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2063 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristide%20Maillol | Aristide Maillol | Aristide Joseph Bonaventure Maillol (; December 8, 1861 – September 27, 1944) was a French sculptor, painter, and printmaker.
Biography
Maillol was born in Banyuls-sur-Mer, Roussillon. He decided at an early age to become a painter, and moved to Paris in 1881 to study art. After several applications and several years of living in poverty, his enrollment in the École des Beaux-Arts was accepted in 1885, and he studied there under Jean-Léon Gérôme and Alexandre Cabanel. His early paintings show the influence of his contemporaries Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Paul Gauguin.
Gauguin encouraged his growing interest in decorative art, an interest that led Maillol to take up tapestry design. In 1893 Maillol opened a tapestry workshop in Banyuls, producing works whose high technical and aesthetic quality gained him recognition for renewing this art form in France. He began making small terracotta sculptures in 1895, and within a few years his concentration on sculpture led to the abandonment of his work in tapestry.
In July 1896, Maillol married Clotilde Narcis, one of his employees at his tapestry workshop. Their only son, Lucian, was born that October.
Maillol's first major sculpture, A Seated Woman, was modeled after his wife. The first version (in the Museum of Modern Art, New York) was completed in 1902, and renamed La Méditerranée. Maillol, believing that "art does not lie in the copying of nature", produced a second, less naturalistic version in 1905. In 1902, the art dealer Ambroise Vollard provided Maillol with his first exhibition.
The subject of nearly all of Maillol's mature work is the female body, treated with a classical emphasis on stable forms. The figurative style of his large bronzes is perceived as an important precursor to the greater simplifications of Henry Moore, and his serene classicism set a standard for European (and American) figure sculpture until the end of World War II.
Josep Pla said of Maillol, "These archaic ideas, Greek, were the great novelty Maillol brought into the tendency of modern sculpture. What you need to love from the ancients is not the antiquity, it is the sense of permanent, renewed novelty, that is due to the nature and reason."
His important public commissions include a 1912 commission for a monument to Cézanne, as well as numerous war memorials commissioned after World War I.
Maillol served as a juror with Florence Meyer Blumenthal in awarding the Prix Blumenthal (1919–1954) a grant awarded to painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians.
He made a series of woodcut illustrations for an edition of Vergil's Eclogues published by Harry Graf Kessler in 1926–27. He also illustrated Daphnis and Chloe by Longus (1937) and Chansons pour elle by Paul Verlaine (1939).
He died in Banyuls at the age of eighty-three, in an automobile accident. While driving home during a thunderstorm, the car in which he was a passenger skidded off the road and rolled over. A large collection of Maillol's work is maintained at the Musée Maillol in Paris, which was established by Dina Vierny, Maillol's model and platonic companion during the last 10 years of his life. His home a few kilometers outside Banyuls, also the site of his final resting place, has been turned into a museum, the Musée Maillol Banyuls-sur-Mer, where a number of his works and sketches are displayed.
Three of his bronzes grace the grand staircase of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City: Summer (1910–11), Venus Without Arms (1920), and Kneeling Woman: Monument to Debussy (1950–55). The third, the artist's only reference to music, is a copy of an original created for the French city of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Claude Debussy's birthplace.
Nazi-looted art
During the German occupation of France, dozens of artworks by Maillol were seized by the Nazi looting organization known as the E.R.R. or Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce. The Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume lists thirty artworks by Maillol. The German Lost Art Foundation database lists 33 entries for Maillol. The German Historical Museum's database for artworks recovered by the Allies at the Munich Central Collecting Point has 13 items related to Maillol. Maillol's sculpture ‘Head of Flora’ was found in the stash of Cornelius Gurlitt, son of Hitler's art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt together with lithographs, drawings and paintings.
A photograph from May 24, 1946 shows "Six men, members of the Monuments, Fine Arts & Archives section of the military, prepare Aristide Maillol's sculpture Baigneuse à la draperie, looted during World War II for transport to France. Sculpture is labeled with sign: Wiesbaden, no. 31."
Jewish art collectors whose artworks by Maillol were looted by Nazis include Hugo Simon, Alfred Flechtheim and many others.
Works
Action in Chains (1905)
Flora, Nude (1910)
L'Été sans bras (1911)
Bathing Woman with Raised Arms (1921)
Nymph (1930)
The Mountain (1937)
L'Air (1938)
The River (1938-43)
Mme Henry Clemens van de Velde (c. 1899)
References
Sources
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, "Aristide Maillol, 1861-1944", New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1975.
Frèches-Thory, Claire, & Perucchi-Petry, Ursula, ed.: Die Nabis: Propheten der Moderne, Kunsthaus Zürich & Grand Palais, Paris & Prestel, Munich 1993 (German), (French)
Further reading
Lorquin, Bertrand (1995). Maillol. Skira. .
Rewald, John (1951). The Woodcuts of Aristide Maillol. New York: Pantheon Books.
External links
Masters of 20th Century Figure Sculpture
Maillol Museum
Aristide Maillol in Cultural Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg: Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume
French sculptors
Modern sculptors
1861 births
1944 deaths
Painters from Catalonia
Sculptors from Catalonia
French male painters
French male sculptors
Prix Blumenthal
Alumni of the École des Beaux-Arts
French Roman Catholics
People from Pyrénées-Orientales
Road incident deaths in France
19th-century French painters
20th-century French painters
20th-century male artists
19th-century French sculptors
20th-century French sculptors |
2064 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio%20Canova | Antonio Canova | Antonio Canova (; 1 November 1757 – 13 October 1822) was an Italian Neoclassical sculptor, famous for his marble sculptures. Often regarded as the greatest of the Neoclassical artists, his sculpture was inspired by the Baroque and the classical revival, and has been characterised as having avoided the melodramatics of the former, and the cold artificiality of the latter.
Life
Possagno
In 1757, Antonio Canova was born in the Venetian Republic city of Possagno to Pietro Canova, a stonecutter, and Maria Angela Zardo Fantolini. In 1761, his father died. A year later, his mother remarried. As such, in 1762, he was put into the care of his paternal grandfather Pasino Canova, who was a stonemason, owner of a quarry, and was a "sculptor who specialized in altars with statues and low reliefs in late Baroque style". He led Antonio into the art of sculpting.
Before the age of ten, Canova began making models in clay, and carving marble. Indeed, at the age of nine, he executed two small shrines of Carrara marble, which are still extant. After these works, he appears to have been constantly employed under his grandfather.
Venice
In 1770, he was an apprentice for two years to Giuseppe Bernardi, who was also known as 'Torretto'. Afterwards, he was under the tutelage of Giovanni Ferrari until he began his studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia. At the Academy, he won several prizes. During this time, he was given his first workshop within a monastery by some local monks.
The Senator Giovanni Falier commissioned Canova to produce statues of Orpheus and Eurydice for his garden – the Villa Falier at Asolo. The statues were begun in 1775, and both were completed by 1777. The pieces exemplify the late Rococo style. On the year of their completion, both works were exhibited for the Feast of the Ascension in Piazza S. Marco. Widely praised, the works won Canova his first renown among the Venetian elite. Another Venetian who is said to have commissioned early works from Canova was the abate Filippo Farsetti, whose collection at Ca' Farsetti on the Grand Canal he frequented.
In 1779, Canova opened his own studio at Calle Del Traghetto at S. Maurizio,. At this time, Procurator Pietro Vettor Pisani commissioned Canova's first marble statue: a depiction of Daedalus and Icarus. The statue inspired great admiration for his work at the annual art fair; Canova was paid for 100 gold zecchini for the completed work. At the base of the statue, Daedalus' tools are scattered about; these tools are also an allusion to Sculpture, of which the statue is a personification. With such an intention, there is suggestion that Daedalus is a portrait of Canova's grandfather Pasino.
Rome
Canova arrived in Rome, on 28 December 1780. Prior to his departure, his friends had applied to the Venetian senate for a pension. Successful in the application, the stipend allotted amounted to three hundred ducats, limited to three years.
While in Rome, Canova spent time studying and sketching the works of Michelangelo.
In 1781, Girolamo Zulian – the Venetian ambassador to Rome – hired Canova to sculpt Theseus and the Minotaur. Zulian played a fundamental role in Canova's rise to fame, turning some rooms of his palace into a studio for the artist and placing his trust in him despite Canova's early critics in Rome. The statue depicts the victorious Theseus seated on the lifeless body of a Minotaur. The initial spectators were certain that the work was a copy of a Greek original, and were shocked to learn it was a contemporary work. The highly regarded work is now in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, in London.
Between 1783 and 1785, Canova arranged, composed, and designed a funerary monument dedicated to Clement XIV for the Church of Santi Apostoli. After another two years, the work met completion in 1787. The monument secured Canova's reputation as the pre-eminent living artist.
In 1792, he completed another cenotaph, this time commemorating Clement XIII for St. Peter's Basilica. Canova harmonized its design with the older Baroque funerary monuments in the basilica.
In 1790, he began to work on a funerary monument for Titian, which was eventually abandoned by 1795. During the same year, he increased his activity as a painter. Canova was notoriously disinclined to restore sculptures. However, in 1794 he made an exception for his friend and early patron Zulian, restoring a few sculptures that Zulian had moved from Rome to Venice.
The following decade was extremely productive, beginning works such as Hercules and Lichas, Cupid and Psyche, Hebe, Tomb of Duchess Maria Christina of Saxony-Teschen, and The Penitent Magdalene.
In 1797, he went to Vienna, but only a year later, in 1798, he returned to Possagno for a year.
France and England
By 1800, Canova was the most celebrated artist in Europe. He systematically promoted his reputation by publishing engravings of his works and having marble versions of plaster casts made in his workshop. He became so successful that he had acquired patrons from across Europe including France, England, Russia, Poland, Austria and Holland, as well as several members from different royal lineages, and prominent individuals. Among his patrons were Napoleon and his family, for whom Canova produced much work, including several depictions between 1803 and 1809. The most notable representations were that of Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker, and Venus Victrix which was portrayal of Pauline Bonaparte.
Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker had its inception after Canova was hired to make a bust of Napoleon in 1802. The statue was begun in 1803, with Napoleon requesting to be shown in a French General's uniform, Canova rejected this, insisting on an allusion to Mars, the Roman god of War. It was completed in 1806. In 1811, the statue arrived in Paris, but not installed; neither was its bronze copy in the Foro Napoleonico in Milan. In 1815, the original went to the Duke of Wellington, after his victory at Waterloo against Napoleon.
Venus Victrix was originally conceived as a robed and recumbent sculpture of Pauline Borghese in the guise of Diana. Instead, Pauline ordered Canova to make the statue a nude Venus. The work was not intended for public viewing.
Other works for the Napoleon family include, a bust of Napoleon, a statue of Napoleon's mother, and Marie Louise as Concordia.
In 1802, Canova was assigned the post of 'Inspector-General of Antiquities and Fine Art of the Papal State', a position formerly held by Raphael. One of his activities in this capacity was to pioneer the restoration of the Appian Way by restoring the tomb of Servilius Quartus. In 1808 Canova became an associated member of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands.
In 1814, he began his The Three Graces.
In 1815, he was named 'Minister Plenipotentiary of the Pope,' and was tasked with recovering various works of art that were taken to Paris by Napoleon.
Also in 1815, he visited London, and met with Benjamin Haydon. It was after the advice of Canova that the Elgin marbles were acquired by the British Museum, with plaster copies sent to Florence, according to Canova's request.
Returning to Italy
In 1816, Canova returned to Rome with some of the art Napoleon had taken. He was rewarded with several marks of distinction: he was appointed President of the Accademia di San Luca, inscribed into the "Golden Book of Roman Nobles" by the Pope's own hands, and given the title of Marquis of Ischia, alongside an annual pension of 3000 crowns.
In 1819, he commenced and completed his commissioned work Venus Italica as a replacement for the Venus de' Medici.
After his 1814 proposal to build a personified statue of Religion for St. Peter's Basilica was rejected, Canova sought to build his own temple to house it. This project came to be the Tempio Canoviano. Canova designed, financed, and partly built the structure himself. The structure was to be a testament to Canova's piety. The building's design was inspired by combining the Parthenon and the Pantheon together. On 11 July 1819, Canova laid the foundation stone dressed in red Papal uniform and decorated with all his medals. It first opened in 1830, and was finally completed in 1836. After the foundation-stone of this edifice had been laid, Canova returned to Rome; but every succeeding autumn he continued to visit Possagno to direct the workmen and encourage them with rewards.
During the period that intervened between commencing operations at Possagno and his death, he executed or finished some of his most striking works. Among these were the group Mars and Venus, the colossal figure of Pius VI, the Pietà, the St John, and a colossal bust of his friend, the Count Cicognara.
In 1820, he made a statue of George Washington for the state of North Carolina. As recommended by Thomas Jefferson, the sculptor used the marble bust of Washington by Giuseppe Ceracchi as a model. It was delivered on 24 December 1821. The statue and the North Carolina State House where it was displayed were later destroyed by fire in 1831. A plaster replica was sent by the king of Italy in 1910, now on view at the North Carolina Museum of History. A marble copy was sculpted by Romano Vio in 1970, now on view in the rotunda of the capitol building.
In 1822, he journeyed to Naples, to superintend the construction of wax moulds for an equestrian statue of Ferdinand VII. The adventure was disastrous to his health, but soon became healthy enough to return to Rome. From there, he voyaged to Venice; however, on 13 October 1822, he died there at the age of 64. As he never married, the name became extinct, except through his stepbrothers' lineage of Satori-Canova.
On 12 October 1822, Canova instructed his brother to use his entire estate to complete the Tempio in Possagno.
On 25 October 1822, his body was placed in the Tempio Canoviano. His heart was interred at the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice, and his right hand preserved in a vase at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia.
His memorial service was so grand that it rivaled the ceremony that the city of Florence held for Michelangelo in 1564.
In 1826, Giovanni Battista Sartori sold Canova's Roman studio and took every plaster model and sculpture to Possagno, where they were installed in the Tempio Canoviano.
Works
Among Canova's most notable works are:
Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss (1787)
Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss was commissioned in 1787 by Colonel John Campbell. It is regarded as a masterpiece of Neoclassical sculpture, but shows the mythological lovers at a moment of great emotion, characteristic of the emerging movement of Romanticism. It represents the god Cupid in the height of love and tenderness, immediately after awakening the lifeless Psyche with a kiss.
Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker (1802–1806)
Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker had its inception after Canova was hired to make a bust of Napoleon in 1802. The statue was begun in 1802, with Napoleon requesting to be shown in a French General's uniform, Canova rejected this, insisting on an allusion to Mars, the Roman god of War. It was completed in 1806. In 1811, the statue arrived in Paris, but not installed; neither was its bronze copy in the Foro Napoleonico in Milan. In 1815, the original went to the Duke of Wellington, after his victory at Waterloo against Napoleon.
Perseus Triumphant (1804–1806)
Perseus Triumphant, sometimes called Perseus with the Head of Medusa, was a statue commissioned by tribune Onorato Duveyriez. It depicts the Greek hero Perseus after his victory over the Gorgon Medusa.
The statue was based freely to the Apollo Belvedere and the Medusa Rondanini.
Napoleon, after his 1796 Italian Campaign, took the Apollo Belvedere to Paris. In the statue's absence, Pope Pius VII acquired Canova's Perseus Triumphant and placed the work upon the Apollo'''s pedestal. The statue was so successful that when the Apollo was returned, Perseus remained as a companion piece.
One replica of the statue was commissioned from Canova by the Polish countess Waleria Tarnowska; it's now displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Karl Ludwig Fernow said of the statue that "every eye must rest with pleasure on the beautiful surface, even when the mind finds its hopes of high and pure enjoyment disappointed."
Venus Victrix (1805–1808)Venus Victrix ranks among the most famous of Canova's works. Originally, Canova wished the depictation to be of a robed Diana, but Pauline Borghese insisted to appear as a nude Venus. The work was not intended for public viewing.
The Three Graces (1814–1817)
John Russell, the 6th Duke of Bedford, commissioned a version of the now famous work. He had previously visited Canova in his studio in Rome in 1814 and had been immensely impressed by a carving of the Graces the sculptor had made for the Empress Josephine. When the Empress died in May of the same year he immediately offered to purchase the completed piece, but was unsuccessful as Josephine's son Eugène claimed it (his son Maximilian brought it to St. Petersburg, where it can now be found in the Hermitage Museum). Undeterred, the Duke commissioned another version for himself.
The sculpting process began in 1814 and was completed in 1817. Finally in 1819 it was installed at the Duke's residence in Woburn Abbey. Canova even made the trip over to England to supervise its installation, choosing for it to be displayed on a pedestal adapted from a marble plinth with a rotating top. This version is now owned jointly by the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Galleries of Scotland, and is alternately displayed at each.
Artistic process
Canova had a distinct, signature style in which he combined Greek and Roman art practices with early stirrings of romanticism to delve into a new path of Neoclassicism. Canova's sculptures fall into three categories: Heroic compositions, compositions of grace, and sepulchral monuments. In each of these, Canova's underlying artistic motivations were to challenge, if not compete, with classical statues.
Canova refused to take in pupils and students, but would hire workers to carve the initial figure from the marble. According to art historian Giuseppe Pavanello, "Canova's system of work concentrated on the initial idea, and on the final carving of the marble". He had an elaborate system of comparative pointing so that the workers were able to reproduce the plaster form in the selected block of marble. These workers would leave a thin veil over the entire statue so Canova's could focus on the surface of the statue.
While he worked, he had people read to him select literary and historical texts.
Last touch
During the last quarter of the eighteenth century, it became fashionable to view art galleries at night by torchlight. Canova was an artist that leapt on the fad and displayed his works of art in his studio by candlelight. As such, Canova would begin to finalize the statue with special tools by candlelight, to soften the transitions between the various parts of the nude. After a little recarving, he began to rub the statue down with pumice stone, sometimes for periods longer than weeks or months. If that was not enough, he would use tripoli (rottenstone) and lead.
He then applied a now unknown chemical-composition of patina onto the flesh of the figure to lighten the skin tone. Importantly, his friends also denied any usage of acids in his process.
Criticisms
Conversations revolving around the justification of art as superfluous usually invoked the name of Canova. Karl Ludwig Fernow believed that Canova was not Kantian enough in his aesthetic, because emphasis seemed to have been placed on agreeableness rather than Beauty. Canova was faulted for creating works that were artificial in complexity.
Legacy
Although the Romantic period artists buried Canova's name soon after he died, he is slowly being rediscovered. Giuseppe Pavanello wrote in 1996 that "the importance and value of Canova's art is now recognized as holding in balance the last echo of the Ancients and the first symptom of the restless experimentation of the modern age".
Canova spent large parts of his fortune helping young students and sending patrons to struggling sculptors, including Sir Richard Westmacott and John Gibson.
He was introduced into various orders of chivalry.
A number of his works, sketches, and writings are collected in the Sala Canoviana of the Museo Civico of Bassano del Grappa. Other works, including plaster casts are the Museo Canoviano in Asolo.
In 2018, a crater on Mercury was named in his honor.
Literary inspirations
Two of Canova's works appear as engravings in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1834, with poetical illustrations by Letitia Elizabeth Landon. These are of The Dancing Girl and Hebe''.
Commemorations
Canova, South Dakota
Via Antonio Canova, in Treviso
Aeroporto di Treviso A. Canova
The Museo Canova in Possagno
Tempio Canoviano, in Possagno
Gallery
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
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External links
Canova's Three Graces (second version) in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2000). One of three Flickr photos by ketrin 1407.
Canova's Perseus and Medusa in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2009). Part of Flickr set by ketrin1407.
Europe in the age of enlightenment and revolution, a catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Canova (see index)
Antonio Canova: Photo Gallery
Canova's death mask at Princeton
Canova museum and plaster cast gallery
Canova 2009 Exhibition in Forlì, Italy
Antonio Canova
1757 births
1822 deaths
People from the Province of Treviso
18th-century Italian sculptors
Italian male sculptors
19th-century Italian sculptors
Neoclassical sculptors
Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Artists of the Boston Public Library
19th-century male artists
Burials at Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari |
2065 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste%20Rodin | Auguste Rodin | François Auguste René Rodin (12 November 184017 November 1917) was a French sculptor generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was schooled traditionally and took a craftsman-like approach to his work. Rodin possessed a unique ability to model a complex, turbulent, and deeply pocketed surface in clay. He is known for such sculptures as The Thinker, Monument to Balzac, The Kiss, The Burghers of Calais, and The Gates of Hell.
Many of Rodin's most notable sculptures were criticized, as they clashed with predominant figurative sculpture traditions in which works were decorative, formulaic, or highly thematic. Rodin's most original work departed from traditional themes of mythology and allegory. He modeled the human body with naturalism, and his sculptures celebrate individual character and physicality. Although Rodin was sensitive to the controversy surrounding his work, he refused to change his style, and his continued output brought increasing favor from the government and the artistic community.
From the unexpected naturalism of Rodin's first major figure – inspired by his 1875 trip to Italy – to the unconventional memorials whose commissions he later sought, his reputation grew, and Rodin became the preeminent French sculptor of his time. By 1900, he was a world-renowned artist. Wealthy private clients sought Rodin's work after his World's Fair exhibit, and he kept company with a variety of high-profile intellectuals and artists. His student, Camille Claudel, became his associate, lover, and creative rival. Rodin's other students included Antoine Bourdelle, Constantin Brâncuși, and Charles Despiau. He married his lifelong companion, Rose Beuret, in the last year of both their lives. His sculptures suffered a decline in popularity after his death in 1917, but within a few decades his legacy solidified. Rodin remains one of the few sculptors widely known outside the visual arts community.
Biography
Formative years
Rodin was born in 1840 into a working-class family in Paris, the second child of Marie Cheffer and Jean-Baptiste Rodin, who was a police department clerk. He was largely self-educated, and began to draw at age 10. Between ages 14 and 17, he attended the Petite École, a school specializing in art and mathematics where he studied drawing and painting. His drawing teacher Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran believed in first developing the personality of his students so that they observed with their own eyes and drew from their recollections, and Rodin expressed appreciation for his teacher much later in life. It was at Petite École that he met Jules Dalou and Alphonse Legros.
In 1857, Rodin submitted a clay model of a companion to the École des Beaux-Arts in an attempt to win entrance; he did not succeed, and two further applications were also denied. Entrance requirements were not particularly high at the Grande École, so the rejections were considerable setbacks. Rodin's inability to gain entrance may have been due to the judges' Neoclassical tastes, while Rodin had been schooled in light, 18th-century sculpture. He left the Petite École in 1857 and earned a living as a craftsman and ornamenter for most of the next two decades, producing decorative objects and architectural embellishments.
Rodin's sister Maria, two years his senior, died of peritonitis in a convent in 1862, and Rodin was anguished with guilt because he had introduced her to an unfaithful suitor. He turned away from art and joined the Catholic order of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament. Saint Peter Julian Eymard, founder and head of the congregation, recognized Rodin's talent and sensed his lack of suitability for the order, so he encouraged Rodin to continue with his sculpture. Rodin returned to work as a decorator while taking classes with animal sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye. The teacher's attention to detail and his finely rendered musculature of animals in motion significantly influenced Rodin.
In 1864, Rodin began to live with a young seamstress named Rose Beuret (born in June 1844), with whom he stayed for the rest of his life, with varying commitment. The couple had a son named Auguste-Eugène Beuret (1866–1934). That year, Rodin offered his first sculpture for exhibition and entered the studio of Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, a successful mass producer of objets d'art. Rodin worked as Carrier-Belleuse' chief assistant until 1870, designing roof decorations and staircase and doorway embellishments. With the arrival of the Franco-Prussian War, Rodin was called to serve in the French National Guard, but his service was brief due to his near-sightedness. Decorators' work had dwindled because of the war, yet Rodin needed to support his family, as poverty was a continual difficulty for him until about the age of 30. Carrier-Belleuse soon asked him to join him in Belgium, where they worked on ornamentation for the Brussels Stock Exchange.
Rodin planned to stay in Belgium a few months, but he spent the next six years outside of France. It was a pivotal time in his life. He had acquired skill and experience as a craftsman, but no one had yet seen his art, which sat in his workshop since he could not afford castings. His relationship with Carrier-Belleuse had deteriorated, but he found other employment in Brussels, displaying some works at salons, and his companion Rose soon joined him there. Having saved enough money to travel, Rodin visited Italy for two months in 1875, where he was drawn to the work of Donatello and Michelangelo. Their work had a profound effect on his artistic direction. Rodin said, "It is Michelangelo who has freed me from academic sculpture." Returning to Belgium, he began work on The Age of Bronze, a life-size male figure whose naturalism brought Rodin attention but led to accusations of sculptural cheatingits naturalism and scale was such that critics alleged he had cast the work from a living model. Much of Rodin's later work was explicitly larger or smaller than life, in part to demonstrate the folly of such accusations.
Artistic independence
Rose Beuret and Rodin returned to Paris in 1877, moving into a small flat on the Left Bank. Misfortune surrounded Rodin: his mother, who had wanted to see her son marry, was dead, and his father was blind and senile, cared for by Rodin's sister-in-law, Aunt Thérèse. Rodin's eleven-year-old son Auguste, possibly developmentally delayed, was also in the ever-helpful Thérèse's care. Rodin had essentially abandoned his son for six years, and would have a very limited relationship with him throughout his life. Father and son joined the couple in their flat, with Rose as caretaker. Charges of fakery surrounding The Age of Bronze continued. Rodin increasingly sought soothing female companionship in Paris, and Rose stayed in the background.
Rodin earned his living collaborating with more established sculptors on public commissions, primarily memorials and neo-baroque architectural pieces in the style of Carpeaux. In competitions for commissions he submitted models of Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Lazare Carnot, all to no avail. On his own time, he worked on studies leading to the creation of his next important work, St. John the Baptist Preaching.
In 1880, Carrier-Belleuse – then art director of the Sèvres national porcelain factory – offered Rodin a part-time position as a designer. The offer was in part a gesture of reconciliation, and Rodin accepted. That part of Rodin which appreciated 18th-century tastes was aroused, and he immersed himself in designs for vases and table ornaments that brought the factory renown across Europe.
The artistic community appreciated his work in this vein, and Rodin was invited to Paris Salons by such friends as writer Léon Cladel. During his early appearances at these social events, Rodin seemed shy; in his later years, as his fame grew, he displayed the loquaciousness and temperament for which he is better known. French statesman Leon Gambetta expressed a desire to meet Rodin, and the sculptor impressed him when they met at a salon. Gambetta spoke of Rodin in turn to several government ministers, likely including , the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Fine Arts, whom Rodin eventually met.
Rodin's relationship with Turquet was rewarding: through him, he won the 1880 commission to create a portal for a planned museum of decorative arts. Rodin dedicated much of the next four decades to his elaborate Gates of Hell, an unfinished portal for a museum that was never built. Many of the portal's figures became sculptures in themselves, including Rodin's most famous, The Thinker and The Kiss. With the museum commission came a free studio, granting Rodin a new level of artistic freedom. Soon, he stopped working at the porcelain factory; his income came from private commissions.
In 1883, Rodin agreed to supervise a course for sculptor Alfred Boucher in his absence, where he met the 18-year-old Camille Claudel. The two formed a passionate but stormy relationship and influenced each other artistically. Claudel inspired Rodin as a model for many of his figures, and she was a talented sculptor, assisting him on commissions as well as creating her own works. Her Bust of Rodin was displayed to critical acclaim at the 1892 Salon.
Although busy with The Gates of Hell, Rodin won other commissions. He pursued an opportunity to create a historical monument for the town of Calais. For a monument to French author Honoré de Balzac, Rodin was chosen in 1891. His execution of both sculptures clashed with traditional tastes, and met with varying degrees of disapproval from the organizations that sponsored the commissions. Still, Rodin was gaining support from diverse sources that propelled him toward fame.
In 1889, the Paris Salon invited Rodin to be a judge on its artistic jury. Though Rodin's career was on the rise, Claudel and Beuret were becoming increasingly impatient with Rodin's "double life". Claudel and Rodin shared an atelier at a small old castle (the Château de l'Islette in the Loire), but Rodin refused to relinquish his ties to Beuret, his loyal companion during the lean years, and mother of his son. During one absence, Rodin wrote to Beuret, "I think of how much you must have loved me to put up with my caprices...I remain, in all tenderness, your Rodin."
Claudel and Rodin parted in 1898. Claudel suffered an alleged nervous breakdown several years later and was confined to an institution for 30 years by her family, until her death in 1943, despite numerous attempts by doctors to explain to her mother and brother that she was sane.
Works
In 1864, Rodin submitted his first sculpture for exhibition, The Man with the Broken Nose, to the Paris Salon. The subject was an elderly neighborhood street porter. The unconventional bronze piece was not a traditional bust, but instead the head was "broken off" at the neck, the nose was flattened and crooked, and the back of the head was absent, having fallen off the clay model in an accident. The work emphasized texture and the emotional state of the subject; it illustrated the "unfinishedness" that would characterize many of Rodin's later sculptures. The Salon rejected the piece.
Early figures: the inspiration of Italy
In Brussels, Rodin created his first full-scale work, The Age of Bronze, having returned from Italy. Modeled after a Belgian soldier, the figure drew inspiration from Michelangelo's Dying Slave, which Rodin had observed at the Louvre. Attempting to combine Michelangelo's mastery of the human form with his own sense of human nature, Rodin studied his model from all angles, at rest and in motion; he mounted a ladder for additional perspective, and made clay models, which he studied by candlelight. The result was a life-size, well-proportioned nude figure, posed unconventionally with his right hand atop his head, and his left arm held out at his side, forearm parallel to the body.
In 1877, the work debuted in Brussels and then was shown at the Paris Salon. The statue's apparent lack of a theme was troubling to critics – commemorating neither mythology nor a noble historical event – and it is not clear whether Rodin intended a theme. He first titled the work The Vanquished, in which form the left hand held a spear, but he removed the spear because it obstructed the torso from certain angles. After two more intermediary titles, Rodin settled on The Age of Bronze, suggesting the Bronze Age, and in Rodin's words, "man arising from nature". Later, however, Rodin said that he had had in mind "just a simple piece of sculpture without reference to subject".
Its mastery of form, light, and shadow made the work look so naturalistic that Rodin was accused of surmoulage – having taken a cast from a living model. Rodin vigorously denied the charges, writing to newspapers and having photographs taken of the model to prove how the sculpture differed. He demanded an inquiry and was eventually exonerated by a committee of sculptors. Leaving aside the false charges, the piece polarized critics. It had barely won acceptance for display at the Paris Salon, and criticism likened it to "a statue of a sleepwalker" and called it "an astonishingly accurate copy of a low type". Others rallied to defend the piece and Rodin's integrity. The government minister Turquet admired the piece, and The Age of Bronze was purchased by the state for 2,200 francs – what it had cost Rodin to have it cast in bronze.
A second male nude, St. John the Baptist Preaching, was completed in 1878. Rodin sought to avoid another charge of surmoulage by making the statue larger than life: St. John stands almost . While The Age of Bronze is statically posed, St. John gestures and seems to move toward the viewer. The effect of walking is achieved despite the figure having both feet firmly on the ground – a technical achievement that was lost on most contemporary critics. Rodin chose this contradictory position to, in his words, "display simultaneously...views of an object which in fact can be seen only successively".
Despite the title, St. John the Baptist Preaching did not have an obviously religious theme. The model, an Italian peasant who presented himself at Rodin's studio, possessed an idiosyncratic sense of movement that Rodin felt compelled to capture. Rodin thought of John the Baptist, and carried that association into the title of the work. In 1880, Rodin submitted the sculpture to the Paris Salon. Critics were still mostly dismissive of his work, but the piece finished third in the Salon's sculpture category.
Regardless of the immediate receptions of St. John and The Age of Bronze, Rodin had achieved a new degree of fame. Students sought him at his studio, praising his work and scorning the charges of surmoulage. The artistic community knew his name.
The Gates of Hell
A commission to create a portal for Paris' planned Museum of Decorative Arts was awarded to Rodin in 1880. Although the museum was never built, Rodin worked throughout his life on The Gates of Hell, a monumental sculptural group depicting scenes from Dante's Inferno in high relief. Often lacking a clear conception of his major works, Rodin compensated with hard work and a striving for perfection.
He conceived The Gates with the surmoulage controversy still in mind: "...I had made the St. John to refute [the charges of casting from a model], but it only partially succeeded. To prove completely that I could model from life as well as other sculptors, I determined...to make the sculpture on the door of figures smaller than life." Laws of composition gave way to the Gates''' disordered and untamed depiction of Hell. The figures and groups in this, Rodin's meditation on the condition of man, are physically and morally isolated in their torment.The Gates of Hell comprised 186 figures in its final form. Many of Rodin's best-known sculptures started as designs of figures for this composition, such as The Thinker, The Three Shades, and The Kiss, and were only later presented as separate and independent works. Other well-known works derived from The Gates are Ugolino, Fallen Caryatid Carrying her Stone, Fugit Amor, She Who Was Once the Helmet-Maker's Beautiful Wife, The Falling Man, and The Prodigal Son.The Thinker (originally titled The Poet, after Dante) was to become one of the best-known sculptures in the world. The original was a high bronze piece created between 1879 and 1889, designed for the Gates' lintel, from which the figure would gaze down upon Hell. While The Thinker most obviously characterizes Dante, aspects of the Biblical Adam, the mythological Prometheus, and Rodin himself have been ascribed to him. Other observers de-emphasize the apparent intellectual theme of The Thinker, stressing the figure's rough physicality and the emotional tension emanating from it.
The Burghers of Calais
The town of Calais had contemplated a historical monument for decades when Rodin learned of the project. He pursued the commission, interested in the medieval motif and patriotic theme. The mayor of Calais was tempted to hire Rodin on the spot upon visiting his studio, and soon the memorial was approved, with Rodin as its architect. It would commemorate the six townspeople of Calais who offered their lives to save their fellow citizens.
During the Hundred Years' War, the army of King Edward III besieged Calais, and Edward ordered that the town's population be killed en masse. He agreed to spare them if six of the principal citizens would come to him prepared to die, bareheaded and barefooted and with ropes around their necks. When they came, he ordered that they be executed, but pardoned them when his queen, Philippa of Hainault, begged him to spare their lives. The Burghers of Calais depicts the men as they are leaving for the king's camp, carrying keys to the town's gates and citadel.
Rodin began the project in 1884, inspired by the chronicles of the siege by Jean Froissart. Though the town envisioned an allegorical, heroic piece centered on Eustache de Saint-Pierre, the eldest of the six men, Rodin conceived the sculpture as a study in the varied and complex emotions under which all six men were laboring. One year into the commission, the Calais committee was not impressed with Rodin's progress. Rodin indicated his willingness to end the project rather than change his design to meet the committee's conservative expectations, but Calais said to continue.
In 1889, The Burghers of Calais was first displayed to general acclaim. It is a bronze sculpture weighing , and its figures are tall. The six men portrayed do not display a united, heroic front; rather, each is isolated from his brothers, individually deliberating and struggling with his expected fate. Rodin soon proposed that the monument's high pedestal be eliminated, wanting to move the sculpture to ground level so that viewers could "penetrate to the heart of the subject". At ground level, the figures' positions lead the viewer around the work, and subtly suggest their common movement forward.
The committee was incensed by the untraditional proposal, but Rodin would not yield. In 1895, Calais succeeded in having Burghers displayed in their preferred form: the work was placed in front of a public garden on a high platform, surrounded by a cast-iron railing. Rodin had wanted it located near the town hall, where it would engage the public. Only after damage during the First World War, subsequent storage, and Rodin's death was the sculpture displayed as he had intended. It is one of Rodin's best-known and most acclaimed works.
Commissions and controversy
Commissioned to create a monument to French writer Victor Hugo in 1889, Rodin dealt extensively with the subject of artist and muse. Like many of Rodin's public commissions, Monument to Victor Hugo was met with resistance because it did not fit conventional expectations. Commenting on Rodin's monument to Victor Hugo, The Times in 1909 expressed that "there is some show of reason in the complaint that [Rodin's] conceptions are sometimes unsuited to his medium, and that in such cases they overstrain his vast technical powers". The 1897 plaster model was not cast in bronze until 1964.
The Société des Gens des Lettres, a Parisian organization of writers, planned a monument to French novelist Honoré de Balzac immediately after his death in 1850. The society commissioned Rodin to create the memorial in 1891, and Rodin spent years developing the concept for his sculpture. Challenged in finding an appropriate representation of Balzac given the author's rotund physique, Rodin produced many studies: portraits, full-length figures in the nude, wearing a frock coat, or in a robe – a replica of which Rodin had requested. The realized sculpture displays Balzac cloaked in the drapery, looking forcefully into the distance with deeply gouged features. Rodin's intent had been to show Balzac at the moment of conceiving a work – to express courage, labor, and struggle.
When Balzac was exhibited in 1898, the negative reaction was not surprising. The Société rejected the work, and the press ran parodies. Criticizing the work, Morey (1918) reflected, "there may come a time, and doubtless will come a time, when it will not seem outre to represent a great novelist as a huge comic mask crowning a bathrobe, but even at the present day this statue impresses one as slang." A modern critic, indeed, claims that Balzac is one of Rodin's masterpieces.
The monument had its supporters in Rodin's day; a manifesto defending him was signed by Monet, Debussy, and future Premier Georges Clemenceau, among many others. In the BBC series Civilisation, art historian Kenneth Clark praised the monument as "the greatest piece of sculpture of the 19th Century, perhaps, indeed, the greatest since Michelangelo." Rather than try to convince skeptics of the merit of the monument, Rodin repaid the Société his commission and moved the figure to his garden. After this experience, Rodin did not complete another public commission. Only in 1939 was Monument to Balzac cast in bronze and placed on the Boulevard du Montparnasse at the intersection with Boulevard Raspail.
Other works
The popularity of Rodin's most famous sculptures tends to obscure his total creative output. A prolific artist, he created thousands of busts, figures, and sculptural fragments over more than five decades. He painted in oils (especially in his thirties) and in watercolors. The Musée Rodin holds 7,000 of his drawings and prints, in chalk and charcoal, and thirteen vigorous drypoints. He also produced a single lithograph.
Portraiture was an important component of Rodin's oeuvre, helping him to win acceptance and financial independence. His first sculpture was a bust of his father in 1860, and he produced at least 56 portraits between 1877 and his death in 1917. Early subjects included fellow sculptor Jules Dalou (1883) and companion Camille Claudel (1884).
Later, with his reputation established, Rodin made busts of prominent contemporaries such as English politician George Wyndham (1905), Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1906), socialist (and former mistress of the Prince of Wales who became King Edward VII) Countess of Warwick (1908), Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (1909), former Argentine president Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and French statesman Georges Clemenceau (1911).
His undated drawing Study of a Woman Nude, Standing, Arms Raised, Hands Crossed Above Head is one of the works seized in 2012 from the collection of Cornelius Gurlitt.
Aesthetic
Rodin was a naturalist, less concerned with monumental expression than with character and emotion. Departing with centuries of tradition, he turned away from the idealism of the Greeks, and the decorative beauty of the Baroque and neo-Baroque movements. His sculpture emphasized the individual and the concreteness of flesh, and suggested emotion through detailed, textured surfaces, and the interplay of light and shadow. To a greater degree than his contemporaries, Rodin believed that an individual's character was revealed by his physical features.
Rodin's talent for surface modeling allowed him to let every part of the body speak for the whole. The male's passion in The Thinker is suggested by the grip of his toes on the rock, the rigidness of his back, and the differentiation of his hands. Speaking of The Thinker, Rodin illuminated his aesthetic: "What makes my Thinker think is that he thinks not only with his brain, with his knitted brow, his distended nostrils and compressed lips, but with every muscle of his arms, back, and legs, with his clenched fist and gripping toes."
Sculptural fragments to Rodin were autonomous works, and he considered them the essence of his artistic statement. His fragments – perhaps lacking arms, legs, or a head – took sculpture further from its traditional role of portraying likenesses, and into a realm where forms existed for their own sake. Notable examples are The Walking Man, Meditation without Arms, and Iris, Messenger of the Gods.
Rodin saw suffering and conflict as hallmarks of modern art. "Nothing, really, is more moving than the maddened beast, dying from unfulfilled desire and asking in vain for grace to quell its passion." Charles Baudelaire echoed those themes, and was among Rodin's favorite poets. Rodin enjoyed music, especially the opera composer Gluck, and wrote a book about French cathedrals. He owned a work by the as-yet-unrecognized Van Gogh, and admired the forgotten El Greco.
Method
Instead of copying traditional academic postures, Rodin preferred his models to move naturally around his studio (despite their nakedness). The sculptor often made quick sketches in clay that were later fine-tuned, cast in plaster, and cast in bronze or carved from marble. Rodin's focus was on the handling of clay.
George Bernard Shaw sat for a portrait and gave an idea of Rodin's technique: "While he worked, he achieved a number of miracles. At the end of the first fifteen minutes, after having given a simple idea of the human form to the block of clay, he produced by the action of his thumb a bust so living that I would have taken it away with me to relieve the sculptor of any further work."
He described the evolution of his bust over a month, passing through "all the stages of art's evolution": first, a "Byzantine masterpiece", then "Bernini intermingled", then an elegant Houdon. "The hand of Rodin worked not as the hand of a sculptor works, but as the work of Elan Vital. The Hand of God is his own hand."
After he completed his work in clay, he employed highly skilled assistants to re-sculpt his compositions at larger sizes (including any of his large-scale monuments such as The Thinker), to cast the clay compositions into plaster or bronze, and to carve his marbles. Rodin's major innovation was to capitalize on such multi-staged processes of 19th century sculpture and their reliance on plaster casting.
Since clay deteriorates rapidly if not kept wet or fired into a terra-cotta, sculptors used plaster casts as a means of securing the composition they would make from the fugitive material that is clay. This was common practice amongst Rodin's contemporaries, and sculptors would exhibit plaster casts with the hopes that they would be commissioned to have the works made in a more permanent material. Rodin, however, would have multiple plasters made and treat them as the raw material of sculpture, recombining their parts and figures into new compositions, and new names.
As Rodin's practice developed into the 1890s, he became more and more radical in his pursuit of fragmentation, the combination of figures at different scales, and the making of new compositions from his earlier work. A prime example of this is the bold The Walking Man (1899–1900), which was exhibited at his major one-person show in 1900. This is composed of two sculptures from the 1870s that Rodin found in his studio – a broken and damaged torso that had fallen into neglect and the lower extremities of a statuette version of his 1878 St. John the Baptist Preaching he was having re-sculpted at a reduced scale.
Without finessing the join between upper and lower, between torso and legs, Rodin created a work that many sculptors at the time and subsequently have seen as one of his strongest and most singular works. This is despite the fact that the object conveys two different styles, exhibits two different attitudes toward finish, and lacks any attempt to hide the arbitrary fusion of these two components. It was the freedom and creativity with which Rodin used these practices – along with his activation surfaces of sculptures through traces of his own touch and with his more open attitude toward bodily pose, sensual subject matter, and non-naturalistic surface – that marked Rodin's re-making of traditional 19th century sculptural techniques into the prototype for modern sculpture.
Later years (1900–1917)
By 1900, Rodin's artistic reputation was entrenched. Gaining exposure from a pavilion of his artwork set up near the 1900 World's Fair (Exposition Universelle) in Paris, he received requests to make busts of prominent people internationally, while his assistants at the atelier produced duplicates of his works. His income from portrait commissions alone totaled probably 200,000 francs a year. As Rodin's fame grew, he attracted many followers, including the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and authors Octave Mirbeau, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and Oscar Wilde.
Rilke stayed with Rodin in 1905 and 1906, and did administrative work for him; he would later write a laudatory monograph on the sculptor. Rodin and Beuret's modest country estate in Meudon, purchased in 1897, was a host to such guests as King Edward, dancer Isadora Duncan, and harpsichordist Wanda Landowska. A British journalist who visited the property noted in 1902 that in its complete isolation, there was "a striking analogy between its situation and the personality of the man who lives in it". Rodin moved to the city in 1908, renting the main floor of the Hôtel Biron, an 18th-century townhouse. He left Beuret in Meudon, and began an affair with the American-born Duchesse de Choiseul. From 1910, he mentored the Russian sculptor, Moissey Kogan.
United States
While Rodin was beginning to be accepted in France by the time of The Burghers of Calais, he had not yet conquered the American market. Because of his technique and the frankness of some of his work, he did not have an easy time selling his work to American industrialists. However, he came to know Sarah Tyson Hallowell (1846–1924), a curator from Chicago who visited Paris to arrange exhibitions at the large Interstate Expositions of the 1870s and 1880s. Hallowell was not only a curator but an adviser and a facilitator who was trusted by a number of prominent American collectors to suggest works for their collections, the most prominent of these being the Chicago hotelier Potter Palmer and his wife, Bertha Palmer (1849–1918).
The next opportunity for Rodin in America was the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Hallowell wanted to help promote Rodin's work and he suggested a solo exhibition, which she wrote him was beaucoup moins beau que l'original but impossible, outside the rules. Instead, she suggested he send a number of works for her loan exhibition of French art from American collections and she told him she would list them as being part of an American collection. Rodin sent Hallowell three works, Cupid and Psyche, Sphinx and Andromeda. All nudes, these works provoked great controversy and were ultimately hidden behind a drape with special permission given for viewers to see them.Bust of Dalou and Burgher of Calais were on display in the official French pavilion at the fair and so between the works that were on display and those that were not, he was noticed. However, the works he gave Hallowell to sell found no takers, but she soon brought the controversial Quaker-born financier Charles Yerkes (1837–1905) into the fold and he purchased two large marbles for his Chicago manse; Yerkes was likely the first American to own a Rodin sculpture.
Other collectors soon followed including the tastemaking Potter Palmers of Chicago and Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) of Boston, all arranged by Sarah Hallowell. In appreciation for her efforts at unlocking the American market, Rodin eventually presented Hallowell with a bronze, a marble and a terra cotta. When Hallowell moved to Paris in 1893, she and Rodin continued their warm friendship and correspondence, which lasted to the end of the sculptor's life. After Hallowell's death, her niece, the painter Harriet Hallowell, inherited the Rodins and after her death, the American heirs could not manage to match their value in order to export them, so they became the property of the French state.
Great Britain
After the start of the 20th century, Rodin was a regular visitor to Great Britain, where he developed a loyal following by the beginning of the First World War. He first visited England in 1881, where his friend, the artist Alphonse Legros, had introduced him to the poet William Ernest Henley. With his personal connections and enthusiasm for Rodin's art, Henley was most responsible for Rodin's reception in Britain. (Rodin later returned the favor by sculpting a bust of Henley that was used as the frontispiece to Henley's collected works and, after his death, on his monument in London.)
Through Henley, Rodin met Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Browning, in whom he found further support. Encouraged by the enthusiasm of British artists, students, and high society for his art, Rodin donated a significant selection of his works to the nation in 1914.
After the revitalization of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1890, Rodin served as the body's vice-president. In 1903, Rodin was elected president of the International Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers. He replaced its former president, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, upon Whistler's death. His election to the prestigious position was largely due to the efforts of Albert Ludovici, father of English philosopher Anthony Ludovici, who was private secretary to Rodin for several months in 1906, but the two men parted company after Christmas, "to their mutual relief."
During his later creative years, Rodin's work turned increasingly toward the female form, and themes of more overt masculinity and femininity. He concentrated on small dance studies, and produced numerous erotic drawings, sketched in a loose way, without taking his pencil from the paper or his eyes from the model. Rodin met American dancer Isadora Duncan in 1900, attempted to seduce her, and the next year sketched studies of her and her students. In July 1906, Rodin was also enchanted by dancers from the Royal Ballet of Cambodia, and produced some of his most famous drawings from the experience.
Fifty-three years into their relationship, Rodin married Rose Beuret. They married on 29 January 1917, and Beuret died two weeks later, on 16 February. Rodin was ill that year; in January, he suffered weakness from influenza, and on 16 November his physician announced that "congestion of the lungs has caused great weakness. The patient's condition is grave." Rodin died the next day, age 77, at his villa in Meudon, Île-de-France, on the outskirts of Paris.
A cast of The Thinker was placed next to his tomb in Meudon; it was Rodin's wish that the figure served as his headstone and epitaph. In 1923, Marcell Tirel, Rodin's secretary, published a book alleging that Rodin's death was largely due to cold, and the fact that he had no heat at Meudon. Rodin requested permission to stay in the Hotel Biron, a museum of his works, but the director of the museum refused to let him stay there.
Legacy
Rodin willed to the French state his studio and the right to make casts from his plasters. Because he encouraged the edition of his sculpted work, Rodin's sculptures are represented in many public and private collections. The Musée Rodin was founded in 1916 and opened in 1919 at the Hôtel Biron, where Rodin had lived, and it holds the largest Rodin collection, with more than 6,000 sculptures and 7,000 works on paper. The French order Légion d'honneur made him a Commander, and he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford.
During his lifetime, Rodin was compared to Michelangelo, and was widely recognized as the greatest artist of the era. In the three decades following his death, his popularity waned with changing aesthetic values. Since the 1950s, Rodin's reputation has re-ascended; he is recognized as the most important sculptor of the modern era, and has been the subject of much scholarly work. The sense of incompletion offered by some of his sculpture, such as The Walking Man, influenced the increasingly abstract sculptural forms of the 20th century.
Rodin restored an ancient role of sculpture – to capture the physical and intellectual force of the human subject – and he freed sculpture from the repetition of traditional patterns, providing the foundation for greater experimentation in the 20th century. His popularity is ascribed to his emotion-laden representations of ordinary men and women – to his ability to find the beauty and pathos in the human animal. His most popular works, such as The Kiss and The Thinker, are widely used outside the fine arts as symbols of human emotion and character. To honor Rodin's artistic legacy, the Google search engine homepage displayed a Google Doodle featuring The Thinker to celebrate his 172nd birthday on 12 November 2012.
Rodin had enormous artistic influence. A whole generation of sculptors studied in his workshop. These include Gutzon Borglum, Antoine Bourdelle, Constantin Brâncuși, Camille Claudel, Charles Despiau, Malvina Hoffman, Carl Milles, François Pompon, Rodo, Gustav Vigeland, Clara Westhoff and Margaret Winser, even though Brancusi later rejected his legacy. Rodin also promoted the work of other sculptors, including Aristide Maillol and Ivan Meštrović whom Rodin once called "the greatest phenomenon amongst sculptors." Other sculptors whose work has been described as owing to Rodin include Joseph Csaky, Alexander Archipenko, Joseph Bernard, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Georg Kolbe, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Jacques Lipchitz, Pablo Picasso, Adolfo Wildt, and Ossip Zadkine. Henry Moore acknowledged Rodin's seminal influence on his work.
Several films have been made featuring Rodin as a prominent character or presence. These include Camille Claudel, a 1988 film in which Gérard Depardieu portrays Rodin, Camille Claudel 1915 from 2013, and Rodin, a 2017 film starring Vincent Lindon as Rodin. Furthermore, the Rodin Studios artists' cooperative housing in New York City, completed in 1917 to designs by Cass Gilbert, was named after Rodin.
Forgeries
The relative ease of making reproductions has also encouraged many forgeries: a survey of expert opinion placed Rodin in the top ten most-faked artists. Rodin fought against forgeries of his works as early as 1901, and since his death, many cases of organized, large-scale forgeries have been revealed. A massive forgery was discovered by French authorities in the early 1990s and led to the conviction of art dealer Guy Hain.
To deal with the complexity of bronze reproduction, France has promulgated several laws since 1956 which limit reproduction to twelve casts – the maximum number that can be made from an artist's plasters and still be considered his work. As a result of this limit, The Burghers of Calais, for example, is found in fourteen cities.
In the market for sculpture, plagued by fakes, the value of a piece increases significantly when its provenance can be established. A Rodin work with a verified history sold for US$4.8 million in 1999, and Rodin's bronze Ève, grand modele – version sans rocher sold for $18.9 million at a 2008 Christie's auction in New York. Art critics concerned about authenticity have argued that taking a cast does not equal reproducing a Rodin sculpture – especially given the importance of surface treatment in Rodin's work.
A number of drawings previously attributed to Rodin are now known to have been forged by Ernest Durig.
Citations
General sources
(Online Essay)
Further reading
Corbett, Rachel (2016). You Must Change Your Life: the Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin, New York: W. W. Norton and Company. .
Sanyal, Narayan (1984). Rodin, Dey's Publishing Company, Kolkata. .
Vincent, Clare. "Auguste Rodin (1840–1917)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. (October 2004)
Tobias G. Natter, Max Hollein (Eds.): Klimt & Rodin: An Artistic Encounter.'' DelMonico Books – Prestel Publishing, Munich e. a. 2017, ISBN 978-3-7913-5708-9.
External links
Musée Rodin, Paris
Friends of Rodin, association organizing for its members events around Auguste Rodin
Rodin Museum, Philadelphia
Auguste Rodin at the National Gallery of Art
Rodin Collection, Stanford University
Auguste Rodin: Timeline of Art History Metropolitan Museum of Art
Rodin Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum Nov 1987 – Jan 1988
Rodin at the Victoria and Albert Museum
Correspondence with Walter Butterworth held at the University of Salford
Public Art Fund: Rodin at Rockefeller Center
Video documentary about Rodin's work
(by Ranier Maria Rilke, trans. by Jessie Lemont & Hans Trausil)
Portrait of Auguste Rodin by Alphonse Legros at University of Michigan Museum of Art
1840 births
1917 deaths
19th-century French sculptors
20th-century French sculptors
Artists from Paris
French male sculptors
French printmakers
Grand Officiers of the Légion d'honneur
Modern sculptors |
2067 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann%20Arbor%2C%20Michigan | Ann Arbor, Michigan | Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County. The 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851, making it the fifth-largest city in Michigan. It is the principal city of the Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Washtenaw County. Ann Arbor is also included in the larger Greater Detroit Combined Statistical Area.
Ann Arbor is home to the University of Michigan. The university significantly shapes Ann Arbor's economy as it employs about 30,000 workers, including about 12,000 in the medical center. The city's economy is also centered on high technology, with several companies drawn to the area by the university's research and development infrastructure.
Ann Arbor was founded in 1825, named after the wives of the village's founders, both named Ann, and the stands of bur oak trees. The University of Michigan moved from Detroit to Ann Arbor in 1837, and the city grew at a rapid rate in the early to mid-20th century.
History
In about 1774, the Potawatomi founded two villages in the area of what is now Ann Arbor.
Ann Arbor was founded in 1825 by land speculators John Allen and Elisha Walker Rumsey. On May 25, 1825, the town plat was registered with Wayne County as "Annarbour", the earliest known use of the town's name. Allen and Rumsey decided to name it for their wives, both named Ann, and for the stands of bur oak in the of land they purchased for $800 from the federal government at $1.25 per acre. The local Ojibwa named the settlement kaw-goosh-kaw-nick, after the sound of Allen's sawmill.
Ann Arbor became the seat of Washtenaw County in 1827, and was incorporated as a village in 1833. The Ann Arbor Land Company, a group of speculators, set aside of undeveloped land and offered it to the state of Michigan as the site of the state capitol, but lost the bid to Lansing. In 1837, the property was accepted instead as the site of the University of Michigan, which moved from Detroit.
Since the university's establishment in the city in 1837, the histories of the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor have been closely linked. The town became a regional transportation hub in 1839 with the arrival of the Michigan Central Railroad, and a north–south railway connecting Ann Arbor to Toledo and other markets to the south was established in 1878. Throughout the 1840s and the 1850s settlers continued to come to Ann Arbor. While the earlier settlers were primarily of British ancestry, the newer settlers also consisted of Germans, Irish, and blacks. In 1851, Ann Arbor was chartered as a city, though the city showed a drop in population during the Depression of 1873. It was not until the early 1880s that Ann Arbor again saw robust growth, with new emigrants from Greece, Italy, Russia, and Poland. Ann Arbor saw increased growth in manufacturing, particularly in milling. Ann Arbor's Jewish community also grew after the turn of the 20th century, and its first and oldest synagogue, Beth Israel Congregation, was established in 1916.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the city gained a reputation as an important center for liberal politics. Ann Arbor also became a locus for left-wing activism and anti-Vietnam War movement, as well as the student movement. The first major meetings of the national left-wing campus group Students for a Democratic Society took place in Ann Arbor in 1960; in 1965, the city was home to the first U.S. teach-in against the Vietnam War. During the ensuing 15 years, many countercultural and New Left enterprises sprang up and developed large constituencies within the city. These influences washed into municipal politics during the early and mid-1970s when three members of the Human Rights Party (HRP) won city council seats on the strength of the student vote. During their time on the council, HRP representatives fought for measures including pioneering antidiscrimination ordinances, measures decriminalizing marijuana possession, and a rent-control ordinance; many of these progressive organizations remain in effect today in modified form.
Two religious-conservative institutions were created in Ann Arbor; the Word of God (established in 1967), a charismatic inter-denominational movement; and the Thomas More Law Center (established in 1999).
Following a 1956 vote, the city of East Ann Arbor merged with Ann Arbor to encompass the eastern sections of the city.
In the past several decades, Ann Arbor has grappled with the effects of sharply rising land values, gentrification, and urban sprawl stretching into outlying countryside. On November 4, 2003, voters approved a greenbelt plan under which the city government bought development rights on agricultural parcels of land adjacent to Ann Arbor to preserve them from sprawling development. Since then, a vociferous local debate has hinged on how and whether to accommodate and guide development within city limits. Ann Arbor consistently ranks in the "top places to live" lists published by various mainstream media outlets every year. In 2008, it was ranked by CNNMoney.com 27th out of 100 "America's best small cities". And in 2010, Forbes listed Ann Arbor as one of the most liveable cities in the United States.
Geography and cityscape
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which, of it is land and is water, much of which is part of the Huron River. Ann Arbor is road miles west of Ypsilanti. Ann Arbor is also road miles west of Detroit. Ann Arbor Charter Township adjoins the city's north and east sides. Ann Arbor is situated on the Huron River in a productive agricultural and fruit-growing region. The landscape of Ann Arbor consists of hills and valleys, with the terrain becoming steeper near the Huron River. The elevation ranges from about along the Huron River to on the city's west side, near the intersection of Maple Road and Pauline Blvd. Generally, the west-central and northwestern parts of the city and U-M's North Campus are the highest parts of the city; the lowest parts are along the Huron River and in the southeast. Ann Arbor Municipal Airport, which is south of the city at , has an elevation of .
Ann Arbor's "Tree Town" nickname stems from the dense forestation of its parks and residential areas. The city contains more than 50,000 trees along its streets and an equal number in parks. In recent years, the emerald ash borer has destroyed many of the city's approximately 10,500 ash trees. The city contains 157 municipal parks ranging from small neighborhood green spots to large recreation areas. Several large city parks and a university park border sections of the Huron River. Fuller Recreation Area, near the University Hospital complex, contains sports fields, pedestrian and bike paths, and swimming pools. The Nichols Arboretum, owned by the University of Michigan, is a arboretum that contains hundreds of plant and tree species. It is on the city's east side, near the university's Central Campus. Located across the Huron River just beyond the university's North Campus is the university's Matthaei Botanical Gardens, which contains 300 acres of gardens and a large tropical conservatory as well as a wildflower garden specializing in the vegetation of the southern Great Lakes Region..
The Kerrytown Shops, Main Street Business District, the State Street Business District, and the South University Business District are commercial areas in downtown Ann Arbor. Three commercial areas south of downtown include the areas near I-94 and Ann Arbor-Saline Road, Briarwood Mall, and the South Industrial area. Other commercial areas include the Arborland/Washtenaw Avenue and Packard Road merchants on the east side, the Plymouth Road area in the northeast, and the Westgate/West Stadium areas on the west side. Downtown contains a mix of 19th- and early-20th-century structures and modern-style buildings, as well as a farmers' market in the Kerrytown district. The city's commercial districts are composed mostly of two- to four-story structures, although downtown and the area near Briarwood Mall contain a small number of high-rise buildings.
Ann Arbor's residential neighborhoods contain architectural styles ranging from classic 19th- and early 20th-century designs to ranch-style houses. Among these homes are a number of kit houses built in the early 20th century. Contemporary-style houses are farther from the downtown district. Surrounding the University of Michigan campus are houses and apartment complexes occupied primarily by student renters. Tower Plaza, a 26-story condominium building located between the University of Michigan campus and downtown, is the tallest building in Ann Arbor. The 19th-century buildings and streetscape of the Old West Side neighborhood have been preserved virtually intact; in 1972, the district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and it is further protected by city ordinances and a nonprofit preservation group.
Climate
Ann Arbor has a typically Midwestern humid continental climate (Köppen Dfa), which is influenced by the Great Lakes. There are four distinct seasons: winters are cold and snowy, with average highs around . Summers are warm to hot and humid, with average highs around and with slightly more precipitation. Spring and autumn are transitional between the two. The area experiences lake effect weather, primarily in the form of increased cloudiness during late fall and early winter. The monthly daily average temperature in July is , while the same figure for January is . Temperatures reach or exceed on 10 days, and drop to or below on 4.6 nights. Precipitation tends to be the heaviest during the summer months, but most frequent during winter. Snowfall, which normally occurs from November to April but occasionally starts in October, averages per season. The lowest recorded temperature was on February 11, 1885 and the highest recorded temperature was on July 24, 1934.
Demographics
As of the 2020 U.S. Census, there were 123,851 people and 49,948 households residing in the city. The population density was 4,435.9 people per square mile (1,712.3/km), making it less densely populated than Detroit proper and its inner-ring suburbs like Oak Park and Ferndale, but more densely populated than outer-ring suburbs like Livonia and Troy. The racial makeup of the city was 67.6% White, 6.8% black, 0.2% Native American, 15.7% Asian, 0.1% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 1.8% from other races, and 7.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race made up 5.5% of the population. Ann Arbor has a small population of Arab Americans, including students as well as local Lebanese and Palestinians.
As of the 2010 U.S. Census, there were 113,934 people, 20,502 families, and 47,060 households residing in the city. The population density was 4,093.9 people per square mile (1,580.7/km). The racial makeup of the city was 73.0% White (70.4% non-Hispanic White), 7.7% Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, 0.3% Native American, 14.4% Asian, 0.0% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 1.0% from other races, and 3.6% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race made up 4.1% of the population.
In 2013, Ann Arbor had the second-largest community of Japanese citizens in the state of Michigan, at 1,541; this figure trailed only that of Novi, which had 2,666 Japanese nationals.
In 2010, out of 47,060 households, 43.6% were family households, 20.1% had individuals under the age of 18 living in them, and 17.0% had individuals over age 65 living in them. Of the 20,502 family households, 19.2% included children under age 18, 34.2% were husband-wife families (estimates did not include same-sex married couples), and 7.1% had a female householder with no husband present. The average household size was 2.17 people, and the average family size was 2.85 people. The median age was 27.8; 14.4% of the population was under age 18, and 9.3% was age 65 or older.
According to the 2012–2016 American Community Survey estimates, the median household income was $57,697, and the median family income was $95,528. Males over age 25 and with earnings had a median income of $51,682, versus $39,203 for females. The per capita income for the city was $37,158. Nearly a quarter (23.4%) of people and 6.7% of families had incomes below the poverty level.
Economy
The University of Michigan shapes Ann Arbor's economy significantly. It employs about 30,000 workers, including about 12,000 in the medical center. Other employers are drawn to the area by the university's research and development money, and by its graduates. High tech, health services and biotechnology are other major components of the city's economy; numerous medical offices, laboratories, and associated companies are located in the city. Automobile manufacturers, such as General Motors and Visteon, also employ residents.
High tech companies have located in the area since the 1930s, when International Radio Corporation introduced the first mass-produced AC/DC radio (the Kadette, in 1931) as well as the first pocket radio (the Kadette Jr., in 1933). The Argus camera company, originally a subsidiary of International Radio, manufactured cameras in Ann Arbor from 1936 to the 1960s. Current firms include Arbor Networks (provider of Internet traffic engineering and security systems), Arbortext (provider of XML-based publishing software), JSTOR (the digital scholarly journal archive), MediaSpan (provider of software and online services for the media industries), Truven Health Analytics, and ProQuest, which includes UMI. Ann Arbor Terminals manufactured a video-display terminal called the Ann Arbor Ambassador during the 1980s. Barracuda Networks, which provides networking, security, and storage products based on network appliances and cloud services, opened an engineering office in Ann Arbor in 2008 on Depot St. and currently occupies the building previously used as the Borders headquarters on Maynard Street. Duo Security, a cloud-based access security provider protecting thousands of organizations worldwide through two-factor authentication, is headquartered in Ann Arbor. It was formerly a unicorn and continues to be headquartered in Ann Arbor after its acquisition by Cisco Systems. In November 2021, semiconductor test equipment company KLA Corporation opened a new North American headquarters in Ann Arbor.
Websites and online media companies in or near the city include All Media Guide, the Weather Underground, and Zattoo. Ann Arbor is the home to Internet2 and the Merit Network, a not-for-profit research and education computer network. Both are located in the South State Commons 2 building on South State Street, which once housed the Michigan Information Technology Center Foundation. The city is also home to a secondary office of Google's AdWords program—the company's primary revenue stream. The recent surge in companies operating in Ann Arbor has led to a decrease in its office and flex space vacancy rates. As of December 31, 2012, the total market vacancy rate for office and flex space is 11.80%, a 1.40% decrease in vacancy from one year previous, and the lowest overall vacancy level since 2003. The office vacancy rate decreased to 10.65% in 2012 from 12.08% in 2011, while the flex vacancy rate decreased slightly more, with a drop from 16.50% to 15.02%.
Pfizer, once the city's second largest employer, operated a large pharmaceutical research facility on the northeast side of Ann Arbor. On January 22, 2007, Pfizer announced it would close operations in Ann Arbor by the end of 2008. The facility was previously operated by Warner-Lambert and, before that, Parke-Davis. In December 2008, the University of Michigan Board of Regents approved the purchase of the facilities, and the university anticipates hiring 2,000 researchers and staff during the next 10 years. It is now known as North Campus Research Complex. The city is the home of other research and engineering centers, including those of Lotus Engineering, General Dynamics and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Other research centers sited in the city are the United States Environmental Protection Agency's National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory and the Toyota Technical Center. The city is also home to National Sanitation Foundation International (NSF International), the nonprofit non-governmental organization that develops generally accepted standards for a variety of public health related industries and subject areas.
Borders Books, started in Ann Arbor, was opened by brothers Tom and Louis Borders in 1971 with a stock of used books. The Borders chain was based in the city, as was its flagship store until it closed in September 2011. Domino's Pizza's headquarters is near Ann Arbor on Domino's Farms, a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired complex just northeast of the city. Another Ann Arbor-based company is Zingerman's Delicatessen, which serves sandwiches and has developed businesses under a variety of brand names. Zingerman's has grown into a family of companies which offers a variety of products (bake shop, mail order, creamery, coffee) and services (business education). Flint Ink Corp., another Ann Arbor-based company, was the world's largest privately held ink manufacturer until it was acquired by Stuttgart-based XSYS Print Solutions in October 2005. Avfuel, a global supplier of aviation fuels and services, is also headquartered in Ann Arbor. Aastrom Biosciences, a publicly traded company that develops stem cell treatments for cardiovascular diseases, is also headquartered in Ann Arbor.
Many cooperative enterprises were founded in the city; among those that remain are the People's Food Co-op and the Inter-Cooperative Council at the University of Michigan, a student housing cooperative founded in 1937. There are also three cohousing communities—Sunward, Great Oak, and Touchstone—located immediately to the west of the city limits.
Culture
Several performing arts groups and facilities are on the University of Michigan's campus, as are museums dedicated to art, archaeology, and natural history and sciences. Founded in 1879, the University Musical Society is an independent performing arts organization that presents over 60 events each year, bringing international artists in music, dance, and theater. Since 2001 Shakespeare in the Arb has presented one play by Shakespeare each June, in a large park near downtown. Regional and local performing arts groups not associated with the university include the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre, the Arbor Opera Theater, the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, the Ann Arbor Ballet Theater, the Ann Arbor Civic Ballet (established in 1954 as Michigan's first chartered ballet company), The Ark, and Performance Network Theatre. Another unique piece of artistic expression in Ann Arbor is the fairy doors. These small portals are examples of installation art and can be found throughout the downtown area.
The Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum is located in a renovated and expanded historic downtown fire station. Multiple art galleries exist in the city, notably in the downtown area and around the University of Michigan campus. Aside from a large restaurant scene in the Main Street, South State Street, and South University Avenue areas, Ann Arbor ranks first among U.S. cities in the number of booksellers and books sold per capita. The Ann Arbor District Library maintains four branch outlets in addition to its main downtown building. The city is also home to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
Several annual events—many of them centered on performing and visual arts—draw visitors to Ann Arbor. One such event is the Ann Arbor Art Fairs, a set of four concurrent juried fairs held on downtown streets. Scheduled on Thursday through Sunday of the third week of July, the fairs draw upward of half a million visitors. Another is the Ann Arbor Film Festival, held during the third week of March, which receives more than 2,500 submissions annually from more than 40 countries and serves as one of a handful of Academy Award–qualifying festivals in the United States.
Ann Arbor has a long history of openness to marijuana, given Ann Arbor's decriminalization of cannabis, the large number of medical marijuana dispensaries in the city (one dispensary, called People's Co-op, was directly across the street from Michigan Stadium until zoning forced it to move one mile to the west), the large number of pro-marijuana residents, and the annual Hash Bash: an event that is held on the first Saturday of April. Until (at least) the successful passage of Michigan's medical marijuana law, the event had arguably strayed from its initial intent, although for years, a number of attendees have received serious legal responses due to marijuana use on University of Michigan property, which does not fall under the city's progressive and compassionate ticketing program.
Ann Arbor is a major center for college sports, most notably at the University of Michigan. Several well-known college sports facilities exist in the city, including Michigan Stadium, the largest American football stadium in the world and the third-largest stadium of any kind in the world. Michigan Stadium has a capacity of 107,601, with the final "extra" seat said to be reserved for and in honor of former athletic director and Hall of Fame football coach Fitz Crisler. The stadium was completed in 1927 and cost more than $950,000 to build. The stadium is colloquially known as "The Big House" due to its status as the largest American football stadium. Crisler Center and Yost Ice Arena play host to the school's basketball (both men's and women's) and ice hockey teams, respectively. Concordia University, a member of the NAIA, also fields sports teams.
Ann Arbor is represented in the NPSL by semi-pro soccer team AFC Ann Arbor, a club founded in 2014 who call themselves The Mighty Oak.
A person from Ann Arbor is called an "Ann Arborite", and many long-time residents call themselves "townies". The city itself is often called "A²" ("A-squared") or "A2" ("A two") or "AA", "The Deuce" (mainly by Chicagoans), and "Tree Town". With tongue-in-cheek reference to the city's liberal political leanings, some occasionally refer to Ann Arbor as "The People's Republic of Ann Arbor" or "25 square miles surrounded by reality", the latter phrase being adapted from Wisconsin Governor Lee Dreyfus's description of Madison, Wisconsin. In A Prairie Home Companion broadcast from Ann Arbor, Garrison Keillor described Ann Arbor as "a city where people discuss socialism, but only in the fanciest restaurants." Ann Arbor sometimes appears on citation indexes as an author, instead of a location, often with the academic degree MI, a misunderstanding of the abbreviation for Michigan.
Law and government
Ann Arbor has a council-manager form of government. The City Council has 11 voting members: the mayor and 10 city council members. Two city council members are elected from each of the city's five wards. The mayor and council serve four-year terms. The mayor and one council member from each ward are elected in Presidential election years, and the other five council members are elected in the alternate even-numbered years. The mayor is elected citywide. The mayor is the presiding officer of the City Council and has the power to appoint all Council committee members as well as board and commission members, with the approval of the City Council. The current mayor of Ann Arbor is Christopher Taylor, a Democrat who was elected as mayor in 2014. Day-to-day city operations are managed by a city administrator chosen by the city council.
Ann Arbor holds mayoral elections to 4-year terms concurrent with the Gubernatorial election.
Until 2017, City Council held annual elections in which half of the seats (one from each ward) were elected to 2-year terms. These elections were staggered, with each ward having one of their seats up for election in odd years and their other seat up for election in even years. Beginning in 2018 the City Council has had staggered elections to 4-year terms in even years. This means that half of the members (one from each ward) are elected in presidential election years, while the other half are elected in mid-term election years. To facilitate this change in scheduling, the 2017 election elected members to terms that lasted 3-years.
In 1960, Ann Arbor voters approved a $2.3 million bond issue to build the current city hall, which was designed by architect Alden B. Dow. The City Hall opened in 1963. In 1995, the building was renamed the Guy C. Larcom, Jr. Municipal Building in honor of the longtime city administrator who championed the building's construction.
Ann Arbor is part of Michigan's 12th congressional district, represented in Congress by Representative Debbie Dingell, a Democrat. On the state level, the city is part of the 18th district in the Michigan Senate, represented by Democrat Rebekah Warren. In the Michigan House of Representatives, representation is split between the 55th district (northern Ann Arbor, part of Ann Arbor Township, and other surrounding areas, represented by Democrat Adam Zemke), the 53rd district (most of downtown and the southern half of the city, represented by Democrat Yousef Rabhi) and the 52nd district (southwestern areas outside Ann Arbor proper and western Washtenaw County, represented by Democrat Donna Lasinski).
As the county seat of Washtenaw County, the Washtenaw County Trial Court (22nd Circuit Court) is located in Ann Arbor at the Washtenaw County Courthouse on Main Street. This court has countywide general jurisdiction and has two divisions: the Civil/Criminal (criminal and civil matters) and the Family Division (which includes Juvenile Court, Friend of the Court, and Probate Court sections). Seven judges serve on the court.
Ann Arbor also has a local state district court (15th District Court), which serves only the City of Ann Arbor. In Michigan, the state district courts are limited jurisdiction courts which handle traffic violations, civil cases with claims under $25,000, landlord-tenant matters, and misdemeanor crimes.
The Ann Arbor Federal Building (attached to a post office) on Liberty Street serves as one of the courthouses for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan and Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Politics
Progressive politics have been particularly strong in municipal government since the 1960s. Voters approved charter amendments that have lessened the penalties for possession of marijuana (1974), and that aim to protect access to abortion in the city should it ever become illegal in the State of Michigan (1990). In 1974, Kathy Kozachenko's victory in an Ann Arbor city-council race made her the country's first openly homosexual candidate to win public office. In 1975, Ann Arbor became the first U.S. city to use instant-runoff voting for a mayoral race. Adopted through a ballot initiative sponsored by the local Human Rights Party, which feared a splintering of the liberal vote, the process was repealed in 1976 after use in only one election. As of April 2021, Democrats hold the mayorship and all ten council seats. Nationally, Ann Arbor is located in Michigan's 12th congressional district, represented by Democrat Debbie Dingell.
Crime
In 2015, Ann Arbor was ranked 11th safest among cities in Michigan with a population of over 50,000. It ranked safer than cities such as Royal Oak, Livonia, Canton and Clinton Township. The level of most crimes in Ann Arbor has fallen significantly in the past 20 years. In 1995 there were 294 aggravated assaults, 132 robberies and 43 rapes while in 2015 there were 128 aggravated assaults, 42 robberies and 58 rapes (under the revised definition).
Ann Arbor's crime rate was below the national average in 2000. The violent crime rate was further below the national average than the property crime rate; the two rates were 48% and 11% lower than the U.S. average, respectively.
Education
Primary and secondary education
Public schools are part of the Ann Arbor Public Schools (AAPS) district. AAPS has one of the country's leading music programs. In September 2008, 16,539 students had been enrolled in the Ann Arbor Public Schools. Notable schools include Pioneer, Huron, Skyline, and Community high schools, and Ann Arbor Open School. The district has a preschool center with both free and tuition-based programs for preschoolers in the district. The University High School, a "demonstration school" with teachers drawn from the University of Michigan's education program, was part of the school system from 1924 to 1968.
Ann Arbor is home to several private schools, including Emerson School, the Father Gabriel Richard High School, Rudolf Steiner School of Ann Arbor, Clonlara School, Michigan Islamic Academy, and Greenhills School, a prep school. The city is also home to several charter schools such as Central Academy (Michigan) (PreK-12) of the Global Educational Excellence (GEE) charter school company, and Honey Creek Community School.
Higher education
The University of Michigan dominates the city of Ann Arbor, providing the city with its distinctive college-town character. University buildings are located in the center of the city and the campus is directly adjacent to the State Street and South University downtown areas.
Other local colleges and universities include Concordia University Ann Arbor, a Lutheran liberal-arts institution; a campus of the University of Phoenix; and Cleary University, a private business school. Washtenaw Community College is located in neighboring Ann Arbor Township. In 2000, the Ave Maria School of Law, a Roman Catholic law school established by Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, opened in northeastern Ann Arbor, but the school moved to Ave Maria, Florida in 2009, and the Thomas M. Cooley Law School acquired the former Ave Maria buildings for use as a branch campus.
Media
The Ann Arbor News, owned by the Michigan-based Booth Newspapers chain, was the major newspaper serving Ann Arbor and the rest of Washtenaw County. The newspaper ended its 174-year daily print run in 2009, due to economic difficulties and began producing two printed editions a week under the name AnnArbor.com, It resumed using its former name in 2013. It also produces a daily digital edition named Mlive.com. Another Ann Arbor-based publication that has ceased production was the Ann Arbor Paper, a free monthly. Ann Arbor has been said to be the first significant city to lose its only daily paper. The Ann Arbor Chronicle, an online newspaper, covered local news, including meetings of the library board, county commission, and DDA until September 3, 2014.
Current publications in the city include the Ann Arbor Journal (A2 Journal), a weekly community newspaper; the Ann Arbor Observer, a free monthly local magazine; and Current, a free entertainment-focused alt-weekly. The Ann Arbor Business Review covers local business in the area. Car and Driver magazine and Automobile Magazine are also based in Ann Arbor. The University of Michigan is served by many student publications, including the independent Michigan Daily student newspaper, which reports on local, state, and regional issues in addition to campus news.
Four major AM radio stations based in or near Ann Arbor are WAAM 1600, a conservative news and talk station; WLBY 1290, a business news and talk station; WDEO 990, Catholic radio; and WTKA 1050, which is primarily a sports station. The city's FM stations include NPR affiliate WUOM 91.7; country station WWWW 102.9; and adult-alternative station WQKL 107.1. Freeform station WCBN-FM 88.3 is a local community radio/college radio station operated by the students of the University of Michigan featuring noncommercial, eclectic music and public-affairs programming. The city is also served by public and commercial radio broadcasters in Ypsilanti, the Lansing/Jackson area, Detroit, Windsor, and Toledo.
Ann Arbor is part of the Detroit television market. WPXD channel 31, the owned-and-operated Detroit outlet of the ION Television network, is licensed to the city. Until its sign-off on August 31, 2017, WHTV channel 18, a MyNetworkTV-affiliated station for the Lansing market, was broadcast from a transmitter in Lyndon Township, west of Ann Arbor. Community Television Network (CTN) is a city-provided cable television channel with production facilities open to city residents and nonprofit organizations. Detroit and Toledo-area radio and television stations also serve Ann Arbor, and stations from Lansing and Windsor, Ontario, can be seen in parts of the area.
Health, environment, and utilities
The University of Michigan Medical Center, the only teaching hospital in the city, took the number 1 slot in U.S. News & World Report for best hospital in the state of Michigan, as of 2015. The University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) includes University Hospital, C.S. Mott Children's Hospital and Women's Hospital in its core complex. UMHS also operates out-patient clinics and facilities throughout the city. The area's other major medical centers include a large facility operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs in Ann Arbor, and Saint Joseph Mercy Hospital in nearby Superior Township.
The city provides sewage disposal and water supply services, with water coming from the Huron River and groundwater sources. There are two water-treatment plants, one main and three outlying reservoirs, four pump stations, and two water towers. These facilities serve the city, which is divided into five water districts. The city's water department also operates four dams along the Huron River—Argo, Barton, Geddes, and Superior—of which Barton and Superior provide hydroelectric power. The city also offers waste management services, with Recycle Ann Arbor handling recycling service. Other utilities are provided by private entities. Electrical power and gas are provided by DTE Energy. AT&T Inc. is the primary wired telephone service provider for the area. Cable TV service is primarily provided by Comcast.
A plume of the industrial solvent dioxane is migrating under the city from the contaminated Gelman Sciences, Inc. property on the westside of Ann Arbor. It's currently detected at 0.039 ppb. The Gelman plume is a potential threat to one of the City of Ann Arbor's drinking water sources, the Huron River, which flows through downtown Ann Arbor.
Transportation
Surface roads and paths
The streets in downtown Ann Arbor conform to a grid pattern, though this pattern is less common in the surrounding areas. Major roads branch out from the downtown district like spokes on a wheel to the highways surrounding the city. The city is belted by three freeways: I-94, which runs along the southern and western portion of the city; U.S. Highway 23 (US 23), which primarily runs along the eastern edge of Ann Arbor; and M-14, which runs along the northern edge of the city. Other nearby highways include US 12 (Michigan Ave.), M-17 (Washtenaw Ave.), and M-153 (Ford Rd.). Several of the major surface arteries lead to the I-94/M-14 interchange in the west, US 23 in the east, and the city's southern areas. The city also has a system of bike routes and paths and includes the nearly complete Washtenaw County Border-to-Border Trail.
Bus service
The Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority (AAATA), which brands itself as "TheRide", operates public bus services throughout the city and nearby Ypsilanti. The AATA operates Blake Transit Center on Fourth Ave. in downtown Ann Arbor, and the Ypsilanti Transit Center. A separate zero-fare bus service operates within and between the University of Michigan campuses. Since April 2012, route 98 (the "AirRide") connects to Detroit Metro Airport a dozen times a day. There are also limited-stop bus services between Ann Arbor and Chelsea as well as Canton. These two routes, 91 and 92 respectively, are known as the "ExpressRide".
Greyhound Lines provides intercity bus service. The Michigan Flyer, a service operated by Indian Trails, cooperates with AAATA for their AirRide and additionally offers bus service to East Lansing. Megabus has direct service to Chicago, Illinois, while a bus service is provided by Amtrak for rail passengers making connections to services in East Lansing and Toledo, Ohio.
Airports
Ann Arbor Municipal Airport is a small, city-run general aviation airport located south of I-94. Detroit Metropolitan Airport, the area's large international airport, is about east of the city, in Romulus. Willow Run Airport east of the city near Ypsilanti serves freight, corporate, and general aviation clients.
Railroads
The city was a major rail hub, notably for freight traffic between Toledo and ports north of Chicago, Illinois, from 1878 to 1982; however, the Ann Arbor Railroad also provided passenger service from 1878 to 1950, going northwest to Frankfort and Elberta on Lake Michigan and southeast to Toledo. (In Elberta connections to ferries across the Lake could be made.) The city was served by the Michigan Central Railroad starting in 1837. The Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti Street Railway, Michigan's first interurban, served the city from 1891 to 1929.
Amtrak, which provides service to the city at the Ann Arbor Train Station, operates the Wolverine train between Chicago and Pontiac, via Detroit. The present-day train station neighbors the city's old Michigan Central Depot, which was renovated as a restaurant in 1970.
Sister cities
Ann Arbor has seven sister cities:
Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany (since 1965) The schools in Ann Arbor and Tübingen have regular exchanges.
Belize City, Belize (since 1967)
Hikone, Shiga, Japan (since 1969) The schools in Ann Arbor and Hikone have regular exchanges.
Peterborough, Ontario, Canada (since 1983)
Juigalpa, Chontales, Nicaragua (since 1986)
Dakar, Senegal (since 1997)
Remedios, Cuba (since 2003)
See also
Ann Arbor staging
Ardis Publishing
List of people from Ann Arbor
Metro Detroit
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
City's official website
Ann Arbor Area Convention and Visitor's Bureau
Collection: "Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan" from the University of Michigan Museum of Art
Populated places established in 1824
Academic enclaves
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2070 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act%20of%20Settlement%201701 | Act of Settlement 1701 | The Act of Settlement is an Act of the Parliament of England that was passed in 1701 to settle the succession to the English and Irish crowns on Protestants only. This had the effect of deposing the descendants of Charles I (other than his Protestant granddaughter Princess (later Queen) Anne) as the next Protestant in line to the throne was the Electress Sophia of Hanover, a granddaughter of James VI and I. After her, the crowns would descend only to her non-Catholic heirs.
The Act of Supremacy 1558 had confirmed the Church of England's independence from Roman Catholicism under the English monarch. One of the principal factors causing the political crisis known as the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was the perceived assaults made on the Church of England by King James II, a Roman Catholic. James was deposed in favour of his Protestant elder daughter Mary II and her husband William III. The need for the Act of Settlement was prompted by the failure of William and Mary, as well as that of Mary's Protestant sisterthe future Queen Anne to produce any surviving children, and by the perceived threat posed by the pretensions to the throne by remaining Roman Catholic members of the House of Stuart. The line founded by Sophia of Hanover was the most junior surviving one amongst the descendants of King James I, but consisted of convinced Protestants willing to uphold the Church of England. As Sophia died on 8 June 1714, less than two months before the death of Queen Anne on 1 August 1714, it was Sophia's son who duly succeeded to the throne, as King George I, and started the Hanoverian dynasty in Britain.
The act played a key role in the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain. England and Scotland had shared a monarch since 1603, but had remained separately governed countries. The Scottish parliament was more reluctant than the English to abandon the House of Stuart, members of which had been Scottish monarchs long before they became English ones.
Under the Act of Settlement anyone who became a Roman Catholic, or who married one, became disqualified to inherit the throne. The act also placed limits on both the role of foreigners in the British government and the power of the monarch with respect to the Parliament of England. Some of those provisions have been altered by subsequent legislation.
Along with the Bill of Rights 1689, the Act of Settlement remains today one of the main constitutional laws governing the succession not only to the throne of the United Kingdom, but to those of the other Commonwealth realms, whether by assumption or by patriation. The Act of Settlement cannot be altered in any realm except by that realm's own parliament and, by convention, only with the consent of all the other realms, as it touches on the succession to the shared crown.
Following the Perth Agreement in 2011, legislation amending the act came into effect across the Commonwealth realms on 26 March 2015, and removed the disqualification arising from marriage to a Roman Catholic. Other provisions of the amended act remain in effect.
Original context
Following the Glorious Revolution, the line of succession to the English throne was governed by the Bill of Rights 1689, which declared that the flight of James II from England to France during the revolution amounted to an abdication of the throne and that James's daughter Mary II and her husband/cousin, William III (William of Orange, who was also James's nephew), were James's successors. The Bill of Rights also provided that the line of succession would go through Mary's Protestant descendants by William and any possible future husband should she outlive him, then through Mary's sister Anne and her Protestant descendants, and then to the Protestant descendants of William III by a possible later marriage should he outlive Mary. During the debate, the House of Lords had attempted to append Sophia and her descendants to the line of succession, but the amendment failed in the Commons.
Mary II died childless in 1694, after which William III did not remarry. In 1700, Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, who was Anne's only child to survive infancy, died of smallpox at the age of 11. Thus, Anne was left as the only person in line to the throne. The Bill of Rights excluded Catholics from the throne, which ruled out James II and his children (as well as their descendants) sired after he converted to Catholicism in 1668. However, it did not provide for the further succession after Anne. Parliament thus saw the need to settle the succession on Sophia and her descendants, and thereby guarantee the continuity of the Crown in the Protestant line.
With religion and lineage initially decided, the ascendancy of William of Orange in 1689 would also bring his partiality to his foreign favourites that followed. By 1701 English jealousy of foreigners was rampant, and action was considered necessary.
Provisions
The Act of Settlement provided that the throne would pass to the Electress Sophia of Hanover – a granddaughter of James VI and I and a niece of King Charles I – and her descendants, but it excluded "for ever" "all and every Person and Persons who ... is are or shall be reconciled to or shall hold Communion with the See or Church of Rome or shall profess the Popish Religion or shall marry a Papist". Thus, those who were Roman Catholics, and those who married Roman Catholics, were barred from ascending the throne. The Act did not even mention the concept of marriages involving heirs who were members of non-Christian faiths, because that would have been unthinkable in eighteenth century Great Britain.
The Act contained eight additional provisions that were to only come into effect upon the death of both William and Anne:
The monarch "shall join in communion with the Church of England". This was intended to ensure the exclusion of a Roman Catholic monarch. Along with James II's perceived despotism, his religion was the main cause of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and of the previous linked religious and succession problems which had been resolved by the joint monarchy of William III and Mary II.
If a person not native to England comes to the throne, England will not wage war for "any dominions or territories which do not belong to the Crown of England, without the consent of Parliament". This would become relevant when a member of the House of Hanover ascended the British throne, as he would retain the territories of the Electorate of Hanover in what is now Lower Saxony (Germany), then part of the Holy Roman Empire. This provision has been dormant since Queen Victoria ascended the throne, because she did not inherit Hanover under the Salic Laws of the German-speaking states.
No monarch may leave "the dominions of England, Scotland, or Ireland", without the consent of Parliament. This provision was repealed in 1716, at the request of George I who was also the Elector of Hanover and Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg within the Holy Roman Empire; because of this, and also for personal reasons, he wished to visit Hanover from time to time.
All government matters within the jurisdiction of the Privy Council were to be transacted there, and all council resolutions were to be signed by those who advised and consented to them. This was because Parliament wanted to know who was deciding policies, as sometimes councillors' signatures normally attached to resolutions were absent. This provision was repealed early in Queen Anne's reign, as many councillors ceased to offer advice and some stopped attending meetings altogether.
No foreigner ("no Person born out of the Kingdoms of England Scotland or Ireland or the Dominions thereunto belonging"), even if naturalised or made a denizen (unless born of English parents), can be a Privy Councillor or a member of either House of Parliament, or hold "any Office or Place of Trust, either Civill or Military, or to [sic] have any Grant of Lands, Tenements or Hereditaments from the Crown, to himself or to any other or others in Trust for him". Subsequent nationality laws (today primarily the British Nationality Act 1981) made naturalised citizens the equal of those native born, and excluded Commonwealth and Irish citizens from the definition of foreigners, but otherwise this provision still applies. It has however been disapplied in particular cases by a number of other statutes.
No person who has an office under the monarch, or receives a pension from the Crown, was to be a Member of Parliament. This provision was inserted to avoid unwelcome royal influence over the House of Commons. It remains in force, but with several exceptions. (As a side effect, this provision means that members of the Commons seeking to resign from parliament can get around the prohibition on resignation by obtaining a sinecure in the control of the Crown; while several offices have historically been used for this purpose, two are currently in use: appointments generally alternate between the stewardships of the Chiltern Hundreds and of the Manor of Northstead.)
Judges' commissions are valid quamdiu se bene gesserint (during good behaviour) and if they do not behave themselves, they can be removed only by both Houses of Parliament (or in other Commonwealth realms the one House of Parliament, depending on the legislature's structure.) This provision was the result of various monarchs influencing judges' decisions, and its purpose was to assure judicial independence. This patent was used prior to 1701 but did not prevent Charles I from removing Sir John Walter as Chief Baron of the Exchequer.
That "no Pardon under the Great Seal of England be pleadable to an Impeachment by the Commons in Parliament". This meant in effect that no pardon by the monarch was to save someone from being impeached by the House of Commons.
Opposition
The Tory administration that replaced the Whig Junto in 1699 took responsibility for steering the Act through Parliament. As a result, it passed with little opposition, although five peers voted against it in the House of Lords, including the Earl of Huntingdon, his brother-in-law the Earl of Scarsdale and three others. While many shared their opposition to a 'foreign' king, the general feeling was summed up as 'better a German prince than a French one.'
Effects
For different reasons, various constitutionalists have praised the Act of Settlement: Henry Hallam called the Act "the seal of our constitutional laws" and David Lindsay Keir placed its importance above the Bill of Rights of 1689. Naamani Tarkow wrote: "If one is to make sweeping statements, one may say that, save Magna Carta (more truly, its implications), the Act of Settlement is probably the most significant statute in English history".
Union of Scotland with England and Wales
The Act of Settlement was, in many ways, the major cause of the union of Scotland with England and Wales to form the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Parliament of Scotland was not happy with the Act of Settlement and, in response, passed the Act of Security in 1704, through which Scotland reserved the right to choose its own successor to Queen Anne. Stemming from this, the Parliament of England decided that, to ensure the stability and future prosperity of Great Britain, full union of the two parliaments and nations was essential before Anne's death.
It used a combination of exclusionary legislation (the Alien Act 1705), politics, and bribery to achieve this within three years under the Act of Union 1707. This success was in marked contrast to the four attempts at political union between 1606 and 1689, which all failed owing to a lack of political will in both kingdoms. By virtue of Article II of the Treaty of Union, which defined the succession to the throne of Great Britain, the Act of Settlement became part of Scots Law as well.
Succession to the Crown
In addition to excluding James II (who died a few months after the act received royal assent) and his Roman Catholic children (Prince James (The Old Pretender) and the Princess Royal), the Act also excluded the descendants of Princess Henrietta, the youngest sister of James II. Henrietta's daughter was Anne, Queen of Sardinia, a Roman Catholic, from whom descend all Jacobite pretenders after 1807.
With the legitimate descendants of Charles I either childless (in the case of his two grand-daughters the late Queen Mary II and her successor Queen Anne) or Roman Catholic, Parliament's choice was limited to Sophia of Hanover, the Protestant daughter of the late Elizabeth of Bohemia, the only other child of King James I to have survived childhood. Elizabeth had borne nine children who reached adulthood, of whom Sophia was the youngest daughter. However in 1701 Sophia was the senior Protestant one, therefore with a legitimate claim to the English throne; Parliament passed over her Roman Catholic siblings, namely her sister Louise Hollandine of the Palatinate, and their descendants, who included Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orléans; Louis Otto, Prince of Salm, and his aunts; Anne Henriette, Princess of Condé and Benedicta Henrietta, Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg.
Removal from the succession due to Catholicism
Since the Act's passing the most senior living member of the royal family to have married a Roman Catholic, and thereby to have been removed from the line of succession, is Prince Michael of Kent, who married Baroness Marie-Christine von Reibnitz in 1978; he was fifteenth in the line of succession at the time. He was restored to the line of succession in 2015 when the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 came into force, and became 34th in line.
The next most senior living descendant of the Electress Sophia who had been ineligible to succeed on this ground is George Windsor, Earl of St Andrews, the elder son of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, who married the Roman Catholic Sylvana Palma Tomaselli in 1988. His son, Lord Downpatrick, converted to Roman Catholicism in 2003 and is the most senior descendant of Sophia to be barred as a result of his religion. In 2008 his daughter, Lady Marina Windsor, also converted to Catholicism and was removed from the line of succession. More recently, Peter Phillips, the son of Anne, Princess Royal, and eleventh in line to the throne, married Autumn Kelly; Kelly had been brought up as a Roman Catholic, but she converted to Anglicanism prior to the wedding. Had she not done so, Phillips would have forfeited his place in the succession upon their marriage, only to have it restored in 2015.
Excluding those princesses who have married into Roman Catholic royal families, such as Marie of Edinburgh, Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg and Princess Beatrice of Edinburgh, one member of the Royal Family (that is, with the style of Royal Highness) has converted to Roman Catholicism since the passage of the Act: the Duchess of Kent, wife of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, who converted on 14 January 1994, but her husband did not lose his place in the succession because she was an Anglican at the time of their marriage.
Present status
As well as being part of the law of the United Kingdom, the Act of Settlement was received into the laws of all the countries and territories over which the British monarch reigned. It remains part of the laws of the 15 Commonwealth realms and the relevant jurisdictions within those realms. In accordance with established convention, the Statute of Westminster 1931 and later laws, the Act of Settlement (along with the other laws governing the succession of the Commonwealth realms) may only be changed with the agreement of all the realms (and, in some federal realms, the constituent members of those federations).
The Succession to the Crown Act 2013 changed many provisions of this act.
Amendment proposals
Challenges have been made against the Act of Settlement, especially its provisions regarding Roman Catholics and preference for males. However, changing the Act is a complex process, since the Act governs the shared succession of all the Commonwealth realms. The Statute of Westminster 1931 acknowledges by established convention that any changes to the rules of succession may be made only with the agreement of all of the states involved, with concurrent amendments to be made by each state's parliament or parliaments. Further, as the current monarch's eldest child and, in turn, his eldest child, are Anglican males, any change to the succession laws would have no immediate implications. Consequently, there was little public concern with the issues and debate had been confined largely to academic circles until the November 2010 announcement that Prince William was to marry. This raised the question of what would happen if he were to produce first a daughter and then a son.
The Times reported on 6 November 1995 that Prince Charles had said on that day to Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown that "Catholics should be able to ascend to the British throne". Ashdown claimed the Prince said: "I really can't think why we can't have Catholics on the throne". In 1998, during debate on a Succession to the Crown Bill, Junior Home Office Minister Lord Williams of Mostyn informed the House of Lords that the Queen had "no objection to the Government's view that in determining the line of succession to the throne, daughters and sons should be treated in the same way."
Australia
In October 2011 the Australian federal government was reported to have reached an agreement with all of the states on potential changes to their laws in the wake of amendments to the Act of Settlement. The practice of the Australian states—for example, New South Wales and Victoria—has been, when legislating to repeal some imperial statutes so far as they still applied in Australia, to provide that imperial statutes concerning the royal succession remain in force.
The legal process required at the federal level remains, theoretically, unclear. The Australian constitution, as was noted during the crisis of 1936, contains no power for the federal parliament to legislate with respect to the monarchy. Everything thus turns upon the status and meaning of clause 2 in the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900, which provides: "The provisions of this Act referring to the Queen shall extend to Her Majesty's heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom."
Anne Twomey reviews three possible interpretations of the clause.
First: it "mandates that whoever is the sovereign of the United Kingdom is also, by virtue of this external fact, sovereign of Australia"; accordingly, changes to British succession laws would have no effect on Australian law, but if the British amendment changed the sovereign, then the new sovereign of the United Kingdom would automatically become the new sovereign of Australia.
Second, it is "merely an interpretative provision", operating to ensure that references to "the Queen" in the Constitution are references to whoever may at the time be the incumbent of the "sovereignty of the United Kingdom" as determined with regard to Australia, following the Australia Act 1986, by Australian law.
Or, third, it incorporates the United Kingdom rules of succession into the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, which itself can now be altered only by Australia, according to the Australia Act 1986; in that way, the British rules of succession have been patriated to Australia and, with regard to Australia, are subject to amendment or repeal solely by Australian law.
However, Twomey expresses confidence that, if the High Court of Australia were to be faced with the problems of covering clause 2, it would find some way to conclude that, with regard to Australia, the clause is subject solely to Australian law. Canadian scholar Richard Toporoski theorised in 1998 that "if, let us say, an alteration were to be made in the United Kingdom to the Act of Settlement 1701, providing for the succession of the Crown... [i]t is my opinion that the domestic constitutional law of Australia or Papua New Guinea, for example, would provide for the succession in those countries of the same person who became Sovereign of the United Kingdom."
In practice, when legislating for the Perth Agreement (see below), the Australian governments took the approach of the states requesting, and referring power to, the federal government to enact the legislation on behalf of the states (under paragraph 51(xxxviii) of the Australian Constitution) and the Commonwealth of Australia.
Canada
In Canada, where the Act of Settlement () is now a part of Canadian constitutional law, Tony O'Donohue, a Canadian civic politician, took issue with the provisions that exclude Roman Catholics from the throne, and which make the monarch of Canada the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, requiring him or her to be an Anglican. This, he claimed, discriminated against non-Anglicans, including Catholics, who are the largest faith group in Canada. In 2002, O'Donohue launched a court action that argued the Act of Settlement violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but, the case was dismissed by the court. It found that, as the Act of Settlement is part of the Canadian constitution, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as another part of the same constitution, does not have supremacy over it. Also, the court noted that, while Canada has the power to amend the line of succession to the Canadian throne, the Statute of Westminster stipulates that the agreement of the governments of the fifteen other Commonwealth realms that share the Crown would first have to be sought if Canada wished to continue its relationship with these countries. An appeal of the decision was dismissed on 16 March 2005. Some commentators state that, as a result of this, any single provincial legislature could hinder any attempts to change this Act, and by extension, to the line of succession for the shared crown of all 16 Commonwealth realms. Others contend that that is not the case, and changes to the succession instituted by an Act of the Parliament of Canada "[in accord] with the convention of symmetry that preserves the personal unity of the British and Dominion Crowns".
With the announcement in 2007 of the engagement of Peter Phillips to Autumn Kelly, a Roman Catholic and a Canadian, discussion about the Act of Settlement was revived. Norman Spector called in The Globe and Mail for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to address the issue of the act's bar on Catholics, saying Phillips' marriage to Kelly would be the first time the provisions of the act would bear directly on Canada—Phillips would be barred from acceding to the Canadian throne because he married a Roman Catholic Canadian. (In fact, Lord St Andrews had already lost his place in the line of succession when he married the Roman Catholic Canadian Sylvana Palma Tomaselli in 1988. But St Andrews' place in the line of succession was significantly lower than Phillips'.) Criticism of the Act of Settlement due to the Phillips–Kelly marriage was muted when Autumn Kelly converted to Anglicanism shortly before her marriage, thus preserving her husband's place in the line of succession.
United Kingdom
From time to time there has been debate over repealing the clause that prevents Roman Catholics, or those who marry one, from ascending to the British throne. Proponents of repeal argue that the clause is a bigoted anachronism; Cardinal Winning, who was leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, called the act an "insult" to Catholics. Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England, pointed out that Prince William (later the Duke of Cambridge) "can marry by law a Hindu, a Buddhist, anyone, but not a Roman Catholic." Opponents of repeal, such as Enoch Powell and Adrian Hilton, believe that it would lead to the disestablishment of the Church of England as the state religion if a Roman Catholic were to come to the throne. They also note that the monarch must swear to defend the faith and be a member of the Anglican Communion, but that a Roman Catholic monarch would, like all Roman Catholics, owe allegiance to the Pope. This would, according to opponents of repeal, amount to a loss of sovereignty for the Anglican Church.
When in December 1978 there was media speculation that Prince Charles might marry a Roman Catholic, Powell defended the provision that excludes Roman Catholics from ascending the throne, stating his objection was not rooted in religious bigotry but in political considerations. He said a Roman Catholic monarch would mean the acceptance of a source of authority external to the realm and "in the literal sense, foreign to the Crown-in-Parliament ... Between Roman Catholicism and royal supremacy there is, as Saint Thomas More concluded, no reconciliation." Powell concluded that a Roman Catholic crown would be the destruction of the Church of England because "it would contradict the essential character of that church."
He continued:
When Thomas Hobbes wrote that "the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof", he was promulgating an enormously important truth. Authority in the Roman Church is the exertion of that imperium from which England in the 16th century finally and decisively declared its national independence as the alter imperium, the "other empire", of which Henry VIII declared "This realm of England is an empire" ... It would signal the beginning of the end of the British monarchy. It would portend the eventual surrender of everything that has made us, and keeps us still, a nation.
The Scottish Parliament unanimously passed a motion in 1999 calling for the complete removal of any discrimination linked to the monarchy and the repeal of the Act of Settlement. The following year, The Guardian challenged the succession law in court, claiming that it violated the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides,
The enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in this Convention shall be secured without discrimination on any ground such as sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth, or other status.
As the Convention nowhere lists the right to succeed to the Crown as a human right, the challenge was rejected.
Adrian Hilton, writing in The Spectator in 2003, defended the Act of Settlement as not "irrational prejudice or blind bigotry", but claimed that it was passed because "the nation had learnt that when a Roman Catholic monarch is upon the throne, religious and civil liberty is lost." He points to the Pope's claiming universal jurisdiction, and Hilton argues that "it would be intolerable to have, as the sovereign of a Protestant and free country, one who owes any allegiance to the head of any other state" and contends that, if such situation came about, "we will have undone centuries of common law." He said that because the Roman Catholic Church does not recognise the Church of England as an apostolic church, a Roman Catholic monarch who abided by their faith's doctrine would be obliged to view Anglican and Church of Scotland archbishops, bishops, and clergy as part of the laity and therefore "lacking the ordained authority to preach and celebrate the sacraments." (Hilton noted that the Church of Scotland's Presbyterian polity does not include bishops or archbishops.) Hilton said a Roman Catholic monarch would be unable to be crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury and notes that other European states have similar religious provisions for their monarchs: Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, whose constitutions compel their monarchs to be Lutherans; the Netherlands, which has a constitution requiring its monarchs be members of the Protestant House of Orange; and Belgium, which has a constitution that provides for the succession to be through Roman Catholic houses.
In December 2004, a private member's bill—the Succession to the Crown Bill—was introduced in the House of Lords. The government, headed by Tony Blair, blocked all attempts to revise the succession laws, claiming it would raise too many constitutional issues and it was unnecessary at the time. In the British general election the following year, Michael Howard promised to work towards having the prohibition removed if the Conservative Party gained a majority of seats in the House of Commons, but the election was won by Blair's Labour Party. Four years later, plans drawn up by Chris Bryant were revealed that would end the exclusion of Catholics from the throne and end the doctrine of agnatic (male-preference) primogeniture in favour of absolute primogeniture, which governs succession solely on birth order and not on sex. The issue was raised again in January 2009, when a private member's bill to amend the Act of Succession was introduced in parliament.
Across the realms
In early 2011 Keith Vaz, a Labour Member of Parliament, introduced to the House of Commons at Westminster a private member's bill which proposed that the Act of Settlement be amended to remove the provisions relating to Roman Catholicism and change the primogeniture governing the line of succession to the British throne from agnatic to absolute cognatic. Vaz sought support for his project from the Canadian Cabinet and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, but the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada responded that the issue was "not a priority for the government or for Canadians without further elaboration on the merits or drawbacks of the proposed reforms". Stephenson King, Prime Minister of Saint Lucia, said he supported the idea and it was reported that the government of New Zealand did, as well. The Monarchist League of Canada said at the time to the media that it "supports amending the Act of Settlement in order to modernize the succession rules."
Later the same year, the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Nick Clegg, announced that the government was considering a change in the law. At approximately the same time, it was reported that British Prime Minister David Cameron had written to each of the prime ministers of the other fifteen Commonwealth realms, asking for their support in changing the succession to absolute primogeniture and notifying them he would raise his proposals at that year's Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Perth, Australia. Cameron reportedly also proposed removing the restriction on successors being or marrying Roman Catholics; however, potential Roman Catholic successors would be required to convert to Anglicanism prior to acceding to the throne. In reaction to the letter and media coverage, Harper stated that, this time, he was "supportive" of what he saw as "reasonable modernizations".
At CHOGM on 28 October 2011, the prime ministers of the other Commonwealth realms agreed to support Cameron's proposed changes to the Act. The bill put before the Parliament of the United Kingdom would act as a model for the legislation required to be passed in at least some of the other realms, and any changes would only first take effect if the Duke of Cambridge were to have a daughter before a son.
The British group Republic asserted that succession reform would not make the monarchy any less discriminatory. As it welcomed the gender equality reforms, the British newspaper The Guardian criticized the lack of a proposal to remove the ban on Catholics sitting on the throne, as did Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland, who pointed out that "It is deeply disappointing that the reform [of the Act of Settlement of 1701] has stopped short of removing the unjustifiable barrier on a Catholic becoming monarch." On the subject, Cameron asserted: "Let me be clear, the monarch must be in communion with the Church of England because he or she is the head of that Church."
The disqualification arising from marriage to a Roman Catholic was removed by the Succession to the Crown Act 2013.
See also
Jacobitism
List of British monarchs
List of Canadian monarchs
List of New Zealand monarchs
List of Australian monarchs
Royal Succession Bills and Acts
Succession to the British throne
Alternative successions of the English and British crown
Notes
Sources
External links
Text of the Act of Settlement as originally passed, The Statutes at Large: vol X: 1696/7–1703 (1764), pp. 357–60.
Official text of the "Act of Settlement 1700" as currently in force in the Australian Capital Territory
British Monarchy web page on the Act of Settlement
Image of original act from the Parliamentary Archives website
Australian constitutional law
Constitution of Canada
Constitutional laws of England
Constitution of the United Kingdom
Acts of the Parliament of England
Acts of the Parliament of England still in force
1701 in law
1701 in England
Monarchy in Canada
Monarchy in Australia
Monarchy in New Zealand
Succession acts
Succession to the British crown
Succession to the Canadian Crown
Law about religion in the United Kingdom
History of Christianity in Canada
History of Catholicism in England
Anti-Catholicism in England
Sophia of Hanover |
2075 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft%20hijacking | Aircraft hijacking | Aircraft hijacking (also known as airplane hijacking, skyjacking, plane hijacking, plane jacking, air robbery, air piracy, or aircraft piracy, with the last term used within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States) is the unlawful seizure of an aircraft by an individual or a group. Dating from the earliest of hijackings, most cases involve the pilot being forced to fly according to the hijacker's demands. However, in rare cases, the hijackers have flown the aircraft themselves and used them in suicide attacksmost notably in the September 11 attacksand in several cases, planes have been hijacked by the official pilot or co-pilot; e.g., the Lubitz case.
Unlike carjacking or sea piracy, an aircraft hijacking is not usually committed for robbery or theft. Individuals driven by personal gain often divert planes to destinations where they are not planning to go themselves. Some hijackers intend to use passengers or crew as hostages, either for monetary ransom or for some political or administrative concession by authorities. Various motives have driven such occurrences, such as demanding the release of certain high-profile individuals or for the right of political asylum (notably Flight ET 961), but sometimes a hijacking may have been affected by a failed private life or financial distress, as in the case of Aarno Lamminparras in the Oulu Aircraft Hijacking. Hijackings involving hostages have produced violent confrontations between hijackers and the authorities, during negotiation and settlement. In the case of Lufthansa Flight 181 and Air France Flight 139, the hijackers were not satisfied and showed no inclination to surrender, resulting in attempts by special forces to rescue passengers.
In most jurisdictions of the world, aircraft hijacking is punishable by life imprisonment or a long prison sentence. In most jurisdictions where the death penalty is a legal punishment, aircraft hijacking is a capital crime, including in China, India, Liberia and the U.S. states of Georgia and Mississippi.
History
Airplane hijackings have occurred since the early days of flight. These can be classified in the following eras: 1929–1957, 1958–1979, 1980–2000 and 2001–present. Early incidents involved light planes, but this later involved passenger aircraft as commercial aviation became widespread.
1929–1957
Between 1929 and 1957, there were fewer than 20 incidents of reported hijackings worldwide; several occurred in Eastern Europe.
One of the first unconfirmed hijackings occurred in December 1929. J. Howard "Doc" DeCelles was flying a postal route for a Mexican firm, Transportes Aeras Transcontinentales, ferrying mail from San Luis Potosí to Torreon and then on to Guadalajara. A lieutenant named Saturnino Cedillo, the governor of the state of San Luis Potosí, ordered him to divert. Several other men were also involved, and through an interpreter, DeCelles had no choice but to comply. He was allegedly held captive for several hours under armed guard before being released.
The first recorded aircraft hijack took place on February 21, 1931, in Arequipa, Peru. Byron Richards, flying a Ford Tri-Motor, was approached on the ground by armed revolutionaries. He refused to fly them anywhere during a 10-day standoff. Richards was informed that the revolution was successful and he could be freed in return for flying one of the men to Lima.
The following year, in September 1932, a Sikorsky S-38 with registration P-BDAD, still bearing the titles of Nyrba do Brasil was seized in the company's hangar by three men, who took a fourth as a hostage. Despite having no flying experience, they managed to take off. However, the aircraft crashed in São João de Meriti, killing the four men. Apparently, the hijack was related to the events of the Constitutionalist Revolution in São Paulo; it is considered to be the first hijack that took place in Brazil.
On October 28, 1939, the first murder on a plane took place in Brookfield, Missouri, US. The victim was Carl Bivens, a flight instructor, who was teaching a man named Earnest P. "Larry" Pletch. While airborne in a Taylor Cub monoplane, Pletch shot Bivens twice in the back of the head. Pletch later told prosecutors, "Carl was telling me I had a natural ability and I should follow that line", adding, "I had a revolver in my pocket and without saying a word to him, I took it out of my overalls and I fired a bullet into the back of his head. He never knew what struck him." The Chicago Daily Tribune stated it was one of the most spectacular crimes of the 20th century. Pletch pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison. However, he was released on March 1, 1957, after serving 17 years, and lived until June 2001.
In 1942 near Malta, two New Zealanders, a South African and an Englishman achieved the first confirmed in-air hijack when they overpowered their captors aboard an Italian seaplane that was flying them to a prisoner-of-war camp. As they approached an Allied base, they were strafed by Spitfires unaware of the aircraft's true operators and forced to land on the water. However, all on board survived to be picked up by a British boat.
In the years following World War II, Philip Baum, an aviation security expert suggests that the development of a rebellious youth "piggybacking on to any cause which challenged the status quo or acted in support of those deemed oppressed", may have been a contributor to attacks against the aviation field. The first hijacking of a commercial flight occurred on the Cathay Pacific Miss Macao on July 16, 1948. After this incident and others in the 1950s, airlines recommended that flight crews comply with the hijackers' demands rather than risk a violent confrontation. There were also various hijacking incidents and assaults on planes in China and the Middle East.
The first hijacking of a flight for political reasons happened in Bolivia, affecting the airline Lloyd Aereo Boliviano on September 26, 1956. The DC-4 was carrying 47 prisoners who were being transported from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, to El Alto, in La Paz. A political group was waiting to take them to a concentration camp located in Carahuara de Carangas, Oruro. The 47 prisoners overpowered the crew and gained control of the aircraft while airborne and diverted the plane to Tartagal, Argentina. Prisoners took control of the aircraft and received instructions to again fly to Salta, Argentina, as the airfield in Tartagal was not big enough. Upon landing, they told the government of the injustice they were subjected to, and received political asylum.
1958–1979
Between 1958 and 1967, there were approximately 40 hijackings worldwide. Beginning in 1958, hijackings from Cuba to other destinations started to occur; in 1961, hijackings from other destinations to Cuba became prevalent. The first happened on May 1, 1961, on a flight from Miami to Key West. The perpetrator, armed with a knife and gun, forced the captain to land in Cuba.
Australia was relatively untouched by the threat of hijackings until July 19, 1960. On that evening, a 22-year-old Russian man attempted to divert Trans Australia Airlines Flight 408 to Darwin or Singapore. The crew were able to subdue the man after a brief struggle.
According to the FAA, in the 1960s, there were 100 attempts of hijackings involving U.S. aircraft: 77 successful and 23 unsuccessful. Recognizing the danger early, the FAA issued a directive on July 28, 1961, which prohibits unauthorized persons from carrying concealed firearms and interfering with crew member duties. The Federal Aviation Act of 1958 was amended to impose severe penalties for those seizing control of a commercial aircraft. Airlines could also refuse to transport passengers who were likely to cause danger. That same year, the FAA and Department of Justice created the Peace Officers Program which put trained marshals on flights. A few years later, on May 7, 1964, the FAA adopted a rule requiring that cockpit doors on commercial aircraft be kept locked at all times.
In a five-year period (1968–1972) the world experienced 326 hijack attempts, or one every 5.6 days. The incidents were frequent and often just an inconvenience, which resulted in television shows creating parodies. Time magazine even ran a lighthearted comedy piece called "What to Do When the Hijacker Comes". Most incidents occurred in the United States. There were two distinct types: hijackings for transportation elsewhere and hijackings for extortion with the threat of harm.
Between 1968 and 1972, there were 90 recorded transport attempts to Cuba. In contrast, there were 26 extortion attempts (see table on the right). The longest and first transcontinental (Los Angeles, Denver, New York, Bangor, Shannon and Rome) hijacking from the US started on 31 October 1969.
The Eastern Air Lines Shuttle flight 1320 on May 17, 1970, witnessed the first fatality in the course of a U.S. highjacking.
Incidents also became problematic outside of the U.S. For instance, in 1968, El Al Flight 426 was seized by Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) militants on 23 July, an incident which lasted 40 days, making it one of the longest. This record was later beaten in 1999.
As a result of the evolving threat, President Nixon issued a directive in 1970 to promote security at airports, electronic surveillance and multilateral agreements for tackling the problem.
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) issued a report on aircraft hijacking in July 1970. Beginning in 1969 until the end of June 1970, there were 118 incidents of unlawful seizure of aircraft and 14 incidents of sabotage and armed attacks against civil aviation. This involved airlines of 47 countries and more than 7,000 passengers. In this period, 96 people were killed and 57 were injured as a result of hijacking, sabotage and armed attacks.
The ICAO stated that this is not isolated to one nation or one region, but a worldwide issue to the safe growth of international civil aviation. Incidents also became notoriousin 1971, a man known as D. B. Cooper hijacked a plane and extorted US$200,000 in ransom before parachuting over Oregon. He was never identified.
On August 20, 1971, a Pakistan Air Force T-33 military plane was hijacked prior the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971 in Karachi. Lieutenant Matiur Rahman attacked Officer Rashid Minhas and attempted to land in India. Minhas deliberately crashed the plane into the ground near Thatta to prevent the diversion.
Countries around the world continued their efforts to tackle crimes committed on-board planes. The Tokyo Convention, drafted in 1958, established an agreement between signatories that the "state in which the aircraft is registered is competent to exercise jurisdiction over crimes committed on board that aircraft while it is in flight". While the Convention does not make hijacking an international crime, it does contain provisions which obligate the country in which a hijacked aircraft lands to restore the aircraft to its responsible owner, and allow the passengers and crew to continue their journey. The Convention came into force in December 1969.
A year later, in December 1970, the Hague Convention was drafted which punishes hijackers, enabling each state to prosecute a hijacker if that state does not extradite them, and to deprive them from asylum from prosecution.
On December 5, 1972, the FAA issued emergency rules requiring all passengers and their carry-on baggage to be screened. Airports slowly implemented walk-through metal detectors, hand-searches and X-ray machines, to prohibit weapons and explosive devices. These rules came into effect on January 5, 1973, and were welcomed by most of the public. In 1974, Congress enacted a statute which provided for the death penalty for acts of aircraft piracy resulting in death. Between 1968 and 1977, there were approximately 41 hijackings per year.
1980–2000
By 1980, airport screening and greater cooperation from the international community led to fewer successful hijackings; the number of events had significantly dropped below the 1968 level. Between 1978 and 1988, there were roughly 26 incidents of hijackings a year. A new threat emerged in the 1980s: organised terrorists destroying aircraft to draw attention. For instance, terrorist groups were responsible for the bombing of Air India Flight 182 over the Irish coast. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed flying over Scotland. Terrorist activity which included hijack attempts in the Middle East were also a cause of concern.
During the 1990s, there was relative peace in the United States airspace as the threat of domestic hijacking was seen as a distant memory. Globally, however, hijackings still persisted. Between 1993 and 2003, the highest number of hijackings occurred in 1993 (see table below). This number can be attributed to events in China where hijackers were trying to gain political asylum in Taiwan. Europe and the rest of East Asia were not immune either. On December 26, 1994, Air France Flight 8969 with 172 passengers and crew was hijacked after leaving Algiers. Authorities believed that the goal was to crash the plane into the Eiffel Tower. On June 21, 1995, All Nippon Airways Flight 857 was hijacked by a man claiming to be a member of the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult, demanding the release of its imprisoned leader Shoko Asahara. The incident was resolved when the police stormed the plane.
On October 17, 1996, the first hijacking that was brought to an end while airborne was carried out by four operatives of the Austrian special law enforcement unit Cobra on a Russian Aeroflot flight from Malta to Lagos, Nigeria, aboard a Tupolev Tu-154. The operatives escorted inmates detained for deportation to their homelands and were equipped with weapons and gloves. On 12 April 1999, six ELN members hijacked a Fokker 50 of Avianca Flight 9463, flying from Bucaramanga to Bogotá. Many hostages were held for more than a year, and the last hostage was finally freed 19 months after the hijacking.
2001–present
On September 11, 2001, four airliners were hijacked by 19 Al-Qaeda extremists: American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, American Airlines Flight 77 and United Airlines Flight 93. The first two planes were deliberately crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the third was crashed into The Pentagon building. The fourth crashed in a field in Stonycreek Township near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after crew and passengers attempted to overpower the hijackers. Authorities believe that the intended target was the U.S. Capitol. In total, 2,996 people perished and more than 6,000 were injured in the attacks, making the hijackings the deadliest in modern history.
Following the attacks, the U.S. government formed the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to handle airport screening at U.S. airports. Government agencies around the world tightened their airport security, procedures and intelligence gathering. Until the September 11 attacks, there had never been an incident whereby a passenger aircraft was used as a weapon of mass destruction. The 9/11 Commission report stated that it was always assumed that a "hijacking would take the traditional form"; therefore, airline crews never had a contingency plan for a suicide-hijacking. As Patrick Smith, an airline pilot, summarizes:
Throughout the mid-2000s, hijackings still occurred but there were much fewer incidents and casualties. The number of incidents had been declining, even before the September 11 attacks. One notable incident in 2006 was the hijacking of Turkish Airlines Flight 1476, flying from Tirana to Istanbul, which was seized by a man named Hakan Ekinci. The aircraft, with 107 passengers and 6 crew, made distress calls to air traffic control and the plane was escorted by military aircraft before landing safely at Brindisi, Italy. In 2007, several incidents occurred in the Middle East and Northern Africa; hijackers in one of these incidents claimed to be affiliated with Al-Qaeda. Towards the end of the decade, AeroMexico experienced its first terror incident when Flight 576 was hijacked by a man demanding to speak with President Calderón.
Since 2010, the Aviation Safety Network estimates there have been 15 hijackings worldwide with three fatalities. This is a considerably lower figure than in previous decades which can be attributed to greater security enhancements and awareness of September 11–style attacks. On June 29, 2012, an attempt was made to hijack Tianjin Airlines Flight GS7554 from Hotan to Ürümqi in China. More recently was the 2016 hijacking of EgyptAir Flight MS181, involving an Egyptian man who claimed to have a bomb and ordered the plane to land in Cyprus. He surrendered several hours later, after freeing the passengers and crew.
Countermeasures
As a result of the large number of U.S.–Cuba hijackings in the late 1960s to early 1970s, international airports introduced screening technology such as metal detectors, X-ray machines and explosive detection tools. In the U.S, these rules were enforced starting from January 1973 and were eventually copied around the world. These security measures did make hijacking a "higher-risk proposition" and deter criminals in later decades. Until September 2001, the FAA set and enforced a "layered" system of defense: hijacking intelligence, passenger pre-screening, checkpoint screening and on-board security. The idea was that if one layer were later to fail, another would be able stop a hijacker from boarding a plane. However, the 9/11 Commission found that this layered approach was flawed and unsuitable to prevent the September 11 attacks. The U.S Transportation Security Administration has since strengthened this approach, with a greater emphasis on intelligence sharing.
On-board security
In the history of hijackings, most incidents involved planes being forced to land at a certain destination with demands. As a result, commercial airliners adopted a "total compliance" rule which taught pilots and cabin crew to comply with the hijackers' demands. Crews advise passengers to sit quietly to increase their chances of survival. The ultimate goal is to land the plane safely and let the security forces handle the situation. The FAA suggested that the longer a hijacking persisted, the more likely it would end peacefully with the hijackers reaching their goal. Although total compliance is still relevant, the events of September 11 changed this paradigm as this technique cannot prevent a suicide hijacking.
It is now evident that each hijacking situation needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Cabin crew, now aware of the severe consequences, have a greater responsibility for maintaining control of their aircraft. Most airlines also give crew members training in self-defense tactics. Ever since the 1970s, crew are taught to be vigilant for suspicious behaviour. For example, passengers who have no carry-on luggage, or are standing next to the cockpit door with fidgety movements. There have been various incidents when crew and passengers intervened to prevent attacks: on December 22, 2001, Richard Reid attempted to ignite explosives on American Airlines Flight 63. In 2009, on Northwest Flight 253, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to detonate explosives sewn into his underwear. In 2012, the attempted hijacking of Tianjin Airlines Flight 7554 was stopped when cabin crew placed a trolley in-front of the cockpit door and asked passengers for help.
American Airlines Flight 11
In the September 11 attacks, crew on one of the hijacked planes went beyond their scope of training by informing the airline ground crew about the events on board. In separate phone calls, Amy Sweeney and Betty Ong provided information on seat numbers of the attackers and passenger injuries. This helped authorities identify them.
Cockpit security
As early as 1964, the FAA required cockpit doors on commercial aircraft be kept locked during flight. In 2002, U.S. Congress passed the Arming Pilots Against Terrorism Act, allowing pilots at U.S. airlines to carry guns in the cockpit. Since 2003, these pilots are known as Federal Flight Deck Officers. It is estimated that one in 10 of the 125,000 commercial pilots are trained and armed. Also in 2002, aircraft manufacturers such as Airbus introduced a reinforced cockpit door which is resistant to gunfire and forced entry. Shortly afterwards, the FAA required operators of more than 6,000 aircraft to install tougher cockpit doors by April 9, 2003. Rules were also tightened to restrict cockpit access and make it easier for pilots to lock the doors. In 2015, Germanwings Flight 9525 was seized by the co-pilot and deliberately crashed, while the captain was out. The captain was unable to re-enter the cockpit, because the airline had already reinforced the cockpit door. The European Aviation Safety Agency issued a recommendation for airlines to ensure that at least two people, one pilot and a member of cabin crew, occupy the cockpit during flight. The FAA in the United States enforce a similar rule.
Air marshal service
Some countries operate a marshal service, which puts members of law enforcement on high-risk flights based on intelligence. Their role is to keep passengers safe, by preventing hijackings and other criminal acts committed on a plane. Federal marshals in the U.S. are required to identify themselves before boarding a plane; marshals of other countries often are not. According to the Congressional Research Service, the budget for the U.S. Federal Air Marshal Service was US$719 million in 2007. Marshals often sit as regular passengers, at the front of the plane to allow observation of the cockpit. Despite the expansion of the marshal service, they cannot be on every plane, and they rarely face a real threat on a flight. Critics have questioned the need for them.
Air traffic control
There is no generic or set of rules for handling a hijacking situation. Air traffic controllers are expected to exercise their best judgement and expertise when dealing with the apparent consequences of an unlawful interference or hijack. Depending on the jurisdiction, the controller will inform authorities, such as the military, who will escort the hijacked plane. Controllers are expected to keep communications to a minimum and clear the runway for a possible landing.
Legislation for downing hijacked aircraft
Germany
In January 2005, a federal law came into force in Germany, called the Luftsicherheitsgesetz, which allows "direct action by armed force" against a hijacked aircraft to prevent a September 11–style attack. However, in February 2006 the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany struck down these provisions of the law, stating such preventive measures were unconstitutional and would essentially be state-sponsored murder, even if such an act would save many more lives on the ground. The main reason behind this decision was that the state would effectively be killing innocent hostages in order to avoid a terrorist attack. The Court also ruled that the Minister of Defense is constitutionally not entitled to act in terrorism matters, as this is the duty of the state and federal police forces. President of Germany Horst Köhler urged judicial review of the constitutionality of the Luftsicherheitsgesetz after he signed it into law in 2005.
India
India published its new anti-hijacking policy in August 2005. The policy came into force after approval from the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS). The main points of the policy are:
Any attempt to hijack will be considered an act of aggression against the country and will prompt a response fit for an aggressor.
Hijackers, if captured alive, will be put on trial, convicted, and sentenced to death.
Hijackers will be engaged in negotiations only to bring the incident to an end, to comfort passengers and to prevent loss of lives.
The hijacked plane will be shot down if it is deemed to become a missile heading for strategic targets.
The hijacked plane will be escorted by armed fighter aircraft and will be forced to land.
A hijacked grounded plane will not be allowed to take off under any circumstance.
United States
Prior to the September 11 attacks, countermeasures were focused on "traditional" hijackings. As such, there were no specific rules for handling suicide hijackings, where aircraft would be used as a weapon. Moreover, military response at the time consisted of multiple uncoordinated units, each with its own set of rules of engagement with no unified command structure. Soon after the attacks, however, new rules of engagement were introduced, authorizing the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)the Air Force command tasked with protecting U.S. airspaceto shoot down hijacked commercial airliners if necessary. In 2003, the military stated that fighter pilots exercise this scenario several times a week.
Other countries
Poland and Russia are among other countries that have had laws or directives for shooting down hijacked planes. However, in September 2008 the Polish Constitutional Court ruled that the Polish rules were unconstitutional, and voided them.
International law
Tokyo Convention
The Convention on Offences and Certain Other Acts Committed on Board Aircraft, known as the Tokyo Convention, is an international treaty which entered force on December 4, 1969. , it has been ratified by 186 parties. Article 11 of the Tokyo Convention states the following:
The signatories agree that if there is unlawful takeover of an aircraft, or a threat of it on their territory, then they will take all necessary measures to regain or keep control over an aircraft. The captain can also disembark a suspected person on the territory of any country, where the aircraft lands, and that country must agree to it, as stated in Articles 8 and 12 of the convention.
Hague Convention
The Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft (known as the Hague Convention) went into effect on October 14, 1971. , the convention has 185 signatories.
Montreal Convention
The Montreal Convention is a multilateral treaty adopted by a diplomatic meeting of ICAO member states in 1999. It amended important provisions of the Warsaw Convention's regime concerning compensation for the victims of air disasters.
In popular culture
The 1997 Hollywood film Air Force One is based on the fictional hijacking of Air Force One.
Hijacking is a central theme in the Turbulence movie trilogy.
In Mission: Impossible 2, one of the film's antagonists hijacks a plane at the start of the movie.
The 2006 film United 93 is based on the real events onboard United Airlines Flight 93 one of the four airlines hijacked during the September 11 attacks.
The 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises features an opening sequence of hijacking and crashing an aircraft for the purpose of kidnapping a man and faking his death.
The film Con Air features a U.S. Marshals aircraft being hijacked by the maximum-security prisoners on board.
The Taking of Flight 847: The Uli Derickson Story was a made-for-TV film based on the actual hijacking of TWA Flight 847, as seen through the eyes of the chief flight attendant Uli Derickson.
Passenger 57 depicts an airline security expert trapped on a passenger jet when terrorists seize control.
Executive Decision depicts a Boeing 747 carrying 400 passengers being hijacked by Algerian terrorists, and U.S. marine and Army special forces use a reconnaissance aircraft to re-take the plane.
Skyjacked is a 1972 film about a crazed Vietnam War veteran hijacking an airliner, demanding to be taken to the Soviet Union.
The 1986 film The Delta Force depicted a Special Forces squad tasked with retaking a plane hijacked by Lebanese terrorists, loosely based on the hijacking of TWA Flight 847.
The 2004 film The Assassination of Richard Nixon, based on a true incident, depicts a disillusioned tire salesman who attempts to hijack a plane in 1974 and crash it into the White House. His attempt failed and he was mortally wounded by an airport policeman. He killed himself before police stormed the plane.
The 2006 film Snakes On a Plane is a fictional story about aircraft piracy through the in-flight release of venomous snakes.
In Harold and Kumar 2, two U.S. Air Marshals subdue Harold and Kumar on board a plane after mistaking them for terrorists.
The 2011 film Payanam is a movie entirely based on the negotiations and rescue operations done by the Indian security forces in response to a flight hijacking incident.
In the 2013 video game Grand Theft Auto V the player is tasked with hijacking a cargo plane carrying a large shipment of weapons by crashing a crop duster into the cargo bay mid-flight and fighting to seize control of the aircraft. The cargo plane is later shot down by the US Air Force, requiring the player to bail out.
The 2014 film Non-Stop depicts an aircraft hijacking.
The Indian film Neerja is based on the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 in Karachi.
In 2016, German television broadcast the film "Terror – Ihr Urteil" ("Terror – Your Judgement"), in which a Bundeswehr military pilot shoots down a hijacked passenger plane with 164 people on board that was heading towards a stadium filled with 70,000 people. Following the broadcast, a public vote was called for in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and 86.9% of viewers voted that the pilot was not guilty of murder.
The 2019 film 7500 depicts the struggle of a pilot to land an aircraft and maintain control of its cockpit during a hijacking.
See also
Air pirate
Airport security
Canadian Air Transport Security Authority
Dymshits–Kuznetsov hijacking affair
El Al
Federal Air Marshal Service
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal crime in the United States
List of aircraft hijackings
List of Cuba–United States aircraft hijackings
Palestinian political violence
Terrorism
Transportation Security Administration (TSA)
United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
References
External links
"The First Hijacking Myth" at Fortnight Journal
"America's first highjacking" at A Blast From the Past
Aviation risks
Aviation security
Terrorism tactics |
2076 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acropolis%20of%20Athens | Acropolis of Athens | The Acropolis of Athens is an ancient citadel located on a rocky outcrop above the city of Athens and contains the remains of several ancient buildings of great architectural and historical significance, the most famous being the Parthenon. The word acropolis is from the Greek words (akron, "highest point, extremity") and (polis, "city"). The term acropolis is generic and there are many other acropoleis in Greece. During ancient times the Acropolis of Athens was known also more properly as Cecropia, after the legendary serpent-man, Cecrops, the supposed first Athenian king.
While there is evidence that the hill was inhabited as far back as the fourth millennium BC, it was Pericles (c. 495–429 BC) in the fifth century BC who coordinated the construction of the buildings whose present remains are the site's most important ones, including the Parthenon, the Propylaea, the Erechtheion and the Temple of Athena Nike. The Parthenon and the other buildings were seriously damaged during the 1687 siege by the Venetians during the Morean War when gunpowder being stored in the Parthenon by the Ottomans was hit by a cannonball and exploded.
History
Early settlement
The Acropolis is located on a flattish-topped rock that rises above sea level in the city of Athens, with a surface area of about . While the earliest artifacts date to the Middle Neolithic era, there have been documented habitations in Attica from the Early Neolithic period (6th millennium BC).
There is little doubt that a Mycenaean megaron palace stood upon the hill during the late Bronze Age. Nothing of this megaron survives except, probably, a single limestone column-base and pieces of several sandstone steps. Soon after the palace was constructed, a Cyclopean massive circuit wall was built, 760 meters long, up to 10 meters high, and ranging from 3.5 to 6 meters thick. From the end of the Helladic IIIB (1300-1200 BC) on, this wall would serve as the main defense for the acropolis until the 5th century. The wall consisted of two parapets built with large stone blocks and cemented with an earth mortar called emplekton (Greek: ἔμπλεκτον). The wall uses typical Mycenaean conventions in that it followed the natural contour of the terrain and its gate, which was towards the south, was arranged obliquely, with a parapet and tower overhanging the incomers' right-hand side, thus facilitating defense. There were two lesser approaches up the hill on its north side, consisting of steep, narrow flights of steps cut in the rock. Homer is assumed to refer to this fortification when he mentions the "strong-built House of Erechtheus" (Odyssey 7.81). At some time before the 13th century BC, an earthquake caused a fissure near the northeastern edge of the Acropolis. This fissure extended some 35 meters to a bed of soft marl in which a well was dug. An elaborate set of stairs was built and the well served as an invaluable, protected source of drinking water during times of siege for some portion of the Mycenaean period.
Archaic Acropolis
Not much is known about the architectural appearance of the Acropolis until the Archaic era. During the 7th and the 6th centuries BC, the site was controlled by Kylon during the failed Kylonian revolt, and twice by Peisistratos; each of these were attempts directed at seizing political power by coups d'état. Apart from the Hekatompedon mentioned later, Peisistratos also built an entry gate or propylaea. Nevertheless, it seems that a nine-gate wall, the Enneapylon, had been built around the acropolis hill and incorporating the biggest water spring, the Clepsydra, at the northwestern foot.
A temple to Athena Polias, the tutelary deity of the city, was erected between 570 and 550 BC. This Doric limestone building, from which many relics survive, is referred to as the Hekatompedon (Greek for "hundred–footed"), Ur-Parthenon (German for "original Parthenon" or "primitive Parthenon"), H–Architecture or Bluebeard temple, after the pedimental three-bodied man-serpent sculpture, whose beards were painted dark blue. Whether this temple replaced an older one, or just a sacred precinct or altar, is not known. Probably, the Hekatompedon was built where the Parthenon now stands.
Between 529 and 520 BC yet another temple was built by the Pisistratids, the Old Temple of Athena, usually referred to as the Arkhaios Neōs (ἀρχαῖος νεώς, "ancient temple"). This temple of Athena Polias was built upon the Dörpfeld foundations, between the Erechtheion and the still-standing Parthenon. Arkhaios Neōs was destroyed as part of the Achaemenid destruction of Athens during the Second Persian invasion of Greece during 480–479 BC; however, the temple was probably reconstructed during 454 BC, since the treasury of the Delian League was transferred in its opisthodomos. The temple may have been burnt down during 406/405 BC as Xenophon mentions that the old temple of Athena was set afire. Pausanias does not mention it in his 2nd century AD Description of Greece.
Around 500 BC the Hekatompedon was dismantled to make place for a new grander building, the "Older Parthenon" (often referred to as the Pre-Parthenon, "early Parthenon"). For this reason, Athenians decided to stop the construction of the Olympieion temple which was connoted with the tyrant Peisistratos and his sons and, instead, used the Piraeus limestone destined for the Olympieion to build the Older Parthenon. In order to accommodate the new temple, the south part of the summit was cleared, made level by adding some 8,000 two-ton blocks of limestone, a foundation deep at some points, and the rest was filled with soil kept in place by the retaining wall. However, after the victorious Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, the plan was revised and marble was used instead. The limestone phase of the building is referred to as Pre-Parthenon I and the marble phase as Pre-Parthenon II. In 485 BC, construction stalled to save resources as Xerxes became king of Persia and war seemed imminent.
The Older Parthenon was still under construction when the Persians invaded and sacked the city in 480 BC. The building was burned and looted, along with the Ancient Temple and practically everything else on the rock. After the Persian crisis had subsided, the Athenians incorporated many architectural parts of the unfinished temple (unfluted column drums, triglyphs, metopes, etc.) into the newly built northern curtain wall of the Acropolis, where they served as a prominent "war memorial" and can still be seen today. The devastated site was cleared of debris. Statuary, cult objects, religious offerings and unsalvageable architectural members were buried ceremoniously in several deeply dug pits on the hill, serving conveniently as a fill for the artificial plateau created around the classic Parthenon. This "Persian debris" was the richest archaeological deposit excavated on the Acropolis by 1890.
The Periclean building program
After winning at Eurymedon during 468 BC, Cimon and Themistocles ordered the reconstruction of the southern and northern walls of the Acropolis. Most of the major temples, including the Parthenon, were rebuilt by order of Pericles during the so-called Golden Age of Athens (460–430 BC). Phidias, an Athenian sculptor, and Ictinus and Callicrates, two famous architects, were responsible for the reconstruction.
During 437 BC, Mnesicles started building the Propylaea, a monumental gate at the western end of the Acropolis with Doric columns of Pentelic marble, built partly upon the old propylaea of Peisistratos. These colonnades were almost finished during 432 BC and had two wings, the northern one decorated with paintings by Polygnotus. About the same time, south of the Propylaea, building started on the small Ionic Temple of Athena Nike in Pentelic marble with tetrastyle porches, preserving the essentials of Greek temple design. After an interruption caused by the Peloponnesian War, the temple was finished during the time of Nicias' peace, between 421 BC and 409 BC.
Construction of the elegant temple of Erechtheion in Pentelic marble (421–406 BC) was in accordance with a complex plan which took account of the extremely uneven ground and the need to circumvent several shrines in the area. The entrance, facing east, is lined with six Ionic columns. Unusually, the temple has two porches, one on the northwest corner borne by Ionic columns, the other, to the southwest, supported by huge female figures or Caryatids. The eastern part of the temple was dedicated to Athena Polias, while the western part, serving the cult of the archaic king Poseidon-Erechtheus, housed the altars of Hephaestus and Voutos, brother of Erechtheus. Little is known about the original plan of the interior which was destroyed by fire during the first century BC and has been rebuilt several times.
During the same period, a combination of sacred precincts including the temples of Athena Polias, Poseidon, Erechtheus, Cecrops, Herse, Pandrosos and Aglauros, with its Kore Porch (Porch of the Maidens) or Caryatids' balcony was begun. Between the temple of Athena Nike and the Parthenon, there was the Sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia (or the Brauroneion), the goddess represented as a bear and worshipped in the deme of Brauron. According to Pausanias, a wooden statue or xoanon of the goddess and a statue of Artemis made by Praxiteles during the 4th century BC were both in the sanctuary.
Behind the Propylaea, Phidias' gigantic bronze statue of Athena Promachos ("Athena who fights in the front line"), built between 450 BC and 448 BC, dominated. The base was high, while the total height of the statue was . The goddess held a lance, the gilt tip of which could be seen as a reflection by crews on ships rounding Cape Sounion, and a giant shield on the left side, decorated by Mys with images of the fight between the Centaurs and the Lapiths. Other monuments that have left almost nothing visible to the present day are the Chalkotheke, the Pandroseion, Pandion's sanctuary, Athena's altar, Zeus Polieus's sanctuary and, from Roman times, the circular temple of Augustus and Rome.
Hellenistic and Roman period
During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, many of the existing buildings in the area of the Acropolis were repaired, due to damage from age, and occasionally, war. Monuments to foreign kings were erected, notably those of the Attalid kings of Pergamon Attalos II (in front of the NW corner of the Parthenon), and Eumenes II, in front of the Propylaia. These were rededicated during the early Roman Empire to Augustus or Claudius (uncertain), and Agrippa, respectively. Eumenes was also responsible for constructing a stoa on the South slope, not unlike that of Attalos in the Agora below.
During the Julio-Claudian period, the Temple of Rome and Augustus, a small, round edifice, about 23 meters from the Parthenon, was to be the last significant ancient construction on the summit of the rock. Around the same time, on the North slope, in a cave next to the one dedicated to Pan since the classical period, a sanctuary was founded where the archons dedicated to Apollo on assuming office. During 161 AD, on the South slope, the Roman Herodes Atticus built his grand amphitheatre or Odeon. It was destroyed by the invading Herulians a century later but was reconstructed during the 1950s.
During the 3rd century, under threat from a Herulian invasion, repairs were made to the Acropolis walls, and the "Beulé Gate" was constructed to restrict entrance in front of the Propylaia, thus returning the Acropolis to use as a fortress.
Byzantine, Latin and Ottoman period
During the Byzantine period, the Parthenon was used as a church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary. During the Latin Duchy of Athens, the Acropolis functioned as the city's administrative center, with the Parthenon as its cathedral, and the Propylaea as part of the Ducal Palace. A large tower was added, the "Frankopyrgos", demolished during the 19th century.
After the Ottoman conquest of Greece, the Parthenon was used as the garrison headquarters of the Turkish army, and the Erechtheum was turned into the governor's private harem. The buildings of the Acropolis suffered significant damage during the 1687 siege by the Venetians in the Morean War. The Parthenon, which was being used as a gunpowder magazine, was hit by artillery shot and damaged severely.
During subsequent years, the Acropolis was a site of bustling human activity with many Byzantine, Frankish, and Ottoman structures. The dominant feature during the Ottoman period was a mosque inside the Parthenon, complete with a minaret.
The Acropolis was besieged thrice during the Greek War of Independence (two sieges from the Greeks in 1821–1822 and one from the Ottomans in 1826–1827. A new bulwark named after Odysseas Androutsos was built by the Greeks between 1822 and 1825 to protect the recently rediscovered Klepsydra spring which became the sole fresh water supply of the fortress.
After independence, most features that dated from the Byzantine, Frankish and Ottoman periods were cleared from the site in an attempt to restore the monument to its original form, "cleansed" of all later additions.
German neoclassicist architect Leo von Klenze was responsible for the restoration of the Acropolis in the 19th century, according to German historian Wolf Seidl, as described in his book Bavarians in Greece.
Second World War
At the beginning of the Axis occupation of Greece in 1941, German soldiers raised the Nazi German War Flag over the Acropolis. It would be taken down by Manolis Glezos and Apostolos Santas in one of the first acts of resistance. In 1944 Greek Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou arrived on the Acropolis to celebrate liberation from the Nazis.
Archaeological remains
The entrance to the Acropolis was a monumental gateway termed the Propylaea. To the south of the entrance is the tiny Temple of Athena Nike. At the centre of the Acropolis is the Parthenon or Temple of Athena Parthenos (Athena the Virgin). East of the entrance and north of the Parthenon is the temple known as the Erechtheum. South of the platform that forms the top of the Acropolis there are also the remains of the ancient, though often remodelled, Theatre of Dionysus. A few hundred metres away, there is the now partially reconstructed Odeon of Herodes Atticus.
All the valuable ancient artifacts are situated in the Acropolis Museum, which resides on the southern slope of the same rock, 280 metres from the Parthenon.
Site plan
Site plan of the Acropolis at Athens showing the major archaeological remains
Parthenon
Old Temple of Athena
Erechtheum
Statue of Athena Promachos
Propylaea
Temple of Athena Nike
Eleusinion
Sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia or Brauroneion
Chalkotheke
Pandroseion
Arrephorion
Altar of Athena
Sanctuary of Zeus Polieus
Sanctuary of Pandion
Odeon of Herodes Atticus
Stoa of Eumenes
Sanctuary of Asclepius or Asclepieion
Theatre of Dionysus Eleuthereus
Odeon of Pericles
Temenos of Dionysus Eleuthereus
Aglaureion
The Acropolis Restoration Project
The Acropolis Restoration Project began in 1975 with the goal to reverse the decay of centuries of attrition, pollution, destruction from military actions, and misguided past restorations. The project included collection and identification of all stone fragments, even small ones, from the Acropolis and its slopes and the attempt was made to restore as much as possible using reassembled original material (anastylosis), with new marble from Mount Pentelicus used sparingly. All restoration was made using titanium dowels and is designed to be completely reversible, in case future experts decide to change things. A combination of cutting-edge modern technology and extensive research and reinvention of ancient techniques were used.
The Parthenon colonnades, largely destroyed by Venetian bombardment during the 17th century, were restored, with many wrongly assembled columns now properly placed. The roof and floor of the Propylaea were partly restored, with sections of the roof made of new marble and decorated with blue and gold inserts, as in the original. Restoration of the Temple of Athena Nike was completed in 2010.
A total of 2,675 tons of architectural members were restored, with 686 stones reassembled from fragments of the originals, 905 patched with new marble, and 186 parts made entirely of new marble. A total of 530 cubic meters of new Pentelic marble were used.
In 2021, the addition of new reinforced concrete paths to the site to improve accessibility caused controversy among archaeologists.
Cultural significance
Every four years, the Athenians had a festival called the Great Panathenaea that rivaled the Olympic Games in popularity. During the festival, a procession (believed to be depicted on the Parthenon frieze) traveled through the city via the Panathenaic Way and culminated on the Acropolis. There, a new robe of woven wool (peplos) was placed on either the statue of Athena Polias in the Erechtheum (during the annual Lesser Panathenaea) or on the statue of Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon (during the Great Panathenaea, held every four years).
Within the later tradition of Western Civilization and classical revival, the Acropolis, from at least the mid-18th century on, has often been invoked as a key symbol of the Greek legacy and of the glories of Classical Greece.
Μost of the artefacts from the temple are housed today in the Acropolis Museum at the foot of the ancient rock.
Geology
The Acropolis is a klippe consisting of two lithostratigraphic units, the Athens schist and the overlying Acropolis limestone. The Athens schist is a soft reddish rock dating from the upper Cretaceous period. The original sediments were deposited in a river delta approximately 72 million years ago. The Acropolis limestone dates from the upper Jurassic period, predating the underlying Athens schist by about 30 million years. The Acropolis limestone was thrust over the Athens schist by compressional tectonic forces (Plate tectonics), forming a nappe or overthrust sheet. Erosion of the limestone nappe led to the eventual detachment of the Acropolis, forming the present day feature. Where the Athens schist and the limestone meet there are springs and karstic caves. Many of the hills in the Athens region were formed by the erosion of the same nappe as the Acropolis. These include the hills of Lykabettos, Areopagus, and Mouseion. The marble utilized to construct the buildings of the Acropolis was sourced from the quarries of Mount Pentelicus, a mountain to the northeast of the city.
Geological Issues
The limestone that the Acropolis is built upon is unstable because of the erosion and tectonic shifts that the region is prone to. This instability can cause rock slides that cause damage to the historic site. Various measures have been implemented to protect the site including retaining walls, drainage systems and rock bolts. These measures work to counter the natural processes that threaten the historic site.
See also
Landscaping of the Acropolis of Athens
References
Notes
Bibliography
Cohen, Beth. (2010). "Deconstructing the Acropolis: The Acropolis Museum, Athens, opened 20 June 2009 by Bernard Tschumi Architects." American Journal of Archaeology 114:745–753.
Goette, Hans Rupprecht. (2001). Athens, Attica and the Megarid: An Archaeological Guide. London and New York: Routledge.
Harris, Diane. (1995). The Treasures of the Parthenon and Erechtheion. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Neils, Jenifer, ed. (1996). Worshipping Athena: Panathenaia and Parthenon. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press.
Pollitt, Jerome J. (1990). The Art of Ancient Greece: Sources and Documents. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
External links
The Acropolis of Athens (Greek Government website)
The Acropolis Restoration Project (Greek Government website)
The Acropolis of Athens Virtual Tour
The Acropolis Museum and the Goddess Athena
The Glafka Project
UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Acropolis, Athens
Ancient Athens 3D
Excerpt on the geology of Athens from: A Geological Companion to Greece and the Aegean by Michael and Reynold Higgins, Cornell University Press, 1996
The Acropolis of Athens-Athensguide
Tour of Acropolis of Athens, Site of the Parthenon-About.com
Athenian Acropolis
Videos
Acropolis of Athens, Full Reconstruction, animation by the Technological Research Institute, University of Santiago de Compostela, on YouTube
Timelapse video of Acropolis during Earth Hour 2010 Timelapse showing how the Acropolis of Athens switched off & on the lights during Earth Hour 2010
The Acropolis in 1955
The Acropolis in 1969
Greek Glory A tour of ancient Greek buildings and monuments in Athens in the 1940s
Acropolis of Athens from the old Greek TV show "Ελλάδος Περιήγησις..." (Greece Tours), 1998
Athens, Greece: Ancient Acropolis and Agora by Rick Steves
Three dimensional reconstruction of ancient Acropolis
Buildings and structures completed in the 5th century BC
Ancient Greek culture
Ancient Greek sanctuaries in Greece
Art of ancient Attica
Greek culture
Former populated places in Greece
Landmarks in Athens
World Heritage Sites in Greece
Tourist attractions in Athens |
2077 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam%20Weishaupt | Adam Weishaupt | Johann Adam Weishaupt (; 6 February 1748 – 18 November 1830) was a German philosopher, professor of civil law and later canon law, and founder of the Illuminati.
Early life
Adam Weishaupt was born on 6 February 1748 in Ingolstadt in the Electorate of Bavaria. Many have suggested his family were of Jewish origin. Weishaupt's father Johann Georg Weishaupt (1717–1753) died when Adam was five years old. After his father's death he came under the tutelage of his godfather Johann Adam Freiherr von Ickstatt who, like his father, was a professor of law at the University of Ingolstadt. Ickstatt was a proponent of the philosophy of Christian Wolff and of the Enlightenment, and he influenced the young Weishaupt with his rationalism. Weishaupt began his formal education at age seven at a Jesuit school. He later enrolled at the University of Ingolstadt and graduated in 1768 at age 20 with a doctorate of law. In 1772 he became a professor of law. The following year he married Afra Sausenhofer of Eichstätt.
After Pope Clement XIV's suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773, Weishaupt became a professor of canon law, a position that was held exclusively by the Jesuits until that time. In 1775 Weishaupt was introduced to the empirical philosophy of Johann Georg Heinrich Feder of the University of Göttingen. Both Feder and Weishaupt would later become opponents of Kantian idealism.
Foundation of the Illuminati
On 1 May 1776 Johann Adam Weishaupt founded the "Illuminati" in the Electorate of Bavaria. Initially Illumination was designated for a group of outstanding and enlightened individuals in the society. Indeed, the word was adapted from a Latin root, Iluminatus, which directly translates to "enlightened." He also adopted the name of "Brother Spartacus" within the order. Even encyclopedia references vary on the goal of the order, such as New Advent saying the Order was not egalitarian or democratic internally, but sought to promote the doctrines of equality and freedom throughout society; while others such as Collier's have said the aim was to combat religion and foster rationalism in its place. The Illuminati was formed with the vision of liberating humans from religious bondage and undermining corrupted governments.
The actual character of the society was an elaborate network of spies and counter-spies. Each isolated cell of initiates reported to a superior, whom they did not know: a party structure that was effectively adopted by some later groups.
Weishaupt was initiated into the Masonic lodge "Theodor zum guten Rath", at Munich in 1777. His project of "illumination, enlightening the understanding by the sun of reason, which will dispel the clouds of superstition and of prejudice" was an unwelcome reform. He used Freemasonry to recruit for his own quasi-masonic society, with the goal of "perfecting human nature" through re-education to achieve a communal state with nature, freed of government and organized religion. Presenting their own system as pure masonry, Weishaupt and Adolph Freiherr Knigge, who organised his ritual structure, greatly expanded the secret organisation.
Contrary to Immanuel Kant's famous dictum that Enlightenment (and Weishaupt's Order was in some respects an expression of the Enlightenment Movement) was the passage by man out of his 'self-imposed immaturity' through daring to 'make use of his own reason, without the guidance of another,' Weishaupt's Order of Illuminati prescribed in great detail everything which the members had obediently to read and think, so that Dr. Wolfgang Riedel has commented that this approach to illumination or enlightenment constituted a degradation and twisting of the Kantian principle of Enlightenment. Riedel writes:
'The independence of thought and judgement required by Kant ... was specifically prevented by the Order of the Illuminati's rules and regulations. Enlightenment takes place here, if it takes place at all, precisely under the direction of another, namely under that of the "Superiors" [of the Order].
Weishaupt's radical rationalism and vocabulary were not likely to succeed. Writings that were intercepted in 1784 were interpreted as seditious, and the Society was banned by the government of Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria, in 1784. Weishaupt lost his position at the University of Ingolstadt and fled Bavaria.
Activities in exile
He received the assistance of Duke Ernest II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1745–1804), and lived in Gotha writing a series of works on illuminism, including A Complete History of the Persecutions of the Illuminati in Bavaria (1785), A Picture of Illuminism (1786), An Apology for the Illuminati (1786), and An Improved System of Illuminism (1787). Adam Weishaupt died in Gotha on 18 November 1830. He was survived by his second wife, Anna Maria (née Sausenhofer), and his children Nanette, Charlotte, Ernst, Karl, Eduard, and Alfred. Weishaupt was buried next to his son Wilhelm who preceded him in death in 1802 at Friedhof II der Sophiengemeinde Berlin, a Protestant cemetery.
After Weishaupt's Order of Illuminati was banned and its members dispersed, it left behind no enduring traces of an influence, not even on its own erstwhile members, who went on in the future to develop in quite different directions.
Assessment of character and intentions
Weishaupt's character and intentions have been variously assessed. Some took a negative view, such as Augustin Barruel, who despite writing that Weishaupt's goals were that "Equality and Liberty, together with the most absolute independence, are to be the substitutes for all rights and all property" saw this as more dangerous than beneficial, and John Robison who regarded him as a 'human devil' and saw his mission as one of malevolent destructiveness. Others took a more positive view, including Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in a letter to James Madison that "Barruel’s own parts of the book are perfectly the ravings of a Bedlamite" and considered Weishaupt as an "enthusiastic Philanthropist" who believed in the indefinite perfectibility of man and his intention was simply to "reinstate natural religion, and by diffusing the light of his morality, to teach us to govern ourselves".
In his defense, Weishaupt wrote a Kurze Rechtfertigung meiner Absichten in 1787 (A Brief Justification of my Intentions). A translation was done by Dr. Tony Page in which he wrote:
"Weishaupt’s plan was to educate Illuminati followers in the highest levels of humanity and morality (basing his teachings on the supremacy of Reason, allied with the spirit of the Golden Rule of not doing to others what one would not wish done to oneself), so that if Illuminati alumni subsequently attained positions of significance and power (such as in the fields of education and politics), they could exert a benevolent and uplifting influence upon society at large. His project was utopian and naively optimistic, and he himself was certainly not without flaws of character – but neither he nor his plan was evil or violent in and of themselves. It is one of the deplorable and tragic ironies of history that a man who tried to inculcate virtue, philanthropy, social justice and morality has become one of the great hate-figures of 21st-century 'conspiracy' thinking."
Works
Philosophical works
(1775) De Lapsu Academiarum Commentatio Politica.
(1786) Über die Schrecken des Todes – eine philosophische Rede.
Discours Philosophique sur les Frayeurs de la Mort (1788). Gallica
(1786) Über Materialismus und Idealismus. Torino
(1788) Geschichte der Vervollkommnung des menschlichen Geschlechts.
(1788) Über die Gründe und Gewißheit der Menschlichen Erkenntniß.
(1788) Über die Kantischen Anschauungen und Erscheinungen.
(1788) Zweifel über die Kantischen Begriffe von Zeit und Raum.
(1793) Über Wahrheit und sittliche Vollkommenheit.
(1794) Über die Lehre von den Gründen und Ursachen aller Dinge.
(1794) Über die Selbsterkenntnis, ihre Hindernisse und Vorteile.
(1797) Über die Zwecke oder Finalursachen.
(1802) Über die Hindernisse der baierischen Industrie und Bevölkerung.
(1804) Die Leuchte des Diogenes.
(1817) Über die Staats-Ausgaben und Auflagen. Google Books
(1818) Über das Besteuerungs-System.
Works relating to the Illuminati
(1786) Apologie der Illuminaten, .
(1786) Vollständige Geschichte der Verfolgung der Illuminaten in Bayern.
(1786) Schilderung der Illuminaten.
(1787) Einleitung zu meiner Apologie.
(1787) Einige Originalschriften des Illuminatenordens...
(1787) Nachtrage von weitern Originalschriften...
(1787) Kurze Rechtfertigung meiner Absichten.
(1787) Nachtrag zur Rechtfertigung meiner Absichten.
(1787) Apologie des Mißvergnügens und des Übels.
(1787) Das Verbesserte System der Illuminaten.
(1788) Der ächte Illuminat, oder die wahren, unverbesserten Rituale der Illuminaten.
(1795) Pythagoras, oder Betrachtungen über die geheime Welt- und Regierungs-Kunst.
Source
Works by Adam Weishaupt in English translation
(2008) Diogenes' Lamp, or an Examination of Our Present Day Morality and Enlightenment, translated by Amelia Gill, The Masonic Book Club. Internet Archive
(2015) The Secret School of Wisdom: The Authentic Rituals and Doctrines of the Illuminati, translated by Jeva Singh-Anand, edited by Josef Wäges and Reinhard Markner, London: Lewis Masonic, 447 pp.,
Notes
External links
Biography in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie Vol. 41, pp. 539–550 by Daniel Jacoby.
A Bavarian Illuminati primer by Trevor W. McKeown.
Illuminati entry in The Catholic Encyclopedia, hosted by New Advent.
1748 births
1830 deaths
People from Ingolstadt
People from the Electorate of Bavaria
Enlightenment philosophers
German philosophers
18th-century philosophers
University of Ingolstadt alumni
University of Ingolstadt faculty
German Freemasons
18th-century German male writers |
2078 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn%20Electron | Acorn Electron | The Acorn Electron (nicknamed the Elk inside Acorn and beyond) was a budget version of the BBC Micro educational/home computer introduced by Acorn Computers Ltd on 25 August 1983. It had 32 kilobytes of RAM, and its ROM includes BBC BASIC v2 along with its operating system.
The Electron was able to save and load programs onto audio cassette via a supplied converter cable that connected it to any standard tape recorder that had the correct sockets. It was capable of basic graphics, and could display onto either a television set, a colour (RGB) monitor or a monochrome monitor.
For a short period, the Electron was reportedly the best selling micro in the United Kingdom, with an estimated 200,000 to 250,000 machines sold over its entire commercial lifespan.
History
After Acorn Computers released the BBC Micro, executives believed that the company needed a less-expensive computer for the mass market. In May 1982, when asked about the recently announced Sinclair ZX Spectrum's potential to hurt sales of the BBC Micro, priced at £125 for the 16K model compared to around twice that price for the 16K BBC Model A, Acorn co-founder Hermann Hauser responded that in the third quarter of that year Acorn would release a new £120–150 computer which "will probably be called the Electron", a form of "miniaturised BBC Micro", having 32 KB of RAM and 32 KB of ROM, with "higher resolution graphics than those offered by the Spectrum".
Acorn co-founder Chris Curry also emphasised the Electron's role as being "designed to compete with the Spectrum... to get the starting price very low, but not preclude expansion in the long term." In order to reduce component costs, and to prevent cloning, the company reduced the number of chips in the Electron from the 102 on the BBC Micro's motherboard to "something like 12 to 14 chips" with most functionality on a single 2,400-gate Uncommitted Logic Array (ULA). Reports during the second half of 1982 indicated a potential December release, with Curry providing qualified confirmation of such plans, together with an accurate depiction of the machine's form and capabilities, noting that the "massive ULA" would be the "dominant factor" in any pre-Christmas release. However, as the end of the year approached, with the ULA not ready for "main production", the launch of the Electron was to be delayed until the spring.
By June 1983, with the planned March release having passed, the launch of the Electron had been rescheduled for the Acorn User Exhibition in August 1983, and the machine was indeed launched at the event. The company expected to ship the Electron before Christmas, and sell 100,000 by February 1984. The price at launch - £199 - remained unchanged from that stated in an announcement earlier in the year, with the machine's nickname within Acorn - the "Elk" - also being reported publicly for perhaps the first time.
Reviews were generally favourable, starting with positive impressions based on the physical design of the computer, with one reviewer noting, "The Electron is beautifully designed and built — quite a shock compared to the BBC. Its designer case will look great on the coffee table." Praise was also forthcoming for the Electron's keyboard which was regarded as being better than most of its low-cost peers, with only the VIC-20 being comparable. In one review, the keyboard was even regarded as better than the one in the BBC Micro. The provision of rapid BASIC keyword entry though the combination of the key with various letter keys was also welcomed as a helpful aid to prevent typing errors by "most users", while "touch typists" were still able to type out the keywords in full.
Reviewers also noted the machine's excellent graphics compared to the Commodore 64 and the Spectrum. The provision of screen modes supporting 80 columns of readable text and graphics resolutions of was described as "unrivalled by every machine up to the BBC Model B itself", although the absence of a teletext mode was also noted, typically for the low memory usage characteristics of that mode, but one reviewer thought the absence of a "software simulation of a teletext screen" was a "lazy omission" even if it would have to be "awfully slow and take up piles of memory".
While its speed was acceptable compared to its immediate competition, the Electron was, however, rather slower than the BBC Micro with one review noting that games designed for the BBC Micro ran "at less than half the speed, with very significant effects on their appeal". The reduced performance can be attributed to the use of a 4-bit wide memory system instead of the 8-bit wide memory system of the BBC Micro to reduce cost. Due to needing two accesses to the memory instead of one to fetch each byte, along with contention with the video hardware also needing access, reading or writing RAM was much slower than on the BBC Micro. Reviewers were also disappointed by the single-channel sound, noting that "BBC-style music" and its "imitations of various musical instruments" would not be possible, the latter due to the inability of the sound system to vary the amplitude of sounds.
Despite some uncertainty about Acorn's target demographic for the Electron, some noted the potential for the machine in education given its robustness, but also given its price, noting that the high price of BBC Model B machines seemed "rarely justified by their actual practical applications in schools". The introduction of the Electron was seen as potentially leading to competition between Acorn's different models within the schools market rather than creating a broader audience for them, although the potential for more computers in schools, giving more "hands-on" experience for students, was welcomed. Nevertheless, reviewers anticipated that the Electron would sell well at the lower end of the market, with projected sales of 100,000 units by Christmas 1983, helped by the Electron's software compatibility with the BBC Micro and the already established reputation of its predecessor. With parents potentially being convinced of the Electron's educational value, some reviewers foresaw a conflict between parents and "discerning children", the latter merely wanting to play games and preferring models with sound and graphics capabilities more appropriate for gaming. Although Acorn had based its expansion into the United States on the BBC Micro, the company did have plans to introduce the Electron at a later time, and a model for the US market was described in an official book, The Acorn Guide to the Electron, but this model was never produced.
Production difficulties at Astec in Malaysia delayed the machine's introduction, forcing Acorn to look to other manufacturers such as AB Electronics in Wales and Wongs in Hong Kong (an original equipment manufacturer making over 30 million circuit boards a year, along with power supplies and plastic housings, for companies such as IBM, Xerox, Atari, and Apple, including units made for Acorn for the BBC Micro). By October 1983, Acorn had received orders for more than 150,000 units, but had production targets of only 25,000 a month before Christmas, meaning that the existing backlog would take more than six months to fulfil. Demand for the Electron was high but only two of WH Smith's London branches had inventory. Ultimately, manufacturing in Malaysia ceased with the anticipated but unspecified number of units having been produced, this having been originally reported as 100,000 units. Acorn's marketing manager, Tom Hohenberg, admitted in early 1984 that "a lot of the trouble stemmed from the ULA" in getting production to the desired levels, but that such difficulties had been resolved, although Acorn faced an order backlog of almost a quarter of a million units.
As the company increased production during 1984, however, the British home computer market greatly weakened. Hohenberg later noted that after the 1983 Christmas season, Electron deliveries had increased to meet a demand that was no longer there, with the market having "completely dried up". Acorn's Christmas 1984 sales were greatly below expectations and by March 1985 the company had reduced the Electron's price to £129. With the company's unsuccessful expansion into the United States abandoned, Acorn's financial situation had deteriorated sufficiently to prompt Olivetti to rescue the company by taking a 49.30% ownership stake. Renewed efforts were made to sell the machine, bundling it with Acorn's own expansions and software, such as one package adding the Plus 1 expansion, joysticks and a ROM cartridge game to the base machine for a total price of £219. Acorn committed to supporting the machine "until the end of 1986", continuing to supply it (as the Merlin M2105) to British Telecom as part of the Healthnet communications system, with small-scale manufacturing continuing while existing stocks were being run down.
By autumn, retailers appeared eager to discount the computer, with prices in stores as low as £100, reportedly less than the distributor prices of the summer months. As the Christmas season approached, Dixons Retail acquired the remaining Electron inventory to sell, bundled with a cassette recorder and software, at a retail price of £99.95. This deal, from the perspective of a year later, apparently played a significant part in helping to reduce Acorn's unsold inventory from a value of £18 million to around £7.9 million, and in combination with "streamlining corporate activities and reducing overheads", had helped to reduce Acorn's losses from over £20 million to less than £3 million.
The deal effectively brought to an end Acorn's interest in the Electron and the lower-cost end of the home computing market, but empowered third-party suppliers whose "inventiveness and initiative" was noted as being in contrast with Acorn's lack of interest in the product and the "false promises" made to its users. However, Acorn subsequently released the Master Compact a model in the Master series of microcomputers with fewer BBC Micro-style ports and a similar expansion connector to that used by the Electron with the home audience specifically in mind. Indeed, prior to its release, the Master Compact had been perceived as the successor to the Electron. Superficial similarities between the Compact and Acorn Communicator, together with technical similarities between the Electron (particularly when expanded in the form of the Merlin M2105) and the Communicator, may also have driven rumours of an updated Electron model. A more substantial emphasis on the "home, music and hobby sectors" came with the appointment of a dedicated marketing manager in 1989 following the launch of the BBC A3000 in the Acorn Archimedes range.
Although the Electron presented challenges to developers in terms of the amount of memory available to programs and, particularly for those writing or porting games to the machine, a reduction in hardware features useful for controlling or presenting content on the screen, developers often discovered creative workarounds to deliver commercially successful products, making the business of writing conversions a viable one for some developers.
Several features that would later be associated with the BBC Master and Archimedes first appeared as features of Electron expansion units, including ROM cartridge slots and the Advanced Disc Filing System, a hierarchical improvement to the BBC's original Disc Filing System.
The availability of the Electron at discounted prices from 1985 onwards led to increased demand for third-party software and expansions for the machine. While it may not have been as popular as the Spectrum, Commodore 64 or Amstrad CPC, it did sell in sufficient numbers to ensure that new software titles from established producers were being produced right up until the early 1990s, with mainstream publications dedicated to the machine having effectively supported it for five years beyond the point at which Acorn's own support had ceased.
Hardware expansions
Since the Electron provided only a selection of video output ports, a cassette port and the expansion connector, a range of additional expansions were produced to offer ports and connections to various peripherals. The first expansions were largely joystick and printer interfaces or sideways ROM boards. For instance, First Byte Computers developed an interface and software which allowed a "switched" joystick to be used with the majority of software titles. This interface became very popular and was sold by W.H. Smiths, Boots, Comet and hundreds of independent computer dealers, selling as many as 23,000 units over a two-year period, helped by a bundling agreement with Dixons.
Acorn's own expansion strategy was led by the Plus 1 which offered a combination of ports and cartridge connectors, followed by the Plus 3 disc drive unit, but by early 1986 the more general range of expansions had broadened to include floppy drive and RS423 interfaces, Teletext adapters, and other fundamental enhancements to the base machine.
Multi-function expansions
Since the Electron's expansion connector was the basis of practically all external hardware expansions for the machine, unless an expansion propagated this connector to others, as was done by the Acorn Plus 3, the capabilities of any given expansion would limit the capabilities of the expanded machine. Thus, expansions offering a single function, such as joystick ports or a printer port, would need to be disconnected if other capabilities were needed, and then reconnected later. Consequently, multi-function expansions offering a combination of different capabilities offered a significant degree of convenience as well as avoiding wear on the expansion connector.
Alongside announcements of Acorn's then-unreleased Plus 1, Solidisk previewed a General Purpose Interface for the Electron in early 1984 offering a Centronics printer port, switched joystick port, user port, sideways ROM sockets, and mini-cartridge sockets supported by the 6522 versatile interface adapter (VIA) chip. The Plus 1 itself was released in mid-1984, introducing the influential cartridge format for expansions ultimately used by several other companies.
Acorn Plus 1
The Acorn Plus 1 added two ROM cartridge slots, an analogue interface (supporting four channels) and a Centronics parallel port, priced at £59.90. The analogue interface was normally used for joysticks, although trackball and graphics tablet devices were available, and the parallel interface was typically used to connect a printer. Game ROM cartridges would boot automatically. Languages in paged ROM cartridges would take precedence over BASIC. (The slot at the front of the interface took priority if both were populated.)
Access to ROM occurred at 2 MHz until RAM access was required, so theoretically programs released on ROM could run up to twice as fast as those released on tape or disc. Despite this, all of the games released on ROM were packaged as ROM filing system cartridges, from which the micro would load programs into main memory in exactly the same way as if it were loading from tape. This meant that programs did not need to be modified for their new memory location and could be written in BASIC but gave no execution speed benefits. Six ROM cartridge titles were announced for the launch of the Plus 1: three arcade games, one adventure game, one educational title, and the Lisp language implementation, the latter being a genuine language ROM that "takes the place of the BASIC ROM" and is instantly available when switching on.
The cartridge slots provided additional control lines (compared to the lines available via the edge connector on the rear of the Electron) to ease implementation of ROM cartridges. Acorn described the hardware extension possibilities in promotional literature, giving an RS423 cartridge as an example of this capability of the Plus 1.
Additional peripheral cartridges by companies such as PRES (via their ARA/ARA2/ASR products) allowed sideways ROM capability, that allowed the standard Acorn ROM space to be programmatically mapped out for alternative EPROMs, either physically via ZIF Sockets, or 'virtually' via ROM images loaded into (battery-backed) RAM in the same ROM address space. This enabled the Electron to achieve the same functionality as that provided by the expansion ROM slots under the keyboard and on the bottom-left of the BBC Micro B keyboard.
The addition of the Plus 1 added a number of new *FX or OSBYTE calls that allowed the OS to read values from the analogue interface and write to the parallel interface.
After Acorn's change of focus away from the Electron, and with a shortage of Plus 1 units available to purchase, Advanced Computer Products secured the rights to manufacture the unit under licence from Acorn, obtaining the injection moulds and tooling, thus restarting production in 1987 after Acorn's own production of the unit had ceased in November 1985.
The Plus 1 needed memory page &D for its workspace, and the unit added some processing overhead when enabled, both of these things causing issues with the loading and running of software, particularly cassette-based games. To disable the Plus 1, after pressing BREAK, the following commands could be issued:
*FX163,128,1
?&212=&D6
?&213=&F1
?&2AC=0
An official application note described a similar set of commands to "remove the Plus One completely from the address map disabling the Centronics and A/D ports (additionally disabling the RS423 cartridge if fitted)".
Slogger Rombox Plus
Following on from Slogger's earlier Rombox product an expansion similar in profile to the Plus 1 but offering eight ROM sockets and propagating the expansion connector to other units the Rombox Plus was positioned more directly as a competitor to the Plus 1 in that it offered two cartridge slots and a Centronics print port alongside four ROM sockets. Priced at £49.95, the unit was mostly compatible with cartridges designed for the Plus 1 although one reviewer reported physical issues with some expansion cartridges, suggesting some manufacturing inconsistencies given other users' more positive experiences, but indicated that it was still "worth considering as an alternative to the Plus 1".
Software Bargains Plus 1
In mid-1989, Software Bargains announced an expansion providing different levels of Plus 1 functionality, offered as a bare printed circuit board without casing and in three different variants: the basic model offered one cartridge port and was bundled with View and Viewsheet cartridges for £29.95; an extended model offered one cartridge port and a printer port with the two bundled cartridges for £36.95; the full model offered two cartridge ports, printer port and the bundled cartridges for £39.95. Various board upgrade options were also offered between the variants, with the product being described mainly as a vehicle to expose the bundled software packages to as many as 150,000 owners of the estimated 200,000 Electrons in the UK who "have not yet been able to acquire or use View or Viewsheet".
Communications and networking
To support connectivity, Acorn announced a Plus 2 network interface with availability scheduled for early 1985, together with a RS423 cartridge for the Plus 1. Neither of these products were delivered as announced.
Acorn Plus 2
The Acorn Plus 2 interface was due to provide Econet capability. This interface did not make it to market. However, an Econet interface was produced by Barson Computers in Australia and possibly other individuals and businesses.
Acorn Plus 4
The Acorn Plus 4 interface was due to provide a modem communications capability.
Andyk RS423 cartridge
Andyk announced an RS423 cartridge for the Plus 1 providing a serial port, alongside other products, in late 1985. It was priced at £34.99.
Pace Tellstar/Nightingale
Originally reported in mid-1985 as a collaboration between Acorn and Pace Micro Technology, but launched in early 1986, Pace offered a communications product consisting of a RS423 cartridge, bundled with a Nightingale modem and Tellstar communications software, offered at a discounted price of £145.
Jafa Systems RS423 cartridge
Jafa Systems announced an RS423 cartridge in late 1989 to "fill a two year gap in the market", offering a serial connector compatible with the BBC Micro together with an on-board socket for 8 KB or 16 KB EPROM devices or for 32 KB RAM, the latter being configured to present two sideways RAM banks to the system. Write protect functionality was supported to prevent certain ROM software from attempting to overwrite itself if stored in RAM. The cartridge board itself was priced at around £30, with a case costing £5 extra, and an optional 32 KB RAM adding another £20. Support for the E00 ADFS offered by PRES for that company's AP3 disc system was indicated as an application for the sideways RAM.
Disc interfaces
The first disc interface to be announced for the Electron was Pace's Le Box in 1984, offering a single-sided 100 KB floppy drive controlled by the 8271 controller and accessed using the Amcom Disc Filing System, with pricing at £299 plus VAT including the drive or around £199 without. The unit also provided eight sideways ROM sockets and was intended to sit under the Electron itself. The unit was connected via cabling to the expansion edge connector and included its own power supply, and other drives including switchable 40/80 track drives offering up to 400 KB capacity were dealer-supplied options. Although the product was meant to be on sale at the Acorn User Show in August 1984, and had been advertised, it was "discontinued" in early 1985 before getting to market, with a Pace representative indicating that prohibitive pricing of the 8271 chips (each at "over £80 at times") had left the company considering a re-launch of the product should the pricing situation become more favourable.
Following on from Acorn's Plus 3 interface, Cumana, Solidisk, Advanced Computer Products and Slogger all offered disc interfaces for the Electron. Unlike disc systems on the BBC Micro and the Acorn Plus 3, many of the systems released for the Electron did not claim RAM workspace (and raise the PAGE variable affecting applications above the default of &E00), making it easier to use cassette-based software transferred to disc and to run larger programs from disc.
Acorn Plus 3
Launched in late 1984 for a price of £229, the Acorn Plus 3 was a hardware module that connected independently of the Plus 1 and provided a "self contained disc interface and 3.5 inch single sided disc drive" offering over 300 KB of storage per disc using the newly introduced Advanced Disc Filing System (ADFS). The Plus 3 was also reportedly produced with a double-sided drive fitted.
An expansion connector for a second 3.5- or 5.25-inch drive was also provided by the unit, with such drives needing to provide a Shugart-compatible connector and their own power supply. The original Electron edge connector was repeated on the back of the Plus 3, allowing the Plus 1 or other compatible expansion to be connected in conjunction with the Plus 3.
The double-density drive of the Plus 3 was driven using a WD1770 drive controller by the ADFS. (The Plus 3 had been rumoured to offer Acorn's DFS and to feature a 8272 double-density disk controller before its launch.) Because the WD1770 is capable of single-density mode and uses the same IBM360-derived floppy disc format as the Intel 8271 found in the BBC Micro, it was also possible to use the Disc Filing System with an alternate ROM, such as the ACP 1770 DFS.
The Plus 3 reset PAGE to &1D00, reducing the amount of free RAM available to the user. The ADFS system could be temporarily disabled (and PAGE reset to &E00) via the command. Later products such as the PRES E00 ADFS remedied the memory demands of the ADFS, along with other issues suffered by the software as delivered with the Plus 3. If using the Plus 3 in screen modes 0–3, the pseudo-variable would be thrown off, as the interrupts were disabled during disk access in these modes. The screen would also blank during disc accesses.
Disks had to be manually mounted and dismounted using the / commands, or using the -+ key combination. Disks could also be booted from via the standard + key-combination, if the !BOOT file was present on the disk. This behaviour was the same as on the BBC Micro.
The Plus 3 included an uprated square black power supply unit with mains cord, manufactured by STC, designed and manufactured in England to and , that was designed to power the Plus 3, in addition to the Electron and the Plus 1 interface as well. This replaced the original cream-coloured "wall wart" style power supply, designed to and manufactured in Hong Kong.
Original Part no: 0201,113; input 220/240 V AC/50 Hz; output 19 V AC/0.737 A/14 W: Usage: Electron, Electron+Plus1
Uprated Part no: 0865,010; input 240 V AC/50 Hz 50 W; output 21 V AC/1.75 A/36.75 W: Usage: Electron+Plus3, Electron+Plus3+Plus1
Repair note: If the internal power-supply connector, used to power the existing internal 3.5-inch drive is damaged, and requires replacement, then the original AMP 800-930 4-pin connector, which was already in short supply during the original production run, may be replaced with a Molex 5264 50-37-5043 "Mini-SPOX" connector as an alternative.
Advanced Plus 3
Produced by Advanced Computer Products (ACP) and sold by PRES, the Advanced Plus 3 (AP3) was a Plus 1 cartridge interface using the WD1770 controller, supplied with Acorn's ADFS and a single-sided 3½-inch disc drive for £99 plus VAT, offering equivalent functionality to the Acorn Plus 3. Announced in late 1987, the product was made possible by an agreement between ACP and Acorn to license the ADFS software. As with many disc interfaces for the Electron, since the interface provided a connector for the drive, this made it possible to connect a 5¼" floppy disc drive (more common amongst BBC Micro owners) or the more typical 3½-inch drive.
PRES later released a version of ADFS with support for PAGE at &E00, this being achieved by using RAM provided by the Advanced Battery Backed RAM (ABR) cartridge. This version also fixed two notable bugs in Acorn's ADFS, eliminating unreliability when accessing the first tracks on a disc which had previously necessitated the writing of a file (ZYSYSHELP) as a workaround, and switching off the text cursor during disc compaction which had previously caused disc corruption (since the disc data would be processed using screen memory during this operation, and the cursor would modify that data when blinking). The ROM image was supplied on disc for £17.19, whereas a bundle of the ROM and ABR cartridge was £50.95.
In 1989, the Advanced Plus 3 Mark 2 was launched, offering a double-sided drive in place of the single-sided drive previously offered. This meant that the storage capacity of each disc was increased from the 320 KB of the original Plus 3 to 640 KB (this being supported by ADFS on the Master Compact).
Cumana Floppy Disc System
Early in 1985, Cumana released a cartridge-based interface providing support for double-density storage, a real-time clock and calendar for timestamping of files, and a spare ROM socket for user-fitted sideways ROMs. The filing system used was Cumana's own QFS, supporting 89 files per disc, PAGE at &E00, a non-hierarchical catalogue, ten-character filenames, with a format not directly compatible with either of Acorn's DFS or ADFS. The interface itself cost £149.95 when originally announced, but settled at around £115.95 including VAT, also being offered in a promotional bundle with a 5¼-inch drive for £224.15 including VAT. Later pricing put the interface at £74.95 including VAT.
Solidisk EFS
In mid-1985, Solidisk released a cartridge-based interface with support for single and double density storage and providing Acorn DFS and ADFS compatibility, 16 KB of on-board sideways RAM, and a connector for a Winchester hard drive. The cartridge itself cost £59, with a bundle including a double-sided, double-density, 3½-inch drive costing £200. A 20 MB hard drive was offered at a price of £805.
Advanced Plus 4
Announced in early 1986, the Advanced Plus 4 (AP4) from Advanced Computer Products was a cartridge-based interface employing the WD1770 controller and featuring ACP's 1770 DFS product, providing compatibility with Acorn's DFS from the BBC Micro and thereby supporting seven-character filenames and up to 31 files per disc. However, 8 KB of on-board static RAM was used as workspace for the filing system, keeping PAGE at &E00. An extra ROM socket was provided for a user-fitted sideways ROM, and being a 1770-based interface, it was reported that Acorn's ADFS could be used instead, although since it was not aware of the additional RAM, PAGE would be raised to &1D00 as it would be when using Acorn's Plus 3. The interface was priced at £69.55 plus VAT.
Slogger Electron Disc System and Pegasus 400
Slogger, an established producer of expansions and a reseller of other disc systems, introduced the Electron Disc System in early 1987, priced at £74.95, featuring the Cumana Floppy Disc System interface, which was combined with an Acorn-compatible DFS, SEDFS, having the capability of reading 40-track discs on 80-track drives plus support for Slogger's tape-to-disc conversion products, and reported as offering "virtual 100 per cent 8271 emulation" for compatibility with traditional DFS software. The SEDFS ROM was also available separately for existing Cumana interface owners, priced at £24.95.
The SEDFS was later bundled with Slogger's own cartridge-based interface and a 40/80-track switchable drive offering up to 400 KB storage per disc, with the bundle taking the Pegasus 400 name, introduced as part of a sales tour towards the end of 1987. This package of interface and drive cost £130. The precise DFS variant used by the Pegasus 400 system introduced "typeahead" support permitting keystroke buffering during disc activity on systems with the Turbo-Driver or Master RAM Board fitted and enabled.
Slogger/Elektuur Turbo boards
Announced in early 1986, the Slogger Turbo-Driver was a professionally fitted upgrade priced at £42. The board itself plugged into the CPU and BASIC ROM sockets on the main circuit board of the Electron, which merely involved removing socketed components on very early Electron models, but required desoldering work and therefore benefited from a fitting service for later units. The performance benefit of fitting the board was to make some programs, particularly those running in the high bandwidth modes (0 to 3), run up to three times faster.
The direct origins of the Slogger product appear to be a board designed by Andyk Limited, announced as the Fast Electron Board in late 1985 with a price of £29.99, whereas the Elektuur modification was described in an article in Dutch Electronics magazine Elektuur and intended for users to perform at home.
The Slogger and Elektuur Turbo boards were born out of a hack initially devised at Acorn. By shadowing the lowest 8 KB of RAM with a static RAM chip outside of reach of the ULA, the CPU could always access it at 2 MHz. The tradeoff was that the screen could not be located in that 8 KB. In practice the operating system ROMs always put the screen into the top 20 KB and as a result this probably only broke compatibility with around 2% of software. Speeding up the low portion of memory is particularly useful on 6502 derived machines because that processor has a faster addressing for the first 256 bytes and so it is common for software to put any variables involved in time-critical sections of program into that region.
The cost of the 64 Kbit SRAM chip would have been more than that of doubling the four 64 Kbit DRAM chips to give 8-bit RAM access, fixing both the modest memory and poor performance issues of the Electron.
Slogger Master RAM Board
Introduced at around the start of 1987 and priced at £64.95 fitted or £54.95 as a kit, the Master RAM Board offered the familiar turbo mode from the Slogger Turbo-Driver alongside a shadow mode providing 32 KB of static shadow RAM in addition to the existing 32 KB, thus giving 64 KB in total. So-called "legally written software", this being software using the operating system calls and not writing directly to the screen, could function without significant modification, making substantially more memory available for BASIC, View, Viewsheet, language ROMs and many other applications. By providing extra storage this modification also allowed some games and applications intended for the BBC Micro to function on the Electron despite the lack of a native Mode 7.
Applications could not directly address video memory in shadow mode without modification, so it was incompatible with most games, although there is no inherent reason why a game could not be written to function in shadow mode. A switch mounted through the case switched between normal, turbo and shadow modes.
Towards the end of the Electron's commercial lifetime, the Turbo-Driver and Master RAM Boards were offered already fitted to new Electrons in an attempt to increase sales. For a time, Jafa Systems manufactured their own equivalent of the Master RAM Board in order to support their own product range.
Mode 7 display expansions
Of the capabilities present in the BBC Micro but absent from the Electron, the Teletext-style Mode 7 was particularly conspicuous because of the very low memory usage of that mode (1000 bytes) and the high number of BBC programs that used it to maximise available memory for program code and data while also providing a colourful 40-column textual display with simple low-resolution graphical decorations.
Such display capabilities, desirable in their own right on low-memory computers, were also desirable for delivering content through low-bandwidth communications channels such as that from Teletext and Viewdata services. However, access to such services can be considered to be a separate capability, and the BBC Micro needed to be upgraded to complement its display capability with the Teletext or Prestel adapters to receive such over-the-air or online content.
Jafa Systems provided a number of solutions to remedy the absence of a Teletext display capability. Morley Electronics instead chose to offer an expansion combining the display and reception capabilities.
Sir Computers
In late 1984, Sir Computers announced a Mode 7 adapter unit that plugged into the Electron's expansion connector. Unfortunately, Sir Computers ceased trading before the product was brought to market.
Jafa Systems
Released in 1987 at a price of £89, the Mode 7 Mark 1 Display Unit was a separate unit "about the size, shape and colour of the Plus One or a Slogger ROMbox" that connected to the Electron's expansion connector and featured a Motorola 6845 display controller and Mullard SAA5050 character generator to replicate the main elements of the BBC Micro's Teletext display solution. This only used 1 KB of memory for the display, with the expansion listening to display memory write accesses and buffering the data in its own memory. A ROM was included to extend the operating system to allow activation of Mode 7 as a genuine screen mode and to provide extra commands and to support keyboard shortcuts used on the BBC Micro to emit Teletext control sequences. To support the output of both the Mode 7 display and the existing video output, a lead connected the Electron's RGB output to the expansion, with the expansion providing only RF (television) output.
Conscious of the relatively high price of the Mark 1 unit, John Wike of Jafa devised and, at the end of 1988, introduced a software-based Mode 7 Simulator, priced at £25, supplied on a ROM cartridge that rendered the Mode 7 display in a low-resolution, 8-colour graphics mode. Although cheap and effective in enabling use of some software that only used official operating system routines for text output, this solution proved very slow because the Electron had to be placed into the high-bandwidth Mode 2 display to be able to show eight colours at once. In doing so, the CPU spent a lot of time drawing representations of Mode 7 characters and graphics that in a hardware solution would be achieved without any demand on the CPU. It also used up 20 KB of RAM for the graphics display rather than the 1000 bytes of a hardware Mode 7.
A conceptually similar predecessor to the software-based simulator was published by Electron User in early 1987, offering a monochrome Mode 4 simulation of the Teletext display, using the lower 25 character lines of the screen to show the Teletext output, reserving several lines at the top of the screen for a representation of Mode 7 used to prepare the eventual visual output. However, the program did not support direct access to Mode 7 memory locations. The author noted that a Mode 2 version would have been possible but would have required a redesigned character set and "too much memory".
A further refinement of the hardware solution was introduced in 1989 with the Mode 7 Mark 2 Display Unit, which retained the SAA5050 character generator but omitted the 6845 display controller, and was fitted internally in the Electron itself instead of being housed in an external unit, although some kind of ROM expansion unit was needed to hold the driver/utilities ROM. It used software to ensure that the SAA5050 was fed with the correct character data. A software ROM would put the machine into a two-colour, 40-column graphics mode (thus providing one byte per character), and as the ULA read display data from memory in the usual fashion, the SAA5050 would listen to the data it was reading and produce a Mode 7 interpretation of the same information, this being achieved by fitting a board on top of the ULA connecting to its pins. When necessary the hardware would switch between the conventional Electron graphics output and the Mode 7 output being produced by the add-on, feeding it to the Electron's built-in video output sockets via the red, green and blue lines on the motherboard.
The disadvantage to this system is that while the SAA5050 would expect to be repeatedly fed the same 40 bytes of data for every display scanline of each character row, the ULA would read a different set of 40 bytes for every display scanline in order to produce a full graphics display. A software ROM worked around this by duplicating the data intended for a Mode 7 display in memory. Although this produced a Mode 7 that had less of an impact upon CPU performance than a software solution, gave the same visual quality as the BBC Micro, and supported direct access to Mode 7 screen addresses as well as accesses via operating system routines, it still used 10 KB of memory for the display and reduced the amount of readily-usable application memory (as indicated by HIMEM) by another 6 KB.
However, with users increasingly able to rely on expansions such as the Slogger Master RAM board to provide more memory, and with this combination of expansions acknowledged throughout the user manual, the emphasis of the Mode 7 Simulator and Mark 2 Display Unit was arguably to deliver the actual display capabilities for those applications that needed them, instead of using Mode 7 as a way of economising with regard to memory usage, and to do so at a reasonable price. In this latter regard, the Mark 2 model was available as a kit costing £25 or as an assembled product (requiring some soldering) costing £49, with a fitting service available for £10.
The Jafa interfaces did not provide a Teletext or Viewdata reception capability, but the Mark 2 was explicitly stated to work in conjunction with the Morley Electronics Teletext Adapter. Meanwhile, the manual for the Mark 2 noted that the product would provide the functionality of a Viewdata terminal if combined with Jafa's RS423 cartridge.
Morley Electronics
Morley Electronics produced a Teletext Adaptor expansion for the BBC Micro and the Electron. Since the BBC Micro has the Mode 7 display capability, the model aimed at the BBC Micro merely provided the content reception capability needed to receive and decode Teletext signals, connecting to the user port and power supply. However, the Electron models provided both display and reception capabilities, doing so by routing either the RGB or UHF signals (depending on the model) through the unit in order to introduce the Mode 7 output produced by the unit, also connecting via a cartridge. The Teletext display capabilities in the Electron models exceeded those of the BBC Micro, with one reviewer noting that the enhanced capabilities permitted "black text on a coloured background, something I've always wanted to do on my Beeb". The UHF model of the Electron adapter also supported overlaying of Teletext onto video and framing of video.
Second Processor expansions
Acorn did demonstrate a prototype "Tube" interface for the Electron alongside the Plus 3 interface at the Compec exhibition in November 1984, although this was never brought to market directly by Acorn.
Advanced Plus 5
Despite Acorn's withdrawal from the Electron peripheral market, Advanced Computer Products developed the Advanced Plus 5 (AP5) expansion, featuring Tube, 1 MHz bus and user port interfaces, which plugged into a Plus 1 cartridge socket. This provided a sufficient level of compatibility that both the 6502 and Z80 second processor products from Acorn were shown to work, providing a Tube implementation that was "as faithful as you can get", with it also being noted that the Electron being available for as little as £50 at that point in its commercial lifespan was a "very cheap way of getting a CP/M machine". Some differences in the memory map of the Electron meant that BBC Micro software would need modifications to work on the Electron with AP5. The price of the unit in late 1986 was £66.70.
The additional facilities of the AP5 alongside the Tube interface permitted various expansions for the BBC Micro to be made available for the Electron. These included the Hybrid Music 5000 and the AMX Mouse.
PMS Electron Second Processor
In 1986, Permanent Memory Systems announced a second processor product for the Electron, the PMS-E2P, as a self-contained cartridge for use with the Plus 1 containing a second 2 MHz 6502A processor plus 64 KB of RAM, priced at £89. This was based on a product originally developed by John Wike of Jafa Systems. Available as a kit or in assembled form, it could even be adapted to connect directly to the Electron's expansion connector, thus avoiding the need to even have a Plus 1 expansion, although this would require the user to find other solutions for attaching peripherals. The implementation of the interface between the Electron and second processor was said to adhere closely to Acorn's recommendations, noting that any hardware or software compatibility issues were likely to be the fault of other vendors not similarly adhering to Acorn's guidelines.
Sound system expansions
Despite the Electron having only limited sound generation capabilities, few expansions were offered to overcome the machine's limitations.
Millsgrade Voxbox
Advertised in late 1985, the Voxbox by Millsgrade Limited was an expansion connecting to the Electron's expansion connector that provided allophone-based speech synthesis, with driver software provided on cassette. The supplied software supported the definition of spoken words built up from the allophones these allophones or sounds being stored in the expansion's own ROM and for catalogues of words to be created and saved. A program was supplied that extended BASIC to allow the use of the synthesiser in user programs. The expansion used the General Instrument SP0256A-AL2 speech synthesis chip.
Sound Expansion cartridge
Originally announced in 1987 by Project Expansions to be priced at around £40, the Sound Expansion cartridge could be fitted in a Plus 1 (or compatible) slot and provide sound output equivalent to that of the BBC Micro, with Superior Software's Speech bundled as a "limited offer". A product of the same name and with similar functionality was subsequently sold by Complex Software for around £55, employing its own adjustable speaker in the cartridge unit.
Hybrid Music 5000
Hybrid Technology's Music 5000 was adapted and released by PRES for use with the 1 MHz bus of the Advanced Plus 5 expansion, with the Music 5000 itself priced at £113.85. The only functional differences between the Electron adaptation and the original BBC Micro unit involved the use of Mode 6 for the display and the reduced performance of the Electron imposing some limitations on processing in programs written for the system.
Merlin M2105
An unusual variant of the Electron was sold by British Telecom Business Systems as the BT Merlin M2105 Communications Terminal, being previewed by British Telecom at the Communications '84 show. This consisted of a rebadged Electron plus a large expansion unit containing 32 KB of battery-backed RAM (making up 64 KB of RAM in total), up to 64 KB of ROM resident in four sockets (making up to 96 KB of ROM in total), a Centronics printer port, an RS423 serial port, a modem, and the speech generator previously offered for the BBC Micro. The ROM firmware provided dial-up communications facilities, text editing and text messaging functions.
Initially trialled in a six-month pilot at 50 florists, with the intention of rolling out to all 2,500 members of the UK network, these were used by the Interflora florists network in the UK for over a decade. Used mostly for sending messages, despite providing support for other applications, limited availability of the product led Interflora to look for alternatives after five years, although users appeared to be happy with the product as it was.
This generic product combination of the Electron and accompanying expansion was apparently known as the Chain during development, itself having a different board layout, with British Telecom having intended the M2105 to be a product supporting access to an online service known as Healthnet. This service aimed to improve and speed up communications within hospitals so that patients could be treated and discharged more quickly, and to facilitate transfers of information to doctors and health workers outside hospitals, with communications taking place over conventional telephone lines. The service was to be introduced in the Hammersmith and Fulham district health authority, with installation starting at Charing Cross Hospital. The Electron was said to be particularly suitable for deployment in this application in that it had a "large expansion bus", ostensibly making the machine amenable to the necessary adaptations required for the role, together with its "price, and the fact it has a real keyboard". As a Healthnet terminal, the M2105 was intended to support the exchange of forms, letters and memos.
The adoption of an Acorn product in this role was perhaps also unusual in that much of BT's Merlin range of this era had been supplied by ICL, notably the M2226 small business computer and M3300 "communicating word processor". Nevertheless, the M2105 offered interoperability with other BT products such as the QWERTYphone which was able to receive messages from the M2105 and the Merlin Tonto.
The hardware specifications of the M2105, observed from manufactured units, include the 6502 CPU (SY6502 or R6502), ULA and 32 KB of dynamic RAM fitted in the Electron main unit, plus 32 KB of static RAM, two 6522 VIA devices for interfacing, AM2910PC modem, SCN2681A UART, and TMS5220 plus TMS6100 for speech synthesis. The speech synthesis was used for the "voice response" function which answered incoming voice calls by playing a synthesised message to the caller. The components chosen and the capabilities provided (excluding speech synthesis) are broadly similar to those featured by the Acorn Communicator which was another product of Acorn's custom systems division.
The product documentation indicates a specification with 48 KB of RAM plus 16 KB of "non volatile CMOS RAM" and 96 KB of ROM, although this particular composition of RAM is apparently contradicted by the RAM devices present on surviving M2105 machines. However, the earlier Chain variant of the board does appear to provide only 16 KB of static RAM using two HM6264LP-15 chips, also providing an extra 16 KB of dynamic RAM using eight MK4516-15 chips, suggesting that the product evolved during development.
Technical information
Much of the core functionality of the BBC Micro the video and memory controller, cassette input/output, timers and sound generation was replicated using a single customised ULA chip designed by Acorn in conjunction with Ferranti, albeit with only one sound channel instead of three (and one noise channel), and without the character-based Teletext Mode 7.
The edge connector on the rear of the Electron exposes all address and data bus lines from the CPU, including the upper eight bits of the address bus, in contrast to the limited selection available via the BBC Micro's expansion ports, with the One Megahertz Bus as the principal mechanism for general purpose expansion on the BBC Micro only providing the lower eight bits of the address bus. In addition, various control signals provided by the CPU and ULA are exposed via the Electron's expansion connector.
For Issue 1–4 motherboards, the ULA had an issue similar to those experienced by other socketed CPUs. Over time, the thermal heating and cooling could cause the ULA to rise slightly out of its socket just enough to cause the machine to start exhibiting 'hanging' or other startup-failure issues, such as a continuous 'startup beep'. This was despite a metal cover, and locking-bar mechanism designed to prevent this from occurring. Pushing down on the metal cover to reseat the ULA was normally sufficient to rectify these issues. Issue 5 and 6 boards utilized a different ULA type, this being known as the Aberdeen ULA (as opposed to the earlier Ferranti ULA) which was mounted on a board that was directly soldered to the main board, with the chip being covered by epoxy resin "insulating material". This arrangement dispensed with the 68-pin socket, and this new type of ULA was expected to be "less prone to failure".
The keyboard includes a form of quick keyword input, similar to that used on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, through use of the key in combination with other keys labelled with BASIC keywords. However, unlike the Spectrum, this method of rapid keyword entry is optional, and keywords can be entered manually if preferred.
The ULA mediates access to 32 KB of addressable RAM using 4 64-kilobit RAM chips (4164), sharing the RAM between the CPU and the video signal generation (or screen refresh) performed by the ULA itself. Two accesses have to be made to the RAM to get each byte (albeit with a single RAS), delivering a maximum transfer rate to or from RAM of one byte per 2 MHz cycle. In generating the video signal, the ULA is able to take advantage of this 2 MHz bandwidth when producing the picture for the high-bandwidth screen modes. Due to signalling constraints, the CPU can only access RAM at 1 MHz, even when it is not competing with the video system.
When the ULA is consuming all of the RAM bandwidth during the active portion of a display line, the CPU is unable to access the RAM. (The Electron uses the Synertek variant of the 6502 processor as that allowed the clock to be stopped for this 40 microsecond period.) In other modes the CPU and video accesses are interleaved with each accessor acquiring bytes at 1 MHz.
In contrast, the BBC Micro employs one or two sets of eight 16-kilobit devices, with the RAM running at twice the speed (4 MHz) of the CPU (2 MHz), allowing the video system (screen refresh) and CPU memory accesses to be interleaved, with each accessor able to transfer bytes at 2 MHz. The RAM access limitations imposed by the Electron's ULA therefore reduce the effective CPU speed by as much as a factor of four relative to the BBC Micro in the more demanding display modes, and as much as a factor of two otherwise. Byte transfers from ROM occur at 2 MHz, however.
Hardware
The hardware specification according to official documentation, combined with more technical documentation and analysis is as follows:
CPU: Synertek SY6502A
Clock rate: variable. CPU runs at 2 MHz when accessing ROM and 1 MHz when accessing RAM. The CPU is also periodically halted.
Glue logic: Ferranti Semiconductor Custom ULA
RAM: 32 KB
ROM: 32 KB
Graphics modes: 160×256 pixels (20×32 characters) in 4 or 16 colours, 320×256 (40×32 characters) in 2 or 4 colours, 640×256 (80x32 characters) in 2 colours
Text modes: 40x25 characters in 2 colours, 80x25 characters in 2 colours
Colours: 8 colours (TTL combinations of RGB primaries) + 8 flashing versions of the same colours
Sound: 1 channel of sound, 7 octaves; built-in speaker. Software emulation of noise channel supported
Keyboard: 56 key "full travel QWERTY keyboard"
Dimensions: 16×34×6.5 cm
I/O ports: Expansion port, tape recorder connector (1200 baud CUTS variation on the Kansas City standard for data encoding, via a 7-pin circular DIN connector), aerial TV connector (RF modulator), composite video and RGB monitor output
Power supply: External PSU, 19V AC
Quirks
Like the BBC Micro, the Electron was constrained by limited memory resources. Of the 32 KB RAM, 3½ KB was allocated to the OS at startup and at least 10 KB was taken up by the display buffer in contiguous display modes.
Although programs running on the BBC Micro could use the machine's 6522 chip to trigger interrupts at certain points in the update of each display frame, using these events to change the palette and potentially switching all colours to black, thus blanking regions of the screen and hiding non-graphical data that had been stored in screen memory, the Electron lacked such hardware capabilities as standard. However, it was possible to take advantage of the characteristics of interrupts that were provided, permitting palette changes after the top 100 lines of each display frame, thus facilitating the blanking of either the top 100 or bottom 156 lines of the display. Many games took advantage of this, gaining storage by leaving non-graphical data in the disabled area.
Other games would simply load non-graphical data into the display and leave it visible as regions of apparently randomly coloured pixels. One notable example is Superior Software's Citadel.
Although page flipping was a hardware possibility, the limited memory forced most applications to do all their drawing directly to the visible screen, often resulting in graphical flicker or visible redraw. A notable exception is Players' Joe Blade series.
Tricks
Firetrack: smooth vertical scrolling
Although programs can alter the position of the screen in memory, the non-linear format of the display means that vertical scrolling can only be done in blocks of 8 pixels without further work.
Firetrack, released on a compilation by Superior Software, exploits a division in the way the Electron handles its display of the seven available graphics modes, two are configured so that the final two of every ten scanlines are blank and are not based on the contents of RAM. If 16 scanlines of continuous graphical data are written to a character-block-aligned portion of the screen then they will appear as a continuous block in most modes but in the two non-continuous modes they will be displayed as two blocks of eight scanlines, separated in the middle by two blank scanlines.
In order to keep track of its position within the display, the Electron maintains an internal display address counter. The same counter is used in both the continuous and non-continuous graphics modes and switching modes mid-frame does not cause any adjustment to the counter.
Firetrack switches from a non-continuous to a continuous graphics mode part way down the display. By using the palette to mask the top area of the display and taking care about when it changes mode it can shift the continuous graphics at the bottom of the display down in two pixel increments because the internal display counter is not incremented on blank scanlines during non-continuous graphics modes.
Exile: sampled speech
Exile turns the Electron's one channel output into a digital speaker for PCM output.
The speaker can be programmatically switched on or off at any time but is permanently attached to a hardware counter so is normally only able to output a square wave. But if set to a frequency outside the human audible range then the ear can't perceive the square wave, only the difference between the speaker being switched on and off. This gives the effect of a simple toggle speaker similar to that seen in the 48 KB Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Exile uses this to output 1-bit audio samples.
Frak! and Zalaga: Polyphonic music
As part of their copy protection, illegal copies of Aardvark Software's Frak! and Zalaga would cause a pseudo-polyphonic rendition of Trumpet Hornpipe, the Captain Pugwash theme tune, to play endlessly rather than loading the game properly (Pugwash being a pirate). On the Electron version of Frak!, the tune was the main theme from "Benny Hill" (Boots Randolph's "Yakety Sax"). The polyphony was achieved via fast note-switching to achieve the necessary chords.
Popular games
Of the twelve software titles announced by Acornsoft for the Electron at the machine's launch, six were games titles: Snapper, Monsters (a clone of Space Panic), Meteors (a clone of Asteroids), Starship Command, Chess, and the combined title Draughts and Reversi. When the Plus 1 expansion was launched in 1984, three of these titles - Hopper, Snapper and Starship Command - were among the six ROM cartridge titles available at launch, together with the adventure Countdown to Doom. Acornsoft would continue to release games including those based on existing arcade games such as Arcadians (based on Galaxian) and Hopper (based on Frogger), as well as original titles such as Free Fall and Elite.
Micro Power, already an established BBC Micro games publisher, also entered the Electron market at a relatively early stage, offering ten initial titles either converted from the BBC Micro, in the case of Escape from Moonbase Alpha and Killer Gorilla, or "completely re-written", in the case of Moonraider (due to differences in the screen handling between the machines). Superior Software, also a significant publisher for the BBC Micro, routinely released games for both machines, notably a licensed version of Atari's Tempest in 1985, but also successful original titles such as the Repton series of games, Citadel, Thrust and Galaforce. Superior's role in games publishing for the Acorn machines expanded in 1986 when the company acquired the right to use the Acornsoft brand, leading to the co-branding of games and compilations released by the company and the re-release of existing Acornsoft titles with this branding, Elite among them. The company would subsequently release another "masterpiece" with bundled novella - the 1988 game Exile - as well as numerous conversions and compilations.
By 1988, the "big three" full-price games publishers for the Acorn 8-bit market were identified as Superior Software, Audiogenic (ASL) and Tynesoft, with Top Ten and Alternative Software being the significant budget publishers, and other "strong contenders" being Godax, Mandarin and Bug Byte, this assessment made from the perspective of an established games author evaluating trustworthy publishers for aspiring authors. Commercial considerations motivated authors to make their games available for the Electron due to its importance in sales terms, representing "around half of the Acorn market", with it being regarded as "almost compulsory for any mainstream game" to have an Electron version "unless your game is a state-of-the-art masterpiece", with Revs, Cholo and Sentinel cited as such BBC Micro exclusives. Although the Electron imposed additional technical constraints on authors accustomed to the BBC Micro, some authors were able to use this to their creative advantage. For instance, of Frak! it was noted that the "Electron version is more popular, and considered better than the BBC version because it has a screen designer included".
Although not as well supported by the biggest software publishers as rivals like the Commodore 64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum, a good range of games were available for the Electron including popular multi-format games such as Chuckie Egg. There were also many popular games officially converted to the Electron from arcade machines (including Crystal Castles, Tempest, Commando, Paperboy and Yie Ar Kung-Fu) and other home computer systems (including Impossible Mission, Jet Set Willy, The Way of the Exploding Fist, Tetris, The Last Ninja, Barbarian, Ballistix, Predator, Hostages and SimCity).
Despite Acorn themselves effectively shelving the Electron in 1985, games continued to be developed and released by professional software houses until the early 1990s. There were around 1,400 games released for the Acorn Electron, several thousand extra public domain titles were released on disc through Public Domain libraries. Notable enterprises which produced discs of such software are BBC PD, EUG (Electron User Group) and HeadFirst PD.
Emulation
Several emulators of the machine exist: ElectrEm for Windows/Linux/macOS, Elkulator for Windows/Linux/DOS, ElkJS is a browser-based (JavaScript/HTML5) emulator, and the multi-system emulators MESS and Clock Signal feature support for the Electron. Electron software is predominantly archived in the UEF file format.
There are also two known FPGA based recreations of the Acorn Electron hardware. ElectronFPGA for the Papilio Duo hardware and the Acorn-Electron core for the FPGA Arcade "Replay" board.
Design team
The operating system ROM locations 0xFC00-0xFFFF contain the following text, which is different from the 'thanks' list in the original BBC Model B (Code here):
Additionally, the last bytes of both the BASIC ROM and 'Plus 3 Interface' ADFS v1.0 ROM include the word "Roger", thought to be a reference to Roger Wilson.
The case was designed by industrial designer Allen Boothroyd of Cambridge Product Design Ltd.
See also
Electron User, the most popular Acorn Electron focused magazine
References
Notes
External links
Stairway To Hell
Acorn Electron World
Electron MODE 7 Photos
Electron
6502-based home computers
Home computers
Computers designed in the United Kingdom |
2080 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%20Fire%20Upon%20the%20Deep | A Fire Upon the Deep | A Fire Upon the Deep is a 1992 science fiction novel by American writer Vernor Vinge. It is a space opera involving superhuman intelligences, aliens, variable physics, space battles, love, betrayal, genocide, and a communication medium resembling Usenet. A Fire Upon the Deep won the Hugo Award in 1993, sharing it with Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.
Besides the normal print book editions, the novel was also included on a CD-ROM sold by ClariNet Communications along with the other nominees for the 1993 Hugo awards. The CD-ROM edition included numerous annotations by Vinge on his thoughts and intentions about different parts of the book, and was later released as a standalone e-book (no longer available).
Setting
The novel is set in various locations in the Milky Way. The galaxy is divided into four concentric volumes called the "Zones of Thought"; it is not clear to the novel's characters whether this is a natural phenomenon or an artificially produced one, but it seems to roughly correspond with galactic-scale stellar density and a Beyond region is mentioned in the Sculptor Galaxy as well. The Zones reflect fundamental differences in basic physical laws, and one of the main consequences is their effect on intelligence, both biological and artificial. Artificial intelligence and automation is most directly affected, in that advanced hardware and software from the Beyond or the Transcend will work less and less well as a ship "descends" towards the Unthinking Depths. But even biological intelligence is affected to a lesser degree. The four zones are spoken of in terms of "low" to "high" as follows:
The Unthinking Depths are the innermost zone, surrounding the galactic core. In it, only minimal forms of intelligence, biological or otherwise, are possible. This means that any ship straying into the Depths will be stranded, effectively permanently. Even if the crew did not die immediately—and some forms of life native to "higher" Zones would likely do so—they would be rendered incapable of even human intelligence, leaving them unable to operate their ship in any meaningful way.
Surrounding the Depths is the Slow Zone. The Earth (called "Old Earth") is located in this Zone, and humanity is said to have originated there, although Earth plays no significant role in the story. Biological intelligence is possible in "the Slowness", but not true, sentient, artificial intelligence. Automation is not intelligent enough to calculate the jumps required for faster than light travel in the Slow Zone, but they may escape by performing an immediate reverse jump to where they arrived from if the Slowness is detected, and navigation systems watch for this and store the information required for a return to the start point during each jump. All ships which find themselves in the Slow Zone are restricted to sub-light speeds if an immediate reverse jump back out is impossible. Faster-than-light communication is impossible into or out of the Slow Zone. As the boundaries of the Zones are unknown and subject to change, accidental entry to the Slow Zone is a major interstellar navigational hazard at the "Bottom" of the Beyond. Starships which operate near the Beyond/Slow Zone border often have an auxiliary Bussard ramjet drive, so that, if they accidentally stray into the Slow Zone (thus disabling any FTL drive), they will at least have a backup (sub-light) drive to push them back "up" to the Beyond. Such ships also tend to include "coldsleep" equipment, as it is likely that any such return will still take many subjective lifetimes for most species.
The next outermost layer is the Beyond, within which artificial intelligence, faster-than-light travel, and faster-than-light communication are possible. A few human civilizations exist in the Beyond, all descended from a single ethnic Norwegian group which managed to travel from the Slow Zone to the Beyond (presumably at sub-light speeds) and thence spread using FTL travel. The original settlement of this group is known as Nyjora; other human settlements in the Beyond include Straumli Realm and Sjandra Kei. In the Beyond, FTL travel is accomplished by making many small "jumps" across intervening space, and the efficiency of the drive increases the farther a ship travels from the galactic core. This reflects increases in both drive efficiency and the ship's automation's increased capacity as one moves outward, enabling the computation of longer and longer jumps. The Beyond is not a homogeneous zone—many references are made to, e.g., the "High Beyond" or the "Bottom of the Beyond", depending on distance to the galactic core. These terms seem to refer to differences in the Zone itself, not just relative distance from the Core, but there are no obvious Zone boundaries within the Beyond the way there are between the Slow Zone and the Beyond, or between the Beyond and the Transcend. Whereas a ship that crosses from the Beyond to the Slow Zone or vice versa will experience a dramatic change in its capabilities, a ship in the Beyond which moves farther from the Core will experience a gradual increase in efficiency (assuming it has the technology to make use of it) until another major shift at the boundary to the Transcend. The Beyond is populated by a very large number of interstellar and intergalactic civilizations which are linked by a faster-than-light communication network, "the Net", sometimes cynically called the "Net of a Million Lies". The Net does connect with the Transcend, on the off-chance that one of the "Powers" that live there deigns to communicate, but has no connections with the Slow Zone, as FTL communication is impossible into or out of that Zone. In the novel, the Net is depicted as working much like the Usenet network in the early 1990s, with transcripts of messages containing header and footer information as one would find in such forums.
The outermost layer, containing the galactic halo, is the Transcend, within which incomprehensible, superintelligent beings dwell. When a "Beyonder" civilization reaches the point of technological singularity, it is said to "Transcend", becoming a "Power". Such Powers always seem to relocate to the Transcend, seemingly necessarily, where they become engaged in affairs which remain entirely mysterious to those that remain in the Beyond.
Plot
An expedition from Straumli Realm, an ambitious young human civilization in the high Beyond, investigates a five-billion-year-old data archive in the low Transcend that offers the possibility of unimaginable riches. The expedition's facility, High Lab, is gradually compromised by a dormant superintelligence within the archive later known as the Blight. However, shortly before the Blight's final "flowering", two self-aware entities created similarly to the Blight plot to aid the humans before the Blight can escape.
Recognizing the danger of what they have awakened, the researchers at High Lab attempt to flee in two ships, one carrying all the adults and the second carrying all the children in "coldsleep boxes". Suspicious, the Blight discovers that the first ship contains a data storage device in its cargo manifest; assuming it contains information that could harm it, the Blight destroys the ship. The second ship escapes. The Blight assumes that it is no threat, but later realizes that it is actually carrying away a "countermeasure" against it.
The ship lands on a distant planet with a medieval-level civilization of dog-like creatures, dubbed "Tines", who live in packs as group minds. Upon landing, however, the two surviving adults are ambushed and killed by Tine fanatics known as Flenserists, in whose realm they have landed. The Flenserists capture a young boy named Jefri Olsndot and his wounded sister, Johanna. While Jefri is taken deeper into Flenserist territory, Johanna is rescued by a Tine pilgrim who witnessed the ambush and delivers her to a neighboring kingdom ruled by a Tine named Woodcarver. The Flenserists tell Jefri that Johanna had been killed by Woodcarver and exploit him in order to develop advanced technology (such as cannon and radio communication), while Johanna and the knowledge stored in her "dataset" device help Woodcarver rapidly develop in turn.
A distress signal from the sleeper ship eventually reaches "Relay", a major node in the galactic communications network. A benign transcendent entity named "the Old One" contacts Relay, seeking information about the Blight and the humans who released it, and reconstitutes a human man named Pham Nuwen from an old wreck to act as its agent, using his doubt of his own memory's veracity to bend him to the Old One's will. Ravna Bergsndot, the only human Relay employee, traces the sleeper ship's signal to the Tines' world and persuades her employer to investigate what the human ship took from High Lab, contracting the merchant vessel Out of Band II, owned by two sentient plant Skroderiders, Blueshell and Greenstalk, to transport them.
Before the mission is launched, the Blight attacks Relay and concurrently kills Old One. As Old One dies, it downloads what information it can into Pham to defeat the Blight, and Pham, Ravna and the Skroderiders barely escape Relay's destruction in the Out of Band II.
The Blight expands, taking over races and "rewriting" their people to become its agents, murdering several other Powers, and seizing other archives in the Beyond, looking for what was taken. It finally realizes where the danger truly lies and sends a hastily assembled fleet in pursuit of the Out of Band II.
The humans arrive at the Tines' homeworld and ally with Woodcarver to defeat the Flenserists. Pham initiates Countermeasure, which extends the Slow Zone by thousands of light years, enveloping the Blight at the cost of wrecking thousands of uninvolved civilizations and causing trillions of deaths. The humans are stranded on the Tines world, now in the depths of the "Slow Zone". Activating the countermeasure costs Pham his life, but just before Pham dies, he realizes that, although his body is a reconstruction, his memories are real. Vinge expands on Pham's background story in A Deepness in the Sky.
Intelligent species
Aprahanti
A race of humanoids with colorful butterfly-like wings who attempt to use the chaos wrought by the Blight to reestablish their waning hegemony. Despite their attractive, delicate appearance, the Aprahanti are an extremely fearsome and vicious species.
Blight
An ancient, malevolent super-intelligent entity which strives to constantly expand and can easily manipulate electronics and even organic beings.
Dirokimes
An older race which originally inhabited Sjandra Kei before the arrival of humanity.
Humans
All humans in the novel (except Pham) are descended from Nyjoran stock. Their ancestors were "Tuvo-Norsk" asteroid miners from Old Earth's solar system, which is noted as being on the other side of the galaxy in the Slow Zone. (Nyjora sounds similar to New Norwegian "New Earth".) One of the major human habitations is Sjandra Kei, three systems comprising roughly 28 billion individuals. Their main language is Samnorsk, the Norwegian term for a hypothetical unification of the Bokmål and Nynorsk forms of the language. (Vinge indicates in the book's dedication that several key ideas in it came to him while at a conference in Tromsø, Norway.)
Skroders/Riders/Skroderiders
A race of plantlike beings with fronds that are used for expression. The riders have no native capacity for short-term memory. Five billion years ago, someone gave the species wheeled mechanical constructs ("skrodes") to move around and to provide short-term memory. It is later revealed that their "benefactor" was the Blight, and it is able to corrupt and remotely operate the Riders via their skrodes.
Tines
A canid race, each "person" comprising a group mind of 4–8 members, who communicate using very short-range ultrasonic waves from drumlike organs called "tympana". Each "soul" can survive and evolve by adding members to replace those who die, potentially for hundreds of years, as Woodcarver does.
Kalir
A race of insectoid humanoids which constitutes one of the "majority races" of the Vrinimi organization.
Related works
Vinge first used the concepts of "Zones of Thought" in a 1988 novella The Blabber, which occurs after Fire. Vinge's novel A Deepness in the Sky (1999) is a prequel to A Fire Upon the Deep set 20,000 years earlier and featuring Pham Nuwen. Vinge's The Children of the Sky, "a near-term sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep, set ten years later, was released in October 2011.
Vinge's former wife, Joan D. Vinge, has also written stories in the Zones of Thought universe, based on his notes. These include "The Outcasts of Heaven Belt", "Legacy", and (as of 2008) a planned novel featuring Pham Nuwen.
Title
Vinge's original title for the novel was "Among the Tines"; its final title was suggested by his editors.
Awards and nominations
A Fire Upon the Deep shared the 1993 Hugo Award for Best Novel with Doomsday Book. The book was nominated for the 1992 Nebula Award for Best Novel, the 1993 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and the 1993 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.
Critical reactions
Jo Walton wrote: "Any one of the ideas in A Fire Upon the Deep would have kept an ordinary writer going for years. For me it's the book that does everything right, the example of what science fiction does when it works. ... A Fire Upon the Deep remains a favourite and a delight to re-read, absorbing even when I know exactly what’s coming."
References
External links
A Fire Upon the Deep at Worlds Without End
1992 American novels
Hugo Award for Best Novel-winning works
Transhumanist books
Usenet
Novels by Vernor Vinge
1992 science fiction novels
Tor Books books
Artificial intelligence in fiction
Malware in fiction
Nanotechnology in fiction
Fiction about consciousness transfer
Apocalyptic fiction |
2082 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeronautics | Aeronautics | Aeronautics is the science or art involved with the study, design, and manufacturing of air flight–capable machines, and the techniques of operating aircraft and rockets within the atmosphere. The British Royal Aeronautical Society identifies the aspects of "aeronautical Art, Science and Engineering" and "The profession of Aeronautics (which expression includes Astronautics)."
While the term originally referred solely to operating the aircraft, it has since been expanded to include technology, business, and other aspects related to aircraft.
The term "aviation" is sometimes used interchangeably with aeronautics, although "aeronautics" includes lighter-than-air craft such as airships, and includes ballistic vehicles while "aviation" technically does not.
A significant part of aeronautical science is a branch of dynamics called aerodynamics, which deals with the motion of air and the way that it interacts with objects in motion, such as an aircraft.
History
Early ideas
Attempts to fly without any real aeronautical understanding have been made from the earliest times, typically by constructing wings and jumping from a tower with crippling or lethal results.
Wiser investigators sought to gain some rational understanding through the study of bird flight. Medieval Islamic Golden Age scientists such as Abbas ibn Firnas also made such studies. The founders of modern aeronautics, Leonardo da Vinci in the Renaissance and Cayley in 1799, both began their investigations with studies of bird flight.
Man-carrying kites are believed to have been used extensively in ancient China. In 1282 the Italian explorer Marco Polo described the Chinese techniques then current. The Chinese also constructed small hot air balloons, or lanterns, and rotary-wing toys.
An early European to provide any scientific discussion of flight was Roger Bacon, who described principles of operation for the lighter-than-air balloon and the flapping-wing ornithopter, which he envisaged would be constructed in the future. The lifting medium for his balloon would be an "aether" whose composition he did not know.
In the late fifteenth century, Leonardo da Vinci followed up his study of birds with designs for some of the earliest flying machines, including the flapping-wing ornithopter and the rotating-wing helicopter. Although his designs were rational, they were not based on particularly good science. Many of his designs, such as a four-person screw-type helicopter, have severe flaws. He did at least understand that "An object offers as much resistance to the air as the air does to the object." (Newton would not publish the Third law of motion until 1687.) His analysis led to the realisation that manpower alone was not sufficient for sustained flight, and his later designs included a mechanical power source such as a spring. Da Vinci's work was lost after his death and did not reappear until it had been overtaken by the work of George Cayley.
Balloon flight
The modern era of lighter-than-air flight began early in the 17th century with Galileo's experiments in which he showed that air has weight. Around 1650 Cyrano de Bergerac wrote some fantasy novels in which he described the principle of ascent using a substance (dew) he supposed to be lighter than air, and descending by releasing a controlled amount of the substance. Francesco Lana de Terzi measured the pressure of air at sea level and in 1670 proposed the first scientifically credible lifting medium in the form of hollow metal spheres from which all the air had been pumped out. These would be lighter than the displaced air and able to lift an airship. His proposed methods of controlling height are still in use today; by carrying ballast which may be dropped overboard to gain height, and by venting the lifting containers to lose height. In practice de Terzi's spheres would have collapsed under air pressure, and further developments had to wait for more practicable lifting gases.
From the mid-18th century the Montgolfier brothers in France began experimenting with balloons. Their balloons were made of paper, and early experiments using steam as the lifting gas were short-lived due to its effect on the paper as it condensed. Mistaking smoke for a kind of steam, they began filling their balloons with hot smoky air which they called "electric smoke" and, despite not fully understanding the principles at work, made some successful launches and in 1783 were invited to give a demonstration to the French Académie des Sciences.
Meanwhile, the discovery of hydrogen led Joseph Black in c. 1780 to propose its use as a lifting gas, though practical demonstration awaited a gas tight balloon material. On hearing of the Montgolfier Brothers' invitation, the French Academy member Jacques Charles offered a similar demonstration of a hydrogen balloon. Charles and two craftsmen, the Robert brothers, developed a gas tight material of rubberised silk for the envelope. The hydrogen gas was to be generated by chemical reaction during the filling process.
The Montgolfier designs had several shortcomings, not least the need for dry weather and a tendency for sparks from the fire to set light to the paper balloon. The manned design had a gallery around the base of the balloon rather than the hanging basket of the first, unmanned design, which brought the paper closer to the fire. On their free flight, De Rozier and d'Arlandes took buckets of water and sponges to douse these fires as they arose. On the other hand, the manned design of Charles was essentially modern. As a result of these exploits, the hot-air balloon became known as the Montgolfière type and the hydrogen balloon the Charlière.
Charles and the Robert brothers' next balloon, La Caroline, was a Charlière that followed Jean Baptiste Meusnier's proposals for an elongated dirigible balloon, and was notable for having an outer envelope with the gas contained in a second, inner ballonet. On 19 September 1784, it completed the first flight of over 100 km, between Paris and Beuvry, despite the man-powered propulsive devices proving useless.
In an attempt the next year to provide both endurance and controllability, de Rozier developed a balloon having both hot air and hydrogen gas bags, a design which was soon named after him as the Rozière. The principle was to use the hydrogen section for constant lift and to navigate vertically by heating and allowing to cool the hot air section, in order to catch the most favourable wind at whatever altitude it was blowing. The balloon envelope was made of goldbeater's skin. The first flight ended in disaster and the approach has seldom been used since.
Cayley and the foundation of modern aeronautics
Sir George Cayley (1773–1857) is widely acknowledged as the founder of modern aeronautics. He was first called the "father of the aeroplane" in 1846 and Henson called him the "father of aerial navigation." He was the first true scientific aerial investigator to publish his work, which included for the first time the underlying principles and forces of flight.
In 1809 he began the publication of a landmark three-part treatise titled "On Aerial Navigation" (1809–1810). In it he wrote the first scientific statement of the problem, "The whole problem is confined within these limits, viz. to make a surface support a given weight by the application of power to the resistance of air." He identified the four vector forces that influence an aircraft: thrust, lift, drag and weight and distinguished stability and control in his designs.
He developed the modern conventional form of the fixed-wing aeroplane having a stabilising tail with both horizontal and vertical surfaces, flying gliders both unmanned and manned.
He introduced the use of the whirling arm test rig to investigate the aerodynamics of flight, using it to discover the benefits of the curved or cambered aerofoil over the flat wing he had used for his first glider. He also identified and described the importance of dihedral, diagonal bracing and drag reduction, and contributed to the understanding and design of ornithopters and parachutes.
Another significant invention was the tension-spoked wheel, which he devised in order to create a light, strong wheel for aircraft undercarriage.
The 19th century
During the 19th century Cayley's ideas were refined, proved and expanded on, culminating in the works of Otto Lilienthal.
Lilienthal was a German engineer and buisnessman who became known as the "flying man". He was the first person to make well-documented, repeated, successful flights with gliders, therefore making the idea of „heavier than air“ a reality. Newspapers and magazines published photographs of Lilienthal gliding, favourably influencing public and scientific opinion about the possibility of flying machines becoming practical.
His work lead to him developing the concept of the modern wing. His flight attempts in the year 1891 are seen as the beginning of human flight and the „Lilienthal Normalsegelapparat“ is considered to be the first air plane in series production, making the Maschinenfabrik Otto Lilienthal the first air plane production company in the world.
Otto Lilienthal is often referred to as either the "father of avation" or "father of flight".
Other important investigators included Horatio Phillips.
Branches
Aeronautics may be divided into three main branches comprising Aviation, Aeronautical science and Aeronautical engineering.
Aviation
Aviation is the art or practice of aeronautics. Historically aviation meant only heavier-than-air flight, but nowadays it includes flying in balloons and airships.
Aeronautical engineering
Aeronautical engineering covers the design and construction of aircraft, including how they are powered, how they are used and how they are controlled for safe operation.
A major part of aeronautical engineering is aerodynamics, the science of passing through the air.
With the increasing activity in space flight, nowadays aeronautics and astronautics are often combined as aerospace engineering.
Aerodynamics
The science of aerodynamics deals with the motion of air and the way that it interacts with objects in motion, such as an aircraft.
The study of aerodynamics falls broadly into three areas:
Incompressible flow occurs where the air simply moves to avoid objects, typically at subsonic speeds below that of sound (Mach 1).
Compressible flow occurs where shock waves appear at points where the air becomes compressed, typically at speeds above Mach 1.
Transonic flow occurs in the intermediate speed range around Mach 1, where the airflow over an object may be locally subsonic at one point and locally supersonic at another.
Rocketry
A rocket or rocket vehicle is a missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other vehicle which obtains thrust from a rocket engine. In all rockets, the exhaust is formed entirely from propellants carried within the rocket before use. Rocket engines work by action and reaction. Rocket engines push rockets forwards simply by throwing their exhaust backwards extremely fast.
Rockets for military and recreational uses date back to at least 13th-century China. Significant scientific, interplanetary and industrial use did not occur until the 20th century, when rocketry was the enabling technology of the Space Age, including setting foot on the moon.
Rockets are used for fireworks, weaponry, ejection seats, launch vehicles for artificial satellites, human spaceflight and exploration of other planets. While comparatively inefficient for low speed use, they are very lightweight and powerful, capable of generating large accelerations and of attaining extremely high speeds with reasonable efficiency.
Chemical rockets are the most common type of rocket and they typically create their exhaust by the combustion of rocket propellant. Chemical rockets store a large amount of energy in an easily released form, and can be very dangerous. However, careful design, testing, construction and use minimizes risks.
See also
References
Citations
Sources
External links
Courses
Research
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Vehicle operation
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2083 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste%20and%20Louis%20Lumi%C3%A8re | Auguste and Louis Lumière | The Lumière brothers (, ; ), Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas Lumière (19 October 1862 – 10 April 1954) and Louis Jean Lumière (5 October 1864 – 6 June 1948), were French manufacturers of photography equipment, best known for their Cinématographe motion picture system and the short films they produced between 1895 and 1905, which places them among the earliest filmmakers.
Their screening of a single film on 22 March 1895 for around 200 members of the "Society for the Development of the National Industry" in Paris was probably the first presentation of projected film. Their first commercial public screening on 28 December 1895 for around 40 paying visitors and invited relations has traditionally been regarded as the birth of cinema. Either the techniques or the business models of earlier filmmakers proved to be less viable than the breakthrough presentations of the Lumières.
History
The Lumière brothers were born in Besançon, France, to Charles-Antoine Lumière (1840–1911) and Jeanne Joséphine Costille Lumière, who were married in 1861 and moved to Besançon, setting up a small photographic portrait studio where Auguste and Louis were born. They moved to Lyon in 1870, where son Edouard and three daughters were born. Auguste and Louis both attended La Martiniere, the largest technical school in Lyon. Their father Charles-Antoine set up a small factory producing photographic plates, but even with Louis and a young sister working from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. it teetered on the verge of bankruptcy, and by 1882 it looked as if they would fail. When Auguste returned from military service, the boys designed the machines necessary to automate their father's plate production and devised a very successful new photo plate, 'etiquettes bleue', and by 1884 the factory employed a dozen workers.
They patented several significant processes leading up to their film camera, most notably film perforations (originally implemented by Emile Reynaud) as a means of advancing the film through the camera and projector. The original cinématographe had been patented by Léon Guillaume Bouly on 12 February 1892. The cinématographe — a three-in-one device that could record, develop, and project motion pictures — was further developed by the Lumières. The brothers patented their own version on 13 February 1895.
The date of the recording of their first film is in dispute. In an interview with Georges Sadoul given in 1948, Louis Lumière claimed that he shot the film in August 1894 - before the arrival of the kinetoscope in France. This is questioned by historians, who consider that a functional Lumière camera did not exist before the beginning of 1895.
The Lumière brothers saw film as a novelty and had withdrawn from the film business by 1905. They went on to develop the first practical photographic colour process, the Lumière Autochrome.
Louis died on 6 June 1948 and Auguste on 10 April 1954. They are buried in a family tomb in the New Guillotière Cemetery in Lyon.
First film screenings
On 22 March 1895 in Paris, at the "Society for the Development of the National Industry", in front of a small audience, one of whom was said to be Léon Gaumont, then director of the company the Comptoir Géneral de la Photographie, the Lumières privately screened a single film, La Sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon. The main focus of the conference by Louis Lumière concerned the recent developments in the photographic industry, mainly the research on polychromy (colour photography). It was much to Lumière's surprise that the moving black-and-white images retained more attention than the coloured stills. The American Woodville Latham screened films to a paying public two months later on 20 May 1895 at 156 Broadway, New York City.
The Lumières gave their first paid public screening on 28 December 1895, at Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris. This presentation consisted of the following 10 short films, lasting 50 seconds each, (in order of presentation):
La Sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon (literally, "the exit from the Lumière factory in Lyon", or, under its more common English title, Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory), 46 seconds
Le Jardinier (l'Arroseur Arrosé) ("The Gardener", or "The Sprinkler Sprinkled"), 49 seconds
Le Débarquement du congrès de photographie à Lyon ("the disembarkment of the Congress of Photographers in Lyon"), 48 seconds
La Voltige ("Horse Trick Riders"), 46 seconds
La Pêche aux poissons rouges ("fishing for goldfish"), 42 seconds
Les Forgerons ("Blacksmiths"), 49 seconds
Repas de bébé ("Baby's Breakfast" (lit. "baby's meal")), 41 seconds
Le Saut à la couverture ("Jumping Onto the Blanket"), 41 seconds
La Places des Cordeliers à Lyon ("Cordeliers Square in Lyon"—a street scene), 44 seconds
La Mer (Baignade en mer) ("the sea [bathing in the sea]"), 38 seconds
Each film is 17 meters long, which, when hand cranked through a projector, runs approximately 50 seconds.
The Lumières went on tour with the cinématographe in 1896, visiting cities including Brussels, Bombay, London, Montreal, New York City, and Buenos Aires.
In 1896, only a few months after the initial screenings in Europe, films by the Lumiere Brothers were shown in Egypt, first in the Tousson stock exchange in Alexandria on 5 November 1896 and then in the Hamam Schneider (Schneider Bath) in Cairo.
Their actuality films, or actualités, are often cited as the first, primitive documentaries, but they had been preceded in this by the work of Birt Acres and Robert Paul in Britain. They made the first steps towards slapstick films with L'Arroseur Arrosé, and the early versions of Le Saut à la couverture and La Voltige.
Early colour photography
The brothers stated that "the cinema is an invention without any future" and declined to sell their camera to other filmmakers such as Georges Méliès. This made many film makers upset. Consequently, their role in the history of film was exceedingly brief. In parallel with their cinema work they experimented with colour photography. They worked on colour photographic processes in the 1890s including the Lippmann process (interference heliochromy) and their own 'bichromated glue' process, a subtractive colour process, examples of which were exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. This last process was commercialised by the Lumieres but commercial success had to wait for their next colour process. In 1903 they patented a colour photographic process, the Autochrome Lumière, which was launched on the market in 1907. Throughout much of the 20th century, the Lumière company was a major producer of photographic products in Europe, but the brand name, Lumière, disappeared from the marketplace following merger with Ilford.
Film systems that preceded the Cinématographe Lumière
Earlier moving images in for instance phantasmagoria shows, the phénakisticope, the zoetrope and Émile Reynaud's Théâtre Optique consisted of hand-drawn images. A system that could record reality in motion, in a fashion much like it is seen by the eyes, had a greater impact on people.
Eadweard Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope projected moving painted silhouettes based on his chronophotography photography. The only Zoopraxiscope disc with actual photographs was made with an early form of stop motion. Less-known predecessors, such as Jules Duboscq's Bioscope were not projected.
Louis Le Prince's Roundhay Garden Scene (1888) is now widely regarded as the first example of filmed moving pictures, but Le Prince disappeared without a trace in 1890 before he managed to present his work or publish about it.
William Friese-Greene patented a "machine camera" in 1889, which embodied many aspects of later film cameras. He displayed the results at photographic societies in 1890 and developed further cameras but did not publicly project the results.
Ottomar Anschütz's Electrotachyscope projected very short loops of high photographic quality.
Thomas Edison believed projection of films wasn't as viable a business model as offering the films in the "peepshow" kinetoscope device. Watching the images on the screen turned out to be much preferred by audiences. Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope (developed by William Kennedy Dickson), premiered publicly in 1894.
Kazimierz Prószyński allegedly built his camera and projecting device, called Pleograph, in 1894.
Lauste and Latham's Eidoloscope was demonstrated for members of the press on 21 April 1895, and opened to the paying public on Broadway on 20 May. They shot films up to twenty minutes long at speeds over thirty frames per second and showed them in many US cities. The Eidoloscope Company was dissolved in 1896 after various internal disputes.
Max and Emil Skladanowsky, inventors of the Bioscop, had offered projected moving images to a paying public in Berlin from 1 November 1895 until the end of the month. Their machinery was relatively cumbersome and their films much shorter. Their booking in Paris was cancelled after the news of the Lumière screening. Nonetheless, they toured their films to other countries.
See also
Auguste Lumière
Louis Lumière
1895 in film
1896 in film
19th century in film
History of film
L'Idéal Cinéma Jacques Tati in Aniche the oldest still-active cinéma in the world, though not continuously, since 23 November 1905.
List of works by Louis Botinelly
Place Ambroise-Courtois
References
Notes
Works cited
General references
Chardère, B. Les images des Lumière (in French). Paris: Gallimard, 1995. .
Cook, David. A History of Narrative Film (4th ed.). New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. .
Mast, Gerald and Bruce F. Kawin. A Short History of the Movies (9th ed.). New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. .
Rittaud-Hutinet, Jacques. Le cinéma des origines (in French). Seyssel, France: Champ Vallon, 1985. .
External links
The Lumiere Brothers, Pioneers of Cinema
Société d'encouragement pour l'industrie nationale
Major Exhibition Casts New Light on the Lumières by David Robinson
The films shown at the first public screening (QuickTime format) — 26 December 1895. Also includes a program for the event.
Le musée Lumière — Lumière Museum
Autochrome colour still of the Lumiere Brothers, 1907
1896 Palestine 1896 short film (La Palestina En 1896) – Lumieres Brothers
1862 births
1864 births
1948 deaths
1954 deaths
People from Besançon
Color scientists
Sibling filmmakers
Sibling duos
French film directors
French businesspeople
Pioneers of photography
Cinema pioneers
History of film
Cinema of France
La Martinière Lyon alumni
Members of the French Academy of Sciences
Order of the Francisque recipients
Recipients of the Order of St. Sava
French cinema pioneers
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2084 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts%20of%20the%20Apostles | Acts of the Apostles | The Acts of the Apostles (, Práxeis Apostólōn; ), or simply Acts, is the fifth book of the New Testament; it tells of the founding of the Christian Church and the spread of its message to the Roman Empire.
Acts and the Gospel of Luke make up a two-part work, Luke–Acts, by the same anonymous author. It is usually dated to around 80–90 AD, although some scholars suggest 90–110. The first part, the Gospel of Luke, tells how God fulfilled his plan for the world's salvation through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the promised messiah. Acts continues the story of Christianity in the 1st century, beginning with the ascension of Jesus to Heaven. The early chapters, set in Jerusalem, describe the Day of Pentecost (the coming of the Holy Spirit) and the growth of the church in Jerusalem. Initially, the Jews are receptive to the Christian message, but later they turn against the followers of Jesus. Rejected by the Jews, the message is taken to the Gentiles under the guidance of Paul the Apostle. The later chapters tell of Paul's conversion, his mission in Asia Minor and the Aegean, and finally his imprisonment in Rome, where, as the book ends, he awaits trial.
Luke–Acts is an attempt to answer a theological problem, namely how the Messiah of the Jews came to have an overwhelmingly non-Jewish church; the answer it provides is that the message of Christ was sent to the Gentiles because the Jews rejected it. Luke–Acts can also be seen as a defense of (or "apology" for) the Jesus movement addressed to the Jews: the bulk of the speeches and sermons in Acts are addressed to Jewish audiences, with the Romans serving as external arbiters on disputes concerning Jewish customs and law. On the one hand, Luke portrays the followers of Jesus as a sect of the Jews, and therefore entitled to legal protection as a recognised religion; on the other, Luke seems unclear as to the future God intends for Jews and Christians, celebrating the Jewishness of Jesus and his immediate followers while also stressing how the Jews had rejected God's promised Messiah.
Composition and setting
Title, unity of Luke – Acts, authorship and date
The title "Acts of the Apostles" was first used by Irenaeus in the late 2nd century. It is not known whether this was an existing title or one invented by Irenaeus; it does seem clear that it was not given by the author, as the word práxeis (deeds, acts) only appears once in the text (Acts 19:18) and there it does not refer to the apostles but refers to deeds confessed by followers to the apostles.
The Gospel of Luke and Acts make up a two-volume work which scholars call Luke–Acts. Together they account for 27.5% of the New Testament, the largest contribution attributed to a single author, providing the framework for both the Church's liturgical calendar and the historical outline into which later generations have fitted their idea of the story of Jesus and the early church. The author is not named in either volume. According to Church tradition dating from the 2nd century, the author was the "Luke" named as a companion of the apostle Paul in three of the letters attributed to Paul himself; this view is still sometimes advanced, but "a critical consensus emphasizes the countless contradictions between the account in Acts and the authentic Pauline letters." (An example can be seen by comparing Acts's accounts of Paul's conversion (Acts 9:1–31, 22:6–21, and 26:9–23) with Paul's own statement that he remained unknown to Christians in Judea after that event (Galatians 1:17–24).) The author "is an admirer of Paul, but does not share Paul's own view of himself as an apostle; his own theology is considerably different from Paul's on key points and does not represent Paul's own views accurately." He was educated, a man of means, probably urban, and someone who respected manual work, although not a worker himself; this is significant, because more high-brow writers of the time looked down on the artisans and small business people who made up the early church of Paul and were presumably Luke's audience.
The earliest possible date for Luke-Acts is around 62 AD, the time of Paul's imprisonment in Rome, but most scholars date the work to 80–90 AD on the grounds that it uses Mark as a source, looks back on the destruction of Jerusalem, and does not show any awareness of the letters of Paul (which began circulating late in the first century); if it does show awareness of the Pauline epistles, and also of the work of the Jewish historian Josephus, as some believe, then a date in the early 2nd century is possible.
Manuscripts
There are two major textual variants of Acts, the Western text-type and the Alexandrian. The oldest complete Alexandrian manuscripts date from the 4th century and the oldest Western ones from the 6th, with fragments and citations going back to the 3rd. Western texts of Acts are 6.2–8.4% longer than Alexandrian texts, the additions tending to enhance the Jewish rejection of the Messiah and the role of the Holy Spirit, in ways that are stylistically different from the rest of Acts. The majority of scholars prefer the Alexandrian (shorter) text-type over the Western as the more authentic, but this same argument would favour the Western over the Alexandrian for the Gospel of Luke, as in that case the Western version is the shorter.
Genre, sources and historicity of Acts
The title "Acts of the Apostles" (Praxeis Apostolon) would seem to identify it with the genre telling of the deeds and achievements of great men (praxeis), but it was not the title given by the author. The anonymous author aligned Luke–Acts to the "narratives" (διήγησις, diēgēsis) which many others had written, and described his own work as an "orderly account" (ἀκριβῶς καθεξῆς). It lacks exact analogies in Hellenistic or Jewish literature.
