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The forms also differ in their object of imitation. Comedy, for instance, is a dramatic imitation of men worse than average; whereas tragedy imitates men slightly better than average. Lastly, the forms differ in their manner of imitation – through narrative or character, through change or no change, and through drama or no drama.
Aesthetics and the philosophy of art.
Some writers distinguish aesthetics from the philosophy of art, claiming that the former is the study of beauty and taste while the latter is the study of works of art. Slater holds that the "full field" of aesthetics is broad, but in a narrow sense it can be limited to the theory of beauty, excluding the philosophy of art. Aesthetics typically considers questions of beauty as well as of art. It examines topics such as art works, aesthetic experience, and aesthetic judgment.
Aesthetic experience refers to the sensory contemplation or appreciation of an object (not necessarily a work of art), while artistic judgment refers to the recognition, appreciation or criticism of art in general or a specific work of art. In the words of one philosopher, "Philosophy of art is about art. Aesthetics is about many things—including art. But it is also about our experience of breathtaking landscapes or the pattern of shadows on the wall opposite your office.
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Philosophers of art weigh a culturally contingent conception of art versus one that is purely theoretical. They study the varieties of art in relation to their physical, social, and cultural environments. Aesthetic philosophers sometimes also refer to psychological studies to help understand how people see, hear, imagine, think, learn, and act in relation to the materials and problems of art. Aesthetic psychology studies the creative process and the aesthetic experience.
Aesthetic judgment, universals, and ethics.
Aesthetic judgment.
Aesthetics examines affective domain response to an object or phenomenon. Judgements of aesthetic value rely on the ability to discriminate at a sensory level. However, aesthetic judgments usually go beyond sensory discrimination.
For David Hume, delicacy of taste is not merely "the ability to detect all the ingredients in a composition", but also the sensitivity "to pains as well as pleasures, which escape the rest of mankind." Thus, sensory discrimination is linked to capacity for pleasure.
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For Immanuel Kant ("Critique of Judgment", 1790), "enjoyment" is the result when pleasure arises from sensation, but judging something to be "beautiful" has a third requirement: sensation must give rise to pleasure by engaging reflective contemplation. Judgements of beauty are sensory, emotional and intellectual all at once. Kant observed of a man "if he says that 'Canary wine is pleasant,' he is quite content if someone else corrects his expression and remind him that he ought to say instead: 'It is pleasant "to me",'" because "every one has his own [sense of] taste". The case of "beauty" is different from mere "pleasantness" because "if he gives out anything as beautiful, he supposes in others the same satisfaction—he judges not merely for himself, but for every one, and speaks of beauty as if it were a property of things."
Viewer interpretations of beauty may on occasion be observed to possess two concepts of value: aesthetics and taste. Aesthetics is the philosophical notion of beauty. Taste is a result of an education process and awareness of elite cultural values learned through exposure to mass culture. Bourdieu examined how the elite in society define the aesthetic values like taste and how varying levels of exposure to these values can result in variations by class, cultural background, and education. According to Kant, beauty is subjective and universal; thus certain things are beautiful to everyone. In the opinion of Władysław Tatarkiewicz, there are six conditions for the presentation of art: beauty, form, representation, reproduction of reality, artistic expression and innovation. However, one may not be able to pin down these qualities in a work of art.
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The question of whether there are facts about aesthetic judgments belongs to the branch of metaphilosophy known as meta-aesthetics.
Factors involved in aesthetic judgment.
Aesthetic judgment is closely tied to disgust. Responses like disgust show that sensory detection is linked in instinctual ways to facial expressions including physiological responses like the gag reflex. Disgust is triggered largely by dissonance; as Darwin pointed out, seeing a stripe of soup in a man's beard is disgusting even though neither soup nor beards are themselves disgusting. Aesthetic judgments may be linked to emotions or, like emotions, partially embodied in physical reactions. For example, the awe inspired by a sublime landscape might physically manifest with an increased heart-rate or pupil dilation.
As seen, emotions are conformed to 'cultural' reactions, therefore aesthetics is always characterized by 'regional responses', as Francis Grose was the first to affirm in his "Rules for Drawing Caricaturas: With an Essay on Comic Painting" (1788), published in W. Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, Bagster, London s.d. (1791? [1753]), pp. 1–24. Francis Grose can therefore be claimed to be the first critical 'aesthetic regionalist' in proclaiming the anti-universality of aesthetics in contrast to the perilous and always resurgent dictatorship of beauty. 'Aesthetic Regionalism' can thus be seen as a political statement and stance which vies against any universal notion of beauty to safeguard the counter-tradition of aesthetics related to what has been considered and dubbed un-beautiful just because one's culture does not contemplate it, e.g. Edmund Burke's sublime, what is usually defined as 'primitive' art, or un-harmonious, non-cathartic art, camp art, which 'beauty' posits and creates, dichotomously, as its opposite, without even the need of formal statements, but which will be 'perceived' as ugly.
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Likewise, aesthetic judgments may be culturally conditioned to some extent. Victorians in Britain often saw African sculpture as ugly, but just a few decades later, Edwardian audiences saw the same sculptures as beautiful. Evaluations of beauty may well be linked to desirability, perhaps even to sexual desirability. Thus, judgments of aesthetic value can become linked to judgments of economic, political, or moral value. In a current context, a Lamborghini might be judged to be beautiful partly because it is desirable as a status symbol, or it may be judged to be repulsive partly because it signifies over-consumption and offends political or moral values.
The context of its presentation also affects the perception of artwork; artworks presented in a classical museum context are liked more and rated more interesting than when presented in a sterile laboratory context. While specific results depend heavily on the style of the presented artwork, overall, the effect of context proved to be more important for the perception of artwork than the effect of genuineness (whether the artwork was being presented as original or as a facsimile/copy).
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Aesthetic judgments can often be very fine-grained and internally contradictory. Likewise aesthetic judgments seem often to be at least partly intellectual and interpretative. What a thing means or symbolizes is often what is being judged. Modern aestheticians have asserted that will and desire were almost dormant in aesthetic experience, yet preference and choice have seemed important aesthetics to some 20th-century thinkers. The point is already made by Hume, but see Mary Mothersill, "Beauty and the Critic's Judgment", in "The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics", 2004. Thus aesthetic judgments might be seen to be based on the senses, emotions, intellectual opinions, will, desires, culture, preferences, values, subconscious behaviour, conscious decision, training, instinct, sociological institutions, or some complex combination of these, depending on exactly which theory is employed.
A third major topic in the study of aesthetic judgments is how they are unified across art forms. For instance, the source of a painting's beauty has a different character to that of beautiful music, suggesting their aesthetics differ in kind. The distinct inability of language to express aesthetic judgment and the role of social construction further cloud this issue.
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Aesthetic universals.
The philosopher Denis Dutton identified six universal signatures in human aesthetics:
Artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn have indicated that there are too many exceptions to Dutton's categories. For example, Hirschhorn's installations deliberately eschew technical virtuosity. People can appreciate a Renaissance Madonna for aesthetic reasons, but such objects often had (and sometimes still have) specific devotional functions. "Rules of composition" that might be read into Duchamp's "Fountain" or John Cage's "4′33″" do not locate the works in a recognizable style (or certainly not a style recognizable at the time of the works' realization). Moreover, some of Dutton's categories seem too broad: a physicist might entertain hypothetical worlds in his/her imagination in the course of formulating a theory. Another problem is that Dutton's categories seek to universalize traditional European notions of aesthetics and art forgetting that, as André Malraux and others have pointed out, there have been large numbers of cultures in which such ideas (including the idea "art" itself) were non-existent.
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Aesthetic ethics.
Aesthetic ethics refers to the idea that human conduct and behaviour ought to be governed by that which is beautiful and attractive. John Dewey has pointed out that the unity of aesthetics and ethics is in fact reflected in our understanding of behaviour being "fair"—the word having a double meaning of attractive and morally acceptable. More recently, James Page has suggested that aesthetic ethics might be taken to form a philosophical rationale for peace education.
Beauty.
Beauty is one of the main subjects of aesthetics, together with art and taste. Many of its definitions include the idea that an object is beautiful if perceiving it is accompanied by aesthetic pleasure. Among the examples of beautiful objects are landscapes, sunsets, humans and works of art. Beauty is a positive aesthetic value that contrasts with ugliness as its negative counterpart.
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New Criticism and "The Intentional Fallacy".
During the first half of the twentieth century, a significant shift to general aesthetic theory took place which attempted to apply aesthetic theory between various forms of art, including the literary arts and the visual arts, to each other. This resulted in the rise of the New Criticism school and debate concerning "the intentional fallacy". At issue was the question of whether the aesthetic intentions of the artist in creating the work of art, whatever its specific form, should be associated with the criticism and evaluation of the final product of the work of art, or, if the work of art should be evaluated on its own merits independent of the intentions of the artist.
In 1946, William K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley published a classic and controversial New Critical essay entitled "The Intentional Fallacy", in which they argued strongly against the relevance of an author's intention, or "intended meaning" in the analysis of a literary work. For Wimsatt and Beardsley, the words on the page were all that mattered; importation of meanings from outside the text was considered irrelevant, and potentially distracting.
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In another essay, "The Affective Fallacy," which served as a kind of sister essay to "The Intentional Fallacy", Wimsatt and Beardsley also discounted the reader's personal/emotional reaction to a literary work as a valid means of analyzing a text. This fallacy would later be repudiated by theorists from the reader-response school of literary theory. One of the leading theorists from this school, Stanley Fish, was himself trained by New Critics. Fish criticizes Wimsatt and Beardsley in his essay "Literature in the Reader" (1970).
As summarized by Berys Gaut and Livingston in their essay "The Creation of Art": "Structuralist and post-structuralists theorists and critics were sharply critical of many aspects of New Criticism, beginning with the emphasis on aesthetic appreciation and the so-called autonomy of art, but they reiterated the attack on biographical criticisms' assumption that the artist's activities and experience were a privileged critical topic." These authors contend that: "Anti-intentionalists, such as formalists, hold that the intentions involved in the making of art are irrelevant or peripheral to correctly interpreting art. So details of the act of creating a work, though possibly of interest in themselves, have no bearing on the correct interpretation of the work."
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Gaut and Livingston define the intentionalists as distinct from formalists stating that: "Intentionalists, unlike formalists, hold that reference to intentions is essential in fixing the correct interpretation of works." They quote Richard Wollheim as stating that, "The task of criticism is the reconstruction of the creative process, where the creative process must in turn be thought of as something not stopping short of, but terminating on, the work of art itself."
Derivative forms of aesthetics.
A large number of derivative forms of aesthetics have developed as contemporary and transitory forms of inquiry associated with the field of aesthetics which include the post-modern, psychoanalytic, scientific, and mathematical among others.
Post-modern aesthetics and psychoanalysis.
Early-twentieth-century artists, poets and composers challenged existing notions of beauty, broadening the scope of art and aesthetics. In 1941, Eli Siegel, American philosopher and poet, founded Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy that reality itself is aesthetic, and that "The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites."
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Various attempts have been made to define Post-Modern Aesthetics. The challenge to the assumption that beauty was central to art and aesthetics, thought to be original, is actually continuous with older aesthetic theory; Aristotle was the first in the Western tradition to classify "beauty" into types as in his theory of drama, and Kant made a distinction between beauty and the sublime. What was new was a refusal to credit the higher status of certain types, where the taxonomy implied a preference for tragedy and the sublime to comedy and the Rococo.
Croce suggested that "expression" is central in the way that beauty was once thought to be central. George Dickie suggested that the sociological institutions of the art world were the glue binding art and sensibility into unities. Marshall McLuhan suggested that art always functions as a "counter-environment" designed to make visible what is usually invisible about a society. Theodor Adorno felt that aesthetics could not proceed without confronting the role of the culture industry in the commodification of art and aesthetic experience.
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Theodor Adorno felt that aesthetics could not proceed without confronting the role of the culture industry in the commodification of art and aesthetic experience. Hal Foster attempted to portray the reaction against beauty and Modernist art in "The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture". Arthur Danto has described this reaction as "kalliphobia" (after the Greek word for beauty, κάλλος "kallos"). André Malraux explains that the notion of beauty was connected to a particular conception of art that arose with the Renaissance and was still dominant in the eighteenth century (but was supplanted later). The discipline of aesthetics, which originated in the eighteenth century, mistook this transient state of affairs for a revelation of the permanent nature of art. Brian Massumi suggests to reconsider beauty following the aesthetical thought in the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. Walter Benjamin echoed Malraux in believing aesthetics was a comparatively recent invention, a view proven wrong in the late 1970s, when Abraham Moles and Frieder Nake analyzed links between beauty, information processing, and information theory. Walter Benjamin echoed Malraux in believing aesthetics was a comparatively recent invention, a view proven wrong in the late 1970s, when Abraham Moles and Frieder Nake analyzed links between beauty, information processing, and information theory. Denis Dutton in "The Art Instinct" also proposed that an aesthetic sense was a vital evolutionary factor.
