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By the late 1940s it was known that the properties of atomic nuclei could not be explained by then-current models such as the liquid drop model developed by Niels Bohr amongst others. The shell model, developed in 1949 by Maria Goeppert Mayer and others, allowed some additional features to be explained, in particular the so-called magic numbers. However, there were also properties that could not be explained, including the non-spherical distribution of charge in certain nuclei. In a 1950 paper, James Rainwater of Columbia University suggested a variant of the drop model of the nucleus that could explain a non-spherical charge distribution. Rainwater's model postulated a nucleus like a balloon with balls inside that distort the surface as they move about. He discussed the idea with Bohr, who was visiting Columbia at the time, and had independently conceived the same idea, and had, about a month after Rainwater's submission, submitted for publication a paper that discussed the same problem, but along more general lines. Bohr imagined a rotating, irregular-shaped nucleus with a form of surface tension. Bohr developed the idea further, in 1951 publishing a paper that comprehensively treated the relationship between oscillations of the surface of the nucleus and the movement of the individual nucleons.
Upon his return to Copenhagen in 1950, Bohr began working with Ben Roy Mottelson to compare the theoretical work with experimental data. In three papers, that were published in 1952 and 1953, Bohr and Mottelson demonstrated close agreement between theory and experiment; for example, showing that the energy levels of certain nuclei could be described by a rotation spectrum. They were thereby able to reconcile the shell model with Rainwater's concept. This work stimulated many new theoretical and experimental studies. Bohr, Mottelson and Rainwater were jointly awarded the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this connection". Because his father had been awarded the prize in 1922, Bohr became one of only four pairs of fathers and sons to win the Nobel Prize in Physics. Only after doing his Nobel Prize-winning research did Bohr receive his doctorate from the University of Copenhagen, in 1954, writing his thesis on "Rotational States of Atomic Nuclei". Bohr became a professor at the University of Copenhagen in 1956, and, following his father's death in 1962, succeeded him as director of the Niels Bohr Institute, a position he held until 1970. He remained active there until he retired in 1992. He was also a member of the board of the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics from its inception in 1957, and was its director from 1975 to 1981. In addition to the Nobel Prize, he won the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics in 1960, the Atoms for Peace Award in 1969, H. C. Ørsted Medal in 1970, Rutherford Medal and Prize in 1972, John Price Wetherill Medal in 1974, and the Ole Rømer medal in 1976. Bohr and Mottelson continued to work together, publishing a two-volume monograph, "Nuclear Structure". The first volume, "Single-Particle Motion," appeared in 1969; the second, "Nuclear Deformations," in 1975.
In 1972 Bohr was awarded an honorary degree, doctor philos. honoris causa, at the Norwegian Institute of Technology, later part of Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1980. Bohr was also an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the United States National Academy of Sciences. In 1981, Bohr became a founding member of the World Cultural Council. Bohr's wife Marietta died on 2 October 1978. In 1981, he married Bente Scharff Meyer (1926–2011). His son, Tomas Bohr, is a professor of physics at the Technical University of Denmark, working in the area of fluid dynamics. Aage Bohr died in Copenhagen on 9 September 2009. He was survived by his second wife and children. Bohr's Nobel Prize medal was sold at auction in November 2011. It was subsequently sold at auction in April 2019 for $90,000.
Analytic geometry In mathematics, analytic geometry, also known as coordinate geometry or Cartesian geometry, is the study of geometry using a coordinate system. This contrasts with synthetic geometry. Analytic geometry is used in physics and engineering, and also in aviation, rocketry, space science, and spaceflight. It is the foundation of most modern fields of geometry, including algebraic, differential, discrete and computational geometry. Usually the Cartesian coordinate system is applied to manipulate equations for planes, straight lines, and circles, often in two and sometimes three dimensions. Geometrically, one studies the Euclidean plane (two dimensions) and Euclidean space. As taught in school books, analytic geometry can be explained more simply: it is concerned with defining and representing geometric shapes in a numerical way and extracting numerical information from shapes' numerical definitions and representations. That the algebra of the real numbers can be employed to yield results about the linear continuum of geometry relies on the Cantor–Dedekind axiom.
History. Ancient Greece. The Greek mathematician Menaechmus solved problems and proved theorems by using a method that had a strong resemblance to the use of coordinates and it has sometimes been maintained that he had introduced analytic geometry. Apollonius of Perga, in "On Determinate Section", dealt with problems in a manner that may be called an analytic geometry of one dimension; with the question of finding points on a line that were in a ratio to the others. Apollonius in the "Conics" further developed a method that is so similar to analytic geometry that his work is sometimes thought to have anticipated the work of Descartes by some 1800 years. His application of reference lines, a diameter and a tangent is essentially no different from our modern use of a coordinate frame, where the distances measured along the diameter from the point of tangency are the abscissas, and the segments parallel to the tangent and intercepted between the axis and the curve are the ordinates. He further developed relations between the abscissas and the corresponding ordinates that are equivalent to rhetorical equations (expressed in words) of curves. However, although Apollonius came close to developing analytic geometry, he did not manage to do so since he did not take into account negative magnitudes and in every case the coordinate system was superimposed upon a given curve "a posteriori" instead of "a priori". That is, equations were determined by curves, but curves were not determined by equations. Coordinates, variables, and equations were subsidiary notions applied to a specific geometric situation.
Persia. The 11th-century Persian mathematician Omar Khayyam saw a strong relationship between geometry and algebra and was moving in the right direction when he helped close the gap between numerical and geometric algebra with his geometric solution of the general cubic equations, but the decisive step came later with Descartes. Omar Khayyam is credited with identifying the foundations of algebraic geometry, and his book "Treatise on Demonstrations of Problems of Algebra" (1070), which laid down the principles of analytic geometry, is part of the body of Persian mathematics that was eventually transmitted to Europe. Because of his thoroughgoing geometrical approach to algebraic equations, Khayyam can be considered a precursor to Descartes in the invention of analytic geometry. Western Europe. Analytic geometry was independently invented by René Descartes and Pierre de Fermat, although Descartes is sometimes given sole credit. "Cartesian geometry", the alternative term used for analytic geometry, is named after Descartes.
Descartes made significant progress with the methods in an essay titled "La Géométrie (Geometry)", one of the three accompanying essays (appendices) published in 1637 together with his "Discourse on the Method for Rightly Directing One's Reason and Searching for Truth in the Sciences", commonly referred to as "Discourse on Method". "La Geometrie", written in his native French tongue, and its philosophical principles, provided a foundation for calculus in Europe. Initially the work was not well received, due, in part, to the many gaps in arguments and complicated equations. Only after the translation into Latin and the addition of commentary by van Schooten in 1649 (and further work thereafter) did Descartes's masterpiece receive due recognition. Pierre de Fermat also pioneered the development of analytic geometry. Although not published in his lifetime, a manuscript form of "Ad locos planos et solidos isagoge" (Introduction to Plane and Solid Loci) was circulating in Paris in 1637, just prior to the publication of Descartes' "Discourse". Clearly written and well received, the "Introduction" also laid the groundwork for analytical geometry. The key difference between Fermat's and Descartes' treatments is a matter of viewpoint: Fermat always started with an algebraic equation and then described the geometric curve that satisfied it, whereas Descartes started with geometric curves and produced their equations as one of several properties of the curves. As a consequence of this approach, Descartes had to deal with more complicated equations and he had to develop the methods to work with polynomial equations of higher degree. It was Leonhard Euler who first applied the coordinate method in a systematic study of space curves and surfaces.
Coordinates. In analytic geometry, the plane is given a coordinate system, by which every point has a pair of real number coordinates. Similarly, Euclidean space is given coordinates where every point has three coordinates. The value of the coordinates depends on the choice of the initial point of origin. There are a variety of coordinate systems used, but the most common are the following: Cartesian coordinates (in a plane or space). The most common coordinate system to use is the Cartesian coordinate system, where each point has an "x"-coordinate representing its horizontal position, and a "y"-coordinate representing its vertical position. These are typically written as an ordered pair ("x", "y"). This system can also be used for three-dimensional geometry, where every point in Euclidean space is represented by an ordered triple of coordinates ("x", "y", "z"). Polar coordinates (in a plane). In polar coordinates, every point of the plane is represented by its distance "r" from the origin and its angle "θ", with "θ" normally measured counterclockwise from the positive "x"-axis. Using this notation, points are typically written as an ordered pair ("r", "θ"). One may transform back and forth between two-dimensional Cartesian and polar coordinates by using these formulae: formula_1 This system may be generalized to three-dimensional space through the use of cylindrical or spherical coordinates.
Cylindrical coordinates (in a space). In cylindrical coordinates, every point of space is represented by its height "z", its radius "r" from the "z"-axis and the angle "θ" its projection on the "xy"-plane makes with respect to the horizontal axis. Spherical coordinates (in a space). In spherical coordinates, every point in space is represented by its distance "ρ" from the origin, the angle "θ" its projection on the "xy"-plane makes with respect to the horizontal axis, and the angle "φ" that it makes with respect to the "z"-axis. The names of the angles are often reversed in physics. Equations and curves. In analytic geometry, any equation involving the coordinates specifies a subset of the plane, namely the solution set for the equation, or locus. For example, the equation "y" = "x" corresponds to the set of all the points on the plane whose "x"-coordinate and "y"-coordinate are equal. These points form a line, and "y" = "x" is said to be the equation for this line. In general, linear equations involving "x" and "y" specify lines, quadratic equations specify conic sections, and more complicated equations describe more complicated figures.
Usually, a single equation corresponds to a curve on the plane. This is not always the case: the trivial equation "x" = "x" specifies the entire plane, and the equation "x"2 + "y"2 = 0 specifies only the single point (0, 0). In three dimensions, a single equation usually gives a surface, and a curve must be specified as the intersection of two surfaces (see below), or as a system of parametric equations. The equation "x"2 + "y"2 = "r"2 is the equation for any circle centered at the origin (0, 0) with a radius of r. Lines and planes. Lines in a Cartesian plane, or more generally, in affine coordinates, can be described algebraically by "linear" equations. In two dimensions, the equation for non-vertical lines is often given in the "slope-intercept form": formula_2 where: In a manner analogous to the way lines in a two-dimensional space are described using a point-slope form for their equations, planes in a three dimensional space have a natural description using a point in the plane and a vector orthogonal to it (the normal vector) to indicate its "inclination".
Specifically, let formula_3 be the position vector of some point formula_4, and let formula_5 be a nonzero vector. The plane determined by this point and vector consists of those points formula_6, with position vector formula_7, such that the vector drawn from formula_8 to formula_6 is perpendicular to formula_10. Recalling that two vectors are perpendicular if and only if their dot product is zero, it follows that the desired plane can be described as the set of all points formula_7 such that formula_12 Expanded this becomes formula_13 This is just a linear equation: formula_14 Conversely, it is easily shown that if "a", "b", "c" and "d" are constants and "a", "b", and "c" are not all zero, then the graph of the equation formula_15 This familiar equation for a plane is called the "general form" of the equation of the plane. In three dimensions, lines can "not" be described by a single linear equation, so they are frequently described by parametric equations: formula_16 formula_17 formula_18 where: Conic sections.
In the Cartesian coordinate system, the graph of a quadratic equation in two variables is always a conic section – though it may be degenerate, and all conic sections arise in this way. The equation will be of the form formula_19 As scaling all six constants yields the same locus of zeros, one can consider conics as points in the five-dimensional projective space formula_20 The conic sections described by this equation can be classified using the discriminant formula_21 If the conic is non-degenerate, then: Quadric surfaces. A quadric, or quadric surface, is a "2"-dimensional surface in 3-dimensional space defined as the locus of zeros of a quadratic polynomial. In coordinates , the general quadric is defined by the algebraic equation formula_28 Quadric surfaces include ellipsoids (including the sphere), paraboloids, hyperboloids, cylinders, cones, and planes. Distance and angle. In analytic geometry, geometric notions such as distance and angle measure are defined using formulas. These definitions are designed to be consistent with the underlying Euclidean geometry. For example, using Cartesian coordinates on the plane, the distance between two points ("x"1, "y"1) and ("x"2, "y"2) is defined by the formula
formula_29 which can be viewed as a version of the Pythagorean theorem. Similarly, the angle that a line makes with the horizontal can be defined by the formula formula_30 where "m" is the slope of the line. In three dimensions, distance is given by the generalization of the Pythagorean theorem: formula_31 while the angle between two vectors is given by the dot product. The dot product of two Euclidean vectors A and B is defined by formula_32 where "θ" is the angle between A and B. Transformations. Transformations are applied to a parent function to turn it into a new function with similar characteristics. The graph of formula_33 is changed by standard transformations as follows: There are other standard transformation not typically studied in elementary analytic geometry because the transformations change the shape of objects in ways not usually considered. Skewing is an example of a transformation not usually considered. For more information, consult the Wikipedia article on affine transformations.