The author may have taken as his model the works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who wrote a well-known history of Rome, or the Jewish historian Josephus, author of a history of the Jews. Like them, he anchors his history by dating the birth of the founder (Romulus for Dionysius, Moses for Josephus, Jesus for Luke) and like them he tells how the founder is born from God, taught authoritatively, and appeared to witnesses after death before ascending to heaven. By and large the sources for Acts can only be guessed at, but the author would have had access to the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures), the Gospel of Mark, and either the hypothetical collection of "sayings of Jesus" called the Q source or the Gospel of Matthew. He transposed a few incidents from Mark's gospel to the time of the Apostles—for example, the material about "clean" and "unclean" foods in Mark 7 is used in Acts 10, and Mark's account of the accusation that Jesus has attacked the Temple (Mark 14:58) is used in a story about Stephen (Acts 6:14). There are also points of contacts (meaning suggestive parallels but something less than clear evidence) with 1 Peter, the Letter to the Hebrews, and 1 Clement. Other sources can only be inferred from internal evidence—the traditional explanation of the three "we" passages, for example, is that they represent eyewitness accounts. The search for such inferred sources was popular in the 19th century, but by the mid-20th it had largely been abandoned.
Acts was read as a reliable history of the early church well into the post-Reformation era, but by the 17th century biblical scholars began to notice that it was incomplete and tendentious—its picture of a harmonious church is quite at odds with that given by Paul's letters, and it omits important events such as the deaths of both Peter and Paul. The mid-19th-century scholar Ferdinand Baur suggested that the author had re-written history to present a united Peter and Paul and advance a single orthodoxy against the Marcionites (Marcion was a 2nd-century heretic who wished to cut Christianity off entirely from the Jews); Baur continues to have enormous influence, but today there is less interest in determining the historical accuracy of Acts (although this has never died out) than in understanding the author's theological program.
Audience and authorial intent
Luke was written to be read aloud to a group of Jesus-followers gathered in a house to share the Lord's supper. The author assumes an educated Greek-speaking audience, but directs his attention to specifically Christian concerns rather than to the Greco-Roman world at large. He begins his gospel with a preface addressed to Theophilus (Luke 1:3; cf. Acts 1:1), informing him of his intention to provide an "ordered account" of events which will lead his reader to "certainty". He did not write in order to provide Theophilus with historical justification—"did it happen?"—but to encourage faith—"what happened, and what does it all mean?"
Acts (or Luke–Acts) is intended as a work of "edification," meaning "the empirical demonstration that virtue is superior to vice." The work also engages with the question of a Christian's proper relationship with the Roman Empire, the civil power of the day: could a Christian obey God and also Caesar? The answer is ambiguous. The Romans never move against Jesus or his followers unless provoked by the Jews, in the trial scenes the Christian missionaries are always cleared of charges of violating Roman laws, and Acts ends with Paul in Rome proclaiming the Christian message under Roman protection; at the same time, Luke makes clear that the Romans, like all earthly rulers, receive their authority from Satan, while Christ is ruler of the kingdom of God.
Structure and content
Structure
Acts has two key structural principles. The first is the geographic movement from Jerusalem, centre of God's Covenantal people, the Jews, to Rome, centre of the Gentile world. This structure reaches back to the author's preceding work, the Gospel of Luke, and is signaled by parallel scenes such as Paul's utterance in Acts 19:21, which echoes Jesus's words in Luke 9:51: Paul has Rome as his destination, as Jesus had Jerusalem. The second key element is the roles of Peter and Paul, the first representing the Jewish Christian church, the second the mission to the Gentiles.
Transition: reprise of the preface addressed to Theophilus and the closing events of the gospel (Acts 1–1:26)
Petrine Christianity: the Jewish church from Jerusalem to Antioch (Acts 2:1–12:25)
2:1–8:1 – beginnings in Jerusalem
8:2–40 – the church expands to Samaria and beyond
9:1–31 – conversion of Paul
9:32–12:25 – the conversion of Cornelius, and the formation of the Antioch church
Pauline Christianity: the Gentile mission from Antioch to Rome (Acts 13:1–28:31)
13:1–14:28 – the Gentile mission is promoted from Antioch
15:1–35 – the Gentile mission is confirmed in Jerusalem
15:36–28:31 – the Gentile mission, climaxing in Paul's passion story in Rome (21:17–28:31)
Outline
Dedication to Theophilus (1:1–2)
Resurrection appearances (1:3)
Great Commission (1:4–8)
Ascension (1:9)
Second Coming Prophecy (1:10–11)
Matthias replaced Judas (1:12–26)
the Upper Room (1:13)
The Holy Spirit came at Shavuot (Pentecost) (2:1-47), see also Paraclete
Peter healed a crippled beggar (3:1–10)
Peter's speech at the Temple (3:11–26)
Peter and John before the Sanhedrin (4:1–22)
Resurrection of the dead (4:2)
Believers' Prayer (4:23–31)
Everything is shared (4:32–37)
Ananias and Sapphira (5:1–11)
Signs and Wonders (5:12–16)
Apostles before the Sanhedrin (5:17–42)
Seven Deacons appointed (6:1–7)
Stephen before the Sanhedrin (6:8–7:60)
The "Cave of the Patriarchs" was located in Shechem (7:16)
"Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians" (7:22)
First mentioning of Saul (Paul the Apostle) in the Bible (7:58)
Paul the Apostle confesses his part in the martyrdom of Stephen (7:58–60)
Saul persecuted the Church of Jerusalem (8:1–3)
Philip the Evangelist (8:4–40)
Simon Magus (8:9–24)
Ethiopian eunuch (8:26–39)
Conversion of Paul the Apostle (9:1–31, 22:1–22, 26:9–24)
Paul the Apostle confesses his active part in the martyrdom of Stephen (22:20)
Peter healed Aeneas and raised Tabitha from the dead (9:32–43)
Conversion of Cornelius (10:1–8, 24–48)
Peter's vision of a sheet with animals (10:9–23, 11:1–18)
Church of Antioch founded (11:19–30)
term "Christian" first used (11:26)
James the Great executed (12:1–2)
Peter's rescue from prison (12:3–19)
Death of Herod Agrippa I [in 44] (12:20–25)
"the voice of a god" (12:22)
Mission of Barnabas and Saul (13–14)
"Saul, who was also known as Paul" (13:9)
called "gods ... in human form" (14:11)
Council of Jerusalem (15:1–35)
Paul separated from Barnabas (15:36–41)
2nd and 3rd missions (16–20)
Areopagus sermon (17:16–34)
"God...has set a day" (17:30–31)
Trial before Gallio c. 51–52 (18:12–17)
Trip to Jerusalem (21)
Before the people and the Sanhedrin (22–23)
Before Felix–Festus–Herod Agrippa II (24–26)
Trip to Rome (27–28)
called a god on Malta (28:6)
Content
The Gospel of Luke began with a prologue addressed to Theophilus; Acts likewise opens with an address to Theophilus and refers to "my earlier book", almost certainly the gospel.
The apostles and other followers of Jesus meet and elect Matthias to replace Judas as a member of The Twelve. On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descends and confers God's power on them, and Peter and John preach to many in Jerusalem and perform healings, casting out of evil spirits, and raising of the dead. The first believers share all property in common, eat in each other's homes, and worship together. At first many Jews follow Christ and are baptized, but the followers of Jesus begin to be increasingly persecuted by other Jews. Stephen is accused of blasphemy and stoned. Stephen's death marks a major turning point: the Jews have rejected the message, and henceforth it will be taken to the Gentiles.
The death of Stephen initiates persecution, and many followers of Jesus leave Jerusalem. The message is taken to the Samaritans, a people rejected by Jews, and to the Gentiles. Saul of Tarsus, one of the Jews who persecuted the followers of Jesus, is converted by a vision to become a follower of Christ (an event which Luke regards as so important that he relates it three times). Peter, directed by a series of visions, preaches to Cornelius the Centurion, a Gentile God-fearer, who becomes a follower of Christ. The Holy Spirit descends on Cornelius and his guests, thus confirming that the message of eternal life in Christ is for all mankind. The Gentile church is established in Antioch (north-western Syria, the third-largest city of the empire), and here Christ's followers are first called Christians.
The mission to the Gentiles is promoted from Antioch and confirmed at a meeting in Jerusalem between Paul and the leadership of the Jerusalem church. Paul spends the next few years traveling through western Asia Minor and the Aegean, preaching, converting, and founding new churches. On a visit to Jerusalem he is set on by a Jewish mob. Saved by the Roman commander, he is accused by the Jews of being a revolutionary, the "ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes", and imprisoned. Later, Paul asserts his right as a Roman citizen, to be tried in Rome and is sent by sea to Rome, where he spends another two years under house arrest, proclaiming the Kingdom of God and teaching freely about "the Lord Jesus Christ". Acts ends abruptly without recording the outcome of Paul's legal troubles.
Theology
Prior to the 1950s, Luke–Acts was seen as a historical work, written to defend Christianity before the Romans or Paul against his detractors; since then the tendency has been to see the work as primarily theological. Luke's theology is expressed primarily through his overarching plot, the way scenes, themes and characters combine to construct his specific worldview. His "salvation history" stretches from the Creation to the present time of his readers, in three ages: first, the time of "the Law and the Prophets" (Luke 16:16), the period beginning with Genesis and ending with the appearance of John the Baptist (Luke 1:5–3:1); second, the epoch of Jesus, in which the Kingdom of God was preached (Luke 3:2–24:51); and finally the period of the Church, which began when the risen Christ was taken into Heaven, and would end with his second coming.
Luke–Acts is an attempt to answer a theological problem, namely how the Messiah, promised to the Jews, came to have an overwhelmingly non-Jewish church; the answer it provides, and its central theme, is that the message of Christ was sent to the Gentiles because the Jews rejected it. This theme is introduced in Chapter 4 of the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus, rejected in Nazareth, recalls that the prophets were rejected by Israel and accepted by Gentiles; at the end of the gospel he commands his disciples to preach his message to all nations, "beginning from Jerusalem." He repeats the command in Acts, telling them to preach "in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the Earth." They then proceed to do so, in the order outlined: first Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria, then the entire (Roman) world.
For Luke, the Holy Spirit is the driving force behind the spread of the Christian message, and he places more emphasis on it than do any of the other evangelists. The Spirit is "poured out" at Pentecost on the first Samaritan and Gentile believers and on disciples who had been baptised only by John the Baptist, each time as a sign of God's approval. The Holy Spirit represents God's power (at his ascension, Jesus tells his followers, "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you"): through it the disciples are given speech to convert thousands in Jerusalem, forming the first church (the term is used for the first time in Acts 5).
One issue debated by scholars is Luke's political vision regarding the relationship between the early church and the Roman Empire. On the one hand, Luke generally does not portray this interaction as one of direct conflict. Rather, there are ways in which each may have considered having a relationship with the other rather advantageous to its own cause. For example, early Christians may have appreciated hearing about the protection Paul received from Roman officials against Gentile rioters in Philippi (Acts 16:16–40) and Ephesus (Acts 19:23–41), and against Jewish rioters on two occasions (Acts 17:1–17; Acts 18:12–17). Meanwhile, Roman readers may have approved of Paul's censure of the illegal practice of magic (Acts 19:17–19) as well as the amicability of his rapport with Roman officials such as Sergius Paulus (Acts 13:6–12) and Festus (Acts 26:30–32). Furthermore, Acts does not include any account of a struggle between Christians and the Roman government as a result of the latter's imperial cult. Thus Paul is depicted as a moderating presence between the church and the Roman Empire.
On the other hand, events such as the imprisonment of Paul at the hands of the empire (Acts 22–28) as well as several encounters that reflect negatively on Roman officials (for instance, Felix's desire for a bribe from Paul in Acts 24:26) function as concrete points of conflict between Rome and the early church. Perhaps the most significant point of tension between Roman imperial ideology and Luke's political vision is reflected in Peter's speech to the Roman centurion, Cornelius (Acts 10:36). Peter states that "this one" [οὗτος], i.e. Jesus, "is lord [κύριος] of all." The title, κύριος, was often ascribed to the Roman emperor in antiquity, rendering its use by Luke as an appellation for Jesus an unsubtle challenge to the emperor's authority.
Comparison with other writings
Gospel of Luke
As the second part of the two-part work Luke–Acts, Acts has significant links to the Gospel of Luke. Major turning points in the structure of Acts, for example, find parallels in Luke: the presentation of the child Jesus in the Temple parallels the opening of Acts in the Temple, Jesus's forty days of testing in the wilderness prior to his mission parallel the forty days prior to his Ascension in Acts, the mission of Jesus in Samaria and the Decapolis (the lands of the Samaritans and Gentiles) parallels the missions of the Apostles in Samaria and the Gentile lands, and so on (see Gospel of Luke). These parallels continue through both books. There are also differences between Luke and Acts, amounting at times to outright contradiction. For example, the gospel seems to place the Ascension on Easter Sunday, immediately after the Resurrection, while Acts 1 puts it forty days later. There are similar conflicts over the theology, and while not seriously questioning the single authorship of Luke–Acts, these differences do suggest the need for caution in seeking too much consistency in books written in essence as popular literature.
Pauline epistles
Acts agrees with Paul's letters on the major outline of Paul's career: he is converted and becomes a Christian missionary and apostle, establishing new churches in Asia Minor and the Aegean and struggling to free Gentile Christians from the Jewish Law. There are also agreements on many incidents, such as Paul's escape from Damascus, where he is lowered down the walls in a basket. But details of these same incidents are frequently contradictory: for example, according to Paul it was a pagan king who was trying to arrest him in Damascus, but according to Luke it was the Jews (2 Corinthians 11:33 and Acts 9:24). Acts speaks of "Christians" and "disciples", but Paul never uses either term, and it is striking that Acts never brings Paul into conflict with the Jerusalem church and places Paul under the authority of the Jerusalem church and its leaders, especially James and Peter (Acts 15 vs. Galatians 2). Acts omits much from the letters, notably Paul's problems with his congregations (internal difficulties are said to be the fault of the Jews instead), and his apparent final rejection by the church leaders in Jerusalem (Acts has Paul and Barnabas deliver an offering that is accepted, a trip that has no mention in the letters). There are also major differences between Acts and Paul on Christology (the understanding of Christ's nature), eschatology (the understanding of the "last things"), and apostleship.
See also
Les Actes des Apotres
Acts of the Apostles (genre)
Historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles
Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles
List of Gospels
List of New Testament verses not included in modern English translations
The Lost Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, also known as the Sonnini Manuscript
Textual variants in the Acts of the Apostles
References
Bibliography
External links
Book of Acts at Bible Gateway (NIV & KJV)
Tertullian.org: The Western Text of the Acts of the Apostles (1923) J. M. WILSON, D.D.
Various versions
1st-century books
1st-century Christianity
New Testament books
Acts of the Apostles (genre) |
2085 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyria | Assyria | Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: māt Aššur; ) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC and then as a territorial state and eventually an empire from the 14th century BC to the 7th century BC.
Spanning from the early Bronze Age to the late Iron Age, modern historians typically divide ancient Assyrian history into the Early Assyrian ( 2600–2025 BC), Old Assyrian ( 2025–1364 BC), Middle Assyrian ( 1363–912 BC), Neo-Assyrian (911–609 BC) and post-imperial (609 BC– AD 240) periods, based on political events and gradual changes in language. Assur, the first Assyrian capital, was founded 2600 BC but there is no evidence that the city was independent until the collapse of the Third Dynasty of Ur in the 21st century BC, when a line of independent kings beginning with Puzur-Ashur I began ruling the city. Centered in the Assyrian heartland in northern Mesopotamia, Assyrian power fluctuated over time. The city underwent several periods of foreign rule and domination before Assyria rose under Ashur-uballit I in the 14th century BC as the Middle Assyrian Empire. In the Middle and Neo-Assyrian periods Assyria was one of the two major Mesopotamian kingdoms, alongside Babylonia in the south, and at times became the dominant power in the ancient Near East. Assyria was at its strongest in the Neo-Assyrian period, when the Assyrian army was the strongest military power in the world and the Assyrians ruled the largest empire then yet assembled in world history, spanning from parts of modern-day Iran in the east to Egypt in the west.
The Assyrian Empire fell in the late 7th century BC, conquered by Babylonians, who had lived under Assyrian rule for about a century, and the Medes. Though the core territory of Assyria was extensively devastated in the Medo-Babylonian conquest of the Assyrian Empire and the succeeding Neo-Babylonian Empire invested little resources in rebuilding it, ancient Assyrian culture and traditions continued to survive for centuries throughout the post-imperial period. Assyria experienced a recovery under the Seleucid and Parthian empires, though declined again under the Sasanian Empire, which sacked numerous cities in the region, including Assur itself. The remaining Assyrian people, who have survived in northern Mesopotamia to modern times, were gradually Christianized from the 1st century AD onwards. The ancient Mesopotamian religion persisted at Assur until its final sack in the 3rd century AD, and at certain other holdouts for centuries thereafter.
The success of ancient Assyria did not derive solely from its energetic warrior-kings, but also from its ability to efficiently incorporate and govern conquered lands through sophisticated administrative systems. Innovations in warfare and administration pioneered in ancient Assyria were used under later empires and states for millennia thereafter. Ancient Assyria also left a legacy of great cultural significance, particularly through the Neo-Assyrian Empire making a prominent impression in later Assyrian, Greco-Roman and Hebrew literary and religious tradition.
Nomenclature
In the Old Assyrian period, when Assyria was merely a city-state centered around the city of Assur, the state was typically referred to as ālu Aššur ("city of Ashur"). From the time of its rise as a territorial state in the 14th century BC and onwards, Assyria was referred to in official documentation as māt Aššur ("land of Ashur"), marking the shift to being a regional polity. The term māt Aššur is first attested as being used in the reign of Ashur-uballit I ( 1363–1328 BC), the first king of the Middle Assyrian Empire. Both ālu Aššur and māt Aššur derive from the Assyrian national deity Ashur. Ashur probably originated in the Early Assyrian period as a deified personification of Assur itself. In the Old Assyrian period the deity was considered the formal king of Assur, with the actual rulers only using the style Išši'ak ("governor"). From the time of Assyria's rise as a territorial state, Ashur began to be regarded as an embodiment of the entire land ruled by the Assyrian kings.
The modern name "Assyria" is of Greek origin, derived from Ασσυρία (Assuría). The term is first attested in the time of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BC). The Greeks designated the Levant as "Syria" and Mesopotamia as "Assyria", even though the local population at the time, and well into the later Christian period, used both terms interchangeably for the entire region. Whether the Greeks began referring to Mesopotamia as "Assyria" because they equated the region with the Assyrian Empire, long fallen by the time the term is first attested, or because they named the region after the people who lived there (the Assyrians) is not known. Because the term is so similar to "Syria", the question of whether the two are connected has been examined by scholars since the 17th century. Since the shortened form "Syria" is attested in sources predating the Greek ones as a synonym for Assyria, notably in Luwian and Aramaic texts from the time of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, modern scholars overwhelmingly support the names as being connected.
Both "Assyria" and the contracted "Syria" are ultimately derived from the Akkadian Aššur. The numerous later empires that ruled over Assyria after the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire used their own names for the region, many of which were also derived from Aššur. The Achaemenid Empire referred to Assyria as Aθūrā ("Athura"). The Sasanian Empire inexplicably referred to southern Mesopotamia as Āsōristān ("land of the Assyrians"), though the northern province of Nōdšīragān, which included much of the old Assyrian heartland, was also sometimes called Atūria or Āthōr. In Classical Syriac, Assyria was and is referred to as ʾāthor.
History
Early history
Agricultural villages in the region that would later become Assyria are known to have existed by the time of the Hassuna culture, 6300–5800 BC. Though the sites of some nearby cities that would later be incorporated into the Assyrian heartland, such as Nineveh, are known to have been inhabited since the Neolithic, the earliest archaeological evidence from Assur dates to the Early Dynastic Period, 2600 BC. During this time, the surrounding region was already relatively urbanized. There is no evidence that early Assur was an independent settlement, and it might not have been called Assur at all initially, but rather Baltil or Baltila, used in later times to refer to the city's oldest portion. The name "Assur" is first attested for the site in documents of the Akkadian period in the 24th century BC. Through most of the Early Assyrian period ( 2600–2025 BC), Assur was dominated by states and polities from southern Mesopotamia. Early on, Assur for a time fell under the loose hegemony of the Sumerian city of Kish and it was later occupied by both the Akkadian Empire and then the Third Dynasty of Ur. In 2025 BC, due to the collapse of the Third Dynasty of Ur, Assur became an independent city-state under Puzur-Ashur I.
Assur was under the Puzur-Ashur dynasty home to less than 10,000 people and likely held very limited military power; no military institutions at all are known from this time and no political influence was exerted on neighboring cities. The city was still influential in other ways; under Erishum I ( 1974–1934 BC), Assur experimented with free trade, the earliest known such experiment in world history, which left the initiative for trade and large-scale foreign transactions entirely to the populace rather than the state. Royal encouragement of trade led to Assur quickly establishing itself as a prominent trading city in northern Mesopotamia and soon thereafter establishing an extensive long-distance trade network, the first notable impression Assyria left in the historical record. Among the evidence left from this trade network are large collections of Old Assyrian cuneiform tablets from Assyrian trade colonies, the most notable of which is a set of 22,000 clay tablets found at Kültepe, near the modern city of Kayseri in Turkey. As trade declined, perhaps due to increased warfare and conflict between the growing states of the Near East, Assur was frequently threatened by larger foreign states and kingdoms. The original Assur city-state, and the Puzur-Ashur dynasty, came to an end 1808 BC when the city was conquered by the Amorite ruler of Ekallatum, Shamshi-Adad I. Shamshi-Adad's extensive conquests in northern Mesopotamia eventually made him the ruler of the entire region, founding what some scholars have termed the "Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia". The survival of this realm relied chiefly on Shamshi-Adad's own strength and charisma and it thus collapsed shortly after his death 1776 BC.
After Shamshi-Adad's death, the political situation in northern Mesopotamia was highly volatile, with Assur at times coming under the brief control of Eshnunna, Elam and the Old Babylonian Empire. At some point, the city returned to being an independent city-state, though the politics of Assur itself were volatile as well, with fighting between members of Shamshi-Adad's dynasty, native Assyrians and Hurrians for control. The infighting came to an end after the rise of Bel-bani as king 1700 BC. Bel-bani founded the Adaside dynasty, which after his reign ruled Assyria for about a thousand years. Assyria's rise as a territorial state in later times was in large part facilitated by two separate invasions of Mesopotamia by the Hittites. An invasion by the Hittite king Mursili I in 1595 BC destroyed the dominant Old Babylonian Empire, allowing the smaller kingdoms of Mitanni and Kassite Babylonia to rise in the north and south, respectively. Around 1430 BC, Assur was subjugated by Mitanni, an arrangement that lasted for about 70 years, until 1360 BC. Another Hittite invasion by Šuppiluliuma I in the 14th century BC effectively crippled the Mitanni kingdom. After his invasion, Assyria succeeded in freeing itself from its suzerain, achieving independence once more under Ashur-uballit I ( 1363–1328 BC) whose rise to power, independence, and conquests of neighboring territory traditionally marks the rise of the Middle Assyrian Empire ( 1363–912 BC).
Assyrian Empire
Ashur-uballit I was the first native Assyrian ruler to claim the royal title šar ("king"). Shortly after achieving independence, he further claimed the dignity of a great king on the level of the Egyptian pharaohs and the Hittite kings. Assyria's rise was intertwined with the decline and fall of the Mitanni kingdom, its former suzerain, which allowed the early Middle Assyrian kings to expand and consolidate territories in northern Mesopotamia. Under the warrior-kings Adad-nirari I ( 1305–1274 BC), Shalmaneser I ( 1273–1244 BC) and Tukulti-Ninurta I ( 1243–1207 BC), Assyria began to realize its aspirations of becoming a significant regional power. These kings campaigned in all directions and incorporated a significant amount of territory into the growing Assyrian Empire. Under Shalmaneser I, the last remnants of the Mitanni kingdom were formally annexed into Assyria. The most successful of the Middle Assyrian kings was Tukulti-Ninurta I, who brought the Middle Assyrian Empire to its greatest extent. His most notable military achievements were his victory at the Battle of Nihriya 1237 BC, which marked the beginning of the end of Hittite influence in northern Mesopotamia, and his temporary conquest of Babylonia, which became an Assyrian vassal 1225–1216 BC. Tukulti-Ninurta was also the first Assyrian king to try to move the capital away from Assur, inaugurating the new city Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta as capital 1233 BC. The capital was returned to Assur after his death.
Tukulti-Ninurta I's assassination 1207 BC was followed by inter-dynastic conflict and a significant drop in Assyrian power. Tukulti-Ninurta I's successors were unable to maintain Assyrian power and Assyria became increasingly restricted to just the Assyrian heartland, a period of decline broadly coinciding with the Late Bronze Age collapse. Though some kings in this period of decline, such as Ashur-dan I ( 1178–1133 BC), Ashur-resh-ishi I (1132–1115 BC) and Tiglath-Pileser I (1114–1076 BC) worked to reverse the decline and made significant conquests, their conquests were ephemeral and shaky, quickly lost again. From the time of Eriba-Adad II (1056–1054 BC) onwards, Assyrian decline intensified. The Assyrian heartland remained safe since it was protected by its geographical remoteness. Since Assyria was not the only state to undergo decline during these centuries, and the lands surrounding the Assyrian heartland were also significantly fragmented, it would ultimately be relatively easy for the reinvigorated Assyrian army to reconquer large parts of the empire. Under Ashur-dan II (934–912 BC), who campaigned in the northeast and northwest, Assyrian decline was at last reversed, paving the way for grander efforts under his successors. The end of his reign conventionally marks the beginning of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–609 BC).
Through decades of conquests, the early Neo-Assyrian kings worked to retake the lands of the Middle Assyrian Empire. Since this reconquista had to begin nearly from scratch, its eventual success was an extraordinary achievement. Under Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 BC), the Neo-Assyrian Empire became the dominant political power in the Near East. In his ninth campaign, Ashurnasirpal II marched to the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, collecting tribute from various kingdoms on the way. A significant development during Ashurnasirpal II's reign was the second attempt to transfer the Assyrian capital away from Assur. Ashurnasirpal restored the ancient and ruined town of Nimrud, also located in the Assyrian heartland, and in 879 BC designated that city as the new capital of the empire Though no longer the political capital, Assur remained the ceremonial and religious center of Assyria. Ashurnasirpal II's son Shalmaneser III (859–824 BC) also went on wide-ranging wars of conquest, expanding the empire in all directions. After Shalmaneser III's death, the Neo-Assyrian Empire entered into a period of stagnation dubbed the "age of the magnates", when powerful officials and generals were the principal wielders of political power rather than the king. This time of stagnation came to an end with the rise of Tiglath-Pileser III (745–727 BC), who reduced the power of the magnates, consolidated and centralized the holdings of the empire, and through his military campaigns and conquests more than doubled the extent of Assyrian territory. The most significant conquests were the vassalization of the Levant all the way to the Egyptian border and the 729 BC conquest of Babylonia.
The Neo-Assyrian Empire reached the height of its extent and power under the Sargonid dynasty, founded by Sargon II (722–705 BC). Under Sargon II and his son Sennacherib (705–681 BC), the empire was further expanded and the gains were consolidated. Both kings founded new capitals; Sargon II moved the capital to the new city of Dur-Sharrukin in 706 BC and the year after, Sennacherib transferred the capital to Nineveh, which he ambitiously expanded and renovated. The 671 BC conquest of Egypt under Esarhaddon (681–669 BC) brought Assyria to its greatest ever extent. After the death of Ashurbanipal (669–631 BC), the Neo-Assyrian Empire swiftly collapsed. One of the primary reasons was the inability of the Neo-Assyrian kings to resolve the "Babylonian problem"; despite many attempts to appease Babylonia in the south, revolts were frequent all throughout the Sargonid period. The revolt of Babylon under Nabopolassar in 626 BC, in combination with an invasion by the Medes under Cyaxares in 615/614 BC, led to the Medo-Babylonian conquest of the Assyrian Empire. Assur was sacked in 614 BC and Nineveh fell in 612 BC. The last Assyrian ruler, Ashur-uballit II, tried to rally the Assyrian army at Harran in the west but he was defeated in 609 BC, marking the end of the ancient line of Assyrian kings and of Assyria as a state.
Later history
Despite the violent downfall of the Assyrian Empire, Assyrian culture continued to survive through the subsequent post-imperial period (609 BC – AD 240) and beyond. The Assyrian heartland experienced a dramatic decrease in the size and number of inhabited settlements during the rule of the Neo-Babylonian Empire founded by Nabopolassar; the former Assyrian capital cities Assur, Nimrud and Nineveh were nearly completely abandoned. Throughout the time of the Neo-Babylonian and later Achaemenid Empire, Assyria remained a marginal and sparsely populated region. Towards the end of the 6th century BC, the Assyrian dialect of the Akkadian language went extinct, having towards the end of the Neo-Assyrian Empire already largely been replaced by Aramaic as a vernacular language. Under the empires succeeding the Neo-Babylonians, from the late 6th century BC onwards, Assyria began to experience a recovery. Under the Achaemenids, most of the territory was organized into the province Athura (Aθūrā). The organization into a single large province, the lack of interference of the Achaemenid rulers in local affairs, and the return of the cult statue of Ashur to Assur soon after the Achaemenids conquered Babylon facilitated the survival of Assyrian culture. Under the Seleucid Empire, which controlled Mesopotamia from the late 4th to mid-2nd century BC, Assyrian sites such as Assur, Nimrud and Nineveh were resettled and a large number of villages were rebuilt and expanded.
After the Parthian Empire conquered the region in the 2nd century BC, the recovery of Assyria continued, culminating in an unprecedented return to prosperity and revival in the 1st to 3rd centuries AD. The region was resettled and restored so intensely that the population and settlement density reached heights not seen since the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The region was under the Parthians primarily ruled by a group of vassal kingdoms, including Osroene, Adiabene and Hatra. Though in some aspects influenced by Assyrian culture, these states were for the most part not ruled by Assyrian rulers. Assur itself flourished under Parthian rule. From around or shortly after the end of the 2nd century BC, the city may have become the capital of its own small semi-autonomous Assyrian realm, either under the suzerainty of Hatra, or under direct Parthian suzerainty. On account of the resemblance between the stelae by the local rulers and those of the ancient Assyrian kings, they may have seen themselves as the restorers and continuators of the old royal line. The ancient Ashur temple was restored in the 2nd century AD. This last cultural golden age came to an end with the sack of Assur by the Sasanian Empire 240. During the sack, the Ashur temple was destroyed again and the city's population was dispersed.
Starting from the 1st century AD onwards, many of the Assyrians became Christianized, though holdouts of the old ancient Mesopotamian religion continued to survive for centuries. Despite the loss of political power, the Assyrians continued to constitute a significant portion of the population in northern Mesopotamia until religiously-motivated suppression and massacres under the Ilkhanate and the Timurid Empire in the 14th century, which relegated them to a local ethnic and religious minority. The Assyrians lived largely in peace under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, which gained control of Assyria in 16th century. In the late 19th and early 20th century, when the Ottomans grew increasingly nationalistic, further persecutions and massacres were enacted against the Assyrians, most notably the Sayfo (Assyrian genocide), which resulted in the deaths of as many as 250,000 Assyrians. Throughout the 20th century and still today, many unsuccessful proposals have been made by the Assyrians for autonomy or independence. Further massacres and persecutions, enacted both by governments and by terrorist groups such as the Islamic State, have resulted in most of the Assyrian people living in diaspora.
Government and military
Kingship
In the Assur city-state of the Old Assyrian period, the government was in many respects an oligarchy, where the king was a permanent, albeit not the only prominent, actor. The Old Assyrian kings were not autocrats, with sole power, but rather acted as stewards on behalf of the god Ashur and presided over the meetings of the city assembly, the main Assyrian administrative body during this time. The composition of the city assembly is not known, but it is generally believed to have been made up of members of the most powerful families of the city, many of whom were merchants. The king acted as the main executive officer and chairman of this group of influential individuals and also contributed with legal knowledge and expertise. The Old Assyrian kings were styled as iššiak Aššur ("governor [on behalf] of Ashur"), with Ashur being considered the city's formal king. That the populace of Assur in the Old Assyrian period often referred to the king as rubā’um ("great one") clearly indicates that the kings, despite their limited executive power, were seen as royal figures and as being primus inter pares (first among equals) among the powerful individuals of the city.
Assur first experienced a more autocratic form of kingship under the Amorite conqueror Shamshi-Adad I, the earliest ruler of Assur to use the style šarrum (king) and the title 'king of the Universe'. Shamshi-Adad I appears to have based his more absolute form of kingship on the rulers of the Old Babylonian Empire. Under Shamshi-Adad I, Assyrians also swore their oaths by the king, not just by the god. This practice did not survive beyond his death. The influence of the city assembly had disappeared by the beginning of the Middle Assyrian period. Though the traditional iššiak Aššur continued to be used at times, the Middle Assyrian kings were autocrats, in terms of power having little in common with the rulers of the Old Assyrian period. As the Assyrian Empire grew, the kings began to employ an increasingly sophisticated array of royal titles. Ashur-uballit I was the first to assume the style šar māt Aššur ("king of the land of Ashur") and his grandson Arik-den-ili ( 1317–1306 BC) introduced the style šarru dannu ("strong king"). Adad-nirari I's inscriptions required 32 lines to be devoted just to his titles. This development peaked under Tukulti-Ninurta I, who assumed, among other titles, the styles "king of Assyria and Karduniash", "king of Sumer and Akkad", "king of the Upper and the Lower Seas" and "king of all peoples". Royal titles and epithets were often highly reflective of current political developments and the achievements of individual kings; during periods of decline, the royal titles used typically grew more simple again, only to grow grander once more as Assyrian power experienced resurgences.
The kings of the Middle and Neo-Assyrian periods continued to present themselves, and be viewed by their subjects, as the intermediaries between Ashur and mankind. This position and role was used to justify imperial expansion: the Assyrians saw their empire as being the part of the world overseen and administered by Ashur through his human agents. In their ideology, the outer realm outside of Assyria was characterized by chaos and the people there were uncivilized, with unfamiliar cultural practices and strange languages. The mere existence of the "outer realm" was regarded as a threat to the cosmic order within Assyria and as such, it was the king's duty to expand the realm of Ashur and incorporate these strange lands, converting chaos to civilization. Texts describing the coronation of Middle and Neo-Assyrian kings at times include Ashur commanding the king to "broaden the land of Ashur" or "extend the land at his feet". As such, expansion was cast as a moral and necessary duty. Because the rule and actions of the Assyrian king were seen as divinely sanctioned, resistance to Assyrian sovereignty in times of war was regarded to be resistance against divine will, which deserved punishment. Peoples and polities who revolted against Assyria were seen as criminals against the divine world order. Since Ashur was the king of the gods, all other gods were subjected to him and thus the people who followed those gods should be subjected to the representative of Ashur, the Assyrian king.
The kings also had religious and judicial duties. Kings were responsible for performing various rituals in support of the cult of Ashur and the Assyrian priesthood. They were expected, together with the Assyrian people, to provide offerings to not only Ashur but also all the other gods. From the time of Ashur-resh-ishi I onwards, the religious and cultic duties of the king were pushed somewhat into the background, though they were still prominently mentioned in accounts of building and restoring temples. Assyrian titles and epithets in inscriptions from then on generally emphasized the kings as powerful warriors. Developing from their role in the Old Assyrian period, the Middle and Neo-Assyrian kings were the supreme judicial authority in the empire, though they generally appear to have been less concerned with their role as judges than their predecessors in the Old Assyrian period were. The kings were expected to ensure the welfare and prosperity of the Assyria and its people, indicated by multiple inscriptions referring to the kings as "shepherds" (re’û).
Capital cities
No word for the idea of a capital city existed in Akkadian, the nearest being the idea of a "city of kingship", i.e. an administrative center used by the king, but there are several examples of kingdoms having multiple "cities of kingship". Due to Assyria growing out of the Assur city-state of the Old Assyrian period, and due to the city's religious importance, Assur was the administrative center of Assyria through most of its history. Though the royal administration at times moved elsewhere, the ideological status of Assur was never fully superseded and it remained a ceremonial center in the empire even when it was governed from elsewhere. The transfer of the royal seat of power to other cities was ideologically possible since the king was Ashur's representative on Earth. The king, like the god, embodied Assyria itself, and so the capital of Assyria was in a sense wherever the king happened to have his residence.
The first transfer of administrative power away from Assur occurred under Tukulti-Ninurta I, who 1233 BC inaugurated Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta as capital. Tukulti-Ninurta I's foundation of a new capital was perhaps inspired by developments in Babylonia in the south, where the Kassite dynasty had transferred the administration from the long-established city of Babylon to the newly constructed city of Dur-Kurigalzu, also named after a king. It seems that Tukulti-Ninurta I intended to go further than the Kassites and also establish Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta as the new Assyrian cult center. The city was however not maintained as capital after Tukulti-Ninurta I's death, with subsequent kings once more ruling from Assur.
The Neo-Assyrian Empire underwent several different capitals. There is some evidence that Tukulti-Ninurta II (890–884 BC), perhaps inspired by his predecessor of the same name, made unfulfilled plans to transfer the capital to a city called Nemid Tukulti-Ninurta, either a completely new city or a new name applied to Nineveh, which by this point already rivalled Assur in scale and political importance. The capital was transferred under Tukulti-Ninurta II's son Ashurnasirpal II to Nimrud in 879 BC. An architectural detail separating Nimrud and the other Neo-Assyrian capitals from Assur is that they were designed in a way that emphasized royal power: the royal palaces in Assur were smaller than the temples but the situation was reversed in the new capitals. Sargon II transferred the capital in 706 BC to the city Dur-Sharrukin, which he built himself. Since the location of Dur-Sharrukin had no obvious practical or political merit, this move was probably an ideological statement. Immediately after Sargon II's death in 705 BC, his son Sennacherib transferred the capital to Nineveh, a far more natural seat of power. Though it was not meant as a permanent royal residence, Ashur-uballit II chose Harran as his seat of power after the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC. Harran is typically seen as the short-lived final Assyrian capital. No building projects were conducted during this time, but Harran was an established and major religious center, dedicated to the god Sîn.
Aristocracy and elite
Because of the nature of source preservation, more information about the upper classes of ancient Assyria survives than for the lower ones. At the top of Middle and Neo-Assyrian society were members of long-established and large families called "houses". Members of this aristocracy tended to occupy the most important offices within the government and they were likely descendants of the most prominent families of the Old Assyrian period. One of the most influential offices in the Assyrian administration was the position of vizier (sukkallu). From at least the time of Shalmaneser I onwards, there were grand viziers (sukkallu rabi’u), superior to the ordinary viziers, who at times governed their own lands as appointees of the kings. At least in the Middle Assyrian period, the grand viziers were typically members of the royal family and the position was at this time, like many other offices, hereditary.
The elite of the Neo-Assyrian Empire was expanded and included several different offices. The Neo-Assyrian inner elite is typically divided by modern scholars into the "magnates", a set of high-ranking offices, and the "scholars" (ummânī), tasked with advising and guiding the kings through interpreting omens. The magnates included the offices masennu (treasurer), nāgir ekalli (palace herald), rab šāqê (chief cupbearer), rab ša-rēši (chief officer/eunuch), sartinnu (chief judge), sukkallu (grand vizier) and turtanu (commander-in-chief), which at times continued to be occupied by royal family members. Some of the magnates also acted as governors of important provinces and all of them were deeply involved with the Assyrian military, controlling significant forces. They also owned large tax-free estates, scattered throughout the empire. In the late Neo-Assyrian Empire, there was a growing disconnect between the traditional Assyrian elite and the kings due to eunuchs growing unprecedently powerful. The highest offices both in the civil administration and the army began to be occupied by eunuchs with deliberately obscure and lowly origins since this ensured that they would be loyal to the king. Eunuchs were trusted since they were believed to not be able to have any dynastic aspirations of their own.
From the time of Erishum I in the early Old Assyrian period onwards, a yearly office-holder, a limmu official, was elected from the influential men of Assyria. The limmu official gave their name to the year, meaning that their name appeared in all administrative documents signed that year. Kings were typically the limmu officials in their first regnal years. In the Old Assyrian period, the limmu officials also held substantial executive power, though this aspect of the office had disappeared by the time of the rise of the Middle Assyrian Empire.
Administration
The success of Assyria was not only due to energetic kings who expanded its borders but more importantly due to its ability to efficiently incorporate and govern conquered lands. From the rise of Assyria as a territorial state at the beginning of the Middle Assyrian period onwards, Assyrian territory was divided into a set of provinces or districts (pāḫutu). The total number and size of these provinces varied and changed as Assyria expanded and contracted. Every province was headed by a provincial governor (bel pāḫete, bēl pīhāti or šaknu) who was responsible for handling local order, public safety and economy. Governors also stored and distributed the goods produced in their province, which were inspected and collected by royal representatives once a year. Through these inspections, the central government could keep track of current stocks and production throughout the country. Governors had to pay both taxes and offer gifts to the god Ashur, though such gifts were usually small and mainly symbolic. The channeling of taxes and gifts were not only a method of collecting profit but also served to connect the elite of the entire empire to the Assyrian heartland. In the Neo-Assyrian period, an extensive hierarchy within the provincial administration is attested. At the bottom of this hierarchy were lower officials, such as village managers (rab ālāni) who oversaw one or more villages, collecting taxes in the form of labor and goods and keeping the administration informed of the conditions of their settlements, and corvée officers (ša bēt-kūdini) who kept tallies on the labor performed by forced laborers and the remaining time owed. Individual cities had their own administrations, headed by mayors (ḫazi’ānu), responsible for the local economy and production.
Some regions of the Assyrian Empire were not incorporated into the provincial system but were still subjected to the rule of the Assyrian kings. Such vassal states could be ruled indirectly through allowing established local lines of kings to continue ruling in exchange for tribute or through the Assyrian kings appointing their own vassal rulers. Through the ilku system, the Assyrian kings could also grant arable lands to individuals in exchange for goods and military service.
To overcome the challenges of governing a large empire, the Neo-Assyrian Empire developed a sophisticated state communication system, which included various innovative techniques and relay stations. Per estimates by Karen Radner, an official message sent in the Neo-Assyrian period from the western border province Quwê to the Assyrian heartland, a distance of 700 kilometers (430 miles) over a stretch of lands featuring many rivers without any bridges, could take less than five days to arrive. Such communication speed was unprecedented before the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and was not surpassed in the Middle East until the telegraph was introduced by the Ottoman Empire in 1865, nearly two and a half thousand years after the Neo-Assyrian Empire's fall.
Military
The Assyrian army was throughout its history mostly composed of levies, mobilized only when they were needed (such as in the time of campaigns). Through regulations, obligations and sophisticated government systems, large amounts of soldiers could be recruited and mobilized already in the early Middle Assyrian period. A small central standing army unit was established in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, dubbed the kiṣir šarri ("king's unit"). Some professional (though not standing) troops are also attested in the Middle Assyrian period, dubbed ḫurādu or ṣābū ḫurādātu, though what their role was is not clear due to the scarcity of sources. Perhaps this category included archers and charioteers, who needed more extensive training than normal foot soldiers.
The Assyrian army developed and evolved over time. In the Middle Assyrian period, foot soldiers were divided into the sạ bū ša kakkē ("weapon troops") and the sạ bū ša arâtē ("shield-bearing troops") but surviving records are not detailed enough to determine what the differences were. It is possible that the sạ bū ša kakkē included ranged troops, such as slingers (ṣābū ša ušpe) and archers (ṣābū ša qalte). The chariots in the army composed a unit of their own. Based on surviving depictions, chariots were crewed by two soldiers: an archer who commanded the chariot (māru damqu) and a driver (ša mugerre). Chariots first entered extensive military use under Tiglath-Pileser I in the 12th–11th centuries BC and were in the later Neo-Assyrian period gradually phased out in favor of cavalry (ša petḫalle). In the Middle Assyrian period, cavalry was mainly used for escorting or message deliveries.
Under the Neo-Assyrian Empire, important new developments in the military was the large-scale introduction of cavalry, the adoption of iron for armor and weapons, and the development of new and innovative siege warfare techniques. At the height of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Assyrian army was the strongest army yet assembled in world history. The number of soldiers in the Neo-Assyrian army was likely several hundred thousand. The Neo-Assyrian army was subdivided into kiṣru, composed of perhaps 1,000 soldiers, most of whom would have been infantry soldiers (zūk, zukkû or raksūte). The infantry was divided into three types: light, medium and heavy, with varying weapons, level of armor and responsibilities. While on campaign, the Assyrian army made heavy use of both interpreters/translators (targumannu) and guides (rādi kibsi), both probably being drawn from foreigners resettled in Assyra.
Population and society
Population and social standing
Populace
The majority of the population of ancient Assyria were farmers who worked land owned by their families. Old Assyrian society was divided into two main groups: slaves (subrum) and free citizens, referred to as awīlum ("men") or DUMU Aššur ("sons of Ashur"). Among the free citizens there was also a division into rabi ("big") and ṣaher ("small") members of the city assembly. Assyrian society grew more complex and hierarchical over time. In the Middle Assyrian Empire, there were several groups among the lower classes, the highest of which were the free men (a’ılū), who like the upper classes could receive land in exchange for performing duties for the government, but who could not live on these lands since they were comparably small. Below the free men were the unfree men (šiluhlu̮). The unfree men had given up their freedom and entered the services of others on their own accord, and were in turn provided with clothes and rations. Many of them probably originated as foreigners. Though similar to slavery, it was possible for an unfree person to regain their freedom by providing a replacement and they were during their service considered the property of the government rather than their employers. Other lower classes of the Middle Assyrian period included the ālāyû ("village residents"), ālik ilke (people recruited through the ilku system) and the hupšu, though what these designations meant in terms of social standing and living standards is not known.
The Middle Assyrian structure of society by and large endured through the subsequent Neo-Assyrian period. Below the higher classes of Neo-Assyrian society were free citizens, semi-free laborers and slaves. It was possible through steady service to the Assyrian state bureaucracy for a family to move up the social ladder; in some cases stellar work conducted by a single individual enhanced the status of their family for generations to come. In many cases, Assyrian family groups, or "clans", formed large population groups within the empire referred to as tribes. Such tribes lived together in villages and other settlements near or adjacent to their agricultural lands.
Slavery was an intrinsic part of nearly every society in the ancient Near East. There were two main types of slaves in ancient Assyria: chattel slaves, primarily foreigners who were kidnapped or who were spoils of war, and debt slaves, formerly free men and women who had been unable to pay off their debts. In some cases, Assyrian children were seized by authorities due to the debts of their parents and sold off into slavery when their parents were unable to pay. Children born to slave women automatically became slaves themselves, unless some other arrangement had been agreed to. Though Old Babylonian texts frequently mention the geographical and ethnic origin of slaves, there is only a single known such reference in Old Assyrian texts (whereas there are many describing slaves in a general sense), a slave girl explicitly being referred to as Subaraean, indicating that ethnicity was not seen as very important in terms of slavery. The surviving evidence suggests that the number of slaves in Assyria never reached a large share of the population. In the Akkadian language, several terms were used for slaves, commonly wardum, though this term could confusingly also be used for (free) official servants, retainers and followers, soldiers and subjects of the king. Because many individuals designated as wardum in Assyrian texts are described as handling property and carrying out administrative tasks on behalf of their masters, many may have in actuality been free servants and not slaves in the common meaning of the term. A number of wardum are however also recorded as being bought and sold.
Status of women
Little evidence survives concerning the lives of ordinary women in ancient Assyria, the main evidence being administrative documents and law codes. There was no legal distinction between men and women in the Old Assyrian period and they had more or less the same rights in society. Both men and women paid the same fines, could inherit property, participated in trade, bought, owned and sold houses and slaves, made their own last wills and were allowed to divorce their partners. Records of Old Assyrian marriages confirm that the dowry to the bride belonged to her, not the husband, and was inherited by their children after her death. Though they were equal legally, men and women in the Old Assyrian period were raised differently and had different social expectations and obligations. Girls were typically raised by their mothers, tought to spin, weave and help with daily tasks, whereas boys were tought by masters to read and write, later often following their fathers on trade expeditions. The eldest daughter of a family was sometimes consecrated as a priestess, which meant that she was no longer allowed to marry but also that she became economically independent. Wives were also expected to provide their husbands with garments and food. Though marriages were typically monogamous, husbands were allowed to buy a female slave in order to produce an heir in case his wife was infertile. His wife was allowed to choose the slave and the slave never gained the status of a second wife. Husbands who were away on long trading journeys were allowed to take a second wife in one of the trading colonies, though with strict rules: the second wife was not allowed to accompany him back to Assur and both wives had to be provided with a home to live in, food and wood. Since several letters written by women are known from the Old Assyrian period, it is evident that women were free to learn how to read and write.
The status of women decreased in the Middle Assyrian period, as can be gathered from laws concerning them among the Middle Assyrian Laws. Among these laws were punishments for various crimes, often sexual or marital ones. The Middle Assyrian Laws, though they did not deprive women of all their rights and they were not significantly different from other ancient Near Eastern laws of their time, effectively made women second-class citizens. It is however not clear how strongly these laws were enforced. The laws gave men the right to punish their wives as they wished. Among the harshest punishments written into law, for a crime not even committed by the woman herself, was that a raped woman would be forcibly married to her rapist. The laws also specified that most women while out in the street were obliged to wear veils. Some women, such as slave women and ḫarımtū women, were however prohibited from wearing veils and others, such as certain priestesses, were only allowed to wear veils if they were married. Not all laws were suppressive against women; women whose husbands died or were taken prisoner in war, and who did not have any sons or relatives to support them, were guaranteed support from the government. The ḫarımtū women have historically been believed to have been prostitutes but are today interpreted as women with an independent social existence, i.e. not tied to a husband, father, or institution. Though most ḫarımtū appear to have been poor (there were however noteworthy exceptions) and the term appears with negative connotations in several texts, their mere existence makes it clear that it was possible for women to live independent lives, despite their lesser social standing.
Royal and upper-class women experienced increased influence during the Neo-Assyrian period. Women attached to the Neo-Assyrian royal court sent and received letters, were independently wealthy and could buy and own lands of their own. The queens of the Neo-Assyrian Empire are better historically attested than queens of preceding periods. Under the Sargonid dynasty, they were granted their own military units, sometimes known to have partaken alongside other units in military campaigns. Among the most influential women of the Neo-Assyrian period were Shammuramat, queen of Shamshi-Adad V (824–811 BC), who in the reign of her son Adad-nirari III (811–783 BC) might have been regent and participated in military campaigns, and Naqi'a, who influenced politics in the reigns of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal.
Economy
In the Old Assyrian period, a major portion of Assur's population was involved in the city's international trade. As can be gathered from hiring contracts and other records, the trade involved people of many different occupations, including porters, guides, donkey drivers, agents, traders, bakers and bankers. Because of the extensive cuneiform records known from the period, details of the trade are relatively well-known. It has been estimated that just in the period 1950–1836 BC, twenty-five tons of Anatolian silver was transported to Assur, and that approximately one hundred tons of tin and 100,000 textiles were transported to Anatolia in return. The Assyrians also sold livestock, processed goods and reed products. In many cases, the materials sold by Assyrian colonists came from far-away places; the textiles sold by Assyrians in Anatolia were imported from southern Mesopotamia and the tin came from the east in the Zagros Mountains.
After international trade declined in the 19th century BC, the Assyrian economy became increasingly oriented towards the state. In the Neo-Assyrian period, the wealth generated through private investments was dwarfed by the wealth of the state, which was by far the largest employer in the empire and had a monopoly on agriculture, manufacturing and exploitation of minerals. The imperial economy advantaged mainly the elite, since it was structured in a way that ensured that surplus wealth flowed to the government and was then used for the maintenance of the state throughout the empire. Though all means of production were owned by the state, there also continued to be a vibrant private economic sector within the empire, with property rights of individuals ensured by the government.
Personal identity and continuity
Ethnicity and culture are largely based in self-perception and self-designation. A distinct Assyrian identity seems to have formed already in the Old Assyrian period, when distinctly Assyrian burial practices, foods and dress codes are attested and Assyrian documents appear to consider the inhabitants of Assur to be a distinct cultural group. A wider Assyrian identity appears to have spread across northern Mesopotamia under the Middle Assyrian Empire, since later writings concerning the reconquests of the early Neo-Assyrian kings refer to some of their wars as liberating the Assyrian people of the cities they reconquered.
Surviving evidence suggests that the ancient Assyrians had a relatively open definition of what it meant to be Assyrian. Modern ideas such as a person's ethnic background, or the Roman idea of legal citizenship, do not appear to have been reflected in ancient Assyria. Although Assyrian accounts and artwork of warfare frequently describe and depict foreign enemies, they are not depicted with different physical features, but rather with different clothing and equipment. Assyrian accounts describe enemies as barbaric only in terms of their behavior, as lacking correct religious practices, and as doing wrongdoings against Assyria. All things considered, there does not appear to have been any well-developed concepts of ethnicity or race in ancient Assyria. What mattered for a person to be seen by others as Assyrian was mainly fulfillment of obligations (such as military service), being affiliated with the Assyrian Empire politically and maintaining loyalty to the Assyrian king. One of the inscriptions that attest to this view, as well as royal Assyrian policies enacted to encourage assimilation and cultural mixture, is Sargon II's account of the construction of Dur-Sharrukin. One of the passages of the inscription reads:
Although the text clearly differentiates the new settlers from those that had been "born Assyrians", the aim of Sargon's policy was also clearly to transform the new settlers into Assyrians through appointing supervisors and guides to teach them. Though the expansion of the Assyrian Empire, in combination with resettlements and deportations, changed the ethno-cultural make-up of the Assyrian heartland, there is no evidence to suggest that the more ancient Assyrian inhabitants of the land ever disappeared or became restricted to a small elite, nor that the ethnic and cultural identity of the new settlers was anything other than "Assyrian" after one or two generations.
Though the use of the term "Assyrian" by the modern Assyrian people has historically been the target of misunderstanding and controversy, both politically and academically, Assyrian continuity is generally scholarly accepted based on both historical and genetic evidence in the sense that the modern Assyrians are regarded to be descendants of the population of the ancient Assyrian Empire. Though the ancient Akkadian language and cuneiform script did not survive for long in Assyria after the empire was destroyed in 609 BC, Assyrian culture clearly did; the old Assyrian religion continued to be practised at Assur until the 3rd century AD, and at other sites for centuries thereafter, gradually losing ground to Christianity. At Mardin, believers in the old religion are known from as late as the 18th century. Individuals with names harkening back to ancient Mesopotamia are also attested at Assur until it was sacked for the last time in AD 240 and at other sites as late as the 13th century. Though many foreign states ruled over Assyria in the millennia following the empire's fall, there is no evidence of any large scale influx of immigrants that replaced the original population, which instead continued to make up a significant portion of the region's people until the Mongol and Timurid massacres in the late 14th century.
In pre-modern Syriac-language (the type of Aramaic used in Christian Mesopotamian writings) sources, the typical self-designations used are ʾārāmāyā ("Aramean") and suryāyā, with the term ʾāthorāyā ("Assyrian") rarely being used as a self-designation. The terms Assyria (ʾāthor) and Assyrian (ʾāthorāyā) were however used in several senses in pre-modern times; most notably being used for the ancient Assyrians and for the land surrounding Nineveh (and for the city of Mosul, built next to Nineveh's ruins). In Syriac translations of the Bible, the term ʾāthor is also used to refer to the ancient Assyrian Empire. In the sense of a citizen of Mosul, the designation ʾāthorāyā were used for some individuals in the pre-modern period. The reluctance of Christians to use ʾāthorāyā as a self-designation could perhaps be explained by the Assyrians described in the Bible being prominent enemies of Israel; the term ʾāthorāyā was sometimes employed in Syriac writings as a term for enemies of Christians. In this context, the term was sometimes applied to the Persians of the Sasanian Empire; the 4th-century Syriac writer Ephrem the Syrian for instance referred to the Sasanian Empire as "filthy ʾāthor, mother of corruption". In a similar fashion, the term was also sometimes applied to the later Muslim rulers.
The self-designation suryāyā, suryāyē or sūrōyē, sometimes translated as "Syrian", is not technically a different identity than "Assyrian" since it is derived from the Akkadian term assūrāyu ("Assyrian"), which was sometimes even in ancient times rendered in the shorter form sūrāyu. Some medieval Syriac Christian documents used āsūrāyē and sūrāyē, rather than āthōrāyē, also for the ancient Assyrians. The connection between assūrāyu and suryāyā is also made in medieval and modern Armenian sources, which consistently referred to Syriac-speaking Christians as Asori.
Despite the complex issue of self-designations, pre-modern Syriac-language sources at times identified positively with the ancient Assyrians and drew connections between the ancient empire and themselves. Most prominently, ancient Assyrian kings and figures long appeared in local folklore and literary tradition and claims of descent from ancient Assyrian royalty were forwarded both for figures in folklore and by actual living high-ranking members of society in northern Mesopotamia. Visits by missionaries from various western churches to the Assyrian heartland in the 18th century likely contributed to the Assyrian people more strongly relating their self-designation and identity to ancient Assyria; in the context of interactions with westerners who connected them to the ancient Assyrians, and due to an increasing number of atrocities and massacres directed against them, the Assyrian people experienced a cultural "awakening" or "renaissance" towards the end of the 19th century, which led to the development of a national ideology more strongly rooted in their descent from ancient Assyria and a re-adoption of self-designations such as ʾāthorāyā and ʾāsurāyā.
Culture
Languages
Akkadian
The ancient Assyrians primarily spoke and wrote the Assyrian language, a Semitic language (i.e. related to modern Hebrew and Arabic) closely related to Babylonian, spoken in southern Mesopotamia. Both Assyrian and Babylonian are generally regarded by modern scholars to be dialects of the Akkadian language. This is a modern convention since contemporary ancient authors considered Assyrian and Babylonian to be two separate languages; only Babylonian was referred to as akkadûm, with Assyrian being referred to as aššurû or aššurāyu. Though both were written with cuneiform script, the signs look quite different and can be distinguished relatively easily. Given the vast timespan covered by ancient Assyria, the Assyrian language developed and evolved over time. Modern scholars broadly categorize it into three different periods, roughly (though far from precisely) corresponding to the periods used to divide Assyrian history: the Old Assyrian language (2000–1500 BC), Middle Assyrian language (1500–1000 BC) and Neo-Assyrian language (1000–500 BC). Because the record of Assyrian tablets and documents is still somewhat spotty, many of the stages of the language remain poorly known and documented.
The signs used in Old Assyrian texts are for the most part less complex than those used during the succeeding Middle and Neo-Assyrian periods and they were fewer in number, amounting to no more than 150–200 unique signs, most of which were syllabic signs (representing syllables). Due to the limited number of signs used, Old Assyrian is relatively easier to decipher for modern researchers than later forms of the language, though the limited number of signs also means that there are in cases several possible alternative phonetic values and readings. This means that while it is easy to decipher the signs, many researchers remain uncomfortable with the language itself. Though it was a more archaic variant of the later Assyrian language, Old Assyrian also contains several words that are not attested in later periods, some being peculiar early forms of words and others being names for commercial terms or various textile and food products from Anatolia.
In the Middle and Neo-Assyrian empires, the later versions of the Assyrian language were not the only versions of Akkadian used. Though Assyrian was typically used in letters, legal documents, administrative documents, and as a vernacular, Standard Babylonian was also used in an official capacity. Standard Babylonian was a highly codified version of ancient Babylonian, as used around 1500 BC, and was used as a language of high culture, for nearly all scholarly documents, literature, poetry and royal inscriptions. The culture of the Assyrian elite was strongly influenced by Babylonia in the south; in a vein similar to how Greek civilization was respected in, and influenced, ancient Rome, the Assyrians had much respect for Babylon and its ancient culture.
Because of the multilingual nature of the vast empire, many loan words are attested as entering the Assyrian language during the Neo-Assyrian period. The number of surviving documents written in cuneiform grow considerably fewer in the late reign of Ashurbanipal, which suggests that the language was declining since it is probably attributable to an increased use of Aramaic, often written on perishable materials like leather scrolls or papyrus. The ancient Assyrian language did not disappear completely until around the end of the 6th century BC, well into the subsequent post-imperial period.
Aramaic and other languages
Because the Assyrians never imposed their language on foreign peoples whose lands they conquered outside of the Assyrian heartland, there were no mechanisms in place to stop the spread of languages other than Akkadian. Beginning with the migrations of Arameans into Assyrian territory during the Middle Assyrian period, this lack of linguistic policies facilitated the spread of the Aramaic language. As the most widely spoken and mutually understandable of the Semitic languages (the language group containing many of the languages spoken through the empire), Aramaic grew in importance throughout the Neo-Assyrian period and increasingly replaced the Neo-Assyrian language even within the Assyrian heartland itself. From the 9th century BC onwards, Aramaic became the de facto lingua franca of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, with Neo-Assyrian and other forms of Akkadian becoming relegated to a language of the political elite.
From the time of Shalmaneser III, in the 9th century BC, Aramaic was used in state-related contexts alongside Akkadian and by the time of Tiglath-Pileser III, the kings employed both Akkadian and Aramaic-language royal scribes, confirming the rise of Aramaic to a position of an official language used by the imperial administration. During the time after the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the old Assyrian language was completely abandoned in Mesopotamia in favor of Aramaic. By 500 BC, Akkadian was probably no longer a spoken language.
Modern Assyrian people refer to their language as "Assyrian" (Sūrayt or Sūreth). Though it has little in common with the Assyrian dialect of the Akkadian language, it is a modern version of the ancient Mesopotamian Aramaic. The language retains some influence of ancient Akkadian, particularly in the form of loanwords. Modern Assyrian varieties of Aramaic are often referred to by scholars as Neo-Aramaic or Neo-Syriac. As a liturgical language, many Assyrians also speak Syriac, a codified version of classical Aramaic as spoken at Edessa during the Christianization of Assyria.
Another language sometimes used in ancient Assyria as a language of scholarship and culture, though only in written form, was the ancient Sumerian language. At the height of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, various other local languages were also spoken within the imperial borders, though none achieved the same level of official recognition as Aramaic.
Architecture
There are three surviving forms of primary evidence for the architecture of ancient Assyria. The most important form is the surviving buildings themselves, found through archaeological excavations, but important evidence can also be gathered from both contemporary documentation, such as letters and administrative documents that describe buildings that might not have been preserved, as well as documentation by later kings concerning the building works of previous kings. Assyrian buildings and construction works were almost always constructed out of mudbrick. Limestone was also used, though primarily only in works such as aqueducts and river walls, exposed to running water, and defensive fortifications.
In order to support large buildings, they were often built on top of foundation platforms or on mud brick foundations. Floors were typically made of rammed earth, covered in important rooms with carpets or reed mats. Floors in locations that were exposed to the elements, such as outside on terraces or in courtyards, were paved with stone slabs or backed bricks. Roofs, particularly in larger rooms, were supported through the use of wooden beams.
The ancient Assyrians accomplished several technologically complex construction projects, including constructions of whole new capital cities, which indicates sophisticated technical knowledge. Though in large part following previous Mesopotamian architecture, there are several characteristic features of ancient Assyrian architecture. Some examples of features of ancient Assyrian architecture include stepped merlons, vaulted roofs, and palaces to a large degree often being made up of sets of self-contained suites.
Art
A relatively large number of statues and figurines have been recovered from the ruins of temples in Assur dating to the Early Assyrian period. Most of the surviving artwork from this time was clearly influenced by the artwork of foreign powers. For instance, a set of 87 alabaster figures of male and female worshippers from Assur before the rise of the Akkadian Empire greatly resembles Early Dynastic Sumerian figures. Because of variation in artwork elsewhere, the artwork of early Assur was also highly variable depending on the time period, ranging from highly stylized to highly naturalistic. Among the most unique finds from the Early period is the head of a female figure, of which the eyes, eyebrows and elaborate hair covering were originally inlaid. This head is typical of the art style of the Akkadian period, with an overall naturalistic style, smooth and soft curves and a full mouth. Another unique art piece from the early period is an ivory figurine of a nude woman, and fragments of at least five additional similar figurines. The ivory used might have come from Indian elephants, which would indicate trade between early Assur and the early tribes and states of Iran. Among other artwork known from the early period are a handful of large stone statues of rulers (governors and foreign kings), figures of animals and stone statues of naked women.
The artwork known from the Old Assyrian period, other than a few objects such as a partial stone statue perhaps depicting Erishum I, is largely limited to seals and impressions of seals on cuneiform documents. Royal seals from the Puzur-Ashur dynasty of kings, prior to the rise of Shamshi-Adad I, are very similar to the seals of the kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur. In the Middle Assyrian period, from Ashur-uballit I onwards, seals looked quite different and appear to emphasize royal power, rather than the theological and cosmic sources of the king's right to rule. Among non-royal seals of the Middle Assyrian period a wide assortment of different motifs are known, including both religious scenes and peaceful scenes of animals and trees. From the time of Tukulti-Ninurta I onwards, seals also sometimes featured contests and struggles between humans, various animals, and mythological creatures.
Several other new artistic innovations were also made in the Middle Assyrian period. In the temple dedicated to Ishtar in Assur, four cult pedestals (or "altars") from the time of Tukulti-Ninurta I have been discovered. These altars were decorated with various motifs, common inclusions being the king (sometimes multiple times) and protective divine figures and standards. One of the pedestals preserves along the lower step of its base a relief image which is the earliest known narrative image in Assyrian art history. This relief, which is not very well-preserved, appears to depict rows of prisoners before the Assyrian king. The earliest known Assyrian wall paintings are also from the time of Tukulti-Ninurta I, from his palace in Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta. Motifs included plant-based patterns (rosettes and palmettes), trees and bird-headed genies. The colors used to paint the walls included black, red, blue and white. An unusual limestone statue of a nude female figure is known from Nineveh from the time of Ashur-bel-kala (1074–1056 BC). An entirely new type of monument introduced in the 11th century BC were obelisks; four-sided stone stelae decorated all around with both pictures and text. Obelisks saw continued usage until at least the 9th century BC.
Compared to other periods, a larger amount of artwork survives from the Neo-Assyrian period, particularly monumental art made under the patronage of the kings. The most well-known form of Neo-Assyrian monumental art are wall reliefs, carved stone artwork that lined the internal and external walls of temples and palaces. Another well-known form of Neo-Assyrian art are colossi, often human-headed lions or bulls (lamassu), that were placed at the gates of temples, palaces and cities. The earliest known examples of both wall reliefs and colossi are from the reign of Ashurnasirpal II, who might have been inspired by the Hittite monumental art that he saw on his campaigns to the Mediterranean. Wall paintings like those made under Tukulti-Ninurta I in the Middle Assyrian period also continued to be used, sometimes to supplement wall reliefs and sometimes instead of them. Interior walls could be decorated by covering the mudbrick used in construction with painted mud plaster and exterior walls were at times decorated with glazed and painted tiles or bricks. The most extensive known surviving sets of wall reliefs are from the reign of Sennacherib. In terms of Neo-Assyrian artwork, modern scholars have paid particular attention to the reliefs produced under Ashurbanipal, which have been described as possessing a distinct "epic quality" unlike the art under his predecessors.
Scholarship and literature
Ancient Assyrian literature drew heavily on Babylonian literary traditions. Both the Old and Middle Assyrian periods are limited in terms of surviving literary texts. The most important surviving Old Assyrian literary work is Sargon, Lord of Lies, a text found in a well-preserved version on a cuneiform tablet from Kültepe. Once thought to have been a parody, the tale is a first-person narrative of the reign of Sargon of Akkad, the founder of the Akkadian Empire. The text follows Sargon as he gains strength from the god Adad, swears by Ishtar, the "lady of combat", and speaks with the gods. Surviving Middle Assyrian literature is only slightly more diverse. A distinct Assyrian scholarship tradition, though still drawing on Babylonian tradition, is conventionally placed as beginning around the time of the beginning of the Middle Assyrian period. The rising status of scholarship at this time might be connected to the kings beginning to regard amassing knowledge as a way to strengthen their power. Known Middle Assyrian works include the Tukulti-Ninurta Epic (a narrative of the reign of Tukulti-Ninurta I and his exploits), fragments of other royal epics, The Hunter (a short martial poem) and some royal hymns.
The clear majority of surviving ancient Assyrian literature is from the Neo-Assyrian period. The kings of the Neo-Assyrian Empire began to see preserving knowledge as one of their responsibilities, and not (as previous kings had) a responsibility of private individuals and temples. This development might have originated with the kings no longer viewing the divination performed by their diviners as enough and wished to have access to the relevant texts themselves. The office of chief scholar is first attested in the reign of the Neo-Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta II.
Most of the surviving ancient Assyrian literature comes from the Neo-Assyrian Library of Ashurbanipal, which included more than 30,000 documents. Libraries were built in the Neo-Assyrian period to preserve knowledge of the past and maintain scribal culture. Neo-Assyrian texts fall into a wide array of genres, including divinatory texts, divination reports, treatments for the sick (either medical or magical), ritual texts, incantations, prayers and hymns, school texts and literary texts. An innovation of the Neo-Assyrian period were the annals, a genre of texts recording the events of the reigns of a king, particularly military exploits. Annals were disseminated throughout the empire and probably served propagandistic purposes, supporting the legitimacy of the king's rule. Various purely literary works, previously aligned by scholars with propaganda, are known from the Neo-Assyrian period. Such works include, among others, the Underworld Vision of an Assyrian Crown Prince, the Sin of Sargon and the Marduk Ordeal. In addition to their own works, the Assyrians also copied and preserved earlier Mesopotamian literature. The inclusion of texts such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Enûma Eliš (the Babylonian creation myth), Erra, the Myth of Etana and the Epic of Anzu in the Library of Ashurbanipal is the primary reason for how such texts have survived to the present day.
Religion
Ancient Assyrian religion
Knowledge of the ancient polytheistic Assyrian religion, referred to as "Ashurism" by some modern Assyrians, is mostly limited to state cults; little can be ascertained of the personal religious beliefs and practices of the common people of ancient Assyria. The Assyrians worshipped the same pantheon of gods as the Babylonians in southern Mesopotamia. The chief Assyrian deity was the national deity Ashur. Though the deity and the ancient capital city are commonly distinguished by modern historians through calling the god Ashur and the city Assur, both were inscribed in the exact same way in ancient times (Aššur). In documents from the preceding Old Assyrian period, the city and god are often not clearly differentiated, which suggests that Ashur originated sometime in the Early Assyrian period as a deified personification of the city itself. Below Ashur, the other Mesopotamian deities were organized in a hierarchy, with each having their own assigned roles (the sun-god Shamash was for instance regarded as a god of justice and Ishtar was seen as a goddess of love and war) and their own primary seats of worship (Ninurta was for instance primarily worshipped at Nimrud and Ishtar primarily at Arbela). Quintessentially Babylonian deities like Enlil, Marduk and Nabu were worshipped in Assyria just as much as in Babylonia, and several traditionally Babylonian rituals, such as the akitu festival, were borrowed in the north.
Ashur's role as the chief deity was flexible and changed with the changing culture and politics of the Assyrians themselves. In the Old Assyrian period, Ashur was mainly regarded as a god of death and revival, related to agriculture. Under the Middle and Neo-Assyrian Empire, Ashur's role was expanded and thoroughly altered. Possibly originating as a reaction to the period of suzerainty under the Mittani kingdom, Middle Assyrian theology presented Ashur as a god of war, who bestowed the Assyrian kings not only with divine legitimacy, something retained from the Old Assyrian period, but also commanded the kings to enlarge Assyria ("the land of Ashur") with Ashur's "just scepter", i.e. expand the Assyrian Empire through military conquest. This militarization of Ashur might also have derived from the Amorite conqueror Shamshi-Adad I equating Ashur with the southern Enlil during his rule over northern Mesopotamia in the 18th and 17th centuries BC. In the Middle Assyrian period, Ashur is attested with the title "king of the gods", a role previous civilizations in both northern and southern Mesopotamia ascribed to Enlil. The development of equating Ashur with Enlil, or at least transferring Enlil's role to Ashur, was paralleled in Babylon, where the previously unimportant local god Marduk was elevated in the reign of Hammurabi (18th century BC) to the head of the pantheon, modelled after Enlil.
Assyrian religion was centered in temples, monumental structures that included a central shrine which housed the cult statue of the temple's god, and several subordinate chapels with space for statues of other deities. Temples were typically self-contained communities; they had their own economic resources, chiefly in the form of land holdings, and their own hierarchically organized personnel. In later times, temples became increasingly dependent on royal benefits, in the shape of specific taxes, offerings and donations of booty and tribute. The head of a temple was titled as the "chief administrator" and was responsible to the Assyrian king since the king was regarded to be Ashur's representative in the mortal world. Records from temples showcase that divination in the form of astrology and extispicy (studying the entrails of dead animals) were important parts of the Assyrian religion since they were believed to be means through which deities communicated with the mortal world.
Unlike many other ancient empires, the Neo-Assyrian Empire did at its height not impose its culture and religion on conquered regions; there were no significant temples built for Ashur outside of northern Mesopotamia. In the post-imperial period, after the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Assyrians continued to venerate Ashur and the rest of the pantheon, though without the Assyrian state, religious beliefs in many parts of the Assyrian heartland diverged and developed in different directions. From the time of Seleucid rule over the region (4th to 2nd century BC) onwards, there was a strong influence of the ancient Greek religion, with many Greek deities becoming syncretized with Mesopotamian deities. There was also some influence of Judaism, given that the kings of Adiabene, a vassal kingdom covering much of the old Assyrian heartland, converted to Judaism in the 1st century AD. In the 1st century BC onwards, as a frontier region between the Roman and the Parthian empires, Assyria was likely highly religiously complex and diverse. Under Parthian rule, both old and new gods were worshipped at Assur. As late as the time of the city's second destruction in the 3rd century AD, the most important deity was still Ashur, known during this time as Assor or Asor. Worship of Ashur during this time was carried out in the same way as it had been in ancient times, per a cultic calendar effectively identical to that used under the Neo-Assyrian Empire 800 years prior. The ancient Mesopotamian religion persisted in some places for centuries after the end of the post-imperial period, such as at Harran until at least the 10th century and at Mardin until as late as the 18th century.
Christianity
The Church of the East developed early in Christian history. Though tradition holds that Christianity was first spread to Mesopotamia by Thomas the Apostle, the exact timespan when the Assyrians were first Christianized is unknown. The city of Arbela was an important early Christian center; according to the later Chronicle of Arbela, Arbela became the seat of a bishop already in AD 100, but the reliability of this document is questioned among scholars. It is however known that both Arbela and Kirkuk later served as important Christian centers in the Sasanian and later Islamic periods. According to some traditions, Christianity took hold in Assyria when Saint Thaddeus of Edessa converted King Abgar V of Osroene in the mid-1st century AD. From the 3rd century AD onwards, it is clear that Christianity was becoming the major religion of the region, with the Christian god replacing the old Mesopotamian deities. Assyrians had by this time already intellectually contributed to Christian thought; in the 1st century AD, the Christian Assyrian writer Tatian composed the influential Diatessaron, a synoptic rendition of the gospels.
Though Christianity is today an intrinsic part of Assyrian identity, Assyrian Christians have over the centuries splintered into a number of different Christian denominations. Though the prominent Assyrian Church of the East, the followers of which have often been termed "Nestorians", continues to exist, other prominent eastern churches include the Chaldean Catholic Church, which split off in the 16th century, the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Syriac Catholic Church, and the Ancient Church of the East, which branched off from the Assyrian Church of the East in 1968.
Though these churches have been distinct for centuries, they still follow much of the same liturgical, spiritual and theological foundation. There are also Assyrian followers of various denominations of Protestantism, chiefly due to missions by American missionaries of the Presbyterian Church.
Because the Assyrian Church of the East remains dismissed as "Nestorian" and heretical by many other branches of Christianity, it has not been admitted into the Middle East Council of Churches and it does not take part in the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. This does not mean that efforts to approach ecumenism have not been undertaken. In 1994, Pope John Paul II and Patriarch Dinkha IV signed the Common Christological Declaration Between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East, with some further efforts also having been made in the years since. Historically, the main obstacle in the way of ecumenism has been the ancient text Liturgy of Addai and Mari, used in the Assyrian churches, wherein the anaphora does not contain the Words of Institution, seen as indispensable by the Catholic Church. This obstacle was removed in 2001, when the Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith determined that the text could be considered valid in Catholicism as well, despite the absence of the words. Some efforts have also been made to approach reunification of the Assyrian and Chaldean churches. In 1996, Dinkha IV and Patriarch Raphael I Bidawid of the Chaldean Church signed a list of common proposals to move towards unity, approved by synods of both churches in 1997.
See also
Ancient Near East
Chronology of the ancient Near East
History of Mesopotamia
Geography of Mesopotamia
Music of Mesopotamia
List of Mesopotamian dynasties
Beth Nahrain
Beth Garmai
History of the Middle East
History of Iraq
Assyrian nationalism
List of Assyrian settlements
List of Assyrian tribes
Assyrian cuisine
Notes
References
Bibliography
Web sources
Ancient Levant
Ancient Mesopotamia
Ancient Near East
Bronze Age countries in Asia
Iron Age countries in Asia
9th century BC
8th century BC
7th century BC
States and territories established in the 3rd millennium BC
States and territories disestablished in the 7th century BC
7th-century BC disestablishments
Eastern Mediterranean |
2086 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abijah | Abijah | Abijah ( Aviyyah) is a Biblical Hebrew unisex name which means "my Father is Yah". The Hebrew form Aviyahu also occurs in the Bible.
Old Testament characters
Women
Abijah, who married King Ahaz of Judah. She is also called Abi. Her father's name was Zechariah; she was the mother of King Hezekiah
A wife of Hezron, one of the grandchildren of Judah
Men
Abijah of Judah, also known as Abijam (אבים, Abiyam, "My Father is Yam [Sea]"), who was son of Rehoboam and succeeded him on the throne of Judah
A son of Becher, the son of Benjamin
The second son of Samuel. His conduct, along with that of his brother, as a judge in Beersheba, to which office his father had appointed him, led to popular discontent, and ultimately provoked the people to demand a monarchy.
A descendant of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, a chief of the eighth of the twenty-four orders into which the priesthood was divided by David and an ancestor of Zechariah, the priest who was the father of John the Baptist. The order of Abijah is listed with the priests and Levites who returned with Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and with Joshua.
A son of Jeroboam, the first king of Israel. On account of his severe illness when a youth, his father sent his wife to consult the prophet Ahijah regarding his recovery. The prophet, though blind with old age, knew the wife of Jeroboam as soon as she approached, and under a divine impulse he announced to her that inasmuch as in Abijah alone of all the house of Jeroboam there was found "some good thing toward the Lord", he only would come to his grave in peace. As his mother crossed the threshold of the door on her return, the youth died, and "all Israel mourned for him". According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, the good that he did "Rabbinical Literature:The passage, I Kings, xiv. 13, in which there is a reference to "some good thing [found in him] toward the Lord God of Israel," is interpreted as an allusion to Abijah's courageous and pious act in removing the sentinels placed by his father on the frontier between Israel and Judah to prevent pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Some assert that he himself undertook a pilgrimage."
This name (possibly) appeared on the Gezer Calendar, a Paleo-Hebrew inscription dating to the 9th or 10th Century BC, making it one of the earliest if not the earliest Yahwistic theophoric names outside the Bible.
Russian name
The variant used in the Russian language is "" (Aviya), with "" or "" (Abiya), being older forms. Included into various, often handwritten, church calendars throughout the 17th–19th centuries, it was omitted from the official Synodal Menologium at the end of the 19th century. In 1924–1930, the name (as "", a form of "Abiya") was included into various Soviet calendars, which included the new and often artificially created names promoting the new Soviet realities and encouraging the break with the tradition of using the names in the Synodal Menologia. In Russian it is only used as a female name. Diminutives of this name include "" (Ava) and "" (Viya).
References
Notes
Sources
Н. А. Петровский (N. A. Petrovsky). "Словарь русских личных имён" (Dictionary of Russian First Names). ООО Издательство "АСТ". Москва, 2005.
А. В. Суперанская (A. V. Superanskaya). "Словарь русских имён" (Dictionary of Russian Names). Издательство Эксмо. Москва, 2005.
Feminine given names
Masculine given names
8th-century BC women
Set indices on Hebrew Bible people
Women in the Hebrew Bible
Samuel |
2087 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ark | Ark | Ark may refer to:
Biblical narratives and religion
Hebrew word teva
Noah's Ark, a massive vessel said to have been built to save the world's animals from a flood
Ark of bulrushes, the boat of the infant Moses
Hebrew aron
Ark of the Covenant, container for the tablets of the Ten Commandments
Torah ark, a cabinet used to store a synagogue's Torah scrolls
Businesses and organizations
Ark (charity), UK
Ark (toy company), a former company
Ark Invest, American asset management firm
ARK Music Factory, a record label, Los Angeles, California, US
The Ark, a weekly newspaper in Tiburon, California
Media, arts and entertainment
Fiction
Works of fiction
Ark (2005 film), a 2005 animated science fiction film directed by Subro Adonis
Ark (novel), a 2009 novel by Stephen Baxter
Ark (web series), a 2010 science fiction series by Trey Stokes
Ark (1970 film), a 1970 apocalyptic short film directed by Rolf Forsberg
ARK (1996), a book of poetry by Ronald Johnson
The Ark (Doctor Who), a 1966 Doctor Who serial
The Ark (film), a BBC TV film
"The Ark" (Stargate Atlantis), an episode of Stargate Atlantis
Ark II, a children's science fiction television series
Ark: Survival Evolved, a 2017 video game
Fictional story elements
Ark (Gravitation), character in Gravitation
Ark (Noon Universe), a planet
Ark (Transformers), a spacecraft
The Ark (Halo), control station
ARK, space colony in video games Sonic Adventure 2 and Shadow the Hedgehog
Ark, character in video game Terranigma
The Ark, space stations housing humanity in The 100 (TV series)
The Ark, a floating city and the main setting of the game Brink
Music
Bands
Ark (Bangladeshi band), a Bangladeshi rock band
Ark (British band), a melodic rock band
Ark (Norwegian band), a progressive metal band
The Ark (Swedish band), a Swedish glam-rock band
Albums
Ark (Brendan Perry album), 2010, by Brendan Perry
Ark (In Hearts Wake album), 2017, by In Hearts Wake
Ark (L'Arc-en-Ciel album), 1999, by Japanese rock band L'Arc-en-Ciel
Ark (The Animals album), 1983, by The Original Animals
Ark (We Are the Ocean album), 2015, by We Are the Ocean
The Ark (album), 1991 album by Frank Zappa
The Ark (EP), 1996, by Swedish band The Ark
Here Comes the Indian, 2003 album by Animal Collective, reissued in 2020 as Ark
Songs
"The Ark", 2008, by Dr. Dog from Fate
Poetry
"Ark", 2019 poem by Simon Armitage to commemorate launch of RRS Sir David Attenborough
Video Games
Ark: Survival Evolved, a 2017 action adventure survival video game
Places
Buildings
The Ark (Duke University), a dance studio
Ark Encounter, a creationist theme park, Kentucky, US
The Ark (folk venue), Ann Arbor, Michigan, US
The Ark (fortress), Bukhara, Uzbekistan
The Ark, London, an office block in Hammersmith, London, UK
The Ark (Prince Edward Island), a bioshelter in Canada
Inhabited places
Ark., an alternative abbreviation for Arkansas, United States
Ark, Iran (disambiguation)
Ark, Missouri, a ghost town in the United States
Ark, Virginia, in Gloucester County, Virginia, United States
Other places
The Ark (Antarctica), a rock summit in Antarctica
Transportation
Ark (river boat), a temporary boat used in river transport in eastern North America
, a prestigious ship name in the British Royal Navy, often the name of the Fleet Flagship, has been given to five ships
The Ark (ship), a ship used in founding the Province of Maryland
The Ark, a ship used as a Scottish Marine Station, now the basis of the University Marine Biological Station Millport
The Ark, an unfinished sculpture in the form of a functional ship created by artist Kea Tawana between 1982 and 1988 in Newark, New Jersey
Interstellar ark, a conceptual multi-lifetime space vehicle
Technology
ARK (Archival Resource Key), a type of URL that serves as a persistent identifier for scientific and cultural objects
, a software distribution founded by Bernhard Rosenkränzer
Ark (search engine), a people search engine
Ark (software), an archiving tool
Hongmeng OS, an Android-compatible mobile operating system by Huawei
Other uses
Ark Prize of the Free Word, a literary prize
See also
Chicken ark, a mobile shelter for domestic chickens
Knowledge ark, a collection of knowledge preserved in such a way that future generations would have access to said knowledge if current means of access were lost
Arc (disambiguation)
Arch (disambiguation)
ARK (disambiguation)
Arkana (disambiguation)
ARRC (disambiguation)
ARC (disambiguation) |
2088 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphasia | Aphasia | Aphasia is an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions. The major causes are stroke or head trauma. Aphasia can also be the result of brain tumors, brain infections, or neurodegenerative diseases, but the latter are far less prevalent.
To be diagnosed with aphasia, a person's speech or language must be significantly impaired in one (or more) of the four aspects of communication following acquired brain injury. Alternately, in the case of progressive aphasia, it must have significantly declined over a short period of time. The four aspects of communication are auditory comprehension, verbal expression, reading and writing, and functional communication.
The difficulties of people with aphasia can range from occasional trouble finding words, to losing the ability to speak, read, or write; intelligence, however, is unaffected. Expressive language and receptive language can both be affected as well. Aphasia also affects visual language such as sign language. In contrast, the use of formulaic expressions in everyday communication is often preserved. For example, while a person with aphasia, particularly expressive aphasia (Broca's aphasia), may not be able to ask a loved one when their birthday is, they may still be able to sing "Happy Birthday". One prevalent deficit in the aphasias is anomia, which is a difficulty in finding the correct word.
With aphasia, one or more modes of communication in the brain have been damaged and are therefore functioning incorrectly. Aphasia is not caused by damage to the brain that results in motor or sensory deficits, which produces abnormal speech; that is, aphasia is not related to the mechanics of speech but rather the individual's language cognition (although a person can have both problems, particularly if they suffered a hemorrhage that damaged a large area of the brain). An individual's "language" is the socially shared set of rules, as well as the thought processes that go behind verbalized speech. It is not a result of a more peripheral motor or sensory difficulty, such as paralysis affecting the speech muscles or a general hearing impairment.
Aphasia affects about 2 million people in the US and 250,000 people in Great Britain. Nearly 180,000 people acquire the disorder every year in the US alone. Any person of any age can develop aphasia, given that it is often caused by a traumatic injury. However, people who are middle aged and older are the most likely to acquire aphasia, as the other etiologies are more likely at older ages.; for example, approximately 75% of all strokes occur in individuals over the age of 65. Strokes account for most documented cases of aphasia: 25% to 40% of people who survive a stroke develop aphasia as a result of damage to the language-processing regions of the brain.
Aphasia and dysphasia
Technically, dysphasia means impaired language and aphasia means lack of language. There have been calls to use the term 'aphasia' regardless of severity. Reasons for doing so include dysphasia being easily confused with the swallowing disorder dysphagia, consumers and speech pathologists preferring the term aphasia, and many languages other than English using a word similar to aphasia. It would appear that the term "aphasia" is more commonly encountered in North America, while "dysphasia" is more frequently found in British literature.
Signs and symptoms
People with aphasia may experience any of the following behaviors due to an acquired brain injury, although some of these symptoms may be due to related or concomitant problems, such as dysarthria or apraxia, and not primarily due to aphasia. Aphasia symptoms can vary based on the location of damage in the brain. Signs and symptoms may or may not be present in individuals with aphasia and may vary in severity and level of disruption to communication. Often those with aphasia will try to hide their inability to name objects by using words like thing. So when asked to name a pencil they may say it is a thing used to write.
Inability to comprehend language
Inability to pronounce, not due to muscle paralysis or weakness
Inability to speak spontaneously
Inability to form words
Inability to name objects (anomia)
Poor enunciation
Excessive creation and use of personal neologisms
Inability to repeat a phrase
Persistent repetition of one syllable, word, or phrase (stereotypies, recurrent/recurring utterances/speech automatism)
Paraphasia (substituting letters, syllables or words)
Agrammatism (inability to speak in a grammatically correct fashion)
Dysprosody (alterations in inflection, stress, and rhythm)
Incomplete sentences
Inability to read
Inability to write
Limited verbal output
Difficulty in naming
Speech disorder
Speaking gibberish
Inability to follow or understand simple requests
Related behaviors
Given the previously stated signs and symptoms, the following behaviors are often seen in people with aphasia as a result of attempted compensation for incurred speech and language deficits:
Self-repairs: Further disruptions in fluent speech as a result of mis-attempts to repair erred speech production.
Speech disfluencies: Include previously mentioned disfluencies including repetitions and prolongations at the phonemic, syllable and word level presenting in pathological/severe levels of frequency.
Struggle in non-fluent aphasias: A severe increase in expelled effort to speak after a life where talking and communicating was an ability that came so easily can cause visible frustration.
Preserved and automatic language: A behavior in which some language or language sequences that were used so frequently prior to onset are still produced with more ease than other language post onset.
Poor eyesight (Oral Dysmorphia): Usually characterized by tingling in the arms and legs, and sometimes heart disorders.
Subcortical
Subcortical aphasias characteristics and symptoms depend upon the site and size of subcortical lesion. Possible sites of lesions include the thalamus, internal capsule, and basal ganglia.
Causes
Aphasia is most often caused by stroke, where about a quarter of patients who experience an acute stroke develop aphasia. However, any disease or damage to the parts of the brain that control language can cause aphasia. Some of these can include brain tumors, traumatic brain injury, and progressive neurological disorders. In rare cases, aphasia may also result from herpesviral encephalitis. The herpes simplex virus affects the frontal and temporal lobes, subcortical structures, and the hippocampal tissue, which can trigger aphasia. In acute disorders, such as head injury or stroke, aphasia usually develops quickly. When caused by brain tumor, infection, or dementia, it develops more slowly.
Substantial damage to tissue anywhere within the region shown in blue (on the figure in the infobox above) can potentially result in aphasia. Aphasia can also sometimes be caused by damage to subcortical structures deep within the left hemisphere, including the thalamus, the internal and external capsules, and the caudate nucleus of the basal ganglia. The area and extent of brain damage or atrophy will determine the type of aphasia and its symptoms. A very small number of people can experience aphasia after damage to the right hemisphere only. It has been suggested that these individuals may have had an unusual brain organization prior to their illness or injury, with perhaps greater overall reliance on the right hemisphere for language skills than in the general population.
Primary progressive aphasia (PPA), while its name can be misleading, is actually a form of dementia that has some symptoms closely related to several forms of aphasia. It is characterized by a gradual loss in language functioning while other cognitive domains are mostly preserved, such as memory and personality. PPA usually initiates with sudden word-finding difficulties in an individual and progresses to a reduced ability to formulate grammatically correct sentences (syntax) and impaired comprehension. The etiology of PPA is not due to a stroke, traumatic brain injury (TBI), or infectious disease; it is still uncertain what initiates the onset of PPA in those affected by it.
Epilepsy can also include transient aphasia as a prodromal or episodic symptom. Aphasia is also listed as a rare side-effect of the fentanyl patch, an opioid used to control chronic pain.
Classification
Aphasia is best thought of as a collection of different disorders, rather than a single problem. Each individual with aphasia will present with their own particular combination of language strengths and weaknesses. Consequently, it is a major challenge just to document the various difficulties that can occur in different people, let alone decide how they might best be treated. Most classifications of the aphasias tend to divide the various symptoms into broad classes. A common approach is to distinguish between the fluent aphasias (where speech remains fluent, but content may be lacking, and the person may have difficulties understanding others), and the nonfluent aphasias (where speech is very halting and effortful, and may consist of just one or two words at a time).
However, no such broad-based grouping has proven fully adequate. There is wide variation among people even within the same broad grouping, and aphasias can be highly selective. For instance, people with naming deficits (anomic aphasia) might show an inability only for naming buildings, or people, or colors.
It is important to note that there are typical difficulties with speech and language that come with normal aging as well. As we age, language can become more difficult to process resulting in a slowing of verbal comprehension, reading abilities and more likely word finding difficulties. With each of these though, unlike some aphasias, functionality within daily life remains intact.
Boston classification
Individuals with receptive aphasia (Wernicke's aphasia), also referred to as fluent aphasia, may speak in long sentences that have no meaning, add unnecessary words, and even create new "words" (neologisms). For example, someone with receptive aphasia may say, "delicious taco", meaning "The dog needs to go out so I will take him for a walk". They have poor auditory and reading comprehension, and fluent, but nonsensical, oral and written expression. Individuals with receptive aphasia usually have great difficulty understanding the speech of both themselves and others and are, therefore, often unaware of their mistakes. Receptive language deficits usually arise from lesions in the posterior portion of the left hemisphere at or near Wernicke's area. It is often the result of trauma to the temporal region of the brain, specifically damage to Wernicke's area. Trauma can be the result from an array of problems, however it is most commonly seen as a result of stroke
Individuals with expressive aphasia (Broca's aphasia) frequently speak short, meaningful phrases that are produced with great effort. It is thus characterized as a nonfluent aphasia. Affected people often omit small words such as "is", "and", and "the". For example, a person with expressive aphasia may say, "walk dog", which could mean "I will take the dog for a walk", "you take the dog for a walk" or even "the dog walked out of the yard". Individuals with expressive aphasia are able to understand the speech of others to varying degrees. Because of this, they are often aware of their difficulties and can become easily frustrated by their speaking problems. While Broca's aphasia may appear to be solely an issue with language production, evidence suggests that it may be rooted in an inability to process syntactical information. Individuals with expressive aphasia may have a speech automatism (also called recurring or recurrent utterance. These speech automatisms can be repeated lexical speech automatisms; e.g., modalisations ('I can't..., I can't...'), expletives/swearwords, numbers ('one two, one two') or non-lexical utterances made up of repeated, legal but meaningless, consonant-vowel syllables (e.g.., /tan tan/, /bi bi/). In severe cases, the individual may be able to utter only the same speech automatism each time they attempt speech.
Individuals with anomic aphasia have difficulty with naming. People with this aphasia may have difficulties naming certain words, linked by their grammatical type (e.g., difficulty naming verbs and not nouns) or by their semantic category (e.g., difficulty naming words relating to photography but nothing else) or a more general naming difficulty. People tend to produce grammatic, yet empty, speech. Auditory comprehension tends to be preserved. Anomic aphasia is the aphasial presentation of tumors in the language zone; it is the aphasial presentation of Alzheimer's disease. Anomic aphasia is the mildest form of aphasia, indicating a likely possibility for better recovery.
Individuals with transcortical sensory aphasia, in principle the most general and potentially among the most complex forms of aphasia, may have similar deficits as in receptive aphasia, but their repetition ability may remain intact.
Global aphasia is considered a severe impairment in many language aspects since it impacts expressive and receptive language, reading, and writing. Despite these many deficits, there is evidence that has shown individuals benefited from speech language therapy. Even though individuals with global aphasia will not become competent speakers, listeners, writers, or readers, goals can be created to improve the individual's quality of life. Individuals with global aphasia usually respond well to treatment that includes personally relevant information, which is also important to consider for therapy.
Individuals with conduction aphasia have deficits in the connections between the speech-comprehension and speech-production areas. This might be caused by damage to the arcuate fasciculus, the structure that transmits information between Wernicke's area and Broca's area. Similar symptoms, however, can be present after damage to the insula or to the auditory cortex. Auditory comprehension is near normal, and oral expression is fluent with occasional paraphasic errors. Paraphasic errors include phonemic/literal or semantic/verbal. Repetition ability is poor. Conduction and transcortical aphasias are caused by damage to the white matter tracts. These aphasias spare the cortex of the language centers but instead create a disconnection between them. Conduction aphasia is caused by damage to the arcuate fasciculus. The arcuate fasciculus is a white matter tract that connects Broca's and Wernicke's areas. People with conduction aphasia typically have good language comprehension, but poor speech repetition and mild difficulty with word retrieval and speech production. People with conduction aphasia are typically aware of their errors. Two forms of conduction aphasia have been described: reproduction conduction aphasia (repetition of a single relatively unfamiliar multisyllabic word) and repetition conduction aphasia (repetition of unconnected short familiar words
Transcortical aphasias include transcortical motor aphasia, transcortical sensory aphasia, and mixed transcortical aphasia. People with transcortical motor aphasia typically have intact comprehension and awareness of their errors, but poor word finding and speech production. People with transcortical sensory and mixed transcortical aphasia have poor comprehension and unawareness of their errors. Despite poor comprehension and more severe deficits in some transcortical aphasias, small studies have indicated that full recovery is possible for all types of transcortical aphasia.
Classical-localizationist approaches
Localizationist approaches aim to classify the aphasias according to their major presenting characteristics and the regions of the brain that most probably gave rise to them. Inspired by the early work of nineteenth-century neurologists Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke, these approaches identify two major subtypes of aphasia and several more minor subtypes:
Expressive aphasia (also known as "motor aphasia" or "Broca's aphasia"), which is characterized by halted, fragmented, effortful speech, but well-preserved comprehension relative to expression. Damage is typically in the anterior portion of the left hemisphere, most notably Broca's area. Individuals with Broca's aphasia often have right-sided weakness or paralysis of the arm and leg, because the left frontal lobe is also important for body movement, particularly on the right side.
Receptive aphasia (also known as "sensory aphasia" or "Wernicke's aphasia"), which is characterized by fluent speech, but marked difficulties understanding words and sentences. Although fluent, the speech may lack in key substantive words (nouns, verbs, adjectives), and may contain incorrect words or even nonsense words. This subtype has been associated with damage to the posterior left temporal cortex, most notably Wernicke's area. These individuals usually have no body weakness, because their brain injury is not near the parts of the brain that control movement.
Conduction aphasia, where speech remains fluent, and comprehension is preserved, but the person may have disproportionate difficulty where repeating words or sentences. Damage typically involves the arcuate fasciculus and the left parietal region.
Transcortical motor aphasia and transcortical sensory aphasia, which are similar to Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia respectively, but the ability to repeat words and sentences is disproportionately preserved.
Recent classification schemes adopting this approach, such as the Boston-Neoclassical Model, also group these classical aphasia subtypes into two larger classes: the nonfluent aphasias (which encompasses Broca's aphasia and transcortical motor aphasia) and the fluent aphasias (which encompasses Wernicke's aphasia, conduction aphasia and transcortical sensory aphasia). These schemes also identify several further aphasia subtypes, including: anomic aphasia, which is characterized by a selective difficulty finding the names for things; and global aphasia, where both expression and comprehension of speech are severely compromised.
Many localizationist approaches also recognize the existence of additional, more "pure" forms of language disorder that may affect only a single language skill. For example, in pure alexia, a person may be able to write but not read, and in pure word deafness, they may be able to produce speech and to read, but not understand speech when it is spoken to them.
Cognitive neuropsychological approaches
Although localizationist approaches provide a useful way of classifying the different patterns of language difficulty into broad groups, one problem is that a sizeable number of individuals do not fit neatly into one category or another. Another problem is that the categories, particularly the major ones such as Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia, still remain quite broad. Consequently, even amongst individuals who meet the criteria for classification into a subtype, there can be enormous variability in the types of difficulties they experience.
Instead of categorizing every individual into a specific subtype, cognitive neuropsychological approaches aim to identify the key language skills or "modules" that are not functioning properly in each individual. A person could potentially have difficulty with just one module, or with a number of modules. This type of approach requires a framework or theory as to what skills/modules are needed to perform different kinds of language tasks. For example, the model of Max Coltheart identifies a module that recognizes phonemes as they are spoken, which is essential for any task involving recognition of words. Similarly, there is a module that stores phonemes that the person is planning to produce in speech, and this module is critical for any task involving the production of long words or long strings of speech. Once a theoretical framework has been established, the functioning of each module can then be assessed using a specific test or set of tests. In the clinical setting, use of this model usually involves conducting a battery of assessments, each of which tests one or a number of these modules. Once a diagnosis is reached as to the skills/modules where the most significant impairment lies, therapy can proceed to treat these skills.
Progressive aphasias
Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a neurodegenerative focal dementia that can be associated with progressive illnesses or dementia, such as frontotemporal dementia / Pick Complex Motor neuron disease, Progressive supranuclear palsy, and Alzheimer's disease, which is the gradual process of progressively losing the ability to think. Gradual loss of language function occurs in the context of relatively well-preserved memory, visual processing, and personality until the advanced stages. Symptoms usually begin with word-finding problems (naming) and progress to impaired grammar (syntax) and comprehension (sentence processing and semantics). The loss of language before the loss of memory differentiates PPA from typical dementias. People suffering from PPA may have difficulties comprehending what others are saying. They can also have difficulty trying to find the right words to make a sentence. There are three classifications of Primary Progressive Aphasia : Progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA), Semantic Dementia (SD), and Logopenic progressive aphasia (LPA).
Progressive Jargon Aphasia is a fluent or receptive aphasia in which the person's speech is incomprehensible, but appears to make sense to them. Speech is fluent and effortless with intact syntax and grammar, but the person has problems with the selection of nouns. Either they will replace the desired word with another that sounds or looks like the original one or has some other connection or they will replace it with sounds. As such, people with jargon aphasia often use neologisms, and may perseverate if they try to replace the words they cannot find with sounds. Substitutions commonly involve picking another (actual) word starting with the same sound (e.g., clocktower - colander), picking another semantically related to the first (e.g., letter - scroll), or picking one phonetically similar to the intended one (e.g., lane - late).
Deaf aphasia
There have been many instances showing that there is a form of aphasia among deaf individuals. Sign languages are, after all, forms of language that have been shown to use the same areas of the brain as verbal forms of language. Mirror neurons become activated when an animal is acting in a particular way or watching another individual act in the same manner. These mirror neurons are important in giving an individual the ability to mimic movements of hands. Broca's area of speech production has been shown to contain several of these mirror neurons resulting in significant similarities of brain activity between sign language and vocal speech communication. Facial communication is a significant portion of how animals interact with each other. Humans use facial movements to create, what other humans perceive, to be faces of emotions. While combining these facial movements with speech, a more full form of language is created which enables the species to interact with a much more complex and detailed form of communication. Sign language also uses these facial movements and emotions along with the primary hand movement way of communicating. These facial movement forms of communication come from the same areas of the brain. When dealing with damages to certain areas of the brain, vocal forms of communication are in jeopardy of severe forms of aphasia. Since these same areas of the brain are being used for sign language, these same, at least very similar, forms of aphasia can show in the Deaf community. Individuals can show a form of Wernicke's aphasia with sign language and they show deficits in their abilities in being able to produce any form of expressions. Broca's aphasia shows up in some people, as well. These individuals find tremendous difficulty in being able to actually sign the linguistic concepts they are trying to express.
Severity
The severity of the type of aphasia varies depending on the size of the stroke. However, there is much variance between how often one type of severity occurs in certain types of aphasia. For instance, any type of aphasia can range from mild to profound. Regardless of the severity of aphasia, people can make improvements due to spontaneous recovery and treatment in the acute stages of recovery. Additionally, while most studies propose that the greatest outcomes occur in people with severe aphasia when treatment is provided in the acute stages of recovery, Robey (1998) also found that those with severe aphasia are capable of making strong language gains in the chronic stage of recovery as well. This finding implies that persons with aphasia have the potential to have functional outcomes regardless of how severe their aphasia may be. While there is no distinct pattern of the outcomes of aphasia based on severity alone, global aphasia typically makes functional language gains, but may be gradual since global aphasia affects many language areas.
Cognitive deficits in aphasia
While aphasia has traditionally been described in terms of language deficits, there is increasing evidence that many people with aphasia commonly experience co-occurring non-linguistic cognitive deficits in areas such as attention, memory, executive functions and learning. By some accounts, cognitive deficits, such as attention and working memory constitute the underlying cause of language impairment in people with aphasia. Others suggest that cognitive deficits often co-occur but are comparable to cognitive deficits in stroke patients without aphasia and reflect general brain dysfunction following injury. The degree to which deficits in attention and other cognitive domains underlie language deficits in aphasia is still unclear.
In particular, people with aphasia often demonstrate short-term and working memory deficits. These deficits can occur in both the verbal domain as well as the visuospatial domain. Furthermore, these deficits are often associated with performance on language specific tasks such as naming, lexical processing, and sentence comprehension, and discourse production. Other studies have found that most, but not all people with aphasia demonstrate performance deficits on tasks of attention, and their performance on these tasks correlate with language performance and cognitive ability in other domains. Even patients with mild aphasia, who score near the ceiling on tests of language often demonstrate slower response times and interference effects in non-verbal attention abilities.
In addition to deficits in short-term memory, working memory, and attention, people with aphasia can also demonstrate deficits in executive function. For instance, people with aphasia may demonstrate deficits in initiation, planning, self-monitoring, and cognitive flexibility. Other studies have found that people with aphasia demonstrate reduced speed and efficiency during completion executive function assessments.
Regardless of their role in the underlying nature of aphasia, cognitive deficits have a clear role in the study and rehabilitation of aphasia. For instance, the severity of cognitive deficits in people with aphasia has been associated with lower quality of life, even more so than the severity of language deficits. Furthermore, cognitive deficits may influence the learning process of rehabilitation and language treatment outcomes in aphasia. Non-linguistic cognitive deficits have also been the target of interventions directed at improving language ability, though outcomes are not definitive. While some studies have demonstrated language improvement secondary to cognitively-focused treatment, others have found little evidence that the treatment of cognitive deficits in people with aphasia has an influence on language outcomes.
One important caveat in the measurement and treatment of cognitive deficits in people with aphasia is the degree to which assessments of cognition rely on language abilities for successful performance. Most studies have attempted to circumvent this challenge by utilizing non-verbal cognitive assessments to evaluate cognitive ability in people with aphasia. However, the degree to which these tasks are truly 'non-verbal' and not mediated by language in unclear. For instance, Wall et al. found that language and non-linguistic performance was related, except when non-linguistic performance was measured by 'real life' cognitive tasks.
Prevention of aphasia
Aphasia is largely caused by unavoidable instances. However, some precautions can be taken to decrease risk for experiencing one of the two major causes of aphasia: stroke and traumatic brain injury (TBI). To decrease the probability of having an ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke, one should take the following precautions:
Exercising regularly
Eating a healthy diet, avoiding cholesterol in particular
Keeping alcohol consumption low and avoiding tobacco use
Controlling blood pressure
Going to the emergency room immediately if you begin to experience unilateral extremity (especially leg) swelling, warmth, redness, and/or tenderness as these are symptoms of a deep vein thrombosis which can lead to a stroke
To prevent aphasia due to traumatic injury, one sure take precautionary measures when engaging in dangerous activities such as:
Wearing a helmet when operating a bicycle, motor cycle, ATV, or any other moving vehicle that could potential be involved in an accident
Wearing a seatbelt when driving or riding in a car
Wearing proper protective gear when playing contact sports, especially American football, rugby, and hockey, or refraining from such activities
Minimizing anticoagulant use (including aspirin) if at all possible as they increase the risk of hemorrhage after a head injury
Additionally, one should always seek medical attention after sustaining head trauma due to a fall or accident. The sooner that one receives medical attention for a traumatic brain injury, the less likely one is to experience long-term or severe effects.
Management
When addressing Wernicke's aphasia, according to Bakheit et al. (2007), the lack of awareness of the language impairments, a common characteristic of Wernicke's aphasia, may affect the rate and extent of therapy outcomes. Robey (1998) determined that at least 2 hours of treatment per week is recommended for making significant language gains. Spontaneous recovery may cause some language gains, but without speech-language therapy, the outcomes can be half as strong as those with therapy.
When addressing Broca's aphasia, better outcomes occur when the person participates in therapy, and treatment is more effective than no treatment for people in the acute period. Two or more hours of therapy per week in acute and post-acute stages produced the greatest results. High-intensity therapy was most effective, and low-intensity therapy was almost equivalent to no therapy.
People with global aphasia are sometimes referred to as having irreversible aphasic syndrome, often making limited gains in auditory comprehension, and recovering no functional language modality with therapy. With this said, people with global aphasia may retain gestural communication skills that may enable success when communicating with conversational partners within familiar conditions. Process-oriented treatment options are limited, and people may not become competent language users as readers, listeners, writers, or speakers no matter how extensive therapy is. However, people's daily routines and quality of life can be enhanced with reasonable and modest goals. After the first month, there is limited to no healing to language abilities of most people. There is a grim prognosis leaving 83% who were globally aphasic after the first month they will remain globally aphasic at the first year. Some people are so severely impaired that their existing process-oriented treatment approaches offer signs of progress, and therefore cannot justify the cost of therapy.
Perhaps due to the relative rareness of conduction aphasia, few studies have specifically studied the effectiveness of therapy for people with this type of aphasia. From the studies performed, results showed that therapy can help to improve specific language outcomes. One intervention that has had positive results is auditory repetition training. Kohn et al. (1990) reported that drilled auditory repetition training related to improvements in spontaneous speech, Francis et al. (2003) reported improvements in sentence comprehension, and Kalinyak-Fliszar et al. (2011) reported improvements in auditory-visual short-term memory.
Most acute cases of aphasia recover some or most skills by working with a speech-language pathologist. Recovery and improvement can continue for years after the stroke. After the onset of Aphasia, there is approximately a six-month period of spontaneous recovery; during this time, the brain is attempting to recover and repair the damaged neurons. Improvement varies widely, depending on the aphasia's cause, type, and severity. Recovery also depends on the person's age, health, motivation, handedness, and educational level.
There is no one treatment proven to be effective for all types of aphasias. The reason that there is no universal treatment for aphasia is because of the nature of the disorder and the various ways it is presented, as explained in the above sections. Aphasia is rarely exhibited identically, implying that treatment needs to be catered specifically to the individual. Studies have shown that, although there is no consistency on treatment methodology in literature, there is a strong indication that treatment, in general, has positive outcomes. Therapy for aphasia ranges from increasing functional communication to improving speech accuracy, depending on the person's severity, needs and support of family and friends. Group therapy allows individuals to work on their pragmatic and communication skills with other individuals with aphasia, which are skills that may not often be addressed in individual one-on-one therapy sessions. It can also help increase confidence and social skills in a comfortable setting.
Evidence does not support the use of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) for improving aphasia after stroke. Moderate quality evidence does indicate naming performance improvements for nouns but not verbs using tDCS
Specific treatment techniques include the following:
Copy and recall therapy (CART) - repetition and recall of targeted words within therapy may strengthen orthographic representations and improve single word reading, writing, and naming
Visual communication therapy (VIC) - the use of index cards with symbols to represent various components of speech
Visual action therapy (VAT) - typically treats individuals with global aphasia to train the use of hand gestures for specific items
Functional communication treatment (FCT) - focuses on improving activities specific to functional tasks, social interaction, and self-expression
Promoting aphasic's communicative effectiveness (PACE) - a means of encouraging normal interaction between people with aphasia and clinicians. In this kind of therapy, the focus is on pragmatic communication rather than treatment itself. People are asked to communicate a given message to their therapists by means of drawing, making hand gestures or even pointing to an object
Melodic intonation therapy (MIT) - aims to use the intact melodic/prosodic processing skills of the right hemisphere to help cue retrieval of words and expressive language
Other - i.e. drawing as a way of communicating, trained conversation partners
Semantic feature analysis (SFA) -a type of aphasia treatment that targets word-finding deficits. It is based on the theory that neural connections can be strengthened by using related words and phrases that are similar to the target word, to eventually activate the target word in the brain. SFA can be implemented in multiple forms such as verbally, written, using picture cards, etc. The SLP provides prompting questions to the individual with aphasia in order for the person to name the picture provided. Studies show that SFA is an effective intervention for improving confrontational naming.
Melodic intonation therapy is used to treat non-fluent aphasia and has proved to be effective in some cases. However, there is still no evidence from randomized controlled trials confirming the efficacy of MIT in chronic aphasia. MIT is used to help people with aphasia vocalize themselves through speech song, which is then transferred as a spoken word. Good candidates for this therapy include people who have had left hemisphere strokes, non-fluent aphasias such as Broca's, good auditory comprehension, poor repetition and articulation, and good emotional stability and memory. An alternative explanation is that the efficacy of MIT depends on neural circuits involved in the processing of rhythmicity and formulaic expressions (examples taken from the MIT manual: "I am fine," "how are you?" or "thank you"); while rhythmic features associated with melodic intonation may engage primarily left-hemisphere subcortical areas of the brain, the use of formulaic expressions is known to be supported by right-hemisphere cortical and bilateral subcortical neural networks.
Systematic reviews support the effectiveness and importance of partner training. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), involving family with the treatment of an aphasic loved one is ideal for all involved, because while it will no doubt assist in their recovery, it will also make it easier for members of the family to learn how best to communicate with them.
When a person's speech is insufficient, different kinds of augmentative and alternative communication could be considered such as alphabet boards, pictorial communication books, specialized software for computers or apps for tablets or smartphones.
Intensity of treatment
The intensity of aphasia therapy is determined by the length of each session, total hours of therapy per week, and total weeks of therapy provided. There is no consensus about what "intense" aphasia therapy entails, or how intense therapy should be to yield the best outcomes. A 2016 Cochrane review of speech and language therapy for people with aphasia found that treatments that are higher intensity, higher dose or over a long duration of time led to significantly better functional communication but people were more likely to drop out of high intensity treatment (up to 15 hours per week).
Intensity of therapy is also dependent on the recency of stroke. People with aphasia react differently to intense treatment in the acute phase (0–3 months post stroke), sub-acute phase (3–6 months post stroke), or chronic phase (6+ months post stroke). Intensive therapy has been found to be effective for people with nonfluent and fluent chronic aphasia, but less effective for people with acute aphasia. People with sub-acute aphasia also respond well to intensive therapy of 100 hours over 62 weeks. This suggests people in the sub-acute phase can improve greatly in language and functional communication measures with intensive therapy compared to regular therapy.
Individualized service delivery
Intensity of treatment should be individualized based on the recency of stroke, therapy goals, and other specific characteristics such as age, size of lesion, overall health status, and motivation. Each individual reacts differently to treatment intensity and is able to tolerate treatment at different times post-stroke. Intensity of treatment after a stroke should be dependent on the person's motivation, stamina, and tolerance for therapy.
Outcomes
If the symptoms of aphasia last longer than two or three months after a stroke, a complete recovery is unlikely. However, it is important to note that some people continue to improve over a period of years and even decades. Improvement is a slow process that usually involves both helping the individual and family understand the nature of aphasia and learning compensatory strategies for communicating.
After a traumatic brain injury (TBI) or cerebrovascular accident (CVA), the brain undergoes several healing and re-organization processes, which may result in improved language function. This is referred to as spontaneous recovery. Spontaneous recovery is the natural recovery the brain makes without treatment, and the brain begins to reorganize and change in order to recover. There are several factors that contribute to a person's chance of recovery caused by stroke, including stroke size and location. Age, sex, and education have not been found to be very predictive. There is also research pointing to damage in the left hemisphere healing more effectively than the right.
Specific to aphasia, spontaneous recovery varies among affected people and may not look the same in everyone, making it difficult to predict recovery.
Though some cases of Wernicke's aphasia have shown greater improvements than more mild forms of aphasia, people with Wernicke's aphasia may not reach as high a level of speech abilities as those with mild forms of aphasia.
History
The first recorded case of aphasia is from an Egyptian papyrus, the Edwin Smith Papyrus, which details speech problems in a person with a traumatic brain injury to the temporal lobe.
During the second half of the 19th century, aphasia was a major focus for scientists and philosophers who were working in the beginning stages of the field of psychology.
In medical research, speechlessness was described as an incorrect prognosis, and there was no assumption that underlying language complications existed. Broca and his colleagues were some of the first to write about aphasia, but Wernicke was the first credited to have written extensively about aphasia being a disorder that contained comprehension difficulties. Despite claims of who reported on aphasia first, it was F.J. Gall that gave the first full description of aphasia after studying wounds to the brain, as well as his observation of speech difficulties resulting from vascular lesions. A recent book on the entire history of aphasia is available (Reference: Tesak, J. & Code, C. (2008) Milestones in the History of Aphasia: Theories and Protagonists. Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Press).
Etymology
Aphasia is from Greek a- ("without", negative prefix) + phásis (φάσις, "speech").
The word aphasia comes from the word ἀφασία aphasia, in Ancient Greek, which means "speechlessness", derived from ἄφατος aphatos, "speechless" from ἀ- a-, "not, un" and φημί phemi, "I speak".
Further research
Research is currently being done using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to witness the difference in how language is processed in normal brains vs aphasic brains. This will help researchers to understand exactly what the brain must go through in order to recover from Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and how different areas of the brain respond after such an injury.
Another intriguing approach being tested is that of drug therapy. Research is in progress that will hopefully uncover whether or not certain drugs might be used in addition to speech-language therapy in order to facilitate recovery of proper language function. It's possible that the best treatment for Aphasia might involve combining drug treatment with therapy, instead of relying on one over the other.
One other method being researched as a potential therapeutic combination with speech-language therapy is brain stimulation. One particular method, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), alters brain activity in whatever area it happens to stimulate, which has recently led scientists to wonder if this shift in brain function caused by TMS might help people re-learn languages.
The research being put into Aphasia has only just begun. Researchers appear to have multiple ideas on how Aphasia could be more effectively treated in the future.
See also
Agnosia
Aphasiology
Apraxia of speech
Aprosodia
Auditory processing disorder
Lethologica
Lists of language disorders
My Beautiful Broken Brain
Origin of speech
References
External links
National Aphasia Association
Alexia (condition)
Communication disorders
Language disorders
Symptoms and signs: Speech and voice |
2089 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aorta | Aorta | The aorta ( ) is the main and largest artery in the human body, originating from the left ventricle of the heart and extending down to the abdomen, where it splits into two smaller arteries (the common iliac arteries). The aorta distributes oxygenated blood to all parts of the body through the systemic circulation.
Structure
Sections
In anatomical sources, the aorta is usually divided into sections.
One way of classifying a part of the aorta is by anatomical compartment, where the thoracic aorta (or thoracic portion of the aorta) runs from the heart to the diaphragm. The aorta then continues downward as the abdominal aorta (or abdominal portion of the aorta) from the diaphragm to the aortic bifurcation.
Another system divides the aorta with respect to its course and the direction of blood flow. In this system, the aorta starts as the ascending aorta, travels superiorly from the heart, and then makes a hairpin turn known as the aortic arch. Following the aortic arch, the aorta then travels inferiorly as the descending aorta. The descending aorta has two parts. The aorta begins to descend in the thoracic cavity and is consequently known as the thoracic aorta. After the aorta passes through the diaphragm, it is known as the abdominal aorta. The aorta ends by dividing into two major blood vessels, the common iliac arteries and a smaller midline vessel, the median sacral artery.
Ascending aorta
The ascending aorta begins at the opening of the aortic valve in the left ventricle of the heart. It runs through a common pericardial sheath with the pulmonary trunk. These two blood vessels twist around each other, causing the aorta to start out posterior to the pulmonary trunk, but end by twisting to its right and anterior side.
The transition from ascending aorta to aortic arch is at the pericardial reflection on the aorta.
At the root of the ascending aorta, the lumen has three small pockets between the cusps of the aortic valve and the wall of the aorta, which are called the aortic sinuses or the sinuses of Valsalva. The left aortic sinus contains the origin of the left coronary artery and the right aortic sinus likewise gives rise to the right coronary artery. Together, these two arteries supply the heart. The posterior aortic sinus does not give rise to a coronary artery. For this reason the left, right and posterior aortic sinuses are also called left-coronary, right-coronary and non-coronary sinuses.
Aortic arch
The aortic arch loops over the left pulmonary artery and the bifurcation of the pulmonary trunk, to which it remains connected by the ligamentum arteriosum, a remnant of the fetal circulation that is obliterated a few days after birth. In addition to these blood vessels, the aortic arch crosses the left main bronchus. Between the aortic arch and the pulmonary trunk is a network of autonomic nerve fibers, the cardiac plexus or aortic plexus. The left vagus nerve, which passes anterior to the aortic arch, gives off a major branch, the recurrent laryngeal nerve, which loops under the aortic arch just lateral to the ligamentum arteriosum. It then runs back to the neck.
The aortic arch has three major branches: from proximal to distal, they are the brachiocephalic trunk, the left common carotid artery, and the left subclavian artery. The brachiocephalic trunk supplies the right side of the head and neck as well as the right arm and chest wall, while the latter two together supply the left side of the same regions.
The aortic arch ends, and the descending aorta begins at the level of the intervertebral disc between the fourth and fifth thoracic vertebrae.
Thoracic aorta
The thoracic descending aorta gives rise to the intercostal and subcostal arteries, as well as to the superior and inferior left bronchial arteries and variable branches to the esophagus, mediastinum, and pericardium. Its lowest pair of branches are the superior phrenic arteries, which supply the diaphragm, and the subcostal arteries for the twelfth rib.
Abdominal aorta
The abdominal aorta begins at the aortic hiatus of the diaphragm at the level of the twelfth thoracic vertebra. It gives rise to lumbar and musculophrenic arteries, renal and middle suprarenal arteries, and visceral arteries (the celiac trunk, the superior mesenteric artery and the inferior mesenteric artery). It ends in a bifurcation into the left and right common iliac arteries. At the point of the bifurcation, there also springs a smaller branch, the median sacral artery.
Development
The ascending aorta develops from the outflow tract, which initially starts as a single tube connecting the heart with the aortic arches (which will form the great arteries) in early development but is then separated into the aorta and the pulmonary trunk.
The aortic arches start as five pairs of symmetrical arteries connecting the heart with the dorsal aorta, and then undergo a significant remodelling to form the final asymmetrical structure of the great arteries, with the 3rd pair of arteries contributing to the common carotids, the right 4th forming the base and middle part of the right subclavian artery and the left 4th being the central part of the aortic arch. The smooth muscle of the great arteries and the population of cells that form the aorticopulmonary septum that separates the aorta and pulmonary artery is derived from cardiac neural crest. This contribution of the neural crest to the great artery smooth muscle is unusual as most smooth muscle is derived from mesoderm. In fact the smooth muscle within the abdominal aorta is derived from mesoderm, and the coronary arteries, which arise just above the semilunar valves, possess smooth muscle of mesodermal origin. A failure of the aorticopulmonary septum to divide the great vessels results in persistent truncus arteriosus.
Microanatomy
The aorta is an elastic artery, and as such is quite distensible. The aorta consists of a heterogeneous mixture of smooth muscle, nerves, intimal cells, endothelial cells, fibroblast-like cells, and a complex extracellular matrix. The vascular wall consists of several layers known as the tunica externa, tunica media, and tunica intima. The thickness of the aorta requires an extensive network of tiny blood vessels called vasa vasorum, which feed the tunica externa and tunica media outer layers of the aorta. The aortic arch contains baroreceptors and chemoreceptors that relay information concerning blood pressure and blood pH and carbon dioxide levels to the medulla oblongata of the brain. This information is processed by the brain and the autonomic nervous system mediates the homeostatic responses.
Within the tunica media, smooth muscle and the extracellular matrix are quantitatively the largest components of the aortic vascular wall. The fundamental unit of the aorta is the elastic lamella, which consists of smooth muscle and elastic matrix. The medial layer of the aorta consist of concentric musculoelastic layers (the elastic lamella) in mammals. The smooth muscle component does not dramatically alter the diameter of the aorta but rather serves to increase the stiffness and viscoelasticity of the aortic wall when activated. The elastic matrix dominates the biomechanical properties of the aorta. The elastic matrix forms lamellae, consisting of elastic fibers, collagens (predominately type III), proteoglycans, and glycoaminoglycans.
Variation
Variations may occur in the location of the aorta, and the way in which arteries branch off the aorta. The aorta, normally on the left side of the body, may be found on the right in dextrocardia, in which the heart is found on the right, or situs inversus, in which the location of all organs are flipped.
Variations in the branching of individual arteries may also occur. For example, the left vertebral artery may arise from the aorta, instead of the left common carotid artery.
In patent ductus arteriosus, a congenital disorder, the fetal ductus arteriosis fails to close, leaving an open vessel connecting the pulmonary artery to the proximal descending aorta.
Function
The aorta supplies all of the systemic circulation, which means that the entire body, except for the respiratory zone of the lung, receives its blood from the aorta. Broadly speaking, branches from the ascending aorta supply the heart; branches from the aortic arch supply the head, neck, and arms; branches from the thoracic descending aorta supply the chest (excluding the heart and the respiratory zone of the lung); and branches from the abdominal aorta supply the abdomen. The pelvis and legs get their blood from the common iliac arteries.
Blood flow and velocity
The pulsatile nature of blood flow creates a pulse wave that is propagated down the arterial tree, and at bifurcations reflected waves rebound to return to semilunar valves and the origin of the aorta. These return waves create the dicrotic notch displayed in the aortic pressure curve during the cardiac cycle as these reflected waves push on the aortic semilunar valve. With age, the aorta stiffens such that the pulse wave is propagated faster and reflected waves return to the heart faster before the semilunar valve closes, which raises the blood pressure. The stiffness of the aorta is associated with a number of diseases and pathologies, and noninvasive measures of the pulse wave velocity are an independent indicator of hypertension. Measuring the pulse wave velocity (invasively and non-invasively) is a means of determining arterial stiffness. Maximum aortic velocity may be noted as Vmax or less commonly as AoVmax.
Mean arterial pressure (MAP) is highest in the aorta, and the MAP decreases across the circulation from aorta to arteries to arterioles to capillaries to veins back to atrium. The difference between aortic and right atrial pressure accounts for blood flow in the circulation. When the left ventricle contracts to force blood into the aorta, the aorta expands. This stretching gives the potential energy that will help maintain blood pressure during diastole, as during this time the aorta contracts passively. This Windkessel effect of the great elastic arteries has important biomechanical implications. The elastic recoil helps conserve the energy from the pumping heart and smooth out the pulsatile nature created by the heart. Aortic pressure is highest at the aorta and becomes less pulsatile and lower pressure as blood vessels divide into arteries, arterioles, and capillaries such that flow is slow and smooth for gases and nutrient exchange.
Clinical significance
Aortic aneurysm – mycotic, bacterial (e.g. syphilis), senile, genetic, associated with valvular heart disease
Aortic coarctation – pre-ductal, post-ductal
Aortic dissection
Aortic stenosis
Abdominal aortic aneurysm
Aortitis, inflammation of the aorta that can be seen in trauma, infections, and autoimmune disease
Atherosclerosis
Ehlers–Danlos syndrome
Marfan syndrome
Trauma, such as traumatic aortic rupture, most often thoracic and distal to the left subclavian artery and often quickly fatal
Transposition of the great vessels, see also dextro-Transposition of the great arteries and levo-Transposition of the great arteries
Other animals
All amniotes have a broadly similar arrangement to that of humans, albeit with a number of individual variations. In fish, however, there are two separate vessels referred to as aortas. The ventral aorta carries de-oxygenated blood from the heart to the gills; part of this vessel forms the ascending aorta in tetrapods (the remainder forms the pulmonary artery). A second, dorsal aorta carries oxygenated blood from the gills to the rest of the body and is homologous with the descending aorta of tetrapods. The two aortas are connected by a number of vessels, one passing through each of the gills.
Amphibians also retain the fifth connecting vessel, so that the aorta has two parallel arches.
History
The word aorta stems from the Late Latin from Classical Greek aortē (), from aeirō, "I lift, raise" () This term was first applied by Aristotle when describing the aorta and describes accurately how it seems to be "suspended" above the heart.
The function of the aorta is documented in the Talmud, where it is noted as one of three major vessels entering or leaving the heart, and where perforation is linked to death.
References
External links
Arteries of the thorax
Arteries of the abdomen
Cardiac anatomy |
2093 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abimelech | Abimelech | Abimelech (also spelled Abimelek or Avimelech; ) was the generic name given to all Philistine kings in the Hebrew Bible from the time of Abraham through King David.
Etymology
The name or title Abimelech is formed from Hebrew words for "father" and "king," and may be interpreted in a variety of ways, including "Father-King", "My father is king," or "Father of a king." In the Pentateuch, it is used as a title for kings in the land of Canaan.
At the time of the Amarna tablets (mid-14th century BC), there was an Egyptian governor of Tyre similarly named Abimilki,
Abimelech Son of Jerubbaal
During the period of Judges, Abimelech son of Jerubbaal was an extremely conniving and evil person. He persuaded his mother's brothers to encourage the people of Shechem to back him in a plot to overthrow his family rule and make him sole ruler.
After slaying all but one of his seventy brothers, Abimelech was crowned king. The brother who escaped, Jotham youngest son of Jerrubaal, made a pronouncement against Abimelech and those who had crowned him.
The curse was that if they had not dealt righteously with the family of Jerrubaal, then fire would come against Abimelech from the people of Shechem and fire would come out of Abimelech against the people who had backed him in this bloody coup.
After Abimelech ruled for three years, the pronouncement came through. The people of Shechem set robbers to lie in wait of any goods or money headed to Abimelech and steal everything.
Then Gaal Son of Ebed went to Shechem and drunkenly bragged that he would remove Abimelech from the throne. Zebul - ruler of Shechem sent word to Abimelech along with a battle strategy. Once Zebul taunted Gaal into fighting Abimelech, he shut Gaal and his brethren out of the city.
Abimelech then slew the field workers that came out of the city of Shechem the next day. When he heard that the people of Shechem had locked themselves in a strong tower, he and his men set fire to it, killing about a thousand men and women.
After this, Abimelech went to Thebez and camped against it. When he went close to the tower in Thebez to set it on fire, a woman dropped an upper millstone on Abimelech's head. He did not want to be known as having been killed by a woman, so he asked his armour bearer to run him through with a sword. His place of death is cited as being Thebez.
Abimelech of Gerar
Abimelech was most prominently the name of a polytheistic king of Gerar who is mentioned in two of the three wife-sister narratives in Genesis, in connection with both Abraham and Isaac.
King Abimelech of Gerar also appears in an extra-biblical tradition recounted in texts such as the Kitab al-Magall, the Cave of Treasures and the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, as one of 12 regional kings in Abraham's time said to have built the city of Jerusalem for Melchizedek.
Other people with this name
Apart from the king (or kings) of Gerar, the Bible also records this name for:
Abimelech, son of Gideon, proclaimed king after the death of his father.
The father of Abiathar, and high priest in the time of David. In the parallel passage, the name is given as Ahimelech; most authorities consider this the more correct reading.
The king of Gath better known as Achish, referred to as Abimelech or Achimelech in the title of Psalm 34.
The husband of Naomi, and father of Mahlon and Chilion who leaves Bethlehem and dies in the land of Moab, in the Hebrew, his name is given as Elimelek, which is likely the correct reading.
Other literary references include:
Abimélech, Satrap of Gaza is a character baritone in Saint-Saëns' Samson and Delilah.
See also
Abimelech (oratorio)
Wife–sister narratives in the Book of Genesis
References
Philistines
Philistine kings
Torah monarchs
Set indices on Hebrew Bible people
Vayeira |
2099 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew%20Tridgell | Andrew Tridgell | Andrew "Tridge" Tridgell (born 28 February 1967) is an Australian computer programmer. He is the author of and a contributor to the Samba file server, and co-inventor of the rsync algorithm.
He has analysed complex proprietary protocols and algorithms, to allow compatible free and open source software implementations.
Projects
Tridgell was a major developer of the Samba software, analyzing the Server Message Block protocol used for workgroup and network file sharing by Microsoft Windows products. He developed the hierarchical memory allocator, originally as part of Samba.
For his PhD dissertation, he co-developed rsync, including the rsync algorithm, a highly efficient file transfer and synchronisation tool. He was also the original author of rzip, which uses a similar algorithm to rsync. He developed spamsum, based on locality-sensitive hashing algorithms.
He is the author of KnightCap, a reinforcement-learning based chess engine.
Tridgell was also a leader in hacking the TiVo to make it work in Australia, which uses the PAL video format.
In April 2005, Tridgell tried to produce free software (now known as SourcePuller) that interoperated with the BitKeeper source code repository. This was cited as the reason that BitMover revoked a license allowing Linux developers free use of their BitKeeper product. Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, and Tridgell were thus involved in a public debate about the events, in which Tridgell stated that, not having bought or owned BitKeeper – and thus having never agreed to its license – he could not violate it, and was analyzing the protocol ethically, as he had done with Samba. Tridgell's involvement in the project resulted in Torvalds accusing him of playing dirty tricks with BitKeeper. Tridgell claimed his analysis started with simply telneting to a BitKeeper server and typing help.
In 2011 Tridgell got involved with the software development of ArduPilot Mega, an open source Arduino-based UAV controller board, working on an entry for the UAV Challenge Outback Rescue.
Academic achievements
Tridgell completed a PhD at the Computer Sciences Laboratory of the Australian National University. His original doctorate work was in the area of speech recognition but was never completed. His submitted dissertation 'Efficient Algorithms for Sorting and Synchronization' was based on his work on the rsync algorithm.
Awards and honours
In October 2003, The Bulletin magazine judged Tridgell to be Australia's smartest Information and Communications Technology person.
In July 2008, Tridgell was named "Best Interoperator" at the Google–O'Reilly Open Source Awards, for his work on Samba and rsync.
Tridgell (along with Jeremy Allison and Volker Lendecke) has been called a "guru in its traditional Indian meaning" by IT writer, Sam Varghese.
On 11 December 2018, Tridgell was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) by the Australian National University, for authoring Samba, co-inventing rsync; and contributions to free and open source software.
On 26 January 2020, Tridgell was awarded the Medal (OAM) of the Order of Australia in the General Division for service to Information Technology. The biographical notes for the award noted his contributions to software development and education including his work on rsync, Samba, ArduPilot, MAVProxy as well as teaching at the Australian National University.
References
External links
Andrew Tridgell's website, Newer Personal Website
Andrew Tridgell's "Junk Code" collection
Efficient Algorithms for Sorting and Synchronization (PhD thesis) – (406kB PDF)
Active Directory in Samba 4 'an old story'
FOSS folk who make us proud
Patent Defence for Free Software, January 2010 presentation transcript
Australian computer programmers
Free software programmers
IBM employees
1967 births
Living people
People from the Australian Capital Territory
University of Sydney alumni
Australian National University alumni
Geeknet
People educated at Barker College
Recipients of the Medal of the Order of Australia |
24203812 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibyna | Sibyna | A sibyna () was a type of spear used for hunting or warfare (see boar spears) in ancient times.
A long heavy spear the Illyrians used was described by the poet Ennius according to Festius. Hesychius of Alexandria, (5th century) calls it similar to a spear. Suda lexicon (10th century) calls it a Roman javelin.
See also
Illyrian weaponry
References
Javelins
Spears
Ancient weapons
Projectiles
Illyrian warfare |
2100 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applesoft%20BASIC | Applesoft BASIC | Applesoft BASIC is a dialect of Microsoft BASIC, developed by Marc McDonald and Ric Weiland, supplied with the Apple II series of computers. It supersedes Integer BASIC and is the BASIC in ROM in all Apple II series computers after the original Apple II model. It is also referred to as FP BASIC (from floating point) because of the Apple DOS command used to invoke it, instead of INT for Integer BASIC.
Applesoft BASIC was supplied by Microsoft and its name is derived from the names of both Apple and Microsoft. Apple employees, including Randy Wigginton, adapted Microsoft's interpreter for the Apple II and added several features. The first version of Applesoft was released in 1977 on cassette tape and lacked proper support for high-resolution graphics. Applesoft II, which was made available on cassette and disk and in the ROM of the Apple II Plus and subsequent models, was released in 1978. It is this latter version, which has some syntax differences and support for the Apple II high-resolution graphics modes, that is usually synonymous with the term "Applesoft."
A compiler for Applesoft BASIC, TASC (The Applesoft Compiler), was released by Microsoft in 1981.
History
When Steve Wozniak wrote Integer BASIC for the Apple II, he did not implement support for floating point math because he was primarily interested in writing games, a task for which integers alone were sufficient. In 1976, Microsoft had developed Microsoft BASIC for the MOS Technology 6502, but at the time there was no production computer that used it. Upon learning that Apple had a 6502 machine, Microsoft asked if the company were interested in licensing BASIC, but Steve Jobs replied that Apple already had one.
The Apple II was unveiled to the public at the West Coast Computer Faire in April 1977 and became available for sale in June. One of the most common customer complaints about the computer was BASIC's lack of floating-point math. Making things more problematic was that the rival Commodore PET personal computer had a floating point-capable BASIC interpreter from the beginning. As Wozniak—the only person who understood Integer BASIC well enough to add floating point features—was busy with the Disk II drive and controller and with Apple DOS, Apple turned to Microsoft.
Apple reportedly obtained an eight-year license for Applesoft BASIC from Microsoft for a flat fee of $31,000, renewing it in 1985 through an arrangement that gave Microsoft the rights and source code for Apple's Macintosh version of BASIC. Applesoft was designed to be backwards-compatible with Integer BASIC and uses the core of Microsoft's 6502 BASIC implementation, which includes using the GET command for detecting key presses and not requiring any spaces on program lines. While Applesoft BASIC is slower than Integer BASIC, it has many features that the older BASIC lacks:
Atomic strings: A string is no longer an array of characters (as in Integer BASIC and C); it is instead a garbage-collected object (as in Scheme and Java). This allows for string arrays; creates a array of eleven string variables numbered 0–10.
Multidimensional arrays (numbers or strings)
Single-precision floating point variables with an 8-bit exponent and a 31-bit significand and improved math capabilities, including trigonometry and logarithmic functions
Commands for high-resolution graphics
DATA statements, with READ and RESTORE commands, for representing numerical and string values in quantity
CHR$, STR$, and VAL functions for converting between string and numeric types (both languages did have the ASC function)
User-defined functions: simple one-line functions written in BASIC, with a single parameter
Error-trapping: allowing BASIC programs to handle unexpected errors via subroutine written in BASIC
Conversely, Applesoft lacks the MOD (remainder) operator from Integer BASIC.
Adapting BASIC for the Apple II was a tedious job as Apple received a source listing for Microsoft 6502 BASIC which proved to be buggy and also required the addition of Integer BASIC commands. Since Apple had no 6502 assembler on hand, the development team was forced to send the source code over the phone lines to Call Computer, an outfit that offered compiler services. This was an extremely tedious, slow process and after Call Computer lost the source code due to an equipment malfunction, one of the programmers, Cliff Huston, used his own IMSAI 8080 computer to cross assemble the BASIC source.
Features
Applesoft is similar to Commodore's BASIC 2.0 aside from features inherited from Integer BASIC. There are a few minor differences such as Applesoft's lack of bitwise operators; otherwise most BASIC programs that do not use hardware-dependent features will run on both BASICs.
The PR# statement redirects output to an expansion card, and IN# redirects input from an expansion card. The slot number of the card is specified after the PR# or IN# within the statement. The computer locks-up if there is no card present in the slot. PR#0 restores output to the 40 column screen and IN#0 to the keyboard.
The PR# statement can be used to redirect output to the printer (e.g. ) where x is the slot number containing the printer port card. To send a BASIC program listing to the printer, the user types .
PR#6 causes Applesoft to boot the disk drives (although the Disk II controller can be in any slot, it is usually in slot 6). PR#3 switches to 80 column text mode if an 80 column card is present.
As with Commodore BASIC, numeric variables are stored as 40-bit floating point; each variable requires five bytes of memory. The programmer may designate variables as integer by following them with a percent sign, in which case they use two bytes and are limited to a range of -32768 to 32767; however BASIC internally converts them back to floating point, while each percent sign also takes an additional byte of program code, so in practice this feature is only useful for reducing the memory usage of large array variables.
The RND function generates a pseudorandom fractional number between 0 and 1. returns the most recently generated random number. RND with a negative number will jump to a point in the sequence determined by the particular negative number used. RND with any positive value generates the next number in the sequence, not dependent on the actual value given. Locations $4E and $4F, which the system cycles the values of continuously while waiting for user keystrokes, can be PEEKed to provide truly random values to use as a seed (when negated) for RND. For example, after keyboard input, will seed RND with the values of $4E and $4F.
Like other implementations of Microsoft BASIC, Applesoft discards spaces (outside of strings and comments) on program lines. LIST adds spaces when displaying code for the sake of readability. Since LIST adds a space before and after every tokenized keyword, it often produces two spaces in a row where one would suffice for readability.
The default prompt for INPUT is a question mark. PRINT does not add a leading space in front of numbers.
Coleco claimed that its Adam home computer's SmartBASIC was source-code compatible with Applesoft. Microsoft licensed a BASIC compatible with Applesoft to VTech for its Laser 128 clone.
Limitations
Through several early models of the Apple II, Applesoft BASIC did not support the use of lowercase letters in programs, except in strings. PRINT is a valid command but print and Print result in a syntax error.
Applesoft lacks several commands and functions common to most of the non-6502 Microsoft BASIC interpreters, such as:
INSTR (search for a substring in a string)
PRINT USING (format numbers in printed output)
INKEY$ (check for a keypress without stopping the program; although a PEEK to location $C000 achieves this action)
LPRINT (output to a printer instead of the screen)
Applesoft does not have commands for file or disk handling, other than to save and load programs via cassette tape. The Apple II disk operating system, known simply as DOS, augments the language to provide such abilities.
Only the first two letters of variables names are significant. For example, "LOW" and "LOSS" are treated as the same variable, and attempting to assign a value to "LOSS" overwrites any value assigned to "LOW". A programmer also has to avoid consecutive letters that are Applesoft commands or operations. The name "SCORE" for a variable is interpreted as containing the OR Boolean operator, rendered as SC OR E. "BACKGROUND" contains GR, the command to invoke the low-resolution graphics mode, and results in a syntax error.
Sound and graphics
The only sound support is the option to PRINT an ASCII bell character to sound the system alert beep, and a PEEK command to click the speaker. The language is not fast enough to produce more than a baritone buzz from repeated clicks. Programs can, however, store a machine-language routine to be called to generate electronic musical tones spanning several octaves.
Applesoft supports the low resolution (lores) graphics display, where 40 color pixels horizontally, and up to 48 vertically, can be displayed in 16 colors, and the 280 by 192 high resolution (hires) mode. There are commands to plot pixels and draw horizontal and vertical lines in lores. Hires allows drawing arbitrary lines. Vector-based shape tables can be used to draw objects in high-resolution graphic modes. They consist of horizontal and vertical lines, and entire shapes can be scaled to larger sizes and rotated to any angle. No provision exists for mixing text and graphics, except for the Apple's four lines of text at the bottom of a graphic display.
Beginning with the Apple IIe, a "double-high resolution" mode became available on machines with 128k of memory. This mode essentially duplicates the resolution of the original hires mode, but including all 16 colors of the lores palette. Applesoft does not provide direct support for this mode. Apple IIgs-specific modes are likewise not supported.
Extensions
Applesoft BASIC can be extended by two means: the ampersand (&) command and the USR() function. These are two features that call low-level machine-language routines stored in memory, which is useful for routines that need to be fast or require direct access to arbitrary functions or data in memory. The USR() function takes one numerical argument, and can be programmed to derive and return a calculated function value, to be used in a numerical expression. "&" is effectively a shorthand for CALL, with an address that is predefined.
Bugs
A deficiency with error-trapping via ONERR means that the system stack is not reset if an error-handling routine does not invoke RESUME, potentially leading to a crash. The built-in pseudorandom number generator function RND is capable of producing a predictable series of outputs due to the manner in which the generator is seeded when first powering on. This behavior is contrary to how Apple's documentation describes the function.
Performance
Wozniak originally referred to his Integer BASIC as "Game BASIC" (having written it so he could implement a Breakout clone for his new computer). Few action games were written in Applesoft BASIC, in large part because the use of floating-point numbers for all math operations degrades performance.
Applesoft BASIC programs are stored as a linked list of lines; a GOTO or GOSUB takes linear time. Some programs have the subroutines at the top to reduce the time for calling them.
Unlike Integer BASIC, Applesoft does not convert literal numbers (like 100) in the source code to binary when a line is entered. Rather, the ASCII string is converted whenever the line is executed. Since variable lookup is often faster than this conversion, it can be faster to store numeric constants used inside loops in variables before the loop is entered.
Sample code
Hello World in Applesoft BASIC can be entered as the following:
10TEXT:HOME
20?"HELLO WORLD"
Multiple commands can be included on the same line of code if separated by a colon (:). The ? can be used in Applesoft BASIC (and almost all versions of Microsoft BASIC) as a shortcut for "PRINT", though spelling out the word is not only acceptable but canonical—Applesoft converted "?" in entered programs to the same token as "PRINT" (thus no memory is actually saved by using "?"), thus either appears as "PRINT" when a program is listed. The program above appears in a LIST command as:
10 TEXT : HOME
20 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
When Applesoft II BASIC was initially released in mid-1978, it came on cassette tape and could be loaded into memory via the Apple II's machine language monitor. When the enhanced Apple II+ replaced the original II in 1979, Applesoft was now included in ROM and automatically started on power-up if no bootable floppy disk was present. Conversely, Integer BASIC was now removed from ROM and turned into an executable file on the DOS 3.3 disk.
Early evolution
The original Applesoft, stored in RAM as documented in its Reference Manual of November 1977, has smaller interpreter code than the later Applesoft II, occupying 8½ kb of memory, instead of the 10 kb used by the later Applesoft II. Consequently, it lacks a number of command features developed for the later, mainstream version:
All commands supporting Apple's "high resolution" graphics (9 total)
Error-trapping with ONERR...GOTO and RESUME
Machine-routine shorthand call "&"
Screen-clearing HOME (a call to a system ROM routine)
Text-output control NORMAL, INVERSE, FLASH and SPEED=
The print-space function SPC() is listed among reserved words in the manual, but is not otherwise documented (the TAB() print-function is documented)
Cassette tape storage of numerical arrays: STORE and RECALL
Device response: WAIT
as well as several the later version would have, that had already been present in Apple's Integer BASIC:
Program-line deletion: DEL
Machine-routine access: CALL
Peripheral device access: IN# and PR# (although IN without "#" is listed among reserved words)
Memory range control: HIMEM: and LOMEM:
Execution tracking for debugging: TRACE and NOTRACE
Screen-positioning: HTAB and VTAB
Subroutine aborting POP
Functions PDL() to read the analog controllers, and SCRN() to read the low-resolution graphics screen (both accessing system ROM routines)
In addition, its low-resolution graphics commands have different names from their Integer BASIC/Applesoft II counterparts. All command names are of the form PLTx such that GR, COLOR=, PLOT, HLIN and VLIN are called PLTG, PLTC, PLTP, PLTH, and PLTV, respectively. The command for returning to text mode, known as TEXT in other versions, is simply TEX, and carries the proviso that it has to be the last statement in a program line.
Applesoft BASIC 1.x was closer to Microsoft's original 6502 BASIC code than the later Applesoft II; it retained the Memory Size? prompt and displayed a Microsoft copyright notice. To maintain consistency with Integer BASIC, the "Ok" prompt from Microsoft's code was replaced by a ] character. Applesoft 1.x also prompted the user upon loading if he wished to disable the REM statement and the LET keyword in assignment statements in exchange for lores graphics commands.
The USR() function is also defined differently, serving as a stand-in for the absent CALL command. Its argument is not for passing a numerical value to the machine-language routine, but is instead the call-address of the routine itself; there is no "hook" to pre-define the address. All of several examples in the manual use the function only to access "system monitor ROM" routines, or short user-routines to manipulate the ROM routines. No mention is made of any code to calculate the value returned by the function itself; the function is always shown being assigned to "dummy" variables, which, without action to set a value by user-code, just receive a meaningless value handed back to them. Even accessed ROM routines that return values (in examples, those that provide the service of PDL() and SCRN() functions) merely have their values stored, by user-routines, in locations that are separately PEEKed in a subsequent statement.
Unlike in Integer BASIC and Applesoft II, the Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT perform bitwise operations on 16-bit integer values. If they are given values outside that range, an error results.
The terms OUT and PLT (and the aforementioned IN) appear in the list of reserved words, but are not explained anywhere in the manual.
See also
ALF's Formula Transfer Link, speed enhancement for Applesoft BASIC
Chinese BASIC, a Chinese-localized version of Applesoft BASIC
Apple III BASICs from Apple and Microsoft
References
External links
Disassembled ROM
AppleSoft BASIC in JavaScript
Apple II software
BASIC interpreters
Discontinued Microsoft BASICs
BASIC programming language family
Microsoft programming languages |
2101 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix | Asterix | Asterix or The Adventures of Asterix ( or , ; "Asterix the Gaul") is a Bande dessinée comic book series about Gaulish warriors, who adventure around the world and fight the Roman Republic, with the aid of a magic potion, during the era of Julius Caesar in an ahistorical telling of the time after the Gallic Wars. The series first appeared in the Franco-Belgian comic magazine Pilote on 29 October 1959. It was written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo until Goscinny's death in 1977. Uderzo then took over the writing until 2009, when he sold the rights to publishing company Hachette; he died in 2020. In 2013, a new team consisting of Jean-Yves Ferri (script) and Didier Conrad (artwork) took over. , 39 volumes have been released, with the most recent released in October 2021.
Description
Asterix comics usually start with the following introduction: The year is 50 BC. Gaul is entirely occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely... One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders. And life is not easy for the Roman legionaries who garrison the fortified camps of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium... The series follows the adventures of a village of Gauls as they resist Roman occupation in 50 BC. They do so using a magic potion, brewed by their druid Getafix (Panoramix in the French version), which temporarily gives the recipient superhuman strength. The protagonists, the title character Asterix and his friend Obelix, have various adventures. The "-ix" ending of both names (as well as all the other pseudo-Gaulish "-ix" names in the series) alludes to the "-rix" suffix (meaning "king") present in the names of many real Gaulish chieftains such as Vercingetorix, Orgetorix, and Dumnorix.
In many of the stories, they travel to foreign countries, while other tales are set in and around their village. For much of the history of the series (Volumes 4 through 29), settings in Gaul and abroad alternated, with even-numbered volumes set abroad and odd-numbered volumes set in Gaul, mostly in the village.
The Asterix series is one of the most popular Franco-Belgian comics in the world, with the series being translated into 111 languages and dialects .
The success of the series has led to the adaptation of its books into 13 films: nine animated, and four live action (two of which, Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra and Asterix and Obelix vs. Caesar, were major box office successes in France). There have also been a number of games based on the characters, and a theme park near Paris, Parc Astérix. The very first French satellite, Astérix, launched in 1965, was named after the character. As of 2017, 370million copies of Asterix books had been sold worldwide, with co-creators René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo being France's best-selling authors abroad.
History
Prior to creating the Asterix series, Goscinny and Uderzo had previously had success with their series Oumpah-pah, which was published in Tintin magazine.
Astérix was originally serialised in Pilote magazine, debuting in the first issue on 29 October 1959. In 1961 the first book was put together, titled Asterix the Gaul. From then on, books were released generally on a yearly basis. Their success was exponential; the first book sold 6,000 copies in its year of publication; a year later, the second sold 20,000. In 1963, the third sold 40,000; the fourth, released in 1964, sold 150,000. A year later, the fifth sold 300,000; 1966's Asterix and the Big Fight sold 400,000 upon initial publication. The ninth Asterix volume, when first released in 1967, sold 1.2 million copies in two days.
Uderzo's first preliminary sketches portrayed Asterix as a huge and strong traditional Gaulish warrior. But Goscinny had a different picture in his mind, visualizing Asterix as a shrewd, compact warrior who would possess intelligence and wit more than raw strength. However, Uderzo felt that the downsized hero needed a strong but dim companion, to which Goscinny agreed. Hence, Obelix was born. Despite the growing popularity of Asterix with the readers, the financial backing for the publication Pilote ceased. Pilote was taken over by Georges Dargaud.
When Goscinny died in 1977, Uderzo continued the series by popular demand of the readers, who implored him to continue. He continued to issue new volumes of the series, but on a less frequent basis. Many critics and fans of the series prefer the earlier collaborations with Goscinny. Uderzo created his own publishing company, Éditions Albert René, which published every album drawn and written by Uderzo alone since then. However, Dargaud, the initial publisher of the series, kept the publishing rights on the 24 first albums made by both Uderzo and Goscinny. In 1990, the Uderzo and Goscinny families decided to sue Dargaud to take over the rights. In 1998, after a long trial, Dargaud lost the rights to publish and sell the albums. Uderzo decided to sell these rights to Hachette instead of Albert-René, but the publishing rights on new albums were still owned by Albert Uderzo (40%), Sylvie Uderzo (20%) and Anne Goscinny (40%).
In December 2008, Uderzo sold his stake to Hachette, which took over the company. In a letter published in the French newspaper Le Monde in 2009, Uderzo's daughter, Sylvie, attacked her father's decision to sell the family publishing firm and the rights to produce new Astérix adventures after his death. She said:
... the co-creator of Astérix, France's comic strip hero, has betrayed the Gaulish warrior to the modern-day Romans – the men of industry and finance.
However, René Goscinny's daughter, Anne, also gave her agreement to the continuation of the series and sold her rights at the same time. She is reported to have said that "Asterix has already had two lives: one during my father's lifetime and one after it. Why not a third?". A few months later, Uderzo appointed three illustrators, who had been his assistants for many years, to continue the series. In 2011, Uderzo announced that a new Asterix album was due out in 2013, with Jean-Yves Ferri writing the story and Frédéric Mébarki drawing it. A year later, in 2012, the publisher Albert-René announced that Frédéric Mébarki had withdrawn from drawing the new album, due to the pressure he felt in following in the steps of Uderzo. Comic artist Didier Conrad was officially announced to take over drawing duties from Mébarki, with the due date of the new album in 2013 unchanged.
In January 2015, after the murders of seven cartoonists at the satirical Paris weekly Charlie Hebdo, Astérix creator Albert Uderzo came out of retirement to draw two Astérix pictures honouring the memories of the victims.
List of titles
Numbers 1–24, 32 and 34 are by Goscinny and Uderzo. Numbers 25–31 and 33 are by Uderzo alone. Numbers 35–39 are by Jean-Yves Ferri and Didier Conrad. Years stated are for their initial album release.
Asterix the Gaul (1961)
Asterix and the Golden Sickle (1962)
Asterix and the Goths (1963)
Asterix the Gladiator (1964)
Asterix and the Banquet (1965)
Asterix and Cleopatra (1965)
Asterix and the Big Fight (1966)
Asterix in Britain (1966)
Asterix and the Normans (1966)
Asterix the Legionary (1967)
Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield (1968)
Asterix at the Olympic Games (1968)
Asterix and the Cauldron (1969)
Asterix in Spain (1969)
Asterix and the Roman Agent (1970)
Asterix in Switzerland (1970)
The Mansions of the Gods (1971)
Asterix and the Laurel Wreath (1972)
Asterix and the Soothsayer (1972)
Asterix in Corsica (1973)
Asterix and Caesar's Gift (1974)
Asterix and the Great Crossing (1975)
Obelix and Co. (1976)
Asterix in Belgium (1979)
Asterix and the Great Divide (1980)
Asterix and the Black Gold (1981)
Asterix and Son (1983)
Asterix and the Magic Carpet (1987)
Asterix and the Secret Weapon (1991)
Asterix and Obelix All at Sea (1996)
Asterix and the Actress (2001)
Asterix and the Class Act (2003)
Asterix and the Falling Sky (2005)
Asterix and Obelix's Birthday: The Golden Book (2009)
Asterix and the Picts (2013)
Asterix and the Missing Scroll (2015)
Asterix and the Chariot Race (2017)
Asterix and the Chieftain's Daughter (2019)
Asterix and the Griffin (2021)
Non-canonical volumes:
Asterix Conquers Rome, to be the 23rd volume, before Obelix and Co. (1976) - comic
How Obelix Fell into the Magic Potion When he was a Little Boy (1989) - special issue album
The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (2016) - special issue album, illustrated text
Uderzo Croqué par ses Amis - (Uderzo sketched by his friends) Tribute album by various artists (1996)
Asterix Conquers Rome is a comics adaptation of the animated film The Twelve Tasks of Asterix. It was released in 1976 and was the 23rd volume to be published, but it has been rarely reprinted and is not considered to be canonical to the series. The only English translations ever to be published were in the Asterix Annual 1980 and never an English standalone volume. A picture-book version of the same story was published in English translation as The Twelve Tasks of Asterix by Hodder & Stoughton in 1978.
In 1996, a tribute album in honour of Albert Uderzo was released titled "Uderzo Croqué par ses Amis", a volume containing 21 short stories with Uderzo in Ancient Gaul. This volume was published by Soleil Productions and has not been translated into English.
In 2007, Éditions Albert René released a tribute volume titled Astérix et ses Amis, a 60-page volume of one-to-four-page short stories. It was a tribute to Albert Uderzo on his 80th birthday by 34 European cartoonists. The volume was translated into nine languages. , it has not been translated into English.
In 2016, the French publisher Hachette, along with Anne Goscinny and Albert Uderzo decided to make the special issue album The XII Tasks of Asterix for the 40th anniversary of the film The Twelve Tasks of Asterix. There was no English edition.
Synopsis and characters
The main setting for the series is an unnamed coastal village, rumoured to be inspired by Erquy in Armorica (present-day Brittany), a province of Gaul (modern France), in the year 50 BC. Julius Caesar has conquered nearly all of Gaul for the Roman Empire during the Gallic Wars. The little Armorican village, however, has held out because the villagers can gain temporary superhuman strength by drinking a magic potion brewed by the local village druid, Getafix. His chief is Vitalstatistix.
The main protagonist and hero of the village is Asterix, who, because of his shrewdness, is usually entrusted with the most important affairs of the village. He is aided in his adventures by his rather corpulent and slower thinking friend, Obelix, who, because he fell into the druid's cauldron of the potion as a baby, has permanent superhuman strength (because of this, Getafix steadfastly refuses to allow Obelix to drink the potion, as doing so would have a dangerous and unpredictable result, as shown in Asterix and Obelix All at Sea). Obelix is usually accompanied by Dogmatix, his little dog. (Except for Asterix and Obelix, the names of the characters change with the language. For example, Obelix's dog's name is "Dogmatix" in English, but "Idéfix" in the original French edition.)
Asterix and Obelix (and sometimes other members of the village) go on various adventures both within the village and in far away lands. Places visited in the series include parts of Gaul (Lutetia, Corsica etc.), neighbouring nations (Belgium, Spain, Britain, Germany etc.), and far away lands (North America, Middle East, India etc.).
The series employs science-fiction and fantasy elements in the more recent books; for instance, the use of extraterrestrials in Asterix and the Falling Sky and the city of Atlantis in Asterix and Obelix All at Sea.
With rare exceptions, the ending of the albums usually shows a big banquet with the village's inhabitants gathering - the sole exception is the bard Cacofonix restrained and gagged to prevent him from singing (but in Asterix and the Normans the ironsmith Fulliautomatix was tied up). Mostly the banquets are held under the starry nights in the village, where roast boar is devoured and all (but one) are set about in merrymaking. However, there are a few exceptions, such as in Asterix and Cleopatra.
Humour
The humour encountered in the Asterix comics often centers around puns, caricatures, and tongue-in-cheek stereotypes of contemporary European nations and French regions. Much of the humour in the initial Asterix books was French-specific, which delayed the translation of the books into other languages for fear of losing the jokes and the spirit of the story. Some translations have actually added local humour: In the Italian translation, the Roman legionaries are made to speak in 20th-century Roman dialect, and Obelix's famous Ils sont fous ces Romains ("These Romans are crazy") is translated properly as Sono pazzi questi romani, humorously alluding to the Roman abbreviation SPQR. In another example: Hiccups are written onomatopoeically in French as hips, but in English as "hic", allowing Roman legionaries in more than one of the English translations to decline their hiccups absurdly in Latin (hic, haec, hoc). The newer albums share a more universal humour, both written and visual.
Character names
All the fictional characters in Asterix have names which are puns on their roles or personalities, and which follow certain patterns specific to nationality. Certain rules are followed (most of the time) such as Gauls (and their neighbours) having an "-ix" suffix for the men and ending in "-a" for the women; for example, Chief Vitalstatistix (so called due to his portly stature) and his wife Impedimenta (often at odds with the chief). The male Roman names end in "-us", echoing Latin nominative male singular form, as in Gluteus Maximus, a muscle-bound athlete whose name is literally the butt of the joke. Gothic names (present-day Germany) end in "-ic", after Gothic chiefs such as Alaric and Theoderic; for example Rhetoric the interpreter. Greek names end in "-os" or "-es"; for example, Thermos the restaurateur. British names end in "-ax" and are often puns on the taxation associated with the later United Kingdom; examples include Valuaddedtax the druid, and Selectivemploymentax the mercenary. Vikings names end with af, for example necaf or cenotaf. Other nationalities are treated to pidgin translations from their language, like Huevos y Bacon, a Spanish chieftain (whose name, meaning eggs and bacon, is often guidebook Spanish for tourists), or literary and other popular media references, like Dubbelosix (a sly reference to James Bond's codename "007").
Most of these jokes, and hence the names of the characters, are specific to the translation; for example, the druid named Getafix in English translation - "get a fix", referring to the character's role in dispensing the magic potion - is Panoramix in the original French and Miraculix in German. Even so, occasionally the wordplay has been preserved: Obelix's dog, known in the original French as Idéfix (from idée fixe, a "fixed idea" or obsession), is called Dogmatix in English, which not only renders the original meaning strikingly closely ("dogmatic") but in fact adds another layer of wordplay with the syllable "Dog-" at the beginning of the name.
The name Asterix, French Astérix, comes from , meaning "asterisk", which is the typographical symbol * indicating a footnote, from the Greek word αστήρ (aster), meaning a "star". His name is usually left unchanged in translations, aside from accents and the use of local alphabets. For example, in Esperanto, Polish, Slovene, Latvian, and Turkish it is Asteriks (in Turkish he was first named Bücür meaning "shorty", but the name was then standardised). Two exceptions include Icelandic, in which he is known as Ástríkur ("Rich of love"), and Sinhala, where he is known as (Soora Pappa), which can be interpreted as "Hero". The name Obelix (Obélix) may refer to "obelisk", a stone column from ancient Egypt, but also to another typographical symbol, the obelisk or obelus ().
For explanations of some of the other names, see List of Asterix characters.
Ethnic stereotypes
Many of the Asterix adventures take place in other countries away from their homeland in Gaul. In every album that takes place abroad, the characters meet (usually modern-day) stereotypes for each country, as seen by the French.
Italics (Italians) are the inhabitants of Italy. In the adventures of Asterix, the term "Romans" is used by non-Italics to refer to all inhabitants of Italy, who at that time had extended their dominion over a large part of the Mediterranean basin. But as can be seen in Asterix and the Chariot Race, in the Italic peninsula this term is used only to the people from the capital, with many Italics preferring to identify themselves as Umbrians, Etruscans, Venetians, etc. Various topics from this country are explored, as in this example, Italian gastronomy (pasta, pizza, wine), art, famous people (Pavarotti, Berlusconi, Mona Lisa), and even the controversial issue of political corruption.Romans in general appear more similar to the historical Romans, than to modern-age Italians.
Goths (Germans) are disciplined and militaristic, they are composed of many factions that fight amongst each other (which is a reference to Germany before Otto von Bismarck, and to East and West Germany after the Second World War), and they wear the Pickelhaube helmet common during the German Empire. In later appearances, the Goths tend to be more good-natured.
Helvetians (Swiss) are neutral, eat fondue, and are obsessed with cleaning, accurate time-keeping, and banks.
The Britons (English) are phlegmatic, and speak with early 20th-century aristocratic slang (similar to Bertie Wooster). They stop for tea every day (making it with hot water and a drop of milk until Asterix brings them actual tea leaves), drink lukewarm beer (Bitter), eat tasteless foods with mint sauce (Rosbif), and live in streets containing rows of identical houses. In Asterix and Obelix: God Save Britannia the Britons all wore woollen pullovers and Tam o' shanters.
Hibernians (Irish) inhabit Hibernia, the Latin name of Ireland and they fight against the Romans alongside the Britons to defend the British Isles.
Iberians (Spanish) are filled with pride and have rather choleric tempers. They produce olive oil, provide very slow aid for chariot problems on the Roman roads and (thanks to Asterix) adopt bullfighting as a tradition.
When the Gauls visited North America in Asterix and the Great Crossing, Obelix punches one of the attacking Native Americans with a knockout blow. The warrior first hallucinates American-style emblematic eagles; the second time, he sees stars in the formation of the Stars and Stripes; the third time, he sees stars shaped like the United States Air Force roundel. Asterix's inspired idea for getting the attention of a nearby Viking ship (which could take them back to Gaul) is to hold up a torch; this refers to the Statue of Liberty (which was a gift from France).
Corsicans are proud, patriotic, and easily aroused but lazy, making decisions by using pre-filled ballot boxes. They harbour vendettas against each other, and always take their siesta.
Greeks are chauvinists and consider Romans, Gauls, and all others to be barbarians. They eat stuffed grape leaves (dolma), drink resinated wine (retsina), and are hospitable to tourists. Most seem to be related by blood, and often suggest some cousin appropriate for a job. Greek characters are often depicted in side profile, making them resemble figures from classical Greek vase paintings.
Normans (Vikings) drink endlessly, they always use cream in their cuisine, they don't know what fear is (which they're trying to discover), and in their home territory (Scandinavia), the night lasts for 6 months.Their depiction in the albums is a mix of stereotypes of Swedish Vikings and the Norman French.
Cimbres (Danes) are very similar to the Normans with the greatest difference being that the Gauls are unable to communicate with them. Their names end in "-sen", a common ending of surnames in Denmark and Norway akin to "-son".
Belgians speak with a funny accent, snub the Gauls, and always eat sliced roots deep-fried in bear fat. They also tell Belgian jokes.
Lusitanians (Portuguese) are short in stature and polite (Uderzo said all the Portuguese who he had met were like that).
The Indians have elephant trainers, as well as gurus who can fast for weeks and levitate on magic carpets. They worship thirty-three million deities and consider cows as sacred. They also bathe in the Ganges river.
Egyptians are short with prominent noses, endlessly engaged in building pyramids and palaces. Their favorite food is lentil soup and they sail feluccas along the banks of the Nile River.
Persians (Iranians) produce carpets and staunchly refuse to mend foreign ones. They eat caviar, as well as roasted camel and the women wear burqas.
Hittites (Turks), Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, and Babylonians (the last four peoples: Iraqis) are perpetually at war with each other and attack strangers because they confuse them with their enemies, but they later apologize when they realize that the strangers are not their enemies. This is likely a criticism of the constant conflicts among the Middle Eastern peoples.
The Jews are all depicted as Yemenite Jews, with dark skin, black eyes, and beards, a tribute to Marc Chagall, the famous painter whose painting of King David hangs at the Knesset (Israeli Parliament).
Numidians, contrary to the Berber inhabitants of ancient Numidia (located in North Africa), are obviously Africans from sub-Saharan Africa. The names end in "-tha", similar to the historical king Jugurtha of Numidia.
The Picts (Scots) wear a typical dress with a kilt (skirt), have the habit of drinking "malt water" (whisky) and throwing logs (caber tossing) as a popular sport and their names all start with "Mac-".
Sarmatians (Ukrainians), inhabit the North Black Sea area, which represents present-day Ukraine. Their names end in "-ov", like many Ukrainian surnames.
When the Gauls see foreigners speaking their foreign languages, these have different representations in the cartoon speech bubbles:
Iberian: Same as Spanish, with inversion of exclamation marks ('¡') and question marks ("¿")
Goth language: Gothic script (incomprehensible to the Gauls, except Getafix)
Viking (Normans and Cimbres): "Ø" and "Å" instead of "O" and "A" (incomprehensible to the Gauls)
Amerindian: Pictograms and sign language (generally incomprehensible to the Gauls)
Egyptians and Kushites: Hieroglyphs with explanatory footnotes (incomprehensible to the Gauls)
Greek: Straight letters, carved as if in stone
Sarmatian: In their speech balloons, some letters (E, F, N, R ...) are written in a mirror-reversed form, which evokes the modern Cyrillic alphabet.
Translations
The various volumes have been translated into more than 100 languages and dialects. Besides the original French language, most albums are available in Bengali, Estonian, English, Czech, Dutch, German, Galician, Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Catalan, Basque, Portuguese, Italian, Greek, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Turkish, Slovene, Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, Latvian, Welsh, as well as Latin.
Selected albums have also been translated into languages such as Esperanto, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Scots, Indonesian, Persian, Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, Bengali, Afrikaans, Arabic, Hindi, Hebrew, Frisian, Romansch, Vietnamese, Sinhala, Ancient Greek, and Luxembourgish.
In Europe, several volumes were translated into a variety of regional languages and dialects, such as Alsatian, Breton, Chtimi (Picard), and Corsican in France; Bavarian, Swabian, and Low German in Germany; and Savo, Karelia, Rauma, and Helsinki slang dialects in Finland. Also, in Portugal, a special edition of the first volume, Asterix the Gaul, was translated into local language Mirandese. In Greece, a number of volumes have appeared in the Cretan Greek, Cypriot Greek, and Pontic Greek dialects. In the Italian version, while the Gauls speak standard Italian, the legionaries speak in the Romanesque dialect. In the former Yugoslavia, the "Forum" publishing house translated Corsican text in Asterix in Corsica into the Montenegrin dialect of Serbo-Croatian (today called Montenegrin).
In the Netherlands, several volumes were translated into West Frisian, a Germanic language spoken in the province of Friesland; into Limburgish, a regional language spoken not only in Dutch Limburg but also in Belgian Limburg and North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany; and into Tweants, a dialect in the region of Twente in the eastern province of Overijssel. Hungarian-language books have been published in Yugoslavia for the Hungarian minority living in Serbia. Although not translated into a fully autonomous dialect, the books differ slightly from the language of the books issued in Hungary. In Sri Lanka, the cartoon series was adapted into Sinhala as Sura Pappa.
Most volumes have been translated into Latin and Ancient Greek, with accompanying teachers' guides, as a way of teaching these ancient languages.
English translation
Before Asterix became famous, translations of some strips were published in British comics including Valiant, Ranger, and Look & Learn, under names Little Fred and Big Ed and Beric the Bold, set in Roman-occupied Britain. These were included in an exhibition on Goscinny's life and career, and Asterix, in London's Jewish Museum in 2018.
In 1970 William Morrow published English translations in hardback of three Asterix albums for the American market. These were Asterix the Gaul, Asterix and Cleopatra and Asterix the Legionary. Lawrence Hughes in a letter to The New York Times stated, "Sales were modest, with the third title selling half the number of the first. I was publisher at the time, and Bill Cosby tried to buy film and television rights. When that fell through, we gave up the series."
The first 33 Asterix albums were translated into English by Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge (including the three volumes reprinted by William Morrow), who were widely praised for maintaining the spirit and humour of the original French versions. Hockridge died in 2013, so Bell translated books 34 to 36 by herself, before retiring in 2016 for health reasons. She died in 2018. Adriana Hunter is the present translator.
US publisher Papercutz in December 2019 announced it would begin publishing "all-new more American translations" of the Asterix books, starting on 19 May 2020. The launch was postponed to 15 July 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The new translator is Joe Johnson (Dr. Edward Joseph Johnson), a Professor of French and Spanish at Clayton State University.
Adaptations
The series has been adapted into various media. There are 18 films, 15 board games, 40 video games, and 1 theme park.
Films
Deux Romains en Gaule, 1967 black and white television film, mixed media, live-action with Asterix and Obelix animated. Released on DVD in 2002.
Asterix the Gaul, 1967, animated, based on the album Asterix the Gaul.
Asterix and the Golden Sickle, 1967, animated, based upon the album Asterix and the Golden Sickle, incomplete and never released.
Asterix and Cleopatra, 1968, animated, based on the album Asterix and Cleopatra.
The Dogmatix Movie, 1973, animated, a unique story based on Dogmatix and his animal friends, Albert Uderzo created a comic version (consisting of eight comics, as the film is a combination of 8 different stories) of the never-released movie in 2003.
The Twelve Tasks of Asterix, 1976, animated, a unique story not based on an existing comic.
Asterix Versus Caesar, 1985, animated, based on both Asterix the Legionary and Asterix the Gladiator.
Asterix in Britain, 1986, animated, based upon the album Asterix in Britain.
Asterix and the Big Fight, 1989, animated, based on both Asterix and the Big Fight and Asterix and the Soothsayer.
Asterix Conquers America, 1994, animated, loosely based upon the album Asterix and the Great Crossing.
Asterix and Obelix vs. Caesar, 1999, live-action, based primarily upon Asterix the Gaul, Asterix and the Soothsayer, Asterix and the Goths, Asterix the Legionary, and Asterix the Gladiator.
Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, 2002, live-action, based upon the album Asterix and Cleopatra.
Asterix and Obelix in Spain, 2004, live-action, based upon the album Asterix in Spain, incomplete and never released because of disagreement with the team behind the movie and the creator of the comics.
Asterix and the Vikings, 2006, animated, loosely based upon the album Asterix and the Normans.
Asterix at the Olympic Games, 2008, live-action, loosely based upon the album Asterix at the Olympic Games.
Asterix and Obelix: God Save Britannia, 2012, live-action, loosely based upon the album Asterix in Britain and Asterix and the Normans.
Asterix: The Mansions of the Gods, 2014, computer-animated, based upon the album The Mansions of the Gods and is the first animated Asterix movie in stereoscopic 3D.
Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion, 2018, computer-animated, original story.
Television series
On 17 November, 2018, a 52 eleven-minute episode computer-animated series centred around Dogmatix was announced to be in production by Studio 58 and Futurikon for broadcast on France Télévisions in 2020. On 21 December, 2020, it was confirmed that Dogmatix and the Indomitables had been pushed back to fall 2021, with o2o Studio producing the animation. The show is distributed globally by LS Distribution. The series premiered on the Okoo streaming service on 2 July before beginning its linear broadcast on France 4 on 28 August 2021.
On 3 March, 2021, it was announced that Asterix the Gaul is to star in a new Netflix animated series directed by Alain Chabat. The series will be adapted from one of the classic volumes, Asterix and the Big Fight, where the Romans, after being constantly embarrassed by Asterix and his village cohorts, organize a brawl between rival Gaulish chiefs and try to fix the result by kidnapping a druid along with his much-needed magic potion. The series will debut in 2023. The series will be CG-Animated.
Games
Many gamebooks, board games and video games are based upon the Asterix series. In particular, many video games were released by various computer game publishers.
Theme park
Parc Astérix, a theme park 22 miles north of Paris, based upon the series, was opened in 1989. It is one of the most visited sites in France, with around 1.6 million visitors per year.
Influence in popular culture
The first French satellite, which was launched in 1965, was named Astérix-1 in honour of Asterix. Asteroids 29401 Asterix and 29402 Obelix were also named in honour of the characters. Coincidentally, the word Asterix/Asterisk originates from the Greek for Little Star.
During the campaign for Paris to host the 1992 Summer Olympics, Asterix appeared in many posters over the Eiffel Tower.
The French company Belin introduced a series of Asterix crisps shaped in the forms of Roman shields, gourds, wild boar, and bones.
In the UK in 1995, Asterix coins were presented free in every Nutella jar.
In 1991, Asterix and Obelix appeared on the cover of Time for a special edition about France, art directed by Mirko Ilic. In a 2009 issue of the same magazine, Asterix is described as being seen by some as a symbol for France's independence and defiance of globalisation. Despite this, Asterix has made several promotional appearances for fast food chain McDonald's, including one advertisement which featured members of the village enjoying the traditional story-ending feast at a McDonald's restaurant.
Version 4.0 of the operating system OpenBSD features a parody of an Asterix story.
Action Comics Issue #579, published by DC Comics in 1986, written by Lofficier and Illustrated by Keith Giffen, featured a homage to Asterix where Superman and Jimmy Olsen are drawn back in time to a small village of indomitable Gauls.
In 2005, the Mirror World Asterix exhibition was held in Brussels. The Belgian post office also released a set of stamps to coincide with the exhibition. A book was released to coincide with the exhibition, containing sections in French, Dutch and English.
On 29 October 2009, the Google homepage of a great number of countries displayed a logo (called Google Doodle) commemorating 50 years of Asterix.
Although they have since changed, the #2 and #3 heralds in the Society for Creative Anachronism's Kingdom of Ansteorra were the Asterisk and Obelisk Heralds.
Asterix and Obelix were the official mascots of the 2017 Ice Hockey World Championships, jointly hosted by France and Germany.
In 2019, France issued a commemorative €2 coin to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Asterix.
The Royal Canadian Navy has a supply vessel named MV Asterix. A second Resolve-Class ship, to have been named MV Obelix, was cancelled.
See also
List of Asterix characters
Bande dessinée
English translations of Asterix
List of Asterix games
List of Asterix volumes
Kajko i Kokosz
Potion
Roman Gaul, after Julius Caesar's conquest of 58–51 BC that consisted of five provinces
Commentarii de Bello Gallico
References
Sources
Astérix publications in Pilote BDoubliées
Astérix albums Bedetheque
External links
Official site
Asterix the Gaul at Don Markstein's Toonopedia, from the original on 6 April 2012.
Asterix around the World – The many languages
Alea Jacta Est (Asterix for grown-ups) Each Asterix book is examined in detail
Les allusions culturelles dans Astérix - Cultural allusions
The Asterix Annotations – album-by-album explanations of all the historical references and obscure in-jokes
French comic strips
Pilote titles
Dargaud titles
Alternate history comics
Lagardère SCA franchises
Satirical comics
Comic franchises
Fantasy comics
Historical comics
Humor comics
Pirate comics
1959 comics debuts
Fiction set in Roman Gaul
Comics set in ancient Rome
Comics set in France
Brittany in fiction
Comics set in the 1st century BC
French comics adapted into films
Comics adapted into animated films
Comics adapted into animated series
Comics adapted into video games
1959 establishments in France
Works about rebels
Works about rebellions
Rebellions in fiction
Gallia Lugdunensis
Comics by Albert Uderzo
Armorica |
2102 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona%20Cardinals | Arizona Cardinals | The Arizona Cardinals are a professional American football team based in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The Cardinals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) West division, and play their home games at State Farm Stadium in the northwestern suburb of Glendale.
The team was established in 1898 as the Morgan Athletic Club, an amateur football team in Chicago, and joined the NFL as a charter member on September 17, 1920. The Cardinals are one of the oldest continuously run professional football teams in the United States, as well as one of two NFL charter member franchises still in operation since the league's founding, along with the Chicago Bears (the Green Bay Packers were an independent team until they joined the NFL a year after its creation in 1921). The team moved to St. Louis in and played there until . The team in St. Louis was commonly referred to as the "Football Cardinals", the "Gridbirds" or the "Big Red" to avoid confusion with the Major League Baseball (MLB) team of the same name. Before the season, the team moved west to Tempe, Arizona, a college suburb east of Phoenix, and played their home games for the next 18 seasons at Sun Devil Stadium on the campus of Arizona State University. In , the team moved to their current home field in Glendale, although their executive offices and training facility remain in Tempe. From 1988 to 2012 (except 2005, when they trained in Prescott), the Cardinals conducted their annual summer training camp at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. The Cardinals moved their training camp to State Farm Stadium (then University of Phoenix Stadium) in 2013.
The Cardinals have won two NFL championships, both while the team was based in Chicago. The first occurred in , but is the subject of controversy, with supporters of the Pottsville Maroons believing that Pottsville should have won the title. Their second, and the first to be won in a championship game, came in , nearly two decades before the first Super Bowl. They returned to the title game to defend in 1948, but lost the rematch 7–0 in a snowstorm in Philadelphia.
Since winning the championship in 1947, the team suffered many losing seasons, and currently holds the longest active championship drought of North American sports at 75 consecutive seasons. In 2012, the Cardinals became the first NFL franchise to lose 700 games since its inception. The team's all-time win-loss record (including regular season and playoff games) at the conclusion of the 2021 season is ( in the regular season, in the playoffs). They have been to the playoffs eleven times and have won seven playoff games, three of which were victories during their run in the 2008–09 NFL playoffs. During that season, they won their only NFC Championship Game since the 1970 AFL–NFL merger, and reached Super Bowl XLIII in 2009, losing 27–23 to the Pittsburgh Steelers. The team has also won five division titles (, , , and ) since their 1947–48 NFL championship game appearances. The Cardinals are the only NFL team who have never lost a playoff game at home, with a 5–0 record: the 1947 NFL Championship Game, two postseason victories during the aforementioned 2008–09 NFL playoffs, one during the 2009–10 playoffs, and one during the 2015–16 playoffs.
Franchise history
Chicago
The franchise's inception dates back to 1898, when a neighborhood group gathered to play on the South Side of Chicago, calling themselves the Morgan Athletic Club. Chicago painting and building contractor Chris O'Brien acquired the team, which he relocated to Normal Field on Racine Avenue. The team was known as the Racine Normals until 1901, when O'Brien bought used jerseys from the University of Chicago. After he described the faded maroon clothing as "Cardinal red", the team became the Racine Street Cardinals. Eventually in 1920, the team became a charter member of the American Professional Football Association (APFA), which was rechristened the National Football League (NFL) two years later. The team entered the league as the Racine Cardinals, but changed their name to the Chicago Cardinals in 1922 to avoid confusion with the Horlick-Racine Legion, who entered the league two years earlier. In 1925, the Cardinals were awarded the NFL Championship after the Pottsville Maroons were suspended for playing a game in what was deemed "another teams ". Having beat the Cardinals in a head-to-head game earlier in the season, the Pottsville Maroons won their extra game against the University of Notre Dame, helping them finish the year with the same record as the Cardinals. The Cardinals were also guilty of breaking NFL rules when they had scheduled two additional games, playing against the Hammond Pros and the Milwaukee Badgers, both of whom had already disbanded for the season. The game against the Badgers spurred a scandal when the Badgers filled out their roster with four high school players, in violation of NFL rules. The Cardinals experienced some success on the playing field during their first 26 seasons in the league. During the post-World War II years, the team reached two straight NFL finals against the Philadelphia Eagles, winning in 1947 (eight months after Charles Bidwill's death) but losing the following year. In the late 1950s, after years of bad seasons and losing fans to their crosstown rivals, the Chicago Bears, the Cardinals were almost bankrupt, and owner Violet Bidwill Wolfner became interested in a relocation.
St. Louis
Due to the formation of the rival American Football League, the NFL allowed Bidwill to relocate the team to St. Louis, Missouri, where they became the St. Louis Cardinals (they were locally called the "Big Red", the "Gridbirds" or the "Football Cardinals" to avoid confusion with the baseball team of the same name). During the Cardinals' 28-year stay in St. Louis, they advanced to the playoffs just three times (1974, 1975 and 1982), never hosting or winning in any appearance. The overall mediocrity of the Cardinals, combined with a then-21-year-old stadium, caused game attendance to dwindle, and owner Bill Bidwill decided to move the team to Arizona.
Phoenix
Not long after the 1987 NFL season, Bidwill agreed to move to Phoenix on a handshake deal with state and local officials, and the team became the Phoenix Cardinals (the franchise has never played in the city of Phoenix proper; however, there are several NFL teams which do not play in their market's central cities). The team changed their geographic name to the Arizona Cardinals on March 17, 1994. The 1998 NFL season saw the Cardinals break two long droughts, qualifying for the playoffs for the first time in 16 years. The team got their first postseason win since 1947 by defeating the Dallas Cowboys 20–7 in the Wild Card Playoffs. In 2008, the Cardinals, led by quarterback Kurt Warner, won the NFC Championship Game against the Philadelphia Eagles to advance to the Super Bowl for the first time in their history. They lost Super Bowl XLIII 27–23 to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the final seconds of the game.
After their historic 2008 season, the Cardinals posted a 10–6 record in 2009, their first season with 10 wins in Arizona. The Cardinals clinched their second consecutive NFC West title, but were defeated by the eventual Super Bowl champion, the New Orleans Saints, 45–14 in the divisional playoffs. The next time they would make the playoffs would be in 2014, when they ended up as a wild card. They set the best regular-season record in their history in Arizona at 11–5, but were defeated by the 7–8–1 NFC South champions, the Carolina Panthers.
The next year, the Cardinals set a franchise-best 13–3 record, and clinched their first-ever first-round playoff bye as the NFC's second seed. They defeated the Green Bay Packers 26–20 in overtime, giving quarterback Carson Palmer his first playoff victory. The Cardinals then advanced to their second NFC Championship Game in their history, but were blown out by the top-seeded 15–1 Panthers 49–15, committing seven turnovers.
The Cardinals then fell to 7–8–1 in and 8–8 in before ultimately dropping to 3–13 in , tying the franchise record set in 2000 for the worst record in a 16-game season. The team improved to 5–10–1 in and 8–8 in . In the 2021 season season, the Cardinals went 11-6, posting a winning record and returning to the postseason for the first time since 2015.
Logos and uniforms
Starting in , the team had a logo of a cardinal bird perched on the laces of a football.
The Cardinals moved to Arizona in , and the flag of Arizona was added to the sleeves the following year. In , the team began wearing red pants with their white jerseys, as new coach Joe Bugel wanted to emulate his former employer, the Washington Redskins, who at the time wore burgundy pants with their white jerseys (the Redskins later returned to their 1970s gold pants with all their jerseys).
In , the Cardinals participated in the NFL's 75th-anniversary throwback uniform program. The jerseys were similar to those of the 1920s Chicago Cardinals, with an interlocking "CC" logo and three stripes on each sleeve. The uniform numbers were relocated to the right chest. The pants were khaki to simulate the color and material used in that era. The Cardinals also stripped the logos from their helmets for two games: at Cleveland and home vs. Pittsburgh.
The Cardinal head on the helmet also appeared on the sleeve of the white jersey from 1982 to 1995. In 1996, the state flag of Arizona was moved higher on the sleeve after the Cardinal head was eliminated as sleeves on football jerseys became shorter, and black was removed as an accent color, instead replaced with a blue to match the predominant color of the state flag. In 2002, the Cardinals began to wear all-red and all-white combinations, and continued to do so through 2004, prior to the team's makeover.
In , the team unveiled its first major changes in a century. The cardinal-head logo was updated to look sleeker and meaner than its predecessor. Numerous fans had derisively called the previous version a "parakeet". Black again became an accent color after an eight-year absence, while trim lines were added to the outside shoulders, sleeves, and sides of the jerseys and pants. Both the red and white jerseys have the option of red or white pants.
Hoping to break a six-game losing streak, the Cardinals wore the red pants for the first time on October 29, 2006, in a game at Lambeau Field against the Green Bay Packers. The Packers won 31–14, and the Cards headed into their bye week with a 1–7 mark. Following the bye week, the Cardinals came out in an all-red combination at home against the Dallas Cowboys and lost, 27–10. Arizona did not wear the red pants for the remainder of the season and won four of their last seven games. However, the following season, in , the Cardinals again wore their red pants for their final 3 home games. They wore red pants with white jerseys in games on the road at the Cincinnati Bengals and Seattle Seahawks. They paired red pants with red jerseys, the all-red combination, for home games against the Detroit Lions, San Francisco 49ers, Cleveland Browns, and St. Louis Rams. The red pants were not worn at all in , but they were used in home games vs. Seattle, Minnesota, and St. Louis in . The red pants were paired with the white road jersey for the first time in three years during a 2010 game at Carolina, but the white jersey/red pants combination was not used again until 2018, when they broke out the combination against the Kansas City Chiefs.
The Cardinals' first home game in Arizona, in 1988, saw them play in red jerseys. Thereafter, for the next 18 years in Arizona, the Cardinals, like a few other NFL teams in warm climates, wore their white jerseys at home during the first half of the season—forcing opponents to suffer in their darker jerseys during Arizona autumns that frequently see temperatures over 100 °F (38 °C). However, this tradition did not continue when the Cardinals moved from Sun Devil Stadium to State Farm Stadium in 2006, as early-season games (and some home games late in the season) were played with the roof closed. With the temperature inside at a comfortable 70 °F (21 °C), the team opted to wear red jerseys at home full-time. The Cardinals wore white jerseys at home for the first time at State Farm Stadium on August 29, 2008, in a preseason game against the Denver Broncos.
The Cardinals wore white at home for the first time in a regular-season game at State Farm Stadium against the Houston Texans on October 11, . In October 2009, the NFL recognized Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and players wore pink-accented items, including gloves, wristbands, and shoes. The team thought the pink accents looked better with white uniforms than with red.
From 1970 through 1983, and again in many seasons between 1989 and 2002, the Cardinals would wear white when hosting the Dallas Cowboys in order to force the Cowboys to don their "jinxed" blue jerseys. They have not done this since moving into State Farm Stadium, however.
The season saw the Cardinals debut a new, alternate black jersey. In , the Cardinals debuted an all-black set for the NFL Color Rush program. While the regular black alternates featured white lettering and are paired with white pants, the Cardinals' Color Rush alternates used red lettering and black pants for the occasion.
Seasons and overall records
Single-season records
Points Scored: 489 ()
Passing
Passing yards: 4,671 – Carson Palmer ()
Passing touchdowns: 35 – Carson Palmer ()
Passes completed: 401 – Kurt Warner ()
Passes attempted: 598 – Kurt Warner ()
Longest completed pass: 98 yards – Doug Russell (); Ogden Compton (); Jim Hart ()
Rushing
Rushing yards: 1,605 – Ottis Anderson ()
Rushing attempts: 337 – Edgerrin James ()
Rushing touchdowns: 16 – David Johnson ()
Rushing touchdowns (Rookie): 10 – Tim Hightower ()
Longest rushing attempt: 83 yards – John David Crow ()
Rushing yards per game: 100.3 yards – Ottis Anderson ()
Receiving
Receptions: 109 – Larry Fitzgerald ()
Receiving yards: 1,598 – David Boston ()
Receiving touchdowns: 15 – Sonny Randle ()
Returns
Punt returns in a season: 44 – Vai Sikahema ()
Longest punt return: 99 yards – Patrick Peterson ()
Longest kickoff return: 108 yards – David Johnson ()
Kicking
Field goals: 40 – Neil Rackers ()
Points after touchdown (PAT)s converted: 53 – Pat Harder ()
Punts: 112 – Dave Zastudil ()
Punting yards: 5,209 – Dave Zastudil ()
Career records
As of 2021
Passing yards: 34,639, Jim Hart (–)
Passing touchdowns: 209, Jim Hart (–)
Rushing yards: 7,999, Ottis Anderson (–)
Rushing touchdowns: 46, Ottis Anderson (–)
Receptions: 1,234, Larry Fitzgerald (–present)
Receiving yards: 15,545, Larry Fitzgerald (–present)
Passes intercepted: 52, Larry Wilson (–)
Field goals made: 282, Jim Bakken (–)
Points: 1,380, Jim Bakken (–)
Total touchdowns: 110, Larry Fitzgerald (–present)
Punt return average: 13.7, Charley Trippi (–)
Kickoff return average: 28.5, Ollie Matson (, –)
Yards per punt average: 44.9, Jerry Norton (–)
Sacks: 71.5, Chandler Jones (–)
Tackles: 785, Eric Hill (1989–1997)
Players of note
Current roster
Retired numbers
Notes:
1 Posthumously retired.
2 No. 99 was issued to J. J. Watt after daughter of Goldberg gave her blessing to Watt to wear it on March 2, 2021.
Pro Football Hall of Famers
Italics = played a portion of career with the Cardinals and enshrined representing another team
Dierdorf, Smith, Wehrli and Wilson were members of the St. Louis Football Ring of Fame in The Dome at America's Center when the Rams played there from 1995 to 2015.
Ring of Honor
The Cardinals' Ring of Honor was started in to mark the opening of State Farm Stadium. It honors former Cardinal greats from all eras of the franchise's history. Following is a list of inductees and the dates that they were inducted.
Staff
The Cardinals have had 42 head coaches throughout their history. Their first head coach was Paddy Driscoll, who compiled a 17–8–4 record with the team from 1920 to 1922. Jimmy Conzelman, Jim Hanifan and Ken Whisenhunt are tied as the longest-serving head coaches in Cardinals history.
Current staff
Radio and television
The Cardinals' flagship radio station is KMVP-FM; Dave Pasch, Ron Wolfley, and Paul Calvisi handle the radio broadcast. Spanish-language radio broadcasts are heard on the combo of KQMR/KHOV-FM "Latino Mix" under a contract with Univisión, signed in 2015. Prior to 2015, they were heard on KDVA/KVVA-FM "José FM", as well as co-owned KBMB AM 710. The Cardinals were the first NFL team to offer all 20 preseason and regular season games on Spanish-language radio, doing so in 2000. Luis Hernandez and Rolando Cantú are the Spanish broadcast team. The Cardinals have the most extensive Mexican affiliate network in the NFL, with contracts with Grupo Larsa (in the state of Sonora) and Grupo Radiorama (outside Sonora) and stations in 20 cities, including Hermosillo, Guadalajara and Mexico City.
As of the 2017 season, NBC affiliate KPNX broadcasts the team's preseason games on television (which, that year, included the Hall of Fame Game broadcast by NBC), called by Pasch and Wolfley, with station anchor Paul Gerke as sideline reporter. The broadcasts are syndicated regionally to KTTU and KMSB-TV in Tucson, and KVVU-TV in Las Vegas.
English radio affiliates
References
Further reading
Ziemba, Joe (2010). When Football Was Football: The Chicago Cardinals and the Birth of the NFL. Chicago: Triumph Books. .
External links
Arizona Cardinals at the National Football League official website
Sports in Phoenix, Arizona
National Football League teams
Sports in Glendale, Arizona
American football teams in Arizona
American football teams established in 1898 |
2103 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta%20Falcons | Atlanta Falcons | The Atlanta Falcons are a professional American football team based in Atlanta. The Falcons compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. The Falcons joined the NFL in 1965 as an expansion team, after the NFL offered then-owner Rankin Smith a franchise to keep him from joining the rival American Football League (AFL).
In their 55 years of existence, the Falcons have compiled a record of 379–487–6 ( in the regular season and in the playoffs), winning division championships in 1980, 1998, 2004, 2010, 2012, and 2016. The Falcons have appeared in two Super Bowls, the first during the 1998 season in Super Bowl XXXIII, where they lost to the Denver Broncos and the second 18 years later, a overtime loss to the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LI.
The Falcons' current home field is Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which opened for the 2017 season; the team's headquarters and practice facilities are located at a site in Flowery Branch, northeast of Atlanta in Hall County.
Franchise history
Professional football comes to Atlanta
Professional football first came to Atlanta in 1962, when the American Football League (AFL) staged two preseason contests, with one featuring the Denver Broncos vs. the Houston Oilers and the second pitting the Dallas Texans against the Oakland Raiders. Two years later, the AFL held another exhibition, this time with the New York Jets taking on the San Diego Chargers.
In 1965, after the Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium (then known simply as Atlanta Stadium) was built, the city of Atlanta felt the time was right to start pursuing professional football. One independent group which had been active in NFL exhibition promotions in Atlanta applied for franchises in both the AFL and NFL, acting entirely on its own with no guarantee of stadium rights. Another group reported it had deposited earnest money for a team in the AFL.
With everyone running in different directions, some local businessmen (Cox Broadcasting) worked out a deal and were awarded an AFL franchise on contingent upon acquiring exclusive stadium rights from city NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, who had been moving slowly in Atlanta matters, was spurred by the AFL interest and headed on the next plane down to Atlanta to block the rival league's claim on the city He forced the city to make a choice between the two leagues; by June 30, the city picked Rankin Smith and the NFL.
The AFL's original expansion plans in June 1965 were for two new teams in Atlanta and It later evolved into the Miami Dolphins in 1966 and the Cincinnati Bengals in 1968. The NFL had planned to add two teams in ; the competition with the AFL for Atlanta forced the first to be added a year early in . The odd number of teams (15) resulted in one idle team (bye) each week, with each team playing 14 games over 15 weeks (similar to : 12 games over 13 weeks). The second expansion team, the New Orleans Saints, joined the NFL as planned in 1967 as its 16th franchise.
The Atlanta Falcons franchise began on June 30, 1965, when Rozelle granted ownership to 40-year-old Rankin Smith Sr., an Executive Vice President of Life Insurance Company of Georgia. He paid $8.5 million, the highest price in NFL history at the time for a franchise. Rozelle and Smith made the deal in about five minutes and the Atlanta Falcons brought the largest and most popular sport to the city of Atlanta. The Atlanta expansion team became the 15th NFL franchise, and they were awarded the first overall pick in the 1966 NFL Draft as well as the final pick in each of the first five rounds. They selected consensus All-American linebacker Tommy Nobis from the University of Texas, making him the first-ever Falcon. The league also held the expansion draft six weeks later in which Atlanta selected unprotected players from the 14 existing franchises. Although the Falcons selected many good players in those drafts, they still were not able to win right away.
The Atlanta team received its nickname on August 29, 1965. Miss Julia Elliott, a school teacher from Griffin, was singled out from many people who suggested "Falcons" as the nickname for the new franchise. She wrote: "the Falcon is proud and dignified, with great courage and fight. It never drops its prey. It is deadly and has a great sporting tradition."
1966–1977: Early struggles
The Falcons' inaugural season was in 1966, and their first preseason game was on August 1, a loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. Under head coach Norb Hecker, Atlanta lost their first nine regular-season games in 1966; their first victory came on the road against the struggling New York Giants on November 20 in Yankee Stadium. Two weeks later, Atlanta won at Minnesota, and beat St. Louis in Atlanta the next week for their first home win. The team finished the 1960s with 12 wins in four seasons.
The Falcons had their first Monday Night Football game in Atlanta during the 1970 season, a 20–7 loss to the Miami Dolphins. The only two winning seasons in their first 12 years were and
1978–1989
In the 1978 season, the Falcons qualified for the playoffs for the first time and won the Wild Card game against the Eagles 14–13. The following week, they lost to the Dallas Cowboys 27–20 in the Divisional Playoffs.
In the 1980 season, after a nine-game winning streak, the Falcons posted a franchise then-best record of 12–4 and captured their first NFC West division title. The next week, their dream season ended at home with a loss to the Cowboys 30–27 in the divisional playoffs. In the strike-shortened 1982 season, the Falcons made the playoffs but lost to the Minnesota Vikings, 30–24. Falcons coach Leeman Bennett was fired after the loss. The team then had losing seasons for the next eight years.
1989–1996
In the 1989 NFL Draft, the Falcons selected cornerback Deion Sanders in the first round, who helped them for the next four years, setting many records for the franchise. "Neon Deion" (a.k.a. "Prime Time") had a flashy appeal and helped bring media attention to one of the league's most anonymous franchises. Sanders was also famous for playing on major league baseball teams (New York Yankees and the Atlanta Braves) while simultaneously playing in the NFL.
After defeating the New Orleans Saints in the NFC Wild Card game, the Falcons' 1991 season ended in a divisional playoff loss to the Washington Redskins. In the 1991 NFL Draft, the Falcons selected quarterback Brett Favre as the 33rd overall pick. During his rookie season, he played in two games where he amassed a record of four passing attempts with no receptions and two interceptions. The following February, Favre was traded to the Green Bay Packers.
In 1992, the Atlanta Falcons opened a new chapter in their history moving into the newly constructed Georgia Dome, where the team has defeated all 31 other NFL teams at least once during its time there.
1997–2000: The Dan Reeves era
In 1998, under recently acquired head coach Dan Reeves, quarterback Chris Chandler and running back Jamal Anderson the "Dirty Bird" Falcons had their greatest season to date. On November 8, they beat the New England Patriots 41–10, ending a streak of 22 losses at cold-weather sites. The team finished with a franchise-best 14–2 regular-season record and the NFC West division championship. On January 17, 1999, the Falcons upset the top-seeded Vikings at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in the NFC Championship Game 30–27, in an exciting overtime victory. However, in their first-ever Super Bowl appearance, they lost 34–19 to the defending champion Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXXIII.
In the second game of the Falcons 1999 season, running back Jamal Anderson, who had been a key player in the Falcons' 1998 success, suffered a season-ending knee injury. The Falcons finished the season with a very disappointing 5–11 regular-season record. In 2000, the Falcons suffered through another horrendous season finishing 4–12 and once again missing the playoffs.
2001–2006
In the 2001 NFL draft, the Falcons orchestrated a trade with the San Diego Chargers, acquiring the first overall pick (which was used on quarterback Michael Vick) in exchange for wide receiver-return specialist Tim Dwight and the fifth overall pick (used on running back LaDainian Tomlinson).
The Falcons finished the 2001 season with a record of 7–9 and missed the playoffs. Jessie Tuggle retired following 14 seasons in Atlanta. On December 6, 2001, Arthur M. Blank reached a preliminary agreement with the Falcons' Taylor Smith to purchase the team. In a special meeting prior to Super Bowl XXXVI in New Orleans on February 2, 2002, NFL owners voted unanimously to approve the purchase.
The 2002 season saw the Falcons return to the playoffs with a regular-season record of 9–6–1, tying the Pittsburgh Steelers. It was Vick's first year as the starter, and the team, with newly acquired running back Warrick Dunn, delivered the Green Bay Packers their first home playoff loss ever. A 20–6 loss to the Donovan McNabb-led Philadelphia Eagles the following week, however, ended the Falcons' season.
On March 19, 2003, the Falcons presented their new logo. During the 2003 preseason Vick broke his leg and missed the first 12 games of the season. After losing 7 straight games, the decision was made to release head coach Dan Reeves. Wade Phillips acted as interim coach for the final 3 games. Although the Falcons won 3 of their last 4 games after the return of Vick, they ended up with a 5–11 record that year. In 2004, a new head coach, Jim L. Mora, was hired and Vick returned for the full season. The Falcons went 11–5, winning their third division title and earning a first-round bye into the playoffs. In the divisional playoffs, the Falcons defeated the St. Louis Rams, 47–17, in the Georgia Dome, advancing to the NFC Championship Game, which they lost to the Eagles, 27–10.
The Falcons again fell short of achieving back-to-back winning seasons in , going 8–8. In , Michael Vick became the first quarterback in league history to rush for more than 1,000 yards in a season, with 1,039. After finishing the season 7–9, however, coach Jim Mora was dismissed and Bobby Petrino, the University of Louisville's football coach, replaced him. Before the 2007 season began, Vick was suspended indefinitely by the NFL after pleading guilty to charges involving dog fighting in the state of Virginia. On December 10, 2007, Vick received a 23-month prison sentence and was officially cut from the Atlanta roster.
2007
For the 2007 season, the Falcons were forced to start Joey Harrington at quarterback. On December 11, 13 games into his first NFL season as head coach, Bobby Petrino resigned without notice to coach at the University of Arkansas, leaving the beleaguered players only a note in the locker room. Secondary Coach Emmitt Thomas was named interim coach for the final three games of the season on December 12. The Falcons ended the year with a dismal 4–12 record.
2008–2014: The Mike Smith era
After the tumultuous and disappointing 2007 season, the Falcons made a number of moves, hiring a new General Manager and head coach, drafting a new starting quarterback, and signing a starting running back.
On January 13, 2008, the Falcons named former Patriots director of college football scouting Thomas Dimitroff General Manager. On January 23, Jacksonville Jaguars defensive coach and former linebackers coach for the 2000 Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens Mike Smith was named the Falcons' new head coach. Chargers back-up RB Michael Turner agreed to a 6-year deal, $30 million deal on March 2. On April 26, Matt Ryan (quarterback from Boston College) was drafted third overall in the 2008 NFL draft by the Falcons.
2008
The Falcons finished the 2008 regular season with a record of 11–5, and the #5 seed in the playoffs. On December 21, 2008, Atlanta beat the Minnesota Vikings 24–17 to clinch a wild card spot, earning a trip to the playoffs for the first time since 2004. The Falcons would go on to lose in the wild-card round of the 2008 NFL playoffs to the eventual NFC champion Arizona Cardinals, 30–24.
Matt Ryan started all 16 games in his rookie season and was named the Associated Press Offensive Rookie of the Year. First-year head coach Mike Smith was named 2008 NFL Coach of the Year.
2009
Although they failed to make the playoffs in 2009 the team rallied to win their final three regular-season games to record back-to-back winning seasons for the first time in franchise history. The Falcons defeated the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 20–10 in the final game of the season to improve their record to 9–7.
2010
In 2010, with a regular-season record of 13–3, the Falcons secured a third straight winning season, their fourth overall divisional title, and the top overall seed in the NFC playoffs; however, the Falcons were overpowered by the eventual Super Bowl XLV champion Green Bay Packers in the NFC Divisional Playoffs 48–21. The Falcons scored 414 points – the fifth-most in franchise history. The team sent an NFL-high and franchise-best nine players to the 2011 Pro Bowl.
2011
The Falcons made a surprise trade up with the Cleveland Browns in the 2011 NFL draft to select Alabama wide receiver Julio Jones sixth overall. In exchange, the Falcons gave up their first-, second- and fourth-round draft picks in 2011, and their first and fourth draft picks in 2012. Jones, along with teammates Tony Gonzalez and Roddy White, have since been dubbed Atlanta's "Big Three" (based on their total number of reception yards). On August 30, 2011, Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King, who correctly predicted the 2011 Super Bowl, made his predictions for the 2011 season and picked the Falcons to defeat the San Diego Chargers in the 2012 Super Bowl. The Falcons finished the season at 10–6, securing the fifth seed after a Week 17 beatdown of Tampa Bay in which the Falcons pulled their starters after leading 42–0 just 23 minutes into the game.
The Falcons then went on to play the New York Giants in a 2011 NFC Wild Card Game at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The first half was a defensive struggle, with the first points coming off of a safety by the Falcons, giving Atlanta a 2–0 lead. In the 2nd quarter, though, Eli Manning connected with Hakeem Nicks for a short touchdown pass to make it 7–2 Giants heading into the 2nd half. Then the Giants took control, as Manning threw for two more TD passes to Mario Manningham and Nicks and the defense completed its shutout of the Falcons to give the New York Giants the win, 24–2, and the Falcons their third straight playoff loss with Matt Ryan and Mike Smith. After the season Defense Coordinator Brian VanGorder accepted a coaching job at Auburn University, and the offensive coordinator Mike Mularkey took the head coaching job in Jacksonville.
2012
Atlanta exploded out of the gate, going a franchise-best 8–0 and remaining the last unbeaten team in the NFL that year. Their hopes to get an undefeated season came to an end with a 27–31 loss to the division rival Saints. Julio Jones had a remarkable second year, grabbing 10 touchdowns and 1,198 yards. The Falcons finished the season 13–3, and clinched the number one seed in the NFC playoffs.
The Falcons played the Seattle Seahawks in their first playoff game. Although they went down 28–27 with only 31 seconds left on the clock, Matt Ryan led the team to their first playoff victory, 30–28. It was the only playoff victory in the Mike Smith era.
The Atlanta Falcons then advanced to face the San Francisco 49ers. The Falcons seized control of the game early with a Matt Bryant field goal, a trio of Matt Ryan touchdown passes caught by Julio Jones and Tony Gonzalez coupled with outstanding defensive play. By the end of the half, the score was 24–14. The tides of the game began to shift in the second half as the 49ers rallied back with a pair of Frank Gore touchdown runs. Atlanta's offense attempted to reply but were ultimately shut down by the 49er defense. A few series later, late in the 4th quarter with little time remaining, Atlanta found themselves in a 4th and 4 situation at the 10-yard line. The Falcons needed just 10 more yards to secure victory and advance to their first Super Bowl berth in 14 years. Matt Ryan fired a pass to Roddy White which was ultimately broken up by inside linebacker NaVorro Bowman, resulting in a 28–24 defeat.
2013
Following the success of the previous season, the Falcons were an expected Super Bowl contender. However, injuries hampered the team's performance and the team finished the season 4–12. With that, the streak of consecutive winning seasons came to an end and Mike Smith had his first losing season as a head coach. Tony Gonzalez, in his final season in the NFL, was selected to the 2014 Pro Bowl as a starter representing Team Rice. Following the conclusion of the 2012 season, director of player personnel Les Snead departed the team to join the St. Louis Rams and Dave Caldwell, assistant to general manager Thomas Dimitroff, left the team to join the Jacksonville Jaguars. Scott Pioli, former GM of the Kansas City Chiefs, was announced as the Falcons' new assistant GM. Mike Smith was given a one-year extension on his contract as head coach. The Falcons had the 6th overall pick in the 2014 NFL draft with which they selected Jake Matthews, who played as offensive tackle for Texas A&M.
2014
Despite having another rough season, the Falcons still had an opportunity to qualify for the playoffs at the end of the regular season. The Falcons hosted the Carolina Panthers in their regular season finale, with the winners clinching the NFC South division. Unfortunately, the Falcons lost in a 34–3 blowout as Matt Ryan threw two interceptions that were returned for touchdowns and got sacked six times. The Falcons finished the season 6–10, marking the second consecutive losing season for the team. The following day, Mike Smith was fired after seven seasons as head coach. The Falcons would soon hire Seattle Seahawks defensive coordinator Dan Quinn as the team's 16th head coach. The Falcons had the 8th overall pick in the 2015 NFL draft with which they selected Vic Beasley, a defensive end from Clemson University.
2015–2020: The Dan Quinn era
2015
In February 2015, the team was investigated by the NFL for alleged use of artificial crowd noise in the Georgia Dome. The Falcons lost a 2016 NFL Draft selection as a result of the league's investigation.
Dan Quinn's first season saw a 5–0 start, the team's best start in four years. They would then struggle throughout the rest of the season by losing 8 of their last 11 games, resulting in an 8–8 record. They did, however, give the Panthers their only regular-season loss. The Falcons used their first-round pick in the 2016 NFL Draft on safety Keanu Neal from the University of Florida.
2016
In the Falcons' 25th and final season in the Georgia Dome, Atlanta lost their week 1 game to the Buccaneers 24–31. The Falcons would then win their next four including one over the Panthers, when the franchise set new records: Matt Ryan threw for 503 yards, and Julio Jones caught 12 passes for 300 yards. Beating the San Francisco 49ers 41–13 in Week 15, the Falcons improved to 9–5 and secured their first winning season since 2012. One week later, the Falcons defeated the Panthers in Charlotte, North Carolina, and clinched their first NFC South division title since 2012. In their last regular-season game at the Georgia Dome, the Falcons defeated the New Orleans Saints, and secured an 11–5 record and a first-round bye.
In the divisional round of the playoffs, Atlanta defeated the Seahawks 36–20 in the Georgia Dome, and hosted their last game at the Dome against the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship Game on January 22, 2017. The Falcons defeated the Packers 44–21 to advance to Super Bowl LI as the NFC champions. Atlanta was up 28–3 late in the third quarter, and the New England Patriots scored 31 unanswered points, with the last 6 in the first-ever overtime in the Super Bowl. The Patriots' 25-point comeback was the largest in Super Bowl history.
In 2016, the Falcons scored 540 points in the regular season, the seventh-most in NFL history, tied with the Greatest Show on Turf (the 2000 St. Louis Rams). However, the Falcons defense gave up 406 points, 27th in the league.
2017
The Falcons moved into their new home, the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, this season. Their first game ever played at the new stadium was a preseason loss to the Arizona Cardinals. The first regular-season game at the new stadium was a rematch of the 2016–17 NFC Championship, with Atlanta defeating Green Bay 34–23. Their first loss of the season was a 23–17 home defeat to the Buffalo Bills in week 4. The team returned to the playoffs with a 10–6 record (albeit with a third-place finish in the NFC South). The Falcons defeated the Los Angeles Rams 26–13 in the Wild Card round, but their 2017 season came to an end a week later in the Divisional Playoff round at the hands of the eventual Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles 15–10.
2020
In their first game with new uniforms, the Falcons lost to the Seattle Seahawks at home 38–25. The Falcons then suffered comebacks made by both the Cowboys on the road (39–40) and then back in Atlanta against the Bears (26–30). On October 11, after the team suffered a 23–16 loss at home against the Carolina Panthers and fell to 0–5, the Falcons announced the firings of Quinn and Dimitroff. Defensive coordinator Raheem Morris took over for the rest of the season, leading the team to a 4–12 record. Morris was not retained after the season, and soon joined the Los Angeles Rams as their defensive coordinator.
2021
On January 15, 2021, the Falcons announced that Tennessee Titans offensive coordinator Arthur Smith had been named the 18th head coach in franchise history. Four days later, New Orleans Saints executive Terry Fontenot was named the Falcons' new general manager. Tight end Kyle Pitts was selected with the 4th pick of the 2021 draft, and longtime star receiver Julio Jones was traded to the Titans, after publicly requesting a trade from Atlanta.
Stadiums
The Falcons have called three stadiums home in their 51 years of existence, and its third home in their history opened in the late summer of 2017. The first was the Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium, sharing with the Atlanta Braves Major League Baseball team until 1991. In 1992, the Georgia Dome was built, and the Falcons played there from its opening to the 2016 season. The Dome has been frequently used for college football, including Georgia State football and college bowl games such as the Peach Bowl.
In an effort to replace the aging Georgia Dome and potentially host a future Super Bowl, team owner Arthur Blank proposed a deal with the city of Atlanta to build a new state-of-the-art stadium not far from where the Georgia Dome is located. Blank will contribute $800 million and the city of Atlanta will contribute an additional $200 million via bonds backed by the city's hotel/motel tax towards the construction of a retractable roof stadium. Blank will contribute additional money for cost overruns if it is needed. The team will provide up to $50 million towards infrastructure costs that weren't included in the construction budget and to retire the remaining debt on the Georgia Dome. In addition, Blank's foundation and the city will each provide $15 million for development in surrounding neighborhoods. Though the total cost of the stadium was initially estimated to be around $1 billion, the total cost was revised to $1.5 billion according to Blank. In March 2013, the Atlanta City Council voted 11–4 in favor of building the stadium. The retractable roof Mercedes-Benz Stadium broke ground in May 2014, and became the third home stadium for the Falcons and the first for the new Atlanta United FC Major League Soccer club upon opening in 2017.
Logo and uniforms
The Atlanta Falcons' colors are red, black, silver and white. When the team began play in 1966, the Falcons wore red helmets with a black falcon crest logo. In the center of the helmet was a center black stripe surrounded by two gold stripes and two white stripes. These colors represented the two college rival schools in the state of Georgia; rival schools Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets (white and gold) and the Georgia Bulldogs (red and black). Although the gold was removed after several seasons, the white remains to this day. They wore white pants and either black or white jerseys. At first, the falcon crest logo was also put on the jersey sleeves, but it was replaced by a red and white stripe pattern four years later. They switched from black to red jerseys in 1971, and the club began to wear silver pants in 1978. The facemasks on the helmets were initially gray, becoming white in 1978, and then black in 1984; the team wore black face masks until its 2020 redesign.
A prototype white helmet was developed for the team prior to the 1974 season, but was never worn.
In 1990, the uniform design changed to black helmets, silver pants, and either black or white jerseys. The numbers on the white jerseys were black, but were changed to red in 1997. (The red numerals could be seen on the away jerseys briefly in 1990.)
Both the logo and uniforms changed in 2003. The logo was redesigned with red and silver accents to depict a more powerful, aggressive falcon, which now more closely resembles the capital letter F.
Although the Falcons still wore black helmets, the new uniforms featured jerseys and pants with red trim down the sides. The uniform design consisted of either black or white jerseys, and either black or white pants. During that same year, a red alternate jersey with black trim was also introduced. The Falcons also started wearing black cleats with these uniforms.
In 2004, the red jerseys became the primary jerseys, and the black ones became the alternate, both worn with white pants. In select road games, the Falcons wear black pants with white jerseys. The Falcons wore an all-black combination for home games against their archrivals, the New Orleans Saints, winning the first two contests (24–21 in and 36–17 in ), but losing 31–13 in . The Falcons wore the all-black combination against the New Orleans Saints for four straight seasons starting in 2004, With the last time being in 2007, losing 34–14. They wore the combination again in 2006, against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 2. The Falcons won that game, 14–3. The Falcons also wore their all-black uniform in 2007 against the New York Giants, and in 2008 against the Carolina Panthers and against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (for the second time). After that, the black pants and uniforms were retired and the white pants were now used full-time with the regular uniforms.
In the 1980s, the Falcons wore their white uniforms at home most of the time because of the heat. When the Falcons started playing in a dome, the team switched to their dark uniforms for home games but have worn their white uniforms at home a few times since switching to the dome. It was announced at the 2009 state of the franchise meeting that the Falcons would wear 1966 throwback uniforms for a couple games during the 2009 season. The Atlanta Falcons wore 1966 throwback jerseys for two home games in 2009 – against the Carolina Panthers on September 20 and against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on November 29. The Falcons won both of those games. They donned the throwbacks again for 2 games in 2010, against Baltimore and San Francisco, winning both of those games as well. The throwbacks were used twice in 2011 and 2012; both times were against the Panthers and Saints. However, the throwbacks were retired following a 2013 NFL rule requiring only one helmet shell per team.
The Falcons unveiled an all-red Color Rush uniform on September 13, 2016; however, due to the fact that the Falcons and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had similar all-red Color Rush uniforms, the Falcons were unable to wear their Color Rush uniform until the 2017 season.
Also in 2016, the Falcons unveiled a mixed throwback uniform set. The uniform tops, pants and socks closely resembled their 1960s kits. But due to the NFL's one-shell rule that prevented them from resurrecting the red helmets, the Falcons instead wore the black helmets with the original logo decal similar to the design they wore in the 1990s.
It was revealed in January 2020 that the Falcons will change uniforms for the 2020 NFL season. The ensuing design featured the return to black as the primary home uniform color for the first time since 2003. Both the primary home and road uniforms featured the "ATL" abbreviation in red above either white or black numbers with red drop shadows. The white and black tops are usually paired with either white or black pants. The alternate uniform featured a red/black gradient design and also featured the "ATL" abbreviation in white above white numbers with black drop shadows. Black pants are only used with this uniform. All three uniforms feature red side stripes. The current throwback uniform was also retained. In addition, the Falcons switched to matte helmets with the enlarged falcon logo and gray facemasks.
Rivalries
New Orleans Saints
In every season from 1970 to the present, the Falcons have shared a division with the New Orleans Saints (first the NFC West, and now the NFC South). Over this time, a heated rivalry has developed between the two cities' franchises, as they were the only two NFL teams in the Deep South for quite some time. The series is the oldest and most iconic rivalry in the NFC South. Atlanta leads the series 52–48.
Carolina Panthers
In addition, the Falcons share a similar, yet smaller, rivalry with the Carolina Panthers, with both teams having been in the NFC West from the Panthers' founding in 1995 to the NFL realignment in 2002, where they have been in the NFC South since then. The Falcons lead the series 27–17.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Finally, the Falcons share a rivalry with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers since the NFL realignment in 2002. Before that, Tampa Bay was in the AFC West. After, they were in the NFC Central before the realignment.
Philadelphia Eagles
The Eagles lead the Falcons 21–15–1, with a 3–1 lead in playoff games. The rivalry first emerged after the Falcons upset the Eagles in the 1978 Wild Card Round, and only intensified further thanks to the rivalry between prominent dual-threat quarterbacks Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick. Recently, the Falcons lost to the Eagles in the 2017 divisional round.
Statistics
Season-by-season records
Record vs. opponents
Includes postseason records
Source:
|-
| St. Louis/Phoenix/Arizona Cardinals || 15 || 16 || 0 || || L 33-34 || October 13, 2019 || State Farm Stadium || 0–1 postseason
|-
| Baltimore Ravens || 2 || 4 || 0 || || L 16–26 || December 2, 2018 || Mercedes-Benz Stadium ||
|-
| Buffalo Bills || 7 || 6 || 0 || || L 15–29 || January 2, 2022 || Highmark Stadium ||
|-
| Carolina Panthers || 34 || 20 || 0 || || W 29–21 || December 12, 2021 || Bank of America Stadium ||
|-
| Chicago Bears || 13 || 15 || 0 || || L 26-30 || September 27, 2020 || Mercedes-Benz Stadium ||
|-
| Cincinnati Bengals || 5 || 9 || 0 || || L 36–37 || September 30, 2018 || Mercedes-Benz Stadium ||
|-
| Cleveland Browns || 3 || 12 || 0 || || L 16–28 || November 11, 2018 || FirstEnergy Stadium ||
|-
| Dallas Cowboys || 11 || 17 || 0 || || L 3–43 || November 14, 2021 || AT&T Stadium || 0–2 postseason
|-
| Denver Broncos || 7 || 8 || 0 || || W 34–27 || November 8, 2020 || Mercedes-Benz Stadium || 0–1 postseason
|-
| Detroit Lions || 14 || 25 || 0 || || W 20–16 || December 26, 2021 || Mercedes-Benz Stadium ||
|-
| Green Bay Packers || 14 || 17 || 0 || || L 16–30 || October 5, 2020 || Lambeau Field || 2–2 postseason
|-
| Houston Texans || 2 || 3 || 0 || || L 32–53 || October 6, 2019 || NRG Stadium ||
|-
| Baltimore/Indianapolis Colts || 2 || 15 || 0 || || L 24–27 || September 22, 2019 || Lucas Oil Stadium ||
|-
| Jacksonville Jaguars || 5 || 3 || 0 || || W 21–14 || November 28, 2021 || TIAA Bank Field ||
|-
| Kansas City Chiefs || 3 || 7 || 0 || || L 14–17 || December 27, 2020 || Arrowhead Stadium ||
|-
| San Diego/Los Angeles Chargers || 8 || 3 || 0 || || L 17–20 || December 13, 2020 || SoFi Stadium ||
|-
| St. Louis/Los Angeles Rams || 28 || 48 || 2 || || L 10–37 || October 20, 2019 || Mercedes-Benz Stadium || 2–0 postseason
|-
| Miami Dolphins || 5 || 9 || 0 || || W 30–28 || October 24, 2021 || Hard Rock Stadium ||
|-
| Minnesota Vikings || 11 || 19 || 0 || || W 40–23 || October 18, 2020 || US Bank Stadium || 1–1 postseason
|-
| New England Patriots || 6 || 9 || 0 || || L 0–25 || November 18, 2021 || Mercedes-Benz Stadium || 0–1 postseason
|-
| New Orleans Saints || 53 || 52 || 0 || || L 20–30 || January 9, 2022 || Mercedes-Benz Stadium || 1–0 postseason
|-
| New York Giants || 14 || 11 || 0 || || W 17–14 || September 26, 2021 || MetLife Stadium || 0–1 postseason
|-
| New York Jets || 8 || 5 || 0 || || W 27–20 || October 10, 2021 || Tottenham Hotspur Stadium ||
|-
| Las Vegas/Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders || 8 || 7 || 0 || || W 43–6 || November 29, 2020 || Mercedes-Benz Stadium ||
|-
| Philadelphia Eagles || 14 || 18 || 1 || || L 6–32 || September 12, 2021 || Mercedes-Benz Stadium || 1–3 postseason
|-
| Pittsburgh Steelers || 2 || 14 || 1 || || L 17–41 || October 7, 2018 || Heinz Field ||
|-
| San Francisco 49ers || 31 || 47 || 1 || || L 13–31 || December 19, 2021 || Levi's Stadium || 1–1 postseason
|-
| Seattle Seahawks || 6 || 12 || 0 || || L 25–38 || September 13, 2020 || Mercedes-Benz Stadium || 2–0 postseason
|-
| Tampa Bay Buccaneers || 28 || 29 || 0 || || L 17–30 || December 5, 2021 || Mercedes-Benz Stadium ||
|-
| Tennessee Titans/Houston Oilers || 7 || 8 || 0 || || L 10–24 || September 29, 2019 || Mercedes-Benz Stadium ||
|-
| Washington Commanders || 10 || 15 || 1 || || L 30–34 ||October 3, 2021 || Mercedes-Benz Stadium || 0–1 postseason
|-
! Total || 374 || 455 || 6 || || || || || 10–14 ()
Notes International Series
Single game records
Rushing: Michael Turner, 220 (September 7, 2008)
Passing: Matt Ryan, 503 (October 2, 2016)
Passing touchdowns: Wade Wilson, 5 (December 13, 1992) and Matt Ryan, 5 (September 23, 2018)
Receptions: William Andrews, 15 (September 15, 1981)
Receiving yards: Julio Jones, 300 (October 2, 2016)
Interceptions: Several Falcons, 2, most recently Damontae Kazee, 2 (December 8, 2019)
Field goals: Norm Johnson, 6 (November 13, 1994)
Total touchdowns: T. J. Duckett, 4 (December 12, 2004) and Michael Turner, 4 (November 23, 2008)
Points scored: T. J. Duckett, 24 (December 12, 2004) and Michael Turner, 24 (November 23, 2008)
Sacks: Adrian Clayborn, 6 (November 13, 2017)
Single season records
Passing attempts: 651 Matt Ryan (2013)
Passing completions: 439 Matt Ryan (2013)
Passing yards: 4,944 Matt Ryan (2016)
Passing touchdowns: 38 Matt Ryan (2016)
Passing interceptions: 25 Bobby Hebert (1996)
Completion percentage: 69.9 Matt Ryan (2016)
Passing rating: 117.1 Matt Ryan (2016)
Rushing attempts: 410 Jamal Anderson (1998)
Rushing yards: 1,846 Jamal Anderson (1998)
Rushing touchdowns: 17 Michael Turner (2008)
Receiving catches: 136 Julio Jones (2015)
Receiving yards: 1,871 Julio Jones (2015)
Receiving touchdowns: 15 Andre Rison (1993)
Quarterback sacks: 16.5 John Abraham (2008)
Pass interceptions: 10 Scott Case (1988)
Field goal attempts: 40 Jay Feely (2002)
Field goals made: 34 Matt Bryant (2016 and 2017)
Points: 158 Matt Bryant (2016)
Total touchdowns: 17 Michael Turner (2008)
Career records
Passing attempts: 6,817 Matt Ryan (2008–present)
Passing completions: 4,460 Matt Ryan (2008–present)
Passing yards: 51,186 Matt Ryan (2008–present)
Passing touchdowns: 321 Matt Ryan (2008–present)
Passing interceptions: 147 Matt Ryan (2008–present)
Passing rating: 94.6 Matt Ryan (2008–present)
Rushing attempts: 1,587 Gerald Riggs (1982–88)
Rushing yards: 6,631 Gerald Riggs (1982–88)
Rushing yards by a QB: 3,859 Michael Vick (2001–2006)
Rushing touchdowns: 60 Michael Turner (2008–2012)
Receiving catches: 808 Roddy White (2005–2015)
Receiving yards: 12,125 Julio Jones (2011–2020)
Receiving touchdowns: 63 Roddy White (2005–2015)
Quarterback sacks: 68.5 John Abraham (2006–2012)
Pass interceptions: 39 Rolland Lawrence (1973–80)
Field goal attempts: 296 Matt Bryant (2009–present)
Field goals made: 224 Matt Bryant (2009–present)
Points: 1,163 Matt Bryant (2009–present)
Total touchdowns: 63 Roddy White (2005–2015)
Pass interception return yards: 658 Rolland Lawrence (1973–80)
Pass interception returned for touchdowns: 4 Deion Jones (2016–present)
Punt return yards: 1,723 Allen Rossum (2002–2006)
Kickoff return yards: 5,489 Allen Rossum (2002–2006)
Longest punt: 75 John James (1972–1981) and Harold Alexander (1993–1994)
Longest field goal: 59 Morten Andersen (1995–2000, 2006–2007) and Matt Bryant (2009–present)
Players
Current roster
Pro Football Hall of Famers
Sanders, Humphrey, Andersen, and Gonzalez are the only players in the Hall of Fame that have been inducted based substantially on their service with the Falcons. Andersen spent eight of his 25 NFL seasons with the Falcons, previously being the team's all-time scoring leader, but he also played his first 13 NFL seasons with the New Orleans Saints, leading that team's career scoring list.
Ring of Honor
The Atlanta Falcons organization does not officially retire jersey numbers, but considers certain players' jerseys worthy of being honored. The Falcons Ring of Honor, which is featured in the rafters of the Georgia Dome, honors individual players.
Georgia Sports Hall of Fame
Starting quarterbacks
Draft history
Coaching staff
Head coaches
In their history, the Atlanta Falcons have had 18 head coaches.
Current staff
Radio and television
The Falcons' flagship radio station is WZGC 92.9 The Game. Wes Durham, son of longtime North Carolina Tar Heels voice Woody Durham, is the Falcons' play-by-play announcer, with former Atlanta Falcons QB and pro football veteran, Dave Archer serving as color commentator.
In 2014, The CW owned-and-operated station WUPA became the official television station of the Falcons, gaining rights to its preseason games, which are produced by CBS Sports.
In the regular season, the team's games are seen on Fox's O&O affiliate WAGA. When the Falcons challenge an AFC team, CBS affiliate WGCL will air those games while Sunday night games are televised on WXIA, the local NBC affiliate.
Radio affiliates
Source:
Georgia
Alabama
Mississippi
South Carolina
Tennessee
Notes and references
External links
Atlanta Falcons at the National Football League official website
American football teams in Atlanta
National Football League teams
American football teams established in 1966
1966 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state) |
2104 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathenry%20in%20the%20United%20States | Heathenry in the United States | Heathenry is a modern Pagan new religious movement that has been active in the United States since at least the early 1970s. Although the term "Heathenry" is often employed to cover the entire religious movement, different Heathen groups within the United States often prefer the term "Ásatrú" or "Odinism" as self-designations.
Heathenry appeared in the United States during the 1960s, at the same time as the wider emergence of modern Paganism in the United States. Among the earliest American group was the Odinist Fellowship, founded by Danish migrant Else Christensen in 1969.
History
Ásatrú grew steadily in the United States during the 1960s. In 1969, the Danish Odinist Else Christensen established the Odinist Fellowship from her home in Florida, U.S.A. Heavily influenced by Alexander Rud Mills' writings, she began publication of a magazine, The Odinist, although this focused to a greater extent on right-wing and racialist ideas than theological ones. Stephen McNallen first founded the Viking Brotherhood in the early 1970s, before creating the Ásatrú Free Assembly (AFA) in 1976, which broke up in 1986 amid widespread political disagreements after McNallen's repudiation of neo-Nazis within the group. In the 1990s, McNallen founded the Ásatrú Folk Assembly (AFA), an ethnically oriented Heathen group headquartered in California.
Meanwhile, Valgard Murray and his kindred in Arizona founded the Ásatrú Alliance (AA) in the late 1980s, which shared the AFA's perspectives on race and which published the Vor Tru newsletter. In 1987, Edred Thorsson and James Chisholm founded The Troth, which was incorporated in Texas. Taking an inclusive, non-racialist view, it soon grew into an international organisation.
Terminology
In English usage, the genitive "of Æsir faith" is often used on its own to denote adherents (both singular and plural). This term is favored by practitioners who focus on the deities of Scandinavia, although it is problematic as many Asatruar worship deities and entities other than the Æsir, such as the Vanir, Valkyries, Elves, and Dwarves. Other practitioners term their religion Vanatrú, meaning "those who honour the Vanir" or Dísitrú, meaning "those who honour the Goddesses", depending on their particular theological emphasis.
Within the community it is sometimes stated that the term Ásatrú pertains to groups which are not racially focused, while Odinism is the term preferred by racially oriented groups. However, in practice, there is no such neat division in terminology.
There are notable differences of emphasis between Ásatrú as practiced in the US and in Scandinavia. According to , American Asatruar tend to prefer a more devotional form of worship and a more emotional conception of the Nordic gods than Scandinavian practitioners, reflecting the parallel tendency of highly emotional forms of Christianity prevalent in the United States.
Demographics
Although deeming it impossible to calculate the exact size of the Heathen community in the US, sociologist Jeffrey Kaplan estimated that, in the mid-1990s, there were around 500 active practitioners in the country, with a further thousand individuals on the periphery of the movement. He noted that the overwhelming majority of individuals in the movement were white, male, and young. Most had at least an undergraduate degree, and worked in a mix of white collar and blue collar jobs. From her experience within the community, Snook concurred that the majority of American Heathens were male, adding also that most were also white and middle-aged, but believed that there had been a growth in the proportion of Heathen women in the US since the mid-1990s.
The Pagan Census project led by Helen A. Berger, Evan A. Leach, and Leigh S. Shaffer gained 60 responses from Heathens in the US, noting that 65% were male and 35% female, which they saw as the "opposite" of the rest of the country's Pagan community. The majority had a college education, but were generally less well educated than the wider Pagan community, with a lower median income than the wider Pagan community too.
Subsequent assessments have suggested a larger support base; 10,000 to 20,000 according to McNallen, and 7,878 according to the 2014 census.
Politics and controversies
Ásatrú organizations have memberships which span the entire political and spiritual spectrum. There is a history of political controversy within organized US Ásatrú, mostly surrounding the question of how to deal with such adherents as place themselves in a context of the far right and white supremacy, notably resulting in the fragmentation of the Asatru Free Assembly in 1986.
Externally, political activity on the part of Ásatrú organizations has surrounded campaigns against alleged religious discrimination, such as the call for the introduction of an Ásatrú "emblem of belief" by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs to parallel the Wiccan pentacle granted to the widow of Patrick Stewart in 2006. In May 2013, the "Hammer of Thor" was added to the list of United States Department of Veterans Affairs emblems for headstones and markers. It was reported in early 2019 that a Heathenry service was held on the U.S. Navy's USS John C. Stennis
Jake Angeli, a political activist known for participating in the 2021 United States Capitol attack, has made posts on social media relating to Heathenry.
Folkish Ásatrú, Universalism and racialism
Historically, the main dispute between the national organizations has generally centered on the interpretation of "Nordic heritage" as either something cultural, or as something genetic or racial. In the internal discourse within American Ásatrú, this cultural/racial divide has long been known as "universalist" vs. "folkish" Ásatrú.
The Troth takes the "universalist" position, claiming Ásatrú as a synonym for "Northern European Heathenry" taken to comprise "many variations, names, and practices, including Theodism, Irminism, Odinism, and Anglo-Saxon Heathenry". The Asatru Folk Assembly takes the folkish position, claiming that Ásatrú and the Germanic beliefs are ancestral in nature, and as an indigenous religion of the European Folk should only be accessed by the descendants of Europe. In the UK, Germanic Neopaganism is more commonly known as Odinism or as Heathenry. This is mostly a matter of terminology, and US Ásatrú may be equated with UK Odinism for practical purposes, as is evident in the short-lived International Asatru-Odinic Alliance of folkish Ásatrú/Odinist groups.
Some groups identifying as Ásatrú have been associated with national socialist and white nationalist movements. Wotansvolk, for example, is an explicitly racial form.
More recently, however, many Ásatrú groups have been taking a harder stance against these elements of their community. Declaration 127, so named for the corresponding stanza of the Hávamál: "When you see misdeeds, speak out against them, and give your enemies no frið” is a collective statement denouncing and testifying disassociation with the Asatru Folk Assembly for alleged racial and sexually-discriminatory practices and beliefs signed by over 150 Ásatrú religious organizations from over 15 different nations mainly represented on Facebook.
Discrimination charges
Inmates of the "Intensive Management Unit" at Washington State Penitentiary who are adherents of Ásatrú in 2001 were deprived of their Thor's Hammer medallions.
In 2007, a federal judge confirmed that Ásatrú adherents in US prisons have the right to possess a Thor's Hammer pendant. An inmate sued the Virginia Department of Corrections after he was denied it while members of other religions were allowed their medallions.
In the Georgacarakos v. Watts case Peter N. Georgacarakos filed a pro se civil-rights complaint in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado against 19 prison officials for "interference with the free exercise of his Ásatrú religion" and "discrimination on the basis of his being Ásatrú".
See also
Germanic Neopaganism
Heathen holidays
Neopaganism in German-speaking Europe
Ásatrúarfélagið
Neopaganism in the United Kingdom
Heathenry in Canada
Norse mythology
Polytheistic reconstructionism
Odinism
References
Footnotes
Sources
External links
Paulas, Rick; How a Thor-Worshipping Religion Turned Racist, Vice Magazine, May 1, 2015
Ásatrú (Germanic Paganism) – ReligionFacts
Asatru (Norse Heathenism) – AltReligion
Ásatrú (Norse Heathenism) – Religioustolerance
Jotun's Bane Kindred
Ravencast – The Only Asatru Podcast – Interviews and 101 Information
Theodish Belief – General information about Theodism
On the development of Ásatrú in Australia see: |
2106 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansible | Ansible | An ansible is a category of fictional devices or technology capable of near-instantaneous or faster-than-light communication. It can send and receive messages to and from a corresponding device over any distance or obstacle whatsoever with no delay, even between star systems. As a name for such a device, the word "ansible" first appeared in a 1966 novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. Since that time, the term has been broadly used in the works of numerous science fiction authors, across a variety of settings and continuities.
Coinage by Ursula Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin coined the word "ansible" in her 1966 novel Rocannon's World. The word was a contraction of "answerable", as the device would allow its users to receive answers to their messages in a reasonable amount of time, even over interstellar distances.
The plot device of the ansible was the basis for creating a specific kind of interstellar civilization one where communications between far-flung stars are instantaneous, but humans can only travel at relativistic speeds. Under these conditions, a full-fledged galactic empire is not possible, but there is a looser interstellar organization, in which several of Le Guin's protagonists are involved.
Although Le Guin invented the name "ansible" for this type of device, fleshed out with specific details in her fictional works, the broader concept of instantaneous or faster-than-light communication had previously existed in science fiction. For example, similar communication functions were included in a device called an interocitor in the 1952 novel This Island Earth by Raymond F. Jones, and the 1955 film based on that novel, and in the "Dirac Communicator", which first appeared in James Blish's short story "Beep" (1954), which was later expanded into the novel The Quincunx of Time (1973). Robert Heinlein in Time for the Stars (1958) employed instantaneous telepathic communication between identical twin pairs over interstellar distances, and like Le Guin, provided a technical explanation based on a non-Einsteinian principle of simultaneity.
In Le Guin's works
In her subsequent works, Le Guin continued to develop the concept of the ansible:
In The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Le Guin describes that the ansible "doesn't involve radio waves, or any form of energy. The principle it works on, the constant of simultaneity, is analogous in some ways to gravity ... One point has to be fixed, on a planet of certain mass, but the other end is portable."
In The Word for World Is Forest (1972), Le Guin explains that in order for communication to work with any pair of ansibles, at least one "must be on a large-mass body, the other can be anywhere in the cosmos".
In The Dispossessed (1974), Le Guin tells of the development of the theory leading up to the ansible.
Any ansible may be used to communicate through any other, by setting its coordinates to those of the receiving ansible. They have a limited bandwidth, which only allows for at most a few hundred characters of text to be communicated in any transaction of a dialog session, and are attached to a keyboard and small display to perform text messaging.
Use by later authors
Since Le Guin's conception of the ansible, the name of the device has been borrowed by numerous authors. While Le Guin's ansible was said to communicate "instantaneously", the name has also been adopted for devices capable of communication at finite speeds that are faster than light.
Orson Scott Card's works
Orson Scott Card, in his 1977 novelette and 1985 novel Ender's Game and its sequels, used the term "ansible" as an unofficial name for the philotic parallax instantaneous communicator, a machine capable of communicating across infinite distances with no time delay. In Ender's Game, a character states that "somebody dredged the name ansible out of an old book somewhere".
In the universe of the Ender's Game series, the ansible's functions involved a fictional subatomic particle, the philote. The two quarks inside a pi meson can be separated by an arbitrary distance, while remaining connected by "philotic rays". This concept is similar to quantum teleportation due to entanglement; however, in reality, quark confinement prevents quarks from being separated by any observable distance.
Card's version of the ansible was also featured in the video game Advent Rising, for which Card helped write the story, and in the movie Ender's Game, which was based on the book.
Other writers
Numerous other writers have included faster-than-light communication devices in their fictional works. Notable examples include:
Christopher Rowley, in his 1986 novel “Starhammer” describes the Deep Link, an instantaneous interstellar communicator. Most commonly used for messaging, it is capable of voice and video conversations as well, although the latter only at great expense.
Vernor Vinge, in the 1988 short story "The Blabber"
Elizabeth Moon, in the 1995 novel Winning Colors
Jason Jones, in the 1995 computer game Marathon 2: Durandal
L.A. Graf, in the 1996 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel Time's Enemy
Philip Pullman, in the 2000 novel The Amber Spyglass, part of the His Dark Materials trilogy.
Neal Asher, in his Polity series of novels including Gridlinked (2001), in which the runcible, named in homage to the ansible, is an interstellar wormhole generator/teleporter
Dan Simmons, in the 2003 novel Ilium
Liu Cixin, in the 2008– trilogy Remembrance of Earth's Past
Kim Stanley Robinson, in the 2012 novel 2312
Becky Chambers, in the 2014 novel The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
Neon Yang, in the 2017 novella Waiting on a Bright Moon
Joe M. McDermott, in the 2017 novel The Fortress at the End of Time
Thomas Happ, in the 2021 console and PC video game Axiom Verge 2
Brandon Sanderson, in his series The Stormlight Archive
See also
Interstellar communication
No-cloning theorem
Tachyon
Tachyonic antitelephone
References
Further reading
Faster-than-light communication
Fictional technology |
2108 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adalbert%20of%20Prague | Adalbert of Prague | Adalbert of Prague (, , , , ; 95623 April 997), known in Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia by his birth name Vojtěch (), was a Bohemian missionary and Christian saint. He was the Bishop of Prague and a missionary to the Hungarians, Poles, and Prussians, who was martyred in his efforts to convert the Baltic Prussians to Christianity. He is said to be the composer of the oldest Czech hymn Hospodine, pomiluj ny and Bogurodzica, the oldest known Polish hymn, but his authorship of it has not been confirmed.
Adalbert was later declared the patron saint of the Czech Republic, Poland, and the Duchy of Prussia. He is also the patron saint of the Archdiocese of Esztergom in Hungary.
Life
Early Years
Born as Vojtěch in 952 or ca. 956 in gord Libice, he belonged to the Slavnik clan, one of the two most powerful families in Bohemia. Events from his life were later recorded by a Bohemian priest Cosmas of Prague (1045–1125). Vojtěch's father was Slavník (d. 978–981), a duke ruling a province centred at Libice. His mother was Střezislava (d. 985–987), and according to David Kalhous belonged to the Přemyslid dynasty. He had five brothers: Soběslav, Spytimír, Dobroslav, Pořej, and Čáslav. Cosmas also refers to Radim (later Gaudentius) as a brother; who is believed to have been a half-brother by his father's liaison with another woman. After he survived a grave illness in childhood, his parents decided to dedicate him to the service of God. Adalbert was well educated, having studied for approximately ten years (970-80) in Magdeburg under Adalbert of Magdeburg. The young Vojtěch took his tutor's name "Adalbert" at his Confirmation.
Episcopacy
In 981 Adalbert of Magdeburg died, and his young protege Adalbert returned to Bohemia. Later Bishop Dietmar of Prague ordained him a Catholic priest. In 982, Bishop Dietmar died, and Adalbert, despite being under canonical age, was chosen to succeed him as Bishop of Prague. Amiable and somewhat worldly, he was not expected to trouble the secular powers by making excessive claims for the Church. Although Adalbert was from a wealthy family, he avoided comfort and luxury, and was noted for his charity and austerity. After six years of preaching and prayer, he had made little headway in evangelizing the Bohemians, who maintained deeply embedded pagan beliefs.
Adalbert opposed the participation of Christians in the slave trade and complained of polygamy and idolatry, which were common among the people. Once he started to propose reforms he was met with opposition from both the secular powers and the clergy. His family refused to support Duke Boleslaus in an unsuccessful war against Poland. Adalbert was no longer welcome and eventually forced into exile. In 988 he went to Rome. He lived as a hermit at the Benedictine monastery of Saint Alexis. Five years later, Boleslaus requested that the Pope send Adalbert back to Prague, in hopes of securing his family's support. Pope John XV agreed, with the understanding that Adalbert was free to leave Prague if he continued to encounter entrenched resistance. Adalbert returned as bishop of Prague, where he was initially received with demonstrations of apparent joy. Together with a group of Italian Benedictine monks which brought with him, he founded in 14 January 993 a monastery in Břevnov (then situated westward from Prague, now part of the city), the second oldest monastery on Czech territory.
In 995, the Slavniks' former rivalry with the Přemyslids, who were allied with the powerful Bohemian clan of the Vršovcis, resulted in the storming of the Slavnik town of Libice nad Cidlinou, which was led by the Přemyslid Boleslaus II the Pious. During the struggle four or five of Adalbert's brothers were killed. The Zlič Principality became part of the Přemyslids' estate. Adalbert unsuccessfully attempted to protect a noblewoman caught in adultery. She had fled to a convent, where she was killed. In upholding the right of sanctuary, Bishop Adalbert responded by excommunicating the murderers. Butler suggests that the incident was orchestrated by enemies of his family.