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Jean-François Lyotard re-invokes the Kantian distinction between taste and the sublime. Sublime painting, unlike kitsch realism, "... will enable us to see only by making it impossible to see; it will please only by causing pain."
Sigmund Freud inaugurated aesthetical thinking in Psychoanalysis mainly via the "Uncanny" as aesthetical affect. Following Freud and Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Lacan theorized aesthetics in terms of sublimation and the Thing.
The relation of Marxist aesthetics to post-modern aesthetics is still a contentious area of debate.
Aesthetics and science.
The field of experimental aesthetics was founded by Gustav Theodor Fechner in the 19th century. Experimental aesthetics in these times had been characterized by a subject-based, inductive approach. The analysis of individual experience and behaviour based on experimental methods is a central part of experimental aesthetics. In particular, the perception of works of art, music, sound, or modern items such as websites or other IT products is studied. Experimental aesthetics is strongly oriented towards the natural sciences. Modern approaches mostly come from the fields of cognitive psychology (aesthetic cognitivism) or neuroscience (neuroaesthetics).
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Truth in beauty and mathematics.
Mathematical considerations, such as symmetry and complexity, are used for analysis in theoretical aesthetics. This is different from the aesthetic considerations of applied aesthetics used in the study of mathematical beauty. Aesthetic considerations such as symmetry and simplicity are used in areas of philosophy, such as ethics and theoretical physics and cosmology to define truth, outside of empirical considerations. Beauty and Truth have been argued to be nearly synonymous, as reflected in the statement "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" in the poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats, or by the Hindu motto "Satyam Shivam Sundaram" (Satya (Truth) is Shiva (God), and Shiva is Sundaram (Beautiful)). The fact that judgments of beauty and judgments of truth both are influenced by processing fluency, which is the ease with which information can be processed, has been presented as an explanation for why beauty is sometimes equated with truth. Recent research found that people use beauty as an indication for truth in mathematical pattern tasks. However, scientists including the mathematician David Orrell and physicist Marcelo Gleiser have argued that the emphasis on aesthetic criteria such as symmetry is equally capable of leading scientists astray.
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Computational approaches.
Computational approaches to aesthetics emerged amid efforts to use computer science methods "to predict, convey, and evoke emotional response to a piece of art. In this field, aesthetics is not considered to be dependent on taste but is a matter of cognition, and, consequently, learning. In 1928, the mathematician George David Birkhoff created an aesthetic measure formula_1 as the ratio of order to complexity.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Max Bense, Abraham Moles and Frieder Nake were among the first to analyze links between aesthetics, information processing, and information theory. Max Bense, for example, built on Birkhoff's aesthetic measure and proposed a similar information theoretic measure formula_2, where formula_3 is the redundancy and formula_4 the entropy, which assigns higher value to simpler artworks.
In the 1990s, Jürgen Schmidhuber described an algorithmic theory of beauty. This theory takes the subjectivity of the observer into account and postulates that among several observations classified as comparable by a given subjective observer, the most aesthetically pleasing is the one that is encoded by the shortest description, following the direction of previous approaches. Schmidhuber's theory explicitly distinguishes between that which is beautiful and that which is interesting, stating that interestingness corresponds to the first derivative of subjectively perceived beauty. He supposes that every observer continually tries to improve the predictability and compressibility of their observations by identifying regularities like repetition, symmetry, and fractal self-similarity.
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Since about 2005, computer scientists have attempted to develop automated methods to infer aesthetic quality of images. Typically, these approaches follow a machine learning approach, where large numbers of manually rated photographs are used to "teach" a computer about what visual properties are of relevance to aesthetic quality. A study by Y. Li and C. J. Hu employed Birkhoff's measurement in their statistical learning approach where order and complexity of an image determined aesthetic value. The image complexity was computed using information theory while the order was determined using fractal compression. There is also the case of the Acquine engine, developed at Penn State University, that rates natural photographs uploaded by users.
There have also been relatively successful attempts with regard to chess and music. Computational approaches have also been attempted in film making as demonstrated by a software model developed by Chitra Dorai and a group of researchers at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. The tool predicted aesthetics based on the values of narrative elements. A relation between Max Bense's mathematical formulation of aesthetics in terms of "redundancy" and "complexity" and theories of musical anticipation was offered using the notion of Information Rate.
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Evolutionary aesthetics.
Evolutionary aesthetics refers to evolutionary psychology theories in which the basic aesthetic preferences of "Homo sapiens" are argued to have evolved in order to enhance survival and reproductive success. One example being that humans are argued to find beautiful and prefer landscapes which were good habitats in the ancestral environment. Another example is that body symmetry and proportion are important aspects of physical attractiveness which may be due to this indicating good health during body growth. Evolutionary explanations for aesthetical preferences are important parts of evolutionary musicology, Darwinian literary studies, and the study of the evolution of emotion.
Applied aesthetics.
As well as being applied to art, aesthetics can also be applied to cultural objects, such as crosses or tools. For example, aesthetic coupling between art-objects and medical topics was made by speakers working for the US Information Agency. Art slides were linked to slides of pharmacological data, which improved attention and retention by simultaneous activation of intuitive right brain with rational left. It can also be used in topics as diverse as cartography, mathematics, gastronomy, fashion and website design.
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Other approaches.
Guy Sircello has pioneered efforts in analytic philosophy to develop a rigorous theory of aesthetics, focusing on the concepts of beauty, love and sublimity. In contrast to romantic theorists, Sircello argued for the objectivity of beauty and formulated a theory of love on that basis.
British philosopher and theorist of conceptual art aesthetics, Peter Osborne, makes the point that "'post-conceptual art' aesthetic does not concern a particular type of contemporary art so much as the historical-ontological condition for the production of contemporary art in general ...". Osborne noted that contemporary art is 'post-conceptual' in a public lecture delivered in 2010.
Gary Tedman has put forward a theory of a subjectless aesthetics derived from Karl Marx's concept of alienation, and Louis Althusser's antihumanism, using elements of Freud's group psychology, defining a concept of the 'aesthetic level of practice'.
Gregory Loewen has suggested that the subject is key in the interaction with the aesthetic object. The work of art serves as a vehicle for the projection of the individual's identity into the world of objects, as well as being the irruptive source of much of what is uncanny in modern life. As well, art is used to memorialize individuated biographies in a manner that allows persons to imagine that they are part of something greater than themselves.
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Criticism.
The philosophy of aesthetics as a practice has been criticized by some sociologists and writers of art and society. Raymond Williams, for example, argues that there is no unique and or individual aesthetic object which can be extrapolated from the art world, but rather that there is a continuum of cultural forms and experience of which ordinary speech and experiences may signal as art. By "art" we may frame several artistic "works" or "creations" as so though this reference remains within the institution or special event which creates it and this leaves some works or other possible "art" outside of the frame work, or other interpretations such as other phenomenon which may not be considered as "art".
Pierre Bourdieu disagrees with Kant's idea of the "aesthetic". He argues that Kant's "aesthetic" merely represents an experience that is the product of an elevated class habitus and scholarly leisure as opposed to other possible and equally valid "aesthetic" experiences which lay outside Kant's narrow definition.
Timothy Laurie argues that theories of musical aesthetics "framed entirely in terms of appreciation, contemplation or reflection risk idealizing an implausibly unmotivated listener defined solely through musical objects, rather than seeing them as a person for whom complex intentions and motivations produce variable attractions to cultural objects and practices".
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Ark of the Covenant
The Ark of the Covenant, also known as the Ark of the Testimony or the Ark of God, is a purported religious storage chest and relic held to be the most sacred object by the Israelites.
Religious tradition describes it as a wooden storage chest decorated in solid gold accompanied by an ornamental lid known as the Seat of Mercy. According to the Book of Exodus and First Book of Kings in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, the Ark contained the Tablets of the Law, by which God delivered the Ten Commandments to Moses at Mount Sinai. According to the Book of Exodus, the Book of Numbers, and the Epistle to the Hebrews in the New Testament, it also contained Aaron's rod and a pot of manna.
The biblical account relates that approximately one year after the Israelites' exodus from Egypt, the Ark was created according to the pattern that God gave to Moses when the Israelites were encamped at the foot of Mount Sinai. Thereafter, the gold-plated acacia chest's staves were lifted and carried by the Levites approximately 2,000 cubits () in advance of the people while they marched. God spoke with Moses "from between the two cherubim" on the Ark's cover.
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There are ongoing academic discussions among biblical scholars and archeologists regarding the history of the Ark's movements around the Ancient Near East as well as the history and dating of the Ark narratives in the Hebrew Bible. There is additional scholarly debate over possible historical influences that led to the creation of the Ark, including Bedouin or Egyptian influences.
Biblical account.
Construction and description.
According to the Book of Exodus, God instructed Moses to build the Ark during his 40-day stay upon Mount Sinai. He was shown the pattern for the tabernacle and furnishings of the Ark, and told that it would be made of shittim wood (also known as acacia wood) to house the Tablets of Stone. Moses instructed Bezalel and Oholiab to construct the Ark.
The Book of Exodus gives detailed instructions on how the Ark is to be constructed. It is to be cubits in length, cubits breadth, and cubits height (approximately ) of acacia wood. Then it is to be gilded entirely with gold, and a crown or molding of gold is to be put around it. Four rings of gold are to be attached to its four corners, two on each side—and through these rings staves of shittim wood overlaid with gold for carrying the Ark are to be inserted; and these are not to be removed.
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Mobile vanguard.
The biblical account continues that, after its creation by Moses, the Ark was carried by the Israelites during their 40 years of wandering in the desert. Whenever the Israelites camped, the Ark was placed in the tent of meeting, inside the Tabernacle.
When the Israelites, led by Joshua toward the Promised Land, arrived at the banks of the River Jordan, the Ark was carried in the lead, preceding the people, and was the signal for their advance. During the crossing, the river grew dry as soon as the feet of the priests carrying the Ark touched its waters, and remained so until the priests—with the Ark—left the river after the people had passed over. As memorials, twelve stones were taken from the Jordan at the place where the priests had stood.
During the Battle of Jericho, the Ark was carried around the city once a day for six days, preceded by the armed men and seven priests sounding seven trumpets of rams' horns. On the seventh day, the seven priests sounding the seven trumpets of rams' horns before the Ark compassed the city seven times, and, with a great shout, Jericho's wall fell down flat and the people took the city.
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After the defeat at Ai, Joshua lamented before the Ark. When Joshua read the Law to the people between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, they stood on each side of the Ark. The Ark was then kept at Shiloh after the Israelites finished their conquest of Canaan. We next hear of the Ark in Bethel, where it was being cared for by the priest Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron. According to this verse, it was consulted by the people of Israel when they were planning to attack the Benjaminites at the Battle of Gibeah. Later the Ark was kept at Shiloh again, where it was cared for by Hophni and Phinehas, two sons of Eli.
Capture by the Philistines.
According to the biblical narrative, a few years later the elders of Israel decided to take the Ark onto the battlefield to assist them against the Philistines, having recently been defeated at the battle of Eben-Ezer. They were again heavily defeated, with the loss of 30,000 men. The Ark was captured by the Philistines, and Hophni and Phinehas were killed. The news of its capture was at once taken to Shiloh by a messenger "with his clothes rent, and with earth upon his head". The old priest, Eli, fell dead when he heard it, and his daughter-in-law, bearing a son at the time the news of the Ark's capture was received, named him Ichabod—explained as "The glory has departed Israel" in reference to the loss of the Ark. Ichabod's mother died at his birth.
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The Philistines took the Ark to several places in their country, and at each place misfortune befell them. At Ashdod it was placed in the temple of Dagon. The next morning Dagon was found prostrate, bowed down, before it; and on being restored to his place, he was on the following morning again found prostrate and broken. The people of Ashdod were smitten with tumors; a plague of rodents was sent over the land. This may have been the bubonic plague. The affliction of tumours was also visited upon the people of Gath and of Ekron, whither the Ark was successively removed.
Return of the Ark to the Israelites.
