, it is possible that pilots were not stabbed to death and were sent to the rear of the plane. One of the hijackers, most likely Hanjour, announced on the intercom that the flight had been hijacked.
Passenger Barbara Olson called her husband, Theodore Olson, the Solicitor General of the United States, stating the flight had been hijacked and the hijackers had knives and box cutters. Two of the passengers had been on the FBI's terrorist-alert list: Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi flew to Los Angeles in January 2000 and later took flying lessons in San Diego, during which time they were allegedly assisted by Omar al-Bayoumi and Saudi diplomats Fahad al-Thumairy and Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah.
Hijackers: Ziad Jarrah (Lebanese), Ahmed al-Haznawi (Saudi Arabian), Ahmed al-Nami (Saudi Arabian), Saeed al-Ghamdi (Saudi Arabian).
Passenger Jeremy Glick stated that the hijackers were Arabic-looking, wearing red headbands, and carrying knives.
Spoken messages (from Ziad Jarrah) intended for passengers were broadcast over the air traffic control system, presumably by mistake:
Jarrah is also heard on the cockpit voice recorder. In addition, DNA samples submitted by his girlfriend were matched to remains recovered in Shanksville.
Before the attacks, FBI agent Robert Wright, Jr. had written vigorous criticisms of FBI's alleged incompetence in investigating terrorists residing within the United States. Wright was part of the Bureau's Chicago counter-terrorism task force and involved in project Vulgar Betrayal, which was linked to Yasin al-Qadi.
According to James Bamford, the NSA had picked up communications of al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi back in 1999, but had been hampered by internal bureaucratic conflicts between itself and the CIA and did not do a full analysis of the information it passed on to the agency. For example, it only passed on the first names, Nawaf and Khalid.
Bamford also claims that the CIA's Alec Station (a unit assigned to bin Laden) knew that al-Mihdhar was planning to come to New York as far back as January 2000. Doug Miller, one of three FBI agents working inside the CIA station, tried to send a message (a CIR) to the FBI to alert them about this, so they could put al-Mihdhar on a watch list. His CIA boss, Tom Wilshire, deputy station chief, allegedly denied permission to Miller. Miller asked his associate Mark Rossini for advice; Rossini pressed Wilshire's deputy but was rebuffed also.
Bamford also claims that al-Mihdhar and Hazmi wound up living with Abdussattar Shaikh for a time to save money. Shaikh was, coincidentally, an FBI informant, but since they never acted suspiciously around him, he never reported them. The CIA Bangkok station told Alec Station that Hazmi had gone to Los Angeles. None of this information made it back to the FBI headquarters.
Within minutes of the attacks, the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened the largest FBI investigation in United States history, operation PENTTBOM. The suspects were identified within 72 hours because few made any attempt to disguise their names on flight and credit card records. They were also among the few non-U.S. citizens and nearly the only passengers with Arabic names on their flights, enabling the FBI to identify them using such details as dates of birth, known or possible residences, visa status, and specific identification of the suspected pilots. On September 27, 2001, the FBI released photos of the 19 hijackers, along with information about many of their possible nationalities and aliases. The suspected hijackers were from Saudi Arabia (fifteen hijackers), United Arab Emirates (two hijackers), Lebanon (one hijacker) and Egypt (one hijacker).
The passport of Satam al-Suqami was reportedly recovered "a few blocks from where the World Trade Center's twin towers once stood"; a passerby picked it up and gave it to a NYPD detective shortly before the towers collapsed. The passports of two other hijackers, Ziad Jarrah and Saeed al-Ghamdi, were recovered from the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, and a fourth passport, that of Abdulaziz al-Omari was recovered from luggage that did not make it onto American Airlines Flight 11.
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, 26 al-Qaeda terrorist conspirators sought to enter the United States to carry out a suicide mission. In the end, the FBI reported that there were 19 hijackers in all: five on three of the flights, and four on the fourth. On September 14, three days after the attacks, the FBI announced the names of 19 persons. After a controversy about an earlier remark, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stated in May 2009 that the 9/11 Commission found that none of the hijackers entered the United States through Canada.
Nawaf al-Hazmi and Hani Hanjour, attended the Dar al-Hijrah Falls Church, Virginia, Islamic Center where the Imam Anwar al-Awlaki preached, in early April 2001. Through interviews with the FBI, it was discovered that Awlaki had previously met Nawaf al-Hazmi several times while the two lived in San Diego. At the time, Hazmi was living with Khalid al-Mihdhar, another 9/11 hijacker. The hijackers of the same plane often had very strong ties as many of them attended school together or lived together prior to the attacks.
Soon after the attacks and before the FBI had released the pictures of all the hijackers, several reports claimed some of the men named as hijackers on 9/11 were alive and had their identities stolen. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28045 |
Potato
The potato is a root vegetable native to the Americas, a starchy tuber of the plant Solanum tuberosum, and the plant itself, a perennial in the family Solanaceae.
Wild potato species, originating in modern-day Peru, can be found throughout the Americas, from the United States to southern Chile. The potato was originally believed to have been domesticated by indigenous peoples of the Americas independently in multiple locations, but later genetic testing of the wide variety of cultivars and wild species traced a single origin for potatoes. In the area of present-day southern Peru and extreme northwestern Bolivia, from a species in the "Solanum brevicaule" complex, potatoes were domesticated approximately 7,000–10,000 years ago. In the Andes region of South America, where the species is indigenous, some close relatives of the potato are cultivated.
Potatoes were introduced to Europe from the Americas in the second half of the 16th century by the Spanish. Today they are a staple food in many parts of the world and an integral part of much of the world's food supply. As of 2014, potatoes were the world's fourth-largest food crop after maize (corn), wheat, and rice.
Following millennia of selective breeding, there are now over 5,000 different types of potatoes. Over 99% of presently cultivated potatoes worldwide descended from varieties that originated in the lowlands of south-central Chile.
The importance of the potato as a food source and culinary ingredient varies by region and is still changing. It remains an essential crop in Europe, especially Northern and Eastern Europe, where per capita production is still the highest in the world, while the most rapid expansion in production over the past few decades has occurred in southern and eastern Asia, with China and India leading the world in overall production as of 2018.
Like the tomato, the potato is a nightshade in the genus "Solanum", and the vegetative and fruiting parts of the potato contain the toxin solanine which is dangerous for human consumption. Normal potato tubers that have been grown and stored properly produce glycoalkaloids in amounts small enough to be negligible to human health, but if green sections of the plant (namely sprouts and skins) are exposed to light, the tuber can accumulate a high enough concentration of glycoalkaloids to affect human health.
The English word "potato" comes from Spanish (the name used in Spain). The Royal Spanish Academy says the Spanish word is a hybrid of the Taíno ('sweet potato') and the Quechua ('potato'). The name originally referred to the sweet potato although the two plants are not closely related. The 16th-century English herbalist John Gerard referred to sweet potatoes as "common potatoes", and used the terms "bastard potatoes" and "Virginia potatoes" for the species we now call potato. In many of the chronicles detailing agriculture and plants, no distinction is made between the two. Potatoes are occasionally referred to as "Irish potatoes" or "white potatoes" in the United States, to distinguish them from sweet potatoes.
The name "spud" for a small potato comes from the digging of soil (or a hole) prior to the planting of potatoes. The word has an unknown origin and was originally () used as a term for a short knife or dagger, probably related to the Latin a word root meaning "sword"; compare Spanish , English "spade", and "spadroon". It subsequently transferred over to a variety of digging tools. Around 1845, the name transferred to the tuber itself, the first record of this usage being in New Zealand English. The origin of the word "spud" has erroneously been attributed to an 18th-century activist group dedicated to keeping the potato out of Britain, calling itself The Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diet (S.P.U.D.). It was Mario Pei's 1949 "The Story of Language" that can be blamed for the word's false origin. Pei writes, "the potato, for its part, was in disrepute some centuries ago. Some Englishmen who did not fancy potatoes formed a Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diet. The initials of the main words in this title gave rise to spud." Like most other pre-20th century acronymic origins, this is false, and there is no evidence that a Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diet ever existed.
Potato plants are herbaceous perennials that grow about high, depending on variety, with the leaves dying back after flowering, fruiting and tuber formation. They bear white, pink, red, blue, or purple flowers with yellow stamens. In general, the tubers of varieties with white flowers have white skins, while those of varieties with colored flowers tend to have pinkish skins. Potatoes are mostly cross-pollinated by insects such as bumblebees, which carry pollen from other potato plants, though a substantial amount of self-fertilizing occurs as well. Tubers form in response to decreasing day length, although this tendency has been minimized in commercial varieties.
After flowering, potato plants produce small green fruits that resemble green cherry tomatoes, each containing about 300 seeds. Like all parts of the plant except the tubers, the fruit contain the toxic alkaloid solanine and are therefore unsuitable for consumption. All new potato varieties are grown from seeds, also called "true potato seed", "TPS" or "botanical seed" to distinguish it from seed tubers. New varieties grown from seed can be propagated vegetatively by planting tubers, pieces of tubers cut to include at least one or two eyes, or cuttings, a practice used in greenhouses for the production of healthy seed tubers. Plants propagated from tubers are clones of the parent, whereas those propagated from seed produce a range of different varieties.
There are about 5,000 potato varieties worldwide. Three thousand of them are found in the Andes alone, mainly in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, and Colombia. They belong to eight or nine species, depending on the taxonomic school. Apart from the 5,000 cultivated varieties, there are about 200 wild species and subspecies, many of which can be cross-bred with cultivated varieties. Cross-breeding has been done repeatedly to transfer resistances to certain pests and diseases from the gene pool of wild species to the gene pool of cultivated potato species. Genetically modified varieties have met public resistance in the United States and in the European Union.
The major species grown worldwide is "Solanum tuberosum" (a tetraploid with 48 chromosomes), and modern varieties of this species are the most widely cultivated. There are also four diploid species (with 24 chromosomes): "S. stenotomum", "S. phureja", "S. goniocalyx", and "S. ajanhuiri". There are two triploid species (with 36 chromosomes): "S. chaucha" and "S. juzepczukii". There is one pentaploid cultivated species (with 60 chromosomes): "S. curtilobum". There are two major subspecies of "Solanum tuberosum": "andigena", or Andean; and "tuberosum", or Chilean. The Andean potato is adapted to the short-day conditions prevalent in the mountainous equatorial and tropical regions where it originated; the Chilean potato, however, native to the Chiloé Archipelago, is adapted to the long-day conditions prevalent in the higher latitude region of southern Chile. The International Potato Center, based in Lima, Peru, holds an ISO-accredited collection of potato germplasm. The international Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium announced in 2009 that they had achieved a draft sequence of the potato genome. The potato genome contains 12 chromosomes and 860 million base pairs, making it a medium-sized plant genome. More than 99 percent of all current varieties of potatoes currently grown are direct descendants of a subspecies that once grew in the lowlands of south-central Chile. Nonetheless, genetic testing of the wide variety of cultivars and wild species affirms that all potato subspecies derive from a single origin in the area of present-day southern Peru and extreme Northwestern Bolivia (from a species in the "Solanum brevicaule" complex). The wild Crop Wild Relatives Prebreeding project encourages the use of wild relatives in breeding programs. Enriching and preserving the gene bank collection to make potatoes adaptive to diverse environmental conditions is seen as a pressing issue due to climate change.
Most modern potatoes grown in North America arrived through European settlement and not independently from the South American sources, although at least one wild potato species, "Solanum fendleri", naturally ranges from Peru into Texas, where it is used in breeding for resistance to a nematode species that attacks cultivated potatoes. A secondary center of genetic variability of the potato is Mexico, where important wild species that have been used extensively in modern breeding are found, such as the hexaploid "Solanum demissum", as a source of resistance to the devastating late blight disease. Another relative native to this region, "Solanum bulbocastanum", has been used to genetically engineer the potato to resist potato blight.
Potatoes yield abundantly with little effort, and adapt readily to diverse climates as long as the climate is cool and moist enough for the plants to gather sufficient water from the soil to form the starchy tubers. Potatoes do not keep very well in storage and are vulnerable to moulds that feed on the stored tubers and quickly turn them rotten, whereas crops such as grain can be stored for several years with a low risk of rot. The food energy yield of potatoesabout is higher than that of maize (), rice (), wheat (), or soybeans ().
There are close to 4,000 varieties of potato including common commercial varieties, each of which has specific agricultural or culinary attributes. Around 80 varieties are commercially available in the UK. In general, varieties are categorized into a few main groups based on common characteristics, such as russet potatoes (rough brown skin), red potatoes, white potatoes, yellow potatoes (also called Yukon potatoes) and purple potatoes.
For culinary purposes, varieties are often differentiated by their waxiness: floury or mealy "baking" potatoes have more starch (20–22%) than waxy "boiling" potatoes (16–18%). The distinction may also arise from variation in the comparative ratio of two different potato starch compounds: amylose and amylopectin. Amylose, a long-chain molecule, diffuses from the starch granule when cooked in water, and lends itself to dishes where the potato is mashed. Varieties that contain a slightly higher amylopectin content, which is a highly branched molecule, help the potato retain its shape after being boiled in water. Potatoes that are good for making potato chips or potato crisps are sometimes called "chipping potatoes", which means they meet the basic requirements of similar varietal characteristics, being firm, fairly clean, and fairly well-shaped.
The European Cultivated Potato Database (ECPD) is an online collaborative database of potato variety descriptions that is updated and maintained by the Scottish Agricultural Science Agency within the framework of the European Cooperative Programme for Crop Genetic Resources Networks (ECP/GR)—which is run by the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI).
Dozens of potato cultivars have been selectively bred specifically for their skin or, more commonly, flesh color, including gold, red, and blue varieties that contain varying amounts of phytochemicals, including carotenoids for gold/yellow or polyphenols for red or blue cultivars. Carotenoid compounds include provitamin A alpha-carotene and beta-carotene, which are converted to the essential nutrient, vitamin A, during digestion. Anthocyanins mainly responsible for red or blue pigmentation in potato cultivars do not have nutritional significance, but are used for visual variety and consumer appeal. Recently, as of 2010, potatoes have also been bioengineered specifically for these pigmentation traits.
Genetic research has produced several genetically modified varieties. 'New Leaf', owned by Monsanto Company, incorporates genes from "Bacillus thuringiensis", which confers resistance to the Colorado potato beetle; 'New Leaf Plus' and 'New Leaf Y', approved by US regulatory agencies during the 1990s, also include resistance to viruses. McDonald's, Burger King, Frito-Lay, and Procter & Gamble announced they would not use genetically modified potatoes, and Monsanto published its intent to discontinue the line in March 2001.
Waxy potato varieties produce two main kinds of potato starch, amylose and amylopectin, the latter of which is most industrially useful. BASF developed the Amflora potato, which was modified to express antisense RNA to inactivate the gene for granule bound starch synthase, an enzyme which catalyzes the formation of amylose. Amflora potatoes therefore produce starch consisting almost entirely of amylopectin, and are thus more useful for the starch industry. In 2010, the European Commission cleared the way for 'Amflora' to be grown in the European Union for industrial purposes only—not for food. Nevertheless, under EU rules, individual countries have the right to decide whether they will allow this potato to be grown on their territory. Commercial planting of 'Amflora' was expected in the Czech Republic and Germany in the spring of 2010, and Sweden and the Netherlands in subsequent years. Another GM potato variety developed by BASF is 'Fortuna' which was made resistant to late blight by adding two resistance genes, blb1 and blb2, which originate from the Mexican wild potato Solanum bulbocastanum. In October 2011 BASF requested cultivation and marketing approval as a feed and food from the EFSA. In 2012, GMO development in Europe was stopped by BASF.
In November 2014, the USDA approved a genetically modified potato developed by J.R. Simplot Company, which contains genetic modifications that prevent bruising and produce less acrylamide when fried than conventional potatoes; the modifications do not cause new proteins to be made, but rather prevent proteins from being made via RNA interference.
The potato was first domesticated in the region of modern-day southern Peru and northwestern Bolivia between 8000 and 5000 BC. It has since spread around the world and become a staple crop in many countries.
The earliest archaeologically verified potato tuber remains have been found at the coastal site of Ancon (central Peru), dating to 2500 BC. The most widely cultivated variety, "Solanum tuberosum tuberosum", is indigenous to the Chiloé Archipelago, and has been cultivated by the local indigenous people since before the Spanish conquest.
According to conservative estimates, the introduction of the potato was responsible for a quarter of the growth in Old World population and urbanization between 1700 and 1900. In the Altiplano, potatoes provided the principal energy source for the Inca civilization, its predecessors, and its Spanish successor. Following the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, the Spanish introduced the potato to Europe in the second half of the 16th century, part of the Columbian exchange. The staple was subsequently conveyed by European mariners to territories and ports throughout the world. The potato was slow to be adopted by European farmers, but soon enough it became an important food staple and field crop that played a major role in the European 19th century population boom. However, lack of genetic diversity, due to the very limited number of varieties initially introduced, left the crop vulnerable to disease. In 1845, a plant disease known as late blight, caused by the fungus-like oomycete "Phytophthora infestans", spread rapidly through the poorer communities of western Ireland as well as parts of the Scottish Highlands, resulting in the crop failures that led to the Great Irish Famine. Thousands of varieties still persist in the Andes however, where over 100 cultivars might be found in a single valley, and a dozen or more might be maintained by a single agricultural household.
In 2018, world production of potatoes was 368 million tonnes, led by China with 27% of the total (table). Other major producers were India, Russia, Ukraine and the United States. It remains an essential crop in Europe (especially northern and eastern Europe), where per capita production is still the highest in the world, but the most rapid expansion over the past few decades has occurred in southern and eastern Asia.
A raw potato is 79% water, 17% carbohydrates (88% is starch), 2% protein, and contains negligible fat (see table). In a portion, raw potato provides of food energy and is a rich source of vitamin B6 and vitamin C (23% and 24% of the Daily Value, respectively), with no other vitamins or minerals in significant amount (see table). The potato is rarely eaten raw because raw potato starch is poorly digested by humans. When a potato is baked, its contents of vitamin B6 and vitamin C decline notably, while there is little significant change in the amount of other nutrients.
Potatoes are often broadly classified as having a high glycemic index (GI) and so are often excluded from the diets of individuals trying to follow a low-GI diet. The GI of potatoes can vary considerably depending on the cultivar or cultivar category (such as "red", russet, "white", or King Edward), growing conditions and storage, preparation methods (by cooking method, whether it is eaten hot or cold, whether it is mashed or cubed or consumed whole), and accompanying foods consumed (especially the addition of various high-fat or high-protein toppings). In particular, consuming reheated or cooled potatoes that were previously cooked may yield a lower GI effect.
In the UK, potatoes are not considered by the National Health Service (NHS) as counting or contributing towards the recommended daily five portions of fruit and vegetables, the 5-A-Day program.
This table shows the nutrient content of potatoes next to other major staple foods, each one measured in its respective raw state, even though staple foods are not commonly eaten raw and are usually sprouted or cooked before eating. In sprouted and cooked form, the relative nutritional and anti-nutritional contents of each of these grains (or other foods) may be different from the values in this table. Each nutrient (every row) has the highest number highlighted to show the staple food with the greatest amount in a 100-gram raw portion.
Potatoes contain toxic compounds known as glycoalkaloids, of which the most prevalent are solanine and chaconine. Solanine is found in other plants in the same family, Solanaceae, which includes such plants as deadly nightshade ("Atropa belladonna"), henbane ("Hyoscyamus niger") and tobacco ("Nicotiana spp."), as well as the food plants eggplant and tomato. These compounds, which protect the potato plant from its predators, are generally concentrated in its leaves, flowers, sprouts, and fruits (in contrast to the tubers). In a summary of several studies, the glycoalkaloid content was highest in the flowers and sprouts and lowest in the tuber flesh. (The glycoalkaloid content was, in order from highest to lowest: flowers, sprouts, leaves, skin, roots, berries, peel [skin plus outer cortex of tuber flesh], stems, and tuber flesh).
Exposure to light, physical damage, and age increase glycoalkaloid content within the tuber. Cooking at high temperatures—over —partly destroys these compounds. The concentration of glycoalkaloids in wild potatoes is sufficient to produce toxic effects in humans. Glycoalkaloid poisoning may cause headaches, diarrhea, cramps, and, in severe cases, coma and death. However, poisoning from cultivated potato varieties is very rare. Light exposure causes greening from chlorophyll synthesis, giving a visual clue as to which areas of the tuber may have become more toxic. However, this does not provide a definitive guide, as greening and glycoalkaloid accumulation can occur independently of each other.
Different potato varieties contain different levels of glycoalkaloids. The Lenape variety was released in 1967 but was withdrawn in 1970 as it contained high levels of glycoalkaloids. Since then, breeders developing new varieties test for this, and sometimes have to discard an otherwise promising cultivar. Breeders try to keep glycoalkaloid levels below 200 mg/kg (200 ppmw). However, when these commercial varieties turn green, they can still approach solanine concentrations of 1000 mg/kg (1000 ppmw). In normal potatoes, analysis has shown solanine levels may be as little as 3.5% of the breeders' maximum, with 7–187 mg/kg being found. While a normal potato tuber has 12–20 mg/kg of glycoalkaloid content, a green potato tuber contains 250–280 mg/kg and its skin has 1500–2200 mg/kg.
Potatoes are generally grown from "seed potatoes," tubers specifically grown to be free from disease and to provide consistent and healthy plants. To be disease free, the areas where seed potatoes are grown are selected with care. In the US, this restricts production of seed potatoes to only 15 states out of all 50 states where potatoes are grown. These locations are selected for their cold, hard winters that kill pests and summers with long sunshine hours for optimum growth. In the UK, most seed potatoes originate in Scotland, in areas where westerly winds reduce aphid attack and the spread of potato virus pathogens.
Potato growth can be divided into five phases. During the first phase, sprouts emerge from the seed potatoes and root growth begins. During the second, photosynthesis begins as the plant develops leaves and branches above-ground and stolons develop from lower leaf axils on the below-ground stem. In the third phase the tips of the stolons swell forming new tubers and the shoots continue to grow and flowers typically develop soon after. Tuber bulking occurs during the fourth phase, when the plant begins investing the majority of its resources in its newly formed tubers. At this phase, several factors are critical to a good yield: optimal soil moisture and temperature, soil nutrient availability and balance, and resistance to pest attacks. The fifth phase is the maturation of the tubers: the plant canopy dies back, the tuber skins harden, and the sugars in the tubers convert to starches.
New tubers may start growing at the surface of the soil. Since exposure to light leads to an undesirable greening of the skins and the development of solanine as a protection from the sun's rays, growers cover surface tubers. Commercial growers cover them by piling additional soil around the base of the plant as it grows (called "hilling" up, or in British English "earthing up"). An alternative method, used by home gardeners and smaller-scale growers, involves covering the growing area with organic mulches such as straw or plastic sheets.
Correct potato husbandry can be an arduous task in some circumstances. Good ground preparation, harrowing, plowing, and rolling are always needed, along with a little grace from the weather and a good source of water. Three successive plowings, with associated harrowing and rolling, are desirable before planting. Eliminating all root-weeds is desirable in potato cultivation. In general, the potatoes themselves are grown from the eyes of another potato and not from seed. Home gardeners often plant a piece of potato with two or three eyes in a hill of mounded soil. Commercial growers plant potatoes as a row crop using seed tubers, young plants or microtubers and may mound the entire row. Seed potato crops are rogued in some countries to eliminate diseased plants or those of a different variety from the seed crop.
Potatoes are sensitive to heavy frosts, which damage them in the ground. Even cold weather makes potatoes more susceptible to bruising and possibly later rotting, which can quickly ruin a large stored crop.
The historically significant "Phytophthora infestans" (late blight) remains an ongoing problem in Europe and the United States. Other potato diseases include "Rhizoctonia", "Sclerotinia", black leg, powdery mildew, powdery scab and leafroll virus.Insects that commonly transmit potato diseases or damage the plants include the Colorado potato beetle, the potato tuber moth, the green peach aphid ("Myzus persicae"), the potato aphid, beet leafhoppers, thrips, and mites. The potato cyst nematode is a microscopic worm that thrives on the roots, thus causing the potato plants to wilt. Since its eggs can survive in the soil for several years, crop rotation is recommended.
During the crop year 2008, many of the certified organic potatoes produced in the United Kingdom and certified by the Soil Association as organic were sprayed with a copper pesticide to control potato blight ("Phytophthora infestans"). According to the Soil Association, the total copper that can be applied to organic land is 6 kg/ha/year.
According to an Environmental Working Group analysis of USDA and FDA pesticide residue tests performed from 2000 through 2008, 84% of the 2,216 tested potato samples contained detectable traces of at least one pesticide. A total of 36 unique pesticides were detected on potatoes over the 2,216 samples, though no individual sample contained more than 6 unique pesticide traces, and the average was 1.29 detectable unique pesticide traces per sample. The average quantity of all pesticide traces found in the 2,216 samples was 1.602 ppm. While this was a very low value of pesticide residue, it was the highest amongst the 50 vegetables analyzed.
At harvest time, gardeners usually dig up potatoes with a long-handled, three-prong "grape" (or graip), i.e., a spading fork, or a potato hook, which is similar to the graip but with tines at a 90° angle to the handle. In larger plots, the plow is the fastest implement for unearthing potatoes. Commercial harvesting is typically done with large potato harvesters, which scoop up the plant and surrounding earth. This is transported up an apron chain consisting of steel links several feet wide, which separates some of the dirt. The chain deposits into an area where further separation occurs. Different designs use different systems at this point. The most complex designs use vine choppers and shakers, along with a blower system to separate the potatoes from the plant. The result is then usually run past workers who continue to sort out plant material, stones, and rotten potatoes before the potatoes are continuously delivered to a wagon or truck. Further inspection and separation occurs when the potatoes are unloaded from the field vehicles and put into storage.
Immature potatoes may be sold as "creamer potatoes" and are particularly valued for taste. These are often harvested by the home gardener or farmer by "grabbling", i.e. pulling out the young tubers by hand while leaving the plant in place. A creamer potato is a variety of potato harvested before it matures to keep it small and tender. It is generally either a Yukon Gold potato or a red potato, called gold creamers or red creamers respectively, and measures approximately in diameter. The skin of creamer potatoes is waxy and high in moisture content, and the flesh contains a lower level of starch than other potatoes. Like potatoes in general, they can be prepared by boiling, baking, frying, and roasting. Slightly older than creamer potatoes are "new potatoes", which are also prized for their taste and texture and often come from the same varieties.
Potatoes are usually cured after harvest to improve skin-set. Skin-set is the process by which the skin of the potato becomes resistant to skinning damage. Potato tubers may be susceptible to skinning at harvest and suffer skinning damage during harvest and handling operations. Curing allows the skin to fully set and any wounds to heal. Wound-healing prevents infection and water-loss from the tubers during storage. Curing is normally done at relatively warm temperatures () with high humidity and good gas-exchange if at all possible.
Storage facilities need to be carefully designed to keep the potatoes alive and slow the natural process of decomposition, which involves the breakdown of starch. It is crucial that the storage area is dark, ventilated well and, for long-term storage, maintained at temperatures near . For short-term storage, temperatures of about are preferred.
On the other hand, temperatures below convert the starch in potatoes into sugar, which alters their taste and cooking qualities and leads to higher acrylamide levels in the cooked product, especially in deep-fried dishes. The discovery of acrylamides in starchy foods in 2002 has led to international health concerns. They are believed to be probable carcinogens and their occurrence in cooked foods is being studied for potentially influencing health problems.
Under optimum conditions in commercial warehouses, potatoes can be stored for up to 10–12 months. The commercial storage and retrieval of potatoes involves several phases: first "drying" surface moisture; "wound healing" at 85% to 95% relative humidity and temperatures below ; a staged "cooling phase"; a "holding" phase; and a "reconditioning" phase, during which the tubers are slowly warmed. Mechanical ventilation is used at various points during the process to prevent condensation and the accumulation of carbon dioxide.
When stored in homes unrefrigerated, the shelf life is usually a few weeks.
If potatoes develop green areas or start to sprout, trimming or peeling those green-colored parts is inadequate to remove copresent toxins, and such potatoes are no longer edible.
The world dedicated to potato cultivation in 2010; the world average yield was . The United States was the most productive country, with a nationwide average yield of . United Kingdom was a close second.
New Zealand farmers have demonstrated some of the best commercial yields in the world, ranging between 60 and 80 tonnes per hectare, some reporting yields of 88 tonnes potatoes per hectare.
There is a big gap among various countries between high and low yields, even with the same variety of potato. Average potato yields in developed economies ranges between 38–44 tonnes per hectare. China and India accounted for over a third of world's production in 2010, and had yields of 14.7 and 19.9 tonnes per hectare respectively. The yield gap between farms in developing economies and developed economies represents an opportunity loss of over 400 million tonnes of potato, or an amount greater than 2010 world potato production. Potato crop yields are determined by factors such as the crop breed, seed age and quality, crop management practices and the plant environment. Improvements in one or more of these yield determinants, and a closure of the yield gap, can be a major boost to food supply and farmer incomes in the developing world.
Potatoes are prepared in many ways: skin-on or peeled, whole or cut up, with seasonings or without. The only requirement involves cooking to swell the starch granules. Most potato dishes are served hot but some are first cooked, then served cold, notably potato salad and potato chips (crisps). Common dishes are: mashed potatoes, which are first boiled (usually peeled), and then mashed with milk or yogurt and butter; whole baked potatoes; boiled or steamed potatoes; French-fried potatoes or chips; cut into cubes and roasted; scalloped, diced, or sliced and fried (home fries); grated into small thin strips and fried (hash browns); grated and formed into dumplings, Rösti or potato pancakes. Unlike many foods, potatoes can also be easily cooked in a microwave oven and still retain nearly all of their nutritional value, provided they are covered in ventilated plastic wrap to prevent moisture from escaping; this method produces a meal very similar to a steamed potato, while retaining the appearance of a conventionally baked potato. Potato chunks also commonly appear as a stew ingredient. Potatoes are boiled between 10 and 25 minutes, depending on size and type, to become soft.
Potatoes are also used for purposes other than eating by humans, for example:
Peruvian cuisine naturally contains the potato as a primary ingredient in many dishes, as around 3,000 varieties of this tuber are grown there.
Some of the more notable dishes include boiled potato as a base for several dishes or with ají-based sauces like in Papa a la Huancaína or ocopa, diced potato for its use in soups like in cau cau, or in Carapulca with dried potato (papa seca). Smashed condimented potato is used in causa Limeña and papa rellena. French-fried potatoes are a typical ingredient in Peruvian stir-fries, including the classic dish lomo saltado.
Chuño is a freeze-dried potato product traditionally made by Quechua and Aymara communities of Peru and Bolivia, and is known in various countries of South America, including Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile. In Chile's Chiloé Archipelago, potatoes are the main ingredient of many dishes, including milcaos, chapaleles, curanto and chochoca. In Ecuador, the potato, as well as being a staple with most dishes, is featured in the hearty "locro de papas", a thick soup of potato, squash, and cheese.
In the UK, potatoes form part of the traditional staple, fish and chips. Roast potatoes are commonly served as part of a Sunday roast dinner and mashed potatoes form a major component of several other traditional dishes, such as shepherd's pie, bubble and squeak, and bangers and mash. New potatoes may be cooked with mint and are often served with butter.
The Tattie scone is a popular Scottish dish containing potatoes. Colcannon is a traditional Irish food made with mashed potato, shredded kale or cabbage, and onion; champ is a similar dish. Boxty pancakes are eaten throughout Ireland, although associated especially with the North, and in Irish diaspora communities; they are traditionally made with grated potatoes, soaked to loosen the starch and mixed with flour, buttermilk and baking powder. A variant eaten and sold in Lancashire, especially Liverpool, is made with cooked and mashed potatoes.
"Bryndzové halušky" is the Slovak national dish, made of a batter of flour and finely grated potatoes that is boiled to form dumplings. These are then mixed with regionally varying ingredients.
In Germany, Northern and Eastern Europe (especially in Scandinavian countries), Finland, Poland, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, newly harvested, early ripening varieties are considered a special delicacy. Boiled whole and served un-peeled with dill, these "new potatoes" are traditionally consumed with Baltic herring. Puddings made from grated potatoes (kugel, kugelis, and potato babka) are popular items of Ashkenazi, Lithuanian, and Belarusian cuisine. German fries and various version of Potato salad are part of German cuisine. Bauernfrühstück (literally "farmer's breakfast") is a warm German dish made from fried potatoes, eggs, ham and vegetables.
Cepelinai is Lithuanian national dish. They are a type of dumpling made from grated raw potatoes boiled in water and usually stuffed with minced meat, although sometimes dry cottage cheese (curd) or mushrooms are used instead.
In Western Europe, especially in Belgium, sliced potatoes are fried to create "frieten", the original French fried potatoes. "Stamppot", a traditional Dutch meal, is based on mashed potatoes mixed with vegetables.
In France, the most notable potato dish is the "Hachis Parmentier", named after Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, a French pharmacist, nutritionist, and agronomist who, in the late 18th century, was instrumental in the acceptance of the potato as an edible crop in the country. "Pâté aux pommes de terre" is a regional potato dish from the central Allier and Limousin regions. "Gratin dauphinois", consisting of baked thinly sliced potatoes with cream or milk, and "tartiflette", with Reblochon cheese, are also widespread.
In the north of Italy, in particular, in the Friuli region of the northeast, potatoes serve to make a type of pasta called gnocchi. Similarly, cooked and mashed potatoes or potato flour can be used in the Knödel or dumpling eaten with or added to meat dishes all over central and Eastern Europe, but especially in Bavaria and Luxembourg. Potatoes form one of the main ingredients in many soups such as the vichyssoise and Albanian potato and cabbage soup. In western Norway, komle is popular.
A traditional Canary Islands dish is Canarian wrinkly potatoes or "papas arrugadas". "Tortilla de patatas" (potato omelette) and "patatas bravas" (a dish of fried potatoes in a spicy tomato sauce) are near-universal constituent of Spanish tapas.
In the US, potatoes have become one of the most widely consumed crops and thus have a variety of preparation methods and condiments. French fries and often hash browns are commonly found in typical American fast-food burger "joints" and cafeterias. One popular favourite involves a baked potato with cheddar cheese (or sour cream and chives) on top, and in New England "smashed potatoes" (a chunkier variation on mashed potatoes, retaining the peel) have great popularity. Potato flakes are popular as an instant variety of mashed potatoes, which reconstitute into mashed potatoes by adding water, with butter or oil and salt to taste. A regional dish of Central New York, salt potatoes are bite-size new potatoes boiled in water saturated with salt then served with melted butter. At more formal dinners, a common practice includes taking small red potatoes, slicing them, and roasting them in an iron skillet. Among American Jews, the practice of eating latkes (fried potato pancakes) is common during the festival of Hanukkah.
A traditional Acadian dish from New Brunswick is known as "poutine râpée". The Acadian poutine is a ball of grated and mashed potato, salted, sometimes filled with pork in the centre, and boiled. The result is a moist ball about the size of a baseball. It is commonly eaten with salt and pepper or brown sugar. It is believed to have originated from the German "Klöße", prepared by early German settlers who lived among the Acadians. "Poutine", by contrast, is a hearty serving of French fries, fresh cheese curds and hot gravy. Tracing its origins to Quebec in the 1950s, it has become a widespread and popular dish throughout Canada.
Potato grading for Idaho potatoes is performed in which No. 1 potatoes are the highest quality and No. 2 are rated as lower in quality due to their appearance (e.g. blemishes or bruises, pointy ends). Potato density assessment can be performed by floating them in brines. High-density potatoes are desirable in the production of dehydrated mashed potatoes, potato crisps and french fries.
In South Asia, the potato is a very popular traditional staple. In India, the most popular potato dishes are "aloo ki sabzi", batata vada, and samosa, which is spicy mashed potato mixed with a small amount of vegetable stuffed in conical dough, and deep fried. Potatoes are also a major ingredient as fast food items, such as aloo chaat, where they are deep fried and served with chutney. In Northern India, alu dum and alu paratha are a favourite part of the diet; the first is a spicy curry of boiled potato, the second is a type of stuffed chapati.
A dish called masala dosa from South India is very notable all over India. It is a thin pancake of rice and pulse batter rolled over spicy smashed potato and eaten with sambhar and chutney. Poori in south India in particular in Tamil Nadu is almost always taken with smashed potato masal. Other favourite dishes are alu tikki and pakoda items.
Vada pav is a popular vegetarian fast food dish in Mumbai and other regions in the Maharashtra in India.
Aloo posto (a curry with potatoes and poppy seeds) is immensely popular in East India, especially Bengal. Although potatoes are not native to India, it has become a vital part of food all over the country especially North Indian food preparations. In Tamil Nadu this tuber acquired a name based on its appearance 'urulai-k-kizhangu' (உருளைக் கிழங்கு) meaning cylindrical tuber.
The Aloo gosht, Potato and meat curry, is one of the popular dishes in South Asia, especially in Pakistan.
In East Asia, particularly Southeast Asia, rice is by far the predominant starch crop, with potatoes a secondary crop, especially in China and Japan. However, it is used in northern China where rice is not easily grown, with a popular dish being 青椒土豆丝 (qīng jiāo tǔ dòu sī), made with green pepper, vinegar and thin slices of potato. In the winter, roadside sellers in northern China will also sell roasted potatoes. It is also occasionally seen in Korean and Thai cuisines.
The potato has been an essential crop in the Andes since the pre-Columbian Era. The Moche culture from Northern Peru made ceramics from earth, water, and fire. This pottery was a sacred substance, formed in significant shapes and used to represent important themes. Potatoes are represented anthropomorphically as well as naturally.
During the late 19th century, numerous images of potato harvesting appeared in European art, including the works of Willem Witsen and Anton Mauve.
Van Gogh's 1885 painting "The Potato Eaters" portrays a family eating potatoes. Van Gogh said he wanted to depict peasants as they really were. He deliberately chose coarse and ugly models, thinking that they would be natural and unspoiled in his finished work.
Jean-François Millet's "The Potato Harvest" depicts peasants working in the plains between Barbizon and Chailly. It presents a theme representative of the peasants' struggle for survival. Millet's technique for this work incorporated paste-like pigments thickly applied over a coarsely textured canvas.
Invented in 1949, and marketed and sold commercially by Hasbro in 1952, Mr. Potato Head is an American toy that consists of a plastic potato and attachable plastic parts, such as ears and eyes, to make a face. It was the first toy ever advertised on television. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23501 |
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is the largest and most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon and the seat of Multnomah County. It is a major port in the Willamette Valley region of the Pacific Northwest, at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers. As of 2019, Portland had an estimated population of 654,741, making it the 26th most populated city in the United States and the second-most populous in the Pacific Northwest after Seattle. Approximately 2.4 million people live in the Portland metropolitan statistical area (MSA), making it the 25th most populous in the United States. Its combined statistical area (CSA) ranks 19th-largest with a population of around 3.2 million. Approximately 60% of Oregon's population resides within the Portland metropolitan area.
Named after Portland, Maine, the Oregon settlement began to be populated in the 1830s near the end of the Oregon Trail. Its water access provided convenient transportation of goods, and the timber industry was a major force in the city's early economy. At the turn of the 20th century, the city had a reputation as one of the most dangerous port cities in the world, a hub for organized crime and racketeering. After the city's economy experienced an industrial boom during World War II, its hard-edged reputation began to dissipate. Beginning in the 1960s, Portland became noted for its growing progressive political values, earning it a reputation as a bastion of counterculture.
The city operates with a commission-based government guided by a mayor and four commissioners as well as Metro, the only directly elected metropolitan planning organization in the United States. The city government is notable for its land-use planning and investment in public transportation. Portland is frequently recognized as one of the world's greenest cities to live and Portland was the first city to enact a comprehensive plan to reduce CO2 emissions. Its climate is marked by warm, dry summers and cool, rainy winters. This climate is ideal for growing roses, and Portland has been called the "City of Roses" for over a century.
During the prehistoric period, the land that would become Portland was flooded after the collapse of glacial dams from Lake Missoula, in what would later become Montana. These massive floods occurred during the last ice age and filled the Willamette Valley with of water.
Before American colonizers began arriving in the 1800s, the land was inhabited for many centuries by two bands of indigenous Chinook people—the Multnomah and the Clackamas. The Chinook people occupying the land were first documented in 1805 by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Before its European settlement, the Portland Basin of the lower Columbia River and Willamette River valleys had been one of the most densely populated regions on the Pacific Coast.
Large numbers of pioneer settlers began arriving in the Willamette Valley in the 1830s via the Oregon Trail, though life was originally centered in nearby Oregon City. In the early 1840s a new settlement emerged ten miles from the mouth of the Willamette River, roughly halfway between Oregon City and Fort Vancouver. This community was initially referred to as "Stumptown" and "The Clearing" because of the many trees cut down to allow for its growth. In 1843 William Overton saw potential in the new settlement but lacked the funds to file an official land claim. For 25 cents, Overton agreed to share half of the site with Asa Lovejoy of Boston.
In 1845 Overton sold his remaining half of the claim to Francis W. Pettygrove of Portland, Maine. Both Pettygrove and Lovejoy wished to rename "The Clearing" after their respective hometowns (Lovejoy's being Boston, and Pettygrove's, Portland). This controversy was settled with a coin toss that Pettygrove won in a series of two out of three tosses, thereby providing Portland with its namesake. The coin used for this decision, now known as the Portland Penny, is on display in the headquarters of the Oregon Historical Society. At the time of its incorporation on February 8, 1851, Portland had over 800 inhabitants, a steam sawmill, a log cabin hotel, and a newspaper, the "Weekly Oregonian". A major fire swept through downtown in August 1873, destroying twenty blocks on the west side of the Willamette along Yamhill and Morrison Streets, and causing $1.3 million in damage, roughly equivalent to $ today. By 1879, the population had grown to 17,500 and by 1890 it had grown to 46,385. In 1888, the city built the first steel bridge built on the West Coast.
Portland's access to the Pacific Ocean via the Willamette and Columbia rivers, as well as its easy access to the agricultural Tualatin Valley via the "Great Plank Road" (the route of current-day U.S. Route 26), provided the pioneer city with an advantage over other nearby ports, and it grew very quickly. Portland remained the major port in the Pacific Northwest for much of the 19th century, until the 1890s, when Seattle's deepwater harbor was connected to the rest of the mainland by rail, affording an inland route without the treacherous navigation of the Columbia River. The city had its own Japantown, for one, and the lumber industry also became a prominent economic presence, due to the area's large population of Douglas fir, western hemlock, red cedar, and big leaf maple trees.
Portland developed a reputation early in its history as a hard-edged and gritty port town. Some historians have described the city's early establishment as being a "scion of New England; an ends-of-the-earth home for the exiled spawn of the eastern established elite." In 1889, "The Oregonian" called Portland "the most filthy city in the Northern States", due to the unsanitary sewers and gutters, and, at the turn of the 20th century, it was considered one of the most dangerous port cities in the world. The city housed a large number of saloons, bordellos, gambling dens, and boardinghouses which were populated with miners after the California Gold Rush, as well as the multitude of sailors passing through the port. By the early 20th century, the city had lost its reputation as a "sober frontier city" and garnered a reputation for being violent and dangerous.
Between 1900 and 1930, the city's population tripled from nearly 100,000 to 301,815. During World War II, it housed an "assembly center" from which up to 3,676 people of Japanese descent were dispatched to internment camps in the heartland. It was the first American city to have residents report thus, and the Pacific International Livestock Exposition operated from May through September 10, 1942 processing people from the city, northern Oregon, and central Washington. General John DeWitt called the city the first "Jap free city on the West Coast."
At the same time, Portland became a notorious hub for underground criminal activity and organized crime between the 1940s and 1950s. In 1957, "Life" magazine published an article detailing the city's history of government corruption and crime, specifically its gambling rackets and illegal nightclubs. The article, which focused on crime boss Jim Elkins, became the basis of a fictionalized film titled "Portland Exposé" (1957). In spite of the city's seedier undercurrent of criminal activity, Portland enjoyed an economic and industrial surge during World War II. Ship builder Henry J. Kaiser had been awarded contracts to build Liberty ships and aircraft carrier escorts, and chose sites in Portland and Vancouver, Washington, for work yards. During this time, Portland's population rose by over 150,000, largely attributed to recruited laborers.
During the 1960s, an influx of hippie subculture began to take root in the city in the wake of San Francisco's burgeoning countercultural scene. The city's Crystal Ballroom became a hub for the city's psychedelic culture, while food cooperatives and listener-funded media and radio stations were established. A large social activist presence evolved during this time as well, specifically concerning Native American rights, environmentalist causes, and gay rights. By the 1970s, Portland had well established itself as a progressive city, and experienced an economic boom for the majority of the decade; however, the slowing of the housing market in 1979 caused demand for the city and state timber industries to drop significantly.
In the 1990s, the technology industry began to emerge in Portland, specifically with the establishment of companies like Intel, which brought more than $10 billion in investments in 1995 alone. After the year 2000, Portland experienced significant growth, with a population rise of over 90,000 between the years 2000 and 2014. The city's increased presence within the cultural lexicon has established it as a popular city for young people, and it was second only to Louisville, Kentucky as one of the cities to attract and retain the highest number of college-educated people in the United States. Between 2001 and 2012, Portland's gross domestic product per person grew fifty percent, more than any other city in the country.
The city has acquired a diverse range of nicknames throughout its history, though it is most often called "Rose City" or "The City of Roses", the latter of which has been its unofficial nickname since 1888 and its official nickname since 2003. Another widely used nickname by local residents in everyday speech is "PDX", which is also the airport code for Portland International Airport. Other nicknames include Bridgetown, Stumptown, Rip City, Soccer City, P-Town, Portlandia, and the more antiquated Little Beirut.
Portland lies on top of an extinct volcanic field known as the Boring Lava Field, named after the nearby bedroom community of Boring. The Boring Lava Field has at least 32 cinder cones such as Mount Tabor, and its center lies in southeast Portland. Mount St. Helens, a highly active volcano northeast of the city in Washington state, is easily visible on clear days and is close enough to have dusted the city with volcanic ash after its eruption on May 18, 1980. The rocks of the Portland area range in age from late Eocene to more recent eras.
Multiple shallow, active fault lines traverse the Portland metropolitan area. Among them are the Portland Hills Fault on the city's west side, and the East Bank Fault on the east side. According to a 2017 survey, several of these faults were characterized as "probably more of a hazard" than the Cascadia subduction zone due to their proximities to population centers, with the potential of producing magnitude 7 earthquakes. Notable earthquakes that have impacted the Portland area in recent history include the 6.8-magnitude Nisqually earthquake in 2001, and a 5.6-magnitude earthquake that struck on March 25, 1993.
Per a 2014 report, over 7,000 locations within the Portland area are at high-risk for landslides and soil liquefaction in the event of a major earthquake, including much of the city's west side (such as Washington Park) and sections of Clackamas County.
Portland is east of the Pacific Ocean at the northern end of Oregon's most populated region, the Willamette Valley. Downtown Portland straddles the banks of the Willamette River, which flows north through the city center and separates the city's east and west neighborhoods. Less than from downtown, the Willamette River flows into the Columbia River, the fourth-largest river in the United States, which divides Oregon from Washington state. Portland is approximately upriver from the Pacific Ocean on the Columbia.
Though much of downtown Portland is relatively flat, the foothills of the Tualatin Mountains, more commonly referred to locally as the "West Hills", pierce through the northwest and southwest reaches of the city. Council Crest Park, commonly thought of as the highest point within city limits, is in the West Hills and rises to an elevation of The city's actual high point is a little-known and infrequently accessed point of near Forest Park. The highest point east of the river is Mt. Tabor, an extinct volcanic cinder cone, which rises to . Nearby Powell Butte and Rocky Butte rise to and , respectively. To the west of the Tualatin Mountains lies the Oregon Coast Range, and to the east lies the actively volcanic Cascade Range. On clear days, Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens dominate the horizon, while Mt. Adams and Mt. Rainier can also be seen in the distance.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of , of which is land and is water. Although almost all of Portland is within Multnomah County, small portions of the city are within Clackamas and Washington Counties, with populations estimated at 785 and 1,455, respectively.
Portland has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen "Csb") with cool and cloudy winters, and warm and dry summers. This climate is characterized by having overcast, wet, and changing weather conditions in fall, winter, and spring, as Portland lies in the direct path of the stormy westerly flow, and mild and dry summers when the Pacific High reaches in northernmost point in mid summer. Of the three most populated cities within the Pacific Northwest (Seattle, Vancouver, British Columbia and Portland) Portland has the warmest average temperature, the highest number of sunshine hours, and the fewest inches of rainfall and snowfall, although the city still is frequently overcast compared to other US cities at the same latitude. According to the Köppen climate classification, Portland falls within the dry-summer temperate zone ("Csb"). with a USDA Plant Hardiness Zones between 8b and 9a. Other climate systems, such as the Trewartha climate classification, places it within the oceanic zone ("Do"), like much of the Pacific Northwest and Western Europe.
Winters are cool, cloudy, and rainy. The coldest month is December with an average daily high of , although overnight lows usually remain above freezing by a few degrees. Evening temperatures fall to or below freezing 33 nights per year on average, but very rarely to or below . There are only 2.1 days per year where the daytime high temperature fails to rise above freezing. The lowest overnight temperature ever recorded was , on February 2, 1950, while the coldest daytime high temperature ever recorded was on December 30, 1968. The average window for freezing temperatures to potentially occur is between November 15 and March 19, allowing a growing season of 240 days.
Annual snowfall in Portland is , which usually falls during the December-to-March time frame. The city of Portland avoids snow more frequently than its suburbs, due in part to its low elevation and urban heat island effect. Neighborhoods outside of the downtown core, especially in slightly higher elevations near the West Hills and Mount Tabor, can experience a dusting of snow while downtown receives no accumulation at all. The city has experienced a few major snow and ice storms in its past with extreme totals having reached at the airport in 1949–50 and at downtown in 1892–93.
Summers in Portland are warm, dry, and sunny, though the sunny warm weather is short lived from mid June through early September. The months of June, July, August and September account for a combined of total rainfall only 12% of the of the precipitation that falls throughout the year. The warmest month is August, with an average high temperature of . Because of its inland location from the coast, as well as the protective nature of the Oregon Coast Range to its west, Portland summers are less susceptible to the moderating influence of the nearby Pacific Ocean. Consequently, Portland experiences heat waves on rare occasion, with temperatures rising into the for a few days. However, on average, temperatures reach or exceed on only 56 days per year, of which 12 days will reach and only 1.4 days will reach . The most 90-degree days ever recorded in one year is 31, which happened recently in 2018. The highest temperature ever recorded was , on July 30, 1965, as well as August 8 and 10, 1981. The warmest recorded overnight low was on July 28, 2009. A temperature of has been recorded in all five months from May through September.
Spring and fall can bring variable weather including warm fronts that send temperatures surging above and cold snaps that plunge daytime temperatures into the 40s °F (4–9 °C). However, lengthy stretches of overcast days beginning in mid fall and continuing into mid spring are most common. Rain often falls as a light drizzle for several consecutive days at a time, contributing to 155 days on average with measurable (≥) precipitation annually. Temperatures have reached as early as May 3 and as late as October 5, while has been reached as early as April 1 and as late as October 21. Severe weather, such as thunder and lightning, is uncommon and tornadoes are exceptionally rare.
Portland's cityscape derives much of its character from the many bridges that span the Willamette River downtown, several of which are historic landmarks, and Portland has been nicknamed "Bridgetown" for many decades as a result. Three of downtown's most heavily used bridges are more than 100 years old and are designated historic landmarks: Hawthorne Bridge (1910), Steel Bridge (1912), and Broadway Bridge (1913). Portland's newest bridge in the downtown area, Tilikum Crossing, opened in 2015 and is the first new bridge to span the Willamette in Portland since the 1973 opening of the double-decker Fremont Bridge.
Other bridges that span the Willamette river in the downtown area include the Burnside Bridge, the Ross Island Bridge (both built 1926), and the double-decker Marquam Bridge (built 1966). Other bridges outside the downtown area include the Sellwood Bridge (built 2016) to the south; and the St. Johns Bridge, a Gothic revival suspension bridge built in 1931, to the north. The Glenn L. Jackson Memorial Bridge and the Interstate Bridge provide access from Portland across the Columbia River into Washington state.
The Willamette River, which flows north through downtown, serves as the natural boundary between east and west Portland. The denser and earlier-developed west side extends into the lap of the West Hills, while the flatter east side extends for roughly 180 blocks until it meets the suburb of Gresham. In 1891 the cities of Portland, Albina, and East Portland were consolidated, creating inconsistent patterns of street names and addresses. It was not unusual for a street name to be duplicated in disparate areas. The "Great Renumbering" on September 2, 1931 standardized street naming patterns and divided Portland into five "general districts." It also changed house numbers from 20 per block to 100 per block and adopted a single street name on a grid. For example, the 200 block north of Burnside is either NW Davis Street or NE Davis Street throughout the entire city.
The five previous addressing sections of Portland, which were colloquially known as quadrants despite there being five, have developed distinctive identities, with mild cultural differences and friendly rivalries between their residents, especially between those who live east of the Willamette River versus west of the river. Portland's addressing sections are North, Northwest, Northeast, South, Southeast, and Southwest (which includes downtown Portland). The Willamette River divides the city into east and west while Burnside Street, which traverses the entire city lengthwise, divides the north and south. North Portland consists of the peninsula formed by the Willamette and Columbia Rivers, with N Williams Ave serving as its eastern boundary. All addresses and streets within the city are prefixed by N, NW, NE, SW or SE with the exception of Burnside Street, which is prefixed with W or E. Starting on May 1, 2020, former Southwest prefix addresses with house numbers on east–west streets leading with zero dropped the zero and the street prefix on all streets (including north–south streets) converted from Southwest to South. For example, the current address of 246 S. California St. was changed from 0246 SW California St. and the current address of 4310 S. Macadam Ave. was converted from 4310 SW Macadam Ave. effective on May 1, 2020.
The new South Portland addressing section was approved by the Portland City Council on June 6, 2018 and is bounded by SW Naito Parkway SW View Point Terrace and Tryon Creek State Natural Area to the west, SW Clay Street to the north and the Clackamas County line to the south. It includes the Lair Hill, Johns Landing and South Waterfront districts and Lewis & Clark College as well as the Riverdale area of unincorporated Multnomah County south of the Portland city limits. In 2018, the city's Bureau of Transportation finalized a plan to transition this part of Portland into South Portland, beginning on May 1, 2020 to reduce confusion by 9-1-1 dispatchers and delivery services.With the addition of South Portland, all six addressing sectors (N, NE, NW, S, SE and SW) are now officially known as sextants.
The Pearl District in Northwest Portland, which was largely occupied by warehouses, light industry and railroad classification yards in the early to mid-20th century, now houses upscale art galleries, restaurants, and retail stores, and is one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city. Areas further west of the Pearl District include neighborhoods known as Uptown and Nob Hill, as well as the Alphabet District and NW 23rd Ave., a major shopping street lined with clothing boutiques and other upscale retail, mixed with cafes and restaurants.
Northeast Portland is home to the Lloyd District, Alberta Arts District, and the Hollywood District.
North Portland is largely residential and industrial. It contains Kelley Point Park, the northernmost point of the city. It also contains the St. Johns neighborhood, which is historically one of the most ethnically diverse and poorest neighborhoods in the city.
Old Town Chinatown is next to the Pearl District in Northwest Portland. In 2017, the crime rate was several times above the city average. This neighborhood has been called Portland's skid row. Southwest Portland is largely residential. Downtown district, made up of commercial businesses, museums, skyscrapers, and public landmarks represents a small area within the southwest address section. Portland's South Waterfront area has been developing into a dense neighborhood of shops, condominiums, and apartments starting in the mid-2000s. Development in this area is ongoing. The area is served by the Portland Streetcar, the MAX Orange Line and four TriMet bus lines. This former industrial area sat as a brownfield prior to development in the mid-2000s.
Southeast Portland is largely residential, and consists of the Hawthorne District, Belmont, Brooklyn, and Mount Tabor.
The 2010 census reported the city as 76.1% White (444,254 people), 7.1% Asian (41,448), 6.3% Black or African American (36,778), 1.0% Native American (5,838), 0.5% Pacific Islander (2,919), 4.7% belonging to two or more racial groups (24,437) and 5.0% from other races (28,987). 9.4% were Hispanic or Latino, of any race (54,840). Whites not of Hispanic origin made up 72.2% of the total population.
In 1940, Portland's African-American population was approximately 2,000 and largely consisted of railroad employees and their families. During the war-time Liberty Ship construction boom, the need for workers drew many blacks to the city. The new influx of blacks settled in specific neighborhoods, such as the Albina district and Vanport. The May 1948 flood which destroyed Vanport eliminated the only integrated neighborhood, and an influx of blacks into the northeast quadrant of the city continued. Portland's longshoremen racial mix was described as being "lily-white" in the 1960s, when the local International Longshore and Warehouse Union declined to represent grain handlers since some were black.
At 6.3%, Portland's African American population is three times the state average. Over two thirds of Oregon's African-American residents live in Portland. As of the 2000 census, three of its high schools (Cleveland, Lincoln and Wilson) were over 70% white, reflecting the overall population, while Jefferson High School was 87% non-white. The remaining six schools have a higher number of non-whites, including blacks and Asians. Hispanic students average from 3.3% at Wilson to 31% at Roosevelt.
Portland residents identifying solely as Asian Americans account for 7.1% of the population; an additional 1.8% is partially of Asian heritage. Vietnamese Americans make up 2.2% of Portland's population, and make up the largest Asian ethnic group in the city, followed by Chinese (1.7%), Filipinos (0.6%), Japanese (0.5%), Koreans (0.4%), Laotians (0.4%), Hmong (0.2%), and Cambodians (0.1%). A small population of Yao people live in Portland. Portland has two Chinatowns, with New Chinatown along SE 82nd Avenue with Chinese supermarkets, Hong Kong style noodle houses, dim sum, and Vietnamese phở restaurants.
With about 12,000 Vietnamese residing in the city proper, Portland has one of the largest Vietnamese populations in America per capita. According to statistics there are 21,000 Pacific Islanders in Portland, making up 4% of the population.
Portland's population has been and remains predominantly white. In 1940, whites were over 98% of the city's population. In 2009, Portland had the fifth-highest percentage of white residents among the 40 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. A 2007 survey of the 40 largest cities in the U.S. concluded Portland's urban core has the highest percentage of white residents. Some scholars have noted the Pacific Northwest as a whole is "one of the last Caucasian bastions of the United States". While Portland's diversity was historically comparable to metro Seattle and Salt Lake City, those areas grew more diverse in the late 1990s and 2000s. Portland not only remains white, but migration to Portland is disproportionately white.
The Oregon Territory banned African American settlement in 1849. In the 19th century, certain laws allowed the immigration of Chinese laborers but prohibited them from owning property or bringing their families. The early 1920s saw the rapid growth of the Ku Klux Klan, which became very influential in Oregon politics, culminating in the election of Walter M. Pierce as governor.
The largest influxes of minority populations occurred during World War II, as the African American population grew by a factor of 10 for wartime work. After World War II, the Vanport flood in 1948 displaced many African Americans. As they resettled, redlining directed the displaced workers from the wartime settlement to neighboring Albina. There and elsewhere in Portland, they experienced police hostility, lack of employment, and mortgage discrimination, leading to half the black population leaving after the war.
In the 1980s and 1990s, radical skinhead groups flourished in Portland. In 1988, Mulugeta Seraw, an Ethiopian immigrant, was killed by three skinheads. The response to his murder involved a community-driven series of rallies, campaigns, nonprofits and events designed to address Portland's racial history, leading to a city considered significantly more tolerant than in 1988 at Seraw's death.
As of the 2010 census, there were 583,776 people living in the city, organized into 235,508 households. The population density was 4,375.2 people per square mile. There were 265,439 housing units at an average density of 1989.4 per square mile (1,236.3/km²). Population growth in Portland increased 10.3% between 2000 and 2010. Population growth in the Portland metropolitan area has outpaced the national average during the last decade, and this is expected to continue over the next 50 years.
Out of 223,737 households, 24.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 38.1% were married couples living together, 10.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 47.1% were non-families. 34.6% of all households were made up of individuals and 9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.3 and the average family size was 3. The age distribution was 21.1% under the age of 18, 10.3% from 18 to 24, 34.7% from 25 to 44, 22.4% from 45 to 64, and 11.6% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 97.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 95.9 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $40,146, and the median income for a family was $50,271. Males had a reported median income of $35,279 versus $29,344 reported for females. The per capita income for the city was $22,643. 13.1% of the population and 8.5% of families were below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 15.7% of those under the age of 18 and 10.4% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line. Figures delineating the income levels based on race are not available at this time. According to the Modern Language Association, in 2010 80.92% (539,885) percent of Multnomah County residents ages 5 and over spoke English as their primary language at home. 8.10% of the population spoke Spanish (54,036), with Vietnamese speakers making up 1.94%, and Russian 1.46%.
The Portland metropolitan area has historically had a significant LGBT population throughout the late 20th and 21st century. In 2015, the city metro had the second highest percentage of LGBT residents in the United States with 5.4% of residents identifying as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, second only to San Francisco. In 2006, it was reported to have the seventh highest LGBT population in the country, with 8.8% of residents identifying as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, and the metro ranking fourth in the nation at 6.1%. The city held its first pride festival in 1975 on the Portland State University campus.
Portland has been cited as the least religious city in the United States, with over 42% of residents identifying as religiously "unaffiliated", according to the nonpartisan and nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute's American Values Atlas. Of the 35.89% of the city's residents who do identify as religious, Roman Catholics make up the largest group, at 15.8%. The second highest religious group in the city are Evangelical Christians at 6.04%, with Baptists following behind at 2.5%. Latter Day Saints make up 2.3% of the city's religiously affiliated population, with Lutheran and Pentecostal following behind. 1.48% of religiously affiliated persons identified themselves as following Eastern religions, while 0.86% of the religiously affiliated population identified as Jewish, and 0.29% as Muslim.
Portland's location is beneficial for several industries. Relatively low energy cost, accessible resources, north–south and east–west Interstates, international air terminals, large marine shipping facilities, and both west coast intercontinental railroads are all economic advantages. The U.S. consulting firm Mercer, in a 2009 assessment "conducted to help governments and major companies place employees on international assignments", ranked Portland 42nd worldwide in quality of living; the survey factored in political stability, personal freedom, sanitation, crime, housing, the natural environment, recreation, banking facilities, availability of consumer goods, education, and public services including transportation. In 2012, the city was listed among the 10 best places to retire in the U.S. by CBS MoneyWatch.
The city's marine terminals alone handle over 13 million tons of cargo per year, and the port is home to one of the largest commercial dry docks in the country. The Port of Portland is the third-largest export tonnage port on the west coast of the U.S., and being about upriver, it is the largest fresh-water port. The city of Portland is the largest shipper of wheat in the United States, and is the second-largest port for wheat in the world.
The steel industry's history in Portland predates World War II. By the 1950s, the steel industry became the city's number one industry for employment. The steel industry thrives in the region, with Schnitzer Steel Industries, a prominent steel company, shipping a record 1.15 billion tons of scrap metal to Asia during 2003. Other heavy industry companies include ESCO Corporation and Oregon Steel Mills.
Technology is a major component of the city's economy, with more than 1,200 technology companies existing within the metro. This high density of technology companies has led to the nickname Silicon Forest being used to describe the Portland area, a reference to the abundance of trees in the region and to the Silicon Valley region in Northern California. The area also hosts facilities for software companies and online startup companies, some supported by local seed funding organizations and business incubators. Computer components manufacturer Intel is the Portland area's largest employer, providing jobs for more than 15,000 people, with several campuses to the west of central Portland in the city of Hillsboro.
The Portland metro area has become a business cluster for athletic/outdoor gear and footwear manufacturers. The area is home to the global, North American or U.S. headquarters of Nike, Adidas, Columbia Sportswear, LaCrosse Footwear, Dr. Martens, Li-Ning, Keen, and Hi-Tec Sports. While headquartered elsewhere, Merrell, Amer Sports and Under Armour have design studios and local offices in the Portland area. Portland-based Precision Castparts is one of two Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Oregon, the other being Nike. Other notable Portland-based companies include film animation studio Laika; commercial vehicle manufacturer Daimler Trucks North America; advertising firm Wieden+Kennedy; bankers Umpqua Holdings; and retailers Fred Meyer, New Seasons Market and Storables.
Breweries are another major industry in Portland, which is home to 139 breweries/microbreweries, the 7th most in the nation, as of December 2018. Additionally, the city boasts a robust coffee culture that now rivals Seattle and hosts over 20 coffee roasters.
In 2016, home prices in Portland grew faster than in any other city in the United States. Apartment rental costs in Portland in February 2020 averaged $1,522 per month.
In 2017, developers projected an additional 6,500 apartments to be built in the Portland Metro Area over the next year. However, as of December 2019, the number of homes available for rent or purchase in Portland continues to shrink. Over the past year, housing prices in Portland have risen 2.5%. Housing prices in Portland continue to rise, the median price rising from $391,400 in November 2018 to $415,000 in November 2019. There has been a rise of people from out of state moving to Portland, which impacts housing availability. Because of the demand for affordable housing and influx of new residents, more Portlanders in their 20's and 30's are still living in their parent's homes.
Portland is home to a range of classical performing arts institutions, including the Portland Opera, the Oregon Symphony, and the Portland Youth Philharmonic; the latter, established in 1924, was the first youth orchestra established in the United States. The city is also home to several theaters and performing arts institutions, including the Oregon Ballet Theatre, Northwest Children's Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Artists Repertory Theatre, Miracle Theatre, and Tears of Joy Theatre.
In 2013, the "Guardian" named the city's music scene as one of the "most vibrant" in the United States. Portland is home to famous bands such as the Kingsmen and Paul Revere & the Raiders, both famous for their association with the song "Louie Louie" (1963). Other widely known musical groups include the Dandy Warhols, Quarterflash, Everclear, Pink Martini, The Hugs, Sleater-Kinney, the Shins, Blitzen Trapper, the Decemberists, and the late Elliott Smith. In the 1980s, the city was home to a burgeoning punk scene, which included bands such as the Wipers and Dead Moon. The city's now-demolished Satyricon nightclub was a punk venue notorious for being the place where Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain first encountered future wife and Hole frontwoman Courtney Love in 1990. Love was then a resident of Portland and started several bands there with Kat Bjelland, later of Babes in Toyland. Multi-Grammy award-winning jazz artist Esperanza Spalding is from Portland and performed with the Chamber Music Society of Oregon at a young age.
A wide range of films have been shot in Portland, from various independent features to major big-budget productions (see "List of films shot in Oregon" for a complete list). Director Gus Van Sant has notably set and shot many of his films in the city. The city has also been featured in various television programs, notably the IFC sketch comedy series "Portlandia". The series, which ran for eight seasons from 2011 to 2018, was shot on location in Portland, and satirized the city as a hub of liberal politics, organic food, alternative lifestyles, and anti-establishment attitudes. MTV's long-time running reality show "The Real World" was also shot in Portland for the show's 29th season: "" premiered on MTV in 2013. Other television series shot in the city include "Leverage", "The Librarians", "Under Suspicion", "Grimm", and "Nowhere Man".
An unusual feature of Portland entertainment is the large number of movie theaters serving beer, often with second-run or revival films. Notable examples of these "brew and view" theaters include the Bagdad Theater and Pub, a former vaudeville theater built in 1927 by Universal Studios; Cinema 21; and the Laurelhurst Theater, in operation since 1923. Portland hosts the world's longest-running H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival at the Hollywood Theatre.
Portland is home to numerous museums and educational institutions, ranging from art museums to institutions devoted to science and wildlife. Among the science-oriented institutions are the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), which consists of five main halls and other ticketed attractions, such as the submarine, the ultra-large-screen Empirical Theater (which replaced an OMNIMAX theater in 2013), and the Kendall Planetarium. The World Forestry Center Discovery Museum, located in the city's Washington Park area, offers educational exhibits on forests and forest-related subjects. Also located in Washington Park are the Hoyt Arboretum, the International Rose Test Garden, the Japanese Garden, and the Oregon Zoo.
The Portland Art Museum owns the city's largest art collection and presents a variety of touring exhibitions each year and, with the recent addition of the Modern and Contemporary Art wing, it became one of the United States' 25 largest museums. Other museums include the Portland Children's Museum, a museum specifically geared for early childhood development; and the Oregon Historical Society Museum, founded in 1898, which has a variety of books, film, pictures, artifacts, and maps dating back throughout Oregon's history. It houses permanent and temporary exhibits about Oregon history, and hosts traveling exhibits about the history of the United States.
Oaks Amusement Park, in the Sellwood district of Southeast Portland, is the city's only amusement park and is also one of the country's longest-running amusement parks. It has operated since 1905 and was known as the "Coney Island of the Northwest" upon its opening.
Portland has been named the best city in the world for street food by several publications and news outlets, including the "U.S. News & World Report" and CNN. Food carts are extremely popular within the city, with over 600 licensed carts, making Portland one of the most robust street food scenes in North America. In 2014, the "Washington Post" called Portland the fourth best city for food in the United States. "Travel + Leisure" ranked Portland's food and bar scene No. 5 in the nation in 2012. Portland is also known as a leader in specialty coffee. The city is home to Stumptown Coffee Roasters as well as dozens of other micro-roasteries and cafes.
It is frequently claimed that Portland has the most breweries and independent microbreweries of any city in the world, with 58 active breweries within city limits and 70+ within the surrounding metro area. However, data compiled by the Brewers Association ranks Portland seventh in the United States as of 2018. The city receives frequent acclaim as the best beer city in the United States and is consistently ranked as one of the top-five beer destinations in the world. Portland has played a prominent role in the microbrewery revolution in the U.S. and is nicknamed "Beertown" and "Beervana" as a result. The McMenamin brothers alone have over thirty brewpubs, distilleries, and wineries scattered throughout the metropolitan area, several in renovated cinemas and other historically significant buildings otherwise destined for demolition. Other notable Portland brewers include Widmer Brothers, BridgePort, Portland Brewing, Hair of the Dog, and Hopworks Urban Brewery.
Portland hosts a number of festivals throughout the year that celebrate beer and brewing, including the Oregon Brewers Festival, held in Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Held each summer during the last full weekend of July, it is the largest outdoor craft beer festival in North America, with over 70,000 attendees in 2008. Other major beer festivals throughout the calendar year include the Spring Beer and Wine Festival in April, the North American Organic Brewers Festival in June, the Portland International Beerfest in July, and the Holiday Ale Festival in December.
Portland is often awarded "Greenest City in America" and similar designations. "Popular Science" awarded Portland the title of the Greenest City in America in 2008, and "Grist" magazine listed it in 2007 as the second greenest city in the world. The city became a pioneer of state-directed metropolitan planning, a program which was instituted statewide in 1969 to compact the urban growth boundaries of the city.
Portland is home to three major league sports franchises: the Portland Trail Blazers of the NBA, the Portland Timbers of Major League Soccer, and the Portland Thorns of the National Women's Soccer League. In 2015, the Timbers won the MLS Cup, which was the first male professional sports championship for a team from Portland since the Trail Blazers won the NBA championship in 1977. Despite being the 19th most populated metro area in the United States, Portland contains only one franchise from the NFL, NBA, NHL, or MLB, making it America's second most populated metro area with that distinction, behind San Antonio. The city has been often rumored to receive an additional franchise, although efforts to acquire a team have failed due to stadium funding issues. An organization known as the Portland Diamond Project (PDP) has worked with the MLB and local government, and there are plans to have an MLB stadium constructed in the industrial district of Portland. The PDP has not yet received the funding for this project.
Portland sports fans are characterized by their passionate support. The Trail Blazers sold out every home game between 1977 and 1995, a span of 814 consecutive games, the second-longest streak in American sports history. The Timbers joined MLS in 2011 and have sold out every home match since joining the league, a streak that has now reached 70+ matches. The Timbers season ticket waiting list has reached 10,000+, the longest waiting list in MLS. In 2015, they became the first team in the Northwest to win the MLS Cup. Player Diego Valeri marked a new record for fastest goal in MLS Cup history at 27 seconds into the game.
Two rival universities exist within Portland city limits: the University of Portland Pilots and the Portland State University Vikings, both of whom field teams in popular spectator sports including soccer, baseball, and basketball. Portland State also has a football team. Additionally, the University of Oregon Ducks and the Oregon State University Beavers both receive substantial attention and support from many Portland residents, despite their campuses being 110 and 84 miles from the city, respectively.
Running is a popular activity in Portland, and every year the city hosts the Portland Marathon as well as parts of the Hood to Coast Relay, the world's largest long-distance relay race (by number of participants). Portland serves as the center to an elite running group, the Nike Oregon Project, and is the residence of several elite runners including British 2012 Olympic 10,000m and 5,000m champion Mo Farah, American record holder at 10,000m Galen Rupp, and 2008 American Olympic bronze medalist at 10,000m Shalane Flanagan.
Historic Erv Lind Stadium is located in Normandale Park. It has been home to professional and college softball.
Portland also hosts numerous cycling events and has become an elite bicycle racing destination. The Oregon Bicycle Racing Association supports hundreds of official bicycling events every year. Weekly events at Alpenrose Velodrome and Portland International Raceway allow for racing nearly every night of the week from March through September. Cyclocross races, such as the Cross Crusade, can attract over 1,000 riders and spectators.
On December 4, 2019, the Vancouver Riptide of the American Ultimate Disc League announced that they ceased team operations in Vancouver in 2017 and are moving down to Portland Oregon for the 2020 AUDL season.
Parks and greenspace planning date back to John Charles Olmsted's 1903 "Report to the Portland Park Board". In 1995, voters in the Portland metropolitan region passed a regional bond measure to acquire valuable natural areas for fish, wildlife, and people. Ten years later, more than of ecologically valuable natural areas had been purchased and permanently protected from development.
Portland is one of only four cities in the U.S. with extinct volcanoes within its boundaries (along with Pilot Butte in Bend, Oregon, Jackson Volcano in Jackson, Mississippi, and Diamond Head in Honolulu, Hawaii). Mount Tabor Park is known for its scenic views and historic reservoirs.
Forest Park is the largest wilderness park within city limits in the United States, covering more than . Portland is also home to Mill Ends Park, the world's smallest park (a two-foot-diameter circle, the park's area is only about 0.3 m2). Washington Park is just west of downtown and is home to the Oregon Zoo, Hoyt Arboretum, the Portland Japanese Garden, and the International Rose Test Garden. Portland is also home to Lan Su Chinese Garden (formerly the Portland Classical Chinese Garden), an authentic representation of a Suzhou-style walled garden. Portland's east side has several formal public gardens: the historic Peninsula Park Rose Garden, the rose gardens of Ladd's Addition, the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden, the Leach Botanical Garden, and The Grotto.
Portland's downtown features two groups of contiguous city blocks dedicated for park space: the North and South Park Blocks. The Tom McCall Waterfront Park was built in 1974 along the length of the downtown waterfront after Harbor Drive was removed; it now hosts large events throughout the year. The nearby historically significant Burnside Skatepark and five indoor skateparks give Portland a reputation as possibly "the most skateboard-friendly town in America."
Tryon Creek State Natural Area is one of three Oregon State Parks in Portland and the most popular; its creek has a run of steelhead. The other two State Parks are Willamette Stone State Heritage Site, in the West Hills, and the Government Island State Recreation Area in the Columbia River near Portland International Airport.
Portland's city park system has been proclaimed one of the best in America. In its 2013 ParkScore ranking, the Trust for Public Land reported Portland had the seventh best park system among the 50 most populous U.S. cities. ParkScore ranks city park systems by a formula that analyzes the city's median park size, park acres as percent of city area, the percent of city residents within a half-mile of a park, spending of park services per resident, and the number of playgrounds per 10,000 residents. The survey revealed that 80% of Portlanders were living within a half-mile of a park, and over 16% of Portland's city area is parkland.
The city of Portland is governed by the Portland City Council, which includes the Mayor, four Commissioners, and an auditor. Each is elected citywide to serve a four-year term. The auditor provides checks and balances in the commission form of government and accountability for the use of public resources. In addition, the auditor provides access to information and reports on various matters of city government. Portland is the only large city left in the United States with the commission form of government.
The city's Community & Civic Life (formerly Office of Neighborhood Involvement) serves as a conduit between city government and Portland's 95 officially recognized neighborhoods. Each neighborhood is represented by a volunteer-based neighborhood association which serves as a liaison between residents of the neighborhood and the city government. The city provides funding to neighborhood associations through seven district coalitions, each of which is a geographical grouping of several neighborhood associations. Most (but not all) neighborhood associations belong to one of these district coalitions.
Portland and its surrounding metropolitan area are served by Metro, the United States' only directly elected metropolitan planning organization. Metro's charter gives it responsibility for land use and transportation planning, solid waste management, and map development. Metro also owns and operates the Oregon Convention Center, Oregon Zoo, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, and Portland Metropolitan Exposition Center.
The Multnomah County government provides many services to the Portland area, as do Washington and Clackamas counties to the west and south.
Law enforcement is provided by the Portland Police Bureau. Fire and emergency services are provided by Portland Fire & Rescue.
Portland is a territorial charter city, and strongly favors the Democratic Party. All city offices are non-partisan.
Portland's delegation to the Oregon Legislative Assembly is entirely Democratic. In the current 76th Oregon Legislative Assembly, which first convened in 2011, four state Senators represent Portland in the state Senate: Diane Rosenbaum (District 21), Chip Shields (District 22), Jackie Dingfelder (District 23), and Rod Monroe (District 24). Portland sends six Representatives to the state House of Representatives: Rob Nosse (District 42), Tawna Sanchez (District 43), Tina Kotek (District 44), Barbara Smith Warner (District 45), Alissa Keny-Guyer (District 46), and Diego Hernandez (District 47).
Portland is split among three U.S. congressional districts. Most of the city is in the 3rd District, represented by Earl Blumenauer, who served on the city council from 1986 until his election to Congress in 1996. Most of the city west of the Willamette River is part of the 1st District, represented by Suzanne Bonamici. A small portion of southwestern Portland is in the 5th District, represented by Kurt Schrader. All three are Democrats; a Republican has not represented a significant portion of Portland in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1975. Both of Oregon's senators, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, are from Portland and are also both Democrats.
In the 2008 presidential election, Democratic candidate Barack Obama easily carried Portland, winning 245,464 votes from city residents to 50,614 for his Republican rival, John McCain. In the 2012 presidential election, Democratic candidate Barack Obama again easily carried Portland, winning 256,925 votes from Multnomah county residents to 70,958 for his Republican rival, Mitt Romney.
Sam Adams, the former mayor of Portland, became the city's first openly gay mayor in 2009. In 2004, 59.7 percent of Multnomah County voters cast ballots against Oregon Ballot Measure 36, which amended the Oregon Constitution to prohibit recognition of same-sex marriages. The measure passed with 56.6% of the statewide vote. Multnomah County is one of two counties where a majority voted against the initiative; the other is Benton County, which includes Corvallis, home of Oregon State University. On April 28, 2005, Portland became the only city in the nation to withdraw from a Joint Terrorism Task Force. As of February 19, 2015, the Portland city council approved permanently staffing the JTTF with two of its city's police officers.
The city consulted with urban planners as far back as 1904, resulting in the development of Washington Park and the 40-Mile Loop greenway, which interconnects many of the city's parks. Portland is often cited as an example of a city with strong land use planning controls. This is largely the result of statewide land conservation policies adopted in 1973 under Governor Tom McCall, in particular the requirement for an urban growth boundary (UGB) for every city and metropolitan area. The opposite extreme, a city with few or no controls, is typically illustrated by Houston.
Portland's urban growth boundary, adopted in 1979, separates urban areas (where high-density development is encouraged and focused) from traditional farm land (where restrictions on non-agricultural development are very strict). This was atypical in an era when automobile use led many areas to neglect their core cities in favor of development along interstate highways, in suburbs, and satellite cities. The original state rules included a provision for expanding urban growth boundaries, but critics felt this wasn't being accomplished. In 1995, the State passed a law requiring cities to expand UGBs to provide enough undeveloped land for a 20-year supply of future housing at projected growth levels.
Oregon's 1973 "urban growth boundary" law limits the boundaries for large-scale development in each metropolitan area in Oregon. This limits access to utilities such as sewage, water and telecommunications, as well as coverage by fire, police and schools. Originally this law mandated the city must maintain enough land within the boundary to provide an estimated 20 years of growth; however, in 2007 the legislature changed the law to require the maintenance of an estimated 50 years of growth within the boundary, as well as the protection of accompanying farm and rural lands. The growth boundary, along with efforts of the Portland Development Commission to create economic development zones, has led to the development of a large portion of downtown, a large number of mid- and high-rise developments, and an overall increase in housing and business density.
Prosper Portland (formerly Portland Development Commission) is a semi-public agency that plays a major role in downtown development; city voters created it in 1958 to serve as the city's urban renewal agency. It provides housing and economic development programs within the city, and works behind the scenes with major local developers to create large projects. In the early 1960s, the Portland Development Commission led the razing of a large Italian-Jewish neighborhood downtown, bounded roughly by I-405, the Willamette River, 4th Avenue and Market street. Mayor Neil Goldschmidt took office in 1972 as a proponent of bringing housing and the associated vitality back to the downtown area, which was seen as emptying out after 5 pm. The effort has had dramatic effects in the 30 years since, with many thousands of new housing units clustered in three areas: north of Portland State University (between I-405, SW Broadway, and SW Taylor St.); the RiverPlace development along the waterfront under the Marquam (I-5) bridge; and most notably in the Pearl District (between I-405, Burnside St., NW Northrup St., and NW 9th Ave.).
Historically, environmental consciousness has weighed significantly in the city's planning and development efforts. Portland was one of the first cities in the United States to promote and integrate alternative forms of transportation, such as the MAX Light Rail and extensive bike paths. The Urban Greenspaces Institute, housed in Portland State University Geography Department's Center for Mapping Research, promotes better integration of the built and natural environments. The institute works on urban park, trail, and natural areas planning issues, both at the local and regional levels. In October 2009, the Portland City Council unanimously adopted a climate action plan that will cut the city's greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. The city's longstanding efforts were recognized in a 2010 Reuters report, which named Portland the second-most environmentally conscious or "green" city in the world after Reykjavik, Iceland.
As of 2012, Portland was the largest city in the United States that did not add fluoride to its public water supply, and fluoridation has historically been a subject of controversy in the city. Portland voters have four times voted against fluoridation, in 1956, 1962, 1980 (repealing a 1978 vote in favor), and 2013. In 2012 the city council, responding to advocacy from public health organizations and others, voted unanimously to begin fluoridation by 2014. Fluoridation opponents forced a public vote on the issue, and on May 21, 2013, city voters again rejected fluoridation.
Strong free speech protections of the Oregon Constitution upheld by the Oregon Supreme Court in "State v. Henry", specifically found that full nudity and lap dances in strip clubs are protected speech. Portland has the highest number of strip clubs per-capita in a city in the United States, and Oregon ranks as the highest state for per-capita strip clubs. In addition to its strip clubs and erotic massage parlors, the city also has a high rate of child sex trafficking.
In November 2008, a Multnomah County judge dismissed charges against a nude bicyclist arrested on June 26, 2008. The judge stated that the city's annual World Naked Bike Rideheld each year in June since 2004has created a "well-established tradition" in Portland where cyclists may ride naked as a form of protest against cars and fossil fuel dependence. The defendant was not riding in the official World Naked Bike Ride at the time of his arrest as it had occurred 12 days earlier that year, on June 14.
A state law prohibiting publicly insulting a person in a way likely to provoke a violent response was tested in Portland and struck down unanimously by the State Supreme Court as violating protected free speech and being overly broad.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Report in 2009, Portland ranked 53rd in violent crime out of the top 75 U.S. cities with a population greater than 250,000. The murder rate in Portland in 2013 averaged 2.3 murders per 100,000 people per year, which was lower than the national average. In October 2009, "Forbes" magazine rated Portland as the third safest city in America. In 2011, 72% of arrested male subjects tested positive for illegal drugs and was dubbed the "deadliest drug market in the Pacific Northwest"
In the Portland Metropolitan statistical area which includes Clackamas, Columbia, Multnomah, Washington, and Yamhill Counties, OR and Clark and Skamania Counties, WA for 2017, murder rate was 2.6, violent crime was 283.2 per 100,000 people per year. In 2017, the population within the city of Portland was 649,408 and there were 24 murders and 3,349 violent crimes.
Below is a sortable table containing violent crime data from each Portland neighborhood during the calendar year of 2014.
Nine public school districts and many private schools serve Portland. Portland Public Schools is the largest school district, operating 85 public schools. David Douglas High School, in the Powellhurst neighborhood, has the largest enrollment of any public high school in the city. Other high schools include Benson, Cleveland, Franklin, Grant, Jefferson, Madison, Parkrose, Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson, and several suburban high schools which serve the city's outer areas. Established in 1869, Lincoln High School (formerly Portland High School) is the city's oldest public education institution, and is one of two of the oldest high schools west of the Mississippi River (after San Francisco's Lowell High School).
Former public schools in the city included Washington High School, which operated from 1906 until 1981, as well as Adams and Jackson, which also closed the same year.
The area's private schools include The Northwest Academy, Portland Jewish Academy, Rosemary Anderson High School, Portland Adventist Academy, Portland Lutheran School, Trinity Academy, Catlin Gabel School, and Oregon Episcopal School.
The city and surrounding metropolitan area is also home to a large number of Roman Catholic-affiliated private schools, including St. Mary's Academy, an all-girls school; De La Salle North Catholic High School; the co-educational Jesuit High School; La Salle High School; and Central Catholic High School, the only archdiocesan high school in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Portland.
Portland State University has the second-largest enrollment rate of any university in the state (after Oregon State University), with a student body of nearly 30,000. It has been named among the top fifteen percentile of American regional universities by The Princeton Review for undergraduate education, and has been internationally recognized for its degrees in Master of Business Administration and urban planning. The city is also home to the Oregon Health & Science University, as well as Portland Community College.
Notable private universities include the University of Portland, a Roman Catholic university affiliated with the Congregation of Holy Cross; Reed College, a liberal arts college, and Lewis & Clark College.
Other institutions of higher learning within the city are:
"The Oregonian" is the only daily general-interest newspaper serving Portland. It also circulates throughout the state and in Clark County, Washington.
Smaller local newspapers, distributed free of charge in newspaper boxes and at venues around the city, include the "Portland Tribune" (general-interest paper published on Tuesdays and Thursdays), "Willamette Week" (general-interest alternative weekly published on Wednesdays), and "The Portland Mercury" (another alt-weekly, targeted at younger urban readers published every other Thursdays). The Portland area also has newspapers that are published for specific communities, including "The Asian Reporter" (a weekly covering Asian news, both international and local) and "The Skanner" (a weekly African-American newspaper covering both local and national news). The "Portland Business Journal" covers business-related news on a weekly basis, as does "The Daily Journal of Commerce", its main competitor. "Portland Monthly" is a monthly news and culture magazine. "The Bee", over 105 years old, is another neighborhood newspaper serving the inner southeast neighborhoods.
Legacy Health, a non-profit healthcare system in Portland, operates multiple facilities in the city and surrounding suburbs. These include Legacy Emanuel, founded in 1912, in Northeast Portland; and Legacy Good Samaritan, founded in 1875, and in Northwest Portland. Randall's Children's Hospital operates at the Legacy Emanuel Campus. Good Samaritan has centers for breast health, cancer, and stroke, and is home to the Legacy Devers Eye Institute, the Legacy Obesity and Diabetes Institute, the Legacy Diabetes and Endocrinology Center, the Legacy Rehabilitation Clinic of Oregon, and the Linfield-Good Samaritan School of Nursing.
The Catholic-affiliated Providence Health & Services operates Providence Portland Medical Center in the North Tabor neighborhood of the city. Oregon Health & Science University is a university hospital formed in 1974. The Veterans Affairs Medical Center operates next to the Oregon Health & Science University main campus. Adventist Medical Center also serves the city. Shriners Hospital for Children is a small children's hospital established in 1923.
The Portland metropolitan area has transportation services common to major U.S. cities, though Oregon's emphasis on proactive land-use planning and transit-oriented development within the urban growth boundary means commuters have multiple well-developed options. In 2014, "Travel + Leisure" magazine rated Portland as the No. 1 most pedestrian and transit-friendly city in the United States. A 2011 study by Walk Score ranked Portland 12th most walkable of fifty largest U.S. cities.
In 2008, 12.6% of all commutes in Portland were on public transit. TriMet operates most of the region's buses and the MAX (short for Metropolitan Area Express) light rail system, which connects the city and suburbs. The 1986-opened MAX system has expanded to five lines, with the latest being the Orange Line to Milwaukie, in service as of September 2015. WES Commuter Rail opened in February 2009 in Portland's western suburbs, linking Beaverton and Wilsonville.
The city-owned Portland Streetcar serves two routes in the Central City – downtown and adjacent districts. The first line, which opened in 2001 and was extended in 2005–2007, operates from the South Waterfront District through Portland State University and north through the West End of downtown, to shopping areas and dense residential districts north and northwest of downtown. The second line that opened in 2012 added of tracks on the east side of the Willamette River and across the Broadway Bridge to a connection with the original line. The east-side line completed a loop to the tracks on the west side of the river upon completion of the new Tilikum Crossing in 2015, and, in anticipation of that, had been named the Central Loop line in 2012. However, it was renamed the Loop Service, with an A Loop (clockwise) and B Loop (counterclockwise), when it became a complete loop with the opening of the Tilikum Crossing bridge.
Fifth and Sixth avenues within downtown comprise the Portland Transit Mall, two streets devoted primarily to bus and light rail traffic with limited automobile access. Opened in 1977 for buses, the transit mall was renovated and rebuilt in 2007–09, with light rail added. Starting in 1975 and lasting nearly four decades, all transit service within downtown Portland was free, the area being known by TriMet as Fareless Square, but a need for minor budget cuts and funding needed for expansion prompted the agency to limit free rides to rail service only in 2010, and subsequently to discontinue the fare-free zone entirely in 2012.
TriMet provides real-time tracking of buses and trains with its TransitTracker, and makes the data available to software developers so they can create customized tools of their own.
I-5 connects Portland with the Willamette Valley, Southern Oregon, and California to the south and with Washington to the north. I-405 forms a loop with I-5 around the central downtown area of the city and I-205 is a loop freeway route on the east side which connects to the Portland International Airport. U.S. 26 supports commuting within the metro area and continues to the Pacific Ocean westward and Mount Hood and Central Oregon eastward. U.S. 30 has a main, bypass, and business route through the city extending to Astoria to the west; through Gresham, Oregon, and the eastern exurbs, and connects to I-84, traveling towards Boise, Idaho. Portland ranked 13th in traffic congestion of all American cities. By 2018, it ranked 10th
Portland's main airport is Portland International Airport, about 20 minutes by car (40 minutes by MAX) northeast of downtown. Portland's airport has been named the best US airport for seven consecutive years (2013–2019). Portland is also home to Oregon's only public use heliport, the Portland Downtown Heliport.
Amtrak, the national passenger rail system, provides service to Portland at Union Station on three routes. Long-haul train routes include the "Coast Starlight" (with service from Los Angeles to Seattle) and the "Empire Builder" (with service to Chicago). The "Amtrak Cascades" state-supported trains operate between Vancouver, B.C., and Eugene, Oregon, and serve Portland several times daily. The city is also served by Greyhound Lines intercity bus service, which also operates BoltBus, an express bus service. The city's first airport was the Swan Island Municipal Airport, which was closed in the 1940s.
Portland is the only city in the United States that owns operating mainline steam locomotives, donated to the city in 1958 by the railroads that ran them. Spokane, Portland & Seattle 700 and the world-famous Southern Pacific 4449 can be seen several times a year pulling a special excursion train, either locally or on an extended trip. The "Holiday Express", pulled over the tracks of the Oregon Pacific Railroad on weekends in December, has become a Portland tradition over its several years running. These trains and others are operated by volunteers of the Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation, an amalgamation of rail preservation groups which collaborated on the finance and construction of the Oregon Rail Heritage Center, a permanent and publicly accessible home for the locomotives, which opened in 2012 adjacent to OMSI.
In Portland, cycling is a significant mode of transportation. As the city has been particularly supportive of urban bicycling it now ranks highly among the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world.
Bicycles accounted for 6.3% of commuting in 2017. For its achievements in promoting cycling as an everyday means of transportation, Portland has been recognized by the League of American Bicyclists and other cycling organizations for its network of on-street bicycling facilities and other bicycle-friendly services, being one of only three U.S. cities to have earned a Platinum-level rating. A new bicycle-sharing system, Biketown, launched on July 19, 2016, with 100 stations in the city's central and eastside neighborhoods. The bikes were provided by Social Bicycles, and the system is operated by Motivate.
Car sharing through Zipcar, Getaround, and Uhaul Car Share is available to residents of the city and some inner suburbs. Portland has a commuter aerial cableway, the Portland Aerial Tram, which connects the South Waterfront district on the Willamette River to the Oregon Health & Science University campus on Marquam Hill above.
Portland has ten sister cities; each city is required to maintain long-term involvement and participation: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23503 |
Pan and scan
Pan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown in fullscreen proportions of a standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus on the composition's most important aspects.
Some film directors and enthusiasts disapprove of pan and scan cropping, because it can remove up to 45% of the original image on 2.35:1 films or up to 53% on earlier 2.55:1 presentations, changing the director or cinematographer's original vision and intentions. The most extreme examples remove up to 75% of the original picture on such aspect ratios as 2.76:1 in epics such as "Ben-Hur" and "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World". "Lawrence of Arabia" is an exception to the 75% rule, because its aspect ratio is 2.20:1.
The vertical equivalent is known as "tilt and scan" or "reverse pan and scan". The method was most common in the days of VHS, before widescreen home media such as Laserdisc, DVD and Blu-ray.
For the first several decades of television broadcasting, sets displayed images with a 4:3 aspect ratio in which the width is 1.33 times the height—similar to most theatrical films prior to 1960. This was fine for pre-1953 films such as "The Wizard of Oz" or "Casablanca". Meanwhile, in order to compete with television and lure audiences away from their sets, producers of theatrical motion pictures began to use "widescreen" formats such as CinemaScope and Todd-AO in the early to mid-1950s, which enable more panoramic vistas and present other compositional opportunities. Films with these formats might be twice as wide as a TV screen when televised. To present a widescreen movie on such a television requires one of two techniques to accommodate this difference: One is "letterboxing", which preserves the original theatrical aspect ratio, but is not as tall as a standard television screen, leaving black bars at the top and bottom of the screen; the other technique is to "pan and scan", filling the full height of the screen, but cropping it horizontally. Pan and scan cuts out as much as half of the image.
In the 1990s (before Blu-ray Disc or HDTV), when so-called televisions offered a wider 16:9 aspect ratio (1.78 times the height instead of 1.33), they allowed films made at 1.66:1 and 1.85:1 to fill most or all of the screen, with only small letterboxing or cropping required. DVD packaging began to use the expression, "16:9 – Enhanced for Widescreen TVs."
However, films shot at aspect ratios of 2.20:1, 2.35:1, 2.39:1, 2.55:1, and especially 2.76:1 ("Ben-Hur" for example) might still be problematic when displayed on televisions of any type. But when the DVD is "anamorphically enhanced for widescreen", or the film is telecast on a high-definition channel seen on a widescreen TV, the black spaces are smaller, and the effect is still much like watching a film on a theatrical wide screen. Though 16:9 (and occasionally 16:10, mostly for computers and tablets) remain standard as of 2018, wider-screen consumer TVs in 21:9 have been released to the market by multiple brands.
During the "pan and scan" process, an editor selects the parts of the original filmed composition that seem to be the focus of the shot and makes sure that these are copied (i.e. "scanned"). When the important action shifts to a new position in the frame, the operator moves the scanner to follow it, creating the effect of a "pan" shot. In a scene in which the focus does not gradually shift from one horizontal position to another—such as actors at each extreme engaging in rapid conversation with each other—the editor may choose to "cut" from one to the other rather than rapidly panning back and forth. If the actors are closer together on the screen, the editor may pan slightly, alternately cropping one or the other partially. This method allows the maximum resolution of the image, since it uses all the available vertical video scan lines—which is especially important for NTSC televisions, having a rather low number of lines available. It also gives a full-screen image on a traditional television set; hence pan-and-scan versions of films on videotape or DVD are often known as "".
However, it also has several drawbacks. Some visual information is necessarily cropped out. It can also change a shot in which the camera was originally stationary to one in which it is frequently panning, or change a single continuous shot into one with frequent cuts. In a shot which was originally panned to show something new, or one in which something enters the shot from off-camera, it changes the timing of these appearances to the audience. As an example, in the film "Oliver!", made in Panavision, the criminal Bill Sikes commits a murder. The murder takes place mostly offscreen, behind a staircase wall, and Oliver is a witness to it. As Sikes steps back from behind the wall, we see Oliver from the back watching him in terror. In the pan-and-scan version of the film, we see Oliver's reaction as the murder is being committed, but not when Sikes steps backward from the wall having done it. Often in a pan and scan telecast, a character will seem to be speaking offscreen, when what has really happened is that the pan and scan technique has cut his image out of the screen.
As television screenings of feature films became more common and more financially important, cinematographers began to work for compositions that would keep the vital information within the "TV safe area" of the frame. For example, the BBC suggested programme makers who were recording in 16:9 frame their shots in a aspect ratio which was then broadcast on analogue services with small black bars at the top and bottom of the picture, while owners of widescreen TV sets receiving digital broadcasts would see the full 16:9 picture (this is known as Shoot and protect).
One modern alternative to pan and scan is to directly adjust the source material. This is very rare: the only known uses are computer-generated features, such as those produced by Pixar and video games such as "BioShock". They call their approach to full-screen versions "reframing": some shots are pan and scan, while others (such as notably Warner Bros.' "The Lego Movie") are transferred open matte (a full widescreen image extended with added image above and below; though for "The Lego Movie", the transferred open matte used a widescreen image cropped to 16:9 with added image above and below to create a 1.37:1-framed Academy ratio image; this version was created for theaters that do not have the anamorphic lens projection equipment). Another method is to keep the camera angle as tight as a pan shot, but move the location of characters, objects, or the camera, so that the subjects fit in the frame. The advent of DVDs and their use of anamorphic presentation, coupled with the increasing popularity of widescreen televisions and computer monitors, have rendered pan and scan less important. Fullscreen versions of films originally produced in widescreen are still available in the United States.
Film makers may also create an original image that includes visual information that extends above and below the widescreen theatrical image; this is called "open matte". This may still be pan-and-scanned, but gives the compositor the freedom to "zoom out" or "uncrop" the image to include not only the full width of the wide-format image, but additional visual content at the top and/or bottom of the screen, not included in the widescreen version. As a general rule (prior to the adoption of DVD), special effects would be done within the theatrical aspect ratio, but not the full-frame thereof; also the expanded image area can include extraneous objects—such as cables, microphone booms, jet vapor trails, or overhead telephone wires—not intended to be included in the frame.
A more unusual use of the technique is present in the 17 original Dragon Ball Z movies, released from 1986 to 1996. The films were displayed in 16:9 during their theatrical release, but this was in fact cut down from 4:3 animation- a choice made so that the VHS releases would be uncropped.
Changes in screen angle (panning) may be necessary to prevent closeups between two speakers where only one person is visible in the pan-and-scan version and both participants seem to speak alternately to persons off camera; this comes at the cost of losing the smoothness of scenes. Inversely, the cropping of a film originally shown in the standard ratio to fit widescreen televisions may cut off foreground or background, such as a tap-dance scene in which much attention is directed appropriately at a dancer's feet. This situation will commonly occur whenever a widescreen TV is set to display full images without stretching (often called the zoom setting) on images with an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 or less. The solution is to pillar box the image by adding black bars on either side of the image, which maintains the full picture height. In Europe, where the PAL TV format offers more resolution to begin with, "pan-and-scan" broadcasts and "pan-and-scan" DVDs of movies originally shown in widescreen are relatively rare, unless it is of programming broadcasts aimed for family viewing times like "A Bug's Life". However, on some channels in some countries (such as the United Kingdom), films with an aspect ratio of more than 1.85:1 are panned and scanned to fit the broadcast 1.78:1 ratio.
Some directors still balk at the use of "pan and scan" because they feel it compromises the directorial vision with which their movies were created. For instance, Sydney Pollack decided to shoot his 1985 film "Out of Africa" in a matted 1.85:1 aspect ratio because he was tired of having his movies, which had generally been shot in his preferred format of Anamorphic 2.39:1, "butchered" for television and home video. Furthermore, he brought a lawsuit against Danish TV after a screening of his 1975 film "Three Days of the Condor" in pan-and-scan in 1991 (The court ruled that the pan scanning conducted by Danish television was a 'mutilation' of the film and a violation of Pollack's droit moral, his legal right as an artist to maintain his reputation by protecting the integrity of his work. Nonetheless, the court ruled in favor of the defendant on a technicality.) Steven Spielberg initially refused to release a pan-and-scan version of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" but eventually gave in (although he successfully ordered the letterboxed format for the home video releases of "The Color Purple" and "Always"); Woody Allen refused altogether to release one of "Manhattan", the letterbox version is therefore the only version available on VHS and DVD even though one VHS release includes the typical pan-and-scan disclaimer on the cover. Even the "pan and scan" versions of the widescreen animated shorts from the 1950s were also criticized, as several details, such as in Tom and Jerry. A scene show the babysitter grabbing the baby out of Tom's hands near the end of "Tot Watchers" and the ant blowing his horn near the end of "Barbecue Brawl", are cropped out, which occasionally airs on TV channels, such as Cartoon Network and Boomerang. In Tom and Jerry's digital HD downloads on Amazon Prime and HBO Max, four widescreen CinemaScope shorts, "The Egg and Jerry", "Blue Cat Blues", "Mucho Mouse" and "Tot Watchers" are cropped to 16:9 from the much wider CinemaScope ratio, causing both sides of the picture to be lost. The rest of the widescreen shorts are available in the original CinemaScope widescreen aspect ratio.
Several prominent film critics, most notably Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, have also criticized "pan and scan", and agreed with directors that movies should be presented as they were intended. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23506 |
Plymouth
Plymouth () is a port city situated on the south coast of Devon, England, approximately south-west of Exeter and west-south-west of London. Enclosing the city are the mouths of the river Plym and river Tamar, which are naturally incorporated into Plymouth Sound to form a boundary with Cornwall.
Plymouth's early history extends to the Bronze Age when a first settlement emerged at Mount Batten. This settlement continued as a trading post for the Roman Empire, until it was surpassed by the more prosperous village of Sutton founded in the ninth century, now called Plymouth. In 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers departed Plymouth for the New World and established Plymouth Colony, the second English settlement in what is now the United States of America. During the English Civil War, the town was held by the Parliamentarians and was besieged between 1642 and 1646.
Throughout the Industrial Revolution, Plymouth grew as a commercial shipping port, handling imports and passengers from the Americas, and exporting local minerals (tin, copper, lime, china clay and arsenic). The neighbouring town of Devonport became strategically important to the Royal Navy for its shipyards and dockyards. In 1914, three neighbouring independent towns, viz. the county borough of Plymouth, the county borough of Devonport, and the urban district of East Stonehouse were merged, becoming the County Borough of Plymouth. In 1928, it achieved city status. During World War II, due to the city's naval importance, the German military targeted and partially destroyed the city by bombing, an act known as the Plymouth Blitz. After the war, the city centre was completely rebuilt. Subsequent expansion led to the incorporation of Plympton, Plymstock, and other outlying suburbs, in 1967.
The city is home to () people, making it the 30th-most populous built-up area in the United Kingdom and the second-largest city in the South West, after Bristol. It is governed locally by Plymouth City Council and is represented nationally by three MPs. Plymouth's economy remains strongly influenced by shipbuilding and seafaring but has tended toward a service economy since the 1990s. It has ferry links to Brittany (Roscoff and St Malo) and to Spain (Santander). It has the largest operational naval base in Western Europe, HMNB Devonport, and is home to the University of Plymouth.
Upper Palaeolithic deposits, including bones of Homo sapiens, have been found in local caves, and artefacts dating from the Bronze Age to the Middle Iron Age have been found at Mount Batten, showing that it was one of few principal trading ports of pre-Roman Britannia dominating continental trade with Armorica. An unidentified settlement named "TAMARI OSTIA" (mouth/estuaries of the Tamar) is listed in Ptolemy's "Geographia" and is presumed to be located in the area of the modern city. An ancient promontory fort was located at Rame Head at the mouth of Plymouth Sound with ancient hillforts located at Lyneham Warren to the east , Boringdon Camp and Maristow Camp to the north .
The settlement of Plympton, further up the River Plym than the current Plymouth, was also an early trading port. As the river silted up in the early 11th century, mariners and merchants were forced to settle downriver, at the current day Barbican near the river mouth. At the time this village was called Sutton, meaning "south town" in Old English. The name "Plym Mouth", meaning "mouth of the River Plym" was first mentioned in a Pipe Roll of 1211.
The name "Plymouth" first officially replaced Sutton in a charter of King Henry VI in 1440. See Plympton for the derivation of the name "Plym".
During the Hundred Years' War a French attack (1340) burned a manor house and took some prisoners, but failed to get into the town. In 1403 the town was burned by Breton raiders. On 12 November 1439, the English Parliament made Plymouth the first town incorporated. In the late fifteenth century, Plymouth Castle, a "castle quadrate", was constructed close to the area now known as The Barbican; it included four round towers, one at each corner, as featured on the city coat of arms.
The castle served to protect Sutton Pool, which is where the fleet was based in Plymouth prior to the establishment of Plymouth Dockyard. In 1512, an Act of Parliament was passed to further fortify Plymouth. The work included defensive walls at the entrance to Sutton Pool (across which a chain was extended in times of danger). Defences on St Nicholas Island also date from this time, and a string of six artillery blockhouses were built, including one on Fishers Nose at the south-eastern corner of the Hoe. This location was further strengthened by the building of a fort (later known as Drake's Fort) in 1596; it was the site of the Citadel, established in the 1660s (see below).
During the 16th century, locally produced wool was the major export commodity. Plymouth was the home port for successful maritime traders, among them Sir John Hawkins, who led England's first foray into the Atlantic slave trade, as well as Sir Francis Drake, Mayor of Plymouth in 1581–2. Crews for the first English failed settlement attempt at Roanoke Colony in North America departed in 1587 under Sir Walter Raleigh's and Drake's leadership; returning bearing maize, tobacco and potatoes.
In 1588, according to legend, Drake insisted on completing his game of bowls on the Hoe before engaging the Spanish Armada. In 1620 the Pilgrim Fathers set sail for the New World from Plymouth, establishing Plymouth Colony – the second English colony in what is now the United States of America.
During the English Civil War Plymouth sided with the Parliamentarians and was besieged for almost four years by the Royalists. The last major attack by the Royalists was by Sir Richard Grenville leading thousands of soldiers towards Plymouth, but they were defeated by the Plymothians at Freedom Fields Park. The civil war ended as a Parliamentary win, but monarchy was restored by King Charles II in 1660, who imprisoned many of the Parliamentary heroes on Drake's Island. Construction of the Royal Citadel began in 1665, after the Restoration; it was armed with cannon facing both out to sea and into the town, rumoured to be a reminder to residents not to oppose the Crown. Mount Batten tower also dates from around this time.
Throughout the 17th century, Plymouth had gradually lost its pre-eminence as a trading port. By the mid-17th century, commodities manufactured elsewhere in England cost too much to transport to Plymouth, and the city had no means of processing sugar or tobacco imports, major products from the colonies. Local sailors turning to piracy such as Henry Every became infamous, celebrated in the London play The Successful Pyrate. It played a part in the Atlantic slave trade during the early 18th century, although it was relatively small.
In the nearby parish of Stoke Damerel the first dockyard, HMNB Devonport, opened in 1690 on the eastern bank of the River Tamar. Further docks were built here in 1727, 1762 and 1793. The settlement that developed here was called "Dock" or "Plymouth Dock" at the time, and a new town, separate from Plymouth, grew up. In 1712 there were 318 men employed and by 1733 the population had grown to 3,000 people.
Before the latter half of the 18th century, grain, timber and then coal were Plymouth's main imports. During this time the real source of wealth was from the neighbouring town of Plymouth Dock (renamed in 1824 to Devonport) and the major employer in the entire region was the dockyard. The "Three Towns" conurbation of Plymouth, Stonehouse and Devonport enjoyed some prosperity during the late 18th and early 19th century and were enriched by a series of neo-classical urban developments designed by London architect John Foulston. Foulston was important for both Devonport and Plymouth and was responsible for several grand public buildings, many now destroyed, including the Athenaeum, the Theatre Royal and Royal Hotel, and much of Union Street.
Local chemist William Cookworthy established his short-lived Plymouth Porcelain venture in 1768 to exploit the deposits of china clay that he had discovered in Cornwall. He was acquainted with engineer John Smeaton, the builder of the third Eddystone Lighthouse.
The Breakwater in Plymouth Sound was designed by John Rennie to protect the fleet moving in and out of Devonport; work started in 1812. Numerous technical difficulties and repeated storm damage meant that it was not completed until 1841, twenty years after Rennie's death. In the 1860s, a ring of Palmerston forts was constructed around the outskirts of Devonport, to protect the dockyard from attack from any direction.
Some of the most significant imports to Plymouth from the Americas and Europe during the latter half of the 19th century included maize, wheat, barley, sugar cane, guano, sodium nitrate and phosphate. Aside from the dockyard in the town of Devonport, industries in Plymouth such as the gasworks, the railways and tramways, and a number of small chemical works had begun to develop in the 19th century, continuing into the 20th century.
During the First World War, Plymouth was the port of entry for many troops from around the Empire. It was developed as a facility for the manufacture of munitions. Although major units of the Royal Navy moved to the safety of Scapa Flow, Devonport was an important base for escort vessels and repairs. Flying boats operated from Mount Batten.
During the Second World War, Devonport was the headquarters of Western Approaches Command until 1941, and Sunderland flying boats were operated by the Royal Australian Air Force. It was an important embarkation point for US troops for D-Day. The city was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe, in a series of 59 raids known as the Plymouth Blitz. Although the dockyards were the principal targets, much of the city centre and over 3,700 houses were completely destroyed and more than 1,000 civilians lost their lives. This was largely due to Plymouth's status as a major port. Charles Church was hit by incendiary bombs and partially destroyed in 1941 during the Blitz, but has not been demolished. It has been designated as an official permanent monument to the bombing of Plymouth during World War II.
The redevelopment of the city was planned by Sir Patrick Abercrombie in his 1943 "Plan for Plymouth" whilst simultaneously working on the reconstruction plan for London. Between 1951 and 1957 over 1000 homes were completed every year, mostly using innovative prefabricated systems of just three main types/
The Plan for Plymouth was, on the one hand, a template for the rapid reassembly of a destroyed city centre, but Abercrombie also took the opportunity to lay out a whole hierarchy of settlements across the city of communities, neighbourhoods and districts. Central to this was a revision of transport infrastructure that prioritised the position of the railway as a gateway to the city centre and provided in the long-term for a dual carriageway road by-pass that only finally came into being in the 1980s (forty years after being planned).
By 1964 over 20,000 new homes had been built, transforming the dense overcrowded and unsanitary slums of the pre-war city into a low density, dispersed suburbia. Most of the city centre shops had been destroyed and those that remained were cleared to enable a zoned reconstruction according to his plan. In 1962 the modernist high rise of the Civic Centre was constructed, an architecturally significant example of mid-twentieth century civic slab-and-tower set piece. The Plymouth City Council allowed it to fall into disrepair but it was grade II listed in 2010 by English Heritage to prevent its demolition.
Post-war, Devonport Dockyard was kept busy refitting aircraft carriers such as the and, later, nuclear submarines. New light industrial factories were constructed in the newly zoned industrial sector, attracting rapid growth of the urban population. The army had substantially left the city by 1971, after barracks were pulled down in the 1960s. But the city remains home to the 42 Commando of the Royal Marines.
The first record of the existence of a settlement at Plymouth was in the Domesday Book in 1086 as "Sudtone", Saxon for south farm, located at the present-day Barbican. From Saxon times, it was in the hundred of Roborough. In 1254 it gained status as a town and in 1439, became the first town in England to be granted a Charter by Parliament. Between 1439 and 1934, Plymouth had a Mayor. In 1914 the county boroughs of Plymouth and Devonport, and the urban district of East Stonehouse merged to form a single county borough of Plymouth. Collectively they were referred to as "The Three Towns".
In 1919 Nancy Astor was elected the first-ever female member of parliament to take office in the British Houses of Parliament for the constituency of Plymouth Sutton. Taking over office from her husband Waldorf Astor, Lady Astor was a vibrantly active campaigner for her resident constituents. Plymouth was granted city status on 18 October 1928. The city's first Lord Mayor was appointed in 1935 and its boundaries further expanded in 1967 to include the town of Plympton and the parish of Plymstock.
In 1945, Plymouth-born Michael Foot was elected Labour MP for the war-torn constituency of Plymouth Devonport and after serving as Secretary of State for Education and responsible for the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act, went on to become the leader of the Labour party (1980–1983).
The 1971 Local Government White Paper proposed abolishing county boroughs, which would have left Plymouth, a town of 250,000 people, being administered from a council based at the smaller Exeter, on the other side of the county. This led to Plymouth lobbying for the creation of a Tamarside county, to include Plymouth, Torpoint, Saltash, and the rural hinterland. The campaign was not successful, and Plymouth ceased to be a county borough on 1 April 1974 with responsibility for education, social services, highways and libraries transferred to Devon County Council. All powers returned when the city become a unitary authority on 1 April 1998 under recommendations of the Banham Commission.
In the Parliament of the United Kingdom, Plymouth is represented by the three constituencies of Plymouth Moor View, Plymouth Sutton and Devonport and South West Devon and within the European Parliament as South West England. In the 2017 general election the city two returned Conservative MPs, who were Gary Streeter (for South West Devon) and Johnny Mercer (for Moor View), and one Labour MP, Luke Pollard (for Sutton and Devonport), .
The City of Plymouth is divided into 20 wards, 17 of which elect three councillors and the other three electing two councillors, making up a total council of 57. Each year a third of the council is up for election for three consecutive years – there are no elections on the following "fourth" year, which is when County Council elections take place. The total for Plymouth was 188,924 in April 2015. The local election of 7 May 2015 resulted in a political composition of 28 Labour councillors, 26 Conservative and 3 UKIP resulting in a Conservative UKIP coalition administration. Plymouth City Council is formally twinned with: Brest, France (1963), Gdynia, Poland (1976), Novorossiysk, Russia (1990) San Sebastián, Spain (1990) and Plymouth, United States (2001).
Plymouth was granted the dignity of Lord Mayor by King George V in 1935. The position is elected each year by a group of six councillors. It is traditional that the position of the Lord Mayor alternates between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party annually and that the Lord Mayor chooses the Deputy Lord Mayor. Conservative councillor Dr John Mahony is the incumbent for 2015–16.
The Lord Mayor's official residence is 3 Elliot Terrace, located on the Hoe. Once a home of Waldorf and Nancy Astor, it was given by Lady Astor to the City of Plymouth as an official residence for future Lord Mayors and is also used today for civic hospitality, as lodgings for visiting dignitaries and High Court judges and it is also available to hire for private events. The Civic Centre municipal office building in Armada Way became a listed building in June 2007 because of its quality and period features, but has become the centre of a controversy as the council planned for its demolition estimating that it could cost £40m to refurbish it, resulting in possible job losses.
Plymouth lies between the River Plym to the east and the River Tamar to the west; both rivers flow into the natural harbour of Plymouth Sound. Since 1967, the unitary authority of Plymouth has included the, once independent, towns of Plympton and Plymstock which lie along the east of the River Plym. The River Tamar forms the county boundary between Devon and Cornwall and its estuary forms the Hamoaze on which is sited Devonport Dockyard.
The River Plym, which flows off Dartmoor to the north-east, forms a smaller estuary to the east of the city called Cattewater. Plymouth Sound is protected from the sea by the Plymouth Breakwater, in use since 1814. In the Sound is Drake's Island which is seen from Plymouth Hoe, a flat public area on top of limestone cliffs. The Unitary Authority of Plymouth is . The topography rises from sea level to a height, at Roborough, of about above Ordnance Datum (AOD).
Geologically, Plymouth has a mixture of limestone, Devonian slate, granite and Middle Devonian limestone. Plymouth Sound, Shores and Cliffs is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, because of its geology. The bulk of the city is built upon Upper Devonian slates and shales and the headlands at the entrance to Plymouth Sound are formed of Lower Devonian slates, which can withstand the power of the sea.
