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The phrase refers to a distillation of the common law into general and accepted legal principles. This can be seen in the quote above from the Supreme Court where the court is noting that while the black-letter law is clear, New York precedent deviates from the general principles.
In common law, the informal notion of black-letter law includes the basic principles of law generally accepted by the courts and/or embodied in the statutes of a particular jurisdiction. The letter of the law is its actual implementation, thereby demonstrating that black-letter laws are those statutes, rules, acts, laws, provisions, etc. that are or have been written down, codified, or indicated somewhere in legal texts throughout history of specific state law. This is often the case for many precedents that have been set in the common law.
An example of such a state within the common law jurisdiction, and using the black letter legal doctrine is Canada. Canadian law is based on British law and black-letter law is the principles of law accepted by the majority of judges in most provinces and territories. Sometimes it is referred to as "hornbook law" meaning treatise or textbook, often relied upon as authoritative, competent, and generally accepted in the field of Canadian law.
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In lawyer lingo, hornbook law or black-letter law is a fundamental and well-accepted legal principle that does not require any further explanation, since a hornbook is a primer of basics. Law is the rule which establish that a principle, provision, references, inference, observation, etc. may not require further explanation or clarification when the very nature of them shows that they are basic and elementary.
Similar phrases.
The phrase is nearly synonymous with the phrase "hornbook law". There are a number of venerable legal sources that distill the common law on various subjects known as restatement of the Law. The specific titles will be "The Restatement (First) of Contracts" or "The Restatement of Agency", etc. Each of these volumes is divided into sections that begin with a text in boldface that summarizes a basic rule on an aspect of the law of contracts, agency, etc. This "restatement" is followed by commentary and examples that expand on the principle stated.
Another synonymous term, usually used in the United Kingdom, is "trite law".
Examples.
Examples of black-letter law include that the formation of a contract requires consideration, or that the registration of a trademark requires established use in the course of trade. |
Blue law
Blue laws (also known as Sunday laws, Sunday trade laws, and Sunday closing laws) are laws restricting or banning certain activities on specified days, usually Sundays in the western world. The laws were adopted originally for religious reasons, specifically to promote the observance of the Christian day of worship. Since then, they have come to serve secular purposes as well.
Blue laws commonly ban certain business and recreational activities on Sundays, and impose restrictions on the retail sale of hard goods and consumables, particularly alcoholic beverages. The laws also place limitations on a range of other endeavors—including travel, fashions, hunting, professional sports, stage performances, movie showings, and gambling. While less prevalent today, blue laws continue to be enforced in parts of the United States and Canada as well as in European countries, such as Austria, Germany, Norway, and Poland, where most stores are required to close on Sundays.
In the United States, the Supreme Court has upheld blue laws as constitutional despite their religious origins if supported by secular justifications. This has resulted to the provision of a day of rest for the general population. Meanwhile, various state courts have struck down the laws as either unenforceable or in violation of their states' constitutions. In response, state legislators have re-enacted certain Sunday laws to satisfy the rulings while allowing some of the other statutes to remain on the books with no intention to enforce them.
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History.
The Roman Emperor Constantine promulgated the first known law regarding prohibition of Sunday labour for apparent religion-associated reasons in A.D. 321:
The earliest laws in North America addressing Sunday activities and public behavior were enacted in the Jamestown Colony in 1619 by the first General Assembly of Virginia. Among the 70 laws passed by the assembly was a mandate requiring attendance by all colonists at both morning and afternoon worship services on Sundays. The laws adopted that year also included provisions addressing idleness, gambling, drunkenness, and excessive apparel. Similar laws aimed at keeping the Sabbath holy and regulating morals were soon adopted throughout the colonies.
The first known example of the phrase "blue laws" in print was in the March 3, 1755, edition of the "New-York Mercury", in which the writer imagines a future newspaper praising the revival of "our [Connecticut's] old Blue Laws". In his 1781 book "General History of Connecticut", the Reverend Samuel Peters (1735–1826) used the phrase to describe numerous laws adopted by 17th-century Puritans that prohibited various activities on Sunday, recreational as well as commercial. Beyond that, Peters' book is regarded as an unreliable account of the laws and probably was written to satirize their puritanical nature.
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While the historical roots of Sunday trade laws in the United States are generally known, the origin of the term "blue laws" remains a mystery. According to a "Time" magazine editorial in 1961, the year the Supreme Court heard four cases on the issue, the color blue came to be associated with colonial laws in opposition to the red emblem of British royalty. Other explanations have been offered. One of the most widely circulated is that early blue laws adopted in Connecticut were printed on blue paper. However, no copies have been found that would support this claim and it is not deemed credible. A more plausible explanation, one that is gaining general acceptance, is that the laws adopted by Puritans were aimed at enforcing morality and thus were "blue-nosed", though the term "blue" may have been used in the vernacular of the times as a synonym for puritanism itself, in effect, overly strict.
As Protestant moral reformers organized the Sabbath reform in 19th-century America, calls for the enactment and enforcement of stricter Sunday laws developed. Numerous Americans were arrested for working, keeping an open shop, drinking alcohol, traveling, and engaging in recreational activities on Sundays. Erwin Fahlbusch and Geoffrey William Bromiley write that throughout their existence, organizations advocating first-day Sabbatarianism, such as the Lord's Day Alliance in North America and the Lord's Day Observance Society in the British Isles, were supported by labor unions in lobbying "to prevent secular and commercial interests from hampering freedom of worship and from exploiting workers".
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In Canada, the "Ligue du Dimanche", a Roman Catholic Sunday league, supported the "Lord's Day Act" in 1923 and promoted first-day Sabbatarian legislation. Beginning in the 1840s, workers, Jews, Seventh Day Baptists, freethinkers, and other groups began to organize opposition. Throughout the century, Sunday laws fueled churchstate controversy, and as an issue that contributed to the emergence of modern American minority-rights politics. On the other hand, the more recent "Dies Domini", written by Pope John Paul II in 1998, advocates Sunday legislation in that it protects civil servants and workers; the North Dakota Catholic Conference in 2011 likewise maintained that blue laws, in accordance with the "Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church", "ensure that, for reasons of economic productivity, citizens are not denied time for rest and divine worship". Similarly, Chief Justice Earl Warren, while recognizing the partial religious origin of blue laws, acknowledged the "secular purpose they served by providing a benefit to workers at the same time that they enhanced labor productivity".
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Laws by jurisdiction.
Europe.
Germany.
The ("shop closing law") on Sundays and public holidays have been in effect since 1956.
Denmark.
In Denmark the closing laws restricting retail trade on Sundays were effectively abolished on October 1, 2012. Retail trade is only restricted on public holidays (New Year's Day, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday, Day of Prayer, Ascension Day, Whit Sunday, Whit Monday, Christmas Day and Boxing Day) and on Constitution Day, Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve (on New Year's Eve from 3 pm only). On these days almost all shops will remain closed. Exempt are bakeries, DIYs, garden centres, gas stations and smaller supermarkets.
England and Wales.
Before 1994.
Prior to 1994, trading laws forbade sale of certain products on a Sunday; the distinction between those that could and could not be sold was increasingly seen as arbitrary, and the laws were inadequately enforced and widely flouted. For example, some supermarkets would treat the relatively modest fines arising as a business cost and open nonetheless.
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Since 1994.
The Sunday Trading Act 1994 relaxed restrictions on Sunday trading. This produced vocal opposition from bodies such as the Keep Sunday Special campaign, and the Lord's Day Observance Society: on religious grounds, on the grounds that it would increase consumerism, and that it would reduce shop assistants' weekend leisure time.
The legislation permits large shops (those with a relevant floor area in excess of 280 square metres; 3000 sq. ft.) to open for up to six hours on Sunday. Small shops, those with an area of below 280 square metres (3000 sq. ft.), are free to set their own Sunday trading times. Some large shops, such as off-licences, service stations and garages, are exempt from the restrictions.
Some very large shops (e.g. department stores) open for longer than six hours on a Sunday by allowing customers in to browse 30 minutes prior to allowing them to make a purchase, since the six-hour restriction only applies to time during which the shop may make sales.
Christmas Day and Easter Sunday are non-trading days. This applies even to garden centres, which earlier had been trading over Easter, but not to small shops (those with an area of below 280 square metres; 3000 sq. ft.).
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Netherlands.
Prior to 1996, shops were generally closed on Sundays. A new law () regarding opening times changed that and leaves that decision mostly up to local municipalities. This law was changed several times since.
The "Zondagswet" (“”), a law on Sabbath desecration, is mainly to ensure that church services remain undisturbed on Sundays and Christian holidays. It forbids public festivities on a Sunday before 13:00, as well as making noise that carries farther than , but activities that are unlikely to disturb church services are exempt.
Northern Ireland.
Prior to 2008, no football was permitted to be played on Sundays by clubs affiliated to the Irish Football Association in Northern Ireland.
Shops with a floor area of over may only open from 1 to 6pm on Sundays.
In Belfast, public playgrounds were closed on Sundays until 1965. Swings in public parks were tied up and padlocked to prevent their use. Similar laws formerly applied to cinemas, pubs and parks.
Poland.
Since 2007, blue laws were enacted and resulted in stores closing on the 13 state holidays in Poland – these are both religious and secular days of rest. In 2014, an initiative by the Law and Justice party failed to pass the reading in the Sejm to ban trading on Sundays and state holidays. However, since 2018, the ruling government and the President of Poland has signed a law that restricts store trading from March 1, 2018, to the first and last Sunday of the month, Palm Sunday, the 3rd and 4th Advent Sundays, as well as trading until 14.00 for Easter Saturday and Christmas Eve.
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In 2019, the restriction was extended, and trading was permitted solely on the last Sunday of the month, as well as Palm Sunday, the 3rd and 4th Advent Sundays, as well as trading until 14.00 for Easter Saturday and Christmas Eve. From 2020, stores may only be open on seven Sundays in the year: Palm Sunday, the 3rd and 4th Advent Sundays, the last Sunday of January, April, June and August as well as trading until 14.00 for Easter Saturday and Christmas Eve. As a result of restrictions in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2nd Advent Sunday was later added as a shopping day.
North America.
Canada.
The "Lord's Day Act", which since 1906 had prohibited business transactions from taking place on Sundays, was declared unconstitutional in the 1985 case "R. v. Big M Drug Mart Ltd." Calgary police officers witnessed several transactions at the Big M Drug Mart, all of which occurred on a Sunday. Big M was charged with a violation of the "Lord's Day Act". A provincial court ruled that the "Lord's Day Act" was unconstitutional, but the Crown proceeded to appeal all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. In a unanimous 6–0 decision, the "Lord's Day Act" was ruled an infringement of the freedom of conscience and religion defined in section 2(a) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
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A Toronto referendum in 1950 allowed only team sports to be played professionally on Sunday. Theatre performances, movie screenings, and horse racing were not permitted until the 1960s.
The Supreme Court later concluded, in "R. v. Edwards Books and Art Ltd." [1986] (2 S.C.R. 713), that Ontario's "Retail Business Holiday Act", which required some Sunday closings, did not violate the Charter because it did not have a religious purpose. Nonetheless, as of today, virtually all provincial Sunday closing laws have ceased to exist. Some were struck down by provincial courts, but most were simply abrogated, often due to competitive reasons where out-of-province or foreign merchants were open.
United States.
In the United States, judges have defended blue laws "in terms of their secular benefit to workers", holding that "the laws were essential to social well-being". In 1896, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Johnson Field, opined with regard to Sunday blue laws:
Many states prohibit selling alcohol for on and off-premises sales in one form or another on Sundays at some restricted time, under the idea that people should be in church on Sunday morning, or at least not drinking.
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Many blue laws in the United States restrict the purchase of particular items on Sundays. Some of these laws restrict the ability to buy cars, groceries, office supplies, and housewares among other things. Though most of these laws have been relaxed or repealed in most states, they are still enforced in some other states.
In Texas, for example, blue laws prohibited selling housewares such as pots, pans, and washing machines on Sunday until 1985. In Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, New Jersey, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, car dealerships continue to operate under blue-law prohibitions in which an automobile may not be purchased or traded on a Sunday. Maryland permits Sunday automobile sales only in the counties of Charles, Prince George's, Montgomery, and Howard; similarly, Michigan restricts Sunday sales to only those counties with a population of less than 130,000. Texas and Utah prohibit car dealerships from operating over consecutive weekend days. In some cases, these laws were created or retained with the support of those whom they affected, to allow them a day off each week without fear of their competitors still being open.
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Blue laws may also prohibit retail activity on days other than Sunday. In Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maine, for example, blue laws prohibit most retail stores, including grocery stores, from opening on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Research regarding the effect of the repeal of blue laws has been conducted, with Professor Elesha Coffman of Baylor University writing:
Court cases.
Beginning in the mid-19th century, religious and ethno-cultural minorities arrested for violating state and local blue laws appealed their convictions to state supreme courts. In "Specht v. Commonwealth" (Pa. 1848), for example, German Seventh Day Baptists in Pennsylvania employed attorney Thaddeus Stevens to challenge the constitutionality of Pennsylvania's Sunday law. As in cases in other states, litigants pointed to the provisions of state constitutions protecting religious liberty and maintained that Sunday laws were a blatant violation. Though typically unsuccessful (most state supreme courts upheld the constitutionality of Sunday laws), these constitutional challenges helped set a pattern by which subsequent minorities would seek to protect religious freedom and minority rights.