After the Ark had been among them for seven months, the Philistines, on the advice of their diviners, returned it to the Israelites, accompanying its return with an offering consisting of golden images of the tumors and mice wherewith they had been afflicted. The Ark was set up in the field of Joshua of Beit Shemesh, and the people of Beit Shemesh offered sacrifices and burnt offerings according to the first five verses of 1 Samuel 6. Verse 9, 1 Samuel 6 states that out of curiosity, the people of Beit Shemesh gazed at the Ark, and as a punishment, God struck down seventy of them (fifty thousand and seventy in some translations). The men of Beit Shemesh sent to Qiryath Ye'arim to have the Ark removed in verse 21, and it was taken to the house of Abinadab, whose son Eleazar was sanctified to keep it. Qiryath Ye'arim remained the abode of the Ark for twenty years, according to 1 Samuel 7.
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Under Saul, the Ark was with the army before he first met the Philistines, but the king was too impatient to consult it before engaging in battle. In 1 Chronicles 13:3, it is stated that the people were not accustomed to consulting the Ark in the days of Saul.
During the reign of King David.
In the biblical narrative, at the beginning of his reign over the United Monarchy, King David removed the Ark from Kirjath-jearim amid great rejoicing. On the way to Zion, Uzzah, one of the drivers of the cart that carried the Ark, put out his hand to steady the Ark, and was struck dead by God for touching it. The place was subsequently named "Perez-Uzzah", literally , as a result. David, in fear, carried the Ark aside into the house of Obed-edom the Gittite, instead of carrying it on to Zion, and it stayed there for three months.
On hearing that God had blessed Obed-edom because of the presence of the Ark in his house, David had the Ark brought to Zion by the Levites, while he himself, "girded with a linen ephod[...] danced before the Lord with all his might" and in the sight of all the public gathered in Jerusalem, a performance which caused him to be scornfully rebuked by his first wife, Saul's daughter Michal. In Zion, David put the Ark in the tent he had prepared for it, offered sacrifices, distributed food, and blessed the people and his own household. David used the tent as a personal place of prayer.
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The Levites were appointed to minister before the Ark. David's plan of building a temple for the Ark was stopped on the advice of the prophet Nathan. The Ark was with the army during the siege of Rabbah; and when David fled from Jerusalem at the time of Absalom's conspiracy, the Ark was carried along with him until he ordered Zadok the priest to return it to Jerusalem.
The Temple of King Solomon.
According to the Biblical narrative, when Abiathar was dismissed from the priesthood by King Solomon for having taken part in Adonijah's conspiracy against David, his life was spared because he had formerly borne the Ark. Solomon worshipped before the Ark after his dream in which God promised him wisdom.
During the construction of Solomon's Temple, a special inner room, named ('Holy of Holies'), was prepared to receive and house the Ark; and when the Temple was dedicated, the Ark—containing the original tablets of the Ten Commandments—was placed therein. When the priests emerged from the holy place after placing the Ark there, the Temple was filled with a cloud, "for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord".
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When Solomon married Pharaoh's daughter, he caused her to dwell in a house outside Zion, as Zion was consecrated because it contained the Ark. King Josiah also had the Ark returned to the Temple, from which it appears to have been removed by one of his predecessors (cf. 2 Chronicles 33–34 and 2 Kings 21–23).
During the reign of King Hezekiah.
Prior to king Josiah who is the last biblical figure mentioned as having seen the Ark, king Hezekiah had seen the Ark. Hezekiah is also known for protecting Jerusalem against the Assyrian Empire by improving the city walls and diverting the waters of the Gihon Spring through a tunnel known today as Hezekiah's Tunnel, which channeled the water inside the city walls to the Pool of Siloam.
In a noncanonical text known as the Treatise of the Vessels, Hezekiah is identified as one of the kings who had the Ark and the other treasures of Solomon's Temple hidden during a time of crisis. This text lists the following hiding places, which it says were recorded on a bronze tablet: (1) a spring named Kohel or Kahal with pure water in a valley with a stopped-up gate; (2) a spring named Kotel (or "wall" in Hebrew); (3) a spring named Zedekiah; (4) an unidentified cistern; (5) Mount Carmel; and (6) locations in Babylon.
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To many scholars, Hezekiah is also credited as having written all or some of the Book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes in the Christian tradition), in particular the famously enigmatic epilogue. Notably, the epilogue appears to refer to the Ark story with references to almond blossoms (i.e., Aaron's rod), locusts, silver, and gold. The epilogue then cryptically refers to a pitcher broken at a fountain and a wheel broken at a cistern.
Although scholars disagree on whether the Pool of Siloam's pure spring waters were used by pilgrims for ritual purification, many scholars agree that a stepped pilgrimage road between the pool and the Temple had been built in the first century CE. This roadway has been partially excavated, but the west side of the Pool of Siloam remains unexcavated.
The invasion of the Kingdom of Babylon.
In 587 BC, when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, an ancient Greek version of the biblical third Book of Ezra, 1 Esdras, suggests that Babylonians took away the vessels of the ark of God, but does not mention taking away the Ark:
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In Rabbinic literature, the final disposition of the Ark is disputed. Some rabbis hold that it must have been carried off to Babylon, while others hold that it must have been hidden lest it be carried off into Babylon and never brought back. A late 2nd-century rabbinic work known as the states the opinions of these rabbis that Josiah, the king of Judah, stored away the Ark, along with the jar of manna, and a jar containing the holy anointing oil, the rod of Aaron which budded and a chest given to Israel by the Philistines.
Service of the Kohathites.
The Kohathites were one of the Levite houses from the Book of Numbers. Theirs was the responsibility to care for "the most holy things" in the tabernacle. When the camp, then wandering the Wilderness, set out the Kohathites would enter the tabernacle with Aaron and cover the ark with the screening curtain and "then they shall put on it a covering of fine leather, and spread over that a cloth all of blue, and shall put its poles in place." The ark was one of the items of the tent of meeting that the Kohathites were responsible for carrying.
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Jewish tradition on location today.
The Talmud in Yoma suggests that the Ark was removed from the Temple towards the end of the era of the First Temple and the Second Temple never housed it. According to one view, it was taken to Babylon when Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem in 587 BCE, exiling King Jeconiah along with the upper classes.
Another perspective proposes that Josiah, king of Judah, hid the Ark in anticipation of the Temple's destruction. Where it was hidden remains uncertain. One account in the Talmud mentions a priest's suspicion of a tampered stone in a chamber designated for wood storage, hinting at the Ark's concealment.
Alternatively, it's suggested that the Ark remained underground in the Holy of Holies. Some of the Chazal, including the Radak and Maimonides, propose that Solomon designed tunnels beneath the Temple to safeguard the Ark that Josiah later used. Attempts to excavate this area have yielded little due to political sensitivities.
An opinion found in the II Maccabees 2:4-10, asserts that Jeremiah hid the Ark and other sacred items in a cave on Mount Nebo (now in Jordan), anticipating the Neo-Babylonian invasion.
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Archaeology and historical context.
Archaeological evidence shows strong cultic activity at Kiriath-Jearim in the 8th and 7th centuries BC, well after the ark was supposedly removed from there to Jerusalem. In particular, archaeologists found a large elevated podium, associated with the Northern Kingdom and not the Southern Kingdom, which may have been a shrine. Thomas Römer suggests that this may indicate that the ark was not moved to Jerusalem until much later, possibly during the reign of King Josiah (reigned ). He notes that this might explain why the ark featured prominently in the history before Solomon, but not after. Additionally, 2 Chronicles 35:3 indicates that it was moved during King Josiah's reign. However, Yigal Levin argues that there is no evidence that Kiriath-Jearim was a cultic center in the monarchical era or that it ever housed any "temple of the Ark".
K. L. Sparks believes the story of the Ark was written independently around the 8th century BC in a text referred to as the "Ark Narrative" and then incorporated into the main biblical narrative just before the Babylonian exile.
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Römer also suggests that the ark may have carried sacred stones "of the kind found in the chests of pre-Islamic Bedouins" and speculates that these may have been either a statue of Yahweh or a pair of statues depicting both Yahweh and his companion goddess Asherah. In contrast, Scott Noegel has argued that the parallels between the ark and these practices remain "unconvincing" in part because the Bedouin objects lack the ark's distinctive structure, function, and mode of transportation. Unlike the ark, the Bedouin chests "contained no box, no lid, and no poles," they did not serve as the throne or footstool of a god, they were not overlaid with gold, did not have "kerubim" figures upon them, there were no restrictions on who could touch them, and they were transported on horses or camels.
Noegel suggests that the ancient Egyptian Solar barque is a more plausible model for the Israelite ark, since Egyptian barques had all the features just mentioned. He adds that the Egyptians also were known to place written covenants beneath the feet of statues, proving a further parallel to the placement of the covenantal tablets inside the ark.
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Levin holds that some biblical texts suggest that the Ark of the Covenant was only one among many other different arks at regional shrines prior to the centralization of worship in Jerusalem, although Raanan Eichler disagrees. While Clifford Mark McCormick has questioned whether the Ark ever existed, other scholars such as Eichler, David A. Falk, Roger D. Isaacs, and Adam R. Hemmings have defended its historicity and antiquity based on linguistic evidence and significant parallels with similar artifacts from New Kingdom Egypt.
References in Abrahamic religions.
Tanakh.
The Ark is first mentioned in the Book of Exodus and then numerous times in Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, I Samuel, II Samuel, I Kings, I Chronicles, II Chronicles, Psalms, and Jeremiah.
In the Book of Jeremiah, it is referenced by Jeremiah, who, speaking in the days of Josiah, prophesied a future time, possibly the end of days, when the Ark will no longer be talked about or be made use of again:
Rashi comments on this verse that "The entire people will be so imbued with the spirit of sanctity that God's Presence will rest upon them collectively, as if the congregation itself was the Ark of the Covenant."
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Second Book of Maccabees.
According to Second Maccabees, at the beginning of chapter 2:
The "mountain from the top of which Moses saw God's promised land" would be Mount Nebo, located in what is now Jordan.
Samaritan tradition.
Samaritan tradition claims that the Ark of the Covenant had been kept at a sanctuary on Mt. Gerizim.
New Testament.
The physical ark of the Old Testament.
In the New Testament, the Ark is mentioned in the Letter to the Hebrews and the Revelation to St. John. Hebrews 9:4 states that the Ark contained "the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the tablets of the covenant." says the prophet saw God's temple in heaven opened, "and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple."
The Blessed Virgin Mary as the “New Ark”.
In the Gospel of Luke, the author's accounts of the Annunciation and Visitation are constructed using eight points of literary parallelism to compare Mary to the Ark.
The contents of the ark were seen by Church Fathers including Thomas Aquinas as symbolic of the attributes of Jesus Christ: the manna as the Holy Eucharist; Aaron's rod as Jesus' eternal priestly authority; and the tablets of the Law, as the Lawgiver himself. Thomas Aquinas compared the two types of materials of the ark to the two natures of Christ in the hypostatic union (Jesus having human and divine natures). "The Ark, wherein were the Law and the manna, signified Christ, who is 'the living bread that came down from Heaven' and 'the fulfillment of the Law'. Moreover, the wood overlaid with gold signifies that Christ was true man and true God."
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Catholic scholars connect the pregnant, birthing Woman of the Apocalypse from , with the Blessed Virgin Mary, whom they identify as the "Ark of the New Covenant." Carrying the saviour of mankind within her, she herself became the Holy of Holies. This is the interpretation given in the third century by Gregory Thaumaturgus, and in the fourth century by Saint Ambrose, Saint Ephraem of Syria and Saint Augustine. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that Mary is a metaphorical version of the ark: "Mary, in whom the Lord himself has just made his dwelling, is the daughter of Zion in person, the ark of the covenant, the place where the glory of the Lord dwells. She is 'the dwelling of God[...] with men."
Saint Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria, is credited with writing about the connections between the Ark and the Virgin Mary: "O noble Virgin, truly you are greater than any other greatness. For who is your equal in greatness, O dwelling place of God the Word? To whom among all creatures shall I compare you, O Virgin? You are greater than them all O (Ark of the) Covenant, clothed with purity instead of gold! You are the Ark in which is found the golden vessel containing the true manna, that is, the flesh in which Divinity resides" ("Homily of the Papyrus of Turin").
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The Ark in Pauline Writings.
Psalm 68 has the ark ascending Mount Zion as a triumph of Yahweh. Paul applies that Psalm to Jesus triumphant ascension. Many theologians take Paul’s citation of Psalm 68:8 in Ephesians 4:1-13 as a plain claim of the ark ascending Mount Zion representing Jesus’s ascension.
Charles Spurgeon, in his sermon Our Lord’s Triumphant Ascension, saw Paul understanding David’s psalm—with its imagery of the ark—as ultimately referring to Jesus. “When he says regarding David moving the ark up Mt Zion to Jerusalem that we are no loss for the spiritual interpretation when with song and dance David brought the ark form the home of Obed Edom to Jerusalem. “When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive and gave gifts to men”
W S Plummer in the Geneva Commentary on Psalms and Watne Grudem in his book Systematic Theology, an introduction to Biblical Doctrine align with this view as well.