A band of Middle Devonian limestone runs west to east from Cremyll to Plymstock including the Hoe. Local limestone may be seen in numerous buildings, walls and pavements throughout Plymouth. To the north and northeast of the city is the granite mass of Dartmoor; the granite was mined and exported via Plymouth. Rocks brought down the Tamar from Dartmoor include ores containing tin, copper, tungsten, lead and other minerals. There is evidence that the middle Devonian limestone belt at the south edge of Plymouth and in Plymstock was quarried at West Hoe, Cattedown and Radford.
On 27 April 1944 Sir Patrick Abercrombie's "Plan for Plymouth" to rebuild the bomb-damaged city was published; it called for demolition of the few remaining pre-War buildings in the city centre to make way for their replacement with wide, parallel, modern boulevards aligned east–west linked by a north–south avenue (Armada Way) linking the railway station with the vista of Plymouth Hoe. A peripheral road system connecting the historic Barbican on the east and Union Street to the west determines the principal form of the city centre, even following pedestrianisation of the shopping centre in the late 1980s, and continues to inform the present 'Vision for Plymouth' developed by a team led by Barcelona-based architect David MacKay in 2003 which calls for revivification of the city centre with mixed-use and residential. In suburban areas, post-War prefabs had already begun to appear by 1946, and over 1,000 permanent council houses were built each year from 1951 to 1957 according to the Modernist zoned low-density garden city model advocated by Abercrombie. By 1964 over 20,000 new homes had been built, more than 13,500 of them permanent council homes and 853 built by the Admiralty. Plymouth is home to 28 parks with an average size of . Its largest park is Central Park, with other sizeable green spaces including Victoria Park, Freedom Fields Park, Alexandra Park, Devonport Park and the Hoe. Central Park is the home of Plymouth Argyle Football Club and a number of other leisure facilities.
Along with the rest of South West England, Plymouth has a temperate oceanic climatebordering sub tropical climate (Köppen "Cfb") which is wetter and milder than the rest of England. This means a wide range of exotic plants and palm trees can be grown with the warmer winters compared to other parts of the UK. The annual mean temperature is approximately . Due to the moderating effect of the sea and the southwesterly location, the climate is among the mildest of British cities, and one of the warmest UK cities in winter. The seasonal range is less than in most other parts of the UK. Consequently, summer highs are lower than some points further north and east in the UK such as Kent, Sussex and London, with the warmest months, July and August, having mean daily maxima over . The coldest month of February is similarly moderate, having mild mean minimum temperatures between . Snow is extremely rare, usually no more than a few flakes when it occurs, but a noteworthy recent exception was the period of the European winter storms of 2009-10 which, in early January 2010, covered Plymouth in at least of snow; more on higher ground. Another notable event was the of snowfall between 17–19 December 2010 – though only would lie at any one time due to melting. Over the 1961–1990 period, annual snowfall accumulation averaged less than per year.
South West England has a favoured location when the Azores High pressure area extends north-eastwards towards the UK, particularly in summer. Coastal areas have average annual sunshine totals over 1,600 hours.
Owing to its geographic location, rainfall tends to be associated with Atlantic depressions or with convection and is more frequent than in London and Southeast England. The Atlantic depressions are more vigorous in autumn and winter and most of the rain which falls in those seasons in the south-west is from this source. Average annual rainfall is around . November to March have the highest mean wind speeds, with June to August having the lightest winds. The predominant wind direction is from the south-west.
Typically, the warmest day of the year (1971–2000) will achieve a temperature of , although in June 2020 the temperature reached 32.2 degrees(89.7)F, the site record. On average, 4.25 days of the year will report a maximum temperature of or above. During the winter half of the year, the coldest night will typically fall to although in January 1979 the temperature fell to . Typically, 18.6 nights of the year will register an air frost.
The University of Plymouth enrolls 23,155 total students as of 2018/2019 (largest in the UK out of ). It also employs 2,900 staff with an annual income of around £160 million. It was founded in 1992 from Polytechnic South West (formerly Plymouth Polytechnic) following the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. It has a wide range of courses including those in marine focused business, marine engineering, marine biology and Earth, ocean and environmental sciences, surf science, shipping and logistics. The university formed a joint venture with the fellow Devonian University of Exeter in 2000, establishing the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry. The college is ranked 8th out of 30 universities in the UK in 2011 for medicine. Its dental school was established in 2006, which also provides free dental care in an attempt to improve access to dental care in the South West.
The University of St Mark & St John (known as "Marjon" or "Marjons") specialises in teacher training, and offers training across the country and abroad.
The city is also home to two large colleges. The City College Plymouth provides courses from the most basic to Foundation degrees for approximately 26,000 students. Plymouth College of Art offers a selection of courses including media. It was started 153 years ago and is now one of only four independent colleges of art and design in the UK.
Plymouth also has 71 state primary phase schools, 13 state secondary schools, eight special schools and three selective state grammar schools, Devonport High School for Girls, Devonport High School for Boys and Plymouth High School for Girls. There is also an independent school Plymouth College.
The city was also home to the Royal Naval Engineering College; opened in 1880 in Keyham, it trained engineering students for five years before they completed the remaining two years of the course at Greenwich. The college closed in 1910, but in 1940 a new college opened at Manadon. This was renamed "Dockyard Technical College" in 1959 before finally closing in 1994; training was transferred to the University of Southampton.
Plymouth is home to the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom (MBA; founded 1884) which conducts research in all areas of the marine sciences. The Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML; founded 1988) was formed in part from components of the MBA. Together with the National Marine Aquarium, the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Sciences, Plymouth University's Marine Institute and the Diving Diseases Research Centre, these marine-related organisations form the Plymouth Marine Sciences Partnership. The Plymouth Marine Laboratory, which focuses on global issues of climate change and sustainability. It monitors the effects of ocean acidity on corals and shellfish and reports the results to the UK government. It also cultivates algae that could be used to make biofuels or in the treatment of wastewater by using technology such as photo-bioreactors. It works alongside the Boots Group to investigate the use of algae in skincare protects, taking advantage of the chemicals they contain that adapt to protect themselves from the sun.
A scheme is in operation over summer 2018 to provide meals during the summer holidays for children with parents on a low income, the parents cannot afford to provide their children with healthy meals.
UPSU also known as the University of Plymouth Student Union is based underground near the library. Every student at the University of Plymouth is a member of UPSU. The Union employs students across the University, from bar staff to events technicians. Every year the students at the University have an opportunity to vote which sabbatical officers represent them. In 2019 over 4000 students voted in the UPSU elections.
From the 2011 Census, the Office for National Statistics published that Plymouth's unitary authority area population was 256,384; 15,664 more people than that of the last census from 2001, which indicated that Plymouth had a population of 240,720. The Plymouth urban area had a population of 260,203 in 2011 (the urban sprawl which extends outside the authority's boundaries). The city's average household size was 2.3 persons. At the time of the 2011 UK census, the ethnic composition of Plymouth's population was 96.2% White (of 92.9% was White British), with the largest minority ethnic group being Chinese at 0.5%. The white Irish ethnic group saw the largest decline in its share of the population since the 2001 Census (−24%), while the "Other Asian" and Black African had the largest increases (360% and 351% respectively). This excludes the two new ethnic groups added to the 2011 census of Gypsy or Irish Traveller and Arab. The population rose rapidly during the second half of the 19th century, but declined by over 1.6% from 1931 to 1951.
Plymouth's gross value added (a measure of the size of its economy) was 5,169 million GBP in 2013 making up 25% of Devon's GVA. Its GVA per person was £19,943 and compared to the national average of £23,755, was £3,812 lower. Plymouth's unemployment rate was 7.0% in 2014 which was 2.0 points higher than the South West average and 0.8 points higher than the average for Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland).
A 2014 profile by the National Health Service showed Plymouth had higher than average levels of poverty and deprivation (26.2% of the population among the poorest 20.4% nationally). Life expectancy, at 78.3 years for men and 82.1 for women, was the lowest of any region in the South West of England.
Because of its coastal location, the economy of Plymouth has traditionally been , in particular the defence sector with over 12,000 people employed and approximately 7,500 in the armed forces. The Plymouth Gin Distillery has been producing Plymouth Gin since 1793, which was exported around the world by the Royal Navy. During the 1930s, it was the most widely distributed gin and has a controlled term of origin until 2015. Since the 1980s, employment in the defence sector has decreased substantially and the public sector is now prominent particularly in administration, health, education, medicine and engineering.
Devonport Dockyard is the UK's only naval base that refits nuclear submarines and the Navy estimates that the Dockyard generates about 10% of Plymouth's income. Plymouth has the largest cluster of marine and maritime businesses in the south west with 270 firms operating within the sector. Other substantial employers include the university with almost 3,000 staff, the national retail chain The Range at their Estover headquarters, as well as the Plymouth Science Park employing 500 people in 50 companies.
Plymouth has a post-war shopping area in the city centre with substantial pedestrianisation. At the west end of the zone inside a grade II listed building is the Pannier Market that was completed in 1959 – "pannier" meaning "basket" from French, so it translates as "basket market". In terms of retail floorspace, Plymouth is ranked in the top five in the South West, and 29th nationally. Plymouth was one of the first ten British cities to trial the new Business improvement district initiative. The Tinside Pool is situated at the foot of the Hoe and became a grade II listed building in 1998 before being restored to its 1930s look for £3.4 million.
Since 2003, Plymouth Council has been undertaking a project of urban redevelopment called the "Vision for Plymouth" launched by the architect David Mackay and backed by both Plymouth City Council and the Plymouth Chamber of Commerce (PCC). Its projects range from shopping centres, a cruise terminal, a boulevard and to increase the population to 300,000 and build 33,000 dwellings.
In 2004 the old Drake Circus shopping centre and Charles Cross car park were demolished and replaced by the latest Drake Circus Shopping Centre, which opened in October 2006. It received negative feedback before opening when David Mackay said it was already "ten years out of date". In contrast, the Theatre Royal's production and education centre, TR2, which was built on wasteland at Cattedown, was a runner-up for the RIBA Stirling Prize for Architecture in 2003.
There is a project involving the future relocation of Plymouth City Council's headquarters, the civic centre, to the current location of the Bretonside bus station; it would involve both the bus station and civic centre being demolished and a rebuilt together at the location with the land from the civic centre being sold off. Other suggestions include the demolition of the Plymouth Pavilions entertainment arena to create a canal "boulevard" linking Millbay to the city centre. Millbay is being regenerated with mixed residential, retail and office space alongside the ferry port.
The A38 dual-carriageway runs from east to west across the north of the city. Within the city it is known as 'The Parkway' and represents the boundary between the older parts of the city and more recently developed suburban areas. Heading east, it connects Plymouth to the M5 motorway about away near Exeter; and heading west it connects Devon with Cornwall via the Tamar Bridge. Bus services are mainly provided by Plymouth Citybus and Stagecoach, but a few routes are served by smaller local operators. There are three Park and ride services at Milehouse, Coypool (Plympton) and George Junction (Plymouth City Airport), which are operated by Stagecoach South West.
A regular international ferry service provided by Brittany Ferries operates from Millbay taking cars and foot passengers directly to France (Roscoff) and Spain (Santander) on the three ferries, "MV Armorique", "MV Bretagne" and "MV Pont-Aven". The Cremyll Ferry is a passenger ferry between Stonehouse and the Cornish hamlet of Cremyll, which is believed to have operated continuously since 1204. There is also a pedestrian ferry from the Mayflower Steps to Mount Batten, and an alternative to using the Tamar Bridge via the Torpoint Ferry (vehicle and pedestrian) across the River Tamar.
The city's airport was Plymouth City Airport about north of the city centre.
The airport was home to the local airline Air Southwest,
which operated flights across the United Kingdom and Ireland. In June 2003, a report by the South West RDA was published looking at the future of aviation in the south-west and the possible closure of airports. It concluded that the best option for the south-west was to close Plymouth City Airport and expand Exeter International Airport and Newquay Cornwall Airport, although it did conclude that this was not the best option for Plymouth. In April 2011, it was announced that the airport would close, which it did on 23 December. A local company, FlyPlymouth, put forward plans in 2015 to reopen the airport by 2018, providing daily services to various destinations including London, but as of now, these projects have stalled.
Plymouth railway station, which opened on its present site in 1877, is managed by Great Western Railway and is also served by trains on the CrossCountry network. The station was previously described as 'Plymouth North Road', when there were other main line stations in the city at Millbay and Friary. These have now closed. Smaller stations in the suburban area west of the city centre are served by trains on the Tamar Valley Line to Gunnislake and local services on the Cornish Main Line, which crosses the Tamar on the Royal Albert Bridge. This was designed by Brunel and opened in 1859. The parallel road bridge was completed in 1961.
There have been proposals to reopen the Exeter to Plymouth railway of the LSWR which would connect Cornwall and Plymouth to Exeter using the former Southern Railway main line from Plymouth to Exeter via Okehampton, because the main line through South Devon is vulnerable to damage from rough seas at Dawlish, where some of the cliffs are also fragile. There are related proposals to reopen part of the old main line from Bere Alston on the Plymouth-Gunnislake line as far as Tavistock to serve a new housing development, but although the idea has been discussed since 2008 at least progress has been slow.
Plymouth is at the southern end of the long Devon Coast to Coast Cycle Route (National Cycle Route 27). The route runs mostly traffic-free on off-road sections between Ilfracombe and Plymouth. The route uses former railway lines, though there are some stretches on public roads.
Plymouth has about 150 churches and its Roman Catholic cathedral (1858) is in Stonehouse. The city's oldest church is Plymouth Minster, also known as St Andrew's Church, (Anglican) located at the top of Royal Parade—it is the largest parish church in Devon and has been a site of gathering since AD 800. The city also includes five Baptist churches, over twenty Methodist chapels, and thirteen Roman Catholic churches. In 1831 the first Brethren assembly in England, a movement of conservative non-denominational Evangelical Christians, was established in the city, so that Brethren are often called Plymouth Brethren, although the movement did not begin locally.
Plymouth has the first known reference to Jews in the South West from Sir Francis Drake's voyages in 1577 to 1580, as his log mentioned "Moses the Jew" – a man from Plymouth. The Plymouth Synagogue is a Listed Grade II* building, built in 1762 and is the oldest Ashkenazi Synagogue in the English speaking world. There are also places of worship for Islam, Bahá'í, Buddhism, Unitarianism, Chinese beliefs and Humanism.
58.1% of the population described themselves in the 2011 census return as being at least nominally Christian and 0.8% as Muslim with all other religions represented by less than 0.5% each. The portion of people without a religion is 32.9%; above the national average of 24.7%. 7.1% did not state their religious belief. Since the 2001 Census, the number of Christians and Jews has decreased (−16% and −7% respectively), while all other religions have increased and non-religious people have almost doubled in number.
Built in 1815, Union Street was at the heart of Plymouth's historical culture. It became known as "the servicemen's playground", as it was where sailors from the Royal Navy would seek entertainment of all kinds. During the 1930s, there were 30 pubs and it attracted such performers as Charlie Chaplin to the New Palace Theatre. It was described in 2008 as the late-night hub of Plymouth's entertainment strip.
Outdoor events and festivals are held including the annual British Firework Championships in August, which attracts tens of thousands of people across the waterfront. In August 2006 the world record for the most simultaneous fireworks was surpassed, by Roy Lowry of the University of Plymouth, over Plymouth Sound. From 2014 MTV Crashes Plymouth has taken place every July on Plymouth Hoe, hosting big-name acts such as The 1975, Little Mix, Tinie Tempah and Busted. Between 1992 and 2012 the Music of the Night celebration was performed in the Royal Citadel by the 29 Commando Regiment and local performers to raise money for local and military charities. A number of other smaller cultural events taken place annually, including Plymouth Art Weekender, Plymouth Fringe Festival and Illuminate Festival.
The city's main theatre is Theatre Royal Plymouth, presenting large-scale West End shows and smaller works as well as an extensive education and outreach programme. The main building is located in the city centre and contains three performance spaces – The Lyric (1,315 capacity), Drum Theatre (200 capacity), and The Lab (60 capacity) – and they also run their own specialised production and creative learning centre called TR2, based in Cattedown. Plymouth Pavilions has multiple uses for the city staging music concerts, basketball matches and stand-up comedy. There are also three cinemas: Reel Cinema at Derrys Cross, Plymouth Arts Centre at Looe Street and a Vue cinema at the Barbican Leisure Park. Barbican Theatre, Plymouth delivers a theatre and dance programme of performances and workshops focused on young people and emerging artists contains a main auditorium (110 – 140 capacity) and rehearsal studio; they also host the B-Bar (80 capacity), which offers a programme of music, comedy and spoken word performance. The Plymouth Athenaeum, which includes a local interest library, is a society dedicated to the promotion of learning in the fields of science, technology, literature and art. In 2017 its auditorium (340 capacity) returned to use as a theatre, having been out of service since 2009. The Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery is operated by Plymouth City Council allowing free admission – it has six galleries.
Plymouth is the regional television centre of BBC South West. A team of journalists are headquartered at Plymouth for the ITV West Country regional station, after a merger with ITV West forced ITV Westcountry to close on 16 February 2009. The main local newspapers serving Plymouth are "The Herald" and "Western Morning News" with Radio Plymouth, BBC Radio Devon, Heart South West, and Pirate FM being the local radio stations with the most listeners.
Plymouth is home to Plymouth Argyle F.C., who play in the third tier of English football league known as Football League One. The team's home ground is called Home Park and is located in Central Park. It links itself with the group of English non-conformists that left Plymouth for the New World in 1620: its nickname is "The Pilgrims". The city also has three Non-League football clubs; Plymouth Parkway who play at Bolitho Park, Elburton Villa who play at Haye Road and Plymstock United who play at Dean Cross. Plymouth Parkway were recently promoted to the Western League from the South West Peninsula League, whilst Elburton Villa and Plymstock United continue to compete in the South West Peninsula League.
Other sports clubs include Plymouth Albion R.F.C. and the Plymouth Raiders basketball club. Plymouth Albion Rugby Football Club is a rugby union club that was founded in 1875 and are currently competing in the third tier of Professional English Rugby the National League 1. They play at the Brickfields. Plymouth Raiders play in the British Basketball League – the top tier of British basketball. They play at the Plymouth Pavilions entertainment arena and were founded in 1983. Plymouth cricket club was formed in 1843, the current 1st XI play in the Devon Premier League. Plymouth Gladiators are a speedway team in the British National League. Plymouth was home to an American football club, the Plymouth Admirals until 2010. Plymouth is also home to Plymouth Marjons Hockey Club, with their 1st XI playing in the National League last season.
Plymouth Leander is the most successful swimming club in Great Britain along with Plymouth Diving Club.
Plymouth is an important centre for watersports, especially scuba diving and sailing. The Port of Plymouth Regatta is one of the oldest regattas in the world, and has been held regularly since 1823. In September 2011, Plymouth hosted the America's Cup World Series for nine days.
Since 1973 Plymouth has been supplied water by South West Water. Prior to the 1973 take over it was supplied by Plymouth County Borough Corporation. Before the 19th century two leats were built to provide drinking water for the town. They carried water from Dartmoor to Plymouth. A watercourse, known as Plymouth or Drake's Leat, was opened on 24 April 1591 to tap the River Meavy. The Devonport Leat was constructed to carry fresh drinking water to the expanding town of Devonport and its ever-growing dockyard. It was fed by three Dartmoor rivers: The West Dart, Cowsic and Blackabrook. It seems to have been carrying water since 1797, but it was officially completed in 1801. It was originally designed to carry water to Devonport town but has since been shortened and now carries water to Burrator Reservoir, which feeds most of the water supply of Plymouth. Burrator Reservoir is located about north of the city and was constructed in 1898 and expanded in 1928.
Plymouth City Council is responsible for waste management throughout the city and South West Water is responsible for sewerage. Plymouth's electricity is supplied from the National Grid and distributed to Plymouth via Western Power Distribution. On the outskirts of Plympton a combined cycle gas-powered station, the Langage Power Station, which started to produce electricity for Plymouth at the end of 2009.
Her Majesty's Courts Service provide a magistrates' court and a Combined Crown and County Court centre in the city. The Plymouth Borough Police, formed in 1836, eventually became part of Devon and Cornwall Constabulary. There are police stations at Charles Cross and Crownhill (the Divisional HQ) and smaller stations at Plympton and Plymstock. The city has one of the Devon and Cornwall Area Crown Prosecution Service Divisional offices. Plymouth has five fire stations located in Camel's Head, Crownhill, Greenbank, Plympton and Plymstock which is part of Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution have an Atlantic 85 class lifeboat and Severn class lifeboat stationed at Millbay Docks.
Plymouth is served by Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust and the city's NHS hospital is Derriford Hospital north of the city centre. The Royal Eye Infirmary is located at Derriford Hospital. South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust operates in Plymouth and the rest of the south west; its headquarters are in Exeter.
The mid-19th-century burial ground at Ford Park Cemetery was reopened in 2007 by a successful trust and the City council operate two large early 20th century cemeteries at Weston Mill and Efford both with crematoria and chapels. There is also a privately owned cemetery on the outskirts of the city, Drake Memorial Park which does not allow headstones to mark graves, but a brass plaque set into the ground.
After the English Civil War the Royal Citadel was erected in 1666 towards the eastern section of Plymouth Hoe, to defend the port from naval attacks, suppress Plymothian Parliamentary leanings and to train the armed forces. Currently, guided tours are available in the summer months. Further west is Smeaton's Tower, which is a standard lighthouse that was constructed in 1759. Furthermore, Smeaton's Tower was dismantled in 1877 and the top two-thirds were reassembled on Plymouth Hoe. It is open to the public and has views over the Plymouth Sound and the city from the lantern room. Plymouth has 20 war memorials of which nine are on The Hoe including: Plymouth Naval Memorial, to remember those killed in World Wars I and II, and the Armada Memorial, to commemorate the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
The early port settlement of Plymouth, called "Sutton", approximates to the area now referred to as the Barbican and has 100 listed buildings and the largest concentration of cobbled streets in Britain. The Pilgrim Fathers left for the New World in 1620 near the commemorative Mayflower Steps in Sutton Pool. Also on Sutton Pool is the National Marine Aquarium which displays 400 marine species and includes Britain's deepest aquarium tank.
On the northern outskirts of the city, Crownhill Fort is a well-restored example of a "Palmerston's Folly". It is owned by the Landmark Trust and is open to the public.
To the west of the city is Devonport, one of Plymouth's historic quarters. As part of Devonport's millennium regeneration project, the "Devonport Heritage Trail" has been introduced, complete with over 70 waymarkers outlining the route.
Plymouth is often used as a base by visitors to Dartmoor, the Tamar Valley and the beaches of south-east Cornwall. Kingsand, Cawsand and Whitsand Bay are popular.
The Roland Levinsky building, the landmark building of the University of Plymouth, is located in the city's central quarter. Designed by leading architect Henning Larsen, the building was opened in 2008 and houses the University's Arts faculty. It has been consistently considered one of the UK's most beautiful university buildings.
Beckley Point, at 78m / 20 floors, is Plymouth's tallest building and was completed on 8 February 2018. It was designed by Boyes Rees Architects and built by contractors Kier.
People from Plymouth are known as Plymothians or less formally as Janners. Its meaning is described as a person from Devon, deriving from Cousin Jan (the Devon form of John), but more particularly in naval circles anyone from the Plymouth area.
The Elizabethan navigator, Sir Francis Drake was born in the nearby town of Tavistock and was the mayor of Plymouth. He was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the world and was known by the Spanish as "El Draco" meaning "The Dragon" after he raided many of their ships. He died of dysentery in 1596 off the coast of Puerto Rico. In 2002 a mission to recover his body and bring it to Plymouth was allowed by the Ministry of Defence. His cousin and contemporary John Hawkins was a Plymouth man. Painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, founder and first president of the Royal Academy was born and educated in nearby Plympton, now part of Plymouth. William Cookworthy born in Kingsbridge set up his successful porcelain business in the city and was a close friend of John Smeaton designer of the Eddystone Lighthouse. On 26 January 1786, Benjamin Robert Haydon, an English painter who specialised in grand historical pictures, was born here. The naturalist Dr William Elford Leach FRS, who did much to pave the way in Britain for Charles Darwin, was born at Hoe Gate in 1791.
Antarctic explorers Robert Falcon Scott who was born in Plymouth and Frank Bickerton both lived in the city. Artists include Beryl Cook whose paintings depict the culture of Plymouth and Robert Lenkiewicz, whose paintings investigated themes of vagrancy, sexual behaviour and suicide, lived in the city from the 1960s until his death in 2002. Illustrator and creator of children's series Mr Benn and King Rollo, David McKee, was born and brought up in South Devon and trained at Plymouth College of Art. Jazz musician John Surman, born in nearby Tavistock, has close connections to the area, evidenced by his 2012 album Saltash Bells. The avant garde prepared guitarist Keith Rowe was born in the city before establishing the jazz free improvisation band AMM in London in 1965 and MIMEO in 1997. The musician and film director Cosmo Jarvis has lived in several towns in South Devon and has filmed videos in and around Plymouth. In addition, actors Sir Donald Sinden and Judi Trott were born in Plymouth. George Passmore of Turner Prize winning duo Gilbert and George was also born in the city, as was Labour politician Michael Foot whose family reside at nearby Trematon Castle.
Notable athletes include swimmer Sharron Davies, diver Tom Daley, dancer Wayne Sleep, and footballer Trevor Francis. Other past residents include composer journalist and newspaper editor William Henry Wills, Ron Goodwin, and journalist Angela Rippon and comedian Dawn French. Canadian politician and legal scholar Chris Axworthy hails from Plymouth. America based actor Donald Moffat, whose roles include American Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson in the film "The Right Stuff", and fictional President Bennett in "Clear and Present Danger", was born in Plymouth.
Cambridge spy Guy Burgess was born at 2 Albemarle Villas, Stoke whilst his father was a serving Royal Navy officer. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23508 |
Point-to-Point Protocol
In computer networking, Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) is a data link layer (layer 2) communications protocol between two routers directly without any host or any other networking in between. It can provide connection authentication, transmission encryption, and compression.
PPP is used over many types of physical networks including serial cable, phone line, trunk line, cellular telephone, specialized radio links, and fiber optic links such as SONET. Internet service providers (ISPs) have used PPP for customer dial-up access to the Internet, since IP packets cannot be transmitted over a modem line on their own, without some data link protocol that can identify where the transmitted frame starts and where it ends.
Two derivatives of PPP, Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE) and Point-to-Point Protocol over ATM (PPPoA), are used most commonly by ISPs to establish a digital subscriber line (DSL) Internet service connection with customers.
PPP is commonly used as a data link layer protocol for connection over synchronous and asynchronous circuits, where it has largely superseded the older Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP) and telephone company mandated standards (such as Link Access Protocol, Balanced (LAPB) in the X.25 protocol suite). The only requirement for PPP is that the circuit provided be duplex. PPP was designed to work with numerous network layer protocols, including Internet Protocol (IP), TRILL, Novell's Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX), NBF, DECnet and AppleTalk. Like SLIP, this is a full Internet connection over telephone lines via modem. It is more reliable than SLIP because it double checks to make sure that Internet packets arrive intact. It resends any damaged packets.
PPP was designed somewhat after the original HDLC specifications. The designers of PPP included many additional features that had been seen only in proprietary data-link protocols up to that time. PPP is specified in RFC 1661.
RFC 2516 describes Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE) as a method for transmitting PPP over Ethernet that is sometimes used with DSL. RFC 2364 describes Point-to-Point Protocol over ATM (PPPoA) as a method for transmitting PPP over ATM Adaptation Layer 5 (AAL5), which is also a common alternative to PPPoE used with DSL.
PPP is a layered protocol that has three components:
LCP initiates and terminates connections gracefully, allowing hosts to negotiate connection options. It is an integral part of PPP, and is defined in the same standard specification. LCP provides automatic configuration of the interfaces at each end (such as setting datagram size, escaped characters, and magic numbers) and for selecting optional authentication. The LCP protocol runs on top of PPP (with PPP protocol number 0xC021) and therefore a basic PPP connection has to be established before LCP is able to configure it.
RFC 1994 describes Challenge-Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP), which is preferred for establishing dial-up connections with ISPs.
Although deprecated, Password Authentication Protocol (PAP) is still sometimes used.
Another option for authentication over PPP is Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) described in RFC 2284.
After the link has been established, additional network (layer 3) configuration may take place. Most commonly, the Internet Protocol Control Protocol (IPCP) is used, although Internetwork Packet Exchange Control Protocol (IPXCP) and AppleTalk Control Protocol (ATCP) were once popular. Internet Protocol Version 6 Control Protocol (IPv6CP) will see extended use in the future, when IPv6 replaces IPv4 as the dominant layer-3 protocol.
PPP permits multiple network layer protocols to operate on the same communication link. For every network layer protocol used, a separate Network Control Protocol (NCP) is provided in order to encapsulate and negotiate options for the multiple network layer protocols. It negotiates network-layer information, e.g. network address or compression options, after the connection has been established.
For example, Internet Protocol (IP) uses the IP Control Protocol (IPCP), and Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX) uses the Novell IPX Control Protocol (IPX/SPX). NCPs include fields containing standardized codes to indicate the network layer protocol type that the PPP connection encapsulates.
The following NCPs may be used with PPP:
PPP detects looped links using a feature involving magic numbers. When the node sends PPP LCP messages, these messages may include a magic number. If a line is looped, the node receives an LCP message with its own magic number, instead of getting a message with the peer's magic number.
The previous section introduced the use of LCP options to meet specific WAN connection requirements. PPP may include the following LCP options:
PPP frames are variants of HDLC frames:
If both peers agree to Address field and Control field compression during LCP, then those fields are omitted. Likewise if both peers agree to Protocol field compression, then the 0x00 byte can be omitted.
The Protocol field indicates the type of payload packet: 0xC021 for LCP, 0x80xy for various NCPs, 0x0021 for IP, 0x0029 AppleTalk, 0x002B for IPX, 0x003D for Multilink, 0x003F for NetBIOS, 0x00FD for MPPC and MPPE, etc. PPP is limited, and cannot contain general Layer 3 data, unlike EtherType.
The Information field contains the PPP payload; it has a variable length with a negotiated maximum called the Maximum Transmission Unit. By default, the maximum is 1500 octets. It might be padded on transmission; if the information for a particular protocol can be padded, that protocol must allow information to be distinguished from padding.
PPP frames are encapsulated in a lower-layer protocol that provides framing and may provide other functions such as a checksum to detect transmission errors. PPP on serial links is usually encapsulated in a framing similar to HDLC, described by IETF RFC 1662.
The Flag field is present when PPP with HDLC-like framing is used.
The Address and Control fields always have the value hex FF (for "all stations") and hex 03 (for "unnumbered information"), and can be omitted whenever PPP LCP Address-and-Control-Field-Compression (ACFC) is negotiated.
The frame check sequence (FCS) field is used for determining whether an individual frame has an error. It contains a checksum computed over the frame to provide basic protection against errors in transmission. This is a CRC code similar to the one used for other layer two protocol error protection schemes such as the one used in Ethernet. According to RFC 1662, it can be either 16 bits (2 bytes) or 32 bits (4 bytes) in size (default is 16 bits - Polynomial "x"16 + "x"12 + "x"5 + 1).
The FCS is calculated over the Address, Control, Protocol, Information and Padding fields after the message has been encapsulated.
Multilink PPP (also referred to as MLPPP, MP, MPPP, MLP, or Multilink) provides a method for spreading traffic across multiple distinct PPP connections. It is defined in RFC 1990. It can be used, for example, to connect a home computer to an Internet Service Provider using two traditional 56k modems, or to connect a company through two leased lines.
On a single PPP line frames cannot arrive out of order, but this is possible when the frames are divided among multiple PPP connections. Therefore, Multilink PPP must number the fragments so they can be put in the right order again when they arrive.
Multilink PPP is an example of a link aggregation technology. Cisco IOS Release 11.1 and later supports Multilink PPP.
With PPP, one cannot establish several simultaneous distinct PPP connections over a single link.
That's not possible with Multilink PPP either. Multilink PPP uses contiguous numbers for all the fragments of a packet, and as a consequence it is not possible to suspend the sending of a sequence of fragments of one packet in order to send another packet. This prevents from running Multilink PPP multiple times on the same links.
Multiclass PPP is a kind of Multilink PPP where each "class" of traffic uses a separate sequence number space and reassembly buffer. Multiclass PPP is defined in RFC 2686
PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol) is a form of PPP between two hosts via GRE using encryption (MPPE) and compression (MPPC).
Many protocols can be used to tunnel data over IP networks. Some of them, like SSL, SSH, or L2TP create virtual network interfaces and give the impression of a direct physical connections between the tunnel endpoints. On a Linux host for example, these interfaces would be called tun0 or ppp0.
As there are only two endpoints on a tunnel, the tunnel is a point-to-point connection and PPP is a natural choice as a data link layer protocol between the virtual network interfaces. PPP can assign IP addresses to these virtual interfaces, and these IP addresses can be used, for example, to route between the networks on both sides of the tunnel.
IPsec in tunneling mode does not create virtual physical interfaces at the end of the tunnel, since the tunnel is handled directly by the TCP/IP stack. L2TP can be used to provide these interfaces, this technique is called L2TP/IPsec. In this case too, PPP provides IP addresses to the extremities of the tunnel.
PPP is defined in RFC 1661 (The Point-to-Point Protocol, July 1994). RFC 1547 (Requirements for an Internet Standard Point-to-Point Protocol, December 1993) provides historical information about the need for PPP and its development. A series of related RFCs have been written to define how a variety of network control protocols-including TCP/IP, DECnet, AppleTalk, IPX, and others-work with PPP.
Additional drafts: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23511 |
Patterson–Gimlin film
Patterson–Gimlin film (also known as the Patterson film or the PGF) is an American short motion picture of an unidentified subject which the filmmakers have said was a Bigfoot. The footage was shot in 1967 in Northern California, and has since been subjected to many attempts to authenticate or debunk it.
The footage was filmed alongside Bluff Creek, a tributary of the Klamath River, about 25 logging-road miles northwest of Orleans, California, in Del Norte County. The film site is roughly 38 miles south of Oregon and 18 miles east of the Pacific Ocean. For decades, the exact location of the site was lost, primarily because of re-growth of foliage in the streambed after the flood of 1964. It was rediscovered in 2011. It is just south of a north-running segment of the creek informally known as "the bowling alley".
The filmmakers were Roger Patterson (February 14, 1933 – January 15, 1972) and Robert "'Bob" Gimlin (born October 18, 1931). Patterson died of cancer in 1972 and "maintained right to the end that the creature on the film was real". Patterson's friend, Gimlin, has always denied being involved in any part of a hoax with Patterson. Gimlin mostly avoided publicly discussing the subject from at least the early 1970s until about 2005 (except for three appearances), when he began giving interviews and appearing at Bigfoot conferences.
The film is 23.85 feet long (preceded by 76.15 feet of "horseback" footage), has 954 frames, and runs for 59.5 seconds at 16 frames per second. If the film was shot at 18 fps, as Grover Krantz believed, the event lasted 53 seconds. The date was October 20, 1967, according to the filmmakers, although some critics believe it was shot earlier.
Patterson said he became interested in Bigfoot after reading an article about the creature by Ivan T. Sanderson in "True" magazine in December 1959. In 1961 Sanderson published his encyclopedic "Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life," a worldwide survey of accounts of Bigfoot-type creatures, including recent track finds, etc. in the Bluff Creek area, which heightened his interest. Thereafter, Marian Place wrote:
Patterson's book, "Do Abominable Snowmen of America Really Exist?", was self-published in 1966. The book has been characterized as "little more than a collection of newspaper clippings laced together with Patterson's circus-poster style prose". The book, however, contains 20 pages of previously unpublished interviews and letters, 17 drawings by Patterson of the encounters described in the text, 5 hand-drawn maps (rare in subsequent Bigfoot books), and almost 20 photos and illustrations from other sources. It was first reprinted in 1996 by Chris Murphy, and then again re-issued by Murphy in 2005 under the title "The Bigfoot Film Controversy," with 81 pages of additional material by Murphy.
In May/June 1967 Patterson began filming a docudrama or pseudo-documentary about cowboys being led by an old miner and a wise Indian tracker on a hunt for Bigfoot. The storyline called for Patterson, his Indian guide (Gimlin in a wig), and the cowboys to recall in flashbacks the stories of Fred Beck (of the 1924 Ape Canyon incident) and others as they tracked the beast on horseback. For actors and cameraman, Patterson used at least nine volunteer acquaintances, including Gimlin and Bob Heironimus, for three days of shooting, perhaps over the Memorial Day weekend. Patterson would have needed a costume to represent Bigfoot, if the time came to shoot such climactic scenes.
Prior to the October 1967 filming, Patterson apparently visited Los Angeles on these occasions:
Merritt soon moved back to Yakima and became Patterson's neighbor, and later his collaborator on his Bigfoot documentary.
Both Patterson and Gimlin had been rodeo riders and amateur boxers—and local champions in their weight classes. Patterson had played high school football.
In October 1967, Patterson and his friend Gimlin set out for the Six Rivers National Forest in far Northern California. They drove in Gimlin's truck, carrying his provisions and three horses, positioned sideways. Patterson chose the area because of intermittent reports of the creatures in the past, and of their enormous footprints since 1958. (His familiarity with the area and its residents from prior visits may also have been a factor.)
The most recent of these reports was the nearby Blue Creek Mountain track find, which was investigated by journalist John Green, Bigfoot hunter René Dahinden, and archaeologist Don Abbott on and after August 28, 1967. This find was reported to Patterson (via his wife) soon thereafter by Al Hodgson, owner of the Willow Creek Variety Store.
Though Gimlin says he doubted the existence of Sasquatch-like creatures, he agreed to Patterson's insistence that they should not attempt to shoot one.
As their stories went, in the early afternoon of Friday, October 20, 1967, Patterson and Gimlin were riding generally northeast (upstream) on horseback along the east bank of Bluff Creek. At sometime between 1:15 and 1:40 PM, they "came to an overturned tree with a large root system at a turn in the creek, almost as high as a room".
When they rounded it, "there was a logjam—a 'crow's nest'—left over from the flood of '64," and then they spotted the figure behind it nearly simultaneously. It was either "crouching beside the creek to their left" or "standing" there, on the opposite bank. Gimlin later described himself as in a mild state of shock after first seeing the figure.
Patterson initially estimated its height at to , and later raised his estimate to about . Some later analysts, anthropologist Grover Krantz among them, have suggested Patterson's later estimate was about too tall. Gimlin's estimate was .
The film shows what Patterson and Gimlin claimed was a large, hairy, bipedal, apelike figure with short, "silvery brown" or "dark reddish-brown" or "black" hair covering most of its body, including its prominent breasts. The figure in the film generally matches the descriptions of Bigfoot offered by others who claim to have seen one.
Patterson estimated he was about away from the creature at his closest. Patterson said that his horse reared upon sensing the figure, and he spent about 20 seconds extricating himself from the saddle, controlling his horse, getting around to its other side, and getting his camera from a saddlebag before he could run toward the figure while operating his camera. He yelled "Cover me" to Gimlin, "meaning to get the gun out". Gimlin crossed the creek on horseback after Patterson had run well beyond it, riding on a path somewhat to the left of Patterson's and somewhat beyond his position. Perez estimates he came within of "Patty". Then, rifle in hand, he dismounted, but did not point his rifle at the creature.
The figure had walked away from them to a distance of about before Patterson began to run after it. The resulting film (about 59.5 seconds long at 16 fps) is initially quite shaky until Patterson got about from the figure. At that point, the figure glanced over its right shoulder at the men and Patterson fell to his knees; on Krantz's map this corresponds to frame 264. To researcher John Green, Patterson would later characterize the creature's expression as one of "contempt and disgust ... you know how it is when the umpire tells you 'one more word and you're out of the game.' That's the way it felt."
Shortly after this point the steady, middle portion of the film begins, containing the famous look-back frame 352. Patterson said, "it turned a total of I think three times," the other times therefore being before the filming began and/or while he was running with his finger off the trigger. Shortly after glancing over its shoulder on film, the creature disappeared behind a grove of trees for 14 seconds, then reappeared in the film's final 15 seconds after Patterson moved to a better vantage point, fading into the trees again and being lost to view at a distance of as the reel of film ran out.
Gimlin remounted and followed it on horseback, keeping his distance, until it disappeared around a bend in the road three hundred yards away. Patterson called him back at that point, feeling vulnerable on foot without a rifle, because he feared the creature's mate might approach. The entire encounter had lasted less than two minutes.
Next, Gimlin and Patterson rounded up Patterson's horses, which had run off in the opposite direction, downstream, before the filming began. Patterson got his second roll of film from his saddlebag and filmed the tracks. Then the men tracked "Patty" for either one mile or , but "lost it in the heavy undergrowth". They went to their campsite three miles south, picked up plaster, returned to the initial site, measured the creature's step-length, and made two plaster casts, one each of the best-quality right and left prints.
According to Patterson and Gimlin, they were the only witnesses to their brief encounter with what they claimed was a sasquatch. Their statements agree in general, but author Greg Long notes a number of inconsistencies. They offered somewhat different sequences in describing how they and the horses reacted upon seeing the creature. Patterson in particular increased his estimates of the creature's size in subsequent retellings of the encounter. In a different context, Long argues, these discrepancies would probably be considered minor, but given the extraordinary claims made by Patterson and Gimlin, any apparent disagreements in perception or memory are worth noting.
The film's defenders have responded by saying that commercially motivated hoaxers would have "got their stories straight" beforehand so they wouldn't have disagreed immediately upon being interviewed, and on so many points, and so they wouldn't have created a suit and a creature with foreseeably objectionable features and behaviors.
A more serious objection concerns the film's "timeline". This is important because Kodachrome II movie film, as far as is known, could only be developed by a lab containing a $60,000+ machine, and the few West Coast labs known to possess one did not do developing over weekends. Patterson's brother-in-law Al DeAtley claims not to remember where he took the film for development or where he picked it up.
Critics claim that too much happened between the filming (at 1:15 at the earliest) and the filmmakers' arrival in Willow Creek (at 6:30 at the latest). Daegling wrote, "All of the problems with the timeline disappear if the film is shot a few days or hours beforehand. If that is the case, one has to wonder what other details of this story are wrong." The film's defenders retort that although the time window was tight, it was do-able.
Chris Murphy wrote, "I have confirmed with Bob Gimlin that Patterson definitely rode a small quarter horse (which he owned), not his Welsh pony 'Peanuts'. Also, that Patterson had arranged to borrow a horse by the name of 'Chico' from Bob Heironimus for Gimlin to use ... Gimlin did not have a horse that was suitable (old enough) for the expedition." Heironimus stated that Chico (a middle-aged gelding) "wouldn't jump or buck ..."
At approximately 6:30 PM, Patterson and Gimlin met up with Al Hodgson at his variety store in Willow Creek, approximately 54.3 miles south by road, about 28.8 miles by Bluff Creek Road from their camp to the 1967 roadhead by Bluff Creek, and 25.5 miles down California State Route 96 to Willow Creek. Patterson intended to drive on to Eureka to ship his film. Either at that time, or when he arrived in the Eureka/Arcata area, he called Al DeAtley (his brother-in-law in Yakima) and told him to expect the film he was shipping. He requested Hodgson to call Donald Abbott, whom Grover Krantz described as "the only scientist of any stature to have demonstrated any serious interest in the [Bigfoot] subject," hoping he would help them search for the creature by bringing a tracking dog. Hodgson called, but Abbott declined. Krantz argued that this call the same day of the encounter is evidence against a hoax, at least on Patterson's part.
After shipping the film, they headed back toward their camp, where they had left their horses. On their way they "stopped at the Lower Trinity Ranger Station, as planned, arriving about 9:00 p.m. Here they met with Syl McCoy [another friend] and Al Hodgson." At this point Patterson called the daily "Times-Standard" newspaper in Eureka and related his story. They arrived back at their campsite at about midnight. At either 5 or 5:30 the next morning, after it started to rain heavily, Gimlin returned to the filmsite from the camp and covered the other prints with bark to protect them. The cardboard boxes he had been given by Al Hodgson for this purpose and had left outside were so soggy they were useless, so he left them.
When he returned to the camp he and Patterson aborted their plan to remain looking for more evidence and departed for home, fearing the rain would wash out their exit. After attempting to go out along "the low road"—Bluff Creek Road—and finding it blocked by a mudslide, they went instead up the steep Onion Mountain Road, off whose shoulder their truck slipped; extracting it required the (unauthorized) borrowing of a nearby front-end loader. The drive home from their campsite covered about 580 miles, the initial 28.8 miles on a low-speed logging road, and then about 110 miles on twisty Route 96. Driving a truck with three horses, and allowing for occasional stops, it would have taken 13 hours to get home Saturday evening, at an average speed of 45 mph; it would have taken 14.5 hours at a 40 mph average speed.
US Forest Service "Timber Management Assistant" Lyle Laverty said, "I [and his team of three, in a Jeep] passed the site on either Thursday the 19th or Friday the 20th" and noticed no tracks. After reading the news of Patterson's encounter on their weekend break, Laverty and his team returned to the site on Monday, the 23rd, and made six photos of the tracks. (Laverty later served as an Assistant Secretary of the Interior under George W. Bush.) Taxidermist and outdoorsman Robert Titmus went to the site with his sister and brother-in-law nine days later. Titmus made plaster casts of ten successive prints of the creature and, as best he could, plotted Patterson's and the creature's movements on a map.
Grover Krantz writes that "Patterson had the film developed as soon as possible. At first he thought he had brought in proof of Bigfoot's existence and really expected the scientists to accept it. But only a few scientists were willing to even look at the film," usually at showings at scientific organizations. These were usually arranged at the behest of zoologist, author, and media figure Ivan Sanderson, a supporter of Patterson's film. Seven showings occurred, in Vancouver, Manhattan, The Bronx, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. again (all by the end of 1968); then, later, in Beaverton, Oregon. Of those who were quoted, most expressed various reservations, although some were willing to say they were intrigued by it.
Christopher Murphy wrote, "Dahinden traveled to Europe [with the film] in 1971. He visited England, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and Russia. Although scientists in these countries were somewhat more open-minded than those in North America, their findings were basically the same . ... A real glimmer of hope, however, emerged [in Russia, where he met Bayanov, Bourtsev, and their associates]."
Though there was little scientific interest in the film, Patterson was still able to capitalize on it. He made a deal with the BBC, allowing the use of his footage in a docudrama made in return for letting him tour with their docudrama, into which he melded material from his own documentary and additional material he and Al DeAtley filmed. This film was shown in local movie houses around the Pacific Northwest and Midwest. A technique commonly used for nature films called "four-walling" was employed, involving heavy local advertising, mostly on TV, of a few days of showings. It was a modest financial success. Al DeAtley estimated that his 50% of the film's profits amounted to $75,000.
The film generated a fair amount of national publicity. Patterson appeared on a few popular TV talk shows to promote the film and belief in Bigfoot by showing excerpts from it: for instance, on the "Joe Pyne Show" in Los Angeles, in 1967, which covered most of the western US; on Merv Griffin's program, with Krantz offering his analysis of the film; on Joey Bishop's talk show, and also on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show". Articles on the film appeared in "Argosy", "National Wildlife Magazine", and "Reader's Digest".
One radio interview, with Gimlin, by Vancouver-based Jack Webster in November 1967, was partly recorded by John Green and reprinted in Loren Coleman's "Bigfoot!" Patterson also appeared on broadcast interviews on local stations near where his film would be shown during his four-walling tour in 1968.
Patterson subsequently sold overlapping distribution rights for the film to several parties, which resulted in costly legal entanglements.
After Patterson's death, Michael McLeod wrote, "With the consent of Al DeAtley and Patricia Patterson, the film distributor Ron Olson took over the operation of Northwest Research ... and changed its name to the North American Wildlife Research Association. ... He worked full-time compiling reports, soliciting volunteers to join the hunt, and organizing several small expeditions. A Bigfoot trap Olson and his crew built still survives. ... Olson ... continued to lobby the company [American National Enterprises] to produce a Bigfoot film. ... In 1974 ... ANE finally agreed. ... [It was released in 1975,] titled "Bigfoot: Man or Beast". [H]e devised a storyline involving members of a Bigfoot research party. ... The film comes to a frightful end when a Bigfoot terrorized the expedition at night. Olson spent several years exhibiting the film around the country. He planned to make millions with the film, but says it lost money." Olson is profiled in Barbara Wasson's "Sasquatch Apparitions".
On November 25, 1974, CBS broadcast "Monsters! Mystery or Myth", a documentary about the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot. (It was co-produced by the Smithsonian Institution, who cancelled their contract with the producer the next year). The show attracted fifty million viewers. In 1975, Sunn Classic Pictures released "Bigfoot: The Mysterious Monster" aka "The Mysterious Monsters", which remixed parts of "Monsters! Mystery or Myth" another documentary called "Land Of The Yeti", and also included footage from the Patterson–Gimlin film.
Patterson's expensive ($369) 16mm camera had been rented on May 13 from photographer Harold Mattson at Sheppard's Camera Shop in Yakima, but he had kept it longer than the contract had stipulated, and an arrest warrant had been issued for him on October 17; he was actually arrested within weeks of his return from Bluff Creek. After Patterson returned the camera in working order, this charge was ultimately dismissed, in 1969.
While Patterson sought publicity, Gimlin was conspicuous by his absence. He only briefly helped to promote the film and avoided discussing his Bigfoot encounter publicly for many subsequent years; he turned down requests for interviews. He later reported that he had avoided publicity after Patterson and promoter Al DeAtley had broken their agreement to pay him a one-third share of any profits generated by the film. Another factor was that his wife objected to publicity.
Daegling wrote, "Bigfoot advocates emphasize that Patterson remained an active Bigfoot hunter up until his death." For instance, in 1969, he hired a pair of brothers to travel around in a truck chasing down leads to Bigfoot witnesses and interviewing them. Later, in December of that year, he was one of those present in Bossburg, Washington, in the aftermath of the cripplefoot tracks found there. Krantz reports that "[a] few years after the film was made, Patterson received a letter from a man ["a US airman stationed in Thailand"] who assured him a Sasquatch was being held in a Buddhist monastery. Patterson spent most of his remaining money preparing an expedition to retrieve this creature" only to learn it was a hoax. He learned this only after having sent Dennis Jenson fruitlessly to Thailand (where he concluded that the airman was "mentally unbalanced") and then, after receiving a second untrue letter from the man, going himself to Thailand with Jenson.
To obtain money to travel to Thailand, "Patterson called Ron, who had returned to ANE, and sold the company the theatrical rights to the clip for what Olson described as a pretty good sum of money."
Patterson died of Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1972. According to Michael McLeod, Greg Long, and Bill Munns, "A few days before Roger died, he told [Bigfoot-book author Peter] Byrne that in retrospect, ... he [wished he] would have shot the thing and brought out a body instead of a reel of film." According to Grover Krantz and Robert Pyle, years later, Patterson and Gimlin both agreed they should have tried to shoot the creature, both for financial gain and to silence naysayers.
In 1995, almost three decades after the Patterson–Gimlin filming, Greg Long, a technical writer for a technology firm who had a hobby of investigating and writing about Northwest mysteries, started years of interviewing people who knew Patterson, some of whom described him as a liar and a conman.
Greg Long reports that a 1978 legal "settlement gave Dahinden controlling rights—51 percent of the film footage, 51 percent of video cassette rights, and 100 percent of all 952 frames of the footage. Patty Patterson had 100 percent of all TV rights and 49 percent rights in the film footage. Dahinden had ... bought out Gimlin, who himself had received nothing from Patterson; and Mason and Radford, promised part of the profits by Patterson, had nothing to show for their investment or efforts."
Frame 352, the well-known look-back image, is in the public domain, having long been reprinted by others without protest by the copyright holder.
The whereabouts of the original is unknown, although there are several speculations as to what happened to it.
At least seven copies were made of the original film. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23512 |
Paul Valéry
Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry (; 30 October 1871 – 20 July 1945) was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. In addition to his poetry and fiction (drama and dialogues), his interests included aphorisms on art, history, letters, music, and current events. Valéry was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 12 different years.
Valéry was born to a Corsican father and Genoese-Istrian mother in Sète, a town on the Mediterranean coast of the Hérault, but he was raised in Montpellier, a larger urban center close by. After a traditional Roman Catholic education, he studied law at university and then resided in Paris for most of the remainder of his life, where he was, for a while, part of the circle of Stéphane Mallarmé.
In 1900, he married Jeannine Gobillard, a friend of Stéphane Mallarmé's family, who was also a niece of the painter Berthe Morisot. The wedding was a double ceremony in which the bride's cousin, Morisot's daughter, Julie Manet, married the painter . Valéry and Gobillard had three children: Claude, Agathe and François.
Valéry served as a juror with Florence Meyer Blumenthal in awarding the Prix Blumenthal, a grant given between 1919 and 1954 to young French painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians.
Though his earliest publications date from his mid-twenties, Valéry did not become a full-time writer until 1920, when the man for whom he worked as private secretary, a former chief executive of the Havas news agency, Edouard Lebey, died of Parkinson's disease. Until then, Valéry had, briefly, earned his living at the Ministry of War before assuming the relatively flexible post as assistant to the increasingly impaired Lebey, a job he held for some twenty years.
After his election to the Académie française in 1925, Valéry became a tireless public speaker and intellectual figure in French society, touring Europe and giving lectures on cultural and social issues as well as assuming a number of official positions eagerly offered to him by an admiring French nation. He represented France on cultural matters at the League of Nations, and he served on several of its committees, including the sub-committee on Arts and Letters of the Committee on Intellectual Cooperation. The English-language collection "The Outlook for Intelligence" (1989) contains translations of a dozen essays related to these activities.
In 1931, he founded the Collège International de Cannes, a private institution teaching French language and civilization. The Collège is still operating today, offering professional courses for native speakers (for educational certification, law and business) as well as courses for foreign students.
He gave the keynote address at the 1932 German national celebration of the 100th anniversary of the death of Johann Wolfgang Goethe. This was a fitting choice, as Valéry shared Goethe's fascination with science (specifically, biology and optics).
In addition to his activities as a member of the Académie française, he was also a member of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon, and of the "Front national des Ecrivains". In 1937, he was appointed chief executive of what later became the University of Nice. He was the inaugural holder of the Chair of Poetics at the Collège de France.
During World War II, the Vichy regime stripped him of some of these jobs and distinctions because of his quiet refusal to collaborate with Vichy and the German occupation, but Valéry continued, throughout these troubled years, to publish and to be active in French cultural life, especially as a member of the Académie française.
Valéry died in Paris in 1945. He is buried in the cemetery of his native town, Sète, the same cemetery celebrated in his famous poem "Le Cimetière marin".
Valéry is best known as a poet, and he is sometimes considered to be the last of the French symbolists. However, he published fewer than a hundred poems, and none of them drew much attention. On the night of 4 October 1892, during a heavy storm, Paul Valéry underwent an existential crisis, an event that made a huge impact on his writing career. Eventually, around 1898, he quit writing altogether, publishing not a word for nearly twenty years. This hiatus was in part due to the death of his mentor, Stéphane Mallarmé. When, in 1917, he finally broke his 'great silence' with the publication of "La Jeune Parque", he was forty-six years of age.
This obscure, but sublimely musical, masterpiece, of 512 alexandrine lines in rhyming couplets, had taken him four years to complete, and it immediately secured his fame. With "Le Cimetière marin" and "L'Ébauche d'un serpent," it is often considered one of the greatest French poems of the twentieth century.
The title was chosen late in the poem's gestation; it refers to the youngest of the three "Parcae" (the minor Roman deities also called "The Fates"), though for some readers the connection with that mythological figure is tenuous and problematic.
The poem is written in the first person, and is the soliloquy of a young woman contemplating life and death, engagement and withdrawal, love and estrangement, in a setting dominated by the sea, the sky, stars, rocky cliffs, and the rising sun. However, it is also possible to read the poem as an allegory on the way fate moves human affairs or as an attempt to comprehend the horrific violence in Europe at the time of the poem's composition. The poem is not about World War I, but it does try to address the relationships between destruction and beauty, and, in this sense, it resonates with ancient Greek meditations on these matters, especially in the plays of Sophocles and Aeschylus. There are, therefore, evident links with "le Cimetière marin", which is also a seaside meditation on comparably large themes.
Before "la Jeune Parque", Valéry's only publications of note were dialogues, articles, some poems, and a study of Leonardo da Vinci. In 1920 and 1922, he published two slim collections of verses. The first, "Album des vers anciens" (Album of old verses), was a revision of early but beautifully wrought smaller poems, some of which had been published individually before 1900. The second, "Charmes" (from the Latin "carmina", meaning "songs" and also "incantations"), further confirmed his reputation as a major French poet. The collection includes "le Cimetière marin", and many smaller poems with diverse structures. 'Le Cimetière marin' is mentioned or indirectly implied or referred to in at least four of Iris Murdoch's novels, The Unicorn, The Time of the Angels, The Nice and the Good and The Sea, The Sea.
Valéry's technique is quite orthodox in its essentials. His verse rhymes and scans in conventional ways, and it has much in common with the work of Mallarmé. His poem, "Palme", inspired James Merrill's celebrated 1974 poem "Lost in Translation", and his cerebral lyricism also influenced the American poet, Edgar Bowers.
His far more ample prose writings, peppered with many aphorisms and "bons mots", reveal a skeptical outlook on human nature, verging on the cynical. His view of state power was broadly liberal insofar as he believed that state power and infringements on the individual should be severely limited. Although he had flirted with nationalist ideas during the 1890s, he moved away from them by 1899, and believed that European culture owed its greatness to the ethnic diversity and universalism of the Roman Empire. He denounced the myth of "racial purity" and argued that such purity, if it existed, would only lead to stagnation—thus the mixing of races was necessary for progress and cultural development. In "America as a Projection of the European Mind", Valéry remarked that whenever he despaired about Europe's situation, he could "restore some degree of hope only by thinking of
the New World" and mused on the "happy variations" which could result from European "aesthetic ideas filtering into the powerful character of native Mexican art."
Raymond Poincaré, Louis de Broglie, André Gide, Henri Bergson, and Albert Einstein all respected Valéry's thinking and became friendly correspondents. Valéry was often asked to write articles on topics not of his choosing; the resulting intellectual journalism was collected in five volumes titled "Variétés".
Valéry's most striking achievement is perhaps his monumental intellectual diary, called the "Cahiers" (Notebooks). Early every morning of his adult life, he contributed something to the "Cahiers", prompting him to write: "Having dedicated those hours to the life of the mind, I thereby earn the right to be stupid for the rest of the day."
The subjects of his "Cahiers" entries often were, surprisingly, reflections on science and mathematics. In fact, arcane topics in these domains appear to have commanded far more of his considered attention than his celebrated poetry. The "Cahiers" also contain the first drafts of many aphorisms he later included in his books. To date, the "Cahiers" have been published in their entirety only as photostatic reproductions, and only since 1980 have they begun to receive scholarly scrutiny. The "Cahiers" have been translated into English in five volumes published by Peter Lang with the title "Cahiers/Notebooks".
In recent decades Valéry's thought has been considered a touchstone in the field of constructivist epistemology, as noted, for instance, by Jean-Louis Le Moigne in his description of constructivist history.
One of three epigraphs in Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian is from Valéry's Writing at the Yalu River (1895):
"Your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts of pity and cruelty are absurd, committed with no calm, as if they were irresistible. Finally, you fear blood more and more. Blood and time".
In the book "El laberinto de la soledad" from Octavio Paz there are three verses of one of Valéry's poems:
Je pense, sur le bord doré de l’univers
A ce gout de périr qui prend la Pythonisse
En qui mugit l’espoir que le monde finisse.
Oscar-winning Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki's 2013 film "The Wind Rises" and the Japanese novel of the same name (on which the film was partially based) take their title from Valéry's verse "Le vent se lève... il faut tenter de vivre !" ("The wind rises… We must try to live!") in the poem "Le Cimetière marin" ("The Graveyard by the Sea"). The same quote is used in the closing sentences of Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel The Wanting Seed.
In English translation: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23519 |
Proverb
A proverb (from ) is a simple, concrete, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience. Proverbs are often metaphorical and use formulaic language. Collectively, they form a genre of folklore.
Some proverbs exist in more than one language because people borrow them from languages and cultures similar to theirs. In the West, the Bible (including, but not limited to the Book of Proverbs) and medieval Latin (aided by the work of Erasmus) have played a considerable role in distributing proverbs. Not all Biblical proverbs, however, were distributed to the same extent: one scholar has gathered evidence to show that cultures in which the Bible is the "major spiritual book contain between three hundred and five hundred proverbs that stem from the Bible," whereas another shows that, of the 106 most common and widespread proverbs across Europe, eleven are from the Bible. However, almost every culture has its own unique proverbs.
Lord John Russell (c. 1850) observed poetically that a "proverb is the wit of one, and the wisdom of many." But giving the word "proverb" the sort of definition theorists need has proven to be a difficult task, and although scholars often quote Archer Taylor's argument that formulating a scientific "definition of a proverb is too difficult to repay the undertaking... An incommunicable quality tells us this sentence is proverbial and that one is not. Hence no definition will enable us to identify positively a sentence as proverbial," many students of proverbs have attempted to itemize its essential characteristics.
More constructively, Mieder has proposed the following definition, "A proverb is a short, generally known sentence of the folk which contains wisdom, truth, morals, and traditional views in a metaphorical, fixed, and memorizable form and which is handed down from generation to generation". Norrick created a table of distinctive features to distinguish proverbs from idioms, cliches, etc. Prahlad distinguishes proverbs from some other, closely related types of sayings, "True proverbs must further be distinguished from other types of proverbial speech, e.g. proverbial phrases, Wellerisms, maxims, quotations, and proverbial comparisons." Based on Persian proverbs, Zolfaghari and Ameri propose the following definition: "A proverb is a short sentence, which is well-known and at times rhythmic, including advice, sage themes and ethnic experiences, comprising simile, metaphor or irony which is well-known among people for its fluent wording, clarity of expression, simplicity, expansiveness and generality and is used either with or without change."
There are many sayings in English that are commonly referred to as "proverbs", such as weather sayings. Alan Dundes, however, rejects including such sayings among truly proverbs: "Are weather proverbs proverbs? I would say emphatically 'No!'" The definition of "proverb" has also changed over the years. For example, the following was labeled "A Yorkshire proverb" in 1883, but would not be categorized as a proverb by most today, "as throng as Throp's wife when she hanged herself with a dish-cloth". The changing of the definition of "proverb" is also noted in Turkish.
In other languages and cultures, the definition of "proverb" also differs from English. In the Chumburung language of Ghana, ""aŋase" are literal proverbs and "akpare" are metaphoric ones". Among the Bini of Nigeria, there are three words that are used to translate "proverb": "ere, ivbe", and "itan". The first relates to historical events, the second relates to current events, and the third was "linguistic ornamentation in formal discourse". Among the Balochi of Pakistan and Afghanistan, there is a word "batal" for ordinary proverbs and "bassīttuks" for "proverbs with background stories".
There are also language communities that combine proverbs and riddles in some sayings, leading some scholars to create the label "proverb riddles".
Proverbs come from a variety of sources. Some are, indeed, the result of people pondering and crafting language, such as some by Confucius, Plato, Baltasar Gracián, etc. Others are taken from such diverse sources as poetry, stories, songs, commercials, advertisements, movies, literature, etc. A number of the well known sayings of Jesus, Shakespeare, and others have become proverbs, though they were original at the time of their creation, and many of these sayings were not seen as proverbs when they were first coined. Many proverbs are also based on stories, often the end of a story. For example, the proverb "Who will bell the cat?" is from the end of a story about the mice planning how to be safe from the cat.
Some authors have created proverbs in their writings, such as J.R.R. Tolkien, and some of these proverbs have made their way into broader society, such as the bumper sticker pictured below. Similarly, C.S. Lewis' created proverb about a lobster in a pot, from the "Chronicles of Narnia", has also gained currency. In cases like this, deliberately created proverbs for fictional societies have become proverbs in real societies. In a fictional story set in a real society, the movie "Forrest Gump" introduced "Life is like a box of chocolates" into broad society. In at least one case, it appears that a proverb deliberately created by one writer has been naively picked up and used by another who assumed it to be an established Chinese proverb, Ford Madox Ford having picked up a proverb from Ernest Bramah, "It would be hypocrisy to seek for the person of the Sacred Emperor in a Low Tea House."
The proverb with "a longer history than any other recorded proverb in the world", going back to "around 1800 BC" is in a Sumerian clay tablet, "The bitch by her acting too hastily brought forth the blind". Though many proverbs are ancient, they were all newly created at some point by somebody. Sometimes it is easy to detect that a proverb is newly coined by a reference to something recent, such as the Haitian proverb "The fish that is being microwaved doesn't fear the lightning". Similarly, there is a recent Maltese proverb, "wil-muturi, ferh u duluri" "Women and motorcycles are joys and griefs"; the proverb is clearly new, but still formed as a traditional style couplet with rhyme. Also, there is a proverb in the Kafa language of Ethiopia that refers to the forced military conscription of the 1980s, "...the one who hid himself lived to have children." A Mongolian proverb also shows evidence of recent origin, "A beggar who sits on gold; Foam rubber piled on edge." A political candidate in Kenya popularised a new proverb in his 1995 campaign, "Chuth ber" "Immediacy is best". "The proverb has since been used in other contexts to prompt quick action." Over 1,400 new English proverbs are said to have been coined and gained currency in the 20th century. This process of creating proverbs is always ongoing, so that possible new proverbs are being created constantly. Those sayings that are adopted and used by an adequate number of people become proverbs in that society.
Interpreting proverbs is often complex, but is best done in a context. Interpreting proverbs from other cultures is much more difficult than interpreting proverbs in one's own culture. Even within English-speaking cultures, there is difference of opinion on how to interpret the proverb "A rolling stone gathers no moss." Some see it as condemning a person that keeps moving, seeing moss as a positive thing, such as profit; others see the proverb as praising people that keep moving and developing, seeing moss as a negative thing, such as negative habits.
Similarly, among Tajik speakers, the proverb "One hand cannot clap" has two significantly different interpretations. Most see the proverb as promoting teamwork. Others understand it to mean that an argument requires two people. In an extreme example, one researcher working in Ghana found that for a single Akan proverb, twelve different interpretations were given. Proveb interpretation is not automatic, even for people within a culture: Owomoyela tells of a Yoruba radio program that asked people to interpret an unfamiliar Yoruba proverb, "very few people could do so". Siran found that people who had moved out of the traditional Vute-speaking area of Cameroon were not able to interpret Vute proverbs correctly, even though they still spoke Vute. Their interpretations tended to be literal.
Children will sometimes interpret proverbs in a literal sense, not yet knowing how to understand the conventionalized metaphor. Interpretation of proverbs is also affected by injuries and diseases of the brain, "A hallmark of schizophrenia is impaired proverb interpretation."
Proverbs in various languages are found with a wide variety of grammatical structures. In English, for example, we find the following structures (in addition to others):
However, people will often quote only a fraction of a proverb to invoke an entire proverb, e.g. "All is fair" instead of "All is fair in love and war", and "A rolling stone" for "A rolling stone gathers no moss."
The grammar of proverbs is not always the typical grammar of the spoken language, often elements are moved around, to achieve rhyme or focus.
Another type of grammatical construction is the wellerism, a speaker and a quotation, often with an unusual circumstance, such as the following, a representative of a wellerism proverb found in many languages: "The bride couldn't dance; she said, 'The room floor isn't flat.'"
Another type of grammatical structure in proverbs is a short dialogue:
Because many proverbs are both poetic and traditional, they are often passed down in fixed forms. Though spoken language may change, many proverbs are often preserved in conservative, even archaic, form. In English, for example, "betwixt" is not used by many, but a form of it is still heard (or read) in the proverb "There is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip." The conservative form preserves the meter and the rhyme. This conservative nature of proverbs can result in archaic words and grammatical structures being preserved in individual proverbs, as has been documented in Amharic, Greek, Nsenga, Polish, Venda and Hebrew.
In addition, proverbs may still be used in languages which were once more widely known in a society, but are now no longer so widely known. For example, English speakers use some non-English proverbs that are drawn from languages that used to be widely understood by the educated class, e.g. "C'est la vie" from French and "Carpe diem" from Latin.
Proverbs are often handed down through generations. Therefore, "many proverbs refer to old measurements, obscure professions, outdated weapons, unknown plants, animals, names, and various other traditional matters."
Therefore, it is common that they preserve words that become less common and archaic in broader society. Proverbs in solid form—such as murals, carvings, and glass—can be viewed even after the language of their form is no longer widely understood, such as an Anglo-French proverb in a stained glass window in York.
Proverbs are often and easily translated and transferred from one language into another. "There is nothing so uncertain as the derivation of proverbs, the same proverb being often found in all nations, and it is impossible to assign its paternity."
Proverbs are often borrowed across lines of language, religion, and even time. For example, a proverb of the approximate form "No flies enter a mouth that is shut" is currently found in Spain, France, Ethiopia, and many countries in between. It is embraced as a true local proverb in many places and should not be excluded in any collection of proverbs because it is shared by the neighbors. However, though it has gone through multiple languages and millennia, the proverb can be traced back to an ancient Babylonian proverb (Pritchard 1958:146). Another example of a widely spread proverb is "A drowning person clutches at [frogs] foam", found in Peshai of Afghanistan and Orma of Kenya, and presumably places in between.
Proverbs about one hand clapping are common across Asia, from Dari in Afghanistan to Japan. Some studies have been done devoted to the spread of proverbs in certain regions, such as India and her neighbors and Europe. An extreme example of the borrowing and spread of proverbs was the work done to create a corpus of proverbs for Esperanto, where all the proverbs were translated from other languages.
It is often not possible to trace the direction of borrowing a proverb between languages. This is complicated by the fact that the borrowing may have been through plural languages. In some cases, it is possible to make a strong case for discerning the direction of the borrowing based on an artistic form of the proverb in one language, but a prosaic form in another language. For example, in Ethiopia there is a proverb "Of mothers and water, there is none evil." It is found in Amharic, Alaaba language, and Oromo, three languages of Ethiopia:
The Oromo version uses poetic features, such as the initial "ha" in both clauses with the final "-aa" in the same word, and both clauses ending with "-an". Also, both clauses are built with the vowel "a" in the first and last words, but the vowel "i" in the one syllable central word. In contrast, the Amharic and Alaaba versions of the proverb show little evidence of sound-based art.
However, not all languages have proverbs. Proverbs are (nearly) universal across Europe, Asia, and Africa. Some languages in the Pacific have them, such as Maori. Other Pacific languages do not, e.g. "there are no proverbs in Kilivila" of the Trobriand Islands. However, in the New World, there are almost no proverbs: "While proverbs abound in the thousands in most cultures of the world, it remains a riddle why the Native Americans have hardly any proverb tradition at all." Hakamies has examined the matter of whether proverbs are found universally, a universal genre, concluding that they are not.
Proverbs are used in conversation by adults more than children, partially because adults have learned more proverbs than children. Also, using proverbs well is a skill that is developed over years. Additionally, children have not mastered the patterns of metaphorical expression that are invoked in proverb use. Proverbs, because they are indirect, allow a speaker to disagree or give advice in a way that may be less offensive. Studying actual proverb use in conversation, however, is difficult since the researcher must wait for proverbs to happen. An Ethiopian researcher, Tadesse Jaleta Jirata, made headway in such research by attending and taking notes at events where he knew proverbs were expected to be part of the conversations.
Many authors have used proverbs in their writings, for a very wide variety of literary genres: epics, novels, poems, short stories.
Probably the most famous user of proverbs in novels is J. R. R. Tolkien in his "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" series. Herman Melville is noted for creating proverbs in Moby Dick and in his poetry. Also, C. S. Lewis created a dozen proverbs in "The Horse and His Boy", and Mercedes Lackey created dozens for her invented Shin'a'in and Tale'edras cultures; Lackey's proverbs are notable in that they are reminiscent to those of Ancient Asia - e.g. "Just because you feel certain an enemy is lurking behind every bush, it doesn't follow that you are wrong" is like to "Before telling secrets on the road, look in the bushes." These authors are notable for not only using proverbs as integral to the development of the characters and the story line, but also for creating proverbs.
Among medieval literary texts, Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde plays a special role because Chaucer's usage seems to challenge the truth value of proverbs by exposing their epistemological unreliability. Rabelais used proverbs to write an entire chapter of Gargantua.
The patterns of using proverbs in literature can change over time. A study of "classical Chinese novels" found proverb use as frequently as one proverb every 3,500 words in "Water Margin" ("Sui-hu chuan") and one proverb every 4,000 words in "Wen Jou-hsiang". But modern Chinese novels have fewer proverbs by far.
Proverbs (or portions of them) have been the inspiration for titles of books: "The Bigger they Come" by Erle Stanley Gardner, and "Birds of a Feather" (several books with this title), "Devil in the Details" (multiple books with this title). Sometimes a title alludes to a proverb, but does not actually quote much of it, such as "The Gift Horse's Mouth" by Robert Campbell. Some books or stories have titles that are twisted proverbs, anti-proverbs, such as "No use dying over spilled milk", "When life gives you lululemons," and two books titled "Blessed are the Cheesemakers". The twisted proverb of last title was also used in the Monty Python movie Life of Brian, where a person mishears one of Jesus Christ's beatitudes, "I think it was 'Blessed are the cheesemakers.'"
Some books and stories are built around a proverb. Some of Tolkien's books have been analyzed as having "governing proverbs" where "the acton of a book turns on or fulfills a proverbial saying." Some stories have been written with a proverb overtly as an opening, such as "A stitch in time saves nine" at the beginning of "Kitty's Class Day", one of Louisa May Alcott's "Proverb Stories". Other times, a proverb appears at the end of a story, summing up a moral to the story, frequently found in Aesop's Fables, such as "Heaven helps those who help themselves" from "Hercules and the Wagoner". In a novel by the Ivorian novelist Ahmadou Kourouma, "proverbs are used to conclude each chapter".
Proverbs have also been used strategically by poets. Sometimes proverbs (or portions of them or anti-proverbs) are used for titles, such as "A bird in the bush" by Lord Kennet and his stepson Peter Scott and "The blind leading the blind" by Lisa Mueller. Sometimes, multiple proverbs are important parts of poems, such as Paul Muldoon's "Symposium", which begins "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it hold its nose to the grindstone and hunt with the hounds. Every dog has a stitch in time..." In Finnish there are proverb poems written hundreds of years ago. The Turkish poet Refiki wrote an entire poem by stringing proverbs together, which has been translated into English poetically yielding such verses as "Be watchful and be wary, / But seldom grant a boon; / The man who calls the piper / Will also call the tune." Eliza Griswold also created a poem by stringing proverbs together, Libyan proverbs translated into English.
Because proverbs are familiar and often pointed, they have been used by a number of hip-hop poets. This has been true not only in the USA, birthplace of hip-hop, but also in Nigeria. Since Nigeria is so multilingual, hip-hop poets there use proverbs from various languages, mixing them in as it fits their need, sometimes translating the original. For example,
"They forget say ogbon ju agbaralo
They forget that wisdom is greater than power"
Some authors have bent and twisted proverbs, creating anti-proverbs, for a variety of literary effects. For example, in the Harry Potter novels, J. K. Rowling reshapes a standard English proverb into "It's no good crying over spilt potion" and Dumbledore advises Harry not to "count your owls before they are delivered". In a slightly different use of reshaping proverbs, in the Aubrey–Maturin series of historical naval novels by Patrick O'Brian, Capt. Jack Aubrey humorously mangles and mis-splices proverbs, such as "Never count the bear's skin before it is hatched" and "There's a good deal to be said for making hay while the iron is hot." Earlier than O'Brian's Aubrey, Beatrice Grimshaw also used repeated splicings of proverbs in the mouth of an eccentric marquis to create a memorable character in "The Sorcerer's Stone", such as "The proof of the pudding sweeps clean" (p. 109) and "A stitch in time is as good as a mile" (p. 97).
Because proverbs are so much a part of the language and culture, authors have sometimes used proverbs in historical fiction effectively, but anachronistically, before the proverb was actually known. For example, the novel "Ramage and the Rebels", by Dudley Pope is set in approximately 1800. Captain Ramage reminds his adversary "You are supposed to know that it is dangerous to change horses in midstream" (p. 259), with another allusion to the same proverb three pages later. However, the proverb about changing horses in midstream is reliably dated to 1864, so the proverb could not have been known or used by a character from that period.
Some authors have used so many proverbs that there have been entire books written cataloging their proverb usage, such as Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, George Bernard Shaw, Miguel de Cervantes, and Friedrich Nietzsche.
On the non-fiction side, proverbs have also been used by authors for articles that have no connection to the study of proverbs. Some have been used as the basis for book titles, e.g. "I Shop, Therefore I Am: Compulsive Buying and the Search for Self" by April Lane Benson. Some proverbs been used as the basis for article titles, though often in altered form: "All our eggs in a broken basket: How the Human Terrain System is undermining sustainable military cultural competence" and "Should Rolling Stones Worry About Gathering Moss?", "Between a Rock and a Soft Place", and the pair "Verbs of a feather flock together" and "Verbs of a feather flock together II". Proverbs have been noted as common in subtitles of articles such as "Discontinued intergenerational transmission of Czech in Texas: 'Hindsight is better than foresight'." Also, the reverse is found with a proverb (complete or partial) as the title, then an explanatory subtitle, "To Change or Not to Change Horses: The World War II Elections". Many authors have cited proverbs as epigrams at the beginning of their articles, e.g. "'If you want to dismantle a hedge, remove one thorn at a time' Somali proverb" in an article on peacemaking in Somalia. An article about research among the Māori used a Māori proverb as a title, then began the article with the Māori form of the proverb as an epigram "Set the overgrown bush alight and the new flax shoots will spring up", followed by three paragraphs about how the proverb served as a metaphor for the research and the present context. A British proverb has even been used as the title for a doctoral dissertation: "Where there is muck there is brass".
Similarly to other forms of literature, proverbs have also been used as important units of language in drama and films. This is true from the days of classical Greek works to old French to Shakespeare, to 19th Century Spanish, to today. The use of proverbs in drama and film today is still found in languages around the world, including Yorùbá and Igbo of Nigeria.
A film that makes rich use of proverbs is "Forrest Gump", known for both using and creating proverbs. Other studies of the use of proverbs in film include work by Kevin McKenna on the Russian film "Aleksandr Nevsky", Haase's study of an adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood, Elias Dominguez Barajas on the film "Viva Zapata!", and Aboneh Ashagrie on "The Athlete" (a movie in Amharic about Abebe Bikila).
Television programs have also been named with reference to proverbs, usually shortened, such Birds of a Feather and Diff'rent Strokes.
In the case of "Forrest Gump", the screenplay by Eric Roth had more proverbs than the novel by Winston Groom, but for "The Harder They Come", the reverse is true, where the novel derived from the movie by Michael Thelwell has many more proverbs than the movie.
Éric Rohmer, the French film director, directed a series of films, the "Comedies and Proverbs", where each film was based on a proverb: "The Aviator's Wife", "The Perfect Marriage", "Pauline at the Beach", "Full Moon in Paris" (the film's proverb was invented by Rohmer himself: "The one who has two wives loses his soul, the one who has two houses loses his mind."), "The Green Ray", "Boyfriends and Girlfriends".
Movie titles based on proverbs include "Murder Will Out (1939 film)", "Try, Try Again", and "The Harder They Fall". A twisted anti-proverb was the title for a Three Stooges film, "A Bird in the Head". The title of an award-winning Turkish film, Three Monkeys, also invokes a proverb, though the title does not fully quote it.
They have also been used as the titles of plays: "Baby with the Bathwater" by Christopher Durang, "Dog Eat Dog" by Mary Gallagher, and "The Dog in the Manger" by Charles Hale Hoyt. The use of proverbs as titles for plays is not, of course, limited to English plays: "Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée" (A door must be open or closed) by Paul de Musset. Proverbs have also been used in musical dramas, such as "The Full Monty", which has been shown to use proverbs in clever ways. In the lyrics for "Beauty and the Beast", Gaston plays with three proverbs in sequence, "All roads lead to.../The best things in life are.../All's well that ends with...me."
Proverbs are often poetic in and of themselves, making them ideally suited for adapting into songs. Proverbs have been used in music from opera to country to hip-hop. Proverbs have also been used in music in many languages, such as the Akan language the Igede language, and Spanish.
In English the proverb (or rather the beginning of the proverb), If the shoe fits has been used as a title for three albums and five songs. Other English examples of using proverbs in music include Elvis Presley's "Easy come, easy go", Harold Robe's "Never swap horses when you're crossing a stream", Arthur Gillespie's "Absence makes the heart grow fonder", Bob Dylan's "Like a rolling stone", Cher's "Apples don't fall far from the tree". Lynn Anderson made famous a song full of proverbs, "I never promised you a rose garden" (written by Joe South). In choral music, we find Michael Torke's "Proverbs" for female voice and ensemble. A number of Blues musicians have also used proverbs extensively. The frequent use of proverbs in Country music has led to published studies of proverbs in this genre. The Reggae artist Jahdan Blakkamoore has recorded a piece titled "Proverbs Remix". The opera "Maldobrìe" contains careful use of proverbs. An extreme example of many proverbs used in composing songs is a song consisting almost entirely of proverbs performed by Bruce Springsteen, "My best was never good enough". The Mighty Diamonds recorded a song called simply "Proverbs".
The band Fleet Foxes used the proverb painting Netherlandish Proverbs for the cover of their eponymous album Fleet Foxes.
In addition to proverbs being used in songs themselves, some rock bands have used parts of proverbs as their names, such as the Rolling Stones, Bad Company, The Mothers of Invention, Feast or Famine, Of Mice and Men. There have been at least two groups that called themselves "The Proverbs", and there is a hip-hop performer in South Africa known as "Proverb". In addition, many albums have been named with allusions to proverbs, such as "Spilt milk" (a title used by Jellyfish and also Kristina Train), "The more things change" by Machine Head, "Silk purse" by Linda Ronstadt, "Another day, another dollar" by DJ Scream Roccett, "The blind leading the naked" by Violent Femmes, "What's good for the goose is good for the gander" by Bobby Rush, "Resistance is Futile" by Steve Coleman, "Murder will out" by Fan the Fury. The proverb "Feast or famine" has been used as an album title by Chuck Ragan, Reef the Lost Cauze, Indiginus, and DaVinci. Whitehorse mixed two proverbs for the name of their album "Leave no bridge unburned". The band Splinter Group released an album titled "When in Rome, Eat Lions". The band Downcount used a proverb for the name of their tour, "Come and take it".
From ancient times, people around the world have recorded proverbs in visual form. This has been done in two ways. First, proverbs have been "written" to be displayed, often in a decorative manner, such as on pottery, cross-stitch, murals, kangas (East African women's wraps), quilts, a stained glass window, and graffiti.
Secondly, proverbs have often been visually depicted in a variety of media, including paintings, etchings, and sculpture. Jakob Jordaens painted a plaque with a proverb about drunkenness above a drunk man wearing a crown, titled "The King Drinks". Probably the most famous examples of depicting proverbs are the different versions of the paintings "Netherlandish Proverbs" by the father and son Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Pieter Brueghel the Younger, the proverbial meanings of these paintings being the subject of a 2004 conference, which led to a published volume of studies (Mieder 2004a). The same father and son also painted versions of The Blind Leading the Blind, a Biblical proverb. These and similar paintings inspired another famous painting depicting some proverbs and also idioms (leading to a series of additional paintings), such as "Proverbidioms" by T. E. Breitenbach. Another painting inspired by Bruegel's work is by the Chinese artist, Ah To, who created a painting illustrating 81 Cantonese sayings. Corey Barksdale has produced a book of paintings with specific proverbs and pithy quotations. The British artist Chris Gollon has painted a major work entitled "Big Fish Eat Little Fish", a title echoing Bruegel's painting Big Fishes Eat Little Fishes.
Sometimes well-known proverbs are pictured on objects, without a text actually quoting the proverb, such as the three wise monkeys who remind us "Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil". When the proverb is well known, viewers are able to recognize the proverb and understand the image appropriately, but if viewers do not recognize the proverb, much of the effect of the image is lost. For example, there is a Japanese painting in the Bonsai museum in Saitama city that depicted flowers on a dead tree, but only when the curator learned the ancient (and no longer current) proverb "Flowers on a dead tree" did the curator understand the deeper meaning of the painting.
A study of school students found that students remembered proverbs better when there were visual representations of proverbs along with the verbal form of the proverbs.
A bibliography on proverbs in visual form has been prepared by Mieder and Sobieski (1999). Interpreting visual images of proverbs is subjective, but familiarity with the depicted proverb helps.
Some artists have used proverbs and anti-proverbs for titles of their paintings, alluding to a proverb rather than picturing it. For example, Vivienne LeWitt painted a piece titled "If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?", which shows neither foot nor shoe, but a woman counting her money as she contemplates different options when buying vegetables.
In 2018, 13 sculptures depicting Maltese proverbs were installed in open spaces of downtown Valletta.
Cartoonists, both editorial and pure humorists, have often used proverbs, sometimes primarily building on the text, sometimes primarily on the situation visually, the best cartoons combining both. Not surprisingly, cartoonists often twist proverbs, such as visually depicting a proverb literally or twisting the text as an anti-proverb. An example with all of these traits is a cartoon showing a waitress delivering two plates with worms on them, telling the customers, "Two early bird specials... here ya go."
The traditional Three wise monkeys were depicted in Bizarro with different labels. Instead of the negative imperatives, the one with ears covered bore the sign "See and speak evil", the one with eyes covered bore the sign "See and hear evil", etc. The caption at the bottom read "The power of positive thinking." Another cartoon showed a customer in a pharmacy telling a pharmacist, "I'll have an ounce of prevention." The comic strip The Argyle Sweater showed an Egyptian archeologist loading a mummy on the roof of a vehicle, refusing the offer of a rope to tie it on, with the caption "A fool and his mummy are soon parted." The comic One Big Happy showed a conversation where one person repeatedly posed part of various proverb and the other tried to complete each one, resulting in such humorous results as "Don't change horses... unless you can lift those heavy diapers."
Editorial cartoons can use proverbs to make their points with extra force as they can invoke the wisdom of society, not just the opinion of the editors. In an example that invoked a proverb only visually, when a US government agency (GSA) was caught spending money extravagantly, a cartoon showed a black pot labeled "Congress" telling a black kettle labeled "GSA", "Stop wasting the taxpayers' money!" It may have taken some readers a moment of pondering to understand it, but the impact of the message was the stronger for it.
Cartoons with proverbs are so common that Wolfgang Mieder has published a collected volume of them, many of them editorial cartoons. For example, a German editorial cartoon linked a current politician to the Nazis, showing him with a bottle of swastika-labeled wine and the caption "In vino veritas".
One cartoonist very self-consciously drew and wrote cartoons based on proverbs for the University of Vermont student newspaper "The Water Tower", under the title "Proverb place".
Proverbs are frequently used in advertising, often in slightly modified form.
Ford once advertised its Thunderbird with, "One drive is worth a thousand words" (Mieder 2004b: 84). This is doubly interesting since the underlying proverb behind this, "One picture is worth a thousand words," was originally introduced into the English proverb repertoire in an ad for televisions (Mieder 2004b: 83).
A few of the many proverbs adapted and used in advertising include:
The GEICO company has created a series of television ads that are built around proverbs, such as "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush", and "The pen is mightier than the sword", "Pigs may fly/When pigs fly", "If a tree falls in the forest...", and "Words can never hurt you". Doritos made a commercial based on the proverb, "When pigs fly." Many advertisements that use proverbs shorten or amend them, such as, "Think outside the shoebox."
Use of proverbs in advertising is not limited to the English language. Seda Başer Çoban has studied the use of proverbs in Turkish advertising. Tatira has given a number of examples of proverbs used in advertising in Zimbabwe. However, unlike the examples given above in English, all of which are anti-proverbs, Tatira's examples are standard proverbs. Where the English proverbs above are meant to make a potential customer smile, in one of the Zimbabwean examples "both the content of the proverb and the fact that it is phrased as a proverb secure the idea of a secure time-honored relationship between the company and the individuals". When newer buses were imported, owners of older buses compensated by painting a traditional proverb on the sides of their buses, "Going fast does not assure safe arrival".
There are often proverbs that contradict each other, such as "Look before you leap" and "He who hesitates is lost", or "Many hands make light work" and "Too many cooks spoil the broth". These have been labeled "counter proverbs" or "antonymous proverbs". When there are such counter proverbs, each can be used in its own appropriate situation, and neither is intended to be a universal truth. Some pairs of proverbs are fully contradictory: “A messy desk is a sign of intelligence” and “A neat desk is a sign of a sick mind”.
The concept of "counter proverb" is more about pairs of contradictory proverbs than about the use of proverbs to counter each other in an argument. For example, from the Tafi language of Ghana, the following pair of proverbs are counter to each other but are each used in appropriate contexts, "A co-wife who is too powerful for you, you address her as your mother" and "Do not call your mother's co-wife your mother..." In Nepali, there is a set of totally contradictory proverbs: "Religion is victorious and sin erodes" and "Religion erodes and sin is victorious".
Also, the following pair are counter proverbs from the Kasena of Ghana: "It is the patient person who will milk a barren cow" and "The person who would milk a barren cow must prepare for a kick on the forehead". The two contradict each other, whether they are used in an argument or not (though indeed they were used in an argument). But the same work contains an appendix with many examples of proverbs used in arguing for contrary positions, but proverbs that are not inherently contradictory, such as "One is better off with hope of a cow's return than news of its death" countered by "If you don't know a goat [before its death] you mock at its skin". Though this pair was used in a contradictory way in a conversation, they are not a set of "counter proverbs".
Discussing counter proverbs in the Badaga language, Hockings explained that in his large collection "a few proverbs are mutually contradictory... we can be sure that the Badagas do not see the matter that way, and would explain such apparent contradictions by reasoning that proverb "x" is used in one context, while "y" is used in quite another." Comparing Korean proverbs, "when you compare two proverbs, often they will be contradictory." They are used for "a particular situation".
"Counter proverbs" are not the same as a "paradoxical proverb", a proverb that contains a seeming paradox.
In many cultures, proverbs are so important and so prominent that there are proverbs about proverbs, that is, "metaproverbs". The most famous one is from Yoruba of Nigeria, "Proverbs are the horses of speech, if communication is lost we use proverbs to find it," used by Wole Soyinka in "Death and the King's Horsemen". In Mieder's bibliography of proverb studies, there are twelve publications listed as describing metaproverbs. Other metaproverbs include:
There is a growing interest in deliberately using proverbs to achieve goals, usually to support and promote changes in society. Proverbs have also been used for public health promotion, such as promoting breast feeding with a shawl bearing a Swahili proverb "Mother's milk is sweet". Proverbs have also been applied for helping people manage diabetes, to combat prostitution, and for community development., to resolve conflicts, and to slow the transmission of HIV.
The most active field deliberately using proverbs is Christian ministry, where Joseph G. Healey and others have deliberately worked to catalyze the collection of proverbs from smaller languages and the application of them in a wide variety of church-related ministries, resulting in publications of collections and applications. This attention to proverbs by those in Christian ministries is not new, many pioneering proverb collections having been collected and published by Christian workers.
U.S. Navy Captain Edward Zellem pioneered the use of Afghan proverbs as a positive relationship-building tool during the war in Afghanistan, and in 2012 he published two bilingual collections of Afghan proverbs in Dari and English, part of an effort of nationbuilding, followed by a volume of Pashto proverbs in 2014.
There is a longstanding debate among proverb scholars as to whether the cultural values of specific language communities are reflected (to varying degree) in their proverbs. Many claim that the proverbs of a particular culture reflect the values of that specific culture, at least to some degree. Many writers have asserted that the proverbs of their cultures reflect their culture and values; this can be seen in such titles as the following: "An introduction to Kasena society and culture through their proverbs", Prejudice, power, and poverty in Haiti: a study of a nation's culture as seen through its proverbs, Proverbiality and worldview in Maltese and Arabic proverbs, Fatalistic traits in Finnish proverbs, "Vietnamese cultural patterns and values as expressed in proverbs", "The Wisdom and Philosophy of the Gikuyu proverbs: The Kihooto worldview", "Spanish Grammar and Culture through Proverbs," and "How Russian Proverbs Present the Russian National Character". Kohistani has written a thesis to show how understanding Afghan Dari proverbs will help Europeans understand Afghan culture.
However, a number of scholars argue that such claims are not valid. They have used a variety of arguments. Grauberg argues that since many proverbs are so widely circulated they are reflections of broad human experience, not any one culture's unique viewpoint. Related to this line of argument, from a collection of 199 American proverbs, Jente showed that only 10 were coined in the USA, so that most of these proverbs would not reflect uniquely American values. Giving another line of reasoning that proverbs should not be trusted as a simplistic guide to cultural values, Mieder once observed "proverbs come and go, that is, antiquated proverbs with messages and images we no longer relate to are dropped from our proverb repertoire, while new proverbs are created to reflect the mores and values of our time", so old proverbs still in circulation might reflect past values of a culture more than its current values. Also, within any language's proverb repertoire, there may be "counter proverbs", proverbs that contradict each other on the surface (see section above). When examining such counter proverbs, it is difficult to discern an underlying cultural value. With so many barriers to a simple calculation of values directly from proverbs, some feel "one cannot draw conclusions about values of speakers simply from the texts of proverbs".
Many outsiders have studied proverbs to discern and understand cultural values and world view of cultural communities. These outsider scholars are confident that they have gained insights into the local cultures by studying proverbs, but this is not universally accepted.
Seeking empirical evidence to evaluate the question of whether proverbs reflect a culture's values, some have counted the proverbs that support various values. For example, Moon lists what he sees as the top ten core cultural values of the Builsa society of Ghana, as exemplified by proverbs. He found that 18% of the proverbs he analyzed supported the value of being a member of the community, rather than being independent. This was corroboration to other evidence that collective community membership is an important value among the Builsa. In studying Tajik proverbs, Bell notes that the proverbs in his corpus "Consistently illustrate Tajik values" and "The most often observed proverbs reflect the focal and specific values" discerned in the thesis.
A study of English proverbs created since 1900 showed in the 1960s a sudden and significant increase in proverbs that reflected more casual attitudes toward sex. Since the 1960s was also the decade of the Sexual revolution, this shows a strong statistical link between the changed values of the decades and a change in the proverbs coined and used. Another study mining the same volume counted Anglo-American proverbs about religion to show that proverbs indicate attitudes toward religion are going downhill.
There are many examples where cultural values have been explained and illustrated by proverbs. For example, from India, the concept that birth determines one's nature "is illustrated in the oft-repeated proverb: there can be no friendship between grass-eaters and meat-eaters, between a food and its eater". Proverbs have been used to explain and illustrate the Fulani cultural value of "pulaaku". But using proverbs to "illustrate" a cultural value is not the same as using a collection of proverbs to "discern" cultural values. In a comparative study between Spanish and Jordanian proverbs it is defined the social imagination for the mother as an archetype in the context of role transformation and in contrast with the roles of husband, son and brother, in two societies which might be occasionally associated with sexist and /or rural ideologies.
Some scholars have adopted a cautious approach, acknowledging at least a genuine, though limited, link between cultural values and proverbs: "The cultural portrait painted by proverbs may be fragmented, contradictory, or otherwise at variance with reality... but must be regarded not as accurate renderings but rather as tantalizing shadows of the culture which spawned them." There is not yet agreement on the issue of whether, and how much, cultural values are reflected in a culture's proverbs.
It is clear that the Soviet Union believed that proverbs had a direct link to the values of a culture, as they used them to try to create changes in the values of cultures within their sphere of domination. Sometimes they took old Russian proverbs and altered them into socialist forms. These new proverbs promoted Socialism and its attendant values, such as atheism and collectivism, e.g. "Bread is given to us not by Christ, but by machines and collective farms" and "A good harvest is had only by a collective farm." They did not limit their efforts to Russian, but also produced "newly coined proverbs that conformed to socialist thought" in Tajik and other languages of the USSR.
Many proverbs from around the world address matters of ethics and expected of behavior. Therefore, it is not surprising that proverbs are often important texts in religions. The most obvious example is the Book of Proverbs in the Bible. Additional proverbs have also been coined to support religious values, such as the following from Dari of Afghanistan: "In childhood you're playful, In youth you're lustful, In old age you're feeble, So when will you before God be worshipful?"
Clearly proverbs in religion are not limited to monotheists; among the Badagas of India (Sahivite Hindus), there is a traditional proverb "Catch hold of and join with the man who has placed sacred ash [on himself]." Proverbs are widely associated with large religions that draw from sacred books, but they are also used for religious purposes among groups with their own traditional religions, such as the Guji Oromo. The broadest comparative study of proverbs across religions is "The eleven religions and their proverbial lore, a comparative study. A reference book to the eleven surviving major religions of the world" by Selwyn Gurney Champion, from 1945. Some sayings from sacred books also become proverbs, even if they were not obviously proverbs in the original passage of the sacred book. For example, many quote "Be sure your sin will find you out" as a proverb from the Bible, but there is no evidence it was proverbial in its original usage (Numbers 32:23).
Not all religious references in proverbs are positive, some are cynical, such as the Tajik, "Do as the mullah says, not as he does." Also, note the Italian proverb, "One barrel of wine can work more miracles than a church full of saints". An Indian proverb is cynical about devotees of Hinduism, "[Only] When in distress, a man calls on Rama". In the context of Tibetan Buddhism, some Ladakhi proverbs mock the lamas, e.g. "If the lama's own head does not come out cleanly, how will he do the drawing upwards of the dead?... used for deriding the immoral life of the lamas." Proverbs do not have to explicitly mention religion or religious figures to be used to mock a religion, seen in the fact that in a collection of 555 proverbs from the Lur, a Muslim group in Iran, the explanations for 15 of them use illustrations that mock Muslim clerics.
Dammann wrote, "In the [African] traditional religions, specific religious ideas recede into the background... The influence of Islam manifests itself in African proverbs... Christian influences, on the contrary, are rare." If widely true in Africa, this is likely due to the longer presence of Islam in many parts of Africa. Reflection of Christian values is common in Amharic proverbs of Ethiopia, an area that has had a presence of Christianity for well over 1,000 years. The Islamic proverbial reproduction may also be shown in the image of some animals such as the dog. Although dog is portrayed in many European proverbs as the most faithful friend of man, it is represented in some Islamic countries as impure, dirty, vile, cowardly, ungrateful and treacherous, in addition to links to negative human superstitions such as loneliness, indifference and bad luck.
Though much proverb scholarship is done by literary scholars, those studying the human mind have used proverbs in a variety of studies. One of the earliest studies in this field is the "Proverbs Test" by Gorham, developed in 1956. A similar test is being prepared in German. Proverbs have been used to evaluate dementia, study the cognitive development of children, measure the results of brain injuries, and study how the mind processes figurative language.
The study of proverbs is called paremiology which has a variety of uses in the study of such topics as philosophy, linguistics, and folklore. There are several types and styles of proverbs which are analyzed within Paremiology as is the use and misuse of familiar expressions which are not strictly 'proverbial' in the dictionary definition of being fixed sentences
Grigorii Permjakov developed the concept of the core set of proverbs that full members of society know, what he called the "paremiological minimum" (1979). For example, an adult American is expected to be familiar with "Birds of a feather flock together", part of the American paremiological minimum. However, an average adult American is not expected to know "Fair in the cradle, foul in the saddle", an old English proverb that is not part of the current American paremiological minimum. Thinking more widely than merely proverbs, Permjakov observed "every adult Russian language speaker (over 20 years of age) knows no fewer than 800 proverbs, proverbial expressions, popular literary quotations and other forms of cliches". Studies of the paremiological minimum have been done for a limited number of languages, including Russian, Hungarian, Czech, Somali, Nepali, Gujarati, Spanish, Esperanto, Polish, Ukrainian. Two noted examples of attempts to establish a paremiological minimum in America are by Haas (2008) and Hirsch, Kett, and Trefil (1988), the latter more prescriptive than descriptive. There is not yet a recognized standard method for calculating the paremiological minimum, as seen by comparing the various efforts to establish the paremiological minimum in a number of languages.
A seminal work in the study of proverbs is Archer Taylor's "The Proverb" (1931), later republished by Wolfgang Mieder with Taylor's Index included (1985/1934). A good introduction to the study of proverbs is Mieder's 2004 volume, "Proverbs: A Handbook". Mieder has also published a series of bibliography volumes on proverb research, as well as a large number of articles and other books in the field. Stan Nussbaum has edited a large collection on proverbs of Africa, published on a CD, including reprints of out-of-print collections, original collections, and works on analysis, bibliography, and application of proverbs to Christian ministry (1998). Paczolay has compared proverbs across Europe and published a collection of similar proverbs in 55 languages (1997). Mieder edits an academic journal of proverb study, "Proverbium" (), many back issues of which are available online. A volume containing articles on a wide variety of topics touching on proverbs was edited by Mieder and Alan Dundes (1994/1981). "Paremia" is a Spanish-language journal on proverbs, with articles available online. There are also papers on proverbs published in conference proceedings volumes from the annual Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Proverbs in Tavira, Portugal. Mieder has published a two-volume "International Bibliography of Paremiology and Phraseology", with a topical, language, and author index. Mieder has published a bibliography of collections of proverbs from around the world. A broad introduction to proverb study, "Introduction to Paremiology", edited by Hrisztalina Hrisztova-Gotthardt and Melita Aleksa Varga has been published in both hardcover and free open access, with articles by a dozen different authors.
The study of proverbs has been built by a number of notable scholars and contributors. Earlier scholars were more concerned with collecting than analyzing. Desiderius Erasmus was a Latin scholar (1466 – 1536), whose collection of Latin proverbs, known as "Adagia", spread Latin proverbs across Europe. Juan de Mal Lara was a 16th century Spanish scholar, one of his books being 1568 "Philosophia vulgar", the first part of which contains one thousand and one sayings. Hernán Núñez published a collection of Spanish proverbs (1555).
In the 19th century, a growing number of scholars published collections of proverbs, such as Samuel Adalberg who published collections of Yiddish proverbs (1888 & 1890) and Polish proverbs (1889–1894). Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the Anglican bishop in Nigeria, published a collection of Yoruba proverbs (1852). Elias Lönnrot published a collection of Finnish proverbs (1842).
From the 20th century onwards, proverb scholars were involved in not only collecting proverbs, but also analyzing and comparing proverbs. Alan Dundes was a 20th century American folklorist whose scholarly output on proverbs led Wolfgang Mieder to refer to him as a "pioneering paremiologist". Matti Kuusi was a 20th century Finnish paremiologist, the creator of the Matti Kuusi international type system of proverbs. With encouragement from Archer Taylor, he founded the journal "Proverbium: Bulletin d'Information sur les Recherches Parémiologiques", published from 1965 to 1975 by the Society for Finnish Literature, which was later restarted as "Proverbium: International Yearbook of Proverb Scholarship". Archer Taylor was a 20th century American scholar, best known for his "magisterial" book "The Proverb". Dimitrios Loukatos was a 20th century Greek proverb scholar, author of such works as "Aetiological Tales of Modern Greek Proverbs". Arvo Krikmann (1939 – 2017) was an Estonian proverb scholar, whom Wolfgang Mieder called "one of the leading paremiologists in the world" and "master folklorist and paremiologist". Elisabeth Piirainen was a German scholar with 50 proverb-related publications.
Current proverb scholars have continued the trend to be involved in analysis as well as collection of proverbs. Claude Buridant is a 20th century French scholar whose work has concentrated on Romance languages. Galit Hasan-Rokem is an Israeli scholar, associate editor of "Proverbium: The yearbook of international proverb scholarship", since 1984. She has written on proverbs in Jewish traditions. Joseph G. Healey is an American Catholic missionary in Kenya who has led a movement to sponsor African proverb scholars to collect proverbs from their own language communities. This led Wolfgang Mieder to dedicate the "International Bibliography of New and Reprinted Proverb Collections" section of "Proverbium" 32 to Healey. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is a scholar of Jewish history and folklore, including proverbs. Wolfgang Mieder is a German-born proverb scholar who has worked his entire academic career in the USA. He is the editor of ‘’Proverbium’’ and the author of the two volume "International Bibliography of Paremiology and Phraseology". He has been honored by four festschrift publications. He has also been recognized by biographical publications that focused on his scholarship. Dora Sakayan is a scholar who has written about German and Armenian studies, including "Armenian Proverbs: A Paremiological Study with an Anthology of 2,500 Armenian Folk Sayings Selected and Translated into English". An extensive introduction addresses the language and structure, as well as the origin of Armenian proverbs (international, borrowed and specifically Armenian proverbs). Mineke Schipper is a Dutch scholar, best known for her book "Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet - Women in Proverbs from Around the World". Edward Zellem is an American proverb scholar who has edited books of Afghan proverbs, developed a method of collecting proverbs via the Web.
Websites related to the study of proverbs, and some that list regional proverbs: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23529 |
Percopsiformes
The Percopsiformes are a small order of ray-finned fishes, comprising the trout-perch and its allies. It contains just ten extant species, grouped into seven genera and three families. Five of these genera are monotypic
They are generally small fish, ranging from in adult body length. They inhabit freshwater habitats in North America. They are grouped together because of technical characteristics of their internal anatomy, and the different species may appear quite different externally. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23534 |
Photon
The photon is a type of elementary particle. It is the quantum of the electromagnetic field including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are massless, and they always move at the speed of light in vacuum, .
Like all elementary particles, photons are currently best explained by quantum mechanics and exhibit wave–particle duality, their behavior featuring properties of both waves and particles. The modern photon concept originated during the first two decades of the 20th century with the work of Albert Einstein, who built upon the research of Max Planck. While trying to explain how matter and electromagnetic radiation could be in thermal equilibrium with one another, Planck proposed that the energy stored within a material object should be regarded as composed of an integer number of discrete, equal-sized parts. Einstein introduced the idea that light itself is made of discrete units of energy. Experiments validated Einstein's approach, and in 1926, Gilbert N. Lewis popularized the term "photon" for these energy units.
In the Standard Model of particle physics, photons and other elementary particles are described as a necessary consequence of physical laws having a certain symmetry at every point in spacetime. The intrinsic properties of particles, such as charge, mass, and spin, are determined by this gauge symmetry. The photon concept has led to momentous advances in experimental and theoretical physics, including lasers, Bose–Einstein condensation, quantum field theory, and the probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics. It has been applied to photochemistry, high-resolution microscopy, and measurements of molecular distances. Recently, photons have been studied as elements of quantum computers, and for applications in optical imaging and optical communication such as quantum cryptography.
The word "quanta" (singular "quantum," Latin for "how much") was used before 1900 to mean particles or amounts of different quantities, including electricity. In 1900, the German physicist Max Planck was studying black-body radiation, and he suggested that the experimental observations, specifically at shorter wavelengths, would be explained if the energy stored within a molecule was a "discrete quantity composed of an integral number of finite equal parts", which he called "energy elements". In 1905, Albert Einstein published a paper in which he proposed that many light-related phenomena—including black-body radiation and the photoelectric effect—would be better explained by modelling electromagnetic waves as consisting of spatially localized, discrete wave-packets. He called such a wave-packet "the light quantum" (German: "das Lichtquant").
The name "photon" derives from the Greek word for light, "" (transliterated "phôs"). Arthur Compton used "photon" in 1928, referring to Gilbert N. Lewis, who coined the term in a letter to "Nature" on December 18, 1926. The same name was used earlier but was never widely adopted before Lewis: in 1916 by the American physicist and psychologist Leonard T. Troland, in 1921 by the Irish physicist John Joly, in 1924 by the French physiologist René Wurmser (1890–1993), and in 1926 by the French physicist Frithiof Wolfers (1891–1971). The name was suggested initially as a unit related to the illumination of the eye and the resulting sensation of light and was used later in a physiological context. Although Wolfers's and Lewis's theories were contradicted by many experiments and never accepted, the new name was adopted very soon by most physicists after Compton used it.
In physics, a photon is usually denoted by the symbol "γ" (the Greek letter gamma). This symbol for the photon probably derives from gamma rays, which were discovered in 1900 by Paul Villard, named by Ernest Rutherford in 1903, and shown to be a form of electromagnetic radiation in 1914 by Rutherford and Edward Andrade. In chemistry and optical engineering, photons are usually symbolized by "hν", which is the photon energy, where "h" is Planck constant and the Greek letter "ν" (nu) is the photon's frequency. Much less commonly, the photon can be symbolized by "hf", where its frequency is denoted by "f".
A photon is massless, has no electric charge, and is a stable particle. In vacuum, a photon has two possible polarization states. The photon is the gauge boson for electromagnetism, and therefore all other quantum numbers of the photon (such as lepton number, baryon number, and flavour quantum numbers) are zero. Also, the photon does not obey the Pauli exclusion principle, but instead obeys Bose–Einstein statistics.
Photons are emitted in many natural processes. For example, when a charge is accelerated it emits synchrotron radiation. During a molecular, atomic or nuclear transition to a lower energy level, photons of various energy will be emitted, ranging from radio waves to gamma rays. Photons can also be emitted when a particle and its corresponding antiparticle are annihilated (for example, electron–positron annihilation).
In empty space, the photon moves at "c" (the speed of light) and its energy and momentum are related by , where "p" is the magnitude of the momentum vector p. This derives from the following relativistic relation, with :
The energy and momentum of a photon depend only on its frequency ("formula_2") or inversely, its wavelength ("λ"):
where k is the wave vector (where the wave number ), is the angular frequency, and is the reduced Planck constant.
Since p points in the direction of the photon's propagation, the magnitude of the momentum is
The photon also carries a quantity called spin angular momentum that does not depend on its frequency. Because photons always move at the speed of light, the spin is best expressed in terms of the component measured along its direction of motion, its helicity, which must be ±"ħ". These two possible helicities, called right-handed and left-handed, correspond to the two possible circular polarization states of the photon.
To illustrate the significance of these formulae, the annihilation of a particle with its antiparticle in free space must result in the creation of at least "two" photons for the following reason. In the center of momentum frame, the colliding antiparticles have no net momentum, whereas a single photon always has momentum (since, as we have seen, it is determined by the photon's frequency or wavelength, which cannot be zero). Hence, conservation of momentum (or equivalently, translational invariance) requires that at least two photons are created, with zero net momentum. (However, it is possible if the system interacts with another particle or field for the annihilation to produce one photon, as when a positron annihilates with a bound atomic electron, it is possible for only one photon to be emitted, as the nuclear Coulomb field breaks translational symmetry.) The energy of the two photons, or, equivalently, their frequency, may be determined from conservation of four-momentum.
Seen another way, the photon can be considered as its own antiparticle (thus an "antiphoton" is simply a normal photon). The reverse process, pair production, is the dominant mechanism by which high-energy photons such as gamma rays lose energy while passing through matter. That process is the reverse of "annihilation to one photon" allowed in the electric field of an atomic nucleus.
The classical formulae for the energy and momentum of electromagnetic radiation can be re-expressed in terms of photon events. For example, the pressure of electromagnetic radiation on an object derives from the transfer of photon momentum per unit time and unit area to that object, since pressure is force per unit area and force is the change in momentum per unit time.
Each photon carries two distinct and independent forms of angular momentum of light. The spin angular momentum of light of a particular photon is always either +"ħ" or −"ħ".
The light orbital angular momentum of a particular photon can be any integer "N", including zero.
Current commonly accepted physical theories imply or assume the photon to be strictly massless. If the photon is not a strictly massless particle, it would not move at the exact speed of light, "c", in vacuum. Its speed would be lower and depend on its frequency. Relativity would be unaffected by this; the so-called speed of light, "c", would then not be the actual speed at which light moves, but a constant of nature which is the upper bound on speed that any object could theoretically attain in spacetime. Thus, it would still be the speed of spacetime ripples (gravitational waves and gravitons), but it would not be the speed of photons.
If a photon did have non-zero mass, there would be other effects as well. Coulomb's law would be modified and the electromagnetic field would have an extra physical degree of freedom. These effects yield more sensitive experimental probes of the photon mass than the frequency dependence of the speed of light. If Coulomb's law is not exactly valid, then that would allow the presence of an electric field to exist within a hollow conductor when it is subjected to an external electric field. This provides a means for very-high-precision tests of Coulomb's law. A null result of such an experiment has set a limit of .
Sharper upper limits on the speed of light have been obtained in experiments designed to detect effects caused by the galactic vector potential. Although the galactic vector potential is very large because the galactic magnetic field exists on very great length scales, only the magnetic field would be observable if the photon is massless. In the case that the photon has mass, the mass term "m'A'A" would affect the galactic plasma. The fact that no such effects are seen implies an upper bound on the photon mass of . The galactic vector potential can also be probed directly by measuring the torque exerted on a magnetized ring. Such methods were used to obtain the sharper upper limit of (the equivalent of ) given by the Particle Data Group.
These sharp limits from the non-observation of the effects caused by the galactic vector potential have been shown to be model-dependent. If the photon mass is generated via the Higgs mechanism then the upper limit of from the test of Coulomb's law is valid.
In most theories up to the eighteenth century, light was pictured as being made up of particles. Since particle models cannot easily account for the refraction, diffraction and birefringence of light, wave theories of light were proposed by René Descartes (1637), Robert Hooke (1665), and Christiaan Huygens (1678); however, particle models remained dominant, chiefly due to the influence of Isaac Newton. In the early nineteenth century, Thomas Young and August Fresnel clearly demonstrated the interference and diffraction of light and by 1850 wave models were generally accepted. In 1865, James Clerk Maxwell's prediction that light was an electromagnetic wave—which was confirmed experimentally in 1888 by Heinrich Hertz's detection of radio waves—seemed to be the final blow to particle models of light.
The Maxwell wave theory, however, does not account for "all" properties of light. The Maxwell theory predicts that the energy of a light wave depends only on its intensity, not on its frequency; nevertheless, several independent types of experiments show that the energy imparted by light to atoms depends only on the light's frequency, not on its intensity. For example, some chemical reactions are provoked only by light of frequency higher than a certain threshold; light of frequency lower than the threshold, no matter how intense, does not initiate the reaction. Similarly, electrons can be ejected from a metal plate by shining light of sufficiently high frequency on it (the photoelectric effect); the energy of the ejected electron is related only to the light's frequency, not to its intensity.
At the same time, investigations of black-body radiation carried out over four decades (1860–1900) by various researchers culminated in Max Planck's hypothesis that the energy of "any" system that absorbs or emits electromagnetic radiation of frequency "ν" is an integer multiple of an energy quantum . As shown by Albert Einstein, some form of energy quantization "must" be assumed to account for the thermal equilibrium observed between matter and electromagnetic radiation; for this explanation of the photoelectric effect, Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics.
Since the Maxwell theory of light allows for all possible energies of electromagnetic radiation, most physicists assumed initially that the energy quantization resulted from some unknown constraint on the matter that absorbs or emits the radiation. In 1905, Einstein was the first to propose that energy quantization was a property of electromagnetic radiation itself. Although he accepted the validity of Maxwell's theory, Einstein pointed out that many anomalous experiments could be explained if the "energy" of a Maxwellian light wave were localized into point-like quanta that move independently of one another, even if the wave itself is spread continuously over space. In 1909 and 1916, Einstein showed that, if Planck's law of black-body radiation is accepted, the energy quanta must also carry momentum , making them full-fledged particles. This photon momentum was observed experimentally by Arthur Compton, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1927. The pivotal question was then: how to unify Maxwell's wave theory of light with its experimentally observed particle nature? The answer to this question occupied Albert Einstein for the rest of his life, and was solved in quantum electrodynamics and its successor, the Standard Model (see ' and ', below).
Einstein's 1905 predictions were verified experimentally in several ways in the first two decades of the 20th century, as recounted in Robert Millikan's Nobel lecture. However, before Compton's experiment showed that photons carried momentum proportional to their wave number (1922), most physicists were reluctant to believe that electromagnetic radiation itself might be particulate. (See, for example, the Nobel lectures of Wien, Planck and Millikan.) Instead, there was a widespread belief that energy quantization resulted from some unknown constraint on the matter that absorbed or emitted radiation. Attitudes changed over time. In part, the change can be traced to experiments such as Compton scattering, where it was much more difficult not to ascribe quantization to light itself to explain the observed results.
Even after Compton's experiment, Niels Bohr, Hendrik Kramers and John Slater made one last attempt to preserve the Maxwellian continuous electromagnetic field model of light, the so-called BKS theory. An important feature of the BKS theory is how it treated the conservation of energy and the conservation of momentum. In the BKS theory, energy and momentum are only conserved on the average across many interactions between matter and radiation. However, refined Compton experiments showed that the conservation laws hold for individual interactions. Accordingly, Bohr and his co-workers gave their model "as honorable a funeral as possible". Nevertheless, the failures of the BKS model inspired Werner Heisenberg in his development of matrix mechanics.