After this, Adalbert could not safely stay in Bohemia and escaped from Prague. Strachkvas was eventually appointed to be his successor. However, Strachkvas suddenly died during the liturgy at which he was to accede to his episcopal office in Prague. The cause of his death is still ambiguous. The Pope directed Adalbert to resume his see, but believing that he would not be allowed back, Adalbert requested a brief as an itinerant missionary.
Adalbert then traveled to Hungary and probably baptized Géza of Hungary and his son Stephen in Esztergom. Then he went to Poland where he was cordially welcomed by then-Duke Boleslaus I and installed as Bishop of Gniezno.
Mission and Martyrdom in Prussia
Adalbert again relinquished his diocese, namely that of Gniezno, and set out as a missionary to preach to the inhabitants near Prussia. Bolesław I, Duke (and, later, King) of Poland, sent soldiers with Adalbert on his mission to the Prussians. The Bishop and his companions, entered Prussian territory and traveled along the coast of the Baltic Sea to Gdańsk. At the borders of the Polish realm, at the mouth of the Vistula River, his half-brother Radim (Gaudentius), Benedict-Bogusza (who was probably a Pole), and at least one interpreter, ventured out into Prussia alone, as Bolesław had only sent his soldiers to escort them to the border.
Adalbert achieved some success upon his arrival, however his arrival mostly caused strain upon the local Prussian populations. Partially this was because of the imperious manner with which he preached, but potentially because he preached utilizing a book. The Prussians had a oral society where communication was face to face. To the locals Adalbert reading from a book may have come off as a manifestation of an evil action. He was forced to leave this first village after being struck in the back of the head by an oar by a local chieftain, causing the pages of his book to scatter upon the ground. He and his companions then fled across a river.
In the next place that Adalbert tried to preach, his message was met with the locals banging their sticks upon the ground, calling for the death of Adalbert and his companions. Retreating once again Adalbert and his companions went to a market place of Truso (near modern-day Elbląg). Here they were met with a similar response as at the previous place. On the 23 April 997, after mass, while Adalbert and his companions lay in the grass while eating a snack, they were set upon by a pagan mob. The mob was led by a man named Sicco, possibly a pagan priest, who delivered the first blow against Adalbert, before the others joined in. They removed the Adalbert's head from his body after he was dead, and mounted on a pole while they returned home. This encounter may also have taken place in Tenkitten and Fischhausen (now Primorsk, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia). It is recorded that his body was bought back for its weight in gold by King Boleslaus I of Poland.
Veneration and Relics
A few years after his martyrdom, Adalbert was canonized as Saint Adalbert of Prague. His life was written in Vita Sancti Adalberti Pragensis by various authors, the earliest being traced to imperial Aachen and the Bishop of Liège, Notger von Lüttich, although it was previously assumed that the Roman monk John Canaparius wrote the first Vita in 999. Another famous biographer of Adalbert was Bruno of Querfurt who wrote a hagiography of him in 1001–4.
Notably, the Přemyslid rulers of Bohemia initially refused to ransom Adalbert's body from the Prussians who murdered him, and therefore it was purchased by Poles. This fact may be explained by Adalbert's belonging to the Slavniks family which was rival to the Přemyslids. Thus Adalbert's bones were preserved in Gniezno, which assisted Boleslaus I of Poland in increasing Polish political and diplomatic power in Europe.
According to Bohemian accounts, in 1039 the Bohemian Duke Břetislav I looted the bones of Adalbert from Gniezno in a raid and translated them to Prague. According to Polish accounts, however, he stole the wrong relics, namely those of Gaudentius, while the Poles concealed Adalbert's relics which remain in Gniezno. In 1127 his severed head, which was not in the original purchase according to Roczniki Polskie, was discovered and translated to Gniezno. In 1928, one of the arms of Adalbert, which Bolesław I had given to Holy Roman Emperor Otto III in 1000, was added to the bones preserved in Gniezno. Therefore, today Adalbert has two elaborate shrines in the Prague Cathedral and Royal Cathedral of Gniezno, each of which claims to possess his relics, but which of these bones are his authentic relics is unknown. For example, pursuant to both claims two skulls are attributed to Adalbert. The one in Gniezno was stolen in 1923.
The massive bronze doors of Gniezno Cathedral, dating from around 1175, are decorated with eighteen reliefs of scenes from Adalbert's life. They are the only Romanesque ecclesiastical doors in Europe depicting a cycle illustrating the life of a saint, and therefore are a precious relic documenting Adalbert's martyrdom. We can read that door literally and theologically.
The one thousandth anniversary of Adalbert's martyrdom was on 23 April 1997. It was commemorated in Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, Russia, and other nations. Representatives of Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Evangelical churches traveled on a pilgrimage to Adalbert's tomb located in Gniezno. Pope John Paul II visited the cathedral and celebrated a liturgy there in which heads of seven European nations and approximately one million faithful participated.
A ten-meter cross was erected near the village of Beregovoe (formerly Tenkitten), Kaliningrad Oblast, where Adalbert is thought to have been martyred by the Prussians.
In popular culture and society
The Dagmar and Václav Havel VIZE 97 Foundation Prize, given annually to a distinguished thinker "whose work exceeds the traditional framework of scientific knowledge, contributes to the understanding of science as an integral part of general culture and is concerned with unconventional ways of asking fundamental questions about cognition, being and human existence"
includes a massive replica of Adalbert's crozier by Czech artist Jiří Plieštík.
St. Vojtech Fellowship was established in 1870 by Slovak Catholic priest Andrej Radlinský. It had facilitated Slovak Catholic thinkers and authors, continuing to publish religious original works and translations to this day. It is the official publishing body of Episcopal Conference of Slovakia.
Churches and parishes named for Adalbert
See also
History of the Czech lands in the Middle Ages
History of Poland (966–1385)
Congress of Gniezno
Gniezno Doors
Adalbert of Magdeburg
Saint Adalbert of Prague, patron saint archive
Statue of Adalbert of Prague, Charles Bridge
References
Sources
Donald Attwater and Catherine R. John, The Penguin Dictionary of Saints, Third Edition (New York: Penguin Books, 1993); .
External links
Adalbert of Prague
Adalbert of Prague
10th-century bishops in Bohemia
Roman Catholic bishops of Prague
Medieval Bohemian nobility
Slavník dynasty
People from Nymburk District
Czech Christian missionaries
Burials at St. Vitus Cathedral
Burials at Gniezno Cathedral
Czech Roman Catholic saints
Polish Roman Catholic saints
10th-century Christian saints
10th-century Christian martyrs
10th century in Hungary
10th century in Poland
Christian missionaries in Europe
Patron saints of Poland |
2110 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86lfheah%20of%20Canterbury | Ælfheah of Canterbury | Ælfheah ( – 19 April 1012), more commonly known today as Alphege, was an Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Winchester, later Archbishop of Canterbury. He became an anchorite before being elected abbot of Bath Abbey. His reputation for piety and sanctity led to his promotion to the episcopate and, eventually, to his becoming archbishop. Ælfheah furthered the cult of Dunstan and also encouraged learning. He was captured by Viking raiders in 1011 during the siege of Canterbury and killed by them the following year after refusing to allow himself to be ransomed. Ælfheah was canonised as a saint in 1078. Thomas Becket, a later Archbishop of Canterbury, prayed to him just before his own murder in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170.
Life
Ælfheah was born around 953, supposedly in Weston on the outskirts of Bath, and became a monk early in life. He first entered the monastery of Deerhurst, but then moved to Bath, where he became an anchorite. He was noted for his piety and austerity and rose to become abbot of Bath Abbey. The 12th century chronicler, William of Malmesbury recorded that Ælfheah was a monk and prior at Glastonbury Abbey, but this is not accepted by all historians. Indications are that Ælfheah became abbot at Bath by 982, perhaps as early as around 977. He perhaps shared authority with his predecessor Æscwig after 968.
Probably due to the influence of Dunstan, the Archbishop of Canterbury (959–988), Ælfheah was elected Bishop of Winchester in 984, and was consecrated on 19 October that year. While bishop he was largely responsible for the construction of a large organ in the cathedral, audible from over a mile (1600 m) away and said to require more than 24 men to operate. He also built and enlarged the city's churches, and promoted the cult of Swithun and his own predecessor, Æthelwold of Winchester. One act promoting Æthelwold's cult was the translation of Æthelwold's body to a new tomb in the cathedral at Winchester, which Ælfheah presided over on 10 September 996.
Following a Viking raid in 994, a peace treaty was agreed with one of the raiders, Olaf Tryggvason. Besides receiving danegeld, Olaf converted to Christianity and undertook never to raid or fight the English again. Ælfheah may have played a part in the treaty negotiations, and it is certain that he confirmed Olaf in his new faith.
In 1006, Ælfheah succeeded Ælfric as Archbishop of Canterbury, taking Swithun's head with him as a relic for the new location. He went to Rome in 1007 to receive his pallium—symbol of his status as an archbishop—from Pope John XVIII, but was robbed during his journey. While at Canterbury, he promoted the cult of Dunstan, ordering the writing of the second Life of Dunstan, which Adelard of Ghent composed between 1006 and 1011. He also introduced new practices into the liturgy, and was instrumental in the Witenagemot's recognition of Wulfsige of Sherborne as a saint in about 1012.
Ælfheah sent Ælfric of Eynsham to Cerne Abbey to take charge of its monastic school. He was present at the council of May 1008 at which Wulfstan II, Archbishop of York, preached his Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (The Sermon of the Wolf to the English), castigating the English for their moral failings and blaming the latter for the tribulations afflicting the country.
In 1011, the Danes again raided England, and from 8–29 September they laid siege to Canterbury. Aided by the treachery of Ælfmaer, whose life Ælfheah had once saved, the raiders succeeded in sacking the city. Ælfheah was taken prisoner and held captive for seven months. Godwine (Bishop of Rochester), Leofrun (abbess of St Mildrith's), and the king's reeve, Ælfweard were captured also, but the abbot of St Augustine's Abbey, Ælfmær, managed to escape. Canterbury Cathedral was plundered and burned by the Danes following Ælfheah's capture.
Death
Ælfheah refused to allow a ransom to be paid for his freedom, and as a result was killed on 19 April 1012 at Greenwich, reputedly on the site of St Alfege's Church. The account of Ælfheah's death appears in the E version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:
Ælfheah was the first Archbishop of Canterbury to die a violent death. A contemporary report tells that Thorkell the Tall attempted to save Ælfheah from the mob about to kill him by offering everything he owned except for his ship, in exchange for Ælfheah's life; Thorkell's presence is not mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, however. Some sources record that the final blow, with the back of an axe, was delivered as an act of kindness by a Christian convert known as "Thrum." Ælfheah was buried in St Paul's Cathedral. In 1023, his body was moved by King Cnut to Canterbury, with great ceremony. Thorkell the Tall was appalled at the brutality of his fellow raiders, and switched sides to the English king Æthelred the Unready following Ælfheah's death.
Veneration
Pope Gregory VII canonised Ælfheah in 1078, with a feast day of 19 April. Lanfranc, the first post-Conquest archbishop, was dubious about some of the saints venerated at Canterbury. He was persuaded of Ælfheah's sanctity, but Ælfheah and Augustine of Canterbury were the only pre-conquest Anglo-Saxon archbishops kept on Canterbury's calendar of saints. Ælfheah's shrine, which had become neglected, was rebuilt and expanded in the early 12th century under Anselm of Canterbury, who was instrumental in retaining Ælfheah's name in the church calendar. After the 1174 fire in Canterbury Cathedral, Ælfheah's remains together with those of Dunstan were placed around the high altar, at which Thomas Becket is said to have commended his life into Ælfheah's care shortly before his martyrdom during the Becket controversy. The new shrine was sealed in lead, and was north of the high altar, sharing the honour with Dunstan's shrine, which was located south of the high altar. A Life of Saint Ælfheah in prose and verse was written by a Canterbury monk named Osbern, at Lanfranc's request. The prose version has survived, but the Life is very much a hagiography; many of the stories it contains have obvious Biblical parallels, making them suspect as a historical record.
In the late medieval period, Ælfheah's feast day was celebrated in Scandinavia, perhaps because of the saint's connection with Cnut. Few church dedications to him are known, with most of them occurring in Kent and one each in London and Winchester; as well as St Alfege's Church in Greenwich, a nearby hospital (1931–1968) was named after him. In Kent, there are two 12th century parish churches dedicated to St Alphege at Seasalter and Canterbury. Reputedly his body lay in these churches overnight on his way back to Canterbury Cathedral for burial. In the town of Solihull in the West Midlands, St Alphege Church is dedicated to Ælfheah dating back to approximately 1277. In 1929, a new Roman Catholic church in Bath, the Church of Our Lady & St Alphege, was designed by Giles Gilbert Scott in homage to the ancient Roman church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, and dedicated to Ælfheah under the name of Alphege. St George the Martyr with St Alphege & St Jude stands in Borough in London.
Notes
Citations
References
Further reading
External links
950s births
1012 deaths
People from Bath, Somerset
Anglo-Saxon saints
Archbishops of Canterbury
Bishops of Winchester
Martyred Roman Catholic priests
11th-century Christian saints
11th-century Christian martyrs
Incorrupt saints
Year of birth uncertain
11th-century English Roman Catholic archbishops
Anglican saints
Canonizations by Pope Gregory VII |
2112 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associative%20algebra | Associative algebra | In mathematics, an associative algebra A is an algebraic structure with compatible operations of addition, multiplication (assumed to be associative), and a scalar multiplication by elements in some field. The addition and multiplication operations together give A the structure of a ring; the addition and scalar multiplication operations together give A the structure of a vector space over K. In this article we will also use the term [[algebra over a field|K-algebra]] to mean an associative algebra over the field K. A standard first example of a K-algebra is a ring of square matrices over a field K, with the usual matrix multiplication.
A commutative algebra is an associative algebra that has a commutative multiplication, or, equivalently, an associative algebra that is also a commutative ring.
In this article associative algebras are assumed to have a multiplicative identity, denoted 1; they are sometimes called unital associative algebras for clarification. In some areas of mathematics this assumption is not made, and we will call such structures non-unital associative algebras. We will also assume that all rings are unital, and all ring homomorphisms are unital.
Many authors consider the more general concept of an associative algebra over a commutative ring R, instead of a field: An R-algebra is an R-module with an associative R-bilinear binary operation, which also contains a multiplicative identity. For examples of this concept, if S is any ring with center C, then S is an associative C-algebra.
Definition
Let R be a commutative ring (so R could be a field). An associative R-algebra (or more simply, an R-algebra) is a ring
that is also an R-module in such a way that the two additions (the ring addition and the module addition) are the same operation, and scalar multiplication satisfies
for all r in R and x, y in the algebra. (This definition implies that the algebra is unital, since rings are supposed to have a multiplicative identity.)
Equivalently, an associative algebra A is a ring together with a ring homomorphism from R to the center of A. If f is such a homomorphism, the scalar multiplication is (here the multiplication is the ring multiplication); if the scalar multiplication is given, the ring homomorphism is given by (See also below).
Every ring is an associative -algebra, where denotes the ring of the integers.
A is an associative algebra that is also a commutative ring.
As a monoid object in the category of modules
The definition is equivalent to saying that a unital associative R-algebra is a monoid object in R-Mod (the monoidal category of R-modules). By definition, a ring is a monoid object in the category of abelian groups; thus, the notion of an associative algebra is obtained by replacing the category of abelian groups with the category of modules.
Pushing this idea further, some authors have introduced a "generalized ring" as a monoid object in some other category that behaves like the category of modules. Indeed, this reinterpretation allows one to avoid making an explicit reference to elements of an algebra A. For example, the associativity can be expressed as follows. By the universal property of a tensor product of modules, the multiplication (the R-bilinear map) corresponds to a unique R-linear map
.
The associativity then refers to the identity:
From ring homomorphisms
An associative algebra amounts to a ring homomorphism whose image lies in the center. Indeed, starting with a ring A and a ring homomorphism whose image lies in the center of A, we can make A an R-algebra by defining
for all r ∈ R and x ∈ A. If A is an R-algebra, taking x = 1, the same formula in turn defines a ring homomorphism whose image lies in the center.
If a ring is commutative then it equals its center, so that a commutative R-algebra can be defined simply as a commutative ring A together with a commutative ring homomorphism .
The ring homomorphism η appearing in the above is often called a structure map. In the commutative case, one can consider the category whose objects are ring homomorphisms R → A; i.e., commutative R-algebras and whose morphisms are ring homomorphisms A → A that are under R; i.e., R → A → A is R → A (i.e., the coslice category of the category of commutative rings under R.) The prime spectrum functor Spec then determines an anti-equivalence of this category to the category of affine schemes over Spec R.
How to weaken the commutativity assumption is a subject matter of noncommutative algebraic geometry and, more recently, of derived algebraic geometry. See also: generic matrix ring.
Algebra homomorphisms
A homomorphism between two R-algebras is an R-linear ring homomorphism. Explicitly, is an associative algebra homomorphism if
The class of all R-algebras together with algebra homomorphisms between them form a category, sometimes denoted R-Alg.
The subcategory of commutative R-algebras can be characterized as the coslice category R/CRing where CRing is the category of commutative rings.
Examples
The most basic example is a ring itself; it is an algebra over its center or any subring lying in the center. In particular, any commutative ring is an algebra over any of its subrings. Other examples abound both from algebra and other fields of mathematics.
Algebra
Any ring A can be considered as a Z-algebra. The unique ring homomorphism from Z to A is determined by the fact that it must send 1 to the identity in A. Therefore, rings and Z-algebras are equivalent concepts, in the same way that abelian groups and Z-modules are equivalent.
Any ring of characteristic n is a (Z/nZ)-algebra in the same way.
Given an R-module M, the endomorphism ring of M, denoted EndR(M) is an R-algebra by defining (r·φ)(x) = r·φ(x).
Any ring of matrices with coefficients in a commutative ring R forms an R-algebra under matrix addition and multiplication. This coincides with the previous example when M is a finitely-generated, free R-module.
In particular, the square n-by-n matrices with entries from the field K form an associative algebra over K.
The complex numbers form a 2-dimensional commutative algebra over the real numbers.
The quaternions form a 4-dimensional associative algebra over the reals (but not an algebra over the complex numbers, since the complex numbers are not in the center of the quaternions).
The polynomials with real coefficients form a commutative algebra over the reals.
Every polynomial ring R[x1, ..., xn] is a commutative R-algebra. In fact, this is the free commutative R-algebra on the set {x1, ..., xn}.
The free R-algebra on a set E is an algebra of "polynomials" with coefficients in R and noncommuting indeterminates taken from the set E.
The tensor algebra of an R-module is naturally an associative R-algebra. The same is true for quotients such as the exterior and symmetric algebras. Categorically speaking, the functor that maps an R-module to its tensor algebra is left adjoint to the functor that sends an R-algebra to its underlying R-module (forgetting the multiplicative structure).
The following ring is used in the theory of λ-rings. Given a commutative ring A, let the set of formal power series with constant term 1. It is an abelian group with the group operation that is the multiplication of power series. It is then a ring with the multiplication, denoted by , such that determined by this condition and the ring axioms. The additive identity is 1 and the multiplicative identity is . Then has a canonical structure of a -algebra given by the ring homomorphism On the other hand, if A is a λ-ring, then there is a ring homomorphism giving a structure of an A-algebra.
Representation theory
The universal enveloping algebra of a Lie algebra is an associative algebra that can be used to study the given Lie algebra.
If G is a group and R is a commutative ring, the set of all functions from G to R with finite support form an R-algebra with the convolution as multiplication. It is called the group algebra of G. The construction is the starting point for the application to the study of (discrete) groups.
If G is an algebraic group (e.g., semisimple complex Lie group), then the coordinate ring of G is the Hopf algebra A corresponding to G. Many structures of G translate to those of A.
A quiver algebra (or a path algebra) of a directed graph is the free associative algebra over a field generated by the paths in the graph.
Analysis
Given any Banach space X, the continuous linear operators A : X → X form an associative algebra (using composition of operators as multiplication); this is a Banach algebra.
Given any topological space X, the continuous real- or complex-valued functions on X form a real or complex associative algebra; here the functions are added and multiplied pointwise.
The set of semimartingales defined on the filtered probability space (Ω, F, (Ft)t ≥ 0, P) forms a ring under stochastic integration.
The Weyl algebra
An Azumaya algebra
Geometry and combinatorics
The Clifford algebras, which are useful in geometry and physics.
Incidence algebras of locally finite partially ordered sets are associative algebras considered in combinatorics.
Constructions
Subalgebras A subalgebra of an R-algebra A is a subset of A which is both a subring and a submodule of A. That is, it must be closed under addition, ring multiplication, scalar multiplication, and it must contain the identity element of A.
Quotient algebras Let A be an R-algebra. Any ring-theoretic ideal I in A is automatically an R-module since r · x = (r1A)x. This gives the quotient ring A / I the structure of an R-module and, in fact, an R-algebra. It follows that any ring homomorphic image of A is also an R-algebra.
Direct products The direct product of a family of R-algebras is the ring-theoretic direct product. This becomes an R-algebra with the obvious scalar multiplication.
Free products One can form a free product of R-algebras in a manner similar to the free product of groups. The free product is the coproduct in the category of R-algebras.
Tensor products The tensor product of two R-algebras is also an R-algebra in a natural way. See tensor product of algebras for more details. Given a commutative ring R and any ring A the tensor product R ⊗Z A can be given the structure of an R-algebra by defining r · (s ⊗ a) = (rs ⊗ a). The functor which sends A to R ⊗Z A is left adjoint to the functor which sends an R-algebra to its underlying ring (forgetting the module structure). See also: Change of rings.
Separable algebra
Let A be an algebra over a commutative ring R. Then the algebra A is a right module over with the action . Then, by definition, A is said to separable if the multiplication map splits as an -linear map, where is an -module by . Equivalently,
is separable if it is a projective module over ; thus, the -projective dimension of A, sometimes called the bidimension of A, measures the failure of separability.
Finite-dimensional algebra
Let A be a finite-dimensional algebra over a field k. Then A is an Artinian ring.
Commutative case
As A is Artinian, if it is commutative, then it is a finite product of Artinian local rings whose residue fields are algebras over the base field k. Now, a reduced Artinian local ring is a field and thus the following are equivalent
is separable.
is reduced, where is some algebraic closure of k.
for some n.
is the number of -algebra homomorphisms .
Noncommutative case
Since a simple Artinian ring is a (full) matrix ring over a division ring, if A is a simple algebra, then A is a (full) matrix algebra over a division algebra D over k; i.e., . More generally, if A is a semisimple algebra, then it is a finite product of matrix algebras (over various division k-algebras), the fact known as the Artin–Wedderburn theorem.
The fact that A is Artinian simplifies the notion of a Jacobson radical; for an Artinian ring, the Jacobson radical of A is the intersection of all (two-sided) maximal ideals (in contrast, in general, a Jacobson radical is the intersection of all left maximal ideals or the intersection of all right maximal ideals.)
The Wedderburn principal theorem states: for a finite-dimensional algebra A with a nilpotent ideal I, if the projective dimension of as an -module is at most one, then the natural surjection splits; i.e., contains a subalgebra such that is an isomorphism. Taking I to be the Jacobson radical, the theorem says in particular that the Jacobson radical is complemented by a semisimple algebra. The theorem is an analog of Levi's theorem for Lie algebras.
Lattices and orders
Let R be a Noetherian integral domain with field of fractions K (for example, they can be ). A lattice L in a finite-dimensional K-vector space V is a finitely generated R-submodule of V that spans V; in other words, .
Let be a finite-dimensional K-algebra. An order in is an R-subalgebra that is a lattice. In general, there are a lot fewer orders than lattices; e.g., is a lattice in but not an order (since it is not an algebra).
A maximal order is an order that is maximal among all the orders.
Related concepts
Coalgebras
An associative algebra over K is given by a K-vector space A endowed with a bilinear map A × A → A having two inputs (multiplicator and multiplicand) and one output (product), as well as a morphism K → A identifying the scalar multiples of the multiplicative identity. If the bilinear map A × A → A is reinterpreted as a linear map (i. e., morphism in the category of K-vector spaces) A ⊗ A → A (by the universal property of the tensor product), then we can view an associative algebra over K as a K-vector space A endowed with two morphisms (one of the form A ⊗ A → A and one of the form K → A) satisfying certain conditions that boil down to the algebra axioms. These two morphisms can be dualized using categorial duality by reversing all arrows in the commutative diagrams that describe the algebra axioms; this defines the structure of a coalgebra.
There is also an abstract notion of F-coalgebra, where F is a functor. This is vaguely related to the notion of coalgebra discussed above.
Representations
A representation of an algebra A is an algebra homomorphism ρ : A → End(V) from A to the endomorphism algebra of some vector space (or module) V. The property of ρ being an algebra homomorphism means that ρ preserves the multiplicative operation (that is, ρ(xy) = ρ(x)ρ(y) for all x and y in A), and that ρ sends the unit of A to the unit of End(V) (that is, to the identity endomorphism of V).
If A and B are two algebras, and ρ : A → End(V) and τ : B → End(W) are two representations, then there is a (canonical) representation A B → End(V W) of the tensor product algebra A B on the vector space V W. However, there is no natural way of defining a tensor product of two representations of a single associative algebra in such a way that the result is still a representation of that same algebra (not of its tensor product with itself), without somehow imposing additional conditions. Here, by tensor product of representations, the usual meaning is intended: the result should be a linear representation of the same algebra on the product vector space. Imposing such additional structure typically leads to the idea of a Hopf algebra or a Lie algebra, as demonstrated below.
Motivation for a Hopf algebra
Consider, for example, two representations and . One might try to form a tensor product representation according to how it acts on the product vector space, so that
However, such a map would not be linear, since one would have
for k ∈ K. One can rescue this attempt and restore linearity by imposing additional structure, by defining an algebra homomorphism Δ: A → A ⊗ A, and defining the tensor product representation as
Such a homomorphism Δ is called a comultiplication if it satisfies certain axioms. The resulting structure is called a bialgebra. To be consistent with the definitions of the associative algebra, the coalgebra must be co-associative, and, if the algebra is unital, then the co-algebra must be co-unital as well. A Hopf algebra is a bialgebra with an additional piece of structure (the so-called antipode), which allows not only to define the tensor product of two representations, but also the Hom module of two representations (again, similarly to how it is done in the representation theory of groups).
Motivation for a Lie algebra
One can try to be more clever in defining a tensor product. Consider, for example,
so that the action on the tensor product space is given by
.
This map is clearly linear in x, and so it does not have the problem of the earlier definition. However, it fails to preserve multiplication:
.
But, in general, this does not equal
.
This shows that this definition of a tensor product is too naive; the obvious fix is to define it such that it is antisymmetric, so that the middle two terms cancel. This leads to the concept of a Lie algebra.
Non-unital algebras
Some authors use the term "associative algebra" to refer to structures which do not necessarily have a multiplicative identity, and hence consider homomorphisms which are not necessarily unital.
One example of a non-unital associative algebra is given by the set of all functions f: R → R' whose limit as x nears infinity is zero.
Another example is the vector space of continuous periodic functions, together with the convolution product.
See also
Abstract algebra
Algebraic structure
Algebra over a field
Sheaf of algebras, a sort of an algebra over a ringed space
Notes
References
Nathan Jacobson, Structure of Rings
James Byrnie Shaw (1907) A Synopsis of Linear Associative Algebra, link from Cornell University Historical Math Monographs.
Ross Street (1998) Quantum Groups: an entrée to modern algebra'', an overview of index-free notation.
Algebras
Algebraic geometry |
2113 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom%20of%20regularity | Axiom of regularity | In mathematics, the axiom of regularity (also known as the axiom of foundation) is an axiom of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory that states that every non-empty set A contains an element that is disjoint from A. In first-order logic, the axiom reads:
The axiom of regularity together with the axiom of pairing implies that no set is an element of itself, and that there is no infinite sequence (an) such that ai+1 is an element of ai for all i. With the axiom of dependent choice (which is a weakened form of the axiom of choice), this result can be reversed: if there are no such infinite sequences, then the axiom of regularity is true. Hence, in this context the axiom of regularity is equivalent to the sentence that there are no downward infinite membership chains.
The axiom was introduced by ; it was adopted in a formulation closer to the one found in contemporary textbooks by . Virtually all results in the branches of mathematics based on set theory hold even in the absence of regularity; see chapter 3 of . However, regularity makes some properties of ordinals easier to prove; and it not only allows induction to be done on well-ordered sets but also on proper classes that are well-founded relational structures such as the lexicographical ordering on
Given the other axioms of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, the axiom of regularity is equivalent to the axiom of induction. The axiom of induction tends to be used in place of the axiom of regularity in intuitionistic theories (ones that do not accept the law of the excluded middle), where the two axioms are not equivalent.
In addition to omitting the axiom of regularity, non-standard set theories have indeed postulated the existence of sets that are elements of themselves.
Elementary implications of regularity
No set is an element of itself
Let A be a set, and apply the axiom of regularity to {A}, which is a set by the axiom of pairing. We see that there must be an element of {A} which is disjoint from {A}. Since the only element of {A} is A, it must be that A is disjoint from {A}. So, since , we cannot have A ∈ A (by the definition of disjoint).
No infinite descending sequence of sets exists
Suppose, to the contrary, that there is a function, f, on the natural numbers with f(n+1) an element of f(n) for each n. Define S = {f(n): n a natural number}, the range of f, which can be seen to be a set from the axiom schema of replacement. Applying the axiom of regularity to S, let B be an element of S which is disjoint from S. By the definition of S, B must be f(k) for some natural number k. However, we are given that f(k) contains f(k+1) which is also an element of S. So f(k+1) is in the intersection of f(k) and S. This contradicts the fact that they are disjoint sets. Since our supposition led to a contradiction, there must not be any such function, f.
The nonexistence of a set containing itself can be seen as a special case where the sequence is infinite and constant.
Notice that this argument only applies to functions f that can be represented as sets as opposed to undefinable classes. The hereditarily finite sets, Vω, satisfy the axiom of regularity (and all other axioms of ZFC except the axiom of infinity). So if one forms a non-trivial ultrapower of Vω, then it will also satisfy the axiom of regularity. The resulting model will contain elements, called non-standard natural numbers, that satisfy the definition of natural numbers in that model but are not really natural numbers. They are fake natural numbers which are "larger" than any actual natural number. This model will contain infinite descending sequences of elements. For example, suppose n is a non-standard natural number, then and , and so on. For any actual natural number k, . This is an unending descending sequence of elements. But this sequence is not definable in the model and thus not a set. So no contradiction to regularity can be proved.
Simpler set-theoretic definition of the ordered pair
The axiom of regularity enables defining the ordered pair (a,b) as {a,{a,b}}; see ordered pair for specifics. This definition eliminates one pair of braces from the canonical Kuratowski definition (a,b) = {{a},{a,b}}.
Every set has an ordinal rank
This was actually the original form of the axiom in von Neumann's axiomatization.
Suppose x is any set. Let t be the transitive closure of {x}. Let u be the subset of t consisting of unranked sets. If u is empty, then x is ranked and we are done. Otherwise, apply the axiom of regularity to u to get an element w of u which is disjoint from u. Since w is in u, w is unranked. w is a subset of t by the definition of transitive closure. Since w is disjoint from u, every element of w is ranked. Applying the axioms of replacement and union to combine the ranks of the elements of w, we get an ordinal rank for w, to wit . This contradicts the conclusion that w is unranked. So the assumption that u was non-empty must be false and x must have rank.
For every two sets, only one can be an element of the other
Let X and Y be sets. Then apply the axiom of regularity to the set {X,Y} (which exists by the axiom of pairing). We see there must be an element of {X,Y} which is also disjoint from it. It must be either X or Y. By the definition of disjoint then, we must have either Y is not an element of X or vice versa.
The axiom of dependent choice and no infinite descending sequence of sets implies regularity
Let the non-empty set S be a counter-example to the axiom of regularity; that is, every element of S has a non-empty intersection with S. We define a binary relation R on S by , which is entire by assumption. Thus, by the axiom of dependent choice, there is some sequence (an) in S satisfying anRan+1 for all n in N. As this is an infinite descending chain, we arrive at a contradiction and so, no such S exists.
Regularity and the rest of ZF(C) axioms
Regularity was shown to be relatively consistent with the rest of ZF by and , meaning that if ZF without regularity is consistent, then ZF (with regularity) is also consistent. For his proof in modern notation see for instance.
The axiom of regularity was also shown to be independent from the other axioms of ZF(C), assuming they are consistent. The result was announced by Paul Bernays in 1941, although he did not publish a proof until 1954. The proof involves (and led to the study of) Rieger-Bernays permutation models (or method), which were used for other proofs of independence for non-well-founded systems ( and ).
Regularity and Russell's paradox
Naive set theory (the axiom schema of unrestricted comprehension and the axiom of extensionality) is inconsistent due to Russell's paradox. In early formalizations of sets, mathematicians and logicians have avoided that contradiction by replacing the axiom schema of comprehension with the much weaker axiom schema of separation. However, this step alone takes one to theories of sets which are considered too weak. So some of the power of comprehension was added back via the other existence axioms of ZF set theory (pairing, union, powerset, replacement, and infinity) which may be regarded as special cases of comprehension. So far, these axioms do not seem to lead to any contradiction. Subsequently, the axiom of choice and the axiom of regularity were added to exclude models with some undesirable properties. These two axioms are known to be relatively consistent.
In the presence of the axiom schema of separation, Russell's paradox becomes a proof that there is no set of all sets. The axiom of regularity together with the axiom of pairing also prohibit such a universal set. However, Russell's paradox yields a proof that there is no "set of all sets" using the axiom schema of separation alone, without any additional axioms. In particular, ZF without the axiom of regularity already prohibits such a universal set.
If a theory is extended by adding an axiom or axioms, then any (possibly undesirable) consequences of the original theory remain consequences of the extended theory. In particular, if ZF without regularity is extended by adding regularity to get ZF, then any contradiction (such as Russell's paradox) which followed from the original theory would still follow in the extended theory.
The existence of Quine atoms (sets that satisfy the formula equation x = {x}, i.e. have themselves as their only elements) is consistent with the theory obtained by removing the axiom of regularity from ZFC. Various non-wellfounded set theories allow "safe" circular sets, such as Quine atoms, without becoming inconsistent by means of Russell's paradox.
Regularity, the cumulative hierarchy, and types
In ZF it can be proven that the class , called the von Neumann universe, is equal to the class of all sets. This statement is even equivalent to the axiom of regularity (if we work in ZF with this axiom omitted). From any model which does not satisfy axiom of regularity, a model which satisfies it can be constructed by taking only sets in .
wrote that "The idea of rank is a descendant of Russell's concept of type". Comparing ZF with type theory, Alasdair Urquhart wrote that "Zermelo's system has the notational advantage of not containing any explicitly typed variables, although in fact it can be seen as having an implicit type structure built into it, at least if the axiom of regularity is included. The details of this implicit typing are spelled out in [Zermelo 1930], and again in a well-known article of George Boolos [Boolos 1971]."
went further and claimed that:
In the same paper, Scott shows that an axiomatic system based on the inherent properties of the cumulative hierarchy turns out to be equivalent to ZF, including regularity.
History
The concept of well-foundedness and rank of a set were both introduced by Dmitry Mirimanoff (1917) cf. and . Mirimanoff called a set x "regular" (French: "ordinaire") if every descending chain x ∋ x1 ∋ x2 ∋ ... is finite. Mirimanoff however did not consider his notion of regularity (and well-foundedness) as an axiom to be observed by all sets; in later papers Mirimanoff also explored what are now called non-well-founded sets ("extraordinaire" in Mirimanoff's terminology).
and pointed out that non-well-founded sets are superfluous (on p. 404 in van Heijenoort's translation) and in the same publication von Neumann gives an axiom (p. 412 in translation) which excludes some, but not all, non-well-founded sets. In a subsequent publication, gave the following axiom (rendered in modern notation by A. Rieger):
.
Regularity in the presence of urelements
Urelements are objects that are not sets, but which can be elements of sets. In ZF set theory, there are no urelements, but in some other set theories such as ZFA, there are. In these theories, the axiom of regularity must be modified. The statement "" needs to be replaced with a statement that is not empty and is not an urelement. One suitable replacement is , which states that x is inhabited.
See also
Non-well-founded set theory
Scott's trick
Epsilon-induction
References
Sources
reprinted in
Reprinted in From Frege to Gödel, van Heijenoort, 1967, in English translation by Stefan Bauer-Mengelberg, pp. 291–301.
; translation in
; translation in
External links
Inhabited set and the axiom of foundation on nLab
Axioms of set theory
Wellfoundedness |
2114 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM%20AIX | IBM AIX | AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive, pronounced , “ay-eye-ex”) is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms. Originally released for the IBM RT PC RISC workstation in 1986, AIX has supported a wide variety of hardware platforms, including the IBM RS/6000 series and later Power and PowerPC-based systems, IBM System i, System/370 mainframes, PS/2 personal computers, and the Apple Network Server. It is currently supported on IBM Power Systems alongside IBM i and Linux.
AIX is based on UNIX System V with 4.3BSD-compatible extensions. It is certified to the UNIX 03 and UNIX V7 marks of the Single UNIX Specification, beginning with AIX versions 5.3 and 7.2 TL5 respectively. Older versions were previously certified to the UNIX 95 and UNIX 98 marks.
AIX was the first operating system to have a journaling file system, and IBM has continuously enhanced the software with features such as processor, disk and network virtualization, dynamic hardware resource allocation (including fractional processor units), and reliability engineering ported from its mainframe designs.
History
Unix started life at AT&T's Bell Labs research center in the early 1970s, running on DEC minicomputers. By 1976, the operating system was in use at various academic institutions, including Princeton, where Tom Lyon and others ported it to the S/370, to run as a guest OS under VM/370. This port would later grow out to become UTS, a mainframe Unix offering by IBM's competitor Amdahl Corporation.
IBM's own involvement in Unix can be dated to 1979, when it assisted Bell Labs in doing its own Unix port to the 370 (to be used as a build host for the 5ESS switch's software). In the process, IBM made modifications to the TSS/370 hypervisor to better support Unix.
It took until 1985 for IBM to offer its own Unix on the S/370 platform, IX/370, which was developed by Interactive Systems Corporation and intended by IBM to compete with Amdahl UTS. The operating system offered special facilities for interoperating with PC/IX, Interactive/IBM's version of Unix for IBM PC compatible hardware, and was licensed at $10,000 per sixteen concurrent users.
AIX Version 1, introduced in 1986 for the IBM RT PC workstation, was based on UNIX System V Releases 1 and 2. In developing AIX, IBM and Interactive Systems Corporation (whom IBM contracted) also incorporated source code from 4.2 and 4.3 BSD UNIX.
Among other variants, IBM later produced AIX Version 3 (also known as AIX/6000), based on System V Release 3, for their POWER-based RS/6000 platform. Since 1990, AIX has served as the primary operating system for the RS/6000 series (later renamed IBM eServer pSeries, then IBM System p, and now IBM Power Systems). AIX Version 4, introduced in 1994, added symmetric multiprocessing with the introduction of the first RS/6000 SMP servers and continued to evolve through the 1990s, culminating with AIX 4.3.3 in 1999. Version 4.1, in a slightly modified form, was also the standard operating system for the Apple Network Server systems sold by Apple Computer to complement the Macintosh line.
In the late 1990s, under Project Monterey, IBM and the Santa Cruz Operation planned to integrate AIX and UnixWare into a single 32-bit/64-bit multiplatform UNIX with particular emphasis on running on Intel IA-64 (Itanium) architecture CPUs. A beta test version of AIX 5L for IA-64 systems was released, but according to documents released in the SCO v. IBM lawsuit, less than forty licenses for the finished Monterey Unix were ever sold before the project was terminated in 2002. In 2003, the SCO Group alleged that (among other infractions) IBM had misappropriated licensed source code from UNIX System V Release 4 for incorporation into AIX; SCO subsequently withdrew IBM's license to develop and distribute AIX. IBM maintains that their license was irrevocable, and continued to sell and support the product until the litigation was adjudicated.
AIX was a component of the 2003 SCO v. IBM lawsuit, in which the SCO Group filed a lawsuit against IBM, alleging IBM contributed SCO's intellectual property to the Linux codebase. The SCO Group, who argued they were the rightful owners of the copyrights covering the Unix operating system, attempted to revoke IBM's license to sell or distribute the AIX operating system. In March 2010, a jury returned a verdict finding that Novell, not the SCO Group, owns the rights to Unix.
AIX 6 was announced in May 2007, and it ran as an open beta from June 2007 until the general availability (GA) of AIX 6.1 on November 9, 2007. Major new features in AIX 6.1 included full role-based access control, workload partitions (which enable application mobility), enhanced security (Addition of AES encryption type for NFS v3 and v4), and Live Partition Mobility on the POWER6 hardware.
AIX 7.1 was announced in April 2010, and an open beta ran until general availability of AIX 7.1 in September 2010. Several new features, including better scalability, enhanced clustering and management capabilities were added. AIX 7.1 includes a new built-in clustering capability called Cluster Aware AIX. AIX is able to organize multiple LPARs through the multipath communications channel to neighboring CPUs, enabling very high-speed communication between processors. This enables multi-terabyte memory address range and page table access to support global petabyte shared memory space for AIX POWER7 clusters so that software developers can program a cluster as if it were a single system, without using message passing (i.e. semaphore-controlled Inter-process Communication). AIX administrators can use this new capability to cluster a pool of AIX nodes. By default, AIX V7.1 pins kernel memory and includes support to allow applications to pin their kernel stack. Pinning kernel memory and the kernel stack for applications with real-time requirements can provide performance improvements by ensuring that the kernel memory and kernel stack for an application is not paged out.
AIX 7.2 was announced in October 2015, and released in December 2015. The principal feature of AIX 7.2 is the Live Kernel Update capability, which allows OS fixes to replace the entire AIX kernel with no impact to applications, by live migrating workloads to a temporary surrogate AIX OS partition while the original OS partition is patched. AIX 7.2 was also restructured to remove obsolete components. The networking component, bos.net.tcp.client was repackaged to allow additional installation flexibility. Unlike AIX 7.1, AIX 7.2 is only supported on systems based on POWER7 or later processors.
Supported hardware platforms
IBM RT PC
The original AIX (sometimes called AIX/RT) was developed for the IBM RT PC workstation by IBM in conjunction with Interactive Systems Corporation, who had previously ported UNIX System III to the IBM PC for IBM as PC/IX. According to its developers, the AIX source (for this initial version) consisted of one million lines of code. Installation media consisted of eight 1.2M floppy disks. The RT was based on the IBM ROMP microprocessor, the first commercial RISC chip. This was based on a design pioneered at IBM Research (the IBM 801) .
One of the novel aspects of the RT design was the use of a microkernel, called Virtual Resource Manager (VRM). The keyboard, mouse, display, disk drives and network were all controlled by a microkernel. One could "hotkey" from one operating system to the next using the Alt-Tab key combination. Each OS in turn would get possession of the keyboard, mouse and display. Besides AIX v2, the PICK OS also included this microkernel.
Much of the AIX v2 kernel was written in the PL/8 programming language, which proved troublesome during the migration to AIX v3. AIX v2 included full TCP/IP networking, as well as SNA and two networking file systems: NFS, licensed from Sun Microsystems, and Distributed Services (DS). DS had the distinction of being built on top of SNA, and thereby being fully compatible with DS on and on midrange systems running OS/400 through IBM i. For the graphical user interfaces, AIX v2 came with the X10R3 and later the X10R4 and X11 versions of the X Window System from MIT, together with the Athena widget set. Compilers for Fortran and C were available.
IBM PS/2 series
AIX PS/2 (also known as AIX/386) was developed by Locus Computing Corporation under contract to IBM. AIX PS/2, first released in October 1988, ran on IBM PS/2 personal computers with Intel 386 and compatible processors.
The product was announced in September 1988 with a baseline tag price of $595, although some utilities like uucp were included in a separate Extension package priced at $250. nroff and troff for AIX were also sold separately in a Text Formatting System package priced at $200. The TCP/IP stack for AIX PS/2 retailed for another $300. The X Window package was priced at $195, and featured a graphical environment called the AIXwindows Desktop, based on IXI's X.desktop. The C and FORTRAN compilers each had a price tag of $275. Locus also made available their DOS Merge virtual machine environment for AIX, which could run MS DOS 3.3 applications inside AIX; DOS Merge was sold separately for another $250. IBM also offered a $150 AIX PS/2 DOS Server Program, which provided file server and print server services for client computers running PC DOS 3.3.
The last version of PS/2 AIX is 1.3. It was released in 1992 and announced to add support for non-IBM (non-microchannel) computers as well. Support for PS/2 AIX ended in March 1995.
IBM mainframes
In 1988, IBM announced AIX/370, also developed by Locus Computing. AIX/370 was IBM's fourth attempt to offer Unix-like functionality for their mainframe line, specifically the System/370 (the prior versions were a TSS/370-based Unix system developed jointly with AT&T c.1980, a VM/370-based system named VM/IX developed jointly with Interactive Systems Corporation c.1984, and a VM/370-based version of TSS/370 named IX/370 which was upgraded to be compatible with Unix System V). AIX/370 was released in 1990 with functional equivalence to System V Release 2 and 4.3BSD as well as IBM enhancements. With the introduction of the ESA/390 architecture, AIX/370 was replaced by AIX/ESA in 1991, which was based on OSF/1, and also ran on the System/390 platform. This development effort was made partly to allow IBM to compete with Amdahl UTS. Unlike AIX/370, AIX/ESA ran both natively as the host operating system, and as a guest under VM. AIX/ESA, while technically advanced, had little commercial success, partially because UNIX functionality was added as an option to the existing mainframe operating system, MVS, as MVS/ESA SP Version 4 Release 3 OpenEdition in 1994, and continued as an integral part of MVS/ESA SP Version 5, OS/390 and z/OS, with the name eventually changing from OpenEdition to Unix System Services. IBM also provided OpenEdition in VM/ESA Version 2 through z/VM.
IA-64 systems
As part of Project Monterey, IBM released a beta test version of AIX 5L for the IA-64 (Itanium) architecture in 2001, but this never became an official product due to lack of interest.
Apple Network Servers
The Apple Network Server (ANS) systems were PowerPC-based systems designed by Apple Computer to have numerous high-end features that standard Apple hardware did not have, including swappable hard drives, redundant power supplies, and external monitoring capability. These systems were more or less based on the Power Macintosh hardware available at the time but were designed to use AIX (versions 4.1.4 or 4.1.5) as their native operating system in a specialized version specific to the ANS called AIX for Apple Network Servers.
AIX was only compatible with the Network Servers and was not ported to standard Power Macintosh hardware. It should not be confused with A/UX, Apple's earlier version of Unix for 68k-based Macintoshes.
POWER ISA/PowerPC/Power ISA-based systems
The release of AIX version 3 (sometimes called AIX/6000) coincided with the announcement of the first POWER1-based IBM RS/6000 models in 1990.
AIX v3 innovated in several ways on the software side. It was the first operating system to introduce the idea of a journaling file system, JFS, which allowed for fast boot times by avoiding the need to ensure the consistency of the file systems on disks (see fsck) on every reboot. Another innovation was shared libraries which avoid the need for static linking from an application to the libraries it used. The resulting smaller binaries used less of the hardware RAM to run, and used less disk space to install. Besides improving performance, it was a boon to developers: executable binaries could be in the tens of kilobytes instead of a megabyte for an executable statically linked to the C library. AIX v3 also scrapped the microkernel of AIX v2, a contentious move that resulted in v3 containing no PL/8 code and being somewhat more "pure" than v2.
Other notable subsystems included:
IRIS GL, a 3D rendering library, the progenitor of OpenGL. IRIS GL was licensed by IBM from SGI in 1987, then still a fairly small company, which had sold only a few thousand machines at the time. SGI also provided the low-end graphics card for the RS/6000, capable of drawing 20,000 gouraud-shaded triangles per second. The high-end graphics card was designed by IBM, a follow-on to the mainframe-attached IBM 5080, capable of rendering 990,000 vectors per second.
PHIGS, another 3D rendering API, popular in automotive CAD/CAM circles, and at the core of CATIA.
Full implementation of version 11 of the X Window System, together with Motif as the recommended widget collection and window manager.
Network file systems: NFS from Sun; AFS, the Andrew File System; and DFS, the Distributed File System.
NCS, the Network Computing System, licensed from Apollo Computer (later acquired by HP).
DPS on-screen display system. This was notable as a "plan B" in case the X11+Motif combination failed in the marketplace. However, it was highly proprietary, supported only by Sun, NeXT, and IBM. This cemented its failure in the marketplace in the face of the open systems challenge of X11+Motif and its lack of 3D capability.
, AIX runs on IBM Power, System p, System i, System p5, System i5, eServer p5, eServer pSeries and eServer i5 server product lines, as well as IBM BladeCenter blades and IBM PureFlex compute nodes. In addition, AIX applications can run in the PASE subsystem under IBM i.
POWER7 AIX features
AIX 7.1 fully exploits systems based on POWER7 processors include the Active Memory Expansion (AME) feature, which increases system flexibility where system administrators can configure logical partitions (LPARs) to use less physical memory. For example, an LPAR running AIX appears to the OS applications to be configured with 80 GB of physical memory but the hardware actually only consumes 60 GB of physical memory. Active Memory Expansion is a virtual memory compression system which employs memory compression technology to transparently compress in-memory data, allowing more data to be placed into memory and thus expanding the memory capacity of POWER7 systems. Using Active Memory Expansion can improve system use and increase a system's throughput. AIX 7 automatically manages the size of memory pages used to automatically use 4 KB, 64 KB or a combination of those page sizes. This self-tuning feature results in optimized performance without administrative effort.
POWER8 AIX features
AIX 7.2 exploits POWER8 hardware features including accelerators and eight-way hardware multithreading.
POWER9 AIX features
AIX 7.2 exploits POWER9 secure boot technology.
Versions
Version history
POWER/PowerPC releases
AIX V7.3, December 10, 2021
AIX V7.2, October 5, 2015
Live update for Interim Fixes, Service Packs and Technology Levels replaces the entire AIX kernel without impacting applications
Flash based filesystem caching
Cluster Aware AIX automation with repository replacement mechanism
SRIOV-backed VNIC, or dedicated VNIC virtualized network adapter support
RDSv3 over RoCE adds support of the Oracle RDSv3 protocol over the Mellanox Connect RoCE adapters
Requires POWER7 or newer CPUs
AIX V7.1, September 10, 2010
Support for 256 cores / 1024 threads in a single LPAR
The ability to run AIX V5.2 or V5.3 inside of a Workload Partition
An XML profile based system configuration management utility
Support for export of Fibre Channel adapters to WPARs
VIOS disk support in a WPAR
Cluster Aware AIX
AIX Event infrastructure
Role-based access control (RBAC) with domain support for multi-tenant environments
AIX V6.1, November 9, 2007
Workload Partitions (WPARs) operating system-level virtualization
Live Application Mobility
Live Partition Mobility
Security
Role Based Access Control RBAC
AIX Security Expert a system and network security hardening tool
Encrypting JFS2 filesystem
Trusted AIX
Trusted Execution
Integrated Electronic Service Agent for auto error reporting
Concurrent Kernel Maintenance
Kernel exploitation of POWER6 storage keys
ProbeVue dynamic tracing
Systems Director Console for AIX
Integrated filesystem snapshot
Requires POWER4 or newer CPUs
AIX 6 withdrawn from Marketing effective April 2016 and from Support effective April 2017
AIX 5L 5.3, August 13, 2004, end of support April 30, 2012
NFS Version 4
Advanced Accounting
Virtual SCSI
Virtual Ethernet
Exploitation of Simultaneous multithreading (SMT)
Micro-Partitioning enablement
POWER5 exploitation
JFS2 quotas
Ability to shrink a JFS2 filesystem
Kernel scheduler has been enhanced to dynamically increase and decrease the use of virtual processors.
AIX 5L 5.2, October 18, 2002, end of support April 30, 2009
Ability to run on the IBM BladeCenter JS20 with the PowerPC 970
Minimum level required for POWER5 hardware
MPIO for Fibre Channel disks
iSCSI Initiator software
Participation in Dynamic LPAR
Concurrent I/O (CIO) feature introduced for JFS2 released in Maintenance Level 01 in May 2003
AIX 5L 5.1, May 4, 2001, end of support April 1, 2006
Ability to run on an IA-64 architecture processor, although this never went beyond beta.
Minimum level required for POWER4 hardware and the last release that worked on the Micro Channel architecture
64-bit kernel, installed but not activated by default
JFS2
Ability to run in a Logical Partition on POWER4
The L stands for Linux affinity
Trusted Computing Base (TCB)
Support for mirroring with striping
AIX 4.3.3, September 17, 1999
Online backup function
Workload Manager (WLM)
Introduction of topas utility
AIX 4.3.2, October 23, 1998
AIX 4.3.1, April 24, 1998
First TCSEC security evaluation, completed December 18, 1998
AIX 4.3, October 31, 1997
Ability to run on 64-bit architecture CPUs
IPv6
Web-based System Manager
AIX 4.2.1, April 25, 1997
NFS Version 3
Y2K-compliant
AIX 4.2, May 17, 1996
AIX 4.1.5, November 8, 1996
AIX 4.1.4, October 20, 1995
AIX 4.1.3, July 7, 1995
CDE 1.0 became the default GUI environment, replacing the AIXwindows Desktop.
AIX 4.1.1, October 28, 1994
AIX 4.1, August 12, 1994
AIX Ultimedia Services introduced (multimedia drivers and applications)
AIX 4.0, 1994
Run on RS/6000 systems with PowerPC processors and PCI busses.
AIX 3.2 1992
AIX 3.1, (General Availability) February 1990
Journaled File System (JFS) filesystem type
AIXwindows Desktop (based on X.desktop from IXI Limited)
AIX 3.0 1989 (Early Access)
LVM (Logical Volume Manager) was incorporated into OSF/1, and in 1995 for HP-UX, and the Linux LVM implementation is similar to the HP-UX LVM implementation.
SMIT was introduced.
IBM System/370 releases
AIX/370 Version 1 Release 1
Announced March 15, 1988
Available February 16, 1989
AIX/370 Version 1 Release 2.1
Announced February 5, 1991
Available February February 22, 1991
Withdrawn December 31, 1992
AIX/ESA Version 2 Release 1
Announced March 31, 1992
Available June 26, 1992
Withdrawn Jun 19, 1993
AIX/ESA Version 2 Release 2
Announced December 15, 1992
Available February 26, 1993
Withdrawn Jun 19, 1993
IBM PS/2 releases
AIX PS/2 v1.3, October 1992
Withdrawn from sale in US, March 1995
Patches supporting IBM ThinkPad 750C family of notebook computers, 1994
Patches supporting non PS/2 hardware and systems, 1993
AIX PS/2 v1.2.1, May 1991
AIX PS/2 v1.2, March 1990
AIX PS/2 v1.1, March 1989
AIX PS/2 (1–16 User Option) $795
AIX PS/2 (1–2 User Option) 595
AIX PS/2 Extensions 275
AIX PS/2 DOS Merge 275
AIX PS/2 Usability Services 275
AIX PS/2 Text Formatting System 220
AIX PS/2 X-Windows 214
AIX PS/2 VS FORTRAN 302
AIX PS/2 VS Pascal 302
AIX PS/2 C Language 302
AIX PS/2 Application
Development Toolkit 192
AIX PS/2 Workstation
Host Interface Program 441
AIX PS/2 Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) 330
AIX PS/2 INmail (1)/INed (2)/INnet (1)/FTP 275
AIX Access for DOS Users 164
X-Windows for IBM DOS 214
IBM RT releases
AIX RT v2.2.1, March 1991
AIX RT v2.2, March 1990
AIX RT v2.1, March 1989
X-Windows included on installation media
AIX RT v1.1, 1986
User interfaces
The default shell was Bourne shell up to AIX version 3, but was changed to KornShell (ksh88) in version 4 for XPG4 and POSIX compliance.
Graphical
The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) is AIX's default graphical user interface. As part of Linux Affinity and the free AIX Toolbox for Linux Applications (ATLA), open-source KDE Plasma Workspaces and GNOME desktop are also available.
System Management Interface Tool
SMIT is the System Management Interface Tool for AIX. It allows a user to navigate a menu hierarchy of commands, rather than using the command line. Invocation is typically achieved with the command smit. Experienced system administrators make use of the F6 function key which generates the command line that SMIT will invoke to complete it.
SMIT also generates a log of commands that are performed in the smit.script file. The smit.script file automatically records the commands with the command flags and parameters used. The smit.script file can be used as an executable shell script to rerun system configuration tasks. SMIT also creates the smit.log file, which contains additional detailed information that can be used by programmers in extending the SMIT system.
smit and smitty refer to the same program, though smitty invokes the text-based version, while smit will invoke an X Window System based interface if possible; however, if smit determines that X Window System capabilities are not present, it will present the text-based version instead of failing. Determination of X Window System capabilities is typically performed by checking for the existence of the DISPLAY variable.
Database
Object Data Manager (ODM) is a database of system information integrated into AIX, analogous to the registry in Microsoft Windows. A good understanding of the ODM is essential for managing AIX systems.
Data managed in ODM is stored and maintained as objects with associated attributes. Interaction with ODM is possible via application programming interface (API) library for programs, and command-line utilities such us odmshow, odmget, odmadd, odmchange and odmdelete for shell scripts and users. SMIT and its associated AIX commands can also be used to query and modify information in the ODM.
Example of information stored in the ODM database are:
Network configuration
Logical volume management configuration
Installed software information
Information for logical devices or software drivers
List of all AIX supported devices
Physical hardware devices installed and their configuration
Menus, screens and commands that SMIT uses
See also
AOS, IBM's educational-market port of 4.3BSD
IBM PowerHA SystemMirror (formerly HACMP)
List of Unix systems
nmon
Operating systems timeline
Service Update Management Assistant
Vital Product Data (VPD)
References
External links
IBM AIX
IBM operating systems
Power ISA operating systems
PowerPC operating systems
IBM Aix
Object-oriented database management systems
1986 software |
2115 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleTalk | AppleTalk | AppleTalk is a discontinued proprietary suite of networking protocols developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh computers. AppleTalk includes a number of features that allow local area networks to be connected with no prior setup or the need for a centralized router or server of any sort. Connected AppleTalk-equipped systems automatically assign addresses, update the distributed namespace, and configure any required inter-networking routing.
AppleTalk was released in 1985, and was the primary protocol used by Apple devices through the 1980s and 1990s. Versions were also released for the IBM PC and compatibles and the Apple IIGS. AppleTalk support was also available in most networked printers (especially laser printers), some file servers, and a number of routers.
The rise of TCP/IP during the 1990s led to a reimplementation of most of these types of support on that protocol, and AppleTalk became unsupported as of the release of Mac OS X v10.6 in 2009. Many of AppleTalk's more advanced autoconfiguration features have since been introduced in Bonjour, while Universal Plug and Play serves similar needs.
History
AppleNet
After the release of the Apple Lisa computer in January 1983, Apple invested considerable effort in the development of a local area networking (LAN) system for the machines. Known as AppleNet, it was based on the seminal Xerox XNS protocol stack but running on a custom 1 Mbit/s coaxial cable system rather than Xerox's 2.94 Mbit/s Ethernet. AppleNet was announced early in 1983 with a full introduction at the target price of $500 for plug-in AppleNet cards for the Lisa and the Apple II.
At that time, early LAN systems were just coming to market, including Ethernet, Token Ring, Econet and ARCNET. This was a topic of major commercial effort at the time, dominating shows like the National Computer Conference (NCC) in Anaheim in May 1983. All of the systems were jockeying for position in the market, but even at this time Ethernet's widespread acceptance suggested it was to become a de facto standard. It was at this show that Steve Jobs asked Gursharan Sidhu a seemingly innocuous question: "Why has networking not caught on?"
Four months later, in October, AppleNet was cancelled. At the time, they announced that "Apple realized that it's not in the business to create a networking system. We built and used AppleNet in-house, but we realized that if we had shipped it, we would have seen new standards coming up." In January, Jobs announced that they would instead be supporting IBM's Token Ring, which he expected to come out in a "few months".
AppleBus
Through this period, Apple was deep in development of the Macintosh computer. During development, engineers had made the decision to use the Zilog 8530 serial controller chip (SCC) instead of the lower-cost and more common UART to provide serial port connections. The SCC cost about $5 more than a UART, but offered much higher speeds of up to 250 kilobits per second (or higher with additional hardware) and internally supported a number of basic networking-like protocols like IBM's Bisync.
The SCC was chosen because it would allow multiple devices to be attached to the port. Peripherals equipped with similar SCCs could communicate using the built-in protocols, interleaving their data with other peripherals on the same bus. This would eliminate the need for more ports on the back of the machine, and allowed for the elimination of expansion slots for supporting more complex devices. The initial concept was known as AppleBus, envisioning a system controlled by the host Macintosh polling "dumb" devices in a fashion similar to the modern Universal Serial Bus.
AppleBus networking
The Macintosh team had already begun work on what would become the LaserWriter, and had considered a number of other options to answer the question of how to share these expensive machines and other resources. A series of memos from Bob Belleville clarified these concepts, outlining the Mac, LaserWriter and a file server system which would become the Macintosh Office. By late 1983 it was clear that IBM's Token Ring would not be ready in time for the launch of the Mac, and might miss the launch of these other products as well. In the end, Token Ring would not ship until October 1985.
Jobs' earlier question to Sidhu had already sparked a number of ideas. When AppleNet was cancelled in October, Sidhu led an effort to develop a new networking system based on the AppleBus hardware. This new system would not have to conform to any existing preconceptions, and was designed to be worthy of the Mac – a system that was user-installable, had zero-configuration, and no fixed network addresses – in short, a true plug-and-play network. Considerable effort was needed, but by the time the Mac was released, the basic concepts had been outlined, and some of the low-level protocols were on their way to completion. Sidhu mentioned the work to Belleville only two hours after the Mac was announced.
The "new" AppleBus was announced in early 1984, allowing direct connection from the Mac or Lisa through a small box that plugged into the serial port and connected via cables to the next computer upstream and downstream. Adaptors for Apple II and Apple III were also announced. Apple also announced that AppleBus networks could be attached to, and would appear to be a single node within, a Token Ring system. Details of how this would work were sketchy.
AppleTalk Personal Network
Just prior to its release in early 1985, AppleBus was renamed AppleTalk. Initially marketed as AppleTalk Personal Network, it comprised a family of network protocols and a physical layer.
The physical layer had a number of limitations, including a speed of only 230.4 kbit/s, a maximum distance of from end to end, and only 32 nodes per LAN. But as the basic hardware was built into the Mac, adding nodes only cost about $50 for the adaptor box. In comparison, Ethernet or Token Ring cards cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. Additionally, the entire networking stack required only about 6 kB of RAM, allowing it to run on any Mac.
The relatively slow speed of AppleTalk allowed further reductions in cost. Instead of using RS-422's balanced transmit and receive circuits, the AppleTalk cabling used a single common electrical ground, which limited speeds to about 500 kbit/s, but allowed one conductor to be removed. This meant that common three-conductor cables could be used for wiring. Additionally, the adaptors were designed to be "self-terminating", meaning that nodes at the end of the network could simply leave their last connector unconnected. There was no need for the wires to be connected back together into a loop, nor the need for hubs or other devices.
The system was designed for future expansion; the addressing system allowed for expansion to 255 nodes in a LAN (although only 32 could be used at that time), and by using "bridges" (which came to be known as "routers", although technically not the same) one could interconnect LANs into larger collections. "Zones" allowed devices to be addressed within a bridge-connected internet. Additionally, AppleTalk was designed from the start to allow use with any potential underlying physical link, and within a few years, the physical layer would be renamed LocalTalk, so as to differentiate it from the AppleTalk protocols.
The main advantage of AppleTalk was that it was completely maintenance-free. To join a device to a network, a user simply plugged the adaptor into the machine, then connected a cable from it to any free port on any other adaptor. The AppleTalk network stack negotiated a network address, assigned the computer a human-readable name, and compiled a list of the names and types of other machines on the network so the user could browse the devices through the Chooser. AppleTalk was so easy to use that ad hoc networks tended to appear whenever multiple Macs were in the same room. Apple would later use this in an advertisement showing a network being created between two seats in an airplane.
PhoneNet and other adaptors
A thriving 3rd party market for AppleTalk devices developed over the next few years. One particularly notable example was an alternate adaptor designed by BMUG and commercialized by Farallon as PhoneNet in 1987. This was essentially a replacement for Apple's connector that had conventional phone jacks instead of Apple's round connectors. PhoneNet allowed AppleTalk networks to be connected together using normal telephone wires, and with very little extra work, could run analog phones and AppleTalk on a single four-conductor phone cable.
Other companies took advantage of the SCC's ability to read external clocks in order to support higher transmission speeds, up to 1 Mbit/s. In these systems the external adaptor also included its own clock, and used that to signal the SCC's clock input pins. The best known such system was Centram's FlashTalk, which ran at 768 kbit/s, and was intended to be used with their TOPS networking system. A similar solution was the 850 kbit/s DaynaTalk, which used a separate box that plugged in between the computer and a normal LocalTalk/PhoneNet box. Dayna also offered a PC expansion card that ran up to 1.7 Mbit/s when talking to other Dayna PC cards. Several other systems also existed with even higher performance, but these often required special cabling that was incompatible with LocalTalk/PhoneNet, and also required patches to the networking stack that often caused problems.
AppleTalk over Ethernet
As Apple expanded into more commercial and education markets, they needed to integrate AppleTalk into existing network installations. Many of these organizations had already invested in a very expensive Ethernet infrastructure and there was no direct way to connect a Macintosh to Ethernet. AppleTalk included a protocol structure for inter-connecting AppleTalk subnets and so as a solution, EtherTalk was initially created to use the Ethernet as a backbone between LocalTalk subnets. To accomplish this, organizations would need to purchase a LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridge and Apple left it to third parties to produce these products. A number of companies responded, including Hayes and a few newly formed companies like Kinetics.
LocalTalk, EtherTalk, TokenTalk and AppleShare
By 1987, Ethernet was clearly winning the standards battle over Token Ring, and in the middle of that year Apple introduced EtherTalk 1.0, an implementation of the AppleTalk protocol over the Ethernet physical layer. Introduced for the newly released Macintosh II computer, Apple's first Macintosh with expansion slots, the operating system included a new Network control panel that allowed the user to select which physical connection to use for networking (from "Built-in" or "EtherTalk"). At introduction, Ethernet interface cards were available from 3Com and Kinetics that plugged into a Nubus slot in the machine. The new networking stack also expanded the system to allow a full 255 nodes per LAN. With EtherTalk's release, AppleTalk Personal Network was renamed LocalTalk, the name it would be known under for the bulk of its life. Token Ring would later be supported with the similar TokenTalk product, which used the same Network control panel and underlying software. Over time, many third-party companies would introduce compatible Ethernet and Token Ring cards that used these same drivers.
The appearance of a Macintosh with a direct Ethernet connection also magnified the Ethernet and LocalTalk compatibility problem: Networks with new and old Macs needed some way to communicate with each other. This could be as simple as a network of Ethernet Mac II's trying to talk to a LaserWriter that only connected to LocalTalk. Apple initially relied on the aforementioned LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridge products, but contrary to Apple's belief that these would be low-volume products, by the end of 1987, 130,000 such networks were in use. AppleTalk was at that time the most used networking system in the world, with over three times the installations of any other vendor.
1987 also marked the introduction of the AppleShare product, a dedicated file server that ran on any Mac with 512 kB of RAM or more. A common AppleShare machine was the Mac Plus with an external SCSI hard drive. AppleShare was the #3 network operating system in the late 1980s, behind Novell NetWare and Microsoft's MS-Net. AppleShare was effectively the replacement for the failed Macintosh Office efforts, which had been based on a dedicated file server device.
AppleTalk Phase II and other developments
A significant re-design was released in 1989 as AppleTalk Phase II. In many ways, Phase II can be considered an effort to make the earlier version (never called Phase I) more generic. LANs could now support more than 255 nodes, and zones were no longer associated with physical networks, but were entirely virtual constructs used simply to organize nodes. For instance, one could now make a "Printers" zone that would list all the printers in an organization, or one might want to place that same device in the "2nd Floor" zone to indicate its physical location. Phase II also included changes to the underlying inter-networking protocols to make them less "chatty", which had previously been a serious problem on networks that bridged over wide-area networks.
By this point Apple had a wide variety of communications products under development, and many of these were announced along with AppleTalk Phase II. These included updates to EtherTalk and TokenTalk, AppleTalk software and LocalTalk hardware for the IBM PC, EtherTalk for Apple's A/UX operating system allowing it to use LaserPrinters and other network resources, and the Mac X.25 and MacX products.
Ethernet had become almost universal by 1990, and it was time to build Ethernet into Macs direct from the factory. However, the physical wiring used by these networks was not yet completely standardized. Apple solved this problem using a single port on the back of the computer into which the user could plug an adaptor for any given cabling system. This FriendlyNet system was based on the industry-standard Attachment Unit Interface or AUI, but deliberately chose a non-standard connector that was smaller and easier to use, which they called "Apple AUI", or AAUI. FriendlyNet was first introduced on the Quadra 700 and Quadra 900 computers, and used across much of the Mac line for some time. As with LocalTalk, a number of 3rd party FriendlyNet adaptors quickly appeared.
As 10BASE-T became the de facto cabling system for Ethernet, second-generation Power Macintosh machines added a 10BASE-T port in addition to AAUI. The PowerBook 3400c and lower-end Power Macs also added 10BASE-T. The Power Macintosh 7300/8600/9600 were the final Macs to include AAUI, and 10BASE-T became universal starting with the Power Macintosh G3 and PowerBook G3.
The capital-I Internet
From the beginning of AppleTalk, users wanted to connect the Macintosh to the TCP/IP network environments. In 1984, Bill Croft at Stanford University pioneered the development of IP packets encapsulated in DDP as part of the SEAGATE (Stanford Ethernet - AppleTalk Gateway) project. SEAGATE was commercialized by Kinetics in their LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridge as an additional routing option. A few years later, MacIP, was separated from the SEAGATE code and became the de facto method for IP packets to be routed over LocalTalk networks. By 1986, Columbia University released the first version of the Columbia AppleTalk Package (CAP) that allowed higher integration of Unix, TCP/IP and AppleTalk environments. In 1988, Apple released MacTCP, a system that allowed the Mac to support TCP/IP on machines with suitable Ethernet hardware. However, this left many universities with the problem of supporting IP on their many LocalTalk-equipped Macs. It was soon common to include MacIP support in LocalTalk-to-Ethernet bridges. MacTCP would not become a standard part of the Classic Mac OS until 1994, by which time it also supported SNMP and PPP.
For some time in the early 1990s, the Mac was a primary client on the rapidly expanding Internet. Among the better known programs in wide use were Fetch, Eudora, eXodus, NewsWatcher and the NCSA packages, especially NCSA Mosaic and its offspring, Netscape Navigator. Additionally, a number of server products appeared that allowed the Mac to host Internet content. Through this period, Macs had about 2 to 3 times as many clients connected to the Internet as any other platform, despite the relatively small overall microcomputer market share.
As the world quickly moved to IP for both LAN and WAN uses, Apple was faced with maintaining two increasingly outdated code bases on an ever-wider group of machines as well as the introduction of the PowerPC based machines. This led to the Open Transport efforts, which re-implemented both MacTCP and AppleTalk on an entirely new code base adapted from the Unix standard STREAMS. Early versions had problems and did not become stable for some time. By that point, Apple was deep in their ultimately doomed Copland efforts.
Legacy and abandonment
With the purchase of NeXT and subsequent development of Mac OS X, AppleTalk was strictly a legacy system. Support was added to OS X in order to provide support for the large number of existing AppleTalk devices, notably laser printers and file shares, but alternate connection solutions common in this era, notably USB for printers, limited their demand. As Apple abandoned many of these product categories, and all new systems were based on IP, AppleTalk became less and less common. AppleTalk support was finally removed from the MacOS in Mac OS X v10.6 in 2009.
However, the loss of AppleTalk did not reduce the desire for networking solutions that combined its ease-of-use with IP routing. Apple has led development of many such efforts, from the introduction of the AirPort router to the development of the Zero-configuration networking system and their implementation of it, Bonjour.
As of 2020, AppleTalk support has been completely removed from legacy support with macOS 11 Big Sur.
Design
The AppleTalk design rigorously followed the OSI model of protocol layering. Unlike most of the early LAN systems, AppleTalk was not built using the archetypal Xerox XNS system. The intended target was not Ethernet, and it did not have 48-bit addresses to route. Nevertheless, many portions of the AppleTalk system have direct analogs in XNS.
One key differentiation for AppleTalk was it contained two protocols aimed at making the system completely self-configuring. The AppleTalk address resolution protocol (AARP) allowed AppleTalk hosts to automatically generate their own network addresses, and the Name Binding Protocol (NBP) was a dynamic system for mapping network addresses to user-readable names. Although systems similar to AARP existed in other systems, Banyan VINES for instance, nothing like NBP has existed until recently.
Both AARP and NBP had defined ways to allow "controller" devices to override the default mechanisms. The concept was to allow routers to provide the information or "hardwire" the system to known addresses and names. On larger networks where AARP could cause problems as new nodes searched for free addresses, the addition of a router could reduce "chattiness." Together AARP and NBP made AppleTalk an easy-to-use networking system. New machines were added to the network by plugging them and optionally giving them a name. The NBP lists were examined and displayed by a program known as the Chooser which would display a list of machines on the local network, divided into classes such as file-servers and printers.
Addressing
An AppleTalk address was a four-byte quantity. This consisted of a two-byte network number, a one-byte node number, and a one-byte socket number. Of these, only the network number required any configuration, being obtained from a router. Each node dynamically chose its own node number, according to a protocol (originally the LocalTalk Link Access Protocol LLAP and later, for Ethernet/EtherTalk, the AppleTalk Address Resolution Protocol, AARP) which handled contention between different nodes accidentally choosing the same number. For socket numbers, a few well-known numbers were reserved for special purposes specific to the AppleTalk protocol itself. Apart from these, all application-level protocols were expected to use dynamically-assigned socket numbers at both the client and server end.
Because of this dynamism, users could not be expected to access services by specifying their address. Instead, all services had names which, being chosen by humans, could be expected to be meaningful to users, and also could be sufficiently long to minimize the chance of conflicts.
As NBP names translated to an address, which included a socket number as well as a node number, a name in AppleTalk mapped directly to a service being provided by a machine, which was entirely separate from the name of the machine itself. Thus, services could be moved to a different machine and, so long as they kept the same service name, there was no need for users to do anything different in order to continue accessing the service. And the same machine could host any number of instances of services of the same type, without any network connection conflicts.
Contrast this with A records in the DNS, in which a name translates to a machine's address, not including the port number that might be providing a service. Thus, if people are accustomed to using a particular machine name to access a particular service, their access will break when the service is moved to a different machine. This can be mitigated somewhat by insistence on using CNAME records indicating service rather than actual machine names to refer to the service, but there is no way of guaranteeing that users will follow such a convention. Some newer protocols, such as Kerberos and Active Directory use DNS SRV records to identify services by name, which is much closer to the AppleTalk model.
Protocols
AppleTalk Address Resolution Protocol
AARP resolves AppleTalk addresses to link layer, usually MAC, addresses. It is functionally equivalent to ARP and obtains address resolution by a method very similar to ARP.
AARP is a fairly simple system. When powered on, an AppleTalk machine broadcasts an AARP probe packet asking for a network address, intending to hear back from controllers such as routers. If no address is provided, one is picked at random from the "base subnet", 0. It then broadcasts another packet saying "I am selecting this address", and then waits to see if anyone else on the network complains. If another machine has that address, it will pick another address, and keep trying until it finds a free one. On a network with many machines it may take several tries before a free address is found, so for performance purposes the successful address is "written down" in NVRAM and used as the default address in the future. This means that in most real-world setups where machines are added a few at a time, only one or two tries are needed before the address effectively become constant.
AppleTalk Data Stream Protocol
This was a comparatively late addition to the AppleTalk protocol suite, done when it became clear that a TCP-style reliable connection-oriented transport was needed. Significant differences from TCP were that:
a connection attempt could be rejected
there were no "half-open" connections; once one end initiated a tear-down of the connection, the whole connection would be closed (i.e., ADSP is full-duplex, not dual simplex).
AppleTalk had an included attention message system which allowed short messages to be sent which would bypass the normal stream data flow. These were delivered reliably but out of order with respect to the stream. Any attention message would be delivered as soon as possible instead of waiting for the current stream byte sequence point to become current.
Apple Filing Protocol
The Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), formerly AppleTalk Filing Protocol, is the protocol for communicating with AppleShare file servers. Built on top of AppleTalk Session Protocol (for legacy AFP over DDP) or the Data Stream Interface (for AFP over TCP), it provides services for authenticating users (extensible to different authentication methods including two-way random-number exchange) and for performing operations specific to the Macintosh HFS filesystem. AFP is still in use in macOS, even though most other AppleTalk protocols have been deprecated.
AppleTalk Session Protocol
ASP was an intermediate protocol, built on top of ATP, which in turn was the foundation of AFP. It provided basic services for requesting responses to arbitrary commands d performing out-of-band status queries. It also allowed the server to send asynchronous attention messages to the client.
Datagram Delivery Protocol
DDP was the lowest-level data-link-independent transport protocol. It provided a datagram service with no guarantees of delivery. All application-level protocols, including the infrastructure protocols NBP, RTMP and ZIP, were built on top of DDP. AppleTalk's DDP corresponds closely to the Network layer of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) communication model.
Name Binding Protocol
Name Binding Protocol was a dynamic, distributed system for managing AppleTalk names. When a service started up on a machine, it registered a name for itself as chosen by a human administrator. At this point, NBP provided a system for checking that no other machine had already registered the same name. Later, when a client wanted to access that service, it used NBP to query machines to find that service. NBP provided browsability ("what are the names of all the services available?") as well as the ability to find a service with a particular name. Names were human readable, containing spaces, upper and lower case letters, and including support for searching.
AppleTalk Echo Protocol
AEP (AppleTalk Echo Protocol) is a transport layer protocol designed to test the reachability of network nodes. AEP generates packets to be sent to the network node and is identified in the Type field of a packet as an AEP packet. The packet is first passed to the source DDP. After it is identified as an AEP packet, it is forwarded to the node where the packet is examined by the DDP at the destination. After the packet is identified as an AEP packet, the packet is then copied and a field in the packet is altered to create an AEP reply packet, and is then returned to the source node.
Printer Access Protocol
PAP was the standard way of communicating with PostScript printers. It was built on top of ATP. When a PAP connection was opened, each end sent the other an ATP request which basically meant "send me more data". The client's response to the server was to send a block of PostScript code, while the server could respond with any diagnostic messages that might be generated as a result, after which another "send-more-data" request was sent. This use of ATP provided automatic flow control; each end could only send data to the other end if there was an outstanding ATP request to respond to.
PAP also provided for out-of-band status queries, handled by separate ATP transactions. Even while it was busy servicing a print job from one client, a PAP server could continue to respond to status requests from any number of other clients. This allowed other Macintoshes on the LAN that were waiting to print to display status messages indicating that the printer was busy, and what the job was that it was busy with.
Routing Table Maintenance Protocol
RTMP was the protocol by which routers kept each other informed about the topology of the network. This was the only part of AppleTalk that required periodic unsolicited broadcasts: every 10 seconds, each router had to send out a list of all the network numbers it knew about and how far away it thought they were.
Zone Information Protocol
ZIP was the protocol by which AppleTalk network numbers were associated with zone names. A zone was a subdivision of the network that made sense to humans (for example, "Accounting Department"); but while a network number had to be assigned to a topologically-contiguous section of the network, a zone could include several different discontiguous portions of the network.
Physical implementation
The initial default hardware implementation for AppleTalk was a high-speed serial protocol known as LocalTalk that used the Macintosh's built-in RS-422 ports at 230.4 kbit/s. LocalTalk used a splitter box in the RS-422 port to provide an upstream and downstream cable from a single port. The topology was a bus: cables were daisy-chained from each connected machine to the next, up to the maximum of 32 permitted on any LocalTalk segment. The system was slow by today's standards, but at the time the additional cost and complexity of networking on PC machines was such that it was common that Macs were the only networked personal computers in an office. Other larger computers, such as UNIX or VAX workstations, would commonly be networked via Ethernet.
Other physical implementations were also available. A very popular replacement for LocalTalk was PhoneNet, a 3rd party solution from Farallon Computing, Inc. (renamed Netopia, acquired by Motorola in 2007) that also used the RS-422 port and was indistinguishable from LocalTalk as far as Apple's LocalTalk port drivers were concerned, but ran over the two unused wires in standard four-wire phone cabling. Foreshadowing today's network hubs and switches, Farallon provided solutions for PhoneNet to be used in "star" as well as bus configurations, with both "passive" star connections (with the phone wires simply bridged to each other at a central point), and "active" star with "PhoneNet Star Controller" hub hardware. Apple's LocalTalk connectors didn't have a locking feature, so connectors could easily come loose, and the bus configuration resulted in any loose connector bringing down the whole network, and being hard to track down. PhoneNet RJ-11 connectors, on the other hand, snapped into place, and in a star configuration any wiring issue only affected one device, and problems were easy to pinpoint. PhoneNet's low cost, flexibility, and easy troubleshooting resulted in it being the dominant choice for Mac networks into the early 1990s.
AppleTalk protocols also came to run over Ethernet (first coaxial and then twisted pair) and Token Ring physical layers, labeled by Apple as EtherTalk and TokenTalk, respectively. EtherTalk gradually became the dominant implementation method for AppleTalk as Ethernet became generally popular in the PC industry throughout the 1990s. Besides AppleTalk and TCP/IP, any Ethernet network could also simultaneously carry other protocols such as DECnet and IPX.
Networking model
Versions
Cross-platform solutions
When AppleTalk was first introduced, the dominant office computing platform was the PC compatible running MS-DOS. Apple introduced the AppleTalk PC Card in early 1987, allowing PCs to join AppleTalk networks and print to LaserWriter printers. A year later AppleShare PC was released, allowing PCs to access AppleShare file servers.
The "TOPS Teleconnector" MS-DOS networking system over AppleTalk system enabled MS-DOS PCs to communicate over AppleTalk network hardware; it comprised an AppleTalk interface card for the PC and a suite of networking software allowing such functions as file, drive and printer sharing. As well as allowing the construction of a PC-only AppleTalk network, it allowed communication between PCs and Macs with TOPS software installed. (Macs without TOPS installed could use the same network but only to communicate with other Apple machines.) The Mac TOPS software did not match the quality of Apple's own either in ease of use or in robustness and freedom from crashes, but the DOS software was relatively simple to use in DOS terms, and was robust.
The BSD and Linux operating systems support AppleTalk through an open source project called Netatalk, which implements the complete protocol suite and allows them to both act as native file or print servers for Macintosh computers, and print to LocalTalk printers over the network.
The Windows Server operating systems supported AppleTalk starting with Windows NT and ending after Windows Server 2003. Miramar included AppleTalk in its PC MacLAN product which was discontinued by CA in 2007. GroupLogic continues to bundle its AppleTalk protocol with its ExtremeZ-IP server software for Macintosh-Windows integration which supports Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista as well prior versions. HELIOS Software GmbH offers a proprietary implementation of the AppleTalk protocol stack, as part of their HELIOS UB2 server. This is essentially a File and Print Server suite that runs on a whole range of different platforms.
In addition, Columbia University released the Columbia AppleTalk Package (CAP) which implemented the protocol suite for various Unix flavors including Ultrix, SunOS, *BSD and IRIX. This package is no longer actively maintained.
See also
Netatalk is a free, open-source implementation of the AppleTalk suite of protocols.
Network File System
Remote File Sharing
Samba
Server Message Block
Notes
References
Citations
Bibliography
Apple Inc. software
Network operating systems
Network protocols |
2116 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%20II%20series | Apple II series | The Apple II series (trademarked with square brackets as "Apple ][" and rendered on later models as "Apple //") is a family of home computers, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.), and launched in 1977 with the original Apple II.
In terms of ease of use, features, and expandability, the Apple II was a major advancement over its predecessor, the Apple I, a limited-production bare circuit board computer for electronics hobbyists. Through 1988, a number of models were introduced, with the most popular, the Apple IIe, remaining relatively unchanged into the 1990s.
A 16-bit model with much more advanced graphics and sound, the Apple IIGS, was added in 1986. While compatible with earlier Apple II systems, the IIGS had significantly different hardware, more in league with the Atari ST and Amiga.
The Apple II was first sold on June 10, 1977. By the end of production in 1993, somewhere between five and six million Apple II series computers (including about 1.25 million Apple IIGS models) had been produced. The Apple II was one of the longest running mass-produced home computer series, with models in production for just under 17 years.
The Apple II became one of several recognizable and successful computers during the 1980s and early 1990s, although this was mainly limited to the US. It was aggressively marketed through volume discounts and manufacturing arrangements to educational institutions, which made it the first computer in widespread use in American secondary schools, displacing the early leader Commodore PET. The effort to develop educational and business software for the Apple II, including the 1979 release of the popular VisiCalc spreadsheet, made the computer especially popular with business users and families.
Despite the introduction of the Motorola 68000-based Macintosh in 1984, the Apple II series still reportedly accounted for 85% of the company's hardware sales in the first quarter of fiscal 1985. Apple continued to sell Apple II systems alongside the Macintosh until terminating the IIGS in December 1992 and the IIe in November 1993. The last II-series Apple in production, the IIe card for Macintoshes, was discontinued on October 15, 1993. The total Apple II sales of all of its models during its 16-year production run were about 6 million units, with the peak occurring in 1983 when 1 million were sold.
Hardware
All the machines in the series, except the //c, shared similar overall design elements. The plastic case was designed to look more like a home appliance than a piece of electronic equipment, and the machine could be opened without the use of tools, allowing access to the computer's internals.
The motherboard held eight expansion slots and an array of random access memory (RAM) sockets that could hold up to 48 kilobytes. Over the course of the Apple II series' life, an enormous amount of first- and third-party hardware was made available to extend the capabilities of the machine.
The //c was designed as a compact, portable unit, not intended to be disassembled, and could not use most of the expansion hardware sold for the other machines in the series.
All machines in the Apple II series had a built-in keyboard, with the exception of the IIgs which had a separate keyboard.
Apple IIs had color and high-resolution graphics modes, sound capabilities and a built-in BASIC programming language. The Apple II was targeted for the masses rather than just hobbyists and engineers, and influenced many of the microcomputers that followed it. Unlike preceding home microcomputers, it was sold as a finished consumer appliance rather than as a kit (unassembled or preassembled). The Apple II series eventually supported over 1,500 software programs.
Apple marketed the machine as a durable product, including a 1981 ad in which an Apple II survived a fire started when a cat belonging to one early user knocked over a lamp.
Software
The original Apple II provided an operating system in ROM along with a BASIC variant called Integer BASIC. The only form of storage available was cassette tape.
When the Disk II floppy disk drive was released in 1978, a new operating system, Apple DOS, was commissioned from Shepardson Microsystems and developed by Paul Laughton, adding support for the disk drive. The final and most popular version of this software was Apple DOS 3.3.
Apple DOS was superseded by ProDOS, which supported a hierarchical filesystem and larger storage devices. With an optional third-party Z80-based expansion card, the Apple II could boot into the CP/M operating system and run WordStar, dBase II, and other CP/M software. With the release of MousePaint in 1984 and the Apple IIGS in 1986, the platform took on the look of the Macintosh user interface, including a mouse.
Apple eventually released Applesoft BASIC, a more advanced variant of the language which users could run instead of Integer BASIC for more capabilities.
Some commercial Apple II software booted directly and did not use standard DOS disk formats. This discouraged the copying or modifying of the software on the disks, and improved loading speed.
Models
Apple II
The first Apple II computers went on sale on June 10, 1977 with a MOS Technology 6502 (later Synertek) microprocessor running at 1.023 MHz, 4 KB of RAM, an audio cassette interface for loading programs and storing data, and the Integer BASIC programming language built into the ROMs. The video controller displayed 40 columns by 24 lines of monochrome, upper-case-only (the original character set matches ASCII characters 0x20 to 0x5F) text on the screen, with NTSC composite video output suitable for display on a TV monitor, or on a regular TV set by way of a separate RF modulator. The original retail price of the computer was US$1298(with 4 KB of RAM) and US$2638 (with the maximum 48 KB of RAM). To reflect the computer's color graphics capability, the Apple logo on the casing was represented using rainbow stripes, which remained a part of Apple's corporate logo until early 1998. The earliest Apple IIs were assembled in Silicon Valley, and later in Texas; printed circuit boards were manufactured in Ireland and Singapore.
An external 5-inch floppy disk drive, the Disk II, attached via a controller card that plugged into one of the computer's expansion slots (usually slot 6), was used for data storage and retrieval to replace cassettes. The Disk II interface, created by Steve Wozniak, was regarded as an engineering masterpiece for its economy of electronic components.
Rather than having a dedicated sound-synthesis chip, the Apple II had a toggle circuit that could only emit a click through a built-in speaker or a line out jack; all other sounds (including two, three and, eventually, four-voice music and playback of audio samples and speech synthesis) were generated entirely by software that clicked the speaker at just the right times.
The Apple II's multiple expansion slots permitted a wide variety of third-party devices, including Apple II peripheral cards such as serial controllers, display controllers, memory boards, hard disks, networking components, and realtime clocks. There were plug-in expansion cards – such as the Z-80 SoftCard – that permitted the Apple to use the Z80 processor and run a multitude of programs developed under the CP/M operating system, including the dBase II database and the WordStar word processor. There was also a third-party 6809 card that would allow OS-9 Level One to be run. Third-party sound cards greatly improved audio capabilities, allowing simple music synthesis and text-to-speech functions. Eventually, Apple II accelerator cards were created to double or quadruple the computer's speed.
Rod Holt designed the Apple II's power supply. He employed a switched-mode power supply design, which was far smaller and generated less unwanted heat than the linear power supply some other home computers used.
The original Apple II was discontinued at the start of 1981, having been superseded by the Apple II+. By 1984, over six million machines had been sold.
Apple II Plus
The Apple II Plus, introduced in June 1979, included the Applesoft BASIC programming language in ROM. This Microsoft-authored dialect of BASIC, which was previously available as an upgrade, supported floating-point arithmetic, and became the standard BASIC dialect on the Apple II series (though it ran at a noticeably slower speed than Steve Wozniak's Integer BASIC).
Except for improved graphics and disk-booting support in the ROM, and the removal of the 2k 6502 assembler/disassembler to make room for the floating point BASIC, the II+ was otherwise identical to the original II. RAM prices fell during 1980–81 and all II+ machines came from the factory with a full 48k of memory already installed.
Apple II Europlus and J-Plus
After the success of the first Apple II in the United States, Apple expanded its market to include Europe, Australia and the Far East in 1989, with the Apple II Europlus (Europe, Australia) and the Apple II J-Plus (Japan). In these models, Apple made the necessary hardware, software and firmware changes in order to comply to standards outside of the US.
Apple IIe
The Apple II Plus was followed in 1983 by the Apple IIe, a cost-reduced yet more powerful machine that used newer chips to reduce the component count and add new features, such as the display of upper and lowercase letters and a standard 64 KB of RAM.
The IIe RAM was configured as if it were a 48 KB Apple II Plus with a language card. The machine had no slot 0, but instead had an auxiliary slot that could accept a 1 KB memory card to enable the 80-column display. This card contained only RAM; the hardware and firmware for the 80-column display was built into the Apple IIe. An "extended 80-column card" with more memory increased the machine's RAM to 128 KB.
The Apple IIe was the most popular machine in the Apple II series. It has the distinction of being the longest-lived Apple computer of all time—it was manufactured and sold with only minor changes for nearly 11 years. The IIe was the last Apple II model to be sold, and was discontinued in November 1993.
During its lifespan two variations were introduced: the Apple IIe Enhanced (four replacement chips to give it some of the features of the later model Apple IIc) and the Apple IIe Platinum (a modernized case color to match other Apple products of the era, along with the addition of a numeric keypad).
Some of the feature of the IIe were carried over from the less successful Apple III, among them the ProDOS operating system.
Apple IIc
The Apple IIc was released in April 1984, billed as a portable Apple II because it could be easily carried due to its size and carrying handle, which could be flipped down to prop the machine up into a typing position. Unlike modern portables it lacked a built-in display and battery. It was the first of three Apple II models to be made in the Snow White design language, and the only one that used its unique creamy off-white color.
The Apple IIc was the first Apple II to use the 65C02 low-power variant of the 6502 processor, and featured a built-in 5.25-inch floppy drive and 128 KB RAM, with a built-in disk controller that could control external drives, composite video (NTSC or PAL), serial interfaces for modem and printer, and a port usable by either a joystick or mouse. Unlike previous Apple II models, the IIc had no internal expansion slots at all.
Two different monochrome LCD displays were sold for use with the IIc's video expansion port, although both were short-lived due to high cost and poor legibility. The IIc had an external power supply that converted AC power to 15 V DC, though the IIc itself will accept between 12 V and 17 V DC, allowing third parties to offer battery packs and automobile power adapters that connected in place of the supplied AC adapter.
Apple IIGS
The Apple IIGS, released on September 15, 1986, was the last model in the Apple II series, and a radical departure from the prior computers in the line. It featured a true 16-bit microprocessor, the 65C816 operating at with 24-bit addressing, allowing expansion up to 8 MB of RAM. It introduced a palette of 4096 colors and new graphics modes with resolutions of 320×200 and 640×400.
The Apple IIGS evolved and advanced the platform while still maintaining near-complete backward compatibility. Its Mega II chip contained the functional equivalent of an entire Apple IIe computer (sans processor). This, combined with the 65816's ability to execute 65C02 code directly, provided full support for legacy software, while also supporting 16-bit software running under a new OS.
The new OS eventually included a Macintosh-like graphical Finder for managing disks and files and opening documents and applications, along with desk accessories. Eventually, the IIGS gained the ability to read and write Macintosh disks and, through third-party software, even multitasking (in the form of a Unix-type shell) and TrueType font support.
The GS includes a 32-voice Ensoniq 5503 DOC sample-based sound synthesizer chip with 64 KB dedicated RAM, 256 KB (or later 1.125 MB) of standard RAM, built-in peripheral ports (switchable between IIe-style card slots and IIc-style onboard controllers for disk drives, mouse, RGB video, and serial devices) and, built-in AppleTalk networking.
Apple IIc Plus
The final Apple II model was the Apple IIc Plus introduced in 1988. It was the same size and shape as the IIc that came before it, but the 5.25-inch floppy drive had been replaced with a 3-inch drive, the power supply was moved inside the case, and the processor was a fast 65C02 processor that actually ran 8-bit Apple II software faster than the IIGS.
The IIc Plus also featured a new keyboard layout that matched the Platinum IIe and IIGS. Unlike the IIe IIc and IIGS, the IIc Plus came only in one version (American) and was not officially sold anywhere outside the US. The Apple IIc Plus ceased production in 1990, with its two-year production run being the shortest of all the Apple II computers.
Apple IIe Card
Although not an extension of the Apple II line, in 1990 the Apple IIe Card, an expansion card for the LC line of Macintosh computers, was released. Essentially a miniaturized Apple IIe computer on a card (using the Mega II chip from the Apple IIGS), it allowed the Macintosh to run 8-bit Apple IIe software through hardware emulation (although video was emulated in software and was slower at times than a IIe).
Many of the LC's built-in Macintosh peripherals could be "borrowed" by the card when in Apple II mode (i.e. extra RAM, 3.5-inch floppy, AppleTalk networking, hard disk). The IIe card could not, however, run software intended for the 16-bit Apple IIGS.
Advertising, marketing, and packaging
Mike Markkula, a retired Intel marketing manager, provided the early critical funding for Apple Computer. From 1977 to 1981, Apple used the Regis McKenna agency for its advertisements and marketing. In 1981, Chiat-Day acquired Regis McKenna's advertising operations and Apple used Chiat-Day. At Regis McKenna Advertising, the team assigned to launch the Apple II consisted of Rob Janoff, art director, Chip Schafer, copywriter and Bill Kelley, account executive. Janoff came up with the Apple logo with a bite out of it. The design was originally an olive green with matching company logotype all in lower case. Steve Jobs insisted on promoting the color capability of the Apple II by putting rainbow stripes on the Apple logo. In its letterhead and business card implementation, the rounded "a" of the logotype echoed the "bite" in the logo. This logo was developed simultaneously with an advertisement and a brochure; the latter being produced for distribution initially at the first West Coast Computer Faire.
Since the original Apple II, Apple has paid high attention to its quality of packaging, partly because of Steve Jobs' personal preferences and opinions on packaging and final product appearance. All of Apple's packaging for the Apple II series looked similar, featuring much clean white space and showing the Apple rainbow logo prominently. For several years up until the late 1980s, Apple used the Motter Tektura font for packaging, until changing to the Apple Garamond font.
Apple ran the first advertisement for the Apple II, a two-page spread ad titled "Introducing Apple II", in BYTE in July 1977. The first brochure, was entitled "Simplicity" and the copy in both the ad and brochure pioneered "demystifying" language intended to make the new idea of a home computer more "personal." The Apple II introduction ad was later run in the September 1977 issue of Scientific American.
Apple later aired eight television commercials for the Apple IIGS, emphasizing its benefits to education and students, along with some print ads.
Clones
The Apple II was frequently cloned, both in the United States and abroad, in a similar way to the IBM PC. According to some sources (see below), more than 190 different models of Apple II clones were manufactured. Most could not be legally imported into the United States. Apple sued and sought criminal charges against clone makers in more than a dozen countries.
Without explicitly stating that they were Apple II clones, many had fruit-related names. Examples were the Pineapple and ACT Apricot. Apple successfully forced the "Pineapple," for instance, to change its name to "Pinecom".
Agat was a series of Apple II compatible computers produced in the Soviet Union between 1984 and 1993, widely used in schools in the 80's. The first mass-produced models, the Agat 4 and Agat 7, had different memory layouts and video modes to Apple II, which made them only partially compatible with Apple II software.
Agats were not direct clones of Apple II, but rather uniquely designed computers based on 6502 CPU and emulated Apple II architecture. That helped developers to port Apple II software titles to Agat. A later model, the Agat 9, had an Apple II compatibility mode out of the box. Soviet engineers and enthusiasts developed thousands of software titles for Agat, including system software, business applications and educational software.
Bulgarian Pravetz Series 8 was an Apple II clone with Cyrillic support.
Basis, a German company, created the Basis 108, a clone for the Apple II that included both a 6502 processor and the Zilog Z80, allowing it to run the CP/M operating system as well as most Apple II software. This machine was unusual in that it was housed in a heavy cast aluminum chassis. The Basis 108 was equipped with built-in Centronics (parallel) and RS232c (serial) ports, as well as the standard six Apple II compatible slots. Unlike the Apple II it came with a detached full-stroke keyboard (AZERTY/QWERTY) of 100 keys plus 15 functions keys and separate numeric and editing keypads.
Another European Apple II clone was the Pearcom Pear II, which was larger as the original as it sported not eight but fourteen expansion slots. It also had a numerical keypad. Pearcom initially used a pear shaped rainbow logo, but stopped after Apple threatened to take legal action.
A Bosnian company named IRIS Computers (subsidiary of an electric company in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia ENERGOINVEST) produced Apple II clones starting in the early 1980s. Their official brand name was IRIS 8. They were very expensive and hard to obtain and were produced primarily for use in early computerized digital telephone systems and for education. Their use in offices of state companies, R&D labs and in the Yugoslav army was also reported. IRIS 8 machines looked like early IBM PCs, with a separate central unit accompanied by a cooling system and two 5.25-inch disks, monitor, and keyboard. Compatibility with the original Apple II was complete. Elite high schools in Yugoslavia and especially Bosnia and Herzegovina were equipped with clusters of 8, 16, or 32 IRIS 8 computers connected in a local network administrated by an IRIS 16 PC clone. The number of IRIS 8s produced is believed to be on the order of 10 or 20 thousand.
An Australian-produced clone of the Apple II was the Medfly, named after the Mediterranean fruit fly that attacks apples. The Medfly computer featured a faster processor, more memory, detached keyboard, lower and upper case characters, and a built-in disk controller.
Until 1992 in Brazil, it was illegal to import microcomputers. Because of that, the illegal cloning industry of Apple II-based computers was strong there. In the early 1980s, there were around 20 different clones of Apple II Plus computers in that country, all of them using illegally copied software and hardware (since the Apple II and II Plus used commonly available TTL integrated circuits). Some of the names include Elppa ("Apple" spelled backwards), Maxtro, Exato MC4000 (by CCE), AP II (by Unitron), and even an "Apple II Plus" (manufactured by a company called Milmar, which was using the name illegally). There were only two clones of the Apple IIe, since it used custom IC chips that could not be copied, and therefore had to be reversed-engineered and developed in the country. These clones were the TK3000 IIe by Microdigital and Exato IIe by CCE. In addition, the Laser IIc was manufactured by Milmar and, despite the name, was a clone of the Apple II Plus, not of the Apple IIc, although it had a design similar to that of the Apple IIc, with an integrated floppy controller and 80-column card, but without an integrated floppy disk drive.
The Ace clones from Franklin Computer Corporation were the best known Apple II clones and had the most lasting impact, as Franklin copied Apple's ROMs and software and freely admitted to doing so. Franklin's response was that a computer's ROM was simply a pattern of switches locked into a fixed position, and one cannot copyright a pattern of switches. Apple fought Franklin in court for about five years to get its clones off the market, and was ultimately successful when a court ruled that software stored in ROM was in fact copyrightable in the US. (See Apple Computer, Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corp.) Franklin later released non-infringing but less-compatible clones; these could run ProDOS and AppleWorks and had an Applesoft-like BASIC, but compatibility with other software was hit-or-miss.
Apple also challenged VTech's Laser 128, an enhanced clone of the Apple IIc first released in 1984, in court. This suit proved less fruitful for Apple, because VTech had reverse-engineered the Monitor ROM rather than copying it and had licensed Applesoft BASIC from its creator, Microsoft. Apple had neglected to obtain exclusive rights to the Applesoft dialect of BASIC from Microsoft; VTech was the first cloner to license it. The Laser 128 proved popular and remained on the market for many years, both in its original form and in accelerated versions that ran faster than . Although it was not fully compatible with the Apple II, it was close, and its popularity ensured that most major developers tested their software on a Laser as well as on genuine Apple machines. Because it was frequently sold via mail order and mass-market retailers such as Sears, the Laser 128 cut into the sales of low-cost competitors such as Commodore Business Machines as much as it did Apple's.
While the first Apple II clones were generally exact copies of their Apple counterparts that competed mainly on price, many clones had extra capabilities too. A Franklin model, the Ace 1000, sported a numeric keypad and lower-case long before these features were added to the Apple II line. The Laser 128 series is sometimes credited with spurring Apple to release the Apple IIc Plus; the built-in 3-inch drive and accelerated processor were features Laser had pioneered. The Laser 128 also had a IIe-style expansion slot on the side that could be used to add peripheral cards.
Bell & Howell, an audiovisual equipment manufacturer whose products (particularly film projectors) were ubiquitous in American schools, offered what appeared at first glance to be an Apple II Plus clone in a distinctive black plastic case. However, these were in fact real Apple II Plus units manufactured by Apple for B&H for a brief period of time. Many schools had a few of these Black Apples in their labs.
ITT made the ITT 2020, a licensed Apple II Plus clone, in the UK. It has the same shape as the Apple II but was matte silver (it was sometimes known as the "silver Apple") and was not an exact copy functionally. The ITT2020 produced a PAL video signal for the European market, where the domestic US market used NTSC. Software using the BIOS worked correctly on both the Apple and ITT, but software written to access the Apple's display hardware directly, bypassing the BIOS, displayed with vertical stripes on the ITT 2020. The Apple II itself was later introduced in the UK, and both the Apple II and ITT 2020 were sold for a time, the ITT at a lower price.
Syscom 2 Inc (from Carson City, NV) created the Syscom 2 Apple II+ clone. The case looked nearly identical. It had 48 KB of RAM and the normal expansion capabilities. These clones also supported lower case characters, toggled with a ^O keystroke.
An unknown company produced a clone called the RX-8800. One new feature it had was a numeric keypad.
The SEKON, made in Taiwan, had the same color plastic case as an Apple ][, sported 48 KB of RAM standard, and a lower-uppercase switch, located where the power light indicator was typically situated on Apple II's. Additionally, it featured a 5-amp power supply which supplied ample power for add-on cards. SEKON avoided shipments being confiscated by US Customs, by shipping their computers without ROMs, leaving it to the dealers to populate the boards upon arrival to their private stores. Often these machines would boot up with a familiar logo of the Apple II after the dealers removed E-proms of original Apple ROMs and added them in. The reason for such activity was so that users could obtain a fully Apple-compatible clone for usually around US$600, as opposed to US$2500 from Apple.
Norwegian company West Computer AS introduced an Apple II clone West PC-800 in 1984. The computer was designed as an alarm center allowing use of several CPUs (6502, Z80, 8086, 68000) and operating systems.
Although not technically a clone, Quadram produced an add-in ISA card, called the Quadlink, that provided hardware emulation of an Apple II+ for the IBM PC. The card had its own 6502 CPU and dedicated 80 K RAM (64 K for applications, plus 16 K to hold a reverse-engineered Apple ROM image, loaded at boot-time), and installed "between" the PC and its floppy drive(s), color display, and speaker, in a pass-through configuration. This allowed the PC to operate in a dual-boot fashion: when booted through the Quadlink, the PC could run the majority of Apple II software, and read and write Apple-formatted floppies through the standard PC floppy drive. Because it had a dedicated processor, rather than any form of software emulation, this system ran at nearly the same speed as an equivalent Apple machine. Another company, Diamond Computer Systems, produced a similar card called the Trackstar, that had a dual pair of 6502 CPUs, and ran Apple II software using an Apple licensed ROM. The original Trackstar (and "128" and "Plus" model) was Apple II Plus compatible, while the "Trackstar E", Apple IIe compatible. The original offered 64K of usable Apple II RAM, while the other models 128K RAM (192K is on board, with the additional memory reserved for the Trackstar itself). The original Trackstar also contained a Z80 CPU, allowing it to run both Apple DOS and Apple CP/M software, however the newer Trackstar models did not, and thus dropped CP/M compatibility. The Trackstar also had a connector allowing use of an actual Apple floppy drive, which enhanced its compatibility with software that took advantage of Apple hardware for copy-protection.
Data storage
Cassette
Originally the Apple II used Compact Cassette tapes for program and data storage. A dedicated tape recorder along the lines of the Commodore Datasette was never produced; Apple recommended using the Panasonic RQ309 in some of its early printed documentation. The uses of common consumer cassette recorders and a standard video monitor or television set (with a third party R-F modulator) made the total cost of owning an Apple II less expensive and helped contribute to the Apple II's success.
Cassette storage may have been inexpensive, but it was also slow and unreliable. The Apple II's lack of a disk drive was "a glaring weakness" in what was otherwise intended to be a polished, professional product. Recognizing that the II needed a disk drive to be taken seriously, Apple set out to develop a disk drive and a DOS to run it. Wozniak spent the 1977 Christmas holidays designing a disk controller that reduced the number of chips used by a factor of 10 compared to existing controllers. Still lacking a DOS, and with Wozniak inexperienced in operating system design, Jobs approached Shepardson Microsystems with the project. On April 10, 1978 Apple signed a contract for $13,000 with Sheperdson to develop the DOS.
Even after disk drives made the cassette tape interfaces obsolete they were still used by enthusiasts as simple one-bit audio input-output ports. Ham radio operators used the cassette input to receive slow scan TV (single frame images). A commercial speech recognition Blackjack program was available, after some user-specific voice training it would recognize simple commands (Hit, stand). Bob Bishop's "Music Kaleidoscope" was a simple program that monitored the cassette input port and based on zero-crossings created color patterns on the screen, a predecessor to current audio visualization plug-ins for media players. Music Kaleidoscope was especially popular on projection TV sets in dance halls.
The OS Disk
Apple and many third-party developers made software available on tape at first, but after the Disk II became available in 1978, tape-based Apple II software essentially disappeared from the market. The initial price of the Disk II drive and controller was US$595, although a $100 off coupon was available through the Apple newsletter "Contact". The controller could handle two drives and a second drive (without controller) retailed for $495.
The Disk II single-sided floppy drive used 5.25-inch floppy disks; double-sided disks could be used, one side at a time, by turning them over and notching a hole for the write protect sensor. The first disk operating systems for the were and DOS 3.2, which stored 113.75 KB on each disk, organized into 35 tracks of 13 256-byte sectors each. After about two years, DOS 3.3 was introduced, storing 140 KB thanks to a minor firmware change on the disk controller that allowed it to store 16 sectors per track. (This upgrade was user-installable as two PROMs on older controllers.) After the release of DOS 3.3, the user community discontinued use of except for running legacy software. Programs that required DOS 3.2 were fairly rare; however, as DOS 3.3 was not a major architectural change aside from the number of sectors per track, a program called MUFFIN was provided with DOS 3.3 to allow users to copy files from DOS 3.2 disks to DOS 3.3 disks. It was possible for software developers to create a DOS 3.2 disk which would also boot on a system with firmware.
Later, double-sided drives, with heads to read both sides of the disk, became available from third-party companies. (Apple only produced double-sided 5.25-inch disks for the Lisa 1 computer).
On a DOS 3.x disk, tracks 0, 1, and most of track 2 were reserved to store the operating system. (It was possible, with a special utility, to reclaim most of this space for data if a disk did not need to be bootable.) A short ROM program on the disk controller had the ability to seek to track zero which it did without regard for the read/write head's current position, resulting in the characteristic "chattering" sound of a Disk II boot, which was the read/write head hitting the rubber stop block at the end of the rail – and read and execute code from sector 0. The code contained in there would then pull in the rest of the operating system. DOS stored the disk's directory on track 17, smack in the middle of the 35-track disks, in order to reduce the average seek time to the frequently used directory track. The directory was fixed in size and could hold a maximum of 105 files. Subdirectories were not supported.
Most game publishers did not include DOS on their floppy disks, since they needed the memory it occupied more than its capabilities; instead, they often wrote their own boot loaders and read-only file systems. This also served to discourage "crackers" from snooping around in the game's copy-protection code, since the data on the disk was not in files that could be accessed easily.
Some third-party manufacturers produced floppy drives that could write 40 tracks to most 5.25-inch disks, yielding 160 KB of storage per disk, but the format did not catch on widely, and no known commercial software was published on 40-track media. Most drives, even Disk IIs, could write 36 tracks; a two byte modification to DOS to format the extra track was common.
The Apple Disk II stored 140 KB on single-sided, "single-density" floppy disks, but it was very common for Apple II users to extend the capacity of a single-sided floppy disk to 280 KB by cutting out a second write-protect notch on the side of the disk using a "disk notcher" or hole puncher and inserting the disk flipped over. Double-sided disks, with notches on both sides, were available at a higher price, but in practice the magnetic coating on the reverse of nominally single-sided disks was usually of good enough quality to be used (both sides were coated in the same way to prevent warping, although only one side was certified for use). Early on, diskette manufacturers routinely warned that this technique would damage the read/write head of the drives or wear out the disk faster, and these warnings were frequently repeated in magazines of the day. In practice, however, this method was an inexpensive way to store twice as much data for no extra cost, and was widely used for commercially released floppies as well.
Later, Apple IIs were able to use 3.5-inch disks with a total capacity of 800 KB and hard disks. did not support these drives natively; third-party software was required, and disks larger than about 400 KB had to be split up into multiple "virtual disk volumes."
DOS 3.3 was succeeded by ProDOS, a 1983 descendant of the Apple ///'s SOS. It added support for subdirectories and volumes up to 32 MB in size. ProDOS became the DOS of choice; AppleWorks and other newer programs required it.
Legacy
Industry impact
The Apple II series of computers had an enormous impact on the technology industry and expanded the role of microcomputers in society. The Apple II was the first personal computer many people ever saw. Its price was within the reach of many middle-class families, and a partnership with MECC helped make the Apple II popular in schools. By the end of 1980 Apple had already sold over 100,000 Apple IIs. Its popularity bootstrapped the computer game and educational software markets and began the boom in the word processor and computer printer markets. The first spreadsheet application, VisiCalc, was initially released for the Apple II, and many businesses bought them just to run VisiCalc. Its success drove IBM in part to create the IBM PC, which many businesses purchased to run spreadsheet and word processing software, at first ported from Apple II versions.
The Apple II's slots, allowing any peripheral card to take control of the bus and directly access memory, enabled an independent industry of card manufacturers who together created a flood of hardware products that let users build systems that were far more powerful and useful (at a lower cost) than any competing system, most of which were not nearly as expandable and were universally proprietary. The first peripheral card was a blank prototyping card intended for electronics enthusiasts who wanted to design their own peripherals for the Apple II.
Specialty peripherals kept the Apple II in use in industry and education environments for many years after Apple Computer stopped supporting the Apple II. Well into the 1990s every clean-room (the super-clean facility where spacecraft are prepared for flight) at the Kennedy Space Center used an Apple II to monitor the environment and air quality. Most planetariums used Apple IIs to control their projectors and other equipment.
Even the game port was unusually powerful and could be used for digital and analog input and output. The early manuals included instructions for how to build a circuit with only four commonly available components (one transistor and three resistors) and a software routine to drive a common Teletype Model 33 machine. Don Lancaster used the game I/O to drive a LaserWriter printer.
Modern use
Today, emulators for various Apple II models are available to run Apple II software on macOS, Linux, Microsoft Windows, homebrew enabled Nintendo DS and other operating systems. Numerous disk images of Apple II software are available free over the Internet for use with these emulators. AppleWin and MESS are among the best emulators compatible with most Apple II images. The MESS emulator supports recording and playing back of Apple II emulation sessions, as does Home Action Replay Page (a.k.a. HARP).
In addition, an active retrocomputing community of vintage Apple II collectors and users, continue to restore, maintain and develop hardware and software for daily use of these original computers. There is still a small annual convention, KansasFest, dedicated to the platform.
In 2017, the band 8 Bit Weapon released the world's first 100% Apple II based music album entitled, "Class Apples." The album featured dance-oriented cover versions of classical music by Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart recorded directly off the Apple II motherboard.
See also
Apple Industrial Design Group
List of publications and periodicals devoted to the Apple II
Apple II peripheral cards
Apple II graphics
List of Apple II application software
List of Apple II games
List of Apple IIGS games
References
External links
epocalc Apple II clones list
"These Pictures Of Apple's First Employees Are Absolutely Wonderful", contains a c.1977 photograph taken inside Apple of early employees Chrisann Brennan, Mark Johnson, and Robert Martinengo standing in front of a stack of Apple IIs that they had tested, assembled, and were about to ship (Business Insider, December 26, 2013).
Apple II computers
Computer-related introductions in 1977 |
2117 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%20III | Apple III | The Apple III (styled as apple ///) is a business-oriented personal computer produced by Apple Computer and released in 1980. Running the Apple SOS operating system, it was intended as the successor to the Apple II series, but was largely considered a failure in the market. It was designed to provide key features business users wanted in a personal computer: a true typewriter-style upper/lowercase keyboard (the Apple II only supported uppercase) and an 80-column display.
Work on the Apple III started in late 1978 under the guidance of Dr. Wendell Sander. It had the internal code name of "Sara", named after Sander's daughter. The system was announced on May 19, 1980 and released in late November that year. Serious stability issues required a design overhaul and a recall of the first 14,000 machines produced. The Apple III was formally reintroduced on November 9, 1981.
Damage to the computer's reputation had already been done and it failed to do well commercially. Development stopped and the Apple III was discontinued on April 24, 1984, and its last successor, the III Plus, was dropped from the Apple product line in September 1985.
An estimated 65,000–75,000 Apple III computers were sold. The Apple III Plus brought this up to approximately 120,000. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak stated that the primary reason for the Apple III's failure was that the system was designed by Apple's marketing department, unlike Apple's previous engineering-driven projects. The Apple III's failure led Apple to reevaluate its plan to phase out the Apple II, prompting the eventual continuation of development of the older machine. As a result, later Apple II models incorporated some hardware and software technologies of the Apple III, such as the thermal Apple Scribe printer.
Overview
Design
Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs expected hobbyists to purchase the Apple II, but because of VisiCalc and Disk II, small businesses purchased 90% of the computers. The Apple III was designed to be a business computer and successor. Though the Apple II contributed to the inspirations of several important business products, such as VisiCalc, Multiplan, and Apple Writer, the computer's hardware architecture, operating system, and developer environment are limited. Apple management intended to clearly establish market segmentation by designing the Apple III to appeal to the 90% business market, leaving the Apple II to home and education users. Management believed that "once the Apple III was out, the Apple II would stop selling in six months", Wozniak said.
The Apple III is powered by a 1.8-megahertz Synertek 6502A or B 8-bit CPU and, like some of the later machines in the Apple II family, uses bank switching techniques to address memory beyond the 6502's traditional 64 kB limit, up to 256 kB in the III's case. Third-party vendors produced memory upgrade kits that allow the Apple III to reach up to 512 kB of random-access memory (RAM). Other Apple III built-in features include an 80-column, 24-line display with upper and lowercase characters, a numeric keypad, dual-speed (pressure-sensitive) cursor control keys, 6-bit (DAC) audio, and a built-in 140-kilobyte 5.25-inch floppy disk drive. Graphics modes include 560x192 in black and white, and 280x192 with 16 colors or shades of gray. Unlike the Apple II, the Disk III controller is part of the logic board.
The Apple III is the first Apple product to allow the user to choose both a screen font and a keyboard layout: either QWERTY or Dvorak. These choices cannot be changed while programs were running, unlike the Apple IIc, which has a keyboard switch directly above the keyboard, allowing the user to switch on the fly.
Software
The Apple III introduced an advanced operating system called Apple SOS, pronounced "apple sauce". Its ability to address resources by name allows the Apple III to be more scalable than the Apple II's addressing by physical location such as PR#6, CATALOG, D1. Apple SOS allows the full capacity of a storage device to be used as a single volume, such as the Apple ProFile hard disk drive, and it supports a hierarchical file system. Some of the features and code base of Apple SOS were later adopted into the Apple II's ProDOS and GS/OS operating systems, as well as Lisa 7/7 and Macintosh system software.
With a starting price between $4,340 to $7,800, the Apple III was more expensive than many of the CP/M-based business computers that were available at the time. Few software applications other than VisiCalc are available for the computer; according to a presentation at KansasFest 2012, fewer than 50 Apple III-specific software packages were ever published, most shipping when the III Plus was released. Because Apple did not view the Apple III as suitable for hobbyists, it did not provide much of the technical software information that accompanies the Apple II. Originally intended as a direct replacement to the Apple II series, it was designed to be backward compatible with Apple II software. However, since Apple did not want to encourage continued development of the II platform, Apple II compatibility exists only in a special Apple II Mode which is limited in its capabilities to the emulation of a basic Apple II Plus configuration with 48 kB of RAM. Special chips were intentionally added to prevent access from Apple II Mode to the III's advanced features such as its larger amount of memory.
Peripherals
The Apple III has four expansion slots, a number that inCider in 1986 called "miserly". Apple II cards are compatible but risk violating government RFI regulations, and require Apple III-specific device drivers; BYTE stated that "Apple provides virtually no information on how to write them". As with software, Apple provided little hardware technical information with the computer but Apple III-specific products became available, such as one that made the computer compatible with the Apple IIe. Several new Apple-produced peripherals were developed for the Apple III. The original Apple III has a built-in real-time clock, which is recognized by Apple SOS. The clock was later removed from the "revised" model, and was instead made available as an add-on.
Along with the built-in floppy drive, the Apple III can also handle up to three additional external Disk III floppy disk drives. The Disk III is only officially compatible with the Apple III. The Apple III Plus requires an adaptor from Apple to use the Disk III with its DB-25 disk port.
With the introduction of the revised Apple III a year after launch, Apple began offering the ProFile external hard disk system. Priced at $3,499 for 5 MB of storage, it also required a peripheral slot for its controller card.
Backward compatibility
The Apple III has the built-in hardware capability to run Apple II software. In order to do so, an emulation boot disk is required that functionally turns the machine into a standard 48-kilobyte Apple II Plus, until it is powered off. The keyboard, internal floppy drive (and one external Disk III), display (color is provided through the 'B/W video' port) and speaker all act as Apple II peripherals. The paddle and serial ports can also function in Apple II mode, however with some limitations and compatibility issues.
Apple engineers added specialized circuity with the sole purpose of blocking access to its advanced features when running in Apple II emulation mode. This was done primarily to discourage further development and interest in the Apple II line, and to push the Apple III as its successor. For example, no more than of RAM can be accessed, even if the machine has of RAM or higher present. Many Apple II programs require a minimum of of RAM, making them impossible to run on the Apple III. Similarly, access to lowercase support, 80 columns text, or its more advanced graphics and sound are blocked by this hardware circuitry, making it impossible for even skilled software programmers to bypass Apple's lockout. A third-party company, Titan Technologies, sold an expansion board called the III Plus II that allows Apple II mode to access more memory, a standard game port, and with a later released companion card, even emulate the Apple IIe.
Certain Apple II slot cards can be installed in the Apple III and used in native III-mode with custom written SOS device drivers, including Grappler Plus and Liron 3.5 Controller.
Revisions
After overheating issues were attributed to serious design flaws, a redesigned logic board was introduced – which included a lower power supply requirement, wider circuit traces and better-designed chip sockets. The $3,495 revised model also includes 256 kB of RAM as the standard configuration. The 14,000 units of the original Apple III sold were returned and replaced with the entirely new revised model.
Apple III Plus
Apple discontinued the III in October 1983 because it violated FCC regulations, and the FCC required the company to change the redesigned computer's name. It introduced the Apple III Plus in December 1983 at a price of US$2,995. This newer version includes a built-in clock, video interlacing, standardized rear port connectors, 55-watt power supply, 256 kB of RAM as standard, and a redesigned, Apple IIe-like keyboard.
Owners of the Apple III could purchase individual III Plus upgrades, like the clock and interlacing feature, and obtain the newer logic board as a service replacement. A keyboard upgrade kit, dubbed "Apple III Plus upgrade kit" was also made available – which included the keyboard, cover, keyboard encoder ROM, and logo replacements. This upgrade had to be installed by an authorized service technician.
Design flaws
According to Wozniak, the Apple III "had 100 percent hardware failures". Former Apple executive Taylor Pohlman stated that:
Steve Jobs insisted on the idea of having no fan or air vents, in order to make the computer run quietly. Jobs would later push this same ideology onto almost all Apple models he had control of, from the Apple Lisa and Macintosh 128K to the iMac. To allow the computer to dissipate heat, the base of the Apple III was made of heavy cast aluminum, which supposedly acts as a heat sink. One advantage to the aluminum case was a reduction in RFI (Radio Frequency Interference), a problem which had plagued the Apple II series throughout its history. Unlike the Apple II series, the power supply was mounted – without its own shell – in a compartment separate from the logic board. The decision to use an aluminum shell ultimately led to engineering issues which resulted in the Apple III's reliability problems. The lead time for manufacturing the shells was high, and this had to be done before the motherboard was finalized. Later, it was realized that there was not enough room on the motherboard for all of the components unless narrow traces were used.
Many Apple IIIs were thought to have failed due to their inability to properly dissipate heat. inCider stated in 1986 that "Heat has always been a formidable enemy of the Apple ///", and some users reported that their Apple IIIs became so hot that the chips started dislodging from the board, causing the screen to display garbled data or their disk to come out of the slot "melted". BYTE wrote, "the integrated circuits tended to wander out of their sockets". It is has been rumored Apple advised customers to tilt the front of the Apple III six inches above the desk and then drop it to reseat the chips as a temporary solution. Other analyses blame a faulty automatic chip insertion process, not heat.
Case designer Jerry Manock denied the design flaw charges, insisting that tests proved that the unit adequately dissipated the internal heat. The primary cause, he claimed, was a major logic board design problem. The logic board used "fineline" technology that was not fully mature at the time, with narrow, closely spaced traces. When chips were "stuffed" into the board and wave-soldered, solder bridges would form between traces that were not supposed to be connected. This caused numerous short circuits, which required hours of costly diagnosis and hand rework to fix. Apple designed a new circuit board with more layers and normal-width traces. The new logic board was laid out by one designer on a huge drafting board, rather than using the costly CAD-CAM system used for the previous board, and the new design worked.
Earlier Apple III units came with a built-in real time clock. The hardware, however, would fail after prolonged use. Assuming that National Semiconductor would test all parts before shipping them, Apple did not perform this level of testing. Apple was soldering chips directly to boards and could not easily replace a bad chip if one was found. Eventually, Apple solved this problem by removing the real-time clock from the Apple III's specification rather than shipping the Apple III with the clock pre-installed, and then sold the peripheral as a level 1 technician add-on.
BASIC
Microsoft and Apple each developed their own versions of BASIC for the Apple III. Apple III Microsoft BASIC was designed to run on the CP/M platform available for the Apple III. Apple Business BASIC shipped with the Apple III. Donn Denman ported Applesoft BASIC to SOS and reworked it to take advantage of the extended memory of the Apple III.
Both languages introduced a number of new or improved features over Applesoft BASIC. Both languages replaced Applesoft's single-precision floating-point variables using 5-byte storage with the somewhat-reduced-precision 4-byte variables, while also adding a larger numerical format. Apple III Microsoft BASIC provides double-precision floating-point variables, taking 8 bytes of storage, while Apple Business BASIC offers an extra-long integer type, also taking 8 bytes for storage. Both languages also retain 2-byte integers, and maximum 255-character strings.
Other new features common to both languages include:
Incorporation of disk-file commands within the language.
Operators for MOD and for integer-division.
An optional ELSE clause in IF...THEN statements.
HEX$() function for hexadecimal-format output.
INSTR function for finding a substring within a string.
PRINT USING statement to control format of output. Apple Business BASIC had an option, in addition to directly specifying the format with a string expression, of giving the line number where an IMAGE statement gave the formatting expression, similar to a FORMAT statement in FORTRAN.
Some features work differently in each language:
Microsoft BASIC additional features
INPUT$() function to replace Applesoft's GET command.
LINE INPUT statement to input an entire line of text, regardless of punctuation, into a single string variable.
LPRINT and LPRINT USING statements to automatically direct output to paper.
LSET and RSET statements to left- or right-justify a string expression within a given string variable's character length.
OCT$() function for output, and "&"- or "&O"-formatted expressions, for manipulating octal notation.
SPACE$() function for generating blank spaces outside of a PRINT statement, and STRING$() function to do likewise with any character.
WHILE...WEND statements, for loop structures built on general Boolean conditions without an index variable.
Bitwise Boolean (16-bit) operations (AND, OR, NOT), with additional operators XOR, EQV, IMP.
Line number specification in the RESTORE command.
RESUME options of NEXT (to skip to the statement after that which caused the error) or a specified line number (which replaces the idea of exiting error-handling by GOTO-line, thus avoiding Applesoft II's stack error problem).
Multiple parameters in user-defined (DEF FN) functions.
A return to the old Applesoft One concept of having multiple USR() functions at different addresses, by establishing ten different USR functions, numbered USR0 to USR9, with separate DEF USRx statements to define the address of each. The argument passed to a USRx function can be of any specific type, including string. The returned value can also be of any type, by default the same type as the argument passed.
There is no support for graphics provided within the language, nor for reading analog controls or buttons; nor is there a means of defining the active window of the text screen.
Business BASIC additional features
Apple Business BASIC eliminates all references to absolute memory addresses. Thus, the POKE command and PEEK() function were not included in the language, and new features replaced the CALL statement and USR() function. The functionality of certain features in Applesoft that had been achieved with various PEEK and POKE locations is now provided by:
BUTTON() function to read game-controller buttons
WINDOW statement to define the active window of the text screen by its coordinates
KBD, HPOS, and VPOS system variables
External binary subroutines and functions are loaded into memory by a single INVOKE disk-command that loads separately-assembled code modules. A PERFORM statement is then used to call an INVOKEd procedure by name, with an argument-list. INVOKEd functions would be referenced in expressions by EXFN. (floating-point) or EXFN%. (integer), with the function name appended, plus the argument-list for the function.
Graphics are supported with an INVOKEd module, with features including displaying text within graphics in various fonts, within four different graphics modes available on the Apple III.
Reception
Despite devoting the majority of its R&D to the Apple III and so ignoring the II that for a while dealers had difficulty in obtaining the latter, the III's technical problems made marketing the computer difficult. Ed Smith, who after designing the APF Imagination Machine worked as a distributor's representative, described the III as "a complete disaster". He recalled that he "was responsible for going to every dealership, setting up the Apple III in their showroom, and then explaining to them the functions of the Apple III, which in many cases didn’t really work".
Sales
Pohlman reported that Apple was only selling 500 units a month by late 1981, mostly as replacements. The company was able to eventually raise monthly sales to 5,000, but the IBM PC's successful launch had encouraged software companies to develop for it instead, prompting Apple to shift focus to the Lisa and Macintosh. The PC almost ended sales of the Apple III, the most closely comparable Apple computer model. By early 1984, sales were primarily to existing III owners, Apple itself—its 4500 employees were equipped with some 3000-4500 units—and some small businesses. Apple finally discontinued the Apple III series on April 24, 1984, four months after introducing the III Plus, after selling only 65,000-75,000 units and replacing 14,000 defective units.
Jobs said that the company lost "infinite, incalculable amounts" of money on the Apple III. Wozniak estimated that Apple had spent $100 million on the III, instead of improving the II and better competing against IBM. Pohlman claimed that there was a "stigma" at Apple associated with having contributed to the computer. Most employees who worked on the III reportedly left Apple.
Legacy
The file system and some design ideas from Apple SOS, the Apple III's operating system, were part of Apple ProDOS and Apple GS/OS, the major operating systems for the Apple II series following the demise of the Apple III, as well as the Apple Lisa, which was the de facto business-oriented successor to the Apple III. The hierarchical file system influenced the evolution of the Macintosh: while the original Macintosh File System (MFS) was a flat file system designed for a floppy disk without subdirectories, subsequent file systems were hierarchical. By comparison, the IBM PC's first file system (again designed for floppy disks) was also flat and later versions (designed for hard disks) were hierarchical.
In popular culture
At the start of the Walt Disney Pictures film TRON, lead character Kevin Flynn (played by Jeff Bridges) is seen hacking into the ENCOM mainframe using an Apple III.
References
Sources
External links
The Ill-Fated Apple III
Many manuals and diagrams
Sara – Apple /// emulator
The Ill-Fated Apple III Low End Mac
Apple III Chaos: Apple’s First Failure Low End Mac
Apple II family
Computer-related introductions in 1980
Discontinued Apple Inc. products
8-bit computers |
2118 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVL%20tree | AVL tree | In computer science, an AVL tree (named after inventors Adelson-Velsky and Landis) is a self-balancing binary search tree (BST). It was the first such data structure to be invented. In an AVL tree, the heights of the two child subtrees of any node differ by at most one; if at any time they differ by more than one, rebalancing is done to restore this property. Lookup, insertion, and deletion all take time in both the average and worst cases, where is the number of nodes in the tree prior to the operation. Insertions and deletions may require the tree to be rebalanced by one or more tree rotations.
The AVL tree is named after its two Soviet inventors, Georgy Adelson-Velsky and Evgenii Landis, who published it in their 1962 paper "An algorithm for the organization of information".
AVL trees are often compared with red–black trees because both support the same set of operations and take time for the basic operations. For lookup-intensive applications, AVL trees are faster than red–black trees because they are more strictly balanced. Similar to red–black trees, AVL trees are height-balanced. Both are, in general, neither weight-balanced nor -balanced for any ; that is, sibling nodes can have hugely differing numbers of descendants.
Definition
Balance factor
In a binary tree the balance factor of a node X is defined to be the height difference
of its two child sub-trees. A binary tree is defined to be an AVL tree if the invariant
holds for every node X in the tree.
A node X with is called "left-heavy", one with is called "right-heavy", and one with is sometimes simply called "balanced".
Properties
Balance factors can be kept up-to-date by knowing the previous balance factors and the change in height – it is not necessary to know the absolute height. For holding the AVL balance information, two bits per node are sufficient.
The height (counted as the maximal number of levels) of an AVL tree with nodes lies in the interval:
where is the golden ratio and
This is because an AVL tree of height contains at least nodes where is the Fibonacci sequence with the seed values
Operations
Read-only operations of an AVL tree involve carrying out the same actions as would be carried out on an unbalanced binary search tree, but modifications have to observe and restore the height balance of the sub-trees.
Searching
Searching for a specific key in an AVL tree can be done the same way as that of any balanced or unbalanced binary search tree. In order for search to work effectively it has to employ a comparison function which establishes a total order (or at least a total preorder) on the set of keys. The number of comparisons required for successful search is limited by the height and for unsuccessful search is very close to , so both are in .
Traversal
As a read-only operation the traversal of an AVL tree functions the same way as on any other binary tree. Exploring all nodes of the tree visits each link exactly twice: one downward visit to enter the subtree rooted by that node, another visit upward to leave that node's subtree after having explored it.
Once a node has been found in an AVL tree, the next or previous node can be accessed in amortized constant time. Some instances of exploring these "nearby" nodes require traversing up to links (particularly when navigating from the rightmost leaf of the root's left subtree to the root or from the root to the leftmost leaf of the root's right subtree; in the AVL tree of figure 1, navigating from node P to the next-to-the-right node Q takes 3 steps). Since there are links in any tree, the amortized cost is , or approximately 2.
Insert
When inserting a node into an AVL tree, you initially follow the same process as inserting into a Binary Search Tree. If the tree is empty, then the node is inserted as the root of the tree. If the tree is not empty, then we go down the root, and recursively go down the tree searching for the location to insert the new node. This traversal is guided by the comparison function. In this case, the node always replaces a NULL reference (left or right) of an external node in the tree i.e., the node is either made a left-child or a right-child of the external node.
After this insertion if a tree becomes unbalanced, only ancestors of the newly inserted node are unbalanced. This is because only those nodes have their sub-trees altered. So it is necessary to check each of the node's ancestors for consistency with the invariants of AVL trees: this is called "retracing". This is achieved by considering the balance factor of each node.
Since with a single insertion the height of an AVL subtree cannot increase by more than one, the temporary balance factor of a node after an insertion will be in the range For each node checked, if the temporary balance factor remains in the range from –1 to +1 then only an update of the balance factor and no rotation is necessary. However, if the temporary balance factor is ±2, the subtree rooted at this node is AVL unbalanced, and a rotation is needed. With insertion as the code below shows, the adequate rotation immediately perfectly rebalances the tree.
In figure 1, by inserting the new node Z as a child of node X the height of that subtree Z increases from 0 to 1.
Invariant of the retracing loop for an insertion
The height of the subtree rooted by Z has increased by 1. It is already in AVL shape.
for (X = parent(Z); X != null; X = parent(Z)) { // Loop (possibly up to the root)
// BF(X) has to be updated:
if (Z == right_child(X)) { // The right subtree increases
if (BF(X) > 0) { // X is right-heavy
// ==> the temporary BF(X) == +2
// ==> rebalancing is required.
G = parent(X); // Save parent of X around rotations
if (BF(Z) < 0) // Right Left Case (see figure 3)
N = rotate_RightLeft(X, Z); // Double rotation: Right(Z) then Left(X)
else // Right Right Case (see figure 2)
N = rotate_Left(X, Z); // Single rotation Left(X)
// After rotation adapt parent link
} else {
if (BF(X) < 0) {
BF(X) = 0; // Z’s height increase is absorbed at X.
break; // Leave the loop
}
BF(X) = +1;
Z = X; // Height(Z) increases by 1
continue;
}
} else { // Z == left_child(X): the left subtree increases
if (BF(X) < 0) { // X is left-heavy
// ==> the temporary BF(X) == -2
// ==> rebalancing is required.
G = parent(X); // Save parent of X around rotations
if (BF(Z) > 0) // Left Right Case
N = rotate_LeftRight(X, Z); // Double rotation: Left(Z) then Right(X)
else // Left Left Case
N = rotate_Right(X, Z); // Single rotation Right(X)
// After rotation adapt parent link
} else {
if (BF(X) > 0) {
BF(X) = 0; // Z’s height increase is absorbed at X.
break; // Leave the loop
}
BF(X) = -1;
Z = X; // Height(Z) increases by 1
continue;
}
}
// After a rotation adapt parent link:
// N is the new root of the rotated subtree
// Height does not change: Height(N) == old Height(X)
parent(N) = G;
if (G != null) {
if (X == left_child(G))
left_child(G) = N;
else
right_child(G) = N;
} else
tree->root = N; // N is the new root of the total tree
break;
// There is no fall thru, only break; or continue;
}
// Unless loop is left via break, the height of the total tree increases by 1.
In order to update the balance factors of all nodes, first observe that all nodes requiring correction lie from child to parent along the path of the inserted leaf. If the above procedure is applied to nodes along this path, starting from the leaf, then every node in the tree will again have a balance factor of −1, 0, or 1.
The retracing can stop if the balance factor becomes 0 implying that the height of that subtree remains unchanged.
If the balance factor becomes ±1 then the height of the subtree increases by one and the retracing needs to continue.
If the balance factor temporarily becomes ±2, this has to be repaired by an appropriate rotation after which the subtree has the same height as before (and its root the balance factor 0).
The time required is for lookup, plus a maximum of retracing levels ( on average) on the way back to the root, so the operation can be completed in time.
Delete
The preliminary steps for deleting a node are described in section Binary search tree#Deletion.
There, the effective deletion of the subject node or the replacement node decreases the height of the corresponding child tree either from 1 to 0 or from 2 to 1, if that node had a child.
Starting at this subtree, it is necessary to check each of the ancestors for consistency with the invariants of AVL trees. This is called "retracing".
Since with a single deletion the height of an AVL subtree cannot decrease by more than one, the temporary balance factor of a node will be in the range from −2 to +2.
If the balance factor remains in the range from −1 to +1 it can be adjusted in accord with the AVL rules. If it becomes ±2 then the subtree is unbalanced and needs to be rotated. (Unlike insertion where a rotation always balances the tree, after delete, there may be BF(Z) ≠ 0 (see figures 2 and 3), so that after the appropriate single or double rotation the height of the rebalanced subtree decreases by one meaning that the tree has to be rebalanced again on the next higher level.) The various cases of rotations are described in section Rebalancing.
Invariant of the retracing loop for a deletion
The height of the subtree rooted by N has decreased by 1. It is already in AVL shape.
for (X = parent(N); X != null; X = G) { // Loop (possibly up to the root)
G = parent(X); // Save parent of X around rotations
// BF(X) has not yet been updated!
if (N == left_child(X)) { // the left subtree decreases
if (BF(X) > 0) { // X is right-heavy
// ==> the temporary BF(X) == +2
// ==> rebalancing is required.
Z = right_child(X); // Sibling of N (higher by 2)
b = BF(Z);
if (b < 0) // Right Left Case (see figure 3)
N = rotate_RightLeft(X, Z); // Double rotation: Right(Z) then Left(X)
else // Right Right Case (see figure 2)
N = rotate_Left(X, Z); // Single rotation Left(X)
// After rotation adapt parent link
} else {
if (BF(X) == 0) {
BF(X) = +1; // N’s height decrease is absorbed at X.
break; // Leave the loop
}
N = X;
BF(N) = 0; // Height(N) decreases by 1
continue;
}
} else { // (N == right_child(X)): The right subtree decreases
if (BF(X) < 0) { // X is left-heavy
// ==> the temporary BF(X) == -2
// ==> rebalancing is required.
Z = left_child(X); // Sibling of N (higher by 2)
b = BF(Z);
if (b > 0) // Left Right Case
N = rotate_LeftRight(X, Z); // Double rotation: Left(Z) then Right(X)
else // Left Left Case
N = rotate_Right(X, Z); // Single rotation Right(X)
// After rotation adapt parent link
} else {
if (BF(X) == 0) {
BF(X) = -1; // N’s height decrease is absorbed at X.
break; // Leave the loop
}
N = X;
BF(N) = 0; // Height(N) decreases by 1
continue;
}
}
// After a rotation adapt parent link:
// N is the new root of the rotated subtree
parent(N) = G;
if (G != null) {
if (X == left_child(G))
left_child(G) = N;
else
right_child(G) = N;
} else
tree->root = N; // N is the new root of the total tree
if (b == 0)
break; // Height does not change: Leave the loop
// Height(N) decreases by 1 (== old Height(X)-1)
}
// If (b != 0) the height of the total tree decreases by 1.
The retracing can stop if the balance factor becomes ±1 (it must have been 0) meaning that the height of that subtree remains unchanged.
If the balance factor becomes 0 (it must have been ±1) then the height of the subtree decreases by one and the retracing needs to continue.
If the balance factor temporarily becomes ±2, this has to be repaired by an appropriate rotation. It depends on the balance factor of the sibling Z (the higher child tree in figure 2) whether the height of the subtree decreases by one –and the retracing needs to continue– or does not change (if Z has the balance factor 0) and the whole tree is in AVL-shape.
The time required is for lookup, plus a maximum of retracing levels ( on average) on the way back to the root, so the operation can be completed in time.
Set operations and bulk operations
In addition to the single-element insert, delete and lookup operations, several set operations have been defined on AVL trees: union, intersection and set difference. Then fast bulk operations on insertions or deletions can be implemented based on these set functions. These set operations rely on two helper operations, Split and Join. With the new operations, the implementation of AVL trees can be more efficient and highly-parallelizable.
The function Join on two AVL trees and and a key will return a tree containing all elements in , as well as . It requires to be greater than all keys in and smaller than all keys in . If the two trees differ by height at most one, Join simply create a new node with left subtree , root and right subtree . Otherwise, suppose that is higher than for more than one (the other case is symmetric). Join follows the right spine of until a node which is balanced with . At this point a new node with left child , root and right child is created to replace c. The new node satisfies the AVL invariant, and its height is one greater than . The increase in height can increase the height of its ancestors, possibly invalidating the AVL invariant of those nodes. This can be fixed either with a double rotation if invalid at the parent or a single left rotation if invalid higher in the tree, in both cases restoring the height for any further ancestor nodes. Join will therefore require at most two rotations. The cost of this function is the difference of the heights between the two input trees.
function JoinRightAVL(TL, k, TR)
(l,k',c) = expose(TL)
if (Height(c) <= Height(TR)+1)
T' = Node(c,k,TR)
if (Height(T') <= Height(l)+1) then return Node(l,k',T')
else return rotateLeft(Node(l,k',rotateRight(T')))
else
T' = JoinRightAVL(c,k,TR)
T'' = Node(l,k',T')
if (Height(T') <= Height(l)+1) return T''
else return rotateLeft(T'')
function JoinLeftAVL(TL, k, TR)
/* symmetric to JoinRightAVL */
function Join(TL, k, TR)
if (Height(TL)>Height(TR)+1) return JoinRightAVL(TL, k, TR)
if (Height(TR)>Height(TL)+1) return JoinLeftAVL(TL, k, TR)
return Node(TL,k,TR)
Here Height(v) is the height of a subtree (node) . (l,k,r) = expose(v) extracts 's left child , the key of 's root, and the right child . Node(l,k,r) means to create a node of left child , key , and right child .
To split an AVL tree into two smaller trees, those smaller than key , and those larger than key , first draw a path from the root by inserting into the AVL. After this insertion, all values less than will be found on the left of the path, and all values greater than will be found on the right. By applying Join, all the subtrees on the left side are merged bottom-up using keys on the path as intermediate nodes from bottom to top to form the left tree, and the right part is asymmetric. The cost of Split is , order of the height of the tree.
function Split(T,k)
if (T = nil) return (nil,false,nil)
(L,m,R) = expose(T)
if (k = m) return (L,true,R)
if (k<m)
(L',b,R') = Split(L,k)
return (L',b,Join(R',m,R))
if (k>m)
(L',b,R') = Split(R,k)
return (Join(L,m,L'),b,R'))
The union of two AVL trees and representing sets and , is an AVL that represents .
function Union(t1, t2):
if t1 = nil:
return t2
if t2 = nil:
return t1
(t<, b, t>) = Split(t2, t1.root)
return Join(Union(left(t1), t<), t1.root, Union(right(t1), t>))
Here, Split is presumed to return two trees: one holding the keys less its input key, one holding the greater keys. (The algorithm is non-destructive, but an in-place destructive version exists as well.)
The algorithm for intersection or difference is similar, but requires the Join2 helper routine that is the same as Join but without the middle key. Based on the new functions for union, intersection or difference, either one key or multiple keys can be inserted to or deleted from the AVL tree. Since Split calls Join but does not deal with the balancing criteria of AVL trees directly, such an implementation is usually called the "join-based" implementation.
The complexity of each of union, intersection and difference is for AVL trees of sizes and . More importantly, since the recursive calls to union, intersection or difference are independent of each other, they can be executed in parallel with a parallel depth . When , the join-based implementation has the same computational DAG as single-element insertion and deletion.
Rebalancing
If during a modifying operation the height difference between two child subtrees changes, this may, as long as it is < 2, be reflected by an adaption of the balance information at the parent. During insert and delete operations a (temporary) height difference of 2 may arise, which means that the parent subtree has to be "rebalanced". The given repair tools are the so-called tree rotations, because they move the keys only "vertically", so that the ("horizontal") in-order sequence of the keys is fully preserved (which is essential for a binary-search tree).
Let X be the node that has a (temporary) balance factor of −2 or +2. Its left or right subtree was modified. Let Z be the higher child (see figures 2 and 3). Note that both children are in AVL shape by induction hypothesis.
In case of insertion this insertion has happened to one of Z's children in a way that Z's height has increased.
In case of deletion this deletion has happened to the sibling t1 of Z in a way so that t1's height being already lower has decreased. (This is the only case where Z's balance factor may also be 0.)
There are four possible variants of the violation:
And the rebalancing is performed differently:
Thereby, the situations are denoted as where C (= child direction) and B (= balance) come from the set } with The balance violation of case is repaired by a simple rotation whereas the case is repaired by a double rotation
The cost of a rotation, either simple or double, is constant.
Simple rotation
Figure 2 shows a Right Right situation. In its upper half, node X has two child trees with a balance factor of +2. Moreover, the inner child t23 of Z (i.e., left child when Z is right child resp. right child when Z is left child) is not higher than its sibling t4. This can happen by a height increase of subtree t4 or by a height decrease of subtree t1. In the latter case, also the pale situation where t23 has the same height as t4 may occur.
The result of the left rotation is shown in the lower half of the figure. Three links (thick edges in figure 2) and two balance factors are to be updated.
As the figure shows, before an insertion, the leaf layer was at level h+1, temporarily at level h+2 and after the rotation again at level h+1. In case of a deletion, the leaf layer was at level h+2, where it is again, when t23 and t4 were of same height. Otherwise the leaf layer reaches level h+1, so that the height of the rotated tree decreases.
Code snippet of a simple left rotation
node *rotate_Left(node *X, node *Z) {
// Z is by 2 higher than its sibling
t23 = left_child(Z); // Inner child of Z
right_child(X) = t23;
if (t23 != null)
parent(t23) = X;
left_child(Z) = X;
parent(X) = Z;
// 1st case, BF(Z) == 0,
// only happens with deletion, not insertion:
if (BF(Z) == 0) { // t23 has been of same height as t4
BF(X) = +1; // t23 now higher
BF(Z) = –1; // t4 now lower than X
} else
{ // 2nd case happens with insertion or deletion:
BF(X) = 0;
BF(Z) = 0;
}
return Z; // return new root of rotated subtree
}
Double rotation
Figure 3 shows a Right Left situation. In its upper third, node X has two child trees with a balance factor of +2. But unlike figure 2, the inner child Y of Z is higher than its sibling t4. This can happen by the insertion of Y itself or a height increase of one of its subtrees t2 or t3 (with the consequence that they are of different height) or by a height decrease of subtree t1. In the latter case, it may also occur that t2 and t3 are of the same height.
The result of the first, the right, rotation is shown in the middle third of the figure. (With respect to the balance factors, this rotation is not of the same kind as the other AVL single rotations, because the height difference between Y and t4 is only 1.) The result of the final left rotation is shown in the lower third of the figure. Five links (thick edges in figure 3) and three balance factors are to be updated.
As the figure shows, before an insertion, the leaf layer was at level h+1, temporarily at level h+2 and after the double rotation again at level h+1. In case of a deletion, the leaf layer was at level h+2 and after the double rotation it is at level h+1, so that the height of the rotated tree decreases.
Code snippet of a right-left double rotation
node *rotate_RightLeft(node *X, node *Z) {
// Z is by 2 higher than its sibling
Y = left_child(Z); // Inner child of Z
// Y is by 1 higher than sibling
t3 = right_child(Y);
left_child(Z) = t3;
if (t3 != null)
parent(t3) = Z;
right_child(Y) = Z;
parent(Z) = Y;
t2 = left_child(Y);
right_child(X) = t2;
if (t2 != null)
parent(t2) = X;
left_child(Y) = X;
parent(X) = Y;
// 1st case, BF(Y) == 0,
// only happens with deletion, not insertion:
if (BF(Y) == 0) {
BF(X) = 0;
BF(Z) = 0;
} else
// other cases happen with insertion or deletion:
if (BF(Y) > 0) { // t3 was higher
BF(X) = –1; // t1 now higher
BF(Z) = 0;
} else {
// t2 was higher
BF(X) = 0;
BF(Z) = +1; // t4 now higher
}
BF(Y) = 0;
return Y; // return new root of rotated subtree
}
Comparison to other structures
Both AVL trees and red–black (RB) trees are self-balancing binary search trees and they are related mathematically. Indeed, every AVL tree can be colored red–black, but there are RB trees which are not AVL balanced. For maintaining the AVL resp. RB tree's invariants, rotations play an important role. In the worst case, even without rotations, AVL or RB insertions or deletions require inspections and/or updates to AVL balance factors resp. RB colors. RB insertions and deletions and AVL insertions require from zero to three tail-recursive rotations and run in amortized time, thus equally constant on average. AVL deletions requiring rotations in the worst case are also on average. RB trees require storing one bit of information (the color) in each node, while AVL trees mostly use two bits for the balance factor, although, when stored at the children, one bit with meaning «lower than sibling» suffices. The bigger difference between the two data structures is their height limit.
For a tree of size
an AVL tree's height is at most
where the golden ratio, and .
a RB tree's height is at most
.
AVL trees are more rigidly balanced than RB trees with an asymptotic relation AVL/RB ≈0.720 of the maximal heights. For insertions and deletions, Ben Pfaff shows in 79 measurements a relation of AVL/RB between 0.677 and 1.077 with median ≈0.947 and geometric mean ≈0.910.
See also
Trees
Tree rotation
WAVL tree
Red–black tree
Splay tree
Scapegoat tree
B-tree
T-tree
List of data structures
References
Further reading
Donald Knuth. The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 3: Sorting and Searching, Third Edition. Addison-Wesley, 1997. . Pages 458–475 of section 6.2.3: Balanced Trees.
.
External links
A verified functional implementation in Isabelle (proof assistant): Chapter 9 in Functional Algorithms, Verified!
1962 in computing
Articles with example pseudocode
Binary trees
Soviet inventions
Search trees |
2120 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliphatic%20compound | Aliphatic compound | In organic chemistry, hydrocarbons (compounds composed solely of carbon and hydrogen) are divided into two classes: aromatic compounds and aliphatic compounds (; G. aleiphar, fat, oil). Aliphatic compounds can be saturated, like hexane, or unsaturated, like hexene and hexyne. Open-chain compounds, whether straight or branched, and which contain no rings of any type, are always aliphatic. Cyclic compounds can be aliphatic if they are not aromatic.
Structure
Aliphatic compounds can be saturated, joined by single bonds (alkanes), or unsaturated, with double bonds (alkenes) or triple bonds (alkynes). Besides hydrogen, other elements can be bound to the carbon chain, the most common being oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and chlorine.
The least complex aliphatic compound is methane (CH4).
Properties
Most aliphatic compounds are flammable, allowing the use of hydrocarbons as fuel, such as methane in Bunsen burners and as liquefied natural gas (LNG), and ethyne (acetylene) in welding.
Examples of aliphatic compounds / non-aromatic
The most important aliphatic compounds are:
n-, iso- and cyclo-alkanes (saturated hydrocarbons)
n-, iso- and cyclo-alkenes and -alkynes (unsaturated hydrocarbons).
Important examples of low-molecular aliphatic compounds can be found in the list below (sorted by the number of carbon-atoms):
References
Organic compounds |
2122 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology | Astrology | Astrology is a pseudoscience that claims to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the movements and relative positions of celestial objects. Astrology has been dated to at least the 2nd millennium BCE, and has its roots in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications. Many cultures have attached importance to astronomical events, and some—such as the Hindus, Chinese, and the Maya—developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations. Western astrology, one of the oldest astrological systems still in use, can trace its roots to 19th–17th century BCE Mesopotamia, from where it spread to Ancient Greece, Rome, the Arab world and eventually Central and Western Europe. Contemporary Western astrology is often associated with systems of horoscopes that purport to explain aspects of a person's personality and predict significant events in their lives based on the positions of celestial objects; the majority of professional astrologers rely on such systems.
Throughout most of its history, astrology was considered a scholarly tradition and was common in academic circles, often in close relation with astronomy, alchemy, meteorology, and medicine. It was present in political circles and is mentioned in various works of literature, from Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer to William Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, and Calderón de la Barca. Following the end of the 19th century and the wide-scale adoption of the scientific method, researchers have successfully challenged astrology on both theoretical and experimental grounds, and have shown it to have no scientific validity or explanatory power. Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical standing, and common belief in it has largely declined, until a resurgence starting in the 1960s.
Etymology
The word astrology comes from the early Latin word astrologia, which derives from the Greek —from ἄστρον astron ("star") and -λογία -logia, ("study of"—"account of the stars"). Astrologia later passed into meaning 'star-divination' with astronomia used for the scientific term.
History
Many cultures have attached importance to astronomical events, and the Indians, Chinese, and Maya developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations. In the West, astrology most often consists of a system of horoscopes purporting to explain aspects of a person's personality and predict future events in their life based on the positions of the sun, moon, and other celestial objects at the time of their birth. The majority of professional astrologers rely on such systems.
Astrology has been dated to at least the 2nd millennium BCE, with roots in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications. A form of astrology was practised in the first dynasty of Mesopotamia (1950–1651 BCE). Vedāṅga Jyotiṣa is one of earliest known Hindu texts on astronomy and astrology (Jyotisha). The text is dated between 1400 BCE to final centuries BCE by various scholars according to astronomical and linguistic evidences. Chinese astrology was elaborated in the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE). Hellenistic astrology after 332 BCE mixed Babylonian astrology with Egyptian Decanic astrology in Alexandria, creating horoscopic astrology. Alexander the Great's conquest of Asia allowed astrology to spread to Ancient Greece and Rome. In Rome, astrology was associated with "Chaldean wisdom". After the conquest of Alexandria in the 7th century, astrology was taken up by Islamic scholars, and Hellenistic texts were translated into Arabic and Persian. In the 12th century, Arabic texts were imported to Europe and translated into Latin. Major astronomers including Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Galileo practised as court astrologers. Astrological references appear in literature in the works of poets such as Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer, and of playwrights such as Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare.
Throughout most of its history, astrology was considered a scholarly tradition. It was accepted in political and academic contexts, and was connected with other studies, such as astronomy, alchemy, meteorology, and medicine. At the end of the 17th century, new scientific concepts in astronomy and physics (such as heliocentrism and Newtonian mechanics) called astrology into question. Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical standing, and common belief in astrology has largely declined.
Ancient world
Astrology, in its broadest sense, is the search for meaning in the sky. Early evidence for humans making conscious attempts to measure, record, and predict seasonal changes by reference to astronomical cycles, appears as markings on bones and cave walls, which show that lunar cycles were being noted as early as 25,000 years ago. This was a first step towards recording the Moon's influence upon tides and rivers, and towards organising a communal calendar. Farmers addressed agricultural needs with increasing knowledge of the constellations that appear in the different seasons—and used the rising of particular star-groups to herald annual floods or seasonal activities. By the 3rd millennium BCE, civilisations had sophisticated awareness of celestial cycles, and may have oriented temples in alignment with heliacal risings of the stars.
Scattered evidence suggests that the oldest known astrological references are copies of texts made in the ancient world. The Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa is thought to have been compiled in Babylon around 1700 BCE. A scroll documenting an early use of electional astrology is doubtfully ascribed to the reign of the Sumerian ruler Gudea of Lagash (c. 2144 – 2124 BCE). This describes how the gods revealed to him in a dream the constellations that would be most favourable for the planned construction of a temple. However, there is controversy about whether these were genuinely recorded at the time or merely ascribed to ancient rulers by posterity. The oldest undisputed evidence of the use of astrology as an integrated system of knowledge is therefore attributed to the records of the first dynasty of Mesopotamia (1950–1651 BCE). This astrology had some parallels with Hellenistic Greek (western) astrology, including the zodiac, a norming point near 9 degrees in Aries, the trine aspect, planetary exaltations, and the dodekatemoria (the twelve divisions of 30 degrees each). The Babylonians viewed celestial events as possible signs rather than as causes of physical events.
The system of Chinese astrology was elaborated during the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE) and flourished during the Han Dynasty (2nd century BCE to 2nd century CE), during which all the familiar elements of traditional Chinese culture – the Yin-Yang philosophy, theory of the five elements, Heaven and Earth, Confucian morality – were brought together to formalise the philosophical principles of Chinese medicine and divination, astrology and alchemy.
Ancient objections
The Hellenistic schools of philosophical skepticism criticized the rationality of astrology. Criticism of astrology by academic skeptics such as Cicero, Carneades, and Favorinus; and Pyrrhonists such as Sextus Empiricus has been preserved.
Carneades argued that belief in fate denies free will and morality; that people born at different times can all die in the same accident or battle; and that contrary to uniform influences from the stars, tribes and cultures are all different.
Cicero stated the twins objection (that with close birth times, personal outcomes can be very different), later developed by Saint Augustine. He argued that since the other planets are much more distant from the Earth than the Moon, they could have only very tiny influence compared to the Moon's. He also argued that if astrology explains everything about a person's fate, then it wrongly ignores the visible effect of inherited ability and parenting, changes in health worked by medicine, or the effects of the weather on people.
Favorinus argued that it was absurd to imagine that stars and planets would affect human bodies in the same way as they affect the tides, and equally absurd that small motions in the heavens cause large changes in people's fates.
Sextus Empiricus argued that it was absurd to link human attributes with myths about the signs of the zodiac, and wrote an entire book, Against the Astrologers, compiling arguments against astrology.
Plotinus, a neoplatonist, argued that since the fixed stars are much more distant than the planets, it is laughable to imagine the planets' effect on human affairs should depend on their position with respect to the zodiac. He also argues that the interpretation of the moon's conjunction with a planet as good when the moon is full, but bad when the moon is waning, is clearly wrong, as from the moon's point of view, half of its surface is always in sunlight; and from the planet's point of view, waning should be better, as then the planet sees some light from the moon, but when the moon is full to us, it is dark, and therefore bad, on the side facing the planet in question.
Hellenistic Egypt
In 525 BCE, Egypt was conquered by the Persians. The 1st century BCE Egyptian Dendera Zodiac shares two signs – the Balance and the Scorpion – with Mesopotamian astrology.
With the occupation by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE, Egypt became Hellenistic. The city of Alexandria was founded by Alexander after the conquest, becoming the place where Babylonian astrology was mixed with Egyptian Decanic astrology to create Horoscopic astrology. This contained the Babylonian zodiac with its system of planetary exaltations, the triplicities of the signs and the importance of eclipses. It used the Egyptian concept of dividing the zodiac into thirty-six decans of ten degrees each, with an emphasis on the rising decan, and the Greek system of planetary Gods, sign rulership and four elements. 2nd century BCE texts predict positions of planets in zodiac signs at the time of the rising of certain decans, particularly Sothis. The astrologer and astronomer Ptolemy lived in Alexandria. Ptolemy's work the Tetrabiblos formed the basis of Western astrology, and, "...enjoyed almost the authority of a Bible among the astrological writers of a thousand years or more."
Greece and Rome
The conquest of Asia by Alexander the Great exposed the Greeks to ideas from Syria, Babylon, Persia and central Asia. Around 280 BCE, Berossus, a priest of Bel from Babylon, moved to the Greek island of Kos, teaching astrology and Babylonian culture. By the 1st century BCE, there were two varieties of astrology, one using horoscopes to describe the past, present and future; the other, theurgic, emphasising the soul's ascent to the stars. Greek influence played a crucial role in the transmission of astrological theory to Rome.
The first definite reference to astrology in Rome comes from the orator Cato, who in 160 BCE warned farm overseers against consulting with Chaldeans, who were described as Babylonian 'star-gazers'. Among both Greeks and Romans, Babylonia (also known as Chaldea) became so identified with astrology that 'Chaldean wisdom' became synonymous with divination using planets and stars. The 2nd-century Roman poet and satirist Juvenal complains about the pervasive influence of Chaldeans, saying, "Still more trusted are the Chaldaeans; every word uttered by the astrologer they will believe has come from Hammon's fountain."
One of the first astrologers to bring Hermetic astrology to Rome was Thrasyllus, astrologer to the emperor Tiberius, the first emperor to have had a court astrologer, though his predecessor Augustus had used astrology to help legitimise his Imperial rights.
Medieval world
Hindu
The main texts upon which classical Indian astrology is based are early medieval compilations, notably the , and Sārāvalī by .
The Horāshastra is a composite work of 71 chapters, of which the first part (chapters 1–51) dates to the 7th to early 8th centuries and the second part (chapters 52–71) to the later 8th century. The Sārāvalī likewise dates to around 800 CE. English translations of these texts were published by N.N. Krishna Rau and V.B. Choudhari in 1963 and 1961, respectively.
Islamic
Astrology was taken up by Islamic scholars following the collapse of Alexandria to the Arabs in the 7th century, and the founding of the Abbasid empire in the 8th. The second Abbasid caliph, Al Mansur (754–775) founded the city of Baghdad to act as a centre of learning, and included in its design a library-translation centre known as Bayt al-Hikma 'House of Wisdom', which continued to receive development from his heirs and was to provide a major impetus for Arabic-Persian translations of Hellenistic astrological texts. The early translators included Mashallah, who helped to elect the time for the foundation of Baghdad, and Sahl ibn Bishr, (a.k.a. Zael), whose texts were directly influential upon later European astrologers such as Guido Bonatti in the 13th century, and William Lilly in the 17th century. Knowledge of Arabic texts started to become imported into Europe during the Latin translations of the 12th century.
Europe
The first astrological book published in Europe was the Liber Planetis et Mundi Climatibus ("Book of the Planets and Regions of the World"), which appeared between 1010 and 1027 AD, and may have been authored by Gerbert of Aurillac. Ptolemy's second century AD Tetrabiblos was translated into Latin by Plato of Tivoli in 1138. The Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas followed Aristotle in proposing that the stars ruled the imperfect 'sublunary' body, while attempting to reconcile astrology with Christianity by stating that God ruled the soul. The thirteenth century mathematician Campanus of Novara is said to have devised a system of astrological houses that divides the prime vertical into 'houses' of equal 30° arcs, though the system was used earlier in the East. The thirteenth century astronomer Guido Bonatti wrote a textbook, the Liber Astronomicus, a copy of which King Henry VII of England owned at the end of the fifteenth century.
In Paradiso, the final part of the Divine Comedy, the Italian poet Dante Alighieri referred "in countless details" to the astrological planets, though he adapted traditional astrology to suit his Christian viewpoint, for example using astrological thinking in his prophecies of the reform of Christendom.
Medieval objections
In the seventh century, Isidore of Seville argued in his Etymologiae that astronomy described the movements of the heavens, while astrology had two parts: one was scientific, describing the movements of the sun, the moon and the stars, while the other, making predictions, was theologically erroneous. In contrast, John Gower in the fourteenth century defined astrology as essentially limited to the making of predictions. The influence of the stars was in turn divided into natural astrology, with for example effects on tides and the growth of plants, and judicial astrology, with supposedly predictable effects on people. The fourteenth century sceptic Nicole Oresme however included astronomy as a part of astrology in his Livre de divinacions. Oresme argued that current approaches to prediction of events such as plagues, wars, and weather were inappropriate, but that such prediction was a valid field of inquiry. However, he attacked the use of astrology to choose the timing of actions (so-called interrogation and election) as wholly false, and rejected the determination of human action by the stars on grounds of free will. The friar Laurens Pignon (c. 1368–1449) similarly rejected all forms of divination and determinism, including by the stars, in his 1411 Contre les Devineurs. This was in opposition to the tradition carried by the Arab astronomer Albumasar (787-886) whose Introductorium in Astronomiam and De Magnis Coniunctionibus argued the view that both individual actions and larger scale history are determined by the stars.
In the late 15th century, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola forcefully attacked astrology in Disputationes contra Astrologos, arguing that the heavens neither caused, nor heralded earthly events. His contemporary, Pietro Pomponazzi, a "rationalistic and critical thinker", was much more sanguine about astrology and critical of Pico's attack.
Renaissance and Early Modern
Renaissance scholars commonly practised astrology. Gerolamo Cardano cast the horoscope of king Edward VI of England, while John Dee was the personal astrologer to queen Elizabeth I of England. Catherine de Medici paid Michael Nostradamus in 1566 to verify the prediction of the death of her husband, king Henry II of France made by her astrologer Lucus Gauricus. Major astronomers who practised as court astrologers included Tycho Brahe in the royal court of Denmark, Johannes Kepler to the Habsburgs, Galileo Galilei to the Medici, and Giordano Bruno who was burnt at the stake for heresy in Rome in 1600. The distinction between astrology and astronomy was not entirely clear. Advances in astronomy were often motivated by the desire to improve the accuracy of astrology.
Ephemerides with complex astrological calculations, and almanacs interpreting celestial events for use in medicine and for choosing times to plant crops, were popular in Elizabethan England. In 1597, the English mathematician and physician Thomas Hood made a set of paper instruments that used revolving overlays to help students work out relationships between fixed stars or constellations, the midheaven, and the twelve astrological houses. Hood's instruments also illustrated, for pedagogical purposes, the supposed relationships between the signs of the zodiac, the planets, and the parts of the human body adherents believed were governed by the planets and signs. While Hood's presentation was innovative, his astrological information was largely standard and was taken from Gerard Mercator's astrological disc made in 1551, or a source used by Mercator.
Enlightenment period and onwards
During the Enlightenment, intellectual sympathy for astrology fell away, leaving only a popular following supported by cheap almanacs. One English almanac compiler, Richard Saunders, followed the spirit of the age by printing a derisive Discourse on the Invalidity of Astrology, while in France Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire of 1697 stated that the subject was puerile. The Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift ridiculed the Whig political astrologer John Partridge.
Astrology saw a popular revival starting in the 19th century, as part of a general revival of spiritualism and—later, New Age philosophy, and through the influence of mass media such as newspaper horoscopes. Early in the 20th century the psychiatrist Carl Jung developed some concepts concerning astrology, which led to the development of psychological astrology.
Principles and practice
Advocates have defined astrology as a symbolic language, an art form, a science, and a method of divination. Though most cultural astrology systems share common roots in ancient philosophies that influenced each other, many use methods that differ from those in the West. These include Hindu astrology (also known as "Indian astrology" and in modern times referred to as "Vedic astrology") and Chinese astrology, both of which have influenced the world's cultural history.
Western
Western astrology is a form of divination based on the construction of a horoscope for an exact moment, such as a person's birth. It uses the tropical zodiac, which is aligned to the equinoctial points.
Western astrology is founded on the movements and relative positions of celestial bodies such as the Sun, Moon and planets, which are analysed by their movement through signs of the zodiac (twelve spatial divisions of the ecliptic) and by their aspects (based on geometric angles) relative to one another. They are also considered by their placement in houses (twelve spatial divisions of the sky). Astrology's modern representation in western popular media is usually reduced to sun sign astrology, which considers only the zodiac sign of the Sun at an individual's date of birth, and represents only 1/12 of the total chart.
The horoscope visually expresses the set of relationships for the time and place of the chosen event. These relationships are between the seven 'planets', signifying tendencies such as war and love; the twelve signs of the zodiac; and the twelve houses. Each planet is in a particular sign and a particular house at the chosen time, when observed from the chosen place, creating two kinds of relationship. A third kind is the aspect of each planet to every other planet, where for example two planets 120° apart (in 'trine') are in a harmonious relationship, but two planets 90° apart ('square') are in a conflicted relationship. Together these relationships and their interpretations supposedly form "...the language of the heavens speaking to learned men."
Along with tarot divination, astrology is one of the core studies of Western esotericism, and as such has influenced systems of magical belief not only among Western esotericists and Hermeticists, but also belief systems such as Wicca that have borrowed from or been influenced by the Western esoteric tradition. Tanya Luhrmann has said that "all magicians know something about astrology," and refers to a table of correspondences in Starhawk's The Spiral Dance, organised by planet, as an example of the astrological lore studied by magicians.
Hindu
The earliest Vedic text on astronomy is the Vedanga Jyotisha; Vedic thought later came to include astrology as well.
Hindu natal astrology originated with Hellenistic astrology by the 3rd century BCE, though incorporating the Hindu lunar mansions. The names of the signs (e.g. Greek 'Krios' for Aries, Hindi 'Kriya'), the planets (e.g. Greek 'Helios' for Sun, astrological Hindi 'Heli'), and astrological terms (e.g. Greek 'apoklima' and 'sunaphe' for declination and planetary conjunction, Hindi 'apoklima' and 'sunapha' respectively) in Varaha Mihira's texts are considered conclusive evidence of a Greek origin for Hindu astrology. The Indian techniques may also have been augmented with some of the Babylonian techniques.
Chinese and East Asian
Chinese astrology has a close relation with Chinese philosophy (theory of the three harmonies: heaven, earth and man) and uses concepts such as yin and yang, the Five phases, the 10 Celestial stems, the 12 Earthly Branches, and shichen (時辰 a form of timekeeping used for religious purposes). The early use of Chinese astrology was mainly confined to political astrology, the observation of unusual phenomena, identification of portents and the selection of auspicious days for events and decisions.
The constellations of the Zodiac of western Asia and Europe were not used; instead the sky is divided into Three Enclosures (三垣 sān yuán), and Twenty-Eight Mansions (二十八宿 èrshíbā xiù) in twelve Ci (十二次). The Chinese zodiac of twelve animal signs is said to represent twelve different types of personality. It is based on cycles of years, lunar months, and two-hour periods of the day (the shichen). The zodiac traditionally begins with the sign of the Rat, and the cycle proceeds through 11 other animals signs: the Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig. Complex systems of predicting fate and destiny based on one's birthday, birth season, and birth hours, such as ziping and Zi Wei Dou Shu () are still used regularly in modern-day Chinese astrology. They do not rely on direct observations of the stars.
The Korean zodiac is identical to the Chinese one. The Vietnamese zodiac is almost identical to Chinese zodiac except the second animal is the Water Buffalo instead of the Ox, and the fourth animal is the Cat instead of the Rabbit. The Japanese have since 1873 celebrated the beginning of the new year on 1 January as per the Gregorian calendar. The Thai zodiac begins, not at Chinese New Year, but either on the first day of fifth month in the Thai lunar calendar, or during the Songkran festival (now celebrated every 13–15 April), depending on the purpose of the use.
Theological viewpoints
Ancient
St. Augustine (354430) believed that the determinism of astrology conflicted with the Christian doctrines of man's free will and responsibility, and God not being the cause of evil, but he also grounded his opposition philosophically, citing the failure of astrology to explain twins who behave differently although conceived at the same moment and born at approximately the same time.
Medieval
Some of the practices of astrology were contested on theological grounds by medieval Muslim astronomers such as Al-Farabi (Alpharabius), Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) and Avicenna. They said that the methods of astrologers conflicted with orthodox religious views of Islamic scholars, by suggesting that the Will of God can be known and predicted. For example, Avicenna's 'Refutation against astrology', Risāla fī ibṭāl aḥkām al-nojūm, argues against the practice of astrology while supporting the principle that planets may act as agents of divine causation. Avicenna considered that the movement of the planets influenced life on earth in a deterministic way, but argued against the possibility of determining the exact influence of the stars. Essentially, Avicenna did not deny the core dogma of astrology, but denied our ability to understand it to the extent that precise and fatalistic predictions could be made from it. Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya (1292–1350), in his Miftah Dar al-SaCadah, also used physical arguments in astronomy to question the practice of judicial astrology. He recognised that the stars are much larger than the planets, and argued: And if you astrologers answer that it is precisely because of this distance and smallness that their influences are negligible, then why is it that you claim a great influence for the smallest heavenly body, Mercury? Why is it that you have given an influence to al-Ra's and al-Dhanab, which are two imaginary points [ascending and descending nodes]?
Modern
The Catechism of the Catholic Church maintains that divination, including predictive astrology, is incompatible with modern Catholic beliefs such as free will:
Scientific analysis and criticism
The scientific community rejects astrology as having no explanatory power for describing the universe, and considers it a pseudoscience. Scientific testing of astrology has been conducted, and no evidence has been found to support any of the premises or purported effects outlined in astrological traditions. There is no proposed mechanism of action by which the positions and motions of stars and planets could affect people and events on Earth that does not contradict basic and well understood aspects of biology and physics. Those who have faith in astrology have been characterised by scientists including Bart J. Bok as doing so "...in spite of the fact that there is no verified scientific basis for their beliefs, and indeed that there is strong evidence to the contrary".
Confirmation bias is a form of cognitive bias, a psychological factor that contributes to belief in astrology. Astrology believers tend to selectively remember predictions that turn out to be true, and do not remember those that turn out false. Another, separate, form of confirmation bias also plays a role, where believers often fail to distinguish between messages that demonstrate special ability and those that do not. Thus there are two distinct forms of confirmation bias that are under study with respect to astrological belief.
Demarcation
Under the criterion of falsifiability, first proposed by the philosopher of science Karl Popper, astrology is a pseudoscience. Popper regarded astrology as "pseudo-empirical" in that "it appeals to observation and experiment," but "nevertheless does not come up to scientific standards." In contrast to scientific disciplines, astrology has not responded to falsification through experiment.
In contrast to Popper, the philosopher Thomas Kuhn argued that it was not lack of falsifiability that makes astrology unscientific, but rather that the process and concepts of astrology are non-empirical. Kuhn thought that, though astrologers had, historically, made predictions that categorically failed, this in itself does not make astrology unscientific, nor do attempts by astrologers to explain away failures by claiming that creating a horoscope is very difficult. Rather, in Kuhn's eyes, astrology is not science because it was always more akin to medieval medicine; astrologers followed a sequence of rules and guidelines for a seemingly necessary field with known shortcomings, but they did no research because the fields are not amenable to research, and so "they had no puzzles to solve and therefore no science to practise." While an astronomer could correct for failure, an astrologer could not. An astrologer could only explain away failure but could not revise the astrological hypothesis in a meaningful way. As such, to Kuhn, even if the stars could influence the path of humans through life astrology is not scientific.
The philosopher Paul Thagard asserts that astrology cannot be regarded as falsified in this sense until it has been replaced with a successor. In the case of predicting behaviour, psychology is the alternative. To Thagard a further criterion of demarcation of science from pseudoscience is that the state-of-the-art must progress and that the community of researchers should be attempting to compare the current theory to alternatives, and not be "selective in considering confirmations and disconfirmations." Progress is defined here as explaining new phenomena and solving existing problems, yet astrology has failed to progress having only changed little in nearly 2000 years. To Thagard, astrologers are acting as though engaged in normal science believing that the foundations of astrology were well established despite the "many unsolved problems", and in the face of better alternative theories (psychology). For these reasons Thagard views astrology as pseudoscience.
For the philosopher Edward W. James, astrology is irrational not because of the numerous problems with mechanisms and falsification due to experiments, but because an analysis of the astrological literature shows that it is infused with fallacious logic and poor reasoning.
Effectiveness
Astrology has not demonstrated its effectiveness in controlled studies and has no scientific validity. Where it has made falsifiable predictions under controlled conditions, they have been falsified. One famous experiment included 28 astrologers who were asked to match over a hundred natal charts to psychological profiles generated by the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) questionnaire. The double-blind experimental protocol used in this study was agreed upon by a group of physicists and a group of astrologers nominated by the National Council for Geocosmic Research, who advised the experimenters, helped ensure that the test was fair and helped draw the central proposition of natal astrology to be tested. They also chose 26 out of the 28 astrologers for the tests (two more volunteered afterwards). The study, published in Nature in 1985, found that predictions based on natal astrology were no better than chance, and that the testing "...clearly refutes the astrological hypothesis."
In 1955, the astrologer and psychologist Michel Gauquelin stated that though he had failed to find evidence that supported indicators like zodiacal signs and planetary aspects in astrology, he did find positive correlations between the diurnal positions of some planets and success in professions that astrology traditionally associates with those planets. The best-known of Gauquelin's findings is based on the positions of Mars in the natal charts of successful athletes and became known as the Mars effect. A study conducted by seven French scientists attempted to replicate the claim, but found no statistical evidence. They attributed the effect to selective bias on Gauquelin's part, accusing him of attempting to persuade them to add or delete names from their study.
Geoffrey Dean has suggested that the effect may be caused by self-reporting of birth dates by parents rather than any issue with the study by Gauquelin. The suggestion is that a small subset of the parents may have had changed birth times to be consistent with better astrological charts for a related profession. The number of births under astrologically undesirable conditions was also lower, indicating that parents choose dates and times to suit their beliefs. The sample group was taken from a time where belief in astrology was more common. Gauquelin had failed to find the Mars effect in more recent populations, where a nurse or doctor recorded the birth information.
Dean, a scientist and former astrologer, and psychologist Ivan Kelly conducted a large scale scientific test that involved more than one hundred cognitive, behavioural, physical, and other variables—but found no support for astrology. Furthermore, a meta-analysis pooled 40 studies that involved 700 astrologers and over 1,000 birth charts. Ten of the tests—which involved 300 participants—had the astrologers pick the correct chart interpretation out of a number of others that were not the astrologically correct chart interpretation (usually three to five others). When date and other obvious clues were removed, no significant results suggested there was any preferred chart.
Lack of mechanisms and consistency
Testing the validity of astrology can be difficult, because there is no consensus amongst astrologers as to what astrology is or what it can predict. Most professional astrologers are paid to predict the future or describe a person's personality and life, but most horoscopes only make vague untestable statements that can apply to almost anyone.
Many astrologers claim that astrology is scientific, while some have proposed conventional causal agents such as electromagnetism and gravity. Scientists reject these mechanisms as implausible since, for example, the magnetic field, when measured from Earth, of a large but distant planet such as Jupiter is far smaller than that produced by ordinary household appliances.
Western astrology has taken the earth's axial precession (also called precession of the equinoxes) into account since Ptolemy's Almagest, so the "first point of Aries", the start of the astrological year, continually moves against the background of the stars. The tropical zodiac has no connection to the stars, and as long as no claims are made that the constellations themselves are in the associated sign, astrologers avoid the concept that precession seemingly moves the constellations. Charpak and Broch, noting this, referred to astrology based on the tropical zodiac as being "...empty boxes that have nothing to do with anything and are devoid of any consistency or correspondence with the stars." Sole use of the tropical zodiac is inconsistent with references made, by the same astrologers, to the Age of Aquarius, which depends on when the vernal point enters the constellation of Aquarius.
Astrologers usually have only a small knowledge of astronomy, and often do not take into account basic principles—such as the precession of the equinoxes, which changes the position of the sun with time. They commented on the example of Élizabeth Teissier, who claimed that, "The sun ends up in the same place in the sky on the same date each year", as the basis for claims that two people with the same birthday, but a number of years apart, should be under the same planetary influence. Charpak and Broch noted that, "There is a difference of about twenty-two thousand miles between Earth's location on any specific date in two successive years", and that thus they should not be under the same influence according to astrology. Over a 40-year period there would be a difference greater than 780,000 miles.
Cultural impact
Western politics and society
In the West, political leaders have sometimes consulted astrologers. For example, the British intelligence agency MI5 employed Louis de Wohl as an astrologer after claims surfaced that Adolf Hitler used astrology to time his actions. The War Office was "...interested to know what Hitler's own astrologers would be telling him from week to week." In fact, de Wohl's predictions were so inaccurate that he was soon labelled a "complete charlatan," and later evidence showed that Hitler considered astrology "complete nonsense." After John Hinckley's attempted assassination of US President Ronald Reagan, first lady Nancy Reagan commissioned astrologer Joan Quigley to act as the secret White House astrologer. However, Quigley's role ended in 1988 when it became public through the memoirs of former chief of staff, Donald Regan.
There was a boom in interest in astrology in the late 1960s. The sociologist Marcello Truzzi described three levels of involvement of "Astrology-believers" to account for its revived popularity in the face of scientific discrediting. He found that most astrology-believers did not claim it was a scientific explanation with predictive power. Instead, those superficially involved, knowing "next to nothing" about astrology's 'mechanics', read newspaper astrology columns, and could benefit from "tension-management of anxieties" and "a cognitive belief-system that transcends science." Those at the second level usually had their horoscopes cast and sought advice and predictions. They were much younger than those at the first level, and could benefit from knowledge of the language of astrology and the resulting ability to belong to a coherent and exclusive group. Those at the third level were highly involved and usually cast horoscopes for themselves. Astrology provided this small minority of astrology-believers with a "meaningful view of their universe and [gave] them an understanding of their place in it." This third group took astrology seriously, possibly as a sacred canopy, whereas the other two groups took it playfully and irreverently.
In 1953, the sociologist Theodor W. Adorno conducted a study of the astrology column of a Los Angeles newspaper as part of a project examining mass culture in capitalist society. Adorno believed that popular astrology, as a device, invariably leads to statements that encouraged conformity—and that astrologers who go against conformity, by discouraging performance at work etc., risk losing their jobs. Adorno concluded that astrology is a large-scale manifestation of systematic irrationalism, where individuals are subtly led—through flattery and vague generalisations—to believe that the author of the column is addressing them directly. Adorno drew a parallel with the phrase opium of the people, by Karl Marx, by commenting, "occultism is the metaphysic of the dopes."
A 2005 Gallup poll and a 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center reported that 25% of US adults believe in astrology. According to data released in the National Science Foundation's 2014 Science and Engineering Indicators study, "Fewer Americans rejected astrology in 2012 than in recent years." The NSF study noted that in 2012, "slightly more than half of Americans said that astrology was 'not at all scientific,' whereas nearly two-thirds gave this response in 2010. The comparable percentage has not been this low since 1983."
India and Japan
In India, there is a long-established and widespread belief in astrology. It is commonly used for daily life, particularly in matters concerning marriage and career, and makes extensive use of electional, horary and karmic astrology. Indian politics have also been influenced by astrology. It is still considered a branch of the Vedanga. In 2001, Indian scientists and politicians debated and critiqued a proposal to use state money to fund research into astrology, resulting in permission for Indian universities to offer courses in Vedic astrology.
In February 2011, the Bombay High Court reaffirmed astrology's standing in India when it dismissed a case that challenged its status as a science.
In Japan, strong belief in astrology has led to dramatic changes in the fertility rate and the number of abortions in the years of Fire Horse. Adherents believe that women born in hinoeuma years are unmarriageable and bring bad luck to their father or husband. In 1966, the number of babies born in Japan dropped by over 25% as parents tried to avoid the stigma of having a daughter born in the hinoeuma year.
Literature and music
The fourteenth-century English poets John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer both referred to astrology in their works, including Gower's Confessio Amantis and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer commented explicitly on astrology in his Treatise on the Astrolabe, demonstrating personal knowledge of one area, judicial astrology, with an account of how to find the ascendant or rising sign.
In the fifteenth century, references to astrology, such as with similes, became "a matter of course" in English literature.
In the sixteenth century, John Lyly's 1597 play, The Woman in the Moon, is wholly motivated by astrology, while Christopher Marlowe makes astrological references in his plays Doctor Faustus and Tamburlaine (both c. 1590), and Sir Philip Sidney refers to astrology at least four times in his romance The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (c. 1580). Edmund Spenser uses astrology both decoratively and causally in his poetry, revealing "...unmistakably an abiding interest in the art, an interest shared by a large number of his contemporaries." George Chapman's play, Byron's Conspiracy (1608), similarly uses astrology as a causal mechanism in the drama. William Shakespeare's attitude towards astrology is unclear, with contradictory references in plays including King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, and Richard II. Shakespeare was familiar with astrology and made use of his knowledge of astrology in nearly every play he wrote, assuming a basic familiarity with the subject in his commercial audience. Outside theatre, the physician and mystic Robert Fludd practised astrology, as did the quack doctor Simon Forman. In Elizabethan England, "The usual feeling about astrology ... [was] that it is the most useful of the sciences."
In seventeenth century Spain, Lope de Vega, with a detailed knowledge of astronomy, wrote plays that ridicule astrology. In his pastoral romance La Arcadia (1598), it leads to absurdity; in his novela Guzman el Bravo (1624), he concludes that the stars were made for man, not man for the stars. Calderón de la Barca wrote the 1641 comedy Astrologo Fingido (The Pretended Astrologer); the plot was borrowed by the French playwright Thomas Corneille for his 1651 comedy Feint Astrologue.
The most famous piece of music influenced by astrology is the orchestral suite The Planets. Written by the British composer Gustav Holst (1874–1934), and first performed in 1918, the framework of The Planets is based upon the astrological symbolism of the planets. Each of the seven movements of the suite is based upon a different planet, though the movements are not in the order of the planets from the Sun. The composer Colin Matthews wrote an eighth movement entitled Pluto, the Renewer, first performed in 2000. In 1937, another British composer, Constant Lambert, wrote a ballet on astrological themes, called Horoscope. In 1974, the New Zealand composer Edwin Carr wrote The Twelve Signs: An Astrological Entertainment for orchestra without strings. Camille Paglia acknowledges astrology as an influence on her work of literary criticism Sexual Personae (1990).
Astrology features strongly in Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries, recipient of the 2013 Man Booker Prize.
See also
Astrology and science
Astrology software
Barnum effect
List of astrological traditions, types, and systems
List of topics characterised as pseudoscience
Jewish astrology
Scientific skepticism
Notes
References
Sources
External links
Digital International Astrology Library (ancient astrological works)
Biblioastrology (www.biblioastrology.com) (specialised bibliography)
Paris Observatory |
2123 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abyssinia%20%28disambiguation%29 | Abyssinia (disambiguation) | Abyssinia is a historical name for the Ethiopian Empire
Abyssinia may also refer to:
Languages
Ethiopian Semitic languages, mainly found in the Amhara Region and Tigray Region of Ethiopia
People
Abyssinian people, the Amhara and the Tigrayans
Places
Abyssinia Lines, a neighbourhood of Jamshed Town in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan
Apostolic Vicariate of Abyssinia, the former Eastern Catholic missionary
Arts and media
Abyssinia, a theatrical show by Bert Williams
Abyssinia (musical), a show first staged in 1987
"Abyssinia", a song by the Patti Smith Group on Radio Ethiopia
"Abyssinia, Henry", an episode of the television series M*A*S*H
Vessels
SS Abyssinia, an 1870 Canadian Pacific steamship
HMS Abyssinia (1870), a British armoured ship
Other uses
Abyssinia (battle honour)
Abyssinia Creek, The Pilbara, Western Australia
See also
Abyssinian (disambiguation)
Habash (disambiguation)
Habishi (disambiguation)
History of Ethiopia |
2125 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic%20extension | Algebraic extension | In abstract algebra, a field extension L/K is called algebraic if every element of L is algebraic over K, i.e. if every element of L is a root of some non-zero polynomial with coefficients in K. Field extensions that are not algebraic, i.e. which contain transcendental elements, are called transcendental.
For example, the field extension R/Q, that is the field of real numbers as an extension of the field of rational numbers, is transcendental, while the field extensions C/R and Q()/Q are algebraic, where C is the field of complex numbers.
All transcendental extensions are of infinite degree. This in turn implies that all finite extensions are algebraic. The converse is not true however: there are infinite extensions which are algebraic. For instance, the field of all algebraic numbers is an infinite algebraic extension of the rational numbers.
Let E be an extension field of K, and a ∈ E. If a is algebraic over K, then K(a), the set of all polynomials in a with coefficients in K, is not only a ring but a field: K(a) is an algebraic extension of K which has finite degree over K. The converse is not true. Q[π] and Q[e] are fields but π and e are transcendental over Q.
An algebraically closed field F has no proper algebraic extensions, that is, no algebraic extensions E with F < E. An example is the field of complex numbers. Every field has an algebraic extension which is algebraically closed (called its algebraic closure), but proving this in general requires some form of the axiom of choice.
An extension L/K is algebraic if and only if every sub K-algebra of L is a field.
Properties
The class of algebraic extensions forms a distinguished class of field extensions, that is, the following three properties hold:
If E is an algebraic extension of F and F is an algebraic extension of K then E is an algebraic extension of K.
If E and F are algebraic extensions of K in a common overfield C, then the compositum EF is an algebraic extension of K.
If E is an algebraic extension of F and E > K > F then E is an algebraic extension of K.
These finitary results can be generalized using transfinite induction:
This fact, together with Zorn's lemma (applied to an appropriately chosen poset), establishes the existence of algebraic closures.
Generalizations
Model theory generalizes the notion of algebraic extension to arbitrary theories: an embedding of M into N is called an algebraic extension if for every x in N there is a formula p with parameters in M, such that p(x) is true and the set
is finite. It turns out that applying this definition to the theory of fields gives the usual definition of algebraic extension. The Galois group of N over M can again be defined as the group of automorphisms, and it turns out that most of the theory of Galois groups can be developed for the general case.
See also
Integral element
Lüroth's theorem
Galois extension
Separable extension
Normal extension
Notes
References
Field extensions |
2126 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ani%20DiFranco | Ani DiFranco | Angela Maria "Ani" DiFranco (; born September 23, 1970) is an American singer-songwriter. She has released more than 20 albums. DiFranco's music has been classified as folk rock and alternative rock, although it has additional influences from punk, funk, hip hop and jazz. She has released all her albums on her own record label, Righteous Babe.
DiFranco supports many social and political movements by performing benefit concerts, appearing on benefit albums and speaking at rallies. Through the Righteous Babe Foundation, DiFranco has backed grassroots cultural and political organizations supporting causes including abortion rights and LGBT visibility. She counts American folk singer and songwriter Pete Seeger among her mentors.
DiFranco released a memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, on May 7, 2019, via Viking Books and made The New York Times Best Seller List.
Early life and education
DiFranco was born in Buffalo, New York, on September 23, 1970, the daughter of Elizabeth (Ross) and Dante Americo DiFranco, who had met while attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her father was of Italian descent, and her mother was from Montreal. DiFranco started playing Beatles covers at local bars and busking with her guitar teacher, Michael Meldrum, at the age of nine. By 14 she was writing her own songs. She played them at bars and coffee houses throughout her teens. DiFranco graduated from the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts high school at 16 and began attending classes at Buffalo State College. She was living by herself, having moved out of her mother's apartment after she became an emancipated minor when she was 15.
Career
DiFranco started her own record company, Righteous Babe Records, in 1989 at age 19. She released her self-titled debut album in the winter of 1990, shortly after relocating to New York City. There, she took poetry classes at The New School, where she met poet Sekou Sundiata, who was to become a friend and mentor. She toured steadily for the next 15 years, pausing only to record albums. Appearances at Canadian folk festivals and increasingly larger venues in the U.S. reflected her increasing popularity on the North American folk and roots scene. Throughout the early and mid-1990s DiFranco toured solo and also as a duo with Canadian drummer Andy Stochansky.
In September 1995, DiFranco participated in a concert at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland Ohio, inaugurating the opening of the Woody Guthrie Archives in New York City. She later released a CD on Righteous Babe of the concert Til We Outnumber Em featuring artists such as DiFranco, Billy Bragg, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Arlo Guthrie, Indigo Girls, Dave Pirner, Tim Robbins, and Bruce Springsteen with 100 percent of proceeds going to the Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum educational department.
In 1996, bassist Sara Lee joined the touring group, whose live rapport is showcased on the 1997 album Living in Clip. DiFranco would later release Lee's solo album Make It Beautiful on Righteous Babe. In 1998, Stochansky left to pursue a solo career as a singer-songwriter. A new touring ensemble consisting of Jason Mercer on bass, Julie Wolf on keyboards, and Daren Hahn on drums, augmented at times by a horn section, accompanied DiFranco on tour between 1998 and 2002.
The 1990s were a period of heightened exposure for DiFranco, as she continued playing ever larger venues around the world and attracted international attention of the press, including cover stories in Spin, Ms., and Magnet, among others, as well as appearances on MTV and VH1. Her playfully ironic cover of the Bacharach/David song "Wishin' and Hopin'" appeared under the opening titles of the film My Best Friend's Wedding.
She guest starred on a 1998 episode of the Fox sitcom King of the Hill, as the voice of Peggy's feminist guitar teacher, Emily.
Beginning in 1999, Righteous Babe Records began releasing albums by other artists including Sara Lee, Sekou Sundiata, Arto Lindsay, Bitch and Animal, That One Guy, Utah Phillips, Hamell on Trial, Andrew Bird, Kurt Swinghammer, Buddy Wakefield, Anaïs Mitchell and Nona Hendryx.
On September 11, 2001, DiFranco was in Manhattan and later penned the poem "Self Evident" about the experience. The poem was featured in the book It's a Free Country: Personal Freedom in America After September 11. The poem's title also became the name of DiFranco's first book of poetry released exclusively in Italy by Minimum Fax. It was later also featured in Verses, a book of her poetry published in the U.S. by Seven Stories press. DiFranco has written and performed many spoken-word pieces throughout her career and was showcased as a poet on the HBO series Def Poetry in 2005.
Since her 2005 release Knuckle Down (co-produced by Joe Henry) DiFranco's touring band and recordings have featured bass player Todd Sickafoose and in turns other musicians such as Allison Miller, Andy Borger, Herlin Riley, and Terence Higgins on drums and Mike Dillon on percussion and vibes.
On September 11, 2007, she released the first retrospective of her career, a two disc compilation entitled Canon and simultaneously a retrospective collection of poetry book Verses. On September 30, 2008, she released Red Letter Year.
In 2009, DiFranco appeared at Pete Seeger's 90th birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden, debuting her revamped version of the 1930s labor anthem "Which Side Are You On?" in a duet with Bruce Cockburn and also duetting with Kris Kristofferson on the folk classic "There's a Hole in the Bucket".
DiFranco released an album on January 17, 2012, ¿Which Side Are You On?. It includes collaborations with Pete Seeger, Ivan Neville, Cyril Neville, Skerik, Adam Levy, Righteous Babe recording artist Anaïs Mitchell, CC Adcock, and a host of New Orleans-based horn players known for their work in such outfits as Galactic, Bonerama, and Rebirth Brass Band.
In 2014, she released her eighteenth album, Allergic to Water. In 2017, she released her nineteenth, Binary.
On May 7, 2019, DiFranco released a memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, via Viking Books. It is described as a "coming-of-age story".
In 2021, DiFranco released the album Revolutionary Love which was largely inspired by Valarie Kaur's book See No Stranger.
Personal life
DiFranco came out as bisexual in her twenties, and has written songs about love and sex with women and men. She addressed the controversy about her sexuality in the song "In or Out" on the album Imperfectly (1992). In 1998, she married her sound engineer Andrew Gilchrist in a Unitarian Universalist service in Canada. DiFranco and Gilchrist divorced in 2003.
In 1990, she wrote "Lost Woman Song", which was inspired by her abortions at ages eighteen and twenty.
DiFranco's father died in the summer of 2004. In July 2005, DiFranco developed tendinitis and took a nine-month hiatus from touring. In January 2007 DiFranco gave birth to her first child, a daughter, at her Buffalo home. She married the child's father, Mike Napolitano, also her regular producer, in 2009. In an interview on September 13, 2012, DiFranco mentioned that she was pregnant with her second child. In April 2013, she gave birth to her second child, a son.
DiFranco has resided in the Bywater, New Orleans, neighborhood since 2008.
DiFranco has described herself as an atheist. On the subject of religion, DiFranco has stated:
Critical reception
DiFranco has been a critical success for much of her career, with a career album average of 72 on Metacritic. Living in Clip, DiFranco's 1998 double live album, is the only one to achieve gold record status to date. DiFranco was praised by The Buffalo News in 2006 as "Buffalo's leading lady of rock music".
Starting in 2003, DiFranco was nominated four consecutive times for Best Recording Package at the Grammy Awards, winning in 2004 for Evolve.
On July 21, 2006, DiFranco received the Woman of Courage Award at the National Organization for Women (NOW) Conference and Young Feminist Summit in Albany, New York. DiFranco was one of the first musicians to receive the award, given each year to a woman who has set herself apart by her contributions to the feminist movement.
In 2009, DiFranco received the Woody Guthrie Award for being a voice of positive social change.
Music
Style
DiFranco's guitar playing is often characterized by a signature staccato style, rapid fingerpicking and many alternate tunings. She delivers many of her lines in a speaking style notable for its rhythmic variation. Her lyrics, which often include alliteration, metaphor, word play and a more or less gentle irony, have also received praise for their sophistication.
Although DiFranco's music has been classified as both folk rock and alternative rock, she has reached across genres since her earliest albums incorporating first punk, then funk, hiphop, and jazz influences.
While primarily an acoustic guitarist she has used a variety of instruments and styles: brass instrumentation was prevalent in 1998's Little Plastic Castle; a simple walking bass in her 1997 cover of Hal David and Burt Bacharach's "Wishin' and Hopin' "; strings on the 1997 live album Living in Clip and 2004's Knuckle Down; and electronics and synthesizers in 1999's To the Teeth and 2006's Reprieve.
DiFranco has stated that "folk music is not an acoustic guitar – that's not where the heart of it is. I use the word 'folk' in reference to punk music and rap music. It's an attitude, it's an awareness of one's heritage, and it's a community. It's subcorporate music that gives voice to different communities and their struggle against authority."
Musical collaborations, cover versions, and samples
DiFranco has collaborated with a wide range of artists. In 1997, she appeared on Canadian songwriter Bruce Cockburn's Charity of Night album. In 1998, she produced fellow folksinger Dan Bern's album Fifty Eggs.
She developed a deep association with folksinger and social activist Utah Phillips throughout the mid-1990s, sharing her stage and her audience with the older musician until his death in 2008 and resulting in two collaborative albums: The Past Didn't Go Anywhere (1996) and Fellow Workers (1999, with liner notes by Howard Zinn). The Past is built around Phillips's storytelling, an important part of his art that had not previously been documented on recordings; on the album, DiFranco provides musical settings for his speaking voice. The followup, Fellow Workers, was recorded live in Daniel Lanois's Kingsway Studio in New Orleans and features Phillips fronting DiFranco's touring band for a collection of songs and stories.
Prince recorded two songs with DiFranco in 1999, "Providence" on her To the Teeth album, and "Eye Love U, But Eye Don't Trust U Anymore" on Prince's Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic album. Funk and soul jazz musician Maceo Parker and rapper Corey Parker have both appeared on DiFranco's albums and featured appearances by her on theirs. Parker and Di Franco toured together in 1999.
She has appeared on several compilations of the songs of Pete Seeger and frequented his Hudson Clearwater Revival Festival. In 2001, she appeared on Brazilian artist Lenine's album Falange Canibal. In 2002, her rendition of Greg Brown's "The Poet Game" appeared on Going Driftless: An Artist's Tribute to Greg Brown. Also in 2002 she recorded a duet with Jackie Chan of the Irving Gordon song "Unforgettable" for a record of unlikely collaborations, When Pigs Fly: Songs You Never Thought You'd Hear.
In 2005, she appeared on Dar Williams' record My Better Self, duetting on William's cover of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb". She performed with Cyndi Lauper on "Sisters of Avalon" a track from Lauper's 2005 The Body Acoustic album. In 2006, she produced Hamell on Trial's album Songs for Parents Who Enjoy Drugs. In 2008, she appeared on Todd Sickafoose's album Tiny Resisters. In 2010, she co-produced a track with Margaret Cho called "Captain Cameltoe" for the comedian's Cho Dependant album. In 2011, she appeared on Rob Wasserman's album Note of Hope, an exploration of the writings of Woody Guthrie with musical accompaniment, though the track in which she appeared, "Voice", was actually recorded 13 years earlier. Also in 2011 she duetted with Greg Dulli on the Twilight Singers record Dynamite Steps.
Other artists have covered and sampled DiFranco's work throughout the years. Her spoken word poem "Self Evident" was covered by Public Enemy founder Chuck D's group called Impossebulls. Alana Davis had some commercial success with DiFranco's song "32 Flavors".
Samples from the track "Coming Up" were used by DJ Spooky in his album Live Without Dead Time, produced for AdBusters Magazine in 2003.
In 2010, DiFranco played Persephone on Anaïs Mitchell's album Hadestown.
DiFranco was approached by Zoe Boekbinder to work on their Prison Music Project, an album of collaborations between incarcerated and formerly incarcerated writers and musicians on the outside. DiFranco co-produced the project with Boekbinder and co-wrote and performed "Nowhere but Barstow and Prison." The album Long Time Gone was released on Righteous Babe Records in 2020 after ten years in the making.
Lyrical content
Although much of DiFranco's material is autobiographical, it is often also strongly political. Many of her songs are concerned with contemporary social issues such as racism, sexism, sexual abuse, homophobia, reproductive rights, poverty, and war. In 2008, she donated a song to Aid Still Required's CD to assist with the restoration of the devastation done to Southeast Asia from the 2004 tsunami.
The combination of personal and political is partially responsible for DiFranco's early popularity among politically active college students, particularly those of the left wing, some of whom set up fan pages on the web to document DiFranco's career as early as 1994. DiFranco's rapid rise in popularity in the mid-1990s was fueled mostly by personal contact and word of mouth rather than mainstream media.
Label independence
Ani cites her anti-corporate ethos for the main reason she decided to start her own label. This has allowed her a considerable degree of creative freedom over the years, including, for example, providing all instrumentals and vocals and recording the album herself at her home on an analog 8-track reel to reel, and handling much of the artwork and packaging design for her 2004 album Educated Guess. She has referenced this independence from major labels in song more than once, including "The Million You Never Made" (Not a Pretty Girl), which discusses the act of turning down a lucrative contract, "The Next Big Thing" (Not So Soft), which describes an imagined meeting with a label head-hunter who evaluates the singer based on her looks, and "Napoleon" (Dilate), which sympathizes sarcastically with an unnamed friend who did sign with a label.
The business grew organically starting in 1990 with the first cassette tape. Connections were made when women in colleges started duplicating and sharing tapes. Offers to play at colleges started coming in and her popularity grew largely by word of mouth and through women's groups or organizations. Zango and Goldenrod, two music distributors specializing in women's music, started carrying DiFranco's music. In general they sold music to independent music stores and women's book stores. In 1995, Righteous Babe Records signed with Koch International for DiFranco's release of Not a Pretty Girl. Her records could then be found in large and small record stores alike.
DiFranco has occasionally joined with Prince in discussing publicly the problems associated with major record companies. Righteous Babe Records employs a number of people in her hometown of Buffalo. In a 1997 open letter to Ms. magazine she expressed displeasure that what she considers a way to ensure her own artistic freedom was seen by others solely in terms of its financial success.
Activism
From the earliest days of her career, Ani DiFranco has lent her voice and her name to a broad range of social movements, performing benefit concerts, appearing on benefit albums, speaking at rallies, and offering info table space to organizations at her concerts and the virtual equivalent on her website, among other methods and actions. In 1999, she created her own not-for-profit organization; as the Buffalo News has reported, "Through the Righteous Babe Foundation, DiFranco has backed various grassroots cultural and political organizations, supporting causes ranging from abortion rights to gay visibility."
During the first Gulf War, DiFranco participated in the anti-war movement. In early 1993 she played Pete Seeger's Clearwater Folk Festival for the first time. In 1998, she was a featured performer in the Dead Man Walking benefit concert series raising money for Sister Helen Prejean's "Not in Our Name" anti-death penalty organization. DiFranco's commitment to opposing the death penalty is longstanding; she has also been a long time supporter of the Southern Center for Human Rights.
During the 2000 U.S. presidential election, she actively supported and voted for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, though in an open letter she made clear that if she lived in a swing state, she would vote for Al Gore to prevent George W. Bush from being elected.
In 2004, DiFranco visited Burma in order to learn about the Burmese resistance movement and the country's fight for democracy. During her travels she met with then-detained resistance leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Her song "In The Way" was later featured on For the Lady, a benefit CD that donated all proceeds to the United States Campaign for Burma.
During the 2004 presidential primaries, she supported liberal, anti-war Democrat Dennis Kucinich. Congressman Kucinich appeared on stage with her at several concerts and she spoke positively about him from the stage at many more of her concerts. After the primary season ended, and John Kerry was the clear Democratic candidate, DiFranco launched a "Vote Dammit!" tour of swing states encouraging audience members to vote. In 2005, she lobbied Congress against the proliferation of nuclear power in general and the placement of nuclear waste dumps on Indian land in particular. In 2008, she again backed Kucinich in his bid for the presidency.
In 2002, Righteous Babe Records established the "Aiding Buffalo's Children" program in conjunction with members of the local community to raise funds for Buffalo's public school system. To kick off the program, DiFranco donated "a day's pay"—the performance fee from her concert that year at Shea's Performing Arts Center— to ABC and challenged her fans to do the same. Aiding Buffalo's Children has since been folded into the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo, contributing to a variety of charitable funds.
In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated DiFranco's newly adopted home town of New Orleans she collected donations from fans around the world through The Righteous Babe Store website for the Katrina Piano Fund, helping musicians replace instruments lost in the hurricane, raising over $47,500 for the cause.
In 2010, after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, she performed at the "For Our Coast" benefit concert joining Marianne Faithfull, C. C. Adcock and others at the Acadiana Center for the Arts Theater in Lafayette, raising money for Gulf Aid Acadiana, and the Gulf Aid show with Lenny Kravitz, Mos Def, and others at Mardi Gras World River City in New Orleans, both shows raising money to help protect the wetlands, clean up the coast and to assist the fishermen and their families affected by the spill.
DiFranco also sits on the board for The Roots of Music, founded by Rebirth Brass Band drummer Derrick Tabb. The organization provides free marching band instruction to children in the New Orleans area in addition to academic tutoring and mentoring.
DiFranco joined about 500,000 people at the March for Women's Lives in DC in April 2004. As an honored guest she marched in the front row for the three-mile route, along with Margaret Cho, Janeane Garofalo, Whoopi Goldberg, Gloria Steinem and others. Later in the day, Ani played a few songs on the main stage in front of the Capitol, including "Your Next Bold Move".
Scot Fisher, Righteous Babe label president and DiFranco's longtime manager, has been a longtime advocate of the preservation movement in Buffalo. In 1999, he and DiFranco purchased a decaying church on the verge of demolition in downtown Buffalo and began the lengthy process of restoring it. In 2006, the building opened its doors again, first briefly as "The Church" and then as "Babeville," housing two concert venues, the record label's business office, and Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center.
DiFranco is also a member of the Toronto-based charity Artists Against Racism for which she participated in a radio PSA.
Awards and nominations
Discography
Studio albums
Ani DiFranco (1990)
Not So Soft (1991)
Imperfectly (1992)
Puddle Dive (1993)
Out of Range (1994)
Not a Pretty Girl (1995)
Dilate (1996)
Little Plastic Castle (1998)
Up Up Up Up Up Up (1999)
To the Teeth (1999)
Revelling/Reckoning (2001)
Evolve (2003)
Educated Guess (2004)
Knuckle Down (2005)
Reprieve (2006)
Red Letter Year (2008)
¿Which Side Are You On? (2012)
Allergic to Water (2014)
Binary (2017)
Revolutionary Love (2021)
With Utah Phillips
The Past Didn't Go Anywhere (1996)
Fellow Workers (1999)
Live albums
1994 – An Acoustic Evening With
1994 – Women in (E)motion (German Release)
1997 – Living in Clip
2002 – So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter
2004 – Atlanta – 10.9.03 (Official Bootleg series #1)
2004 – Sacramento – 10.25.03 (Official Bootleg series #1)
2004 – Portland – 4.7.04 (Official Bootleg series #1)
2005 – Boston – 11.16.03 (Official Bootleg series #1)
2005 – Chicago – 1.17.04 (Official Bootleg series #1)
2005 – Madison – 1.25.04 (Official Bootleg series #1)
2005 – Rome – 11.15.04 (Official Bootleg series #1)
2006 – Carnegie Hall – 4.6.02 (Official Bootleg series No. 1 – available in stores)
2007 – Boston – 11.10.06 (Official Bootleg series #1)
2008 – Hamburg – 10.18.07 (Official Bootleg series #1)
2009 – Saratoga, CA – 9.18.06 (Official Bootleg series #1)
2009 – Chicago – 9.22.07 (Official Bootleg series #1)
2010 – Live at Bull Moose Music (Limited edition)
2012 – Buffalo – April 22, 2012 (Official Bootleg series #2)
2013 – London – October 29, 2008 (Official Bootleg series #2)
2014 – Ridgefield, CT – November 18, 2009 (Official Bootleg series #2)
2014 – Harrisburg, PA – January 23, 2008 (Official Bootleg series #2)
2015 – New York, NY – March 30, 1995 (Official Bootleg series #2)
2016 – Glenside, PA – November 11, 2012 (Official Bootleg series #2)
2016 – Melbourne, FL – January 19, 2016 (Official Bootleg series #2)
2018 – Charlottesville, VA 5.12.18 (Official Bootleg series #3)
2019 – Woodstock, NY 6-16-2019 (Official Bootleg series #3)
2020 – Keene, NH 11-16-2019 (Official Bootleg series #3)
EPs
1996 – More Joy, Less Shame
1999 – Little Plastic Remixes (limited distribution)
2000 – Swing Set
2016 – Play God
Videos
2002 – Render: Spanning Time with Ani DiFranco
2004 – Trust
2008 – Live at Babeville
Compilations
1993 – Like I Said: Songs 1990–91
1995 – Live from Mountain Stage, Vol. 8 – "Buildings & Bridges (live)"
1996 – Women's Work – "Cradle and All (live)"
1996 – Women: Live from Mountain Stage- "Egos Like Hairdos (live)"
1997 – Divine Divas: A World of Women's Voices- "Amazing Grace"
1998 – Live at World Café Vol. 6- "Buildings & Bridges (live)"
1998 – Modern Day Storytellers – "Buildings & Bridges"
1998 – Rare on Air Vol. 4 (KCRW) – "Gravel (live)"
1998 – Where Have All the Flowers Gone: Songs of Pete Seeger – "My Name is Lisa Kalvelage"
1998 – Women of Spirit- "Done Wrong"
1999 – Respect: A Century of Women in Music- "32 Flavors"
2000 – Badlands: A Tribute to Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska- "Used Cars"
2000 – Best of Hard Rock Café Live – "Little Plastic Castle (live)"
2000 – 'Til We Outnumber 'Em – Performed "Do Re Mi" solo and "Ramblin' Round" with Indigo Girls; Producer
2001 – Live @ The World Café Vol. 10 – "32 Flavors"
2001 – Best of Sessions at West 54th – "32 Flavors"
2002 – Gascd – "Your Next Bold Move"
2002 – Going Driftless: An Artist Tribute to Greg Brown- "The Poet Game"
2002 – When Pigs Fly: Songs You Never Thought You'd Hear – "Unforgettable" w/ Jackie Chan
2003 – Peace Not War – "Self Evident"
2004 – Peace Not War Vol. 2 – "Animal"
2004 – For the Lady – "In the Way"
2005 – Bonnaroo Music Festival 2004 (CD & DVD) – "Evolve (live)"
2006 – Music Is Hope- "Napoleon (remix)"
2006 – Dead Man Walking: Music from and Inspired by the Motion Picture – "Crime for Crime", "Fuel", "Up Up Up Up Up Up"
2007 – Canon
2007 – Sowing the Seed: The 10th Anniversary Appleseed Recordings – "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy"
2007 – Cool as Folk: Cambridge Folk Festival – "Cradle and All (live)"
2009 – Singing Through the Hard Times: A Utah Phillips Celebration – "The International"
2011 – Note of Hope: A Celebration of Woody Guthrie – "Voice"
2011 – Every Mother Counts – "Present/Infant" (Remix)
2012 – Occupy This Album – "Which Side Are You On? (a capella)"
2019 – No Walls Mixtape
2020 – Prison Music Project: Long Time Gone - "Nowhere but Barstow and Prison"
As producer
1998 — Dan Bern — Fifty Eggs
2010 — Margaret Cho — Cho Dependent — co-producer on "Captain Cameltoe"
2017 – Peter Mulvey – Are You Listening?
2020 – Prison Music Project: Long Time Gone
Other contributions
1989 – Demo tape (unreleased)
2001 – John Gorka – The Company You Keep – backing vocals on "Oh Abraham"
2006 – Jason Karaban – Doomed to Make Choices
2006 – Twilight Singers – Powder Burns – Featured on "Bonnie Brae," "Candy Cane Crawl," and "Powder Burns"
2008 – Dr. John – The City That Care Forgot – Contributed backing vocals to the title track.
2009 – Jason Karaban – Sobriety Kills
2010 – Anaïs Mitchell – Hadestown
2010 – Preservation Hall Jazz Band – Preservation: An Album to Benefit Preservation Hall & The Preservation Hall Music Outreach Program – Featured on "Freight Train"
2011 – Twilight Singers – Dynamite Steps – Featured on "Blackbird and the Fox"
2016 — Ryan Harvey — Featured on "Old Man Trump"
2019 — Rising Appalachia — Leylines — Featured on "Speak Out"
2021 — Pieta Brown — Featured on "We Are Not Machines"
Poetry
2004 – Self-evident: poesie e disegni
2007 – Verses
References
External links
The Righteous Babe homepage
Ani DiFranco at Rolling Stone
Ani DiFranco featured in award-winning documentary film
1970 births
20th-century atheists
21st-century atheists
Living people
American acoustic guitarists
American anti–death penalty activists
American atheists
American street performers
American contraltos
American women guitarists
American women singer-songwriters
American women rock singers
American folk guitarists
American folk rock musicians
American folk singers
American women composers
American people of Canadian descent
American people of Italian descent
21st-century American composers
Anti-corporate activists
Atheist feminists
Bisexual feminists
Bisexual musicians
Bisexual women
Buffalo State College alumni
Women bass guitarists
Feminist musicians
Grammy Award winners
LGBT composers
LGBT people from New York (state)
LGBT rights activists from the United States
LGBT singers from the United States
LGBT songwriters
Singer-songwriters from New York (state)
Musicians from Buffalo, New York
Righteous Babe Records artists
The New School alumni
American rock songwriters
Activists from New York (state)
Guitarists from New York (state)
21st-century American women singers
21st-century American singers
21st-century bass guitarists
American women activists
21st-century women composers
20th-century LGBT people
21st-century LGBT people |
2127 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arene%20%28disambiguation%29 | Arene (disambiguation) | An arene or aromatic hydrocarbon is a hydrocarbon with alternating double and single bonds between carbon atoms forming rings.Benzene is an example of arenes.
Arene may also refer to:
Arene (gastropod), a genus of marine snails in the family Areneidae
Arene (mythology), the wife of Aphareus and mother of Idas and Lynceus in Greek mythology
Arene, Elis, an ancient town in Elis, Greece, also known as Samiko
Jean Arènes (1898–1960), French botanist who described many new species of the genus Dombeya
Paul Arène (1843–1896), Provençal poet and French writer
See also
Arena (disambiguation) |
2129 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona%20Diamondbacks | Arizona Diamondbacks | The Arizona Diamondbacks (colloquially known as the D-backs) are an American professional baseball team based in Phoenix, Arizona. The Diamondbacks compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. The franchise was established as an expansion team and began play in 1998. The team plays its home games at Chase Field, formerly known as Bank One Ballpark. In its fourth season, Arizona won a World Series championship, defeating the New York Yankees in 2001 to become the fastest expansion team in major league history to win a championship.
From 1998 to 2021, the Diamondbacks have an overall record of 1,840–1,946 ().
Franchise history
On March 9, 1995, Phoenix was awarded an expansion franchise to begin play for the season. A $130 million franchise fee was paid to Major League Baseball and on January 16, 1997, the Diamondbacks were officially voted into the National League. The Diamondbacks' first major league game was played against the Colorado Rockies on March 31, 1998, at Bank One Ballpark. The ballpark was renamed Chase Field in 2005, as a result of Bank One Corporation's merger with JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Since their debut, the Diamondbacks have won five NL West division titles, one NL pennant, one Wild Card game, and the 2001 World Series.
Logos and uniforms
1998–2006
The Diamondbacks' original colors were purple, black, teal and copper. Their first logo was an italicized block letter "A" with a diamond pattern, and the crossbar represented by a snake's tongue. This period saw the Diamondbacks wear various uniform combinations.
At home, the Diamondbacks wore cream uniforms with purple pinstripes. The primary sleeved uniform, worn from 1998 to 2000, featured the full team name ("Diamond" and "Backs" stacked together) in front and chest numbers. The alternate sleeveless version contained the "A" logo on the right chest, and was paired with purple undershirts. Before the 2001 season, the sleeved uniform was changed to feature the "A" logo. In all three uniforms, player names were teal with purple trim, and numbers were purple with white with teal trim.
The Diamondbacks' primary road gray uniform also contained purple pinstripes. The first version featured "Arizona" in purple with white and teal trim along with black drop shadows. Chest numbers were also added. Player names were in purple with white trim, and numbers were teal with white and purple trim. In 2001, the uniform became sleeveless with black undershirts, and the lettering scheme was changed to purple with white, copper and black accents.
The alternate home purple uniform featured "Arizona" in teal with white and copper trim and black drop shadows. Originally the letters were rendered in teal with copper and white trim, but was changed to copper with teal and white trim after only one season. This set was worn until 2002.
The alternate road black uniform initially featured the "A" logo on the right chest, while letters were in purple with white trim and numbers in teal with white and purple trim. A zigzag pattern of teal, copper and purple was also featured on the sleeves. In 2001, the uniform was changed to feature "Arizona" in front. Letters were now purple with white and copper trim.
The Diamondbacks initially wore four different cap versions. The primary home cap is all-purple, while the road cap is black with a teal brim. They also wore a cream cap with purple brim, and a teal cap with purple brim. All designs featured the primary "A" logo. In 1999, the road cap became all-black and contained the alternate "D-snake" logo rendered in copper. Also, the teal and cream alternate caps were dropped.
The left sleeve of all four uniforms initially contained the snake logo with the full team name, but became only exclusive to the road black uniform after the 2003 season.
2006–2015
The franchise unveiled new uniforms and colors of Sedona red, Sonoran sand and black on November 8, 2006. The red shade is named for the sandstone canyon at Red Rock State Park near Sedona, while the beige (sand) shade is named for the Sonoran Desert. A sleeve patch was added featuring a lowercase "d" and "b" configured to look like a snake's head. The team also kept the "D" logo, but was slightly altered and put on an all red cap to be used as their game cap. They also kept the "A" logo with the new colors applied to it, with a solid black cap used as the alternate cap. A similar color scheme is currently used by the Arizona Coyotes of the National Hockey League.
The white home uniform featured "D-Backs" in red with sand and black trim. The road gray uniform featured "Arizona" in red with sand and black trim. Player names were red with black trim while numbers were black with red trim.
The alternate red uniform contained "D-Backs" in sand with red and black trim, with player names in sand with black trim and numbers in black with sand trim.
There were two versions of the alternate black uniform. One design has the alternate "A" logo on the right chest, while the other has "Arizona" written in red with black and sand trim. The latter was introduced in 2013 as a tribute to the victims of the Yarnell Hill Fire. On both uniforms, player names were sand with red trim, and numbers in red with sand trim.
2016–present
Prior to the 2016 season, the Diamondbacks reincorporated teal into its color scheme while keeping Sedona Red, Sonoran Sand and black. They also unveiled eight different uniform combinations, including two separate home white and away grey uniforms. One major difference between the two sets is that the non-teal uniforms feature a snakeskin pattern on the shoulders, while the teal-trimmed uniforms include a charcoal/grey snakeskin pattern on the back. Arizona also kept the throwback pinstriped sleeveless uniforms from their 2001 championship season for use during Thursday home games.
Starting with the 2020 season, the Diamondbacks made slight redesigns to their current uniforms. The snakeskin patterns were removed while the teal-trimmed grey uniforms were retired. The team also reverted to a standard grey uniform after wearing a darker shade on the previous set. Two home white uniforms remain in use: the primary Sedona Red and the alternate teal. They would also wear two black uniforms: one with the primary "A" logo on the left chest and the other with "Los D-Backs" trimmed in teal. Three cap designs were also unveiled: the primary "A" cap, the teal-trimmed "snake" cap (paired exclusively on the teal alternates), and the sand-trimmed "snake" cap (paired exclusively on the Sedona Red alternates). The Nike swoosh logo is also placed on the right chest near the shoulder.
Regular season home attendance
Radio and television
The primary television play-by-play voice for the team's first nine seasons of play was Thom Brennaman, who also broadcast baseball and college football games nationally for FOX Television. Brennaman was the TV announcer for the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds (along with his father Marty Brennaman) before being hired by Diamondbacks founder Jerry Colangelo in 1996, two years before the team would begin play.
In October 2006, Brennaman left the Diamondbacks to call games with his father for the Reds beginning in 2007, signing a four-year deal (his FOX duties remained unchanged).
The English language flagship radio station is KTAR. Greg Schulte is the regular radio play-by-play voice, a 25-year veteran of sports radio in the Phoenix market, also well known for his previous work on Phoenix Suns, Arizona Cardinals and Arizona State University (ASU) broadcasts.
Jeff Munn is a backup radio play-by-play announcer; he served as the regular public address announcer at Chase Field in the early days of the franchise. He is well known to many Phoenix area sports fans, having also served as the public address announcer for the Suns at America West Arena (now Phoenix Suns Arena) in the 1990s. He is also the play-by-play radio voice for ASU women's basketball.
On November 1, 2006, the team announced that the TV voice of the Milwaukee Brewers since 2002, Daron Sutton, would be hired as the Diamondbacks primary TV play-by-play voice. Sutton was signed to a five-year contract with a team option for three more years. Sutton is considered one of the best of the younger generation of baseball broadcasters. His signature chants include "let's get some runs" when the D-backs trail in late innings. Sutton's father is Hall of Fame pitcher and current Atlanta Braves broadcaster Don Sutton.
Former Diamondbacks and Chicago Cubs first baseman Mark Grace and former Major League knuckleball pitcher Tom Candiotti were the Diamondbacks primary color analysts for the 2006 and 2007 seasons. Former Diamondbacks third baseman Matt Williams also did color commentary on occasion, as did former Cardinals and NBC broadcast legend Joe Garagiola, Sr., a longtime Phoenix-area resident and father of Joe Garagiola, Jr., the first GM of the Diamondbacks (as head of the Maricopa County Sports Authority in the early 1990s, Garagiola, Jr. was one of the primary people involved in Phoenix obtaining a Major League Baseball franchise).
The Diamondbacks announced in July 2007 that for the 2008 season, all regionally broadcast Diamondbacks TV games would be shown exclusively on FOX Sports Arizona (now Bally Sports Arizona) and a few could possibly be shown on the national MLB on FOX telecasts. Bally Sports Arizona is currently seen in 2.8 million households in Arizona and New Mexico. The previous flagship station since the inaugural 1998 season was KTVK, a popular over-the-air independent station (and former longtime ABC affiliate) in Phoenix.
From 2009 to 2012, Mark Grace and Daron Sutton were tagged as the main broadcasters of the Diamondbacks with pre-game and postgame shows on FOX Sports Arizona, being hosted by former big-league closer Joe Borowski.
On June 21, 2012, Daron Sutton was suspended indefinitely, amid rumors of insubordination. Then on August 24, the team announced that Mark Grace had requested an indefinite leave of absence after being arrested for his second DUI in less than two years (Grace was later indicted on four DUI counts). For the remainder of the 2012 season, Sutton was replaced by Greg Schulte (Jeff Munn replaced Schulte on the radio broadcast) and Grace was replaced by Luis Gonzalez. At the end of the 2012 season, the team announced that neither Sutton nor Grace would be returning for the 2013 season.
On October 18, 2012, the team announced that Bob Brenly would be returning as a broadcaster to replace Grace and that he would be joined by then-ESPN personality Steve Berthiaume.
Spanish broadcasts
The flagship Spanish language radio station is KHOV-FM 105.1 with Oscar Soria, Rodrigo Lopez, and Richard Saenz.
Games were televised in Spanish on KPHE-LP—with Oscar Soria and Jerry Romo as the announcers—but this arrangement ended prior to the 2009 season due to the team switching fully to FOX Sports Arizona and the lack of carriage of KPHE-LP on the Cox cable system.
Achievements
Baseball Hall of Famers
Ford C. Frick Award recipients
Arizona Sports Hall of Fame
All-time leaders
Hitting
Games played: Luis Gonzalez (1999–2006) – 1,194
At bats: Luis Gonzalez – 4,488
Hits: Luis Gonzalez – 1,337
Batting average: Greg Colbrunn – .310
Runs: Luis Gonzalez – 780
Doubles: Luis Gonzalez – 310
Triples: Stephen Drew – 52
Home runs: Luis Gonzalez – 224
Runs batted in: Luis Gonzalez – 774
On-base percentage: Paul Goldschmidt* – .396
Walks: Luis Gonzalez – 650
Strikeouts: Chris Young* – 814
Slugging percentage: Paul Goldschmidt* – .538
Stolen bases: Tony Womack – 182
Pitching
ERA: Randy Johnson (1999–2004, 2007–08) – 2.83
Wins: Randy Johnson – 118
Losses: Randy Johnson/Brandon Webb (2003–10) – 62
Games: Brad Ziegler – 290
Saves: José Valverde – 98
Innings: Randy Johnson – 1630.1
Starts: Randy Johnson – 232
Strikeouts: Randy Johnson – 2,077
Complete games: Randy Johnson – 38
Shutouts: Randy Johnson – 14
WHIP: Curt Schilling – 1.04
all stats are current as of December 9, 2015 from the Arizona Diamondbacks website.
* signifies current Major League player
Championships
Retired numbers
No. 42 was retired throughout Major League Baseball in 1997 to honor Jackie Robinson.
Season record
Roster
Minor league affiliations
The Arizona Diamondbacks farm system consists of nine minor league affiliates.
See also
List of Arizona Diamondbacks team records
List of Arizona Diamondbacks broadcasters
List of managers and ownership of the Arizona Diamondbacks
References
External links
Major League Baseball teams
Baseball teams established in 1998
Cactus League
Sports in Phoenix, Arizona
Professional baseball teams in Arizona
1998 establishments in Arizona |
2130 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics | Aesthetics | Aesthetics, or esthetics (), is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed through judgments of taste.
Aesthetics covers both natural and artificial sources of aesthetic experience and judgment. It considers what happens in our minds when we engage with aesthetic objects or environments such as viewing visual art, listening to music, reading poetry, experiencing a play, or exploring nature. The philosophy of art specifically studies how artists imagine, create, and perform works of art, as well as how people use, enjoy, and criticize art. Aesthetics considers why people like some works of art and not others, as well as how art can affect moods or even our beliefs. Both aesthetics and the philosophy of art ask questions like "What is art?," "What is a work of art?," and "What makes good art?"
Scholars in the field have defined aesthetics as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature". In modern English, the term "aesthetic" can also refer to a set of principles underlying the works of a particular art movement or theory (one speaks, for example, of a Renaissance aesthetic).
Etymology
The word aesthetic is derived from the Greek (aisthetikos, meaning "aesthetic, sensitive, sentient, pertaining to sense perception"), which in turn was derived from αἰσθάνομαι (aisthanomai, meaning "I perceive, feel, sense" and related to (aisthēsis, "sensation"). Aesthetics in this central sense has been said to start with the series of articles on "The Pleasures of the Imagination" which the journalist Joseph Addison wrote in the early issues of the magazine The Spectator in 1712. The term "aesthetics" was appropriated and coined with new meaning by the German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten in his dissertation Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus ("Philosophical considerations of some matters pertaining the poem") in 1735; Baumgarten chose "aesthetics" because he wished to emphasize the experience of art as a means of knowing. Baumgarten's definition of aesthetics in the fragment Aesthetica (1750) is occasionally considered the first definition of modern aesthetics.
History
Aesthetics and the philosophy of art
Some separate aesthetics and the philosophy of art, claiming that the former is the study of beauty and taste while the latter is the study of works of art. But aesthetics typically considers questions of beauty as well as of art. It examines topics such as art works, aesthetic experience, and aesthetic judgments. Some consider aesthetics to be a synonym for the philosophy of art since Hegel, while others insist that there is a significant distinction between these closely related fields. In practice, aesthetic judgement refers to the sensory contemplation or appreciation of an object (not necessarily a work of art), while artistic judgement refers to the recognition, appreciation or criticism of art or an art work.
Philosophical aesthetics must not only speak about and judge art and art works but also define art. A common point of disagreement concerns whether art is independent of any moral or political purpose.
Aestheticians weigh a culturally contingent conception of art versus one that is purely theoretical. They study the varieties of art in relation to their physical, social, and culture environments. Aestheticians also use psychology to understand how people see, hear, imagine, think, learn, and act in relation to the materials and problems of art. Aesthetic psychology studies the creative process and the aesthetic experience.
Aesthetic judgment, universals and ethics
Aesthetic judgment
Aesthetics examines affective domain response to an object or phenomenon. Judgments of aesthetic value rely on the ability to discriminate at a sensory level. However, aesthetic judgments usually go beyond sensory discrimination.
For David Hume, delicacy of taste is not merely "the ability to detect all the ingredients in a composition", but also the sensitivity "to pains as well as pleasures, which escape the rest of mankind." Thus, the sensory discrimination is linked to capacity for pleasure.
For Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgment, 1790), "enjoyment" is the result when pleasure arises from sensation, but judging something to be "beautiful" has a third requirement: sensation must give rise to pleasure by engaging reflective contemplation. Judgments of beauty are sensory, emotional and intellectual all at once. Kant (1790) observed of a man "If he says that canary wine is agreeable he is quite content if someone else corrects his terms and reminds him to say instead: It is agreeable to me," because "Everyone has his own (sense of) taste". The case of "beauty" is different from mere "agreeableness" because, "If he proclaims something to be beautiful, then he requires the same liking from others; he then judges not just for himself but for everyone, and speaks of beauty as if it were a property of things."
Viewer interpretations of beauty may on occasion be observed to possess two concepts of value: aesthetics and taste. Aesthetics is the philosophical notion of beauty. Taste is a result of an education process and awareness of elite cultural values learned through exposure to mass culture. Bourdieu examined how the elite in society define the aesthetic values like taste and how varying levels of exposure to these values can result in variations by class, cultural background, and education. According to Kant, beauty is subjective and universal; thus certain things are beautiful to everyone. In the opinion of Władysław Tatarkiewicz, there are six conditions for the presentation of art: beauty, form, representation, reproduction of reality, artistic expression and innovation. However, one may not be able to pin down these qualities in a work of art.
The question whether there are facts about aesthetic judgments belongs to the branch of metaphilosophy known as meta-aesthetics.
Factors involved in aesthetic judgment
Aesthetic judgement is closely tied to disgust. Responses like disgust show that sensory detection is linked in instinctual ways to facial expressions including physiological responses like the gag reflex. Disgust is triggered largely by dissonance; as Darwin pointed out, seeing a stripe of soup in a man's beard is disgusting even though neither soup nor beards are themselves disgusting. Aesthetic judgments may be linked to emotions or, like emotions, partially embodied in physical reactions. For example, the awe inspired by a sublime landscape might physically manifest with an increased heart-rate or pupil dilation.
As seen, emotions are conformed to 'cultural' reactions, therefore aesthetics is always characterized by 'regional responses', as Francis Grose was the first to affirm in his 'Rules for Drawing Caricaturas: With an Essay on Comic Painting' (1788), published in W. Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, Bagster, London s.d. (1791? [1753]), pp. 1–24. Francis Grose can therefore be claimed to be the first critical 'aesthetic regionalist' in proclaiming the anti-universality of aesthetics in contrast to the perilous and always resurgent dictatorship of beauty. 'Aesthetic Regionalism' can thus be seen as a political statement and stance which vies against any universal notion of beauty to safeguard the counter-tradition of aesthetics related to what has been considered and dubbed un-beautiful just because one's culture does not contemplate it, e.g. E. Burke's sublime, what is usually defined as 'primitive' art, or un-harmonious, non-cathartic art, camp art, which 'beauty' posits and creates, dichotomously, as its opposite, without even the need of formal statements, but which will be 'perceived' as ugly.
Likewise, aesthetic judgments may be culturally conditioned to some extent. Victorians in Britain often saw African sculpture as ugly, but just a few decades later, Edwardian audiences saw the same sculptures as beautiful. Evaluations of beauty may well be linked to desirability, perhaps even to sexual desirability. Thus, judgments of aesthetic value can become linked to judgments of economic, political, or moral value. In a current context, a Lamborghini might be judged to be beautiful partly because it is desirable as a status symbol, or it may be judged to be repulsive partly because it signifies over-consumption and offends political or moral values.
The context of its presentation also affects the perception of artwork; artworks presented in a classical museum context are liked more and rated more interesting than when presented in a sterile laboratory context. While specific results depend heavily on the style of the presented artwork, overall, the effect of context proved to be more important for the perception of artwork than the effect of genuineness (whether the artwork was being presented as original or as a facsimile/copy).
Aesthetic judgments can often be very fine-grained and internally contradictory. Likewise aesthetic judgments seem often to be at least partly intellectual and interpretative. What a thing means or symbolizes is often what is being judged. Modern aestheticians have asserted that will and desire were almost dormant in aesthetic experience, yet preference and choice have seemed important aesthetics to some 20th-century thinkers. The point is already made by Hume, but see Mary Mothersill, "Beauty and the Critic's Judgment", in The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics, 2004. Thus aesthetic judgments might be seen to be based on the senses, emotions, intellectual opinions, will, desires, culture, preferences, values, subconscious behaviour, conscious decision, training, instinct, sociological institutions, or some complex combination of these, depending on exactly which theory is employed.
A third major topic in the study of aesthetic judgments is how they are unified across art forms. For instance, the source of a painting's beauty has a different character to that of beautiful music, suggesting their aesthetics differ in kind. The distinct inability of language to express aesthetic judgment and the role of Social construction further cloud this issue.
Aesthetic universals
The philosopher Denis Dutton identified six universal signatures in human aesthetics:
Expertise or virtuosity. Humans cultivate, recognize, and admire technical artistic skills.
Nonutilitarian pleasure. People enjoy art for art's sake, and do not demand that it keep them warm or put food on the table.
Style. Artistic objects and performances satisfy rules of composition that place them in a recognizable style.
Criticism. People make a point of judging, appreciating, and interpreting works of art.
Imitation. With a few important exceptions like abstract painting, works of art simulate experiences of the world.
Special focus. Art is set aside from ordinary life and made a dramatic focus of experience.
Artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn have indicated that there are too many exceptions to Dutton's categories. For example, Hirschhorn's installations deliberately eschew technical virtuosity. People can appreciate a Renaissance Madonna for aesthetic reasons, but such objects often had (and sometimes still have) specific devotional functions. "Rules of composition" that might be read into Duchamp's Fountain or John Cage's 4′33″ do not locate the works in a recognizable style (or certainly not a style recognizable at the time of the works' realization). Moreover, some of Dutton's categories seem too broad: a physicist might entertain hypothetical worlds in his/her imagination in the course of formulating a theory. Another problem is that Dutton's categories seek to universalize traditional European notions of aesthetics and art forgetting that, as André Malraux and others have pointed out, there have been large numbers of cultures in which such ideas (including the idea "art" itself) were non-existent.
Aesthetic ethics
Aesthetic ethics refers to the idea that human conduct and behaviour ought to be governed by that which is beautiful and attractive. John Dewey has pointed out that the unity of aesthetics and ethics is in fact reflected in our understanding of behaviour being "fair"—the word having a double meaning of attractive and morally acceptable. More recently, James Page has suggested that aesthetic ethics might be taken to form a philosophical rationale for peace education.
Beauty
Beauty is one of the main subjects of aesthetics, together with art and taste. Many of its definitions include the idea that an object is beautiful if perceiving it is accompanied by aesthetic pleasure. Among the examples of beautiful objects are landscapes, sunsets, humans and works of art. Beauty is a positive aesthetic value that contrasts with ugliness as its negative counterpart.
Different intuitions commonly associated with beauty and its nature are in conflict with each other, which poses certain difficulties for understanding it. On the one hand, beauty is ascribed to things as an objective, public feature. On the other hand, it seems to depend on the subjective, emotional response of the observer. It is said, for example, that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". It may be possible to reconcile these intuitions by affirming that it depends both on the objective features of the beautiful thing and the subjective response of the observer. One way to achieve this is to hold that an object is beautiful if it has the power to bring about certain aesthetic experiences in the perceiving subject. This is often combined with the view that the subject needs to have the ability to correctly perceive and judge beauty, sometimes referred to as "sense of taste". Various conceptions of how to define and understand beauty have been suggested. Classical conceptions emphasize the objective side of beauty by defining it in terms of the relation between the beautiful object as a whole and its parts: the parts should stand in the right proportion to each other and thus compose an integrated harmonious whole. Hedonist conceptions, on the other hand, focus more on the subjective side by drawing a necessary connection between pleasure and beauty, e.g. that for an object to be beautiful is for it to cause disinterested pleasure. Other conceptions include defining beautiful objects in terms of their value, of a loving attitude towards them or of their function.
New Criticism and "The Intentional Fallacy"
During the first half of the twentieth century, a significant shift to general aesthetic theory took place which attempted to apply aesthetic theory between various forms of art, including the literary arts and the visual arts, to each other. This resulted in the rise of the New Criticism school and debate concerning the intentional fallacy. At issue was the question of whether the aesthetic intentions of the artist in creating the work of art, whatever its specific form, should be associated with the criticism and evaluation of the final product of the work of art, or, if the work of art should be evaluated on its own merits independent of the intentions of the artist.
In 1946, William K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley published a classic and controversial New Critical essay entitled "The Intentional Fallacy", in which they argued strongly against the relevance of an author's intention, or "intended meaning" in the analysis of a literary work. For Wimsatt and Beardsley, the words on the page were all that mattered; importation of meanings from outside the text was considered irrelevant, and potentially distracting.
In another essay, "The Affective Fallacy," which served as a kind of sister essay to "The Intentional Fallacy" Wimsatt and Beardsley also discounted the reader's personal/emotional reaction to a literary work as a valid means of analyzing a text. This fallacy would later be repudiated by theorists from the reader-response school of literary theory. One of the leading theorists from this school, Stanley Fish, was himself trained by New Critics. Fish criticizes Wimsatt and Beardsley in his essay "Literature in the Reader" (1970).
As summarized by Berys Gaut and Livingston in their essay "The Creation of Art": "Structuralist and post-structuralists theorists and critics were sharply critical of many aspects of New Criticism, beginning with the emphasis on aesthetic appreciation and the so-called autonomy of art, but they reiterated the attack on biographical criticisms' assumption that the artist's activities and experience were a privileged critical topic." These authors contend that: "Anti-intentionalists, such as formalists, hold that the intentions involved in the making of art are irrelevant or peripheral to correctly interpreting art. So details of the act of creating a work, though possibly of interest in themselves, have no bearing on the correct interpretation of the work."
Gaut and Livingston define the intentionalists as distinct from formalists stating that: "Intentionalists, unlike formalists, hold that reference to intentions is essential in fixing the correct interpretation of works." They quote Richard Wollheim as stating that, "The task of criticism is the reconstruction of the creative process, where the creative process must in turn be thought of as something not stopping short of, but terminating on, the work of art itself."
Derivative forms of aesthetics
A large number of derivative forms of aesthetics have developed as contemporary and transitory forms of inquiry associated with the field of aesthetics which include the post-modern, psychoanalytic, scientific, and mathematical among others.
Post-modern aesthetics and psychoanalysis
Early-twentieth-century artists, poets and composers challenged existing notions of beauty, broadening the scope of art and aesthetics. In 1941, Eli Siegel, American philosopher and poet, founded Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy that reality itself is aesthetic, and that "The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites."
Various attempts have been made to define Post-Modern Aesthetics. The challenge to the assumption that beauty was central to art and aesthetics, thought to be original, is actually continuous with older aesthetic theory; Aristotle was the first in the Western tradition to classify "beauty" into types as in his theory of drama, and Kant made a distinction between beauty and the sublime. What was new was a refusal to credit the higher status of certain types, where the taxonomy implied a preference for tragedy and the sublime to comedy and the Rococo.
Croce suggested that "expression" is central in the way that beauty was once thought to be central. George Dickie suggested that the sociological institutions of the art world were the glue binding art and sensibility into unities. Marshall McLuhan suggested that art always functions as a "counter-environment" designed to make visible what is usually invisible about a society. Theodor Adorno felt that aesthetics could not proceed without confronting the role of the culture industry in the commodification of art and aesthetic experience. Hal Foster attempted to portray the reaction against beauty and Modernist art in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Arthur Danto has described this reaction as "kalliphobia" (after the Greek word for beauty, κάλλος kallos). André Malraux explains that the notion of beauty was connected to a particular conception of art that arose with the Renaissance and was still dominant in the eighteenth century (but was supplanted later). The discipline of aesthetics, which originated in the eighteenth century, mistook this transient state of affairs for a revelation of the permanent nature of art. Brian Massumi suggests to reconsider beauty following the aesthetical thought in the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. Walter Benjamin echoed Malraux in believing aesthetics was a comparatively recent invention, a view proven wrong in the late 1970s, when Abraham Moles and Frieder Nake analyzed links between beauty, information processing, and information theory. Denis Dutton in "The Art Instinct" also proposed that an aesthetic sense was a vital evolutionary factor.
Jean-François Lyotard re-invokes the Kantian distinction between taste and the sublime. Sublime painting, unlike kitsch realism, "... will enable us to see only by making it impossible to see; it will please only by causing pain."
Sigmund Freud inaugurated aesthetical thinking in Psychoanalysis mainly via the "Uncanny" as aesthetical affect. Following Freud and Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Lacan theorized aesthetics in terms of sublimation and the Thing.
The relation of Marxist aesthetics to post-modern aesthetics is still a contentious area of debate.
Recent aesthetics
Guy Sircello has pioneered efforts in analytic philosophy to develop a rigorous theory of aesthetics, focusing on the concepts of beauty, love and sublimity. In contrast to romantic theorists, Sircello argued for the objectivity of beauty and formulated a theory of love on that basis.
British philosopher and theorist of conceptual art aesthetics, Peter Osborne, makes the point that "'post-conceptual art' aesthetic does not concern a particular type of contemporary art so much as the historical-ontological condition for the production of contemporary art in general ...". Osborne noted that contemporary art is 'post-conceptual' in a public lecture delivered in 2010.
Gary Tedman has put forward a theory of a subjectless aesthetics derived from Karl Marx's concept of alienation, and Louis Althusser's antihumanism, using elements of Freud's group psychology, defining a concept of the 'aesthetic level of practice'.
Gregory Loewen has suggested that the subject is key in the interaction with the aesthetic object. The work of art serves as a vehicle for the projection of the individual's identity into the world of objects, as well as being the irruptive source of much of what is uncanny in modern life. As well, art is used to memorialize individuated biographies in a manner that allows persons to imagine that they are part of something greater than themselves.
Aesthetics and science
The field of experimental aesthetics was founded by Gustav Theodor Fechner in the 19th century. Experimental aesthetics in these times had been characterized by a subject-based, inductive approach. The analysis of individual experience and behaviour based on experimental methods is a central part of experimental aesthetics. In particular, the perception of works of art, music, or modern items such as websites or other IT products is studied. Experimental aesthetics is strongly oriented towards the natural sciences. Modern approaches mostly come from the fields of cognitive psychology or neuroscience (neuroaesthetics).