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The Supreme Court of the United States held in its landmark case, "McGowan v. Maryland" (1961), that Maryland's blue laws violated neither the Free Exercise Clause nor the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It approved the state's blue law restricting commercial activities on Sunday, noting that while such laws originated to encourage attendance at Christian churches, the contemporary Maryland laws were intended to serve "to provide a uniform day of rest for all citizens" on a secular basis and to promote the secular values of "health, safety, recreation, and general well-being" through a common day of rest. That this day coincides with Christian Sabbath is not a bar to the state's secular goals; it neither reduces its effectiveness for secular purposes nor prevents adherents of other religions from observing their own holy days.
"McGowan" was but one of four Sunday closing cases decided together by the Court in May 1961. In "Gallagher v. Crown Kosher Super Market of Mass., Inc.", the Court ruled against a Kosher deli that closed on Saturday but was open on Sunday. The other two cases were "Braunfeld v. Brown", and "Two Guys from Harrison-Allentown, Inc. v. McGinley". Chief Justice Earl Warren declared that "the State seeks to set one day apart from all others as a day of rest, repose, recreation and tranquility--a day which all members of the family and community have the opportunity to spend and enjoy together, a day on which there exists relative quiet and disassociation from the everyday intensity of commercial activities, a day on which people may visit friends and relatives who are not available during working days".
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In March 2006, Texas judges upheld the state blue law that requires car dealerships to close either Saturday or Sunday each weekend.
Oceania.
Cook Islands and Niue.
Blue laws also exist in the Polynesian islands of Cook Islands and Niue. In the Cook Islands, these were the first written legislation, enacted by the London Missionary Society in 1827, with the consent of the "ariki" (chiefs). Laws in Niue ban certain activities on Sunday, reflecting the country's history of observing the Christian Sabbath tradition.
Tonga.
In the Kingdom of Tonga, the Vavaʻu Code (1839) was a form of blue law inspired by the teachings of Methodist missionaries. With the inauguration of the Tongan Constitution on June 4, 1875, the sixth clause stipulates: "The Sabbath Day shall be kept holy in Tonga and no person shall practise his trade or profession or conduct any commercial undertaking on the Sabbath Day except according to law; and any agreement made or witnessed on that day shall be null and void and of no legal effect." |
Beer
Beer is an alcoholic beverage produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches from cereal grain—most commonly malted barley, although wheat, maize (corn), rice, and oats are also used. The grain is mashed to convert starch in the grain to sugars, which dissolve in water to form wort. Fermentation of the wort by yeast produces ethanol and carbonation in the beer. Beer is one of the oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic drinks in the world, and one of the most popular of all drinks. Most modern beer is brewed with hops, which add bitterness and other flavours and act as a natural preservative and stabilising agent. Other flavouring agents, such as gruit, herbs, or fruits, may be included or used instead of hops. In commercial brewing, natural carbonation is often replaced with forced carbonation.
Beer is distributed in bottles and cans, and is commonly available on draught in pubs and bars. The brewing industry is a global business, consisting of several dominant multinational companies and many thousands of smaller producers ranging from brewpubs to regional breweries. The strength of modern beer is usually around 4% to 6% alcohol by volume (ABV).
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Some of the earliest writings mention the production and distribution of beer: the Code of Hammurabi (1750 BC) included laws regulating it, while "The Hymn to Ninkasi", a prayer to the Mesopotamian goddess of beer, contains a recipe for it. Beer forms part of the culture of many nations and is associated with social traditions such as beer festivals, as well as activities like pub games.
Etymology.
In early forms of English and in the Scandinavian languages, the usual word for beer was the word whose Modern English form is "ale". The modern word "beer" comes into present-day English from Old English , itself from Common Germanic, it is found throughout the West Germanic and North Germanic dialects (modern Dutch and German , Old Norse ). The earlier etymology of the word is debated: the three main theories are that the word originates in Proto-Germanic (putatively from Proto-Indo-European ), meaning "brewer's yeast, beer dregs"; that it is related to the word "barley", or that it was somehow borrowed from Latin "to drink".
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Christine Fell, in "Leeds Studies in English" (1975), suggests that the Old English/Norse word "bēor" did not originally denote ale or beer, but a strong, sweet drink rather like mead or cider. Whatever the case, the meaning of "bēor" expanded to cover the meaning of "ale". When hopped ale from Europe was imported into Britain in the late Middle Ages, it was described as "beer" to differentiate it from the British unhopped ale, later acquiring a broader meaning.
History.
Prehistory.
Beer is one of the world's oldest prepared alcoholic drinks. The earliest archaeological evidence of fermentation consists of 13,000 year-old residues of a beer with the consistency of gruel, used by the semi-nomadic Natufians for ritual feasting, at the Raqefet Cave in the Carmel Mountains near Haifa in northern Israel. There is evidence that beer was produced at Göbekli Tepe during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (around 8500 BC to 5500 BC). The earliest clear chemical evidence of beer produced from barley dates to about 3500–3100 BC, from the site of Godin Tepe in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran.
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Early civilisations.
Beer is recorded in the written history of ancient Egypt, and archaeologists speculate that beer was instrumental in the formation of civilizations. Approximately 5000 years ago, workers in the city of Uruk (modern day Iraq) were paid by their employers with volumes of beer. During the building of the Egyptian pyramids, each worker got a daily ration of four to five litres of beer, which served as both nutrition and refreshment and was crucial to the pyramids' construction.
Some of the earliest Sumerian writings contain references to beer; examples include a prayer to the goddess Ninkasi, known as "The Hymn to Ninkasi", which served as both a prayer and a method of remembering the recipe for beer in a culture with few literate people, and the ancient advice ("Fill your belly. Day and night make merry") to Gilgamesh, recorded in the "Epic of Gilgamesh" by the alewife Siduri, may, at least in part, have referred to the consumption of beer. The Ebla tablets, discovered in 1974 in Ebla, Syria, show that beer was produced in the city in 2500 BC. A fermented drink using rice and fruit was made in China around 7000 BC. Unlike sake, mould was not used to saccharify the rice (amylolytic fermentation); the rice was probably prepared for fermentation by chewing or malting. During the Vedic period in Ancient India, there are records of the consumption of the beer-like "sura". Xenophon noted that during his travels, beer was being produced in Armenia.
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Medieval.
Beer was spread through Europe by Germanic and Celtic tribes as far back as 3000 BC, and it was mainly brewed on a domestic scale. The product that the early Europeans drank might not be recognised as beer by most people today. Alongside the basic starch source, the early European beers may have contained fruits, honey, numerous types of plants, spices, and other substances such as narcotic herbs. This mixture was called gruit, where if some were improperly heated could cause hallucinations. The mixture of gruit was different from every brewer. What they did not contain was hops, as that was a later addition, first mentioned in Europe around 822 by a Carolingian Abbot and again in 1067 by abbess Hildegard of Bingen.
In 1516, William IV, Duke of Bavaria adopted the "Reinheitsgebot" (purity law), perhaps the oldest food-quality regulation still in use in the 21st century, according to which the only allowed ingredients of beer are water, hops, and barley-malt. Beer produced before the Industrial Revolution was made and sold on a domestic scale, although by the 7th century AD, beer was also being produced and sold by European monasteries. During the Industrial Revolution, the production of beer moved from artisanal to industrial manufacture, while domestic production ceased to be significant by the end of the 19th century.
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Modern.
In 1912, brown bottles began to be used by the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the United States. This innovation has since been accepted worldwide as it prevents light rays from degrading the quality and stability of beer. The brewing industry is a global business, consisting of several dominant multinational companies and many thousands of smaller producers, ranging from brewpubs to regional breweries. As of 2006, more than of beer are sold per year, producing global revenues of US$294.5 billion. In 2010, China's beer consumption hit , or nearly twice that of the United States, but only 5 per cent sold were premium beers, compared with 50 per cent in France and Germany. Beer is the most widely consumed of all alcoholic drinks. A widely publicised study in 2018 suggested that sudden decreases in barley production due to extreme drought and heat could in the future cause substantial volatility in the availability and price of beer.
Brewing.
Process.
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Ingredients.
The basic ingredients of beer are water; a starch source, usually malted barley; a brewer's yeast to produce the fermentation; and a flavouring such as hops. A mixture of starch sources may be used, with a secondary carbohydrate source, such as maize (corn), rice, wheat, or sugar, often termed an adjunct, especially when used alongside malted barley. Less widely used starch sources include millet, sorghum, and cassava root in Africa; potato in Brazil; and agave in Mexico.
Water is the main ingredient, accounting for 93% of beer's weight. The level of dissolved bicarbonate influences beer's finished taste. Due to the mineral properties of each region's water, specific areas were originally the sole producers of certain types of beer, each identifiable by regional characteristics. Dublin's hard water is well-suited to making stout, such as Guinness, while the Plzeň Region's soft water is ideal for brewing Pilsner, such as Pilsner Urquell. The waters of Burton in England contain gypsum, which benefits making pale ale to such a degree that brewers of pale ale add gypsum in a process known as Burtonisation.
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The starch source provides the fermentable material and determines the strength and flavour of the beer. The most common starch source used in beer is malted grain. Grain is malted by soaking it in water, allowing it to begin germination, and then drying the partially germinated grain in a kiln. Malting produces enzymes that convert starches into fermentable sugars. Different roasting times and temperatures produce different colours of malt from the same grain. Darker malts produce darker beers. Nearly all beers use barley malt for most of the starch, as its fibrous hull remains attached to the grain during threshing. After malting, barley is milled, which finally removes the hull, breaking it into large pieces. These pieces remain with the grain during the mash and act as a filter bed during lautering, when sweet wort is separated from insoluble grain material. Other grains, including wheat, rice, oats, and rye, and less frequently, corn and sorghum may be used. Some brewers have produced gluten-free beer, made with sorghum, for those who cannot consume gluten-containing grains like wheat, barley, and rye.
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Flavouring beer is the sole commercial use of hops. The flower of the hop vine acts as a flavouring and preservative agent in nearly all beer made today. The flowers themselves are often called "hops". The first historical mention of the use of hops in beer dates from 822 AD in monastery rules written by Adalard of Corbie, though widespread cultivation of hops for use in beer began in the thirteenth century. Before then, beer was flavoured with other plants such as grains of paradise or 'alehoof'. Combinations of aromatic herbs, berries, and even wormwood were combined into aflavouring mixture known as gruit. Some beers today, such as Fraoch' by the Scottish Heather Ales company use plants other than hops for flavouring. and Cervoise Lancelot by the French Brasserie-Lancelot company,
Hops contribute a bitterness that balances the sweetness of the malt; the bitterness of beers is measured on the International Bitterness Units scale. Hops further contribute floral, citrus, and herbal aromas and flavours. They have an antibiotic effect that favours the activity of brewer's yeast over less desirable microorganisms, and aids in "head retention", the length of time that a foamy head created by carbonation will last. The acidity of hops is a preservative.
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Yeast is the microorganism responsible for fermenting beer. It metabolises the sugars, producing ethanol and carbon dioxide, and thereby turns wort into beer. In addition, yeast influences the character and flavour. The dominant types of beer yeast are top-fermenting "Saccharomyces cerevisiae" and bottom-fermenting "Saccharomyces pastorianus". "Brettanomyces" ferments lambics, and "Torulaspora delbrueckii" ferments Bavarian weissbier. Before the role of yeast in fermentation was understood, fermentation involved wild or airborne yeasts. A few styles, such as lambics, rely on this method today, but most modern fermentation adds pure yeast cultures.
Some brewers add clarifying agents or finings to beer, which typically precipitate (collect as a solid) out along with protein solids, and are found only in trace amounts in the finished product. This process makes the beer appear bright and clean, rather than the cloudy appearance of ethnic and older styles such as wheat beers. Clarifying agents include isinglass, from the swimbladders of fish; Irish moss, a seaweed; kappa carrageenan, from the seaweed "Kappaphycus cottonii"; Polyclar (artificial); and gelatin. Beer marked "suitable for vegans" is clarified either with seaweed or with artificial agents.
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Industry.
In the 21st century, larger breweries have repeatedly absorbed smaller breweries. In 2002, South African Breweries bought the North American Miller Brewing Company to found SABMiller, becoming the second-largest brewery after North American Anheuser-Busch. In 2004, the Belgian Interbrew was the third-largest brewery by volume, and the Brazilian AmBev was the fifth-largest. They merged into InBev, becoming the largest brewery. In 2007, SABMiller surpassed InBev and Anheuser-Busch when it acquired Royal Grolsch, the brewer of Dutch brand Grolsch. In 2008, when InBev (the second-largest) bought Anheuser-Busch (the third-largest), the new Anheuser-Busch InBev company became again the largest brewer in the world.
, according to the market research firm Technavio, AB InBev was the largest brewing company in the world, with Heineken second, CR Snow third, Carlsberg fourth, and Molson Coors fifth.