There has been significant academic interest and numerous doctoral dissertations focused on the interpretive and theological implications of this use of Psalm 68:8 in Ephesians 4:1-13.
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Quran.
The Ark is referred to in the Quran (Surah Al-Baqara: 248):
The Ark in other faiths.
According to Uri Rubin, the Ark of the Covenant has a religious basis in Islam (and the Baháʼí Faith), which gives it special significance.
Claims of current status.
According to the Book of Maccabees.
The Book of 2 Maccabees 2:4–10, written around 100 B.C. claims that the prophet Jeremiah, following “being warned by God" before the Babylonian invasion, took the Ark, the Tabernacle, and the Altar of Incense, and buried them in a cave, informing those of his followers who wished to find the place that it should remain unknown "until the time that God should gather His people again together, and receive them unto mercy."
Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church claims to possess the Ark of the Covenant in Axum. The Ark is kept under guard in a treasury near the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion. Replicas of the tablets within the Ark, or "tabots", are kept in every Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Each tabot is kept in its own holy of holies, each with its own dedication to a particular saint; the most popular of these include Saint Mary, Saint George and Saint Michael.
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The "Kebra Nagast" is often said to have been composed to legitimise the Solomonic dynasty, which ruled the Ethiopian Empire following its establishment in 1270, but this is not the case. It was originally composed in some other language (Coptic or Greek), then translated into Arabic, and translated into Geʽez in 1321. It narrates how the Ark of the Covenant was brought to Ethiopia by Menelik I with divine assistance, while a forgery was left in the Temple in Jerusalem. Although the "Kebra Nagast" is the best-known account of this belief, the belief predates the document. Abu al-Makarim, writing in the last quarter of the twelfth century, makes one early reference to this belief that they possessed the Ark. "The Abyssinians possess also the Ark of the Covenant", he wrote, and, after a description of the object, describes how the liturgy is celebrated upon the Ark four times a year, "on the feast of the great nativity, on the feast of the glorious Baptism, on the feast of the holy Resurrection, and on the feast of the illuminating Cross."
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In his controversial 1992 book "The Sign and the Seal", British writer Graham Hancock reports on the Ethiopian belief that the ark spent several years in Egypt before it came to Ethiopia via the Nile River, where it was kept on the islands of Lake Tana for about four hundred years and finally taken to Axum. Archaeologist John Holladay of the University of Toronto called Hancock's theory "garbage and hogwash"; Edward Ullendorff, a former professor of Ethiopian Studies at the University of London, said he "wasted a lot of time reading it." In a 1992 interview, Ullendorff says that he examined the ark held in the church in Axum in 1941. Describing the ark there, he says, "They have a wooden box, but it's empty. Middle- to late-medieval construction, when these were fabricated ad hoc."
On 25 June 2009, the patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia, Abune Paulos, said he would announce to the world the next day the unveiling of the Ark of the Covenant, which he said had been kept safe and secure in a church in Axum. The following day, he announced that he would not unveil the Ark after all, but that instead he could attest to its current status.
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Southern Africa.
The Lemba people of South Africa and Zimbabwe have claimed that their ancestors carried the Ark south, calling it the "ngoma lungundu" "voice of God", eventually hiding it in a deep cave in the Dumghe mountains, their spiritual home.
On 14 April 2008, in a UK Channel 4 documentary, Tudor Parfitt, taking a literalist approach to the Biblical story, described his research into this claim. He says that the object described by the Lemba has attributes similar to the Ark. It was of similar size, was carried on poles by priests, was not allowed to touch the ground, was revered as a voice of their God, and was used as a weapon of great power, sweeping enemies aside.
In his book "The Lost Ark of the Covenant" (2008), Parfitt also suggests that the Ark was taken to Arabia following the events depicted in the Second Book of Maccabees, and cites Arabic sources which maintain it was brought in distant times to Yemen. Genetic Y-DNA analyses in the 2000s have established a partially Middle-Eastern origin for a portion of the male Lemba population but no specific Jewish connection. Lemba tradition maintains that the Ark spent some time in a place called Sena, which might be Sena, Yemen. Later, it was taken across the sea to East Africa and may have been taken inland at the time of Great Zimbabwe. According to their oral traditions, it self-destructed sometime after the Lemba's arrival with the Ark. Using a core from the original, the Lemba priests constructed a new one. This replica was discovered in a cave by a Swedish-German missionary named Harald Philip Hans von Sicard in the 1940s and eventually found its way to the Museum of Human Science in Harare.
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Europe.
Rome.
The 2nd century Rabbi Eliezer ben José claimed that he saw somewhere in Rome the mercy-seat lid of the ark. According to his account, a bloodstain was present and was told that it was a stain from the blood which the Jewish high priest sprinkled thereon on the Day of Atonement."
Accordingly, another tale claims that the Ark was kept within the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, surviving the pillages of Rome by King of the Visigoths Alaric I and King of the Vandals Gaiseric but was eventually lost when the basilica burned in the fifth century.
Ireland.
Between 1899 and 1902, the British-Israel Association of London carried out limited excavations of the Hill of Tara in Ireland looking for the Ark of the Covenant. The Irish nationalists including Maud Gonne and the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (RSAI) campaigned successfully to have them stopped before they destroyed the hill. A non-invasive survey by archaeologist Conor Newman carried out from 1992 until 1995 found no evidence of the Ark.
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The British Israelites believed that the Ark was located at the grave of the Egyptian princess Tea Tephi, who according to Irish legend came to Ireland in the 6th century BC and married Irish King Érimón. Because of the historical importance of Tara, Irish nationalists like Douglas Hyde and W. B. Yeats voiced their protests in newspapers and in 1902 Maud Gonne led a protest against the excavations at the site.
In literature and the arts.
Philip Kaufman conceived of the Ark of the Covenant as the main plot device of Steven Spielberg's 1981 adventure film "Raiders of the Lost Ark", where it is found by Indiana Jones in the Egyptian city of Tanis in 1936. In early 2020, a prop version made for the film (which does not actually appear onscreen) was featured on television series "Antiques Roadshow".
In the Danish family film "The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar" from 2006, the main part of the treasure found in the end is the Ark of the Covenant. The power of the Ark comes from static electricity stored in separated metal plates like a giant Leyden jar.
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In Harry Turtledove's novel "Alpha and Omega" (2019) the ark is found by archeologists, and the characters have to deal with the proven existence of God.
In Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones tells his companion, Marion Ravenwood, to shut their eyes as the Nazis open the Ark—a nod to biblical warnings against looking at or touching it.
The Ark has been depicted many times in art for two thousand years, some examples are in the article above, a few more are here.
Yom HaAliyah.
Yom HaAliyah (Aliyah Day) () is an Israeli national holiday celebrated annually on the tenth of the Hebrew month of Nisan to commemorate the Israelites crossing the Jordan River into the Land of Israel while carrying the Ark of the Covenant.
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Angles (tribe)
The Angles were one of the main Germanic peoples who settled in Great Britain in the post-Roman period. They founded several kingdoms of the Heptarchy in Anglo-Saxon England. Their name, which probably derives from the Angeln peninsula, is the root of the name "England" ("Engla land"), as well as ultimately the word "English" for its people and language. According to Tacitus, writing around 100 AD, a people known as Angles (Anglii) lived beyond (apparently northeast of) the Lombards and Semnones, who lived near the River Elbe.
Etymology.
The name of the Angles may have been first recorded in Latinised form, as "Anglii", in the "Germania" of Tacitus. It is thought to derive from the name of the area they originally inhabited, the Angeln peninsula, which is on the Baltic Sea coast of Schleswig-Holstein.
Two related theories have been advanced, which attempt to give the name a Germanic etymology:
According to , Dan and Angul were made rulers by the consent of their people because of their bravery. The Danes and Angles are respectively named from them.
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Greco-Roman historiography.
Tacitus.
The earliest surviving mention of the Angles is in chapter 40 of Tacitus's "Germania" written around AD 98. Tacitus describes the "Anglii" as one of the more remote Suebic tribes living beyond the Semnones and Langobardi, who lived near the lower Elbe, and were better known to the Romans. He grouped the Angles with several other tribes in that region, the Reudigni, Aviones, Varini, Eudoses, Suarines, and Nuithones. According to Tacitus, they were all living behind ramparts of rivers and woods, and therefore inaccessible to attack.
He gives no precise indication of their geographical situation but states that, together with the six other tribes, they worshipped Nerthus, or Mother Earth, whose sanctuary was located on "an island in the Ocean". The Eudoses are generally considered to be the Jutes and these names have been associated with localities in Jutland or on the Baltic coast. The coast contains sufficient estuaries, inlets, rivers, islands, swamps, and marshes to have been inaccessible to those not familiar with the terrain, such as the Romans, who considered it unknown and inaccessible.
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The majority of scholars believe that the Anglii lived on the coasts of the Baltic Sea, probably in the southern part of the Jutland peninsula. This view is based partly on Old English and Danish traditions regarding persons and events of the fourth century, and partly because striking affinities to the cult of Nerthus as described by Tacitus are to be found in pre-Christian Scandinavian religion.
Ptolemy.
Surviving versions of the work of Ptolemy, who wrote around AD 150, in his "Geography" (2.10), describe the Angles in a confusing manner. In one passage, the "Sueboi Angeilloi" (or "Suevi Angili"), are described as living inland between the northern Rhine and central Elbe, but apparently not touching either river, with the Suebic Langobardi on the Rhine to their west, and the Suebic Semnones on the Elbe stretching to their east, forming a band of Suebic peoples. This positioning of the Langobardi and Angli is unexpected, as are the positions of many of the peoples in this passage. The text is believed to result from the combining of different types of older texts. As pointed out by Gudmund Schütte, the neighbouring Langobards appear in two places, and the ones near the Rhine appears to be there by mistake. Schütte, in his analysis, believes that the Angles are placed correctly relative to the Langobardi to their west, but that these have been positioned in the wrong place. The Langobardi also appear in the expected position on the lower Elbe, and the Angles would be expected to their northeast, based upon Tacitus.
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Another theory is that all or part of the Angles dwelt or moved among other coastal people, perhaps confederated up to the basin of the Saale (in the neighbourhood of the ancient canton of Engilin) on the Unstrut valleys below the Kyffhäuserkreis, from which region the "Lex Anglorum et Werinorum hoc est Thuringorum" is believed by many to have come. The ethnic names of Frisians and Warines are also attested in these Saxon districts.
Procopius.
An especially early reference to the Angli in Britain is by the 6th-century Byzantine historian Procopius (who however expressed doubts about the stories he had heard—apparently from Frankish diplomats—about events in the west). He does not mention the Saxons, but he states that an island called "Brittia" (which he says is separate and distinct from Britain itself) was settled by three nations, each ruled by its own king: the Angili, Frissones, and Brittones. Each nation was so prolific that it sent large numbers of individuals every year to the Franks, who allow them to settle in the part of their land which appears to be more deserted, and by this means they say [the Franks] are winning over the island. Thus it actually happened that not long ago the king of the Franks, in sending some of his intimates on an embassy to the Emperor Justinian in Byzantium, sent with them some of the Angili, thus seeking to establish his claim that this island was ruled by him. Procopius says that the Angles had recently sailed a large army of 400 ships from Brittia to Europe, to the Rhine, to enforce a marriage agreement with the Warini who he said were living north of the Franks at that time.
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Medieval historiography.
Bede (died 735) stated that the Anglii, before coming to Great Britain, dwelt in a land called Angulus, "which lies between the province of the Jutes and the Saxons, and remains unpopulated to this day." Similar evidence is given by the 9th-century "Historia Brittonum". King Alfred the Great and the chronicler Æthelweard identified this place with Angeln, in the province of Schleswig (though it may then have been of greater extent), and this identification agrees with the indications given by Bede.
In the Norwegian seafarer Ohthere of Hålogaland's account of a two-day voyage from the Oslo fjord to Schleswig, he reported the lands on his starboard bow, and Alfred appended the note "on these islands dwelt the "Engle" before they came hither". Confirmation is afforded by English and Danish traditions relating to two kings named Wermund and Offa of Angel, from whom the Mercian royal family claimed descent and whose exploits are connected with Angeln, Schleswig, and Rendsburg.
Danish tradition has preserved record of two governors of Schleswig, father and son, in their service, Frowinus (Freawine) and Wigo (Wig), from whom the royal family of Wessex claimed descent. During the fifth century, the Anglii invaded Great Britain, after which time their name does not recur on the continent except in the title of the legal code issued to the Thuringians: "Lex Angliorum et Werinorum hoc est Thuringorum".