Transformations can be applied to any geometric equation whether or not the equation represents a function. Transformations can be considered as individual transactions or in combinations. Suppose that formula_33 is a relation in the formula_67 plane. For example, formula_68 is the relation that describes the unit circle. Finding intersections of geometric objects. For two geometric objects P and Q represented by the relations formula_69 and formula_70 the intersection is the collection of all points formula_71 which are in both relations. For example, formula_6 might be the circle with radius 1 and center formula_73: formula_74 and formula_75 might be the circle with radius 1 and center formula_76. The intersection of these two circles is the collection of points which make both equations true. Does the point formula_73 make both equations true? Using formula_73 for formula_71, the equation for formula_75 becomes formula_81 or formula_82 which is true, so formula_73 is in the relation formula_75. On the other hand, still using formula_73 for formula_71 the equation for formula_6 becomes formula_88 or formula_89 which is false. formula_73 is not in formula_6 so it is not in the intersection.
The intersection of formula_6 and formula_75 can be found by solving the simultaneous equations: formula_94 formula_95 Traditional methods for finding intersections include substitution and elimination. Substitution: Solve the first equation for formula_37 in terms of formula_34 and then substitute the expression for formula_37 into the second equation: formula_94 formula_100 We then substitute this value for formula_101 into the other equation and proceed to solve for formula_34: formula_103 formula_104 formula_105 formula_106 Next, we place this value of formula_34 in either of the original equations and solve for formula_37: formula_109 formula_110 formula_111 So our intersection has two points: formula_112 Elimination: Add (or subtract) a multiple of one equation to the other equation so that one of the variables is eliminated. For our current example, if we subtract the first equation from the second we get formula_113. The formula_101 in the first equation is subtracted from the formula_101 in the second equation leaving no formula_37 term. The variable formula_37 has been eliminated. We then solve the remaining equation for formula_34, in the same way as in the substitution method:
formula_119 formula_105 formula_106 We then place this value of formula_34 in either of the original equations and solve for formula_37: formula_109 formula_125 formula_111 So our intersection has two points: formula_127 For conic sections, as many as 4 points might be in the intersection. Finding intercepts. One type of intersection which is widely studied is the intersection of a geometric object with the formula_34 and formula_37 coordinate axes. The intersection of a geometric object and the formula_37-axis is called the formula_37-intercept of the object. The intersection of a geometric object and the formula_34-axis is called the formula_34-intercept of the object. For the line formula_134, the parameter formula_42 specifies the point where the line crosses the formula_37 axis. Depending on the context, either formula_42 or the point formula_138 is called the formula_37-intercept. Geometric axis. Axis in geometry is the perpendicular line to any line, object or a surface. Also for this may be used the common language use as a: normal (perpendicular) line, otherwise in engineering as "axial line".
In geometry, a normal is an object such as a line or vector that is perpendicular to a given object. For example, in the two-dimensional case, the normal line to a curve at a given point is the line perpendicular to the tangent line to the curve at the point. In the three-dimensional case a surface normal, or simply normal, to a surface at a point "P" is a vector that is perpendicular to the tangent plane to that surface at "P". The word "normal" is also used as an adjective: a line normal to a plane, the normal component of a force, the normal vector, etc. The concept of normality generalizes to orthogonality. Spherical and nonlinear planes and their tangents. Tangent is the linear approximation of a spherical or other curved or twisted line of a function. Tangent lines and planes. In geometry, the tangent line (or simply tangent) to a plane curve at a given point is the straight line that "just touches" the curve at that point. Informally, it is a line through a pair of infinitely close points on the curve. More precisely, a straight line is said to be a tangent of a curve at a point on the curve if the line passes through the point on the curve and has slope where "f" is the derivative of "f". A similar definition applies to space curves and curves in "n"-dimensional Euclidean space.
As it passes through the point where the tangent line and the curve meet, called the point of tangency, the tangent line is "going in the same direction" as the curve, and is thus the best straight-line approximation to the curve at that point. Similarly, the tangent plane to a surface at a given point is the plane that "just touches" the surface at that point. The concept of a tangent is one of the most fundamental notions in differential geometry and has been extensively generalized; see Tangent space.
Arabic alphabet The Arabic alphabet, or the Arabic abjad, is the Arabic script as specifically codified for writing the Arabic language. It is a unicameral script written from right-to-left in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters, of which most have contextual letterforms. Unlike the modern Latin alphabet, the script has no concept of letter case. The Arabic alphabet is an abjad, with only consonants required to be written; due to its optional use of diacritics to notate vowels, it is considered an impure abjad. Letters. The basic Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters. Forms using the Arabic script to write other languages added and removed letters: for example ⟨پ⟩ is often used to represent in adaptations of the Arabic script. Unlike Greek-derived alphabets, Arabic has no distinct upper and lower case letterforms. Many letters look similar but are distinguished from one another by dots () above or below their central part (). These dots are an integral part of a letter, since they distinguish between letters that represent different sounds. For example, the Arabic letters , , and have the same basic shape, but with one dot added below, two dots added above, and three dots added above respectively. The letter also has the same form in initial and medial forms, with one dot added above, though it is somewhat different in its isolated and final forms. Historically, they were often omitted, in a writing style called rasm.
Both printed and written Arabic are cursive, with most letters within a word directly joined to adjacent letters. Alphabetical order. There are two main collating sequences ('alphabetical orderings') for the Arabic alphabet: , and . The Hija'i order ( ) is the more common order and it is used when sorting lists of words and names, such as in phonebooks, classroom lists, and dictionaries. The original order ( ) derives from that used by the Phoenician alphabet and therefore resembles the sequence of letters in Hebrew and Greek. Letters are also assigned numerical values (abjad numerals) for purposes of numerology, as is done in Hebrew gematria and Greek isopsephy. Letters in the Hija'i order are not considered to have numerical values. Hijaʼi. Modern dictionaries and reference books use the alphabetical order instead of the Abjadi alphabetical order, in which letters are arranged mainly by similarity of shape. The "hijaʼi" order is never used for numerals. A different "hijaʼi" order was used in the Maghreb but is now considered obsolete. The sequence is:
The "al-iklīl" order, now obsolete, also arranged letters mainly by shape. It was first used in the 10th-century work "Kitāb al-Iklīl". The sequence is: Abjadi. The Abjadi order is not a simple correspondence with the earlier north Semitic alphabetic order, as it has a position corresponding to the Aramaic letter "samek" , which has no cognate letter in the Arabic alphabet historically. The abjadi order is the usual Arabic order in dictionaries and reference books of the late 1st millennium to the early 2nd millennium. The loss of was compensated for by: The six other letters that do not correspond to any north Semitic letter are placed at the end. This is commonly vocalized as follows: Another vocalization is: This can be vocalized as: Letter forms. The Arabic alphabet is always cursive and letters vary in shape depending on their position within a word. Letters can exhibit up to four distinct forms corresponding to an initial, medial (middle), final, or isolated position (IMFI). While some letters show considerable variations, others remain almost identical across all four positions. Generally, letters in the same word are linked together on both sides by short horizontal lines, but six letters () can only be linked to their preceding letter. In addition, some letter combinations are written as ligatures (special shapes), notably , which is the only mandatory ligature (the unligated combination is considered difficult to read).
Table of basic letters. Notes Hamza forms. The Hamza (glottal stop) can be written either alone, as if it were a letter, or with a carrier, when it becomes a diacritic. () indicates a long + sound as in "sorry", while the other Hamzas indicate the glottal stop in different positions of the word as in and , the writing of the Hamza is based on a set of rules, For the writing rule of each form, see . Modified letters. The following are not individual letters, but rather different contextual variants of some of the Arabic letters. Long vowels. In the fully vocalized Arabic text found in texts such as the Quran, a long following a consonant other than a " is written with a short sign () on the consonant plus an after it; long is written as a sign for short () plus a ; and long as a sign for short () plus a . Briefly, = ; = ; and = . Long following a may be represented by an or by a free followed by an (two consecutive s are never allowed in Arabic). The table below shows vowels placed above or below a dotted circle replacing a primary consonant letter or a " sign. For clarity in the table, the primary letters on the left used to mark these long vowels are shown only in their isolated form. Most consonants do connect to the left with , and written then with their medial or final form. Additionally, the letter in the last row may connect to the letter on its left, and then will use a medial or initial form. Use the table of primary letters to look at their actual glyph and joining types.
In unvocalized text (one in which the short vowels are not marked), the long vowels are represented by the vowel in question: , , or . Long vowels written in the middle of a word of unvocalized text are treated like consonants with a (see below) in a text that has full diacritics. Here also, the table shows long vowel letters only in isolated form for clarity. Combinations and are always pronounced and respectively. The exception is the suffix in verb endings where is silent, resulting in or . In addition, when transliterating names and loanwords, Arabic language speakers write out most or all the vowels as long ( with , and with , and and with ), meaning it approaches a true alphabet. Diphthongs. The diphthongs and are represented in vocalized text as follows: A final "is usually" written at the end of words for "nisba" ( ') which is a common suffix to form adjectives of relation or pertinence. The suffix is ' for masculine ( ' for feminine); for example ' "socialist", it is also used for a singulative ending that applies to human or other sentient beings as in "jundiyy" "a soldier". However nowadays this final is mostly pronounced with a long () ' as in ' instead of ' . A similar mistake happens at the end of some third person plural verbs as in ' "they ran" which is pronounced nowadays as "" .
Ligatures. The use of ligature in Arabic is common. There is one compulsory ligature, that for ل + ا, which exists in two forms. All other ligatures, of which there are many, are optional. A more complex ligature that combines as many as seven distinct components is commonly used to represent the word . The only ligature within the primary range of Arabic script in Unicode (U+06xx) is + . This is the only one compulsory for fonts and word-processing. Other ranges are for compatibility to older standards and contain other ligatures, which are optional. Note: Unicode also has in its Presentation Form B FExx range a code for this ligature. If your browser and font are configured correctly for Arabic, the ligature displayed above should be identical to this one, codice_1 Diacritics. Users of Arabic usually write long vowels but omit short ones, so readers must utilize their knowledge of the language in order to supply the missing vowels. However, in the education system and particularly in classes on Arabic grammar these vowels are used since they are crucial to the grammar. An Arabic sentence can have a completely different meaning by a subtle change of the vowels. This is why in an important text such as the the three basic vowel signs are mandated, like the Arabic diacritics and other types of marks, like the cantillation signs.
Short vowels. In the Arabic handwriting of everyday use, in general publications, and on street signs, short vowels are typically not written. On the other hand, copies of the cannot be endorsed by the religious institutes that review them unless the diacritics are included. Children's books, elementary school texts, and Arabic-language grammars in general will include diacritics to some degree. These are known as "vocalized" texts. Short vowels may be written with diacritics placed above or below the consonant that precedes them in the syllable, called . All Arabic vowels, long and short, follow a consonant; in Arabic, words like "Ali" or "alif", for example, start with a consonant: , . Nunation. Nunation ( ) is the addition of a final to a noun or adjective. The vowel before it indicates grammatical case. In written Arabic, nunation is indicated by doubling the vowel diacritic at the end of the word, e.g. . Gemination. Gemination is the doubling of a consonant. Instead of writing the letter twice, Arabic places a "W"-shaped sign called above it.
Vowel omission. An Arabic syllable can be open (ending with a vowel) or closed (ending with a consonant): A normal text is composed only of a series of consonants plus vowel-lengthening letters; thus, the word "qalb", "heart", is written "qlb", and the word "qalaba" "he turned around", is also written "qlb". To write "qalaba" without this ambiguity, we could indicate that the "l" is followed by a short "a" by writing a "fatḥah" above it. To write "qalb", we would instead indicate that the "l" is followed by no vowel by marking it with a diacritic called "sukūn" (), like this: . This is one step down from full vocalization, where the vowel after the "q" would also be indicated by a "fatḥah": . The "Qurʾān" is traditionally written in full vocalization. The long "i" sound in some editions of the "Qur’ān" is written with a "kasrah" followed by a diacritic-less "y", and long "u" by a "ḍammah" followed by a bare "w". In others, these "y" and "w" carry a "sukūn". Outside of the "Qur’ān", the latter convention is extremely rare, to the point that "y" with "sukūn" will be unambiguously read as the diphthong , and "w" with "sukūn" will be read .
For example, the letters can be read like English "meel" or "mail", or (theoretically) also like "mayyal" or "mayil". But if a "sukūn" is added on the "y" then the "m" cannot have a "sukūn" (because two letters in a row cannot be "sukūn"ated), cannot have a "ḍammah" (because there is never an "uy" sound in Arabic unless there is another vowel after the "y"), and cannot have a "kasrah" (because "kasrah" before "sukūn"ated "y" is never found outside the "Qur’ān"), so it "must" have a "fatḥah" and the only possible pronunciation is (meaning mile, or even e-mail). By the same token, m-y-t with a "sukūn" over the "y" can be "mayt" but not "mayyit" or "meet", and m-w-t with a "sukūn" on the "w" can only be "mawt", not "moot" ("iw" is impossible when the "w" closes the syllable). Vowel marks are always written as if the "i‘rāb" vowels were in fact pronounced, even when they must be skipped in actual pronunciation. So, when writing the name "Aḥmad", it is optional to place a "sukūn" on the "ḥ", but a "sukūn" is forbidden on the "d", because it would carry a "ḍammah" if any other word followed, as in "Aḥmadu zawjī" "Ahmad is my husband".