A "microbrewery", or "craft brewery", produces a limited amount of beer. The maximum amount of beer a brewery can produce and still be classed as a 'microbrewery' varies by region and by authority; in the US, it is a year. A "brewpub" is a type of microbrewery that incorporates a pub or other drinking establishment. The highest density of breweries in the world, most of them microbreweries, exists in Franconia, Germany, especially in the district of Upper Franconia, which has about 200 breweries. The Benedictine Weihenstephan brewery in Bavaria, Germany, can trace its roots to the year 768, as a document from that year refers to a hop garden in the area paying a tithe to the monastery. It claims to be the oldest working brewery in the world.
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Varieties.
Top-fermented beers.
Top-fermented beers are most commonly produced with "Saccharomyces cerevisiae", a top-fermenting yeast which clumps and rises to the surface, typically between . At these temperatures, yeast produces significant amounts of esters and other secondary flavour and aroma products, and the result is often a beer with slightly "fruity" compounds resembling apple, pear, pineapple, banana, plum, or prune, among others. After the introduction of hops into England from Flanders in the 15th century, "ale" came to mean an unhopped fermented brew, while "beer" meant a brew with an infusion of hops. The term 'real ale' was coined by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) in 1973 for "beer brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide". It is applied to both bottle conditioned and cask conditioned beers.
As for the types of top-fermented beers, pale ale predominantly uses pale malt. It is one of the world's major beer styles and includes India pale ale (IPA). Mild ale has a predominantly malty palate. It is usually dark, with an abv of 3% to 3.6%. Wheat beer is brewed with a large proportion of wheat although it often also contains a significant proportion of malted barley. Wheat beers are usually top-fermented. Stout is a dark beer made using roasted barley, and typically brewed with slow fermenting yeast. There are a number of variations including dry stout (such as Guinness), sweet stout, and Imperial (or Russian) stout. Stout was originally the strongest variety of porter, a dark brown beer popular with the street and river porters of eighteenth century London.
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Bottom-fermented beers.
Lager is cool-fermented beer. Pale lagers are the most commonly drunk beers in the world. Many are of the "pilsner" type. The name "lager" comes from the German "lagern" for "to store", as brewers in Bavaria stored beer in cool cellars during the warm summer months, allowing the beers to continue to ferment, and to clear any sediment. Lager yeast is a cool bottom-fermenting yeast ("Saccharomyces pastorianus"). Lager typically undergoes primary fermentation at , and then a long secondary fermentation at (the lagering phase). During the secondary stage, the lager clears and mellows. The cooler conditions inhibit the natural production of esters and other byproducts, resulting in a "cleaner"-tasting beer. With improved modern yeast strains, most lager breweries use only short periods of cold storage, typically no more than 2 weeks. Some traditional lagers are still stored for several months.
Lambic.
Lambic, a beer of Belgium, is naturally fermented using wild yeasts, rather than cultivated. Many of these are not strains of brewer's yeast ("Saccharomyces cerevisiae") and may have significant differences in aroma and sourness. Yeast varieties such as "Brettanomyces bruxellensis" and "Brettanomyces lambicus" are common in lambics. In addition, other organisms such as "Lactobacillus" bacteria produce acids which contribute to the sourness.
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Non-barley beers.
Around the world, many traditional and ancient starch-based drinks are classed as beer. In Africa, there are ethnic beers made from sorghum or millet, such as Oshikundu in Namibia and Tella in Ethiopia. Kyrgyzstan also has a beer made from millet; it is a low alcohol, somewhat porridge-like drink called "Bozo". Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet and Sikkim also use millet in Chhaang, a popular semi-fermented rice/millet drink in the eastern Himalayas.
The Andes in South America has Chicha, made from germinated maize (corn); while the indigenous peoples in Brazil have Cauim, a traditional drink made since pre-Columbian times by chewing manioc so that an enzyme (amylase) present in human saliva can break down the starch into fermentable sugars; this is similar to Masato in Peru.
Beers made from bread, among the earliest forms of the drink, are Sahti in Finland, Kvass in Russia and Ukraine, and Bouza in Sudan. 4000 years ago fermented bread was used in Mesopotamia. Food waste activists got inspired by these ancient recipes and use leftover bread to replace a third of the malted barley that would otherwise be used for brewing their craft ale.
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Measurement.
Beer is measured and assessed by colour, by strength and by bitterness. The strength of modern beer is usually around 4% to 6%, measured as alcohol by volume (ABV). The perceived bitterness is measured by the International Bitterness Units scale (IBU), defined in co-operation between the American Society of Brewing Chemists and the European Brewery Convention. The international scale was a development of the European Bitterness Units scale, often abbreviated as EBU, and the bitterness values should be identical.
Colour.
Beer colour is determined by the malt. The most common colour is a pale amber produced from using pale malts. "Pale lager" and "pale ale" are terms used for beers made from malt dried and roasted with the fuel coke. Coke was first used for roasting malt in 1642, but it was not until around 1703 that the term "pale ale" was used.
In terms of sales volume, most of today's beer is based on the pale lager brewed in 1842 in the city of Plzeň in the present-day Czech Republic. The modern pale lager is light in colour due to use of coke for kilning, which gives off heat with little smoke.
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Dark beers are usually brewed from a pale malt or lager malt base with a small proportion of darker malt added to achieve the desired shade. Other colourants—such as caramel—are also widely used to darken beers. Very dark beers, such as stout, use dark or patent malts that have been roasted longer. Some have roasted unmalted barley.
Strength.
Beer ranges from less than 3% alcohol by volume (abv) to around 14% abv, though this strength can be increased to around 20% by re-pitching with champagne yeast, and to 55% ABVby the freeze-distilling process. The alcohol content of beer varies by local practice or beer style. The pale lagers that most consumers are familiar with fall in the range of 4–6%, with a typical ABVof 5%. The customary strength of British ales is quite low, with many session beers being around 4% abv. In Belgium, some beers, such as table beer are of such low alcohol content (1%–4%) that they are served instead of soft drinks in some schools. The weakest beers are described as 'alcohol-free', typically containing 0.05% ABV; this compares to low alcohol beers which may contain 1.2% ABV or less, and conventional beers which average 4.4% ABV.
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The strength of beers has climbed during the later years of the 20th century. Vetter 33, a 10.5% ABV (33 degrees Plato, hence Vetter "33") doppelbock, was listed in the 1994 "Guinness Book of World Records" as the strongest beer at that time, though Samichlaus, by the Swiss brewer Hürlimann, had also been listed by the "Guinness Book of World Records" as the strongest at 14% |BV. Since then, some brewers have used champagne yeasts to increase the alcohol content of their beers. Samuel Adams reached 20% ABVwith "Millennium", and then surpassed that amount to 25.6% ABV with Utopias. The strongest beer brewed in Britain was Baz's Super Brew by Parish Brewery, a 23% ABVbeer. In September 2011, the Scottish brewery BrewDog produced Ghost Deer, which, at 28%, they claim to be the world's strongest beer produced by fermentation alone.
The product claimed to be the strongest beer made is Schorschbräu's 2011 "Schorschbock 57" with 57,5% ABV. It was preceded by "The End of History", a 55% Belgian ale, made by BrewDog in 2010. The same company had previously made "Sink The Bismarck!", a 41% ABV IPA, and "Tactical Nuclear Penguin", a 32% ABV Imperial stout. Each of these beers are made using the eisbock method of fractional freezing, in which a strong ale is partially frozen and the ice is repeatedly removed, until the desired strength is reached, a process that may class the product as spirits rather than beer. The German brewery Schorschbräu's "Schorschbock", a 31% ABV eisbock, and Hair of the Dog's "Dave", a 29% abv barley wine made in 1994, used the same fractional freezing method. A 60% ABV blend of beer with whiskey was jokingly claimed as the strongest beer by a Dutch brewery in July 2010.
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Serving.
Draught.
Draught (also spelled "draft") beer from a pressurised keg using a lever-style dispenser and a spout is the most common method of dispensing in bars around the world. A metal keg is pressurised with carbon dioxide (CO2) gas which drives the beer to the dispensing tap or faucet. Some beers may be served with a nitrogen/carbon dioxide mixture. Nitrogen produces fine bubbles, resulting in a dense head and a creamy mouthfeel. In the 1980s, Guinness introduced the beer widget, a nitrogen-pressurised ball inside a can which creates a moderately dense, tight head. This approximates the effect of serving from a keg, at least for a British-style beer which does not have a specially large head.
Cask-conditioned ales (or cask ales) are unfiltered and unpasteurised beers. These beers are termed "real ale" by the CAMRA organisation. When a cask arrives in a pub, it is placed horizontally on a "stillage" frame, designed to hold it steady and at the right angle, and then allowed to cool to cellar temperature (typically between ), before being tapped and vented—a tap is driven through a rubber bung at the bottom of one end, and a hard spile is used to open a hole in the uppermost side of the cask. The act of stillaging and then venting a beer in this manner typically disturbs all the sediment, so it must be left for a suitable period of hours to days to "drop" (clear) again, as well as to fully condition the beer. At this point the beer is ready to sell, either being pulled through a beer line with a hand pump, or simply being "gravity-fed" directly into the glass.
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Draught beer's environmental impact can be 68% lower than bottled beer due to packaging differences. A life cycle study of one beer brand, including grain production, brewing, bottling, distribution and waste management, shows that the CO2 emissions from a 6-pack of micro-brew beer is about 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds). The loss of natural habitat potential from the 6-pack of micro-brew beer is estimated to be 2.5 square metres (26 square feet). Downstream emissions from distribution, retail, storage and disposal of waste can be over 45% of a bottled micro-brew beer's CO2 emissions. Where legal, the use of a refillable jug, reusable bottle or other reusable containers to transport draught beer from a store or a bar, rather than buying pre-bottled beer, can reduce the environmental impact of beer consumption.
Packaging.
Most beers are cleared of yeast by filtering when packaged in bottles and cans. However, bottle conditioned beers retain some yeast—either by being unfiltered, or by being filtered and then reseeded with fresh yeast.
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Many beers are sold in cans, though there is considerable variation in the proportion between different countries. In Sweden in 2001, 63.9% of beer was sold in cans. People either drink from the can or pour the beer into a glass. A technology developed by Crown Holdings for the 2010 FIFA World Cup is the 'full aperture' can, so named because the entire lid is removed during the opening process, turning the can into a drinking cup. Cans protect the beer from light (thereby preventing spoilage) and have a seal less prone to leaking over time than bottles. Cans were initially viewed as a technological breakthrough for maintaining the quality of a beer, then became commonly associated with less expensive, mass-produced beers, even though the quality of storage in cans is much like bottles. Plastic (PET) bottles are used by some breweries.
Temperature.
The temperature of a beer has an influence on a drinker's experience; warmer temperatures reveal the range of flavours in a beer but cooler temperatures are more refreshing. Most drinkers prefer pale lager to be served chilled, a low- or medium-strength pale ale to be served cool, while a strong barley wine or imperial stout to be served at room temperature.
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Beer writer Michael Jackson proposed a five-level scale for serving temperatures: well chilled () for "light" beers (pale lagers); chilled () for Berliner Weisse and other wheat beers; lightly chilled () for all dark lagers, altbier and German wheat beers; cellar temperature () for regular British ale, stout and most Belgian specialities; and room temperature () for strong dark ales (especially trappist beer) and barley wine.
Drinking chilled beer began with the development of artificial refrigeration and by the 1870s, was spread in those countries that concentrated on brewing pale lager. Chilling beer makes it more refreshing, though below 15.5 °C (60 °F) the chilling starts to reduce taste awareness and reduces it significantly below . Beer served unchilled—either cool or at room temperature—reveal more of their flavours. Cask Marque, a non-profit UK beer organisation, has set a temperature standard range of 12°–14 °C (53°–57 °F) for cask ales to be served.
Vessels.
Beer is consumed out of a variety of vessels, such as a glass, a beer stein, a mug, a pewter tankard, a beer bottle or a can; or at music festivals and some bars and nightclubs, from a plastic cup. The shape of the glass from which beer is consumed can influence the perception of the beer and can define and accent the character of the style. Breweries offer branded glassware intended only for their own beers as a marketing promotion, as this increases sales of their product.
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The pouring process has an influence on a beer's presentation. The rate of flow from the tap or other serving vessel, tilt of the glass, and position of the pour (in the centre or down the side) into the glass all influence the result, such as the size and longevity of the head, lacing (the pattern left by the head as it moves down the glass as the beer is drunk), and the release of carbonation.
A beer tower or portable beer tap is sometimes used in bars and restaurants to allow a group of customers to serve themselves. The device consists of a tall container with a cooling mechanism and a beer tap at its base.
Chemistry.
Beer contains the phenolic acids 4-hydroxyphenylacetic acid, vanillic acid, caffeic acid, syringic acid, "p"-coumaric acid, ferulic acid, and sinapic acid. Alkaline hydrolysis experiments show that most of the phenolic acids are present as bound forms and only a small portion can be detected as free compounds. Hops, and beer made with it, contain 8-prenylnaringenin which is a potent phytoestrogen. Hop also contains myrcene, humulene, xanthohumol, isoxanthohumol, myrcenol, linalool, tannins, and resin. The alcohol 2M2B is a component of hops brewing.