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The Angles are the subject of a legend about Pope Gregory I, who happened to see a group of Angle children from Deira for sale as slaves in the Roman market. As the story was told by Bede, Gregory was struck by the unusual appearance of the slaves and asked about their background. When told they were called "Anglii" (Angles), he replied with a Latin pun that translates well into English: "Bene, nam et angelicam habent faciem, et tales angelorum in caelis decet esse coheredes" (It is well, for they have an angelic face, and such people ought to be co-heirs of the angels in heaven). Supposedly, this encounter inspired the pope to launch a mission to bring Christianity to their countrymen.
Archaeology.
The province of Schleswig has proved rich in prehistoric antiquities that date apparently from the fourth and fifth centuries. A large cremation cemetery has been found at Borgstedt, between Rendsburg and Eckernförde, and it has yielded many urns and brooches closely resembling those found in pagan graves in England. Of still greater importance are the great deposits at Thorsberg moor (in Angeln) and Nydam, which contained large quantities of arms, ornaments, articles of clothing, agricultural implements, etc., and in Nydam, even ships. By the help of these discoveries, Angle culture in the age preceding the invasion of Britannia can be pieced together.
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Anglian kingdoms in England.
According to sources such as the "History" of Bede, after the invasion of Britannia, the Angles split up and founded the kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia. H. R. Loyn has observed in this context that "a sea voyage is perilous to tribal institutions", and the apparently tribe-based kingdoms were formed in England. Early times had two northern kingdoms (Bernicia and Deira) and two midland ones (Middle Anglia and Mercia), which had by the seventh century resolved themselves into two Angle kingdoms, viz., Northumbria and Mercia.
Northumbria held suzerainty amidst the Germanic presence in the British Isles in the 7th century, but was eclipsed by the rise of Mercia in the 8th century. Both kingdoms fell in the great assaults of the Danish Viking armies in the 9th century. Their royal houses were effectively destroyed in the fighting, and their Angle populations came under the Danelaw. Further south, the Saxon kings of Wessex withstood the Danish assaults. Then in the late 9th and early 10th centuries, the kings of Wessex defeated the Danes and liberated the Angles from the Danelaw.
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They united their house in marriage with the surviving Angle royalty and were accepted by the Angles as their kings. This marked the passing of the old Anglo-Saxon world and the dawn of the "English" as a new people. The regions of East Anglia and Northumbria are still known by their original titles. Northumbria once stretched as far north as what is now southeast Scotland, including Edinburgh, and as far south as the Humber estuary and even the river Witham.
The rest of that people stayed at the centre of the Angle homeland in the northeastern portion of the modern German "Bundesland" of Schleswig-Holstein, on the Jutland Peninsula. There, a small peninsular area is still called Angeln today and is formed as a triangle drawn roughly from modern Flensburg on the Flensburger Fjord to the City of Schleswig and then to Maasholm, on the Schlei inlet.
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Aster CT-80
The Aster CT-80 is a 1982 personal computer developed by the small Dutch company MCP (later renamed to Aster Computers), was sold in its first incarnation as a kit for hobbyists. Later it was sold ready to use. It consisted of several Eurocard PCB's with DIN 41612 connectors, and a backplane all based on a 19-inch rack configuration. It was the first commercially available Dutch personal/home computer. The Aster computer could use the software written for the popular Tandy TRS-80 computer while fixing many of the problems of that computer, but it could also run CP/M software, with a large amount of free memory Transient Program Area, (TPA) and a full 80×25 display, and it could be used as a Videotext terminal. Although the Aster was a clone of the TRS-80 Model I it was in fact more compatible with the TRS-80 Model III and ran all the software of these systems including games. It also had a built-in speaker which was compatible with such games software.
Models.
Three models were sold. The first model (launched June 1982) looked like the IBM PC, a rectangular base unit with two floppy drives on the front, and a monitor on top with a separate detachable keyboard. The second incarnation was a much smaller unit the width of two 5" floppy drives stacked on top of each other, and the third incarnation looked like a flattened Apple with a built-in keyboard.
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All units ran much faster than the original TRS-80, at 4 MHz, (with a software selectable throttle to the original speed for compatibility purposes) and the display supported upper and lower case, hardware snow suppression (video ram bus arbitration logic), and an improved character font set. The floppy disk interface supported dual density, and disk capacities up to 800 KB, more than four times the capacity of the original TRS-80. A special version of NewDos/80, (an improved TRS-DOS compatible Disk operating system) was used to support these disk capacities when using the TRS-80 compatibility mode.
For the educational market a version of the first model was produced with a new plastic enclosure (the First Asters had an all-metal enclosure) that also had an opening on the top in which a cassette recorder could be placed. This model was used in a cluster with one Aster (with disk drives) for the teacher, and eight disk less versions for the pupils. The pupils could download software from the teachers computer through a network based on a fast serial connection, as well as sending back their work to the teachers computer. There was also hardware in place through which the teacher could see the display of each pupils screen on his own monitor.
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Working modes.
The Aster used 64 KB of RAM and had the unique feature of supporting two fundamentally different internal architectures: when turned on without a boot floppy or with a TRS-DOS floppy, the Aster would be fully TRS-80 compatible, with 48 KB of RAM. When the boot loader detected a CP/M floppy, the Aster would reconfigure its internal memory architecture on the fly to optimally support CP/M with 60 KB free RAM for programs (TPA) and an 80 x 25 display. This dual-architecture capability only existed on one other TRS-80 clone, the LOBO Max-80.
With a special configuration tool, the CT-80 could reconfigure its floppy drivers to read and write the floppies of about 80 other CP/M systems.
A third mode was entered with a special boot floppy which turned the Aster into a Videotex terminal with a 40x25 display and a Videotex character set, The software used the built in RS-232 interface of the Aster to control a modem through which it could contact a Prestel service provider.
Sales.
Most Aster CT-80's (about 10 thousand of them) were sold to schools for computer education, in a project first known as the "honderd scholen project" (one hundred schools project), but which later involved many more than just one hundred schools. MCP received this order from the Dutch government because their computer met all the technical and other demands, including the demand that the computers should be of Dutch origin and should be built in the Netherlands. Another important demand was that the computers could be used in a network (Aster developed special software and hardware for that). Later however the Government turned around and gave 50% of the order to Philips and their P2000 homecomputer even though the P2000 did not meet all the technical demands, was made in Austria and did not have network hardware nor software.
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Company.
Aster computers was based in the small town of Arkel near the town of Gorinchem.
Initially Aster computer b.v. was called MCP (Music print Computer Product), because it was specialized in producing computer assisted printing of sheet music. The director of the company was interested in Microprocessor technology and noticed there was a market for selling kits to computer building amateurs, so they started selling electronic kits to hobbyists, and employed four persons at that time . They also assembled kits for people without soldering skills, especially the "junior Computer" from Elektor (a copy of the KIM-1), and the ZX80 from Sinclair. Among the kits sold there were also alternative floppy disk drives for TRS-80 computers. But these needed the infamous TRS-80 expansion interface, which was very expensive, and had a very unreliable floppy disk controller because it used the WD1771 floppy disk controller chip without an external "data separator". To fix this problem MCP developed a small plugin board which could be plugged into the socket for the WD1771, and which contained a data separator, and a socket for the WD1791 to support dual-density operation. Still, the expansion interface was expensive and due to its design it was also unreliable. So they decided to also develop their own alternative in the form of an improved floppy disk controller and printer interface that could be built right into a floppy disk enclosure. The lack of RAM expansion offered by this solution was solved by a service in which the 16 KB RAM chips inside the base unit would be replaced by 64 KB RAM chips.
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While this went on MCP renamed itself to "MCP CHIP" but ran into problems with the German computer magazine "CHIP", and had to return to its former name. At that time MCP did also sell imported home computers like the TRS-80, the Video Genie (another TRS-80 clone), the Luxor ABC 80 and the Apple II.
They also sold the exotic Olivetti M20, a very early 16-bit personal computer that was one of the very few systems to use a Z8000 CPU.
After designing their own fully functional replacement for the TRS-80 expansion interface (which was never commercialized) the company realized that they could do better than just re-designing the expansion interface. They observed that the TRS-80 was a great computer but it lacked in several areas. The display logic and resulting display 'snow' was irritating, as was the missing lower case support, the CPU speed could be improved, the quality and layout of the keyboard was bothersome, and the floppy disk capacity and reliability was low. Also the more interesting software offered for CP/M systems could not run well on a TRS-80. So they decided to design a TRS-80 and CP/M software-compatible computer system, which (following the lead of Apple Computer) they decided to name after a "typical Dutch flower". So they called it the Aster CT-80 (CP/M/Tandy-1980). Why they went with Aster, and not the more well known Tulip is unknown, perhaps they thought it would be to presumptuous, or perhaps the fact that "Aster" is also a Dutch girls' name has something to do with it. Remarkably "Aster" was also the name given to a Dutch Supercomputer much later, in 2002.
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The first version of the Aster consisted of four "Eurocards", one Z80 CPU card with 64 KB memory, one Motorola MC6845-based video card, one double density floppy disk controller card and one "keyboard/RS-232/cassette interface" card. Plus a "backplane card", (which connected all the other cards) and a keyboard. And was intended for hobbyists, to be sold as a kit consisting of the parts and the PCB's for the computer and attached keyboard. After selling a few kits, MCP became convinced there was a much bigger market for an improved model sold as a completed working system. However the original kit version lacked many features that prevented its use as a serious computer system. Because the original designer had left the company another employee completely redesigned most of the system, (adding a display snow remover circuit, true 80/64 column text mode support, (with different size letters for TRS-80 and CP/M mode, so that in TRS-80 mode the full screen was also used, not just a 64×16 portion of the 80×25 screen) with an improved font set (adding "gray scale" version of the TRS-80 mozaik graphics and many special PETSCII like characters),
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not just a 64×16 portion of the 80×25 screen) with an improved font set (adding "gray scale" version of the TRS-80 mozaik graphics and many special PETSCII like characters), and a more flexible and reliable floppy disk controller and keyboard interface plus many other small improvements), also an enclosure was developed for the main computer system, (in the form of a 19-inch rack for the Eurocards) and for two floppy disk drives and the power supply. A software engineer was hired to write the special "dual boot mode" BIOS and the special CP/M BIOS. The "dual boot mode" BIOS actually discovered whether a TRS-DOS, or Aster CP/M disk was placed in the drive, and would, depending on the type of disk, reorganise the internal memory architecture of the system, to either be 100% TRS-80 compatible or optimally support CP/M, with as much "workspace" as possible, and the 80×25 video mode. It also was responsible for switching to ROM BASIC when the system was turned on with the break key pressed, and later supported a primitive LAN system, using the RS-232 port with modified cabling. It also was responsible for switching to ROM BASIC when the system was turned on with the break key pressed, and later supported a primitive LAN system, using the RS-232 port with modified cabling. The very first of the ready made computers were sold with the "kit" versions of the euro cards, the version with redesigned cards came a month or so later.
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Soon the little shop became much too small and they moved to a much larger factory building nearby (formerly a window glass factory), and started mass-producing the Aster for a period of a few years, in which time its staff grew twentyfold.
After the Aster having been a few years on the Market Tandy released its own improved model, the TRS-80 Model III computer which solved many of the same problems that the Aster also had solved, but the model 3 still did not fully support CP/M as the Aster did. In the meantime IBM had released its original IBM PC, which incidentally looked remarkably like the Asters base with floppy drives + separate keyboard set-up.
The Aster was chosen for Dutch schools by the Dutch ministry of education, in a set-up with eight disk-less Asters, and one Aster with high-capacity floppy drives all connected by a LAN based on the Aster's high-speed serial port hardware, and special cables that permitted that any single computer on the LAN could broadcast to all other computers. The floppy based system was operated by the teacher who could send programs from his floppy disk, and data, to the student's disk-less systems thanks to the special BIOS in those systems. The students could send programs and data back to the teacher through the same LAN, or could save to a cassette recorder built into the disk-less units. Through a special "video-switch" the teacher was also able to see a copy of each student's display on his own screen. About a thousand of such systems were sold for many hundreds of Dutch schools.
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Because of cash flow problems (resulting from growing too fast, insufficient financial backing, technical problems, and a sudden problem with Z80 processor deliveries) the company suddenly folded even before it came to full fruition.
Perhaps the Aster computer inspired another Dutch computer firm to name their computer after another typical Dutch flower—the Tulip's Tulip System-1 which appeared about the same time Aster folded.
Most of the engineers who designed the hardware and software of the Aster went on to design hardware and software for the (then new) MSX system for a company called "Micro Technology b.v.".