Another example: the sentence that in correct literary Arabic must be pronounced "Aḥmadu zawjun shirrīr" "Ahmad is a wicked husband", is usually pronounced (due to influence from vernacular Arabic varieties) as "Aḥmad zawj shirrīr". Yet, for the purposes of Arabic grammar and orthography, is treated as if it were not mispronounced and as if yet another word followed it, i.e., if adding any vowel marks, they must be added as if the pronunciation were "Aḥmadu zawjun sharrīrun" with a "tanwīn" 'un' at the end. So, it is correct to add an "un" "tanwīn" sign on the final "r", but actually pronouncing it would be a hypercorrection. Also, it is never correct to write a "sukūn" on that "r", even though in actual pronunciation it is (and in correct Arabic MUST be) "sukūn"ed. Of course, if the correct "i‘rāb" is a "sukūn", it may be optionally written. The "sukūn" is also used for transliterating words into the Arabic script. The English name "Mark" is written , for example, might be written with a "sukūn" above the to signify that there is no vowel sound between that letter and the .
Additional Diacritics. These diacritics are uncommon in modern publications but are often used in Quran and some manuscripts. ٰThe alif khanjariyyah (, 'dagger ’alif') is written as short vertical stroke on top of a letter. It indicates a long sound for which ' is normally not written. For example: (') or (""). The Wasla or (, 'hamza of connection') is a variant of the letter "hamza" () resembling part of the letter () that is rarely placed over the letter ( "ʾalif al-waṣl" ()) to form () at the beginning of the word (). It indicates that the is not pronounced as a glottal stop (written as the "hamza"), but that the word is connected to the previous word (like liaison in French). Outside of vocalised liturgical texts, the is usually not written. e.g. Abdullah can be written with hamzat al-wasl on the first letter of the word but it is mostly written without it . Additional letters. Regional variations. Some letters take a traditionally different form in specific regions: Non-standard letters. Some modified letters are used to represent non-native sounds to Modern Standard Arabic. These letters are used as an optional alternative in transliterated names, loanwords and dialectal words. The usage of these letters depends on the writer and their country of origin and their usage is not mandatory.
The phoneme (considered a standard pronunciation of in Egypt, Oman, and coastal Yemen) has the highest number of variations when writing loanwords or foreign proper nouns in Literary Arabic, and it can be written with either the standard letters , , , and or with the non-standard letters (used only in Tunisia and Algeria), (used only in Morocco), and (used mainly in Iraq) for example "Golf" pronounced can be written , , , , , or depending on the writer and their country of origin. On the other hand, is considered a native phoneme in most Arabic dialects, either as a reflex of as in lower Egypt, parts of Oman and parts of Yemen (e.g. ) or as a reflex of as in most of the Arabian peninsula, Iraq, Sudan, and parts of Egypt, Levant and North Africa (e.g. ). Note: The sounds and are non-native to most Arabic dialects (excl. Anatolian Arabic where "Wolf" is pronounced vīp instead of Standard Arabic ), while , and appear as a native phoneme or allophone in many dialects. Numerals. There are two main kinds of numerals used along with Arabic text; Western Arabic numerals and Eastern Arabic numerals. In most of present-day North Africa, the usual Western Arabic numerals are used. Like Western Arabic numerals, in Eastern Arabic numerals, the units are always right-most, and the highest value left-most. Eastern Arabic numbers are written from left to right.
Letters as numerals. In addition, the Arabic alphabet can be used to represent numbers (Abjad numerals). This usage is based on the order of the alphabet. is 1, is 2, is 3, and so on until = 10, = 20, = 30, ..., = 200, ..., = 1000. This is sometimes used to produce chronograms. History. The Arabic alphabet can be traced back to the Nabataean script used to write Nabataean Aramaic. A transitional phase, between the Nabataean Aramaic script and a subsequent, recognizably Arabic script, is known as Nabataean Arabic. The pre-Islamic phase of the script as it existed in the fifth and sixth centuries, once it had become recognizably similar to the script as it came to be known in the Islamic era, is known as Paleo-Arabic. The first known text in the Arabic alphabet is a late fourth-century inscription from 50 km east of in Jordan, but the Zabad trilingual inscription is the earliest dated Arabic text from 512, and was discovered in Syria. Nevertheless, the epigraphic record is extremely sparse. Later, dots were added above and below the letters to differentiate them. (The Aramaic language had fewer phonemes than the Arabic, and some originally distinct Aramaic letters had become indistinguishable in shape, so that in the early writings 14 distinct letter-shapes had to do duty for 28 sounds; cf. the similarly ambiguous Book Pahlavi.)
The first surviving document that definitely uses these dots is also the first surviving Arabic papyrus (PERF 558), dated April 643, although they did not become obligatory until much later. Important texts were and still are frequently memorized, especially in Qurʾan memorization. Later still, vowel marks and the hamza were introduced, beginning some time in the latter half of the 7th century, preceding the first invention of Syriac and Tiberian vocalizations. Initially, this was done by a system of red dots, said to have been commissioned in the Umayyad era by Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali, a dot above = , a dot below = , a dot on the line = , and doubled dots indicated nunation. However, this was cumbersome and easily confusable with the letter-distinguishing dots, so about 100 years later, the modern system was adopted. The system was finalized around 786 by al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi. Other tributes and alphabets written in Arabic dialects. Arabic dialects were written in different alphabets before the spread of the Arabic alphabet currently in use. The most important of these alphabets and inscriptions are the Safaitic inscriptions, amounting to 30,000 inscriptions discovered in the Levant desert.
There are about 3,700 inscriptions in Hismaic in central Jordan and northwest of the Arabian Peninsula, and Nabataean inscriptions, the most important of which are the Umm al-Jimal I inscription and the Numara inscription. Arabic printing. Medieval Arabic blockprinting flourished from the 10th century until the 14th. It was devoted to tiny texts, which were usually used in amulets. In 1514, following Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in 1450, Gregorio de Gregorii, a Venetian, published an entire book of hours in Arabic script; it was entitled "Kitab Salat al-Sawa'i" and was intended for eastern Christian communities. Between 1580 and 1586, type designer Robert Granjon designed Arabic typefaces for Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici, and the Medici Oriental Press published many Christian prayer and scholarly Arabic texts in the late 16th century. Maronite monks at Monastery of Qozhaya on Mount Lebanon published the first Arabic books to use movable type in the Middle East. The monks employed Garshuni, the practice of writing Arabic using the Syriac script, usually by Christians.
Although Napoleon generally receives credit for introducing the printing press to Egypt during his invasion of the country in 1798, and though he did indeed bring printing presses and Arabic presses to print the French occupation's official newspaper "Al-Tanbiyyah" "The Courier," printing in the Arabic language had started several centuries earlier. A goldsmith (like Gutenberg) designed and implemented an Arabic script movable type printing press in the Middle East. The Lebanese Melkite monk Abdallah Zakher set up an Arabic printing press using movable type at the monastery of Saint John at the town of Dhour El Shuwayr in Mount Lebanon, the first homemade press in Lebanon using Arabic script. He cut the type molds and founded the typeface. The first book came off his press in 1734; this press continued in use until 1899. Computers. The Arabic alphabet can be encoded using several character sets, including ISO-8859-6, Windows-1256 and Unicode, the latter of which contains the "Arabic segment", entries U+0600 to U+06FF. However, none of the sets indicates the form that each character should take in context. It is left to the rendering engine to select the proper glyph to display for each character.
Each letter has a position-independent encoding in Unicode, and the rendering software can infer the correct glyph form (initial, medial, final or isolated) from its joining context. That is the current recommendation. However, for compatibility with previous standards, the initial, medial, final and isolated forms can also be encoded separately. Unicode. As of Unicode , the Arabic script is contained in the following blocks: The basic Arabic range encodes the standard letters and diacritics but does not encode contextual forms (U+0621-U+0652 being directly based on ISO 8859-6). It also includes the most common diacritics and Arabic-Indic digits. U+06D6 to U+06ED encode Qur'anic annotation signs such as "end of "ayah"" ۝ۖ and "start of "rub el hizb"" ۞. The Arabic supplement range encodes letter variants mostly used for writing African (non-Arabic) languages. The Arabic Extended-A range encodes additional Qur'anic annotations and letter variants used for various non-Arabic languages. The Arabic Presentation Forms-A range encodes contextual forms and ligatures of letter variants needed for Persian, Urdu, Sindhi and Central Asian languages. The Arabic Presentation Forms-B range encodes spacing forms of Arabic diacritics, and more contextual letter forms. The Arabic Mathematical Alphabetical Symbols block encodes characters used in Arabic mathematical expressions.
See also the notes of the section on modified letters. Keyboards. Keyboards designed for different nations have different layouts, so proficiency in one style of keyboard, such as Iraq's, does not transfer to proficiency in another, such as Saudi Arabia's. Differences can include the location of non-alphabetic characters. All Arabic keyboards allow typing Roman characters, e.g., for the URL in a web browser. Thus, each Arabic keyboard has both Arabic and Roman characters marked on the keys. Usually, the Roman characters of an Arabic keyboard conform to the QWERTY layout, but in North Africa, where French is the most common language typed using the Roman characters, the Arabic keyboards are AZERTY. To encode a particular written form of a character, there are extra code points provided in Unicode which can be used to express the exact written form desired. The range "Arabic presentation forms A" (U+FB50 to U+FDFF) contain ligatures while the range "Arabic presentation forms B" (U+FE70 to U+FEFF) contains the positional variants. These effects are better achieved in Unicode by using the "zero-width joiner" and "zero-width non-joiner", as these presentation forms are deprecated in Unicode and should generally only be used within the internals of text-rendering software; when using Unicode as an intermediate form for conversion between character encodings; or for backwards compatibility with implementations that rely on the hard-coding of glyph forms.
Finally, the Unicode encoding of Arabic is in "logical order", that is, the characters are entered, and stored in computer memory, in the order that they are written and pronounced without worrying about the direction in which they will be displayed on paper or on the screen. Again, it is left to the rendering engine to present the characters in the correct direction, using Unicode's bi-directional text features. In this regard, if the Arabic words on this page are written left to right, it is an indication that the Unicode rendering engine used to display them is out of date. There are competing online tools, e.g. Yamli editor, which allow entry of Arabic letters without having Arabic support installed on a PC, and without knowledge of the layout of the Arabic keyboard. Handwriting recognition. The first software program of its kind in the world that identifies Arabic handwriting in real time was developed by researchers at Ben-Gurion University (BGU). The prototype enables the user to write Arabic words by hand on an electronic screen, which then analyzes the text and translates it into printed Arabic letters in a thousandth of a second. The error rate is less than three percent, according to Dr. Jihad El-Sana, from BGU's department of computer sciences, who developed the system along with master's degree student Fadi Biadsy.
Angels in art Angels have appeared in works of art since early Christian art, and they have been a popular subject for Byzantine and European paintings and sculpture. Normally given wings in art, angels are usually intended, in both Christian and Islamic art, to be beautiful, though several depictions go for more awe-inspiring or frightening attributes, notably in the depiction of the living creatures (which have bestial characteristics), ophanim (which are wheels) and cherubim (which have mosaic features); As a matter of theology, they are spiritual beings who do not eat or excrete and are genderless. Many historical depictions of angels may appear to the modern eye to be gendered as either male or female by their dress or actions, but until the 19th century, even the most female looking will normally lack breasts, and the figures should normally be considered as genderless. In 19th-century art, especially funerary art, this traditional convention is sometimes abandoned. The lack of gender was to enable these winged creatures to be relatable to both genders.
Christian art. In the early Church. Specific ideas regarding how to portray angels began to develop in the early Church. Since angels are defined as pure spirits, the lack of a defined form has allowed artists wide latitude for creativity. Daniel 8:15 describes Gabriel as appearing in the "likeness of man" and in Daniel 9:21 he is referred to as "the man Gabriel." Such anthropomorphic descriptions of an angel are consistent with previous descriptions of angels, as in Genesis 19:5. They were usually depicted in the form of young men. The earliest known Christian image of an angel, in the "Cubicolo dell'Annunziazione" in the Catacomb of Priscilla, which is dated to the middle of the third century, is a depiction of the Annunciation in which Gabriel is portrayed without wings. Representations of angels on sarcophagi and on objects such as lamps and reliquaries of that period also show them without wings, as for example the angel in the "Sacrifice of Isaac" scene in the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus. In a third-century fresco of the Hebrew children in the furnace, in the cemetery of St. Priscilla, a dove takes the place of the angel, while a fourth-century representation of the same subject, in the coemeterium maius, substitutes the Hand of God for the heavenly messenger.
The earliest known representation of angels with wings is on what is called the Prince's Sarcophagus, discovered at Sarigüzel, near Istanbul, in the 1930s, and attributed to the time of Theodosius I (379–395). Flying winged angels, very often in pairs flanking a central figure or subject, are derivations in visual terms from pairs of winged Victories in classical art. In this same period, Saint John Chrysostom explained the significance of angels' wings: "They manifest a nature's sublimity. That is why Gabriel is represented with wings. Not that angels have wings, but that you may know that they leave the heights and the most elevated dwelling to approach human nature. Accordingly, the wings attributed to these powers have no other meaning than to indicate the sublimity of their nature." From then on Christian art generally represented angels with wings, as in the cycle of mosaics in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore (432–440). Multi-winged angels, often with only their face and wings showing, drawn from the higher grades of angels, especially cherubim and seraphim, are derived from Persian art, and are usually shown only in heavenly contexts, as opposed to performing tasks on Earth. They often appear in the pendentives of domes or semi-domes of churches.