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Barley, in the form of malt, brings the condensed tannins prodelphinidins B3, B9 and C2 into beer. Tryptophol, tyrosol, and phenylethanol are aromatic higher alcohols (congeners) produced by yeast during the brewing process. as secondary products of alcoholic fermentation
Nutrition.
Beers vary in their nutritional content. The ingredients used to make beer, including the yeast, provide a rich source of nutrients; therefore beer may contain nutrients including magnesium, selenium, potassium, phosphorus, biotin, chromium and B vitamins. Beer is sometimes referred to as "liquid bread", though beer is not a meal in itself.
Health effects.
A 2016 systematic review and meta-analysis found that moderate ethanol consumption brought no mortality benefit compared with lifetime abstention from ethanol consumption. Some studies have concluded that drinking small quantities of alcohol (less than one drink in women and two in men, per day) is associated with a "decreased" risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes mellitus, and early death. |
Some studies have concluded that drinking small quantities of alcohol (less than one drink in women and two in men, per day) is associated with a "decreased" risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes mellitus, and early death. Some of these studies combined former ethanol drinkers and lifelong abstainers into a single group of nondrinkers, which hides the health benefits of lifelong abstention from ethanol. The long-term health effects of continuous, moderate or heavy alcohol consumption include the risk of developing alcoholism and alcoholic liver disease. Alcoholism, also known as "alcohol use disorder", is a broad term for any drinking of alcohol that results in problems. It was previously divided into two types: alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence. |
Alcoholism, also known as "alcohol use disorder", is a broad term for any drinking of alcohol that results in problems. It was previously divided into two types: alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence. Alcoholism reduces a person's life expectancy by around ten years and alcohol use is the third leading cause of early death in the United States. No professional medical association recommends that people who are nondrinkers should start drinking alcoholic beverages. In the United States, a total of 3.3 million deaths per year (5.9% of all deaths) are believed to be due to alcohol.
Overeating and lack of muscle tone is the main cause of a beer belly, rather than beer consumption, though a 2004 study found a link between binge drinking and a beer belly. Several diet books quote beer as having an undesirably high glycemic index of 110, the same as maltose; however, the maltose in beer undergoes metabolism by yeast during fermentation so that beer consists mostly of water, hop oils and only trace amounts of sugars, including maltose.
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The multi-step process of beer production is effective at removing pesticide residues from grain. At each step (e.g. mashing or malting) pesticide levels are typically reduced by 50-90%, varying with the particular process and pesticide's chemical properties.
A 2013 study found that the flavour of beer alone could provoke dopamine activity in the brain of the male participants, who wanted to drink more as a result. The 49 men in the study were subject to positron emission tomography scans, while a computer-controlled device sprayed minute amounts of beer, water and a sports drink onto their tongues. Compared with the taste of the sports drink, the taste of beer significantly increased the participants desire to drink. Test results indicated that the flavour of the beer triggered a dopamine release, even though alcohol content in the spray was insufficient for the purpose of becoming intoxicated.
Society and culture.
Some of the earliest writings mention the production and distribution of beer: the 1750 BC Babylonian Code of Hammurabi included laws regulating it, while "The Hymn to Ninkasi", a 1800 BC prayer to the Mesopotamian goddess of beer, a recipe for it.
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In many societies, beer is the most popular alcoholic drink. Various social traditions and activities are associated with beer drinking, such as playing cards, darts, or other pub games; attending beer festivals; engaging in zythology (the study of beer); visiting a series of pubs in one evening; visiting breweries; beer-oriented tourism; or rating beer. Drinking games, such as beer pong, accompany the drinking of beer. Even having a "shower beer" has developed a following. A relatively new profession is that of the beer sommelier, who informs restaurant patrons about beers and food pairings. Some breweries have developed beers to pair with food. Wine writer Malcolm Gluck disputed the need to pair beer with food, while beer writers Roger Protz and Melissa Cole contested that claim.
Beer is considered to be a social lubricant, and is consumed in countries all over the world. There are breweries in Middle Eastern countries such as Syria, and in some African countries. Sales of beer are four times those of wine, which is the second most popular alcoholic drink. |
Bit
The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communication. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented as either , but other representations such as "true"/"false", "yes"/"no", "on"/"off", or "+"/"−" are also widely used.
The relation between these values and the physical states of the underlying storage or device is a matter of convention, and different assignments may be used even within the same device or program. It may be physically implemented with a two-state device.
A contiguous group of binary digits is commonly called a "bit string", a bit vector, or a single-dimensional (or multi-dimensional) "bit array".
A group of eight bits is called one "byte", but historically the size of the byte is not strictly defined. Frequently, half, full, double and quadruple words consist of a number of bytes which is a low power of two. A string of four bits is usually a "nibble".
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In information theory, one bit is the information entropy of a random binary variable that is 0 or 1 with equal probability, or the information that is gained when the value of such a variable becomes known. As a unit of information or negentropy, the bit is also known as a "shannon", named after Claude E. Shannon. As a measure of the length of a digital string that is encoded as symbols over a 0-1 (binary) alphabet, the bit has been called a binit, but this usage is now rare.
In data compression, the goal is to find a shorter representation for a string, so that it requires fewer bits during storage or transmissionbut it must be "compressed" before doing so, and then "decompressed" after. The field of algorithmic information theory is devoted to the study of the "irreducible information content" of a string (i.e. its shortest-possible representation length, in bits), under the assumption that the receiver has minimal "a priori" knowledge of the method used to compress the string. In error detection and correction, the goal is to add redundant data to a string, to enable the detection and/or correction of errors during storage or transmissionbut the redundant data has to be computed before doing so, and then "checked" or "corrected" after.
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The symbol for the binary digit is either "bit", per the IEC 80000-13:2008 standard, or the lowercase character "b", per the IEEE 1541-2002 standard. Use of the latter may create confusion with the capital "B" which is the international standard symbol for the byte.
History.
Ralph Hartley suggested the use of a logarithmic measure of information in 1928. Claude E. Shannon first used the word "bit" in his seminal 1948 paper "A Mathematical Theory of Communication". He attributed its origin to John W. Tukey, who had written a Bell Labs memo on 9 January 1947 in which he contracted "binary information digit" to simply "bit".
Physical representation.
A bit can be stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in either of two possible distinct states. These may be the two stable states of a flip-flop, two positions of an electrical switch, two distinct voltage or current levels allowed by a circuit, two distinct levels of light intensity, two directions of magnetization or polarization, the orientation of reversible double stranded DNA, etc.
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Perhaps the earliest example of a binary storage device was the punched card invented by Basile Bouchon and Jean-Baptiste Falcon (1732), developed by Joseph Marie Jacquard (1804), and later adopted by Semyon Korsakov, Charles Babbage, Herman Hollerith, and early computer manufacturers like IBM. A variant of that idea was the perforated paper tape. In all those systems, the medium (card or tape) conceptually carried an array of hole positions; each position could be either punched through or not, thus carrying one bit of information. The encoding of text by bits was also used in Morse code (1844) and early digital communications machines such as teletypes and stock ticker machines (1870).
The first electrical devices for discrete logic (such as elevator and traffic light control circuits, telephone switches, and Konrad Zuse's computer) represented bits as the states of electrical relays which could be either "open" or "closed" [1]. These relays functioned as mechanical switches, physically toggling between states to represent binary data, forming the fundamental building blocks of early computing and control systems. When relays were replaced by vacuum tubes, starting in the 1940s, computer builders experimented with a variety of storage methods, such as pressure pulses traveling down a mercury delay line, charges stored on the inside surface of a cathode-ray tube, or opaque spots printed on glass discs by photolithographic techniques.
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In the 1950s and 1960s, these methods were largely supplanted by magnetic storage devices such as magnetic-core memory, magnetic tapes, drums, and disks, where a bit was represented by the polarity of magnetization of a certain area of a ferromagnetic film, or by a change in polarity from one direction to the other. The same principle was later used in the magnetic bubble memory developed in the 1980s, and is still found in various magnetic strip items such as metro tickets and some credit cards.
In modern semiconductor memory, such as dynamic random-access memory or a solid-state drive, the two values of a bit are represented by two levels of electric charge stored in a capacitor or a floating-gate MOSFET. In certain types of programmable logic arrays and read-only memory, a bit may be represented by the presence or absence of a conducting path at a certain point of a circuit. In optical discs, a bit is encoded as the presence or absence of a microscopic pit on a reflective surface. In one-dimensional bar codes and two-dimensional QR codes, bits are encoded as lines or squares which may be either black or white.
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In modern digital computing, bits are transformed in Boolean logic gates.
Transmission and processing.
Bits are transmitted one at a time in serial transmission. By contrast, multiple bits are transmitted simultaneously in a parallel transmission. A serial computer processes information in either a bit-serial or a byte-serial fashion. From the standpoint of data communications, a byte-serial transmission is an 8-way parallel transmission with binary signalling.
In programming languages such as C, a bitwise operation operates on binary strings as though they are vectors of bits, rather than interpreting them as binary numbers.
Data transfer rates are usually measured in decimal SI multiples. For example, a channel capacity may be specified as 8 kbit/s = 8 kb/s = 1 kB/s.
Storage.
File sizes are often measured in (binary) IEC multiples of bytes, for example 1 KiB = 1024 bytes = 8192 bits. Confusion may arise in cases where (for historic reasons) filesizes are specified with binary multipliers using the ambiguous prefixes K, M, and G rather than the IEC standard prefixes Ki, Mi, and Gi.
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Mass storage devices are usually measured in decimal SI multiples, for example 1 TB = formula_1 bytes.
Confusingly, the storage capacity of a directly-addressable memory device, such as a DRAM chip, or an assemblage of such chips on a memory module, is specified as a binary multiple -- using the ambiguous prefix G rather than the IEC recommended Gi prefix. For example, a DRAM chip that is specified (and advertised) as having "1 GB" of capacity has formula_2 bytes of capacity. As at 2022, the difference between the popular understanding of a memory system with "8 GB" of capacity, and the SI-correct meaning of "8 GB" was still causing difficulty to software designers.
Unit and symbol.
The bit is not defined in the International System of Units (SI). However, the International Electrotechnical Commission issued standard IEC 60027, which specifies that the symbol for binary digit should be 'bit', and this should be used in all multiples, such as 'kbit', for kilobit. However, the lower-case letter 'b' is widely used as well and was recommended by the IEEE 1541 Standard (2002). In contrast, the upper case letter 'B' is the standard and customary symbol for byte.
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Multiple bits.
Multiple bits may be expressed and represented in several ways. For convenience of representing commonly reoccurring groups of bits in information technology, several units of information have traditionally been used. The most common is the unit byte, coined by Werner Buchholz in June 1956, which historically was used to represent the group of bits used to encode a single character of text (until UTF-8 multibyte encoding took over) in a computer and for this reason it was used as the basic addressable element in many computer architectures. By 1993, the trend in hardware design had converged on the 8-bit byte. However, because of the ambiguity of relying on the underlying hardware design, the unit octet was defined to explicitly denote a sequence of eight bits.
Computers usually manipulate bits in groups of a fixed size, conventionally named "words". Like the byte, the number of bits in a word also varies with the hardware design, and is typically between 8 and 80 bits, or even more in some specialized computers. In the early 21st century, retail personal or server computers have a word size of 32 or 64 bits.
The International System of Units defines a series of decimal prefixes for multiples of standardized units which are commonly also used with the bit and the byte. The prefixes kilo (103) through yotta (1024) increment by multiples of one thousand, and the corresponding units are the kilobit (kbit) through the yottabit (Ybit). |
Byte
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures. To disambiguate arbitrarily sized bytes from the common 8-bit definition, network protocol documents such as the Internet Protocol () refer to an 8-bit byte as an octet. Those bits in an octet are usually counted with numbering from 0 to 7 or 7 to 0 depending on the bit endianness.
The size of the byte has historically been hardware-dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size. Sizes from 1 to 48 bits have been used. The six-bit character code was an often-used implementation in early encoding systems, and computers using six-bit and nine-bit bytes were common in the 1960s. These systems often had memory words of 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 48, or 60 bits, corresponding to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, or 10 six-bit bytes, and persisted, in legacy systems, into the twenty-first century. In this era, bit groupings in the instruction stream were often referred to as "syllables" or "slab", before the term "byte" became common.
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The modern "de facto" standard of eight bits, as documented in ISO/IEC 2382-1:1993, is a convenient power of two permitting the binary-encoded values 0 through 255 for one byte, as 2 to the power of 8 is 256. The international standard IEC 80000-13 codified this common meaning. Many types of applications use information representable in eight or fewer bits and processor designers commonly optimize for this usage. The popularity of major commercial computing architectures has aided in the ubiquitous acceptance of the 8-bit byte. Modern architectures typically use 32- or 64-bit words, built of four or eight bytes, respectively.
The unit symbol for the byte was designated as the upper-case letter B by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Internationally, the unit "octet" explicitly defines a sequence of eight bits, eliminating the potential ambiguity of the term "byte". The symbol for octet, 'o', also conveniently eliminates the ambiguity in the symbol 'B' between byte and bel.
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Etymology and history.
The term "byte" was coined by Werner Buchholz in June 1956, during the early design phase for the IBM Stretch computer, which had addressing to the bit and variable field length (VFL) instructions with a byte size encoded in the instruction. It is a deliberate respelling of "bite" to avoid accidental mutation to "bit".