In the 1970s, Abraham Moles and Frieder Nake were among the first to analyze links between aesthetics, information processing, and information theory.
In the 1990s, Jürgen Schmidhuber described an algorithmic theory of beauty which takes the subjectivity of the observer into account and postulates: among several observations classified as comparable by a given subjective observer, the aesthetically most pleasing one is the one with the shortest description, given the observer's previous knowledge and his particular method for encoding the data. This is closely related to the principles of algorithmic information theory and minimum description length. One of his examples: mathematicians enjoy simple proofs with a short description in their formal language. Another very concrete example describes an aesthetically pleasing human face whose proportions can be described by very few bits of information, drawing inspiration from less detailed 15th century proportion studies by Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer. Schmidhuber's theory explicitly distinguishes between what's beautiful and what's interesting, stating that interestingness corresponds to the first derivative of subjectively perceived beauty. Here the premise is that any observer continually tries to improve the predictability and compressibility of the observations by discovering regularities such as repetitions and symmetries and fractal self-similarity. Whenever the observer's learning process (which may be a predictive artificial neural network; see also Neuroesthetics) leads to improved data compression such that the observation sequence can be described by fewer bits than before, the temporary interestingness of the data corresponds to the number of saved bits. This compression progress is proportional to the observer's internal reward, also called curiosity reward. A reinforcement learning algorithm is used to maximize future expected reward by learning to execute action sequences that cause additional interesting input data with yet unknown but learnable predictability or regularity. The principles can be implemented on artificial agents which then exhibit a form of artificial curiosity.
Truth in beauty and mathematics
Mathematical considerations, such as symmetry and complexity, are used for analysis in theoretical aesthetics. This is different from the aesthetic considerations of applied aesthetics used in the study of mathematical beauty. Aesthetic considerations such as symmetry and simplicity are used in areas of philosophy, such as ethics and theoretical physics and cosmology to define truth, outside of empirical considerations. Beauty and Truth have been argued to be nearly synonymous, as reflected in the statement "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" in the poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats, or by the Hindu motto "Satyam Shivam Sundaram" (Satya (Truth) is Shiva (God), and Shiva is Sundaram (Beautiful)). The fact that judgments of beauty and judgments of truth both are influenced by processing fluency, which is the ease with which information can be processed, has been presented as an explanation for why beauty is sometimes equated with truth. Recent research found that people use beauty as an indication for truth in mathematical pattern tasks. However, scientists including the mathematician David Orrell and physicist Marcelo Gleiser have argued that the emphasis on aesthetic criteria such as symmetry is equally capable of leading scientists astray.
Computational approaches
Computational approaches to aesthetics emerged amid efforts to use computer science methods "to predict, convey, and evoke emotional response to a piece of art. It this field, aesthetics is not considered to be dependent on taste but is a matter of cognition, and, consequently, learning. In 1928, the mathematician George David Birkhoff created an aesthetic measure M = O/C as the ratio of order to complexity.
Since about 2005, computer scientists have attempted to develop automated methods to infer aesthetic quality of images. Typically, these approaches follow a machine learning approach, where large numbers of manually rated photographs are used to "teach" a computer about what visual properties are of relevance to aesthetic quality. A study by Y. Li and C.J. Hu employed Birkhoff's measurement in their statistical learning approach where order and complexity of an image determined aesthetic value. The image complexity was computed using information theory while the order was determined using fractal compression. There is also the case of the Acquine engine, developed at Penn State University, that rates natural photographs uploaded by users.
There have also been relatively successful attempts with regard to chess and music. Computational approaches have also been attempted in film making as demonstrated by a software model developed by Chitra Dorai and a group of researchers at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. The tool predicted aesthetics based on the values of narrative elements. A relation between Max Bense's mathematical formulation of aesthetics in terms of "redundancy" and "complexity" and theories of musical anticipation was offered using the notion of Information Rate.
Evolutionary aesthetics
Evolutionary aesthetics refers to evolutionary psychology theories in which the basic aesthetic preferences of Homo sapiens are argued to have evolved in order to enhance survival and reproductive success. One example being that humans are argued to find beautiful and prefer landscapes which were good habitats in the ancestral environment. Another example is that body symmetry and proportion are important aspects of physical attractiveness which may be due to this indicating good health during body growth. Evolutionary explanations for aesthetical preferences are important parts of evolutionary musicology, Darwinian literary studies, and the study of the evolution of emotion.
Applied aesthetics
As well as being applied to art, aesthetics can also be applied to cultural objects, such as crosses or tools. For example, aesthetic coupling between art-objects and medical topics was made by speakers working for the US Information Agency. Art slides were linked to slides of pharmacological data, which improved attention and retention by simultaneous activation of intuitive right brain with rational left. It can also be used in topics as diverse as cartography, mathematics, gastronomy, fashion and website design.
Criticism
The philosophy of aesthetics as a practice has been criticized by some sociologists and writers of art and society. Raymond Williams, for example, argues that there is no unique and or individual aesthetic object which can be extrapolated from the art world, but rather that there is a continuum of cultural forms and experience of which ordinary speech and experiences may signal as art. By "art" we may frame several artistic "works" or "creations" as so though this reference remains within the institution or special event which creates it and this leaves some works or other possible "art" outside of the frame work, or other interpretations such as other phenomenon which may not be considered as "art".
Pierre Bourdieu disagrees with Kant's idea of the "aesthetic". He argues that Kant's "aesthetic" merely represents an experience that is the product of an elevated class habitus and scholarly leisure as opposed to other possible and equally valid "aesthetic" experiences which lay outside Kant's narrow definition.
Timothy Laurie argues that theories of musical aesthetics "framed entirely in terms of appreciation, contemplation or reflection risk idealizing an implausibly unmotivated listener defined solely through musical objects, rather than seeing them as a person for whom complex intentions and motivations produce variable attractions to cultural objects and practices".
See also
Art and Theosophy
Art periods
History of aesthetics before the 20th century
Medieval aesthetics
Mise en scène
Theological aesthetics
Theory of art
References
Further reading
Mario Perniola, 20th Century Aesthetics. Towards A Theory of Feeling, translated by Massimo Verdicchio, London, New Delhi, New York, Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2013, .
Handbook of Phenomenological Aesthetics. Edited by Hans Rainer Sepp and Lester Embree. (Series: Contributions To Phenomenology, Vol. 59) Springer, Dordrecht / Heidelberg / London / New York 2010.
Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto: A Philosophy of Literature, New York, NY, New American Library, 1971
Derek Allan, Art and the Human Adventure, Andre Malraux's Theory of Art, Rodopi, 2009
Derek Allan. Art and Time, Cambridge Scholars, 2013.
Augros, Robert M., Stanciu, George N., The New Story of Science: mind and the universe, Lake Bluff, Ill.: Regnery Gateway, 1984. (has significant material on Art, Science and their philosophies)
John Bender and Gene Blocker, Contemporary Philosophy of Art: Readings in Analytic Aesthetics 1993.
René Bergeron. L'Art et sa spiritualité. Québec, QC.: Éditions du Pelican, 1961.
Christine Buci-Glucksmann (2003), Esthétique de l'éphémère, Galilée. (French)
Noël Carroll (2000), Theories of Art Today, University of Wisconsin Press.
Mario Costa (1999) (in Italian), L'estetica dei media. Avanguardie e tecnologia, Milan: Castelvecchi, .
Benedetto Croce (1922), Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic.
E.S. Dallas (1866), The Gay Science, 2 volumes, on the aesthetics of poetry.
Danto, Arthur (2003), The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept of Art, Open Court.
Stephen Davies (1991), Definitions of Art.
Terry Eagleton (1990), The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Blackwell.
Susan L. Feagin and Patrick Maynard (1997), Aesthetics. Oxford Readers.
Penny Florence and Nicola Foster (eds.) (2000), Differential Aesthetics. London: Ashgate.
Berys Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes (eds.), Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. 3rd edition. London and New York: Routledge, 2013.
Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert (1995), Einführung in die Ästhetik, Munich, W. Fink.
David Goldblatt and Lee B. Brown, ed. (2010), Aesthetics: A Reader in the Philosophy of the Arts. 3rd edition. Pearson Publishing.
Theodore Gracyk (2011), The Philosophy of Art: An Introduction. Polity Press.
Greenberg, Clement (1960), "Modernist Painting", The Collected Essays and Criticism 1957–1969, The University of Chicago Press, 1993, 85–92.
Evelyn Hatcher (ed.), Art as Culture: An Introduction to the Anthropology of Art. 1999
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1975), Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T.M. Knox, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hans Hofmann and Sara T Weeks; Bartlett H Hayes; Addison Gallery of American Art; Search for the real, and other essays (Cambridge, Massachusetts, M.I.T. Press, 1967)
Michael Ann Holly and Keith Moxey (eds.), Art History and Visual Studies. Yale University Press, 2002.
Carol Armstrong and Catherine de Zegher (eds.), Women Artists at the Millennium. Massachusetts: October Books/MIT Press, 2006.
Kant, Immanuel (1790), Critique of Judgement, Translated by Werner S. Pluhar, Hackett Publishing Co., 1987.
Kelly, Michael (Editor in Chief) (1998) Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press. 4 vol. pp. xvii–521, pp. 555, pp. 536, pp. 572; 2224 total pages; 100 b/w photos; . Covers philosophical, historical, sociological, and biographical aspects of Art and Aesthetics worldwide.
Søren Kierkegaard (1843), Either/Or, translated by Alastair Hannay, London, Penguin, 1992
Peter Kivy (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics. 2004
Carolyn Korsmeyer (ed.), Aesthetics: The Big Questions. 1998
Lyotard, Jean-François (1979), The Postmodern Condition, Manchester University Press, 1984.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1969), The Visible and the Invisible, Northwestern University Press.
David Novitz (1992), The Boundaries of Art.
Mario Perniola, The Art and Its Shadow, foreword by Hugh J. Silverman, translated by Massimo Verdicchio, London-New York, Continuum, 2004.
Griselda Pollock, "Does Art Think?" In: Dana Arnold and Margaret Iverson (eds.) Art and Thought. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2003. 129–174. .
Griselda Pollock, Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum: Time, Space and the Archive. Routledge, 2007. .
Griselda Pollock, Generations and Geographies in the Visual Arts. Routledge, 1996. .
George Santayana (1896), The Sense of Beauty. Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory. New York, Modern Library, 1955.
Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton, 2001.
Friedrich Schiller, (1795), On the Aesthetic Education of Man. Dover Publications, 2004.
Alan Singer and Allen Dunn (eds.), Literary Aesthetics: A Reader. Blackwell Publishing Limited, 2000.
Jadranka Skorin-Kapov, The Intertwining of Aesthetics and Ethics: Exceeding of Expectations, Ecstasy, Sublimity. Lexington Books, 2016.
Władysław Tatarkiewicz, A History of Six Ideas: an Essay in Aesthetics, The Hague, 1980.
Władysław Tatarkiewicz, History of Aesthetics, 3 vols. (1–2, 1970; 3, 1974), The Hague, Mouton.
Markand Thakar Looking for the 'Harp' Quartet: An Investigation into Musical Beauty. University of Rochester Press, 2011.
Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art?, Penguin Classics, 1995.
Roger Scruton, Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2009.
Roger Scruton, The Aesthetic Understanding: Essays in the Philosophy of Art and Culture (1983)
The London Philosophy Study Guide offers many suggestions on what to read, depending on the student's familiarity with the subject: Aesthetics
John M. Valentine, Beginning Aesthetics: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art. McGraw-Hill, 2006.
von Vacano, Diego, "The Art of Power: Machiavelli, Nietzsche and the Making of Aesthetic Political Theory," Lanham MD: Lexington: 2007.
Thomas Wartenberg, The Nature of Art. 2006.
John Whitehead, Grasping for the Wind. 2001.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures on aesthetics, psychology and religious belief, Oxford, Blackwell, 1966.
Richard Wollheim, Art and its objects, 2nd edn, 1980, Cambridge University Press,
Gino Zaccaria, The Enigma of Art, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2021 https://brill.com/view/title/59609
Indian aesthetics
External links
Aesthetics in Continental Philosophy article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Medieval Theories of Aesthetics article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Revue online Appareil
Postscript 1980– Some Old Problems in New Perspectives
Aesthetics in Art Education: A Look Toward Implementation
More about Art, culture and Education
An history of aesthetics
The Concept of the Aesthetic
Aesthetics entry in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Philosophy of Aesthetics entry in the Philosophy Archive
Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges: Introduction to Aesthetics
Art Perception Complete pdf version of art historian David Cycleback's book.
Beauty, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Angie Hobbs, Susan James & Julian Baggini (In Our Time, 19 May 2005)
Humanities
1730s neologisms |
2134 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ark%20of%20the%20Covenant | Ark of the Covenant | The Ark of the Covenant (Hebrew: ; , Ge'ez: , also known as the Ark of the Testimony, or the Ark of God) is the most sacred relic of the Israelites. It consisted of a pure gold-covered wooden chest with an elaborate lid called the Mercy seat. The Ark is described in the Book of Exodus as containing the two stone tablets of the Ten Commandments. According to New Testament Book of Hebrews, it also contained Aaron's rod and a pot of manna.
The biblical account relates that, approximately one year after the Israelites' exodus from Egypt, the Ark was created according to the pattern given to Moses by God when the Israelites were encamped at the foot of Mount Sinai. Thereafter, the gold-plated acacia chest was carried by its staves by the Levites approximately 2,000 cubits (approximately ) in advance of the people when on the march or before the Israelite army, the host of fighting men. God spoke with Moses "from between the two cherubim" on the Ark's cover.
Biblical account
Construction and description
According to the Book of Exodus, God instructed Moses to build the Ark during his 40-day stay upon Mount Sinai. He was shown the pattern for the tabernacle and furnishings of the Ark, and told that it would be made of shittim wood (also known as acacia wood) to house the Tablets of Stone. Moses instructed Bezalel and Aholiab to construct the Ark.
The Book of Exodus gives detailed instructions on how the Ark is to be constructed. It is to be 2 cubits in length, 1 in breadth, and 1 in height (approximately ) of acacia wood. Then it is to be gilded entirely with gold, and a crown or molding of gold is to be put around it. Four rings of gold are to be attached to its four corners, two on each side—and through these rings staves of shittim wood overlaid with gold for carrying the Ark are to be inserted; and these are not to be removed. A golden lid, the kapporet (translated as "mercy seat" or "cover"), which is ornamented with two golden cherubim, is to be placed above the Ark. Missing from the account are instructions concerning the thickness of the mercy seat and details about the cherubim other than that the cover be beaten out the ends of the Ark and that they form the space where God will appear. The Ark is finally to be placed under a veil to conceal it.
Mobile vanguard
The biblical account continues that, after its creation by Moses, the Ark was carried by the Israelites during their 40 years of wandering in the desert. Whenever the Israelites camped, the Ark was placed in a separate room in a sacred tent, called the Tabernacle.
When the Israelites, led by Joshua toward the Promised Land, arrived at the banks of the River Jordan, the Ark was carried in the lead, preceding the people, and was the signal for their advance. During the crossing, the river grew dry as soon as the feet of the priests carrying the Ark touched its waters, and remained so until the priests—with the Ark—left the river after the people had passed over. As memorials, twelve stones were taken from the Jordan at the place where the priests had stood.
During the Battle of Jericho, the Ark was carried around the city once a day for six days, preceded by the armed men and seven priests sounding seven trumpets of rams' horns. On the seventh day, the seven priests sounding the seven trumpets of rams' horns before the Ark compassed the city seven times and, with a great shout, Jericho's wall fell down flat and the people took the city.
After the defeat at Ai, Joshua lamented before the Ark. When Joshua read the Law to the people between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, they stood on each side of the Ark. We next hear of the Ark in Bethel, where it was being cared for by the priest Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron. According to this verse, it was consulted by the people of Israel when they were planning to attack the Benjaminites at the Battle of Gibeah. Later the Ark was kept at Shiloh, another religious centre some north of Bethel, at the time of the prophet Samuel's apprenticeship, where it was cared for by Hophni and Phinehas, two sons of Eli.
Capture by the Philistines
According to the biblical narrative, a few years later the elders of Israel decided to take the Ark out onto the battlefield to assist them against the Philistines, having recently been defeated at the battle of Eben-Ezer. They were again heavily defeated, with the loss of 30,000 men. The Ark was captured by the Philistines and Hophni and Phinehas were killed. The news of its capture was at once taken to Shiloh by a messenger "with his clothes rent, and with earth upon his head". The old priest, Eli, fell dead when he heard it; and his daughter-in-law, bearing a son at the time the news of the Ark's capture was received, named him Ichabod—explained as "The glory has departed Israel" in reference to the loss of the Ark. Ichabod's mother died at his birth.
The Philistines took the Ark to several places in their country, and at each place misfortune befell them. At Ashdod it was placed in the temple of Dagon. The next morning Dagon was found prostrate, bowed down, before it; and on being restored to his place, he was on the following morning again found prostrate and broken. The people of Ashdod were smitten with tumors; a plague of rodents was sent over the land. This may have been the bubonic plague. The affliction of tumours was also visited upon the people of Gath and of Ekron, whither the Ark was successively removed.
Return of the Ark to the Israelites
After the Ark had been among them for seven months, the Philistines, on the advice of their diviners, returned it to the Israelites, accompanying its return with an offering consisting of golden images of the tumors and mice wherewith they had been afflicted. The Ark was set up in the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite, and the Beth-shemites offered sacrifices and burnt offerings. Out of curiosity the men of Beth-shemesh gazed at the Ark; and as a punishment, seventy of them (fifty thousand and seventy in some translations) were smitten by the Lord. The Bethshemites sent to Kirjath-jearim, or Baal-Judah, to have the Ark removed; and it was taken to the house of Abinadab, whose son Eleazar was sanctified to keep it. Kirjath-jearim remained the abode of the Ark for twenty years. Under Saul, the Ark was with the army before he first met the Philistines, but the king was too impatient to consult it before engaging in battle. In 1 Chronicles 13:3 it is stated that the people were not accustomed to consulting the Ark in the days of Saul.
In the days of King David
In the biblical narrative, at the beginning of his reign over the United Monarchy, King David removed the Ark from Kirjath-jearim amid great rejoicing. On the way to Zion, Uzzah, one of the drivers of the cart that carried the Ark, put out his hand to steady the Ark, and was struck dead by God for touching it. The place was subsequently named "Perez-Uzzah", literally "Outburst Against Uzzah", as a result. David, in fear, carried the Ark aside into the house of Obed-edom the Gittite, instead of carrying it on to Zion, and it stayed there for three months.
On hearing that God had blessed Obed-edom because of the presence of the Ark in his house, David had the Ark brought to Zion by the Levites, while he himself, "girded with a linen ephod ... danced before the Lord with all his might" and in the sight of all the public gathered in Jerusalem, a performance which caused him to be scornfully rebuked by his first wife, Saul's daughter Michal. In Zion, David put the Ark in the tent he had prepared for it, offered sacrifices, distributed food, and blessed the people and his own household. David used the tent as a personal place of prayer.
The Levites were appointed to minister before the Ark. David's plan of building a temple for the Ark was stopped on the advice of the prophet Nathan. The Ark was with the army during the siege of Rabbah; and when David fled from Jerusalem at the time of Absalom's conspiracy, the Ark was carried along with him until he ordered Zadok the priest to return it to Jerusalem.
David gave his son Solomon the plans for building the Temple. He designated the weight of the gold and silver to be used in building and furnishing the inner sanctuary. According to the historian Flavius Josephus, 300 talents (about eight tons) of gold were dedicated by David for Solomon's use in the inner sanctuary.
The Copper Scroll (actually made of bronze), found in a Dead Sea cave in 1952, lists 300 talents of gold as being hidden underground on the west side of a pool in the "valley of purity."
In Solomon's Temple
According to the Biblical narrative, when Abiathar was dismissed from the priesthood by King Solomon for having taken part in Adonijah's conspiracy against David, his life was spared because he had formerly borne the Ark. Solomon worshipped before the Ark after his dream in which God promised him wisdom.
During the construction of Solomon's Temple, a special inner room, named Kodesh Hakodashim (Eng. Holy of Holies), was prepared to receive and house the Ark; and when the Temple was dedicated, the Ark—containing the original tablets of the Ten Commandments—was placed therein. When the priests emerged from the holy place after placing the Ark there, the Temple was filled with a cloud, "for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord".
When Solomon married Pharaoh's daughter, he caused her to dwell in a house outside Zion, as Zion was consecrated because it contained the Ark. King Josiah also had the Ark returned to the Temple, from which it appears to have been removed by one of his predecessors (cf. 2 Chron. 33-34 and 2 Kings 21–23).
In the days of King Hezekiah
King Hezekiah is the last biblical figure mentioned as having seen the Ark. Hezekiah is also known for protecting Jerusalem against the Assyrian Empire by improving the city walls and diverting the waters of the Gihon Spring through a tunnel known today as Hezekiah's Tunnel, which channeled the water inside the city walls to the Pool of Siloam.
In a noncanonical text known as the Treatise of the Vessels, Hezekiah is identified as one of the kings who had the Ark and the other treasures of Solomon's Temple hidden during a time of crisis. This text lists the following hiding places, which it says were recorded on a bronze tablet: (1) a spring named Kohel or Kahal with pure water in a valley with a stopped-up gate; (2) a spring named Kotel (or "wall" in Hebrew); (3) a spring named Zedekiah; (4) an unidentified cistern; (5) Mount Carmel; and (6) locations in Babylon.
To many scholars, Hezekiah is also credited as having written all or some of the Book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes in the Christian tradition), in particular the famously enigmatic epilogue. Notably, the epilogue appears to refer to the Ark story with references to almond blossoms (i.e., Aaron's rod), locusts, silver, and gold. The epilogue then cryptically refers to a pitcher broken at a fountain and a wheel broken at a cistern.
Although scholars disagree on whether the Pool of Siloam's pure spring waters were used by pilgrims for ritual purification, many scholars agree that a stepped pilgrimage road between the pool and the Temple had been built in the first century CE. This roadway has been partially excavated, but the west side of the Pool of Siloam remains unexcavated.
The Babylonian Conquest and aftermath
In 587 BC, the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple. There is no record of what became of the Ark in the Books of Kings and Chronicles. An ancient Greek version of the biblical third Book of Ezra, 1 Esdras, suggests that Babylonians took away the vessels of the ark of God, but does not mention taking away the Ark:
In Rabbinic literature, the final disposition of the Ark is disputed. Some rabbis hold that it must have been carried off to Babylon, while others hold that it must have been hidden lest it be carried off into Babylon and never brought back. A late 2nd-century rabbinic work known as the Tosefta states the opinions of these rabbis that Josiah, the king of Judah, stored away the Ark, along with the jar of manna, and a jar containing the holy anointing oil, the rod of Aaron which budded and a chest given to Israel by the Philistines. This was said to have been done in order to prevent their being carried off into Babylon as had already happened to the other vessels. Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Shimon, in the same rabbinic work, state that the Ark was, in fact, taken into Babylon. Rabbi Yehudah, dissenting, says that the Ark was stored away in its own place, meaning somewhere on the Temple Mount.
Service of the Kohathites
The Kohathites were one of the Levite houses from the Book of Numbers. Theirs was the responsibility to care for "the most holy things" in the tabernacle. When the camp, then wandering the Wilderness, set out the Kohathites would enter the tabernacle with Aaron and cover the ark with the screening curtain and "then they shall put on it a covering of fine leather, and spread over that a cloth all of blue, and shall put its poles in place." The ark was one of the items of the tent of meeting that the Kohathites were responsible for carrying.
Archaeology
Archaeological evidence shows strong cultic activity at Kiriath-Jearim in the 8th and 7th centuries BC, well after the ark was supposedly removed from there to Jerusalem. In particular, archaeologists found a large elevated podium, associated with the Northern Kingdom and not the Southern Kingdom, which may have been a shrine. Thomas Römer suggests that this may indicate that the ark was not moved to Jerusalem until much later, possibly during the reign of King Josiah. He notes that this might explain why the ark featured prominently in the history before Solomon, but not after. Additionally, 2 Chronicles 35:3 indicates that it was moved during King Josiah's reign.
Some scholars believe the story of the Ark was written independently around the 8th century in a text referred to as the "Ark Narrative" and then incorporated into the main biblical narrative just before the Babylonian exile.
Römer also suggests that the ark may have originally carried sacred stones "of the kind found in the chests of pre-Islamic Bedouins" and speculates that these may have been either a statue of Yahweh or a pair of statues depicting both Yahweh and his companion goddess Asherah. In contrast, Scott Noegel has argued that the parallels between the ark and these practices "remain unconvincing" in part because the Bedouin objects lack the ark's distinctive structure, function, and mode of transportation. Specifically, unlike the ark, the Bedouin chests "contained no box, no lid, and no poles," they did not serve as the throne or footstool of a god, they were not overlaid with gold, did not have kerubim figures upon them, there were no restrictions on who could touch them, and they were transported on horses or camels. Noegel suggests that the ancient Egyptian bark is a more plausible model for the Israelite ark, since Egyptian barks had all the features just mentioned. Noegel adds that the Egyptians also were known to place written covenants beneath the feet of statues, proving a further parallel to the placement of the covenental tablets inside the ark.
References in Abrahamic religions
Tanakh
The Ark is first mentioned in the Book of Exodus and then numerous times in Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, I Samuel, II Samuel, I Kings, I Chronicles, II Chronicles, Psalms, and Jeremiah.
In the Book of Jeremiah, it is referenced by Jeremiah, who, speaking in the days of Josiah, prophesied a future time, possibly the end of days, when the Ark will no longer be talked about or be made use of again:
Rashi comments on this verse that "The entire people will be so imbued with the spirit of sanctity that God's Presence will rest upon them collectively, as if the congregation itself was the Ark of the Covenant."
Second Book of Maccabees
According to Second Maccabees, at the beginning of chapter 2:
The "mountain from the top of which Moses saw God's promised land" would be Mount Nebo, located in what is now Jordan.
New Testament
In the New Testament, the Ark is mentioned in the Letter to the Hebrews and the Revelation to St. John. Hebrews 9:4 states that the Ark contained "the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the tablets of the covenant." Revelation 11:19 says the prophet saw God's temple in heaven opened, "and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple."
The contents of the ark are seen by theologians such as the Church Fathers and Thomas Aquinas as personified by Jesus Christ: the manna as the Holy Eucharist; Aaron's rod as Jesus' eternal priestly authority; and the tablets of the Law, as the Lawgiver himself.
Catholic scholars connect this verse with the Woman of the Apocalypse in , which immediately follows, and say that the Blessed Virgin Mary is identified as the "Ark of the New Covenant." Carrying the saviour of mankind within her, she herself became the Holy of Holies. This is the interpretation given in the third century by Gregory Thaumaturgus, and in the fourth century by Saint Ambrose, Saint Ephraem of Syria and Saint Augustine. The Catholic Church teaches this in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "Mary, in whom the Lord himself has just made his dwelling, is the daughter of Zion in person, the Ark of the Covenant, the place where the glory of the Lord dwells. She is 'the dwelling of God . . . with men."
In the Gospel of Luke, the author's accounts of the Annunciation and Visitation are constructed using eight points of literary parallelism to compare Mary to the Ark.
Saint Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria, is credited with writing about the connections between the Ark and the Virgin Mary: "O noble Virgin, truly you are greater than any other greatness. For who is your equal in greatness, O dwelling place of God the Word? To whom among all creatures shall I compare you, O Virgin? You are greater than them all O (Ark of the) Covenant, clothed with purity instead of gold! You are the Ark in which is found the golden vessel containing the true manna, that is, the flesh in which Divinity resides" (Homily of the Papyrus of Turin).
The Ark in Islamic sources
Chapter 2 (Sura 2) of the Quran (Verse 248), is believed to refer to the Ark:
The Arabic word (variously translated "peace of reassurance" or "spirit of tranquility") is related to the post-Biblical Hebrew , meaning "dwelling or presence of God".
The Islamic scholar mentioned that the could be Tawrat, the Books of Moses. According to , the relics in the Ark were the fragments of the two tablets, rods, robes, shoes, mitre of Moses and the vase of manna. , in (The Stories of the Prophets), has given an earlier and later history of the Ark.
According to Uri Rubin, the Ark of the Covenant has a religious basis in Islam, which gives it special significance.
Whereabouts
Since its disappearance from the Biblical narrative, there have been a number of claims of having discovered or of having possession of the Ark, and several possible places have been suggested for its location.
Maccabees
2 Maccabees 2:4-10, written around 100 BC, says that the prophet Jeremiah, "being warned by God" before the Babylonian invasion, took the Ark, the Tabernacle, and the Altar of Incense, and buried them in a cave, informing those of his followers who wished to find the place that it should remain unknown "until the time that God should gather His people again together, and receive them unto mercy."
Ethiopia
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church claims to possess the Ark of the Covenant in Axum. The Ark is currently kept under guard in a treasury near the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion. Replicas of the tablets within the Ark, or Tabots, are kept in every Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, and kept in its own holy of holies, each with its own dedication to a particular saint; the most popular of these include Saint Mary, Saint George and Saint Michael.
The Kebra Nagast is often said to have been composed to legitimise the Solomonic dynasty, which ruled the Ethiopian Empire following its establishment in 1270, but this is not the case. It was originally composed in some other language (Coptic or Greek), then translated into Arabic, and translated into Ge'ez in 1321. It narrates how the real Ark of the Covenant was brought to Ethiopia by Menelik I with divine assistance, while a forgery was left in the Temple in Jerusalem. Although the Kebra Nagast is the best-known account of this belief, it predates the document. Abu al-Makarim, writing in the last quarter of the twelfth century, makes one early reference to this belief that they possessed the Ark. "The Abyssinians possess also the Ark of the Covenant", he wrote, and, after a description of the object, describes how the liturgy is celebrated upon the Ark four times a year, "on the feast of the great nativity, on the feast of the glorious Baptism, on the feast of the holy Resurrection, and on the feast of the illuminating Cross."
In his controversial and much attacked 1992 book The Sign and the Seal, British writer Graham Hancock reports on the Ethiopian belief that the ark spent several years in Egypt before it came to Ethiopia via the Nile River, where it was kept in the islands of Lake Tana for about four hundred years and finally taken to Axum. (Archaeologist John Holladay of the University of Toronto called Hancock's theory "garbage and hogwash"; Edward Ullendorff, a former Professor of Ethiopian Studies at the University of London, said he "wasted a lot of time reading it.") In a 1992 interview, Ullendorff says that he personally examined the ark held within the church in Axum in 1941 while a British Army officer. Describing the ark there, he says, "They have a wooden box, but it's empty. Middle- to late-medieval construction, when these were fabricated ad hoc."
On 25 June 2009, the patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia, Abune Paulos, said he would announce to the world the next day the unveiling of the Ark of the Covenant, which he said had been kept safe and secure in a church in Axum, Ethiopia. The following day, on 26 June 2009, the patriarch announced that he would not unveil the Ark after all, but that instead he could attest to its current status.
Southern Africa
The Lemba people of South Africa and Zimbabwe have claimed that their ancestors carried the Ark south, calling it the ngoma lungundu or "voice of God", eventually hiding it in a deep cave in the Dumghe mountains, their spiritual home.
On 14 April 2008, in a UK Channel 4 documentary, Tudor Parfitt, taking a literalist approach to the Biblical story, described his research into this claim. He says that the object described by the Lemba has attributes similar to the Ark. It was of similar size, was carried on poles by priests, was not allowed to touch the ground, was revered as a voice of their God, and was used as a weapon of great power, sweeping enemies aside.
In his book The Lost Ark of the Covenant (2008), Parfitt also suggests that the Ark was taken to Arabia following the events depicted in the Second Book of Maccabees, and cites Arabic sources which maintain it was brought in distant times to Yemen. Genetic Y-DNA analyses in the 2000s have established a partially Middle-Eastern origin for a portion of the male Lemba population but no specific Jewish connection. Lemba tradition maintains that the Ark spent some time in a place called Sena, which might be Sena in Yemen. Later, it was taken across the sea to East Africa and may have been taken inland at the time of the Great Zimbabwe civilization. According to their oral traditions, some time after the arrival of the Lemba with the Ark, it self-destructed. Using a core from the original, the Lemba priests constructed a new one. This replica was discovered in a cave by a Swedish German missionary named Harald von Sicard in the 1940s and eventually found its way to the Museum of Human Science in Harare.
Europe
Chartres Cathedral, France
French author Louis Charpentier claimed in his 1966 book Les Mystères de la Cathédrale de Chartres that the Ark was taken to the Chartres Cathedral by the Knights Templar.
Rennes-le-Château, then to the United States
One author has theorised that the Ark was taken from Jerusalem to the village of Rennes-le-Château in Southern France. Karen Ralls has cited Freemason Patrick Byrne, who believes the Ark was moved from Rennes-le-Château at the outbreak of World War I to the United States.
Rome
The Ark of the Covenant was said to have been kept in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, surviving the pillages of Rome by Alaric I and Gaiseric but lost when the basilica burned.
"Rabbi Eliezer ben José stated that he saw in Rome the mercy-seat of the temple. There was a bloodstain on it. On inquiry he was told that it was a stain from the blood which the high priest sprinkled thereon on the Day of Atonement."
Ireland
At the turn of the 20th century, British Israelites carried out some excavations of the Hill of Tara in Ireland looking for the Ark of the Covenant. The Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (RSAI) campaigned successfully to have them stopped before they destroyed the hill.
Egypt
Tutankhamun's tomb
In 1922 in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, the royal tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun (KV62) was opened by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon. Among the artifacts was a processional ark, listed as Shrine 261, the Anubis Shrine. Almost immediately after publication of the photographs of this sensational archaeological find, some claimed that the Anubis Shrine could be the Ark of the Covenant. John M. Lundquist, author of The Temple of Jerusalem: Past, Present, and Future (2008), discounts this idea. The Anubis Shrine measures long, wide, and high in the shape of a pylon. The Biblical Ark of the Covenant is approximately long, wide, and high in the shape of a rectangular chest.
Lundquist observes that the Anubis Shrine is not strictly analogous to the Ark of the Covenant; it can only be said that it is "ark-like", constructed of wood, gessoed and gilded, stored within a sacred tomb, "guarding" the treasury of the tomb (and not the primary focus of that environment), that it contains compartments within it that store and hold sacred objects, that it has a figure of Anubis on its lid, and that it was carried by two staves permanently inserted into rings at its base and borne by eight priests in the funerary procession to Tutankhamun's tomb.
Israel
Author Brad Ricca's book, True Raiders (2021), tells the story of the forgotten 1909 expedition to find the Ark in Jerusalem, according to a secret code found in the Bible.
In popular culture
Philip Kaufman conceived of the Ark of the Covenant as the main plot device of Steven Spielberg's 1981 adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark, where it is found by Indiana Jones in the Egyptian city of Tanis in 1936. In early 2020, a prop version made for the film (which does not actually appear onscreen) was featured on Antiques Roadshow.
In the Danish family film The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar from 2006, the main part of the treasure found in the end is the Ark of the Covenant. The power of the Ark comes from static electricity stored in separated metal plates like a giant Leyden jar.
In Harry Turtledove's novel Alpha and Omega (2019) the ark is found by archeologists, and the characters have to deal with the proven existence of God.
Yom HaAliyah
Yom HaAliyah (Aliyah Day) () is an Israeli national holiday celebrated annually on the tenth of the Hebrew month of Nisan to commemorate the Israelites crossing the Jordan River into the Land of Israel while carrying the Ark of the Covenant.
See also
Copper Scroll
List of artifacts in biblical archaeology
The Exodus Decoded (television documentary)
History of ancient Israel and Judah
Jewish symbolism
Mikoshi, a portable Shinto shrine
Gihon Spring
Josephus
Mount Gerizim
Pool of Siloam
Samaritans
Siloam Tunnel
Solomon's Temple
References
Footnotes
Citations
Further reading
Carew, Mairead, Tara and the Ark of the Covenant: A Search for the Ark of the Covenant by British Israelites on the Hill of Tara, 1899-1902. Royal Irish Academy, 2003.
Cline, Eric H. (2007), From Eden to Exile: Unravelling Mysteries of the Bible, National Geographic Society,
Fisher, Milton C., The Ark of the Covenant: Alive and Well in Ethiopia?. Bible and Spade 8/3, pp. 65–72, 1995.
Foster, Charles, Tracking the Ark of the Covenant. Monarch, 2007.
Grierson, Roderick & Munro-Hay, Stuart, The Ark of the Covenant. Orion Books Ltd, 2000.
Hancock, Graham, The Sign and the Seal: The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant. Touchstone Books, 1993.
Haran, M., The Disappearance of the Ark, IEJ 13 (1963), 46-58
Hertz, J.H., The Pentateuch and Haftoras. Deuteronomy. Oxford University Press, 1936.
Hubbard, David (1956) The Literary Sources of the Kebra Nagast Ph.D. dissertation, St. Andrews University, Scotland
Munro-Hay, Stuart, The Quest For The Ark of The Covenant: The True History of The Tablets of Moses. L. B. Tauris & Co Ltd., 2006.
Ritmeyer, L., The Ark of the Covenant: Where It Stood in Solomon's Temple. Biblical Archaeology Review 22/1: 46–55, 70–73, 1996.
Stolz, Fritz. "Ark of the Covenant." In The Encyclopedia of Christianity, edited by Erwin Fahlbusch and Geoffrey William Bromiley, 125. Vol. 1. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999.
External links
Portions of this article have been taken from the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1906. Ark of the Covenant
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume I. Ark of the Covenant
Smithsonian.com "Keepers of the Lost Ark?"'.
Shyovitz, David, The Lost Ark of the Covenant. Jewish Virtual Library.
Hebrew Bible objects
Hebrew Bible words and phrases
Tabernacle and Temples in Jerusalem
Book of Exodus
Containers
Relics
Chests (furniture)
Individual wooden objects
Gold objects
Epistle to the Hebrews
Lost works of art |
2136 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angles | Angles | The Angles (, ; ) were one of the main Germanic peoples who settled in Great Britain in the post-Roman period. They founded several kingdoms of the Heptarchy in Anglo-Saxon England, and their name is the root of the name England ("land of Ængle"). According to Tacitus, writing before their move to Britain, Angles lived alongside Langobards and Semnones in historical regions of Schleswig and Holstein, which are today part of southern Denmark and northern Germany (Schleswig-Holstein).
Etymology
The name of the Angles may have been first recorded in Latinised form, as Anglii, in the Germania of Tacitus. It is thought to derive from the name of the area they originally inhabited, the Anglia Peninsula (Angeln in modern German, Angel in Danish).
Multiple theories concerning the etymology of the name have been hypothesised:
According to Gesta Danorum were Dan and Angul (Angel), sons of one Humbli, who were made rulers by the consent of the people because of their bravery. Dan gave name to Danes and Angel gave names to Angles.
It originated from the Germanic root for "narrow" (compare German and Dutch eng = "narrow"), meaning "the Narrow [Water]", i.e., the Schlei estuary; the root would be *h₂enǵʰ, "tight".
The name derives from "hook" (as in angling for fish), in reference to the shape of the peninsula; Indo-European linguist Julius Pokorny derives it from Proto-Indo-European *h₂enk-, "bend" (see ankle). Alternatively, the Angles may have been called such because they were a fishing people or were originally descended from such.
During the fifth century, all Germanic tribes who invaded Britain were referred to as either Englisc, Ængle or Engle, who were all speakers of Old English (which was known as Englisc, Ænglisc, or Anglisc). Englisc and its descendant, English, also goes back to Proto-Indo-European *h₂enǵʰ-, meaning narrow.
Pope Gregory I, in an epistle, simplified the Latinised name Anglii to Angli, the latter form developing into the preferred form of the word. The country remained Anglia in Latin. Alfred the Great's translation of Orosius's history of the world uses Angelcynn (-kin) to describe the English people; Bede uses Angelfolc (-folk); also such forms as Engel, Englan (the people), Englaland, and Englisc occur, all showing i-mutation.
Greco-Roman historiography
Tacitus
The earliest known mention of the Angles may be in chapter 40 of Tacitus's Germania written around AD 98. Tacitus describes the "Anglii" as one of the more remote Suebic tribes compared to the Semnones and Langobardi, who lived on the Elbe and were better known to the Romans. He grouped the Angles with several other tribes in that region, the Reudigni, Aviones, Varini, Eudoses, Suarines, and Nuithones. These were all living behind ramparts of rivers and woods, and therefore inaccessible to attack.
He gives no precise indication of their geographical situation but states that, together with the six other tribes, they worshipped Nerthus, or Mother Earth, whose sanctuary was located on "an island in the Ocean". The Eudoses are the Jutes; these names probably refer to localities in Jutland or on the Baltic coast. The coast contains sufficient estuaries, inlets, rivers, islands, swamps, and marshes to have been then inaccessible to those not familiar with the terrain, such as the Romans, who considered it unknown, inaccessible, with a small population and of little economic interest.
The majority of scholars believe that the Anglii lived on the coasts of the Baltic Sea, probably in the southern part of the Jutland peninsula. This view is based partly on Old English and Danish traditions regarding persons and events of the fourth century, and partly because striking affinities to the cult of Nerthus as described by Tacitus are to be found in pre-Christian Scandinavian religion.
Ptolemy
Ptolemy, writing in around 150 AD, in his atlas Geography (2.10), describes them in a confusing manner. In one passage, the Sueboi Angeilloi (in Greek equivalent to Latin spelling Suevi Angili), are living in a stretch of land between the northern Rhine and central Elbe, but apparently not touching either river, with the Suebic Langobardi on the Rhine to their west, and the Suebic Semnones on the Elbe stretching to their east. This is unexpected. However, as pointed out by Gudmund Schütte, the Langobards also appear as the "Laccobardi" in another position near the Elbe and the Saxons, which is considered more likely to be correct, and the Angles probably lived in that region also. Owing to the uncertainty of this passage, much speculation existed regarding the original home of the Anglii.
One theory is that they or part of them dwelt or moved among other coastal people, perhaps confederated up to the basin of the Saale (in the neighbourhood of the ancient canton of Engilin) on the Unstrut valleys below the Kyffhäuserkreis, from which region the Lex Anglorum et Werinorum hoc est Thuringorum is believed by many to have come. The ethnic names of Frisians and Warines are also attested in these Saxon districts.
A second possible solution is that these Angles of Ptolemy are not those of Schleswig at all. According to Julius Pokorny, the Angri- in Angrivarii, the -angr in Hardanger and the Angl- in Anglii all come from the same root meaning "bend", but in different senses. In other words, the similarity of the names is strictly coincidental and does not reflect any ethnic unity beyond Germanic. Gudmund Schütte, in his analysis of Ptolemy, believes that the Angles have simply been moved by an error coming from Ptolemy's use of imperfect sources. He points out that Angles are placed correctly just to the northeast of the Langobardi, but that these have been duplicated, so that they appear once, correctly, on the lower Elbe, and a second time, incorrectly, at the northern Rhine.
Medieval historiography
Bede states that the Anglii, before coming to Great Britain, dwelt in a land called Angulus, "which lies between the province of the Jutes and the Saxons, and remains unpopulated to this day." Similar evidence is given by the Historia Brittonum. King Alfred the Great and the chronicler Æthelweard identified this place with Anglia, in the province of Schleswig (Slesvig) (though it may then have been of greater extent), and this identification agrees with the indications given by Bede.
In the Norwegian seafarer Ohthere of Hålogaland's account of a two-day voyage from the Oslo fjord to Schleswig, he reported the lands on his starboard bow, and Alfred appended the note "on these islands dwelt the Engle before they came hither". Confirmation is afforded by English and Danish traditions relating to two kings named Wermund and Offa of Angel, from whom the Mercian royal family claimed descent and whose exploits are connected with Anglia, Schleswig, and Rendsburg. Danish tradition has preserved record of two governors of Schleswig, father and son, in their service, Frowinus (Freawine) and Wigo (Wig), from whom the royal family of Wessex claimed descent. During the fifth century, the Anglii invaded Great Britain, after which time their name does not recur on the continent except in the title of the legal code issued to the Thuringians: Lex Anglorum et Werinorum hoc est Thuringorum.
The Angles are the subject of a legend about Pope Gregory I, who happened to see a group of Angle children from Deira for sale as slaves in the Roman market. As the story was told by Bede, Gregory was struck by the unusual appearance of the slaves and asked about their background. When told they were called Anglii (Angles), he replied with a Latin pun that translates well into English: "Bene, nam et angelicam habent faciem, et tales angelorum in caelis decet esse coheredes" [It is well, for they have an angelic face, and such people ought to be co-heirs of the angels in heaven]. Supposedly, this encounter inspired the pope to launch a mission to bring Christianity to their countrymen.
Archaeology
The province of Schleswig has proved rich in prehistoric antiquities that date apparently from the fourth and fifth centuries. A large cremation cemetery has been found at Borgstedt, between Rendsburg and Eckernförde, and it has yielded many urns and brooches closely resembling those found in pagan graves in England. Of still greater importance are the great deposits at Thorsberg moor (in Anglia) and Nydam, which contained large quantities of arms, ornaments, articles of clothing, agricultural implements, etc., and in Nydam, even ships. By the help of these discoveries, Angle culture in the age preceding the invasion of Britannia can be pieced together.
Anglian kingdoms in England
According to sources such as the History of Bede, after the invasion of Britannia, the Angles split up and founded the kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia. H.R. Loyn has observed in this context that "a sea voyage is perilous to tribal institutions", and the apparently tribe-based kingdoms were formed in England. Early times had two northern kingdoms (Bernicia and Deira) and two midland ones (Middle Anglia and Mercia), which had by the seventh century resolved themselves into two Angle kingdoms, viz., Northumbria and Mercia. Northumbria held suzerainty amidst the Teutonic presence in the British Isles in the 7th century, but was eclipsed by the rise of Mercia in the 8th century. Both kingdoms fell in the great assaults of the Danish Viking armies in the 9th century. Their royal houses were effectively destroyed in the fighting, and their Angle populations came under the Danelaw. Further south, the Saxon kings of Wessex withstood the Danish assaults. Then in the late 9th and early 10th centuries, the kings of Wessex defeated the Danes and liberated the Angles from the Danelaw. They united their house in marriage with the surviving Angle royalty, and were accepted by the Angles as their kings. This marked the passing of the old Anglo-Saxon world and the dawn of the "English" as a new people. The regions of East Anglia and Northumbria are still known by their original titles. Northumbria once stretched as far north as what is now southeast Scotland, including Edinburgh, and as far south as the Humber estuary.
The rest of that people stayed at the centre of the Angle homeland in the northeastern portion of the modern German Bundesland of Schleswig-Holstein, on the Jutland Peninsula. There, a small peninsular area is still called Anglia today and is formed as a triangle drawn roughly from modern Flensburg on the Flensburger Fjord to the City of Schleswig and then to Maasholm, on the Schlei inlet.
Notes
References
Sources
Attribution:
Early Germanic peoples
History of Northumberland
Ingaevones
Migration Period
Peoples of Anglo-Saxon England |
2137 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aster%20CT-80 | Aster CT-80 | The Aster CT-80, an early (1982) home/personal computer developed by the small Dutch company MCP (later renamed to Aster Computers), was sold in its first incarnation as a kit for hobbyists. Later it was sold ready to use. It consisted of several Eurocard PCB's with DIN 41612 connectors, and a backplane all based on a 19-inch rack configuration. It was the first commercially available Dutch personal/home computer. The Aster computer could use the software written for the popular Tandy TRS-80 computer while fixing many of the problems of that computer, but it could also run CP/M software, with a large amount of free memory Transient Program Area, (TPA) and a full 80×25 display, and it could be used as a Videotext terminal. Although the Aster was a clone of the TRS-80 Model I it was in fact more compatible with the TRS-80 Model III, and ran all the software of these systems including games. It also had a built in speaker which was compatible with such games software.
Models
Three models were sold. The first model (launched June 1982) looked like the IBM PC, a rectangular base unit with two floppy drives on the front, and a monitor on top with a separate detachable keyboard. The second incarnation was a much smaller unit the width of two 5" floppy drives stacked on top of each other, and the third incarnation looked like a flattened Apple with a built-in keyboard.
All units ran much faster than the original TRS-80, at 4 MHz, (with a software selectable throttle to the original speed for compatibility purposes) and the display supported upper and lower case, hardware snow suppression (video ram bus arbitration logic), and an improved character font set. The floppy disk interface supported dual density, and disk capacities up to 800 KB, more than four times the capacity of the original TRS-80. A special version of NewDos/80, (an improved TRS-DOS compatible Disk operating system) was used to support these disk capacities when using the TRS-80 compatibility mode.
For the educational market a version of the first model was produced with a new plastic enclosure (the First Asters had an all-metal enclosure) that also had an opening on the top in which a cassette recorder could be placed. This model was used in a cluster with one Aster (with disk drives) for the teacher, and eight disk less versions for the pupils. The pupils could download software from the teachers computer through a network based on a fast serial connection, as well as sending back their work to the teachers computer. There was also hardware in place through which the teacher could see the display of each pupils screen on his own monitor.
Working modes
The Aster used 64KB of RAM memory and had the unique feature of supporting two fundamentally different internal architectures: when turned on without a boot floppy or with a TRS-DOS floppy, the Aster would be fully TRS-80 compatible, with 48KB or RAM. When the boot loader detected a CP/M floppy, the Aster would reconfigure its internal memory architecture on the fly to optimally support CP/M with 60 KB free RAM for programs (TPA) and an 80 x 25 display. This dual-architecture capability only existed on one other TRS-80 clone, the LOBO Max-80.
With a special configuration tool, the CT-80 could reconfigure its floppy drivers to read and write the floppies of about 80 other CP/M systems.
A third mode was entered with a special boot floppy which turned the Aster into a Videotex terminal with a 40x25 display and a Videotex character set, The software used the built in RS232 interface of the Aster to control a modem through which it could contact a Prestel service provider.
Sales
Most Aster CT-80's (about 10 thousand of them) were sold to schools for computer education, in a project first known as the "honderd scholen project" (one hundred schools project), but which later involved many more than just one hundred schools. MCP received this order from the Dutch government because their computer met all the technical and other demands, including the demand that the computers should be of Dutch origin and should be built in the Netherlands. Another important demand was that the computers could be used in a network (Aster developed special software and hardware for that). Later however the Government turned around and gave 50% of the order to Philips and their P2000 homecomputer even though the P2000 did not meet all the technical demands, was made in Austria and did not have network hardware nor software.
Company
Aster computers was based in the small town of Arkel near the town of Gorinchem.
Initially Aster computer b.v. was called MCP (Music print Computer Product), because it was specialized in producing computer assisted printing of sheet music. The director of the company was interested in Microprocessor technology and noticed there was a market for selling kits to computer building amateurs, so they started selling electronic kits to hobbyists, and employed four persons at that time . They also assembled kits for people without soldering skills, especially the "junior Computer" from Elektor (a copy of the KIM-1), and the ZX80 from Sinclair. Among the kits sold there were also alternative floppy disk drives for TRS-80 computers. But these needed the infamous TRS-80 expansion interface, which was very expensive, and had a very unreliable floppy disk controller because it used the WD1771 floppy disc controller chip without an external "data separator". To fix this problem MCP developed a small plugin board which could be plugged into the socket for the WD1771, and which contained a data separator, and a socket for the WD1791 to support dual-density operation. Still, the expansion interface was expensive and due to its design it was also unreliable. So they decided to also develop their own alternative in the form of an improved floppy disk controller and printer interface that could be built right into a floppy disk enclosure. The lack of RAM expansion offered by this solution was solved by a service in which the 16 KB RAM chips inside the base unit would be replaced by 64 KB RAM chips.
While this went on MCP renamed itself to MCP CHIP but ran into problems with the German computer magazine CHIP, and had to return to its former name. At that time MCP did also sell imported home computers like the TRS-80, the Video Genie, (another TRS-80 clone), the Luxor ABC 80 and the Apple II.
They also sold the exotic Olivetti M20, a very early 16-bit personal computer that was one of the very few systems to use a Z8000 CPU.
After designing their own fully functional replacement for the TRS-80 expansion interface (which was never commercialized) the company realized that they could do better than just re-designing the expansion interface. They observed that the TRS-80 was a great computer but it lacked in several areas. The display logic and resulting display 'snow' was irritating, as was the missing lower case support, the CPU speed could be improved, the quality and layout of the keyboard was bothersome, and the floppy disk capacity and reliability was low. Also the more interesting software offered for CP/M systems could not run well on a TRS-80. So they decided to design a TRS-80 and CP/M software-compatible computer system, which (following the lead of Apple Computer) they decided to name after a "typical Dutch flower". So they called it the Aster CT-80 (CP/M/Tandy-1980). Why they went with Aster, and not the more well known Tulip is unknown, perhaps they thought it would be to presumptuous, or perhaps the fact that "Aster" is also a Dutch girls' name has something to do with it. Remarkably "Aster" was also the name given to a Dutch Supercomputer much later, in 2002.
The first version of the Aster consisted of four "Eurocard's", one Z80 CPU card with 64 KB memory, one Motorola MC6845-based video card, one double density floppy disk controller card and one "keyboard/RS232/cassette interface" card. Plus a "backplane card", (which connected all the other cards) and a keyboard. And was intended for hobbyists, to be sold as a kit consisting of the parts and the PCB's for the computer and attached keyboard. After selling a few kits, MCP became convinced there was a much bigger market for an improved model sold as a completed working system. However the original kit version lacked many features that prevented its use as a serious computer system. Because the original designer had left the company another employee completely redesigned most of the system, (adding a display snow remover circuit, true 80/64 column text mode support, (with different size letters for TRS-80 and CP/M mode, so that in TRS-80 mode the full screen was also used, not just a 64×16 portion of the 80×25 screen) with an improved font set (adding "gray scale" version of the TRS-80 mozaik graphics and many special PETSCII like characters), and a more flexible and reliable floppy disk controller and keyboard interface plus many other small improvements), also an enclosure was developed for the main computer system, (in the form of a 19-inch rack for the Eurocards) and for two floppy disk drives and the power supply. A software engineer was hired to write the special "dual boot mode" BIOS and the special CP/M BIOS. The "dual boot mode" BIOS actually discovered whether a TRS-DOS, or Aster CP/M disk was placed in the drive, and would, depending on the type of disk, reorganise the internal memory architecture of the system, to either be 100% TRS-80 compatible or optimally support CP/M, with as much "workspace" as possible, and the 80×25 video mode. It also was responsible for switching to ROM BASIC when the system was turned on with the break key pressed, and later supported a primitive LAN system, using the RS232 port with modified cabling. The very first of the ready made computers were sold with the "kit" versions of the euro cards, the version with redesigned cards came a month or so later.
Soon the little shop became much too small and they moved to a much larger factory building nearby (formerly a window glass factory), and started mass-producing the Aster for a period of a few years, in which time its staff grew twentyfold.
After the Aster having been a few years on the Market Tandy released its own improved model, the TRS-80 Model III computer which solved many of the same problems that the Aster also had solved, but the model 3 still did not fully support CP/M as the Aster did. In the meantime IBM had released its original IBM PC, which incidentally looked remarkably like the Asters base with floppy drives + separate keyboard set-up.
The Aster was chosen for Dutch schools by the Dutch ministry of education, in a set-up with eight disk-less Asters, and one Aster with high-capacity floppy drives all connected by a LAN based on the Aster's high-speed serial port hardware, and special cables that permitted that any single computer on the LAN could broadcast to all other computers. The floppy based system was operated by the teacher who could send programs from his floppy disk, and data, to the student's disk-less systems thanks to the special BIOS in those systems. The students could send programs and data back to the teacher through the same LAN, or could save to a cassette recorder built into the disk-less units. Through a special "video-switch" the teacher was also able to see a copy of each student's display on his own screen. About a thousand of such systems were sold for many hundreds of Dutch schools.
Because of cash flow problems (resulting from growing too fast, insufficient financial backing, technical problems, and a sudden problem with Z80 processor deliveries) the company suddenly folded even before it came to full fruition.
Perhaps the Aster computer inspired another Dutch computer firm to name their computer after another typical Dutch flower—the Tulip's Tulip System-1 which appeared about the same time Aster folded.
Most of the engineers who designed the hardware and software of the Aster went on to design hardware and software for the (then new) MSX system for a company called "Micro Technology b.v.".
Unreleased add ons
To enhance and modernize the Aster CT-80 the company also designed three alternative video display adapters to supplement or replace the TRS-80 compatible video card, (due to the modular nature of the Aster it was simply a matter of changing the video card, and/or CPU card to upgrade the system).
A very High resolution monochrome video card with blitter and hardware text line and arc drawing capability, was designed for CAD applications, based on the NEC μPD7220 chip designed for graphic terminals, but was also used by some personal computers like the DEC Rainbow, and notably also for the Tulip System I.
A colour video card with sprite capability based on the same video chip (the TMS9918) as the TI-99/4 and MSX computers, designed for gaming, and more creative and colorful educational software. A working prototype of this card was finished.
A replacement card for the original TRS-80 compatible video card, software compatible to the original one, but with added color and very high resolution capabilities. was also on the drawing board. Based on a newer, slightly more flexible, version of the Asters original Motorola MC6845 video chip, the Rockwell 6545, it worked by adding a new video mode, one with the ability to reprogram an extended, (2048 characters instead of 256 characters) version of the character set, supported by an extended character memory of the video card that did not use one (8 bit) byte per character, but an 11 bit "word", so it could address each one of the available 2048 unique programmable characters. This meant it could provide a separate programmable character for all of the 1024 (64x16) or 2000 (80x25) characters on the screen. By filling the character pointer memory with values from zero to 1999 this essentially turned the text mode display into a very high resolution graphics mode, with the "font memory", acting as the high resolution Raster graphics video memory. Because the characters were 8 x 12 pixels this meant that video resolutions of 512 x 192 pixels (in 64x16 character mode), or 640 x 300 pixels (in 80x25 character mode) were created, which was quite high for the time. The "double width" mode of the TRS-80 was also supported, so 256 x 192 pixels (in 32x16 character mode), or 320 x 300 pixels (in 40x25 character mode) were also possible. The video card also supported 16 foreground and 16 background colors per character, by providing one byte per character position (2K) of "color ram". One nibble of such a byte then controlled the foreground color, and the other nibble controlled the background color, a system very similar to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, in fact in the 256x192 mode the display mode was virtually identical to the video of the ZX Spectrum. The color memory was also available in the "normal" TRS-80 and CP/M text modes, which meant that existing TRS-80 and CP/M software could be easily modified to add color. This video card would also support fast scrolling of high resolution color screens for games, because it had the indirection of the character pointers, so it was possible to quickly scroll the high resolution display, (or use other effects) by simply manipulating the 1920/1024 bytes of text video instead of the 24,576 bytes of high-resolution video memory.
A hard disk interface was also in the works, which would, add a SCSI interface, and the necessary software. A working prototype was developed that added a 40MB hard disk.
On the software front, work was being done to implement the replacement for the aging "user interface" of CP/M, (the Command Console Processor CCP) with the more modern ZCPR.
Finally a replacement for the aging Z80 processor was being developed in the form of an Intel 8086 board, and additional 512K 16 bit memory boards. Such replacements of CPU and memory system components were possible because the Aster CT-80 was designed to use a backplane that was designed to support both 8 and 16 bit processors, and used a modular Eurocard based design with slots to spare for expansion. In theory the system could support the Z80 and the 8086 simultaneously. Plans were formulated to support CP/M-86 and even MS-DOS.
Unfortunately none of these extensions to the system became available because the company folded before any of them could be released.
External links
Pictures of the Aster CT-80 model one from a Spanish computer museum, the educational model with an opening for a cassette player is the one on the right
A picture of the Aster CT-80 model two used for a business application
A picture of the Aster CT-80 model three without cover (Computermuseumgroningen does not have this item anymore)
Notes
Z80-based home computers
Home computers
Personal computers
TRS-80 |
2138 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur%20Wellesley | Arthur Wellesley | Arthur Wellesley may refer to:
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852), Anglo-Irish soldier and British prime minister
Arthur Wellesley, 2nd Duke of Wellington (1807–1884), British soldier and nobleman
Arthur Wellesley, 4th Duke of Wellington (1849–1934), British soldier and nobleman
Arthur Wellesley, 5th Duke of Wellington (1876–1941), British soldier and nobleman
Arthur Wellesley, Marquess of Douro (born 1978), grandson of the 8th Duke
Arthur Wellesley Hughes (1870–1950), also known as Arthur Wellesley, Canadian musician and composer
Arthur Wellesley, 4th Earl Cowley (1890–1962), British actor and nobleman
See also
Arthur (disambiguation)
Wellesley (disambiguation)
Duke of Wellington (disambiguation) |
2139 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists%20of%20animated%20television%20series | Lists of animated television series | These are lists of animated television series. Animated television series are television programs produced by means of animation. Animated series produced for theaters are not included in this lists; for those, see List of animated short film series. These lists include compilation series of theatrical shorts such as The Bugs Bunny Show since they often feature some new wrap-around animation.
Lists by decade
List of animated television series of the 1940s and 1950s
List of animated television series of the 1960s
List of animated television series of the 1970s
List of animated television series of the 1980s
List of animated television series of the 1990s
List of animated television series of the 2000s
List of animated television series of the 2010s
List of animated television series of the 2020s
Other lists
List of animated television series created for syndication
List of animated television series by episode count
List of children's animated television series
List of adult animated television series
List of American prime time animated television series
List of anime series by episode count
List of anime franchises by episode count
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2140 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta%20Braves | Atlanta Braves | The Atlanta Braves are an American professional baseball team based in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The Braves compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) East division. The team played its home games at Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium from 1966 to 1996, and at Turner Field from 1997 to 2016. Since 2017, their home stadium has been Truist Park (formerly SunTrust Park), located 10 miles (16 km) northwest of downtown Atlanta in Cumberland, Georgia. The Braves play spring training games at CoolToday Park in North Port, Florida.
The name "Braves", which was first used in 1912, originates from a term for a Native American warrior. They are nicknamed "the Bravos", and often referred to as "America's Team" in reference to the team's games being broadcast on the nationally available TBS from the 1970s until 2007, giving the team a nationwide fan base.
The Braves and the Chicago Cubs are the National League's two remaining charter franchises. The Braves were founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1871, as the Boston Red Stockings (not to be confused with the American League's Boston Red Sox). The team states it is "the oldest continuously operating professional sports franchise in America." After various name changes, the team eventually began operating as the Boston Braves, which lasted for most of the first half of the 20th century. Then, in 1953, the team moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and became the Milwaukee Braves, followed by their move to Atlanta in 1966.
From 1991 to 2005, the Braves were one of the most successful teams in baseball, winning an unprecedented 14 consecutive division titles (omitting the strike-shortened 1994 season in which there were no official division champions), and producing one of the greatest pitching rotations in the history of baseball. Most notably, this rotation consisted of pitchers Greg Maddux, John Smoltz, and Tom Glavine. Pitcher Steve Avery was also a significant contributor to the rotation during the period of 1991–1993. The Braves won the National League West division from 1991 to 1993, and after divisional realignment, the National League East division from 1995 to 2005. They returned to the playoffs as the National League Wild Card in 2010. The Braves advanced to the World Series five times in the 1990s (1991, 1992, 1995, 1996, and 1999), winning the title in 1995 against the Cleveland Indians. Since their debut in the National League in 1876, the franchise has won an MLB record 21 divisional titles, 18 National League pennants, and four World Series championships – in 1914 as the Boston Braves, in 1957 as the Milwaukee Braves, and in 1995 and 2021 as the Atlanta Braves. The Braves are the only Major League Baseball franchise to have won the World Series in three different home cities. At the end of the 2021 season, the Braves' overall win–loss record is .
History
Boston (1871–1952)
1871–1913
The Cincinnati Red Stockings, established in 1869 as the first openly all-professional baseball team, voted to dissolve after the 1870 season. Player-manager Harry Wright, with brother George and two other Cincinnati players, then went to Boston, Massachusetts at the invitation of Boston Red Stockings founder Ivers Whitney Adams to form the nucleus of the Boston Red Stockings, a charter member of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP). The original Boston Red Stockings team and its successors can lay claim to being the oldest continuously playing team in American professional sports. (The only other team that has been organized as long, the Chicago Cubs, did not play for the two years following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.) Two young players hired away from the Forest City club of Rockford, Illinois, turned out to be the biggest stars during the NAPBBP years: pitcher Al Spalding (founder of Spalding sporting goods) and second baseman Ross Barnes.
Led by the Wright brothers, Barnes, and Spalding, the Red Stockings dominated the National Association, winning four of that league's five championships. The team became one of the National League's charter franchises in 1876, sometimes called the "Red Caps" (as a new Cincinnati Red Stockings club was another charter member).
The Boston Red Caps played in the first game in the history of the National League, on Saturday, April 22, 1876, defeating the Philadelphia Athletics, 6–5.
Although somewhat stripped of talent in the National League's inaugural year, Boston bounced back to win the 1877 and 1878 pennants. The Red Caps/Beaneaters were one of the league's dominant teams during the 19th century, winning a total of eight pennants. For most of that time, their manager was Frank Selee. Boston came to be called the Beaneaters in 1883 while retaining red as the team color. The 1898 team finished 102–47, a club record for wins that would stand for almost a century. Stars of those 1890s Beaneater teams included the "Heavenly Twins", Hugh Duffy and Tommy McCarthy, as well as "Slidin'" Billy Hamilton.
The team was decimated when the American League's new Boston entry set up shop in 1901. Many of the Beaneaters' stars jumped to the new team, which offered contracts that the Beaneaters' owners did not even bother to match. They only managed one winning season from 1900 to 1913 and lost 100 games five times. In 1907, the Beaneaters (temporarily) eliminated the last bit of red from their stockings because their manager thought the red dye could cause wounds to become infected, as noted in The Sporting News Baseball Guide in the 1940s. The American League club's owner, Charles Taylor, wasted little time in adopting Red Sox as his team's first official nickname (up to that point they had been called by the generic "Americans"). Media-driven nickname changes to the Doves in 1907 and the Rustlers in 1911 did nothing to change the National League club's luck. The team became the Braves for the first time before the 1912 season. The president of the club, John M. Ward named the club after the owner, James Gaffney. Gaffney was called one of the "braves" of New York City's political machine, Tammany Hall, which used an Indian chief as their symbol.
1914: Miracle
Two years later, the Braves put together one of the most memorable seasons in baseball history. After a dismal 4–18 start, the Braves seemed to be on pace for a last-place finish. On July 4, 1914, the Braves lost both games of a doubleheader to the Brooklyn Dodgers. The consecutive losses put their record at 26–40 and the Braves were in last place, 15 games behind the league-leading New York Giants, who had won the previous three league pennants. After a day off, the Braves started to put together a hot streak, and from July 6 through September 5, the Braves went 41–12. On September 7 and 8, the Braves took two of three games from the New York Giants and moved into first place. The Braves tore through September and early October, closing with 25 wins against six losses, while the Giants went 16–16. They were the only team, under the old eight-team league format, to win a pennant after being in last place on the Fourth of July. They were in last place as late as July 18, but were close to the pack, moving into fourth on July 21 and second place on August 12.
Despite their amazing comeback, the Braves entered the World Series as a heavy underdog to Connie Mack's Philadelphia A's. Nevertheless, the Braves swept the Athletics—the first unqualified sweep in the young history of the modern World Series (the 1907 Series had one tied game) to win the world championship. Meanwhile, Johnny Evers won the Chalmers Award.
The Braves played the World Series (as well as the last few games of the 1914 season) at Fenway Park, since their normal home, the South End Grounds, was too small. However, the Braves' success inspired owner Gaffney to build a modern park, Braves Field, which opened in August 1915. It was the largest park in the majors at the time, with 40,000 seats and a very spacious outfield. The park was novel for its time; public transportation brought fans right to the park.
1915–1953
After contending for most of 1915 and 1916, the Braves only twice posted winning records from 1917 to 1932. The lone highlight of those years came when Judge Emil Fuchs bought the team in 1923 to bring his longtime friend, pitching great Christy Mathewson, back into the game. However, Mathewson died in 1925, leaving Fuchs in control of the team.
Fuchs was committed to building a winner, but the damage from the years prior to his arrival took some time to overcome. The Braves finally managed to be competitive in 1933 and 1934 under manager Bill McKechnie, but Fuchs' revenue was severely depleted due to the Great Depression.
Looking for a way to get more fans and more money, Fuchs worked out a deal with the New York Yankees to acquire Babe Ruth, who had started his career with the Red Sox. Fuchs made Ruth team vice president, and promised him a share of the profits. He was also granted the title of assistant manager, and was to be consulted on all of the Braves' deals. Fuchs even suggested that Ruth, who had long had his heart set on managing, could take over as manager once McKechnie stepped down—perhaps as early as 1936.
At first, it appeared that Ruth was the final piece the team needed in 1935. On opening day, he had a hand in all of the Braves' runs in a 4–2 win over the Giants. However, that proved to be the only time the Braves were over .500 all year. Events went downhill quickly. While Ruth could still hit, he could do little else. He could not run, and his fielding was so terrible that three of the Braves' pitchers threatened to go on strike if Ruth were in the lineup. It soon became obvious that he was vice president and assistant manager in name only and Fuchs' promise of a share of team profits was hot air. In fact, Ruth discovered that Fuchs expected him to invest some of his money in the team.
Seeing a franchise in complete disarray, Ruth retired on June 1—only six days after he clouted what turned out to be the last three home runs of his career. He had wanted to quit as early as May 12, but Fuchs wanted him to hang on so he could play in every National League park. The Braves finished 38–115, the worst season in franchise history. Their .248 winning percentage is the second-worst in the modern era and the second-worst in National League history (ahead of the 1899 Cleveland Spiders with a .130 winning percentage).
Fuchs lost control of the team in August 1935, and the new owners tried to change the team's image by renaming it the Boston Bees. This did little to change the team's fortunes. After five uneven years, a new owner, construction magnate Lou Perini, changed the nickname back to the Braves. He immediately set about rebuilding the team. World War II slowed things down a little, but the team rode the pitching of Warren Spahn to impressive seasons in 1946 and 1947.
In 1948, the team won the pennant, behind the pitching of Spahn and Johnny Sain, who won 39 games between them. The remainder of the rotation was so thin that in September, Boston Post writer Gerald Hern wrote this poem about the pair:
First we'll use Spahn
then we'll use Sain
Then an off day
followed by rain
Back will come Spahn
followed by Sain
And followed
we hope
by two days of rain.
The poem received such a wide audience that the sentiment, usually now paraphrased as "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain", entered the baseball vocabulary. However, in the 1948 season, the Braves had the same overall winning percentage as in games that Spahn and Sain started.
The 1948 World Series, which the Braves lost in six games to the Indians, turned out to be the Braves' last hurrah in Boston. In 1950, Sam Jethroe became the team's first African American player, making his major league debut on April 18. Amid four mediocre seasons, attendance steadily dwindled until, on March 13, 1953, Perini, who had recently bought out his original partners, announced he was moving the team to Milwaukee, where the Braves had their top farm club, the Brewers. Milwaukee had long been a possible target for relocation. Bill Veeck had tried to return his St. Louis Browns there earlier the same year (Milwaukee was the original home of that franchise), but his proposal had been voted down by the other American League owners.
Milwaukee (1953–1965)
Milwaukee went wild over the Braves, drawing a then-NL record 1.8 million fans. The Braves finished 92–62 in their first season in Milwaukee. The success of the relocated team showed that baseball could succeed in new markets, and the Philadelphia Athletics, St. Louis Browns, Brooklyn Dodgers, and New York Giants left their hometowns within the next five years.
As the 1950s progressed, the reinvigorated Braves became increasingly competitive. Sluggers Eddie Mathews and Hank Aaron drove the offense (they hit a combined 1,226 home runs as Braves, with 850 of those coming while the franchise was in Milwaukee and 863 coming while they were teammates), often aided by another power hitter, Joe Adcock, while Warren Spahn, Lew Burdette, and Bob Buhl anchored the rotation. The 1956 Braves finished second, only one game behind the Brooklyn Dodgers.
In 1957, the Braves celebrated their first pennant in nine years spearheaded by Aaron's MVP season, as he led the National League in home runs and RBI. Perhaps the most memorable of his 44 round-trippers that season came on September 23, a two-run walk-off home run that gave the Braves a 4–2 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals and clinched the League championship. The team then went on to its first World Series win in over 40 years, defeating the powerful New York Yankees of Berra, Mantle, and Ford in seven games. One-time Yankee Burdette, the Series MVP, threw three complete-game victories against his former team, giving up only two earned runs.
In 1958, the Braves again won the National League pennant and jumped out to a three games to one lead in the World Series against the New York Yankees once more, thanks in part to the strength of Spahn's and Burdette's pitching. But the Yankees stormed back to take the last three games, in large part to World Series MVP Bob Turley's pitching.
The 1959 season saw the Braves finish the season in a tie with the Los Angeles Dodgers, both with 86–68 records. Many residents of Chicago and Milwaukee were hoping for a Sox-Braves Series, as the cities are only about apart, but it was not to be because Milwaukee fell in a best-of-3 playoff with two straight losses to the Dodgers. The Dodgers would go on to defeat the Chicago White Sox in the World Series.
The next six years were up-and-down for the Braves. The 1960 season featured two no-hitters by Burdette and Spahn, and Milwaukee finished seven games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates, who went on to win the World Series that year, in second place, one year after the Braves were on the winning end of the 13-inning near-perfect game of Pirates pitcher Harvey Haddix. The 1961 season saw a drop in the standings for the Braves down to fourth, despite Spahn recording his 300th victory and pitching another no-hitter that year.
Aaron hit 45 home runs in 1962, a Milwaukee career high for him, but this did not translate into wins for the Braves, as they finished fifth. The next season, Aaron again hit 44 home runs and notched 130 RBI, and 42-year-old Warren Spahn was once again the ace of the staff, going 23–7. However, none of the other Braves produced at that level, and the team finished in the "second division", for the first time in its short history in Milwaukee.
The Braves were mediocre as the 1960s began, with an inflated win total fed by the expansion New York Mets and Houston Colt .45s. To this day, the Milwaukee Braves are the only major league team that played more than one season and never had a losing record.
Perini sold the Braves to a Chicago-based group led by William Bartholomay in 1962. Almost immediately Bartholomay started shopping the Braves to a larger television market. Keen to attract them, the fast-growing city of Atlanta, led by Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. constructed a new $18 million, 52,000-seat ballpark in less than one year, Atlanta Stadium, which was officially opened in 1965 in hopes of luring an existing major league baseball and/or NFL/AFL team. After the city failed to lure the Kansas City A's to Atlanta (the A's ultimately moved to Oakland in 1968), the Braves announced their intention to move to Atlanta for the 1965 season. However, an injunction filed in Wisconsin kept the Braves in Milwaukee for one final year. In 1966, the Braves completed the move to Atlanta.
Eddie Mathews is the only Braves player to have played for the organization in all three cities that they have been based in. Mathews played with the Braves for their last season in Boston, the team's entire tenure in Milwaukee, and their first season in Atlanta.
Atlanta (1966–present)
1966–1974
The Braves were a .500 team in their first few years in Atlanta; 85–77 in 1966, 77–85 in 1967, and 81–81 in 1968. The 1967 season was the Braves' first losing season since 1952, their last year in Boston. In 1969, with the onset of divisional play, the Braves won the first-ever National League West Division title, before being swept by the "Miracle Mets" in the National League Championship Series. They would not be a factor during the next decade, posting only two winning seasons between 1970 and 1981 – in some cases, fielding teams as bad as the worst Boston teams.
In the meantime, fans had to be satisfied with the achievements of Hank Aaron. In the relatively hitter-friendly confines and higher-than-average altitude of Atlanta Stadium ("The Launching Pad"), he actually increased his offensive production. Atlanta also produced batting champions in Rico Carty (in 1970) and Ralph Garr (in 1974). In the shadow of Aaron's historical home run pursuit, was the fact that three Atlanta sluggers hit 40 or more home runs in 1973 – Darrell Evans and Davey Johnson along with Aaron.
By the end of the 1973 season, Aaron had hit 713 home runs, one short of Ruth's record. Throughout the winter he received racially motivated death threats, but stood up well under the pressure. On April 4, opening day of the next season, he hit No.714 in Cincinnati, and on April 8, in front of his home fans and a national television audience, he finally beat Ruth's mark with a home run to left-center field off left-hander Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Aaron spent most of his career as a Milwaukee and Atlanta Brave before being traded to the Milwaukee Brewers on November 2, 1974.
1976–1977: Ted Turner buys the team
In 1976, the team was purchased by media magnate Ted Turner, owner of superstation WTBS, as a means to keep the team (and one of his main programming staples) in Atlanta. The financially strapped Turner used money already paid to the team for their broadcast rights as a down-payment. It was then that Atlanta Stadium was renamed Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium. Turner quickly gained a reputation as a quirky, hands-on baseball owner. On May 11, 1977, Turner appointed himself manager, but because MLB passed a rule in the 1950s barring managers from holding a financial stake in their teams, Turner was ordered to relinquish that position after one game (the Braves lost 2–1 to the Pittsburgh Pirates to bring their losing streak to 17 games).
Turner used the Braves as a major programming draw for his fledgling cable network, making the Braves the first franchise to have a nationwide audience and fan base. WTBS marketed the team as "The Atlanta Braves: America's Team", a nickname that still sticks in some areas of the country, especially the South. Among other things, in 1976 Turner suggested the nickname "Channel" for pitcher Andy Messersmith and jersey number 17, in order to promote the television station that aired Braves games. Major League Baseball quickly nixed the idea.
1978–1990
After three straight losing seasons, Bobby Cox was hired for his first stint as manager for the 1978 season. He promoted 22-year-old slugger Dale Murphy into the starting lineup. Murphy hit 77 home runs over the next three seasons, but he struggled on defense, unable to adeptly play either catcher or first base. In 1980, Murphy was moved to center field and demonstrated excellent range and throwing ability, while the Braves earned their first winning season since 1974. Cox was fired after the 1981 season and replaced with Joe Torre, under whose leadership the Braves attained their first divisional title since 1969. Strong performances from Bob Horner, Chris Chambliss, pitcher Phil Niekro, and short relief pitcher Gene Garber helped the Braves, but no Brave was more acclaimed than Murphy, who won both a Most Valuable Player and a Gold Glove award. Murphy also won an MVP award the following season, but the Braves began a period of decline that defined the team throughout the 1980s. Murphy, excelling in defense, hitting, and running, was consistently recognized as one of the league's best players, but the Braves averaged only 65 wins per season between 1985 and 1990. Their lowest point came in 1988, when they lost 106 games. The 1986 season saw the return of Bobby Cox as general manager. Also in 1986, the team stopped using their Indian-themed mascot, Chief Noc-A-Homa.
1991–2005: Division dominance
1991–1994
Cox returned to the dugout as manager in the middle of the 1990 season, replacing Russ Nixon. The Braves finished the year with the worst record in baseball, at 65–97. They traded Dale Murphy to the Philadelphia Phillies after it was clear he was becoming a less dominant player. Pitching coach Leo Mazzone began developing young pitchers Tom Glavine, Steve Avery, and John Smoltz into future stars. That same year, the Braves used the number one overall pick in the 1990 MLB draft to select Chipper Jones, who became one of the best hitters in team history. Perhaps the Braves' most important move was not on the field, but in the front office. Immediately after the season, John Schuerholz was hired away from the Kansas City Royals as general manager.
The following season, Glavine, Avery, and Smoltz would be recognized as the best young pitchers in the league, winning 52 games among them. Meanwhile, behind position players David Justice, Ron Gant and unexpected league Most Valuable Player and batting champion Terry Pendleton, the Braves overcame a 39–40 start, winning 55 of their final 83 games over the last three months of the season and edging the Los Angeles Dodgers by one game in one of baseball's more memorable playoff races. The "Worst to First" Braves, who had not won a divisional title since 1982, captivated the city of Atlanta (and the entire southeast) during their improbable run to the flag. They defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates in a very tightly contested seven-game NLCS only to lose the World Series, also in seven games, to the Minnesota Twins. The series, considered by many to be one of the greatest ever, was the first time a team that had finished last in its division one year went to the World Series the next; both the Twins and Braves accomplished the feat.
Despite the 1991 World Series loss, the Braves' success would continue. In 1992, the Braves returned to the NLCS and once again defeated the Pirates in seven games, culminating in a dramatic game seven win. Francisco Cabrera's two-out single that scored David Justice and Sid Bream capped a three-run rally in the bottom of the ninth inning that gave the Braves a 3–2 victory. It was the first time in post-season history that the tying and winning runs had scored on a single play in the ninth inning. The Braves lost the World Series to the Toronto Blue Jays, however. In 1993, the Braves signed Cy Young Award winning pitcher Greg Maddux from the Chicago Cubs, leading many baseball insiders to declare the team's pitching staff the best in baseball. The 1993 team posted a franchise-best 104 wins after a dramatic pennant race with the San Francisco Giants, who won 103 games. The Braves needed a stunning 55–19 finish to edge out the Giants, who led the Braves by nine games in the standings as late as August 11. However, the Braves fell in the NLCS to the Philadelphia Phillies in six games.
In 1994, in a realignment of the National League's divisions following the 1993 expansion, the Braves moved to the Eastern Division. This realignment was the main cause of the team's heated rivalry with the New York Mets during the mid-to-late 1990s.
The player's strike cut short the 1994 season, prior to the division championships, with the Braves six games behind the Montreal Expos with 48 games left to play.
1995–2005
The Braves returned strong the following strike-shortened (144 games instead of the customary 162) year and beat the Cleveland Indians in the 1995 World Series. This squelched claims by many Braves critics that they were the "Buffalo Bills of Baseball" (January 1996 issue of Beckett Baseball Card Monthly). With this World Series victory, the Braves became the first team in Major League Baseball to win world championships in three different cities. With their strong pitching as a constant, the Braves appeared in the and 1999 World Series (losing both to the New York Yankees, managed by Joe Torre, a former Braves manager), and had a streak of division titles from 1991 to 2005 (three in the Western Division and eleven in the Eastern) interrupted only in 1994 when the strike ended the season early. Pitching was not the only constant in the Braves organization —Cox was the Braves' manager, while Schuerholz remained the team's GM until after the 2007 season when he was promoted to team president. Terry Pendleton finished his playing career elsewhere but returned to the Braves system as the hitting coach.
In October 1996, Time Warner acquired Ted Turner's Turner Broadcasting System and all of its assets, including its cable channels and the Atlanta Braves. Over the next few years, Ted Turner's presence as the owner of the team would diminish.
A 95–67 record in produced a ninth consecutive division title. However, a sweep by the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Division Series prevented the Braves from reaching the NL Championship Series.
In 2001, Atlanta won the National League East division yet again, swept the Houston Astros in the NLDS, then lost to the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League Championship Series four games to one. One memorable game the Braves played that year came on September 21, when they played rival New York Mets in the first major professional sporting event held in New York City since 9/11.
In 2002, 2003, and 2004, the Braves won the Eastern division again, but lost in the NLDS in all three years in the same fashion: 3 games to 2 to the San Francisco Giants, Chicago Cubs, and Houston Astros.
Cy Young dominance
Six National League Cy Young Awards in the 1990s were awarded to three Braves pitchers:
In 1991, left-handed pitcher Tom Glavine received his first award.
Right-handed pitcher Greg Maddux won four in a row, three of them with the Braves from 1993 through 1995. His first award came in 1992 with the Cubs.
In 1996, right-handed pitcher John Smoltz received his only Cy Young Award.
In 1998, Glavine won his second.
2005: A new generation
In 2005, the Braves won the Division championship for the 14th consecutive time from 1991 to 2005. The fourteen consecutive division titles (not counting the interrupted 1994 season) stands as the record for all major league baseball. This particular team would be known as the "Baby Braves", referring to the vast presence of rookies on the roster such as Wilson Betemit, Brian McCann, Pete Orr, Ryan Langerhans, and Jeff Francoeur. Catcher Brian McCann, right fielder Jeff Francoeur, and pitcher Kyle Davies all grew up near the Atlanta area; as such, the team had a record of 90–72, two games better than the second place team in the Philadelphia Phillies.
However, the season would end on a sour note as the Braves lost the National League Division Series to the Astros in four games. In Game 4, with the Braves leading by five runs in the eighth inning, the Astros battled back with a Lance Berkman grand slam and a two-out, ninth-inning Brad Ausmus home run off of Braves closer Kyle Farnsworth. The game did not end until the 18th inning, becoming the longest game in playoff history at five hours 50 minutes. Chris Burke ended the marathon with a home run off of Joey Devine.
After the 2005 season, the Braves lost their long-time pitching coach Leo Mazzone, who left to go to the Baltimore Orioles. Roger McDowell took his place in the Atlanta dugout. Unable to re-sign shortstop Rafael Furcal, the Braves acquired shortstop Édgar Rentería from the Boston Red Sox.
2006: Struggles
In 2006, the Braves did not perform at the level they had grown accustomed to. Due to an offensive slump, injuries to their starting rotation, and subpar bullpen performances, the Braves compiled a 6–21 record during June, the worst month ever in Atlanta with a winning percentage of .222; this was only better than the woeful Boston Braves in May 1935 (4–20) with a .166 winning percentage.
After the break, the Braves came out with their bats swinging, setting many franchise records. They won five straight, sweeping the Padres and taking two from the Cardinals, tallying a total of 65 runs in that span. The 65 runs in five games is the best by the franchise since 1897, when the Boston Beaneaters totaled 78, including 25 in one game and 21 in another, from May 31 – June 3; the 2006 Braves also became the first team since the 1930 New York Yankees to score ten runs or more in five straight games. The Braves had a total of 81 hits during their five-game run and 98 hits in their last six games, going back to an 8–3 victory over Cincinnati on July 9, the last game before the All-Star break. Additionally, Chipper Jones was able to maintain a 20-game hitting streak and tie Paul Waner's 69-year-old Major League record with a 14-game extra-base hit streak.
However, on September 18, the New York Mets' win over the Florida Marlins mathematically eliminated the Braves from winning the NL East, ending the Atlanta Braves' 11-year reign over the NL East. On September 24, the Braves' loss to the Colorado Rockies mathematically eliminated the Braves from winning the NL Wild Card, making 2006 the first year that the Braves would not compete in the postseason since 1990, not counting the strike-shortened 1994 season. Also, a loss to the Mets on September 28 guaranteed the Braves their first losing season since 1990. Although the Braves won two of their last three games against the Astros, including rookie Chuck James besting Roger Clemens, Atlanta finished the season in third place, one game ahead of the Marlins, at 79–83.
Sale to Liberty Media
In December 2005, team owner Time Warner, which inherited the Braves after purchasing Turner Broadcasting System in 1996, announced it was placing the team for sale. Liberty Media began negotiations to purchase the team.
In February 2007, after more than a year of negotiations, Time Warner agreed to a deal to sell the Braves to Liberty Media, which owned a large amount of stock in Time Warner, pending approval by 75 percent of MLB owners and the Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Selig. The deal included the exchange of the Braves, valued in the deal at $450 million, a hobbyist magazine publishing company, and $980 million cash, for 68.5 million shares of Time Warner stock held by Liberty, worth approximately $1.48 billion. Team President Terry McGuirk anticipated no change in the front office structure, personnel, or day-to-day operations of the Braves, and Liberty did not participate in day-to-day operations. On May 16, 2007, Major League Baseball's owners approved the sale. The Braves are one of only two Major League Baseball teams under majority corporate ownership (and the only NL team with this distinction); the other team is the Toronto Blue Jays (owned by Canadian media conglomerate Rogers Communications).
2007: More struggles
On July 5, Chipper Jones surpassed Dale Murphy for the Atlanta club record of 372 home runs by belting two against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
After struggling during the second half of the 2007 season, Atlanta finished over .500 and missed the postseason again. On October 12, 2007, John Schuerholz stepped down as general manager to take over as team president. Assistant GM Frank Wren took over as general manager.
2009: The return of solid pitching
On December 4, 2008, the Braves received Javier Vázquez and Boone Logan, while the Chicago White Sox received prospects catcher Tyler Flowers, shortstop Brent Lillibridge, third baseman Jon Gilmore and pitcher Santos Rodriguez. On January 13, 2009, the Braves signed Japanese pitcher Kenshin Kawakami to a three-year deal, and two days later signed free agent pitcher Derek Lowe to a four-year contract. During the course of the offseason, the Braves signed veteran pitcher and former Brave Tom Glavine, while losing long-time Brave John Smoltz to the Boston Red Sox.
On February 25, 2009, just before the start of spring training, Atlanta agreed to terms on a one-year contract with free-agent outfielder Garret Anderson. The additional outfield depth allowed the Braves to trade Josh Anderson to the Detroit Tigers for minor league pitcher Rudy Darrow on March 30, 2009.
On June 3, 2009, the Braves acquired Nate McLouth from the Pittsburgh Pirates for prospects Jeff Locke, Charlie Morton and Gorkys Hernández. They also released veteran pitcher Tom Glavine. On July 10, 2009, the Braves traded outfielder Jeff Francoeur to the New York Mets for outfielder Ryan Church. On July 31, 2009, hours before the trade deadline, the Braves and Boston Red Sox swapped 1st basemen: Atlanta dealt Casey Kotchman to Boston and reacquired Adam LaRoche, whom the Braves had traded away during the 2006–07 off-season to Pittsburgh.
The Braves made a late-season surge, coming within 2 games of the wild card leading Colorado Rockies in late September. On October 1, 2009, with the Braves four games back, Colorado beat the Milwaukee Brewers 9–2 to clinch the wild card spot and end the Braves' 2009 postseason hopes.
2010: Cox's final season
The 2010 Braves' season featured an attempt to reclaim a postseason berth for the first time since 2005. The Braves were once again skippered by Bobby Cox, in his 25th and final season managing the team. The Braves started the 2010 season slowly and had a nine-game losing streak in April. Then they had a nine-game winning streak from May 26 through June 3, the Braves longest since 2000 when they won 16 in a row. On May 31, the Atlanta Braves defeated the then-first place Philadelphia Phillies at Turner Field to take sole possession of first place in the National League East standings, a position they had maintained through the middle of August. The last time the Atlanta Braves led the NL East on August 1 was in 2005. On July 13, 2010, at the 2010 MLB All-Star Game in Anaheim, Braves catcher Brian McCann was awarded the All-Star Game MVP Award for his clutch two-out, three-run double in the seventh inning to give the National League its first win in the All-Star Game since 1996. He became the first Brave to win the All-Star Game MVP Award since Fred McGriff did so in 1994. The Braves made two deals before the trade deadline to acquire Álex González, Rick Ankiel and Kyle Farnsworth from the Toronto Blue Jays and Kansas City Royals, giving up shortstop Yunel Escobar, pitchers Jo-Jo Reyes and Jesse Chavez, outfielder Gregor Blanco and three minor leaguers. On August 18, 2010, they traded three pitching prospects for first baseman Derrek Lee from the Chicago Cubs. On August 22, 2010, against the Chicago Cubs, Mike Minor struck out 12 batters across 6 innings; an Atlanta Braves single game rookie strikeout record. The Braves dropped to second in the NL East in early September, but won the NL Wild Card. They lost to the San Francisco Giants in the National League Division Series in four games. Every game of the series was determined by one run. After the series-clinching victory for the Giants in Game 4, Bobby Cox was given a standing ovation by the fans, also by players and coaches of both the Braves and Giants.
2011: Fredi González takes over
On October 13, 2010, the Braves announced that Fredi González would replace long-time Braves manager Bobby Cox as manager of the team in 2011. The announcement came just two days after the 2010 Braves were eliminated from the postseason. It was also announced that pitching coach Roger McDowell, third-base coach Brian Snitker, and bullpen coach Eddie Pérez would retain their current positions, while former hitting coach Terry Pendleton would replace Glenn Hubbard as the first-base coach and newcomer Carlos Tosca would become the new bench coach. Hubbard and former bench coach Chino Cadahia were not offered positions on the new coaching staff. Larry Parrish was hired as hitting coach on October 29, 2010.
On November 16, 2010, in an offseason trade, the Braves acquired Dan Uggla from the Florida Marlins in exchange for left-handed reliever Mike Dunn and infielder Omar Infante. According to Elias Sports Bureau, the Braves had an all-time franchise win–loss record over .500 for the first time since 1923 after their win over the Houston Astros on June 11, 2011. The Braves franchise became the third franchise in MLB history to reach 10,000 wins with their win over the Washington Nationals on July 15, 2011. On July 31, 2011, just sixteen days after registering their 10,000th win, the Florida Marlins defeated the Braves by a score of 3–1, handing the team the 10,000th loss in franchise history. The Braves become only the second team in big league history with 10,000 losses after the Philadelphia Phillies reached the plateau in 2007.
Players from the Braves' farm system, such as Freddie Freeman and Brandon Beachy, played regularly with the big league club, while Julio Teherán, Randall Delgado, and Mike Minor were called up for spot starts. With late season injuries to starters Jair Jurrjens and Tommy Hanson, these three young pitchers made their way into the starting rotation in their absence. Eight players made their major league debuts for the team in 2011.
September collapse
The Braves led the National League Wild Card standings for much of the 2011 season, with the division-rival Philadelphia Phillies firmly in control of first place in the National League East. The Braves entered the final month of the regular season 25 games above .500 with a record of 80–55 and an -game lead in the Wild Card standings. The nearest team trailing them, the St. Louis Cardinals, who also trailed the National League Central-leading Milwaukee Brewers by games at the time, were considered a long-shot to gain a spot in the postseason. Just days prior on August 26, the Cardinals found themselves games behind and in third place.
With 27 games to play, the Braves went 9–18 in September to finish the season with a record of 89–73. The Cardinals, meanwhile, went 18–8 to finish at 90–72. Braves closer Craig Kimbrel, who had not surrendered a single earned run in July or August, carried a 4.76 ERA in September with three blown saves. After being dominant in his role for much of the season, Braves setup man Jonny Venters posted a 5.11 September ERA. These sharp declines in both relievers led many critics to question the handling of the bullpen by Braves manager Fredi González. Veteran starter Derek Lowe posted a win-loss record of 0–5 in September with an ERA of 8.75. Shortly into the offseason, Lowe would be traded to the Cleveland Indians. The Braves starters lasted six or more innings only three times over the last 23 games. Over the last five games, all of which were losses for the Braves, the team managed to score only seven runs. Braves catcher Brian McCann, often regarded as the best offensive catcher in the Majors, hit only .183 with two home runs in September. The offense as a whole hit for only a .235 batting average and a .300 on-base percentage in September, both second-worst in the National League. The .195 RISP average by Braves hitters was second worst in the Majors. Hitting coach Larry Parrish was fired two days following the last game of the season.
2012: Chipper's last season
In 2012, the Braves began their 138th season after an upsetting end to the 2011 season. On March 22, the Braves announced that third baseman Chipper Jones would retire following the 2012 season after 19 Major League seasons with the team. The Braves also lost many key players through trades or free agency, including pitcher Derek Lowe, shortstop Alex González, and outfielder Nate McLouth. To compensate for this, the team went on to receive many key players such as outfielder Michael Bourn, along with shortstops Tyler Pastornicky and Andrelton Simmons. To fill the void of a quality starting pitcher left by Lowe (as well as a mid-season injury to Brandon Beachy), manager Fredi González elected relief pitcher Kris Medlen to the starting pitching rotation. The Braves went on to win every game Medlen started, setting the MLB record for most consecutive wins when a single pitcher starts (total of 23). Atlanta stayed close to the Washington Nationals in the race to win the National League East title. They also stayed on top of the National League Wild Card race. Washington ended up winning their first division title in franchise history, but the Braves remained in first place of the NL wild-card race. Keeping with a new MLB rule for the 2012 season, the top two wild card teams in each league must play each other in a playoff game before entering into the Division Series.
The Braves played the St. Louis Cardinals in the first-ever Wild Card Game. The Braves were behind 6–3 in the bottom of the eighth inning when Andrelton Simmons hit a fly ball to left field that dropped in between the Cardinals shortstop and left fielder. Umpire Sam Holbrook called Simmons out, citing the infield fly rule. Had an infield fly not been called, Simmons would have been credited with a single and Atlanta would have had the bases loaded with one out. Fans at Turner Field began to litter the field with debris, prompting the game to be delayed for 19 minutes. The Braves lost the game 6–3, ending their season.
2013: Braves win the East
Following a gut-wrenching exit against the St. Louis Cardinals in the Wild Card Game, the Braves spent the 2012–2013 offseason revamping and retooling their offense. The Braves turned heads across baseball by acquiring B.J. Upton from the Tampa Bay Rays, signing him to a 5-year $75.25 million contract and making him their starting center fielder, and uniting him with his younger brother Justin Upton from the Arizona Diamondbacks in a seven-player trade that sent fan favorite utility man Martín Prado to the Diamondbacks, they also filled a need for a new Third Baseman in Chris Johnson after the retirement of Chipper Jones the previous year. The Braves began the 2013 season with a hot start in April by going 17–9 for the month, which saw the emergence of rookie sensation Evan Gattis, while taking hold of first place in the National League East division, a lead they would never relinquish for the rest of the season. The Braves suffered many injuries to key players throughout the season, including injuries to Jason Heyward, Brian McCann, Freddie Freeman, Eric O'Flaherty, Jonny Venters, Ramiro Pena and others, but found a way to win despite these blows to the team. Leading up to the All Star break, First Baseman Freddie Freeman was voted in to play for the 2013 National League All-Star Team, in the 2013 All Star Game, which he did not play. The Braves also witnessed the emergence of rookie pitcher Julio Teherán after much hype during Spring training. From July 26 to August 10, the Braves won 14 games in a row. The winning streak was the longest of its kind since April–May 2000.
On June 28, 2013, the Atlanta Braves retired former third baseman Chipper Jones' jersey, number 10, before the game against the Arizona Diamondbacks. He was honored before 51,300 fans at Turner Field in Atlanta. He served as a staple of the Braves franchise for 19 years before announcing his retirement at the beginning of the 2012 season. Chipper Jones played his last regular-season game for the Braves on September 30, 2012.
The Braves opened up a 15-game lead on the Washington Nationals in the National League East on September 3, 2013, riding that lead en route to its first division title since 2005, the last of 14 straight division titles. This was also Braves manager Fredi González's first division title since beginning his managerial career in 1990; including his first since becoming the manager of the Braves after the 2010 season. The Braves clinched the 18th division title in team history on September 22, 2013 after a Nationals loss to the Marlins in the first game of a double header; the Braves also won their game that day, beating the Chicago Cubs 5–2 at Wrigley Field.
After clinching the division title, they lost to the Dodgers 3–1 in the Division Series.
2014: Losing season
On November 11, 2013, the Braves announced that they would vacate Turner Field for a new stadium in Cobb County, in the northwest suburbs outside of Atlanta in 2017. The move is to follow the expiration of the Braves' 20-year lease on Turner Field in 2016. The new stadium is to be constructed in a public/private partnership. During the offseason the Braves signed few of their young talents to multi year contracts; Craig Kimbrel (4 years/$42 million), Freddie Freeman (8 years/$135M), Kris Medlen (1 year/$5.8M), Jason Heyward (2 years/$13.3M), Julio Teherán (6 years/$32.4M) and Andrelton Simmons (7 years/$58M).
The Braves finished the season in a distant second place with a 79–83 record, which was their first losing season since 2008 and only their third since 1990.
2015–2016: Rebuilding
Prior to the 2015 season, the Braves fired general manager Frank Wren, and John Hart replaced him as interim general manager, choosing to only take the title of President of Baseball Operations. The Braves promptly traded Gold Glove Award winner Jason Heyward to the St. Louis Cardinals along with pitcher Jordan Walden for pitchers Shelby Miller and Tyrell Jenkins. Hart traded All-Star left fielder Justin Upton to the San Diego Padres for Max Fried, Jace Peterson, Dustin Peterson, and Mallex Smith. Catcher Evan Gattis and minor league prospect James Hoyt were traded to the Houston Astros for minor leaguers Mike Foltynewicz, Rio Ruiz, and Andrew Thurman. A day before the season began, the Braves made a final trade involving former All-Star Craig Kimbrel and outfielder Melvin Upton Jr. They were traded to the San Diego Padres for outfielders Cameron Maybin, Carlos Quentin, pitcher Matt Wisler, and the 41st overall pick in the 2015 Major League Baseball draft. By the beginning of the season, the Braves made 11 trades in all.
Prior to the start of the 2016 regular season, the Braves continued their offseason rebuilding by trading Andrelton Simmons to the Los Angeles Angels for Erick Aybar and pitching prospects Sean Newcomb and Chris Ellis and $2.5 million. They agreed to one-year contracts with Kelly Johnson, Chris Withrow, and Arodys Vizcaino, and agreed to terms on a minor league contract for Carlos Torres and Jeff Francoeur. The Braves purchased the major league contract of Francoeur.
On April 13, 2016, Hector Olivera was arrested and charged with the assault of a woman at the team hotel when the Braves were in Washington D.C. facing the Nationals. He was placed on administrative leave by MLB and was placed on the Braves restricted list.
The Braves began the season on a nine-game losing streak, which is the worst opening by the franchise since 1988, when they dropped the first 10 games of that season.
After a 9–28 start in 2016, Fredi González was fired on May 17 and replaced by Gwinnett Braves' manager Brian Snitker as interim manager. Snitker replaced González once before in the 2006–07 offseason as the Braves third base coach when González left the Braves to manage the Marlins. The Braves finished the season 68–93 and in last place in NL East.
During the 2016 offseason, the Braves signed pitchers R. A. Dickey and Bartolo Colón and promoted interim manager Brian Snitker to full-time manager.
2017: New ballpark and front office changes
The Braves opened their new stadium, SunTrust Park (now Truist Park), on April 14, 2017, with a four-game sweep of the San Diego Padres. The park received positive reviews. Woody Studenmund of the Hardball Times called the park a "gem" saying that he was impressed with "the compact beauty of the stadium and its exciting approach to combining baseball, business and social activities." J.J. Cooper of Baseball America praised the "excellent sight lines for pretty much every seat." Cooper also noted that "the Wi-Fi works and it's very fast, even with a park full of smartphone users." The Braves also introduced "The Freeze" as between-innings entertainment—a former college sprinter, dressed in aqua spandex, has a footrace with a fan; The Freeze wins the majority of the races, despite the fan being given a significant head start.
On October 2, 2017, John Coppolella resigned as general manager of the Braves amid a Major League Baseball investigation into Atlanta's international signings, having committed what the Braves termed "a breach of MLB rules regarding the international player market". On November 13, 2017, the Braves announced Alex Anthopoulos as the new general manager and executive vice president. John Hart was removed as team president and assumed a senior adviser role with the organization. Braves chairman Terry McGuirk apologized to fans "on behalf of the entire Braves family" for the scandal. McGuirk described Anthopoulos as "a man of integrity" and that "he will operate in a way that will make all of our Braves fans proud." On November 17, 2017, the Braves announced that John Hart had stepped down as senior advisor for the organization. Hart said in a statement that "with the hiring of Alex Anthopoulos as general manager, this organization is in great hands."
MLB investigation and penalties
On November 21, 2017, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred announced the findings of the MLB investigation into Atlanta's international signings. Manfred ruled that the Braves must forfeit 13 international prospects, including highly touted Kevin Maitan, an infielder from Venezuela who signed for $4.25 million in 2016. The team also forfeited a third-round draft pick in the 2018 draft. Former Braves general manager John Coppolella was placed on baseball's permanently ineligible list.
Additionally, the Braves shall be prohibited from signing any international player for more than $10,000 during the 2019–20 signing period and their international signing bonus pool for the 2020–21 signing period will be reduced by 50%.
2018–2021: Return to the postseason and World Series title
The Braves began a new streak of NL East division titles in 2018, when they went 90–72. In 2019, their 97–65 record was their best since 2003. However, in neither season did the Braves advance past the Division Series. In the 2020 National League Championship Series against the Dodgers, the Braves led 3–1 before the Dodgers came back to win the series and advance to the World Series. The Braves returned to the NLCS in 2021 after beating the Milwaukee Brewers 3–1 in the 2021 NLDS on the heels of a Freddie Freeman game-winning home run in the bottom of the 8th inning in Game 4. With the score tied at 4, Freeman delivered a blast to left center field to give the Braves a 5–4 lead headed to the top of the 9th. After allowing a lead off single to Eduardo Escobar, Will Smith subsequently retired the side in order to secure the Braves berth in the NLCS.
On October 23, 2021, the Braves defeated the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series, a rematch of the 2020 NLCS, in six games to advance to the World Series for the first time since 1999, thereby securing their first pennant in 22 years. They defeated the Houston Astros in six games to win their fourth World Series title.
World Series championships
Over the 117 years since the inception of the World Series, the Braves franchise has won a total of four World Series Championships, with at least one in each of the three cities they have played in.
Major rivalries
New York Mets
The Braves–Mets rivalry is a rivalry between the two teams, featuring the Braves and the New York Mets as they both play in the National League East.
Although their first major confrontation occurred when the Mets swept the Braves in the 1969 NLCS, en route to their first World Series championship, the first playoff series won by an expansion team (also the first playoff appearance by an expansion team), the rivalry did not become especially heated until the 1994 season when division realignment put both the Mets and the Braves in the NL East division. During this time the Braves became one of the most dominant teams in professional baseball, earning 14 straight division titles through 2005, including five World Series berths, and one World Series championship during the 1995 season. The rivalry remained heated through the early 2000s.
Philadelphia Phillies
While their rivalry with the Philadelphia Phillies lacks the history and hatred of the Mets, it has been the more important one in the last decade. Between 1993 and 2013, the two teams reigned almost exclusively as NL East champions, the exceptions being in 2006, when the Mets won their first division title since 1988 (no division titles were awarded in 1994 due to the player's strike), and in 2012, when the Washington Nationals claimed their first division title since 1981 when playing as the Montreal Expos. The Phillies 1993 championship was also part of a four-year reign of exclusive division championships by the Phillies and the Pittsburgh Pirates, their in-state rivals. While rivalries are generally characterized by mutual hatred, the Braves and Phillies deeply respect each other. Each game played (18 games in 2011) is vastly important between these two NL East giants, but at the end of the day, they are very similar organizations. Overall, the Braves have five more National League East division titles than the Phillies, the Braves having won 16 times since 1995, and holding it for 11 consecutive years from 1995 through 2005. (The Braves also have five NL West titles from 1969 through 1993.)
Uniforms
1966–1967
The Atlanta Braves originally wore the same uniform design from their final years in Milwaukee, save for the red-brimmed navy cap which was changed from a block "M" to a script "A". Both the home and road uniforms have navy piping and the "Braves" script in red with navy trim, along with chest numbers which were also red with navy trim. The "screaming Indian" patch was added on the left sleeve.
1968–1971
During this period navy became the team's primary color, and pinstripes were worn on the home uniform. The chest numbers and piping were removed, with red only used exclusively on the road uniform. The original navy/red cap was only used at home, while an all-navy cap was used on the road. By 1969, the all-navy cap served as the primary, retiring the navy/red cap.
1972–1975
The Braves entered the polyester era with a new look, changing from navy to royal blue while keeping red as a trim color. Home uniforms were white with blue sleeves, while road uniforms were blue with white sleeves. Chest numbers returned with this uniform. Both sleeves contain a feather patch. Caps became royal blue with white panels, along with a lowercase "a" in red with white and blue trim.
1976–1979
The Braves returned to wearing pinstripes and gray uniforms with this set. The home uniform removed the blue sleeves and feather patch, and replaced them with red pinstripes and collar. The road uniform kept the previous template but returned to a gray base with blue sleeves, with the feather patch exclusive only to the left sleeve. The road uniform also featured a script "Atlanta" in front, with the first "a" in lowercase. In 1979, blue player names were added to the road uniform.
1980–1986
The Braves' home uniform again removed the pinstripes and added player names in blue. Collars and sleeves featured red, white and blue stripes. The road uniform was changed to powder blue minus the contrasting sleeve colors and red trim. In 1981, the road uniform was tweaked slightly, adopting the uppercase "A" script on the word "Atlanta". The Braves also wore two all-blue caps: the home cap featured the white "A" script with red trim, while the road cap lacked the red trim on the "A".
1987–present
The Braves updated their uniform set in 1987, returning to buttoned uniforms and belted pants. This design returned to the classic look they wore in the 1950s.
The white home uniform features red and navy piping, the "Braves" script and tomahawk in front, and radially arched (vertically arched until 2005; sewn into a nameplate until 2012) navy letters and red numbers with navy trim at the back. The gray road uniforms are identical to the white home uniforms save for the "Atlanta" script in front.
Initially, the cap worn with both uniforms is the red-brimmed navy cap with the script "A" in front. In 2008, an all-navy cap was introduced and became the primary road cap the following season.
The Braves have had three different versions of their Friday red alternate home uniform. The first uniform, worn from 2005 to 2013, featured navy and white piping, navy "Braves" script and tomahawk in front, and white letters and navy numbers with white trim at the back. It was paired with a navy cap with red brim featuring the alternate "tomahawk A" logo. From 2014 to 2018, the Braves tweaked the uniform; the "Braves" script was now adorned with stars while the tomahawk was removed. The "tomahawk A" cap was also retired. In 2019, the Braves reverted to a variation of the original red alternate uniform minus the white piping.
The cream alternate uniforms were introduced in February 2012 as a tribute to the Braves' first season in Atlanta in 1966. This set is similar to the primary home uniform, but with chest numbers in place of the tomahawk and blue piping minus the red accents. An alternate "crossing tomahawks" logo featuring the team name and foundation date was added to the left sleeve.
The Braves have worn two versions of their alternate navy blue road jerseys. The first iteration was introduced on opening night of the 2008 season against the Washington Nationals, and featured navy lettering. The only red elements on the uniform can be seen on the tomahawk. For 2019, the Braves drastically changed the uniform to feature red lettering, a red tomahawk and silver piping.
Unlike the home uniforms, which are worn based on a schedule, the road uniforms are chosen on game day by the starting pitcher. However, they are also subject to Major League Baseball rules requiring the road team to wear uniforms that contrast with the uniforms worn by the home team. Due to this rule, the gray uniforms are worn when the home team chooses to wear navy blue, and sometimes when the home team chooses to wear black.
Logos
From 1945 to 1955 the Braves primary logo consisted of the head of an Indian warrior. From 1956 to 1965 it was a laughing Indian with a mohawk and one feather in his hair. When the Braves moved to Atlanta in 1966, the "Braves" script was added underneath the laughing Indian. In 1985, the Braves made a small script change to the logo. The Braves modern logo debuted in 1987. The modern logo is the word "Braves" in cursive with a tomahawk below it. In 2018, the Braves made a subtle color change to the primary logo.
Tomahawk chop
The tomahawk chop was adopted by fans of the Atlanta Braves in 1991. Carolyn King, the Braves organist, had played the "tomahawk song" during most at bats for a few seasons, but it finally caught on with Braves fans when the team started winning. The usage of foam tomahawks led to criticism from Native American groups that it was "demeaning" to them and called for them to be banned. In response, the Braves' public relations director said that it was "a proud expression of unification and family". King, who did not understand the sociopolitical ramifications, approached one of the Native American chiefs who were protesting. The chief told her that leaving her job as an organist would not change anything and that if she left "they'll find someone else to play."
The controversy has persisted since and became national news again during the 2019 National League Division Series. During the series, St. Louis Cardinals relief pitcher and Cherokee Nation member, Ryan Helsley was asked about the chop and chant. Helsley said he found the fans' chanting and arm-motions insulting and that the chop depicts natives "in this kind of caveman-type people way who aren't intellectual." The relief pitcher's comments prompted the Braves to stop handing out foam tomahawks, playing the chop music or showing the chop graphic when the series returned to Atlanta for Game 5. The Braves released a statement saying they would "continue to evaluate how we activate elements of our brand, as well as the overall in-game experience" and that they would continue a "dialogue with those in the Native American community after the postseason concludes." The heads of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and Cherokee Nation both condemned the chop and chant.
During the off-season, the Braves met with the National Congress of American Indians to start discussing a path forward. In July 2020, the team faced mounting pressure to change their name after the Cleveland Indians and Washington Redskins announced they were discussing brand change. The Braves released a statement announcing that discussions were still ongoing about the chop, but the team name would not be changed.
Achievements
Awards
Team records
Team captains
Bob Horner 1982–1986
Dale Murphy 1987–1990
Retired numbers
The Braves have retired eleven numbers in the history of the franchise, including most recently Chipper Jones' number 10 in 2013, John Smoltz's number 29 in 2012, Bobby Cox's number 6 in 2011, Tom Glavine's number 47 in 2010, and Greg Maddux's number 31 in 2009. Additionally, Hank Aaron's 44, Dale Murphy's 3, Phil Niekro's 35, Eddie Mathews' 41, Warren Spahn's 21 and Jackie Robinson's 42, which is retired for all of baseball with the exception of Jackie Robinson Day, have also been retired. The color and design of the retired numbers reflect the uniform design at the time the person was on the team, excluding Robinson.
Of the ten Braves whose numbers have been retired, all who are eligible for the National Baseball Hall of Fame have been elected with the exception of Murphy, whose eligibility has expired.
Braves Hall of Fame
Baseball Hall of Famers
Ford C. Frick Award recipients (broadcasters)
Georgia Sports Hall of Fame
Roster
Minor league affiliates
The Atlanta Braves farm system consists of six minor league affiliates.
Home attendance
Turner Field
Truist Park
(*) – There were no fans allowed in any MLB stadium in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Radio and television
After years of stability, the Braves have faced a period of transition in their radio and television coverage.
The 2007 season was the last for Braves baseball on the TBS Superstation. TBS showed 70 games throughout the country, then cleared the decks to make way for a new national broadcast package that began in earnest with the 2007 postseason, and expanded to Sunday afternoon games in 2008. Until his dismissal in 2009, Chip Caray, one of the Braves' current broadcasters, called play-by-play for the national package, which includes the Division Series every season and alternating coverage of the ALCS and NLCS. Caray is joined by Joe Simpson, who has provided color commentary for the Braves since 1992.
Braves baseball had been on TBS since it was WTCG in 1972 and had been a cornerstone of the national superstation since it began in 1976. WPCH-TV/Peachtree TV, formerly WTBS Atlanta, still carried Braves games after 2007, but only in parts of the Southern United States. After the transfer of the channel's operations from Time Warner to Meredith Corporation, all Peachtree TV games were simulcast on Fox Sports South outside of the Peachtree TV coverage area in 2011 and 2012. On February 27, 2013, it was announced that Fox Sports South and SportSouth (now called Bally Sports Southeast) would carry every regionally televised Braves game exclusively, ending the team's partnership with WPCH-TV after 40 years.
After the 2004 season, longtime radio flagship station 750 WSB was replaced by WGST 640AM. Due to WGST's weak signal at night, which fails to cover the entire Atlanta metropolitan area, all games began to be simulcast on FM radio when the rights were transferred. The games first appeared on 96.1 WKLS (formerly "96 Rock") in 2005, but moved to country music station 94.9 WUBL ("94.9 The Bull") in 2007 after WKLS underwent a change in format from classic rock to active rock and became Project 9–6–1. As of the 2009 season, the Braves returned to WKLS on the FM frequency but remained on WGST on AM. It was announced that for the 2010 season, the Braves will be flagshipped on WCNN 680 The Fan and in Atlanta on the AM dial and WNNX 100.5 FM.
The Atlanta Braves radio network currently serves 134 radio stations across the Southern United States, including 20 in Alabama, 4 in Florida, 68 in Georgia, 1 in Mississippi, 13 in North Carolina, 14 in South Carolina, and 14 in Tennessee.
From 2009 to 2018, the radio announcers were former Brewers announcer Jim Powell and Don Sutton. Sutton was released after the 2006 season and called Washington Nationals games on television from 2007 to 2008, but returned for the 2009 season. Sutton retired after the 2018 season (and subsequently died in 2021) and Powell has continued under the same capacity since. Longtime Braves voices Skip Caray and Pete Van Wieren were the primary play-by-play voices of Braves baseball until Skip's sudden death on August 3, 2008, and Van Wieren's retirement after the 2008 season.
References
Footnotes
Citations
Further reading
External links
Team index page at Baseball Reference
Milwaukee Braves informational website
Sports Illustrated Atlanta Braves Page
ESPN Atlanta Braves Page
History of the Boston Braves on MassHistory.com
Major League Baseball teams
Grapefruit League
Liberty Media subsidiaries
19th century in Boston
Baseball teams in Boston
Baseball teams established in 1876
1876 establishments in Massachusetts
Former WarnerMedia subsidiaries
Baseball teams in Georgia (U.S. state) |
2141 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari%20ST | Atari ST | The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the 520ST, saw limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first personal computer with a bitmapped color GUI, using a version of Digital Research's GEM from February 1985.
The 1040ST, released in 1986 with 1 MB of RAM, was the first home computer with a cost-per-kilobyte of less than US$1. It is part of a mid-1980s generation of computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, and mouse-controlled graphical user interfaces. (Other examples include the Macintosh, Amiga, Apple IIGS, and Acorn Archimedes.)
"ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", referring to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals. The system was designed by a small team led by Shiraz Shivji.
The ST was sold with either Atari's color monitor or less expensive monochrome monitor. Color graphics modes were available only on the former while the highest-resolution mode required the monochrome monitor. Some later models could display the color modes on a TV.
In some markets, particularly Germany, the ST gained a foothold for CAD and desktop publishing. With its built-in MIDI ports, it was popular for music sequencing and as a controller of musical instruments among amateurs and professional musicians.
It was superseded by the Atari STE, Atari TT, Atari MEGA STE and Falcon computers.
Origins
The Atari ST was born from the rivalry between home computer makers Atari, Inc. and Commodore International.
Amiga contract
Jay Miner, one of the original designers of the custom chips found in the Atari 2600 and Atari 8-bit family, tried to convince Atari management to create a new chipset for a video game console and computer. When his idea was rejected, he left Atari to form a small think tank called Hi-Toro in 1982 and began designing the new "Lorraine" chipset. The company, which was later renamed Amiga Corporation, pretended to sell video game controllers to deceive its competition while it developed a Lorraine-based computer.
Amiga ran out of capital to complete Lorraine's development, and Atari, by then owned by Warner Communications, paid Amiga to continue its work. In return, Atari received exclusive use of the Lorraine design for one year as a video game console. After that time, Atari had the right to add a keyboard and market the complete computer, designated the 1850XLD. As Atari was heavily involved with Disney at the time, it was later code-named "Mickey", and the 256K memory expansion board was codenamed "Minnie".
Tramiel Technology
After leaving Commodore International in January 1984, Jack Tramiel formed Tramel Technology, Ltd. with his sons and other ex-Commodore employees and, in April, began planning a new computer. They initially considered the National Semiconductor NS32000 microprocessor, but were disappointed with its performance. This started the move to the 68000 processor. Their lead designer was ex-Commodore employee Shiraz Shivji, who previously worked on the Commodore 64's development.
Atari in mid-1984 was losing about a million dollars per day. Interested in Atari's overseas manufacturing and worldwide distribution network for his new computer, Tramiel negotiated with Warner in May and June 1984. He secured funding and bought Atari's Consumer Division (which included the console and home computer departments) in July. As executives and engineers left Commodore to join Tramel Technology, Commodore responded by filing lawsuits against four former engineers for theft of trade secrets.
The Tramiels did not purchase the employee contracts when they bought the assets of Atari Inc., so one of their first acts was to interview Atari Inc. employees to decide whom to hire at what was essentially a brand new company. At the time of the purchase of Atari Inc's assets, there were roughly 900 employees remaining from a high point of 10,000. After the interviews, approximately 100 employees were hired to work at Tramel Technology, which soon changed its name to Atari Corporation.
At one point a custom sound processor called AMY was a planned component for the new ST computer design, but the chip needed more time to complete, so AMY was dropped in favor of an off-the-shelf Yamaha sound chip.
It was during this time in late July/early August that Leonard Tramiel discovered the original Amiga contract, which required Amiga Corporation to deliver the Lorraine chipset to Atari on June 30, 1984. Amiga Corp. had sought more monetary support from investors in spring 1984 (among them Tramel Technology, which wished to replace nearly everyone at Amiga).
Commodore and Amiga
Having heard rumors that Tramiel was negotiating to buy Atari, Amiga Corp. entered discussions with Commodore. This led to Commodore wanting to purchase Amiga Corporation outright, which Commodore believed would cancel any outstanding contracts, including Atari's. Instead of Amiga Corp. delivering Lorraine to Atari, Commodore delivered a check of $500,000 to Atari on Amiga's behalf, in effect returning the funds Atari invested in Amiga for the chipset. Tramiel countered by suing Amiga Corp. on August 13, 1984, seeking damages and an injunction to bar Amiga (and effectively Commodore) from producing anything with its technology.
At Commodore, the lawsuit left the Amiga team in limbo during the summer of 1984. Nothing of the status of the chipset, the Lorraine computer, or the team's fate was known. In the fall of 1984, Commodore informed the team that the Lorraine project was again active, the chipset was to be improved, the operating system (OS) developed, and the hardware design completed. While Commodore announced the Amiga 1000 with the Lorraine chipset in July 1985, the delay gave Atari, with its many former Commodore engineers, time to deliver the first Atari ST units in June 1985. In March 1987, the two companies settled the dispute out of court in a closed decision.
Operating system
With its hardware design nearing completion, the Atari team started looking at the operating system. Soon after the Atari buyout, Microsoft approached Tramiel with the suggestion that they port Windows to the platform, but the delivery date was out by two years, far too long for their needs. Another possibility was Digital Research, who was working on a new GUI-based system then known as Crystal, soon to become GEM. Another option was to write a new operating system in-house, but this was rejected as Atari management was unsure whether the company had the required expertise.
Digital Research was fully committed to the Intel platform, so a team from Atari was sent to the Digital Research headquarters to work with the "Monterey Team", which comprised a mixture of Atari and Digital Research engineers. Atari's Leonard Tramiel was the Atari person overseeing "Project Jason" (a.k.a. The Operating System) for the Atari ST line of computers, named for designer and developer Jason Loveman.
GEM was based on CP/M-68K, essentially a direct port of CP/M to the 68000. By 1985, CP/M was becoming increasingly outdated; it did not support subdirectories, for example. Digital Research was also in the process of building GEMDOS, a new DOS-like operating system for GEM, and there was discussion of whether or not a port of it could be completed in time for product delivery in June. The decision was eventually taken to port it, resulting in a GEMDOS file system which became part of Atari TOS (for "The Operating System", colloquially known as the "Tramiel Operating System"). This gave the ST a fast, hierarchical file system, essential for hard drives, and provided programmers with function calls similar to IBM PC DOS. Its character set was based on codepage 437.
Besides the original TOS operating system, a number of third-party OSes were developed for, or ported to, the Atari ST. Among Unix clones, Idris, Minix had an Atari ST port and the Mint OS was developed specifically for the Atari ST.
Debut and release
After six months of intensive effort following Tramiel's takeover, Atari announced the 520ST at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 1985. InfoWorld described prototypes shown at computer shows as a "typical Commodore-64-style, corner-cutting, low-cost Jack Tramiel product", but Atari unexpectedly displayed the ST at Atlanta COMDEX in May. Due to its similarities to the original Macintosh and Tramiel's role in its development, it was quickly nicknamed the Jackintosh. Atari's rapid development of the ST amazed many, but others were skeptical, citing the ST's "cheap" appearance, Atari's uncertain financial health, and poor relations between Tramiel-led Commodore and software developers.
Computer Gaming World stated that Tramiel's poor pre-Atari reputation would likely make computer stores reluctant to deal with the company, hurting its distribution of the ST. One retailer said, "If you can believe Lucy when she holds the football for Charlie Brown, you can believe Jack Tramiel"; another said that because of its experience with Tramiel, "our interest in Atari is zero, zilch". Neither Atari nor Commodore could persuade large chains like ComputerLand or BusinessLand to sell its products. Observers criticized Atari's erratic discussion of its stated plans for the new computer, as it shifted between using mass merchandisers, specialty computer stores, and both. When asked at COMDEX, Atari executives could not name any computer stores that would carry the ST. After attending a meeting with the company, one analyst said, "We've seen marketing strategies changed before our eyes".
Although the more than 30 companies exhibiting ST software at Las Vegas COMDEX in November 1985—while the Amiga had almost none—surprised the industry, Tramiel's poor reputation influenced potential developers of software for his computer. One said, "Dealing with Commodore is like dealing with Attila the Hun. I don't know if Tramiel will be following his old habits ... I don't see a lot of people rushing to get software on the machine." Large business-software companies like Lotus, Ashton-Tate, and Microsoft did not promise software for either the ST or Amiga, and the majority of software companies were hesitant to support another platform beyond the IBM PC, Apple and Commodore 64; "These days, if I were a consumer, I'd stick with companies [e.g. Apple and IBM] I know will be around", said Philippe Kahn of Borland. After Atlanta COMDEX, The New York Times reported that "more than 100 software titles will be available for the [ST], most written by small software houses that desperately need work", and contrasted the "small, little-known companies" at Las Vegas with the larger ones like Electronic Arts and Activision, which planned Amiga programs.
Trip Hawkins of Electronic Arts said, "I don't think Atari understands the software business. I'm still skeptical about its resources and its credibility." Although Michael Berlyn of Infocom promised that his company would quickly publish all of its games for the new computer, he doubted many others would soon do so. Other companies such as Spinnaker Software and Lifetree Software were more positive; both promised to release ST software, with the former saying that "Atari has a vastly improved attitude toward software developers. They are eager to give us technical support and machines", and the latter stating, "We are giving Atari high priority". Some, such as Software Publishing Corporation, were unsure of whether to develop for the ST or the Amiga; while John C. Dvorak wrote that the public saw both Commodore and Atari as selling "cheap disposable" game machines, in part because of their computers' sophisticated graphics.
Release
Atari ST print advertisements stated, "America, We Built It For You", and quoted Atari president Sam Tramiel: "We promised. We delivered. With pride, determination, and good old ATARI know how". But Atari was out of cash, Jack Tramiel admitted that sales of its 8-bit computers were "very, very slow", and employees feared that he would shut the company down.
In spring of 1985, the 520ST shipped to the press, developers and user groups; and in early July 1985 for general retail sales. It saved the company. By November, Atari stated that it had sold more than 50 thousand 520STs, "with U.S. sales alone well into five figures". The machine had gone from concept to store shelves in a little under a year.
Atari had intended to release versions with 128 KB and 256 KB of RAM as the 130ST and 260ST respectively. However, the ST initially shipped with TOS on disk, requiring 206 KB RAM when loaded, leaving little or no room for applications. The 260ST did make its way into Europe on a limited basis. Early models were designed with six ROM sockets that allowed easy upgrading to the future ROM-based TOS. These became available only a few months later and were included in all new machines as well as being available as an upgrade for older machines. By late 1985 the machines were also upgraded with the addition of an RF modulator (for TV display), a version known as the 520STM. ST systems before the Mega ST range have no battery-backed clock, although third-party boards that went between the 6301 socket and the 6301 chip which was used for the keyboard and clock could be connected to a rechargeable battery pack to provide a battery-backed clock.
Atari originally intended to include GEM's GDOS (Graphical Device Operating System), which allowed programs to send GEM VDI (Virtual Device Interface) commands to drivers loaded by GDOS. This allowed developers to send VDI instructions to other devices simply by pointing to it. However, GDOS was not ready at the time the ST started shipping and was included in software packages and later ST machines. Later versions of GDOS supported vector fonts.
A limited set of GEM fonts were included in the ROMs, including the ST's standard 8x8 pixel graphical character set. It contained four unusual characters which could be placed together in a square, forming a facsimile of the face of J. R. "Bob" Dobbs (the figurehead of the Church of the SubGenius).
The ST was less expensive than most machines, including the Macintosh Plus, and was faster than many. Largely as a result of its price/performance factor, the ST became fairly popular, notably in European markets where foreign-exchange rates amplified prices. The company's English advertising slogan of the era was "Power Without the Price." An Atari ST and terminal emulation software was much cheaper than a Digital VT220 terminal, commonly needed by offices with central computers.
Design
Original housing
The original 520ST case design was created by Ira Velinsky, Atari's chief Industrial Designer. It is wedge-shaped, with bold angular lines and a series of grilles cut into the rear for airflow. The keyboard has soft tactile feedback and rhomboid-shaped function keys across the top. It is an all-in-one unit, similar to earlier home computers like the Commodore 64, but with a larger keyboard with cursor keys and a numeric keypad. It used an external AC adapter.
Port connections
The 520ST has a large number of ports at the rear of the machine that remained largely unchanged over its history.
Standard ports:
RS-232c serial port (DB25 male, operating as basic 9-conductor DTE)
Centronics printer port (DB25 female, officially compliant only with the most basic unidirectional standard with a single, "Busy" input line; unofficially offering some bidirectional capabilities)
Atari joystick ports (DE-9 male) for the mouse and game controllers
2 MIDI ports (5-pin DIN, "IN" and "OUT")
ST-specific ports:
Monitor port (custom 13-pin DIN, 12 of the pins in a rectangular pattern, carrying signals for both RGB and monochrome monitors, monophonic audio and, in later models, composite video)
ACSI (similar to SCSI) DMA port (custom-sized 19-pin D-sub, for hard disks and laser printers, capable of up to 2 MByte/s with efficient programming)
Floppy port (14-pin DIN, listed as operating at 250 kbit/s)
ST cartridge port (double-sided 40-contact edge connector socket, for 128 KB ROM cartridges)
Because of its bi-directional design, the Centronics printer port can be used for joystick input, and several games used available adaptors that used the printer socket, providing two additional 9-pin joystick ports.
Monitor
The ST supports a monochrome or color monitor. The color hardware supports two resolutions: 320 × 200, with 16 out of 512 colors; and 640 × 200, with 4 out of 512 colors. The monochrome monitor was less expensive and has a single resolution of 640 × 400 at 71.25 Hz. The attached monitor determines available resolutions, so software either supports both types of monitors or works with only one. Most ST games require color.
Floppy drive
Atari initially used single-sided 3.5 inch disk drives that could store up to 360 kB. Later drives were double-sided and stored 720 kB. Some commercial software, particularly games, shipped by default on single-sided disks, even supplying two 360kB floppies instead of a single double-sided one, for fear of alienating early adopters.
Another sticking point with the ST's floppy drives was that, while double-sided drive equipped STs could happily read discs formatted under MS-DOS on IBM PCs, PCs could not themselves read Atari disks, because the initial versions of TOS could recognise, read, and write to (but not themselves create) discs in the same particular specification used and indeed demanded by MS-DOS because of differences in the layout of data on track 0. Atari ST native format uses 5 sectors for FAT12 entries, while MSDOS uses 3 sectors for double sided floppies and 2 sectors for single sided floppies. Although the number of sectors for the FAT12 entries is included on track 0, MSDOS ignores it and assumes 2 (single sided) or 3 sectors (double sided). The Atari ST uses that info, so it can operate with floppies formatted either way. Achieving successful data interchange between the two platforms normally meant using floppies formatted by MSDOS, or by third party formatting utilities that were later released for the Atari ST. Conversion utilities such as MOSDOS.TOS could convert a native ST formatted floppy to a MSDOS compatible floppy. Other utilities allowed for transfer with unusual formats, such as the Commodore Amiga. Atari's own version 1.4 (and later) TOS upgrades, switched to formatting MSDOS compatible floppies.
STF and STFM models
Atari later upgraded the basic design in 1986 with the 1040STF (also written STF). The machine is generally similar to the earlier 520ST, but moved the power supply and a double-sided floppy drive into the rear of the housing of the computer, as opposed to being external. This added to the size of the machine, but reduced cable clutter in the back. The joystick/mouse ports, formerly on the right side of the machine where the disk drive now sat, were moved to a niche underneath the keyboard.
The 1040ST was the one of the earliest personal computers shipped with a base RAM configuration of 1 MB. When the list price was reduced to $999 in the U.S. it appeared on the cover of BYTE in March 1986 as the first computer to break the $1000/megabyte price barrier; Compute! noted that, in fact, the 1040ST was the first computer to break the $2500/megabyte price barrier. However, the ST remained generally the same internally over the majority of its several-year lifespan. The choice of model numbers was inherited from the model numbers of the XE series of the Atari 8-bit family of computers. A limited number of 1040STFs shipped with a single-sided floppy drive.
The same basic design was also used for a cut-down version, the 512 KB 520STFM, which replaced the earlier 520ST models in the market. The early 'STF' machines lack the 'M' modulator that allows a TV to be used and will therefore only work with a monitor.
Mega models
Initial sales were strong, especially in Europe, where Atari sold 75% of its computers. Germany became Atari's strongest market, with small business owners using them for desktop publishing and CAD.
To address this growing market segment, Atari introduced the ST1 at Comdex in 1986. Renamed the Mega, it includes a high-quality detached keyboard, a stronger case to support the weight of a monitor, and an internal bus expansion connector. A 20 MB hard drive could also be purchased and placed below or above the main case. Initially equipped with 2 or 4 MB of RAM (a 1 MB version, the Mega 1, later followed), the Mega machines could be combined with Atari laser's printer for a low-cost desktop publishing package.
A custom blitter coprocessor improved some graphics performance, but was not included in all models. Developers wanting to use it had to detect its presence in their programs. Properly written applications using the GEM API automatically make use of the blitter.
Later models
STE models
In late 1989, Atari released the 520STE and 1040STE (also written STE), enhanced version of the ST with improvements to the multimedia hardware and operating system. It features an increased color palette of 4,096 colors from the ST's 512 (though the maximum displayable palette of these without programming tricks was still limited to 16 in the lowest 320x200 resolution, and even fewer in higher resolutions), Genlock support, and a blitter co-processor (stylized as "BLiTTER") which can quickly move large blocks of data (most particularly, graphics data) around in RAM. The STE was the first Atari with PCM audio; using a new chip, it added the ability to play back 8-bit (signed) samples at 6258 Hz, 12517 Hz, 25033 Hz and even 50066 Hz, via DMA (Direct Memory Access). The channels are arranged as either a mono track or a track of LRLRLRLR... bytes. RAM was now much more simply upgradable via SIMMs.
Two enhanced joystick ports were added (two normal joysticks can be plugged into each port with an adapter), with the new connectors placed in more easily accessed locations on the side of the case. The enhanced joystick ports were re-used in Atari's Jaguar console and are compatible.
The STE models initially had software and hardware conflicts resulting in some applications and video games written for the ST line being unstable or even completely unusable, primarily caused by programming direct hardware calls which bypassed the operating system. Furthermore, even having a joystick plugged in would sometimes cause strange behavior with a few applications (such as the WYSIWYG word-processor application 1st Word Plus). Very little use was made of the extra features of the STE: STE-enhanced and STE-only software was rare.
The last STE machine, the Mega STE, is an STE in a grey Atari TT case that had a switchable 16 MHz, dual-bus design (16-bit external, 32-bit internal), optional Motorola 68881 FPU, built-in 1.44 MB "HD" 3½-inch floppy disk drive, VME expansion slot, a network port (very similar to that used by Apple's LocalTalk) and an optional built-in 3½" hard drive. It also shipped with TOS 2.00 (better support for hard drives, enhanced desktop interface, memory test, 1.44 MB floppy support, bug fixes). It was marketed as more affordable than a TT but more powerful than an ordinary ST.
Atari TT
In 1990, Atari released the high-end workstation-oriented Atari TT030, based on a 32 MHz Motorola 68030 processor. The "TT" name ("Thirty-two/Thirty-two") continued the nomenclature system as the 68030 chip had full 32-bit wide buses both internally and externally. Originally planned with a 68020 CPU, the TT included improved graphics and more powerful support chips. The case was a new design with an integrated hard-drive enclosure.
Atari Falcon
The final model of ST computer was the multimedia-capable Atari Falcon030. Like the TT, it was also 68030-based, operating at 16 MHz, but with improved video modes and an on-board Motorola 56001 audio digital signal processor. Like the Atari STE, it supported sampling frequencies above 44.1 kHz; the sampling master clock is 98340 Hz (which can be divided by a number between 2 and 16 to get the actual sampling frequencies). Apart from these frequencies, it could also play the STE sample frequencies (up to 50066 Hz) in 8 or 16 bit, mono/stereo, all by using the same DMA interface as the STE, with a few additions. It could both play back and record samples, with 8 mono channels and 4 stereo channels, allowing musicians to use it for hard-disk recording. Although the 68030 microprocessor could use 32-bit memory, the Falcon used a 16-bit bus, which affected its performance, but also reduced its cost. In another cost-reduction measure, Atari shipped the Falcon in an inexpensive case much like that of the STF and STE. Aftermarket upgrade kits were available that allowed it to be put in a desktop or rack-mount case, with the keyboard separate.
Released in 1992, the Falcon was discontinued by Atari the following year. In Europe, C-Lab licensed the Falcon design from Atari and released the C-Lab Falcon Mk I, identical to Atari's Falcon except for slight modifications to the audio circuitry. The Mk II added an internal 500 MB SCSI hard disk; and the Mk X further added a desktop case. C-Lab Falcons were also imported to the US by some Atari dealers.
Software
As with the Atari 8-bit computers, software publishers attributed their reluctance to produce Atari ST products in part to—as Compute! reported in 1988—the belief in the existence of a "higher-than-normal amount of software piracy". That year WordPerfect threatened to discontinue the Atari ST version of its word processor because the company discovered that pirate bulletin board systems (BBSs) were distributing it, causing ST-Log to warn that "we had better put a stop to piracy now ... it can have harmful effects on the longevity and health of your computer". In 1989, magazines published a letter by Gilman Louie, head of Spectrum HoloByte. He stated that he had been warned by competitors that releasing a game like Falcon on the ST would fail because BBSs would widely disseminate it. Within 30 days of releasing the non-copy protected ST version, the game was available on BBSs with maps and code wheels. Because the ST market was smaller than that for the IBM PC it was more vulnerable to piracy which, Louie said, seemed to be better organized and more widely accepted for the ST. He reported that the Amiga version sold in six weeks twice as much as the ST version in nine weeks, and that the Mac and PC versions had four times the sales. Computer Gaming World stated "This is certainly the clearest exposition ... we have seen to date" of why software companies produced less software for the ST than for other computers.
Music and sound
The ST has built-in MIDI ports, and there was plenty of MIDI-related software for use professionally in music studios, or by amateur enthusiasts. The popular Windows/Macintosh applications Cubase and Logic Pro originated on the Atari ST (the latter as Notator Logic, preceded by Creator, Notator and Notator-SL). Another popular and powerful ST music sequencer application, Dr. T's KCS, contains a "Multi-Program Environment" that allows ST users to run other applications, such as the synthesizer patch editing software XoR (now known as Unisyn on the Macintosh), from within the sequencer application.
Music tracker software was popular on the ST, such as the TCB Tracker, aiding the production of quality music from the Yamaha synthesizer ('chiptunes').
An innovative music composition program that combines the sample playing abilities of a tracker with conventional music notation (which was usually only found in MIDI software) is called Quartet (after its four-note polyphonic tracker, which displays one monophonic stave at a time on color screens).
Due to the ST having comparatively large amounts of memory for the time, sound sampling packages became a realistic proposition. The Microdeal Replay Professional product features a sound sampler that cleverly uses the ST cartridge port to read in parallel from the cartridge port from the ADC. For output of digital sound, it uses the on-board frequency output, sets it to 128 kHz (inaudible) and then modulates the amplitude of that.
Another program that had success on the ST platform is MasterTracks Pro from Passport Designs, of Half Moon Bay, CA., that was first put out by Don Williams for the Macintosh. When the ST died, a PC version continued that one could port MIDI to using the generic .MID format. GVox bought out Passport, and continues the program for Windows and macOS along with the other Passport product, the notation program Encore, which is as of 2013 marketed and maintained by a new iteration, Passport Music Software, LLC.
Software titles
Also popular on the ST was professional desktop publishing software, such as PageStream and Calamus; office tools such as word processors (WordPerfect, Microsoft Write, AtariWorks, WordWriter ST, First Word [shipped with the machine] and its Plus continuation, and others); spreadsheets (3D-Calc, LDW Power, LDW Power 2, LOGiSTiX Senior, PowerLedger ST, SwiftCalc ST, VIP Professional, and others); turnkey programs (Mail-Pro, Sales-Pro 6, Video-Pro, and others); database programs (A-Calc Prime, Data Manager, Data Manager Professional, DBMan V, Base Two, H&DBase, Informer II, DB Master One, SBT Database Accounting Library (dLedger, dInvoice, dOrder, dPurchases, and dPayables), Superbase Personal, Superbase Professional, Tracker ST, Zoomracks and others); and various CAD and CAM tools from amateur hobbyist to professional grade (Campus CAD, DynaCADD, Leonard ST, Technobox CAD/2...): all being largely targeted at, or even limited to owners of high-resolution monochrome monitors.
Graphics programs such as NEOchrome, Degas & Degas Elite, Canvas, Deluxe Paint, and Cyber Paint (which author Jim Kent would later evolve into Autodesk Animator) featured advanced features such as 3D design and animation. One paint program, Spectrum 512, uses the ST's rapid palette switching ability to expand the maximum number of colors to be displayed on-screen at once to 512 (up to 46 in each scan line.
3D computer graphics applications (like Cyber Studio CAD-3D, which author Tom Hudson would later develop into Autodesk 3D Studio), brought 3D modelling, sculpting, scripting, and computer animation to the desktop. Video-capture and -editing applications using special video-capture 'dongles' connected using the cartridge port: low frame rate, mainly silent and monochrome, but progressing to sound and basic color (in still frames) by the end of the machine's life. At the end, Spectrum 512 and CAD-3D teamed up to produce realistic 512-color textured 3D renderings, but processing was slow, and Atari's failure to deliver a machine with a math coprocessor had Hudson and Yost looking towards the PC as the future before a finished product could be delivered to the consumer.
The Atari ST was the computer upon which today's prevalent graphical touchscreen point of sale software for restaurants was originally developed. This software was created by Gene Mosher under the ViewTouch copyright and trademark. It does not feature the Atari ST's GEM graphical user interface but, instead, features an application specific graphical user interface and widget framework which he developed using, in part, the Neochrome paint program.
Software development
The 520 ST came bundled with both Digital Research Logo and Atari ST BASIC. Third-party BASICs with better performance were eventually available: HiSoft BASIC, GFA BASIC, FaST BASIC, DBASIC, LDW BASIC, Omikron BASIC, BASIC 1000D and STOS. In the later years of the Atari ST, Omikron Basic was bundled with it in Germany.
The initial development kit from Atari included a computer and manuals. The $5,000 cost discouraged many from developing software for the ST. Later, the Atari Developer's Kit consisted of software and manuals (but no hardware) for $300. Included with the kit were a resource kit, C compiler (first Alcyon C, then Mark Williams C), debugger, and 68000 assembler (plus the non-disclosure agreement). The third-party Megamax C development package reduced the cost of entry to $200.
Other development tools include 68000 assemblers (MadMac from Atari, HiSoft Systems's Devpac, TurboAss, GFA-Assembler), Pascal (OSS Personal Pascal, Maxon Pascal, PurePascal), Modula-2, C compilers (Lattice C, Pure C, Megamax C, GNU C, Aztec C, AHCC), LISP, Prolog, and others.
Games
The ST enjoyed success in gaming due to the low cost, fast performance, and colorful graphics. Notable individuals who developed games on the ST include Peter Molyneux, Doug Bell, Jeff Minter, Éric Chahi, Jez San, and David Braben.
The realtime pseudo-3D role-playing video game Dungeon Master, was developed and released first on the ST, and was the best-selling software ever produced for the platform. Simulation games like Falcon and Flight Simulator II made use of the ST's graphics, as did many arcade ports. Proto first person shooter MIDI Maze, uses the MIDI ports to connect up to 16 machines for networked deathmatch play. The critically acclaimed Another World was originally released for ST and Amiga in 1991 with the engine developed on the ST and the rotoscoped animations created on the Amiga. Games simultaneously released on the Amiga that didn't use the Amiga's superior graphics and sound capabilities were often accused by video game magazines of simply being ST ports.
Garry Kasparov became the first player to register the commercial ChessBase, a popular commercial database program produced for storing and searching records of games of chess. The first version was built for Atari ST with his collaboration in January 1987. In his autobiography Child of Change, he regards this facility as "the most important development in chess research since printing."
Emulators
Spectre GCR lets the ST emulate the Macintosh. There were also MS-DOS emulators released in the late 1980s. PC-Ditto came in two versions: software-only, and a hardware version that plugs into the cartridge slot or kludges internally. After running the PC-Ditto software, an MS-DOS boot disk is required to load the system. Both allow users to run MS-DOS programs in CGA mode, though much more slowly than on an IBM PC. Other options are the PC-Speed (NEC V30), AT-Speed (Intel 80286) and ATonce-386SX (Intel 80386sx) hardware emulator boards.
Popularity with musicians
The ST's low cost, built-in MIDI ports, and fast, low-latency response times made it a favorite with musicians:
German electronic music pioneers Tangerine Dream relied heavily on the Atari ST in the studio and for live performances during the late 1980s and 1990s.
The album notes for Mike Oldfield's Earth Moving state that it was recorded using an Atari ST and C-Lab MIDI software.
The Fatboy Slim album You've Come a Long Way, Baby was created using an Atari ST.
Electronic music artists Mike Paradinas and Luke Vibert started out writing music on Atari STs.
In the Paris performance of Jean Michel Jarre's album Waiting for Cousteau, the Paris La Défense – Une Ville En Concert, musicians have attached Atari ST machines with C-Lab Unitor software to their keyboards, as seen in the TV live show and video recordings.
White Town's "Your Woman", which reached #1 in the UK singles charts, was created using an Atari ST.
The Utah Saints used a 520ST and 1040ST running Cubase during the recording of both of their albums, Utah Saints and Two, with their 1040ST still seeing occasional use for re-recording or remixing early tracks as late as 2015 despite the machine being "temperamental" according to Utah Saints' Tim Garbutt .
Atari Teenage Riot named itself after the brand and programmed most of their music on an Atari ST, including the entire album Is This Hyperreal? (June, 2011).
Cabaret Voltaire founder Richard H. Kirk said in 2016 that he continues to write music on an Atari 1040ST with a sequencer called C-Lab.
Darude used Cubase on an Atari 1040ST when he created his 2000 hit "Sandstorm".
Depeche Mode used a combination of an Atari ST and Cubase in the studio during the production of Songs of Faith and Devotion in 1992. The machine used is visible in footage from the making-of documentary included with the 2006 remaster of the album.
Record producer Jimmy Hotz used an Atari ST to produce Fleetwood Mac's "Tango In The Night" album, as well as records for B.B. King and Dave Mason.
British DJ and house producer Joey Negro.
British songwriters and record producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman.
British synth pop duo Pet Shop Boys replaced their Fairlight CMI with an Atari ST, with their programmer Pete Gleadall saying "it (Atari ST) was just much easier to work with".
Technical specifications
All STs are made up of both custom and commercial chips:
Custom chips:
ST Shifter "Video shift register chip": Enables bitmap graphics using 32 KB of contiguous memory for all resolutions. Screen address has to be a multiple of 256.
ST GLU "Generalized Logic Unit": Control logic for the system used to connect the ST's chips. Not part of the data path, but needed to bridge chips with each other.
ST MMU "Memory Management Unit": Provides signals needed for CPU/blitter/DMA and Shifter to access dynamic RAM. Even memory accesses are given to CPU/blitter/DMA while odd cycles are reserved for DRAM refresh or used by Shifter for displaying contents of the frame buffer.
ST DMA "Direct Memory Access": Used for floppy and hard drive data transfers. Can directly access main memory in the ST.
Support chips:
MC6850P ACIA "Asynchronous Common Interface Adapter": Enables the ST to directly communicate with MIDI devices and keyboard (two chips used). for MIDI, for keyboard.
MC68901 MFP "Multi Function Peripheral": Used for interrupt generation/control, serial and misc. control input signals. Atari TT030 has two MFP chips.
WD-1772-PH "Western Digital Floppy Disk Controller": Floppy controller chip.
YM2149F PSG "Programmable Sound Generator": Provides three-voice sound synthesis, also used for floppy signalling, serial control output and printer parallel port.
HD6301V1 "Hitachi keyboard processor": Used for keyboard scanning and mouse/joystick ports.
ST/STF/STM/STFM
As originally released in the 520ST:
CPU: Motorola 68000 16-/32-bit CPU @ 8 MHz. 16-bit data/32-bit internal/24-bit address.
RAM: 512 KB or 1 MB
Display modes (60 Hz NTSC, 50 Hz PAL, 71.2 Hz monochrome):
Low resolution: 320 × 200 (16 color), palette of 512 colors
Medium resolution: 640 × 200 (4 color), palette of 512 colors
High resolution: 640 × 400 (mono), monochrome
Sound: Yamaha YM2149 3-voice squarewave plus 1-voice white noise mono Programmable Sound Generator
Drive: Single-sided 3½" floppy disk drive, 360 kB capacity when formatted to standard 9 sector, 80 track layout.
Ports: TV out (on ST-M and ST-FM models, NTSC or PAL standard RF modulated), MIDI in/out (with 'out-thru'), RS-232 serial, Centronics parallel (printer), monitor (RGB or Composite Video color and mono, 13-pin DIN), extra disk drive port (14-pin DIN), DMA port (ACSI port, Atari Computer System Interface) for hard disks and Atari Laser Printer (sharing RAM with computer system), joystick and mouse ports (9-pin MSX standard)
Operating System: TOS v1.00 (TOS meaning The Operating System) with the Graphics Environment Manager (GEM)
Very early machines included the OS on a floppy disk before a final version was burned into ROM. This version of TOS was bootstrapped from a small core boot ROM.
In 1986, most production models became STFs, with an integrated single- (520STF) or double-sided (1040STF) double density floppy disk drive built-in, but no other changes. Also in 1986, the 520STM (or 520STM) added an RF Modulator for allowing the low and medium resolution color modes when connected to a TV. Later F and FM models of the 520 had a built-in double-sided disk drive instead of a single-sided one.
STE
As originally released in the 520STE/1040STE:
All of the features of the 520STFM/1040STFM
Extended palette of 4,096 available colors to choose from
Blitter chip (stylized as BLiTTER) to copy/fill/clear large data blocks with a max write rate of 4 Mbytes/s
Hardware support for horizontal and vertical fine scrolling and split screen (using the Shifter video chip)
DMA sound chip with 2-channels stereo 8-bit PCM sound at 6.25/12.5/25/50 kHz and stereo RCA audio-out jacks (using enhancements to the Shifter video chip to support audio shifting)
National LMC 1992 audio controller chip, allowing adjustable left/right/master volume and bass and treble EQ via a Microwire interface
Memory: 30-pin SIMM memory slots (SIPP packages in earliest versions) allowing upgrades up to 4 MB Allowable memory sizes including only 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, 2.5 and 4.0 MB due to configuration restraints (however, 2.5 MB is not officially supported and has compatibility problems). Later third-party upgrade kits allow a maximum of 14MB w/Magnum-ST, bypassing the stock MMU with a replacement unit and the additional chips on a separate board fitting over it.
Ability to synchronise the video timings with an external device so that a video Genlock device can be used without having to make any modifications to computer's hardware
Analogue joypad ports (2), with support for devices such as paddles and light pens in addition to joysticks/joypads. The Atari Jaguar joypads and Power Pad joypads (gray version of Jaguar joypads marketed for the STE and Falcon) can be used without an adapter. Two standard Atari-style digital joysticks could be plugged into each analogue port with an adapter.
TOS 1.06 (also known as TOS 1.6) or TOS 1.62 (which fixed some major backwards-compatibility bugs in TOS 1.6) in two socketed 128 KB ROM chips.
Socketed PLCC 68000 CPU
Models
The members of the ST family are listed below, in roughly chronological order:
520ST Original model with 512 KB RAM, external power supply, no floppy disk drive. The early models had only a bootstrap ROM and TOS had to be loaded from disk.
520ST+ early 520STs with 1 MB of RAM, but without floppy disk
260ST originally intended to be a 256 kB variant, but actually sold in small quantities in Europe with 512 KB. Used after the release of the 520ST+ to differentiate the cheaper 512 KB models from the 1 MB models. Because the early 520STs were sold with TOS on disk, which used up 192 KB or RAM, the machine only had around 256KB left.
520STM a 520ST with a built-in modulator for TV output and 512 KB RAM.
520STFM a 520STM with a newly redesigned motherboard in a larger case with a built-in floppy disk drive (in some cases a single-sided drive only), and 512 KB RAM.
1040STF a 520STFM with 1 MB of RAM and a built-in double-sided floppy disk drive, but without RF modulator
1040STFM a 520STFM with 1 MB of RAM and a built-in double-sided floppy disk drive with RF modulator
Mega ST (MEGA 1, MEGA 2, MEGA 4) redesigned motherboard with 1, 2 or 4 MB of RAM, respectively, in a much improved "pizza box" case with a detached keyboard. All MEGA mainboards have a PLCC socket for the BLiTTER chip and some early models did not include the BLiTTER chip. They also included a real-time clock and internal expansion connector. Some early MEGA 2 had a MEGA 4 mainboard with half of the memory chip places unpopulated and the MEGA 2 can be upgraded by adding the additional DRAM chips and some resistors for the control lines. The MEGA 1 mainboards had a redesigned memory chip area and could not be upgraded in this way as there are only places for the 1 MByte DRAM chips.
520STE and 1040STE a 520STFM/1040STFM with enhanced sound, a BLiTTER chip, and a 4096-color palette, in the older 1040-style all-in-one case
Mega STE same hardware as 1040STE except for a faster 16 MHz processor with 16K cache, an onboard SCSI controller, additional faster RS232 port, VME expansion port, in an ST gray version of the TT case
STacy a portable (but definitely not laptop) version of the ST with the complete ST keyboard, an LCD screen simulating 640x400 hi-res, and a mini-trakball intended mostly for travellers and musicians because of the backlit screen and its built-in midi ports. Originally designed to operate on 12 standard C cell flashlight batteries for portability, when Atari finally realized how quickly the machine would use up a set of batteries (especially when rechargeable batteries of the time supplied insufficient power compared to the intended alkalines), they simply glued the lid of the battery compartment shut.
ST BOOK a later portable ST, more portable than the STacy, but sacrificing several features in order to achieve this, notably the backlight and internal floppy disk drive. Files were meant to be stored on a small amount (one megabyte) of internal flash memory 'on the road' and transferred using serial or parallel links, memory flashcards or external (and externally powered) floppy disk to a desktop ST once back indoors. The screen is highly reflective for the time, but still hard to use indoors or in low light, it is fixed to the 640 × 400 1-bit mono mode, and no external video port was provided. Despite its limitations, it gained some popularity, particularly amongst musicians.
Unreleased
The 130ST was intended to be a 128 KB variant. It was announced at the 1985 CES alongside the 520ST but never produced. The 4160STE was a 1040STE, but with 4 MB of RAM. A small quantity of development units were produced, but the system was never officially released. Atari did produce a quantity of 4160STE metallic case badges which found their way to dealers, so it's not uncommon to find one attached to systems which were originally 520/1040STE. No such labels were produced for the base of the systems.
Related systems
Atari Transputer Workstation is a standalone machine developed in conjunction with Perihelion Hardware, containing modified ST hardware and up to 17 transputers capable of massively parallel operations for tasks such as ray tracing.
Clones
Following Atari's departure from the computer market, both Medusa Computer Systems and Milan Computer manufactured Atari Falcon/TT-compatible machines that used 68040 and 68060 processors. The FireBee is an Atari ST/TT clone based on the Coldfire processor. The GE-Soft Eagle is a 32 MHz TT clone.
Peripherals
SF354: Single-sided double-density 3½-inch floppy drive (360 kB) with external power supply
SF314: Double-sided double-density 3½-inch floppy drive (720 kB) with external power supply
PS3000: Combined 12-inch color monitor and 360k 3½-inch floppy drive (SF354). Speaker. Manufactured by JVC in limited quantity (≈1000), only a few working models remain.
SM124: Monochrome monitor, 12-inch screen, 640 × 400 pixels, 70 Hz refresh
SM125: Monochrome monitor, 12-inch screen, up/down/sideways swivel stand, speaker, 640x400 pixels, 70 Hz refresh
SM147: Monochrome monitor, 14-inch screen, no speaker, replacement for SM124
SC1224: Color monitor, 12-inch screen, 640 × 200 pixels plus speaker
SC1425: Color monitor, 14-inch screen, One speaker on the left of screen, a jack to plug ear-listeners
SC1435: Color monitor, 14-inch screen, stereo speakers, replacement for SC1224 (rebadged Magnavox 1CM135)
SM195: Monochrome monitor, 19-inch screen for TT030. 1280 × 960 pixels. 70 Hz refresh
SH204: External hard drive, 20 MB MFM drive, "shoe box" case made of metal
SH205: External hard drive, Mega ST matching case, 20 MB MFM 3.5-inch (Tandon TM262) or 5.25-inch (Segate ST225) drive with ST506 interface (became later the Megafile 20)
Megafile 20, 30, 60: External hard drive, Mega ST matching case, ACSI bus; Megafile 30 and 60 had a 5.25-inch RLL (often a Seagate ST238R 30 MByte or Seagate ST277R 60 MByte drive) with ST506 interface
Megafile 44: Removable cartridge drive, ACSI bus, Mega ST matching case
SLM804: Laser printer, connected through ACSI DMA port, used ST's memory and processor to build pages for printing
SLM605: Laser printer, connected through ACSI DMA port, smaller than SLM805.
See also
Bitstream Speedo Fonts – the fonts included in the Atari ST
References
External links
Atari ST Computer Systems, Peripherals and Prototypes
Atarimania: Atari ST software preservation project
"The little green desktop"
BYTE Magazine September 1986, Atari ST Software Development
Atari ST: a look from all sides
68000-based home computers
Home computers
Atari ST
Products introduced in 1985
All-in-one desktop computers |
2142 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%20of%20artificial%20intelligence%20projects | List of artificial intelligence projects | The following is a list of current and past, non-classified notable artificial intelligence projects.
Specialized projects
Brain-inspired
Blue Brain Project, an attempt to create a synthetic brain by reverse-engineering the mammalian brain down to the molecular level.
Google Brain A deep learning project part of Google X attempting to have intelligence similar or equal to human-level.
Human Brain Project
NuPIC, an open source implementation by Numenta of its cortical learning algorithm.
Cognitive architectures
4CAPS, developed at Carnegie Mellon University under Marcel A. Just
ACT-R, developed at Carnegie Mellon University under John R. Anderson.
AIXI, Universal Artificial Intelligence developed by Marcus Hutter at IDSIA and ANU.
CALO, a DARPA-funded, 25-institution effort to integrate many artificial intelligence approaches (natural language processing, speech recognition, machine vision, probabilistic logic, planning, reasoning, many forms of machine learning) into an AI assistant that learns to help manage your office environment.
CHREST, developed under Fernand Gobet at Brunel University and Peter C. Lane at the University of Hertfordshire.
CLARION, developed under Ron Sun at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and University of Missouri.
CoJACK, an ACT-R inspired extension to the JACK multi-agent system that adds a cognitive architecture to the agents for eliciting more realistic (human-like) behaviors in virtual environments.
Copycat, by Douglas Hofstadter and Melanie Mitchell at the Indiana University.
DUAL, developed at the New Bulgarian University under Boicho Kokinov.
FORR developed by Susan L. Epstein at The City University of New York.
IDA and LIDA, implementing Global Workspace Theory, developed under Stan Franklin at the University of Memphis.
OpenCog Prime, developed using the OpenCog Framework.
Procedural Reasoning System (PRS), developed by Michael Georgeff and Amy L. Lansky at SRI International.
Psi-Theory developed under Dietrich Dörner at the Otto-Friedrich University in Bamberg, Germany.
R-CAST, developed at the Pennsylvania State University.
Soar, developed under Allen Newell and John Laird at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Michigan.
Society of mind and its successor the Emotion machine proposed by Marvin Minsky.
Subsumption architectures, developed e.g. by Rodney Brooks (though it could be argued whether they are cognitive).
Games
AlphaGo, software developed by Google that plays the Chinese board game Go.
Chinook, a computer program that plays English draughts; the first to win the world champion title in the competition against humans.
Deep Blue, a chess-playing computer developed by IBM which beat Garry Kasparov in 1997.
FreeHAL, a self-learning conversation simulator (chatterbot) which uses semantic nets to organize its knowledge to imitate a very close human behavior within conversations.
Halite, an artificial intelligence programming competition created by Two Sigma.
Libratus, a poker AI that beat world-class poker players in 2017, intended to be generalisable to other applications.
Quick, Draw!, an online game developed by Google that challenges players to draw a picture of an object or idea and then uses a neural network to guess what the drawing is.
Stockfish AI, an open source chess engine currently ranked the highest in many computer chess rankings.
TD-Gammon, a program that learned to play world-class backgammon partly by playing against itself (temporal difference learning with neural networks).
Internet activism
Serenata de Amor, project for the analysis of public expenditures and detect discrepancies.
Knowledge and reasoning
Braina, an intelligent personal assistant application with a voice interface for Windows OS.
Cyc, an attempt to assemble an ontology and database of everyday knowledge, enabling human-like reasoning.
Eurisko, a language by Douglas Lenat for solving problems which consists of heuristics, including some for how to use and change its heuristics.
Google Now, an intelligent personal assistant with a voice interface in Google's Android and Apple Inc.'s iOS, as well as Google Chrome web browser on personal computers.
Holmes a new AI created by Wipro.
Microsoft Cortana, an intelligent personal assistant with a voice interface in Microsoft's various Windows 10 editions.
Mycin, an early medical expert system.
Open Mind Common Sense, a project based at the MIT Media Lab to build a large common sense knowledge base from online contributions.
P.A.N., a publicly available text analyzer.
Siri, an intelligent personal assistant and knowledge navigator with a voice-interface in Apple Inc.'s iOS and macOS.
SNePS, simultaneously a logic-based, frame-based, and network-based knowledge representation, reasoning, and acting system.
Viv (software), a new AI by the creators of Siri.
Wolfram Alpha, an online service that answers queries by computing the answer from structured data.
Motion and manipulation
AIBO, the robot pet for the home, grew out of Sony's Computer Science Laboratory (CSL).
Cog, a robot developed by MIT to study theories of cognitive science and artificial intelligence, now discontinued.
Music
Melomics, a bioinspired technology for music composition and synthesization of music, where computers develop their own style, rather than mimic musicians.
Natural language processing
AIML, an XML dialect for creating natural language software agents.
Apache Lucene, a high-performance, full-featured text search engine library written entirely in Java.
Apache OpenNLP, a machine learning based toolkit for the processing of natural language text. It supports the most common NLP tasks, such as tokenization, sentence segmentation, part-of-speech tagging, named entity extraction, chunking and parsing.
Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity (A.L.I.C.E.), an award-winning natural language processing chatterbot.
Cleverbot, successor to Jabberwacky, now with 170m lines of conversation, Deep Context, fuzziness and parallel processing. Cleverbot learns from around 2 million user interactions per month.
ELIZA, a famous 1966 computer program by Joseph Weizenbaum, which parodied person-centered therapy.
GPT-3, a 2020 language model developed by OpenAI that can produce text difficult to distinguish from that written by a human.
Jabberwacky, a chatbot by Rollo Carpenter, aiming to simulate natural human chat.
Mycroft, a free and open-source intelligent personal assistant that uses a natural language user interface.
PARRY, another early chatterbot, written in 1972 by Kenneth Colby, attempting to simulate a paranoid schizophrenic.
SHRDLU, an early natural language processing computer program developed by Terry Winograd at MIT from 1968 to 1970.
SYSTRAN, a machine translation technology by the company of the same name, used by Yahoo!, AltaVista and Google, among others.
ASR-automated speech recognization System.
Other
1 the Road, the first novel marketed by an AI.
Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulations (SEAS), a model of the real world used by Homeland security and the United States Department of Defense that uses simulation and AI to predict and evaluate future events and courses of action.
Multipurpose projects
Software libraries
Apache Mahout, a library of scalable machine learning algorithms.
Deeplearning4j, an open-source, distributed deep learning framework written for the JVM.
Keras, a high level open-source software library for machine learning (works on top of other libraries).
Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit (previously known as CNTK), an open source toolkit for building artificial neural networks.
OpenNN, a comprehensive C++ library implementing neural networks.
PyTorch, an open-source Tensor and Dynamic neural network in Python.
TensorFlow, an open-source software library for machine learning.
Theano, a Python library and optimizing compiler for manipulating and evaluating mathematical expressions, especially matrix-valued ones.
GUI frameworks
Neural Designer, a commercial deep learning tool for predictive analytics.
Neuroph, a Java neural network framework.
OpenCog, a GPL-licensed framework for artificial intelligence written in C++, Python and Scheme.
PolyAnalyst: A commercial tool for data mining, text mining, and knowledge management.
RapidMiner, an environment for machine learning and data mining, now developed commercially.
Weka, a free implementation of many machine learning algorithms in Java.
Cloud services
Data Applied, a web based data mining environment.
Grok, a service that ingests data streams and creates actionable predictions in real time.
Watson, a pilot service by IBM to uncover and share data-driven insights, and to spur cognitive applications.
See also
Comparison of cognitive architectures
Comparison of deep-learning software
References
External links
AI projects on GitHub
AI projects on SourceForge
Artificial intelligence projects |
2144 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaliyah | Aaliyah | Aaliyah Dana Haughton (; January 16, 1979 – August 25, 2001), known mononymously as Aaliyah, was an American singer, actress, dancer, and model. She has been credited for helping to redefine contemporary R&B, pop and hip hop, earning her the nicknames the "Princess of R&B" and "Queen of Urban Pop".
Born in Brooklyn but raised in Detroit, she first gained recognition at the age of 10, when she appeared on the television show Star Search and performed in concert alongside Gladys Knight. At the age of 12, Aaliyah signed with Jive Records and her uncle Barry Hankerson's Blackground Records. Hankerson introduced her to R. Kelly, who became her mentor, as well as lead songwriter and producer of her debut album, Age Ain't Nothing but a Number. The album sold three million copies in the United States and was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). After facing allegations of an illegal marriage with Kelly, Aaliyah ended her contract with Jive and signed with Atlantic Records.
Aaliyah worked with record producers Timbaland and Missy Elliott for her second album, One in a Million, which sold three million copies in the United States and more than eight million copies worldwide. In 2000, Aaliyah appeared in her first film, Romeo Must Die. She contributed to the film's soundtrack, which spawned the single "Try Again". The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 solely on airplay, making Aaliyah the first artist in Billboard history to achieve this goal. After completing Romeo Must Die, Aaliyah filmed her role in Queen of the Damned, and released, in 2001, her self-titled third and final studio album, which topped the Billboard 200.
On August 25, 2001, Aaliyah died at the age of 22 in an airplane accident in the Bahamas, when the badly overloaded aircraft she was traveling in crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all nine on board. The pilot was later found to have traces of cocaine and alcohol in his body and was not qualified to fly the aircraft designated for the flight. Aaliyah's family later filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the aircraft's operator, Blackhawk International Airways, which was settled out of court. In the decades since her death, Aaliyah's music has continued to achieve commercial success, aided by several posthumous releases, and she has sold an estimated 24 to 32 million albums worldwide. Her accolades include three American Music Awards and two MTV VMAs, along with five Grammy Award nominations. Billboard lists her as the tenth most successful female R&B artist of the past 25 years, and the 27th most successful in history.
Early life
Aaliyah Dana Haughton was born on January 16, 1979, in Brooklyn, New York, and was the younger child of Diane and Michael "Miguel" Haughton (1951–2012). She was of African-American descent. Her name is the feminine form of the Arabic "Ali" meaning "highest, most exalted one, the best." The singer was highly fond of her name, calling it "beautiful" and asserting she was "very proud of it" and strove to live up to her name every day. Aaliyah's mother enrolled Aaliyah in voice lessons at an early age. She started performing at weddings, church choir and charity events. When Aaliyah was five years old, her family moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she was raised along with her older brother, Rashad. She attended a Catholic school, Gesu Elementary, where in first grade she was cast in the stage play Annie, which inspired her to become an entertainer. In Detroit, her father began working in the warehouse business, one of his brother-in-law Barry Hankerson's widening interests. Her mother stayed home and raised Aaliyah and her brother.
Throughout Aaliyah's life, she had a good relationship with Rashad, who recalled Aaliyah having a beautiful voice as a child. Aaliyah's family was very close due to the struggles of her grandparents and when they moved to Detroit, the Hankersons were ready to take them in if necessary. These same bonds led to ties in the music industry, under the Blackground Records label.
Aaliyah's mother was a vocalist, and her uncle, Barry Hankerson, was an entertainment lawyer who had been married to Gladys Knight. As a child, Aaliyah traveled with Knight and worked with an agent in New York to audition for commercials and television programs, including Family Matters; she went on to appear on Star Search at the age of ten. Aaliyah chose to begin auditioning. Her mother made the decision to drop her surname. She auditioned for several record labels and at age 11 appeared in concerts alongside Knight. She had several pet animals during her childhood, including ducks, snakes and iguanas. Her cousin Jomo had a pet alligator, which Aaliyah felt was too much, remarking, "that was something I wasn't going to stroke."
Her grandmother died in 1991. Years after her death, Aaliyah said her grandmother supported everyone in the family and always wanted to hear her sing, as well as admitting that she "spoiled" her and her brother Rashad. She also enjoyed Aaliyah's singing and would have Aaliyah sing for her. Aaliyah said she thought of her grandmother whenever she fell into depression. Aaliyah's hands reminded her of her aunt, who died when she was very young and whom Aaliyah remembered as an "amazingly beautiful woman".
Education
When she was growing up, Aaliyah attended Detroit schools and believed she was well-liked, but got teased for her short stature. She recalled coming into her own prior to age 15 and grew to love her height. Her mother would tell her to be happy that she was small and compliment her. Other children disliked Aaliyah, but she did not stay focused on them. "You always have to deal with people who are jealous, but there were so few it didn't even matter. The majority of kids supported me, which was wonderful. When it comes to dealing with negative people, I just let it in one ear and out the other. Those people were invisible to me." Even in her adult life, she considered herself small. She had "learned to accept and love" herself and added: "... the most important thing is to think highly of yourself because if you don't, no one else will".
During her audition for acceptance to the Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts, Aaliyah sang the song "Ave Maria" in its entirety in the Italian language. Aaliyah, who maintained a perfect 4.0 grade-point average when graduating from high school, felt education was important. She saw fit to keep her grades up despite the pressures and time constraints brought on her during the early parts of her career. She labeled herself as a perfectionist and recalled always being a good student. Aaliyah reflected: "I always wanted to maintain that, even in high school when I first started to travel. I wanted to keep that 4.0. Being in the industry, you know, I don't want kids to think, 'I can just sing and forget about school.' I think it's very important to have an education, and even more important to have something to fall back on." She did this in her own life, as she planned to "fall back on" another part of the entertainment industry. She believed that she could teach music history or open her own school to teach that or drama if she did not make a living as a recording artist because, as she reasoned, "when you pick a career it has to be something you love".
Career
1991–1995: Age Ain't Nothing but a Number
After Hankerson signed a distribution deal with Jive Records, he signed Aaliyah to his Blackground Records label at the age of 12. Hankerson later introduced her to recording artist and producer R. Kelly, who became Aaliyah's mentor, as well as lead songwriter and producer of her first album, which was recorded when she was 14. Aaliyah's debut album, Age Ain't Nothing but a Number, was released under her mononym "Aaliyah", by Jive and Blackground Records on May 24, 1994; the album debut at number 24 on the Billboard 200 chart, selling 38,000 copies in its first week. It ultimately peaked at number 18 on the Billboard 200 and sold over three million copies in the United States, where it was certified two times Platinum by the RIAA. In Canada, the album sold over 50,000 copies and was certified gold by the CRIA. Aaliyah's debut single, "Back & Forth", topped the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart for three weeks and was certified Gold by the RIAA. The second single, a cover of The Isley Brothers' "At Your Best (You Are Love)", peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100 and was also certified Gold by the RIAA. The title track, "Age Ain't Nothing but a Number", peaked at number 75 on the Hot 100. Additionally, she released "The Thing I Like" as part of the soundtrack to the 1994 film A Low Down Dirty Shame.
Age Ain't Nothing But a Number received generally favorable reviews from music critics. Some writers noted that Aaliyah's "silky vocals" and "sultry voice" blended with Kelly's new jack swing helped define R&B in the 1990s. Her sound was also compared to that of female quartet En Vogue. Christopher John Farley of Time magazine described the album as a "beautifully restrained work", noting that Aaliyah's "girlish, breathy vocals rode calmly on R. Kelly's rough beats". Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic felt that the album had its "share of filler", but described the singles as "slyly seductive". He also claimed that the songs on the album were "frequently better" than that of Kelly's second studio album, 12 Play. The single "At Your Best (You Are Love)" was criticized by Billboard for being out of place on the album and for its length.
1996–2000: One in a Million and Romeo Must Die
In 1996, Aaliyah left Jive Records and signed with Atlantic Records. She worked with record producers Timbaland and Missy Elliott, who contributed to her second studio album, One in a Million. Missy Elliott recalled Timbaland and herself being nervous to work with Aaliyah, since Aaliyah had already released her successful debut album while Missy Elliott and Timbaland were just starting out. Missy Elliott also feared she would be a diva, but reflected that Aaliyah "came in and was so warming; she made us immediately feel like family." The album yielded the single "If Your Girl Only Knew", which topped the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs for two weeks. It also generated the singles "Hot Like Fire" and "4 Page Letter". The following year, Aaliyah was featured on Timbaland & Magoo's debut single, "Up Jumps da Boogie". One in a Million peaked at number 18 on the Billboard 200, selling 3 million copies in the United States and over eight million copies worldwide. The album was certified double platinum by the RIAA on June 16, 1997, denoting shipments of two million copies. The month prior to One in a Millions release, on May 5, 1997, music publisher Windswept Pacific filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against Aaliyah claiming she had illegally copied Bobby Caldwell's "What You Won't Do for Love" for the single "Age Ain't Nothing but a Number".
Aaliyah attended the Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts, where she majored in drama and graduated in 1997 with a 4.0 GPA. Aaliyah began her acting career that same year; she played herself in the police drama television series New York Undercover. During this time, Aaliyah participated in the Children's Benefit Concert, a charity concert that took place at the Beacon Theatre in New York. Aaliyah also became the spokesperson for Tommy Hilfiger Corporation. During Aaliyah's campaign with Tommy Hilfiger, the company sold over 2,400 pairs of the red, white and blue baggy jeans that she wore in their advertisements which prompted them to restock 5,000 more pairs of those jeans.
In 1997, Aaliyah performed the Christmas carol What Child Is This at the annual holiday special Christmas in Washington. She contributed on the soundtrack album for the Fox Animation Studios animated feature Anastasia, performing a cover version of "Journey to the Past" which earned songwriters Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Aaliyah performed the song at the 1998 Academy Awards ceremony and became the youngest singer to perform at the event. The song "Are You That Somebody?" was featured on the Dr. Dolittle soundtrack, which earned Aaliyah her first Grammy Award nomination. The song peaked at number 21 on the Hot 100.
In 1999, Aaliyah landed her first film role in Romeo Must Die, released March 22, 2000. Aaliyah starred opposite martial artist Jet Li, playing a couple who fall in love amid their warring families. It grossed US$18.6 million in its first weekend, ranking number two at the box office. Aaliyah purposely stayed away from reviews of the film to "make it easier on" herself, but she heard "that people were able to get into me, which is what I wanted." In contrast, some critics felt there was no chemistry between her and Jet Li, as well as viewing the film was too simplistic. This was echoed by Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times, who wrote that while Aaliyah was "a natural" and the film was conceived as a spotlight for both her and Li, "they have so little chemistry together you'd think they're putting out a fire instead of shooting off sparks. Her role was well received by Glen Oliver by IGN who liked that she did not portray her character "as a victimized female" but instead "as a strong female who does not come across as an over-the-top Women's Right Advocate."
In addition to acting, Aaliyah served as an executive producer of the film's soundtrack, where she contributed four songs. "Try Again" was released as a single from the soundtrack; the song topped the Billboard Hot 100, making Aaliyah the first artist to top the chart based solely on airplay; this led the song to be released in a 12" vinyl and 7" single. The music video won the Best Female Video and Best Video from a Film awards at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. It also earned her a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female R&B Vocalist. The soundtrack went on to sell 1.5 million copies in the United States.
2001: Aaliyah and Queen of the Damned
After completing Romeo Must Die, Aaliyah began to work on her second film, Queen of the Damned. She played the role of an ancient vampire, Queen Akasha, which she described as a "manipulative, crazy, sexual being". Filming both Romeo Must Die and Queen of the Damned delayed the release of the album. Aaliyah had not intended for her albums to have such a gap between them. "I wanted to take a break after One in a Million to just relax, think about how I wanted to approach the next album. Then, when I was ready to start back up, "Romeo" happened, and so I had to take another break and do that film and then do the soundtrack, then promote it. The break turned into a longer break than I anticipated." Aaliyah enjoyed balancing her singing and acting careers. Though she called music a "first" for her, she also had been acting since she was young and had wanted to begin acting "at some point in my career," but "wanted it to be the right time and the right vehicle" and felt Romeo Must Die "was it". Connie Johnson of the Los Angeles Times argued that Aaliyah having to focus on her film career may have caused her to not give the album "the attention it merited." Collaborator Timbaland concurred, stating that he was briefly in Australia to work on the album while Aaliyah was filming and did not feel the same production had gone into Aaliyah as One in a Million had. He also said Virgin Records had rushed the album and Aaliyah had specifically requested Missy Elliott and Timbaland work on Aaliyah with her.
During the recording stages for the album, Aaliyah's publicist disclosed that the album's release date was most likely in October 2000. Ultimately she finished recording the album in March 2001; after a year of recording tracks that began in March of the previous year.
Aaliyah was released five years after One in a Million on July 17, 2001, and it debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 187,000 copies in its first week. The first single from the album, "We Need a Resolution", peaked at number 59 on the Billboard Hot 100. The week after Aaliyah's death, her third and self-titled studio album, rose from number 19 to number one on the Billboard 200. "Rock the Boat" was released as a posthumous single. The music video premiered on BET's Access Granted; it became the most viewed and highest rated episode in the history of the show. The song peaked at number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number two on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. It was also included on the Now That's What I Call Music! 8 compilation series; a portion of the album's profits was donated to the Aaliyah Memorial Fund. Promotional posters for Aaliyah that had been put up in major cities such as New York and Los Angeles became makeshift memorials for grieving fans.
"More than a Woman" and "I Care 4 U" were released as posthumous singles and peaked within the top 25 of the Billboard Hot 100. The album was certified double Platinum by the RIAA and sold 2.6 million copies in the United States. "More than a Woman" reached number one on the UK singles chart making Aaliyah the first female deceased artist to reach number one on the UK singles chart. "More than a Woman" was replaced by George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" which is the only time in the UK singles chart's history where a dead artist has replaced another dead artist at number one. In July 2001, she allowed MTV's show Diary behind-the-scenes access to her life and stated: "I am truly blessed to wake up every morning to do something that I love; there is nothing better than that." She continued, "Everything is worth it – the hard work, the times when you're tired, the times when you are a bit sad. In the end, it's all worth it because it really makes me happy. I wouldn't trade it for anything else in the world. I've got good friends, a beautiful family and I've got a career. I thank God for his blessings every single chance I get."
Aaliyah was signed to appear in several future films, including a romantic film titled Some Kind of Blue, and a Whitney Houston-produced remake of the 1976 film Sparkle. Whitney Houston recalled Aaliyah being "so enthusiastic" about the film and wanting to appear in the film "so badly". Houston also voiced her belief that Aaliyah was more than qualified for the role and the film was shelved after she died, since Aaliyah had "gone to a better place". Studio officials of Warner Brothers stated that Aaliyah and her mother had both read the script for Sparkle. According to them, Aaliyah was passionate about playing the lead role of a young singer in a girl group.
The film was released in 2012, eleven years after Aaliyah's death. Before her death Aaliyah was cast in the sequels of The Matrix as the character Zee. She had filmed part of her role in The Matrix Reloaded and was scheduled to film and reprise her role in The Matrix Revolutions as Zee. Aaliyah told Access Hollywood that she was "beyond happy" to have landed the role. The role was subsequently recast to Nona Gaye. Aaliyah's scenes were included in the tribute section of the Matrix Ultimate Collection series. There had been rumours that Aaliyah had been cast to play the lead in Honey but in 2020, director Bille Woodruff debunked the rumor, stating: "That’s incorrect. It was supposed to be Beyoncé. That’s been widely reported but it’s incorrect, [Beyoncé] couldn’t do it because of her touring schedule for her first album Dangerously in Love."
In November 2001, Ronald Isley stated that Aaliyah and the Isley Brothers had discussed a collaboration prior to her death. She had previously covered the Isley Brothers' single "At Your Best (You Are Love)". Prior to her death, she expressed the possibility of recording songs for the Queen of The Damned soundtrack and welcomed the possibility of collaborating with Jonathan Davis. By 2001, Aaliyah had enjoyed her now seven-year career and felt a sense of accomplishment. "This is what I always wanted," she said of her career in Vibe magazine. "I breathe to perform, to entertain, I can't imagine myself doing anything else. I'm just a really happy girl right now. I honestly love every aspect of this business. I really do. I feel very fulfilled and complete."
Artistry
Voice and style
Aaliyah had the vocal range of a soprano. With the release of her debut album Age Ain't Nothing but a Number, writer Dimitri Ehrlich of Entertainment Weekly compared her style and sound to R&B group En Vogue. Ehrlich also expressed that Aaliyah's "silky vocals are more agile than those of self-proclaimed queen of hip-hop soul Mary J. Blige." In her review for Aaliyah's second studio album One in a Million Vibe magazine, music critic Dream Hampton said that Aaliyah's "deliciously feline" voice has the same "pop appeal" as Janet Jackson's. Aaliyah described her sound as "street but sweet", which featured her "gentle" vocals over a "hard" beat. Though Aaliyah did not write any of her own material, her lyrics were described as in-depth. She incorporated R&B, pop and hip hop into her music. Her songs were often uptempo and at the same time often dark, revolving around "matters of the heart". After her R. Kelly-produced debut album, Aaliyah worked with Timbaland and Missy Elliott, whose productions were more electronic. Sasha Frere-Jones of The Wire finds Aaliyah's "Are You That Somebody?" to be Timbaland's "masterpiece" and exemplary of his production's start-stop rhythms, with "big half-second pauses between beats and voices". Keith Harris of Rolling Stone cites "Are You That Somebody?" as "one of '90s R&B's most astounding moments".
Aaliyah's songs have been said to have "crisp production" and "staccato arrangements" that "extend genre boundaries" while containing "old-school" soul music. Kelefah Sanneh of The New York Times called Aaliyah "a digital diva who wove a spell with ones and zeroes", and writes that her songs comprised "simple vocal riffs, repeated and refracted to echo the manipulated loops that create digital rhythm", as Timbaland's "computer-programmed beats fitted perfectly with her cool, breathy voice to create a new kind of electronic music." When she experimented with other genres on Aaliyah, such as Latin pop and heavy metal, Entertainment Weeklys Craig Seymour panned the attempt. While analyzing her eponymous album, British publication NME (New Musical Express) felt that Aaliyah's radical third album was intended to consolidate her position as U.S.R&B's most experimental artist. As her albums progressed, writers felt that Aaliyah matured, calling her progress a "declaration of strength and independence". ABC News noted that Aaliyah's music was evolving from the punchy pop influenced Hip hop and R&B to a more mature, introspective sound on her third album. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described her eponymous album, Aaliyah, as "a statement of maturity and a stunning artistic leap forward" and called it one of the strongest urban soul records of its time. She portrayed "unfamiliar sounds, styles and emotions", but managed to please critics with the contemporary sound it contained. Ernest Hardy of Rolling Stone felt that Aaliyah reflected a stronger technique, where she gave her best vocal performance. Prior to her death, Aaliyah expressed a desire to learn about the burgeoning UK garage scene she had heard about at the time. Altogether, Aaliyah's music can be described as alternative R&B, progressive soul, and neo soul, according to Farley.
Influences
As an artist, Aaliyah often voiced that she was inspired by a number of performers. These include Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Sade, En Vogue, Nine Inch Nails, Korn, Prince, Naughty by Nature, Johnny Mathis, Janet Jackson and Barbra Streisand. Aaliyah expressed that Michael Jackson's Thriller was her "favorite album" and that "nothing will ever top Thriller." She stated that she admired Sade because "she stays true to her style no matter what ... she's an amazing artist, an amazing performer ... and I absolutely love her." Aaliyah expressed she had always desired to work with Janet Jackson, whom she had drawn a frequent comparison to over the course of her career, stating "I admire her a great deal. She's a total performer ... I'd love to do a duet with Janet Jackson." Jackson reciprocated Aaliyah's affections, commenting "I've loved her from the beginning because she always comes out and does something different, musically." Jackson also stated she would have enjoyed collaborating with Aaliyah.
Image
Aaliyah focused on her public image throughout her career. She often wore baggy clothes and sunglasses, stating that she wanted to be herself. She described her image as being "important ... to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack". She often wore black clothing, starting a trend for similar fashion among women in United States and Japan. Aaliyah's fashionable style has been credited for being an influence on new fashion trends called "Health Goth" and "Ghetto Goth", also known as "GHE20 GOTH1K". Aaliyah participated in fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger's All America Tour and was featured in Tommy Jean ads, which depicted her in boxer shorts, baggy jeans and a tube top. Hilfiger's brother, Andy, called it "a whole new look" that was "classy but sexy". Carson Daly A former VJ on MTV's Total Request Live commented on Aaliyah's style by saying that she was "cutting edge," "always one step ahead of the curve" and that "the TRL audience looks to her to figure out what's hot and what's new".
When she changed her hairstyle, Aaliyah took her mother's advice and covered her left eye, much like Veronica Lake. The look has become known as her signature and been referred to as fusion of "unnerving emotional honesty" and "a sense of mystique". In 1998, she hired a personal trainer to keep in shape, and exercised five days a week and ate diet foods. Aaliyah was praised for her "clean-cut image" and "moral values". Robert Christgau of The Village Voice wrote of Aaliyah's artistry and image, "she was lithe and dulcet in a way that signified neither jailbait nor hottie—an ingenue whose selling point was sincerity, not innocence and the obverse it implies."
Aaliyah was viewed by others as a role model. Emil Wilbekin, described by CNN as "a friend of Aaliyah's" and follower of her career, explained: "Aaliyah is an excellent role model because she started her career in the public eye at age 15 with a gold album, Age Ain't Nothing but a Number. And then her second album, One in a Million went double platinum. She had the leading role in Romeo Must Die, which was a box office success. She's won numerous awards, several MTV music video awards, and aside from her professional successes, many of her lyrics are very inspirational and uplifting. She also carried herself in a very professional manner. She was well-spoken. She was beautiful, but she didn't use her beauty to sell her music. She used her talent. Many young hip-hop fans greatly admire her."
She also was seen by others as a sex symbol. Aaliyah did not have a problem with being considered one. "I know that people think I'm sexy and I am looked at as that, and it is cool with me," she stated. "It's wonderful to have sex appeal. If you embrace it, it can be a very beautiful thing. I am totally cool with that. Definitely. I see myself as sexy. If you are comfortable with it, it can be very classy and it can be very appealing." The single "We Need a Resolution" was argued to have transformed "the once tomboy into a sexy grown woman". Aaliyah mentioned that her mother, during her childhood, would take pictures of her and notice a sex appeal. She reinforced her mother's belief by saying that she did feel "sexy for sure" and that she embraced it and was comfortable with this view of her.
Personal life
In an 1995 interview with Honey, Aaliyah stated that she was Catholic and she attended church whenever she was at home. In 2001, she told Vibe magazine that she was mostly a homebody and liked "the simple things in life." Aaliyah revealed during her final interview on August 21, 2001, on the television show 106 & Park, that she had never owned a car because she lived in New York City and could hire a car or driver on a regular basis.
Family
Aaliyah's family played a major role in the course of her career. Aaliyah's father Michael Haughton served as her personal manager. Her mother assisted her in her career while brother Rashad Haughton and cousin Jomo Hankerson worked with her consistently. Her father's illness ended his co-management of Aaliyah with her mother Diane Haughton. She ran all of her decisions by Rashad.
Aaliyah was known to have usually been accompanied by members of her family and the "Rock the Boat" filming was credited by Rashad Haughton as being the first and only time her family was not present. In October 2001, Rashad stated: "It really boggles everyone [that] from Day One, every single video she ever shot there's always been myself or my mother or my father there. The circumstances surrounding this last video were really strange because my mother had eye surgery and couldn't fly. That really bothered her because she always traveled. My dad had to take care of my mom at that time. And I went to Australia to visit some friends. We really couldn't understand why we weren't there. You ask yourself maybe we could have stopped it. But you can't really answer the question. There's always gonna be that question of why."
Aaliyah's friend Kidada Jones said in the last year of her life her parents had given her more freedom and she had talked about wanting a family.
Gladys Knight, who had been married to Aaliyah's uncle Barry Hankerson, was essential to the start of Aaliyah's career as she gave her many of her earlier performances. One of their last conversations concerned Aaliyah having difficulty with "another young artist" that she was trying to work with. Knight felt the argument was "petty" and insisted that she remain being who she was in spite of the conflict.
Illegal marriage
With the release of Age Ain't Nothing but a Number, rumors circulated of a relationship between Aaliyah and R. Kelly, including the allegation that they had secretly married without her parents' knowledge. Vibe magazine later revealed a marriage certificate that listed the couple married on August 31, 1994, in Sheraton Gateway Suites in Rosemont, Illinois. Aaliyah, who was 15 at the time, was listed as 18 on the certificate; R. Kelly was 27. The marriage was annulled by her parents in February 1995, but the pair denied the allegations, stating that neither was married.
Aaliyah reportedly developed an intimate relationship with Kelly during the recording of her debut album. Aaliyah recalled to Vibe magazine in 1994 that she and Kelly would "go watch a movie" and "go eat" when she got tired and would then "come back and work." She described the relationship between her and Kelly as being "rather close." In December 1994, Aaliyah told the Sun-Times that whenever she was asked about being married to Kelly, she urged them not to believe "all that mess" and that she and Kelly were "close" and "people took it the wrong way."
Jamie Foster Brown in the 1994 issue of Sister 2 Sister wrote that "R. Kelly told me that he and Aaliyah got together and it was just magic." Brown also reported hearing about a sexual relationship between them. "I've been hearing about Robert and Aaliyah for a while—that she was pregnant. Or that she was coming and going in and out of his house. People would see her walking his dog, 12 Play, with her basketball cap and sunglasses on. Every time I asked the label, they said it was platonic. But I kept hearing complaints from people about her being in the studio with all those men." Brown later added "at 15, you have all those hormones and no brains attached to them."
In his 2011 book The Man Behind the Man: Looking From the Inside Out, Demetrius Smith Sr., Kelly's former tour manager, revealed that Kelly married Aaliyah after she told him that she was pregnant. In the 2019 documentary Surviving R. Kelly, Smith described how he helped Aaliyah forge the necessary documents to show she was 18 in order to marry Kelly. Smith also stated that he is "not proud" of his role in facilitating their marriage. Additionally, the documentary revealed that Jovante Cunningham, a former backup dancer, claimed to have witnessed Kelly having sex with Aaliyah on his tour bus.
Aaliyah admitted in court documents that she had lied about her age. In May 1997, she filed suit in Cook County seeking to have all records of the marriage expunged because she was not old enough under state law to get married without her parents' consent. It was reported that she cut off all professional and personal ties with Kelly after the marriage was annulled and ceased having contact with him. In 2014, Aaliyah's cousin Jomo Hankerson stated that she "got villainized" over her relationship with Kelly and the scandal over the marriage made it difficult to find producers for her second album. "We were coming off of a multi-platinum debut album and except for a couple of relationships with Jermaine Dupri and Puffy, it was hard for us to get producers on the album." Hankerson also expressed confusion over why "they were upset" with Aaliyah given her age at the time.
Aaliyah was known to avoid answering questions regarding Kelly following the professional split. During an interview with Christopher John Farley, she was asked if she was still in contact with him and if she would ever work with him again. Farley said Aaliyah responded with a "firm, frosty 'no'" to both of the questions. Vibe magazine said Aaliyah changed the subject anytime "you bring up the marriage with her". A spokeswoman for Aaliyah said in 2000 that when "R. Kelly comes up, she doesn't even speak his name, and nobody's allowed to ask about it at all." Kelly later commented that Aaliyah had opportunities to address the pair's relationship after they separated professionally but chose not to. In 2019, Damon Dash revealed to Hip Hop Motivation that Aaliyah did not even speak of her relationship with Kelly in private; she tried multiple times to discuss it with him, but could only say that Kelly was a "bad man". Dash said he was unable to watch Surviving R. Kelly because its interviews with visibly traumatized girls struggling to discuss their encounters with Kelly reminded him of how Aaliyah behaved when trying to recount her relationship with Kelly. Dash later appeared in Surviving R. Kelly, Part 2 in 2020.
Kelly would have other allegations made about him regarding underage girls in the years following her death and his marriage to Aaliyah was used as an example of his involvement with them. He has refused to discuss his relationship with her, citing her death. "Out of respect for her, and her mom and her dad, I will not discuss Aaliyah. That was a whole other situation, a whole other time, it was a whole other thing, and I'm sure that people also know that." In 2016, Kelly said that he was as in love with Aaliyah as he was with "anybody else."Aaliyah's mother, Diane Haughton, reflected that everything "that went wrong in her life" began with her relationship with Kelly.
After the documentary Surviving R Kelly aired in January 2019, pressure from the public using the Mute R. Kelly hashtag escalated and RCA Records dropped Kelly from the label. In February 2019, Kelly was indicted on ten counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse. In July 2019, he was arrested on federal charges alleging sex crimes, human trafficking, child pornography, racketeering, and obstruction of justice. When his trial began in August 2021, Kelly was facing 22 federal criminal charges that involved allegedly abusing 11 girls and women between 1994 and 2018. Aaliyah’s illegal marriage to Kelly was heavily featured in the court case. On September 27, 2021, a federal court jury found R. Kelly guilty on nine counts including racketeering, sexual exploitation of a child, kidnapping, bribery, sex trafficking, and a violation of the Mann Act. The judge ordered that Kelly remain in custody pending sentencing, which was set for May 4, 2022.
Relationship with Damon Dash
Aaliyah was dating co-founder of Roc-A-Fella Records Damon Dash at the time of her death. Although they were not formally engaged, in interviews given after Aaliyah's death, Dash claimed the couple had planned to marry. In the summer of 2000, Aaliyah was introduced to Dash by his accountant and they formed a friendship. Aaliyah never publicly addressed their relationship as being anything but platonic.
Due to their hectic work schedules, Aaliyah and Dash were separated long periods of time. Jay-Z mentioned Aaliyah and Dash on the remix to her song "Miss You", released in 2003.
Death
On August 25, 2001, at 6:50 p.m. (EDT), Aaliyah and the members of the record company boarded a twin-engine Cessna 402 light aircraft at the Marsh Harbour Airport in Abaco Islands, the Bahamas, to travel to the Opa-Locka Airport in Florida, after they completed filming the music video for "Rock the Boat". They had a flight scheduled the following day, but with filming finishing early, Aaliyah and her entourage were eager to return to the U.S. and made the decision to leave immediately. The designated airplane was smaller than the Cessna 404 on which they had originally arrived, but the whole party and all of the equipment were accommodated on board. The plane crashed and caught fire shortly after takeoff, about from the end of the runway.
Aaliyah and the eight others on board—pilot Luis Morales III, hair stylist Eric Forman, Anthony Dodd, security guard Scott Gallin, family friend Keith Wallace, make-up stylist Christopher Maldonado, and Blackground Records employees Douglas Kratz and Gina Smith—were all killed.
The passengers had grown impatient because the Cessna was supposed to arrive at 4:30 p.m. EDT, but did not arrive until 6:15 p.m. EDT. Charter pilot Lewis Key claimed to have overheard passengers arguing with the pilot, Luis Morales III, prior to take off, adding that Morales warned them that there was too much weight for a "safe flight". Key further stated: "He tried to convince them the plane was overloaded, but they insisted they had chartered the plane and they had to be in Miami Saturday night." Key indicated that Morales gave in to the passengers and that he had trouble starting one of the engines.
According to findings from an inquest conducted by the coroner's office in the Bahamas, Aaliyah suffered from "severe burns and a blow to the head", in addition to severe shock and a weak heart. The coroner theorized that she went into such a state of shock that even if she had survived the crash, her recovery would have been nearly impossible given the severity of her injuries. The bodies were taken to the morgue at Princess Margaret Hospital in Nassau, where they were kept for relatives to help identify them. Some of the bodies were badly burned in the crash.
As the subsequent investigation determined, the aircraft was overloaded by when it attempted to take off, and was carrying one more passenger than it was certified for. The National Transportation Safety Board reported that "the airplane was seen lifting off the runway, and then nose down, impacting in a marsh on the south side of the departure end of runway 27." The report indicated that the pilot was not approved to fly the plane. Morales falsely obtained his FAA license by showing hundreds of hours never flown, and he may also have falsified how many hours he had flown in order to get a job with his employer, Blackhawk International Airways. Additionally, toxicology tests performed on Morales revealed traces of cocaine and alcohol in his system.
Funeral
Aaliyah's private funeral Mass was held on August 31, 2001, at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in Manhattan, following a procession from the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel. Her body was set in a silver-plated copper-deposit casket, which was carried in a horse-drawn, glass hearse. An estimated 800 mourners were in attendance at the procession.
Among those in attendance at the private ceremony were Missy Elliott, Timbaland, Gladys Knight, Lil' Kim, and Sean Combs. After the service, 22 white doves were released to symbolize each year of her life.
Aaliyah was initially entombed in a crypt on the third floor of the expansion wing of Ferncliff Cemetery's main mausoleum in Hartsdale, New York. In April 2005, she was moved to a private room at the end of a corridor in the Rosewood Mausoleum. The inscription "BABY GIRL" appears on Aaliyah's crypt. Her father Michael, who died eleven years later in 2012 at age 61, is interred in the crypt directly above her. The inscription at the bottom of Aaliyah's portrait at the funeral read: "We Were Given a Queen, We Were Given an Angel."
Aaliyah's brother Rashad delivered the eulogy and described his sister as giving him strength. "Aaliyah, you left, but I'll see you always next to me and I can see you smiling through the sunshine," he said. "When our life is over, our book is done. I hope God keeps me strong until I see her again." He read the names of the other victims of the crash and concluded by asking mourners to pray for them as well. As Diane Haughton and the mourners left, they sang Aaliyah's song "One in a Million".
Posthumous releases
2001–2011: Aaliyah Memorial Fund, Queen of the Damned and compilations
Immediately after Aaliyah's death, there was uncertainty over whether the music video for "Rock the Boat" would ever air. It made its world premiere on BET's Access Granted on October 9, 2001. She won two posthumous awards at the American Music Awards of 2002; Favorite Female R&B Artist and Favorite R&B/Soul Album for Aaliyah. Her second and final film, Queen of the Damned, was released in February 2002. Before its release, Aaliyah's brother, Rashad, re-dubbed some of her lines during post-production. It grossed US$15.2 million in its first weekend, ranking number one at the box office. On the first anniversary of Aaliyah's death, a candlelight vigil was held in Times Square; millions of fans observed a moment of silence; and throughout the United States, radio stations played her music in remembrance. In December 2002, a collection of previously unreleased material was released as Aaliyah's first posthumous album, I Care 4 U. A portion of the proceeds was donated to the Aaliyah Memorial Fund, a program that benefits the Revlon UCLA Women's Cancer Research Program and Harlem's Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. It debuted at number three on the US Billboard 200, selling 280,000 copies in its first week. The album's lead single, "Miss You", peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. In August of the following year, luxury fashion house Dior donated profits from sales in honor of Aaliyah.
In April 2005, Aaliyah's second posthumous album, a double CD+DVD box set titled Ultimate Aaliyah, was released in the United Kingdom by Blackground Records. Andy Kellman of AllMusic remarked "Ultimate Aaliyah adequately represents the shortened career of a tremendous talent who benefited from some of the best songwriting and production work by Timbaland, Missy Elliott, and R. Kelly." A documentary movie Aaliyah Live in Amsterdam was released in 2011, shortly before the tenth anniversary of Aaliyah's death. The documentary, by Pogus Caesar, contained previously unseen footage shot of her career beginnings in 1995 when she was appearing in the Netherlands.
2012–2014: Proposed posthumous album
In March 2012, music producer Jeffrey "J-Dub" Walker announced on his Twitter account that a song "Steady Ground", which he produced for Aaliyah's third album, would be included in the forthcoming posthumous Aaliyah album. This second proposed posthumous album would feature this song using demo vocals, as Walker claims the originals were somehow lost by his sound engineer. Aaliyah's brother Rashad later refuted Walker's claim, claiming that "no official album [is] being released and supported by the Haughton family." On August 5, 2012, Blackground Records released the track "Enough Said" online. It was produced by Noah "40" Shebib and features Canadian rapper Drake. Four days later, Jomo Hankerson confirmed a posthumous album is being produced and that it was scheduled to be released by the end of 2012 by Blackground Records. The album was reported to include 16 unreleased songs and have contributions from Aaliyah's longtime collaborators Timbaland and Missy Elliott, among others. On August 13, Timbaland and Missy Elliott dismissed rumors about being contacted or participating for the project. Elliott's manager Mona Scott-Young said in a statement to XXL, "Although Missy and Timbaland always strive to keep the memory of their close friend alive, we have not been contacted about the project nor are there any plans at this time to participate. We've seen the reports surfacing that they have been confirmed to participate but that is not the case. Both Missy and Timbaland are very sensitive to the loss still being felt by the family so we wanted to clear up any misinformation being circulated." Elliott herself said, "Tim and I carry Aaliyah with us everyday, like so many of the people who love her. She will always live in our hearts. We have nothing but love and respect for her memory and for her loved ones left behind still grieving her loss. They are always in our prayers."
In June 2013, Aaliyah was featured on a new track by Chris Brown, titled "Don't Think They Know"; with Aaliyah singing the song's hook. The video features dancing holographic versions of Aaliyah. The song appears on Brown's sixth studio album, X. Timbaland voiced his disapproval for "Enough Said" and "Don't Think They Know" in July 2013. He exclaimed, "Aaliyah music only work with its soulmate, which is me". Soon after, Timbaland apologized to Chris Brown over his remarks, which he explained were made due to Aaliyah and her death being a "very sensitive subject".
In January 2014, producer Noah "40" Shebib confirmed that the posthumous album was shelved due to the negative reception surrounding Drake's involvement. Shebib added, "Aaliyah's mother saying, 'I don't want this out' was enough for me ... I walked away very quickly."
Aaliyah's vocals were reported to be featured on the T-Pain mixtape, The Iron Way, on the track "Girlfriend", but were pulled after being met with criticism by fans and many in attendance at a New York listening session that he hosted for the project. In response to the criticism, T-Pain questioned if Aaliyah's legacy was driven by her death and claimed that were she still alive, she would be seen as trying to emulate Beyoncé. According to T-Pain, he was given her vocals from a session she had done prior to her death after being approached to work on a track for a posthumous Aaliyah album and completing the song, calling the exchange "just like a swap." She was featured on the Tink track "Million", which was released in May 2015 and contained samples from her song "One in a Million". Collaborator Timbaland was involved in the song's creation, having previously claimed that Aaliyah appeared to him in a dream and stressed that Tink was "the one".
2015–present: Merchandise, catalogue rerelease and Unstoppable
In September 2015, Aaliyah by Xyrena, an official tribute fragrance, was announced. On December 19, 2015, Timbaland uploaded a snippet of a new Aaliyah song title "Shakin" on his Instagram account and said it would be released December 25, 2015. "Shakin'", featuring rapper Strado, was featured on the Timbaland mixtape King Stays King. The original track was produced by Eric Seats and Rapture Stewart of KeyBeats, and had been titled "He Keeps Me Shakin'". On August 24, 2017 MAC Cosmetics announced that an Aaliyah collection will be made available in the summer of 2018. The Aaliyah for Mac collection was released on June 20 online and June 21 in stores, along with the MAC collection, MAC and i-D Magazine partnered up to release a short film titled "A-Z of Aaliyah" which coincided with the launch. The short film highlighted and celebrated the legacy of Aaliyah with the help of select fans who were selected to be a part of the film through a casting call competition held by Mac and i–d magazine. The Aaliyah for Mac collectors box was sold at $250 and it sold out within minutes during the first day of its initial release.
On August 21, 2019, the Madame Tussauds museum revealed a wax figure of Aaliyah at their Las Vegas location. The lifesize figure was modelled on Aaliyah's iconic "Try Again" outfit and makeup. It was unveiled by her brother, Rashad, to an invited audience. Four days later, Aaliyah's family announced that they were in talks with record companies to discuss the future of her discography, with a view of making it available for download and streaming.
In January 2021, it was announced that Aaliyah would have her own Funko Pop!figurine. The collectible was styled in Aaliyah's 1994 era and was released March 2021 worldwide. In August 2021, it was reported that the album and Aaliyah's other recorded work for Blackground (since rebranded as Blackground Records 2.0) would be re-released on physical, digital, and streaming services in a deal between the label and Empire Distribution. One in a Million was reissued on August 20, despite Aaliyah's estate issuing a statement in response to Blackground 2.0's announcement, denouncing the "unscrupulous endeavor to release Aaliyah's music without any transparency or full accounting to the estate". After the album's re-release, One in a Million re-entered the UK Official Hip Hop and R&B Albums Chart Top 40 at number eight. In the US, the album reached the top ten for on the Billboard 200 for the first time at number ten, selling 26,000 album-equivalent units in the week ending of August 26.
On August 25, 2021, Barry Hankerson revealed in an interview with Big Tigger for WVEE that a fourth (and likely final) studio album, titled Unstoppable, would be released in "a matter of weeks". The album will feature Drake, Snoop Dogg, Ne-Yo, Chris Brown, Future and use previously unreleased vocals from before Aaliyah's passing. Hankerson shared that this will be the end of new music for the late star and added, "I think it's wonderful. It's a very emotional process to do. It's very difficult to hear her sing when she's not here, but we got through it." Aaliyah was reissued September 10, 2021. After the album's re-release, Aaliyah re-entered the UK Official Hip Hop and R&B Albums Chart Top 40 at number seven and reentered the US Billboard 200 chart at number 13, charting at number four for high pure sales. In celebration of the reissue, Blackground released an animated commercial titled "It's Been A Long Time" (in a similar style to the album's original 2001 commercial), directed by Takahiro Tanaka, showing Aaliyah resurrecting her music from out of a large underground vault. Compilation albums I Care 4 U and Ultimate Aaliyah were reissued October 8, 2021. While the I Care 4 U album failed to rechart, Ultimate Aaliyah peaked at number 8 on the UK R&B Albums Chart Top 40 and charted for the first time in the US at number 41 on the Billboard 200.
On December 14, 2021, it was announced that a new single would be released by Aaliyah, featuring The Weeknd. The mid-tempo track, "Poison", was released on December 17, 2021. The single was written by Static Major, The Weeknd and Belly and produced by DannyBoyStyles and Nick Lamb. On January 4, 2022, Hankerson confirmed that Unstoppable would be released later that month, however, by February 16, 2022, there was no sign of the album, nor any announcement from the label.
Legacy and influence
Aaliyah has been credited for helping redefine R&B, pop and hip hop in the 1990s, "leaving an indelible imprint on the music industry as a whole." According to Billboard, she revolutionized R&B with her sultry mix of pop, soul and hip hop. In a 2001 review of her eponymous album, Rolling Stone professed that Aaliyah's impact on R&B and pop has been enormous. Steve Huey of AllMusic wrote Aaliyah ranks among the "elite" artists of the R&B genre, as she "played a major role in popularizing the stuttering, futuristic production style that consumed hip-hop and urban soul in the late 1990s." Critic Bruce Britt stated that by combining "schoolgirl charm with urban grit, Aaliyah helped define the teen-oriented sound that has resulted in contemporary pop phenom's like Brandy, Christina Aguilera and Destiny's Child".
Described as one of "R&B's most important artists" during the 1990s, her second studio album, One in a Million, became one of the most influential R&B albums of the decade. Music critic Simon Reynolds cited "Are You That Somebody?" as "the most radical pop single" of 1998. Kelefah Sanneh of The New York Times wrote that rather than being the song's focal point, Aaliyah "knew how to disappear into the music, how to match her voice to the bass line", and consequently "helped change the way popular music sounds; the twitchy, beat-driven songs of Destiny's Child owe a clear debt to 'Are You That Somebody'." Sanneh asserted that by the time of her death in 2001, Aaliyah "had recorded some of the most innovative and influential pop songs of the last five years." Music publication Popdust called Aaliyah an unlikely queen of the underground for her influence on the underground alternative music scene; the publication also mentioned that the forward-thinking music Aaliyah did with Timbaland and the experimental music being made by many underground alternative artists are somewhat cut from the same cloth. While compiling a list of artists that take cues from Aaliyah, MTV Hive mentioned that it's easy to spot her influence on underground movements like dubstep, strains of indie pop, and lo-fi R&B movements. Erika Ramirez, an associate editor of Billboard, said at the time of Aaliyah's career "there weren't many artists using the kind of soft vocals the ways she was using it, and now you see a lot of artists doing that and finding success," her reasoning for Aaliyah's continued influence on current artists. She argued that Aaliyah's second album One in a Million was "very much ahead of its time, with the bass and electro kind of R&B sounds that they produced", referring to collaborators Timbaland and Missy Elliott and that the sound, which "really stood out" at its time, was being replicated. With sales of 8.1 million albums in the United States and an estimated 24 to 32 million albums worldwide, Aaliyah earned the nicknames "Princess of R&B" and "Queen of Urban Pop", as she "proved she was a muse in her own right". Ernest Hardy of Rolling Stone dubbed her as the "undisputed queen of the midtempo come-on". She has also been referred to as a pop and R&B icon for her impact and contributions to those respective genres.
Aaliyah was honored at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards by Janet Jackson, Missy Elliott, Timbaland, Ginuwine and her brother, Rashad, who all paid tribute to her. In the same year, the United States Social Security Administration ranked the name Aaliyah one of the 100 most popular names for newborn girls. Aaliyah was ranked as one of "The Top 40 Women of the Video Era" in VH1's 2003 The Greatest series. In 2020, Billboard included her on its 100 Greatest Music Video Artists of All Time list, explaining that she "coined the smooth choreography and tomboyish style that would inspire [R&B]'s future generations for years to come." She was also ranked at number 18 on BET's "Top 25 Dancers of All Time". Aaliyah appeared on both 2000 and 2001 list of Maxim Hot 100 in position 41 and the latter at 14. In 2002, VH1 created the 100 sexiest artist list and Aaliyah was ranked at number 36. In memory of Aaliyah, the Entertainment Industry Foundation created the Aaliyah Memorial Fund to donate money raised to charities she supported. In December 2009, Billboard magazine ranked Aaliyah at number 70 on its Top Artists of the Decade, while her eponymous album was ranked at number 181 on the magazine's Top 200 Albums of the Decade. She is listed by Billboard as the tenth most successful female R&B artist of the past 25 years, and 27th most successful R&B artist overall. In 2012, VH1 ranked her number 48 in "VH1's Greatest Women in Music". Also in 2012, Aaliyah was ranked at number 10 on Complex magazine's 100 hottest female singers of all-time list and number 22 on their 90 hottest women of the 1990s list. In 2014, NME ranked Aaliyah at number 18 on NME'''s 100 most influential artist list. Aaliyah's dress that she wore at the 2000 MTV Video Music Award's was featured in the most memorable fashion moments at the VMA's list by the fashion publication Harper's Bazaar. In October 2015, Aaliyah was featured in the 10 women who became Denim Style icons list created by the fashion publication Vogue. In August 2018, Billboard ranked Aaliyah at number 47 on their Top 60 Female Artists of All-Time list.
Aaliyah's music has influenced numerous artists including Adele, The Weeknd, Ciara, Beyoncé, Monica, Chris Brown, Rihanna, Azealia Banks, Sevyn Streeter, Keyshia Cole, J. Cole, Ryan Destiny Kelly Rowland, Zendaya, Rita Ora, The xx, Arctic Monkeys, Speedy Ortiz, Chelsea Wolfe, Haim, Angel Haze, Kiesza, Naya Rivera, Normani Cassie, Hayley Williams, Jessie Ware, Yeasayer, Bebe Rexha, Omarion, Megan Rochell, and Years & Years frontman Olly Alexander. Canadian R&B singer Keshia Chanté who was said to play as her in her pending biopic back in 2008, complimented the singer's futuristic style in music and fashion.
Chanté backed out of the biopic after speaking to Diane Haughton, but has expressed a willingness to do the project if "the right production comes along and the family's behind it". Chanté also mentioned that Aaliyah had been part of her life "since I was 6." R&B singer and friend Brandy said about the late singer "She came out before Monica and I did, she was our inspiration. At the time, record companies did not believe in kid acts and it was just inspiring to see someone that was winning and winning being themselves. When I met her I embraced her, I was so happy to meet her." Rapper Drake said that the singer has had the biggest influence on his career. He also has a tattoo of the singer on his back. Solange Knowles remarked on the tenth anniversary of her death that she idolized Aaliyah and proclaimed that she would never be forgotten. Adam Levine, the lead vocalist of the pop rock group Maroon 5, remembers that listening to "Are You That Somebody?" convinced him to pursue a more soulful sound than that of his then-band Kara's Flowers. Japanese pop singer Hikaru Utada has said several times that "It was when I heard Aaliyah's Age Ain't Nothing but a Number that I got hooked on R&B.", after which Utada released her debut album First Love with heavy R&B influences. In 2012, British singer-songwriter Katy B released the song Aaliyah as a tribute to Aaliyah's legacy and lasting impression on R&B music. The song first appeared on Katy B's Danger EP and featured Jessie Ware on guest vocals. In 2016, Swedish singer-songwriter Erik Hassle released a song titled "If Your Man Only Knew" which serves as a tribute to Aaliyah's 1996 single "If Your Girl Only Knew".
There has been continuing belief that Aaliyah would have achieved greater career success had it not been for her death. Emil Wilbekin mentioned the deaths of The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur in conjunction with hers and added: "Her just-released third album and scheduled role in a sequel to The Matrix could have made her another Janet Jackson or Whitney Houston". Director of Queen of the Damned Michael Rymer said of Aaliyah, "God, that girl could have gone so far" and spoke of her having "such a clarity about what she wanted. Nothing was gonna step in her way. No ego, no nervousness, no manipulation. There was nothing to stop her." On July 18, 2014, it was announced that Alexandra Shipp replaced Zendaya for the role of Aaliyah for the Lifetime TV biopic movie Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B, which premiered on November 15, 2014. Zendaya drew criticism because people felt that she was too light skinned and did not greatly resemble Aaliyah. She voiced her strong respect for Aaliyah before dropping out of the project. She explained her choice to withdraw from the film in videos on Instagram. Aaliyah's family has been vocal in their disapproving of the film. Her cousin Jomo Hankerson stated the family would prefer a "major studio release along the lines" of What's Love Got to Do with It, the biopic based on the life of Tina Turner. Aaliyah's family has consulted a lawyer to stop Lifetime from using "any of the music, or any of the photographs and videos" they own and Jomo Hankerson claimed the TV network "didn't reach out." On August 9, 2014, it was announced that Chattrisse Dolabaille and Izaak Smith had been cast as Aaliyah's collaborators Missy Elliott and Timbaland. Dolabaille received criticism for her appearance in comparison with that of Missy Elliot. Despite negative reviews, the film's premiere drew 3.2 million viewers, becoming the second highest rated television movie of 2014.
On August 17, 2021, Atria Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) published Kathy Iandoli's Baby Girl: Better Known as Aaliyah, a biography that draws on interviews with Aaliyah's friends, mentors and family, and document how her career influenced a new generation of artists. It has not been authorized by the Haughton family.
Discography
Studio albums
Age Ain't Nothing but a Number (1994)
One in a Million (1996)
Aaliyah (2001)
Unstoppable (2022)
Compilation albums
I Care 4 U (2002)
Ultimate Aaliyah'' (2005)
Filmography
See also
List of artists who reached number one in the United States
List of awards and nominations received by Aaliyah
List of fatalities from aviation accidents
References
Bibliography
External links
Aaliyah on Grammy Awards
1979 births
2001 deaths
20th-century American actresses
20th-century African-American women singers
21st-century American actresses
21st-century African-American women singers
Actresses from Detroit
African-American actresses
African-American Catholics
African-American dancers
African-American female dancers
African-American female models
African-American models
American female models
American child singers
American contemporary R&B singers
American female dancers
American women pop singers
American film actresses
American female hip hop singers
American sopranos
Atlantic Records artists
Burials at Ferncliff Cemetery
Catholics from Michigan
Catholics from New York (state)
Child marriage in the United States
Child pop musicians
Dancers from Michigan
Dance-pop musicians
American female hip hop musicians
Jive Records artists
Midwest hip hop musicians
Musicians from Detroit
Musicians killed in aviation accidents or incidents
Swing Mob artists
Universal Records artists
Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 2001
Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in the Bahamas
Virgin Records artists |
2147 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armour | Armour | Armour (British English) or armor (American English; see spelling differences) is a covering used to protect an object, individual, or vehicle from physical injury or damage, especially direct contact weapons or projectiles during combat, or from a potentially dangerous environment or activity (e.g. cycling, construction sites, etc.). Personal armour is used to protect soldiers and war animals. Vehicle armour is used on warships, armoured fighting vehicles, and some mostly ground attack combat aircraft.
A second use of the term armour describes armoured forces, armoured weapons, and their role in combat. After the development of armoured warfare, tanks and mechanised infantry and their combat formations came to be referred to collectively as "armour".
Etymology
The word "armour" began to appear in the Middle Ages as a derivative of Old French. It is dated from 1297 as a "mail, defensive covering worn in combat". The word originates from the Old French , itself derived from the Latin meaning "arms and/or equipment", with the root meaning "arms or gear".
Personal
Armour has been used throughout recorded history. It has been made from a variety of materials, beginning with the use of leathers or fabrics as protection and evolving through chain mail and metal plate into today's modern composites. For much of military history the manufacture of metal personal armour has dominated the technology and employment of armour.
Armour drove the development of many important technologies of the Ancient World, including wood lamination, mining, metal refining, vehicle manufacture, leather processing, and later decorative metal working. Its production was influential in the industrial revolution, and furthered commercial development of metallurgy and engineering. Armour was the single most influential factor in the development of firearms, which in turn revolutionised warfare.
History
Significant factors in the development of armour include the economic and technological necessities of its production. For instance, plate armour first appeared in Medieval Europe when water-powered trip hammers made the formation of plates faster and cheaper. Also, modern militaries usually do not equip their forces with the best armour available because it would be prohibitively expensive. At times the development of armour has paralleled the development of increasingly effective weaponry on the battlefield, with armourers seeking to create better protection without sacrificing mobility.
Well-known armour types in European history include the lorica hamata, lorica squamata, and the lorica segmentata of the Roman legions, the mail hauberk of the early medieval age, and the full steel plate harness worn by later medieval and renaissance knights, and breast and back plates worn by heavy cavalry in several European countries until the first year of World War I (1914–15). The samurai warriors of feudal Japan utilised many types of armour for hundreds of years up to the 19th century.
Early
Cuirasses and helmets were manufactured in Japan as early as the 4th century. Tankō, worn by foot soldiers and keikō, worn by horsemen were both pre-samurai types of early Japanese armour constructed from iron plates connected together by leather thongs. Japanese lamellar armour (keiko) passed through Korea and reached Japan around the 5th century. These early Japanese lamellar armours took the form of a sleeveless jacket, leggings and a helmet.
Armour did not always cover all of the body; sometimes no more than a helmet and leg plates were worn. The rest of the body was generally protected by means of a large shield. Examples of armies equipping their troops in this fashion were the Aztecs (13th to 15th century CE).
In East Asia many types of armour were commonly used at different times by various cultures, including scale armour, lamellar armour, laminar armour, plated mail, mail, plate armour, and brigandine. Around the dynastic Tang, Song, and early Ming Period, cuirasses and plates (mingguangjia) were also used, with more elaborate versions for officers in war. The Chinese, during that time used partial plates for "important" body parts instead of covering their whole body since too much plate armour hinders their martial arts movement. The other body parts were covered in cloth, leather, lamellar, or Mountain pattern. In pre-Qin dynasty times, leather armour was made out of various animals, with more exotic ones such as the rhinoceros.
Mail, sometimes called "chainmail", made of interlocking iron rings is believed to have first appeared some time after 300 BC. Its invention is credited to the Celts; the Romans are thought to have adopted their design.
Gradually, small additional plates or discs of iron were added to the mail to protect vulnerable areas. Hardened leather and splinted construction were used for arm and leg pieces. The coat of plates was developed, an armour made of large plates sewn inside a textile or leather coat.
13th to 18th century Europe
Early plate in Italy, and elsewhere in the 13th–15th century, were made of iron. Iron armour could be carburised or case hardened to give a surface of harder steel. Plate armour became cheaper than mail by the 15th century as it required much less labour and labour had become much more expensive after the Black Death, though it did require larger furnaces to produce larger blooms. Mail continued to be used to protect those joints which could not be adequately protected by plate, such as the armpit, crook of the elbow and groin. Another advantage of plate was that a lance rest could be fitted to the breast plate.
The small skull cap evolved into a bigger true helmet, the bascinet, as it was lengthened downward to protect the back of the neck and the sides of the head. Additionally, several new forms of fully enclosed helmets were introduced in the late 14th century.
Probably the most recognised style of armour in the world became the plate armour associated with the knights of the European Late Middle Ages, but continuing to the early 17th century Age of Enlightenment in all European countries.
By about 1400 the full harness of plate armour had been developed in armouries of Lombardy. Heavy cavalry dominated the battlefield for centuries in part because of their armour.
In the early 15th century, advances in weaponry allowed infantry to defeat armoured knights on the battlefield. The quality of the metal used in armour deteriorated as armies became bigger and armour was made thicker, necessitating breeding of larger cavalry horses. If during the 14–15th centuries armour seldom weighed more than 15 kg, then by the late 16th century it weighed 25 kg. The increasing weight and thickness of late 16th century armour therefore gave substantial resistance.
In the early years of low velocity firearms, full suits of armour, or breast plates actually stopped bullets fired from a modest distance. Crossbow bolts, if still used, would seldom penetrate good plate, nor would any bullet unless fired from close range. In effect, rather than making plate armour obsolete, the use of firearms stimulated the development of plate armour into its later stages. For most of that period, it allowed horsemen to fight while being the targets of defending arquebusiers without being easily killed. Full suits of armour were actually worn by generals and princely commanders right up to the second decade of the 18th century. It was the only way they could be mounted and survey the overall battlefield with safety from distant musket fire.
The horse was afforded protection from lances and infantry weapons by steel plate barding. This gave the horse protection and enhanced the visual impression of a mounted knight. Late in the era, elaborate barding was used in parade armour.
Later
Gradually, starting in the mid-16th century, one plate element after another was discarded to save weight for foot soldiers.
Back and breast plates continued to be used throughout the entire period of the 18th century and through Napoleonic times, in many European (heavy) cavalry units, until the early 20th century. From their introduction, muskets could pierce plate armour, so cavalry had to be far more mindful of the fire. In Japan armour continued to be used until the end of the samurai era, with the last major fighting in which armour was used happening in 1868. Samurai armour had one last short lived use in 1877 during the Satsuma Rebellion.
Though the age of the knight was over, armour continued to be used in many capacities. Soldiers in the American Civil War bought iron and steel vests from peddlers (both sides had considered but rejected body armour for standard issue). The effectiveness of the vests varied widely—some successfully deflected bullets and saved lives, but others were poorly made and resulted in tragedy for the soldiers. In any case the vests were abandoned by many soldiers due to their weight on long marches as well as the stigma they got for being cowards from their fellow troops.
At the start of World War I, thousands of the French Cuirassiers rode out to engage the German Cavalry. By that period, the shiny armour plate was covered in dark paint and a canvas wrap covered their elaborate Napoleonic style helmets. Their armour was only meant for protection against edged weapons such as bayonets, sabres, and lances. Cavalry had to be wary of repeating rifles, machine guns, and artillery, unlike the foot soldiers, who at least had a trench to give them some protection.
Present
Today, ballistic vests, also known as flak jackets, made of ballistic cloth (e.g. kevlar, dyneema, twaron, spectra etc.) and ceramic or metal plates are common among police forces, security staff, corrections officers and some branches of the military.
The US Army has adopted Interceptor body armour, which uses Enhanced Small Arms Protective Inserts (ESAPIs) in the chest, sides, and back of the armour. Each plate is rated to stop a range of ammunition including 3 hits from a 7.62×51 NATO AP round at a range of . Dragon Skin is another ballistic vest which is currently in testing with mixed results. As of 2019, it has been deemed too heavy, expensive, and unreliable, in comparison to more tradition plates, and it is outdated in protection compared to modern US IOTV armour, and even in testing was deemed a downgrade from the IBA.
The British Armed Forces also have their own armour, known as Osprey. It is rated to the same general equivalent standard as the US counterpart, the Improved Outer Tactical Vest, and now the Soldier Plate Carrier System and Modular Tactical Vest.
The Russian Armed Forces also have armour, known as the 6B43, all the way to 6B45, depending on variant.
Their armour runs on the GOST system, which, due to regional conditions, has resulted in a technically higher protective level overall.
Vehicle
The first modern production technology for armour plating was used by navies in the construction of the Ironclad warship, reaching its pinnacle of development with the battleship. The first tanks were produced during World War I. Aerial armour has been used to protect pilots and aircraft systems since the First World War.
In modern ground forces' usage, the meaning of armour has expanded to include the role of troops in combat. After the evolution of armoured warfare, mechanised infantry were mounted in armoured fighting vehicles and replaced light infantry in many situations. In modern armoured warfare, armoured units equipped with tanks and infantry fighting vehicles serve the historic role of heavy cavalry, light cavalry, and dragoons, and belong to the armoured branch of warfare.
History
Ships
The first ironclad battleship, with Iron armour over a wooden hull, La Gloire, was launched by the French Navy in 1859 prompting the British Royal Navy to build a counter. The following year they launched HMS Warrior, which was twice the size and had iron armour over an iron hull. After the first battle between two ironclads took place in 1862 during the American Civil War, it became clear that the ironclad had replaced the unarmoured line-of-battle ship as the most powerful warship afloat.
Ironclads were designed for several roles, including as high seas battleships, coastal defence ships, and long-range cruisers. The rapid evolution of warship design in the late 19th century transformed the ironclad from a wooden-hulled vessel which carried sails to supplement its steam engines into the steel-built, turreted battleships and cruisers familiar in the 20th century. This change was pushed forward by the development of heavier naval guns (the ironclads of the 1880s carried some of the heaviest guns ever mounted at sea), more sophisticated steam engines, and advances in metallurgy which made steel shipbuilding possible.
The rapid pace of change in the ironclad period meant that many ships were obsolete as soon as they were complete, and that naval tactics were in a state of flux. Many ironclads were built to make use of the ram or the torpedo, which a number of naval designers considered the crucial weapons of naval combat. There is no clear end to the ironclad period, but towards the end of the 1890s the term ironclad dropped out of use. New ships were increasingly constructed to a standard pattern and designated battleships or armoured cruisers.
Trains
Armoured trains saw use during the 19th century in the American Civil War (1861–1865), the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), the First and Second Boer Wars (1880–81 and 1899–1902),the Polish–Soviet War (1919–1921); the First (1914–1918) and Second World Wars (1939–1945) and the First Indochina War (1946–1954). The most intensive use of armoured trains was during the Russian Civil War (1918–1920).
Armoured cars saw use during World wars 1 and 2.
During the Second Boer War on 15 November 1899, Winston Churchill, then a war-correspondent, was travelling on board an armoured train when it was ambushed by Boer commandos. Churchill and many of the train's garrison were captured, though many others escaped, including wounded placed on the train's engine.
Armoured fighting vehicles
Ancient siege engines were usually protected by wooden armour, often covered with wet hides or thin metal to prevent being easily burned.
Medieval war wagons were horse-drawn wagons that were similarly armoured. These contained guns or crossbowmen that could fire through gun-slits.
The first modern AFVs were armoured cars, developed circa 1900. These started as ordinary wheeled motor-cars protected by iron shields, typically mounting a machine gun.
During World War I, the stalemate of trench warfare during on the Western Front spurred the development of the tank. It was envisioned as an armoured machine that could advance under fire from enemy rifles and machine guns, and respond with its own heavy guns. It utilized caterpillar tracks to cross ground broken up by shellfire and trenches.
Aircraft
With the development of effective anti-aircraft artillery in the period before the Second World War, military pilots, once the "knights of the air" during the First World War, became far more vulnerable to ground fire. As a response armour plating was added to aircraft to protect aircrew and vulnerable areas such as engines and fuel tanks. Self-sealing fuel tanks functioned like armor in that they added protection but also increased weight and cost.
Present
Tank armour has progressed from the Second World War armour forms, now incorporating not only harder composites, but also reactive armour designed to defeat shaped charges. As a result of this, the main battle tank (MBT) conceived in the Cold War era can survive multiple RPG strikes with minimal effect on the crew or the operation of the vehicle. The light tanks that were the last descendants of the light cavalry during the Second World War have almost completely disappeared from the world's militaries due to increased lethality of the weapons available to the vehicle-mounted infantry.
The armoured personnel carrier (APC) was devised during World War I. It allows the safe and rapid movement of infantry in a combat zone, minimising casualties and maximising mobility. APCs are fundamentally different from the previously used armoured half-tracks in that they offer a higher level of protection from artillery burst fragments, and greater mobility in more terrain types. The basic APC design was substantially expanded to an Infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) when properties of an armoured personnel carrier and a light tank were combined in one vehicle.
Naval armour has fundamentally changed from the Second World War doctrine of thicker plating to defend against shells, bombs and torpedoes. Passive defence naval armour is limited to kevlar or steel (either single layer or as spaced armour) protecting particularly vital areas from the effects of nearby impacts. Since ships cannot carry enough armour to completely protect against anti-ship missiles, they depend more on defensive weapons destroying incoming missiles, or causing them to miss by confusing their guidance systems with electronic warfare.
Although the role of the ground attack aircraft significantly diminished after the Korean War, it re-emerged during the Vietnam War, and in the recognition of this, the US Air Force authorised the design and production of what became the A-10 dedicated anti-armour and ground-attack aircraft that first saw action in the Gulf War.
High-voltage transformer fire barriers are often required to defeat ballistics from small arms as well as projectiles from transformer bushings and lightning arresters, which form part of large electrical transformers, per NFPA 850. Such fire barriers may be designed to inherently function as armour, or may be passive fire protection materials augmented by armour, where care must be taken to ensure that the armour's reaction to fire does not cause issues with regards to the fire barrier being armoured to defeat explosions and projectiles in addition to fire, especially since both functions must be provided simultaneously, meaning they must be fire-tested together to provide realistic evidence of fitness for purpose.
Combat drones use little to no vehicular armour as they are not manned vessels, this results in them being lightweight and small in size.
Animal armour
Horse armour
Barding (also spelled bard or barb) is body armour for war horses, especially as used by European knights.
During the late Middle Ages as armour protection for knights became more effective, their mounts became targets. This vulnerability was exploited by the Scots at the Battle of Bannockburn in the 14th century, when horses were killed by the infantry, and for the English at the Battle of Crécy in the same century where longbowmen shot horses and the then dismounted French knights were killed by heavy infantry. Barding developed as a response to such events.
Examples of armour for horses could be found as far back as classical antiquity. Cataphracts, with scale armour for both rider and horse, are believed by many historians to have influenced the later European knights, via contact with the Byzantine Empire.
Surviving period examples of barding are rare; however, complete sets are on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Wallace Collection in London, the Royal Armouries in Leeds, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Horse armour could be made in whole or in part of cuir bouilli (hardened leather), but surviving examples of this are especially rare.
See also
Battledress
Bomb suit
High-voltage transformer fire barriers
Linothorax
Powered exoskeleton
Rolled homogeneous armour
Notes
References
"Ballistic Protection Levels." BulletproofME.com Body Armor. ArmorUP L.P., n.d. 19 October 2014
External links
Articles containing video clips
Safety clothing
Military equipment of antiquity |
2148 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armoured%20fighting%20vehicle | Armoured fighting vehicle | An armoured fighting vehicle (AFV) is an armed combat vehicle protected by armour, generally combining operational mobility with offensive and defensive capabilities. AFVs can be wheeled or tracked. Tanks, armoured cars, assault guns/armoured self-propelled guns, infantry fighting vehicles and armoured personnel carriers (APC) are all examples of AFVs.
Armoured fighting vehicles are classified according to their characteristics and intended role on the battlefield. The classifications are not absolute; two countries may classify the same vehicle differently, and the criteria change over time. For example, relatively lightly armed armoured personnel carriers were largely superseded by infantry fighting vehicles with much heavier armament in a similar role.
Successful designs are often adapted to a wide variety of applications. For example, the MOWAG Piranha, originally designed as an APC, has been adapted to fill numerous roles such as a mortar carrier, infantry fighting vehicle, and assault gun.
Armoured fighting vehicles began to appear in use in World War I with the armoured car, the tank, the self-propelled gun, and the personnel carrier seeing use. By World War II, armies had large numbers of AFVs, together with other vehicles to carry troops this permitted highly mobile manoeuvre warfare.
Evolution of AFVs
The concept of a highly mobile and protected fighting unit has been around for centuries; from Hannibal's war elephants to Leonardo's contraptions, military strategists endeavoured to maximize the mobility and survivability of their soldiers.
Armoured fighting vehicles were not possible until internal combustion engines of sufficient power became available at the start of the 20th century.
History
Modern armoured fighting vehicles represent the realization of an ancient concept - that of providing troops with mobile protection and firepower. Armies have deployed war machines and cavalries with rudimentary armour in battle for millennia. Use of these animals and engineering designs sought to achieve a balance between the conflicting paradoxical needs of mobility, firepower and protection.
Siege machine
Siege engines, such as battering rams and siege towers, would often be armoured in order to protect their crews from enemy action. Polyidus of Thessaly developed a very large movable siege tower, the helepolis, as early as 340 BC, and Greek forces used such structures in the Siege of Rhodes (305 BC).
The idea of a protected fighting vehicle has been known since antiquity. Frequently cited is Leonardo da Vinci's 15th-century sketch of a mobile, protected gun-platform; the drawings show a conical, wooden shelter with apertures for cannons around the circumference. The machine was to be mounted on four wheels which would be turned by the crew through a system of hand cranks and cage (or "lantern") gears. Leonardo claimed: "I will build armored wagons which will be safe and invulnerable to enemy attacks. There will be no obstacle which it cannot overcome." Modern replicas have demonstrated that the human crew would have been able to move it over only short distances.
War wagon
Hussite forces in Bohemia developed war wagons - medieval vehicles that doubled as wagon forts - around 1420 during the Hussite Wars. These heavy wagons were given protective sides with firing slits; their heavy firepower came from either a cannon or from a force of hand-gunners and crossbowmen, supported by light cavalry and infantry using pikes and flails. Heavy arquebuses mounted on wagons were called arquebus à croc. These carried a ball of about .
Armed and armoured car
The first modern AFVs were armed cars, dating back virtually to the invention of the motor car. The British inventor F.R. Simms designed and built the Motor Scout in 1898. It was the first armed, petrol-engine powered vehicle ever built. It consisted of a De Dion-Bouton quadricycle with a Maxim machine gun mounted on the front bar. An iron shield offered some protection for the driver from the front, but it lacked all-around protective armour.
The armoured car was the first modern fully armoured fighting vehicle. The first of these was the Simms' Motor War Car, also designed by Simms and built by Vickers, Sons & Maxim in 1899. The vehicle had Vickers armour 6 mm thick and was powered by a four-cylinder 3.3-litre 16 hp Cannstatt Daimler engine giving it a maximum speed of around . The armament, consisting of two Maxim guns, was carried in two turrets with 360° traverse.
Another early armoured car of the period was the French Charron, Girardot et Voigt 1902, presented at the Salon de l'Automobile et du cycle in Brussels, on 8 March 1902. The vehicle was equipped with a Hotchkiss machine gun, and with 7 mm armour for the gunner. Armoured cars were first used in large numbers on both sides during World War I as scouting vehicles.
Tank
In 1903, H. G. Wells published the short story "The Land Ironclads," positing indomitable war machines that would bring a new age of land warfare, the way steam-powered ironclad warships had ended the age of sail.
Wells' literary vision was realized in 1916, when, amidst the pyrrhic standstill of the Great War, the British Landship Committee, deployed revolutionary armoured vehicles to break the stalemate. The tank was envisioned as an armoured machine that could cross ground under fire from machine guns and reply with its own mounted machine guns and cannons. These first British heavy tanks of World War I moved on caterpillar tracks that had substantially lower ground pressure than wheeled vehicles, enabling them to pass the muddy, pocked terrain and slit trenches of the Battle of the Somme.
Troop transport
The tank eventually proved highly successful and, as technology improved, it became a weapon that could cross large distances at much higher speeds than supporting infantry and artillery. The need to provide the units that would fight alongside the tank led to the development of a wide range of specialised AFVs, especially during the Second World War (1939-1945).
The armoured personnel carrier, designed to transport infantry troops to the frontline, emerged towards the end of World War I. During the first actions with tanks, it had become clear that close contact with infantry was essential in order to secure ground won by the tanks. Troops on foot were vulnerable to enemy fire, but they could not be transported in the tank because of the intense heat and noxious atmosphere. In 1917, Lieutenant G.J. Rackham was ordered to design an armoured vehicle that could fight and carry troops or supplies. The Mark IX tank was built by Armstrong, Whitworth & Co., although just three vehicles had been finished at the time of the Armistice in November 1918, and only 34 were built in total.
Tankette
Different tank classifications emerged in the interwar period. The tankette was conceived as a mobile, two-man model, mainly intended for reconnaissance. In 1925, Sir John Carden and Vivian Loyd produced the first such design to be adopted – the Carden Loyd tankette. Tankettes saw use in the Italian Royal Army during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935–1936), the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), and almost everywhere Italian soldiers fought during World War II. The Imperial Japanese Army used tankettes for jungle warfare.
Self-propelled artillery
The British Gun Carrier Mark I, the first Self-propelled artillery, was fielded in 1917. It was based on the first tank, the British Mark I, and carried a heavy field-gun. The next major advance was the Birch gun (1925), developed for the British motorised warfare experimental brigade (the Experimental Mechanized Force). This mounted a field gun, capable of the usual artillery trajectories and even anti-aircraft use, on a tankchassis.
During World War II, most major military powers developed self-propelled artillery vehicles. These had guns mounted on a tracked chassis (often that of an obsolete or superseded tank) and provided an armoured superstructure to protect the gun and its crew. The first British design, "Bishop", carried the 25 pdr gun-howitzer in an extemporised mounting on a tank chassis that severely limited the gun's performance. It was replaced by the more effective Sexton. The Germans built many lightly armoured self-propelled anti-tank guns using captured French equipment (for example Marder I), their own obsolete light tank chassis (Marder II), or ex-Czech chassis (Marder III). These led to better-protected tank destroyers, built on a medium-tank chassis such as the Jagdpanzer IV or the Jagdpanther.
Anti-aircraft vehicle
The Self-propelled anti-aircraft weapon debuted in WWI. The German 88 mm anti-aircraft gun was truck-mounted and used to great effect against British tanks, and the British QF 3-inch 20 cwt was mounted on trucks for use on the Western Front. Although the Birch gun was a general purpose artillery piece on an armoured tracked chassis, it was capable of elevation for anti-aircraft use. Vickers Armstrong developed one of the first SPAAGs based on the chassis of the Mk.E 6-ton light tank/Dragon Medium Mark IV tractor, mounting a Vickers QF-1 "Pom-Pom" gun of 40 mm. The Germans fielded the Sd.Kfz. 10/4 and 6/2, cargo halftracks mounting single 20 mm or 37 mm AA guns (respectively) by the start of the war.
Self-propelled multiple rocket-launcher
Rocket launchers such as the Soviet Katyusha originated in the late 1930s. The Wehrmacht fielded self-propelled rocket artillery in World War II - the Panzerwerfer and Wurfrahmen 40 equipped half-track armoured fighting vehicles. Many modern multiple rocket launchers are self propelled by either truck or tank chassis.
Cold War AFV
By the end of World War II, most modern armies had vehicles to carry infantry, artillery and anti-aircraft weaponry. Most modern AFVs are superficially similar in design to their World War II counterparts, but with significantly better armour, weapons, engines, electronics, and suspension. The increase in the capacity of transport aircraft makes possible and practicable the transport of AFVs by air. Many armies are replacing some or all of their traditional heavy vehicles with lighter airmobile versions, often with wheels instead of tracks.
Design
Armour
The level of armour protection between AFVs varies greatly – a main battle tank will normally be designed to take hits from other tank guns and anti-tank missiles, whilst light reconnaissance vehicles are often only armoured "just in case". Whilst heavier armour provides better protection, it makes vehicles less mobile (for a given engine power), limits its air-transportability, increases cost, uses more fuel and may limit the places it can go – for example, many bridges may be unable to support the weight of a main battle tank. A trend toward composite armour is taking the place of steel – composites are stronger for a given weight, allowing the tank to be lighter for the same protection as steel armour, or better protected for the same weight. Armour is being supplemented with active protection systems on a number of vehicles, allowing the AFV to protect itself from incoming projectiles.
The level of protection also usually varies considerably throughout the individual vehicle too, depending on the role of the vehicle and the likely direction of attack. For example, a main battle tank will usually have the heaviest armour on the hull front and the turret, lighter armour on the sides of the hull and the thinnest armour on the top and bottom of the tank. Other vehicles – such as the MRAP family – may be primarily armoured against the threat from IEDs and so will have heavy, sloped armour on the bottom of the hull.
Weaponry
Weaponry varies by a very wide degree between AFVs – lighter vehicles for infantry carrying, reconnaissance or specialist roles may have only a cannon or machine gun (or no armament at all), whereas heavy self propelled artillery will carry large guns, mortars or rocket launchers. These weapons may be mounted on a pintle, affixed directly to the vehicle or placed in a turret or cupola.
The greater the recoil of the weapon on an AFV, the larger the turret ring needs to be. A larger turret ring necessitates a larger vehicle. To avoid listing to the side, turrets on amphibious vehicles are usually located at the centre of the vehicle.
Grenade launchers provide a versatile launch platform for a plethora of munitions including, smoke, phosphorus, tear gas, illumination, anti-personnel, infrared and radar-jamming rounds.
Turret stabilization is an important capability because it enables firing on the move and prevents crew fatigue.
Engine
Modern AFVs have primarily used either petrol (gasoline) or diesel piston engines. More recently, gas turbines have been used. Most early AFVs used petrol engines, as they offer a good power-to-weight ratio. However, they fell out of favour during World War II due to the flammability of the fuel.
Most current AFVs are powered by a diesel engine; modern technology, including the use of turbo-charging, helps to overcome the lower power-to-weight ratio of diesel engines compared to petrol.
Gas turbine (turboshaft) engines offer a very high power-to-weight ratio and were starting to find favour in the late 20th century – however, they offer very poor fuel consumption and as such some armies are switching from gas turbines back to diesel engines (i.e. the Russian T-80 used a gas turbine engine, whereas the later T-90 does not). The US M1 Abrams is a notable example of a gas turbine powered tank.
Modern classification by type and role
Notable armoured fighting vehicles extending from post-World War I to today.