Byzantine art. Angels appear in Byzantine art in mosaics and icons. Artists found some of their inspiration from winged Greek figures such as "Victory". They also drew from imperial iconography. Court eunuchs could rise to positions of authority in the Empire. They performed ceremonial functions and served as trusted messengers. Amelia R. Brown points out that legislation under Justinian indicates that many of them came from the Caucasus, having light eyes, hair, and skin, as well as the "comely features and fine bodies" desired by slave traders. Those "castrated in childhood developed a distinctive skeletal structure, lacked full masculine musculature, body hair and beards..." As officials, they would wear a white tunic decorated with gold. Brown suggests that "Byzantine artists drew, consciously or not, on this iconography of the court eunuch". Daniel 10: 5–6 describes an angel as clothed in linen and girt with gold. Angels, especially the archangel Michael, who were depicted as military-style agents of God, came to be shown wearing Late Antique military uniform. This could be either the normal military dress, with a tunic to about the knees, armour breastplate and pteruges, but also often the specific dress of the bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperor, with a long tunic and the "loros", a long gold and jewelled pallium restricted to the Imperial family and their closest guards, and in icons to archangels. The basic military dress it is still worn in pictures into the Baroque period and beyond in the West, and up to the present day in Eastern Orthodox icons. Other angels came to be conventionally depicted in long robes.
Medieval art. Medieval depictions of angels borrow from the Byzantine. In the French "Hours of Anne of Brittany", Gabriel wears a dalmatic. In the later Middle Ages they often wear the vestments of a deacon, a cope over a dalmatic, especially Gabriel in Annunciation scenes – for example "The Annunciation" by Jan van Eyck. This indicated that, for all their powers, they could not perform the Eucharist, and were in this respect outranked by every priest, reinforcing the prestige of the clergy. In Early Christian art white robes were almost invariably adopted, sometimes bound with the "golden girdle" of Revelation. During the mediæval period senior angels were often clad in every brilliant colour, while junior ranks wore white. Early Renaissance painters such as Jan van Eyck and Fra Angelico painted angels with multi-colored wings. Depictions of angels came to combine medieval notions of beauty with feminine ideals of grace and beauty, as in da Panicale's 1435 "Baptism of Christ". Renaissance art. The classical "erotes" or "putto" re-appeared in art during the Italian Renaissance in both religious and mythological art, and is often known in English as a cherub, the singular of cherubim, actually one of the higher ranks in the Christian angelic hierarchy. They normally appear in groups and are generally given wings in religious art, and are sometimes represented as just a winged head. They generally are just in attendance, except that they may be amusing Christ or John the Baptist as infants in scenes of the Holy Family.
The classic example of Renaissance art showing Erotes is the depiction of Eros and Cupid. In the Greek mythology, Eros and his Roman counterpart Cupid, are winged and have arrows they use to manipulate people to fall in love. Victorian art. In the late 19th century artists' model Jane Burden Morris came to embody an ideal of beauty for Pre-Raphaelite painters. With the use of her long dark hair and features made somewhat more androgynous, they created a prototype Victorian angel which would appear in paintings and stained glass windows. Roger Homan notes that Edward Burne-Jones and others used her image often and in different ways, creating a new type of angel. Modern art. Angels continued to be depicted in the 20th century. One example is the large mosaic mural "Angels of the Heavenly Host" in St Paul's, Bow Common, created during 1963–68 by Charles Lutyens. Islamic art. Angels in Islamic art often appear in illustrated manuscripts of Muhammad's life. Other common depictions of angels in Islamic art include angels with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, angels discerning the saved from the damned on the Day of Judgement, and angels as a repeating motif in borders or textiles. Islamic depictions of angels resemble winged Christian angels, although Islamic angels are typically shown with multicolored wings. Angels, such as the archangel Gabriel, are typically depicted as masculine, which is consistent with God's rejection of feminine depictions of angels in several verses of Quran. Nevertheless, later depictions of angels in Islamic art are more feminine and androgynous.
Angels in manuscripts. The 13th-century book "Ajā'ib al-makhlūqāt wa gharā'ib al-mawjūdāt" "(The Wonders of Creation)" by Zakariya al-Qazwini describes Islamic angelology, and is often illustrated with many images of angels. The angels are typically depicted with bright, vivid colors, giving them unusual liveliness and other-worldly translucence. While some angels are referred to as "Guardians of the Kingdom of God," others are associated with hell. An undated manuscript of "The Wonders of Creation" from the Bavarian State Library in Munich includes depictions of angels both alone and alongside humans and animals. Angels are also illustrated in Timurid and Ottoman manuscripts, such as "The Timurid Book of the Prophet Muhammad’s Ascension" () and the "Siyer-i Nebi". Angels in heaven and hell. The Qur’an makes multiple references to angels. These angels take on both active and passive roles in Quranic stories. In the story of the creation of Adam, God announces to the angels that he intends to create man. The angels act as witnesses to this announcement and subsequent creation of Adam. Although there are many versions of the story, Islamic sources relate that God used the creation of Adam as a punishment or test for the angels. Therefore, the role of angels is often described as in opposition to man.
Another angel-like creature mentioned in the Qu’ran (4:97, 32:11) is the "zabāniya." A "zabāniya" is a black angel of hell that brings souls of sinners down to hell to punish them and can be seen in illustrations of "The Timurid Book of the Prophet Muhammad’s Ascension" (c. 1436 A.D.). There are nineteen "zabāniya," led by "Mālik", an angel considered to be the master of fire or the gatekeeper of hell"." "Mālik's" and "zabāniya's" categorizations as angels are debated as some believe they are better described as spirits or demons. Actually, portrayal of "Zabaniyya" shares many traits characteristical for demons in Islamic arts. As seen in "The Timurid Book of the Prophet Muhammad’s Ascension," Muhammad is greeted by "Mālik" and later witnesses the torture of sinners carried out by the "zabāniya." Similar, the fallen angel Iblis is shown during his moment of refusal to prostrate himself before the newly created Adam, leading to his banishment to the bottom of hell. He is depicted as a black-skinned monstrous creature with horns and flaming eyes, in contrast to the presentation of the noble angels. Only his wings remain as a sign of his former angelic status, however with burned edges.
Angels associated with Muhammad. Although depictions of Muhammad are often forbidden, the few that exist often include images of angels. Specifically, the Archangel Gabriel is frequently shown alongside Muhammad. For example, in "The Timurid Book of the Prophet Muhammad’s Ascension", the Archangel Gabriel appears to Muhammad in Mecca to announce his ascension. Kneeling before Muhammad, Gabriel is shown with colorful wings and a crown. Later in "The Timurid Book," Muhammad is shown with Gabriel meeting a group of angels in heaven. In the "Jami' al-tawarikh", a Persian history from the 14th century, Muhammad is depicted beside al-Buraq, whose tail is transformed into an angel, while two other angels approach. A 16th-century Ottoman manuscript of "Siyer-i Nebi", a Turkish epic about the life of Muhammad, also includes many depictions of Muhammad alongside angels. Jewish art. Mainstream Rabbinic Judaism discourages focus from being placed on angels due to fears about idolatry and a desire to curtail any inclinations to polytheism. As such, many Jews do not make or display artworks of angels. However, such art does exist, and has been consistently made throughout Rabbinic history, for example as in the Dura Europos synagogue, where wingless humanoid angels dressed like Persians appear, as well as winged humanoids. Overall, if angel art is popular in a time and place, there will be Jewish art that depicts angels as well. Contemporary resistance and ignorance regarding angels in Judaism, and specifically in Jewish art, may partially stem from the current strong association between angels and Christianity.
Sanoi, Sansoni, and Samanglif (also spelled Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof) are three angels that protect newborns. Depictions of them as small, non-human creatures occur on amulets and have had a small resurgence in popularity in recent years. They are associated with the Alphabet of Ben Sira, where they attempt to retrieve Lilith after she flees from Adam. When they cannot, they make her promise not to harm newborns if they are protecting them. The use of their names in amulets for children predates the story, and that was likely intended to explain an existing custom. Cherubim in their classic Jewish description are typically creatures with features of a human, lion, bird, and cattle in some combination. The variety of imagery here was common in the Ancient Near East, and draws on that of the lamassu. The name cherub may come from that connection. It also draws on the imagery of the sphinx. The descriptions of cherubim overall vary. Similarly, the imagery used for seraphim derives from the uraeus, which appeared in ancient carvings from Judah. It particularly occurred on seals, where it was invoked as a protective symbol.
While winged humanoid angels are strongly associated with Christianity, some academics argue that rather than Judaism occasionally adopting this imagery from Christianity, Christianity adopted it from Judaism. In text, humanoid beings with wings and no other unusual features appear as early as the writing of Zechariah 5:5–11. The most common wings are feathered, but occasionally winged humanoid angels in Jewish art have been depicted with butterfly wings. Winged angels are sometimes also depicted with halos. Angels are sometimes depicted as birds without human features. Humanoid angels appear in Ethiopian Jewish art traditions, which are traditionally non-Rabbinic. Many well-known pop culture depictions of angels in the West come from the work of Jewish writers. Precursors. Assyrian. The use of winged angels in art spans several millennia and cuts across multiple cultures, with each culture associating these ethereal figures with various aspects. For instance, in the ancient Assyrian culture, there was a protective deity labelled lamassu. A lamassu is a hybrid figure that contains part human on the head, part bovine lion on the body, and enormous wings with feathers, completing the bird aspect of the deity.
Ancient Greece. Ancient Greek mythology has been an integral part of art, serving as an inspiration to a large number of concepts in art. The culture had a winged figure, Ero, the son of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who became Cupid in the Roman Empire The Greek mythology associates Erotes with love and desire. While they are perceived as heavenly creatures, they contain power that can make a person fall in love based on their enchantments. The majority of ancient artwork portrayed Eros as being a slender yet well-built man wielding enormous sexual power. While Eros was not a popular figure in the classical period, the arrival of the Hellenistic period raised him back to prominence. The popularization of Erotes arises from the normalization of the Roman counterpart, Cupid, who has a bow and arrow that he uses to make people fall in love. The majority of people who observe Valentines Day have or utilize stories related to Cupid and Eros. The classical "erotes" or "putto" re-appeared in art during the Italian Renaissance in both religious and mythological art, and is often known in English as a cherub, the singular of cherubim, actually one of the higher ranks in the Christian angelic hierarchy. They normally appear in groups and are generally given wings in religious art, and are sometimes represented as just a winged head. They generally are just in attendance, except that they may be amusing Christ or John the Baptist as infants in scenes of the Holy Family
The Greek mythology associates Erotes with love and desire. While they are perceived as heavenly creatures, they contain power that can make a person fall in love based on their enchantments. According to Greek mythology, Eros was associated with Gaia, mother earth goddess. The majority of ancient artwork portrayed Eros as being a slender yet well-built man wielding enormous sexual power. While Eros was not a popular figure in the classical period, the arrival of the Hellenistic period raised him back to prominence. The popularization of Erotes arises from the normalization of the Roman counterpart, Cupid, who has a bow and arrow that he uses to make people fall in love. The majority of people who observe Valentines Day have or utilize stories related to Cupid and Eros. Eros or Cupid uses his arrow to manipulate people through the power of love, making his role as a god an intriguing one.
Arctic fox The Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus), also known as the white fox, polar fox, or snow fox, is a small species of fox native to the Arctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere and common throughout the Arctic tundra biome. It is well adapted to living in cold environments, and is best known for its thick, warm fur that is also used as camouflage. It has a large and very fluffy tail. In the wild, most individuals do not live past their first year but some exceptional ones survive up to 11 years. Its body length ranges from , with a generally rounded body shape to minimize the escape of body heat. The Arctic fox preys on many small creatures such as lemmings, voles, ringed seal pups, fish, waterfowl, and seabirds. It also eats carrion, berries, seaweed, and insects and other small invertebrates. Arctic foxes form monogamous pairs during the breeding season and they stay together to raise their young in complex underground dens. Occasionally, other family members may assist in raising their young. Natural predators of the Arctic fox are golden eagles, Arctic wolves, polar bears, wolverines, red foxes, and grizzly bears.
Behavior. Arctic foxes must endure a temperature difference of up to between the external environment and their internal core temperature. To prevent heat loss, the Arctic fox curls up tightly tucking its legs and head under its body and behind its furry tail. This position gives the fox the smallest surface area to volume ratio and protects the least insulated areas. Arctic foxes also stay warm by getting out of the wind and residing in their dens. Although the Arctic foxes are active year-round and do not hibernate, they attempt to preserve fat by reducing their locomotor activity. They build up their fat reserves in the autumn, sometimes increasing their body weight by more than 50%. This provides greater insulation during the winter and a source of energy when food is scarce. Reproduction. In the spring, the Arctic fox's attention switches to reproduction and a home for their potential offspring. They live in large dens in frost-free, slightly raised ground. These are complex systems of tunnels covering as much as and are often in eskers, long ridges of sedimentary material deposited in formerly glaciated regions. These dens may be in existence for many decades and are used by many generations of foxes.