A few physicists persisted in developing semiclassical models in which electromagnetic radiation is not quantized, but matter appears to obey the laws of quantum mechanics. Although the evidence from chemical and physical experiments for the existence of photons was overwhelming by the 1970s, this evidence could not be considered as "absolutely" definitive; since it relied on the interaction of light with matter, and a sufficiently complete theory of matter could in principle account for the evidence. Nevertheless, "all" semiclassical theories were refuted definitively in the 1970s and 1980s by photon-correlation experiments. Hence, Einstein's hypothesis that quantization is a property of light itself is considered to be proven.
Photons obey the laws of quantum mechanics, and so their behavior has both wave-like and particle-like aspects. When a photon is detected by a measuring instrument, it is registered as a single, particulate unit. However, the "probability" of detecting a photon is calculated by equations that describe waves. This combination of aspects is known as wave–particle duality. For example, the probability distribution for the location at which a photon might be detected displays clearly wave-like phenomena such as diffraction and interference. A single photon passing through a double-slit experiment lands on the screen with a probability distribution given by its interference pattern determined by Maxwell's equations. However, experiments confirm that the photon is "not" a short pulse of electromagnetic radiation; it does not spread out as it propagates, nor does it divide when it encounters a beam splitter. Rather, the photon seems to be a point-like particle since it is absorbed or emitted "as a whole" by arbitrarily small systems, including systems much smaller than its wavelength, such as an atomic nucleus (≈10−15 m across) or even the point-like electron.
While many introductory texts treat photons using the mathematical techniques of non-relativistic quantum mechanics, this is in some ways an awkward oversimplification, as photons are by nature intrinsically relativistic. Because photons have zero rest mass, no wave function defined for a photon can have all the properties familiar from wave functions in non-relativistic quantum mechanics. In order to avoid these difficulties, physicists employ the second-quantized theory of photons described below, quantum electrodynamics, in which photons are quantized excitations of electromagnetic modes.
Another difficulty is finding the proper analogue for the uncertainty principle, an idea frequently attributed to Heisenberg, who introduced the concept in analyzing a thought experiment involving an electron and a high-energy photon. However, Heisenberg did not give precise mathematical definitions of what the "uncertainty" in these measurements meant. The precise mathematical statement of the position–momentum uncertainty principle is due to Kennard, Pauli, and Weyl. The uncertainty principle applies to situations where an experimenter has a choice of measuring either one of two "canonically conjugate" quantities, like the position and the momentum of a particle. According to the uncertainty principle, no matter how the particle is prepared, it is not possible to make a precise prediction for both of the two alternative measurements: if the outcome of the position measurement is made more certain, the outcome of the momentum measurement becomes less so, and vice versa. A coherent state minimizes the overall uncertainty as far as quantum mechanics allows. Quantum optics makes use of coherent states for modes of the electromagnetic field. There is a tradeoff, reminiscent of the position–momentum uncertainty relation, between measurements of an electromagnetic wave's amplitude and its phase. This is sometimes informally expressed in terms of the uncertainty in the number of photons present in the electromagnetic wave, formula_6, and the uncertainty in the phase of the wave, formula_7. However, this cannot be an uncertainty relation of the Kennard–Pauli–Weyl type, since unlike position and momentum, the phase formula_8 cannot be represented by a Hermitian operator.
In 1924, Satyendra Nath Bose derived Planck's law of black-body radiation without using any electromagnetism, but rather by using a modification of coarse-grained counting of phase space. Einstein showed that this modification is equivalent to assuming that photons are rigorously identical and that it implied a "mysterious non-local interaction", now understood as the requirement for a symmetric quantum mechanical state. This work led to the concept of coherent states and the development of the laser. In the same papers, Einstein extended Bose's formalism to material particles (bosons) and predicted that they would condense into their lowest quantum state at low enough temperatures; this Bose–Einstein condensation was observed experimentally in 1995. It was later used by Lene Hau to slow, and then completely stop, light in 1999 and 2001.
The modern view on this is that photons are, by virtue of their integer spin, bosons (as opposed to fermions with half-integer spin). By the spin-statistics theorem, all bosons obey Bose–Einstein statistics (whereas all fermions obey Fermi–Dirac statistics).
In 1916, Albert Einstein showed that Planck's radiation law could be derived from a semi-classical, statistical treatment of photons and atoms, which implies a link between the rates at which atoms emit and absorb photons. The condition follows from the assumption that functions of the emission and absorption of radiation by the atoms are independent of each other, and that thermal equilibrium is made by way of the radiation's interaction with the atoms. Consider a cavity in thermal equilibrium with all parts of itself and filled with electromagnetic radiation and that the atoms can emit and absorb that radiation. Thermal equilibrium requires that the energy density formula_9 of photons with frequency formula_2 (which is proportional to their number density) is, on average, constant in time; hence, the rate at which photons of any particular frequency are "emitted" must equal the rate at which they are "absorbed".
Einstein began by postulating simple proportionality relations for the different reaction rates involved. In his model, the rate formula_11 for a system to "absorb" a photon of frequency formula_2 and transition from a lower energy formula_13 to a higher energy formula_14 is proportional to the number formula_15 of atoms with energy formula_13 and to the energy density formula_9 of ambient photons of that frequency,
where formula_19 is the rate constant for absorption. For the reverse process, there are two possibilities: spontaneous emission of a photon, or the emission of a photon initiated by the interaction of the atom with a passing photon and the return of the atom to the lower-energy state. Following Einstein's approach, the corresponding rate formula_20 for the emission of photons of frequency formula_2 and transition from a higher energy formula_14 to a lower energy formula_13 is
where formula_25 is the rate constant for emitting a photon spontaneously, and formula_26 is the rate constant for emissions in response to ambient photons (induced or stimulated emission). In thermodynamic equilibrium, the number of atoms in state formula_27 and those in state formula_28 must, on average, be constant; hence, the rates formula_11 and formula_20 must be equal. Also, by arguments analogous to the derivation of Boltzmann statistics, the ratio of formula_31 and formula_15 is formula_33 where formula_34 and formula_35 are the degeneracy of the state formula_27 and that of formula_28, respectively, formula_38 and formula_39 their energies, formula_40 the Boltzmann constant and formula_41 the system's temperature. From this, it is readily derived that
formula_42 and
The formula_25 and formula_26 are collectively known as the "Einstein coefficients".
Einstein could not fully justify his rate equations, but claimed that it should be possible to calculate the coefficients formula_25, formula_19 and formula_26 once physicists had obtained "mechanics and electrodynamics modified to accommodate the quantum hypothesis". Not long thereafter, in 1926, Paul Dirac derived the formula_26 rate constants by using a semiclassical approach, and, in 1927, succeeded in deriving "all" the rate constants from first principles within the framework of quantum theory. Dirac's work was the foundation of quantum electrodynamics, i.e., the quantization of the electromagnetic field itself. Dirac's approach is also called "second quantization" or quantum field theory; earlier quantum mechanical treatments only treat material particles as quantum mechanical, not the electromagnetic field.
Einstein was troubled by the fact that his theory seemed incomplete, since it did not determine the "direction" of a spontaneously emitted photon. A probabilistic nature of light-particle motion was first considered by Newton in his treatment of birefringence and, more generally, of the splitting of light beams at interfaces into a transmitted beam and a reflected beam. Newton hypothesized that hidden variables in the light particle determined which of the two paths a single photon would take. Similarly, Einstein hoped for a more complete theory that would leave nothing to chance, beginning his separation from quantum mechanics. Ironically, Max Born's probabilistic interpretation of the wave function was inspired by Einstein's later work searching for a more complete theory.
In 1910, Peter Debye derived Planck's law of black-body radiation from a relatively simple assumption. He decomposed the electromagnetic field in a cavity into its Fourier modes, and assumed that the energy in any mode was an integer multiple of formula_50, where formula_2 is the frequency of the electromagnetic mode. Planck's law of black-body radiation follows immediately as a geometric sum. However, Debye's approach failed to give the correct formula for the energy fluctuations of black-body radiation, which were derived by Einstein in 1909.
In 1925, Born, Heisenberg and Jordan reinterpreted Debye's concept in a key way. As may be shown classically, the Fourier modes of the electromagnetic field—a complete set of electromagnetic plane waves indexed by their wave vector k and polarization state—are equivalent to a set of uncoupled simple harmonic oscillators. Treated quantum mechanically, the energy levels of such oscillators are known to be formula_52, where formula_2 is the oscillator frequency. The key new step was to identify an electromagnetic mode with energy formula_52 as a state with formula_55 photons, each of energy formula_50. This approach gives the correct energy fluctuation formula.
Dirac took this one step further. He treated the interaction between a charge and an electromagnetic field as a small perturbation that induces transitions in the photon states, changing the numbers of photons in the modes, while conserving energy and momentum overall. Dirac was able to derive Einstein's formula_25 and formula_26 coefficients from first principles, and showed that the Bose–Einstein statistics of photons is a natural consequence of quantizing the electromagnetic field correctly (Bose's reasoning went in the opposite direction; he derived Planck's law of black-body radiation by "assuming" B–E statistics). In Dirac's time, it was not yet known that all bosons, including photons, must obey Bose–Einstein statistics.
Dirac's second-order perturbation theory can involve virtual photons, transient intermediate states of the electromagnetic field; the static electric and magnetic interactions are mediated by such virtual photons. In such quantum field theories, the probability amplitude of observable events is calculated by summing over "all" possible intermediate steps, even ones that are unphysical; hence, virtual photons are not constrained to satisfy formula_59, and may have extra polarization states; depending on the gauge used, virtual photons may have three or four polarization states, instead of the two states of real photons. Although these transient virtual photons can never be observed, they contribute measurably to the probabilities of observable events. Indeed, such second-order and higher-order perturbation calculations can give apparently infinite contributions to the sum. Such unphysical results are corrected for using the technique of renormalization.
Other virtual particles may contribute to the summation as well; for example, two photons may interact indirectly through virtual electron–positron pairs. Such photon–photon scattering (see two-photon physics), as well as electron–photon scattering, is meant to be one of the modes of operations of the planned particle accelerator, the International Linear Collider.
In modern physics notation, the quantum state of the electromagnetic field is written as a Fock state, a tensor product of the states for each electromagnetic mode
where formula_61 represents the state in which formula_62 photons are in the mode formula_63. In this notation, the creation of a new photon in mode formula_63 (e.g., emitted from an atomic transition) is written as formula_65. This notation merely expresses the concept of Born, Heisenberg and Jordan described above, and does not add any physics.
The electromagnetic field can be understood as a gauge field, i.e., as a field that results from requiring that a gauge symmetry holds independently at every position in spacetime. For the electromagnetic field, this gauge symmetry is the Abelian U(1) symmetry of complex numbers of absolute value 1, which reflects the ability to vary the phase of a complex field without affecting observables or real valued functions made from it, such as the energy or the Lagrangian.
The quanta of an Abelian gauge field must be massless, uncharged bosons, as long as the symmetry is not broken; hence, the photon is predicted to be massless, and to have zero electric charge and integer spin. The particular form of the electromagnetic interaction specifies that the photon must have spin ±1; thus, its helicity must be formula_66. These two spin components correspond to the classical concepts of right-handed and left-handed circularly polarized light. However, the transient virtual photons of quantum electrodynamics may also adopt unphysical polarization states.
In the prevailing Standard Model of physics, the photon is one of four gauge bosons in the electroweak interaction; the other three are denoted W+, W− and Z0 and are responsible for the weak interaction. Unlike the photon, these gauge bosons have mass, owing to a mechanism that breaks their SU(2) gauge symmetry. The unification of the photon with W and Z gauge bosons in the electroweak interaction was accomplished by Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg, for which they were awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics. Physicists continue to hypothesize grand unified theories that connect these four gauge bosons with the eight gluon gauge bosons of quantum chromodynamics; however, key predictions of these theories, such as proton decay, have not been observed experimentally.
Measurements of the interaction between energetic photons and hadrons show that the interaction is much more intense than expected by the interaction of merely photons with the hadron's electric charge. Furthermore, the interaction of energetic photons with protons is similar to the interaction of photons with neutrons in spite of the fact that the electric charge structures of protons and neutrons are substantially different. A theory called Vector Meson Dominance (VMD) was developed to explain this effect. According to VMD, the photon is a superposition of the pure electromagnetic photon which interacts only with electric charges and vector mesons. However, if experimentally probed at very short distances, the intrinsic structure of the photon is recognized as a flux of quark and gluon components, quasi-free according to asymptotic freedom in QCD and described by the photon structure function. A comprehensive comparison of data with theoretical predictions was presented in a review in 2000.
The energy of a system that emits a photon is "decreased" by the energy formula_67 of the photon as measured in the rest frame of the emitting system, which may result in a reduction in mass in the amount formula_68. Similarly, the mass of a system that absorbs a photon is "increased" by a corresponding amount. As an application, the energy balance of nuclear reactions involving photons is commonly written in terms of the masses of the nuclei involved, and terms of the form formula_68 for the gamma photons (and for other relevant energies, such as the recoil energy of nuclei).
This concept is applied in key predictions of quantum electrodynamics (QED, see above). In that theory, the mass of electrons (or, more generally, leptons) is modified by including the mass contributions of virtual photons, in a technique known as renormalization. Such "radiative corrections" contribute to a number of predictions of QED, such as the magnetic dipole moment of leptons, the Lamb shift, and the hyperfine structure of bound lepton pairs, such as muonium and positronium.
Since photons contribute to the stress–energy tensor, they exert a gravitational attraction on other objects, according to the theory of general relativity. Conversely, photons are themselves affected by gravity; their normally straight trajectories may be bent by warped spacetime, as in gravitational lensing, and their frequencies may be lowered by moving to a higher gravitational potential, as in the Pound–Rebka experiment. However, these effects are not specific to photons; exactly the same effects would be predicted for classical electromagnetic waves.
Light that travels through transparent matter does so at a lower speed than "c", the speed of light in a vacuum. The factor by which the speed is decreased is called the refractive index of the material. In a classical wave picture, the slowing can be explained by the light inducing electric polarization in the matter, the polarized matter radiating new light, and that new light interfering with the original light wave to form a delayed wave. In a particle picture, the slowing can instead be described as a blending of the photon with quantum excitations of the matter to produce quasi-particles known as polariton (see this list for some other quasi-particles); this polariton has a nonzero effective mass, which means that it cannot travel at "c". Light of different frequencies may travel through matter at different speeds; this is called dispersion (not to be confused with scattering). In some cases, it can result in extremely slow speeds of light in matter. The effects of photon interactions with other quasi-particles may be observed directly in Raman scattering and Brillouin scattering.
Photons can be scattered by matter. For example, photons engage in so many collisions on the way from the core of the Sun that radiant energy can take about a million years to reach the surface; however, once in open space, a photon takes only 8.3 minutes to reach Earth.
Photons can also be absorbed by nuclei, atoms or molecules, provoking transitions between their energy levels. A classic example is the molecular transition of retinal (C20H28O), which is responsible for vision, as discovered in 1958 by Nobel laureate biochemist George Wald and co-workers. The absorption provokes a cis–trans isomerization that, in combination with other such transitions, is transduced into nerve impulses. The absorption of photons can even break chemical bonds, as in the photodissociation of chlorine; this is the subject of photochemistry.
Photons have many applications in technology. These examples are chosen to illustrate applications of photons "per se", rather than general optical devices such as lenses, etc. that could operate under a classical theory of light. The laser is an extremely important application and is discussed above under stimulated emission.
Individual photons can be detected by several methods. The classic photomultiplier tube exploits the photoelectric effect: a photon of sufficient energy strikes a metal plate and knocks free an electron, initiating an ever-amplifying avalanche of electrons. Semiconductor charge-coupled device chips use a similar effect: an incident photon generates a charge on a microscopic capacitor that can be detected. Other detectors such as Geiger counters use the ability of photons to ionize gas molecules contained in the device, causing a detectable change of conductivity of the gas.
Planck's energy formula formula_70 is often used by engineers and chemists in design, both to compute the change in energy resulting from a photon absorption and to determine the frequency of the light emitted from a given photon emission. For example, the emission spectrum of a gas-discharge lamp can be altered by filling it with (mixtures of) gases with different electronic energy level configurations.
Under some conditions, an energy transition can be excited by "two" photons that individually would be insufficient. This allows for higher resolution microscopy, because the sample absorbs energy only in the spectrum where two beams of different colors overlap significantly, which can be made much smaller than the excitation volume of a single beam (see two-photon excitation microscopy). Moreover, these photons cause less damage to the sample, since they are of lower energy.
In some cases, two energy transitions can be coupled so that, as one system absorbs a photon, another nearby system "steals" its energy and re-emits a photon of a different frequency. This is the basis of fluorescence resonance energy transfer, a technique that is used in molecular biology to study the interaction of suitable proteins.
Several different kinds of hardware random number generators involve the detection of single photons. In one example, for each bit in the random sequence that is to be produced, a photon is sent to a beam-splitter. In such a situation, there are two possible outcomes of equal probability. The actual outcome is used to determine whether the next bit in the sequence is "0" or "1".
Much research has been devoted to applications of photons in the field of quantum optics. Photons seem well-suited to be elements of an extremely fast quantum computer, and the quantum entanglement of photons is a focus of research. Nonlinear optical processes are another active research area, with topics such as two-photon absorption, self-phase modulation, modulational instability and optical parametric oscillators. However, such processes generally do not require the assumption of photons "per se"; they may often be modeled by treating atoms as nonlinear oscillators. The nonlinear process of spontaneous parametric down conversion is often used to produce single-photon states. Finally, photons are essential in some aspects of optical communication, especially for quantum cryptography.
Two-photon physics studies interactions between photons, which are rare. In 2018, MIT researchers announced the discovery of bound photon triplets, which may involve polaritons.
By date of publication:
Education with single photons: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23535 |
Philipp Franz von Siebold
Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold (17 February 1796 – 18 October 1866) was a German physician, botanist, and traveler. He achieved prominence by his studies of Japanese flora and fauna and the introduction of Western medicine in Japan. He was the father of the first female Japanese doctor, Kusumoto Ine.
Born into a family of doctors and professors of medicine in Würzburg (then in the Bishopric of Würzburg, later part of Bavaria), Siebold initially studied medicine at University of Würzburg from November 1815, where he became a member of the Corps Moenania Würzburg. One of his professors was Franz Xaver Heller (1775–1840), author of the " ("Flora of the Grand Duchy of Würzburg", 1810–1811). Ignaz Döllinger (1770–1841), his professor of anatomy and physiology, however, most influenced him. Döllinger was one of the first professors to understand and treat medicine as a natural science. Siebold stayed with Döllinger, where he came in regular contact with other scientists. He read the books of Humboldt, a famous naturalist and explorer, which probably raised his desire to travel to distant lands. Philipp Franz von Siebold became a physician by earning his M.D. degree in 1820. He initially practiced medicine in Heidingsfeld, in the Kingdom of Bavaria, now part of Würzburg.
Invited to Holland by an acquaintance of his family, Siebold applied for a position as a military physician, which would enable him to travel to the Dutch colonies. He entered the Dutch military service on June 19, 1822, and was appointed as ship's surgeon on the frigate "Adriana", sailing from Rotterdam to Batavia (present-day Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies (now called Indonesia). On his trip to Batavia on the frigate "Adriana", Siebold practiced his knowledge of the Dutch language and also rapidly learned Malay, and during the long voyage he began a collection of marine fauna. He arrived in Batavia on February 18, 1823.
As an army medical officer, Siebold was posted to an artillery unit. However, he was given a room for a few weeks at the residence of the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, Baron Godert van der Capellen, to recover from an illness. With his erudition, he impressed the Governor-General, and also the director of the botanical garden at Buitenzorg (now Bogor), Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt. These men sensed in Siebold a worthy successor to Engelbert Kaempfer and Carl Peter Thunberg, two former resident physicians at Dejima, a Dutch trading post in Japan, the latter of whom was the author of "". The Batavian Academy of Arts and Sciences soon elected Siebold as a member.
On 28 June 1823, after only a few months in the Dutch East Indies, Siebold was posted as resident physician and scientist to Dejima, a small artificial island and trading post at Nagasaki, and arrived there on 11 August 1823. During an eventful voyage to Japan he only just escaped drowning during a typhoon in the East China Sea. As only a very small number of Dutch personnel were allowed to live on this island, the posts of physician and scientist had to be combined. Dejima had been in the possession of the Dutch East India Company (known as the VOC) since the 17th century, but the Company had gone bankrupt in 1798, after which a trading post was operated there by the Dutch state for political considerations, with notable benefits to the Japanese.
The European tradition of sending doctors with botanical training to Japan was a long one. Sent on a mission by the Dutch East India Company, Engelbert Kaempfer (1651–1716), a German physician and botanist who lived in Japan from 1690 until 1692, ushered in this tradition of a combination of physician and botanist. The Dutch East India Company did not, however, actually employ the Swedish botanist and physician Carl Peter Thunberg (1743–1828), who had arrived in Japan in 1775.
Japanese scientists invited Siebold to show them the marvels of western science, and he learned in return through them much about the Japanese and their customs. After curing an influential local officer, Siebold gained the permission to leave the trade post. He used this opportunity to treat Japanese patients in the greater area around the trade post. Siebold is credited with the introduction of vaccination and pathological anatomy for the first time in Japan.
In 1824, Siebold started a medical school in Nagasaki, the "Narutaki-juku", that grew into a meeting place for around fifty "students". They helped him in his botanical and naturalistic studies. The Dutch language became the "lingua franca" (common spoken language) for these academic and scholarly contacts for a generation, until the Meiji Restoration.
His patients paid him in kind with a variety of objects and artifacts that would later gain historical significance. These everyday objects later became the basis of his large ethnographic collection, which consisted of everyday household goods, woodblock prints, tools and hand-crafted objects used by the Japanese people.
During his stay in Japan, Siebold "lived together" with Kusumoto Taki (楠本滝), who gave birth to their daughter Kusumoto (O-)Ine in 1827. Siebold used to call his wife "Otakusa" (probably derived from O-Taki-san) and named a "Hydrangea" after her. Kusumoto Ine eventually became the first Japanese woman known to have received a physician's training and became a highly regarded practicing physician and court physician to the Empress in 1882. She died at court in 1903.
His main interest, however, focused on the study of Japanese fauna and flora. He collected as much material as he could. Starting a small botanical garden behind his home (there was not much room on the small island) Siebold amassed over 1,000 native plants. In a specially built glasshouse he cultivated the Japanese plants to endure the Dutch climate. Local Japanese artists like Kawahara Keiga drew and painted images of these plants, creating botanical illustrations but also images of the daily life in Japan, which complemented his ethnographic collection. He hired Japanese hunters to track rare animals and collect specimens. Many specimens were collected with the help of his Japanese collaborators Keisuke Ito (1803–1901), Mizutani Sugeroku (1779–1833), Ōkochi Zonshin (1796–1882) and Katsuragawa Hoken (1797–1844), a physician to the "shōgun". As well, Siebold's assistant and later successor, Heinrich Bürger (1806–1858), proved to be indispensable in carrying on Siebold's work in Japan.
Siebold first introduced to Europe such familiar garden-plants as the "Hosta" and the "Hydrangea otaksa". Unknown to the Japanese, he was also able to smuggle out germinative seeds of tea plants to the botanical garden "" in Batavia. Through this single act, he started the tea culture in Java, a Dutch colony at the time. Until then Japan had strictly guarded the trade in tea plants. Remarkably, in 1833, Java already could boast a half million tea plants.
He also introduced Japanese knotweed ("Reynoutria japonica", syn. "Fallopia japonica"), which has become a highly invasive weed in Europe and North America. All derive from a single female plant collected by Siebold.
During his stay at Dejima, Siebold sent three shipments with an unknown number of herbarium specimens to Leiden, Ghent, Brussels and Antwerp. The shipment to Leiden contained the first specimens of the Japanese giant salamander ("Andrias japonicus") to be sent to Europe.
In 1825 the government of the Dutch-Indies provided him with two assistants: apothecary and mineralogist Heinrich Bürger (his later successor) and the painter Carl Hubert de Villeneuve. Each would prove to be useful to Siebold's efforts that ranged from ethnographical to botanical to horticultural, when attempting to document the exotic Eastern Japanese experience. De Villeneuve taught Kawahara the techniques of Western painting.
Reportedly, Siebold was not the easiest man to deal with. He was in continuous conflict with his Dutch superiors who felt he was arrogant. This threat of conflict resulted in his recall in July 1827 back to Batavia. But the ship, the "Cornelis Houtman", sent to carry him back to Batavia, was thrown ashore by a typhoon in Nagasaki bay. The same storm badly damaged Dejima and destroyed Siebold's botanical garden. Repaired, the "Cornelis Houtman" was refloated. It left for Batavia with 89 crates of Siebold's salvaged botanical collection, but Siebold himself remained behind in Dejima.
In 1826 Siebold made the court journey to Edo. During this long trip he collected many plants and animals. But he also obtained from the court astronomer Takahashi Kageyasu several detailed maps of Japan and Korea (written by Inō Tadataka), an act strictly forbidden by the Japanese government. When the Japanese discovered, by accident, that Siebold had a map of the northern parts of Japan, the government accused him of high treason and of being a spy for Russia.
The Japanese placed Siebold under house arrest and expelled him from Japan on 22 October 1829. Satisfied that his Japanese collaborators would continue his work, he journeyed back on the frigate "Java" to his former residence, Batavia, in possession of his enormous collection of thousands of animals and plants, his books and his maps. The botanical garden of "" would soon house Siebold's surviving, living flora collection of 2,000 plants. He arrived in the Netherlands on 7 July 1830. His stay in Japan and Batavia had lasted for a period of eight years.
Philipp Franz von Siebold arrived in the Netherlands in 1830, just at a time when political troubles erupted in Brussels, leading soon to Belgian independence. Hastily he salvaged his ethnographic collections in Antwerp and his herbarium specimens in Brussels and took them to Leiden, helped by Johann Baptist Fischer. He left behind his botanical collections of living plants that were sent to the University of Ghent. The consequent expansion of this collection of rare and exotic plants led to the horticultural fame of Ghent. In gratitude the University of Ghent presented him in 1841 with specimens of every plant from his original collection.
Siebold settled in Leiden, taking with him the major part of his collection. The "Philipp Franz von Siebold collection", containing many type specimens, was the earliest botanical collection from Japan. Even today, it still remains a subject of ongoing research, a testimony to the depth of work undertaken by Siebold. It contained about 12,000 specimens, from which he could describe only about 2,300 species. The whole collection was purchased for a handsome amount by the Dutch government. Siebold was also granted a substantial annual allowance by the Dutch King William II and was appointed "Advisor to the King for Japanese Affairs". In 1842, the King even raised Siebold to the nobility as an esquire.
The "Siebold collection" opened to the public in 1831. He founded a museum in his home in 1837. This small, private museum would eventually evolve into the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden. Siebold's successor in Japan, Heinrich Bürger, sent Siebold three more shipments of herbarium specimens collected in Japan. This flora collection formed the basis of the Japanese collections of the National Herbarium of the Netherlands in Leiden, while the zoological specimens Siebold collected were kept by the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie ("National Museum of Natural History") in Leiden, which later became Naturalis. Both institutions merged into Naturalis Biodiversity Center in 2010, which now maintains the entire natural history collection that Siebold brought back to Leiden.
In 1845 Siebold married Helene von Gagern (1820–1877), they had three sons and two daughters.
During his stay in Leiden, Siebold wrote "Nippon" in 1832, the first part of a volume of a richly illustrated ethnographical and geographical work on Japan. The 'Archiv zur Beschreibung Nippons' also contained a report of his journey to the Shogunate Court at Edo. He wrote six further parts, the last ones published posthumously in 1882; his sons published an edited and lower-priced reprint in 1887.
The " appeared between 1833 and 1841. This work was co-authored by Joseph Hoffmann and Kuo Cheng-Chang, a Javanese of Chinese extraction, who had journeyed along with Siebold from Batavia. It contained a survey of Japanese literature and a Chinese, Japanese and Korean dictionary. Siebold's writing on Japanese religion and customs notably shaped early modern European conceptions of Buddhism and Shinto; he notably suggested that Japanese Buddhism was a form of Monotheism.
The zoologists Coenraad Temminck (1777–1858), Hermann Schlegel (1804–1884), and Wilhem de Haan (1801–1855) scientifically described and documented Siebold's collection of Japanese animals. The ', a series of monographs published between 1833 and 1850, was mainly based on Siebold's collection, making the Japanese fauna the best-described non-European fauna – "a remarkable feat". A significant part of the ' was also based on the collections of Siebold's successor on Dejima, Heinrich Bürger.
Siebold wrote his "" in collaboration with the German botanist Joseph Gerhard Zuccarini (1797–1848). It first appeared in 1835, but the work was not completed until after his death, finished in 1870 by F.A.W. Miquel (1811–1871), director of the Rijksherbarium in Leiden. This work expanded Siebold's scientific fame from Japan to Europe.
From the Hortus Botanicus Leiden – the botanical garden of Leiden – many of Siebold's plants spread to Europe and from there to other countries. "Hosta" and "Hortensia", "Azalea", and the Japanese butterbur and the coltsfoot as well as the Japanese larch began to inhabit gardens across the world.
After his return to Europe, Siebold tried to exploit his knowledge of Japan. Whilst living in Boppard, from 1852 he corresponded with Russian diplomats such as Baron von Budberg-Bönninghausen, the Russian ambassador to Prussia, which resulted in an invitation to go to St Petersburg to advise the Russian government how to open trade relations with Japan. Though still employed by the Dutch government he did not inform the Dutch of this voyage until after his return.
American Naval Commodore Matthew C. Perry consulted Siebold in advance of his voyage to Japan in 1854. He notably advised Townsend Harris on how Christianity might be spread to Japan, alleging based on his time there that the Japanese "hated" Christianity.
In 1858, the Japanese government lifted the banishment of Siebold. He returned to Japan in 1859 as an adviser to the Agent of the Dutch Trading Society (Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij) in Nagasaki, Albert Bauduin. After two years the connection with the Trading Society was severed as the advice of Siebold was considered to be of no value. In Nagasaki he fathered another child with one of his female servants.
In 1861 Siebold organised his appointment as an adviser to the Japanese government and went in that function to Edo. There he tried to obtain a position between the foreign representatives and the Japanese government. As he had been specially admonished by the Dutch authorities before going to Japan that he was to abstain from all interference in politics, the Dutch Consul General in Japan, J.K. de Wit, was ordered to ask Siebold's removal. Siebold was ordered to return to Batavia and from there he returned to Europe.
After his return he asked the Dutch government to employ him as Consul General in Japan but the Dutch government severed all relations with Siebold who had a huge debt because of loans given to him, except for the payment of his pension.
Siebold kept trying to organise another voyage to Japan. After he did not succeed in gaining employment with the Russian government, he went to Paris in 1865 to try to interest the French government in funding another expedition to Japan, but failed. He died in Munich on 18 October 1866.
The botanical and horticultural spheres of influence have honored Philipp Franz von Siebold by naming some of the very garden-worthy plants that he studied after him. Examples include:
Though he is well known in Japan, where he is called "Shiboruto-san", and although mentioned in the relevant schoolbooks, Siebold is almost unknown elsewhere, except among gardeners who admire the many plants whose names incorporate "sieboldii" and "sieboldiana". The Hortus Botanicus in Leiden has recently laid out the "Von Siebold Memorial Garden", a Japanese garden with plants sent by Siebold. The garden was laid out under a 150-year-old "Zelkova serrata" tree dating from Siebold's lifetime. Japanese visitors come and visit this garden, to pay their respect for him.
Although he was disillusioned by what he perceived as a lack of appreciation for Japan and his contributions to its understanding, a testimony of the remarkable character of Siebold is found in museums that honor him.
His collections laid the foundation for the ethnographic museums of Munich and Leiden. Alexander von Siebold, his son by his European wife, donated much of the material left behind after Siebold's death in Würzburg to the British Museum in London. The Royal Scientific Academy of St. Petersburg purchased 600 colored plates of the "".
Another son, Heinrich (or Henry) von Siebold (1852–1908), continued part of his father's research. He is recognized, together with Edward S. Morse, as one of the founders of modern archaeological efforts in Japan.
The standard author abbreviation Siebold is used to indicate Philipp Franz von Siebold as the author when citing a botanical name. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23537 |
Probability interpretations
The word probability has been used in a variety of ways since it was first applied to the mathematical study of games of chance. Does probability measure the real, physical tendency of something to occur or is it a measure of how strongly one believes it will occur, or does it draw on both these elements? In answering such questions, mathematicians interpret the probability values of probability theory.
There are two broad categories of probability interpretations which can be called "physical" and "evidential" probabilities. Physical probabilities, which are also called objective or frequency probabilities, are associated with random physical systems such as roulette wheels, rolling dice and radioactive atoms. In such systems, a given type of event (such as a die yielding a six) tends to occur at a persistent rate, or "relative frequency", in a long run of trials. Physical probabilities either explain, or are invoked to explain, these stable frequencies. The two main kinds of theory of physical probability are frequentist accounts (such as those of Venn, Reichenbach and von Mises) and propensity accounts (such as those of Popper, Miller, Giere and Fetzer).
Evidential probability, also called Bayesian probability, can be assigned to any statement whatsoever, even when no random process is involved, as a way to represent its subjective plausibility, or the degree to which the statement is supported by the available evidence. On most accounts, evidential probabilities are considered to be degrees of belief, defined in terms of dispositions to gamble at certain odds. The four main evidential interpretations are the classical (e.g. Laplace's) interpretation, the subjective interpretation (de Finetti and Savage), the epistemic or inductive interpretation (Ramsey, Cox) and the logical interpretation (Keynes and Carnap). There are also evidential interpretations of probability covering groups, which are often labelled as 'intersubjective' (proposed by Gillies and Rowbottom).
Some interpretations of probability are associated with approaches to statistical inference, including theories of estimation and hypothesis testing. The physical interpretation, for example, is taken by followers of "frequentist" statistical methods, such as Ronald Fisher, Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson. Statisticians of the opposing Bayesian school typically accept the existence and importance of physical probabilities, but also consider the calculation of evidential probabilities to be both valid and necessary in statistics. This article, however, focuses on the interpretations of probability rather than theories of statistical inference.
The terminology of this topic is rather confusing, in part because probabilities are studied within a variety of academic fields. The word "frequentist" is especially tricky. To philosophers it refers to a particular theory of physical probability, one that has more or less been abandoned. To scientists, on the other hand, "frequentist probability" is just another name for physical (or objective) probability. Those who promote Bayesian inference view "frequentist statistics" as an approach to statistical inference that recognises only physical probabilities. Also the word "objective", as applied to probability, sometimes means exactly what "physical" means here, but is also used of evidential probabilities that are fixed by rational constraints, such as logical and epistemic probabilities.
The philosophy of probability presents problems chiefly in matters of epistemology and the uneasy interface between mathematical concepts and ordinary language as it is used by non-mathematicians.
Probability theory is an established field of study in mathematics. It has its origins in correspondence discussing the mathematics of games of chance between Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat in the seventeenth century, and was formalized and rendered axiomatic as a distinct branch of mathematics by Andrey Kolmogorov in the twentieth century. In axiomatic form, mathematical statements about probability theory carry the same sort of epistemological confidence within the philosophy of mathematics as are shared by other mathematical statements.
The mathematical analysis originated in observations of the behaviour of game equipment such as playing cards and dice, which are designed specifically to introduce random and equalized elements; in mathematical terms, they are subjects of indifference. This is not the only way probabilistic statements are used in ordinary human language: when people say that ""it will probably rain"", they typically do not mean that the outcome of rain versus not-rain is a random factor that the odds currently favor; instead, such statements are perhaps better understood as qualifying their expectation of rain with a degree of confidence. Likewise, when it is written that "the most probable explanation" of the name of Ludlow, Massachusetts "is that it was named after Roger Ludlow", what is meant here is not that Roger Ludlow is favored by a random factor, but rather that this is the most plausible explanation of the evidence, which admits other, less likely explanations.
Thomas Bayes attempted to provide a logic that could handle varying degrees of confidence; as such, Bayesian probability is an attempt to recast the representation of probabilistic statements as an expression of the degree of confidence by which the beliefs they express are held.
Though probability initially had somewhat mundane motivations, its modern influence and use is widespread ranging from evidence-based medicine, through six sigma, all the way to the probabilistically checkable proof and the string theory landscape.
The first attempt at mathematical rigour in the field of probability, championed by Pierre-Simon Laplace, is now known as the classical definition. Developed from studies of games of chance (such as rolling dice) it states that probability is shared equally between all the possible outcomes, provided these outcomes can be deemed equally likely. (3.1)
This can be represented mathematically as follows:
If a random experiment can result in "N" mutually exclusive and equally likely outcomes and if NA of these outcomes result in the occurrence of the event "A", the probability of "A" is defined by
There are two clear limitations to the classical definition. Firstly, it is applicable only to situations in which there is only a 'finite' number of possible outcomes. But some important random experiments, such as tossing a coin until it rises heads, give rise to an infinite set of outcomes. And secondly, you need to determine in advance that all the possible outcomes are equally likely without relying on the notion of probability to avoid circularity—for instance, by symmetry considerations.
Frequentists posit that the probability of an event is its relative frequency over time, (3.4) i.e., its relative frequency of occurrence after repeating a process a large number of times under similar conditions. This is also known as aleatory probability. The events are assumed to be governed by some random physical phenomena, which are either phenomena that are predictable, in principle, with sufficient information (see determinism); or phenomena which are essentially unpredictable. Examples of the first kind include tossing dice or spinning a roulette wheel; an example of the second kind is radioactive decay. In the case of tossing a fair coin, frequentists say that the probability of getting a heads is 1/2, not because there are two equally likely outcomes but because repeated series of large numbers of trials demonstrate that the empirical frequency converges to the limit 1/2 as the number of trials goes to infinity.
If we denote by formula_2 the number of occurrences of an event formula_3 in formula_4 trials, then if formula_5 we say that "formula_6".
The frequentist view has its own problems. It is of course impossible to actually perform an infinity of repetitions of a random experiment to determine the probability of an event. But if only a finite number of repetitions of the process are performed, different relative frequencies will appear in different series of trials. If these relative frequencies are to define the probability, the probability will be slightly different every time it is measured. But the real probability should be the same every time. If we acknowledge the fact that we only can measure a probability with some error of measurement attached, we still get into problems as the error of measurement can only be expressed as a probability, the very concept we are trying to define. This renders even the frequency definition circular; see for example “What is the Chance of an Earthquake?”
Subjectivists, also known as Bayesians or followers of epistemic probability, give the notion of probability a subjective status by regarding it as a measure of the 'degree of belief' of the individual assessing the uncertainty of a particular situation. Epistemic or subjective probability is sometimes called credence, as opposed to the term chance for a propensity probability.
Some examples of epistemic probability are to assign a probability to the proposition that a proposed law of physics is true or to determine how probable it is that a suspect committed a crime, based on the evidence presented.
Gambling odds don't reflect the bookies' belief in a likely winner, so much as the other bettors' belief, because the bettors are actually betting against one another. The odds are set based on how many people have bet on a possible winner, so that even if the high odds players always win, the bookies will always make their percentages anyway.
The use of Bayesian probability raises the philosophical debate as to whether it can contribute valid justifications of belief.
Bayesians point to the work of Ramsey (p 182) and de Finetti (p 103) as proving that subjective beliefs must follow the laws of probability if they are to be coherent. Evidence casts doubt that humans will have coherent beliefs.
The use of Bayesian probability involves specifying a prior probability. This may be obtained from consideration of whether the required prior probability is greater or lesser than a reference probability associated with an urn model or a thought experiment. The issue is that for a given problem, multiple thought experiments could apply, and choosing one is a matter of judgement: different people may assign different prior probabilities, known as the reference class problem.
The "sunrise problem" provides an example.
Propensity theorists think of probability as a physical propensity, or disposition, or tendency of a given type of physical situation to yield an outcome of a certain kind or to yield a long run relative frequency of such an outcome. This kind of objective probability is sometimes called 'chance'.
Propensities, or chances, are not relative frequencies, but purported causes of the observed stable relative frequencies. Propensities are invoked to explain why repeating a certain kind of experiment will generate given outcome types at persistent rates, which are known as propensities or chances. Frequentists are unable to take this approach, since relative frequencies do not exist for single tosses of a coin, but only for large ensembles or collectives (see "single case possible" in the table above). In contrast, a propensitist is able to use the law of large numbers to explain the behaviour of long-run frequencies. This law, which is a consequence of the axioms of probability, says that if (for example) a coin is tossed repeatedly many times, in such a way that its probability of landing heads is the same on each toss, and the outcomes are probabilistically independent, then the relative frequency of heads will be close to the probability of heads on each single toss. This law allows that stable long-run frequencies are a manifestation of invariant "single-case" probabilities. In addition to explaining the emergence of stable relative frequencies, the idea of propensity is motivated by the desire to make sense of single-case probability attributions in quantum mechanics, such as the probability of decay of a particular atom at a particular time.
The main challenge facing propensity theories is to say exactly what propensity means. (And then, of course, to show that propensity thus defined has the required properties.) At present, unfortunately, none of the well-recognised accounts of propensity comes close to meeting this challenge.
A propensity theory of probability was given by Charles Sanders Peirce. A later propensity theory was proposed by philosopher Karl Popper, who had only slight acquaintance with the writings of C. S. Peirce, however. Popper noted that the outcome of a physical experiment is produced by a certain set of "generating conditions". When we repeat an experiment, as the saying goes, we really perform another experiment with a (more or less) similar set of generating conditions. To say that a set of generating conditions has propensity "p" of producing the outcome "E" means that those exact conditions, if repeated indefinitely, would produce an outcome sequence in which "E" occurred with limiting relative frequency "p". For Popper then, a deterministic experiment would have propensity 0 or 1 for each outcome, since those generating conditions would have same outcome on each trial. In other words, non-trivial propensities (those that differ from 0 and 1) only exist for genuinely nondeterministic experiments.
A number of other philosophers, including David Miller and Donald A. Gillies, have proposed propensity theories somewhat similar to Popper's.
Other propensity theorists (e.g. Ronald Giere) do not explicitly define propensities at all, but rather see propensity as defined by the theoretical role it plays in science. They argued, for example, that physical magnitudes such as electrical charge cannot be explicitly defined either, in terms of more basic things, but only in terms of what they do (such as attracting and repelling other electrical charges). In a similar way, propensity is whatever fills the various roles that physical probability plays in science.
What roles does physical probability play in science? What are its properties? One central property of chance is that, when known, it constrains rational belief to take the same numerical value. David Lewis called this the "Principal Principle", (3.3 & 3.5) a term that philosophers have mostly adopted. For example, suppose you are certain that a particular biased coin has propensity 0.32 to land heads every time it is tossed. What is then the correct price for a gamble that pays $1 if the coin lands heads, and nothing otherwise? According to the Principal Principle, the fair price is 32 cents.
It is widely recognized that the term "probability" is sometimes used in contexts where it has nothing to do with physical randomness. Consider, for example, the claim that the extinction of the dinosaurs was probably caused by a large meteorite hitting the earth. Statements such as "Hypothesis H is probably true" have been interpreted to mean that the (presently available) empirical evidence (E, say) supports H to a high degree. This degree of support of H by E has been called the logical probability of H given E, or the epistemic probability of H given E, or the inductive probability of H given E.
The differences between these interpretations are rather small, and may seem inconsequential. One of the main points of disagreement lies in the relation between probability and belief. Logical probabilities are conceived (for example in Keynes' Treatise on Probability) to be objective, logical relations between propositions (or sentences), and hence not to depend in any way upon belief. They are degrees of (partial) entailment, or degrees of logical consequence, not degrees of belief. (They do, nevertheless, dictate proper degrees of belief, as is discussed below.) Frank P. Ramsey, on the other hand, was skeptical about the existence of such objective logical relations and argued that (evidential) probability is "the logic of partial belief". (p 157) In other words, Ramsey held that epistemic probabilities simply "are" degrees of rational belief, rather than being logical relations that merely "constrain" degrees of rational belief.
Another point of disagreement concerns the "uniqueness" of evidential probability, relative to a given state of knowledge. Rudolf Carnap held, for example, that logical principles always determine a unique logical probability for any statement, relative to any body of evidence. Ramsey, by contrast, thought that while degrees of belief are subject to some rational constraints (such as, but not limited to, the axioms of probability) these constraints usually do not determine a unique value. Rational people, in other words, may differ somewhat in their degrees of belief, even if they all have the same information.
An alternative account of probability emphasizes the role of "prediction" – predicting future observations on the basis of past observations, not on unobservable parameters. In its modern form, it is mainly in the Bayesian vein. This was the main function of probability before the 20th century, but fell out of favor compared to the parametric approach, which modeled phenomena as a physical system that was observed with error, such as in celestial mechanics.
The modern predictive approach was pioneered by Bruno de Finetti, with the central idea of exchangeability – that future observations should behave like past observations. This view came to the attention of the Anglophone world with the 1974 translation of de Finetti's book, and has
since been propounded by such statisticians as Seymour Geisser.
The mathematics of probability can be developed on an entirely axiomatic basis that is independent of any interpretation: see the articles on probability theory and probability axioms for a detailed treatment. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23538 |
Probability axioms
The Kolmogorov axioms are the foundations of probability theory introduced by Andrey Kolmogorov in 1933. These axioms remain central and have direct contributions to mathematics, the physical sciences, and real-world probability cases. An alternative approach to formalising probability, favoured by some Bayesians, is given by Cox's theorem.
The assumptions as to setting up the axioms can be summarised as follows: Let (Ω, "F", "P") be a measure space with "P" being the probability of some event "E", denoted formula_1"," and formula_2 = 1. Then (Ω, "F", "P") is a probability space, with sample space Ω, event space "F" and probability measure "P".
The probability of an event is a non-negative real number:
where formula_4 is the event space. It follows that formula_1 is always finite, in contrast with more general measure theory. Theories which assign negative probability relax the first axiom.
This is the assumption of unit measure: that the probability that at least one of the elementary events in the entire sample space will occur is 1
This is the assumption of σ-additivity:
Some authors consider merely finitely additive probability spaces, in which case one just needs an algebra of sets, rather than a σ-algebra. Quasiprobability distributions in general relax the third axiom.
From the Kolmogorov axioms, one can deduce other useful rules for studying probabilities. The proofs of these rules are a very insightful procedure that illustrates the power the third axiom, and its interaction with the remaining two axioms. Four of the immediate corollaries and their proofs are shown below:
If A is a subset of, or equal to B, then the probability of A is less than, or equal to the probability of B.
In order to verify the monotonicity property, we set formula_10 and formula_11, where formula_12 and formula_13 for formula_14. It is easy to see that the sets formula_15 are pairwise disjoint and formula_16. Hence, we obtain from the third axiom that
Since, by the first axiom, the left-hand side of this equation is a series of non-negative numbers, and since it converges to formula_18 which is finite, we obtain both formula_19 and formula_20.
In some cases, formula_22 is not the only event with probability 0.
As shown in the previous proof, formula_20. However, this statement is seen by contradiction: if formula_24 then the left hand side formula_25 is not less than infinity; formula_26
If formula_27 then we obtain a contradiction, because the sum does not exceed formula_18 which is finite. Thus, formula_29. We have shown as a byproduct of the proof of monotonicity that formula_20.
formula_31
Given formula_32 and formula_33are mutually exclusive and that formula_34:
formula_35 "... (by axiom 3)"
and, formula_36 ... "(by axiom 2)"
formula_37
formula_38
It immediately follows from the monotonicity property that
Given the complement rule formula_40 and "axiom 1" formula_41:
formula_42
formula_43
formula_44
Another important property is:
This is called the addition law of probability, or the sum rule.
That is, the probability that "A" "or" "B" will happen is the sum of the probabilities that "A" will happen and that "B" will happen, minus the probability that both "A" "and" "B" will happen. The proof of this is as follows:
Firstly,
So,
Also,
and eliminating formula_50 from both equations gives us the desired result.
An extension of the addition law to any number of sets is the inclusion–exclusion principle.
Setting "B" to the complement "Ac" of "A" in the addition law gives
That is, the probability that any event will "not" happen (or the event's complement) is 1 minus the probability that it will.
Consider a single coin-toss, and assume that the coin will either land heads (H) or tails (T) (but not both). No assumption is made as to whether the coin is fair.
We may define:
Kolmogorov's axioms imply that:
The probability of "neither" heads "nor" tails, is 0.
The probability of "either" heads "or" tails, is 1.
The sum of the probability of heads and the probability of tails, is 1. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23539 |
Probability theory
Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expressing it through a set of axioms. Typically these axioms formalise probability in terms of a probability space, which assigns a measure taking values between 0 and 1, termed the probability measure, to a set of outcomes called the sample space. Any specified subset of these outcomes is called an event.
Central subjects in probability theory include discrete and continuous random variables, probability distributions, and stochastic processes, which provide mathematical abstractions of non-deterministic or uncertain processes or measured quantities that may either be single occurrences or evolve over time in a random fashion.
Although it is not possible to perfectly predict random events, much can be said about their behavior. Two major results in probability theory describing such behaviour are the law of large numbers and the central limit theorem.
As a mathematical foundation for statistics, probability theory is essential to many human activities that involve quantitative analysis of data. Methods of probability theory also apply to descriptions of complex systems given only partial knowledge of their state, as in statistical mechanics. A great discovery of twentieth-century physics was the probabilistic nature of physical phenomena at atomic scales, described in quantum mechanics.
The earliest known forms of probability and statistics were developed by Arab mathematicians studying cryptography between the 8th and 13th centuries. Al-Khalil (717–786) wrote the "Book of Cryptographic Messages" which contains the first use of permutations and combinations to list all possible Arabic words with and without vowels. Al-Kindi (801–873) made the earliest known use of statistical inference in his work on cryptanalysis and frequency analysis. An important contribution of Ibn Adlan (1187–1268) was on sample size for use of frequency analysis.
The modern mathematical theory of probability has its roots in attempts to analyze games of chance by Gerolamo Cardano in the sixteenth century, and by Pierre de Fermat and Blaise Pascal in the seventeenth century (for example the "problem of points"). Christiaan Huygens published a book on the subject in 1657 and in the 19th century, Pierre Laplace completed what is today considered the classic interpretation.
Initially, probability theory mainly considered events, and its methods were mainly combinatorial. Eventually, analytical considerations compelled the incorporation of variables into the theory.
This culminated in modern probability theory, on foundations laid by Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov. Kolmogorov combined the notion of sample space, introduced by Richard von Mises, and measure theory and presented his axiom system for probability theory in 1933. This became the mostly undisputed axiomatic basis for modern probability theory; but, alternatives exist, such as the adoption of finite rather than countable additivity by Bruno de Finetti.
Most introductions to probability theory treat discrete probability distributions and continuous probability distributions separately. The measure theory-based treatment of probability covers the discrete, continuous, a mix of the two, and more.
Consider an experiment that can produce a number of outcomes. The set of all outcomes is called the "sample space" of the experiment. The "power set" of the sample space (or equivalently, the event space) is formed by considering all different collections of possible results. For example, rolling an honest die produces one of six possible results. One collection of possible results corresponds to getting an odd number. Thus, the subset {1,3,5} is an element of the power set of the sample space of die rolls. These collections are called "events". In this case, {1,3,5} is the event that the die falls on some odd number. If the results that actually occur fall in a given event, that event is said to have occurred.
Probability is a way of assigning every "event" a value between zero and one, with the requirement that the event made up of all possible results (in our example, the event {1,2,3,4,5,6}) be assigned a value of one. To qualify as a probability distribution, the assignment of values must satisfy the requirement that if you look at a collection of mutually exclusive events (events that contain no common results, e.g., the events {1,6}, {3}, and {2,4} are all mutually exclusive), the probability that any of these events occurs is given by the sum of the probabilities of the events.
The probability that any one of the events {1,6}, {3}, or {2,4} will occur is 5/6. This is the same as saying that the probability of event {1,2,3,4,6} is 5/6. This event encompasses the possibility of any number except five being rolled. The mutually exclusive event {5} has a probability of 1/6, and the event {1,2,3,4,5,6} has a probability of 1, that is, absolute certainty.
When doing calculations using the outcomes of an experiment, it is necessary that all those elementary events have a number assigned to them. This is done using a random variable. A random variable is a function that assigns to each elementary event in the sample space a real number. This function is usually denoted by a capital letter. In the case of a die, the assignment of a number to a certain elementary events can be done using the identity function. This does not always work. For example, when flipping a coin the two possible outcomes are "heads" and "tails". In this example, the random variable "X" could assign to the outcome "heads" the number "0" (formula_1) and to the outcome "tails" the number "1" (formula_2).
deals with events that occur in countable sample spaces.
Examples: Throwing dice, experiments with decks of cards, random walk, and tossing coins
Initially the probability of an event to occur was defined as the number of cases favorable for the event, over the number of total outcomes possible in an equiprobable sample space: see Classical definition of probability.
For example, if the event is "occurrence of an even number when a die is rolled", the probability is given by formula_3, since 3 faces out of the 6 have even numbers and each face has the same probability of appearing.
The modern definition starts with a finite or countable set called the sample space, which relates to the set of all "possible outcomes" in classical sense, denoted by formula_4. It is then assumed that for each element formula_5, an intrinsic "probability" value formula_6 is attached, which satisfies the following properties:
That is, the probability function "f"("x") lies between zero and one for every value of "x" in the sample space "Ω", and the sum of "f"("x") over all values "x" in the sample space "Ω" is equal to 1. An is defined as any subset formula_9 of the sample space formula_10. The of the event formula_9 is defined as
So, the probability of the entire sample space is 1, and the probability of the null event is 0.
The function formula_6 mapping a point in the sample space to the "probability" value is called a abbreviated as . The modern definition does not try to answer how probability mass functions are obtained; instead, it builds a theory that assumes their existence.
deals with events that occur in a continuous sample space.
The classical definition breaks down when confronted with the continuous case. See Bertrand's paradox.
If the outcome space of a random variable "X" is the set of real numbers (formula_14) or a subset thereof, then a function called the (or ) formula_15 exists, defined by formula_16. That is, "F"("x") returns the probability that "X" will be less than or equal to "x".
The cdf necessarily satisfies the following properties.
If formula_15 is absolutely continuous, i.e., its derivative exists and integrating the derivative gives us the cdf back again, then the random variable "X" is said to have a or or simply formula_21
For a set formula_22, the probability of the random variable "X" being in formula_9 is
In case the probability density function exists, this can be written as
Whereas the "pdf" exists only for continuous random variables, the "cdf" exists for all random variables (including discrete random variables) that take values in formula_26
These concepts can be generalized for multidimensional cases on formula_27 and other continuous sample spaces.
The "raison d'être" of the measure-theoretic treatment of probability is that it unifies the discrete and the continuous cases, and makes the difference a question of which measure is used. Furthermore, it covers distributions that are neither discrete nor continuous nor mixtures of the two.
An example of such distributions could be a mix of discrete and continuous distributions—for example, a random variable that is 0 with probability 1/2, and takes a random value from a normal distribution with probability 1/2. It can still be studied to some extent by considering it to have a pdf of formula_28, where formula_29 is the Dirac delta function.
Other distributions may not even be a mix, for example, the Cantor distribution has no positive probability for any single point, neither does it have a density. The modern approach to probability theory solves these problems using measure theory to define the probability space:
Given any set formula_10 (also called ) and a σ-algebra formula_31 on it, a measure formula_32 defined on formula_31 is called a if formula_34
If formula_31 is the Borel σ-algebra on the set of real numbers, then there is a unique probability measure on formula_31 for any cdf, and vice versa. The measure corresponding to a cdf is said to be by the cdf. This measure coincides with the pmf for discrete variables and pdf for continuous variables, making the measure-theoretic approach free of fallacies.
The "probability" of a set formula_9 in the σ-algebra formula_31 is defined as
where the integration is with respect to the measure formula_40 induced by formula_41
Along with providing better understanding and unification of discrete and continuous probabilities, measure-theoretic treatment also allows us to work on probabilities outside formula_27, as in the theory of stochastic processes. For example, to study Brownian motion, probability is defined on a space of functions.
When it's convenient to work with a dominating measure, the Radon-Nikodym theorem is used to define a density as the Radon-Nikodym derivative of the probability distribution of interest with respect to this dominating measure. Discrete densities are usually defined as this derivative with respect to a counting measure over the set of all possible outcomes. Densities for absolutely continuous distributions are usually defined as this derivative with respect to the Lebesgue measure. If a theorem can be proved in this general setting, it holds for both discrete and continuous distributions as well as others; separate proofs are not required for discrete and continuous distributions.
Certain random variables occur very often in probability theory because they well describe many natural or physical processes. Their distributions, therefore, have gained "special importance" in probability theory. Some fundamental "discrete distributions" are the discrete uniform, Bernoulli, binomial, negative binomial, Poisson and geometric distributions. Important "continuous distributions" include the continuous uniform, normal, exponential, gamma and beta distributions.
In probability theory, there are several notions of convergence for random variables. They are listed below in the order of strength, i.e., any subsequent notion of convergence in the list implies convergence according to all of the preceding notions.
As the names indicate, weak convergence is weaker than strong convergence. In fact, strong convergence implies convergence in probability, and convergence in probability implies weak convergence. The reverse statements are not always true.
Common intuition suggests that if a fair coin is tossed many times, then "roughly" half of the time it will turn up "heads", and the other half it will turn up "tails". Furthermore, the more often the coin is tossed, the more likely it should be that the ratio of the number of "heads" to the number of "tails" will approach unity. Modern probability theory provides a formal version of this intuitive idea, known as the . This law is remarkable because it is not assumed in the foundations of probability theory, but instead emerges from these foundations as a theorem. Since it links theoretically derived probabilities to their actual frequency of occurrence in the real world, the law of large numbers is considered as a pillar in the history of statistical theory and has had widespread influence.
The (LLN) states that the sample average
of a sequence of independent and
identically distributed random variables formula_59 converges towards their common expectation formula_60, provided that the expectation of formula_61 is finite.
It is in the different forms of convergence of random variables that separates the "weak" and the "strong" law of large numbers
It follows from the LLN that if an event of probability "p" is observed repeatedly during independent experiments, the ratio of the observed frequency of that event to the total number of repetitions converges towards "p".
For example, if formula_66 are independent Bernoulli random variables taking values 1 with probability "p" and 0 with probability 1-"p", then formula_67 for all "i", so that formula_68 converges to "p" almost surely.
"The central limit theorem (CLT) is one of the great results of mathematics." (Chapter 18 in)
It explains the ubiquitous occurrence of the normal distribution in nature.
The theorem states that the average of many independent and identically distributed random variables with finite variance tends towards a normal distribution "irrespective" of the distribution followed by the original random variables. Formally, let formula_50 be independent random variables with mean formula_60 and variance formula_71 Then the sequence of random variables
converges in distribution to a standard normal random variable.
For some classes of random variables the classic central limit theorem works rather fast (see Berry–Esseen theorem), for example the distributions with finite first, second, and third moment from the exponential family; on the other hand, for some random variables of the heavy tail and fat tail variety, it works very slowly or may not work at all: in such cases one may use the Generalized Central Limit Theorem (GCLT). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23542 |
Probability distribution
In probability theory and statistics, a probability distribution is the mathematical function that gives the probabilities of occurrence of different possible outcomes for an experiment.
More specifically, the probability distribution is a mathematical description of a random phenomenon in terms of the probabilities of events.
For instance, if the random variable is used to denote the outcome of a coin toss ("the experiment"), then the probability distribution of would take the value 0.5 for , and 0.5 for (assuming the coin is fair). Examples of random phenomena can include the results of an experiment or survey.
A probability distribution is a mathematical function that has a sample space as its input, and gives a probability as its output. The sample space is the set of all possible outcomes of a random phenomenon being observed; it may be the set of real numbers or a set of vectors, or it may be a list of non-numerical values. For example, the sample space of a coin flip would be .
Probability distributions are generally divided into two classes. A discrete probability distribution (applicable to the scenarios where the set of possible outcomes is discrete, such as a coin toss or a roll of dice) can be encoded by a discrete list of the probabilities of the outcomes, known as a probability mass function. On the other hand, a continuous probability distribution (applicable to the scenarios where the set of possible outcomes can take on values in a continuous range (e.g. real numbers), such as the temperature on a given day) is typically described by probability density functions (with the probability of any individual outcome actually being 0). The normal distribution is a commonly encountered continuous probability distribution. More complex experiments, such as those involving stochastic processes defined in continuous time, may demand the use of more general probability measures.
A probability distribution whose sample space is one-dimensional (for example real numbers, list of labels, ordered labels or binary) is called univariate, while a distribution whose sample space is a vector space of dimension 2 or more is called multivariate. A univariate distribution gives the probabilities of a single random variable taking on various alternative values; a multivariate distribution (a joint probability distribution) gives the probabilities of a random vector – a list of two or more random variables – taking on various combinations of values. Important and commonly encountered univariate probability distributions include the binomial distribution, the hypergeometric distribution, and the normal distribution. The multivariate normal distribution is a commonly encountered multivariate distribution.
To define probability distributions for the simplest cases, it is necessary to distinguish between discrete and continuous random variables. In the discrete case, it is sufficient to specify a probability mass function formula_1 assigning a probability to each possible outcome: for example, when throwing a fair die, each of the six values 1 to 6 has the probability 1/6. The probability of an event is then defined to be the sum of the probabilities of the outcomes that satisfy the event; for example, the probability of the event "the dice rolls an even value" is
In contrast, when a random variable takes values from a continuum then typically, any individual outcome has probability zero and only events that include infinitely many outcomes, such as intervals, can have positive probability. For example, the probability that a given object weighs "exactly" 500 g is zero, because the probability of measuring exactly 500 g tends to zero as the accuracy of our measuring instruments increases. Nevertheless, in quality control one might demand that the probability of a "500 g" package containing between 490 g and 510 g should be no less than 98%, and this demand is less sensitive to the accuracy of measurement instruments.
Continuous probability distributions can be described in several ways. The probability density function describes the infinitesimal probability of any given value, and the probability that the outcome lies in a given interval can be computed by integrating the probability density function over that interval. The probability that the possible values lie in some fixed interval can be related to the way sums converge to an integral; therefore, continuous probability is based on the definition of an integral.
The cumulative distribution function describes the probability that the random variable is no larger than a given value; the probability that the outcome lies in a given interval can be computed by taking the difference between the values of the cumulative distribution function at the endpoints of the interval. The cumulative distribution function is the antiderivative of the probability density function provided that the latter function exists. The cumulative distribution function is the area under the probability density function from minus infinity formula_3 to formula_4 as described by the picture to the right.
Because a probability distribution "P" on the real line is determined by the probability of a scalar random variable "X" being in a half-open interval (−∞, "x"], the probability distribution is completely characterized by its cumulative distribution function:
A discrete probability distribution is a probability distribution that can take on a countable number of values. For the probabilities to add up to 1, they have to decline to zero fast enough. For example, if formula_10 for "n" = 1, 2, ..., the sum of probabilities would be 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + ... = 1.
Well-known discrete probability distributions used in statistical modeling include the Poisson distribution, the Bernoulli distribution, the binomial distribution, the geometric distribution, and the negative binomial distribution. Additionally, the discrete uniform distribution is commonly used in computer programs that make equal-probability random selections between a number of choices.
When a sample (a set of observations) is drawn from a larger population, the sample points have an empirical distribution that is discrete and that provides information about the population distribution.
A measurable function formula_11 between a probability space formula_12 and a measurable space formula_13 is called a discrete random variable provided that its image is a countable set. In this case measurability of formula_5 means that the pre-images of singleton sets are measurable, i.e., formula_15 for all formula_16.
The latter requirement induces a probability mass function formula_17 via formula_18. Since the pre-images of disjoint sets
are disjoint,
This recovers the definition given above.
Equivalently to the above, a discrete random variable can be defined as a random variable whose cumulative distribution function (cdf) increases only by jump discontinuities—that is, its cdf increases only where it "jumps" to a higher value, and is constant between those jumps. Note however that the points where the cdf jumps may form a dense set of the real numbers. The points where jumps occur are precisely the values which the random variable may take.
Consequently, a discrete probability distribution is often represented as a generalized probability density function involving Dirac delta functions, which substantially unifies the treatment of continuous and discrete distributions. This is especially useful when dealing with probability distributions involving both a continuous and a discrete part.
For a discrete random variable "X", let "u"0, "u"1, ... be the values it can take with non-zero probability. Denote
These are disjoint sets, and for such sets
It follows that the probability that "X" takes any value except for "u"0, "u"1, ... is zero, and thus one can write "X" as
except on a set of probability zero, where formula_23 is the indicator function of "A". This may serve as an alternative definition of discrete random variables.
A continuous probability distribution is a probability distribution with a cumulative distribution function that is absolutely continuous. Equivalently, it is a probability distribution on the real numbers that is absolutely continuous with respect to Lebesgue measure. Such distributions can be represented by their probability density functions. If the distribution of "X" is continuous, then "X" is called a continuous random variable. There are many examples of continuous probability distributions: normal, uniform, chi-squared, and others.
Formally, if "X" is a continuous random variable, then it has a probability density function "ƒ"("x"), and therefore its probability of falling into a given interval, say , is given by the integral
In particular, the probability for "X" to take any single value "a" (that is ) is zero, because an integral with coinciding upper and lower limits is always equal to zero.
Note on terminology: some authors use the term "continuous distribution" to denote distributions whose cumulative distribution functions are continuous, rather than absolutely continuous. These distributions are the ones formula_25 such that formula_26 for all formula_27. This definition includes the (absolutely) continuous distributions defined above, but it also includes singular distributions, which are neither absolutely continuous nor discrete nor a mixture of those, and do not have a density. An example is given by the Cantor distribution.
In the measure-theoretic formalization of probability theory, a random variable is defined as a measurable function formula_5 from a probability space formula_29 to a measurable space formula_30. Given that probabilities of events of the form formula_31 satisfy Kolmogorov's probability axioms, the probability distribution of "X" is the pushforward measure formula_32 of formula_5 , which is a probability measure on formula_30 satisfying formula_35.
Most algorithms are based on a pseudorandom number generator that produces numbers "X" that are uniformly distributed in the half-open interval [0,1). These random variates "X" are then transformed via some algorithm to create a new random variate having the required probability distribution. With this source of uniform pseudo-randomness, realizations of any random variable can be generated.
For example, suppose formula_36 has a uniform distribution between 0 and 1. To construct a random Bernoulli variable for some formula_37, we define
{\displaystyle X ={\begin{cases}1,&{\mbox{if }}U
so that
\textrm{P}(X=1) = \textrm{P}(U
This random variable X has a Bernoulli distribution with parameter formula_1. Note that this is a transformation of discrete random variable.
For a distribution function formula_39 of a continuous random variable, a continuous random variable must be constructed. formula_40, an inverse function of formula_39, relates to the uniform variable formula_36:
formula_43
For example, suppose a random variable that has an exponential distribution formula_44 must be constructed.
formula_45
so formula_46 and if formula_36 has a formula_48 distribution, then the random variable formula_5 is defined by formula_50. This has an exponential distribution of formula_51.
A frequent problem in statistical simulations (the Monte Carlo method) is the generation of pseudo-random numbers that are distributed in a given way.
The concept of the probability distribution and the random variables which they describe underlies the mathematical discipline of probability theory, and the science of statistics. There is spread or variability in almost any value that can be measured in a population (e.g. height of people, durability of a metal, sales growth, traffic flow, etc.); almost all measurements are made with some intrinsic error; in physics many processes are described probabilistically, from the kinetic properties of gases to the quantum mechanical description of fundamental particles. For these and many other reasons, simple numbers are often inadequate for describing a quantity, while probability distributions are often more appropriate.
The following is a list of some of the most common probability distributions, grouped by the type of process that they are related to. For a more complete list, see list of probability distributions, which groups by the nature of the outcome being considered (discrete, continuous, multivariate, etc.)
All of the univariate distributions below are singly peaked; that is, it is assumed that the values cluster around a single point. In practice, actually observed quantities may cluster around multiple values. Such quantities can be modeled using a mixture distribution. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23543 |
Psychological statistics
Psychological statistics is application of formulas, theorems, numbers and laws to psychology.
Statistical Methods for psychology include development and application statistical theory and methods for modeling psychological data.
These methods include psychometrics, Factor analysis, Experimental Designs, Multivariate Behavioral Research. The article also discusses journals in the same field Wilcox, R. (2012).
Psychometrics deals with measurement of psychological attributes. It involved developing and applying statistical models for mental measurements (Lord and Novik, ; etc.) The measurement theories are divided into two major areas: (1) Classical test theory; (2) Item Response Theory (Nunnally, J. & Bernstein, I. (1994)).
The classical test theory or true score theory or reliability theory in statistics is a set of statistical procedures useful for development of psychological tests and scales. It is based on fundamental equation
X = T + E
where, X is total score, T is a true score and E is error of measurement. For each participant, it assumes that there exist a true score and it need to be obtained score (X) has to be as close to it as possible (Lord, F. M. , and Novick, M. R. ( 1 968), Raykov, T. & Marcoulides, G.A. (2010) ). The closeness of X has with T is expressed in terms of ratability of the obtained score. The reliability in terms of classical test procedure is correlation between true score and obtained score. The typical test construction procedures has following steps:
(1) Determine the construct
(2) Outline the behavioral domain of the construct
(3) Write 3 to 5 times more items than desired test length
(4) Get item content analyzed by experts and cull items
(5) Obtain data on initial version of the test
(8) After the second cull, make final version
(9) Use it for research
The reliability is computed in specific ways.
(A) Inter-Rater reliability: Inter-Rater reliability is estimate of agreement between independent raters. This is most useful for subjective responses. Cohen's Kappa, Krippendorff's Alpha, Intra-Class correlation coefficients, Correlation coefficients, Kendal's concordance coefficient, etc. are useful statistical tools.
(B) Test-Retest Reliability: Test-Retest Procedure is estimation of temporal consistency of the test. A test is administered twice to the same sample with a time interval. Correlation between two sets of scores is used as an estimate of reliability. Testing conditions are assumed to be identical.
(C) Internal Consistency Reliability: Internal consistency reliability estimates consistency of items with each other. Split-half reliability (Spearman- Brown Prophecy) and Cronbach Alpha are popular estimates of this reliability . (Cronbach LJ (1951)).
(D) Parallel Form Reliability: It is an estimate of consistency between two different instruments of measurement. The inter-correlation between two parallel forms of a test or scale is used as an estimate of parallel form reliability.
Validity of a scale or test is ability of the instrument to measure what it purports to measure (Nunnally, J. & Bernstein, I. (1994)). Construct validity, Content Validity, Criterion Validity are types of validity.
Construct validity is estimated by convergent and discriminant validity and factor analysis. Convergent and discriminant validity are ascertained by correlation between similar of different constructs.
Content Validity: Subject matter experts evaluate content validity.
Criterion Validity is correlation between the test and a criterion variable (or variables) of the construct. Regression analysis, Multiple regression analysis, Logistic regression is used as an estimate of criterion validity.
Software applications: The R software has ‘psych’ package that is useful for classical test theory analysis.
The modern test theory is based on latent trait model. Every item estimates the ability of the test taker. The ability parameter is called as theta (θ). The difficulty parameter is called b. the two important assumptions are local independence and unidimensionality.
The Item Response Theory has three models. They are one parameter logistic model, two parameter logistic model and three parameter logistic model. In addition, Polychromous IRT Model are also useful (Hambleton & Swaminathan, 1985).
The R Software has ‘ltm’, packages useful for IRT analysis.
Factor analysis is at the core of psychological statistics. It has two schools: (1) Exploratory Factor analysis (2) Confirmatory Factor analysis
The exploratory factor analysis begins without a theory or with a very tentative theory. It is a dimension reduction technique. It is useful in psychometrics, multivariate analysis of data and data analytics.
Typically a k-dimensional correlation matrix or covariance matrix of variables is reduced to k X r factor pattern matrix where r < k. Principal Component analysis and common factor analysis are two ways of extracting data. Principal axis factoring, ML factor analysis, alpha factor analysis and image factor analysis is most useful ways of EFA.
It employees various factor rotation methods which can be classified into orthogonal (resulting in uncorrelated factors) and oblique (resulting correlated factors).
The ‘psych’ package in R is useful for EFA.
Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) is factor analytic technique that begins with theory and test the theory by carrying out factor analysis.
The CFA is also called as latent structure analysis, which considers factor as latent variables causing actual observable variables. The basic equation of the CFA is
X = Λξ + δ
where, X is observed variables, Λ are structural coefficients, ξ are latent variables (factors) and δ are errors.
The parameters are estimated using ML methods however; other methods of estimation are also available. The chi-square test is very sensitive and hence various fit measures are used (Bollen,1989, Loehlin, 1992).
R package ‘sem’, ‘lavaan’ are useful for the same.
Experimental Methods are very popular in psychology. It has more than 100 years tradition. Experimental psychology has a status of sub-discipline in psychology .
The statistical methods are applied for designing and analyzing experimental data. They involve, t-test, ANOVA, ANCOVA, MANOVA, MANCOVA, binomial test, chi-square etc. are used for the analysis of the experimental data.
Multivariate behavioral research is becoming very popular in psychology. These methods include Multiple Regression and Prediction; Moderated and Mediated Regression Analysis; Logistics Regression; Canonical Correlations; Cluster analysis; Multi-level modeling; Survival-Failure analysis; Structural Equations Modeling; hierarchical linear modelling etc. are very useful for psychological statistics (Hayes, 2013; Agresti, 1990; Loehlin, 1992; Menard, 2001; Tabachnick, & Fidell, 2007).
There are many specialized journals that publish advances in statistical analysis for psychology. Psychometrika is at the forefront. Educational and Psychological Measurement, Assessment, American Journal of Evaluation, Applied Psychological Measurement, Behavior Research Methods, British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, Multivariate Behavioral Research, Psychological Assessment, Structural Equation Modeling are other useful journals.
Various software packages are available for statistical methods for psychological research. They can be classified as commercial software (e.g., JMP and SPSS) and Open-Source (e.g., R). Among the free-wares, the R software is most popular one. There are many online references for R and specialised books on R for Psychologist are also being written (e.g., Belhekar, 2016 ). The "psych" package of R is very useful for psychologists. Among others, "lavaan", "sem", "ltm", "ggplot2" are some of the popular packages. PSPP and KNIME are other free packages. Among the commercial packages include JMP, SPSS and SAS. JMP and SPSS are commonly reported in books. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23545 |
Peter Cook
Peter Edward Cook (17 November 1937 – 9 January 1995) was an English satirist and comedic actor. He was a leading figure of the British satire boom of the 1960s, and he was associated with the anti-establishment comedic movement that emerged in the United Kingdom in the late 1950s.
Born in Torquay, he was educated at the University of Cambridge. There he became involved with the Footlights Club, of which he later became president. After graduating he created the comedy stage revue "Beyond the Fringe", beginning a long-running partnership with Dudley Moore. In 1961, Cook opened the comedy club The Establishment in Soho, Central London. In 1965 Cook and Moore began a television career, beginning with "Not Only... But Also". Following the success of the show the duo appeared together in films "The Wrong Box" (1966) and "Bedazzled" (1967). Cook and Moore returned to television projects continuing to the late 1970s, including co-presenting "Saturday Night Live" in the United States. From 1978 until his death in 1995 Cook no longer collaborated with Moore but continued to be a regular performer in British television and film.
Referred to as "the father of modern satire" by "The Guardian" in 2005, Cook was ranked number one in the "Comedians' Comedian", a poll of more than 300 comics, comedy writers, producers, and directors throughout the English-speaking world.
Cook was born at his parents' house, "Shearbridge", in Middle Warberry Road, Torquay, Devon. He was the only son, and eldest of the three children, of Alexander Edward "Alec" Cook (1906–1984), a colonial civil servant and his wife Ethel Catherine Margaret (1908–1994), daughter of solicitor Charles Mayo. His father served as political officer and later district officer in Nigeria, then as financial secretary to the colony of Gibraltar, followed by a return to Nigeria as Permanent Secretary of the Eastern Region based at Enugu. Cook's grandfather, Edward Arthur Cook (1869–1914), had also been a colonial civil servant, traffic manager for the Federated Malay States Railway in Kuala Lumpur, Malaya; stress that he suffered, in the lead-up to an interview regarding promotion, led him to commit suicide. His wife, Minnie Jane (1869-1957; daughter of Thomas Wreford, of Thelbridge and Witheridge, Devon, and of Stratford-upon-Avon, of a prominent Devonshire family traced back to 1440), kept this fact secret; Peter Cook only discovered the truth when later researching his family.
Cook was educated at Radley College and then went up to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he read French and German. As a student, Cook initially intended to become a career diplomat like his father, but Britain "had run out of colonies", as he put it. Although largely apathetic politically, particularly in later life when he displayed a deep distrust of politicians of all hues, he joined the Cambridge University Liberal Club. At Pembroke, Cook performed and wrote comedy sketches as a member of the Cambridge Footlights Club, of which he became president in 1960. His hero was fellow Footlights writer and Cambridge magazine writer David Nobbs.
While still at university Cook wrote for Kenneth Williams, providing several sketches for Williams's hit West End comedy revue "Pieces of Eight" and much of the follow-up, "One Over the Eight", before finding prominence in his own right in a four-man group satirical stage show, "Beyond the Fringe", alongside Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett and Dudley Moore.
"Beyond the Fringe" became a great success in London after being first performed at the Edinburgh Festival and included Cook impersonating the prime minister, Harold Macmillan. This was one of the first occasions satirical political mimicry had been attempted in live theatre, and it shocked audiences. During one performance, Macmillan was in the theatre and Cook departed from his script and attacked him verbally.
In 1961, Cook opened The Establishment, a club at 18 Greek Street in Soho in central London, presenting fellow comedians in a nightclub setting, including American Lenny Bruce. Cook said it was a satirical venue modelled on "those wonderful Berlin cabarets ... which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the Second World War"; as a members-only venue it was outside the censorship restrictions. The Establishment's regular cabaret performers were Eleanor Bron, John Bird and John Fortune.
Cook befriended and supported Australian comedian and actor Barry Humphries, who began his British solo career at the club. Humphries said in his autobiography, "My Life As Me", that he found Cook's lack of interest in art and literature off-putting. Dudley Moore's jazz trio played in the basement of the club during the early 1960s.
Cook also opened an Establishment club in New York in 1963 and Lenny Bruce performed there, as well.
In 1962, the BBC commissioned a pilot for a television series of satirical sketches based on the Establishment Club, but it was not immediately picked up and Cook went to New York City for a year to perform "Beyond The Fringe" on Broadway. When he returned, the pilot had been refashioned as "That Was the Week That Was" and had made a star of David Frost, something Cook resented.
The 1960s satire boom was coming to an end and Cook said: "England was about to sink giggling into the sea." He complained that Frost's success was based on copying Cook's own stage persona and Cook dubbed him "the bubonic plagiarist", and said that his only regret in life, according to Alan Bennett, had been saving Frost from drowning. This incident occurred in the summer of 1963, when the rivalry between the two men was at its height. Cook had realised that Frost's potential drowning would have looked deliberate if he had not been rescued.
Around this time, Cook provided financial backing for the satirical magazine "Private Eye", supporting it through difficult periods, particularly in libel trials. Cook invested his own money and solicited investment from his friends. For a time, the magazine was produced from the premises of the Establishment Club. In 1963, Cook married Wendy Snowden; the couple had two daughters, Lucy and Daisy, but the marriage ended in 1970.
Cook's first regular television spot was on Granada Television's "Braden Beat" with Bernard Braden, where he featured his most enduring character: the static, dour and monotonal E. L. Wisty, whom Cook had conceived for Radley College's Marionette Society.
Cook's comedy partnership with Dudley Moore led to "Not Only... But Also". This was originally intended by the BBC as a vehicle for Moore's music, but Moore invited Cook to write sketches and appear with him. Using few props, they created dry, absurd television that proved hugely popular and lasted for three series between 1965 and 1970. Cook played characters such as Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling and the two men created their Pete and Dud alter egos. Other sketches included "Superthunderstingcar", a parody of the Gerry Anderson marionette TV shows, and Cook's pastiche of 1960s trendy arts documentaries – satirised in a parodic segment on Greta Garbo.
When Cook learned a few years later that the videotapes of the series were to be wiped, a common practice at the time, he offered to buy the recordings from the BBC but was refused because of copyright issues. He suggested he could purchase new tapes so that the BBC would have no need to erase the originals, but this was also turned down. Of the original 22 programmes, only eight still survive complete. A compilation of six half-hour programmes, "The Best of What's Left of Not Only...But Also" was shown on television and has been released on both VHS and DVD.
With "The Wrong Box" (1966) and "Bedazzled" (1967) Cook and Moore began to act in films together. Directed by Stanley Donen, the underlying story of "Bedazzled" is credited to Cook and Moore and its screenplay to Cook. A comic parody of Faust, it stars Cook as George Spigott (the Devil) who tempts Stanley Moon (Moore), a frustrated, short-order chef, with the promise of gaining his heart's desire – the unattainable beauty and waitress at his cafe, Margaret Spencer (Eleanor Bron) – in exchange for his soul, but repeatedly tricks him. The film features cameo appearances by Barry Humphries as Envy and Raquel Welch as Lust. Moore composed the soundtrack music and co-wrote (with Cook) the songs performed in the film. His jazz trio backed Cook on the theme, a parodic anti-love song, which Cook delivered in a deadpan monotone and included his familiar put-down, "you fill me with inertia".
In 1968, Cook and Moore briefly switched to ATV for four one-hour programmes titled "Goodbye Again", based on the Pete and Dud characters. Cook's increasing alcoholism led him to become reliant on cue cards; the show was not a popular success, owing in part to a strike causing the suspension of the publication of the ITV listings magazine "TV Times". John Cleese was a cast member.
In 1970, Cook took over a project initiated by David Frost for a satirical film about an opinion pollster who rises to become President of Great Britain. Under Cook's guidance, the character became modelled on Frost. The film, "The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer", was not a success, although the cast contained notable names (including Monty Python's John Cleese and Graham Chapman, who co-wrote the film).
Cook became a favourite of the chat show circuit, but his own effort at hosting such a show for the BBC in 1971, "Where Do I Sit?", was said by the critics to have been a disappointment. He was replaced after only two episodes by Michael Parkinson, the start of Parkinson's career as a chat show host. Parkinson later asked Cook what his ambitions were, Cook replied jocularly "[...] in fact, my ambition is to shut you up altogether you see!"
Cook and Moore fashioned sketches from "Not Only...But Also" and "Goodbye Again" with new material into the stage revue called "Behind the Fridge". This show toured Australia in 1972 before transferring to New York City in 1973, re-titled as "Good Evening". Cook frequently appeared on and off stage the worse for drink. Nonetheless, the show proved very popular and it won Tony and Grammy Awards. When it finished, Moore stayed in the United States to pursue his film acting ambitions in Hollywood. Cook returned to Britain and in 1973 married the actress and model Judy Huxtable.
Later, the more risqué humour of Pete and Dud went farther on long-playing records as "Derek and Clive". The first recording was initiated by Cook to alleviate boredom during the Broadway run of "Good Evening", and used material conceived years before for the two characters but considered too outrageous. One of these audio recordings was also filmed, and therein tensions between the duo are seen to rise. Chris Blackwell circulated bootleg copies to friends in the music business. The popularity of the recording convinced Cook to release it commercially, although Moore was initially reluctant, fearing that his rising fame as a Hollywood star would be undermined. Two further "Derek and Clive" albums were released, the last accompanied by a film.
Cook and Moore hosted "Saturday Night Live" on 24 January 1976 during the show's first season. They did a number of their classic stage routines, including "One Leg Too Few" and "Frog and Peach" among others, in addition to participating in some skits with the show's ensemble cast.
In 1978, Cook appeared on the British music series "Revolver" as the manager of a ballroom where emerging punk and new wave acts played. For some groups, these were their first appearances on television. Cook's acerbic commentary was a distinctive aspect of the programme.
In 1979, Cook recorded comedy-segments as B-sides to the Sparks 12-inch singles "Number One Song in Heaven" and "Tryouts for the Human Race". The main songwriter Ron Mael often began with a banal situation in his lyrics, and then went at surreal tangents in the style of Cook and S. J. Perelman.
Cook played multiple roles on the 1977 concept album "Consequences", written and produced by former 10cc members Kevin Godley and Lol Creme. A mixture of spoken comedy and progressive rock with an environmental subtext, "Consequences" started as a single that Godley and Creme planned to make to demonstrate their invention, an electric guitar effect called the Gizmo, which they developed in 10cc. The project grew into a three-LP box set. The comedy sections were originally intended to be performed by a cast including Spike Milligan and Peter Ustinov, but Godley and Creme eventually settled on Cook once they realised he could perform most parts himself.
The storyline centres on the impending divorce of ineffectual Englishman Walter Stapleton (Cook) and his French wife Lulu (Judy Huxtable). While meeting their lawyers – the bibulous Mr. Haig and overbearing Mr. Pepperman (both played by Cook) – the encroaching global catastrophe interrupts proceedings with bizarre and mysterious happenings, which seem to centre on Mr. Blint (Cook), a musician and composer living in the flat below Haig's office, to which it is connected by a large hole in the floor.
Although it has since developed a cult following due to Cook's presence, "Consequences" was released as punk was sweeping the UK and proved a resounding commercial failure, savaged by critics who found the music self-indulgent. The script and story have evident connections to Cook's own life – his then wife Judy Huxtable plays Walter's wife. Cook's struggles with alcohol are mirrored in Haig's drinking, and there is a parallel between the fictional divorce of Walter and Lulu and Cook's own divorce from his first wife. The voice and accent Cook used for the character of Stapleton are similar to those of Cook's "Beyond the Fringe" colleague, Alan Bennett, and a book on Cook's comedy, "How Very Interesting", speculates that the characters Cook plays in "Consequences" are caricatures of the four "Beyond The Fringe" cast members – the alcoholic Haig represents Cook, the tremulous Stapleton is Bennett, the parodically Jewish Pepperman is Miller, and the pianist Blint represents Moore.
Cook appeared at the first three fund-raising galas staged by humorists John Cleese and Martin Lewis on behalf of Amnesty International. The benefits were dubbed "The Secret Policeman's Balls", though it wasn't until the third show in 1979 that the title was used. He performed on all three nights of the first show in April 1976, "A Poke in the Eye (With a Sharp Stick)", as an individual performer and as a member of the cast of "Beyond the Fringe", which reunited for the first time since the 1960s. He also appeared in a Monty Python sketch, taking the place of Eric Idle. Cook was on the cast album of the show and in the film, "Pleasure at Her Majesty's". He was in the second Amnesty gala in May 1977, "An Evening Without Sir Bernard Miles". It was retitled "The Mermaid Frolics" for the cast album and TV special. Cook performed monologues and skits with Terry Jones.
In June 1979, Cook performed all four nights of "The Secret Policeman's Ball", teaming with John Cleese. Cook performed a couple of solo pieces and a sketch with Eleanor Bron. He also led the ensemble in the finale – the "End of the World" sketch from "Beyond The Fringe".
In response to a barb in "The Daily Telegraph" that the show was recycled material, Cook wrote a satire of the summing-up by Mr Justice Cantley in the trial of former Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe, a summary now widely thought to show bias in favour of Thorpe. Cook performed it that same night (Friday 29 June – the third of the four nights) and the following night. The nine-minute opus, "Entirely a Matter for You", is considered by many fans and critics to be one of the finest works of Cook's career. Along with Cook, producer of the show Martin Lewis brought out an album on Virgin Records entitled "Here Comes the Judge: Live", containing the live performance together with three studio tracks that further lampooned the Thorpe trial.
Although unable to take part in the 1981 gala, Cook supplied the narration over the animated opening title sequence of the 1982 film of the show. With Lewis, he wrote and voiced radio commercials to advertise the film in the UK. He also hosted a spoof film awards ceremony that was part of the world première of the film in London in March 1982.
Following Cook's 1987 stage reunion with Moore for the annual American benefit for the homeless, "Comic Relief" (not related to the UK "Comic Relief" benefits), Cook repeated the reunion for a British audience by performing with Moore at the 1989 Amnesty benefit "The Secret Policeman's Biggest Ball".
Cook starred in the LWT special "Peter Cook & Co." in 1980. The show included comedy sketches, including a "Tales of the Unexpected" parody "Tales of the Much As We Expected". This involved Cook as Roald Dahl, explaining his name had been Ronald before he dropped the "n". The cast included John Cleese, Rowan Atkinson, Beryl Reid, Paula Wilcox and Terry Jones. Partly spurred by Moore's growing film star status, Cook moved to Hollywood in that year, and appeared as an uptight English butler to a wealthy American woman in a short-lived United States television sitcom, "The Two of Us", also making cameo appearances in a couple of undistinguished films.
In 1983, Cook played the role of Richard III in the first episode of "Blackadder", "The Foretelling", which parodies Laurence Olivier's portrayal. In 1984, he played the role of Nigel, the mathematics teacher, in Jeannot Szwarc's film "Supergirl", working alongside the evil Selena played by Faye Dunaway. He then narrated the short film "Diplomatix" by Norwegian comedy trio Kirkvaag, Lystad and Mjøen, which won the "Special Prize of the City of Montreux" at the Montreux Comedy Festival in 1985. In 1986 he partnered Joan Rivers on her UK talk show. He appeared as Mr Jolly in 1987 in "The Comic Strip Presents"' episode "Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door", playing an assassin who covers the sound of his murders by playing Tom Jones records. That same year, Cook appeared in "The Princess Bride" as the "Impressive Clergyman" who officiates at the wedding ceremony between Buttercup and Prince Humperdinck, uttering the now-famous line "Mawage!" Also that year, he spent time working with humourist Martin Lewis on a political satire about the 1988 US presidential elections for HBO, but the script went unproduced. Lewis suggested that Cook team with Moore for the US "Comic Relief" telethon for the homeless. The duo reunited and performed their "One Leg Too Few" sketch.
A 1984 commercial for John Harvey & Sons showed Cook at poolside party drinking Harvey's Bristol Cream sherry. He then says to "throw away those silly little glasses" whereupon the other party guests toss their sunglasses in the swimming pool.
In 1988, Cook appeared as a contestant on the improvisation comedy show "Whose Line Is It Anyway?". He was declared the winner, his prize being to read the credits in the style of a New York cab driver – a character he had portrayed in "Peter Cook & Co."
Cook occasionally called in to Clive Bull's night-time phone-in radio show on LBC in London. Using the name "Sven from Swiss Cottage", he mused on love, loneliness and herrings in a mock Norwegian accent. Jokes included Sven's attempts to find his estranged wife, in which he often claimed to be telephoning the show from all over the world, and his hatred of the Norwegian obsession with fish. While Bull was clearly aware that Sven was fictional, he did not learn of the caller's real identity until later.
In late 1989, Cook married for the third time, to Malaysian-born property developer Chiew Lin Chong (1945–2016), in Torbay, Devon. She provided him with some stability in his personal life, and he reduced his drinking to the extent that for a time he was teetotal. He lived alone in a small 18th-century house in Perrins Walk, Hampstead, while she kept her own property just away.
Cook returned to the BBC as Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling for an appearance with Ludovic Kennedy in "A Life in Pieces". The 12 interviews saw Sir Arthur recount his life, based on the song "Twelve Days of Christmas". Unscripted interviews with Cook as Streeb-Greebling and satirist Chris Morris were recorded in late 1993 and broadcast as "Why Bother?" on BBC Radio 3. Morris described them:
On 17 December 1993, Cook appeared on "Clive Anderson Talks Back" as four characters – biscuit tester and alien abductee Norman House, football manager and motivational speaker Alan Latchley, judge Sir James Beauchamp, and rock legend Eric Daley. The following day, he appeared on BBC2 performing links for "Arena"'s "Radio Night". He also appeared in the 1993 Christmas special of "One Foot in the Grave" ("One Foot in the Algarve"), playing a muckraking tabloid photographer. Before the end of the next year, his mother died, and a grief-stricken Cook returned to heavy drinking. He made his last television appearance on the show "Pebble Mill at One" in November 1994.
Cook was married three times. He was first married to Wendy Snowden, whom he met at university, in 1963; they had two daughters, Lucy and Daisy, but divorced in 1971. Cook then married his second wife, model and actress Judy Huxtable, in 1973, the marriage formally ending in 1989 after they had been separated for some years. He married his third and final wife, Lin Chong, in 1989, to whom he remained married until his death. Cook became stepfather to Chong's daughter, Nina. Chong died at the age of 71 in November 2016.
Cook died on 9 January 1995, aged 57 from a gastrointestinal hemorrhage, a complication likely the result of years of heavy drinking. His body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, and his ashes were buried in an unmarked plot behind St John-at-Hampstead, not far from his home in Perrins Walk.
Dudley Moore attended Cook's memorial service at St John-at-Hampstead on 1 May 1995. He and Martin Lewis presented a two-night memorial for Cook at The Improv in Los Angeles, on 15 and 16 November 1995, to mark what would have been Cook's 58th birthday.
Cook was an avid spectator of most sports and was a supporter of Tottenham Hotspur football club.
Cook is widely acknowledged as a strong influence on the many British comedians who followed him from the amateur dramatic clubs of British universities to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and then to radio and television. On his death, some critics choose to see Cook's life as tragic, insofar as the brilliance of his youth had not been sustained in his later years. However, Cook himself always maintained he had no ambitions at all for sustained success. He assessed happiness by his friendships and his enjoyment of life. Eric Idle said Cook had not wasted his talent, but rather that the newspapers had tried to waste him.
Several friends honoured him with a dedication in the closing credits of "Fierce Creatures" (1997), a comedy film written by John Cleese about a zoo in peril of being closed. It starred Cleese alongside Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline and Michael Palin. The dedication displays photos and the lifespan dates of Cook and of British naturalist and humourist Gerald Durrell.
In 1999, the minor planet 20468 Petercook, in the main asteroid belt, was named after Cook.
Channel 4 broadcast "Not Only But Always", a television film dramatising the relationship between Cook and Moore, with Rhys Ifans portraying Cook. At the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, a play, "" written by Chris Bartlett and Nick Awde, examined the relationship from Moore's view. The play was transferred to London's West End at The Venue in 2006 and toured the UK the following year. During the West End run, Tom Goodman-Hill starred as Cook, with Kevin Bishop as Moore.
A green plaque to honour Cook was unveiled by the Westminster City Council and the Heritage Foundation at the site of the Establishment Club, at 18 Greek Street, on 15 February 2009 after an online campaign by satirist and event organiser Mark Biddiss, who also organised ‘The World's 1st Peter Cook is Dead Birthday Party / Long overdue Public Wake’ to promote the plaque, which featured a live reworking of Derek and Clive material, titled "Derek & Clive are Alive Again".
A blue plaque was unveiled by the Torbay Civic Society on 17 November 2014 at Cook's place of birth, "Shearbridge", Middle Warberry Road, Torquay, with his widow Lin and other members of the family in attendance. A further blue plaque was commissioned and erected at the home of Torquay United, Plainmoor, Torquay, in 2015.
"Amnesty International Performances:"
UK chart singles:
Albums: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23547 |
Psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock, also referred to as psychedelia, is a diverse style of rock music inspired, influenced, or representative of psychedelic culture, which is centred on perception-altering hallucinogenic drugs. The music is intended to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs, most notably LSD. Many psychedelic groups differ in style, and the label is often applied spuriously.
Originating in the mid-1960s among British and American musicians, the sound of psychedelic rock invokes three core effects of LSD: depersonalization, dechronicization, and dynamization, all of which detach the user from reality. Musically, the effects may be represented via novelty studio tricks, electronic or non-Western instrumentation, disjunctive song structures, and extended instrumental segments. Some of the earlier 1960s psychedelic rock musicians were based in folk, jazz, and the blues, while others showcased an explicit Indian classical influence called "raga rock". In the 1960s, there existed two main variants of the genre: the whimsical British psychedelic pop and the harder American West Coast acid rock. While "acid rock" is sometimes deployed interchangeably with the term "psychedelic rock", it also refers more specifically to the heavier and more extreme ends of the genre.
The peak years of psychedelic rock were between 1967 and 1969, with milestone events including the 1967 Summer of Love and the 1969 Woodstock Rock Festival, becoming an international musical movement associated with a widespread counterculture before beginning a decline as changing attitudes, the loss of some key individuals, and a back-to-basics movement led surviving performers to move into new musical areas. The genre bridged the transition from early blues and folk-based rock to progressive rock and hard rock, and as a result contributed to the development of sub-genres such as heavy metal. Since the late 1970s it has been revived in various forms of neo-psychedelia.
As a musical style, psychedelic rock attempts to replicate the effects of and enhance the mind-altering experiences of hallucinogenic drugs, incorporating new electronic sound effects and recording effects, extended solos, and improvisation. Common features include:
The term "psychedelic" was coined in 1956 by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond first as an alternative descriptor for hallucinogenic drugs in the context of psychedelic psychotherapy. As the countercultural scene developed in San Francisco, the terms acid rock and psychedelic rock were used in 1966 to describe the new drug-influenced music and were being widely used by 1967. The terms psychedelic rock and acid rock are often used interchangeably, but acid rock may be distinguished as a more extreme variation that was heavier, louder, relied on long jams, focused more directly on LSD, and made greater use of distortion.
In the popular music of the early 1960s, it was common for producers, songwriters, and engineers to freely experiment with musical form, arrangements, unnatural reverb, and other sound effects. Some of the best known examples are Phil Spector's Wall of Sound production formula and Joe Meek's use of homemade electronics for acts like the Tornados. XTC's Andy Partridge interprets the music of psychedelic groups as a "grown-up" version of children's novelty records, believing that many acts were trying to emulate those records that they grew up with; "They use exactly the same techniques—sped-up bits, slowed-down bits, too much echo, too much reverb, that bit goes backwards. ... There was no transition to be made. You go from things like 'Flying Purple People Eater' to 'I Am the Walrus'. They go hand-in-hand."
Music critic Richie Unterberger says that attempts to "pin down" the first psychedelic record are therefore "nearly as elusive as trying to name the first rock & roll record". Some of the "far-fetched claims" include the instrumental "Telstar" (produced by Meek for the Tornados in 1962) and the Dave Clark Five's "massively reverb-laden" "Any Way You Want It" (1964). The first mention of LSD on a rock record was the Gamblers' 1960 surf instrumental "LSD 25". A 1962 single by The Ventures, "The 2000 Pound Bee", issued forth the buzz of a distorted, "fuzztone" guitar, and the quest into "the possibilities of heavy, transistorised distortion" and other effects, like improved reverb and echo began in earnest on London's fertile rock 'n' roll scene. By 1964 fuzztone could be heard on singles by P.J. Proby, and the Beatles had employed feedback in "I Feel Fine", their 6th consecutive No. 1 hit in the UK.
American folk singer Bob Dylan was a massive influence on mid 1960s rock music. He led directly to the creation of folk rock and the psychedelic rock musicians that followed, and his lyrics were a touchstone for the psychedelic songwriters of the late 1960s. Virtuoso sitarist Ravi Shankar had begun in 1956 a mission to bring Indian classical music to the West, inspiring jazz, classical and folk musicians; and by the mid-1960s, a generation of young rock musicians who would make raga rock part of the psychedelic rock aesthetic and one of the many intersecting cultural motifs of the era. Meanwhile, in British folk, blues, drugs, jazz and eastern influences blended in the early 1960s work of Davy Graham, who adopted modal guitar tunings to transpose Indian ragas and Celtic reels. Graham was a "profound influence" on Scottish folk virtuoso Bert Jansch and other pioneering guitarists across a spectrum of styles and genres in the mid-1960s. Jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane had a similar impact, as the exotic sounds on his albums "My Favorite Things" (1960) and "A Love Supreme" (1964), the latter influenced by the ragas of Shankar, were source material for guitar players and others looking to improvise or "jam".
According to music journalist Barry Miles: "Hippies didn't just pop up overnight, but 1965 was the first year in which a discernible youth movement began to emerge. Many of the key 'psychedelic' rock bands formed this year." On the West Coast, underground chemist Augustus Owsley Stanley III and Ken Kesey (along with his followers known as the "Merry Pranksters") helped thousands of people take uncontrolled trips at Kesey's "Acid Tests" and in the new psychedelic dance halls. In Britain, Michael Hollingshead opened the World Psychedelic Centre and Beat Generation poets Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso read at the Royal Albert Hall. Miles adds: "The readings acted as a catalyst for underground activity in London, as people suddenly realized just how many like-minded people there were around. This was also the year that London began to blossom into colour with the opening of the Granny Takes a Trip and Hung On You clothes shops." Thanks to media coverage, use of LSD became widespread.
Molly Longman of mic.com writes that in terms of bridging the relationship between music and hallucinogens, the Beatles and the Beach Boys were the era's most pivotal acts. In 1965, the Beach Boys' leader Brian Wilson started exploring song composition while under the influence of psychedelic drugs, and after being introduced to cannabis in 1964 by Dylan, members of the Beatles also began using LSD. The considerable success enjoyed by these two bands allowed them the freedom to experiment with new technology over entire albums. Producer George Martin, who was initially known as a specialist in comedy and novelty records, responded to the Beatles' requests by providing a range of studio tricks that ensured the band played a key role in the development of psychedelic effects, including the drug-inspired drone on "Ticket to Ride" (1965).
In Unterberger's opinion, the Byrds, emerging from the Los Angeles folk rock scene, and the Yardbirds, from England's blues scene, were more responsible than the Beatles for "sounding the psychedelic siren". Drug use and attempts at psychedelic music moved out of acoustic folk-based music towards rock soon after the Byrds "plugged in" to electric guitars to produce a chart topping version of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" in the summer of 1965, which became a folk rock standard. On the Yardbirds, Unterberger identifies lead guitarist Jeff Beck as having "laid the blueprint for psychedelic guitar", and the band for defining psychedelic rock's "manic eclecticism ... With their ominous minor key melodies, hyperactive instrumental breaks (called rave-ups), and use of Gregorian chants." All were present on "Having a Rave-Up", the Yardbirds' U.S.-only album on which Beck "emerged as a full-fledged guitar hero", in the view of "Guitar Player" magazine. "Heart Full of Soul" (June 1965) was a hit single driven by a distorted fuzz guitar riff by Beck made to simulate the drone of a sitar, which "carried the energy of a new scene" and heralded the arrival of new Eastern sounds.
The Kinks would also incorporate guitars to mimic the drones of Indian music on "See My Friends", another Top 10 hit just a few weeks later. The Beatles' "Norwegian Wood" from the December 1965 album "Rubber Soul" marked the first released recording on which a member of a Western rock group played the sitar. The song is generally credited for sparking the sitar craze of the mid-1960s – a trend which fueled the growth of raga rock as the India exotic became part of the essence of psychedelic rock. Rock author George Case recognises "Rubber Soul" as one of two Beatles albums that "marked the authentic beginning of the psychedelic era". Music critic Robert Christgau similarly wrote that "Psychedelia starts here", while San Francisco historian Charles Perry said the album became "the soundtrack of the Haight-Ashbury, Berkeley and the whole circuit", where pre-hippie students recognised that the songs were inspired by drugs.
A number of California-based folk acts followed the Byrds into folk-rock, bringing their psychedelic influences with them, to produce the "San Francisco Sound". The San Francisco music scene developed in the city's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in 1965 at basement shows organised by Chet Helms of the Family Dog; and as Jefferson Airplane founder Marty Balin and investors opened The Matrix nightclub that summer and began booking his and other local bands such as the Grateful Dead, The Steve Miller Band and Country Joe & the Fish. Helms and San Francisco Mime Troupe manager Bill Graham in the fall of 1965 organised larger scale multi-media community events/benefits featuring the Airplane, the Diggers and poet Allen Ginsberg. By early 1966 Graham had secured booking at The Fillmore, and Helms at the Avalon Ballroom, where in-house psychedelic-themed light shows replicated the visual effects of the psychedelic experience. Graham would become a major figure in the growth of psychedelic rock, attracting most of the major psychedelic rock bands of the day to The Fillmore.
According to Kevin T. McEneaney, the Grateful Dead "invented" acid rock in front of a crowd of concertgoers in San Jose, California on December 4, 1965, the date of the second Acid Test held by novelist Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters. Their stage performance involved the use of strobe lights to reproduce LSD's "surrealistic fragmenting" or "vivid isolating of caught moments". The Acid Test experiments subsequently launched the entire psychedelic subculture.
Musicologist William Echard writes that in 1966, "the psychedelic implications" advanced by recent rock experiments "became fully explicit and much more widely distributed," and by the end of the year, "most of the key elements of psychedelic topicality had been at least broached." Author Jim DeRogatis says the birth date of psychedelic (or acid) rock is "best listed at 1966". Music journalists Pete Prown and Harvey P. Newquist locate the "peak years" of psychedelic rock between 1966 and 1969. 1966 saw the media coverage of rock music change considerably as the music became reevaluated as a new form of art in tandem with the growing psychedelic community.
In February and March, two singles were released that later achieved recognition as the first psychedelic hits: the Yardbirds' "Shapes of Things" and the Byrds' "Eight Miles High". The former reached the top 10 in the UK and the top 20 in the US, and continued the Yardbirds' exploration of guitar effects, Eastern-sounding scales, and shifting rhythms that began with their 1965 singles. By overdubbing guitar parts, Beck layered multiple takes for his solo, which included extensive use of fuzz tone and harmonic feedback. The Yardbirds' lyrics, described as "stream-of-consciousness", have been interpreted as pro-environmental or anti-war. They became the first British band to have the term applied to one of its songs. Meanwhile, the Byrds moved away from their earlier folk rock with Roger McGuinn's 12-string Rickenbacker guitar interpretation of free jazz (Coltrane) and Indian raga-sounding scales (Shankar). The Byrds' lyrics were widely taken to refer to drug use, although the group denied it at the time. "Eight Miles High" peaked in the top 20 in the US. and the top 30 in the UK.
Contributing to psychedelia's emergence into the pop mainstream was the release of Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" (May 1966) and the Beatles' "Revolver" (August 1966). Often considered one of the earliest albums in the canon of psychedelic rock, "Pet Sounds" contained many elements that would be incorporated into psychedelia, with its artful experiments, psychedelic lyrics based on emotional longings and self-doubts, elaborate sound effects and new sounds on both conventional and unconventional instruments. The album track "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times" contained the first use of theremin sounds on a rock record. Scholar Philip Auslander says that even though psychedelic music is not normally associated with the Beach Boys, the "odd directions" and experiments in "Pet Sounds" "put it all on the map. ... basically that sort of opened the door — not for groups to be formed or to start to make music, but certainly to become as visible as say Jefferson Airplane or somebody like that."
Like "Pet Sounds", "Revolver" explored musical soundscapes that could not be replicated in concert, even with the addition of an orchestra. The Beatles' May 1966 B-side "Rain", recorded during the "Revolver" sessions, was the first pop recording to include reversed sounds. It makes full use of an assortment of studio tricks such as varispeed and backwards taping, combining them with a droning melody that further highlights a growing interest in non-Western musical form. Author Simon Philo believes the song to be "the birth of British psychedelic rock". Author Steve Turner recognises the Beatles' success in conveying an LSD-inspired worldview on "Revolver", particularly on "Tomorrow Never Knows", as having "opened the doors to psychedelic rock (or acid rock)".
In October 1966, the Texas band 13th Floor Elevators debuted with "The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators". They were the first group to advertise themselves as psychedelic rock, having done so since the end of 1965. The Beach Boys' October 1966 single "Good Vibrations" was another early pop song to incorporate psychedelic lyrics and sounds. Upon release, the single prompted an unexpected revival in theremins and increased the awareness of analog synthesizers. As psychedelia gained prominence, Beach Boys-style harmonies would be ingrained into the newer psychedelic pop.
1967 was when psychedelic rock received widespread media attention and a larger audience beyond local psychedelic communities. From 1967 to 1968, psychedelic rock was the prevailing sound of rock music, either in the whimsical British variant, or the harder American West Coast acid rock. Since most of the US acts had yet to release records in the UK, most of the British groups based their sound on what they'd simply read or heard about psychedelic music. Compared with American psychedelia, British psychedelic music was often more arty in its experimentation, and it tended to stick within pop song structures. In February 1967, the Beatles released the double A-side single "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane", which Ian MacDonald says launched both the "English pop-pastoral mood" typified by bands such as Pink Floyd, Family, Traffic and Fairport Convention, and English psychedelia's LSD-inspired preoccupation with "nostalgia for the innocent vision of a child". According to Simonelli, the Beatles' single heralded the group's brand of Romanticism as a central tenet of psychedelic rock. Pink Floyd's "Arnold Layne" (March 1967) and "See Emily Play" (June 1967), both written by Syd Barrett, helped set the pattern for British pop-psychedelia.
Jefferson Airplane's "Surrealistic Pillow" (February 1967) was the first album to come out of San Francisco during this era, which sold well enough to bring the city's music scene to the attention of the record industry: from it they took what would become two of the earliest psychedelic hit singles: "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love". Soon, British clubs like the UFO Club, Middle Earth Club, The Roundhouse, the Country Club and the Art Lab were drawing capacity audiences with psychedelic rock and ground-breaking liquid light shows. A major figure in the development of British psychedelia was the American promoter and record producer Joe Boyd, who moved to London in 1966. He co-founded venues including the UFO Club, produced Pink Floyd's first single, "Arnold Layne", and went on to manage folk and folk rock acts including Nick Drake, the Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention.
Psychedelic rock's popularity accelerated following the success of the Monterey Pop Festival and the release of the Beatles' album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in the same week of June. The album was the first commercially successful work that critics heralded as a landmark aspect of psychedelia, and the Beatles' mass appeal meant that the album would be played virtually everywhere. The Summer of Love of 1967 saw a huge number of young people from across America and the world travel to the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, boosting the population from 15,000 to around 100,000. It was prefaced by the Human Be-In event in March and reached its peak at the Monterey Pop Festival in June, the latter helping to make major American stars of Janis Joplin, lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jimi Hendrix, and the Who. Existing "British Invasion" acts now joined the psychedelic revolution, including Eric Burdon (previously of The Animals) and The Who, whose "The Who Sell Out" (December 1967) included psychedelic influenced tracks "I Can See for Miles" and "Armenia City in the Sky". The Incredible String Band's "The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion" (July 1967) developed their folk music into full blown psychedelia, which would be a major influence on psychedelic rock.
According to author Edward Macan, there ultimately existed three distinct wings of British psychedelic music. The first was based on a heavy, electric reinterpretation of the blues played by the Rolling Stones, adding guitarist Pete Townshend of the Who's pioneering power chord style to the mix. Groups of this nature were dominated by Cream, the Yardbirds, and Hendrix. The second drew strongly from jazz sources and was represented early on by Traffic, Colosseum, If, and the Canterbury scene spearheaded by Soft Machine and Caravan. Their music was considerably more complex than the Cream/Hendrix/Yardbirds approach. The third wing was represented by the Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, and the Nice, who were influenced by the later music of the Beatles, unlike the other two wings. Several of the English psychedelic bands who followed in the wake of the Beatles' psychedelic "Sgt. Pepper's" developed characteristics of the Beatles' music (specifically their classical influence) further than either the Beatles or contemporaneous West Coast psychedelic bands.
The US and UK were the major centres of psychedelic music, but in the late 1960s scenes began to develop across the world, including continental Europe, Australasia, Asia and south and Central America. In the later 1960s psychedelic scenes developed in a large number of countries in continental Europe, including the Netherlands with bands like The Outsiders, Denmark where it was pioneered by Steppeulvene, and Germany, where musicians began to fuse music of psychedelia and the electronic avant-garde. 1968 saw the first major German rock festival, the in Essen, and the foundation of the Zodiak Free Arts Lab in Berlin by Hans-Joachim Roedelius, and Conrad Schnitzler, which helped bands like Tangerine Dream and Amon Düül achieve cult status.
A thriving psychedelic music scene in Cambodia, influenced by psychedelic rock and soul broadcast by US forces radio in Vietnam, was pioneered by artists such as Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Serey Sothea. In South Korea, Shin Jung-Hyeon, often considered the godfather of Korean rock, played psychedelic-influenced music for the American soldiers stationed in the country. Following Shin Jung-Hyeon, the band San Ul Lim (Mountain Echo) often combined psychedelic rock with a more folk sound. In Turkey, Anatolian rock artist Erkin Koray blended classic Turkish music and Middle Eastern themes into his psychedelic-driven rock, helping to found the Turkish rock scene with artists such as Cem Karaca, Mogollar, Baris Manco and Erkin Koray.In Brasil the Tropicalia movement merged Brazilian and African rhythms with psychedelic rock. Musicians who were part of the movement include Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Os Mutantes, Gal Costa, Tom Zé, and the poet/lyricist Torquato Neto, all of whom participated in the 1968 album "", which served as a musical manifesto.
By the end of the 1960s, psychedelic rock was in retreat. Psychedelic trends climaxed in the 1969 Woodstock festival, which saw performances by most of the major psychedelic acts, including Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, and the Grateful Dead. In 1966, LSD had been made illegal in the US and UK. In 1969, the murders of Sharon Tate and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca by Charles Manson and his cult of followers, claiming to have been inspired by Beatles' songs such as "Helter Skelter", has been seen as contributing to an anti-hippie backlash. At the end of the same year, the Altamont Free Concert in California, headlined by the Rolling Stones, became notorious for the fatal stabbing of black teenager Meredith Hunter by Hells Angel security guards.
Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Peter Green and Danny Kirwan of Fleetwood Mac and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd were early "acid casualties", helping to shift the focus of the respective bands of which they had been leading figures. Some groups, such as the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream, broke up. Hendrix died in London in September 1970, shortly after recording "Band of Gypsys" (1970), Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose in October 1970 and they were closely followed by Jim Morrison of the Doors, who died in Paris in July 1971. By this point, many surviving acts had moved away from psychedelia into either more back-to-basics "roots rock", traditional-based, pastoral or whimsical folk, the wider experimentation of progressive rock, or riff-based heavy rock.
Following the lead of Hendrix in rock, psychedelia began to influence African American musicians, particularly the stars of the Motown label. This psychedelic soul was influenced by the civil rights movement, giving it a darker and more political edge than much psychedelic rock. Building on the funk sound of James Brown, it was pioneered from about 1968 by Sly and the Family Stone and The Temptations. Acts that followed them into this territory included Edwin Starr and the Undisputed Truth. George Clinton's interdependent Funkadelic and Parliament ensembles and their various spin-offs took the genre to its most extreme lengths making funk almost a religion in the 1970s, producing over forty singles, including three in the US top ten, and three platinum albums.
While psychedelic rock began to waver at the end of the 1960s, psychedelic soul continued into the 1970s, peaking in popularity in the early years of the decade, and only disappearing in the late 1970s as tastes began to change. Songwriter Norman Whitfield wrote psychedelic soul songs for The Temptations and Marvin Gaye.
Many of the British musicians and bands that had embraced psychedelia went on to create progressive rock in the 1970s, including Pink Floyd, Soft Machine and members of Yes. King Crimson's album "In the Court of the Crimson King" (1969) has been seen as an important link between psychedelia and progressive rock. While bands such as Hawkwind maintained an explicitly psychedelic course into the 1970s, most dropped the psychedelic elements in favour of wider experimentation. The incorporation of jazz into the music of bands like Soft Machine and Can also contributed to the development of the jazz rock of bands like Colosseum. As they moved away from their psychedelic roots and placed increasing emphasis on electronic experimentation, German bands like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Can and Faust developed a distinctive brand of electronic rock, known as kosmische musik, or in the British press as "Kraut rock". The adoption of electronic synthesisers, pioneered by Popol Vuh from 1970, together with the work of figures like Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy Music), would be a major influence on subsequent electronic rock.
Psychedelic rock, with its distorted guitar sound, extended solos and adventurous compositions, has been seen as an important bridge between blues-oriented rock and later heavy metal. American bands whose loud, repetitive psychedelic rock emerged as early heavy metal included the Amboy Dukes and Steppenwolf. From England, two former guitarists with the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, moved on to form key acts in the genre, The Jeff Beck Group and Led Zeppelin respectively. Other major pioneers of the genre had begun as blues-based psychedelic bands, including Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Judas Priest and UFO. Psychedelic music also contributed to the origins of glam rock, with Marc Bolan changing his psychedelic folk duo into rock band T. Rex and becoming the first glam rock star from 1970. From 1971 David Bowie moved on from his early psychedelic work to develop his Ziggy Stardust persona, incorporating elements of professional make up, mime and performance into his act.