Tank
The tank is an all terrain AFV designed to fill almost all battlefield roles and to engage enemy forces by the use of direct fire in the frontal assault role. Though several configurations have been tried, particularly in the early experimental "golden days" of tank development, a standard, mature design configuration has since emerged to a generally accepted pattern. This features a main tank gun or artillery gun, mounted in a fully rotating turret atop a tracked automotive hull, with various additional secondary weapon systems throughout.
Philosophically, the tank is, by its very nature, an offensive weapon. Being a protective encasement with at least one gun position, it is essentially a pillbox or small fortress (though these are static fortifications of a purely defensive nature) that can move toward the enemy – hence its offensive utility. Psychologically, the tank is a force multiplier that has a positive morale effect on the infantry it accompanies. It also instills fear in the opposing force who can often hear and even feel their arrival.
Tank classifications
Tanks were classified either by size or by role.
Classification by relative size was common, as this also tended to influence the tanks' role.
Light tanks are smaller tanks with thinner armour and lower-powered guns, allowing for better tactical mobility and ease of strategic transport. These are intended for armoured reconnaissance, skirmishing, artillery observation, expeditionary warfare and supplementing airborne or naval landings. Light tanks are typically cheaper to build and maintain, but fare poorly against heavier tanks. They may be held in reserve for exploiting any breakthroughs in enemy lines, with the goal of disrupting communications and supply lines.
Medium tanks are mid-sized tanks with adequate armour and guns, and fair mobility, allowing for a balance of fighting abilities, mobility, cost-effectiveness, and transportability. Medium tanks are effective in groups when used against enemy tanks.
Heavy tanks are larger tanks with thick armour and more powerful guns, but less mobile and more difficult to transport. They were intended to be more than a match for typical enemy medium tanks, easily penetrating their armour while being much less susceptible to their attacks. Heavy tanks cost more to both build and maintain, and their heavy armour proved most effective when deployed in support infantry assaulting entrenched fortifications.
Over time, tanks tended to be designed with heavier armour and weapons, increasing the weight of all tanks, so these classifications are relative to the average for the nation's tanks for any given period. An older tank design might be reclassified over time, such as a tank being first deployed as a medium tank, but in later years relegated to light tank roles.
Tanks were also classified by roles that were independent of size, such as cavalry tank, cruiser tank, fast tank, infantry tank, "assault" tank, or "breakthrough" tank. Military theorists initially tended to assign tanks to traditional military infantry, cavalry, and artillery roles, but later developed more specialized roles unique to tanks.
In modern use, the heavy tank has fallen out of favour, being supplanted by more heavily armed and armoured descendant of the medium tanks – the universal main battle tank. The light tank has, in many armies, lost favour to cheaper, faster, lighter armoured cars; however, light tanks (or similar vehicles with other names) are still in service with a number of forces as reconnaissance vehicles, most notably the Russian Marines with the PT-76, the British Army with the Scimitar, and the Chinese Army with the Type 63.
Main battle tank
Modern main battle tanks or "universal tanks" incorporate recent advances in automotive, artillery, armour, and electronic technology to combine the best characteristics of the historic medium and heavy tanks into a single, all around type. They are also the most expensive to mass-produce. A main battle tank is distinguished by its high level of firepower, mobility and armour protection relative to other vehicles of its era. It can cross comparatively rough terrain at high speeds, but its heavy-dependency on fuel, maintenance, and ammunition makes it logistically demanding. It has the heaviest armour of any AFVs on the battlefield, and carries a powerful precision-guided munition weapon systems that may be able to engage a wide variety of both ground targets and air targets. Despite significant advances in anti-tank warfare, it still remains the most versatile and fearsome land-based weapon-systems of the 21st-century, valued for its shock action and high survivability.
Tankette
A tankette is a tracked armed and armoured vehicle resembling a small "ultra-light tank" or "super-light tank" roughly the size of a car, mainly intended for light infantry support or scouting. They were one or two-man vehicles armed with a machine gun. Colloquially it may also simply mean a "small tank".
Tankettes were designed and built by several nations between the 1920s and 1940s following the British Carden Loyd tankette which was a successful implementation of "one man tank" ideas from Giffard Le Quesne Martel. They were very popular with smaller countries. Some saw some combat (with limited success) in World War II. However, the vulnerability of their light armour eventually caused the concept to be abandoned.
However, the German Army uses a modern design of air-transportable armored weapons carriers, the Wiesel AWC, which resembles the concept of a tankette.
Super-heavy tank
The term "super-heavy tank" has been used to describe armoured fighting vehicles of extreme size, generally over 75 tonnes. Programs have been initiated on several occasions with the aim of creating an invincible siegeworks/breakthrough vehicle for penetrating enemy formations and fortifications without fear of being destroyed in combat. Examples were designed in World War I and World War II (such as the Panzer VIII Maus), along with a few in the Cold War. However, few working prototypes were built and there are no clear evidence any of these vehicles saw combat, as their immense size would have made most designs impractical.
Missile tank
A missile tank is a tank fulfilling the role of a main battle tank, but using only guided missiles for main armament. Several nations have experimented with prototypes, notably the Soviet Union during the tenure of Nikita Khrushchev (projects Object 167, Object 137Ml, Object 155Ml, Object 287, Object 775),
Flame tank
A flame tank is an otherwise-standard tank equipped with a flamethrower, most commonly used to supplement combined arms attacks against fortifications, confined spaces, or other obstacles. The type only reached significant use in the Second World War, during which the United States, Soviet Union, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom (including members of the British Commonwealth) all produced flamethrower-equipped tanks. Usually, the flame projector replaced one of the tank's machineguns, however, some flame projectors replaced the tank's main gun. Fuel for the flame weapon was generally carried inside the tank, although a few designs mounted the fuel externally, such as the armoured trailer used on the Churchill Crocodile.
Flame tanks have been superseded by thermobaric weapons such as the Russian TOS-1.
Infantry tank
The idea for this tank was developed during World War I by British and French. The infantry tank was designed to work in concert with infantry in the assault, moving mostly at a walking pace, and carrying heavy armour to survive defensive fire. Its main purpose was to suppress enemy fire, crush obstacles such as barbed-wire entanglements, and protect the infantry on their advance into and through enemy lines by giving mobile overwatch and cover. The French Renault FT was the first iteration of this concept.
The British and French retained the concept between the wars and into the Second World War era. Because infantry tanks did not need to be fast, they could carry heavy armour. One of the best-known infantry tanks was the Matilda II of World War II. Other examples include the French R-35, the British Valentine, and the British Churchill.
Cruiser tank
A cruiser tank, or cavalry tank, was designed to move fast and exploit penetrations of the enemy front. The idea originated in "Plan 1919", a British plan to break the trench deadlock of World War I in part via the use of high-speed tanks. The first cruiser tank was the British Whippet.
Between the wars, this concept was implemented in the "fast tanks" pioneered by J. Walter Christie. These led to the Soviet BT tank series and the British cruiser tank series.
During World War II, British cruiser tanks were designed to complement infantry tanks, exploiting gains made by the latter to attack and disrupt the enemy rear areas. In order to give them the required speed, cruiser designs sacrificed armour and armament compared to the infantry tanks. Pure British cruisers were generally replaced by more capable medium tanks such as the US Sherman and, to a lesser extent, the Cromwell by 1943.
The Soviet fast tank (bistrokhodniy tank, or BT tank) classification also came out of the infantry/cavalry concept of armoured warfare and formed the basis for the British cruisers after 1936. The T-34 was a development of this line of tanks as well, though their armament, armour, and all-round capability places them firmly in the medium tank category.
Armoured car
The armoured car is a wheeled, often lightly armoured, vehicle adapted as a fighting machine. Its earliest form consisted of a motorised ironside chassis fitted with firing ports. By World War I, this had evolved into a mobile fortress equipped with command equipment, searchlights, and machine guns for self-defence. It was soon proposed that the requirements for the armament and layout of armoured cars be somewhat similar to those on naval craft, resulting in turreted vehicles. The first example carried a single revolving cupola with a Vickers gun; modern armoured cars may boast heavier armament – ranging from twin machine guns to large calibre cannon.
Some multi-axled wheeled fighting vehicles can be quite heavy, and superior to older or smaller tanks in terms of armour and armament. Others are often used in military marches and processions, or for the escorting of important figures. Under peacetime conditions, they form an essential part of most standing armies. Armoured car units can move without the assistance of transporters and cover great distances with fewer logistical problems than tracked vehicles.
During World War II, armoured cars were used for reconnaissance alongside scout cars. Their guns were suitable for some defence if they encountered enemy armoured vehicles, but they were not intended to engage enemy tanks. Armoured cars have since been used in the offensive role against tanks with varying degrees of success, most notably during the South African Border War, Toyota War, the Invasion of Kuwait, and other lower-intensity conflicts.
Aerosani
An aerosani (, literally "aerosled") is a type of propeller-driven snowmobile, running on skis, used for communications, mail deliveries, medical aid, emergency recovery and border patrolling in northern Russia, as well as for recreation. Aerosanis were used by the Soviet Red Army during the Winter War and World War II.
The first aerosanis may have been built by young Igor Sikorsky in 1909–10, before he built multi-engine airplanes and helicopters. They were very light plywood vehicles on skis, propelled by old airplane engines and propellers.
Scout car
A scout car is a military armoured reconnaissance vehicle, capable of off-road mobility and often carrying mounted weapons such as machine guns for offensive capabilities and crew protection. They often only carry an operational crew aboard, which differentiates them from wheeled armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and Infantry Mobility Vehicles (IMVs), but early scout cars, such as the open-topped US M3 Scout Car could carry a crew of seven. The term is often used synonymously with the more general term armoured car, which also includes armored civilian vehicles. They are also differentiated by being designed and built for purpose, as opposed to improvised "technicals" which might serve in the same role.
Reconnaissance vehicle
A reconnaissance vehicle, also known as a scout vehicle, is a military vehicle used for forward reconnaissance. Both tracked and wheeled reconnaissance vehicles are in service. In some nations, light tanks such as the M551 Sheridan and AMX-13 are also used by scout platoons. Reconnaissance vehicles are usually designed with a low profile or small size and are lightly armoured, relying on speed and cover to escape detection. Their armament ranges from a medium machine gun to a large cannon. Modern examples are often fitted with ATGMs and a wide range of sensors.
Some armoured personnel carriers and infantry mobility vehicle, such as the M113, TPz Fuchs, and Cadillac Gage Commando double in the reconnaissance role.
Internal security vehicle
An internal security vehicle (ISV), also known as an armoured security vehicle (ASV), is a combat vehicle used for suppressing civilian unrest. Security vehicles are typically armed with a turreted heavy machine gun and auxiliary medium machine gun. The vehicle is designed to minimize firepower dead space and the vehicles weapons can be depressed to a maximum of 12°. Non-lethal water cannons and tear gas cannons can provide suppressive fire in lieu of unnecessary deadly fire.
The vehicle must be protected against weapons typical of riots. Protection from incendiary devices is achieved though coverage of the air intake and exhaust ports as well as a strong locking mechanism on the fuel opening. Turret and door locks prevent access to the interior of the vehicle by rioters. Vision blocks, ballistic glass and window shutters and outside surveillance cameras allow protected observation from within the vehicle. Wheeled 4x4 and 6x6 configurations are typical of security vehicles. Tracked security vehicles are often cumbersome and leave negative political connotations for being perceived as an imperial invading force.
Improvised fighting vehicle
An improvised fighting vehicle is a combat vehicle resulting from modifications to a civilian or military non-combat vehicle in order to give it a fighting capability. Such modifications usually consist of the grafting of armour plating and weapon systems. Various militaries have procured such vehicles, ever since the introduction of the first automobiles into military service.
During the early days, the absence of a doctrine for the military use of automobiles or of an industry dedicated to producing them, lead to much improvisation in the creation of early armoured cars, and other such vehicles. Later, despite the advent of arms industries in many countries, several armies still resorted to using ad hoc contraptions, often in response to unexpected military situations, or as a result of the development of new tactics for which no available vehicle was suitable. The construction of improvised fighting vehicles may also reflect a lack of means for the force that uses them. This is especially true in developing countries, where various armies and guerrilla forces have used them, as they are more affordable than military-grade combat vehicles.
Modern examples include military gun truck used by units of regular armies or other official government armed forces, based on a conventional cargo truck, that is able to carry a large weight of weapons and armour. They have mainly been used by regular armies to escort military convoys in regions subject to ambush by guerrilla forces. "Narco tanks", used by Mexican drug cartels in the Mexican Drug War, are built from such trucks, which combines operational mobility, tactical offensive, and defensive capabilities.
Troop carriers
Troop-carrying AFVs are divided into three main types – armoured personnel carriers (APCs), infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) and infantry mobility vehicles (IMV). The main difference between the three is their intended role – the APC is designed purely to transport troops and is armed for self-defence only – whereas the IFV is designed to provide close-quarters and anti-armour fire support to the infantry it carries. IMV is a wheeled armoured personnel carrier serving as a military patrol, reconnaissance or security vehicle.
Armoured personnel carrier
Armoured personnel carriers (APCs) are intended to carry infantry quickly and relatively safely to the point where they are deployed. In the Battle of Amiens, 8 August 1918, the British Mk V* tank (a lengthened Mark V) carried a small number of machine gunners as an experiment, but the men were debilitated by the conditions inside the vehicle. Later that year the first purpose-built APC, the British Mk IX tank (Mark Nine), appeared. In 1944, the Canadian general Guy Simonds ordered the conversion of redundant armoured vehicles to carry troops (generically named "Kangaroos"). This proved highly successful, even without training, and the concept was widely used in the 21st Army Group. Post-war, specialised designs were built, such as the Soviet BTR-60 and US M113.
Infantry fighting vehicle
An infantry fighting vehicle (IFV), also known as a mechanized infantry combat vehicle (MICV), is a type of armoured fighting vehicle used to carry infantry into battle and provide direct fire support. The first example of an IFV was the West German Schützenpanzer Lang HS.30 which served in the Bundeswehr from 1958 until the early 1980s.
IFVs are similar to armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and infantry carrier vehicles (ICVs), designed to transport a section or squad of infantry (generally between five and ten men) and their equipment. They are differentiated from APCs—which are purely "troop-transport" vehicles armed only for self-defence—because they are designed to give direct fire support to the dismounted infantry and so usually have significantly enhanced armament. IFVs also often have improved armour and some have firing ports (allowing the infantry to fire personal weapons while mounted).
They are typically armed with an autocannon of 20 to 57 mm calibre, 7.62mm machine guns, anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) and/or surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). IFVs are usually tracked, but some wheeled vehicles fall into this category. IFVs are generally less heavily armed and armoured than main battle tanks. They sometimes carry anti-tank missiles to protect and support infantry against armoured threats, such as the NATO TOW missile and Soviet Bastion, which offer a significant threat to tanks. Specially equipped IFVs have taken on some of the roles of light tanks; they are used by reconnaissance organizations, and light IFVs are used by airborne units which must be able to fight without the heavy firepower of tanks.
Infantry mobility vehicle
An infantry mobility vehicle (IMV) or protected patrol vehicle (PPV) is a wheeled armoured personnel carrier (APC) serving as a military patrol, reconnaissance or security vehicle. Examples include the ATF Dingo, AMZ Dzik, AMZ Tur, Mungo ESK, and Bushmaster IMV. This term also applies to the vehicles currently being fielded as part of the MRAP program.
IMVs were developed in response to the threats of modern counter insurgency warfare, with an emphasis on Ambush Protection and Mine-Resistance. Similar vehicles existed long before the term IMV was coined, such as the French VAB and South African Buffel. The term is coming more into use to differentiate light 4x4 wheeled APCs from the traditional 8x8 wheeled APCs. It is a neologism for what might have been classified in the past as an armoured scout car, such as the BRDM, but the IMV is distinguished by having a requirement to carry dismountable infantry. The up-armoured M1114 Humvee variant can be seen as an adaptation of the unarmoured Humvee to serve in the IMV role.
Amphibious vehicles
Many modern military vehicles, ranging from light wheeled command and reconnaissance, through armoured personnel carriers and tanks, are manufactured with amphibious capabilities. Contemporary wheeled armoured amphibians include the French Véhicule de l'Avant Blindé and Véhicule Blindé Léger. The latter is a small, lightly armoured 4×4 all-terrain vehicle that is fully amphibious and can swim at 5.4 km/h. The VAB (Véhicule de l'Avant Blindé – "Armoured Vanguard Vehicle") is a fully amphibious armoured personnel carrier powered in the water by two water jets, that entered service in 1976 and produced in numerous configurations, ranging from basic personnel carrier, anti-tank missile platform.
During the Cold War the Soviet bloc states developed a number of amphibious APCs, fighting vehicles and tanks, both wheeled and tracked. Most of the vehicles the Soviets designed were amphibious, or could ford deep water. Wheeled examples are the BRDM-1 and BRDM-2 4x4 armoured scout cars, as well as the BTR-60, BTR-70, BTR-80 and BTR-94 8x8 armoured personnel carriers and the BTR-90 infantry fighting vehicle.
The United States started developing a long line of Landing Vehicle Tracked (LVT) designs from ca. 1940. The US Marine Corps currently uses the AAV7-A1 Assault Amphibious Vehicle, which was to be succeeded by the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, which was capable of planing on water and can achieve water speeds of 37–46 km/h. The EFV project has been cancelled.
A significant number of tracked armoured vehicles that are primarily intended for land-use, have some amphibious capability, tactically useful inland, reducing dependence on bridges. They use their tracks, sometimes with added propeller or water jets for propulsion. As long as the banks have a shallow enough slopes to enter or leave the water they can cross rivers and water obstacles.
Some heavy tanks can operate amphibiously with a fabric skirt to add buoyancy. The Sherman DD tank used in the Normandy landings had this setup. When in water the waterproof float screen was raised and propellers deployed. Some modern vehicles use a similar skirt.
Airborne vehicles
Lightweight armoured fighting vehicles designed or modified to be carried by aircraft and delivered by air drop, helicopter lift, glider, or air landing with infantry to provide heavier tactical firepower and mobility. The air-equivalent to amphibious vehicles, the main advantage of airborne forces is their ability to be deployed into combat zones without land passage, as long as the airspace is accessible. Airborne vehicles are limited only by the tonnage capacity of their transport aircraft. Airborne vehicles typically lack the armour and supplies necessary for prolonged combat, so they are utilized for establishing an airhead to bring in larger forces before carrying out other combat objectives.
Armoured engineering vehicle
Modern engineering AFV's utilize chassis based on main battle tank platforms: these vehicles are as well armoured and protected as tanks, designed to keep up with tanks, breach obstacles to help tanks get to wherever it needs to be, perform utility functions necessary to expedite mission objectives of tanks, and to conduct other earth-moving and engineering work on the battlefield. These vehicles go by different names depending upon the country of use or manufacture. In the United States the term "combat engineer vehicle (CEV)" is used, in the United Kingdom the term "Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers (AVRE)" is used, while in Canada and other commonwealth nations the term "armoured engineer vehicle (AEV)" is used. There is no set template for what such a vehicle will look like, yet likely features include a large dozer blade or mine ploughs, a large calibre demolition cannon, augers, winches, excavator arms and cranes, or lifting booms.
Although the term "armoured engineer vehicle" is used specifically to describe these multi-purpose tank-based engineering vehicles, that term is also used more generically in British and Commonwealth militaries to describe all heavy tank-based engineering vehicles used in the support of mechanized forces. Thus, "armoured engineer vehicle" used generically would refer to AEV, AVLB, Assault Breachers, and so on. Good examples of this type of vehicle include the UK Trojan AVRE, the Russian IMR, and the US M728 Combat Engineer Vehicle.
Breaching vehicle
A breaching vehicle is especially designed to clear pathways for troops and other vehicles through minefields and along roadside bombs and Improvised Explosive Devices. These vehicles are equipped with mechanical or other means for the breaching of man made obstacles. Common types of breaching vehicles include mechanical flails, mine plough vehicles, and mine roller vehicles.
Armoured bulldozer
The armoured bulldozer is a basic tool of combat engineering. These combat engineering vehicles combine the earth moving capabilities of the bulldozer with armor which protects the vehicle and its operator in or near combat. Most are civilian bulldozers modified by addition of vehicle armor/military equipment, but some are tanks stripped of armament and fitted with a dozer blade. Some tanks have bulldozer blades while retaining their armament, but this does not make them armoured bulldozers as such, because combat remains the primary role – earth moving is a secondary task.
Armoured recovery vehicle
An armoured recovery vehicle (ARV) is a type of vehicle recovery armoured fighting vehicle used to repair battle- or mine-damaged as well as broken-down armoured vehicles during combat, or to tow them out of the danger zone for more extensive repairs. To this end the term "Armoured Repair and Recovery Vehicle" (ARRV) is also used.
ARVs are normally built on the chassis of a main battle tank (MBT), but some are also constructed on the basis of other armoured fighting vehicles, mostly armoured personnel carriers (APCs). ARVs are usually built on the basis of a vehicle in the same class as they are supposed to recover; a tank-based ARV is used to recover tanks, while an APC-based one recovers APCs, but does not have the power to tow a much heavier tank.
Armoured vehicle-launched bridge
An armoured vehicle-launched bridge (AVLB) is a combat support vehicle, sometimes regarded as a subtype of combat engineering vehicle, designed to assist militaries in rapidly deploying tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles across rivers. The AVLB is usually a tracked vehicle converted from a tank chassis to carry a folding metal bridge instead of weapons. The AVLB's job is to allow armoured or infantry units to cross water, when a river too deep for vehicles to wade through is reached, and no bridge is conveniently located (or sufficiently sturdy, a substantial concern when moving 60-ton tanks).
The bridge layer unfolds and launches its cargo, providing a ready-made bridge across the obstacle in only minutes. Once the span has been put in place, the AVLB vehicle detaches from the bridge, and moves aside to allow traffic to pass. Once all of the vehicles have crossed, it crosses the bridge itself and reattaches to the bridge on the other side. It then retracts the span ready to move off again. A similar procedure can be employed to allow crossings of small chasms or similar obstructions. AVLBs can carry bridges of or greater in length. By using a tank chassis, the bridge layer is able to cover the same terrain as main battle tanks, and the provision of armour allows them to operate even in the face of enemy fire. However, this is not a universal attribute: some exceptionally sturdy 6x6 or 8x8 truck chassis have lent themselves to bridge-layer applications.
Combat engineer section carriers
The combat engineer section carriers are used to transport sappers (combat engineers) and can be fitted with a bulldozer's blade and other mine-breaching devices. They are often used as APCs because of their carrying ability and heavy protection. They are usually armed with machine guns and grenade launchers and usually tracked to provide enough tractive force to push blades and rakes. Some examples are the U.S. M113 APC, IDF Puma, Nagmachon, Husky, and U.S. M1132 ESV (a Stryker variant).
Air defence vehicles
An anti-aircraft vehicle, also known as a self-propelled anti-aircraft gun (SPAAG) or self-propelled air defence system (SPAD), is a mobile vehicle with a dedicated anti-aircraft capability. The Russian term zenitnaya samokhodnaya ustanovka ("anti-aircraft self-propelled mount") abbreviation ZSU. Specific weapon systems used include machine guns, autocannons, larger guns, or missiles, and some mount both guns and longer-ranged missiles. Armoured personnel carrier and tank chassis have been used as the basis for aircraft, artillery, and small arms fire for front line deployment. Anti-aircraft guns are usually mounted in a quickly traversing turret with a high rate of elevation, for tracking fast-moving aircraft. They are often in dual or quadruple mounts, allowing a high rate of fire. Today, missiles have largely supplanted anti-aircraft guns.
Self-propelled artillery
Self-propelled artillery vehicles give mobility to artillery. Within the term are covered self-propelled guns (or howitzers) and rocket artillery. They are highly mobile, usually based on tracked chassis carrying either a large howitzer or other field gun or alternatively a mortar or some form of rocket or missile launcher. They are usually used for long-range indirect bombardment support on the battlefield.
In the past, self-propelled artillery has included direct-fire "Gun Motor Carriage" vehicles, such as assault guns and tank destroyers (also known as self-propelled anti-tank guns). These have been heavily armoured vehicles, the former providing danger-close fire-support for infantry and the latter acting as specialized anti-tank vehicles.
Modern self-propelled artillery vehicles may superficially resemble tanks, but they are generally lightly armoured, too lightly to survive in direct-fire combat. However, they protect their crews against shrapnel and small arms and are therefore usually included as armoured fighting vehicles. Many are equipped with machine guns for defence against enemy infantry.
The key advantage of self-propelled over towed artillery is that it can be brought into action much faster. Before towed artillery can be used, it has to stop, unlimber and the guns set up. To move position, the guns must be limbered up again and brought – usually towed – to the new location. By comparison, self-propelled artillery in combination with modern communications, can stop at a chosen location and begin firing almost immediately, then quickly move on to a new position. This ability is very useful in a mobile conflict and particularly on the advance.
Conversely, towed artillery was and remains cheaper to build and maintain. It is also lighter and can be taken to places that self-propelled guns cannot reach, so despite the advantages of the self-propelled artillery, towed guns remain in the arsenals of many modern armies.
Assault gun
An assault gun is a gun or howitzer mounted on a motor vehicle or armoured chassis, designed for use in the direct fire role in support of infantry when attacking other infantry or fortified positions.
Historically, the custom-built fully armoured assault guns usually mounted the gun or howitzer in a fully enclosed casemate on a tank chassis. The use of a casemate instead of a gun turret limited these weapons' field of fire, but allowed a larger gun to be fitted relative to the chassis, more armour to be fitted for the same weight, and provided a cheaper construction. In most cases, these turretless vehicles also presented a lower profile as a target for the enemy.
Mortar carrier
A mortar carrier is a self-propelled artillery vehicle carrying a mortar as its primary weapon. Mortar carriers cannot be fired while on the move and some must be dismounted to fire. In U.S. Army doctrine, mortar carriers provide close and immediate indirect fire support for maneuver units while allowing for rapid displacement and quick reaction to the tactical situation. The ability to relocate not only allows fire support to be provided where it is needed faster, but also allows these units to avoid counter-battery fire. Mortar carriers have traditionally avoided direct contact with the enemy. Many units report never using secondary weapons in combat.
Prior to the Iraq War, American 120 mm mortar platoons reorganized from six M1064 mortar carriers and two M577 fire direction centers (FDC) to four M1064 and one FDC. The urban environment of Iraq made it difficult to utilize mortars. New technologies such as mortar ballistic computers and communication equipment and are being integrated. Modern era combat is becoming more reliant on direct fire support from mortar carrier machine guns.
Multiple rocket launcher
A multiple rocket launcher is a type of unguided rocket artillery system. Like other rocket artillery, multiple rocket launchers are less accurate and have a much lower (sustained) rate of fire than batteries of traditional artillery guns. However, they have the capability of simultaneously dropping many hundreds of kilograms of explosive, with devastating effect.
The Korean Hwacha is an example of an early weapon system with a resemblance to the modern-day multiple rocket launcher. The first self-propelled multiple rocket launchers – and arguably the most famous – were the Soviet BM-13 Katyushas, first used during World War II and exported to Soviet allies afterwards. They were simple systems in which a rack of launch rails was mounted on the back of a truck. This set the template for modern multiple rocket launchers. The first modern multiple rocket launcher was the German 15 cm Nebelwerfer 41 of the 1930s, a small towed artillery piece. Only later in World War II did the British deploy similar weapons in the form of the Land Mattress.The Americans mounted tubular launchers atop M4 Sherman tanks to create the T34 Calliope rocket launching tank, only used in small numbers, as their closest equivalent to the Katyusha.
Tank destroyer
Tank destroyers and tank hunters are armed with an anti-tank gun or missile launcher, and are designed specifically to engage enemy armoured vehicles. Many have been based on a tracked tank chassis, while others are wheeled. Since World War II, main battle tanks have largely replaced gun-armed tank destroyers; although lightly armoured anti tank guided missile (ATGM) carriers are commonly used for supplementary long-range anti-tank engagements.
In post-Cold War conflict, the resurgence of expeditionary warfare has seen the emergence of gun-armed wheeled vehicles, sometimes called "protected gun systems", which may bear a superficial resemblance to tank destroyers, but are employed as direct fire support units typically providing support in low intensity operations such as Iraq and Afghanistan. These have the advantage of easier deployment, as only the largest air transports can carry a main battle tank, and their smaller size makes them more effective in urban combat.
Many forces' IFVs carry anti-tank missiles in every infantry platoon, and attack helicopters have also added anti-tank capability to the modern battlefield. But there are still dedicated anti-tank vehicles with very heavy long-range missiles, or intended for airborne use. There have also been dedicated anti-tank vehicles built on ordinary armoured personnel carrier or armoured car chassis. Examples include the U.S. M901 ITV (Improved TOW Vehicle) and the Norwegian NM142, both on an M113 chassis, several Soviet ATGM launchers based on the BRDM reconnaissance car, the British FV438 Swingfire and FV102 Striker and the German Raketenjagdpanzer series built on the chassis of the HS 30 and Marder IFV.
Armoured train
An armoured train is a railway train protected with armour. They are usually equipped with rail cars armed with artillery and machine guns. They were mostly used during the late 19th to mid-20th century, when they offered an innovative way to quickly move large amounts of firepower. Their use was discontinued in most countries when road vehicles became much more powerful and offered more flexibility, and because armoured trains were too vulnerable to track sabotage and attacks from the air. However, the Russian Federation used improvised armoured trains in the Second Chechen War in the late 1990s and 2000s. Armoured trains carrying ballistic missiles have also been used.
The rail cars on an armoured train were designed for many tasks, such as carrying artillery and machine guns, infantry units, and anti-aircraft guns. During World War II, the Germans would sometimes put a Fremdgerät (captured AFVs such as the French Somua S-35 or Czech PzKpfw 38(t)), or obsolescent Panzer II light tanks on a flatbed rail car, which could quickly be offloaded by means of a ramp and used away from the railway line to chase down enemy partisans.
Different types of armour were used to protect armoured trains from attack. In addition to various metal plates, concrete and sandbags were used in some cases on armoured trains.
Armoured trains were sometimes escorted by a kind of rail-tank called a draisine. One such example was the Italian 'Littorina' armoured trolley, which had a cab in the front and rear, each with a control set so it could be driven down the tracks in either direction. Littorina mounted two dual 7.92mm MG13 machine gun turrets from Panzer I light tanks.
See also
References
Sources
External links
US Wheeled armoured fighting vehicles
Military vehicles by type |
2151 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton%20Drexler | Anton Drexler | Anton Drexler (13 June 1884 – 24 February 1942) was a German far-right political agitator for the Völkisch movement in the 1920s. He founded the pan-German and anti-Semitic German Workers' Party (DAP), the antecedent of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). Drexler mentored his successor in the NSDAP, Adolf Hitler, during his early years in politics.
Early life
Born in Munich, Drexler was a machine-fitter before becoming a railway toolmaker and locksmith in Berlin. He is believed to have been disappointed with his income, and to have played the zither in restaurants to supplement his earnings. Drexler did not serve in the armed forces during World War I because he was deemed physically unfit for service.
Politics
During World War I, Drexler joined the German Fatherland Party, a short-lived far-right party active during the last phase of the war, which played a significant role in the emergence of the stab-in-the-back myth and the defamation of certain politicians as the "November Criminals".
In March 1918, Drexler founded a branch of the Free Workers' Committee for a Good Peace (Der Freie Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden) league. Karl Harrer, a journalist and member of the Thule Society, convinced Drexler and several others to form the Political Workers' Circle (Politischer Arbeiter-Zirkel) in 1918. The members met periodically for discussions about nationalism and antisemitism.
German Workers' Party
Together with Harrer, Gottfried Feder and Dietrich Eckart, Drexler founded the German Workers' Party (DAP) in Munich on 5 January 1919.
At a DAP meeting in Munich in September 1919, the main speaker was Gottfried Feder. When Feder's lecture concluded, Adolf Hitler – who attended the meeting as part of his assignment from the German Army to watch political agitators – got involved in a heated political argument with a visitor, Professor Adalbert Baumann, who questioned the soundness of Feder's arguments in support of Bavaria separatism and against capitalism. In vehemently attacking the man's arguments, Hitler made an impression on the other party members with his oratory abilities, and according to him, the professor left the hall acknowledging defeat. Drexler approached Hitler and gave him a copy of his pamphlet My Political Awakening, which contained anti-Semitic, nationalist, anti-capitalist, and anti-Marxist ideas. Hitler claims the literature reflected the ideals he already believed in. Impressed with Hitler, Drexler encouraged him to join the DAP. On the orders of his army superiors, Hitler applied to join the party.
Once accepted, Hitler began to make the party more public by drawing people in with his speaking abilities, leading up to his organizing the party's biggest meeting yet, which attracted 2,000 people to the Hofbräuhaus in Munich on 24 February 1920. It was in this speech that Hitler, for the first time, enunciated the twenty-five points of the German Worker's Party's manifesto that he had authored with Drexler and Feder. Through these points he gave the organisation a foreign policy, including the abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles, a Greater Germany, Eastern expansion, and exclusion of Jews from citizenship. On the same day the party was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; NSDAP).
Following an intraparty dispute, Hitler angrily tendered his resignation on 11 July 1921. Drexler and the members of the party's governing committee realised that the resignation of their leading public figure and speaker would mean the end of the party. So Dietrich Eckart was asked by the Party leadership to speak with Hitler and relay the conditions in which he would agree to return. Hitler announced he would rejoin the party on the condition that he would replace Drexler as party chairman, with dictatorial powers and the title of "Führer", and that the party headquarters would remain in Munich. The committee agreed and he rejoined the party as member 3,680. Drexler was thereafter moved to the purely symbolic position of honorary president and left the party in 1923.
Drexler was also a member of a völkisch political club for affluent members of Munich society known as the Thule Society. His membership in the Nazi Party ended when it was temporarily outlawed in 1923 following the Beer Hall Putsch, although Drexler had not actually taken part in the coup attempt. In 1924 he was elected to the Bavarian state parliament for the Völkisch-Social Bloc party (VSB), in which he served as vice president until 1928. He played no role in the Nazi Party's re-founding in February 1925 and rejoined only after Hitler ascended to national power in 1933. In May 1925 he founded a group with other VSB deputies, the Nationalsozialer Volksbund (National Social People's League), but was dissolved in 1927-1928. Drexler received the Nazi Party's Blood Order in 1934, and was still occasionally used as a propaganda tool until about 1937, but was never allowed any power within the party.
Death
Drexler died in Munich in February 1942 after a lengthy illness due to alcoholism.
References
Bibliography
External links
Mein politisches Erwachen; aus dem Tagebuch eines deutschen sozialistischen Arbeiters München, Deutscher Volksverlag 4th ed.
1884 births
1942 deaths
German anti-capitalists
German anti-communists
German Workers Party members
German Fatherland Party politicians
German nationalists
Nazi Party officials
People from the Kingdom of Bavaria
Political party founders
Politicians from Munich
Right-wing anti-capitalism
Thule Society members
Alcohol-related deaths in Germany |
2152 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All%20Quiet%20on%20the%20Western%20Front | All Quiet on the Western Front | All Quiet on the Western Front () is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I. The book describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental stress during the war, and the detachment from civilian life felt by many of these soldiers upon returning home from the front.
The novel was first published in November and December 1928 in the German newspaper Vossische Zeitung and in book form in late January 1929. The book and its sequel, The Road Back (1930), were among the books banned and burned in Nazi Germany. All Quiet on the Western Front sold 2.5 million copies in 22 languages in its first 18 months in print.
In 1930, the book was adapted as an Academy Award-winning film of the same name, directed by Lewis Milestone. It was adapted again in 1979 by Delbert Mann, this time as a television film starring Richard Thomas and Ernest Borgnine.
Title and translation
The English translation by Arthur Wesley Wheen gives the title as All Quiet on the Western Front. The literal translation of "Im Westen nichts Neues" is "Nothing New in the West," with "West" being the Western Front; the phrase refers to the content of an official communiqué at the end of the novel.
Brian Murdoch's 1993 translation rendered the phrase as "there was nothing new to report on the Western Front" within the narrative. However, in the foreword, he explains his retention of the original book title:
Although it does not match the German exactly, Wheen's title has justly become part of the English language and is retained here with gratitude.
The phrase "all quiet on the Western Front" has become a colloquial expression meaning stagnation, or lack of visible change, in any context.
Murdoch also explains how, due to the time it was published, Wheen's translation was obliged to Anglicise some lesser-known German references and lessen the impact of certain passages, while omitting others entirely. Murdoch's translation is more accurate to the original text and completely unexpurgated.
Plot summary
The book tells the story of Paul Bäumer, who belongs to a group of German soldiers on the Western Front during World War I. The patriotic speeches of his teacher Kantorek had led the whole class to volunteer for the Imperial German Army shortly after the start of The Great War. He didn't have any experience when going into the war but he went in with an open mind and a kind heart. Paul lived with his father, mother, and sister in a charming German village, and attended school. His class was "scattered over the platoons amongst Frisian fishermen, peasants, and laborers." Bäumer arrives at the Western Front with his friends and schoolmates (Leer, Müller, Kropp, and a number of other characters). There they meet Stanislaus Katczinsky, an older soldier, nicknamed Kat, who becomes Paul's mentor. While fighting at the front, Bäumer and his comrades have to engage in frequent battles and endure the treacherous and filthy conditions of trench warfare.
At the beginning of the book, Remarque writes, "This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped (its) shells, were destroyed by the war." The book does not focus on heroic stories of bravery, but rather gives a view of the conditions in which the soldiers find themselves. The monotony between battles, the constant threat of artillery fire and bombardments, the struggle to find food, the lack of training of young recruits (meaning lower chances of survival), and the overarching role of random chance in the lives and deaths of the soldiers are described in detail.
The battles fought here have no names and seem to have little overall significance, except for the impending possibility of injury or death for Bäumer and his comrades. Only pitifully meager pieces of land are gained, about the size of a football field, which are often lost again later. Remarque often refers to the living soldiers as old and dead, emotionally drained and shaken. "We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing from ourselves, from our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces."
Paul's visiting his home highlights the cost of the war on his psyche. The town has not changed since he went off to war, but he has: he finds that he does "not belong here anymore, it is a foreign world." He feels disconnected from most of the townspeople. His father asks him "stupid and distressing" questions about his war experiences, not understanding "that a man cannot talk of such things." An old schoolmaster lectures him about strategy and advancing to Paris while insisting that Paul and his friends know only their "own little sector" of the war but nothing of the big picture.
Indeed, the only person he remains connected to is his dying mother, with whom he shares a tender, yet restrained relationship. The night before he is to return from leave, he stays up with her, exchanging small expressions of love and concern for each other. He thinks to himself, "Ah! Mother, Mother! How can it be that I must part from you? Here I sit and there you are lying; we have so much to say, and we shall never say it." In the end, he concludes that he "ought never to have come [home] on leave."
Paul feels glad to be reunited with his comrades. Soon after, he volunteers to go on a patrol and kills a man for the first time in hand-to-hand combat. He watches the man die, in pain for hours. He feels remorse and asks forgiveness from the man's corpse. He is devastated and later confesses to Kat and Albert, who try to comfort him and reassure him that it is only part of the war.
They are then sent on what Paul calls a "good job." They must guard a supply depot in a village that was evacuated due to being shelled too heavily. During this time, the men are able to adequately feed themselves, unlike the near-starvation conditions in the German trenches. In addition, the men enjoy themselves while living off the spoils from the village and officers' luxuries from the supply depot (such as fine cigars). While evacuating the villagers (enemy civilians), Paul and Albert are taken by surprise by artillery fired at the civilian convoy and wounded by a shell. On the train back home, Albert takes a turn for the worse and cannot complete the journey, instead being sent off the train to recuperate in a Catholic hospital.
Paul uses a combination of bartering and manipulation to stay by Albert's side. Albert eventually has his leg amputated, while Paul is deemed fit for service and returned to the front.
By now, the war is nearing its end and the German Army is retreating. In despair, Paul watches as his friends fall one by one. It is the death of Kat that eventually makes Paul careless about living. In the final chapter, he comments that peace is coming soon, but he does not see the future as bright and shining with hope. Paul feels that he has no aims or goals left in life and that their generation will be different and misunderstood.
In October 1918, Paul is finally killed on a remarkably peaceful day. The situation report from the frontline states a simple phrase: "All quiet on the Western Front." Paul's corpse displays a calm expression on its face, "as though almost glad the end had come."
Themes
One of the major themes of the novel is the difficulty of soldiers to revert to civilian life after having experienced extreme combat situations. This internal destruction can be found as early as the first chapter as Paul comments that, although all the boys are young, their youth has left them. In addition, the massive loss of life and negligible gains from the fighting are constantly emphasized. Soldiers' lives are thrown away by their commanding officers who are stationed comfortably away from the front, ignorant of the daily terrors of the front line.
Another major theme is the concept of blind nationalism. Remarque often emphasizes the boys in the story were not forced to join the war effort against their will but rather by a sense of patriotism and pride. Kantorek called Paul's platoon the "Iron Youth", helping the boys imagine a romanticized version of warfare with glory and duty to the Fatherland. Only later did they realize the true horror of war as they engaged in fierce trench warfare.
Main characters
Paul Bäumer
The central figure in the story.
Albert Kropp
Kropp was in Paul's class at school and is described as the clearest thinker of the group as well as the smallest. Kropp is wounded towards the end of the novel and undergoes a leg amputation. Both he and Bäumer end up spending time in a Catholic hospital together, Bäumer suffering from shrapnel wounds to the leg and arm. Though Kropp initially plans to commit suicide if he requires an amputation, the book suggests he postponed suicide because of the strength of military camaraderie and a lack of a revolver. Kropp and Bäumer part ways when Bäumer is recalled to his regiment after recovering. Paul comments that saying farewell was "very hard, but it is something a soldier learns to deal with."
Haie Westhus
Haie is described as being tall and strong, and a peat-digger by profession. Overall, his size and behavior make him seem older than Paul, yet he is the same age as Paul and his school-friends (roughly 19 at the start of the book). Haie, in addition, has a good sense of humour. During combat, he is injured in his back, fatally (Chapter 6)—the resulting wound is large enough for Paul to see Haie's breathing lung when Himmelstoß (Himmelstoss) carries him to safety. He later dies of this injury.
Friedrich Müller
Müller is 19 and one of Bäumer's classmates, when he also joins the German army as a volunteer to go to the war. Carrying his old school books with him to the battlefield, he constantly reminds himself of the importance of learning and education. Even while under enemy fire, he "mutters propositions in physics". He became interested in Kemmerich's boots and inherits them when Kemmerich dies early in the novel. He is killed later in the book after being shot point-blank in the stomach with a "light pistol" (flare gun). As he was dying "quite conscious and in terrible pain", he gave his boots which he inherited from Kemmerich to Paul.
Stanislaus "Kat" Katczinsky
Kat has the most positive influence on Paul and his comrades on the battlefield. Katczinsky, a recalled reserve militiaman, was a cobbler (shoemaker) in civilian life; he is older than Paul Bäumer and his comrades, about 40 years old, and serves as their leadership figure. He also represents a literary model highlighting the differences between the younger and older soldiers. While the older men have already had a life of professional and personal experience before the war, Bäumer and the men of his age have had little life experience or time for personal growth.
Kat is also well known for his ability to scavenge nearly any item needed, especially food. At one point he secures four boxes of lobster. Bäumer describes Kat as possessing a sixth sense. One night, Bäumer along with a group of other soldiers are held up in a factory with neither rations nor comfortable bedding. Katczinsky leaves for a short while, returning with straw to put over the bare wires of the beds. Later, to feed the hungry men, Kat brings bread, a bag of horse flesh, a lump of fat, a pinch of salt and a pan in which to cook the food.
Kat is hit by shrapnel at the end of the story, leaving him with a smashed shin. Paul carries him back to camp on his back, only to discover upon their arrival that a stray splinter had hit Kat in the back of the head and killed him on the way. He is thus the last of Paul's close friends to die in battle. It is Kat's death that eventually makes Bäumer indifferent as to whether he survives the war or not, yet certain that he can face the rest of his life without fear. "Let the months and the years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear."
Tjaden
One of Bäumer's non-schoolmate friends. Before the war, Tjaden was a locksmith. A big eater with a grudge against the former postman-turned corporal Himmelstoß (thanks to his strict "disciplinary actions"), he manages to forgive Himmelstoß later in the book. Throughout the book, Paul frequently remarks on how much of an eater he is, yet somehow manages to stay as "thin as a rake". He appears in the sequel, The Road Back.
Secondary characters
Kantorek
Kantorek was the schoolmaster of Paul and his friends, including Kropp, Leer, Müller, and Behm. Behaving "in a way that cost [him] nothing," Kantorek is a strong supporter of the war and encourages Bäumer and other students in his class to join the war effort. Among twenty enlistees was Joseph Behm, the first of the class to die in battle. In an example of tragic irony, Behm was the only one who did not want to enter the war.
Kantorek is a hypocrite, urging the young men he teaches to fight in the name of patriotism, while not voluntarily enlisting himself. In a twist of fate, Kantorek is later called up as a soldier as well. He very reluctantly joins the ranks of his former students, only to be drilled and taunted by Mittelstädt, one of the students he had earlier persuaded to enlist.
Peter Leer
Leer is an intelligent soldier in Bäumer's company, and one of his classmates. He is very popular with women; when he and his comrades meet three French women, he is the first to seduce one of them. Bäumer describes Leer's ability to attract women by saying "Leer is an old hand at the game". In chapter 11, Leer is hit by a shell fragment, which also hits Bertinck. The shrapnel tears open Leer's hip, causing him to bleed to death quickly. His death causes Paul to ask himself, "What use is it to him now that he was such a good mathematician in school?"
Bertinck
Lieutenant Bertinck is the leader of Bäumer's company. His men have a great respect for him, and Bertinck has great respect for his men. In the beginning of the book, he permits them to eat the rations of the men that had been killed in action, standing up to the chef Ginger who allowed them only their allotted share. Bertinck is genuinely despondent when he learns that few of his men had survived an engagement.
When he and the other characters are trapped in a trench under heavy attack, Bertinck, who has been injured in the firefight, spots a flamethrower team advancing on them. He gets out of cover and takes aim on the flamethrower but misses, and gets hit by enemy fire. With his next shot he kills the flamethrower, and immediately afterwards an enemy shell explodes on his position blowing off his chin. The same explosion also fatally wounds Leer.
Himmelstoss
Corporal Himmelstoss (spelled Himmelstoß in some editions) was a postman before enlisting in the war. He is a power-hungry corporal with special contempt for Paul and his friends, taking sadistic pleasure in punishing the minor infractions of his trainees during their basic training in preparation for their deployment. Paul later figures that the training taught by Himmelstoss made them "hard, suspicious, pitiless, and tough" but most importantly it taught them comradeship. Bäumer and his comrades have a chance to get back at Himmelstoss because of his punishments, mercilessly whipping him on the night before they board trains to go to the front.
Himmelstoss later joins them at the front, revealing himself as a coward who shirks his duties for fear of getting hurt or killed, and pretends to be wounded because of a scratch on his face. Paul Bäumer beats him because of it and when a lieutenant comes along looking for men for a trench charge, Himmelstoss joins and leads the charge. He carries Haie Westhus's body to Bäumer after he is fatally wounded. Matured and repentant through his experiences Himmelstoß later asks for forgiveness from his previous charges. As he becomes the new staff cook, to prove his friendship he secures two pounds of sugar for Bäumer and half a pound of butter for Tjaden.
Detering
Detering is a farmer who constantly longs to return to his wife and farm. He is also fond of horses and is angered when he sees them used in combat. He says, "It is of the vilest baseness to use horses in the war," when the group hears several wounded horses writhe and scream for a long time before dying during a bombardment. He tries to shoot them to put them out of their misery, but is stopped by Kat to keep their current position hidden. He is driven to desert when he sees a cherry tree in blossom, which reminds him of home too much and inspires him to leave. He is found by military police and court-martialed and is never heard from again.
Josef Hamacher
Hamacher is a patient at the Catholic hospital where Paul and Albert Kropp are temporarily stationed. He has an intimate knowledge of the workings of the hospital. He also has a "Special Permit," certifying him as sporadically not responsible for his actions due to a head wound, though he is clearly quite sane and exploiting his permit so he can stay in the hospital and away from the war as long as possible.
Franz Kemmerich
A young boy of only 19 years. Franz Kemmerich had enlisted in the army for World War I along with his best friend and classmate, Bäumer. Kemmerich is shot in the leg early in the story; his injured leg has to be amputated, and he dies shortly after. In anticipation of Kemmerich's imminent death, Müller was eager to get his boots. While in the hospital, someone steals Kemmerich's watch that he intended to give to his mother, causing him great distress and prompting him to ask about his watch every time his friends visit him in the hospital. Paul later finds the watch and hands it over to Kemmerich's mother, only to lie and say Franz died instantly and painlessly when questioned.
Joseph Behm
A student in Paul's class who is described as youthful and overweight. Behm was the only student that was not quickly influenced by Kantorek's patriotism to join the war, but eventually, due to pressure from friends and Kantorek, he joins the war. He is the first of Paul's friends to die. He is blinded in no man's land and believed to be dead by his friends. The next day, when he is seen walking blindly around no man's land, it is discovered that he was only unconscious, but he is killed before he can be rescued.
Publication and reception
From November 10 to December 9, 1928, All Quiet on the Western Front was published in serial form in Vossische Zeitung magazine. It was released in book form the following year to smashing success, selling one and a half million copies that same year. It was the best-selling work of fiction in America for the year 1929, according to Publishers Weekly. Although publishers had worried that interest in World War I had waned more than 10 years after the armistice, Remarque's realistic depiction of trench warfare from the perspective of young soldiers struck a chord with the war's survivors—soldiers and civilians alike—and provoked strong reactions, both positive and negative, around the world.
With All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque emerged as an eloquent spokesman for a generation that had been, in his own words, "destroyed by war, even though it might have escaped its shells." Remarque's harshest critics, in turn, were his countrymen, many of whom felt the book denigrated the German war effort, and that Remarque had exaggerated the horrors of war to further his pacifist agenda. The strongest voices against Remarque came from the emerging Nazi Party and its ideological allies. In 1933, when the Nazis rose to power, All Quiet on the Western Front became one of the first degenerate books to be publicly burnt; in 1930, screenings of the Academy Award-winning film based on the book were met with Nazi-organized protests and mob attacks on both movie theatres and audience members.
Objections to Remarque's portrayal of the World War I German soldiers were not limited to those of the Nazis in 1933. Dr. was concerned about Remarque's depiction of the medical personnel as being inattentive, uncaring, or absent from frontline action. Dr. Kroner was specifically worried that the book would perpetuate German stereotypes abroad that had subsided since the First World War. He offered the following clarification: “People abroad will draw the following conclusions: if German doctors deal with their own fellow countrymen in this manner, what acts of inhumanity will they not perpetuate against helpless prisoners delivered up into their hands or against the populations of occupied territory?”
A fellow patient of Remarque's in the military hospital in Duisburg objected to the negative depictions of the nuns and patients, and of the general portrayal of soldiers: “There were soldiers to whom the protection of homeland, protection of house and homestead, protection of family were the highest objective, and to whom this will to protect their homeland gave the strength to endure any extremities.”
These criticisms suggest that perhaps experiences of the war and the personal reactions of individual soldiers to their experiences may be more diverse than Remarque portrays them; however, it is beyond question that Remarque gives voice to a side of the war and its experience that was overlooked or suppressed at the time. This perspective is crucial to understanding the true effects of World War I. The evidence can be seen in the lingering depression that Remarque and many of his friends and acquaintances were suffering a decade later.
The book was also banned in other European countries on the ground of it being considered anti-war propaganda; Austrian soldiers were forbidden from reading the book in 1929, and Czechoslovakia banned it from its military libraries. The Italian translation was also banned in 1933. When the Nazis were re-militarizing Germany's military the book was banned as it was deemed counterproductive to German rearmament.
In contrast, All Quiet on the Western Front was trumpeted by pacifists as an anti-war book. Remarque makes a point in the opening statement that the novel does not advocate any political position, but is merely an attempt to describe the experiences of the soldier.
The main artistic criticism was that it was a mediocre attempt to cash in on public sentiment. The enormous popularity the work received was a point of contention for some literary critics, who scoffed at the fact that such a simple work could be so earth-shattering. Much of this literary criticism came from Salomo Friedlaender, who wrote a book Hat Erich Maria Remarque wirklich gelebt? "Did Erich Maria Remarque really live?" (under the pen name Mynona), which was, in its turn, criticized in: Hat Mynona wirklich gelebt? "Did Mynona really live?" by Kurt Tucholsky. Friedlaender's criticism was mainly personal in nature—he attacked Remarque as being ego-centric and greedy. Remarque publicly stated that he wrote All Quiet on the Western Front for personal reasons, not for profit, as Friedlaender had charged. wrote a parody titled Vor Troja nichts Neues (All quiet before the gates of Troy) under the pseudonym Emil Marius Requark.
Adaptations
Film
In 1930, an American film of the novel was made, directed by Lewis Milestone; with a screenplay by Maxwell Anderson, George Abbott, Del Andrews, C. Gardner Sullivan; and with uncredited work by Walter Anthony and Milestone. It stars Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayres, John Wray, Arnold Lucy, and Ben Alexander.
The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1930 for Universal, the Academy Award for Directing for Lewis Milestone, and the Academy Award for Outstanding Production. It was the first all-talking non-musical film to win the Best Picture Oscar. It also received two further nominations: Best Cinematography, for Arthur Edeson, and Best Writing Achievement for Abbott, Anderson, and Andrews.
In 2016, it was mentioned that Roger Donaldson would direct a remake starring Travis Fimmel as Katczinsky. On February 14, 2020, Edward Berger replaced Donaldson as director and Daniel Brühl is starring without Fimmel Unlike the previous film adaptations, the remake will be in German.
Television film
In 1979, the film was remade for CBS television by Delbert Mann, starring Richard Thomas of The Waltons as Paul Bäumer and Ernest Borgnine as Kat. The movie was filmed in Czechoslovakia.
Music
Elton John's album Jump Up! (1982) features the song "All Quiet on the Western Front" (written by Elton and Bernie Taupin). The song is a rendition of the novel's story ("It's gone all quiet on the Western Front / Male Angels sigh / ghosts in a flooded trench / As Germany dies").
Bob Dylan, during his Nobel Laureate lecture, cited this book as one that had a profound effect on his songwriting.
Radio
On November 9, 2008, a radio adaptation of the novel was broadcast on BBC Radio 3, starring Robert Lonsdale as Paul Bäumer and Shannon Graney as Katczinsky. Its screenplay was written by Dave Sheasby, and the show was directed by David Hunter.
Audiobooks
In 2000, Recorded Books released an audiobook of the text, read by Frank Muller.
In 2010, Hachette Audio UK published an audiobook adaptation of the novel, narrated by Tom Lawrence. It was well received by critics and listeners.
Comics
In 1952, the novel was adapted into comic book form as part of the Classics Illustrated series.
See also
Paul Bäumer
Bildungsroman
List of books with anti-war themes
References
External links
CliffsNotes
Spark Notes
Schneider, Thomas: All Quiet on the Western Front (novel) (2014) at 1914-1918-online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
1929 German-language novels
1929 German novels
Anti-war novels
Censored books
German novels adapted into films
Novels adapted into comics
German novels adapted into television shows
Novels adapted into radio programs
Novels by Erich Maria Remarque
Novels first published in serial form
Works originally published in Vossische Zeitung
Novels set during World War I
Novels set in Europe
Little, Brown and Company books |
2154 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African%20Americans | African Americans | African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and formerly Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from any of the black racial groups of Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of enslaved Africans who are from the United States. While some Black immigrants or their children may also come to identify as African-American, the majority of first generation immigrants do not, preferring to identify with their nation of origin.
African Americans constitute the second largest racial group in the U.S. after White Americans, as well as the third largest ethnic group after Hispanic and Latino Americans. Most African Americans are descendants of enslaved people within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of West/Central African with some European descent; some also have Native American and other ancestry.
According to U.S. Census Bureau data, African immigrants generally do not self-identify as African American. The overwhelming majority of African immigrants identify instead with their own respective ethnicities (~95%). Immigrants from some Caribbean, Central American, and South American nations and their descendants may or may not also self-identify with the term.
African-American history began in the 16th century, with Africans from West Africa being sold to European slave traders and transported across the Atlantic to the Thirteen Colonies. After arriving in the Americas, they were sold as slaves to European colonists and put to work on plantations, particularly in the southern colonies. A few were able to achieve freedom through manumission or escape and founded independent communities before and during the American Revolution.
After the United States was founded in 1783, most Black people continued to be enslaved, being most concentrated in the American South, with four million enslaved only liberated during and at the end of the Civil War in 1865. During Reconstruction, they gained citizenship and the right to vote, but due to White supremacy, they were largely treated as second-class citizens and found themselves soon disenfranchised in the South. These circumstances changed due to participation in the military conflicts of the United States, substantial migration out of the South, the elimination of legal racial segregation, and the civil rights movement which sought political and social freedom. In 2008, Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected President of the United States.
History
Colonial era
The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade were people from Central and West Africa, who had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids, or sold by other West Africans, or by half-European "merchant princes" to European slave traders, who brought them to the Americas.
The first African slaves arrived via Santo Domingo to the San Miguel de Gualdape colony (most likely located in the Winyah Bay area of present-day South Carolina), founded by Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón in 1526. The ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterward of an epidemic and the colony was abandoned. The settlers and the slaves who had not escaped returned to Haiti, whence they had come.
The marriage between Luisa de Abrego, a free Black domestic servant from Seville, and Miguel Rodríguez, a White Segovian conquistador in 1565 in St. Augustine (Spanish Florida), is the first known and recorded Christian marriage anywhere in what is now the continental United States.
The first recorded Africans in English America (including most of the future United States) were "20 and odd negroes" who came to Jamestown, Virginia via Cape Comfort in August 1619 as indentured servants. As many Virginian settlers began to die from harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers.
An indentured servant (who could be White or Black) would work for several years (usually four to seven) without wages. The status of indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland was similar to slavery. Servants could be bought, sold, or leased and they could be physically beaten for disobedience or running away. Unlike slaves, they were freed after their term of service expired or was bought out, their children did not inherit their status, and on their release from contract they received "a year's provision of corn, double apparel, tools necessary", and a small cash payment called "freedom dues".
Africans could legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom. They raised families, married other Africans and sometimes intermarried with Native Americans or European settlers.
By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown and some became wealthy by colonial standards and purchased indentured servants of their own. In 1640, the Virginia General Court recorded the earliest documentation of lifetime slavery when they sentenced John Punch, a Negro, to lifetime servitude under his master Hugh Gwyn for running away.
In the Spanish Florida some Spanish married or had unions with Pensacola, Creek or African women, both slave and free, and their descendants created a mixed-race population of mestizos and mulattos. The Spanish encouraged slaves from the colony of Georgia to come to Florida as a refuge, promising freedom in exchange for conversion to Catholicism. King Charles II issued a royal proclamation freeing all slaves who fled to Spanish Florida and accepted conversion and baptism. Most went to the area around St. Augustine, but escaped slaves also reached Pensacola. St. Augustine had mustered an all-Black militia unit defending Spanish Florida as early as 1683.
One of the Dutch African arrivals, Anthony Johnson, would later own one of the first Black "slaves", John Casor, resulting from the court ruling of a civil case.
The popular conception of a race-based slave system did not fully develop until the 18th century. The Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation of eleven Black slaves into New Amsterdam (present-day New York City). All the colony's slaves, however, were freed upon its surrender to the English.
Massachusetts was the first English colony to legally recognize slavery in 1641. In 1662, Virginia passed a law that children of enslaved women took the status of the mother, rather than that of the father, as under common law. This legal principle was called partus sequitur ventrum.
By an act of 1699, the colony ordered all free Blacks deported, virtually defining as slaves all people of African descent who remained in the colony. In 1670, the colonial assembly passed a law prohibiting free and baptized Blacks (and Indians) from purchasing Christians (in this act meaning White Europeans) but allowing them to buy people "of their owne nation".
In the Spanish Louisiana although there was no movement toward abolition of the African slave trade, Spanish rule introduced a new law called coartación, which allowed slaves to buy their freedom, and that of others. Although some did not have the money to buy their freedom, government measures on slavery allowed many free Blacks. That brought problems to the Spaniards with the French Creoles who also populated Spanish Louisiana, French creoles cited that measure as one of the system's worst elements.
First established in South Carolina in 1704, groups of armed White men—slave patrols—were formed to monitor enslaved Black people. Their function was to police slaves, especially fugitives. Slave owners feared that slaves might organize revolts or slave rebellions, so state militias were formed in order to provide a military command structure and discipline within the slave patrols so they could be used to detect, encounter, and crush any organized slave meetings which might lead to revolts or rebellions.
The earliest African-American congregations and churches were organized before 1800 in both northern and southern cities following the Great Awakening. By 1775, Africans made up 20% of the population in the American colonies, which made them the second largest ethnic group after English Americans.
From the American Revolution to the Civil War
During the 1770s, Africans, both enslaved and free, helped rebellious American colonists secure their independence by defeating the British in the American Revolutionary War. Blacks played a role in both sides in the American Revolution. Activists in the Patriot cause included James Armistead, Prince Whipple and Oliver Cromwell. Around 15,000 Black Loyalists left with the British after the war, most of them ending up as free people in England or its colonies.
In the Spanish Louisiana, Governor Bernardo de Gálvez organized Spanish free Black men into two militia companies to defend New Orleans during the American Revolution. They fought in the 1779 battle in which Spain captured Baton Rouge from the British. Gálvez also commanded them in campaigns against the British outposts in Mobile, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida, he recruited slaves for the militia by pledging to free anyone who was seriously wounded and promised to secure a low price for coartación (buy their freedom and that of others) for those who received lesser wounds. During the 1790s, Governor Francisco Luis Héctor, baron of Carondelet reinforced local fortifications and recruit even more free Black men for the militia. Carondelet doubled the number of free Black men who served, creating two more militia companies—one made up of Black members and the other of pardo (mixed race). Serving in the militia brought free Black men one step closer to equality with Whites, allowing them, for example, the right to carry arms and boosting their earning power. However, actually these privileges distanced free Black men from enslaved Blacks and encouraged them to identify with Whites.
Slavery had been tacitly enshrined in the U.S. Constitution through provisions such as Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, commonly known as the 3/5 compromise. Because of Section 9, Clause 1, Congress was unable to pass an Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves until 1807. Fugitive slave laws (derived from the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution) were passed by Congress in 1793 and 1850, guaranteeing the right for a slaveholder to recover an escaped slave within the U.S. Slavery, which by then meant almost exclusively Black people, was the most important political issue in the antebellum United States, leading to one crisis after another. Among these were the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850 and the Dred Scott decision.
Prior to the Civil War, eight serving presidents owned slaves, a practice protected by the U.S. Constitution. By 1860, there were 3.5 to 4.4 million enslaved Black people in the U.S. due to the Atlantic slave trade, and another 488,000–500,000 Blacks lived free (with legislated limits) across the country. With legislated limits imposed upon them in addition to "unconquerable prejudice" from Whites according to Henry Clay, some Black people who were not enslaved left the U.S. for Liberia in West Africa. Liberia began as a settlement of the American Colonization Society (ACS) in 1821, with the abolitionist members of the ACS believing Blacks would face better chances for freedom and equality in Africa.
The slaves not only constituted a large investment, they produced America's most valuable product and export: cotton. They not only helped build the U.S. Capitol, they built the White House and other District of Columbia buildings. (Washington was a slave trading center.) Similar building projects existed in slaveholding states.
By 1815, the domestic slave trade had become a major economic activity in the United States; it lasted until the 1860s. Historians estimate nearly one million in total took part in the forced migration of this new "Middle Passage." The historian Ira Berlin called this forced migration of slaves the "central event" in the life of a slave between the American Revolution and the Civil War, writing that whether slaves were directly uprooted or lived in fear that they or their families would be involuntarily moved, "the massive deportation traumatized black people." Individuals lost their connection to families and clans, and many ethnic Africans lost their knowledge of varying tribal origins in Africa.
The 1863 photograph of Wilson Chinn, a branded slave from Louisiana, like the one of Gordon and his scarred back, served as two early examples of how the newborn medium of photography could encapsulate the cruelty of slavery.
Emigration of free Blacks to their continent of origin had been proposed since the Revolutionary war. After Haiti became independent, it tried to recruit African Americans to migrate there after it re-established trade relations with the United States. The Haitian Union was a group formed to promote relations between the countries. After riots against Blacks in Cincinnati, its Black community sponsored founding of the Wilberforce Colony, an initially successful settlement of African-American immigrants to Canada. The colony was one of the first such independent political entities. It lasted for a number of decades and provided a destination for about 200 Black families emigrating from a number of locations in the United States.
In 1863, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared that all slaves in Confederate-held territory were free. Advancing Union troops enforced the proclamation, with Texas being the last state to be emancipated, in 1865.
Slavery in Union-held Confederate territory continued, at least on paper, until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. While the Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U.S. citizenship to Whites only, the 14th Amendment (1868) gave Black people citizenship, and the 15th Amendment (1870) gave Black males the right to vote (which would still be denied to all women until 1920).
Reconstruction era and Jim Crow
African Americans quickly set up congregations for themselves, as well as schools and community/civic associations, to have space away from White control or oversight. While the post-war Reconstruction era was initially a time of progress for African Americans, that period ended in 1876. By the late 1890s, Southern states enacted Jim Crow laws to enforce racial segregation and disenfranchisement. Segregation, which began with slavery, continued with Jim Crow laws, with signs used to show Blacks where they could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat. For those places that were racially mixed, non-Whites had to wait until all White customers were dealt with. Most African Americans obeyed the Jim Crow laws, to avoid racially motivated violence. To maintain self-esteem and dignity, African Americans such as Anthony Overton and Mary McLeod Bethune continued to build their own schools, churches, banks, social clubs, and other businesses.
In the last decade of the 19th century, racially discriminatory laws and racial violence aimed at African Americans began to mushroom in the United States, a period often referred to as the "nadir of American race relations". These discriminatory acts included racial segregation—upheld by the United States Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896—which was legally mandated by southern states and nationwide at the local level of government, voter suppression or disenfranchisement in the southern states, denial of economic opportunity or resources nationwide, and private acts of violence and mass racial violence aimed at African Americans unhindered or encouraged by government authorities.
Great migration and civil rights movement
The desperate conditions of African Americans in the South sparked the Great Migration during the first half of the 20th century which led to a growing African-American community in Northern and Western United States. The rapid influx of Blacks disturbed the racial balance within Northern and Western cities, exacerbating hostility between both Blacks and Whites in the two regions. The Red Summer of 1919 was marked by hundreds of deaths and higher casualties across the U.S. as a result of race riots that occurred in more than three dozen cities, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919 and the Omaha race riot of 1919. Overall, Blacks in Northern and Western cities experienced systemic discrimination in a plethora of aspects of life. Within employment, economic opportunities for Blacks were routed to the lowest-status and restrictive in potential mobility. At the 1900 Hampton Negro Conference, Reverend Matthew Anderson said: "...the lines along most of the avenues of wage earning are more rigidly drawn in the North than in the South." Within the housing market, stronger discriminatory measures were used in correlation to the influx, resulting in a mix of "targeted violence, restrictive covenants, redlining and racial steering". While many Whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics toward African Americans, many other Whites migrated to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions, a process known as White flight.
Despite discrimination, drawing cards for leaving the hopelessness in the South were the growth of African-American institutions and communities in Northern cities. Institutions included Black oriented organizations (e.g., Urban League, NAACP), churches, businesses, and newspapers, as well as successes in the development in African-American intellectual culture, music, and popular culture (e.g., Harlem Renaissance, Chicago Black Renaissance). The Cotton Club in Harlem was a Whites-only establishment, with Blacks (such as Duke Ellington) allowed to perform, but to a White audience. Black Americans also found a new ground for political power in Northern cities, without the enforced disabilities of Jim Crow.
By the 1950s, the civil rights movement was gaining momentum. A 1955 lynching that sparked public outrage about injustice was that of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago. Spending the summer with relatives in Money, Mississippi, Till was killed for allegedly having wolf-whistled at a White woman. Till had been badly beaten, one of his eyes was gouged out, and he was shot in the head. The visceral response to his mother's decision to have an open-casket funeral mobilized the Black community throughout the U.S. Vann R. Newkirk| wrote "the trial of his killers became a pageant illuminating the tyranny of White supremacy". The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, but they were speedily acquitted by an all-White jury. One hundred days after Emmett Till's murder, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in Alabama—indeed, Parks told Emmett's mother Mamie Till that "the photograph of Emmett's disfigured face in the casket was set in her mind when she refused to give up her seat on the Montgomery bus."
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the conditions which brought it into being are credited with putting pressure on presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson put his support behind passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and labor unions, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which expanded federal authority over states to ensure Black political participation through protection of voter registration and elections. By 1966, the emergence of the Black Power movement, which lasted from 1966 to 1975, expanded upon the aims of the civil rights movement to include economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from White authority.
During the post-war period, many African Americans continued to be economically disadvantaged relative to other Americans. Average Black income stood at 54 percent of that of White workers in 1947, and 55 percent in 1962. In 1959, median family income for Whites was $5,600, compared with $2,900 for non-White families. In 1965, 43 percent of all Black families fell into the poverty bracket, earning under $3,000 a year. The Sixties saw improvements in the social and economic conditions of many Black Americans.
From 1965 to 1969, Black family income rose from 54 to 60 percent of White family income. In 1968, 23 percent of Black families earned under $3,000 a year, compared with 41 percent in 1960. In 1965, 19 percent of Black Americans had incomes equal to the national median, a proportion that rose to 27 percent by 1967. In 1960, the median level of education for Blacks had been 10.8 years, and by the late Sixties the figure rose to 12.2 years, half a year behind the median for Whites.
Post–civil rights era
Politically and economically, African Americans have made substantial strides during the post–civil rights era. In 1967, Thurgood Marshall became the first African-American Supreme Court Justice. In 1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Congress. In 1989, Douglas Wilder became the first African American elected governor in U.S. history. Clarence Thomas succeeded Marshall to become the second African-American Supreme Court Justice in 1991. In 1992, Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois became the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate. There were 8,936 Black officeholders in the United States in 2000, showing a net increase of 7,467 since 1970. In 2001, there were 484 Black mayors.
In 2005, the number of Africans immigrating to the United States, in a single year, surpassed the peak number who were involuntarily brought to the United States during the Atlantic Slave Trade. On November 4, 2008, Democratic Senator Barack Obama defeated Republican Senator John McCain to become the first African American to be elected president. At least 95 percent of African-American voters voted for Obama. He also received overwhelming support from young and educated Whites, a majority of Asians, and Hispanics, picking up a number of new states in the Democratic electoral column. Obama lost the overall White vote, although he won a larger proportion of White votes than any previous nonincumbent Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter. Obama was reelected for a second and final term, by a similar margin on November 6, 2012. In 2021, Kamala Harris became the first woman, the first African American, and the first Asian American to serve as Vice President of the United States.
Demographics
In 1790, when the first U.S. Census was taken, Africans (including slaves and free people) numbered about 760,000—about 19.3% of the population. In 1860, at the start of the Civil War, the African-American population had increased to 4.4 million, but the percentage rate dropped to 14% of the overall population of the country. The vast majority were slaves, with only 488,000 counted as "freemen". By 1900, the Black population had doubled and reached 8.8 million.
In 1910, about 90% of African Americans lived in the South. Large numbers began migrating north looking for better job opportunities and living conditions, and to escape Jim Crow laws and racial violence. The Great Migration, as it was called, spanned the 1890s to the 1970s. From 1916 through the 1960s, more than 6 million Black people moved north. But in the 1970s and 1980s, that trend reversed, with more African Americans moving south to the Sun Belt than leaving it.
The following table of the African-American population in the United States over time shows that the African-American population, as a percentage of the total population, declined until 1930 and has been rising since then.
By 1990, the African-American population reached about 30 million and represented 12% of the U.S. population, roughly the same proportion as in 1900.
At the time of the 2000 Census, 54.8% of African Americans lived in the South. In that year, 17.6% of African Americans lived in the Northeast and 18.7% in the Midwest, while only 8.9% lived in the western states. The west does have a sizable Black population in certain areas, however. California, the nation's most populous state, has the fifth largest African-American population, only behind New York, Texas, Georgia, and Florida. According to the 2000 Census, approximately 2.05% of African Americans identified as Hispanic or Latino in origin, many of whom may be of Brazilian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, Haitian, or other Latin American descent. The only self-reported ancestral groups larger than African Americans are the Irish and Germans.
According to the 2010 U.S. Census, nearly 3% of people who self-identified as Black had recent ancestors who immigrated from another country. Self-reported non-Hispanic Black immigrants from the Caribbean, mostly from Jamaica and Haiti, represented 0.9% of the U.S. population, at 2.6 million. Self-reported Black immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa also represented 0.9%, at about 2.8 million. Additionally, self-identified Black Hispanics represented 0.4% of the United States population, at about 1.2 million people, largely found within the Puerto Rican and Dominican communities. Self-reported Black immigrants hailing from other countries in the Americas, such as Brazil and Canada, as well as several European countries, represented less than 0.1% of the population. Mixed-Race Hispanic and non-Hispanic Americans who identified as being part Black, represented 0.9% of the population. Of the 12.6% of United States residents who identified as Black, around 10.3% were "native Black American" or ethnic African Americans, who are direct descendants of West/Central Africans brought to the U.S. as slaves. These individuals make up well over 80% of all Blacks in the country. When including people of mixed-race origin, about 13.5% of the U.S. population self-identified as Black or "mixed with Black". However, according to the U.S. census bureau, evidence from the 2000 Census indicates that many African and Caribbean immigrant ethnic groups do not identify as "Black, African Am., or Negro". Instead, they wrote in their own respective ethnic groups in the "Some Other Race" write-in entry. As a result, the census bureau devised a new, separate "African American" ethnic group category in 2010 for ethnic African Americans.
U.S. cities
After 100 years of African Americans leaving the south in large numbers seeking better opportunities and treatment in the west and north, a movement known as the Great Migration, there is now a reverse trend, called the New Great Migration. As with the earlier Great Migration, the New Great Migration is primarily directed toward cities and large urban areas, such as Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Dallas, Raleigh, Tampa, San Antonio, Memphis, Nashville, Jacksonville, and so forth. A growing percentage of African-Americans from the west and north are migrating to the southern region of the U.S. for economic and cultural reasons. New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles have the highest decline in African Americans, while Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston have the highest increase respectively.
Among cities of 100,000 or more, Detroit, Michigan had the highest percentage of Black residents of any U.S. city in 2010, with 82%. Other large cities with African-American majorities include Jackson, Mississippi (79.4%), Miami Gardens, Florida (76.3%), Baltimore, Maryland (63%), Birmingham, Alabama (62.5%), Memphis, Tennessee (61%), New Orleans, Louisiana (60%), Montgomery, Alabama (56.6%), Flint, Michigan (56.6%), Savannah, Georgia (55.0%), Augusta, Georgia (54.7%), Atlanta, Georgia (54%, see African Americans in Atlanta), Cleveland, Ohio (53.3%), Newark, New Jersey (52.35%), Washington, D.C. (50.7%), Richmond, Virginia (50.6%), Mobile, Alabama (50.6%), Baton Rouge, Louisiana (50.4%), and Shreveport, Louisiana (50.4%).
The nation's most affluent community with an African-American majority resides in View Park–Windsor Hills, California with an annual median household income of $159,618. Other largely affluent and African-American communities include Prince George's County in Maryland (namely Mitchellville, Woodmore, and Upper Marlboro), Dekalb County and South Fulton in Georgia, Charles City County in Virginia, Baldwin Hills in California, Hillcrest and Uniondale in New York, and Cedar Hill, DeSoto, and Missouri City in Texas. Queens County, New York is the only county with a population of 65,000 or more where African Americans have a higher median household income than White Americans.
Seatack, Virginia is currently the oldest African-American community in the United States. It survives today with a vibrant and active civic community.
Education
During slavery, anti-literacy laws were enacted in the U.S. that prohibited education for Black people. Slave owners saw literacy as a threat to the institution of slavery. As a North Carolina statute stated, "Teaching slaves to read and write, tends to excite dissatisfaction in their minds, and to produce insurrection and rebellion."
In 1863, enslaved Americans became free citizens during a time when public educational systems were expanding across the country. By 1870, around seventy-four institutions in the south provided a form of advanced education for African American students, and by 1900, over a hundred programs at these schools provided training for Black professionals, including teachers. Many of the students at Fisk University, including W. E. B. Du Bois when he was a student there, taught school during the summers to support their studies.
African Americans were very concerned to provide quality education for their children, but White supremacy limited their ability to participate in educational policymaking on the political level. State governments soon moved to undermine their citizenship by restricting their right to vote. By the late 1870s, Blacks were disenfranchised and segregated across the American South. White politicians in Mississippi and other states withheld financial resources and supplies from Black schools. Nevertheless, the presence of Black teachers, and their engagement with their communities both inside and outside the classroom, ensured that Black students had access to education despite these external constraints.
Predominantly Black schools for kindergarten through twelfth grade students were common throughout the U.S. before the 1970s. By 1972, however, desegregation efforts meant that only 25% of Black students were in schools with more than 90% non-White students. However, since then, a trend towards re-segregation affected communities across the country: by 2011, 2.9 million African-American students were in such overwhelmingly minority schools, including 53% of Black students in school districts that were formerly under desegregation orders.
As late as 1947, about one third of African Americans over 65 were considered to lack the literacy to read and write their own names. By 1969, illiteracy as it had been traditionally defined, had been largely eradicated among younger African Americans.
U.S. Census surveys showed that by 1998, 89 percent of African Americans aged 25 to 29 had completed a high-school education, less than Whites or Asians, but more than Hispanics. On many college entrance, standardized tests and grades, African Americans have historically lagged behind Whites, but some studies suggest that the achievement gap has been closing. Many policy makers have proposed that this gap can and will be eliminated through policies such as affirmative action, desegregation, and multiculturalism.
Between 1995 and 2009, freshmen college enrollment for African Americans increased by 73 percent and only 15 percent for Whites. Black women are enrolled in college more than any other race and gender group, leading all with 9.7% enrolled according to the 2011 U.S. Census Bureau.
The average high school graduation rate of Blacks in the United States has steadily increased to 71% in 2013. Separating this statistic into component parts shows it varies greatly depending upon the state and the school district examined. 38% of Black males graduated in the state of New York but in Maine 97% graduated and exceeded the White male graduation rate by 11 percentage points. In much of the southeastern United States and some parts of the southwestern United States the graduation rate of White males was in fact below 70% such as in Florida where 62% of White males graduated from high school. Examining specific school districts paints an even more complex picture. In the Detroit school district the graduation rate of Black males was 20% but 7% for White males. In the New York City school district 28% of Black males graduate from high school compared to 57% of White males. In Newark County 76% of Black males graduated compared to 67% for White males. Further academic improvement has occurred in 2015. Roughly 23% of all Blacks have bachelor's degrees. In 1988, 21% of Whites had obtained a bachelor's degree versus 11% of Blacks. In 2015, 23% of Blacks had obtained a bachelor's degree versus 36% of Whites. Foreign born Blacks, 9% of the Black population, made even greater strides. They exceed native born Blacks by 10 percentage points.
Historically Black colleges and universities
Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), which were founded when segregated institutions of higher learning did not admit African Americans, continue to thrive and educate students of all races today. There are 101 HBCUs representing three percent of the nation's colleges and universities with the majority established in the Southeast. HBCUs have been largely responsible for establishing and expanding the African-American middle-class.
Economic status
Economically, African Americans have benefited from the advances made during the civil rights era, particularly among the educated, but not without the lingering effects of historical marginalisation when considered as a whole. The racial disparity in poverty rates has narrowed. The Black middle class has grown substantially. In the first quarter of 2021, 45.1% of African Americans owned their homes, compared to 65.3% of all Americans. The poverty rate among African Americans has decreased from 24.7% in 2004 to 18.8% in 2020, compared to 10.5% for all Americans.
African Americans have a combined buying power of over $892 billion currently and likely over $1.1 trillion by 2012. In 2002, African American-owned businesses accounted for 1.2 million of the US's 23 million businesses. African American-owned businesses account for approximately 2 million US businesses. Black-owned businesses experienced the largest growth in number of businesses among minorities from 2002 to 2011.
Twenty-five percent of Blacks had white-collar occupations (management, professional, and related fields) in 2000, compared with 33.6% of Americans overall. In 2001, over half of African-American households of married couples earned $50,000 or more. Although in the same year African Americans were over-represented among the nation's poor, this was directly related to the disproportionate percentage of African-American families headed by single women; such families are collectively poorer, regardless of ethnicity.
In 2006, the median earnings of African-American men was more than Black and non-Black American women overall, and in all educational levels. At the same time, among American men, income disparities were significant; the median income of African-American men was approximately 76 cents for every dollar of their European American counterparts, although the gap narrowed somewhat with a rise in educational level.
Overall, the median earnings of African-American men were 72 cents for every dollar earned of their Asian American counterparts, and $1.17 for every dollar earned by Hispanic men. On the other hand, by 2006, among American women with post-secondary education, African-American women have made significant advances; the median income of African-American women was more than those of their Asian-, European- and Hispanic American counterparts with at least some college education.
The U.S. public sector is the single most important source of employment for African Americans. During 2008–2010, 21.2% of all Black workers were public employees, compared with 16.3% of non-Black workers. Both before and after the onset of the Great Recession, African Americans were 30% more likely than other workers to be employed in the public sector.
The public sector is also a critical source of decent-paying jobs for Black Americans. For both men and women, the median wage earned by Black employees is significantly higher in the public sector than in other industries.
In 1999, the median income of African-American families was $33,255 compared to $53,356 of European Americans. In times of economic hardship for the nation, African Americans suffer disproportionately from job loss and underemployment, with the Black underclass being hardest hit. The phrase "last hired and first fired" is reflected in the Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment figures. Nationwide, the October 2008 unemployment rate for African Americans was 11.1%, while the nationwide rate was 6.5%.
The income gap between Black and White families is also significant. In 2005, employed Blacks earned 65% of the wages of Whites, down from 82% in 1975. The New York Times reported in 2006 that in Queens, New York, the median income among African-American families exceeded that of White families, which the newspaper attributed to the growth in the number of two-parent Black families. It noted that Queens was the only county with more than 65,000 residents where that was true. In 2011, it was reported that 72% of Black babies were born to unwed mothers. The poverty rate among single-parent Black families was 39.5% in 2005, according to Walter E. Williams, while it was 9.9% among married-couple Black families. Among White families, the respective rates were 26.4% and 6% in poverty.
Collectively, African Americans are more involved in the American political process than other minority groups in the United States, indicated by the highest level of voter registration and participation in elections among these groups in 2004. African Americans also have the highest level of Congressional representation of any minority group in the U.S.
Politics
Since the mid 20th century, a large majority of African Americans support the Democratic Party. In the 2004 Presidential Election, Democrat John Kerry received 88% of the African-American vote compared to 11% for Republican George W. Bush. Although there is an African-American lobby in foreign policy, it has not had the impact that African-American organizations have had in domestic policy.
Many African Americans were excluded from electoral politics in the decades following the end of Reconstruction. For those that could participate, until the New Deal, African Americans were supporters of the Republican Party because it was Republican President Abraham Lincoln who helped in granting freedom to American slaves; at the time, the Republicans and Democrats represented the sectional interests of the North and South, respectively, rather than any specific ideology, and both conservative and liberal were represented equally in both parties.
The African-American trend of voting for Democrats can be traced back to the 1930s during the Great Depression, when Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program provided economic relief to African Americans. Roosevelt's New Deal coalition turned the Democratic Party into an organization of the working class and their liberal allies, regardless of region. The African-American vote became even more solidly Democratic when Democratic presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson pushed for civil rights legislation during the 1960s. In 1960, nearly a third of African Americans voted for Republican Richard Nixon.
Black national anthem
"Lift Every Voice and Sing" is often referred to as the Black national anthem in the United States. In 1919, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had dubbed it the "Negro national anthem" for its power in voicing a cry for liberation and affirmation for African American people.
Sexuality
According to a Gallup survey, 4.6% of Black or African-Americans self-identified as LGBT in 2016, while the total portion of American adults in all ethnic groups identifying as LGBT was 4.1% in 2016.
Health
General
The life expectancy for Black men in 2008 was 70.8 years. Life expectancy for Black women was 77.5 years in 2008. In 1900, when information on Black life expectancy started being collated, a Black man could expect to live to 32.5 years and a Black woman 33.5 years. In 1900, White men lived an average of 46.3 years and White women lived an average of 48.3 years. African-American life expectancy at birth is persistently five to seven years lower than European Americans. Black men have shorter lifespans than any other group in the US besides Native American men.
Black people have higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension than the U.S. average. For adult Black men, the rate of obesity was 31.6% in 2010. For adult Black women, the rate of obesity was 41.2% in 2010. African Americans have higher rates of mortality than any other racial or ethnic group for 8 of the top 10 causes of death. In 2013, among men, Black men had the highest rate of getting cancer, followed by White, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander (A/PI), and American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) men. Among women, White women had the highest rate of getting cancer, followed by Black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Alaska Native women.
Violence has an impact upon African-American life expectancy. A report from the U.S. Department of Justice states "In 2005, homicide victimization rates for blacks were 6 times higher than the rates for whites". The report also found that "94% of black victims were killed by blacks." Black boys and men age 15–44 are the only race/sex category for which homicide is a top-five cause of death.
In 2022, COVID-19 became the third leading cause of death for African Americans. African Americans are less likely to be vaccinated against the virus.
Sexual health
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, African Americans have higher rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) compared to Whites, with 5 times the rates of syphilis and chlamydia, and 7.5 times the rate of gonorrhea.
The disproportionately high incidence of HIV/AIDS among African-Americans has been attributed to homophobic influences and lack of access to proper healthcare. The prevalence of HIV/AIDS among Black men is seven times higher than the prevalence for White men, and Black men are more than nine times as likely to die from HIV/AIDS-related illness than White men.
Mental health
African Americans have several barriers for accessing mental health services. Counseling has been frowned upon and distant in utility and proximity to many people in the African American community. In 2004, a qualitative research study explored the disconnect with African Americans and mental health. The study was conducted as a semi-structured discussion which allowed the focus group to express their opinions and life experiences. The results revealed a couple key variables that create barriers for many African American communities to seek mental health services such as the stigma, lack of four important necessities; trust, affordability, cultural understanding and impersonal services.
Historically, many African American communities did not seek counseling because religion was a part of the family values. African American who have a faith background are more likely to seek prayer as a coping mechanism for mental issues rather than seeking professional mental health services. In 2015 a study concluded, African Americans with high value in religion are less likely to utilize mental health services compared to those who have low value in religion.
Most counseling approaches are westernized and do not fit within the African American culture. African American families tend to resolve concerns within the family, and it is viewed by the family as a strength. On the other hand, when African Americans seek counseling, they face a social backlash and are criticized. They may be labeled "crazy", viewed as weak, and their pride is diminished. Because of this, many African Americans instead seek mentorship within communities they trust.
Terminology is another barrier in relation to African Americans and mental health. There is more stigma on the term psychotherapy versus counseling. In one study, psychotherapy is associated with mental illness whereas counseling approaches problem-solving, guidance and help. More African Americans seek assistance when it is called counseling and not psychotherapy because it is more welcoming within the cultural and community. Counselors are encouraged to be aware of such barriers for the well-being of African American clients. Without cultural competency training in health care, many African Americans go unheard and misunderstood.
Although suicide is a top-10 cause of death for men overall in the US, it is not a top-10 cause of death for Black men.
Genetics
Genome-wide studies
Recent surveys of African Americans using a genetic testing service have found varied ancestries which show different tendencies by region and sex of ancestors. These studies found that on average, African Americans have 73.2–82.1% West African, 16.7%–24% European, and 0.8–1.2% Native American genetic ancestry, with large variation between individuals. Genetics websites themselves have reported similar ranges, with some finding 1 or 2 percent Native American ancestry and Ancestry.com reporting an outlying percentage of European ancestry among African Americans, 29%.
According to a genome-wide study by Bryc et al. (2009), the mixed ancestry of African Americans in varying ratios came about as the result of sexual contact between West/Central Africans (more frequently females) and Europeans (more frequently males). Consequently, the 365 African Americans in their sample have a genome-wide average of 78.1% West African ancestry and 18.5% European ancestry, with large variation among individuals (ranging from 99% to 1% West African ancestry). The West African ancestral component in African Americans is most similar to that in present-day speakers from the non-Bantu branches of the Niger-Congo (Niger-Kordofanian) family.
Correspondingly, Montinaro et al. (2014) observed that around 50% of the overall ancestry of African Americans traces back to the Niger-Congo-speaking Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria and southern Benin, reflecting the centrality of this West African region in the Atlantic Slave Trade. The next most frequent ancestral component found among African Americans was derived from Great Britain, in keeping with historical records. It constitutes a little over 10% of their overall ancestry, and is most similar to the Northwest European ancestral component also carried by Barbadians. Zakharaia et al. (2009) found a similar proportion of Yoruba associated ancestry in their African-American samples, with a minority also drawn from Mandenka and Bantu populations. Additionally, the researchers observed an average European ancestry of 21.9%, again with significant variation between individuals. Bryc et al. (2009) note that populations from other parts of the continent may also constitute adequate proxies for the ancestors of some African-American individuals; namely, ancestral populations from Guinea Bissau, Senegal and Sierra Leone in West Africa and Angola in Southern Africa.
Altogether, genetic studies suggest that African Americans are a genetically diverse people. According to DNA analysis led in 2006 by Penn State geneticist Mark D. Shriver, around 58 percent of African Americans have at least 12.5% European ancestry (equivalent to one European great-grandparent and his/her forebears), 19.6 percent of African Americans have at least 25% European ancestry (equivalent to one European grandparent and his/her forebears), and 1 percent of African Americans have at least 50% European ancestry (equivalent to one European parent and his/her forebears). According to Shriver, around 5 percent of African Americans also have at least 12.5% Native American ancestry (equivalent to one Native American great-grandparent and his/her forebears). Research suggests that Native American ancestry among people who identify as African American is a result of relationships that occurred soon after slave ships arrived in the American colonies, and European ancestry is of more recent origin, often from the decades before the Civil War.
Y-DNA
Africans bearing the E-V38 (E1b1a) likely traversed across the Sahara, from east to west, approximately 19,000 years ago. E-M2 (E1b1a1) likely originated in West Africa or Central Africa. According to a Y-DNA study by Sims et al. (2007), the majority (≈60%) of African Americans belong to various subclades of the E-M2 (E1b1a1, formerly E3a) paternal haplogroup. This is the most common genetic paternal lineage found today among West/Central African males, and is also a signature of the historical Bantu migrations. The next most frequent Y-DNA haplogroup observed among African Americans is the R1b clade, which around 15% of African Americans carry. This lineage is most common today among Northwestern European males. The remaining African Americans mainly belong to the paternal haplogroup I (≈7%), which is also frequent in Northwestern Europe.
mtDNA
According to an mtDNA study by Salas et al. (2005), the maternal lineages of African Americans are most similar to haplogroups that are today especially common in West Africa (>55%), followed closely by West-Central Africa and Southwestern Africa (<41%). The characteristic West African haplogroups L1b, L2b,c,d, and L3b,d and West-Central African haplogroups L1c and L3e in particular occur at high frequencies among African Americans. As with the paternal DNA of African Americans, contributions from other parts of the continent to their maternal gene pool are insignificant.
Social status
Formal political, economic and social discrimination against minorities has been present throughout American history. Leland T. Saito, Associate Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, writes, "Political rights have been circumscribed by race, class and gender since the founding of the United States, when the right to vote was restricted to White men of property. Throughout the history of the United States race has been used by Whites for legitimizing and creating difference and social, economic and political exclusion."
Although they have gained a greater degree of social equality since the civil rights movement, African Americans have remained stagnant economically, which has hindered their ability to break into the middle class and beyond. As of 2020, the racial wealth gap between whites and blacks remains as large as it was in 1968, with the typical net worth of a white household equivalent to that of 11.5 black households. Despite this, African Americans have increased employment rates and gained representation in the highest levels of American government in the post–civil rights era. However, widespread racism remains an issue that continues to undermine the development of social status.
Economic issues
One of the most serious and long-standing issues within African-American communities is poverty. Poverty is associated with higher rates of marital stress and dissolution, physical and mental health problems, disability, cognitive deficits, low educational attainment, and crime. In 2004, almost 25% of African-American families lived below the poverty level. In 2007, the average income for African Americans was approximately $34,000, compared to $55,000 for Whites. African Americans experience a higher rate of unemployment than the general population.
African Americans have a long and diverse history of business ownership. Although the first African-American business is unknown, slaves captured from West Africa are believed to have established commercial enterprises as peddlers and skilled craftspeople as far back as the 17th century. Around 1900, Booker T. Washington became the most famous proponent of African-American businesses. His critic and rival W. E. B. DuBois also commended business as a vehicle for African-American advancement.
Policing and criminal justice
Forty percent of prison inmates are African American. African American males are more likely to be killed by police when compared to other races. This is one of the factors that led to the creation of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013. A historical issue in the U.S. where women have weaponized their White privilege in the country by reporting on Black people, often instigating racial violence, White women calling the police on Black people became widely publicized in 2020. In African-American culture there is a long history of calling a meddlesome White woman by a certain name, while The Guardian called 2020 "the year of Karen".
Although in the last decade Black youth have had lower rates of cannabis (marijuana) consumption than Whites of the same age, they have disproportionately higher arrest rates than Whites: in 2010, for example, Blacks were 3.73 times as likely to get arrested for using cannabis than Whites, despite not significantly more frequently being users.
Social issues
After over 50 years, marriage rates for all Americans began to decline while divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births have climbed. These changes have been greatest among African Americans. After more than 70 years of racial parity Black marriage rates began to fall behind Whites. Single-parent households have become common, and according to U.S. census figures released in January 2010, only 38 percent of Black children live with both their parents.
The first ever anti-miscegenation law was passed by the Maryland General Assembly in 1691, criminalizing interracial marriage. In a speech in Charleston, Illinois in 1858, Abraham Lincoln stated, "I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people". By the late 1800s, 38 US states had anti-miscegenation statutes. By 1924, the ban on interracial marriage was still in force in 29 states. While interracial marriage had been legal in California since 1948, in 1957 actor Sammy Davis Jr. faced a backlash for his involvement with White actress Kim Novak. Harry Cohn, the president of Columbia Pictures (with whom Novak was under contract) gave in to his concerns that a racist backlash against the relationship could hurt the studio. Davis briefly married Black dancer Loray White in 1958 to protect himself from mob violence. Inebriated at the wedding ceremony, Davis despairingly said to his best friend, Arthur Silber Jr., "Why won't they let me live my life?" The couple never lived together, and commenced divorce proceedings in September 1958. In 1958, officers in Virginia entered the home of Mildred and Richard Loving and dragged them out of bed for living together as an interracial couple, on the basis that “any white person intermarry with a colored person”— or vice versa—each party “shall be guilty of a felony” and face prison terms of five years. The law was ruled unconstitutional in 1967 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia.
In 2008, Democrats overwhelmingly voted 70% against California Proposition 8, African Americans voted 58% in favor of it while 42% voted against Proposition 8. On May 9, 2012, Barack Obama, the first Black president, became the first U.S. president to support same-sex marriage. Since Obama's endorsement there has been a rapid growth in support for same-sex marriage among African Americans. As of 2012, 59% of African Americans support same-sex marriage, which is higher than support among the national average (53%) and White Americans (50%).
Polls in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Maryland, Ohio, Florida, and Nevada have also shown an increase in support for same sex marriage among African Americans. On November 6, 2012, Maryland, Maine, and Washington all voted for approve of same-sex marriage, along with Minnesota rejecting a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Exit polls in Maryland show about 50% of African Americans voted for same-sex marriage, showing a vast evolution among African Americans on the issue and was crucial in helping pass same-sex marriage in Maryland.
Black Americans hold far more conservative opinions on abortion, extramarital sex, and raising children out of wedlock than Democrats as a whole. On financial issues, however, African Americans are in line with Democrats, generally supporting a more progressive tax structure to provide more government spending on social services.
Political legacy
African Americans have fought in every war in the history of the United States.
The gains made by African Americans in the civil rights movement and in the Black Power movement not only obtained certain rights for African Americans, but changed American society in far-reaching and fundamentally important ways. Prior to the 1950s, Black Americans in the South were subject to de jure discrimination, or Jim Crow laws. They were often the victims of extreme cruelty and violence, sometimes resulting in deaths: by the post World War II era, African Americans became increasingly discontented with their long-standing inequality. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., African Americans and their supporters challenged the nation to "rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed that all men are created equal..."
The civil rights movement marked an enormous change in American social, political, economic and civic life. It brought with it boycotts, sit-ins, nonviolent demonstrations and marches, court battles, bombings and other violence; prompted worldwide media coverage and intense public debate; forged enduring civic, economic and religious alliances; and disrupted and realigned the nation's two major political parties.
Over time, it has changed in fundamental ways the manner in which Blacks and Whites interact with and relate to one another. The movement resulted in the removal of codified, de jure racial segregation and discrimination from American life and law, and heavily influenced other groups and movements in struggles for civil rights and social equality within American society, including the Free Speech Movement, the disabled, the women's movement, and migrant workers. It also inspired the Native American rights movement, and in King's 1964 book Why We Can't Wait he wrote the U.S. "was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race."
Media and coverage
Some activists and academics contend that American news media coverage of African-American news, concerns, or dilemmas is inadequate, or that the news media present distorted images of African Americans.
To combat this, Robert L. Johnson founded Black Entertainment Television (BET), a network that targets young African Americans and urban audiences in the United States. Over the years, the network has aired such programming as rap and R&B music videos, urban-oriented movies and television series, and some public affairs programs. On Sunday mornings, BET would broadcast Christian programming; the network would also broadcast non-affiliated Christian programs during the early morning hours daily. According to Viacom, BET is now a global network that reaches households in the United States, Caribbean, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The network has gone on to spawn several spin-off channels, including BET Her (originally launched as BET on Jazz), which originally showcased jazz music-related programming, and later expanded to include general-interest urban programs as well as some R&B, soul, and world music.
Another network targeting African-Americans is TV One. TV One's original programming was formally focused on lifestyle and entertainment-oriented shows, movies, fashion, and music programming. The network also reruns classic series from as far back as the 1970s to current series such as Empire and Sister Circle. TV One is owned by Urban One, founded and controlled by Catherine Hughes. Urban One is one of the nation's largest radio broadcasting companies and the largest African-American-owned radio broadcasting company in the United States.
In June 2009, NBC News launched a new website named The Grio in partnership with the production team that created the Black documentary film Meeting David Wilson. It is the first African-American video news site that focuses on underrepresented stories in existing national news. The Grio consists of a broad spectrum of original video packages, news articles, and contributor blogs on topics including breaking news, politics, health, business, entertainment and Black History.
Other Black-owned and oriented media outlets include:
The Africa Channel – Dedicated to programming representing the best in African culture.
aspireTV – a digital cable and satellite channel owned by businessman and former basketball player Magic Johnson.
ATTV – an independent public affairs and educational channel.
Bounce TV – a digital multicast network owned by E. W. Scripps Company.
Cleo TV – a sister network to TV One targeting African-American women.
Fox Soul – a digital streaming channel primarily airing original talk shows and syndicated programming
Oprah Winfrey Network – a cable and satellite network founded by Oprah Winfrey and jointly owned by Discovery, Inc. and Harpo Studios. While not exclusively targeting African Americans, much of its original programming is geared towards a similar demographic.
Revolt – a music channel owned by Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs.
Soul of the South Network – a regional broadcast network.
VH1 – A female-oriented general entertainment channel owned by Viacom. Originally focused on light genres of music, the network's programming became slanted towards African American culture in recent years.
Culture
From their earliest presence in North America, African Americans have significantly contributed literature, art, agricultural skills, cuisine, clothing styles, music, language, and social and technological innovation to American culture. The cultivation and use of many agricultural products in the United States, such as yams, peanuts, rice, okra, sorghum, grits, watermelon, indigo dyes, and cotton, can be traced to West African and African-American influences. Notable examples include George Washington Carver, who created 300 products from peanuts, 118 products from sweet potatoes, and 75 products from pecans; and George Crum, a local legend incorrectly associates him with the creation of the potato chip in 1853. Soul food is a variety of cuisine popular among African Americans. It is closely related to the cuisine of the Southern United States. The descriptive terminology may have originated in the mid-1960s, when soul was a common definer used to describe African-American culture (for example, soul music). African Americans were the first peoples in the United States to make fried chicken, along with Scottish immigrants to the South. Although the Scottish had been frying chicken before they emigrated, they lacked the spices and flavor that African Americans had used when preparing the meal. The Scottish American settlers therefore adopted the African-American method of seasoning chicken. However, fried chicken was generally a rare meal in the African-American community, and was usually reserved for special events or celebrations.
Language
African-American English is a variety (dialect, ethnolect, and sociolect) of American English, commonly spoken by urban working-class and largely bi-dialectal middle-class African Americans.
African-American English evolved during the antebellum period through interaction between speakers of 16th- and 17th-century English of Great Britain and Ireland and various West African languages. As a result, the variety shares parts of its grammar and phonology with the Southern American English dialect. African-American English differs from Standard American English (SAE) in certain pronunciation characteristics, tense usage, and grammatical structures, which were derived from West African languages (particularly those belonging to the Niger-Congo family).
Virtually all habitual speakers of African-American English can understand and communicate in Standard American English. As with all linguistic forms, AAVE's usage is influenced by various factors, including geographical, educational and socioeconomic background, as well as formality of setting. Additionally, there are many literary uses of this variety of English, particularly in African-American literature.
Traditional names
African-American names are part of the cultural traditions of African Americans. Prior to the 1950s, and 1960s, most African-American names closely resembled those used within European American culture. Babies of that era were generally given a few common names, with children using nicknames to distinguish the various people with the same name. With the rise of 1960s civil rights movement, there was a dramatic increase in names of various origins.
By the 1970s, and 1980s, it had become common among African Americans to invent new names for themselves, although many of these invented names took elements from popular existing names. Prefixes such as La/Le, Da/De, Ra/Re and Ja/Je, and suffixes like -ique/iqua, -isha and -aun/-awn are common, as are inventive spellings for common names. The book Baby Names Now: From Classic to Cool—The Very Last Word on First Names places the origins of "La" names in African-American culture in New Orleans.
Even with the rise of inventive names, it is still common for African Americans to use biblical, historical, or traditional European names. Daniel, Christopher, Michael, David, James, Joseph, and Matthew were thus among the most frequent names for African-American boys in 2013.
The name LaKeisha is typically considered American in origin, but has elements that were drawn from both French and West/Central African roots. Names such as LaTanisha, JaMarcus, DeAndre, and Shaniqua were created in the same way. Punctuation marks are seen more often within African-American names than other American names, such as the names Mo'nique and D'Andre.
Religion
The majority of African Americans are Protestant, many of whom follow the historically Black churches. The term Black church refers to churches which minister to predominantly African-American congregations. Black congregations were first established by freed slaves at the end of the 17th century, and later when slavery was abolished more African Americans were allowed to create a unique form of Christianity that was culturally influenced by African spiritual traditions.
According to a 2007 survey, more than half of the African-American population are part of the historically Black churches. The largest Protestant denomination among African Americans are the Baptists, distributed mainly in four denominations, the largest being the National Baptist Convention, USA and the National Baptist Convention of America. The second largest are the Methodists, the largest denominations are the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.
Pentecostals are distributed among several different religious bodies, with the Church of God in Christ as the largest among them by far. About 16% of African-American Christians are members of White Protestant communions, these denominations (which include the United Church of Christ) mostly have a 2 to 3% African-American membership. There are also large numbers of Catholics, constituting 5% of the African-American population. Of the total number of Jehovah's Witnesses, 22% are Black.
Some African Americans follow Islam. Historically, between 15 and 30% of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas were Muslims, but most of these Africans were converted to Christianity during the era of American slavery. During the twentieth century, some African Americans converted to Islam, mainly through the influence of Black nationalist groups that preached with distinctive Islamic practices; including the Moorish Science Temple of America, and the largest organization, the Nation of Islam, founded in the 1930s, which attracted at least 20,000 people by 1963. Prominent members included activist Malcolm X and boxer Muhammad Ali.
Malcolm X is considered the first person to start the movement among African Americans towards mainstream Islam, after he left the Nation and made the pilgrimage to Mecca. In 1975, Warith Deen Mohammed, the son of Elijah Muhammad took control of the Nation after his father's death and guided the majority of its members to orthodox Islam.
African-American Muslims constitute 20% of the total U.S. Muslim population, the majority are Sunni or orthodox Muslims, some of these identify under the community of W. Deen Mohammed. The Nation of Islam led by Louis Farrakhan has a membership ranging from 20,000 to 50,000 members.
There is also a small group of African-American Jews, making up less than 0.5% of African Americans or about 2% of the Jewish population in the United States. Most of these Jews are part of mainstream groups such as the Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox branches of Judaism; although there are significant numbers of people who are part of non-mainstream Jewish groups, largely the Black Hebrew Israelites, whose beliefs include the claim that African Americans are descended from the Biblical Israelites.
Confirmed atheists are less than one half of one-percent, similar to numbers for Hispanics.
Music
African-American music is one of the most pervasive African-American cultural influences in the United States today and is among the most dominant in mainstream popular music. Hip hop, R&B, funk, rock and roll, soul, blues, and other contemporary American musical forms originated in Black communities and evolved from other Black forms of music, including blues, doo-wop, barbershop, ragtime, bluegrass, jazz, and gospel music.
African-American-derived musical forms have also influenced and been incorporated into virtually every other popular music genre in the world, including country and techno. African-American genres are the most important ethnic vernacular tradition in America, as they have developed independent of African traditions from which they arise more so than any other immigrant groups, including Europeans; make up the broadest and longest lasting range of styles in America; and have, historically, been more influential, interculturally, geographically, and economically, than other American vernacular traditions.
Dance
African Americans have also had an important role in American dance. Bill T. Jones, a prominent modern choreographer and dancer, has included historical African-American themes in his work, particularly in the piece "Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land". Likewise, Alvin Ailey's artistic work, including his "Revelations" based on his experience growing up as an African American in the South during the 1930s, has had a significant influence on modern dance. Another form of dance, Stepping, is an African-American tradition whose performance and competition has been formalized through the traditionally Black fraternities and sororities at universities.
Literature and academics
Many African-American authors have written stories, poems, and essays influenced by their experiences as African Americans. African-American literature is a major genre in American literature. Famous examples include Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou.
African-American inventors have created many widely used devices in the world and have contributed to international innovation. Norbert Rillieux created the technique for converting sugar cane juice into white sugar crystals. Moreover, Rillieux left Louisiana in 1854 and went to France, where he spent ten years working with the Champollions deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics from the Rosetta Stone. Most slave inventors were nameless, such as the slave owned by the Confederate President Jefferson Davis who designed the ship propeller used by the Confederate navy.
By 1913, over 1,000 inventions were patented by Black Americans. Among the most notable inventors were Jan Matzeliger, who developed the first machine to mass-produce shoes, and Elijah McCoy, who invented automatic lubrication devices for steam engines. Granville Woods had 35 patents to improve electric railway systems, including the first system to allow moving trains to communicate. Garrett A. Morgan developed the first automatic traffic signal and gas mask.
Lewis Howard Latimer invented an improvement for the incandescent light bulb. More recent inventors include Frederick McKinley Jones, who invented the movable refrigeration unit for food transport in trucks and trains. Lloyd Quarterman worked with six other Black scientists on the creation of the atomic bomb (code named the Manhattan Project.) Quarterman also helped develop the first nuclear reactor, which was used in the atomically powered submarine called the Nautilus.
A few other notable examples include the first successful open heart surgery, performed by Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, and the air conditioner, patented by Frederick McKinley Jones. Dr. Mark Dean holds three of the original nine patents on the computer on which all PCs are based. More current contributors include Otis Boykin, whose inventions included several novel methods for manufacturing electrical components that found use in applications such as guided missile systems and computers, and Colonel Frederick Gregory, who was not only the first Black astronaut pilot but the person who redesigned the cockpits for the last three space shuttles. Gregory was also on the team that pioneered the microwave instrumentation landing system.
Terminology
General
The term African American, coined by Jesse Jackson in the 1980s, carries important political overtones. Earlier terms used to describe Americans of African ancestry referred more to skin color than to ancestry, and were conferred upon the group by colonists and Americans of European ancestry; people with dark skins were considered inferior in fact and in law. Other terms (such as colored, person of color, or negro) were included in the wording of various laws and legal decisions which some thought were being used as tools of White supremacy and oppression.
A 16-page pamphlet entitled "A Sermon on the Capture of Lord Cornwallis" is notable for the attribution of its authorship to "An African American". Published in 1782, the book's use of this phrase predates any other yet identified by more than 50 years.
In the 1980s, the term African American was advanced on the model of, for example, German American or Irish American, to give descendants of American slaves, and other American Blacks who lived through the slavery era, a heritage and a cultural base. The term was popularized in Black communities around the country via word of mouth and ultimately received mainstream use after Jesse Jackson publicly used the term in front of a national audience in 1988. Subsequently, major media outlets adopted its use.
Surveys show that the majority of Black Americans have no preference for African American versus Black American, although they have a slight preference for the latter in personal settings and the former in more formal settings. Many African Americans have expressed a preference for the term African American because it was formed in the same way as the terms for the many other ethnic groups currently living in the United States. Some argued further that, because of the historical circumstances surrounding the capture, enslavement, and systematic attempts to de-Africanize Blacks in the United States under chattel slavery, most African Americans are unable to trace their ancestry to any specific African nation; hence, the entire continent serves as a geographic marker.
The term African American embraces pan-Africanism as earlier enunciated by prominent African thinkers such as Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and George Padmore. The term Afro-Usonian, and variations of such, are more rarely used.
Official identity
Since 1977, in an attempt to keep up with changing social opinion, the United States government has officially classified Black people (revised to Black or African American in 1997) as "having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa." Other federal offices, such as the U.S. Census Bureau, adhere to the Office of Management and Budget standards on race in their data collection and tabulation efforts. In preparation for the 2010 U.S. Census, a marketing and outreach plan called 2010 Census Integrated Communications Campaign Plan (ICC) recognized and defined African Americans as Black people born in the United States. From the ICC perspective, African Americans are one of three groups of Black people in the United States.
The ICC plan was to reach the three groups by acknowledging that each group has its own sense of community that is based on geography and ethnicity. The best way to market the census process toward any of the three groups is to reach them through their own unique communication channels and not treat the entire Black population of the U.S. as though they are all African Americans with a single ethnic and geographical background. The Federal Bureau of Investigation of the U.S. Department of Justice categorizes Black or African American people as "[a] person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa" through racial categories used in the UCR Program adopted from the Statistical Policy Handbook (1978) and published by the Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards, U.S. Department of Commerce, derived from the 1977 Office of Management and Budget classification.
Admixture
Historically, "race mixing" between Black and White people was taboo in the United States. So-called anti-miscegenation laws, barring Blacks and Whites from marrying or having sex, were established in colonial America as early as 1691, and endured in many Southern states until the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional in Loving v. Virginia (1967). The taboo among American Whites surrounding White-Black relations is a historical consequence of the oppression and racial segregation of African Americans. Historian David Brion Davis notes the racial mixing that occurred during slavery was frequently attributed by the planter class to the "lower-class White males" but Davis concludes that "there is abundant evidence that many slaveowners, sons of slaveowners, and overseers took black mistresses or in effect raped the wives and daughters of slave families." A famous example was Thomas Jefferson's mistress, Sally Hemings.
Harvard University historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote in 2009 that "African Americans…are a racially mixed or mulatto people—deeply and overwhelmingly so" (see genetics). After the Emancipation Proclamation, Chinese American men married African American women in high proportions to their total marriage numbers due to few Chinese American women being in the United States. African slaves and their descendants have also had a history of cultural exchange and intermarriage with Native Americans, although they did not necessarily retain social, cultural or linguistic ties to Native peoples. There are also increasing intermarriages and offspring between non-Hispanic Blacks and Hispanics of any race, especially between Puerto Ricans and African Americans (American-born Blacks). According to author M.M. Drymon, many African Americans identify as having Scots-Irish ancestry.
Racially mixed marriages have become increasingly accepted in the United States since the civil rights movement and up to the present day. Approval in national opinion polls has risen from 36% in 1978, to 48% in 1991, 65% in 2002, 77% in 2007. A Gallup poll conducted in 2013 found that 84% of Whites and 96% of Blacks approved of interracial marriage, and 87% overall.
At the end of World War II, African American men married Japanese women in Japan and immigrated to the United States.
Terminology dispute
In her book The End of Blackness, as well as in an essay for Salon, author Debra Dickerson has argued that the term Black should refer strictly to the descendants of Africans who were brought to America as slaves, and not to the sons and daughters of Black immigrants who lack that ancestry. Thus, under her definition, President Barack Obama, who is the son of a Kenyan, is not Black. She makes the argument that grouping all people of African descent together regardless of their unique ancestral circumstances would inevitably deny the lingering effects of slavery within the American community of slave descendants, in addition to denying Black immigrants recognition of their own unique ancestral backgrounds. "Lumping us all together," Dickerson wrote, "erases the significance of slavery and continuing racism while giving the appearance of progress."
Similar viewpoints have been expressed by author Stanley Crouch in a New York Daily News piece, Charles Steele Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and African-American columnist David Ehrenstein of the Los Angeles Times, who accused White liberals of flocking to Blacks who were Magic Negros, a term that refers to a Black person with no past who simply appears to assist the mainstream White (as cultural protagonists/drivers) agenda. Ehrenstein went on to say "He's there to assuage white 'guilt' they feel over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history."
The American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) movement coalesces around this view, arguing that Black descendants of American slavery deserve a separate ethnic category that distinguishes them from other Black groups in the United States. Their terminology has gained popularity in some circles, but others have criticized the movement for a perceived bias against (especially poor and Black) immigrants, and for its often inflammatory rhetoric. Politicians such as Obama and Harris have received especially pointed criticism from the movement, as neither are ADOS and have spoken out at times against policies specific to them.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was famously mistaken for a "recent American immigrant" by French President Nicolas Sarkozy), said "descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that." She has also rejected an immigrant designation for African Americans and instead prefers the term Black or White to denote the African and European U.S. founding populations.
Terms no longer in common use
Before the independence of the Thirteen Colonies until the abolition of slavery in 1865, an African-American slave was commonly known as a negro. Free negro was the legal status in the territory of an African-American person who was not a slave. The term colored later also began to be used until the second quarter of the 20th century, when it was considered outmoded and generally gave way again to the exclusive use of negro. By the 1940s, the term was commonly capitalized (Negro); but by the mid-1960s, it was considered disparaging. By the end of the 20th century, negro had come to be considered inappropriate and was rarely used and perceived as a pejorative. The term is rarely used by younger Black people, but remained in use by many older African Americans who had grown up with the term, particularly in the southern U.S. The term remains in use in some contexts, such as the United Negro College Fund, an American philanthropic organization that funds scholarships for Black students and general scholarship funds for 39 private historically Black colleges and universities.
There are many other deliberately insulting terms, many of which were in common use (e.g., nigger), but had become unacceptable in normal discourse before the end of the 20th century. One exception is the use, among the Black community, of the slur nigger rendered as nigga, representing the pronunciation of the word in African-American English. This usage has been popularized by American rap and hip-hop music cultures and is used as part of an in-group lexicon and speech. It is not necessarily derogatory and, when used among Black people, the word is often used to mean "homie" or "friend."
Acceptance of intra-group usage of the word nigga is still debated, although it has established a foothold among younger generations. The NAACP denounces the use of both nigga and nigger. Mixed-race usage of nigga is still considered taboo, particularly if the speaker is White. However, trends indicate that usage of the term in intragroup settings is increasing even among White youth due to the popularity of rap and hip hop culture.
See also
African-American art
African-American middle class
African-American neighborhood
African-American upper class
Afrophobia
Black Belt in the American South
Black Hispanic and Latino Americans
Black Southerners
Civil rights movement (1865–1896)
Civil rights movement (1896–1954)
Juneteenth
North Africans in the United States
National Museum of African American History and Culture
Society and Black people in the Spanish Colonial Americas
South African Americans
Timeline of the civil rights movement
Stereotypes of African Americans
West Indian Americans
Diaspora
African Americans in Africa
African Americans in France
African Americans in Ghana
African Americans in Israel
Americo-Liberian people
Black Nova Scotians
Samaná Americans
Sierra Leone Creole people
Lists
Index of articles related to African Americans
List of African-American neighborhoods
List of African-American newspapers and media outlets
List of historically Black colleges and universities
List of monuments to African Americans
List of populated places in the United States with African-American plurality populations
List of topics related to the African diaspora
Lists of African Americans
Notes
References
Further reading
Finkelman, Paul, ed. Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass (3 vol Oxford University Press, 2006).
Finkelman, Paul, ed. Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century (5 vol. Oxford University Press, USA, 2009).
John Hope Franklin, Alfred Moss, From Slavery to Freedom. A History of African Americans, McGraw-Hill Education 2001, standard work, first edition in 1947.
Gates, Henry L. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (eds), African American Lives, Oxford University Press, 2004 – more than 600 biographies.
Darlene Clark Hine, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, Elsa Barkley Brown (eds), Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, Paperback Edition, Indiana University Press 2005.
Kranz, Rachel. African-American Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs (Infobase Publishing, 2004).
Salzman, Jack, ed. Encyclopedia of Afro-American culture and history, New York City : Macmillan Library Reference USA, 1996.
External links
Richard Thompson Ford Name Games, Slate, September 16, 2004. Article discussing the problems of defining African American
"Of Arms & the Law: Don Kates on Afro-American Homicide Rates"
Scientific American Magazine (June 2006) Trace Elements Reconnecting African Americans to an ancestral past
"The Definition of Political Absurdity", San Francisco Chronicle, March 2, 2007
African American archaeology in Sacramento, California pdf
African American archaeology in Oakland, California – see Part III, Chap 10
Black History related original documents and photos
President Obama's Speech to the NAACP on July 16, 2009 – full video by MSNBC
Frank Newport, "Black or African American?" , Gallup, September 28, 2007
"The Long Journey of Black Americans" – slideshow by The First Post
Ethnic groups in the United States
History of civil rights in the United States
American |
2161 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artistic%20License | Artistic License | The Artistic License is a software license used for certain free and open-source software packages, most notably the standard implementation of the Perl programming language and most CPAN modules, which are dual-licensed under the Artistic License and the GNU General Public License (GPL).
History
Artistic License 1.0
The original Artistic License was written by Larry Wall. The name of the license is a reference to the concept of artistic license.
Whether or not the original Artistic License is a free software license is largely unsettled. The Free Software Foundation explicitly called the original Artistic License a non-free license, criticizing it as being "too vague; some passages are too clever for their own good, and their meaning is not clear". The FSF recommended that the license not be used on its own, but approved the common AL/GPL dual-licensing approach for Perl projects.
In response to this, Bradley Kuhn, who later worked for the Free Software Foundation, made a minimal redraft to clarify the ambiguous passages. This was released as the Clarified Artistic License and was approved by the FSF. It is used by the Paros Proxy, the JavaFBP toolkit and NcFTP.
The terms of the Artistic License 1.0 were at issue in Jacobsen v. Katzer in the initial 2009 ruling by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California declared that FOSS-like licenses could only be enforced through contract law rather than through copyright law, in contexts where contract damages would be difficult to establish. On appeal, a federal appellate court "determined that the terms of the Artistic License are enforceable copyright conditions". The case was remanded to the District Court, which did not apply the superior court's criteria on the grounds that, in the interim, the governing Supreme Court precedent applicable to the case had changed. However, this left undisturbed the finding that a free and open-source license nonetheless has economic value. Jacobsen ultimately prevailed in 2010, and the Case established a new standard making terms and conditions under Artistic License 1.0 enforceable through copyright statutes and relevant precedents.
Artistic License 2.0
In response to the Request for Comments (RFC) process for improving the licensing position for Perl 6, Kuhn's draft was extensively rewritten by Roberta Cairney and Allison Randal for readability and legal clarity, with input from the Perl community. This resulted in the Artistic License 2.0, which has been approved as both a free software and open source license.
The Artistic license 2.0 is also notable for its excellent license compatibility with other FOSS licenses due to a relicensing clause, a property other licenses like the GPL lack.
It has been adopted by some of the Perl 6 implementations, the Mojolicious framework, and has been used by the Parrot virtual machine since version 0.4.13. It is also used by the SNEeSe emulator, which was formerly licensed under the Clarified Artistic License.
The OSI recommends that all developers and projects licensing their products with the Artistic License adopt Artistic License 2.0.
See also
Software using the Artistic license (category)
References
External links
Version 1.0
The Artistic LicenseThe original Artistic License 1.0, the one which is still used by Perl and CPAN; They use a disjunction of the Artistic License 1.0 and the GNU GPL for Perl 5 and above.
The Clarified Artistic License
Version 2.0
The Artistic License 2.0It's e.g. used by Parrot.
2.0 revision RFC process
Prominent uses
DuskThe first online Novel and Blog written under Artistic License 2.0.
"R.E.M releases videos under Artistic License 2.0Is about R.E.M.'s choice of the Artistic License 2.0 for videos from one of their albums.
Free and open-source software licenses |
2162 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaans | Afrikaans | Afrikaans (, , English meaning: African) is a West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia, and, to a lesser extent, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. It evolved from the Dutch vernacular of Holland (Hollandic dialect) spoken by the European (Dutch, French, and German) settlers and their slaves in South Africa, where it gradually began to develop distinguishing characteristics in the course of the 18th century. It is considered by most linguists to be partially, rather than fully, a creole language. Afrikaans linguistics researchers maintain that Afrikaans is only partially creole.
Although Afrikaans has adopted words from other languages, including German and the Khoisan languages, an estimated 90 to 95% of the vocabulary of Afrikaans is of Dutch origin. Therefore, differences with Dutch often lie in the more analytic-type morphology and grammar of Afrikaans and a spelling that expresses Afrikaans pronunciation rather than standard Dutch. There is a large degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages, especially in written form.
With about seven million native speakers in South Africa, or 13.5% of the population, it is the third most spoken language in the country. Estimates of the total number of Afrikaans speakers range between 15 and 23 million. It has the widest geographic and racial distribution of all the 11 official languages of South Africa and is widely spoken and understood as a second or third language. It is the majority language of the western half of South Africa—the provinces of the Northern Cape and Western Cape—and the first language of 75.8% of Coloured South Africans (4.8 million people), 60.8% of White South Africans (2.7 million people), 4.6% of Indian South Africans (58,000 people), and 1.5% of Black South Africans (600,000 people).
Etymology
The term is derived from the Dutch term (now spelled ) meaning "African". It was previously referred to as "Cape Dutch" (a term also used to refer collectively to the early Cape settlers) or "kitchen Dutch" (a derogatory term used to refer to Afrikaans in its earlier days). However, it has also been variously described as a Dutch-based creole or as a partially creolised language.
History
Origin
The Afrikaans language arose in the Dutch Cape Colony, through a gradual divergence from European Dutch dialects, during the course of the 18th century. As early as the mid-18th century and as recently as the mid-20th century, Afrikaans was known in standard Dutch as a "kitchen language" (), lacking the prestige accorded, for example, even by the educational system in Africa, to languages spoken outside Africa. Other early epithets setting apart ("Cape Dutch", i.e. Afrikaans) as putatively beneath official Dutch standards included , and ("mutilated/broken/uncivilised Dutch"), as well as ("incorrect Dutch").
Den Besten theorises that modern Standard Afrikaans derives from two sources:
Cape Dutch, a direct transplantation of European Dutch to Southern Africa, and
'Hottentot Dutch', a pidgin that descended from 'Foreigner Talk' and ultimately from the Dutch pidgin spoken by slaves, via a hypothetical Dutch creole.
Thus in his view Afrikaans is neither a creole nor a direct descendant of Dutch, but a fusion of two transmission pathways.
Development
A relative majority of the first settlers whose descendants today are the Afrikaners were from the United Provinces (now Netherlands and Flanders), though up to one-sixth of the community was also of French Huguenot origin, and a seventh from Germany.
African and Asian workers, Cape Coloured children of European settlers and Khoikhoi women, slaves contributed to the development of Afrikaans. The slave population was made up of people from East Africa, West Africa, India, Madagascar, and the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia). A number were also indigenous Khoisan people, who were valued as interpreters, domestic servants, and labourers. Many free and enslaved women married, cohabited with, or were victims of sexual violence from the male Dutch settlers. M. F. Valkhoff argued that 75% of children born to female slaves in the Dutch Cape Colony between 1652 and 1672 had a Dutch father. Sarah Grey Thomason and Terrence Kaufman argue that Afrikaans' development as a separate language was "heavily conditioned by nonwhites who learned Dutch imperfectly as a second language."
Beginning in about 1815, Afrikaans started to replace Malay as the language of instruction in Muslim schools in South Africa, written with the Arabic alphabet: see Arabic Afrikaans. Later, Afrikaans, now written with the Latin script, started to appear in newspapers and political and religious works in around 1850 (alongside the already established Dutch).
In 1875, a group of Afrikaans-speakers from the Cape formed the ("Society for Real Afrikaners"), and published a number of books in Afrikaans including grammars, dictionaries, religious materials and histories.
Until the early 20th century, Afrikaans was considered a Dutch dialect, alongside Standard Dutch, which it eventually replaced as an official language. Before the Boer wars, "and indeed for some time afterwards, Afrikaans was regarded as inappropriate for educated discourse. Rather, Afrikaans was described derogatorily as 'a kitchen language' or 'a bastard jargon,' suitable for communication mainly between the Boers and their servants."
Recognition
In 1925, Afrikaans was recognised by the South African government as a distinct language, rather than simply a slang version of Dutch. On 8 May 1925, twenty-three years after the Second Boer War ended, the Official Languages of the Union Act of 1925 was passed—mostly due to the efforts of the Afrikaans language movement—at a joint sitting of the House of Assembly and the Senate, in which the Afrikaans language was declared a variety of Dutch. The Constitution of 1961 reversed the position of Afrikaans and Dutch, so that English and Afrikaans were the official languages, and Afrikaans was deemed to include Dutch. The Constitution of 1983 removed any mention of Dutch altogether.
The Afrikaans Language Monument is located on a hill overlooking Paarl in the Western Cape Province. Officially opened on 10 October 1975, it was erected on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Society of Real Afrikaners, and the 50th anniversary of Afrikaans being declared an official language of South Africa in distinction to Dutch.
Standardisation
The earliest Afrikaans texts were some doggerel verse from 1795 and a dialogue transcribed by a Dutch traveller in 1825. Afrikaans used the Latin alphabet around this time, although the Cape Muslim community used the Arabic script. In 1861, L.H. Meurant published his ("Conversation between Claus Truthsayer and John Doubter"), which is considered to be the first book published in Afrikaans.
The first grammar book was published in 1876; a bilingual dictionary was later published in 1902. The main modern Afrikaans dictionary in use is the (HAT). A new authoritative dictionary, called (WAT), was under development as of 2018. The official orthography of Afrikaans is the , compiled by .
The Afrikaans Bible
The Afrikaner religion had stemmed from the Protestant practices of the Reformed Church of Holland during the 17th century, later on being influenced in South Africa by British ministries during the 1800s. A landmark in the development of the language was the translation of the whole Bible into Afrikaans. While significant advances had been made in the textual criticism of the Bible, especially the Greek New Testament, the 1933 translation followed the textus receptus and was closely akin to the . Before this, most Cape Dutch-Afrikaans speakers had to rely on the Dutch . This had its origins with the Synod of Dordrecht of 1618 and was thus in an archaic form of Dutch. This was hard for Dutch speakers to understand, and increasingly unintelligible for Afrikaans speakers.
C. P. Hoogehout, , and Stephanus Jacobus du Toit were the first Afrikaans Bible translators. Important landmarks in the translation of the Scriptures were in 1878 with C. P. Hoogehout's translation of the (Gospel of Mark, lit. Gospel according to Mark); however, this translation was never published. The manuscript is to be found in the South African National Library, Cape Town.
The first official translation of the entire Bible into Afrikaans was in 1933 by J. D. du Toit, E. E. van Rooyen, J. D. Kestell, H. C. M. Fourie, and BB Keet. This monumental work established Afrikaans as , that is "a pure and proper language" for religious purposes, especially amongst the deeply Calvinist Afrikaans religious community that previously had been sceptical of a Bible translation that varied from the Dutch version that they were used to.
In 1983, a fresh translation marked the 50th anniversary of the 1933 version and provided a much-needed revision. The final editing of this edition was done by E. P. Groenewald, A. H. van Zyl, P. A. Verhoef, J. L. Helberg and W. Kempen. This translation was influenced by Eugene Nida's theory of dynamic-equavalence which focussed on finding the nearest equivalent in the receptor language to the idea that the Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic wanted to convey. The challenge to this type of translation is that it doesn't take into account that there are shifts in meaning in the receptor language.
A new translation, Die Bybel: 'n Direkte Vertaling was released in November 2020. It is the first truly ecumenical translation of the Bible in Afrikaans as translators from various churches, including the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches, are involved.
Various commercial translations of the Bible in Afrikaans have also appeared since the 1990s, such as Die Boodskap and the Nuwe Lewende Vertaling. Most of these translations were published by Christelike Uitgewersmaatskappy (CUM).
Classification
Indo-European languages
Germanic
West Germanic
Low Franconian
Dutch
Afrikaans, Dutch-based creoles
Afrikaans descended from Dutch dialects in the 17th century. It belongs to a West Germanic sub-group, the Low Franconian languages. Other West Germanic languages related to Afrikaans are German, English, the Frisian languages, and the unstandardised languages Low German and Yiddish.
Geographic distribution
Statistics
Sociolinguistics
Some state that instead of Afrikaners, which refers to an ethnic group, the terms or (lit. Afrikaans speakers) should be used for people of any ethnic origin who speak Afrikaans. Linguistic identity has not yet established which terms shall prevail, and all three are used in common parlance.
Afrikaans is also widely spoken in Namibia. Before independence, Afrikaans had equal status with German as an official language. Since independence in 1990, Afrikaans has had constitutional recognition as a national, but not official, language. There is a much smaller number of Afrikaans speakers among Zimbabwe's white minority, as most have left the country since 1980. Afrikaans was also a medium of instruction for schools in Bophuthatswana, an Apartheid-era Bantustan. Eldoret in Kenya was founded by Afrikaners.
Many South Africans living and working in Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, the UAE and Kuwait are also Afrikaans-speaking. They have access to Afrikaans websites, news sites such as Netwerk24.com and Sake24, and radio broadcasts over the web, such as those from Radio Sonder Grense, Bokradio and Radio Pretoria. There are also many artists that tour to bring Afrikaans to the emigrants.
Afrikaans has been influential in the development of South African English. Many Afrikaans loanwords have found their way into South African English, such as ("pickup truck"), ("barbecue"), ("tangerine"), (American "sneakers", British "trainers", Canadian "runners"). A few words in standard English are derived from Afrikaans, such as aardvark (lit. "earth pig"), trek ("pioneering journey", in Afrikaans lit. "pull" but used also for "migrate"), spoor ("animal track"), ("Southern African grassland" in Afrikaans, lit. "field"), commando from Afrikaans meaning small fighting unit, ("tree snake") and ("segregation"; more accurately "apartness" or "the state or condition of being apart").
In 1976, secondary-school pupils in Soweto began a rebellion in response to the government's decision that Afrikaans be used as the language of instruction for half the subjects taught in non-White schools (with English continuing for the other half). Although English is the mother tongue of only 8.2% of the population, it is the language most widely understood, and the second language of a majority of South Africans. Afrikaans is more widely spoken than English in the Northern and Western Cape provinces, several hundred kilometres from Soweto. The Black community's opposition to Afrikaans and preference for continuing English instruction was underlined when the government rescinded the policy one month after the uprising: 96% of Black schools chose English (over Afrikaans or native languages) as the language of instruction. Afrikaans-medium schools were also accused of using language policy to deter black African parents. Some of these parents, in part supported by provincial departments of education, initiated litigation which enabled enrolment with English as language of instruction. By 2006 there were 300 single-medium Afrikaans schools, compared to 2,500 in 1994, after most converted to dual-medium education. Due to Afrikaans being viewed as the "language of the white oppressor" by some, pressure has been increased to remove Afrikaans as a teaching language in South African universities, resulting in bloody student protests in 2015.
Under South Africa's Constitution of 1996, Afrikaans remains an official language, and has equal status to English and nine other languages. The new policy means that the use of Afrikaans is now often reduced in favour of English, or to accommodate the other official languages. In 1996, for example, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reduced the amount of television airtime in Afrikaans, while South African Airways dropped its Afrikaans name from its livery. Similarly, South Africa's diplomatic missions overseas now display the name of the country only in English and their host country's language, and not in Afrikaans. Meanwhile, the constitution of the Western Cape, which went into effect in 1998, declares Afrikaans to be an official language of the province alongside English and Xhosa.
In spite of these moves, the language has remained strong, and Afrikaans newspapers and magazines continue to have large circulation figures. Indeed, the Afrikaans-language general-interest family magazine has the largest readership of any magazine in the country. In addition, a pay-TV channel in Afrikaans called KykNet was launched in 1999, and an Afrikaans music channel, MK () (lit. 'Music Channel'), in 2005. A large number of Afrikaans books are still published every year, mainly by the publishers Human & Rousseau, , , and . The Afrikaans film trilogy (first released in 2008) caused a reawakening of the Afrikaans film industry (which had been moribund since the mid to late 1990s ) and Belgian-born singer Karen Zoid's debut single "" (released 2001) caused a resurgence in the Afrikaans music industry, as well as giving rise to the Afrikaans Rock genre.
Afrikaans has two monuments erected in its honour. The first was erected in , South Africa, in 1893, and the second, nowadays better-known Afrikaans Language Monument (), was built in Paarl, South Africa, in 1975.
When the British design magazine Wallpaper described Afrikaans as "one of the world's ugliest languages" in its September 2005 article about the monument, South African billionaire Johann Rupert (chairman of the Richemont Group), responded by withdrawing advertising for brands such as Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Montblanc and Alfred Dunhill from the magazine. The author of the article, Bronwyn Davies, was an English-speaking South African.
Mutual intelligibility with Dutch
An estimated 90 to 95% of the Afrikaans lexicon is ultimately of Dutch origin, and there are few lexical differences between the two languages. Afrikaans has a considerably more regular morphology, grammar, and spelling. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages, particularly in written form.
Afrikaans acquired some lexical and syntactical borrowings from other languages such as Malay, Khoisan languages, Portuguese, and Bantu languages, and Afrikaans has also been significantly influenced by South African English. Dutch speakers are confronted with fewer non-cognates when listening to Afrikaans than the other way round. Mutual intelligibility thus tends to be asymmetrical, as it is easier for Dutch speakers to understand Afrikaans than for Afrikaans speakers to understand Dutch.
In general, mutual intelligibility between Dutch and Afrikaans is far better than between Dutch and Frisian or between Danish and Swedish. The South African poet writer Breyten Breytenbach, attempting to visualise the language distance for Anglophones once remarked that the differences between (Standard) Dutch and Afrikaans are comparable to those between the Received Pronunciation and Southern American English.
Current status
Post-apartheid South Africa has seen a loss of preferential treatment by the government for Afrikaans, in terms of education, social events, media (TV and radio), and general status throughout the country, given that it now shares its place as official language with ten other languages. Nevertheless, Afrikaans remains more prevalent in the media – radio, newspapers and television – than any of the other official languages, except English. More than 300 book titles in Afrikaans are published annually. South African census figures suggest a growing number of speakers in all nine provinces, a total of 6.85 million in 2011 compared to 5.98 million a decade earlier. The South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) projects that a growing majority will be Coloured Afrikaans speakers. Afrikaans speakers experience higher employment rates than other South African language groups, though as of 2012 half a million remain unemployed.
Despite the challenges of demotion and emigration that it faces in South Africa, the Afrikaans vernacular remains competitive, being popular in DSTV pay channels and several internet sites, while generating high newspaper and music CD sales. A resurgence in Afrikaans popular music since the late 1990s has invigorated the language, especially among a younger generation of South Africans. A recent trend is the increased availability of pre-school educational CDs and DVDs. Such media also prove popular with the extensive Afrikaans-speaking emigrant communities who seek to retain language proficiency in a household context.
After years of slumber, Afrikaans language cinema is showing signs of new vigour. The 2007 film , the first full-length Afrikaans movie since Paljas in 1998, is seen as the dawn of a new era in Afrikaans cinema. Several short films have been created and more feature-length movies, such as and (both in 2008) have been produced, besides the 2011 Afrikaans-language film , which was the first Afrikaans film to screen at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was also released in 2011. The Afrikaans Film industry started gaining international recognition via the likes of big Afrikaans Hollywood film stars, like Charlize Theron (Monster) and Sharlto Copley (District 9) promoting their mother tongue.
Afrikaans seems to be returning to the SABC. SABC3 announced early in 2009 that it would increase Afrikaans programming due to the "growing Afrikaans-language market and [their] need for working capital as Afrikaans advertising is the only advertising that sells in the current South African television market". In April 2009, SABC3 started screening several Afrikaans-language programmes. Further latent support for the language derives from its de-politicised image in the eyes of younger-generation South Africans, who less and less often view it as "the language of the oppressor". Indeed, there is a groundswell movement within Afrikaans to be inclusive, and to promote itself along with the other indigenous official languages. In Namibia, the percentage of Afrikaans speakers declined from 11.4% (2001 Census) to 10.4% (2011 Census). The major concentrations are in Hardap (41.0%), ǁKaras (36.1%), Erongo (20.5%), Khomas (18.5%), Omaheke (10.0%), Otjozondjupa (9.4%), Kunene (4.2%), and Oshikoto (2.3%).
Many native speakers of Bantu languages and English also speak Afrikaans as a second language. It is widely taught in South African schools, with about 10.3 million second-language students. Even in KwaZulu-Natal (where there are relatively few Afrikaans home-speakers), the majority of pupils opt for Afrikaans as their first additional language because it is regarded as easier than Zulu.
Afrikaans is offered at many universities outside South Africa, for example in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Russia, and the United States.
Grammar
In Afrikaans grammar, there is no distinction between the infinitive and present forms of verbs, with the exception of the verbs 'to be' and 'to have':
In addition, verbs do not conjugate differently depending on the subject. For example,
Only a handful of Afrikaans verbs have a preterite, namely the auxiliary ("to be"), the modal verbs, and the verb ("to think"). The preterite of ("may") is rare in contemporary Afrikaans.
All other verbs use the perfect tense, het + past participle (ge-), for the past. Therefore, there is no distinction in Afrikaans between I drank and I have drunk. (In colloquial German, the past tense is also often replaced with the perfect.)
When telling a longer story, Afrikaans speakers usually avoid the perfect and simply use the present tense, or historical present tense instead (as is possible, but less common, in English as well).
A particular feature of Afrikaans is its use of the double negative; it is classified in Afrikaans as and is something that is absent from the other West Germanic standard languages. For example,
English: He can not speak Afrikaans. / He can't speak Afrikaans.
Both French and San origins have been suggested for double negation in Afrikaans. While double negation is still found in Low Franconian dialects in West Flanders and in some "isolated" villages in the centre of the Netherlands (such as Garderen), it takes a different form, which is not found in Afrikaans. The following is an example:
* (lit. I want not this do not.)
English: I do not want to do this.
* Compare with , which changes the meaning to "I want not to do this." Whereas emphasizes a lack of desire to act, emphasizes the act itself.
The was the Middle Dutch way to negate but it has been suggested that since became highly non-voiced, or was needed to complement the . With time the disappeared in most Dutch dialects.
The double negative construction has been fully grammaticalised in standard Afrikaans and its proper use follows a set of fairly complex rules as the examples below show:
A notable exception to this is the use of the negating grammar form that coincides with negating the English present participle. In this case there is only a single negation.
English: He is in [the] hospital, though he eats not.
Certain words in Afrikaans arise due to grammar. For example, , which literally means "must not", usually becomes ; although one does not have to write or say it like this, virtually all Afrikaans speakers will change the two words to in the same way as do not shifts to don't in English.
The Dutch word ("it" in English) does not correspond to in Afrikaans. The Dutch words corresponding to Afrikaans are , , and .
Phonology
Vowels
As phonemes, and occur only in the words 'mirror' and 'bullet', which used to be pronounced with sequences and , respectively. In other cases, and occur as allophones of, respectively, and before .
is phonetically long before .
is always stressed and occurs only in the word 'wedges'.
The closest unrounded counterparts of are central , rather than front .
occur only in a few words.
occurs as an allophone of before , though this occurs primarily dialectally, most commonly in the former Transvaal and Free State provinces.
Diphthongs
occur mainly in loanwords.
Consonants
All obstruents at the ends of words are devoiced, so that e.g. a final is realized as .
occur only in loanwords. is also an allophone of in some environments.
is most often uvular . Velar occurs only in some speakers.
is usually an alveolar trill or tap . In some parts of the former Cape Province, it is realized uvularly, either as a trill or a fricative .
occurs as an allophone of at the end of a syllable.
Dialects
Following early dialectal studies of Afrikaans, it was theorised that three main historical dialects probably existed after the Great Trek in the 1830s. These dialects are the Northern Cape, Western Cape, and Eastern Cape dialects. Northern Cape dialect may have resulted from contact between Dutch settlers and the Khoi-Khoi people between the Great Karoo and the Kunene, and Eastern Cape dialect between the Dutch and the Xhosa. Remnants of these dialects still remain in present-day Afrikaans, although the standardising effect of Standard Afrikaans has contributed to a great levelling of differences in modern times.
There is also a prison cant, known as Sabela, which is based on Afrikaans, yet heavily influenced by Zulu. This language is used as a secret language in prison and is taught to initiates.
The term ("Cape Afrikaans") is sometimes erroneously used to refer to the entire Western Cape dialect; it is more commonly used for a particular sociolect spoken in the Cape Peninsula of South Africa. was once spoken by all population groups. However, it became increasingly restricted to the Cape Coloured ethnic group in Cape Town and environs. Kaapse Afrikaans is still understood by the large majority of native Afrikaans speakers in South Africa.
preserves some features more similar to Dutch than to Afrikaans.
The 1st person singular pronoun as in Dutch as opposed to Afrikaans
The diminutive endings , pronounced as in Dutch and not as as in Afrikaans.
The use of the form (compare Dutch ) as opposed to Afrikaans
has some other features not typically found in Afrikaans.
The pronunciation of , normally as in Dutch is often a . This is the strongest feature of .
The insertion of after , and when followed by , e.g. as opposed to Standard Afrikaans .
is also characterised by much code-switching between English and Afrikaans, especially in the inner-city and lower socio-economic status areas of Cape Town.
An example of characteristic :
:
English (literal): And I say to you, what seek you here by me? I seek you not! No, go now away!
English: And I'm telling you, what are you looking for here? I'm not looking for you! No, go away now!
The term ("Afrikaans of the Orange River") is sometimes erroneously used to refer to the Northern Cape dialect; it is more commonly used for the regional peculiarities of standard Afrikaans spoken in the Upington/Orange River wine district of South Africa.
Some of the characteristics of are the plural form (Ma-, ), variant pronunciation such as in ("Church") and ("money") and the ending , which indicates possession.
Patagonian Afrikaans dialect
A distinct dialect of Afrikaans is spoken by the 650-strong South African community of Argentina, in the region of Patagonia.
Influences on Afrikaans from other languages
Malay
Due to the early settlement of a Cape Malay community in Cape Town, who are now known as Coloureds, numerous Classical Malay words were brought into Afrikaans. Some of these words entered Dutch via people arriving from, what is now known as Indonesia as part of their colonial heritage. Malay words in Afrikaans include:
, which means 'very'/'much'/'many' (from ) is a very commonly used Afrikaans word, different from its Dutch equivalent or .
, Afrikaans for jacket (from , ultimately from Persian), used where Dutch would use or . The word in Dutch is now considered archaic and only used in written, literary texts.
bobotie, a traditional Cape-Malay dish, made from spiced minced meat baked with an egg-based topping.
, which means banana. This is different from the common Dutch word . The Indonesian word is also used in Dutch, though usage is more common.
, which means saucer (from , also from Persian).
Portuguese
Some words originally came from Portuguese such as ("umbrella") from the Portuguese , ("pen/cattle enclosure") from the Portuguese , and ("corn", from ). These words have become common in South Africa to an extent of being used in many other South African languages. Some of these words also exist in Dutch, like "parasol", though usage is less common and meanings can slightly differ.
Khoisan languages
, meaning cannabis
, meaning lizard, diminutive adapted from Khoekhoe word
, meaning insect, from the Khoisan xo-xo
, blanket of animal hides
, walking stick from Khoekhoe
Some of these words also exist in Dutch, though with a more specific meaning: for example means "South-African tribal javelin" and means "South-African tribal blanket of animal hides".
Bantu languages
Loanwords from Bantu languages in Afrikaans include the names of indigenous birds, such as and , and indigenous plants, such as and .
, from the Zulu word meaning "scholar" or "student", but used to mean someone who is a student of/expert on a certain subject, i.e. He is a language .
, meaning bride price, from (and referring to) lobolo of the Nguni languages
, the grey crowned crane, known in Latin as Balearica regulorum
, medium-sized dioecious tree known in Latin as Sclerocarya birrea
, species of thatching grass known as Hyparrhenia
, deciduous tree also known by its Latin name, Spirostachys africana
/ , an adaption of the word , meaning "to go home" or "to knock off (from work)".
French
The revoking of the Edict of Nantes on 22 October 1685 was a milestone in the history of South Africa, for it marked the beginning of the great Huguenot exodus from France. It is estimated that between 250,000 and 300,000 Protestants left France between 1685 and 1700; out of these, according to Louvois, 100,000 had received military training. A measure of the calibre of these immigrants and of their acceptance by host countries (in particular South Africa) is given by H. V. Morton in his book: In Search of South Africa (London, 1948). The Huguenots were responsible for a great linguistic contribution to Afrikaans, particularly in terms of military terminology as many of them fought on the battlefields during the wars of the Great Trek.
Most of the words in this list are descendants from Dutch borrowings from French, Old French or Latin, and are not direct influences from French on Afrikaans.
Orthography
The Afrikaans writing system is based on Dutch, using the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet, plus 16 additional vowels with diacritics. The hyphen (e.g. in a compound like see-eend 'sea duck'), apostrophe (e.g. ma's 'mothers'), and a whitespace character (e.g. in multi-word units like Dooie See 'Dead Sea') is part of the orthography of words, while the indefinite article ʼn is a ligature. All the alphabet letters, including those with diacritics, have capital letters as allographs; the ʼn does not have a capital letter allograph. This means that Afrikaans has 88 graphemes with allographs in total.
In Afrikaans, many consonants are dropped from the earlier Dutch spelling. For example, ('only') in Dutch becomes in Afrikaans. Also, Afrikaans and some Dutch dialects make no distinction between and , having merged the latter into the former; while the word for "south" is written in Dutch, it is spelled in Afrikaans (as well as dialectal Dutch writings) to represent this merger. Similarly, the Dutch digraph , normally pronounced as , corresponds to Afrikaans , except where it replaces the Dutch suffix which is pronounced as , as in > .
Another difference is the indefinite article, in Afrikaans and in Dutch. "A book" is in Afrikaans, whereas it is either or in Dutch. This is usually pronounced as just a weak vowel, .
The diminutive suffix in Afrikaans is , or , whereas in Dutch it is or , hence a "bit" is ʼn in Afrikaans and in Dutch.
The letters c, q, x, and z occur almost exclusively in borrowings from French, English, Greek and Latin. This is usually because words that had c and ch in the original Dutch are spelled with k and g, respectively, in Afrikaans. Similarly original qu and x are most often spelt kw and ks, respectively. For example, instead of equatoriaal, and instead of excuus.
The vowels with diacritics in non-loanword Afrikaans are: á, ä, é, è, ê, ë, í, î, ï, ó, ô, ö, ú, û, ü, ý. Diacritics are ignored when alphabetising, though they are still important, even when typing the diacritic forms may be difficult. For example, ("ate") instead of the 3 e's alongside each other: *, which can never occur in Afrikaans, or , which translates to "say", whereas is a possessive form. The acute's (á, é, í, ó, ú, ý) primary function is to place emphasis on a word (i.e. for emphatic reasons), by adding it to the emphasised syllable of the word. For example, sál ("will" (verb)), néé ('no'), móét ("must"), hý ("he"), gewéét ("knew"). The acute is only placed on the i if it is the only vowel in the emphasised word: wil ('want' (verb)) becomes wíl, but lui ('lazy') becomes lúi. Only a few non-loan words is spelled with acutes, e.g. dié ('this'), ná ('after'), óf ... óf ('either ... or'), nóg ... nóg ('neither ... nor'), etc. Only four non-loan words are spelled with the grave: ('yes?', 'right?', 'eh?'), ('here, take this!' or '[this is] yours!'), hè ('huh?', 'what?', 'eh?'), and appèl ('(formal) appeal' (noun)).
Initial apostrophes
A few short words in Afrikaans take initial apostrophes. In modern Afrikaans, these words are always written in lower case (except if the entire line is uppercase), and if they occur at the beginning of a sentence, the next word is capitalised. Three examples of such apostrophed words are . The last (the indefinite article) is the only apostrophed word that is common in modern written Afrikaans, since the other examples are shortened versions of other words ( and , respectively) and are rarely found outside of a poetic context.
Here are a few examples:
The apostrophe and the following letter are regarded as two separate characters, and are never written using a single glyph, although a single character variant of the indefinite article appears in Unicode, .
Table of characters
For more on the pronunciation of the letters below, see Help:IPA/Afrikaans.
Afrikaans phrases
Although there are many different dialects and accents, the transcription would be fairly standard.
In the Dutch language the word means African, in the general sense. Consequently, Afrikaans is commonly denoted as . This ambiguity also exists in Afrikaans itself and is resolved either in the context of its usage, or by using in the adjective sense (e.g. Afrika-olifant for African elephant).
A handful of Afrikaans words are exactly the same as in English. The following Afrikaans sentences, for example, are exactly the same in the two languages, in terms of both their meaning and spelling; only their pronunciation differs.
()
()
Sample text
Psalm 23 1983 translation:
Die Here is my Herder, ek kom niks kort nie.
Hy laat my rus in groen weivelde. Hy bring my by waters waar daar vrede is.
Hy gee my nuwe krag. Hy lei my op die regte paaie tot eer van Sy naam.
Selfs al gaan ek deur donker dieptes, sal ek nie bang wees nie, want U is by my. In U hande is ek veilig.
Psalm 23 1953 translation:
Die Here is my Herder, niks sal my ontbreek nie.
Hy laat my neerlê in groen weivelde; na waters waar rus is, lei Hy my heen.
Hy verkwik my siel; Hy lei my in die spore van geregtigheid, om sy Naam ontwil.
Al gaan ek ook in 'n dal van doodskaduwee, ek sal geen onheil vrees nie; want U is met my: u stok en u staf die vertroos my.
Lord's Prayer (Afrikaans New Living translation)
Ons Vader in die hemel, laat U Naam geheilig word.
Laat U koningsheerskappy spoedig kom.
Laat U wil hier op aarde uitgevoer word soos in die hemel.
Gee ons die porsie brood wat ons vir vandag nodig het.
En vergeef ons ons sondeskuld soos ons ook óns skuldenaars vergewe het.
Bewaar ons sodat ons nie aan verleiding sal toegee nie; en bevry ons van die greep van die Bose.
Want van U is die koninkryk,
en die krag,
en die heerlikheid,
tot in ewigheid. Amen
Lord's Prayer (Original translation):
Onse Vader wat in die hemel is,
laat U Naam geheilig word;
laat U koninkryk kom;
laat U wil geskied op die aarde,
net soos in die hemel.
Gee ons vandag ons daaglikse brood;
en vergeef ons ons skulde
soos ons ons skuldenaars vergewe
en laat ons nie in die versoeking nie
maar verlos ons van die Bose
Want aan U behoort die koninkryk
en die krag
en die heerlikheid
tot in ewigheid. Amen
See also
Arts Festival
Afrikaans literature
Afrikaans speaking population in South Africa
Arabic Afrikaans
(Afrikaans Dictionary)
Differences between Afrikaans and Dutch
IPA/Afrikaans
(Arts Festival)
Languages of South Africa
Languages of Zimbabwe#Afrikaans
List of Afrikaans language poets
List of Afrikaans singers
List of English words of Afrikaans origin
South African Translators' Institute
1000 Most Common Afrikaans Words
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
Further reading
Grieshaber, Nicky. 2011. Diacs and Quirks in a Nutshell – Afrikaans spelling explained. Pietermaritzburg. ; e-.
External links
afrikaans.com
Afrikaans English Online Dictionary at Hablaa
Afrikaans-English Online Dictionary at majstro.com
Learn Afrikaans Online (Open Learning Environment)
Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge (FAK) – Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Associations
Dutch Writers from South Africa: A Cultural-Historical Study, Part I from the World Digital Library
Afrikaans Literature and Language Web dossier African Studies Centre, Leiden (2011)
Analytic languages
Articles containing video clips
Languages of Botswana
Languages of Namibia
Languages of South Africa
Languages of Eswatini
Low Franconian languages
Stress-timed languages
Subject–object–verb languages
Verb-second languages |
2163 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolus | Aeolus | In Greek mythology, Aeolus (; , ) is a name shared by three mythical characters. These three personages are often difficult to tell apart, and even the ancient mythographers appear to have been perplexed about which Aeolus was which. Diodorus Siculus made an attempt to define each of these three (although it is clear that he also became muddled), and his opinion is followed here.
The first Aeolus was a son of Hellen and eponymous founder of the Aeolian race.
The second Aeolus was a son of Poseidon, who led a colony to islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea.
The third Aeolus was a son of Hippotes who is mentioned in Odyssey and the Aeneid as the Keeper of the Winds.
All three men named Aeolus appear to be connected genealogically, although the precise relationship, especially regarding the second and third Aeolus, is often ambiguous as their identities seem to have been merged by many ancient writers.
Aeolus was also the name of the following minor characters:
Aeolus, a defender of Thebes in the war of the Seven against Thebes. He was killed by Parthenopaeus.
Aeolus, a Trojan companion of Aeneas in Italy, where he was killed by Turnus, King of the Rutulians. Aeolus was father of Clytius and Misenus. "Otherwise unknown to fame", he survived both the Greeks and Achilles at Troy, and Richard F. Thomas pointed out textual parallels between this passage and the Illiad, book 20.
Notes
References
Apollodorus The Library with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. ISBN 0-674-99135-4 Online version at the Perseus Digital Library Greek text available from the same website
Gaius Julius Hyginus Fabulae from The Myths of Hyginus translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies Online version at the Topos Text Project
Homer, The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, Maine, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919 Online version at the Perseus Digital Library Greek text available from the same website
Publius Papinius Statius The Thebaid translated by John Henry Mozley. Loeb Classical Library Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1928. Online version at the Topos Text Project
Publius Papinius Statius, The Thebaid. Vol I-II John Henry Mozley. London: William Heinemann; New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. 1928 Latin text available at the Perseus Digital Library
Publius Vergilius Maro Aeneid Theodore C. Williams. trans. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1910 Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
Publius Vergilius Maro, Bucolics, Aeneid, and Georgics J. B. Greenough. Boston. Ginn & Co. 1900 Latin text available at the Perseus Digital Library
Trojans
Characters in the Aeneid
Characters in Greek mythology
Characters in Seven against Thebes |
2166 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC | ABC | ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Broadcasting
American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
Disney–ABC Television Group, the former name of the parent organization of ABC Television Network
Australian Broadcasting Corporation, one of the national publicly funded broadcasters of Australia
ABC Television (Australian TV network), the national television network of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
ABC TV (Australian TV channel), the flagship TV station of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
ABC (TV station), Canberra, and other ABC TV local stations in state capitals
ABC Australia (Southeast Asian TV channel), an international pay TV channel
ABC Radio (disambiguation), various radio stations including the American and Australian ABCs
Associated Broadcasting Corporation, one of the former names of TV5 Network, Inc., a Philippine television company
ABC 5, the former name of TV5 (Philippines), a Philippine free-to-air network
ABC (Swedish TV programme), a former Swedish regional news programme
ABC Weekend TV, a former British television company
Asahi Broadcasting Corporation, a Japanese commercial television and radio station
Associated Broadcasting Company, a former name of Associated Television, a British television company
Music
Groups
ABC (band), an English new wave band
A.B.C-Z (A.B.C. till 2008), a Japanese boyband managed by Johnny's and Associates
Acid Black Cherry, a Japanese rock band
Alien Beat Club, a Danish pop band
Another Bad Creation, an American R&B and rap musical group
Labels
ABC Classics, an Australian record label
ABC Records, an American record label
Albums
ABC (The Jackson 5 album), a 1970 album by The Jackson 5
ABC (Jin album), a 2007 album by Chinese-American rapper Jin
ABC (Kreidler album), a 2014 album by the band Kreidler
Other uses in music
ABC song (disambiguation), various songs with this title
ABC notation, a musical notation language
O2 ABC Glasgow, a music venue
Periodicals
ABC (magazine), an Italian magazine published between 1960 and 1977
ABC (newspaper), a Spanish daily newspaper founded in 1903
ABC (Monterrey newspaper), a Mexican newspaper founded in 1985
ABC Color, a Paraguayan newspaper founded in 1967
Other uses in arts, entertainment, and media
ABC Cinemas, a UK cinema chain
Alphabet book, any of several children's books depicting the alphabet
America's Best Comics, an imprint of DC Comics
Places
ABC countries, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile
ABC Islands (Alaska), Admiralty Island, Baranof Island, and Chichagof Island
ABC islands (Leeward Antilles), Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao
ABC Region, an industrial area outside of São Paulo, Brazil
Albacete Airport, a joint civilian/military airport serving Albacete, Spain (IATA: ABC)
Altnabreac railway station, Scotland, by National Rail code
Appa Balwant Chowk, area of Pune, India, famous for its bookshops
Brands and enterprises
Companies
Financial
Agricultural Bank of China, a bank in the People's Republic of China
Arab Banking Corporation, an international bank headquartered in Bahrain
Food and beverage
ABC (food), an Indonesian-based food division of the H. J. Heinz Company
Aerated Bread Company, a once-famous British bakery and tea-room chain
Appalachian Brewing Company, an American brewery
Transport
ABC (1906 automobile), an American car
ABC (1920 automobile), an English car
ABC (1922 automobile), a planned American car
ABC motorcycles, a British motorcycle manufacturer
ABC Motors, an English manufacturer of aircraft, aero engines and cars
ABC Rail Guide, British railway guide published between 1853 and 2007
Other companies
ABC Learning Centres, a former Australian childcare business
ABC Stores (Hawaii), a chain of convenience stores in Hawaii
Aircraft Builders Council, a provider of aviation products liability insurance
Anglo Belgian Corporation, a diesel engine manufacturer
Audit Bureau of Circulations (disambiguation), publication circulation auditing companies
Audit Bureau of Circulations (India), a non-profit circulation-auditing organisation
Audit Bureau of Circulations (North America)
Audit Bureau of Circulations (UK)
Mathematics
abc conjecture, a concept in number theory
ABC formula
Approximate Bayesian computation, a family of statistical techniques
Organizations
Political organizations and unions
ABC (Cuba), Cuban political organization 1931–1952, named after the system for labeling its clandestine cells
All Basotho Convention, a political party in Lesotho
Alliance for Barangay Concerns, a political party in the Philippines
American Bakery and Confectionery Workers International Union, a predecessor to the contemporary Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers' International Union
Americans Battling Communism, founded 1947
Anarchist Black Cross, a political organization
Anything But Conservative, a 2008 Canadian political campaign
Association of Barangay Captains, an organization of all the barangays (villages) in the Philippines now known as the League of Barangays in the Philippines
Association of British Counties, of historic counties
Religious organizations
American Baptist Convention, former name of American Baptist Churches USA
Association of Baptist Churches in Ireland, in Ireland and the United Kingdom
Sports organizations
ABC Futebol Clube, a football (soccer) club based in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil
American Bowling Congress, which merged in 2005 with other bowling organizations to form the United States Bowling Congress (USBC)
Association of Boxing Commissions, a North American not-for-profit professional boxing and mixed martial arts (MMA) organization
Indianapolis ABCs, a 1900s Negro league baseball team
Other organizations
Academia Británica Cuscatleca, a school in Santa Tecla, El Salvador
Accessible Books Consortium, a subunit of the World Intellectual Property Organization
Afrikan Black Coalition, a University of California student organization
American Bird Conservancy, a non-profit membership organization
Association of Black Cardiologists, a North American non-profit
Australian Bird Count, a project of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union
Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, Virginia, US
Science and technology
Biology and medicine
ABC (medicine), a mnemonic for "Airway, Breathing, Circulation"
Abacavir, an antiretroviral drug used to treat HIV/AIDS
ABC model of flower development, a genetic model
Abortion–breast cancer hypothesis, a posited connection between breast cancer and abortion
Alien big cat, large feline outside its indigenous range
Aneurysmal bone cyst, a kind of lesion
ATP-binding cassette transporter, a transmembrane protein
Computing
Hardware
ABC, a line of computers by Dataindustrier AB
Acorn Business Computer, a series of microcomputers announced at the end of 1983 by the British company Acorn Computers
Atanasoff–Berry computer, an early electronic digital computer
Other uses in computing
ABC (computer virus), a memory-resident, file-infecting computer virus
ABC (programming language), a programming language and environment
ABC (stream cipher), a stream cipher algorithm
.abc, ActionScript Byte Code files; see comparison of application virtual machines
.abc, or Alembic (computer graphics) file format
Abstract base class, a programming language concept
Artificial bee colony algorithm, a search algorithm
Economics
ABC analysis, an inventory categorization technique
Activity-based costing, an accounting method
Assignment for the benefit of creditors, a concept in bankruptcy law
Psychology
ABC data collection, a descriptive functional behavior assessment method in applied behavior analysis
Affective-behavioral-cognitive (ABC) model, an attitude component model
Transportation
Active Body Control, a type of automobile suspension technology
Automatic Buffer Couplers, a type of railway couplers
Other uses in science and technology
ABC dry chemical, a fire extinguishing agent
ABC weapon, a weapon of mass destruction
Accelerated bridge construction, a technique for building bridges
Aerial bundled cable, for power lines
Airborne Cigar, a British military electronic countermeasure system used during World War II (WWII) to jam Luftwaffe night fighter communications
Atomic, biological, and chemical defense, now rendered as chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense
Other uses
Andrew Cunningham, 1st Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope (1883–1963), nicknamed ABC, British WWII admiral
ABC strategy, for "Abstinence, be faithful, use a condom", a sex-education strategy
ABC trial of Crispin Aubrey, John Berry and Duncan Campbell in 1978 in the United Kingdom under the Official Secrets Act 1911
American-born Chinese, people of Chinese ethnicity born in the United States
Australian-born Chinese, people of Chinese ethnicity born in Australia
Advance Booking Charter, a type of air travel
Air batu campur, also known as ais kacang, a Malaysian dessert
Architectural, building and construction, an industry; for example see Industry Foundation Classes
See also
.abc (disambiguation)
Alcoholic Beverage Control (disambiguation) |
2167 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alford%20plea | Alford plea | An Alford plea (also called a Kennedy plea in West Virginia, an Alford guilty plea and the Alford doctrine), in United States law, is a guilty plea in criminal court, whereby a defendant in a criminal case does not admit to the criminal act and asserts innocence. In entering an Alford plea, the defendant admits that the evidence presented by the prosecution would be likely to persuade a judge or jury to find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Alford pleas are legally permissible in nearly all U.S. federal and state courts, but are not allowed in the state courts of Indiana, Michigan, and New Jersey, or in the courts of the United States Armed Forces.
Origin
The Alford guilty plea is named after the United States Supreme Court case of North Carolina v. Alford (1970). Henry Alford had been indicted on a charge of first-degree murder in 1963. Evidence in the case included testimony from witnesses that Alford had said, after the victim's death, that he had killed the individual. Court testimony showed that Alford and the victim had argued at the victim's house. Alford left the house, and afterwards the victim received a fatal gunshot wound when he opened the door responding to a knock.
Alford was faced with the possibility of capital punishment if convicted by a jury trial. The death penalty was the default sentence by North Carolina law at the time, if two requisites in the case were satisfied: the defendant had to have pleaded not guilty, and the jury did not instead recommend a life sentence. Had he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, Alford would have had the possibility of a life sentence and would have avoided the death penalty, but he did not want to admit guilt. Nonetheless, Alford pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and said he was doing so to avoid a death sentence, were he to be convicted of first-degree murder, after attempting to contest that charge. Alford was sentenced to 30 years in prison after the trial judge accepted the plea bargain and ruled that the defendant had been adequately advised by his defense lawyer.
Alford appealed and requested a new trial, arguing he was forced into a guilty plea because he was afraid of receiving a death sentence. The Supreme Court of North Carolina ruled that the defendant had voluntarily entered the guilty plea with knowledge of what that meant. Following this ruling, Alford petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, which upheld the initial ruling, and subsequently to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which ruled that Alford's plea was not voluntary, because it was made under fear of the death penalty. "I just pleaded guilty because they said if I didn't, they would gas me for it," wrote Alford in one of his appeals.
The case was then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Supreme Court Justice Byron White wrote the majority decision, which held that for the plea to be accepted, the defendant must have been advised by a competent lawyer who was able to inform the individual that his best decision in the case would be to enter a guilty plea. The Court ruled that the defendant can enter such a plea "when he concludes that his interests require a guilty plea and the record strongly indicates guilt." The Court allowed the guilty plea with a simultaneous protestation of innocence only because there was enough evidence to show that the prosecution had a strong case for a conviction and the defendant was entering such a plea to avoid this possible sentencing. The Court went on to note that even if the defendant could have shown that he would not have entered a guilty plea "but for" the rationale of receiving a lesser sentence, the plea itself would not have been ruled invalid. As evidence existed that could have supported Alford's conviction, the Supreme Court held that his guilty plea was allowable while the defendant himself still maintained that he was not guilty.
Alford died in prison in 1975.
Definition
The Dictionary of Politics: Selected American and Foreign Political and Legal Terms defines the term "Alford plea" as: "A plea under which a defendant may choose to plead guilty, not because of an admission to the crime, but because the prosecutor has sufficient evidence to place a charge and to obtain conviction in court. The plea is commonly used in local and state courts in the United States." According to University of Richmond Law Review, "When offering an Alford plea, a defendant asserts his innocence but admits that sufficient evidence exists to convict him of the offense." A Guide to Military Criminal Law notes that under the Alford plea, "the defendant concedes that the prosecution has enough evidence to convict, but the defendant still refuses to admit guilt." The book Plea Bargaining's Triumph: A History of Plea Bargaining in America published by Stanford University Press defines the plea as one in "which the defendant adheres to his/her claim of innocence even while allowing that the government has enough evidence to prove his/her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt". According to the book Gender, Crime, and Punishment published by Yale University Press, "Under the Alford doctrine, a defendant does not admit guilt but admits that the state has sufficient evidence to find him or her guilty, should the case go to trial." Webster's New World Law Dictionary defines Alford plea as: "A guilty plea entered as part of a plea bargain by a criminal defendant who denies committing the crime or who does not actually admit his guilt. In federal courts, such plea may be accepted as long as there is evidence that the defendant is actually guilty."
The Alford guilty plea is "a plea of guilty containing a protestation of innocence". The defendant pleads guilty, but does not have to specifically admit to the guilt itself. The defendant maintains a claim of innocence, but agrees to the entry of a conviction in the charged crime. Upon receiving an Alford guilty plea from a defendant, the court may immediately pronounce the defendant guilty and impose sentence as if the defendant had otherwise been convicted of the crime. Sources disagree, as may differing states' laws, as to what category of plea the Alford plea falls under: Some sources state that the Alford guilty plea is a form of nolo contendere, where the defendant in the case states "no contest" to the factual matter of the case as given in the charges outlined by the prosecution. Others hold that an Alford plea is simply one form of a guilty plea, and, as with other guilty pleas, the judge must see there is some factual basis for the plea.
Defendants can take advantage of the ability to use the Alford guilty plea, by admitting there is enough evidence to convict them of a higher crime, while at the same time pleading guilty to a lesser charge. Defendants usually enter an Alford guilty plea if they want to avoid a possible worse sentence were they to lose the case against them at trial. It affords defendants the ability to accept a plea bargain, while maintaining innocence.
Court and government use
This form of guilty plea has been frequently used in local and state courts in the United States, though it constitutes a small percentage of all plea bargains in the U.S. This form of plea is not allowed in courts of the United States military. In 2000, the United States Department of Justice noted, "In an Alford plea the defendant agrees to plead guilty because he or she realizes that there is little chance to win acquittal because of the strong evidence of guilt. About 17% of State inmates and 5% of Federal inmates submitted either an Alford plea or a no contest plea, regardless of the type of attorney. This difference reflects the relative readiness of State courts, compared to Federal courts, to accept an alternative plea."
In the 1995 case State of Idaho v. Howry before the Idaho Court of Appeals, the Court commented on the impact of the Alford guilty plea on later sentencing. The Court ruled, "Although an Alford plea allows a defendant to plead guilty amid assertions of innocence, it does not require a court to accept those assertions. The sentencing court may, of necessity, consider a broad range of information, including the evidence of the crime, the defendant's criminal history and the demeanor of the defendant, including the presence or absence of remorse." In the 1999 South Carolina Supreme Court case State v. Gaines, the Court held that Alford guilty pleas were to be held valid in the absence of a specific on-the-record ruling that the pleas were voluntary – provided that the sentencing judge acted appropriately in accordance with the rules for acceptance of a plea made voluntarily by the defendant. The Court held that a ruling that the plea was entered into voluntarily is implied by the act of sentencing.
In the 2006 case before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Ballard v. Burton, Judge Carl E. Stewart writing for the Court held that an Alford guilty plea is a "variation of an ordinary guilty plea". In October 2008, the United States Department of Justice defined an Alford plea as: "the defendant maintains his or her innocence with respect to the charge to which he or she offers to plead guilty".
In March 2009, the Minnesota House of Representatives characterized the Alford plea as: "a form of a guilty plea in which the defendant asserts innocence but acknowledges on the record that the prosecutor could present enough evidence to prove guilt." The Minnesota Judicial Branch similarly states: "Alford Plea: A plea of guilty that may be accepted by a court even where the defendant does not admit guilt. In an Alford plea, defendant has to admit that he has reviewed the state's evidence, a reasonable jury could find him guilty, and he wants to take advantage of a plea offer that has been made. Court has discretion as to whether to accept this type of plea."
The U.S. Attorneys' Manual states that in the federal system, Alford pleas "should be avoided except in the most unusual circumstances, even if no plea agreement is involved and the plea would cover all pending charges." U.S. Attorneys are required to obtain the approval of an Assistant Attorney General with supervisory responsibility over the subject matter before accepting such a plea.
Commentary
In his book American Criminal Justice (1972), Jonathan D. Casper comments on the Supreme Court decision, noting, "The Alford decision recognizes the plea-bargaining system, acknowledging that a man may maintain his innocence but still plead guilty in order to minimize his potential loss." Casper comments on the impact of the Supreme Court's decision to require evidence of guilt in such a plea: "By requiring that there be some evidence of guilt in such a situation, the decision attempts to protect the 'really' innocent from the temptations to which plea-bargaining and defense attorneys may subject them."
US Air Force attorney Steven E. Walburn argues in a 1998 article in The Air Force Law Review that this form of guilty plea should be adopted for usage by the United States military. "In fairness to an accused, if, after consultation with his defense counsel, he knowingly and intelligently determines that his best interest is served by an Alford-type guilty plea, he should be free to choose this path. The system should not force him to lie under oath, nor to go to trial with no promise of the ultimate outcome concerning guilt or punishment. We must trust the accused to make such an important decision for himself. The military provides an accused facing court-martial with a qualified defense attorney. Together, they are in the best position to properly weigh the impact his decision, and the resulting conviction, will have upon himself and his family," writes Walburn. He emphasizes that when allowing these pleas, "trial counsel should establish as strong a factual basis as possible", in order to minimize the possible negative outcomes to "the public's perception of the administration of justice within the military".
Stephanos Bibas writes in a 2003 analysis for Cornell Law Review that Judge Frank H. Easterbrook and a majority of scholars "praise these pleas as efficient, constitutional means of resolving cases". Bibas notes that prominent plea bargain critic Albert Alschuler supports the use of this form of plea, writing, "He views them as a lesser evil, a way to empower defendants within a flawed system. As long as we have plea bargaining, he maintains, innocent defendants should be free to use these pleas to enter advantageous plea bargains without lying. And guilty defendants who are in denial should be empowered to use these pleas instead of being forced to stand trial." Bibas instead asserts that this form of plea is "unwise and should be abolished". Bibas argues, "These procedures may be constitutional and efficient, but they undermine key values served by admissions of guilt in open court. They undermine the procedural values of accuracy and public confidence in accuracy and fairness, by convicting innocent defendants and creating the perception that innocent defendants are being pressured into pleading guilty. More basically, they allow guilty defendants to avoid accepting responsibility for their wrongs."
Legal scholar Jim Drennan, an expert on the court system at the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told the Winston-Salem Journal in a 2007 interview that the ability to use this form of guilty plea as an option in courts had a far-reaching effect throughout the United States. Drennan commented, "We have lots of laws, but human interaction creates unique circumstances and the law has to adapt." He said of the Supreme Court case, "They had to make a decision about what to do. One of the things the court has to do is figure out how to answer new questions, and that is what happened in this case."
Common criticisms of Alford pleas include harm to victims who are denied justice, harm to society from lack of respect for the criminal justice system, the incentive for coercion, violating the right against self-incrimination, hindering rehabilitation by avoiding treatment, and the arbitrary nature in which they are utilized.
See also
Alternative pleading
Deferred adjudication
Insanity defense
List of U.S. states by Alford plea usage
Malum in se
Malum prohibitum
Nolo contendere
Peremptory plea
West Memphis Three
Michael Peterson
References
Further reading
External links
Alford Doctrine – State of Connecticut, Judicial Branch
USAM 9-16.000 Pleas—Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11, United States Department of Justice
Issue: Effect of Alford Plea of Guilty, Issues In NY Criminal Law, Volume 4, Issue 11.
Transcript Of Plea Form, North Carolina, with question about term
Court cases
North Carolina v. Alford, Supreme Court of the United States
US v. Szucko, Definition of term by United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
US v. Bierd, Definition of term by United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
Pleas |
2170 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABCD | ABCD | ABCD is a list of the first four letters in the English alphabet. It may also refer to:
Medicine
ABC (medicine), also known as ABCD, a mnemonic for steps in resuscitation
ABCD rating, a staging system for prostate cancer
ABCD syndrome, a genetic disorder
ABCD guideline, a heuristic for detecting melanomas
ABCD2 score, a score for determining the risk of stroke after a transient ischemic attack (TIA)
ABCD1, a protein
Science
ABCD matrix analysis, a type of ray tracing technique used in the design of some optical systems
ABCD-parameters, a type of properties describing the electrical behavior of linear electrical networks
ABCD Schema, a highly structured data exchange and access model for taxon occurrence data (specimens, observations, etc. of living organisms), i.e. primary biodiversity data
Film
ABCD: American-Born Confused Desi, a 2013 Malayalam comedy film
ABCD: Any Body Can Dance, a 2013 Bollywood film
ABCD 2, a 2015 film based on dance
ABCD (film), a 2005 Tamil film released in India
ABCD – American Born Confused Desi, a 2019 Telugu drama film
Other uses
ABCd, American streaming service
Action for Boston Community Development, a Boston, Massachusetts-based non-profit social services agency
Asset-based community development, a methodology that seeks to uncover and highlight the strengths within communities
CompTIA, also known as the Association of Better Computer Dealers
ABCD Region, an industrial district outside of São Paulo, Brazil
American-Born Confused Desi, refers to American youth of South Asian descent
ABCD: add, browse, change, delete, another representation of Create, read, update and delete
ABCD line, a Japanese term for embargoes placed against Japan by the Americans, British, Chinese and Dutch, as well as other countries
ABCD ships, The first four steel ships built during the "New Navy" period of U.S. Naval history - Atlanta, Boston, Chicago and Dolphin
Four major agriculture commodity companies
Archer Daniels Midland
Bunge
Cargill
Louis Dreyfus |
2171 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-realism | Anti-realism | In analytic philosophy, anti-realism is a position which encompasses many varieties such as metaphysical, mathematical, semantic, scientific, moral and epistemic. The term was first articulated by British philosopher Michael Dummett in an argument against a form of realism Dummett saw as 'colorless reductionism'.
In anti-realism, the truth of a statement rests on its demonstrability through internal logic mechanisms, such as the context principle or intuitionistic logic, in direct opposition to the realist notion that the truth of a statement rests on its correspondence to an external, independent reality. In anti-realism, this external reality is hypothetical and is not assumed.
Anti-realism in its most general sense can be understood as being in contrast to a generic realism, which holds that distinctive objects of a subject-matter exist and have properties independent of one's beliefs and conceptual schemes. The ways in which anti-realism rejects these type of claims can vary dramatically. Because this encompasses statements containing abstract ideal objects (i.e. mathematical objects), anti-realism may apply to a wide range of philosophical topics, from material objects to the theoretical entities of science, mathematical statement, mental states, events and processes, the past and the future.
Varieties
Metaphysical anti-realism
One kind of metaphysical anti-realism maintains a skepticism about the physical world, arguing either: 1) that nothing exists outside the mind, or 2) that we would have no access to a mind-independent reality, even if it exists. The latter case often takes the form of a denial of the idea that we can have 'unconceptualised' experiences (see Myth of the Given). Conversely, most realists (specifically, indirect realists) hold that perceptions or sense data are caused by mind-independent objects. But this introduces the possibility of another kind of skepticism: since our understanding of causality is that the same effect can be produced by multiple causes, there is a lack of determinacy about what one is really perceiving, as in the brain in a vat scenario. The main alternative to this sort of metaphysical anti-realism is metaphysical realism.
On a more abstract level, model-theoretic anti-realist arguments hold that a given set of symbols in a theory can be mapped onto any number of sets of real-world objects—each set being a "model" of the theory—provided the relationship between the objects is the same (compare with symbol grounding.)
In ancient Greek philosophy, nominalist (anti-realist) doctrines about universals were proposed by the Stoics, especially Chrysippus. In early modern philosophy, conceptualist anti-realist doctrines about universals were proposed by thinkers like René Descartes, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, George Berkeley, and David Hume. In late modern philosophy, anti-realist doctrines about knowledge were proposed by the German idealist Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel was a proponent of what is now called inferentialism: he believed that the ground for the axioms and the foundation for the validity of the inferences are the right consequences and that the axioms do not explain the consequence. Kant and Hegel held conceptualist views about universals. In contemporary philosophy, anti-realism was revived in the form of empirio-criticism, logical positivism, semantic anti-realism and scientific instrumentalism (see below).
Mathematical anti-realism
In the philosophy of mathematics, realism is the claim that mathematical entities such as 'number' have an observer-independent existence. Empiricism, which associates numbers with concrete physical objects, and Platonism, in which numbers are abstract, non-physical entities, are the preeminent forms of mathematical realism.
The "epistemic argument" against Platonism has been made by Paul Benacerraf and Hartry Field. Platonism posits that mathematical objects are abstract entities. By general agreement, abstract entities cannot interact causally with physical entities ("the truth-values of our mathematical assertions depend on facts involving platonic entities that reside in a realm outside of space-time") Whilst our knowledge of physical objects is based on our ability to perceive them, and therefore to causally interact with them, there is no parallel account of how mathematicians come to have knowledge of abstract objects.
Field developed his views into fictionalism. Benacerraf also developed the philosophy of mathematical structuralism, according to which there are no mathematical objects. Nonetheless, some versions of structuralism are compatible with some versions of realism.
Counterarguments
Anti-realist arguments hinge on the idea that a satisfactory, naturalistic account of thought processes can be given for mathematical reasoning. One line of defense is to maintain that this is false, so that mathematical reasoning uses some special intuition that involves contact with the Platonic realm, as in the argument given by Sir Roger Penrose.
Another line of defense is to maintain that abstract objects are relevant to mathematical reasoning in a way that is non causal, and not analogous to perception. This argument is developed by Jerrold Katz in his 2000 book Realistic Rationalism. In this book, he put forward a position called realistic rationalism, which combines metaphysical realism and rationalism.
A more radical defense is to deny the separation of physical world and the platonic world, i.e. the mathematical universe hypothesis (a variety of mathematicism). In that case, a mathematician's knowledge of mathematics is one mathematical object making contact with another.
Semantic anti-realism
The term "anti-realism" was introduced by Michael Dummett in his 1982 paper "Realism" in order to re-examine a number of classical philosophical disputes, involving such doctrines as nominalism, Platonic realism, idealism and phenomenalism. The novelty of Dummett's approach consisted in portraying these disputes as analogous to the dispute between intuitionism and Platonism in the philosophy of mathematics.
According to intuitionists (anti-realists with respect to mathematical objects), the truth of a mathematical statement consists in our ability to prove it. According to Platonic realists, the truth of a statement is proven in its correspondence to objective reality. Thus, intuitionists are ready to accept a statement of the form "P or Q" as true only if we can prove P or if we can prove Q. In particular, we cannot in general claim that "P or not P" is true (the law of excluded middle), since in some cases we may not be able to prove the statement "P" nor prove the statement "not P". Similarly, intuitionists object to the existence property for classical logic, where one can prove , without being able to produce any term of which holds.
Dummett argues that this notion of truth lies at the bottom of various classical forms of anti-realism, and uses it to re-interpret phenomenalism, claiming that it need not take the form of reductionism.
Dummett's writings on anti-realism draw heavily on the later writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, concerning meaning and rule following, and can be seen as an attempt to integrate central ideas from the Philosophical Investigations into the constructive tradition of analytic philosophy deriving from Gottlob Frege.
Scientific anti-realism
In philosophy of science, anti-realism applies chiefly to claims about the non-reality of "unobservable" entities such as electrons or genes, which are not detectable with human senses.
One prominent variety of scientific anti-realism is instrumentalism, which takes a purely agnostic view towards the existence of unobservable entities, in which the unobservable entity X serves as an instrument to aid in the success of theory Y and does not require proof for the existence or non-existence of X.
Moral anti-realism
In the philosophy of ethics, moral anti-realism (or moral irrealism) is a meta-ethical doctrine that there are no objective moral values or normative facts. It is usually defined in opposition to moral realism, which holds that there are objective moral values, such that a moral claim may be either true or false. Specifically the moral anti-realist is committed to denying one of the following three statements:
The Semantic Thesis: Moral statements have meaning, they express propositions, or are the kind of things that can be true or false.
The Alethic Thesis: Some moral propositions are true.
The Metaphysical Thesis: The metaphysical status of moral facts is robust and ordinary, not importantly different from other facts about the world.
Different version of moral anti-realism deny different statements: specifically non-cognitivism denies the first claim, arguing that moral statements have no meaning or truth content, error theory denies the second claim, arguing that all moral statements are false, and ethical subjectivism denies the third claim, arguing that the truth of moral statements is mind dependent.
Examples of anti-realist moral theories might be:
Ethical subjectivism
Non-cognitivism
Emotivism
Prescriptivism
Quasi-realism
Projectivism
Moral fictionalism
Moral nihilism
Moral skepticism
There is a debate as to whether Moral relativism is actually an anti-realist position because, while many versions deny the metaphysical thesis, some do not, as one could imagine a system of morality which requires you to obey the written laws in your country. Such a system would be a version of moral relativism, as different individuals would be required to follow different laws, but the moral facts are physical facts about the world, not mental facts, so they are metaphysically ordinary. According to Richard Joyce in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy "Moral relativism is sometimes thought of as a version of anti-realism, but (short of stipulating usage) there is no basis for this classification; it is better to say that some versions of relativism may be anti-realist and others may be realist."
Epistemic anti-realism
Just as moral anti-realism asserts the nonexistence of normative facts, epistemic anti-realism asserts the nonexistence of facts in the domain of epistemology. Thus, the two are now sometimes grouped together as "metanormative anti-realism". Prominent defenders of epistemic anti-realism include Hartry Field, Simon Blackburn, Matthew Chrisman, and Allan Gibbard, among others.
See also
Arend Heyting
Constructivist epistemology
Crispin Wright
Critical realism (philosophy of perception)
Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer
Metaepistemology
Münchhausen trilemma
Neil Tennant (philosopher)
Philosophical realism
Quasi-realism
References
Bibliography
. reprinted, pp. 1–24.
. reprinted, pp. 145–165.
. reprinted, pp. 202–214.
Lee Braver (2007). A Thing of This World: a History of Continental Anti-Realism, Northwestern University Press: 2007.
Ian Hacking (1999). The Social Construction of What?. Harvard University Press: 2001.
Samir Okasha (2002). Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.
External links
Semantic challenges to realism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Philosophical realism
Epistemological theories
Idealism
Logical positivism
Metaphysical realism
Metaphysical theories
Metaphysics of mind
Metaphysics of science
Metatheory of science
Philosophy of science |
2174 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenal%20F.C. | Arsenal F.C. | Arsenal Football Club is a professional football club based in Islington, London, England. Arsenal plays in the Premier League, the top flight of English football. The club has won 13 league titles (including one unbeaten title), a record 14 FA Cups, two League Cups, 16 FA Community Shields, the League Centenary Trophy, one European Cup Winners' Cup, and one Inter-Cities Fairs Cup.
Arsenal was the first club from the South of England to join the Football League in 1893, and they reached the First Division in 1904. Relegated only once, in 1913, they continue the longest streak in the top division, and have won the second-most top-flight matches in English football history. In the 1930s, Arsenal won five League Championships and two FA Cups, and another FA Cup and two Championships after the war. In 1970–71, they won their first League and FA Cup Double. Between 1989 and 2005, they won five League titles and five FA Cups, including two more Doubles. They completed the 20th century with the highest average league position. Between 1998 and 2017, Arsenal qualified for the UEFA Champions League for 19 straight seasons.
Herbert Chapman, who changed the fortunes of Arsenal forever, won the club its first silverware, and his legacy led the club to dominate the 1930s decade; Chapman, however, died of pneumonia in 1934, aged 55. He helped introduce the WM formation, floodlights, and shirt numbers; he also added the white sleeves and brighter red to the club's jersey. Arsène Wenger is the longest-serving manager and won the most trophies. He won a record seven FA Cups, and his title-winning team set an English record for the longest top-flight unbeaten league run at 49 games between 2003 and 2004, receiving the nickname The Invincibles.
In 1886, munitions workers at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich founded the club as Dial Square. In 1913, after the destruction of their South London stadium by suffragettes, the club crossed the city to Arsenal Stadium in Highbury, becoming close neighbours of Tottenham Hotspur, and creating the North London derby. In 2006, they moved to the nearby Emirates Stadium. With an annual revenue of £340.3m in the 2019–20 season, Arsenal was estimated to be worth US$2.68 billion by Forbes, making it the world's eighth most valuable club, while it is one of the most followed on social media. The motto of the club has long been Victoria Concordia Crescit, Latin for "Victory Through Harmony".
History
1886–1919: Name change
In October 1886, Scotsman David Danskin and fifteen fellow munitions workers in Woolwich formed Dial Square Football Club, named after a workshop at the heart of the Royal Arsenal complex. Each member contributed sixpence and Danskin also added three shillings to help form the club. Dial Square played their first match on 11 December 1886 against Eastern Wanderers and won 6–0. The club renamed to Royal Arsenal a month later, and its first home was Plumstead Common, though they spent most of their time playing at the Manor Ground. Their first trophies were the Kent Senior Cup and London Charity Cup in 1889–90 and the London Senior Cup in 1890–91; these were the only county association trophies Arsenal won during their time in South East London. In 1891, Royal Arsenal became the first London club to turn professional.
Royal Arsenal renamed for a second time upon becoming a limited liability company in 1893. They registered their new name, Woolwich Arsenal, with The Football League when the club ascended later that year. Woolwich Arsenal was the first southern member of The Football League, starting out in the Second Division and reaching the First Division in 1904. Falling attendances, due to financial difficulties among the munitions workers and the arrival of more accessible football clubs elsewhere in the city, led the club close to bankruptcy by 1910. Businessmen Henry Norris and William Hall became involved in the club, and sought to move them elsewhere.
In 1913, soon after relegation back to the Second Division, the grandstand of Woolwich Arsenal's Plumstead stadium was burnt down by the suffragettes, as part of their nationwide bombing and arson campaign for women's suffrage. The attack cost £1,000 in damages (around £120,000 today), and so the same year the club moved across the river to the new Arsenal Stadium in Highbury. In 1919, The Football League controversially voted to promote The Arsenal, instead of relegated local rivals Tottenham Hotspur, into the newly enlarged First Division, despite only finishing fifth in the Second Division's last pre-war season of 1914–15. Later that year, The Arsenal started dropping "The" in official documents, gradually shifting its name for the final time towards Arsenal, as it is generally known today.
1919–1953: Bank of England club
With a new home and First Division football, attendances were more than double those at the Manor Ground, and Arsenal's budget grew rapidly. Their location and record-breaking salary offer lured star Huddersfield Town manager Herbert Chapman in 1925. Over the next five years, Chapman built a new Arsenal. He appointed an enduring new trainer Tom Whittaker, implemented Charlie Buchan's new twist on the nascent WM formation, captured young players like Cliff Bastin and Eddie Hapgood, and lavished Highbury's income on stars like David Jack and Alex James. With record-breaking spending and gate receipts, Arsenal quickly became known as the Bank of England club.
Transformed, Chapman's Arsenal claimed their first national trophy, the FA Cup in 1930, and League Championships followed in 1930–31 and 1932–33. Chapman also presided over off the pitch changes: white sleeves and shirt numbers were added to the kit; a Tube station was named after the club; and the first of two opulent, Art Deco stands was completed, with some of the first floodlights in English football. Suddenly, in the middle of the 1933–34 season, Chapman died of pneumonia. His work was left to Joe Shaw and George Allison, who saw out a hat-trick with the 1933–34 and 1934–35 titles, and then won the 1936 FA Cup and 1937–38 title.
World War II meant The Football League was suspended for seven years, but Arsenal returned to win it in the second post-war season, 1947–48. This was Tom Whittaker's first season as manager, after his promotion to succeed Allison, and the club had equalled the champions of England record. They won a third FA Cup in 1950, and then won a record-breaking seventh championship in 1952–53. However, the war had taken its toll on Arsenal. The club had had more players killed than any top flight club, and debt from reconstructing the North Bank Stand bled Arsenal's resources.
1953–1986: Mediocrity, Mee and Neill
Arsenal were not to win the League or the FA Cup for another 18 years. The '53 Champions squad was old, and the club failed to attract strong enough replacements. Although Arsenal were competitive during these years, their fortunes had waned; the club spent most of the 1950s and 1960s in midleague mediocrity. Even former England captain Billy Wright could not bring the club any success as manager, in a stint between 1962 and 1966.
Arsenal tentatively appointed club physiotherapist Bertie Mee as acting manager in 1966. With new assistant Don Howe and new players such as Bob McNab and George Graham, Mee led Arsenal to their first League Cup finals, in 1967–68 and 1968–69. Next season saw a breakthrough: Arsenal's first competitive European trophy, the 1969–70 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. And the season after, an even greater triumph: Arsenal's first League and FA Cup double, and a new champions of England record. This marked a premature high point of the decade; the Double-winning side was soon broken up and the rest of the decade was characterised by a series of near misses, starting with Arsenal finishing as FA Cup runners up in 1972, and First Division runners-up in 1972–73.
Former player Terry Neill succeeded Mee in 1976. At the age of 34, he became the youngest Arsenal manager to date. With new signings like Malcolm Macdonald and Pat Jennings, and a crop of talent in the side like Liam Brady and Frank Stapleton, the club reached a trio of FA Cup finals (1978 FA Cup, 1979 FA Cup and 1980 FA Cup), and lost the 1980 European Cup Winners' Cup Final on penalties. The club's only trophy during this time was the 1979 FA Cup, achieved with a last-minute 3–2 victory over Manchester United. The final is widely regarded as a classic.
1986–1996: George Graham
One of Mee's double winners, George Graham, returned as manager in 1986, with Arsenal winning their first League Cup in 1987, Graham's first season in charge. New signings Nigel Winterburn, Lee Dixon and Steve Bould had joined the club by 1988 to complete the "famous Back Four", led by homegrown player Tony Adams. They immediately won the 1988 Football League Centenary Trophy, and followed it with the 1988–89 Football League title, snatched with a last-minute goal in the final game of the season against fellow title challengers Liverpool. Graham's Arsenal won another title in 1990–91, losing only one match, won the FA Cup and League Cup double in 1993, and the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1994. Graham's reputation was tarnished when he was found to have taken kickbacks from agent Rune Hauge for signing certain players, and he was dismissed in 1995. His replacement, Bruce Rioch, lasted for only one season, leaving the club after a dispute with the board of directors.
1996–2018: Wenger years
The club metamorphosed during the tenure of French manager Arsène Wenger, who was appointed in 1996. Attacking football, an overhaul of dietary and fitness practices, and efficiency with money
have defined his reign. Accumulating key players from Wenger's homeland, such as Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry, Arsenal won a second League and Cup double in 1997–98 and a third in 2001–02. In addition, the club reached the final of the 1999–2000 UEFA Cup, were victorious in the 2003 and 2005 FA Cup finals, and won the Premier League in 2003–04 without losing a single match, an achievement which earned the side the nickname "The Invincibles". This feat came within a run of 49 league matches unbeaten from 7 May 2003 to 24 October 2004, a national record.
Arsenal finished in either first or second place in the league in eight of Wenger's first nine seasons at the club, although they never won the title in two consecutive seasons.
The club had never progressed beyond the quarter-finals of the Champions League until 2005–06; in that season they became the first club from London to reach the final in the competition's fifty-year history, but were beaten 2–1 by Barcelona. In July 2006, they moved into the Emirates Stadium, after 93 years at Highbury.
Arsenal reached the final of the 2007 and 2011 League Cups, losing 2–1 to Chelsea and Birmingham City respectively. The club had not gained a trophy since the 2005 FA Cup until, spearheaded by club record acquisition Mesut Özil, Arsenal beat Hull City in the 2014 FA Cup Final, coming back from a 2–0 deficit to win the match 3–2.
A year later, Arsenal completed another victorious FA Cup campaign, and became the most successful club in the tournament's history by winning their 13th FA Cup in 2016–17. However, in that same season, Arsenal finished fifth in the league, the first time they had finished outside the top four since before Wenger arrived in 1996. After another unspectacular league season the following year, Wenger departed Arsenal on 13 May 2018.
Since 2018: Post-Wenger era
After conducting an overhaul in the club's operating model to coincide with Wenger's departure, Basque-Spaniard Unai Emery was named as the club's new head coach on 23 May 2018. He became the club's first ever 'head coach' and second manager from outside the United Kingdom. In Emery's first season, Arsenal finished fifth in the Premier League and as runner-up in the Europa League. On 29 November 2019, Emery was sacked and former player and assistant first team coach Freddie Ljungberg was appointed as interim head coach.
On 20 December 2019, Arsenal appointed former club captain Mikel Arteta as the new head coach. Arsenal finished the league season in eighth, their lowest finish since 1994–95, but beat Chelsea 2–1 to earn a record-extending 14th FA Cup win. After the season, Arteta's title was changed from head coach to manager. On 18 April 2021, Arsenal were announced as a founding club of the breakaway European competition The Super League; they withdrew from the competition two days later amid near-universal condemnation. Arsenal finished the season in eighth place once again, not qualifying for a European competition for the first time in 26 years.
Crest
Unveiled in 1888, Royal Arsenal's first crest featured three cannons viewed from above, pointing northwards, similar to the coat of arms of the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich (nowadays transferred to the coat of arms of the Royal Borough of Greenwich). These can sometimes be mistaken for chimneys, but the presence of a carved lion's head and a cascabel on each are clear indicators that they are cannons. This was dropped after the move to Highbury in 1913, only to be reinstated in 1922, when the club adopted a crest featuring a single cannon, pointing eastwards, with the club's nickname, The Gunners, inscribed alongside it; this crest only lasted until 1925, when the cannon was reversed to point westward and its barrel slimmed down.
In 1949, the club unveiled a modernised crest featuring the same style of cannon below the club's name, set in blackletter typography, and above the coat of arms of the Metropolitan Borough of Islington and a scroll inscribed with the club's newly adopted Latin motto, Victoria Concordia Crescit – "victory comes from harmony" – coined by the club's programme editor Harry Homer. For the first time, the crest was rendered in colour, which varied slightly over the crest's lifespan, finally becoming red, gold and green. Because of the numerous revisions of the crest, Arsenal were unable to copyright it. Although the club had managed to register the crest as a trademark, and had fought (and eventually won) a long legal battle with a local street trader who sold "unofficial" Arsenal merchandise,
Arsenal eventually sought a more comprehensive legal protection. Therefore, in 2002 they introduced a new crest featuring more modern curved lines and a simplified style, which was copyrightable.
The cannon once again faces east and the club's name is written in a sans-serif typeface above the cannon. Green was replaced by dark blue. The new crest was criticised by some supporters; the Arsenal Independent Supporters' Association claimed that the club had ignored much of Arsenal's history and tradition with such a radical modern design, and that fans had not been properly consulted on the issue.
Until the 1960s, a badge was worn on the playing shirt only for high-profile matches such as FA Cup finals, usually in the form of a monogram of the club's initials in red on a white background.
The monogram theme was developed into an Art Deco-style badge on which the letters A and C framed a football rather than the letter F, the whole set within a hexagonal border. This early example of a corporate logo, introduced as part of Herbert Chapman's rebranding of the club in the 1930s, was used not only on Cup Final shirts but as a design feature throughout Highbury Stadium, including above the main entrance and inlaid in the floors.
From 1967, a white cannon was regularly worn on the shirts, until replaced by the club crest, sometimes with the addition of the nickname "The Gunners", in the 1990s.
In the 2011–12 season, Arsenal celebrated their 125th anniversary. The celebrations included a modified version of the current crest worn on their jerseys for the season. The crest was all white, surrounded by 15 oak leaves to the right and 15 laurel leaves to the left. The oak leaves represent the 15 founding members of the club who met at the Royal Oak pub. The 15 laurel leaves represent the design detail on the six pence pieces paid by the founding fathers to establish the club. The laurel leaves also represent strength. To complete the crest, 1886 and 2011 are shown on either sides of the motto "Forward" at the bottom of the crest.
Colours
For much of Arsenal's history, their home colours have been bright red shirts with white sleeves and white shorts, though this has not always been the case. The choice of red is in recognition of a charitable donation from Nottingham Forest, soon after Arsenal's foundation in 1886. Two of Dial Square's founding members, Fred Beardsley and Morris Bates, were former Forest players who had moved to Woolwich for work. As they put together the first team in the area, no kit could be found, so Beardsley and Bates wrote home for help and received a set of kit and a ball. The shirt was redcurrant, a dark shade of red, and was worn with white shorts and socks with blue and white hoops.
In 1933, Herbert Chapman, wanting his players to be more distinctly dressed, updated the kit, adding white sleeves and changing the shade to a brighter pillar box red. Two possibilities have been suggested for the origin of the white sleeves. One story reports that Chapman noticed a supporter in the stands wearing a red sleeveless sweater over a white shirt; another was that he was inspired by a similar outfit worn by the cartoonist Tom Webster, with whom Chapman played golf.
Regardless of which story is true, the red and white shirts have come to define Arsenal and the team have worn the combination ever since, aside from two seasons. The first was 1966–67, when Arsenal wore all-red shirts; this proved unpopular and the white sleeves returned the following season. The second was 2005–06, the last season that Arsenal played at Highbury, when the team wore commemorative redcurrant shirts similar to those worn in 1913, their first season in the stadium; the club reverted to their normal colours at the start of the next season. In the 2008–09 season, Arsenal replaced the traditional all-white sleeves with red sleeves with a broad white stripe.
Arsenal's home colours have been the inspiration for at least three other clubs. In 1909, Sparta Prague adopted a dark red kit like the one Arsenal wore at the time; in 1938, Hibernian adopted the design of the Arsenal shirt sleeves in their own green and white strip.
In 1941, Luis Robledo, an England-schooled founder of Santa Fe and a fan of Arsenal, selected the main colors for his newly created team. In 1920, Sporting Clube de Braga's manager returned from a game at Highbury and changed his team's green kit to a duplicate of Arsenal's red with white sleeves and shorts, giving rise to the team's nickname of Os Arsenalistas.
These teams still wear those designs to this day.
For many years Arsenal's away colours were white or navy blue. However, in 1968 the FA banned navy shirts (they looked too similar to referees' black kit) so in the 1969–70 season, Arsenal introduced an away kit of yellow shirts with blue shorts. This kit was worn in the 1971 FA Cup Final as Arsenal beat Liverpool to secure the double for the first time in their history. The yellow and blue strip became almost as famous as their iconic red and white home kit. Arsenal reached the FA Cup final again the following year wearing the red and white home strip and were beaten by Leeds United. Arsenal then competed in three consecutive FA Cup finals between 1978 and 1980 wearing their "lucky" yellow and blue strip, which remained the club's away strip until the release of a green and navy away kit in 1982–83. The following season, Arsenal returned to the yellow and blue scheme, albeit with a darker shade of blue than before.
When Nike took over from Adidas as Arsenal's kit provider in 1994, Arsenal's away colours were again changed to two-tone blue shirts and shorts. Since the advent of the lucrative replica kit market, the away kits have been changed regularly, with Arsenal usually releasing both away and third choice kits. During this period the designs have been either all blue designs, or variations on the traditional yellow and blue, such as the metallic gold and navy strip used in the 2001–02 season, the yellow and dark grey used from 2005 to 2007, and the yellow and maroon of 2010 to 2013.
Until 2014, the away kit was changed every season, and the outgoing away kit became the third-choice kit if a new home kit was being introduced in the same year.
Since Puma began manufacturing Arsenal's kits in 2014, new home, away and third kits were released every single season. In the 2017–18 season, Puma released a new color scheme for the away and third kits. The away kit was a light blue, which fades to a darker blue near the bottom, while the third kit was black with red highlight. Puma returned to the original color scheme for the 2018–19 season.
From the 2019–20 season Arsenal's kits are manufactured by Adidas. In the 2020–21 season, Adidas unveiled the new away kit to
mark the 15-year anniversary since leaving Highbury. The new away kit is white, with a marbled pattern all across to replicate the iconic marble hall in the East stand of Highbury.
Kit suppliers and shirt sponsors
Stadiums
Before joining the Football League, Arsenal played briefly on Plumstead Common, then at the Manor Ground in Plumstead, then spent three years between 1890 and 1893 at the nearby Invicta Ground. Upon joining the Football League in 1893, the club returned to the Manor Ground and installed stands and terracing, upgrading it from just a field. Arsenal continued to play their home games there for the next twenty years (with two exceptions in the 1894–95 season), until the move to north London in 1913.
Widely referred to as Highbury, Arsenal Stadium was the club's home from September 1913 until May 2006. The original stadium was designed by the renowned football architect Archibald Leitch, and had a design common to many football grounds in the UK at the time, with a single covered stand and three open-air banks of terracing. The entire stadium was given a massive overhaul in the 1930s: new Art Deco West and East stands were constructed, opening in 1932 and 1936 respectively, and a roof was added to the North Bank terrace, which was bombed during the Second World War and not restored until 1954.
Highbury could hold more than 60,000 spectators at its peak, and had a capacity of 57,000 until the early 1990s. The Taylor Report and Premier League regulations obliged Arsenal to convert Highbury to an all-seater stadium in time for the 1993–94 season, thus reducing the capacity to 38,419 seated spectators.
This capacity had to be reduced further during Champions League matches to accommodate additional advertising boards, so much so that for two seasons, from 1998 to 2000, Arsenal played Champions League home matches at Wembley, which could house more than 70,000 spectators.
Expansion of Highbury was restricted because the East Stand had been designated as a Grade II listed building and the other three stands were close to residential properties. These limitations prevented the club from maximising matchday revenue during the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, putting them in danger of being left behind in the football boom of that time.
After considering various options, in 2000 Arsenal proposed building a new 60,361-capacity stadium at Ashburton Grove, since named the Emirates Stadium, about 500 metres south-west of Highbury.
The project was initially delayed by red tape and rising costs,
and construction was completed in July 2006, in time for the start of the 2006–07 season.
The stadium was named after its sponsors, the airline company Emirates, with whom the club signed the largest sponsorship deal in English football history, worth around £100 million.
Some fans referred to the ground as Ashburton Grove, or the Grove, as they did not agree with corporate sponsorship of stadium names.
The stadium will be officially known as Emirates Stadium until at least 2028, and the airline will be the club's shirt sponsor until at least 2024. From the start of the 2010–11 season on, the stands of the stadium have been officially known as North Bank, East Stand, West Stand and Clock end.
Arsenal's players train at the Shenley Training Centre in Hertfordshire, a purpose-built facility which opened in 1999.
Before that the club used facilities on a nearby site owned by the University College of London Students' Union. Until 1961 they had trained at Highbury.
Arsenal's Academy under-18 teams play their home matches at Shenley, while the reserves play their games at Meadow Park, which is also the home of Boreham Wood F.C. Both the Academy under-18 & the reserves occasionally play their big games at the Emirates in front of a crowd reduced to only the lower west stand.
Supporters and rivalries
Arsenal's fanbase are referred to as "Gooners" – the name derived from the club's nickname "The Gunners". Virtually all home matches sell out; in 2007–08 Arsenal had the second-highest average League attendance for an English club (60,070, which was 99.5% of available capacity), and, as of 2015, the third-highest all-time average attendance. Arsenal have the seventh highest average attendance of European football clubs only behind Borussia Dortmund, FC Barcelona, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, and Schalke. The club's location, adjoining wealthy areas such as Canonbury and Barnsbury, mixed areas such as Islington, Holloway, Highbury, and the adjacent London Borough of Camden, and largely working-class areas such as Finsbury Park and Stoke Newington, has meant that Arsenal's supporters have come from a variety of social classes. Much of the Afro-Caribbean support comes from the neighbouring London Borough of Hackney and a large portion of the South Asian Arsenal supporters commute to the stadium from Wembley Park, North West of the capital. There was also traditionally a large Irish community that followed Arsenal, with the nearby Archway area having a particularly large community, but Irish migration to North London is much lower than in the 1960s or 1970s.
Like all major English football clubs, Arsenal have a number of domestic supporters' clubs, including the Arsenal Football Supporters' Club, which works closely with the club, and the Arsenal Independent Supporters' Association, which maintains a more independent line. The Arsenal Supporters' Trust promotes greater participation in ownership of the club by fans. The club's supporters also publish fanzines such as The Gooner, Gunflash and the satirical Up The Arse!. In addition to the usual English football chants, supporters sing "One-Nil to the Arsenal" (to the tune of "Go West").
There have always been Arsenal supporters outside London, and since the advent of satellite television, a supporter's attachment to a football club has become less dependent on geography. Consequently, Arsenal have a significant number of fans from beyond London and all over the world; in 2007, 24 UK, 37 Irish and 49 other overseas supporters clubs were affiliated with the club. A 2011 report by SPORT+MARKT estimated Arsenal's global fanbase at 113 million. The club's social media activity was the fifth highest in world football during the 2014–15 season.
Rivalries
Arsenal's longest-running and deepest rivalry is with their nearest major neighbours, Tottenham Hotspur; matches between the two are referred to as North London derbies. Other rivalries within London include those with Chelsea, Fulham and West Ham United. In addition, Arsenal and Manchester United developed a strong on-pitch rivalry in the late 1980s, which intensified in recent years when both clubs were competing for the Premier League title – so much so that a 2003 online poll by the Football Fans Census listed Manchester United as Arsenal's biggest rivals, followed by Tottenham and Chelsea. A 2008 poll listed the Tottenham rivalry as more important.
Mascot
The club mascot is Gunnersaurus Rex, a smiling, 7-foot-tall green dinosaur, who first appeared at a home match against Manchester City in August 1994 (or 1993). He is based on a drawing by then 11-year-old Peter Lovell, whose design and another similar idea won a Junior Gunners contest; his official back story is that he hatched from an egg found during renovations at Highbury.
The same person, Jerry Quy, has been inside the suit from the start; in early October 2020, as part of cost-cutting brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, the club made him redundant from that and his other part-time job in supporter liaison, together with 55 full-time employees, although they later said Gunnersaurus could return after spectators were allowed back in stadiums. An online fundraiser was begun for Quy, and Mesut Özil offered to pay his salary himself as long as he remains with Arsenal. In November 2020, in advance of COVID-19 regulations being relaxed to allow supporters to attend home games from 3 December, Arsenal announced that Gunnersaurus would return, to be played by a roster of people that could include Quy if he wished.
Ownership and finances
The largest shareholder on the Arsenal board is American sports tycoon Stan Kroenke. Kroenke first launched a bid for the club in April 2007, and faced competition for shares from Red and White Securities, which acquired its first shares from David Dein in August 2007. Red & White Securities was co-owned by Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov and Iranian London-based financier Farhad Moshiri, though Usmanov bought Moshiri's stake in 2016. Kroenke came close to the 30% takeover threshold in November 2009, when he increased his holding to 18,594 shares (29.9%). In April 2011, Kroenke achieved a full takeover by purchasing the shareholdings of Nina Bracewell-Smith and Danny Fiszman, taking his shareholding to 62.89%. In May 2017, Kroenke owned 41,721 shares (67.05%) and Red & White Securities owned 18,695 shares (30.04%). In January 2018, Kroenke expanded his ownership by buying twenty-two more shares, taking his total ownership to 67.09%. In August 2018, Kroenke bought out Usmanov for £550m. Now owning more than 90% of the shares, he had the required stake to complete the buyout of the remaining shares and become the sole owner. There has been criticism of Arsenal's poor performance since Kroenke took over, which has been attributed to his ownership. Ivan Gazidis was the club's Chief executive from 2009 to 2018.
Arsenal's parent company, Arsenal Holdings plc, operates as a non-quoted public limited company, whose ownership is considerably different from that of other football clubs. Only 62,219 shares in Arsenal have been issued, and they are not traded on a public exchange such as the FTSE or AIM; instead, they are traded relatively infrequently on the ICAP Securities and Derivatives Exchange, a specialist market. On 29 May 2017, a single share in Arsenal had a mid price of £18,000, which sets the club's market capitalisation value at approximately £1,119.9m. Most football clubs are not listed on an exchange, which makes direct comparisons of their values difficult. Consultants Brand Finance valued the club's brand and intangible assets at $703m in 2015, and consider Arsenal an AAA global brand. Business magazine Forbes valued Arsenal as a whole at $2.238 billion (£1.69 billion) in 2018, ranked third in English football. Research by the Henley Business School ranked Arsenal second in English football, modelling the club's value at £1.118 billion in 2015.
Arsenal's financial results for the 2019–20 season showed an after tax loss of £47.8m, due in part to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Deloitte Football Money League is a publication that homogenises and compares clubs' annual revenue. Deloitte put Arsenal's footballing revenue in 2019 at £392.7m (€445.6m), ranking Arsenal eleventh among world football clubs. Arsenal and Deloitte both listed the match day revenue generated in 2019 by the Emirates Stadium as €109.2m (£96.2m).
In popular culture
Arsenal have appeared in a number of media "firsts". On 22 January 1927, their match at Highbury against Sheffield United was the first English League match to be broadcast live on radio. A decade later, on 16 September 1937, an exhibition match between Arsenal's first team and the reserves was the first football match in the world to be televised live.
Arsenal also featured in the first edition of the BBC's Match of the Day, which screened highlights of their match against Liverpool at Anfield on 22 August 1964.
Sky's coverage of Arsenal's January 2010 match against Manchester United was the first live public broadcast of a sports event on 3D television.
As one of the most successful teams in the country, Arsenal have often featured when football is depicted in the arts in Britain. They formed the backdrop to one of the earliest football-related novels, The Arsenal Stadium Mystery (1939), which was made into a film in the same year. The story centres on a friendly match between Arsenal and an amateur side, one of whose players is poisoned while playing. Many Arsenal players appeared as themselves in the film and manager George Allison was given a speaking part. The book Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby was an autobiographical account of Hornby's life and relationship with football and Arsenal in particular. Published in 1992, it formed part of the revival and rehabilitation of football in British society during the 1990s. The book was twice adapted for the cinema – the 1997 British film focuses on Arsenal's 1988–89 title win, and a 2005 American version features a fan of baseball's Boston Red Sox.
Arsenal have often been stereotyped as a defensive and "boring" side, especially during the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1997 film The Full Monty the principal characters move forward in a line and raise their hands, deliberately mimicking the Arsenal defence's offside trap, in an attempt to co-ordinate their striptease routine.
Fifteen years later an almost identical scene was included in the 2012 Disney science-fiction film John Carter (director and co-writer Andrew Stanton, a notable overseas supporter of the club), along with other visual cues and oblique dialogue hints and references to the club throughout the film.
Another film reference to the club's defence comes in the film Plunkett & Macleane, in which two characters are named Dixon and Winterburn after Arsenal's long-serving full backs – the right-sided Lee Dixon and the left-sided Nigel Winterburn.
In the community
In 1985, Arsenal founded a community scheme, "Arsenal in the Community", which offered sporting, social inclusion, educational and charitable projects. The club support a number of charitable causes directly and in 1992 established The Arsenal Charitable Trust, which by 2006 had raised more than £2 million for local causes. An ex-professional and celebrity football team associated with the club also raised money by playing charity matches. The club launched the Arsenal for Everyone initiative in 2008 as an annual celebration of the diversity of the Arsenal family. In the 2009–10 season Arsenal announced that they had raised a record breaking £818,897 for the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity. The original target was £500,000.
Save the Children has been Arsenal global charity partner since 2011 and have worked together in numerous projects to improve safety and well-being for vulnerable children in London and abroad. On 3 September 2016 The Arsenal Foundation has donated £1m to build football pitches for children in London, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan and Somalia thanks to The Arsenal Foundation Legends Match against Milan Glorie at the Emirates Stadium. On 3 June 2018, Arsenal played Real Madrid in the Corazon Classic Match 2018 at the Bernabeu, where the proceeds went to Realtoo Real Madrid Foundation projects that are aimed at the most vulnerable children. In addition there will be a return meeting on 8 September 2018 at the Emirates stadium where proceeds will go towards the Arsenal foundation.
Statistics and records
Arsenal's tally of 13 League Championships is the third highest in English football, after Manchester United (20) and Liverpool (19),
and they were the first club to reach a seventh and an eighth League Championship. As of June 2020, they are one of seven teams, the others being Manchester United, Blackburn Rovers, Chelsea, Manchester City, Leicester City and Liverpool, to have won the Premier League since its formation in 1992.
They hold the highest number of FA Cup trophies, with 14. The club is one of only six clubs to have won the FA Cup twice in succession, in 2002 and 2003, and 2014 and 2015.
Arsenal have achieved three League and FA Cup "Doubles" (in 1971, 1998 and 2002), a feat only previously achieved by Manchester United (in 1994, 1996 and 1999).
They were the first side in English football to complete the FA Cup and League Cup double, in 1993.
Arsenal were also the first London club to reach the final of the UEFA Champions League, in 2006, losing the final 2–1 to Barcelona.
Arsenal have one of the best top-flight records in history, having finished below fourteenth only seven times. They have won the second most top flight league matches in English football, and have also accumulated the second most points, whether calculated by two points per win or by the contemporary points value. They have been in the top flight for the most consecutive seasons (95 as of 2020–21). Arsenal also have the highest average league finishing position for the 20th century, with an average league placement of 8.5.
Arsenal hold the record for the longest run of unbeaten League matches (49 between May 2003 and October 2004). This included all 38 matches of their title-winning 2003–04 season, when Arsenal became only the second club to finish a top-flight campaign unbeaten, after Preston North End (who played only 22 matches) in 1888–89. They also hold the record for the longest top flight win streak. Arsenal set a Champions League record during the 2005–06 season by going ten matches without conceding a goal, beating the previous best of seven set by A.C. Milan. They went a record total stretch of 995 minutes without letting an opponent score; the streak ended in the final, when Samuel Eto'o scored a 76th-minute equaliser for Barcelona.
David O'Leary holds the record for Arsenal appearances, having played 722 first-team matches between 1975 and 1993. Fellow centre half and former captain Tony Adams comes second, having played 669 times. The record for a goalkeeper is held by David Seaman, with 564 appearances. Thierry Henry is the club's top goalscorer with 228 goals in all competitions between 1999 and 2012,
having surpassed Ian Wright's total of 185 in October 2005.
Wright's record had stood since September 1997, when he overtook the longstanding total of 178 goals set by winger Cliff Bastin in 1939.
Henry also holds the club record for goals scored in the League, with 175, a record that had been held by Bastin until February 2006.
Arsenal's record home attendance is 73,707, for a UEFA Champions League match against RC Lens on 25 November 1998 at Wembley Stadium, where the club formerly played home European matches because of the limits on Highbury's capacity. The record attendance for an Arsenal match at Highbury is 73,295, for a 0–0 draw against Sunderland on 9 March 1935, while that at Emirates Stadium is 60,161, for a 2–2 draw with Manchester United on 3 November 2007.
Players
First-team squad
Out on loan
Under-23s
Players to have featured in a first-team matchday squad for Arsenal
Out on loan
Management and staff
Current staff
Arsenal board
Honours
Arsenal's first ever silverware was won as the Royal Arsenal in 1890. The Kent Junior Cup, won by Royal Arsenal's reserves, was the club's first trophy, while the first team's first trophy came three weeks later when they won the Kent Senior Cup. Their first national senior honour came in 1930, when they won the FA Cup. The club enjoyed further success in the 1930s, winning another FA Cup and five Football League First Division titles. Arsenal won their first league and cup double in the 1970–71 season and twice repeated the feat, in 1997–98 and 2001–02, as well as winning a cup double of the FA Cup and League Cup in 1992–93.
Seasons in bold are seasons when the club won a Double of the league and FA Cup, or of the FA Cup and League Cup. The 2003–04 season was the only 38-match league season unbeaten in English football history. A special gold version of the Premier League trophy was commissioned and presented to the club the following season.
As of 29 August 2020.
EFL and Premier League
First Division / Premier League (Level 1)
Winners (13): 1930–31, 1932–33, 1933–34, 1934–35, 1937–38, 1947–48, 1952–53, 1970–71, 1988–89, 1990–91, 1997–98, 2001–02, 2003–04
League Cup / EFL Cup
Winners (2): 1986–87, 1992–93
League Centenary Trophy
Winners (1): 1988
The FA
FA Cup
Winners (14) (record): 1929–30, 1935–36, 1949–50, 1970–71, 1978–79, 1992–93, 1997–98, 2001–02, 2002–03, 2004–05, 2013–14, 2014–15, 2016–17, 2019–20
FA Community Shield (FA Charity Shield before 2002)
Winners (16): 1930, 1931, 1933, 1934, 1938, 1948, 1953, 1991 (shared), 1998, 1999, 2002, 2004, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2020
UEFA
UEFA Cup Winners' Cup (European Cup Winners' Cup before 1994)
Winners (1): 1993–94
Inter-Cities Fairs Cup
Winners (1): 1969–70
County FAs
When the FA Cup was the only national football association competition available to Arsenal, the other football association competitions were County Cups, and they made up many of the matches the club played during a season. Arsenal's first first-team trophy was a County Cup, the inaugural Kent Senior Cup. Arsenal became ineligible for the London Cups when the club turned professional in 1891, and rarely participated in County Cups after this. Due to the club's original location within the borders of both the London and Kent Football Associations, Arsenal competed in and won trophies organised by each.
Other
During Arsenal's history, the club has participated in and won a variety of pre-season and friendly honours. These include Arsenal's own pre-season competition the Emirates Cup, begun in 2007. During the wars, previous competitions were widely suspended and the club had to participate in wartime competitions. During WWII, Arsenal won several of these.
UEFA club coefficient ranking
In European football, the UEFA coefficients are statistics used for ranking and seeding teams in club and international competitions. Club coefficients are used to rank individual clubs for seeding in the UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, and since 2021, the UEFA Europa Conference League.
Arsenal Women
Arsenal Women is the women's football club affiliated to Arsenal. Founded as Arsenal Ladies F.C. in 1987 by Vic Akers, they turned semi-professional in 2002 and have been managed since 2021 by Jonas Eidevall; Akers holds the role of Honorary President of Arsenal Women. As part of the festivities surrounding their 30th anniversary in 2017, the club announced that they were changing their formal name to Arsenal Women F.C., and would use "Arsenal" in all references except rare cases where there might be confusion with the men's side.
Arsenal Women are the most successful team in English women's football having won a total of 58 trophies. In the 2008–09 season, they won all three major English trophies – the FA Women's Premier League, FA Women's Cup and FA Women's Premier League Cup, and, as of 2017, were the only English side to have won the UEFA Women's Cup or UEFA Women's Champions League, having won the Cup in the 2006–07 season as part of a unique quadruple. The men's and women's clubs are formally separate entities but have quite close ties; Arsenal Women are entitled to play once a season at the Emirates Stadium, though they usually play their home matches at Meadow Park in Borehamwood.
Footnotes
References
Works cited
Further reading
External links
1886 establishments in England
Association football clubs established in 1886
Companies formerly listed on the Alternative Investment Market
EFL Cup winners
FA Cup winners
Football clubs in England
Football clubs in London
Former English Football League clubs
G-14 clubs
Kroenke Sports & Entertainment
Premier League clubs
UEFA Cup Winners' Cup winning clubs |
2175 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American%20cuisine | American cuisine | American cuisine is the cooking style and traditional food dishes prepared in the United States. Primarily European in origin, it has been significantly influenced by indigenous Native Americans, African Americans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and many other cultures and traditions, reflecting the diverse history of the United States.
Though some of American cuisine is fusion cuisine reflecting global cuisine, such as Mexican-American, Greek-American cuisine, and American Chinese cuisines, many regional cuisines have their own deeply rooted ethnic heritages, including Cajun, Louisiana Creole, Native American, New England Algonquian, New Mexican, Pennsylvania Dutch, Soul food, Texan/Tex-Mex, Southern, and Tlingit.
American cuisine is very diverse and has various styles of cuisine. It continued expanding well into the 19th and 20th centuries, proportional to the influx of immigrants from many different nations; this influx nurtured a rich diversity in food preparation throughout the country.
History
Native Americans origins: American cuisine before 1600
Early Native Americans utilized a number of cooking methods in early American cuisine that have been blended with the methods of early Europeans to form the basis of what is now American cuisine.
Nearly all regions and subregions of the present day cuisine have roots in the foodways of Native Americans, who lived in tribes numbering in the thousands. Prior to 1600, native peoples lived off the land in very diverse bioregions and had done so for thousands of years, often living a nomadic life where their diet changed with the season.
Many practiced a form of agriculture revolving around the Three Sisters, the rotation of beans, maize, and squash as staples of their diet; in the East, this was documented as early as the 1620s in Of Plimoth Plantation, evidenced by the pages William Bradford wrote regarding Squanto: he showed them the traditional regional method of burying a fish or eel in a mound with seeds for maize to improve the soil; this itself is also part of the widely practiced phenomenon of companion planting.
Other tribes across the land were practicing an iteration of using the same three staples, evidenced by 100 years of archaeological investigations in every region.
Wild game was equally a staple of nearly every tribe: generally speaking, deer, elk, and bison were staples as were rabbits and hare of every kind. The Cherokee of the Southern Appalachians used blowguns made of an indigenous type of bamboo to hunt squirrels.
Northern tribes like the Ojibwe of what is now the state of Michigan and the peoples of the Wabanaki of what is now the state of Maine would stalk and hunt moose, whereas their Southern counterparts, like the Choctaw or Catawba, hunted snapping turtles and other testudines, possums, and young alligators in the subtropical swamps of Louisiana and South Carolina.
Many tribes would preserve their meat in the form of pemmican, needed greatly on long journeys or to survive harsh winters.
Fish and Crustaceans
As with hunted game, the biome in which one lived often dictated what was available to catch. For example, the Apache and Navajo peoples of the Southwest, whose territories each would have included swathes of New Mexico and Arizona, generally do not eat fish because in both cultures it's taboo, as well as often inconvenient.
The Navajo believe that fish have a part in the story of creation, the Apache were in general afraid of water since they associated it with thunder, and the arid desert climate made fish a rarity.
However, in the culture of the Lenape, the tribe that originally lived in New Jersey, on the Delaware River, and the area that now comprises New York City, fish and shellfish were a staple in their diet and it was such a revered part of the culture that there is a documented and still practiced harvest dance called the Fish Dance.
Originally it would have been done to celebrate the bringing in of fish from places like the Delaware or Raritan River or even the estuary around Manhattan Island and the completion of smoking them as a source of food for the long winter ahead.
Eastern tribes would have eaten cod, particularly groups that spoke the Algonquian languages of New England as far south as present day Connecticut, winter flounder and other flatfish, species of herring like the alewife, shad, Atlantic herring, and Atlantic menhaden, They also would have consumed the Atlantic sturgeon and drum.
In the West, Pacific several species of sturgeon, like the white sturgeon and green sturgeon, olachen and several autochthonal fish of the Oncorhynchus family including the rainbow trout, cutthroat trout, coho salmon, kokanee salmon, and chinook salmon. The last makes an appearance in the accounts of Lewis and Clark as being fished for in the Columbia River Basin, and this specific species is named for a family of tribes of the Pacific Northwest, indicating very strongly its important role in that specific food culture.
Pacific gray whales and humpbacks were hunted by American Indians off the Northwest coast, especially by the Makah, and used for their meat and oil. Catfish was also popular among native people throughout the land, over many types of terrain.
Crustaceans included shrimp, lobster, crayfish, and dungeness crabs in the Northwest and shrimp, lobster and blue crabs in the East. Other shellfish include abalone and geoduck on the West Coast, while on the East Coast the surf clam, quahog, and the soft-shell clam. Oysters were eaten on both shores, as were mussels and periwinkles.
Cooking methods
Early American Natives used a number of cooking methods in early American Cuisine that have been blended with early European cooking methods to form the basis of American Cuisine. Grilling meats was common. Spit roasting over a pit fire was common as well. Vegetables, especially root vegetables, were often cooked directly in the ashes of the fire.
As early Native Americans lacked pottery that could be used directly over a fire, they developed a technique causing many anthropologists to call them "stone boilers". They heated rocks in a fire, then added the rocks to a pot filled with water until it came to a boil to cook the meat or vegetables.
In what is now the Southwestern United States, they also created adobe ovens, dubbed hornos by the Spanish, to bake products such as cornmeal bread. Other parts of America dug pit ovens, which were also used to steam foods by adding heated rocks or embers.
One example performed extensively by New England tribes was adding seaweed or corn husks on top of the layers of stones to steam fish and shellfish as well as vegetables.
A later addition was potatoes, a garden plant that came to New England by the 18th century, added while still in skin with corn while in-husk, later to be referred to as a clambake by colonists.
Colonial period
The European settlement of the Americas introduced a number of ingredients, spices, herbs, and cooking styles to the continent.
When European colonists came to Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and any of the other English colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America, their initial attempts at survival included planting crops familiar to them from back home in England. In the same way, they farmed animals for clothing and meat.
Through hardships and eventual establishment of trade with England, the West Indies and other regions, the colonists were able to derive a cuisine similar to what they had previously consumed in Britain and Ireland, while also introducing local animals and plants to their diet.
American colonists followed along the line of British cookery up until the Revolution, when a desire to distinguish themselves from Britain led Americans to create "American" styles of cookery.
In 1796, the first American cookbook was published, and others followed. There was a general disdain for French cookery, even with French Huguenot settlers in South Carolina and French-Canadian emigrants in America. One of the cookbooks that proliferated in the colonies was The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747) by Hannah Glasse, who referred to "the blind folly of this age that would rather be imposed on by a French booby, than give encouragement to a good English cook!" Of the French recipes given in the text, she speaks out flagrantly against the dishes as she "... think[s] it an odd jumble of trash."
With the introduction of slavery, Africans were brought into the colonies. With them, came foods and ingredients such as bananas, peanuts, yams, and coffee. During this era, cooking and the preparation of food was primarily done by enslaved peoples and because of this, cooking styles remnant of West African cuisines are still found in many dishes, especially in Southern cuisine.
The expulsion of the Acadians from Acadia led many of them to Louisiana, where they left a French influence in the diet of those settled in Louisiana, and among the Acadian Francophones who settled eastern Maine and parts of what is now northern Vermont at the same time they colonized New Brunswick.
Some of the Jews who fled from the Inquisition with other Sephardic Jews in the 15th century had previously settled in Recife, Brazil and the West Indies, where their cuisine was influenced by new local ingredients like molasses, rum, sugar, vanilla, chocolate, peppers, corn, tomatoes, kidney beans, string beans and turkey.
In 1654, twenty three Sephardic Jews arrived in New Amsterdam bringing this cuisine with them to the early colonial United States. Early American Jewish cuisine was heavily influenced by this branch of Sephardic cuisine. Many of the recipes were bound up in observance of traditional holidays and remained true to their origins. These included dishes such as stew and fish fried in olive oil, beef and bean stews, almond puddings, and egg custards.
The first kosher cookbook in America was the Jewish Cookery Book by Esther Levy, published in 1871 in Philadelphia and includes many of the traditional recipes.
Common ingredients
The American colonial diet varied depending on the settled region in which someone lived. Local cuisine patterns had established by the mid-18th century. The New England colonies were extremely similar in their dietary habits to those that many of them had brought from England.
A striking difference for the colonists in New England compared to other regions was seasonality. While in the southern colonies, they could farm almost year-round, in the northern colonies, the growing seasons were very restricted. In addition, northern colonists' close proximity to the ocean gave them a bounty of fresh fish to add to their diet.
Wheat, the grain used to bake bread back in England, was almost impossible to grow, and imports of wheat were far from cost productive. Substitutes in cases such as this included cornmeal. The Johnnycake was a poor substitute to some for wheaten bread, but acceptance by both the northern and southern colonies seems evident.
As many of the New Englanders were originally from England, game hunting was useful when they immigrated to the New World. Many of the northern colonists depended upon their ability to hunt, or upon others from whom they could purchase game. Hunting was the preferred method of protein consumption, as opposed to animal husbandry, which required much more work to defend the kept animals against raids.
Livestock and game
Commonly hunted game included deer, bear, buffalo, and wild turkey. The larger muscles of the animals were roasted and served with currant sauce, while the other smaller portions went into soups, stews, sausages, pies, and pastries. In addition to game, colonists' protein intake was supplemented by mutton.
The Spanish in Florida originally introduced sheep to the New World, but this development never quite reached the North, and there they were introduced by the Dutch and English. The keeping of sheep was a result of the English non-practice of animal husbandry. The animals provided wool when young and mutton upon maturity after wool production was no longer desirable. The forage-based diet for sheep that prevailed in the Colonies produced a characteristically strong, gamy flavor and a tougher consistency, which required aging and slow cooking to tenderize.
Fats and oils
Fats and oils made from animals served to cook many colonial foods. Many homes had a sack made of deerskin filled with bear oil for cooking, while solidified bear fat resembled shortening.
Rendered pork fat made the most popular cooking medium, especially from the cooking of bacon. Pork fat was used more often in the southern colonies than the northern colonies as the Spanish introduced pigs earlier to the South. The colonists enjoyed butter in cooking as well, but it was rare prior to the American Revolution, as cattle were not yet plentiful.
Alcoholic drinks
Prior to the Revolution, New Englanders consumed large quantities of rum and beer, as maritime trade provided them relatively easy access to the goods needed to produce these items. Rum was the distilled spirit of choice, as the main ingredient, molasses, was readily available from trade with the West Indies.
Further into the interior, however, one would often find colonists consuming whiskey, as they did not have similar access to sugar cane. They did have ready access to corn and rye, which they used to produce their whiskey.
Until the Revolution, many considered whiskey to be a coarse alcohol unfit for human consumption, as many believed that it caused the poor to become raucous and unkempt drunkards. In addition to these alcohol-based products produced in America, imports were seen on merchant shelves, including wine and brandy.
Southern variations
In comparison to the northern colonies, the southern colonies were quite diverse in their agricultural diet. The uplands of the Piedmont and the coastal lowlands made up the two main parts of the southern colonies.
The diet of the uplands often included wild game, cabbage, string beans, corn, squashes and white potatoes. People had biscuits as part of their breakfast, along with healthy portions of pork. The lowlands of Louisiana included a varied diet heavily influenced by the French, Spanish, Acadians, Germans, Native Americans, Africans and Caribbeans. Rice played a large part of the diet in Louisiana. In addition, unlike the uplands, the lowlands subsistence of protein came mostly from coastal seafood. Much of the diet involved the use of peppers, as it still does to this day.
Post-colonial cuisine
During the 18th and 19th centuries, Americans developed many new foods. Some, such as Rocky Mountain oysters, stayed regional; some spread throughout the nation but with little international appeal, such as peanut butter (a core ingredient of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich); and some spread throughout the world, such as popcorn, cola, fried chicken, cornbread, unleavened muffins such as the poppyseed muffin, and brownies.
Nineteenth-century American farmhouse
During the 1800s, American farms were mostly self-sufficient; but, certain staples like salt, coffee, sugar and baking soda would be purchased at the town general store. If the family didn't grow wheat, then flour would also be purchased.
Another luxury was canned salmon, which was sometimes eaten for Sunday dinner. Items purchased at the general store would be paid for with eggs, butter or some other food from the farm.
Women were responsible for much of the processing of food like straining fresh milk, churning butter, making molasses from sorghum, grinding corn into cornmeal or cleaning whole chickens.
Fresh picked apples were pressed into cider, which could be fermented to make apple cider vinegar. Fruits and vegetables were preserved by various means like canning, drying or pickling.
One contemporary writer from Michigan described October as cider season, when apple butter would be made. Her writings mention johnnycakes, and, as winter fare, buckwheat cakes.
Typical farmhouse fare included fried chicken, simmered green beans, boiled corn, chicken and dumplings, fried ham, boiled beans and beets, stewed tomatoes, potatoes, and coleslaw made of shredded cabbage. Pon haus, similar to the scrapple of the Pennsylvania Dutch, was a typical breakfast dish among the Germans who had settled Indiana in the 19th century.
Pork scraps and corn meal were cooked into a thick porridge and molded in loaf pans. Once solidified, the mixture would be cut and fried. During the fall months, pork might be replaced with fried apples or potatoes. It was served with buttered biscuits, jam, jelly, milk gravy or sorghum syrup. Fruit butter might be made from apples, plums or peaches to accompany the meal.
Twentieth Century
Pork was a staple of the rural diet through the Southern and Midwestern United States. Lard was used for baking, frying and even as a seasoning.
The cookware of the period was made of cast iron and these were thoroughly seasoned with pork fat. Fried salt pork with gravy was an indulgent fat-laden dish often served with a side of boiled potatoes. In the Appalachian region a dish called "killed lettuce" was made with pokeweed, dandelion and assorted wild greens that were drizzled with hot bacon grease until wilted or "killed".
Pie could be served up to three times a day and many varieties were prepared depending on the season. During the spring months, pies would be made of rhubarb and strawberry; in summer peach, cherry, blackberry, blueberry, elderberry and grape; and in fall apple.
The staples of the urban diet were bread, dairy and canned goods. Dinner might be tomato bisque from a can topped with cream or a salad made of canned string beans and mayonnaise. Many preferred to purchase food at delicatessens, rather than attempt to prepare meals in the cramped kitchenettes.
German delicatessens in cities like New York and Milwaukee sold imported cold cuts, potato salads, schmierkase, wienerwurst, North Sea herring, assorted pickles (pickled cucumber) and other prepared foods.
Jewish immigrants from Germany soon followed suit, replacing pork dishes with corned beef (salt-cured beef) and pastrami. Ice cream soda was served at soda fountains, along with various other early "soda water" recipes like the Garden Sass Sundae (rhubarb) or the Oh-Oh-Cindy Sundae (strawberry ice cream topped with chocolate syrup, chopped nuts, whipped cream and candied cherries).
During that same time frame, grain-feeding of cattle during low pasture months made milk increasingly available year-round. The invention of milking machines lowered production costs. Pasteurization, homogenization, evaporation, condensation, and refrigeration along with glass milk bottles, wax-paper cartons, and then plastic bottles made milk increasingly available and safe for urban consumers.
Milk became a staple food item and an increasingly important ingredient in American cuisine. Examples include the root beer float and the milkshake.
Major railroads featured upscale cuisine in their dining cars. Restaurant chains emerged with standardized decor and menus, including the Fred Harvey restaurants along the route of the Santa Fe Railroad in the Southwest.
Fast-food restaurants with standardized product and franchised service models began to appear and spread with the development of the highway system. White Castle (1916) was one of the first examples. Franchising was introduced in 1921 by A&W Root Beer. The McDonald brothers created their "Speedee Service System" in 1948. Other examples include Burger King, KFC, Wendy's, Pizza Hut, Little Caesars, Domino's Pizza and Papa John's Pizza.
At the universities, nutritionists and home economists taught a new scientific approach to food. In the early 1900s muckraking journalists raised public concern about the wholesomeness of industrialized food products that contained various preservatives and adulterants of unknown safety.
From 1902 to 1912 Harvey Washington Wiley, a chemist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, supervised "hygienic table trials" to test the safety of food additives and preservatives. His work contributed to the enactment of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. He became the first commissioner of the FDA and later led the laboratories of Good Housekeeping Magazine.
During World War I the Progressives' moral advice about food conservation was emphasized in large-scale state and federal programs designed to educate housewives. Large-scale foreign aid during and after the war brought American standards to Europe.
From 1912 to the end of the 1930s researchers discovered and popularized the role of various vitamins and minerals in human health. Starting with iodized salt in 1924, commercially distributed food began to be fortified with vitamins and minerals. In 1932, milk began to be fortified with viosterol, a purified vitamin D2 product. Synthetic thiamin (vitamin B1) first became available after 1936 and bakers began voluntarily enriching bread with high-vitamin yeast or synthetic vitamins in the late 1930s.
The Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Science established the first set of "Recommended Dietary Allowances" in 1941. In 1943, the US War Foods Administration issued the War Food Order No. 1, which made enriched bread the temporary law of the land.
In 1945 George Stigler published an article on "The cost of subsistence" which described the so-called Stigler diet, his solution to the problem of providing a diet that met the RDA at a minimum cost.
The logistical requirements of the US military during WW2 and the Korean War spurred the development and growth of the processed foods industry in the US. These wars encouraged production of shelf-stable ingredients processed on a vast industrial scale. Examples include powdered milk, powdered eggs, potato flakes, and frozen concentrated orange juice.
After the war, low-cost, highly processed foods became one of the foundational elements of an era of mass prosperity. Many companies in the American food industry developed new products requiring minimal preparation, such as frozen entrees. One such example is the TV dinner in which a multi-course meal was assembled in aluminum packaging in a food factory and flash frozen, then reheated at home in a thermal oven to be served while watching TV. Convenience foods of the era were designed to simplify home preparation.
One example is macaroni & cheese created using a powdered artificial cheese product that is reconstituted at home with fresh milk. Newspapers and magazines ran recipe columns, aided by research from corporate kitchens, which were major food manufacturers like General Mills, Campbell's, and Kraft Foods. For example, the General Mills Betty Crocker's Cookbook, first published in 1950, was a popular book in American homes.
Highly processed foods of the mid-20th century included novelty elements like multi-colored Jell-O using various chemical food colorings, prepared breakfast cereals marketed to children with large amounts of sugar and artificial colors (e.g. Froot Loops). Fruit-flavored punches made with artificial fruit flavorings (e.g. Tang, Hi-C). Mid-20th-century foods also added novelty packaging elements like spray cheese in an aerosol can, pimento-stuffed olives, and drink pouches.
The development of the microwave oven resulted in the creation of industrial food products and packaging intended to take advantage of the opportunities and overcome the unique challenges of that technology. Microwave popcorn is an example of such a product.
Throughout the second half of the 20th century the US commercial food system has become increasingly dependent on subsidized maize (corn) production to provide feed for livestock and ingredients for human foods such as high-fructose corn syrup. It is estimated that the typical American gets 70 percent of his/her carbon intake from maize (corn) sources.
The last half of the 20th century saw the development of controversial technological innovations intended to lower the cost of, improve the quality of, or increase the safety of commercial food including: food irradiation, genetically modified organisms, livestock treated with antibiotics/hormones, and concentrated animal feeding operations. Activists have raised concerns about the wholesomeness, safety, or humaneness of these innovations and recommend alternatives such as organic produce, veganism/vegetarianism, and locavore diets.
Ethnic influences
One signature characteristic of American cooking is the fusion of multiple ethnic or regional approaches into completely new cooking styles. For example, spaghetti is Italian, while hot dogs are German; a popular meal, especially among young children, is spaghetti containing slices of hot dogs. Since the 1960s, Asian cooking has played a particularly large role in American fusion cuisine.
Some dishes that are typically considered American have their origins in other countries. American cooks and chefs have substantially altered these dishes over the years, to the degree that the dishes now enjoyed around the world are considered to be American. Hot dogs and hamburgers are both based on traditional German dishes, but in their modern popular form they can be reasonably considered American dishes.
Pizza is based on the traditional Italian dish, brought by Italian immigrants to the United States, but varies highly in style based on the region of development since its arrival. For example, Chicago style has focus on a thicker, taller crust, whereas a "New York Slice" is known to have a much thinner crust which can be folded. These different types of pizza can be advertised throughout the country and are generally recognizable and well-known, with some restaurants going so far as to import New York tap water from a thousand or more miles away to recreate the signature style in other regions.
Some dishes that Americans think of as being of "foreign" in origin and/or associated with a particular immigrant group were in fact invented in America and customized to American tastes. For example General Tso's chicken was invented by Chinese or Taiwanese chefs working in New York in the early 1970s. The dish is unknown in China, except for a distant resemblance to a much spicier dish from Hong Kong said to have influenced the American version. The fortune cookie was likewise invented in California in the early 1900s and is known in Asia only as an American style food.
A wave of celebrity chefs began with Julia Child and Graham Kerr in the 1970s, with many more following after the rise of cable channels like Food Network. By the beginning of the 21st century, regional variations in consumption of meat began to reduce, as more meat was consumed overall. Saying they eat too much protein, the 2015–2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans asked men and teenage boys to increase their consumption of underconsumed foods such as vegetables.
New American
During the 1980s, upscale restaurants introduced a mixing of cuisines that contain Americanized styles of cooking with foreign elements commonly referred as New American cuisine, a type of fusion cuisine combining flavors from the melting pot of traditional American cooking techniques with those from other cultures, sometimes adding molecular gastronomy components.
Regional cuisines
In the present day, the modern cuisine of the United States is very regional in nature. Excluding Alaska and Hawaii, the terrain spans from east to west and more than from north to south.
Northeast
New England
New England is a Northeastern region of the United States bordering the Maritime Provinces of Canada and portions of Quebec in the north. It includes the six states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, with its largest city and cultural capital Boston, founded in 1630.
Native American cuisine became part of the cookery style that the early colonists brought with them. Tribes like the Nipmuck, Wampanoag, Passamaquoddy and other Algonquian cultures were noted for slashing and burning areas to create meadows and bogs that would attract animals like moose and deer, but also encourage the growth of plants like black raspberries, blueberries, and cranberries.
In the forest they would have collected nuts of species like the shagbark hickory, American hazel, and American chestnuts and fruits like wild grapes and black cherries. The Wabanaki tribal nations and other eastern woodlands peoples have made nut milk and infant formula made from nuts and cornmeal.
All of these eventually showed up in the kitchens of colonial New England women and many were sent back to England and other portions of Europe to be catalogued by scientists, collectors, and horticulturalists.