Arctic foxes tend to select dens that are easily accessible with many entrances, and that are clear from snow and ice making it easier to burrow in. The Arctic fox builds and chooses dens that face southward towards the sun, which makes the den warmer. Arctic foxes prefer large, maze-like dens for predator evasion and a quick escape especially when red foxes are in the area. Natal dens are typically found in rugged terrain, which may provide more protection for the pups. But, the parents will also relocate litters to nearby dens to avoid predators. When red foxes are not in the region, Arctic foxes will use dens that the red fox previously occupied. Shelter quality is more important to the Arctic fox than the proximity of spring prey to a den. The main prey of the Arctic fox in the tundra are lemmings, which is why the white fox is often called the "lemming fox". The white fox's reproduction rates reflect the lemming population density, which cyclically fluctuates every 3–5 years. When lemmings are abundant, the white fox can give birth to 18 pups, but they often do not reproduce when food is scarce. The "coastal fox" or blue fox lives in an environment where food availability is relatively consistent, and they will have up to 5 pups every year.
Breeding usually takes place in April and May, and the gestation period is about 52 days. Litters may contain as many as 25 (the largest litter size in the order Carnivora). The young emerge from the den when 3 to 4 weeks old and are weaned by 9 weeks of age. Arctic foxes are primarily monogamous and both parents will care for the offspring. When predators and prey are abundant, Arctic foxes are more likely to be promiscuous (exhibited in both males and females) and display more complex social structures. Larger packs of foxes consisting of breeding or non-breeding males or females can guard a single territory more proficiently to increase pup survival. When resources are scarce, competition increases and the number of foxes in a territory decreases. On the coasts of Svalbard, the frequency of complex social structures is larger than inland foxes that remain monogamous due to food availability. In Scandinavia, there are more complex social structures compared to other populations due to the presence of the red fox. Also, conservationists are supplying the declining population with supplemental food. One unique case, however, is Iceland where monogamy is the most prevalent. The older offspring (1-year-olds) often remain within their parent's territory even though predators are absent and there are fewer resources, which may indicate kin selection in the fox.
Diet. Arctic foxes generally eat any small animal they can find, including lemmings, voles, other rodents, hares, birds, eggs, fish, and carrion. They scavenge on carcasses left by larger predators such as wolves and polar bears, and in times of scarcity also eat their feces. In areas where they are present, lemmings are their most common prey, and a family of foxes can eat dozens of lemmings each day. In some locations in northern Canada, a high seasonal abundance of migrating birds that breed in the area may provide an important food source. On the coast of Iceland and other islands, their diet consists predominantly of birds. During April and May, the Arctic fox also preys on ringed seal pups when the young animals are confined to a snow den and are relatively helpless. They also consume berries and seaweed, so they may be considered omnivores. This fox is a significant bird-egg predator, consuming eggs of all except the largest tundra bird species. Arctic foxes survive harsh winters and food scarcity by either hoarding food or storing body fat subcutaneously and viscerally. At the beginning of winter, one Arctic fox has approximately 14740 kJ of energy storage from fat alone. Using the lowest BMR value measured in Arctic foxes, an average sized fox of would need 471 kJ/day during the winter to survive. In Canada, Arctic foxes acquire from snow goose eggs at a rate of 2.7–7.3 eggs/h and store 80–97% of them. Scats provide evidence that they eat the eggs during the winter after caching. Isotope analysis shows that eggs can still be eaten after a year, and the metabolizable energy of a stored goose egg only decreases by 11% after 60 days; a fresh egg has about 816 kJ. Eggs stored in the summer are accessed the following spring prior to reproduction.
Adaptations. The Arctic fox lives in some of the most frigid extremes on the planet, but they do not start to shiver until the temperature drops to . Among its adaptations for survival in the cold is its dense, multilayered pelage, which provides excellent insulation. Additionally, the Arctic fox is the only canid whose foot pads are covered in fur. There are two genetically distinct coat color morphs: white and blue. The white morph has seasonal camouflage, white in winter and brown along the back with light grey around the abdomen in summer. The blue morph is often a dark blue, brown, or grey color year-round. Although the blue allele is dominant over the white allele, 99% of the Arctic fox population is the white morph. Two similar mutations to MC1R cause the blue color and the lack of seasonal color change. The fur of the Arctic fox provides the best insulation of any mammal. The Arctic fox has a low surface area to volume ratio, as evidenced by its generally compact body shape, short muzzle and legs, and short, thick ears. Since less of its surface area is exposed to the Arctic cold, less heat escapes from its body.
Sensory modalities. The Arctic fox has a functional hearing range between 125 Hz–16 kHz with a sensitivity that is ≤ 60 dB in air, and an average peak sensitivity of 24 dB at 4 kHz. Overall, the Arctic foxes hearing is less sensitive than the dog and the kit fox. The Arctic fox and the kit fox have a low upper-frequency limit compared to the domestic dog and other carnivores. The Arctic fox can easily hear lemmings burrowing under 4-5 inches of snow. When it has located its prey, it pounces and punches through the snow to catch its prey. The Arctic fox also has a keen sense of smell. They can smell carcasses that are often left by polar bears anywhere from . It is possible that they use their sense of smell to also track down polar bears. Additionally, Arctic foxes can smell and find frozen lemmings under of snow, and can detect a subnivean seal lair under of snow. Physiology. The Arctic fox contains advantageous genes to overcome extreme cold and starvation periods. Transcriptome sequencing has identified two genes that are under positive selection: Glycolipid transfer protein domain containing 1 (GLTPD1) and V-akt murine thymoma viral oncogene homolog 2 (AKT2). GLTPD1 is involved in the fatty acid metabolism, while AKT2 pertains to the glucose metabolism and insulin signaling.
The average mass specific BMR and total BMR are 37% and 27% lower in the winter than the summer. The Arctic fox decreases its BMR via metabolic depression in the winter to conserve fat storage and minimize energy requirements. According to the most recent data, the lower critical temperature of the Arctic fox is at in the winter and in the summer. It was commonly believed that the Arctic fox had a lower critical temperature below . However, some scientists have concluded that this statistic is not accurate since it was never tested using the proper equipment. About 22% of the total body surface area of the Arctic fox dissipates heat readily compared to red foxes at 33%. The regions that have the greatest heat loss are the nose, ears, legs, and feet, which is useful in the summer for thermal heat regulation. Also, the Arctic fox has a beneficial mechanism in their nose for evaporative cooling like dogs, which keeps the brain cool during the summer and exercise. The thermal conductivity of Arctic fox fur in the summer and winter is the same; however, the thermal conductance of the Arctic fox in the winter is lower than the summer since fur thickness increases by 140%. In the summer, the thermal conductance of the Arctic foxes body is 114% higher than the winter, but their body core temperature is constant year-round.
One way that Arctic foxes regulate their body temperature is by utilizing a countercurrent heat exchange in the blood of their legs. Arctic foxes can constantly keep their feet above the tissue freezing point () when standing on cold substrates without losing mobility or feeling pain. They do this by increasing vasodilation and blood flow to a capillary rete in the pad surface, which is in direct contact with the snow rather than the entire foot. They selectively vasoconstrict blood vessels in the center of the foot pad, which conserves energy and minimizes heat loss. Arctic foxes maintain the temperature in their paws independently from the core temperature. If the core temperature drops, the pad of the foot will remain constantly above the tissue freezing point. Size. The average head-and-body length of the male is , with a range of , while the female averages with a range of . In some regions, no difference in size is seen between males and females. The tail is about long in both sexes. The height at the shoulder is . On average males weigh , with a range of , while females average , with a range of .
Taxonomy. "Vulpes lagopus" is a 'true fox' belonging to the genus "Vulpes" of the fox tribe Vulpini, which consists of 12 extant species. It is classified under the subfamily Caninae of the canid family Canidae. Although it has previously been assigned to its own monotypic genus "Alopex", recent genetic evidence now places it in the genus "Vulpes" along with the majority of other foxes. It was originally described by Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of "Systema Naturae" in 1758 as "Canis lagopus". The type specimen was recovered from Lapland, Sweden. The generic name "vulpes" is Latin for "fox". The specific name "lagopus" is derived from Ancient Greek λαγώς ("lagōs", "hare") and πούς ("pous", "foot"), referring to the hair on its feet similar to those found in cold-climate species of hares. Looking at the most recent phylogeny, the Arctic fox and the red fox ("Vulpes vulpes") diverged approximately 3.17MYA. Additionally, the Arctic fox diverged from its sister group, the kit fox ("Vulpes macrotis"), at about 0.9MYA.
Origins. The origins of the Arctic fox have been described by the "out of Tibet" hypothesis. On the Tibetan Plateau, fossils of the extinct ancestral Arctic fox ("Vulpes qiuzhudingi") from the early Pliocene (5.08–3.6 MYA) were found along with many other precursors of modern mammals that evolved during the Pliocene (5.3–2.6 MYA). It is believed that this ancient fox is the ancestor of the modern Arctic fox. Globally, the Pliocene was about 2–3 °C warmer than today, and the Arctic during the summer in the mid-Pliocene was 8 °C warmer. By using stable carbon and oxygen isotope analysis of fossils, researchers claim that the Tibetan Plateau experienced tundra-like conditions during the Pliocene and harbored cold-adapted mammals that later spread to North America and Eurasia during the Pleistocene Epoch (2.6 million-11,700 years ago). Subspecies. Besides the nominate subspecies, the common Arctic fox, "V. l. lagopus", four other subspecies of this fox have been described: Distribution and habitat. The Arctic fox has a circumpolar distribution and occurs in Arctic tundra habitats in northern Europe, northern Asia, and North America. Its range includes Greenland, Iceland, Fennoscandia, Svalbard, Jan Mayen (where it was hunted to extinction) and other islands in the Barents Sea, northern Russia, islands in the Bering Sea, Alaska, and Canada as far south as Hudson Bay. In the late 19th century, it was introduced into the Aleutian Islands southwest of Alaska. However, the population on the Aleutian Islands is currently being eradicated in conservation efforts to preserve the local bird population. It mostly inhabits tundra and pack ice, but is also present in Canadian boreal forests (northeastern Alberta, northern Saskatchewan, northern Manitoba, Northern Ontario, Northern Quebec, and Newfoundland and Labrador) and the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. They are found at elevations up to above sea level and have been seen on sea ice close to the North Pole.
The Arctic fox is the only land mammal native to Iceland. It came to the isolated North Atlantic island at the end of the last ice age, walking over the frozen sea. The Arctic Fox Center in Súðavík contains an exhibition on the Arctic fox and conducts studies on the influence of tourism on the population. Its range during the last ice age was much more extensive than it is now, and fossil remains of the Arctic fox have been found over much of northern Europe and Siberia. The color of the fox's coat also determines where they are most likely to be found. The white morph mainly lives inland and blends in with the snowy tundra, while the blue morph occupies the coasts because its dark color blends in with the cliffs and rocks. Migrations and travel. During the winter, 95.5% of Arctic foxes utilize commuting trips, which remain within the fox's home range. Commuting trips in Arctic foxes last less than 3 days and occur between 0–2.9 times a month. Nomadism is found in 3.4% of the foxes, and loop migrations (where the fox travels to a new range, then returns to its home range) are the least common at 1.1%. Arctic foxes in Canada that undergo nomadism and migrations voyage from the Canadian archipelago to Greenland and northwestern Canada. The duration and distance traveled between males and females is not significantly different.
Arctic foxes closer to goose colonies (located at the coasts) are less likely to migrate. Meanwhile, foxes experiencing low-density lemming populations are more likely to make sea ice trips. Residency is common in the Arctic fox population so that they can maintain their territories. Migratory foxes have a mortality rate >3 times higher than resident foxes. Nomadic behavior becomes more common as the foxes age. In July 2019, the Norwegian Polar Institute reported the story of a yearling female which was fitted with a GPS tracking device and then released by their researchers on the east coast of Spitsbergen in the Svalbard group of islands. The young fox crossed the polar ice from the islands to Greenland in 21 days, a distance of . She then moved on to Ellesmere Island in northern Canada, covering a total recorded distance of in 76 days, before her GPS tracker stopped working. She averaged just over a day, and managed as much as in a single day. Conservation status. The Arctic fox has been assessed as least concern on the IUCN Red List since 2004. However, the Scandinavian mainland population is acutely endangered, despite being legally protected from hunting and persecution for several decades. The estimate of the adult population in all of Norway, Sweden, and Finland is fewer than 200 individuals. Of these, especially in Finland, the Arctic fox is even classified as critically endangered, because even though the animal was declared a protected species in Finland in 1940, the population has not recovered despite that. As a result, the populations of Arctic fox have been carefully studied and inventoried in places such as the Vindelfjällens Nature Reserve (Sweden), which has the Arctic fox as its symbol.
The abundance of the Arctic fox tends to fluctuate in a cycle along with the population of lemmings and voles (a 3- to 4-year cycle). The populations are especially vulnerable during the years when the prey population crashes, and uncontrolled trapping has almost eradicated two subpopulations. The pelts of Arctic foxes with a slate-blue coloration were especially valuable. They were transported to various previously fox-free Aleutian Islands during the 1920s. The program was successful in terms of increasing the population of blue foxes, but their predation of Aleutian Canada geese conflicted with the goal of preserving that species. The Arctic fox is losing ground to the larger red fox. This has been attributed to climate change—the camouflage value of its lighter coat decreases with less snow cover. Red foxes dominate where their ranges begin to overlap by killing Arctic foxes and their kits. An alternative explanation of the red fox's gains involves the gray wolf. Historically, it has kept red fox numbers down, but as the wolf has been hunted to near extinction in much of its former range, the red fox population has grown larger, and it has taken over the niche of top predator. In areas of northern Europe, programs are in place that allow the hunting of red foxes in the Arctic fox's previous range.