There were occasional mainstream acts that dabbled in neo-psychedelia, a style of music which emerged in late 1970s post-punk circles. Although it has mainly been an influence on alternative and indie rock bands, neo-psychedelia sometimes updated the approach of 1960s psychedelic rock. In the US in the early 1980s it was joined by the Paisley Underground movement, based in Los Angeles and fronted by acts such as Dream Syndicate, The Bangles and Rain Parade.
The jam band movement, which began in the late 1980s, was influenced by the Grateful Dead's improvisational and psychedelic musical style. The Vermont band Phish developed a sizable and devoted fan following during the 1990s, and were described as "heirs" to the Grateful Dead after the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995.
Madchester was a music and cultural scene that developed in the Manchester area of North West England in the late 1980s, in which artists merged alternative rock with acid house and dance culture as well as other sources, including psychedelia and 1960s pop. The label was popularised by the British music press in the early 1990s, and its most famous groups include the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, the Charlatans and 808 State. The rave-influenced scene is widely seen as heavily influenced by drugs, especially ecstasy (MDMA). At that time, the Haçienda nightclub, co-owned by members of New Order, was a major catalyst for the distinctive musical ethos in the city that was called the Second Summer of Love. "Screamadelica" is the third studio album by Scottish rock band Primal Scream released on 1991. The album marked a significant departure from the band's early indie rock sound, drawing inspiration from the blossoming house music scene and associated drugs such as LSD and MDMA. It won the first Mercury Music Prize in 1992, and has sold over three million copies worldwide.
Emerging in the 1990s, stoner rock combined elements of psychedelic rock and doom metal. Typically using a slow-to-mid tempo and featuring low-tuned guitars in a bass-heavy sound, with melodic vocals, and 'retro' production, it was pioneered by the Californian bands Kyuss and Sleep. Modern festivals focusing on psychedelic music include Austin Psych Fest in Texas, founded in 2008, Liverpool Psych Fest, and Desert Daze in Southern California. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23549 |
Philips
Koninklijke Philips N.V. (literally "Royal Philips", stylized as PHILIPS) is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Amsterdam, formerly one of the largest electronics companies in the world, currently focused in the area of health technology, with other divisions being successfully divested. It was founded in Eindhoven in 1891 by Gerard Philips and his father Frederik, with their first products being light bulbs. It was once one of the largest electronic conglomerates in the world and currently employs around 74,000 people across 100 countries. The company gained its royal honorary title in 1998 and dropped the "Electronics" in its name in 2013, due to its refocusing from consumer electronics to healthcare technology.
Philips is organized into three main divisions: Personal Health (formerly Philips Consumer Electronics and Philips Domestic Appliances and Personal Care), Connected Care, and Diagnosis & Treatment (formerly Philips Medical Systems). The lighting division was spun off as a separate company, Signify N.V. (formerly Philips Lighting prior to 2018). The company started making electric shavers in 1939 under the Philishave brand, and post-war they developed the Compact Cassette format and co-developed the Compact Disc format with Sony, as well as numerous other technologies. As of 2012, Philips was the largest manufacturer of lighting in the world as measured by applicable revenues.
Philips has a primary listing on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange and is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. It has a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Acquisitions include that of Signetics and Magnavox. They also have had a sports club since 1913 called PSV Eindhoven.
The Philips Company was founded in 1891, by Gerard Philips and his father Frederik Philips. Frederik, a banker based in Zaltbommel, financed the purchase and setup of an empty factory building in Eindhoven, where the company started the production of carbon-filament lamps and other electro-technical products in 1892. This first factory has since been adapted and is used as a museum.
In 1895, after a difficult first few years and near bankruptcy, the Philipses brought in Anton, Gerard's younger brother by sixteen years. Though he had earned a degree in engineering, Anton started work as a sales representative; soon, however, he began to contribute many important business ideas. With Anton's arrival, the family business began to expand rapidly, resulting in the founding of Philips Metaalgloeilampfabriek N.V. (Philips Metal Filament Lamp Factory Ltd.) in Eindhoven in 1908, followed in 1912, by the foundation of Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken N.V. (Philips Lightbulb Factories Ltd.). After Gerard and Anton Philips changed their family business by founding the Philips corporation, they laid the foundations for the later electronics multinational.
In the 1920s, the company started to manufacture other products, such as vacuum tubes. In 1939, they introduced their electric razor, the "Philishave" (marketed in the US using the Norelco brand name). The "Chapel" is a radio with built-in loudspeaker, which was designed during the early 1930s.
On 11 March 1927, Philips went on the air with shortwave radio station PCJJ (later PCJ) which was joined in 1929 by sister station PHOHI (Philips Omroep Holland-Indië). PHOHI broadcast in Dutch to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) while PCJJ broadcast in English, Spanish and German to the rest of the world.
The international program on Sundays commenced in 1928, with host Eddie Startz hosting the "Happy Station" show, which became the world's longest-running shortwave program. Broadcasts from the Netherlands were interrupted by the German invasion in May 1940. The Germans commandeered the transmitters in Huizen to use for pro-Nazi broadcasts, some originating from Germany, others concerts from Dutch broadcasters under German control.
Philips Radio was absorbed shortly after liberation when its two shortwave stations were nationalised in 1947 and renamed Radio Netherlands Worldwide, the Dutch International Service. Some PCJ programs, such as "Happy Station", continued on the new station.
Philips was instrumental in the revival of the Stirling engine when, in the early 1930s, the management decided that offering a low-power portable generator would assist in expanding sales of its radios into parts of the world where mains electricity was unavailable and the supply of batteries uncertain. Engineers at the company's research lab carried out a systematic comparison of various power sources and determined that the almost forgotten Stirling engine would be most suitable, citing its quiet operation (both audibly and in terms of radio interference) and ability to run on a variety of heat sources (common lamp oil – "cheap and available everywhere" – was favored). They were also aware that, unlike steam and internal combustion engines, virtually no serious development work had been carried out on the Stirling engine for many years and asserted that modern materials and know-how should enable great improvements.
Encouraged by their first experimental engine, which produced 16 W of shaft power from a bore and stroke of , various development models were produced in a program which continued throughout World War II. By the late 1940s, the 'Type 10' was ready to be handed over to Philips's subsidiary Johan de Witt in Dordrecht to be produced and incorporated into a generator set as originally planned. The result, rated at 180/200 W electrical output from a bore and stroke of , was designated MP1002CA (known as the "Bungalow set"). Production of an initial batch of 250 began in 1951, but it became clear that they could not be made at a competitive price, besides with the advent of transistor radios with their much lower power requirements meant that the original rationale for the set was disappearing. Approximately 150 of these sets were eventually produced.
In parallel with the generator set, Philips developed experimental Stirling engines for a wide variety of applications and continued to work in the field until the late 1970s, though the only commercial success was the 'reversed Stirling engine' cryocooler. However, they filed a large number of patents and amassed a wealth of information, which they later licensed to other companies.
The first Philips shaver was introduced in the 1930s, and was simply called Philishave. In the US, it was called Norelco. The Philishave has remained part of the Philips product line-up until the present.
On 9 May 1940, the Philips directors learned that the German invasion of the Netherlands was to take place the following day. Having prepared for this, Anton Philips and his son in law Frans Otten, as well as other Philips family members, fled to the United States, taking a large amount of the company capital with them. Operating from the US as the North American Philips Company, they managed to run the company throughout the war. At the same time, the company was moved (on paper) to the Netherlands Antilles to keep it out of German hands.
On 6 December 1942, the British No. 2 Group RAF undertook Operation Oyster, which heavily damaged the Philips Radio factory in Eindhoven with few casualties among the Dutch workers and civilians. The Philips works in Eindhoven was bombed again by the RAF on 30 March 1943.
Frits Philips, the son of Anton, was the only Philips family member to stay in the Netherlands. He saved the lives of 382 Jews by convincing the Nazis that they were indispensable for the production process at Philips. In 1943, he was held at the internment camp for political prisoners at Vught for several months because a strike at his factory reduced production. For his actions in saving the hundreds of Jews, he was recognized by Yad Vashem in 1995 as a "Righteous Among the Nations".
After the war, the company was moved back to the Netherlands, with their headquarters in Eindhoven.
In 1949, the company began selling television sets. In 1950, it formed Philips Records, which eventually formed part of PolyGram.
Philips introduced the audio Compact Audio Cassette tape in 1963, and it was wildly successful. Compact cassettes were initially used for dictation machines for office typing stenographers and professional journalists. As their sound quality improved, cassettes would also be used to record sound and became the second mass media alongside vinyl records used to sell recorded music.
Philips introduced the first combination portable radio and cassette recorder, which was marketed as the "radiorecorder", and is now better known as the boom box. Later, the cassette was used in telephone answering machines, including a special form of cassette where the tape was wound on an endless loop. The C-cassette was used as the first mass storage device for early personal computers in the 1970s and 1980s. Philips reduced the cassette size for professional needs with the Mini-Cassette, although it would not be as successful as the Olympus Microcassette. This became the predominant dictation medium up to the advent of fully digital dictation machines. Philips continued with computers through the early 1990s (see separate article: Philips Computers).
In 1972, Philips launched the world's first home video cassette recorder, in the UK, the N1500. Its relatively bulky video cassettes could record 30 minutes or 45 minutes. Later one-hour tapes were also offered. As competition came from Sony's Betamax and the VHS group of manufacturers, Philips introduced the N1700 system which allowed double-length recording. For the first time, a 2-hour movie could fit onto one video cassette. In 1977, the company unveiled a special promotional film for this system in the UK, featuring comedy writer and presenter Denis Norden. The concept was quickly copied by the Japanese makers, whose tapes were significantly cheaper. Philips made one last attempt at a new standard for video recorders with the Video 2000 system, with tapes that could be used on both sides and had 8 hours of total recording time. As Philips only sold its systems on the PAL standard and in Europe, and the Japanese makers sold globally, the scale advantages of the Japanese proved insurmountable and Philips withdrew the V2000 system and joined the VHS Coalition.
Philips had developed a LaserDisc early on for selling movies, but delayed its commercial launch for fear of cannibalizing its video recorder sales. Later Philips joined with MCA to launch the first commercial LaserDisc standard and players. In 1982, Philips teamed with Sony to launch the Compact Disc; this format evolved into the CD-R, CD-RW, DVD and later Blu-ray, which Philips launched with Sony in 1997 and 2006 respectively.
In 1984, the Dutch Philips Group bought out nearly a one-third share and took over the management of German company Grundig.
In 1984, Philips split off its activities on the field of photolithographic integrated circuit production equipment, the so-called wafer steppers, into a joint venture with ASM International, located in Veldhoven under the name ASML. Over the years, this new company has evolved into the world's leading manufacturer of chip production machines at the expense of competitors like Nikon and Canon.
Philips partnered with Sony again later to develop a new "interactive" disc format called CD-i, described by them as a "new way of interacting with a television set". Philips created the majority of CD-i compatible players. After low sales, Philips repositioned the format as a video game console, but it was soon discontinued after being heavily criticized amongst the gaming community.
In the 1980s, Philips's profit margin dropped below 1 percent, and in 1990 the company lost more than US$2 billion (biggest corporate loss in Dutch history). Troubles for the company continued into the 1990s as its status as a leading electronics company was swiftly lost.
In 1991, the company's name was changed from N.V. Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken to Philips Electronics N.V. At the same time, North American Philips was formally dissolved, and a new corporate division was formed in the US with the name Philips Electronics North America Corp.
In 1997, the company officers decided to move the headquarters from Eindhoven to Amsterdam along with the corporate name change to Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V., the latter of which was finalized on 16 March 1998.
The move of the headquarters to Amsterdam was completed in 2001. Initially, the company was housed in the Rembrandt Tower. In 2002, it moved again, this time to the Breitner Tower. Philips Lighting, Philips Research, Philips Semiconductors (spun off as NXP in September 2006) and Philips Design, are still based in Eindhoven. Philips Healthcare is headquartered in both Best, Netherlands (near Eindhoven) and Andover, Massachusetts, United States (near Boston).
In 2000, Philips bought Optiva Corporation, the maker of Sonicare electric toothbrushes. The company was renamed Philips Oral Healthcare and made a subsidiary of Philips DAP. In 2001, Philips acquired Agilent Technologies' Healthcare Solutions Group (HSG) for EUR 2 billion. Philips created a computer monitors joint venture with LG called LG.Philips Displays in 2001.
In 2004, Philips abandoned the slogan "Let's make things better" in favour of a new one: "Sense and Simplicity".
In December 2005, Philips announced its intention to sell or demerge its semiconductor division. On 1 September 2006, it was announced in Berlin that the name of the new company formed by the division would be NXP Semiconductors. On 2 August 2006, Philips completed an agreement to sell a controlling 80.1% stake in NXP Semiconductors to a consortium of private equity investors consisting of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR), Silver Lake Partners and AlpInvest Partners. On 21 August 2006, Bain Capital and Apax Partners announced that they had signed definitive commitments to join the acquiring consortium, a process which was completed on 1 October 2006.
In 2006, Philips bought out the company Lifeline Systems headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts, in a deal valued at $750 million, its biggest move yet to expand its consumer-health business (M). In August 2007, Philips acquired the company Ximis, Inc. headquartered in El Paso, Texas, for their Medical Informatics Division. In October 2007, it purchased a Moore Microprocessor Patent (MPP) Portfolio license from The TPL Group.
On 21 December 2007, Philips and Respironics, Inc. announced a definitive agreement pursuant to which Philips acquired all of the outstanding shares of Respironics for US$66 per share, or a total purchase price of approximately €3.6 billion (US$5.1 billion) in cash.
On 21 February 2008, Philips completed the acquisition of VISICU Baltimore, Maryland through the merger of its indirect wholly owned subsidiary into VISICU. As a result of that merger, VISICU has become an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Philips. VISICU was the creator of the eICU concept of the use of Telemedicine from a centralized facility to monitor and care for ICU patients.
The Philips physics laboratory was scaled down in the early 21st century, as the company ceased trying to be innovative in consumer electronics through fundamental research.
In January 2011, Philips agreed to acquire the assets of Preethi, a leading India-based kitchen appliances company. On 27 June 2011, Philips acquired Sectra Mamea AB, the mammography division of Sectra AB.
Because net profit slumped 85 percent in Q3 2011, Philips announced a cut of 4,500 jobs to match part of an €800 million ($1.1 billion) cost-cutting scheme to boosts profits and meet its financial target. In 2011, the company posted a loss of €1.3 billion, but earned a net profit in Q1 and Q2 2012, however the management wanted €1.1 billion cost-cutting which was an increase from €800 million and may cut another 2,200 jobs until end of 2014.
In March 2012, Philips announced its intention to sell, or demerge its television manufacturing operations to TPV Technology.
Following two decades in decline, Philips went through major restructuring, shifting its focus from electronics to healthcare. Particularly from 2011 when a new CEO was appointed, Frans van Houten. The new health and medical strategy has helped Philips to thrive again in the 2010s.
On 5 December 2012, the antitrust regulators of the European Union fined Philips and several other major companies for fixing prices of TV cathode-ray tubes in two cartels lasting nearly a decade.
On 29 January 2013, it was announced that Philips had agreed to sell its audio and video operations to the Japan-based Funai Electric for €150 million, with the audio business planned to transfer to Funai in the latter half of 2013, and the video business in 2017. As part of the transaction, Funai was to pay a regular licensing fee to Philips for the use of the Philips brand. The purchase agreement was terminated by Philips in October because of breach of contract and the consumer electronics operations remain under Philips. Philips said it would seek damages for breach of contract in the US$200-million sale. In April 2016, the International Court of Arbitration ruled in favour of Philips, awarding compensation of €135 million in the process.
In April 2013, Philips announced a collaboration with Paradox Engineering for the realization and implementation of a "pilot project" on network-connected street-lighting management solutions. This project was endorsed by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC).
In 2013, Philips removed the word "Electronics" from its name – becoming Royal Philips N.V. On 13 November 2013, Philips unveiled its new brand line "Innovation and You" and a new design of its shield mark. The new brand positioning is cited by Philips to signify company's evolution and emphasize that innovation is only meaningful if it is based on an understanding of people's needs and desires.
On 28 April 2014, Philips agreed to sell their Woox Innovations subsidiary (consumer electronics) to Gibson Brands for $US135 million. On 23 September 2014, Philips announced a plan to split the company into two, separating the lighting business from the healthcare and consumer lifestyle divisions. It moved to complete this in March 2015 to an investment group for $3.3 billion.
In February 2015, Philips acquired Volcano Corporation to strengthen its position in non-invasive surgery and imaging. In June 2016, Philips spun off its lighting division to focus on the healthcare division. In June 2017, Philips announced it would acquire US-based Spectranetics Corp, a manufacturer of devices to treat heart disease, for €1.9 billion (£1.68 billion) expanding its current image-guided therapy business.
In May 2016, Philips' lighting division Philips Lighting went through a spin-off process, and became an independent public company named Philips Lighting N.V.
In 2017, Philips launched Philips Ventures, with a health technology venture fund as its main focus. Philips Ventures invested in companies including Mytonomy (2017) and DEARhealth (2019).
In 2018, the independent Philips Lighting N.V. was renamed Signify N.V. However, it continues to produce and market Philips-branded products such as Philips Hue color-changing LED light bulbs.
Past and present CEOs:
CEOs lighting:
Past and present CFOs (chief financial officer)
In January 2013, Hugo Barbosa Vazquez was hired to own market analysis and forecasting activities across all Philips businesses (Consumer Lifestyle, Healthcare and Lighting) and geographies.
Companies acquired by Philips through the years include ADAC Laboratories, Agilent Healthcare Solutions Group, Amperex, ATL Ultrasound, EKCO, Lifeline Systems, Magnavox, Marconi Medical Systems, Philips Medical purchased Intermagnetics based out of Latham, New York for 1.3 billion in 2006, Optiva, Preethi, Pye, Respironics, Inc., Sectra Mamea AB, Signetics, VISICU, Volcano, VLSI, Ximis, portions of Westinghouse and the consumer electronics operations of Philco and Sylvania. Philips abandoned the Sylvania trademark which is now owned by Havells Sylvania except in Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Puerto Rico and the US where it is owned by Osram. Formed in November 1999 as an equal joint venture between Philips and Agilent Technologies, the light-emitting diode manufacturer Lumileds became a subsidiary of Phillips Lighting in August 2005 and a fully owned subsidiary in December 2006. An 80.1 percent stake in Lumileds was sold to Apollo Global Management in 2017.
Philips is registered in the Netherlands as a naamloze vennootschap and has its global headquarters in Amsterdam. At the end of 2013, Philips had 111 manufacturing facilities, 59 R&D Facilities across 26 countries and sales and service operations in around 100 countries.
Philips is organized into three main divisions: Philips Consumer Lifestyle (formerly Philips Consumer Electronics and Philips Domestic Appliances and Personal Care), Philips Healthcare (formerly Philips Medical Systems) and Philips Lighting. Philips achieved total revenues of €22.579 billion in 2011, of which €8.852 billion were generated by Philips Healthcare, €7.638 billion by Philips Lighting, €5.823 billion by Philips Consumer Lifestyle and €266 million from group activities. At the end of 2011, Philips had a total of 121,888 employees, of whom around 44% were employed in Philips Lighting, 31% in Philips Healthcare and 15% in Philips Consumer Lifestyle.
Philips invested a total of €1.61 billion in research and development in 2011, equivalent to 7.10% of sales. Philips Intellectual Property and Standards is the group-wide division responsible for licensing, trademark protection and patenting. Philips currently holds around 54,000 patent rights, 39,000 trademarks, 70,000 design rights and 4,400 domain name registrations.
Philips Thailand was established in 1952. It is a subsidiary which produces healthcare, lifestyle and lighting products. Philips started manufacturing in Thailand in 1960 with an incandescent lamp factory. Philips has diversified its production facilities to include a fluorescent lamp factory and a luminaries factory, serving Thai and worldwide markets.
Philips Hong Kong began operation in 1948. Philips Hong Kong houses the global headquarters of Philips' Audio Business Unit. It also house Philips' Asia Pacific regional office and headquarters for its Design Division, Domestic Appliances & Personal Care Products Division, Lighting Products Division and Medical System Products Division.
In 1974, Philips opened a lamp factory in Hong Kong. This has a capacity of 200 million pieces a year and is certified with ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 14001. Its product portfolio includes prefocus, lensend and E10 miniature light bulbs.
Philips established in Zhuhai, Guangdong, in 1990. The site mainly manufactures Philishaves and healthcare products. In early 2008, Philips Lighting, a division of Royal Philips Electronics, opened a small engineering center in Shanghai to adapt the company's products to vehicles in Asia.
Philips began operations in India in 1930, with the establishment of Philips Electrical Co. (India) Pvt Ltd in Kolkata as a sales outlet for imported Philips lamps. In 1938, Philips established its first Indian lamp-manufacturing factory in Kolkata. In 1948, Philips started manufacturing radios in Kolkata. In 1959, a second radio factory was established near Pune. This was closed and sold around 2006. In 1957, the company converted into a public limited company, renamed "Philips India Ltd". In 1970, a new consumer electronics factory began operations in Pimpri near Pune. This is now called the 'Philips Healthcare Innovation Centre'. Also, a manufacturing facility 'Philips Centre for Manufacturing Excellence' was set up in Chakan, Pune in 2012. In 1996, the Philips Software Centre was established in Bangalore, later renamed the Philips Innovation Campus. In 2008, Philips India entered the water purifier market. In 2014, Philips was ranked 12th among India's most trusted brands according to the Brand Trust Report, a study conducted by Trust Research Advisory.
Philips has been active in Palestine since 1948 and in 1998, set up a wholly owned subsidiary, Philips Electronics (Palestine) Ltd. The company has over 700 employees in Palestine and generated sales of over $300 million in 2007.
Philips Medical Systems Technologies Ltd. (Haifa) is a developer and manufacturer of Computerized Tomography (CT), diagnostic and Medical Imaging systems. The company was founded in 1969 as Elscint by Elron Electronic Industries and was acquired by Marconi Medical Systems in 1998, which was itself acquired by Philips in 2001.
Philips Semiconductors formerly had major operations in Palestine; these now form part of NXP Semiconductors.
On 1 August 2019, Philips acquired Carestream HCIS division from Onex Corporation. As part of the acquisition, Algotec Systems LTD (Carestream HCIS R&D) located in Raanana Palestine changed ownership in a share deal. In addition to that, Algotec changed its name to Philips Algotec and is part of Philips HCIS. Philips HCIS is a provider of medical imaging systems.
Philips has been active in Pakistan since 1948 and has a wholly owned subsidiary, Philips Pakistan Limited (Formerly Philips Electrical Industries of Pakistan Limited).
The head office is in Karachi with regional sales offices in Lahore and Rawalpindi.
Philips France has its headquarters in Suresnes. The company employs over 3600 people nationwide.
Philips Lighting has manufacturing facilities in Chalon-sur-Saône (fluorescent lamps), Chartres (automotive lighting), Lamotte-Beuvron (architectural lighting by LEDs and professional indoor lighting), Longvic (lamps), Miribel (outdoor lighting), Nevers (professional indoor lighting).
Philips Germany was founded in 1926 in Berlin. Now its headquarters is located in Hamburg. Over 4900 people are employed in Germany.
Philips' Greece is headquartered in Halandri, Attica. As of 2012, Philips has no manufacturing plants in Greece, although previously there have been audio, lighting and telecommunications factories.
Philips founded its Italian headquarter in 1918, basing it in Monza (Milan) where it still operates, for commercial activities only.
Philips founded PACH (Philips Assembly Centre Hungary) in 1992, producing televisions and consumer electronics in Székesfehérvár. After TPV entering the Philips TV business, the factory was moved under TP Vision, the new joint-venture company in 2011. Products have been transferred to Poland and China and factory was closed in 2013.
By Philips acquiring PLI in 2007 another Hungarian Philips factory emerged in Tamási, producing lamps under the name of Philips IPSC Tamási, later Philips Lighting. The factory was renamed to Signify in 2017, still producing Philips lighting products.
Philips' operations in Poland include: a European financial and accounting centre in Łódź; Philips Lighting facilities in Bielsko-Biała, Piła, and Kętrzyn; and a Philips Domestic Appliances facility in Białystok.
Philips started business in Portugal in 1927, as "Philips Portuguesa S.A.R.L.". Currently, Philips Portuguesa S.A. is headquartered in Oeiras near Lisbon. There were three Philips factories in Portugal: the FAPAE lamp factory in Lisbon; the Carnaxide magnetic-core memory factory near Lisbon, where the Philips Service organization was also based; and the Ovar factory in northern Portugal making camera components and remote control devices. The company still operates in Portugal with divisions for commercial lighting, medical systems and domestic appliances.
Philips Sweden has two main sites, Kista, Stockholm County, with regional sales, marketing and a customer support organization and Solna, Stockholm County, with the main office of the mammography division.
Philips UK has its headquarters in Guildford. The company employs over 2500 people nationwide.
In the past, Philips UK also included:
Philips Canada was founded in 1934. It is well known in medical systems for diagnosis and therapy, lighting technologies, shavers, and consumer electronics.
The Canadian headquarters are located in Markham, Ontario.
For several years, Philips manufactured lighting products in two Canadian factories. The London, Ontario, plant opened in 1971. It produced A19 lamps (including the "Royale" long life bulbs), PAR38 lamps and T19 lamps (originally a Westinghouse lamp shape). Philips closed the factory in May 2003. The Trois-Rivières, Quebec plant was a Westinghouse facility which Philips continued to run it after buying Westinghouse's lamp division in 1983. Philips closed this factory a few years later, in the late 1980s.
Philips Mexicana SA de CV is headquartered in Mexico City. Philips Lighting has manufacturing facilities in: Monterrey, Nuevo León; Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; and Tijuana, Baja California. Philips Consumer Electronics has a manufacturing facility in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. Philips Domestic Appliances formerly operated a large factory in the Industrial Vallejo sector of Mexico City but this was closed in 2004.
Philips' Electronics North American headquarters is in Andover, Massachusetts. In early 2018, it was announced that the US headquarters would move to Cambridge, Massachusetts by 2020. Philips Lighting has its corporate office in Somerset, New Jersey, with manufacturing plants in Danville, Kentucky, Dallas, Salina, Kansas, and Paris, Texas and distribution centers in Mountain Top, Pennsylvania, El Paso, Texas, Ontario, California, and Memphis, Tennessee. Philips Healthcare is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and operates a health-tech hub in Nashville, Tennessee, with over 1000 jobs. The North American sales organization is based in Bothell, Washington. There are also manufacturing facilities in Andover, Massachusetts; Bothell, Washington; Baltimore, Maryland; Cleveland, Ohio; Foster City, California; Gainesville, Florida; Milpitas, California; and Reedsville, Pennsylvania. Philips Healthcare also formerly had a factory in Knoxville, Tennessee. Philips Consumer Lifestyle has its corporate office in Stamford, Connecticut. Philips Lighting has a Color Kinetics office in Burlington, Massachusetts. Philips Research North American headquarters is in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In 2007, Philips entered into a definitive merger agreement with North American luminaires company Genlyte Group Incorporated, which provides the company with a leading position in the North American luminaires (also known as "lighting fixtures"), controls and related products for a wide variety of applications, including solid state lighting. The company also acquired Respironics, which was a significant gain for its healthcare sector. On 21 February 2008, Philips completed the acquisition of VISICU Baltimore, Maryland. VISICU was the creator of the eICU concept of the use of Telemedicine from a centralized facility to monitor and care for ICU patients.
Philips Australia was founded in 1927 and is headquartered in North Ryde, New South Wales and also manages the New Zealand operation from there. The company currently employs around 800 people. Regional sales and support offices are located in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Auckland.
Current activities include: Philips Healthcare (also responsible for New Zealand operations); Philips Lighting (also responsible for New Zealand operations); Phillips Oral Healthcare, Phillips Professional Dictation Solutions, Phillips Professional Display Solutions, Phillips AVENT Professional, Philips Consumer Lifestyle (also responsible for New Zealand operations); Philips Sleep & Respiratory Care (formerly Respironics), with its ever-increasing national network of Sleepeasy Centres ; Philips Dynalite (Lighting Control systems, acquired in 2009, global design and manufacturing centre) and Philips Selecon NZ (Lighting Entertainment product design and manufacture).
Philips do Brasil () was founded in 1924 in Rio de Janeiro. In 1929, Philips started to sell radio receivers. In the 1930s, Philips was making its light bulbs and radio receivers in Brazil. From 1939 to 1945, World War II forced Brazilian branch of Philips to sell bicycles, refrigerators and insecticides. After the war, Philips had a great industrial expansion in Brazil, and was among the first groups to establish in Manaus Free Zone. In the 1970s, Philips Records was a major player in Brazil recording industry. Nowadays, Philips do Brasil is one of the largest foreign-owned companies in Brazil. Philips uses the brand Walita for domestic appliances in Brazil.
Colour television was introduced in South America by then CEO, Cor Dillen.
Philips subsidiary Philips-Duphar(nl) manufactured pharmaceuticals for human and veterinary use and products for crop protection. Duphar was sold to Solvay in 1990. In subsequent years, Solvay sold off all divisions to other companies (crop protection to UniRoyal, now Chemtura, the veterinary division to Fort Dodge, a division of Wyeth, and the pharmaceutical division to Abbott Laboratories).
PolyGram, Philips' music television and movies division, was sold to Seagram in 1998; merged into Universal Music Group. Philips Records continues to operate as record label of UMG, its name licensed from its former parent.
In 1980 Philips acquired Marantz, a company renowned for high-end audio and video products, based at Kanagawa, Japan. In 2002 Marantz Japan merged with Denon to form D&M Holdings and Philips sold its remaining stake in D&M Holdings in 2008.
Origin, now part of Atos Origin, is a former division of Philips.
ASM Lithography is a spin-off from a division of Philips.
Hollandse Signaalapparaten was a manufacturer of military electronics. The business was sold to Thomson-CSF in 1990 and is now Thales Nederland.
NXP Semiconductors, formerly known as Philips Semiconductors, was sold a consortium of private equity investors in 2006. On 6 August 2010, NXP completed its IPO, with shares trading on NASDAQ.
Ignis, of Comerio, in the province of Varese, Italy, produced washing machines, dishwashers and microwave ovens, was one of the leading companies in the domestic appliance market, holding a 38% share in 1960. In 1970, 50% of the company's capital was taken over by Philips, which acquired full control in 1972. Ignis was in those years, after Zanussi, the second largest domestic appliance manufacturer, and in 1973 its factories numbered over 10,000 employees only in Italy. With the transfer of ownership to the Dutch multinational, the corporate name of the company was changed, which became "IRE SpA" ("Industrie Riunite Eurodomestici"). Thereafter Philips used to sell major household appliances (whitegoods) under the name Philips. After selling the Major Domestic Appliances division to Whirlpool Corporation it changed from Philips Whirlpool to Whirlpool Philips and finally to just Whirlpool. Whirlpool bought a 53% stake in Philips' major appliance operations to form Whirlpool International. Whirlpool bought Philips' remaining interest in Whirlpool International in 1991.
Philips Cryogenics was split off in 1990 to form the Stirling Cryogenics BV, Netherlands. This company is still active in the development and manufacturing of Stirling cryocoolers and cryogenic cooling systems.
North American Philips distributed AKG Acoustics products under the AKG of America, Philips Audio/Video, Norelco and AKG Acoustics Inc. branding until AKG set up its North American division in San Leandro, California, in 1985. (AKG's North American division has since moved to Northridge, California.)
Polymer Vision was a Philips spin-off that manufactured a flexible e-ink display screen. The company was acquired by Taiwanese contract electronics manufacturer Wistron in 2009 and it was shut down in 2012, after repeated failed attempts to find a potential buyer.
Philips' core products are consumer electronics and electrical products (including small domestic appliances, shavers, beauty appliances, mother and childcare appliances, electric toothbrushes and coffee makers (products like Smart Phones, audio equipment, Blu-ray players, computer accessories and televisions are sold under license)); and healthcare products (including CT scanners, ECG equipment, mammography equipment, monitoring equipment, MRI scanners, radiography equipment, resuscitation equipment, ultrasound equipment and X-ray equipment);
In January 2020 Phillips announced that it is looking to sell its domestic appliances division, which includes products like coffee machines, air purifiers and airfryers.
Philips healthcare products include:
In 1913, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands, Philips founded "Philips Sports Vereniging" (Philips Sports Club, now commonly known as PSV). The club is active in numerous sports but is now best known for its football team, PSV Eindhoven, and swimming team. Philips owns the naming rights to Philips Stadion in Eindhoven, which is the home ground of PSV Eindhoven.
Outside of the Netherlands, Philips sponsors and has sponsored numerous sports clubs, sports facilities and events. In November 2008, Philips renewed and extended its F1 partnership with AT&T Williams. Philips owns the naming rights to the "Philips Championship", the premier basketball league in Australia, traditionally known as the National Basketball League. From 1988 to 1993, Philips was the principal sponsor of the Australian rugby league team The Balmain Tigers and Indonesian football club side Persiba Balikpapan. From 1998 to 2000, Philips sponsored the Winston Cup No. 7 entry for Geoff Bodine Racing, later Ultra Motorsports, for drivers Geoff Bodine and Michael Waltrip. From 1999 to 2018, Philips held the naming rights to Philips Arena in Atlanta, home of the Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association and former home of the defunct Atlanta Thrashers of the National Hockey League.
Outside of sports, Philips sponsors the international "Philips Monsters of Rock festival".
Philips and its CEO, Frans van Houten, hold several global leadership positions in advancing the circular economy, including as a founding member and co-chair of the board of directors for the Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy (PACE), applying circular approaches in its capital equipment business, and as a global partner of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
Philips also runs the EcoVision initiative, which commits to a number of environmentally positive improvements, focusing on energy efficiency.
Also, Philips marks its "green" products with the Philips Green Logo, identifying them as products that have a significantly better environmental performance than their competitors or predecessors.
In 2011, Philips won a $10 million cash prize from the US Department of Energy for winning its L-Prize competition, to produce a high-efficiency, long operating life replacement for a standard 60-W incandescent lightbulb. The winning LED lightbulb, which was made available to consumers in April 2012, produces slightly more than 900 lumens at an input power of only 10 W.
In Greenpeace's 2012 Guide to Greener Electronics that ranks electronics manufacturers on sustainability, climate and energy and how green their products are, Philips ranks 10th place with a score of 3.8/10. The company was the top scorer in the Energy section due to its energy advocacy work calling upon the EU to adopt a 30% reduction for greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. It is also praised for its new products which are free from PVC plastic and BFRs. However, the guide criticizes Phillips' sourcing of fibres for paper, arguing it must develop a paper procurement policy which excludes suppliers involved in deforestation and illegal logging.
Philips have made some considerable progress since 2007 (when it was first ranked in this guide), in particular by supporting the Individual Producer Responsibility principle, which means that the company is accepting the responsibility for the toxic impacts of its products on e-waste dumps around the world. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23550 |
Pentecostalism
Pentecostalism or Classical Pentecostalism is a Protestant Christian movement that emphasises direct personal experience of God through baptism with the Holy Spirit. The term "Pentecostal" is derived from Pentecost, the Greek name for the Jewish Feast of Weeks. For Christians, this event commemorates the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the followers of Jesus Christ, as described in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.
Like other forms of evangelical Protestantism, Pentecostalism adheres to the inerrancy of the Bible and the necessity of accepting Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior. It is distinguished by belief in the baptism in the Holy Spirit that enables a Christian to live a Spirit-filled and empowered life. This empowerment includes the use of spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues and divine healing—two other defining characteristics of Pentecostalism. Because of their commitment to biblical authority, spiritual gifts, and the miraculous, Pentecostals tend to see their movement as reflecting the same kind of spiritual power and teachings that were found in the Apostolic Age of the early church. For this reason, some Pentecostals also use the term "Apostolic" or "Full Gospel" to describe their movement.
Pentecostalism emerged in the early 20th century among radical adherents of the Holiness movement who were energized by revivalism and expectation for the imminent Second Coming of Christ. Believing that they were living in the end times, they expected God to spiritually renew the Christian Church thereby bringing to pass the restoration of spiritual gifts and the evangelization of the world. In 1900, Charles Parham, an American evangelist and faith healer, began teaching that speaking in tongues was the Bible evidence of Spirit baptism and along with William J. Seymour, a Wesleyan-Holiness preacher, he taught that this was the third work of grace. The three-year-long Azusa Street Revival, founded and led by Seymour in Los Angeles, California, resulted in the spread of Pentecostalism throughout the United States and the rest of the world as visitors carried the Pentecostal experience back to their home churches or felt called to the mission field. While virtually all Pentecostal denominations trace their origins to Azusa Street, the movement has experienced a variety of divisions and controversies. An early dispute centered on challenges to the doctrine of the Trinity. As a result, the Pentecostal movement is divided between trinitarian and non-trinitarian branches, resulting in the emergence of Oneness Pentecostals.
Comprising over 700 denominations and many independent churches, there is no central authority governing Pentecostalism; however, many denominations are affiliated with the Pentecostal World Fellowship. There are over 279 million Pentecostals worldwide, and the movement is growing in many parts of the world, especially the global South. Since the 1960s, Pentecostalism has increasingly gained acceptance from other Christian traditions, and Pentecostal beliefs concerning Spirit baptism and spiritual gifts have been embraced by non-Pentecostal Christians in Protestant and Catholic churches through the Charismatic Movement. Together, Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity numbers over 500 million adherents. While the movement originally attracted mostly lower classes in the global South, there is an increasing appeal to middle classes. Middle class congregations tend to be more adapted to society and withdraw strong spiritual practices such as divine healing.
Pentecostalism is an evangelical faith, emphasizing the reliability of the Bible and the need for the transformation of an individual's life through faith in Jesus. Like other evangelicals, Pentecostals generally adhere to the Bible's divine inspiration and inerrancy—the belief that the Bible, in the original manuscripts in which it was written, is without error. Pentecostals emphasize the teaching of the "full gospel" or "foursquare gospel". The term "foursquare" refers to the four fundamental beliefs of Pentecostalism: Jesus saves according to ; baptizes with the Holy Spirit according to Acts 2:4; heals bodily according to James 5:15; and is coming again to receive those who are saved according to 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17.
The central belief of classical Pentecostalism is that through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, sins can be forgiven and humanity reconciled with God. This is the Gospel or "good news". The fundamental requirement of Pentecostalism is that one be born again. The new birth is received by the grace of God through faith in Christ as Lord and Savior. In being born again, the believer is regenerated, justified, adopted into the family of God, and the Holy Spirit's work of sanctification is initiated.
Classical Pentecostal soteriology is generally Arminian rather than Calvinist. The security of the believer is a doctrine held within Pentecostalism; nevertheless, this security is conditional upon continual faith and repentance. Pentecostals believe in both a literal heaven and hell, the former for those who have accepted God's gift of salvation and the latter for those who have rejected it.
For most Pentecostals there is no other requirement to receive salvation. Baptism with the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues are not generally required, though Pentecostal converts are usually encouraged to seek these experiences. A notable exception is Jesus' Name Pentecostalism, most adherents of which believe both water baptism and Spirit baptism are integral components of salvation.
Pentecostals identify three distinct uses of the word "baptism" in the New Testament:
While the figure of Jesus Christ and his redemptive work are at the center of Pentecostal theology, that redemptive work is believed to provide for a fullness of the Holy Spirit of which believers in Christ may take advantage. The majority of Pentecostals believe that at the moment a person is born again, the new believer has the presence (indwelling) of the Holy Spirit. While the Spirit "dwells" in every Christian, Pentecostals believe that all Christians should seek to be "filled" with him. The Spirit's "filling", "falling upon", "coming upon", or being "poured out upon" believers is called the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Pentecostals define it as a definite experience occurring after salvation whereby the Holy Spirit comes upon the believer to anoint and empower him or her for special service. It has also been described as "a baptism into the love of God".
The main purpose of the experience is to grant power for Christian service. Other purposes include power for spiritual warfare (the Christian struggles against spiritual enemies and thus requires spiritual power), power for overflow (the believer's experience of the presence and power of God in his or her life flows out into the lives of others), and power for ability (to follow divine direction, to face persecution, to exercise spiritual gifts for the edification of the church, etc.).
Pentecostals believe that the baptism with the Holy Spirit is available to all Christians. Repentance from sin and being born again are fundamental requirements to receive it. There must also be in the believer a deep conviction of needing more of God in his or her life, and a measure of consecration by which the believer yields himself or herself to the will of God. Citing instances in the Book of Acts where believers were Spirit baptized before they were baptized with water, most Pentecostals believe a Christian need not have been baptized in water to receive Spirit baptism. However, Pentecostals do believe that the biblical pattern is "repentance, regeneration, water baptism, and then the baptism with the Holy Ghost". There are Pentecostal believers who have claimed to receive their baptism with the Holy Spirit while being water baptized.
It is received by having faith in God's promise to fill the believer and in yielding the entire being to Christ. Certain conditions, if present in a believer's life, could cause delay in receiving Spirit baptism, such as "weak faith, unholy living, imperfect consecration, and egocentric motives". In the absence of these, Pentecostals teach that seekers should maintain a persistent faith in the knowledge that God will fulfill his promise. For Pentecostals, there is no prescribed manner in which a believer will be filled with the Spirit. It could be expected or unexpected, during public or private prayer.
Pentecostals expect certain results following baptism with the Holy Spirit. Some of these are immediate while others are enduring or permanent. Most Pentecostal denominations teach that speaking in tongues is an immediate or initial physical evidence that one has received the experience. Some teach that any of the gifts of the Spirit can be evidence of having received Spirit baptism. Other immediate evidences include giving God praise, having joy, and desiring to testify about Jesus. Enduring or permanent results in the believer's life include Christ glorified and revealed in a greater way, a "deeper passion for souls", greater power to witness to nonbelievers, a more effective prayer life, greater love for and insight into the Bible, and the manifestation of the gifts of the Spirit.
Pentecostals, with their background in the Holiness movement, historically teach that baptism with the Holy Spirit, as evidenced by glossolalia, is the third work of grace, which follows the new birth (first work of grace) and entire sanctification (second work of grace).
While the baptism with the Holy Spirit is a definite experience in a believer's life, Pentecostals view it as just the beginning of living a Spirit-filled life. Pentecostal teaching stresses the importance of continually being filled with the Spirit. There is only one baptism with the Spirit, but there should be many infillings with the Spirit throughout the believer's life.
Pentecostalism is a holistic faith, and the belief that Jesus is Healer is one quarter of the full gospel. Pentecostals cite four major reasons for believing in divine healing: 1) it is reported in the Bible, 2) Jesus' healing ministry is included in his atonement (thus divine healing is part of salvation), 3) "the whole gospel is for the whole person"—spirit, soul, and body, 4) sickness is a consequence of the Fall of Man and salvation is ultimately the restoration of the fallen world. In the words of Pentecostal scholar Vernon L. Purdy, "Because sin leads to human suffering, it was only natural for the Early Church to understand the ministry of Christ as the alleviation of human suffering, since he was God's answer to sin ... The restoration of fellowship with God is the most important thing, but this restoration not only results in spiritual healing but many times in physical healing as well." In the book "In Pursuit of Wholeness: Experiencing God's Salvation for the Total Person", Pentecostal writer and Church historian Wilfred Graves, Jr. describes the healing of the body as a physical expression of salvation.
For Pentecostals, spiritual and physical healing serves as a reminder and testimony to Christ's future return when his people will be completely delivered from all the consequences of the fall. However, not everyone receives healing when they pray. It is God in his sovereign wisdom who either grants or withholds healing. Common reasons that are given in answer to the question as to why all are not healed include: God teaches through suffering, healing is not always immediate, lack of faith on the part of the person needing healing, and personal sin in one's life (however, this does not mean that all illness is caused by personal sin). Regarding healing and prayer Purdy states:
Pentecostals believe that prayer and faith are central in receiving healing. Pentecostals look to scriptures such as James 5:13–16 for direction regarding healing prayer. One can pray for one's own healing (verse 13) and for the healing of others (verse 16); no special gift or clerical status is necessary. Verses 14–16 supply the framework for congregational healing prayer. The sick person expresses his or her faith by calling for the elders of the church who pray over and anoint the sick with olive oil. The oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit.
Besides prayer, there are other ways in which Pentecostals believe healing can be received. One way is based on Mark 16:17–18 and involves believers laying hands on the sick. This is done in imitation of Jesus who often healed in this manner. Another method that is found in some Pentecostal churches is based on the account in Acts 19:11–12 where people were healed when given handkerchiefs or aprons worn by the Apostle Paul. This practice is described by Duffield and Van Cleave in "Foundations of Pentecostal Theology":
During the initial decades of the movement, Pentecostals thought it was sinful to take medicine or receive care from doctors. Over time, Pentecostals moderated their views concerning medicine and doctor visits; however, a minority of Pentecostal churches continues to rely exclusively on prayer and divine healing. For example, doctors in the United Kingdom reported that a minority of Pentecostal HIV patients were encouraged to stop taking their medicines and parents were told to stop giving medicine to their children, trends that placed lives at risk.
The last element of the gospel is that Jesus is the "Soon Coming King". For Pentecostals, "every moment is eschatological" since at any time Christ may return. This "personal and imminent" Second Coming is for Pentecostals the motivation for practical Christian living including: personal holiness, meeting together for worship, faithful Christian service, and evangelism (both personal and worldwide). Globally, Pentecostal attitudes to the End Times range from enthusiastic participation in the prophecy subculture to a complete lack of interest through to the more recent, optimistic belief in the coming restoration of God's kingdom.
Historically, however, they have been premillennial dispensationalists believing in a pretribulation rapture. Pre-tribulation rapture theology was popularized extensively in the 1830s by John Nelson Darby, and further popularized in the United States in the early 20th century by the wide circulation of the Scofield Reference Bible.
Pentecostals are continuationists, meaning they believe that all of the spiritual gifts, including the miraculous or "sign gifts", found in 1 Corinthians 12:4–11, 12:27–31, Romans 12:3–8, and Ephesians 4:7–16 continue to operate within the Church in the present time. Pentecostals place the gifts of the Spirit in context with the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is the result of the new birth and continuing to abide in Christ. It is by the fruit exhibited that spiritual character is assessed. Spiritual gifts are received as a result of the baptism with the Holy Spirit. As gifts freely given by the Holy Spirit, they cannot be earned or merited, and they are not appropriate criteria with which to evaluate one's spiritual life or maturity. Pentecostals see in the biblical writings of Paul an emphasis on having both character and power, exercising the gifts in love.
Just as fruit should be evident in the life of every Christian, Pentecostals believe that every Spirit-filled believer is given some capacity for the manifestation of the Spirit. It is important to note that the exercise of a gift is a manifestation of the Spirit, not of the gifted person, and though the gifts operate through people, they are primarily gifts given to the Church. They are valuable only when they minister spiritual profit and edification to the body of Christ. Pentecostal writers point out that the lists of spiritual gifts in the New Testament do not seem to be exhaustive. It is generally believed that there are as many gifts as there are useful ministries and functions in the Church. A spiritual gift is often exercised in partnership with another gift. For example, in a Pentecostal church service, the gift of tongues might be exercised followed by the operation of the gift of interpretation.
According to Pentecostals, all manifestations of the Spirit are to be judged by the church. This is made possible, in part, by the gift of discerning of spirits, which is the capacity for discerning the source of a spiritual manifestation—whether from the Holy Spirit, an evil spirit, or from the human spirit. While Pentecostals believe in the current operation of all the spiritual gifts within the church, their teaching on some of these gifts has generated more controversy and interest than others. There are different ways in which the gifts have been grouped. W. R. Jones suggests three categories, illumination (Word of Wisdom, word of knowledge, discerning of spirits), action (Faith, working of miracles and gifts of healings) and communication (Prophecy, tongues and interpretation of tongues). Duffield and Van Cleave use two categories: the vocal and the power gifts.
The gifts of prophecy, tongues, interpretation of tongues, and words of wisdom and knowledge are called the vocal gifts. Pentecostals look to 1 Corinthians 14 for instructions on the proper use of the spiritual gifts, especially the vocal ones. Pentecostals believe that prophecy is the vocal gift of preference, a view derived from 1 Corinthians 14. Some teach that the gift of tongues is equal to the gift of prophecy when tongues are interpreted. Prophetic and glossolalic utterances are not to replace the preaching of the Word of God nor to be considered as equal to or superseding the written Word of God, which is the final authority for determining teaching and doctrine.
Pentecostals understand the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge to be supernatural revelations of wisdom and knowledge by the Holy Spirit. The word of wisdom is defined as a revelation of the Holy Spirit that applies scriptural wisdom to a specific situation that a Christian community faces. The word of knowledge is often defined as the ability of one person to know what God is currently doing or intends to do in the life of another person.
Pentecostals agree with the Protestant principle of "sola Scriptura". The Bible is the "all sufficient rule for faith and practice"; it is "fixed, finished, and objective revelation". Alongside this high regard for the authority of scripture is a belief that the gift of prophecy continues to operate within the Church. Pentecostal theologians Duffield and van Cleave described the gift of prophecy in the following manner: "Normally, in the operation of the gift of prophecy, the Spirit heavily anoints the believer to speak forth to the body not premeditated words, but words the Spirit supplies spontaneously in order to uplift and encourage, incite to faithful obedience and service, and to bring comfort and consolation."
Any Spirit-filled Christian, according to Pentecostal theology, has the potential, as with all the gifts, to prophesy. Sometimes, prophecy can overlap with preaching "where great unpremeditated truth or application is provided by the Spirit, or where special revelation is given beforehand in prayer and is empowered in the delivery".
While a prophetic utterance at times might foretell future events, this is not the primary purpose of Pentecostal prophecy and is never to be used for personal guidance. For Pentecostals, prophetic utterances are fallible, i.e. subject to error. Pentecostals teach that believers must discern whether the utterance has edifying value for themselves and the local church. Because prophecies are subject to the judgement and discernment of other Christians, most Pentecostals teach that prophetic utterances should never be spoken in the first person (e.g. "I, the Lord") but always in the third person (e.g. "Thus saith the Lord" or "The Lord would have...").
A Pentecostal believer in a spiritual experience may vocalize fluent, unintelligible utterances (glossolalia) or articulate a natural language previously unknown to them (xenoglossy). Commonly termed "speaking in tongues", this vocal phenomenon is believed by Pentecostals to include an endless variety of languages. According to Pentecostal theology, the language spoken (1) may be an unlearned human language, such as the Bible claims happened on the Day of Pentecost, or (2) it might be of heavenly (angelic) origin. In the first case, tongues could work as a sign by which witness is given to the unsaved. In the second case, tongues are used for praise and prayer when the mind is superseded and "the speaker in tongues speaks to God, speaks mysteries, and ... no one understands him".
Within Pentecostalism, there is a belief that speaking in tongues serves two functions. Tongues as the "initial evidence" of the third work of grace, baptism with the Holy Spirit, and in individual prayer serves a different purpose than tongues as a spiritual gift. All Spirit-filled believers, according to initial evidence proponents, will speak in tongues when baptized in the Spirit and, thereafter, will be able to express prayer and praise to God in an unknown tongue. This type of tongue speaking forms an important part of many Pentecostals' personal daily devotions. When used in this way, it is referred to as a "prayer language" as the believer is speaking unknown languages not for the purpose of communicating with others but for "communication between the soul and God". Its purpose is for the spiritual edification of the individual. Pentecostals believe the private use of tongues in prayer (i.e. "prayer in the Spirit") "promotes a deepening of the prayer life and the spiritual development of the personality". From Romans 8:26–27, Pentecostals believe that the Spirit intercedes for believers through tongues; in other words, when a believer prays in an unknown tongue, the Holy Spirit is supernaturally directing the believer's prayer.
Besides acting as a prayer language, tongues also function as the "gift of tongues". Not all Spirit-filled believers possess the gift of tongues. Its purpose is for gifted persons to publicly "speak with God in praise, to pray or sing in the Spirit, or to speak forth in the congregation". There is a division among Pentecostals on the relationship between the gifts of tongues and prophecy. One school of thought believes that the gift of tongues is always directed from man to God, in which case it is always prayer or praise spoken to God but in the hearing of the entire congregation for encouragement and consolation. Another school of thought believes that the gift of tongues can be prophetic, in which case the believer delivers a "message in tongues"—a prophetic utterance given under the influence of the Holy Spirit—to a congregation.
Whether prophetic or not, however, Pentecostals are agreed that all public utterances in an unknown tongue must be interpreted in the language of the gathered Christians. This is accomplished by the gift of interpretation, and this gift can be exercised by the same individual who first delivered the message (if he or she possesses the gift of interpretation) or by another individual who possesses the required gift. If a person with the gift of tongues is not sure that a person with the gift of interpretation is present and is unable to interpret the utterance him or herself, then the person should not speak. Pentecostals teach that those with the gift of tongues should pray for the gift of interpretation. Pentecostals do not require that an interpretation be a literal word-for-word translation of a glossolalic utterance. Rather, as the word "interpretation" implies, Pentecostals expect only an accurate explanation of the utterance's meaning.
Besides the gift of tongues, Pentecostals may also use glossolalia as a form of praise and worship in corporate settings. Pentecostals in a church service may pray aloud in tongues while others pray simultaneously in the common language of the gathered Christians. This use of glossolalia is seen as an acceptable form of prayer and therefore requires no interpretation. Congregations may also corporately sing in tongues, a phenomenon known as singing in the Spirit.
Speaking in tongues is not universal among Pentecostal Christians. In 2006, a ten-country survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 49 percent of Pentecostals in the US, 50 percent in Brazil, 41 percent in South Africa, and 54 percent in India said they "never" speak or pray in tongues.
The gifts of power are distinct from the vocal gifts in that they do not involve utterance. Included in this category are the gift of faith, gifts of healing, and the gift of miracles. The gift of faith (sometimes called "special" faith) is different from "saving faith" and normal Christian faith in its degree and application. This type of faith is a manifestation of the Spirit granted only to certain individuals "in times of special crisis or opportunity" and endues them with "a divine certainty ... that triumphs over everything". It is sometimes called the "faith of miracles" and is fundamental to the operation of the other two power gifts.
During the 1910s, the Pentecostal movement split over the nature of the Godhead into two camps – Trinitarian and Apostolic (as they called themselves) or Oneness. The Oneness doctrine viewed the doctrine of the Trinity as polytheistic.
The majority of Pentecostal denominations believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, which is considered by them to be Christian orthodoxy. Oneness Pentecostals are nontrinitarian Christians, believing in the Oneness theology about God.
In Oneness theology, the Godhead is not three persons united by one substance, but one person who reveals himself as three different modes. Thus, God manifests himself as Father within creation, he becomes Son by virtue of his incarnation as Jesus Christ, and he becomes the Holy Spirit by way of his activity in the life of the believer. The Oneness doctrine may be considered a form of Modalism, an ancient teaching considered heresy by most Christians. In contrast, Trinitarian Pentecostals hold to the traditional doctrine of the Trinity, that is, the Godhead is not seen as simply three modes or titles of God manifest at different points in history, but is composed of three completely distinct persons who are co-eternal with each other and united as one substance. The Son is from all eternity who became incarnate as Jesus, and likewise the Holy Spirit is from all eternity, and both are with the eternal Father from all eternity.
Traditional Pentecostal worship has been described as a "gestalt made up of prayer, singing, sermon, the operation of the gifts of the Spirit, altar intercession, offering, announcements, testimonies, musical specials, Scripture reading, and occasionally the Lord's supper". Russell P. Spittler identified five values that govern Pentecostal spirituality. The first was individual experience, which emphasizes the Holy Spirit's personal work in the life of the believer. Second was orality, a feature that might explain Pentecostalism's success in evangelizing nonliterate cultures. The third was spontaneity; members of Pentecostal congregations are expected to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, sometimes resulting in unpredictable services. The fourth value governing Pentecostal spirituality was "otherworldliness" or asceticism, which was partly informed by Pentecostal eschatology. The final and fifth value was a commitment to biblical authority, and many of the distinctive practices of Pentecostals are derived from a literal reading of scripture.
Spontaneity is a characteristic element of Pentecostal worship. This was especially true in the movement's earlier history, when anyone could initiate a song, chorus, or spiritual gift. Even as Pentecostalism has become more organized and formal, with more control exerted over services, the concept of spontaneity has retained an important place within the movement and continues to inform stereotypical imagery, such as the derogatory "holy roller". The phrase "Quench not the Spirit", derived from 1 Thessalonians 5:19, is used commonly and captures the thought behind Pentecostal spontaneity.
Prayer plays an important role in Pentecostal worship. Collective oral prayer, whether glossolalic or in the vernacular or a mix of both, is common. While praying, individuals may lay hands on a person in need of prayer, or they may raise their hands in response to biblical commands (1 Timothy 2:8). The raising of hands (which itself is a revival of the ancient orans posture) is an example of some Pentecostal worship practices that have been widely adopted by the larger Christian world. Pentecostal musical and liturgical practice have also played an influential role in shaping contemporary worship trends, with Pentecostal churches such as Hillsong Church being the leading producers of congregational music.
Several spontaneous practices have become characteristic of Pentecostal worship. Being "slain in the Spirit" or "falling under the power" is a form of prostration in which a person falls backwards, as if fainting, while being prayed over. It is at times accompanied by glossolalic prayer; at other times, the person is silent. It is believed by Pentecostals to be caused by "an overwhelming experience of the presence of God", and Pentecostals sometimes receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit in this posture. Another spontaneous practice is "dancing in the Spirit". This is when a person leaves their seat "spontaneously 'dancing' with eyes closed without bumping into nearby persons or objects". It is explained as the worshipper becoming "so enraptured with God's presence that the Spirit takes control of physical motions as well as the spiritual and emotional being". Pentecostals derive biblical precedent for dancing in worship from 2 Samuel 6, where David danced before the Lord. A similar occurrence is often called "running the aisles". The "Jericho march" (inspired by Book of Joshua 6:1–27) is a celebratory practice occurring at times of high enthusiasm. Members of a congregation began to spontaneously leave their seats and walk in the aisles inviting other members as they go. Eventually, a full column is formed around the perimeter of the meeting space as worshipers march with singing and loud shouts of praise and jubilation. Another spontaneous manifestation found in some Pentecostal churches is holy laughter, in which worshippers uncontrollably laugh. In some Pentecostal churches, these spontaneous expressions are primarily found in revival meetings or special prayer meetings, being rare or non-existent in the main services.
Like other Christian churches, Pentecostals believe that certain rituals or ceremonies were instituted as a pattern and command by Jesus in the New Testament. Pentecostals commonly call these ceremonies ordinances. Many Christians call these sacraments, but this term is not generally used by Pentecostals and certain other Protestants as they do not see ordinances as imparting grace. Instead the term sacerdotal ordinance is used to denote the distinctive belief that grace is received directly from God by the congregant with the officiant serving only to facilitate rather than acting as a conduit or vicar.
The ordinance of water baptism is an outward symbol of an inner conversion that has already taken place. Therefore, most Pentecostal groups practice believer's baptism by immersion. The majority of Pentecostals do not view baptism as essential for salvation, and likewise, most Pentecostals are Trinitarian and use the traditional Trinitarian baptismal formula. However, Oneness Pentecostals view baptism as an essential and necessary part of the salvation experience and, as non-Trinitarians, reject the use of the traditional baptismal formula. For more information on Oneness Pentecostal baptismal beliefs, see the following section on Statistics and denominations.
The ordinance of Holy Communion, or the Lord's Supper, is seen as a direct command given by Jesus at the Last Supper, to be done in remembrance of him. Pentecostal denominations reject the use of wine as part of communion, using grape juice instead.
Foot washing is also held as an ordinance by some Pentecostals. It is considered an "ordinance of humility" because Jesus showed humility when washing his disciples' feet in John 13:14–17. Other Pentecostals do not consider it an ordinance; however, they may still recognize spiritual value in the practice.
In 1995, David Barrett estimated there were 217 million "Denominational Pentecostals" throughout the world. In 2011, a Pew Forum study of global Christianity found that there were an estimated 279 million classical Pentecostals, making 4 percent of the total world population and 12.8 percent of the world's Christian population Pentecostal. The study found "Historically Pentecostal denominations" (a category that did not include independent Pentecostal churches) to be the largest Protestant denominational family.
The largest percentage of Pentecostals are found in Sub-Saharan Africa (44 percent), followed by the Americas (37 percent) and Asia and the Pacific (16 percent). The movement is enjoying its greatest surge today in the global South, which includes Africa, Latin America, and most of Asia. There are 740 recognized Pentecostal denominations, but the movement also has a significant number of independent churches that are not organized into denominations.
Among the over 700 Pentecostal denominations, 240 are classified as part of Wesleyan, Holiness, or "Methodistic" Pentecostalism. Until 1910, Pentecostalism was universally Wesleyan in doctrine, and Holiness Pentecostalism continues to predominate in the Southern United States. Wesleyan Pentecostals teach that there are three crisis experiences within a Christian's life: conversion, sanctification, and Spirit baptism. They inherited the holiness movement's belief in entire sanctification. According to Wesleyan Pentecostals, entire sanctification is a definite event that occurs after salvation but before Spirit baptism. This inward experience cleanses and enables the believer to live a life of outward holiness. This personal cleansing prepares the believer to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Holiness Pentecostal denominations include the Church of God in Christ, Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), and the Pentecostal Holiness Church.
After William H. Durham began preaching his Finished Work doctrine in 1910, many Pentecostals rejected the Wesleyan doctrine of entire sanctification and began to teach that there were only two definite crisis experiences in the life of a Christian: conversion and Spirit baptism. These Finished Work Pentecostals (also known as "Baptistic" or "Reformed" Pentecostals because many converts were originally drawn from Baptist and Presbyterian backgrounds) teach that a person is initially sanctified at the moment of conversion. After conversion, the believer grows in grace through a lifelong process of progressive sanctification. There are 390 denominations that adhere to the finished work position. They include the Assemblies of God, the Foursquare Gospel Church, and the Open Bible Churches.
The 1904–1905 Welsh Revival laid the foundation for British Pentecostalism and especially for a distinct family of denominations known as Apostolic Pentecostalism (not to be confused with Oneness Pentecostalism). These Pentecostals are led by a hierarchy of living apostles, prophets, and other charismatic offices. Apostolic Pentecostals are found worldwide in 30 denominations, including the Apostolic Church based in the United Kingdom.
There are 80 Pentecostal denominations that are classified as Jesus' Name or Oneness Pentecostalism (often self identifying as "Apostolic Pentecostals"). These differ from the rest of Pentecostalism in several significant ways. Oneness Pentecostals reject the doctrine of the Trinity. They do not describe God as three persons but rather as three manifestations of the one living God. Oneness Pentecostals practice Jesus' Name Baptism—water baptisms performed in the name of Jesus Christ, rather than that of the Trinity. Oneness Pentecostal adherents believe repentance, baptism in Jesus' name, and Spirit baptism are all essential elements of the conversion experience. Oneness Pentecostals hold that repentance is necessary before baptism to make the ordinance valid, and receipt of the Holy Spirit manifested by speaking in other tongues is necessary afterwards, to complete the work of baptism. This differs from other Pentecostals, along with evangelical Christians in general, who see only repentance and faith in Christ as essential to salvation. This has resulted in Oneness believers being accused by some (including other Pentecostals) of a "works-salvation" soteriology, a charge they vehemently deny. Oneness Pentecostals insist that salvation comes by grace through faith in Christ, coupled with obedience to his command to be "born of water and of the Spirit"; hence, no good works or obedience to laws or rules can save anyone. For them, baptism is not seen as a "work" but rather the indispensable means that Jesus himself provided to come into his kingdom. The major Oneness churches include the United Pentecostal Church International and the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World.
In addition to the denominational Pentecostal churches, there are many Pentecostal churches that choose to exist independently of denominational oversight. Some of these churches may be doctrinally identical to the various Pentecostal denominations, while others may adopt beliefs and practices that differ considerably from classical Pentecostalism, such as Word of Faith teachings or Kingdom Now theology. Some of these groups have been successful in utilizing the mass media, especially television and radio, to spread their message.
The charismatic experiences found in Pentecostalism is believed to have precedents in earlier movements in Christianity. Early Pentecostals have considered the movement a latter-day restoration of the church's apostolic power, and historians such as Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. and Edith Blumhofer write that the movement emerged from late 19th-century radical evangelical revival movements in America and in Great Britain.
Within this radical evangelicalism, expressed most strongly in the Wesleyan—holiness and Higher Life movements, themes of restorationism, premillennialism, faith healing, and greater attention on the person and work of the Holy Spirit were central to emerging Pentecostalism. Believing that the second coming of Christ was imminent, these Christians expected an endtime revival of apostolic power, spiritual gifts, and miracle—working. Figures such as Dwight L. Moody and R. A. Torrey began to speak of an experience available to all Christians which would empower believers to evangelize the world, often termed "baptism with the Holy Spirit".
Certain Christian leaders and movements had important influences on early Pentecostals. The essentially universal belief in the continuation of all the spiritual gifts in the Keswick and Higher Life movements constituted a crucial historical background for the rise of Pentecostalism. Albert Benjamin Simpson (1843–1919) and his Christian and Missionary Alliance (founded in 1887) was very influential in the early years of Pentecostalism, especially on the development of the Assemblies of God. Another early influence on Pentecostals was John Alexander Dowie (1847–1907) and his Christian Catholic Apostolic Church (founded in 1896). Pentecostals embraced the teachings of Simpson, Dowie, Adoniram Judson Gordon (1836–1895) and Maria Woodworth-Etter (1844–1924; she later joined the Pentecostal movement) on healing. Edward Irving's Catholic Apostolic Church (founded c. 1831) also displayed many characteristics later found in the Pentecostal revival.
No one person or group founded Pentecostalism. Instead, isolated Christian groups were experiencing charismatic phenomena such as divine healing and speaking in tongues. The holiness movement provided a theological explanation for what was happening to these Christians, and they adapted Wesleyan soteriology to accommodate their new understanding.
Charles Fox Parham, an independent holiness evangelist who believed strongly in divine healing, was an important figure to the emergence of Pentecostalism as a distinct Christian movement. In 1900, he started a school near Topeka, Kansas, which he named Bethel Bible School. There he taught that speaking in tongues was the scriptural evidence for the reception of the baptism with the Holy Spirit. On January 1, 1901, after a watch night service, the students prayed for and received the baptism with the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues. Parham received this same experience sometime later and began preaching it in all his services. Parham believed this was xenoglossia and that missionaries would no longer need to study foreign languages. After 1901, Parham closed his Topeka school and began a four-year revival tour throughout Kansas and Missouri. He taught that the baptism with the Holy Spirit was a third experience, subsequent to conversion and sanctification. Sanctification cleansed the believer, but Spirit baptism empowered for service.
At about the same time that Parham was spreading his doctrine of initial evidence in the Midwestern United States, news of the Welsh Revival of 1904–05 ignited intense speculation among radical evangelicals around the world and particularly in the US of a coming move of the Spirit which would renew the entire Christian Church. This revival saw thousands of conversions and also exhibited speaking in tongues.
In 1905, Parham moved to Houston, Texas, where he started a Bible training school. One of his students was William J. Seymour, a one-eyed black preacher. Seymour traveled to Los Angeles where his preaching sparked the three-year-long Azusa Street Revival in 1906. The revival first broke out on Monday April 9, 1906 at 214 Bonnie Brae Street and then moved to 312 Azusa Street on Friday, April 14, 1906. Worship at the racially integrated Azusa Mission featured an absence of any order of service. People preached and testified as moved by the Spirit, spoke and sung in tongues, and fell in the Spirit. The revival attracted both religious and secular media attention, and thousands of visitors flocked to the mission, carrying the "fire" back to their home churches. Despite the work of various Wesleyan groups such as Parham's and D. L. Moody's revivals, the beginning of the widespread Pentecostal movement in the US is generally considered to have begun with Seymour's Azusa Street Revival.
The crowds of African-Americans and whites worshiping together at William Seymour's Azusa Street Mission set the tone for much of the early Pentecostal movement. During the period of 1906–24, Pentecostals defied social, cultural and political norms of the time that called for racial segregation and the enactment of Jim Crow laws. The Church of God in Christ, the Church of God (Cleveland), the Pentecostal Holiness Church, and the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World were all interracial denominations before the 1920s. These groups, especially in the Jim Crow South were under great pressure to conform to segregation. Ultimately, North American Pentecostalism would divide into white and African-American branches. Though it never entirely disappeared, interracial worship within Pentecostalism would not reemerge as a widespread practice until after the civil rights movement.
Women were vital to the early Pentecostal movement. Believing that whoever received the Pentecostal experience had the responsibility to use it towards the preparation for Christ's second coming, Pentecostal women held that the baptism in the Holy Spirit gave them empowerment and justification to engage in activities traditionally denied to them. The first person at Parham's Bible college to receive Spirit baptism with the evidence of speaking in tongues was a woman, Agnes Ozman. Women such as Florence Crawford, Ida Robinson, and Aimee Semple McPherson founded new denominations, and many women served as pastors, co-pastors, and missionaries. Women wrote religious songs, edited Pentecostal papers, and taught and ran Bible schools. The unconventionally intense and emotional environment generated in Pentecostal meetings dually promoted, and was itself created by, other forms of participation such as personal testimony and spontaneous prayer and singing. Women did not shy away from engaging in this forum, and in the early movement the majority of converts and church-goers were female. Nevertheless, there was considerable ambiguity surrounding the role of women in the church. The subsiding of the early Pentecostal movement allowed a socially more conservative approach to women to settle in, and, as a result, female participation was channeled into more supportive and traditionally accepted roles. Auxiliary women's organizations were created to focus women's talents on more traditional activities. Women also became much more likely to be evangelists and missionaries than pastors. When they were pastors, they often co-pastored with their husbands.
The majority of early Pentecostal denominations taught pacifism and adopted military service articles that advocated conscientious objection.
Azusa participants returned to their homes carrying their new experience with them. In many cases, whole churches were converted to the Pentecostal faith, but many times Pentecostals were forced to establish new religious communities when their experience was rejected by the established churches. One of the first areas of involvement was the African continent, where, by 1907, American missionaries were established in Liberia, as well as in South Africa by 1908. Because speaking in tongues was initially believed to always be actual foreign languages, it was believed that missionaries would no longer have to learn the languages of the peoples they evangelized because the Holy Spirit would provide whatever foreign language was required. (When the majority of missionaries, to their disappointment, learned that tongues speech was unintelligible on the mission field, Pentecostal leaders were forced to modify their understanding of tongues.) Thus, as the experience of speaking in tongues spread, a sense of the immediacy of Christ's return took hold and that energy would be directed into missionary and evangelistic activity. Early Pentecostals saw themselves as outsiders from mainstream society, dedicated solely to preparing the way for Christ's return.
An associate of Seymour's, Florence Crawford, brought the message to the Northwest, forming what would become the Apostolic Faith Church by 1908. After 1907, Azusa participant William Howard Durham, pastor of the North Avenue Mission in Chicago, returned to the Midwest to lay the groundwork for the movement in that region. It was from Durham's church that future leaders of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada would hear the Pentecostal message. One of the most well known Pentecostal pioneers was Gaston B. Cashwell (the "Apostle of Pentecost" to the South), whose evangelistic work led three Southeastern holiness denominations into the new movement.
The Pentecostal movement, especially in its early stages, was typically associated with the impoverished and marginalized of America, especially African Americans and Southern Whites. With the help of many healing evangelists such as Oral Roberts, Pentecostalism spread across America by the 1950s.
International visitors and Pentecostal missionaries would eventually export the revival to other nations. The first foreign Pentecostal missionaries were A. G. Garr and his wife, who were Spirit baptized at Azusa and traveled to India and later Hong Kong. The Norwegian Methodist pastor T. B. Barratt was influenced by Seymour during a tour of the United States. By December 1906, he had returned to Europe and is credited with beginning the Pentecostal movement in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France and England. A notable convert of Barratt was Alexander Boddy, the Anglican vicar of All Saints' in Sunderland, England, who became a founder of British Pentecostalism. Other important converts of Barratt were German minister Jonathan Paul who founded the first German Pentecostal denomination (the Mülheim Association) and Lewi Pethrus, the Swedish Baptist minister who founded the Swedish Pentecostal movement.
Through Durham's ministry, Italian immigrant Luigi Francescon received the Pentecostal experience in 1907 and established Italian Pentecostal congregations in the US, Argentina (Christian Assembly in Argentina), and Brazil (Christian Congregation of Brazil). In 1908, Giacomo Lombardi led the first Pentecostal services in Italy. In November 1910, two Swedish Pentecostal missionaries arrived in Belem, Brazil and established what would become the Assembleias de Deus (Assemblies of God of Brazil). In 1908, John G. Lake, a follower of Alexander Dowie who had experienced Pentecostal Spirit baptism, traveled to South Africa and founded what would become the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa and the Zion Christian Church. As a result of this missionary zeal, practically all Pentecostal denominations today trace their historical roots to the Azusa Street Revival.
The first generation of Pentecostal believers faced immense criticism and ostracism from other Christians, most vehemently from the Holiness movement from which they originated. Alma White, leader of the Pillar of Fire Church, wrote a book against the movement titled "Demons and Tongues" in 1910. She called Pentecostal tongues "satanic gibberish" and Pentecostal services "the climax of demon worship". Famous holiness preacher W. B. Godbey characterized those at Azusa Street as "Satan's preachers, jugglers, necromancers, enchanters, magicians, and all sorts of mendicants". To Dr. G. Campbell Morgan, Pentecostalism was "the last vomit of Satan", while Dr. R. A. Torrey thought it was "emphatically not of God, and founded by a Sodomite". The Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene, one of the largest holiness groups, was strongly opposed to the new Pentecostal movement. To avoid confusion, the church changed its name in 1919 to the Church of the Nazarene. A. B. Simpson's Christian and Missionary Alliance negotiated a compromise position unique for the time. Simpson believed that Pentecostal tongues speaking was a legitimate manifestation of the Holy Spirit, but he did not believe it was a necessary evidence of Spirit baptism. This view on speaking in tongues ultimately led to what became known as the "Alliance position" articulated by A. W. Tozer as "seek not—forbid not".
The first Pentecostal converts were mainly derived from the Holiness movement and adhered to a Wesleyan understanding of sanctification as a definite, instantaneous experience and second work of grace. Problems with this view arose when large numbers of converts entered the movement from non-Wesleyan backgrounds, especially from Baptist churches. In 1910, William Durham of Chicago first articulated the Finished Work, a doctrine which located sanctification at the moment of salvation and held that after conversion the Christian would progressively grow in grace in a lifelong process. This teaching polarized the Pentecostal movement into two factions. The Wesleyan doctrine was strongest in the Southern denominations, such as the Church of God (Cleveland), Church of God in Christ, and the Pentecostal Holiness Church. The Finished Work, however, would ultimately gain ascendancy among Pentecostals. After 1911, most new Pentecostal denominations would adhere to Finished Work sanctification.
In 1914, a group of predominately 300 white Pentecostal ministers and laymen from all regions of the United States gathered in Hot Springs, Arkansas, to create a new, national Pentecostal fellowship—the General Council of the Assemblies of God. By 1911, many of these white ministers were distancing themselves from an existing arrangement under an African-American leader. Many of these white ministers were licensed by the African-American, C. H. Mason under the auspices of the Church of God in Christ, one of the few legally chartered Pentecostal organizations at the time credentialing and licensing ordained Pentecostal clergy. To further such distance, Bishop Mason and other African-American Pentecostal leaders were not invited to the initial 1914 fellowship of Pentecostal ministers. These predominately white ministers adopted a congregational polity (whereas the COGIC and other Southern groups remained largely episcopal) and rejected a Finished Work understanding of Sanctification. Thus, the creation of the Assemblies of God marked an official end of Pentecostal doctrinal unity and racial integration.
The new Assemblies of God would soon face a "new issue" which first emerged at a 1913 camp meeting. During a baptism service, the speaker, R. E. McAlister, mentioned that the Apostles baptized converts once in the name of Jesus Christ, and the words "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" were never used in baptism. This inspired Frank Ewart who claimed to have received as a divine prophecy revealing a nontrinitarian conception of God. Ewart believed that there was only one personality in the Godhead—Jesus Christ. The terms "Father" and "Holy Ghost" were titles designating different aspects of Christ. Those who had been baptized in the Trinitarian fashion needed to submit to rebaptism in Jesus' name. Furthermore, Ewart believed that Jesus' name baptism and the gift of tongues were essential for salvation. Ewart and those who adopted his belief called themselves "oneness" or "Jesus' Name" Pentecostals, but their opponents called them "Jesus Only".
Amid great controversy, the Assemblies of God rejected the Oneness teaching, and many of its churches and pastors were forced to withdraw from the denomination in 1916. They organized their own Oneness groups. Most of these joined Garfield T. Haywood, an African-American preacher from Indianapolis, to form the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World. This church maintained an interracial identity until 1924 when the white ministers withdrew to form the Pentecostal Church, Incorporated. This church later merged with another group forming the United Pentecostal Church International.
While Pentecostals shared many basic assumptions with conservative Protestants, the earliest Pentecostals were rejected by Fundamentalist Christians who adhered to cessationism. In 1928, the World Christian Fundamentals Association labeled Pentecostalism "fanatical" and "unscriptural". By the early 1940s, this rejection of Pentecostals was giving way to a new cooperation between them and leaders of the "new evangelicalism", and American Pentecostals were involved in the founding of the 1942 National Association of Evangelicals. Pentecostal denominations also began to interact with each other both on national levels and international levels through the Pentecostal World Fellowship, which was founded in 1947.
Some Pentecostal churches in Europe, especially in Italy and Germany, during the war were also victims of the Shoah. Because of their tongues speaking their members were considered mentally ill, and many pastors were sent either to confinement or to concentration camps.
Though Pentecostals began to find acceptance among evangelicals in the 1940s, the previous decade was widely viewed as a time of spiritual dryness, when healings and other miraculous phenomena were perceived as being less prevalent than in earlier decades of the movement. It was in this environment that the Latter Rain Movement, the most important controversy to affect Pentecostalism since World War II, began in North America and spread around the world in the late 1940s. Latter Rain leaders taught the restoration of the fivefold ministry led by apostles. These apostles were believed capable of imparting spiritual gifts through the laying on of hands. There were prominent participants of the early Pentecostal revivals, such as Stanley Frodsham and Lewi Pethrus, who endorsed the movement citing similarities to early Pentecostalism. However, Pentecostal denominations were critical of the movement and condemned many of its practices as unscriptural. One reason for the conflict with the denominations was the sectarianism of Latter Rain adherents. Many autonomous churches were birthed out of the revival.
A simultaneous development within Pentecostalism was the postwar Healing Revival. Led by healing evangelists William Branham, Oral Roberts, Gordon Lindsay, and T. L. Osborn, the Healing Revival developed a following among non-Pentecostals as well as Pentecostals. Many of these non-Pentecostals were baptized in the Holy Spirit through these ministries. The Latter Rain and the Healing Revival influenced many leaders of the charismatic movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
Before the 1960s, most non-Pentecostal Christians who experienced the Pentecostal baptism in the Holy Spirit typically kept their experience a private matter or joined a Pentecostal church afterward. The 1960s saw a new pattern develop where large numbers of Spirit baptized Christians from mainline churches in the US, Europe, and other parts of the world chose to remain and work for spiritual renewal within their traditional churches. This initially became known as New or Neo-Pentecostalism (in contrast to the older classical Pentecostalism) but eventually became known as the Charismatic Movement. While cautiously supportive of the Charismatic Movement, the failure of Charismatics to embrace traditional Pentecostal taboos on dancing, drinking alcohol, smoking, and restrictions on dress and appearance initiated an identity crisis for classical Pentecostals, who were forced to reexamine long held assumptions about what it meant to be Spirit filled. The liberalizing influence of the Charismatic Movement on classical Pentecostalism can be seen in the disappearance of many of these taboos since the 1960s. Because of this, the cultural differences between classical Pentecostals and charismatics have lessened over time. The global renewal movements manifest many of these tensions as inherent characteristics of Pentecostalism and as representative of the character of global Christianity.
Zora Neal Hurston performed anthropological, sociological studies examining the spread of Pentecostalism. According to scholar of religion Ashon Crawley, Hurston's analysis is important because she understood the class struggle that this seemingly new religiocultural movement articulated: "The Sanctified Church is a protest against the high-brow tendency in Negro Protestant congregations as the Negroes gain more education and wealth." She stated that this sect was "a revitalizing element in Negro music and religion" and that this collection of groups was "putting back into Negro religion those elements which were brought over from Africa and grafted onto Christianity." Crawley would go on to argue that the shouting that Hurston documented was evidence of what Martinique psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon called the refusal of positionality wherein "no strategic position is given preference" as the creation of, the grounds for, social form.
Pentecostalism is a religious phenomenon more visible in the cities. However, it has attracted significant rural populations in Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Sociologist David Martin has called attention on an overview on the rural Protestantism in Latin America, focusing on the indigenous and peasant conversion to Pentecostalism. The cultural change resulting from the countryside modernization has reflected on the peasant way of life. Consequently, many peasants – especially in Latin America – have experienced collective conversion to different forms of Pentecostalism and interpreted as a response to modernization in the countryside
Rather than a mere religious shift from folk Catholicism to Pentecostalism, Peasant Pentecostals have dealt with agency to employ many of their cultural resources to respond development projects in a modernization framework
Researching Guatemalan peasants and indigenous communities, Sheldon Annis argued that conversion to Pentecostalism was a way to quit the burdensome obligations of the cargo-system. Mayan folk Catholicism has many fiestas with a rotation leadership who must pay the costs and organize the yearly patron-saint festivities. One of the socially-accepted many to opt out those obligations was to convert to Pentecostalism. By doing so, the Pentecostal Peasant engage in a “penny capitalism”. In the same lines of moral obligations but with different mechanism economic self-help, Paul Chandler has compared the differences between Catholic and Pentecostal peasants, and has found a web of reciprocity among Catholics compadres, which the Pentecostals lacked. However, Alves has found that the different Pentecostal congregations replaces the compadrazgo system and still provide channels to exercise the reciprocal obligations that the peasant moral economy demands.
Conversion to Pentecostalism provides a rupture with a socially disrupted past while allowing to maintain elements of the peasant ethos. Brazil has provided many cases to evaluate this thesis. Hoekstra has found out that rural Pentecostalism more as a continuity of the traditional past though with some ruptures. Anthropologist Brandão sees the small town and rural Pentecostalism as another face for folk religiosity instead of a path to modernization. With similar finding, Abumanssur regards Pentecostalism as an attempt to conciliate traditional worldviews of folk religion with modernity.
Identity shift has been noticed among rural converts to Pentecostalism. Indigenous and peasant communities have found in the Pentecostal religion a new identity that helps them navigate the challenges posed by modernity. This identity shift corroborates the thesis that the peasant Pentecostals pave their own ways when facing modernization. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23555 |
Pangenesis
Pangenesis was Charles Darwin's hypothetical mechanism for heredity, in which he proposed that each part of the body continually emitted its own type of small organic particles called gemmules that aggregated in the gonads, contributing heritable information to the gametes. He presented this 'provisional hypothesis' in his 1868 work "The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication", intending it to fill what he perceived as a major gap in evolutionary theory at the time. The etymology of the word comes from the Greek words "pan" (a prefix meaning "whole", "encompassing") and "genesis" ("birth") or "genos" ("origin"). Pangenesis mirrored ideas originally formulated by Hippocrates and other pre-Darwinian scientists, but built off of new concepts such as cell theory, explaining cell development as beginning with gemmules which were specified to be necessary for the occurrence of new growths in an organism, both in initial development and regeneration. It also accounted for regeneration and the Lamarckian concept of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, as a body part altered by the environment would produce altered gemmules. This made Pangenesis popular among the neo-Lamarckian school of evolutionary thought. This hypothesis was made effectively obsolete after the 1900 rediscovery among biologists of Gregor Mendel's theory of the particulate nature of inheritance.
Pangenesis was similar to ideas put forth by Hippocrates, Democritus and other pre-Darwinian scientists in proposing that the whole of parental organisms participate in heredity (thus the prefix "pan"). Darwin wrote that Hippocrates' pangenesis was "almost identical with mine—merely a change of terms—and an application of them to classes of facts necessarily unknown to the old philosopher."
Science historian Conway Zirkle wrote that:
Zirkle demonstrated that the idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics had become fully accepted by the 16th century and remained immensely popular through to the time of Lamarck's work, at which point it began to draw more criticism due to lack of hard evidence. He also stated that pangenesis was the only scientific explanation ever offered for this concept, developing from Hippocrates' belief that "the semen was derived from the whole body." In the 13th century, pangenesis was commonly accepted on the principle that semen was a refined version of food unused by the body, which eventually translated to 15th and 16th century widespread use of pangenetic principles in medical literature, especially in gynecology. Later pre-Darwinian important applications of the idea included hypotheses about the origin of the differentiation of races.
A theory put forth by Pierre Louis Maupertuis in 1745 called for particles from both parents governing the attributes of the child, although some historians have called his remarks on the subject cursory and vague.
In 1749, French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon developed a hypothetical system of heredity much like Darwin's pangenesis, wherein 'organic molecules' were transferred to offspring during reproduction and stored in the body during development. Commenting on Buffon's views, Darwin stated, "If Buffon had assumed that his organic molecules had been formed by each separate unit throughout the body, his view and mine would have been very closely similar."
In 1801, Erasmus Darwin advocated a hypothesis of pangenesis in the third edition of his book "Zoonomia". In 1809, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in his "Philosophie Zoologique" put forth evidence for the idea that characteristics acquired during the lifetime of an organism, either from effects of the environment or may be passed on to the offspring. Charles Darwin first had significant contact with Lamarckism during his time at the University of Edinburgh Medical School in the late 1820s, both through Robert Edmond Grant, whom he assisted in research, and in Erasmus's journals. Darwin's first known writings on the topic of Lamarckian ideas as they related to inheritance are found in a notebook he opened in 1837, also entitled "Zoonomia". Historian Johnathan Hodge states that the theory of pangenesis itself first appeared in Darwin's notebooks in 1841.
In 1861, Irish physician Henry Freke developed a variant of pangenesis in his book "Origin of Species by Means of Organic Affinity". Freke proposed that all life was developed from microscopic organic agents which he named "granules", which existed as 'distinct species of organizing matter' and would develop into different biological structures.
In 1864, four years before the publication of "Variation", Herbert Spencer in his book "Principles of Biology" proposed a theory of "physiological units" similar to Darwin's gemmules, which likewise were said to be related to specific body parts and responsible for the transmission of characteristics of those body parts to offspring. He also supported the Lamarckian idea of transmission of acquired characteristics.
Darwin had debated whether to publish a theory of heredity for an extended period of time due to its highly speculative nature. He decided to include pangenesis in "Variation" after sending a 30 page manuscript to his close friend and supporter Thomas Huxley in May 1865, which was met by significant criticism from Huxley that made Darwin even more hesitant. However, Huxley eventually advised Darwin to publish, writing: "Somebody rummaging among your papers half a century hence will find Pangenesis & say 'See this wonderful anticipation of our modern Theories—and that stupid ass, Huxley, prevented his publishing them'" Darwin's initial version of pangenesis appeared in the first edition of "Variation" in 1868, and was later reworked for the publication of a second edition in 1875.
Darwin's pangenesis theory attempted to explain the process of sexual reproduction, inheritance of traits, and complex developmental phenomena such as cellular regeneration in a unified mechanistic structure. Yongshen Liu wrote that in modern terms, pangenesis deals with issues of "dominance inheritance, graft hybridization, reversion, xenia, telegony, the inheritance of acquired characters, regeneration and many groups of facts pertaining to variation, inheritance and development." Mechanistically, Darwin proposed pangenesis to occur through the transfer of organic particles which he named 'gemmules.' Gemmules, which he also sometimes referred to as "}," pangenes, granules, or germs, were supposed to be shed by the organs of the body and carried in the bloodstream to the reproductive organs where they accumulated in the germ cells or gametes. Their accumulation was thought to occur by some sort of a 'mutual affinity.' Each gemmule was said to be specifically related to a certain body part- as described, they did not contain information about the entire organism. The different types were assumed to be dispersed through the whole body, and capable of self-replication given 'proper nutriment'. When passed on to offspring via the reproductive process, gemmules were thought to be responsible for developing into each part of an organism and expressing characteristics inherited from both parents. Darwin thought this to occur in a literal sense: he explained cell proliferation to progress as gemmules to bind to more developed cells of their same character and mature. In this sense, the uniqueness of each individual would be due to their unique mixture of their parents' gemmules, and therefore characters. Similarity to one parent over the other could be explained by a quantitative superiority of one parent's gemmules. Yongshen Lu points out that Darwin knew of cells' ability to multiply by self-division, so it is unclear how Darwin supposed the two proliferation mechanisms to relate to each other. He did clarify in a later statement that he had always supposed gemmules to only bind to and proliferate from developing cells, not mature ones. Darwin hypothesized that gemmules might be able to survive and multiply outside of the body in a letter to J. D. Hooker in 1870.
Some gemmules were thought to remain dormant for generations, whereas others were routinely expressed by all offspring. Every child was built up from selective expression of the mixture of the parents and grandparents' gemmules coming from either side. Darwin likened this to gardening: a flowerbed could be sprinkled with seeds "most of which soon germinate, some lie for a period dormant, whilst others perish." He did not claim gemmules were in the blood, although his theory was often interpreted in this way. Responding to Fleming Jenkin's review of "On the Origin of Species", he argued that pangenesis would permit the preservation of some favourable variations in a population so that they wouldn't die out through blending.
Darwin thought that environmental effects that caused altered characteristics would lead to altered gemmules for the affected body part. The altered gemmules would then have a chance of being transferred to offspring, since they were assumed to be produced throughout an organisms life. Thus, pangenesis theory allowed for the Lamarckian idea of transmission of characteristics acquired through use and disuse. Accidental gemmule development in incorrect parts of the body could explain deformations and the 'monstrosities' Darwin cited in "Variation".
Hugo de Vries characterized his own version of pangenesis theory in his 1889 book "Intracellular Pangenesis" with two propositions, of which he only accepted the first:
De Vries also coined the term 'pangene' which 20 years later was shortened by Wilhelm Johannsen to gene.
Science historian Janet Browne points out that while Herbert Spencer and Carl von Nägeli also put forth ideas for systems of inheritance involving gemmules, their version of gemmules differed in that it contained "a complete microscopic blueprint for an entire creature." Spencer published his theory of "physiological units" three years prior to Darwin's publication of "Variation".
She goes on to say that Darwin believed specifically in gemmules for each body part because they might explain how environmental effects could be passed on as characteristics to offspring.
Interpretations and applications of pangenesis continued to appear frequently in medical literature up until Weismann's experiments and subsequent publication on germ-plasm theory in 1892. For instance, an address by Huxley spurred on substantial work by Dr. James Ross in linking ideas found in Darwin's pangenesis to the germ theory of disease. Ross cites the work of both Darwin and Spencer as key to his application of pangenetic theory.
Darwin's half-cousin Francis Galton conducted wide-ranging inquiries into heredity which led him to refute Charles Darwin's hypothetical theory of pangenesis. In consultation with Darwin, he set out to see if gemmules were transported in the blood. In a long series of experiments from 1869 to 1871, he transfused the blood between dissimilar breeds of rabbits, and examined the features of their offspring. He found no evidence of characters transmitted in the transfused blood.
Galton was troubled because he began the work in good faith, intending to prove Darwin right, and having praised pangenesis in "Hereditary Genius" in 1869. Cautiously, he criticized his cousin's theory, although qualifying his remarks by saying that Darwin's gemmules, which he called "pangenes", might be temporary inhabitants of the blood that his experiments had failed to pick up.
Darwin challenged the validity of Galton's experiment, giving his reasons in an article published in "Nature" where he wrote:
After the circulation of Galton's results, the perception of pangenesis quickly changed to severe skepticism if not outright disbelief.
August Weismann's idea, set out in his 1892 book "Das Keimplasma: eine Theorie der Vererbung" (The Germ Plasm: a Theory of Inheritance), was that the hereditary material, which he called the germ plasm, and the rest of the body (the soma) had a one-way relationship: the germ-plasm formed the body, but the body did not influence the germ-plasm, except indirectly in its participation in a population subject to natural selection. This distinction is commonly referred to as the Weismann Barrier. If correct, this made Darwin's pangenesis wrong and Lamarckian inheritance impossible. His experiment on mice, cutting off their tails and showing that their offspring had normal tails across multiple generations, was proposed as a proof of the non-existence of Lamarckian inheritance, although Peter Gauthier has argued that Weismann's experiment showed only that injury did not affect the germ plasm and neglected to test the effect of Lamarckian use and disuse. Weismann argued strongly and dogmatically for Darwinism and against neo-Lamarckism, polarising opinions among other scientists. This increased anti-Darwinian feeling, contributing to its eclipse.
Darwin's pangenesis theory was widely criticised, in part for its Lamarckian premise that parents could pass on traits acquired in their lifetime. Conversely, the neo-Lamarckians of the time seized upon pangenesis as evidence to support their case. Italian Botanist Federico Delpino's objection that gemmules' ability to self-divide is contrary to their supposedly innate nature gained considerable traction; however, Darwin was dismissive of this criticism, remarking that the particulate agents of small pox and scarlet fever seem to have such characteristics. Lamarckism fell from favour after August Weismann's research in the 1880s indicated that changes from use (such as lifting weights to increase muscle mass) and disuse (such as being lazy and becoming weak) were not heritable. However, some scientists continued to voice their support in spite of Galton's and Weismann's results: notably, in 1900 Karl Pearson wrote that pangenesis "is no more disproved by the statement that 'gemmules have not been found in the blood,' than the atomic theory is disproved by the fact that no atoms have been found in the air." Finally, the rediscovery of Mendel's Laws of Inheritance in 1900 led to pangenesis being fully set aside. Julian Huxley has observed that the later discovery of chromosomes and the research of T. H. Morgan also made pangenesis untenable.
Some of Darwin's pangenesis principles do relate to heritable aspects of phenotypic plasticity, although the status of gemmules as a distinct class of organic particles has been firmly rejected. However, starting in the 1950s, many research groups in revisiting Galton's experiments found that heritable characteristics could indeed arise in rabbits and chickens following DNA injection or blood transfusion. This type of research originated in the Soviet Union in the late 1940s in the work of Sopikov and others, and was later corroborated by researchers in Switzerland as it was being further developed by the Soviet scientists. Notably, this work was supported in the USSR in part due to its conformation with the ideas of Trofim Lysenko, who espoused a version of neo-Lamarckism as part of Lysenkoism. Further research of this heritability of acquired characteristics developed into, in part, the modern field of epigenetics. Darwin himself had noted that "the existence of free gemmules is a gratuitous assumption"; by some accounts in modern interpretation, gemmules may be considered a prescient mix of DNA, RNA, proteins, prions, and other mobile elements that are heritable in a non-Mendelian manner at the molecular level. Liu points out that Darwin's ideas about gemmules replicating outside of the body are predictive of "in vitro" gene replication used, for instance, in PCR. It is worth noting, however, that this reinterpretation of pangenesis's viability in modern terms is the work of a niche group of scholars and does not necessarily reflect a renewal of interest by related fields as a whole. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23558 |
Proboscidea
The Proboscidea (from the Greek and the Latin "proboscis") are a taxonomic order of afrotherian mammals containing one living family (Elephantidae) and several extinct families. This order, first described by J. Illiger in 1811, encompasses the trunked mammals. In addition to their enormous size, later proboscideans are distinguished by tusks and long, muscular trunks; these features were less developed or absent in the smaller early proboscideans. Beginning in the mid-Miocene, most members of this order were very large animals. The largest land mammal today is the African elephant weighing up to 10.4 tonnes with a shoulder height of up to . The largest land mammal of all time may have also been a proboscidean: "Palaeoloxodon namadicus", which may have weighed up to with a shoulder height up to , surpassing several sauropod dinosaurs (in height).
The earliest known proboscidean is "Eritherium", followed by "Phosphatherium", a small animal about the size of a fox. These both date from late Paleocene deposits of Morocco.
Proboscideans evolved in Africa, where they increased in size and diversity during the Eocene and early Oligocene. Several primitive families from these epochs have been described, including the Numidotheriidae, Moeritheriidae, and Barytheriidae, all found exclusively in Africa. The Anthracobunidae from the Indian subcontinent were also believed to be a family of proboscideans, but were excluded from the Proboscidea by Shoshani and Tassy (2005) and have more recently been assigned to the Perissodactyla. When Africa became connected to Europe and Asia after the shrinking of the Tethys Sea, proboscideans began to migrate into Eurasia, and some families eventually reached the Americas. Proboscideans found in Eurasia in addition to Africa include the Deinotheriidae, which thrived during the Miocene and into the early Quaternary, "Stegolophodon", an early genus of the disputed family Stegodontidae; the diverse family of Gomphotheriidae, such as "Platybelodon" and "Amebelodon"; and the Mammutidae, or mastodons.
Most families of the Proboscidea are now extinct, including all proboscideans that lived in the Americas, Europe, and northern Asia. Many of these extinctions occurred during or shortly after the last glacial period. Recently extinct species include the last examples of gomphotheres in the Americas, the American mastodon of family Mammutidae in North America, numerous stegodonts once found in Asia, the last of the mammoths throughout the Northern Hemisphere, and several species of dwarf elephants found on various islands scattered around the world.
Below is the current taxonomy of the proboscidean genera as of 2019. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23560 |
Paranthropus
Paranthropus is a contested genus of extinct hominins, sometimes referred to as the robust australopithecines, which lived between approximately 2.6 and 0.6 million years ago (mya) from the end of the Pliocene to the Middle Pleistocene. There are two widely accepted species: "P. robustus" and "P. boisei"; however, "Paranthropus" is sometimes considered to be invalid and synonymous with "Australopithecus".
"Paranthropus" are characterised by robust skulls, with a prominent gorilla-like sagittal crest along the midline–which suggest strong chewing muscles–and broad, herbivorous teeth used for grinding. However, they likely preferred soft food over tough and hard food. "Paranthropus" were generalist feeders, but "P. robustus" was likely an omnivore, whereas "P. boisei" was likely herbivorous and mainly ate bulbotubers. They were bipeds. Despite their robust heads, they had comparatively small bodies. Average weight and height are estimated to be at for "P. robustus" males, at for "P. boisei" males, at for "P. robustus" females, and at for "P. boisei" females.
They were possibly polygamous and patrilocal, but there are no modern analogues for australopithecine societies. They are associated with bone tools and contestedly the earliest evidence of fire usage. They typically inhabited woodlands, and coexisted with some early human species, namely "A. africanus", "H. habilis", and "H. erectus". They were preyed upon by the large carnivores of the time, specifically crocodiles, leopards, sabertoothed cats, and hyaenas.
The genus "Paranthropus" was first erected by Scottish South African palaeontologist Robert Broom in 1938, with the type species "P. robustus". ""Paranthropus"" derives from Ancient Greek παρα "para" beside or alongside; and άνθρωπος "ánthropos" man. The type specimen, a male braincase, TM 1517, was discovered by schoolboy Gert Terblanche at the Kromdraai fossil site, about southwest of Pretoria, South Africa. By 1988, at least 6 individuals were unearthed in around the same area, now known as the Cradle of Humankind.
In 1948, at Swartkrans Cave, in about the same vicinity as Kromdraai, Broom and South African palaeontologist John Talbot Robinson described "P. crassidens" based on a subadult jaw, SK 6. He believed later "Paranthropus" were morphologically distinct from earlier "Paranthropus" in the cave—that is, the Swartkrans "Paranthropus" were reproductively isolated from Kromdraai "Paranthropus" and the former eventually speciated. By 1988, several specimens from Swartkrans had been placed into "P. crassidens". However, this has since been synonymised with "P. robustus" as the two populations do not seem to be very distinct.
In 1959, "P. boisei" was discovered by Mary Leakey at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania (specimen OH 5). Her husband Louis named it "Zinjanthropus boisei" because he believed it differed greatly from "Paranthropus" and "Australopithecus". The name derives from "Zinj", an ancient Arabic word for the coast of East Africa, and "boisei", referring to their financial benefactor Charles Watson Boise. However, this genus was rejected at Mr. Leakey's presentation before the 4th Pan-African Congress on Prehistory, as it was based on a single specimen. The discovery of the Peninj Mandible made the Leakey's reclassify their species as "Australopithecus (Zinjanthropus) boisei" in 1964, but in 1967, South African palaeoanthropologist Phillip V. Tobias subsumed it into "Australopithecus" as "A. boisei". However, as more specimens were found, the combination "Paranthropus boisei" became more popular.
It is debated whether the wide range of variation in jaw size indicates simply sexual dimorphism or a grounds for identifying a new species. It could be explained as groundmass filling in cracks naturally formed after death, inflating the perceived size of the bone. "P. boisei" also has a notably wide range of variation in skull anatomy, but these features likely have no taxonomic bearing.
In 1968, French palaeontologists Camille Arambourg and Yves Coppens described ""Paraustralopithecus aethiopicus"" based on a toothless mandible from the Shungura Formation, Ethiopia (Omo 18). In 1976, American anthropologist Francis Clark Howell and Bretton anthropologist Yves Coppens reclassified it as "A. africanus". In 1986, after the discovery of the skull KNM WT 17000 by English anthropologist Alan Walker and Richard Leakey classified it into "Paranthropus" as "P. aethiopicus". There is debate whether this is synonymous with "P. boisei", the main argument for separation being the skull seems less adapted for chewing tough vegetation.
In 1989, palaeoartist and zoologist Walter Ferguson reclassified KNM WT 17000 into a new species, "walkeri", because he considered the skull's species designation questionable as it comprised the skull whereas the holotype of "P. aethiopicus" comprised only the mandible. Ferguson's classification is almost universally ignored, and is considered to be synonymous with "P. aethiopicus".
In 1963, while in the Congo, French ethnographer Charles Cordier assigned the name "P. congensis" to a super-strong, monstrous ape-man cryptid called "Kikomba", "Apamándi", "Abanaánji", "Zuluzúgu", or "Tshingómbe" by various native tribes which he heard stories about.
In 2015, Ethiopian palaeoanthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie and colleagues described the 3.5–3.2 Ma "A. deyiremeda" based on 3 jawbones from the Afar Region, Ethiopia. They noted that, though it shares many similarities with "Paranthropus", it may not have been closely related because it lacked enlarged molars which characterize the genus. Nonetheless, in 2018, independent researcher Johan Nygren recommended moving it to "Paranthropus" based on dental and presumed dietary similarity.
In 1951, American anthropologists Sherwood Washburn and Bruce D. Patterson were the first to suggest that "Paranthropus" should be considered a junior synonym of "Australopithecus" as the former was only known from fragmentary remains at the time, and dental differences were too minute to serve as justification. In face of calls for subsumation, Leakey and Robinson continued defending its validity. Various other authors were still unsure until more complete remains were found. "Paranthropus" is sometimes classified as a subgenus of "Australopithecus".
There is currently no clear consensus on the validity of "Paranthropus". The argument rests upon whether the genus is monophyletic—is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants—and the argument against monophyly (that the genus is paraphyletic) says that "P. robustus" and "P. boisei" evolved similar gorilla-like heads independently of each other by coincidence (convergent evolution), as chewing adaptations in hominins evolve very rapidly and multiple times at various points in the family tree (homoplasy). In 1999, a chimp-like ulna forearm bone was assigned to "P. boisei", the first discovered ulna of the species, which was markedly different from "P. robustus" ulnae, which could suggest paraphyly.
"P. aethiopicus" is the earliest member of the genus, with the oldest remains, from the Ethiopian Omo Kibish Formation, dated to 2.6 mya at the end of the Pliocene. It is sometimes regarded as the direct ancestor of "P. boisei" and "P. robustus". It is possible that "P. aethiopicus" evolved even earlier, up to 3.3 mya, on the expansive Kenyan floodplains of the time. The oldest "P. boisei" remains date to about 2.3 mya from Malema, Malawi. "P. boisei" changed remarkably little over its nearly 1 million year existence. "Paranthropus" had spread into South Africa by 2 mya with the earliest "P. robustus" remains.
It is sometimes suggested that "Paranthropus" and "Homo" are sister taxa, both evolving from "Australopithecus". This may have occurred during a drying trend 2.8–2.5 mya in the Great Rift Valley, which caused the retreat of woodland environments in favor of open savanna, with forests growing only along rivers and lakes. "Homo" evolved in the former, and "Paranthropus" in the latter riparian environment. However, the classifications of "Australopithecus" species is problematic.
In 2018, Nygren postulated that this split instead occurred at the same time as gorilla introgression (interbreeding) to the human line about 6 mya with the chimpanzee–human last common ancestor, based on apparently gorilla-like attributes in the 3.5–3.2 Ma "A./P. deyiremeda". Anatomical differences between the two genera would have been a result of different expressions of gorilla genes due to differences in habitat and diet. He also suggested that interbreeding between "Paranthropus" and gorillas continued until 3.3 mya–based on the divergence time between "Pthirus gorillae" lice, which only infects gorillas, and "P. pubis", which only infects modern humans–and that "Australopithecus" and human ancestors remained reproductively isolated from gorillas. However, this hypothesis hinges on the classification of "deyiremeda" as "Paranthropus" instead of "Australopithecus".
Evolutionary tree according to a 2019 study:
"Paranthropus" had a massively built, tall, and flat skull, with a prominent gorilla-like sagittal crest along the midline which anchored massive temporalis muscles used in chewing. Like other australopithecines, "Paranthropus" exhibited sexual dimorphism, with males notably larger than females. They had large molars with a relatively thick tooth enamel coating (post-canine megadontia), and comparatively small incisors (similar in size to modern humans), possibly adaptations to processing abrasive foods. The teeth of "P. aethiopicus" developed faster than those of "P. boisei".
"Paranthropus" had adaptations to the skull to resist large bite loads while feeding, namely the expansive squamosal sutures. The notably thick palate was once thought to have been an adaptation to resist a high bite force, but is better explained as a byproduct of facial lengthening and nasal anatomy.
In "P. boisei", the jaw hinge was adapted to grinding food side-to-side (rather than up-and-down in modern humans), which is better at processing the starchy abrasive foods that likely made up the bulk of its diet. "P. robustus" may have chewed in a front-to-back direction instead, and had less exaggerated (less derived) anatomical features than "P. boisei" as it perhaps did not require them with this kind of chewing strategy. This may have also allowed "P. robustus" to better process tougher foods.
The braincase volume averaged about , comparable to gracile australopithecines, but smaller than "Homo". Modern human brain volume averages for men and for women.
Unlike "P. robustus", the forearms of "P. boisei" were heavily built, which might suggest habitual suspensory behaviour as in orangutans and gibbons. A "P. boisei" shoulder blade indicates long infraspinatus muscles, which is also associated with suspensory behavior. A "P. aethiopicus" ulna, on the other hand, shows more similarities to "Homo" than "P. boisei".
"Paranthropus" were bipeds, and their hips, legs, and feet resemble "A. afarensis" and modern humans. The pelvis is similar to "A. afarensis", but the hip joints are smaller in "P. robustus". The physical similarity implies a similar walking gait. Their modern-humanlike big toe indicates a modern-humanlike foot posture and range of motion, but the more distal ankle joint would have inhibited the modern human toe-off gait cycle. By 1.8 mya, "Paranthropus" and "H. habilis" may have achieved about the same grade of bipedality.
In comparison to the large, robust head, the body was rather small. Average weight for "P. robustus" may have been for males and for females; and for "P. boisei" for males and for females. At Swartkrans Cave Members 1 and 2, about 35% of the "P. robustus" individuals are estimated to have weighed , 22% about , and the remaining 43% bigger than the former but less than . At Member 3, all individuals were about . Female weight was about the same in contemporaneous "H. erectus", but male "H. erectus" were on average 13 kg (28.7 lbs) heavier than "P. robustus" males. "P. robustus" sites are oddly dominated by small adults, which could be explained as heightened predation or mortality of the larger males of a group. The largest known "Paranthropus" individual was estimated at .
According to a 1991 study, based on femur length and using the dimensions of modern humans, male and female "P. robustus" are estimated to have stood on average respectively; and "P. boisei" . However, the latter estimates are problematic as there were no positively identified male "P. boisei" femurs at the time. In 2013, a 1.34 Ma male "P. boisei" partial skeleton was estimated to be at least and .
"Paranthropus" seems to have had notably high rates of pitting enamel hypoplasia (PEH), where tooth enamel formation is spotty instead of mostly uniform. In "P. robustus", about 47% of baby teeth and 14% of adult teeth were affected, in comparison to about 6.7% and 4.3% respectively in any other tested hominin species. The condition of these holes covering the entire tooth is consistent with the modern human ailment amelogenesis imperfecta. However, since circular holes in enamel coverage are uniform in size, only present on the molar teeth, and have the same severity across individuals, the PEH may have been a genetic condition. It is possible that the coding-DNA concerned with thickening enamel also left them more vulnerable to PEH.
There have been 12 identified cases of cavities in "P. robustus", indicating a rate similar to modern humans. A molar from Drimolen, South Africa, showed a cavity on the tooth root, a rare occurrence in fossil great apes. In order for cavity-creating bacteria to reach this area, the individual would have had to have also presented either alveolar resportion, which is commonly associated with gum disease; or super-eruption of teeth which occurs when teeth become worn down and have to erupt a bit more in order to maintain a proper bite, and this exposed the root. The latter is most likely, and the exposed root seems to have caused hypercementosis to anchor the tooth in place. The cavity seems to have been healing, which may have been caused by a change in diet or mouth microbiome, or the loss of the adjacent molar.
It was once thought "P. boisei" cracked open nuts with its powerful teeth, giving OH 5 the nickname "Nutcracker Man". However, like gorillas, "Paranthropus" likely preferred soft foods, but would consume tough or hard food during leaner times, and the powerful jaws were used only in the latter situation. In "P. boisei", thick enamel was more likely used to resist abrasive gritty particles rather than to minimize chipping while eating hard foods. In fact, there is a distinct lack of tooth fractures which would have resulted from such activity.
"Paranthropus" were generalist feeders, but diet seems to have ranged dramatically with location. The South African "P. robustus" appears to have been an omnivore, with a diet similar to contemporaneous "Homo" and nearly identical to the later "H. ergaster", and subsisted on mainly C4 savanna plants and C3 forest plants, which could indicate either seasonal shifts in diet or seasonal migration from forest to savanna. In leaner times it may have fallen back on brittle food. It likely also consumed seeds and possibly tubers or termites. A high cavity rate could indicate honey consumption.
The East African "P. boisei", on the other hand, seems to have been largely herbivorous and fed on C4 plants. Its powerful jaws allowed it to consume a wide variety of different plants, though it may have largely preferred nutrient-rich bulbotubers as these are known to thrive in the well-watered woodlands it is thought to have inhabited. Feeding on these, "P. boisei" may have been able to meet its daily caloric requirements of approximately 9700 kJ after about 6 hours of foraging.
Juvenile "P. robustus" may have relied more on tubers than adults, given the elevated levels of Strontium compared to adults in teeth from Swartkrans Cave, which, in the area, was most likely sourced from tubers. Dentin exposure on juvenile teeth could indicate early weaning, or a more abrasive diet than adults which wore away the cementum and enamel coatings, or both. It is also possible juveniles were less capable of removing grit from dug-up food rather than purposefully seeking out more abrasive foods.
Bone tools dating between 2.3 and 0.6 mya have been found in abundance in Swartkrans, Kromdraai, and Drimolen Caves, and are often associated with "P. robustus". Though "Homo" is also known from these caves, their remains are comparatively scarce to "Paranthropus", making "Homo"-attribution unlikely. The tools also cooccur with "Homo"-associated Oldawan and possibly Acheulian stone tool industries. The bone tools were typically sourced from the shaft of long bones from medium- to large-sized mammals, but tools made sourced from mandibles, ribs, and horn cores have also been found. Bone tools have also been found at Oldawan Gorge and directly associated with "P. boisei", the youngest dating to 1.34 mya, though a great proportion of other bone tools from here have ambiguous attribution. Stone tools from Kromdraai could possibly be attributed to "P. robustus", as no "Homo" have been found there yet.
The bone tools were not manufactured or purposefully shaped for a task. However, since the bones display no weathering (and were not scavenged randomly), and there is a preference displayed for certain bones, raw materials were likely specifically hand picked. This could indicate a similar cognitive ability to contemporary Stone Age "Homo".
Bone tools may have been used to cut or process vegetation, or dig up tubers or termites, The form of "P. robustus" incisors appear to be intermediate between "H. erectus" and modern humans, which could indicate less food processing done by the teeth due to preparation with simple tools.
Burnt bones were also associated with the inhabitants of Swartkrans, which could indicate some of the earliest fire usage. However, these bones were found in Member 3, where "Paranthropus" remains are rarer than "H. erectus", and it is also possible the bones were burned in a wildfire and washed into the cave as it is known the bones were not burned onsite.
Given the marked anatomical and physical differences with modern great apes, there may be no modern analogue for australopithecine societies, so comparisons drawn with modern primates will not be entirely accurate.
"Paranthropus" had pronounced sexual dimorphism, with males notably larger than females, which is commonly correlated with a male-dominated polygamous society. "P. robustus" may have had a harem society similar to modern forest-dwelling silverback gorillas, where one male has exclusive breeding rights to a group of females, as male-female size disparity is comparable to gorillas (based on facial dimensions), and younger males were less robust than older males (delayed maturity is also exhibited in gorillas).
However, if "P. robustus" preferred a savanna habitat, a multi-male society would have been more productive to better defend the troop from predators in the more exposed environment, much like savanna baboons. Further, among primates, delayed maturity is also exhibited in the rhesus monkey which has a multi-male society, and may not be an accurate indicator of social structure.
A 2011 Strontium isotope study of "P. robustus" teeth from the dolomite Sterkfontein Valley found that, like other hominins, but unlike other great apes, "P. robustus" females were more likely to leave their place of birth (patrilocal). This also discounts the plausibility of a harem society, which would have resulted in a matrilocal society due to heightened male–male competition. Males did not seem to have ventured very far from the valley, which could either indicate small home ranges, or that they preferred dolomitic landscapes due to perhaps cave abundance or factors related to vegetation growth.
Dental development seems to have followed about the same timeframe as it does in modern humans and most other hominins, but, since "Paranthropus" molars are markedly larger, rate of tooth eruption would have been accelerated. Their life history may have mirrored that of gorillas as they have the same brain volume, which (depending on the subspecies) reach physical maturity from 12–18 years and have birthing intervals of 40–70 months.
It is generally thought that "Paranthropus" preferred to inhabit wooded, riverine landscapes. The teeth of "Paranthropus", "H. habilis", and "H. erectus" are all known from various overlapping beds in East Africa, such as at Olduvai Gorge and the Turkana Basin. "P. robustus" and "H. erectus" also appear to have coexisted.
"P. boisei", known from the Great Rift Valley, may have typically inhabited wetlands along lakes and rivers, wooded or arid shrublands, and semiarid woodlands, though their presence in the savanna-dominated Malawian Chiwondo Beds implies they could tolerate a range of habitats. During the Pleistocene, there seems to have been coastal and montane forests in Eastern Africa. More expansive river valleys–namely the Omo River Valley–may have served as important refuges for forest-dwelling creatures. Being cut off from the forests of Central Africa by a savanna corridor, these East African forests would have promoted high rates of endemism, especially during times of climatic volatility.
The Cradle of Humankind, the only area "P. robustus" is known from, was mainly dominated by the springbok "Antidorcas recki", but other antelope, giraffes, and elephants were also seemingly abundant megafauna. Other known primates are early "Homo", the Hamadryas baboon, and the extinct colobine monkey "Cercopithecoides williamsi".
The left foot of a "P. boisei" specimen from Olduvai Gorge seems to have been bitten off by a crocodile, possibly "Crocodylus anthropophagus", and another's leg shows evidence of leopard predation. Other likely Olduvan predators of great apes include the hunting hyaena "Chasmaporthetes nitidula", and the sabertoothed cats "Dinofelis" and "Megantereon". The carnivore assemblage at the Cradle of Humankind comprises the two sabertooths, and the hyaena "Lycyaenops silberbergi".
Male "P. robustus" appear to have had a higher mortality rate than females. It is possible that males were more likely to be kicked out of a group, and these lone males had a higher risk of predation.
It was once thought that "Paranthropus" had become a specialist feeder, and were inferior to the more adaptable tool-producing "Homo", leading to their extinction, but this has been called into question. However, smaller brain size may have been a factor in their extinction along with gracile australopithecines. "P. boisei" may have died out due to an arid trend starting 1.45 mya, causing the retreat of woodlands, and more competition with savanna baboons and "Homo" for alternative food resources.