The style of New England cookery originated from its colonial roots. Early New England colonists were frugal and mostly unwilling to eat anything other than what they were used to from what they previously consumed in England.
Most of the initial colonists came from East Anglia in England, with other groups following them over the ages like francophone regions of Canada (this was especially true of Northern New England, where there are still many speakers of a dialect of French), from Ireland, from Southern Italy, and most recently from Haiti, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and Portugal. The oldest forms of the cuisine date to the early 17th century and in the case of Massachusetts, out of the entire country only the state of Virginia can claim recipes that are older.
East Anglian cookery would have included recipes for dishes like suet puddings, wheaten breads, and a few shellfish delicacies, like winkles, and would have been at the time of settlement simple Puritan fare quite in contrast to the fineries and excesses expected in London cavalier circles. Most of the cuisine started with one-pot cookery, which resulted in such dishes as succotash, chowder, baked beans, and others.
Starches are fairly simple, and typically encompass just a handful of classics like potatoes and cornmeal, and a few native breads like Anadama bread, johnnycakes, bulkie rolls, Parker house rolls, popovers, ployes, and New England brown bread.
Because of the influence of New Englanders who include Sylvester Graham, this region is fairly conservative with its spices, but typical spices include nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice, especially in desserts, and for savory foods, thyme, black pepper, sea salt, and sage. Typical condiments include maple syrup, grown from the native sugar maple, molasses, and cranberry sauce.
The fruits of the region include the Vitis labrusca grapes used in grape juice made by companies such as Welch's, along with jelly, Kosher wine by companies like Mogen David and Manischewitz along with other wineries that make higher quality wines.
Though not anywhere near as productive a region as the top three apple-producing regions, apples have been a staple of New England foodways since at least the 1640s, and it is here that a very high amount of heirloom varieties are found, many of them gaining renewed interest as part of locavore movements and the re-emergence of cider as a beverage of choice.
Apples from New England would include varieties imported from their earliest in Europe and a few natives, like Baldwin, Lady, Mother, Pomme Grise, Porter, Roxbury Russet, Rhode Island Greening, Sops of Wine, Hightop Sweet, Peck's Pleasant, Titus Pippin, Westfield-Seek-No-Further, and Duchess of Oldenburg.
Historically New England and the other original 13 colonies were major producers of hard cider and the only reason why this changed were that immigrants from Western and Central Europe preferred beer, especially lagers, to apple based alcohol.
In more recent years cider has made a roaring comeback nationwide, with New England being the first to break out of the box and with many pomologists scouring the woods for abandoned apple trees and heirloom varieties to add to the cider press. Angry Orchard is a local commercial brand that began in New Hampshire but has since skyrocketed in sales, with other large marques following suit around the land.
Beach plums a small native species with fruits the size of a pinball, are sought after in summer to make into a jam. Cranberries are another fruit indigenous to the region, often collected in autumn in huge flooded bogs. Thereafter they are juiced so they can be drunk fresh for breakfast, or dried and incorporated into salads and quickbreads.
Winter squashes like pumpkin and butternut squashes have been a staple for generations owing to their ability to keep for long periods over icy New England winters and being an excellent source of beta carotene; in summer, they are replaced with pattypan and zucchini, the latter brought to the region by immigrants from Southern Italy a century ago.
Blueberries are a very common summertime treat owing to them being an important crop, and find their way into muffins, pies and pancakes.
Typical favorite desserts are quite diverse, and encompass hasty pudding, blueberry pie, whoopie pies, Boston cream pie, pumpkin pie, Joe Frogger cookies, hand-crafted ice cream, Hermit cookies, and the chocolate chip cookie, invented in Massachusetts in the 1930s.
New England is noted for having a heavy emphasis on seafood, a legacy inherited from coastal tribes like the Wampanoag and Narragansett, who equally used the rich fishing banks offshore for sustenance. Favorite fish include cod, salmon, winter flounder, haddock, striped bass, pollock, hake, bluefish, and, in southern New England, tautog. All of these are prepared numerous ways, such as frying cod for fish fingers, grilling bluefish over hot coals for summertime, smoking salmon or serving a whole poached one chilled for feasts with a dill sauce, or, on cold winter nights, serving haddock baked in casserole dish with a creamy sauce and crumbled breadcrumbs as a top so it forms a crust.
Clam cakes, a savory fritter based on chopped clams, are a specialty of Rhode Island. Also, a hard shell clam is unique to Rhode Island called the Quahoag which is used in clear chowders. Farther inland, brook trout, largemouth bass, and herring are sought after, especially in the rivers and icy finger lakes in upper New England where New Englanders will fly fish for them in summertime.
Meat is present though not as prominent, and typically is either stewed in dishes like Yankee pot roast and New England boiled dinner or braised, as in a picnic ham; these dishes suit the weather better as summers are humid and hot but winters are raw and cold, getting below 0 °C for most of the winter and only just above it by March.
The roasting of whole turkeys began here as a centerpiece for large American banquets, and like all other East Coast tribes, the Native American tribes of New England prized wild turkeys as a source of sustenance and later Anglophone settlers were enamored of cooking them using methods they knew from Europe: often that meant trussing the bird and spinning it on a string or spit roasting.
Today turkey meat is a key ingredient in soups, and also a favorite in several sandwiches like the Pilgrim. For lunch, hot roast beef is sometimes chopped finely into small pieces and put on a roll with salami and American or provolone cheese to make a steak bomb. Bacon is often maple cured, and often bacon or salt pork drippings are an ingredient in corn chowder, a cousin of the clam chowder. Veal consumption was prevalent in the North Atlantic States prior to World War II.
A variety of linguiça is favored as a breakfast food, introduced by Portuguese fishermen and Brazilian immigrants. In contrast with some parts of the United States, lamb (although less so mutton or goat) is a popular roasted or grilled meat across diverse groups in New England.
Dairy farming and its resultant products figure strongly on the ingredient list, and homemade ice cream is a summertime staple of the region: it was a small seasonal roadside stand in Vermont that eventually became the internationally famous Ben and Jerry's ice cream.
Vermont is known for producing farmhouse style cheeses, especially a type of cheddar. The recipe goes all the way back to colonial times when English settlers brought the recipe with them from England and found the rocky landscape eminently suitable to making the cheese. Today Vermont has more artisanal cheese makers per capita than any other state, and diversity is such that interest in goat's milk cheeses has become prominent.
Crustaceans and mollusks are also an essential ingredient in the regional cookery. Maine and Massachusetts, in more recent years, have taken to harvesting peekytoe crab and Jonah crab and making crab bisques, based on cream with 35% milkfat, and crabcakes out of them: often these were overlooked as bycatch of lobster pots by fishermen of the region, but in the past 30 years their popularity has firmly established them as a staple. They even appear on the menu as far south as to be out of region in New York, where they are sold to four star restaurants in the form of cocktail claws.
Squid are heavily fished for and eaten as fried calamari, and often are an ingredient in Italian American cooking in this region. Whelks are eaten in salad, and lobster, which is indigenous to the coastal waters of the region and are a feature of many dishes, baked, boiled, roasted, and steamed, or simply eaten as a sandwich, chilled with mayonnaise and chopped celery in Maine and Massachusetts, or slathered with melted butter on Long Island and in Connecticut.
Shellfish of all sorts are part of the diet, and shellfish of the coastal regions include little neck clams, sea scallops, blue mussels, oysters, soft shell clams, and razor shell clams. Much of this shellfish contributes to New England tradition, the clambake. The clambake as known today is a colonial interpretation of an American Indian tradition.
In summer, oysters and clams are dipped in batter and fried, often served in a basket with french fries, or commonly on a wheaten bun as a clam roll. Oysters are otherwise eaten chilled on a bed of crushed ice on the half shell with mignonette sauce, and are often branded on where they were harvested. Large quahogs are stuffed with breadcrumbs and seasoning and baked in their shells, and smaller ones often find their way into clam chowder. Other preparations include clams casino, clams on the half shell served stuffed with herbs like oregano and streaky bacon.
Southern New England, particularly along the coast, shares many specialties with the Mid-Atlantic, including especially dishes from Jewish and Italian-American cuisine.
Coastal Connecticut is known for distinctive kinds of pizza, locally called apizza (pronounced locally as abeetz), differing in texture (thin and slightly blackened) and toppings (such as clams) from pizza further south in the so-called pizza belt, which stretches from New Haven, Connecticut southward through New York, New Jersey, and into Maryland.
Delaware Valley and Mid-Atlantic
The mid-Atlantic states comprise the states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Northern Maryland. The oldest major settlement in this area of the country is found in the most populous city in the nation, New York, founded in 1625 by the Dutch. Today, it is a major cultural capital of the United States.
The influences on cuisine in this region are extremely eclectic owing to the fact that it has been and continues to be a gateway for international culture as well as a gateway for new immigrants. Going back to colonial times, each new group has left their mark on homegrown cuisine and in turn the cities in this region disperse trends to the wider United States. In addition, cities like New York and Philadelphia have had the past influence of Dutch, Italian, German, Irish, British, and Jewish cuisines, and that continues to this day. Baltimore has become the crossroads between North and South, a distinction it has held since the end of the Civil War.
A global power city, New York is well known for its diverse and cosmopolitan dining scene. Its restaurants compete fiercely for good reviews in the Food and Dining section of The New York Times, online guides, and Zagat's, the last of which is widely considered the premier American dining guide, published yearly and headquartered in New York.
Many of the more complicated dishes with rich ingredients like Lobster Newberg, waldorf salad, vichyssoise, eggs benedict, and the New York strip steak were born out of a need to entertain and impress the well-to-do in expensive bygone restaurants like Delmonico's and still standing establishments like the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Modern commercial American cream cheese was developed in 1872.
Since the first reference to an alcoholic mixed drink called a cocktail comes from New York State in 1803, it is not a surprise that there have been many cocktails invented in New York and the surrounding environs. Even today New York bars are noted for being highly influential in making national trends. Cosmopolitans, Long Island iced teas, Manhattans, Rob Roys, Tom Collins, Aviations, and Greyhounds were all invented in New York bars, and the gin martini was popularized in New York in speakeasies during the 1920s, as evidenced by its appearance in the works of New Yorker and American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Like its neighbor Philadelphia, many rare and unusual liquors and liqueurs often find their way into a mixologist's cupboard or restaurant wine list.
New York State is the third most productive area in the country for wine grapes, just behind California and Washington. It has AVA's near the Finger Lakes, the Catskills, and Long Island, and in the Hudson Valley has the second-most productive area in the country for growing apples, making it a center for hard cider production, just like New England. Pennsylvania has been growing rye since Germans began to emigrate to the area at the end of the 17th century and required a grain they knew from Germany. Therefore, overall it is not unusual to find New York grown Gewürtztraminer and Riesling, Pennsylvania rye whiskey, or marques of locally produced ciders like Original Sin on the same menu.
Since their formative years, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore have welcomed immigrants of every kind to their shores, and all three have been an important gateway through which new citizens to the general United States arrive. Traditionally natives have eaten cheek to jowl with newcomers for centuries as the newcomers would open new restaurants and small businesses and all the different groups would interact.
Even in colonial days this region was a very diverse mosaic of peoples, as settlers from Switzerland, Wales, England, Ulster, Wallonia, Holland, Gelderland, the British Channel Islands, and Sweden sought their fortune in this region. This is very evident in many signature dishes and local foods, all of which have evolved to become American dishes in their own right.
The original Dutch settlers of New York brought recipes they knew and understood from the Netherlands and their mark on local cuisine is still apparent today: in many quarters of New York their version of apple pie with a streusel top is still baked. In the colony of New Amsterdam, their predilection for waffles in time evolved into the American national recipe and forms part of a New York brunch. They also made coleslaw, originally a Dutch salad, but today accented with the later 18th-century introduction of mayonnaise.
The doughnut began its life originally as a New York pastry that arrived in the 18th century as the Dutch olykoek, with later additions from other nations of Europe like the Italian zeppole, the Jewish/Polish pączki, and the German Berliner arriving in the 19th century to complete the variety found in modern doughnuts today.
Crab cakes were once a kind of English croquette, but over time as spices have been added they and the Maryland crab feast became two of Baltimore's signature dishes. Fishing for blue crab is a favorite summer pastime in the waters off Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware where they may grace the table at summer picnics.
Other mainstays of the region have been present since the early years of American history, like oysters from Cape May, the Chesapeake Bay, and Long Island, and lobster and tuna from the coastal waters found in New York and New Jersey. Philadelphia Pepper Pot, a tripe stew, was originally a British dish but today is a classic of home cooking in Pennsylvania alongside bookbinder soup, a type of turtle soup.
In the winter, New York pushcarts sell roasted chestnuts, a delicacy dating back to English Christmas traditions, and it was in New York and Pennsylvania that the earliest Christmas cookies were introduced: Germans introduced crunchy molasses-based gingerbread and sugar cookies in Pennsylvania, and the Dutch introduced cinnamon-based cookies, all of which have become part of the traditional Christmas meal.
Scrapple was originally a type of savory pudding that early Pennsylvania Germans made to preserve the offal of a pig slaughter. The Philadelphia soft pretzel was originally brought to Eastern Pennsylvania in the early 18th century, and later, 19th-century immigrants sold them to the masses from pushcarts to make them the city's best-known bread product, having evolved into its own unique recipe.
After the 1820s, new groups began to arrive and the character of the region began to change. There had been some Irish from Ulster prior to 1820, however largely they had been Protestants with somewhat different culture and (often) a different language than the explosion of emigrants that came to Castle Garden and Locust Point in Baltimore in their masses starting in the 1840s.
The Irish arrived in America in a rather woeful state, as Ireland at the time was often plagued by some of the worst poverty in Europe and often heavy disenfranchisement among the masses. Many of them arrived barely alive having ridden coffin ships to the New World, very sick with typhus and gaunt from prolonged starvation.
In addition, they were the first to face challenges other groups did not have: they were the first large wave of Catholics. They faced prejudice for their faith and the cities of Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore were not always set up for their needs.
For example, Catholic bishops in the U.S. mandated until the 1960s that all Catholics were forbidden from eating red meat on Fridays and during Lent, and attending Mass sometimes conflicted with work as produce and meat markets would be open on high holy days; this was difficult for Irishmen supporting families since many worked as laborers.
Unsurprisingly, many Irishmen also found their fortunes working as longshoremen, which would have given their families access to fish and shellfish whenever a fisherman made berth, which was frequent on the busy docks of Baltimore and New York.
Though there had been some activity in Baltimore in founding a see earlier by the Carrolls, the Irish were the first major wave of Catholic worship in this region, and that meant bishops and cardinals sending away to Europe for wine. Wine, with water, is consecrated as part of the Catholic Mass.
Taverns had existed prior to their emigration to America in the region, though the Irish brought their particular brand of pub culture and founded some of the first saloons and bars that served Dublin style stout and red ale; they brought with them the knowledge of single-malt style whiskey and sold it.
The Irish were the first immigrant group to arrive in this region in massive millions, and these immigrants also founded some of the earliest saloons and bars in this region, of which McSorley's is a still operating example.
It was also in this region that the Irish introduced something that today is a very important festival in American culture that involves a large amount of food, drink, and merry making: Halloween. In England and Wales, where prior immigrants had come from, the feast of All Hallows Eve had died out in the Reformation, dismissed as superstition and excess having nothing to do with the Bible and often replaced with the festival of Guy Fawkes Night. Other immigrant groups like the Germans preferred to celebrate October 31 as Reformation Day, and after the American Revolution all of the above were less and less eager to celebrate the legacy of an English festival given they had fought against Great Britain for their independence.
The Catholicism of the Irish demanded attendance at church on November 1 and charity and deeds, not just faith, as a cornerstone of dogma, and many of their older traditions survived the Reformation and traveled with them. Naturally, they went door-to-door to collect victuals for masked parties as well as gave them out, like nuts to roast on the fire, whiskey, beer, or cider, and barmbracks; they also bobbed for apples and made dumb cakes. Later in the century they were joined by Scots going guising, children going door-to-door to ask for sweets and treats in costume.
From the Mid-Atlantic this trend spread to be nationwide and evolved into American children trick-or-treating on October 31 wearing costumes and their older counterparts having wild costume parties with various foods and drinks such as caramel apples, candy apples, dirt cakes, punch, cocktails, cider (both alcoholic and non,) pumpkin pie, candy corn, chocolate turtles, peanut brittle, taffy, tipsy cake, and copious buckets full of candy; children carving jack-o-lanterns and eating squash derived foods derive from Halloween's heritage as a harvest festival and from Irish and Scottish traditions of carving turnips and eating root vegetables at this time of year.
Bobbing for apples has survived to the present day as a Halloween party classic game, as has a variation on the parlor game of trying to grab an apple hanging from the ceiling blindfolded: it has evolved into trying to catch a donut in one's teeth.
Immigrants from Southern Europe, namely Sicily, Campania, Lazio, and Calabria, appeared between 1880 and 1960 in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Eastern Maryland hoping to escape the extreme poverty and corruption endemic to Italy.
Typically none of them spoke English, but rather dialects of Italian and had a culture that was more closely tied to the village they were born in than the high culture only accessible to those who could afford it at this time; many could not read or write in any language.
They were employed in manual labor or factory work but it is because of them that dishes like spaghetti with meatballs, New York-style pizza, calzones, and baked ziti exist, and Americans of today are very familiar with semolina based pasta noodles.
Their native cuisine had less of an emphasis on meat, as evidenced by dishes they introduced like pasta e fagioli and minestrone, but the dishes they created in America often piled it on as a sign of wealth and newfound prosperity since for the first time even cheap cuts of it were affordable. The American recipe for lasagna is proof of this, as mostly it is derived from the Neapolitan version of the dish with large amounts of meat and cheese.
New York-style hot dogs came about with German-speaking emigrants from Austria and Germany, particularly with the frankfurter sausage and the smaller wiener sausage; Jews would also contribute here by introducing the kosher version of these sausages, made of beef rather than pork. Today, the New York-style hot dog with sauerkraut, mustard, and the optional cucumber pickle relish is such a part of the local fabric, that it is one of the favorite comestibles of New York and both the pork and the beef versions are beloved. Hot dogs are a typical street food sold year round in all but the most inclement weather from thousands of pushcarts.
As with all other stadiums in Major League Baseball they are an essential for New York Yankees and the New York Mets games though it is the local style of preparation that predominates without exception.
Hot dogs are also the focus of a televised eating contest on the Fourth of July in Coney Island, at Nathan's Famous, one of the earliest hot dog stands opened in the United States in 1916 by Nathan Handwerker. Handwerker was a Jewish man who emigrated from what is now Ukraine in 1912 and whose influence is felt today around the world.
Coney Island is most famous for being a traditional boardwalk amusement park and the site of the world's first rollercoaster, a precursor of modern theme parks. Hot dogs are a staple of amusement parks 100 years later.
A summertime treat, Italian ice, began its life as a sweeter adaptation of the Sicilian granita that was strictly lemon-flavored and brought to New York and Philadelphia. Its Hispanic counterpart, piragua, is a common shaved-ice treat brought to New York by Puerto Ricans in the 1930s. Unlike the original dish which included flavors like tamarind, mango, coconut, piragua is evolving to include flavors like grape and cherry, fruits which are impossible to grow in the tropical Puerto Rican climate and get exported back to the island from New York.
Taylor Ham, a meat delicacy of New Jersey, first appeared around the time of the Civil War and today is often served for breakfast with eggs and cheese on a kaiser roll, a variant of a roll brought to the area by Austrians in the second half of the 19th century, now commonly used for sandwiches at lunchtime, often topped with poppyseeds. This breakfast meat is generally known as pork roll in southern New Jersey and Philadelphia, and Taylor Ham in northern New Jersey.
Other dishes came about during the early 20th century and have much to do with delicatessen fare, set up largely by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who came to America incredibly poor, often illiterate in any other language but Yiddish, and often banished from mainstream society in their place of origin for centuries. Most often they were completely unable to partake in the outdoor food markets that the general population utilized as most of the food for sale was not kosher.
The influence of European Jewry before their destruction in the Holocaust on modern mid-Atlantic cooking remains strong and reinforced by their many descendants in the region. These currently form the largest concentration of Jews outside Tel Aviv and very integrated into the local mainstream of New York in particular.
American-style pickles, now a common addition to hamburgers and sandwiches, were brought by Polish Jews, and Austro-Hungarian Jews brought a recipe for almond horns that now is a common regional cookie, diverting from the original recipe in dipping the ends in dark chocolate.
New York-style cheesecake has copious amounts of cream and eggs because animal rennet is not kosher and so could not be sold to a large number of the deli's clientele.
New York inherited its bagels and bialys from Jews, as well as Challah bread. Pastrami first entered the country via Romanian Jews, and is a feature of many sandwiches, often eaten on marble rye, a bread that was born in the mid-Atlantic.
Whitefish salad, lox, and matzoh ball soup are now standard fare made to order at local diners and delicatessens, but started their life as foods that made up a strict dietary code. Rugelach cookies and hamentashen are sweet staples still sold to the general public, but came to New York over a century ago with Ashkenazi Jews along with Jewish rye.
Many of their dishes passed into the mainstream enough that they became standard fare in diners by the end of the 20th century, a type of restaurant that is now the most common in the region, and the subject matter of the artist Edward Hopper.
In the past this sort of establishment was the haven of the short-order cook grilling or frying simple foods for the working man. Today typical service includes staples from this large region like beef on weck, Manhattan clam chowder, the club sandwich, Buffalo wings, Philadelphia cheesesteak, the black and white cookie, shoofly pie, snapper soup, Smith Island cake, blackout cake, grape pie, milkshakes, and the egg cream, a vanilla or chocolate fountain drink with a frothy top and fizzy taste.
As in Hopper's painting from 1942, many of these businesses are open 24 hours a day.
Midwest
Midwestern cuisine today is a very eclectic and odd mix and match of foodways, covering everything from Kansas City-style barbecue to the Chicago-style hot dog, though many of its classics are very simple, hearty fare.
This region was mostly untouched by European and American settlers until after the American Civil War, and excepting Missouri and the heavily forested states near the Great Lakes, was mainly populated by nomadic tribes like the Sioux, Osage, Arapaho, and Cheyenne.
As with most other American Indians tribes, these tribes consumed the Three Sisters of beans, maize, and squash, but also for thousands of years followed the herds of bison, hunting them on foot and later on horseback, typically using bow and arrow.
There are buffalo jumps dating back nearly 10,000 years and several photographs and written accounts of trappers and homesteaders attesting to their dependence on the buffalo and to a lesser degree elk.
After nearly wiping out elk and bison, this region has taken to raising bison alongside cattle for their meat and at an enormous profit, making them into burgers and steaks.
This region today comprises the states near the Great Lakes and also the Great Plains; much of it is prairie with a very flat terrain where the blue sky meets a neverending horizon. Winters are bitterly cold, windy, and wet.
Often that means harsh blizzards especially near the Great Lakes where Arctic winds blow off of Canada, where ice on rivers and lakes freezes thick enough for ice hockey, and for ice fishing for pike, walleye and panfish to be ubiquitous. In Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, they often become part of the local fish fry.
Population density is extremely low away from the Great Lakes and small towns dominated by enormous farms are the rule, larger cities being the exception. Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and St. Paul dominate the landscape in wealth and size, owing to their ties with manufacturing, finance, transportation, and meatpacking.
Smaller places like Omaha, Tulsa, and Kansas City are the local capitals, but the king is Chicago, third-largest city in the country, on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Non-American Indian settlement began in Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan earlier than anywhere else in the region, and thus the food available here ranges from the sublime to the bizarre.
As with all of the Midwest, the primary meats here are beef and poultry, since the Midwest has been raising turkeys, chickens, and geese for over 150 years. Chickens have been common for so long that the Midwest has several native breeds that are prized for both backyard farming and for farmer's markets, such as the Buckeye and Wyandotte. One, Billina, appears as a character in the second book of the Oz series by L. Frank Baum.
Favorite fruits of the region include some native plants inherited from Native American tribes like the pawpaw, and American persimmons are also highly favored.
As in the American South, pawpaws are the region's largest native fruit, about the size of a mango, often found growing wild come September; they are made into preserves and cakes and command quite a price at farmer's markets in Chicago.
The American persimmon is often smaller than its Japanese cousin, about the size of a small plum, but in the Midwest and parts of the East it is the main ingredient in a steamed pudding called persimmon pudding, topped with crème anglaise.
Other crops inherited from the Native Americans include wild rice, which grows on the banks of lakes and is a local favorite for fancy meals and today often used in stuffing for Thanksgiving.
Typical fruits of the region are cold-weather crops. Once it was thought that its winters were too harsh for apples, but a breeder in Minnesota produced the Wealthy apple and it became the third-most productive region for apple growing in the land, with local varieties comprising Wolf River, Enterprise, Melrose, Paula Red, Rome Beauty, Honeycrisp, and the Red Delicious.
Cherries are important to Michigan and Wisconsin grows many cranberries, a legacy of early-19th-century emigration of New England farmers. Crabapple jelly is a favorite condiment of the region.
The influence of German, Scandinavian, and Slavic peoples on the northern portion of the region is very strong; many emigrated to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois in the 19th century to take advantage of jobs in the meatpacking business as well as being homesteaders and tradesmen.
Bratwurst is a very common sausage eaten at tailgate parties for the Green Bay Packers, Chicago Bears, or Detroit Lions, often served boiled in lager beer with sauerkraut, different than many of the recipes currently found in Germany.
Polish sausage, in particular a locally invented type of kielbasa, is essential for sporting events in Chicago: Chicago today has approximately 200,000 Polish speakers and has had a similar population for over 100 years.
When Poles came to Chicago and surrounding cities from Europe, they brought with them long ropes of kielbasa, cabbage rolls, and pierogis. Poles that left Poland after the fall of the Berlin Wall and descendants of earlier immigrants still make them, and they remain common in local diners and delis.
Today alongside the pierogi, the sausage is served on a long roll with mustard like a hot dog or as a Maxwell Street Polish, a sandwich with caramelized onions. In Cleveland, the same sausage is served in the form of the Polish boy, a sandwich made of french fries, spicy barbecue sauce, and coleslaw.
Unlike cities in the East where the hot dog alone is traditional, fans of the Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, Chicago Cubs, and Milwaukee Brewers favor two or three different kinds of sausage sold in the pushcarts outside the stadium.
The hot dogs themselves tend to follow the Chicago style, loaded with mustard, and pickled vegetables.
In Cincinnati, where the Cincinnati Reds play, there is a competitor in Cincinnati chili. Invented by Macedonian immigrants, it includes spaghetti as its base, chili with a Mediterranean-inspired spice mix, and cheddar cheese; the chili itself is often a topping for local hot dogs at games.
In the Midwest and especially Minnesota, the tradition of the church potluck is a gathering where local foods reign, and has been since the era of the frontier; pioneers often needed to pool resources to have a celebration in the 19th century and that simply never changed.
Nowhere is this more clear than with the hotdish, a type of casserole believed to have derived from a Norwegian recipe, it is usually topped with potatoes or tater tots. Next to the hotdish at potlucks usually glorified rice is found, a kind of rice pudding mixed with crushed pineapple and maraschino cherries. Next to that is the booyah, a thick soup made of meat, vegetables, and seasonings that is meant to simmer on the stove for up to two days.
Lefse, traditionally a Scandinavian flatbread, has been handed down to descendants for over a hundred years and is common on the table. Behind that is venison, a popular meat around the Great Lakes and often eaten as steaks, sandwiches, and crown roasts for special events. Within Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Dakotas, tiger meat, a dish similar to steak tartare, is common.
Last on the table are the dessert bars and brownies, created originally in 1898 in Chicago, now a global food and international favorite.
Further South, barbecue has its own style in places in Kansas and St. Louis different from the South and American West. Kansas City and St. Louis were and are important hubs for the railroad that connected the plains with the Great Lakes and cities farther east, like Philadelphia.
At the turn of the 19th century, the St. Louis area, Omaha, and Kansas City had huge stockyards, waystations for cattle and pigs on their way East to the cities of the coast and North to the Great Lakes. They all had large growing immigrant and migrant populations from Europe and the South respectively, so the region has developed unique styles of barbecue.
St. Louis-style barbecue favors a heavy emphasis on a sticky sweet barbecue sauce. Its standbys include the pork steak, a cut taken from the shoulder of the pig, grilled then slowly stewed in a pan over charcoal; crispy snoots, a cut from the cheek and nose of the pig that is fried up like cracklins and eaten dipped in sauce; pork spare ribs; and a mix of either beer-boiled bratwurst or grilled Italian sausage, flavored with fennel.
Dessert is usually something like gooey butter cake, invented in the city in the 1930s.
Kansas City-style barbecue uses several different kinds of meat, more than most styles of American barbecue—turkey, mutton, pork, and beef to name a few—but is distinct from St. Louis in that the barbecue sauce adds molasses in with the tomato-based recipe and typically has a more tart taste.
Traditionally, Kansas City uses a low-and-slow method of smoking the meat in addition to just stewing it in the sauce. It also favors using hickory wood for smoking and continual watering or layering of the sauce while cooking to form a glaze; with burnt ends this step is necessary to create the "bark" or charred outer layer of the brisket.
Southern United States
When referring to the American South as a region, typically it should indicate Southern Maryland and the states that were once part of the Old Confederacy, with the dividing line between the East and West jackknifing about 100 miles west of Dallas, Texas, and mostly south of the old Mason–Dixon line. Cities found in this area include New Orleans, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Memphis, Charleston, and Charlotte with Houston, Texas being the largest. The Florida Panhandle is usually considered part of the South, but the Florida peninsula (especially its lower half) is not.
These states are much more closely tied to each other and have been part of U.S. territory for much longer than states much farther west than East Texas, and in the case of food, the influences and cooking styles are strictly separated as the terrain begins to change to prairie and desert from bayou and hardwood forest.
This section of the country has some of the oldest known U.S. foodways, with some recipes almost 400 years old.
Native American influences are still quite visible in the use of cornmeal as an essential staple and found in the Southern predilection for hunting wild game, in particular wild turkey, deer, woodcock, and various kinds of waterfowl; for example, coastal North Carolina is a place where hunters will seek tundra swan as a part of Christmas dinner; the original English and Scottish settlers would have rejoiced at this revelation owing to the fact that such was banned among the commoner class in what is now the United Kingdom, and naturally, their descendants have not forgotten.
Native Americans also consumed turtles and catfish, specifically the snapping turtle, the alligator snapping turtle, and blue catfish. Catfish are often caught with one's bare hands, gutted, breaded, and fried to make a Southern variation on English fish and chips and turtles are turned into stews and soups.
Native American tribes of the region such as the Cherokee or Choctaw often cultivated or gathered local plants like pawpaw, maypop and several sorts of squashes and corn as food. They also used spicebush and sassafras as spices, and the aforementioned fruits are still cultivated as food in the South.
Maize is to this day found in dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner in the form of grits, hoecakes, baked cornbread, and spoonbread, and nuts like the hickory, black walnut and pecan are commonly included in desserts and pastries as varied as mince pies, pecan pie, pecan rolls and honey buns (both are types of sticky bun), and quick breads, which were themselves invented in the South during the American Civil War.
Peaches have been grown in this region since the 17th century and are a staple crop as well as a favorite fruit, with peach cobbler being a signature dessert.
Early history
European influence began soon after the settlement of Jamestown in 1607 and the earliest recipes emerged by the end of the 17th century. Specific influences from Europe were quite varied, and they remain traditional and essential to the modern cookery overall.
German speakers often settled in the Piedmont on small farms from the coast, and invented an American delicacy that is now nationally beloved, apple butter, based on their recipe for apfelkraut, and later they introduced red cabbage and rye.
From the British Isles, an enormous amount of influence was bestowed upon the South, specifically foodways from 17th- and 18th-century Ulster, the borderlands between England and Scotland, the Scottish Highlands, portions of Wales, the West Midlands, the West Country, Black Country and Southern England. Settlers bound for America fled the tumult of the Civil War, Ulster and the Highland Clearances.
Often ships' manifests show their belongings nearly always included cookpots or bakestones and seed stock for plants like peaches, plums, and apples to grow orchards which they planted in their hundreds. Each group brought foods and ideas from their respective regions.
Settlers from Ireland and Scotland were well known for creating peatreak and poitín, strong hard liquor based on fermenting potatoes or barley. In time they came up with a method for distilling a corn mash with added sugar and aging in charred barrels made of select hardwoods, which created a whiskey with a high proof. This gave birth to American whiskey and Kentucky bourbon, and its cousins moonshine and Everclear.
Closer to the coast, 18th-century recipes for English trifle turned into tipsy cakes, replacing the sherry with whiskey and their recipe for pound cake, brought to the South around the same time, still works with American baking units: 1 pound sugar, one pound eggs, one pound butter, one pound flour.
Common features
Pork is the popular choice in 80% of Southern style barbecue and features in other preparations like sausages and sandwiches. For most Southerners in the antebellum period, corn and pork were staples of the diet. Country sausage is an ingredient in the Southern breakfast dish of biscuits and gravy. Country ham is often served for breakfast and cured with salt or sugar and hickory-smoked.
Accompanying many meals is the southern style fluffy biscuit, where the leavening agent is baking soda and often includes buttermilk, and for breakfast they often accompany country ham, grits, and scrambled eggs.
Desserts
Desserts in the South tend to be quite rich and very much a legacy of entertaining to impress guests, since a Southern housewife was (and to a degree still is) expected to show her hospitality by laying out as impressive a banquet as she is able to manage.
Desserts are vast and encompass Lane cake, sweet potato pie, peach cobbler, pecan pie, hummingbird cake, Jefferson Davis pie, peanut brittle, coconut cake, apple fritters, peanut cookies, Moravian spice cookies, chess pie, doberge cake, Lady Baltimore cake, bourbon balls, and caramel cake.
American-style sponge cakes tend to be the rule rather than the exception as is American buttercream, a place where Southern baking intersects with the rest of the United States. Nuts like pecan and hickory tend to be revered as garnishes for these desserts, and they make their way into local bakeries as fillings for chocolates.
Cajun and Creole Cuisine of Louisiana
In Louisiana, cooking methods have more in common with rustic French cuisines of the 17th and 18th century than anything ever found at the French court in Versailles or the bistros of 19th- and 20th-century Paris; this is especially true of Cajun cuisine.
Cajun French is more closely related to dialects spoken in Northern Maine, New Brunswick, and to a lesser degree Haiti than anything spoken in modern France, and likewise their terminology, methodology, and culture concerning food is much more closely related to the styles of these former French colonies even today.
Unlike other areas of the South, Cajuns were and still are largely Catholics and thus much of what they eat is seasonal; for example pork is an important component of the Cajun boucherie (a large community event where the hog is butchered, prepared with a fiery spice mix, and eaten snout to tail) but it is never consumed in the five weeks of Lent, when such would be forbidden.
Cajun cuisine tends to focus on what is locally available, historically because Cajuns were often poor, illiterate, independent farmers and not plantation owners but today it is because such is deeply imbedded in local culture.
Boudin is a type of sausage found only in this area of the country, and it is often by far more spicy than anything found in France or Belgium. Chaudin is unique to the area, and the method of cooking is comparable to the Scottish dish haggis: the stuffing includes onions, rice, bell peppers, spices, and pork sewn up in the stomach of a pig, and served in slices piping hot.
Crayfish are a staple of the Cajun grandmother's cookpot, as they are abundant in the bayous of Southern Louisiana and a main source of livelihood, as are blue crabs, shrimp, corn on the cob, and red potatoes, since these are the basic ingredients of the Louisiana crawfish boil.
New Orleans has been the capital of Creole culture since before Louisiana was a state. This culture is that of the colonial French and Spanish that evolved in the city of New Orleans, which was and still is quite distinct from the rural culture of Cajuns and dovetails with what would have been eaten in antebellum Louisiana plantation culture long ago.
Cooking to impress and show one's wealth was a staple of Creole culture, which often mixed French, Spanish, Italian, German, African, Caribbean and Native American cooking methods, producing rich dishes like oysters bienville, pompano en papillote, and even the muffaletta sandwich.
However, Louisiana Creole cuisine tends to diverge from the original ideas brought to the region in ingredients: profiteroles, for example, use a near identical choux pastry to that which is found in modern Paris but often use vanilla or chocolate ice cream rather than custard as the filling, pralines nearly always use pecan and not almonds, and bananas foster came about when New Orleans was a key port for the import of bananas from the Caribbean Sea.
Gumbos tend to be thickened with okra, or the leaves of the sassafrass tree. Andouille is often used, but not the andouille currently known in France, since French andouille uses tripe whereas Louisiana andouille is made from a Boston butt, usually inflected with pepper flakes, and smoked for hours over pecan wood.
Other ingredients that are native to Louisiana and not found in the cuisine of modern France would include rice, which has been a staple of both Creole and Cajun cooking for generations, and sugarcane, which has been grown in Louisiana since the early 1800s.
Ground cayenne pepper is a key spice of the region, as is the meat of the American alligator, something settlers learned from the Choctaws and Houma. The maypop plant has been a favorite of Southerners for 350 years; it gives its name to the Ocoee River in Tennessee, a legacy of the Cherokees, and in Southern Louisiana it is known as liane de grenade, indicating its consumption by Cajuns. It is a close relative of the commercial passionfruit, similar in size, and is a common plant growing in gardens all over the South as a source of fresh summertime fruit.
African American influences
West African influences came with slaves from Ghana, Benin, Mali, Congo, Angola, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and other portions of the Gold Coast, and the mark Africans and their descendants, the African Americans, have made on Southern food is strong today and an essential addition to the Southern table.
Crops like okra, sorghum, sesame seeds, eggplant, and many different kinds of melons were brought with them from West Africa along with the incredibly important introduction of rice to the Carolinas and later to Texas and Louisiana, whence it became a staple grain of that region and still remains a staple in those areas today, found in dishes like Hoppin John, purloo, and Charleston red rice.
Like the poorer indentured servants that came to the South, slaves often got the leftovers of what was slaughtered for the consumption of the master of the plantation and so many recipes had to be adapted for offal, like pig's ears and fatbacks though other methods encouraged low and slow methods of cooking to tenderize the tougher cuts of meat, like braising, smoking, and pit roasting, the last of which was a method known to West Africans in the preparation of roasting goat.
Peanut soup is one of the oldest known recipes brought to Virginia by Africans and over time, through their descendants, it has become creamier and milder tasting than the original.
Florida cuisine
Certain portions of the South often have their own distinct subtypes of cuisine owing to local history and landscape. Floridian cuisine, for example, has a distinct way of cooking that includes different ingredients, especially south of Tampa and Orlando.
Spain had control of the state until the early 19th century and used the southern tip as an outpost to guard the Spanish Main beginning in the 1500s, but Florida kept and still maintains ties with the Caribbean Sea, including the Bahamas Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica.
South of Tampa, there are and have been for a long time many speakers of Caribbean Spanish, Haitian French, Jamaican Patois, and Haitian Creole and each Caribbean culture has a strong hold on cooking methods and spices in Florida. In turn, each mixes and matches with the foodways of the Seminole tribe and Anglophone settlers. Thus, for almost 200 years, Floridian cooking has had a more tropical flavor than any other Southern state.
Allspice, a spice originally from Jamaica, is an ingredient found in spice mixes in summer barbecues along with ginger, garlic, scotch bonnet peppers, sea salt, and nutmeg; in Floridian cooking this is often a variant of Jamaican jerk spice. Coconuts are grown in the areas surrounding Miami and are shipped in daily through its port for consumption of the milk, meat, and water of the coconut.
Bananas are not just the yellow Cavendish variety found in supermarkets across America: in Florida they are available as bananitos, colorados, plátanos, and maduros. The first of these is a tiny miniature banana only about 4-5 inches (10–13 cm) in length and it is sweet. The second has a red peel and an apple-like aftertaste, and the third and fourth are used as a starch on nearly every Caribbean island as a side dish, baked or fried: all of the above are a staple of Florida outdoor markets when in season and all have been grown in the Caribbean for almost 400 years.
Mangoes are grown as a backyard plant in Southern Florida and otherwise are a favorite treat coming in many different shapes in sizes from Nam Doc Mai, brought to Florida after the Vietnam War, to Madame Francis, a mango from Haiti. Sweetsop and soursop are popular around Miami, but nearly unheard of in other areas of the South.
Citrus is a major crop of Florida, and features at many breakfast tables and many markets, with the height of the season near the first week of January. Hamlin oranges are the main cultivar planted, and from this crop the rest of the United States and to a lesser extent Europe gets orange juice. Other plantings would include grapefruits, tangerines, clementine oranges, limes, and even a few more rare ones, like cara cara navels, tangelos, and the Jamaican Ugli fruit. Tomatoes, bell peppers, habanero peppers, and figs, especially taken from the Florida strangler fig, complete the produce menu.
Blue crab, conch, Florida stone crab, red drum, dorado, and marlins tend to be local favorite ingredients. Dairy is available in this region, but it is less emphasized due to the year round warmth.
Traditional key lime pie, a dessert from the islands off the coast of Miami, is made with condensed milk to form the custard with the eye wateringly tart limes native to the Florida Keys in part because milk would spoil in an age before refrigeration.
Pork in this region tends to be roasted in methods similar to those found in Puerto Rico and Cuba, owing to mass emigration from those countries in the 20th century, especially in the counties surrounding Miami.
Orange blossom honey is a specialty of the state, and is widely available in farmer's markets. Caribbean lobster is a favorite special meal eagerly sought after by Floridians as it is found as far north as Fort Myers: spear diving and collecting them from reefs in the Florida Keys and near rocky shoals is a common practice of local scuba divers.
Other small game
Ptarmigan, grouse, crow blackbirds, dove, ducks and other game fowl are consumed in the United States. In the American state of Arkansas, beaver tail stew is consumed in Cotton town. Squirrel, raccoon, possum, bear, muskrat, chipmunk, skunk, groundhog, pheasant, armadillo and rabbit are also consumed in the United States.
Cuisine in the West
Cooking in the American West gets its influence from Native American and Hispanophone cultures, as well as later settlers that came in the 19th century: Texas, for example, has some influence from Germany in its choice of barbecue by using sausages.
Another instance can be found in the Northwestern region, which encompasses Oregon, Washington, and Northern California. All of the aforementioned rely on local seafood and a few classics of their own.
In New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, West Texas, and Southern California, Mexican flavors and influences are extremely common, especially from the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Baja California, and Sonora.
Northwest
The Pacific Northwest as a region includes Alaska and the state of Washington near the Canada-US border and terminates near Sacramento, California. Here, the terrain is mostly temperate rainforest on the coast mixed with pine forest as one approaches the Canada-US border inland.
One of the core favorite foodstuffs is Pacific salmon, native to many of the larger rivers of the area and often smoked or grilled on cedar planks. In Alaska, wild game like ptarmigan and moose meat feature extensively since much of the state is wilderness.
Fresh fish like steelhead trout, Pacific cod, Pacific halibut, and pollock are fished for extensively and feature on the menu of many restaurants, as do a plethora of fresh berries and vegetables, like Cameo apples from Washington state, the headquarters of the U.S. apple industry, cherries from Oregon, blackberries, and marionberries, a feature of many pies. Hazelnuts are grown extensively in this region and are a feature of baking, such as in chocolate hazelnut pie, an Oregon favorite, and Almond Roca is a local candy.
This region is also heavily dominated by some notable wineries producing a high-quality product.
Like its counterpart on the opposite coast to the East, there is a grand variety of shellfish in this region. Geoducks are a native species of giant clam that have incredibly long necks; they are eaten by the bucketful and shipped to Asia for millions of dollars as they are believed to be an aphrodisiac. Gaper clams are a favorite food, often grilled or steamed in a sauce.
Native California abalone is protected as a food source, and a traditional foodway predating settlement by whites, today featuring heavily in the cooking of fine restaurants as well as in home cooking, in mirin-flavored soups (the influence of Japanese cooking is strong in the region) noodle dishes and on the barbecue.
Olympia oysters are served on the half shell as well as the Kumamoto oyster, introduced by Japanese immigrants and a staple at dinner as an appetizer.
California mussels are a delicacy of the region, and have been a feature of the cooking for generations. There is evidence that Native American tribes consumed them up and down the California coast for centuries.
Crabs are a delicacy, and included in this are Alaskan king crab, red crab, yellow crab, and Dungeness crab. Californian and Oregonian sportsmen pursue the last three extensively using hoop nets, and prepare them in a multitude of ways.
Alaskan king crab, able to get up to 10 kg, is often served steamed for a whole table with lemon-butter sauce or put in chunks of salad with avocado, and native crabs are the base of dishes like the California roll, cioppino, a tomato-based fisherman's stew, and Crab Louie, another kind of salad native to San Francisco.
Favorite grains are mainly wheat, and the region is known for sourdough bread. Cheeses of the region include Humboldt Fog, Cougar Gold and Teleme.
Southwest and Southern California
The states of the Four Corners (Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah) plus Nevada, Southern California, and West Texas make up a large chunk of the United States.
There is a distinct Hispanic accent to the cookery here, with each having cultural capitals in Albuquerque, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Santa Fe, San Diego, and Tucson.
For centuries, prior to California's statehood in the 1850s, it was part of the Spanish Empire, namely Alta California (modern California), Santa Fe de Nuevo México (modern New Mexico), and Tejas (modern Texas). Today it is home of a large population of Native Americans, Hispanos, descendants of the American frontier, Asian Americans, and immigrants from Mexico and Latin America.
California, New Mexico, and Texas continue to hold their unique identities which is reflected in their distinct regional cuisines, the multiple cuisines of California, New Mexican cuisine, Texan cuisine, and Tex-Mex. Spanish is a commonly spoken secondary language here; the state of New Mexico has its own distinct dialect.
With the exception of Southern California, the signature meat is beef, since this is one of the two regions in which cowboys lived and modern cattle ranchers still eke out their living today. High-quality beefstock is a feature that has been present in the region for more than 200 years and the many cuts of beef are unique to the United States. These cuts of meat are different from the related Mexican cuisine over the border in that certain kind of offal, like lengua (tongue) cabeza (head) and tripas (tripe) are considered less desirable and are thus less emphasized. Typical cuts would include the ribs, brisket, sirloin, flank steak, skirt steak, and t-bone.
Historically, Spanish settlers that came to the region found it completely unsuitable to the mining operations that much older settlements in Mexico had to offer as their technology was not advanced enough to extract the silver that would later be found. They had no knowledge of the gold in California, which wouldn't be found until 1848, and knew even less about the silver in Nevada, undiscovered until after the Civil War.
Instead, in order to make the pueblos prosper, they adapted the old rancho system of places like Andalusia in Spain and brought the earliest beefstock, among these were breeds that would go feral and become the Texas longhorn, and Navajo-Churro sheep, still used as breeding stock because they are easy to keep and well adapted to the extremely arid and hot climate, where temperatures easily exceed 38 °C.
Later, cowboys learned from their management practices, many of which still stand today, like the practical management of stock on horseback using the Western saddle.
Likewise, settlers learned the cooking methods of those who came before and local tribes as well, for example, portions of Arizona and New Mexico still use the aforementioned beehive shaped clay contraption called an horno, an outdoor wood-fired oven both Native American tribes like the Navajo and Spaniards used for roasting meat, maize, and baking bread.
Meats that see frequent use are elk meat, a favorite in crown roasts and burgers, and nearer the Mexican border rattlesnake, often skinned and stewed.
The taste for alcohol tends toward light and clean flavors found in tequila, a staple of this region since the days of the Wild West and a staple in the bartender's arsenal for cocktails, especially in Las Vegas. In Utah, a state heavily populated by Mormons, alcohol is frowned upon by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but still available in area bars in Salt Lake City, mainly consumed by the populations of Catholics and other Protestant denominations living there.
Introduction of agriculture was limited prior to the 20th century and the development of better irrigation techniques, but included the addition of peaches, a crop still celebrated by Native American tribes like the Havasupai, and oranges. Today in Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico the favored orange today is the Moro blood orange, which often finds its way into the local cuisine, like cakes and marmalade.
Pine nuts are a particular regional specialty and feature often in fine dining and cookies; in Nevada the Native American tribes that live there are by treaty given rights to exclusive harvest, and in New Mexico they reserve usage of the term piñon for certain species of indigenous pine nuts.
From Native Americans, Westerners learned the practice of eating cactus fruit from the myriad species of opuntia that occupy the Chihuahuan, Sonoran, and Mojave desert lands. In California, Spanish missionaries brought with them the mission fig, and today this fruit is a delicacy.
Cuisine in this region tends to have certain key ingredients: tomatoes, onions, black beans, pinto beans, rice, bell peppers, chile peppers, and cheese, in particular Monterey Jack, invented in Southern California in the 19th century and itself often further altered into pepper Jack where spicy jalapeño peppers are incorporated into the cheese to create a smoky taste.
Chili peppers play an important role in the cuisine, with a few native to the region. This is especially true with the region's distinct New Mexico chile pepper, still grown by Hispanos of New Mexico and Puebloans the most sought after of which come from the Hatch valley, Albuquerque's Central Rio Grande, Chimayo, and Pueblos.
In New Mexico, chile is eaten on a variety of foods, such as the green chile cheeseburger, made popular by fast food chains such as Blake's Lotaburger. Indeed, even national fast food chains operating in the state, such as McDonald's, offer locally grown chile on many of their menu items.
In the 20th century a few more recent additions have arrived like the poblano pepper, rocoto pepper, ghost pepper, thai chili pepper, and Korean pepper, the last three especially when discussing Southern California and its large population from East and South Asia.
Cornbread is consumed, however the recipe differs from ones in the East in that the batter is cooked in a cast-iron skillet.
Outdoor cooking is popular and still utilizes an old method settlers brought from the East with them, in which a cast-iron Dutch oven is covered with the coals of the fire and stacked or hung from a tripod: this is different from the earthenware pots of Mexico.
Tortillas are still made the traditional way here and form an important component of the spicy breakfast burrito, which contains ham, eggs, and salsa or pico de gallo. They are also used for regular burritos, which contains any combination of marinated meats, vegetables, and piquant chilis; smothered burritos, often both containing and topped with New Mexico chile sauces; quesadillas, a much loved grilled dish where cheese and other ingredients are stuffed between two tortillas and served by the slice; and steak fajitas, where sliced skirt steak sizzles in a skillet with caramelized onions.
Unlike Mexico, tortillas of this region also may incorporate vegetables like spinach into the flatbread dough to make wraps, which were invented in Southern California. Food here tends to use pungent spices and condiments, typically chili verde sauce, various kinds of hot sauce, sriracha sauce, chili powder, cayenne pepper, white pepper, cumin, paprika, onion powder, thyme and black pepper. Nowhere is this fiery mix of spice more evident than in the dishes chili con carne, a meaty stew, and cowboy beans, both of which are a feature of regional cookoffs.
Southern California has several additions like five spice powder, rosemary, curry powder, kimchi, and lemongrass, with many of these brought by recent immigration to the region and often a feature of Southern California's fusion cuisine, popular in fine dining.
In Texas, the local barbecue is often entirely made up of beef brisket or large rib racks, where the meat is seasoned with a spice rub and cooked over coals of mesquite. In other portions of the state they smoke the meat and peppery sausages over high heat using pecan, apple, and oak wood and serve it with a side of pickled vegetables, a legacy of German and Czech settlers of the late 1800s.
California is home to Santa Maria-style barbecue, where the spices involved generally are black pepper, paprika, and garlic salt, and grill over the coals of coast live oak.
Native American additions may include Navajo frybread and corn on the cob, often roasted on the grill in its husk. A typical accompaniment or appetizer of all these states is the tortilla chip, which sometimes includes cornmeal from cultivars of corn that are blue or red in addition to the standard yellow of sweetcorn, and is served with salsa of varying hotness.
Tortilla chips also are an ingredient in the Tex Mex dish nachos, where these chips are loaded with any combination of ground beef, melted Monterey Jack, cheddar, or Colby cheese, guacamole, sour cream, and salsa, and Texas usually prefers a version of potato salad as a side dish.
For alcohol, a key ingredient is tequila: this spirit has been made on both sides of the US-Mexican border for generations, and in modern cuisine it is a must-have in a bartender's arsenal as well as an addition to dishes for sauteeing.
Southern California is focused more towards the coast and has had more contact with immigration from the West Pacific and Baja California, in addition to having the international city of Los Angeles as its capital. Here, the prime mode of transportation is by car.
Drive through fast food was invented in this area, but so was the concept of the gourmet burger movement, giving birth to chains like In-N-Out Burger, with many variations of burgers including chili, multiple patties, avocado, special sauces, and Angus or wagyu beef. Common accompaniments include thick milkshakes in various flavors like mint, chocolate, peanut butter, vanilla, strawberry, and mango.
Smoothies are a common breakfast item made with fresh fruit juice, yogurt, and crushed ice. Agua fresca, a drink originated by Mexican immigrants, is a common hot-weather beverage sold in many supermarkets and at mom and pop stands, available in citrus, watermelon, and strawberry flavors; the California version usually served chilled without grain in it.
The weather in Southern California is such that the temperature rarely drops below 54 °F in winter, thus, sun-loving crops like pistachios, kiwifruit, avocadoes, strawberries, and tomatoes are staple crops of the region, the last often dried in the sun and a feature of salads and sandwiches.
Olive oil is a staple cooking oil of the region and has been since the days of Junípero Serra; today the mission olive is a common tree growing in a Southern Californian's back garden. As a crop olives are increasingly a signature of the region along with Valencia oranges and Meyer lemons.
Soybeans, bok choy, Japanese persimmon, thai basil, Napa cabbage, nori, mandarin oranges, water chestnuts, and mung beans are other crops brought to the region from East Asia and are common additions to salads as the emphasis on fresh produce in both Southern and Northern California is strong.
Other vegetables and herbs have a distinct Mediterranean flavor which would include oregano, basil, summer squash, eggplant, and broccoli, with all of the above extensively available at farmers' markets all around Southern California.
Naturally, salads native to Southern California tend to be hearty affairs, like Cobb salad and Chinese chicken salad, and dressings like green goddess and ranch are a staple.
California-style pizza tends to have disparate ingredients with an emphasis on vegetables, with any combination of chili oil, prawns, eggs, chicken, shiitake mushrooms, olives, bell pepper, goat cheese, and feta cheese. Peanut noodles tend to include a sweet dressing with lo mein noodles and chopped peanuts.
Fresh fish and shellfish in Southern California tends to be expensive in restaurants, but every year since the end of WWII, the Pismo clam festival has taken place where the local population takes a large species of clam and bakes, stuffs, and roasts it as it is a regional delicacy.
Fishing for pacific species of octopus and the Humboldt squid are common, and both are a feature of East Asian and other L.A. fish markets. Lingcod is a coveted regional fish that is often caught in the autumn off the coast of San Diego and in the Channel Islands and often served baked. California sheephead are often grilled and are much sought after by spear fishermen and the immigrant Chinese population, in which case it is basket steamed.
Most revered of all in recent years is the California spiny lobster, a beast that can grow to 44 lb, and is a delicacy that now rivals the fishery for Dungeness crab in its importance.
Pacific and Hawaiian cuisine
Hawaii is often considered to be one of the most culturally diverse U.S. states, as well as being the only state with an Asian-majority population and one of the few places where United States territory extends into the tropics. As a result, Hawaiian cuisine borrows elements of a variety of cuisines, particularly those of Asian and Pacific-rim cultures, as well as traditional native Hawaiian and a few additions from the American mainland.
American influence in the last 150 years has brought cattle, goats, and sheep to the islands, introducing cheese, butter, and yogurt products, as well as crops like red cabbage.
Major Asian and Polynesian influences on modern Hawaiian cuisine are from Japan, Korea, Vietnam, China (especially near the Pearl River delta,) Samoa, and the Philippines. From Japan, the concept of serving raw fish as a meal with rice was introduced, as was soft tofu, setting the stage for the popular dish called poke.
From Korea, immigrants to Hawaii brought a love of spicy garlic marinades for meat and kimchi. From China, their version of char siu baau became modern manapua, a type of steamed pork bun with a spicy filling.
Filipinos brought vinegar, bagoong, and lumpia, and during the 20th century immigrants from American Samoa brought the open pit fire umu and the Vietnamese introduced lemongrass and fish sauce.
Each East Asian culture brought several different kinds of noodles, including udon, ramen, mei fun, and pho, and today these are common lunchtime meals.
Much of this cuisine mixes and melts into traditions like the lu'au, whose traditional elaborate fare was once the prerogative of kings and queens but is today the subject of parties for both tourists and also private parties for the ‘ohana (meaning family and close friends.)
Traditionally, women and men ate separately under the Hawaiian kapu system, a system of religious beliefs that honored the Hawaiian gods similar to the Maori tapu system, though in this case had some specific prohibitions towards females eating things like coconut, pork, turtle meat, and bananas as these were considered parts of the male gods. Punishment for violation could be severe, as a woman might endanger a man's mana, or soul, by eating with him or otherwise by eating the forbidden food because doing so dishonored the male gods.
As the system broke down after 1810, introductions of foods from laborers on plantations began to be included at feasts and much cross pollination occurred, where Asian foodstuffs mixed with Polynesian foodstuffs like breadfruit, kukui nuts, and purple sweet potatoes.
Some notable Hawaiian fare includes seared ahi tuna, opakapaka (snapper) with passionfruit, Hawaiian island-raised lamb, beef and meat products, Hawaiian plate lunch, and Molokai shrimp. Seafood traditionally is caught fresh in Hawaiian waters, and particular delicacies are ula poni, papaikualoa, ‘opihi, and ‘opihi malihini, better known as Hawaiian spiny lobster, Kona crab, Hawaiian limpet, and abalone, the last brought over with Japanese immigrants.
Some cuisine also incorporates a broad variety of produce and locally grown agricultural products, including tomatoes, sweet Maui onions, taro, and macadamia nuts. Tropical fruits also play an important role in the cuisine as a flavoring in cocktails and in desserts, including local cultivars of bananas, sweetsop, mangoes, lychee, coconuts, papayas, and lilikoi (passionfruit). Pineapples have been an island staple since the 19th century and figure into many marinades and drinks.
Common dishes found on a regional level
Ethnicity-specific and immigrant influence
The influence of ethnicity-specific cuisines like Italian cuisine and Mexican cuisine was present in the United States by World War I. There are recipes for Chilean meat pies, chicken chop suey, chow mein, Mexican pork pastries and Italian meatballs going back to at least the 1930s, but many of the recipes were Anglicized and they appeared relatively infrequently compared to Northern European recipes.
19th-century cookbooks bear evidence of diverse influences with some including recipes like Indian pickle, Italian pork and various curries. 19th-century literature shows knowledge of Jewish, Russian, Italian, Chinese and Greek-American cuisines, and foreign cookbooks continued to grow more detailed through World War I including recipes like Peruvian chicken, Mexican enchiladas, Chilean corn pudding and Hindustan chicken curry.
Louise Rice, author of Dainty Dishes from Foreign Lands describes the recipes in her book as "not wholly vegetarian" though noting at the time of publication in 1911 that most of the recipes would likely be new to average American cooks and likely contain higher proportions of vegetables to meat. She includes Italian pasta recipes like macaroni in milk, soups and polentas and German recipes like liver dumplings called Leberknödel and a variation of Sauerbraten.
The demand for ethnic foods in the United States reflects the nation's changing diversity as well as its development over time. According to the National Restaurant Association, Restaurant industry sales are expected to reach a record high of $476 billion in 2005, an increase of 4.9 percent over 2004... Driven by consumer demand, the ethnic food market reached record sales in 2002, and has emerged as the fastest growing category in the food and beverage product sector, according to USBX Advisory Services. Minorities in the U.S. spend a combined $142 billion on food and by 2010, America's ethnic population is expected to grow by 40 percent.
A movement began during the 1980s among popular leading chefs to reclaim America's ethnic foods within its regional traditions, where these trends originated. One of the earliest was Paul Prudhomme, who in 1984 began the introduction of his influential cookbook, Paul Prodhomme's Louisiana Kitchen, by describing the over 200-year history of Creole and Cajun cooking; he aims to "preserve and expand the Louisiana tradition." Prodhomme's success quickly inspired other chefs. Norman Van Aken embraced a Floridian type cuisine fused with many ethnic and globalized elements in his Feast of Sunlight cookbook in 1988. California became swept up in the movement, then seemingly started to lead the trend itself, in, for example, the popular restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley.
Examples of the Chez Panisse phenomenon, chefs who embraced a new globalized cuisine, were celebrity chefs like Jeremiah Tower and Wolfgang Puck, both former colleagues at the restaurant. Puck went on to describe his belief in contemporary, new style American cuisine in the introduction to The Wolfgang Puck Cookbook:
Another major breakthrough, whose originators were once thought to be crazy, is the mixing of ethnic cuisines. It is not at all uncommon to find raw fish listed next to tortillas on the same menu. Ethnic crossovers also occur when distinct elements meet in a single recipe. This country is, after all, a huge melting pot. Why should its cooking not illustrate the American transformation of diversity into unity?
Puck's former colleague, Jeremiah Tower became synonymous with California Cuisine and the overall American culinary revolution. Meanwhile, the restaurant that inspired both Puck and Tower became a distinguished establishment, popularizing its so called "mantra" in its book by Paul Bertolli and owner Alice Waters, Chez Panisse Cooking, in 1988. Published well after the restaurants' founding in 1971, this new cookbook from the restaurant seemed to perfect the idea and philosophy that had developed over the years. The book embraced America's natural bounty, specifically that of California, while containing recipes that reflected Bertoli and Waters' appreciation of both northern Italian and French style foods.
Early ethnic influences
While the earliest cuisine of the United States was influenced by Native Americans, the thirteen colonies, or the antebellum South, the overall culture of the nation, its gastronomy and the growing culinary arts became ever more influenced by its changing ethnic mix and immigrant patterns from the 18th and 19th centuries unto the present. Some of the ethnic groups that continued to influence the cuisine were here in prior years; others arrived more numerously during "The Great Transatlantic Migration" (of 1870–1914) or other mass migrations.
Some of the ethnic influences could be found across the nation after the American Civil War and into the continental expansion for most of the 19th century. Ethnic influences already in the nation at that time would include the following groups and their respective cuisines:
Select nationalities of Europe and the respective developments from early modern European cuisine of the colonial age:
British-Americans and on-going developments in New England cuisine, the national traditions founded in the cuisine of the original thirteen colonies, The Cuisine of the Southern United States, and many aspects of other regional cuisine.
Spanish Americans and early modern Spanish cuisine, as well as Basque-Americans and Basque cuisine.
Early German-American or Pennsylvania Dutch and Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine
French Americans and their New World regional identities such as:
Acadian
Cajun and Cajun cuisine
Louisiana Creole and Louisiana Creole cuisine. Louisiana Creole (also called French Créole) refers to native-born people of the New Orleans area who are descended from the Colonial French and Spanish settlers of Colonial French Louisiana, before it became part of the United States in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase.
The various ethnicities originating from the early gastronomy and cuisines of the New World, Latin American cuisine, and North American cuisine:
Native Americans in the United States and Native American cuisine
African Americans and Soul food.
Puerto Rican cuisine
Mexican Americans and Mexican-American cuisine; as well as related regional cuisines:
Tex-Mex (regional Texas and Mexican fusion)
Some aspects of "Southwestern cuisine".
New Mexican cuisine from New Mexico and the historical region of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, and now ethnically tied to the Pueblos and Hispanos of New Mexico.
Later ethnic and immigrant influence
Mass migrations of immigrants to the United States came over time. Historians identify several waves of migration to the United States: one from 1815 to 1860, in which some five million English, Irish, Germanic, Scandinavian, and others from northwestern Europe came to the United States; one from 1865 to 1890, in which some 10 million immigrants, also mainly from northwestern Europe, settled; and a third from 1890 to 1914, in which 15 million immigrants, mainly from central, eastern, and southern Europe (many Austrian, Hungarian, Turkish, Lithuanian, Russian, Jewish, Greek, Italian, and Romanian) settled in the United States.
Together with earlier arrivals to the United States (including the indigenous Native Americans, Hispanic and Latino Americans, particularly in the West, Southwest, and Texas; African Americans who came to the United States in the Atlantic slave trade; and early colonial migrants from Europe), these new waves of immigrants had a profound impact on national or regional cuisine. Some of these more prominent groups include the following:
Arab Americans, particularly Lebanese Americans (the largest ethnic Arab group in the United States)—Arab cuisine, Lebanese cuisine
Chinese Americans—American Chinese cuisine, Chinese cuisine
Cuban Americans—Cuban cuisine
Dominican Americans—Dominican Republic cuisine
Ethiopian Americans—Eritrean Americans: Ethiopian cuisine, Eritrean cuisine in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Denver, New York.
German Americans—German cuisine (the Pennsylvania Dutch, although descended from Germans, arrived earlier than the bulk of German migrants and have distinct culinary traditions)
Greek Americans—Greek-American cuisine, Greek cuisine, Mediterranean cuisine
Haitian Americans—Haitian cuisine
Hungarian Americans—Hungarian cuisine
Indian Americans—Indian cuisine
Irish Americans—Irish cuisine
Italian Americans—Italian-American cuisine, Italian cuisine
Japanese Americans—Japanese cuisine, with influences on the Hawaiian cuisine
Jewish Americans—Jewish cuisine, with particular influence on New York City cuisine
Korean Americans—Korean cuisine
Lithuanian Americans—Lithuanian cuisine, Midwest
Nicaraguan American—Nicaraguan cuisine
Pakistani Americans—Pakistani cuisine
Polish Americans—Polish cuisine, with particular impact on Midwest
Polynesian Americans—Hawaiian cuisine
Portuguese Americans—Portuguese cuisine
Romanian Americans—Romanian cuisine
Russian Americans—Russian cuisine, with particular impact on Midwest
Salvadoran Americans—Salvadoran cuisine
Scottish Americans—Scottish cuisine
Thai Americans—Thai cuisine
Turkish Americans—Turkish cuisine, Balkan cuisine
Vietnamese Americans—Vietnamese cuisine
West Indian Americans—Caribbean cuisine, Jamaican cuisine, Trinidad and Tobago cuisine
Italian, Mexican and Chinese (Cantonese) cuisines have indeed joined the mainstream. These three cuisines have become so ingrained in the American culture that they are no longer foreign to the American palate. According to the study, more than nine out of 10 consumers are familiar with and have tried these foods, and about half report eating them frequently. The research also indicates that Italian, Mexican and Chinese (Cantonese) have become so adapted to such an extent that "authenticity" is no longer a concern to customers.
Contributions from these ethnic foods have become as common as traditional "American" fares such as hot dogs, hamburgers, beef steak, which are derived from German cuisine, (chicken-fried steak, for example, is a variation on German schnitzel), cherry pie, Coca-Cola, milkshakes, fried chicken (Fried chicken is of English, Scottish, and African influence), Pepsi, Dr Pepper and so on. Nowadays, Americans also have a ubiquitous consumption of foods like pizza and pasta, tacos and burritos to "General Tso's chicken" and fortune cookies. Fascination with these and other ethnic foods may also vary with region.
Notable American chefs
American chefs have been influential both in the food industry and in popular culture. An important 19th-century American chef was Charles Ranhofer of Delmonico's Restaurant in New York. American cooking has been exported around the world, both through the global expansion of restaurant chains such as T.G.I. Friday's and McDonald's and the efforts of individual restaurateurs such as Bob Payton, credited with bringing American-style pizza to the UK.
The first generation of television chefs such as Robert Carrier and Julia Child tended to concentrate on cooking based primarily on European, especially French and Italian, cuisines. Only during the 1970s and 1980s did television chefs such as James Beard and Jeff Smith shift the focus towards home-grown cooking styles, particularly those of the different ethnic groups within the nation. Notable American restaurant chefs include Thomas Keller, Charlie Trotter, Grant Achatz, Alfred Portale, Paul Prudhomme, Paul Bertolli, Jonathan Waxman, Mark Peel, Frank Stitt, Alice Waters, Wolfgang Puck, Patrick O'Connell and celebrity chefs like Mario Batali, David Chang, Alton Brown, Emeril Lagasse, Cat Cora, Michael Symon, Bobby Flay, Ina Garten, Todd English, Anthony Bourdain, Guy Fieri, Colonel Sanders and Paula Deen.
Regional chefs are emerging as localized celebrity chefs with growing broader appeal, such as Peter Merriman (Hawaii Regional Cuisine), Jerry Traunfeld, Alan Wong (Pacific Rim cuisine), Rick Bayless (traditional Mexican cuisine with modern interpretations), Norman Van Aken (New World Cuisine – fusion Latin, Caribbean, Asian, African and American), and Mark Miller (American Southwest cuisine).
See also
Tex-Mex cuisine
Indigenous cuisine of the Americas
Soul food
High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America
Cuisine of Antebellum America
Cuisine of New York City
Cuisine of California
List of American desserts
List of American breads
List of American foods
List of American regional and fusion cuisines
List of American breakfast foods
Native American cuisine
Tlingit cuisine
Cuisine of the Americas
Cuisine of the Pennsylvania Dutch
Cuisine of the Southern United States
References
Works cited
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Fried, Stephen. Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West (Bantam; 2010)
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Veit, Helen Zoe. Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century (2013)
Further reading
External links
Cultural history of the United States
North American cuisine |
2176 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad%20Shah%20Massoud | Ahmad Shah Massoud | Ahmad Shah Massoud (Dari/Pashto: , ; September 2, 1953September 9, 2001) was an Afghan politician and military commander. He was a powerful guerrilla commander during the resistance against the Soviet occupation between 1979 and 1989. In the 1990s, he led the government's military wing against rival militias; after the Taliban takeover, he was the leading opposition commander against their regime until his assassination in 2001.
Massoud came from an ethnic Tajik, Sunni Muslim background in the Panjshir Valley of Northern Afghanistan. He began studying engineering at Polytechnical University of Kabul in the 1970s, where he became involved with religious anti-communist movements around Burhanuddin Rabbani, a leading Islamist. He participated in a failed uprising against Mohammed Daoud Khan's government. He later joined Rabbani's Jamiat-e Islami party. During the Soviet–Afghan War, his role as a powerful insurgent leader of the Afghan mujahideen earned him the nickname "Lion of Panjshir" () among his followers, as he successfully resisted the Soviets from taking the Panjshir Valley. In 1992, he signed the Peshawar Accord, a peace and power-sharing agreement, in the post-communist Islamic State of Afghanistan. He was appointed the Minister of Defense as well as the government's main military commander. His militia fought to defend Kabul against militias led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and other warlords who were bombing the city, as well as later against the Taliban, who laid siege to the capital in January 1995 after the city had seen fierce fighting with at least 60,000 civilians killed.
Following the rise of the Taliban in 1996, Massoud, who rejected the Taliban's fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, returned to armed opposition until he was forced to flee to Kulob, Tajikistan, strategically destroying the Salang Tunnel on his way north. He became the military and political leader of the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan or Northern Alliance, which by 2000 controlled only between 5 and 10 percent of the country. In 2001 he visited Europe and urged European Parliament leaders to pressure Pakistan on its support for the Taliban. He also asked for humanitarian aid to combat the Afghan people's gruesome conditions under the Taliban. Massoud was assassinated by two al-Qaeda assassins with a suicide bombing on September 9, 2001, ordered personally by the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden himself. Two days later, the September 11 attacks occurred in the United States, which ultimately led to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation invading Afghanistan and allying with Massoud's forces. The Northern Alliance eventually won the two-month-long war in December 2001, removing the Taliban from power.
Massoud has been described as one of the greatest guerrilla leaders of the 20th century and has been compared to Josip Broz Tito, Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara. Massoud was posthumously named "National Hero" by the order of President Hamid Karzai after the Taliban were ousted from power. The date of Massoud's death, September 9, is observed as a national holiday known as "Massoud Day". His followers call him Amer Sāhib-e Shahīd (), which translates to "(our) martyred commander". He has been posthumously honored by a plaque in France in 2021, and in the same year was awarded with the highest honor of Tajikistan. However, he is also seen as a war criminal by others.
Early life
Ahmad Shah Massoud was born in 1953 in Bazarak in the Panjshir Valley (today administered as part of Panjshir Province), to a well-to-do family native to the Panjshir valley. His name at birth was "Ahmed Shah" after Ahmad Shah Durrani; he took the name "Massoud" as a nom de guerre when he went into the resistance movement in 1974. His father, Dost Mohammad Khan, was a colonel in the Royal Afghan Army. From his native Panjshir, his family moved briefly to Herat and then to Kabul, where Massoud spent most of his childhood.
Massoud attended the renowned Franco-Afghan Lycée Esteqlal where he attained his proficiency in French. While studying at the Lycée Massoud took interest in all things military, namely during the Six-Day War in which he became enamoured by Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser's Islamic nationalism and defiance. Massound later also cited the experiences of Jordanian soldiers defending Jerusalem and Egyptian and Syrian Soldiers defending their countries as an inspiration. Regarded as a gifted student, he studied engineering at Kabul University after his graduation from the Lycée. Massoud's native tongue was Dari (Afghan Farsi) but could also speak Pashto, Urdu (Lashkari) and French and had good English reading skills. During his youth, Massoud read the works of Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong and Argentine Che Guevara. He said he learned much from Mao, but found Guevara's thinking to be too simple.
1975 rebellion in Panjshir valley
In 1973, former Prime Minister Mohammed Daoud Khan was brought to power in a coup d'état backed by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, and the Republic of Afghanistan was established. These developments gave rise to an Islamist movement opposed to the increasing communist and Soviet influence over Afghanistan. During that time, while studying at Kabul University, Massoud became involved with the Muslim Youth (Sazman-i Jawanan-i Musulman), the student branch of the Jamiat-e Islami (Islamic Society), whose chairman then was the professor Burhanuddin Rabbani. Kabul University was a centre for political debate and activism during that time.
In July 1975, Massoud, with help from the Pakistani intelligence, led the first rebellion of Panjshir residents against the government of Daoud Khan. The uprising was later suppressed by Daoud Khan's forces and Massoud crossed back into Pakistan where he would attend a secret, paramilitary ISI training center in Cherat. Dissatisfied, Massoud left the center and returned to Peshawar where he committed himself to personal military studies. Massoud read Mao Tse-tung's writings on the Long March, of Che Guevara's career, the memoirs of General de Gualle, General Võ Nguyên Giáp, Sun Tzu's Art of War, and an unnamed handbook on counterterrorism by an American general.
After this failure, a "profound and long-lasting schism" within the Islamist movement began to emerge. The Islamic Society split between supporters of the more moderate forces around Massoud and Rabbani, who led the Jamiat-i Islami, and more radical Islamist elements surrounding Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who founded the Hezb-i Islami. The conflict reached such a point that Hekmatyar reportedly tried to kill Massoud, then 22 years old.
The Soviet invasion and PDPA communism
Communist revolution in Afghanistan (1978)
The government of Mohammed Daoud Khan tried to scale back the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan's influence, dismissing PDPA members from their government posts, appointing conservatives to replace them, and finally dissolved the PDPA, with the arrests of senior party members.
On April 27, 1978, the PDPA and military units loyal to it killed Daoud Khan, his immediate family, and bodyguards in a violent coup, and seized control of the capital Kabul. The new PDPA government, led by a revolutionary council, did not enjoy the support of the masses. It implemented a doctrine hostile to political dissent, whether inside or outside the party.
The PDPA started reforms along Marxist–Leninist and Soviet lines. The reforms and the PDPA's affinity to the Soviet Union were met with strong resistance by the population, especially as the government attempted to enforce its Marxist policies by arresting or executing those who resisted. Between 50,000 and 100,000 people were estimated to have been arrested and killed by communist troops in the countryside alone. Due to the repression, large parts of the country, especially the rural areas, organized into open revolt against the PDPA government. By spring 1979 unrest had reached 24 out of 28 Afghan provinces, including major urban areas. Over half of the Afghan army either deserted or joined the insurrection.
Believing that an uprising against the Soviet-backed communists would be supported by the people, Massoud, on July 6, 1979, started an insurrection in the Panjshir, which initially failed. Massoud decided to avoid conventional confrontation with the larger government forces and to wage a guerrilla war. He subsequently took full control of Panjshir, pushing out Afghan communist troops. Oliver Roy writes that in the following period, Massoud's "personal prestige and the efficiency of his military organisation persuaded many local commanders to come and learn from him."
Resistance against the Soviet Union (1979–1989)
Following the 1979 Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, Massoud devised a strategic plan for expelling the invaders and overthrowing the communist regime. The first task was to establish a popularly based resistance force that had the loyalty of the people. The second phase was "active defense" of the Panjshir stronghold, while carrying out asymmetric warfare. In the third phase, the "strategic offensive", Massoud's forces would gain control of large parts of Northern Afghanistan. The fourth phase was the "general application" of Massoud's principles to the whole country, and the defeat of the Afghan communist government.
Massoud's mujahideen attacked the occupying Soviet forces, ambushing Soviet and Afghan communist convoys travelling through the Salang Pass, and causing fuel shortages in Kabul. The Soviets mounted a series of offensives against the Panjshir. Between 1980 and 1985, these offensives were conducted twice a year. Despite engaging more men and hardware on each occasion, the Soviets were unable to defeat Massoud's forces. In 1982, the Soviets began deploying major combat units in the Panjshir, numbering up to 30,000 men. Massoud pulled his troops back into subsidiary valleys, where they occupied fortified positions. When the Soviet columns advanced onto these positions, they fell into ambushes. When the Soviets withdrew, Afghan army garrisons took over their positions. Massoud and his mujahideen forces attacked and recaptured them one by one.
In 1983, the Soviets offered Massoud a temporary truce, which he accepted in order to rebuild his own forces and give the civilian population a break from Soviet attacks. He put the respite to good use. In this time he created the Shura-e Nazar (Supervisory Council), which subsequently united 130 commanders from 12 Afghan provinces in their fight against the Soviet army. This council existed outside the Peshawar parties, which were prone to internecine rivalry and bickering, and served to smooth out differences between resistance groups, due to political and ethnic divisions. It was the predecessor of what could have become a unified Islamic Afghan army.
Relations with the party headquarters in Peshawar were often strained, as Rabbani insisted on giving Massoud no more weapons and supplies than to other Jamiat commanders, even those who did little fighting. To compensate for this deficiency, Massoud relied on revenues drawn from exports of emeralds and lapis lazuli, that are traditionally exploited in Northern Afghanistan.
Regarding infighting among different mujahideen factions, following a Soviet truce, Massoud said in an interview:
To organize support for the mujahideen, Massoud established an administrative system that enforced law and order (nazm) in areas under his control. The Panjshir was divided into 22 bases (qarargah) governed by a military commander and a civilian administrator, and each had a judge, a prosecutor and a public defender. Massoud's policies were implemented by different committees: an economic committee was charged with funding the war effort. The health committee provided health services, assisted by volunteers from foreign humanitarian non-governmental organizations, such as Aide médicale internationale. An education committee was charged with the training of the military and administrative cadre. A culture committee and a judiciary committee were also created.
This expansion prompted Babrak Karmal to demand that the Red Army resume their offensives, in order to crush the Panjshir groups. However, Massoud had received warning of the attack through GCHQ intelligence and he evacuated all 130,000 inhabitants from the valley into the Hindukush mountains, leaving the Soviet bombings to fall on empty ground and the Soviet battalions to face the mountains.
With the defeat of the Soviet-Afghan attacks, Massoud carried out the next phase of his strategic plan, expanding the resistance movement and liberating the northern provinces of Afghanistan. In August 1986, he captured Farkhar in Takhar Province. In November 1986, his forces overran the headquarters of the government's 20th division at Nahrin in Baghlan Province, scoring an important victory for the resistance. This expansion was also carried out through diplomatic means, as more mujahideen commanders were persuaded to adopt the Panjshir military system.
Despite almost constant attacks by the Red Army and the Afghan army, Massoud increased his military strength. Starting in 1980 with a force of less than 1,000 ill-equipped guerrillas, the Panjshir valley mujahideen grew to a 5,000-strong force by 1984. After expanding his influence outside the valley, Massoud increased his resistance forces to 13,000 fighters by 1989. These forces were divided into different types of units: the locals (mahalli) were tasked with static defense of villages and fortified positions. The best of the mahalli were formed into units called grup-i zarbati (shock troops), semi-mobile groups that acted as reserve forces for the defense of several strongholds. A different type of unit was the mobile group (grup-i-mutaharek), a lightly equipped commando-like formation numbering 33 men, whose mission was to carry out hit-and-run attacks outside the Panjshir, sometimes as far as 100 km from their base. These men were professional soldiers, well-paid and trained, and, from 1983 on, they provided an effective strike force against government outposts. Uniquely among the mujahideen, these groups wore uniforms, and their use of the pakul made this headwear emblematic of the Afghan resistance.
Massoud's military organization was an effective compromise between the traditional Afghan method of warfare and the modern principles of guerrilla warfare which he had learned from the works of Mao Zedong and Che Guevara. His forces were considered the most effective of all the various Afghan resistance movements.
Britain's MI6 having activated long-established networks of contacts in Pakistan were able to support Massoud and soon became their key ally. MI6 sent an annual mission of two of their officers as well as military instructors to Massoud and his fighters. The United States provided Massoud with comparatively less support than other factions. Part of the reason was that it permitted its funding and arms distribution to be administered by Pakistan, which favored the rival mujahideen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In an interview, Massoud said, "We thought the CIA knew everything. But they didn't. They supported some bad people [meaning Hekmatyar]." Primary advocates for supporting Massoud were the US State Department's Edmund McWilliams and Peter Tomsen, who were on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Others included two Heritage Foundation foreign policy analysts, Michael Johns and James A. Phillips, both of whom championed Massoud as the Afghan resistance leader most worthy of U.S. support under the Reagan Doctrine. Thousands of foreign Islamic volunteers entered Afghanistan to fight with the mujahideen against the Soviet troops.
The Soviet army and the Afghan communist army were mainly defeated by Massoud and his mujahideen in numerous small engagements between 1984 and 1988. After describing the Soviet Union's military engagement in Afghanistan as "a bleeding wound" in 1986, Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev began a withdrawal of Soviet troops from the nation in May 1988. On February 15, 1989, in what was depicted as an improbable victory for the mujahideen, the last Soviet soldier left the nation.
Fall of the Afghan communist regime (1992)
After the departure of Soviet troops in 1989, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan regime, then headed by Mohammad Najibullah, held its own against the mujahideen. Backed by a massive influx of weapons from the Soviet Union, the Afghan armed forces reached a level of performance they had never reached under direct Soviet tutelage. They maintained control over all of Afghanistan's major cities. During late 1990, helped by hundreds of mujahideen forces, Massoud targeted the Tajik Supreme Soviet, trying to oust communism from the neighboring Tajikistan to further destabilize the dying Soviet Union, which would also impact the Afghan government. At that time, as per Asad Durrani, the director-general of the ISI during this period, Massoud's base camp was in Garam Chashma, in Pakistan. By 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Afghan regime eventually began to crumble. Food and fuel shortages undermined the capacities of the government's army, and a resurgence of factionalism split the regime between Khalq and Parcham supporters.
A few days after Najibullah had lost control of the nation, his army commanders and governors arranged to turn over authority to resistance commanders and local warlords throughout the country. Joint councils (shuras) were immediately established for local government, in which civil and military officials of the former government were usually included. In many cases, prior arrangements for transferring regional and local authority had been made between foes.
Collusions between military leaders quickly brought down the Kabul government. In mid-January 1992, within three weeks of the demise of the Soviet Union, Massoud was aware of conflict within the government's northern command. General Abdul Momim, in charge of the Hairatan border crossing at the northern end of Kabul's supply highway, and other non-Pashtun generals based in Mazar-i-Sharif, feared removal by Najibullah and replacement by Pashtun officers. When the generals rebelled, Abdul Rashid Dostum, who held general rank as head of the Jowzjani militia, also based in Mazar-i-Sharif, took over.
He and Massoud reached a political agreement, together with another major militia leader, Sayyed Mansour, of the Ismaili community based in Baghlan Province. These northern allies consolidated their position in Mazar-i-Sharif on March 21. Their coalition covered nine provinces in the north and northeast. As turmoil developed within the government in Kabul, no government force stood between the northern allies and the major air force base at Bagram, some seventy kilometers north of Kabul. By mid-April 1992, the Afghan air force command at Bagram had capitulated to Massoud. On March 18, 1992, Najibullah decided to resign. On April 17, as his government fell, he tried to escape but was stopped at Kabul Airport by Dostum's forces. He took refuge at the United Nations mission, where he remained unharmed until 1996, while Massoud controlled the area surrounding the mission.
Senior communist generals and officials of the Najibullah administration acted as a transitional authority to transfer power to Ahmad Shah Massoud's alliance. The Kabul interim authority invited Massoud to enter Kabul as the new Head of State, but he held back. Massoud ordered his forces, positioned to the north of Kabul, not to enter the capital until a political solution was in place. He called on all the senior Afghan party leaders, many then based in exile in Peshawar, to work out a political settlement acceptable to all sides and parties.
War in Afghanistan (1992–2001)
War in Kabul and other parts of the country (1992–1996)
Peace and power-sharing agreement (1992)
With United Nations support, most Afghan political parties decided to appoint a legitimate national government to succeed communist rule, through an elite settlement. While the external Afghan party leaders were residing in Peshawar, the military situation around Kabul involving the internal commanders was tense. A 1991 UN peace process brought about some negotiations, but the attempted elite settlement did not develop. In April 1992, resistance leaders in Peshawar tried to negotiate a settlement. Massoud supported the Peshawar process of establishing a broad coalition government inclusive of all resistance parties, but Hekmatyar sought to become the sole ruler of Afghanistan, stating, "In our country coalition government is impossible because, this way or another, it is going to be weak and incapable of stabilizing the situation in Afghanistan."
Massoud wrote:
All the parties had participated in the war, in jihad in Afghanistan, so they had to have their share in the government, and in the formation of the government. Afghanistan is made up of different nationalities. We were worried about a national conflict between different tribes and different nationalities. In order to give everybody their own rights and also to avoid bloodshed in Kabul, we left the word to the parties so they should decide about the country as a whole. We talked about it for a temporary stage and then after that the ground should be prepared for a general election.
A recorded radio communication between the two leaders showed the divide as Massoud asked Hekmatyar:
The Kabul regime is ready to surrender, so instead of the fighting we should gather. ... The leaders are meeting in Peshawar. ... The troops should not enter Kabul, they should enter later on as part of the government.
Hekmatyar's response:
We will march into Kabul with our naked sword. No one can stop us. ... Why should we meet the leaders?"
Massoud answered:
"It seems to me that you don't want to join the leaders in Peshawar nor stop your threat, and you are planning to enter Kabul ... in that case I must defend the people.
At that point Osama bin Laden, trying to mediate, urged Hekmatyar to "go back with your brothers" and to accept a compromise. Bin Laden reportedly "hated Ahmad Shah Massoud". Bin Laden was involved in ideological and personal disputes with Massoud and had sided with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar against Massoud in the inner-Afghan conflict since the late 1980s. But Hekmatyar refused to accept a compromise, confident that he would be able to gain sole power in Afghanistan.
On April 24, 1992, the leaders in Peshawar agreed on and signed the Peshawar Accord, establishing the post-communist Islamic State of Afghanistan – which was a stillborn 'state' with a paralyzed 'government' right from its inception, until its final succumbing in September 1996. The creation of the Islamic State was welcomed though by the General Assembly of the United Nations and the Islamic State of Afghanistan was recognized as the legitimate entity representing Afghanistan until June 2002, when its successor, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, was established under the interim government of Hamid Karzai. Under the 1992 Peshawar Accord, the Defense Ministry was given to Massoud while the Prime Ministership was given to Hekmatyar. Hekmatyar refused to sign. With the exception of Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami, all of the other Peshawar resistance parties were unified under this peace and power-sharing accord in April 1992.
Escalating war over Kabul (1992)
Although repeatedly offered the position of prime minister, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar refused to recognize the peace and power-sharing agreement. His Hezb-e Islami militia initiated a massive bombardment campaign against the Islamic State and the capital city Kabul. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar received operational, financial and military support from neighboring Pakistan. The Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University, Amin Saikal, writes in Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival that without Pakistan's support, Hekmatyar "would not have been able to target and destroy half of Kabul." Saikal states that Pakistan wanted to install a favorable regime under Hekmatyar in Kabul so that it could use Afghan territory for access to Central Asia.
Hekmatyar's rocket bombardments and the parallel escalation of violent conflict between two militias, Ittihad and Wahdat, which had entered some suburbs of Kabul, led to a breakdown in law and order. Shia Iran and Sunni Wahabbi Saudi Arabia, as competitors for regional hegemony, encouraged conflict between the Ittihad and Wahdat factions. On the one side was the Shia Hazara Hezb-i Wahdat of Abdul Ali Mazari and on the other side, the Sunni Pashtun Ittihad-i Islami of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf.
According to Human Rights Watch, Iran was strongly supporting the Hezb-i Wahdat forces, with Iranian intelligence officials providing direct orders, while Saudi Arabia supported Sayyaf and his Ittihad-i Islami faction to maximize Wahhabi influence. Kabul descended into lawlessness and chaos, as described in reports by Human Rights Watch and the Afghanistan Justice Project. Massoud's Jamiat commanders, the interim government, and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) repeatedly tried to negotiate ceasefires, which broke down in only a few days. Another militia, the Junbish-i Milli of former communist general Abdul Rashid Dostum, was backed by Uzbekistan. Uzbek president Islam Karimov was keen to see Dostum controlling as much of Afghanistan as possible, especially in the north. Dostum repeatedly changed allegiances.
The Afghanistan Justice Project (AJP) says, that "while [Hekmatyar's anti-government] Hizb-i Islami is frequently named as foremost among the factions responsible for the deaths and destruction in the bombardment of Kabul, it was not the only perpetrator of these violations." According to the AJP, "the scale of the bombardment and kinds of weapons used represented disproportionate use of force" in a capital city with primarily residential areas by all the factions involved – including the government forces. Crimes were committed by individuals within the different armed factions. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar released 10,000 dangerous criminals from the main prisons into the streets of Kabul to destabilize the city and cut off Kabul from water, food and energy supplies. The Iran-controlled Wahdat of Abdul Ali Mazari, as well as the Ittihad of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf supported by Saudi Arabia, targeted civilians of the 'opposite side' in systematic atrocities. Abdul Rashid Dostum allowed crimes as a perceived payment for his troops.
Afshar operation (February 1993)
"The major criticism of Massoud's human rights record" is the escalation of the Afshar military operation in 1993. A report by the Afghanistan Justice Project describes Massoud as failing to prevent atrocities carried out by his forces and those of their factional ally, Ittihad-i Islami, against civilians on taking the suburb of Afshar during a military operation against an anti-state militia allied to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. They shelled residential areas in the capital city in February 1993. Critics said that Massoud should have foreseen these problems. A meeting convened by Massoud on the next day ordered a halt to killing and looting, but it failed to stop abuses. Human Rights Watch, in a report based largely on the material collected by the Afghanistan Justice Project, concurs that Massoud's Jamiat forces bear a share of the responsibility for human rights abuses throughout the war, including the indiscriminate targeting of civilians in Afshar, and that Massoud was personally implicated in some of these abuses. Roy Gutman has argued that the witness reports about Afshar cited in the AJP report implicated only the Ittihad forces, and that these had not been under Massoud's direct command.
Anthony Davis, who studied and observed Massoud's forces from 1981 to 2001, reported that during the observed period, there was "no pattern of repeated killings of enemy civilians or military prisoners" by Massoud's forces. Edward Girardet, who covered Afghanistan for over three decades, was also in Kabul during the war. He states that while Massoud was able to control most of his commanders well during the anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban resistance, he was not able to control every commander in Kabul. According to this and similar testimonies, this was due to a breakdown of law and order in Kabul and a war on multiple fronts, which they say, Massoud personally had done all in his power to prevent:
Further war over Kabul (March–December 1993)
In 1993, Massoud created the Cooperative Mohammad Ghazali Culture Foundation (Bonyad-e Farhangi wa Ta'wani Mohammad-e Ghazali) to further humanitarian assistance and politically independent Afghan culture. The Ghazali Foundation provided free medical services during some days of the week to residents of Kabul who were unable to pay for medical treatment. The Ghazali Foundation's department for distribution of auxiliary goods was the first partner of the Red Cross. The Ghazali Foundation's department of family consultation was a free advisory board, which was accessible seven days a week for the indigent. Although Massoud was responsible for the financing of the foundation, he did not interfere with its cultural work. A council led the foundation and a jury, consisting of impartial university lecturers, decided on the works of artists. The Ghazali foundation enabled Afghan artists to exhibit their works at different places in Kabul, and numerous artists and authors were honoured for their works; some of them neither proponents of Massoud nor the Islamic State government.
In March 1993, Massoud resigned his government position in exchange for peace, as requested by Hekmatyar, who considered him as a personal rival. According to the Islamabad Accord, Burhanuddin Rabbani, belonging to the same party as Massoud, remained president, while Gulbuddin Hekmatyar took the long-offered position of prime minister. Two days after the Islamabad Accord was put into effect, however, Hekmatyar's allies of Hezb-e Wahdat renewed rocket attacks in Kabul.
Both the Wahhabi Pashtun Ittehad-i Islami of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf backed by Saudi Arabia and the Shia Hazara Hezb-e Wahdat supported by Iran remained involved in heavy fighting against each other. Hekmatyar was afraid to enter Kabul proper, and chaired only one cabinet meeting. The author Roy Gutman of the United States Institute of Peace wrote in How We Missed the Story: Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, and the Hijacking of Afghanistan:
Hekmatyar had become prime minister ... But after chairing one cabinet meeting, Hekmatyar never returned to the capital, fearing, perhaps, a lynching by Kabulis infuriated over his role in destroying their city. Even his close aides were embarrassed. Hekmatyar spokesman Qutbuddin Helal was still setting up shop in the prime minister's palace when the city came under Hezb[-i Islami] rocket fire late that month. "We are here in Kabul and he is rocketing us. Now we have to leave. We can't do anything," he told Massoud aides.
Hekmatyar, who was generally opposed to coalition government and struggled for undisputed power, had conflicts with other parties over the selection of cabinet members. His forces started major attacks against Kabul for one month. The President, Burhanuddin Rabbani, was attacked when he attempted to meet Hekmatyar. Massoud resumed his responsibilities as minister of defense.
In May 1993, a new effort was made to reinstate the Islamabad Accord. In August, Massoud reached out to Hekmatyar in an attempt to broaden the government. By the end of 1993, however, Hekmatyar and the former communist general and militia leader, Abdul Rashid Dostum, were involved in secret negotiations encouraged by Pakistan's secret Inter-Services Intelligence, Iran's intelligence service, and Uzbekistan's Karimov administration. They planned a coup to oust the Rabbani administration and to attack Massoud in his northern areas.
War in Kabul, Taliban arise in the south (1994)
In January 1994, Hekmatyar and Dostum mounted a bombardment campaign against the capital and attacked Massoud's core areas in the northeast. Amin Saikal writes, Hekmatyar had the following objectives in all his operations:
The first was to make sure that Rabbani and Massoud were not allowed to consolidate power, build a credible administration, or expand their territorial control, so that the country would remain divided into small fiefdoms, run by various Muajhideen leaders and local warlords or a council of such elements, with only some of them allied to Kabul. The second was to ensure the Rabbani government acquired no capacity to dispense patronage, and to dissuade the Kabul population from giving more than limited support to the government. The third was to make Kabul an unsafe city for representatives of the international community and to prevent the Rabbani government from attracting the international support needed to begin the post-war reconstruction of Afghanistan and generate a level of economic activity which would enhance its credibility and popularity.
By mid-1994, Hekmatyar and Dostum were on the defensive in Kabul against Islamic State forces led by Massoud. Southern Afghanistan had been neither under the control of foreign-backed militias nor of the government in Kabul, but was ruled by local Pashtun leaders, such as Gul Agha Sherzai, and their militias. In 1994, the Taliban (a movement originating from Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-run religious schools for Afghan refugees in Pakistan) also developed in Afghanistan as a politico-religious force, reportedly in opposition to the tyranny of the local governor. When the Taliban took control of Kandahar in 1994, they forced the surrender of dozens of local Pashtun leaders who had presided over a situation of complete lawlessness and atrocities. In 1994, the Taliban took power in several provinces in southern and central Afghanistan.
Taliban siege of Kabul (1995–1996)
Hizb-i Islami had bombarded Kabul from January 1994 until February 1995 when the Taliban expelled Hizb from its Charasiab headquarters, after which the Taliban relaunched the bombardment of Kabul and started to besiege the town.
By early 1995, Massoud initiated a nationwide political process with the goal of national consolidation and democratic elections. He arranged a conference in three parts uniting political and cultural personalities, governors, commanders, clergymen and representatives, in order to reach a lasting agreement. Massoud's favourite for candidacy to the presidency was Dr. Mohammad Yusuf, the first democratic prime minister under Zahir Shah, the former king. In the first meeting representatives from 15 different Afghan provinces met, in the second meeting there were already 25 provinces participating.
Massoud also invited the Taliban to join the peace process wanting them to be a partner in providing stability to Afghanistan during such a process. But the Taliban, which had emerged over the course of 1994 in southern Afghanistan, were already at the doors of the capital city. Against the advice of his security personnel, Massoud went to talk to some Taliban leaders in Maidan Shar, Taliban territory. The Taliban declined to join the peace process leading towards general elections. When Massoud returned to Kabul unharmed, the Taliban leader who had received him as his guest paid with his life: he was killed by other senior Taliban for failing to assassinate Massoud while the possibility had presented itself. The Taliban, placing Kabul under a two-year siege and bombardment campaign from early 1995 onwards, in later years committed massacres against civilians, compared by United Nations observers to those that happened during the War in Bosnia.
Neighboring Pakistan exerted strong influence over the Taliban. A publication with the George Washington University describes: "Initially, the Pakistanis supported ... Gulbuddin Hekmatyar ... When Hekmatyar failed to deliver for Pakistan, the administration began to support a new movement of religious students known as the Taliban." Many analysts like Amin Saikal describe the Taliban as developing into a proxy force for Pakistan's regional interests. The Taliban started shelling Kabul in early 1995 but were defeated by forces of the Islamic State government under Ahmad Shah Massoud. Amnesty International, referring to the Taliban offensive, wrote in a 1995 report:
The Taliban's early victories in 1994 were followed by a series of defeats that resulted in heavy losses. The Taliban's first major offensive against the important western city of Herat, under the rule of Islamic state ally Ismail Khan, in February 1995 was defeated when Massoud airlifted 2,000 of his own core forces from Kabul to help defend Herat. Ahmed Rashid writes: "The Taliban had now been decisively pushed back on two fronts by the government and their political and military leadership was in disarray. Their image as potential peacemakers was badly dented, for in the eyes of many Afghans they had become nothing more than just another warlord party." International observers already speculated that the Taliban as a country-wide organization might have "run its course".
Mullah Omar, however, consolidated his control of the Taliban and with foreign help rebuilt and re-equipped his forces. Pakistan increased its support to the Taliban. Its military advisers oversaw the restructuring of Taliban forces. The country provided armored pick-up trucks and other military equipment. Saudi Arabia provided the funding. Furthermore, there was a massive influx of 25,000 new Taliban fighters, many of them recruited in Pakistan. This enabled the Taliban to capture Herat to the west of Kabul in a surprise attack against the forces of Ismail Khan in September 1995. A nearly one-year siege and bombardment campaign against Kabul, however, was again defeated by Massoud's forces.
Massoud and Rabbani meanwhile kept working on an internal Afghan peace process – successfully. By February 1996, all of Afghanistan's armed factions – except for the Taliban – had agreed to take part in the peace process and to set up a peace council to elect a new interim president. Many Pashtun areas under Taliban control had representatives also advocating for a peace agreement with the Islamic State government. But Taliban leader Mullah Omar and the Kandaharis surrounding him wanted to expand the war. At that point the Taliban leadership and their foreign supporters decided they needed to act quickly before the government could consolidate the new understanding between the parties. The Taliban moved against Jalalabad, under the control of the Pashtun Jalalabad Shura, to the east of Kabul. Part of the Jalalabad Shura was bribed with millions of dollars by the Taliban's foreign sponsors, especially Saudi Arabia, to vacate their positions. The Taliban's battle for Jalalabad was directed by Pakistani military advisers. Hundreds of Taliban crossed the Afghan-Pakistani border moving on Jalalabad from Pakistan and thereby suddenly placed to the east of Kabul. This left the capital city Kabul "wide open" to many sides as Ismail Khan had been defeated to the west, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar had vacated his positions to the south and the fall and surrender of Jalalabad had suddenly opened a new front to the east. At that point Massoud decided to conduct a strategic retreat through a northern corridor, according to Ahmed Rashid, "knowing he could not defend [Kabul] from attacks coming from all four points of the compass. Nor did he want to lose the support of Kabul's population by fighting for the city and causing more bloodshed." On September 26, 1996, as the Taliban with military support by Pakistan and financial support by Saudi Arabia prepared for another major offensive, Massoud ordered a full retreat from Kabul. The Taliban marched into Kabul on September 27, 1996, and established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Massoud and his troops retreated to the northeast of Afghanistan which became the base for the still internationally recognized Islamic State of Afghanistan.
Resistance against the Taliban (1996–2001)
United Front against the Taliban
Ahmad Shah Massoud created the United Front (Northern Alliance) against the Taliban advance. The United Front included forces and leaders from different political backgrounds as well as from all ethnicities of Afghanistan. From the Taliban conquest in 1996 until November 2001, the United Front controlled territory in which roughly 30% of Afghanistan's population was living, in provinces such as Badakhshan, Kapisa, Takhar and parts of Parwan, Kunar, Nuristan, Laghman, Samangan, Kunduz, Ghōr and Bamyan.
Meanwhile, the Taliban imposed their repressive regime in the parts of Afghanistan under their control. Hundreds of thousands of people fled to Northern Alliance territory, Pakistan and Iran. Massoud's soldiers held some 1,200 Taliban prisoners in the Panjshir Valley, 122 of them foreign Muslims who had come to Afghanistan to fight a jihad. In 1998, after the defeat of Abdul Rashid Dostum's faction in Mazar-i-Sharif, Ahmad Shah Massoud remained the only main leader of the United Front in Afghanistan and the only leader who was able to defend vast parts of his area against the Taliban. Most major leaders including the Islamic State's President Burhanuddin Rabbani, Abdul Rashid Dostum, and others, were living in exile. During this time, commentators remarked that "The only thing standing in the way of future Taliban massacres is Ahmad Shah Massoud."
Massoud stated that the Taliban repeatedly offered him a position of power to make him stop his resistance. He declined, declaring the differences between their ideology and his own pro-democratic outlook on society to be insurmountable.
Massoud wanted to convince the Taliban to join a political process leading towards democratic elections in a foreseeable future. He also predicted that without assistance from Pakistan and external extremist groups, the Taliban would lose their hold on power.
In early 2001, the United Front employed a new strategy of local military pressure and global political appeals. Resentment was increasingly gathering against Taliban rule from the bottom of Afghan society including the Pashtun areas. At the same time, Massoud was very wary not to revive the failed Kabul government of the early 1990s. Already in 1999 the United Front leadership ordered the training of police forces specifically to keep order and protect the civilian population in case the United Front would be successful.
Cross-factional negotiations
From 1999 onwards, a renewed process was set into motion by the Tajik Ahmad Shah Massoud and the Pashtun Abdul Haq to unite all the ethnicities of Afghanistan. Massoud united the Tajiks, Hazara and Uzbeks as well as several Pashtun commanders under his United Front. Besides meeting with Pashtun tribal leaders and acting as a point of reference, Abdul Haq received increasing numbers of Pashtun Taliban themselves who were secretly approaching him. Some commanders who had worked for the Taliban military apparatus agreed to the plan to topple the Taliban regime as the Taliban lost support even among the Pashtuns. Senior diplomat and Afghanistan expert Peter Tomsen wrote that "[t]he 'Lion of Kabul' [Abdul Haq] and the 'Lion of Panjshir' [Ahmad Shah Massoud] would make a formidable anti-Taliban team if they combined forces. Haq, Massoud, and Karzai, Afghanistan's three leading moderates, could transcend the Pashtun – non-Pashtun, north-south divide." Steve Coll referred to this plan as a "grand Pashtun-Tajik alliance". The senior Hazara and Uzbek leaders took part in the process just like later Afghan president Hamid Karzai. They agreed to work under the banner of the exiled Afghan king Zahir Shah in Rome.
In November 2000, leaders from all ethnic groups were brought together in Massoud's headquarters in northern Afghanistan, travelling from other parts of Afghanistan, Europe, the United States, Pakistan and India to discuss a Loya Jirga for a settlement of Afghanistan's problems and to discuss the establishment of a post-Taliban government. In September 2001, an international official who met with representatives of the alliance remarked, "It's crazy that you have this today ... Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazara ... They were all ready to buy in to the process".
In early 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud with leaders from all ethnicities of Afghanistan addressed the European Parliament in Brussels, asking the international community to provide humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan. He stated that the Taliban and al-Qaeda had introduced "a very wrong perception of Islam" and that without the support of Pakistan and Bin Laden the Taliban would not be able to sustain their military campaign for up to a year. On that visit to Europe, he also warned the U.S. about Bin Laden.
The areas of Massoud
Life in the areas under direct control of Massoud was different from the life in the areas under Taliban or Dostum's control. In contrast to the time of chaos in which all structures had collapsed in Kabul, Massoud was able to control most of the troops under his direct command well during the period starting in late 1996. Massoud always controlled the Panjshir, Takhar, parts of Parwan and Badakhshan during the war. Some other provinces (notably Kunduz, Baghlan, Nuristan and the north of Kabul) were captured by his forces from the Taliban and lost again from time to time as the frontlines varied.
Massoud created democratic institutions which were structured into several committees: political, health, education and economic. Still, many people came to him personally when they had a dispute or problem and asked him to solve their problems.
In September 2000, Massoud signed the Declaration of the Essential Rights of Afghan Women drafted by Afghan women. The declaration established gender equality in front of the law and the right of women to political participation, education, work, freedom of movement and speech. In the areas of Massoud, women and girls did not have to wear the Afghan burqa by law. They were allowed to work and to go to school. Although it was a time of war, girls' schools were operating in some districts. In at least two known instances, Massoud personally intervened against cases of forced marriage in favour of the women to make their own choice.
While it was Massoud's stated personal conviction that men and women are equal and should enjoy the same rights, he also had to deal with Afghan traditions which he said would need a generation or more to overcome. In his opinion, that could only be achieved through education. Author Pepe Escobar wrote in Asia Times:
Humayun Tandar, who took part as an Afghan diplomat in the 2001 International Conference on Afghanistan in Bonn, said that "strictures of language, ethnicity, region were [also] stifling for Massoud. That is why ... he wanted to create a unity which could surpass the situation in which we found ourselves and still find ourselves to this day." This applied also to strictures of religion. Jean-José Puig describes how Massoud often led prayers before a meal or at times asked his fellow Muslims to lead the prayer but also did not hesitate to ask the Jewish Princeton Professor Michael Barry or his Christian friend Jean-José Puig: "Jean-José, we believe in the same God. Please, tell us the prayer before lunch or dinner in your own language."
International relations
U.S. policy regarding Massoud, the Taliban and Afghanistan remained ambiguous and differed between the various U.S. government agencies.
In 1997, U.S. State Department's Robin Raphel suggested to Massoud he should surrender to the Taliban. He soundly rejected the proposal.
At one point in the war, in 1997, two top foreign policy officials in the Clinton administration flew to northern Afghanistan in an attempt to convince Massoud not to take advantage of a strategic opportunity to make crucial gains against the Taliban.
In 1998, a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, Julie Sirrs, visited Massoud's territories privately, having previously been denied official permission to do so by her agency. She reported that Massoud had conveyed warnings about strengthened ties between the Taliban and foreign Islamist terrorists. Returning home, she was sacked from her agency for insubordination, because at that time the U.S. administration had no trust in Massoud.
In the meantime, the only collaboration between Massoud and another U.S. intelligence service, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), consisted of an effort to trace Osama bin Laden following the 1998 embassy bombings. The U.S. and the European Union provided no support to Massoud for the fight against the Taliban.
A change of policy, lobbied for by CIA officers on the ground who had visited the area of Massoud, regarding support to Massoud, was underway in the course of 2001. According to Steve Coll's book Ghost Wars (who won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction):
U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher also recalled:
[B]etween Bush's inauguration and 9/11, I met with the new national security staff on 3 occasions, including one meeting with Condoleezza Rice to discuss Afghanistan. There were, in fact, signs noted in an overview story in The Washington Post about a month ago that some steps were being made to break away from the previous administration's Afghan policy.
CIA lawyers, working with officers in the Near East Division and Counterterrorist Center, began to draft a formal, legal presidential finding for Bush's signature authorizing a new covert action program in Afghanistan, the first in a decade that sought to influence the course of the Afghan war in favour of Massoud. This change in policy was finalized in August 2001 when it was too late.
After Pakistan had funded, directed and supported the Taliban's rise to power in Afghanistan, Massoud and the United Front received some assistance from India. The assistance provided by India was extensive, including uniforms, ordnance, mortars, small armaments, refurbished Kalashnikovs, combat and winter clothes, as well as funds. India was particularly concerned about Pakistan's Taliban strategy and the Islamic militancy in its neighborhood; it provided U.S.$70 million in aid including two Mi-17 helicopters, three additional helicopters in 2000 and US$8 million worth of high-altitude equipment in 2001. Also In the 1990s, India had run a field hospital at Farkor on the Tajik-Afghan border to treat wounded fighters from the then Northern Alliance that was battling the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
It was at the very same hospital that the Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Masood was pronounced dead after being assassinated just two days before the 9/11 terror strikes in 2001. Furthermore, the alliance supposedly also received minor aid from Tajikistan, Russia and Iran because of their opposition to the Taliban and the Pakistani control over the Taliban's Emirate. Their support, however, remained limited to the most needed things. Meanwhile, Pakistan engaged up to 28,000 Pakistani nationals and regular Pakistani army troops to fight alongside the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces against Massoud.
In April 2001, the president of the European Parliament, Nicole Fontaine (who called Massoud the "pole of liberty in Afghanistan"), invited Massoud with the support of French and Belgian politicians to address the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium. In his speech, he asked for humanitarian aid for the people of Afghanistan. Massoud further went on to warn that his intelligence agents had gained limited knowledge about a large-scale terrorist attack on U.S. soil being imminent.
Assassination
Massoud, then aged 48, was the target of an assassination plot at Khwājah Bahā ud Dīn (Khvājeh Bahāuḏḏīn), in Takhar Province in northeastern Afghanistan on September 9, 2001. The attackers' names were alternately given as Dahmane Abd al-Sattar, husband of Malika El Aroud, and Bouraoui el-Ouaer; or 34-year-old Karim Touzani and 26-year-old Kacem Bakkali.
The attackers claimed to be Belgians originally from Morocco. According to Le Monde they transited through the municipality of Molenbeek. Their passports turned out to be stolen and their nationality was later determined to be Tunisian. Waiting for almost three weeks (during which they also interviewed Burhanuddin Rabbani and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf) for an interview opportunity, on September 8, 2001, an aide to Massoud recalls the would-be suicide attackers "were so worried" and threatened to leave if the interview did not happen in the next 24 hours (until September 10, 2001). They were finally granted an interview. During the interview, they set off a bomb composed of explosives hidden in the camera and in a battery-pack belt. Massoud died in a helicopter that was taking him to an Indian military field hospital at Farkhor in nearby Tajikistan. The explosion also killed Mohammed Asim Suhail, a United Front official, while Mohammad Fahim Dashty and Massoud Khalili were injured. One of the suicide attackers, Bouraoui, was killed by the explosion, while Dahmane Abd al-Sattar was captured and shot while trying to escape.
Despite initial denials by the United Front, news of Massoud's death was reported almost immediately, appearing on the BBC, and in European and North American newspapers on September 10, 2001. On September 16, the United Front officially announced that Massoud had died of injuries in the suicide attack. Massoud was buried in his home village of Bazarak in the Panjshir Valley. The funeral, although in a remote rural area, was attended by hundreds of thousands of people.
Massoud had survived assassination attempts over a period of 26 years, including attempts made by al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Pakistani ISI and before them the Soviet KGB, the Afghan communist KHAD and Hekmatyar. The first attempt on Massoud's life was carried out by Hekmatyar and two Pakistani ISI agents in 1975 when Massoud was 22 years old. In early 2001, al-Qaeda would-be assassins were captured by Massoud's forces while trying to enter his territory.
Connection to September 11, 2001
The assassination of Massoud is considered to have a strong connection to the September 11 attacks in 2001 on U.S. soil, which killed nearly 3,000 people. It appeared to have been the major terrorist attack which Massoud had warned against in his speech to the European Parliament several months earlier.
In late 2001, a computer was seized that was stolen from an office used by al-Qaida immediately after the fall of Kabul in November. This computer was mainly used by Aiman al-Zawahri and contained the letter with the interview request for Massoud. The two assassins had completed military training in training camps in Afghanistan at the end of 2000 and were selected for the suicide mission in the spring or early summer of the following year. Following the assassination, bin Laden had an emissary deliver Dahmane Abd al-Sattar's widow a letter with $500 in an envelope to settle a debt. The Afghan publicist Waheed Muzhda, who worked for the Taliban in the Foreign Ministry, confirmed the two assassins met with al-Qaida officials in Kandahar and Osama bin Laden and Aiman al-Zawahri have seen them off when they left. An al-Qaeda magazine in Saudi Arabia later published a biography of Youssef al-Aayyiri, who headed al-Qaeda’s operations in Saudi Arabia from 2002, which described al-Qaeda’s involvement in Massoud’s assassination. Osama bin Laden commissioned the assassination attempt to appease the Taliban because of the imminent terrorist attacks in the USA, which would cause serious problems for the Taliban.
The Taliban denied any involvement in Massoud's assassination, and it is extremely unlikely that they were privy to the assassination plans. There were a few minor attacks by the Taliban after the attack, but no major offensive.
Investigative commission
In April 2003, the Karzai administration created a commission to investigate the assassination of Massoud. In 2003, French investigators and the FBI were able to trace the provenance of the camera used in the assassination, which had been stolen in France some time earlier.
Legacy
National Hero of Afghanistan
Massoud was the only chief Afghan leader who never left Afghanistan in the fight against the Soviet Union and later in the fight against the Taliban Emirate. In the areas under his direct control, such as Panjshir, some parts of Parwan and Takhar, Massoud established democratic institutions. One refugee who cramped his family of 27 into an old jeep to flee from the Taliban to the area of Massoud described Massoud's territory in 1997 as "the last tolerant corner of Afghanistan".
In 2001, the Afghan interim government under president Hamid Karzai officially awarded Massoud the title of "Hero of the Afghan Nation". One analyst in 2004 said:
One man holds a greater political punch than all 18 living [Afghan] presidential candidates combined. Though already dead for three years.... Since his death on September 9, 2001 at the hands of two al Qaeda-linked Islamic radicals, Massoud has been transformed from mujahedin to national heroif not saint. Pictures of Massoud, the Afghan mujahedin who battled the Soviets, other warlords, and the Taliban for more than 20 years, vastly outnumber those of any other Afghan including those of Karzai.
Today Panjshir, the home of Massoud,
is arguably the most peaceful place in the entire country. A small US military reconstruction team is based here, but there are none of the signs of foreign occupation that exist elsewhere. Even Afghan soldiers are few and far between. Instead, the people like to boast about how they keep their own security.
A Massoud Foundation was established in 2003, to provide humanitarian assistance to Afghans, especially in the fields of health care and education. It also runs programs in the fields of culture, construction, agriculture and welfare.
A major road in Kabul was named Great Massoud Road.
A monument to Massoud was installed outside the US Embassy.
A street in New Delhi, India, is named after Ahmad Shah Massoud. It is the first time that such an honour has been extended to a leader from that country as part of close ties between Afghanistan and India.
Magpul Massoud was a 7.62 NATO rifle produced by Magpul which was named after himself.
The road near the Afghanistan Embassy is a "symbol of ties" that binds the two nations that have always "enjoyed excellent relations".
His friend Abdullah Abdullah said that Massoud was different from the other guerilla leaders. "He is a hero who led a clear struggle for the values of the people".
In a 2001 mourning ceremony at Moscow to honour the memory of Ahmad Shah Massoud, one-time foe Colonel Abdul Qadir stated: "Though Massoud and I used to be enemies, I am sure he deserves great respect as an outstanding military leader and, first of all, as a patriot of his country".
Lion of Panjshir
Massoud's byname, "Lion of Panjshir" (, "Shir-e-Panjshir"), earned for his role during the Soviet occupation, is a rhyming play on words in Persian, as the name of the valley means "five lions".
The Wall Street Journal referred to Massoud as "The Afghan Who Won the Cold War", referring to the global significance of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan for the subsequent collapse of the Eastern Bloc.
Honors outside Afghanistan
In 2007, the government of India decided to name a road in New Delhi's Chanakyapuri district after Massoud.
In February 2021, the Council of Paris in France honored Massoud by installing a plaque in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. The decision reflected Massoud's unique connections with France. In March 2021, the Mayor of Paris named a pathway in the Champs-Élysées gardens after Massoud. The ceremony was attended by Massoud's son and former president Hamid Karzai.
Civilian orders
Tajikistan: Order of Ismoili Somoni – posthumously awarded on September 2, 2021.
Views on Pakistan and potential al-Qaeda attacks
Although Pakistan were supporting the mujahideen groups during the Soviet-Afghan War, Ahmad Shah Massoud increasingly distrusted the Pakistanis and eventually kept his distance from them. In a 1999 interview, Massoud says "They [Pakistan] are trying to turn us into a colony. Without them there would be no war".
In the spring 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud addressed the European Parliament in Brussels, saying that Pakistan was behind the situation in Afghanistan. He also said that he believed that, without the support of Pakistan, Osama bin Laden, and Saudi Arabia, the Taliban would not be able to sustain their military campaign for up to a year. He said the Afghan population was ready to rise against them. Addressing the United States specifically, he warned that should the U.S. not work for peace in Afghanistan and put pressure on Pakistan to cease their support to the Taliban, the problems of Afghanistan would soon become the problems of the U.S. and the world.
Declassified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents from November 2001 show that Massoud had gained "limited knowledge... regarding the intentions of al-Qaeda to perform a terrorist act against the U.S. on a scale larger than the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania." They noted that he warned about such attacks.
Succession and resistance to Taliban by his son
In September 2019, his son Ahmad Massoud was declared as his successor. Following the 2021 Taliban offensive and the Fall of Kabul, Massoud allied with self-proclaimed acting president Amrullah Saleh and established the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan to the Taliban in the Panjshir Valley. Massoud called for West's support to resist the Taliban.
Personal life
Massoud was married to Sediqa Massoud. They had one son, Ahmad Massoud (born in 1989) and five daughters (Fatima born in 1992, Mariam born in 1993, Ayesha born in 1995, Zohra born in 1996 and Nasrine born in 1998). In 2005 Sediqa Massoud published a personal account on her life with Massoud (co-authored by two women's rights activists and friends of Sediqa Massoud, Chékéba Hachemi and ) called "Pour l'amour de Massoud" (For the love of Massoud), in which she describes a decent and loving husband.
Massoud liked reading and had a library of 3,000 books at his home in Panjshir. He used to read the works of revolutionaries Mao Zedong and Che Guevara, and was a great admirer of Charles de Gaulle, founder of the French Fifth Republic. Massoud said his favorite author was Victor Hugo and he was also a fan of classical Persian poetry, including the works of Bidel and Hafez. He was keen at playing football and chess.
Massoud's reputation for fearlessness is illustrated by a story about him told in Afghanistan, which cannot be confirmed. Once, while inspecting the front lines with a deputy, Massoud's driver had become lost and driven into the middle of a Taliban encampment. In tremendous peril, since he was recognized immediately, Massoud demanded to see the Taliban commander, making polite conversation for just long enough to bluff that he had arrived intentionally and not accidentally. The confused Taliban allowed him to leave.
Massoud's family since his death have had a great deal of prestige in the politics of Afghanistan. One of his six brothers, Ahmad Zia Massoud, was the Vice President of Afghanistan from 2004 until 2009 under the first democratically elected government of Afghanistan. Unsuccessful attempts have been made on the life of Ahmad Zia Massoud in 2004 and late 2009. The Associated Press reported that eight Afghans died in the attempt on Ahmad Zia Massoud's life. Ahmad Zia Massoud leads the National Front of Afghanistan (a United Front group). Another brother, Ahmad Wali Massoud, was Afghanistan's Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 2002 to 2006. He is a member of Abdullah Abdullah's National Coalition of Afghanistan (another United Front group).
In literature
Essay
Sebastian Junger, one of the last Western journalists to interview Massoud in depth, featured him in an essay in his 2002 collection, Fire.
Fiction
Massoud is the subject of Ken Follett's 1986 novel Lie Down With Lions, about the Soviet-Afghan War.
He also is featured as a historical figure in James McGee's 1989 thriller, Crow's War.
Massoud is the subject of Olivier Weber's novel Massoud's Confession, about the Islam of Enlightenment and the need to reform religious practices.
Massoud is played by Mido Hamada in the 2006 miniseries The Path to 9/11.
Notes
References
Further reading
Sandy Gall (2021): Afghan Napoleon: The Life of Ahmad Shah Massoud. London: Haus Publishing. ISBN 978-1-913368-22-7.
Marcela Grad (2009): Massoud: An Intimate Portrait of the Legendary Afghan Leader; Webster University Press, 310pp
Sediqa Massoud with Chékéba Hachemi and Marie-Francoise Colombani (2005): Pour l'amour de Massoud; Document XO Editions, 265pp (in French)
Amin Saikal (2006): Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival; I. B. Tauris, 352pp ("One of the "Five Best" Books on Afghanistan" – The Wall Street Journal)
Roy Gutman (2008): How We Missed the Story: Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban and the Hijacking of Afghanistan; United States Institute of Peace Press, 304pp
Coll, Steve (2004): Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 9, 2001; Penguin Press, 695pp, . (won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction)
Stephen Tanner: Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban
Christophe de Ponfilly (2001): Massoud l'Afghan; Gallimard, 437pp (in French)
Gary W. Bowersox (2004): The Gem Hunter-True Adventures of an American in Afghanistan; Geovision, Inc. (January 22, 2004), .
Olivier Weber (2001): Le Faucon afghan; Robert Laffont
Olivier Weber (2001, with Reza): Afghan eternities; Le Chene/ UNESCO
Gary C. Schroen (2005): 'First In' An Insiders Account of How The CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan; New York: Presidio Press/Ballantine Books, .
Peter Bergen: Holy War, Inc.
Ahmed Rashid: TALIBAN – The Story of the Afghan Warlords; .
A. R. Rowan: On The Trail Of A Lion: Ahmed Shah Massoud, Oil Politics and Terror
MaryAnn T. Beverly (2007): From That Flame; Kallisti Publishing
Roger Plunk: The Wandering Peacemaker
References to Massoud appear in the book "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini.
References to Massoud appear in the book "Sulla rotta dei ribelli" by Emilio Lonardo; .
Kara Kush, London: William Collins Sons and Co., Ltd., 1986. The novel Kara Kush by Idries Shah is rumored to be loosely based on the exploits of Massoud during the Afghan-Soviet War
Olivier Weber (2013): Massoud's Confession; Flammarion.
External links
Interviews
The Last Interview with Ahmad Shah Massoud Piotr Balcerowicz, early August 2001
Obituaries and articles
Remembering Massoud, a fighter for peace, The New York Times, September 10, 2002
60 Years of Asian Heroes: Ahmad Shah Massoud Time, 2006
Profile: Afghanistan's 'Lion Of Panjshir' Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, September 5, 2006
Afghan Commander Massoud, Killed on Eve of 9/11 Attacks, is a National Hero by The LA Times, September 22, 2010
Documentaries/Panegyrics
An 18-minute video, 'Starving to Death', about Massoud defending Kabul against the Taliban siege in March 1996. With horrifying pictures of civilian war victims. By Journeyman Pictures/Journeyman.tv. Retrieved on YouTube, June 27, 2018.
Reza and Olivier Weber on Massoud, National Geographic
'Afghanistan Revealed' (2000) | SnagFilms . A portrait of Massoud by National Geographic photographer Reza Deghati, cinematographer Stephen Cocklin, and writer Sebastian Junger
[Dead link, on National Geographic:] A Film Screening and Panel Discussion Focusing on the Middle East and Afghanistan
1953 births
2001 deaths
20th-century Afghan politicians
21st-century Afghan politicians
Afghan guerrillas killed in action
Afghan Sunni Muslims
Afghan Tajik people
Assassinated Afghan politicians
Assassinated military personnel
Deaths by suicide bomber
Defence ministers of Afghanistan
Guerrilla warfare theorists
Islamic State of Afghanistan
Military personnel killed in action
Mujahideen members of the Soviet–Afghan War
People killed by al-Qaeda
People murdered in Afghanistan |
2178 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis | Atlantis | Atlantis (, Atlantis nesos, "island of Atlas") is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works Timaeus and Critias, wherein it represents the antagonist naval power that besieges "Ancient Athens", the pseudo-historic embodiment of Plato's ideal state in The Republic. In the story, Athens repels the Atlantean attack unlike any other nation of the known world, supposedly bearing witness to the superiority of Plato's concept of a state. The story concludes with Atlantis falling out of favor with the deities and submerging into the Atlantic Ocean.
Despite its minor importance in Plato's work, the Atlantis story has had a considerable impact on literature. The allegorical aspect of Atlantis was taken up in utopian works of several Renaissance writers, such as Francis Bacon's New Atlantis and Thomas More's Utopia. On the other hand, nineteenth-century amateur scholars misinterpreted Plato's narrative as historical tradition, most famously Ignatius L. Donnelly in his Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. Plato's vague indications of the time of the events (more than 9,000 years before his time) and the alleged location of Atlantis ("beyond the Pillars of Hercules") gave rise to much pseudoscientific speculation. As a consequence, Atlantis has become a byword for any and all supposed advanced prehistoric lost civilizations and continues to inspire contemporary fiction, from comic books to films.
While present-day philologists and classicists agree on the story's fictional character, there is still debate on what served as its inspiration. Plato is known to have freely borrowed some of his allegories and metaphors from older traditions, as he did, for instance, with the story of Gyges. This led a number of scholars to investigate possible inspiration of Atlantis from Egyptian records of the Thera eruption, the Sea Peoples invasion, or the Trojan War. Others have rejected this chain of tradition as implausible and insist that Plato created an entirely fictional account, drawing loose inspiration from contemporary events such as the failed Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415–413 BC or the destruction of Helike in 373 BC.
Plato's dialogues
Timaeus
The only primary sources for Atlantis are Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias; all other mentions of the island are based on them. The dialogues claim to quote Solon, who visited Egypt between 590 and 580 BC; they state that he translated Egyptian records of Atlantis. Written in 360 BC, Plato introduced Atlantis in Timaeus:
The four people appearing in those two dialogues are the politicians Critias and Hermocrates as well as the philosophers Socrates and Timaeus of Locri, although only Critias speaks of Atlantis. In his works Plato makes extensive use of the Socratic method in order to discuss contrary positions within the context of a supposition.
The Timaeus begins with an introduction, followed by an account of the creations and structure of the universe and ancient civilizations. In the introduction, Socrates muses about the perfect society, described in Plato's Republic (c. 380 BC), and wonders if he and his guests might recollect a story which exemplifies such a society. Critias mentions a tale he considered to be historical, that would make the perfect example, and he then follows by describing Atlantis as is recorded in the Critias. In his account, ancient Athens seems to represent the "perfect society" and Atlantis its opponent, representing the very antithesis of the "perfect" traits described in the Republic.
Critias
According to Critias, the Hellenic deities of old divided the land so that each deity might have their own lot; Poseidon was appropriately, and to his liking, bequeathed the island of Atlantis. The island was larger than Ancient Libya and Asia Minor combined, but it was later sunk by an earthquake and became an impassable mud shoal, inhibiting travel to any part of the ocean. Plato asserted that the Egyptians described Atlantis as an island consisting mostly of mountains in the northern portions and along the shore and encompassing a great plain in an oblong shape in the south "extending in one direction three thousand stadia [about 555 km; 345 mi], but across the center inland it was two thousand stadia [about 370 km; 230 mi]." Fifty stadia [9 km; 6 mi] from the coast was a mountain that was low on all sides ... broke it off all round about ... the central island itself was five stades in diameter [about 0.92 km; 0.57 mi].
In Plato's metaphorical tale, Poseidon fell in love with Cleito, the daughter of Evenor and Leucippe, who bore him five pairs of male twins. The eldest of these, Atlas, was made rightful king of the entire island and the ocean (called the Atlantic Ocean in his honor), and was given the mountain of his birth and the surrounding area as his fiefdom. Atlas's twin Gadeirus, or Eumelus in Greek, was given the extremity of the island toward the pillars of Hercules. The other four pairs of twins—Ampheres and Evaemon, Mneseus and Autochthon, Elasippus and Mestor, and Azaes and Diaprepes—were also given "rule over many men, and a large territory."
Poseidon carved the mountain where his love dwelt into a palace and enclosed it with three circular moats of increasing width, varying from one to three stadia and separated by rings of land proportional in size. The Atlanteans then built bridges northward from the mountain, making a route to the rest of the island. They dug a great canal to the sea, and alongside the bridges carved tunnels into the rings of rock so that ships could pass into the city around the mountain; they carved docks from the rock walls of the moats. Every passage to the city was guarded by gates and towers, and a wall surrounded each ring of the city. The walls were constructed of red, white, and black rock, quarried from the moats, and were covered with brass, tin, and the precious metal orichalcum, respectively.
According to Critias, 9,000 years before his lifetime a war took place between those outside the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar and those who dwelt within them. The Atlanteans had conquered the parts of Libya within the Pillars of Hercules, as far as Egypt, and the European continent as far as Tyrrhenia, and had subjected its people to slavery. The Athenians led an alliance of resistors against the Atlantean empire, and as the alliance disintegrated, prevailed alone against the empire, liberating the occupied lands.
The logographer Hellanicus of Lesbos wrote an earlier work entitled Atlantis, of which only a few fragments survive. Hellanicus' work appears to have been a genealogical one concerning the daughters of Atlas (Ἀτλαντὶς in Greek means "of Atlas"), but some authors have suggested a possible connection with Plato's island. John V. Luce notes that when Plato writes about the genealogy of Atlantis's kings, he writes in the same style as Hellanicus, suggesting a similarity between a fragment of Hellanicus's work and an account in the Critias. Rodney Castleden suggests that Plato may have borrowed his title from Hellanicus, who may have based his work on an earlier work about Atlantis.
Castleden has pointed out that Plato wrote of Atlantis in 359 BC, when he returned to Athens from Sicily. He notes a number of parallels between the physical organisation and fortifications of Syracuse and Plato's description of Atlantis. Gunnar Rudberg was the first who elaborated upon the idea that Plato's attempt to realize his political ideas in the city of Syracuse could have heavily inspired the Atlantis account.
Interpretations
Ancient
Some ancient writers viewed Atlantis as fictional or metaphorical myth; others believed it to be real. Aristotle believed that Plato, his teacher, had invented the island to teach philosophy. The philosopher Crantor, a student of Plato's student Xenocrates, is cited often as an example of a writer who thought the story to be historical fact. His work, a commentary on Timaeus, is lost, but Proclus, a Neoplatonist of the fifth century AD, reports on it. The passage in question has been represented in the modern literature either as claiming that Crantor visited Egypt, had conversations with priests, and saw hieroglyphs confirming the story, or, as claiming that he learned about them from other visitors to Egypt. Proclus wrote:
The next sentence is often translated "Crantor adds, that this is testified by the prophets of the Egyptians, who assert that these particulars [which are narrated by Plato] are written on pillars which are still preserved." But in the original, the sentence starts not with the name Crantor but with the ambiguous He; whether this referred to Crantor or to Plato is the subject of considerable debate. Proponents of both Atlantis as a metaphorical myth and Atlantis as history have argued that the pronoun refers to Crantor.
Alan Cameron argues that the pronoun should be interpreted as referring to Plato, and that, when Proclus writes that "we must bear in mind concerning this whole feat of the Athenians, that it is neither a mere myth nor unadorned history, although some take it as history and others as myth", he is treating "Crantor's view as mere personal opinion, nothing more; in fact he first quotes and then dismisses it as representing one of the two unacceptable extremes".
Cameron also points out that whether he refers to Plato or to Crantor, the statement does not support conclusions such as Otto Muck's "Crantor came to Sais and saw there in the temple of Neith the column, completely covered with hieroglyphs, on which the history of Atlantis was recorded. Scholars translated it for him, and he testified that their account fully agreed with Plato's account of Atlantis" or J. V. Luce's suggestion that Crantor sent "a special enquiry to Egypt" and that he may simply be referring to Plato's own claims.
Another passage from the commentary by Proclus on the "Timaeus" gives a description of the geography of Atlantis:
Marcellus remains unidentified.
Other ancient historians and philosophers who believed in the existence of Atlantis were Strabo and Posidonius. Some have theorized that, before the sixth century BC, the "Pillars of Hercules" may have applied to mountains on either side of the Gulf of Laconia, and also may have been part of the pillar cult of the Aegean. The mountains stood at either side of the southernmost gulf in Greece, the largest in the Peloponnese, and it opens onto the Mediterranean Sea. This would have placed Atlantis in the Mediterranean, lending credence to many details in Plato's discussion.
The fourth-century historian Ammianus Marcellinus, relying on a lost work by Timagenes, a historian writing in the first century BC, writes that the Druids of Gaul said that part of the inhabitants of Gaul had migrated there from distant islands. Some have understood Ammianus's testimony as a claim that at the time of Atlantis's sinking into the sea, its inhabitants fled to western Europe; but Ammianus, in fact, says that "the Drasidae (Druids) recall that a part of the population is indigenous but others also migrated in from islands and lands beyond the Rhine" (Res Gestae 15.9), an indication that the immigrants came to Gaul from the north (Britain, the Netherlands, or Germany), not from a theorized location in the Atlantic Ocean to the south-west. Instead, the Celts who dwelled along the ocean were reported to venerate twin gods, (Dioscori), who appeared to them coming from that ocean.
Jewish and Christian
During the early first century, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo wrote about the destruction of Atlantis in his On the Eternity of the World, xxvi. 141, in a longer passage allegedly citing Aristotle's successor Theophrastus:
The theologian Joseph Barber Lightfoot (Apostolic Fathers, 1885, II, p. 84) noted on this passage: "Clement may possibly be referring to some known, but hardly accessible land, lying without the pillars of Hercules. But more probably he contemplated some unknown land in the far west beyond the ocean, like the fabled Atlantis of Plato ..."
Other early Christian writers wrote about Atlantis, although they had mixed views on whether it once existed or was an untrustworthy myth of pagan origin. Tertullian believed Atlantis was once real and wrote that in the Atlantic Ocean once existed "[the isle] that was equal in size to Libya or Asia" referring to Plato's geographical description of Atlantis. The early Christian apologist writer Arnobius also believed Atlantis once existed, but blamed its destruction on pagans.
Cosmas Indicopleustes in the sixth century wrote of Atlantis in his Christian Topography in an attempt to prove his theory that the world was flat and surrounded by water:
Modern
Aside from Plato's original account, modern interpretations regarding Atlantis are an amalgamation of diverse, speculative movements that began in the sixteenth century, when scholars began to identify Atlantis with the New World. Francisco Lopez de Gomara was the first to state that Plato was referring to America, as did Francis Bacon and Alexander von Humboldt; Janus Joannes Bircherod said in 1663 orbe novo non-novo ("the New World is not new"). Athanasius Kircher accepted Plato's account as literally true, describing Atlantis as a small continent in the Atlantic Ocean.
Contemporary perceptions of Atlantis share roots with Mayanism, which can be traced to the beginning of the Modern Age, when European imaginations were fueled by their initial encounters with the indigenous peoples of the Americas. From this era sprang apocalyptic and utopian visions that would inspire many subsequent generations of theorists.
Most of these interpretations are considered pseudohistory, pseudoscience, or pseudoarchaeology, as they have presented their works as academic or scientific, but lack the standards or criteria.
The Flemish cartographer and geographer Abraham Ortelius is believed to have been the first person to imagine that the continents were joined before drifting to their present positions. In the 1596 edition of his Thesaurus Geographicus he wrote: "Unless it be a fable, the island of Gadir or Gades will be the remaining part of the island of Atlantis or America, which was not sunk (as Plato reports in the Timaeus) so much as torn away from Europe and Africa by earthquakes and flood... The traces of the ruptures are shown by the projections of Europe and Africa and the indentations of America in the parts of the coasts of these three said lands that face each other to anyone who, using a map of the world, carefully considered them. So that anyone may say with Strabo in Book 2, that what Plato says of the island of Atlantis on the authority of Solon is not a figment."
Atlantis pseudohistory
Early influential literature
The term "utopia" (from "no place") was coined by Sir Thomas More in his sixteenth-century work of fiction Utopia. Inspired by Plato's Atlantis and travelers' accounts of the Americas, More described an imaginary land set in the New World. His idealistic vision established a connection between the Americas and utopian societies, a theme that Bacon discussed in The New Atlantis (c. 1623). A character in the narrative gives a history of Atlantis that is similar to Plato's and places Atlantis in America. People had begun believing that the Mayan and Aztec ruins could possibly be the remnants of Atlantis.
Impact of Mayanism
Much speculation began as to the origins of the Maya, which led to a variety of narratives and publications that tried to rationalize the discoveries within the context of the Bible and that had undertones of racism in their connections between the Old and New World. The Europeans believed the indigenous people to be inferior and incapable of building that which was now in ruins and by sharing a common history, they insinuate that another race must have been responsible.
In the middle and late nineteenth century, several renowned Mesoamerican scholars, starting with Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, and including Edward Herbert Thompson and Augustus Le Plongeon, formally proposed that Atlantis was somehow related to Mayan and Aztec culture.
The French scholar Brasseur de Bourbourg traveled extensively through Mesoamerica in the mid-1800s, and was renowned for his translations of Mayan texts, most notably the sacred book Popol Vuh, as well as a comprehensive history of the region. Soon after these publications, however, Brasseur de Bourbourg lost his academic credibility, due to his claim that the Maya peoples had descended from the Toltecs, people he believed were the surviving population of the racially superior civilization of Atlantis. His work combined with the skillful, romantic illustrations of Jean Frederic Waldeck, which visually alluded to Egypt and other aspects of the Old World, created an authoritative fantasy that excited much interest in the connections between worlds.
Inspired by Brasseur de Bourbourg's diffusion theories, the pseudoarchaeologist Augustus Le Plongeon traveled to Mesoamerica and performed some of the first excavations of many famous Mayan ruins. Le Plongeon invented narratives, such as the kingdom of Mu saga, which romantically drew connections to him, his wife Alice, and Egyptian deities Osiris and Isis, as well as to Heinrich Schliemann, who had just discovered the ancient city of Troy from Homer's epic poetry (that had been described as merely mythical). He also believed that he had found connections between the Greek and Mayan languages, which produced a narrative of the destruction of Atlantis.
Ignatius Donnelly
The 1882 publication of Atlantis: the Antediluvian World by Ignatius L. Donnelly stimulated much popular interest in Atlantis. He was greatly inspired by early works in Mayanism, and like them, attempted to establish that all known ancient civilizations were descended from Atlantis, which he saw as a technologically sophisticated, more advanced culture. Donnelly drew parallels between creation stories in the Old and New Worlds, attributing the connections to Atlantis, where he believed the Biblical Garden of Eden existed. As implied by the title of his book, he also believed that Atlantis was destroyed by the Great Flood mentioned in the Bible.
Donnelly is credited as the "father of the nineteenth century Atlantis revival" and is the reason the myth endures today. He unintentionally promoted an alternative method of inquiry to history and science, and the idea that myths contain hidden information that opens them to "ingenious" interpretation by people who believe they have new or special insight.
Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophists
The Russian mystic Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and her partner Henry Steel Olcott founded their Theosophical Society in the 1870s with a philosophy that combined western romanticism and eastern religious concepts. Blavatsky and her followers in this group are often cited as the founders of New Age and other spiritual movements.
Blavatsky took up Donnelly's interpretations when she wrote The Secret Doctrine (1888), which she claimed was originally dictated in Atlantis. She maintained that the Atlanteans were cultural heroes (contrary to Plato, who describes them mainly as a military threat). She believed in a form of racial evolution (as opposed to primate evolution). In her process of evolution the Atlanteans were the fourth "Root Race", which were succeeded by the fifth, the "Aryan race", which she identified with the modern human race.
The Theosophists believed that the civilization of Atlantis reached its peak between 1,000,000 and 900,000 years ago, but destroyed itself through internal warfare brought about by the dangerous use of psychic and supernatural powers of the inhabitants. Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy and Waldorf Schools, along with other well known Theosophists, such as Annie Besant, also wrote of cultural evolution in much the same vein.
Some subsequent occultists have followed Blavatsky, at least to the point of tracing the lineage of occult practices back to Atlantis. Among the most famous is Dion Fortune in her Esoteric Orders and Their Work.
Drawing on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner and Hanns Hörbiger, Egon Friedell started his book , and thus his historical analysis of antiquity, with the ancient culture of Atlantis. The book was published in 1940.
Nazism and occultism
Blavatsky was also inspired by the work of the 18th-century astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly, who had "Orientalized" the Atlantis myth in his mythical continent of Hyperborea, a reference to Greek myths featuring a Northern European region of the same name, home to a giant, godlike race. Dan Edelstein claims that her reshaping of this theory in The Secret Doctrine provided the Nazis with a mythological precedent and a pretext for their ideological platform and their subsequent genocide. However, Blavatsky's writings mention that the Atlantean were in fact olive-skinned peoples with Mongoloid traits who were the ancestors of modern Native Americans, Mongolians, and Malayans.
The idea that the Atlanteans were Hyperborean, Nordic supermen who originated in the Northern Atlantic or even in the far North, was popular in the German ariosophic movement around 1900, propagated by Guido von List and others. It gave its name to the Thule Gesellschaft, an antisemite Münich lodge, which preceded the German Nazi Party (see Thule). The scholars (1920) and Herman Wirth (1928) were the first to speak of a "Nordic-Atlantean" or "Aryan-Nordic" master race that spread from Atlantis over the Northern Hemisphere and beyond. The Hyperboreans were contrasted with the Jewish people. Party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg (in The Myth of the Twentieth Century, 1930) and SS-leader Heinrich Himmler made it part of the official doctrine. The idea was followed up by the adherents of Esoteric Nazism such as Julius Evola (1934) and, more recently, Miguel Serrano (1978).
The idea of Atlantis as the homeland of the Caucasian race would contradict the beliefs of older Esoteric and Theosophic groups, which taught that the Atlanteans were non-Caucasian brown-skinned peoples. Modern Esoteric groups, including the Theosophic Society, do not consider Atlantean society to have been superior or Utopian—they rather consider it a lower stage of evolution.
Edgar Cayce
The clairvoyant Edgar Cayce spoke frequently of Atlantis. During his "life readings", he claimed that many of his subjects were reincarnations of people who had lived there. By tapping into their collective consciousness, the "Akashic Records" (a term borrowed from Theosophy), Cayce declared that he was able to give detailed descriptions of the lost continent. He also asserted that Atlantis would "rise" again in the 1960s (sparking much popularity of the myth in that decade) and that there is a "Hall of Records" beneath the Egyptian Sphinx which holds the historical texts of Atlantis.
Recent times
As continental drift became widely accepted during the 1960s, and the increased understanding of plate tectonics demonstrated the impossibility of a lost continent in the geologically recent past, most "Lost Continent" theories of Atlantis began to wane in popularity.
Plato scholar Julia Annas, Regents Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona, had this to say on the matter:
One of the proposed explanations for the historical context of the Atlantis story is a warning of Plato to his contemporary fourth-century fellow-citizens against their striving for naval power.
Kenneth Feder points out that Critias's story in the Timaeus provides a major clue. In the dialogue, Critias says, referring to Socrates' hypothetical society:
Feder quotes A. E. Taylor, who wrote, "We could not be told much more plainly that the whole narrative of Solon's conversation with the priests and his intention of writing the poem about Atlantis are an invention of Plato's fancy."
Location hypotheses
Since Donnelly's day, there have been dozens of locations proposed for Atlantis, to the point where the name has become a generic concept, divorced from the specifics of Plato's account. This is reflected in the fact that many proposed sites are not within the Atlantic at all. Few today are scholarly or archaeological hypotheses, while others have been made by psychic (e.g., Edgar Cayce) or other pseudoscientific means. (The Atlantis researchers Jacques Collina-Girard and Georgeos Díaz-Montexano, for instance, each claim the other's hypothesis is pseudoscience.) Many of the proposed sites share some of the characteristics of the Atlantis story (water, catastrophic end, relevant time period), but none has been demonstrated to be a true historical Atlantis.
In or near the Mediterranean Sea
Most of the historically proposed locations are in or near the Mediterranean Sea: islands such as Sardinia, Crete, Santorini (Thera), Sicily, Cyprus, and Malta; land-based cities or states such as Troy, Tartessos, and Tantalis (in the province of Manisa, Turkey); Israel-Sinai or Canaan; and northwestern Africa.
The Thera eruption, dated to the seventeenth or sixteenth century BC, caused a large tsunami that some experts hypothesize devastated the Minoan civilization on the nearby island of Crete, further leading some to believe that this may have been the catastrophe that inspired the story. In the area of the Black Sea the following locations have been proposed: Bosporus and Ancomah (a legendary place near Trabzon).
Others have noted that, before the sixth century BC, the mountains on either side of the Gulf of Laconia were called the "Pillars of Hercules", and they could be the geographical location being described in ancient reports upon which Plato was basing his story. The mountains stood at either side of the southernmost gulf in Greece, the largest in the Peloponnese, and that gulf opens onto the Mediterranean Sea. If from the beginning of discussions, misinterpretation of Gibraltar as the location rather than being at the Gulf of Laconia, would lend itself to many erroneous concepts regarding the location of Atlantis. Plato may have not been aware of the difference. The Laconian pillars open to the south toward Crete and beyond which is Egypt. The Thera eruption and the Late Bronze Age collapse affected that area and might have been the devastation to which the sources used by Plato referred. Significant events such as these would have been likely material for tales passed from one generation to another for almost a thousand years.
In the Atlantic Ocean
The location of Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean has a certain appeal given the closely related names. Popular culture often places Atlantis there, perpetuating the original Platonic setting as they understand it. The Canary Islands and Madeira Islands have been identified as a possible location, west of the Straits of Gibraltar, but in relative proximity to the Mediterranean Sea. Detailed studies of their geomorphology and geology have demonstrated, however, that they have been steadily uplifted, without any significant periods of subsidence, over the last four million years, by geologic processes such as erosional unloading, gravitational unloading, lithospheric flexure induced by adjacent islands, and volcanic underplating.
Various islands or island groups in the Atlantic were also identified as possible locations, notably the Azores. Similarly, cores of sediment covering the ocean bottom surrounding the Azores and other evidence demonstrate that it has been an undersea plateau for millions of years. The area is known for its volcanism however, which is associated with rifting along the Azores Triple Junction. The spread of the crust along the existing faults and fractures has produced many volcanic and seismic events. The area is supported by a buoyant upwelling in the deeper mantle, which some associate with an Azores hotspot. Most of the volcanic activity has occurred primarily along the Terceira Rift. From the beginning of the islands' settlement, around the 15th century, there have been about 30 volcanic eruptions (terrestrial and submarine) as well as numerous, powerful earthquakes. The island of São Miguel in the Azores is the site of the Sete Cidades volcano and caldera, which are the byproducts of historical volcanic activity in the Azores.
The submerged island of Spartel near the Strait of Gibraltar has also been suggested.
Ireland
In 2004, Swedish physiographist Ulf Erlingsson proposed that the legend of Atlantis was based on Stone Age Ireland. He later stated that he does not believe that Atlantis ever existed but maintained that his hypothesis that its description matches Ireland's geography has a 99.8% probability. The director of the National Museum of Ireland commented that there was no archaeology supporting this.
In Europe
Several hypotheses place the sunken island in northern Europe, including Doggerland in the North Sea, and Sweden (by Olof Rudbeck in Atland, 1672–1702). Doggerland, as well as Viking Bergen Island, is thought to have been flooded by a megatsunami following the Storegga slide of c. 6100 BC. Some have proposed the Celtic Shelf as a possible location, and that there is a link to Ireland.
In 2011, a team, working on a documentary for the National Geographic Channel, led by Professor Richard Freund from the University of Hartford, claimed to have found possible evidence of Atlantis in southwestern Andalusia. The team identified its possible location within the marshlands of the Doñana National Park, in the area that once was the Lacus Ligustinus, between the Huelva, Cádiz, and Seville provinces, and they speculated that Atlantis had been destroyed by a tsunami, extrapolating results from a previous study by Spanish researchers, published four years earlier.
Spanish scientists have dismissed Freund's speculations, claiming that he sensationalised their work. The anthropologist Juan Villarías-Robles, who works with the Spanish National Research Council, said, "Richard Freund was a newcomer to our project and appeared to be involved in his own very controversial issue concerning King Solomon's search for ivory and gold in Tartessos, the well documented settlement in the Doñana area established in the first millennium BC", and described Freund's claims as "fanciful".
A similar theory had previously been put forward by a German researcher, Rainer W. Kühne, that is based only on satellite imagery and places Atlantis in the Marismas de Hinojos, north of the city of Cádiz. Before that, the historian Adolf Schulten had stated in the 1920s that Plato had used Tartessos as the basis for his Atlantis myth.
Other locations
Several writers, such as Flavio Barbiero as early as 1974, have speculated that Antarctica is the site of Atlantis. A number of claims involve the Caribbean, such as an alleged underwater formation off the Guanahacabibes peninsula in Cuba. The adjacent Bahamas or the folkloric Bermuda Triangle have been proposed as well. Areas in the Pacific and Indian Oceans have also been proposed, including Indonesia (i.e. Sundaland). The stories of a lost continent off the coast of India, named "Kumari Kandam", have inspired some to draw parallels to Atlantis.
Literary interpretations
Ancient versions
In order to give his account of Atlantis verisimilitude, Plato mentions that the story was heard by Solon in Egypt, and transmitted orally over several generations through the family of Dropides, until it reached Critias, a dialogue speaker in Timaeus and Critias. Solon had supposedly tried to adapt the Atlantis oral tradition into a poem (that if published, was to be greater than the works of Hesiod and Homer). While it was never completed, Solon passed on the story to Dropides. Modern classicists deny the existence of Solon's Atlantis poem and the story as an oral tradition. Instead, Plato is thought to be the sole inventor or fabricator.
Hellanicus of Lesbos used the word "Atlantis" as the title for a poem published before Plato, a fragment of which may be Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 11, 1359. This work only describes the Atlantides (the daughters of Atlas), however, and has no relation to Plato's Atlantis account.
In the new era, the third century AD Neoplatonist Zoticus wrote an epic poem based on Plato's account of Atlantis. Plato's work may already have inspired parodic imitation, however. Writing only a few decades after the Timaeus and Critias, the historian Theopompus of Chios wrote of a land beyond the ocean known as Meropis. This description was included in Book 8 of his Philippica, which contains a dialogue between Silenus and King Midas. Silenus describes the Meropids, a race of men who grow to twice normal size, and inhabit two cities on the island of Meropis: Eusebes (, "Pious-town") and Machimos (, "Fighting-town"). He also reports that an army of ten million soldiers crossed the ocean to conquer Hyperborea, but abandoned this proposal when they realized that the Hyperboreans were the luckiest people on earth. Heinz-Günther Nesselrath has argued that these and other details of Silenus' story are meant as imitation and exaggeration of the Atlantis story, by parody, for the purpose of exposing Plato's ideas to ridicule.
Utopias and dystopias
The creation of Utopian and dystopian fictions was renewed after the Renaissance, most notably in Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1627), the description of an ideal society that he located off the western coast of America. Thomas Heyrick (1649-1694) followed him with "The New Atlantis" (1687), a satirical poem in three parts. His new continent of uncertain location, perhaps even a floating island either in the sea or the sky, serves as background for his exposure of what he described in a second edition as "A True Character of Popery and Jesuitism".
The title of The New Atalantis by Delarivier Manley (1709), distinguished from the two others by the single letter, is an equally dystopian work but set this time on a fictional Mediterranean island. In it sexual violence and exploitation is made a metaphor for the hypocritical behaviour of politicians in their dealings with the general public. In Manley's case, the target of satire was the Whig Party, while in David Maclean Parry's The Scarlet Empire (1906) it is Socialism as practised in foundered Atlantis. It was followed in Russia by Velemir Khlebnikov's poem The Fall of Atlantis (Gibel' Atlantidy, 1912), which is set in a future rationalist dystopia that has discovered the secret of immortality and is so dedicated to progress that it has lost touch with the past. When the high priest of this ideology is tempted by a slave girl into an act of irrationality, he murders her and precipitates a second flood, above which her severed head floats vengefully among the stars.
A slightly later work, The Ancient of Atlantis (Boston, 1915) by Albert Armstrong Manship, expounds the Atlantean wisdom that is to redeem the earth. Its three parts consist of a verse narrative of the life and training of an Atlantean wise one, followed by his Utopian moral teachings and then a psychic drama set in modern times in which a reincarnated child embodying the lost wisdom is reborn on earth.
In Hispanic eyes, Atlantis had a more intimate interpretation. The land had been a colonial power which, although it had brought civilization to ancient Europe, had also enslaved its peoples. Its tyrannical fall from grace had contributed to the fate that had overtaken it, but now its disappearance had unbalanced the world. This was the point of view of Jacint Verdaguer's vast mythological epic L'Atlantida (1877). After the sinking of the former continent, Hercules travels east across the Atlantic to found the city of Barcelona and then departs westward again to the Hesperides. The story is told by a hermit to a shipwrecked mariner, who is inspired to follow in his tracks and so "call the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old". This mariner, of course, was Christopher Columbus.
Verdaguer's poem was written in Catalan, but was widely translated in both Europe and Hispano-America. One response was the similarly entitled Argentinian Atlantida of Olegario Victor Andrade (1881), which sees in "Enchanted Atlantis that Plato foresaw, a golden promise to the fruitful race" of Latins. The bad example of the colonising world remains, however. Jose Juan Tablada characterises its threat in his "De Atlántida" (1894) through the beguiling picture of the lost world populated by the underwater creatures of Classical myth, among whom is the Siren of its final stanza with
There is a similar ambivalence in Janus Djurhuus' six-stanza "Atlantis" (1917), where a celebration of the Faroese linguistic revival grants it an ancient pedigree by linking Greek to Norse legend. In the poem a female figure rising from the sea against a background of Classical palaces is recognised as a priestess of Atlantis. The poet recalls "that the Faroes lie there in the north Atlantic Ocean/ where before lay the poet-dreamt lands," but also that in Norse belief, such a figure only appears to those about to drown.
A land lost in the distance
The fact that Atlantis is a lost land has made of it a metaphor for something no longer attainable. For the American poet Edith Willis Linn Forbes (1865-1945), "The Lost Atlantis" stands for idealisation of the past; the present moment can only be treasured once that is realised. Ella Wheeler Wilcox finds the location of "The Lost Land" (1910) in one's carefree youthful past. Similarly, for the Irish poet Eavan Boland in "Atlantis, a lost sonnet" (2007), the idea was defined when "the old fable-makers searched hard for a word/ to convey that what is gone is gone forever".
For some male poets too, the idea of Atlantis is constructed from what cannot be obtained. Charles Bewley in his Newdigate Prize poem (1910) thinks it grows from dissatisfaction with one's condition,
in a dream of Atlantis. Similarly for the Australian Gary Catalano in a 1982 prose poem, it is "a vision that sank under the weight of its own perfection". W. H. Auden, however, suggests a way out of such frustration through the metaphor of journeying toward Atlantis in his poem of 1941. While travelling, he advises the one setting out, you will meet with many definitions of the goal in view, only realising at the end that the way has all the time led inward.
Epic narratives
A few late-19th century verse narratives complement the genre fiction that was beginning to be written at the same period. Two of them report the disaster that overtook the continent as related by long-lived survivors. In Frederick Tennyson's Atlantis (1888), an ancient Greek mariner sails west and discovers an inhabited island which is all that remains of the former kingdom. He learns of its end and views the shattered remnant of its former glory, from which a few had escaped to set up the Mediterranean civilisations. In the second, Mona, Queen of Lost Atlantis: An Idyllic Re-embodiment of Long Forgotten History (Los Angeles CA 1925) by James Logue Dryden (1840–1925), the story is told in a series of visions. A Seer is taken to Mona's burial chamber in the ruins of Atlantis, where she revives and describes the catastrophe. There follows a survey of the lost civilisations of Hyperborea and Lemuria as well as Atlantis, accompanied by much spiritualist lore.
William Walton Hoskins (1856–1919) admits to the readers of his Atlantis and other poems (Cleveland OH, 1881), that he is only 24. Its melodramatic plot concerns the poisoning of the descendant of god-born kings. The usurping poisoner is poisoned in his turn, following which the continent is swallowed in the waves. Asian gods people the landscape of The Lost Island (Ottawa 1889) by Edward Taylor Fletcher (1816–97). An angel foresees impending catastrophe and that the people will be allowed to escape if their semi-divine rulers will sacrifice themselves. A final example, Edward N. Beecher's The Lost Atlantis or The Great Deluge of All (Cleveland OH, 1898) is just a doggerel vehicle for its author's opinions: that the continent was the location of the Garden of Eden; that Darwin's theory of evolution is correct, as are Donnelly's views.
Atlantis was to become a theme in Russia following the 1890s, taken up in unfinished poems by Valery Bryusov and Konstantin Balmont, as well as in a drama by the schoolgirl Larisa Reisner. One other long narrative poem was published in New York by George V. Golokhvastoff. His 250-page The Fall of Atlantis (1938) records how a high priest, distressed by the prevailing degeneracy of the ruling classes, seeks to create an androgynous being from royal twins as a means to overcome this polarity. When he is unable to control the forces unleashed by his occult ceremony, the continent is destroyed.
Artistic representations
Music
The Spanish composer Manuel de Falla worked on a dramatic cantata based on Verdaguer's L'Atlántida, during the last 20 years of his life. The name has been affixed to symphonies by Janis Ivanovs (1941), Richard Nanes, and Vaclav Buzek (2009). There was also the symphonic celebration of Alan Hovhaness: "Fanfare for the New Atlantis" (Op. 281, 1975).
The Bohemian-American composer and arranger Vincent Frank Safranek wrote Atlantis (The Lost Continent) Suite in Four Parts; I. Nocturne and Morning Hymn of Praise, II. A Court Function, III. "I Love Thee" (The Prince and Aana), IV. The Destruction of Atlantis, for military (concert) band in 1913.
The opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis (The Emperor of Atlantis) was written in 1943 by Viktor Ullmann with a libretto by Peter Kien, while they were both inmates at the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt. The Nazis did not allow it to be performed, assuming the opera's reference to an Emperor of Atlantis to be a satire on Hitler. Though Ullmann and Kiel were murdered in Auschwitz, the manuscript survived and was performed for the first time in 1975 in Amsterdam.
Painting and sculpture
Paintings of the submersion of Atlantis are comparatively rare. In the seventeenth century there was François de Nomé's The Fall of Atlantis, which shows a tidal wave surging toward a Baroque city frontage. The style of architecture apart, it is not very different from Nicholas Roerich's The Last of Atlantis of 1928.
The most dramatic depiction of the catastrophe was Léon Bakst's Ancient Terror (Terror Antiquus, 1908), although it does not name Atlantis directly. It is a mountain-top view of a rocky bay breached by the sea, which is washing inland about the tall structures of an ancient city. A streak of lightning crosses the upper half of the painting, while below it rises the impassive figure of an enigmatic goddess who holds a blue dove between her breasts. Vyacheslav Ivanov identified the subject as Atlantis in a public lecture on the painting given in 1909, the year it was first exhibited, and he has been followed by other commentators in the years since.
Sculptures referencing Atlantis have often been stylized single figures. One of the earliest was Einar Jónsson's The King of Atlantis (1919–1922), now in the garden of his museum in Reykjavík. It represents a single figure, clad in a belted skirt and wearing a large triangular helmet, who sits on an ornate throne supported between two young bulls. The walking female entitled Atlantis (1946) by Ivan Meštrović was from a series inspired by ancient Greek figures with the symbolical meaning of unjustified suffering.
In the case of the Brussels fountain feature known as The Man of Atlantis (2003) by the Belgian sculptor , the 4-metre tall figure wearing a diving suit steps from a plinth into the spray. It looks light-hearted but the artist's comment on it makes a serious point: "Because habitable land will be scarce, it is no longer improbable that we will return to the water in the long term. As a result, a portion of the population will mutate into fish-like creatures. Global warming and rising water levels are practical problems for the world in general and here in the Netherlands in particular".
Robert Smithson's Hypothetical Continent (Map of broken clear glass, Atlantis) was first created as a photographical project on Loveladies Island NJ in 1969, and then recreated as a gallery installation of broken glass. On this he commented that he liked "landscapes that suggest prehistory", and this is borne out by the original conceptual drawing of the work that includes an inset map of the continent sited off the coast of Africa and at the straits into the Mediterranean.
See also
Atlantis in comics
List of mythological places
Antillia
Avalon
Brasil (mythical island)
Brittia
Cantre'r Gwaelod
Iram of the Pillars
Lemuria (continent)
Mayda
Mu (lost continent)
Mythical place
Numenor
Saint Brendan's Island
Sandy Island, New Caledonia
Thule
Ys
Underwater geography:
Yonaguni Monument
Bimini Road
General:
Doggerland
Lost lands
Kumari Kandam
Minoan eruption
Notes
Further reading
Ancient sources
Plato, Timaeus, translated by Benjamin Jowett at Project Gutenberg; alternative version with commentary.
Plato, Critias, translated by Benjamin Jowett at Project Gutenberg; alternative version with commentary.
Modern sources
Allegory
Esoteric anthropogenesis
Legendary tribes in Greco-Roman historiography
Mythological populated places
Phantom islands
Platonism
Theoretical continents
Pseudohistory |
2179 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobiography | Autobiography | An autobiography (from the Greek, αὐτός-autos self + βίος-bios life + γράφειν-graphein to write; also informally called an autobio) is a self-written account of one's life. The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English periodical The Monthly Review, when he suggested the word as a hybrid, but condemned it as "pedantic". However, its next recorded use was in its present sense, by Robert Southey in 1809. Despite only being named early in the nineteenth century, first-person autobiographical writing originates in antiquity. Roy Pascal differentiates autobiography from the periodic self-reflective mode of journal or diary writing by noting that "[autobiography] is a review of a life from a particular moment in time, while the diary, however reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time". Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's life from the moment of composition. While biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents and viewpoints, autobiography may be based entirely on the writer's memory. The memoir form is closely associated with autobiography but it tends, as Pascal claims, to focus less on the self and more on others during the autobiographer's review of their own life.
Biography
Life
Autobiographical works are by nature subjective. The inability—or unwillingness—of the author to accurately recall memories has in certain cases resulted in misleading or incorrect information. Some sociologists and psychologists have noted that autobiography offers the author the ability to recreate history.
Spiritual autobiography
Spiritual autobiography is an account of an author's struggle or journey towards God, followed by conversion a religious conversion, often interrupted by moments of regression. The author re-frames their life as a demonstration of divine intention through encounters with the Divine. The earliest example of a spiritual autobiography is Augustine's Confessions though the tradition has expanded to include other religious traditions in works such as Zahid Rohari's An Autobiography and Black Elk Speaks. The spiritual autobiography often serves as an endorsement of their religion.
Memoirs
A memoir is slightly different in character from an autobiography. While an autobiography typically focuses on the "life and times" of the writer, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on the author's memories, feelings and emotions. Memoirs have often been written by politicians or military leaders as a way to record and publish an account of their public exploits. One early example is that of Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, also known as Commentaries on the Gallic Wars. In the work, Caesar describes the battles that took place during the nine years that he spent fighting local armies in the Gallic Wars. His second memoir, Commentarii de Bello Civili (or Commentaries on the Civil War) is an account of the events that took place between 49 and 48 BC in the civil war against Gnaeus Pompeius and the Senate.
Leonor López de Córdoba (1362–1420) wrote what is supposed to be the first autobiography in Spanish. The English Civil War (1642–1651) provoked a number of examples of this genre, including works by Sir Edmund Ludlow and Sir John Reresby. French examples from the same period include the memoirs of Cardinal de Retz (1614–1679) and the Duc de Saint-Simon.
Fictional autobiography
The term "fictional autobiography" signifies novels about a fictional character written as though the character were writing their own autobiography, meaning that the character is the first-person narrator and that the novel addresses both internal and external experiences of the character. Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders is an early example. Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is another such classic, and J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is a well-known modern example of fictional autobiography. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is yet another example of fictional autobiography, as noted on the front page of the original version. The term may also apply to works of fiction purporting to be autobiographies of real characters, e.g., Robert Nye's Memoirs of Lord Byron.
Autobiography through the ages
The classical period: Apologia, oration, confession
In antiquity such works were typically entitled apologia, purporting to be self-justification rather than self-documentation. John Henry Newman's Christian confessional work (first published in 1864) is entitled Apologia Pro Vita Sua in reference to this tradition.
The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus introduces his autobiography (Josephi Vita, c. 99) with self-praise, which is followed by a justification of his actions as a Jewish rebel commander of Galilee.
The pagan rhetor Libanius (c. 314–394) framed his life memoir (Oration I begun in 374) as one of his orations, not of a public kind, but of a literary kind that could not be aloud in privacy.
Augustine (354–430) applied the title Confessions to his autobiographical work, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau used the same title in the 18th century, initiating the chain of confessional and sometimes racy and highly self-critical, autobiographies of the Romantic era and beyond. Augustine's was arguably the first Western autobiography ever written, and became an influential model for Christian writers throughout the Middle Ages. It tells of the hedonistic lifestyle Augustine lived for a time within his youth, associating with young men who boasted of their sexual exploits; his following and leaving of the anti-sex and anti-marriage Manichaeism in attempts to seek sexual morality; and his subsequent return to Christianity due to his embracement of Skepticism and the New Academy movement (developing the view that sex is good, and that virginity is better, comparing the former to silver and the latter to gold; Augustine's views subsequently strongly influenced Western theology). Confessions will always rank among the great masterpieces of western literature.
In the spirit of Augustine's Confessions is the 12th-century Historia Calamitatum of Peter Abelard, outstanding as an autobiographical document of its period.
Early autobiographies
In the 15th century, Leonor López de Córdoba, a Spanish noblewoman, wrote her Memorias, which may be the first autobiography in Castillian.
Zāhir ud-Dīn Mohammad Bābur, who founded the Mughal dynasty of South Asia kept a journal Bāburnāma (Chagatai/; literally: "Book of Babur" or "Letters of Babur") which was written between 1493 and 1529.
One of the first great autobiographies of the Renaissance is that of the sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571), written between 1556 and 1558, and entitled by him simply Vita (Italian: Life). He declares at the start: "No matter what sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really seem great achievements, if he cares for truth and goodness, ought to write the story of his own life in his own hand; but no one should venture on such a splendid undertaking before he is over forty." These criteria for autobiography generally persisted until recent times, and most serious autobiographies of the next three hundred years conformed to them.
Another autobiography of the period is De vita propria, by the Italian mathematician, physician and astrologer Gerolamo Cardano (1574).
The earliest known autobiography written in English is the Book of Margery Kempe, written in 1438. Following in the earlier tradition of a life story told as an act of Christian witness, the book describes Margery Kempe's pilgrimages to the Holy Land and Rome, her attempts to negotiate a celibate marriage with her husband, and most of all her religious experiences as a Christian mystic. Extracts from the book were published in the early sixteenth century but the whole text was published for the first time only in 1936.
Possibly the first publicly available autobiography written in English was Captain John Smith's autobiography published in 1630 which was regarded by many as not much more than a collection of tall tales told by someone of doubtful veracity. This changed with the publication of Philip Barbour's definitive biography in 1964 which, amongst other things, established independent factual bases for many of Smith's "tall tales", many of which could not have been known by Smith at the time of writing unless he was actually present at the events recounted.
Other notable English autobiographies of the 17th century include those of Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1643, published 1764) and John Bunyan (Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, 1666).
Jarena Lee (1783–1864) was the first African American woman to have a published biography in the United States.
18th and 19th centuries
Following the trend of Romanticism, which greatly emphasized the role and the nature of the individual, and in the footsteps of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, a more intimate form of autobiography, exploring the subject's emotions, came into fashion. Stendhal's autobiographical writings of the 1830s, The Life of Henry Brulard and Memoirs of an Egotist, are both avowedly influenced by Rousseau. An English example is William Hazlitt's Liber Amoris (1823), a painful examination of the writer's love-life.
With the rise of education, cheap newspapers and cheap printing, modern concepts of fame and celebrity began to develop, and the beneficiaries of this were not slow to cash in on this by producing autobiographies. It became the expectation—rather than the exception—that those in the public eye should write about themselves—not only writers such as Charles Dickens (who also incorporated autobiographical elements in his novels) and Anthony Trollope, but also politicians (e.g. Henry Brooks Adams), philosophers (e.g. John Stuart Mill), churchmen such as Cardinal Newman, and entertainers such as P. T. Barnum. Increasingly, in accordance with romantic taste, these accounts also began to deal, amongst other topics, with aspects of childhood and upbringing—far removed from the principles of "Cellinian" autobiography.
20th and 21st centuries
From the 17th century onwards, "scandalous memoirs" by supposed libertines, serving a public taste for titillation, have been frequently published. Typically pseudonymous, they were (and are) largely works of fiction written by ghostwriters. So-called "autobiographies" of modern professional athletes and media celebrities—and to a lesser extent about politicians—generally written by a ghostwriter, are routinely published. Some celebrities, such as Naomi Campbell, admit to not having read their "autobiographies". Some sensationalist autobiographies such as James Frey's A Million Little Pieces have been publicly exposed as having embellished or fictionalized significant details of the authors' lives.
Autobiography has become an increasingly popular and widely accessible form. A Fortunate Life by Albert Facey (1979) has become an Australian literary classic. With the critical and commercial success in the United States of such memoirs as Angela’s Ashes and The Color of Water, more and more people have been encouraged to try their hand at this genre. Maggie Nelson's book The Argonauts is one of the recent autobiographies. Maggie Nelson calls it "autotheory"—a combination of autobiography and critical theory.
A genre where the "claim for truth" overlaps with fictional elements though the work still purports to be autobiographical is autofiction.
See also
List of autobiographies
:Category:Autobiographies
Autobiographical comics
Autobiographical memory
Autobiographical novel
Autofiction
Biography
I-novel
Letter collection
List of autobiographies
Memoir
Unreliable narrator
References
Bibliography
External links
Biography (genre)
Articles needing additional references from December 2012
Works about history
1790s neologisms |
2180 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcadius | Arcadius | Flavius Arcadius ( ; c. 377 – 1 May 408) was Roman emperor from 383 to 408. He was the eldest son of the Augustus Theodosius I () and his first wife Aelia Flaccilla, and the brother of Honorius (). Arcadius ruled the eastern half of the empire from 395, when their father died, while Honorius ruled the west. A weak ruler, his reign was dominated by a series of powerful ministers and by his wife, Aelia Eudoxia.
Early life
Birth
Arcadius was born in 377 in Hispania, the eldest son of Theodosius I and Aelia Flaccilla, and brother of Honorius, who would become the Western Roman emperor. In 16 January 383, his father declared the five-year-old Arcadius an Augustus and co-ruler for the eastern half of the Empire. Later in the year a corresponding declaration made Honorius Augustus of the western half. Arcadius passed his early years under the tutelage of the rhetorician Themistius and Arsenius Zonaras, a monk.
Emperor
Early reign
Both of Theodosius' sons were young and inexperienced, susceptible to being dominated by ambitious subordinates. In 394 Arcadius briefly exercised independent power with the help of his advisors in Constantinople, when his father Theodosius went west to fight Arbogastes and Eugenius. Theodosius died in 17 January 395, and Arcadius, still aged only 17, fell under the influence of the praetorian prefect of the East, Rufinus. Honorius, aged 10, was consigned to the guardianship of the magister militum Stilicho. Rufinus ambitiously sought to marry his daughter to Arcadius and thereby gain the prestige of being the emperor's father-in-law. However, when the prefect was called away to business in Antioch (where according to Zosimus, Rufinus had Lucianus, the comes orientis, flogged to death with whips loaded with lead), Arcadius was shown a painting of Aelia Eudoxia, the daughter of the deceased Frankish magister militum per orientem, Bauto. Seeing the young emperor's interest in Eudoxia, Eutropius, the eunuch praepositus sacri cubiculi, arranged for the two to meet. Arcadius fell in love and a marriage was quickly arranged, with the ceremony performed on 27 April 395. According to Zosimus, Rufinus assumed that his daughter was still to be the bride, only discovering otherwise when the nuptial procession went to Eudoxia's residence rather than his own. The rise of Eudoxia, facilitated by a general who was a rival of Rufinus, demonstrates the shifting of the centres of power in the eastern court. Such jostling for influence over the malleable emperor would be a recurring feature of Arcadius's reign.
The first crisis facing the young Arcadius was the rebellion of the Visigoths in 395, under the command of Alaric I (), who sought to take advantage of the accession of two inexperienced Roman emperors. As Alaric marched towards Constantinople, plundering Macedonia and Thrace, the eastern court could offer no response, as the majority of its army had gone to Italy with Theodosius and was now in the hands of Stilicho. Perhaps sensing an opportunity to exercise power in the eastern half of the empire as well, Stilicho declared that Theodosius had made him guardian over both his sons. He traveled eastward, ostensibly to face Alaric, leading both his own forces and the Gothic mercenaries whom Theodosius had taken west in the civil war with Eugenius. Arcadius and Rufinus felt more threatened by Stilicho than by Alaric; upon landing in Thessaly Stilicho received an imperial order to send along the eastern regiments, but himself to proceed no further. Stilicho complied, falling back to Salona while Gainas led the mercenaries to Constantinople. Arcadius and his entourage received Gainas in the Campus Martius, a parade ground adjacent to the city, on 27 November 395. There Rufinus was suddenly assassinated by the Goths, on the orders of Stilicho and possibly with the support of Eutropius. The murder certainly created an opportunity for Eutropius and for Arcadius' wife, Eudoxia, who took Rufinus' place as advisors and guardians of the emperor.
While Eutropius consolidated his hold on power in the capital, the distracted government still failed to react to the presence of Alaric in Greece. At first Eutropius may have coordinated with Stilicho around the defence of Illyricum; by 397, when Stilicho personally led a blockade that compelled Alaric to retreat into Epirus, the atmosphere of the eastern court had changed. As neither Arcadius nor Eutropius was keen to have Stilicho intervening in the affairs of the eastern empire, they provided no further military aid to Stilicho, who then abandoned the blockade of the Visigoths. At Eutropius's urging, Arcadius declared Stilicho to be a hostis publicus, and came to an arrangement with Alaric, making him magister militum per Illyricum. At around the same time, the eastern court persuaded Gildo, the magister utriusque militiae per Africam, to transfer his allegiance from Honorius to Arcadius, causing relations between the two imperial courts to deteriorate further.
Eutropius' influence lasted four years, during which time he sought to marginalise the military and promote the civilian offices within the bureaucracy. He brought to trial two prominent military officers, Timasius and Abundantius. He also had Arcadius introduce two administrative innovations: the running of the cursus publicus (office of postmaster general) and the office in charge of manufacturing military equipment was transferred from the praetorian prefects to the magister officiorum (master of offices). Secondly, the role that Eutropius held, the praepositus sacri cubiculi (grand chamberlain) was given the rank of illustris, and therefore equal in rank to the praetorian prefects. In the autumn of 397 he issued a law in Arcadius's name, targeting the Roman military, where any conspiracy involving soldiers or the barbarian regiments against persons holding the rank of illustris was considered to be treason, with the conspirators to be sentenced to death, and their descendants to be deprived of citizenship.
In 398, Eutropius led a successful campaign against the Huns in Roman Armenia. The following year he convinced Arcadius to grant him the consulship, triggering protests across the empire. For traditionalists, the granting of the consulship to a eunuch and former slave was an insult to the Roman system and other contemporary Romans, and the western court refused to recognize him as consul. The crisis escalated when the Ostrogoths who had been settled in Asia Minor by Theodosius I revolted, demanding the removal of Eutropius. The emperor sent two forces against Tribigild, the rebel leader; the first, under an officer named Leo, was defeated. The second force was commanded by Gainas, rival of Eutropius in the Eastern court. He returned to Arcadius and argued that the Ostrogoths could not be defeated, and that it would be sensible to accede to their demand. Arcadius viewed this proposal with displeasure, but was convinced to support it by Eudoxia, who wished to take Eutropius’ place as the main influence upon the emperor. Arcadius therefore dismissed Eutropius and sent him into exile (17 August 399), before recalling him to face trial and execution during the autumn of 399. The imperial edict issued by Arcadius detailing Eutropius's banishment survives:
The Emperors Arcadius and Honorius, Augusti, to Aurelian, Praetorian Prefect. We have added to our treasury all the property of Eutropius, who was formerly the Praepositus sacri cubiculi, having stripped him of his splendour, and delivered the consulate from the foul stain of his tenure, and from the recollection of his name and the base filth thereof ; so that, all his acts having been repealed, all time may be dumb concerning him ; and that the blot of our age may not appear by the mention of him ; and that those who by their valour and wounds extend the Roman borders or guard the same by equity in the maintenance of law, may not groan over the fact that the divine reward of consulship has been befouled and defiled by a filthy monster. Let him learn that he has been deprived of the rank of the patriciate and all lower dignities that he stained with the perversity of his character. That all the statues, all the images —whether of bronze or marble, or painted in colours, or of any other material used in art—we command to be abolished in all cities, towns, private and public places, that they may not, as a brand of infamy on our age, pollute the gaze of beholders. Accordingly under the conduct of faithful guards let him be taken to the island of Cyprus, whither let your sublimity know that he has been banished ; so that therein guarded with most watchful diligence he may be unable to work confusion with his mad designs.
Later reign
With Eutropius' fall from power, Gainas sought to take advantage of Arcadius's current predicament. He joined the rebel Ostrogoths, and, in a face to face meeting with Arcadius, forced the emperor to make him magister militum praesentalis and Consul designate for 401. Arcadius also acquiesced when Gainas asked for the dismissal of further officials, such as the urban prefect Aurelianus, as well as a place for settlement for his troops in Thrace. However, Arcadius refused to agree to Gainas's demand for an Arian church in Constantinople for his Gothic mercenaries, following the advice of John Chrysostom, the Archbishop of Constantinople.
By July 400, the actions of Gainas had irritated a significant portion of the population of Constantinople to the point that a general riot broke out in the capital. Although Gainas had stationed his troops outside of the capital walls, he was either unable or unwilling to bring them into the capital when many Goths in the city were hunted down and attacked. As many as 7,000 Goths were killed in the rioting; those who took refuge in a church were stoned and burned to death, after they received the emperor's permission, nor was it condemned by the Archbishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom.
Although initially staying his hand (probably through the intervention of the new Praetorian Prefect of the East Caesarius), Gainas eventually withdrew with his Gothic mercenaries into Thrace and rebelled against Arcadius. He attempted to take his forces across the Hellespont into Asia, but was intercepted and defeated by Fravitta, another Goth who held the position of magister militum praesentalis. Following his defeat, Gainas fled to the Danube with his remaining followers, but was ultimately defeated and killed by Uldin the Hun in Thrace.
With the fall of Gainas, the next conflict emerged between Eudoxia and John Chrysostom. The Archbishop was a stern, ascetic individual, who was a vocal critic of all displays of extravagant wealth. But his ire tended to focus especially on wealthy women, and their use of clothing, jewellery and makeup as being vain and frivolous. Eudoxia assumed that Chrysostom's denunciations of extravagance in feminine dress were aimed at her. As the tensions between the two escalated, Chrysostom, who felt that Eudoxia had used her imperial connections to obtain the possessions of the wife of a condemned senator, preached a sermon in 401 in which Eudoxia was openly called Jezebel, the infamous wife of the Israelite king Ahab. Eudoxia retaliated by supporting Bishop Severian of Gabala in his conflict with Chrysostom. As Chrysostom was very popular in the capital, riots erupted in favour of the Archbishop, forcing Arcadius and Eudoxia to publicly back down and beg Chrysostom to revoke Severian's excommunication.
Then in 403, Eudoxia saw another chance to strike against the Archbishop, when she threw her support behind Theophilus of Alexandria who presided over a synod in 403 (the Synod of the Oak) to charge Chrysostom with heresy. Although Arcadius originally supported Chrysostom, the Archbishop's decision not to participate caused Arcadius to change his mind and support Theophilus, resulting in Chrysostom's deposition and banishment. He was called back by Arcadius almost immediately, as the people started rioting over his departure, even threatening to burn the imperial palace. There was an earthquake the night of his arrest, which Eudoxia took for a sign of God's anger, prompting her to ask Arcadius for John's reinstatement.
Peace was short-lived. In September 403 a silver statue of Eudoxia was erected in the Augustaion, near the Magna Ecclesia church. Chrysostom, who was conducting a mass at the time, denounced the noisy dedication ceremonies as pagan and spoke against the Empress in harsh terms: "Again Herodias raves; again she is troubled; she dances again; and again desires to receive John's head in a charger", an allusion to the events surrounding the death of John the Baptist. This time Arcadius was unwilling to overlook the insult to his wife; a new synod was called in early 404 where Chrysostom was condemned. Arcadius hesitated until Easter to enforce the sentence, but Chrysostom refused to go, even after Arcadius sent in a squad of soldiers to escort him into exile. Arcadius procrastinated, but by 20 June 404, the emperor finally managed to get the Archbishop to submit, and he was taken away to his place of banishment, this time to Abkhazia in the Caucasus. Eudoxia did not get to enjoy her victory for long, dying later that year.
Death
With the passing of Eudoxia, Arcadius once again fell under the domination of a member of his court, this time the competent Anthemius, the Praetorian Prefect. He would rule in Arcadius's name for the final four years of his reign, seeking to repair the harm done by his predecessors. He attempted to heal the divisions of the past decade by trying to make peace with Stilicho in the West. Stilicho, however, had lost patience with the eastern court, and in 407 encouraged Alaric and the Visigoths to seize the Praetorian prefecture of Illyricum and hand it over to the western empire. Stilicho's plan failed, and soon after, on 1 May 408, Arcadius died. He was succeeded by his young son, Theodosius.
Like Constantine the Great and several of his successors, he was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles, in a porphyry sarcophagus that was described in the 10th century by Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus in the De Ceremoniis.
Character and achievements
In noting the character of Arcadius, the historian J. B. Bury described him and his abilities thus: He was of short stature, of dark complexion, thin and inactive, and the dullness of his wit was betrayed by his speech and by his sleepy, drooping eyes. His mental deficiency and the weakness of his character made it inevitable that he should be governed by the strong personalities of his court.
Traditional interpretations of the reign of Arcadius have revolved around his weakness as an Emperor, and the formulation of policy by prominent individuals (and the court parties that formed and regrouped round them) towards curtailing the increasing influence of barbarians in the military, which in Constantinople at this period meant the Goths. Scholars such as the historian J. B. Bury spoke of a group in Arcadius's court with Germanic interests and, opposed to them, a Roman faction. So when interpreting the revolt of Gainas and the massacre of the Goths in Constantinople in 400, the episode has been traditionally interpreted by scholars such as Otto Seeck as a violent anti-barbarian reaction that functioned to stabilize the East and prevent the rise of all powerful Romanised barbarian military leaders such as Stilicho in the West - what has been termed the victory of anti-Germanism in the eastern empire.
The main source of this interpretation has been the works Synesius of Cyrene, specifically Aegyptus sive de providentia and De regno. Both works have traditionally been interpreted to support the thesis that there were anti-barbarian and pro-barbarian groups, with the Praetorian Prefect Aurelianus being the leader of the anti-barbarian faction. Recent scholarly research has revised this interpretation, and has instead favoured the interaction of personal ambition and enmities among the principal participants as being the leading cause for the court intrigue throughout Arcadius's reign. The gradual decline of the use of Gothic mercenaries in the eastern empire's armies that began in the reign of Arcadius was driven by recruitment issues, as the regions beyond the Danube were made inaccessible by the Huns, forcing the empire to seek recruitment in Asia Minor. The current consensus can be summarised by the historian Thomas S. Burns: "Despite much civilian distrust and outright hatred of the army and the barbarians in it, there were no anti-barbarian or pro-barbarian parties at the court."
With respect to Arcadius himself, as emperor was more concerned with appearing to be a pious Christian than he was with political or military matters. Not being a military leader, he began to promote a new type of imperial victory through images, not via the traditional military achievements, but focusing on his piety. Arcadius's reign saw the growing push towards the outright abolishment of paganism. On 13 July 399, Arcadius issued an edict ordering that all remaining non-Christian temples should be immediately demolished.
In terms of buildings and monuments, a new forum was built in the name of Arcadius, on the seventh hill of Constantinople, the Xērolophos, in which a column was begun to commemorate his 'victory' over Gainas (although the column was only completed after Arcadius' death by Theodosius II). The Pentelic marble portrait head of Arcadius (now in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum) was discovered in Istanbul close to the Forum Tauri, in June 1949, in excavating foundations for new buildings of the university at Beyazit. The neck was designed to be inserted in a torso, but no statue, base or inscription was found. The diadem is a fillet with rows of pearls along its edges and a rectangular stone set about with pearls over the young Emperor's forehead.
A more nuanced assessment of Arcadius's reign was provided by Warren Treadgold: By failing to reign, Arcadius had allowed a good deal of maladministration. But by continuing to reign - so harmlessly that nobody had taken the trouble to depose him - he had maintained legal continuity during a troubled time.
Arcadius had four children with Eudoxia: three daughters, Pulcheria, Arcadia and Marina, and one son, Theodosius, the future Emperor Theodosius II.
Notes
Sources
Primary sources
Zosimus, "Historia Nova", Book 5
Secondary sources
McEvoy, Meaghan, An imperial jellyfish? The emperor Arcadius and imperial leadership in the late fourth century A.D.', in Erika Manders, Daniëlle Slootjes (eds), Leadership, ideology and crowds in the Roman empire of the fourth century AD. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag (2020).
Nicholson, O. ed. (2018). "Arcadius, Flavius". The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity.
Lee, A. D. (2013). From Rome to Byzantium AD 363 to 565, Edinburgh University Press.
Liebeschuetz, J. H. W. G. (2011). Ambrose and John Chrysostom: Clerics Between Desert and Empire. Oxford University Press.
Goldsworthy, Adrian (2010). The Fall of the West: The Death of the Roman Superpower. Phoenix.
Treadgold, Warren (1997). A History of the Byzantine State and Society, Stanford University Press.
Long, Jacqueline (1996). Claudian's In Eutropium, Or, How, When, and why to Slander a Eunuch. University of North Carolina Press.
Burns, Thomas Samuel (1994). Barbarians Within the Gates of Rome: A Study of Roman Military Policy and the Barbarians, Ca. 375-425 A.D. Indiana University Press.
Cameron, A.; Long, J., Sherry, L., (1993). Barbarians and Politics at the Court of Arcadius. University of California Press.
Kazhdan, Alexander ed. (1991). Arkadios. The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, pp. 173–174.
Jones, A. H. M., John Robert Martindale, John Morris (1971). Arcadius 5. The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire I. Cambridge University Press, p. 99.
Bury, J. B. (1889). A History of the Later Roman Empire from Arcadius to Irene I.
Gibbon, Edward (1932) [1789]. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. New York: The Modern Library.
External links
Laws of Arcadius, extracted from Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis
Watts, Edward, "the motifs of Imperial authority in the bust of Arcadius"
This list of Roman laws of the fourth century shows laws passed by Arcadius relating to Christianity.
370s births
408 deaths
4th-century Roman consuls
5th-century Roman consuls
4th-century Roman emperors
5th-century Byzantine emperors
4th-century Christians
5th-century Christians
Flavii
Sons of Roman emperors
Theodosian dynasty |
2185 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabs | Arabs | The Arabs (singular Arab ; singular , DIN 31635: , , plural , DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Western Indian Ocean islands (including the Comoros). An Arab diaspora is established around the world in significant numbers, in the Americas, Western Europe, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, India and Iran.
In modern usage, the term "Arabs" tends to refer to those whose native language is Arabic and identify as such. In a source that compares Arabs in Europe to other socioethnic groups, Arabs are referred to as a socioethnic group. This contrasts with the narrower traditional definition, which refers to the descendants of the Tribes of the Arabian Peninsula. Islam started in Arabia, Arabic is the language of Islamic scripture, and most Arabs are Muslims. However, only 20% of Muslims are Arabs.
The first mention of Arabs appeared in the mid-9th century BCE, as a tribal people in Eastern and Southern Syria and the northern Arabian Peninsula. The Arabs appear to have been under the vassalage of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–612 BCE), as well as the succeeding Neo-Babylonian (626–539 BCE), Achaemenid (539–332 BCE), Seleucid and Parthian empires. The Nabataeans, an Arab people, ruled a Kingdom near Petra in the 3rd century BCE. Arab tribes, most notably the Ghassanids and Lakhmids, began to appear in the Southern Syrian Desert from the mid 3rd century CE onward, during the mid to later stages of the Roman and Sasanian empires.
Before the expansion of the Rashidun Caliphate (632–661 C.E.), "Arab" referred to any of the largely nomadic and settled Arabic-speaking people from the Arabian Peninsula, Syrian Desert and Lower Mesopotamia, with some even reaching what is now northern Iraq. Since the influence of Pan-Arabism in the 1950s and 1960s, "Arabs" has been taken to refer to a large number of people whose native regions became part of the Arab world due to the spread of Islam, Arabic tribes and the Arabic language throughout the region during the early Muslim conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries. These cultural and demographic influences resulted in the subsequent Arabisation of the indigenous populations.
The Arabs forged the Rashidun (632–661), Umayyad (661–750), Abbasid (750–1517) and the Fatimid (901–1071) caliphates, whose borders reached Southern France in the west, China in the east, Anatolia in the north and the Sudan in the south. This was one of the largest land empires in history. In the early 20th century, the First World War signalled the end of the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled much of the Arab world since conquering the Mamluk Sultanate in 1517. The end culminated in the 1922 defeat and dissolution of the empire and the partition of its territories, forming the modern Arab states. Following the adoption of the Alexandria Protocol in 1944, the Arab League was founded on 22 March 1945. The Charter of the Arab League endorsed the principle of an Arab homeland whilst respecting the individual sovereignty of its member states.
Today, Arabs primarily inhabit the 22 member states of the Arab League. The Arab world stretches around 13 million km2, from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean in the southeast. People of non-Arab ethnicities associated with non-Arabic languages also live in these countries, sometimes as a majority. These include Somalis, Kurds, Berbers, the Afar people, Nubians and others. Beyond the boundaries of the League of Arab States, Arabs can also be found in the global diaspora. The ties that bind Arabs are ethnic, linguistic, cultural, historical, identical, nationalist, geographical and political. The Arabs have their own customs, language, architecture, art, literature, music, dance, media, cuisine, dress, society, sports and mythology.
Arabs are a diverse group in terms of religious affiliations and practices. In the pre-Islamic era, most Arabs followed polytheistic religions. Some tribes had adopted Christianity or Judaism and a few individuals, the hanifs, apparently observed another form of monotheism. Today, about 93% of Arabs are adherents of Islam and there are sizable Christian minorities. Arab Muslims primarily belong to the Sunni, Shiite, Ibadi and Alawite denominations. Arab Christians generally follow one of the Eastern Christian Churches, such as those within the Oriental Orthodox churches, Eastern Catholic churches, or Eastern Protestant churches. There also exist small numbers of Arab Jews still living in Arab countries and a much larger population of Jews descended from Arab Jewish communities living in Israel and various Western countries, who may or may not consider themselves Arab today. Christian minorities in Arab-majority states may also not consider themselves Arab, such as Copts and Assyrians. Other smaller minority religions also exist, such as the Druze, Zoroastrianism and the Baháʼí Faith.
Arabs have greatly influenced and contributed to diverse fields, notably the arts and architecture, language, philosophy, mythology, ethics, literature, politics, business, music, dance, cinema, medicine, science and technology in ancient and modern history.
Etymology
The earliest documented use of the word Arab in reference to a people appears in the Kurkh Monoliths, an Akkadian-language record of the Assyrian conquest of Aram (9th century BCE). The Monoliths used the term to refer to Bedouins of the Arabian Peninsula under King Gindibu, who fought as part of a coalition opposed to Assyria. Listed among the booty captured by the army of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III in the Battle of Qarqar (853 BCE) are 1000 camels of "Gi-in-di-bu'u the ar-ba-a-a" or "[the man] Gindibu belonging to the Arabs" (ar-ba-a-a being an adjectival nisba of the noun ʿarab).
The related word ʾaʿrāb is used to refer to Bedouins today, in contrast to ʿarab which refers to Arabs in general. Both terms are mentioned around 40 times in pre-Islamic Sabaean inscriptions. The term ʿarab ('Arab') occurs also in the titles of the Himyarite kings from the time of 'Abu Karab Asad until MadiKarib Ya'fur. According to Sabaean grammar, the term ʾaʿrāb is derived from the term ʿarab. The term is also mentioned in Quranic verses, referring to people who were living in Madina and it might be a south Arabian loanword into Quranic language.
The oldest surviving indication of an Arab national identity is an inscription made in an archaic form of Arabic in 328 CE using the Nabataean alphabet, which refers to Imru' al-Qays ibn 'Amr as 'King of all the Arabs'. Herodotus refers to the Arabs in the Sinai, southern Palestine, and the frankincense region (Southern Arabia). Other Ancient-Greek historians like Agatharchides, Diodorus Siculus and Strabo mention Arabs living in Mesopotamia (along the Euphrates), in Egypt (the Sinai and the Red Sea), southern Jordan (the Nabataeans), the Syrian steppe and in eastern Arabia (the people of Gerrha). Inscriptions dating to the 6th century BCE in Yemen include the term 'Arab'.
The most popular Arab account holds that the word Arab came from an eponymous father named Ya'rub, who was supposedly the first to speak Arabic. Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Hamdani had another view; he states that Arabs were called gharab ('westerners') by Mesopotamians because Bedouins originally resided to the west of Mesopotamia; the term was then corrupted into arab.
Yet another view is held by al-Masudi that the word Arab was initially applied to the Ishmaelites of the Arabah valley. In Biblical etymology, Arab (Hebrew: arvi) comes from the desert origin of the Bedouins it originally described (arava means 'wilderness').
The root ʿ-r-b has several additional meanings in Semitic languages—including 'west, sunset', 'desert', 'mingle', 'mixed', 'merchant' and 'raven'—and are "comprehensible" with all of these having varying degrees of relevance to the emergence of the name. It is also possible that some forms were metathetical from , 'moving around' (Arabic: , 'traverse') and hence, it is alleged, 'nomadic'.
History
Antiquity
Pre-Islamic Arabia refers to the Arabian Peninsula prior to the rise of Islam in the 630s. The study of Pre-Islamic Arabia is important to Islamic studies as it provides the context for the development of Islam. Some of the settled communities in the Arabian Peninsula developed into distinctive civilizations. Sources for these civilizations are not extensive, and are limited to archaeological evidence, accounts written outside of Arabia, and Arab oral traditions later recorded by Islamic scholars. Among the most prominent civilizations was Dilmun, which arose around the 4th millennium BCE and lasted to 538 BCE, and Thamud, which arose around the 1st millennium BCE and lasted to about 300 CE. Additionally, from the beginning of the first millennium BCE, Southern Arabia was the home to a number of kingdoms, such as the Sabaean kingdom (, possibly Sheba), and the coastal areas of Eastern Arabia were controlled by the Parthian and Sassanians from 300 BCE.
Origins and early history
According to Arab-Islamic-Jewish traditions, Ishmael was father of the Arabs, to be the ancestor of the Ishmaelites.
Both Judaism and Islam see him as the ancestor of Arab peoples.
Ishmael is recognized by Muslims as the ancestor of several prominent Arab tribes and being the forefather of Muhammad. A–Z of Prophets in Islam and Judaism, Wheeler, Ishmael Muslims also believe that Muhammad was the descendant of Ishmael that would establish a great nation, as promised by God in the Old Testament.
Genesis 17:20
Ishmael was considered the ancestor of the Northern Arabs and Muhammad was linked to him through the lineage of the patriarch Adnan. Ishmael may also have been the ancestor of the Southern Arabs through his descendant Qahtan.
Assyrians referred to the Arab Tribes as Ishmaelites, or "Shumu'ilu" as recorded in their inscriptions.
"Zayd ibn Amr" was another Pre-Islamic figure who refused idolatry and preached monotheism, claiming it was the original belief of their [Arabs] father Ishmael.
The tribes of Central West Arabia called themselves the "people of Abraham and the offspring of Ishmael."
Gibb, Hamilton A. R., and J. H. Kramers. 1965. Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. pp. 191–98
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The first written attestation of the ethnonym Arab occurs in an Assyrian inscription of 853 BCE, where Shalmaneser III lists a King Gindibu of mâtu arbâi (Arab land) as among the people he defeated at the Battle of Qarqar. Some of the names given in these texts are Aramaic, while others are the first attestations of Ancient North Arabian dialects. In fact several different ethnonyms are found in Assyrian texts that are conventionally translated "Arab": Arabi, Arubu, Aribi and Urbi. Many of the Qedarite queens were also described as queens of the aribi. The Hebrew Bible occasionally refers to Aravi peoples (or variants thereof), translated as "Arab" or "Arabian." The scope of the term at that early stage is unclear, but it seems to have referred to various desert-dwelling Semitic tribes in the Syrian Desert and Arabia. Arab tribes came into conflict with the Assyrians during the reign of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, and he records military victories against the powerful Qedar tribe among others.
Old Arabic diverges from Central Semitic by the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE.
Medieval Arab genealogists divided Arabs into three groups:
"Ancient Arabs", tribes that had vanished or been destroyed, such as ʿĀd and Thamud, often mentioned in the Qur'an as examples of God's power to vanquish those who fought his prophets.
"Pure Arabs" of South Arabia, descending from Qahtan. The Qahtanites (Qahtanis) are said to have migrated from the land of Yemen following the destruction of the Ma'rib Dam (sadd Ma'rib).
The "Arabized Arabs" (mustaʿribah) of Central Arabia (Najd) and North Arabia, descending from Ishmael the elder son of Abraham, through Adnan (hence, Adnanites). The Book of Genesis narrates that God promised Hagar to beget from Ishmael twelve princes and turn him to a great nation. The Book of Jubilees claims that the sons of Ishmael intermingled with the 6 sons of Keturah, from Abraham, and their descendants were called Arabs and Ishmaelites:
Assyrian and Babylonian Royal Inscriptions and North Arabian inscriptions from 9th to 6th century BCE, mention the king of Qedar as king of the Arabs and King of the Ishmaelites.
Of the names of the sons of Ishmael the names "Nabat, Kedar, Abdeel, Dumah, Massa, and Teman" were mentioned in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions as tribes of the Ishmaelites. Jesur was mentioned in Greek inscriptions in the 1st century BCE.
Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddima distinguishes between sedentary Arab Muslims who used to be nomadic, and Bedouin nomadic Arabs of the desert. He used the term "formerly nomadic" Arabs and refers to sedentary Muslims by the region or city they lived in, as in Yemenis. The Christians of Italy and the Crusaders preferred the term Saracens for all the Arabs, Muslims. The Christians of Iberia used the term Moor to describe all the Arabs and Muslims of that time.
Muslims of Medina referred to the nomadic tribes of the deserts as the A'raab, and considered themselves sedentary, but were aware of their close racial bonds. The term "A'raab" mirrors the term Assyrians used to describe the closely related nomads they defeated in Syria. The Qur'an does not use the word , only the nisba adjective . The Qur'an calls itself , "Arabic", and , "clear". The two qualities are connected for example in Quran 43:2-3, "By the clear Book: We have made it an Arabic recitation in order that you may understand". The Qur'an became regarded as the prime example of the , the language of the Arabs. The term ʾiʿrāb has the same root and refers to a particularly clear and correct mode of speech. The plural noun refers to the Bedouin tribes of the desert who resisted Muhammad, for example in at-Tawba 97,
"the Bedouin are the worst in disbelief and hypocrisy".
Based on this, in early Islamic terminology, referred to the language, and to the Arab Bedouins, carrying a negative connotation due to the Qur'anic verdict just cited. But after the Islamic conquest of the eighth century, the language of the nomadic Arabs became regarded as the most pure by the grammarians following Abi Ishaq, and the term , "language of the Arabs", denoted the uncontaminated language of the Bedouins.
Classical kingdoms
Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, texts give a clearer picture of the Arabs' emergence. The earliest are written in variants of epigraphic south Arabian musnad script, including the 8th century BCE Hasaean inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, the 6th century BCE Lihyanite texts of southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout the Arabian Peninsula and Sinai (not in reality connected with Thamud).
The Nabataeans were nomadic Arabs who moved into territory vacated by the Edomites – Semites who settled the region centuries before them. Their early inscriptions were in Aramaic, but gradually switched to Arabic, and since they had writing, it was they who made the first inscriptions in Arabic. The Nabataean alphabet was adopted by Arabs to the south, and evolved into modern Arabic script around the 4th century. This is attested by Safaitic inscriptions (beginning in the 1st century BCE) and the many Arabic personal names in Nabataean inscriptions. From about the 2nd century BCE, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Faw reveal a dialect no longer considered proto-Arabic, but pre-classical Arabic. Five Syriac inscriptions mentioning Arabs have been found at Sumatar Harabesi, one of which dates to the 2nd century CE.
Arabs arrived in the Palmyra in the late first millennium BCE. The soldiers of the sheikh Zabdibel, who aided the Seleucids in the battle of Raphia (217 BCE), were described as Arabs; Zabdibel and his men were not actually identified as Palmyrenes in the texts, but the name "Zabdibel" is a Palmyrene name leading to the conclusion that the sheikh hailed from Palmyra. Palmyra was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate after its 634 capture by the Arab general Khalid ibn al-Walid, who took the city on his way to Damascus; an 18-day march by his army through the Syrian Desert from Mesopotamia. By then Palmyra was limited to the Diocletian camp. After the conquest, the city became part of Homs Province.
Palmyra prospered as part of the Umayyad Caliphate, and its population grew. It was a key stop on the East-West trade route, with a large souq (, market), built by the Umayyads, who also commissioned part of the Temple of Bel as a mosque. During this period, Palmyra was a stronghold of the Banu Kalb tribe. After being defeated by Marwan II during a civil war in the caliphate, Umayyad contender Sulayman ibn Hisham fled to the Banu Kalb in Palmyra, but eventually pledged allegiance to Marwan in 744; Palmyra continued to oppose Marwan until the surrender of the Banu Kalb leader al-Abrash al-Kalbi in 745. That year, Marwan ordered the city's walls demolished. In 750 a revolt, led by Majza'a ibn al-Kawthar and Umayyad pretender Abu Muhammad al-Sufyani, against the new Abbasid Caliphate swept across Syria; the tribes in Palmyra supported the rebels. After his defeat Abu Muhammad took refuge in the city, which withstood an Abbasid assault long enough to allow him to escape.
Late kingdoms
The Ghassanids, Lakhmids and Kindites were the last major migration of pre-Islamic Arabs out of Yemen to the north. The Ghassanids increased the Semitic presence in the then Hellenized Syria, the majority of Semites were Aramaic peoples. They mainly settled in the Hauran region and spread to modern Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan.
Greeks and Romans referred to all the nomadic population of the desert in the Near East as Arabi. The Romans called Yemen "Arabia Felix". The Romans called the vassal nomadic states within the Roman Empire Arabia Petraea, after the city of Petra, and called unconquered deserts bordering the empire to the south and east Arabia Magna. The Emesene were a Roman client dynasty of Arab priest-kings known to have ruled from Emesa, Syria. Roman empress Julia Domna, matriarch of the Severan dynasty of Roman emperors, was one of their descendants.
The Lakhmids as a dynasty inherited their power from the Tanukhids, the mid Tigris region around their capital Al-Hira. They ended up allying with the Sassanids against the Ghassanids and the Byzantine Empire. The Lakhmids contested control of the Central Arabian tribes with the Kindites with the Lakhmids eventually destroying the Kingdom of Kinda in 540 after the fall of their main ally Himyar. The Persian Sassanids dissolved the Lakhmid dynasty in 602, being under puppet kings, then under their direct control.
The Kindites migrated from Yemen along with the Ghassanids and Lakhmids, but were turned back in Bahrain by the Abdul Qais Rabi'a tribe. They returned to Yemen and allied themselves with the Himyarites who installed them as a vassal kingdom that ruled Central Arabia from "Qaryah Dhat Kahl" (the present-day called Qaryat al-Faw). They ruled much of the Northern/Central Arabian peninsula, until they were destroyed by the Lakhmid king Al-Mundhir, and his son 'Amr.
Medieval period
Arab caliphates
Rashidun era (632–661)
After the death of Muhammad in 632, Rashidun armies launched campaigns of conquest, establishing the Caliphate, or Islamic Empire, one of the largest empires in history. It was larger and lasted longer than the previous Arab empire of Queen Mawia or the Aramean-Arab Palmyrene Empire. The Rashidun state was a completely new state and unlike the Arab kingdoms of its century such as the Himyarite, Lakhmids or Ghassanids.
Umayyad era (661–750 & 756–1031)
In 661, the Rashidun Caliphate fell into the hands of the Umayyad dynasty and Damascus was established as the empire's capital. The Umayyads were proud of their Arab identity and sponsored the poetry and culture of pre-Islamic Arabia. They established garrison towns at Ramla, Raqqa, Basra, Kufa, Mosul and Samarra, all of which developed into major cities.
Caliph Abd al-Malik established Arabic as the Caliphate's official language in 686. This reform greatly influenced the conquered non-Arab peoples and fueled the Arabization of the region. However, the Arabs' higher status among non-Arab Muslim converts and the latter's obligation to pay heavy taxes caused resentment. Caliph Umar II strove to resolve the conflict when he came to power in 717. He rectified the disparity, demanding that all Muslims be treated as equals, but his intended reforms did not take effect, as he died after only three years of rule. By now, discontent with the Umayyads swept the region and an uprising occurred in which the Abbasids came to power and moved the capital to Baghdad.
Umayyads expanded their Empire westwards capturing North Africa from the Byzantines. Before the Arab conquest, North Africa was conquered or settled by various people including Punics, Vandals and Romans. After the Abbasid Revolution, the Umayyads lost most of their territories with the exception of Iberia. Their last holding became known as the Emirate of Córdoba. It wasn't until the rule of the grandson of the founder of this new emirate that the state entered a new phase as the Caliphate of Córdoba. This new state was characterized by an expansion of trade, culture and knowledge, and saw the construction of masterpieces of al-Andalus architecture and the library of Al-Ḥakam II which housed over 400,000 volumes. With the collapse of the Umayyad state in 1031 CE, Islamic Spain was divided into small kingdoms.
Abbasid era (750–1258 & 1261–1517)
The Abbasids were the descendants of Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib, one of the youngest uncles of Muhammad and of the same Banu Hashim clan. The Abbasids led a revolt against the Umayyads and defeated them in the Battle of the Zab effectively ending their rule in all parts of the Empire with the exception of al-Andalus. In 762, the second Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur founded the city of Baghdad and declared it the capital of the Caliphate. Unlike the Umayyads, the Abbasids had the support of non-Arab subjects.
The Islamic Golden Age was inaugurated by the middle of the 8th century by the ascension of the Abbasid Caliphate and the transfer of the capital from Damascus to the newly founded city of Baghdad. The Abbassids were influenced by the Qur'anic injunctions and hadith such as "The ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of martyrs" stressing the value of knowledge. During this period the Muslim world became an intellectual centre for science, philosophy, medicine and education as the Abbasids championed the cause of knowledge and established the "House of Wisdom" () in Baghdad. Rival dynasties such as the Fatimids of Egypt and the Umayyads of al-Andalus were also major intellectual centres with cities such as Cairo and Córdoba rivaling Baghdad.
The Abbasids ruled for 200 years before they lost their central control when Wilayas began to fracture in the 10th century; afterwards, in the 1190s, there was a revival of their power, which was ended by the Mongols, who conquered Baghdad in 1258 and killed the Caliph Al-Musta'sim. Members of the Abbasid royal family escaped the massacre and resorted to Cairo, which had broken from the Abbasid rule two years earlier; the Mamluk generals taking the political side of the kingdom while Abbasid Caliphs were engaged in civil activities and continued patronizing science, arts and literature.
Fatimid Caliphate (909–1171)
The Fatimid caliphate was founded by al-Mahdi Billah, a descendant of Fatimah, the daughter of Muhammad, in the early 10th century. Egypt was the political, cultural, and religious centre of the Fatimid empire. The Fatimid state took shape among the Kutama Berbers, in the West of the North African littoral, in Algeria, in 909 conquering Raqqada, the Aghlabid capital. In 921 the Fatimids established the Tunisian city of Mahdia as their new capital. In 948 they shifted their capital to Al-Mansuriya, near Kairouan in Tunisia, and in 969 they conquered Egypt and established Cairo as the capital of their caliphate.
Intellectual life in Egypt during the Fatimid period achieved great progress and activity, due to many scholars who lived in or came to Egypt, as well as the number of books available. Fatimid Caliphs gave prominent positions to scholars in their courts, encouraged students, and established libraries in their palaces, so that scholars might expand their knowledge and reap benefits from the work of their predecessors. The Fatimids were also known for their exquisite arts. Many traces of Fatimid architecture exist in Cairo today; the most defining examples include Al-Hakim Mosque and the Al-Azhar University.
It was not until the 11th century that the Maghreb saw a large influx of ethnic Arabs. Starting with the 11th century, the Arab bedouin Banu Hilal tribes migrated to the West. Having been sent by the Fatimids to punish the Berber Zirids for abandoning Shias, they travelled westwards. The Banu Hilal quickly defeated the Zirids and deeply weakened the neighboring Hammadids. According to some modern historians. their influx was a major factor in the arabization of the Maghreb. Although Berbers ruled the region until the 16th century (under such powerful dynasties as the Almoravids, the Almohads, Hafsids, etc.), the arrival of these tribes eventually helped Arabize much of it ethnically, in addition to the linguistic and political impact on local non-Arabs.
Ottoman Empire
From 1517 to 1918, much of the Arab world was under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans defeated the Mamluk Sultanate in Cairo, and ended the Abbasid Caliphate. Arabs did not feel the change of administration because the Ottomans modeled their rule after the previous Arab administration systems.
In 1911, Arab intellectuals and politicians from throughout the Levant formed al-Fatat ("the Young Arab Society"), a small Arab nationalist club, in Paris. Its stated aim was "raising the level of the Arab nation to the level of modern nations." In the first few years of its existence, al-Fatat called for greater autonomy within a unified Ottoman state rather than Arab independence from the empire. Al-Fatat hosted the Arab Congress of 1913 in Paris, the purpose of which was to discuss desired reforms with other dissenting individuals from the Arab world. However, as the Ottoman authorities cracked down on the organization's activities and members, al-Fatat went underground and demanded the complete independence and unity of the Arab provinces.
After World War I, when the Ottoman Empire was overthrown by the British Empire, former Ottoman colonies were divided up between the British and French as League of Nations mandates.
Modern period
Arabs in modern times live in the Arab world, which comprises 22 countries in Western Asia, North Africa, and parts of the Horn of Africa. They are all modern states and became significant as distinct political entities after the fall and defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1908–1922).
Identity
Arab identity is defined independently of religious identity, and pre-dates the spread of Islam, with historically attested Arab Christian kingdoms and Arab Jewish tribes. Today, however, most Arabs are Muslim, with a minority adhering to other faiths, largely Christianity, but also Druze and Baháʼí.
Paternal descent has traditionally been considered the main source of affiliation in the Arab world when it comes to membership into an ethnic group or clan.
Today, the main unifying characteristic among Arabs is Arabic, a Central Semitic language from the Afroasiatic language family. Modern Standard Arabic serves as the standardized and literary variety of Arabic used in writing. The Arabs are first mentioned in the mid-ninth century BCE as a tribal people dwelling in the central Arabian Peninsula subjugated by Upper Mesopotamia-based state of Assyria. The Arabs appear to have remained largely under the vassalage of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BCE), and then the succeeding Neo-Babylonian Empire (605–539 BCE), Persian Achaemenid Empire (539–332 BCE), Greek Macedonian/Seleucid Empire and Parthian Empire.
Arab tribes, most notably the Ghassanids and Lakhmids begin to appear in the south Syrian deserts and southern Jordan from the mid 3rd century CE onwards, during the mid to later stages of the Roman Empire and Sasanian Empire. Also, before them the Nabataeans of Jordan and arguably the Emessans, Edessans, and Hatrans all appear to have been an Aramaic speaking ethnic Arabs who came to rule much of the pre-Islamic fertile crescent often as vassals of the two rival empires, the Sasanian (Persian) and the Byzantine (Eastern Roman). Thus, although a more limited diffusion of Arab culture and language was felt in some areas by these migrant minority Arabs in pre-Islamic times through Arabic-speaking Christian kingdoms and Jewish tribes, it was only after the rise of Islam in the mid-7th century that Arab culture, people and language began their wholesale spread from the central Arabian Peninsula (including the south Syrian desert) through conquest and trade.
Subgroups
Arabs in the narrow sense are the indigenous Arabians who trace their roots back to the tribes of Arabia and their immediate descendant groups in the Levant and North Africa. Within the people of the Arabian Peninsula, distinction is made between:
"Perishing Arabs" (), which are ancient tribes about whose history little is known. They include ʿĀd (), Thamûd (), Tasm, Jadis, Imlaq and others. Jadis and Tasm perished because of genocide. 'Aad and Thamud perished because of their decadence, as recorded in the Qur'an. Archaeologists have recently uncovered inscriptions that contain references to Iram dhāṫ al-'Imād (, Iram of the Pillars), which was a major city of the 'Aad. Imlaq is the singular form of 'Amaleeq and is probably synonymous to the biblical Amalek.
"Pure Arabs" () or Qahtanites from Yemen, taken to be descended from Ya'rub ibn Yashjub ibn Qahtan and further from Hud.
"Arabized Arabs" () or Adnanites, taken to be the descendants of Ishmael son of Abraham.
Arabians are most prevalent in the Arabian Peninsula, but are also found in large numbers in Mesopotamia (Arab tribes in Iraq), the Levant and Sinai (Negev Bedouin, Tarabin bedouin), as well as the Maghreb (Eastern Libya, South Tunisia and South Algeria) and the Sudan region.
This traditional division of the Arabs of Arabia may have arisen at the time of the First Fitna. Of the Arabian tribes that interacted with Muhammad, the most prominent was the Quraysh. The Quraysh subclan, the Banu Hashim, was the clan of Muhammad. During the early Muslim conquests and the Islamic Golden Age, the political rulers of Islam were exclusively members of the Quraysh.
The Arab presence in Iran did not begin with the Arab conquest of Persia in 633 CE. For centuries, Iranian rulers had maintained contacts with Arabs outside their borders, dealt with Arab subjects and client states (such as those of Iraq and Yemen), and settled Arab tribesmen in various parts of the Iranian plateau. It follows that the "Arab" conquests and settlements were by no means the exclusive work of Arabs from the Hejaz and the tribesmen of inner Arabia. The Arab infiltration into Iran began before the Muslim conquests and continued as a result of the joint exertions of the civilized Arabs (ahl al-madar) as well as the desert Arabs (ahl al-wabar). The largest group of Iranian Arabs are the Ahwazi Arabs, including Banu Ka'b, Bani Turuf and the Musha'sha'iyyah sect. Smaller groups are the Khamseh nomads in Fars Province and the Arabs in Khorasan.
The Arabs of the Levant are traditionally divided into Qays and Yaman tribes. This tribal division is likewise taken to date to the Umayyad period. The Yemen trace their origin to South Arabia or Yemen; they include Banu Kalb, Kinda, Ghassanids, and Lakhmids. Since the 1834 Peasants' revolt in Palestine, the Arabic-speaking population of Palestine has shed its formerly tribal structure and emerged as the Palestinians.
Native Jordanians are either descended from Bedouins (of which, 6% live a nomadic lifestyle), or from the many deeply rooted non bedouin communities across the country, most notably Al-Salt city west of Amman which was at the time of Emirate the largest urban settlement east of the Jordan River. Along with indigenous communities in Al Husn, Aqaba, Irbid, Al Karak, Madaba, Jerash, Ajloun, Fuheis and Pella. In Jordan, there is no official census data for how many inhabitants have Palestinian roots but they are estimated to constitute half of the population, which in 2008 amounted to about 3 million. Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics put their number at 3.24 million in 2009.
The Bedouins of western Egypt and eastern Libya are traditionally divided into Saʿada and Murabtin, the Saʿada having higher social status. This may derive from a historical feudal system in which the Murabtin were vassals to the Saʿada.
In Sudan, there are numerous Arabic-speaking tribes, including the Shaigya, Ja'alin and Shukria, who are ancestrally related to the Nubians. These groups are collectively known as Sudanese Arabs. In addition, there are other Afroasiatic-speaking populations, such as Copts and Beja.
The medieval trans-Saharan slave trade in the Sudan drove a wedge between the Arabized Sudanese and the non-Arabized Nilotic Sudanese populations. It has contributed to ethnic conflict in the region, such as the Sudanese conflict in South Kordofan and Blue Nile, Northern Mali conflict, or the Boko Haram insurgency.
The Arabs of the Maghreb are descendants of Arabian tribes of Banu Hilal, the Banu Sulaym and the Maqil native of Middle East and of other tribes native to Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Iraq. Arabs and Arabic-speakers inhabit plains and cities. The Banu Hilal spent almost a century in Egypt before moving to Libya, Tunisia and Algeria, and another century later some moved to Morocco, it is logical to think that they are mixed with inhabitants of Egypt and with Libya.
Demographics
The total number of Arabic speakers living in the Arab nations is estimated at 366 million by the CIA Factbook (as of 2014). The estimated number of Arabs in countries outside the Arab League is estimated at 17.5 million, yielding a total of close to 384 million.
Arab world
According to the Charter of the Arab League (also known as the Pact of the League of Arab States), the League of Arab States is composed of independent Arab states that are signatories to the Charter.
Although all Arab states have Arabic as an official language, there are many non-Arabic-speaking populations native to the Arab world. Among these are Berbers, Toubou, Nubians, Jews, Assyrians, Armenians, Kurds. Additionally, many Arab countries in the Persian Gulf have sizable non-Arab immigrant populations (10–70%). Iraq, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Oman have a Persian speaking minority. The same countries also have Hindi-Urdu speakers and Filipinos as sizable minority. Balochi speakers are a good size minority in Oman. Additionally, countries like Bahrain, UAE, Oman and Kuwait have significant non-Arab and non-Muslim minorities (10–20%) like Hindus and Christians from South Asia and the Philippines.
The table below shows the distribution of populations in the Arab world, as well as the official language(s) within the various Arab states.
Arab diaspora
Arab diaspora refers to descendants of the Arab immigrants who, voluntarily or as refugees, emigrated from their native lands in non-Arab countries, primarily in East Africa, South America, Europe, North America, Australia and parts of South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and West Africa. According to the International Organization for Migration, there are 13 million first-generation Arab migrants in the world, of which 5.8 million reside in Arab countries. Arab expatriates contribute to the circulation of financial and human capital in the region and thus significantly promote regional development. In 2009, Arab countries received a total of 35.1 billion USD in remittance in-flows and remittances sent to Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon from other Arab countries are 40 to 190 per cent higher than trade revenues between these and other Arab countries. The 250,000 strong Lebanese community in West Africa is the largest non-African group in the region. Arab traders have long operated in Southeast Asia and along the East Africa's Swahili coast. Zanzibar was once ruled by Omani Arabs. Most of the prominent Indonesians, Malaysians, and Singaporeans of Arab descent are Hadhrami people with origins in southern Arabia in the Hadramawt coastal region.
There are millions of Arabs living in Europe, mostly concentrated in France (about 6,000,000 in 2005). Most Arabs in France are from the Maghreb but some also come from the Mashreq areas of the Arab world. Arabs in France form the second largest ethnic group after ethnically French people. In Italy, Arabs first arrived on the southern island of Sicily in the 9th century. The largest modern societies on the island from the Arab world are Tunisians and Moroccans, who make up 10.9% and 8% respectively of the foreign population of Sicily, which in itself constitutes 3.9% of the island's total population. The modern Arab population of Spain numbers 1,800,000, and there have been Arabs in Spain since the early 8th century when the Umayyad conquest of Hispania created the state of Al-Andalus. In Germany the Arab population numbers over 1,000,000, in the United Kingdom between 366,769 and 500,000, and in Greece between 250,000 and 750,000). In addition, Greece is home to people from Arab countries who have the status of refugees (e.g. refugees of the Syrian civil war). In the Netherlands 180,000, and in Denmark 121,000. Other European countries are also home to Arab populations, including Norway, Austria, Bulgaria, Switzerland, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia. As of late 2015, Turkey had a total population of 78.7 million, with Syrian refugees accounting for 3.1% of that figure based on conservative estimates. Demographics indicated that the country previously had 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 Arab residents, so Turkey's Arab population is now 4.5 to 5.1% of the total population, or approximately 4–5 million people.
Arab immigration to the United States began in sizable numbers during the 1880s. Today, it is estimated that nearly 3.7 million Americans trace their roots to an Arab country. Arab Americans are found in every state, but more than two thirds of them live in just ten states: California, Michigan, New York, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Metropolitan Los Angeles, Detroit, and New York City are home to one-third of the population. Contrary to popular assumptions or stereotypes, the majority of Arab Americans are native-born, and nearly 82% of Arabs in the U.S. are citizens. Arabs immigrants began to arrive in Canada in small numbers in 1882. Their immigration was relatively limited until 1945, after which time it increased progressively, particularly in the 1960s and thereafter. According to the website "Who are Arab Canadians," Montreal, the Canadian city with the largest Arab population, has approximately 267,000 Arab inhabitants.
Latin America has the largest Arab population outside of the Arab World. Latin America is home to anywhere from 17–25 to 30 million people of Arab descent, which is more than any other diaspora region in the world. The Brazilian and Lebanese governments claim there are 7 million Brazilians of Lebanese descent. Also, the Brazilian government claims there are 4 million Brazilians of Syrian descent. According to research conducted by IBGE in 2008, covering only the states of Amazonas, Paraíba, São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, Mato Grosso and Distrito Federal, 0.9% of white Brazilian respondents said they had family origins in the Middle East. Other large Arab communities includes Argentina (about 4,500,000) The interethnic marriage in the Arab community, regardless of religious affiliation, is very high; most community members have only one parent who has Arab ethnicity. Venezuela (over 1,600,000), Colombia (over 1,500,000), Mexico (over 1,100,000), Chile (over 800,000), and Central America, particularly El Salvador, and Honduras (between 150,000 and 200,000).<ref name= is the fourth largest in the world after those in Israel, Lebanon, and Jordan. Arab Haitians (a large number of whom live in the capital) are more often than not, concentrated in financial areas where the majority of them establish businesses.
In 1728, a Russian officer described a group of Arab nomads who populated the Caspian shores of Mughan (in present-day Azerbaijan) and spoke a mixed Turkic-Arabic language. It is believed that these groups migrated to the South Caucasus in the 16th century. The 1888 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica also mentioned a certain number of Arabs populating the Baku Governorate of the Russian Empire. They retained an Arabic dialect at least into the mid-19th century, there are nearly 30 settlements still holding the name Arab (for example, Arabgadim, Arabojaghy, Arab-Yengija, etc.). From the time of the Arab conquest of the South Caucasus, continuous small-scale Arab migration from various parts of the Arab world occurred in Dagestan. The majority of these lived in the village of Darvag, to the north-west of Derbent. The latest of these accounts dates to the 1930s. Most Arab communities in southern Dagestan underwent linguistic Turkicisation, thus nowadays Darvag is a majority-Azeri village. According to the History of Ibn Khaldun, the Arabs that were once in Central Asia have been either killed or have fled the Tatar invasion of the region, leaving only the locals. However, today many people in Central Asia identify as Arabs. Most Arabs of Central Asia are fully integrated into local populations, and sometimes call themselves the same as locals (for example, Tajiks, Uzbeks) but they use special titles to show their Arab origin such as Sayyid, Khoja or Siddiqui.
There are only two communities in India which self-identify as Arabs, the Chaush of the Deccan region and the Chavuse of Gujarat. These groups are largely descended from Hadhrami migrants who settled in these two regions in the 18th century. However, neither community still speaks Arabic, although the Chaush have seen re-immigration to Eastern Arabia and thus a re-adoption of Arabic. In South Asia, where Arab ancestry is considered prestigious, many communities have origin myths that claim Arab ancestry. Several communities following the Shafi'i madhab (in contrast to other South Asian Muslims who follow the Hanafi madhab) claim descent from Arab traders like the Konkani Muslims of the Konkan region, the Mappilla of Kerala, and the Labbai and Marakkar of Tamil Nadu and a few Christian groups in India that claim and have Arab roots are situated in the state of Kerala. South Asian Iraqi biradri may have records of their ancestors who migrated from Iraq in historical documents. The Sri Lankan Moors are the third largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka, comprising 9.23% of the country's total population. Some sources trace the ancestry of the Sri Lankan Moors to Arab traders who settled in Sri Lanka at some time between the 8th and 15th centuries.
There are about 5,000,000 Native Indonesians with Arab ancestry. Arab Indonesians are mainly of Hadrami descent.
Afro-Arabs are individuals and groups from Africa who are of partial Arab descent. Most Afro-Arabs inhabit the Swahili Coast in the African Great Lakes region, although some can also be found in parts of the Arab world. Large numbers of Arabs migrated to West Africa, particularly Côte d'Ivoire (home to over 100,000 Lebanese), Senegal (roughly 30,000 Lebanese), Sierra Leone (roughly 10,000 Lebanese today; about 30,000 prior to the outbreak of civil war in 1991), Liberia, and Nigeria. Since the end of the civil war in 2002, Lebanese traders have become re-established in Sierra Leone. The Arabs of Chad occupy northern Cameroon and Nigeria (where they are sometimes known as Shuwa), and extend as a belt across Chad and into Sudan, where they are called the Baggara grouping of Arab ethnic groups inhabiting the portion of Africa's Sahel. There are 171,000 in Cameroon, 150,000 in Niger), and 107,000 in the Central African Republic.
Religion
Arabs are mostly Muslims with a Sunni majority and a Shia minority, one exception being the Ibadis, who predominate in Oman. Arab Christians generally follow Eastern Churches such as the Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches, though a minority of Protestant Church followers also exists. There are also Arab communities consisting of Druze and Baháʼís.
Before the coming of Islam, most Arabs followed a pagan religion with a number of deities, including Hubal, Wadd, Allāt, Manat, and Uzza. A few individuals, the hanifs, had apparently rejected polytheism in favor of monotheism unaffiliated with any particular religion. Some tribes had converted to Christianity or Judaism. The most prominent Arab Christian kingdoms were the Ghassanid and Lakhmid kingdoms. When the Himyarite king converted to Judaism in the late 4th century, the elites of the other prominent Arab kingdom, the Kindites, being Himyirite vassals, apparently also converted (at least partly). With the expansion of Islam, polytheistic Arabs were rapidly Islamized, and polytheistic traditions gradually disappeared.
Today, Sunni Islam dominates in most areas, vastly so in North Africa and the Horn of Africa. Shia Islam is dominant among the Arab population in Bahrain and southern Iraq while northern Iraq is mostly Sunni. Substantial Shia populations exist in Lebanon, Yemen, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, northern Syria and Al-Batinah Region in Oman. There are small numbers of Ibadi and non-denominational Muslims too. The Druze community is concentrated in Lebanon, Syria, Israel and Jordan. Many Druze claim independence from other major religions in the area and consider their religion more of a philosophy. Their books of worship are called Kitab Al Hikma (Epistles of Wisdom). They believe in reincarnation and pray to five messengers from God. In Israel, the Druze have a status aparte from the general Arab population, treated as a separate ethno-religious community.
Christianity had a prominent presence In pre-Islamic Arabia among several Arab communities, including the Bahrani people of Eastern Arabia, the Christian community of Najran, in parts of Yemen, and among certain northern Arabian tribes such as the Ghassanids, Lakhmids, Taghlib, Banu Amela, Banu Judham, Tanukhids and Tayy. In the early Christian centuries, Arabia was sometimes known as Arabia heretica, due to its being "well known as a breeding-ground for heterodox interpretations of Christianity." Christians make up 5.5% of the population of Western Asia and North Africa. A sizeable share of those are Arab Christians proper, and affiliated Arabic-speaking populations of Copts and Maronites. In Lebanon, Christians number about 40.5% of the population. In Syria, Christians make up 10% of the population. In West Bank and in Gaza Strip, Christians make up 8% and 0.7% of the populations, respectively. In Egypt, Coptic Christians number about 10% of the population. In Iraq, Christians constitute 0.1% of the population. In Israel, Arab Christians constitute 2.1% (roughly 9% of the Arab population). Arab Christians make up 8% of the population of Jordan. Most North and South American Arabs are Christian, so are about half of the Arabs in Australia who come particularly from Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. One well known member of this religious and ethnic community is Saint Abo, martyr and the patron saint of Tbilisi, Georgia. Arab Christians also live in holy Christian cities such as Nazareth, Bethlehem and the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem and many other villages with holy Christian sites.
Culture
Arabic culture is the culture of Arab people, from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea. Language, literature, gastronomy, art, architecture, music, spirituality, philosophy, mysticism (etc.) are all part of the cultural heritage of the Arabs.
Arabs share basic beliefs and values that cross national and social class boundaries. Social attitudes have remained constant because Arab society is more conservative and demands conformity from its members.
Language
Another important and unifying characteristic of Arabs is a common language. Arabic is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic Family. Evidence of its first use appears in accounts of wars in 853 BCE. It also became widely used in trade and commerce. Arabic also is a liturgical language of 1.7 billion Muslims.
Arabic is one of six official languages of the United Nations. It is revered as the language that God chose to reveal the Quran.
Arabic has developed into at least two distinct forms. Classical Arabic is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad and Abbasid times (7th to 9th centuries). It is based on the medieval dialects of Arab tribes. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the direct descendant used today throughout the Arab world in writing and in formal speaking, for example, prepared speeches, some radio broadcasts, and non-entertainment content, while the lexis and stylistics of Modern Standard Arabic are different from Classical Arabic. Colloquial Arabic, an informal spoken language, varies by dialect from region to region; various forms of the language are in use today and provide an important force for Arab cohesion.
Mythology
Arabic mythology comprises the ancient beliefs of the Arabs. Prior to Islam the Kaaba of Mecca was covered in symbols representing the myriad demons, djinn, demigods, or simply tribal gods and other assorted deities which represented the polytheistic culture of pre-Islamic. It has been inferred from this plurality an exceptionally broad context in which mythology could flourish. The most popular beasts and demons of Arabian mythology are Bahamut, Dandan, Falak, Ghoul, Hinn, Jinn, Karkadann, Marid, Nasnas, Qareen, Roc, Shadhavar, Werehyena and other assorted creatures which represented the profoundly polytheistic environment of pre-Islamic.
The most obvious symbol of Arabian mythology is the Jinn or genie. Jinns are supernatural beings of varying degrees of power. They possess free will (that is, they can choose to be good or evil) and come in two flavors. There are the Marids, usually described as the most powerful type of Jinn. These are the type of genie with the ability to grant wishes to humans. However, granting these wishes is not free. The Quran says that the jinn were created from "mārijin min nar" (smokeless fire or a mixture of fire; scholars explained, this is the part of the flame, which mixed with the blackness of fire). They are not purely spiritual, but are also physical in nature, being able to interact in a tactile manner with people and objects and likewise be acted upon. The jinn, humans, and angels make up the known sapient creations of God.
A ghoul is a monster or evil spirit in Arabic mythology, associated with graveyards and consuming human flesh, demonic being believed to inhabit burial grounds and other deserted places. In ancient Arabic folklore, ghūls belonged to a diabolic class of jinn (spirits) and were said to be the offspring of Iblīs, the prince of darkness in Islam. They were capable of constantly changing form, but their presence was always recognizable by their unalterable sign—ass's hooves. which describes the ghūl of Arabic folklore. The ghul is a devilish type of jinn believed to be sired by Iblis.
Literature
Al-Jahiz (born 776, in Basra – December 868/January 869) was an Arab prose writer and author of works of literature, Mu'tazili theology, and politico-religious polemics. A leading scholar in the Abassid Caliphate, his canon includes two hundred books on various subjects, including Arabic grammar, zoology, poetry, lexicography, and rhetoric. Of his writings, only thirty books survive. Al-Jāḥiẓ was also one of the first Arabian writers to suggest a complete overhaul of the language's grammatical system, though this would not be undertaken until his fellow linguist Ibn Maḍāʾ took up the matter two hundred years later.
There is a small remnant of pre-Islamic poetry, but Arabic literature predominantly emerges in the Middle Ages, during the Golden Age of Islam. Literary Arabic is derived from Classical Arabic, based on the language of the Quran as it was analyzed by Arabic grammarians beginning in the 8th century.
A large portion of Arabic literature before the 20th century is in the form of poetry, and even prose from this period is either filled with snippets of poetry or is in the form of saj or rhymed prose.
The ghazal or love poem had a long history being at times tender and chaste and at other times rather explicit. In the Sufi tradition the love poem would take on a wider, mystical and religious importance. Arabic epic literature was much less common than poetry, and presumably originates in oral tradition, written down from the 14th century or so. Maqama or rhymed prose is intermediate between poetry and prose, and also between fiction and non-fiction. Maqama was an incredibly popular form of Arabic literature, being one of the few forms which continued to be written during the decline of Arabic in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Arabic literature and culture declined significantly after the 13th century, to the benefit of Turkish and Persian. A modern revival took place beginning in the 19th century, alongside resistance against Ottoman rule. The literary revival is known as al-Nahda in Arabic, and was centered in Egypt and Lebanon. Two distinct trends can be found in the nahda period of revival. The first was a neo-classical movement which sought to rediscover the literary traditions of the past, and was influenced by traditional literary genres—such as the maqama—and works like One Thousand and One Nights. In contrast, a modernist movement began by translating Western modernist works—primarily novels—into Arabic. A tradition of modern Arabic poetry was established by writers such as Francis Marrash, Ahmad Shawqi and Hafiz Ibrahim. Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab is considered to be the originator of free verse in Arabic poetry.
Gastronomy
Arabic cuisine is the cuisine of the Arab people. The cuisines are often centuries old and reflect the culture of great trading in spices, herbs, and foods. The three main regions, also known as the Maghreb, the Mashriq, and the Khaleej have many similarities, but also many unique traditions. These kitchens have been influenced by the climate, cultivating possibilities, as well as trading possibilities. The kitchens of the Maghreb and Levant are relatively young kitchens which were developed over the past centuries. The kitchen from the Khaleej region is a very old kitchen. The kitchens can be divided into the urban and rural kitchens.
Arab cuisine mostly follows one of three culinary traditions – from the Maghreb, the Levant or Eastern Arabia. In the Maghreb countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya) traditional main meals are tajines or dishes using couscous. In the Levant (Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) main meals usually start with mezze – small dishes of dips and other items which are eaten with bread. This is typically followed by skewers of grilled lamb or chicken. Gulf cuisine, tends to be more highly spiced with more use of rice. Sometimes a lamb is roasted and served whole.
One will find the following items in most dishes; cinnamon, fish (in coastal areas), garlic, lamb (or veal), mild to hot sauces, mint, onion, rice, saffron, sesame, yogurt, spices due to heavy trading between the two regions. Tea, thyme (or oregano), turmeric, a variety of fruits (primarily citrus) and vegetables such as cucumbers, eggplants, lettuce, tomato, green pepper, green beans, zucchini and parsley.
Art
Arabic art takes on many forms, though it is jewelry, textiles and architecture that are the most well-known. It is generally split up by different eras, among them being early Arabic, early medieval, late medieval, late Arabic, and finally, current Arabic. One thing to remember is that many times a particular style from one era may continue into the next with few changes, while some have a drastic transformation. This may seem like a strange grouping of art mediums, but they are all closely related.
Arabic writing is done from right to left, and was generally written in dark inks, with certain things embellished with special colored inks (red, green, gold). In early Arabic and early Medieval, writing was typically done on parchment made of animal skin. The ink showed up very well on it, and occasionally the parchment was dyed a separate color and brighter ink was used (this was only for special projects). The name given to the form of writing in early times was called Kufic script.
Arabic miniatures are small paintings on paper, whether book illustrations or separate works of art. Arabic miniature art dates to the late 7th century. Arabs depended on such art not only to satisfy their artistic taste, but also for scientific explanations.
Arabesque is a form of artistic decoration consisting of "surface decorations based on rhythmic linear patterns of scrolling and interlacing foliage, tendrils" or plain lines, often combined with other elements. Another definition is "Foliate ornament, typically using leaves, derived from stylised half-palmettes, which were combined with spiralling stems". It usually consists of a single design which can be 'tiled' or seamlessly repeated as many times as desired.
Architecture
Arabic Architecture has a deep diverse history, it dates to the dawn of the history in pre-Islamic Arabia and includes various styles from the Nabataean architecture to the old yet still used architecture in various regions of the Arab world. Each of it phases largely
an extension of the earlier phase, it left also heavy impact on the architecture of other nations. Arab Architecture also encompasses a wide range of both secular and religious styles from the foundation of Islam to the present day. Some parts of its religious architectures raised by Muslim Arabs were influenced by cultures of Roman, Byzantine, Persian and cultures of other lands which the Arab conquered in the 7th and 8th centuries.
In Sicily, Arab-Norman architecture combined Occidental features, such as the Classical pillars and friezes, with typical Arabic decorations and calligraphy. The principal Islamic architectural types are: the Mosque, the Tomb, the Palace and the Fort. From these four types, the vocabulary of Islamic architecture is derived and used for other buildings such as public baths, fountains and domestic architecture.
Music
Arabic music, while independent and flourishing in the 2010s, has a long history of interaction with many other regional musical styles and genres. It is an amalgam of the music of the Arab people in the Arabian Peninsula and the music of all the peoples that make up the Arab world today. Pre-Islamic Arab music was similar to that of Ancient Middle Eastern music. Most historians agree that there existed distinct forms of music in the Arabian peninsula in the pre-Islamic period between the 5th and 7th century CE. Arab poets of that "Jahili poets", meaning "the poets of the period of ignorance"—used to recite poems with a high notes. It was believed that Jinns revealed poems to poets and music to musicians. By the 11th century, Islamic Iberia had become a center for the manufacture of instruments. These goods spread gradually throughout France, influencing French troubadours, and eventually reaching the rest of Europe. The English words lute, rebec, and naker are derived from Arabic oud, rabab, and naqareh.
A number of musical instruments used in classical music are believed to have been derived from Arabic musical instruments: the lute was derived from the Oud, the rebec (ancestor of violin) from the rebab, the guitar from qitara, which in turn was derived from the Persian Tar, naker from naqareh, adufe from al-duff, alboka from al-buq, anafil from al-nafir, exabeba from al-shabbaba (flute), atabal (bass drum) from al-tabl, atambal from al-tinbal, the balaban, the castanet from kasatan, sonajas de azófar from sunuj al-sufr, the conical bore wind instruments, the xelami from the sulami or fistula (flute or musical pipe),
the shawm and dulzaina from the reed instruments zamr and al-zurna, the gaita from the ghaita, rackett from iraqya or iraqiyya, geige (violin) from ghichak,
and the theorbo from the tarab.
During the 1950s and the 1960s, Arabic music began to take on a more Western tone – artists Umm Kulthum, Abdel Halim Hafez, and Shadia along with composers Mohamed Abd al-Wahab and Baligh Hamdi pioneered the use of western instruments in Egyptian music. By the 1970s several other singers had followed suit and a strand of Arabic pop was born. Arabic pop usually consists of Western styled songs with Arabic instruments and lyrics. Melodies are often a mix between Eastern and Western. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Lydia Canaan, musical pioneer widely regarded as the first rock star of the Middle East
Spirituality
Arab polytheism was the dominant religion in pre-Islamic Arabia. Gods and goddesses, including Hubal and the goddesses al-Lāt, Al-'Uzzá and Manāt, were worshipped at local shrines, such as the Kaaba in Mecca, whilst Arabs in the south, in what is today's Yemen, worshipped various gods, some of which represented the Sun or Moon. Different theories have been proposed regarding the role of Allah in Meccan religion. Many of the physical descriptions of the pre-Islamic gods are traced to idols, especially near the Kaaba, which is said to have contained up to 360 of them. Until about the fourth century, almost all Arabs practised polytheistic religions. Although significant Jewish and Christian minorities developed, polytheism remained the dominant belief system in pre-Islamic Arabia.
The religious beliefs and practices of the nomadic bedouin were distinct from those of the settled tribes of towns such as Mecca. Nomadic religious belief systems and practices are believed to have included fetishism, totemism and veneration of the dead but were connected principally with immediate concerns and problems and did not consider larger philosophical questions such as the afterlife. Settled urban Arabs, on the other hand, are thought to have believed in a more complex pantheon of deities. While the Meccans and the other settled inhabitants of the Hejaz worshipped their gods at permanent shrines in towns and oases, the bedouin practised their religion on the move.
Philosophy
The philosophical thought in the Arab world is heavily influenced by Islamic Philosophy. Schools of Islamic thought include Avicennism and Averroism. The first great Arab thinker in the Islamic tradition is widely regarded to be al-Kindi (801–873 A.D.), a Neo-Platonic philosopher, mathematician and scientist who lived in Kufa and Baghdad (modern day Iraq). After being appointed by the Abbasid Caliphs to translate Greek scientific and philosophical texts into Arabic, he wrote a number of original treatises of his own on a range of subjects, from metaphysics and ethics to mathematics and pharmacology.
Much of his philosophical output focuses on theological subjects such as the nature of God, the soul and prophetic knowledge. Doctrines of the Arabic philosophers of the 9th–12th century who influenced medieval Scholasticism in Europe. The Arabic tradition combines Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with other ideas introduced through Islam. Influential thinkers include the Persians al-Farabi and Avicenna. The Arabic philosophic literature was translated into Hebrew and Latin, this contributed to the development of modern European philosophy. The Arabic tradition was developed by Moses Maimonides and Ibn Khaldun.
Science
Islamic science underwent considerable development during the 8th to 13th centuries CE, a source of knowledge that later spread throughout Europe and greatly influenced both medical practice and education. The language of recorded science was Arabic. Scientific treatises were composed by thinkers originating from across the Muslim world. These accomplishments occurred after Muhammad united the Arab tribes and the spread of Islam beyond the Arabian peninsula.
Within a century after Muhammed's death (632 CE), an empire ruled by Arabs was established. It encompassed a large part of the planet, stretching from southern Europe to North Africa to Central Asia and on to India. In 711 CE, Arab Muslims invaded southern Spain; al-Andalus was a center of Arabic scientific accomplishment. Soon after, Sicily too joined the greater islamic world. Another center emerged in Baghdad from the Abbasids, who ruled part of the Islamic world during a historic period later characterized as the "Golden Age" (∼750 to 1258 CE).
This era can be identified as the years between 692 and 945, and ended when the caliphate was marginalized by local Muslim rulers in Baghdad – its traditional seat of power. From 945 onward until the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, the Caliph continued on as a figurehead, with power devolving more to local amirs. The pious scholars of Islam, men and women collectively known as the ulama, were the most influential element of society in the fields of Sharia law, speculative thought and theology. Arabic scientific achievement is not as yet fully understood, but is very large. These achievements encompass a wide range of subject areas, especially mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. Other subjects of scientific inquiry included physics, alchemy and chemistry, cosmology, ophthalmology, geography and cartography, sociology, and psychology.