Another origin of "byte" for bit groups smaller than a computer's word size, and in particular groups of four bits, is on record by Louis G. Dooley, who claimed he coined the term while working with Jules Schwartz and Dick Beeler on an air defense system called SAGE at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in 1956 or 1957, which was jointly developed by Rand, MIT, and IBM. Later on, Schwartz's language JOVIAL actually used the term, but the author recalled vaguely that it was derived from AN/FSQ-31.
Early computers used a variety of four-bit binary-coded decimal (BCD) representations and the six-bit codes for printable graphic patterns common in the U.S. Army (FIELDATA) and Navy. These representations included alphanumeric characters and special graphical symbols. These sets were expanded in 1963 to seven bits of coding, called the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) as the Federal Information Processing Standard, which replaced the incompatible teleprinter codes in use by different branches of the U.S. government and universities during the 1960s. ASCII included the distinction of upper- and lowercase alphabets and a set of control characters to facilitate the transmission of written language as well as printing device functions, such as page advance and line feed, and the physical or logical control of data flow over the transmission media. During the early 1960s, while also active in ASCII standardization, IBM simultaneously introduced in its product line of System/360 the eight-bit Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC), an expansion of their six-bit binary-coded decimal (BCDIC) representations used in earlier card punches.
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The prominence of the System/360 led to the ubiquitous adoption of the eight-bit storage size, while in detail the EBCDIC and ASCII encoding schemes are different.
In the early 1960s, AT&T introduced digital telephony on long-distance trunk lines. These used the eight-bit μ-law encoding. This large investment promised to reduce transmission costs for eight-bit data.
In Volume 1 of "The Art of Computer Programming" (first published in 1968), Donald Knuth uses "byte" in his hypothetical MIX computer to denote a unit which "contains an "unspecified" amount of information ... capable of holding at least 64 distinct values ... "at most" 100 distinct values. On a binary computer a byte must therefore be composed of six bits". He notes that "Since 1975 or so, the word "byte" has come to mean a sequence of precisely eight binary digits...When we speak of bytes in connection with MIX we shall confine ourselves to the former sense of the word, harking back to the days when bytes were not yet standardized."
The development of eight-bit microprocessors in the 1970s popularized this storage size. Microprocessors such as the Intel 8080, the direct predecessor of the 8086, could also perform a small number of operations on the four-bit pairs in a byte, such as the decimal-add-adjust (DAA) instruction. A four-bit quantity is often called a nibble, also "nybble", which is conveniently represented by a single hexadecimal digit.
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The term "octet" unambiguously specifies a size of eight bits. It is used extensively in protocol definitions.
Historically, the term "octad" or "octade" was used to denote eight bits as well at least in Western Europe; however, this usage is no longer common. The exact origin of the term is unclear, but it can be found in British, Dutch, and German sources of the 1960s and 1970s, and throughout the documentation of Philips mainframe computers.
Unit symbol.
The unit symbol for the byte is specified in IEC 80000-13, IEEE 1541 and the Metric Interchange Format as the upper-case character B.
In the International System of Quantities (ISQ), B is also the symbol of the "bel", a unit of logarithmic power ratio named after Alexander Graham Bell, creating a conflict with the IEC specification. However, little danger of confusion exists, because the bel is a rarely used unit. It is used primarily in its decadic fraction, the decibel (dB), for signal strength and sound pressure level measurements, while a unit for one-tenth of a byte, the decibyte, and other fractions, are only used in derived units, such as transmission rates.
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The lowercase letter o for octet is defined as the symbol for octet in IEC 80000-13 and is commonly used in languages such as French and Romanian, and is also combined with metric prefixes for multiples, for example ko and Mo.
Multiple-byte units.
More than one system exists to define unit multiples based on the byte. Some systems are based on powers of 10, following the International System of Units (SI), which defines for example the prefix "kilo" as 1000 (103); other systems are based on powers of two. Nomenclature for these systems has led to confusion. Systems based on powers of 10 use standard SI prefixes ("kilo", "mega", "giga", ...) and their corresponding symbols (k, M, G, ...). Systems based on powers of 2, however, might use binary prefixes ("kibi", "mebi", "gibi", ...) and their corresponding symbols (Ki, Mi, Gi, ...) or they might use the prefixes K, M, and G, creating ambiguity when the prefixes M or G are used.
While the difference between the decimal and binary interpretations is relatively small for the kilobyte (about 2% smaller than the kibibyte), the systems deviate increasingly as units grow larger (the relative deviation grows by 2.4% for each three orders of magnitude). For example, a power-of-10-based terabyte is about 9% smaller than power-of-2-based tebibyte.
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Units based on powers of 10.
Definition of prefixes using powers of 10—in which 1 "kilobyte" (symbol kB) is defined to equal 1,000 bytes—is recommended by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The IEC standard defines eight such multiples, up to 1 yottabyte (YB), equal to 10008 bytes. The additional prefixes "ronna-" for 10009 and "quetta-" for 100010 were adopted by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in 2022.
This definition is most commonly used for data-rate units in computer networks, internal bus, hard drive and flash media transfer speeds, and for the capacities of most storage media, particularly hard drives, flash-based storage, and DVDs. Operating systems that use this definition include macOS, iOS, Ubuntu, and Debian. It is also consistent with the other uses of the SI prefixes in computing, such as CPU clock speeds or measures of performance.
Prior art, the IBM System 360 and the related tape systems set the byte at 8 bits. Early 5.25" disks used decimal even though they used 128 byte and 256 byte sectors. Hard disks used mostly 256 byte and then 512 byte before 4096 byte blocks became standard. RAM was always sold in powers of 2.
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Units based on powers of 2.
A system of units based on powers of 2 in which 1 kibibyte (KiB) is equal to 1,024 (i.e., 210) bytes is defined by international standard IEC 80000-13 and is supported by national and international standards bodies (BIPM, IEC, NIST). The IEC standard defines eight such multiples, up to 1 yobibyte (YiB), equal to 10248 bytes. The natural binary counterparts to "ronna-" and "quetta-" were given in a consultation paper of the International Committee for Weights and Measures' Consultative Committee for Units (CCU) as "robi-" (Ri, 10249) and "quebi-" (Qi, 102410), but have not yet been adopted by the IEC or ISO.
An alternative system of nomenclature for the same units (referred to here as the "customary convention"), in which 1 "kilobyte" (KB) is equal to 1,024 bytes, 1 "megabyte" (MB) is equal to 10242 bytes and 1 "gigabyte" (GB) is equal to 10243 bytes is mentioned by a 1990s JEDEC standard. Only the first three multiples (up to GB) are mentioned by the JEDEC standard, which makes no mention of TB and larger. While confusing and incorrect, the customary convention is used by the Microsoft Windows operating system and random-access memory capacity, such as main memory and CPU cache size, and in marketing and billing by telecommunication companies, such as Vodafone, AT&T, Orange and Telstra.
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For storage capacity, the customary convention was used by macOS and iOS through Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and iOS 10, after which they switched to units based on powers of 10.
Parochial units.
Various computer vendors have coined terms for data of various sizes, sometimes with different sizes for the same term even within a single vendor. These terms include "double word", "half word", "long word", "quad word", "slab", "superword" and "syllable". There are also informal terms. e.g., "half byte" and "nybble" for 4 bits, "octal K" for .
History of the conflicting definitions.
Contemporary computer memory has a binary architecture making a definition of memory units based on powers of 2 most practical. The use of the metric prefix "kilo" for binary multiples arose as a convenience, because is approximately . This definition was popular in early decades of personal computing, with products like the Tandon 5-inch DD floppy format (holding bytes) being advertised as "360 KB", following the -byte convention. It was not universal, however. The Shugart SA-400 5-inch floppy disk held 109,375 bytes unformatted, and was advertised as "110 Kbyte", using the 1000 convention. Likewise, the 8-inch DEC RX01 floppy (1975) held bytes formatted, and was advertised as "256k". Some devices were advertised using a "mixture" of the two definitions: most notably, floppy disks advertised as "1.44 MB" have an actual capacity of , the equivalent of 1.47 MB or 1.41 MiB.
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In 1995, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry's (IUPAC) Interdivisional Committee on Nomenclature and Symbols attempted to resolve this ambiguity by proposing a set of binary prefixes for the powers of 1024, including kibi (kilobinary), mebi (megabinary), and gibi (gigabinary).
In December 1998, the IEC addressed such multiple usages and definitions by adopting the IUPAC's proposed prefixes (kibi, mebi, gibi, etc.) to unambiguously denote powers of 1024. Thus one kibibyte (1 KiB) is 10241 bytes = 1024 bytes, one mebibyte (1 MiB) is 10242 bytes = bytes, and so on.
In 1999, Donald Knuth suggested calling the kibibyte a "large kilobyte" ("KKB").
Modern standard definitions.
The IEC adopted the IUPAC proposal and published the standard in January 1999. The IEC prefixes are part of the International System of Quantities. The IEC further specified that the kilobyte should only be used to refer to bytes.
Lawsuits over definition.
Lawsuits arising from alleged consumer confusion over the binary and decimal definitions of multiples of the byte have generally ended in favor of the manufacturers, with courts holding that the legal definition of gigabyte or GB is 1 GB = (109) bytes (the decimal definition), rather than the binary definition (230, i.e., ). Specifically, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California held that "the U.S. Congress has deemed the decimal definition of gigabyte to be the 'preferred' one for the purposes of 'U.S. trade and commerce' [...] The California Legislature has likewise adopted the decimal system for all 'transactions in this state.
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Earlier lawsuits had ended in settlement with no court ruling on the question, such as a lawsuit against drive manufacturer Western Digital. Western Digital settled the challenge and added explicit disclaimers to products that the usable capacity may differ from the advertised capacity. Seagate was sued on similar grounds and also settled.
Common uses.
Many programming languages define the data type "byte".
The C and C++ programming languages define "byte" as an "addressable unit of data storage large enough to hold any member of the basic character set of the execution environment" (clause 3.6 of the C standard). The C standard requires that the integral data type "unsigned char" must hold at least 256 different values, and is represented by at least eight bits (clause 5.2.4.2.1). Various implementations of C and C++ reserve 8, 9, 16, 32, or 36 bits for the storage of a byte. In addition, the C and C++ standards require that there be no gaps between two bytes. This means every bit in memory is part of a byte.
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Java's primitive data type "byte" is defined as eight bits. It is a signed data type, holding values from −128 to 127.
.NET programming languages, such as C#, define "byte" as an unsigned type, and the "sbyte" as a signed data type, holding values from 0 to 255, and −128 to 127, respectively.
In data transmission systems, the byte is used as a contiguous sequence of bits in a serial data stream, representing the smallest distinguished unit of data. For asynchronous communication a full transmission unit usually additionally includes a start bit, 1 or 2 stop bits, and possibly a parity bit, and thus its size may vary from seven to twelve bits for five to eight bits of actual data. For synchronous communication the error checking usually uses bytes at the end of a frame.
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Boron nitride
Boron nitride is a thermally and chemically resistant refractory compound of boron and nitrogen with the chemical formula BN. It exists in various crystalline forms that are isoelectronic to a similarly structured carbon lattice. The hexagonal form corresponding to graphite is the most stable and soft among BN polymorphs, and is therefore used as a lubricant and an additive to cosmetic products. The cubic (zincblende aka sphalerite structure) variety analogous to diamond is called c-BN; it is softer than diamond, but its thermal and chemical stability is superior. The rare wurtzite BN modification is similar to lonsdaleite but slightly softer than the cubic form.
Because of excellent thermal and chemical stability, boron nitride ceramics are used in high-temperature equipment and metal casting. Boron nitride has potential use in nanotechnology.
History.
Boron nitride was discovered by chemistry teacher of the Liverpool Institute in 1842 via reduction of boric acid with charcoal in the presence of potassium cyanide. Boron Nitride is now used to make nanotubes, and used for mechanical insulation, and other nanomaterials used in the industry and occasionally pharmaceutical purposes, as well as recent development in electronics.
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Structure.
Boron nitride exists in multiple forms that differ in the arrangement of the boron and nitrogen atoms, giving rise to varying bulk properties of the material.
Amorphous form (a-BN).
The amorphous form of boron nitride (a-BN) is non-crystalline, lacking any long-distance regularity in the arrangement of its atoms. It is analogous to amorphous carbon.
All other forms of boron nitride are crystalline.
Hexagonal form (h-BN).
The most stable crystalline form is the hexagonal one, also called h-BN, α-BN, g-BN, graphitic boron nitride and "white graphene". Hexagonal boron nitride (point group = D3h; space group = P63/mmc) has a layered structure similar to graphite. Within each layer, boron and nitrogen atoms are bound by strong covalent bonds, whereas the layers are held together by weak van der Waals forces. The interlayer "registry" of these sheets differs, however, from the pattern seen for graphite, because the atoms are eclipsed, with boron atoms lying over and above nitrogen atoms. This registry reflects the local polarity of the B–N bonds, as well as interlayer N-donor/B-acceptor characteristics. Likewise, many metastable forms consisting of differently stacked polytypes exist. Therefore, h-BN and graphite are very close neighbors, and the material can accommodate carbon as a substituent element to form BNCs. BC6N hybrids have been synthesized, where carbon substitutes for some B and N atoms. Hexagonal boron nitride monolayer is analogous to graphene, having a honeycomb lattice structure of nearly the same dimensions. Unlike graphene, which is black and an electrical conductor, h-BN monolayer is white and an insulator. It has been proposed for use as an atomic flat insulating substrate or a tunneling dielectric barrier in 2D electronics. .