Unreleased add ons.
To enhance and modernize the Aster CT-80 the company also designed three alternative video display adapters to supplement or replace the TRS-80 compatible video card, (due to the modular nature of the Aster it was simply a matter of changing the video card, and/or CPU card to upgrade the system):
A hard disk interface was also in the works, which would, add a SCSI interface, and the necessary software. A working prototype was developed that added a 40MB hard disk.
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On the software front, work was being done to implement the replacement for the aging "user interface" of CP/M, (the Command Console Processor CCP) with the more modern ZCPR.
Finally a replacement for the aging Z80 processor was being developed in the form of an Intel 8086 board, and additional 512K 16 bit memory boards. Such replacements of CPU and memory system components were possible because the Aster CT-80 was designed to use a backplane that was designed to support both 8 and 16 bit processors, and used a modular Eurocard based design with slots to spare for expansion. In theory the system could support the Z80 and the 8086 simultaneously. Plans were formulated to support CP/M-86 and even MS-DOS.
None of these extensions to the system became available because the company folded before any of them could be released.
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Arthur Wellesley
Arthur Wellesley may refer to:
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Lists of animated television series
These are lists of animated television series. Animated television series are television programs produced by means of animation. Animated series produced for theaters are not included in this lists; for those, see List of animated short film series. These lists include compilation series of theatrical shorts such as "The Bugs Bunny Show" since they often feature some new wrap-around animation.
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Atlanta Braves
The Atlanta Braves are an American professional baseball team based in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The Braves compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) East Division. The club was founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1871 as the Boston Red Stockings. The Braves are one of two remaining National League charter franchises that debuted in 1876 and are the oldest continuously operating professional sports franchise in North America. The franchise was known by various names until it adopted the Boston Braves name in 1912.
After 81 seasons and one World Series title in Boston, the club moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1953. With a roster of star players such as Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews, and Warren Spahn, the Milwaukee Braves won the World Series in 1957. Despite the team's success, fan attendance declined. The club's owners moved the team to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1966.
The Braves did not find much success in Atlanta until 1991. From 1991 to 2005, the Braves were one of the most successful teams in baseball, winning an unprecedented 14 consecutive division titles, making an MLB record eight consecutive National League Championship Series appearances, and producing one of the greatest pitching rotations in the history of baseball including Hall of Famers Greg Maddux, John Smoltz, and Tom Glavine.
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The club has won an MLB record 23 divisional titles, 18 National League pennants, and four World Series championships. The Braves are the only Major League Baseball franchise to have won the World Series in three different home cities. At the end of the 2024 season, the Braves' overall win–loss record is (). Since moving to Atlanta in 1966, the Braves have an overall win–loss record of () through the end of 2024.
History.
Boston (1871–1952).
1871–1913.
The Cincinnati Red Stockings, formed in 1869, were the first openly all-professional baseball team but disbanded after the 1870 season. Manager Harry Wright and players moved to Boston, forming the "Boston Red Stockings", a charter team in the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP). Led by the Wright brothers, Ross Barnes, and Al Spalding, they dominated the National Association, winning four of five championships. The original Boston Red Stockings team and its successors can lay claim to being the oldest continuously playing franchise in American professional sports.
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The club was known as the Boston Red Caps when they played the first National League game in 1876, winning against the Philadelphia Athletics. Despite a weaker roster in the league's first year, they rebounded to secure the 1877 and 1878 pennants. Managed by Frank Selee, they were a dominant force in the 19th century, winning eight pennants. By 1898, the team was known as the Beaneaters and they won 102 games that season, with stars like Hugh Duffy, Tommy McCarthy, and "Slidin'" Billy Hamilton.
In 1901, the American League was introduced, causing many Beaneaters players including stars Duffy and Jimmy Collins to leave for clubs of the rival league. The team struggled, having only one winning season from 1900 to 1913. In 1907, they temporarily dropped the red color from their stockings due to infection concerns.
The club underwent various nickname changes until becoming the Braves before the 1912 season. The president of the club, John M. Ward named the club after the owner, James Gaffney. Gaffney was called one of the "braves" of New York City's political machine, Tammany Hall, which used a Native American chief as their symbol.
1914: Miracle.
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In 1914, the Boston Braves experienced a remarkable turnaround in what would become one of the most memorable seasons in baseball history. Starting with a dismal 4–18 record, the Braves found themselves in last place, trailing the league-leading New York Giants by 15 games after losing a doubleheader to the Brooklyn Robins on July 4. However, the team rebounded with an incredible hot streak, going 41–12 from July 6 to September 5. On August 3, Joseph Lannin the president of the Red Sox, offered Fenway Park to the Braves free of charge for the remainder of the season since their usual home, the South End Grounds, was too small. On September 7 and 8, they defeated the Giants in two out of three games, propelling them into first place. Despite being in last place as late as July 18, the Braves secured the pennant, becoming the only team under the old eight-team league format to achieve this after being in last place on the Fourth of July. They were in last place as late as July 18, but were close to the pack, moving into fourth on July 21 and second place on August 12.
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The Braves entered the 1914 World Series led by captain and National League Most Valuable Player, Johnny Evers. The Boston club were slight underdogs against Connie Mack's Philadelphia A's. However, they swept the Athletics and won the world championship. Inspired by their success, owner Gaffney constructed a modern park, Braves Field, which opened in August 1915 and was the largest park in the majors at the time, boasting 40,000 seats and convenient public transportation access.
1915–1952.
From 1917 to 1933, the Boston Braves struggled. After a series of different owners, Emil Fuchs bought the team in 1923. Fuchs brought his longtime friend, pitching great Christy Mathewson, as part of the syndicate that bought the club. However, the death of pitching legend in 1925 left Fuchs in control. Despite Fuchs' commitment to success, the team faced challenges overcoming the damage from previous years. It wasn't until 1933 and 1934, under manager Bill McKechnie, that the Braves became competitive, but it did little to help the club's finances.
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In an effort to boost fan attendance and finances, Fuchs orchestrated a deal with the New York Yankees to acquire Babe Ruth in 1935. Ruth was appointed team vice president with promises of profit shares and managerial prospects. Initially, Ruth seemed to provide a spark on opening day, but his declining skills became evident. Ruth's inability to run and poor fielding led to internal strife, and it became clear that his titles were symbolic. Ruth retired on June 1, 1935, shortly after hitting his last three home runs. The Braves finished the season with a dismal 38–115 record, marking the franchise's worst season.
Fuchs lost control of the team in August 1935, leading to a rebranding attempt as the Boston Bees, but it did little to alter the team's fortune. Construction magnate Lou Perini took over, eventually restoring the Braves' name. Despite World War II causing a brief setback, the team, led by pitcher Warren Spahn, enjoyed impressive seasons in 1946 and 1947 under Perini's ownership.
In 1948, the team won the pennant, behind the pitching of Spahn and Johnny Sain. The remainder of the rotation was so thin that in September, "Boston Post" writer Gerald Hern wrote this poem about the pair:
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The poem received such a wide audience that the sentiment, usually now paraphrased as "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain", entered the baseball vocabulary.
The 1948 World Series, which the Braves lost in six games to the Indians, turned out to be the Braves' last hurrah in Boston. On March 13, 1953, Perini announced he was moving the club to Milwaukee. Perini cited advent of television and the lack of enthusiasm for the Braves in Boston as the key factors in deciding to move the franchise.
Milwaukee (1953–1965).
The Milwaukee Braves' move to Wisconsin for the 1953 season was an immediate success, as they drew a National League-record 1.8 million fans and finished the season second in the league. Manager Charlie Grimm was named NL Manager of the Year.
Throughout the 1950s, the Braves were a National League power; driven by sluggers Eddie Mathews and Hank Aaron, the team won two pennants and finished second twice between 1956 and 1959. In 1957, Aaron's MVP season led the Braves to their first pennant in nine years, then a World Series victory against the formidable New York Yankees. Despite a strong start in the World Series rematch the following season, the Braves ultimately lost the last three games and the World Series. The 1959 season ended in a tie with the Los Angeles Dodgers, who defeated the Braves in a playoff. The ensuing years saw fluctuating success, including the Braves finishing fifth in 1963, their first time in the "second division".
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In 1962, team owner Louis Perini sold the Braves to a Chicago-based group led by William Bartholomay. Bartholomay intended to move the team to Atlanta in 1965, but legal hurdles kept them in Milwaukee for an extra season.
Atlanta (1966–present).
1966–1974.
After arriving in Atlanta in 1966, the Braves found success in 1969, with the onset of divisional play by winning the first National League West Division title. In the National League Championship Series the Braves were swept by the "Miracle Mets". They would post only two winning seasons between 1970 and 1981. Fans in Atlanta had to be satisfied with the achievements of Hank Aaron, who by the end of the 1973 season, had hit 713 home runs, one short of Ruth's record. On April 4, opening day of the next season, he hit No. 714 in Cincinnati, and on April 8, in front of his home fans and a national television audience, he finally beat Ruth's mark with a home run to left-center field off left-hander Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Aaron spent most of his career as a Milwaukee and Atlanta Brave before being traded to the Milwaukee Brewers on November 2, 1974.
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Ted Turner and Time Warner era.
1976–1977: Ted Turner buys the team.
In 1976, the team was purchased by media magnate Ted Turner, owner of superstation WTBS, as a means to keep the team (and one of his main programming staples) in Atlanta. Turner used the Braves as a major programming draw for his fledgling cable network, making the Braves the first franchise to have a nationwide audience and fan base. WTBS marketed the team as "The Atlanta Braves: America's Team", a nickname that still sticks in some areas of the country, especially the South. The financially strapped Turner used money already paid to the team for their broadcast rights as a down-payment. Turner quickly gained a reputation as a quirky, hands-on baseball owner. On May 11, 1977, Turner appointed himself manager, but because MLB passed a rule in the 1950s barring managers from holding a financial stake in their teams, Turner was ordered to relinquish that position after one game (the Braves lost 2–1 to the Pittsburgh Pirates to bring their losing streak to 17 games).
1978–1990.
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The Braves didn't enjoy much success between 1978 and 1990, however, in the 1982 season, led by manager Joe Torre, the Braves secured their first divisional title since 1969. The team was led by standout performances from key players like Dale Murphy, Bob Horner, Chris Chambliss, Phil Niekro, and Gene Garber. The Braves were swept in the NLCS in three games by the Cardinals. Murphy won the Most Valuable Player award for the National League in 1982 and 1983.
1991–2005: 14 consecutive division titles.
From 1991 to 2005, the Atlanta Braves enjoyed a remarkable era of success in baseball, marked by a record-setting 14 consecutive division titles, five National League pennants, and a World Series championship in 1995. Bobby Cox returned as manager in 1990, leading the team's turnaround after finishing the previous season with the worst record in baseball. Notable developments included the drafting of Chipper Jones in 1990 and the hiring of general manager John Schuerholz from the Kansas City Royals.
The Braves' remarkable journey began in 1991, known as the "Worst to First" season. Overcoming a shaky start, the Braves bounced back led by young pitchers Tom Glavine and John Smoltz. The team secured the NL pennant in a memorable playoff race, ultimately losing a closely contested World Series to the Minnesota Twins. The following year, the Braves won the NLCS in dramatic fashion against the Pirates but fell short in the World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays.
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In 1993, the Braves strengthened their pitching staff with the addition of Cy Young Award winner Greg Maddux in free agency. Despite posting a franchise-best 104 wins, they lost in the NLCS to the Philadelphia Phillies. The team moved to the Eastern Division in 1994, sparking a heated rivalry with the New York Mets.
The player's strike cut short the 1994 season just before the division championships, but the Braves rebounded in 1995, defeating the Cleveland Indians to win the World Series. With this World Series victory, the Braves became the first team in Major League Baseball to win world championships in three different cities. The Braves reached the World Series in 1996 and 1999 but were defeated both times by the New York Yankees.
In 1996, Time Warner acquired Ted Turner's Turner Broadcasting System, including the Braves. Despite their continued success with a ninth consecutive division title in 2000, the Braves faced postseason disappointment with a sweep by the St. Louis Cardinals in the NLDS. The team won division titles from 2002 to 2004 but experienced early exits in the NLDS each year.
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Liberty Media era.
Liberty Media buys the team.
In December 2005, Time Warner, put the club up for sale, leading to negotiations with Liberty Media. After over a year of talks, a deal was reached in February 2007 for Liberty Media to acquire the Braves for $450 million, a magazine publishing company, and $980 million in cash. The sale, valued at approximately $1.48 billion, was contingent on approval from 75 percent of MLB owners and Commissioner Bud Selig.
Bobby Cox and Chipper Jones retire.