Al-Battani (c. 858 – 929; born Harran, Bilad al-Sham) was an Arab astronomer, astrologer and mathematician of the Islamic Golden Age. His work is considered instrumental in the development of science and astronomy. One of Al-Battani's best-known achievements in astronomy was the determination of the solar year as being 365 days, 5 hours, 46 minutes and 24 seconds which is only 2 minutes and 22 seconds off.
Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) used experimentation to obtain the results in his Book of Optics (1021), an important development in the history of the scientific method. He combined observations, experiments and rational arguments to support his intromission theory of vision, in which rays of light are emitted from objects rather than from the eyes. He used similar arguments to show that the ancient emission theory of vision supported by Ptolemy and Euclid (in which the eyes emit the rays of light used for seeing), and the ancient intromission theory supported by Aristotle (where objects emit physical particles to the eyes), were both wrong.
Al-Zahrawi, regarded by many as the greatest surgeon of the middle ages. His surgical treatise "De chirurgia" is the first illustrated surgical guide ever written. It remained the primary source for surgical procedures and instruments in Europe for the next 500 years. The book helped lay the foundation to establish surgery as a scientific discipline independent from medicine, earning al-Zahrawi his name as one of the founders of this field.
Other notable Arabic contributions include among other things: the pioneering of organic chemistry by Jābir ibn Hayyān, establishing the science of cryptology and cryptanalysis by al-Kindi, the development of analytic geometry by Ibn al-Haytham, the discovery of the pulmonary circulation by Ibn al-Nafis, the discovery of the itch mite parasite by Ibn Zuhr, the first use of irrational numbers as an algebraic objects by Abū Kāmil, the first use of the positional decimal fractions by al-Uqlidisi, the development of the Arabic numerals and an early algebraic symbolism in the Maghreb, the Thabit number and Thābit theorem by Thābit ibn Qurra, the discovery of several new trigonometric identities by Ibn Yunus and al-Battani, the mathematical proof for Ceva's theorem by Ibn Hűd, the first accurate lunar model by Ibn al-Shatir, the invention of the torquetum by Jabir ibn Aflah, the invention of the universal astrolabe and the equatorium by al-Zarqali, the first description of the crankshaft by al-Jazari, the anticipation of the inertia concept by Averroes, the discovery of the physical reaction by Avempace, the identification of more than 200 new plants by Ibn al-Baitar the Arab Agricultural Revolution, and the Tabula Rogeriana, which was the most accurate world map in pre-modern times by al-Idrisi.
The birth of the University institution can be traced to this development, as several universities and educational institutions of the Arab world such as the University of Al Quaraouiyine, Al Azhar University, and Al Zaytuna University are considered to be the oldest in the world. Founded by Fatima al Fihri in 859 as a mosque, the University of Al Quaraouiyine in Fez is the oldest existing, continually operating and the first degree awarding educational institution in the world according to UNESCO and Guinness World Records and is sometimes referred to as the oldest university.
There are many scientific Arabic loanwords in Western European languages, including English, mostly via Old French. This includes traditional star names such as Aldebaran, scientific terms like alchemy (whence also chemistry), algebra, algorithm, alcohol, alkali, cipher, zenith, etc.
Under Ottoman rule, cultural life and science in the Arab world declined. In the 20th and 21st centuries, Arabs who have won important science prizes include Ahmed Zewail and Elias Corey (Nobel Prize), Michael DeBakey and Alim Benabid (Lasker Award), Omar M. Yaghi (Wolf Prize), Huda Zoghbi (Shaw Prize), Zaha Hadid (Pritzker Prize), and Michael Atiyah (both Fields Medal and Abel Prize). Rachid Yazami was one of the co-inventors of the lithium-ion battery, and Tony Fadell was important in the development of the iPod and the iPhone.
Wedding and marriage
Arabic weddings have changed greatly in the past 100 years. Original traditional Arabic weddings are supposed to be very similar to modern-day Bedouin weddings and rural weddings, and they are in some cases unique from one region to another, even within the same country. The practice of marrying of relatives is a common feature of Arab culture.
In the Arab world today between 40% and 50% of all marriages are consanguineous or between close family members, though these figures may vary among Arab nations. In Egypt, around 40% of the population marry a cousin. A 1992 survey in Jordan found that 32% were married to a first cousin; a further 17.3% were married to more distant relatives. 67% of marriages in Saudi Arabia are between close relatives as are 54% of all marriages in Kuwait, whereas 18% of all Lebanese were between blood relatives. Due to the actions of Muhammad and the Rightly Guided Caliphs, marriage between cousins is explicitly allowed in Islam and the Qur'an itself does not discourage or forbid the practice. Nevertheless, opinions vary on whether the phenomenon should be seen as exclusively based on Islamic practices as a 1992 study among Arabs in Jordan did not show significant differences between Christian Arabs or Muslim Arabs when comparing the occurrence of consanguinity.
Genetics
See also
Arab Union
Arab world
List of Arabs
Lists of Arab companies
North African Arabs
References
Notes
Bibliography
Touma, Habib Hassan. The Music of the Arabs. Portland, Oregon: Amadeus P, 1996. .
Lipinski, Edward. Semitic Languages: Outlines of a Comparative Grammar, 2nd ed., Orientalia Lovanensia Analecta: Leuven 2001
Kees Versteegh, The Arabic Language, Edinburgh University Press (1997)
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Robert Appleton Company, 1907, Online Edition, K. Night 2003: article Arabia
History of Arabic language(1894), Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
The Arabic language, National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education web page (2006)
Hooker, Richard. "Pre-Islamic Arabic Culture." WSU Web Site. 6 June 1999. Washington State University.
Owen, Roger. "State Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East 3rd Ed" Page 57
Further reading
Price-Jones, David. The Closed Circle: an Interpretation of the Arabs. Pbk. ed., with a new preface by the author. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 2002. xiv, 464 p.
Ankerl, Guy. Coexisting Contemporary Civilizations: Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, and Western. INU PRESS, Geneva, 2000. .
External links
www.LasPortal.org
ArabCultureFund AFAC
Afroasiatic peoples
Ancient peoples of the Near East
Arab
Ethnic groups in Africa
Ethnic groups in North Africa
Ethnic groups in the Arab world
Ethnic groups in the Middle East
Muslim communities in Africa
Muslim communities in Asia |
2186 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillo | Armadillo | Armadillos (meaning "little armored ones" in Spanish) are New World placental mammals in the order Cingulata. The Chlamyphoridae and Dasypodidae are the only surviving families in the order, which is part of the superorder Xenarthra, along with the anteaters and sloths. Nine extinct genera and 21 extant species of armadillo have been described, some of which are distinguished by the number of bands on their armor. All species are native to the Americas, where they inhabit a variety of different environments.
Armadillos are characterized by a leathery armor shell and long, sharp claws for digging. They have short legs, but can move quite quickly. The average length of an armadillo is about , including tail. The giant armadillo grows up to and weighs up to , while the pink fairy armadillo has a length of only . When threatened by a predator, Tolypeutes species frequently roll up into a ball; they are the only species of armadillo capable of this.
Etymology
The word armadillo means "little armored one" in Spanish. The Aztecs called them āyōtōchtli , Nahuatl for "turtle-rabbit": āyōtl (turtle) and tōchtli (rabbit). The Portuguese word for "armadillo" is tatu which is derived from the Tupi language. Similar names are also found in other, especially European, languages.
Classification
Family Dasypodidae
Subfamily Dasypodinae
Genus Dasypus
Nine-banded armadillo or long-nosed armadillo, Dasypus novemcinctus
Seven-banded armadillo, Dasypus septemcinctus
Southern long-nosed armadillo, Dasypus hybridus
Llanos long-nosed armadillo, Dasypus sabanicola
Greater long-nosed armadillo, Dasypus kappleri
Hairy long-nosed armadillo, Dasypus pilosus
Yepes's mulita, Dasypus yepesi
†Beautiful armadillo, Dasypus bellus
Genus †Stegotherium
Family Chlamyphoridae
Subfamily Chlamyphorinae
Genus Calyptophractus
Greater fairy armadillo, Calyptophractus retusus
Genus Chlamyphorus
Pink fairy armadillo, Chlamyphorus truncatus
Subfamily Euphractinae
Genus Chaetophractus
Screaming hairy armadillo, Chaetophractus vellerosus
Big hairy armadillo, Chaetophractus villosus
Andean hairy armadillo, Chaetophractus nationi
Genus †Macroeuphractus
Genus †Paleuphractus
Genus †Proeuphractus
Genus †Doellotatus
Genus †Peltephilus
†Horned armadillo, Peltephilus ferox
Genus Euphractus
Six-banded armadillo, Euphractus sexcinctus
Genus Zaedyus
Pichi, Zaedyus pichiy
Subfamily Tolypeutinae
Genus †Kuntinaru
Genus Cabassous
Northern naked-tailed armadillo, Cabassous centralis
Chacoan naked-tailed armadillo, Cabassous chacoensis
Southern naked-tailed armadillo, Cabassous unicinctus
Greater naked-tailed armadillo, Cabassous tatouay
Genus Priodontes
Giant armadillo, Priodontes maximus
Genus Tolypeutes
Southern three-banded armadillo, Tolypeutes matacus
Brazilian three-banded armadillo, Tolypeutes tricinctus
† indicates extinct taxon
Phylogeny
Below is a recent simplified phylogeny of the xenarthran families, which includes armadillos, based on Slater et al. (2016) and Delsuc et al. (2016). The dagger symbol, "†", denotes extinct groups.
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Evolution
Recent genetic research suggests that an extinct group of giant armored mammals, the glyptodonts, should be included within the lineage of armadillos, having diverged some 35 million years ago, more recently than previously assumed.
Distribution
Like all of the Xenarthra lineages, armadillos originated in South America. Due to the continent's former isolation, they were confined there for most of the Cenozoic. The recent formation of the Isthmus of Panama allowed a few members of the family to migrate northward into southern North America by the early Pleistocene, as part of the Great American Interchange. (Some of their much larger cingulate relatives, the pampatheres and chlamyphorid glyptodonts, made the same journey.)
Today, all extant armadillo species are still present in South America. They are particularly diverse in Paraguay (where 11 species exist) and surrounding areas. Many species are endangered. Some, including four species of Dasypus, are widely distributed over the Americas, whereas others, such as Yepes's mulita, are restricted to small ranges. Two species, the northern naked-tailed armadillo and nine-banded armadillo, are found in Central America; the latter has also reached the United States, primarily in the south-central states (notably Texas), but with a range that extends as far east as North Carolina and Florida, and as far north as southern Nebraska and southern Indiana. Their range has consistently expanded in North America over the last century due to a lack of natural predators.
Characteristics
Size
The smallest species of armadillo, the pink fairy armadillo, weighs around and is in total length. The largest species, the giant armadillo, can weigh up to , and can be long.
Diet and predation
The diets of different armadillo species vary, but consist mainly of insects, grubs, and other invertebrates. Some species, however, feed almost entirely on ants and termites.
They are prolific diggers. Many species use their sharp claws to dig for food, such as grubs, and to dig dens. The nine-banded armadillo prefers to build burrows in moist soil near the creeks, streams, and arroyos around which it lives and feeds.
Armadillos have very poor eyesight, and use their keen sense of smell to hunt for food. They use their claws for digging and finding food, as well as for making their homes in burrows. They dig their burrows with their claws, making only a single corridor the width of the animal's body. They have five clawed toes on their hind feet, and three to five toes with heavy digging claws on their fore feet. Armadillos have numerous cheek teeth which are not divided into premolars and molars, but usually have no incisors or canines. The dentition of the nine-banded armadillo is P 7/7, M 1/1 = 32.
Body temperature
In common with other xenarthrans, armadillos, in general, have low body temperatures of and low basal metabolic rates (40–60% of that expected in placental mammals of their mass). This is particularly true of types that specialize in using termites as their primary food source (for example, Priodontes and Tolypeutes).
Skin
The armor is formed by plates of dermal bone covered in relatively small overlapping epidermal scales called "scutes" which are composed of keratin. Most species have rigid shields over the shoulders and hips, with a number of bands separated by flexible skin covering the back and flanks. Additional armor covers the top of the head, the upper parts of the limbs, and the tail. The underside of the animal is never armored, and is simply covered with soft skin and fur. This armor-like skin appears to be an important defense for many armadillos, although most escape predators by fleeing (often into thorny patches, from which their armor protects them) or digging to safety. Only the South American three-banded armadillos (Tolypeutes) rely heavily on their armor for protection.
Defensive behavior
When threatened by a predator, Tolypeutes species frequently roll up into a ball. Other armadillo species cannot roll up because they have too many plates. The North American nine-banded armadillo tends to jump straight in the air when surprised, so consequently often collides with the undercarriage or fenders of passing vehicles to its demise.
Movement
Armadillos have short legs, but can move quite quickly. The nine-banded armadillo is noted for its movement through water which is accomplished via two different methods: it can walk underwater for short distances, holding its breath for as long as six minutes; also, to cross larger bodies of water, it is capable of increasing its buoyancy by swallowing air, inflating its stomach and intestines.
Reproduction
Gestation lasts from 60 to 120 days, depending on species, although the nine-banded armadillo also exhibits delayed implantation, so the young are not typically born for eight months after mating. Most members of the genus Dasypus give birth to four monozygotic young (that is, identical quadruplets), but other species may have typical litter sizes that range from one to eight. The young are born with soft, leathery skin which hardens within a few weeks. They reach sexual maturity in three to twelve months, depending on the species. Armadillos are solitary animals that do not share their burrows with other adults.
Armadillos and humans
In science
Disease
Armadillos are often used in the study of leprosy, since they, along with mangabey monkeys, rabbits, and mice (on their footpads), are among the few known species that can contract the disease systemically. They are particularly susceptible due to their unusually low body temperature, which is hospitable to the leprosy bacterium, Mycobacterium leprae. (The leprosy bacterium is difficult to culture and armadillos have a body temperature of , similar to human skin.) Humans can acquire a leprosy infection from armadillos by handling them or consuming armadillo meat. Armadillos are a presumed vector and natural reservoir for the disease in Texas, Louisiana and Florida. Prior to the arrival of Europeans in the late 15th century, leprosy was unknown in the New World. Given that armadillos are native to the New World, at some point they must have acquired the disease from old-world humans.
The armadillo is also a natural reservoir for Chagas disease.
Reproduction
The nine-banded armadillo also serves science through its unusual reproductive system, in which four genetically identical offspring are born, the result of one original egg. Because they are always genetically identical, the group of four young provides a good subject for scientific, behavioral, or medical tests that need consistent biological and genetic makeup in the test subjects. This is the only reliable manifestation of polyembryony in the class Mammalia, and exists only within the genus Dasypus and not in all armadillos, as is commonly believed. Other species that display this trait include parasitoid wasps, certain flatworms, and various aquatic invertebrates.
Education
Armadillos (mainly Dasypus) are common roadkill due to their habit of jumping 3–4 ft vertically when startled, which puts them into collision with the underside of vehicles. Wildlife enthusiasts are using the northward march of the armadillo as an opportunity to educate others about the animals, which can be a burrowing nuisance to property owners and managers.
As musical instruments
Armadillo shells have traditionally been used to make the back of the charango, an Andean lute instrument.
Culinary Use
In certain parts of Central and South America, armadillo meat is eaten; it is a popular ingredient in Oaxaca, Mexico. During the Great Depression, Americans were known to eat armadillo, known begrudgingly as "Hoover hogs", a nod to the belief that President Herbert Hoover was responsible for the economic despair facing the nation at that time.
In literature
A whimsical account of The Beginning of the Armadillos is one of the chapters of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories 1902 children's book.
See also
Pangolins, another mammal group with defensive keratin body coverings
Porcupines, another mammal group with defensive keratin body coverings
Echidnas, a type of monotreme with a defensive keratin body covering
Hedgehogs, another mammal group with defensive keratin body coverings
References
Further reading
External links
"Armadillo online" website hosted by zoologist Dr. Joshua Nixon
Photographs of armadillo rolling into a ball
Armadillos
Cingulates
Rolling animals
Extant Thanetian first appearances
Mammal common names |
2187 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism%20in%20the%20Arab%20world | Antisemitism in the Arab world | Antisemitism in the Arab world refers to prejudice against and hatred of Jews in Arab countries. Antisemitism has increased greatly in the region since the beginning of the 20th century, for several reasons: the dissolution and breakdown of the Ottoman Empire and traditional Islamic society; European influence, brought about by Western imperialism and Arab Christians; Nazi propaganda and relations between Nazi Germany and the Arab world; resentment over Jewish nationalism; the rise of Arab nationalism; and the widespread proliferation of anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist conspiracy theories.
Traditionally, Jews in the Muslim world were considered to be People of the Book and were subjected to dhimmi status. They were afforded relative security against persecution, provided they did not contest the varying inferior social and legal status imposed on them in Islamic states.
While there were antisemitic incidents before the 20th century, during this time antisemitism in the Arab world increased greatly. During the 1930s and the 1940s several Jewish communities in the Arab world suffered from pogroms. The status of Jews in Arab countries deteriorated further at the onset of the Arab-Israeli conflict. After the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Palestinian exodus, the creation of the State of Israel and Israeli victories during the wars of 1956 and 1967 were a severe humiliation to Israel's opponents—primarily Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. However, by the mid-1970s the vast majority of Jews had left Arab and Muslim countries, moving primarily to Israel, France, and the United States. The reasons for the exodus are varied and disputed.
By the 1980s, according to historian Bernard Lewis, the volume of antisemitic literature published in the Arab world, and the authority of its sponsors, seemed to suggest that classical antisemitism had become an essential part of Arab intellectual life, considerably more than in late 19th- and early 20th-century France and to a degree that has been compared to Nazi Germany. The rise of political Islam during the 1980s and afterwards provided a new mutation of Islamic antisemitism, giving the hatred of Jews a religious component.
In their 2008 report on contemporary Arab-Muslim antisemitism, the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center dates the beginning of this phenomenon to the spread of classic European Christian antisemitism into the Arab world starting in the late 19th century. In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League published a global survey of worldwide antisemitic attitudes, reporting that in the Middle East, 74% of adults agreed with a majority of the survey's eleven antisemitic propositions, including that "Jews have too much power in international financial markets" and that "Jews are responsible for most of the world's wars."
Medieval times
Jews, along with Christians, Sabians, and Zoroastrians living under early and medieval Muslim rule were known as "People of the Book" to Muslims and subjected to the status of dhimmi ("protected" minority) in the lands conquered by Muslim Arabs, a status generally applied to Non-Muslim minorities that was later also extended to other Non-Muslims like Sikhs, Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists. Jews were generally seen as a religious group (not a separate race), thus being a part of the "Arab family".
Dhimmi were subjected to a number of restrictions, the application and severity of which varied with time and place. Restrictions included residency in segregated quarters, obligation to wear distinctive clothing such as the Yellow badge, public subservience to Muslims, prohibitions against proselytizing and against marrying Muslim women, and limited access to the legal system (the testimony of a Jew did not count if contradicted by that of a Muslim). Dhimmi had to pay a special poll tax (the jizya), which exempted them from military service, and also from payment of the zakat alms tax required of Muslims. In return, dhimmi were granted limited rights, including a degree of tolerance, community autonomy in personal matters, and protection from being killed outright. Jewish communities, like Christian ones, were typically constituted as semi-autonomous entities managed by their own laws and leadership, who carried the responsibility for the community towards the Muslim rulers.
By medieval standards, conditions for Jews under Islam were generally more formalized and better than those of Jews in Christian lands, in part due to the sharing of minority status with Christians in these lands. There is evidence for this claim in that the status of Jews in lands with no Christian minority was usually worse than their status in lands with one. For example, there were numerous incidents of massacres and ethnic cleansing of Jews in North Africa, especially in Morocco, Libya, and Algeria where eventually Jews were forced to live in ghettos. Decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted in the Middle Ages in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. At certain times in Yemen, Morocco, and Baghdad, Jews were forced to convert to Islam or face the death penalty.
The situation where Jews both enjoyed cultural and economic prosperity at times, but were widely persecuted at other times, was summarised by G. E. Von Grunebaum:
It would not be difficult to put together the names of a very sizable number of Jewish subjects or citizens of the Islamic area who have attained to high rank, to power, to great financial influence, to significant and recognized intellectual attainment; and the same could be done for Christians. But it would again not be difficult to compile a lengthy list of persecutions, arbitrary confiscations, attempted forced conversions, or pogroms.
Views in modernity
Some scholars hold that Arab antisemitism in the modern world arose in the nineteenth century, against the backdrop of conflicting Jewish and Arab nationalism, and was imported into the Arab world primarily by nationalistically minded Christian Arabs (and only subsequently was it "Islamized"), Mark Cohen states. According to Bernard Lewis:
19th century
The Damascus affair was an accusation of ritual murder and a blood libel against Jews in Damascus in 1840. On February 5, 1840, Franciscan Capuchin friar Father Thomas and his Greek servant were reported missing, never to be seen again. The Turkish governor and the French consul Ratti-Menton believed accusations of ritual murder and blood libel, as the alleged murder occurred before the Jewish Passover. An investigation was staged, and Solomon Negrin, a Jewish barber, confessed under torture and accused other Jews. Two other Jews died under torture, and one (Moses Abulafia) converted to Islam to escape torture. More arrests and atrocities followed, culminating in 63 Jewish children being held hostage and mob attacks on Jewish communities throughout the Middle East. International outrage led to Ibrahim Pasha in Egypt ordering an investigation. Negotiations in Alexandria eventually secured the unconditional release and recognition of innocence of the nine prisoners still remaining alive (out of thirteen). Later in Constantinople, Moses Montefiore (leader of the British Jewish community) persuaded Sultan Abdülmecid I to issue a firman (edict) intended to halt the spread of blood libel accusations in the Ottoman Empire:
... and for the love we bear to our subjects, we cannot permit the Jewish nation, whose innocence for the crime alleged against them is evident, to be worried and tormented as a consequence of accusations which have not the least foundation in truth....
Nevertheless, the blood libel spread through the Middle East and North Africa: Aleppo (1810, 1850, 1875), Damascus (1840, 1848, 1890), Beirut (1862, 1874), Dayr al-Qamar (1847), Jerusalem (1847), Cairo (1844, 1890, 1901–02), Mansura (1877), Alexandria (1870, 1882, 1901–02), Port Said (1903, 1908), and Damanhur (1871, 1873, 1877, 1892).
The Dreyfus affair of the late 19th century had consequences in the Arab world. Passionate outbursts of antisemitism in France were echoed in areas of French influence, especially Maronite Lebanon. The Muslim Arab press, however, was sympathetic to the falsely accused Captain Dreyfus, and criticized the persecution of Jews in France.
20th century
Pre-state antisemitism
While Arab antisemitism has increased in the wake of the Arab–Israeli conflict, there were pogroms against Jews prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, including Nazi-inspired pogroms in Algeria in the 1930s, and attacks on the Jews of Iraq and Libya in the 1940s. In 1941, 180 Jews were murdered and 700 were injured in the anti-Jewish riots known as "the Farhud". Four hundred Jews were injured in violent demonstrations in Egypt in 1945 and Jewish property was vandalized and looted. In Libya, 130 Jews were killed and 266 injured. In December 1947, 13 Jews were killed in Damascus, including 8 children, and 26 were injured. In Aleppo, rioting resulted in dozens of Jewish casualties, damage to 150 Jewish homes, and the torching of 5 schools and 10 synagogues. In Yemen, 97 Jews were murdered and 120 injured.
Speculated causes
Antisemitism in the Arab world increased in the 20th century, as resentment against Jewish immigration and Zionist activities in Palestine Mandate grew. Around this time, the fabricated antisemitic text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion started to become available in Palestine. A translation of the text in Arabic was done by an Arab Christian in Cairo in 1927 or 1928, this time as a published book. In March 1921, Musa Khazem El Husseini, Mayor of Jerusalem, told Winston Churchill "The Jews have been amongst the most active advocates of destruction in many lands. ... It is well known that the disintegration of Russia was wholly or in great part brought about by the Jews, and a large proportion of the defeat of Germany and Austria must also be put at their door."
Matthias Küntzel has suggested that the decisive transfer of Jewish conspiracy theory took place between 1937 and 1945 under the impact of Nazi propaganda targeted at the Arab world. According to Kuntzel, the Nazi Arabic radio service had a staff of 80 and broadcast every day in Arabic, stressing the similarities between Islam and Nazism and supported by the activities of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini (who broadcast pro-Nazi propaganda from Berlin). Alongside al-Husseini's collaboration with the Nazis, cooperative political and military relationships between the Arab world and the Axis powers (Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy) were founded on shared antisemitic scorn and hostilities toward common enemies: the United Kingdom, France, and Zionism. The Nazi regime also provided funding to the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood, which began calling for boycotts of Jewish businesses in 1936.
Bernard Lewis also describes Nazi influence in the Arab world, including its impact on Michel Aflaq, the principal founder of Ba'athist thought (which later dominated Syria and Iraq). After the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws, Hitler received telegrams of congratulation from all over the Arab and Muslim world, especially from Morocco and Palestine, where the Nazi propaganda had been most active.... Before long political parties of the Nazi and Fascist type began to appear, complete with paramilitary youth organizations, colored shirts, strict discipline and more or less charismatic leaders.
George Gruen attributes the increased animosity towards Jews in the Arab world to the defeat and breakdown of the Ottoman Empire and traditional Islamic society; domination by Western colonial powers under which Jews gained a disproportionately large role in the commercial, professional, and administrative life of the region; the rise of Arab nationalism, whose proponents sought the wealth and positions of local Jews through government channels; resentment over Jewish nationalism and the Zionist movement; and the readiness of unpopular Arab regimes to scapegoat local Jews for political purposes.
After the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Palestinian exodus, the creation of the state of Israel, and the independence of Arab countries from European control, conditions for Jews in the Arab world deteriorated. Over the next few decades, almost all would flee the Arab world, some willingly, and some under threat (see Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries). In 1945 there were between 758,000 and 866,000 Jews (see table below) living in communities throughout the Arab world. Today, there are fewer than 8,000. In some Arab states, such as Libya (which was once around 3% Jewish), the Jewish community no longer exists; in other Arab countries, only a few hundred Jews remain.
Harvard University Professor Ruth R. Wisse claims that "anti-Semitism / Zionism has been the cornerstone of pan-Arab politics since the Second World War" and that it is the "strongest actual and potential source of unity" in the Arab world. This is because Jews and Israel function as substitutes for Western values that challenge the hegemony of religious and political power in the Middle East. Antisemitism is also malleable enough that it can unite right-wing and left-wing groups within the Arab world.
Robert Bernstein, founder of Human Rights Watch, says that antisemitism is "deeply ingrained and institutionalized" in "Arab nations in modern times".
Contemporary attitudes
Israeli Arabs
In 2003, Israeli-Arab Raed Salah, the leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel published the following poem in the Islamic Movement's periodical:
You Jews are criminal bombers of mosques,
Slaughterers of pregnant women and babies.
Robbers and germs in all times,
The Creator sentenced you to be loser monkeys,
Victory belongs to Muslims, from the Nile to the Euphrates.
During a speech in 2007, Salah accused Jews of using children's blood to bake bread. "We have never allowed ourselves to knead [the dough for] the bread that breaks the fast in the holy month of Ramadan with children's blood," he said. "Whoever wants a more thorough explanation, let him ask what used to happen to some children in Europe, whose blood was mixed in with the dough of the [Jewish] holy bread.".
Kamal Khatib, deputy leader of the northern branch of the Islamic movement, referred in one of his speeches to the Jews as "fleas"
Of all groups surveyed, a 2010 Pew Research global poll found that Israeli Arabs have the lowest rate of anti-Jewish attitudes in the Middle East.
Egypt
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Mahdi Akef has denounced what he called "the myth of the Holocaust" in defending Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's denial of it.
The Egyptian government-run newspaper, Al Akhbar, on April 29, 2002, published an editorial denying the Holocaust as a fraud. The next paragraph decries the failure of the Holocaust to eliminate all of the Jews:
With regard to the fraud of the Holocaust.... Many French studies have proven that this is no more than a fabrication, a lie, and a fraud!! That is, it is a 'scenario' the plot of which was carefully tailored, using several faked photos completely unconnected to the truth. Yes, it is a film, no more and no less. Hitler himself, whom they accuse of Nazism, is in my eyes no more than a modest 'pupil' in the world of murder and bloodshed. He is completely innocent of the charge of frying them in the hell of his false Holocaust!!
The entire matter, as many French and British scientists and researchers have proven, is nothing more than a huge Israeli plot aimed at extorting the German government in particular and the European countries in general. But I, personally and in light of this imaginary tale, complain to Hitler, even saying to him from the bottom of my heart, 'If only you had done it, brother, if only it had really happened, so that the world could sigh in relief [without] their evil and sin.'
In an article in October 2000 columnist Adel Hammoda alleged in the state-owned Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram that Jews made Matza from the blood of (non-Jewish) children. Mohammed Salmawy, editor of Al-Ahram Hebdo, "defended the use of old European myths like the blood libel" in his newspapers.
In August 2010, Saudi columnist Iman Al-Quwaifli sharply criticized the "phenomenon of sympathy for Adolf Hitler and for Nazism in the Arab world", specifically citing the words of Hussam Fawzi Jabar, an Islamic cleric who justified Hitler's actions against the Jews in an Egyptian talk show one month earlier.
In an October 2012 sermon broadcast on Egyptian Channel 1 (which was attended by Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi) Futouh Abd Al-Nabi Mansour, the Head of Religious Endowment of the Matrouh Governorate, prayed (as translated by MEMRI):
Jordan
Jordan does not allow entry to Jews with visible signs of Judaism or even with personal religious items in their possession. The Jordanian ambassador to Israel replied to a complaint by a religious Jew denied entry that security concerns required that travelers entering the Hashemite Kingdom not do so with prayer shawls (Tallit) and phylacteries (Tefillin). Jordanian authorities state that the policy is in order to ensure the Jewish tourists' safety.
In July 2009, six Breslov Hasidim were deported after attempting entry into Jordan in order to visit the tomb of Aaron / Sheikh Harun on Mount Hor, near Petra, because of an alert from the Ministry of Tourism. The group had taken a ferry from Sinai, Egypt because they understood that Jordanian authorities were making it hard for visible Jews to enter from Israel. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs is aware of the issue.
Saudi Arabia
Hostility toward Jews is common in Saudi Arabian media, religious sermons, school curriculum, and official government policy.
Indoctrination against Jews is a part of school curriculum in Saudi Arabia. Children are advised not to befriend Jews, are given false information about them (such as the claim that Jews worship the Devil), and are encouraged to engage in jihad against Jews.
Conspiracy theories about Jews are widely disseminated in Saudi Arabian state-controlled media.
According to the U.S. State Department, religious freedom "does not exist" in Saudi Arabia, and therefore, Jews may not freely practice their religion.
Syria
On March 2, 1974, the bodies of four Syrian Jewish women were discovered by border police in a cave in the Zabdani Mountains northwest of Damascus. Fara Zeibak 24, her sisters Lulu Zeibak 23, Mazal Zeibak 22 and their cousin Eva Saad 18, had contracted with a band of smugglers to flee Syria to Lebanon and eventually to Israel. The girls' bodies were found raped, murdered and mutilated. The police also found the remains of two Jewish boys, Natan Shaya 18 and Kassem Abadi 20, victims of an earlier massacre. Syrian authorities deposited the bodies of all six in sacks before the homes of their parents in the Jewish ghetto in Damascus.
In 1984 Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass published a book called The Matzah of Zion, which claimed that Jews had killed Christian children in Damascus to make Matzas (see Damascus affair). His book inspired the Egyptian TV series Horseman Without a Horse (see below) and a spinoff, The Diaspora, which led to Hezbollah's al-Manar being banned in Europe for broadcasting it.
Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke visited Syria in November 2005 and made a speech that was broadcast live on Syrian television.
Tunisia
For a personal account of the discrimination and physical attacks experienced by Jews in Tunisia the Jewish-Arab anti-colonialist writer Albert Memmi wrote:
At each crisis, with every incident of the slightest importance, the mob would go wild, setting fire to Jewish shops. This even happened during the Yom Kippur War. Tunisia's President, Habib Bourguiba, has in all probability never been hostile to the Jews, but there was always that notorious "delay", which meant that the police arrived on the scene only after the shops had been pillaged and burnt. Is it any wonder that the exodus to France and Israel continued and even increased?
On November 30, 2012, prominent Tunisian imam Sheikh Ahmad Al-Suhayli of Radès, told his followers during a live broadcast on Hannibal TV that "God wants to destroy this [Tunisian] sprinkling of Jews and is sterilizing the wombs of Jewish women." This was the fourth time incitement against Jews has been reported in the public sphere since the overthrow of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, thus prompting Jewish community leaders to demand security protection from the Tunisian government. Al-Suhayli subsequently posted a video on the Internet in which he claimed that his statements had been misinterpreted.
On January 18, 2021, Tunisian president Kais Saied was caught on video telling a crowd that "We know very well who the people are who are controlling the country today. It is the Jews who are doing the stealing, and we need to put an end to it." Saied's office responded that the president's words had been misheard and that he meant to say something else instead of Jews. Two days later, Saied publicly apologized for his statements, holding a phone call with Djerba's chief rabbi, Haim Bitan in which he expressed regret for his statements.
The history of the Jews in Tunisia goes back to Roman times. Before 1948, the Jewish population of Tunisia reached a peak of 110,000. Today it has a Jewish community of less than 2,000 people.
Palestinian territories
The Hamas, an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, has a foundational statement of principles, or "covenant" that claims that the French revolution, the Russian revolution, colonialism and both world wars were created by the Zionists. It also claims the Freemasons and Rotary clubs are Zionist fronts and refers to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Claims that Jews and Freemasons were behind the French Revolution originated in Germany in the mid-19th century.
Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the PLO, published a Ph.D. thesis (at Moscow University) in 1982, called The Secret Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement.
His doctoral thesis later became a book, The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism, which, following his appointment as Palestinian Prime Minister in 2003, was heavily criticized as an example of Holocaust denial. In his book, Abbas wrote:
It seems that the interest of the Zionist movement, however, is to inflate this figure [of Holocaust deaths] so that their gains will be greater. This led them to emphasize this figure [six million] in order to gain the solidarity of international public opinion with Zionism. Many scholars have debated the figure of six million and reached stunning conclusions—fixing the number of Jewish victims at only a few hundred thousand.Gross, Tom. Abu Mazen and the Holocaust
Lebanon
Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV channel has often been accused of airing antisemitic broadcasts, blaming the Jews for a Zionist conspiracy against the Arab world, and often airing excerpts from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which the Encyclopædia Britannica describes as a "fraudulent document that served as a pretext and rationale for anti-Semitism in the early 20th century".
Al-Manar recently aired a drama series, called The Diaspora, which is based on historical antisemitic allegations. BBC reporters who watched the series said that: Correspondents who have viewed The Diaspora note that it quotes extensively from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious 19th-century publication used by the Nazis among others to fuel race hatred.
In another incident, an Al-Manar commentator recently referred to "Zionist attempts to transmit AIDS to Arab countries". Al-Manar officials deny broadcasting antisemitic incitement and state that their position is anti-Israeli, not antisemitic. However, Hezbollah has directed strong rhetoric both against Israel and Jews, and it has cooperated in publishing and distributing outright antisemitic literature. The government of Lebanon has not criticized continued broadcast of antisemitic material on television.
Due to protests by the CRIF umbrella group of French Jews regarding allegations of antisemitic content, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin called for a ban on Al-Manar broadcasting in France on December 2, 2004; just two weeks after al-Manar was authorised to continue broadcasting in Europe by France's media watchdog agency. On December 13, 2004, France's highest administrative court banned Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV station on the grounds that it consistently incites racial hatred and antisemitism.
Yemen
The 1940s and the establishment of Israel saw rapid emigration of Jews out of Yemen, in the wake of anti-Jewish riots and massacres. By the late 1990s, only several hundred remained, mainly in a northwestern mountainous region named Sa'ada and town of Raida. Houthi members put up notes on the Jews' doors, accusing them of corrupting Muslim morals. Eventually, the Houthi leaders sent threatening messages to the Jewish community: "We warn you to leave the area immediately.... We give you a period of 10 days, or you will regret it."
On 28 March 2021, 13 Jews were forced by the Houthis to leave Yemen, leaving four elderly Jews the only Jews still in Yemen.
Arab newspapers
Many Arab newspapers, such as Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah, the Palestinian Authority's official newspaper, often write that "the Jews" control all the world's governments, and that "the Jews" plan genocide on all the Arabs in the West Bank. Others write less sensational stories, and state that Jews have too much of an influence in the United States government. Often the leaders of other nations are said to be controlled by Jews. Articles in many official Arab government newspapers claim that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, reflects facts, and thus points to an international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.
Horseman Without a Horse
In 2001–2002, Arab Radio and Television produced a 30-part television miniseries entitled Horseman Without a Horse, starring prominent Egyptian actor Mohamed Sobhi, which contains dramatizations of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The United States and Israel criticized Egypt for airing the program, which includes racist falsehoods that have a history of being used "as a pretext for persecuting Jews".
Opinion polling
In 2008 a Pew Research Center survey found that negative views concerning Jews were most common in the three predominantly Arab nations polled, with 97% of Lebanese having unfavorable opinion of Jews, 95% in Egypt and 96% in Jordan.
See also
Contemporary imprints of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Covenant of Umar I
Dhimmi
Islam and antisemitism
Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim lands
Jizya
Mellah
Pact of Umar II
Qutbism
Racism in the Arab world
Notes
References
Bibliography
Lewis, Bernard (1984). The Jews of Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lewis, Bernard (1999). Semites and anti-Semites.
Gerber, Jane S. (1986). "Anti-Semitism and the Muslim World". In History and Hate: The Dimensions of Anti-Semitism, ed. David Berger. Jewish Publications Society.
Bostom, Andrew G. The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred texts to Solemn History. Prometheus Books. 2008.
Laqueur, Walter. The Changing Face of Antisemitism: From Ancient Times To The Present Day. Oxford University Press. 2006.
Poliakov, Leon (1997). "Anti-Semitism". Encyclopaedia Judaica (CD-ROM Edition Version 1.0). Ed. Cecil Roth. Keter Publishing House.
Segev, Tom. One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate. Trans. Haim Watzman. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001.
Wistrich, Robert S. Hitler's Apocalypse: Jews and the Nazi Legacy. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 1985.
Wistrich, Robert S. A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad. Random House. 2010.
External links
The Holocaust in Arab Public Discourse: Historicized Politics and Politicized History
Arab Anti-Semitism in 1998/99 – summary of Arab antisemitism, by the University of Tel Aviv
S.RES.366 Urging the Government of Egypt and other Arab governments not to allow their government-controlled television stations to broadcast any program that lends legitimacy to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and for other purposes. (Passed/agreed to in Senate on November 20, 2002).
http://www.memri.org Organization that monitors Middle-Eastern media for antisemitism. See MEMRI.
Major Anti-Semitic Motifs in Arab Cartoons
Iraqis Wrestle with the Jewish Factor
Arab world
Discrimination in the Arab world
Arab world |
2192 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August%2011 | August 11 |
Events
Pre-1600
3114 BC – The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations, notably the Maya, begins.
2492 BC – Traditional date of the defeat of Bel by Hayk, progenitor and founder of the Armenian nation.
106 – The south-western part of Dacia (modern Romania) becomes a Roman province: Roman Dacia.
355 – Claudius Silvanus, accused of treason, proclaims himself Roman Emperor against Constantius II.
490 – Battle of Adda: The Goths under Theodoric the Great and his ally Alaric II defeat the forces of Odoacer on the Adda River, near Milan.
1315 – The Great Famine of Europe becomes so dire that even the king of England has difficulties buying bread for himself and his entourage.
1332 – Wars of Scottish Independence: Battle of Dupplin Moor: Scots under Domhnall II, Earl of Mar are routed by Edward Balliol.
1473 – The Battle of Otlukbeli: Mehmed the Conqueror of the Ottoman Empire decisively defeats Uzun Hassan of Aq Qoyunlu.
1601–1900
1675 – Franco-Dutch War: Forces of the Holy Roman Empire defeat the French in the Battle of Konzer Brücke.
1786 – Captain Francis Light establishes the British colony of Penang in Malaysia.
1804 – Francis II assumes the title of first Emperor of Austria.
1812 – Peninsular War: French troops engage British-Portuguese forces in the Battle of Majadahonda.
1813 – In Colombia, Juan del Corral declares the independence of Antioquia.
1858 – The Eiger in the Bernese Alps is ascended for the first time by Charles Barrington accompanied by Christian Almer and Peter Bohren.
1871 – An Explosion of guncotton occurs in Stowmarket, England, killing 28.
1898 – Spanish–American War: American troops enter the city of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.
1901–present
1918 – World War I: The Battle of Amiens ends.
1919 – Germany's Weimar Constitution is signed into law.
1920 – The Latvian–Soviet Peace Treaty, which relinquished Russia's authority and pretenses to Latvia, is signed, ending the Latvian War of Independence.
1929 – Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 500 home runs in his career with a home run at League Park in Cleveland, Ohio.
1934 – The first civilian prisoners arrive at the Federal prison on Alcatraz Island.
1942 – Actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil receive a patent for a Frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication system that later became the basis for modern technologies in wireless telephones, two-way radio communications, and Wi-Fi.
1945 – Poles in Kraków engage in a pogrom against Jews in the city, killing one and wounding five.
1952 – Hussein bin Talal is proclaimed King of Jordan.
1959 – Sheremetyevo International Airport, the second-largest airport in Russia, opens.
1960 – Chad declares independence from France.
1961 – The former Portuguese territories in India of Dadra and Nagar Haveli are merged to create the Union Territory Dadra and Nagar Haveli.
1962 – Vostok 3 launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev becomes the first person to float in microgravity.
1965 – Race riots (the Watts Riots) begin in the Watts area of Los Angeles, California.
1969 – The Apollo 11 astronauts are released from a three-week quarantine following their liftoff from the moon.
1972 – Vietnam War: The last United States ground combat unit leaves South Vietnam.
1975 – East Timor: Governor Mário Lemos Pires of Portuguese Timor abandons the capital Dili, following a coup by the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT) and the outbreak of civil war between UDT and Fretilin.
1979 – Two Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-134s collide over the Ukrainian city of Dniprodzerzhynsk and crash, killing all 178 aboard both airliners.
1982 – A bomb explodes on Pan Am Flight 830, en route from Tokyo, Japan to Honolulu, Hawaii, killing one passenger and injuring 15 others.
1984 – "We begin bombing in five minutes": United States President Ronald Reagan, while running for re-election, jokes while preparing to make his weekly Saturday address on National Public Radio.
1992 – The Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota opens. At the time the largest shopping mall in the United States.
2000 – An air rage incident occurs on board Southwest Airlines Flight 1763 when 19-year-old Jonathan Burton attempts to storm the cockpit, but he is subdued by other passengers and dies from his injuries.
2003 – NATO takes over command of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, marking its first major operation outside Europe in its 54-year-history.
2003 – Jemaah Islamiyah leader Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, is arrested in Bangkok, Thailand.
2006 – The oil tanker MT Solar 1 sinks off the coast of Guimaras and Negros Islands in the Philippines, causing the country's worst oil spill.
2012 – At least 306 people are killed and 3,000 others injured in a pair of earthquakes near Tabriz, Iran.
2017 – At least 41 people are killed and another 179 injured after two passenger trains collide in Alexandria, Egypt.
Births
Pre-1600
1086 – Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1125)
1384 – Yolande of Aragon (d. 1442)
1472 – Nikolaus von Schönberg, Catholic cardinal (d. 1537)
1510 – Margaret Paleologa, Sovereign Marchioness of Montferrat (d. 1566)
1601–1900
1673 – Richard Mead, English physician and astrologer (d. 1754)
1718 – Frederick Haldimand, Swiss-English general and politician, 22nd Governor of Quebec (d. 1791)
1722 – Richard Brocklesby, English physician (d. 1797)
1748 – Joseph Schuster, German composer (d. 1812)
1778 – Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, Prussian gymnast, educator, and politician (d. 1852)
1794 – James B. Longacre, American engraver (d. 1869)
1807 – David Rice Atchison, American general, lawyer, and politician (d. 1886)
1808 – William W. Chapman, American lawyer and politician (d. 1892)
1816 – Frederick Innes, Scottish-Australian politician, 9th Premier of Tasmania (d. 1882)
1833 – Robert G. Ingersoll, American soldier, lawyer, and politician (d. 1899)
1833 – Kido Takayoshi, Japanese samurai and politician (d. 1877)
1836 – Warren Brown, American historian and politician (d. 1919)
1837 – Marie François Sadi Carnot, French engineer and politician, 4th President of the French Republic (d. 1894)
1855 – John Hodges, Australian cricketer (d. 1933)
1858 – Christiaan Eijkman, Dutch physician and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1930)
1860 – Ottó Bláthy, Hungarian engineer and chess player (d. 1939)
1870 – Tom Richardson, English cricketer (d. 1912)
1874 – Princess Louise Charlotte of Saxe-Altenburg (d. 1953)
1877 – Adolph M. Christianson, American lawyer and judge (d. 1954)
1878 – Oliver W. F. Lodge, English poet and author (d. 1955)
1881 – Aleksander Aberg, Estonian wrestler (d. 1920)
1884 – Hermann Wlach, Austrian-Swiss actor (d. 1962)
1885 – Stephen Butterworth, English physicist and engineer (d. 1958)
1891 – Stancho Belkovski, Bulgarian architect and educator (d. 1962)
1891 – Edgar Zilsel, Austrian historian and philosopher of science, linked to the Vienna Circle (d. 1944)
1892 – Hugh MacDiarmid, Scottish poet and linguist (d. 1978)
1892 – Eiji Yoshikawa, Japanese author (d. 1962)
1897 – Enid Blyton, English author, poet, and educator (d. 1968)
1897 – Louise Bogan, American poet and critic (d. 1970)
1898 – Peter Mohr Dam, Faroese educator and politician, 3rd Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands (d. 1968)
1900 – Charley Paddock, American sprinter (d. 1943)
1900 – Philip Phillips, American archaeologist and scholar (d. 1994)
1901–present
1902 – Alfredo Binda, Italian cyclist (d. 1986)
1902 – Lloyd Nolan, American actor (d. 1985)
1902 – Christian de Castries, French general (d. 1991)
1905 – Erwin Chargaff, Austrian-American biochemist and academic (d. 2002)
1905 – Ernst Jaakson, Estonian diplomat (d. 1998)
1907 – Ted a'Beckett, Australian cricketer and lawyer (d. 1989)
1908 – Don Freeman, American author and illustrator (d. 1978)
1908 – Torgny T:son Segerstedt, Swedish sociologist and philosopher (d. 1999)
1909 – Yūji Koseki, Japanese composer (d. 1989)
1909 – Uku Masing, Estonian philosopher and theologian (d. 1985)
1911 – Thanom Kittikachorn, Thai field marshal and politician, 10th Prime Minister of Thailand (d. 2004)
1912 – Eva Ahnert-Rohlfs, German astronomer and academic (d. 1954)
1912 – Raphael Blau, American screenwriter and producer (d. 1996)
1913 – Paul Dupuis, Canadian actor (d. 1976)
1913 – Bob Scheffing, American baseball player and manager (d. 1985)
1913 – Angus Wilson, English author and academic (d. 1991)
1915 – Morris Weiss, American author and illustrator (d. 2014)
1916 – Johnny Claes, English-Belgian race car driver and trumpet player (d. 1956)
1919 – Luis Olmo, Puerto Rican-American baseball player and manager (d. 2017)
1920 – Mike Douglas, American singer and talk show host (d. 2006)
1920 – Chuck Rayner, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2002)
1921 – Alex Haley, American historian and author (d. 1992)
1922 – John "Mule" Miles, American baseball player (d. 2013)
1923 – Stan Chambers, American journalist and actor (d. 2015)
1925 – Floyd Curry, Canadian ice hockey player and manager (d. 2006)
1925 – Arlene Dahl, American actress, businesswoman and writer (d. 2021)
1926 – Aaron Klug, Lithuanian-English chemist and biophysicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2018)
1927 – Raymond Leppard, English harpsichord player and conductor (d. 2019)
1927 – Stuart Rosenberg, American director and producer (d. 2007)
1932 – Fernando Arrabal, Spanish actor, director, and playwright
1932 – Izzy Asper, Canadian lawyer, businessman, and politician, founded Canwest (d. 2003)
1932 – Geoffrey Cass, English businessman
1932 – Peter Eisenman, American architect, designed the City of Culture of Galicia
1932 – John Gorrie, English director and screenwriter
1933 – Jerry Falwell, American minister and television host (d. 2007)
1933 – Jerzy Grotowski, Polish director and producer (d. 1999)
1933 – Tamás Vásáry, Hungarian pianist and conductor
1934 – Bob Hepple, South African lawyer and academic (d. 2015)
1936 – Andre Dubus, American short story writer, essayist, and memoirist (d. 1999)
1936 – Bill Monbouquette, American baseball player and coach (d. 2015)
1936 – Jonathan Spence, English-American historian and academic (d. 2021)
1937 – Anna Massey, English actress (d. 2011)
1937 – Patrick Joseph McGovern, American businessman, founded International Data Group (d. 2014)
1939 – James Mancham, first President of Seychelles (d. 2017)
1939 – Ronnie Dawson, American singer and guitarist (d. 2003)
1940 – Glenys Page, New Zealand cricketer (d. 2012)
1941 – John Ellison, American-Canadian musician and songwriter
1942 – Mike Hugg, English drummer and keyboard player
1943 – Jim Kale, Canadian bass player
1943 – Pervez Musharraf, Pakistani general and politician, 10th President of Pakistan
1943 – Denis Payton, English saxophonist (d. 2006)
1944 – Martin Linton, Swedish-English journalist and politician
1944 – Frederick W. Smith, American businessman, founded FedEx
1944 – Ian McDiarmid, Scottish actor
1946 – John Conlee, American singer-songwriter
1946 – Marilyn vos Savant, American journalist and author
1947 – Theo de Jong, Dutch footballer, coach, and manager
1947 – Georgios Karatzaferis, Greek journalist and politician
1948 – Don Boyd, Scottish director, producer, and screenwriter
1949 – Eric Carmen, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1949 – Tim Hutchinson, American lawyer and politician
1949 – Ian Charleson, Scottish-English actor and singer (d. 1990)
1950 – Erik Brann, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2003)
1950 – Gennadiy Nikonov, Russian engineer, designed the AN-94 rifle (d. 2003)
1950 – Steve Wozniak, American computer scientist and programmer, co-founded Apple Inc.
1952 – Reid Blackburn, American photographer (d. 1980)
1952 – Bob Mothersbaugh, American singer, guitarist, and producer
1953 – Hulk Hogan, American wrestler
1953 – Wijda Mazereeuw, Dutch swimmer
1954 – Bryan Bassett, American guitarist
1954 – Vance Heafner, American golfer and coach (d. 2012)
1954 – Joe Jackson, English singer-songwriter and musician
1954 – Tarmo Rüütli, Estonian footballer, coach, and manager
1954 – Yashpal Sharma, Indian cricketer and umpire (d. 2021)
1955 – Marc Bureau, Canadian politician, 16th Mayor of Gatineau
1955 – Sylvia Hermon, Northern Irish academic and politician
1956 – Pierre-Louis Lions, French mathematician and academic
1957 – Ian Stuart Donaldson, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1993)
1957 – Masayoshi Son, Japanese technology entrepreneur and investor
1958 – Steven Pokere, New Zealand rugby player
1958 – Jah Wobble, English singer-songwriter and bass player
1959 – Gustavo Cerati, Argentinian singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (d. 2014)
1959 – Yoshiaki Murakami, Japanese businessman
1959 – Taraki Sivaram, Sri Lankan journalist and author (d. 2005)
1959 – Richard Scudamore, English businessman
1959 – László Szlávics, Jr., Hungarian sculptor
1961 – David Brooks, American journalist and author
1961 – Craig Ehlo, American basketball player and coach
1962 – Brian Azzarello, American author
1962 – Charles Cecil, English video game designer and co-founded Revolution Software
1962 – John Micklethwait, English journalist and author
1962 – Rob Minkoff, American director and producer
1963 – Hiromi Makihara, Japanese baseball player
1964 – Jim Lee, South Korean-American author and illustrator
1964 – Grant Waite, New Zealand golfer
1965 – Marc Bergevin, Canadian ice hockey player and manager
1965 – Embeth Davidtz, American actress
1965 – Viola Davis, American actress
1966 – Nigel Martyn, English footballer and coach
1966 – Juan María Solare, Argentinian pianist and composer
1967 – Massimiliano Allegri, Italian footballer and manager
1967 – Enrique Bunbury, Spanish singer-songwriter and guitarist
1967 – Joe Rogan, American actor, comedian, and television host
1967 – Petter Wettre, Norwegian saxophonist and composer
1968 – Sophie Okonedo, British actress
1968 – Charlie Sexton, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1970 – Dirk Hannemann, German footballer and manager
1970 – Gianluca Pessotto, Italian footballer
1971 – Alejandra Barros, Mexican actress and screenwriter
1971 – Tommy Mooney, English footballer
1973 – Kristin Armstrong, American cyclist
1974 – Marie-France Dubreuil, Canadian figure skater
1974 – Hadiqa Kiani, Pakistani singer, songwriter and philanthropist
1974 – Audrey Mestre, French biologist and diver (d. 2002)
1974 – Carolyn Murphy, American model and actress
1975 – Chris Cummings, Canadian singer-songwriter
1976 – Iván Córdoba, Colombian footballer and manager
1976 – Bubba Crosby, American baseball player
1976 – Will Friedle, American actor and screenwriter
1976 – Ben Gibbard, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1976 – Ľubomír Višňovský, Slovak ice hockey player
1977 – Gemma Hayes, Irish singer-songwriter
1977 – Dênio Martins, Brazilian footballer
1978 – Spyros Gogolos, Greek footballer
1978 – Charlotte Leslie, British politician
1978 – Lillian Nakate, Ugandan politician
1978 – Isy Suttie, English comedian, musician, actress, and writer
1979 – Walter Ayoví, Ecuadorian footballer
1980 – Daniel Lloyd, English cyclist and sportscaster
1980 – Lee Suggs, American football player
1981 – Daniel Poohl, Swedish journalist
1983 – Chris Hemsworth, Australian actor
1983 – Luke Lewis, Australian rugby league player
1983 – Pavel 183, Russian painter (d. 2013)
1984 – Melky Cabrera, Dominican baseball player
1984 – Lucas di Grassi, Brazilian race car driver
1985 – Jacqueline Fernandez, Bahraini–Sri Lankan actress
1986 – Mokhtar Benmoussa, Algerian footballer
1986 – Pablo Sandoval, Venezuelan baseball player
1987 – Dany N'Guessan, French footballer
1987 – Drew Storen, American baseball player
1988 – Rabeh Al-Hussaini, Filipino basketball player
1988 – Patty Mills, Australian basketball player
1988 – Mustafa Pektemek, Turkish footballer
1989 – Junior Heffernan, Irish cyclist and triathlete (d. 2013)
1989 – Sebastian Huke, German footballer
1990 – Lenka Juríková, Slovak tennis player
1991 – Cristian Tello, Spanish footballer
1994 – Storm Sanders, Australian tennis player
1994 – Anton Cooper, New Zealand cross-country cyclist
1994 – Joseph Barbato, French footballer
1997 – Sarah Clelland, Scottish footballer
Deaths
Pre-1600
223 – Jia Xu, Chinese politician (b. 147)
353 – Magnentius, Roman usurper (b. 303)
449 – Archbishop Flavian of Constantinople
919 – Dhuka al-Rumi, Abbasid governor of Egypt
979 – Gero, Count of Alsleben
991 – Byrhtnoth, English soldier (b. 956)
1044 – Sokkate, king of the Pagan dynasty of Burma (b. 1001)
1204 – Guttorm of Norway (b. 1199)
1253 – Clare of Assisi, Italian follower of Francis of Assisi (b. 1194)
1259 – Möngke Khan, Mongolian emperor (b. 1208)
1268 – Agnes of Faucigny, Dame ruler of Faucigny, Countess consort of Savoy
1332 – Domhnall II, Earl of Mar
1332 – Robert II Keith, Marischal of Scotland
1332 – Thomas Randolph, 2nd Earl of Moray
1332 – Murdoch III, Earl of Menteith
1332 – Robert Bruce, Lord of Liddesdale
1456 – John Hunyadi, Hungarian general and politician (b. 1387)
1464 – Nicholas of Cusa, German cardinal and mystic (b. 1401)
1465 – Kettil Karlsson, regent of Sweden and Bishop of Linköping (b. 1433)
1486 – William Waynflete, English Lord Chancellor and bishop of Winchester (b. c. 1398)
1494 – Hans Memling, German-Belgian painter (b. 1430)
1519 – Johann Tetzel, German preacher (b. 1465)
1556 – John Bell, English bishop
1563 – Bartolomé de Escobedo, Spanish composer and educator (b. 1500)
1578 – Pedro Nunes, Portuguese mathematician and academic (b. 1502)
1596 – Hamnet Shakespeare, son of William Shakespeare (b. 1585)
1601–1900
1614 – Lavinia Fontana, Italian painter (b. 1552)
1656 – Ottavio Piccolomini, Austrian-Italian field marshal (b. 1599)
1725 – Prince Vittorio Amedeo Theodore of Savoy (b. 1723)
1774 – Charles-François Tiphaigne de la Roche, French physician and author (b. 1722)
1813 – Henry James Pye, English poet and politician (b. 1745)
1851 – Lorenz Oken, German botanist, biologist, and ornithologist (b. 1779)
1854 – Macedonio Melloni, Italian physicist and academic (b. 1798)
1868 – Halfdan Kjerulf, Norwegian pianist and composer (b. 1815)
1886 – Lydia Koidula, Estonian poet and playwright (b. 1843)
1890 – John Henry Newman, English cardinal and theologian (b. 1801)
1892 – Enrico Betti, Italian mathematician and academic (b. 1813)
1901–present
1903 – Eugenio María de Hostos, Puerto Rican-American sociologist, philosopher, and lawyer (b. 1839)
1908 – Khudiram Bose, Indian Bengali revolutionary (b. 1889)
1919 – Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist, founded the Carnegie Steel Company and Carnegie Hall (b. 1835)
1921 – Mary Sumner, English philanthropist, founded the Mothers' Union (b. 1828)
1936 – Blas Infante, Spanish historian and politician (b. 1885)
1937 – Edith Wharton, American novelist and short story writer (b. 1862)
1939 – Jean Bugatti, German-Italian engineer (b. 1909)
1939 – Siegfried Flesch, Austrian fencer (b. 1872)
1945 – Stefan Jaracz, Polish actor and theater producer (b. 1883)
1953 – Tazio Nuvolari, Italian race car driver and motorcycle racer (b. 1892)
1956 – Jackson Pollock, American painter (b. 1912)
1961 – Antanas Škėma, Lithuanian-American author, playwright, actor, and director (b. 1910)
1963 – Otto Wahle, Austrian-American swimmer and coach (b. 1879)
1965 – Bill Woodfull, Australian cricketer and educator (b. 1897)
1969 – Miriam Licette, English soprano and educator (b. 1885)
1972 – Max Theiler, South African-American virologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1899)
1974 – Vicente Emilio Sojo, Venezuelan conductor and composer (b. 1887)
1977 – Frederic Calland Williams, British co-inventor of the Williams-Kilborn tube, used for memory in early computer systems (b. 1911)
1978 – Berta Ruck, Indian-born Welsh romance novelist (b. 1878)
1979 – J. G. Farrell, English author (b. 1935)
1980 – Paul Robert, French lexicographer and publisher (b. 1910)
1982 – Tom Drake, American actor and singer (b. 1918)
1984 – Alfred A. Knopf Sr., American publisher, founded Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (b. 1892)
1984 – Paul Felix Schmidt, Estonian–American chemist and chess player (b. 1916)
1986 – János Drapál, Hungarian motorcycle racer (b. 1948)
1988 – Anne Ramsey, American actress (b. 1929)
1989 – John Meillon, Australian actor (b. 1934)
1991 – J. D. McDuffie, American race car driver (b. 1938)
1994 – Peter Cushing, English actor (b. 1913)
1995 – Phil Harris, American singer-songwriter and actor (b. 1904)
1996 – Rafael Kubelík, Czech conductor and composer (b. 1914)
1996 – Ambrosio Padilla, Filipino basketball player and politician (b. 1910)
2000 – Jean Papineau-Couture, Canadian composer and academic (b. 1916)
2001 – Percy Stallard, English cyclist and coach (b. 1909)
2002 – Galen Rowell, American photographer and mountaineer (b. 1940)
2003 – Armand Borel, Swiss-American mathematician and academic (b. 1923)
2003 – Herb Brooks, American ice hockey player and coach (b. 1937)
2006 – Mike Douglas, American singer and talk show host (b. 1920)
2008 – George Furth, American actor and playwright (b. 1932)
2008 – Dursun Karataş, founding leader of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party–Front (DHKP-C) in Turkey (b. 1952)
2009 – Eunice Kennedy Shriver, American activist, founded the Special Olympics (b. 1921)
2012 – Red Bastien, American wrestler, trainer, and promoter (b. 1931)
2012 – Michael Dokes, American boxer (b. 1958)
2012 – Lucy Gallardo, Argentinian-Mexican actress and screenwriter (b. 1929)
2013 – Raymond Delisle, French cyclist (b. 1943)
2013 – Zafar Futehally, Indian ornithologist and author (b. 1919)
2013 – David Howard, English ballet dancer and educator (b. 1937)
2014 – Vladimir Beara, Croatian footballer and manager (b. 1928)
2014 – Raymond Gravel, Canadian priest and politician (b. 1952)
2014 – Kika Szaszkiewiczowa, Polish author and blogger (b. 1917)
2014 – Robin Williams, American actor and comedian (b. 1951)
2015 – Serge Collot, French viola player and educator (b. 1923)
2015 – Harald Nielsen, Danish footballer and manager (b. 1941)
2015 – Richard Oriani, Salvadoran-American metallurgist and engineer (b. 1920)
2017 – Yisrael Kristal, Polish-Israeli supercentenarian; oldest living Holocaust survivor and one of the ten oldest men ever (b. 1903)
2017 – Segun Bucknor, Nigerian musician and journalist (b. 1946)
2018 – V S Naipaul, British writer (b. 1932)
2019 – Sergio Obeso Rivera, Mexican Roman Catholic cardinal (b. 1931)
2020 – Trini Lopez, Mexican American singer and guitarist (b. 1937)
2020 – Sumner Redstone, American billionaire businessman (b. 1923)
Holidays and observances
Christian Feast Day:
Athracht
Clare of Assisi
Fiacre
Gaugericus
John Henry Newman (Church of England)
Philomena
Susanna
Taurinus of Évreux
Tiburtius and Chromatius
August 11 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Flag Day (Pakistan)
Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Chad from France in 1960.
Mountain Day (Japan)
References
External links
Days of the year
August |
2193 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology | Arcology | Arcology, a portmanteau of "architecture" and "ecology", is a field of creating architectural design principles for very densely populated and ecologically low-impact human habitats.
The term was coined in 1969 by architect Paolo Soleri, who believed that a completed arcology would provide space for a variety of residential, commercial, and agricultural facilities while minimizing individual human environmental impact. These structures have been largely hypothetical, as no arcology, even one envisioned by Soleri himself, has yet been built.
The concept has been popularized by various science fiction writers. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle provided a detailed description of an arcology in their 1981 novel Oath of Fealty. William Gibson mainstreamed the term in his seminal 1984 cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, where each corporation has its own self-contained city known as arcologies. More recently, authors such as Peter Hamilton in Neutronium Alchemist and Paolo Bacigalupi in The Water Knife explicitly used arcologies as part of their scenarios. They are often portrayed as self-contained or economically self-sufficient.
Development
An arcology is distinguished from a merely large building in that it is designed to lessen the impact of human habitation on any given ecosystem. It could be self-sustainable, employing all or most of its own available resources for a comfortable life: power, climate control, food production, air and water conservation and purification, sewage treatment, etc. An arcology is designed to make it possible to supply those items for a large population. An arcology would supply and maintain its own municipal or urban infrastructures in order to operate and connect with other urban environments apart from its own.
Arcology was proposed to reduce human impact on natural resources. Arcology designs might apply conventional building and civil engineering techniques in very large, but practical projects in order to achieve pedestrian economies of scale that have proven, post-automobile, to be difficult to achieve in other ways.
Frank Lloyd Wright proposed an early version called Broadacre City although, in contrast to an arcology, his idea is comparatively two-dimensional and depends on a road network. Wright's plan described transportation, agriculture, and commerce systems that would support an economy. Critics said that Wright's solution failed to account for population growth, and assumed a more rigid democracy than the US actually has.
Buckminster Fuller proposed the Old Man River's City project, a domed city with a capacity of 125,000, as a solution to the housing problems in East St. Louis, Illinois.
Paolo Soleri proposed later solutions, and coined the term "arcology". Soleri describes ways of compacting city structures in three dimensions to combat two-dimensional urban sprawl, to economize on transportation and other energy uses. Like Wright, Soleri proposed changes in transportation, agriculture, and commerce. Soleri explored reductions in resource consumption and duplication, land reclamation; he also proposed to eliminate most private transportation. He advocated for greater "frugality" and favored greater use of shared social resources, including public transit (and public libraries).
Similar real-world projects
Arcosanti is an experimental "arcology prototype", a demonstration project under construction in central Arizona since 1970. Designed by Paolo Soleri, its primary purpose is to demonstrate Soleri's personal designs, his application of principles of arcology to create a pedestrian-friendly urban form.
Many cities in the world have proposed projects adhering to the design principles of the arcology concept, like Tokyo, and Dongtan near Shanghai. The Dongtan project may have collapsed, and it failed to open for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010.
McMurdo Station of the United States Antarctic Program and other scientific research stations on Antarctica resemble the popular conception of an arcology as a technologically advanced, relatively self-sufficient human community. The Antarctic research base provides living and entertainment amenities for roughly 3,000 staff who visit each year. Its remoteness and the measures needed to protect its population from the harsh environment give it an insular character. The station is not self-sufficientthe U.S. military delivers 30,000 cubic metres (8,000,000 US gal) of fuel and of supplies and equipment yearly through its Operation Deep Freeze resupply effortbut it is isolated from conventional support networks. Under international treaty, it must avoid damage to the surrounding ecosystem.
Begich Towers operates like a small-scale arcology encompassing nearly all of the population of Whittier, Alaska. The building contains residential housing as well as a police station, grocery, and municipal offices.
Whittier once boasted a second structure known as the Buckner Building. The Buckner Building still stands but was deemed unfit for habitation after the 1969 earthquake.
In popular culture
Most proposals to build real arcologies have failed due to financial, structural or conceptual shortcomings. Arcologies are therefore found primarily in fictional works.
In Robert Silverberg's The World Inside, most of the global population of 75 billion live inside giant skyscrapers, called "urbmons", each of which contains hundreds of thousands of people. The urbmons are arranged in "constellations". Each urbmon is divided into "neighborhoods" of 40 or so floors. All the needs of the inhabitants are provided inside the building – food is grown outside and brought into the building – so the idea of going outside is heretical and can be a sign of madness. The book examines human life when the population density is extremely high.
Another significant example is the 1981 novel Oath of Fealty by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, in which a segment of the population of Los Angeles has moved into an arcology. The plot examines the social changes that result, both inside and outside the arcology. Thus the arcology is not just a plot device but a subject of critique.
In the city-building video game Sim City 2000, self-contained arcologies can be built, reducing the infrastructure needs of the city.
See also
Autonomous building
Bionic architecture
Earthship
Megastructure
Proposed tall buildings and structures
Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid
Underground city
Urban ecology
Vertical farming
References
Notes
Further reading
Soleri, Paolo. Arcology: The City in the Image of Man. 1969: Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press.
External links
Arcology: The City in the Image of Man by Paolo Soleri (full text online)
Arcology.com – useful links
The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson (full text online)
Victory City
A discussion of arcology concepts
Usage of "arcology" vs. "hyperstructure"
Arcology.com ("An arcology in southern China" on front page)
Arcology ("An arcology is a self-contained environment...")
SculptorsWiki: Arcology ("The only arcology yet on Earth...")
Review of Shadowrun: Renraku Arcology ("What's an arcology? A self-contained, largely self-sufficient living, working, recreational structure...")
Megastructures
Exploratory engineering
Environmental design
Human habitats
Planned cities
Urban studies and planning terminology
Emerging technologies
Cyberpunk themes
Architecture related to utopias |
2194 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April%205 | April 5 |
Events
Pre-1600
823 – Lothair I is crowned King of Italy by Pope Paschal I.
919 – The second Fatimid invasion of Egypt begins, when the Fatimid heir-apparent, al-Qa'im bi-Amr Allah, sets out from Raqqada at the head of his army.
1081 – Alexios I Komnenos is crowned Byzantine emperor at Constantinople, bringing the Komnenian dynasty to full power.
1242 – During the Battle on the Ice of Lake Peipus, Russian forces, led by Alexander Nevsky, rebuff an invasion attempt by the Teutonic Knights.
1536 – Royal Entry of Charles V into Rome: The last Roman triumph.
1566 – Two hundred Dutch noblemen, led by Hendrick van Brederode, force themselves into the presence of Margaret of Parma and present the Petition of Compromise, denouncing the Spanish Inquisition in the Seventeen Provinces.
1601–1900
1609 – Daimyō (Lord) Shimazu Tadatsune of the Satsuma Domain in southern Kyūshū, Japan, completes his successful invasion of the Ryūkyū Kingdom in Okinawa.
1614 – In Virginia, Native American Pocahontas marries English colonist John Rolfe.
1621 – The Mayflower sets sail from Plymouth, Massachusetts on a return trip to England.
1792 – United States President George Washington exercises his authority to veto a bill, the first time this power is used in the United States.
1795 – Peace of Basel between France and Prussia is made.
1818 – In the Battle of Maipú, Chile's independence movement, led by Bernardo O'Higgins and José de San Martín, win a decisive victory over Spain, leaving 2,000 Spaniards and 1,000 Chilean patriots dead.
1862 – American Civil War: The Battle of Yorktown begins.
1879 – Chile declares war on Bolivia and Peru, starting the War of the Pacific.
1900 – Archaeologists in Knossos, Crete, discover a large cache of clay tablets with hieroglyphic writing in a script they call Linear B.
1901–present
1902 – A stand box collapses at Ibrox Park (now Ibrox Stadium) in Glasgow, Scotland, which led to the deaths of 25 and injuries to more than 500 supporters during an international association football match between Scotland and England.
1910 – The Transandine Railway connecting Chile and Argentina is inaugurated.
1922 – The American Birth Control League, forerunner of Planned Parenthood, is incorporated.
1932 – Dominion of Newfoundland: Ten thousand rioters seize the Colonial Building leading to the end of self-government.
1933 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs two executive orders: 6101 to establish the Civilian Conservation Corps, and 6102 "forbidding the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion, and Gold Certificates" by U.S. citizens.
1933 – Andorran Revolution: The Young Andorrans occupy the Casa de la Vall and force the government to hold democratic elections with universal male suffrage.
1936 – Tupelo–Gainesville tornado outbreak: An F5 tornado kills 233 in Tupelo, Mississippi.
1942 – World War II: Adolf Hitler issues Fuhrer Directive No. 41 summarizing Case Blue, including the German Sixth Army's planned assault on Stalingrad.
1942 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese Navy launches a carrier-based air attack on Colombo, Ceylon during the Indian Ocean raid. Port and civilian facilities are damaged and the Royal Navy cruisers and are sunk southwest of the island.
1943 – World War II: United States Army Air Forces bomber aircraft accidentally cause more than 900 civilian deaths, including 209 children, and 1,300 wounded among the civilian population of the Belgian town of Mortsel. Their target was the Erla factory one kilometer from the residential area hit.
1945 – Cold War: Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito signs an agreement with the Soviet Union to allow "temporary entry of Soviet troops into Yugoslav territory".
1946 – Soviet troops end their year-long occupation of the Danish island of Bornholm.
1946 – A Fleet Air Arm Vickers Wellington crashes into a residential area in Rabat, Malta during a training exercise, killing all 4 crew members and 16 civilians on the ground.
1949 – A fire in a hospital in Effingham, Illinois, kills 77 people and leads to nationwide fire code improvements in the United States.
1951 – Cold War: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are sentenced to death for spying for the Soviet Union.
1956 – Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro declares himself at war with Cuban President Fulgencio Batista.
1958 – Ripple Rock, an underwater threat to navigation in the Seymour Narrows in Canada is destroyed in one of the largest non-nuclear controlled explosions of the time.
1966 – During the Buddhist Uprising, South Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ personally attempted to lead the capture of the restive city of Đà Nẵng before backing down.
1969 – Vietnam War: Massive antiwar demonstrations occur in many U.S. cities.
1971 – In Sri Lanka, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna launches a revolt against the United Front government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike.
1976 – In China, the April Fifth Movement leads to the Tiananmen Incident.
1977 – The US Supreme Court rules that congressional legislation that diminished the size of the Sioux people's reservation thereby destroyed the tribe's jurisdictional authority over the area in Rosebud Sioux Tribe v. Kneip.
1991 – An ASA EMB 120 crashes in Brunswick, Georgia, killing all 23 aboard including Sen. John Tower and astronaut Sonny Carter.
1992 – Alberto Fujimori, president of Peru, dissolves the Peruvian congress by military force.
1992 – Peace protesters Suada Dilberovic and Olga Sučić are killed on the Vrbanja Bridge in Sarajevo, becoming the first casualties of the Bosnian War.
1998 – In Japan, the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge opens to traffic, becoming the longest bridge span in the world.
1999 – Two Libyans suspected of bringing down Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 are handed over for eventual trial in the Netherlands.
2009 – North Korea launches its controversial Kwangmyŏngsŏng-2 rocket. The satellite passed over mainland Japan, which prompted an immediate reaction from the United Nations Security Council, as well as participating states of Six-party talks.
2010 – Twenty-nine coal miners are killed in an explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia.
2021 – Nguyễn Xuân Phúc took office as President of Vietnam after dismissing the title of Prime Minister.
Births
Pre-1600
1170 – Isabella of Hainault (d. 1190)
1219 – Wonjong of Goryeo, 24th ruler of Goryeo (d. 1274)
1279 – Al-Nuwayri, Egyptian Muslim historian (d. 1333)
1288 – Emperor Go-Fushimi of Japan (d. 1336)
1315 – James III of Majorca (d. 1349)
1365 – William II, Duke of Bavaria (d. 1417)
1472 – Bianca Maria Sforza, Italian wife of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1510)
1521 – Francesco Laparelli, Italian architect (d. 1570)
1523 – Blaise de Vigenère, French cryptographer and diplomat (d. 1596)
1533 – Giulio della Rovere, Italian Catholic Cardinal (d. 1578)
1539 – George Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach (d. 1603)
1549 – Princess Elizabeth of Sweden (d. 1597)
1568 – Pope Urban VIII (d. 1644)
1588 – Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher (d. 1679)
1591 – Frederick Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg (d. 1634)
1595 – John Wilson, English composer and educator (d. 1674)
1601–1900
1604 – Charles IV, Duke of Lorraine (d. 1675)
1616 – Frederick, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken (d. 1661)
1622 – Vincenzo Viviani, Italian mathematician, astronomer, and physicist (d. 1703)
1649 – Elihu Yale, American-English merchant and philanthropist (d. 1721)
1656 – Nikita Demidov, Russian industrialist (d. 1725)
1664 – Élisabeth Thérèse de Lorraine, French noblewoman and Princess of Epinoy (d. 1748)
1674 – Margravine Elisabeth Sophie of Brandenburg, (d. 1748)
1691 – Louis VIII, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt (d. 1768)
1692 – Adrienne Lecouvreur, French actress (d. 1730)
1719 – Axel von Fersen the Elder, Swedish field marshal and politician, Lord Marshal of Sweden (d. 1794)
1726 – Benjamin Harrison V, American politician, planter and merchant (d. 1791)
1727 – Pasquale Anfossi, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1797)
1729 – Frederick Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (d. 1809)
1730 – Jean Baptiste Seroux d'Agincourt, French archaeologist and historian (d. 1814)
1732 – Jean-Honoré Fragonard, French painter and etcher (d. 1806)
1735 – Franziskus Herzan von Harras, Czech Roman Catholic cardinal (d. 1804)
1739 – Philemon Dickinson, American lawyer and politician (d. 1809)
1752 – Sébastien Érard, French instrument maker (d. 1831)
1761 – Sybil Ludington, American heroine of the American Revolutionary War (d. 1839)
1769 – Sir Thomas Hardy, 1st Baronet, English admiral (d. 1839)
1773 – José María Coppinger, governor of Spanish East Florida (d. 1844)
1773 – Duchess Therese of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, (d. 1839)
1777 – Marie Jules César Savigny, French zoologist (d. 1851)
1782 – Wincenty Krasiński, Polish nobleman (d. 1858)
1784 – Louis Spohr, German violinist, composer, and conductor (d. 1859)
1788 – Franz Pforr, German painter (d. 1812)
1793 – Casimir Delavigne, French poet and dramatist (d. 1843)
1793 – Felix de Muelenaere, Belgian politician (d. 1862)
1795 – Henry Havelock, British general (d. 1857)
1799 – Jacques Denys Choisy, Swiss clergyman and botanist (d. 1859)
1801 – Félix Dujardin, French biologist (d. 1860)
1801 – Vincenzo Gioberti, Italian philosopher, publicist and politician (d. 1852)
1804 – Matthias Jakob Schleiden, German botanist (d. 1881)
1809 – Karl Felix Halm, German scholar and critic (d. 1882)
1810 – Sir Henry Rawlinson, British East India Company army officer and politician (d. 1895)
1811 – Jules Dupré, French painter (d. 1889)
1814 – Felix Lichnowsky, Czech soldier and politician (d. 1848)
1822 – Émile Louis Victor de Laveleye, Belgian economist (d. 1892)
1827 – Joseph Lister, English surgeon and academic (d. 1912)
1832 – Jules Ferry, French lawyer and politician, 44th Prime Minister of France (d. 1893)
1834 – Prentice Mulford, American humorist and author (d. 1891)
1834 – Wilhelm Olbers Focke, German medical doctor and botanist (d. 1922)
1834 – Frank R. Stockton, American writer and humorist (d. 1902)
1835 – Vítězslav Hálek, Czech poet, writer, journalist, dramatist and theatre critic. (d. 1874)
1837 – Algernon Charles Swinburne, English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic (d. 1909)
1839 – Robert Smalls, African-American ship's pilot, sea captain, and politician (d. 1915)
1840 – Ghazaros Aghayan, Armenian historian and linguist (d. 1911)
1842 – Hans Hildebrand, Swedish archaeologist (d. 1913)
1845 – Friedrich Sigmund Merkel, German anatomist and histopathologist (d. 1919)
1845 – Jules Cambon, French diplomat (d. 1935)
1846 – Sigmund Exner, Austrian physiologist (d. 1926)
1846 – Henry Wellesley, British peer and politician (d. 1900)
1848 – Thure de Thulstrup, American illustrator (d. 1930)
1848 – Ulrich Wille, Swiss army general (d. 1925)
1850 – Enrico Mazzanti, Italian engineer and cartoonist (d. 1910)
1852 – Émile Billard, French sailor (d. 1930)
1852 – Walter W. Winans, American marksman and sculptor (d. 1920)
1852 – Franz Eckert, German composer and musician (d. 1916)
1856 – Booker T. Washington, African-American educator, essayist and historian (d. 1915)
1857 – Alexander of Battenberg (d. 1893)
1858 – Washington Atlee Burpee, Canadian businessman, founded Burpee Seeds (d. 1915)
1859 – Reinhold Seeberg, German theologian (d. 1935)
1860 – Harry S. Barlow, British tennis player (d. 1917)
1862 – Louis Ganne, French conductor (d. 1923)
1862 – Leo Stern, English cellist (d. 1904)
1863 – Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine (d. 1950)
1867 – Ernest Lewis, British tennis player (d. 1930)
1869 – Sergey Chaplygin, Russian physicist, mathematician, and engineer (d. 1942)
1869 – Albert Roussel, French composer (d. 1937)
1870 – Motobu Chōki, Japanese karateka (d. 1944)
1871 – Stanisław Grabski, Polish economist and politician (d. 1949)
1872 – Samuel Cate Prescott, American microbiologist and chemist (d. 1962)
1873 – Joseph Rheden, Austrian astronomer (d. 1946)
1874 – Emmanuel Célestin Suhard, French Cardinal of the Catholic Church (d. 1949)
1874 – Manuel María Ponce Brousset, President of Peru (d. 1966)
1878 – Albert Champion, French cyclist (d. 1927)
1878 – Georg Misch, German philosopher (d. 1965)
1878 – Paul Weinstein, German high jumper (d. 1964)
1879 – Arthur Berriedale Keith, Scottish lawyer (d. 1944)
1879 – Nikolaus zu Dohna-Schlodien, German naval officer and author (d. 1956)
1880 – Eric Carlberg, Swedish Army officer, diplomat, shooter, fencer and modern pentathlete (d. 1963)
1880 – Vilhelm Carlberg, Swedish Army officer and shooter (d. 1970)
1882 – Song Jiaoren, Chinese revolutionary (d. 1913)
1882 – Natalia Sedova, 2nd wife of Leon Trotsky (d. 1962)
1883 – Walter Huston, Canadian-American actor and singer (d. 1950)
1884 – Ion Inculeț, Bessarabian academic and politician, President of Moldova (d. 1940)
1885 – Dimitrie Cuclin, Romanian composer (d. 1978)
1886 – Gotthelf Bergsträsser, German linguist (d. 1933)
1886 – Frederick Lindemann, British physicist (d. 1957)
1886 – Gustavo Jiménez, Peruvian colonel and politician, 73rd President of Peru (d. 1933)
1887 – William Cowhig, British gymnast (d. 1964)
1889 – Vicente Ferreira Pastinha, Brazilian martial artist (d. 1981)
1890 – Karl Kirk, Danish gymnast (d. 1955)
1890 – William Moore, British track and field athlete (d. 1956)
1891 – Arnold Jackson, English runner, soldier, and lawyer (d. 1972)
1891 – Laura Vicuña, Chilean nun (d. 1904)
1892 – Raymond Bonney, American ice hockey player (d. 1964)
1893 – Frithjof Andersen, Norwegian wrestler (d. 1975)
1893 – Clas Thunberg, Finnish speed skater (d. 1973)
1894 – Lawrence Dale Bell, American industrialist and founder of Bell Aircraft Corporation (d. 1956)
1894 – Hans Hüttig, German SS officer (d. 1980)
1894 – Carl Rudolf Florin, Swedish botanist (d. 1965)
1895 – Mike O'Dowd, American boxer (d. 1957)
1896 – Einar Lundborg, Swedish aviator (d. 1931)
1897 – Hans Schuberth, German politician (d. 1976)
1899 – Alfred Blalock, American surgeon and academic (d. 1964)
1900 – Herbert Bayer, Austrian-American graphic designer, painter, and photographer (d. 1985)
1900 – Roman Steinberg, Estonian wrestler (d. 1939)
1900 – Spencer Tracy, American actor (d. 1967)
1901–present
1901 – Curt Bois, German actor (d. 1991)
1901 – Chester Bowles, American diplomat and ambassador (d. 1986)
1901 – Melvyn Douglas, American actor (d. 1981)
1901 – Doggie Julian, American football, basketball, and baseball player and coach (d. 1967)
1902 – Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Russian-American rabbi (d. 1994)
1903 – Marion Aye, American actress (d. 1951)
1904 – Richard Eberhart, American poet and academic (d. 2005)
1906 – Albert Charles Smith, American botanist (d. 1999)
1906 – Fernando Germani, Italian organist (d. 1998)
1906 – Ted Morgan, New Zealand boxer (d. 1952)
1907 – Sanya Dharmasakti, Thai jurist (d. 2002)
1908 – Bette Davis, American actress (d. 1989)
1908 – Kurt Neumann, German director (d. 1958)
1908 – Jagjivan Ram, Indian politician, 4th Deputy Prime Minister of India (d. 1986)
1908 – Herbert von Karajan, Austrian conductor and manager (d. 1989)
1909 – Albert R. Broccoli, American film producer, co-founded Eon Productions (d. 1996)
1909 – Giacomo Gentilomo, Italian film director and painter (d. 2001)
1909 – Károly Sós, Hungarian footballer and manager (d. 1991)
1909 – Erwin Wegner, German hurdler (d. 1945)
1910 – Sven Andersson, Swedish politician (d. 1987)
1910 – Oronzo Pugliese, Italian football manager (d. 1990)
1911 – Hedi Amara Nouira, Tunisian politician (d. 1993)
1911 – Johnny Revolta, American golfer (d. 1991)
1912 – Jehan Buhan, French fencer (d. 1999)
1912 – Habib Elghanian, Iranian businessman (d. 1979)
1912 – Antonio Ferri, Italian scientist (d. 1975)
1912 – Carlos Guastavino, Argentine composer (d. 2000)
1912 – Makar Honcharenko, Ukrainian footballer and manager (d. 1997)
1912 – John Le Mesurier, English actor (d. 1983)
1912 – István Örkény, Hungarian author and playwright (d. 1979)
1912 – Bill Roberts, English sprinter and soldier (d. 2001)
1913 – Antoni Clavé, Catalan artist (d. 2005)
1913 – Nicolas Grunitzky, 2nd President of Togo (d. 1969)
1913 – Ruth Smith, Faroese artist (d. 1958)
1914 – Felice Borel, Italian footballer (d. 1993)
1916 – Gregory Peck, American actor, political activist, and producer (d. 2003)
1917 – Robert Bloch, American author (d. 1994)
1917 – Frans Gommers, Belgian footballer (d. 1996)
1919 – Lester James Peries, Sri Lankan director, screenwriter, and producer (d. 2018)
1920 – Barend Biesheuvel, Dutch politician, Prime Minister of the Netherlands (d. 2001)
1920 – Arthur Hailey, English-Canadian soldier and author (d. 2004)
1920 – Alfonso Thiele, Turkish-Italian race car driver (d. 1986)
1920 – John Willem Gran, Swedish bishop (d. 2008)
1921 – Christopher Hewett, English actor and theatre director (d. 2001)
1922 – Tom Finney, English footballer (d. 2014)
1922 – Harry Freedman, Polish-Canadian horn player, composer, and educator (d. 2005)
1922 – Andy Linden, American race car driver (d. 1987)
1922 – Gale Storm, American actress and singer (d. 2009)
1923 – Ernest Mandel, German-born Belgian Marxist economist, Trotskyist activist and theorist (d. 1995)
1923 – Michael V. Gazzo, American actor (d. 1995)
1923 – Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, Vietnamese general and politician, 5th President of South Vietnam (d. 2001)
1924 – Igor Borisov, Soviet rower (d. before 2005)
1925 – Janet Rowley, American human geneticist (d. 2013)
1925 – Pierre Nihant, Belgian cyclist (d. 1993)
1926 – Roger Corman, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
1926 – Liang Yusheng, Chinese writer (d. 2009)
1927 – Thanin Kraivichien, Thai lawyer and politician
1927 – Arne Hoel, Norwegian ski jumper (d. 2006)
1928 – Enzo Cannavale, Italian actor (d. 2011)
1928 – Tony Williams, American singer (d. 1992)
1929 – Hugo Claus, Belgian author, poet, and painter (d. 2008)
1929 – Ivar Giaever, Norwegian-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
1929 – Nigel Hawthorne, English actor and producer (d. 2001)
1929 – Joe Meek, English songwriter and producer (d. 1967)
1929 – Mahmoud Mollaghasemi, Iranian wrestler
1930 – Mary Costa, American singer and actress
1930 – Pierre Lhomme, French director of photography (d. 2019)
1931 – Jack Clement, American singer-songwriter and producer (d. 2013)
1931 – Héctor Olivera, Argentine director, producer and screenwriter
1933 – Feridun Buğeker, Turkish footballer (d. 2014)
1933 – Frank Gorshin, American actor (d. 2005)
1933 – Barbara Holland, American author (d. 2010)
1933 – K. Kailasapathy, Sri Lankan journalist and academic (d. 1982)
1934 – John Carey, English author and critic
1934 – Roman Herzog, German lawyer and politician, 7th President of Germany (d. 2017)
1934 – Moise Safra, Brazilian businessman and philanthropist, co-founded Banco Safra (d. 2014)
1934 – Stanley Turrentine, American saxophonist and composer (d. 2000)
1935 – Giovanni Cianfriglia, Italian actor
1935 – Peter Grant, English talent manager (d. 1995)
1935 – Donald Lynden-Bell, English astrophysicist and astronomer (d. 2018)
1935 – Frank Schepke, German rower (d. 2017)
1936 – Ronnie Bucknum, American race car driver (d. 1992)
1936 – Glenn Jordan, American director and producer
1936 – Dragoljub Minić, Yugoslavian chess Grandmaster (d. 2005)
1937 – Joseph Lelyveld, American journalist and author
1937 – Colin Powell, American general and politician, 65th United States Secretary of State (d. 2021)
1937 – Andrzej Schinzel, Polish mathematician (d. 2021)
1937 – Arie Selinger, Israeli volleyball player and manager
1937 – Juan Vicente Lezcano, Paraguayan footballer (d. 2012)
1938 – Colin Bland, Zimbabwean-South African cricketer (d. 2018)
1938 – Mal Colston, Australian educator and politician (d. 2003)
1938 – Nancy Holt, American sculptor and painter (d. 2014)
1938 – Natalya Kustinskaya, Soviet actress (d. 2012)
1939 – Leka I, Crown Prince of Albania (d. 2011)
1939 – Crispian St. Peters, English singer-songwriter (d. 2010)
1939 – Haidar Abu Bakr al-Attas, Prime Minister of Yemen
1939 – Ronald White, American singer-songwriter (d. 1995)
1939 – David Winters, English-American actor, choreographer and producer (d. 2019)
1940 – Tommy Cash, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1940 – Gilles Proulx, Canadian journalist, historian, and radio host
1941 – Michael Moriarty, American-Canadian actor
1941 – Dave Swarbrick, English singer-songwriter and fiddler (d. 2016)
1942 – Allan Clarke, English singer-songwriter
1942 – Pascal Couchepin, Swiss politician
1942 – Juan Gisbert Sr., Spanish tennis player
1942 – Peter Greenaway, Welsh director and screenwriter
1943 – Dean Brown, Australian politician, 41st Premier of South Australia
1943 – Max Gail, American actor and director
1943 – Fighting Harada, Japanese boxer
1943 – Miet Smet, Belgian politician
1943 – Jean-Louis Tauran, French cardinal (d. 2018)
1944 – Willeke van Ammelrooy, Dutch actress and director
1944 – János Martonyi, Hungarian politician
1944 – Evan Parker, British musician
1944 – Douangchay Phichit, Laotian politician (d. 2014)
1944 – Willy Planckaert, Belgian cyclist
1944 – Pedro Rosselló, Puerto Rican physician and politician, 7th Governor of Puerto Rico
1944 – Peter T. King, American soldier, lawyer, and politician
1945 – Ove Bengtson, Swedish tennis player
1945 – Steve Carver, American director and producer (d. 2021)
1945 – Cem Karaca, Turkish musician (d. 2004)
1945 – Tommy Smith, English footballer (d. 2019)
1946 – Jane Asher, English actress
1946 – Julio Ángel Fernández, Uruguayan astronomer
1946 – Björn Granath, Swedish actor (d. 2017)
1946 – Georgi Markov, Bulgarian Greco-Roman wrestler
1947 – Đurđica Bjedov, Yugoslav swimmer
1947 – Willy Chirino, Cuban-American musician
1947 – Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Filipino academic and politician, 14th President of the Philippines
1947 – Ramón Mifflin, Peruvian footballer
1947 – Virendra Sharma, Indian-English lawyer and politician
1948 – Pierre-Albert Chapuisat, Swiss footballer
1948 – Dave Holland, English drummer (d. 2018)
1948 – Roy McFarland, English footballer and manager
1949 – Stanley Dziedzic, American wrestler
1949 – Larry Franco, American film producer
1949 – Judith Resnik, American engineer and astronaut (d. 1986)
1950 – Ann C. Crispin, American writer (d. 2013)
1950 – Franklin Chang Díaz, Costa Rican-Chinese American astronaut and physicist
1950 – Agnetha Fältskog, Swedish singer-songwriter and producer
1950 – Toshiko Fujita, Japanese actress, singer and narrator (d. 2018)
1950 – Miki Manojlović, Serbian actor
1951 – Les Binks, Irish drummer and songwriter
1951 – Yevgeniy Gavrilenko, Belarusian hurdler
1951 – Nedim Gürsel, Turkish writer
1951 – Dean Kamen, American inventor and businessman, founded Segway Inc.
1951 – Dave McArtney, New Zealand singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2013)
1951 – Ubol Ratana, Thai Princess
1952 – Alfie Conn, Scottish international footballer
1952 – John C. Dvorak, American author and editor
1952 – Sandy Mayer, American tennis player
1952 – Dennis Mortimer, English footballer
1952 – Mitch Pileggi, American actor
1953 – Frank Gaffney, American journalist and radio host
1953 – Keiko Han, Japanese actress
1953 – Tae Jin-ah, South Korean singer
1953 – Raleb Majadele, Israeli politician
1953 – Ian Swales, English accountant and politician
1954 – Guy Bertrand, Canadian linguist and radio host
1954 – Peter Case, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1954 – Mohamed Ben Mouza, Tunisian footballer
1954 – Stan Ridgway, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1954 – Yoshiichi Watanabe, Japanese footballer
1955 – Charlotte de Turckheim, French actress, producer, and screenwriter
1955 – Ricardo Ferrero, Argentine footballer (d. 2015)
1955 – Christian Gourcuff, French footballer and manager
1955 – Anthony Horowitz, English author and screenwriter
1955 – Bernard Longley, English prelate
1955 – Akira Toriyama, Japanese illustrator
1955 – Takayoshi Yamano, Japanese footballer
1956 – Diamond Dallas Page, American wrestler and actor
1956 – Leonid Fedun, Russian businessman
1956 – Reid Ribble, American politician
1957 – Sebastian Adayanthrath, Indian bishop
1957 – Karin Roßley, German hurdler
1958 – Kevin Dann, Australian rugby league player (d. 2021)
1958 – Henrik Dettmann, Finnish basketball coach
1958 – Ryoichi Kawakatsu, Japanese footballer
1958 – Johan Kriek, South African-American tennis player
1958 – Daniel Schneidermann, French journalist
1958 – Lasantha Wickrematunge, Sri Lankan lawyer and journalist (d. 2009)
1959 – Paul Chung, Hong Kong actor and host (d. 1989)
1960 – Asteris Koutoulas, Romanian-German record producer, manager, and author
1960 – Larry McCray, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1960 – Ian Redford, Scottish footballer and manager (d. 2014)
1960 – Hiromi Taniguchi, Japanese long-distance runner
1960 – Adnan Terzić, Bosnian politician
1961 – Andrea Arnold, English filmmaker and actress
1961 – Anna Caterina Antonacci, Italian soprano
1961 – Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, Bahraini-Danish human rights activist
1961 – Lisa Zane, American actress and singer
1962 – Lana Clarkson, American actress and model (d. 2003)
1962 – Sara Danius, Swedish scholar of literature and aesthetics (d. 2019)
1962 – Richard Gough, Swedish born Scottish international footballer
1962 – Arild Monsen, Norwegian cross-country skier
1962 – Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, Russian businessman and politician, 1st President of Kalmykia
1963 – Arthur Adams, American comic book artist and writer
1964 – Neil Eckersley, British judoka
1964 – Vakhtang Iagorashvili, Soviet modern pentathlete
1964 – Levon Julfalakyan, Soviet Armenian Greco-Roman wrestler
1964 – Marius Lăcătuș, Romanian footballer and coach
1965 – Aykut Kocaman, Turkish footballer and manager
1965 – Lang Tzu-yun, Taiwanese actress
1965 – Elizabeth McIntyre, American freestyle skier
1965 – Svetlana Paramygina, Belarusian biathlete
1966 – Yoon Hyun, South Korean judoka
1966 – Mike McCready, American guitarist and songwriter
1966 – Peter Overton, English-Australian journalist and television host
1967 – Troy Gentry, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2017)
1967 – Franck Silvestre, French footballer
1967 – Erland Johnsen, Norwegian footballer
1967 – Laima Zilporytė, Soviet cyclist
1968 – Paula Cole, American singer-songwriter and pianist
1969 – Dinos Angelidis, Greek basketball player
1969 – Viatcheslav Djavanian, Russian cyclist
1969 – Pontus Kåmark, Swedish footballer
1969 – Pavlo Khnykin, Ukrainian swimmer
1969 – Tomislav Piplica, Bosnian footballer and manager
1969 – Ravindra Prabhat, Indian writer and journalist
1970 – Soheil Ayari, French race car driver
1970 – Valérie Bonneton, French actress
1970 – Diamond D, American hip hop producer
1970 – Petar Genov, Bulgarian chess grandmaster
1970 – Thea Gill, Canadian actress
1970 – Miho Hatori, Japanese singer-songwriter
1970 – Irina Timofeyeva, Russian long-distance runner
1971 – Dong Abay, Filipino singer-songwriter and guitarist
1971 – Krista Allen, American actress
1971 – Austin Berry, Costa Rican footballer
1971 – Simona Cavallari, Italian actress
1971 – Victoria Hamilton, English actress
1971 – Nelson Parraguez, Chilean footballer
1971 – Kim Soo-nyung, South Korean archer
1972 – Nima Arkani-Hamed, American-Canadian theoretical physicist
1972 – Tom Coronel, Dutch race car driver
1972 – Paul Okon, Australian footballer and manager
1972 – Duncan Spencer, English cricketer
1972 – Yasuhiro Takemoto, Japanese animator and director (d. 2019)
1972 – Junko Takeuchi, Japanese actress
1973 – Élodie Bouchez, French-American actress
1973 – Brendan Cannon, Australian rugby player
1973 – Lidia Trettel, Italian snowboarder
1973 – Pharrell Williams, American singer, songwriter and rapper
1974 – Sandra Bagarić, Croatian opera singer and actress
1974 – Julien Boutter, French tennis player
1974 – Katja Holanti, Finnish biathlete
1974 – Oleg Khodkov, Russian handball player
1974 – Ariel López, Argentine footballer
1974 – Lukas Ridgeston, Slovak actor and director
1974 – Vyacheslav Voronin, Russian high jumper
1975 – Sarah Baldock, English organist and conductor
1975 – John Hartson, Welsh footballer and coach
1975 – Juicy J, American rapper and producer
1975 – Serhiy Klymentiev, Ukrainian ice hockey player
1975 – Caitlin Moran, English journalist, author, and critic
1975 – Marcos Vales, Spanish footballer
1975 – Shammond Williams, American basketball player and coach
1976 – Luis de Agustini, Uruguayan footballer
1976 – Péter Biros, Hungarian water polo player
1976 – Sterling K. Brown, American actor
1976 – Aleksei Budõlin, Estonian judoka
1976 – Simone Inzaghi, Italian footballer
1976 – Fernando Morientes, Spanish footballer and coach
1976 – Natascha Ragosina, Russian boxer
1976 – Henrik Stenson, Swedish golfer
1976 – Valeria Straneo, Italian long-distance runner
1976 – Indrek Tobreluts, Estonian biathlete
1976 – Anouska van der Zee, Dutch cyclist
1977 – Jonathan Erlich, Israeli tennis player
1977 – Trevor Letowski, Canadian ice hockey player and coach
1977 – Daniel Majstorović, Swedish footballer
1978 – Dwain Chambers, British track sprinter
1978 – Marcone Amaral Costa, Qatari footballer
1978 – Tarek El-Said, Egyptian footballer
1978 – Jairo Patiño, Colombian footballer
1978 – Sohyang, South Korean singer
1978 – Stephen Jackson, American basketball player
1978 – Arnaud Tournant, French cyclist
1978 – Franziska van Almsick, German swimmer
1978 – Günther Weidlinger, Austrian long-distance runner
1979 – Vlada Avramov, Serbian footballer
1979 – Josh Boone, American screenwriter and director
1979 – Song Dae-nam, South Korean judoka
1979 – Timo Hildebrand, German footballer
1979 – Imany, French singer
1979 – Barel Mouko, Congolese footballer
1979 – Cesare Natali, Italian footballer
1979 – Mitsuo Ogasawara, Japanese footballer
1979 – Alexander Resch, German luger
1979 – Andrius Velička, Lithuanian footballer
1979 – Dante Wesley, American football player
1979 – Chen Yanqing, Chinese weightlifter
1980 – Matt Bonner, American basketball player
1980 – Alberta Brianti, Italian tennis player
1980 – Rafael Cavalcante, Brazilian mixed martial artist
1980 – David Chocarro, Argentinian baseball player and actor
1980 – Mike Glumac, Canadian ice hockey player
1980 – Mario Kasun, Croatian basketball player
1980 – Lee Jae-won, South Korean DJ and singer
1980 – Joris Mathijsen, Dutch footballer
1980 – Rasmus Quist Hansen, Danish rower
1980 – Odlanier Solís, Cuban boxer
1981 – Matthew Emmons, American rifle shooter
1981 – Michael A. Monsoor, American sailor, Medal of Honor recipient (d. 2006)
1981 – Mariqueen Maandig, Filipino-American musician and singer-songwriter
1981 – Daba Modibo Keïta, Malian taekwondo athlete
1981 – Marissa Nadler, American musician
1981 – Tom Riley, English actor and producer
1981 – Mompati Thuma, Botswana footballer
1981 – Pieter Weening, Dutch cyclist
1982 – Hayley Atwell, English-American actress
1982 – Matheus Coradini Vivian, Brazilian footballer
1982 – Thomas Hitzlsperger, German footballer
1982 – Kelly Pavlik, American boxer
1982 – Matt Pickens, American soccer player
1982 – Alexandre Prémat, French race car driver
1982 – Danylo Sapunov, Ukrainian-Kazakhstani triathlete
1982 – Hubert Schwab, Swiss cyclist
1982 – Marcel Seip, Dutch former footballer
1983 – Jaime Castrillón, Colombian footballer
1983 – Jorge Andrés Martínez, Uruguayan footballer
1983 – Brock Radunske, Canadian-South Korean ice hockey player
1983 – Yohann Sangaré, French basketball player
1983 – Cécile Storti, French cross-country skier
1983 – Shikha Uberoi, Indian-American tennis player
1984 – Marshall Allman, American actor
1984 – Aram Mp3, Armenian singer and comedian
1984 – Rune Brattsveen, Norwegian biathlete
1984 – Alexei Glukhov, Russian ice hockey player
1984 – Maartje Goderie, Dutch field hockey player
1984 – Darija Jurak, Croatian tennis player
1984 – Dejan Kelhar, Slovenian footballer
1984 – Dmitry Kozonchuk, Russian cyclist
1984 – Shin Min-a, South Korean actress
1984 – Jess Sum, Hong Kong actress
1984 – Peter Penz, Austrian luger
1984 – Samuele Preisig, Swiss footballer
1984 – Cristian Săpunaru, Romanian footballer
1984 – Fabio Vitaioli, San Marinese footballer
1984 – Kisho Yano, Japanese footballer
1984 – Saba Qamar, Pakistani actress-model
1985 – Daniel Congré, French footballer
1985 – Erwin l'Ami, Dutch chess player
1985 – Jolanda Keizer, Dutch heptathlete
1985 – Sergey Khachatryan, Armenian violinist
1985 – Linas Pilibaitis, Lithuanian footballer
1985 – Jan Smeets, Dutch chess grandmaster
1985 – Kristof Vandewalle, Belgian cyclist
1986 – Anna Sophia Berglund, American model and actress
1986 – Anzor Boltukayev, Chechen wrestler
1986 – Diego Chará, Colombian footballer
1986 – Charlotte Flair, American wrestler, author and actress
1986 – Róbert Kasza, Hungarian Modern pentathlete
1986 – Eetu Muinonen, Finnish footballer
1986 – Manuel Ruz, Spanish footballer
1986 – Albert Selimov, Azerbaijani boxer
1987 – Max Grün, German footballer
1987 – Balázs Hárai, Hungarian water polo player
1987 – Anton Kokorin, Russian sprint athlete
1987 – Fyodor Kudryashov, Russian footballer
1987 – Etiënne Reijnen, Dutch footballer
1988 – Gerson Acevedo, Chilean footballer
1988 – Teresa Almeida, Angolan handball player
1988 – Quade Cooper, New Zealand-Australian rugby player and boxer
1988 – Jonathan Davies, Welsh rugby union player
1988 – Gevorg Ghazaryan, Armenian footballer
1988 – Alisha Glass, American ex-indoor volleyball player
1988 – Vurğun Hüseynov, Azerbaijani footballer
1988 – Matthias Jaissle, German footballer and manager
1988 – Jon Kwang-ik, North Korean footballer
1988 – Christopher Papamichalopoulos, Cypriot skier
1988 – Zack Smith, Canadian ice hockey player
1988 – Pape Sy, French basketball player
1988 – Alexey Volkov, Russian biathlete
1989 – Kader Amadou, Nigerien footballer
1989 – Yémi Apithy, Beninese fencer
1989 – Liemarvin Bonevacia, Dutch sprinter
1989 – Freddie Fox, English actor
1989 – Emre Güral, Turkish footballer
1989 – Justin Holiday, American basketball player
1989 – Rachel Homan, Canadian curler
1989 – Lily James, English actress
1989 – Trevor Marsicano, American speed skater
1989 – Jonathan Rossini, Swiss footballer
1989 – Kiki Sukezane, Japanese actress
1989 – Sosuke Takatani, Japanese wrestler
1990 – Amer Said Al-Shatri, Omani footballer
1990 – Alex Cuthbert, Welsh rugby player
1990 – Patrick Dangerfield, Australian footballer
1990 – Fredy Hinestroza, Colombian footballer
1990 – Chen Huijia, Chinese swimmer
1990 – Haruma Miura, Japanese actor and singer (d. 2020)
1990 – Ismaeel Mohammad, Qatari footballer
1990 – Iryna Pamialova, Belarusian canoeist
1990 – Jakub Sedláček, Czech ice hockey player
1990 – Sercan Yıldırım, Turkish footballer
1990 – Género Zeefuik, Dutch footballer
1991 – Yassine Bounou, Moroccan footballer
1991 – Nathaniel Clyne, English footballer
1991 – Adriano Grimaldi, Italian-German footballer
1991 – Joël Mall, Swiss footballer
1991 – Guilherme dos Santos Torres, Brazilian footballer
1992 – Emmalyn Estrada, Canadian singer-songwriter and dancer
1992 – Shintaro Kurumaya, Japanese footballer
1992 – Kaveh Rezaei, Iranian footballer
1992 – Dmytro Ryzhuk, Ukrainian footballer
1993 – Andreas Bouchalakis, Greek footballer
1993 – Maya DiRado, American swimmer
1993 – Laura Feiersinger, Austrian footballer
1993 – Benjamin Garcia, French rugby league player
1993 – Scottie Wilbekin, American-Turkish basketball player
1994 – Mateusz Bieniek, Polish volleyball player
1994 – Edem Rjaïbi, Tunisian footballer
1994 – Richard Sánchez, Mexican footballer
1995 – Viliame Kikau, Fijian rugby league player
1995 – Sei Muroya, Japanese footballer
1995 – Gleb Rassadkin, Belarusian footballer
1995 – Sebastian Starke Hedlund, Swedish footballer
1996 – Nicolas Beer, Danish race car driver
1996 – Raouf Benguit, Algerian footballer
1997 – Borja Mayoral, Spanish footballer
2000 – Ayush Mahesh Khedekar, Indian actor
2001 – Thylane Blondeau, French model and actress
Deaths
Pre-1600
517 – Timothy I, Byzantine patriarch
582 – Eutychius, Byzantine patriarch
584 – Ruadán of Lorrha, Irish abbot
828 – Nikephoros I, Byzantine patriarch
902 – Al-Mu'tadid, Abbasid caliph
1168 – Robert de Beaumont, 2nd Earl of Leicester, English politician (b. 1104)
1183 – Ramon Berenguer III, Spanish count of Cerdanya and Provence
1205 – Isabella I of Jerusalem, queen regent of Jerusalem (b. 1172)
1258 – Juliana of Liège, Belgian canoness and saint
1308 – Ivan Kőszegi, Hungarian baron and oligarch
1325 – Ralph de Monthermer, 1st Baron of Monthermer and Earl of Gloucester (b. c.1270)
1419 – Vincent Ferrer, Spanish missionary and saint (b. 1350)
1431 – Bernard I, margrave of Baden-Baden (b. 1364)
1512 – Lazzaro Bastiani, Italian painter (b. 1429)
1534 – Jan Matthys, Dutch anabaptist reformer
1594 – Catherine of Palma, Spanish nun (b. 1533)
1601–1900
1612 – Diana Scultori, Italian engraver
1617 – Alonso Lobo, Spanish composer (b. 1555)
1626 – Anna Koltovskaya, Russian tsarina
1673 – François Caron, Belgian-French explorer and politician, 8th Governor of Formosa (b. 1600)
1674 – George Frederick, prince of Nassau-Siegen (b. 1606)
1679 – Anne Geneviève de Bourbon, French princess (b. 1619)
1684 – William Brouncker, English mathematician (b. 1620)
1684 – Karl Eusebius, prince of Liechtenstein (b. 1611)
1693 – Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, French noblewoman (b. 1627)
1693 – Philip William August, German nobleman (b. 1668)
1695 – George Savile, English politician, Lord President of the Council (b. 1633)
1697 – Charles XI, king of Sweden (b. 1655)
1704 – Christian Ulrich I, German nobleman and Duke of Württemberg-Oels (b. 1652)
1708 – Christian Heinrich, German prince and member of the House of Hohenzollern (b. 1661)
1709 – Roger de Piles, French painter, engraver, art critic and diplomat (b. 1635)
1712 – Jan Luyken, Dutch poet, illustrator and engraver (b. 1649)
1717 – Jean Jouvenet, French painter (b. 1647)
1723 – Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, Austrian architect, sculptor and historian (b. 1656)
1735 – William Derham, English minister and philosopher (b. 1657)
1751 – Frederick I, prince consort and king of Sweden (b. 1676)
1765 – Edward Young, English poet and author (b. 1683)
1767 – Princess Charlotte Wilhelmine of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, German princess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (b. 1685)
1768 – Egidio Forcellini, Italian philologist (b. 1688)
1769 – Marc-Antoine Laugier, Jesuit priest (b. 1713)
1794 – Georges Danton, French lawyer and politician, French Minister of Justice (b. 1759)
1794 – François Chabot, French politician (b. 1756)
1794 – Camille Desmoulins, French journalist, lawyer, and politician (b. 1760)
1794 – Fabre d'Églantine, French actor, dramatist, poet and politician (b. 1750)
1794 – Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles, French judge and politician (b. 1759)
1794 – Pierre Philippeaux, French lawyer (b. 1754)
1794 – François Joseph Westermann, French general (b. 1751)
1799 – Johann Christoph Gatterer, German historian (b. 1727)
1804 – Jean-Charles Pichegru, French general (b. 1761)
1808 – Johann Georg Wille, German engraver (b. 1715)
1830 – Richard Chenevix, Irish chemist and playwright (b. 1774)
1831 – Pierre Léonard Vander Linden, Belgian entomologist (b. 1797)
1842 – Shah Shujah Durrani, 5th Emir of Afghanistan (b. 1785)
1852 – Prince Felix of Schwarzenberg, (b. 1800)
1861 – Ferdinand Joachimsthal, German mathematician (b. 1818)
1862 – Barend Cornelis Koekkoek, Dutch artist (b. 1803)
1865 – Manfredo Fanti, Italian general (b. 1806)
1866 – Thomas Hodgkin, British physician (b. 1798)
1868 – Karel Purkyně, Czech painter (b. 1834)
1871 – Paolo Savi, Italian geologist and ornithologist (b. 1798)
1872 – Paul-Auguste-Ernest Laugier, French astronomer (b. 1812)
1873 – Milivoje Blaznavac, Serbian soldier and politician (b. 1824)
1882 – Pierre Guillaume Frédéric le Play, (b. 1806)
1888 – Vsevolod Garshin, Russian author (b. 1855)
1891 – Johann Hermann Bauer, (b. 1861)
1900 – Joseph Bertrand, French mathematician, economist, and academic (b. 1822)
1900 – Osman Nuri Pasha, Ottoman field marshal and the hero of the Siege of Plevna in 1877 (b. 1832)
1901–present
1901 – Angelo Messedaglia, Italian social scientist and statistician (b. 1820)
1902 – Hans Ernst August Buchner, German bacteriologist (b. 1850)
1904 – Ernst Leopold, 4th Prince of Leiningen (b. 1830)
1904 – Frances Power Cobbe, Irish writer (b. 1822)
1906 – Eastman Johnson, American painter (b. 1824)
1914 – Bernard Borggreve, German forestry scientist (b. 1836)
1916 – Maksim Kovalevsky, Russian sociologist (b. 1851)
1918 – George Tupou II, King of Tonga (b. 1874)
1918 – Paul Vidal de La Blache, French geographer (b. 1845)
1920 – Laurent Marqueste, French sculptor (b. 1848)
1921 – Alphons Diepenbrock, Dutch composer (b. 1862)
1921 – Sophie Elkan, Swedish-Jewish writer and translator (b. 1853)
1923 – George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, English archaeologist and businessman (b. 1866)
1924 – Victor Hensen, German zoologist (b. 1835)
1928 – Roy Kilner, English cricketer and soldier (b. 1890)
1928 – Viktor Oliva, Czech painter and illustrator (b. 1861)
1929 – Francis Aidan Gasquet, English Benedictine monk (b. 1846)
1929 – Ludwig von Sybel, German archeologist (b. 1846)
1932 – María Blanchard, Spanish painter (b. 1881)
1933 – Earl Derr Biggers, American novelist and playwright (b. 1884)
1933 – Hjalmar Mellin, Finnish mathematician and functional theorist (b. 1854)
1934 – Salvatore Di Giacomo, Italian poet, playwright, songwriter and fascist intellectual (b. 1860)
1934 – Jiro Sato, Japanese tennis player (b. 1908)
1935 – Achille Locatelli, Roman Catholic cardinal (b. 1856)
1935 – Emil Młynarski, Polish conductor, violinist, composer, and pedagogue (b. 1870)
1935 – Franz von Vecsey, Hungarian violinist and composer (b. 1893)
1936 – Chandler Egan, American golfer and architect (b. 1884)
1937 – Gustav Adolf Deissmann, (b. 1866)
1937 – José Benlliure y Gil, Spanish painter (b. 1858)
1938 – Helena Westermarck, Finnish artist and writer (b. 1857)
1938 – Verner Lehtimäki, Finnish revolutionary (b. 1890)
1940 – Charles Freer Andrews, English-Indian priest, missionary, and educator (b. 1871)
1940 – Robert Maillart, Swiss civil engineer (b. 1872)
1940 – Jay O'Brien, American bobsledder (b. 1883)
1940 – Song Zheyuan, Chinese general (b. 1885)
1941 – Parvin E'tesami, Persian poet (b. 1907)
1941 – Nigel Gresley, Scottish-English engineer (b. 1876)
1941 – Franciszek Kleeberg, Polish general (b. 1888)
1945 – Heinrich Borgmann, German officer (b. 1912)
1945 – Karl-Otto Koch, German SS officer (b. 1897)
1946 – Vincent Youmans, American composer and producer (b. 1898)
1947 – Bernhard Pankok, German painter, artist and architect (b. 1872)
1947 – Elis Strömgren, Swedish-Danish astronomer (b. 1870)
1948 – Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, American socialite and philanthropist (b. 1874)
1949 – Erich Zeigner, Prime Minister of Saxony (b. 1886)
1950 – Hiroshi Yoshida, Japanese painter (b. 1876)
1952 – Agnes Morton, British tennis player (b.
1954 – Princess Märtha of Sweden, (b. 1901)
1954 – Claude Delvincourt, French pianist and composer (b. 1888)
1955 – Tibor Szele, Hungarian mathematician (b. 1918)
1956 – William Titt, British gymnast (b. 1881)
1958 – Prince Ferdinand of Bavaria, (b. 1884)
1958 – Ásgrímur Jónsson, Icelandic painter (b. 1876)
1958 – Isidora Sekulić, Serbian writer (b. 1877)
1961 – Nikolai Kryukov, Russian composer (b. 1908)
1962 – Boo Kullberg, Swedish gymnast (b. 1889)
1963 – Jacobus Oud, Dutch architect (b. 1890)
1964 – James Chapin, American ornithologist (b. 1889)
1964 – Aloïse Corbaz, Swiss artist (b. 1886)
1964 – Douglas MacArthur, American general (b. 1880)
1965 – Pedro Sernagiotto, Italian-Brazilian footballer (b. 1908)
1965 – Sándor Szalay, Hungarian figure skater (b. 1893)
1967 – Mischa Elman, Ukrainian-American violinist (b. 1891)
1967 – Johan Falkberget, Norwegian author (b. 1879)
1967 – Hermann Joseph Muller, American geneticist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1890)
1967 – Herbert Johnston, British runner (b. 1902)
1968 – Félix Couchoro, Togolese writer (b. 1900)
1968 – Lajos Csordás, Hungarian footballer
1968 – Giuseppe Paris, Italian gymnast (b. 1895)
1969 – Alberto Bonucci, Italian actor and director (b. 1918)
1969 – Rómulo Gallegos, Venezuelan novelist and politician (b. 1917)
1969 – Ain-Ervin Mere, Estonian SS officer (b. 1903)
1970 – Louisa Bolus, South African botanist and taxonomist (b. 1877)
1970 – Alfred Sturtevant, American geneticist and academic (b. 1891)
1970 – Karl von Spreti, German diplomat (b. 1907)
1971 – José Cubiles, Spanish pianist and conductor (b. 1894)
1973 – David Murray, British race car driver (b. 1909)
1973 – Isabel Jewell, American actress and singer (b. 1907)
1973 – Alla Tarasova, Russian ballerina (b. 1898)
1974 – Bino Bini, Italian fencer (b. 1900)
1974 – A. Y. Jackson, Canadian painter (b. 1882)
1975 – Tell Berna, American middle and long-distance runner (b. 1891)
1975 – Victor Marijnen, Dutch politician (b. 1917)
1975 – Chiang Kai-shek, Chinese general and politician, 1st President of the Republic of China (b. 1887)
1975 – Harold Osborn, American track and fielder (b. 1899)
1976 – Howard Hughes, American pilot, engineer, and director (b. 1905)
1976 – Wilder Penfield, American-Canadian surgeon and academic (b. 1891)
1976 – Harry Wyld, British cyclist (b. 1900)
1977 – Carlos Prío Socarrás, President of Cuba, (b. 1903)
1977 – Yuri Zavadsky, Russian actor and director (b. 1894)
1981 – Émile Hanse, Belgian footballer (b. 1892)
1981 – Bob Hite, American singer-songwriter (b. 1945)
1981 – Pinchus Kremegne, French artist (b. 1890)
1982 – Abe Fortas, American lawyer and jurist (b. 1910)
1984 – Hans Lunding, Danish military officer (b. 1899)
1984 – Giuseppe Tucci, Italian scholar of oriental cultures (b. 1894)
1986 – Manly Wade Wellman, American writer (b. 1903)
1987 – Leabua Jonathan, 2nd Prime Minister of Lesotho (b. 1914)
1988 – Alf Kjellin, Swedish actor and director (b. 1920)
1989 – Frank Foss, American pole vaulter (b. 1895)
1989 – Karel Zeman, Czech director, artist, production designer and animator (b. 1910)
1991 – Sonny Carter, American soccer player, physician, and astronaut (b. 1947)
1991 – Jay Miller, American basketball player (b. 1943)
1991 – Jiří Mucha, Czech journalist, writer and screenwriter (b. 1915)
1991 – William Sidney, 1st Viscount De L'Isle (b. 1909)
1991 – John Tower, American soldier, academic, and politician (b. 1925)
1992 – Takeshi Inoue, Japanese footballer (b. 1928)
1992 – Molly Picon, American actress (b. 1898)
1992 – Sam Walton, American businessman, founded Walmart and Sam's Club (b. 1918)
1993 – Divya Bharti, Indian actress (b. 1974)
1994 – Kurt Cobain, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1967)
1995 – Nicolaas Cortlever, Dutch chess player (b. 1915)
1995 – Emilio Greco, Italian sculptor and engraver (b. 1913)
1995 – Christian Pineau, French Resistance fighter (b. 1904)
1996 – Charlene Holt, American actress (b. 1928)
1997 – Allen Ginsberg, American poet (b. 1926)
1998 – Frederick Charles Frank, British theoretical physicist (b. 1911)
1998 – Cozy Powell, English drummer (b. 1947)
1999 – Giulio Einaudi, Italian book publisher (b. 1912)
2000 – Heinrich Müller, Austrian footballer (b. 1909)
2000 – Lee Petty, American race car driver (b. 1914)
2001 – Aldo Olivieri, Italian footballer (b. 1910)
2002 – Layne Staley, American singer-songwriter (b. 1967)
2002 – Kim Won-gyun, North Korean composer and politician (b. 1917)
2003 – Keizo Morishita, Japanese painter (b. 1944)
2004 – Fernand Goyvaerts, Belgian footballer (b. 1938)
2004 – Sławomir Rawicz, Polish lieutenant (b. 1915)
2004 – Heiner Zieschang, German mathematician and academic (b. 1936)
2005 – Saul Bellow, Canadian-American novelist, essayist and short story writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1915)
2005 – Robert Borg, American military officer and equestrian (b. 1913)
2005 – Chung Nam-sik, South Korean footballer (b. 1917)
2006 – Allan Kaprow, American painter and educator (b. 1927)
2006 – Gene Pitney, American singer-songwriter (b. 1941)
2006 – Yevgeny Seredin, Russian swimmer (b. 1958)
2006 – Pasquale Macchi, Roman Catholic archbishop (b. 1923)
2007 – Maria Gripe, Swedish journalist and author (b. 1923)
2007 – Leela Majumdar, Indian author and academic (b. 1908)
2007 – Werner Maser, German historian and journalist (b. 1922)
2007 – Mark St. John, American guitarist (b. 1956)
2007 – Thomas Stoltz Harvey, American pathologist (b. 1912)
2008 – Charlton Heston, American actor, director, and political activist (b. 1923)
2009 – I. J. Good, British mathematician (b. 1916)
2010 – Vitaly Sevastyanov, Soviet cosmonaut and engineer (b. 1935)
2011 – Baruch Samuel Blumberg, American physician and geneticist (b. 1925)
2011 – Ange-Félix Patassé, Central African politician (b. 1937)
2012 – Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, German designer (b. 1935)
2012 – Pedro Bartolomé Benoit, Dominican Republican politician military officer
2012 – Jim Marshall, English businessman, founded Marshall Amplification (b. 1923)
2012 – Barney McKenna, Irish musician (b. 1939)
2012 – Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawian economist and politician, 3rd President of Malawi (b. 1934)
2013 – Regina Bianchi, Italian actress (b. 1921)
2013 – Piero de Palma, Italian tenor and actor (b. 1924)
2014 – Alan Davie, Scottish saxophonist and painter (b. 1920)
2014 – Mariano Díaz, Spanish cyclist (b. 1939)
2014 – Peter Matthiessen, American novelist, short story writer, editor, co-founded The Paris Review (b. 1927)
2014 – John Pinette, American comedian (b. 1964)
2014 – José Wilker, Brazilian actor, director, and producer (b. 1947)
2015 – Fredric Brandt, American dermatologist and author (b. 1949)
2015 – Juan Carlos Cáceres, Argentinian singer and pianist (b. 1936)
2016 – Koço Kasapoğlu, Turkish footballer (b. 1936)
2017 – Attilio Benfatto, Italian cyclist (b. 1943)
2017 – Arthur Bisguier, American chess Grandmaster (b. 1929)
2017 – Paul G. Comba, Italian-American computer scientist and astronomer (b. 1926)
2017 – Makoto Ōoka, Japanese poet and literary critic (b. 1931)
2017 – Paul O'Neill, American rock composer and producer (b. 1956)
2017 – Tim Parnell, British race car driver (b. 1932)
2017 – Memè Perlini, Italian actor and director (b. 1947)
2017 – Atanase Sciotnic, Romanian sprint canoeist (b. 1942)
2017 – Ilkka Sinisalo, Finnish ice hockey player (b. 1958)
2018 – Isao Takahata, Japanese director (b. 1935)
2019 – Sydney Brenner, South African biologist (b. 1927)
2021 – Paul Ritter, English actor (b. 1966)
Holidays and observances
Christian feast day:
Albert of Montecorvino
Derfel Gadarn
Æthelburh of Kent
Gerald of Sauve-Majeure
Juliana of Liège
Maria Crescentia Höss
Blessed Mariano de la Mata
Pandita Mary Ramabai (Episcopal Church (USA))
Ruadhán of Lorrha
Vincent Ferrer
April 5 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Cold Food Festival, held on April 4 if it is a leap year (China); and its related observances:
Earliest day on which Sham el-Nessim can fall, while May 9 is the latest; celebrated on Monday after the Orthodox Easter (Egypt)
Children's Day (Palestinian territories)
Sikmogil (South Korea)
National Maritime Day is observed in India, in commemoration of the first voyage of SS Loyalty of the Scindia Steam Navigation Company Ltd. in 1919.
Other
April the Fifth (1929–1954), British Thoroughbred racehorse
(ends 5 April)
References
External links
BBC: On This Day
Historical Events on April 5
Today in Canadian History
Days of the year
April |
2195 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April%2020 | April 20 |
Events
Pre-1600
1303 – The Sapienza University of Rome is instituted by a bull of Pope Boniface VIII.
1453 – Three Genoese galleys and a Byzantine blockade runner fight their way through an Ottoman blockading fleet a few weeks before the fall of Constantinople.
1496 – After his return from the New World Christopher Columbus entered the court of his sponsors King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. For more an hour, the sovereigns besieged the seaman with questions.
1534 – Jacques Cartier begins his first voyage to what is today the east coast of Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador.
1535 – The sun dog phenomenon is observed over Stockholm, as later depicted in the famous painting Vädersolstavlan.
1601–1900
1653 – Oliver Cromwell dissolves the Rump Parliament.
1657 – Admiral Robert Blake destroys a Spanish silver fleet under heavy fire at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
1657 – Freedom of religion is granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam (later New York City).
1689 – Deposed monarch James II of England lays siege to Derry.
1752 – Start of Konbaung–Hanthawaddy War, a new phase in the Burmese Civil War (1740–57).
1770 – The Georgian king, Erekle II, abandoned by his Russian ally Count Totleben, wins a victory over Ottoman forces at Aspindza.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: The Siege of Boston begins, following the battles at Lexington and Concord.
1789 – George Washington arrives at Grays Ferry, Philadelphia while en route to Manhattan for his inauguration.
1792 – France declares war against the "King of Hungary and Bohemia", the beginning of the French Revolutionary Wars.
1800 – The Septinsular Republic is established.
1809 – Two Austrian army corps in Bavaria are defeated by a First French Empire army led by Napoleon at the Battle of Abensberg on the second day of a four-day campaign that ended in a French victory.
1818 – The case of Ashford v Thornton ends, with Abraham Thornton allowed to go free rather than face a retrial for murder, after his demand for trial by battle is upheld.
1828 – René Caillié becomes the second non-Muslim to enter (and the first to return from) Timbuktu, following Major Gordon Laing.
1836 – U.S. Congress passes an act creating the Wisconsin Territory.
1861 – American Civil War: Robert E. Lee resigns his commission in the United States Army in order to command the forces of the state of Virginia.
1861 – Thaddeus S. C. Lowe, attempting to display the value of balloons, makes record journey, flying 900 miles from Cincinnati to South Carolina.
1862 – Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard complete the experiment disproving the theory of spontaneous generation.
1865 – Astronomer Angelo Secchi demonstrates the Secchi disk, which measures water clarity, aboard Pope Pius IX's yacht, the L'Immaculata Concezion.
1876 – The April Uprising begins. Its suppression shocks European opinion, and Bulgarian independence becomes a condition for ending the Russo-Turkish War.
1884 – Pope Leo XIII publishes the encyclical Humanum genus, condemning Freemasonry.
1898 – U.S. President William McKinley signed a joint resolution to Congress for declaration of war against Spain, beginning the Spanish–American War.
1901–present
1902 – Pierre and Marie Curie refine radium chloride.
1914 – Nineteen men, women, and children participating in a strike are killed in the Ludlow Massacre during the Colorado Coalfield War.
1918 – Manfred von Richthofen, a.k.a. The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims, his final victories before his death the following day.
1922 – The Soviet government creates South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast within Georgian SSR.
1945 – World War II: U.S. troops capture Leipzig, Germany, only to later cede the city to the Soviet Union.
1945 – World War II: Führerbunker: On his 56th birthday Adolf Hitler makes his last trip to the surface to award Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth.
1945 – Twenty Jewish children used in medical experiments at Neuengamme are killed in the basement of the Bullenhuser Damm school.
1946 – The League of Nations officially dissolves, giving most of its power to the United Nations.
1961 – Cold War: Failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion of US-backed Cuban exiles against Cuba.
1968 – English politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech.
1972 – Apollo program: Apollo 16 lunar module, commanded by John Young and piloted by Charles Duke, lands on the moon.
1998 – Air France Flight 422 crashes after taking off from El Dorado International Airport in Bogotá, Colombia, killing all 53 people on board.
1999 – Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 13 people and injure 24 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado.
2007 – Johnson Space Center shooting: William Phillips with a handgun barricades himself in NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas before killing a male hostage and himself.
2008 – Danica Patrick wins the Indy Japan 300 becoming the first female driver in history to win an Indy car race.
2010 – The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers and beginning an oil spill that would last six months.
2012 – One hundred twenty-seven people are killed when a plane crashes in a residential area near the Benazir Bhutto International Airport near Islamabad, Pakistan.
2013 – A 6.6-magnitude earthquake strikes Lushan County, Ya'an, in China's Sichuan province, killing more than 150 people and injuring thousands.
2015 – Ten people are killed in a bomb attack on a convoy carrying food supplies to a United Nations compound in Garowe in the Somali region of Puntland.
2021 – State of Minnesota v. Derek Michael Chauvin: Derek Chauvin is found guilty of all charges in the murder of George Floyd by the Fourth Judicial District Court of Minnesota.
Births
Pre-1600
1494 – Johannes Agricola, German theologian and reformer (d. 1566)
1544 – Renata of Lorraine, Duchess consort of Bavaria (d. 1602)
1586 – Rose of Lima, Peruvian mystic and saint (d. 1617)
1601–1900
1633 – Emperor Go-Kōmyō of Japan (d. 1654)
1646 – Charles Plumier, French botanist and author (d. 1704)
1650 – William Bedloe, English spy (d. 1680)
1718 – David Brainerd, American missionary (d. 1747)
1723 – Cornelius Harnett, American merchant, farmer, and politician (d. 1781)
1727 – Florimond Claude, Comte de Mercy-Argenteau, Belgian-Austrian minister and diplomat (d. 1794)
1745 – Philippe Pinel, French physician and psychiatrist (d. 1826)
1748 – Georg Michael Telemann, German composer and theologian (d. 1831)
1808 – Napoleon III, French politician, 1st President of France (d. 1873)
1816 – Bogoslav Šulek, Croatian philologist, historian, and lexicographer (d. 1895)
1818 – Heinrich Göbel, German-American mechanic and engineer (d. 1893)
1826 – Dinah Craik, English author and poet (d. 1887)
1836 – Eli Whitney Blake, Jr., American scientist and academic (d. 1895)
1839 – Carol I of Romania, King of Romania (d. 1914)
1840 – Odilon Redon, French painter and illustrator (d. 1916)
1850 – Daniel Chester French, American sculptor, designed the Lincoln statue (d. 1931)
1851 – Alexander Dianin, Russian chemist (d. 1918)
1851 – Siegmund Lubin, Polish-American businessman, founded the Lubin Manufacturing Company (d. 1923)
1860 – Justinien de Clary, French target shooter (d. 1933)
1871 – Sydney Chapman, English economist and civil servant (d. 1951)
1873 – James Harcourt, English character actor (d. 1951)
1875 – Vladimir Vidrić, Croatian poet and lawyer (d. 1909)
1879 – Paul Poiret, French fashion designer (d. 1944)
1882 – Holland Smith, American general (d. 1967)
1884 – Princess Beatrice of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (d. 1966)
1884 – Oliver Kirk, American boxer (d. 1960)
1884 – Daniel Varoujan, Armenian poet and educator (d. 1915)
1889 – Albert Jean Amateau, Turkish rabbi, lawyer, and activist (d. 1996)
1889 – Prince Erik, Duke of Västmanland (d. 1918)
1889 – Marie-Antoinette de Geuser, French mystic (d. 1918)
1889 – Adolf Hitler, Austrian born German politician, Führer of Nazi Germany (d. 1945)
1889 – Tonny Kessler, Dutch footballer (d. 1960)
1890 – Maurice Duplessis, Canadian lawyer and politician, 16th Premier of Quebec (d. 1959)
1890 – Adolf Schärf, Austrian soldier and politician, 6th President of Austria (d. 1965)
1891 – Dave Bancroft, American baseball player and manager (d. 1972)
1893 – Harold Lloyd, American actor, comedian, and producer (d. 1971)
1893 – Joan Miró, Spanish painter and sculptor (d. 1983)
1895 – Emile Christian, American trombonist and composer (d. 1973)
1895 – Henry de Montherlant, French essayist, novelist, and dramatist (d. 1972)
1896 – Wop May, Canadian captain and pilot (d. 1952)
1899 – Alan Arnett McLeod, Canadian lieutenant, Victoria Cross recipient (d. 1918)
1901–present
1904 – Bruce Cabot, American actor (d. 1972)
1907 – Augoustinos Kantiotes, Greek bishop (d. 2010)
1908 – Lionel Hampton, American vibraphone player, pianist, bandleader, and actor (d. 2002)
1910 – Fatin Rüştü Zorlu, Turkish diplomat and politician (d. 1961)
1913 – Mimis Fotopoulos, Greek actor and poet (d. 1986)
1913 – Willi Hennig, German biologist and entomologist (d. 1976)
1914 – Betty Lou Gerson, American actress (d. 1999)
1915 – Joseph Wolpe, South African psychotherapist and physician (d. 1997)
1916 – Nasiba Zeynalova, Azerbaijani actress (d. 2004)
1918 – Kai Siegbahn, Swedish physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2007)
1919 – Richard Hillary, Australian lieutenant and pilot (d. 1943)
1920 – Frances Ames, South African neurologist, psychiatrist, and human rights activist (d. 2002)
1920 – Clement Isong, Nigerian banker and politician, Governor of Cross River State (d. 2000)
1920 – John Paul Stevens, American lawyer and jurist, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (d. 2019)
1923 – Mother Angelica, American nun and broadcaster, founded Eternal Word Television Network (d. 2016)
1923 – Irene Lieblich, Polish-American painter and illustrator (d. 2008)
1923 – Tito Puente, American drummer and producer (d. 2000)
1924 – Nina Foch, Dutch-American actress (d. 2008)
1924 – Leslie Phillips, English actor and producer
1924 – Guy Rocher, Canadian sociologist and academic
1925 – Ernie Stautner, German-American football player and coach (d. 2006)
1925 – Elena Verdugo, American actress (d. 2017)
1927 – Bud Cullen, Canadian judge and politician, 1st Canadian Minister of Employment and Immigration (d. 2005)
1927 – Phil Hill, American race car driver (d. 2008)
1927 – K. Alex Müller, Swiss physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
1928 – Robert Byrne, American chess player and author (d. 2013)
1928 – Johnny Gavin, Irish international footballer (d. 2007)
1929 – Harry Agganis, American baseball and football player (d. 1955)
1929 – Bobby Hollander, American film director, actor, and magazine publisher (d. 2002)
1930 – Dwight Gustafson, American composer and conductor (d. 2014)
1930 – Antony Jay, English director and screenwriter (d. 2016)
1931 – Michael Allenby, 3rd Viscount Allenby, English lieutenant and politician (d. 2014)
1931 – John Eccles, 2nd Viscount Eccles, English businessman and politician
1932 – Myriam Bru, French actress
1933 – Kristaq Dhamo, Albanian actor and film director
1936 – Lisa Davis, English-American actress
1936 – Pauli Ellefsen, Faroese technician, surveyor, and politician, 6th Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands (d. 2012)
1936 – Pat Roberts, American captain, journalist, and politician
1937 – Jiří Dienstbier, Czech journalist and politician, Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs (d. 2011)
1937 – Antonios Kounadis, Greek discus thrower
1937 – Harvey Quaytman, American painter and educator (d. 2002)
1937 – George Takei, American actor
1938 – Betty Cuthbert, Australian sprinter (d. 2017)
1938 – Manfred Kinder, German runner
1938 – Eszter Tamási, Hungarian actress (d. 1991)
1939 – Elspeth Ballantyne, Australian actress
1939 – Peter S. Beagle, American author and screenwriter
1939 – Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norwegian physician and politician, 22nd Prime Minister of Norway
1939 – Johnny Tillotson, American singer-songwriter
1940 – James Gammon, American actor (d. 2010)
1941 – Ryan O'Neal, American actor
1942 – Giles Henderson, English lawyer and academic
1942 – Arto Paasilinna, Finnish journalist and author (d. 2018)
1943 – Alan Beith, English academic and politician
1943 – John Eliot Gardiner, English conductor and director
1943 – Edie Sedgwick, American model and actress (d. 1971)
1944 – Toivo Aare, Estonian journalist and author (d. 1999)
1945 – Michael Brandon, American actor and director
1945 – Olga Karlatos, Greek actress and Bermudian lawyer
1945 – Thein Sein, Burmese general and politician, 8th President of Burma
1945 – Naftali Temu, Kenyan runner (d. 2003)
1945 – Steve Spurrier, American football player and head coach, 1966 Heisman Trophy winner
1946 – Sandro Chia, Italian painter and sculptor
1946 – Julien Poulin, Canadian actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
1946 – Gordon Smiley, American race car driver (d. 1982)
1947 – Rita Dionne-Marsolais, Canadian economist and politician
1947 – David Leland, English actor, director, and screenwriter
1947 – Viktor Suvorov, Russian intelligence officer, historian, and author
1948 – Gregory Itzin, American actor
1948 – Matthias Kuhle, German geographer and academic (d. 2015)
1949 – Veronica Cartwright, English-American actress
1949 – Toller Cranston, Canadian-Mexican figure skater and painter (d. 2015)
1949 – Massimo D'Alema, Italian journalist and politician, 76th Prime Minister of Italy
1949 – Jessica Lange, American actress
1950 – Steve Erickson, American author and critic
1950 – Alexander Lebed, Russian general and politician (d. 2002)
1950 – N. Chandrababu Naidu, Indian politician, 13th Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh
1951 – Luther Vandross, American singer-songwriter and producer (d. 2005)
1952 – Louka Katseli, Greek economist and politician
1953 – Sebastian Faulks, English journalist and author
1955 – Donald Pettit, American engineer and astronaut
1956 – Beatrice Ask, Swedish politician, Swedish Minister for Justice
1956 – Peter Chelsom, English film director, writer, and actor
1956 – Kakha Bendukidze, Georgian economist and politician (d. 2014)
1958 – Viacheslav Fetisov, Russian ice hockey player and coach
1960 – Debbie Flintoff-King, Australian hurdler and coach
1961 – Don Mattingly, American baseball player, coach, and manager
1961 – Konstantin Lavronenko, Russian actor
1963 – Rachel Whiteread, English sculptor
1964 – Crispin Glover, American actor
1964 – Andy Serkis, English actor and director
1964 – Rosalynn Sumners, American figure skater
1965 – Kostis Chatzidakis, Greek politician, Ministry of Economy, Infrastructure, Shipping and Tourism
1965 – Léa Fazer, Swiss film director, screenwriter and actress
1966 – David Chalmers, Australian philosopher and academic
1966 – David Filo, American businessman, co-founded Yahoo!
1967 – Mike Portnoy, American drummer and songwriter
1968 – Julia Morris, Australian entertainer
1968 – Yelena Välbe, Russian skier and manager
1969 – Will Hodgman, Australian politician, 45th Premier of Tasmania
1970 – Avishai Cohen, Israeli singer-songwriter and bassist
1970 – Shemar Moore, American actor
1972 – Carmen Electra, American model and actress
Deaths
Pre-1600
689 – Cædwalla, king of Wessex (b. 659)
767 – Taichō, Japanese monk (b. 682)
888 – Xi Zong, Chinese emperor (b. 862)
1099 – Peter Bartholomew (b. 1061)
1164 – Antipope Victor IV
1176 – Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, English-Irish politician, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland (b. 1130)
1248 – Güyük Khan, Mongol ruler, 3rd Great Khan of the Mongol Empire (b. 1206)
1284 – Hōjō Tokimune, regent of Japan (b. 1251)
1314 – Pope Clement V (b. 1264)
1322 – Simon Rinalducci, Italian Augustinian friar
1521 – Zhengde, Chinese emperor (b. 1491)
1534 – Elizabeth Barton, English nun and martyr (b. 1506)
1558 – Johannes Bugenhagen, German priest and theologian (b. 1485)
1601–1900
1643 – Christoph Demantius, German composer and poet (b. 1567)
1703 – Lancelot Addison, English clergyman and educator (b. 1632)
1769 – Chief Pontiac, American tribal leader (b. 1720)
1831 – John Abernethy, English surgeon and anatomist (b. 1764)
1873 – William Tite, English architect, designed the Royal Exchange (b. 1798)
1874 – Alexander H. Bailey, American lawyer, judge, and politician (b. 1817)
1881 – William Burges, English architect and designer (b. 1827)
1886 – Charles-François-Frédéric, marquis de Montholon-Sémonville, French general and diplomat, French ambassador to the United States (b. 1814)
1887 – Muhammad Sharif Pasha, Greek-Egyptian politician, 2nd Prime Minister of Egypt (b. 1826)
1899 – Joseph Wolf, German ornithologist and illustrator (b. 1820)
1901–present
1902 – Joaquim de Sousa Andrade, Brazilian poet and educator (b. 1833)
1912 – Bram Stoker, Anglo-Irish novelist and critic, created Count Dracula (b. 1847)
1918 – Karl Ferdinand Braun, German-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1850)
1927 – Enrique Simonet, Spanish painter and educator (b. 1866)
1929 – Prince Henry of Prussia (b. 1862)
1931 – Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon, 5th Baronet, Scottish-English fencer and businessman (b. 1862)
1932 – Giuseppe Peano, Italian mathematician and philosopher (b. 1858)
1935 – John Cameron, Scottish footballer and manager (b. 1872)
1935 – Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, English fashion designer (b. 1863)
1942 – Jüri Jaakson, Estonian businessman and politician, 6th State Elder of Estonia (b. 1870)
1944 – Elmer Gedeon, American baseball player and pilot (b. 1917)
1945 – Erwin Bumke, Polish-German jurist and politician (b. 1874)
1946 – Mae Busch, Australian actress (b. 1891)
1947 – Christian X of Denmark (b. 1870)
1951 – Ivanoe Bonomi, Italian politician, 25th Prime Minister of Italy (b. 1873)
1961 – Ado Vabbe, Estonian painter (b. 1892)
1967 – Léo-Paul Desrosiers, Canadian journalist and author (b. 1896)
1968 – Rudolph Dirks, German-American illustrator (b. 1877)
1969 – Vjekoslav Luburić, Croatian Ustaše official and concentration camp administrator (b. 1914)
1980 – M. Canagaratnam, Sri Lankan politician (b. 1924)
1982 – Archibald MacLeish, American poet, playwright, and lawyer (b. 1892)
1986 – Sibte Hassan, Pakistani journalist, scholar, and activist (b. 1916)
1991 – Steve Marriott, English singer-songwriter and producer (b. 1947)
1991 – Don Siegel, American director and producer (b. 1912)
1992 – Marjorie Gestring, American springboard diver (b. 1922)
1992 – Benny Hill, English comedian, actor, and screenwriter (b. 1924)
1993 – Cantinflas, Mexican actor, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1911)
1995 – Milovan Đilas, Yugoslav communist, politician, theorist and author (b. 1911)
1996 – Trần Văn Trà, Vietnamese general and politician (b. 1918)
1999 – Rick Rude, American professional wrestler (b. 1958)
2001 – Giuseppe Sinopoli, Italian conductor and composer (b. 1946)
2002 – Alan Dale, American singer (b. 1925)
2003 – Bernard Katz, German-English biophysicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1911)
2004 – Lizzy Mercier Descloux, French musician, singer-songwriter, composer, actress, writer and painter (b. 1956)
2005 – Fumio Niwa, Japanese journalist and author (b. 1904)
2007 – Andrew Hill, American pianist, composer, and bandleader (b. 1931)
2007 – Michael Fu Tieshan, Chinese bishop (b. 1931)
2008 – Monica Lovinescu, Romanian journalist and author (b. 1923)
2010 – Dorothy Height, American educator and activist (b. 1912)
2011 – Tim Hetherington, English photographer and journalist (b. 1970)
2012 – Bert Weedon, English guitarist and songwriter (b. 1920)
2016 – Victoria Wood, British comedian, actress and writer (b. 1953)
2018 – Avicii, Swedish DJ and musician (b. 1989)
2021 – Idriss Déby, Chadian politician and military officer (b. 1952)
2021 – Les McKeown, Scottish pop singer (b. 1955)
Holidays and observances
Agnes of Montepulciano
Beuno
Hugh of Anzy le Duc
Johannes Bugenhagen (Lutheran)
Marcellinus of Gaul (Embrun)
Blessed Oda of Brabant
Pope Anicetus
Theotimos
420 (cannabis culture)
UN Chinese Language Day (United Nations)
References
External links
BBC: On This Day
Historical Events on April 20
Today in Canadian History
Days of the year
April |
2196 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April%2019 | April 19 |
Events
Pre-1600
AD 65 – The freedman Milichus betrays Piso's plot to kill the Emperor Nero and all the conspirators are arrested.
531 – Battle of Callinicum: A Byzantine army under Belisarius is defeated by the Persians at Raqqa (northern Syria).
797 – Empress Irene organizes a conspiracy against her son, the Byzantine emperor Constantine VI. He is deposed and blinded. Shortly after, Constantine dies of his wounds; Irene proclaims herself basileus.
1506 – The Lisbon Massacre begins, in which accused Jews are being slaughtered by Portuguese Catholics.
1529 – Beginning of the Protestant Reformation: After the Second Diet of Speyer bans Lutheranism, a group of rulers (German: Fürst) and independent cities protests the reinstatement of the Edict of Worms.
1539 – The Treaty of Frankfurt between Protestants and the Holy Roman Emperor is signed.
1601–1900
1608 – In Ireland: O'Doherty's Rebellion is launched by the Burning of Derry.
1617 – The town of Uusikaupunki (, lit. "New Town") was founded by King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden.
1677 – The French army captures the town of Cambrai held by Spanish troops.
1713 – With no living male heirs, Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 to ensure that Habsburg lands and the Austrian throne would be inheritable by a female; his daughter and successor, Maria Theresa was not born until 1717.
1770 – Captain James Cook, still holding the rank of lieutenant, sights the eastern coast of what is now Australia.
1770 – Marie Antoinette marries Louis XVI of France in a proxy wedding.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: The war begins with an American victory in Concord during the battles of Lexington and Concord.
1782 – John Adams secures Dutch recognition of the United States as an independent government. The house which he had purchased in The Hague becomes the first American embassy.
1809 – An Austrian corps is defeated by the forces of the Duchy of Warsaw in the Battle of Raszyn, part of the struggles of the Fifth Coalition. On the same day the Austrian main army is defeated by a First French Empire Corps led by Louis-Nicolas Davout at the Battle of Teugen-Hausen in Bavaria, part of a four-day campaign that ended in a French victory.
1810 – Venezuela achieves home rule: Vicente Emparán, Governor of the Captaincy General is removed by the people of Caracas and a junta is installed.
1818 – French physicist Augustin Fresnel signs his preliminary "Note on the Theory of Diffraction" (deposited on the following day). The document ends with what we now call the Fresnel integrals.
1839 – The Treaty of London establishes Belgium as a kingdom and guarantees its neutrality.
1861 – American Civil War: Baltimore riot of 1861: A pro-Secession mob in Baltimore attacks United States Army troops marching through the city.
1901–present
1903 – The Kishinev pogrom in Kishinev (Bessarabia) begins, forcing tens of thousands of Jews to later seek refuge in Palestine and the Western world.
1927 – Mae West is sentenced to ten days in jail for obscenity for her play Sex.
1942 – World War II: In German-occupied Poland, the Majdan-Tatarski ghetto is established, situated between the Lublin Ghetto and a Majdanek subcamp.
1943 – World War II: In German-occupied Poland, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins, after German troops enter the Warsaw Ghetto to round up the remaining Jews.
1943 – Albert Hofmann deliberately doses himself with LSD for the first time, three days after having discovered its effects on April 16.
1956 – Actress Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier of Monaco.
1960 – Students in South Korea hold a nationwide pro-democracy protest against president Syngman Rhee, eventually forcing him to resign.
1971 – Sierra Leone becomes a republic, and Siaka Stevens the president.
1971 – Launch of Salyut 1, the first space station.
1971 – Charles Manson is sentenced to death (later commuted to life imprisonment) for conspiracy in the Tate–LaBianca murders.
1973 – The Portuguese Socialist Party is founded in the German town of Bad Münstereifel.
1975 – India's first satellite Aryabhata launched in orbit from Kapustin Yar, Russia.
1975 – South Vietnamese forces withdrew from the town of Xuan Loc in the last major battle of the Vietnam War.
1984 – Advance Australia Fair is proclaimed as Australia's national anthem, and green and gold as the national colours.
1985 – Two hundred ATF and FBI agents lay siege to the compound of the white supremacist survivalist group The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord in Arkansas; the CSA surrenders two days later.
1987 – The Simpsons first appear as a series of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, first starting with "Good Night".
1989 – A gun turret explodes on the , killing 47 sailors.
1993 – The 51-day FBI siege of the Branch Davidian building in Waco, Texas, USA, ends when a fire breaks out. 76 Davidians, including eighteen children under the age of ten, died in the fire.
1995 – Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, USA, is bombed, killing 168 people including 19 children under the age of six.
1999 – The German Bundestag returns to Berlin.
2000 – Air Philippines Flight 541 crashes in Samal, Davao del Norte, killing all 131 people on board.
2005 – Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is elected to the papacy and becomes Pope Benedict XVI.
2011 – Fidel Castro resigns as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba after holding the title since July 1961.
2013 – Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev is killed in a shootout with police. His brother Dzhokhar is later captured hiding in a boat inside a backyard in the suburb of Watertown.
2020 – A killing spree in Nova Scotia, Canada, leaves 22 people and the perpetrator dead, making it the deadliest rampage in the country's history.
2021 – The Ingenuity helicopter becomes the first aircraft to achieve flight on another planet.
Births
Pre-1600
1452 – Frederick IV, King of Naples (d. 1504)
1593 – Sir John Hobart, 2nd Baronet, English politician (d. 1647)
1601–1900
1603 – Michel Le Tellier, French politician, French Minister of Defence (d. 1685)
1613 – Christoph Bach, German musician (d. 1661)
1633 – Willem Drost, Dutch painter (d. 1659)
1655 – George St Lo(e), Royal Navy officer and administrator (d. 1718)
1658 – Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine, German husband of Archduchess Maria Anna Josepha of Austria (d. 1716)
1665 – Jacques Lelong, French author (d. 1721)
1686 – Vasily Tatishchev, Russian ethnographer and politician (d. 1750)
1715 – James Nares, English organist and composer (d. 1783)
1721 – Roger Sherman, American lawyer and politician (d. 1793)
1734 – Karl von Ordóñez, Austrian violinist and composer (d. 1786)
1757 – Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth, English admiral and politician (d. 1833)
1758 – William Carnegie, 7th Earl of Northesk, Scottish admiral (d. 1831)
1785 – Alexandre Pierre François Boëly, French pianist and composer (d. 1858)
1787 – Deaf Smith, American soldier (d. 1837)
1793 – Ferdinand I of Austria (d. 1875)
1806 – Sarah Bagley, American labor organizer (d. 1889)
1814 – Louis Amédée Achard, French journalist and author (d. 1875)
1831 – Mary Louise Booth, American writer, editor and translator (d. 1889)
1832 – José Echegaray, Spanish poet and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1916)
1835 – Julius Krohn, Finnish poet and journalist (d. 1888)
1863 – Hemmo Kallio, Finnish actor (d. 1940)
1872 – Alice Salomon, German social reformer (d. 1948)
1873 – Sydney Barnes, English cricketer (d. 1967)
1874 – Ernst Rüdin, Swiss psychiatrist, geneticist, and eugenicist (d. 1952)
1877 – Ole Evinrude, Norwegian-American engineer, invented the outboard motor (d. 1934)
1879 – Arthur Robertson, Scottish runner (d. 1957)
1882 – Getúlio Vargas, Brazilian lawyer and politician, 14th President of Brazil (d. 1954)
1883 – Henry Jameson, American soccer player (d. 1938)
1883 – Richard von Mises, Austrian-American mathematician and physicist (d. 1953)
1885 – Karl Tarvas, Estonian architect (d. 1975)
1889 – Otto Georg Thierack, German jurist and politician (d. 1946)
1891 – Françoise Rosay, French actress (d. 1974)
1892 – Germaine Tailleferre, French composer and educator (d. 1983)
1894 – Elizabeth Dilling, American author and activist (d. 1966)
1897 – Peter de Noronha, Indian businessman and philanthropist (d. 1970)
1897 – Jiroemon Kimura, Japanese super-centenarian, oldest verified man ever (d. 2013)
1898 – Constance Talmadge, American actress and producer (d. 1973)
1899 – George O'Brien, American actor (d. 1985)
1899 – Cemal Tollu, Turkish lieutenant and painter (d. 1968)
1900 – Iracema de Alencar, Brazilian film actress (d. 1978)
1900 – Richard Hughes, English author, poet, and playwright (d. 1976)
1900 – Roland Michener, Canadian lawyer and politician, 20th Governor General of Canada (d. 1991)
1900 – Rhea Silberta, American Yiddish songwriter and singing teacher (d. 1959)
1901–present
1902 – Veniamin Kaverin, Russian author and screenwriter (d. 1989)
1903 – Eliot Ness, American law enforcement agent (d. 1957)
1907 – Alan Wheatley, English actor (d. 1991)
1908 – Irena Eichlerówna, Polish actress (d. 1990)
1912 – Glenn T. Seaborg, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1999)
1913 – Ken Carpenter, American discus thrower and coach (d. 1984)
1917 – Sven Hassel, Danish-German soldier and author (d. 2012)
1919 – Sol Kaplan, American pianist and composer (d. 1990)
1920 – Gene Leis, American guitarist, composer, and producer (d. 1993)
1920 – Marvin Mandel, American lawyer and politician, 56th Governor of Maryland (d. 2015)
1920 – John O'Neil, American baseball player and manager (d. 2012)
1920 – Julien Ries, Belgian cardinal (d. 2013)
1920 – Marian Winters, American actress (d. 1978)
1921 – Anna Lee Aldred, American jockey (d. 2006)
1921 – Leon Henkin, American logician (d. 2006)
1921 – Roberto Tucci, Italian Jesuit leader, cardinal, and theologian (d. 2015)
1922 – Erich Hartmann, German colonel and pilot (d. 1993)
1922 – David Smith, politician in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe (d. 1996)
1925 – John Kraaijkamp, Sr., Dutch actor (d. 2011)
1925 – Hugh O'Brian, American actor (d. 2016)
1926 – Rawya Ateya, Egyptian captain and politician (d. 1997)
1928 – John Horlock, English engineer and academic (d. 2015)
1928 – Azlan Shah of Perak, Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia (d. 2014)
1931 – Walter Stewart, Canadian journalist and author (d. 2004)
1932 – Fernando Botero, Colombian painter and sculptor
1933 – Jayne Mansfield, American model and actress (d. 1967)
1934 – Dickie Goodman, American singer-songwriter and producer (d. 1989)
1935 – Dudley Moore, English actor, comedian, and pianist (d. 2002)
1935 – Justin Francis Rigali, American cardinal
1936 – Wilfried Martens, Belgian politician, 60th Prime Minister of Belgium (d. 2013)
1936 – Jack Pardee, American football player and coach (d. 2013)
1937 – Antonio Carluccio, Italian-English chef and author (d. 2017)
1937 – Elinor Donahue, American actress
1937 – Joseph Estrada, Filipino politician, 13th President of the Philippines
1938 – Stanley Fish, American theorist, author, and scholar
1939 – E. Clay Shaw, Jr., American accountant, judge, and politician (d. 2013)
1941 – Michel Roux, French-English chef and author (d. 2020)
1941 – Bobby Russell, American singer-songwriter (d. 1992)
1942 – Alan Price, English keyboard player, singer, and composer
1943 – Margo MacDonald, Scottish journalist and politician (d. 2014)
1944 – James Heckman, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
1944 – Bernie Worrell, American keyboard player and songwriter (d. 2016)
1946 – Tim Curry, English actor and singer
1951 – Jóannes Eidesgaard, Faroese educator and politician, Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands
1954 – Trevor Francis, English footballer and manager
1956 – Anne Glover, Scottish biologist and academic
1957 – Mukesh Ambani, Indian businessman, chairman of Reliance Industries and currently the richest man in Asia
1960 – Ara Gevorgyan, Armenian pianist, composer, and producer
1960 – Frank Viola, American baseball player and coach
1964 – Kim Weaver, American astrophysicist, astronomer, and academic
1966 – Véronique Gens, French soprano and actress
1968 – Mswati III, king (Ngwenyama) of Eswatini (Swaziland)
1970 – Kelly Holmes, English athlete and double Olympic champion
1972 – Rivaldo Vitor Borba Ferreira, a Brazilian footballer
1978 – James Franco, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
1978 – Amanda Sage, American-Austrian painter and educator
1981 – Hayden Christensen, American actor
1982 – Samuel C. Morrison, Jr., Liberian-American journalist, producer, and screenwriter
1987 – Maria Sharapova, Russian tennis player
1990 – Kim Chiu, Filipino actress, singer, and dancer
2002 – Loren Gray, American singer and internet personality
Deaths
Pre-1600
843 – Judith of Bavaria, Frankish empress
1012 – Ælfheah of Canterbury, English archbishop and saint (b. 954)
1013 – Hisham II, Umayyad caliph of Córdoba (b. 966)
1044 – Gothelo I, duke of Lorraine
1054 – Leo IX, pope of the Catholic Church (b. 1002)
1321 – Gerasimus I, patriarch of Constantinople
1390 – Robert II, king of Scotland (b. 1316)
1405 – Thomas West, 1st Baron West, English nobleman (b. 1335)
1431 – Adolph III, count of Waldeck (b. 1362)
1560 – Philip Melanchthon, German theologian and reformer (b. 1497)
1567 – Michael Stifel, German monk and mathematician (b. 1487)
1578 – Uesugi Kenshin, Japanese samurai and warlord (b. 1530)
1588 – Paolo Veronese, Italian painter (b. 1528)
1601–1900
1608 – Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, English poet, playwright, and politician, Lord High Treasurer (b. 1536)
1618 – Thomas Bastard, English priest and author (b. 1566)
1619 – Jagat Gosain, Mughal empress (b. 1573)
1629 – Sigismondo d'India, Italian composer (b. 1582)
1686 – Antonio de Solís y Ribadeneyra, Spanish historian and playwright (b. 1610)
1689 – Christina, queen of Sweden (b. 1626)
1733 – Elizabeth Hamilton, countess of Orkney (b. 1657)
1739 – Nicholas Saunderson, English mathematician and academic (b. 1682)
1768 – Canaletto, Italian painter and etcher (b. 1697)
1776 – Jacob Emden, German rabbi and author (b. 1697)
1791 – Richard Price, Welsh-English preacher and philosopher (b. 1723)
1813 – Benjamin Rush, American physician and educator (b. 1745)
1824 – Lord Byron, English-Scottish poet and playwright (b. 1788)
1831 – Johann Gottlieb Friedrich von Bohnenberger, German astronomer and mathematician (b. 1765)
1833 – James Gambier, 1st Baron Gambier, Bahamian-English admiral and politician, 36th Commodore Governor of Newfoundland (b. 1756)
1840 – Jean-Jacques Lartigue, Canadian bishop (b. 1777)
1854 – Robert Jameson, Scottish mineralogist and academic (b. 1774)
1881 – Benjamin Disraeli, English journalist and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1804)
1882 – Charles Darwin, English biologist and theorist (b. 1809)
1893 – Martin Körber, Estonian-German pastor, composer, and conductor (b. 1817)
1901–present
1901 – Alfred Horatio Belo, American publisher, founded The Dallas Morning News (b. 1839)
1903 – Oliver Mowat, Canadian politician, third Premier of Ontario, eighth Lieutenant Governor of Ontario (b. 1820)
1906 – Pierre Curie, French physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1859)
1906 – Spencer Gore, English tennis player and cricketer (b. 1850)
1909 – Signe Rink, Greenland-born Danish writer and ethnologist (b. 1836)
1914 – Charles Sanders Peirce, American mathematician and philosopher (b. 1839)
1915 – Thomas Playford II, English-Australian politician, 17th Premier of South Australia (b. 1837)
1916 – Ephraim Shay, American engineer, designed the Shay locomotive (b. 1839)
1926 – Alexander Alexandrovich Chuprov, Russian-Swiss statistician and theorist (b. 1874)
1930 – Georges-Casimir Dessaulles, Canadian businessman and politician (b. 1827)
1937 – Martin Conway, 1st Baron Conway of Allington, English cartographer and politician (b. 1856)
1937 – William Morton Wheeler, American entomologist and zoologist (b. 1865)
1940 – Jack McNeela, Irish hunger striker
1941 – Johanna Müller-Hermann, Austrian composer (b. 1878)
1949 – Ulrich Salchow, Danish-Swedish figure skater (b. 1877)
1950 – Ernst Robert Curtius, French-German philologist and scholar (b. 1886)
1952 – Steve Conway, British singer (b. 1921)
1955 – Jim Corbett, British-Indian colonel, hunter, and author (b. 1875)
1960 – Beardsley Ruml, American economist and statistician (b. 1894)
1961 – Max Hainle, German swimmer (b. 1882)
1966 – Väinö Tanner, Finnish politician of Social Democratic Party of Finland; the Prime Minister of Finland (b. 1881)
1967 – Konrad Adenauer, German politician, 1st Chancellor of Germany (b. 1876)
1971 – Luigi Piotti, Italian race car driver (b. 1913)
1975 – Percy Lavon Julian, American chemist and academic (b. 1899)
1988 – Kwon Ki-ok, Korean pilot (b. 1901)
1989 – Daphne du Maurier, English novelist and playwright (b. 1907)
1991 – Stanley Hawes, English-Australian director and producer (b. 1905)
1992 – Frankie Howerd, English actor and screenwriter (b. 1917)
1993 – David Koresh, American religious leader (b. 1959)
1993 – George S. Mickelson, American captain, lawyer, and politician, 28th Governor of South Dakota (b. 1941)
1998 – Octavio Paz, Mexican poet, philosopher, and academic Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1914)
1999 – Hermine Braunsteiner, Austrian-German SS officer (b. 1919)
2000 – Louis Applebaum, Canadian composer and conductor (b. 1918)
2002 – Reginald Rose, American writer (b. 1920)
2004 – Norris McWhirter, English author and activist co-founded the Guinness World Records (b. 1925)
2004 – John Maynard Smith, English biologist and geneticist (b. 1920)
2004 – Jenny Pike, Canadian WWII servicewoman and photographer (b. 1922)
2006 – Albert Scott Crossfield, American engineer, pilot, and astronaut (b. 1921)
2007 – Jean-Pierre Cassel, French actor (b. 1932)
2009 – J. G. Ballard, English novelist, short story writer, and essayist (b. 1930)
2011 – Elisabeth Sladen, English actress (b. 1946)
2012 – Levon Helm, American musician and actor (b. 1940)
2013 – François Jacob, French biologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1920)
2013 – Al Neuharth, American journalist, author, and publisher, founded USA Today (b. 1924)
2015 – Raymond Carr, English historian and academic (b. 1919)
2015 – Roy Mason, English miner and politician, Secretary of State for Defence (b. 1924)
2016 – Patricio Aylwin, Chilean politician (b. 1918)
2021 – Walter Mondale, American politician, 42nd Vice President of the United States (b. 1928)
2021 – Monte Hellman, American film director (b.1929)
2021 – Jim Steinman, American composer, lyricist (b. 1947)
Holidays and observances
Ælfheah of Canterbury (Anglican, Catholic)
Conrad of Ascoli
Emma of Lesum
Expeditus
George of Antioch
Olaus and Laurentius Petri (Lutheran)
Pope Leo IX
Ursmar
References
External links
BBC: On This Day
Historical Events on April 19
Today in Canadian History
Days of the year
April |
2197 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad%20CPC | Amstrad CPC | The Amstrad CPC (short for Colour Personal Computer) is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, where it successfully established itself primarily in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and the German-speaking parts of Europe.
The series spawned a total of six distinct models: The CPC464, CPC664, and CPC6128 were highly successful competitors in the European home computer market. The later 464plus and 6128plus, intended to prolong the system's lifecycle with hardware updates, were considerably less successful, as was the attempt to repackage the plus hardware into a game console as the GX4000.
The CPC models' hardware is based on the Zilog Z80A CPU, complemented with either 64 or 128 KB of RAM. Their computer-in-a-keyboard design prominently features an integrated storage device, either a compact cassette deck or 3 inch floppy disk drive. The main units were only sold bundled with either a colour, green-screen or monochrome monitor that doubles as the main unit's power supply. Additionally, a wide range of first and third-party hardware extensions such as external disk drives, printers, and memory extensions, was available.
The CPC series was pitched against other home computers primarily used to play video games and enjoyed a strong supply of game software. The comparatively low price for a complete computer system with dedicated monitor, its high-resolution monochrome text and graphic capabilities and the possibility to run CP/M software also rendered the system attractive for business users, which was reflected by a wide selection of application software.
During its lifetime, the CPC series sold approximately three million units.
Models
The original range
The philosophy behind the CPC series was twofold, firstly the concept was of an "all-in-one", where the computer, keyboard and its data storage device were combined in a single unit and sold with its own dedicated display monitor. Most home computers at that time such as ZX Spectrum series, Commodore 64, and BBC Micro relied on the use of the domestic television set and a separately connected tape recorder or disk drive. In itself, the all-in-one concept was not new, having been seen before on business-oriented machines and the Commodore PET, but in the home computer space, it predated the Macintosh by almost a year.
Secondly, Amstrad founder Alan Sugar wanted the machine to resemble a "real computer, similar to what someone would see being used to check them in at the airport for their holidays", and for the machine to not look like "a pregnant calculator" – in reference presumably to the Sinclair ZX81 and ZX Spectrum with their low cost, membrane-type keyboards.
CPC 464
The CPC 464 was one of the most successful computers in Europe and sold more than two million units.
The CPC 464 featured 64 KB RAM and an internal cassette deck. It was introduced in June 1984 in the UK. Initial suggested retail prices for the CPC464 were GBP£249.00/DM899.00 with a green screen and GBP£359.00/DM1398.00 with a colour monitor. Following the introduction of the CPC6128 in late 1985, suggested retail prices for the CPC464 were cut by GBP£50.00/DM100.00.
In 1990, the 464plus replaced the CPC 464 in the model line-up, and production of the CPC 464 was discontinued.
CPC664
The CPC664 features 64 KB RAM and an internal 3-inch floppy disk drive. It was introduced on 25 April 1985 in the UK. Initial suggested retail prices for the CPC664 were GBP£339.00/DM1198.00 with a green screen and GBP£449.00/DM1998.00 with a colour monitor.
After the successful release of the CPC464, consumers were constantly asking for two improvements: more memory and an internal disk drive. For Amstrad, the latter was easier to realise. At the deliberately low-key introduction of the CPC664, the machine was positioned not only as the lowest-cost disk system but even the lowest-cost CP/M 2.2 machine. In the Amstrad CPC product range the CPC664 complemented the CPC464 which was neither discontinued nor reduced in price.
Compared to the CPC464, the CPC664's main unit has been significantly redesigned, not only to accommodate the floppy disk drive but also with a redesigned keyboard area. Touted as "ergonomic" by Amstrad's promotional material, the keyboard is noticeably tilted to the front with MSX-style cursor keys above the numeric keypad. Compared to the CPC464's multicoloured keyboard, the CPC664's keys are kept in a much quieter grey and pale blue colour scheme.
The back of the CPC664 main unit features the same connectors as the CPC464, with the exception of an additional 12V power lead. Unlike the CPC464's cassette tape drive that could be powered off the main unit's 5V voltage, the CPC664's floppy disk drive requires an additional 12V voltage. This voltage had to be separately supplied by an updated version of the bundled green screen/colour monitor (GT-65 and CTM-644 respectively).
The CPC664 was only produced for approximately six months. In late 1985, when the CPC6128 was introduced in Europe, Amstrad decided not to keep three models in the line-up, and production of the CPC664 was discontinued.
CPC6128
The CPC6128 features 128 KB RAM and an internal 3-inch floppy disk drive. Aside from various hardware and firmware improvements, one of the CPC6128's most prominent features is the compatibility with the CP/M+ operating system that rendered it attractive for business uses.
The CPC6128 was released on 13 June 1985 and initially only sold in the US. Imported and distributed by Indescomp, Inc. of Chicago, it was the first Amstrad product to be sold in the United States, a market that at the time was traditionally hostile towards European computer manufacturers. Two months later, on 15 August 1985, it arrived in Europe and replaced the CPC664 in the CPC model line-up. Initial suggested retail prices for the CPC6128 were US$699.00/£299.00/DM1598.00 with a green screen and US$799.00/£399.00/DM2098.00 with a colour monitor.
In 1990, the 6128plus replaced the CPC6128 in the model line-up, and production of the CPC6128 was discontinued.
The plus range
In 1990, confronted with a changing home computer market, Amstrad decided to refresh the CPC model range by introducing a new range variantly labelled plus or PLUS, 1990, or CPC+ range. The main goals were numerous enhancements to the existing CPC hardware platform, to restyle the casework to provide a contemporary appearance, and to add native support of cartridge media. The new model palette includes three variants, the 464plus and 6128plus computers and the GX4000 video game console. The "CPC" abbreviation was dropped from the model names.
The redesign significantly enhanced the CPC hardware, mainly to rectify its previous shortcomings as a gaming platform. The redesigned video hardware allows for hardware sprites and soft scrolling, with a colour palette extended from a maximum of 16 colours (plus separately definable border) at one time from a choice of 27, increased to a maximum of 31 (16 for background and 15 for hardware sprites) out of 4096. The enhanced sound hardware offers automatic DMA transfer, allowing more complex sound effects with a significantly reduced processor overhead. Other hardware enhancements include the support of analogue joysticks, 8-bit printers, and ROM cartridges up to 4 Mbits.
The new range of models was intended to be completely backwards compatible with the original CPC models. Its enhanced features are only available after a deliberately obscure unlocking mechanism has been triggered, thus preventing existing CPC software from accidentally invoking them.
Despite the significant hardware enhancements, many viewed it as outdated, being based on an 8-bit CPU, and it failed to attract both customers and software producers who were moving towards systems such as the Commodore Amiga and Sega Mega Drive which was launched a few short months after the plus range. The plus range was a commercial failure, and production was discontinued shortly after its introduction in 1990.
464plus, 6128plus
The 464plus and 6128plus models were intended as "more sophisticated and stylish" replacements of the CPC464 and CPC6128. Based on the redesigned plus hardware platform, they share the same base characteristics as their predecessors: The 464plus is equipped with 64 KB RAM and a cassette tape drive, the 6128plus features 128 KB RAM and a 3" floppy disk drive. Both models share a common case layout with a keyboard taken over from the CPC6128 model, and the respective mass storage drive inserted in a case breakout.
In order to simplify the EMC screening process, the edge connectors of the previous models have been replaced with micro-ribbon connectors as previously used on the German Schneider CPC6128. As a result, a wide range of extensions for the original CPC range are connector-incompatible with the 464plus and 6128plus. In addition, the 6128plus does not have a tape socket for an external tape drive.
The plus range is not equipped with an on-board ROM, and thus the 464plus and the 6128plus do not contain a firmware. Instead, Amstrad provided the firmware for both models via the ROM extension facility, contained on the included Burnin' Rubber and Locomotive BASIC cartridge. This resulted in reduced hardware localization cost (only some select key caps and case labels had to be localized) with the added benefit of a rudimentary copy protection mechanism (without a firmware present, the machine itself could not copy a game cartridge's content). As the enhanced V4 firmware's structural differences causes problems with some CPC software directly calling firmware functions by their memory addresses, Amstrad separately sold a cartridge containing the original CPC6128's V3 firmware.
Both the 464plus and the 6128plus were introduced to the public in September 1990. Initial suggested retail prices were GBP£229/FRF1990 with a monochrome monitor and GBP£329/FRF2990 with a colour monitor for the 464plus, and GBP£329/FRF2990 with a monochrome monitor and GBP£429/FRF3990 with a colour monitor for the 6128plus.
GX4000
Developed as part of the plus range, the GX4000 was Amstrad's short-lived attempt to enter the video game consoles market. Sharing the plus range's enhanced hardware characteristics, it represents the bare minimum variant of the range without a keyboard or support for mass storage devices. It came bundled with 2 paddle controllers and the racing game Burnin' Rubber.
Special models and clones
CPC472
During the August holidays of 1985, Spain briefly introduced an import tax of 15 000 pesetas () on computers containing 64KB or less of RAM (Royal Decree 1215/1985 and 1558/1985), and a new law (Royal Decree 1250/1985) mandated that all computers sold in Spain must have a Spanish keyboard. To circumvent this, Amstrad's Spanish distributor Indescomp (later to become Amstrad Spain) created and distributed the CPC472, a modified version of the CPC464. Its main differences are a small additional daughter board containing a CPC664 ROM chip and an 8 KB memory chip, and a keyboard with a ñ key (although some of them were temporarily manufactured without the ñ key). The sole purpose of the 8 KB memory chip (which is not electrically connected to the machine, so consequently rendered unusable) is to increase the machine's total memory specs to 72 KB in order to circumvent the import tax. Some months later, Spain joined the European Communities by the Treaty of Accession 1985 and the import tax was suppressed, so Amstrad added the ñ key for the 464 and production of the CPC472 was discontinued.
KC compact
The ("" - which means "small computer" - being a rather literal German translation of the English "microcomputer") is a clone of the Amstrad CPC built by East Germany's in October 1989. Although the machine included various substitutes and emulations of an Amstrad CPC's hardware, the machine is largely compatible with Amstrad CPC software. It is equipped with 64 KB memory and a CPC6128's firmware customized to the modified hardware, including an unmodified copy of Locomotive BASIC 1.1. The KC compact is the last 8-bit computer produced in East Germany.
Aleste 520EX
In 1993, Omsk, Russia based company Patisonic released the Aleste 520EX, a computer highly compatible with the Amstrad CPC6128. It could also be switched into an MSX mode. An expansion board named Magic Sound allowed to play Scream Tracker files.
Reception
A BYTE columnist in January 1985 called the CPC 464 "the closest yet to filling" his criteria for a useful home computer, including good keyboard, 80-column text, inexpensive disk drive, and support for a mainstream operating system like CP/M.
Hardware
Processor
The entire CPC series is based on the Zilog Z80A processor, clocked at 4 MHz.
In order to avoid the CPU and the video logic simultaneously accessing the shared main memory and causing video corruption ("snowing"), CPU memory access is constrained to occur on microsecond boundaries. This effectively pads every machine cycle to four clock cycles, causing a minor loss of processing power and resulting in what Amstrad estimated to be an "effective clock rate" of "approximately 3.3 MHz."
Memory
Amstrad CPCs are equipped with either 64 (CPC464, CPC664, 464plus, GX4000) or 128 (CPC6128, 6128plus) KB of RAM. This base memory can be extended by up to 512 KB using memory expansions sold by third-party manufacturers, and by up to 4096 KB using experimental methods developed by hardware enthusiasts. Because the Z80 processor is only able to directly address 64 KB of memory, additional memory from the 128 KB models and memory expansions is made available using bank switching.
Video
Underlying a CPC's video output is the unusual pairing of a CRTC (Motorola 6845 or compatible) with a custom-designed gate array to generate a pixel display output. CPC6128s later in production as well as the models from the plus range integrate both the CRTC and the gate array's functions with the system's ASIC.
Three built-in display resolutions are available: 160×200 pixels with 16 colours ("Mode 0", 20 text columns), 320×200 pixels with 4 colours ("Mode 1", 40 text columns), and 640×200 pixels with 2 colours ("Mode 2", 80 text columns). Increased screen size can be achieved by reprogramming the CRTC.
The original CPC video hardware supports a colour palette of 27 colours, generated from RGB colour space with each colour component assigned as either off, half on, or on (3 level RGB palette). The plus range extended the palette to 4096 colours, also generated from RGB with 4 bits each for red, green and blue (12-bit RGB).
With the exception of the GX4000, all CPC models lack an RF television or composite video output and instead shipped with a 6-pin RGB DIN connector, also used by Acorn computers, to connect the supplied Amstrad monitor. This connector delivers a 1v p-p analogue RGB with a 50 Hz composite sync signal that, if wired correctly, can drive a 50 Hz SCART television. External adapters for RF television were available as a first-party hardware accessory.
Audio
The CPC uses the General Instrument AY-3-8912 sound chip, providing three channels, each configurable to generate square waves, white noise or both. A small array of hardware volume envelopes are available.
Output is provided in mono by a small (4 cm) built-in loudspeaker with volume control, driven by an internal amplifier. Stereo output is provided through a headphones jack.
It is possible to play back digital sound samples at a resolution of approximately 5-bit by sending a stream of values to the sound chip. This technique is very processor-intensive and hard to combine with any other processing. Examples are the title screens or other non-playable scenes of games like Chase H.Q., Meltdown, and RoboCop. The later Plus models incorporated a DMA engine in order to offload this processing.
Floppy disk drive
Amstrad uses Matsushita's 3" floppy disk drive [ref: CPCWiki], which was comptible with Hitachi's existing 3" floppy disk format. The chosen drive (built-in for later models) is a single-sided 40-track unit that requires the user to remove and flip the disk to access the other side. Each side has its own independent write-protect switch. The sides are termed "A" and "B", with each one commonly formatted to 180 KB (in AMSDOS format, comprising 2 KB directory and 178 KB storage) for a total of 360 KB per disk.
The interface with the drives is a NEC 765 FDC, used for the same purpose in the IBM PC/XT, PC/AT and PS/2 machines. Its features are not fully used in order to cut costs, namely DMA transfers and support for single density disks; they were formatted as double density using modified frequency modulation.
Discs were shipped in a paper sleeve or a hard plastic case resembling a compact disc "jewel" case. The casing is thicker and more rigid than that of 3.5 inch diskettes, and designed to be mailed without any additional packaging. A sliding metal cover to protect the media surface is internal to the casing and latched, unlike the simple external sliding cover of Sony's version. They were significantly more expensive than both 5.25 inch and 3.5 inch alternatives. This, combined with their low nominal capacities and their essentially proprietary nature, led to the format being discontinued shortly after the CPC itself was discontinued.
Apart from Amstrad's other 3 inch machines (the PCW and the ZX Spectrum +3), the few other computer systems to use them included the Sega SF-7000 and CP/M systems such as the Tatung Einstein and Osborne machines. They also found use on embedded systems.
The Shugart-standard interface means that Amstrad CPC machines are able to use standard 3", 3½" or 5¼" drives as their second drive. Programs such as ROMDOS and ParaDOS extend the standard AMSDOS system to provide support for double-sided, 80-track formats, enabling up to 800 KB to be stored on a single disk.
The 3 inch disks themselves are usually known as "discs" on the CPC, following the spelling on the machine's plastic casing and conventional British English spelling.
Expansion
The hardware and firmware was designed to be able to access software provided on external ROMs. Each ROM has to be a 16 kB block and is switched in and out of the memory space shared with the video RAM. The Amstrad firmware is deliberately designed so that new software could be easily accessed from these ROMs with a minimum of fuss. Popular applications were marketed on ROM, particularly word processing and programming utility software (examples are Protext and Brunword of the former, and the MAXAM assembler of the latter type).
Such extra ROM chips do not plug directly into the CPC itself, but into extra plug-in "rom boxes" which contain sockets for the ROM chips and a minimal amount of decoding circuitry for the main machine to be able to switch between them. These boxes were either marketed commercially or could be built by competent hobbyists and they attached to the main expansion port at the back of the machine. Software on ROM loads much faster than from disc or tape and the machine's boot-up sequence was designed to evaluate ROMs it found and optionally hand over control of the machine to them. This allows significant customisation of the functionality of the machine, something that enthusiasts exploited for various purposes. However, the typical users would probably not be aware of this added ROM functionality unless they read the CPC press, as it is not described in the user manual and was hardly ever mentioned in marketing literature. It is, however, documented in the official Amstrad firmware manual.
The machines also feature a 9-pin Atari joystick port that will either directly take one joystick, or two joysticks by use of a splitter cable.
Peripherals
RS232 serial adapters
Amstrad issued two RS-232-C D25 serial interfaces, attached to the expansion connector on the rear of the machine, with a through-connector for the CPC464 disk drive or other peripherals.
The original interface came with a Book of Spells for facilitating data transfer between other systems using a proprietary protocol in the device's own ROM, as well as terminal software to connect to British Telecom's Prestel service. A separate version of the ROM was created for the U.S. market due to the use of the commands "|SUCK" and "|BLOW", which were considered unacceptable there.
Software and hardware limitations in this interface led to its replacement with an Amstrad-branded version of a compatible alternative by Pace. Serial interfaces were also available from third-party vendors such as KDS Electronics and Cirkit.
Software
BASIC and operating system
Like most home computers at the time, the CPC has its OS and a BASIC interpreter built in as ROM. It uses Locomotive BASIC - an improved version of Locomotive Software's Z80 BASIC for the BBC Microcomputer co-processor board. It is particularly notable for providing easy access to the machine's video and audio resources in contrast to the POKE commands required on generic Microsoft implementations. Other unusual features include timed event handling with the AFTER and EVERY commands, and text-based windowing.
CP/M
Digital Research's CP/M operating system was supplied with the 664 and 6128 disk-based systems, and the DDI-1 disk expansion unit for the 464. 64k machines shipped with CP/M 2.2 alone, while the 128k machines also include CP/M 3.1. The compact CP/M 2.2 implementation is largely stored on the boot sectors of a 3" disk in what was called "System format"; typing |CPM from Locomotive BASIC would load code from these sectors, making it a popular choice for custom game loading routines. The CP/M 3.1 implementation is largely in a separate file which is in turn loaded from the boot sector.
Much public domain CP/M software was made available for the CPC, from word-processors such as VDE to complete bulletin board systems such as ROS.
Other languages
Although it was possible to obtain compilers for Locomotive BASIC, C and Pascal, the majority of the CPC's software was written in native Z80 assembly language. Popular assemblers were Hisoft's Devpac, Arnor's Maxam, and (in France) DAMS. Disk-based CPC (not Plus) systems shipped with an interpreter for the educational language LOGO, booted from CP/M 2.2 but largely CPC-specific with much code resident in the AMSDOS ROM; 6128 machines also include a CP/M 3.1, non-ROM version. A C compiler was also written and made available for the European market through Tandy Europe, by Micro Business products.
Roland
In an attempt to give the CPC a recognisable mascot, a number of games by Amstrad's in-house software publisher Amsoft have been tagged with the Roland name. However, as the games had not been designed around the Roland character and only had the branding added later, the character design varies immensely, from a spiky-haired blonde teenager (Roland Goes Digging) to a white cube with legs (Roland Goes Square Bashing) or a mutant flea (Roland in the Caves). The only two games with similar gameplay and main character design are Roland in Time and its sequel Roland in Space. The Roland character was named after Roland Perry, one of the lead designers of the original CPC range.
Schneider Computer Division
In order to market its computers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland where Amstrad did not have any distribution structures, Amstrad entered a partnership with Schneider Rundfunkwerke AG, a German company that - very much like Amstrad itself - was previously only known for value-priced audio products. In 1984, Schneider's Schneider Computer Division daughter company was created specifically for the task, and the complete Amstrad CPC line-up was branded and sold as Schneider CPC.
Although they are based on the same hardware, the Schneider CPC models differ from the Amstrad CPC models in several details. Most prominently, the Schneider CPC464 and CPC664 keyboards featured grey instead of coloured keys, but still in the original British keyboard layout. To achieve a German "QWERTZ" keyboard layout, Schneider marketed a small software program to reassign the keys as well as sticker labels for the keys. In order to conform with stricter German EMC regulations, the complete Schneider CPC line-up is equipped with an internal metal shielding. For the same reason, the Schneider CPC6128 features micro ribbon type connectors instead of edge connectors. Both the greyscale keyboard and the micro ribbon connectors found their way up into the design of later Amstrad CPC models.
In 1988, after Schneider refused to market Amstrad's AT-compatible computer line, the cooperation ended. Schneider went on to sell the remaining stock of Schneider CPC models and used their now well-established market position to introduce its own PC designs. With the formation of its German daughter company Amstrad GmbH to distribute its product lines including the CPC464 and CPC6128, Amstrad attempted but ultimately failed to establish their own brand in the German-speaking parts of Europe.
Community
The Amstrad CPC enjoyed a strong and long lifetime, mainly due to the machines use for businesses as well as gaming. Dedicated programmers continued working on the CPC range, even producing graphical user interface (GUI) operating systems such as SymbOS. Internet sites devoted to the CPC have appeared from around the world featuring forums, news, hardware, software, programming and games. CPC Magazines appeared during the 1980s including publications in countries such as Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Denmark, Australia, and Greece. Titles included the official Amstrad Computer User publication, as well as independent titles like Amstrad Action, Amtix!, Computing with the Amstrad CPC, CPC Attack, Australia's The Amstrad User, France's Amstrad Cent Pour Cent and Amstar. Following the CPC's end of production, Amstrad gave permission for the CPC ROMs to be distributed freely as long as the copyright message is not changed and that it is acknowledged that Amstrad still holds copyright, giving emulator authors the possibility to ship the CPC firmware with their programs.
Influence on other Amstrad machines
Amstrad followed their success with the CPC 464 by launching the Amstrad PCW word-processor range, another Z80-based machine with a 3" disk drive and software by Locomotive Software. The PCW was originally developed to be partly compatible with an improved version of the CPC (ANT, or Arnold Number Two - the CPC's development codename was Arnold). However, Amstrad decided to focus on the PCW, and the ANT project never came to market.
On 7 April 1986, Amstrad announced it had bought from Sinclair Research "...the worldwide rights to sell and manufacture all existing and future Sinclair computers and computer products, together with the Sinclair brand name and those intellectual property rights where they relate to computers and computer-related products." which included the ZX Spectrum, for £5 million. This included Sinclair's unsold stock of Sinclair QLs and Spectrums. Amstrad made more than £5 million on selling these surplus machines alone. Amstrad launched two new variants of the Spectrum: the ZX Spectrum +2, based on the ZX Spectrum 128, with a built-in tape drive (like the CPC 464) and, the following year, the ZX Spectrum +3, with a built-in floppy disk drive (similar to the CPC 664 and 6128), taking the 3" discs that Amstrad CPC machines used.
Production Timeline
See also
Amstrad CPC character set
Amstrad CP/M Plus character set
List of Amstrad CPC emulators
List of Amstrad CPC games
GX4000
SymbOS (multitasking operating system)
Notes and references
External links
CPC-Wiki (CPC specific Wiki containing further information)
Unofficial Amstrad WWW Resource
New OS for the CPC
Computer-related introductions in 1984
CPC
Z80-based home computers
Computers designed in the United Kingdom |
2198 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulaziz%20al-Omari | Abdulaziz al-Omari | Abdulaziz al-Omari (, , also transliterated as Alomari or al-Umari; May 28, 1979 – September 11, 2001) was a Saudi terrorist who was one of five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11 as part of the September 11 attacks. Prior to the terrorist attack, Omari was an airport security guard and imam.
Omari arrived in the United States in June 2001, on a tourist visa, obtained through the Visa Express program. On September 11, 2001, Omari boarded American Airlines Flight 11 and assisted in the hijacking of the plane, which was crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, as part of the coordinated attacks.
Early life and education
Little is known about al-Omari's life, and it is unclear whether some information refers to Omari or another person by that name. He had used the birth date May 28, 1979.
It is alleged al-Omari graduated with honors from high school, attained a degree from Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University, was married and had a daughter briefly before the attacks.
Career
He is alleged to have often served as an imam at his mosque in Saudi Arabia and is believed by American authorities to have been a student of Saudi cleric Sulaiman Al-Alwan, whose mosque is located in Al-Qassim Province.
According to Walid bin Attash, Omari was one of a group of future hijackers who provided security at Kandahar airport after their basic training at an al-Qaeda camp. During the 2000 Al Qaeda Summit in Kuala Lumpur, American authorities state that immigration records show that a person named Abdulaziz al-Omari was visiting the country, although they say they are not sure that this was the same person.
In the autumn of 2001, after the September 11 attacks, al Jazeera television broadcast a tape they claim was made by Omari. The speaker made a farewell suicide video. In it he read, "I am writing this with my full conscience and I am writing this in expectation of the end, which is near. . . God praise everybody who trained and helped me, namely the leader Sheikh Osama bin Laden."
According to FBI director Robert Mueller and the 9/11 Commission, Omari entered the United States through a Dubai flight on June 29, 2001, with Salem al-Hazmi, landing in New York. He had used the controversial Visa Express program to gain entry. He apparently stayed with several other hijackers in Paterson, New Jersey, before moving to his own place at 4032 57th Terrace, Vero Beach, Florida. On his rental agreement form for that house, Omari gave two license-plates authorized to park in his space, one of which was registered to Atta.
Omari obtained a fake United States ID card from All Services Plus in Passaic County, New Jersey, which was in the business of selling fake documents, including another to Khalid al-Mihdhar. He was married and had a daughter.
Attacks
On September 10, 2001, Mohamed Atta picked up Omari from the Milner Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts, and the two drove their rented Nissan to a Comfort Inn in South Portland, Maine, where they spent the night in room 232. It was initially reported that Adnan and Ameer Bukhari were the two hijackers who had rented and driven the car.
In the early hours of September 11, they boarded a commuter flight back to Boston to connect to American Airlines Flight 11. American 11 was hijacked 15 minutes after the flight departed by Omari and four other hijackers, which allowed trained pilot Mohamed Atta to crash the Boeing 767 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center as part of an attack that killed thousands of people.
Mistaken identity allegations
Controversy over Omari's identity erupted shortly after the attacks. At first, the FBI had named Abdul Rahman al-Omari, a pilot for Saudi Arabian Airlines, as the pilot of Flight 11. It was quickly shown that this person was still alive, and the FBI issued an apology. It was also quickly determined that Mohamed Atta was the pilot among the hijackers. The FBI then named Abdulaziz al-Omari as a hijacker.
A man with the same name as those given by the FBI turned up alive in Saudi Arabia, saying that he had studied at the University of Denver and his passport was stolen there in 1995. The name, origin, birth date, and occupation were released by the FBI, but the picture was not of him. "I couldn't believe it when the FBI put me on their list", he said. "They gave my name and my date of birth, but I am not a suicide bomber. I am here. I am alive. I have no idea how to fly a plane. I had nothing to do with this."
See also
PENTTBOM
Hijackers in the September 11 attacks
References
External links
The Final 9/11 Commission Report
portal.telegraph.co.uk (Article which reports that the Saudi Arabian Airlines pilot named Omari was not involved with the terrorist attacks)
American Airlines Flight 11
2001 deaths
Participants in the September 11 attacks
Saudi Arabian al-Qaeda members
1979 births
Saudi Arabian mass murderers |
2201 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aage%20Bohr | Aage Bohr | Aage Niels Bohr (; 19 June 1922 – 8 September 2009) was a Danish nuclear physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1975 with Ben Mottelson and James Rainwater "for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this connection". Starting from Rainwater's concept of an irregular-shaped liquid drop model of the nucleus, Bohr and Mottelson developed a detailed theory that was in close agreement with experiments.
Since his father, Niels Bohr, had won the prize in 1922, he and his father are one of the six pairs of fathers and sons who have both won the Nobel Prize and one of the four pairs who have both won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Early life and education
Aage Niels Bohr was born in Copenhagen on 19 June 1922, the fourth of six sons of the physicist Niels Bohr and his wife Margrethe Bohr (née Nørlund). His oldest brother, Christian, died in a boating accident in 1934, and his youngest, Harald, from childhood meningitis. Of the others, Hans became a physician; Erik, a chemical engineer; and Ernest, a lawyer and Olympic athlete who played field hockey for Denmark at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. The family lived at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen, now known as the Niels Bohr Institute, where he grew up surrounded by physicists who were working with his father, such as Hans Kramers, Oskar Klein, Yoshio Nishina, Wolfgang Pauli and Werner Heisenberg. In 1932, the family moved to the Carlsberg Æresbolig, a mansion donated by Carl Jacobsen, the heir to Carlsberg breweries, to be used as an honorary residence by the Dane who had made the most prominent contribution to science, literature, or the arts.
Bohr went to high school at Sortedam Gymnasium in Copenhagen. In 1940, shortly after the German occupation of Denmark in April, he entered the University of Copenhagen, where he studied physics. He assisted his father, helping draft correspondence and articles related to epistemology and physics. In September 1943, word reached his family that the Nazis considered them to be Jewish, because Aage's grandmother, Ellen Adler Bohr, had been Jewish, and that they therefore were in danger of being arrested. The Danish resistance helped the family escape by sea to Sweden. Bohr arrived there in October 1943, and then flew to Britain on a de Havilland Mosquito operated by British Overseas Airways Corporation. The Mosquitoes were unarmed high-speed bomber aircraft that had been converted to carry small, valuable cargoes or important passengers. By flying at high speed and high altitude, they could cross German-occupied Norway, and yet avoid German fighters. Bohr, equipped with parachute, flying suit and oxygen mask, spent the three-hour flight lying on a mattress in the aircraft's bomb bay.
On arrival in London, Bohr rejoined his father, who had flown to Britain the week before. He officially became a junior researcher at the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, but actually served as personal assistant and secretary to his father. The two worked on Tube Alloys, the British atomic bomb project. On 30 December 1943, they made the first of a number of visits to the United States, where his father was a consultant to the Manhattan Project. Due to his father's fame, they were given false names; Bohr became James Baker, and his father, Nicholas Baker. In 1945, the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, Robert Oppenheimer, asked them to review the design of the modulated neutron initiator. They reported that it would work. That they had reached this conclusion put Enrico Fermi's concerns about the viability of the design to rest. The initiators performed flawlessly in the bombs used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
Career
In August 1945, with the war ended, Bohr returned to Denmark, where he resumed his university education, graduating with a master's degree in 1946, with a thesis concerned with some aspects of atomic stopping power problems. In early 1948, Bohr became a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. While paying a visit to Columbia University, he met Isidor Isaac Rabi, who sparked in him an interest in recent discoveries related to the hyperfine structure of deuterium. This led to Bohr becoming a visiting fellow at Columbia from January 1949 to August 1950. While in the United States, Bohr married Marietta Soffer on 11 March 1950. They had three children: Vilhelm, Tomas and Margrethe.
By the late 1940s it was known that the properties of atomic nuclei could not be explained by then-current models such as the liquid drop model developed by Niels Bohr amongst others. The shell model, developed in 1949 by Maria Goeppert-Mayer and others, allowed some additional features to be explained, in particular the so-called magic numbers. However, there were also properties that could not be explained, including the non-spherical distribution of charge in certain nuclei. In a 1950 paper, James Rainwater of Columbia University suggested a variant of the drop model of the nucleus that could explain a non-spherical charge distribution. Rainwater's model postulated a nucleus like a balloon with balls inside that distort the surface as they move about. He discussed the idea with Bohr, who was visiting Columbia at the time, and had independently conceived the same idea, and had, about a month after Rainwater's submission, submitted for publication a paper that discussed the same problem, but along more general lines. Bohr imagined a rotating, irregular-shaped nucleus with a form of surface tension. Bohr developed the idea further, in 1951 publishing a paper that comprehensively treated the relationship between oscillations of the surface of the nucleus and the movement of the individual nucleons.
Upon his return to Copenhagen in 1950, Bohr began working with Ben Mottelson to compare the theoretical work with experimental data. In three papers, that were published in 1952 and 1953, Bohr and Mottelson demonstrated close agreement between theory and experiment; for example, showing that the energy levels of certain nuclei could be described by a rotation spectrum. They were thereby able to reconcile the shell model with Rainwater's concept. This work stimulated many new theoretical and experimental studies. Bohr, Mottelson and Rainwater were jointly awarded the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this connection". Because his father had been awarded the prize in 1922, Bohr became one of only four pairs of fathers and sons to win the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Only after doing his Nobel Prize-winning research did Bohr receive his doctorate from the University of Copenhagen, in 1954, writing his thesis on "Rotational States of Atomic Nuclei". Bohr became a professor at the University of Copenhagen in 1956, and, following his father's death in 1962, succeeded him as director of the Niels Bohr Institute, a position he held until 1970. He remained active there until he retired in 1992. He was also a member of the board of the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (Nordita) from its inception in 1957, and was its director from 1975 to 1981. In addition to the Nobel Prize, he won the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics in 1960, the Atoms for Peace Award in 1969, H.C. Ørsted Medal in 1970, Rutherford Medal and Prize in 1972, John Price Wetherill Medal in 1974, and the Ole Rømer medal in 1976. Bohr and Mottelson continued to work together, publishing a two-volume monograph, Nuclear Structure. The first volume, Single-Particle Motion, appeared in 1969; the second, Nuclear Deformations, in 1975.
In 1972 he was awarded an honorary degree, doctor philos. honoris causa, at the Norwegian Institute of Technology, later part of Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He was also a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1980.
In 1981, Bohr became a founding member of the World Cultural Council.
His wife Marietta died on 2 October 1978. In 1981, he married Bente Scharff Meyer (1926–2011). His son, Tomas Bohr, is a Professor of Physics at the Technical University of Denmark, working in the area of fluid dynamics. Aage Bohr died in Copenhagen on 9 September 2009. He was outlived by his second wife and children.
Notes
References
External links
including the Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1975 Rotational Motion in Nuclei
Oral History interview transcript with Aage Bohr 23 & 30 January 1963, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
1922 births
2009 deaths
Atoms for Peace Award recipients
Danish Nobel laureates
Danish nuclear physicists
Danish people of Jewish descent
20th-century Danish physicists
Founding members of the World Cultural Council
Members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Members of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars
Columbia University faculty
Aage
Nobel laureates in Physics
Scientists from Copenhagen
University of Copenhagen alumni
Manhattan Project people
Aage
Danish expatriates in the United States
Burials at Mariebjerg Cemetery |
2202 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic%20geometry | Analytic geometry | In classical mathematics, analytic geometry, also known as coordinate geometry or Cartesian geometry, is the study of geometry using a coordinate system. This contrasts with synthetic geometry.
Analytic geometry is used in physics and engineering, and also in aviation, rocketry, space science, and spaceflight. It is the foundation of most modern fields of geometry, including algebraic, differential, discrete and computational geometry.
Usually the Cartesian coordinate system is applied to manipulate equations for planes, straight lines, and circles, often in two and sometimes three dimensions. Geometrically, one studies the Euclidean plane (two dimensions) and Euclidean space. As taught in school books, analytic geometry can be explained more simply: it is concerned with defining and representing geometric shapes in a numerical way and extracting numerical information from shapes' numerical definitions and representations. That the algebra of the real numbers can be employed to yield results about the linear continuum of geometry relies on the Cantor–Dedekind axiom.
History
Ancient Greece
The Greek mathematician Menaechmus solved problems and proved theorems by using a method that had a strong resemblance to the use of coordinates and it has sometimes been maintained that he had introduced analytic geometry.
Apollonius of Perga, in On Determinate Section, dealt with problems in a manner that may be called an analytic geometry of one dimension; with the question of finding points on a line that were in a ratio to the others. Apollonius in the Conics further developed a method that is so similar to analytic geometry that his work is sometimes thought to have anticipated the work of Descartes by some 1800 years. His application of reference lines, a diameter and a tangent is essentially no different from our modern use of a coordinate frame, where the distances measured along the diameter from the point of tangency are the abscissas, and the segments parallel to the tangent and intercepted between the axis and the curve are the ordinates. He further developed relations between the abscissas and the corresponding ordinates that are equivalent to rhetorical equations of curves. However, although Apollonius came close to developing analytic geometry, he did not manage to do so since he did not take into account negative magnitudes and in every case the coordinate system was superimposed upon a given curve a posteriori instead of a priori. That is, equations were determined by curves, but curves were not determined by equations. Coordinates, variables, and equations were subsidiary notions applied to a specific geometric situation.
Persia
The 11th-century Persian mathematician Omar Khayyam saw a strong relationship between geometry and algebra and was moving in the right direction when he helped close the gap between numerical and geometric algebra with his geometric solution of the general cubic equations, but the decisive step came later with Descartes. Omar Khayyam is credited with identifying the foundations of algebraic geometry, and his book Treatise on Demonstrations of Problems of Algebra (1070), which laid down the principles of analytic geometry, is part of the body of Persian mathematics that was eventually transmitted to Europe. Because of his thoroughgoing geometrical approach to algebraic equations, Khayyam can be considered a precursor to Descartes in the invention of analytic geometry.
Western Europe
Analytic geometry was independently invented by René Descartes and Pierre de Fermat, although Descartes is sometimes given sole credit. Cartesian geometry, the alternative term used for analytic geometry, is named after Descartes.
Descartes made significant progress with the methods in an essay titled La Geometrie (Geometry), one of the three accompanying essays (appendices) published in 1637 together with his Discourse on the Method for Rightly Directing One's Reason and Searching for Truth in the Sciences, commonly referred to as Discourse on Method.
La Geometrie, written in his native French tongue, and its philosophical principles, provided a foundation for calculus in Europe. Initially the work was not well received, due, in part, to the many gaps in arguments and complicated equations. Only after the translation into Latin and the addition of commentary by van Schooten in 1649 (and further work thereafter) did Descartes's masterpiece receive due recognition.
Pierre de Fermat also pioneered the development of analytic geometry. Although not published in his lifetime, a manuscript form of Ad locos planos et solidos isagoge (Introduction to Plane and Solid Loci) was circulating in Paris in 1637, just prior to the publication of Descartes' Discourse. Clearly written and well received, the Introduction also laid the groundwork for analytical geometry. The key difference between Fermat's and Descartes' treatments is a matter of viewpoint: Fermat always started with an algebraic equation and then described the geometric curve that satisfied it, whereas Descartes started with geometric curves and produced their equations as one of several properties of the curves. As a consequence of this approach, Descartes had to deal with more complicated equations and he had to develop the methods to work with polynomial equations of higher degree. It was Leonhard Euler who first applied the coordinate method in a systematic study of space curves and surfaces.
Coordinates
In analytic geometry, the plane is given a coordinate system, by which every point has a pair of real number coordinates. Similarly, Euclidean space is given coordinates where every point has three coordinates. The value of the coordinates depends on the choice of the initial point of origin. There are a variety of coordinate systems used, but the most common are the following:
Cartesian coordinates (in a plane or space)
The most common coordinate system to use is the Cartesian coordinate system, where each point has an x-coordinate representing its horizontal position, and a y-coordinate representing its vertical position. These are typically written as an ordered pair (x, y). This system can also be used for three-dimensional geometry, where every point in Euclidean space is represented by an ordered triple of coordinates (x, y, z).
Polar coordinates (in a plane)
In polar coordinates, every point of the plane is represented by its distance r from the origin and its angle θ, with θ normally measured counterclockwise from the positive x-axis. Using this notation, points are typically written as an ordered pair (r, θ). One may transform back and forth between two-dimensional Cartesian and polar coordinates by using these formulae: This system may be generalized to three-dimensional space through the use of cylindrical or spherical coordinates.
Cylindrical coordinates (in a space)
In cylindrical coordinates, every point of space is represented by its height z, its radius r from the z-axis and the angle θ its projection on the xy-plane makes with respect to the horizontal axis.
Spherical coordinates (in a space)
In spherical coordinates, every point in space is represented by its distance ρ from the origin, the angle θ its projection on the xy-plane makes with respect to the horizontal axis, and the angle φ that it makes with respect to the z-axis. The names of the angles are often reversed in physics.
Equations and curves
In analytic geometry, any equation involving the coordinates specifies a subset of the plane, namely the solution set for the equation, or locus. For example, the equation y = x corresponds to the set of all the points on the plane whose x-coordinate and y-coordinate are equal. These points form a line, and y = x is said to be the equation for this line. In general, linear equations involving x and y specify lines, quadratic equations specify conic sections, and more complicated equations describe more complicated figures.
Usually, a single equation corresponds to a curve on the plane. This is not always the case: the trivial equation x = x specifies the entire plane, and the equation x2 + y2 = 0 specifies only the single point (0, 0). In three dimensions, a single equation usually gives a surface, and a curve must be specified as the intersection of two surfaces (see below), or as a system of parametric equations. The equation x2 + y2 = r2 is the equation for any circle centered at the origin (0, 0) with a radius of r.
Lines and planes
Lines in a Cartesian plane, or more generally, in affine coordinates, can be described algebraically by linear equations. In two dimensions, the equation for non-vertical lines is often given in the slope-intercept form:
where:
m is the slope or gradient of the line.
b is the y-intercept of the line.
x is the independent variable of the function y = f(x).
In a manner analogous to the way lines in a two-dimensional space are described using a point-slope form for their equations, planes in a three dimensional space have a natural description using a point in the plane and a vector orthogonal to it (the normal vector) to indicate its "inclination".
Specifically, let be the position vector of some point , and let be a nonzero vector. The plane determined by this point and vector consists of those points , with position vector , such that the vector drawn from to is perpendicular to . Recalling that two vectors are perpendicular if and only if their dot product is zero, it follows that the desired plane can be described as the set of all points such that
(The dot here means a dot product, not scalar multiplication.)
Expanded this becomes
which is the point-normal form of the equation of a plane. This is just a linear equation:
Conversely, it is easily shown that if a, b, c and d are constants and a, b, and c are not all zero, then the graph of the equation
is a plane having the vector as a normal. This familiar equation for a plane is called the general form of the equation of the plane.
In three dimensions, lines can not be described by a single linear equation, so they are frequently described by parametric equations:
where:
x, y, and z are all functions of the independent variable t which ranges over the real numbers.
(x0, y0, z0) is any point on the line.
a, b, and c are related to the slope of the line, such that the vector (a, b, c) is parallel to the line.
Conic sections
In the Cartesian coordinate system, the graph of a quadratic equation in two variables is always a conic section – though it may be degenerate, and all conic sections arise in this way. The equation will be of the form
As scaling all six constants yields the same locus of zeros, one can consider conics as points in the five-dimensional projective space
The conic sections described by this equation can be classified using the discriminant
If the conic is non-degenerate, then:
if , the equation represents an ellipse;
if and , the equation represents a circle, which is a special case of an ellipse;
if , the equation represents a parabola;
if , the equation represents a hyperbola;
if we also have , the equation represents a rectangular hyperbola.
Quadric surfaces
A quadric, or quadric surface, is a 2-dimensional surface in 3-dimensional space defined as the locus of zeros of a quadratic polynomial. In coordinates , the general quadric is defined by the algebraic equation
Quadric surfaces include ellipsoids (including the sphere), paraboloids, hyperboloids, cylinders, cones, and planes.
Distance and angle
In analytic geometry, geometric notions such as distance and angle measure are defined using formulas. These definitions are designed to be consistent with the underlying Euclidean geometry. For example, using Cartesian coordinates on the plane, the distance between two points (x1, y1) and (x2, y2) is defined by the formula
which can be viewed as a version of the Pythagorean theorem. Similarly, the angle that a line makes with the horizontal can be defined by the formula
where m is the slope of the line.
In three dimensions, distance is given by the generalization of the Pythagorean theorem:
while the angle between two vectors is given by the dot product. The dot product of two Euclidean vectors A and B is defined by
where θ is the angle between A and B.
Transformations
Transformations are applied to a parent function to turn it into a new function with similar characteristics.
The graph of is changed by standard transformations as follows:
Changing to moves the graph to the right units.
Changing to moves the graph up units.
Changing to stretches the graph horizontally by a factor of . (think of the as being dilated)
Changing to stretches the graph vertically.
Changing to and changing to rotates the graph by an angle .
There are other standard transformation not typically studied in elementary analytic geometry because the transformations change the shape of objects in ways not usually considered. Skewing is an example of a transformation not usually considered.
For more information, consult the Wikipedia article on affine transformations.
For example, the parent function has a horizontal and a vertical asymptote, and occupies the first and third quadrant, and all of its transformed forms have one horizontal and vertical asymptote, and occupies either the 1st and 3rd or 2nd and 4th quadrant. In general, if , then it can be transformed into . In the new transformed function, is the factor that vertically stretches the function if it is greater than 1 or vertically compresses the function if it is less than 1, and for negative values, the function is reflected in the -axis. The value compresses the graph of the function horizontally if greater than 1 and stretches the function horizontally if less than 1, and like , reflects the function in the -axis when it is negative. The and values introduce translations, , vertical, and horizontal. Positive and values mean the function is translated to the positive end of its axis and negative meaning translation towards the negative end.
Transformations can be applied to any geometric equation whether or not the equation represents a function.
Transformations can be considered as individual transactions or in combinations.
Suppose that is a relation in the plane. For example,
is the relation that describes the unit circle.
Finding intersections of geometric objects
For two geometric objects P and Q represented by the relations and the intersection is the collection of all points which are in both relations.
For example, might be the circle with radius 1 and center : and might be the circle with radius 1 and center . The intersection of these two circles is the collection of points which make both equations true. Does the point make both equations true? Using for , the equation for becomes or which is true, so is in the relation . On the other hand, still using for the equation for becomes or which is false. is not in so it is not in the intersection.
The intersection of and can be found by solving the simultaneous equations:
Traditional methods for finding intersections include substitution and elimination.
Substitution: Solve the first equation for in terms of and then substitute the expression for into the second equation:
We then substitute this value for into the other equation and proceed to solve for :
Next, we place this value of in either of the original equations and solve for :
So our intersection has two points:
Elimination: Add (or subtract) a multiple of one equation to the other equation so that one of the variables is eliminated. For our current example, if we subtract the first equation from the second we get . The in the first equation is subtracted from the in the second equation leaving no term. The variable has been eliminated. We then solve the remaining equation for , in the same way as in the substitution method:
We then place this value of in either of the original equations and solve for :
So our intersection has two points:
For conic sections, as many as 4 points might be in the intersection.
Finding intercepts
One type of intersection which is widely studied is the intersection of a geometric object with the and coordinate axes.
The intersection of a geometric object and the -axis is called the -intercept of the object.
The intersection of a geometric object and the -axis is called the -intercept of the object.
For the line , the parameter specifies the point where the line crosses the axis. Depending on the context, either or the point is called the -intercept.
Tangents and normals
Tangent lines and planes
In geometry, the tangent line (or simply tangent) to a plane curve at a given point is the straight line that "just touches" the curve at that point. Informally, it is a line through a pair of infinitely close points on the curve. More precisely, a straight line is said to be a tangent of a curve at a point on the curve if the line passes through the point on the curve and has slope where f is the derivative of f. A similar definition applies to space curves and curves in n-dimensional Euclidean space.
As it passes through the point where the tangent line and the curve meet, called the point of tangency, the tangent line is "going in the same direction" as the curve, and is thus the best straight-line approximation to the curve at that point.
Similarly, the tangent plane to a surface at a given point is the plane that "just touches" the surface at that point. The concept of a tangent is one of the most fundamental notions in differential geometry and has been extensively generalized; see Tangent space.
Normal line and vector
In geometry, a normal is an object such as a line or vector that is perpendicular to a given object. For example, in the two-dimensional case, the normal line to a curve at a given point is the line perpendicular to the tangent line to the curve at the point.
In the three-dimensional case a surface normal, or simply normal, to a surface at a point P is a vector that is perpendicular to the tangent plane to that surface at P. The word "normal" is also used as an adjective: a line normal to a plane, the normal component of a force, the normal vector, etc. The concept of normality generalizes to orthogonality.
See also
Cross product
Rotation of axes
Translation of axes
Vector space
Notes
References
Books
John Casey (1885) Analytic Geometry of the Point, Line, Circle, and Conic Sections, link from Internet Archive.
Articles
External links
Coordinate Geometry topics with interactive animations |
2204 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic%20alphabet | Arabic alphabet | The Arabic alphabet (, or , , ), or Arabic abjad, is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing Arabic. It is written from right to left in a cursive style and includes 28 letters. Most letters have contextual letterforms.
The Arabic alphabet is considered an abjad, meaning it only uses consonants, but it is now considered an "impure abjad". As with other impure abjads, such as the Hebrew alphabet, scribes later devised means of indicating vowel sounds by separate vowel diacritics.
Consonants
The basic Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters. Adaptations of the Arabic script for other languages added and removed some letters, as for Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Central Kurdish, Urdu, Sindhi, Malay, Pashto, Arwi and Arabi Malayalam, all of which have additional letters as shown below. There are no distinct upper and lower case letter forms.
Many letters look similar but are distinguished from one another by dots () above or below their central part (). These dots are an integral part of a letter, since they distinguish between letters that represent different sounds. For example, the Arabic letters ب (b), ت (t) and ث (th) have the same basic shape, but have one dot below, two dots above and three dots above, respectively. The letter ن (n) also has the same form in initial and medial forms, with one dot above, though it is somewhat different in isolated and final form.
Both printed and written Arabic are cursive, with most of the letters within a word directly connected to the adjacent letters.
Alphabetical order
There are two main collating sequences for the Arabic alphabet: abjad and hija.
The original order (), used for lettering, derives from the order of the Phoenician alphabet, and is therefore similar to the order of other Phoenician-derived alphabets, such as the Hebrew alphabet. In this order, letters are also used as numbers, Abjad numerals, and possess the same alphanumeric code/cipher as Hebrew gematria and Greek isopsephy.
The () or () order, is used where lists of names and words are sorted, as in phonebooks, classroom lists, and dictionaries, groups letters by similarity of shape.
Abjadī
The order is not a simple historical continuation of the earlier north Semitic alphabetic order, since it has a position corresponding to the Aramaic letter samekh/semkat , yet no letter of the Arabic alphabet historically derives from that letter. Loss of was compensated for by the split of shin into two independent Arabic letters, (shīn) and (sīn) which moved up to take the place of . The six other letters that do not correspond to any north Semitic letter are placed at the end.
This is commonly vocalized as follows:
.
Another vocalization is:
This can be vocalized as:
or
Modern dictionaries and other reference books do not use the order to sort alphabetically; instead, the newer order is used wherein letters are partially grouped together by similarity of shape. The order is never used as numerals.
Another kind of order was used widely in the Maghreb until recently when it was replaced by the Mashriqi order.
Letter forms
The Arabic alphabet is always cursive and letters vary in shape depending on their position within a word. Letters can exhibit up to four distinct forms corresponding to an initial, medial (middle), final, or isolated position (IMFI). While some letters show considerable variations, others remain almost identical across all four positions. Generally, letters in the same word are linked together on both sides by short horizontal lines, but six letters () can only be linked to their preceding letter. For example, (Ararat) has only isolated forms because each letter cannot be connected to its following one. In addition, some letter combinations are written as ligatures (special shapes), notably , which is the only mandatory ligature (the un-ligated combination is considered difficult to read).
Table of basic letters
Notes
See the article Romanization of Arabic for details on various transliteration schemes. Arabic language speakers may usually not follow a standardized scheme when transcribing words or names. Some Arabic letters which don't have an equivalent in English (such as ق) are often spelled as numbers when Romanized. Also names are regularly transcribed as pronounced locally, not as pronounced in Literary Arabic (if they were of Arabic origin).
Regarding pronunciation, the phonemic values given are those of Modern Standard Arabic, which is taught in schools and universities. In practice, pronunciation may vary considerably from region to region. For more details concerning the pronunciation of Arabic, consult the articles Arabic phonology and varieties of Arabic.
The names of the Arabic letters can be thought of as abstractions of an older version where they were meaningful words in the Proto-Semitic language. Names of Arabic letters may have quite different names popularly.
Six letters () do not have a distinct medial form and have to be written with their final form without being connected to the next letter. Their initial form matches the isolated form. The following letter is written in its initial form, or isolated form if it is the final letter in the word.
The letter originated in the Phoenician alphabet as a consonant-sign indicating a glottal stop. Today it has lost its function as a consonant, and, together with and , is a mater lectionis, a consonant sign standing in for a long vowel (see below), or as support for certain diacritics ( and ).
Arabic currently uses a diacritic sign, , called , to denote the glottal stop , written alone or with a carrier:
alone:
with a carrier: (above or under an ), (above a ), (above a dotless or ).
In academic work, the () is transliterated with the modifier letter right half ring (ʾ), while the modifier letter left half ring (ʿ) transliterates the letter (), which represents a different sound, not found in English.
The has a single form, since it is never linked to a preceding or following letter. However, it is sometimes combined with a , , or , and in that case the carrier behaves like an ordinary , , or .
Variations
Alif
Modified letters
The following are not individual letters, but rather different contextual variants of some of the Arabic letters.
{|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"
|-
!colspan="4"|Conditional forms
!rowspan="2"|Name
!rowspan="2"|Translit.
!rowspan="2"|Phonemic Value (IPA)
|-
!Isolated
!Final
!Medial
!Initial
|-
|style="line-height:180%;padding:10px;"|
|colspan=2 style="line-height:180%;padding:10px;"|
|style="line-height:180%;padding:10px;"|
|
(أَلِفْ مَدَّة)
|
|(aka "lengthening/ stressing 'alif")
|-
|style="line-height:180%;padding:10px;"|
|style="line-height:180%;padding:10px;"|
|style="line-height:180%;padding:10px;"|
|style="line-height:180%;padding:10px;"|
|
(تَاءْ مَرْبُوطَة)
| or /
|(aka "correlated tā'''")
used in final position only and for denoting the feminine noun/word or to make the noun/word feminine; however, in rare irregular noun/word cases, it appears to denote the "masculine";
singular nouns: ,
plural nouns: (a preceding letter followed by a + = )
|-
|style="line-height:180%;padding:10px;"|
|style="line-height:180%;padding:10px;"|
|style="line-height:180%;padding:10px;"|
|style="line-height:180%;padding:10px;"|
| (أَلِفْ مَقْصُورَة)
| / / | Two uses:
1. The letter called or , pronounced in Modern Standard Arabic. It is used only at the end of words in some special cases to denote the neuter/non-feminine aspect of the word (mainly verbs), where cannot be used.
2. A way of writing the letter without its dots at the end of words, either traditionally or in contemporary use in Egypt and Sudan.
|}
Ligatures
The use of ligature in Arabic is common. There is one compulsory ligature, that for ل + ا, which exists in two forms. All other ligatures, of which there are many, are optional.
A more complex ligature that combines as many as seven distinct components is commonly used to represent the word .
The only ligature within the primary range of Arabic script in Unicode (U+06xx) is + . This is the only one compulsory for fonts and word-processing. Other ranges are for compatibility to older standards and contain other ligatures, which are optional.
+
Note: Unicode also has in its Presentation Form B FExx range a code for this ligature. If your browser and font are configured correctly for Arabic, the ligature displayed above should be identical to this one, U+FEFB ARABIC LIGATURE LAM WITH ALEF ISOLATED FORM:
U+0640 ARABIC TATWEEL + +
Note: Unicode also has in its Presentation Form B U+FExx range a code for this ligature. If your browser and font are configured correctly for Arabic, the ligature displayed above should be identical to this one:
U+FEFC ARABIC LIGATURE LAM WITH ALEF FINAL FORM
Another ligature in the Unicode Presentation Form A range U+FB50 to U+FDxx is the special code for glyph for the ligature ("God"), U+FDF2 ARABIC LIGATURE ALLAH ISOLATED FORM:
This is a work-around for the shortcomings of most text processors, which are incapable of displaying the correct vowel marks for the word in Koran. Because Arabic script is used to write other texts rather than Koran only, rendering + + as the previous ligature is considered faulty.
If one of a number of the fonts (Noto Naskh Arabic, mry_KacstQurn, KacstOne, Nadeem, DejaVu Sans, Harmattan, Scheherazade, Lateef, Iranian Sans, Baghdad, DecoType Naskh) is installed on a computer (Iranian Sans is supported by Wikimedia web-fonts), the word will appear without diacritics.
+ + = LILLĀH (meaning "to Allāh [only to God]") or لله
+ + + = ALLĀH (the Arabic word for "god")
or الله
+ + + U+0651 ARABIC SHADDA + U+0670 ARABIC LETTER SUPERSCRIPT ALEF + اللّٰه (DejaVu Sans and KacstOne don't show the added superscript Alef)
An attempt to show them on the faulty fonts without automatically adding the gemination mark and the superscript alif, although may not display as desired on all browsers, is by adding the U+200d (Zero width joiner) after the first or second ( +) + + U+200d ZERO WIDTH JOINER +
Gemination
Gemination is the doubling of a consonant. Instead of writing the letter twice, Arabic places a W-shaped sign called , above it. Note that if a vowel occurs between the two consonants the letter will simply be written twice. The diacritic only appears where the consonant at the end of one syllable is identical to the initial consonant of the following syllable. (The generic term for such diacritical signs is ).
Nunation
Nunation ( ) is the addition of a final to a noun or adjective. The vowel before it indicates grammatical case. In written Arabic nunation is indicated by doubling the vowel diacritic at the end of the word.
Vowels
Users of Arabic usually write long vowels but omit short ones, so readers must utilize their knowledge of the language in order to supply the missing vowels. However, in the education system and particularly in classes on Arabic grammar these vowels are used since they are crucial to the grammar. An Arabic sentence can have a completely different meaning by a subtle change of the vowels. This is why in an important text such as the the three basic vowel signs (see below) are mandated, like the ḥarakāt and all the other diacritics or other types of marks, for example the cantillation signs.
Short vowels
In the Arabic handwriting of everyday use, in general publications, and on street signs, short vowels are typically not written. On the other hand, copies of the cannot be endorsed by the religious institutes that review them unless the diacritics are included. Children's books, elementary school texts, and Arabic-language grammars in general will include diacritics to some degree. These are known as "vocalized" texts.
Short vowels may be written with diacritics placed above or below the consonant that precedes them in the syllable, called . All Arabic vowels, long and short, follow a consonant; in Arabic, words like "Ali" or "alif", for example, start with a consonant: , .
Long vowels
In the fully vocalized Arabic text found in texts such as Quran, a long following a consonant other than a is written with a short sign () on the consonant plus an after it; long is written as a sign for short () plus a ; and long as a sign for short () plus a . Briefly, = ; = ; and = . Long following a may be represented by an or by a free followed by an (two consecutive s are never allowed in Arabic).
The table below shows vowels placed above or below a dotted circle replacing a primary consonant letter or a sign. For clarity in the table, the primary letters on the left used to mark these long vowels are shown only in their isolated form. Most consonants do connect to the left with , and written then with their medial or final form. Additionally, the letter in the last row may connect to the letter on its left, and then will use a medial or initial form. Use the table of primary letters to look at their actual glyph and joining types.
In unvocalized text (one in which the short vowels are not marked), the long vowels are represented by the vowel in question: , , or . Long vowels written in the middle of a word of unvocalized text are treated like consonants with a (see below) in a text that has full diacritics. Here also, the table shows long vowel letters only in isolated form for clarity.
Combinations and are always pronounced and respectively. The exception is the suffix in verb endings where is silent, resulting in or .
In addition, when transliterating names and loanwords, Arabic language speakers write out most or all the vowels as long ( with , and with , and and with ), meaning it approaches a true alphabet.
Diphthongs
The diphthongs and are represented in vocalized text as follows:
Vowel omission
An Arabic syllable can be open (ending with a vowel) or closed (ending with a consonant):
open: CV [consonant-vowel] (long or short vowel)
closed: CVC (short vowel only)
A normal text is composed only of a series of consonants plus vowel-lengthening letters; thus, the word qalb, "heart", is written qlb, and the word qalaba "he turned around", is also written qlb.
To write qalaba without this ambiguity, we could indicate that the l is followed by a short a by writing a fatḥah above it.
To write qalb, we would instead indicate that the l is followed by no vowel by marking it with a diacritic called sukūn (), like this: .
This is one step down from full vocalization, where the vowel after the q would also be indicated by a fatḥah: .
The Qurʾān is traditionally written in full vocalization.
The long i sound in some editions of the Qur’ān is written with a kasrah followed by a diacritic-less y, and long u by a ḍammah followed by a bare w. In others, these y and w carry a sukūn. Outside of the Qur’ān, the latter convention is extremely rare, to the point that y with sukūn will be unambiguously read as the diphthong , and w with sukūn will be read .
For example, the letters can be read like English meel or mail, or (theoretically) also like mayyal or mayil. But if a sukūn is added on the y then the m cannot have a sukūn (because two letters in a row cannot be sukūnated), cannot have a ḍammah (because there is never an uy sound in Arabic unless there is another vowel after the y), and cannot have a kasrah (because kasrah before sukūnated y is never found outside the Qur’ān), so it must have a fatḥah and the only possible pronunciation is (meaning mile, or even e-mail). By the same token, m-y-t with a sukūn over the y can be mayt but not mayyit or meet, and m-w-t with a sukūn on the w can only be mawt, not moot (iw is impossible when the w closes the syllable).
Vowel marks are always written as if the i‘rāb vowels were in fact pronounced, even when they must be skipped in actual pronunciation. So, when writing the name Aḥmad, it is optional to place a sukūn on the ḥ, but a sukūn is forbidden on the d, because it would carry a ḍammah if any other word followed, as in Aḥmadu zawjī "Ahmad is my husband".
Another example: the sentence that in correct literary Arabic must be pronounced Aḥmadu zawjun shirrīr "Ahmad is a wicked husband", is usually mispronounced (due to influence from vernacular Arabic varieties) as Aḥmad zawj shirrīr. Yet, for the purposes of Arabic grammar and orthography, is treated as if it were not mispronounced and as if yet another word followed it, i.e., if adding any vowel marks, they must be added as if the pronunciation were Aḥmadu zawjun sharrīrun with a tanwīn 'un' at the end. So, it is correct to add an un tanwīn sign on the final r, but actually pronouncing it would be a hypercorrection. Also, it is never correct to write a sukūn on that r, even though in actual pronunciation it is (and in correct Arabic MUST be) sukūned.
Of course, if the correct i‘rāb is a sukūn, it may be optionally written.
ٰٰ
The sukūn is also used for transliterating words into the Arabic script. The Persian word (mâsk, from the English word "mask"), for example, might be written with a sukūn above the to signify that there is no vowel sound between that letter and the .
Additional letters
Regional variations
Some letters take a traditionally different form in specific regions:
Non-native letters to Standard Arabic
Some modified letters are used to represent non-native sounds of Modern Standard Arabic. These letters are used in transliterated names, loanwords and dialectal words.
is considered a native phoneme/allophone in some dialects, e.g. Kuwaiti and Iraqi dialects.
is considered a native phoneme in Levantine and North African dialects and as an allophone in others.
is considered a native phoneme/allophone in most modern Arabic dialects.
Used in languages other than Arabic
Numerals
There are two main kinds of numerals used along with Arabic text; Western Arabic numerals and Eastern Arabic numerals. In most of present-day North Africa, the usual Western Arabic numerals are used. Like Western Arabic numerals, in Eastern Arabic numerals, the units are always right-most, and the highest value left-most. Eastern Arabic numbers are written from left to right.
Letters as numerals
In addition, the Arabic alphabet can be used to represent numbers (Abjad numerals). This usage is based on the order of the alphabet. is 1, is 2, is 3, and so on until = 10, = 20, = 30, ..., = 200, ..., = 1000. This is sometimes used to produce chronograms.
History
The Arabic alphabet can be traced back to the Nabataean alphabet used to write Nabataean. The first known text in the Arabic alphabet is a late 4th-century inscription from (50 km east of ) in Jordan, but the first dated one is a trilingual inscription at Zebed in Syria from 512. However, the epigraphic record is extremely sparse, with only five certainly pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions surviving, though some others may be pre-Islamic. Later, dots were added above and below the letters to differentiate them. (The Aramaic language had fewer phonemes than the Arabic, and some originally distinct Aramaic letters had become indistinguishable in shape, so that in the early writings 15 distinct letter-shapes had to do duty for 28 sounds; cf. the similarly ambiguous Pahlavi alphabet.) The first surviving document that definitely uses these dots is also the first surviving Arabic papyrus (PERF 558), dated April 643, although they did not become obligatory until much later. Important texts were and still are frequently memorized, especially in Qurʾan memorization.
Later still, vowel marks and the were introduced, beginning some time in the latter half of the 7th century, preceding the first invention of Syriac and Hebrew vocalization. Initially, this was done by a system of red dots, said to have been commissioned in the Umayyad era by Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali a dot above = , a dot below = , a dot on the line = , and doubled dots indicated nunation. However, this was cumbersome and easily confusable with the letter-distinguishing dots, so about 100 years later, the modern system was adopted. The system was finalized around 786 by .
Arabic printing
Medieval Arabic blockprinting flourished from the 10th century until the 14th. It was devoted only to very small texts, usually for use in amulets.
In 1514, following Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in 1450, Gregorio de Gregorii, a Venetian, published an entire prayer-book in Arabic script; it was entitled Kitab Salat al-Sawa'i and was intended for eastern Christian communities.
Between 1580 and 1586, type designer Robert Granjon designed Arabic typefaces for Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici, and the Medici press published many Christian prayer and scholarly Arabic texts in the late 16th century.
Maronite monks at the Maar Quzhayy Monastery in Mount Lebanon published the first Arabic books to use movable type in the Middle East. The monks transliterated the Arabic language using Syriac script.
Although Napoleon Bonaparte generally receives credit for introducing the printing press to Egypt during his invasion of that country in 1798, and though he did indeed bring printing presses and Arabic script presses to print the French occupation's official newspaper Al-Tanbiyyah ("The Courier"), printing in the Arabic language started several centuries earlier.
A goldsmith (like Gutenberg) designed and implemented an Arabic-script movable-type printing-press in the Middle East. The Greek Orthodox monk Abd Allah Zakhir set up an Arabic printing press using movable type at the monastery of Saint John at the town of Dhour El Shuwayr in Mount Lebanon, the first homemade press in Lebanon using Arabic script. He personally cut the type molds and did the founding of the typeface. The first book came off his press in 1734; this press continued in use until 1899.
Computers
The Arabic alphabet can be encoded using several character sets, including ISO-8859-6, Windows-1256 and Unicode (see links in Infobox above), latter thanks to the "Arabic segment", entries U+0600 to U+06FF. However, none of the sets indicates the form that each character should take in context. It is left to the rendering engine to select the proper glyph to display for each character.
Each letter has a position-independent encoding in Unicode, and the rendering software can infer the correct glyph form (initial, medial, final or isolated) from its joining context. That is the current recommendation. However, for compatibility with previous standards, the initial, medial, final and isolated forms can also be encoded separately.
Unicode
As of Unicode 14.0, the Arabic script is contained in the following blocks:
Arabic (0600–06FF, 256 characters)
Arabic Supplement (0750–077F, 48 characters)
Arabic Extended-A (08A0–08FF, 96 characters)
Arabic Extended-B (0870–089F, 41 characters)
Arabic Presentation Forms-A (FB50–FDFF, 631 characters)
Arabic Presentation Forms-B (FE70–FEFF, 141 characters)
Rumi Numeral Symbols (10E60–10E7F, 31 characters)
Indic Siyaq Numbers (1EC70–1ECBF, 68 characters)
Ottoman Siyaq Numbers (1ED00–1ED4F, 61 characters)
Arabic Mathematical Alphabetic Symbols (1EE00—1EEFF, 143 characters)
The basic Arabic range encodes the standard letters and diacritics but does not encode contextual forms (U+0621-U+0652 being directly based on ISO 8859-6). It also includes the most common diacritics and Arabic-Indic digits. U+06D6 to U+06ED encode Qur'anic annotation signs such as "end of ayah" ۖ and "start of rub el hizb" ۞. The Arabic supplement range encodes letter variants mostly used for writing African (non-Arabic) languages. The Arabic Extended-A range encodes additional Qur'anic annotations and letter variants used for various non-Arabic languages.
The Arabic Presentation Forms-A range encodes contextual forms and ligatures of letter variants needed for Persian, Urdu, Sindhi and Central Asian languages. The Arabic Presentation Forms-B range encodes spacing forms of Arabic diacritics, and more contextual letter forms. The Arabic Mathematical Alphabetical Symbols block encodes characters used in Arabic mathematical expressions.
See also the notes of the section on modified letters.
Keyboards
Keyboards designed for different nations have different layouts, so proficiency in one style of keyboard, such as Iraq's, does not transfer to proficiency in another, such as Saudi Arabia's. Differences can include the location of non-alphabetic characters.
All Arabic keyboards allow typing Roman characters, e.g., for the URL in a web browser. Thus, each Arabic keyboard has both Arabic and Roman characters marked on the keys. Usually, the Roman characters of an Arabic keyboard conform to the QWERTY layout, but in North Africa, where French is the most common language typed using the Roman characters, the Arabic keyboards are AZERTY.
To encode a particular written form of a character, there are extra code points provided in Unicode which can be used to express the exact written form desired. The range Arabic presentation forms A (U+FB50 to U+FDFF) contain ligatures while the range Arabic presentation forms B (U+FE70 to U+FEFF) contains the positional variants. These effects are better achieved in Unicode by using the zero-width joiner and zero-width non-joiner, as these presentation forms are deprecated in Unicode and should generally only be used within the internals of text-rendering software; when using Unicode as an intermediate form for conversion between character encodings; or for backwards compatibility with implementations that rely on the hard-coding of glyph forms.
Finally, the Unicode encoding of Arabic is in logical order, that is, the characters are entered, and stored in computer memory, in the order that they are written and pronounced without worrying about the direction in which they will be displayed on paper or on the screen. Again, it is left to the rendering engine to present the characters in the correct direction, using Unicode's bi-directional text features. In this regard, if the Arabic words on this page are written left to right, it is an indication that the Unicode rendering engine used to display them is out of date.See also Multilingual Computing with Arabic and Arabic Transliteration: Arabicizing Windows Applications to Read and Write Arabic & Solutions for the Transliteration Quagmire Faced by Arabic-Script Languages and A PowerPoint Tutorial (with screen shots and an English voice-over) on how to add Arabic to the Windows Operating System.
There are competing online tools, e.g. Yamli editor, which allow entry of Arabic letters without having Arabic support installed on a PC, and without knowledge of the layout of the Arabic keyboard.
Handwriting recognition
The first software program of its kind in the world that identifies Arabic handwriting in real time was developed by researchers at Ben-Gurion University (BGU).
The prototype enables the user to write Arabic words by hand on an electronic screen, which then analyzes the text and translates it into printed Arabic letters in a thousandth of a second. The error rate is less than three percent, according to Dr. Jihad El-Sana, from BGU's department of computer sciences, who developed the system along with master's degree student Fadi Biadsy.
See also
Abjad numerals
Ancient South Arabian script
Algerian braille
Arabic braille
Arabic calligraphy
Arabic Chat Alphabet
Arabic diacritics
Arabic letter frequency
Arabic Mathematical Alphabetic Symbols
Arabic numerals
Arabic phonology
Arabic script – about other languages written in Arabic script
ArabTeX – provides Arabic support for TeX and LaTeX
Kufic
Modern Arabic mathematical notation
Perso-Arabic script
Rasm
Romanization of Arabic
References
External links
Arabic alphabet learning resourcesThis article contains major sections of text from the very detailed article Arabic alphabet from the French Wikipedia, which has been partially translated into English. Further translation of that page, and its incorporation into the text here, are welcomed.''
Arabic orthography |
2207 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels%20in%20art | Angels in art | Angels have appeared in works of art since early Christian art, and they have been a popular subject for Byzantine and European paintings and sculpture.
Angels are usually intended, in both Christian and Islamic art, to be beautiful, though several depictions go for more awesome or frightening attributes, notably in the depiction of the living creatures (which have bestial characteristics), ophanim (which are unanthropomorphic wheels) and cherubim (which have mosaic features); As a matter of theology, they are spiritual beings who do not eat or excrete and are genderless. Many angels in art may appear to the modern eye to be gendered as either male or female by their dress or actions, but until the 19th century, even the most female looking will normally lack breasts, and the figures should normally be considered as genderless. In 19th-century art, especially funerary art, this traditional convention is sometimes abandoned.
Christian art
In the Early Church
Specific ideas regarding how to portray angels began to develop in the early Church. Since angels are defined as pure spirits, the lack of a defined form has allowed artists wide latitude for creativity. Daniel 8:15 describes Gabriel as appearing in the "likeness of man" and in Daniel 9:21 he is referred to as "the man Gabriel." Such anthropomorphic descriptions of an angel are consistent with previous descriptions of angels, as in Genesis 19:5. They were usually depicted in the form of young men.
The earliest known Christian image of an angel, in the Cubicolo dell'Annunziazione in the Catacomb of Priscilla, which is dated to the middle of the third century, is a depiction of the Annunciation in which Gabriel is portrayed without wings. Representations of angels on sarcophagi and on objects such as lamps and reliquaries of that period also show them without wings, as for example the angel in the Sacrifice of Isaac scene in the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus.
In a third-century fresco of the Hebrew children in the furnace, in the cemetery of St. Priscilla, a dove takes the place of the angel, while a fourth-century representation of the same subject, in the coemeterium majus, substitutes the Hand of God for the heavenly messenger.
The earliest known representation of angels with wings is on what is called the Prince's Sarcophagus, discovered at Sarigüzel, near Istanbul, in the 1930s, and attributed to the time of Theodosius I (379-395). Flying winged angels, very often in pairs flanking a central figure or subject, are derivations in visual terms from pairs of winged Victories in classical art.
In this same period, Saint John Chrysostom explained the significance of angels' wings: "They manifest a nature's sublimity. That is why Gabriel is represented with wings. Not that angels have wings, but that you may know that they leave the heights and the most elevated dwelling to approach human nature. Accordingly, the wings attributed to these powers have no other meaning than to indicate the sublimity of their nature."
From then on Christian art generally represented angels with wings, as in the cycle of mosaics in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore (432–440). Multi-winged angels, often with only their face and wings showing, drawn from the higher grades of angels, especially cherubim and seraphim, are derived from Persian art, and are usually shown only in heavenly contexts, as opposed to performing tasks on earth. They often appear in the pendentives of domes or semi-domes of churches.
Byzantine art
Angels appear in Byzantine art in mosaics and icons. Artists found some of their inspiration from winged Greek figures such as "Victory". They also drew from imperial iconography. Court eunuchs could rise to positions of authority in the Empire. They performed ceremonial functions and served as trusted messengers. Amelia R. Brown points out that legislation under Justinian indicates that many of them came from the Caucasus, having light eyes, hair, and skin, as well as the "comely features and fine bodies" desired by slave traders. Those "castrated in childhood developed a distinctive skeletal structure, lacked full masculine musculature, body hair and beards,...." As officials, they would wear a white tunic decorated with gold. Brown suggests that "Byzantine artists drew, consciously or not, on this iconography of the court eunuch".
Daniel 10: 5–6 describes an angel as clothed in linen and girt with gold. Angels, especially the archangel Michael, who were depicted as military-style agents of God, came to be shown wearing Late Antique military uniform. This could be either the normal military dress, with a tunic to about the knees, armour breastplate and pteruges, but also often the specific dress of the bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperor, with a long tunic and the loros, a long gold and jewelled pallium restricted to the Imperial family and their closest guards, and in icons to archangels. The basic military dress it is still worn in pictures into the Baroque period and beyond in the West, and up to the present day in Eastern Orthodox icons. Other angels came to be conventionally depicted in long robes.
Medieval art
Medieval depictions of angels borrow from the Byzantine. In the French Hours of Anne of Brittany, Gabriel wears a dalmatic. In the later Middle Ages they often wear the vestments of a deacon, a cope over a dalmatic, especially Gabriel in Annunciation scenes - for example The Annunciation by Jan van Eyck. This indicated that, for all their powers, they could not perform the Eucharist, and were in this respect outranked by every priest, reinforcing the prestige of the clergy. In Early Christian art white robes were almost invariably adopted, sometimes bound with the "golden girdle" of Revelation. During the mediæval period senior angels were often clad in every brilliant colour, while junior ranks wore white. Early Renaissance painters such as Jan van Eyck and Fra Angelico painted angels with multi-colored wings. Depictions of angels came to combine medieval notions of beauty with feminine ideals of grace and beauty, as in da Panicale's 1435 Baptism of Christ.
Renaissance art
The classical erotes or putto re-appeared in art during the Italian Renaissance in both religious and mythological art, and is often known in English as a cherub, the singular of cherubim, actually one of the higher ranks in the Christian angelic hierarchy. They normally appear in groups and are generally given wings in religious art, and are sometimes represented as just a winged head. They generally are just in attendance, except that they may be amusing Christ or John the Baptist as infants in scenes of the Holy Family.
Victorian art
In the late 19th century artists' model Jane Burden Morris came to embody an ideal of beauty for Pre-Raphaelite painters. With the use of her long dark hair and features made somewhat more androgynous, they created a prototype Victorian angel which would appear in paintings and stained glass windows. Roger Homan notes that Edward Burne-Jones and others used her image often and in different ways, creating a new type of angel.
Islamic art
Angels in Islamic art often appear in illustrated manuscripts of Muhammad's life. Other common depictions of angels in Islamic art include angels with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, angels discerning the saved from the damned on the Day of Judgement, and angels as a repeating motif in borders or textiles. Islamic depictions of angels resemble winged Christian angels, although Islamic angels are typically shown with multicolored wings. Angels, such as the archangel Gabriel, are typically depicted as masculine, which is consistent with God's rejection of feminine depictions of angels in several verses of Quran. Nevertheless, later depictions of angels in Islamic art are more feminine and androgynous.
Angels in manuscripts
The 13th century book Ajā'ib al-makhlūqāt wa gharā'ib al-mawjūdāt (The Wonders of Creation) by Zakariya al-Qazwini describes Islamic angelology, and is often illustrated with many images of angels. The angels are typically depicted with bright, vivid colors, giving them unusual liveliness and other-worldly translucence. While some angels are referred to as "Guardians of the Kingdom of God," others are associated with hell. An undated manuscript of The Wonders of Creation from the Bavarian State Library in Munich includes depictions of angels both alone and alongside humans and animals. Angels are also illustrated in Timurid and Ottoman manuscripts, such as The Timurid Book of the Prophet Muhammad’s Ascension () and the Siyer-i Nebi''''.
Angels in heaven and hell
The Qur’an makes multiple references to angels. These angels take on both active and passive roles in Quranic stories. In the story of the creation of Adam, God announces to the angels that he intends to create man. The angels act as witnesses to this announcement and subsequent creation of Adam. Although there are many versions of the story, Islamic sources relate that God used the creation of Adam as a punishment or test for the angels. Therefore, the role of angels is often described as in opposition to man.