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Studies into the optical properties of h-BN at the few- and mono-layer level have been conducted using specialized techniques like deep ultraviolet (DUV) hyperspectral imaging due to its very wide bandgap. Research at low temperatures revealed that monolayer h-BN exhibits photoluminescence consistent with a direct bandgap semiconductor, with emission observed around 6.1 eV. In contrast to observations in other 2D materials like TMDs, the photoluminescence intensity remains remarkably high in few-layer h-BN, which has been attributed to a high radiative efficiency despite the indirect bandgap nature of bulk h-BN. Complementary AFM investigations, particularly in tapping and Kelvin probe modes, have provided nanoscale insight into surface morphology and potential distribution across mono- and few-layer regions. These AFM-based techniques not only assist in confirming flake thickness and uniformity but also support optoelectronic analyses by correlating topographical and electrical variations with luminescence behavior.
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Functionalization and Heterostructures.
Modifications of hexagonal boron nitride have led to novel materials like hBNCF, a vertical heterostructure involving graphene and h-BN functionalized with fluorine. This material, synthesized from h-BN via graphitization and fluorination, was found to exhibit room-temperature ferromagnetism. Crucially, Magnetic Force Microscopy (MFM), a specialized mode of AFM, was employed to investigate the magnetic properties at the nanoscale. These MFM studies confirmed the ferromagnetic nature of the hBNCF powder. Furthermore, the MFM analysis provided evidence that the observed magnetism was intrinsic to the hBNCF structure, helping to exclude extrinsic metallic magnetic impurities as the origin. The material was also characterized as a wide band gap semiconductor (~3.89 eV) with potential applications as an MRI contrast agent.
Cubic form (c-BN).
Cubic boron nitride has a crystal structure analogous to that of diamond. Consistent with diamond being less stable than graphite, the cubic form is less stable than the hexagonal form, but the conversion rate between the two is negligible at room temperature, as it is for diamond. The cubic form has the sphalerite crystal structure (space group = F3m), the same as that of diamond (with ordered B and N atoms), and is also called β-BN or c-BN.
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Wurtzite form (w-BN).
The wurtzite form of boron nitride (w-BN; point group = C6v; space group = P63mc) has the same structure as lonsdaleite, a rare hexagonal polymorph of carbon. As in the cubic form, the boron and nitrogen atoms are grouped into tetrahedra. In the wurtzite form, the boron and nitrogen atoms are grouped into 6-membered rings. In the cubic form all rings are in the chair configuration, whereas in w-BN the rings between 'layers' are in boat configuration. Earlier optimistic reports predicted that the wurtzite form was very strong, and was estimated by a simulation as potentially having a strength 18% stronger than that of diamond. Since only small amounts of the mineral exist in nature, this has not yet been experimentally verified. Its hardness is 46 GPa, slightly harder than commercial borides but softer than the cubic form of boron nitride.
Properties.
Physical.
The partly ionic structure of BN layers in h-BN reduces covalency and electrical conductivity, whereas the interlayer interaction increases resulting in higher hardness of h-BN relative to graphite. The reduced electron-delocalization in hexagonal-BN is also indicated by its absence of color and a large band gap. Very different bonding – strong covalent within the basal planes (planes where boron and nitrogen atoms are covalently bonded) and weak between them – causes high anisotropy of most properties of h-BN.
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For example, the hardness, electrical and thermal conductivity are much higher within the planes than perpendicular to them. On the contrary, the properties of c-BN and w-BN are more homogeneous and isotropic.
Those materials are extremely hard, with the hardness of bulk c-BN being slightly smaller and w-BN even higher than that of diamond. Polycrystalline c-BN with grain sizes on the order of 10 nm is also reported to have Vickers hardness comparable or higher than diamond. Because of much better stability to heat and transition metals, c-BN surpasses diamond in mechanical applications, such as machining steel. The thermal conductivity of BN is among the highest of all electric insulators (see table).
Boron nitride can be doped p-type with beryllium and n-type with boron, sulfur, silicon or if co-doped with carbon and nitrogen. Both hexagonal and cubic BN are wide-gap semiconductors with a band-gap energy corresponding to the UV region. If voltage is applied to h-BN or c-BN, then it emits UV light in the range 215–250 nm and therefore can potentially be used as light-emitting diodes (LEDs) or lasers.
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Little is known on melting behavior of boron nitride. It degrades at 2973 °C, but melts at elevated pressure.
Thermal stability.
Hexagonal and cubic BN (and probably w-BN) show remarkable chemical and thermal stabilities. For example, h-BN is stable to decomposition at temperatures up to 1000 °C in air, 1400 °C in vacuum, and 2800 °C in an inert atmosphere. The reactivity of h-BN and c-BN is relatively similar, and the data for c-BN are summarized in the table below.
Thermal stability of c-BN can be summarized as follows:
Chemical stability.
Boron nitride is not attacked by the usual acids, but it is soluble in alkaline molten salts and nitrides, such as LiOH, KOH, NaOH-, , , , , or , which are therefore used to etch BN.
Thermal conductivity.
The theoretical thermal conductivity of hexagonal boron nitride nanoribbons (BNNRs) can approach 1700–2000 W/(m⋅K), which has the same order of magnitude as the experimental measured value for graphene, and can be comparable to the theoretical calculations for graphene nanoribbons. Moreover, the thermal transport in the BNNRs is anisotropic. The thermal conductivity of zigzag-edged BNNRs is about 20% larger than that of armchair-edged nanoribbons at room temperature.
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Mechanical properties.
BN nanosheets consist of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN). They are stable up to 800°C in air. The structure of monolayer BN is similar to that of graphene, which has exceptional strength, a high-temperature lubricant, and a substrate in electronic devices.
The anisotropy of Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio depends on the system size. h-BN also exhibits strongly anisotropic strength and toughness, and maintains these over a range of vacancy defects, showing that the anisotropy is independent to the defect type.
Natural occurrence.
In 2009, cubic form (c-BN) was reported in Tibet, and the name qingsongite proposed. The substance was found in dispersed micron-sized inclusions in chromium-rich rocks. In 2013, the International Mineralogical Association affirmed the mineral and the name.
Synthesis.
Preparation and reactivity of hexagonal BN.
Hexagonal boron nitride is obtained by the treating boron trioxide () or boric acid () with ammonia () or urea () in an inert atmosphere:
The resulting disordered (amorphous) material contains 92–95% BN and 5–8% . The remaining can be evaporated in a second step at temperatures in order to achieve BN concentration >98%. Such annealing also crystallizes BN, the size of the crystallites increasing with the annealing temperature.
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h-BN parts can be fabricated inexpensively by hot-pressing with subsequent machining. The parts are made from boron nitride powders adding boron oxide for better compressibility. Thin films of boron nitride can be obtained by chemical vapor deposition from borazine. ZYP Coatings also has developed boron nitride coatings that may be painted on a surface. Combustion of boron powder in nitrogen plasma at 5500 °C yields ultrafine boron nitride used for lubricants and toners.
Boron nitride reacts with iodine fluoride to give in low yield.
Boron nitride reacts with nitrides of lithium, alkaline earth metals and lanthanides to form nitridoborates. For example:
Intercalation of hexagonal BN.
Various species intercalate into hexagonal BN, such as intercalate or alkali metals.
Preparation of cubic BN.
c-BN is prepared analogously to the preparation of synthetic diamond from graphite. Direct conversion of hexagonal boron nitride to the cubic form has been observed at pressures between 5 and 18 GPa and temperatures between 1730 and 3230 °C, that is similar parameters as for direct graphite-diamond conversion. The addition of a small amount of boron oxide can lower the required pressure to 4–7 GPa and temperature to 1500 °C. As in diamond synthesis, to further reduce the conversion pressures and temperatures, a catalyst is added, such as lithium, potassium, or magnesium, their nitrides, their fluoronitrides, water with ammonium compounds, or hydrazine. Other industrial synthesis methods, again borrowed from diamond growth, use crystal growth in a temperature gradient, or explosive shock wave. The shock wave method is used to produce material called heterodiamond, a superhard compound of boron, carbon, and nitrogen.
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Low-pressure deposition of thin films of cubic boron nitride is possible. As in diamond growth, the major problem is to suppress the growth of hexagonal phases (h-BN or graphite, respectively). Whereas in diamond growth this is achieved by adding hydrogen gas, boron trifluoride is used for c-BN. Ion beam deposition, plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition, pulsed laser deposition, reactive sputtering, and other physical vapor deposition methods are used as well.
Preparation of wurtzite BN.
Wurtzite BN can be obtained via static high-pressure or dynamic shock methods. The limits of its stability are not well defined. Both c-BN and w-BN are formed by compressing h-BN, but formation of w-BN occurs at much lower temperatures close to 1700 °C.
Production statistics.
Whereas the production and consumption figures for the raw materials used for BN synthesis, namely boric acid and boron trioxide, are well known (see boron), the corresponding numbers for the boron nitride are not listed in statistical reports. An estimate for the 1999 world production is 300 to 350 metric tons. The major producers and consumers of BN are located in the United States, Japan, China and Germany. In 2000, prices varied from about $75–120/kg for standard industrial-quality h-BN and were about up to $200–400/kg for high purity BN grades.
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Applications.
Hexagonal BN.
Hexagonal BN (h-BN) is the most widely used polymorph. It is a good lubricant at both low and high temperatures (up to 900 °C, even in an oxidizing atmosphere). h-BN lubricant is particularly useful when the electrical conductivity or chemical reactivity of graphite (alternative lubricant) would be problematic. In internal combustion engines, where graphite could be oxidized and turn into carbon sludge, h-BN with its superior thermal stability can be added to engine lubricants. As with all nano-particle suspensions, Brownian-motion settlement is a problem. Settlement can clog engine oil filters, which limits solid lubricant applications in a combustion engine to automotive racing, where engine re-building is common. Since carbon has appreciable solubility in certain alloys (such as steels), which may lead to degradation of properties, BN is often superior for high temperature and/or high pressure applications. Another advantage of h-BN over graphite is that its lubricity does not require water or gas molecules trapped between the layers. Therefore, h-BN lubricants can be used in vacuum, such as space applications. The lubricating properties of fine-grained h-BN are used in cosmetics, paints, dental cements, and pencil leads.
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Hexagonal BN was first used in cosmetics around 1940 in Japan. Because of its high price, h-BN was abandoned for this application. Its use was revitalized in the late 1990s with the optimization h-BN production processes, and currently h-BN is used by nearly all leading producers of cosmetic products for foundations, make-up, eye shadows, blushers, kohl pencils, lipsticks and other skincare products.
Because of its excellent thermal and chemical stability, boron nitride ceramics and coatings are used high-temperature equipment. h-BN can be included in ceramics, alloys, resins, plastics, rubbers, and other materials, giving them self-lubricating properties. Such materials are suitable for construction of e.g. bearings and in steelmaking. Many quantum devices use multilayer h-BN as a substrate material. It can also be used as a dielectric in resistive random access memories.
Hexagonal BN is used in xerographic process and laser printers as a charge leakage barrier layer of the photo drum. In the automotive industry, h-BN mixed with a binder (boron oxide) is used for sealing oxygen sensors, which provide feedback for adjusting fuel flow. The binder utilizes the unique temperature stability and insulating properties of h-BN.
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Parts can be made by hot pressing from four commercial grades of h-BN. Grade HBN contains a boron oxide binder; it is usable up to 550–850 °C in oxidizing atmosphere and up to 1600 °C in vacuum, but due to the boron oxide content is sensitive to water. Grade HBR uses a calcium borate binder and is usable at 1600 °C. Grades HBC and HBT contain no binder and can be used up to 3000 °C.
Boron nitride nanosheets (h-BN) can be deposited by catalytic decomposition of borazine at a temperature ~1100 °C in a chemical vapor deposition setup, over areas up to about 10 cm2. Owing to their hexagonal atomic structure, small lattice mismatch with graphene (~2%), and high uniformity they are used as substrates for graphene-based devices. BN nanosheets are also excellent proton conductors. Their high proton transport rate, combined with the high electrical resistance, may lead to applications in fuel cells and water electrolysis.
h-BN has been used since the mid-2000s as a bullet and bore lubricant in precision target rifle applications as an alternative to molybdenum disulfide coating, commonly referred to as "moly". It is claimed to increase effective barrel life, increase intervals between bore cleaning and decrease the deviation in point of impact between clean bore first shots and subsequent shots.
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h-BN is used as a release agent in molten metal and glass applications. For example, ZYP Coatings developed and currently produces a line of paintable h-BN coatings that are used by manufacturers of molten aluminium, non-ferrous metal, and glass. Because h-BN is nonwetting and lubricious to these molten materials, the coated surface (i.e. mold or crucible) does not stick to the material.