Bobby Cox's final year as manager in 2010 saw the Braves return to the postseason for the first time since 2005. The team secured the NL Wild Card but fell to the San Francisco Giants in the National League Division Series in four closely contested games, marking the conclusion of Bobby Cox's managerial career. The following season the Braves suffered a historic September collapse to miss the postseason. The club bounced back in 2012 and returned to the postseason in Chipper Jones' final season. The Braves won 94 games in 2012, but that wasn't enough to win the NL East, so they faced the St. Louis Cardinals in the inaugural Wild Card Game. Chipper Jones last game was a memorable one: the Braves lost the one game playoff 6–3, but the game would be remembered for a controversial infield fly call that helped end a Braves rally in the 8th inning.
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Truist Park and return to the World Series.
In 2017, the Atlanta Braves began playing at Truist Park, replacing Turner Field as their home stadium. Following an MLB investigation into international signing rule violations, general manager John Coppolella resigned and faced a baseball ban. Alex Anthopoulos took over as the new general manager. The team's chairman, Terry McGuirk, apologized for the scandal and expressed confidence in Anthopoulos' integrity. A new on field mascot named Blooper was introduced at a fan event before the 2017 season. Under Anthopoulos, the Braves made the playoffs in six of his first seven seasons. In 2020 the Braves reached the National League Championship Series, but ultimately lost to the Dodgers after leading 3–1.
In the 2021 season, the Braves won the National League East with an 88–73 record. In the postseason, they quickly defeated the Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Division Series 3–1. The Braves again faced the Dodgers in the 2021 NLCS, and won in six games to take Atlanta's first National League pennant since 1999. The Braves advanced to the World Series. They defeated the Houston Astros in six games to win their fourth World Series title.
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Logos and uniforms.
The Braves logos have evolved over the years, featuring a Native American warrior from 1945 to 1955, followed by a laughing Native American with a mohawk and a feather from 1956 to 1965. The modern logo, introduced in 1987, includes the cursive word "Braves" with a tomahawk below it.
Uniform changes occurred in 1987, with the team adopting uniforms reminiscent of their 1950s classic look. For the 2023 season, the Braves had four uniform combinations, including the classic white home and gray road uniforms, a navy blue road jersey for alternate games, and two alternate uniforms for home games - a Friday night red uniform and a City Connect uniform worn on Saturdays, paying tribute to Hank Aaron. The City Connect uniform features "The A" across the chest, accompanied by a cap with the "A" logo and 1974 uniform colors.
World Series championships.
Over the 120 years since the inception of the World Series (119 total World Series played), the Braves franchise has won a total of four World Series Championships. The Braves are the only franchise to have won a World Series in three different cities.
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Ballparks.
Former parks.
The Boston Braves played at the South End Grounds from their inception. After a fire destroyed the park in 1894, the club temporarily played at the Congress Street Grounds until the South End Grounds could be rebuilt. During the 1914 season, it became evident that the South End Grounds was too small to accommodate larger crowds, prompting the team to play some games at Fenway Park. To address the need for a larger venue, Braves Field was built in 1915.
Braves Field remained the club's home in Boston until the team relocated to Milwaukee. Milwaukee County Stadium was constructed in 1950 to attract a Major League Baseball team and became the Braves' new home in 1953. The team played there until moving to Atlanta in 1966.
The city of Atlanta constructed Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium in 1965 after reaching an agreement with the Braves to relocate from Milwaukee. The Braves played at Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium until 1997, when they moved to Turner Field. Originally built as Centennial Olympic Stadium for the 1996 Summer Olympics, the venue was later converted into a ballpark for the Braves. Turner Field served as the Braves' home ballpark through the 2016 season.
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Current parks.
Truist Park.
The Atlanta Braves home ballpark has been Truist Park since 2017. Truist Park is located approximately 10 miles (16 km) northwest of downtown Atlanta in the unincorporated community of Cumberland, in Cobb County, Georgia. The Braves opened Truist Park on April 14, 2017, with a four-game sweep of the San Diego Padres. The park received positive reviews. Woody Studenmund of the Hardball Times called the park a "gem" saying that he was impressed with "the compact beauty of the stadium and its exciting approach to combining baseball, business and social activities." J.J. Cooper of Baseball America praised the "excellent sight lines for pretty much every seat."
CoolToday Park.
Since 2019, the Braves have played spring training games at CoolToday Park in North Port, Florida. The ballpark opened on March 24, 2019, with the Braves' 4–2 win over the Tampa Bay Rays. The Braves left Champion Stadium, their previous Spring Training home near Orlando to reduce travel times and to get closer to other teams' facilities. CoolToday Park also serves as the Braves' year round rehabilitation facility.
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Attendance.
(*) – There were no fans allowed in any MLB stadium in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Major rivalry.
New York Mets.
Although their first major confrontation occurred when the Mets swept the Braves in the 1969 NLCS, the rivalry did not become especially heated until the 1994 season when division realignment put both the Mets and the Braves in the National League East division.
The Braves faced the Mets in the 1999 National League Championship Series. The Braves initially took a 3–0 series lead, seemingly on the verge of a sweep, but the Mets rallied in Game 4 and Game 5. Despite the Mets' resilience, the Braves eventually won the series in Game 6 with Andruw Jones securing a dramatic walk-off walk, earning their 5th National League pennant of the decade. In 2022, the Braves and Mets, both finished with 101 wins. The National League East title and a first-round bye came down to a crucial three-game series at Truist Park from September 30 to October 2. The Mets entered with a slight lead but faltered as the Braves swept the series. Atlanta claimed the NL East division title and first-round bye, by winning the season series against the Mets.
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Since the Mets joined the league, both teams have won two World Series titles. The Braves have captured six NL pennants, while the Mets have won five. The Braves hold the advantage in the all-time head-to-head record between the two teams at 516–425. However, the Mets have the upper hand in playoff matchups with a 5–4 record.
Nationwide fanbase.
In addition to having strong fan support in the Metro Atlanta area and the state of Georgia, the Braves are often referred to as "America's Team" in reference to the team's games being broadcast nationally on TBS from the 1970s until 2007, giving the team a nationwide fan base.
The Braves boast heavy support within the Southeastern United States particularly in states such as Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Florida.
Tomahawk chop.
In 1991, fans of the Atlanta Braves popularized the "tomahawk chop" during games. The use of foam tomahawks faced criticism from Native American groups, who regarded it as demeaning. Despite protests, the Braves' public relations director defended it as a "proud expression of unification and family." The controversy resurfaced in 2019 when Cherokee Nation member and St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Ryan Helsley found the chop insulting, prompting the Braves to modify their in-game experience. During the off-season, discussions ensued with Native American representatives, and amid pressure in 2020 to change their name, the Braves announced ongoing talks about the chop but insisted the team name would remain unchanged.
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The debate over the tomahawk chop continued into 2021. While some Native American leaders, like Richard Sneed, the Principal Chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, expressed personal indifference or tolerance, acknowledging it as an acknowledgment of Native American strength, others vehemently opposed it. Sneed emphasized larger issues facing Native American communities and questioned the focus on the chop. The Eastern Cherokee Band of Indians and the Braves initiated efforts to incorporate Cherokee language and culture into the team's activities, stadium, and merchandise, aiming for greater cultural sensitivity despite differing opinions within the Native American community.
Achievements.
Awards.
Braves players have won seven Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards, with Dale Murphy notably earning the honor in back-to-back years, 1982 and 1983. Five Braves pitchers have received the Cy Young Award, given to the league's best pitcher, including Greg Maddux, who won it three consecutive times in 1993, 1994, and 1995.
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Two Braves managers have been named Manager of the Year, with Bobby Cox winning the award three times, in 1991, 2004, and 2005. Additionally, seven Braves players have been honored with the Rookie of the Year awards.
Retired numbers.
The Braves have retired eleven numbers in the history of the franchise. Most recently, Andruw Jones' number 25 was retired in 2023. Other retired numbers include Chipper Jones' number 10, John Smoltz's number 29, Bobby Cox's number 6, Tom Glavine's number 47, and Greg Maddux's number 31. Additionally, the Braves have retired Hank Aaron's number 44, Dale Murphy's number 3, Phil Niekro's number 35, Eddie Mathews' number 41, and Warren Spahn's number 21. Jackie Robinson's number 42 is also retired across all of Major League Baseball, with the exception of Jackie Robinson Day.
Six of the eleven numbers (Cox, Jones, Jones, Smoltz, Maddux and Glavine) were on the Braves at the same time. Of the eleven Braves whose numbers have been retired, all who are eligible for the National Baseball Hall of Fame have been elected with the exceptions of Dale Murphy and Andruw Jones. The color and design of the retired numbers on commemorative markers and other in-stadium signage reflect the primary uniform design at the time the player was on the team.
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Minor league affiliates.
The Atlanta Braves farm system consists of six minor league affiliates.
Radio and television.
The Braves regional games are broadcast on FanDuel Sports Network Southeast with a limited number of select games on Peachtree TV (Atlanta's CW, WPCH 17.1) and the Peachtree Sports Network (PSN). Brandon Gaudin serves as the play-by-play announcer and C.J. Nitkowski as lead analyst. Jeff Francoeur and Tom Glavine will also join the broadcast for a few games during the season. Peter Moylan, Nick Green, and John Smoltz also appear in the booth for select games as in-game analysts.
The radio broadcast team is led by the tandem of play-by-play announcer Ben Ingram and analyst Joe Simpson. Braves games are broadcast across Georgia and seven other states on at least 172 radio affiliates, including flagship station 680 The Fan in Atlanta and stations as far away as Richmond, Virginia; Louisville, Kentucky; and the US Virgin Islands. The games are carried on at least 82 radio stations in Georgia.
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Atari ST
Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's 8-bit home computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available in July. It was the first personal computer with a bitmapped color graphical user interface, using a version of Digital Research's GEM environment from February 1985. The Atari 1040ST, released in 1986 with 1 MB of memory, was the first home computer with a cost per kilobyte of RAM under US$1/KB.
After Jack Tramiel purchased the assets of the Atari, Inc. consumer division in 1984 to create Atari Corporation, the 520ST was designed in five months by a small team led by Shiraz Shivji. Alongside the Macintosh, Amiga, Apple IIGS and Acorn Archimedes, the ST is part of a mid-1980s generation of computers with 16 or 16/32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, and mouse-controlled graphical user interfaces. "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", referring to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals.
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The ST was sold with either Atari's color monitor or less expensive monochrome monitor. Color graphics modes are available only on the former while the highest-resolution mode requires the monochrome monitor. Some models can display the color modes on a TV. In Germany and some other markets, the ST gained a foothold for CAD and desktop publishing. With built-in MIDI ports, it was popular for music sequencing and as a controller of musical instruments among amateur and professional musicians. The Atari ST's primary competitor was the Amiga from Commodore.
The 520ST and 1040ST were followed by the Mega series, the STE, and the portable STacy. In the early 1990s, Atari released three final evolutions of the ST with significant technical differences from the original models: TT030 (1990), Mega STE (1991), and Falcon (1992). Atari discontinued the entire ST computer line in 1993, shifting the company's focus to the Jaguar video game console.
Development.
The Atari ST was born from the rivalry between home computer makers Atari, Inc. and Commodore International. Jay Miner, one of the designers of the custom chips in the Atari 2600 and Atari 8-bit computers, tried to convince Atari management to create a new chipset for a video game console and computer. When his idea was rejected, he left Atari to form a small think tank called Hi-Toro in 1982 and began designing the new "Lorraine" chipset.
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Hi-Toro, by then renamed Amiga, ran out of capital to complete Lorraine's development, and Atari, now owned by Warner Communications, paid Amiga to continue its work. In return, Atari received exclusive use of the Lorraine design for one year as a video game console. After that time, Atari had the right to add a keyboard and market the complete computer, designated the 1850XLD.
Tramel Technology.
After leaving Commodore International in January 1984, Jack Tramiel formed Tramel (without an "i") Technology, Ltd. with his sons and other ex-Commodore employees and, in April, began planning a new computer. Interested in Atari's overseas manufacturing and worldwide distribution network, Tramiel negotiated with Warner in May and June 1984. He secured funding and bought Atari's consumer division, which included the console and home computer departments, in July. As executives and engineers left Commodore to join Tramel Technology, Commodore responded by filing lawsuits against four former engineers for infringement of trade secrets. The Tramiels did not purchase the employee contracts with the assets of Atari, Inc. and re-hired approximately 100 of the 900 former employees. Tramel Technology soon changed its name to Atari Corporation.
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Commodore and Amiga.