As with many other game species, the best sources of historical and large-scale population data are hunting bag records and questionnaires. Several potential sources of error occur in such data collections. In addition, numbers vary widely between years due to the large population fluctuations. However, the total population of the Arctic fox must be in the order of several hundred thousand animals. The world population of Arctic foxes is thus not endangered, but two Arctic fox subpopulations are. One is on Medny Island (Commander Islands, Russia), which was reduced by some 85–90%, to around 90 animals, as a result of mange caused by an ear tick introduced by dogs in the 1970s. The population is currently under treatment with antiparasitic drugs, but the result is still uncertain. The other threatened population is the one in Fennoscandia (Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Kola Peninsula). This population decreased drastically around the start of the 20th century as a result of extreme fur prices, which caused severe hunting also during population lows. The population has remained at a low density for more than 90 years, with additional reductions during the last decade. The total population estimate for 1997 is around 60 adults in Sweden, 11 adults in Finland, and 50 in Norway. From Kola, there are indications of a similar situation, suggesting a population of around 20 adults. The Fennoscandian population thus numbers around 140 breeding adults. Even after local lemming peaks, the Arctic fox population tends to collapse back to levels dangerously close to nonviability. The Arctic fox is classed as a "prohibited new organism" under New Zealand's Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996, preventing it from being imported into the country.
Anglo-Saxon (disambiguation) Anglo-Saxons were Germanic tribes that settled in early medieval England. These Anglo-Saxons are also referred to under the names of two notable groups of tribes: Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Saxons may also refer to:
Folklore of the United States American folklore encompasses the folklore that has evolved in the present-day United States mostly since the European colonization of the Americas. It also contains folklore that dates back to the Pre-Columbian era. Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales, stories, tall tales, and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. Native American folk. Native American cultures are rich in myths and legends that explain natural phenomena and the relationship between humans and the spirit world. According to Barre Toelken, feathers, beadwork, dance steps and music, the events in a story, the shape of a dwelling, or items of traditional food can be viewed as icons of cultural meaning. Native American cultures are numerous and diverse. Though some neighboring cultures hold similar beliefs, others can be quite different from one another. The most common myths are the creation myths, which tell a story to explain how the earth was formed and where humans and other beings came from. Others may include explanations about the Sun, Moon, constellations, specific animals, seasons, and weather. This is one of the ways that many tribes have kept, and continue to keep, their cultures alive; these stories are told as a way of preserving and transmitting the nation, tribe, or band's particular beliefs, history, customs, spirituality, and traditional way of life. According to Barre Toelken, "Stories not only entertain but also embody Native behavioral and ethical values."
Although individual tribes have their own sacred beliefs and myths, many stories have much in common. Myths about floods are almost universal amongst Plains tribes, stories of a flooded earth being restored. There are many "hero stories" immortalising the adventures of heroes with supernatural powers, who right wrongs and defeat evils. Animal tales are common, some explaining how features of certain animals occurred, some using animal characters for narration, and others using animals symbolically. There are also myths where supernatural beings appear in the form of animals, with the bear, elk, eagle, owl, and snake frequently referred to. Founding myths. The founding of the United States is often surrounded by national myths, legends, and tall tales. Many stories have developed since the founding long ago to become a part of America's folklore and cultural awareness, and non-Native American folklore especially includes any narrative which has contributed to the shaping of American culture and belief systems. These narratives have varying levels of historical accuracy; the veracity of the stories is not a determining factor.
Christopher Columbus. Christopher Columbus, as a hero and symbol to the then-immigrants, is an important figure in the body of American myth. His status, not unlike most American icons, is representative not of his own accomplishments, but the self-perception of the society which chose him as a hero. Having effected a separation from England and its cultural icons, the United States was left without history—or heroes on which to base a shared sense of their social selves. Washington Irving was instrumental in popularizing Columbus. His version of Columbus' life, published in 1829, was more a romance than a biography. The book was very popular, and contributed to an image of the discoverer as a solitary individual who challenged the unknown sea, as triumphant Americans contemplated the dangers and promise of their own wilderness frontier. As a consequence of his vision and audacity, there was now a land free from kings, a vast continent for new beginnings. In the years following the Revolution the poetic device "Columbia" was used as a symbol of both Columbus and America. King's College of New York changed its name in 1792 to Columbia, and the new capital in Washington was subtitled District of Columbia.
Jamestown. In May 1607, the Susan Constant, the Discovery, and the Godspeed sailed through Chesapeake Bay and thirty miles up the James River settlers built Jamestown, Virginia, England's first permanent colony. Too late in the season to plant crops, many were not accustomed to manual labor. Within a few months, some settlers died of famine and disease. Only thirty-eight made it through their first year in the New World. Captain John Smith, a pirate turned gentleman, turned the settlers into foragers and successful traders with the Native Americans, who taught the English how to plant corn and other crops. Smith led expeditions to explore the regions surrounding Jamestown, and it was during one of these that the chief of the Powhatan Native Americans captured Smith. According to an account Smith published in 1624, he was going to be put to death until the chief's daughter, Pocahontas, saved him. From this, the legend of Pocahontas sprang forth, becoming part of American folklore, children's books, and movies.
Plymouth. Plymouth Rock is the traditional site of disembarkation of William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims who founded Plymouth Colony in 1620, and an important symbol in American history. There are no contemporary references to the Pilgrims' landing on a rock at Plymouth. The first written reference to the Pilgrims landing on a rock is found 121 years after they landed. The Rock, or one traditionally identified as it, has long been memorialized on the shore of Plymouth Harbor in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The holiday of Thanksgiving is said to have begun with the Pilgrims in 1621. They had come to America to escape religious persecution, but then nearly starved to death. Some friendly Native Americans, including Squanto, helped the Pilgrims survive through the first winter. The perseverance of the Pilgrims is celebrated during the annual Thanksgiving festival. Revolutionary War figures. George Washington. George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799), the country's first president, is the most preeminent of American historical and folkloric figures, as he holds the place of "Pater Patriae". Apocryphal stories about Washington's childhood include a claim that he skipped a silver dollar across the Rappahannock River at Ferry Farm. Another tale claims that as a young child, Washington chopped down his father's cherry tree. His angry father confronted the young Washington, who proclaimed "I cannot tell a lie" and admitted to the transgression, thus illuminating his honesty. Parson Mason Locke Weems mentions the first citation of this legend in his 1806 book, "The Life of George Washington: With Curious Anecdotes, Equally Honorable to Himself and Exemplary to His Young Countrymen". This anecdote cannot be independently verified. Samuel Clemens, also known as Mark Twain, is also known to have spread the story while lecturing, personalizing it by adding "I have a higher and greater standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie but I won't."
Patrick Henry. Patrick Henry (May 29, 1736 – June 6, 1799) was an attorney, planter and politician who became known as an orator during the movement for independence in Virginia in the 1770s. Patrick Henry is best known for the speech he made in the House of Burgesses on March 23, 1775, in Saint John's Church in Richmond, Virginia. With the House undecided on whether to mobilize for military action against the encroaching British military force, Henry argued in favor of mobilization. Forty-two years later, Henry's first biographer, William Wirt, working from oral histories, tried to reconstruct what Henry said. According to Wirt, Henry ended his speech with words that have since become immortalized: "I know not what course others may take; but as for me, Give me Liberty, or give me Death!" The crowd, by Wirt's account, jumped up and shouted "To Arms! To Arms!". For 160 years Wirt's account was taken at face value. In the 1970s, historians began to question the authenticity of Wirt's reconstruction. Betsy Ross.
Betsy Ross (January 1, 1752 – January 30, 1836) is widely credited with making the first American flag. There is, however, no credible historical evidence that the story is true. Research conducted by the National Museum of American History notes that the story of Betsy Ross making the first American flag for General George Washington entered into American consciousness about the time of the 1876 centennial celebrations. In the 2008 book "The Star-Spangled Banner: The Making of an American Icon", Smithsonian experts point out that accounts of the event appealed to Americans eager for stories about the revolution and its heroes and heroines. Betsy Ross was promoted as a patriotic role model for young girls and a symbol of women's contributions to American history. Other Revolutionary War heroes who became figures of American folklore include: Benedict Arnold, Benjamin Franklin, Nathan Hale, John Hancock, John Paul Jones and Francis Marion. Tall tales. The tall tale is a fundamental element of American folk literature. The tall tale's origins are seen in the bragging contests that often occurred when men of the American frontier gathered. A tall tale is a story with unbelievable elements, relayed as if it were true and factual. Some such stories are exaggerations of actual events; others are completely fictional tales set in a familiar setting, such as the American Old West, or the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. They are usually humorous or good-natured. The line between myth and tall tale is distinguished primarily by age; many myths exaggerate the exploits of their heroes, but in tall tales, the exaggeration looms large, to the extent of becoming the whole of the story.
Based on historical figures. Other historical figures include Titanic survivor Molly Brown, Gunslinging Outlaw Billy The Kid, Wild West showman Buffalo Bill Cody, and sharpshooter Annie Oakley. Legendary and folkloric creatures. Other folkloric creatures include the Chupacabra, Jackalope, the Nain Rouge of Detroit, Michigan, the Hide-behind, Wendigo of Minnesota and Chessie, a legendary sea monster said to live in Chesapeake Bay. Literature. Santa Claus, also known as Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, or simply "Santa", is a figure with legendary, mythical, historical and folkloric origins. The modern figure of Santa Claus was derived from the Dutch figure, Sinterklaas, which may, in turn, have its origins in the hagiographical tales concerning the Christian Saint Nicholas. "A Visit from St. Nicholas", also known as "The Night Before Christmas" is a poem first published anonymously in 1823 and generally attributed to Clement Clarke Moore. The poem, which has been called "arguably the best-known verses ever written by an American", is largely responsible for the conception of Santa Claus from the mid-nineteenth century to today, including his physical appearance, the night of his visit, his mode of transportation, the number and names of his reindeer, as well as the tradition that he brings toys to children. The poem has influenced ideas about St. Nicholas and Santa Claus from the United States to the rest of the English-speaking world and beyond. "Is There a Santa Claus?" was the title of an editorial appearing in the September 21, 1897, edition of The (New York) Sun. The editorial, which included the famous reply "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus", has become a part of popular Christmas folklore in the United States and Canada.
The Headless Horseman is a fictional character from the short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by American author Washington Irving. The story, from Irving's collection of short stories, entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, has worked itself into known American folklore/legend through literature and film. "Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving, first published in 1819. It follows a Dutch-American villager in colonial America named Rip Van Winkle who meets mysterious Dutchmen, imbibes their liquor and falls asleep in the Catskill Mountains. He awakes 20 years later to a very changed world, having missed the American Revolution. Inspired by a conversation on nostalgia with his American expatriate brother-in-law, Irving wrote the story while temporarily living in Birmingham, England. It was published in his collection, "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent." While the story is set in New York's Catskill Mountains near where Irving later took up residence, he admitted, "When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills."
Folk music. Native Americans were the earliest inhabitants of the land that is today known as the United States and played its first music. Beginning in the 17th century, immigrants from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Germany and France began arriving in large numbers, bringing with them new styles and instruments. African slaves brought musical traditions, and each subsequent wave of immigrants contributes to a melting pot. Folk music includes both traditional music and the genre that evolved from it during the 20th-century folk revival. The term originated in the 19th century but is often applied to music that is older than that. The earliest American scholars were with The American Folklore Society (AFS), which emerged in the late 1800s. Their studies expanded to include Native American music but still treated folk music as a historical item preserved in isolated societies. In North America, during the 1930s and 1940s, the Library of Congress worked through the offices of traditional music collectors Robert Winslow Gordon, Alan Lomax and others to capture as much North American field material as possible. Lomax was the first prominent scholar to study distinctly American folk music such as that of cowboys and southern blacks. His first major published work was in 1911, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, and was arguably the most prominent US folk music scholar of his time, notably during the beginnings of the folk music revival in the 1930s and early 1940s.
The American folk music revival was a phenomenon in the United States that began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, and Oscar Brand had enjoyed a limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward musical styles that had, in earlier times, contributed to the development of country & western, jazz, and rock and roll music. African-American music. Slavery was introduced to the Thirteen Colonies beginning in the early 17th century in Virginia. The ancestors of today's African-American population were brought from hundreds of tribes across West Africa and brought with them certain traits of West African music. This included call and response vocals, complex rhythmic music, syncopated beats, shifting accents, incorporation of hums and moans, which are sounds with no distinct meaning, and a combination of sound and body movements. The African musical focus on rhythmic singing and dancing was brought to the New World, where it became part of a distinct folk culture that helped Africans "retain continuity with their past through music." Along with retaining many African elements, there was also a continuation of instruments. Enslaved Africans would either take with them African instruments or reconstructed them once in the New World. The first slaves in the United States sang work songs and field hollers. However, slave music was used for a variety of reasons. Music was included in religious ceremonies and celebrations, used to coordinate work, and to conceal hidden messages, like when they were commenting on slave owners. African American slave songs can be divided into three groups: religious, work, and recreational songs.