Exfoliated h-BN shows the ability to improved mechanical and thermal properties of polypropylene. One process used Resonant Acoustic Mixing to coat polypropylene with the h-BN. Then the h-BN was exfoliated by running the material through a high-pressure homogenizer, effectively creating nanosheets. This melt process also caused the h-BN to have a more uniform distribution through the polypropylene. Improvements were especially noted in oxidative thermal stability, enhanced oxidative induction time and reduct carbonyl index values.
Cubic BN.
Cubic boron nitride (CBN or c-BN) is widely used as an abrasive. Its usefulness arises from its insolubility in iron, nickel, and related alloys at high temperatures, whereas diamond is soluble in these metals. Polycrystalline c-BN (PCBN) abrasives are therefore used for machining steel, whereas diamond abrasives are preferred for aluminum alloys, ceramics, and stone. When in contact with oxygen at high temperatures, BN forms a passivation layer of boron oxide. Boron nitride binds well with metals due to formation of interlayers of metal borides or nitrides. Materials with cubic boron nitride crystals are often used in the tool bits of cutting tools. For grinding applications, softer binders such as resin, porous ceramics and soft metals are used. Ceramic binders can be used as well. Commercial products are known under names "Borazon" (by Hyperion Materials & Technologies), and "Elbor" or "Cubonite" (by Russian vendors).
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Contrary to diamond, large c-BN pellets can be produced in a simple process (called sintering) of annealing c-BN powders in nitrogen flow at temperatures slightly below the BN decomposition temperature. This ability of c-BN and h-BN powders to fuse allows cheap production of large BN parts.
Similar to diamond, the combination in c-BN of highest thermal conductivity and electrical resistivity is ideal for heat spreaders.
As cubic boron nitride consists of light atoms and is very robust chemically and mechanically, it is one of the popular materials for X-ray membranes: low mass results in small X-ray absorption, and good mechanical properties allow usage of thin membranes, further reducing the absorption.
Amorphous BN.
Layers of amorphous boron nitride (a-BN) are used in some semiconductor devices, e.g. MOSFETs. They can be prepared by chemical decomposition of trichloroborazine with caesium, or by thermal chemical vapor deposition methods. Thermal CVD can be also used for deposition of h-BN layers, or at high temperatures, c-BN.
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Other forms of boron nitride.
Atomically thin boron nitride.
Hexagonal boron nitride can be exfoliated to mono or few atomic layer sheets. Due to its analogous structure to that of graphene, atomically thin boron nitride is sometimes called "white graphene".
Mechanical properties.
Atomically thin boron nitride is one of the strongest electrically insulating materials. Monolayer boron nitride has an average Young's modulus of 0.865TPa and fracture strength of 70.5GPa, and in contrast to graphene, whose strength decreases dramatically with increased thickness, few-layer boron nitride sheets have a strength similar to that of monolayer boron nitride.
Thermal conductivity.
Atomically thin boron nitride has one of the highest thermal conductivity coefficients (751 W/mK at room temperature) among semiconductors and electrical insulators, and its thermal conductivity increases with reduced thickness due to less intra-layer coupling.
Thermal stability.
The air stability of graphene shows a clear thickness dependence: monolayer graphene is reactive to oxygen at 250 °C, strongly doped at 300 °C, and etched at 450 °C; in contrast, bulk graphite is not oxidized until 800 °C. Atomically thin boron nitride has much better oxidation resistance than graphene. Monolayer boron nitride is not oxidized till 700 °C and can sustain up to 850 °C in air; bilayer and trilayer boron nitride nanosheets have slightly higher oxidation starting temperatures. The excellent thermal stability, high impermeability to gas and liquid, and electrical insulation make atomically thin boron nitride potential coating materials for preventing surface oxidation and corrosion of metals and other two-dimensional (2D) materials, such as black phosphorus.
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Better surface adsorption.
Atomically thin boron nitride has been found to have better surface adsorption capabilities than bulk hexagonal boron nitride. According to theoretical and experimental studies, atomically thin boron nitride as an adsorbent experiences conformational changes upon surface adsorption of molecules, increasing adsorption energy and efficiency. The synergic effect of the atomic thickness, high flexibility, stronger surface adsorption capability, electrical insulation, impermeability, high thermal and chemical stability of BN nanosheets can increase the Raman sensitivity by up to two orders, and in the meantime attain long-term stability and reusability not readily achievable by other materials.
Dielectric properties.
Atomically thin hexagonal boron nitride is an excellent dielectric substrate for graphene, molybdenum disulfide (), and many other 2D material-based electronic and photonic devices. As shown by electric force microscopy (EFM) studies, the electric field screening in atomically thin boron nitride shows a weak dependence on thickness, which is in line with the smooth decay of electric field inside few-layer boron nitride revealed by the first-principles calculations.
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Raman characteristics.
Raman spectroscopy has been a useful tool to study a variety of 2D materials, and the Raman signature of high-quality atomically thin boron nitride was first reported by Gorbachev et al. in 2011. and Li et al. However, the two reported Raman results of monolayer boron nitride did not agree with each other. Cai et al., therefore, conducted systematic experimental and theoretical studies to reveal the intrinsic Raman spectrum of atomically thin boron nitride. It reveals that atomically thin boron nitride without interaction with a substrate has a G band frequency similar to that of bulk hexagonal boron nitride, but strain induced by the substrate can cause Raman shifts. Nevertheless, the Raman intensity of G band of atomically thin boron nitride can be used to estimate layer thickness and sample quality.
Boron nitride nanomesh.
Boron nitride nanomesh is a nanostructured two-dimensional material. It consists of a single BN layer, which forms by self-assembly a highly regular mesh after high-temperature exposure of a clean rhodium or ruthenium surface to borazine under ultra-high vacuum. The nanomesh looks like an assembly of hexagonal pores. The distance between two pore centers is 3.2 nm and the pore diameter is ~2 nm. Other terms for this material are boronitrene or white graphene.
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The boron nitride nanomesh is air-stable and compatible with some liquids. up to temperatures of 800 °C.
Boron nitride nanotubes.
Boron nitride tubules were first made in 1989 by Shore and Dolan This work was patented in 1989 and published in 1989 thesis (Dolan) and then 1993 Science. The 1989 work was also the first preparation of amorphous BN by B-trichloroborazine and cesium metal.
Boron nitride nanotubes were predicted in 1994 and experimentally discovered in 1995. They can be imagined as a rolled up sheet of h-boron nitride. Structurally, it is a close analog of the carbon nanotube, namely a long cylinder with diameter of several to hundred nanometers and length of many micrometers, except carbon atoms are alternately substituted by nitrogen and boron atoms. However, the properties of BN nanotubes are very different: whereas carbon nanotubes can be metallic or semiconducting depending on the rolling direction and radius, a BN nanotube is an electrical insulator with a bandgap of ~5.5 eV, basically independent of tube chirality and morphology. In addition, a layered BN structure is much more thermally and chemically stable than a graphitic carbon structure.
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Boron nitride aerogel.
Boron nitride aerogel is an aerogel made of highly porous BN. It typically consists of a mixture of deformed BN nanotubes and nanosheets. It can have a density as low as 0.6 mg/cm3 and a specific surface area as high as 1050 m2/g, and therefore has potential applications as an absorbent, catalyst support and gas storage medium. BN aerogels are highly hydrophobic and can absorb up to 160 times their weight in oil. They are resistant to oxidation in air at temperatures up to 1200 °C, and hence can be reused after the absorbed oil is burned out by flame. BN aerogels can be prepared by template-assisted chemical vapor deposition using borazine as the feed gas.
Composites containing BN.
Addition of boron nitride to silicon nitride ceramics improves the thermal shock resistance of the resulting material. For the same purpose, BN is added also to silicon nitride-alumina and titanium nitride-alumina ceramics. Other materials being reinforced with BN include alumina and zirconia, borosilicate glasses, glass ceramics, enamels, and composite ceramics with titanium boride-boron nitride, titanium boride-aluminium nitride-boron nitride, and silicon carbide-boron nitride composition.
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Zirconia Stabilized Boron Nitride (ZSBN) is produced by adding zirconia to BN, enhancing its thermal shock resistance and mechanical strength through a sintering process. It offers better performance characteristics including Superior corrosion and erosion resistance over a wide temperature range. Its unique combination of thermal conductivity, lubricity, mechanical strength, and stability makes it suitable for various applications including cutting tools and wear-resistant coatings, thermal and electrical insulation, aerospace and defense, and high-temperature components.
Pyrolytic boron nitride (PBN).
Pyrolytic boron nitride (PBN), also known as Chemical vapour-deposited Boron Nitride(CVD-BN), is a high-purity ceramic material characterized by exceptional chemical resistance and mechanical strength at high temperatures.
Pyrolytic boron nitride is typically prepared through the thermal decomposition of boron trichloride and ammonia vapors on graphite substrates at 1900°C.
Pyrolytic boron nitride (PBN) generally has a hexagonal structure similar to hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), though it can exhibit stacking faults or deviations from the ideal lattice. Pyrolytic boron nitride (PBN) shows some remarkable attributes, including exceptional chemical inertness, high dielectric strength, excellent thermal shock resistance, non-wettability, non-toxicity, oxidation resistance, and minimal outgassing.
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Due to a highly ordered planar texture similar to pyrolytic graphite (PG), it exhibits anisotropic properties such as lower dielectric constant vertical to the crystal plane and higher bending strength along the crystal plane. PBN material has been widely manufactured as crucibles of compound semiconductor crystals, output windows and dielectric rods of traveling-wave tubes, high-temperature jigs and insulator.
Health issues.
Boron nitride (along with , NbN, and BNC) is generally considered to be non-toxic and does not exhibit chemical activity in biological systems. Due to its excellent safety profile and lubricious properties, boron nitride finds widespread use in various applications, including cosmetics and food processing equipment. |
Bach (disambiguation)
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) was a German composer of the Baroque period.
Bach may also refer to: |
Blood on the Tracks
Blood on the Tracks is the fifteenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on January 20, 1975, by Columbia Records. The album marked Dylan's return to Columbia after a two-album stint with Asylum Records. Dylan began recording the album at an A & R studio in New York City in September 1974. In December, shortly before Columbia was due to release the album, Dylan abruptly re-recorded much of the material in Sound 80 studio in Minneapolis. The final album contains five tracks recorded in New York and five from Minneapolis. The songs have been linked to tensions in Dylan's personal life, including his estrangement from his then-wife Sara. One of their children, Jakob Dylan, described the songs as "my parents talking". Dylan denied that the songs were autobiographical.
Although "Blood on the Tracks" initially received mixed reviews from critics, it has retrospectively been acclaimed as one of Dylan's best albums by both critics and fans and various publications have since listed it as one of the greatest albums of all time. It was a commercial success, peaking at No. 1 on the "Billboard" 200 and No. 4 on the UK Albums Chart, with the single "Tangled Up in Blue" peaking at No. 31 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. It remains one of Dylan's best-selling studio releases, with a double-platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for at least two million copies sold in the United States. In 2015, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
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"Blood on the Tracks" was voted number 7 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's book "All Time Top 1000 Albums" (2000). In 2003, the album was ranked number 16 on "Rolling Stone"'s list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”, rising to number 9 in the 2020 revision of the list. In 2004, it was placed at number 5 on "Pitchfork"'s list of the "Top 100 Albums of the 1970s". A high-definition 5.1 surround sound edition of the album was released on SACD by Columbia in 2003.
Background and recording.
At the conclusion of his 1974 tour with the Band, Dylan began a relationship with a Columbia Records employee, Ellen Bernstein, which Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin has described as the beginning of the end of Dylan's marriage to his wife Sara. In spring 1974, Dylan was in New York for several weeks while he attended art classes with the painter Norman Raeben. Dylan subsequently gave Raeben credit in interviews for transforming his understanding of time, and during the summer of 1974 Dylan began to write a series of songs in a series of three small notebooks which used his new knowledge:
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Dylan subsequently spent time with Bernstein on his farm in Minnesota and there he completed the 17 songs from which "Blood on the Tracks" was formed—songs which Heylin has described as "perhaps the finest collection of love songs of the twentieth century, songs filled with the full spectrum of emotions a marriage on the rocks can engender".
Before recording the songs that would constitute "Blood on the Tracks", Dylan previewed them for a number of friends in the music world, including David Crosby, Graham Nash, Stephen Stills, Tim Drummond and Peter Rowan. Nash recalled that Stills disliked Dylan's private performance of his new songs; immediately after Dylan left the room, Stills remarked to Nash, "He's a good songwriter ... but he's no musician."
Initially, Dylan considered recording "Blood on the Tracks" with an electric backing group, and contacted Mike Bloomfield who had played lead guitar on Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" album. When the two met, Dylan ran through the songs he was planning to record, but he played them too quickly for Bloomfield to learn. Bloomfield later recalled the experience: "They all began to sound the same to me; they were all in the same key; they were all long. It was one of the strangest experiences of my life. He was sort of pissed off that I didn't pick it up." In the end, Dylan rejected the idea of recording the album with a band, and instead substituted stripped-down acoustic arrangements for all of his songs. On August 2, 1974, Dylan signed a contract with Columbia Records. After releasing his two previous albums, "Planet Waves" and "Before the Flood", on Asylum Records, Dylan decided his new album would benefit from the commercial muscle of the record label that had made him famous, and his new contract gave him increased control over his own masters.