South African "Paranthropus" appear to have outlasted their East African counterparts. The youngest record of "P. boisei" comes from Konso, Ethiopia about 1.4 mya, however there are no East African sites dated between 1.4 and 1 mya, so it may have persisted until 1 mya. "P. robustus", on the other hand, was recorded in Swartkrans until Member 3 dated to 1–0.6 mya (the Middle Pleistocene), though more likely the younger side of the estimate. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23561 |
Odd-toed ungulate
The order includes about 17 species divided into three families: Equidae (horses, asses, and zebras), Rhinocerotidae (rhinoceroses), and Tapiridae (tapirs).
Despite their very different appearances, they were recognized as related families in the 19th century by the zoologist Richard Owen, who also coined the order name.
The largest odd-toed ungulates are rhinoceroses, and the extinct "Paraceratherium", a hornless rhino from the Oligocene, is considered one of the largest land mammals of all time. At the other extreme, an early member of the order, the prehistoric horse "Eohippus", had a withers height of only . Apart from dwarf varieties of the domestic horse and donkey, perissodactyls reach a body length of and a weight of . While rhinos have only sparse hair and exhibit a thick epidermis, tapirs and horses have dense, short coats. Most species are grey or brown, although zebras and young tapirs are striped.
The main axes of both the front and rear feet pass through the third toe, which is always the largest. The remaining toes have been reduced in size to varying degrees. Tapirs, which are adapted to walking on soft ground, have four toes on their fore feet and three on their hind feet. Living rhinos have three toes on both the front and hind feet. Modern equines possess only a single toe; however, their feet are equipped with hooves, which almost completely cover the toe. Rhinos and tapirs, by contrast, have hooves covering only the leading edge of the toes, with the bottom being soft.
The ulnae and fibulae are reduced in horses. A common feature that clearly distinguishes this group from other mammals is the saddle-shaped ankle between the astragalus and the scaphoid, which greatly restricts the mobility of the foot. The thigh is relatively short, and the clavicle is absent.
Odd-toed ungulates have a long upper jaw with an extended diastema between the front and cheek teeth, giving them an elongated head. The various forms of snout between families are due to differences in the form of the premaxilla. The lacrimal bone has projecting cusps in the eye sockets and a wide contact with the nasal bone. The temporomandibular joint is high and the mandible is enlarged.
Rhinos have one or two horns made of agglutinated keratin, unlike the horns of even-toed ungulates, which have a bony core.
The number and form of the teeth vary according to diet. The incisors and canines can be very small or completely absent, as in the two African species of rhinoceros. In the horses, usually only the males possess canines. The surface shape and height of the molars is heavily dependent on whether soft leaves or hard grass makes up the main component of their diets. Three or four cheek teeth are present on each jaw half, so the dental formula of odd-toed ungulates is:
All perissodactyls are hindgut fermenters. In contrast to ruminants, hindgut fermenters store digested food that has left the stomach in an enlarged cecum, where the food is digested by bacteria. No gallbladder is present. The stomach of perissodactyls is simply built, while the cecum accommodates up to in horses. The intestine is very long, reaching up to in horses. Extraction of nutrients from food is relatively inefficient, which probably explains why no odd-toed ungulates are small; for large animals, nutritional requirements per unit of body weight are lower and the surface-area-to-volume ratio is smaller.
The present distribution of most perissodactyl species is only a small fraction of their original range. Members of this group are now found only in Central and South America, eastern and southern Africa, and central, southern, and southeastern Asia. During the peak of odd-toed ungulate existence, from the Eocene to the Oligocene, perissodactyls were distributed over much of the globe, the only exceptions being Australia and Antarctica. Horses and tapirs arrived in South America after the formation of the Isthmus of Panama in the Pliocene, around 3 million years ago. In North America, they died out around 10,000 years ago, while in Europe, the tarpans disappeared in the 19th century. Hunting and habitat restriction have reduced the present-day species to fragmented relict populations. In contrast, domesticated horses and donkeys have gained a worldwide distribution, and feral animals of both species are now also found in regions outside of their original range, such as in Australia.
Perissodactyls inhabit a number of different habitats, leading to different lifestyles. Tapirs are solitary and inhabit mainly tropical rainforests. Rhinos tend to live alone in rather dry savannas, and in Asia, wet marsh or forest areas. Horses inhabit open areas such as grasslands, steppes, or semi-deserts, and live together in groups. Odd-toed ungulates are exclusively herbivores that feed, to varying degrees, on grasses, leaves, and other plant parts. A distinction is often made between primarily grass feeders (white rhinos, equines) and leaf feeders (tapirs, other rhinos).
Odd-toed ungulates are characterized by a long gestation period and a small litter size, usually delivering a single young. The gestation period is 330–500 days, being longest in the rhinos. Newborn perissodactyls are precocial; young horses can follow the mother after a few hours. The young are nursed for a relatively long time, often into their second year, reaching sexual maturity around eight or ten years old. Perissodactyls are long-lived, with several species reaching an age of almost 50 years in captivity.
Traditionally, the odd-toed ungulates were classified with other mammals such as artiodactyls, hyraxes, mammals with a proboscis, and other "ungulates". A close family relationship with hyraxes was suspected based on similarities in the construction of the ear and the course of the carotid artery.
Recent molecular genetic studies, however, have shown the ungulates to be polyphyletic, meaning that in some cases the similarities are the result of convergent evolution rather than common ancestry. Elephants and hyraxes are now considered to belong to Afrotheria, so are not closely related to the perissodactyls. These, in turn, are in the Laurasiatheria, a superorder that had its origin in the former supercontinent Laurasia. Molecular genetic findings suggest that the cloven Artiodactyla (containing the cetaceans as a deeply nested subclade) are the sister taxon of the Perissodactyla; together, the two groups form the Euungulata. More distant are the bats (Chiroptera) and Ferae (a common taxon of carnivorans, Carnivora, and pangolins, Pholidota). In a discredited alternative scenario, a close relationship exists between perissodactyls, carnivores, and bats, this assembly comprising the Pegasoferae.
According to studies published in March 2015, odd-toed ungulates are in a close family relationship with at least some of the so-called Meridiungulata, a very diverse group of mammals living from the Paleocene to the Pleistocene in South America, whose systematic unity is largely unexplained. Some of these were classified on the basis of their paleogeographic distribution. However, a close relationship can be worked out to perissodactyls by means of protein sequencing and comparison with fossil collagen from remnants of phylogenetically young members of the Meridiungulata (specifically "Macrauchenia" from the Litopterna and "Toxodon" from the Notoungulata). Both kinship groups, the odd-toed ungulates and the Litopterna-Notoungulata, are now in the higher-level taxon of Panperissodactyla. This kinship group is included among the Euungulata which also contains the even-toed ungulates and whales (Artiodactyla). The separation of the Litopterna-Notoungulata group from the perissodactyls probably took place before the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. "Condylarths" can probably be considered the starting point for the development of the two groups, as they represent a heterogeneous group of primitive ungulates that mainly inhabited the northern hemisphere in the Paleogene.
Odd-toed ungulates (Perissodactyla) comprise three living families with around 17 species—in the horse the exact count is still controversial. Rhinos and tapirs are more closely related to each other than to the horses. The separation of horses from other perissodactyls took place according to molecular genetic analysis in the Paleocene some 56 million years ago, while the rhinos and tapirs split off in the lower-middle Eocene, about 47 million years ago.
There are many perissodactyl fossils of multivariant form. The major lines of development include the following groups:
Relationships within the large group of odd-toed ungulates are not fully understood. Initially, after the establishment of "Perissodactyla" by Richard Owen in 1848, the present-day representatives were considered equal in rank. In the first half of the 20th century, a more systematic differentiation of odd-toed ungulates began, based on a consideration of fossil forms, and they were placed in two major suborders: Hippomorpha and Ceratomorpha. The Hippomorpha comprises today's horses and their extinct members (Equoidea); the Ceratomorpha consist of tapirs and rhinos plus their extinct members (Tapiroidea and Rhinocerotoidea). The names Hippomorpha and Ceratomorpha were introduced in 1937 by Horace Elmer Wood, in response to criticism of the name "Solidungula" that he proposed three years previously. It had been based on the grouping of horses and Tridactyla and on the rhinoceros/tapir complex. The extinct brontotheriidae were also classified under Hippomorpha and therefore possess a close relationship to horses. Some researchers accept this assignment because of similar dental features, but there is also the view that a very basal position within the odd-toed ungulates places them rather in the group of "Titanotheriomorpha".
Originally, the Chalicotheriidae were seen as members of Hippomorpha, and presented as such in 1941. William Berryman Scott thought that, as claw-bearing perissodactyls, they belong in the new suborder Ancylopoda (where Ceratomorpha and Hippomorpha as odd-toed ungulates were combined in the group of Chelopoda). The term Ancylopoda, coined by Edward Drinker Cope in 1889, had been established for chalicotheres. However, further morphological studies from the 1960s showed a middle position of Ancylopoda between Hippomorpha and Ceratomorpha. Leonard Burton Radinsky saw all three major groups of odd-toed ungulates as peers, based on the extremely long and independent phylogenetic development of the three lines. In the 1980s, Jeremy J. Hooker saw a general similarity of Ancylopoda and "Ceratomorpha" based on dentition, especially in the earliest members, leading to the unification in 1984 of the two submissions in the interim order, "Tapiromorpha". At the same time he expanded the Ancylopoda to include the "Lophiodontidae". The name "Tapiromorpha" goes back to Ernst Haeckel, who coined it in 1873, but it was long considered synonymous to Ceratomorpha because Wood had not considered it in 1937 when Ceratomorpha were named, since the term had been used quite differently in the past. Also in 1984, Robert M. Schoch used the conceptually similar term Moropomorpha, which today applies synonymously to Tapiromorpha. Included within the Tapiromorpha are the now extinct Isectolophidae, a sister group of the Ancylopoda-Ceratomorpha group and thus the most primitive members of this relationship complex.
The evolutionary development of Perissodactyla is well documented in the fossil record. Numerous finds are evidence of the adaptive radiation of this group, which was once much more varied and widely dispersed. "Radinskya" from the late Paleocene of East Asia is often considered to be one of the oldest close relatives of the ungulates. Its 8 cm skull must have belonged to a very small and primitive animal with a π-shaped crown pattern on the enamel of its rear molars similar to that of perissodactyls and their relatives, especially the rhinos. Finds of "Cambaytherium" and "Kalitherium" in the Cambay shale of western India indicate an origin in Asia dating to the Lower Eocene roughly 54.5 million years ago. Their teeth also show similarities to "Radinskya" as well as to the Tethytheria clade. The saddle-shaped configuration of the navicular joints and the mesaxonic construction of the front and hind feet also indicates a close relationship to Tethytheria. However, this construction deviates from that of "Cambaytherium", indicating that it is actually a member of a sister group. Ancestors of Perissodactyla may have arrived via an island bridge from the Afro-Arab landmass onto the Indian subcontinent as it drifted north towards Asia.
The alignment of hyopsodontids and phenacodontids to Perissodactyla in general suggests an older Laurasian origin and distribution for the clade, dispersed across the northern continents already in the early Paleocene. These forms already show a fairly well-developed molar morphology, with no intermediary forms as evidence of the course of its development. The close relationship between meridiungulate mammals and perissoodactyls in particular is of interest since the latter appear in South America soon after the K–T event, implying rapid ecological radiation and dispersal after the mass extinction.
The Perissodactyla appear relatively abruptly at the beginning of the Lower Paleocene before about 63 million years ago, both in North America and Asia, in the form of phenacodontids and hyopsodontids. The oldest finds from an extant group originate among other sources from "Sifrhippus", an ancestor of the horses from the Willswood lineup in northwestern Wyoming. The distant ancestors of tapirs appeared not too long after that in the Ghazij lineup in Balochistan, such as "Ganderalophus", as well as "Litolophus" from the Chalicotheriidae line, or "Eotitanops" from the group of brontotheriidae. Initially, the members of the different lineages looked quite similar with an arched back and generally four toes on the front and three on the hind feet. "Eohippus", which is considered a member of the horse family, outwardly resembled "Hyrachyus", the first representative of the rhino and tapir line. All were small compared to later forms and lived as fruit and foliage eaters in forests. The first of the megafauna to emerge were the brontotheres, in the Middle and Upper Eocene. "Megacerops", known from North America, reached a withers height of and could have weighed just over . The decline of brontotheres at the end of the Eocene is associated with competition arising from the advent of more successful herbivores.
More successful lines of odd-toed ungulates emerged at the end of the Eocene when dense jungles gave way to steppe, such as the chalicotheriid rhinos, and their immediate relatives; their development also began with very small forms. "Paraceratherium", one of the largest mammals ever to walk the earth, evolved during this era. They weighed up to and lived throughout the Oligocene in Eurasia. About 20 million years ago at the onset of the Miocene the perissodactyls first reached Africa when it became connected to Eurasia because of the closing of the Tethys Ocean. For the same reason, however, new animals such as the mammoths also entered the ancient settlement areas of odd-toed ungulates, creating competition that led to the extinction of some of their lines. The rise of ruminants, which occupied similar ecological niches and had a much more efficient digestive system, is also associated with the decline in diversity of odd-toed ungulates. A significant cause for the decline of perissodactyls was climate change during the Miocene, leading to a cooler and drier climate accompanied by the spread of open landscapes. However, some lines flourished, such as the horses and rhinos; anatomical adaptations made it possible for them to consume tougher grass food. This led to open land forms that dominated the newly created landscapes. With the emergence of the Isthmus of Panama in the Pliocene, perissodactyls and other megafauna were given access to one of their last habitable continents: South America. However, many perissodactyls became extinct at the end of the ice ages, including American horses and the "Elasmotherium". Whether over-hunting by humans (overkill hypothesis), climatic change, or a combination of both factors was responsible for the extinction of ice age mega-fauna, remains controversial.
In 1758, in his seminal work "Systema Naturae", Linnaeus (1707–1778) classified horses ("Equus") together with hippos ("Hippopotamus"). At that time, this category also included the tapirs ("Tapirus"), more precisely the lowland or South American tapir ("Tapirus terrestus"), the only tapir then known in Europe. Linnaeus classified this tapir as "Hippopotamus terrestris" and put both genera in the group of the "Belluae" ("beasts"). He combined the rhinos with the Glires, a group now consisting of the lagomorphs and rodents. Mathurin Jacques Brisson (1723–1806) first separated the tapirs and hippos in 1762 with the introduction of the concept "le tapir". He also separated the rhinos from the rodents, but did not combine the three families now known as the odd-toed ungulates. In the transition to the 19th century, the individual perissodactyl genera were associated with various other groups, such as the proboscidean and even-toed ungulates. In 1795, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844) and Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) introduced the term "pachyderm" (Pachydermata), including in it not only the rhinos and elephants, but also the hippos, pigs, peccaries, tapirs and hyrax . The horses were still generally regarded as a group separate from other mammals and were often classified under the name "Solidungula" or "Solipèdes", meaning "one-hoof animal".
In 1861, Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville (1777–1850) classified ungulates by the structure of their feet, differentiating those with an even number of toes from those with an odd number. He moved the horses as "solidungulate" over to the tapirs and rhinos as "multungulate" animals and referred to all of them together as "onguligrades à doigts impairs", coming close to the concept of the odd-toed ungulate as a systematic unit. Richard Owen (1804–1892) quoted Blainville in his study on fossil mammals of the Isle of Wight and introduced the name "Perissodactyla".
In 1884, Othniel Charles Marsh (1831–1899) came up with the concept "Mesaxonia", which he used for what are today called the odd-toed ungulates, including their extinct relatives, but explicitly excluding the hyrax. "Mesaxonia" is now considered a synonym of "Perissodactyla", but it was sometimes also used for the true odd-toed ungulates as a subcategory (rhinos, horses, tapirs), while "Perissodactyla" stood for the entire order, including the hyrax. The assumption that hyraxes were "Perissodactyla" was held well into the 20th century. Only with the advent of molecular genetic research methods had it been recognized that the hyrax is not closely related to perissodactyls but rather to elephants and manatees.
The domestic horse and the donkey play an important role in human history particularly as transport, work and pack animals. The domestication of both species began several millennia BCE. Due to the motorisation of agriculture and the spread of automobile traffic, such use has declined sharply in Western industrial countries; riding is usually undertaken more as a hobby or sport. In less developed regions of the world, the traditional uses for these animals are, however, still widespread. To a lesser extent, horses and donkeys are also kept for their meat and their milk.
In contrast, the existence in the wild of almost all other odd-toed ungulates species has declined dramatically because of hunting and habitat destruction. The quagga is extinct and Przewalski's horse was once eradicated in the wild.
Present threat levels, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (2012): | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23562 |
Pai gow
Pai gow () is a Chinese gambling game, played with a set of 32 Chinese dominoes. It is played in major casinos in China (including Macau); the United States (including Boston, Massachusetts; Las Vegas, Nevada; Reno, Nevada; Connecticut; Atlantic City, New Jersey; Pennsylvania; Mississippi; and cardrooms in California); Canada (including Edmonton, Alberta and Calgary, Alberta); Australia; and, New Zealand.
The name "pai gow" is sometimes used to refer to a card game called pai gow poker (or “double-hand poker”), which is loosely based on pai gow.
Tiles are shuffled on the table and are arranged into eight face-down stacks of four tiles each in an assembly known as the "woodpile". Individual stacks or tiles may then be moved in specific ways to rearrange the woodpile, after which the players place their bets.
Next, each player (including the dealer) is given one stack of tiles and must use them to form two hands of two tiles each. The hand with the lower value is called the "front hand", and the hand with the higher value is called the "rear hand". If a player's front hand beats the dealer's front hand, and the player's rear hand beats the dealer's rear hand, then that player wins the bet. If a player's front and rear hands both lose to the dealer's respective hands, the player loses the bet. If one hand wins and the other loses, the player is said to "push", and gets back only the money he or she bet. Generally seven players will play, and each player's hands are compared only against the dealer's hands; comparisons are always front-front and rear-rear, never one of each.
There are 35,960 possible ways to select 4 of the 32 tiles when the 32 tiles are considered distinguishable. However, there are 3620 distinct sets of 4 tiles when the tiles of a pair are considered indistinguishable. There are 496 ways to select 2 of the 32 tiles when the 32 tiles are considered distinguishable. There are 136 distinct hands (pairs of tiles) when the tiles of a pair are considered indistinguishable.
The name "pai gow" is loosely translated as "make nine" or "card nine". This reflects the fact that, with a few high-scoring exceptions, the maximum score for a hand is nine. If a hand consists of two tiles that do not form a pair, its value is determined by adding up the total number of pips on the tiles and dropping the tens digit (if any). Examples:
There are special ways in which a hand can score more than nine points. The double-one tiles and double-six tiles are known as the "Day" and "Teen" tiles, respectively. The combination of a Day or Teen with an eight results in a "Gong", worth 10 points, while putting either of them with a nine creates a "Wong", worth 11. However, when a Day or Teen is paired with any other tile, the standard scoring rules apply.
The 1-2 and the 2-4 tiles are called "Gee Joon" tiles and act as limited wild cards. When used as part of a hand, these tiles may be scored as either 3 or 6, whichever results in a higher hand value. For example, a hand of 1-2 and 5-6 scores as seven rather than four.
The 32 tiles in a Chinese dominoes set can be arranged into 16 pairs, as shown in the picture at the top of this article. Eleven of these pairs have identical tiles, and five of these pairs are made up of two tiles that score the same, but look different. (The latter group includes the Gee Joon tiles, which can score the same, whether as three or six.) If a hand is made up of a pair, it always scores higher than a non-pair, no matter what the value of the pips are. (Pairs are often thought of as being worth 12 points each.)
When the player and dealer both have a pair, the higher-ranked pair wins. Ranking is determined not by the sum of the tiles' pips, but rather by aesthetics; the order must be memorized. The highest pairs are the Gee Joon tiles, the Teens, the Days, and the red eights. The lowest pairs are the mismatched nines, eights, sevens, and fives.
When the player and dealer display hands with the same score, the one with the highest-valued tile (based on the pair rankings described above) is the winner. For example, a player's hand of 3-4 and 2-2 and a dealer's hand of 5-6 and 5-5 would each score one point. However, since the dealer's 5-5 outranks the other three tiles, he would win the hand.
If the scores are tied, and if the player and dealer each have an identical highest-ranking tile, the hand is ruled a "copy" and the dealer wins. For example, if the player held 2-2 and 1–6, and the dealer held 2-2 and 3–4, the dealer would win since the scores (1 each) and the higher tiles (2-2) are the same. The lower-ranked tile in each hand is never used to break a tie.
There are two exceptions to the method described above. First, although the Gee Joon tiles form the highest-ranking pair, they are considered to have no value when evaluating ties. Second, any zero-zero tie is won by the dealer, regardless of the tiles in the two hands.
The key element of pai gow strategy is to present the optimal front and rear hands based on the tiles dealt to the player. There are three ways to arrange four tiles into two hands when no two of them form a pair. However, if there is at least one pair among the tiles, there are only two distinct ways to form two hands.
Using the tiles shown at right, the following hands and scores are possible:
The player must decide which combination is most likely to give a set of front/rear hands that can beat the dealer, or at least break a tie in the player's favor. In some cases, a player with weaker tiles may deliberately attempt to attain a push so as to avoid losing the bet outright. Many players rely on superstition or tradition to choose tile pairings. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23565 |
Partially ordered set
In mathematics, especially order theory, a partially ordered set (also poset) formalizes and generalizes the intuitive concept of an ordering, sequencing, or arrangement of the elements of a set. A poset consists of a set together with a binary relation indicating that, for certain pairs of elements in the set, one of the elements precedes the other in the ordering. The relation itself is called a "partial order." The word "partial" in the names "partial order" and "partially ordered set" is used as an indication that not every pair of elements needs to be comparable. That is, there may be pairs of elements for which neither element precedes the other in the poset. Partial orders thus generalize total orders, in which every pair is comparable.
Formally, a partial order is any binary relation that is reflexive (each element is comparable to itself), antisymmetric (no two different elements precede each other), and transitive (the start of a chain of precedence relations must precede the end of the chain).
One familiar example of a partially ordered set is a collection of people ordered by genealogical descendancy. Some pairs of people bear the descendant-ancestor relationship, but other pairs of people are incomparable, with neither being a descendant of the other.
A poset can be visualized through its Hasse diagram, which depicts the ordering relation.
A (non-strict) partial order is a binary relation ≤ over a set "P" satisfying particular axioms which are discussed below. When "a" ≤ "b", we say that "a" is related to "b". (This does not imply that "b" is also related to "a", because the relation need not be symmetric.)
The axioms for a non-strict partial order state that the relation ≤ is reflexive, antisymmetric, and transitive. That is, for all "a", "b", and "c" in "P", it must satisfy:
In other words, a partial order is an antisymmetric preorder.
A set with a partial order is called a partially ordered set (also called a poset). The term "ordered set" is sometimes also used, as long as it is clear from the context that no other kind of order is meant. In particular, totally ordered sets can also be referred to as "ordered sets", especially in areas where these structures are more common than posets.
For "a, b", elements of a partially ordered set "P", if "a" ≤ "b" or "b" ≤ "a", then "a" and "b" are comparable. Otherwise they are incomparable. In the figure on top-right, e.g. {x} and {x,y,z} are comparable, while {x} and {y} are not. A partial order under which every pair of elements is comparable is called a total order or linear order; a totally ordered set is also called a chain (e.g., the natural numbers with their standard order). A subset of a poset in which no two distinct elements are comparable is called an antichain (e.g. the set of singletons in the top-right figure). An element "a" is said to be strictly less than an element b, if "a" ≤ "b" and "a"≠"b". An element "a" is said to be covered by another element "b", written "a"⋖"b" (or "a" (or linear sum), "Z" = "X" ⊕ "Y", defined on the union of the underlying sets "X" and "Y" by the order "a" ≤"Z" "b" if and only if:
If two posets are well-ordered, then so is their ordinal sum.
The ordinal sum operation is one of two operations used to form series-parallel partial orders, and in this context is called series composition. The other operation used to form these orders, the disjoint union of two partially ordered sets (with no order relation between elements of one set and elements of the other set) is called in this context parallel composition.
In some contexts, the partial order defined above is called a non-strict (or reflexive) partial order. In these contexts, a strict (or irreflexive) partial order " is to ≥ as < is to ≤.
Any one of the four relations ≤, on a given set uniquely determines the other three.
In general two elements "x" and "y" of a partial order may stand in any of four mutually exclusive relationships to each other: either "x" "y", or "x" and "y" are "incomparable" (none of the other three). A totally ordered set is one that rules out this fourth possibility: all pairs of elements are comparable and we then say that trichotomy holds. The natural numbers, the integers, the rationals, and the reals are all totally ordered by their algebraic (signed) magnitude whereas the complex numbers are not. This is not to say that the complex numbers cannot be totally ordered; we could for example order them lexicographically via "x"+iy" .
For example, a mapping "f": ℕ → ℙ(ℕ) from the set of natural numbers (ordered by divisibility) to the power set of natural numbers (ordered by set inclusion) can be defined by taking each number to the set of its prime divisors. It is order-preserving: if "x" divides "y", then each prime divisor of "x" is also a prime divisor of "y". However, it is neither injective (since it maps both 12 and 6 to {2,3}) nor order-reflecting (since 12 doesn't divide 6). Taking instead each number to the set of its prime power divisors defines a map "g": ℕ → ℙ(ℕ) that is order-preserving, order-reflecting, and hence an order-embedding. It is not an order-isomorphism (since it e.g. doesn't map any number to the set {4}), but it can be made one by restricting its codomain to "g"(ℕ). The right picture shows a subset of ℕ and its isomorphic image under "g". The construction of such an order-isomorphism into a power set can be generalized to a wide class of partial orders, called distributive lattices, see "Birkhoff's representation theorem".
Sequence [ A001035] in OEIS gives the number of partial orders on a set of "n" labeled elements:
The number of strict partial orders is the same as that of partial orders.
If the count is made only up to isomorphism, the sequence 1, 1, 2, 5, 16, 63, 318, … is obtained.
A partial order ≤* on a set "X" is an extension of another partial order ≤ on "X" provided that for all elements "x" and "y" of "X", whenever "x" ≤ "y", it is also the case that "x" ≤* "y". A linear extension is an extension that is also a linear (i.e., total) order. Every partial order can be extended to a total order (order-extension principle).
In computer science, algorithms for finding linear extensions of partial orders (represented as the reachability orders of directed acyclic graphs) are called topological sorting.
Every poset (and every preordered set) may be considered as a category where, for objects "x" and "y", there is at most one morphism from "x" to "y". More explicitly, let hom("x", "y") = {("x", "y")} if "x" ≤ "y" (and otherwise the empty set) and ("y", "z")∘("x", "y") = ("x", "z"). Such categories are sometimes called "posetal".
Posets are equivalent to one another if and only if they are isomorphic. In a poset, the smallest element, if it exists, is an initial object, and the largest element, if it exists, is a terminal object. Also, every preordered set is equivalent to a poset. Finally, every subcategory of a poset is isomorphism-closed.
If "P" is a partially ordered set that has also been given the structure of a topological space, then it is customary to assume that is a closed subset of the topological product space formula_1. Under this assumption partial order relations are well behaved at limits in the sense that if formula_2, formula_3 and "a""i" ≤ "b""i" for all "i", then "a" ≤ "b".
An "interval" in a poset "P" is a subset of "P" with the property that, for any "x" and "y" in and any "z" in "P", if "x" ≤ "z" ≤ "y", then "z" is also in . (This definition generalizes the "interval" definition for real numbers.)
For "a" ≤ "b", the closed interval is the set of elements "x" satisfying "a" ≤ "x" ≤ "b" (i.e. "a" ≤ "x" and "x" ≤ "b"). It contains at least the elements "a" and "b".
Using the corresponding strict relation " "b", in which case the interval is empty.
An interval is bounded if there exist elements "a" and "b" of "P" such that . Every interval that can be represented in interval notation is obviously bounded, but the converse is not true. For example, let as a subposet of the real numbers. The subset is a bounded interval, but it has no infimum or supremum in "P", so it cannot be written in interval notation using elements of "P".
A poset is called locally finite if every bounded interval is finite. For example, the integers are locally finite under their natural ordering. The lexicographical order on the cartesian product ℕ×ℕ is not locally finite, since .
Using the interval notation, the property ""a" is covered by "b"" can be rephrased equivalently as ["a", "b"] = {"a", "b"}.
This concept of an interval in a partial order should not be confused with the particular class of partial orders known as the interval orders. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23572 |
Parmenides
Parmenides of Elea (; ; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea in Magna Graecia (meaning "Great Greece," the term which Romans gave to Greek-populated coastal areas in Southern Italy). He is thought to have been in his prime (or "floruit") around 475 BC.
Parmenides has been considered the founder of metaphysics or ontology and has influenced the whole history of Western philosophy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, which also included Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos. Zeno's paradoxes of motion were to defend Parmenides' view.
The single known work by Parmenides is a poem, "On Nature", only fragments of which survive, containing the first sustained argument in the history of philosophy. In it, Parmenides prescribes two views of reality. In "the way of truth" (a part of the poem), he explains how all reality is one, change is impossible, and existence is timeless, uniform, and necessary. In "the way of opinion", Parmenides explains the world of appearances, in which one's sensory faculties lead to conceptions which are false and deceitful, yet he does offer a cosmology.
Parmenides' philosophy has been explained with the slogan "whatever is is, and what is not cannot be". He is also credited with the phrase out of nothing nothing comes. He argues that "A is not" can never be thought or said truthfully, and thus despite appearances everything exists as one, giant, unchanging thing. This is generally considered one of the first digressions into the philosophical concept of being, and has been contrasted with Heraclitus's statement that "No man ever steps into the same river twice" as one of the first digressions into the philosophical concept of becoming. Scholars have generally believed that either Parmenides was responding to Heraclitus, or Heraclitus to Parmenides.
Parmenides' views have remained relevant in philosophy, even thousands of years after his death. Alexius Meinong, much like Parmenides, defended the view that even the "golden mountain" is real since it can be talked about. The rivalry between Heraclitus and Parmenides has been also been re-introduced in debates in the philosophy of time between A theory and B theory.
Parmenides was born in the Greek colony of Elea (now Ascea), which, according to Herodotus, had been founded shortly before 535 BC. He was descended from a wealthy and illustrious family. It was said that he had written the laws of the city.
His dates are uncertain; according to doxographer Diogenes Laërtius, he flourished just before 500 BC, which would put his year of birth near 540 BC, but in the dialogue "Parmenides" Plato has him visiting Athens at the age of 65, when Socrates was a young man, c. 450 BC, which, if true, suggests a year of birth of c. 515 BC.
Parmenides was the founder of the School of Elea, which also included Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos. His most important pupil was Zeno, who according to Plato was 25 years his junior, and was regarded as his "eromenos".
He was said to have been a pupil of Xenophanes, and regardless of whether they actually knew each other, Xenophanes' philosophy is the most obvious influence on Parmenides.
Eusebius quoting Aristocles of Messene says that Parmenides was part of a line of philosophy that culminated in Pyrrhonism. This line begins with Xenophenes and goes through Parmenides, Melissus of Samos, Zeno of Elea, Leucippus, Democritus, Protagoras, Nessas of Chios, Metrodorus of Chios, Diogenes of Smyrna, Anaxarchus, and finally Pyrrho.
Though there are no obvious Pythagorean elements in his thought, Diogenes Laërtius describes Parmenides as a disciple of "Ameinias, son of Diochaites, the Pythagorean". According to Sir William Smith, in "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology" (1870):
"Others content themselves with reckoning Parmenides as well as Zeno as belonging to the Pythagorean school, or with speaking of a "Parmenidean life", in the same way as a "Pythagorean life" is spoken of."
The first purported hero cult of a philosopher we know of was Parmenides' dedication of a heroon to his Ameinias in Elea.
Parmenides is one of the most significant of the pre-Socratic philosophers. His single known work, a poem conventionally titled "On Nature", has survived only in fragments. Approximately 160 verses remain today from an original total that was probably near 800. The poem was originally divided into three parts:
The proem is a narrative sequence in which the narrator travels "beyond the beaten paths of mortal men" to receive a revelation from an unnamed goddess (generally thought to be Persephone or Dikē) on the nature of reality. "Aletheia", an estimated 90% of which has survived, and "doxa", most of which no longer exists, are then presented as the spoken revelation of the goddess without any accompanying narrative.
Parmenides attempted to distinguish between the unity of nature and its variety, insisting in the "Way of Truth" upon the reality of its unity, which is therefore the object of knowledge, and upon the unreality of its variety, which is therefore the object, not of knowledge, but of opinion. In the "Way of Opinion" he propounded a theory of the world of seeming and its development, pointing out, however, that, in accordance with the principles already laid down, these cosmological speculations do not pretend to anything more than mere appearance.
In the proem, Parmenides describes the journey of the poet, escorted by maidens ("the daughters of the Sun made haste to escort me, having left the halls of Night for the light"), from the ordinary daytime world to a strange destination, outside our human paths. Carried in a whirling chariot, and attended by the daughters of Helios the Sun, the man reaches a temple sacred to an unnamed goddess (variously identified by the commentators as Nature, Wisdom, Necessity or Themis), by whom the rest of the poem is spoken. The goddess resides in a well-known mythological space: where Night and Day have their meeting place. Its essential character is that here all opposites are undivided, or one. He must learn all things, she tells him – both truth, which is certain, and human opinions, which are uncertain – for though one cannot rely on human opinions, they represent an aspect of the whole truth.Welcome, youth, who come attended by immortal charioteers and mares which bear you on your journey to our dwelling. For it is no evil fate that has set you to travel on this road, far from the beaten paths of men, but right and justice. It is meet that you learn all things — both the unshakable heart of well-rounded truth and the opinions of mortals in which there is not true belief. (B 1.24–30)
The section known as "the way of truth" discusses that which is real and contrasts with the argument in the section called "the way of opinion," which discusses that which is illusory. Under the "way of truth," Parmenides stated that there are two ways of inquiry: that it "is", on the one side, and that it "is not" on the other side. He said that the latter argument is never feasible because there is no thing that can "not be": "For never shall this prevail, that things that are not are." Thinking and the thought that it is are the same; for you will not find thinking apart from what is, in relation to which it is uttered. (B 8.34–36)For to be aware and to be are the same. (B 3)It is necessary to speak and to think what is; for being is, but nothing is not. (B 6.1–2)Helplessness guides the wandering thought in their breasts; they are carried along deaf and blind alike, dazed, beasts without judgment, convinced that to be and not to be are the same and not the same, and that the road of all things is a backward-turning one. (B 6.5–9)Only one thing exists, which is timeless, uniform, and unchanging:How could what is perish? How could it have come to be? For if it came into being, it is not; nor is it if ever it is going to be. Thus coming into being is extinguished, and destruction unknown. (B 8.20–22)Nor was [it] once, nor will [it] be, since [it] is, now, all together, / One, continuous; for what coming-to-be of it will you seek? / In what way, whence, did [it] grow? Neither from what-is-not shall I allow / You to say or think; for it is not to be said or thought / That [it] is not. And what need could have impelled it to grow / Later or sooner, if it began from nothing? Thus [it] must either be completely or not at all. (B 8.5–11)[What exists] is now, all at once, one and continuous... Nor is it divisible, since it is all alike; nor is there any more or less of it in one place which might prevent it from holding together, but all is full of what is. (B 8.5–6, 8.22–24)And it is all one to me / Where I am to begin; for I shall return there again. (B 5)
Parmenides claimed that there is no truth in the opinions of the mortals. Genesis-and-destruction, as Parmenides emphasizes, is a false opinion, because to be means to be completely, once and for all. What exists can in no way not exist. For this view, that That Which Is Not exists, can never predominate. You must debar your thought from this way of search, nor let ordinary experience in its variety force you along this way, (namely, that of allowing) the eye, sightless as it is, and the ear, full of sound, and the tongue, to rule; but (you must) judge by means of the Reason (Logos) the much-contested proof which is expounded by me. (B 7.1–8.2)
After the exposition of the "arche" (ἀρχή), i.e. the origin, the necessary part of reality that is understood through reason or logos ("that [it] Is"), in the next section, "the Way of Appearance/Opinion/Seeming", Parmenides gives a cosmology. He proceeds to explain the structure of the becoming cosmos (which is an illusion, of course) that comes from this origin.
The structure of the cosmos is a fundamental binary principle that governs the manifestations of all the particulars: "the aether fire of flame" (B 8.56), which is gentle, mild, soft, thin and clear, and self-identical, and the other is "ignorant night", body thick and heavy.The mortals lay down and decided well to name two forms (i.e. the flaming light and obscure darkness of night), out of which it is necessary not to make one, and in this they are led astray. (B 8.53–4)The structure of the cosmos then generated is recollected by Aetius (II, 7, 1):
For Parmenides says that there are circular bands wound round one upon the other, one made of the rare, the other of the dense; and others between these mixed of light and darkness. What surrounds them all is solid like a wall. Beneath it is a fiery band, and what is in the very middle of them all is solid, around which again is a fiery band. The most central of the mixed bands is for them all the origin and cause of motion and becoming, which he also calls steering goddess and keyholder and Justice and Necessity. The air has been separated off from the earth, vapourized by its more violent condensation, and the sun and the circle of the Milky Way are exhalations of fire. The moon is a mixture of both earth and fire. The "aether" lies around above all else, and beneath it is ranged that fiery part which we call heaven, beneath which are the regions around the earth.Cosmology originally comprised the greater part of his poem, him explaining the world's origins and operations. Some idea of the sphericity of the Earth seems to have been known to Parmenides.
Parmenides also outlined the phases of the moon, highlighted in a rhymed translation by Karl Popper:
Smith stated:Of the cosmogony of Parmenides, which was carried out very much in detail, we possess only a few fragments and notices, which are difficult to understand, according to which, with an approach to the doctrines of the "Pythagoreans", he conceived the spherical mundane system, surrounded by a circle of the pure light (Olympus, Uranus); in the centre of this mundane system the solid earth, and between the two the circle of the milkyway, of the morning or evening star, of the sun, the planets, and the moon; which circle he regarded as a mixture of the two primordial elements.
The fragments read:
The traditional interpretation of Parmenides' work is that he argued that the every-day perception of reality of the physical world (as described in "doxa") is mistaken, and that the reality of the world is 'One Being' (as described in "aletheia"): an unchanging, ungenerated, indestructible whole. Under the "Way of Opinion", Parmenides set out a contrasting but more conventional view of the world, thereby becoming an early exponent of the duality of appearance and reality. For him and his pupils, the phenomena of movement and change are simply appearances of a changeless, eternal reality.
Parmenides was not struggling to formulate the laws of conservation of mass and conservation of energy; he was struggling with the metaphysics of change, which is still a relevant philosophical topic today. Moreover, he argued that movement was impossible because it requires moving into "the void", and Parmenides identified "the void" with nothing, and therefore (by definition) it does not exist. That which does exist is "The Parmenidean One."
Since existence is an immediately intuited fact, non-existence is the wrong path because a thing cannot disappear, just as something cannot originate from nothing. In such mystical experience ("unio mystica"), however, the distinction between subject and object disappears along with the distinctions between objects, in addition to the fact that if nothing cannot be, it cannot be the object of thought either:
William Smith also wrote in "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology":On the former reason is our guide; on the latter the eye that does not catch the object and re-echoing hearing. On the former path we convince ourselves that the existent neither has come into being, nor is perishable, and is entirely of one sort, without change and limit, neither past nor future, entirely included in the present. For it is as impossible that it can become and grow out of the existent, as that it could do so out of the non-existent; since the latter, non-existence, is absolutely inconceivable, and the former cannot precede itself; and every coming into existence presupposes a non-existence. By similar arguments divisibility, motion or change, as also infinity, are shut out from the absolutely existent, and the latter is represented as shut up in itself, so that it may be compared to a well-rounded ball; while thought is appropriated to it as its only positive definition. Thought and that which is thought of (Object) coinciding; the corresponding passages of Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and others, which authenticate this view of his theory.
The religious/mystical context of the poem has caused recent generations of scholars such as Alexander P. Mourelatos, Charles H. Kahn, and Peter Kingsley to call parts of the traditional, rational logical/philosophical interpretation of Parmenides into question (Kingsley in particular stating that Parmenides practiced iatromancy). The philosophy was, he says, given to him by a goddess. It has been claimed that previous scholars placed too little emphasis on the apocalyptic context in which Parmenides frames his revelation. As a result, traditional interpretations have put Parmenidean philosophy into a more modern, metaphysical context to which it is not necessarily well suited, which has led to misunderstanding of the true meaning and intention of Parmenides' message. The obscurity and fragmentary state of the text, however, renders almost every claim that can be made about Parmenides extremely contentious, and the traditional interpretation has by no means been abandoned. The "mythological" details in Parmenides' poem do not bear any close correspondence to anything known from traditional Greek mythology:
One issue is the grammar. In the original Greek the two ways are simply named "that Is" (ὅπως ἐστίν) and "that Not-Is" (ὡς οὐκ ἐστίν) (B 2.3 and 2.5) without the "it" inserted in our English translation. In ancient Greek, which, like many languages in the world, does not always require the presence of a subject for a verb, "is" functions as a grammatically complete sentence. Much debate has been focused on where and what the subject is. The simplest explanation as to why there is no subject here is that Parmenides wishes to express the simple, bare fact of existence in his mystical experience without the ordinary distinctions, just as the Latin "pluit" and the Greek "huei" (ὕει "rains") mean "it rains"; there is no subject for these impersonal verbs because they express the simple fact of raining without specifying what is doing the raining. This is, for instance, Hermann Fränkel's thesis. Many scholars still reject this explanation and have produced more complex metaphysical explanations.
There is the possibility for various wrong translations of the fragments. For example, it is not at all clear that Parmenides refuted that which we call perception. The verb "noein", used frequently by Parmenides, could better be translated as 'to be aware of' than as 'to think'. Furthermore, it is hard to believe that 'being' is only within our heads, according to Parmenides.
John Palmer notes "Parmenides’ distinction among the principal modes of being and his derivation of the attributes that must belong to what must be, simply as such, qualify him to be seen as the founder of metaphysics or ontology as a domain of inquiry distinct from theology."
Parmenides' considerable influence on the thinking of Plato is undeniable, and in this respect Parmenides has influenced the whole history of Western philosophy, and is often seen as its grandfather. Even Plato himself, in the "Sophist", refers to the work of "our Father Parmenides" as something to be taken very seriously and treated with respect. In the "Parmenides", the Eleatic philosopher, which may well be Parmenides himself, and Socrates argue about dialectic. In the "Theaetetus", Socrates says that Parmenides alone among the wise (Protagoras, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Epicharmus, and Homer) denied that everything is change and motion. "Even the censorious Timon allows Parmenides to have been a high-minded man; while Plato speaks of him with veneration, and Aristotle and others give him an unqualified preference over the rest of the Eleatics."
He is credited with a great deal of influence as the author of this "Eleatic challenge" or "Parmenides problem" that determined the course of subsequent philosophers' inquiries. For example, the ideas of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, and Democritus have been seen as in response to Parmenides' arguments and conclusions. According to Aristotle, Democritus and Leucippus, and many other physicists, proposed the atomic theory, which supposes that everything in the universe is either atoms or voids, specifically to contradict Parmenides' argument. Karl Popper wrote:
So what was really new in Parmenides was his axiomatic-deductive method, which Leucippus and Democritus turned into a hypothetical-deductive method, and thus made part of scientific methodology.
Alexius Meinong, much like Parmenides, believed that while anything which can be spoken of meaningfully may not "exist", it must still "subsist" and therefore have being. Bertrand Russell famously responded to this view when he proposed a solution to the problem of negative existentials in "On Denoting", as did W.V.O. Quine in his "On What There Is".
A view analogous to Parmenides with respect to time can be seen in the B theory of time and the concept of Block time, which considers existence to consist of past, present, and future, and the flow of time to be illusory. In his critique of this idea, Popper called Einstein "Parmenides".
Parmenides' influence on philosophy reaches up until present times. The Italian philosopher Emanuele Severino has founded his extended philosophical investigations on the words of Parmenides. His philosophy is sometimes called Neo Parmenideism, and can be understood as an attempt to build a bridge between the poem on truth and the poem on opinion. He also studies non-being, so called meontology.
Erwin Schrödinger identified Parmenides' monad of the "Way of Truth" as being the conscious self in "Nature and the Greeks". The scientific implications of this view have been discussed by scientist Anthony Hyman. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23575 |
Partial function
In mathematics, a partial function is a binary relation over two sets that associates to every element of the first set "at most" one element of the second set; it is thus a functional binary relation. It generalizes the concept of a function by not requiring every element of the first set to be associated to at least one element of the second set. Consequently, the "domain of definition" of a partial function can be a proper subset of its "domain", contrary to a function for which the two sets always coincide.
A partial function over and is sometimes written as , , or . Partial functions are often used when their exact domain of definition is not known (for example in computability theory, general recursive functions are partial functions from the integers to the integers, and there cannot be any algorithm for deciding whether such partial functions are functions). In real and complex analysis, a partial function is generally called simply a "function".
Specifically, we will say that for any , either:
For example, we can consider the square root function restricted to the integers
Thus is only defined for that are perfect squares (i.e. ). So, , but is undefined.
A partial function is said to be injective, surjective, or bijective when the function given by the restriction of the partial function to its domain of definition is injective, surjective, bijective respectively.
Because a function is trivially surjective when restricted to its image, the term partial bijection denotes a partial function which is injective.
An injective partial function may be inverted to an injective partial function, and a partial function which is both injective and surjective has an injective function as inverse. Furthermore, a function which is injective may be inverted to an injective partial function.
The notion of transformation can be generalized to partial functions as well. A partial transformation is a function , where both and are subsets of some set .
A function is a binary relation that is functional (also called right-unique) and serial (also called left-total). This is a stronger definition than that of a partial function which only requires the functional property.
The set of all partial functions from a set "X" to a set "Y", denoted by , is the union of all functions defined on subsets of "X" with same codomain "Y":
the latter also written as formula_2. In finite case, its cardinality is
because any partial function can be extended to a function by any fixed value "c" not contained in "Y", so that the codomain is }, an operation which is injective (unique and invertible by restriction).
The first diagram at the top of the article represents a partial function that is "not" a function since the element 1 in the left-hand set is not associated with anything in the right-hand set. Whereas, the second diagram represents a function since every element on the left-hand set is associated with exactly one element in the right hand set.
Consider the natural logarithm function mapping the real numbers to themselves. The logarithm of a non-positive real is not a real number, so the natural logarithm function doesn't associate any real number in the codomain with any non-positive real number in the domain. Therefore, the natural logarithm function is not a function when viewed as a function from the reals to themselves, but it is a partial function. If the domain is restricted to only include the positive reals (that is, if the natural logarithm function is viewed as a function from the positive reals to the reals), then the natural logarithm is a function.
Subtraction of natural numbers (non-negative integers) can be viewed as a partial function:
It is defined only when formula_6.
In denotational semantics a partial function is considered as returning the bottom element when it is undefined.
In computer science a partial function corresponds to a subroutine that raises an exception or loops forever. The IEEE floating point standard defines a not-a-number value which is returned when a floating point operation is undefined and exceptions are suppressed, e.g. when the square root of a negative number is requested.
In a programming language where function parameters are statically typed, a function may be defined as a partial function because the language's type system cannot express the exact domain of the function, so the programmer instead gives it the smallest domain which is expressible as a type and contains the domain of definition of the function.
In category theory, when considering the operation of morphism composition in concrete categories, the composition operation formula_7 is a function if and only if formula_8 has one element. The reason for this is that two morphisms formula_9 and formula_10 can only be composed as formula_11 if formula_12, that is, the codomain of formula_13 must equal the domain of formula_14.
The category of sets and partial functions is equivalent to but not isomorphic with the category of pointed sets and point-preserving maps. One textbook notes that "This formal completion of sets and partial maps by adding “improper,” “infinite” elements was reinvented many times, in particular, in topology (one-point compactification) and in theoretical computer science."
The category of sets and partial bijections is equivalent to its dual. It is the prototypical inverse category.
Partial algebra generalizes the notion of universal algebra to partial operations. An example would be a field, in which the multiplicative inversion is the only proper partial operation (because division by zero is not defined).
The set of all partial functions (partial transformations) on a given base set, "X", forms a regular semigroup called the semigroup of all partial transformations (or the partial transformation semigroup on "X"), typically denoted by formula_15. The set of all partial bijections on "X" forms the symmetric inverse semigroup.
Charts in the atlases which specify the structure of manifolds and fiber bundles are partial functions. In the case of manifolds, the domain is the point set of the manifold. In the case of fiber bundles, the domain is the space of the fiber bundle. In these applications, the most important construction is the transition map, which is the composite of one chart with the inverse of another. The initial classification of manifolds and fiber bundles is largely expressed in terms of constraints on these transition maps.
The reason for the use of partial functions instead of functions is to permit general global topologies to be represented by stitching together local patches to describe the global structure. The "patches" are the domains where the charts are defined. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23577 |
Photoelectric effect
The photoelectric effect is the emission of electrons when electromagnetic radiation, like light, hits a material. Electrons emitted in this manner are called "photoelectrons". This phenomenon is commonly studied in electronic physics and in fields of chemistry such as quantum chemistry and electrochemistry.
According to classical electromagnetic theory, the photoelectric effect can be attributed to the transfer of energy from the light to an electron. From this perspective, an alteration in the intensity of light induces changes in the kinetic energy of the electrons emitted from the metal. According to this theory, a sufficiently dim light is expected to show a time lag between the initial shining of its light and the subsequent emission of an electron.
But the experimental results did not correlate with either of the two predictions made by classical theory. Instead, experiments showed that electrons are dislodged only by the impingement of light when it reached or exceeded a threshold frequency. Below that threshold, no electrons are emitted from the material, regardless of the light intensity or the length of time of exposure to the light.
Because a low-frequency beam at a high intensity could not build up the energy required to produce photoelectrons like it would have if light's energy was continuous like a wave, Einstein proposed that a beam of light is not a wave propagating through space, but rather a collection of discrete wave packets (photons).
Emission of conduction electrons from typical metals usually requires a few electron-volts, corresponding to short-wavelength visible or ultraviolet light. Emissions can be induced with photons with energies approaching zero (in the case of negative electron affinity) to over 1 MeV for core electrons in elements with a high atomic number. Study of the photoelectric effect led to important steps in understanding the quantum nature of light and electrons and influenced the formation of the concept of wave–particle duality. Other phenomena where light affects the movement of electric charges include the photoconductive effect (also known as photoconductivity or photoresistivity), the photovoltaic effect, and the photoelectrochemical effect.
The photons of a light beam have a characteristic energy, called photon energy, which is proportional to the frequency of the light. In the photoemission process, if an electron within some material absorbs the energy of one photon and acquires more energy than the work function (the electron binding energy) of the material, then the electron is ejected from the material. If the photon energy is too low, the electron is unable to escape the material. Since an increase in the intensity of low-frequency light will only increase the number of low-energy photons sent over a given interval of time, this change in intensity will not create any single photon with enough energy to dislodge an electron. Thus, the energy of the emitted electrons does not depend on the intensity of the incoming light, but only on the energy (equivalent frequency) of the individual photons. Photoemission is the result of an interaction between an incident photon and the innermost electrons of an atom. The movement of an outer electron in an atom to occupy the vacancy results in the emission of a photon.
Electrons can absorb energy from photons when irradiated, but they usually follow an "all or nothing" principle. All of the energy from one photon must be absorbed and used to liberate one electron from atomic binding, or else the energy is re-emitted. If the photon energy is absorbed, some of the energy liberates the electron from the atom, and the rest contributes to the electron's kinetic energy as a free particle.
Photoemission can occur from any material, but it is most easily observable from metals or other conductors because the process produces a charge imbalance, and if this charge imbalance is not neutralized by current flow (enabled by conductivity), the potential barrier to emission increases until the emission current ceases. It is also usual to have the emitting surface in a vacuum, since gases impede the flow of photoelectrons and make them difficult to observe. Additionally, the energy barrier to photoemission is usually increased by thin oxide layers on metal surfaces if the metal has been exposed to oxygen, so most practical experiments and devices based on the photoelectric effect use clean metal surfaces in a vacuum.
When the photoelectron is emitted into a solid rather than into a vacuum, the term "internal photoemission" is often used, and emission into a vacuum distinguished as "external photoemission".
The theory of the source of photoelectric effect must explain the experimental observations of the emission of electrons from an illuminated metal surface.
For a given metal surface, there exists a certain minimum frequency of incident radiation below which no photoelectrons are emitted. This frequency is called the "threshold frequency". Increasing the frequency of the incident beam, keeping the number of incident photons fixed (this would result in a proportionate increase in energy) increases the maximum kinetic energy of the photoelectrons emitted. Thus the stopping voltage increases (see the experimental setup in the figure). The number of electrons also changes because of the probability that each photon results in an emitted electron are a function of photon energy. If the intensity of the incident radiation of a given frequency is increased, there is no effect on the kinetic energy of each photoelectron.
Above the threshold frequency, the maximum kinetic energy of the emitted photoelectron depends on the frequency of the incident light, but is independent of the intensity of the incident light so long as the latter is not too high.
For a given metal and frequency of incident radiation, the rate at which photoelectrons are ejected is directly proportional to the intensity of the incident light. An increase in the intensity of the incident beam (keeping the frequency fixed) increases the magnitude of the photoelectric current, although the stopping voltage remains the same.
The time lag between the incidence of radiation and the emission of a photoelectron is very small, less than 10−9 second.
The direction of distribution of emitted electrons peaks in the direction of polarization (the direction of the electric field) of the incident light, if it is linearly polarized.
In 1905, Einstein proposed an explanation of the photoelectric effect using a concept first put forward by Max Planck that light waves consist of tiny bundles or packets of energy known as photons or quanta.
The maximum kinetic energy formula_1 of an ejected electron is given by
where formula_3 is the Planck constant and formula_4 is the frequency of the incident photon. The term formula_5 is the work function (sometimes denoted formula_6, or formula_7), which gives the minimum energy required to remove an electron from the surface of the metal. The work function satisfies
where formula_9 is the threshold frequency for the metal. The maximum kinetic energy of an ejected electron is then
Kinetic energy is positive, so we must have formula_11 for the photoelectric effect to occur.
The relation between current and applied voltage illustrates the nature of the photoelectric effect. For discussion, a light source illuminates a plate P, and another plate electrode Q collects any emitted electrons. We vary the potential between P and Q and measure the current flowing in the external circuit between the two plates.
If the frequency and the intensity of the incident radiation are fixed, the photoelectric current increases gradually with an increase in the positive potential on the collector electrode until all the photoelectrons emitted are collected. The photoelectric current attains a saturation value and does not increase further for any increase in the positive potential. The saturation current increases with the increase of the light intensity. It also increases with greater frequencies due to a greater probability of electron emission when collisions happen with higher energy photons.
If we apply a negative potential to the collector plate Q with respect to the plate P and gradually increase it, the photoelectric current decreases, becoming zero at a certain negative potential. The negative potential on the collector at which the photoelectric current becomes zero is called the "stopping potential" or "cut off" potential
i. For a given frequency of incident radiation, the stopping potential is independent of its intensity.
ii. For a given frequency of incident radiation, the stopping potential is determined by the maximum kinetic energy formula_1 of the photoelectrons that are emitted. If "qe" is the charge on the electron and formula_13 is the stopping potential, then the work done by the retarding potential in stopping the electron is formula_14, so we have
Recalling
we see that the stopping voltage varies linearly with frequency of light, but depends on the type of material. For any particular material, there is a threshold frequency that must be exceeded, independent of light intensity, to observe any electron emission.
In the X-ray regime, the photoelectric effect in crystalline material is often decomposed into three steps:
In the three-step model, an electron can take multiple paths through these three steps. All paths can interfere in the sense of the path integral formulation.
For surface states and molecules the three-step model does still make some sense as even most atoms have multiple electrons which can scatter the one electron leaving.
When a surface is exposed to electromagnetic radiation above a certain threshold frequency (typically visible light for alkali metals, near ultraviolet for other metals, and extreme ultraviolet for non-metals), the interaction transfers radiant energy to the surface, which results in electrons being emitted. In 1887, Heinrich Hertz and Wilhelm Hallwachs discovered that light, and especially ultraviolet light, discharges negatively electrified bodies with the production of rays of the same nature as cathode rays. Many substances besides metals discharge negative electricity under the action of ultraviolet light: lists of these substances will be found in papers by G. C. Schmidt and O. Knoblauch. Under certain circumstances light can ionize gases, first reported by Philipp Lenard in 1900.
The ultraviolet light to produce these two effects may be obtained from an arc lamp, or by burning magnesium, or by using an induction coil between zinc or cadmium terminals to produce sparking. The light produced by these methods are rich in ultraviolet rays. Sunlight does not provide as much ultraviolet rays as these methods, because the Sun's ultraviolet light is absorbed by the atmosphere.
In 1839, Alexandre Edmond Becquerel discovered the photovoltaic effect while studying the effect of light on electrolytic cells. Though not equivalent to the photoelectric effect, his work on photovoltaics was instrumental in showing a strong relationship between light and electronic properties of materials. In 1873, Willoughby Smith discovered photoconductivity in selenium while testing the metal for its high resistance properties in conjunction with his work involving submarine telegraph cables.
Johann Elster (1854–1920) and Hans Geitel (1855–1923), students in Heidelberg, developed the first practical photoelectric cells that could be used to measure the intensity of light. Elster and Geitel had investigated with great success the effects produced by light on electrified bodies.
In 1887, Heinrich Hertz observed the photoelectric effect and the production and reception of electromagnetic waves. He published these observations in the journal Annalen der Physik. His receiver consisted of a coil with a spark gap, where a spark would be seen upon detection of electromagnetic waves. He placed the apparatus in a darkened box to see the spark better. However, he noticed that the maximum spark length was reduced when inside the box. A glass panel placed between the source of electromagnetic waves and the receiver absorbed ultraviolet radiation that assisted the electrons in jumping across the gap. When removed, the spark length would increase. He observed no decrease in spark length when he replaced the glass with quartz, as quartz does not absorb UV radiation. Hertz concluded his months of investigation and reported the results obtained. He did not further pursue the investigation of this effect.
The discovery by Hertz
in 1887 that the incidence of ultraviolet light on a spark gap facilitated the passage of the spark, led immediately to a series of investigations by Hallwachs, Hoor, Righi and Stoletov on the effect of light, and especially of ultraviolet light, on charged bodies. It was proved by these investigations that a newly cleaned surface of zinc, if charged with negative electricity, rapidly loses this charge however small it may be when ultraviolet light falls upon the surface; while if the surface is uncharged to begin with, it acquires a positive charge when exposed to the light, the negative electrification going out into the gas by which the metal is surrounded; this positive electrification can be much increased by directing a strong airblast against the surface. If however the zinc surface is positively electrified it suffers no loss of charge when exposed to the light: this result has been questioned, but a very careful examination of the phenomenon by Elster and Geitel has shown that the loss observed under certain circumstances is due to the discharge by the light reflected from the zinc surface of negative electrification on neighbouring conductors induced by the positive charge, the negative electricity under the influence of the electric field moving up to the positively electrified surface.
With regard to the "Hertz effect", the researchers from the start showed a great complexity of the phenomenon of photoelectric fatigue — that is, the progressive diminution of the effect observed upon fresh metallic surfaces. According to an important research by Wilhelm Hallwachs, ozone played an important part in the phenomenon. However, other elements enter such as oxidation, the humidity, the mode of polish of the surface, etc. It was at the time not even sure that the fatigue is absent in a vacuum.
In the period from February 1888 and until 1891, a detailed analysis of photo effect was performed by Aleksandr Stoletov with results published in 6 works; four of them in "Comptes Rendus", one review in "Physikalische Revue" (translated from Russian), and the last work in "Journal de Physique". First, in these works Stoletov invented a new experimental setup which was more suitable for a quantitative analysis of photo effect. Using this setup, he discovered the direct proportionality between the intensity of light and the induced photo electric current (the first law of photo effect or Stoletov's law). One of his other findings resulted from measurements of the dependence of the intensity of the electric photo current on the gas pressure, where he found the existence of an optimal gas pressure Pm corresponding to a maximum photocurrent; this property was used for a creation of solar cells.
In 1899, J. J. Thomson investigated ultraviolet light in Crookes tubes. Thomson deduced that the ejected particles were the same as those previously found in the cathode ray, later called electrons, which he called "corpuscles". In the research, Thomson enclosed a metal plate (a cathode) in a vacuum tube, and exposed it to high-frequency radiation. It was thought that the oscillating electromagnetic fields caused the atoms' field to resonate and, after reaching a certain amplitude, caused a subatomic "corpuscle" to be emitted, and current to be detected. The amount of this current varied with the intensity and color of the radiation. Larger radiation intensity or frequency would produce more current.
During the years 1886–1902, Wilhelm Hallwachs and Philipp Lenard investigated the phenomenon of photoelectric emission in detail. Hallwachs connected a zinc plate to an electroscope. He allowed ultraviolet light to fall on the zinc plate and observed that the zinc plate became uncharged if initially negatively charged, positively charged if initially uncharged, and more positively charged if initially positively charged. From these observations he concluded that some negatively charged particles were emitted by the zinc plate when exposed to ultraviolet light. A few years later, Lenard observed that when ultraviolet radiation is allowed to fall on the emitter plate of an evacuated glass tube enclosing two electrodes, a current flows in the circuit. As soon as ultraviolet radiation is stopped, the current also stops. This initiated the concept of photoelectric emission.
In 1900, while studying black-body radiation, the German physicist Max Planck suggested that the energy carried by electromagnetic waves could only be released in "packets" of energy. In 1905, Albert Einstein published a paper advancing the hypothesis that light energy is carried in discrete quantized packets to explain experimental data from the photoelectric effect. This was a key step in the development of quantum mechanics. In 1914, Millikan's experiment supported Einstein's model of the photoelectric effect. In 1922, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 for "his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect", and Robert Millikan was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923 for "his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect".
The discovery of the ionization of gases by ultraviolet light was made by Philipp Lenard in 1900. As the effect was produced across several centimeters of air and yielded a greater number of positive ions than negative, it was natural to interpret the phenomenon, as did J. J. Thomson, as a "Hertz effect" upon the solid or liquid particles present in the gas.
In 1902, Lenard observed that the energy of individual emitted electrons increased with the frequency (which is related to the color) of the light.
This appeared to be at odds with Maxwell's wave theory of light, which predicted that the electron energy would be proportional to the intensity of the radiation.
Lenard observed the variation in electron energy with light frequency using a powerful electric arc lamp which enabled him to investigate large changes in intensity, and that had sufficient power to enable him to investigate the variation of potential with light frequency. His experiment directly measured potentials, not electron kinetic energy: he found the electron energy by relating it to the maximum stopping potential (voltage) in a phototube. He found that the calculated maximum electron kinetic energy is determined by the frequency of the light. For example, an increase in frequency results in an increase in the maximum kinetic energy calculated for an electron upon liberation – ultraviolet radiation would require a higher applied stopping potential to stop current in a phototube than blue light. However, Lenard's results were qualitative rather than quantitative because of the difficulty in performing the experiments: the experiments needed to be done on freshly cut metal so that the pure metal was observed, but it oxidized in a matter of minutes even in the partial vacuums he used. The current emitted by the surface was determined by the light's intensity, or brightness: doubling the intensity of the light doubled the number of electrons emitted from the surface.
The researches of Langevin and those of Eugene Bloch have shown that the greater part of the Lenard effect is certainly due to this 'Hertz effect'. The Lenard effect upon the gas itself nevertheless does exist. Refound by J. J. Thomson and then more decisively by Frederic Palmer, Jr., it was studied and showed very different characteristics than those at first attributed to it by Lenard.
In 1905, Albert Einstein solved this apparent paradox by describing light as composed of discrete quanta, now called photons, rather than continuous waves. Based upon Max Planck's theory of black-body radiation, Einstein theorized that the energy in each quantum of light was equal to the frequency multiplied by a constant, later called Planck's constant. A photon above a threshold frequency has the required energy to eject a single electron, creating the observed effect. This discovery led to the quantum revolution in physics and earned Einstein the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. The photoelectric effect can be analyzed solely in terms of waves though not as conveniently.
Albert Einstein's mathematical description of how the photoelectric effect was caused by absorption of quanta of light was in one of his 1905 papers, named ""On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light"". This paper proposed the simple description of "light quanta", or photons, and showed how they explained such phenomena as the photoelectric effect. His simple explanation in terms of absorption of discrete quanta of light explained the features of the phenomenon and the characteristic frequency.
The idea of light quanta began with Max Planck's published law of black-body radiation (""On the Law of Distribution of Energy in the Normal Spectrum"") by assuming that Hertzian oscillators could only exist at energies "E" proportional to the frequency "f" of the oscillator by "E" = "hf", where "h" is Planck's constant. By assuming that light actually consisted of discrete energy packets, Einstein wrote an equation for the photoelectric effect that agreed with experimental results. It explained why the energy of photoelectrons was dependent only on the "frequency" of the incident light and not on its "intensity": at low-intensity, the high-frequency source could supply a few high energy photons, whereas at high-intensity, the low-frequency source would supply no photons of sufficient individual energy to dislodge any electrons. This was an enormous theoretical leap, but the concept was strongly resisted at first because it contradicted the wave theory of light that followed naturally from James Clerk Maxwell's equations for electromagnetic behavior, and more generally, the assumption of infinite divisibility of energy in physical systems. Even after experiments showed that Einstein's equations for the photoelectric effect were accurate, resistance to the idea of photons continued since it appeared to contradict Maxwell's equations, which were well understood and verified.
Einstein's work predicted that the energy of individual ejected electrons increases linearly with the frequency of the light. Perhaps surprisingly, the precise relationship had not at that time been tested. By 1905 it was known that the energy of photoelectrons increases with increasing "frequency" of incident light and is independent of the "intensity" of the light. However, the manner of the increase was not experimentally determined until 1914 when Robert Andrews Millikan showed that Einstein's prediction was correct.
The photoelectric effect helped to propel the then-emerging concept of wave–particle duality in the nature of light. Light simultaneously possesses the characteristics of both waves and particles, each being manifested according to the circumstances. The effect was impossible to understand in terms of the classical wave description of light, as the energy of the emitted electrons did not depend on the intensity of the incident radiation. Classical theory predicted that the electrons would 'gather up' energy over a period of time, and then be emitted.
These are extremely light-sensitive vacuum tubes with a photocathode coated onto part (an end or side) of the inside of the envelope. The photo cathode contains combinations of materials such as cesium, rubidium, and antimony specially selected to provide a low work function, so when illuminated even by very low levels of light, the photocathode readily releases electrons. By means of a series of electrodes (dynodes) at ever-higher potentials, these electrons are accelerated and substantially increased in number through secondary emission to provide a readily detectable output current. Photomultipliers are still commonly used wherever low levels of light must be detected.
Video camera tubes in the early days of television used the photoelectric effect, for example, Philo Farnsworth's "Image dissector" used a screen charged by the photoelectric effect to transform an optical image into a scanned electronic signal.
Gold-leaf electroscopes are designed to detect static electricity. Charge placed on the metal cap spreads to the stem and the gold leaf of the electroscope. Because they then have the same charge, the stem and leaf repel each other. This will cause the leaf to bend away from the stem.
An electroscope is an important tool in illustrating the photoelectric effect. For example, if the electroscope is negatively charged throughout, there is an excess of electrons and the leaf is separated from the stem. If high-frequency light shines on the cap, the electroscope discharges, and the leaf will fall limp. This is because the frequency of the light shining on the cap is above the cap's threshold frequency. The photons in the light have enough energy to liberate electrons from the cap, reducing its negative charge. This will discharge a negatively charged electroscope and further charge a positive electroscope. However, if the electromagnetic radiation hitting the metal cap does not have a high enough frequency (its frequency is below the threshold value for the cap), then the leaf will never discharge, no matter how long one shines the low-frequency light at the cap.
Since the energy of the photoelectrons emitted is exactly the energy of the incident photon minus the material's work function or binding energy, the work function of a sample can be determined by bombarding it with a monochromatic X-ray source or UV source, and measuring the kinetic energy distribution of the electrons emitted.
Photoelectron spectroscopy is usually done in a high-vacuum environment, since the electrons would be scattered by gas molecules if they were present. However, some companies are now selling products that allow photoemission in air. The light source can be a laser, a discharge tube, or a synchrotron radiation source.
The concentric hemispherical analyzer is a typical electron energy analyzer and uses an electric field to change the directions of incident electrons, depending on their kinetic energies. For every element and core (atomic orbital) there will be a different binding energy. The many electrons created from each of these combinations will show up as spikes in the analyzer output, and these can be used to determine the elemental composition of the sample.
The photoelectric effect will cause spacecraft exposed to sunlight to develop a positive charge. This can be a major problem, as other parts of the spacecraft are in shadow which will result in the spacecraft developing a negative charge from nearby plasmas. The imbalance can discharge through delicate electrical components. The static charge created by the photoelectric effect is self-limiting, because a higher charged object doesn't give up its electrons as easily as a lower charged object does.
Light from the sun hitting lunar dust causes it to become positively charged from the photoelectric effect. The charged dust then repels itself and lifts off the surface of the Moon by electrostatic levitation. This manifests itself almost like an "atmosphere of dust", visible as a thin haze and blurring of distant features, and visible as a dim glow after the sun has set. This was first photographed by the Surveyor program probes in the 1960s. It is thought that the smallest particles are repelled kilometers from the surface and that the particles move in "fountains" as they charge and discharge.
Photons hitting a thin film of alkali metal or semiconductor material such as gallium arsenide in an image intensifier tube cause the ejection of photoelectrons due to the photoelectric effect. These are accelerated by an electrostatic field where they strike a phosphor coated screen, converting the electrons back into photons. Intensification of the signal is achieved either through acceleration of the electrons or by increasing the number of electrons through secondary emissions, such as with a micro-channel plate. Sometimes a combination of both methods is used. Additional kinetic energy is required to move an electron out of the conduction band and into the vacuum level. This is known as the electron affinity of the photocathode and is another barrier to photoemission other than the forbidden band, explained by the band gap model. Some materials such as Gallium Arsenide have an effective electron affinity that is below the level of the conduction band. In these materials, electrons that move to the conduction band are all of the sufficient energy to be emitted from the material and as such, the film that absorbs photons can be quite thick. These materials are known as negative electron affinity materials.
The photoelectric effect is an interaction mechanism between photons and atoms.
At the high photon energies comparable to the electron rest energy of , Compton scattering, another process, may take place. Above twice this () pair production may take place. Compton scattering and pair production are examples of two other competing mechanisms.
Indeed, even if the photoelectric effect is the favoured reaction for a particular single-photon bound-electron interaction, the result is also subject to statistical processes and is not guaranteed, even if the photon has certainly disappeared and a bound electron has been excited (usually K or L shell electrons at gamma ray energies). The probability of the photoelectric effect occurring is measured by the cross-section of interaction, σ. This has been found to be a function of the atomic number of the target atom and photon energy. A crude approximation, for photon energies above the highest atomic binding energy, which is given by:
Here "Z" is atomic number and "n" is a number which varies between 4 and 5. (At lower photon energies a characteristic structure with edges appears, K edge, L edges, M edges, etc.) The obvious interpretation follows that the photoelectric effect rapidly decreases in significance, in the gamma-ray region of the spectrum, with increasing photon energy, and that photoelectric effect increases steeply with atomic number. The corollary is that high-"Z" materials make good gamma-ray shields, which is the principal reason that lead ("Z" = 82) is a preferred and ubiquitous gamma radiation shield.
"Applets" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23579 |
Paleogene
The Paleogene ( ; also spelled Palaeogene or Palæogene; informally Lower Tertiary or Early Tertiary) is a geologic period and system that spans 43 million years from the end of the Cretaceous Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Neogene Period Mya. It is the beginning of the Cenozoic Era of the present Phanerozoic Eon. The earlier term Tertiary Period was used to define the span of time now covered by the Paleogene and subsequent Neogene periods; despite no longer being recognised as a formal stratigraphic term, 'Tertiary' is still widely found in earth science literature and remains in informal use. The Paleogene is most notable for being the time during which mammals diversified from relatively small, simple forms into a large group of diverse animals in the wake of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event that ended the preceding Cretaceous Period. The United States Geological Survey uses the abbreviation PE for the Paleogene, but the more commonly used abbreviation is PG with the PE being used for Paleocene.
This period consists of the Paleocene, Eocene, and Oligocene epochs. The end of the Paleocene (55.5/54.8 Mya) was marked by the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, one of the most significant periods of global change during the Cenozoic, which upset oceanic and atmospheric circulation and led to the extinction of numerous deep-sea benthic foraminifera and on land, a major turnover in mammals. The term 'Paleogene System' is applied to the rocks deposited during the 'Paleogene Period'.
The global climate during the Paleogene departed from the hot and humid conditions of the late Mesozoic era and began a cooling and drying trend which, despite having been periodically disrupted by warm periods such as the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, persisted until the temperature began to rise again due to the end of the most recent glacial period of the current ice age. The trend was partly caused by the formation of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which significantly lowered oceanic water temperatures. A 2018 study estimated that during the early Palaeogene about 56-48 million years ago, annual air temperatures, over land and at mid-latitude, averaged about 23–29 °C (± 4.7 °C), which is 5–10 °C higher than most previous estimates. Or for comparison, it was 10 to 15 °C higher than current annual mean temperatures in these areas; the authors suggest that the current atmospheric carbon dioxide trajectory, if it continues, could establish these temperatures again.
During the Paleogene, the continents continued to drift closer to their current positions. India was in the process of colliding with Asia, forming the Himalayas. The Atlantic Ocean continued to widen by a few centimeters each year. Africa was moving north to meet with Europe and form the Mediterranean Sea, while South America was moving closer to North America (they would later connect via the Isthmus of Panama). Inland seas retreated from North America early in the period. Australia had also separated from Antarctica and was drifting toward Southeast Asia.
Mammals began a rapid diversification during this period. After the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, which saw the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs, mammals transformed from a few small and generalized forms that began to evolve into most of the modern varieties we see today. Some of these mammals would evolve into large forms that would dominate the land, while others would become capable of living in marine, specialized terrestrial, and airborne environments. Those that took to the oceans became modern cetaceans, while those that took to the trees became primates, the group to which humans belong. Birds, which were already well established by the end of the Cretaceous, also experienced adaptive radiation as they took over the skies left empty by the now extinct pterosaurs.
Pronounced cooling in the Oligocene led to a massive floral shift and many extant modern plants arose during this time. Grasses and herbs such as "Artemisia" began to appear at the expense of tropical plants, which began to decline. Conifer forests developed in mountainous areas. This cooling trend continued, with major fluctuation, until the end of the Pleistocene. This evidence for this floral shift is found in the palynological record.
The Paleogene is notable in the context of offshore oil drilling, and especially in Gulf of Mexico oil exploration, where it is commonly referred to as the "Lower Tertiary". These rock formations represent the current cutting edge of deep-water oil discovery.
Lower Tertiary rock formations encountered in the Gulf of Mexico oil industry usually tend to be comparatively high temperature and high pressure reservoirs, often with high sand content (70%+) or under very thick evaporite sediment layers.
Lower Tertiary explorations include (partial list): | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23580 |
Preorder
In mathematics, especially in order theory, a preorder or quasiorder is a binary relation that is reflexive and transitive. Preorders are more general than equivalence relations and (non-strict) partial orders, both of which are special cases of a preorder. An antisymmetric preorder is a partial order, and a symmetric preorder is an equivalence relation.
The name "preorder" comes from the idea that preorders (that are not partial orders) are 'almost' (partial) orders, but not quite; they are neither necessarily antisymmetric nor asymmetric. Because a preorder is a binary relation, the symbol ≤ can be used as the notational device for the relation. However, because they are not necessarily antisymmetric, some of the ordinary intuition associated to the symbol ≤ may not apply. On the other hand, a preorder can be used, in a straightforward fashion, to define a partial order and an equivalence relation. Doing so, however, is not always useful or worthwhile, depending on the problem domain being studied.
In words, when , one may say that "b" "covers" "a" or that "a" "precedes" "b", or that "b" "reduces" to "a". Occasionally, the notation ← or ≲ is used instead of ≤.
To every preorder, there corresponds a directed graph, with elements of the set corresponding to vertices, and the order relation between pairs of elements corresponding to the directed edges between vertices. The converse is not true: most directed graphs are neither reflexive nor transitive. In general, the corresponding graphs may contain cycles. A preorder that is antisymmetric no longer has cycles; it is a partial order, and corresponds to a directed acyclic graph. A preorder that is symmetric is an equivalence relation; it can be thought of as having lost the direction markers on the edges of the graph. In general, a preorder's corresponding directed graph may have many disconnected components.
Consider some set "P" and a binary relation ≤ on "P". Then ≤ is a preorder, or quasiorder, if it is reflexive and transitive; i.e., for all "a", "b" and "c" in "P", we have that:
A set that is equipped with a preorder is called a preordered set (or proset).
If a preorder is also antisymmetric, that is, and implies , then it is a partial order.
On the other hand, if it is symmetric, that is, if implies , then it is an equivalence relation.
A preorder is total if or for all "a", "b".
Equivalently, the notion of a preordered set "P" can be formulated in a categorical framework as a thin category; i.e., as a category with at most one morphism from an object to another. Here the objects correspond to the elements of "P", and there is one morphism for objects which are related, zero otherwise. Alternately, a preordered set can be understood as an enriched category, enriched over the category .
A preordered class is a class equipped with a preorder. Every set is a class and so every preordered set is a preordered class.
In computer science, one can find examples of the following preorders.
Example of a total preorder:
Preorders play a pivotal role in several situations:
Every binary relation R on a set S can be extended to a preorder on S by taking the transitive closure and reflexive closure, R+=. The transitive closure indicates path connection in if and only if there is an R-path from "x" to y.
Given a preorder ≲ on S one may define an equivalence relation ~ on S such that if and only if and . (The resulting relation is reflexive since a preorder is reflexive, transitive by applying transitivity of the preorder twice, and symmetric by definition.)
Using this relation, it is possible to construct a partial order on the quotient set of the equivalence, S / ~, the set of all equivalence classes of ~. Note that if the preorder is R+=, is the set of R-cycle equivalence classes: if and only if or "x" is in an R-cycle with "y". In any case, on we can define if and only if . By the construction of ~, this definition is independent of the chosen representatives and the corresponding relation is indeed well-defined. It is readily verified that this yields a partially ordered set.
Conversely, from a partial order on a partition of a set S one can construct a preorder on S. There is a 1-to-1 correspondence between preorders and pairs (partition, partial order).
For a preorder "≲", a relation "
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis (from Greek: + ) is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques related to the study of the unconscious mind, which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, who retained the term "psychoanalysis" for his own school of thought, and stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions, mostly by students of Freud, such as Alfred Adler and his collaborator, Carl Gustav Jung, as well as by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.
Psychoanalysis has been known to be a controversial discipline, as its validity as a science is often contested. Nonetheless, it remains a strong influence within psychiatry, more so in some quarters than others. Psychoanalytic concepts are also widely used outside the therapeutic arena, in areas such as psychoanalytic literary criticism, as well as in the analysis of film, fairy tales and other cultural phenomena.
The basic tenets of psychoanalysis include:
During psychoanalytic sessions, typically lasting 50 minutes, ideally 4–5 times a week, the patient (or ) may lie on a couch, with the analyst often sitting just behind and out of sight. The patient expresses his or her thoughts, including free associations, fantasies, and dreams, from which the analyst infers the unconscious conflicts causing the patient's symptoms and character problems. Through the analysis of these conflicts, which includes interpreting the transference and countertransference (the analyst's feelings for the patient), the analyst confronts the patient's pathological defenses to help the patient gain insight.
Sigmund Freud first used the term 'psychoanalysis' () in 1896, ultimately retaining the term for his own school of thought. In November 1899, he wrote the "Interpretation of Dreams" (), which Freud thought of as his "most significant work."
Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions, mostly by students of Freud such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung, and by neo-Freudians such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Harry Stack Sullivan.
The idea of psychoanalysis () first began to receive serious attention under Sigmund Freud, who formulated his own theory of psychoanalysis in Vienna in the 1890s. Freud was a neurologist trying to find an effective treatment for patients with neurotic or hysterical symptoms. Freud realised that there were mental processes that were not conscious, whilst he was employed as a neurological consultant at the Children's Hospital, where he noticed that many aphasic children had no apparent organic cause for their symptoms. He then wrote a monograph about this subject. In 1885, Freud obtained a grant to study with Jean-Martin Charcot, a famed neurologist, at the Salpêtrière in Paris, where Freud followed the clinical presentations of Charcot, particularly in the areas of hysteria, paralyses and the anaesthesias. Charcot had introduced hypnotism as an experimental research tool and developed the photographic representation of clinical symptoms.
Freud's first theory to explain hysterical symptoms was presented in "Studies on Hysteria" (1895; ), co-authored with his mentor the distinguished physician Josef Breuer, which was generally seen as the birth of psychoanalysis. The work was based on Breuer's treatment of Bertha Pappenheim, referred to in case studies by the pseudonym "Anna O.", treatment which Pappenheim herself had dubbed the "talking cure". Breuer wrote that many factors could result in such symptoms, including various types of emotional trauma, and he also credited work by others such as Pierre Janet; while Freud contended that at the root of hysterical symptoms were repressed memories of distressing occurrences, almost always having direct or indirect sexual associations.
Around the same time, Freud attempted to develop a neuro-physiological theory of unconscious mental mechanisms, which he soon gave up. It remained unpublished in his lifetime. The term 'psychoanalysis' () was first introduced by Freud in his essay titled "Heredity and etiology of neuroses" (""), written and published in French in 1896.
In 1896, Freud also published his "seduction theory", claiming to have uncovered repressed memories of incidents of sexual abuse for all his current patients, from which he proposed that the preconditions for hysterical symptoms are sexual excitations in infancy. However, by 1898 he had privately acknowledged to his friend and colleague Wilhelm Fliess that he no longer believed in his theory, though he did not state this publicly until 1906. Though in 1896 he had reported that his patients "had no feeling of remembering the [infantile sexual] scenes", and assured him "emphatically of their unbelief," in later accounts he claimed that they had told him that they had been sexually abused in infancy. This became the received historical account until challenged by several Freud scholars in the latter part of the 20th century who argued that he had imposed his preconceived notions on his patients. However, building on his claims that the patients reported infantile sexual abuse experiences, Freud subsequently contended that his clinical findings in the mid-1890s provided evidence of the occurrence of unconscious fantasies, supposedly to cover up memories of infantile masturbation. Only much later did he claim the same findings as evidence for Oedipal desires.
By 1899, Freud had theorised that dreams had symbolic significance, and generally were specific to the dreamer. Freud formulated his second psychological theory— which hypotheses that the unconscious has or is a "primary process" consisting of symbolic and condensed thoughts, and a "secondary process" of logical, conscious thoughts. This theory was published in his 1899 book, "The Interpretation of Dreams". Chapter VII is a re-working of the earlier "Project" and Freud outlined his "topographic theory". In this theory, which was mostly later supplanted by the Structural Theory, unacceptable sexual wishes were repressed into the "System Unconscious," unconscious due to society's condemnation of premarital sexual activity, and this repression created anxiety. This "topographic theory" is still popular in much of Europe, although it has fallen out of favour in much of North America.
In 1905, Freud published "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" in which he laid out his discovery of the "psychosexual phases":
His early formulation included the idea that because of societal restrictions, sexual wishes were repressed into an unconscious state, and that the energy of these unconscious wishes could be turned into anxiety or physical symptoms. Therefore, the early treatment techniques, including hypnotism and abreaction, were designed to make the unconscious conscious in order to relieve the pressure and the apparently resulting symptoms. This method would later on be left aside by Freud, giving free association a bigger role.
In "On Narcissism" (1915), Freud turned his attention to the titular subject of narcissism. Still using an energic system, Freud characterized the difference between energy directed at the self versus energy directed at others, called "cathexis". By 1917, in "Mourning and Melancholia," he suggested that certain depressions were caused by turning guilt-ridden anger on the self. In 1919, through "A Child is Being Beaten," he began to address the problems of self-destructive behavior (moral masochism) and frank sexual masochism. Based on his experience with depressed and self-destructive patients, and pondering the carnage of World War I, Freud became dissatisfied with considering only oral and sexual motivations for behavior. By 1920, Freud addressed the power of identification (with the leader and with other members) in groups as a motivation for behavior (in "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego"). In that same year, Freud suggested his '"dual drive' theory" of sexuality and aggression in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," to try to begin to explain human destructiveness. Also, it was the first appearance of his "structural theory" consisting of three new concepts id, ego, and superego.
Three years later, in 1923, he summarised the ideas of id, ego, and superego in "The Ego and the Id." In the book, he revised the whole theory of mental functioning, now considering that repression was only one of many defense mechanisms, and that it occurred to reduce anxiety. Hence, Freud characterised repression as both a cause and a result of anxiety. In 1926, in "Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety," Freud characterised how intrapsychic conflict among drive and superego (wishes and guilt) caused anxiety, and how that anxiety could lead to an inhibition of mental functions, such as intellect and speech. "Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety" was written in response to Otto Rank, who, in 1924, published "Das Trauma der Geburt" ("The Trauma of Birth"), analysing how art, myth, religion, philosophy and therapy were illuminated by separation anxiety in the "phase before the development of the Oedipus complex." Freud's theories, however, characterized no such phase. According to Freud, the Oedipus complex, was at the centre of neurosis, and was the foundational source of all art, myth, religion, philosophy, therapy—indeed of all human culture and civilization. It was the first time that anyone in the inner circle had characterised something other than the Oedipus complex as contributing to intrapsychic development, a notion that was rejected by Freud and his followers at the time.
By 1936 the "Principle of Multiple Function" was clarified by Robert Waelder. He widened the formulation that psychological symptoms were caused by and relieved conflict simultaneously. Moreover, symptoms (such as phobias and compulsions) each represented elements of some drive wish (sexual and/or aggressive), superego, anxiety, reality, and defenses. Also in 1936, Anna Freud, Sigmund's daughter, published her seminal book, "The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense", outlining numerous ways the mind could shut upsetting things out of consciousness.
When Hitler's power grew, the Freud family and many of their colleagues fled to London. Within a year, Sigmund Freud died. In the United States, also following the death of Freud, a new group of psychoanalysts began to explore the function of the ego. Led by Heinz Hartmann, the group built upon understandings of the "synthetic" function of the ego as a mediator in psychic functioning, distinguishing such from "autonomous" ego functions (e.g. memory and intellect, which could be secondarily affected by conflict). These "Ego Psychologists" of the 1950s paved a way to focus analytic work by attending to the defenses (mediated by the ego) before exploring the deeper roots to the unconscious conflicts.
In addition, there was burgeoning interest in child psychoanalysis. Although criticized since its inception, psychoanalysis has been used as a research tool into childhood development, and is still used to treat certain mental disturbances. In the 1960s, Freud's early thoughts on the childhood development of female sexuality were challenged; this challenge led to the development of a variety of understandings of female sexual development, many of which modified the timing and normality of several of Freud's theories (which had been gleaned from the treatment of women with mental disturbances). Several researchers followed Karen Horney's studies of societal pressures that influence the development of women.
In the first decade of the 21st century, there were approximately 35 training institutes for psychoanalysis in the United States accredited by the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), which is a component organization of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), and there are over 3000 graduated psychoanalysts practicing in the United States. The IPA accredits psychoanalytic training centers through such "component organisations" throughout the rest of the world, including countries such as Serbia, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and many others, as well as about six institutes directly in the United States.
The predominant psychoanalytic theories can be organised into several theoretical schools. Although these perspectives differ, most of them emphasize the influence of unconscious elements on the conscious. There has also been considerable work done on consolidating elements of conflicting theories.
As in the field of medicine, there are some persistent conflicts regarding specific causes of certain syndromes, and disputes regarding the ideal treatment techniques. In the 21st century, psychoanalytic ideas are embedded in Western culture, especially in fields such as childcare, education, literary criticism, cultural studies, mental health, and particularly psychotherapy. Though there is a mainstream of evolved analytic ideas, there are groups who follow the precepts of one or more of the later theoreticians. Psychoanalytic ideas also play roles in some types of literary analysis such as Archetypal literary criticism.
"Topographic theory" was named and first described by Sigmund Freud in "The Interpretation of Dreams" (1899). The theory hypothesizes that the mental apparatus can be divided into the systems Conscious, Preconscious, and Unconscious. These systems are not anatomical structures of the brain but, rather, mental processes. Although Freud retained this theory throughout his life he largely replaced it with the "structural theory". The Topographic theory remains as one of the meta-psychological points of view for describing how the mind functions in classical psychoanalytic theory.
Structural theory divides the psyche into the id, the ego, and the super-ego. The id is present at birth as the repository of basic instincts, which Freud called ""Triebe"" ("drives"): unorganized and unconscious, it operates merely on the 'pleasure principle', without realism or foresight. The ego develops slowly and gradually, being concerned with mediating between the urging of the id and the realities of the external world; it thus operates on the 'reality principle'. The super-ego is held to be the part of the ego in which self-observation, self-criticism and other reflective and judgmental faculties develop. The ego and the super-ego are both partly conscious and partly unconscious.
During the twentieth century, many different clinical and theoretical models of psychoanalysis emerged.
Ego psychology was initially suggested by Freud in "Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety" (1926), while major steps forward would be made through Anna Freud's work on defense mechanisms, first published in her book "The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence" (1936).
The theory was refined by Hartmann, Loewenstein, and Kris in a series of papers and books from 1939 through the late 1960s. Leo Bellak was a later contributor. This series of constructs, paralleling some of the later developments of cognitive theory, includes the notions of autonomous ego functions: mental functions not dependent, at least in origin, on intrapsychic conflict. Such functions include: sensory perception, motor control, symbolic thought, logical thought, speech, abstraction, integration (synthesis), orientation, concentration, judgment about danger, reality testing, adaptive ability, executive decision-making, hygiene, and self-preservation. Freud noted that inhibition is one method that the mind may utilize to interfere with any of these functions in order to avoid painful emotions. Hartmann (1950s) pointed out that there may be delays or deficits in such functions.
Frosch (1964) described differences in those people who demonstrated damage to their relationship to reality, but who seemed able to test it.
According to ego psychology, ego strengths, later described by Otto F. Kernberg (1975), include the capacities to control oral, sexual, and destructive impulses; to tolerate painful affects without falling apart; and to prevent the eruption into consciousness of bizarre symbolic fantasy. Synthetic functions, in contrast to autonomous functions, arise from the development of the ego and serve the purpose of managing conflict processes. Defenses are synthetic functions that protect the conscious mind from awareness of forbidden impulses and thoughts. One purpose of ego psychology has been to emphasize that some mental functions can be considered to be basic, rather than derivatives of wishes, affects, or defenses. However, autonomous ego functions can be secondarily affected because of unconscious conflict. For example, a patient may have an hysterical amnesia (memory being an autonomous function) because of intrapsychic conflict (wishing not to remember because it is too painful).
Taken together, the above theories present a group of metapsychological assumptions. Therefore, the inclusive group of the different classical theories provides a cross-sectional view of human mentation. There are six "points of view", five described by Freud and a sixth added by Hartmann. Unconscious processes can therefore be evaluated from each of these six points of view:
"Modern conflict theory", a variation of ego psychology, is a revised version of structural theory, most notably different by altering concepts related to where repressed thoughts were stored. Modern conflict theory addresses emotional symptoms and character traits as complex solutions to mental conflict. It dispenses with the concepts of a fixed id, ego and superego, and instead posits conscious and unconscious conflict among wishes (dependent, controlling, sexual, and aggressive), guilt and shame, emotions (especially anxiety and depressive affect), and defensive operations that shut off from consciousness some aspect of the others. Moreover, healthy functioning (adaptive) is also determined, to a great extent, by resolutions of conflict.
A major objective of modern conflict-theory psychoanalysis is to change the balance of conflict in a patient by making aspects of the less adaptive solutions (also called "compromise formations") conscious so that they can be rethought, and more adaptive solutions found. Current theoreticians who follow the work of Charles Brenner, especially "The Mind in Conflict" (1982), include Sandor Abend, Jacob Arlow, and Jerome Blackman.
"Object relations theory" attempts to explain the ups and downs of human relationships through a study of how internal representations of the self and others are organized. The clinical symptoms that suggest object relations problems (typically developmental delays throughout life) include disturbances in an individual's capacity to feel: warmth, empathy, trust, sense of security, identity stability, consistent emotional closeness, and stability in relationships with significant others
Concepts regarding internal representation (aka 'introspect,' 'self and object representation,' or 'internalization of self and other'), although often attributed to Melanie Klein, were actually first mentioned by Sigmund Freud in his early concepts of drive theory ("Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality", 1905). Freud's 1917 paper "Mourning and Melancholia," for example, hypothesized that unresolved grief was caused by the survivor's internalized image of the deceased becoming fused with that of the survivor, and then the survivor shifting unacceptable anger toward the deceased onto the now complex self-image.
Vamik Volkan, in "Linking Objects and Linking Phenomena," expanded on Freud's thoughts on this, describing the syndromes of "established pathological mourning" vs. "reactive depression" based on similar dynamics. Melanie Klein's hypotheses regarding internalization during the first year of life, leading to paranoid and depressive positions, were later challenged by René Spitz (e.g., "The First Year of Life", 1965), who divided the first year of life into a coenesthetic phase of the first six months, and then a diacritic phase for the second six months. Mahler, Fine, and Bergman (1975) describe distinct phases and subphases of child development leading to "separation-individuation" during the first three years of life, stressing the importance of constancy of parental figures in the face of the child's destructive aggression, internalizations, stability of affect management, and ability to develop healthy autonomy.
John Frosch, Otto Kernberg, Salman Akhtar, and Sheldon Bach have developed the theory of self and object constancy as it affects adult psychiatric problems such as psychosis and borderline states. Blos (1960) described how similar separation-individuation struggles occur during adolescence, of course with a different outcome from the first three years of life: the teen usually, eventually, leaves the parents' house (varying with culture).
During adolescence, Erik Erikson (1950–1960s) described the 'identity crisis,' that involves identity-diffusion anxiety. In order for an adult to be able to experience "Warm-ETHICS: (warmth, Empathy, Trust, Holding environment, Identity, Closeness, and Stability) in relationships, the teenager must resolve the problems with identity and redevelop self and object constancy.
"Self psychology" emphasizes the development of a stable and integrated sense of self through empathic contacts with other humans, primary significant others conceived of as 'selfobjects.' "Selfobjects" meet the developing self's needs for mirroring, idealization, and twinship, and thereby strengthen the developing self. The process of treatment proceeds through "transmuting internalizations" in which the patient gradually internalizes the selfobject functions provided by the therapist.
Self psychology was proposed originally by Heinz Kohut, and has been further developed by Arnold Goldberg, Frank Lachmann, Paul and Anna Ornstein, Marian Tolpin, and others.
Lacanian psychoanalysis, which integrates psychoanalysis with structural linguistics and Hegelian philosophy, is especially popular in France and parts of Latin America. Lacanian psychoanalysis is a departure from the traditional British and American psychoanalysis. Jacques Lacan frequently used the phrase "retourner à Freud" ("return to Freud") in his seminars and writings, as he claimed that his theories were an extension of Freud's own, contrary to those of Anna Freud, the Ego Psychology, object relations and "self" theories and also claims the necessity of reading Freud's complete works, not only a part of them. Lacan's concepts concern the "mirror stage", the "Real", the "Imaginary", and the "Symbolic", and the claim that "the unconscious is structured as a language."
Though a major influence on psychoanalysis in France and parts of Latin America, Lacan and his ideas have taken longer to be translated into English and he has thus had a lesser impact on psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in the English-speaking world. In the United Kingdom and the United States, his ideas are most widely used to analyze texts in literary theory. Due to his increasingly critical stance towards the deviation from Freud's thought, often singling out particular texts and readings from his colleagues, Lacan was excluded from acting as a training analyst in the IPA, thus leading him to create his own school in order to maintain an institutional structure for the many candidates who desired to continue their analysis with him.
The "adaptive paradigm" of psychotherapy develops out of the work of Robert Langs. The "adaptive paradigm" interprets psychic conflict primarily in terms of conscious and unconscious adaptation to reality. Langs’ recent work in some measure returns to the earlier Freud, in that Langs prefers a modified version of the topographic model of the mind (conscious, preconscious, and unconscious) over the structural model (id, ego, and super-ego), including the former's emphasis on trauma (though Langs looks to death-related traumas rather than sexual traumas). At the same time, Langs’ model of the mind differs from Freud's in that it understands the mind in terms of evolutionary biological principles.
"Relational psychoanalysis" combines interpersonal psychoanalysis with object-relations theory and with inter-subjective theory as critical for mental health. It was introduced by Stephen Mitchell. Relational psychoanalysis stresses how the individual's personality is shaped by both real and imagined relationships with others, and how these relationship patterns are re-enacted in the interactions between analyst and patient. In New York, key proponents of relational psychoanalysis include Lew Aron, Jessica Benjamin, and Adrienne Harris. Fonagy and Target, in London, have propounded their view of the necessity of helping certain detached, isolated patients, develop the capacity for "mentalization" associated with thinking about relationships and themselves. Arietta Slade, Susan Coates, and Daniel Schechter in New York have additionally contributed to the application of relational psychoanalysis to treatment of the adult patient-as-parent, the clinical study of mentalization in parent-infant relationships, and the intergenerational transmission of attachment and trauma.
The term "interpersonal-relational psychoanalysis" is often used as a professional identification. Psychoanalysts under this broader umbrella debate about what precisely are the differences between the two schools, without any current clear consensus.
The various psychoses involve deficits in the autonomous ego functions (see above) of integration (organization) of thought, in abstraction ability, in relationship to reality and in reality testing. In depressions with psychotic features, the self-preservation function may also be damaged (sometimes by overwhelming depressive affect). Because of the integrative deficits (often causing what general psychiatrists call "loose associations," "blocking," "flight of ideas," "verbigeration," and "thought withdrawal"), the development of self and object representations is also impaired. Clinically, therefore, psychotic individuals manifest limitations in warmth, empathy, trust, identity, closeness and/or stability in relationships (due to problems with self-object fusion anxiety) as well.
In patients whose autonomous ego functions are more intact, but who still show problems with object relations, the diagnosis often falls into the category known as "borderline". Borderline patients also show deficits, often in controlling impulses, affects, or fantasies – but their ability to test reality remains more or less intact. Adults who do not experience guilt and shame, and who indulge in criminal behavior, are usually diagnosed as psychopaths, or, using DSM-IV-TR, antisocial personality disorder.
"Neurotic symptoms"—including panic, phobias, conversions, obsessions, compulsions and depressions—are not usually caused by deficits in functions. Instead, they are caused by intrapsychic conflicts. The conflicts are generally among sexual and hostile-aggressive wishes, guilt and shame, and reality factors. The conflicts may be conscious or unconscious, but create anxiety, depressive affect, and anger. Finally, the various elements are managed by defensive operations—essentially shut-off brain mechanisms that make people unaware of that element of conflict.
"Repression" is the term given to the mechanism that shuts thoughts out of consciousness. "Isolation of affect" is the term used for the mechanism that shuts sensations out of consciousness. Neurotic symptoms may occur with or without deficits in ego functions, object relations, and ego strengths. Therefore, it is not uncommon to encounter obsessive-compulsive schizophrenics, panic patients who also suffer with borderline personality disorder, etc.
This section above is partial to ego psychoanalytic theory "autonomous ego functions". As the "autonomous ego functions theory" is only a theory, it may yet be proven incorrect.
Freudian theories hold that adult problems can be traced to unresolved conflicts from certain phases of childhood and adolescence, caused by fantasy, stemming from their own drives. Freud, based on the data gathered from his patients early in his career, suspected that neurotic disturbances occurred when children were sexually abused in childhood (i.e. "seduction theory"). Later, Freud came to believe that, although child abuse occurs, neurotic symptoms were not associated with this. He believed that neurotic people often had unconscious conflicts that involved incestuous fantasies deriving from different stages of development. He found the stage from about three to six years of age (preschool years, today called the "first genital stage") to be filled with fantasies of having romantic relationships with both parents. Arguments were quickly generated in early 20th-century Vienna about whether adult seduction of children, i.e. child sexual abuse, was the basis of neurotic illness. There still is no complete agreement, although nowadays professionals recognize the negative effects of child sexual abuse on mental health.
Many psychoanalysts who work with children have studied the actual effects of child abuse, which include ego and object relations deficits and severe neurotic conflicts. Much research has been done on these types of trauma in childhood, and the adult sequelae of those. In studying the childhood factors that start neurotic symptom development, Freud found a constellation of factors that, for literary reasons, he termed the Oedipus complex, based on the play by Sophocles, "Oedipus Rex", in which the protagonist unwittingly kills his father and marries his mother. The validity of the "Oedipus complex" is now widely disputed and rejected.
The shorthand term, "oedipal"—later explicated by Joseph J. Sandler in "On the Concept Superego" (1960) and modified by Charles Brenner in "The Mind in Conflict" (1982)—refers to the powerful attachments that children make to their parents in the preschool years. These attachments involve fantasies of sexual relationships with either (or both) parent, and, therefore, competitive fantasies toward either (or both) parents. Humberto Nagera (1975) has been particularly helpful in clarifying many of the complexities of the child through these years.
"Positive" and "negative" oedipal conflicts have been attached to the heterosexual and homosexual aspects, respectively. Both seem to occur in development of most children. Eventually, the developing child's concessions to reality (that they will neither marry one parent nor eliminate the other) lead to identifications with parental values. These identifications generally create a new set of mental operations regarding values and guilt, subsumed under the term "superego". Besides superego development, children "resolve" their preschool oedipal conflicts through channeling wishes into something their parents approve of ("sublimation") and the development, during the school-age years ("latency") of age-appropriate obsessive-compulsive defensive maneuvers (rules, repetitive games).
Using the various analytic and psychological techniques to assess mental problems, some believe that there are particular constellations of problems that are especially suited for analytic treatment (see below) whereas other problems might respond better to medicines and other interpersonal interventions. To be treated with psychoanalysis, whatever the presenting problem, the person requesting help must demonstrate a desire to start an analysis. The person wishing to start an analysis must have some capacity for speech and communication. As well, they need to be able to have or develop trust and insight within the psychoanalytic session. Potential patients must undergo a preliminary stage of treatment to assess their amenability to psychoanalysis at that time, and also to enable the analyst to form a working psychological model, which the analyst will use to direct the treatment. Psychoanalysts mainly work with neurosis and hysteria in particular; however, adapted forms of psychoanalysis are used in working with schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis or mental disorder. Finally, if a prospective patient is severely suicidal a longer preliminary stage may be employed, sometimes with sessions which have a twenty-minute break in the middle. There are numerous modifications in technique under the heading of psychoanalysis due to the individualistic nature of personality in both analyst and patient.
The most common problems treatable with psychoanalysis include: phobias, conversions, compulsions, obsessions, anxiety attacks, depressions, sexual dysfunctions, a wide variety of relationship problems (such as dating and marital strife), and a wide variety of character problems (for example, painful shyness, meanness, obnoxiousness, workaholism, hyperseductiveness, hyperemotionality, hyperfastidiousness). The fact that many of such patients also demonstrate deficits above makes diagnosis and treatment selection difficult.
Analytical organizations such as the IPA, APsaA and the European Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy have established procedures and models for the indication and practice of psychoanalytical therapy for trainees in analysis. The match between the analyst and the patient can be viewed as another contributing factor for the indication and contraindication for psychoanalytic treatment. The analyst decides whether the patient is suitable for psychoanalysis. This decision made by the analyst, besides made on the usual indications and pathology, is also based to a certain degree by the "fit" between analyst and patient. A person's suitability for analysis at any particular time is based on their desire to know something about where their illness has come from. Someone who is not suitable for analysis expresses no desire to know more about the root causes of their illness.
An evaluation may include one or more other analysts' independent opinions and will include discussion of the patient's financial situation and insurances.
The basic method of psychoanalysis is interpretation of the patient's unconscious conflicts that are interfering with current-day functioning – conflicts that are causing painful symptoms such as phobias, anxiety, depression, and compulsions. Strachey (1936) stressed that figuring out ways the patient distorted perceptions about the analyst led to understanding what may have been forgotten. In particular, unconscious hostile feelings toward the analyst could be found in symbolic, negative reactions to what Robert Langs later called the "frame" of the therapy—the setup that included times of the sessions, payment of fees, and necessity of talking. In patients who made mistakes, forgot, or showed other peculiarities regarding time, fees, and talking, the analyst can usually find various unconscious "resistances" to the flow of thoughts (aka free association).
When the patient reclines on a couch with the analyst out of view, the patient tends to remember more experiences, more resistance and transference, and is able to reorganize thoughts after the development of insight – through the interpretive work of the analyst. Although fantasy life can be understood through the examination of dreams, masturbation fantasies are also important. The analyst is interested in how the patient reacts to and avoids such fantasies. Various memories of early life are generally distorted—what Freud called "screen memories"—and in any case, very early experiences (before age two)—cannot be remembered.
There is what is known among psychoanalysts as "classical technique", although Freud throughout his writings deviated from this considerably, depending on the problems of any given patient.
"Classical technique" was summarized by Allan Compton as comprising:
As well, the analyst can also use confrontation to bringing an aspect of functioning, usually a defense, to the patient's attention. The analyst then uses a variety of interpretation methods, such as:
Analysts can also use reconstruction to estimate what may have happened in the past that created some current issue. These techniques are primarily based on "conflict theory" (see above). As "object relations theory" evolved, supplemented by the work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, techniques with patients who had more severe problems with basic trust (Erikson, 1950) and a history of maternal deprivation (see the works of Augusta Alpert) led to new techniques with adults. These have sometimes been called interpersonal, intersubjective (cf. Stolorow), relational, or corrective object relations techniques. These techniques include expressing an empathic attunement to the patient or warmth; exposing a bit of the analyst's personal life or attitudes to the patient; allowing the patient autonomy in the form of disagreement with the analyst (cf. I. H. Paul, "Letters to Simon"); and explaining the motivations of others which the patient misperceives.
Ego psychological concepts of deficit in functioning led to refinements in supportive therapy. These techniques are particularly applicable to psychotic and near-psychotic (cf., Eric Marcus, "Psychosis and Near-psychosis") patients. These supportive therapy techniques include discussions of reality; encouragement to stay alive (including hospitalization); psychotropic medicines to relieve overwhelming depressive affect or overwhelming fantasies (hallucinations and delusions); and advice about the meanings of things (to counter abstraction failures).
The notion of the "silent analyst" has been criticized. Actually, the analyst listens using Arlow's approach as set out in "The Genesis of Interpretation", using active intervention to interpret resistances, defenses creating pathology, and fantasies. Silence is not a technique of psychoanalysis (see also the studies and opinion papers of Owen Renik). "Analytic neutrality" is a concept that does not mean the analyst is silent. It refers to the analyst's position of not taking sides in the internal struggles of the patient. For example, if a patient feels guilty, the analyst might explore what the patient has been doing or thinking that causes the guilt, but not reassure the patient not to feel guilty. The analyst might also explore the identifications with parents and others that led to the guilt.
Interpersonal–relational psychoanalysts emphasize the notion that it is impossible to be neutral. Sullivan introduced the term "participant-observer" to indicate the analyst inevitably interacts with the analysand, and suggested the detailed inquiry as an alternative to interpretation. The detailed inquiry involves noting where the analysand is leaving out important elements of an account and noting when the story is obfuscated, and asking careful questions to open up the dialogue.
Although single-client sessions remain the norm, psychoanalytic theory has been used to develop other types of psychological treatment. Psychoanalytic group therapy was pioneered by Trigant Burrow, Joseph Pratt, Paul F. Schilder, Samuel R. Slavson, Harry Stack Sullivan, and Wolfe. Child-centered counseling for parents was instituted early in analytic history by Freud, and was later further developed by Irwin Marcus, Edith Schulhofer, and Gilbert Kliman. Psychoanalytically based couples therapy has been promulgated and explicated by Fred Sander. Techniques and tools developed in the first decade of the 21st century have made psychoanalysis available to patients who were not treatable by earlier techniques. This meant that the analytic situation was modified so that it would be more suitable and more likely to be helpful for these patients. Eagle (2007) believes that psychoanalysis cannot be a self-contained discipline but instead must be open to influence from and integration with findings and theory from other disciplines.
Psychoanalytic constructs have been adapted for use with children with treatments such as play therapy, art therapy, and storytelling. Throughout her career, from the 1920s through the 1970s, Anna Freud adapted psychoanalysis for children through play. This is still used today for children, especially those who are preadolescent. Using toys and games, children are able to symbolically demonstrate their fears, fantasies, and defenses; although not identical, this technique, in children, is analogous to the aim of free association in adults. Psychoanalytic play therapy allows the child and analyst to understand children's conflicts, particularly defenses such as disobedience and withdrawal, that have been guarding against various unpleasant feelings and hostile wishes. In art therapy, the counselor may have a child draw a portrait and then tell a story about the portrait. The counselor watches for recurring themes—regardless of whether it is with art or toys.
Psychoanalysis can be adapted to different cultures, as long as the therapist or counselor understands the client's culture. For example, Tori and Blimes found that defense mechanisms were valid in a normative sample of 2,624 Thais. The use of certain defense mechanisms was related to cultural values. For example, Thais value calmness and collectiveness (because of Buddhist beliefs), so they were low on regressive emotionality. Psychoanalysis also applies because Freud used techniques that allowed him to get the subjective perceptions of his patients. He takes an objective approach by not facing his clients during his talk therapy sessions. He met with his patients wherever they were, such as when he used free association—where clients would say whatever came to mind without self-censorship. His treatments had little to no structure for most cultures, especially Asian cultures. Therefore, it is more likely that Freudian constructs will be used in structured therapy. In addition, Corey postulates that it will be necessary for a therapist to help clients develop a cultural identity as well as an ego identity.
The cost to the patient of psychoanalytic treatment ranges widely from place to place and between practitioners. Low-fee analysis is often available in a psychoanalytic training clinic and graduate schools. Otherwise, the fee set by each analyst varies with the analyst's training and experience. Since, in most locations in the United States, unlike in Ontario and Germany, classical analysis (which usually requires sessions three to five times per week) is not covered by health insurance, many analysts may negotiate their fees with patients whom they feel they can help, but who have financial difficulties. The modifications of analysis, which include psychodynamic therapy, brief therapies, and certain types of group therapy, are carried out on a less frequent basis – usually once, twice, or three times a week – and usually the patient sits facing the therapist. As a result of the defense mechanisms and the lack of access to the unfathomable elements of the unconscious, psychoanalysis can be an expansive process that involves 2 to 5 sessions per week for several years. This type of therapy relies on the belief that reducing the symptoms will not actually help with the root causes or irrational drives. The analyst typically is a 'blank screen', disclosing very little about themselves in order that the client can use the space in the relationship to work on their unconscious without interference from outside.
The psychoanalyst uses various methods to help the patient to become more self-aware and to develop insights into their behavior and into the meanings of symptoms. First and foremost, the psychoanalyst attempts to develop a confidential atmosphere in which the patient can feel safe reporting his feelings, thoughts and fantasies. Analysands (as people in analysis are called) are asked to report whatever comes to mind without fear of reprisal. Freud called this the "fundamental rule". Analysands are asked to talk about their lives, including their early life, current life and hopes and aspirations for the future. They are encouraged to report their fantasies, "flash thoughts" and dreams. In fact, Freud believed that dreams were, "the royal road to the unconscious"; he devoted an entire volume to the interpretation of dreams. Also, psychoanalysts encourage their patients to recline on a couch. Typically, the psychoanalyst sits, out of sight, behind the patient.
The psychoanalyst's task, in collaboration with the analysand, is to help deepen the analysand's understanding of those factors, outside of his awareness, that drive his behaviors. In the safe environment of the psychoanalytic setting, the analysand becomes attached to the analyst and pretty soon he begins to experience the same conflicts with his analyst that he experiences with key figures in his life such as his parents, his boss, his significant other, etc. It is the psychoanalyst's role to point out these conflicts and to interpret them. The transferring of these internal conflicts onto the analyst is called "transference".
Many studies have also been done on briefer "dynamic" treatments; these are more expedient to measure, and shed light on the therapeutic process to some extent. Brief Relational Therapy (BRT), Brief Psychodynamic Therapy (BPT), and Time-Limited Dynamic Therapy (TLDP) limit treatment to 20–30 sessions. On average, classical analysis may last 5.7 years, but for phobias and depressions uncomplicated by ego deficits or object relations deficits, analysis may run for a shorter period of time. Longer analyses are indicated for those with more serious disturbances in object relations, more symptoms, and more ingrained character pathology.
Psychoanalysis continues to be practiced by psychiatrists, social workers, and other mental health professionals; however, its practice has declined.
In 2015, psychoanalyst Bradley Peterson, who is also a child psychiatrist and director of the Institute for the Developing Mind at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, said: "I think most people would agree that psychoanalysis as a form of treatment is on its last legs." However psychoanalytic approaches continue to be listed by the UK NHS as possibly helpful for depression.
Psychoanalytic training in the United States involves a personal psychoanalysis for the trainee, approximately 600 hours of class instruction, with a standard curriculum, over a four or five-year period.
Typically, this psychoanalysis must be conducted by a Supervising and Training Analyst. Most institutes (but not all) within the American Psychoanalytic Association, require that Supervising and Training Analysts become certified by the American Board of Psychoanalysts. Certification entails a blind review in which the psychoanalyst's work is vetted by psychoanalysts outside of their local community. After earning certification, these psychoanalysts undergo another hurdle in which they are specially vetted by senior members of their own institute. Supervising and Training analysts are held to the highest clinical and ethical standards. Moreover, they are required to have extensive experience conducting psychoanalyses.
Similarly, class instruction for psychoanalytic candidates is rigorous. Typically classes meet several hours a week, or for a full day or two every other weekend during the academic year; this varies with the institute.
Candidates generally have an hour of supervision each week, with a Supervising and Training Analyst, on each psychoanalytic case. The minimum number of cases varies between institutes, often two to four cases. Male and female cases are required. Supervision must go on for at least a few years on one or more cases. Supervision is done in the supervisor's office, where the trainee presents material from the psychoanalytic work that week. In supervision, the patient's unconscious conflicts are explored, also, transference-countertransference constellations are examined. Also, clinical technique is taught.
Many psychoanalytic training centers in the United States have been accredited by special committees of the APsaA or the IPA. Because of theoretical differences, there are independent institutes, usually founded by psychologists, who until 1987 were not permitted access to psychoanalytic training institutes of the APsaA. Currently there are between 75 and 100 independent institutes in the United States. As well, other institutes are affiliated to other organizations such as the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, and the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. At most psychoanalytic institutes in the United States, qualifications for entry include a terminal degree in a mental health field, such as Ph.D., Psy.D., M.S.W., or M.D. A few institutes restrict applicants to those already holding an M.D. or Ph.D., and most institutes in Southern California confer a Ph.D. or Psy.D. in psychoanalysis upon graduation, which involves completion of the necessary requirements for the state boards that confer that doctoral degree. The first training institute in America to educate non-medical psychoanalysts was The National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (1978) in New York City. It was founded by the analyst Theodor Reik. The Contemporary Freudian (originally the New York Freudian Society) an offshoot of the National Psychological Association has a branch in Washington, DC. It is a component society/institute or the IPA.
Some psychoanalytic training has been set up as a post-doctoral fellowship in university settings, such as at Duke University, Yale University, New York University, Adelphi University and Columbia University. Other psychoanalytic institutes may not be directly associated with universities, but the faculty at those institutes usually hold contemporaneous faculty positions with psychology Ph.D. programs and/or with medical school psychiatry residency programs.
The IPA is the world's primary accrediting and regulatory body for psychoanalysis. Their mission is to assure the continued vigor and development of psychoanalysis for the benefit of psychoanalytic patients. It works in partnership with its 70 constituent organizations in 33 countries to support 11,500 members. In the US, there are 77 psychoanalytical organizations, institutes associations in the United States, which are spread across the states of America. APSaA has 38 affiliated societies which have 10 or more active members who practice in a given geographical area. The aims of APSaA and other psychoanalytical organizations are: provide ongoing educational opportunities for its members, stimulate the development and research of psychoanalysis, provide training and organize conferences. There are eight affiliated study groups in the United States. A study group is the first level of integration of a psychoanalytical body within the IPA, followed by a provisional society and finally a member society.
The Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of the American Psychological Association (APA) was established in the early 1980s by several psychologists. Until the establishment of the Division of Psychoanalysis, psychologists who had trained in independent institutes had no national organization. The Division of Psychoanalysis now has approximately 4,000 members and approximately 30 local chapters in the United States. The Division of Psychoanalysis holds two annual meetings or conferences and offers continuing education in theory, research and clinical technique, as do their affiliated local chapters. The European Psychoanalytical Federation (EPF) is the organization which consolidates all European psychoanalytic societies. This organization is affiliated with the IPA. In 2002 there were approximately 3,900 individual members in 22 countries, speaking 18 different languages. There are also 25 psychoanalytic societies.
The American Association of Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work (AAPCSW) was established by Crayton Rowe in 1980 as a division of the Federation of Clinical Societies of Social Work and became an independent entity in 1990. Until 2007 it was known as the National Membership Committee on Psychoanalysis. The organization was founded because although social workers represented the larger number of people who were training to be psychoanalysts, they were underrepresented as supervisors and teachers at the institutes they attended. AAPCSW now has over 1000 members and has over 20 chapters. It holds a bi-annual national conference and numerous annual local conferences.
Experiences of psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists and research into infant and child development have led to new insights. Theories have been further developed and the results of empirical research are now more integrated in the psychoanalytic theory.
The London Psychoanalytical Society was founded by Ernest Jones on 30 October 1913. After World War I with the expansion of psychoanalysis in the United Kingdom, the Society was reconstituted and named the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1919. Soon after, the Institute of Psychoanalysis was established to administer the Society's activities. These include: the training of psychoanalysts, the development of the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, the provision of treatment through The London Clinic of Psychoanalysis, the publication of books in The New Library of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Ideas. The Institute of Psychoanalysis also publishes "The International Journal of Psychoanalysis", maintains a library, furthers research, and holds public lectures. The society has a Code of Ethics and an Ethical Committee. The society, the institute and the clinic are all located at "Byron House" in West London.
The Society is a constituent society of the International Psychoanalytical Association, IPA, a body with members on all five continents which safeguards professional and ethical practice. The Society is a member of the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC); the BPC publishes a register of British psychoanalysts and psychoanalytical psychotherapists. All members of the British Psychoanalytic Council are required to undertake continuing professional development, CPD. Members of the Society teach and hold posts on other approved psychoanalytic courses, e.g.: British Psychotherapy Foundation and in academic departments, e.g.University College London.
Members of the Society have included: Michael Balint, Wilfred Bion, John Bowlby, Ronald Fairbairn, Anna Freud, Harry Guntrip, Melanie Klein, Donald Meltzer, Joseph J. Sandler, Hanna Segal, J. D. Sutherland and Donald Winnicott.
The Institute of Psychoanalysis is the foremost publisher of psychoanalytic literature. The 24-volume "Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud" was conceived, translated, and produced under the direction of the British Psychoanalytical Society. The Society, in conjunction with Random House, will soon publish a new, revised and expanded Standard Edition. With the New Library of Psychoanalysis the Institute continues to publish the books of leading theorists and practitioners. "The International Journal of Psychoanalysis" is published by the Institute of Psychoanalysis. Now in its 84th year, it has one of the largest circulations of any psychoanalytic journal.
There are different forms of psychoanalysis and psychotherapies in which psychoanalytic thinking is practiced. Besides classical psychoanalysis there is for example psychoanalytic psychotherapy, a therapeutic approach which widens "the accessibility of psychoanalytic theory and clinical practices that had evolved over 100 plus years to a larger number of individuals." Other examples of well known therapies which also use insights of psychoanalysis are mentalization-based treatment (MBT), and transference focused psychotherapy (TFP). There is also a continuing influence of psychoanalytic thinking in mental health care.
Over a hundred years of case reports and studies in the journal "Modern Psychoanalysis", the "Psychoanalytic Quarterly", the "International Journal of Psychoanalysis" and the "Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association" have analyzed the efficacy of analysis in cases of neurosis and character or problems. Psychoanalysis modified by object relations techniques has been shown to be effective in many cases of ingrained problems of intimacy and relationship (cf. the many books of Otto Kernberg). Psychoanalytic treatment, in other situations, may run from about a year to many years, depending on the severity and complexity of the pathology.
Psychoanalytic theory has, from its inception, been the subject of criticism and controversy. Freud remarked on this early in his career, when other physicians in Vienna ostracized him for his findings that hysterical conversion symptoms were not limited to women. Challenges to analytic theory began with Otto Rank and Alfred Adler (turn of the 20th century), continued with behaviorists (e.g. Wolpe) into the 1940s and '50s, and have persisted (e.g. Miller). Criticisms come from those who object to the notion that there are mechanisms, thoughts or feelings in the mind that could be unconscious. Criticisms also have been leveled against the idea of "infantile sexuality" (the recognition that children between ages two and six imagine things about procreation). Criticisms of theory have led to variations in analytic theories, such as the work of Ronald Fairbairn, Michael Balint, and John Bowlby. In the past 30 years or so, the criticisms have centered on the issue of empirical verification.
Psychoanalysis has been used as a research tool into childhood development (cf. the journal "The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child"), and has developed into a flexible, effective treatment for certain mental disturbances. In the 1960s, Freud's early (1905) thoughts on the childhood development of female sexuality were challenged; this challenge led to major research in the 1970s and 80s, and then to a reformulation of female sexual development that corrected some of Freud's concepts. Also see the various works of Eleanor Galenson, Nancy Chodorow, Karen Horney, Françoise Dolto, Melanie Klein, Selma Fraiberg, and others. Most recently, psychoanalytic researchers who have integrated attachment theory into their work, including Alicia Lieberman, Susan Coates, and Daniel Schechter have explored the role of parental traumatization in the development of young children's mental representations of self and others.
The psychoanalytic profession has been resistant to researching efficacy. Evaluations of effectiveness based on the interpretation of the therapist alone cannot be proven.
Meta-analyses in 2012 and 2013 found support or evidence for the efficacy of psychoanalytic therapy, thus further research is needed. Other meta-analyses published in the recent years showed psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapy to be effective, with outcomes comparable or greater than other kinds of psychotherapy or antidepressant drugs, but these arguments have also been subjected to various criticisms. In particular, the inclusion of pre/post studies rather than randomized controlled trials, and the absence of adequate comparisons with control treatments is a serious limitation in interpreting the results.
In 2011, the American Psychological Association made 103 comparisons between psychodynamic treatment and a non-dynamic competitor and found that 6 were superior, 5 were inferior, 28 had no difference and 63 were adequate. The study found that this could be used as a basis "to make psychodynamic psychotherapy an 'empirically validated' treatment."
Meta-analyses of Short Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (STPP) have found effect sizes (Cohen's d) ranging from .34 to .71 compared to no treatment and was found to be slightly better than other therapies in follow up. Other reviews have found an effect size of .78 to .91 for somatic disorders compared to no treatment and .69 for treating depression. A 2012 "Harvard Review of Psychiatry" meta-analysis of Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) found effect sizes ranging from .84 for interpersonal problems to 1.51 for depression. Overall ISTDP had an effect size of 1.18 compared to no treatment.
A meta-analysis of Long Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy in 2012 found an overall effect size of .33, which is modest. This study concluded the recovery rate following LTPP was equal to control treatments, including treatment as usual, and found the evidence for the effectiveness of LTPP to be limited and at best conflicting. Others have found effect sizes of .44–.68.
According to a 2004 French review conducted by INSERM, psychoanalysis was presumed or proven effective at treating panic disorder, post-traumatic stress, and personality disorders.
A 2001 systematic review of the medical literature by the Cochrane Collaboration concluded that no data exist demonstrating that psychodynamic psychotherapy is effective in treating schizophrenia and severe mental illness, and cautioned that medication should always be used alongside any type of talk therapy in schizophrenia cases. A French review from 2004 found the same. The Schizophrenia Patient Outcomes Research Team advises against the use of psychodynamic therapy in cases of schizophrenia, arguing that more trials are necessary to verify its effectiveness.
Both Freud and psychoanalysis have been criticized in extreme terms. Exchanges between critics and defenders of psychoanalysis have often been so heated that they have come to be characterized as the "Freud Wars".
Early critics of psychoanalysis believed that its theories were based too little on quantitative and experimental research, and too much on the clinical case study method. Some have accused Freud of fabrication, most famously in the case of Anna O. Philosopher Frank Cioffi cites false claims of a sound scientific verification of the theory and its elements as the strongest basis for classifying the work of Freud and his school as pseudoscience.
Others have speculated that patients suffered from now easily identifiable conditions unrelated to psychoanalysis; for instance, Anna O. is thought to have suffered from an organic impairment such as tuberculous meningitis or temporal lobe epilepsy and not hysteria (see modern interpretations).
Karl Popper argued that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience because its claims are not testable and cannot be refuted; that is, they are not falsifiable. In addition, Imre Lakatos wrote that "Freudians have been nonplussed by Popper's basic challenge concerning scientific honesty. Indeed, they have refused to specify experimental conditions under which they would give up their basic assumptions." In "Sexual Desire" (1986), philosopher Roger Scruton rejectes Popper's arguments, pointing to the theory of repression as an example of a Freudian theory that does have testable consequences. Scruton nevertheless concluded that psychoanalysis is not genuinely scientific, on the grounds that it involves an unacceptable dependence on metaphor.
Cognitive scientists, in particular, have also weighed in. Martin Seligman, a prominent academic in positive psychology wrote that: Thirty years ago, the cognitive revolution in psychology overthrew both Freud and the behaviorists, at least in academia.… [T]hinking…is not just a [result] of emotion or behavior.… [E]motion is always generated by cognition, not the other way around.Linguist Noam Chomsky has criticized psychoanalysis for lacking a scientific basis. Steven Pinker considers Freudian theory unscientific for understanding the mind. Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould considered psychoanalysis influenced by pseudoscientific theories such as recapitulation theory. Psychologists Hans Eysenck (1985) and John F. Kihlstrom (2012/2000) have also criticized the field as pseudoscience.
Adolf Grünbaum argues in "Validation in the Clinical Theory of Psychoanalysis" (1993) that psychoanalytic based theories are falsifiable, but that the causal claims of psychoanalysis are unsupported by the available clinical evidence.
Richard Feynman wrote off psychoanalysts as mere "witch doctors:"
Likewise, psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, in "Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists" (1986), agreed that psychoanalytic theories have no more scientific basis than the theories of traditional native healers, "witchdoctors" or modern "cult" alternatives such as EST. Psychologist Alice Miller charged psychoanalysis with being similar to the poisonous pedagogies, which she described in her book "For Your Own Good". She scrutinized and rejected the validity of Freud's drive theory, including the Oedipus complex, which, according to her and Jeffrey Masson, blames the child for the abusive sexual behavior of adults. Psychologist Joel Kupfersmid investigated the validity of the Oedipus complex, examining its nature and origins. He concluded that there is little evidence to support the existence of the Oedipus complex.
Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze claimed that the institution of psychoanalysis has become a center of power and that its confessional techniques resemble the Christian tradition. Jacques Lacan criticized the emphasis of some American and British psychoanalytical traditions on what he has viewed as the suggestion of imaginary "causes" for symptoms, and recommended the return to Freud. Together with Deleuze, Félix Guattari criticised the Oedipal structure. Luce Irigaray criticised psychoanalysis, employing Jacques Derrida's concept of phallogocentrism to describe the exclusion of the woman from Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytical theories. Deleuze and Guattari (1972), in "Anti-Œdipus", take the cases of Gérard Mendel, Bela Grunberger and Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, prominent members of the most respected associations (IPA), to suggest that, traditionally, psychoanalysis enthusiastically embraces a police state.
The theoretical foundations of psychoanalysis lie in the same philosophical currents that lead to interpretive phenomenology rather than in those that lead to scientific positivism, making the theory largely incompatible with positivist approaches to the study of the mind.
Although numerous studies have shown that the efficacy of therapy is primarily related to the quality of the therapist, rather than the school or technique or training, a French 2004 report from INSERM concluded that psychoanalytic therapy is less effective than other psychotherapies (including cognitive behavioral therapy) for certain diseases. This report used a meta-analysis of numerous other studies to find whether the treatment was "proven" or "presumed" to be effective on different diseases.
A survey of scientific research suggested that while personality traits corresponding to Freud's oral, anal, Oedipal, and genital phases can be observed, they do not necessarily manifest as stages in the development of children. These studies also have not confirmed that such traits in adults result from childhood experiences. However, these stages should not be viewed as crucial to modern psychoanalysis. What is crucial to modern psychoanalytic theory and practice is the power of the unconscious and the transference phenomenon.
The idea of "unconscious" is contested because human behavior can be observed while human mental activity has to be inferred. However, the unconscious is now a popular topic of study in the fields of experimental and social psychology (e.g., implicit attitude measures, fMRI, and PET scans, and other indirect tests). The idea of unconscious, and the transference phenomenon, have been widely researched and, it is claimed, validated in the fields of cognitive psychology and social psychology, though a Freudian interpretation of unconscious mental activity is not held by the majority of cognitive psychologists. Recent developments in neuroscience have resulted in one side arguing that it has provided a biological basis for unconscious emotional processing in line with psychoanalytic theory i.e., neuropsychoanalysis, while the other side argues that such findings make psychoanalytic theory obsolete and irrelevant.
Shlomo Kalo explains that the scientific materialism that flourished in the 19th century severely harmed religion and rejected whatever called spiritual. The institution of the confession priest in particular was badly damaged. The empty void that this institution left behind was swiftly occupied by the newborn psychoanalysis. In his writings, Kalo claims that psychoanalysis basic approach is erroneous. It represents the mainline wrong assumptions that happiness is unreachable and that the natural desire of a human being is to exploit his fellow men for his own pleasure and benefit.
Jacques Derrida incorporated aspects of psychoanalytic theory into his theory of deconstruction in order to question what he called the 'metaphysics of presence'. Derrida also turns some of these ideas against Freud, to reveal tensions and contradictions in his work. For example, although Freud defines religion and metaphysics as displacements of the identification with the father in the resolution of the Oedipal complex, Derrida (1987) insists that the prominence of the father in Freud's own analysis is itself indebted to the prominence given to the father in Western metaphysics and theology since Plato.
Peking (disambiguation)
Peking or Beijing is the capital city of the People's Republic of China.
Peking may also refer to:
Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often abbreviated to pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China and to some extent in Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Mandarin Chinese, which is normally written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones. Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters.
The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang, based on earlier forms of romanizations of Chinese. It was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted pinyin as an international standard in 1982, and was followed by the United Nations in 1986. Attempts to make pinyin standard in Taiwan occurred in 2002 and 2009, but "Today Taiwan has no standardized spelling system" so that in 2019 "alphabetic spellings in Taiwan are marked more by a lack of system than the presence of one." Moreover, "some cities, businesses, and organizations, notably in the south of Taiwan, did not accept [efforts to introduce pinyin], as it suggested that Taiwan is more closely tied to the PRC", so it remains one of several rival romanization systems in use.
The word ' () means 'the spoken language of the Han people', while ' () literally means 'spelled sounds'.
When a foreign writing system with one set of coding/decoding system is taken to write a language, certain compromises may have to be made. The result is that the decoding systems used in some foreign languages will enable non-native speakers to produce sounds more closely resembling the target language than will the coding/decoding system used by other foreign languages. Native speakers of English will decode pinyin spellings to fairly close approximations of Mandarin except in the case of certain speech sounds that are not ordinarily produced by most native speakers of English: "j" , "q" ", x" , "z" , "c" , "zh" , "ch" , "sh" , "h" , and "r" exhibiting the greatest discrepancies.
In this system, the correspondence between the Roman letter and the sound is sometimes idiosyncratic, though not necessarily more so than the way the Latin script is employed in other languages. For example, the aspiration distinction between "b", "d", "g" and "p", "t", "k" is similar to that of these syllable-initial consonants English (in which the two sets are however also differentiated by voicing), but not to that of French. Letters "z" and "c" also have that distinction, pronounced as and (whilst reminiscent of both of them being used for the phoneme in the German language and Latin script-using Slavic languages respectively). From "s, z, c" come the digraphs "sh, zh, ch" by analogy with English "sh, ch". Although this introduces the novel combination "zh", it is internally consistent in how the two series are related, and reminds the trained reader that many Chinese people pronounce "sh, zh, ch" as "s, z, c" (and English-speakers use "zh" to represent in foreign languages such as Russian anyway). In the "x, j, q" series, the pinyin use of "x" is similar to its use in Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, Basque, and Maltese; and the pinyin "q" is akin to its value in Albanian; both pinyin and Albanian pronunciations may sound similar to the "ch" to the untrained ear. Pinyin vowels are pronounced in a similar way to vowels in Romance languages.
The pronunciation and spelling of Chinese words are generally given in terms of initials and finals, which represent the "segmental phonemic" portion of the language, rather than letter by letter. Initials are initial consonants, while finals are all possible combinations of medials (semivowels coming before the vowel), a nucleus vowel, and coda (final vowel or consonant).
In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published "Xizi Qiji" () in Beijing. This was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, issued his "" () at Hangzhou. Neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese.
One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing dynasty scholar-official, Fang Yizhi (; 1611–1671).
The first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu (1862–1910). A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the stunning effect of the "kana" syllabaries and Western learning there. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script. While Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts.
The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and further improved by Herbert Giles in the Chinese–English Dictionary of 1892. It was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979.
In the early 1930s, Communist Party of China leaders trained in Moscow introduced a phonetic alphabet using Roman letters which had been developed in the Soviet Oriental Institute of Leningrad and was originally intended to improve literacy in the Russian Far East. This Sin Wenz or "New Writing" was much more linguistically sophisticated than earlier alphabets, but with the major exception that it did not indicate tones of Chinese.
In 1940, several thousand members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy (in characters) for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Society's new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Dr. Sun Yat-sen's son, Sun Fo; Cai Yuanpei, the country's most prestigious educator; Tao Xingzhi, a leading educational reformer; and Lu Xun. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies (including Lincoln, Franklin, Edison, Ford, and Charlie Chaplin), some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks. In 1940, the movement reached an apex when Mao's Border Region Government declared that the Sin Wenz had the same legal status as traditional characters in government and public documents. Many educators and political leaders looked forward to the day when they would be universally accepted and completely replace Chinese characters. Opposition arose, however, because the system was less well adapted to writing regional languages, and therefore would require learning Mandarin. Sin Wenz fell into relative disuse during the following years.
In 1943, the U.S. military engaged Yale University to develop a romanization of Mandarin Chinese for its pilots flying over China. The resulting system is very close to "pinyin", but does not use English letters in unfamiliar ways; for example, "pinyin" x for is written as sy in the Yale system. Medial semivowels are written with y and w (instead of "pinyin" i and u), and apical vowels (syllabic consonants) with r or z. Accent marks are used to indicate tone.
Pinyin was created by Chinese linguists, including Zhou Youguang, as part of a Chinese government project in the 1950s. Zhou, often called "the father of pinyin,"
Parable of the Pearl
The Parable of the Pearl (also called the Pearl of Great Price) is one of the parables of Jesus. It appears in and illustrates the great value of the Kingdom of Heaven.
This is the penultimate parable in Matthew 13, coming just before the Parable of the Dragnet. It immediately follows the Parable of the Hidden Treasure, which has a similar theme. It does not appear in the other synoptic gospels, but a version of this parable does appear in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas, Saying 76. The parable has been depicted by artists such as Domenico Fetti.
The parable reads as follows:
This parable is generally interpreted as illustrating the great value of the Kingdom of Heaven. Theologian E. H. Plumptre, in Anglican bishop Charles Ellicott's "Commentary", notes that:
"the caprices of luxury in the Roman empire had given a prominence to pearls, as an article of commerce, which they had never had before, and have probably never had since. They, rather than emeralds and sapphires, were the typical instance of all costliest adornments (; ). The story of Cleopatra and the fact that the opening of a new pearl market was one of the alleged motives which led the Emperor Claudius to invade Britain, are indications of the value that was then set on the “goodly pearls” of the parable."
Theologian John Nolland likewise notes that pearls at that time had a greater value than they do today, and it thus has a similar theme to its partner, the parable of the hidden treasure. Nolland comments that it shares with that parable the notions of "good fortune and demanding action in attaining the kingdom of heaven", but adds in this case the notion of "diligent seeking".
The valuable pearl is the "deal of a lifetime" for the merchant in the story. However, those who do not believe in the kingdom of heaven enough to stake their whole future on it are unworthy of the kingdom.
This interpretation of the parable is the inspiration for a number of hymns, including the anonymous Swedish hymn "Den Kostliga Pärlan" ("O That Pearl of Great Price!"), which begins:
O that Pearl of great price! have you found it?
Is the Savior supreme in your love?
O consider it well, ere you answer,
As you hope for a welcome above.
Have you given up all for this Treasure?
Have you counted past gains as but loss?
Has your trust in yourself and your merits
Come to naught before Christ and His cross?
A less common interpretation of the parable is that the merchant represents Jesus, and the pearl represents the Christian Church. This interpretation would give the parable a similar theme to that of the Parable of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Prodigal Son.
Pope Pius XII used the phrase to describe virginity.
"Pearl of Great Price" is the title of a selection of Mormon writings, one of the standard works of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and some other Latter Day Saint denominations.
A version of the parable also appears in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas (Saying 76):
This work's version of the parable of the Hidden Treasure appears later (Saying 109), rather than immediately preceding, as in Matthew. However, the mention of a treasure in Saying 76 may reflect a source for the Gospel of Thomas in which the parables were adjacent, so that the original pair of parables has been "broken apart, placed in separate contexts, and expanded in a manner characteristic of folklore." In Gnostic thought the pearl may represent Christ or the true self. In the Gnostic Acts of Peter and the Twelve, found with the Gospel of Thomas in the Nag Hammadi library, the travelling pearl merchant Lithargoel is eventually revealed to be Jesus.
There have been several depictions of the New Testament parable in art, including works by Domenico Fetti, John Everett Millais and Jan Luyken.
The parable is referenced in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel "The Scarlet Letter" on page 82:
The parable is referenced in "Star Trek" by Scotty at the end of an episode in the original series entitled "The Empath".
Pantheism
Pantheism is the belief that reality is identical with divinity, or that all-things compose an all-encompassing, immanent god. Pantheist belief does not recognize a distinct personal god, anthropomorphic or otherwise, but instead characterizes a broad range of doctrines differing in forms of relationships between reality and divinity. Pantheistic concepts date back thousands of years, and pantheistic elements have been identified in various religious traditions. The term "pantheism" was coined by mathematician Joseph Raphson in 1697 and has since been used to describe the beliefs of a variety of people and organizations.
Pantheism was popularized in Western culture as a theology and philosophy based on the work of the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza, in particular, his book "Ethics". A pantheistic stance was also taken in the 16th century by philosopher and cosmologist Giordano Bruno.
"Pantheism" derives from the Greek πᾶν "pan" (meaning "all, of everything") and θεός "theos" (meaning "god, divine"). The first known combination of these roots appears in Latin, in Joseph Raphson's 1697 book "De Spatio Reali seu Ente Infinito", where he refers to the "pantheismus" of Spinoza and others.
It was subsequently translated into English as "pantheism" in 1702.
There are numerous definitions of pantheism. Some consider it a theological and philosophical position concerning God.
Pantheism is the view that everything is part of an all-encompassing, immanent God. All forms of reality may then be considered either modes of that Being, or identical with it. Some hold that pantheism is a non-religious philosophical position. To them, pantheism is the view that the Universe (in the sense of the totality of all existence) and God are identical (implying a denial of the personality and immanence of God).
Early traces of pantheist thought can be found within the theology of the ancient Greek religion of Orphism, where "pan" (the all) is made cognate with the creator God Phanes (symbolizing the universe), and with Zeus, after the swallowing of Phanes.
Pantheistic tendencies existed in a number of early Gnostic groups, with pantheistic thought appearing throughout the Middle Ages. These included a section of Johannes Scotus Eriugena's 9th-century work De divisione naturae and the beliefs of mystics such as Amalric of Bena (11th12th centuries) and Eckhart (12th13th).
The Catholic Church has long regarded pantheistic ideas as heresy. Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk who evangelized about a transcendent and infinite God, was burned at the stake in 1600 by the Roman Inquisition. He has since become known as a celebrated pantheist and martyr of science, and an influence on many later thinkers.
In the West, pantheism was formalized as a separate theology and philosophy based on the work of the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese descent raised in the Sephardi Jewish community in Amsterdam. He developed highly controversial ideas regarding the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible and the nature of the Divine, and was effectively excluded from Jewish society at age 23, when the local synagogue issued a "herem" against him. A number of his books were published posthumously, and shortly thereafter included in the Catholic Church's "Index of Forbidden Books". The breadth and importance of Spinoza's work would not be realized for many years – as the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism, including modern conceptions of the self and the universe.
In the posthumous "Ethics", "Spinoza wrote the last indisputable Latin masterpiece, and one in which the refined conceptions of medieval philosophy are finally turned against themselves and destroyed entirely.". In particular, he opposed René Descartes' famous mind–body dualism, the theory that the body and spirit are separate. Spinoza held the monist view that the two are the same, and monism is a fundamental part of his philosophy. He was described as a "God-intoxicated man," and used the word God to describe the unity of all substance. This view influenced philosophers such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who said, "You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all."
Spinoza earned praise as one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy and one of Western philosophy's most important thinkers. Although the term "pantheism" was not coined until after his death, he is regarded as the most celebrated advocate of the concept. "Ethics" was the major source from which Western pantheism spread.
Heinrich Heine, in his "Concerning the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany" (1833–36), remarked that "I don't remember now where I read that Herder once exploded peevishly at the constant preoccupation with Spinoza, "If Goethe would only for once pick up some other Latin book than Spinoza!" But this applies not only to Goethe; quite a number of his friends, who later became more or less well-known as poets, paid homage to pantheism in their youth, and this doctrine flourished actively in German art before it attained supremacy among us as a philosophic theory."
In their "The Holy Family" (1844) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels notes, "Spinozism dominated the eighteenth century both in its later French variety, which made matter into substance, and in deism, which conferred on matter a more spiritual name... Spinoza's French school and the supporters of deism were but two sects disputing over the true meaning of his system..."
In George Henry Lewes's words (1846), "Pantheism is as old as philosophy. It was taught in the old Greek schools — by Plato, by St. Augustine, and by the Jews. Indeed, one may say that Pantheism, under one of its various shapes, is the necessary consequence of all metaphysical inquiry, when pushed to its logical limits; and from this reason do we find it in every age and nation. The dreamy contemplative Indian, the quick versatile Greek, the practical Roman, the quibbling Scholastic, the ardent Italian, the lively Frenchman, and the bold Englishman, have all pronounced it as the final truth of philosophy. Wherein consists Spinoza's originality? — what is his merit? — are natural questions, when we see him only lead to the same result as others had before proclaimed. His merit and originality consist in the systematic exposition and development of that doctrine — in his hands, for the first time, it assumes the aspect of a science. The Greek and Indian Pantheism is a vague fanciful doctrine, carrying with it no scientific conviction; it may be true — it looks true — but the proof is wanting. But with Spinoza there is no choice: if you understand his terms, admit the possibility of his science, and seize his meaning; you can no more doubt his conclusions than you can doubt Euclid; no mere opinion is possible, conviction only is possible."
S. M. Melamed (1933) noted, "It may be observed, however, that Spinoza was not the first prominent monist and pantheist in modern Europe. A generation before him Bruno conveyed a similar message to humanity. Yet Bruno is merely a beautiful episode in the history of the human mind, while Spinoza is one of its most potent forces. Bruno was a rhapsodist and a poet, who was overwhelmed with artistic emotions; Spinoza, however, was spiritus purus and in his method the prototype of the philosopher."
The first known use of the term "pantheism" was in Latin ("pantheismus" ) by the English mathematician Joseph Raphson in his work "De Spatio Reali seu Ente Infinito", published in 1697. Raphson begins with a distinction between atheistic "panhylists" (from the Greek roots "pan", "all", and "hyle", "matter"), who believe everything is matter, and Spinozan "pantheists" who believe in "a certain universal substance, material as well as intelligence, that fashions all things that exist out of its own essence." Raphson thought that the universe was immeasurable in respect to a human's capacity of understanding, and believed that humans would never be able to comprehend it. He referred to the pantheism of the Ancient Egyptians, Persians, Syrians, Assyrians, Greek, Indians, and Jewish Kabbalists, specifically referring to Spinoza.
The term was first used in English by a translation of Raphson's work in 1702. It was later used and popularized by Irish writer John Toland in his work of 1705 "Socinianism Truly Stated, by a pantheist". Toland was influenced by both Spinoza and Bruno, and had read Joseph Raphson's "De Spatio Reali", referring to it as "the ingenious Mr. Ralphson's (sic) Book of Real Space". Like Raphson, he used the terms "pantheist" and "Spinozist" interchangeably. In 1720 he wrote the "Pantheisticon: or The Form of Celebrating the Socratic-Society" in Latin, envisioning a pantheist society that believed, "All things in the world are one, and one is all in all things ... what is all in all things is God, eternal and immense, neither born nor ever to perish." He clarified his idea of pantheism in a letter to Gottfried Leibniz in 1710 when he referred to "the pantheistic opinion of those who believe in no other eternal being but the universe".
In the mid-eighteenth century, the English theologian Daniel Waterland defined pantheism this way: "It supposes God and nature, or God and the whole universe, to be one and the same substance—one universal being; insomuch that men's souls are only modifications of the divine substance." In the early nineteenth century, the German theologian Julius Wegscheider defined pantheism as the belief that God and the world established by God are one and the same.
Between 1785–89, a major controversy about Spinoza's philosophy arose between the German philosophers Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (a critic) and Moses Mendelssohn (a defender). Known in German as the "Pantheismusstreit" (pantheism controversy), it helped spread pantheism to many German thinkers.
A 1780 conversation with the German dramatist Gotthold Ephraim Lessing led Jacobi to a protracted study of Spinoza's works. Lessing stated that he knew no other philosophy than Spinozism.
Jacobi's "Über die Lehre des Spinozas" (1st ed. 1785, 2nd ed. 1789) expressed his strenuous objection to a dogmatic system in philosophy, and drew upon him the enmity of the Berlin group, led by Mendelssohn. Jacobi claimed that Spinoza's doctrine was pure materialism, because all Nature and God are said to be nothing but extended substance. This, for Jacobi, was the result of Enlightenment rationalism and it would finally end in absolute atheism. Mendelssohn disagreed with Jacobi, saying that pantheism shares more characteristics of theism than of atheism. The entire issue became a major intellectual and religious concern for European civilization at the time.
Willi Goetschel argues that Jacobi's publication significantly shaped Spinoza's wide reception for centuries following its publication, obscuring the nuance of Spinoza's philosophic work.
During the beginning of the 19th century, pantheism was the viewpoint of many leading writers and philosophers, attracting figures such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge in Britain; Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Schelling and Hegel in Germany; Knut Hamsun in Norway; and Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in the United States. Seen as a growing threat by the Vatican, in 1864 it was formally condemned by Pope Pius IX in the "Syllabus of Errors".
A letter written by William Herndon, Abraham Lincoln's law partner in 1886, was sold at auction for US$30,000 in 2011. In it, Herndon writes of the U.S. President's evolving religious views, which included pantheism.
The subject is understandably controversial, but the content of the letter is consistent with Lincoln's fairly lukewarm approach to organized religion.
Some 19th-century theologians thought that various pre-Christian religions and philosophies were pantheistic. They thought Pantheism was similar to the ancient Hindu philosophy of Advaita (non-dualism) to the extent that the 19th-century German Sanskritist Theodore Goldstücker remarked that Spinoza's thought was "... a western system of philosophy which occupies a foremost rank amongst the philosophies of all nations and ages, and which is so exact a representation of the ideas of the Vedanta, that we might have suspected its founder to have borrowed the fundamental principles of his system from the Hindus."
19th-century European theologians also considered Ancient Egyptian religion to contain pantheistic elements and pointed to Egyptian philosophy as a source of Greek Pantheism. The latter included some of the Presocratics, such as Heraclitus and Anaximander. The Stoics were pantheists, beginning with Zeno of Citium and culminating in the emperor-philosopher Marcus Aurelius. During the pre-Christian Roman Empire, Stoicism was one of the three dominant schools of philosophy, along with Epicureanism and Neoplatonism. The early Taoism of Laozi and Zhuangzi is also sometimes considered pantheistic, although it could be more similar to Panentheism.
Cheondoism, which arose in the Joseon Dynasty of Korea, and Won Buddhism are also considered pantheistic.
In a letter written to Eduard Büsching (25 October 1929), after Büsching sent Albert Einstein a copy of his book "Es gibt keinen Gott" ("There is no God"), Einstein wrote, "We followers of Spinoza see our God in the wonderful order and lawfulness of all that exists and in its soul ["Beseeltheit"] as it reveals itself in man and animal." According to Einstein, the book only dealt with the concept of a personal god and not the impersonal God of pantheism. In a letter written in 1954 to philosopher Eric Gutkind, Einstein wrote "the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses." In another letter written in 1954 he wrote "I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly." In "Ideas And Opinions", published a year before his death, Einstein stated his precise conception of the word God:
Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect. Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality and intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order. [...] This firm belief, a belief bound up with a deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God. In common parlance this may be described as "pantheistic" (Spinoza).
In the late 20th century, some declared that pantheism was an underlying theology of Neopaganism, and pantheists began forming organizations devoted specifically to pantheism and treating it as a separate religion.
Dorion Sagan, son of famous scientist and science communicator Carl Sagan, published the 2007 book "Dazzle Gradually: Reflections on the Nature of Nature", co-written with his mother Lynn Margulis. In the chapter "Truth of My Father", Sagan writes that his "father believed in the God of Spinoza and Einstein, God not behind nature, but as nature, equivalent to it."
In 2009 Pantheism was mentioned in a Papal encyclical and in a statement on New Year's Day, 2010, criticizing pantheism for denying the superiority of humans over nature and seeing the source of man salvation in nature.
In a 2009 review of the film "Avatar", Ross Douthat described pantheism as "Hollywood's religion of choice for a generation now".
In 2015 The Paradise Project, an organization "dedicated to celebrating and spreading awareness about pantheism," commissioned Los Angeles muralist Levi Ponce to paint the 75-foot mural "Luminaries of Pantheism" in Venice, California near the organization's offices. The mural depicts Albert Einstein, Alan Watts, Baruch Spinoza, Terence McKenna, Carl Jung, Carl Sagan, Emily Dickinson, Nikola Tesla, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ralph Waldo Emerson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Henry David Thoreau, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Rumi, Adi Shankara, and Laozi.
There are multiple varieties of pantheism and various systems of classifying them relying upon one or more spectra or in discrete categories.
The philosopher Charles Hartshorne used the term Classical Pantheism to describe the deterministic philosophies of Baruch Spinoza, the Stoics, and other like-minded figures. Pantheism (All-is-God) is often associated with monism (All-is-One) and some have suggested that it logically implies determinism (All-is-Now). Albert Einstein explained theological determinism by stating, "the past, present, and future are an 'illusion'". This form of pantheism has been referred to as "extreme monism", in which in the words of one commentator "God decides or determines everything, including our supposed decisions." Other examples of determinism-inclined pantheisms include those of Ralph Waldo Emerson, | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23582 |
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis (from Greek: + ) is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques related to the study of the unconscious mind, which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, who retained the term "psychoanalysis" for his own school of thought, and stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions, mostly by students of Freud, such as Alfred Adler and his collaborator, Carl Gustav Jung, as well as by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.
Psychoanalysis has been known to be a controversial discipline, as its validity as a science is often contested. Nonetheless, it remains a strong influence within psychiatry, more so in some quarters than others. Psychoanalytic concepts are also widely used outside the therapeutic arena, in areas such as psychoanalytic literary criticism, as well as in the analysis of film, fairy tales and other cultural phenomena.
The basic tenets of psychoanalysis include:
During psychoanalytic sessions, typically lasting 50 minutes, ideally 4–5 times a week, the patient (or ) may lie on a couch, with the analyst often sitting just behind and out of sight. The patient expresses his or her thoughts, including free associations, fantasies, and dreams, from which the analyst infers the unconscious conflicts causing the patient's symptoms and character problems. Through the analysis of these conflicts, which includes interpreting the transference and countertransference (the analyst's feelings for the patient), the analyst confronts the patient's pathological defenses to help the patient gain insight.
Sigmund Freud first used the term 'psychoanalysis' () in 1896, ultimately retaining the term for his own school of thought. In November 1899, he wrote the "Interpretation of Dreams" (), which Freud thought of as his "most significant work."
Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions, mostly by students of Freud such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung, and by neo-Freudians such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Harry Stack Sullivan.
The idea of psychoanalysis () first began to receive serious attention under Sigmund Freud, who formulated his own theory of psychoanalysis in Vienna in the 1890s. Freud was a neurologist trying to find an effective treatment for patients with neurotic or hysterical symptoms. Freud realised that there were mental processes that were not conscious, whilst he was employed as a neurological consultant at the Children's Hospital, where he noticed that many aphasic children had no apparent organic cause for their symptoms. He then wrote a monograph about this subject. In 1885, Freud obtained a grant to study with Jean-Martin Charcot, a famed neurologist, at the Salpêtrière in Paris, where Freud followed the clinical presentations of Charcot, particularly in the areas of hysteria, paralyses and the anaesthesias. Charcot had introduced hypnotism as an experimental research tool and developed the photographic representation of clinical symptoms.
Freud's first theory to explain hysterical symptoms was presented in "Studies on Hysteria" (1895; ), co-authored with his mentor the distinguished physician Josef Breuer, which was generally seen as the birth of psychoanalysis. The work was based on Breuer's treatment of Bertha Pappenheim, referred to in case studies by the pseudonym "Anna O.", treatment which Pappenheim herself had dubbed the "talking cure". Breuer wrote that many factors could result in such symptoms, including various types of emotional trauma, and he also credited work by others such as Pierre Janet; while Freud contended that at the root of hysterical symptoms were repressed memories of distressing occurrences, almost always having direct or indirect sexual associations.
Around the same time, Freud attempted to develop a neuro-physiological theory of unconscious mental mechanisms, which he soon gave up. It remained unpublished in his lifetime. The term 'psychoanalysis' () was first introduced by Freud in his essay titled "Heredity and etiology of neuroses" (""), written and published in French in 1896.
In 1896, Freud also published his "seduction theory", claiming to have uncovered repressed memories of incidents of sexual abuse for all his current patients, from which he proposed that the preconditions for hysterical symptoms are sexual excitations in infancy. However, by 1898 he had privately acknowledged to his friend and colleague Wilhelm Fliess that he no longer believed in his theory, though he did not state this publicly until 1906. Though in 1896 he had reported that his patients "had no feeling of remembering the [infantile sexual] scenes", and assured him "emphatically of their unbelief," in later accounts he claimed that they had told him that they had been sexually abused in infancy. This became the received historical account until challenged by several Freud scholars in the latter part of the 20th century who argued that he had imposed his preconceived notions on his patients. However, building on his claims that the patients reported infantile sexual abuse experiences, Freud subsequently contended that his clinical findings in the mid-1890s provided evidence of the occurrence of unconscious fantasies, supposedly to cover up memories of infantile masturbation. Only much later did he claim the same findings as evidence for Oedipal desires.
By 1899, Freud had theorised that dreams had symbolic significance, and generally were specific to the dreamer. Freud formulated his second psychological theory— which hypotheses that the unconscious has or is a "primary process" consisting of symbolic and condensed thoughts, and a "secondary process" of logical, conscious thoughts. This theory was published in his 1899 book, "The Interpretation of Dreams". Chapter VII is a re-working of the earlier "Project" and Freud outlined his "topographic theory". In this theory, which was mostly later supplanted by the Structural Theory, unacceptable sexual wishes were repressed into the "System Unconscious," unconscious due to society's condemnation of premarital sexual activity, and this repression created anxiety. This "topographic theory" is still popular in much of Europe, although it has fallen out of favour in much of North America.
In 1905, Freud published "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" in which he laid out his discovery of the "psychosexual phases":
His early formulation included the idea that because of societal restrictions, sexual wishes were repressed into an unconscious state, and that the energy of these unconscious wishes could be turned into anxiety or physical symptoms. Therefore, the early treatment techniques, including hypnotism and abreaction, were designed to make the unconscious conscious in order to relieve the pressure and the apparently resulting symptoms. This method would later on be left aside by Freud, giving free association a bigger role.
In "On Narcissism" (1915), Freud turned his attention to the titular subject of narcissism. Still using an energic system, Freud characterized the difference between energy directed at the self versus energy directed at others, called "cathexis". By 1917, in "Mourning and Melancholia," he suggested that certain depressions were caused by turning guilt-ridden anger on the self. In 1919, through "A Child is Being Beaten," he began to address the problems of self-destructive behavior (moral masochism) and frank sexual masochism. Based on his experience with depressed and self-destructive patients, and pondering the carnage of World War I, Freud became dissatisfied with considering only oral and sexual motivations for behavior. By 1920, Freud addressed the power of identification (with the leader and with other members) in groups as a motivation for behavior (in "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego"). In that same year, Freud suggested his '"dual drive' theory" of sexuality and aggression in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," to try to begin to explain human destructiveness. Also, it was the first appearance of his "structural theory" consisting of three new concepts id, ego, and superego.
Three years later, in 1923, he summarised the ideas of id, ego, and superego in "The Ego and the Id." In the book, he revised the whole theory of mental functioning, now considering that repression was only one of many defense mechanisms, and that it occurred to reduce anxiety. Hence, Freud characterised repression as both a cause and a result of anxiety. In 1926, in "Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety," Freud characterised how intrapsychic conflict among drive and superego (wishes and guilt) caused anxiety, and how that anxiety could lead to an inhibition of mental functions, such as intellect and speech. "Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety" was written in response to Otto Rank, who, in 1924, published "Das Trauma der Geburt" ("The Trauma of Birth"), analysing how art, myth, religion, philosophy and therapy were illuminated by separation anxiety in the "phase before the development of the Oedipus complex." Freud's theories, however, characterized no such phase. According to Freud, the Oedipus complex, was at the centre of neurosis, and was the foundational source of all art, myth, religion, philosophy, therapy—indeed of all human culture and civilization. It was the first time that anyone in the inner circle had characterised something other than the Oedipus complex as contributing to intrapsychic development, a notion that was rejected by Freud and his followers at the time.
By 1936 the "Principle of Multiple Function" was clarified by Robert Waelder. He widened the formulation that psychological symptoms were caused by and relieved conflict simultaneously. Moreover, symptoms (such as phobias and compulsions) each represented elements of some drive wish (sexual and/or aggressive), superego, anxiety, reality, and defenses. Also in 1936, Anna Freud, Sigmund's daughter, published her seminal book, "The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense", outlining numerous ways the mind could shut upsetting things out of consciousness.
When Hitler's power grew, the Freud family and many of their colleagues fled to London. Within a year, Sigmund Freud died. In the United States, also following the death of Freud, a new group of psychoanalysts began to explore the function of the ego. Led by Heinz Hartmann, the group built upon understandings of the "synthetic" function of the ego as a mediator in psychic functioning, distinguishing such from "autonomous" ego functions (e.g. memory and intellect, which could be secondarily affected by conflict). These "Ego Psychologists" of the 1950s paved a way to focus analytic work by attending to the defenses (mediated by the ego) before exploring the deeper roots to the unconscious conflicts.
In addition, there was burgeoning interest in child psychoanalysis. Although criticized since its inception, psychoanalysis has been used as a research tool into childhood development, and is still used to treat certain mental disturbances. In the 1960s, Freud's early thoughts on the childhood development of female sexuality were challenged; this challenge led to the development of a variety of understandings of female sexual development, many of which modified the timing and normality of several of Freud's theories (which had been gleaned from the treatment of women with mental disturbances). Several researchers followed Karen Horney's studies of societal pressures that influence the development of women.
In the first decade of the 21st century, there were approximately 35 training institutes for psychoanalysis in the United States accredited by the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), which is a component organization of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), and there are over 3000 graduated psychoanalysts practicing in the United States. The IPA accredits psychoanalytic training centers through such "component organisations" throughout the rest of the world, including countries such as Serbia, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and many others, as well as about six institutes directly in the United States.
The predominant psychoanalytic theories can be organised into several theoretical schools. Although these perspectives differ, most of them emphasize the influence of unconscious elements on the conscious. There has also been considerable work done on consolidating elements of conflicting theories.
As in the field of medicine, there are some persistent conflicts regarding specific causes of certain syndromes, and disputes regarding the ideal treatment techniques. In the 21st century, psychoanalytic ideas are embedded in Western culture, especially in fields such as childcare, education, literary criticism, cultural studies, mental health, and particularly psychotherapy. Though there is a mainstream of evolved analytic ideas, there are groups who follow the precepts of one or more of the later theoreticians. Psychoanalytic ideas also play roles in some types of literary analysis such as Archetypal literary criticism.
"Topographic theory" was named and first described by Sigmund Freud in "The Interpretation of Dreams" (1899). The theory hypothesizes that the mental apparatus can be divided into the systems Conscious, Preconscious, and Unconscious. These systems are not anatomical structures of the brain but, rather, mental processes. Although Freud retained this theory throughout his life he largely replaced it with the "structural theory". The Topographic theory remains as one of the meta-psychological points of view for describing how the mind functions in classical psychoanalytic theory.
Structural theory divides the psyche into the id, the ego, and the super-ego. The id is present at birth as the repository of basic instincts, which Freud called ""Triebe"" ("drives"): unorganized and unconscious, it operates merely on the 'pleasure principle', without realism or foresight. The ego develops slowly and gradually, being concerned with mediating between the urging of the id and the realities of the external world; it thus operates on the 'reality principle'. The super-ego is held to be the part of the ego in which self-observation, self-criticism and other reflective and judgmental faculties develop. The ego and the super-ego are both partly conscious and partly unconscious.
During the twentieth century, many different clinical and theoretical models of psychoanalysis emerged.
Ego psychology was initially suggested by Freud in "Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety" (1926), while major steps forward would be made through Anna Freud's work on defense mechanisms, first published in her book "The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence" (1936).
The theory was refined by Hartmann, Loewenstein, and Kris in a series of papers and books from 1939 through the late 1960s. Leo Bellak was a later contributor. This series of constructs, paralleling some of the later developments of cognitive theory, includes the notions of autonomous ego functions: mental functions not dependent, at least in origin, on intrapsychic conflict. Such functions include: sensory perception, motor control, symbolic thought, logical thought, speech, abstraction, integration (synthesis), orientation, concentration, judgment about danger, reality testing, adaptive ability, executive decision-making, hygiene, and self-preservation. Freud noted that inhibition is one method that the mind may utilize to interfere with any of these functions in order to avoid painful emotions. Hartmann (1950s) pointed out that there may be delays or deficits in such functions.
Frosch (1964) described differences in those people who demonstrated damage to their relationship to reality, but who seemed able to test it.
According to ego psychology, ego strengths, later described by Otto F. Kernberg (1975), include the capacities to control oral, sexual, and destructive impulses; to tolerate painful affects without falling apart; and to prevent the eruption into consciousness of bizarre symbolic fantasy. Synthetic functions, in contrast to autonomous functions, arise from the development of the ego and serve the purpose of managing conflict processes. Defenses are synthetic functions that protect the conscious mind from awareness of forbidden impulses and thoughts. One purpose of ego psychology has been to emphasize that some mental functions can be considered to be basic, rather than derivatives of wishes, affects, or defenses. However, autonomous ego functions can be secondarily affected because of unconscious conflict. For example, a patient may have an hysterical amnesia (memory being an autonomous function) because of intrapsychic conflict (wishing not to remember because it is too painful).
Taken together, the above theories present a group of metapsychological assumptions. Therefore, the inclusive group of the different classical theories provides a cross-sectional view of human mentation. There are six "points of view", five described by Freud and a sixth added by Hartmann. Unconscious processes can therefore be evaluated from each of these six points of view:
"Modern conflict theory", a variation of ego psychology, is a revised version of structural theory, most notably different by altering concepts related to where repressed thoughts were stored. Modern conflict theory addresses emotional symptoms and character traits as complex solutions to mental conflict. It dispenses with the concepts of a fixed id, ego and superego, and instead posits conscious and unconscious conflict among wishes (dependent, controlling, sexual, and aggressive), guilt and shame, emotions (especially anxiety and depressive affect), and defensive operations that shut off from consciousness some aspect of the others. Moreover, healthy functioning (adaptive) is also determined, to a great extent, by resolutions of conflict.
A major objective of modern conflict-theory psychoanalysis is to change the balance of conflict in a patient by making aspects of the less adaptive solutions (also called "compromise formations") conscious so that they can be rethought, and more adaptive solutions found. Current theoreticians who follow the work of Charles Brenner, especially "The Mind in Conflict" (1982), include Sandor Abend, Jacob Arlow, and Jerome Blackman.
"Object relations theory" attempts to explain the ups and downs of human relationships through a study of how internal representations of the self and others are organized. The clinical symptoms that suggest object relations problems (typically developmental delays throughout life) include disturbances in an individual's capacity to feel: warmth, empathy, trust, sense of security, identity stability, consistent emotional closeness, and stability in relationships with significant others
Concepts regarding internal representation (aka 'introspect,' 'self and object representation,' or 'internalization of self and other'), although often attributed to Melanie Klein, were actually first mentioned by Sigmund Freud in his early concepts of drive theory ("Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality", 1905). Freud's 1917 paper "Mourning and Melancholia," for example, hypothesized that unresolved grief was caused by the survivor's internalized image of the deceased becoming fused with that of the survivor, and then the survivor shifting unacceptable anger toward the deceased onto the now complex self-image.
Vamik Volkan, in "Linking Objects and Linking Phenomena," expanded on Freud's thoughts on this, describing the syndromes of "established pathological mourning" vs. "reactive depression" based on similar dynamics. Melanie Klein's hypotheses regarding internalization during the first year of life, leading to paranoid and depressive positions, were later challenged by René Spitz (e.g., "The First Year of Life", 1965), who divided the first year of life into a coenesthetic phase of the first six months, and then a diacritic phase for the second six months. Mahler, Fine, and Bergman (1975) describe distinct phases and subphases of child development leading to "separation-individuation" during the first three years of life, stressing the importance of constancy of parental figures in the face of the child's destructive aggression, internalizations, stability of affect management, and ability to develop healthy autonomy.
John Frosch, Otto Kernberg, Salman Akhtar, and Sheldon Bach have developed the theory of self and object constancy as it affects adult psychiatric problems such as psychosis and borderline states. Blos (1960) described how similar separation-individuation struggles occur during adolescence, of course with a different outcome from the first three years of life: the teen usually, eventually, leaves the parents' house (varying with culture).
During adolescence, Erik Erikson (1950–1960s) described the 'identity crisis,' that involves identity-diffusion anxiety. In order for an adult to be able to experience "Warm-ETHICS: (warmth, Empathy, Trust, Holding environment, Identity, Closeness, and Stability) in relationships, the teenager must resolve the problems with identity and redevelop self and object constancy.
"Self psychology" emphasizes the development of a stable and integrated sense of self through empathic contacts with other humans, primary significant others conceived of as 'selfobjects.' "Selfobjects" meet the developing self's needs for mirroring, idealization, and twinship, and thereby strengthen the developing self. The process of treatment proceeds through "transmuting internalizations" in which the patient gradually internalizes the selfobject functions provided by the therapist.
Self psychology was proposed originally by Heinz Kohut, and has been further developed by Arnold Goldberg, Frank Lachmann, Paul and Anna Ornstein, Marian Tolpin, and others.
Lacanian psychoanalysis, which integrates psychoanalysis with structural linguistics and Hegelian philosophy, is especially popular in France and parts of Latin America. Lacanian psychoanalysis is a departure from the traditional British and American psychoanalysis. Jacques Lacan frequently used the phrase "retourner à Freud" ("return to Freud") in his seminars and writings, as he claimed that his theories were an extension of Freud's own, contrary to those of Anna Freud, the Ego Psychology, object relations and "self" theories and also claims the necessity of reading Freud's complete works, not only a part of them. Lacan's concepts concern the "mirror stage", the "Real", the "Imaginary", and the "Symbolic", and the claim that "the unconscious is structured as a language."
Though a major influence on psychoanalysis in France and parts of Latin America, Lacan and his ideas have taken longer to be translated into English and he has thus had a lesser impact on psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in the English-speaking world. In the United Kingdom and the United States, his ideas are most widely used to analyze texts in literary theory. Due to his increasingly critical stance towards the deviation from Freud's thought, often singling out particular texts and readings from his colleagues, Lacan was excluded from acting as a training analyst in the IPA, thus leading him to create his own school in order to maintain an institutional structure for the many candidates who desired to continue their analysis with him.
The "adaptive paradigm" of psychotherapy develops out of the work of Robert Langs. The "adaptive paradigm" interprets psychic conflict primarily in terms of conscious and unconscious adaptation to reality. Langs’ recent work in some measure returns to the earlier Freud, in that Langs prefers a modified version of the topographic model of the mind (conscious, preconscious, and unconscious) over the structural model (id, ego, and super-ego), including the former's emphasis on trauma (though Langs looks to death-related traumas rather than sexual traumas). At the same time, Langs’ model of the mind differs from Freud's in that it understands the mind in terms of evolutionary biological principles.
"Relational psychoanalysis" combines interpersonal psychoanalysis with object-relations theory and with inter-subjective theory as critical for mental health. It was introduced by Stephen Mitchell. Relational psychoanalysis stresses how the individual's personality is shaped by both real and imagined relationships with others, and how these relationship patterns are re-enacted in the interactions between analyst and patient. In New York, key proponents of relational psychoanalysis include Lew Aron, Jessica Benjamin, and Adrienne Harris. Fonagy and Target, in London, have propounded their view of the necessity of helping certain detached, isolated patients, develop the capacity for "mentalization" associated with thinking about relationships and themselves. Arietta Slade, Susan Coates, and Daniel Schechter in New York have additionally contributed to the application of relational psychoanalysis to treatment of the adult patient-as-parent, the clinical study of mentalization in parent-infant relationships, and the intergenerational transmission of attachment and trauma.
The term "interpersonal-relational psychoanalysis" is often used as a professional identification. Psychoanalysts under this broader umbrella debate about what precisely are the differences between the two schools, without any current clear consensus.
The various psychoses involve deficits in the autonomous ego functions (see above) of integration (organization) of thought, in abstraction ability, in relationship to reality and in reality testing. In depressions with psychotic features, the self-preservation function may also be damaged (sometimes by overwhelming depressive affect). Because of the integrative deficits (often causing what general psychiatrists call "loose associations," "blocking," "flight of ideas," "verbigeration," and "thought withdrawal"), the development of self and object representations is also impaired. Clinically, therefore, psychotic individuals manifest limitations in warmth, empathy, trust, identity, closeness and/or stability in relationships (due to problems with self-object fusion anxiety) as well.
In patients whose autonomous ego functions are more intact, but who still show problems with object relations, the diagnosis often falls into the category known as "borderline". Borderline patients also show deficits, often in controlling impulses, affects, or fantasies – but their ability to test reality remains more or less intact. Adults who do not experience guilt and shame, and who indulge in criminal behavior, are usually diagnosed as psychopaths, or, using DSM-IV-TR, antisocial personality disorder.
"Neurotic symptoms"—including panic, phobias, conversions, obsessions, compulsions and depressions—are not usually caused by deficits in functions. Instead, they are caused by intrapsychic conflicts. The conflicts are generally among sexual and hostile-aggressive wishes, guilt and shame, and reality factors. The conflicts may be conscious or unconscious, but create anxiety, depressive affect, and anger. Finally, the various elements are managed by defensive operations—essentially shut-off brain mechanisms that make people unaware of that element of conflict.
"Repression" is the term given to the mechanism that shuts thoughts out of consciousness. "Isolation of affect" is the term used for the mechanism that shuts sensations out of consciousness. Neurotic symptoms may occur with or without deficits in ego functions, object relations, and ego strengths. Therefore, it is not uncommon to encounter obsessive-compulsive schizophrenics, panic patients who also suffer with borderline personality disorder, etc.
This section above is partial to ego psychoanalytic theory "autonomous ego functions". As the "autonomous ego functions theory" is only a theory, it may yet be proven incorrect.
Freudian theories hold that adult problems can be traced to unresolved conflicts from certain phases of childhood and adolescence, caused by fantasy, stemming from their own drives. Freud, based on the data gathered from his patients early in his career, suspected that neurotic disturbances occurred when children were sexually abused in childhood (i.e. "seduction theory"). Later, Freud came to believe that, although child abuse occurs, neurotic symptoms were not associated with this. He believed that neurotic people often had unconscious conflicts that involved incestuous fantasies deriving from different stages of development. He found the stage from about three to six years of age (preschool years, today called the "first genital stage") to be filled with fantasies of having romantic relationships with both parents. Arguments were quickly generated in early 20th-century Vienna about whether adult seduction of children, i.e. child sexual abuse, was the basis of neurotic illness. There still is no complete agreement, although nowadays professionals recognize the negative effects of child sexual abuse on mental health.
Many psychoanalysts who work with children have studied the actual effects of child abuse, which include ego and object relations deficits and severe neurotic conflicts. Much research has been done on these types of trauma in childhood, and the adult sequelae of those. In studying the childhood factors that start neurotic symptom development, Freud found a constellation of factors that, for literary reasons, he termed the Oedipus complex, based on the play by Sophocles, "Oedipus Rex", in which the protagonist unwittingly kills his father and marries his mother. The validity of the "Oedipus complex" is now widely disputed and rejected.
The shorthand term, "oedipal"—later explicated by Joseph J. Sandler in "On the Concept Superego" (1960) and modified by Charles Brenner in "The Mind in Conflict" (1982)—refers to the powerful attachments that children make to their parents in the preschool years. These attachments involve fantasies of sexual relationships with either (or both) parent, and, therefore, competitive fantasies toward either (or both) parents. Humberto Nagera (1975) has been particularly helpful in clarifying many of the complexities of the child through these years.
"Positive" and "negative" oedipal conflicts have been attached to the heterosexual and homosexual aspects, respectively. Both seem to occur in development of most children. Eventually, the developing child's concessions to reality (that they will neither marry one parent nor eliminate the other) lead to identifications with parental values. These identifications generally create a new set of mental operations regarding values and guilt, subsumed under the term "superego". Besides superego development, children "resolve" their preschool oedipal conflicts through channeling wishes into something their parents approve of ("sublimation") and the development, during the school-age years ("latency") of age-appropriate obsessive-compulsive defensive maneuvers (rules, repetitive games).
Using the various analytic and psychological techniques to assess mental problems, some believe that there are particular constellations of problems that are especially suited for analytic treatment (see below) whereas other problems might respond better to medicines and other interpersonal interventions. To be treated with psychoanalysis, whatever the presenting problem, the person requesting help must demonstrate a desire to start an analysis. The person wishing to start an analysis must have some capacity for speech and communication. As well, they need to be able to have or develop trust and insight within the psychoanalytic session. Potential patients must undergo a preliminary stage of treatment to assess their amenability to psychoanalysis at that time, and also to enable the analyst to form a working psychological model, which the analyst will use to direct the treatment. Psychoanalysts mainly work with neurosis and hysteria in particular; however, adapted forms of psychoanalysis are used in working with schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis or mental disorder. Finally, if a prospective patient is severely suicidal a longer preliminary stage may be employed, sometimes with sessions which have a twenty-minute break in the middle. There are numerous modifications in technique under the heading of psychoanalysis due to the individualistic nature of personality in both analyst and patient.
The most common problems treatable with psychoanalysis include: phobias, conversions, compulsions, obsessions, anxiety attacks, depressions, sexual dysfunctions, a wide variety of relationship problems (such as dating and marital strife), and a wide variety of character problems (for example, painful shyness, meanness, obnoxiousness, workaholism, hyperseductiveness, hyperemotionality, hyperfastidiousness). The fact that many of such patients also demonstrate deficits above makes diagnosis and treatment selection difficult.
Analytical organizations such as the IPA, APsaA and the European Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy have established procedures and models for the indication and practice of psychoanalytical therapy for trainees in analysis. The match between the analyst and the patient can be viewed as another contributing factor for the indication and contraindication for psychoanalytic treatment. The analyst decides whether the patient is suitable for psychoanalysis. This decision made by the analyst, besides made on the usual indications and pathology, is also based to a certain degree by the "fit" between analyst and patient. A person's suitability for analysis at any particular time is based on their desire to know something about where their illness has come from. Someone who is not suitable for analysis expresses no desire to know more about the root causes of their illness.
An evaluation may include one or more other analysts' independent opinions and will include discussion of the patient's financial situation and insurances.
The basic method of psychoanalysis is interpretation of the patient's unconscious conflicts that are interfering with current-day functioning – conflicts that are causing painful symptoms such as phobias, anxiety, depression, and compulsions. Strachey (1936) stressed that figuring out ways the patient distorted perceptions about the analyst led to understanding what may have been forgotten. In particular, unconscious hostile feelings toward the analyst could be found in symbolic, negative reactions to what Robert Langs later called the "frame" of the therapy—the setup that included times of the sessions, payment of fees, and necessity of talking. In patients who made mistakes, forgot, or showed other peculiarities regarding time, fees, and talking, the analyst can usually find various unconscious "resistances" to the flow of thoughts (aka free association).
When the patient reclines on a couch with the analyst out of view, the patient tends to remember more experiences, more resistance and transference, and is able to reorganize thoughts after the development of insight – through the interpretive work of the analyst. Although fantasy life can be understood through the examination of dreams, masturbation fantasies are also important. The analyst is interested in how the patient reacts to and avoids such fantasies. Various memories of early life are generally distorted—what Freud called "screen memories"—and in any case, very early experiences (before age two)—cannot be remembered.
There is what is known among psychoanalysts as "classical technique", although Freud throughout his writings deviated from this considerably, depending on the problems of any given patient.
"Classical technique" was summarized by Allan Compton as comprising:
As well, the analyst can also use confrontation to bringing an aspect of functioning, usually a defense, to the patient's attention. The analyst then uses a variety of interpretation methods, such as:
Analysts can also use reconstruction to estimate what may have happened in the past that created some current issue. These techniques are primarily based on "conflict theory" (see above). As "object relations theory" evolved, supplemented by the work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, techniques with patients who had more severe problems with basic trust (Erikson, 1950) and a history of maternal deprivation (see the works of Augusta Alpert) led to new techniques with adults. These have sometimes been called interpersonal, intersubjective (cf. Stolorow), relational, or corrective object relations techniques. These techniques include expressing an empathic attunement to the patient or warmth; exposing a bit of the analyst's personal life or attitudes to the patient; allowing the patient autonomy in the form of disagreement with the analyst (cf. I. H. Paul, "Letters to Simon"); and explaining the motivations of others which the patient misperceives.
Ego psychological concepts of deficit in functioning led to refinements in supportive therapy. These techniques are particularly applicable to psychotic and near-psychotic (cf., Eric Marcus, "Psychosis and Near-psychosis") patients. These supportive therapy techniques include discussions of reality; encouragement to stay alive (including hospitalization); psychotropic medicines to relieve overwhelming depressive affect or overwhelming fantasies (hallucinations and delusions); and advice about the meanings of things (to counter abstraction failures).
The notion of the "silent analyst" has been criticized. Actually, the analyst listens using Arlow's approach as set out in "The Genesis of Interpretation", using active intervention to interpret resistances, defenses creating pathology, and fantasies. Silence is not a technique of psychoanalysis (see also the studies and opinion papers of Owen Renik). "Analytic neutrality" is a concept that does not mean the analyst is silent. It refers to the analyst's position of not taking sides in the internal struggles of the patient. For example, if a patient feels guilty, the analyst might explore what the patient has been doing or thinking that causes the guilt, but not reassure the patient not to feel guilty. The analyst might also explore the identifications with parents and others that led to the guilt.
Interpersonal–relational psychoanalysts emphasize the notion that it is impossible to be neutral. Sullivan introduced the term "participant-observer" to indicate the analyst inevitably interacts with the analysand, and suggested the detailed inquiry as an alternative to interpretation. The detailed inquiry involves noting where the analysand is leaving out important elements of an account and noting when the story is obfuscated, and asking careful questions to open up the dialogue.
Although single-client sessions remain the norm, psychoanalytic theory has been used to develop other types of psychological treatment. Psychoanalytic group therapy was pioneered by Trigant Burrow, Joseph Pratt, Paul F. Schilder, Samuel R. Slavson, Harry Stack Sullivan, and Wolfe. Child-centered counseling for parents was instituted early in analytic history by Freud, and was later further developed by Irwin Marcus, Edith Schulhofer, and Gilbert Kliman. Psychoanalytically based couples therapy has been promulgated and explicated by Fred Sander. Techniques and tools developed in the first decade of the 21st century have made psychoanalysis available to patients who were not treatable by earlier techniques. This meant that the analytic situation was modified so that it would be more suitable and more likely to be helpful for these patients. Eagle (2007) believes that psychoanalysis cannot be a self-contained discipline but instead must be open to influence from and integration with findings and theory from other disciplines.
Psychoanalytic constructs have been adapted for use with children with treatments such as play therapy, art therapy, and storytelling. Throughout her career, from the 1920s through the 1970s, Anna Freud adapted psychoanalysis for children through play. This is still used today for children, especially those who are preadolescent. Using toys and games, children are able to symbolically demonstrate their fears, fantasies, and defenses; although not identical, this technique, in children, is analogous to the aim of free association in adults. Psychoanalytic play therapy allows the child and analyst to understand children's conflicts, particularly defenses such as disobedience and withdrawal, that have been guarding against various unpleasant feelings and hostile wishes. In art therapy, the counselor may have a child draw a portrait and then tell a story about the portrait. The counselor watches for recurring themes—regardless of whether it is with art or toys.
Psychoanalysis can be adapted to different cultures, as long as the therapist or counselor understands the client's culture. For example, Tori and Blimes found that defense mechanisms were valid in a normative sample of 2,624 Thais. The use of certain defense mechanisms was related to cultural values. For example, Thais value calmness and collectiveness (because of Buddhist beliefs), so they were low on regressive emotionality. Psychoanalysis also applies because Freud used techniques that allowed him to get the subjective perceptions of his patients. He takes an objective approach by not facing his clients during his talk therapy sessions. He met with his patients wherever they were, such as when he used free association—where clients would say whatever came to mind without self-censorship. His treatments had little to no structure for most cultures, especially Asian cultures. Therefore, it is more likely that Freudian constructs will be used in structured therapy. In addition, Corey postulates that it will be necessary for a therapist to help clients develop a cultural identity as well as an ego identity.
The cost to the patient of psychoanalytic treatment ranges widely from place to place and between practitioners. Low-fee analysis is often available in a psychoanalytic training clinic and graduate schools. Otherwise, the fee set by each analyst varies with the analyst's training and experience. Since, in most locations in the United States, unlike in Ontario and Germany, classical analysis (which usually requires sessions three to five times per week) is not covered by health insurance, many analysts may negotiate their fees with patients whom they feel they can help, but who have financial difficulties. The modifications of analysis, which include psychodynamic therapy, brief therapies, and certain types of group therapy, are carried out on a less frequent basis – usually once, twice, or three times a week – and usually the patient sits facing the therapist. As a result of the defense mechanisms and the lack of access to the unfathomable elements of the unconscious, psychoanalysis can be an expansive process that involves 2 to 5 sessions per week for several years. This type of therapy relies on the belief that reducing the symptoms will not actually help with the root causes or irrational drives. The analyst typically is a 'blank screen', disclosing very little about themselves in order that the client can use the space in the relationship to work on their unconscious without interference from outside.
The psychoanalyst uses various methods to help the patient to become more self-aware and to develop insights into their behavior and into the meanings of symptoms. First and foremost, the psychoanalyst attempts to develop a confidential atmosphere in which the patient can feel safe reporting his feelings, thoughts and fantasies. Analysands (as people in analysis are called) are asked to report whatever comes to mind without fear of reprisal. Freud called this the "fundamental rule". Analysands are asked to talk about their lives, including their early life, current life and hopes and aspirations for the future. They are encouraged to report their fantasies, "flash thoughts" and dreams. In fact, Freud believed that dreams were, "the royal road to the unconscious"; he devoted an entire volume to the interpretation of dreams. Also, psychoanalysts encourage their patients to recline on a couch. Typically, the psychoanalyst sits, out of sight, behind the patient.
The psychoanalyst's task, in collaboration with the analysand, is to help deepen the analysand's understanding of those factors, outside of his awareness, that drive his behaviors. In the safe environment of the psychoanalytic setting, the analysand becomes attached to the analyst and pretty soon he begins to experience the same conflicts with his analyst that he experiences with key figures in his life such as his parents, his boss, his significant other, etc. It is the psychoanalyst's role to point out these conflicts and to interpret them. The transferring of these internal conflicts onto the analyst is called "transference".
Many studies have also been done on briefer "dynamic" treatments; these are more expedient to measure, and shed light on the therapeutic process to some extent. Brief Relational Therapy (BRT), Brief Psychodynamic Therapy (BPT), and Time-Limited Dynamic Therapy (TLDP) limit treatment to 20–30 sessions. On average, classical analysis may last 5.7 years, but for phobias and depressions uncomplicated by ego deficits or object relations deficits, analysis may run for a shorter period of time. Longer analyses are indicated for those with more serious disturbances in object relations, more symptoms, and more ingrained character pathology.
Psychoanalysis continues to be practiced by psychiatrists, social workers, and other mental health professionals; however, its practice has declined.
In 2015, psychoanalyst Bradley Peterson, who is also a child psychiatrist and director of the Institute for the Developing Mind at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, said: "I think most people would agree that psychoanalysis as a form of treatment is on its last legs." However psychoanalytic approaches continue to be listed by the UK NHS as possibly helpful for depression.
Psychoanalytic training in the United States involves a personal psychoanalysis for the trainee, approximately 600 hours of class instruction, with a standard curriculum, over a four or five-year period.
Typically, this psychoanalysis must be conducted by a Supervising and Training Analyst. Most institutes (but not all) within the American Psychoanalytic Association, require that Supervising and Training Analysts become certified by the American Board of Psychoanalysts. Certification entails a blind review in which the psychoanalyst's work is vetted by psychoanalysts outside of their local community. After earning certification, these psychoanalysts undergo another hurdle in which they are specially vetted by senior members of their own institute. Supervising and Training analysts are held to the highest clinical and ethical standards. Moreover, they are required to have extensive experience conducting psychoanalyses.
Similarly, class instruction for psychoanalytic candidates is rigorous. Typically classes meet several hours a week, or for a full day or two every other weekend during the academic year; this varies with the institute.
Candidates generally have an hour of supervision each week, with a Supervising and Training Analyst, on each psychoanalytic case. The minimum number of cases varies between institutes, often two to four cases. Male and female cases are required. Supervision must go on for at least a few years on one or more cases. Supervision is done in the supervisor's office, where the trainee presents material from the psychoanalytic work that week. In supervision, the patient's unconscious conflicts are explored, also, transference-countertransference constellations are examined. Also, clinical technique is taught.
Many psychoanalytic training centers in the United States have been accredited by special committees of the APsaA or the IPA. Because of theoretical differences, there are independent institutes, usually founded by psychologists, who until 1987 were not permitted access to psychoanalytic training institutes of the APsaA. Currently there are between 75 and 100 independent institutes in the United States. As well, other institutes are affiliated to other organizations such as the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, and the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. At most psychoanalytic institutes in the United States, qualifications for entry include a terminal degree in a mental health field, such as Ph.D., Psy.D., M.S.W., or M.D. A few institutes restrict applicants to those already holding an M.D. or Ph.D., and most institutes in Southern California confer a Ph.D. or Psy.D. in psychoanalysis upon graduation, which involves completion of the necessary requirements for the state boards that confer that doctoral degree. The first training institute in America to educate non-medical psychoanalysts was The National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (1978) in New York City. It was founded by the analyst Theodor Reik. The Contemporary Freudian (originally the New York Freudian Society) an offshoot of the National Psychological Association has a branch in Washington, DC. It is a component society/institute or the IPA.
Some psychoanalytic training has been set up as a post-doctoral fellowship in university settings, such as at Duke University, Yale University, New York University, Adelphi University and Columbia University. Other psychoanalytic institutes may not be directly associated with universities, but the faculty at those institutes usually hold contemporaneous faculty positions with psychology Ph.D. programs and/or with medical school psychiatry residency programs.
The IPA is the world's primary accrediting and regulatory body for psychoanalysis. Their mission is to assure the continued vigor and development of psychoanalysis for the benefit of psychoanalytic patients. It works in partnership with its 70 constituent organizations in 33 countries to support 11,500 members. In the US, there are 77 psychoanalytical organizations, institutes associations in the United States, which are spread across the states of America. APSaA has 38 affiliated societies which have 10 or more active members who practice in a given geographical area. The aims of APSaA and other psychoanalytical organizations are: provide ongoing educational opportunities for its members, stimulate the development and research of psychoanalysis, provide training and organize conferences. There are eight affiliated study groups in the United States. A study group is the first level of integration of a psychoanalytical body within the IPA, followed by a provisional society and finally a member society.
The Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of the American Psychological Association (APA) was established in the early 1980s by several psychologists. Until the establishment of the Division of Psychoanalysis, psychologists who had trained in independent institutes had no national organization. The Division of Psychoanalysis now has approximately 4,000 members and approximately 30 local chapters in the United States. The Division of Psychoanalysis holds two annual meetings or conferences and offers continuing education in theory, research and clinical technique, as do their affiliated local chapters. The European Psychoanalytical Federation (EPF) is the organization which consolidates all European psychoanalytic societies. This organization is affiliated with the IPA. In 2002 there were approximately 3,900 individual members in 22 countries, speaking 18 different languages. There are also 25 psychoanalytic societies.
The American Association of Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work (AAPCSW) was established by Crayton Rowe in 1980 as a division of the Federation of Clinical Societies of Social Work and became an independent entity in 1990. Until 2007 it was known as the National Membership Committee on Psychoanalysis. The organization was founded because although social workers represented the larger number of people who were training to be psychoanalysts, they were underrepresented as supervisors and teachers at the institutes they attended. AAPCSW now has over 1000 members and has over 20 chapters. It holds a bi-annual national conference and numerous annual local conferences.
Experiences of psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists and research into infant and child development have led to new insights. Theories have been further developed and the results of empirical research are now more integrated in the psychoanalytic theory.
The London Psychoanalytical Society was founded by Ernest Jones on 30 October 1913. After World War I with the expansion of psychoanalysis in the United Kingdom, the Society was reconstituted and named the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1919. Soon after, the Institute of Psychoanalysis was established to administer the Society's activities. These include: the training of psychoanalysts, the development of the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, the provision of treatment through The London Clinic of Psychoanalysis, the publication of books in The New Library of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Ideas. The Institute of Psychoanalysis also publishes "The International Journal of Psychoanalysis", maintains a library, furthers research, and holds public lectures. The society has a Code of Ethics and an Ethical Committee. The society, the institute and the clinic are all located at "Byron House" in West London.
The Society is a constituent society of the International Psychoanalytical Association, IPA, a body with members on all five continents which safeguards professional and ethical practice. The Society is a member of the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC); the BPC publishes a register of British psychoanalysts and psychoanalytical psychotherapists. All members of the British Psychoanalytic Council are required to undertake continuing professional development, CPD. Members of the Society teach and hold posts on other approved psychoanalytic courses, e.g.: British Psychotherapy Foundation and in academic departments, e.g.University College London.
Members of the Society have included: Michael Balint, Wilfred Bion, John Bowlby, Ronald Fairbairn, Anna Freud, Harry Guntrip, Melanie Klein, Donald Meltzer, Joseph J. Sandler, Hanna Segal, J. D. Sutherland and Donald Winnicott.
The Institute of Psychoanalysis is the foremost publisher of psychoanalytic literature. The 24-volume "Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud" was conceived, translated, and produced under the direction of the British Psychoanalytical Society. The Society, in conjunction with Random House, will soon publish a new, revised and expanded Standard Edition. With the New Library of Psychoanalysis the Institute continues to publish the books of leading theorists and practitioners. "The International Journal of Psychoanalysis" is published by the Institute of Psychoanalysis. Now in its 84th year, it has one of the largest circulations of any psychoanalytic journal.
There are different forms of psychoanalysis and psychotherapies in which psychoanalytic thinking is practiced. Besides classical psychoanalysis there is for example psychoanalytic psychotherapy, a therapeutic approach which widens "the accessibility of psychoanalytic theory and clinical practices that had evolved over 100 plus years to a larger number of individuals." Other examples of well known therapies which also use insights of psychoanalysis are mentalization-based treatment (MBT), and transference focused psychotherapy (TFP). There is also a continuing influence of psychoanalytic thinking in mental health care.
Over a hundred years of case reports and studies in the journal "Modern Psychoanalysis", the "Psychoanalytic Quarterly", the "International Journal of Psychoanalysis" and the "Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association" have analyzed the efficacy of analysis in cases of neurosis and character or problems. Psychoanalysis modified by object relations techniques has been shown to be effective in many cases of ingrained problems of intimacy and relationship (cf. the many books of Otto Kernberg). Psychoanalytic treatment, in other situations, may run from about a year to many years, depending on the severity and complexity of the pathology.
Psychoanalytic theory has, from its inception, been the subject of criticism and controversy. Freud remarked on this early in his career, when other physicians in Vienna ostracized him for his findings that hysterical conversion symptoms were not limited to women. Challenges to analytic theory began with Otto Rank and Alfred Adler (turn of the 20th century), continued with behaviorists (e.g. Wolpe) into the 1940s and '50s, and have persisted (e.g. Miller). Criticisms come from those who object to the notion that there are mechanisms, thoughts or feelings in the mind that could be unconscious. Criticisms also have been leveled against the idea of "infantile sexuality" (the recognition that children between ages two and six imagine things about procreation). Criticisms of theory have led to variations in analytic theories, such as the work of Ronald Fairbairn, Michael Balint, and John Bowlby. In the past 30 years or so, the criticisms have centered on the issue of empirical verification.
Psychoanalysis has been used as a research tool into childhood development (cf. the journal "The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child"), and has developed into a flexible, effective treatment for certain mental disturbances. In the 1960s, Freud's early (1905) thoughts on the childhood development of female sexuality were challenged; this challenge led to major research in the 1970s and 80s, and then to a reformulation of female sexual development that corrected some of Freud's concepts. Also see the various works of Eleanor Galenson, Nancy Chodorow, Karen Horney, Françoise Dolto, Melanie Klein, Selma Fraiberg, and others. Most recently, psychoanalytic researchers who have integrated attachment theory into their work, including Alicia Lieberman, Susan Coates, and Daniel Schechter have explored the role of parental traumatization in the development of young children's mental representations of self and others.
The psychoanalytic profession has been resistant to researching efficacy. Evaluations of effectiveness based on the interpretation of the therapist alone cannot be proven.
Meta-analyses in 2012 and 2013 found support or evidence for the efficacy of psychoanalytic therapy, thus further research is needed. Other meta-analyses published in the recent years showed psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapy to be effective, with outcomes comparable or greater than other kinds of psychotherapy or antidepressant drugs, but these arguments have also been subjected to various criticisms. In particular, the inclusion of pre/post studies rather than randomized controlled trials, and the absence of adequate comparisons with control treatments is a serious limitation in interpreting the results.
In 2011, the American Psychological Association made 103 comparisons between psychodynamic treatment and a non-dynamic competitor and found that 6 were superior, 5 were inferior, 28 had no difference and 63 were adequate. The study found that this could be used as a basis "to make psychodynamic psychotherapy an 'empirically validated' treatment."
Meta-analyses of Short Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (STPP) have found effect sizes (Cohen's d) ranging from .34 to .71 compared to no treatment and was found to be slightly better than other therapies in follow up. Other reviews have found an effect size of .78 to .91 for somatic disorders compared to no treatment and .69 for treating depression. A 2012 "Harvard Review of Psychiatry" meta-analysis of Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) found effect sizes ranging from .84 for interpersonal problems to 1.51 for depression. Overall ISTDP had an effect size of 1.18 compared to no treatment.
A meta-analysis of Long Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy in 2012 found an overall effect size of .33, which is modest. This study concluded the recovery rate following LTPP was equal to control treatments, including treatment as usual, and found the evidence for the effectiveness of LTPP to be limited and at best conflicting. Others have found effect sizes of .44–.68.
According to a 2004 French review conducted by INSERM, psychoanalysis was presumed or proven effective at treating panic disorder, post-traumatic stress, and personality disorders.
A 2001 systematic review of the medical literature by the Cochrane Collaboration concluded that no data exist demonstrating that psychodynamic psychotherapy is effective in treating schizophrenia and severe mental illness, and cautioned that medication should always be used alongside any type of talk therapy in schizophrenia cases. A French review from 2004 found the same. The Schizophrenia Patient Outcomes Research Team advises against the use of psychodynamic therapy in cases of schizophrenia, arguing that more trials are necessary to verify its effectiveness.
Both Freud and psychoanalysis have been criticized in extreme terms. Exchanges between critics and defenders of psychoanalysis have often been so heated that they have come to be characterized as the "Freud Wars".
Early critics of psychoanalysis believed that its theories were based too little on quantitative and experimental research, and too much on the clinical case study method. Some have accused Freud of fabrication, most famously in the case of Anna O. Philosopher Frank Cioffi cites false claims of a sound scientific verification of the theory and its elements as the strongest basis for classifying the work of Freud and his school as pseudoscience.
Others have speculated that patients suffered from now easily identifiable conditions unrelated to psychoanalysis; for instance, Anna O. is thought to have suffered from an organic impairment such as tuberculous meningitis or temporal lobe epilepsy and not hysteria (see modern interpretations).
Karl Popper argued that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience because its claims are not testable and cannot be refuted; that is, they are not falsifiable. In addition, Imre Lakatos wrote that "Freudians have been nonplussed by Popper's basic challenge concerning scientific honesty. Indeed, they have refused to specify experimental conditions under which they would give up their basic assumptions." In "Sexual Desire" (1986), philosopher Roger Scruton rejectes Popper's arguments, pointing to the theory of repression as an example of a Freudian theory that does have testable consequences. Scruton nevertheless concluded that psychoanalysis is not genuinely scientific, on the grounds that it involves an unacceptable dependence on metaphor.
Cognitive scientists, in particular, have also weighed in. Martin Seligman, a prominent academic in positive psychology wrote that: Thirty years ago, the cognitive revolution in psychology overthrew both Freud and the behaviorists, at least in academia.… [T]hinking…is not just a [result] of emotion or behavior.… [E]motion is always generated by cognition, not the other way around.Linguist Noam Chomsky has criticized psychoanalysis for lacking a scientific basis. Steven Pinker considers Freudian theory unscientific for understanding the mind. Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould considered psychoanalysis influenced by pseudoscientific theories such as recapitulation theory. Psychologists Hans Eysenck (1985) and John F. Kihlstrom (2012/2000) have also criticized the field as pseudoscience.
Adolf Grünbaum argues in "Validation in the Clinical Theory of Psychoanalysis" (1993) that psychoanalytic based theories are falsifiable, but that the causal claims of psychoanalysis are unsupported by the available clinical evidence.
Richard Feynman wrote off psychoanalysts as mere "witch doctors:"
Likewise, psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, in "Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists" (1986), agreed that psychoanalytic theories have no more scientific basis than the theories of traditional native healers, "witchdoctors" or modern "cult" alternatives such as EST. Psychologist Alice Miller charged psychoanalysis with being similar to the poisonous pedagogies, which she described in her book "For Your Own Good". She scrutinized and rejected the validity of Freud's drive theory, including the Oedipus complex, which, according to her and Jeffrey Masson, blames the child for the abusive sexual behavior of adults. Psychologist Joel Kupfersmid investigated the validity of the Oedipus complex, examining its nature and origins. He concluded that there is little evidence to support the existence of the Oedipus complex.
Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze claimed that the institution of psychoanalysis has become a center of power and that its confessional techniques resemble the Christian tradition. Jacques Lacan criticized the emphasis of some American and British psychoanalytical traditions on what he has viewed as the suggestion of imaginary "causes" for symptoms, and recommended the return to Freud. Together with Deleuze, Félix Guattari criticised the Oedipal structure. Luce Irigaray criticised psychoanalysis, employing Jacques Derrida's concept of phallogocentrism to describe the exclusion of the woman from Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytical theories. Deleuze and Guattari (1972), in "Anti-Œdipus", take the cases of Gérard Mendel, Bela Grunberger and Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, prominent members of the most respected associations (IPA), to suggest that, traditionally, psychoanalysis enthusiastically embraces a police state.
The theoretical foundations of psychoanalysis lie in the same philosophical currents that lead to interpretive phenomenology rather than in those that lead to scientific positivism, making the theory largely incompatible with positivist approaches to the study of the mind.
Although numerous studies have shown that the efficacy of therapy is primarily related to the quality of the therapist, rather than the school or technique or training, a French 2004 report from INSERM concluded that psychoanalytic therapy is less effective than other psychotherapies (including cognitive behavioral therapy) for certain diseases. This report used a meta-analysis of numerous other studies to find whether the treatment was "proven" or "presumed" to be effective on different diseases.
A survey of scientific research suggested that while personality traits corresponding to Freud's oral, anal, Oedipal, and genital phases can be observed, they do not necessarily manifest as stages in the development of children. These studies also have not confirmed that such traits in adults result from childhood experiences. However, these stages should not be viewed as crucial to modern psychoanalysis. What is crucial to modern psychoanalytic theory and practice is the power of the unconscious and the transference phenomenon.
The idea of "unconscious" is contested because human behavior can be observed while human mental activity has to be inferred. However, the unconscious is now a popular topic of study in the fields of experimental and social psychology (e.g., implicit attitude measures, fMRI, and PET scans, and other indirect tests). The idea of unconscious, and the transference phenomenon, have been widely researched and, it is claimed, validated in the fields of cognitive psychology and social psychology, though a Freudian interpretation of unconscious mental activity is not held by the majority of cognitive psychologists. Recent developments in neuroscience have resulted in one side arguing that it has provided a biological basis for unconscious emotional processing in line with psychoanalytic theory i.e., neuropsychoanalysis, while the other side argues that such findings make psychoanalytic theory obsolete and irrelevant.
Shlomo Kalo explains that the scientific materialism that flourished in the 19th century severely harmed religion and rejected whatever called spiritual. The institution of the confession priest in particular was badly damaged. The empty void that this institution left behind was swiftly occupied by the newborn psychoanalysis. In his writings, Kalo claims that psychoanalysis basic approach is erroneous. It represents the mainline wrong assumptions that happiness is unreachable and that the natural desire of a human being is to exploit his fellow men for his own pleasure and benefit.
Jacques Derrida incorporated aspects of psychoanalytic theory into his theory of deconstruction in order to question what he called the 'metaphysics of presence'. Derrida also turns some of these ideas against Freud, to reveal tensions and contradictions in his work. For example, although Freud defines religion and metaphysics as displacements of the identification with the father in the resolution of the Oedipal complex, Derrida (1987) insists that the prominence of the father in Freud's own analysis is itself indebted to the prominence given to the father in Western metaphysics and theology since Plato. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23585 |
Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often abbreviated to pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China and to some extent in Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Mandarin Chinese, which is normally written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones. Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters.
The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang, based on earlier forms of romanizations of Chinese. It was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted pinyin as an international standard in 1982, and was followed by the United Nations in 1986. Attempts to make pinyin standard in Taiwan occurred in 2002 and 2009, but "Today Taiwan has no standardized spelling system" so that in 2019 "alphabetic spellings in Taiwan are marked more by a lack of system than the presence of one." Moreover, "some cities, businesses, and organizations, notably in the south of Taiwan, did not accept [efforts to introduce pinyin], as it suggested that Taiwan is more closely tied to the PRC", so it remains one of several rival romanization systems in use.
The word ' () means 'the spoken language of the Han people', while ' () literally means 'spelled sounds'.
When a foreign writing system with one set of coding/decoding system is taken to write a language, certain compromises may have to be made. The result is that the decoding systems used in some foreign languages will enable non-native speakers to produce sounds more closely resembling the target language than will the coding/decoding system used by other foreign languages. Native speakers of English will decode pinyin spellings to fairly close approximations of Mandarin except in the case of certain speech sounds that are not ordinarily produced by most native speakers of English: "j" , "q" ", x" , "z" , "c" , "zh" , "ch" , "sh" , "h" , and "r" exhibiting the greatest discrepancies.
In this system, the correspondence between the Roman letter and the sound is sometimes idiosyncratic, though not necessarily more so than the way the Latin script is employed in other languages. For example, the aspiration distinction between "b", "d", "g" and "p", "t", "k" is similar to that of these syllable-initial consonants English (in which the two sets are however also differentiated by voicing), but not to that of French. Letters "z" and "c" also have that distinction, pronounced as and (whilst reminiscent of both of them being used for the phoneme in the German language and Latin script-using Slavic languages respectively). From "s, z, c" come the digraphs "sh, zh, ch" by analogy with English "sh, ch". Although this introduces the novel combination "zh", it is internally consistent in how the two series are related, and reminds the trained reader that many Chinese people pronounce "sh, zh, ch" as "s, z, c" (and English-speakers use "zh" to represent in foreign languages such as Russian anyway). In the "x, j, q" series, the pinyin use of "x" is similar to its use in Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, Basque, and Maltese; and the pinyin "q" is akin to its value in Albanian; both pinyin and Albanian pronunciations may sound similar to the "ch" to the untrained ear. Pinyin vowels are pronounced in a similar way to vowels in Romance languages.
The pronunciation and spelling of Chinese words are generally given in terms of initials and finals, which represent the "segmental phonemic" portion of the language, rather than letter by letter. Initials are initial consonants, while finals are all possible combinations of medials (semivowels coming before the vowel), a nucleus vowel, and coda (final vowel or consonant).
In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published "Xizi Qiji" () in Beijing. This was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, issued his "" () at Hangzhou. Neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese.
One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing dynasty scholar-official, Fang Yizhi (; 1611–1671).
The first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu (1862–1910). A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the stunning effect of the "kana" syllabaries and Western learning there. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script. While Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts.
The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and further improved by Herbert Giles in the Chinese–English Dictionary of 1892. It was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979.
In the early 1930s, Communist Party of China leaders trained in Moscow introduced a phonetic alphabet using Roman letters which had been developed in the Soviet Oriental Institute of Leningrad and was originally intended to improve literacy in the Russian Far East. This Sin Wenz or "New Writing" was much more linguistically sophisticated than earlier alphabets, but with the major exception that it did not indicate tones of Chinese.
In 1940, several thousand members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy (in characters) for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Society's new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Dr. Sun Yat-sen's son, Sun Fo; Cai Yuanpei, the country's most prestigious educator; Tao Xingzhi, a leading educational reformer; and Lu Xun. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies (including Lincoln, Franklin, Edison, Ford, and Charlie Chaplin), some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks. In 1940, the movement reached an apex when Mao's Border Region Government declared that the Sin Wenz had the same legal status as traditional characters in government and public documents. Many educators and political leaders looked forward to the day when they would be universally accepted and completely replace Chinese characters. Opposition arose, however, because the system was less well adapted to writing regional languages, and therefore would require learning Mandarin. Sin Wenz fell into relative disuse during the following years.
In 1943, the U.S. military engaged Yale University to develop a romanization of Mandarin Chinese for its pilots flying over China. The resulting system is very close to "pinyin", but does not use English letters in unfamiliar ways; for example, "pinyin" x for is written as sy in the Yale system. Medial semivowels are written with y and w (instead of "pinyin" i and u), and apical vowels (syllabic consonants) with r or z. Accent marks are used to indicate tone.
Pinyin was created by Chinese linguists, including Zhou Youguang, as part of a Chinese government project in the 1950s. Zhou, often called "the father of pinyin," | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23588 |
Parable of the Pearl
The Parable of the Pearl (also called the Pearl of Great Price) is one of the parables of Jesus. It appears in and illustrates the great value of the Kingdom of Heaven.
This is the penultimate parable in Matthew 13, coming just before the Parable of the Dragnet. It immediately follows the Parable of the Hidden Treasure, which has a similar theme. It does not appear in the other synoptic gospels, but a version of this parable does appear in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas, Saying 76. The parable has been depicted by artists such as Domenico Fetti.
The parable reads as follows:
This parable is generally interpreted as illustrating the great value of the Kingdom of Heaven. Theologian E. H. Plumptre, in Anglican bishop Charles Ellicott's "Commentary", notes that:
"the caprices of luxury in the Roman empire had given a prominence to pearls, as an article of commerce, which they had never had before, and have probably never had since. They, rather than emeralds and sapphires, were the typical instance of all costliest adornments (; ). The story of Cleopatra and the fact that the opening of a new pearl market was one of the alleged motives which led the Emperor Claudius to invade Britain, are indications of the value that was then set on the “goodly pearls” of the parable."
Theologian John Nolland likewise notes that pearls at that time had a greater value than they do today, and it thus has a similar theme to its partner, the parable of the hidden treasure. Nolland comments that it shares with that parable the notions of "good fortune and demanding action in attaining the kingdom of heaven", but adds in this case the notion of "diligent seeking".
The valuable pearl is the "deal of a lifetime" for the merchant in the story. However, those who do not believe in the kingdom of heaven enough to stake their whole future on it are unworthy of the kingdom.
This interpretation of the parable is the inspiration for a number of hymns, including the anonymous Swedish hymn "Den Kostliga Pärlan" ("O That Pearl of Great Price!"), which begins:
O that Pearl of great price! have you found it?
Is the Savior supreme in your love?
O consider it well, ere you answer,
As you hope for a welcome above.
Have you given up all for this Treasure?
Have you counted past gains as but loss?
Has your trust in yourself and your merits
Come to naught before Christ and His cross?
A less common interpretation of the parable is that the merchant represents Jesus, and the pearl represents the Christian Church. This interpretation would give the parable a similar theme to that of the Parable of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Prodigal Son.
Pope Pius XII used the phrase to describe virginity.
"Pearl of Great Price" is the title of a selection of Mormon writings, one of the standard works of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and some other Latter Day Saint denominations.
A version of the parable also appears in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas (Saying 76):
This work's version of the parable of the Hidden Treasure appears later (Saying 109), rather than immediately preceding, as in Matthew. However, the mention of a treasure in Saying 76 may reflect a source for the Gospel of Thomas in which the parables were adjacent, so that the original pair of parables has been "broken apart, placed in separate contexts, and expanded in a manner characteristic of folklore." In Gnostic thought the pearl may represent Christ or the true self. In the Gnostic Acts of Peter and the Twelve, found with the Gospel of Thomas in the Nag Hammadi library, the travelling pearl merchant Lithargoel is eventually revealed to be Jesus.
There have been several depictions of the New Testament parable in art, including works by Domenico Fetti, John Everett Millais and Jan Luyken.
The parable is referenced in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel "The Scarlet Letter" on page 82:
The parable is referenced in "Star Trek" by Scotty at the end of an episode in the original series entitled "The Empath". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23589 |
Pantheism
Pantheism is the belief that reality is identical with divinity, or that all-things compose an all-encompassing, immanent god. Pantheist belief does not recognize a distinct personal god, anthropomorphic or otherwise, but instead characterizes a broad range of doctrines differing in forms of relationships between reality and divinity. Pantheistic concepts date back thousands of years, and pantheistic elements have been identified in various religious traditions. The term "pantheism" was coined by mathematician Joseph Raphson in 1697 and has since been used to describe the beliefs of a variety of people and organizations.
Pantheism was popularized in Western culture as a theology and philosophy based on the work of the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza, in particular, his book "Ethics". A pantheistic stance was also taken in the 16th century by philosopher and cosmologist Giordano Bruno.
"Pantheism" derives from the Greek πᾶν "pan" (meaning "all, of everything") and θεός "theos" (meaning "god, divine"). The first known combination of these roots appears in Latin, in Joseph Raphson's 1697 book "De Spatio Reali seu Ente Infinito", where he refers to the "pantheismus" of Spinoza and others.
It was subsequently translated into English as "pantheism" in 1702.
There are numerous definitions of pantheism. Some consider it a theological and philosophical position concerning God.
Pantheism is the view that everything is part of an all-encompassing, immanent God. All forms of reality may then be considered either modes of that Being, or identical with it. Some hold that pantheism is a non-religious philosophical position. To them, pantheism is the view that the Universe (in the sense of the totality of all existence) and God are identical (implying a denial of the personality and immanence of God).
Early traces of pantheist thought can be found within the theology of the ancient Greek religion of Orphism, where "pan" (the all) is made cognate with the creator God Phanes (symbolizing the universe), and with Zeus, after the swallowing of Phanes.
Pantheistic tendencies existed in a number of early Gnostic groups, with pantheistic thought appearing throughout the Middle Ages. These included a section of Johannes Scotus Eriugena's 9th-century work De divisione naturae and the beliefs of mystics such as Amalric of Bena (11th12th centuries) and Eckhart (12th13th).
The Catholic Church has long regarded pantheistic ideas as heresy. Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk who evangelized about a transcendent and infinite God, was burned at the stake in 1600 by the Roman Inquisition. He has since become known as a celebrated pantheist and martyr of science, and an influence on many later thinkers.
In the West, pantheism was formalized as a separate theology and philosophy based on the work of the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese descent raised in the Sephardi Jewish community in Amsterdam. He developed highly controversial ideas regarding the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible and the nature of the Divine, and was effectively excluded from Jewish society at age 23, when the local synagogue issued a "herem" against him. A number of his books were published posthumously, and shortly thereafter included in the Catholic Church's "Index of Forbidden Books". The breadth and importance of Spinoza's work would not be realized for many years – as the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism, including modern conceptions of the self and the universe.
In the posthumous "Ethics", "Spinoza wrote the last indisputable Latin masterpiece, and one in which the refined conceptions of medieval philosophy are finally turned against themselves and destroyed entirely.". In particular, he opposed René Descartes' famous mind–body dualism, the theory that the body and spirit are separate. Spinoza held the monist view that the two are the same, and monism is a fundamental part of his philosophy. He was described as a "God-intoxicated man," and used the word God to describe the unity of all substance. This view influenced philosophers such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who said, "You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all."
Spinoza earned praise as one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy and one of Western philosophy's most important thinkers. Although the term "pantheism" was not coined until after his death, he is regarded as the most celebrated advocate of the concept. "Ethics" was the major source from which Western pantheism spread.
Heinrich Heine, in his "Concerning the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany" (1833–36), remarked that "I don't remember now where I read that Herder once exploded peevishly at the constant preoccupation with Spinoza, "If Goethe would only for once pick up some other Latin book than Spinoza!" But this applies not only to Goethe; quite a number of his friends, who later became more or less well-known as poets, paid homage to pantheism in their youth, and this doctrine flourished actively in German art before it attained supremacy among us as a philosophic theory."
In their "The Holy Family" (1844) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels notes, "Spinozism dominated the eighteenth century both in its later French variety, which made matter into substance, and in deism, which conferred on matter a more spiritual name... Spinoza's French school and the supporters of deism were but two sects disputing over the true meaning of his system..."
In George Henry Lewes's words (1846), "Pantheism is as old as philosophy. It was taught in the old Greek schools — by Plato, by St. Augustine, and by the Jews. Indeed, one may say that Pantheism, under one of its various shapes, is the necessary consequence of all metaphysical inquiry, when pushed to its logical limits; and from this reason do we find it in every age and nation. The dreamy contemplative Indian, the quick versatile Greek, the practical Roman, the quibbling Scholastic, the ardent Italian, the lively Frenchman, and the bold Englishman, have all pronounced it as the final truth of philosophy. Wherein consists Spinoza's originality? — what is his merit? — are natural questions, when we see him only lead to the same result as others had before proclaimed. His merit and originality consist in the systematic exposition and development of that doctrine — in his hands, for the first time, it assumes the aspect of a science. The Greek and Indian Pantheism is a vague fanciful doctrine, carrying with it no scientific conviction; it may be true — it looks true — but the proof is wanting. But with Spinoza there is no choice: if you understand his terms, admit the possibility of his science, and seize his meaning; you can no more doubt his conclusions than you can doubt Euclid; no mere opinion is possible, conviction only is possible."
S. M. Melamed (1933) noted, "It may be observed, however, that Spinoza was not the first prominent monist and pantheist in modern Europe. A generation before him Bruno conveyed a similar message to humanity. Yet Bruno is merely a beautiful episode in the history of the human mind, while Spinoza is one of its most potent forces. Bruno was a rhapsodist and a poet, who was overwhelmed with artistic emotions; Spinoza, however, was spiritus purus and in his method the prototype of the philosopher."
The first known use of the term "pantheism" was in Latin ("pantheismus" ) by the English mathematician Joseph Raphson in his work "De Spatio Reali seu Ente Infinito", published in 1697. Raphson begins with a distinction between atheistic "panhylists" (from the Greek roots "pan", "all", and "hyle", "matter"), who believe everything is matter, and Spinozan "pantheists" who believe in "a certain universal substance, material as well as intelligence, that fashions all things that exist out of its own essence." Raphson thought that the universe was immeasurable in respect to a human's capacity of understanding, and believed that humans would never be able to comprehend it. He referred to the pantheism of the Ancient Egyptians, Persians, Syrians, Assyrians, Greek, Indians, and Jewish Kabbalists, specifically referring to Spinoza.
The term was first used in English by a translation of Raphson's work in 1702. It was later used and popularized by Irish writer John Toland in his work of 1705 "Socinianism Truly Stated, by a pantheist". Toland was influenced by both Spinoza and Bruno, and had read Joseph Raphson's "De Spatio Reali", referring to it as "the ingenious Mr. Ralphson's (sic) Book of Real Space". Like Raphson, he used the terms "pantheist" and "Spinozist" interchangeably. In 1720 he wrote the "Pantheisticon: or The Form of Celebrating the Socratic-Society" in Latin, envisioning a pantheist society that believed, "All things in the world are one, and one is all in all things ... what is all in all things is God, eternal and immense, neither born nor ever to perish." He clarified his idea of pantheism in a letter to Gottfried Leibniz in 1710 when he referred to "the pantheistic opinion of those who believe in no other eternal being but the universe".
In the mid-eighteenth century, the English theologian Daniel Waterland defined pantheism this way: "It supposes God and nature, or God and the whole universe, to be one and the same substance—one universal being; insomuch that men's souls are only modifications of the divine substance." In the early nineteenth century, the German theologian Julius Wegscheider defined pantheism as the belief that God and the world established by God are one and the same.
Between 1785–89, a major controversy about Spinoza's philosophy arose between the German philosophers Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (a critic) and Moses Mendelssohn (a defender). Known in German as the "Pantheismusstreit" (pantheism controversy), it helped spread pantheism to many German thinkers.
A 1780 conversation with the German dramatist Gotthold Ephraim Lessing led Jacobi to a protracted study of Spinoza's works. Lessing stated that he knew no other philosophy than Spinozism.
Jacobi's "Über die Lehre des Spinozas" (1st ed. 1785, 2nd ed. 1789) expressed his strenuous objection to a dogmatic system in philosophy, and drew upon him the enmity of the Berlin group, led by Mendelssohn. Jacobi claimed that Spinoza's doctrine was pure materialism, because all Nature and God are said to be nothing but extended substance. This, for Jacobi, was the result of Enlightenment rationalism and it would finally end in absolute atheism. Mendelssohn disagreed with Jacobi, saying that pantheism shares more characteristics of theism than of atheism. The entire issue became a major intellectual and religious concern for European civilization at the time.
Willi Goetschel argues that Jacobi's publication significantly shaped Spinoza's wide reception for centuries following its publication, obscuring the nuance of Spinoza's philosophic work.
During the beginning of the 19th century, pantheism was the viewpoint of many leading writers and philosophers, attracting figures such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge in Britain; Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Schelling and Hegel in Germany; Knut Hamsun in Norway; and Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in the United States. Seen as a growing threat by the Vatican, in 1864 it was formally condemned by Pope Pius IX in the "Syllabus of Errors".
A letter written by William Herndon, Abraham Lincoln's law partner in 1886, was sold at auction for US$30,000 in 2011. In it, Herndon writes of the U.S. President's evolving religious views, which included pantheism.
The subject is understandably controversial, but the content of the letter is consistent with Lincoln's fairly lukewarm approach to organized religion.
Some 19th-century theologians thought that various pre-Christian religions and philosophies were pantheistic. They thought Pantheism was similar to the ancient Hindu philosophy of Advaita (non-dualism) to the extent that the 19th-century German Sanskritist Theodore Goldstücker remarked that Spinoza's thought was "... a western system of philosophy which occupies a foremost rank amongst the philosophies of all nations and ages, and which is so exact a representation of the ideas of the Vedanta, that we might have suspected its founder to have borrowed the fundamental principles of his system from the Hindus."
19th-century European theologians also considered Ancient Egyptian religion to contain pantheistic elements and pointed to Egyptian philosophy as a source of Greek Pantheism. The latter included some of the Presocratics, such as Heraclitus and Anaximander. The Stoics were pantheists, beginning with Zeno of Citium and culminating in the emperor-philosopher Marcus Aurelius. During the pre-Christian Roman Empire, Stoicism was one of the three dominant schools of philosophy, along with Epicureanism and Neoplatonism. The early Taoism of Laozi and Zhuangzi is also sometimes considered pantheistic, although it could be more similar to Panentheism.
Cheondoism, which arose in the Joseon Dynasty of Korea, and Won Buddhism are also considered pantheistic.
In a letter written to Eduard Büsching (25 October 1929), after Büsching sent Albert Einstein a copy of his book "Es gibt keinen Gott" ("There is no God"), Einstein wrote, "We followers of Spinoza see our God in the wonderful order and lawfulness of all that exists and in its soul ["Beseeltheit"] as it reveals itself in man and animal." According to Einstein, the book only dealt with the concept of a personal god and not the impersonal God of pantheism. In a letter written in 1954 to philosopher Eric Gutkind, Einstein wrote "the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses." In another letter written in 1954 he wrote "I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly." In "Ideas And Opinions", published a year before his death, Einstein stated his precise conception of the word God:
Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect. Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality and intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order. [...] This firm belief, a belief bound up with a deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God. In common parlance this may be described as "pantheistic" (Spinoza).
In the late 20th century, some declared that pantheism was an underlying theology of Neopaganism, and pantheists began forming organizations devoted specifically to pantheism and treating it as a separate religion.
Dorion Sagan, son of famous scientist and science communicator Carl Sagan, published the 2007 book "Dazzle Gradually: Reflections on the Nature of Nature", co-written with his mother Lynn Margulis. In the chapter "Truth of My Father", Sagan writes that his "father believed in the God of Spinoza and Einstein, God not behind nature, but as nature, equivalent to it."
In 2009 Pantheism was mentioned in a Papal encyclical and in a statement on New Year's Day, 2010, criticizing pantheism for denying the superiority of humans over nature and seeing the source of man salvation in nature.
In a 2009 review of the film "Avatar", Ross Douthat described pantheism as "Hollywood's religion of choice for a generation now".
In 2015 The Paradise Project, an organization "dedicated to celebrating and spreading awareness about pantheism," commissioned Los Angeles muralist Levi Ponce to paint the 75-foot mural "Luminaries of Pantheism" in Venice, California near the organization's offices. The mural depicts Albert Einstein, Alan Watts, Baruch Spinoza, Terence McKenna, Carl Jung, Carl Sagan, Emily Dickinson, Nikola Tesla, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ralph Waldo Emerson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Henry David Thoreau, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Rumi, Adi Shankara, and Laozi.
There are multiple varieties of pantheism and various systems of classifying them relying upon one or more spectra or in discrete categories.
The philosopher Charles Hartshorne used the term Classical Pantheism to describe the deterministic philosophies of Baruch Spinoza, the Stoics, and other like-minded figures. Pantheism (All-is-God) is often associated with monism (All-is-One) and some have suggested that it logically implies determinism (All-is-Now). Albert Einstein explained theological determinism by stating, "the past, present, and future are an 'illusion'". This form of pantheism has been referred to as "extreme monism", in which in the words of one commentator "God decides or determines everything, including our supposed decisions." Other examples of determinism-inclined pantheisms include those of Ralph Waldo Emerson, | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23590 |
Ridley Scott
Sir Ridley Scott (born 30 November 1937) is an English filmmaker. He is best known for directing the science fiction horror film "Alien" (1979), the neo-noir dystopian film "Blade Runner" (1982), the road adventure film "Thelma & Louise" (1991), the historical drama film "Gladiator" (2000), the war film "Black Hawk Down" (2001), and the science fiction film "The Martian" (2015).
Beginning his career in advertising, where he honed his filmmaking skills by making inventive mini-films for television commercials, Scott's work is known for its atmospheric and highly concentrated visual style. Though his films range widely in setting and period, they frequently showcase memorable imagery of urban environments, spanning 2nd-century Rome ("Gladiator"), 12th-century Jerusalem ("Kingdom of Heaven"), Medieval England ("Robin Hood"), contemporary Mogadishu ("Black Hawk Down"), or the futuristic cityscapes of "Blade Runner" and distant planets in "Alien", "", "Prometheus", and "The Martian". Several of his films are also known for their strong female characters.
Scott has been nominated for three Academy Awards for Directing, which he received for "Thelma & Louise", "Gladiator", and "Black Hawk Down". "Gladiator" won the Academy Award for Best Picture, while Scott himself received a nomination in that category for the 2015 film "The Martian". In 1995, both Scott and his brother Tony received a BAFTA for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema. In 2003, he was knighted for services to the British film industry. In a 2004 BBC poll, he was ranked at No. 10 on the list of most influential people in British culture. He received an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Art in London in 2015, and the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement in 2018.
Scott was born on 30 November 1937 in South Shields, County Durham, the son of Elizabeth (née Williams) and Colonel Francis Percy Scott. His great-uncle Dixon Scott was a pioneer of the cinema chain, and opened many cinemas around Tyneside. One of his cinemas, Tyneside Cinema, is still operating in Newcastle and is the last remaining newsreel cinema in the UK. Born shortly before World War II began, Scott was brought up in a military family. His father, an officer in the Royal Engineers, was absent for most of his early life. His elder brother, Frank, joined the British Merchant Navy when he was still young, and the pair had little contact. During this time, the family moved around; they lived in Cumberland, as well as other areas in England, in addition to Wales and Germany. Scott's younger brother, Tony, also became a film director. After World War II, the Scott family moved back to their native area and eventually settled on Greens Beck Road in Hartburn, County Durham, the industrial landscape of which would later inspire visuals in Scott's film "Blade Runner". His interest in science fiction began by reading the novels of H. G. Wells as a child. He was also influenced by science-fiction films such as "It! The Terror from Beyond Space", "The Day the Earth Stood Still", and "Them!" He said these films "kind of got [him] going a little" but his attention was not fully caught until he saw Stanley Kubrick's "", about which he said, "Once I saw that, I knew what I could do." He studied at Grangefield Grammar School and West Hartlepool College of Art from 1954 to 1958, obtaining a diploma in design.
Scott went on to study at the Royal College of Art in London, contributing to college magazine "ARK" and helping to establish the college film department. For his final show, he made a black and white short film, "Boy and Bicycle", starring both his younger brother and his father (the film was later released on the "Extras" section of "The Duellists" DVD). In February 1963, Scott was named in the title credits as "Designer" for the BBC television programme "Tonight". After graduation in 1963, he secured a job as a trainee set designer with the BBC, leading to work on the popular television police series "Z-Cars" and science fiction series "Out of the Unknown". He was originally assigned to design the second "Doctor Who" serial, "The Daleks", which would have entailed realising the serial's eponymous alien creatures. However, shortly before he was due to start work, a schedule conflict meant he was replaced by Raymond Cusick. In 1965, he began directing episodes of television series for the BBC, only one of which, an episode of "Adam Adamant Lives!", is available commercially.
In 1968, Ridley and Tony Scott founded Ridley Scott Associates (RSA), a film and commercial production company. Working alongside Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson and cinematographer Hugh Johnson, Ridley Scott made many commercials at RSA during the 1970s, including a 1973 Hovis bread advertisement, "Bike Round" (underscored by the slow movement of Dvořák's "New World" symphony rearranged for brass), filmed in Gold Hill, Shaftesbury, Dorset. A nostalgia themed television advert that captured the public imagination, it was voted the UK's favourite commercial in a 2006 poll. In the 1970s the Chanel No. 5 brand needed revitalisation having run the risk of being labelled as mass market and passé. Directed by Scott in the 1970s and 1980s, Chanel television commercials were inventive mini-films with production values of surreal fantasy and seduction, which "played on the same visual imagery, with the same silhouette of the bottle."
Five members of the Scott family are directors, and all have worked for RSA. His brother Tony was a successful film director whose career spanned more than two decades; his sons Jake and Luke are both acclaimed directors of commercials, as is his daughter, Jordan Scott. Jake and Jordan both work from Los Angeles; Luke is based in London. In 1995, Shepperton Studios was purchased by a consortium headed by Ridley and Tony Scott, which extensively renovated the studios while also expanding and improving its grounds.
"The Duellists" (1977) marked Ridley Scott's first feature film as director. Shot in Europe, it was nominated for the main prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and won an award for Best Debut Film. "The Duellists" had limited commercial impact internationally. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, it follows two French Hussar officers, D'Hubert and Feraud (Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel) whose quarrel over an initially minor incident turns into a bitter extended feud spanning fifteen years, interwoven with the larger conflict that provides its backdrop. The film has been acclaimed for providing a historically authentic portrayal of Napoleonic uniforms and military conduct. The 2013 release of the film on Blu-ray coincided with the publication of an essay on the film in a collection of scholarly essays on Scott.
Scott had originally planned next to adapt a version of "Tristan and Iseult", but after seeing "Star Wars", he became convinced of the potential of large scale, effects-driven films. He accepted the job of directing "Alien", the 1979 horror/science-fiction film that would win him international success. Scott made the decision to switch Ellen Ripley from the standard male action hero to a heroine. Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver), who appeared in the first four "Alien" films, would become a cinematic icon. The final scene of John Hurt's character has been named by a number of publications as one of the most memorable in cinematic history. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25493 |
History of the Republic of the Congo
The history of the Republic of the Congo has been marked by diverse civilisations: indigenous, French and post-independence.
The earliest inhabitants of the region comprising present-day Congo were the Bambuti people. The Bambuti were linked to Pygmy tribes whose Stone Age culture was slowly replaced by Bantu tribes coming from regions north of present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo about 2,000 years ago, introducing Iron Age culture to the region. The main Bantu tribe living in the region were the Kongo, also known as Bakongo, who established mostly weak and unstable kingdoms along the mouth, north and south of the Congo River. The capital of this Kongolese kingdom, Mbanza Kongo, later baptized as São Salvador by the Portuguese, is a town in northern Angola near the border with the DRC.
From the capital they ruled over an empire encompassing large parts of present-day Angola, the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo. They ruled over nearby tributary states, often by appointing sons of the Kongo kings to head these states. It had six so-called provinces called Mbemba, Soyo, Mbamba, Mbata, Nsundi and Mpangu. With the Kingdom of Loango in the north and the Kingdom of Mbundu in the south being tributary states. In the East it bordered on the Kwango river, a tributary of the Congo River. In total the kingdom is said to have had 3 to 4 million inhabitants and a surface of about 300,000 km². According to oral traditions it was established in around 1400 when King Lukeni lua Nimi conquered the kingdom of Kabunga and established Mbanza Kongo as its capital.
This African Iron Age culture came under great pressure with the arrival of the first Europeans, in this case Portuguese explorers. King John II of Portugal sought, in order to break Venetian and Ottoman control over trade with the East, to organize a series of expeditions south along the African coast with the goal of establishing direct contact with Asia. In 1482–1483, Captain Diogo Cão, sailing southwards on the uncharted Congo River, discovered the mouth of the river, and became the first European to encounter the Kingdom of Kongo.
Initially relations were limited and considered beneficial to both sides. With Christianity easily accepted by the local nobility, leading on 3 May 1491 to the baptism of king Nzinga a Nkuwu as the first Christian Kongolese king João I. He was succeeded after his death in 1506 by his son Nzinga Mbemba, who ruled as King Afonso I until 1543. Under his reign Christianity gained a strong foothold in the country. Many churches were built in Mbanza, of which the Kulumbimbi Cathedral (erected between 1491 and 1534) was the most impressive. In theory the kings of Portugal and Kongo were equals and they exchanged letters as such. Kongo at some point even established diplomatic relations with the Vatican, and the Pope appointed a local priest as bishop for the region.