Spirituals. Protestant hymns written mostly by New England preachers became a feature of camp meetings held among devout Christians across the South. Most slaves were typically animists or were a part of some other form of African Religion. To destroy any remnants of African culture or make more people disciples, slaves would be encouraged and taken to church. They became attracted to the grace and freedom that was preached within the church, which was very different from the lives they were living. Slaves would learn the same hymns that their masters sang, and when they came together they developed and sang adapted versions of these hymns, they were called Negro spirituals. It was from these roots, of spiritual songs, work songs, and field hollers, that blues, jazz, and gospel developed. Negro spirituals were primarily expressions of religious faith. These songs provided them a voice for their longing for freedom and to experience it. Around the 1840s, slaves knew that in the northern states, slavery was illegal, and some northerners wanted the complete abolishment of slavery. So when they sang about heaven, it was also about possibly escaping north. In the early 19th century the Underground Railroad was developed, containing a network of secret routes and safe houses, and it greatly impacted slaves' religious music. When there was any mention of trains, stations, etc. in spirituals they were directly referencing the Underground Railroad, such as the song "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot". These songs were designed so that slave owners thought that slaves were only singing about heaven.
Work songs. Work Songs at least had two functions: one to benefit the slaves and another to benefit overseers. When a group of slaves had to work together on a hard task, like carrying a heavy load, singing would provide a rhythm that allowed them to coordinate their movements. When picking crops, music was not necessary, but when there was silence it would be uncomfortable for the overseers. Even though there was a presence of melancholy in songs, Southern slave owners would interpret that their slaves were happy and content, possibly because of their singing. Recreational songs. Even if slave owners attempted to forbid things like drums or remnants of African culture, they did not seem to mind them learning European instruments and music. In some cases, black string players would be invited to play to entertain white audiences. Between the week of Christmas and New Years’, owners would give their slaves a holiday. This provided a chance for slave families who had different masters to come together, otherwise, they would not go anywhere. Some slaves would craft items, but masters detested industrious slaves. So most slaves would spend their recreational time doing other things, like dancing and singing. Masters approved of such activities, but they may not have listened carefully to the songs that were performed.
Folk songs. The original Thirteen Colonies of the United States were all former British possessions, and English culture became a major foundation for American folk and popular music. Many American folk songs are identical to British songs in arrangements, but with new lyrics, often as parodies of the original material. Anglo-American traditional music also includes a variety of broadside ballads, humorous stories and tall tales, and disaster songs regarding mining, shipwrecks and murder. Folk songs may be classified by subject matter, such as: drinking songs, sporting songs, train songs, work songs, war songs, and ballads. Other American folksongs include: "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain", "Skewball", "Big Bad John", "Stagger Lee", "Camptown Races" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". Sea shanties. Work songs sung by sailors between the 18th and 20th centuries are known as sea shanties. The shanty was a distinct type of work song, developed especially in American-style merchant vessels that had come to prominence in decades prior to the American Civil War. These songs were typically performed while adjusting the rigging, raising anchor, and other tasks where men would need to pull in rhythm. These songs usually have a very punctuated rhythm precisely for this reason, along with a call-and-answer format. Well before the 19th century, sea songs were common on rowing vessels. Such songs were also very rhythmic in order to keep the rowers together.
They were notably influenced by songs of African Americans, such as those sung whilst manually loading vessels with cotton in ports of the southern United States. The work contexts in which African-Americans sang songs comparable to shanties included: boat-rowing on rivers of the southeastern U.S. and Caribbean; the work of stokers or "firemen", who cast wood into the furnaces of steamboats plying great American rivers;and stevedoring on the U.S. eastern seaboard, the Gulf Coast, and the Caribbean—including "cotton-screwing": the loading of ships with cotton in ports of the American South. During the first half of the 19th century, some of the songs African Americans sang also began to appear in use for shipboard tasks, i.e. as shanties. Shanty repertoire borrowed from the contemporary popular music enjoyed by sailors, including minstrel music, popular marches, and land-based folk songs, which were adapted to suit musical forms matching the various labor tasks required to operate a sailing ship. Such tasks, which usually required a coordinated group effort in either a pulling or pushing action, included weighing anchor and setting sail.
"Poor Paddy Works on the Railway" is a popular Irish and American folk song. Historically, it was often sung as a sea chanty. The song portrays an Irish worker working on a railroad. There are numerous titles of the song including, "Pat Works on the Railway" and "Paddy on the Railway". "Paddy Works on the Erie" is another version of the song. "Paddy on the Railway" is attested as a chanty in the earliest known published work to use the word "chanty", G. E. Clark's "Seven Years of a Sailor's Life" (1867). Clark recounted experiences fishing on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, in a vessel out of Provincetown, Mass. c. 1865–66. At one point, the crew is getting up the anchor in a storm, by means of a pump-style windlass. One of the chanties the men sing while performing this task is mentioned by title, "Paddy on the Railway." Shaker music. The Shakers are a religious sect founded in 18th-century England upon the teachings of Ann Lee. Shakers today are most known for their cultural contributions, especially style of music and furniture. The Shakers composed thousands of songs, and also created many dances; both were an important part of the Shaker worship services. In Shaker society, a spiritual "gift" could also be a musical revelation, and they considered it important to record musical inspirations as they occurred. "Simple Gifts" was composed by Elder Joseph Brackett and originated in the Alfred Shaker community in Maine in 1848. Aaron Copland's iconic 1944 ballet score Appalachian Spring, uses the now famous Shaker tune "Simple Gifts" as the basis of its finale.
Folk dancing. Folk dances of British origin include the square dance, descended from the quadrille, combined with the American innovation of a caller instructing the dancers. The religious communal society known as the Shakers emigrated from England during the 18th century and developed their own folk dance style. Locations and landmarks. Other locations and landmarks that have become part of American folklore include: Independence Hall, Monument Valley, Ellis Island, Hoover Dam, Pearl Harbor, the Vietnam War Memorial, and the Grand Canyon. Cultural icons. Other cultural icons include Rosie the Riveter, the United States Constitution, the Colt Single Action Army, Smokey Bear, the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, and apple pie. History. Historical events that form a part of American folklore include: the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere's Ride, the Battle of the Alamo, the Salem witch trials, the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the California Gold Rush, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the Battle of Gettysburg, the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and the September 11th attacks.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a 4X video game, considered a spiritual sequel to the "Civilization" series. Set in a science fiction depiction of the 22nd century, the game begins as seven competing ideological factions land on the planet Chiron ("Planet") in the Alpha Centauri star system. As the game progresses, Planet's growing sentience becomes a formidable obstacle to the human colonists. Sid Meier, designer of "Civilization", and Brian Reynolds, designer of "Civilization II", developed "Alpha Centauri" after they left MicroProse to join with Jeff Briggs in creating a new video game developer: Firaxis Games. Electronic Arts released both "Alpha Centauri" and its expansion, "Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire", in 1999. The following year, Aspyr Media ported both titles to Classic Mac OS while Loki Software ported them to Linux. "Alpha Centauri" features improvements on "Civilization II"s game engine, including simultaneous multiplay, social engineering, climate, customizable units, alien native life, additional diplomatic and spy options, additional ways to win, and greater mod-ability. "Alien Crossfire" introduces five new human and two non-human factions, as well as additional technologies, facilities, secret projects, native life, unit abilities, and a victory condition.
The game received wide critical acclaim, being compared favorably to "Civilization II". Critics praised its science fiction storyline (comparing the plot to works by Stanley Kubrick, Frank Herbert, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov), the in-game writing, the voice acting, the user-created custom units, and the depth of the technology tree. "Alpha Centauri" also won several awards for best game of the year and best strategy game of the year. Synopsis. Setting. Space-race victories in the "Civilization" series conclude with a journey to Alpha Centauri. Beginning with that premise the "Alpha Centauri" narrative starts in the 22nd century, after the 2060 launch of the United Nations colonization mission "Unity" to Alpha Centauri's planet Chiron ("Planet"). Unbeknownst to humans, advanced extraterrestrials ("Progenitors") had been conducting experiments in vast distributed nervous systems, culminating in a planetary biosphere-sized presentient nervous system ("Manifold") on Chiron, leaving behind monoliths and artifacts on Chiron to guide and examine the system's growth. Immediately prior to the start of the game, a reactor malfunction on the Unity spacecraft wakes the crew and colonists early and irreparably severs communications with Earth. After the captain is assassinated, the most powerful leaders on board build ideological factions with dedicated followers, conflicting agendas for the future of mankind, and "desperately serious" commitments. As the ship breaks up, seven escape pods, each containing a faction, are scattered across Planet.
In the "Alien Crossfire" expansion pack, players learn that alien experiments led to disastrous consequences at Tau Ceti, creating a hundred-million-year evolutionary cycle that ended with the eradication of most complex animal life in several neighboring inhabited star systems. After the disaster (referred to by Progenitors as "Tau Ceti Flowering"), the Progenitors split into two factions: Manifold Caretakers, opposed to further experimentation and dedicated to preventing another Flowering; and Manifold Usurpers, favoring further experimentation and intending to induce a controlled Flowering in "Alpha Centauri"s Planet. In "Alien Crossfire", these factions compete along with the human factions for control over the destiny of Planet. Characters and factions. The game focuses on the leaders of seven factions, chosen by the player from the 14 possible leaders in "Alpha Centauri" and "Alien Crossfire", and Planet (voiced by Alena Kanka). The characters are developed from the faction leaders' portraits, the spoken monologues accompanying scientific discoveries and the "photographs in the corner of a commlink – home towns, first steps, first loves, family, graduation, spacewalk." The leaders in "Alpha Centauri" comprise: Lady Deirdre Skye, a Scottish activist (voiced by Carolyn Dahl), of "Gaia's Stepdaughters"; Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, a Chinese Legalist official (voiced by Lu Yu), of the "Human Hive"; Academician Prokhor Zakharov, a Russian academic (voiced by Yuri Nesteroff) of the "University of Planet"; CEO Nwabudike Morgan, a Namibian businessman (voiced by Regi Davis), of "Morgan Industries"; Colonel Corazon Santiago, an American militiawoman (voiced by Wanda Niño) of the "Spartan Federation"; Sister Miriam Godwinson, an American minister and social psychologist (voiced by Gretchen Weigel), of the "Lord's Believers"; and Commissioner Pravin Lal, an Indian surgeon and diplomat (voiced by Hesh Gordon), of the "Peacekeeping Forces".
The player controls one of the leaders and competes against the others to colonize and conquer Planet. The Datalinks (voiced by Robert Levy and Katherine Ferguson) are minor characters who provide information to the player. Each faction excels at one or two important aspects of the game and follows a distinct philosophical belief, such as technological utopianism, Conclave Christianity, "free-market" capitalism, militarist survivalism, Chinese Legalism, U.N. Charter humanitarianism, or Environmentalist Gaia philosophy. The game takes place on Planet, with its "rolling red ochre plains" and "bands of lonely terraformed green". The seven additional faction leaders in "Alien Crossfire" are Prime Function Aki Zeta-Five, a Norwegian research assistant-turned-cyborg (voiced by Allie Rivenbark), of "The Cybernetic Consciousness"; Captain Ulrik Svensgaard, an American fisherman and naval officer (voiced by James Liebman), of "The Nautilus Pirates"; Foreman Domai, an Australian labor leader (voiced by Frederick Serafin), of "The Free Drones"; Datajack Sinder Roze, a Trinidadian hacker (voiced by Christine Melton), of "The Data Angels"; Prophet Cha Dawn, a human born on Planet (voiced by Stacy Spenser) of "The Cult of Planet"; Guardian Lular H'minee, a Progenitor leader (voiced by Jeff Gordon), of "The Manifold Caretakers"; and Conqueror Judaa Maar, a Progenitor leader (voiced by Jeff Gordon), of "The Manifold Usurpers".
Plot. The story unfolds via the introduction video, explanations of new technologies, videos obtained for completing secret projects, interludes, and cut-scenes. The native life consists primarily of simple wormlike alien parasites and a type of red fungus that spreads rapidly via spores. The fungus is difficult to traverse, provides invisibility for the enemy, provides few resources, and spawns "mindworms" that attack population centres and military units by neurally parasitising them. Mindworms can eventually be captured and bred in captivity and used as terroristic bioweapons, and the player eventually discovers that the fungus and mindworms can think collectively. A voice intrudes into the player's dreams and soon waking moments, threatening more attacks if the industrial pollution and terraforming by the colonists is not reversed. The player discovers that Planet is a dormant semi-sentient hive organism that will soon experience a metamorphosis which will destroy all human life. To counter this threat, the player or a computer faction builds "The Voice of Alpha Centauri" secret project, which artificially links Planet's distributed nervous system into the human Datalinks, delaying Planet's metamorphosis into full self-awareness but incidentally increasing its ultimate intelligence substantially by giving it access to all of humanity's accumulated knowledge. Finally, the player or a computer faction embraces the "Ascent to Transcendence" in which humans too join their brains with the hive organism in its metamorphosis to godhood. Thus, "Alpha Centauri" closes "with a swell of hope and wonder in place of the expected triumphalism", reassuring "that the events of the game weren't the entirety of mankind's future, but just another step."