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Dylan commenced recording at A & R Recording Studios in New York City on September 16, 1974. Bernstein has stated "the theme of returning ran through the sessions", so "it made a lot of sense to do it at A&R". A & R Studios was the former Columbia Records "Studio A", where Dylan had recorded six albums in the 1960s. The musicians quickly realized that Dylan was taking a "spontaneous" approach to recording. The producer, Phil Ramone, later said that Dylan transitioned from one song to another as if they were part of a medley. Ramone noted: "Sometimes he will have several bars, and in the next version, he will change his mind about how many bars there should be in between a verse. Or eliminate a verse. Or add a chorus when you don't expect."
Eric Weissberg and his band, Deliverance, originally recruited as session men, were rejected after two days of recording because they could not keep up with Dylan's pace. Dylan retained bassist Tony Brown from the band, and soon added organist Paul Griffin (who had also worked on "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Blonde on Blonde") and steel guitarist Buddy Cage. After ten days and four sessions with the current lineup, Dylan had finished recording and mixing, and, by November, had cut a test pressing of the album. Columbia began to prepare to release the album before Christmas.
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Dylan played the test pressing for his brother, David Zimmerman, who persuaded Dylan the album would not sell because the overall sound was too stark. Robert Christgau also heard the early version of the album and called it "a sellout to the memory of Dylan's pre-electric period". At his brother's urging, Dylan agreed to re-record five of the album's songs in Sound 80 in Minneapolis, with backing musicians recruited by David. The new takes were accomplished in two days at the end of December 1974. "Blood on the Tracks" was released into stores on January 20, 1975. The version on the original test pressing was given a limited release in 2019 for Record Store Day.
Outtakes.
The five New York acetate recordings that were replaced on the official album have been officially released on varied reissues archival releases, but only in 2019 did an official release of the original test pressing get released, as a limited-edition vinyl-only Record Store Day release. The acetate version of "You're a Big Girl Now" was released on 1985's "Biograph". New York takes of "Tangled Up in Blue", "Idiot Wind", and "If You See Her, Say Hello" were released on "The Bootleg Series, Vol. |
The acetate version of "You're a Big Girl Now" was released on 1985's "Biograph". New York takes of "Tangled Up in Blue", "Idiot Wind", and "If You See Her, Say Hello" were released on "The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1–3", but these were not the versions on the original test pressing. That collection also includes "Call Letter Blues", an outtake/early version of "Meet Me in the Morning" with alternate lyrics. "Up to Me", another outtake from these sessions, was also released on 1985's "Biograph". An alternate take of the song "Shelter from the Storm" is featured in the original soundtrack album for "Jerry Maguire" (1996). An alternate take of "Meet Me in the Morning" was released on the B-side of the Record Store Day 2012 release of "Duquesne Whistle". The acetate versions of "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts", "If You See Her, Say Hello", and "Tangled Up in Blue" were not released officially until 2018, when they were released, alongside 70 previously unreleased recordings, on the 6-disc deluxe edition of "", when they were released, alongside 70 previously unreleased recordings, on the 6-disc deluxe edition of "", volume 14 of Dylan's ongoing archival "Bootleg Series". Despite featuring multiple versions of nearly every song from the sessions, the actual mix of "Idiot Wind" found on the test pressing is not in the box set, and was only made available on the aforementioned 2019 reissue.
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Artwork and packaging.
The front cover shows Bob Dylan in a portrait in profile looking to the left. To the left of this is a burgundy color strip with the artist's name and album title, both in white and underlined. While the cover image looks like a painting, it is a heavily edited photograph by Paul Till (who is credited accordingly). Till explained that the picture was taken with a telephoto lens at a concert in the Maple Leaf Gardens, in Toronto on January 10, 1974. When developing the photo he solarized it, then handcolored it using watercolors.
The backcover shows, depending on the edition, one of two lithographs by David Oppenheim. The main difference is between a version issued with and one issued without liner notes. The liner notes were written by Pete Hamill, then removed by Columbia Records for later 1975 pressings - which is when the lithograph was switched out - and then reinstated after Hamill was awarded a Grammy for his comments. There exist later issues of both versions of the back cover.
Autobiographical interpretation.
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The songs that constitute "Blood on the Tracks" have been described by many Dylan critics as stemming from his personal turmoil at the time, particularly his estrangement from his then-wife Sara Dylan. One of Bob and Sara Dylan's children, Jakob Dylan, has said, "When I'm listening to "Blood On The Tracks", that's about my parents."
Dylan has denied this autobiographical interpretation, stating in a 1985 interview with Bill Flanagan, "A lot of people thought that album pertained to me. It didn't pertain to me ... I'm not going to make an album and lean on a marriage relationship." Informed of the album's popularity, Dylan told Mary Travers in a radio interview in April 1975: "A lot of people tell me they enjoy that album. It's hard for me to relate to that. I mean ... people enjoying that type of pain, you know?" Addressing whether the album described his own personal pain, Dylan replied that he didn't write "confessional songs". However, on the live At Budokan album, Dylan seems to acknowledge the autobiographical nature of the song "Simple Twist of Fate" by introducing it as "Here's a simple love story. Happened to me." And in a 1978 interview, he responded to an observation that the album was confessional and that "Tangled Up in Blue" drew on his relationship with Sara by saying, "There might be some little part of me which is confessing something which I've experienced and I know, but is not definitely the total me confessing anything."
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According to "Rolling Stone", in Dylan's lyric notebook, the working title of "Simple Twist of Fate" was "4th Street Affair"; Dylan and Suze Rotolo lived at 161 W. 4th St. The narrator of the song memorializes an affair of ten years ago instead of singing about Dylan's marriage. In "Hot Press", writing about the three known lyric notebooks for the songs, Anne Margaret Daniel noted that "Simple Twist of Fate" was first entitled "Snowbound", and set in part, like "Tangled Up in Blue", in a New York City apartment.
In his 2004 memoir, "Chronicles, Vol. 1", Dylan stated that the songs have nothing to do with his personal life, and that they were inspired by the short stories of Anton Chekhov.
Critical reception and legacy.
Released in early 1975, "Blood on the Tracks" initially received mixed reviews from critics. "Rolling Stone" published two assessments. The first, by Jonathan Cott, called it "Dylan's magnificent new album". The second reviewer, Jon Landau, wrote that "the record has been made with typical shoddiness." In "NME", Nick Kent described "the accompaniments [as] often so trashy they sound like mere practice takes", while "Crawdaddy" magazine's Jim Cusimano found the instrumentation incompetent.
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An influential review of the album was written by Dylan critic Michael Gray for the magazine "Let It Rock". Gray argued that it transformed the cultural perception of Dylan, and that he was no longer defined as "the major artist of the sixties. Instead, Dylan has legitimized his claim to a creative prowess as vital now as then—a power not bounded by the one decade he so affected." This view was amplified by Clinton Heylin, who wrote: "Ten years after he turned the rock & roll brand of pop into rock ... [Dylan] renewed its legitimacy as a form capable of containing the work of a mature artist." In "The Village Voice", Robert Christgau wrote that although the lyrics occasionally evoke romantic naiveté and bitterness, "Blood on the Tracks" is altogether Dylan's "most mature and assured record".
Since its initial reception, "Blood on the Tracks" has been viewed by critics as one of Dylan's best albums. In Salon.com, Wyman wrote: ""Blood on the Tracks" is his only flawless album and his best produced; the songs, each of them, are constructed in disciplined fashion. It is his kindest album and most dismayed, and seems in hindsight to have achieved a sublime balance between the logorrhea-plagued excesses of his mid-1960s output and the self-consciously simple compositions of his post-accident years." Bell, in his critical biography of Dylan, wrote that "Blood on the Tracks" was proof that "Dylan had won the argument over his refusal to argue about politics. In this, he began to seem prescient." Bell concluded the album "might well count as one of the best things Dylan ever did". Novelist Rick Moody called it "the truest, most honest account of a love affair from tip to stern ever put down on magnetic tape".
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A result of the acclaim surrounding the album has been that when critics have praised one of Dylan's subsequent albums, they have often described it as "his best since "Blood on the Tracks"". According to music journalist Rob Sheffield, "Blood on the Tracks" became a benchmark album for Dylan in the years that followed because it was "such a stunning comeback".
The album was also included in the book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die".
Hip hop group Public Enemy reference it in their 2007 Dylan tribute song "Long and Whining Road": "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back / You bet there's blood on them Bomb Squad tracks".
A film adaptation of the album is currently in pre-production, under the direction of Luca Guadagnino.
Personnel.
For personnel details, see Heylin, 1996 and Björner, 2014. Track numbers refer to CD and digital releases of the album.
Technical.
MInvolved in the Minneapolis recording sessions
NYInvolved in the New York recording sessions
Cover albums.
In 2002, Mary Lee's Corvette released an album covering "Blood on the Tracks" in its entirety.
In 2022, singer/songwriter Ryan Adams also released an album covering each song on the album track-by-track. |
Love and Theft (Bob Dylan album)
"Love and Theft" is the thirty-first studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on September 11, 2001, by Columbia Records. It featured backing by his touring band of the time, with keyboardist Augie Meyers added for the sessions. It peaked at No. 5 on the "Billboard" 200, and has been certified Gold by the RIAA. The album's highest chart positions worldwide were in Norway and Sweden, where it peaked at No. 1, giving Dylan his first No. 1 album in Norway since "Infidels", and his first No. 1 album ever in Sweden. A limited edition release included a separate disc with two bonus tracks recorded in the early 1960s, and two years later, on September 16, 2003, this album was remixed into 5.1 surround sound and became one of 15 Dylan titles reissued and remastered for SACD playback.
Background and recording.
"Love and Theft" was the first album Dylan recorded with his Never Ending Tour road band. This is a trend that would continue with his subsequent eight studio albums. Guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Larry Campbell recalls Dylan showing him the chord changes for the new song "Po' Boy" shortly after the band had recorded Dylan's Oscar-winning original and non-album song "Things Have Changed" in 1999: "They were relatively sophisticated changes for a Bob Dylan song [...] That was the first inkling of what the material might be like—taking elements from the jazz era and adding a folk sensibility to it".
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David Kemper, Dylan's drummer at the time, described in an interview how the sound of "Love and Theft" arose from lessons the band had absorbed from Dylan: "I didn't realise we were actually headed somewhere. I wasn't smart enough to realise: you are in the School of Bob. But when we went in to record "Love And Theft", I realised then, because the influences were really so old on that record. It comes from really early Americana, way back at the turn of the century, and the 1920s. And not everybody in the band was familiar with that style of playing. And I know that the songs that he would bring in would be these amazing examples of early Americana. Nobody that I know, knows as much about American music as Bob Dylan. He has spent so much time trying to understand, and collecting these songs—it was like a never stopping resource. He was always coming up with these songs or artists that I had never heard of. And then when we went in and recorded "Love And Theft" it was like, oh my God, he's been teaching us this music—not literally these songs, but these styles. And as a band, we're familiar with every one of these. That's why we could cut a song a day […] and the album was done".
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As Kemper indicated, the twelve songs on "Love and Theft" were recorded in just 12 days in May 2001 at Clinton Recording in Midtown Manhattan. The recording sessions were notable for their spontaneity. According to engineer Chris Shaw, "What surprised me was how quickly [Dylan] would abandon an arrangement when he was working. He'd say, 'What's the tempo? Let's do it in F and drop the tempo down and do it like a Western swing tune, and I want the drummer to play brushes, not drums.' And suddenly the song was completely different. Nothing was set in stone until he found that key, tempo and style that fit that vocal and that lyric".
For his part, Dylan had been interested in working with Chris Shaw when he heard Shaw had gotten his start on Public Enemy's early records. Dylan praised Shaw's work as an engineer during a press conference in Rome to promote "Love and Theft" in 2001: After complaining that previous producers had botched the recording of his vocals, he was asked if he felt it was difficult to record his voice in the studio. Dylan referenced Shaw when he responded, "I don't think so […] On this particular record we had a young guy who understood how to do it." Dylan would subsequently employ Shaw to engineer and mix his albums "Modern Times" (2006) and "Rough and Rowdy Ways" (2020) as well as various non-album tracks.
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Content.
The album continued Dylan's artistic comeback following 1997's "Time Out of Mind" and was given an even more enthusiastic reception. The title of the album was apparently inspired by historian Eric Lott's book "Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class," which was published in 1993. ""Love and Theft" becomes his "Fables of the Reconstruction", to borrow an R.E.M. album title", writes Greg Kot in the "Chicago Tribune" (published September 11, 2001), "the myths, mysteries and folklore of the South as a backdrop for one of the finest roots rock albums ever made".
The opening track, "Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum", includes many references to parades in Mardi Gras in New Orleans, where participants are masked, and "determined to go all the way" of the parade route, in spite of being intoxicated. "It rolls in like a storm, drums galloping over the horizon into ear shot, guitar riffs slicing with terse dexterity while a tale about a pair of vagabonds unfolds," writes Kot. "It ends in death, and sets the stage for an album populated by rogues, con men, outcasts, gamblers, gunfighters and desperados, many of them with nothing to lose, some of them out of their minds, all of them quintessentially American.
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