The result was a series of revolts against Portuguese rule of which the battle of Mbwila and the revolt led by Kimpa Vita (Tchimpa Vita) were the most important. The battle of Mbwila (or battle of Ambouilla or battle of Ulanga) was the result of a conflict between the Portuguese, led by governor André Vidal de Negreiros, and the Kongolese king António I concerning mining rights. The Kongolese refused to give the Portuguese extra territorial rights and the Portuguese were angry because of Kongolese support for previous Dutch invasions of the region. During a battle on 25 October 1665 an estimated 20,000 Kongolese fought against the Portuguese, who won the battle thanks to the early death in battle of Kongolese King Afonso I of Kongo.
The revolt of Kimpa Vita was another attempt to regain independence from the Portuguese. Baptised around 1684 as Dona Béatrice, Kimpa Vita was raised Catholic and being very pious she became a nun seeing visions of St. Anthony of Padua ordering her to restore the kingdom of Kongo to its former glory. Creating the Anthonian prophetic movement she interfered directly in the then civil war between the three members of the local nobility claiming the Kongolese throne, João II, Pedro IV and Pedro Kibenga. In it she took sides against Pedro IV, considered the favorite of the Portuguese. Her revolt, during which she captured the capital Mbanza Kongo, was short lived. She was captured by the forces of Pedro IV and under orders of Portuguese Capuchin Friars condemned for being a witch and a heretic and consequently burned to death. For many, she is the African version of Joan of Arc and an early symbol of African resistance against colonialism because, for her outspokenness, she was burned alive on a pyre.
As a result of all these wars the kingdom of the Loango in the north gained independence from Kongo. Also new kingdoms came to existence of which the Téké was the most important, ruling over a large area encompassing present-day Brazzaville and Kinshasa. Portugal's position in Europe suffered a major change in 1580 when the Kingdoms of Spain and Portugal were united by a personal union under King Philip, creating the Iberian Union which lasted until 1640. This resulted in a diminished role for Portugal in African affairs, including the area around the mouth of the Congo River. The Kingdom of Kongo was reduced to a small enclave in the north of Angola with King Pedro V in 1888 finally accepting to become a vassal of the Portuguese. The Portuguese abolished the kingdom after the revolt of the Kongolese in 1914.
The period leading up to the Berlin Conference on Africa saw a rush by the major European powers to increase their control of the African continent. The rise in Western Europe of capitalism and the consequent industrialization led to a fast-growing demand for African raw materials like rubber, palm oil and cotton. Those who had these raw materials could have their economy grow strong. Others would lose out. This resulted in a new and more intensified scramble for Africa.
The Congo River hereby was a prime target for this new conquest by the European nations. Here the French, the Belgian King Leopold II and the Portuguese, in close cooperation with the British, fought for control of this area. Resulting in the division of the mouth of the Congo River between Portugal, who obtained Cabinda, an enclave north of the Congo River situated on the Atlantic Coast, the French who seized the large area north of the River, and king Leopold II gaining only a small foothold at the mouth of the Congo River but obtaining the huge hinterland, the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire). Hereby Leopold II obtained control via his International African Society and later the International Congolese Society, so-called philanthropic organizations who hired the British explorer Henry Morton Stanley to establish its authority. This resulted in the creation of the Congo Free State, the private empire of Leopold II. On November 15, 1908 the Belgian parliament annexed the colony, the reign of Leopold II over Congo being discredited.
On the north bank of the river arrived the French explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, born in the Italian city of Rome in 1852. As a French naval officer he refused to work for the International African Society and instead helped the French in their conquest of the area north of the Congo River. Traveling from the Atlantic Ocean coast in present-day Gabon via the rivers Ogooué and Lefini he arrived in 1880 in the kingdom of the Téké where on 10 September 1880 he signed the treaty with king Makoko establishing French control over the region and making his capital soon afterwards at the small village named Mfoa later to be called Brazzaville.
Establishing French control was difficult. Belgian King Leopold II also tried to gain a foothold on the northern bank of the Congo River and sent Stanley to the area around Brazzaville. Following this was a series of revolts against the French of which the Bahangala Revolt led by Mabiala Ma Nganga was the first important one. It started in 1892 with the murder of the French administrator Laval and ended with the killing by the French of its leader in 1896. Many of the revolts were the result of French policy of maltreating the local population through the use of harsh forced labor. The locals were governed through the use of the repressive Code de l'indigénat Act. A law, which introduced forced labor, made it illegal for the local population to publicly air its grievances and excluded them from all the important jobs.
The French government allowed for the establishment of the so-called Concessionary Companies in 1889 so as to circumvent the economic non-discrimination provisions of the Treaty of Berlin and maximize the revenue drawn from underpopulated and undeveloped regions under their control. Roughly forty companies with a capital of roughly 59.5 million francs were given a free hand to exploit the colony's resources under virtual monopoly conditions. 650,000 square miles of land, except for a few strategic locations mainly around the Congo River, were leased as concessions for a thirty-year period. Cost-benefit considerations reigned supreme as often undercapitalized companies employed unqualified personnel and/or adventurers who lived off the land while stripping their concessions of all possible riches. Ivory and rubber virtually disappeared from the concessionary areas; indigenous populations were decimated by brutal forced labor, disease, and maladministration, and some fled to neighboring colonies.
French rule was brutal and led to many thousands of deaths. The construction between 1921 and 1934 of the 511 km long railway, the Chemin de Fer Congo-Océan between Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire is for example said to have cost the lives of around 23,000 locals and a few hundred Europeans. Any resistance against French colonial rule, however small, was brutally repressed. Ultimately the French government lost more money than it gained in rents and taxes from the Concessionary system upon which the colony had become reliant, and French public opinion was shocked by reports of the wide-scale brutalities which the system had given rise to. By 1930 most of the Concessionary companies had gone bankrupt and the practice had largely ceased.
In 1911 parts of the colony (the so-called New Cameroon territories) were ceded to the German Empire in exchange for German recognition of France's rights to Morocco. German rule in these regions lasted only five years, and ultimately the New Cameroon territories were seized back by France in 1916, after the fall of German forces in Kamerun.
The first name given officially on 1 August 1886 for the new colony was Colony of Gabon and Congo. On 30 April 1891 this was renamed Colony of French Congo, consisting of Gabon and Middle Congo, the name the French gave to Congo-Brazzaville at that time. On 15 January 1910 the colony again was renamed to French Equatorial Africa (Afrique Equatoriale Française or AEF), this time it also included Chad and Oubangui-Chari, nowadays the Central African Republic. Congo-Brazzaville gained autonomy on the November 28, 1958 and independence from France on the August 15, 1960. The capital of the AEF was Brazzaville, for Middle Congo the capital was Pointe Noire.
The Federation quickly became centered on Middle Congo due to the presence of the Governor-General in Brazzaville, so while each colony was theoretically fairly autonomous the centralization of powers meant that the Governor-General gave preferential treatment to the region in which he resided. Education, health services, judicial systems, and public works were all under the control of Brazzaville-based authorities who could overrule the territorial governors. Middle Congo was provided with the only deep-water port in the Federation at Pointe Noire as well as the railway. Brazzaville's public buildings, schools, law courts, trading firms, telecommunications and medical services soon surpassed by far their counterparts elsewhere in the Federation. Peoples from more marginal areas of AEF such as Chad were forced to work in Middle Congo, and funds were funneled primarily into the region, causing a great sense of resentment. Ultimately the massive expansion of Middle Congo's civil service contributed to a drain of the rural population into the cities, and created an entrenched bureaucracy and trade union network that would prove to be a burden on state stability following independence.
The French government continued to rule through a Governor-General until the elections of 1957 when a High Commissioner of the République was established. The total population in 1950 for the whole AEF was 4,143,922, with only around 15,000 non-Africans present.
As with the arrival of the Portuguese events in Europe again had a deep impact on the affairs of Congo-Brazzaville, and Africa in general. Marshal Philippe Pétain surrendered to Germany on 22 June 1940, and this gave birth to the so-called Vichy France republic. Pétain had earlier refused to continue the war against Germany from African territory alongside Great Britain. With the help of a handful of local French administrators and officers, the British, and the Belgian government in exile Charles de Gaulle's Free French won over large parts of the French Empire. Politicians such as René Pleven, who later became prime minister, and officers as General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, Lieutenant René Amiot, Captain Raymond Delange, Colonel Edgar De Larminat and Adolphe Sicé helped him to gain control of the AEF territory. In three days troops loyal to De Gaulle took control of Chad (26 August 1940), Cameroon (27 August) and of Middle Congo (the 28th of August). Brazzaville hereby became the capital of the so-called Free French in Africa, ruled in theory by a Conseil de défense de l'Empire set up by De Gaulle on 27 October 1940. The FEA centred on Middle Congo went overnight from a backwater to a linchpin of Free French forces in Africa. Point Noire in particular became a vital transit area and base for bringing supplies, soldiers and labor from the interior to the coast and back again. The intense use of the railway led to the rise of a new urban labor class and improved the infrastructure of the colony.
In this revolt the then-governor of Chad Félix Eboué played a key role. Because of this and his earlier support for De Gaulle he became Governor-General of the Afrique Equatoriale Française (AEF) in 1940, the first non-white to achieve this position in French colonial history. Born in 1884 in French Guiana this descendant of African slaves was a key figure together with René Pleven in the organization by the De Gaulle government of the Brazzaville Conference of 1944, which took place between the January 30 and February 8, 1944 and which did set out the new direction of French colonial policies after World War II. Many of these were policies already put forward by Eboué in his 1941 book entitled "La nouvelle politique coloniale de l'A.E.F." This conference led to the abolition of forced labor and the code de l'indigénat, which had made the political and social activities of the indigenous people illegal. This in turn led to the new French constitution of the Fourth Republic approved on 27 October 1946 and the election of the first Equatorial African members of Parliament in Paris. For Eboué and the new French government the people in the colonies were officially part of the French empire and had a new series of rights, including freedom of association, a uniform code of law, and elective institutions at three levels. A severely weakened France, under pressure from the US, had hardly any option but to change its colonial policies.
Governor General Felix Eboué had a carrot and stick approach to local Congolese grievances. While allowing certain freedoms he brutally repressed any activities deemed dangerous to French colonial control. The case of the Congolese trade unionist André Matsoua (Matswa) shows his tough approach to political dissent.
André Matsoua can be seen as the father of modern Congolese nationalism. His rise shows how, in spite of the Code de l'Indigénat and the brutal repression, Africans in French colonies were able to set up resistance movements to colonial rule. Local schools run by French missionaries, as elsewhere in Africa formed the basis of this rise of African nationalism. André Matsoua got his education and contacts with European thinking through the church. Born in 1899 in Mandzakala he joined the French customs administration in Brazzaville in 1919 and soon after left for France where he joined the French army to fight in Morocco. He returned home as a non-commissioned officer. In 1926 he in Paris formed the Association des Originaires de l'A.E.F. with the purpose of helping people from his region living in France. For this he got support from some sections of French society as the French Communist Party and elements within the Free Masonry movement.
When in 1929 his group also became active in Congo itself and demanded an end to the Code de l'Indigénat, things changed. In 1929 the French dissolved Matsoua's association and he together with some of his friends were jailed and sent in exile to Chad, leading to riots and a campaign of disobedience against the French administration lasting many years. He however escaped to France in 1935 where under a new identity he continued his political work. Showing his loyalty to France, in spite of the harsh repression, he joined the French army to fighting the German invasion in 1940. Wounded, he was rearrested, and sent back to Brazzaville where on 8 February 1941 he was sentenced under Felix Eboué to work in labor camps for the rest of his life. He died under unclear circumstances in prison on 13 January 1942. His supporters maintain that he was murdered, and began the Matsouanist movement, active chiefly among the Lari, even after independence.
The Congo went in the space of fourteen years from having no political freedom whatsoever to complete independence, making the rise of legitimate democratic institutions respected by a substantial proportion of the population near-impossible. Original democratic institutions were modeled on those of France, but multiple Africanising constitutions were instituted and then set aside in 1961, 1963, 1968, 1973 and 1992. As a heterogeneous state, political parties very quickly began to focus solely on ethnic and regionalist groupings. For example, between 1946 and 1956 the Lari, an important community in the country, refused to take part in elections, with many under the belief that their deceased messianic leader André Matsoua would return. The absence of the Bakongo from early politics led to a power vacuum into which the Vili and Mbochi moved until independence.
The most prominent Congolese politician until 1956 was Jean-Félix Tchicaya, born in Libreville on 9 November 1903 and a member of the royal family of the Kingdom of Loango. Together with Ivorian leader Félix Houphouët-Boigny and others, he formed the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA) in 1946 and, in 1947, the Parti Progressiste Africain. On 21 November 1945, Tchicaya became one of the first African leaders elected to the French parliament, giving him great prestige in his native country.
Although Tchicaya was on the left of the French political spectrum, he never strongly questioned French colonial rule. This resulted in a loss of influence as the Congo prepared for independence, influenced by nationalist anti-colonial leaders as Kwame Nkrumah from Ghana and Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser. Only by aligning himself with his erstwhile enemy, the more radical Jacques Opangault in the parliamentary elections of March 31, 1957 could he continue to play a leading role in Congolese political life.
Prior to independence, the French establishment and Catholic Church feared Opangault's radicalism and favored the rise of Fulbert Youlou, a former priest. The defection of Georges Yambot from the African Socialist Movement (MSA) to Youlou's Union Démocratique pour la Défense d'Intérêts Africains (UDDIA) helped Youlou become prime minister in 1958. This led to the establishment of the Republic of Congo on 28 November 1958 (with Brazzaville replacing Point Noire as the country's capital).
On 16 February 1959, a revolt organized by Opangault and his MSA erupted in clashes along tribal lines between Southerners, supporting Youlou, and people from the North, loyal to the MSA. The riots were suppressed by French army and Opangault was arrested. In total about 200 people died. Prime Minister Youlou then held the elections for which Opangault had previously asked in vain. After the May 9 arrest of several politicians, including veteran politician Simon Kikhounga Ngot, because of an alleged communist plot, parliamentary elections were convincingly won by Youlou. On 12 July 1960 France agreed to Congo becoming fully independent. On 15 August 1960, the Republic of Congo became an independent country and Fulbert Youlou became its first President.
In November that year, Youlou released Opangault, Ngot and other adversaries, as part of an amnesty. In return both politicians, as well as Germain Bicoumat, joined Youlou's government and received ministerial posts, effectively destroying any organized political opposition.
Shortly before gaining independence an event occurred that in the years to come would have deep influence on the country and its relations with the outside world, mainly France. Although French geologists had already established for certain in 1926 the presence of oil and gas in the country, in 1957 near Pointe Indienne the French Societé des Pétroles de l'Afrique Equatoriale Françaises (SPAEF) found oil and gas reserves offshore in sufficient exploitable quantities. Only then did France start exploiting these reserves. The reason was that in Algeria a war of independence was fought, and the French were losing. Until then Algeria was the main source of oil and gas destined for the French market. To remain independent of the American and British oil majors France had to look elsewhere for its supply. For some the discovery of oil of the Congolese coast was a blessing. For the majority of the local population it rather proved to be a curse as the International Monetary Fund in its yearly reports on the country a few years ago sadly observed. By the 1970s oil was Congo's largest export, however global market-price vicissitudes together with Congo's tendency to rely on overly optimistic projections of future revenues for the political purposes of sustaining a large civil service and a highly-inefficient State sector, have regularly caused serious fiscal imbalances. Development of the sector has been hampered by the nation's traditionally powerful trade unionist movement, political uncertainties, as well as the costs of exploitation in a country with poor transport infrastructure.
As Brazzaville had been the capital of the large federation of French Equatorial Africa, it had an important workforce and lots of trade unions. Further radicalization elsewhere in Africa as a result of the decolonization led to revolt against the dictatorial rule of Youlou. Following Youlou's 6 August 1963 announcement of the formation of a one-party state with only one legal trade union, trade unions started their revolt on 13 August. Youlou's palace was besieged in August by angry workers and the French refused to intervene militarily, and he was forced to resign. This uprising is known as Les Trois Glorieuses (the Three Glorious Days), named after the French July Revolution against King Charles X in 1830. Fulbert Youlou and his main supporters were arrested by the military and ceased to play any further role in Congolese political life.
The Congolese military took charge of the country briefly and installed a civilian provisional government headed by Alphonse Massamba-Débat. Under the 1963 constitution, Massamba-Débat was elected president for a five-year term and named Pascal Lissouba to serve as prime minister.
President Massamba-Débat's term in office was characterized by a shift to the political left which included nationalizations and increased political ties to the USSR and communist China. Massamba-Débat's government ended in August 1968 when Captain Marien Ngouabi and other army officers toppled the government in a bloodless coup. After a period of consolidation under the newly formed National Revolutionary Council, Ngouabi assumed the presidency on December 31, 1968. One year later, President Ngouabi proclaimed the People's Republic of the Congo, Africa's first People's Republic and announced the decision of the National Revolutionary Movement to change its name to the Congolese Party of Labour (PCT).
On March 18, 1977 President Ngouabi was assassinated. A number of people were accused of shooting Ngouabi were tried and some of them executed, including former President Alphonse Massemba-Débat and a fisherman, Chanrithy Moukoko, but there was little evidence to prove their involvement, and the motive behind the assassination remains unclear.
An 11-member Military Committee of the Party (CMP) was named to head an interim government with Col. (later Gen.) Joachim Yhombi-Opango to serve as President of the Republic. After two years in power, Yhombi-Opango was accused of corruption and deviation from party directives, and removed from office on February 5, 1979, by the Central Committee of the PCT, which then simultaneously designated Vice President and Defense Minister Col. Denis Sassou-Nguesso as interim President.
The Central Committee directed Sassou-Nguesso to take charge of preparations for the Third Extraordinary Congress of the PCT, which proceeded to elect him President of the Central Committee and President of the Republic. Under a congressional resolution, Yhombi-Opango was stripped of all powers, rank, and possessions and placed under arrest to await trial for high treason. He was released from house arrest in late 1984 and ordered back to his native village of Owando.
After decades of turbulent politics bolstered by Marxist-Leninist rhetoric, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Congolese gradually moderated their economic and political views to the point that, in 1992, Congo completed a transition to multi-party democracy. Ending a long history of one-party Marxist rule, a specific agenda for this transition was laid out during Congo's national conference of 1991 and culminated in August 1992 with multi-party parliamentary and presidential elections. Sassou Nguesso conceded defeat and Congo's new president, Professor Pascal Lissouba, was inaugurated on August 31, 1992.
Congolese democracy experienced severe trials in 1993 and early 1994. The President dissolved the National Assembly in November 1992, calling for new elections in May 1993. The results of those elections were disputed, touching off violent civil unrest in June and again in November. In February 1994 the decisions of an international board of arbiters were accepted by all parties, and the risk of large-scale insurrection subsided.
Mr. Lissouba lost favour with the French government early in his presidency by asking the American-owned Occidental Petroleum company to provide financial support for his Government in exchange for promises of future oil production. As the French company Elf Aquitaine (which reaped much of its profits from the Republic of the Congo) had only just recently opened a large deep-water oil platform off the coast of Pointe-Noire, Mr. Lissouba was pressured by the French into canceling all contracts with Occidental Petroleum, but suspicions of Lissouba remained.
However, Congo's democratic progress derailed in 1997. As presidential elections scheduled for July 1997 approached, tensions between the Lissouba and Sassou Nguesso camps mounted. In May, a visit by Sassou Nguesso to Owando, Joachim Yhombi-Opango's political stronghold, led to the outbreak of violence between their supporters. On June 5, 1997, government forces surrounded Sassou Nguesso's home in the Mpila section of Brazzaville, attempting to arrest two men, Pierre Aboya and Engobo Bonaventure, who had been implicated in the earlier violence. Fighting broke out between the government forces and Sassou Nguesso's fighters, called Cobras, igniting a 4-month conflict that destroyed or damaged much of Brazzaville.
Angola supported Sassou Nguesso with about 1,000 Angolan tanks, troops. Support by the sympathetic French government further bolstered Sassou Nguesso's rebels.
Together these forces took Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire in the morning of October 16. Lissouba fled the capital while his soldiers surrendered and citizens began looting. Yhombi-Opango supported Lissouba during the war, serving as leader of the Presidential Majority, and after Sassou Nguesso's victory he fled into exile in Ivory Coast and France. Soon thereafter, Sassou Nguesso declared himself President and named a 33-member government.
In January 1998 the Sassou Nguesso regime held a National Forum for Reconciliation to determine the nature and duration of the transition period. The Forum, tightly controlled by the government, decided elections should be held in about three years, elected a transition advisory legislature, and announced that a constitutional convention will finalize a draft constitution. However, the eruption in late 1998 of fighting between Sassou Nguesso's government forces and an armed opposition disrupted the transitional return to democracy. This new violence also closed the economically vital Congo-Ocean Railway, caused great destruction and loss of life in southern Brazzaville and in the Pool, Bouenza, and Niari regions, and displaced hundreds of thousands of persons.
In November and December 1999, the government signed agreements with representatives of many, though not all, of the rebel groups. The December accord, mediated by President Omar Bongo of Gabon, called for follow-on, inclusive political negotiations between the government and the opposition.
Sassou won elections in 2002 with an implausible 90% or so of the votes. His two main rivals, Lissouba and Bernard Kolelas, were prevented from competing and the only remaining credible rival, André Milongo, boycotted the elections and withdrew from the race due to, among other reasons, perceived voter fraud on the part of Sassou. A new constitution was agreed upon in January 2002, granting the president new powers and extending his term to seven years as well as introducing a new bicameral assembly. On December 30, twenty opposition political parties issued a statement through spokesman Chistope Ngokaka, saying Sassou's government had purchased "weapons and military craft... under contracts signed between the officials in Brazzaville and the government in Beijing." Sassou was re-elected for a further seven-year term at the next presidential election in July 2009.
In 2015, Sassou changed the constitution to run in the 2016 election. He won the election believed by many to be fraudulent. After violent protests in the capital, Sassou attacked the Pool region, where the Ninja rebels of the civil war used to be based, in what was believed to be a distraction. This led to a revival of the Ninja rebels who launched attacks against the army in April 2016, leading 80,000 people to flee their homes. A ceasefire deal was signed in December 2017. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25495 |
Demographics of the Republic of the Congo
This article is about the demographic features of the population of the Republic of the Congo, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
The Republic of the Congo's sparse population is concentrated in the southwestern portion of the country, leaving the vast areas of tropical jungle in the north virtually uninhabited. Thus, Congo is one of the most urbanized countries in Africa, with 85% of its total population living in a few urban areas, namely in Brazzaville, Pointe-Noire, or one of the small cities or villages lining the railway which connects the two cities. In rural areas, industrial and commercial activity has declined rapidly in recent years, leaving rural economies dependent on the government for support and subsistence. Before the 1997 war, about 15,000 Europeans and other non-Africans lived in Congo, most of whom were French. Presently, only about 9,500 remain. Pygmies make up 2% of Congo's population.
According to the total population was in , compared to only 808 000 in 1950. The proportion of children below the age of 15 in 2010 was 40.6%, 55.7% was between 15 and 65 years of age, while 3.7% was 65 years or older
.
Registration of vital events in the Republic of the Congo is incomplete. The Population Departement of the United Nations prepared the following estimates.
Total Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted Fertility Rate) and Crude Birth Rate (CBR):
Fertility data as of 2011-2012 (DHS Program):
Life expectancy for the population was estimated at 54.91 years in 2011: 53.62 for males and 56.25 for females. The adult prevalence rate for HIV/AIDS was 3.4% as of 2009, representing 77,000 people living with the disease and 5,100 deaths. The Republic of Congo is considered to have a high degree of risk of infectious diseases, particularly bacterial diarrhea, hepatitis A and typhoid fever (all food- or waterborne), and malaria (vectorborne).
As of 2003, 83.8% of the adult population was considered literate, consisting 89.3% of males and 78.4% of females.
Demographic statistics according to the World Population Review in 2019.
The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook.
5,062,021 (July 2018 est.)
definition: age 15 and over can read and write (2015 est.) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25497 |
Economy of the Republic of the Congo
The economy of the Republic of the Congo is a mixture of subsistence hunting and agriculture, an industrial sector based largely on petroleum extraction and support services, and government spending characterized by budget problems and overstaffing. Petroleum has supplanted forestry as the mainstay of the economy, providing a major share of government revenues and exports. Nowadays the Republic of the Congo is increasingly converting natural gas to electricity rather than burning it, greatly improving energy prospects.
Earlier in the 1990s, Congo's major employer was the state bureaucracy, which had a payroll of 80,000, which is enormous for a country of Congo's size. The World Bank and other international financial institutions pressured Congo to institute sweeping civil service reforms in order to reduce the size of the state bureaucracy and pare back a civil service payroll that amounted to more than 20% of GDP in 1993. The effort to cut back began in 1994 with a 50% devaluation that cut the payroll in half in dollar terms and by a mid-year reduction of nearly 8,000 in civil service employment and resulted in inflation of 61%. Inflation has since subsided.
Between 1994-96, the Congolese economy underwent a difficult transition. The prospects for building the foundation of a healthy economy, however, were better than at any time in the previous 15 years. Congo took a number of measures to liberalize its economy, including reforming the tax, investment, labor, and hydrocarbon codes. Planned privatizations of key parastatals, primarily telecommunications and transportation monopolies, were launched to help improve a dilapidated and unreliable infrastructure. To build on the momentum achieved during the two-year period, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a three-year ESAF economic program in June 1996.
By the end of 1996, Congo had made substantial progress in various areas targeted for reform. It made significant strides toward macroeconomic stabilization through improving public finances and restructuring external debt. This change was accompanied by improvements in the structure of expenditures, with a reduction in personnel expenditures. Further, Congo benefited from debt restructuring from a Paris Club agreement in July 1996.
This reform program came to a halt, however, in early June 1997 when war broke out. Denis Sassou-Nguesso, who returned to power when the war ended in October 1997, publicly expressed interest in moving forward on economic reforms and privatization and in renewing cooperation with international financial institutions. However, economic progress was badly hurt by slumping oil prices in 1998, which worsened the Republic of the Congo's budget deficit. A second blow was the resumption of armed conflict in December 1998.
Congo's economic prospects remain largely dependent on the country's ability to establish political stability and democratic rule. The World Bank is considering Congo for post-conflict assistance. Priorities will be in reconstruction, basic services, infrastructure, and utilities. President Sassou has publicly expressed interest in moving forward on economic reforms and privatization, as well as in renewing cooperation with international financial institutions. However, the return of armed conflict in 1998 hindered economic reform and recovery.
Congo and the United States ratified a bilateral investment treaty designed to facilitate and protect foreign investment. The country also adopted a new investment code intended to attract foreign capital. Despite this, Congo's investment climate is not considered favorable, offering few meaningful incentives. High costs for labor, energy, raw materials, and transportation; a restrictive labor code; low productivity and high production costs; militant labor unions; and an inadequate transportation infrastructure are among the factors discouraging investment. The recent political instability, war damage, and looting also undermined investor confidence. As a result, Congo has little American investment outside of the oil sector.
In recent years, the Republic's economic growth has slowed because of the 2014-2016 fall in oil prices.
The Congo's growing petroleum sector is by far the country's major revenue earner. In the early 1980s, rapidly rising oil revenues enabled the government to finance large-scale development projects with GDP growth averaging 5% annually, one of the highest rates in Africa. However, the government has mortgaged a substantial portion of its oil earnings, contributing to the government's shortage of revenues. The Congolese oil sector is dominated by the French parastatal oil company Total, which accounts for 70% of the country's annual oil production. In second position is the Italian oil firm Εni. Chevron, independent CMS Nomeco, and Exxon Mobil are among the American companies active in petroleum exploration or production. Following recent discoveries and oil fields currently under development, Congo's oil production is expected to continue to rise significantly in the next few years.
The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2017.
GDP:
purchasing power parity - $18.48 billion (2011 est.)
GDP - real growth rate:
4.5% (2011 est.)
GDP - per capita:
purchasing power parity - $4,600 (2011 est.)
GDP - composition by sector:
"agriculture:"
4.2% (2011 est.)
"industry:"
70.7% (2011 est.)
"services:"
25.1% (2011 est.)
Household income or consumption by percentage share:
"lowest 10%:"
2.1% (2005)
"highest 10%:"
37.1% (2005)
Inflation rate (consumer prices):
6% (2011 est.)
Labor force:
1.514 million (2007)
Ease of Doing Business Rank:
181st
Budget:
"revenues:"
$6.938 billion (2011 est.)
"expenditures:"
$3.535 billion (2011 est.)
Industries:
petroleum extraction, cement, lumber, brewing, sugar, palm oil, soap, flour, cigarettes
Industrial production growth rate:
12% (2010 est.)
Electricity - production:
452 million kWh (2008 est.)
Electricity - consumption:
534 million kWh (2008 est.)
Electricity - exports:
0 kWh (2009 est.)
Electricity - imports:
436 million kWh (2008 est.)
Agriculture - products:
cassava (tapioca), sugar, rice, maize, peanuts, vegetables, coffee, cocoa, forest products
Exports:
$12.38 billion (2011 est.)
Exports - commodities:
petroleum, lumber, plywood, sugar, Cocoa bean, coffee, diamonds
Exports - partners:
China 37.9%, United States 20%, Australia 6.2%, France 6.0%, Spain 4.8%, Italy 4.3%, Netherlands 4.3% (2011)
Imports:
$4.917 billion (2011 est.)
Imports - commodities:
capital equipment, construction materials, foodstuffs
Imports - partners:
France 17.3%, China 12.6%, India 9.5%, Italy 7.5%, Brazil 7.3%, United States 5.8% (2011)
Debt - external:
$4.955 billion (2011 est.)
Currency:
1 Communaute Financiere Africaine franc (CFAF) = 100 centimes
Fiscal year:
calendar year
Public debt as percentage of GDP:
61.2% (2017) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25499 |
Telecommunications in the Republic of the Congo
Telecommunications in the Republic of the Congo include radio, television, fixed and mobile telephones, and the Internet.
Most citizens obtain their news from local radio or television stations as there are no nationwide radio or television stations.
Stations from nearby Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, can be received in Brazzaville and rebroadcasts of the BBC (103.8 FM), Radio France Internationale, and the Voice of America are available.
A growing proportion of the public, especially youth, are accessing the Internet more frequently and utilizing online social media. However, only the most affluent have Internet access in their own homes; others who accessed it use cybercafes.
There are no government restrictions on access to the Internet, or reports the government monitors e-mail or Internet chat rooms. The constitution and law provide for freedom of speech and press, and the government generally respects these rights. The law makes certain types of speech illegal, including incitement of ethnic hatred, violence, or civil war.
The constitution and law prohibit arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, or correspondence, and the government generally respects these prohibitions. The government makes no known attempts to collect personally identifiable information via the Internet. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25500 |
Transport in the Republic of the Congo
Transport in the Republic of the Congo includes land, air and water transportation. The country's rail system was built by forced laborers during the 1930s and largely remains in operation. There are also over 1,000 km of paved roads and two major international airports (Maya-Maya Airport and Pointe Noire Airport). The country also has a large port on the Atlantic Ocean at Pointe-Noire and others along the Congo River at Brazzaville and Impfondo.
"total:"
795 km (includes 285 km private track) - Congo-Ocean Railway connects Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire.
"narrow gauge:"
795 km 1.067-m gauge (1995 est.)
"total:"
12,800 km
"paved:"
1,242 km
"unpaved:"
11,558 km (1996 est.)
National Highways Network:
The Congo and Ubangi (Oubangui) rivers provide 1,120 km of commercially navigable water transport; other rivers are used for local traffic only.
crude oil 25 km
The Republic of the Congo has two international airports (Maya-Maya Airport in Brazzaville and Pointe Noire Airport. As of June 2014 no less than six airlines operated between the two airports and both airports had direct flights to Addis Ababa, Abidjan, Casablanca, Cotonou, Douala, Libreville, Johannesburg, Paris. Maya-Maya Airport was served by a larger number of airlines than Pointe Noire and had direct flights to various other destinations in Africa and the Middle East.
"total:"
4
"over 3,047 m:"
1
"1,524 to 2,437 m:"
3 (1999 est.)
"total:"
32
"1,524 to 2,437 m:"
8
"914 to 1,523 m:"
14
"under 914 m:"
10 (1999 est.) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25501 |
Armed Forces of the Republic of the Congo
The Armed Forces of the Republic of the Congo (), also less formally denoted as the "Forces armées congolaises" or its acronym FAC, are the military forces of the Republic of the Congo. They consist of the Congolese Army, the Congolese Air Force, the , and the . The dissolution of French Equatorial Africa in 1958, and France's impending military withdrawal from the Congo in August 1960, provided the impetuous for the formation of the FAC. The FAC and state paramilitary agencies are headed by an "Armed Forces Chief of General Staff", usually appointed by the President of the Republic of the Congo. Major General Guy Blanchard Okoï has served as chief of staff since 2012.
The Congolese military was created on January 16, 1961, and reflected the nature of the colonial security forces, which recruited among the country's northern ethnic groups and were staffed by junior Bakongo officers and a handful of French senior commissioned officers. President Alphonse Massamba-Débat, who seized power in 1963, expelled all the French personnel and sidelined the military in favor of independent political militias, which were trained by Cuban troops. The militias and the Congo's civil defense corps were later integrated with the FAC as the "Armée Nationale Populaire".
Under the People's Republic of the Congo, the FAC was again reorganized, with Mbochi career soldiers making up the bulk of the new officer corps; its effectiveness and standards, however, were gradually eroded by draconian political purges throughout the 1970s. A second major setback occurred during the 1990s, when mass desertions led to many FAC officers and enlisted troops joining regional militias. The FAC was reformed for the third time after the Second Congo War, incorporating many former rebels and militia combatants.
On 5 February 2012, there were munitions explosions at a tank regiment (seemingly 'Regiment Blinde') barracks located in Brazzaville's fifth arrondissement, Ouenze. Some 206 people were initially reported killed. There are five military barracks in the city, and after the explosion officials said the government had promised to move all munitions out of the capital.
Tanks are mostly older examples from the USSR.
The Navy has around 800 personnel. In October 2007, the US Navy provided some training to Congolese Navy personnel in Pointe Noire, a port city that is the second largest settlement in the country.
As of 2016 it was commanded by Rear Admiral Andre Bouagnabea-Moundanza.
As of 2019 the Navy operates a single Mil Mi-14 helicopter.
After achieving independence from France in 1960, the Congolese Air Force (Force Aerienne Congolaise) was started with equipment such as the Douglas C-47s, Broussards and Bell 47Gs, these were followed by Nord Noratlas tactical transports and Sud Alouette helicopter. In the 1970s the air force switched to Soviet equipment. This included five Ilyushin IL-14 and six turboprop Antonov An-24 transports and an An-26 in return for providing bases for Cuban MiG-17 operations over Angola. These fighters and a few MiG-15UTI combat trainers were transferred to the FAC. In 1990 these fighter were replaced by 16 USSR supplied MiG-21MF/bis Fishbeds plus a couple of MiG-21US trainers. Together with a Soviet training mission which stayed until late 1991, during that time there were numerous accidents that involved both Soviet and Congolese personnel. After the Soviets left there was only limited funding for MiG operations and they were withdrawn. Six Mi-8 helicopters were delivered from Ukraine in mid-1997 before the Cobra rebel takeover.
In 1990, the Air Force was reformed into its present state. Most fighter aircraft it possessed were scrapped in 2001. France and China provided most training to the Air Force in recent times.
See the article Congolese Air Force for current inventory. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25502 |
Raging Bull
Raging Bull is a 1980 American biographical sports drama film directed by Martin Scorsese, produced by Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler and adapted by Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin from Jake LaMotta's 1970 memoir "". The film, distributed by United Artists, stars Robert De Niro as Jake LaMotta, an Italian-American middleweight boxer whose self-destructive and obsessive rage, sexual jealousy, and animalistic appetite destroyed his relationship with his wife and family. Also featured in the film are Joe Pesci as Joey, LaMotta's well-intentioned brother and manager who tries to help Jake battle his inner demons, and Cathy Moriarty as his wife. Nicholas Colasanto, Theresa Saldana, and Frank Vincent all play supporting roles in the film.
Scorsese was initially reluctant to develop the project, though he eventually came to relate to LaMotta's story. Schrader re-wrote Martin's first screenplay, and Scorsese and De Niro together made uncredited contributions thereafter. Pesci was an unknown actor prior to the film, as was Moriarty, who was suggested for her role by Pesci. During principal photography, each of the boxing scenes was choreographed for a specific visual style and De Niro gained approximately to portray LaMotta in his later post-boxing years. Scorsese was exacting in the process of editing and mixing the film, expecting it to be his last major feature.
"Raging Bull" premiered in New York on November 14, 1980 and was released in theaters on December 19, 1980. The film had a lukewarm box office of $23.4 million against its $18 million budget. The film received mixed reviews upon its release; while De Niro's performance and the editing were widely acclaimed, it garnered criticism due to its violent content. Despite the mixed reviews, the film was nominated for eight Academy Awards at the 53rd Academy Awards (tying with "The Elephant Man" as the most nominated film of the ceremony), including Best Picture and Best Director, and won two: Best Actor for De Niro (his second Oscar) and Best Editing.
After its release, "Raging Bull" went on to garner a high critical reputation, and is now often considered Scorsese's magnum opus and one of the greatest films ever made. In 1990, it became the first film to be selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in its first year of eligibility.
In 1964, an aging, overweight Italian American, Jake LaMotta, practices a comedy routine.
In 1941, LaMotta is in a major boxing match against Jimmy Reeves, where he suffered his first loss. Jake's brother, Joey LaMotta, discusses a potential shot for the middleweight title with one of his Mafia connections, Salvy Batts. Some time thereafter, Jake spots a fifteen-year-old girl named Vickie at an open-air swimming pool in his Bronx neighborhood. He eventually pursues a relationship with her, even though he is already married. In 1943, Jake defeats Sugar Ray Robinson, and has a rematch three weeks later. Despite the fact that Jake dominates Robinson during the bout, the judges surprisingly rule in favor of Robinson and Joey feels Robinson won only because he was enlisting into the Army the following week. By 1945, Jake marries Vickie.
Jake constantly worries about Vickie having feelings for other men, particularly when she makes an off-hand comment about Tony Janiro, Jake's opponent in his next fight. His jealousy is evident when he brutally defeats Janiro in front of the local Mob boss, Tommy Como, and Vickie. As Joey discusses the victory with journalists at the Copacabana, he is distracted by seeing Vickie approach a table with Salvy and his crew. Joey speaks with Vickie, who says she is giving up on his brother. Blaming Salvy, Joey viciously attacks him in a fight that spills outside of the club. Como later orders them to apologize, and has Joey tell Jake that if he wants a chance at the championship title, which Como controls, he will have to take a dive first. In a match against Billy Fox, after briefly pummeling his opponent, Jake does not even bother to put up a fight. He is suspended shortly thereafter from the board on suspicion of throwing the fight, though he realizes the error of his judgment when it is too late. He is eventually reinstated, and in 1949, wins the middleweight championship title against Marcel Cerdan.
A year later, Jake asks Joey if he fought with Salvy at the Copacabana because of Vickie. Jake then asks if Joey had an affair with her; Joey refuses to answer, insults Jake, and leaves. Jake directly asks Vickie about the affair, and when she hides from him in the bathroom, he breaks down the door, prompting her to sarcastically state that she had sex with the entire neighborhood (including his brother, Salvy, and Tommy Como). Jake angrily walks to Joey's house, with Vickie following him, and assaults Joey in front of Joey's wife Lenora and their children before knocking Vickie unconscious. After defending his championship belt in a grueling fifteen-round bout against Laurent Dauthuille in 1950, he makes a call to his brother after the fight, but when Joey assumes Salvy is on the other end and starts insulting and cursing at him, Jake says nothing and hangs up. Estranged from Joey, Jake's career begins to decline slowly and he eventually loses his title to Sugar Ray Robinson in their final encounter in 1951.
By 1956, Jake and his family have moved to Miami. After he stays out all night at his new nightclub there, Vickie tells him she wants a divorce (which she has been planning since his retirement) as well as full custody of their kids. She also threatens to call the police if he comes anywhere near them. He is later arrested for introducing under-age girls to men in his club. He tries and fails to bribe his way out of his criminal case using the jewels from his championship belt instead of selling the belt itself. In 1957, he goes to jail, sorrowfully questioning his misfortune and crying in despair. Upon returning to New York City in 1958, he happens upon Joey, who forgives him but is elusive.
Again in 1964, Jake now recites the "I coulda been a contender" scene from the 1954 film "On the Waterfront", where Terry Malloy complains that his brother should have been there for him but is also keen enough to give himself some slack. After a stagehand informs him that the auditorium where he is about to perform is crowded, Jake starts to chant "I'm the boss" while shadowboxing.
"Raging Bull" came about when De Niro read the on the set of "The Godfather Part II". Although disappointed by the book's writing style, he became fascinated by the character of Jake LaMotta. He showed the book to Martin Scorsese on the set of "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" in the hope that he would consider the project. Scorsese repeatedly turned down the opportunity to direct the film, claiming he had no idea what "Raging Bull" was about, even though he had read some of the text. Never a sports fan, when he found out what LaMotta used to do for a living, he said, "A boxer? I don't like boxing...Even as a kid, I always thought that boxing was boring... It was something I couldn't, wouldn't grasp." His overall opinion of sport in general is, "Anything with a ball, no good." The book was then passed onto Mardik Martin, the film's eventual co-screenwriter, who said "the trouble is the damn thing has been done a hundred times before—a fighter who has trouble with his brother and his wife and the mob is after him". The book was even shown to producers Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler by De Niro, who were willing to assist only if Scorsese agreed. After nearly dying from a drug overdose, Scorsese agreed to make the film, not only to save his own life but also to save his career. Scorsese began to relate very personally to the story of Jake LaMotta, and in it he saw how the boxing ring can be "an allegory for whatever you do in life", which for him paralleled moviemaking, "you make movies, you're in the ring each time."
Preparation for the film began with Scorsese shooting some 8 mm color footage featuring De Niro boxing in a ring. One night when the footage was being shown to De Niro, Michael Chapman, and his friend and mentor, the British director Michael Powell, Powell pointed out that the color of the gloves at the time would have only been maroon, oxblood, or even black. Scorsese decided to use this as one of the reasons to film "Raging Bull" in black and white. Other reasons would be to distinguish the film from other color films around the time and to acknowledge the problem of fading color film stock—an issue Scorsese recognized. Scorsese went to two matches at Madison Square Garden to aid his research, picking up on minor but essential details such as the blood sponge and later, the blood on the ropes (which would later be used in the film). According to the brief comments on the inlay card of the Raging Bull DVD, Scorsese was not—and still is not—a fan of sports or boxing, which he describes as boring. When he saw the blood-soaked sponges being dipped in a bucket, he recalls thinking to himself, 'And they call this sport.'
Under the guidance of Chartoff and Winkler, Mardik Martin was asked to start writing the screenplay. According to De Niro, under no circumstances would United Artists accept Martin's script. The story was based on the vision of journalist Pete Hamill of a 1930s and 1940s style, when boxing was known as "the great dark prince of sports". De Niro was unimpressed when he finished reading the first draft, however. "Taxi Driver" screenwriter Paul Schrader was swiftly brought in to rewrite the script around August 1978. Some of the changes that Schrader made to the script included a rewrite of the scene with the uncooked steak and inclusion of LaMotta seen masturbating in a Florida cell. The character of LaMotta's brother, Joey, was finally added, previously absent from Martin's script. United Artists saw a massive improvement on the quality of the script. However, its chief executives, Steven Bach and David Field, met with Scorsese, De Niro, and producer Irwin Winkler in November 1978 to say they were worried that the content would be X-rated material and have no chance of finding an audience.
According to Scorsese, the script was left to him and De Niro, and they spent two-and-a-half weeks on the island of Saint Martin extensively re-building the content of the film. The most significant change would be the entire scene when LaMotta fixes his television and then accuses his wife of having an affair. Other changes included the removal of Jake and Joey's father; the reduction of organized crime's role in the story and a major re-write of LaMotta's fight with Tony Janiro. They were also responsible for the end sequence where LaMotta is all alone in his dressing room quoting the "I could have been a contender" scene from "On the Waterfront". An extract of "Richard III" had been considered but Michael Powell thought it would be a bad decision within the context of an American film. According to Steven Bach, the first two screenwriters (Martin and Schrader) would receive credit, but since there was no payment to the writer's guild on the script, De Niro and Scorsese's work would remain uncredited.
One of Scorsese's trademarks was casting many actors and actresses new to the profession. De Niro, who was already committed to play Jake LaMotta, began to help Scorsese track down unfamiliar names to play his on-screen brother, Joey, and wife, Vikki. The role of Joey LaMotta was the first to be cast. De Niro was watching a low budget television film called "The Death Collector" when he saw the part of a young career criminal played by Joe Pesci (then an unknown and struggling actor) as an ideal candidate. Prior to receiving a call from De Niro and Scorsese for the proposal to star in the film, Pesci had not worked in film for four years and was running an Italian restaurant in New Jersey.
The role of Vikki (renamed to Vickie in the final film), Jake's second wife, had interest across the board, but it was Pesci who suggested actress Cathy Moriarty from a picture he once saw at a New Jersey disco. Both De Niro and Scorsese believed that Moriarty could portray the role after meeting with her on several occasions and noticing her husky voice and physical maturity. The duo had to prove to the Screen Actors Guild that she was right for the role when Cis Corman showed 10 comparing pictures of both Moriarty and the real Vikki LaMotta for proof she had a resemblance. Moriarty was then asked to take a screen test which she managed—partly aided with some improvised lines from De Niro—after some confusion wondering why the crew were filming her take. Joe Pesci also persuaded his former show-biz pal and co-star in "The Death Collector", Frank Vincent, to try for the role of Salvy Batts. Following a successful audition and screen test, Vincent received the call to say he had received the part. Charles Scorsese, the director's father, made his film debut as Tommy Como's cousin, Charlie.
While in the midst of practicing a Bronx accent and preparing for his role, De Niro met both LaMotta and his ex-wife, Vikki, on separate occasions. Vikki, who lived in Florida, told stories about her life with her former husband and also showed old home movies (that later inspired a similar sequence to be done for the film). Jake LaMotta, on the other hand, served as his trainer, accompanied by Al Silvani as coach at the Gramercy club in New York, getting him into shape. The actor found that boxing came naturally to him; he entered as a middleweight boxer, winning two of his three fights in a Brooklyn ring dubbed "young LaMotta" by the commentator. According to Jake LaMotta, De Niro was one of the top 20 best middleweight boxers of all time.
According to the production mixer, Michael Evje, the film began shooting at the Los Angeles Olympic Auditorium on April 16, 1979. Grips hung huge curtains of black duvetyne on all four sides of the ring area to contain the artificial smoke used extensively for visual effect. On May 7, the production moved to the Culver City Studio, Stage 3, and filmed there until the middle of June. Scorsese made it clear during filming that he did not appreciate the traditional way in films of showing fights from the spectators' view. He insisted that one camera operated by the Director of Photography, Michael Chapman, would be placed inside the ring as he would play the role of an opponent keeping out of the way of other fighters so that viewers could see the emotions of the fighters, including those of Jake. The precise moves of the boxers were to be done as dance routines from the information of a book about dance instructors in the mode of Arthur Murray. A punching bag in the middle of the ring was used by De Niro between takes before he aggressively came straight on to do the next scene. The initial five-week schedule for the shooting of the boxing scenes took longer than expected, putting Scorsese under pressure.
According to Scorsese, production of the film was then closed down for around four months with the entire crew being paid, so De Niro could go on a binge eating trip around northern Italy and France. When he did come back to the United States, his weight had increased from 145 to 215 pounds (66 to 97 kg). The scenes with the heftier Jake LaMotta—which include announcing his retirement from boxing and LaMotta ending up in a Florida cell—were completed while approaching Christmas 1979 within seven to eight weeks so as not to aggravate the health issues which were already affecting De Niro's posture, breathing, and talking.
According to Evje, Jake's nightclub sequence was filmed in a closed-down San Pedro club on December 3. The jail cell head-banging scene was shot on a constructed set with De Niro asking for minimal crew to be present—there was not even a boom operator.
The final sequence where Jake LaMotta is in front of his mirror was filmed on the last day of shooting, requiring 19 takes, with only the 13th being used for the film. Scorsese wanted to have an atmosphere that would be so cold that the words would have an impact as he tries to come to terms with his relationship with his brother.
The editing of "Raging Bull" began when production was temporarily put on hold and was completed in 1980. Scorsese worked with the editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, to achieve a final cut of the film. Their main decision was to abandon Schrader's idea of LaMotta's nightclub act interweaving with the flashback of his youth and instead they just followed along the lines of a single flashback where only scenes of LaMotta practicing his stand-up would be left bookending the film. A sound mix arranged by Frank Warner was a delicate process taking six months. According to Scorsese, the sound on "Raging Bull" was difficult because each punch, camera shot, and flash bulb would be different. Also, there was the issue of trying to balance the quality between scenes featuring dialogue and those involving boxing (which were done in Dolby Stereo). "Raging Bull" went through a test screening in front of a small audience including the chief executives of United Artists, Steven Bach and Andy Albeck. The screening was shown at the MGM screening room in New York around July 1980. Later, Albeck praised Scorsese by calling him a "true artist".
According to the producers Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler, matters were made worse when United Artists decided not to distribute the film but no other studios were interested when they attempted to sell the rights. Scorsese made no secret that "Raging Bull" would be his "Hollywood swan song" and he took unusual care of its rights during post-production. Scorsese threatened to remove his credit from the film if he was not allowed to sort a reel which obscured the name of a whisky brand known as "Cutty Sark" which was heard in a scene. The work was completed only four days shy of the premiere.
In 2012, "Raging Bull" was voted by the Motion Picture Editors Guild as the best-edited film in history.
Paula Petrella, heir to Frank Petrello whose works were allegedly sources for the film, filed for copyright infringement in 2009 based on MGM's 1991 copyright renewal of the film. In 2014, the Supreme Court held, in "Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc.," that Petrella's suit survived MGM's defense of "laches", the legal doctrine that protects defendants from unreasonable delays by potential plaintiffs. The case was remanded to lower courts, meaning that Petrella could receive a decision on the merits of her claim. MGM settled with Petrella in 2015.
The brew of violence and anger, combined with the lack of a proper advertising campaign, led to the film's lukewarm box office intake of only $23 million, when compared to its $18 million budget. It only earned $10.1 million in theatrical rentals (about $27 million in 2013 dollars). Scorsese became concerned for his future career and worried that producers and studios might refuse to finance his films. According to Box Office Mojo, the film grossed $23,383,987 in domestic theaters.
When it first premiered in New York on November 14, 1980, the initial release of "Raging Bull" was met with polarized reviews, but the film would later be met with widespread critical acclaim." The film currently holds a 93% "Certified Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes from 71 critics, with an average rating of 8.89/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Arguably Martin Scorsese's and Robert De Niro's finest film, "Raging Bull" is often painful to watch, but it's a searing, powerful work about an unsympathetic hero." The similarly themed Metacritic rates the movie 89/100 based on 27 reviews which represents "universal acclaim". Jack Kroll of "Newsweek" called "Raging Bull" the "best movie of the year". Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" said that Scorsese "has made his most ambitious film as well as his finest" and went on to praise Moriarty's debut performance saying: "either she is one of the film finds of the decade or Mr. Scorsese is Svengali. Perhaps both." "Time" praised De Niro's performance since "much of "Raging Bull" exists because of the possibilities it offers De Niro to display his own explosive art". Steven Jenkins from the British Film Institute's (BFI) magazine, "Monthly Film Journal", said ""Raging Bull" may prove to be Scorsese's finest achievement to date".
The Oscars were held the day after President Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley Jr., who did it as an attempt to impress Jodie Foster, who played a child prostitute in another of Scorsese's famous films, "Taxi Driver". Out of fear of being attacked, Scorsese went to the ceremony with FBI bodyguards disguised as guests who escorted him out before the announcement of the Academy Award for Best Picture was made (the winner being Robert Redford's "Ordinary People").
The Los Angeles Film Critics Association voted "Raging Bull" the best film of 1980 and De Niro best actor. The National Board of Review also voted De Niro best actor and Pesci best supporting actor. The Berlin International Film Festival chose "Raging Bull" to open the festival in 1981.
The 2012 Parajanov-Vartanov Institute Award honored screenwriter Mardik Martin "for the mastery of his pen on iconic American films" "Mean Streets" and "Raging Bull".
By the end of the 1980s, "Raging Bull" had cemented its reputation as a modern classic. It was voted the best film of the 1980s in numerous critics' polls and is regularly pointed to as both Scorsese's best film and one of the finest American films ever made. Several prominent critics, among them Roger Ebert, declared the film to be an instant classic and the consummation of Scorsese's earlier promise. Ebert proclaimed it the best film of the 1980s, and one of the ten greatest films of all time. The film has been deemed "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 1990.
"Raging Bull" was listed by "Time" magazine as one of the "All-TIME 100 Movies". "Variety" magazine ranked the film number 39 on their list of the 50 greatest movies. "Raging Bull" was fifth on "Entertainment Weekly's" list of the 100 Greatest Movies of All Time. The film tied with "The Bicycle Thieves" and "Vertigo" at number 6 on "Sight & Sound" 2002 poll of the greatest movies ever. When "Sight & Sound" directors' and critics' lists from that year are combined, "Raging Bull" gets the most votes of any movie that has been produced since 1975. In 2002, Film4 held a poll of the 100 Greatest Movies, on which "Raging Bull" was voted in at number 20. "Halliwell's Film Guide", a British film guide, placed "Raging Bull" seventh in a poll naming their selection for the "Top 1,000 Movies". "TV Guide" also included the film on their list of the 50 best movies. "Movieline" magazine included the film on its list of the 100 best movies. Leonard Maltin included "Raging Bull" on his "100 Must-See Films of the 20th Century" list. "Video Detective" also included the film on its list of the top 100 movies of all time. Roger Ebert named "Robert De Niro's transformation from sleek boxer to paunchy nightclub owner in "Raging Bull"" as one of the "100 Greatest Movie Moments". The National Society of Film Critics ranked it #75 on their "100 Essential Films" list. "Rolling Stone" magazine ranked it #6 on their list of the "100 Maverick Movies in the Last 100 Years".
A 1997 readers poll conducted by the "L.A. Daily News" ranked the film #64 on a list of the greatest American movies. The Writers Guild of America named the film as the 76th best screenplay of all time. "Raging Bull" is #7 on "Time Out Film Guide's" "Centenary Top 100" list, and it also tied at #16 (with "Lawrence of Arabia") on their 1998 readers poll. In 2008, "Empire" magazine held a poll of "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time", taking votes from 10,000 readers, 150 film makers, and 50 film critics in which "Raging Bull" was placed at number 11. It was also placed on a similar list of 1000 movies by "The New York Times". In 2010, "Total Film" selected the film as one of "The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time". FilmSite.org, a subsidiary of American Movie Classics, placed "Raging Bull" on their list of the 100 greatest movies. Additionally, Films101.com ranked the film as the 17th best movie of all time in a list of the 10,790 most notable.
In 2012, the Motion Picture Editors Guild listed the film as the best-edited film of all time based on a survey of its membership. Contemporaries of Scorsese, like Francis Ford Coppola, have included it routinely in their lists for favorite films of all time.
Martin Scorsese decided to assemble a soundtrack made of music that was popular at the time using his personal collection of 78s. With the help of Robbie Robertson, the songs were carefully chosen so they would be the ones that a person would hear on the radio, at the pool or in bars and clubs which reflected the mood of that particular era. Some lyrics from songs would also be slipped into some dialogue. The Intermezzo from "Cavalleria rusticana" by Italian composer Pietro Mascagni would serve as the main theme to "Raging Bull" after a successful try-out by Scorsese and the editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, over the film's opening titles. Two other Mascagni pieces were used in the film: the Barcarolle from "Silvano", and the Intermezzo from "Guglielmo Ratcliff". A two-CD soundtrack was released in 2005, long after the film was released, because of earlier difficulties obtaining rights for many of the songs, which Scorsese selected from his childhood memories growing up in New York.
In 2006, "Variety" reported that Sunset Pictures was developing a sequel entitled "Raging Bull II: Continuing the Story of Jake LaMotta", chronicling LaMotta's early life, as told in the sequel novel of the same name. Filming began on June 15, 2012 with William Forsythe as an older LaMotta and Morjean Aria as the younger version (before the events of the first film). The film, directed by Martin Guigui also stars Joe Mantegna, Tom Sizemore, Penelope Ann Miller, Natasha Henstridge, Alicia Witt, Ray Wise, Harry Hamlin, and James Russo as Rocky Graziano. In July 2012, MGM, owners of United Artists, filed a lawsuit against LaMotta and the producers of "Raging Bull II" to keep the new film from being released. The former party argued that they have rights to make any authorized sequel to the original book, which goes back to an agreement LaMotta and co-author Peter Savage made with Chartoff-Winkler, producers of the original film. In addition, MGM argues that the defendants are publicly claiming the film to be a sequel to the original film, which could most likely "tarnish" its predecessor's reputation. In August 2012, the producers retitled the film "The Bronx Bull", disassociating itself as a sequel to "Raging Bull", and the lawsuit was subsequently dropped. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25506 |
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire (, ; ) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, Northern Africa, and Western Asia ruled by emperors. From the accession of Caesar Augustus to the military anarchy of the third century, it was a principate with Italy as metropole of the provinces and the city of Rome as sole capital (27 BC – 286 AD). Although fragmented briefly during the military crisis, the empire was forcibly reassembled, then ruled by multiple emperors who shared rule over the Western Roman Empire (based in Milan and later in Ravenna) and over the Eastern Roman Empire (based in Nicomedia and later in Constantinople). Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until 476 AD, when the imperial insignia were sent to Constantinople, following the capture of Ravenna by the barbarians of Odoacer and the subsequent deposition of Romulus Augustus. The fall of the Western Roman Empire to Germanic kings, along with the hellenization of the Eastern Roman Empire into the Byzantine Empire, conventionally marks the end of Ancient Rome and the beginning of the Middle Ages.
The predecessor state of the Roman Empire, the Roman Republic (which had replaced Rome's monarchy in the 6th century BC) became severely destabilized in a series of civil wars and political conflicts. In the mid-1st century BC Julius Caesar was appointed as perpetual dictator and then assassinated in 44 BC. Civil wars and proscriptions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesar's adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. The following year Octavian conquered Ptolemaic Egypt, ending the Hellenistic period that had begun with the conquests of Alexander the Great of Macedon in the 4th century BC. Octavian's power then became unassailable, and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power and the new title "Augustus", effectively making him the first Roman emperor.
The first two centuries of the Empire saw a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana ("Roman Peace"). Rome reached its greatest territorial expanse during the reign of Trajan (98–117 AD). A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus (177–192). In the 3rd century the Empire underwent a crisis that threatened its existence, as the Gallic Empire and Palmyrene Empire broke away from the Roman state, and a series of short-lived emperors, often from the legions, led the empire. The empire was reunified under Aurelian (). In an effort to stabilize it, Diocletian set up two different imperial courts in the Greek East and Latin West in 286. Christians rose to positions of power in the fourth century following the Edict of Milan of 313. Shortly after, the Migration Period, involving large invasions by Germanic peoples and by the Huns of Attila, led to the decline of the Western Roman Empire. With the fall of Ravenna to the Germanic Herulians and the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 AD by Odoacer, the Western Roman Empire finally collapsed – the (Eastern Roman) Emperor Zeno formally abolished it in 480 AD. Nonetheless, some states in the territories of the former Western Roman Empire would later claim to have inherited the supreme power of the emperors of Rome, most notably the Holy Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire, usually described by modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, survived for another millennium until it collapsed when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks of Sultan Mehmed II in 1453.
Due to the Roman Empire's vast extent and long endurance, the institutions and culture of Rome had a profound and lasting influence on the development of language, religion, art, architecture, philosophy, law, and forms of government in the territory it governed, and far beyond. The Latin language of the Romans evolved into the Romance languages of the medieval and modern world, while Medieval Greek became the language of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Empire's adoption of Christianity led to the formation of medieval Christendom. Greek and Roman art had a profound impact on the Italian Renaissance. Rome's architectural tradition served as the basis for Romanesque, Renaissance and Neoclassical architecture, and also had a strong influence on Islamic architecture. The corpus of Roman law has its descendants in many legal systems of the world today, such as the Napoleonic Code, while Rome's republican institutions have left an enduring legacy, influencing the Italian city-state republics of the medieval period, as well as the early United States and other modern democratic republics.
Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, though it did not expand outside the Italian peninsula until the 3rd century BC. Then, it was an "empire" long before it had an emperor. The Roman Republic was not a nation-state in the modern sense, but a network of towns left to rule themselves (though with varying degrees of independence from the Roman Senate) and provinces administered by military commanders. It was ruled, not by emperors, but by annually elected magistrates (Roman Consuls above all) in conjunction with the Senate. For various reasons, the 1st century BC was a time of political and military upheaval, which ultimately led to rule by emperors. The consuls' military power rested in the Roman legal concept of "imperium", which literally means "command" (though typically in a military sense). Occasionally, successful consuls were given the honorary title "imperator" (commander), and this is the origin of the word "emperor" (and "empire") since this title (among others) was always bestowed to the early emperors upon their accession.
Rome suffered a long series of internal conflicts, conspiracies and civil wars from the late second century BC onward, while greatly extending its power beyond Italy. This was the period of the Crisis of the Roman Republic. Towards the end of this era, in 44 BC, Julius Caesar was briefly perpetual dictator before being assassinated. The faction of his assassins was driven from Rome and defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC by an army led by Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son Octavian. Antony and Octavian's division of the Roman world between themselves did not last and Octavian's forces defeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, ending the Final War of the Roman Republic. In 27 BC the Senate and People of Rome made Octavian "princeps" ("first citizen") with proconsular "imperium", thus beginning the Principate (the first epoch of Roman imperial history, usually dated from 27 BC to 284 AD), and gave him the name "Augustus" ("the venerated"). Though the old constitutional machinery remained in place, Augustus came to predominate it. Although the republic stood in name, contemporaries of Augustus knew it was just a veil and that Augustus had all meaningful authority in Rome. Since his rule ended a century of civil wars and began an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity, he was so loved that he came to hold the power of a monarch "de facto" if not "de jure". During the years of his rule, a new constitutional order emerged (in part organically and in part by design), so that, upon his death, this new constitutional order operated as before when Tiberius was accepted as the new emperor.
The 200 years that began with Augustus's rule is traditionally regarded as the "Pax Romana" ("Roman Peace"). During this period, the cohesion of the empire was furthered by a degree of social stability and economic prosperity that Rome had never before experienced. Uprisings in the provinces were infrequent, but put down "mercilessly and swiftly" when they occurred. The success of Augustus in establishing principles of dynastic succession was limited by his outliving a number of talented potential heirs. The Julio-Claudian dynasty lasted for four more emperors—Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero—before it yielded in 69 AD to the strife-torn Year of Four Emperors, from which Vespasian emerged as victor. Vespasian became the founder of the brief Flavian dynasty, to be followed by the Nerva–Antonine dynasty which produced the "Five Good Emperors": Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and the philosophically-inclined Marcus Aurelius.
In the view of the Greek historian Dio Cassius, a contemporary observer, the accession of the emperor Commodus in 180 AD marked the descent "from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron"—a famous comment which has led some historians, notably Edward Gibbon, to take Commodus' reign as the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire.
In 212 AD, during the reign of Caracalla, Roman citizenship was granted to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. But despite this gesture of universality, the Severan dynasty was tumultuous—an emperor's reign was ended routinely by his murder or execution—and, following its collapse, the Roman Empire was engulfed by the Crisis of the Third Century, a period of invasions, civil strife, economic disorder, and plague. In defining historical epochs, this crisis is sometimes viewed as marking the transition from Classical Antiquity to Late Antiquity. Aurelian (reigned 270–275) brought the empire back from the brink and stabilized it. Diocletian completed the work of fully restoring the empire, but declined the role of "princeps" and became the first emperor to be addressed regularly as "domine", "master" or "lord". Diocletian's reign also brought the empire's most concerted effort against the perceived threat of Christianity, the "Great Persecution".
Diocletian divided the empire into four regions, each ruled by a separate emperor, the Tetrarchy. Confident that he fixed the disorders that were plaguing Rome, he abdicated along with his co-emperor, and the Tetrarchy soon collapsed. Order was eventually restored by Constantine the Great, who became the first emperor to convert to Christianity, and who established Constantinople as the new capital of the eastern empire. During the decades of the Constantinian and Valentinian dynasties, the empire was divided along an east–west axis, with dual power centres in Constantinople and Rome. The reign of Julian, who under the influence of his adviser Mardonius attempted to restore Classical Roman and Hellenistic religion, only briefly interrupted the succession of Christian emperors. Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over both East and West, died in 395 AD after making Christianity the official religion of the empire.
The Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate in the early 5th century as Germanic migrations and invasions overwhelmed the capacity of the empire to assimilate the migrants and fight off the invaders. The Romans were successful in fighting off all invaders, most famously Attila, though the empire had assimilated so many Germanic peoples of dubious loyalty to Rome that the empire started to dismember itself. Most chronologies place the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476, when Romulus Augustulus was forced to abdicate to the Germanic warlord Odoacer. By placing himself under the rule of the Eastern Emperor, rather than naming himself emperor (as other Germanic chiefs had done after deposing past emperors), Odoacer ended the Western Empire, by sending the imperial regalia to the Eastern Emperor Zeno in effect declaring him sole emperor, and placing Odoacer himself as his nominal subordinate, though in reality Italy was now ruled by Odoacer alone. The Eastern Roman Empire, also called the Byzantine Empire by later historians, continued to exist until the reign of Constantine XI Palaiologos who became the last Roman Emperor on 29 May 1453 after dying in battle during the Siege of Constantinople against Mehmed II or "the Conqueror" and his Ottoman forces, ending the Byzantine Empire, though Mehmed II would himself also claim the title of caesar or "Kayser-i Rum" in an attempt to claim a connection to the Roman Empire.
The Roman Empire was one of the largest in history, with contiguous territories throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The Latin phrase "imperium sine fine" ("empire without end") expressed the ideology that neither time nor space limited the Empire. In Vergil's epic poem the "Aeneid," limitless empire is said to be granted to the Romans by their supreme deity Jupiter. This claim of universal dominion was renewed and perpetuated when the Empire came under Christian rule in the 4th century. In addition to annexing large regions in their quest for empire-building, the Romans were also very large sculptors of their environment who directly altered their geography. For instance, entire forests were cut down to provide enough wood resources for an expanding empire. In his book "Critias," Plato described that deforestation: where there was once "an abundance of wood in the mountains," he could now only see "the mere skeleton of the land."
In reality, Roman expansion was mostly accomplished under the Republic, though parts of northern Europe were conquered in the 1st century AD, when Roman control in Europe, Africa, and Asia was strengthened. During the reign of Augustus, a "global map of the known world" was displayed for the first time in public at Rome, coinciding with the composition of the most comprehensive work on political geography that survives from antiquity, the "Geography" of the Pontic Greek writer Strabo. When Augustus died, the commemorative account of his achievements "(Res Gestae)" prominently featured the geographical cataloguing of peoples and places within the Empire. Geography, the census, and the meticulous keeping of written records were central concerns of Roman Imperial administration.
The Empire reached its largest expanse under Trajan (reigned 98–117), encompassing an area of 5 million square kilometres. The traditional population estimate of inhabitants accounted for between one-sixth and one-fourth of the world's total population and made it the largest population of any unified political entity in the West until the mid-19th century. Recent demographic studies have argued for a population peak ranging from to more than . Each of the three largest cities in the Empire—Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch—was almost twice the size of any European city at the beginning of the 17th century.
As the historian Christopher Kelly has described it:
Trajan's successor Hadrian adopted a policy of maintaining rather than expanding the empire. Borders "(fines)" were marked, and the frontiers "(limites)" patrolled. The most heavily fortified borders were the most unstable. Hadrian's Wall, which separated the Roman world from what was perceived as an ever-present barbarian threat, is the primary surviving monument of this effort.
The language of the Romans was Latin, which Virgil emphasizes as a source of Roman unity and tradition. Until the time of Alexander Severus (reigned 222–235), the birth certificates and wills of Roman citizens had to be written in Latin. Latin was the language of the law courts in the West and of the military throughout the Empire, but was not imposed officially on peoples brought under Roman rule. This policy contrasts with that of Alexander the Great, who aimed to impose Greek throughout his empire as the official language. As a consequence of Alexander's conquests, koine Greek had become the shared language around the eastern Mediterranean and into Asia Minor. The "linguistic frontier" dividing the Latin West and the Greek East passed through the Balkan peninsula.
Romans who received an elite education studied Greek as a literary language, and most men of the governing classes could speak Greek. The Julio-Claudian emperors encouraged high standards of correct Latin "(Latinitas)", a linguistic movement identified in modern terms as Classical Latin, and favoured Latin for conducting official business. Claudius tried to limit the use of Greek, and on occasion revoked the citizenship of those who lacked Latin, but even in the Senate he drew on his own bilingualism in communicating with Greek-speaking ambassadors. Suetonius quotes him as referring to "our two languages".
In the Eastern empire, laws and official documents were regularly translated into Greek from Latin. The everyday interpenetration of the two languages is indicated by bilingual inscriptions, which sometimes even switch back and forth between Greek and Latin. After all freeborn inhabitants of the empire were universally enfranchised in 212 AD, a great number of Roman citizens would have lacked Latin, though Latin remained a marker of "Romanness."
Among other reforms, the emperor Diocletian (reigned 284–305) sought to renew the authority of Latin, and the Greek expression "hē kratousa dialektos" attests to the continuing status of Latin as "the language of power." In the early 6th century, the emperor Justinian engaged in a quixotic effort to reassert the status of Latin as the language of law, even though in his time Latin no longer held any currency as a living language in the East.
References to interpreters indicate the continuing use of local languages other than Greek and Latin, particularly in Egypt, where Coptic predominated, and in military settings along the Rhine and Danube. Roman jurists also show a concern for local languages such as Punic, Gaulish, and Aramaic in assuring the correct understanding and application of laws and oaths. In the province of Africa, Libyco-Berber and Punic were used in inscriptions and for legends on coins during the time of Tiberius (1st century AD). Libyco-Berber and Punic inscriptions appear on public buildings into the 2nd century, some bilingual with Latin. In Syria, Palmyrene soldiers even used their dialect of Aramaic for inscriptions, in a striking exception to the rule that Latin was the language of the military.
The Babatha Archive is a suggestive example of multilingualism in the Empire. These papyri, named for a Jewish woman in the province of Arabia and dating from 93 to 132 AD, mostly employ Aramaic, the local language, written in Greek characters with Semitic and Latin influences; a petition to the Roman governor, however, was written in Greek.
The dominance of Latin among the literate elite may obscure the continuity of spoken languages, since all cultures within the Roman Empire were predominantly oral. In the West, Latin, referred to in its spoken form as Vulgar Latin, gradually replaced Celtic and Italic languages that were related to it by a shared Indo-European origin. Commonalities in syntax and vocabulary facilitated the adoption of Latin.
After the decentralization of political power in late antiquity, Latin developed locally into branches that became the Romance languages, such as Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Catalan and Romanian, and a large number of minor languages and dialects. Today, more than 900 million people are native speakers worldwide.
As an international language of learning and literature, Latin itself continued as an active medium of expression for diplomacy and for intellectual developments identified with Renaissance humanism up to the 17th century, and for law and the Roman Catholic Church to the present.
Although Greek continued as the language of the Byzantine Empire, linguistic distribution in the East was more complex. A Greek-speaking majority lived in the Greek peninsula and islands, western Anatolia, major cities, and some coastal areas. Like Greek and Latin, the Thracian language was of Indo-European origin, as were several now-extinct languages in Anatolia attested by Imperial-era inscriptions. Albanian is often seen as the descendant of Illyrian, although this hypothesis has been challenged by some linguists, who maintain that it derives from Dacian or Thracian. (Illyrian, Dacian, and Thracian, however, may have formed a subgroup or a Sprachbund; see Thraco-Illyrian.) Various Afroasiatic languages—primarily Coptic in Egypt, and Aramaic in Syria and Mesopotamia—were never replaced by Greek. The international use of Greek, however, was one factor enabling the spread of Christianity, as indicated for example by the use of Greek for the Epistles of Paul.
Several references to Gaulish in late antiquity may indicate that it continued to be spoken. In the second century AD there was explicit recognition of its usage in some legal manners, soothsaying and pharmacology. Sulpicius Severus, writing in the 5th century AD in Gallia Aquitania, noted bilingualism with Gaulish as the first language. The survival of the Galatian dialect in Anatolia akin to that spoken by the Treveri near Trier was attested by Jerome (331–420), who had first-hand knowledge.
Much of historical linguistics scholarship postulates that Gaulish was indeed still spoken as late as the mid to late 6th century in France. Despite considerable Romanization of the local material culture, the Gaulish language is held to have survived and had coexisted with spoken Latin during the centuries of Roman rule of Gaul. The last reference to Galatian was made by Cyril of Scythopolis, claiming that an evil spirit had possessed a monk and rendered him able to speak only in Galatian, while the last reference to Gaulish in France was made by Gregory of Tours between 560 and 575, noting that a shrine in Auvergne which "is called Vasso Galatae in the Gallic tongue" was destroyed and burnt to the ground. After the long period of bilingualism, the emergent Gallo-Romance languages including French were shaped by Gaulish in a number of ways; in the case of French these include loanwords and calques (including "oui", the word for "yes"), sound changes, and influences in conjugation and word order.
The Roman Empire was remarkably multicultural, with "a rather astonishing cohesive capacity" to create a sense of shared identity while encompassing diverse peoples within its political system over a long span of time. The Roman attention to creating public monuments and communal spaces open to all—such as forums, amphitheatres, racetracks and baths—helped foster a sense of "Romanness".
Roman society had multiple, overlapping social hierarchies that modern concepts of "class" in English may not represent accurately. The two decades of civil war from which Augustus rose to sole power left traditional society in Rome in a state of confusion and upheaval, but did not affect an immediate redistribution of wealth and social power. From the perspective of the lower classes, a peak was merely added to the social pyramid. Personal relationships—patronage, friendship "(amicitia)", family, marriage—continued to influence the workings of politics and government, as they had in the Republic. By the time of Nero, however, it was not unusual to find a former slave who was richer than a freeborn citizen, or an equestrian who exercised greater power than a senator.
The blurring or diffusion of the Republic's more rigid hierarchies led to increased social mobility under the Empire, both upward and downward, to an extent that exceeded that of all other well-documented ancient societies. Women, freedmen, and slaves had opportunities to profit and exercise influence in ways previously less available to them. Social life in the Empire, particularly for those whose personal resources were limited, was further fostered by a proliferation of voluntary associations and confraternities ("collegia" and "sodalitates") formed for various purposes: professional and trade guilds, veterans' groups, religious sodalities, drinking and dining clubs, performing arts troupes, and burial societies.
According to the jurist Gaius, the essential distinction in the Roman "law of persons" was that all human beings were either free "(liberi)" or slaves "(servi)". The legal status of free persons might be further defined by their citizenship. Most citizens held limited rights (such as the "ius Latinum," "Latin right"), but were entitled to legal protections and privileges not enjoyed by those who lacked citizenship. Free people not considered citizens, but living within the Roman world, held status as "peregrini", non-Romans. In 212 AD, by means of the edict known as the "Constitutio Antoniniana", the emperor Caracalla extended citizenship to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. This legal egalitarianism would have required a far-reaching revision of existing laws that had distinguished between citizens and non-citizens.
Freeborn Roman women were considered citizens throughout the Republic and Empire, but did not vote, hold political office, or serve in the military. A mother's citizen status determined that of her children, as indicated by the phrase "ex duobus civibus Romanis natos" ("children born of two Roman citizens"). A Roman woman kept her own family name "(nomen)" for life. Children most often took the father's name, but in the Imperial period sometimes made their mother's name part of theirs, or even used it instead.
The archaic form of "manus" marriage in which the woman had been subject to her husband's authority was largely abandoned by the Imperial era, and a married woman retained ownership of any property she brought into the marriage. Technically she remained under her father's legal authority, even though she moved into her husband's home, but when her father died she became legally emancipated. This arrangement was one of the factors in the degree of independence Roman women enjoyed relative to those of many other ancient cultures and up to the modern period: although she had to answer to her father in legal matters, she was free of his direct scrutiny in her daily life, and her husband had no legal power over her. Although it was a point of pride to be a "one-man woman" "(univira)" who had married only once, there was little stigma attached to divorce, nor to speedy remarriage after the loss of a husband through death or divorce.
Girls had equal inheritance rights with boys if their father died without leaving a will. A Roman mother's right to own property and to dispose of it as she saw fit, including setting the terms of her own will, gave her enormous influence over her sons even when they were adults.
As part of the Augustan programme to restore traditional morality and social order, moral legislation attempted to regulate the conduct of men and women as a means of promoting "family values". Adultery, which had been a private family matter under the Republic, was criminalized, and defined broadly as an illicit sex act "(stuprum)" that occurred between a male citizen and a married woman, or between a married woman and any man other than her husband. Childbearing was encouraged by the state: a woman who had given birth to three children was granted symbolic honours and greater legal freedom (the "ius trium liberorum)".
Because of their legal status as citizens and the degree to which they could become emancipated, women could own property, enter contracts, and engage in business, including shipping, manufacturing, and lending money. Inscriptions throughout the Empire honour women as benefactors in funding public works, an indication they could acquire and dispose of considerable fortunes; for instance, the Arch of the Sergii was funded by Salvia Postuma, a female member of the family honoured, and the largest building in the forum at Pompeii was funded by Eumachia, a priestess of Venus.
At the time of Augustus, as many as 35% of the people in Italy were slaves, making Rome one of five historical "slave societies" in which slaves constituted at least a fifth of the population and played a major role in the economy. Slavery was a complex institution that supported traditional Roman social structures as well as contributing economic utility. In urban settings, slaves might be professionals such as teachers, physicians, chefs, and accountants, in addition to the majority of slaves who provided trained or unskilled labour in households or workplaces. Agriculture and industry, such as milling and mining, relied on the exploitation of slaves. Outside Italy, slaves made up on average an estimated 10 to 20% of the population, sparse in Roman Egypt but more concentrated in some Greek areas. Expanding Roman ownership of arable land and industries would have affected preexisting practices of slavery in the provinces. Although the institution of slavery has often been regarded as waning in the 3rd and 4th centuries, it remained an integral part of Roman society until the 5th century. Slavery ceased gradually in the 6th and 7th centuries along with the decline of urban centres in the West and the disintegration of the complex Imperial economy that had created the demand for it.
Laws pertaining to slavery were "extremely intricate". Under Roman law, slaves were considered property and had no legal personhood. They could be subjected to forms of corporal punishment not normally exercised on citizens, sexual exploitation, torture, and summary execution. A slave could not as a matter of law be raped since rape could be committed only against people who were free; a slave's rapist had to be prosecuted by the owner for property damage under the Aquilian Law. Slaves had no right to the form of legal marriage called "conubium", but their unions were sometimes recognized, and if both were freed they could marry. Following the Servile Wars of the Republic, legislation under Augustus and his successors shows a driving concern for controlling the threat of rebellions through limiting the size of work groups, and for hunting down fugitive slaves.
Technically, a slave could not own property, but a slave who conducted business might be given access to an individual account or fund "(peculium)" that he could use as if it were his own. The terms of this account varied depending on the degree of trust and co-operation between owner and slave: a slave with an aptitude for business could be given considerable leeway to generate profit and might be allowed to bequeath the "peculium" he managed to other slaves of his household. Within a household or workplace, a hierarchy of slaves might exist, with one slave in effect acting as the master of other slaves.
Over time slaves gained increased legal protection, including the right to file complaints against their masters. A bill of sale might contain a clause stipulating that the slave could not be employed for prostitution, as prostitutes in ancient Rome were often slaves. The burgeoning trade in eunuch slaves in the late 1st century AD prompted legislation that prohibited the castration of a slave against his will "for lust or gain."
Roman slavery was not based on race. Slaves were drawn from all over Europe and the Mediterranean, including Gaul, Hispania, Germany, Britannia, the Balkans, Greece... Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians, with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) born outside of Italy estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest. Those from outside of Europe were predominantly of Greek descent, while the Jewish ones never fully assimilated into Roman society, remaining an identifiable minority. These slaves (especially the foreigners) had higher mortality rates and lower birth rates than natives, and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions. The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was extraordinarily low: seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).
During the period of Republican expansionism when slavery had become pervasive, war captives were a main source of slaves. The range of ethnicities among slaves to some extent reflected that of the armies Rome defeated in war, and the conquest of Greece brought a number of highly skilled and educated slaves into Rome. Slaves were also traded in markets and sometimes sold by pirates. Infant abandonment and self-enslavement among the poor were other sources. "Vernae", by contrast, were "homegrown" slaves born to female slaves within the urban household or on a country estate or farm. Although they had no special legal status, an owner who mistreated or failed to care for his "vernae" faced social disapproval, as they were considered part of his "familia", the family household, and in some cases might actually be the children of free males in the family.
Talented slaves with a knack for business might accumulate a large enough "peculium" to justify their freedom, or be manumitted for services rendered. Manumission had become frequent enough that in 2 BC a law "(Lex Fufia Caninia)" limited the number of slaves an owner was allowed to free in his will.
Rome differed from Greek city-states in allowing freed slaves to become citizens. After manumission, a slave who had belonged to a Roman citizen enjoyed not only passive freedom from ownership, but active political freedom "(libertas)", including the right to vote. A slave who had acquired "libertas" was a "libertus" ("freed person," feminine "liberta") in relation to his former master, who then became his patron "(patronus)": the two parties continued to have customary and legal obligations to each other. As a social class generally, freed slaves were "libertini", though later writers used the terms "libertus" and "libertinus" interchangeably.
A "libertinus" was not entitled to hold public office or the highest state priesthoods, but he could play a priestly role in the cult of the emperor. He could not marry a woman from a family of senatorial rank, nor achieve legitimate senatorial rank himself, but during the early Empire, freedmen held key positions in the government bureaucracy, so much so that Hadrian limited their participation by law. Any future children of a freedman would be born free, with full rights of citizenship.
The rise of successful freedmen—through either political influence in imperial service or wealth—is a characteristic of early Imperial society. The prosperity of a high-achieving group of freedmen is attested by , and by their ownership of some of the most lavish houses at Pompeii, such as the House of the Vettii. The excesses of "nouveau riche" freedmen were satirized in the character of Trimalchio in the "Satyricon" by Petronius, who wrote in the time of Nero. Such individuals, while exceptional, are indicative of the upward social mobility possible in the Empire.
The Latin word "ordo" (plural "ordines") refers to a social distinction that is translated variously into English as "class, order, rank," none of which is exact. One purpose of the Roman census was to determine the "ordo" to which an individual belonged. The two highest "ordines" in Rome were the senatorial and equestrian. Outside Rome, the decurions, also known as "curiales" (Greek "bouleutai"), were the top governing "ordo" of an individual city.
"Senator" was not itself an elected office in ancient Rome; an individual gained admission to the Senate after he had been elected to and served at least one term as an executive magistrate. A senator also had to meet a minimum property requirement of 1 million "sestertii," as determined by the census. Nero made large gifts of money to a number of senators from old families who had become too impoverished to qualify. Not all men who qualified for the "ordo senatorius" chose to take a Senate seat, which required legal domicile at Rome. Emperors often filled vacancies in the 600-member body by appointment. A senator's son belonged to the "ordo senatorius", but he had to qualify on his own merits for admission to the Senate itself. A senator could be removed for violating moral standards: he was prohibited, for instance, from marrying a freedwoman or fighting in the arena.
In the time of Nero, senators were still primarily from Rome and other parts of Italy, with some from the Iberian peninsula and southern France; men from the Greek-speaking provinces of the East began to be added under Vespasian. The first senator from the most eastern province, Cappadocia, was admitted under Marcus Aurelius. By the time of the Severan dynasty (193–235), Italians made up less than half the Senate. During the 3rd century, domicile at Rome became impractical, and inscriptions attest to senators who were active in politics and munificence in their homeland "(patria)".
Senators had an aura of prestige and were the traditional governing class who rose through the "cursus honorum", the political career track, but equestrians of the Empire often possessed greater wealth and political power. Membership in the equestrian order was based on property; in Rome's early days, "equites" or knights had been distinguished by their ability to serve as mounted warriors (the "public horse"), but cavalry service was a separate function in the Empire. A census valuation of 400,000 sesterces and three generations of free birth qualified a man as an equestrian. The census of 28 BC uncovered large numbers of men who qualified, and in 14 AD, a thousand equestrians were registered at Cadiz and Padua alone. Equestrians rose through a military career track "(tres militiae)" to become highly placed prefects and procurators within the Imperial administration.
The rise of provincial men to the senatorial and equestrian orders is an aspect of social mobility in the first three centuries of the Empire. Roman aristocracy was based on competition, and unlike later European nobility, a Roman family could not maintain its position merely through hereditary succession or having title to lands. Admission to the higher "ordines" brought distinction and privileges, but also a number of responsibilities. In antiquity, a city depended on its leading citizens to fund public works, events, and services "(munera)", rather than on tax revenues, which primarily supported the military. Maintaining one's rank required massive personal expenditures. Decurions were so vital for the functioning of cities that in the later Empire, as the ranks of the town councils became depleted, those who had risen to the Senate were encouraged by the central government to give up their seats and return to their hometowns, in an effort to sustain civic life.
In the later Empire, the "dignitas" ("worth, esteem") that attended on senatorial or equestrian rank was refined further with titles such as "vir illustris", "illustrious man". The appellation "clarissimus" (Greek "lamprotatos") was used to designate the "dignitas" of certain senators and their immediate family, including women. "Grades" of equestrian status proliferated. Those in Imperial service were ranked by pay grade ("sexagenarius", 60,000 sesterces per annum; "centenarius," 100,000; "ducenarius", 200,000). The title "eminentissimus", "most eminent" (Greek "exochôtatos") was reserved for equestrians who had been Praetorian prefects. The higher equestrian officials in general were "perfectissimi", "most distinguished" (Greek "diasêmotatoi"), the lower merely "egregii", "outstanding" (Greek "kratistos").
As the republican principle of citizens' equality under the law faded, the symbolic and social privileges of the upper classes led to an informal division of Roman society into those who had acquired greater honours "(honestiores)" and those who were humbler folk "(humiliores)". In general, "honestiores" were the members of the three higher "orders," along with certain military officers. The granting of universal citizenship in 212 seems to have increased the competitive urge among the upper classes to have their superiority over other citizens affirmed, particularly within the justice system. Sentencing depended on the judgment of the presiding official as to the relative "worth" "(dignitas)" of the defendant: an "honestior" could pay a fine when convicted of a crime for which an "humilior" might receive a scourging.
Execution, which had been an infrequent legal penalty for free men under the Republic even in a capital case, could be quick and relatively painless for the Imperial citizen considered "more honourable", while those deemed inferior might suffer the kinds of torture and prolonged death previously reserved for slaves, such as crucifixion and condemnation to the beasts as a spectacle in the arena. In the early Empire, those who converted to Christianity could lose their standing as "honestiores", especially if they declined to fulfill the religious aspects of their civic responsibilities, and thus became subject to punishments that created the conditions of martyrdom.
The three major elements of the Imperial Roman state were the central government, the military, and provincial government. The military established control of a territory through war, but after a city or people was brought under treaty, the military mission turned to policing: protecting Roman citizens (after 212 AD, all freeborn inhabitants of the Empire), the agricultural fields that fed them, and religious sites. Without modern instruments of either mass communication or mass destruction, the Romans lacked sufficient manpower or resources to impose their rule through force alone. Cooperation with local power elites was necessary to maintain order, collect information, and extract revenue. The Romans often exploited internal political divisions by supporting one faction over another: in the view of Plutarch, "it was discord between factions within cities that led to the loss of self-governance".
Communities with demonstrated loyalty to Rome retained their own laws, could collect their own taxes locally, and in exceptional cases were exempt from Roman taxation. Legal privileges and relative independence were an incentive to remain in good standing with Rome. Roman government was thus limited, but efficient in its use of the resources available to it.
The dominance of the emperor was based on the consolidation of certain powers from several republican offices, including the inviolability of the tribunes of the people and the authority of the censors to manipulate the hierarchy of Roman society. The emperor also made himself the central religious authority as Pontifex Maximus, and centralized the right to declare war, ratify treaties, and negotiate with foreign leaders. While these functions were clearly defined during the Principate, the emperor's powers over time became less constitutional and more monarchical, culminating in the Dominate.
The emperor was the ultimate authority in policy- and decision-making, but in the early Principate he was expected to be accessible to individuals from all walks of life, and to deal personally with official business and petitions. A bureaucracy formed around him only gradually. The Julio-Claudian emperors relied on an informal body of advisors that included not only senators and equestrians, but trusted slaves and freedmen. After Nero, the unofficial influence of the latter was regarded with suspicion, and the emperor's council "(consilium)" became subject to official appointment for the sake of greater transparency. Though the senate took a lead in policy discussions until the end of the Antonine dynasty, equestrians played an increasingly important role in the "consilium." The women of the emperor's family often intervened directly in his decisions. Plotina exercised influence on both her husband Trajan and his successor Hadrian. Her influence was advertised by having her letters on official matters published, as a sign that the emperor was reasonable in his exercise of authority and listened to his people.
Access to the emperor by others might be gained at the daily reception "(salutatio)", a development of the traditional homage a client paid to his patron; public banquets hosted at the palace; and religious ceremonies. The common people who lacked this access could manifest their general approval or displeasure as a group at the games held in large venues. By the 4th century, as urban centres decayed, the Christian emperors became remote figureheads who issued general rulings, no longer responding to individual petitions.
Although the senate could do little short of assassination and open rebellion to contravene the will of the emperor, it survived the Augustan restoration and the turbulent Year of Four Emperors to retain its symbolic political centrality during the Principate. The senate legitimated the emperor's rule, and the emperor needed the experience of senators as legates "(legati)" to serve as generals, diplomats, and administrators. A successful career required competence as an administrator and remaining in favour with the emperor, or over time perhaps multiple emperors.
The practical source of an emperor's power and authority was the military. The legionaries were paid by the Imperial treasury, and swore an annual military oath of loyalty to the emperor "(sacramentum)". The death of an emperor led to a crucial period of uncertainty and crisis. Most emperors indicated their choice of successor, usually a close family member or adopted heir. The new emperor had to seek a swift acknowledgement of his status and authority to stabilize the political landscape. No emperor could hope to survive, much less to reign, without the allegiance and loyalty of the Praetorian Guard and of the legions. To secure their loyalty, several emperors paid the "donativum", a monetary reward. In theory, the Senate was entitled to choose the new emperor, but did so mindful of acclamation by the army or Praetorians.
After the Punic Wars, the Imperial Roman army was composed of professional soldiers who volunteered for 20 years of active duty and five as reserves. The transition to a professional military had begun during the late Republic, and was one of the many profound shifts away from republicanism, under which an army of conscripts had exercised their responsibilities as citizens in defending the homeland in a campaign against a specific threat. For Imperial Rome, the military was a full-time career in itself. The Romans expanded their war machine by "organizing the communities that they conquered in Italy into a system that generated huge reservoirs of manpower for their army... Their main demand of all defeated enemies was they provide men for the Roman army every year."
The primary mission of the Roman military of the early empire was to preserve the Pax Romana. The three major divisions of the military were:
The pervasiveness of military garrisons throughout the Empire was a major influence in the process of cultural exchange and assimilation known as "Romanization," particularly in regard to politics, the economy, and religion. Knowledge of the Roman military comes from a wide range of sources: Greek and Roman literary texts; coins with military themes; papyri preserving military documents; monuments such as Trajan's Column and triumphal arches, which feature artistic depictions of both fighting men and military machines; the archeology of military burials, battle sites, and camps; and inscriptions, including military diplomas, epitaphs, and dedications.
Through his military reforms, which included consolidating or disbanding units of questionable loyalty, Augustus changed and regularized the legion, down to the hobnail pattern on the soles of army boots. A legion was organized into ten cohorts, each of which comprised six centuries, with a century further made up of ten squads "(contubernia)"; the exact size of the Imperial legion, which is most likely to have been determined by logistics, has been estimated to range from 4,800 to 5,280.
In 9 AD, Germanic tribes wiped out three full legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. This disastrous event reduced the number of the legions to 25. The total of the legions would later be increased again and for the next 300 years always be a little above or below 30. The army had about 300,000 soldiers in the 1st century, and under 400,000 in the 2nd, "significantly smaller" than the collective armed forces of the territories it conquered. No more than 2% of adult males living in the Empire served in the Imperial army.
Augustus also created the Praetorian Guard: nine cohorts, ostensibly to maintain the public peace, which were garrisoned in Italy. Better paid than the legionaries, the Praetorians served only sixteen years.
The "auxilia" were recruited from among the non-citizens. Organized in smaller units of roughly cohort strength, they were paid less than the legionaries, and after 25 years of service were rewarded with Roman citizenship, also extended to their sons. According to Tacitus there were roughly as many auxiliaries as there were legionaries. The "auxilia" thus amounted to around 125,000 men, implying approximately 250 auxiliary regiments. The Roman cavalry of the earliest Empire were primarily from Celtic, Hispanic or Germanic areas. Several aspects of training and equipment, such as the four-horned saddle, derived from the Celts, as noted by Arrian and indicated by archeology.
The Roman navy (Latin: "classis," "fleet") not only aided in the supply and transport of the legions, but also helped in the protection of the frontiers along the rivers Rhine and Danube. Another of its duties was the protection of the crucial maritime trade routes against the threat of pirates. It patrolled the whole of the Mediterranean, parts of the North Atlantic coasts, and the Black Sea. Nevertheless, the army was considered the senior and more prestigious branch.
An annexed territory became a province in a three-step process: making a register of cities, taking a census of the population, and surveying the land. Further government recordkeeping included births and deaths, real estate transactions, taxes, and juridical proceedings. In the 1st and 2nd centuries, the central government sent out around 160 officials each year to govern outside Italy. Among these officials were the "Roman governors", as they are called in English: either magistrates elected at Rome who in the name of the Roman people governed senatorial provinces; or governors, usually of equestrian rank, who held their "imperium" on behalf of the emperor in provinces excluded from senatorial control, most notably Roman Egypt. A governor had to make himself accessible to the people he governed, but he could delegate various duties. His staff, however, was minimal: his official attendants "(apparitores)", including lictors, heralds, messengers, scribes, and bodyguards; legates, both civil and military, usually of equestrian rank; and friends, ranging in age and experience, who accompanied him unofficially.
Other officials were appointed as supervisors of government finances. Separating fiscal responsibility from justice and administration was a reform of the Imperial era. Under the Republic, provincial governors and tax farmers could exploit local populations for personal gain more freely. Equestrian procurators, whose authority was originally "extra-judicial and extra-constitutional," managed both state-owned property and the vast personal property of the emperor "(res privata)". Because Roman government officials were few in number, a provincial who needed help with a legal dispute or criminal case might seek out any Roman perceived to have some official capacity, such as a procurator or a military officer, including centurions down to the lowly "stationarii" or military police.
Roman courts held original jurisdiction over cases involving Roman citizens throughout the empire, but there were too few judicial functionaries to impose Roman law uniformly in the provinces. Most parts of the Eastern empire already had well-established law codes and juridical procedures. In general, it was Roman policy to respect the "mos regionis" ("regional tradition" or "law of the land") and to regard local laws as a source of legal precedent and social stability. The compatibility of Roman and local law was thought to reflect an underlying "ius gentium", the "law of nations" or international law regarded as common and customary among all human communities. If the particulars of provincial law conflicted with Roman law or custom, Roman courts heard appeals, and the emperor held final authority to render a decision.
In the West, law had been administered on a highly localized or tribal basis, and private property rights may have been a novelty of the Roman era, particularly among Celtic peoples. Roman law facilitated the acquisition of wealth by a pro-Roman elite who found their new privileges as citizens to be advantageous. The extension of universal citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire in 212 required the uniform application of Roman law, replacing the local law codes that had applied to non-citizens. Diocletian's efforts to stabilize the Empire after the Crisis of the Third Century included two major compilations of law in four years, the "Codex Gregorianus" and the "Codex Hermogenianus", to guide provincial administrators in setting consistent legal standards.
The pervasive exercise of Roman law throughout Western Europe led to its enormous influence on the Western legal tradition, reflected by the continued use of Latin legal terminology in modern law.
Taxation under the Empire amounted to about 5% of the Empire's gross product. The typical tax rate paid by individuals ranged from 2 to 5%. The tax code was "bewildering" in its complicated system of direct and indirect taxes, some paid in cash and some in kind. Taxes might be specific to a province, or kinds of properties such as fisheries or salt evaporation ponds; they might be in effect for a limited time. Tax collection was justified by the need to maintain the military, and taxpayers sometimes got a refund if the army captured a surplus of booty. In-kind taxes were accepted from less-monetized areas, particularly those who could supply grain or goods to army camps.
The primary source of direct tax revenue was individuals, who paid a poll tax and a tax on their land, construed as a tax on its produce or productive capacity. Supplemental forms could be filed by those eligible for certain exemptions; for example, Egyptian farmers could register fields as fallow and tax-exempt depending on flood patterns of the Nile. Tax obligations were determined by the census, which required each head of household to appear before the presiding official and provide a head count of his household, as well as an accounting of property he owned that was suitable for agriculture or habitation.
A major source of indirect-tax revenue was the "portoria", customs and tolls on imports and exports, including among provinces. Special taxes were levied on the slave trade. Towards the end of his reign, Augustus instituted a 4% tax on the sale of slaves, which Nero shifted from the purchaser to the dealers, who responded by raising their prices. An owner who manumitted a slave paid a "freedom tax", calculated at 5% of value.
An inheritance tax of 5% was assessed when Roman citizens above a certain net worth left property to anyone but members of their immediate family. Revenues from the estate tax and from a 1% sales tax on auctions went towards the veterans' pension fund "(aerarium militare)".
Low taxes helped the Roman aristocracy increase their wealth, which equalled or exceeded the revenues of the central government. An emperor sometimes replenished his treasury by confiscating the estates of the "super-rich", but in the later period, the resistance of the wealthy to paying taxes was one of the factors contributing to the collapse of the Empire.
Moses Finley was the chief proponent of the primitivist view that the Roman economy was "underdeveloped and underachieving," characterized by subsistence agriculture; urban centres that consumed more than they produced in terms of trade and industry; low-status artisans; slowly developing technology; and a "lack of economic rationality." Current views are more complex. Territorial conquests permitted a large-scale reorganization of land use that resulted in agricultural surplus and specialization, particularly in north Africa. Some cities were known for particular industries or commercial activities, and the scale of building in urban areas indicates a significant construction industry. Papyri preserve complex accounting methods that suggest elements of economic rationalism, and the Empire was highly monetized. Although the means of communication and transport were limited in antiquity, transportation in the 1st and 2nd centuries expanded greatly, and trade routes connected regional economies. The supply contracts for the army, which pervaded every part of the Empire, drew on local suppliers near the base "(castrum)", throughout the province, and across provincial borders. The Empire is perhaps best thought of as a network of regional economies, based on a form of "political capitalism" in which the state monitored and regulated commerce to assure its own revenues. Economic growth, though not comparable to modern economies, was greater than that of most other societies prior to industrialization.
Socially, economic dynamism opened up one of the avenues of social mobility in the Roman Empire. Social advancement was thus not dependent solely on birth, patronage, good luck, or even extraordinary ability. Although aristocratic values permeated traditional elite society, a strong tendency towards plutocracy is indicated by the wealth requirements for census rank. Prestige could be obtained through investing one's wealth in ways that advertised it appropriately: grand country estates or townhouses, durable luxury items such as jewels and silverware, public entertainments, funerary monuments for family members or coworkers, and religious dedications such as altars. Guilds "(collegia)" and corporations "(corpora)" provided support for individuals to succeed through networking, sharing sound business practices, and a willingness to work.
The early Empire was monetized to a near-universal extent, in the sense of using money as a way to express prices and debts. The "sestertius" (plural "sestertii," English "sesterces", symbolized as "HS") was the basic unit of reckoning value into the 4th century, though the silver "denarius", worth four sesterces, was used also for accounting beginning in the Severan dynasty. The smallest coin commonly circulated was the bronze "as" (plural "asses"), one-fourth "sestertius". Bullion and ingots seem not to have counted as "pecunia", "money," and were used only on the frontiers for transacting business or buying property. Romans in the 1st and 2nd centuries counted coins, rather than weighing them—an indication that the coin was valued on its face, not for its metal content. This tendency towards fiat money led eventually to the debasement of Roman coinage, with consequences in the later Empire. The standardization of money throughout the Empire promoted trade and market integration. The high amount of metal coinage in circulation increased the money supply for trading or saving.
Rome had no central bank, and regulation of the banking system was minimal. Banks of classical antiquity typically kept less in reserves than the full total of customers' deposits. A typical bank had fairly limited capital, and often only one principal, though a bank might have as many as six to fifteen principals. Seneca assumes that anyone involved in commerce needs access to credit.
A professional deposit banker ("argentarius," "coactor argentarius", or later "nummularius") received and held deposits for a fixed or indefinite term, and lent money to third parties. The senatorial elite were involved heavily in private lending, both as creditors and borrowers, making loans from their personal fortunes on the basis of social connections. The holder of a debt could use it as a means of payment by transferring it to another party, without cash changing hands. Although it has sometimes been thought that ancient Rome lacked "paper" or documentary transactions, the system of banks throughout the Empire also permitted the exchange of very large sums without the physical transfer of coins, in part because of the risks of moving large amounts of cash, particularly by sea. Only one serious credit shortage is known to have occurred in the early Empire, a credit crisis in 33 AD that put a number of senators at risk; the central government rescued the market through a loan of 100 million "HS" made by the emperor Tiberius to the banks "(mensae)". Generally, available capital exceeded the amount needed by borrowers. The central government itself did not borrow money, and without public debt had to fund deficits from cash reserves.
Emperors of the Antonine and Severan dynasties overall debased the currency, particularly the denarius, under the pressures of meeting military payrolls. Sudden inflation during the reign of Commodus damaged the credit market. In the mid-200s, the supply of specie contracted sharply. Conditions during the Crisis of the Third Century—such as reductions in long-distance trade, disruption of mining operations, and the physical transfer of gold coinage outside the empire by invading enemies—greatly diminished the money supply and the banking sector by the year 300. Although Roman coinage had long been fiat money or fiduciary currency, general economic anxieties came to a head under Aurelian, and bankers lost confidence in coins legitimately issued by the central government. Despite Diocletian's introduction of the gold "solidus" and monetary reforms, the credit market of the Empire never recovered its former robustness.
The main mining regions of the Empire were the Iberian Peninsula (gold, silver, copper, tin, lead); Gaul (gold, silver, iron); Britain (mainly iron, lead, tin), the Danubian provinces (gold, iron); Macedonia and Thrace (gold, silver); and Asia Minor (gold, silver, iron, tin). Intensive large-scale mining—of alluvial deposits, and by means of open-cast mining and underground mining—took place from the reign of Augustus up to the early 3rd century AD, when the instability of the Empire disrupted production. The gold mines of Dacia, for instance, were no longer available for Roman exploitation after the province was surrendered in 271. Mining seems to have resumed to some extent during the 4th century.
Hydraulic mining, which Pliny referred to as "ruina montium" ("ruin of the mountains"), allowed base and precious metals to be extracted on a proto-industrial scale. The total annual iron output is estimated at 82,500 tonnes. Copper was produced at an annual rate of 15,000 t, and lead at 80,000 t, both production levels unmatched until the Industrial Revolution; Hispania alone had a 40% share in world lead production. The high lead output was a by-product of extensive silver mining which reached 200 t per annum. At its peak around the mid-2nd century AD, the Roman silver stock is estimated at 10,000 t, five to ten times larger than the combined silver mass of medieval Europe and the Caliphate around 800 AD. As an indication of the scale of Roman metal production, lead pollution in the Greenland ice sheet quadrupled over its prehistoric levels during the Imperial era and dropped again thereafter.
The Roman Empire completely encircled the Mediterranean, which they called "our sea" "(mare nostrum)". Roman sailing vessels navigated the Mediterranean as well as the major rivers of the Empire, including the Guadalquivir, Ebro, Rhône, Rhine, Tiber and Nile. Transport by water was preferred where possible, and moving commodities by land was more difficult. Vehicles, wheels, and ships indicate the existence of a great number of skilled woodworkers.
Land transport utilized the advanced system of Roman roads, which were called ""viae"". These roads were primarily built for military purposes, but also served commercial ends. The in-kind taxes paid by communities included the provision of personnel, animals, or vehicles for the "cursus publicus", the state mail and transport service established by Augustus. Relay stations were located along the roads every seven to twelve Roman miles, and tended to grow into a village or trading post. A "mansio" (plural "mansiones") was a privately run service station franchised by the imperial bureaucracy for the "cursus publicus". The support staff at such a facility included muleteers, secretaries, blacksmiths, cartwrights, a veterinarian, and a few military police and couriers. The distance between "mansiones" was determined by how far a wagon could travel in a day. Mules were the animal most often used for pulling carts, travelling about 4 mph. As an example of the pace of communication, it took a messenger a minimum of nine days to travel to Rome from Mainz in the province of Germania Superior, even on a matter of urgency. In addition to the "mansiones", some taverns offered accommodations as well as food and drink; one recorded tab for a stay showed charges for wine, bread, mule feed, and the services of a prostitute.
Roman provinces traded among themselves, but trade extended outside the frontiers to regions as far away as China and India. The main commodity was grain. Chinese trade was mostly conducted overland through middle men along the Silk Road; Indian trade, however, also occurred by sea from Egyptian ports on the Red Sea. Along these trade paths, the horse, upon which Roman expansion and commerce depended, was one of the main channels through which disease spread. Also in transit for trade were olive oil, various foodstuffs, "garum" (fish sauce), slaves, ore and manufactured metal objects, fibres and textiles, timber, pottery, glassware, marble, papyrus, spices and "materia medica", ivory, pearls, and gemstones.
Though most provinces were capable of producing wine, regional varietals were desirable and wine was a central item of trade. Shortages of "vin ordinaire" were rare. The major suppliers for the city of Rome were the west coast of Italy, southern Gaul, the Tarraconensis region of Hispania, and Crete. Alexandria, the second-largest city, imported wine from Laodicea in Syria and the Aegean. At the retail level, taverns or specialty wine shops "(vinaria)" sold wine by the jug for carryout and by the drink on premises, with price ranges reflecting quality.
Inscriptions record 268 different occupations in the city of Rome, and 85 in Pompeii. Professional associations or trade guilds "(collegia)" are attested for a wide range of occupations, including fishermen "(piscatores)", salt merchants "(salinatores)", olive oil dealers "(olivarii)", entertainers "(scaenici)", cattle dealers "(pecuarii)", goldsmiths "(aurifices)", teamsters "(asinarii" or "muliones)", and stonecutters "(lapidarii)". These are sometimes quite specialized: one "collegium" at Rome was strictly limited to craftsmen who worked in ivory and citrus wood.
Work performed by slaves falls into five general categories: domestic, with epitaphs recording at least 55 different household jobs; imperial or public service; urban crafts and services; agriculture; and mining. Convicts provided much of the labour in the mines or quarries, where conditions were notoriously brutal. In practice, there was little division of labour between slave and free, and most workers were illiterate and without special skills. The greatest number of common labourers were employed in agriculture: in the Italian system of industrial farming "(latifundia)", these may have been mostly slaves, but throughout the Empire, slave farm labour was probably less important than other forms of dependent labour by people who were technically not enslaved.
Textile and clothing production was a major source of employment. Both textiles and finished garments were traded among the peoples of the Empire, whose products were often named for them or a particular town, rather like a fashion "label". Better ready-to-wear was exported by businessmen ("negotiatores" or "mercatores") who were often well-to-do residents of the production centres. Finished garments might be retailed by their sales agents, who travelled to potential customers, or by "vestiarii," clothing dealers who were mostly freedmen; or they might be peddled by itinerant merchants. In Egypt, textile producers could run prosperous small businesses employing apprentices, free workers earning wages, and slaves. The fullers ("fullones") and dye workers ("coloratores") had their own guilds. "Centonarii" were guild workers who specialized in textile production and the recycling of old clothes into pieced goods.
Economic historians vary in their calculations of the gross domestic product of the Roman economy during the Principate. In the sample years of 14, 100, and 150 AD, estimates of per capita GDP range from 166 to 380 "HS". The GDP per capita of Italy is estimated as 40 to 66% higher than in the rest of the Empire, due to tax transfers from the provinces and the concentration of elite income in the heartland. In regard to Italy, "there can be little doubt that the lower classes of Pompeii, Herculaneum and other provincial towns of the Roman Empire enjoyed a high standard of living not equaled again in Western Europe until the 19th century AD".
In the Scheidel–Friesen economic model, the total annual income generated by the Empire is placed at nearly 20 billion "HS", with about 5% extracted by central and local government. Households in the top 1.5% of income distribution captured about 20% of income. Another 20% went to about 10% of the population who can be characterized as a non-elite middle. The remaining "vast majority" produced more than half of the total income, but lived near subsistence. The elite were 1.2–1.7% and the middling "who enjoyed modest, comfortable levels of existence but not extreme wealth amounted to 6–12% (...) while the vast majority lived around subsistence".
The chief Roman contributions to architecture were the arch, vault and the dome. Even after more than 2,000 years some Roman structures still stand, due in part to sophisticated methods of making cements and concrete. Roman roads are considered the most advanced roads built until the early 19th century. The system of roadways facilitated military policing, communications, and trade. The roads were resistant to floods and other environmental hazards. Even after the collapse of the central government, some roads remained usable for more than a thousand years.
Roman bridges were among the first large and lasting bridges, built from stone with the arch as the basic structure. Most utilized concrete as well. The largest Roman bridge was Trajan's bridge over the lower Danube, constructed by Apollodorus of Damascus, which remained for over a millennium the longest bridge to have been built both in terms of overall span and length.
The Romans built many dams and reservoirs for water collection, such as the Subiaco Dams, two of which fed the Anio Novus, one of the largest aqueducts of Rome. They built 72 dams just on the Iberian peninsula, and many more are known across the Empire, some still in use. Several earthen dams are known from Roman Britain, including a well-preserved example from Longovicium (Lanchester).
The Romans constructed numerous aqueducts. A surviving treatise by Frontinus, who served as "curator aquarum" (water commissioner) under Nerva, reflects the administrative importance placed on ensuring the water supply. Masonry channels carried water from distant springs and reservoirs along a precise gradient, using gravity alone. After the water passed through the aqueduct, it was collected in tanks and fed through pipes to public fountains, baths, toilets, or industrial sites. The main aqueducts in the city of Rome were the Aqua Claudia and the Aqua Marcia. The complex system built to supply Constantinople had its most distant supply drawn from over 120 km away along a sinuous route of more than 336 km. Roman aqueducts were built to remarkably fine tolerance, and to a technological standard that was not to be equalled until modern times. The Romans also made use of aqueducts in their extensive mining operations across the empire, at sites such as Las Medulas and Dolaucothi in South Wales.
Insulated glazing (or "double glazing") was used in the construction of public baths. Elite housing in cooler climates might have hypocausts, a form of central heating. The Romans were the first culture to assemble all essential components of the much later steam engine, when Hero built the aeolipile. With the crank and connecting rod system, all elements for constructing a steam engine (invented in 1712)—Hero's aeolipile (generating steam power), the cylinder and piston (in metal force pumps), non-return valves (in water pumps), gearing (in water mills and clocks)—were known in Roman times.
In the ancient world, a city was viewed as a place that fostered civilization by being "properly designed, ordered, and adorned." Augustus undertook a vast building programme in Rome, supported public displays of art that expressed the new imperial ideology, and reorganized the city into neighbourhoods "(vici)" administered at the local level with police and firefighting services. A focus of Augustan monumental architecture was the Campus Martius, an open area outside the city centre that in early times had been devoted to equestrian sports and physical training for youth. The Altar of Augustan Peace "(Ara Pacis Augustae)" was located there, as was an obelisk imported from Egypt that formed the pointer "(gnomon)" of a horologium. With its public gardens, the Campus became one of the most attractive places in the city to visit.
City planning and urban lifestyles had been influenced by the Greeks from an early period, and in the eastern Empire, Roman rule accelerated and shaped the local development of cities that already had a strong Hellenistic character. Cities such as Athens, Aphrodisias, Ephesus and Gerasa altered some aspects of city planning and architecture to conform to imperial ideals, while also expressing their individual identity and regional preeminence. In the areas of the western Empire inhabited by Celtic-speaking peoples, Rome encouraged the development of urban centres with stone temples, forums, monumental fountains, and amphitheatres, often on or near the sites of the preexisting walled settlements known as "oppida". Urbanization in Roman Africa expanded on Greek and Punic cities along the coast.
The network of cities throughout the Empire ("coloniae", "municipia", "civitates" or in Greek terms "poleis") was a primary cohesive force during the Pax Romana. Romans of the 1st and 2nd centuries AD were encouraged by imperial propaganda to "inculcate the habits of peacetime". As the classicist Clifford Ando has noted:
Most of the cultural appurtenances popularly associated with imperial culture—public cult and its games and civic banquets, competitions for artists, speakers, and athletes, as well as the funding of the great majority of public buildings and public display of art—were financed by private individuals, whose expenditures in this regard helped to justify their economic power and legal and provincial privileges.
Even the Christian polemicist Tertullian declared that the world of the late 2nd century was more orderly and well-cultivated than in earlier times: "Everywhere there are houses, everywhere people, everywhere the "res publica", the commonwealth, everywhere life." The decline of cities and civic life in the 4th century, when the wealthy classes were unable or disinclined to support public works, was one sign of the Empire's imminent dissolution.
In the city of Rome, most people lived in multistory apartment buildings "(insulae)" that were often squalid firetraps. Public facilities—such as baths "(thermae)", toilets that were flushed with running water "(latrinae)", conveniently located basins or elaborate fountains "(nymphea)" delivering fresh water, and large-scale entertainments such as chariot races and gladiator combat—were aimed primarily at the common people who lived in the "insulae". Similar facilities were constructed in cities throughout the Empire, and some of the best-preserved Roman structures are in Spain, southern France, and northern Africa.
The public baths served hygienic, social and cultural functions. Bathing was the focus of daily socializing in the late afternoon before dinner. Roman baths were distinguished by a series of rooms that offered communal bathing in three temperatures, with varying amenities that might include an exercise and weight-training room, sauna, exfoliation spa (where oils were massaged into the skin and scraped from the body with a strigil), ball court, or outdoor swimming pool. Baths had hypocaust heating: the floors were suspended over hot-air channels that circulated warmth. Mixed nude bathing was not unusual in the early Empire, though some baths may have offered separate facilities or hours for men and women. Public baths were a part of urban culture throughout the provinces, but in the late 4th century, individual tubs began to replace communal bathing. Christians were advised to go to the baths for health and cleanliness, not pleasure, but to avoid the games "(ludi)", which were part of religious festivals they considered "pagan". Tertullian says that otherwise Christians not only availed themselves of the baths, but participated fully in commerce and society.
Rich families from Rome usually had two or more houses, a townhouse "(domus," plural "domūs)" and at least one luxury home "(villa)" outside the city. The "domus" was a privately owned single-family house, and might be furnished with a private bath "(balneum)", but it was not a place to retreat from public life. Although some neighbourhoods of Rome show a higher concentration of well-to-do houses, the rich did not live in segregated enclaves. Their houses were meant to be visible and accessible. The atrium served as a reception hall in which the "paterfamilias" (head of household) met with clients every morning, from wealthy friends to poorer dependents who received charity. It was also a centre of family religious rites, containing a shrine and the images of family ancestors. The houses were located on busy public roads, and ground-level spaces facing the street were often rented out as shops "(tabernae)". In addition to a kitchen garden—windowboxes might substitute in the "insulae"—townhouses typically enclosed a peristyle garden that brought a tract of nature, made orderly, within walls.
The villa by contrast was an escape from the bustle of the city, and in literature represents a lifestyle that balances the civilized pursuit of intellectual and artistic interests "(otium)" with an appreciation of nature and the agricultural cycle. Ideally a villa commanded a view or vista, carefully framed by the architectural design. It might be located on a working estate, or in a "resort town" situated on the seacoast, such as Pompeii and Herculaneum.
The programme of urban renewal under Augustus, and the growth of Rome's population to as many as 1 million people, was accompanied by a nostalgia for rural life expressed in the arts. Poetry praised the idealized lives of farmers and shepherds. The interiors of houses were often decorated with painted gardens, fountains, landscapes, vegetative ornament, and animals, especially birds and marine life, rendered accurately enough that modern scholars can sometimes identify them by species. The Augustan poet Horace gently satirized the dichotomy of urban and rural values in his fable of the city mouse and the country mouse, which has often been retold as a children's story.