Gameplay. "Alpha Centauri", a turn-based strategy game with a hard science fiction setting, is played from an isometric perspective. Many game features from "Civilization II" are present, but renamed or slightly tweaked: players establish bases (Civilization II's cities), build facilities (buildings) and secret projects (Wonders of the World), explore territory, research technology, and conquer other factions (civilizations). In addition to conquering all non-allied factions, players may also win by obtaining votes from three-quarters of the total population (similar to "Civilization IV"s Diplomatic victory), "cornering the Global Energy Market", completing the Ascent to Transcendence secret project, or for alien factions, constructing six Subspace Generators. The main map (the upper two-thirds of the screen) is divided into squares, on which players can establish bases, move units and engage in combat. Through terraforming, players may modify the effects of the individual map squares on movement, combat and resources. Resources are used to feed the population, construct units and facilities, and supply energy. Players can allocate energy between research into new technology and energy reserves. Unlike "Civilization II", new technology grants access to additional unit components rather than pre-designed units, allowing players to design and re-design units as their factions' priorities shift. Energy reserves allow the player to upgrade units, maintain facilities, and attempt to win by the Global Energy Market scenario. Bases are military strongpoints and objectives that are vital for all winning strategies. They produce military units, house the population, collect energy, and build secret projects and Subspace Generators. Facilities and secret projects improve the performance of individual bases and of the entire faction.
In addition to terraforming, optimizing individual base performance and building secret projects, players may also benefit their factions through social engineering, probe teams, and diplomacy. Social engineering modifies the ideologically based bonuses and penalties forced by the player's choice of faction. Probe teams can sabotage and steal information, units, technology, and energy from enemy bases, while diplomacy lets the player create coalitions with other factions. It also allows the trade or transfer of units, bases, technology and energy. The Planetary Council, similar to the United Nations Security Council, takes Planet-wide actions and determines population victories. In addition to futuristic technological advances and secret projects, the game includes alien life, structures and machines. "Xenofungus" and "sea fungus" provide movement, combat, and resource penalties, as well as concealment for "mind worms" and "spore launchers". Immobile "fungal towers" spawn native life. Native life, including the seaborne "Isles of the Deep" and "Sealurks" and airborne "Locusts of Chiron", use psionic combat, an alternate form of combat which ignores weapons and armor. Monoliths repair units and provide resources; artifacts yield new technology and hasten secret projects; landmarks provide resource bonuses; and random events add danger and opportunity. Excessive development leads to terraforming-destroying fungus blooms and new native life.
"Alpha Centauri" provides a single player mode and supports customization and multiplayer. Players may customize the game by choosing options at the beginning of the game, using the built-in scenario and map editors, and modifying "Alpha Centauri"s game files. In addition to a choice of seven (or 14 in "Alien Crossfire") factions, pre-game options include scenario game, customized random map, difficulty level, and game rules that include victory conditions, research control, and initial map knowledge. The scenario and map editors allow players to create customized scenarios and maps. The game's basic rules, diplomatic dialog, and the factions' starting abilities are in text files, which "the designers have done their best to make it reasonably easy to modify..., even for non-programmers." "Alpha Centauri" supports play by email ("PBEM") and TCP/IP mode featuring simultaneous movement, and introduces direct player-to-player negotiation, allowing the unconstrained trade of technology, energy, maps, and other elements.
Development. Inspirations. In 1996, MicroProse released the lauded "Civilization II", designed by Brian Reynolds. Spectrum Holobyte who owned MicroProse at the time, opted to consolidate their business under the MicroProse name, moving the company from Maryland to California by the time the game shipped, and laying off several MicroProse employees. Disagreements between the new management and its employees prompted Reynolds, Jeff Briggs, and Sid Meier (designer of the original "Civilization") to leave MicroProse and found Firaxis. Although unable to use the same intellectual property as "Civilization II", the new company felt that players wanted "a new sweeping epic of a turn-based game". Having just completed a game of human history up to the present, they wanted a fresh topic and chose science fiction. With no previous experience in science fiction games, the developers believed future history was a fitting first foray. For the elements of exploring and terraforming an alien world, they chose a plausible near future situation of a human mission to colonize the solar system's nearest neighbour and human factions. Reynolds researched science fiction for the game's writing. His inspiration included "classic works of science fiction", including Frank Herbert's "The Jesus Incident" and Hellstrom's Hive, "A Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge, and "The Mote in God's Eye" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle for alien races; Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars", "Slant" by Greg Bear, and Stephen R. Donaldson's "The Real Story" for future technology and science; and "Dune" by Herbert and Bear's "Anvil of Stars" for negative interactions between humans.
"Alpha Centauri" set out to capture the whole sweep of humanity's future, including technology, futuristic warfare, social and economic development, the future of the human condition, spirituality, and philosophy. Reynolds also said that "getting philosophy into the game" was one of the attractions of the game. Believing good science fiction thrives on constraint, the developers began with near-future technologies. As they proceeded into the future, they tried to present a coherent, logical, and detailed picture of future developments in physics, biology, information technology, economics, society, government, and philosophy. Alien ecologies and mysterious intelligences were incorporated into "Alpha Centauri" as external "natural forces" intended to serve as flywheels for the backstory and a catalyst for many player intelligences. Chris Pine, creator of the in-game map of Planet, strove to make Planet look like a real planet, which resulted in evidence of tectonic action. Another concern was that Planet matched the story, which resulted in the fungus being connected across continents, as it is supposed to be a gigantic neural network.
Terraforming is a natural outgrowth of colonizing an alien world. The first playable prototype was just a map generator that tested climate changes during the game. This required the designers to create a world builder program and climatic model far more powerful than anything they had done before. Temperature, wind, and rainfall patterns were modeled in ways that allow players to make changes: for example, creating a ridge-line and then watching the effects. In addition to raising terrain, the player can also divert rivers, dig huge boreholes into the planet's mantle, and melt ice caps. In addition to scientific advances, the designers speculated on the future development of human society. The designers allow the player to decide on a whole series of value choices and choose a "ruthless", "moderate", or "idealistic" stance. Reynolds said the designers don't promote a single "right" answer, instead giving each value choice positive and negative consequences. This design was intended to force the player to "think" and make the game "addictive". He also commented that "Alpha Centauri"s fictional nature allowed them to draw their characters "a lot more sharply and distinctly than the natural blurring and greyness of history".
Chiron, the name of the planet, is the name of the only non-barbaric centaur in Greek mythology and an important loregiver and teacher for humanity. The name also pays homage to James P. Hogan's 1982 space opera novel "Voyage from Yesteryear", in which a human colony is artificially planted by an automatic probe on a planet later named by colonists as Chiron. In the game, Chiron has two moons, named after the centaurs Nessus and Pholus, with the combined tidal force of Earth's Moon, and is the second planet out from Alpha Centauri A, the innermost planet being the Mercury-like planet named after the centaur Eurytion. Alpha Centauri B is also dubbed Hercules, a reference to him killing several centaurs in mythology, and the second star preventing the formation of larger planets. The arrival on Chiron is referred to as "Planetfall", which is a term used in many science fiction novels, including Robert A. Heinlein's "Future History" series, and Infocom's celebrated comic interactive fiction adventure "Planetfall". Vernor Vinge's concept of "technological singularity" is the origin of the Transcendence concept. The game's cutscenes use montages of live-action video, CGI, or both; most of the former is from the 1992 experimental documentary "Baraka".
"Alpha Centauri". In July 1996, Firaxis began work on "Alpha Centauri", with Reynolds heading the project. Meier and Reynolds wrote playable prototype code and Jason Coleman wrote the first lines of the development libraries. Because the development of "Gettysburg" took up most of Firaxis' time, the designers spent the first year prototyping the basic ideas. By late 1996, the developers were playing games on the prototype, and by the middle of the next year, they were working on a multiplayer engine. Although Firaxis intended to include multiplayer support in its games, an important goal was to create games with depth and longevity in single-player mode because they believed that the majority of players spend most of their time playing this way. Reynolds felt that smart computer opponents are an integral part of a classic computer game, and considered it a challenge to make them so. Reynolds' previous games omitted internet support because he believed that complex turn-based games with many player options and opportunities for player input are difficult to facilitate online.
Reynolds said that the most important principle of game design is for the designer to play the game as it is developed; Reynolds claimed that this was how a good artificial intelligence (AI) was built. To this end, he would track the decisions he made and why he made them as he played the game. The designer also watched what the computer players did, noting "dumb" actions and trying to discover why the computer made them. Reynolds then taught the computer his reasoning process so the AI could find the right choice when presented several attractive possibilities. He said the AI for diplomatic personalities was the best he had done up to that point. Doug Kaufman, a co-designer of "Civilization II", was invited to join development as a game balancer. Reynolds cited the "Alpha Centauri"s balance for the greater sense of urgency and the more pressing pacing than in his earlier game, "Sid Meier's Colonization". According to producer Timothy Train, in designing the strengths and weaknesses of the factions, the goal was to suggest, without requiring, certain strategies and give the player interesting and fun things to do without unbalancing the game. He didn't want a faction to be dependent on its strength or a faction's power to be dominant over the rest. Train felt that fun meant the factions always have something fun to do with their attributes.
Around the summer of 1997, the staff began research on the scientific realities involved in interstellar travel. In late 1997, Bing Gordon—then Chief Creative Officer of Electronic Arts—joined the team, and was responsible for the Planetary Council, extensive diplomacy, and landmarks. A few months before the 1998 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the team incorporated the Explore/Discover/Build/Conquer marketing campaign into the game. The game was announced in May 1998 at E3. In the latter half of 1998, the team produced a polished and integrated interface, wrote the game manual and foreign language translations, painted the faction leader portraits and terrain, built the 3D vehicles and vehicle parts, and created the music. Michael Ely directed the Secret Project movies and cast the faction leaders. 25 volunteers participated in Firaxis' first public beta test. The beta testers suggested the Diplomatic and Economic victories and the Random Events. The design team started with a very simple playable game. They strengthened the "fun" aspects and fixed or removed the unenjoyable ones, a process Sid Meier called "surrounding the fun". After the revision, they played it again, repeating the cycle of revision and play. Playing the game repeatedly and in-depth was a rule at Firaxis. In the single-player mode, the team tried extreme strategies to find any sure-fire paths to victory and to see how often a particular computer faction ends up at the bottom. The goal was a product of unprecedented depth, scope, longevity, and addictiveness, where the player is always challenged by the game to come up with new strategies with no all-powerful factions or unstoppable tactics. According to Reynolds, the process has been around since Sid Meier's early days at Microprose. At Firaxis, as iterations continue, they expand the group giving feedback, bringing in outside gamers with fresh perspectives. "Alpha Centauri" was the first Firaxis game with public beta testers.
Finally, Brian Reynolds discussed the use of the demo in the development process. Originally a marketing tool released prior to the game, they started getting feedback. They were able to incorporate many suggestions into the retail version. According to Brian Reynolds, they made improvement in the game's interface, added a couple of new features and fixed a few glitches. They also improved some rules, fine-tuned the game balance and improved the AI. Finally, he adds that they continued to add patches to enhance the game after the game was released. In the months leading to the release of "Alpha Centauri", multimedia producer Michael Ely wrote the 35 weekly episodes of "Journey to Centauri" detailing the splintering of the U.N. mission to Alpha Centauri. "Alien Crossfire". A month after "Alpha Centauri"s February 1999 release, the Firaxis team began work on the expansion pack, "Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire". "Alien Crossfire" features seven new factions (two that are non-human), new technologies, new facilities, new secret projects, new alien life forms, new unit special abilities, new victory conditions (including the new "Progenitor Victory") and several additional concepts and strategies. The development team included Train as producer and designer, Chris Pine as programmer, Jerome Atherholt and Greg Foertsch as artists, and Doug Kaufman as co-designer and game balancer.
The team considered several ideas, including a return to a post-apocalyptic earth and the conquest of another planet in the Alpha Centauri system, before deciding to keep the new title on Planet. The premise allowed them to mix and match old and new characters and delve into the mysteries of the monoliths and alien artifacts. The backstory evolved quickly, and the main conflict centered on the return of the original alien inhabitants. The idea of humans inadvertently caught up in an off-world civil war focused the story. Train wanted to improve the "build" aspects, feeling that the god-game genre had always been heavily slanted towards the "Conquer" end of the spectrum. He wanted to provide "builders" with the tools to construct an empire in the face of heated competition. The internet community provided "invaluable" feedback. The first "call for features" was posted around April 1999 and produced the Fletchette Defense System, Algorithmic Enhancement, and The Nethack Terminus. The team had several goals: factions should not be "locked-in" to certain strategies; players should have interesting things to do without unbalancing the game, and the factions must be fun to play. The team believed the "coolness" of the Progenitor aliens would determine the success or failure of "Alien Crossfire". They strove to make them feel significantly different to play, but still compatible with the existing game mechanics. The developers eventually provided the aliens with Battle Ogres, a Planetary survey, non-blind research, and other powers to produce "a nasty and potent race that would take the combined might of humanity to bring them down". Chris Pine modified the AI to account for the additions. The team also used artwork, sound effects, music, and diplomatic text to set the aliens apart. Other than the aliens, the Pirates proved to be the toughest faction to balance because their ocean start gave them huge advantages.

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