Amid rumors that Tramiel was negotiating to buy Atari, Amiga Corp. entered discussions with Commodore. This led to Commodore wanting to purchase Amiga Corporation outright, which Commodore believed would cancel any outstanding contracts, including Atari's. Instead of Amiga Corp. delivering Lorraine to Atari, Commodore delivered a check of $500,000 on Amiga's behalf, in effect returning the funds Atari invested in Amiga for the chipset. Tramiel countered by suing Amiga Corp. on August 13, 1984, seeking damages and an injunction to bar Amiga (and effectively Commodore) from producing anything with its technology.
The lawsuit left the Amiga team in limbo during mid-1984. Commodore eventually moved forward, with plans to improve the chipset and develop an operating system. Commodore announced the Amiga 1000 with the Lorraine chipset in July 1985, but it wasn't available in quantity until 1986. The delay gave Atari time to deliver the Atari 520ST in June 1985. In March 1987, the two companies settled the dispute out of court in a closed decision.
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ST hardware.
The lead architect of the new computer project at Tramel Technology and Atari Corporation was ex-Commodore employee Shiraz Shivji, who previously worked on the Commodore 64's development. Different CPUs were investigated, including the 32-bit National Semiconductor NS32000, but engineers were disappointed with its performance, and they moved to the Motorola 68000. The Atari ST design was completed in five months in 1984, concluding with it being shown at the January 1985 Consumer Electronics Show.
A custom sound processor called AMY had been in development at Atari, Inc. and was considered for the new ST computer design. The chip needed more time to complete, so AMY was dropped in favor of a commodity Yamaha YM2149F variant of the General Instrument AY-3-8910.
Operating system.
Soon after the Atari buyout, Microsoft suggested to Tramiel that it could port Windows to the platform, but the delivery date was out by two years. Another possibility was Digital Research, which was working on a new GUI-based system then known as Crystal, soon to become GEM. Another option was to write a new operating system, but this was rejected as Atari management was unsure whether the company had the required expertise.
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Digital Research was fully committed to the Intel platform, so a team from Atari was sent to the Digital Research headquarters to work with the "Monterey Team", which comprised a mixture of Atari and Digital Research engineers. Atari's Leonard Tramiel oversaw "Project Jason" (also known as The Operating System) for the ST series, named for designer and developer Jason Loveman.
GEM is based on CP/M-68K, a direct port of CP/M to the 68000. By 1985, CP/M was becoming increasingly outdated; it did not support subdirectories, for example. Digital Research was also in the process of building GEMDOS, a disk operating system for GEM, and debated whether a port of it could be completed in time for product delivery in June. The decision was eventually taken to port it, resulting in a GEMDOS file system which became part of Atari TOS (for "The Operating System", colloquially known as the "Tramiel Operating System"). This gave the ST a fast, hierarchical file system, essential for hard drives, and provided programmers with function calls similar to MS-DOS. The Atari ST character set is based on codepage 437.
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Release.
After six months of intensive effort following Tramiel's takeover, Atari announced the 520ST at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 1985. "InfoWorld" assessed the prototypes shown at computer shows as follows:Pilot production models of the Atari machine are much slicker than the hand-built models shown at earlier computer fairs; it doesn't look like a typical Commodore 64-style, corner-cutting, low-cost Jack Tramiel product of the past.Atari unexpectedly displayed the ST at Atlanta COMDEX in May. Similarities to the original Macintosh and Tramiel's role in its development resulted in it being nicknamed Jackintosh. Atari's rapid development of the ST amazed many, but others were skeptical, citing its "cheap" appearance, Atari's uncertain financial health, and poor relations between Tramiel-led Commodore and software developers.
Atari ST print advertisements stated, "America, We Built It For You", and quoted Atari president Sam Tramiel: "We promised. We delivered. With pride, determination, and good old ATARI know how". But Jack Tramiel admitted that sales of its earlier 8-bit systems were "very, very slow", Atari was out of cash, and employees feared that he would shut the company down.
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In early 1985, the 520ST shipped to the press, developers, and user groups, and in early July 1985 for general retail sales. It saved the company. By November, Atari stated that more than 50,000 520STs had been sold, "with U.S. sales alone well into five figures". The machine had gone from concept to store shelves in a little under one year.
Atari had intended to release the 130ST with 128 KB of RAM and the 260ST with 256 KB. However, the ST initially shipped without TOS in ROM and required booting TOS from floppy, taking 206 KB RAM away from applications. The 260ST was launched in Europe on a limited basis. Early models have six ROM sockets for easy upgrades to TOS. New ROMs were released a few months later and were included in new machines and as an upgrade for older machines.
Atari originally intended to include GEM's Graphical Device Operating System (GDOS), which allows programs to send GEM VDI (Virtual Device Interface) commands to drivers loaded by GDOS. This allows developers to send VDI instructions to other devices simply by pointing to it. However, GDOS was not ready at the time the ST started shipping and was included in software packages and with later ST machines. Later versions of GDOS support vector fonts.
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A limited set of GEM fonts were included in the ROMs, including the ST's standard 8x8 pixel graphical character set. It contains four characters which can be placed together in a square, forming the face of J. R. "Bob" Dobbs (the figurehead of the Church of the SubGenius).
The ST was less expensive than most contemporaries, including the Macintosh Plus, and is faster than many. Largely as a result of its price and performance factor, the ST became fairly popular, especially in Europe where foreign-exchange rates amplified prices. The company's English advertising slogan of the era was "Power Without the Price". An Atari ST and terminal emulation software was much cheaper than a Digital VT220 terminal, commonly needed by offices with central computers.
By late 1985, the 520STM added an RF modulator for TV display.
Industry reaction.
"Computer Gaming World" stated that Tramiel's poor pre-Atari reputation would likely make computer stores reluctant to deal with the company, hurting its distribution of the ST. One retailer said, "If you can believe Lucy when she holds the football for Charlie Brown, you can believe Jack Tramiel"; another said that because of its experience with Tramiel, "our interest in Atari is zero, zilch". Neither Atari nor Commodore could persuade large chains like ComputerLand or BusinessLand to sell its products. Observers criticized Atari's erratic discussion of its stated plans for the new computer, as it shifted between using mass merchandisers, specialty computer stores, and both. When asked at COMDEX, Atari executives could not name any computer stores that would carry the ST. After a meeting with Atari, one analyst said, "We've seen marketing strategies changed before our eyes".
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Tramiel's poor reputation influenced potential software developers. One said, "Dealing with Commodore is like dealing with Attila the Hun. I don't know if Tramiel will be following his old habits ... I don't see a lot of people rushing to get software on the machine." Large business-software companies like Lotus, Ashton-Tate, and Microsoft did not promise software for either the ST or Amiga, and the majority of software companies were hesitant to support another platform beyond the IBM PC, Apple, and Commodore 64. Philippe Kahn of Borland said, "These days, if I were a consumer, I'd stick with companies [such as Apple and IBM] I know will be around".
At Las Vegas COMDEX in November 1985, the industry was surprised by more than 30 companies exhibiting ST software while the Amiga had almost none. After Atlanta COMDEX, "The New York Times" reported that "more than 100 software titles will be available for the [ST], most written by small software houses that desperately need work", and contrasted the "small, little-known companies" at Las Vegas with the larger ones like Electronic Arts and Activision, which planned Amiga applications.
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Trip Hawkins of Electronic Arts said, "I don't think Atari understands the software business. I'm still skeptical about its resources and its credibility." Although Michael Berlyn of Infocom promised that his company would quickly publish all of its games for the new computer, he doubted many others would soon do so. Spinnaker and Lifetree were more positive, both promising to release ST software. Spinnaker said that "Atari has a vastly improved attitude toward software developers. They are eager to give us technical support and machines". Lifetree said, "We are giving Atari high priority". Some, such as Software Publishing Corporation, were unsure of whether to develop for the ST or the Amiga. John C. Dvorak wrote that the public saw both Commodore and Atari as selling "cheap disposable" game machines, in part because of their computers' sophisticated graphics.
Design.
The original 520ST case design was created by Ira Velinsky, Atari's chief Industrial Designer. It is wedge-shaped, with bold angular lines and a series of grilles cut into the rear for airflow. The keyboard has soft tactile feedback and rhomboid-shaped function keys across the top. It is an all-in-one unit, similar to earlier home computers like the Commodore 64, but with a larger keyboard with cursor keys and a numeric keypad. The original has an external floppy drive (SF354) and AC adapter. Starting with the 1040ST, the floppy drive and power supply are integrated into the base unit.
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Ports.
The ports on the 520ST remained largely unchanged over its history.
Standard.
Because of its bi-directional design, the Centronics printer port can be used for joystick input, and several games used available adaptors that used the printer socket, providing two additional 9-pin joystick ports.
Monitor.
The ST supports a monochrome or colour monitor. The colour hardware supports two resolutions: 320 × 200 pixels, with 16 of 512 colours; and 640 × 200, with 4 of 512 colours. The monochrome monitor was less expensive and has a single resolution of 640 × 400 at 71.25 Hz. The attached monitor determines available resolutions, so each application either supports both types of monitors or only one. Most ST games require colour with productivity software favouring the monochrome. The Philips CM8833-II was a popular color monitor for the Atari ST.
Floppy drive.
Atari initially used single-sided 3.5 inch floppy disk drives that could store up to 360 KB. Later drives were double-sided and stored 720 KB. Some commercial software, particularly games, shipped by default on single-sided disks, even supplying two 360 KB floppies instead of a single double-sided one, to avoid alienating early adopters.
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Some software uses formats which allow the full disk to be read by double-sided drives but still lets single-sided drives access side A of the disk. Many magazine coverdisks (such as the first 30 issues of "ST Format") were designed this way, as were a few games. The music in "Carrier Command" and the intro sequence in "Populous" are not accessible to single-sided drives, for example.
STs with double-sided drives can read disks formatted by MS-DOS, but IBM PC compatibles can not read Atari disks because of differences in the layout of data on track 0.
Later systems.
1040ST.
Atari upgraded the basic design in 1986 with the 1040STF, stylized as 1040STF: essentially a 520ST with twice the RAM and with the power supply and a double-sided floppy drive with twice the capacity, and built-in instead of external. This adds to the size of the machine, but reduces cable clutter. The joystick and mouse ports, formerly on the right side of the machine, are in a recess underneath the keyboard. An "FM" variant includes an RF modulator allowing a television to be used instead of a monitor.
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The trailing "F" and "FM" were often dropped in common usage. In "BYTE" magazine's March 1986 cover photo of the system, the name plate reads 1040STFM but in the headline and article it's simply "1040ST".
The 1040ST is one of the earliest personal computers shipped with a base RAM configuration of 1 MB. With a list price of in the US, "BYTE" hailed it as the first computer to break the $1000 per megabyte price barrier. "Compute!" noted that the 1040ST is the first computer with one megabyte of RAM to sell for less than $2,500.
A limited number of 1040STFs shipped with a single-sided floppy drive of 360KB storage capacity verses 720KB in the double sided version.
We can find also lot of 520 STF versions in Europe, early models are dated 1986, December and have also a single-sided floppy drive of 360KB storage capacity.
Mega.
Initial sales were strong, especially in Europe, where Atari sold 75% of its computers. West Germany became Atari's strongest market, with small business owners using them for desktop publishing and CAD.
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To address this growing market segment, Atari introduced the ST1 at Comdex in 1986. Renamed to Mega, it includes a high-quality detached keyboard, a stronger case to support the weight of a monitor, and an internal bus expansion connector. An optional 20 MB hard drive can be placed below or above the main case. Initially equipped with 2 or 4 MB of RAM (a 1 MB version, the Mega 1, followed), the Mega machines can be combined with Atari's laser printer for a low-cost desktop publishing package.
A custom blitter coprocessor improved some graphics performance, but was not included in all models. Developers wanting to use it had to detect its presence in their programs. Properly written applications using the GEM API automatically make use of the blitter.
STE.
In late 1989, Atari Corporation released the 520STE and 1040STE (also written STE), enhanced version of the ST with improvements to the multimedia hardware and operating system. It features an increased color palette of 4,096 colors from the ST's 512 (though the maximum displayable palette without programming tricks is still limited to 16 in the lowest 320 × 200 resolution, and even fewer in higher resolutions), genlock support, and a blitter coprocessor (stylized as "BLiTTER") which can quickly move large blocks of data (particularly, graphics data) around in RAM. The STE is the first Atari with PCM audio; using a new chip, it added the ability to play back 8-bit (signed) samples at 6258 Hz, 12,517 Hz, 25,033 Hz, and even 50,066 Hz, via direct memory access (DMA). The channels are arranged as either a mono track or a track of LRLRLRLR... bytes. RAM is now much more simply upgradable via SIMMs.
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