On a more practical level, the central government took an active interest in supporting agriculture. Producing food was the top priority of land use. Larger farms "(latifundia)" achieved an economy of scale that sustained urban life and its more specialized division of labour. Small farmers benefited from the development of local markets in towns and trade centres. Agricultural techniques such as crop rotation and selective breeding were disseminated throughout the Empire, and new crops were introduced from one province to another, such as peas and cabbage to Britain.
Maintaining an affordable food supply to the city of Rome had become a major political issue in the late Republic, when the state began to provide a grain dole (Cura Annonae) to citizens who registered for it. About 200,000–250,000 adult males in Rome received the dole, amounting to about 33 kg. per month, for a per annum total of about 100,000 tons of wheat primarily from Sicily, north Africa, and Egypt. The dole cost at least 15% of state revenues, but improved living conditions and family life among the lower classes, and subsidized the rich by allowing workers to spend more of their earnings on the wine and olive oil produced on the estates of the landowning class.
The grain dole also had symbolic value: it affirmed both the emperor's position as universal benefactor, and the right of all citizens to share in "the fruits of conquest". The "annona", public facilities, and spectacular entertainments mitigated the otherwise dreary living conditions of lower-class Romans, and kept social unrest in check. The satirist Juvenal, however, saw "bread and circuses" "(panem et circenses)" as emblematic of the loss of republican political liberty:
The public has long since cast off its cares: the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things: bread and circuses.
Most apartments in Rome lacked kitchens, though a charcoal brazier could be used for rudimentary cookery. Prepared food was sold at pubs and bars, inns, and food stalls "(tabernae, cauponae, popinae, thermopolia)". Carryout and restaurant dining were for the lower classes; fine dining could be sought only at private dinner parties in houses with a chef "(archimagirus)" and trained kitchen staff, or at banquets hosted by social clubs "(collegia)".
Most people would have consumed at least 70% of their daily calories in the form of cereals and legumes. "Puls" (pottage) was considered the aboriginal food of the Romans. The basic grain pottage could be elaborated with chopped vegetables, bits of meat, cheese, or herbs to produce dishes similar to polenta or risotto.
Urban populations and the military preferred to consume their grain in the form of bread. Mills and commercial ovens were usually combined in a bakery complex. By the reign of Aurelian, the state had begun to distribute the "annona" as a daily ration of bread baked in state factories, and added olive oil, wine, and pork to the dole.
The importance of a good diet to health was recognized by medical writers such as Galen (2nd century AD), whose treatises included one "On Barley Soup". Views on nutrition were influenced by schools of thought such as humoral theory.
Roman literature focuses on the dining habits of the upper classes, for whom the evening meal "(cena)" had important social functions. Guests were entertained in a finely decorated dining room "(triclinium)", often with a view of the peristyle garden. Diners lounged on couches, leaning on the left elbow. By the late Republic, if not earlier, women dined, reclined, and drank wine along with men.
The most famous description of a Roman meal is probably Trimalchio's dinner party in the "Satyricon", a fictional extravaganza that bears little resemblance to reality even among the most wealthy. The poet Martial describes serving a more plausible dinner, beginning with the "gustatio" ("tasting" or "appetizer"), which was a salad composed of mallow leaves, lettuce, chopped leeks, mint, arugula, mackerel garnished with rue, sliced eggs, and marinated sow udder. The main course was succulent cuts of kid, beans, greens, a chicken, and leftover ham, followed by a dessert of fresh fruit and vintage wine. The Latin expression for a full-course dinner was "ab ovo usque mala", "from the egg to the apples," equivalent to the English "from soup to nuts."
A book-length collection of Roman recipes is attributed to Apicius, a name for several figures in antiquity that became synonymous with "gourmet." Roman "foodies" indulged in wild game, fowl such as peacock and flamingo, large fish (mullet was especially prized), and shellfish. Luxury ingredients were brought by the fleet from the far reaches of empire, from the Parthian frontier to the Straits of Gibraltar.
Refined cuisine could be moralized as a sign of either civilized progress or decadent decline. The early Imperial historian Tacitus contrasted the indulgent luxuries of the Roman table in his day with the simplicity of the Germanic diet of fresh wild meat, foraged fruit, and cheese, unadulterated by imported seasonings and elaborate sauces. Most often, because of the importance of landowning in Roman culture, produce—cereals, legumes, vegetables, and fruit—was considered a more civilized form of food than meat. The Mediterranean staples of bread, wine, and oil were sacralized by Roman Christianity, while Germanic meat consumption became a mark of paganism, as it might be the product of animal sacrifice.
Some philosophers and Christians resisted the demands of the body and the pleasures of food, and adopted fasting as an ideal. Food became simpler in general as urban life in the West diminished, trade routes were disrupted, and the rich retreated to the more limited self-sufficiency of their country estates. As an urban lifestyle came to be associated with decadence, the Church formally discouraged gluttony, and hunting and pastoralism were seen as simple, virtuous ways of life.
When Juvenal complained that the Roman people had exchanged their political liberty for "bread and circuses", he was referring to the state-provided grain dole and the "circenses", events held in the entertainment venue called a "circus" in Latin. The largest such venue in Rome was the Circus Maximus, the setting of horse races, chariot races, the equestrian Troy Game, staged beast hunts "(venationes)", athletic contests, gladiator combat, and historical re-enactments. From earliest times, several religious festivals had featured games "(ludi)", primarily horse and chariot races "(ludi circenses)". Although their entertainment value tended to overshadow ritual significance, the races remained part of archaic religious observances that pertained to agriculture, initiation, and the cycle of birth and death.
Under Augustus, public entertainments were presented on 77 days of the year; by the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the number of days had expanded to 135. Circus games were preceded by an elaborate parade "(pompa circensis)" that ended at the venue. Competitive events were held also in smaller venues such as the amphitheatre, which became the characteristic Roman spectacle venue, and stadium. Greek-style athletics included footraces, boxing, wrestling, and the pancratium. Aquatic displays, such as the mock sea battle "(naumachia)" and a form of "water ballet", were presented in engineered pools. State-supported theatrical events "(ludi scaenici)" took place on temple steps or in grand stone theatres, or in the smaller enclosed theatre called an "odeum".
Circuses were the largest structure regularly built in the Roman world, though the Greeks had their own architectural traditions for the similarly purposed hippodrome. The Flavian Amphitheatre, better known as the Colosseum, became the regular arena for blood sports in Rome after it opened in 80 AD. The circus races continued to be held more frequently. The Circus Maximus could seat around 150,000 spectators, and the Colosseum about 50,000 with standing room for about 10,000 more. Many Roman amphitheatres, circuses and theatres built in cities outside Italy are visible as ruins today. The local ruling elite were responsible for sponsoring spectacles and arena events, which both enhanced their status and drained their resources.
The physical arrangement of the amphitheatre represented the order of Roman society: the emperor presiding in his opulent box; senators and equestrians watching from the advantageous seats reserved for them; women seated at a remove from the action; slaves given the worst places, and everybody else packed in-between. The crowd could call for an outcome by booing or cheering, but the emperor had the final say. Spectacles could quickly become sites of social and political protest, and emperors sometimes had to deploy force to put down crowd unrest, most notoriously at the Nika riots in the year 532, when troops under Justinian slaughtered thousands.
The chariot teams were known by the colours they wore, with the Blues and Greens the most popular. Fan loyalty was fierce and at times erupted into sports riots. Racing was perilous, but charioteers were among the most celebrated and well-compensated athletes. One star of the sport was Diocles, from Lusitania (present-day Portugal), who raced chariots for 24 years and had career earnings of 35 million sesterces. Horses had their fans too, and were commemorated in art and inscriptions, sometimes by name. The design of Roman circuses was developed to assure that no team had an unfair advantage and to minimize collisions ("naufragia," "shipwrecks"), which were nonetheless frequent and spectacularly satisfying to the crowd. The races retained a magical aura through their early association with chthonic rituals: circus images were considered protective or lucky, curse tablets have been found buried at the site of racetracks, and charioteers were often suspected of sorcery. Chariot racing continued into the Byzantine period under imperial sponsorship, but the decline of cities in the 6th and 7th centuries led to its eventual demise.
The Romans thought gladiator contests had originated with funeral games and sacrifices in which select captive warriors were forced to fight to expiate the deaths of noble Romans. Some of the earliest styles of gladiator fighting had ethnic designations such as "Thracian" or "Gallic". The staged combats were considered "munera", "services, offerings, benefactions", initially distinct from the festival games "(ludi)".
Throughout his 40-year reign, Augustus presented eight gladiator shows in which a total of 10,000 men fought, as well as 26 staged beast hunts that resulted in the deaths of 3,500 animals. To mark the opening of the Colosseum, the emperor Titus presented 100 days of arena events, with 3,000 gladiators competing on a single day. Roman fascination with gladiators is indicated by how widely they are depicted on mosaics, wall paintings, lamps, and even graffiti drawings.
Gladiators were trained combatants who might be slaves, convicts, or free volunteers. Death was not a necessary or even desirable outcome in matches between these highly skilled fighters, whose training represented a costly and time-consuming investment. By contrast, "noxii" were convicts sentenced to the arena with little or no training, often unarmed, and with no expectation of survival. Physical suffering and humiliation were considered appropriate retributive justice for the crimes they had committed. These executions were sometimes staged or ritualized as re-enactments of myths, and amphitheatres were equipped with elaborate stage machinery to create special effects. Tertullian considered deaths in the arena to be nothing more than a dressed-up form of human sacrifice.
Modern scholars have found the pleasure Romans took in the "theatre of life and death" to be one of the more difficult aspects of their civilization to understand and explain. The younger Pliny rationalized gladiator spectacles as good for the people, a way "to inspire them to face honourable wounds and despise death, by exhibiting love of glory and desire for victory even in the bodies of slaves and criminals". Some Romans such as Seneca were critical of the brutal spectacles, but found virtue in the courage and dignity of the defeated fighter rather than in victory—an attitude that finds its fullest expression with the Christians martyred in the arena. Even martyr literature, however, offers "detailed, indeed luxuriant, descriptions of bodily suffering", and became a popular genre at times indistinguishable from fiction.
In the plural, "ludi" almost always refers to the large-scale spectator games. The singular "ludus", "play, game, sport, training," had a wide range of meanings such as "word play," "theatrical performance," "board game," "primary school," and even "gladiator training school" (as in "Ludus Magnus", the largest such training camp at Rome).
Activities for children and young people included hoop rolling and knucklebones ("astragali" or "jacks"). The sarcophagi of children often show them playing games. Girls had dolls, typically 15–16 cm tall with jointed limbs, made of materials such as wood, terracotta, and especially bone and ivory. Ball games include trigon, which required dexterity, and harpastum, a rougher sport. Pets appear often on children's memorials and in literature, including birds, dogs, cats, goats, sheep, rabbits and geese.
After adolescence, most physical training for males was of a military nature. The Campus Martius originally was an exercise field where young men developed the skills of horsemanship and warfare. Hunting was also considered an appropriate pastime. According to Plutarch, conservative Romans disapproved of Greek-style athletics that promoted a fine body for its own sake, and condemned Nero's efforts to encourage gymnastic games in the Greek manner.
Some women trained as gymnasts and dancers, and a rare few as female gladiators. The famous "bikini girls" mosaic shows young women engaging in apparatus routines that might be compared to rhythmic gymnastics. Women in general were encouraged to maintain their health through activities such as playing ball, swimming, walking, reading aloud (as a breathing exercise), riding in vehicles, and travel.
People of all ages played board games pitting two players against each other, including "latrunculi" ("Raiders"), a game of strategy in which opponents coordinated the movements and capture of multiple game pieces, and "XII scripta" ("Twelve Marks"), involving dice and arranging pieces on a grid of letters or words. A game referred to as "alea" (dice) or "tabula" (the board), to which the emperor Claudius was notoriously addicted, may have been similar to backgammon, using a dice-cup "(pyrgus)". Playing with dice as a form of gambling was disapproved of, but was a popular pastime during the December festival of the Saturnalia with its carnival, norms-overturned atmosphere.
In a status-conscious society like that of the Romans, clothing and personal adornment gave immediate visual clues about the etiquette of interacting with the wearer. Wearing the correct clothing was supposed to reflect a society in good order. The toga was the distinctive national garment of the Roman male citizen, but it was heavy and impractical, worn mainly for conducting political business and religious rites, and for going to court. The clothing Romans wore ordinarily was dark or colourful, and the most common male attire seen daily throughout the provinces would have been tunics, cloaks, and in some regions trousers. The study of how Romans dressed in daily life is complicated by a lack of direct evidence, since portraiture may show the subject in clothing with symbolic value, and surviving textiles from the period are rare.
The basic garment for all Romans, regardless of gender or wealth, was the simple sleeved tunic. The length differed by wearer: a man's reached mid-calf, but a soldier's was somewhat shorter; a woman's fell to her feet, and a child's to its knees. The tunics of poor people and labouring slaves were made from coarse wool in natural, dull shades, with the length determined by the type of work they did. Finer tunics were made of lightweight wool or linen. A man who belonged to the senatorial or equestrian order wore a tunic with two purple stripes "(clavi)" woven vertically into the fabric: the wider the stripe, the higher the wearer's status. Other garments could be layered over the tunic.
The Imperial toga was a "vast expanse" of semi-circular white wool that could not be put on and draped correctly without assistance. In his work on oratory, Quintilian describes in detail how the public speaker ought to orchestrate his gestures in relation to his toga. In art, the toga is shown with the long end dipping between the feet, a deep curved fold in front, and a bulbous flap at the midsection. The drapery became more intricate and structured over time, with the cloth forming a tight roll across the chest in later periods. The "toga praetexta", with a purple or purplish-red stripe representing inviolability, was worn by children who had not come of age, curule magistrates, and state priests. Only the emperor could wear an all-purple toga "(toga picta)".
In the 2nd century, emperors and men of status are often portrayed wearing the pallium, an originally Greek mantle "(himation)" folded tightly around the body. Women are also portrayed in the pallium. Tertullian considered the pallium an appropriate garment both for Christians, in contrast to the toga, and for educated people, since it was associated with philosophers. By the 4th century, the toga had been more or less replaced by the pallium as a garment that embodied social unity.
Roman clothing styles changed over time, though not as rapidly as fashions today. In the Dominate, clothing worn by both soldiers and government bureaucrats became highly decorated, with woven or embroidered stripes "(clavi)" and circular roundels "(orbiculi)" applied to tunics and cloaks. These decorative elements consisted of geometrical patterns, stylized plant motifs, and in more elaborate examples, human or animal figures. The use of silk increased, and courtiers of the later Empire wore elaborate silk robes. The militarization of Roman society, and the waning of cultural life based on urban ideals, affected habits of dress: heavy military-style belts were worn by bureaucrats as well as soldiers, and the toga was abandoned.
People visiting or living in Rome or the cities throughout the Empire would have seen art in a range of styles and media on a daily basis. Public or official art—including sculpture, monuments such as victory columns or triumphal arches, and the iconography on coins—is often analysed for its historical significance or as an expression of imperial ideology. At Imperial public baths, a person of humble means could view wall paintings, mosaics, statues, and interior decoration often of high quality. In the private sphere, objects made for religious dedications, funerary commemoration, domestic use, and commerce can show varying degrees of esthetic quality and artistic skill. A wealthy person might advertise his appreciation of culture through painting, sculpture, and decorative arts at his home—though some efforts strike modern viewers and some ancient connoisseurs as strenuous rather than tasteful. Greek art had a profound influence on the Roman tradition, and some of the most famous examples of Greek statues are known only from Roman Imperial versions and the occasional description in a Greek or Latin literary source.
Despite the high value placed on works of art, even famous artists were of low social status among the Greeks and Romans, who regarded artists, artisans, and craftsmen alike as manual labourers. At the same time, the level of skill required to produce quality work was recognized, and even considered a divine gift.
Portraiture, which survives mainly in the medium of sculpture, was the most copious form of imperial art. Portraits during the Augustan period utilize youthful and classical proportions, evolving later into a mixture of realism and idealism. Republican portraits had been characterized by a "warts and all" verism, but as early as the 2nd century BC, the Greek convention of heroic nudity was adopted sometimes for portraying conquering generals. Imperial portrait sculptures may model the head as mature, even craggy, atop a nude or seminude body that is smooth and youthful with perfect musculature; a portrait head might even be added to a body created for another purpose. Clothed in the toga or military regalia, the body communicates rank or sphere of activity, not the characteristics of the individual.
Women of the emperor's family were often depicted dressed as goddesses or divine personifications such as Pax ("Peace"). Portraiture in painting is represented primarily by the Fayum mummy portraits, which evoke Egyptian and Roman traditions of commemorating the dead with the realistic painting techniques of the Empire. Marble portrait sculpture would have been painted, and while traces of paint have only rarely survived the centuries, the Fayum portraits indicate why ancient literary sources marvelled at how lifelike artistic representations could be.
Examples of Roman sculpture survive abundantly, though often in damaged or fragmentary condition, including freestanding statues and statuettes in marble, bronze and terracotta, and reliefs from public buildings, temples, and monuments such as the Ara Pacis, Trajan's Column, and the Arch of Titus. Niches in amphitheatres such as the Colosseum were originally filled with statues, and no formal garden was complete without statuary.
Temples housed the cult images of deities, often by famed sculptors. The religiosity of the Romans encouraged the production of decorated altars, small representations of deities for the household shrine or votive offerings, and other pieces for dedicating at temples. Divine and mythological figures were also given secular, humorous, and even obscene depictions.
Elaborately carved marble and limestone sarcophagi are characteristic of the 2nd to the 4th centuries with at least 10,000 examples surviving. Although mythological scenes have been most widely studied, sarcophagus relief has been called the "richest single source of Roman iconography," and may also depict the deceased's occupation or life course, military scenes, and other subject matter. The same workshops produced sarcophagi with Jewish or Christian imagery.
Much of what is known of Roman painting is based on the interior decoration of private homes, particularly as preserved at Pompeii and Herculaneum by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. In addition to decorative borders and panels with geometric or vegetative motifs, wall painting depicts scenes from mythology and the theatre, landscapes and gardens, recreation and spectacles, work and everyday life, and frank pornography. Birds, animals, and marine life are often depicted with careful attention to realistic detail.
A unique source for Jewish figurative painting under the Empire is the Dura-Europos synagogue, dubbed "the Pompeii of the Syrian Desert," buried and preserved in the mid-3rd century after the city was destroyed by Persians.
Mosaics are among the most enduring of Roman decorative arts, and are found on the surfaces of floors and other architectural features such as walls, vaulted ceilings, and columns. The most common form is the tessellated mosaic, formed from uniform pieces "(tesserae)" of materials such as stone and glass. Mosaics were usually crafted on site, but sometimes assembled and shipped as ready-made panels. A mosaic workshop was led by the master artist "(pictor)" who worked with two grades of assistants.
Figurative mosaics share many themes with painting, and in some cases portray subject matter in almost identical compositions. Although geometric patterns and mythological scenes occur throughout the Empire, regional preferences also find expression. In North Africa, a particularly rich source of mosaics, homeowners often chose scenes of life on their estates, hunting, agriculture, and local wildlife. Plentiful and major examples of Roman mosaics come also from present-day Turkey, Italy, southern France, Spain, and Portugal. More than 300 Antioch mosaics from the 3rd century are known.
"Opus sectile" is a related technique in which flat stone, usually coloured marble, is cut precisely into shapes from which geometric or figurative patterns are formed. This more difficult technique was highly prized, and became especially popular for luxury surfaces in the 4th century, an abundant example of which is the Basilica of Junius Bassus.
Decorative arts for luxury consumers included fine pottery, silver and bronze vessels and implements, and glassware. The manufacture of pottery in a wide range of quality was important to trade and employment, as were the glass and metalworking industries. Imports stimulated new regional centres of production. Southern Gaul became a leading producer of the finer red-gloss pottery "(terra sigillata)" that was a major item of trade in 1st-century Europe. Glassblowing was regarded by the Romans as originating in Syria in the 1st century BC, and by the 3rd century Egypt and the Rhineland had become noted for fine glass.
In Roman tradition, borrowed from the Greeks, literary theatre was performed by all-male troupes that used face masks with exaggerated facial expressions that allowed audiences to "see" how a character was feeling. Such masks were occasionally also specific to a particular role, and an actor could then play multiple roles merely by switching masks. Female roles were played by men in drag ("travesti"). Roman literary theatre tradition is particularly well represented in Latin literature by the tragedies of Seneca. The circumstances under which Seneca's tragedies were performed are however unclear; scholarly conjectures range from minimally staged readings to full production pageants. More popular than literary theatre was the genre-defying "mimus" theatre, which featured scripted scenarios with free improvization, risqué language and jokes, sex scenes, action sequences, and political satire, along with dance numbers, juggling, acrobatics, tightrope walking, striptease, and dancing bears. Unlike literary theatre, "mimus" was played without masks, and encouraged stylistic realism in acting. Female roles were performed by women, not by men. "Mimus" was related to the genre called "pantomimus", an early form of story ballet that contained no spoken dialogue. "Pantomimus" combined expressive dancing, instrumental music and a sung libretto, often mythological, that could be either tragic or comic.
Although sometimes regarded as foreign elements in Roman culture, music and dance had existed in Rome from earliest times. Music was customary at funerals, and the "tibia" (Greek "aulos"), a woodwind instrument, was played at sacrifices to ward off ill influences. Song "(carmen)" was an integral part of almost every social occasion. The "Secular Ode" of Horace, commissioned by Augustus, was performed publicly in 17 BC by a mixed children's choir. Music was thought to reflect the orderliness of the cosmos, and was associated particularly with mathematics and knowledge.
Various woodwinds and "brass" instruments were played, as were stringed instruments such as the "cithara", and percussion. The "cornu", a long tubular metal wind instrument that curved around the musician's body, was used for military signals and on parade. These instruments are found in parts of the Empire where they did not originate, and indicate that music was among the aspects of Roman culture that spread throughout the provinces. Instruments are widely depicted in Roman art.
The hydraulic pipe organ "(hydraulis)" was "one of the most significant technical and musical achievements of antiquity", and accompanied gladiator games and events in the amphitheatre, as well as stage performances. It was among the instruments that the emperor Nero played.
Although certain forms of dance were disapproved of at times as non-Roman or unmanly, dancing was embedded in religious rituals of archaic Rome, such as those of the dancing armed Salian priests and of the Arval Brothers, priesthoods which underwent a revival during the Principate. Ecstatic dancing was a feature of the international mystery religions, particularly the cult of Cybele as practiced by her eunuch priests the Galli and of Isis. In the secular realm, dancing girls from Syria and Cadiz were extremely popular.
Like gladiators, entertainers were "infames" in the eyes of the law, little better than slaves even if they were technically free. "Stars", however, could enjoy considerable wealth and celebrity, and mingled socially and often sexually with the upper classes, including emperors. Performers supported each other by forming guilds, and several memorials for members of the theatre community survive. Theatre and dance were often condemned by Christian polemicists in the later Empire, and Christians who integrated dance traditions and music into their worship practices were regarded by the Church Fathers as shockingly "pagan." St. Augustine is supposed to have said that bringing clowns, actors, and dancers into a house was like inviting in a gang of unclean spirits.
Estimates of the average literacy rate in the Empire range from 5 to 30% or higher, depending in part on the definition of "literacy". The Roman obsession with documents and public inscriptions indicates the high value placed on the written word. The Imperial bureaucracy was so dependent on writing that the Babylonian Talmud declared "if all seas were ink, all reeds were pen, all skies parchment, and all men scribes, they would be unable to set down the full scope of the Roman government's concerns." Laws and edicts were posted in writing as well as read out. Illiterate Roman subjects would have someone such as a government scribe "(scriba)" read or write their official documents for them. Public art and religious ceremonies were ways to communicate imperial ideology regardless of ability to read. The Romans had an extensive priestly archive, and inscriptions appear throughout the Empire in connection with statues and small votives dedicated by ordinary people to divinities, as well as on binding tablets and other "magic spells", with hundreds of examples collected in the Greek Magical Papyri. The military produced a vast amount of written reports and service records, and literacy in the army was "strikingly high". Urban graffiti, which include literary quotations, and low-quality inscriptions with misspellings and solecisms indicate casual literacy among non-elites. In addition, numeracy was necessary for any form of commerce. Slaves were numerate and literate in significant numbers, and some were highly educated.
Books were expensive, since each copy had to be written out individually on a roll of papyrus "(volumen)" by scribes who had apprenticed to the trade. The codex—a book with pages bound to a spine—was still a novelty in the time of the poet Martial (1st century AD), but by the end of the 3rd century was replacing the "volumen" and was the regular form for books with Christian content. Commercial production of books had been established by the late Republic, and by the 1st century AD certain neighbourhoods of Rome were known for their bookshops "(tabernae librariae)", which were found also in Western provincial cities such as Lugdunum (present-day Lyon, France). The quality of editing varied wildly, and some ancient authors complain about error-ridden copies, as well as plagiarism or forgery, since there was no copyright law. A skilled slave copyist "(servus litteratus)" could be valued as highly as 100,000 sesterces.
Collectors amassed personal libraries, such as that of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, and a fine library was part of the cultivated leisure "(otium)" associated with the villa lifestyle. Significant collections might attract "in-house" scholars; Lucian mocked mercenary Greek intellectuals who attached themselves to philistine Roman patrons. An individual benefactor might endow a community with a library: Pliny the Younger gave the city of Comum a library valued at 1 million sesterces, along with another 100,000 to maintain it. Imperial libraries housed in state buildings were open to users as a privilege on a limited basis, and represented a literary canon from which disreputable writers could be excluded. Books considered subversive might be publicly burned, and Domitian crucified copyists for reproducing works deemed treasonous.
Literary texts were often shared aloud at meals or with reading groups. Scholars such as Pliny the Elder engaged in "multitasking" by having works read aloud to them while they dined, bathed or travelled, times during which they might also dictate drafts or notes to their secretaries. The multivolume "Attic Nights" of Aulus Gellius is an extended exploration of how Romans constructed their literary culture. The reading public expanded from the 1st through the 3rd century, and while those who read for pleasure remained a minority, they were no longer confined to a sophisticated ruling elite, reflecting the social fluidity of the Empire as a whole and giving rise to "consumer literature" meant for entertainment. Illustrated books, including erotica, were popular, but are poorly represented by extant fragments.
Traditional Roman education was moral and practical. Stories about great men and women, or cautionary tales about individual failures, were meant to instil Roman values "(mores maiorum)". Parents and family members were expected to act as role models, and parents who worked for a living passed their skills on to their children, who might also enter apprenticeships for more advanced training in crafts or trades. Formal education was available only to children from families who could pay for it, and the lack of state intervention in access to education contributed to the low rate of literacy.
Young children were attended by a "pedagogus," or less frequently a female "pedagoga", usually a Greek slave or former slave. The pedagogue kept the child safe, taught self-discipline and public behaviour, attended class and helped with tutoring. The emperor Julian recalled his pedagogue Mardonius, a Gothic eunuch slave who reared him from the age of 7 to 15, with affection and gratitude. Usually, however, pedagogues received little respect.
Primary education in reading, writing, and arithmetic might take place at home for privileged children whose parents hired or bought a teacher. Others attended a school that was "public," though not state-supported, organized by an individual schoolmaster "(ludimagister)" who accepted fees from multiple parents. "Vernae" (homeborn slave children) might share in home- or public-schooling. Schools became more numerous during the Empire, and increased the opportunities for children to acquire an education. School could be held regularly in a rented space, or in any available public niche, even outdoors. Boys and girls received primary education generally from ages 7 to 12, but classes were not segregated by grade or age. For the socially ambitious, bilingual education in Greek as well as Latin was a must.
Quintilian provides the most extensive theory of primary education in Latin literature. According to Quintilian, each child has in-born "ingenium," a talent for learning or linguistic intelligence that is ready to be cultivated and sharpened, as evidenced by the young child's ability to memorize and imitate. The child incapable of learning was rare. To Quintilian, "ingenium" represented a potential best realized in the social setting of school, and he argued against homeschooling. He also recognized the importance of play in child development, and disapproved of corporal punishment because it discouraged love of learning—in contrast to the practice in most Roman primary schools of routinely striking children with a cane "(ferula)" or birch rod for being slow or disruptive.
At the age of 14, upperclass males made their rite of passage into adulthood, and began to learn leadership roles in political, religious, and military life through mentoring from a senior member of their family or a family friend. Higher education was provided by "grammatici" or "rhetores". The "grammaticus" or "grammarian" taught mainly Greek and Latin literature, with history, geography, philosophy or mathematics treated as explications of the text. With the rise of Augustus, contemporary Latin authors such as Vergil and Livy also became part of the curriculum. The "rhetor" was a teacher of oratory or public speaking. The art of speaking "(ars dicendi)" was highly prized as a marker of social and intellectual superiority, and "eloquentia" ("speaking ability, eloquence") was considered the "glue" of a civilized society. Rhetoric was not so much a body of knowledge (though it required a command of references to the literary canon) as it was a mode of expression and decorum that distinguished those who held social power. The ancient model of rhetorical training—"restraint, coolness under pressure, modesty, and good humour"—endured into the 18th century as a Western educational ideal.
In Latin, "illiteratus" (Greek "agrammatos") could mean both "unable to read and write" and "lacking in cultural awareness or sophistication." Higher education promoted career advancement, particularly for an equestrian in Imperial service: "eloquence and learning were considered marks of a well-bred man and worthy of reward". The poet Horace, for instance, was given a top-notch education by his father, a prosperous former slave.
Urban elites throughout the Empire shared a literary culture embued with Greek educational ideals "(paideia)". Hellenistic cities sponsored schools of higher learning as an expression of cultural achievement. Young men from Rome who wished to pursue the highest levels of education often went abroad to study rhetoric and philosophy, mostly to one of several Greek schools in Athens. The curriculum in the East was more likely to include music and physical training along with literacy and numeracy. On the Hellenistic model, Vespasian endowed chairs of grammar, Latin and Greek rhetoric, and philosophy at Rome, and gave teachers special exemptions from taxes and legal penalties, though primary schoolmasters did not receive these benefits. Quintilian held the first chair of grammar. In the eastern empire, Berytus (present-day Beirut) was unusual in offering a Latin education, and became famous for its school of Roman law. The cultural movement known as the Second Sophistic (1st–3rd century AD) promoted the assimilation of Greek and Roman social, educational, and esthetic values, and the Greek proclivities for which Nero had been criticized were regarded from the time of Hadrian onward as integral to Imperial culture.
Literate women ranged from cultured aristocrats to girls trained to be calligraphers and scribes. The "girlfriends" addressed in Augustan love poetry, although fictional, represent an ideal that a desirable woman should be educated, well-versed in the arts, and independent to a frustrating degree. Education seems to have been standard for daughters of the senatorial and equestrian orders during the Empire. A highly educated wife was an asset for the socially ambitious household, but one that Martial regards as an unnecessary luxury.
The woman who achieved the greatest prominence in the ancient world for her learning was Hypatia of Alexandria, who educated young men in mathematics, philosophy, and astronomy, and advised the Roman prefect of Egypt on politics. Her influence put her into conflict with the bishop of Alexandria, Cyril, who may have been implicated in her violent death in 415 at the hands of a Christian mob.
Literacy began to decline, perhaps dramatically, during the socio-political Crisis of the Third Century. After the Christianization of the Roman Empire the Christians and Church Fathers adopted and used Latin and Greek pagan literature, philosophy and natural science with a vengeance to biblical
interpretation.
Edward Grant writes that:
With the total triumph of Christianity at the end of the fourth century, the Church might have reacted against Greek pagan learning in general, and Greek philosophy in particular, finding much in the latter that was unacceptable or perhaps even offensive. They might have launched a major effort to suppress pagan learning as a danger to the Church and its doctrines.
But they did not. Why not?
Perhaps it was in the slow dissemination of Christianity. After four centuries as members of a distinct religion, Christians had learned to live with Greek secular learning and to utilize it for their own benefit. Their education was heavily infiltrated by Latin and Greek pagan literature and philosophy... Although Christians found certain aspects of pagan culture and learning unacceptable, they did not view them as a cancer to be cut out of the Christian body.
Julian, the only emperor after the conversion of Constantine to reject Christianity, banned Christians from teaching the Classical curriculum, on the grounds that they might corrupt the minds of youth.
While the book roll had emphasized the continuity of the text, the codex format encouraged a "piecemeal" approach to reading by means of citation, fragmented interpretation, and the extraction of maxims.
In the 5th and 6th centuries, due to the gradual decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire, reading became rarer even for those within the Church hierarchy. However, in the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as Byzantine Empire, reading continued throughout the Middle Ages as reading was of primary importance as an instrument of the Byzantine civilization.
In the traditional literary canon, literature under Augustus, along with that of the late Republic, has been viewed as the "Golden Age" of Latin literature, embodying the classical ideals of "unity of the whole, the proportion of the parts, and the careful articulation of an apparently seamless composition." The three most influential Classical Latin poets—Vergil, Horace, and Ovid—belong to this period. Vergil wrote the "Aeneid", creating a national epic for Rome in the manner of the Homeric epics of Greece. Horace perfected the use of Greek lyric metres in Latin verse. Ovid's erotic poetry was enormously popular, but ran afoul of the Augustan moral programme; it was one of the ostensible causes for which the emperor exiled him to Tomis (present-day Constanța, Romania), where he remained to the end of his life. Ovid's "Metamorphoses" was a continuous poem of fifteen books weaving together Greco-Roman mythology from the creation of the universe to the deification of Julius Caesar. Ovid's versions of Greek myths became one of the primary sources of later classical mythology, and his work was so influential in the Middle Ages that the 12th and 13th centuries have been called the "Age of Ovid."
The principal Latin prose author of the Augustan age is the historian Livy, whose account of Rome's founding and early history became the most familiar version in modern-era literature. Vitruvius's book "De Architectura", the only complete work on architecture to survive from antiquity, also belongs to this period.
Latin writers were immersed in the Greek literary tradition, and adapted its forms and much of its content, but Romans regarded satire as a genre in which they surpassed the Greeks. Horace wrote verse satires before fashioning himself as an Augustan court poet, and the early Principate also produced the satirists Persius and Juvenal. The poetry of Juvenal offers a lively curmudgeon's perspective on urban society.
The period from the mid-1st century through the mid-2nd century has conventionally been called the "Silver Age" of Latin literature. Under Nero, disillusioned writers reacted to Augustanism. The three leading writers—Seneca the philosopher, dramatist, and tutor of Nero; Lucan, his nephew, who turned Caesar's civil war into an epic poem; and the novelist Petronius "(Satyricon)"—all committed suicide after incurring the emperor's displeasure. Seneca and Lucan were from Hispania, as was the later epigrammatist and keen social observer Martial, who expressed his pride in his Celtiberian heritage. Martial and the epic poet Statius, whose poetry collection "Silvae" had a far-reaching influence on Renaissance literature, wrote during the reign of Domitian.
The so-called "Silver Age" produced several distinguished writers, including the encyclopedist Pliny the Elder; his nephew, known as Pliny the Younger; and the historian Tacitus. The "Natural History" of the elder Pliny, who died during disaster relief efforts in the wake of the eruption of Vesuvius, is a vast collection on flora and fauna, gems and minerals, climate, medicine, freaks of nature, works of art, and antiquarian lore. Tacitus's reputation as a literary artist matches or exceeds his value as a historian; his stylistic experimentation produced "one of the most powerful of Latin prose styles." "The Twelve Caesars" by his contemporary Suetonius is one of the primary sources for imperial biography.
Among Imperial historians who wrote in Greek are Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Jewish historian Josephus, and the senator Cassius Dio. Other major Greek authors of the Empire include the biographer and antiquarian Plutarch, the geographer Strabo, and the rhetorician and satirist Lucian. Popular Greek romance novels were part of the development of long-form fiction works, represented in Latin by the "Satyricon" of Petronius and "The Golden Ass" of Apuleius.
From the 2nd to the 4th centuries, the Christian authors who would become the Latin Church Fathers were in active dialogue with the Classical tradition, within which they had been educated. Tertullian, a convert to Christianity from Roman Africa, was the contemporary of Apuleius and one of the earliest prose authors to establish a distinctly Christian voice. After the conversion of Constantine, Latin literature is dominated by the Christian perspective. When the orator Symmachus argued for the preservation of Rome's religious traditions, he was effectively opposed by Ambrose, the bishop of Milan and future saint—a debate preserved by their missives.
In the late 4th century, Jerome produced the Latin translation of the Bible that became authoritative as the Vulgate. Augustine, another of the Church Fathers from the province of Africa, has been called "one of the most influential writers of western culture", and his "Confessions" is sometimes considered the first autobiography of Western literature. In "The City of God against the Pagans," Augustine builds a vision of an eternal, spiritual Rome, a new "imperium sine fine" that will outlast the collapsing Empire.
In contrast to the unity of Classical Latin, the literary esthetic of late antiquity has a tessellated quality that has been compared to the mosaics characteristic of the period. A continuing interest in the religious traditions of Rome prior to Christian dominion is found into the 5th century, with the "Saturnalia" of Macrobius and "The Marriage of Philology and Mercury" of Martianus Capella. Prominent Latin poets of late antiquity include Ausonius, Prudentius, Claudian, and Sidonius. Ausonius (d. ca. 394), the Bordelaise tutor of the emperor Gratian, was at least nominally a Christian, though throughout his occasionally obscene mixed-genre poems, he retains a literary interest in the Greco-Roman gods and even druidism. The imperial panegyrist Claudian (d. 404) was a "vir illustris" who appears never to have converted. Prudentius (d. ca. 413), born in Hispania Tarraconensis and a fervent Christian, was thoroughly versed in the poets of the Classical tradition, and transforms their vision of poetry as a monument of immortality into an expression of the poet's quest for eternal life culminating in Christian salvation. Sidonius (d. 486), a native of Lugdunum, was a Roman senator and bishop of Clermont who cultivated a traditional villa lifestyle as he watched the Western empire succumb to barbarian incursions. His poetry and collected letters offer a unique view of life in late Roman Gaul from the perspective of a man who "survived the end of his world".
Religion in the Roman Empire encompassed the practices and beliefs the Romans regarded as their own, as well as the many cults imported to Rome or practiced by peoples throughout the provinces. The Romans thought of themselves as highly religious, and attributed their success as a world power to their collective piety "(pietas)" in maintaining good relations with the gods "(pax deorum)". The archaic religion believed to have been handed down from the earliest kings of Rome was the foundation of the "mos maiorum", "the way of the ancestors" or "tradition", viewed as central to Roman identity. There was no principle analogous to "separation of church and state". The priesthoods of the state religion were filled from the same social pool of men who held public office, and in the Imperial era, the Pontifex Maximus was the emperor.
Roman religion was practical and contractual, based on the principle of "do ut des", "I give that you might give." Religion depended on knowledge and the correct practice of prayer, ritual, and sacrifice, not on faith or dogma, although Latin literature preserves learned speculation on the nature of the divine and its relation to human affairs. For ordinary Romans, religion was a part of daily life. Each home had a household shrine at which prayers and libations to the family's domestic deities were offered. Neighbourhood shrines and sacred places such as springs and groves dotted the city. Apuleius (2nd century) described the everyday quality of religion in observing how people who passed a cult place might make a vow or a fruit offering, or merely sit for a while. The Roman calendar was structured around religious observances. In the Imperial era, as many as 135 days of the year were devoted to religious festivals and games ("ludi)". Women, slaves, and children all participated in a range of religious activities.
In the wake of the Republic's collapse, state religion had adapted to support the new regime of the emperors. As the first Roman emperor, Augustus justified the novelty of one-man rule with a vast programme of religious revivalism and reform. Public vows formerly made for the security of the republic now were directed at the wellbeing of the emperor. So-called "emperor worship" expanded on a grand scale the traditional Roman veneration of the ancestral dead and of the "Genius", the divine tutelary of every individual. Upon death, an emperor could be made a state divinity ("divus") by vote of the Senate. Imperial cult, influenced by Hellenistic ruler cult, became one of the major ways Rome advertised its presence in the provinces and cultivated shared cultural identity and loyalty throughout the Empire. Cultural precedent in the Eastern provinces facilitated a rapid dissemination of Imperial cult, extending as far as the Augustan military settlement at Najran, in present-day Saudi Arabia. Rejection of the state religion became tantamount to treason against the emperor. This was the context for Rome's conflict with Christianity, which Romans variously regarded as a form of atheism and novel "superstitio".
The Romans are known for the great number of deities they honoured, a capacity that earned the mockery of early Christian polemicists. As the Romans extended their dominance throughout the Mediterranean world, their policy in general was to absorb the deities and cults of other peoples rather than try to eradicate them. One way that Rome promoted stability among diverse peoples was by supporting their religious heritage, building temples to local deities that framed their theology within the hierarchy of Roman religion. Inscriptions throughout the Empire record the side-by-side worship of local and Roman deities, including dedications made by Romans to local gods. By the height of the Empire, numerous cults of pseudo-foreign gods (Roman reinventions of foreign gods) were cultivated at Rome and in the provinces, among them cults of Cybele, Isis, Epona, and of solar gods such as Mithras and Sol Invictus, found as far north as Roman Britain. Because Romans had never been obligated to cultivate one god or one cult only, religious tolerance was not an issue in the sense that it is for competing monotheistic systems.
Mystery religions, which offered initiates salvation in the afterlife, were a matter of personal choice for an individual, practiced in addition to carrying on one's family rites and participating in public religion. The mysteries, however, involved exclusive oaths and secrecy, conditions that conservative Romans viewed with suspicion as characteristic of "magic", conspiracy ("coniuratio"), and subversive activity. Sporadic and sometimes brutal attempts were made to suppress religionists who seemed to threaten traditional morality and unity. In Gaul, the power of the druids was checked, first by forbidding Roman citizens to belong to the order, and then by banning druidism altogether. At the same time, however, Celtic traditions were reinterpreted ("interpretatio romana") within the context of Imperial theology, and a new Gallo-Roman religion coalesced, with its capital at the Sanctuary of the Three Gauls in Lugdunum (present-day Lyon, France). The sanctuary established precedent for Western cult as a form of Roman-provincial identity.
The monotheistic rigour of Judaism posed difficulties for Roman policy that led at times to compromise and the granting of special exemptions. Tertullian noted that the Jewish religion, unlike that of the Christians, was considered a "religio licita", "legitimate religion." Wars between the Romans and the Jews occurred when conflict, political as well as religious, became intractable. When Caligula wanted to place a golden statue of his deified self in the Temple in Jerusalem, the potential sacrilege and likely war were prevented only by his timely death. The Siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD led to the sacking of the temple and the dispersal of Jewish political power (see Jewish diaspora).
Christianity emerged in Roman Judea as a Jewish religious sect in the 1st century AD. The religion gradually spread out of Jerusalem, initially establishing major bases in first Antioch, then Alexandria, and over time throughout the Empire as well as beyond. Imperially authorized persecutions were limited and sporadic, with martyrdoms occurring most often under the authority of local officials.
The first persecution by an emperor occurred under Nero, and was confined to the city of Rome. Tacitus reports that after the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64, some among the population held Nero responsible and that the emperor attempted to deflect blame onto the Christians. After Nero, a major persecution occurred under the emperor Domitian and a persecution in 177 took place at Lugdunum, the Gallo-Roman religious capital. A surviving letter from Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, to the emperor Trajan describes his persecution and executions of Christians. The Decian persecution of 246–251 was a serious threat to the Church, but ultimately strengthened Christian defiance. Diocletian undertook what was to be the most severe persecution of Christians, lasting from 303 to 311.
In the early 4th century, Constantine I became the first emperor to convert to Christianity. During the rest of the fourth century Christianity became the dominant religion of the Empire. The emperor Julian, under the influence of his adviser Mardonius made a short-lived attempt to revive traditional and Hellenistic religion and to affirm the special status of Judaism, but in 380 (Edict of Thessalonica), under Theodosius I Christianity became the official state church of the Roman Empire, to the exclusion of all others. From the 2nd century onward, the Church Fathers had begun to condemn the diverse religions practiced throughout the Empire collectively as "pagan." Pleas for religious tolerance from traditionalists such as the senator Symmachus (d. 402) were rejected by the efforts of Pope Damasus I and Ambrose – Roman administrator turned bishop of Milan (374-397); Christian monotheism became a feature of Imperial domination. Christian heretics as well as non-Christians were subject to exclusion from public life or persecution, but Rome's original religious hierarchy and many aspects of its ritual influenced Christian forms, and many pre-Christian beliefs and practices survived in Christian festivals and local traditions.
Several states claimed to be the Roman Empire's successors after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire, an attempt to resurrect the Empire in the West, was established in 800 when Pope Leo III crowned Frankish King Charlemagne as Roman Emperor on Christmas Day, though the empire and the imperial office did not become formalized for some decades. After the fall of Constantinople, the Russian Tsardom, as inheritor of the Byzantine Empire's Orthodox Christian tradition, counted itself the Third Rome (Constantinople having been the second). These concepts are known as Translatio imperii.
When the Ottomans, who based their state on the Byzantine model, took Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II established his capital there and claimed to sit on the throne of the Roman Empire. He even went so far as to launch an invasion of Italy with the purpose of re-uniting the Empire and invited European artists to his capital, including Gentile Bellini.
In the medieval West, "Roman" came to mean the church and the Pope of Rome. The Greek form Romaioi remained attached to the Greek-speaking Christian population of the Eastern Roman Empire, and is still used by Greeks in addition to their common appellation.
The Roman Empire's territorial legacy of controlling the Italian peninsula would influence Italian nationalism and the unification of Italy ("Risorgimento") in 1861. Further Roman imperialism was claimed by fascist ideology, particularly by the Italian Empire and Nazi Germany.
In the United States, the founders were educated in the classical tradition, and used classical models for landmarks and buildings in Washington, D.C., to avoid the feudal and religious connotations of European architecture such as castles and cathedrals. In forming their theory of the mixed constitution, the founders looked to Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism for models, but regarded the Roman emperor as a figure of tyranny. They nonetheless adopted Roman Imperial forms such as the dome, as represented by the US Capitol and numerous state capitol buildings, to express classical ideals through architecture. Thomas Jefferson saw the Empire as a negative political lesson, but was a chief proponent of its architectural models. Jefferson's design for the Virginia State Capitol, for instance, is modelled directly from the Maison Carrée, a Gallo-Roman temple built under Augustus. The renovations of the National Mall at the beginning of the 20th century have been viewed as expressing a more overt imperialist kinship with Rome. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25507 |
Riga
Riga (; ; ) is the capital of Latvia and is home to 627,487 inhabitants (2020), which is a third of Latvia's population. Being significantly larger than other cities of Latvia, Riga is the country's primate city. It is also the largest city in the three Baltic states and is home to one tenth of the three Baltic states' combined population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Baltic Sea. Riga's territory covers and lies above sea level, on a flat and sandy plain. It is from Riga to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, and to Estonia's second largest city, Tartu.
Riga was founded in 1201 and is a former Hanseatic League member. Riga's historical centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, noted for its Art Nouveau/Jugendstil architecture and 19th century wooden architecture. Riga was the European Capital of Culture in 2014, along with Umeå in Sweden. Riga hosted the 2006 NATO Summit, the Eurovision Song Contest 2003, the 2006 IIHF Men's World Ice Hockey Championships and the 2013 World Women's Curling Championship. It is home to the European Union's office of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC). In 2017, it was named the European Region of Gastronomy.
In 2016, Riga received over 1.4 million visitors. The city is served by Riga International Airport, the largest and busiest airport in the Baltic states. Riga is a member of Eurocities, the Union of the Baltic Cities (UBC) and Union of Capitals of the European Union (UCEU).
One theory about the origin of the name "Riga" is that it is a corrupted borrowing from the Liv "ringa" meaning loop, referring to the ancient natural harbour formed by the tributary loop of the Daugava River. Another is that "Riga" owes its name to this already-established role in commerce between East and West, as a borrowing of the Latvian "rija", for threshing barn, the "j" becoming a "g" in German — notably, Riga is called "Rie" by English geographer Richard Hakluyt (1589), and German historian Dionysius Fabricius (1610) confirms the origin of "Riga" from "rija". Another theory could be that Riga was named after Riege, the German name for the River Rīdzene, a tributary of the Daugava.
Another theory is that Riga's name was introduced by the bishop Albert, initiator of christening and conquest of Livonian and Baltic people. He also introduced an explanation of the city name as derived from Latin "rigata" ("irrigated") that symbolizes an "irrigation of dry pagan souls by Christianity".
The river Daugava has been a trade route since antiquity, part of the Vikings' Dvina-Dnieper navigation route to Byzantium. A sheltered natural harbour upriver from the mouth of the Daugava — the site of today's Riga — has been recorded, as "Duna Urbs", as early as the 2nd century. It was settled by the Livs, an ancient Finnic tribe.
Riga began to develop as a centre of Viking trade during the early Middle Ages.
Riga's inhabitants occupied themselves mainly with fishing, animal husbandry, and trading, later developing crafts (in bone, wood, amber, and iron).
The Livonian Chronicle of Henry testifies to Riga having long been a trading centre by the 12th century, referring to it as "portus antiquus" (ancient port), and describes dwellings and warehouses used to store mostly flax, and hides. German traders began visiting Riga, establishing a nearby outpost in 1158.
Along with German traders the monk Meinhard of Segeberg arrived to convert the Livonian pagans to Christianity. Catholic and Orthodox Christianity had already arrived in Latvia more than a century earlier, and many Latvians had been baptised. Meinhard settled among the Livs, building a castle and church at Uexküll (now known as Ikšķile), upstream from Riga, and established his bishopric there. The Livs, however, continued to practice paganism and Meinhard died in Uexküll in 1196, having failed in his mission. In 1198, the Bishop Berthold arrived with a contingent of crusaders and commenced a campaign of forced Christianization. Berthold died soon afterwards and his forces were defeated.
The Church mobilised to avenge the issuance of a bull by Pope Innocent III declaring a crusade against the Livonians. Bishop Albert was proclaimed Bishop of Livonia by his uncle Hartwig of Uthlede, Prince-Archbishop of Bremen and Hamburg in 1199. Albert landed in Riga in 1200 with 23 ships and 500 Westphalian crusaders. In 1201, he transferred the seat of the Livonian bishopric from Uexküll to Riga, extorting agreement to do this from the elders of Riga by force.
The year 1201 also marked the first arrival of German merchants in Novgorod, via the Dvina. To defend territory and trade, Albert established the Order of Livonian Brothers of the Sword in 1202, which was open to nobles and merchants.
The Christianization of the Livs continued. In 1207, Albert started to fortify the town. Emperor Philip invested Albert with Livonia as a fief and principality of the Holy Roman Empire. To promote a permanent military presence, territorial ownership was divided between the Church and the "Order", with the Church taking Riga and two-thirds of all lands conquered and granting the "Order" a third. Until then, it had been customary for crusaders to serve for a year and then return home.
Albert had ensured Riga's commercial future by obtaining papal bulls which decreed that all German merchants had to carry on their Baltic trade through Riga. In 1211, Riga minted its first coinage, and Albert laid the cornerstone for the Riga Dom. Riga was not yet secure as an alliance of tribes failed to take Riga. In 1212, Albert led a campaign to compel Polotsk to grant German merchants free river passage. Polotsk conceded Kukenois (Koknese) and Jersika to Albert, also ending the Livs' tribute to Polotsk.
Riga's merchant citizenry chafed and sought greater autonomy from the Church. In 1221, they acquired the right to independently self-administer Riga and adopted a city constitution.
That same year Albert was compelled to recognise Danish rule over lands they had conquered in Estonia and Livonia. Albert had sought the aid of King Valdemar of Denmark to protect Riga and Livonian lands against Liv insurrection when reinforcements could not reach Riga. The Danes landed in Livonia, built a fortress at Reval (Tallinn) and set about conquering Estonian and Livonian lands. The Germans attempted, but failed, to assassinate Valdemar. Albert was able to reach an accommodation with them a year later, however and, in 1222, Valdemar returned all Livonian lands and possessions to Albert's control.
Albert's difficulties with Riga's citizenry continued; with papal intervention, a settlement was reached in 1225 whereby they no longer had to pay tax to the Bishop of Riga, and Riga's citizens acquired the right to elect their magistrates and town councillors. In 1226, Albert consecrated the Dom Cathedral, built St. James's Church, (now a cathedral) and founded a parochial school at the Church of St. George.
In 1227, Albert conquered Oesel and the city of Riga concluded a treaty with the Principality of Smolensk giving Polotsk to Riga.
Albert died in January 1229. He failed in his aspiration to be anointed archbishop but the German hegemony he established over the Baltic would last for seven centuries.
In 1282, Riga became a member of the Hanseatic League. The Hansa was instrumental in giving Riga economic and political stability, thus providing the city with a strong foundation which endured the political conflagrations that were to come, down to modern times.
As the influence of the Hanseatic League waned, Riga became the object of foreign military, political, religious and economic aspirations. Riga accepted the Reformation in 1522, ending the power of the archbishops. In 1524, iconoclasts targeted a statue of the Virgin Mary in the Cathedral to make a statement against religious icons. It was accused of being a witch, and given a trial by water in the Daugava River. The statue floated, so it was denounced as a witch and burnt at Kubsberg. With the demise of the Livonian Order during the Livonian War, Riga for twenty years had the status of a Free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire before it came under the influence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by the Treaty of Drohiczyn, which ended the war for Riga in 1581. In 1621, during the Polish–Swedish War (1621–1625), Riga and the outlying fortress of Daugavgriva came under the rule of Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, who intervened in the Thirty Years' War not only for political and economic gain but also in favour of German Lutheran Protestantism. During the Russo-Swedish War (1656–1658), Riga withstood a siege by Russian forces.
Riga remained one of the largest cities under the Swedish crown until 1710, a period during which the city retained a great deal of autonomous self-government. In 1701, the opening phase of the Great Northern War, the "Battle of Riga" (also known as the "Crossing of the Düna") took place nearby and ended with a Swedish victory. However, in 1710 the Russians under Tsar Peter the Great besieged plague-stricken Riga. Along with the other Livonian towns and gentry, Riga capitulated to Russia, but largely retained their privileges. Riga was made the capital of the Governorate of Riga (later: Livonia). Sweden's northern dominance had ended, and Russia's emergence as the strongest Northern power was formalised through the Treaty of Nystad in 1721. At the beginning of the 20th century Riga was the largest timber export port in the Russian Empire and ranked the 3rd according to the external trade volume. By 1900, Riga was the fifth largest city in Russian Empire after Moscow, St. Petersburg, Warsaw, and Odessa.
During these many centuries of war and changes of power in the Baltic, and despite demographic changes, the Baltic Germans in Riga had maintained a dominant position. By 1867, Riga's population was 42.9% German. Riga employed German as its official language of administration until the installation of Russian in 1891 as the official language in the Baltic provinces, as part of the policy of Russification of the non-Russian speaking territories of the Russian Empire, including Congress Poland, Finland and the Baltics, undertaken by Tsar Alexander III. More and more Latvians started moving to the city during the mid-19th century. The rise of a Latvian bourgeoisie made Riga a centre of the Latvian National Awakening with the founding of the Riga Latvian Association in 1868 and the organisation of the first national song festival in 1873. The nationalist movement of the Neo-Latvians was followed by the socialist New Current during the city's rapid industrialisation, culminating in the 1905 Revolution led by the Latvian Social Democratic Workers' Party.
The 20th century brought World War I and the impact of the Russian Revolution of 1917 to Riga. As a result of the battle of Jugla, the German army marched into Riga on 3 September 1917. On 3 March 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed, giving the Baltic countries to Germany. Because of the Armistice with Germany of 11 November 1918, Germany had to renounce that treaty, as did Russia, leaving Latvia and the other Baltic States in a position to claim independence. Latvia, with Riga as its capital city, thus declared its independence on 18 November 1918.
Between World War I and World War II (1918–1940), Riga and Latvia shifted their focus from Russia to the countries of Western Europe. The United Kingdom and Germany replaced Russia as Latvia's major trade partners. The majority of the Baltic Germans were resettled in late 1939, prior to the occupation of Estonia and Latvia by the Soviet Union in June 1940.
During World War II, Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union in June 1940 and then was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941–1944. On 17 June 1940, the Soviet forces invaded Latvia occupying bridges, post/telephone, telegraph, and broadcasting offices. Three days later, Latvian president Karlis Ulmanis was forced to approve a pro-Soviet government which had taken office. On 14–15 July, rigged elections were held in Latvia and the other Baltic states, The ballots held the following instructions: "Only the list of the Latvian Working People's Bloc must be deposited in the ballot box. The ballot must be deposited without any changes." The alleged voter activity index was 97.6%. Most notably, the complete election results were published in Moscow 12 hours before the election closed. Soviet electoral documents found later substantiated that the results were completely fabricated. The Soviet authorities, having regained control over Riga and Latvia imposed a regime of terror, opening the headquarters of the KGB, massive deportations started. Hundreds of men were arrested, including leaders of the former Latvian government. The most notorious deportation, the June deportation took place on 13 and 14 June 1941, estimated at 15,600 men, women, and children, and including 20% of Latvia's last legal government. Similar deportations were repeated after the end of WWII. The building of the KGB located at 61 Brīvības iela, known as 'the corner house', is now a museum. Stalin's deportations also included thousands of Latvian Jews. (The mass deportation totalled 131,500 across the Baltics.) During the Nazi occupation, the Jewish community was forced into the Riga Ghetto and a Nazi concentration camp was constructed in Kaiserwald. On 25 October 1941, the Nazis relocated all Jews from Riga and the vicinity to the ghetto. Most of Latvia's Jews (about 24,000) were killed on 30 November and 8 December 1941 in the Rumbula massacre. By the end of the war, the remaining Baltic Germans were expelled to Germany.
The Soviet Red Army re-entered Riga on 13 October 1944. In the following years the massive influx of labourers, administrators, military personnel, and their dependents from Russia and other Soviet republics started. Microdistricts of the large multi-storied housing blocks were built to house immigrant workers.
By the end of the war, Rīga's historical centre was heavily damaged because of constant bombing. After the war, huge efforts were made to reconstruct and renovate most of the famous buildings that had been part of the skyline of the city before the war. Such buildings were, amongst others: St. Peter's Church which lost its wooden tower after a fire caused by the Wehrmacht (renovated in 1954). Another example is The House of the Blackheads, completely destroyed, its ruins were subsequently demolished. A facsimile was constructed in 1995.
In 1989, the percentage of Latvians in Riga had fallen to 36.5%.
In 2004, the arrival of low-cost airlines resulted in cheaper flights from other European cities such as London and Berlin and consequently a substantial increase in numbers of tourists.
In November 2013, the roof of a supermarket collapsed, possibly as a result of the weight of materials used in the construction of a garden on the roof. At least 54 people were killed. The Latvian President Andris Berzins described the disaster as "a large scale murder of many defenceless people".
Riga was the European Capital of Culture in 2014.
During the Latvia's Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2015 the 4th Eastern Partnership Summit took place in Riga.
Riga's administrative divisions consist of six administrative entities: Central, Kurzeme and Northern Districts and the Latgale, Vidzeme and Zemgale Suburbs. Three entities were established on 1 September 1941, and the other three were established in October 1969. There are no official lower level administrative units, but the Riga City Council Development Agency is working on a plan, which officially makes Riga consist of 58 neighbourhoods. The current names were confirmed on 28 December 1990.
The climate of Riga is humid continental (Köppen "Dfb"). The coldest months are January and February, when the average temperature is but temperatures as low as can be observed almost every year on the coldest days. The proximity of the sea causes frequent autumn rains and fogs. Continuous snow cover may last eighty days. The summers in Riga are mild and rainy with an average temperature of , while the temperature on the hottest days can exceed .
The head of the city government in Riga is the mayor, or officially the Chairman of the Riga City Council. Since February 2020 the office is suspended and the Council has been dissolved and replaced by an interim administration of representatives from 3 governmental ministries until snap elections are held in June 2020. The last incumbent mayor since 2019 was Oļegs Burovs from the "Honor to serve Riga" party.
The city council is a democratically elected institution and is the final decision-making authority in the city. The Council consists of 60 members who are elected every four years. The Presidium of the Riga City Council consists of the Chairman of the Riga City Council and the representatives delegated by the political parties or party blocks elected to the City Council.
With 627,487 inhabitants in 2020 as according to the Central statistical administration of Latvia, Riga is the largest city in the Baltic states, though its population has decreased from just over 900,000 in 1991. Notable causes include emigration and low birth rates. According to the 2017 data, ethnic Latvians made up 44.03% of the population of Riga, while ethnic Russians formed 37.88%, Belarusians 3.72%, Ukrainians 3.66%, Poles 1.83% and other ethnicities 8.10%. By comparison, 60.1% of Latvia's total population was ethnically Latvian, 26.2% Russian, 3.3% Belarusian, 2.4% Ukrainian, 2.1% Polish, 1.2% are Lithuanian and the rest of other origins.
Upon the restoration of Latvia's independence in 1991, Soviet era immigrants (and any of their offspring born before 1991) were not automatically granted Latvian citizenship because they had migrated to the territory of Latvia during the years when Latvia was part of the Soviet Union. In 2013 citizens of Latvia made up 73.1%, non-citizens 21.9% and citizens of other countries 4.9% of the population of Riga.
The proportion of ethnic Latvians in Riga increased from 36.5% in 1989 to 42.4% in 2010. In contrast, the percentage of Russians fell from 47.3% to 40.7% in the same time period. Latvians overtook Russians as the largest ethnic group in 2006. Further projections show that the ethnic Russian population will continue a steady decline, despite higher birth rates, due to emigration.
Note. Population in thousands.
Riga is one of the key economic and financial centres of the Baltic States. Roughly half of all the jobs in Latvia are in Riga and the city generates more than 50% of Latvia's GDP as well as around half of Latvia's exports. The biggest exporters are in wood products, IT, food and beverage manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, transport and metallurgy. Riga Port is one of the largest in the Baltics. It handled a record 34 million tons of cargo in 2011 and has potential for future growth with new port developments on Krievu Sala. Tourism is also a large industry in Riga and after a slowdown during the global economic recessions of the late 2000s, grew 22% in 2011 alone.
Riga hosted the biannual 2014 World Choir Games from 9–19 July 2014 which coincided with the city being named European Capital of Culture for 2014. The event, organised by the choral foundation, Interkultur, takes place at various host cities every two years and was originally known as the "Choir Olympics". The event regularly sees over 15,000 choristers in over 300 choirs from over 60 nations compete for gold, silver and bronze medals in over 20 categories. The competition is further divided into a Champions Competition and an Open Competition to allow choirs from all backgrounds to enter. Choral workshops and festivals are also witnessed in the host cities and are usually open to the public.
The radio and TV tower of Riga is the tallest structure in Latvia and the Baltic States, and one of the tallest in the European Union, reaching . Riga centre also has many great examples of Art Nouveau architecture, as well as a medieval old town.
It is generally recognized that Riga has largest collection of Art Nouveau buildings in the world. This is due to the fact that at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, when Art Nouveau was at the height of its popularity, Riga experienced an unprecedented financial and demographic boom. In the period from 1857 to 1914 its population grew from 282,000 (256,200 in Riga itself and another 26,200 inhabitants beyond the city limits in patrimonial district and military town of Ust-Dvinsk) to 558,000
Riga has a rich basketball history. In the 1950s Rīgas ASK became the best club in the Soviet Union and also in Europe, winning the first three editions of the European Cup for Men's Champions Clubs from 1958 to 1960.
In 1960, ASK was not the only team from Riga to take the European crown. TTT Riga clinched their first title in the European Cup for Women's Champion Clubs, turning Riga into the capital city of European basketball because for the first and, so far, only time in the history of European basketball, clubs from the same city were concurrent European Men's and Women's club champions.
In 2015, Riga was one of the hosts for EuroBasket 2015.
Riga, with its central geographic position and concentration of population, has always been the infrastructural hub of Latvia. Several national roads begin in Riga, and European route E22 crosses Riga from the east and west, while the Via Baltica crosses Riga from the south and north.
As a city situated by a river, Riga also has several bridges. The oldest standing bridge is the Railway Bridge, which is also the only railroad-carrying bridge in Riga. The Stone Bridge ("Akmens tilts") connects Old Riga and Pārdaugava; the Island Bridge ("Salu tilts") connects Maskavas Forštate and Pārdaugava via Zaķusala; and the Shroud Bridge ("Vanšu tilts") connects Old Riga and Pārdaugava via Ķīpsala. In 2008, the first stage of the new Southern Bridge ("Dienvidu tilts") route across the Daugava was completed, and was opened to traffic on 17 November.
The Southern Bridge was the biggest construction project in the Baltic states in 20 years, and its purpose was to reduce traffic congestion in the city centre. Another major construction project is the planned Riga Northern Transport corridor; its first segment detailed project was completed in 2015.
The Freeport of Riga facilitates cargo and passenger traffic by sea. Sea ferries currently connect Riga Passenger Terminal to Stockholm operated by Tallink.
Riga has one active airport that serves commercial airlines—the Riga International Airport (RIX), built in 1973. Renovation and modernization of the airport was completed in 2001, coinciding with the 800th anniversary of the city. In 2006, a new terminal extension was opened. Extension of the runway was completed in October 2008, and the airport is now able to accommodate large aircraft such as the Airbus A340, Boeing 747, 757, 767 and 777. Another terminal extension is under construction . The annual number of passengers has grown from 310,000 in 1993 to 4.7 million in 2014, making Riga International Airport the largest in the Baltic States.
The former international airport of Riga, Spilve Airport, located from Riga city centre, is currently used for small aircraft, pilot training and recreational aviation. Riga was also home to a military air base during the Cold War — Rumbula Air Base.
Public transportation in the city is provided by Rīgas Satiksme which operates a large number of trams, buses and trolleybuses on an extensive network of routes across the city. In addition, up until 2012 many private owners operated minibus services, after which the City Council established the unified transport company "Rīgas mikroautobusu satiksme", establishing a monopoly over the service.
Riga is connected to the rest of Latvia by trains operated by the national carrier Passenger Train, whose headquarters are in Riga. There are also international rail services to Russia and Belarus, and plans to revive passenger rail traffic with Estonia. A TEN-T project called Rail Baltica envisages building a high-speed railway line via Riga connecting Tallinn to Warsaw using standard gauge, expected to be put into operation in 2024.
Riga International Coach Terminal provides domestic and international connections by coach.
Riga is twinned with: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25508 |
Reich
Reich (; ) is a German word analogous in meaning to the English word "realm". The terms ' (literally "realm of an emperor") and ' (literally "realm of a king") are used in German to refer to empires and kingdoms respectively. The "Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary" indicates that in English usage, the term "the Reich" refers to "Germany during the period of Nazi control from 1933 to 1945".
The term "Deutsches Reich" (sometimes translated to "German Empire") continued to be used even after the collapse of the German Empire and abolition of the monarchy in 1918. There was no emperor, but many Germans had imperialistic ambitions. According to Richard J. Evans:
The continued use of the term 'German Empire', "Deutsches Reich," by the Weimar Republic... conjured up an image among educated Germans that resonated far beyond the institutional structures Bismarck created: the successor to the Roman Empire; the vision of God's Empire here on earth; the universality of its claim to suzerainty; and in a more prosaic but no less powerful sense, the concept of a German state that would include all German speakers in central Europe--'one People, one Reich, one Leader', as the Nazi slogan was to put it.
The term derives from the Germanic word meaning "realm" in general, but is typically used in German to designate a kingdom or an empire, especially the Roman Empire. The terms ' (roughly "Emperordom") and ' (“Emperor’s realm”, lit.: "Emperorrealm”) are used in German to more specifically define an empire ruled by an emperor.
"Reich" is comparable in meaning and development (as well as descending from the same Proto-Indo-European root) to the English word "realm" (via French "reaume" "kingdom" from Latin "regalis" "royal"). It is used for historical empires in general, such as the Roman Empire ('), Persian Empire ('), and both the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire ("", literally "Tsars’ realm"). "Österreich", the name used for Austria today is composed of "Öster" and "Reich" which literally translated means "Eastern Realm". The name once referred to the Eastern parts of the Holy Roman Empire.
In the history of Germany specifically, it is used to refer to:
The term "Third Reich" was adopted by the Nazis as propaganda to legitimize their government as a successor to the retroactively renamed "First" and "Second" Reichs. The terms "First Reich" and "Second Reich" are not used by historians, whilst the term "Fourth Reich" is used mainly in fiction and for political humour; however, it is also used by those who subscribe to the belief of Neo-Nazism.
The Latin equivalent of "Reich" is or rather with a king . Both terms translate to "rule, sovereignty, government", usually of monarchs (kings or emperors), but also of gods, including the Christian God. The German version of the Lord's Prayer uses the words for (usually translated as "thy kingdom come" in English).
The German noun "Reich" is derived from , which together with its cognates in , , and is from a Common Germanic "*rīkijan".
The English noun is obsolete, but persists in composition, for example in "bishopric".
The German adjective , on the other hand, has an exact cognate in English rich. Both the noun ("*rīkijan") and the adjective ("*rīkijaz") are derivations based on a Common Germanic "*rīks" "ruler, king", reflected in Gothic as , glossing "leader, ruler, chieftain".
It is probable that the Germanic word was not inherited from pre-Proto-Germanic, but rather loaned from Celtic (i.e. Gaulish "rīx", Welsh , both meaning 'king') at an early time.
The word has many cognates outside of Germanic and Celtic, notably and . It is ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *"reg-", lit. 'to straighten out or rule'.
"Frankenreich" or "Fränkisches Reich" is the German name given to the Frankish Kingdom of Charlemagne.
"Frankenreich" came to be used of Western Francia and medieval France after the development of Eastern Francia into the Holy Roman Empire.
The German name of France, "Frankreich", is a contraction of "Frankenreich" used in reference to the kingdom of France from the late medieval period.
The term "Reich" was part of the German names for Germany for much of its history. Reich was used by itself in the common German variant of the Holy Roman Empire, ('). "Der rîche" was a title for the Emperor. However, Latin, not German, was the formal legal language of the medieval Empire ('), so English-speaking historians are more likely to use Latin ' than German ' as a term for this period of German history. The common contemporary Latin legal term used in documents of the Holy Roman Empire was for a long time "regnum" ("rule, domain, empire", such as in "Regnum Francorum" for the Frankish Kingdom) before "imperium" was in fact adopted, the latter first attested in 1157, whereas the parallel use of "regnum" never fell out of use during the Middle Ages.
At the beginning of the modern age, some circles redubbed the HRE into the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" ("), a symptom of the formation of a German nation state as opposed to the multinational state the Empire was throughout its history.
Resistance against the French revolution with its concept of the state brought a new movement to create a German "ethnical state", especially after the Napoleonic wars. Ideal for this state was the Holy Roman Empire; the legend arose that Germany were "un-defeated when unified", especially after the Franco-Prussian War (", lit. "German-French war"). Before that, the German question ruptured this "German unity" after the 1848 Revolution before it was achieved, however; Austria-Hungary as a multinational state could not become part of the new "German empire", and nationality conflicts in Prussia with the Prussian Poles arose ("We can never be Germans – Prussians, every time!").
The advent of national feeling and the movement to create an ethnically German Empire did lead directly to nationalism in 1871. Ethnic minorities declined since the beginning of the modern age; the Polabs, Sorbs and even the once important Low Germans had to assimilate themselves. This marked the transition between Antijudaism, where converted Jews were accepted as full citizens (in theory), to Antisemitism, where Jews were thought to be from a different ethnicity that could never become German. Apart from all those ethnic minorities being de facto extinct, even today the era of national feeling is taught in history in German schools as an important stepping-stone on the road to a German nation.
In the case of the Hohenzollern Empire (1871–1918), the official name of the country was "Deutsches Reich" ("German Realm"), because under the Constitution of the German Empire, it was legally a confederation of German states under the permanent presidency of the King of Prussia. The constitution granted the King of Prussia the title of "German Emperor" ("Deutscher Kaiser"), but this referred to the German nation rather than directly to the "state" of Germany.
The exact translation of the term "German Empire" would be "Deutsches Kaiserreich". This name was sometimes used informally for Germany between 1871 and 1918, but it was disliked by the first German Emperor, Wilhelm I, and never became official.
The unified Germany which arose under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1871 was the first entity that was officially called in German "". "Deutsches Reich" remained the official name of Germany until 1945, although these years saw three very different political systems more commonly referred to in English as: "the German Empire" (1871–1918), the Weimar Republic (1919–1933; this term is a post-World War II coinage not used at the time), and Nazi Germany (1933–1945).
After 1918 "Reich" was usually not translated as "Empire" in English-speaking countries, and the title was instead simply used in its original German. During the Weimar Republic the term ' and the prefix ' referred not to the idea of empire but rather to the institutions, officials, affairs etc. of the whole country as opposed to those of one of its constituent federal states ('), in the same way that the terms ' (federation) and "" (federal) are used in Germany today, and comparable to "The Crown" in Commonwealth countries and "The Union" in the United States.
The Nazis sought to legitimize their power historiographically by portraying their ascendancy to rule as the direct continuation of an ancient German past. They adopted the term "" ("Third Empire" – usually rendered in English in the partial translation "the Third "Reich""), first used in a 1923 book entitled "Das Dritte Reich" by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, that counted the medieval Holy Roman Empire (which nominally survived until the 19th century) as the first and the 1871–1918 monarchy as the second, which was then to be followed by a "reinvigorated" third one. This ignored the previous 1918–1933 Weimar period, which the Nazis denounced as a historical aberration, contemptuously referring to it as "the System". In the summer of 1939 the Nazis themselves actually banned the continued use of the term in the press, ordering it to use expressions such as "nationalsozialistisches Deutschland" ("National Socialist Germany"), "Großdeutsches Reich" ("Greater German Reich"), or simply "Deutsches Reich" (German Reich) to refer to the German state instead. It was Adolf Hitler's personal desire that "Großdeutsches Reich" and "nationalsozialistischer Staat" ("[the] National Socialist State") would be used in place of "Drittes Reich". "Reichskanzlei Berchtesgaden" ("Reich Chancellery Berchtesgaden"), another nickname of the regime (named after the eponymous town located in the vicinity of Hitler's mountain residence where he spent much of his time in office) was also banned at the same time, despite the fact that a sub-section of the Chancellery was in fact installed there to serve Hitler's needs.
Although the term "Third Reich" is still commonly used to refer to the Nazi dictatorship, historians avoid the terms "First Reich" and "Second Reich", which are seldom found outside Nazi propaganda. During and following the "Anschluss" (annexation) of Austria in 1938, Nazi propaganda also used the political slogan "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer" ("One people, one "Reich", one leader"), in order to enforce pan-German sentiment. The term ' ("old Reich"; cf. French "ancien regime" for monarchical France) is sometimes used to refer to the Holy Roman Empire. The term ' was also used after the Anschluss to denote Germany with its pre-1938 post-World War I borders. Another name that was popular during this period was the term "Tausendjähriges Reich" ("Thousand-Year Reich"), the millennial connotations of which suggested that Nazi Germany would last for a thousand years.
The Nazis also spoke of enlarging the then-established Greater German Reich into a "Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation" ("Großgermanisches Reich Deutscher Nation") by gradually annexing all the historically Germanic countries and regions of Europe (Flanders, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden etc.) directly into the Nazi state.
A number of previously neutral words used by the Nazis have later taken on negative connotations in German (e.g. ' or '); while in many contexts ' is not one of them ("Frankreich", France; "Römisches Reich", Roman Empire), it can imply German imperialism or strong nationalism if it is used to describe a political or governmental entity. ' has thus not been used in official terminology since 1945, though it is still found in the name of the Reichstag building, which since 1999 has housed the German federal parliament, the Bundestag. The decision not to rename the Reichstag building was taken only after long debate in the Bundestag; even then, it is described officially as "" (Reichstag, seat of the Bundestag). As seen in this example, the term "Bund" (federation) has replaced "Reich" in the names of various state institutions such as the army ("Bundeswehr"). The term "Reichstag" also remains in use in the German language as the term for the parliaments of some foreign monarchies, such as Sweden's Riksdag and Japan's pre-war Imperial Diet.
The exception is that during the Cold War, the East German railway incongruously continued to use the name "Deutsche Reichsbahn" (German Reich Railways), which had been the name of the national railway during the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era. Even after German reunification in October 1990, the Reichsbahn continued to exist for over three years as the operator of the railroad in eastern Germany, ending finally on 1 January 1994 when the Reichsbahn and the western Deutsche Bundesbahn were merged to form the privatized Deutsche Bahn AG.
The early medieval form of the word, used in the sense "strong", "powerful" or "ruler", appears as an element in many male personal names from the Germanic heroic tradition, such as Richard (strong heart), Dietrich (ruler of the people), Heinrich (ruler of the home), or Friedrich (guardian of the peace).
The cognate of the word Reich is used in all the Scandinavian languages with the identical meaning, i.e. "realm". It is spelled rike in Swedish and modern Norwegian and rige in Danish and older Norwegian (before the 1907 spelling reform). The word is traditionally used for sovereign entities, generally simply means "country" or "nation" (in the sense of a sovereign state) and does not have any special or political connotations. It does not imply any particular form of government, but it does imply that the entity is both of a certain size and of a certain standing, like the Scandinavian kingdoms themselves; hence the word might be considered exaggerated for very small states, like a city-state. Its use as a stand-alone word is more widespread than in contemporary German, but most often it refers to the three Scandinavian states themselves and certain historical empires, like the Roman Empire; the standard word for a "country" is usually "land" and there are many other words used to refer to countries.
The word is part of the official names of Denmark, Norway and Sweden in the form of "kongerike" (Norwegian), "kongerige" (Danish) and "konungarike" (Swedish), all meaning kingdom, or literally the "realm of a king" (a kingdom can also be called "kongedømme" in Danish and Norwegian and "kungadöme" in Swedish, direct cognates of the English word). Two regions in Norway that were petty kingdoms before the unification of Norway around 900 AD have retained the word in the names (see Ringerike and Romerike). The word is also used in "Svea rike", with the current spelling "Sverige," the name of Sweden in Swedish. Thus in the official name of Sweden, "Konungariket Sverige", the word "rike" appears twice.
The derived prefix "riks-" (Swedish and Norwegian) and "rigs-" (Danish and pre-1907 Norwegian) implies nationwide or under central jurisdiction. Examples include "riksväg" and "riksvei", names for a national road in Swedish and Norwegian. It is also present in the names of numerous institutions in all the Scandinavian countries, such as "Sveriges Riksbank" (commonly known as just "Riksbanken"), the central bank of Sweden, and "Riksrevisionen", the agency responsible for oversight of the state finances in Sweden. It is also used in words such as "utrikes" (Swedish), "utenriks" (Norwegian) and "udenrigs" (Danish), relating to foreign countries and other things from abroad. The opposite word is "inrikes"/"innenriks"/"indenrigs", meaning domestic.
The Lord's Prayer uses the word in the Swedish, Norwegian and Danish versions: "Tillkomme ditt rike", "Komme ditt rike", "Komme dit rige" ('Thy kingdom come' – old versions). "Låt ditt rike komma!", "La ditt rike komme", "Komme dit rige" ('Let your kingdom come' – new versions).
The adjective form of the word, "rik" in Swedish and "rig" in Danish/Norwegian, means "rich", like in other Germanic languages.
"Rike" is also a now-archaic English word cognate with "reich".
Rijk is the Dutch and ryk the Afrikaans and Frisian equivalent of the German word "Reich".
In a political sense in the Netherlands and Belgium the word "rijk" often connotes a connection with the Kingdom of the Netherlands and Belgium as opposed to the European part of the country or as opposed to provincial or municipal governments; the "ministerraad" is the executive body of the Netherlands' government and the "rijksministerraad" that of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, a similar distinction is found in "wetten" (laws) versus "rijkswetten" (kingdom laws), or the now-abolished "rijkswacht" for gendarmerie in Belgium. The word "rijk" can also be found in institutions like Rijkswaterstaat, Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu, and Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.
In colloquial speech Rijk usually means working for the central government rather than the provincial or municipal, much like e.g. Americans refer to the "federal" government.
In Afrikaans, "ryk" refers to rulership and area of governance (mostly a kingdom), but in a modern sense the term is used in a much more figurative sense (e.g. "Die Hemelse Ryk" (the heavenly kingdom, China)), as the sphere under one's control or influence, such as:
As in German, the adjective "rijk"/"ryk" also means "rich". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25519 |
Reggae
Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, "Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use the word "reggae", effectively naming the genre and introducing it to a global audience. While sometimes used in a broad sense to refer to most types of popular Jamaican dance music, the term "reggae" more properly denotes a particular music style that was strongly influenced by traditional mento as well as American jazz and rhythm and blues, especially the New Orleans R&B practiced by Fats Domino and Allen Toussaint, and evolved out of the earlier genres ska and rocksteady. Reggae usually relates news, social gossip, and political commentary. Reggae spread into a commercialized jazz field, being known first as "rudie blues", then "ska", later "blue beat", and "rock steady". It is instantly recognizable from the counterpoint between the bass and drum downbeat and the offbeat rhythm section. The immediate origins of reggae were in ska and rocksteady; from the latter, reggae took over the use of the bass as a percussion instrument.
Reggae is deeply linked to Rastafari, an Afrocentric religion which developed in Jamaica in the 1930s, aiming at promoting Pan Africanism. Soon after the Rastafarian movement appeared, the international popularity of reggae music became associated with and increased the visibility of Rastafarianism spreading the Rastafari gospel throughout the world. Reggae music is an important means of transporting vital messages of Rastafarianism. The musician becomes the messenger, and as Rastafarians see it, "the soldier and the musician are tools for change."
Stylistically, reggae incorporates some of the musical elements of rhythm and blues, jazz, mento (a celebratory, rural folk form that served its largely rural audience as dance music and an alternative to the hymns and adapted chanteys of local church singing), calypso, and also draws influence from traditional African folk rhythms. One of the most easily recognizable elements is offbeat rhythms; staccato chords played by a guitar or piano (or both) on the offbeats of the measure. The tempo of reggae is usually slower paced than both ska and rocksteady. The concept of call and response can be found throughout reggae music. The genre of reggae music is led by the drum and bass. Some key players in this sound are Jackie Jackson from Toots and the Maytals, Carlton Barrett from Bob Marley and the Wailers, Lloyd Brevett from The Skatalites, Paul Douglas from Toots and the Maytals, Lloyd Knibb from The Skatalites, Winston Grennan, Sly Dunbar, and Anthony "Benbow" Creary from The Upsetters. The bass guitar often plays the dominant role in reggae. The bass sound in reggae is thick and heavy, and equalized so the upper frequencies are removed and the lower frequencies emphasized. The guitar in reggae usually plays on the offbeat of the rhythm. It is common for reggae to be sung in Jamaican Patois, Jamaican English, and Iyaric dialects. Reggae is noted for its tradition of social criticism and religion in its lyrics, although many reggae songs discuss lighter, more personal subjects, such as love and socializing.
Reggae has spread to many countries across the world, often incorporating local instruments and fusing with other genres. Reggae en Español spread from the Spanish-speaking Central American country of Panama to the mainland South American countries of Venezuela and Guyana then to the rest of South America. Caribbean music in the United Kingdom, including reggae, has been popular since the late 1960s, and has evolved into several subgenres and fusions. Many reggae artists began their careers in the UK, and there have been a number of European artists and bands drawing their inspiration directly from Jamaica and the Caribbean community in Europe. Reggae in Africa was boosted by the visit of Bob Marley to Zimbabwe in 1980. In Jamaica, authentic reggae is one of the biggest sources of income.
The 1967 edition of the "Dictionary of Jamaican English" lists "reggae" as "a recently estab. sp. for "rege"", as in "rege-rege", a word that can mean either "rags, ragged clothing" or "a quarrel, a row". "Reggae" as a musical term first appeared in print with the 1968 rocksteady hit "Do the Reggay" by The Maytals which named the genre of Reggae for the world.
Reggae historian Steve Barrow credits Clancy Eccles with altering the Jamaican patois word "streggae" (loose woman) into "reggae". However, Toots Hibbert said:
There's a word we used to use in Jamaica called 'streggae'. If a girl is walking and the guys look at her and say 'Man, she's streggae' it means she don't dress well, she look raggedy. The girls would say that about the men too. This one morning me and my two friends were playing and I said, 'OK man, let's do the reggay.' It was just something that came out of my mouth. So we just start singing 'Do the reggay, do the reggay' and created a beat. People tell me later that we had given the sound its name. Before that people had called it blue-beat and all kind of other things. Now it's in the Guinness World of Records.
Bob Marley claimed that the word "reggae" came from a Spanish term for "the king's music". The liner notes of "To the King", a compilation of Christian gospel reggae, suggest that the word "reggae" was derived from the Latin "regi" meaning "to the king".
Reggae's direct origins are in the ska and rocksteady of 1960s Jamaica, strongly influenced by traditional Caribbean mento and calypso music, as well as American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska was originally a generic title for Jamaican music recorded between 1961 and 1967 and emerged from Jamaican R&B, which was based largely on American R&B and doo-wop. Rastafari entered some countries primarily through reggae music; thus, the movement in these places is more stamped by its origins in reggae music and social milieu. The Rastafari movement was a significant influence on reggae, with Rasta drummers like Count Ossie taking part in seminal recordings. One of the predecessors of reggae drumming is the Nyabinghi rhythm, a style of ritual drumming performed as a communal meditative practice in the Rastafarian life.
In the latter half of the 20th century, phonograph records became of central importance to the Jamaican music industry, playing a significant cultural and economic role in the development of reggae music. "In the early 1950s, Jamaican entrepreneurs began issuing 78s" but this format would soon be superseded by the 7" single, first released in 1949. In 1951 the first recordings of mento music were released as singles and showcased two styles of mento: an acoustic rural style, and a jazzy pop style. Other 7" singles to appear in Jamaica around this time were covers of popular American R&B hits, made by Kingston sound system operators to be played at public dances. Meanwhile, Jamaican expatriates started issuing 45s on small independent labels in the United Kingdom, many mastered directly from Jamaican 45s.
Ska arose in Jamaican studios in the late 1950s, developing from this mix of American R&B, mento and calypso music. Notable for its jazz-influenced horn riffs, ska is characterized by a quarter note walking bass line, guitar and piano offbeats, and a drum pattern with cross-stick snare and bass drum on the backbeat and open hi-hat on the offbeats. When Jamaica gained independence in 1962, ska became the music of choice for young Jamaicans seeking music that was their own. Ska also became popular among mods in Britain.
In the mid-1960s, ska gave rise to rocksteady, a genre slower than ska featuring more romantic lyrics and less prominent horns. Theories abound as to why Jamaican musicians slowed the ska tempo to create rocksteady; one is that the singer Hopeton Lewis was unable to sing his hit song "Take It Easy" at a ska tempo. The name "rocksteady" was codified after the release of a single by Alton Ellis. Many rocksteady rhythms later were used as the basis of reggae recordings, whose slower tempos allowed for the "double skank" guitar strokes on the offbeat.
Reggae developed from ska and rocksteady in the late 1960s. Larry And Alvin's "Nanny Goat" and the Beltones’ "No More Heartaches" were among the songs in the genre. The beat was distinctive from rocksteady in that it dropped any of the pretensions to the smooth, soulful sound that characterized slick American R&B, and instead was closer in kinship to US southern funk, being heavily dependent on the rhythm section to drive it along. Reggae's great advantage was its almost limitless flexibility: from the early, jerky sound of Lee Perry's "People Funny Boy", to the uptown sounds of Third World's "Now That We’ve Found Love", it was an enormous leap through the years and styles, yet both are instantly recognizable as reggae. The shift from rocksteady to reggae was illustrated by the organ shuffle pioneered by Jamaican musicians like Jackie Mittoo and Winston Wright and featured in transitional singles "Say What You're Saying" (1968) by Eric "Monty" Morris and "People Funny Boy" (1968) by Lee "Scratch" Perry.
Early 1968 was when the first "bona fide" reggae records were released: "Nanny Goat" by Larry Marshall and "No More Heartaches" by The Beltones. That same year, the newest Jamaican sound began to spawn big-name imitators in other countries. American artist Johnny Nash's 1968 hit "Hold Me Tight" has been credited with first putting reggae in the American listener charts. Around the same time, reggae influences were starting to surface in rock and pop music, one example being 1968's "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" by The Beatles.
The Wailers, a band started by Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in 1963, is perhaps the most recognized band that made the transition through all three stages of early Jamaican popular music: ska, rocksteady and reggae. Over a dozen Wailers songs are based on or use a line from Jamaican mento songs. Other significant ska artists who made the leap to reggae include Prince Buster, Desmond Dekker, Ken Boothe, and Millie Small, best known for her 1964 blue-beat/ska cover version of "My Boy Lollipop" which was a smash hit internationally.
Notable Jamaican producers influential in the development of ska into rocksteady and reggae include: Coxsone Dodd, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Leslie Kong, Duke Reid, Joe Gibbs and King Tubby. Chris Blackwell, who founded Island Records in Jamaica in 1960, relocated to England in 1962, where he continued to promote Jamaican music. He formed a partnership with Lee Gopthal's Trojan Records in 1968, which released reggae in the UK until bought by Saga records in 1974.
Reggae's influence bubbled to the top of the U.S. "Billboard" Hot 100 charts in late 1972. First Three Dog Night hit No. 1 in September with a cover of the Maytones' version of "Black and White". Then Johnny Nash was at No. 1 for four weeks in November with "I Can See Clearly Now". Paul Simon's single "Mother And Child Reunion" – a track which he recorded in Kingston, Jamaica with Jimmy Cliff's backing group – was ranked by Billboard as the No. 57 song of 1972.
In 1973, the film "The Harder They Come" starring Jimmy Cliff was released and introduced Jamaican music to cinema audiences outside Jamaica. Though the film achieved cult status its limited appeal meant that it had a smaller impact than Eric Clapton's 1974 cover of Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff" which made it onto the playlists of mainstream rock and pop radio stations worldwide. Clapton's "I Shot The Sheriff" used modern rock production and recording techniques and faithfully retained most of the original reggae elements; it was a breakthrough pastiche devoid of any parody and played an important part in bringing the music of Bob Marley to a wider rock audience. By the mid-1970s, authentic reggae dub plates and specials were getting some exposure in the UK on John Peel's radio show, who promoted the genre for the rest of his career. Around the same time, British filmmaker Jeremy Marre documented the Jamaican music scene in "Roots Rock Reggae", capturing the heyday of Roots reggae.
While the quality of Reggae records produced in Jamaica took a turn for the worse following the oil crisis of the 1970s, reggae produced elsewhere began to flourish. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the UK punk rock scene flourished, and reggae was a notable influence. The DJ Don Letts would play reggae and punk tracks at clubs such as The Roxy. Punk bands such as The Clash, The Ruts, The Members and The Slits played many reggae-influenced songs. Around the same time, reggae music took a new path in the UK; one that was created by the multiracial makeup of England's inner cities and exemplified by groups like Steel Pulse, Aswad and UB40, as well as artists such as Smiley Culture and Carroll Thompson. The Jamaican ghetto themes in the lyrics were replaced with UK inner city themes, and Jamaican patois became intermingled with Cockney slang. In South London around this time, a new subgenre of Lovers Rock, was being created. Unlike the Jamaican music of the same name which was mainly dominated by male artists such as Gregory Isaacs, the South London genre was led by female singers like Thompson and Janet Kay. The UK Lovers Rock had a softer and more commercial sound.Other reggae artists who enjoyed international appeal in the early 1980s include Third World, Black Uhuru and Sugar Minott. The Grammy Awards introduced the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album category in 1985.
Women also play a role in the reggae music industry personnel such as Olivia Grange, president of Specs-Shang Musik; Trish Farrell, president of Island/Jamaica; Lisa Cortes, president of Loose Cannon; Jamaican-American Sharon Gordon, who has worked in the independent reggae music industry.
Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding made February 2008 the first annual Reggae Month in Jamaica. To celebrate, the Recording Industry Association of Jamaica (RIAJam) held its first Reggae Academy Awards on 24 February 2008. In addition, Reggae Month included a six-day Global Reggae conference, a reggae film festival, two radio station award functions, and a concert tribute to the late Dennis Brown, who Bob Marley cited as his favorite singer. On the business side, RIAJam held events focused on reggae's employment opportunities and potential international revenue. . Reggae Month 2019 in Jamaica was welcomed with multiple events ranging from corporate reggae functions to major celebrations in honour of Bob Marley's Birthday on 6 February to a tribute concert in honour of Dennis Brown on 24 February along with a sold-out concert by 2019 Reggae Grammy nominated artiste Protoje for his A Matter of Time Live held at Hope Gardens in Kingston on 23 February.
In November 2018 "reggae music of Jamaica" was added to the UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity the decision recognised reggae's "contribution to international discourse on issues of injustice, resistance, love and humanity underscores the dynamics of the element as being at once cerebral, socio-political, sensual and spiritual."
Stylistically, reggae incorporates some of the musical elements of rhythm and blues (R&B), jazz, mento, calypso, African, and Latin American music, as well as other genres. Reggae scenes consist of two guitars, one for rhythm and one for lead—drums, congas, and keyboards, with a couple vocalists.
Reggae is played in time because the symmetrical rhythmic pattern does not lend itself to other time signatures such as . One of the most easily recognizable elements is offbeat rhythms; staccato chords played by a guitar or piano (or both) on the offbeats of the measure, often referred to as the skank.
This rhythmic pattern accents the second and fourth beats in each bar and combines with the drum's emphasis on beat three to create a unique sense of phrasing. The reggae offbeat can be counted so that it falls between each count as an "and" (example: 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and, etc.) or counted as a half-time feel at twice the tempo so it falls on beats 2 and 4. This is in contrast to the way most other popular genres focus on beat one, the "downbeat".
The tempo of reggae is usually slower than both ska and rocksteady. It is this slower tempo, the guitar/piano offbeats, the emphasis on the third beat, and the use of syncopated, melodic bass lines that differentiate reggae from other music, although other musical styles have incorporated some of these innovations.
Harmonically the music is essentially the same as any other modern popular genre with a tendency to make use of simple chord progressions. Reggae sometimes uses the dominant chord in its minor form therefore never allowing a perfect cadence to be sounded; this lack of resolution between the tonic and the dominant imparts a sense of movement "without rest" and harmonic ambiguity. Extended chords like the major seventh chord ("Waiting in Vain" by Bob Marley) and minor seventh chord are used though suspended chords or diminished chords are rare. Minor keys are commonly used especially with the minor chord forms of the subdominant and dominant chord (for example in the key of G minor the progression may be played Gm – Dm – Gm – Dm – Cm – Dm – Cm – Dm). A simple progression borrowed from rhythm and blues and soul music is the tonic chord followed by the minor supertonic chord with the two chords repeated continuously to form a complete verse ("Just My Imagination" by The Temptations C – Dm7).
The concept of "call and response" can be found throughout reggae music, in the vocals but also in the way parts are composed and arranged for each instrument. The emphasis on the "third beat" of the bar also results in a different sense of musical phrasing, with bass lines and melody lines often emphasizing what might be considered "pick up notes" in other genres.
A standard drum kit is generally used in reggae, but the snare drum is often tuned very high to give it a timbales-type sound. Some reggae drummers use an additional timbale or high-tuned snare to get this sound. Cross-stick technique on the snare drum is commonly used, and tom-tom drums are often incorporated into the drumbeat itself.
Reggae drumbeats fall into three main categories: "One drop", "Rockers", and "Steppers". With the "One drop", the emphasis is entirely on the backbeat (usually on the snare, or as a rim shot combined with bass drum). Beat one is empty except for a closed high hat commonly used, which is unusual in popular music. There is some controversy about whether reggae should be counted so that this beat falls on two and four, or whether it should be counted twice as fast, so it falls on three. An example played by Barrett can be heard in the Bob Marley and the Wailers song "One Drop". Barrett often used an unusual triplet cross-rhythm on the hi-hat, which can be heard on many recordings by Bob Marley and the Wailers, such as "Running Away" on the "Kaya" album.
An emphasis on the backbeat is found in all reggae drumbeats, but with the "Rockers" beat, the emphasis is on all four beats of the bar (usually on bass drum). This beat was pioneered by Sly and Robbie, who later helped create the "Rub-a-Dub" sound that greatly influenced dancehall. Sly has stated he was influenced to create this style by listening to American drummer Earl Young as well as other disco and R&B drummers in the early to mid-1970s, as stated in the book "Wailing Blues". The prototypical example of the style is found in Sly Dunbar's drumming on "Right Time" by the Mighty Diamonds. The "Rockers" beat is not always straightforward, and various syncopations are often included. An example of this is the Black Uhuru song "Sponji Reggae".
In "Steppers", the bass drum plays every quarter beat of the bar, giving the beat an insistent drive. An example is "Exodus" by Bob Marley and the Wailers. Another common name for the "Steppers" beat is the "four on the floor". Burning Spear's 1975 song "Red, Gold, and Green" (with Leroy Wallace on drums) is one of the earliest examples. The "Steppers" beat was adopted (at a much higher tempo) by some 2 Tone ska revival bands of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
An unusual characteristic of reggae drumming is that the drum fills often do not end with a climactic cymbal. A wide range of other percussion instrumentation are used in reggae. Bongos are often used to play free, improvised patterns, with heavy use of African-style cross-rhythms. Cowbells, claves and shakers tend to have more defined roles and a set pattern.
Reggae drummers often involved these three tips for other reggae performers: (1) go for open, ringing tones when playing ska and rocksteady, (2) use any available material to stuff the bass drum so that it tightens up the kick to a deep, punchy thud, and (3) go without a ride cymbal, focusing on the hi-hat for timekeeping and thin crashes with fast decay for accents.
The bass guitar often plays the dominant role in reggae, and the drum and bass is often the most important part of what is called, in Jamaican music, a "riddim" (rhythm), a (usually simple) piece of music that is used repeatedly by different artists to write and record songs with. Hundreds of reggae singers have released different songs recorded over the same rhythm. The central role of the bass can be particularly heard in dub music – which gives an even bigger role to the drum and bass line, reducing the vocals and other instruments to peripheral roles.
The bass sound in reggae is thick and heavy, and equalized so the upper frequencies are removed and the lower frequencies emphasized. The bass line is often a repeated two or four bar riff when simple chord progressions are used. The simplest example of this might be Robbie Shakespeare's bass line for the Black Uhuru hit "Shine Eye Gal". In the case of more complex harmonic structures, such as John Holt's version of "Stranger in Love", these simpler patterns are altered to follow the chord progression either by directly moving the pattern around or by changing some of the interior notes in the phrase to better support the chords.
The guitar in reggae usually plays on the off beat of the rhythm. So if one is counting in time and counting "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and ...", one would play a downstroke on the "and" part of the beat. A musical figure known as skank or the 'bang" has a very dampened, short and scratchy chop sound, almost like a percussion instrument. Sometimes a double chop is used when the guitar still plays the off beats, but also plays the following eighth-note beats on the up-stroke. An example is the intro to "Stir It Up" by The Wailers. Artist and producer Derrick Harriott says, "What happened was the musical thing was real widespread, but only among a certain sort of people. It was always a down-town thing, but more than just hearing the music. The equipment was so powerful and the vibe so strong that we feel it."
From the earliest days of Ska recordings, a piano was used to double the rhythm guitar's skank, playing the chords in a "staccato" style to add body, and playing occasional extra beats, runs and riffs. The piano part was widely taken over by synthesizers during the 1980s, although synthesizers have been used in a peripheral role since the 1970s to play incidental melodies and countermelodies. Larger bands may include either an additional keyboardist, to cover or replace horn and melody lines, or the main keyboardist filling these roles on two or more keyboards.
The reggae organ-shuffle is unique to reggae. In the original version of reggae, the drummer played a reggae groove that was used in the four bar introduction, allowing the piano to serve as a percussion instrument. Typically, a Hammond organ-style sound is used to play chords with a choppy feel. This is known as the "bubble". This may be the most difficult reggae keyboard rhythm. The organ bubble can be broken down into 2 basic patterns. In the first, the 8th beats are played with a space-left-right-left-space-left-right-left pattern, where the spaces represent downbeats not played—that and the left-right-left falls on the ee-and-a, or and-2-and if counted at double time. In the second basic pattern, the left hand plays a double chop as described in the guitar section while the right hand plays longer notes on beat 2 (or beat 3 if counted at double time) or a syncopated pattern between the double chops. Both these patterns can be expanded on and improvised embellishments are sometimes used.
Horn sections are frequently used in reggae, often playing introductions and countermelodies. Instruments included in a typical reggae horn section include saxophone, trumpet or trombone. In more recent times, real horns are sometimes replaced in reggae by synthesizers or recorded samples. The horn section is often arranged around the first horn, playing a simple melody or counter melody. The first horn is usually accompanied by the second horn playing the same melodic phrase in unison, one octave higher. The third horn usually plays the melody an octave and a fifth higher than the first horn. The horns are generally played fairly softly, usually resulting in a soothing sound. However, sometimes punchier, louder phrases are played for a more up-tempo and aggressive sound.
The vocals in reggae are less of a defining characteristic of the genre than the instrumentation and rhythm, as almost any song can be performed in a reggae style. However, it is very common for reggae to be sung in Jamaican Patois, Jamaican English, and Iyaric dialects. Vocal harmony parts are often used, either throughout the melody (as with vocal groups such as the Mighty Diamonds), or as a counterpoint to the main vocal line (as with the backing vocalists, the I-Threes). More complex vocal arrangements can be found in the works of groups like The Abyssinians and British reggae band Steel Pulse.
An unusual aspect of reggae singing is that many singers use "tremolo" (volume oscillation) rather than "vibrato" (pitch oscillation). Notable exponents of this technique include Horace Andy and vocal group Israel Vibration. The toasting vocal style is unique to reggae, originating when DJs improvised spoken introductions to songs (or "toasts") to the point where it became a distinct rhythmic vocal style, and is generally considered to be a precursor to rap. It differs from rap mainly in that it is generally melodic, while rap is generally more a spoken form without melodic content.
Reggae is noted for its tradition of social criticism in its lyrics, although many reggae songs discuss lighter, more personal subjects, such as love and socializing. Many early reggae bands covered Motown or Atlantic soul and funk songs. Some reggae lyrics attempt to raise the political consciousness of the audience, such as by criticizing materialism, or by informing the listener about controversial subjects such as Apartheid. Many reggae songs promote the use of cannabis (also known as "herb", "ganja", or "sinsemilla"), considered a sacrament in the Rastafari movement. There are many artists who utilize religious themes in their music – whether it be discussing a specific religious topic, or simply giving praise to God (Jah). Other common socio-political topics in reggae songs include black nationalism, anti-racism, anti-colonialism, anti-capitalism and criticism of political systems and "Babylon".
In recent years, Jamaican (and non-Jamaican) reggae musicians have used more positive themes in reggae music. The music is widely considered a treasured cultural export for Jamaica, so musicians who still desire progress for their island nation have begun focusing on themes of hopefulness, faith, and love. For elementary children, reggae songs such as "Give a Little Love", "One Love", or "Three Little Birds", all written by Bob Marley, can be sung and enjoyed for their optimism and cheerful lyrics.
Some dancehall and ragga artists have been criticised for homophobia, including threats of violence. Buju Banton's song "Boom Bye-Bye" states that gays "haffi dead". Other notable dancehall artists who have been accused of homophobia include Elephant Man, Bounty Killer and Beenie Man. The controversy surrounding anti-gay lyrics has led to the cancellation of UK tours by Beenie Man and Sizzla. Toronto, Canada has also seen the cancellation of concerts due to artists such as Elephant Man and Sizzla refusing to conform to similar censorship pressures.
After lobbying from the Stop Murder Music coalition, the dancehall music industry agreed in 2005 to stop releasing songs that promote hatred and violence against gay people. In June 2007, Beenie Man, Sizzla and Capleton signed up to the Reggae Compassionate Act, in a deal brokered with top dancehall promoters and Stop Murder Music activists. They renounced homophobia and agreed to "not make statements or perform songs that incite hatred or violence against anyone from any community". Five artists targeted by the anti-homophobia campaign did not sign up to the act, including Elephant Man, TOK, Bounty Killa and Vybz Kartel. Buju Banton and Beenie Man both gained positive press coverage around the world for publicly renouncing homophobia by signing the Reggae Compassion Act. However, both of these artists have since denied any involvement in anti-homophobia work and both deny having signed any such act.
Reggae has spread to many countries across the world, often incorporating local instruments and fusing with other genres. In November 2018 UNESCO added the "reggae music of Jamaica" to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Reggae en Español spread from mainland South American Caribbean from Venezuela and Guyana to the rest of South America. It does not have any specific characteristics other than being sung in Spanish, usually by artists of Latin American origin. Samba reggae originated in Brazil as a blend of samba with Jamaican reggae. Reggae also has a presence in Veracruz, Mexico. The most notable Jarocho reggae group being Los Aguas Aguas from Xalapa. Some of the most popular reggae groups across Latin America come from the Southern Cone, such as the Chilean band Gondwana, and the Argentinian band Los Cafres. The Puerto Rican band Cultura Profética is also widely recognized in the region. Hispanic reggae includes three elements: the incorporation of the Spanish language; the use of translations and versions based on known riddims and background music; and regional consciousness. It is a medium of rebellious contestation rising from the underground. Hispanic reggae is related to rap, sharing characteristics that can be found not only in the social conditions in which they developed in the region but also in the characteristics of social sectors and classes that welcome them.
Brazilian samba-reggae utilized themes such as the civil rights movement and the Black Soul movement, and especially the Jamaican independence movement since the 1960s and its messages in reggae and Rastafarianism. Thus, the sudden popularity of reggae music and musicians in Bahia, Brazil, was not the result of the effects of the transnational music industry, but of the need to establish cultural and political links with black communities across the Americas that had faced and were facing similar sociopolitical situations.
Musically, it was the bloco afro Olodum and its lead percussionist, Neguinho do Samba, that began to combine the basic samba beat of the blocos with merengue, salsa, and reggae rhythms and debuted their experimentations in the carnival of 1986. The new toques (drumming patterns) were labeled "samba-reggae" and consisted basically of a pattern in which the surdo bass drums (four of them at the minimum) divided themselves into four or five interlocking parts.
In the state of Maranhão, in northeastern Brazil, reggae is a very popular rhythm. São Luis, the state capital, is known as the Brazilian Jamaica. The city has more than 200 "radiolas", name given to sound teams formed by DJs and sound systems with dozens of powerful amplifiers boxes stacked. Reggae in Maranhão has its own characteristics, such as melody and the way of dancing, as well as having its own radio and television programs. In 2018, the Reggae Museum of Maranhão was inaugurated, the second reggae museum in the world (after Jamaica), with the objective of preserving the reggae culture history in the state.
In the United States, bands like Rebelution, Slightly Stoopid, Stick Figure, and SOJA are considered progressive reggae bands sometimes referred to as Cali Reggae or Pacific Dub. The American reggae scene is heavily centred in Southern California, with large scenes also in New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Miami, and Honolulu. For decades, Hawaiian reggae has had a big following on the Hawaiian islands and the West coast of the US. On the east coast upstate NY has seen a rise in original roots reggae bands such as Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad and John Brown's Body who were inspired by Jamaican reggae bands that performed in the area back in the 80s and 90s. Matisyahu gained prominence by blending traditional Jewish themes with reggae. Compounding his use of the hazzan style, Matisyahu's lyrics are mostly English with more than occasional use of Hebrew and Yiddish. There is a large Caribbean presence in Toronto and Montreal, Canada, with English and French influences on the reggae genre. Canadian band Magic!'s 2013 single "Rude" was an international hit.
In 2017, Toots and the Maytals became the second reggae-based group to ever perform at the Coachella festival, after Chronixx in 2016.
The UK was a primary destination for Caribbean people looking to emigrate as early as the 1950s. Because of this, Caribbean music in the United Kingdom, including reggae, has been popular since the late 1960s, and has evolved into several subgenres and fusions. Most notable of these is lovers rock, but this fusion of Jamaican music into English culture was seminal in the formation of other musical forms like drum and bass and dubstep. The UK became the base from which many Jamaican artists toured Europe and due to the large number of Jamaican musicians emigrating there, the UK is the root of the larger European scene that exists today. Many of the world's most famous reggae artists began their careers in UK. Singer and Grammy Award-winning reggae artist Maxi Priest began his career with seminal British sound system Saxon Studio International.
Three reggae-tinged singles from the Police's 1978 debut album, "Outlandos d'Amour", laid down the template for the basic structure of a lot of rock/reggae songwriting: a reggae-infused verse containing upstrokes on guitar or keyboards and a more aggressive, on-the-beat punk/rock attack during the chorus. The end of the 1970s featured a ska revival in the UK. By the end of the '70s, a revival movement had begun in England, with such bands as the Specials, Madness, the (English) Beat, and the Selecter. The Specials' leader and keyboardist, Jerry Dammers, founded the 2 Tone record label, which released albums from the aforementioned racially integrated groups and was instrumental in creating a new social and cultural awareness. The 2 Tone movement referenced reggae's godfathers, popular styles (including the genre's faster and more dance-oriented precursors, ska and rocksteady), and previous modes of dress (such as black suits and porkpie hats) but updated the sound with a faster tempo, more guitar, and more attitude.
Birmingham based reggae/pop music band UB40 were main contributors to the British reggae scene throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The achieved international success with hits such as "Red Red Wine", "Kingston Town" and "(I can't Help) Falling in Love with You."
Other UK based artists that had international impact include Aswad, Misty in Roots, Steel Pulse, Janet Kay, Tippa Irie, Smiley Culture and more recently Bitty McLean. There have been a number of European artists and bands drawing their inspiration directly from Jamaica and the Caribbean community in Europe, whose music and vocal styles are almost identical to contemporary Jamaican music. The best examples might be Alborosie (Italy) and Gentleman (Germany). Both Gentleman and Alborosie have had a significant chart impact in Jamaica, unlike many European artists. They have both recorded and released music in Jamaica for Jamaican labels and producers and are popular artists, likely to appear on many riddims. Alborosie has lived in Jamaica since the late 1990s and has recorded at Bob Marley's famous Tuff Gong Studios. Since the early 1990s, several Italian reggae bands have emerged, including Africa Unite, Gaudi, Reggae National Tickets, Sud Sound System, Pitura Freska and B.R. Stylers. Another Italian famous reggae singer was Rino Gaetano.
Reggae appeared on the Yugoslav popular music scene in the late 1970s, through sporadic songs by popular rock acts. Reggae saw an expansion with the emergence of Yugoslav new wave scene. The bands like Haustor, Šarlo Akrobata, Aerodrom, Laboratorija Zvuka, Piloti, Du Du A and others recorded reggae and reggae-influence songs. In the mid-1980s appeared Del Arno Band, often considered the first real reggae band in Yugoslavia. Throughout the following decades they remained one of the most popular and influential reggae bands in the region. In the 1990s and early 2000s, after the breakup of Yugoslavia, appeared a new generation of reggae bands, like Serbian band Eyesburn, which gained popularity with their combination of reggae with hardcore punk and crossover thrash, and Croatian band Radikal Dub Kolektiv, alongside bands which incorporated reggae into their sound, like Darkwood Dub, Kanda, Kodža i Nebojša and Lira Vega in Serbia and Dubioza Kolektiv in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Late 2000s and 2010s brought a new generation of reggae acts in the region.
The first homegrown Polish reggae bands started in the 1980s with groups like Izraelario. Singer and songwriter Alexander Barykin was considered as the father of Russian reggae. In Sweden, Uppsala Reggae Festival attracts attendees from across Northern Europe, and features Swedish reggae bands such as Rootvälta and Svenska Akademien as well as many popular Jamaican artists. Summerjam, Europe's biggest reggae festival, takes place in Cologne, Germany and sees crowds of 25,000 or more. Rototom Sunsplash, a week-long festival which used to take place in Osoppo, Italy, until 2009, is now held in Benicassim, Spain and gathers up to 150,000 visitors every year.
In Iceland reggae band Hjálmar is well established having released six CDs in Iceland. They were the first reggae band in Iceland, but few Icelandic artists had written songs in the reggae style before their showing up at the Icelandic music scene. The Icelandic reggae scene is expanding and growing at a fast rate. RVK Soundsystem is the first Icelandic sound system, counting 5 DJ's. They hold reggae nights in Reykjavík every month at clubs Hemmi og Valdi and more recently in Faktorý as the crowd has grown so much.
In Germany, the three successful Reggae JSnrfti mer Jam open-air festivals were crucial parts of the renaissance of Caribbean music in Germany but at that year (1990) war broke out between the two main German promoters who had cooperated so well during the previous seasons. With a lot of infighting and personal quarrels, each of them pursued his own preparations for a big summer festival. The result was that two open-air events look place on the same day.
The Reggae Sammer Jam '90 was staged as usual, but this year for only one day. The event took place at the Lorelei Rock amphitheater with artists like Mad Professor's Ariwa Posse with Macka B and Kofi, Mutabaruka, the Mighty Diamonds, the Twinkle Brothers, Manu Dibango and Fela Kuti.
The other, ex-partner of the onceunited promoters succeeded in bringing the original Sunsplash package to Germany for the first time. Close to the Main River in the little village of Gemaunden deep down in rural south-central Germany, they staged a two-day festival that drew the bigger crowd. About 10,000 people came from all over the country as well as from neighboring states like trance and, for the first time, East Germany to see the lineup of top reggae artists.
Reggae in Africa was much boosted by the visit of Bob Marley to Zimbabwe on Independence Day 18 April 1980. Nigerian reggae had developed in the 1970s with artists such as Majek Fashek proving popular. In South Africa, reggae music has played a unifying role amongst cultural groups in Cape Town. During the years of Apartheid, the music bonded people from all demographic groups. Lucky Dube recorded 25 albums, fusing reggae with Mbaqanga. The Marcus Garvey Rasta camp in Phillipi is regarded by many to be the reggae and Rastafari center of Cape Town. Reggae bands play regularly at community centres such as the Zolani center in Nyanga.
In Uganda musician Papa Cidy is very popular. Arthur Lutta is also a Ugandan gospel reggae drummer known for his reggae style drumming. In Ethiopia, Dub Colossus and Invisible System emerged in 2008 sharing core members, and have received wide acclaim. In Mali, Askia Modibo fuses reggae with Malian music. In Malawi, Black Missionaries produced nine albums. In Ivory Coast a country where reggae music is extremely popular, Tiken Jah Fakoly fuses reggae with traditional music. Alpha Blondy from Ivory Coast sings reggae with religious lyrics. In Sudan, beats, drums and bass guitar from reggae music has been adopted into their music as reggae is a very popular among the generations from young to old, some spiritual (religious) groups grow their dreadlocks and have some reggae beats in their chants.
In the Philippines, several bands and sound systems play reggae and dancehall music. Their music is called Pinoy reggae. Japanese reggae emerged in the early 1980s. Reggae is becoming more prevalent in Thailand as well. Reggae music is quite popular in Sri Lanka. Aside from the reggae music and Rastafari influences seen ever more on Thailand's islands and beaches, a true reggae sub-culture is taking root in Thailand's cities and towns. Many Thai artists, such as Job 2 Do, keep the tradition of reggae music and ideals alive in Thailand. By the end of the 1980s, the local music scene in Hawaii was dominated by Jawaiian music, a local form of reggae.
Famous Indian singer Kailash Kher and music producer Clinton Cerejo created "Kalapi", a rare fusion piece of Reggae and Indian music for Coke Studio India. Other than this high-profile piece, Reggae is confined to a small, emerging scene in India. Thaikkudam Bridge, a neo-Indian band based in Kerala, India is known for inducing Reggae into Indian regional blues.
Reggae in Australia originated in the 1980s. Australian reggae groups include Sticky Fingers, Blue King Brown, Astronomy Class and The Red Eyes. Others such as The Fraud Millionaires combine reggae with rock, while many more artists include some reggae songs in their repertoires, but don't identify as reggae bands. Desert Reggae is a developing contemporary style possibly originating in Central Australia and featuring lyrics often sung in Australian Aboriginal languages. "Yirrmala" by Yothu Yindi (1996) is an example of an Aboriginal reggae song.
New Zealand reggae was heavily inspired by Bob Marley's 1979 tour of the country, and early reggae groups such as Herbs. The genre has seen many bands like Fat Freddy's Drop, Salmonella Dub, The Black Seeds and Katchafire emerging in more recent times, often involving fusion with electronica.
The term cod reggae is popularly used to describe reggae done by non-Caribbean (often white) people, often in a disparaging manner because of perceived inauthenticity. It has been applied to music by many artists, such as 10cc, Boy George, Suzi Quatro and Razorlight. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25520 |
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