Another angel-like creature mentioned in the Qu’ran (4:97, 32:11) is the zabāniya. A zabāniya is a black angel of hell that brings souls of sinners down to hell to punish them and can be seen in illustrations of The Timurid Book of the Prophet Muhammad’s Ascension (c. 1436 A.D.). There are nineteen zabāniya, led by Mālik, an angel considered to be the master of fire or the gatekeeper of hell. Mālik's and zabāniya's categorizations as angels are debated as some believe they are better described as spirits or demons. Actually, portrayal of Zabaniyya shares many traits characteristical for demons in Islamic arts. As seen in The Timurid Book of the Prophet Muhammad’s Ascension, Muhammad is greeted by Mālik and later witnesses the torture of sinners carried out by the zabāniya.
Similar, the fallen angel Iblis is shown during his moment of refusal to prostrate himself before the newly created Adam, leading to his banishment to the bottom of hell. He is depict as black skinned monstrous creature with horns and flaming eyes, in contrast to the presentation of the noble angels. Only his wings remain as a sign of his former angelic status, however with burned edges.
Angels associated with Muhammad
Although depictions of Muhammad are often forbidden, the few that exist often include images of angels. Specifically, the Archangel Gabriel is frequently shown alongside the prophet. For example, in The Timurid Book of the Prophet Muhammad’s Ascension, the Archangel Gabriel appears to the Prophet Muhammad in Mecca to announce his ascension. Kneeling before Muhammad, Gabriel is shown with colorful wings and a crown. Later in The Timurid Book, Muhammad is shown with Gabriel meeting a group of angels in heaven. In the Jami' al-tawarikh, a Persian history from the 14th century, Muhammad is depicted beside al-Buraq, whose tail is transformed into an angel, while two other angels approach. A 16th-century Ottoman manuscript of Siyer-i Nebi, a Turkish epic about the life of Muhammad, also includes many depictions of the prophet alongside angels.
Gallery of angels in Christian art
Gallery of angels in Islamic art
See also
Archangel Michael in Christian art
Michael (archangel)
Gabriel
Angels in Islam
Angelus
Fleur de lys
List of films about angels
List of names referring to El
Seraph
Notes
References
Christian art
Islamic art |
2208 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic%20fox | Arctic fox | The Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus), also known as the white fox, polar fox, or snow fox, is a small fox native to the Arctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere and common throughout the Arctic tundra biome. It is well adapted to living in cold environments, and is best known for its thick, warm fur that is also used as camouflage. It has a large and very fluffy tail. In the wild, most individuals do not live past their first year but some exceptional ones survive up to 11 years. Its body length ranges from , with a generally rounded body shape to minimize the escape of body heat.
The Arctic fox preys on many small creatures such as lemmings, voles, ringed seal pups, fish, waterfowl, and seabirds. It also eats carrion, berries, seaweed, and insects and other small invertebrates. Arctic foxes form monogamous pairs during the breeding season and they stay together to raise their young in complex underground dens. Occasionally, other family members may assist in raising their young. Natural predators of the Arctic fox are golden eagles, Arctic wolves, polar bears, wolverines, red foxes, and grizzly bears.
Behavior
Arctic foxes must endure a temperature difference of up to between the external environment and their internal core temperature. To prevent heat loss, the Arctic fox curls up tightly tucking its legs and head under its body and behind its furry tail. This position gives the fox the smallest surface area to volume ratio and protects the least insulated areas. Arctic foxes also stay warm by getting out of the wind and residing in their dens. Although the Arctic foxes are active year-round and do not hibernate, they attempt to preserve fat by reducing their locomotor activity. They build up their fat reserves in the autumn, sometimes increasing their body weight by more than 50%. This provides greater insulation during the winter and a source of energy when food is scarce.
Reproduction
In the spring, the Arctic fox's attention switches to reproduction and a home for their potential offspring. They live in large dens in frost-free, slightly raised ground. These are complex systems of tunnels covering as much as and are often in eskers, long ridges of sedimentary material deposited in formerly glaciated regions. These dens may be in existence for many decades and are used by many generations of foxes.
Arctic foxes tend to select dens that are easily accessible with many entrances, and that are clear from snow and ice making it easier to burrow in. The Arctic fox builds and chooses dens that face southward towards the sun, which makes the den warmer. Arctic foxes prefer large, maze-like dens for predator evasion and a quick escape especially when red foxes are in the area. Natal dens are typically found in rugged terrain, which may provide more protection for the pups. But, the parents will also relocate litters to nearby dens to avoid predators. When red foxes are not in the region, Arctic foxes will use dens that the red fox previously occupied. Shelter quality is more important to the Arctic fox than the proximity of spring prey to a den.
The main prey in the tundra is lemmings, which is why the white fox is often called the “lemming fox.” The white fox's reproduction rates reflect the lemming population density, which cyclically fluctuates every 3–5 years. When lemmings are abundant, the white fox can give birth to 18 pups, but they often do not reproduce when food is scarce. The “coastal fox” or blue fox lives in an environment where food availability is relatively consistent, and they will have up to 5 pups every year.
Breeding usually takes place in April and May, and the gestation period is about 52 days. Litters may contain as many as 25 (the largest litter size in the order Carnivora). The young emerge from the den when 3 to 4 weeks old and are weaned by 9 weeks of age.
Arctic foxes are primarily monogamous and both parents will care for the offspring. When predators and prey are abundant, Arctic foxes are more likely to be promiscuous (exhibited in both males and females) and display more complex social structures. Larger packs of foxes consisting of breeding or non-breeding males or females can guard a single territory more proficiently to increase pup survival. When resources are scarce, competition increases and the number of foxes in a territory decreases. On the coasts of Svalbard, the frequency of complex social structures is larger than inland foxes that remain monogamous due to food availability. In Scandinavia, there are more complex social structures compared to other populations due to the presence of the red fox. Also, conservationists are supplying the declining population with supplemental food. One unique case, however, is Iceland where monogamy is the most prevalent. The older offspring (1-year-olds) often remain within their parent's territory even though predators are absent and there are fewer resources, which may indicate kin selection in the fox.
Diet
Arctic foxes generally eat any small animal they can find, including lemmings, voles, other rodents, hares, birds, eggs, fish, and carrion. They scavenge on carcasses left by larger predators such as wolves and polar bears, and in times of scarcity also eat their feces. In areas where they are present, lemmings are their most common prey, and a family of foxes can eat dozens of lemmings each day. In some locations in northern Canada, a high seasonal abundance of migrating birds that breed in the area may provide an important food source. On the coast of Iceland and other islands, their diet consists predominantly of birds. During April and May, the Arctic fox also preys on ringed seal pups when the young animals are confined to a snow den and are relatively helpless. They also consume berries and seaweed, so they may be considered omnivores. This fox is a significant bird-egg predator, consuming eggs of all except the largest tundra bird species. When food is overabundant, the Arctic fox buries (caches) the surplus as a reserve.
Arctic foxes survive harsh winters and food scarcity by either hoarding food or storing body fat. Fat is deposited subcutaneously and viscerally in Arctic foxes. At the beginning of winter, the foxes have approximately 14740 kJ of energy storage from fat alone. Using the lowest BMR value measured in Arctic foxes, an average sized fox () would need 471 kJ/day during the winter to survive. Arctic foxes can acquire goose eggs (from greater snow geese in Canada) at a rate of 2.7–7.3 eggs/h, and they store 80–97% of them. Scats provide evidence that they eat the eggs during the winter after caching. Isotope analysis shows that eggs can still be eaten after a year, and the metabolizable energy of a stored goose egg only decreases by 11% after 60 days (a fresh egg has about 816 kJ). Researchers have also noted that some eggs stored in the summer are accessed later the following spring prior to reproduction.
Adaptations
The Arctic fox lives in some of the most frigid extremes on the planet, but they do not start to shiver until the temperature drops to . Among its adaptations for survival in the cold is its dense, multilayered pelage, which provides excellent insulation. Additionally, the Arctic fox is the only canid whose foot pads are covered in fur. There are two genetically distinct coat color morphs: white and blue. The white morph has seasonal camouflage, white in winter and brown along the back with light grey around the abdomen in summer. The blue morph is often a dark blue, brown, or grey color year-round. Although the blue allele is dominant over the white allele, 99% of the Arctic fox population is the white morph. Two similar mutations to MC1R cause the blue color and the lack of seasonal color change. The fur of the Arctic fox provides the best insulation of any mammal.
The fox has a low surface area to volume ratio, as evidenced by its generally compact body shape, short muzzle and legs, and short, thick ears. Since less of its surface area is exposed to the Arctic cold, less heat escapes from its body.
Sensory modalities
The Arctic fox has a functional hearing range between 125 Hz–16 kHz with a sensitivity that is ≤ 60 dB in air, and an average peak sensitivity of 24 dB at 4 kHz. Overall, the Arctic foxes hearing is less sensitive than the dog and the kit fox. The Arctic fox and the kit fox have a low upper-frequency limit compared to the domestic dog and other carnivores. The Arctic fox can easily hear lemmings burrowing under 4-5 inches of snow. When it has located its prey, it pounces and punches through the snow to catch its prey.
The Arctic fox also has a keen sense of smell. They can smell carcasses that are often left by polar bears anywhere from 10 to 40 km. It is possible that they use their sense of smell to also track down polar bears. Additionally, Arctic foxes can smell and find frozen lemmings under 46–77 cm of snow, and can detect a subnivean seal lair under 150 cm of snow.
Physiology
The Arctic fox contains advantageous genes to overcome extreme cold and starvation periods. Transcriptome sequencing has identified two genes that are under positive selection: Glycolipid transfer protein domain containing 1 (GLTPD1) and V-akt murine thymoma viral oncogene homolog 2 (AKT2). GLTPD1 is involved in the fatty acid metabolism, while AKT2 pertains to the glucose metabolism and insulin signaling.
The average mass specific BMR and total BMR are 37% and 27% lower in the winter than the summer. The Arctic fox decreases its BMR via metabolic depression in the winter to conserve fat storage and minimize energy requirements. According to the most recent data, the lower critical temperature of the Arctic fox is at −7 °C in the winter and 5 °C in the summer. It was commonly believed that the Arctic fox had a lower critical temperature below −40 °C. However, some scientists have concluded that this stat is not accurate since it was never tested using the proper equipment.
About 22% of the total body surface area of the Arctic fox dissipates heat readily compared to red foxes at 33%. The regions that have the greatest heat loss are the nose, ears, legs, and feet, which is useful in the summer for thermal heat regulation. Also, the Arctic fox has a beneficial mechanism in their nose for evaporative cooling like dogs, which keeps the brain cool during the summer and exercise. The thermal conductivity of Arctic fox fur in the summer and winter is the same; however, the thermal conductance of the Arctic fox in the winter is lower than the summer since fur thickness increases by 140%. In the summer, the thermal conductance of the Arctic foxes body is 114% higher than the winter, but their body core temperature is constant year-round.
One way that Arctic foxes regulate their body temperature is by utilizing a countercurrent heat exchange in the blood of their legs. Arctic foxes can constantly keep their feet above the tissue freezing point (−1 °C) when standing on cold substrates without losing mobility or feeling pain. They do this by increasing vasodilation and blood flow to a capillary rete in the pad surface, which is in direct contact with the snow rather than the entire foot. They selectively vasoconstrict blood vessels in the center of the foot pad, which conserves energy and minimizes heat loss. Arctic foxes maintain the temperature in their paws independently from the core temperature. If the core temperature drops, the pad of the foot will remain constantly above the tissue freezing point.
Size
The average head-and-body length of the male is , with a range of , while the female averages with a range of . In some regions, no difference in size is seen between males and females. The tail is about long in both sexes. The height at the shoulder is . On average males weigh , with a range of , while females average , with a range of .
Taxonomy
Vulpes lagopus is a 'true fox' belonging to the genus Vulpes of the fox tribe Vulpini, which consists of 12 extant species. It is classified under the subfamily Caninae of the canid family Canidae. Although it has previously been assigned to its own monotypic genus Alopex, recent genetic evidence now places it in the genus Vulpes along with the majority of other foxes.
It was originally described by Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae in 1758 as Canis lagopus. The type specimen was recovered from Lapland, Sweden. The generic name vulpes is Latin for "fox". The specific name lagopus is derived from Ancient Greek λαγώς (lagōs, "hare") and πούς (pous, "foot"), referring to the hair on its feet similar to those found in cold-climate species of hares.
Looking at the most recent phylogeny, the Arctic fox and the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) diverged approximately 3.17MYA. Additionally, the Arctic fox diverged from its sister group, the kit fox (Vulpes macrotis), at about 0.9MYA.
Origins
The origins of the Arctic fox have been described by the “out of Tibet” hypothesis. On the Tibetan Plateau, fossils of the extinct ancestral Arctic fox (Vulpes qiuzhudingi) from the early Pliocene (5.08–3.6 MYA) were found along with many other precursors of modern mammals that evolved during the Pliocene (5.3–2.6 MYA). It is believed that this ancient fox is the ancestor of the modern Arctic fox. Globally, the Pliocene was about 2–3 °C warmer than today, and the Arctic during the summer in the mid-Pliocene was 8 °C warmer. By using stable carbon and oxygen isotope analysis of fossils, researchers claim that the Tibetan Plateau experienced tundra-like conditions during the Pliocene and harbored cold-adapted mammals that later spread to North America and Eurasia during the Pleistocene Epoch (2.6 million-11,700 years ago).
Subspecies
Besides the nominate subspecies, the common Arctic fox, V. l. lagopus, four other subspecies of this fox have been described:
Bering Islands Arctic fox, V. l. beringensis
Greenland Arctic fox, V. l. foragoapusis
Iceland Arctic fox, V. l. fuliginosus
Pribilof Islands Arctic fox, V. l. pribilofensis
Distribution and habitat
The Arctic fox has a circumpolar distribution and occurs in Arctic tundra habitats in northern Europe, northern Asia, and North America. Its range includes Greenland, Iceland, Fennoscandia, Svalbard, Jan Mayen (where it was hunted to extinction) and other islands in the Barents Sea, northern Russia, islands in the Bering Sea, Alaska, and Canada as far south as Hudson Bay. In the late 19th century, it was introduced into the Aleutian Islands southwest of Alaska. However, the population on the Aleutian Islands is currently being eradicated in conservation efforts to preserve the local bird population. It mostly inhabits tundra and pack ice, but is also present in Canadian boreal forests (northeastern Alberta, northern Saskatchewan, northern Manitoba, Northern Ontario, Northern Quebec, and Newfoundland and Labrador) and the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. They are found at elevations up to above sea level and have been seen on sea ice close to the North Pole.
The Arctic fox is the only land mammal native to Iceland. It came to the isolated North Atlantic island at the end of the last ice age, walking over the frozen sea. The Arctic Fox Center in Súðavík contains an exhibition on the Arctic fox and conducts studies on the influence of tourism on the population. Its range during the last ice age was much more extensive than it is now, and fossil remains of the Arctic fox have been found over much of northern Europe and Siberia.
The color of the fox's coat also determines where they are most likely to be found. The white morph mainly lives inland and blends in with the snowy tundra, while the blue morph occupies the coasts because its dark color blends in with the cliffs and rocks.
Migrations and travel
During the winter, 95.5% of Arctic foxes utilize commuting trips, which remain within the fox's home range. Commuting trips in Arctic foxes last less than 3 days and occur between 0–2.9 times a month. Nomadism is found in 3.4% of the foxes, and loop migrations (where the fox travels to a new range, then returns to its home range) are the least common at 1.1%. Arctic foxes in Canada that undergo nomadism and migrations voyage from the Canadian archipelago to Greenland and northwestern Canada. The duration and distance traveled between males and females is not significantly different.
Arctic foxes closer to goose colonies (located at the coasts) are less likely to migrate. Meanwhile, foxes experiencing low-density lemming populations are more likely to make sea ice trips. Residency is common in the Arctic fox population so that they can maintain their territories. Migratory foxes have a mortality rate >3 times higher than resident foxes. Nomadic behavior becomes more common as the foxes age.
In July 2019, the Norwegian Polar Institute reported the story of a yearling female which was fitted with a GPS tracking device and then released by their researchers on the east coast of Spitsbergen in the Svalbard group of islands. The young fox crossed the polar ice from the islands to Greenland in 21 days, a distance of . She then moved on to Ellesmere Island in northern Canada, covering a total recorded distance of in 76 days, before her GPS tracker stopped working. She averaged just over a day, and managed as much as in a single day.
Conservation status
The Arctic fox has been assessed as least concern on the IUCN Red List since 2004. However, the Scandinavian mainland population is acutely endangered, despite being legally protected from hunting and persecution for several decades. The estimate of the adult population in all of Norway, Sweden, and Finland is fewer than 200 individuals. As a result, the populations of Arctic fox have been carefully studied and inventoried in places such as the Vindelfjällens Nature Reserve (Sweden), which has the Arctic fox as its symbol.
The abundance of the Arctic fox tends to fluctuate in a cycle along with the population of lemmings and voles (a 3- to 4-year cycle). The populations are especially vulnerable during the years when the prey population crashes, and uncontrolled trapping has almost eradicated two subpopulations.
The pelts of Arctic foxes with a slate-blue coloration were especially valuable. They were transported to various previously fox-free Aleutian Islands during the 1920s. The program was successful in terms of increasing the population of blue foxes, but their predation of Aleutian Canada geese conflicted with the goal of preserving that species.
The Arctic fox is losing ground to the larger red fox. This has been attributed to climate change—the camouflage value of its lighter coat decreases with less snow cover. Red foxes dominate where their ranges begin to overlap by killing Arctic foxes and their kits. An alternative explanation of the red fox's gains involves the gray wolf. Historically, it has kept red fox numbers down, but as the wolf has been hunted to near extinction in much of its former range, the red fox population has grown larger, and it has taken over the niche of top predator. In areas of northern Europe, programs are in place that allow the hunting of red foxes in the Arctic fox's previous range.
As with many other game species, the best sources of historical and large-scale population data are hunting bag records and questionnaires. Several potential sources of error occur in such data collections. In addition, numbers vary widely between years due to the large population fluctuations. However, the total population of the Arctic fox must be in the order of several hundred thousand animals.
The world population of Arctic foxes is thus not endangered, but two Arctic fox subpopulations are. One is on Medny Island (Commander Islands, Russia), which was reduced by some 85–90%, to around 90 animals, as a result of mange caused by an ear tick introduced by dogs in the 1970s. The population is currently under treatment with antiparasitic drugs, but the result is still uncertain.
The other threatened population is the one in Fennoscandia (Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Kola Peninsula). This population decreased drastically around the start of the 20th century as a result of extreme fur prices, which caused severe hunting also during population lows. The population has remained at a low density for more than 90 years, with additional reductions during the last decade. The total population estimate for 1997 is around 60 adults in Sweden, 11 adults in Finland, and 50 in Norway. From Kola, there are indications of a similar situation, suggesting a population of around 20 adults. The Fennoscandian population thus numbers around 140 breeding adults. Even after local lemming peaks, the Arctic fox population tends to collapse back to levels dangerously close to nonviability.
The Arctic fox is classed as a "prohibited new organism" under New Zealand's Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996, preventing it from being imported into the country.
See also
Arctic rabies virus
References
Further reading
Nowak, Ronald M. (2005). Walker's Carnivores of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. .
External links
State of the Environment Norway: Arctic fox
Smithsonian Institution – North American Mammals: Vulpes lagopus
Photo Gallery by islandsmyndir.is
Fox, arctic
Holarctic fauna
Mammals described in 1758
Mammals of Europe
Mammals of Asia
Mammals of Greenland
Mammals of Iceland
Mammals of North America
Mammals of Russia
Mammals of Canada
Mammals of the United States
Mammals of the Arctic
Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus
Vulpes |
2209 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon%20%28disambiguation%29 | Anglo-Saxon (disambiguation) | Anglo-Saxons were Germanic tribes that settled in Britain and founded England.
Anglo-Saxon may also refer to:
Anglo-Saxon (anthropology) or Nordic race, one of the putative Caucasian sub-races
Anglo-Saxon England, the history of Anglo-Saxons
Anglo-Saxon model, modern macroeconomic term
Anglo-Saxon world, modern societies based on or influenced by English customs
Old English or Anglo-Saxon, the earliest historical form of the English language
, one of various ships
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, an ethnicity in the U.S.
See also
Anglo, a prefix
Saxon (disambiguation) |
2210 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folklore%20of%20the%20United%20States | Folklore of the United States | American folklore encompasses the folklores that have evolved in the present-day United States since Europeans arrived in the 16th century. While it contains much in the way of Native American tradition, it is not wholly identical to the tribal beliefs of any community of native people.
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales, stories, tall tales, and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared.
Native American folklore
Native American cultures are rich in myths and legends that explain natural phenomena and the relationship between humans and the spirit world. According to Barre Toelken, feathers, beadwork, dance steps and music, the events in a story, the shape of a dwelling, or items of traditional food can be viewed as icons of cultural meaning.
Native American cultures are numerous and diverse. Though some neighboring cultures hold similar beliefs, others can be quite different from one another. The most common myths are the creation myths, which tell a story to explain how the earth was formed, and where humans and other beings came from. Others may include explanations about the Sun, Moon, constellations, specific animals, seasons, and weather. This is one of the ways that many tribes have kept, and continue to keep, their cultures alive; these stories are told as a way of preserving and transmitting the nation, tribe, or band's particular beliefs, history, customs, spirituality, and traditional way of life. According to Barre Toelken, "Stories not only entertain but also embody Native behavioral and ethical values."
There are many different kinds of stories. Some are called "hero stories"; these are stories of people who lived at one time, and who were immortalized and remembered through these tales. There are "trickster stories", about the different trickster figures of the tribes, spirits who may be either helpful or dangerous, depending on the situation. There are also tales that are simply warnings; they warn against doing something that may harm in some way. Many of these tales have morals or some form of belief that is being taught. This is how the things were remembered.
Founding myths
The founding of the United States is often surrounded by legends and tall tales. Many stories have developed since the founding long ago to become a part of America's folklore and cultural awareness, and non-Native American folklore especially includes any narrative which has contributed to the shaping of American culture and belief systems. These narratives have varying levels of historical accuracy; the veracity of the stories is not a determining factor.
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus, as a hero and symbol to the then-immigrants, is an important figure in the body of American myth. His status, not unlike most American icons, is representative not of his own accomplishments, but the self-perception of the society which chose him as a hero. Having effected a separation from England and its cultural icons, the United States was left without history—or heroes on which to base a shared sense of their social selves. Washington Irving was instrumental in popularizing Columbus. His version of Columbus' life, published in 1829, was more a romance than a biography. The book was very popular, and contributed to an image of the discoverer as a solitary individual who challenged the unknown sea, as triumphant Americans contemplated the dangers and promise of their own wilderness frontier. As a consequence of his vision and audacity, there was now a land free from kings, a vast continent for new beginnings. In the years following the Revolution the poetic device "Columbia" was used as a symbol of both Columbus and America. King's College of New York changed its name in 1792 to Columbia, and the new capital in Washington was subtitled District of Columbia.
Jamestown
In May 1607, the Susan Constant, the Discovery, and the Godspeed sailed through Chesapeake Bay and thirty miles up the James River settlers built Jamestown, Virginia, England's first permanent colony. Too late in the season to plant crops, many were not accustomed to manual labor. Within a few months, some settlers died of famine and disease. Only thirty-eight made it through their first year in the New World. Captain John Smith, a pirate turned gentleman turned the settlers into foragers and successful traders with the Native Americans, who taught the English how to plant corn and other crops. Smith led expeditions to explore the regions surrounding Jamestown, and it was during one of these that the chief of the Powhatan Native Americans captured Smith. According to an account Smith published in 1624, he was going to be put to death until the chief's daughter, Pocahontas, saved him. From this the legend of Pocahontas sprang forth, becoming part of American folklore, children's books, and movies.<ref>{{cite web|last=McGeehan |first=John R. |url=http://www.netplaces.com/american-history/english-french-and-dutch-influences/jamestown-settlement.htm |title=McGeehan, John R., Jamestown Settlement |publisher=Netplaces.com |date=2011-02-23 |access-date=2012-12-29}}</ref>
Pilgrims
Plymouth Rock is the traditional site of disembarkation of William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims who founded Plymouth Colony in 1620, and an important symbol in American history. There are no contemporary references to the Pilgrims' landing on a rock at Plymouth. The first written reference to the Pilgrims landing on a rock is found 121 years after they landed. The Rock, or one traditionally identified as it, has long been memorialized on the shore of Plymouth Harbor in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The holiday of Thanksgiving is said to have begun with the Pilgrims in 1621. They had come to America to escape religious persecution, but then nearly starved to death. Some friendly Native Americans, including Squanto, helped the Pilgrims survive through the first winter. The perseverance of the Pilgrims is celebrated during the annual Thanksgiving festival.
Revolutionary War figures
George Washington
George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799), the country's first president, is the most preeminent of American historical and folkloric figures, as he holds the place of "Father of his Country". Apocryphal stories about Washington's childhood include a claim that he skipped a silver dollar across the Rappahannock River at Ferry Farm. Another tale claims that as a young child, Washington chopped down his father's cherry tree. His angry father confronted the young Washington, who proclaimed "I cannot tell a lie" and admitted to the transgression, thus illuminating his honesty. Parson Mason Locke Weems mentions the first citation of this legend in his 1806 book, The Life of George Washington: With Curious Anecdotes, Equally Honorable to Himself and Exemplary to His Young Countrymen. This anecdote cannot be independently verified. Samuel Clemens, also known as Mark Twain, is also known to have spread the story while lecturing, personalizing it by adding "I have a higher and greater standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie but I won't."
Patrick Henry
Patrick Henry (May 29, 1736 – June 6, 1799) was an attorney, planter and politician who became known as an orator during the movement for independence in Virginia in the 1770s. Patrick Henry is best known for the speech he made in the House of Burgesses on March 23, 1775, in Saint John's Church in Richmond, Virginia. With the House undecided on whether to mobilize for military action against the encroaching British military force, Henry argued in favor of mobilization. Forty-two years later, Henry's first biographer, William Wirt, working from oral histories, tried to reconstruct what Henry said. According to Wirt, Henry ended his speech with words that have since become immortalized: "I know not what course others may take; but as for me, Give me Liberty, or give me Death!" The crowd, by Wirt's account, jumped up and shouted "To Arms! To Arms!". For 160 years Wirt's account was taken at face value. In the 1970s, historians began to question the authenticity of Wirt's reconstruction.
Betsy Ross
Betsy Ross (January 1, 1752 – January 30, 1836) is widely credited with making the first American flag. There is, however, no credible historical evidence that the story is true. Research conducted by the National Museum of American History notes that the story of Betsy Ross making the first American flag for General George Washington entered into American consciousness about the time of the 1876 centennial celebrations. In the 2008 book The Star-Spangled Banner: The Making of an American Icon, Smithsonian experts point out that accounts of the event appealed to Americans eager for stories about the revolution and its heroes and heroines. Betsy Ross was promoted as a patriotic role model for young girls and a symbol of women's contributions to American history.
Other Revolutionary War heroes who became figures of American folklore include: Benedict Arnold, Benjamin Franklin, Nathan Hale, John Hancock, John Paul Jones and Francis Marion.
Tall Tales
The tall tale is a fundamental element of American folk literature. The tall tale's origins are seen in the bragging contests that often occurred when men of the American frontier gathered. A tall tale is a story with unbelievable elements, relayed as if it were true and factual. Some such stories are exaggerations of actual events; others are completely fictional tales set in a familiar setting, such as the American Old West, or the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. They are usually humorous or good-natured. The line between myth and tall tale is distinguished primarily by age; many myths exaggerate the exploits of their heroes, but in tall tales, the exaggeration looms large, to the extent of becoming the whole of the story.
Based on historical figures
John Chapman (September 26, 1774 – March 18, 1845), widely known as Johnny Appleseed, was an American pioneer nurseryman who introduced apple trees to large parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. He became an American legend while still alive, largely because of his kind and generous ways, and the symbolic importance he attributed to apples. Johnny Appleseed is remembered in American popular culture by his traveling song or Swedenborgian hymn ("The Lord is good to me...").
Daniel Boone (November 2, 1734 [O.S. October 22] – September 26, 1820) was an American pioneer, explorer, and frontiersman whose frontier exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States.
Davy Crockett (August 17, 1786 – March 6, 1836) was a 19th-century American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier and politician. He is commonly referred to in popular culture by the epithet, "King of the Wild Frontier". He represented Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives, served in the Texas Revolution, and died at the Battle of the Alamo.
Mike Fink (c. 1770/1780 – c. 1823) called "king of the keelboaters", was a semi-legendary brawler and river boatman who exemplified the tough and hard-drinking men who ran keelboats up and down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
Martha Jane Canary (May 1, 1852 – August 1, 1903), better known as Calamity Jane, was an American frontierswoman, and professional scout best known for her claim of being an acquaintance of Wild Bill Hickok. She is said to have also exhibited kindness and compassion, especially to the sick and needy. It was from her that Bret Harte took his famous character of Cherokee Sal in The Luck of Roaring Camp.
Jigger Johnson (1871–1935), was a lumberjack and log driver from northern New England who is known for his numerous off-the-job exploits, such as catching bobcats alive with his bare hands, and drunken brawls.Monahan, Robert. "Jigger Johnson", New Hampshire Profiles magazine, Northeast Publications, Concord, New Hampshire, April, 1957.
John Henry was an African-American railroad worker who is said to have worked as a "steel-driving man"—a man tasked with hammering a steel drill into rock to make holes for explosives to blast the rock away in constructing a railroad tunnel. According to legend, John Henry's prowess as a steel-driver was measured in a race against a steam-powered hammer, which he won, only to die in victory with his hammer in his hand and his heart giving out from stress. The "Ballad of John Henry" is a musical rendition of his story.
Molly Pitcher was a nickname given to a woman said to have fought in the American Battle of Monmouth, who is generally believed to have been Mary Hays. Since various Molly Pitcher tales grew in the telling, many historians regard Molly Pitcher as folklore rather than history, or suggest that Molly Pitcher may be a composite image inspired by the actions of a number of real women. The name itself may have originated as a nickname given to women who carried water to men on the battlefield during the war.
Other historical figures include Titanic survivor Molly Brown, Wild West showman Buffalo Bill Cody, and sharpshooter Annie Oakley.
Fictional characters
Paul Bunyan is a lumberjack figure in North American folklore and tradition. One of the most famous and popular North American folklore heroes, he is usually described as a giant as well as a lumberjack of unusual skill, and is often accompanied in stories by his animal companion, Babe the Blue Ox. The character originated in folktales circulated among lumberjacks in the Northeastern United States and eastern Canada, first appearing in print in a story published by Northern Michigan journalist James MacGillivray in 1906.
The Lone Ranger is a fictional hero of the west who fought raiders and robbers in the Texas area. The sole survivor of a group of six rangers, he set out to bring the criminals who killed his brother to justice. The Lone Ranger is said to have been based on Bass Reeves by Historian Art Burton but that is in dispute.
Johnny Kaw is a mythical Kansas settler whose exploits created elements of the Kansas landscape and helped establish wheat and sunflowers as major crops. The character dates to the 1955 centennial of Kansas and has been explored in numerous books.
John the Conqueror also known as High John the Conqueror, and many other folk variants, is a folk hero from African-American folklore. John the Conqueror was an African prince who was sold as a slave in the Americas. Despite his enslavement, his spirit was never broken and he survived in folklore as a sort of a trickster figure, because of the tricks he played to evade his masters. Joel Chandler Harris's 'Br'er Rabbit' of the Uncle Remus stories is said to be patterned after High John the Conqueror.
Pecos Bill is an American cowboy, apocryphally immortalized in numerous tall tales of the Old West during American westward expansion into the Southwest of Texas, New Mexico, Southern California, and Arizona
Captain Stormalong was an American folk hero and the subject of numerous nautical-themed tall tales originating in Massachusetts. Stormalong was said to be a sailor and a giant, some 30 feet tall; he was the master of a huge clipper ship known in various sources as either the Courser or the Tuscarora, a ship so tall that it had hinged masts to avoid catching on the moon.
Legendary and folkloric creatures
Bigfoot, also known as "Sasquatch", is the name given to an ape-like creature that some believe inhabit mostly forests in the Pacific Northwest region of, and throughout the entirety of, North America. Bigfoot is usually described as a large, hairy, bipedal humanoid, although descriptions vary depending on location. The height range is about 6 to 10 feet tall with black, dark brown, or dark reddish hair. One of the most famous accounts of Bigfoot is the Patterson-Gimlin film, where a supposedly female Bigfoot marches across the screen with giant strides, turns to face the camera, then marches off up a steep hill and into the forest. There are more than 100 sightings reported yearly. Among these reporters are veterans, campers, hikers, explorers, hunters, and more. There are several websites, podcasts and organizations related to Bigfoot.
Champ is the name given to a reputed lake monster living in Lake Champlain, a natural freshwater lake in North America. The lake crosses the U.S.–Canada border, located partially in the Canadian province of Quebec and partially in the U.S. states of Vermont and New York. There is no scientific evidence for Champ's existence, though there have been over 300 reported sightings.
Punxsutawney Phil is a semi-mythical groundhog central to the most well-known Groundhog Day ceremony, a Pennsylvania Dutch superstition that claims to predict the arrival of spring. According to tradition, the same groundhog has made predictions ever since the 1800s.
The Jersey Devil is a legendary creature said to inhabit the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey in the United States. The creature is often described as a flying biped with hooves, but there are many different variations. The most common description is that of a kangaroo-like creature with the face of a horse, the head of a dog, leathery bat-like wings, horns, small arms with clawed hands, red eyes, cloven hooves and a forked tail. It has been reported to move quickly, as to avoid human contact, and often is described as emitting a "blood-curdling scream". The legend goes as such: a woman named Mother Leeds gave birth to her 13th child on a dark, stormy night. Mother Leed is said to be a witch and her 13th child was born the Devil. It soon grew wings and hooves, killed the midwife, and took off into the night.
The White Lady is a type of female ghost reportedly seen in rural areas and associated with some local legend of tragedy. Common to many of them is the theme of losing or being betrayed by a husband or fiancé. They are often associated with an individual family line or said to be a harbinger of death, similar to a banshee.
Mothman is a mythical creature from Point Pleasant, West Virginia described as a large humanoid with glowing red eyes on its face and large bird-like wings with fur covering its body. Mothman has been blamed for the collapse of the Silver Bridge.
The Hodag is a mythical beast that is said to inhabit the forests of Northern Wisconsin, particularly around the city of Rhinelander. The Hodag has a reptilian body with the horns of a bull and is said to have a penchant for mischief.
Old Black Eyes is a spectral hound said to frequent an area known as the Baker Rocks, located near the top of the Black Mountains of North Carolina. Old Black Eyes is said to be the spirit of Jim Baker, who lived at the rocks and was regarded as a witch with supernatural powers by the local mountain people. According to legend, Jim Baker performed some sort of ritual at an old Indian cemetery, near the Black Mountains, where he proceeded to sell his soul to the Devil. The Devil proceeded to turn Baker's pupils "unnaturally black" as a sign of their deal and hell's claim on his soul. Upon his death, Baker was said to take the spirit of a "devil dog", identifiable by the large black pupils of its eyes, that people feared to approach, believing it was surrounded in black magic. It was said the only way to get rid of Old Black Eyes was to draw its picture, pin it to a tree, and then shoot it with a gun.
In North American folklore, Fearsome critters were tall tale animals jokingly said to inhabit the wilderness in or around logging camps, especially in the Great Lakes region. Today, the term may also be applied to similar fabulous beasts.
Other folkloric creatures include the Chupacabra, Jackalope, the Nain Rouge of Detroit, Michigan, Wendigo of Minnesota and Chessie, a legendary sea monster said to live in Chesapeake Bay.
Literature
Santa Claus, also known as Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, or simply "Santa", is a figure with legendary, mythical, historical and folkloric origins. The modern figure of Santa Claus was derived from the Dutch figure, Sinterklaas, which may, in turn, have its origins in the hagiographical tales concerning the Christian Saint Nicholas. "A Visit from St. Nicholas", also known as "The Night Before Christmas" is a poem first published anonymously in 1823 and generally attributed to Clement Clarke Moore. The poem, which has been called "arguably the best-known verses ever written by an American", is largely responsible for the conception of Santa Claus from the mid-nineteenth century to today, including his physical appearance, the night of his visit, his mode of transportation, the number and names of his reindeer, as well as the tradition that he brings toys to children. The poem has influenced ideas about St. Nicholas and Santa Claus from the United States to the rest of the English-speaking world and beyond. Is There a Santa Claus? was the title of an editorial appearing in the September 21, 1897, edition of The (New York) Sun. The editorial, which included the famous reply "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus", has become a part of popular Christmas folklore in the United States and Canada.
The Headless Horseman is a fictional character from the short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by American author Washington Irving. The story, from Irving's collection of short stories, entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, has worked itself into known American folklore/legend through literature and film.
"Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving, first published in 1819. It follows a Dutch-American villager in colonial America named Rip Van Winkle who meets mysterious Dutchmen, imbibes their liquor and falls asleep in the Catskill Mountains. He awakes 20 years later to a very changed world, having missed the American Revolution.
Inspired by a conversation on nostalgia with his American expatriate brother-in-law, Irving wrote the story while temporarily living in Birmingham, England. It was published in his collection, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. While the story is set in New York's Catskill Mountains near where Irving later took up residence, he admitted, "When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills."
Folk music
Native Americans were the earliest inhabitants of the land that is today known as the United States and played its first music. Beginning in the 17th century, immigrants from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Germany and France began arriving in large numbers, bringing with them new styles and instruments. African slaves brought musical traditions, and each subsequent wave of immigrants contributes to a melting pot. Folk music includes both traditional music and the genre that evolved from it during the 20th-century folk revival. The term originated in the 19th century but is often applied to music that is older than that.
The earliest American scholars were with The American Folklore Society (AFS), which emerged in the late 1800s. Their studies expanded to include Native American music but still treated folk music as a historical item preserved in isolated societies. In North America, during the 1930s and 1940s, the Library of Congress worked through the offices of traditional music collectors Robert Winslow Gordon, Alan Lomax and others to capture as much North American field material as possible. Lomax was the first prominent scholar to study distinctly American folk music such as that of cowboys and southern blacks. His first major published work was in 1911, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, and was arguably the most prominent US folk music scholar of his time, notably during the beginnings of the folk music revival in the 1930s and early 1940s.
The American folk music revival was a phenomenon in the United States that began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, and Oscar Brand had enjoyed a limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward musical styles that had, in earlier times, contributed to the development of country & western, jazz, and rock and roll music.
African-American music
Slavery was introduced to the Thirteen Colonies beginning in the early 17th century in Virginia. The ancestors of today's African-American population were brought from hundreds of tribes across West Africa and brought with them certain traits of West African music. This included call and response vocals, complex rhythmic music, syncopated beats, shifting accents, incorporation of hums and moans, which are sounds with no distinct meaning, and a combination of sound and body movements. The African musical focus on rhythmic singing and dancing was brought to the New World, where it became part of a distinct folk culture that helped Africans "retain continuity with their past through music." Along with retaining many African elements, there was also a continuation of instruments. Enslaved Africans would either take with them African instruments or reconstructed them once in the New World. The first slaves in the United States sang work songs and field hollers. However, slave music was used for a variety of reasons. Music was included in religious ceremonies and celebrations, used to coordinate work, and to conceal hidden messages, like when they were commenting on slave owners. African American slave songs can be divided into three groups: religious, work, and recreational songs.
African American Spirituals
Protestant hymns written mostly by New England preachers became a feature of camp meetings held among devout Christians across the South. Most slaves were either animists or Muslims, so they did not know about Christianity. To destroy any remnants of African culture or make more people disciples, slaves would be encouraged and taken to church. They became attracted to the grace and freedom that was preached within the church, which was very different from the lives they were living. Slaves would learn the same hymns that their masters sang, and when they came together they developed and sang adapted versions of these hymns, they were called Negro spirituals. It was from these roots, of spiritual songs, work songs, and field hollers, that blues, jazz, and gospel developed. Negro spirituals were primarily expressions of religious faith. These songs provided them a voice for their longing for freedom and to experience it. Around the 1840s, slaves knew that in the northern states slavery was illegal, and some northerners wanted the complete abolishment of slavery. So when they sang about heaven, it was also about possibly escaping north. In the early 19th century the Underground railroad was developed, containing a network of secret routes and safe houses, and it greatly impacted slaves’ religious music. When there was any mention of trains, stations, etc. in spirituals they were directly referencing the Underground Railroad, such as the song “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” These songs were designed so that slave owners thought that slaves were only singing about heaven.
African American Work Songs
Work Songs at least had two functions: one to benefit the slaves and another to benefit overseers. When a group of slaves had to work together on a hard task, like carrying a heavy load, singing would provide a rhythm that allowed them to coordinate their movements. When picking crops, music was not necessary, but when there was silence it would be uncomfortable for the overseers. Even though there was a presence of melancholy in songs, Southern slave owners would interpret that their slaves were happy and content, possibly because of their singing.
African American Recreational Songs
Even if slave owners attempted to forbid things like drums or remnants of African culture, they did not seem to mind them learning European instruments and music. In some cases, black string players would be invited to play to entertain white audiences. Between the week of Christmas and New Years’, owners would give their slaves a holiday. This provided a chance for slave families who had different masters to come together, otherwise, they would not go anywhere. Some slaves would craft items, but masters detested industrious slaves. So most slaves would spend their recreational time doing other things, like dancing and singing. Masters approved of such activities, but they may not have listened carefully to the songs that were performed.
Folk songs
The original Thirteen Colonies of the United States were all former British possessions, and Anglo culture became a major foundation for American folk and popular music. Many American folk songs are identical to British songs in arrangements, but with new lyrics, often as parodies of the original material. Anglo-American traditional music also includes a variety of broadside ballads, humorous stories and tall tales, and disaster songs regarding mining, shipwrecks and murder.
Folk songs may be classified by subject matter, such as: drinking songs, sporting songs, train songs, work songs, war songs, and ballads.
The Star-Spangled Banner's tune was adapted from an old English drinking song by John Stafford Smith called "To Anacreon in Heaven."
"The Ballad of Casey Jones" is a traditional song about railroad engineer Casey Jones and his death at the controls of the train he was driving. It tells of how Jones and his fireman Sim Webb raced their locomotive to make up for lost time, but discovered another train ahead of them on the line, and how Jones remained on board to try to stop the train as Webb jumped to safety.
"When Johnny Comes Marching Home" (sometimes "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again") is a popular song of the American Civil War that expressed people's longing for the return of their friends and relatives who were fighting in the war. The Irish anti-war song "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye" and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" share the same melodic material. Based on internal textual references, "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye" apparently dates from the early 1820s, while When Johnny Comes Marching Home was first published in 1863. "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye" is a popular traditional Irish anti-war and anti-recruiting song. It is generally dated to the early 19th century, when soldiers from Athy, County Kildare served the British East India Company.
"Oh My Darling, Clementine" (1884) is an American western folk ballad believed to have been based on another song called Down by the River Liv'd a Maiden (1863). The words are those of a bereaved lover singing about his darling, the daughter of a miner in the 1849 California Gold Rush. He loses her in a drowning accident. The song plays during the opening credits for the highly acclaimed John Ford movie "My Darling Clementine". It also runs as a background score all through the movie.
The Yellow Rose of Texas is a traditional folk song. The original love song has become associated with the legend that Emily D. West, a biracial indentured servant, "helped win the Battle of San Jacinto, the decisive battle in the Texas Revolution".
"Take Me Out to the Ball Game" is a 1908 Tin Pan Alley song by Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer which has become the unofficial anthem of baseball, although neither of its authors had attended a game prior to writing the song. The song is traditionally sung during the seventh-inning stretch of a baseball game. Fans are generally encouraged to sing along.
Other American folksongs include: "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain", "Skewball", "Big Bad John", "Stagger Lee", "Camptown Races" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".
Sea shanties
Work songs sung by sailors between the 18th and 20th centuries are known as sea shanties. The shanty was a distinct type of work song, developed especially in American-style merchant vessels that had come to prominence in decades prior to the American Civil War. These songs were typically performed while adjusting the rigging, raising anchor, and other tasks where men would need to pull in rhythm. These songs usually have a very punctuated rhythm precisely for this reason, along with a call-and-answer format. Well before the 19th century, sea songs were common on rowing vessels. Such songs were also very rhythmic in order to keep the rowers together.
They were notably influenced by songs of African Americans, such as those sung whilst manually loading vessels with cotton in ports of the southern United States. The work contexts in which African-Americans sang songs comparable to shanties included: boat-rowing on rivers of the southeastern U.S. and Caribbean; the work of stokers or "firemen", who cast wood into the furnaces of steamboats plying great American rivers;and stevedoring on the U.S. eastern seaboard, the Gulf Coast, and the Caribbean—including "cotton-screwing": the loading of ships with cotton in ports of the American South. During the first half of the 19th century, some of the songs African Americans sang also began to appear in use for shipboard tasks, i.e. as shanties.
Shanty repertoire borrowed from the contemporary popular music enjoyed by sailors, including minstrel music, popular marches, and land-based folk songs, which were adapted to suit musical forms matching the various labor tasks required to operate a sailing ship. Such tasks, which usually required a coordinated group effort in either a pulling or pushing action, included weighing anchor and setting sail.
"Poor Paddy Works on the Railway" is a popular Irish and American folk song. Historically, it was often sung as a sea chanty. The song portrays an Irish worker working on a railroad. There are numerous titles of the song including, "Pat Works on the Railway" and "Paddy on the Railway". "Paddy Works on the Erie" is another version of the song. "Paddy on the Railway" is attested as a chanty in the earliest known published work to use the word "chanty", G. E. Clark's Seven Years of a Sailor's Life (1867). Clark recounted experiences fishing on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, in a vessel out of Provincetown, Mass. c. 1865–66. At one point, the crew is getting up the anchor in a storm, by means of a pump-style windlass. One of the chanties the men sing while performing this task is mentioned by title, "Paddy on the Railway."
Shaker music
The Shakers is a religious sect founded in 18th-century England upon the teachings of Ann Lee. Shakers today are most known for their cultural contributions, especially style of music and furniture. The Shakers composed thousands of songs, and also created many dances; both were an important part of the Shaker worship services. In Shaker society, a spiritual "gift" could also be a musical revelation, and they considered it important to record musical inspirations as they occurred. "Simple Gifts" was composed by Elder Joseph Brackett and originated in the Alfred Shaker community in Maine in 1848. Aaron Copland's iconic 1944 ballet score Appalachian Spring, uses the now famous Shaker tune "Simple Gifts" as the basis of its finale.
Folk dancing
Folk dances of British origin include the square dance, descended from the quadrille, combined with the American innovation of a caller instructing the dancers. The religious communal society known as the Shakers emigrated from England during the 18th century and developed their own folk dance style.
Locations and landmarks
the "Lost Colony" of Roanoke Island: In 1587, Sir Walter Raleigh recruited over 100 men, women and children to journey from England to Roanoke Island on North Carolina's coast and establish the first English settlement in America under the direction of John White as governor. Virginia Dare (born August 18, 1587) was the first child born in the Americas to English parents, Ananias and Eleanor White Dare in the short-lived Roanoke Colony. The fact of her birth is known because the governor of the settlement, Virginia Dare's grandfather, John White, returned to England in 1587 to seek fresh supplies. When White eventually returned three years later, Virginia and the other colonists were gone. During the past four hundred years, Virginia Dare has become a prominent figure in American myth and folklore, symbolizing different things to different groups of people. She is the subject of a poem (Peregrine White and Virginia Dare) by Rosemary and Stephen Vincent Benet, and the North Carolina Legend of the White Doe. While often cited as an Indian legend, the white doe seems to have its roots in English folklore. White deer are common in English legends and often used as symbols of Christian virtue. A similar story of a young girl transformed into a white deer can be found in Yorkshire, where it formed the basis for Wordsworth's poem The White Doe of Rylstone. In the four centuries since their disappearance, the Roanoke colonists have been the subject of a mystery that still challenges historians and archaeologists as one of America's oldest.
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets. Times Square – iconified as "The Crossroads of the World" is the brightly illuminated hub of the Broadway Theater District. Formerly Longacre Square, Times Square was renamed in April 1904 after The New York Times moved its headquarters to the newly erected Times Building site of the annual ball drop on New Year's Eve. The northern triangle of Times Square is technically Duffy Square, dedicated in 1937 to Chaplain Francis P. Duffy of New York City's "Fighting 69th" Infantry Regiment; a memorial to Duffy is located there, along with a statue of George M. Cohan. The Duffy Statue and the square were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.
Empire State Building is a 102-story skyscraper located in New York City at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. Its name is derived from the nickname for New York, the Empire State. It stood as the world's tallest building for 40 years, from its completion in 1931. The Empire State Building is generally thought of as an American cultural icon. The project involved 3,400 workers, mostly immigrants from Europe, along with hundreds of Mohawk ironworkers, many from the Kahnawake reserve near Montreal. Perhaps the most famous popular culture representation of the building is in the 1933 film King Kong, in which the title character, a giant ape, climbs to the top to escape his captors but falls to his death after being attacked by airplanes. The 1957 romantic drama film An Affair to Remember involves a couple who plan to meet atop the Empire State Building, a rendezvous that is averted by an automobile accident. The 1993 film Sleepless in Seattle, a romantic comedy partially inspired by An Affair to Remember, climaxes with a scene at the Empire State observatory.
Other locations and landmarks that have become part of American folklore include: Independence Hall, Monument Valley, Ellis Island, Hoover Dam, Pearl Harbor, the Vietnam War Memorial, and the Grand Canyon.
Cultural icons
The Liberty Bell is an iconic symbol of American independence, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The bell was commissioned from the London firm of Lester and Pack in 1752, and was cast with the lettering (part of Leviticus 25:10) "Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." In the 1830s, the bell was adopted as a symbol by abolitionist societies, who dubbed it the "Liberty Bell". It acquired its distinctive large crack sometime in the early 19th century—a widespread story claims it cracked while ringing after the death of Chief Justice John Marshall in 1835.
Statue of Liberty The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886. The statue, a gift to the United States from the people of France, is of a robed female figure representing Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom, who bears a torch and a tablet upon which is inscribed the date of the American Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776. The statue is an icon of freedom and of the United States: a welcoming signal to immigrants arriving from abroad.
Uncle Sam (initials U.S.) is a common national personification of the American government and came into use during the War of 1812. According to legend, Samuel Wilson, a meatpacker in New York, supplied rations for the soldiers and stamped the letters U.S. on the boxes, which stood for United States but was jokingly said to be the initials of Uncle Sam. An Uncle Sam is mentioned as early as 1775, in the original "Yankee Doodle" lyrics of the Revolutionary War . "Columbia", who first appeared in 1738 and sometimes was associated with liberty, is the personification of the American nation, while Uncle Sam is a personification of the government; they are some times shown working together or disputing with one another over political issues, especially in the political cartoons of Puck. With the American Revolutionary War came "Brother Jonathan" as a personification of the American Everyman; but it wasn't until after the War of 1812 Uncle Sam appeared.
Shark Mouth nose art on military aircraft: Although originally from Austria this stylistic design was applied to the American Volunteer Group in Asia known more commonly as "The Flying Tigers". This design was painted on the units' P-40 fighters around the large air intake near the front of the plane. This image has since been placed on various aircraft such as American UH-1 and AH-1 helicopters during the Vietnam War as well as the modern-day A-10 Thunderbolt II, A-29 Supertucano and AT-6 Wolverine, and other vehicles both military and civilian alike.
Other Cultural Icons include, Rosie the Riveter, the United States Constitution, the Colt Single Action Army, Smokey Bear, the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, Columbia, and apple pie.
History
Historical events that form a part of American folklore include: the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere's Ride, the Battle of the Alamo, the Salem witch trials, the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the California Gold Rush, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the Battle of Gettysburg, and the Attack on Pearl Harbor.
See also
Black Heritage Trail
John C. Campbell Folk School
Seeing the elephant
References
Further reading
Coffin, Tristram P.; Cohen, Hennig, (editors), Folklore in America; tales, songs, superstitions, proverbs, riddles, games, folk drama and folk festivals, Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1966. Selections from the Journal of American folklore''.
—the evolution of the Elephant Riddle that entered U.S. folklore in California in 1963
Cox, William T. with Latin Classifications by George B. Sudworth. Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods. (Washington, D.C.: Judd & Detweiler Inc., 1910)
External links
American Folklore Society
American Myth Today: O Brother, Where Art Thou? American Studies at the University of Virginia
United States |
2215 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid%20Meier%27s%20Alpha%20Centauri | Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri | Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a 4X video game, considered a spiritual sequel to the Civilization series. Set in a science fiction depiction of the 22nd century, the game begins as seven competing ideological factions land on the planet Chiron ("Planet") in the Alpha Centauri star system. As the game progresses, Planet's growing sentience becomes a formidable obstacle to the human colonists.
Sid Meier, designer of Civilization, and Brian Reynolds, designer of Civilization II, developed Alpha Centauri after they left MicroProse to join with Jeff Briggs in creating a new video game developer: Firaxis Games. Electronic Arts released both Alpha Centauri and its expansion, Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire, in 1999. The following year, Aspyr Media ported both titles to Classic Mac OS while Loki Software ported them to Linux.
Alpha Centauri features improvements on Civilization IIs game engine, including simultaneous multiplay, social engineering, climate, customizable units, alien native life, additional diplomatic and spy options, additional ways to win, and greater mod-ability. Alien Crossfire introduces five new human and two non-human factions, as well as additional technologies, facilities, secret projects, native life, unit abilities, and a victory condition.
The game received wide critical acclaim, being compared favorably to Civilization II. Critics praised its science fiction storyline (comparing the plot to works by Stanley Kubrick, Frank Herbert, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov), the in-game writing, the voice acting, the user-created custom units, and the depth of the technology tree. Alpha Centauri also won several awards for best game of the year and best strategy game of the year.
Synopsis
Setting
Space-race victories in the Civilization series conclude with a journey to Alpha Centauri. Beginning with that premise the Alpha Centauri narrative starts in the 22nd century, after the United Nations sends "Unity", a colonization mission, to Alpha Centauri's planet Chiron ("Planet"). Unbeknownst to humans, advanced extraterrestrials ("Progenitors") had been conducting experiments in vast distributed nervous systems, culminating in a planetary biosphere-sized presentient nervous system ("Manifold") on Chiron, leaving behind monoliths and artifacts on Planet to guide and examine the system's growth. Immediately prior to the start of the game, a reactor malfunction on the Unity spacecraft wakes the crew and colonists early and irreparably severs communications with Earth. After the captain is assassinated, the most powerful leaders on board build ideological factions with dedicated followers, conflicting agendas for the future of mankind, and "desperately serious" commitments. As the ship breaks up, seven escape pods, each containing a faction, are scattered across Planet.
In the Alien Crossfire expansion pack, players learn that alien experiments led to disastrous consequences at Tau Ceti, creating a hundred-million-year evolutionary cycle that ended with the eradication of most complex animal life in several neighboring inhabited star systems. After the disaster (referred to by Progenitors as "Tau Ceti Flowering"), the Progenitors split into two factions: Manifold Caretakers, opposed to further experimentation and dedicated to preventing another Flowering; and Manifold Usurpers, favoring further experimentation and intending to induce a controlled Flowering in Alpha Centauris Planet. In Alien Crossfire, these factions compete along with the human factions for control over the destiny of Planet.
Characters and factions
The game focuses on the leaders of seven factions, chosen by the player from the 14 possible leaders in Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire, and Planet (voiced by Alena Kanka). The characters are developed from the faction leaders' portraits, the spoken monologues accompanying scientific discoveries and the "photographs in the corner of a commlink – home towns, first steps, first loves, family, graduation, spacewalk." The leaders in Alpha Centauri comprise: Lady Deirdre Skye, a Scottish activist (voiced by Carolyn Dahl), of Gaia's Stepdaughters; Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, a Chinese Legalist official (voiced by Lu Yu), of the Human Hive; Academician Prokhor Zakharov, a Russian academic (voiced by Yuri Nesteroff) of the University of Planet; CEO Nwabudike Morgan, a Namibian businessman (voiced by Regi Davis), of Morgan Industries; Colonel Corazon Santiago, a Puerto Rican militiawoman (voiced by Wanda Niño), of the Spartan Federation; Sister Miriam Godwinson, an American minister and social psychologist (voiced by Gretchen Weigel), of the Lord's Believers; and Commissioner Pravin Lal, an Indian surgeon and diplomat (voiced by Hesh Gordon), of the Peacekeeping Forces.
The player controls one of the leaders and competes against the others to colonize and conquer Planet. The Datalinks (voiced by Robert Levy and Katherine Ferguson) are minor characters who provide information to the player. Each faction excels at one or two important aspects of the game and follows a distinct philosophical belief, such as technological utopianism, Conclave Christianity, "free-market" capitalism, militarist survivalism, Chinese Legalism, U.N. Charter humanitarianism, or Environmentalist Gaia philosophy. The game takes place on Planet, with its "rolling red ochre plains" and "bands of lonely terraformed green".
The seven additional faction leaders in Alien Crossfire are Prime Function Aki Zeta-Five, a Norwegian research assistant-turned-cyborg (voiced by Allie Rivenbark), of The Cybernetic Consciousness; Captain Ulrik Svensgaard, an American fisherman and naval officer (voiced by James Liebman), of The Nautilus Pirates; Foreman Domai, an Australian labor leader (voiced by Frederick Serafin), of The Free Drones; Datajack Sinder Roze, a Trinidadian hacker (voiced by Christine Melton), of The Data Angels; Prophet Cha Dawn, a human born on Planet (voiced by Stacy Spenser) of The Cult of Planet; Guardian Lular H'minee, a Progenitor leader (voiced by Jeff Gordon), of The Manifold Caretakers; and Conqueror Judaa Maar, a Progenitor leader (voiced by Jeff Gordon), of The Manifold Usurpers.
Plot
The story unfolds via the introduction video, explanations of new technologies, videos obtained for completing secret projects, interludes, and cut-scenes. The native life consists primarily of simple wormlike alien parasites and a type of red fungus that spreads rapidly via spores. The fungus is difficult to traverse, provides invisibility for the enemy, provides few resources, and spawns "mindworms" that attack population centres and military units by neurally parasitising them. Mindworms can eventually be captured and bred in captivity and used as terroristic bioweapons, and the player eventually discovers that the fungus and mindworms can think collectively.
A voice intrudes into the player's dreams and soon waking moments, threatening more attacks if the industrial pollution and terraforming by the colonists is not reversed. The player discovers that Planet is a dormant semi-sentient hive organism that will soon experience a metamorphosis which will destroy all human life. To counter this threat, the player or a computer faction builds "The Voice of Alpha Centauri" secret project, which artificially links Planet's distributed nervous system into the human Datalinks, delaying Planet's metamorphosis into full self-awareness but incidentally increasing its ultimate intelligence substantially by giving it access to all of humanity's accumulated knowledge. Finally, the player or a computer faction embraces the "Ascent to Transcendence" in which humans too join their brains with the hive organism in its metamorphosis to godhood. Thus, Alpha Centauri closes "with a swell of hope and wonder in place of the expected triumphalism", reassuring "that the events of the game weren’t the entirety of mankind’s future, but just another step."
Gameplay
Alpha Centauri, a turn-based strategy game with a science fiction setting, is played from an isometric perspective. Many game features from Civilization II are present, but renamed or slightly tweaked: players establish bases (Civilization II's cities), build facilities (buildings) and secret projects (Wonders of the World), explore territory, research technology, and conquer other factions (civilizations). In addition to conquering all non-allied factions, players may also win by obtaining votes from three quarters of the total population (similar to Civilization IVs Diplomatic victory), "cornering the Global Energy Market", completing the Ascent to Transcendence secret project, or for alien factions, constructing six Subspace Generators.
The main map (the upper two thirds of the screen) is divided into squares, on which players can establish bases, move units and engage in combat. Through terraforming, players may modify the effects of the individual map squares on movement, combat and resources. Resources are used to feed the population, construct units and facilities, and supply energy. Players can allocate energy between research into new technology and energy reserves. Unlike Civilization II, new technology grants access to additional unit components rather than pre-designed units, allowing players to design and re-design units as their factions' priorities shift. Energy reserves allow the player to upgrade units, maintain facilities, and attempt to win by the Global Energy Market scenario. Bases are military strongpoints and objectives that are vital for all winning strategies. They produce military units, house the population, collect energy, and build secret projects and Subspace Generators. Facilities and secret projects improve the performance of individual bases and of the entire faction.
In addition to terraforming, optimizing individual base performance and building secret projects, players may also benefit their factions through social engineering, probe teams, and diplomacy. Social engineering modifies the ideologically based bonuses and penalties forced by the player's choice of faction. Probe teams can sabotage and steal information, units, technology, and energy from enemy bases, while diplomacy lets the player create coalitions with other factions. It also allows the trade or transfer of units, bases, technology and energy. The Planetary Council, similar to the United Nations Security Council, takes Planet-wide actions and determines population victories.
In addition to futuristic technological advances and secret projects, the game includes alien life, structures and machines. "Xenofungus" and "sea fungus" provide movement, combat, and resource penalties, as well as concealment for "mind worms" and "spore launchers". Immobile "fungal towers" spawn native life. Native life, including the seaborne "Isles of the Deep" and "Sealurks" and airborne "Locusts of Chiron", use psionic combat, an alternate form of combat which ignores weapons and armor. Monoliths repair units and provide resources; artifacts yield new technology and hasten secret projects; landmarks provide resource bonuses; and random events add danger and opportunity. Excessive development leads to terraforming-destroying fungus blooms and new native life.
Alpha Centauri provides a single player mode and supports customization and multiplayer. Players may customize the game by choosing options at the beginning of the game, using the built-in scenario and map editors, and modifying Alpha Centauris game files. In addition to a choice of seven (or 14 in Alien Crossfire) factions, pre-game options include scenario game, customized random map, difficulty level, and game rules that include victory conditions, research control, and initial map knowledge. The scenario and map editors allow players to create customized scenarios and maps. The game's basic rules, diplomatic dialog, and the factions' starting abilities are in text files, which "the designers have done their best to make it reasonably easy to modify..., even for non-programmers." Alpha Centauri supports play by email ("PBEM") and TCP/IP mode featuring simultaneous movement, and introduces direct player-to-player negotiation, allowing the unconstrained trade of technology, energy, maps, and other elements.
Development
Inspirations
In 1996, MicroProse released the lauded Civilization II, designed by Brian Reynolds. Spectrum Holobyte who owned MicroProse at the time, opted to consolidate their business under the MicroProse name, moving the company from Maryland to California by the time the game shipped, and laying off several MicroProse employees. Disagreements between the new management and its employees prompted Reynolds, Jeff Briggs, and Sid Meier (designer of the original Civilization) to leave MicroProse and found Firaxis. Although unable to use the same intellectual property as Civilization II, the new company felt that players wanted "a new sweeping epic of a turn-based game". Having just completed a game of human history up to the present, they wanted a fresh topic and chose science fiction.
With no previous experience in science fiction games, the developers believed future history was a fitting first foray. For the elements of exploring and terraforming an alien world, they chose a plausible near future situation of a human mission to colonize the solar system's nearest neighbour and human factions. Reynolds researched science fiction for the game's writing. His inspiration included "classic works of science fiction", including Frank Herbert's The Jesus Incident and Hellstrom's Hive, A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, and The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle for alien races; Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, Slant by Greg Bear, and Stephen R. Donaldson's The Real Story for future technology and science; and Dune by Herbert and Bear's Anvil of Stars for negative interactions between humans.
Alpha Centauri set out to capture the whole sweep of humanity's future, including technology, futuristic warfare, social and economic development, the future of the human condition, spirituality, and philosophy. Reynolds also said that "getting philosophy into the game" was one of the attractions of the game. Believing good science fiction thrives on constraint, the developers began with near-future technologies. As they proceeded into the future, they tried to present a coherent, logical, and detailed picture of future developments in physics, biology, information technology, economics, society, government, and philosophy. Alien ecologies and mysterious intelligences were incorporated into Alpha Centauri as external "natural forces" intended to serve as flywheels for the backstory and a catalyst for many player intelligences. Chris Pine, creator of the in-game map of Planet, strove to make Planet look like a real planet, which resulted in evidence of tectonic action. Another concern was that Planet matched the story, which resulted in the fungus being connected across continents, as it is supposed to be a gigantic neural network.
Terraforming is a natural outgrowth of colonizing an alien world. The first playable prototype was just a map generator that tested climate changes during the game. This required the designers to create a world builder program and climatic model far more powerful than anything they'd done before. Temperature, wind, and rainfall patterns were modeled in ways that allow players to make changes: for example, creating a ridge-line and then watching the effects. In addition to raising terrain, the player can also divert rivers, dig huge boreholes into the planet's mantle, and melt ice caps.
In addition to scientific advances, the designers speculated on the future development of human society. The designers allow the player to decide on a whole series of value choices and choose a "ruthless", "moderate", or "idealistic" stance. Reynolds said the designers don't promote a single "right" answer, instead giving each value choice positive and negative consequences. This design was intended to force the player to "think" and make the game "addictive". He also commented that Alpha Centauris fictional nature allowed them to draw their characters "a lot more sharply and distinctly than the natural blurring and greyness of history".
Chiron, the name of the planet, is the name of the only non-barbaric centaur in Greek mythology and an important loregiver and teacher for humanity. The name also pays homage to James P. Hogan's 1982 space opera novel Voyage from Yesteryear, in which a human colony is artificially planted by an automatic probe on a planet later named by colonists as Chiron. In the game, Chiron has two moons, named after the centaurs Nessus and Pholus, with the combined tidal force of Earth's Moon, and is the second planet out from Alpha Centauri A, the innermost planet being the Mercury-like planet named after the centaur Eurytion. Alpha Centauri B is also dubbed Hercules, a reference to him killing several centaurs in mythology, and the second star preventing the formation of larger planets. The arrival on Chiron is referred to as "Planetfall", which is a term used in many science fiction novels, including Robert A. Heinlein's Future History series, and Infocom's celebrated comic interactive fiction adventure Planetfall. Vernor Vinge's concept of technological singularity is the origin of the Transcendence concept. The game's cutscenes use montages of live-action video, CGI, or both; most of the former is from the 1992 experimental documentary Baraka.
Alpha Centauri
In July 1996, Firaxis began work on Alpha Centauri, with Reynolds heading the project. Meier and Reynolds wrote playable prototype code and Jason Coleman wrote the first lines of the development libraries. Because the development of Gettysburg took up most of Firaxis' time, the designers spent the first year prototyping the basic ideas. By late 1996, the developers were playing games on the prototype, and by the middle of the next year, they were working on a multiplayer engine. Although Firaxis intended to include multiplayer support in its games, an important goal was to create games with depth and longevity in single-player mode because they believed that the majority of players spend most of their time playing this way. Reynolds felt that smart computer opponents are an integral part of a classic computer game, and considered it a challenge to make them so. Reynolds' previous games omitted internet support because he believed that complex turn-based games with many player options and opportunities for player input are difficult to facilitate online.
Reynolds said that the most important principle of game design is for the designer to play the game as it is developed; Reynolds claimed that this was how a good artificial intelligence (AI) was built. To this end, he would track the decisions he made and why he made them as he played the game. The designer also watched what the computer players did, noting "dumb" actions and trying to discover why the computer made them. Reynolds then taught the computer his reasoning process so the AI could find the right choice when presented several attractive possibilities. He said the AI for diplomatic personalities was the best he had done up to that point.
Doug Kaufman, a co-designer of Civilization II, was invited to join development as a game balancer. Reynolds cited the Alpha Centauris balance for the greater sense of urgency and the more pressing pacing than in his earlier game, Sid Meier's Colonization. According to producer Timothy Train, in designing the strengths and weaknesses of the factions, the goal was to suggest, without requiring, certain strategies and give the player interesting and fun things to do without unbalancing the game. He didn't want a faction to be dependent on its strength or a faction's power to be dominant over the rest. Train felt that fun meant the factions always have something fun to do with their attributes.
Around the summer of 1997, the staff began research on the scientific realities involved in interstellar travel. In late 1997, Bing Gordon—then Chief Creative Officer of Electronic Arts—joined the team, and was responsible for the Planetary Council, extensive diplomacy, and landmarks. A few months before the 1998 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the team incorporated the Explore/Discover/Build/Conquer marketing campaign into the game. The game was announced in May 1998 at E3.
In the latter half of 1998, the team produced a polished and integrated interface, wrote the game manual and foreign language translations, painted the faction leader portraits and terrain, built the 3D vehicles and vehicle parts, and created the music. Michael Ely directed the Secret Project movies and cast the faction leaders. 25 volunteers participated in Firaxis' first public beta test. The beta testers suggested the Diplomatic and Economic victories and the Random Events.
The design team started with a very simple playable game. They strengthened the "fun" aspects and fixed or removed the unenjoyable ones, a process Sid Meier called "surrounding the fun". After the revision, they played it again, repeating the cycle of revision and play. Playing the game repeatedly and in-depth was a rule at Firaxis. In the single-player mode, the team tried extreme strategies to find any sure-fire paths to victory and to see how often a particular computer faction ends up at the bottom. The goal was a product of unprecedented depth, scope, longevity, and addictiveness, where the player is always challenged by the game to come up with new strategies with no all-powerful factions or unstoppable tactics. According to Reynolds, the process has been around since Sid Meier's early days at Microprose. At Firaxis, as iterations continue, they expand the group giving feedback, bringing in outside gamers with fresh perspectives. Alpha Centauri was the first Firaxis game with public beta testers.
Finally, Brian Reynolds discussed the use of the demo in the development process. Originally a marketing tool released prior to the game, they started getting feedback. They were able to incorporate many suggestions into the retail version. According to Brian Reynolds, they made improvement in the game's interface, added a couple of new features and fixed a few glitches. They also improved some rules, fine-tuned the game balance and improved the AI. Finally, he adds that they continued to add patches to enhance the game after the game was released.
In the months leading to the release of Alpha Centauri, multimedia producer Michael Ely wrote the 35 weekly episodes of Journey to Centauri detailing the splintering of the U.N. mission to Alpha Centauri.
Alien Crossfire
A month after Alpha Centauris February 1999 release, the Firaxis team began work on the expansion pack, Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire. Alien Crossfire features seven new factions (two that are non-human), new technologies, new facilities, new secret projects, new alien life forms, new unit special abilities, new victory conditions (including the new "Progenitor Victory") and several additional concepts and strategies. The development team included Train as producer and designer, Chris Pine as programmer, Jerome Atherholt and Greg Foertsch as artists, and Doug Kaufman as co-designer and game balancer.
The team considered several ideas, including a return to a post-apocalyptic earth and the conquest of another planet in the Alpha Centauri system, before deciding to keep the new title on Planet. The premise allowed them to mix and match old and new characters and delve into the mysteries of the monoliths and alien artifacts. The backstory evolved quickly, and the main conflict centered on the return of the original alien inhabitants. The idea of humans inadvertently caught up in an off-world civil war focused the story.
Train wanted to improve the "build" aspects, feeling that the god-game genre had always been heavily slanted towards the "Conquer" end of the spectrum. He wanted to provide "builders" with the tools to construct an empire in the face of heated competition. The internet community provided "invaluable" feedback. The first "call for features" was posted around April 1999 and produced the Fletchette Defense System, Algorithmic Enhancement, and The Nethack Terminus.
The team had several goals: factions should not be "locked-in" to certain strategies; players should have interesting things to do without unbalancing the game, and the factions must be fun to play. The team believed the "coolness" of the Progenitor aliens would determine the success or failure of Alien Crossfire. They strove to make them feel significantly different to play, but still compatible with the existing game mechanics. The developers eventually provided the aliens with Battle Ogres, a Planetary survey, non-blind research, and other powers to produce "a nasty and potent race that would take the combined might of humanity to bring them down". Chris Pine modified the AI to account for the additions. The team also used artwork, sound effects, music, and diplomatic text to set the aliens apart. Other than the aliens, the Pirates proved to be the toughest faction to balance because their ocean start gave them huge advantages.
Upon completion, the team felt that Alien Crossfire was somewhere between an expansion and a full-blown sequel. In the months leading to the release of Alien Crossfire, multimedia producer Michael Ely wrote the 9 episodes of Centauri: Arrival, introducing the Alien Crossfire factions. The game initially had a single production run. Electronic Arts bundled Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire in the Alpha Centauri Planetary Pack in 2000 and included both games in The Laptop Collection in 2003. In 2000, both Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire were ported to Classic Mac OS by Aspyr Media and to Linux by Loki Software.
Reception
Alpha Centauri received wide critical acclaim upon its release, with reviewers voicing respect for the game's pedigree, especially that of Reynolds and Meier. The video game review aggregator websites GameRankings and Metacritic, which collect data from numerous review websites, listed scores of 92% and 89%, respectively. The game was favorably compared to Reynold's previous title, Civilization II, and Rawn Shah of IT World Canada praised the expansion for a "believable" plot. However, despite its critical reception, it sold the fewest copies of all the games in the Civilization series. It sold more than 100,000 copies in its first two months of release. This was followed by 50,000 copies in April, May and June. In the United States, Alpha Centauri was the tenth-best-selling computer game of 1999's first half. Its sales in that country alone reached 224,939 copies by the end of 1999, and rose to 281,115 units by September 2000.
Critical reaction
The game showed well at the 1998 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). Walter Morbeck of GameSpot said that Alpha Centauri was "more than hi-tech physics and new ways to blow each other up", and that the game would feature realistic aliens. Terry Coleman of Computer Gaming World predicted that Alpha Centauri would be "another huge hit". OGR awarded it "Most Promising Strategy Game" and one of the top 25 games of E3 '98. In a vote of 27 journalists from 22 gaming magazine, Alpha Centauri won "Best Turn Based Strategy" of E3 Show Award. Aaron John Loeb, the Awards Committee Chairman, said "for those that understand the intricacies, the wonder, the glory of turn based 'culture building,' this is the game worth skipping class for."
Alpha Centauri's science fiction storyline received high praise; IGN considered the game an exception to PC sci-fi cliches, and GamePro compared the plot to the works of writers Stanley Kubrick and Isaac Asimov. J.C. Herz of The New York Times suggested that the game was a marriage of SimCity and Frank Herbert's Dune. GamePros Dan Morris said "As the single-player campaign builds to its final showdown, the ramifications of the final theoretical discoveries elevate Alpha Centauri from great strategy game to science-fiction epic." Game Revolution said, "The well crafted story, admirable science-fiction world, fully realized scenario, and quality core gameplay are sure to please." Edge praised the uniqueness of expression saying it was "the same kind of old-fashioned, consensual storytelling that once drew universes out of ASCII." The in-game writing and faction leaders were also well-received for their believability, especially the voice acting. GameSpot reviewer Denny Atkin called the factions and their abilities Alpha Centauris "most impressive aspect". Greg Tito of The Escapist said, "the genius of the game is how it flawlessly blends its great writing with strategy elements."
Alpha Centauri's turn-based gameplay, including the technology trees and factional warfare, was commonly compared to Civilization and Civilization II. The Adrenaline Vault's Pete Hines said, "While Alpha Centauri is the evolutionary off-spring to [Civilization] and [Civilization II], it is not [Civilization II] in space. Although the comparison is inevitable because of the lineage, it is still short-sighted." Edge in 2006 praised "Alpha Centauri's greater sophistications as a strategy game." IGN said "Alpha Centauri is a better game than Civilization II; it's deep, rich, rewarding, thought-provoking in almost every way." Game Revolution's reviewer was less magnanimous, saying "Alpha Centauri is at least as good a game as Civilization 2. But it is its great similarity that also does it the most detriment. Alpha Centauri simply does not do enough that is new; it just doesn't innovate enough to earn a higher grade." The ability to create custom units was praised, as was the depth of the tech tree. The artificial intelligence of computer-controlled factions, which featured adaptability and behavioral subtlety, was given mixed comments; some reviewers thought it was efficient and logical, while others found it confusing or erratic. Edge was disappointed in the game's diplomacy, finding "no more and no less than is expected from the genre" and unhappy with "the inability to sound out any real sense of relationship or rational discourse."
The game's graphics were widely acknowledged to be above average at the time of its release, but not revolutionary. Its maps and interface were
considered detailed and in accordance with a space theme, but the game was released with a limited color palette. The in-game cutscenes, particularly the full motion video that accompanied technological advances, were praised for their quality and innovation. Alpha Centauri's sound and music received similar comments; FiringSquad said "[The sound effect quality] sort of follows the same line as the unit graphics – not too splashy but enough to get the job done."
Next Generation reviewed the PC version of the game, rating it five stars out of five, and stated that "Sid Meier creates yet another masterpiece in this game that, at a glance, looks all too familiar."
Alpha Centauri has won several Game of the Year awards, including those from the Denver Post and the Toronto Sun. It won the "Turn-based Strategy Game of the Year" award from GameSpot as well. The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences named Alpha Centauri the "Computer Strategy Game of the Year" (along with nominations for "Game of the Year" and "Outstanding Achievement in Interactive Design"), and in 2000, Alpha Centauri won the Origins Award for Best Strategy Computer Game of 1999. The editors of PC Gamer US named Alpha Centauri their "Best Turn-Based Strategy Game" of 1999, and wrote that it "set a new standard for this venerable genre." Alpha Centauri has the distinction of receiving gaming magazine PC Gamers highest score to date as of 2019 (98%), alongside Half Life 2 and Crysis, surpassing Civilization IIs score (97%). Alien Crossfire was a runner-up for Computer Games Strategy Pluss 1999 "Add-on of the Year" award, which ultimately went to Heroes of Might and Magic III: Armageddon's Blade.
Legacy
There have been no direct sequels beyond Alien Crossfire, something that writer Greg Tito attributed to Reynolds leaving Firaxis in 2000 to form Big Huge Games. Alien Crossfire producer and lead designer Timothy Train also left Firaxis with Reynolds. However, a spiritual sequel, Civilization: Beyond Earth, was announced by Firaxis in April 2014 and released on October 24, 2014; several of those that worked on Alpha Centauri helped to develop the new title. A review in Polygon noted however that while the new game has better graphics, its story fails to rival the original, a sentiment echoed by another review in the PC Gamer. Another in Endgadget noted "as a spiritual successor to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, however, it's a cut-rate disappointment".
Many of the features introduced in Alpha Centauri were carried over into subsequent Civilization titles; upon its release, Civilization III was compared negatively to Alpha Centauri, whose Civilization characteristics were reminiscent of faction bonuses and penalties. The government system in Civilization IV closely resembles Alpha Centauris, and Civilization V includes a new victory condition: the completion of the 'Utopia project', which is reminiscent of the Ascent to Transcendence secret project.
According to Edge magazine, Alpha Centauri remained "highly regarded" in 2006. A decade after its release, Sold-Out Software and GOG.com re-released the game for online-download sales. Escapist Magazine reviewed the game in 2014, noting that "Alpha Centauri is still playable. It still has a unique flavor that is unlike anything else".
After the release of the expansion, multimedia producer Michael Ely wrote a trilogy of novels based on the game. Illustrator Rafael Kayanan also wrote a graphic novel entitled Alpha Centauri: Power of the Mindworms. Steve Jackson Games published GURPS Alpha Centauri, a sourcebook for the GURPS role-playing game set in the Alpha Centauri universe.
See also
Alpha Centauri in fiction
Group mind (science fiction)
Survivalism in fiction
Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth
Notes
References
Further reading
– covers the early years of colonization of the planet Chiron and describes the siege of United Nations HQ by the Spartans, the loss of Peacekeeper sovereignty and the consequent flight by the United Nations survivors into Gaian territory.
– occurs years after the events of Centauri Dawn and describes the Gaia's Stepdaughters' use of "mindworms" to rebuff an attack by the technologically superior Morgan Industries.
– follows the tension between the University of Planet and the Lord's Believers and describes the use of singularity bombs to destroy Morgan Industries and the Spartan Federation and the native life uprising which destroys humanity.
External links
Official website mirrored by alphacentauri2.info.
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2216 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu%20Sayyaf | Abu Sayyaf | Abu Sayyaf (; ; , ASG), officially known by the Islamic State as the Islamic State – East Asia Province, is a Jihadist militant and pirate group that follows the Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam. It is based in and around Jolo and Basilan islands in the southwestern part of the Philippines, where for more than four decades, Moro groups have been engaged in an insurgency seeking to make Moro Province independent. The group is considered violent and was responsible for the Philippines' worst terrorist attack, the bombing of Superferry 14 in 2004, which killed 116 people. The name of the group is derived from the Arabic abu (); "father of"), and sayyaf (; "swordsmith"). As of June 2021, the group is estimated to have less than 50 members, down from 1,250 in 2000. They use mostly improvised explosive devices, mortars and automatic rifles.
Since its inception in 1989, the group has carried out bombings, kidnappings, assassinations and extortion. They have been involved in criminal activities, including rape, child sexual assault, forced marriage, drive-by shootings and drug trafficking. The goals of the group "appear to have alternated over time between criminal objectives and a more ideological intent".
The group has been designated as a terrorist group by Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. From January 15, 2002 to February 24, 2015, fighting Abu Sayyaf became a mission of the American military's Operation Enduring Freedom and part of the global war on terrorism. Several hundred United States soldiers were stationed in the area to mainly train local forces in counter-terror and counterguerrilla operations, but, following a status of forces agreement and under Philippine law, they were not allowed to engage in direct combat.
The group was founded by Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, and led after his death in 1998 by his younger brother Khadaffy Janjalani until his death in 2006. On July 23, 2014, Isnilon Hapilon, one of the group's leaders, swore an oath of loyalty to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State (IS). In September 2014, the group began kidnapping people for ransom, in the name of the IS.
Background and history
In the early 1970s, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) was the main Muslim rebel group fighting in Basilan and Mindanao. Abdurajik Abubakar Janjalani, the older brother of Khadaffy Janjalani, had been a teacher from Basilan, who studied Islamic theology and Arabic in Libya, Syria and Saudi Arabia during the 1980s. Abdurajik went to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet Union and the Afghan government during the Soviet–Afghan War. During that period, he is alleged to have met Osama Bin Laden and been given $6 million to establish a more Islamic group drawn from the MNLF. The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) was established in 1989 in part in response. Both Abdurajik Abubakar and Khadaffy were natives of Isabela City, one of the poorest cities of the Philippines. Located on the northwestern part of Basilan, Isabela is the capital of the province. Isabela City is administered under the Zamboanga Peninsula political region north of Basilan, while the rest of the island province of Basilan is since 1996 governed as part of ARMM to the east.
Abdurajik Abubakar Janjalani leadership (1989–1998)
In the early 1990s, MNLF moderated into an established political government, the ARMM. It was established in 1989, fully institutionalized by 1996, and became the ruling government in southern Mindanao. When Abdurajik returned to Basilan island in 1990, he gathered radical members of the old MNLF who wanted to resume armed struggle and in 1991 established the Abu Sayyaf. Janjalani was funded by a Saudi Islamist, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, who came to the Philippines in 1987 or 1988 and was head of the Philippine branch of the International Islamic Relief Organization foundation. A defector from Abu Sayyaf told Filipino authorities, "The IIRO was behind the construction of Mosques, school buildings, and other livelihood projects" but only "in areas penetrated, highly influenced and controlled by the Abu Sayyaf". According to the defector, "Only 10 to 30% of the foreign funding goes to the legitimate relief and livelihood projects and the rest go to terrorist operations". Khalifa married a local woman, Alice "Jameelah" Yabo.
By 1995, Abu Sayyaf was active in large-scale bombings and attacks. The first attack was the assault on the town of Ipil in Mindanao in April 1995. This year marked the escape of 20-year-old Khadaffy Janjalani from Camp Crame in Manila along with another member named Jovenal Bruno. On December 18, 1998, Abdurajik was killed in a gun battle with the Philippine National Police on Basilan Island. He is thought to have been about 39.
The death of Aburajik marked a turning point in Abu Sayyaf operations. The group shifted to kidnappings, murders, and robberies, under younger brother Khadaffy. Basilan, Jolo, and Sulu experienced some of the fiercest fights between government troops and Abu Sayyaf through the early 1990s. Abu Sayyaf primarily operates in the southern Philippines with members traveling to Manila and other provinces. It was reported that Abu Sayyaf began expanding into neighboring Malaysia and Indonesia by the early 1990s. Abu Sayyaf is one of the smallest, but strongest of the Philippine Islamist separatist groups. Some Abu Sayyaf members studied or worked in Saudi Arabia and developed ties to mujahadeen, while fighting and training in the war against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Abu Sayyaf proclaimed themselves to be mujahideen and freedom fighters.
Khadaffy Janjalani leadership (1999–2007)
Until his death in a gun battle on September 4, 2006, Khaddafy Janjalani was considered the nominal leader of the group by the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Then 23-year-old Khadaffy took leadership of one of the Abu Sayyaf's factions in an internecine struggle. He then worked to consolidate his leadership, causing the group to appear inactive for a period. After his leadership was secured, Abu Sayyaf began a new strategy, taking hostages. The group's motive for kidnapping became more financial than religious during this period, according to locals. Hostage money probably provides the group's financing.
Abu Sayyaf expanded its operations to Malaysia in 2000, when it abducted foreigners from two resorts. This action was condemned by most Islamic leaders. It was responsible for the kidnapping and murder of more than 30 foreigners and Christian clerics and workers, including Martin and Gracia Burnham. An influential commander named Abu Sabaya was killed at sea in June 2002 while trying to evade local forces. His death is considered a crucial turning point for the group, as the number of operatives working for Abu Sayyaf sharply decreased from 1100 in 2001 to 450 in late 2002, and had since been stagnant for the next ten years.
Galib Andang, one of the group's leaders, was captured in Sulu in December 2003. An explosion at a military base in Jolo, on February 18, 2006 was blamed on the group by Brig. General Alexander Aleo. Khadaffy was indicted in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for his alleged involvement in terrorist attacks, including hostage-taking and murder, against United States nationals and other foreign nationals. Consequently, on February 24, 2006, Khadaffy was among six fugitives in the second and most recent group of indicted fugitives to be added to the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list along with two fellow members, Isnilon Totoni Hapilon and Jainal Antel Sali Jr.
On December 13, 2006, it was reported that Abu Sayyaf members may have been planning attacks during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in the Philippines. The group was reported to have trained alongside Jemaah Islamiyah militants. The plot was reported to have involved detonating a car bomb in Cebu City where the summit was to take place. On December 27, the Philippine military reported that Khaddafi's remains had been recovered near Patikul, in Jolo and that DNA tests had been ordered to confirm the discovery. He was allegedly shot in the neck in an encounter with government troops in September on Luba Hills, Patikul town in Sulu.
2010–present
In a video published in the summer of 2014, senior Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon and other masked men swore their allegiance or "bay'ah" to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the "Islamic State" (IS) caliph. "We pledge to obey him on anything which our hearts desire or not and to value him more than anyone else. We will not take any emir (leader) other than him unless we see in him any obvious act of disbelief that could be questioned by Allah in the hereafter." For many years prior to this, Islamic State's competitor, al-Qaeda, had the support of Abu Sayyaf "through various connections". Observers were skeptical about whether the pledge would lead to Abu Sayyaf becoming an ISIS outpost in Southeast Asia, or was simply a way for the group to take advantage of the newer group's international publicity.
In August 2020, MNLF chairman Nur Misuari turned in Abu Sayyaf sub-commander Anduljihad "Idang" Susukan to the Philippine National Police four months after Susukan surrendered to Misuari in Davao City.
Supporters and funding
Abdurajik Abubakar Janjalani's first recruits were soldiers of MNLF and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). However, both MNLF and MILF deny links with Abu Sayyaf. Both officially distance themselves because of its attacks on civilians and its supposed profiteering. The Philippine military, however, has claimed that elements of both groups provide support to Abu Sayyaf. The group was originally not thought to receive funding from outside sources, but intelligence reports from the United States, Indonesia and Australia found intermittent ties to the Indonesian Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist group, and the Philippine government considers the Abu Sayyaf to be part of Jemaah Islamiyah. The government noted that initial funding for ASG came from al-Qaeda through the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa.
Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist Ramzi Yousef operated in the Philippines in the mid-1990s and trained Abu Sayyaf soldiers. The 2002 edition of the United States Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism mention links to Al-Qaeda. Continuing ties to Islamist groups in the Middle East indicate that al-Qaeda may be continuing support. As of mid-2005, Jemaah Islamiyah personnel reportedly had trained about 60 Abu Sayyaf cadres in bomb assembling and detonations.
Funding
The group obtains most of its financing through kidnap ransom and extortion. One report estimated its revenues from ransom payments in 2000 were between $10 and $25 million. According to the State Department, it may receive funding from radical Islamic benefactors in the Middle East and South Asia. It was reported that Libya facilitated ransom payments to Abu Sayyaf. It was also suggested that Libyan money could possibly be channeled to Abu Sayyaf. Russian intelligence agencies connected with Victor Bout's planes reportedly provided Abu Sayyaf with arms. In 2014 and since, kidnapping for ransom has been the primary means of funding.
The chart below collects events that Abu Sayyaf received ransoms or payments that are euphemistically called "board and lodgings". The more detailed information can be seen in the Timeline of Abu Sayyaf attacks.
Motivation, beliefs, targets
Filipino Islamist guerrillas such as Abu Sayyaf have been described as "rooted in a distinct class made up of closely-knit networks built through the marriage of important families through socioeconomic backgrounds and family structures", according to Michael Buehler. This tight-knit, familial structure provides resilience but also limits their growth. Commander of the Western Mindanao Command Lieutenant General Rustico Guerrero, describes Abu Sayyaf as "a local group with a local agenda". Two kidnapping victims, (Martin and Gracia Burnham) who were kept in captivity by ASG for over a year, "gently engaged their captors in theological discussion" and found Abu Sayyaf fighters to be unfamiliar with the Qur'an. They had only "a sketchy" notion of Islam, which they saw as "a set of behavioural rules, to be violated when it suited them", according to author Mark Bowden. As "holy warriors, they were justified in kidnapping, killing and stealing. Having sex with women captives was justified by their claiming them as "wives".
Unlike MILF and MNLF, the group is not recognised by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and according to author Robert East, was seen as "nothing more than a criminal operation" at least prior to 2001. A Center for Strategic and International Studies report by Jack Fellman notes the political rather than religious motivation of ASG. He quotes Khadaffy's statement that his brother was right to split from MNLF because "up to now, nothing came out" of attempts to gain more autonomy for Moro Muslims. This suggests, Fellman believes, that ASG "is merely the latest, albeit most violent, iteration of Moro political dissatisfaction that has existed for the last several decades".
Some Abu Sayyaf members are also "shabu" (methamphetamine) users as described by surviving hostages who saw Abu Sayyaf members taking shabu as well from military findings who found drug packets in many of the abandoned Abu Sayyaf nests that justified their motivation as extreme criminals and terrorists as their state of mind were under the influence of drugs rather than being consciously fighting for the betterment of their region as well rights to living under their minority religion without any discrimination from the majority Filipinos. Its spokesman known as Abu Rami ( 2017) appeared to lack knowledge of the activities of other members, as the group had apparently separated into many small groups with their own leaders.
Targets
Most Abu Sayyaf victims have been Filipinos; however, in recent years (especially from 2011 onwards), Australian, British, Canadian, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Norwegian, Swiss and Vietnamese nationals have been kidnapped or attacked.
Previously, Americans were particularly targeted. An unnamed ASG spokesman allegedly stated, "We have been trying hard to get an American because they may think we are afraid of them". He added, "We want to fight the American people."
In 1993, Abu Sayyaf kidnapped an American Bible translator. In 2000, Abu Sayyaf captured an American Muslim and demanded that the United States release Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and Ramzi Yousef, who were jailed for their involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York City.
Between March 2016 – July 2017, the majority of Abu Sayyaf kidnap for ransom operations shifted to the high seas. Seventeen ships were boarded and some sixty-five hostages from six countries were taken. In total, thirty hostages have been released (usually after a ransom was paid), seven escaped, three were rescued by Philippine security forces, and four were executed. Two others were killed during the attacks while eight seamen escaped during the shipjackings. An additional forty seamen were not taken hostage.
Crimes and terrorism
Abu Sayyaf has carried out numerous bombings, kidnappings, assassinations, and extortion activities. These include the 2000 Sipadan kidnappings, the 2001 Dos Palmas kidnappings and the 2004 SuperFerry 14 bombing.
Kidnappings
Although the group has engaged in kidnapping hostages to be exchanged for ransom for many years, this means of funding grew dramatically beginning in 2014, providing funds for the group's rapid growth.
In the Philippines
Journalists abducted since 2000
ABS-CBN's Newsbreak reported that Abu Sayyaf abducted at least 20 journalists from 2000 to 2008 (mostly foreign journalists). All of them were eventually released upon payment of ransom.
GMA-7 television reporter Susan Enriquez (April 2000, Basilan, a few days);
10 Foreign journalists (7 German, 1 French, 1 Australian and 1 Danish, in May 2000, Jolo, for 10 hours);
German Andreas Lorenz of the magazine Der Spiegel (July 2000, Jolo, for 25 days; he was also kidnapped in May);
French television reporter Maryse Burgot and cameraman Jean-Jacques Le Garrec and sound technician Roland Madura (July 2000, Jolo, for 2 months);
ABS-CBN television reporter Maan Macapagal and cameraman Val Cuenca (July 2000, Jolo, for 4 days);
Philippine Daily Inquirer contributor and Net 25 television reporter Arlyn de la Cruz (January 2002, Zamboanga, for 3 months)
GMA-7 television reporter Carlo Lorenzo and cameraman Gilbert Ordiales (September 2002, Jolo, for 6 days).
Filipino Ces Drilon and news cameramen Jimmy Encarnacion and Angelo Valderrama released unharmed after ransom paid (June 2008 Maimbung, Sulu for 9 days).
Jordanian TV journalist Baker Atyani and his two Filipino crews were kidnapped in June 2012 by the Abu Sayyaf militants they had sought to interview in the jungles of Sulu province. The two crew were freed in February 2013. Al Arabiya News Channel stated that their correspondent, Atyani, was handed over to the local governor's office on December 4, 2013. However, police and military officials could not ascertain whether Atyani had escaped from his captors or was freed.
Jeffrey Schilling
On August 31, 2000, American citizen and Muslim convert Jeffrey Schilling from Oakland, California, was captured on Jolo while visiting a terrorist camp with his new wife, Ivy Osani (a cousin of Abu Sabaya, one of the rebel leaders), whom he had met online. ASG demanded a $10 million ransom. Rebels also sarcastically threatened to behead him in 2001 as a "birthday present" to then Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who responded by declaring "all-out war" on them. The beheading threat was withdrawn after Schilling's mother, Carol, flew to the Philippines and appealed for mercy on local radio. On April 12, 2001, Philippine soldiers raided a rebel camp and rescued the American. The United States praised the Philippine government for freeing Schilling.
Many commentators have been critical of Schilling, who claims to have walked willingly into the camp after he was invited by his wife's cousin, a member of Abu Sayyaf.
Schilling was one of more than 40 hostages taken by Abu Sayyaf in 2000, including 21 tourists and workers seized in a raid on Sipadan diving resort in neighboring Malaysia. Many of the hostages were released after Libya paid millions of dollars. A Libyan official stated that Schilling had visited the Jolo camp often before his capture. Philippine intelligence sources say he was interested in selling military equipment to the rebels, while the bandits accused him of being a CIA agent. Abu Sayyaf threatened several times to kill Schilling. At one stage, Schilling reportedly went on a hunger strike to win his freedom.
Martin and Gracia Burnham
On May 27, 2001, an Abu Sayyaf raid kidnapped about 20 people from Dos Palmas, an expensive resort in Honda Bay, taking them to the north of Puerto Princesa City on the island of Palawan, which had been "considered completely safe". The most "valuable" hostages were three North Americans, Martin and Gracia Burnham, a missionary couple, and Guillermo Sobero, a Peruvian-American tourist who was later beheaded, following a $1 million ransom demand. The hostages and hostage-takers then returned to Abu Sayyaf territories in Mindanao. According to Bowden, the leader of the raid was Abu Sabaya. According to Gracia Burnham, she told her husband "to identify his kidnappers" to authorities "as 'the Osama bin Laden Group,' but Burnham was unfamiliar with that name and stuck with" Abu Sayyaf. After returning to Mindanao, Abu Sayyaf conducted numerous raids, including one that culminated in the Siege of Lamitan and "one at a coconut plantation called Golden Harvest; they took about 15 people captive there and later used bolo knives to hack the heads off two men. The number of hostages waxed and waned as some were ransomed and released, new ones were taken and others were killed."
On June 7, 2002, about a year after the raid, Philippine army troops conducted a rescue operation in which Martin Burnham and Filipino nurse Ediborah Yap were killed. The remaining hostage was wounded and the hostage takers escaped. In July 2004, Gracia Burnham testified at a trial of eight Abu Sayyaf members and identified six of the suspects as her captors, including Alhamzer Limbong, Abdul Azan Diamla, Abu Khari Moctar, Bas Ishmael, Alzen Jandul, and Dazid Baize. "The eight suspects sat silently during her three-hour testimony, separated from her by a wooden grill. They face the death sentence if found guilty of kidnapping for ransom. The trial began this year and is not expected to end for several months." Alhamzer Limbong was later killed in a prison uprising. Burnham claimed that Philippine military officials were colluding with her captors, saying that the Armed Forces of the Philippines "didn't pursue us...As time went on, we noticed that they never pursued us".
2007 Father Bossi kidnapping
On June 10, 2007, Italian priest Reverend Giancarlo Bossi was kidnapped near Pagadian, capital of Zamboanga del Sur Province in the southern Philippines. Pope Benedict XVI made an appeal to free him. Bossi was released on July 19, 2007 at Karumatan, a Muslim town in Lanao del Norte Province, allegedly after the payment of ransom. Father Bossi died in Italy on September 23, 2012.
In December 2020, Samad Awang, alias Ahmad Jamal, of the Abdussalam kidnap-for-ransom group was killed in a firefight with government troops in Zamboanga City. Awang was reportedly involved in the kidnapping of Italian missionary Fr. Giancarlo Bossi in 2007, businessman Joel Endino in 2011, and teacher Kathy Kasipong in 2013.
2009 Red Cross kidnapping
On January 15, 2009, Abu Sayyaf kidnapped International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegates in Patikul, Sulu Province, Philippines. Three ICRC workers had finished conducting fieldwork in Sulu province, located in the southwest of the country when they were abducted by an unknown group, later confirmed as Albader Parad's group. All three were eventually released. According to a CNN story, Parad was reportedly killed, along with five other militants, in an assault by Philippine marines in Sulu province on Sunday, February 21, 2010.
2009 Irish priest kidnapping
On October 11, 2009, Irish Catholic missionary Michael Sinnott, aged 79, from Barntown County Wexford was kidnapped from a gated compound in Pagadian, the capital of Zamboanga del Sur province, suspected to be part of ASG and some renegade members of MILF. Six kidnappers forced the priest into a mini-van and drove towards Sta. Lucia (district), where they transferred to a boat. Sinnott had a heart condition and was without medication when abducted. In early November, a demand for $US2 million ransom was made. On November 11, 2009, Father Sinnott was released in Zamboanga City. The Department of Foreign Affairs (Ireland) claimed that no ransom was paid by the Irish Government.
2010 Japanese treasure hunter
On July 16, 2010, Japanese national Toshio Ito was kidnapped from Pangutaran, Sulu. At one point, the Philippine police believed the "treasure hunter," a Muslim convert also known by his Muslim name Mamaito Katayama, was acting as a cook for Abu Sayyaf; however, this was disputed by other nations, including the United States, which included him on its list of kidnap victims. A classified document obtained by Rappler lists Ito first, saying he was held captive by Abu Sayyaf's most senior leader, Radullan Sahiron, in Langpas, Indanan, Sulu early in 2013.
2011 Malaysian gecko trader
On May 8, 2011, Malaysian gecko trader Mohammad Nasauddin Bin Saidin was kidnapped while hunting for gecko (tuko) in Indanan, Sulu. Saidin was freed on May 12, 2012.
2011 Indian national kidnapping
On June 22, 2011, Indian national Biju Kolara Veetil was captured by four armed men while visiting his wife's relatives on the island of Jolo. A$10 million ransom was demanded. Veetil later denied that he was released in August 2012 because he had converted to Islam during captivity.
Warren Rodwell
Warren Richard Rodwell, a former Australian Army soldier and university English teacher, was shot through the right hand when seized from his home at Ipil, Zamboanga Sibugay on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines on December 5, 2011 by ASG militants. Rodwell later had to have a finger amputated. ASG threatened to behead Rodwell if their $US2 million ransom demand was not met. Both the Australian and Philippine governments had strict policies against paying ransoms. Australia formed a multi-agency task force to liaise with Rodwell's family and assist Philippine authorities. A news blackout was imposed. Filipino politicians helped negotiate the release. After the payment of $AUD94,000 for "board and lodging" expenses by his siblings, Rodwell was released on March 23, 2013.
Arrests and killings
On June 16, 2014, suspects Jimmy Nurilla (alias Doc) and Bakrin Haris were arrested. Both reportedly worked under Basilan-based Abu Sayyaf leader Khair Mundos and Furuji Indama. Authorities believed Nurilla and Haris took part in the Rodwell kidnapping, as well as the separate abduction of US citizen Gerfa Yeatts Lunsman and her son Kevin in 2012. In January 2015, Mindanao Examiner newspaper reported the arrest of Barahama Ali kidnap gang sub-leaders linked to the kidnapping of Rodwell, who was seized by at least 5 gunmen (disguised as policemen), and eventually handed over or sold by the kidnappers to the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan province.
In May 2015, ex-Philippine National Police (PNP) officer Jun A. Malban, alias Michael Zoo, was arrested in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, for the crime of "Kidnapping for Ransom" after Rodwell identified him as the negotiator/spokesperson. Further PNP investigation revealed that Malban is the cousin of Abu Sayyaf leaders Khair and Borhan Mundos (both of whom were arrested in 2014). The director of the Anti-Kidnapping Group (AKG) stated that Malban's arrest resulted from close co-ordination by the PNP, National Bureau of Investigation (Philippines) and Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission with the Malaysian counterparts and through Interpol. In January 2018, Rodwell attended a court hearing for Malban and others in Ipil, Zamboanga Sibugay, pursuant to a Supreme Court petition to transfer his case for security reasons to a court in either Manila or Zamboanga City.
In August 2015, Edeliza Sumbahon Ulep, alias Gina Perez, was arrested at Trento, Agusan del Sur during a joint manhunt operation by police and military units. Ulep was tagged as the ransom courier in the kidnapping. In August 2016, The Manila Times reported the arrest of the kidnap-for-ransom group of Barahama Alih sub-leader, Hasim Calon alias Husien (also a notorious drug dealer), in his hideout in Tenan village in Ipil town. Hasim Calon was involved in Rodwell's abduction. Earlier in 2016, police forces killed Waning Abdulsalam, a former MILF leader, in the village of Singkilon. Abdulsalam was one of the most wanted criminals in the southern Philippines and connected to ASG. He was linked to the kidnappings of Rodwell in 2011, Irish missionary Michael Sinnott in 2009 in Pagadian City, and Italian Catholic priest Giancarlo Bossi in Zamboanga del Sur's Payao town in 2007. In March 2019, combined security forces of the 44th Infantry Battalion, Philippine National Police, Philippine Drugs Enforcement Agency, National Bureau of Investigation and Philippine Coast Guard arrested five members (Benhazer Anduhol, Solaiman Calonof, Nicanel Maningo, Jay-ar Abba Quartocruz and Hashim Lucas Samdani) of Barahama Alih criminal gang during drug operations with warrants in Barangay Tenan of Ipil town, Zamboanga Sibugay. Military sources allege Barahama Alih Group was responsible for a number of kidnapping incidents in previous years including the abduction of Australian national Warren Rodwell, Italian priest Giancarlo Bossi, and some local Filipinos.
In February 2018, Abu Sayyaf sub-commander Nurhassan Jamiri was reported by Malaysia regional intelligence sources as one of three gunmen killed in a gunfight with police in Sabah. Jamiri was atop the Philippines' most wanted list and implicated in dozens of ransom kidnappings including Rodwell. In March 2018, Jamiri turned up alive when he and thirteen followers surrendered to authorities in Basilan. Over the preceding two years, many Abu Sayyaf bandits had surrendered to authorities in Basilan, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi. More were expected to yield because of the regional government's Program Against Violence and Extremism (PAVE), designed to provide opportunities and interventions, including psychosocial sessions, medical check-ups, introduction to farming systems, and expository tours outside the island provinces to facilitate the reintegration of former combatants into society. In April 2018, Rodwell lauded the surrenders and reintegration program, but said he would not interfere with the legal processing of any charges already filed against anyone involved with his own kidnapping.
In June 2020, Inquirer newspaper reported the killing of Mamay Aburi by government troops in Titay, Zamboanga Sibugay after authorities attended to serve a warrant of arrest. Aburi was allegedly a subleader of a kidnap-for-ransom group and had been linked with the Abu Sayyaf Group based in Sulu. The provincial director of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) said Aburi was involved in the 2011 kidnapping of Australian national Warren Rodwell and the 2019 abduction of the Hyrons couple in Tukuran, Zamboanga del Sur. In February 2021, The Manila Times reported that Abu Sayyaf subleader Arrasid Halissam was shot dead when he opened fire on police serving a warrant on him in the village of Santa Maria, Zamboanga City. Halissam was linked to numerous kidnappings such as Australian adventurer Warren Rodwell, Americans Gerfa Lunsmann and son Kevin, Chinese Yuan Lin Kai and Jian Luo, South Korean Nwi Seong Hong, and almost a dozen Filipinos. Halissam was also allegedly involved in the 2015 bombing in Zamboanga that killed two people and injured over fifty others.
2012 European bird watchers
On February 1, 2012, two European bird watchers were seized on Tawi Tawi island. Swiss Lorenzo Vinciguerra escaped in December 2014 as government troops attacked the jungle camp where he was captive on the island of Jolo. Vinciguerra was shot by rebels as he escaped; however, his injuries were non-life-threatening. Dutch captive Ewold Horn was reportedly unable to escape. The whereabouts of Horn remained unknown. On May 31, 2019, Western Mindanao Command confirmed that Horn was shot dead during a clash with military in Patikul, Sulu. Additionally, the military advised that the wife of ASG leader Radulan Sahiron and five other ASG members were also killed.
2012 Mayor Jeffrey Lim Kidnapping
On April 2, 2012, Mayor Jeffrey Lim of Salug, Zamboanga del Norte was kidnapped by ten armed men disguised as policemen. Lim was reportedly handed over to Abu Sayyaf. On November 6, he was freed near Zamboanga City after payment of P1.3M ($US25,000) ransom. On August 9, 2013, a Mindanao Pagadian Frontline report named a "Sehar Muloc" aka "Red Eye" as a suspect in the 2012 kidnapping of Mayor Jeffrey Lim. Abner Gumandol, alias Sehar Muloc and Red Eye, was said to be the leader of a criminal syndicate called the Muloc Group. Gumandol was arrested on June 12, 2016.
2014 Kabasalan ZSP kidnapping
On September 11, 2014, Chinese national Li Pei Zhei was abducted by four gunmen in Kabasalan, Zamboanga Sibugay and taken to Basilan. He was released in Sitio Lugay-Lugay, Barangay Naga-Naga, Alicia, Zamboanga Sibugay on November 5, 2014. Police subsequently charged Ibni Basaludin, Yug Enriquez, Brahama Ali, and Ging-Ging Calon, all residents of Barangay Tenan, Ipil, Zamboanga Sibugay with kidnapping with serious illegal detention.
2015 Roseller Lim ZSP kidnapping
On January 24, 2015, Korean national Nwi Seong Hong was abducted by armed men in Roseller Lim, Zamboanga Sibugay Province. The victim's son, Abby, escaped after he fought off the kidnappers. According to intelligence information from the JTG-SULU, the captors of were Algabsy Misaya, Idang Susukan, Alden Bagade and Mohammad Salud alias Ama Maas, Indanan-based members led by sub-leaders Isang Susukan and Anga Adji. On October 31, 2015, the body of 74-year-old Nwi Seong Hong was found in Barangay Bangkal, Patikul, Sulu. Investigators said the victim died due to severe illness.
2015 Samal Island kidnappings
On September 21, 2015, Canadians Robert Hall and John Ridsdel, as well as Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad, and (Hall's girlfriend) Marites Flor; a Filipino woman, were abducted on Samai island near Davao. Ridsdel was beheaded by Abu Sayyaf on April 25, 2016 following a ransom deadline. ASG reportedly demanded more than $8.1 million for Ridsdel and the others.
On May 3, 2016, a video of the Ridsdel execution was released, along with new demands for the remaining hostages. A masked captor said, "Note to the Philippine government and to the Canadian government: The lesson is clear. John Ridsdel has been beheaded. Now there are three remaining captives here. If you procrastinate once again the negotiations, we will behead this all anytime".
On May 15, Hall appeared in a new video, announcing that he and Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad would be decapitated at 3 pm on Monday June 13 absent a ransom of $16 million. Both hostages wore orange coveralls, similar to hostages in videos produced by IS, to which Abu Sayyaf had previously pledged allegiance. The deadline passed. Hall was beheaded.
On June 24, Abu Sayyaf released Filipina Marites Flor. She was subsequently flown to Davao to meet President-elect Rodrigo Duterte. Duterte said he directed negotiations with the Abu Sayyaf. He did not elaborate.
On September 17, 2016, remaining hostage Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad was released on Jolo island. Abu Rami, an ASG spokesman, claimed $638,000 was paid as ransom.
2015 Dipolog City kidnapping
On October 7, 2015, Italian national and pizza restaurant owner Rolando del Torchio was kidnapped in Dipolog City, capital of Zamboanga del Norte Province. On April 8, 2016, Del Torchio was released and found at Jolo port aboard MV KC Beatrice bound for Zamboanga City after his family paid P29 million ($US650,000) in ransom.
2019 Tukuran kidnapping
On October 4, 2019, armed men abducted British national Allan Hyrons and his Filipino wife Wilma from their beach resort in Tukuran town, Zamboanga del Sur province on the southern island of Mindanao. After a brief exchange of gunfire in November between Abu Sayyaf and Philippine troops on the island of Jolo, the couple was abandoned and rescued. No ransom was reportedly paid.
In Malaysia
2000 Sipadan kidnappings
On May 3, 2000, Abu Sayyaf guerrillas occupied the Malaysian dive resort island Sipadan and took 21 hostages, including 10 tourists and 11 resort workers – 19 foreign nationals in total. The hostages were taken to an Abu Sayyaf base in Jolo. Two Muslim Malaysians were released soon after. Abu Sayyaf made various demands for the release of several prisoners, including 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and $2.4 million. In July, a Filipino television evangelist and 12 of members of the Jesus Miracle Crusade Church offered their help and went as mediators for the relief of other hostages. They, three French television crew members and a German journalist, all visiting Abu Sayyaf on Jolo, were also taken hostage. Most hostages were released in August and September 2000, partly due to mediation by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and an offer of $25 million in "development aid".
Abu Sayyaf conducted a second raid on the island of Pandanan near Sipadan on September 10 and seized three more Malaysians. The Philippine army launched a major offensive on September 16, 2000, rescuing all remaining hostages, except Filipino dive instructor Roland Ullah. He was freed in 2003. Abu Sayyaf coordinated with the Chinese 14K Triad gang in carrying out the kidnappings. The 14K Triad has militarily supported Abu Sayyaf.
2013 Pom Pom kidnappings
On November 15, 2013, Abu Sayyaf militants raided a resort on the Malaysian island of Pom Pom. During the ambush, Taiwanese citizen Chang An-wei was kidnapped and her husband, Hsu Li-min, was killed. Chang was taken to the Sulu Archipelago. Chang was freed in Sulu Province and returned to Taiwan on December 21.
2014 Singamata, Baik Island and Kampung Air Sapang kidnappings
On April 2, 2014, a kidnap gang believed to originate from Abu Sayyaf militants raided Singamata Reef Resort off Semporna. Chinese tourist Gao Huayun from Shanghai and Filipino resort worker Marcy Dayawan were abducted and taken to the Sulu Archipelago. The two hostages were later rescued after a collaboration between Malaysian and Philippines security forces.
On May 6, five Abu Sayyaf gunmen raided a Malaysian fish farm on Baik Island Sabah, kidnapped the fish farm manager and took him to Jolo island. He was freed in July with the help of Malaysian negotiators.
On June 16, two gunmen believed to be from Abu Sayyaf kidnapped a Chinese fish farm manager and one Filipino worker in Kampung Air Sapang. The worker managed to escape and disappeared. Meanwhile, the fish farm manager was taken to Jolo. He was released on December 10.
Malaysian authorities identified five Filipinos, the "Muktadil brothers", as responsible for these cases. They sold their hostages to the Abu Sayyaf group. Of the five Muktadil brothers: Mindas Muktadil was killed by Philippine police in May 2015, Kadafi Muktadil was arrested in late 2015, Nixon Muktadil and Brown Muktadil were killed by the Philippine military on September 27, 2016 after they resisted arrest, while Badong Muktadil succumbed to his injuries while fleeing after he was shot when his brothers was killed. His body was discovered in a pump boat in Mususiasi.
2015 Ocean King Restaurant kidnappings
On May 15, 2015, four armed Abu Sayyaf members kidnapped two Malaysian nationals from Ocean King Restaurant in an upscale resort in Sandakan, Sabah and took them to Parang, Sulu. Police identified the leaders of the group behind the abduction as Alhabsy Misaya, Alden Bagade and Angah Adji. On November 8, Thien Nyuk Fun, the seafood restaurant owner, was released after payment of 30 million pesos ($US675,000) ransom. The initial agreement of 30 million pesos was reportedly for both hostages; however, a faction within the Abu Sayyaf Group demanded more after Thien Nyuk Fun was released. Further negotiations broke down and the other hostage, electrical engineer Bernard Then, was beheaded on Jolo Island on November 17.
Philippines and Malaysia waters
2014 German sailors kidnapping
In April 2014, Germans Dr. Stefan Viktor Okonek and Henrike Dielen were captured on their yacht on the high seas near Borneo. Abu Sayyaf threatened to behead one of them. After payment of $US5.6 million in October 2014, the pair were released in Patikul, Sulu.
2016 Local and foreign sailors kidnappings
On March 26, 2016, ten Indonesian seafarers were held hostage by ASG operating in Sulu Archipelago. They were abducted from the Brahma 12 tugboat and the Anand 12 barge near Tawi-Tawi province. The Indonesian vessels were freighting coal from South Borneo heading for Batangas port when hijacked. In April, the Indonesian government announced that the company that owned tugboat Brahma 12 had agreed to pay the 50-million-peso ($1 million) ransom. On May 2, they were released.
On April 1, four Malaysian sailors aboard a tugboat from Manila were kidnapped when they arrived near the shore of Ligitan Island. Their companions, three Myanmar nationals and two Indonesians, were unharmed. On June 8, they were released.
On April 15, four Indonesian sailors were kidnapped when two Indonesian tugboats from Cebu, Henry and Cristi, were attacked by Abu Sayyaf militants. While five of the passengers were safe, one was shot before he was rescued. They were released on May 11. A group of concerned Filipinos in Sabah urged Philippine president-elect Rodrigo Duterte to intervene for the release of four Malaysians held hostage by Abu Sayyaf. The issue strained the relationship between the Philippines and Malaysia.
On June 21, seven Indonesian sailors were kidnapped while aboard a tugboat passing through the Sulu Archipelago.
On July 9, three Indonesian fishermen were kidnapped near the coast of Lahad Datu, Sabah, Malaysia and released on September 17.
On July 18, five Malaysian sailors were abducted near the coast of Lahad Datu.
On August 3, an Indonesian sailor was kidnapped in the waters of Malaysia leaving two other crew members unharmed. This incident was reported by victims on August 5. Two of the hostages managed to escape after receiving persistent threats of beheading.
On September 10, three Filipino fishermen were kidnapped on the shores of Pom Pom Island.
On September 22, another Indonesian hostage was released.
On September 27, one Malaysian boat-skipper was kidnapped from his trawler by seven armed militants before the group attacked another Indonesian trawler; however, no kidnappings were committed in the second incident. The hostage was released on October 1, with no ransom demand, along with three Indonesians hostages who were released the same day.
On October 21, approximately ten Abu Sayyaf militants attacked a South Korean-bound vessel named MV Dongbang Gian and abducted a South Korean skipper and a Filipino crewman off Bongao, Tawi-Tawi.
On November 5, German sailor Sabine Merz was shot dead while her husband Jürgen Kantner was abducted from their yacht off Tanjong Luuk Pisuk in Sabah. On or before February 27, 2017, Kantner was beheaded after a ransom of 30 million pesos ($US600,000) was not paid.
On November 11, Vietnamese vessel MV Royale 16 with nineteen sailors on board was attacked by Abu Sayyaf near Basilan, abducting six sailors and injuring one. The remaining thirteen sailors were released.
On November 20, two Indonesian fishermen were kidnapped by five gunmen off Lahad Datu.
Due to the increase of attacks against foreign vessels by Abu Sayyaf, the governments of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines agreed to jointly patrol their waters on May 5, 2016. The three countries formed another agreement on joint air patrols.
During the first six months of 2016, Abu Sayyaf made $7.3 million, equivalent to Php 353 million, from ransom payoffs.
Beheadings
As part of its kidnap-for-ransom operations, the Abu Sayyaf has executed some of their male hostages if ransom demands were not met. The group had previously beheaded Christian civilians and others they consider kafir without demanding ransoms for their release, due to their religious affiliation.
Bombings
2004 Superferry 14 Bombing
Superferry 14 was a large ferry destroyed by a bomb on February 27, 2004, killing 116 people in the Philippines' worst terrorist attack and the world's deadliest terrorist attack at sea. On that day, the 10,192 ton ferry sailed out of Manila with about 900 passengers and crew on board. A television set filled with 8 lb. (4 kilograms) of TNT had been placed on board. 90 minutes out of port, the bomb exploded. 63 people were killed instantly and 53 were missing and presumed dead. Despite claims from terrorist groups, the blast was initially thought to have been an accident caused by a gas explosion. However, after divers righted the ferry five months after it had sunk, they found evidence of a bomb blast. A man called Redendo Cain Dellosa admitted to planting the bomb for Abu Sayyaf. Six suspects were arrested in connection with the bombing while the masterminds, Khadaffy Janjalani and Abu Sulaiman, were killed.
2016 Davao City bombing
On September 2, 2016, an explosion occurred at a night market in Davao City, Philippines killing at least 15 and injuring 70. Shortly before the bombing, Abu Sayyaf made a threat following the intensified military operation against them. Abu Sayyaf spokesperson Abu Rami was reported to claim responsibility. He later denied the report and any involvement, saying a group allied to them; the Daulat Ul-Islamiya were responsible. Although the Abu Sayyaf spokesman denied involvement, the Philippine government blame the group.
2019 Jolo Cathedral bombings
On January 27, 2019, two bombs detonated at the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Jolo town which is the center of Abu Sayyaf stronghold. The bombings resulting to eighteen people were killed while 82 others were injured, mostly from Philippine Army's 35th Battalion and civilians inside the church. The Philippine military said the Abu Sayyaf under the faction of Ajang-Ajang are responsible which is also echoed by peace advocate with evidence from military intelligence operatives that they have intercepted plans of the latter to bomb the other parts of downtown Jolo months before. The bombings took place a week after a referendum for the creation of Bangsamoro Autonomous Region with the attacks is described as the opposition by the Abu Sayyaf group for their areas inclusion under the Bangsamoro authorities since the whole Sulu province itself is already known to be against the referendum with 163,526 oppose votes (54.3%).
Criticism of attacks against civilians
Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi in Qatar denounced the kidnappings and killings committed by Abu Sayyaf, asserting that they are not part of the dispute between the Abu Sayyaf and the Philippine government. He stated that it is shameful to commit such acts in the name of the Islamic faith, saying that such acts produce backlash against Islam and Muslims. During the 2000 Sipadan kidnappings, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) condemned the kidnapping and offered to help secure their release. OIC Secretary General Azeddine Laraki, told the Philippine government he was prepared to send an envoy to help save the hostages and issued a statement condemning the rebels. "The Secretary General has pointed out that this operation and the like are rejected by divine laws and that they are neither the appropriate nor correct means to resolve conflicts", the statement said.
The terrorism against civilians committed were condemned by MNLF and MILF, who said that Abu Sayyaf strayed from their real paths of struggle, with MILF labeling Abu Sayyaf as "anti-Islam" soon after Ridsdel's beheading in 2016. MNLF described the group as "causing chaos to their community". Both Christian and Muslim groups in the Philippines condemned Abu Sayyaf beheadings.
The kidnappings were criticized by Indonesia. On July 14, 2016, a group of Indonesian protesters gathered in front of the Philippine Embassy in Indonesia, holding banners that read "Go to hell Philippines and Abu Sayyaf" and "Destroy the Philippines and Abu Sayyaf" due to what was seen as the lack of action from the Philippine government, who seems unable to defeat the militants and protect foreign citizens. The group demanded a large scale military operation to destroy the Abu Sayyaf, of which the Indonesian military before also have proposing to send their military to Philippines, but were rejected by the Philippine government, citing it is against their constitution.
Military operations
The Philippine military has engaged Abu Sayyaf since the 1990s. Under President Duterte, the Philippine government sought a peace agreement with the MNLF and MILF, but not the "bunch of criminals" in Abu Sayyaf. The Philippine military intensified operations in 2003, following the arrest of a Filipino-American who was alleged to have sold illegal weapons to the group. The suspect was tagged by US authorities as "one of the United States' most wanted fugitives". He was then deported by the Philippine government to face legal action in the United States.
On July 29, 2016, the military gained control of an Abu Sayyaf stronghold in Tipo-Tipo. The Philippine military pledged to eliminate Abu Sayyaf. On August 25, President Duterte ordered the group to be "destroyed" after it beheaded a teenager. Following the incident, the Philippine military sent thousands of troops to fight and destroy Abu Sayyaf. Filipino Army Major Filemon Tan said, "The order of the president is to search and destroy the Abu Sayyaf so that's what we are doing". Both MNLF and MILF began helping to suppress extremism in Mindanao, which helps the peace process for both groups.
Philippine security forces collaborated with Malaysia and Indonesia to maintain security in the Sulu Sea. The Indonesian government proposed to station army units in Mindanao to launch a major offensive against Abu Sayyaf. The Indonesian government called on the Malaysian and Philippine armies to launch combined land attacks together on Mindanao, while at the same time urging the Philippine government to allow Indonesia and Malaysia military forces to enter Philippine territory. The Vietnamese military started to hold military exercises against Abu Sayyaf (known locally as "pirates" by the Vietnamese) following the repeat kidnappings of Malaysian and Indonesian sailors. The Philippine military provided one battalion to go against each subgroup. On September 9, following the meeting between President Duterte and Indonesian President Joko Widodo, an agreement was reached to pursue the Abu Sayyaf. The Philippine President said in a statement:
However, the government of Indonesia decided to not launch a military operation in the southern Philippines, stating that there is enough Philippine military personnel had been deployed. Indonesia's view was seconded by Malaysia. Philippine military chief Ricardo Visaya warned the Abu Sayyaf that they would continue with further major military operations. The military chief gave notice to Abu Sayyaf members to surrender or be "neutralised", (killed or apprehended).
Some 20 Abu Sayyaf surrendered in Sumisip on September 22. The day before, Philippine armed forces confiscated 200 speedboats used by the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi and Zamboanga. President Duterte rejected a proposal by Nur Misuari, the leader of MNLF to include Abu Sayyaf in peace talks. On September 27, another attempt to smuggle weapons to Abu Sayyaf was prevented by the Philippine National Police in San Juan City. Four people were arrested. By October 14, the Philippine military had launched 579 military operations, 426 of which were focused to "neutralise" group members. 54 engagements resulted in 56 Abu Sayyaf members killed, 21 surrendered and 17 arrested.
Abu Sayyaf fatalities then increased to 102, with seven more apprehended. Notable Abu Sayyaf leaders were killed, including Nelson Muktadil, Braun Muktadil, their sub-leader Mohammad Said, Jamiri Jawhari, Musanna Jamiri, the group spokesman Abu Rami and Alhabsy Misaya. In addition, another 165 fast boats used for transport and kidnapping activities were confiscated. By April 13, 2017, 50 more ASG members had surrendered. In the same month, Philippine authorities discovered the presence of militants from Indonesia and Malaysia killed during the ongoing operations (notable foreigners such as Sanusi, Zulkifli Abdhir, Ibrahim Ali, Mohd Najib Husen and Mohisen were among the dead) as well the presence of a "traitor" among their security members when a top policewoman was caught for her ties with the group. Indonesia admitted the presence of its citizens who came from North Sulawesi and said they could not prevent them from joining, given the lack of security on their borders. Malaysia discovered that militants were using Sabah as a transit point. The two pledged to prevent cross-border terrorism and curb the activities of militants
Early on November 26, 2016, Duterte stated that he would open peace talks with Abu Sayyaf group (as he did with the MNLF and MILF by offering federalism as a possible solution) while continuing to fight against the Maute group, a move criticized by Philippine analysts as it would be used by extreme rebels to claim for legitimacy as a group. In a statement, the President said:
His statements were criticized by national media as leading to confusion about whether he wanted peace talks. Another IS-linked group, the Maute emerged in 2016. On December 7, Duterte told the Indonesian and Malaysian leaders that "they can bomb the Abu Sayyaf along with the hostages if the Abu Sayyaf continue to present persistent threats and the hostages should already know that there is repeated warnings to not go there". In early 2019, the President explain with definite words that he would never initiate or agree to any peace talks with the Abu Sayyaf as he himself strongly detest and despise with the group's continuous cruel practice of beheading innocent people which includes child victim as low as 8-year-old.
In the aftermath of the 2019 Jolo Cathedral bombings, President Duterte ordered an "All-Out-War" directive against the Abu Sayyaf Group, which led to heavy ground operations, massive airstrikes, artillery bombardment in surrounding areas, the evacuation of civilian in other areas, and the creation of the 11th Infantry Division of the Philippine Army.
See also
Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters
Siege of Marawi
Notes
References
External links
Most Wanted Terrorists, Federal Bureau of Investigation, US Department of Justice
Council on Foreign Relations: Abu Sayyaf Group (Philippines, Islamist separatists)
Reward For Information (on five ASG members), Rewards for Justice Program, US Department of State
Looking for al-Qaeda in the Philippines
Balik-Terrorism: The Return of Abu Sayyaf (PDF), Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College
The bloodstained trail of the Abu Sayyaf, Agence France-Presse
Jihadist groups
Organizations designated as terrorist in Asia
Factions of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
Organized crime groups in the Philippines
Moro conflict
Islamic terrorism in Malaysia
Organisations designated as terrorist by the United Kingdom
Organisations designated as terrorist by Australia
Organisations designated as terrorist by Japan
Organizations designated as terrorist by the United States
Islamic terrorism in the Philippines
Salafi jihadists
Organizations designated as terrorist by Canada |
2217 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian%20language | Armenian language | Armenian (classical: , reformed: , , ) is an Indo-European language belonging to an independent branch of which it is the only member. It is the official language of Armenia. Historically spoken in the Armenian Highlands, today Armenian is widely spoken throughout the Armenian diaspora. Armenian is written in its own writing system, the Armenian alphabet, introduced in 405 AD by the priest Mesrop Mashtots. The total number of Armenian speakers worldwide is estimated between 5 and 7 million.
History
Classification and origins
Armenian is an independent branch of the Indo-European languages. It is of interest to linguists for its distinctive phonological developments within that family. Armenian exhibits more satemization than centumization, although it is not classified as belonging to either of these subgroups. Some linguists tentatively conclude that Armenian, Greek (and Phrygian) and Indo-Iranian were dialectally close to each other; within this hypothetical dialect group, Proto-Armenian was situated between Proto-Greek (centum subgroup) and Proto-Indo-Iranian (satem subgroup). Ronald I. Kim has noted unique morphological developments connecting Armenian to Balto-Slavic languages.
Armenia was a monolingual country by the 2nd century BC at the latest. Its language has a long literary history, with a 5th-century Bible translation as its oldest surviving text. Its vocabulary has historically been influenced by Western Middle Iranian languages, particularly Parthian; its derivational morphology and syntax were also affected by language contact with Parthian, but to a lesser extent. Contact with Greek, Persian, and Syriac also resulted in a number of loanwords. There are two standardized modern literary forms, Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian, with which most contemporary dialects are mutually intelligible.
Although Armenians were known to history much earlier (for example, they were mentioned in the 6th-century BC Behistun Inscription and in Xenophon's 4th century BC history, The Anabasis), the oldest surviving Armenian-language text is the 5th century AD Bible translation of Mesrop Mashtots, who created the Armenian alphabet in 405, at which time it had 36 letters. He is also credited by some with the creation of the Georgian alphabet and the Caucasian Albanian alphabet.
While Armenian constitutes the sole member of the Armenian branch of the Indo-European family, Aram Kossian has suggested that the hypothetical Mushki language may have been a (now extinct) Armenic language.
Early contacts
W. M. Austin (1942) concluded that there was early contact between Armenian and Anatolian languages, based on what he considered common archaisms, such as the lack of a feminine gender and the absence of inherited long vowels. However, unlike shared innovations (or synapomorphies), the common retention of archaisms (or symplesiomorphy) is not considered conclusive evidence of a period of common isolated development. There are words used in Armenian that are generally believed to have been borrowed from Anatolian languages, particularly from Luwian, although some researchers have identified possible Hittite loanwords as well. One notable loanword from Anatolian is Armenian xalam, "skull", cognate to Hittite ḫalanta, "head".
In 1985, Soviet linguist Igor M. Diakonoff noted the presence in Classical Armenian of what he calls a "Caucasian substratum" identified by earlier scholars, consisting of loans from the Kartvelian and Northeast Caucasian languages. Noting that Hurro-Urartian-speaking peoples inhabited the Armenian homeland in the second millennium BC, Diakonoff identifies in Armenian a Hurro-Urartian substratum of social, cultural, and animal and plant terms such as ałaxin "slave girl" ( ← Hurr. al(l)a(e)ḫḫenne), cov "sea" ( ← Urart. ṣûǝ "(inland) sea"), ułt "camel" ( ← Hurr. uḷtu), and xnjor "apple (tree)" ( ← Hurr. ḫinzuri). Some of the terms he gives admittedly have an Akkadian or Sumerian provenance, but he suggests they were borrowed through Hurrian or Urartian. Given that these borrowings do not undergo sound changes characteristic of the development of Armenian from Proto-Indo-European, he dates their borrowing to a time before the written record but after the Proto-Armenian language stage.
Contemporary linguists, such as Hrach Martirosyan, have rejected many of the Hurro-Urartian and Northeast Caucasian origins for these words and instead suggest native Armenian etymologies, leaving the possibility that these words may have been loaned into Hurro-Urartian and Caucasian languages from Armenian, and not vice versa. A notable example is arciv, meaning "eagle," believed to have been the origin of Urartian Arṣibi and Northeast Caucasian arzu. This word is derived from Proto-Indo-European *h₂r̥ǵipyós, with cognates in Sanskrit (ऋजिप्य, ṛjipyá), Avestan (erezef), and Greek (αἰγίπιος, aigípios). Hrach Martirosyan and Armen Petrosyan propose additional borrowed words of Armenian origin loaned into Urartian and vice versa, including grammatical words and parts of speech, such as Urartian eue ("and"), attested in the earliest Urartian texts and likely a loan from Armenian (compare to Armenian , ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁epi). Other loans from Armenian into Urartian includes personal names, toponyms, and names of deities.
Loan words from Iranian languages, along with the other ancient accounts such as that of Xenophon above, initially led linguists to erroneously classify Armenian as an Iranian language. Scholars such as Paul de Lagarde and F. Müller believed that the similarities between the two languages meant that Armenian belonged to the Iranian language family. The distinctness of Armenian was recognized when philologist Heinrich Hübschmann (1875) used the comparative method to distinguish two layers of Iranian words from the older Armenian vocabulary. He showed that Armenian often had 2 morphemes for the one concept, and the non-Iranian components yielded a consistent PIE pattern distinct from Iranian, and also demonstrated that the inflectional morphology was different from that in Iranian languages.
Graeco-Armenian hypothesis
The hypothesis that Greek is Armenian's closest living relative originates with Holger Pedersen (1924), who noted that the number of Greek-Armenian lexical cognates is greater than that of agreements between Armenian and any other Indo-European language. Antoine Meillet (1925, 1927) further investigated morphological and phonological agreement, postulating that the parent languages of Greek and Armenian were dialects in immediate geographical proximity in the Proto-Indo-European period. Meillet's hypothesis became popular in the wake of his book Esquisse d'une histoire de la langue latine (1936). Georg Renatus Solta (1960) does not go as far as postulating a Proto-Graeco-Armenian stage, but he concludes that considering both the lexicon and morphology, Greek is clearly the dialect most closely related to Armenian. Eric P. Hamp (1976, 91) supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis, anticipating even a time "when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian" (meaning the postulate of a Graeco-Armenian proto-language). Armenian shares the augment, and a negator derived from the set phrase Proto-Indo-European language ("never anything" or "always nothing"), and the representation of word-initial laryngeals by prothetic vowels, and other phonological and morphological peculiarities with Greek. Nevertheless, as Fortson (2004) comments, "by the time we reach our earliest Armenian records in the 5th century AD, the evidence of any such early kinship has been reduced to a few tantalizing pieces".
Greco-Armeno-Aryan hypothesis
Graeco-(Armeno)-Aryan is a hypothetical clade within the Indo-European family, ancestral to the Greek language, the Armenian language, and the Indo-Iranian languages. Graeco-Aryan unity would have become divided into Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian by the mid-third millennium BC. Conceivably, Proto-Armenian would have been located between Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian, consistent with the fact that Armenian shares certain features only with Indo-Iranian (the satem change) but others only with Greek (s > h).
Graeco-Aryan has comparatively wide support among Indo-Europeanists who believe the Indo-European homeland to be located in the Armenian Highlands, the "Armenian hypothesis". Early and strong evidence was given by Euler's 1979 examination on shared features in Greek and Sanskrit nominal flection.
Used in tandem with the Graeco-Armenian hypothesis, the Armenian language would also be included under the label Aryano-Greco-Armenic, splitting into proto-Greek/Phrygian and "Armeno-Aryan" (ancestor of Armenian and Indo-Iranian).
Evolution
Classical Armenian (Arm: grabar), attested from the 5th century to the 19th century as the literary standard (up to the 11th century also as a spoken language with different varieties), was partially superseded by Middle Armenian, attested from the 12th century to the 18th century. Specialized literature prefers "Old Armenian" for grabar as a whole, and designates as "Classical" the language used in the 5th century literature, "Post-Classical" from the late 5th to 8th centuries, and "Late Grabar" that of the period covering the 8th to 11th centuries. Later, it was used mainly in religious and specialized literature, with the exception of a revival during the early modern period, when attempts were made to establish it as the language of a literary renaissance, with neoclassical inclinations, through the creation and dissemination of literature in varied genres, especially by the Mekhitarists. The first Armenian periodical, Azdarar, was published in grabar in 1794.
The classical form borrowed numerous words from Middle Iranian languages, primarily Parthian, and contains smaller inventories of loanwords from Greek, Syriac, Aramaic, Arabic, Mongol, Persian, and indigenous languages such as Urartian. An effort to modernize the language in Bagratid Armenia and the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia (11–14th centuries) resulted in the addition of two more characters to the alphabet ("" and ""), bringing the total number to 38.
The Book of Lamentations by Gregory of Narek (951–1003) is an example of the development of a literature and writing style of Old Armenian by the 10th century. In addition to elevating the literary style and vocabulary of the Armenian language by adding well above a thousand new words, through his other hymns and poems Gregory paved the way for his successors to include secular themes and vernacular language in their writings. The thematic shift from mainly religious texts to writings with secular outlooks further enhanced and enriched the vocabulary. “A Word of Wisdom”, a poem by Hovhannes Sargavak devoted to a starling, legitimizes poetry devoted to nature, love, or female beauty. Gradually, the interests of the population at large were reflected in other literary works as well. Konsdantin Yerzinkatsi and several others even take the unusual step of criticizing the ecclesiastic establishment and addressing the social issues of the Armenian homeland. However, these changes represented the nature of the literary style and syntax, but they did not constitute immense changes to the fundamentals of the grammar or the morphology of the language. Often, when writers codify a spoken dialect, other language users are then encouraged to imitate that structure through the literary device known as parallelism.
In the 19th century, the traditional Armenian homeland was once again divided. This time Eastern Armenia was conquered from Qajar Iran by the Russian Empire, while Western Armenia, containing two thirds of historical Armenia, remained under Ottoman control. The antagonistic relationship between the Russian and Ottoman empires led to creation of two separate and different environments under which Armenians lived. Halfway through the 19th century, two important concentrations of Armenian communities were further consolidated. Because of persecutions or the search for better economic opportunities, many Armenians living under Ottoman rule gradually moved to Istanbul, whereas Tbilisi became the center of Armenians living under Russian rule. These two cosmopolitan cities very soon became the primary poles of Armenian intellectual and cultural life.
The introduction of new literary forms and styles, as well as many new ideas sweeping Europe, reached Armenians living in both regions. This created an ever-growing need to elevate the vernacular, Ashkharhabar, to the dignity of a modern literary language, in contrast to the now-anachronistic Grabar. Numerous dialects existed in the traditional Armenian regions, which, different as they were, had certain morphological and phonetic features in common. On the basis of these features two major standards emerged:
Western standard: The influx of immigrants from different parts of the traditional Armenian homeland to Istanbul crystallized the common elements of the regional dialects, paving the way for a style of writing that required a shorter and more flexible learning curve than Grabar.
Eastern standard: The Yerevan dialect provided the primary elements of Eastern Armenian, centered in Tbilisi, Georgia. Similar to the Western Armenian variant, the Modern Eastern was in many ways more practical and accessible to the masses than Grabar.
Both centers vigorously pursued the promotion of Ashkharhabar. The proliferation of newspapers in both versions (Eastern & Western) and the development of a network of schools where modern Armenian was taught, dramatically increased the rate of literacy (in spite of the obstacles by the colonial administrators), even in remote rural areas. The emergence of literary works entirely written in the modern versions increasingly legitimized the language's existence. By the turn of the 20th century both varieties of the one modern Armenian language prevailed over Grabar and opened the path to a new and simplified grammatical structure of the language in the two different cultural spheres. Apart from several morphological, phonetic, and grammatical differences, the largely common vocabulary and generally analogous rules of grammatical fundamentals allows users of one variant to understand the other as long as they are fluent in one of the literary standards.
After World War I, the existence of the two modern versions of the same language was sanctioned even more clearly. The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (1920–1990) used Eastern Armenian as its official language, whereas the diaspora created after the Armenian genocide preserved the Western Armenian dialect.
The two modern literary dialects, Western (originally associated with writers in the Ottoman Empire) and Eastern (originally associated with writers in the Russian Empire), removed almost all of their Turkish lexical influences in the 20th century, primarily following the Armenian genocide.
Geographic distribution
The number of Armenian-speakers by country according to official government sources, including censuses and estimates:
Phonology
Proto-Indo-European voiceless stop consonants are aspirated in the Proto-Armenian language, one of the circumstances that is often linked to the glottalic theory, a version of which postulated that the voiceless occlusives of Proto-Indo-European were aspirated.
Stress
In Armenian, the stress falls on the last syllable unless the last syllable contains the definite article or , and the possessive articles and , in which case it falls on the penultimate one. For instance, , , but and . Exceptions to this rule are some words with the final letter ( in the reformed orthography) () and sometimes the ordinal numerals (, etc.), as well as , and a small number of other words.
Vowels
Modern Armenian has six monophthongs. Each vowel phoneme in the table is represented by three symbols. The first is the sounds transcription in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). After that appears the corresponding letter of the Armenian alphabet. The last symbol is its Latin transliteration.
Consonants
The following table lists the Eastern Armenian consonantal system. The occlusives and affricates have an aspirated series, commonly transcribed with a reversed apostrophe after the letter. Each phoneme in the table is represented by IPA, Armenian script and romanization.
The major phonetic difference between dialects is in the reflexes of Classical Armenian voice-onset time. The seven dialect types have the following correspondences, illustrated with the t–d series:
{| class="wikitable" style=text-align:center
|+Correspondence in initial position
!Armenian Letter
|Տ
|Դ
|Թ
|-
!Indo-European
|*
|*
|*
|-
!Sebastia
|
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="7" |
|-
!Yerevan
|
|-
!Istanbul
|colspan=2|
|-
!Kharberd, Middle Armenian
| rowspan="2" |
|
|-
!Malatya, SWA
|
|-
!Classical Armenian, Agulis, SEA
|
|
|-
!Van, Artsakh
|colspan=2|
|}
Morphology
Armenian corresponds with other Indo-European languages in its structure, but it shares distinctive sounds and features of its grammar with neighboring languages of the Caucasus region. The Armenian orthography is rich in combinations of consonants, but in pronunciation, this is broken up with schwas. Both classical Armenian and the modern spoken and literary dialects have a complicated system of noun declension, with six or seven noun cases but no gender. In modern Armenian, the use of auxiliary verbs to show tense (comparable to will in "he will go") has generally supplemented the inflected verbs of Classical Armenian. Negative verbs are conjugated differently from positive ones (as in English "he goes" and "he does not go") in many tenses, otherwise adding only the negative to the positive conjugation. Grammatically, early forms of Armenian had much in common with classical Greek and Latin, but the modern language, like modern Greek, has undergone many transformations, adding some analytic features.
Noun
Classical Armenian has no grammatical gender, not even in the pronoun, but there is a feminine suffix ( "-uhi"). For example, (usucʻičʻ, "teacher") becomes (usucʻčʻuhi, female teacher). This suffix, however, does not have a grammatical effect on the sentence. The nominal inflection, however, preserves several types of inherited stem classes. Traditionally, nouns are declined for one of seven cases: nominative (ուղղական uġġakan), accusative (հայցական haycʻakan), locative (ներգոյական nergoyakan), genitive (սեռական seṙakan), dative (տրական trakan), ablative (բացառական bacʻaṙakan), or instrumental (գործիական gorciakan), but in the modern language, the distinctions between nominative and accusative, and dative and genitive, are gone.
Examples of noun declension in Eastern Armenian
Which case the direct object takes is split based on animacy. Inanimate nouns take the nominative, while animate nouns take the dative. Additionally, animate nouns can never take the locative case.
Examples of noun declension in Western Armenian
Verb
Verbs in Armenian have an expansive system of conjugation with two main verb types in Eastern Armenian and three in Western Armenian changing form based on tense, mood and aspect.
Dialects
Armenian is a pluricentric language, having two modern standardized forms: Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian. The most distinctive feature of Western Armenian is that it has undergone several phonetic mergers; these may be due to proximity to Arabic- and Turkish-speaking communities.
Classical Armenian (Grabar), which remained the standard until the 18th century, was quite homogeneous across the different regions that works in it were written; it may have been a cross-regional standard. The Middle Armenian variety used in the court of Cilician Armenia (1080–1375) provides a window into the development of Western Armenian, which came to be based on what became the dialect of Istanbul, while the standard for Eastern Armenian was based on the dialect around Mount Ararat and Yerevan. Although the Armenian language is often divided into "east" and "west", the two standards are actually relatively close to each other in light of wealth of the diversity present among regional non-standard Armenian dialects. The different dialects have experienced different degrees of language contact effects, often with Turkic and Caucasian languages; for some, the result has been significant phonological and syntactic changes. Fortson notes that the modern standard as well has now attained a subordinate clausal structure that greatly resembles a Turkic language.
Eastern Armenian speakers pronounce () as [tʰ], () as [d], and () as a tenuis occlusive [t˭]. Western Armenian has simplified the occlusive system into a simple division between voiced occlusives and aspirated ones; the first series corresponds to the tenuis series of Eastern Armenian, and the second corresponds to the Eastern voiced and aspirated series. Thus, the Western dialect pronounces both () and () as [tʰ], and the () letter as [d].
There is no precise linguistic border between one dialect and another because there is nearly always a dialect transition zone of some size between pairs of geographically identified dialects.
Armenian can be divided into two major dialectal blocks and those blocks into individual dialects, though many of the Western Armenian dialects have become extinct due to the effects of the Armenian genocide. In addition, neither dialect is completely homogeneous: any dialect can be subdivided into several subdialects. Although Western and Eastern Armenian are often described as different dialects of the same language, many subdialects are not readily mutually intelligible. Nevertheless, a fluent speaker of one of two greatly varying dialects who is also literate in one of the standards, when exposed to the other dialect for a period of time will be able to understand the other with relative ease.
Distinct Western Armenian varieties currently in use include Homshetsi, spoken by the Hemshin peoples; the dialects of Armenians of Kessab (Քեսապի բարբառ), Latakia and Jisr al-Shughur (Syria), Anjar, Lebanon, and Vakıflı, Samandağ (Turkey), part of the "Sueidia" dialect (Սուէտիայի բարբառ).
Forms of the Karin dialect of Western Armenian are spoken by several hundred thousand people in Northern Armenia, mostly in Gyumri, Artik, Akhuryan, and around 130 villages in Shirak Province, and by Armenians in Samtskhe–Javakheti province of Georgia (Akhalkalaki, Akhaltsikhe).
Nakhichevan-on-Don Armenians speak another Western Armenian variety based on the dialect of Armenians in Crimea, where they came from in order to establish the town and surrounding villages in 1779 (Նոր Նախիջևանի բարբառ).
Western Armenian dialects are currently spoken also in Gavar (formerly Nor Bayazet and Kamo, on the west of Lake Sevan), Aparan, and Talin in Armenia (Mush dialect), and by the large Armenian population residing in Abkhazia, where they are considered to be the first or second ethnic minority, or even equal in number to the local Abkhaz population
Orthography
The Armenian alphabet ( or ) is a graphically unique alphabetical writing system that is used to write the Armenian language. It was introduced around AD 405 by Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader, and originally contained 36 letters. Two more letters, օ (ō) and ֆ (f), were added in the Middle Ages.
During the 1920s orthography reform in Soviet Armenia, a new letter և (capital ԵՎ) was added, which was a ligature before ե+ւ, whereas the letter Ւ ւ was discarded and reintroduced as part of a new letter ՈՒ ու (which was a digraph before). This alphabet and associated orthography is used by most Armenian speakers of Armenia and the countries of the former Soviet Union. Neither the alphabet nor the orthography has been adopted by Diaspora Armenians, including Eastern Armenian speakers of Iran and all Western Armenian speakers, who keep using the traditional alphabet and spelling.
Vocabulary
Indo-European cognates
Armenian is an Indo-European language, so many of its Proto-Indo-European-descended words are cognates of words in other Indo-European languages such as English, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit.
However, due to extensive loaning, only around 1,500 words (G. Jahukyan) are known to have been inherited from Indo-European by the Classical Armenian stage; the rest were lost, a fact that presents a major challenge to endeavors to better understand Proto-Armenian and its place within the family, especially as many of the sound changes along the way from Indo-European to Armenian remain quite difficult to analyze.
This table lists only some of the more recognizable cognates that Armenian shares with English (more specifically, with English words descended from Old English). (Source: Online Etymology Dictionary.)
See also
Armenian Sign Language
Languages of Armenia
Language families and languages
List of Indo-European languages
Classical Armenian orthography
Auguste Carrière
Notes
Footnotes
References
Further reading
Adjarian, Hrachya H. (1909) Classification des dialectes arméniens, par H. Adjarian. Paris: Honoré Champion.
Clackson, James. 1994. The Linguistic Relationship Between Armenian and Greek. London: Publications of the Philological Society, No 30. (and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing)
Holst, Jan Henrik (2009) Armenische Studien. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Mallory, J. P. (1989) In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth. London: Thames & Hudson.
Vaux, Bert. 1998. The Phonology of Armenian. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Vaux, Bert. 2002. "The Armenian dialect of Jerusalem." in Armenians in the Holy Land. Louvain: Peters.
External links
Armenian Lessons (free online through the Linguistics Research Center at UT Austin)
Armenian Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh list appendix)
ARMENIA AND IRAN iv. History, discussion, and the presentation of Iranian influences in Armenian Language over the millennia
Nayiri.com (Library of Armenian dictionaries)
dictionaries.arnet.am Collection of Armenian XDXF and Stardict dictionaries
Grabar (Brief introduction to Classical Armenian also known as Grabar)
բառարան.հայ – Armenian dictionary
Indo-European languages
Subject–object–verb languages
Languages of Armenia
Languages of Russia
Languages of Turkey
Languages of Kazakhstan
Languages of Iran
Languages of Lebanon
Languages of Azerbaijan
Languages of Georgia (country)
Languages of the Caucasus
Languages of Cyprus
Languages attested from the 5th century
Languages of Kurdistan
Articles containing video clips |
2218 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additive%20synthesis | Additive synthesis | Additive synthesis is a sound synthesis technique that creates timbre by adding sine waves together.
The timbre of musical instruments can be considered in the light of Fourier theory to consist of multiple harmonic or inharmonic partials or overtones. Each partial is a sine wave of different frequency and amplitude that swells and decays over time due to modulation from an ADSR envelope or low frequency oscillator.
Additive synthesis most directly generates sound by adding the output of multiple sine wave generators. Alternative implementations may use pre-computed wavetables or the inverse Fast Fourier transform.
Explanation
The sounds that are heard in everyday life are not characterized by a single frequency. Instead, they consist of a sum of pure sine frequencies, each one at a different amplitude. When humans hear these frequencies simultaneously, we can recognize the sound. This is true for both "non-musical" sounds (e.g. water splashing, leaves rustling, etc.) and for "musical sounds" (e.g. a piano note, a bird's tweet, etc.). This set of parameters (frequencies, their relative amplitudes, and how the relative amplitudes change over time) are encapsulated by the timbre of the sound. Fourier analysis is the technique that is used to determine these exact timbre parameters from an overall sound signal; conversely, the resulting set of frequencies and amplitudes is called the Fourier series of the original sound signal.
In the case of a musical note, the lowest frequency of its timbre is designated as the sound's fundamental frequency. For simplicity, we often say that the note is playing at that fundamental frequency (e.g. "middle C is 261.6 Hz"), even though the sound of that note consists of many other frequencies as well. The set of the remaining frequencies is called the overtones (or the harmonics, if their frequencies are integer multiples of the fundamental frequency) of the sound. In other words, the fundamental frequency alone is responsible for the pitch of the note, while the overtones define the timbre of the sound. The overtones of a piano playing middle C will be quite different from the overtones of a violin playing the same note; that's what allows us to differentiate the sounds of the two instruments. There are even subtle differences in timbre between different versions of the same instrument (for example, an upright piano vs. a grand piano).
Additive synthesis aims to exploit this property of sound in order to construct timbre from the ground up. By adding together pure frequencies (sine waves) of varying frequencies and amplitudes, we can precisely define the timbre of the sound that we want to create.
Definitions
Harmonic additive synthesis is closely related to the concept of a Fourier series which is a way of expressing a periodic function as the sum of sinusoidal functions with frequencies equal to integer multiples of a common fundamental frequency. These sinusoids are called harmonics, overtones, or generally, partials. In general, a Fourier series contains an infinite number of sinusoidal components, with no upper limit to the frequency of the sinusoidal functions and includes a DC component (one with frequency of 0 Hz). Frequencies outside of the human audible range can be omitted in additive synthesis. As a result, only a finite number of sinusoidal terms with frequencies that lie within the audible range are modeled in additive synthesis.
A waveform or function is said to be periodic if
for all and for some period .
The Fourier series of a periodic function is mathematically expressed as:
where
is the fundamental frequency of the waveform and is equal to the reciprocal of the period,
is the amplitude of the th harmonic,
is the phase offset of the th harmonic. atan2 is the four-quadrant arctangent function,
Being inaudible, the DC component, , and all components with frequencies higher than some finite limit, , are omitted in the following expressions of additive synthesis.
Harmonic form
The simplest harmonic additive synthesis can be mathematically expressed as:
where is the synthesis output, , , and are the amplitude, frequency, and the phase offset, respectively, of the th harmonic partial of a total of harmonic partials, and is the fundamental frequency of the waveform and the frequency of the musical note.
Time-dependent amplitudes
More generally, the amplitude of each harmonic can be prescribed as a function of time, , in which case the synthesis output is
Each envelope should vary slowly relative to the frequency spacing between adjacent sinusoids. The bandwidth of should be significantly less than .
Inharmonic form
Additive synthesis can also produce inharmonic sounds (which are aperiodic waveforms) in which the individual overtones need not have frequencies that are integer multiples of some common fundamental frequency. While many conventional musical instruments have harmonic partials (e.g. an oboe), some have inharmonic partials (e.g. bells). Inharmonic additive synthesis can be described as
where is the constant frequency of th partial.
Time-dependent frequencies
In the general case, the instantaneous frequency of a sinusoid is the derivative (with respect to time) of the argument of the sine or cosine function. If this frequency is represented in hertz, rather than in angular frequency form, then this derivative is divided by . This is the case whether the partial is harmonic or inharmonic and whether its frequency is constant or time-varying.
In the most general form, the frequency of each non-harmonic partial is a non-negative function of time, , yielding
Broader definitions
Additive synthesis more broadly may mean sound synthesis techniques that sum simple elements to create more complex timbres, even when the elements are not sine waves. For example, F. Richard Moore listed additive synthesis as one of the "four basic categories" of sound synthesis alongside subtractive synthesis, nonlinear synthesis, and physical modeling. In this broad sense, pipe organs, which also have pipes producing non-sinusoidal waveforms, can be considered as a variant form of additive synthesizers. Summation of principal components and Walsh functions have also been classified as additive synthesis.
Implementation methods
Modern-day implementations of additive synthesis are mainly digital. (See section Discrete-time equations for the underlying discrete-time theory)
Oscillator bank synthesis
Additive synthesis can be implemented using a bank of sinusoidal oscillators, one for each partial.
Wavetable synthesis
In the case of harmonic, quasi-periodic musical tones, wavetable synthesis can be as general as time-varying additive synthesis, but requires less computation during synthesis. As a result, an efficient implementation of time-varying additive synthesis of harmonic tones can be accomplished by use of wavetable synthesis.
Group additive synthesis
Group additive synthesis is a method to group partials into harmonic groups (having different fundamental frequencies) and synthesize each group separately with wavetable synthesis before mixing the results.
Inverse FFT synthesis
An inverse Fast Fourier transform can be used to efficiently synthesize frequencies that evenly divide the transform period or "frame". By careful consideration of the DFT frequency-domain representation it is also possible to efficiently synthesize sinusoids of arbitrary frequencies using a series of overlapping frames and the inverse Fast Fourier transform.
Additive analysis/resynthesis
It is possible to analyze the frequency components of a recorded sound giving a "sum of sinusoids" representation. This representation can be re-synthesized using additive synthesis. One method of decomposing a sound into time varying sinusoidal partials is short-time Fourier transform (STFT)-based McAulay-Quatieri Analysis.
By modifying the sum of sinusoids representation, timbral alterations can be made prior to resynthesis. For example, a harmonic sound could be restructured to sound inharmonic, and vice versa. Sound hybridisation or "morphing" has been implemented by additive resynthesis.
Additive analysis/resynthesis has been employed in a number of techniques including Sinusoidal Modelling, Spectral Modelling Synthesis (SMS), and the Reassigned Bandwidth-Enhanced Additive Sound Model. Software that implements additive analysis/resynthesis includes: SPEAR, LEMUR, LORIS, SMSTools, ARSS.
Products
New England Digital Synclavier had a resynthesis feature where samples could be analyzed and converted into ”timbre frames" which were part of its additive synthesis engine. Technos acxel, launched in 1987, utilized the additive analysis/resynthesis model, in an FFT implementation.
Also a vocal synthesizer, Vocaloid have been implemented on the basis of additive analysis/resynthesis: its spectral voice model called Excitation plus Resonances (EpR) model is extended based on Spectral Modeling Synthesis (SMS),
and its diphone concatenative synthesis is processed using
spectral peak processing (SPP) technique similar to modified phase-locked vocoder (an improved phase vocoder for formant processing). Using these techniques, spectral components (formants) consisting of purely harmonic partials can be appropriately transformed into desired form for sound modeling, and sequence of short samples (diphones or phonemes) constituting desired phrase, can be smoothly connected by interpolating matched partials and formant peaks, respectively, in the inserted transition region between different samples. (See also Dynamic timbres)
Applications
Musical instruments
Additive synthesis is used in electronic musical instruments. It is the principal sound generation technique used by Eminent organs.
Speech synthesis
In linguistics research, harmonic additive synthesis was used in 1950s to play back modified and synthetic speech spectrograms.
Later, in early 1980s, listening tests were carried out on synthetic speech stripped of acoustic cues to assess their significance. Time-varying formant frequencies and amplitudes derived by linear predictive coding were synthesized additively as pure tone whistles. This method is called sinewave synthesis. Also the composite sinusoidal modeling (CSM) used on a singing speech synthesis feature on Yamaha CX5M (1984), is known to use a similar approach which was independently developed during 1966–1979. These methods are characterized by extraction and recomposition of a set of significant spectral peaks corresponding to the several resonance modes occurred in the oral cavity and nasal cavity, in a viewpoint of acoustics. This principle was also utilized on a physical modeling synthesis method, called modal synthesis.
History
Harmonic analysis was discovered by Joseph Fourier, who published an extensive treatise of his research in the context of heat transfer in 1822. The theory found an early application in prediction of tides. Around 1876, William Thomson (later ennobled as Lord Kelvin) constructed a mechanical tide predictor. It consisted of a harmonic analyzer and a harmonic synthesizer, as they were called already in the 19th century. The analysis of tide measurements was done using James Thomson's integrating machine. The resulting Fourier coefficients were input into the synthesizer, which then used a system of cords and pulleys to generate and sum harmonic sinusoidal partials for prediction of future tides. In 1910, a similar machine was built for the analysis of periodic waveforms of sound. The synthesizer drew a graph of the combination waveform, which was used chiefly for visual validation of the analysis.
Georg Ohm applied Fourier's theory to sound in 1843. The line of work was greatly advanced by Hermann von Helmholtz, who published his eight years worth of research in 1863. Helmholtz believed that the psychological perception of tone color is subject to learning, while hearing in the sensory sense is purely physiological. He supported the idea that perception of sound derives from signals from nerve cells of the basilar membrane and that the elastic appendages of these cells are sympathetically vibrated by pure sinusoidal tones of appropriate frequencies. Helmholtz agreed with the finding of Ernst Chladni from 1787 that certain sound sources have inharmonic vibration modes.
In Helmholtz's time, electronic amplification was unavailable. For synthesis of tones with harmonic partials, Helmholtz built an electrically excited array of tuning forks and acoustic resonance chambers that allowed adjustment of the amplitudes of the partials. Built at least as early as in 1862, these were in turn refined by Rudolph Koenig, who demonstrated his own setup in 1872. For harmonic synthesis, Koenig also built a large apparatus based on his wave siren. It was pneumatic and utilized cut-out tonewheels, and was criticized for low purity of its partial tones. Also tibia pipes of pipe organs have nearly sinusoidal waveforms and can be combined in the manner of additive synthesis.
In 1938, with significant new supporting evidence, it was reported on the pages of Popular Science Monthly that the human vocal cords function like a fire siren to produce a harmonic-rich tone, which is then filtered by the vocal tract to produce different vowel tones. By the time, the additive Hammond organ was already on market. Most early electronic organ makers thought it too expensive to manufacture the plurality of oscillators required by additive organs, and began instead to build subtractive ones. In a 1940 Institute of Radio Engineers meeting, the head field engineer of Hammond elaborated on the company's new Novachord as having a "subtractive system" in contrast to the original Hammond organ in which "the final tones were built up by combining sound waves". Alan Douglas used the qualifiers additive and subtractive to describe different types of electronic organs in a 1948 paper presented to the Royal Musical Association. The contemporary wording additive synthesis and subtractive synthesis can be found in his 1957 book The electrical production of music, in which he categorically lists three methods of forming of musical tone-colours, in sections titled Additive synthesis, Subtractive synthesis, and Other forms of combinations.
A typical modern additive synthesizer produces its output as an electrical, analog signal, or as digital audio, such as in the case of software synthesizers, which became popular around year 2000.
Timeline
The following is a timeline of historically and technologically notable analog and digital synthesizers and devices implementing additive synthesis.
Discrete-time equations
In digital implementations of additive synthesis, discrete-time equations are used in place of the continuous-time synthesis equations. A notational convention for discrete-time signals uses brackets i.e. and the argument can only be integer values. If the continuous-time synthesis output is expected to be sufficiently bandlimited; below half the sampling rate or , it suffices to directly sample the continuous-time expression to get the discrete synthesis equation. The continuous synthesis output can later be reconstructed from the samples using a digital-to-analog converter. The sampling period is .
Beginning with (),
and sampling at discrete times results in
where
is the discrete-time varying amplitude envelope
is the discrete-time backward difference instantaneous frequency.
This is equivalent to
where
for all
and
See also
Frequency modulation synthesis
Subtractive synthesis
Speech synthesis
Harmonic series (music)
References
External links
Digital Keyboards Synergy
Sound synthesis types |
2219 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft%20carrier | Aircraft carrier | An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a naval force to project air power worldwide without depending on local bases for staging aircraft operations. Carriers have evolved since their inception in the early twentieth century from wooden vessels used to deploy balloons to nuclear-powered warships that carry numerous fighters, strike aircraft, helicopters, and other types of aircraft. While heavier aircraft such as fixed-wing gunships and bombers have been launched from aircraft carriers, one has yet to successfully land on one. By its diplomatic and tactical power, its mobility, its autonomy and the variety of its means, the aircraft carrier is often the centerpiece of modern combat fleets. Tactically or even strategically, it replaced the battleship in the role of flagship of a fleet. One of its great advantages is that, by sailing in international waters, it does not interfere with any territorial sovereignty and thus obviates the need for overflight authorizations from third-party countries, reduces the times and transit distances of aircraft and therefore significantly increase the time of availability on the combat zone.
There is no single definition of an "aircraft carrier", and modern navies use several variants of the type. These variants are sometimes categorized as sub-types of aircraft carriers, and sometimes as distinct types of naval aviation-capable ships. Aircraft carriers may be classified according to the type of aircraft they carry and their operational assignments. Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, RN, former First Sea Lord (head) of the Royal Navy, has said, "To put it simply, countries that aspire to strategic international influence have aircraft carriers." Henry Kissinger, while United States Secretary of State, also said: "An aircraft carrier is 100,000 tons of diplomacy."
As of , there are 47 active aircraft carriers in the world operated by fourteen navies. The United States Navy has 11 large nuclear-powered fleet carriers—carrying around 80 fighters each—the largest carriers in the world; the total combined deck space is over twice that of all other nations combined. As well as the aircraft carrier fleet, the US Navy has nine amphibious assault ships used primarily for helicopters, although these also each carry up to 20 vertical or short take-off and landing (V/STOL) fighter jets and are similar in size to medium-sized fleet carriers. The United Kingdom and China each operate two aircraft carriers. France, India, and Russia each operate a single aircraft carrier with a capacity of 30 to 60 fighter jets. Italy operates two light fleet carriers and Spain operates one. Helicopter carriers are operated by Japan (4, two of which are being converted to operate V/STOL fighters), France (3), Australia (2), Egypt (2), South Korea (2), China (2), Thailand (1) and Brazil (1). Future aircraft carriers are under construction or in planning by Brazil, China, France, India, Russia, South Korea, Turkey and the US.
Types of carriers
General features
Speed is an important asset for aircraft carriers, as they need to be deployed anywhere in the world quickly, and must be fast enough to evade detection and targeting by enemy forces. High speed provides additional "wind over the deck," increasing the lift available for fixed-wing aircraft to carry fuel and munitions. To avoid nuclear submarines, they should be faster than 30 knots.
Aircraft carriers are among the largest warships, as much deck room is needed.
An aircraft carrier must be able to perform increasingly diverse mission sets. Diplomacy, power projection, quick crisis response force, land attack from the sea, sea base for helicopter and amphibious assault forces, Anti-Surface Warfare (ASUW), Defensive Counter Air (DCA), and Humanitarian Aid Disaster Relief (HADR) are some of the missions the aircraft carrier is expected to accomplish. Traditionally an aircraft carrier is supposed to be one ship that can perform at least power projection and sea control missions.
An aircraft carrier must be able to efficiently operate an air combat group. This means it should handle fixed-wing jets as well as helicopters. This includes ships designed to support operations of short-takeoff/vertical-landing (STOVL) jets.
Basic types
Aircraft cruiser
Amphibious assault ship and sub-types
Anti-submarine warfare carrier
Balloon carrier and balloon tenders
Escort carrier
Fleet carrier
Flight deck cruiser
Helicopter carrier
Light aircraft carrier
Sea Control Ship
Seaplane tender and seaplane carriers
(Note: Some of the types listed here are not strictly defined as aircraft carriers by some sources.)
By role
A fleet carrier is intended to operate with the main fleet and usually provides an offensive capability. These are the largest carriers capable of fast speeds. By comparison, escort carriers were developed to provide defense for convoys of ships. They were smaller and slower with lower numbers of aircraft carried. Most were built from mercantile hulls or, in the case of merchant aircraft carriers, were bulk cargo ships with a flight deck added on top. Light aircraft carriers were fast enough to operate with the main fleet but of smaller size with reduced aircraft capacity.
The Soviet aircraft carrier Admiral Kusnetsov was termed a heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser. This was primarily a legal construct to avoid the limitations of the Montreux Convention preventing 'aircraft carriers' transiting the Turkish Straits between the Soviet Black Sea bases and the Mediterranean. These ships, while sized in the range of large fleet carriers, were designed to deploy alone or with escorts. In addition to supporting fighter aircraft and helicopters, they provide both strong defensive weaponry and heavy offensive missiles equivalent to a guided-missile cruiser.
By configuration
Aircraft carriers today are usually divided into the following four categories based on the way that aircraft take off and land:
Catapult-assisted take-off barrier-arrested recovery (CATOBAR): these carriers generally carry the largest, heaviest, and most heavily armed aircraft, although smaller CATOBAR carriers may have other limitations (weight capacity of aircraft elevator, etc.). All CATOBAR carriers in service today are nuclear powered. Two nations currently operate carriers of this type: ten Nimitz and one fleet carriers by the United States, and one medium-sized carrier by France, for a world total of twelve in service.
Short take-off barrier-arrested recovery (STOBAR): these carriers are generally limited to carrying lighter fixed-wing aircraft with more limited payloads. STOBAR carrier air wings, such as the Sukhoi Su-33 and future Mikoyan MiG-29K wings of are often geared primarily towards air superiority and fleet defense roles rather than strike/power projection tasks, which require heavier payloads (bombs and air-to-ground missiles). Today India and Russia each operate one and China operates two of this carrier type – a total of four in service currently.
Short take-off vertical-landing (STOVL): limited to carrying STOVL aircraft. STOVL aircraft, such as the Harrier Jump Jet family and Yakovlev Yak-38 generally have limited payloads, lower performance, and high fuel consumption when compared with conventional fixed-wing aircraft; however, a new generation of STOVL aircraft, currently consisting of the F-35B, has much improved performance. The US has nine STOVL amphibious assault ships. The UK has a class of two 65,000-tonne STOVL aircraft carriers, and , the largest warships ever built for the Royal Navy; with one in service and the other preparing to enter service. Italy operates two in the light fleet role, and Spain operates one amphibious assault ship as a STOVL aircraft carrier, giving a total of fourteen STOVL carriers in active service; (Thailand has one active STOVL carrier but she no longer has any operational STOVL aircraft in inventory so is used and counted as a helicopter carrier).
Helicopter carrier: Helicopter carriers have a similar appearance to other aircraft carriers but operate only helicopters – those that mainly operate helicopters but can also operate fixed-wing aircraft are known as STOVL carriers (see above). There are currently seventeen helicopter carriers (that solely operate helicopters and not fixed-wing aircraft), operated by seven navies, in commission today. Japan has four of this type, France three, Australia, China, Egypt and South Korea each have two, while Brazil and Thailand have one each. In the past, some conventional carriers were converted and called commando carriers by the Royal Navy. Some helicopter carriers, but not all, are classified as amphibious assault ships, tasked with landing and supporting ground forces on enemy territory.
By size
Fleet carrier
Light aircraft carrier
Escort carrier
Supercarrier
The appellation "supercarrier" is not an official designation with any national navy, but a term used predominantly by the media and typically when reporting on new and upcoming aircraft carrier types. It is also used when comparing carriers of various sizes and capabilities, both current and past. It was first used by The New York Times in 1938, in an article about the Royal Navy's , that had a length of , a displacement of 22,000 tonnes and was designed to carry 72 aircraft. Since then, aircraft carriers have consistently grown in size, both in length and displacement, as well as improved capabilities; in defense, sensors, electronic warfare, propulsion, range, launch and recovery systems, number and types of aircraft carried and number of sorties flown per day.
China, Russia, and the United Kingdom all have carriers in service or under construction with displacements ranging from 65,000 to 85,000 tonnes, lengths from to which have been described as "supercarriers".
The largest "supercarriers" in service as of 2021, however, are with the US Navy, with displacements exceeding 100,000 tonnes, lengths of over , and capabilities that match or exceed that of any other class.
Hull type identification symbols
Several systems of identification symbol for aircraft carriers and related types of ship have been used. These include the pennant numbers used by the Royal Navy, Commonwealth countries, and Europe, along with the hull classification symbols used by the US and Canada.
History
Origins
The 1903 advent of the heavier-than-air fixed-wing airplane with the Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, was closely followed on 14 November 1910, by Eugene Burton Ely's first experimental take-off of a Curtiss Pusher airplane from the deck of a United States Navy ship, the cruiser anchored off Norfolk Navy Base in Virginia. Two months later, on 18 January 1911, Ely landed his Curtiss Pusher airplane on a platform on the armored cruiser anchored in San Francisco Bay. On 9 May 1912, the first take off of an airplane from a ship while underway was made by Commander Charles Samson flying a Short Improved S.27 biplane "S.38" of the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) from the deck of the Royal Navy's pre-dreadnought battleship . Thus providing the first practical demonstration of the aircraft carrier for naval operations at sea. Seaplane tender support ships came next, with the French of 1911.
Early in World War I, the Imperial Japanese Navy ship conducted the world's first successful ship-launched air raid: on 6 September 1914, a Farman aircraft launched by Wakamiya attacked the Austro-Hungarian cruiser and the Imperial German gunboat Jaguar in Kiaochow Bay off Tsingtao; neither was hit. The first attack using an air-launched torpedo occurred on 2 August, when a torpedo was fired by Flight Commander Charles H. K. Edmonds from a Short Type 184 seaplane, launched from the seaplane carrier .
The first carrier-launched airstrike was the Tondern raid in July 1918. Seven Sopwith Camels were launched from the battlecruiser which had been modified by replacing her forward turret with a flight deck and hangar turret. The Camels attacked and damaged the German airbase at Tondern, Germany (modern day Tønder, Denmark) and destroyed two zeppelin airships.
The first landing of an airplane on a moving ship was by Squadron Commander Edwin Harris Dunning, when he landed his Sopwith Pup on HMS Furious in Scapa Flow, Orkney on 2 August 1917. Landing on the forward flight deck required the pilot to approach round the ship's superstructure, a difficult and dangerous manoeuver and Dunning was later killed when his airplane was thrown overboard while attempting another landing on Furious. HMS Furious was modified again when her rear turret was removed and another flight deck added over a second hangar for landing aircraft over the stern. Her funnel and superstructure remained intact however and turbulence from the funnel and superstructure was severe enough that only three landing attempts were successful before further attempts were forbidden. This experience prompted the development of vessels with a flush deck and produced the first large fleet ships. In 1918, became the world's first carrier capable of launching and recovering naval aircraft.
As a result of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, which limited the construction of new heavy surface combat ships, most early aircraft carriers were conversions of ships that were laid down (or had served) as different ship types: cargo ships, cruisers, battlecruisers, or battleships. These conversions gave rise to the US s (1927), Japanese and , and British . Specialist carrier evolution was well underway, with several navies ordering and building warships that were purposefully designed to function as aircraft carriers by the mid-1920s. This resulted in the commissioning of ships such as the Japanese (1922), (1924, although laid down in 1918 before Hōshō), and (1927). During World War II, these ships would become known as fleet carriers.
World War II
The aircraft carrier dramatically changed naval warfare in World War II, because air power was becoming a significant factor in warfare. The advent of aircraft as focal weapons was driven by the superior range, flexibility, and effectiveness of carrier-launched aircraft. They had greater range and precision than naval guns, making them highly effective. The versatility of the carrier was demonstrated in November 1940, when launched a long-range strike on the Italian fleet at their base in Taranto, signalling the beginning of the effective and highly mobile aircraft strikes. This operation in the shallow water harbor incapacitated three of the six anchored battleships at a cost of two torpedo bombers.
World War II in the Pacific Ocean involved clashes between aircraft carrier fleets. The Japanese surprise attack on the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor naval and air bases on Sunday, 7 December 1941, was a clear illustration of the power projection capability afforded by a large force of modern carriers. Concentrating six carriers in a single unit turned naval history about, as no other nation had fielded anything comparable. Further versatility was demonstrated during the "Doolittle Raid", on 18 April 1942, when US Navy carrier sailed to within of Japan and launched 16 B-25 bombers from her deck in a retaliatory strike on the mainland, including the capital, Tokyo. However, the vulnerability of carriers compared to traditional battleships when forced into a gun-range encounter was quickly illustrated by the sinking of by German battleships during the Norwegian campaign in 1940.
This new-found importance of naval aviation forced nations to create a number of carriers, in efforts to provide air superiority cover for every major fleet in order to ward off enemy aircraft. This extensive usage led to the development and construction of 'light' carriers. Escort aircraft carriers, such as , were sometimes purpose-built but most were converted from merchant ships as a stop-gap measure to provide anti-submarine air support for convoys and amphibious invasions. Following this concept, light aircraft carriers built by the US, such as , represented a larger, more "militarized" version of the escort carrier. Although with similar complement to escort carriers, they had the advantage of speed from their converted cruiser hulls. The UK 1942 Design Light Fleet Carrier was designed for building quickly by civilian shipyards and with an expected service life of about 3 years. They served the Royal Navy during the war, and the hull design was chosen for nearly all aircraft carrier equipped navies after the war, until the 1980s. Emergencies also spurred the creation or conversion of highly unconventional aircraft carriers. CAM ships were cargo-carrying merchant ships that could launch (but not retrieve) a single fighter aircraft from a catapult to defend the convoy from long range land-based German aircraft.
Postwar era
Before World War II, international naval treaties of 1922, 1930, and 1936 limited the size of capital ships including carriers. Since World War II, aircraft carrier designs have increased in size to accommodate a steady increase in aircraft size. The large, modern of US Navy carriers has a displacement nearly four times that of the World War II–era , yet its complement of aircraft is roughly the same—a consequence of the steadily increasing size and weight of individual military aircraft over the years. Today's aircraft carriers are so expensive that some nations which operate them risk significant economic and military impact if a carrier is lost.
Some changes were made after 1945 in carriers:
The angled flight deck was invented by Royal Navy Captain (later Rear Admiral) Dennis Cambell, as naval aviation jets higher speeds required carriers be modified to "fit" their needs. Additionally, the angled flight deck allows for simultaneous launch and recovery.
Jet blast deflectors became necessary to protect aircraft and handlers from jet blast. The first US Navy carriers to be fitted with them were the wooden-decked s which were adapted to operate jets in the late 1940s. Later versions had to be water-cooled because of increasing engine power.
Optical landing systems were developed to facilitate the very precise landing angles required by jet aircraft, which have a fast landing speed giving little time to correct mistakes. The first system was fitted to in 1952.
Aircraft carrier designs have increased in size to accommodate continuous increase in aircraft size. The 1950s saw US Navy's commission of "supercarriers", designed to operate naval jets, which offered better performance at the expense of bigger size and demanded more ordnance to be carried on-board (fuel, spare parts, electronics, etc.).
Increase in size and requirements of being capable of more than 30 knots and to be at sea for long periods meant nuclear reactors are now used by aboard larger aircraft carriers to generate the steam used to produce power for propulsion, electric power, catapulting airplanes in aircraft carriers, and a few more minor uses.
Modern navies that operate such aircraft carriers treat them as the capital ship of the fleet, a role previously held by the sailing galleons, frigates and ships-of-the-line and later steam or diesel powered battleships. This change took place during World War II in response to air power becoming a significant factor in warfare, driven by the superior range, flexibility and effectiveness of carrier-launched aircraft. Following the war, carrier operations continued to increase in size and importance, and along with, carrier designs also increased in size and ability. Some of these larger carriers, dubbed by the media as "supercarriers", displacing 75,000 tonnes or greater, have become the pinnacle of carrier development. Some are powered by nuclear reactors and form the core of a fleet designed to operate far from home. Amphibious assault ships, such as the and classes, serve the purpose of carrying and landing Marines, and operate a large contingent of helicopters for that purpose. Also known as "commando carriers" or "helicopter carriers", many have the capability to operate VSTOL aircraft.
The threatening role of aircraft carriers has a place in modern asymmetric warfare, like the gunboat diplomacy of the past. Carriers also facilitate quick and precise projections of overwhelming military power into such local and regional conflicts.
Lacking the firepower of other warships, carriers by themselves are considered vulnerable to attack by other ships, aircraft, submarines, or missiles. Therefore, an aircraft carrier is generally accompanied by a number of other ships to provide protection for the relatively unwieldy carrier, to carry supplies and perform other support services, and to provide additional offensive capabilities. The resulting group of ships is often termed a battle group, carrier group, carrier battle group or carrier strike group.
There is a view among some military pundits that modern anti-ship weapons systems, such as torpedoes and missiles, or even ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads have made aircraft carriers and carrier groups too vulnerable for modern combat.
like the German U24 of the conventional 206 class which in 2001 "fired" at the Enterprise during the exercise JTFEX 01-2 in the Caribbean Sea by firing flares and taking a photograph through its periscope or the Swedish Gotland which managed the same feat in 2006 during JTFEX 06-2 by penetrating the defensive measures of Carrier Strike Group 7 which was protecting .
Description
Structure
Carriers are large and long ships, although there is a high degree of variation depending on their intended role and aircraft complement. The size of the carrier has varied over history and among navies, to cater to the various roles that global climates have demanded from naval aviation.
Regardless of size, the ship itself must house their complement of aircraft, with space for launching, storing, and maintaining them. Space is also required for the large crew, supplies (food, munitions, fuel, engineering parts), and propulsion. US aircraft carriers are notable for having nuclear reactors powering their systems and propulsion. This makes the carrier reasonably tall.
The top of the carrier is the flight deck, where aircraft are launched and recovered. On the starboard side of this is the island, where the funnel, air-traffic control and the bridge are located.
The constraints of constructing a flight deck affect the role of a given carrier strongly, as they influence the weight, type, and configuration of the aircraft that may be launched. For example, assisted launch mechanisms are used primarily for heavy aircraft, especially those loaded with air-to-ground weapons. CATOBAR is most commonly used on US Navy fleet carriers as it allows the deployment of heavy jets with full load-outs, especially on ground-attack missions. STOVL is used by other navies because it is cheaper to operate and still provides good deployment capability for fighter aircraft.
Due to the busy nature of the flight deck, only 20 or so aircraft may be on it at any one time. A hangar storage several decks below the flight deck is where most aircraft are kept, and aircraft are taken from the lower storage decks to the flight deck through the use of an elevator. The hangar is usually quite large and can take up several decks of vertical space.
Munitions are commonly stored on the lower decks because they are highly explosive. Usually this is below the waterline so that the area can be flooded in case of emergency.
Flight deck
As "runways at sea", aircraft carriers have a flat-top flight deck, which launches and recovers aircraft. Aircraft launch forward, into the wind, and are recovered from astern. The flight deck is where the most notable differences between a carrier and a land runway are found. Creating such a surface at sea poses constraints on the carrier. For example, the fact that it is a ship means that a full-length runway would be costly to construct and maintain. This affects take-off procedure, as a shorter runway length of the deck requires that aircraft accelerate more quickly to gain lift. This either requires a thrust boost, a vertical component to its velocity, or a reduced take-off load (to lower mass). The differing types of deck configuration, as above, influence the structure of the flight deck. The form of launch assistance a carrier provides is strongly related to the types of aircraft embarked and the design of the carrier itself.
There are two main philosophies in order to keep the deck short: add thrust to the aircraft, such as using a Catapult Assisted Take-Off (CATO-); and changing the direction of the airplanes' thrust, as in Vertical and/or Short Take-Off (V/STO-). Each method has advantages and disadvantages of its own:
Catapult assisted take-off but arrested recovery (CATOBAR): A steam- or electric-powered catapult is connected to the aircraft, and is used to accelerate conventional aircraft to a safe flying speed. By the end of the catapult stroke, the aircraft is airborne and further propulsion is provided by its own engines. This is the most expensive method as it requires complex machinery to be installed under the flight deck, but allows for even heavily loaded aircraft to take off.
Short take-off but arrested recovery (STOBAR) depends on increasing the net lift on the aircraft. Aircraft do not require catapult assistance for take off; instead on nearly all ships of this type an upwards vector is provided by a ski-jump at the forward end of the flight deck, often combined with thrust vectoring by the aircraft. Alternatively, by reducing the fuel and weapon load, an aircraft is able to reach faster speeds and generate more upwards lift and launch without a ski-jump or catapult.
Short take-off vertical-landing (STOVL): On aircraft carriers, non-catapult-assisted, fixed-wing short takeoffs are accomplished with the use of thrust vectoring, which may also be used in conjunction with a runway "ski-jump". Use of STOVL tends to allow aircraft to carry a larger payload as compared to during VTOL use, while still only requiring a short runway. The most famous examples are the Hawker Siddeley Harrier and the Sea Harrier. Although technically VTOL aircraft, they are operationally STOVL aircraft due to the extra weight carried at take-off for fuel and armaments. The same is true of the F-35B Lightning II, which demonstrated VTOL capability in test flights but is operationally STOVL.
Vertical take-off and landing (VTOL): Aircraft are specifically designed for the purpose of using very high degrees of thrust vectoring (e.g. if the thrust to weight-force ratio is greater than 1, it can take off vertically), but are usually slower than conventionally propelled aircraft.
On the recovery side of the flight deck, the adaptation to the aircraft load-out is mirrored. Non-VTOL or conventional aircraft cannot decelerate on their own, and almost all carriers using them must have arrested-recovery systems (-BAR, e.g. CATOBAR or STOBAR) to recover their aircraft. Aircraft that are landing extend a tailhook that catches on arrestor wires stretched across the deck to bring themselves to a stop in a short distance. Post-WWII Royal Navy research on safer CATOBAR recovery eventually led to universal adoption of a landing area angled off axis to allow aircraft who missed the arresting wires to "bolt" and safely return to flight for another landing attempt rather than crashing into aircraft on the forward deck.
If the aircraft are VTOL-capable or helicopters, they do not need to decelerate and hence there is no such need. The arrested-recovery system has used an angled deck since the 1950s because, in case the aircraft does not catch the arresting wire, the short deck allows easier take off by reducing the number of objects between the aircraft and the end of the runway. It also has the advantage of separating the recovery operation area from the launch area. Helicopters and aircraft capable of vertical or short take-off and landing (V/STOL) usually recover by coming abreast of the carrier on the port side and then using their hover capability to move over the flight deck and land vertically without the need for arresting gear.
Staff and deck operations
Carriers steam at speed, up to into the wind during flight deck operations to increase wind speed over the deck to a safe minimum. This increase in effective wind speed provides a higher launch airspeed for aircraft at the end of the catapult stroke or ski-jump, as well as making recovery safer by reducing the difference between the relative speeds of the aircraft and ship.
Since the early 1950s on conventional carriers it has been the practice to recover aircraft at an angle to port of the axial line of the ship. The primary function of this angled deck is to allow aircraft that miss the arresting wires, referred to as a bolter, to become airborne again without the risk of hitting aircraft parked forward. The angled deck allows the installation of one or two "waist" catapults in addition to the two bow cats. An angled deck also improves launch and recovery cycle flexibility with the option of simultaneous launching and recovery of aircraft.
Conventional ("tailhook") aircraft rely upon a landing signal officer (LSO, radio call sign paddles) to monitor the aircraft's approach, visually gauge glideslope, attitude, and airspeed, and transmit that data to the pilot. Before the angled deck emerged in the 1950s, LSOs used colored paddles to signal corrections to the pilot (hence the nickname). From the late 1950s onward, visual landing aids such as the optical landing system have provided information on proper glide slope, but LSOs still transmit voice calls to approaching pilots by radio.
Key personnel involved in the flight deck include the shooters, the handler, and the air boss. Shooters are naval aviators or naval flight officers and are responsible for launching aircraft. The handler works just inside the island from the flight deck and is responsible for the movement of aircraft before launching and after recovery. The "air boss" (usually a commander) occupies the top bridge (Primary Flight Control, also called primary or the tower) and has the overall responsibility for controlling launch, recovery and "those aircraft in the air near the ship, and the movement of planes on the flight deck, which itself resembles a well-choreographed ballet." The captain of the ship spends most of his time one level below primary on the Navigation Bridge. Below this is the Flag Bridge, designated for the embarked admiral and his staff.
To facilitate working on the flight deck of a US aircraft carrier, the sailors wear colored shirts that designate their responsibilities. There are at least seven different colors worn by flight deck personnel for modern United States Navy carrier air operations. Carrier operations of other nations use similar color schemes.
Deck structures
The superstructure of a carrier (such as the bridge, flight control tower) are concentrated in a relatively small area called an island, a feature pioneered on in 1923. While the island is usually built on the starboard side of the flight deck, the Japanese aircraft carriers and had their islands built on the port side. Very few carriers have been designed or built without an island. The flush deck configuration proved to have significant drawbacks, primary of which was management of the exhaust from the power plant. Fumes coming across the deck were a major issue in . In addition, lack of an island meant difficulties managing the flight deck, performing air traffic control, a lack of radar housing placements and problems with navigating and controlling the ship itself.
Another deck structure that can be seen is a ski-jump ramp at the forward end of the flight deck. This was first developed to help launch STOVL aircraft take off at far higher weights than is possible with a vertical or rolling takeoff on flat decks. Originally developed by the Royal Navy, it since has been adopted by many navies for smaller carriers. A ski-jump ramp works by converting some of the forward rolling movement of the aircraft into vertical velocity and is sometimes combined with the aiming of jet thrust partly downwards. This allows heavily loaded and fueled aircraft a few more precious seconds to attain sufficient air velocity and lift to sustain normal flight. Without a ski-jump, launching fully-loaded and fueled aircraft such as the Harrier would not be possible on a smaller flat deck ship before either stalling out or crashing directly into the sea.
Although STOVL aircraft are capable of taking off vertically from a spot on the deck, using the ramp and a running start is far more fuel efficient and permits a heavier launch weight. As catapults are unnecessary, carriers with this arrangement reduce weight, complexity, and space needed for complex steam or electromagnetic launching equipment. Vertical landing aircraft also remove the need for arresting cables and related hardware. Russian, Chinese, and future Indian carriers include a ski-jump ramp for launching lightly loaded conventional fighter aircraft but recover using traditional carrier arresting cables and a tailhook on their aircraft.
The disadvantage of the ski-jump is the penalty it exacts on aircraft size, payload, and fuel load (and thus range); heavily laden aircraft can not launch using a ski-jump because their high loaded weight requires either a longer takeoff roll than is possible on a carrier deck, or assistance from a catapult or JATO rocket. For example, the Russian Su-33 is only able to launch from the carrier with a minimal armament and fuel load. Another disadvantage is on mixed flight deck operations where helicopters are also present, such as on a US landing helicopter dock or landing helicopter assault amphibious assault ship. A ski jump is not included as this would eliminate one or more helicopter landing areas; this flat deck limits the loading of Harriers but is somewhat mitigated by the longer rolling start provided by a long flight deck compared to many STOVL carriers.
National fleets
The US Navy has the largest fleet of carriers in the world, with eleven supercarriers currently in service. The UK has two STOVL carriers in service. China has two STOBAR carriers in service. The navies of France, India, and Russia each operate a single medium-size carrier. The US also has nine similarly sized Amphibious Warfare Ships. There are three small light carriers in use capable of operating both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, Italy operates two, and Spain one.
Additionally there are seventeen small carriers which only operate helicopters serving the navies of Australia (2), Brazil (1), China (2), Egypt (2), France (3), Japan (4), South Korea (2), and Thailand (1).
Australia
Current
The Royal Australian Navy operates two s. The two-ship class, based on the Spanish vessel and built by Navantia and BAE Systems Australia, represents the largest ships ever built for the Royal Australian Navy.
underwent sea trials in late 2013 and was commissioned in 2014. Her sister ship, , was commissioned in December 2015. The Australian ships retain the ski-ramp from the Juan Carlos I design, although the RAN has not acquired carrier-based fixed-wing aircraft.
Brazil
Current
In December 2017, the Brazilian Navy confirmed the purchase of for (GBP) £84.6 million (equivalent to R$359.5M and US$113.2M) and renamed it . The ship was decommissioned from Royal Navy service in March 2018. The Brazilian Navy commissioned the carrier on 29 June 2018 in the United Kingdom. After undertaking a period of maintenance in the UK, was expected to travel to its home port, Arsenal do Rio de Janeiro (AMRJ) and be fully operational by 2020.
The helicopter carrier package for Brazil includes an Artisan 3D search radar, KH1007 surface surveillance radar system, four 30 mm DS30M Mk 2 remote weapon systems and four Mk 5B landing craft. The three original 20 mm Mk 15 Block 1B Phalanx close-in weapon systems, the torpedo defense systems and 7.62 mm M134 machine guns were removed from the ship before its transfer to Brazil. The ship displaces 21,578 tonnes, is long and has a range of .
Atlântico will undergo operational sea training under the Royal Navy's Flag Officer Sea Training (FOST) program.
China
Current
2 STOBAR carriers:
was originally built as the Soviet carrier Varyag and was later purchased as a hulk in 1998 on the pretext of use as a floating casino, then towed to China for rebuild and completion. Liaoning was commissioned on 25 September 2012 and began service for testing and training. In November 2012, Liaoning launched and recovered Shenyang J-15 naval fighter aircraft for the first time. After a refit in January 2019, she was assigned to the North Sea Fleet, a change from its previous role as a training carrier.
was launched on 26 April 2017. She is the first to be built domestically, to an improved Kuznetsov-class design. Shandong started sea trials on 23 April 2018, and entered service in December 2019.
1 Landing helicopter dock
A Type 075 LHD, was commissioned on 23 April 2021 at the naval base in Sanya. A second ship, Guangxi, was commissioned on 26 December 2021.
Future
Chinese officials stated that a third carrier, also known as Type 003 carrier is being constructed in the Shanghai Jiangnan Shipyard. She will be the first Chinese aircraft carrier to use catapult take off system (CATOBAR). In May 2019, the Center for Strategic and International Studies released satellite images of what they said was the third carrier under construction at Jiangnan Shipyard near Shanghai. China has had a long-term plan to operate six large aircraft carriers with two carriers per fleet.
China is planning a class of eight landing helicopter dock vessels, the Type 075 (NATO reporting name Yushen-class landing helicopter assault). This is a class of amphibious assault ship under construction by the Hudong–Zhonghua Shipbuilding company. The first ship was commissioned in April 2021. China is also planning a modified class of the same concept, the Type 076 landing helicopter dock, that will also be equipped with an electromagnetic catapult launch system.
Egypt
Current
Egypt signed a contract with French shipbuilder DCNS to buy two helicopter carriers for approximately 950 million euros. The two ships were originally destined for Russia, but the deal was cancelled by France due to Russian involvement in Ukraine.
On 2 June 2016, Egypt received the first of two helicopter carriers acquired in October 2015, the landing helicopter dock . The flag transfer ceremony took place in the presence of Egyptian and French Navies' chiefs of staff, chairman and chief executive officers of both DCNS and STX France, and senior Egyptian and French officials. On 16 September 2016, DCNS delivered the second of two helicopter carriers, the landing helicopter dock which also participated in a joint military exercise with the French Navy before arriving at its home port of Alexandria.
Egypt is so far the only country in Africa or the Middle East to possess a helicopter carrier.
France
Current
The French Navy operates the , a 42,000-tonne nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, commissioned in 2001 and is the flagship of the French Navy. The ship carries a complement of Dassault Rafale M and E‑2C Hawkeye aircraft, EC725 Caracal and AS532 Cougar helicopters for combat search and rescue, as well as modern electronics and Aster missiles. She is a CATOBAR-type carrier that uses two 75 m C13‑3 steam catapults of a shorter version of the catapult system installed on the US carriers, one catapult at the bow and one across the front of the landing area. In addition, the French Navy operates three s.
Future
In October 2018, the French Ministry of Defence began an 18-month study for €40 million for the eventual future replacement of the beyond 2030. In December 2020, President Macron announced that construction of the next generation carrier would begin in around 2025 with sea trials to start in about 2036. The carrier is planned to have a displacement of around 75,000 tons and to carry about 32 next-generation fighters, two to three E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes and a yet-to-be-determined number of unmanned carrier air vehicles.
India
Current
1 STOBAR carrier: , 45,400 tonnes, modified Kiev class. The carrier was purchased by India on 20 January 2004 after years of negotiations at a final price of $2.35 billion. The ship successfully completed her sea trials in July 2013 and aviation trials in September 2013. She was formally commissioned on 16 November 2013 at a ceremony held at Severodvinsk, Russia.
Future
India started building , also known as Indigenous Aircraft Carrier 1 (IAC-1) a 45,000-tonne, aircraft carrier in 2009. The new carrier will operate MiG-29K and naval HAL Tejas aircraft. The ship will be powered by four gas-turbine engines and will have a range of , carrying 160 officers, 1,400 sailors, and 40 aircraft. The ship was launched in 2013, sea-trials began in August 2021 and commissioning is scheduled in 2022.
A second carrier, , also known as Indigenous Aircraft Carrier 2 (IAC-2) with a displacement of over 65,000 tonnes is planned with a CATOBAR system to launch and recover heavier aircraft.
Italy
Current
2 STOVL carriers:
: 14,000-tonne Italian STOVL carrier, commissioned in 1985.
: 27,000-tonne Italian STOVL carrier designed and built with secondary amphibious assault facilities, commissioned in 2008.
Future
Italy plans to replace ageing aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi, as well as one of the landing helicopter docks, with a new amphibious assault ship, to be named . The ship will be significantly larger than her predecessors with a displacement of 38,000 tonnes at full load. Trieste is to carry the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter. Meanwhile, Giuseppe Garibaldi will be transferred to Italian Space Operation Command for use as a satellite launch platform.
Japan
Current
4 helicopter carriers:
2 s – 19,000-tonne (full load) anti-submarine warfare carriers with enhanced command-and-control capabilities allowing them to serve as fleet flagships.
2 s – , 19,500-tonne (27,000 tonnes full load) helicopter carrier Izumo was launched August 2013 and commissioned March 2015. This is the largest military ship Japan has had since World War II. Izumos sister ship, Kaga, was commissioned in 2017.
Future
2 STOVL carriers:
In December 2018, the Japanese Cabinet gave approval to convert both Izumo-class destroyers into aircraft carriers for F-35B STOVL operations. The conversion of Izumo was underway as of mid-2020. The modification of maritime escort vessels is to "increase operational flexibility" and enhance Pacific air defense, the Japanese defense ministry's position is "We are not creating carrier air wings or carrier air squadrons" similar to the US Navy. The Japanese STOVL F-35s, when delivered, will be operated by the Japan Air Self Defense Force from land bases; according to the 2020 Japanese Defense Ministry white paper the STOVL model was chosen for the JASDF due the lack of appropriately long runways to support air superiority capability across all of Japanese airspace. Japan has requested that the USMC deploy STOVL F-35s and crews aboard the Izumo-class ships "for cooperation and advice on how to operate the fighter on the deck of the modified ships".
Russia
Current
1 STOBAR carrier: Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Kuznetsov: 55,000-tonne STOBAR aircraft carrier. Launched in 1985 as Tbilisi, renamed and operational from 1995. Without catapults she can launch and recover lightly fueled naval fighters for air defense or anti-ship missions but not heavy conventional bombing strikes. Officially designated an aircraft carrying cruiser, she is unique in carrying a heavy cruiser's complement of defensive weapons and large P-700 Granit offensive missiles. The P-700 systems will be removed in the coming refit to enlarge her below decks aviation facilities as well as upgrading her defensive systems.
Future
The Russian Government has been considering the potential replacement of Admiral Kuznetsov for some time and has considered the Shtorm-class aircraft carrier as a possible option. This carrier will be a hybrid of CATOBAR and STOBAR, given the fact that she utilizes both systems of launching aircraft. The carrier is expected to cost . As of 2020, the project had not yet been approved and, given the financial costs, it was unclear whether it would be made a priority over other elements of Russian naval modernization.
A class of 2 LHD, Project 23900 is planned and an official keel laying ceremony for the project happened on 20 July 2020.
South Korea
Current
Two 18,860-tonne full deck amphibious assault ships with hospital and well deck and facilities to serve as fleet flagships.
Future
South Korea has set tentative plans for procuring two light aircraft carriers by 2033, which would help make the ROKN a blue water navy. In December 2020, details of South Korea's planned carrier program (CVX) were finalized. A vessel of about 40,000 tons is envisaged carrying about 20 F-35B fighters as well as future maritime attack helicopters. Service entry had been anticipated in the early 2030s. The program has encountered opposition in the National Assembly. In November 2021, the National Defense Committee of the National Assembly reduced the program's requested budget of 7.2 billion KRW and to just 500 million KRW (about $400K USD), effectively putting the project on hold, at least temporarily. However, on 3 December 2021 the full budget of 7.2 billion won was passed by the National Assembly. Basic design work is to begin in earnest starting 2022.
Spain
Current
: 27,000-tonne, specially designed multipurpose strategic projection ship which can operate as an amphibious assault ship and aircraft carrier. Juan Carlos I has full facilities for both functions including a ski jump for STOVL operations, is equipped with the AV-8B Harrier II attack aircraft. Also, well deck, and vehicle storage area which can be used as additional hangar space, launched in 2008, commissioned 30 September 2010.
Thailand
Current
1 offshore helicopter support ship: helicopter carrier: 11,400-tonne STOVL carrier based on Spanish design. Commissioned in 1997. The AV-8S Matador/Harrier STOVL fighter wing, mostly inoperable by 1999, was retired from service without replacement in 2006. As of 2010, the ship is used for helicopter operations and for disaster relief.
Turkey
Future
is a 24,660-tonne planned amphibious assault ship (LHD) of the Turkish Navy that can be configured as a 27,079-tonne light aircraft carrier. Construction began on 30 April 2016 by Sedef Shipbuilding Inc. at their Istanbul shipyard and is expected to be completed by the end of 2020. The construction of a sister ship, to be named TCG Trakya, is currently being planned by the Turkish Navy.
In 2018, İÇDAŞ, a Turkish company, started the construction of the Kızılelma Shipyard in the Biga district of Çanakkale Province specifically for building a new type of large aircraft carrier which is currently being designed by the Turkish Naval Forces. The dry dock of the Kızılelma Shipyard, completed in 2020, is long and wide.
United Kingdom
Current
Two 65,000-tonne Queen Elizabeth-class STOVL carriers which will operate the F-35 Lightning II. was commissioned in December 2017 and in December 2019.
Queen Elizabeth is anticipated to take her first operational deployment in 2021. Each Queen Elizabeth-class ship is able to operate around 40 aircraft during peacetime operations and is thought to be able to carry up to 72 at maximum capacity. As of the end of April 2020, 18 F-35B aircraft had been delivered to the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. "Full operating capability" for the UK's carrier strike capability is planned for 2023 (2 squadrons or 24 jets operating from one carrier). The longer-term aim is for the ability to conduct a wide range of air operations and support amphibious operations worldwide from both carriers by 2026. They form the central part of the UK Carrier Strike Group.
Future
The Queen Elizabeth-class ships are expected to have service lives of 50 years, therefore there are not imminent studies on their replacement.
United States
Current
11 CATOBAR carriers, all nuclear-powered:
: ten 101,000-tonne, fleet carriers, the first of which was commissioned in 1975. A Nimitz-class carrier is powered by two nuclear reactors providing steam to four steam turbines.
, one 100,000-tonne, fleet carrier. The lead of the class came into service in 2017, with another nine planned.
9 amphibious assault ships carrying vehicles, Marine fighters, attack and transport helicopters, and landing craft with STOVL fighters for CAS and CAP:
: a class of 45,000-tonne amphibious assault ships, although the lead ship in this class does not have a well deck. Two ships in service out of a planned 11 ships. Ships of this class can have a secondary mission as a light carrier with 20 AV-8B Harrier II, and in the future the F-35B Lightning II aircraft after unloading their Marine expeditionary unit.
: a class of eight 41,000-tonne amphibious assault ships, members of this class have been used in wartime in their secondary mission as light carriers with 20 to 25 AV-8Bs after unloading their Marine expeditionary unit.
Future
The current US fleet of Nimitz-class carriers will be followed into service (and in some cases replaced) by the . It is expected that the ships will be more automated in an effort to reduce the amount of funding required to maintain and operate the vessels. The main new features are implementation of Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) (which replace the old steam catapults) and unmanned aerial vehicles. In terms of carrier future developments, Congress has discussed possibly accelerating the phasing out of one or more Nimitz-class carriers, postponing or canceling the procurement of the CVN-82 and CVN-81, or modifying the purchase contract.
Following the deactivation of in December 2012, the US fleet comprised 10 fleet carriers, but that number increased back to 11 with the commissioning of Gerald R. Ford in July 2017. The House Armed Services Seapower subcommittee on 24 July 2007, recommended seven or eight new carriers (one every four years). However, the debate has deepened over budgeting for the $12–14.5 billion (plus $12 billion for development and research) for the 100,000-tonne Gerald R. Ford-class carrier (estimated service 2017) compared to the smaller $2 billion 45,000-tonne s, which are able to deploy squadrons of F-35Bs. The first of this class, , is now in active service with another, , and 9 more are planned.
In a report to Congress in February 2018, the Navy stated it intends to maintain a "12 CVN force" as part of its 30-year acquisition plan.
Aircraft carriers in preservation
Current museum carriers
A few aircraft carriers have been preserved as museum ships. They are:
in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina
in New York City
in Alameda, California
in Corpus Christi, Texas
in San Diego, California
in Tianjin, China
in Nantong, China
Former museum carriers
was moored as a museum in Mumbai from 2001 to 2012, but was never able to find an industrial partner and was closed that year. She was scrapped in 2014.
was acquired for preservation and moored in New Orleans from 1990 to 2002, but due to an embezzlement scandal, funding for the museum never materialized and was scrapped in 2002.
Future museum carriers
has a preservation campaign to bring her to the West Coast of the United States as the world's first amphibious assault ship museum.
See also
Airborne aircraft carrier
Aviation-capable naval vessels
Carrier-based aircraft
Lily and Clover
Merchant aircraft carrier
Mobile offshore base
Project Habakkuk
Seadrome
Submarine aircraft carrier
Unsinkable aircraft carrier
Related lists
List of aircraft carriers
List of aircraft carriers in service
List of aircraft carriers by configuration
List of aircraft carriers of the Second World War
List of sunken aircraft carriers
List of amphibious warfare ships
List of carrier-based aircraft
List of Canadian Navy aircraft carriers
List of aircraft carriers of the People's Liberation Army Navy (China)
List of current French Navy aircraft carriers
List of German aircraft carriers
List of aircraft carriers of the Indian Navy
List of Italian Navy aircraft carriers
List of aircraft carriers of the Japanese Navy
List of aircraft carriers of Russia and the Soviet Union
List of active Spanish aircraft carriers
List of aircraft carriers of the Royal Navy
List of escort carriers of the Royal Navy
List of seaplane carriers of the Royal Navy
List of aircraft carriers of the United States Navy
List of aircraft carrier classes of the United States Navy
List of escort aircraft carriers of the United States Navy
References
Bibliography
Further reading
Ader, Clement. Military Aviation, 1909, Edited and translated by Lee Kennett, Air University Press, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, 2003, .
Chesneau, Roger. Aircraft Carriers of the World, 1914 to the Present: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Naval Institute Press, 1984.
Francillon, René J, Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club US Carrier Operations off Vietnam, 1988, .
Melhorn, Charles M. Two-Block Fox: The Rise of the Aircraft Carrier, 1911–1929. Naval Institute Press, 1974.
Nordeen, Lon, Air Warfare in the Missile Age, 1985, .
Polmar, Norman. Aircraft Carriers: A History of Carrier Aviation and its Influence on World Events, 1901–2006. (two vols.) Potomac Books, 2006.
Wadle, Ryan David. United States navy fleet problems and the development of carrier aviation, 1929–1933. PhD dissertation Texas A&M University, 2005. online.
External links
Future Aircraft Carrier: UK. Armed Forces International
Aircraft carriers of the US Navy
Info about flight deck crew, arresting cables, catapults
How Stuff Works—Aircraft Carriers
Haze Gray & Underway, World Aircraft Carrier Lists comprehensive and detailed listings of all the world's aircraft carriers and seaplane tenders from 1913 to 2001, with photo gallery.
Ships That Mother Seaplanes: craft of the "hush-hush" fleet may play a part in first trans-Atlantic flight. Popular Science monthly, February 1919, page 80, on Google Books.
Ship types
Articles containing video clips |
2221 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apicomplexa | Apicomplexa | The Apicomplexa (also called Apicomplexia) are a large phylum of parasitic alveolates. Most of them possess a unique form of organelle that comprises a type of non-photosynthetic plastid called an apicoplast, and an apical complex structure. The organelle is an adaptation that the apicomplexan applies in penetration of a host cell.
The Apicomplexa are unicellular and spore-forming. All species are obligate endoparasites of animals, except Nephromyces, a symbiont in marine animals, originally classified as a chytrid fungus. Motile structures such as flagella or pseudopods are present only in certain gamete stages.
The Apicomplexa are a diverse group that includes organisms such as the coccidia, gregarines, piroplasms, haemogregarines, and plasmodia.
Diseases caused by Apicomplexa include:
Babesiosis (Babesia)
Malaria (Plasmodium)
Cryptosporidiosis (Cryptosporidium parvum)
Cyclosporiasis (Cyclospora cayetanensis)
Cystoisosporiasis (Cystoisospora belli (formerly known as "Isospora Belli"))
Toxoplasmosis (Toxoplasma gondii)
The name of the taxon Apicomplexa derives from two Latin words—apex (top) and complexus (infolds)—and refers to a set of organelles in the sporozoite. The Apicomplexa comprise the bulk of what used to be called the Sporozoa, a group of parasitic protozoans, in general without flagella, cilia, or pseudopods. Most of the Apicomplexa are motile, however, by use of a gliding mechanism
that uses adhesions and small static myosin motors. The other main lines were the Ascetosporea (now in Rhizaria), the Myxozoa (now known to be highly derived cnidarian animals), and the Microsporidia (now known to be derived from fungi). Sometimes, the name Sporozoa is taken as a synonym for the Apicomplexa, or occasionally as a subset.
Description
The phylum Apicomplexa contains all eukaryotes with a group of structures and organelles collectively termed the apical complex. This complex consists of structural components and secretory organelles that are required for invasion of host cells during the parasitic stages of the Apicomplexan life cycle. Apicomplexa have complex life cycles, involving several stages and typically undergoing both asexual and sexual replication. All Apicomplexa are obligate parasites for some portion of their life cycle, with some parasitizing two separate hosts for their asexual and sexual stages.
Besides the conserved apical complex, Apicomplexa are morphologically diverse. Different organisms within Apicomplexa, as well as different life stages for a given apicomplexan, can vary substantially in size, shape, and subcellular structure. Like other eukaryotes, Apicomplexa have a nucleus, endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi complex. Apicomplexa generally have a single mitochondrion, as well as another endosymbiont-derived organelle called the apicoplast which maintains a separate 35 kilobase circular genome (with the exception of Cryptosporidium species and Gregarina niphandrodes which lack an apicoplast).
All members of this phylum have an infectious stage—the sporozoite—which possesses three distinct structures in an apical complex. The apical complex consists of a set of spirally arranged microtubules (the conoid), a secretory body (the rhoptry) and one or more polar rings. Additional slender electron-dense secretory bodies (micronemes) surrounded by one or two polar rings may also be present. This structure gives the phylum its name. A further group of spherical organelles is distributed throughout the cell rather than being localized at the apical complex and are known as the dense granules. These typically have a mean diameter around 0.7 μm. Secretion of the dense-granule content takes place after parasite invasion and localization within the parasitophorous vacuole and persists for several minutes.
Flagella are found only in the motile gamete. These are posteriorly directed and vary in number (usually one to three).
Basal bodies are present. Although hemosporidians and piroplasmids have normal triplets of microtubules in their basal bodies, coccidians and gregarines have nine singlets.
The mitochondria have tubular cristae.
Centrioles, chloroplasts, ejectile organelles, and inclusions are absent.
The cell is surrounded by a pellicle of three membrane layers (the alveolar structure) penetrated by micropores.
Replication:
Mitosis is usually closed, with an intranuclear spindle; in some species, it is open at the poles.
Cell division is usually by schizogony.
Meiosis occurs in the zygote.
Mobility:
Apicomplexans have a unique gliding capability which enables them to cross through tissues and enter and leave their host cells. This gliding ability is made possible by the use of adhesions and small static myosin motors.
Other features common to this phylum are a lack of cilia, sexual reproduction, use of micropores for feeding, and the production of oocysts containing sporozoites as the infective form.
Transposons appear to be rare in this phylum, but have been identified in the genera Ascogregarina and Eimeria.
Life cycle
Most members have a complex lifecycle, involving both asexual and sexual reproduction. Typically, a host is infected via an active invasion by the parasites (similar to entosis), which divide to produce sporozoites that enter its cells. Eventually, the cells burst, releasing merozoites, which infect new cells. This may occur several times, until gamonts are produced, forming gametes that fuse to create new cysts. Many variations occur on this basic pattern, however, and many Apicomplexa have more than one host.
The apical complex includes vesicles called rhoptries and micronemes, which open at the anterior of the cell. These secrete enzymes that allow the parasite to enter other cells. The tip is surrounded by a band of microtubules, called the polar ring, and among the Conoidasida is also a funnel of tubulin proteins called the conoid. Over the rest of the cell, except for a diminished mouth called the micropore, the membrane is supported by vesicles called alveoli, forming a semirigid pellicle.
The presence of alveoli and other traits place the Apicomplexa among a group called the alveolates. Several related flagellates, such as Perkinsus and Colpodella, have structures similar to the polar ring and were formerly included here, but most appear to be closer relatives of the dinoflagellates. They are probably similar to the common ancestor of the two groups.
Another similarity is that many apicomplexan cells contain a single plastid, called the apicoplast, surrounded by either three or four membranes. Its functions are thought to include tasks such as lipid and heme biosynthesis, and it appears to be necessary for survival. In general, plastids are considered to have a common origin with the chloroplasts of dinoflagellates, and evidence points to an origin from red algae rather than green.
Subgroups
Within this phylum are four groups — coccidians, gregarines, haemosporidians (or haematozoans, including in addition piroplasms), and marosporidians. The coccidians and haematozoans appear to be relatively closely related.
Perkinsus , while once considered a member of the Apicomplexa, has been moved to a new phylum — Perkinsozoa.
Gregarines
The gregarines are generally parasites of annelids, arthropods, and mollusks. They are often found in the guts of their hosts, but may invade the other tissues. In the typical gregarine lifecycle, a trophozoite develops within a host cell into a schizont. This then divides into a number of merozoites by schizogony. The merozoites are released by lysing the host cell, which in turn invade other cells. At some point in the apicomplexan lifecycle, gametocytes are formed. These are released by lysis of the host cells, which group together. Each gametocyte forms multiple gametes. The gametes fuse with another to form oocysts. The oocysts leave the host to be taken up by a new host.
Coccidians
In general, coccidians are parasites of vertebrates. Like gregarines, they are commonly parasites of the epithelial cells of the gut, but may infect other tissues.
The coccidian lifecycle involves merogony, gametogony, and sporogony. While similar to that of the gregarines it differs in zygote formation. Some trophozoites enlarge and become macrogamete, whereas others divide repeatedly to form microgametes (anisogamy). The microgametes are motile and must reach the macrogamete to fertilize it. The fertilized macrogamete forms a zygote that in its turn forms an oocyst that is normally released from the body. Syzygy, when it occurs, involves markedly anisogamous gametes. The lifecycle is typically haploid, with the only diploid stage occurring in the zygote, which is normally short-lived.
The main difference between the coccidians and the gregarines is in the gamonts. In the coccidia, these are small, intracellular, and without epimerites or mucrons. In the gregarines, these are large, extracellular, and possess epimerites or mucrons. A second difference between the coccidia and the gregarines also lies in the gamonts. In the coccidians, a single gamont becomes a macrogametocyte, whereas in the gregarines, the gamonts give rise to multiple gametocytes.
Haemosporidia
The Haemosporidia have more complex lifecycles that alternate between an arthropod and a vertebrate host. The trophozoite parasitises erythrocytes or other tissues in the vertebrate host. Microgametes and macrogametes are always found in the blood. The gametes are taken up by the insect vector during a blood meal. The microgametes migrate within the gut of the insect vector and fuse with the macrogametes. The fertilized macrogamete now becomes an ookinete, which penetrates the body of the vector. The ookinete then transforms into an oocyst and divides initially by meiosis and then by mitosis (haplontic lifecycle) to give rise to the sporozoites. The sporozoites escape from the oocyst and migrate within the body of the vector to the salivary glands where they are injected into the new vertebrate host when the insect vector feeds again.
Marosporida
The class Marosporida Mathur, Kristmundsson, Gestal, Freeman, and Keeling 2020 is a newly recognized lineage of apicomplexans that is sister to the Coccidia and Hematozoa. It is defined as a phylogenetic clade containing Aggregata octopiana Frenzel 1885, Merocystis kathae Dakin, 1911 (both Aggregatidae, originally coccidians), Rhytidocystis sp. 1 and Rhytidocystis sp. 2 Janouškovec et al. 2019 (Rhytidocystidae Levine, 1979, originally coccidians, Agamococcidiorida), and Margolisiella islandica Kristmundsson et al. 2011 (closely related to Rhytidocystidae). Marosporida infect marine invertebrates. Members of this clade retain plastid genomes and the canonical apicomplexan plastid metabolism. However, marosporidians have the most reduced apicoplast genomes sequenced to date, lack canonical plastidial RNA polymerase and so provide new insights into reductive organelle evolution.
Ecology and distribution
Many of the apicomplexan parasites are important pathogens of human and domestic animals. In contrast to bacterial pathogens, these apicomplexan parasites are eukaryotic and share many metabolic pathways with their animal hosts. This makes therapeutic target development extremely difficult – a drug that harms an apicomplexan parasite is also likely to harm its human host. At present, no effective vaccines are available for most diseases caused by these parasites. Biomedical research on these parasites is challenging because it is often difficult, if not impossible, to maintain live parasite cultures in the laboratory and to genetically manipulate these organisms. In recent years, several of the apicomplexan species have been selected for genome sequencing. The availability of genome sequences provides a new opportunity for scientists to learn more about the evolution and biochemical capacity of these parasites. The predominant source of this genomic information is the EuPathDB family of websites, which currently provides specialised services for Plasmodium species (PlasmoDB), coccidians (ToxoDB), piroplasms (PiroplasmaDB), and Cryptosporidium species (CryptoDB). One possible target for drugs is the plastid, and in fact existing drugs such as tetracyclines, which are effective against apicomplexans, seem to operate against the plastid.
Many Coccidiomorpha have an intermediate host, as well as a primary host, and the evolution of hosts proceeded in different ways and at different times in these groups. For some coccidiomorphs, the original host has become the intermediate host, whereas in others it has become the definitive host. In the genera Aggregata, Atoxoplasma, Cystoisospora, Schellackia, and Toxoplasma, the original is now definitive, whereas in Akiba, Babesiosoma, Babesia, Haemogregarina, Haemoproteus, Hepatozoon, Karyolysus, Leucocytozoon, Plasmodium, Sarcocystis, and Theileria, the original hosts are now intermediate.
Similar strategies to increase the likelihood of transmission have evolved in multiple genera. Polyenergid oocysts and tissue cysts are found in representatives of the orders Protococcidiorida and Eimeriida. Hypnozoites are found in Karyolysus lacerate and most species of Plasmodium; transovarial transmission of parasites occurs in lifecycles of Karyolysus and Babesia.
Horizontal gene transfer appears to have occurred early on in this phylum's evolution with the transfer of a histone H4 lysine 20 (H4K20) modifier, KMT5A (Set8), from an animal host to the ancestor of apicomplexans. A second gene—H3K36 methyltransferase (Ashr3 in plants)—may have also be horizontally transferred.
Blood-borne genera
Within the Apicomplexa are three suborders of parasites:
suborder Adeleorina—eight genera
suborder Haemosporina—all genera in this suborder
suborder Eimeriorina—two genera (Lankesterella and Schellackia)
Within the Adelorina are species that infect invertebrates and others that infect vertebrates. The Eimeriorina—the largest suborder in this phylum—the lifecycle involves both sexual and asexual stages. The asexual stages reproduce by schizogony. The male gametocyte produces a large number of gametes and the zygote gives rise to an oocyst, which is the infective stage. The majority are monoxenous (infect one host only), but a few are heteroxenous (lifecycle involves two or more hosts).
The number of families in this later suborder is debated, with the number of families being between one and 20 depending on the authority and the number of genera being between 19 and 25.
Taxonomy
History
The first Apicomplexa protozoan was seen by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who in 1674 saw probably oocysts of Eimeria stiedae in the gall bladder of a rabbit. The first species of the phylum to be described, Gregarina ovata in earwigs intestines, was named by Dufour in 1828. He thought that they were a peculiar group related to the trematodes, at that time included in Vermes. Since then, many more have been identified and named. During 1826–1850, 41 species and six genera of Apicomplexa were named. In 1951–1975, 1873 new species and 83 new genera were added.
The older taxon Sporozoa, included in Protozoa, was created by Leuckart in 1879 and adopted by Bütschli in 1880. Through history, it grouped with the current Apicomplexa many unrelated groups. For example, Kudo (1954) included in the Sporozoa species of the Ascetosporea (Rhizaria), Microsporidia (Fungi), Myxozoa (Animalia), and Helicosporidium (Chlorophyta), while Zierdt (1978) included the genus Blastocystis (Stramenopiles). Dermocystidium was also thought to be sporozoan. Not all of these groups had spores, but all were parasitic. However, other parasitic or symbiotic unicellular organisms were included too in protozoan groups outside Sporozoa (Flagellata, Ciliophora and Sarcodina), if they had flagella (e.g., many Kinetoplastida, Retortamonadida, Diplomonadida, Trichomonadida, Hypermastigida), cilia (e.g., Balantidium) or pseudopods (e.g., Entamoeba, Acanthamoeba, Naegleria). If they had cell walls, they also could be included in plant kingdom between bacteria or yeasts.
Sporozoa is no longer regarded as biologically valid and its use is discouraged, although some authors still use it as a synonym for the Apicomplexa. More recently, other groups were excluded from Apicomplexa, e.g., Perkinsus and Colpodella (now in Protalveolata).
The field of classifying Apicomplexa is in flux and classification has changed throughout the years since it was formally named in 1970.
By 1987, a comprehensive survey of the phylum was completed: in all, 4516 species and 339 genera had been named. They consisted of:
Class Conoidasida
Subclass Gregarinasina p.p.
Order Eugregarinorida, with 1624 named species and 231 named genera
Subclass Coccidiasina p.p
Order Eucoccidiorida p.p
Suborder Adeleorina p.p
Group Hemogregarines, with 399 species and four genera
Suborder Eimeriorina, with 1771 species and 43 genera
Class Aconoidasida
Order Haemospororida, with 444 species and nine genera
Order Piroplasmorida, with 173 species and 20 genera
Other minor groups omitted above, with 105 species and 32 genera
Although considerable revision of this phylum has been done (the order Haemosporidia now has 17 genera rather than 9), these numbers are probably still approximately correct.
Jacques Euzéby (1988)
Jacques Euzéby in 1988 created a new class Haemosporidiasina by merging subclass Piroplasmasina and suborder Haemospororina.
Subclass Gregarinasina (the gregarines)
Subclass Coccidiasina
Suborder Adeleorina (the adeleorins)
Suborder Eimeriorina (the eimeriorins)
Subclass Haemosporidiasina
Order Achromatorida
Order Chromatorida
The division into Achromatorida and Chromatorida, although proposed on morphological grounds, may have a biological basis, as the ability to store haemozoin appears to have evolved only once.
Roberts and Janovy (1996)
Roberts and Janovy in 1996 divided the phylum into the following subclasses and suborders (omitting classes and orders):
Subclass Gregarinasina (the gregarines)
Subclass Coccidiasina
Suborder Adeleorina (the adeleorins)
Suborder Eimeriorina (the eimeriorins)
Suborder Haemospororina (the haemospororins)
Subclass Piroplasmasina (the piroplasms)
These form the following five taxonomic groups:
The gregarines are, in general, one-host parasites of invertebrates.
The adeleorins are one-host parasites of invertebrates or vertebrates, or two-host parasites that alternately infect haematophagous (blood-feeding) invertebrates and the blood of vertebrates.
The eimeriorins are a diverse group that includes one host species of invertebrates, two-host species of invertebrates, one-host species of vertebrates and two-host species of vertebrates. The eimeriorins are frequently called the coccidia. This term is often used to include the adeleorins.
Haemospororins, often known as the malaria parasites, are two-host Apicomplexa that parasitize blood-feeding dipteran flies and the blood of various tetrapod vertebrates.
Piroplasms where all the species included are two-host parasites infecting ticks and vertebrates.
Perkins (2000)
This scheme is taken from Perkins et al. It is outdated as the Perkinsidae have since been recognised as a sister group to the dinoflagellates rather that the Apicomplexia. The remainder of the scheme appears to be valid:
Class Aconoidasida
Conoid present only in the ookinete of some species
Order Haemospororida
Macrogamete and microgamete develop separately. Syzygy does not occur. Ookinete has a conoid. Sporozoites have three walls. Heteroxenous: alternates between vertebrate host (in which merogony occurs) and invertebrate host (in which sporogony occurs). Usually blood parasites, transmitted by blood-sucking insects.
Order Piroplasmorida
Class Conoidasida
Subclass Gregarinasina
Order Archigregarinorida
Order Eugregarinorida
Suborder Adeleorina
Suborder Eimeriorina
Order Neogregarinorida
Subclass Coccidiasina
Order Agamococcidiorida
Order Eucoccidiorida
Order Ixorheorida
Order Protococcidiorida
Class Perkinsasida
Order Perkinsorida
Family Perkinsidae
The name Protospiromonadida has been proposed for the common ancestor of the Gregarinomorpha and Coccidiomorpha.
Another group of organisms that belong in this taxon are the corallicolids. These are found in coral reef gastric cavities. Their relationship to the others in this phylum has yet to be established.
Another genus has been identified - Nephromyces - which appears to be a sister taxon to the Heamatozoa. This genus is found in the renal sac of molgulid ascidian tunicates.
Evolution
All members of this phylum are parasitic and evolved from a free-living ancestor. This lifestyle is presumed to have evolved at the time of the divergence of dinoflagellates and apicomplexans. Further evolution of this phylum has been estimated to have occurred about . The oldest extant clade is thought to be the archigregarines.
These phylogenetic relations have rarely been studied at the subclass level. The Haemosporidia are related to the gregarines, and the piroplasms and coccidians are sister groups. The Haemosporidia and the Piroplasma appear to be sister clades, and are more closely related to the coccidians than to the gregarines. Marosporida is a sister group to Coccidiomorphea.
Janouškovec et al 2015 presents a somewhat different phylogeny, supporting the work of others showing multiple events of plastids losing photosynthesis. More importantly this work provides the first phylogenetic evidence that there have also been multiple events of plastids becoming genome-free.
References
External links
SAR supergroup phyla
Endoparasites |
2222 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine%20cuisine | Argentine cuisine | Argentine cuisine is described as a cultural blending of Mediterranean influences brought by the Spanish during the colonial period and, later, by Italian and Spanish immigrants to Argentina during 19th and 20th centuries, with influences from a further cultural blending of criollos (due to Spanish colonizers) with the Indigenous peoples of Argentina (such as mate and humitas).
Argentine annual consumption of beef has averaged 100 kg (220 lbs) per capita, approaching 180 kg (396 lbs) per capita during the 19th century; consumption averaged 67.7 kg (149 lbs) in 2007.
Beyond asado (the Argentine barbecue), no other dish more genuinely matches the national identity. Nevertheless, the country's vast area, and its cultural diversity, have led to a local cuisine of various dishes.
The great immigratory waves consequently imprinted a large influence in the Argentine cuisine, after all Argentina was the second country in the world with the most immigrants with 6.6 million, only second to the United States with 27 million, and ahead of other immigratory receptor countries such as Canada, Brazil, Australia, etc.
Argentine people have a reputation for their love of eating. Social gatherings are commonly centred on sharing a meal. Invitations to have dinner at home are generally viewed as a symbol of friendship, warmth, and integration. Sunday family lunch is considered the most significant meal of the week, whose highlights often include asado or pasta.
Another feature of Argentine cuisine is the preparation of homemade food such as french fries, patties, and pasta to celebrate a special occasion, to meet friends, or to honour someone. Homemade food is also seen as a way to show affection.
Argentine restaurants include a great variety of cuisines, prices, and flavours. Large cities tend to host everything from high-end international cuisine, to bodegones (inexpensive traditional hidden taverns), less stylish restaurants, and bars and canteens offering a range of dishes at affordable prices.
History
Amerindians lived in Argentina thousands of years before European explorers arrived. Members of an Indian tribe in the northern part of Argentina were farmers who grew squash, melons, and sweet potatoes. Spanish settlers came to Argentina in 1536.
Between 1853 and 1955, 6.6 million immigrants came to live in Argentina from diverse sources such as Europe, the Near and Middle East, Russia and Japan, contributing to the development of Argentine cuisine and making Argentina the country with most immigrants only second to the United States.
Most immigrants were from Italy and Spain. The Italians introduced pizza, as well as a variety of pasta dishes, including spaghetti and lasagna. British, German, Jewish, and other immigrants also settled in Argentina, all bringing their styles of cooking and favourite foods with them. The British brought tea, starting the tradition of teatime. All of these cultures influenced the dishes of Argentina.
Typical foods
Most regions of Argentina are known for their beef-oriented diet. Grilled meat from the asado (barbecue) is a staple, with steak and beef ribs especially common. The term asado itself refers to long strips of flank-cut beef ribs.
Popular items such as chorizo (pork sausage), morcilla (blood sausage), chinchulines (chitterlings), mollejas (sweetbread), and other parts of the animal are also enjoyed.
In Patagonia, however, lamb and chivito (goat) are eaten more frequently than beef. Whole lambs and goats are traditionally cooked over an open fire in a technique known as asado a la estaca.
The most common condiment for Asado is chimichurri, a sauce of herbs, garlic and vinegar. Unlike other preparations, Argentines do not include chilli in their version of chimichurri, but it does include a still-spicy, but milder form of red pepper, ají molido.
Breaded and fried meats (milanesas) are used as snacks, in sandwiches, or eaten warm with mashed potatoes, purée. Empanadas, small pastries of meat, cheese, sweet corn, and many other fillings, are a common sight at parties and picnics, or as starters to a meal. A variation, the empanada gallega (Galician empanada), is a big, round meat pie made most commonly with tuna and mackerel (caballa in Spanish).
Vegetables and salads are also eaten by Argentines; tomatoes, onions, lettuce, eggplants, squashes, and zucchini are common side dishes.
Italian staples, such as pizza and pasta, are eaten as commonly as beef. Fideos (noodles), tallarines (fettuccine and tagliatelle), ñoquis (gnocchi) are traditionally served on the 29th day of the month, ravioles, and canelones (cannelloni) can be bought freshly made in many establishments in the larger cities. Italian-style ice cream is served in large parlours and even drive-through businesses. Other Italian staples are polenta, tarta pascualina, and pastafrola.
In Chubut, the Welsh community is known for its teahouses, offering scones and torta galesa, which is rather like torta negra.
Sandwiches de miga are delicate sandwiches made with crustless buttered English bread, very thinly sliced cured meat, cheese, and lettuce. They are often purchased from entrepreneurial home cooks and may be eaten for a light evening meal.
A sweet paste, dulce de leche is another treasured national food, used to fill cakes and pancakes, spread over toasted bread for breakfast, or served with ice cream. Alfajores are shortbread cookies sandwiched together with chocolate and dulce de leche or a fruit paste. The "policeman's" or "truck driver's" sweet is cheese with quince paste or dulce de membrillo. Dulce de batata is made of sweet potato/yam: this with cheese is the Martín Fierros sweet. Apples, pears, peaches, kiwifruits, avocados, and plums are major exports.
A traditional drink of Argentina is an infusion called mate (in Spanish, mate, with the accent on the first syllable [MAH-teh]). The name comes from the hollow gourd from which it is traditionally drunk.
The mate (gourd) or other small cup is filled about three-quarters full with yerba mate, the dried leaves and twigs of the Ilex paraguariensis. The drink, which is rather bitter, is sipped through a metal or cane straw called a bombilla. Mate can be sweetened with sugar, or flavoured with aromatic herbs or dried orange peel.
Hot but not boiling water is poured into the gourd, drunk, then the mate is refilled. The mate is nearly full of leaves, so each refill only makes a small drink, but many refills are possible before the yerba is spent. In small gatherings it is traditional for one mate to be passed from person to person, filled by whoever has the kettle. It is customary not to thank the refiller routinely; a final gracias (thank you) implies that the drinker has had enough.
Drinking mate together is an important social ritual. Mate cocido is the same leaf, which rather than brewed is boiled and served, like tea, with milk and sugar to taste.
Other typical drinks include wine (sometimes with soda water added); tea and coffee are equally important. Quilmes is the national brand of pale lager, named after the town of Quilmes, Buenos Aires, where it was first produced.
Ingredients
Argentine cuisine uses locally-grown cereals, grains, oil seeds, fruits and vegetables, as well as meat.
Meat products have been dominant in the country since the 16th century. The country is regarded as a major beef, pork and poultry producing and consuming country. Certain areas such as those located in the south are usually engaged in activities involving sheep and lamb breeding, and shellfish, crustaceans, molluscs and salmonides fishing.
The vast breeding activity involving any type of cattle has given rise to a highly developed dairy industry that includes products like cow, sheep and camelide, dulce de leche and yogurts. Some of the cheeses from Argentina are reggianito, sardo, provoleta and cremoso. Argentina can also be conceived as a great industry engaged in the production of dried fruits, olives, all types of oils and spices.
In the Mesopotamia region, river fish such as silverside, surubi, dorado or boga are common.
Regional differences
Argentine cuisine is heavily influenced by its European roots and has regional variations. Asado, dulce de leche, empanadas, and yerba mate are found throughout Argentina. In many parts of the country, food is prepared differently and different kinds of foods are made; this includes to a smaller degree food from pre-Columbian times, as in the Northwest.
Central region and la Pampa
For long periods, urban areas such as Buenos Aires, Rosario, and Córdoba welcomed European immigrants, including, above all, those of Italian and Spanish descent. Nevertheless, there was also a migratory flow of German, Swiss, and Middle-Eastern immigrants arriving in Argentina. Among the countless changes this melting pot brought was the enrichment of culinary art. Dishes such as pasta, pizza, pucheros (stews), croquetas (fritters), sauces, embutidos (sausages), and chicken and meat courses brought a wider scope of options to daily menus. Furthermore, the bread-making, dessert, pastry, and dairy industries have achieved considerable development in this region.
The above-mentioned dishes have developed a distinctively Argentine nuance. That is why, for example, Argentine pasta includes a wide variety of dishes ranging from spaghetti, fusiles (fusilli), ñoquis (gnocchi), ravioli, cintas (pasta ribbons), and lasagne to the Argentine-made sorrentinos, agnolottis (agnolotti), canelones (cannelloni), and fetuchines (fettuccine).
Pizza—made with very thin, and sometimes thick, high-rising doughs, with or without cheese, cooked in the oven or a la piedra (on a stone oven), and stuffed with numerous ingredients—is a dish which can be found in nearly every corner of the country. Buenos Aires, Rosario, and Córdoba also serve it with fainá, which is a chick pea-flour dough placed over the piece of pizza. People say that what makes Argentine pizza unique is the blending of Italian and Spanish cultures. At the turn of the 19th century, immigrants from Naples and Genoa opened the first pizza bars, though Spanish residents subsequently owned most of the pizza businesses.
Bread products are consumed all around the country. The deeply rooted bread, pastry, and dessert-making tradition derive from blending the above nationalities' products. Bakeries sell not only a wide scope of bread, cookies, and cakes, but also pastries. The latter resembles a sort of roll pastry whose main dough ingredient is either butter or fat and which may be simple or stuffed with dulce de leche, milk, jam, crema pastel, or quince or apple jelly, among other fillings. The most popular type of pastry is said to be that of medialunas (singular: medialuna, literally half-moon, that is to say, crescent), based upon French croissants. Furthermore, sandwiches de miga are another type of bread products; they are made only with thin layers of white bread (generally referred to as crustless bread) and stuffed with food items ranging from ham and cheese to other more sophisticated combinations such as raw ham, tomatoes, olives, hard-boiled eggs, tuna, lettuce, red pepper, and the like.
Desserts and sweets are usually stuffed or covered with dulce de leche. The latter can be eaten alone or on top of cakes, alfajores, panqueques (crepes), and pastries, or as a topping spread over flan de leche. Chantilly cream is widely consumed and used in preparing sweets and desserts. Additionally, cakes, sponge cakes, and puddings are very popular dishes. Italian ice-creams in this region also achieved a significant degree of development by adding local flavours that somehow preserved the local spirit involved in their preparation.
Although Asado is eaten all over the country, its origin may be traced back to the Pampas. It entails manifold types of meat, which are generally eaten as follows: achuras (offal, or the cow's inner parts), morcilla (blood sausage), and sometimes also a provoleta (a piece of provolone cheese cooked on the grill with oregano) are eaten first. Then comes the choripán (a kind of spiced sausage made with pork or lamb and placed between two slices of bread), and lastly meat such as asado de tira, vacío (flank steak), lomo (tenderloin), colita de cuadril (rump), matambre (rolled stuffed steak cut into slices and served cold), entraña (hanger steak); the list is never-ending. It is quite common to eat and enjoy a dish known as cabrito al asador (roast kid or goat) in the province of Córdoba.
Northwest and Cuyo
This region is regarded as perhaps the one most influenced by Native Americans, and its foods are closely linked to the Andean-Incan tradition. When preparing regional dishes, potatoes and corn or wheat are almost always used, including quinoa (a cereal typically used in Incan cuisine), peppers, squashes and tomatoes. The most celebrated dishes are humita and tamal, in which the corn husk is stuffed with the corn filling itself, seasonings or meat.
This region is the most suitable to taste empanadas, particularly those stuffed with meat and offering different types of tempting varieties such as the meat empanada, salteña also filled with potatoes, or the empanada tucumana, which is stuffed with matambre and cut with a knife, or empanadas made with cheese. Empanadas are individual-sized and closed savoury pastries which may be fried or baked in the oven and are generally eaten with the hands.
Stews such as locro, carbonada, pollo al disco, and cazuelas (casseroles) are also typical dishes characterizing this region, which also include pumpkin or potato pudding stuffed with meat.
Mesopotamia
The humid and verdant area of north-east Argentina known as Mesopotamia, comprising the provinces of Corrientes, Misiones and Entre Ríos is another area influenced by Native Americans, particularly by the Guaraní tribe. Abounding in rivers and shores, it offers a wide diversity of fish species, such as dorado, pacú, surubi, boga and silverside.
Widely grown in this area, cassava is typically included in the region's dishes, as are other components of meals, such as the chipá (cassava and cheese bread). However, in this area Cassava is cooked alone too, boiled or fried, often as a side dish for Asado and empanadas. As well, mbeyú, chipá avatí, sopa paraguaya, sopa correntina, chipa solo or chipá con carne, el quibebé, el borí borí, chipá guasú o pastel de choclo, mbaipy, chipá mbocá o chipá caburé and some other similar meals that have as basis:manioc, corn, cheese and, sometimes, some meat.. Chipá from Cassava is often eaten during breakfast with yerba mate, prepared with hot water, or with café con leche. Sopa Paraguaya and pastel/Carta de Choclo are eaten for lunch or dinner. As regards products made with sugar, Papaya (mamón in Argentine Spanish) jam is typical of the north of this region.
The principal product of this region is certainly yerba mate. Consumed countrywide, this product features a peculiarity of its own in this area: it is not only prepared with hot water but, driven by the region's high temperatures, it is common to see it prepared with cold water as well, in which case the beverage is known as tereré.
Patagonia
Foods produced in the large southern region of Patagonia include fish and seafood from the sea and rivers and the products of the sheep are widely farmed there.
Marine species such as salmon, spider crabs, squid and other shellfish and molluscs may be caught in the Atlantic Ocean. There are trout in the rivers.
The many berries grown in the area include cherries, bilberries, strawberries, rosa mosqueta and elders, which are made into jams.
The Northern and Central European settlements in this region have built up large-scale production of chocolate and its by-products. Viennese and German cuisine and pastries are also typically associated with this region.
Mutton and lamb, together with wild boar and venison tend to make up the region's meat-based dishes. Also typical of the southern region are smoked products, including salmon, stag, wild boar, and pheasant.
Patagonia has been profoundly influenced by the tribes living there since long before Europeans arrived, in particular, the Mapuches and the Araucanos. A typical dish prepared by the latter is the curanto (a term meaning "hot stone"). Its preparation involves making a fire in a hole about 150 cm deep in the ground, and heating stones in it. A bed of nalca or maqui leaves is arranged on top of the stones, and ingredients are added in turn on top. Ingredients vary, but may include beef, lamb, pork, chicken, Argentine chorizos (pork sausages), potatoes, sweet potatoes, apples and holed squashes filled with cheese, cream and peas. The food is covered with leaves and damp pieces of cloth to keep the heat in, and covered with plenty of soil.
Alcoholic beverages
Though wine (vino) has traditionally been the most popular alcoholic beverage in Argentina, beer (cerveza; the Italian birra is frequently used) in recent decades has competed with wine in popularity. Breweries appeared in Argentina at the end of the 1860s, started by Alsatian colonists. The first were nearly all in the downtown of Buenos Aires (el égido de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), and soon Polish brewers began industrial production of beer: San Carlos in the province of Santa Fe, Río Segundo and Córdoba in the province of Córdoba, Quilmes and Llavallol on the outskirts of La Plata (in Buenos Aires Province), San Miguel de Tucumán in the province of Tucumán and on the outskirts of the cities of Mendoza and Salta.
The local consumption of beer has risen dramatically in the last generation: Argentines consumed 233 million litres in 1980 and 1.57 billion in 2007 (40 litres per capita). Outpacing that of wine since 2001, the growing production and consumption of beer have supported the existence of related events, for example, beer festivals called Oktoberfests or "Fiestas de la Cerveza" in locations that have a significant German population (Villa General Belgrano in Córdoba, San Carlos and Esperanza in the province of Santa Fe, etc.). Such celebrations copy, in an Argentine manner, Munich's Oktoberfest, and similarly are tourist attractions. However, the presence of a vigorous population of Celtic lineage, principally of Irish origin, has supported the creation of other celebrations of beer, often for marketing purposes, such as Saint Patrick's Day (Día de San Patricio), patron of Ireland, which is celebrated with abundant libations.
The consumption of alcoholic beverages in Argentina is similar to that of the United States and somewhat lower than the Western European average. Argentines enjoy a variety of alcoholic beverages and Argentina can boast a varied array of elaboraciones, whether industrial or artisanal. Besides beer and wine, Argentines frequently drink cider (here again, the heritage comes from Spain and Italy, more precisely from Asturias and Campania). Cider is the most popular beverage of the middle and lowers economic classes at Christmas and New Year (the upper classes proverbially preferring to celebrate with locally produced champagne, although real old-line "creole" aristocrats will still drink cider, which is much more traditional).
Other widely consumed spirits are aguardiente (firewater) made from sugar cane, known as caña quemada ("burnt cane") or, simply, 'caña'''' ("cane"). A folkloric note about caña quemada: until 21 June it is traditional to drink caña quemada with ruda macho (a variant of common rue), it is supposed that this mixture prevents the flu and other illnesses. Caña competes, mainly in rural areas, with gin ("ginebra"—as in the Dutch kind of gin.)
The bitter spirit Fernet, and particularly the Italian brand Fernet-Branca, is highly popular in Argentina. (A study in 2017 found that Argentines consume more than 75% of all fernet produced globally.) Fernet is most commonly enjoyed as a mixed drink with Coca-Cola. Given Fernet's qualities as a digestive aid, it is a common choice for an after-dinner digestif.
There are many artisanally produced liqueurs (distilled, flavoured alcoholic beverages) in Argentina, for example, those flavoured with orange, egg, anise, coffee, cherry and, inevitably, dulce de leche. The Hesperidina is a type of liqueur made from orange peels, invented in Argentina around 1890. One may also encounter chitronchelo or (in Italian) citronella, based on lemon. This beverage arrived with immigrants from the Mezzogiorno and is produced both artisanally and industrially (for example, at Mar del Plata).
Non-alcoholic specialties
Argentines enjoy a wide variety of non-alcoholic infusions (although now and then both "families" are mixed; the for example, is mate mixed with caña or gin). Among these, mate has long been the most widely enjoyed; in 2006, over 700,000 metric tons were harvested in Argentina, mostly for domestic consumption. Mate is also one of the top exports from Argentina, as it is valued all over the world.
The fact that mate is so prevalent in the Southern Cone, however, should not necessarily make visitors think that other infusions are rare in the region; in Argentina especially, given the strong European cultural imprint, the consumption of coffee is very common (141 cups per capita, annually). Chocolate infusions are also popular (the eating of chocolate is a Spanish influence, although the plant originated in Mesoamerica). This consumption grows during autumn and winter, or in the cold regions of the country; there are two dates where consumption of chocolate infusions is traditional in the primary educational centres: 25 May and 9 July, that is, the two national dates of Argentina.
English cultural influence (reinforced at the end of the 19th century and the beginnings of the 20th by British contacts with the Far East) has also made the consumption of tea very common.
Medicinal herbs are common in the whole country; among the most popular are: chamomile, lanceleaf, boldo, poleo, peperina, carqueja, thyme, canchalagua, rue (macho and hembra, that is, "male" and "female"), mallow, rosemary, passion flower, bira bira, palán palán, muña muña, to mention only the main ones. Many of these herbs are also used in apéritifs and bitters, whether alcoholic or not.
Popular short-order dishes
Common restoranes or restaurantes and (grill restaurants) nearly anywhere in Argentina today serve (into the small hours) quickly prepared meals that in the course of the 20th century came to be known as minutas, "short-order dishes". Some of the dishes included in the category of minutas are milanesas, churrascos, bifes (beefsteaks), escalopes, tallarines, ravioles (ravioli), ñoquis (gnocchi), although some are very typical of locations that sell food: "bifes" and "milanesas" are served "a caballo" ("on horseback", with fried egg on top), "milanesa completa" (a milanesa with two fried eggs and French fries), "revuelto Gramajo", "colchón de arvejas" (an omelette made with peas), "suprema de pollo" (chicken supreme, usually breaded as a milanesa), matambres, "lengua a la vinagreta" (pickled tongue), and "sandwiches" (sandwiches de miga) are made with sliced white bread, rather than, say, rolls.
The most common sandwiches are those made of milanesa, baked ham and cheese, pan de miga, toast, pebetes, panchos (hot dogs), choripanes, morcipanes, etc.; from Montevideo comes a different species of sandwich called the chivito, even though it contains no goat meat.Picadas, which are consumed at home or in bars, cafés, "cafetines" and "bodegones" are also popular; they consist of an ensemble of plates containing cubes of cheese (typically from Mar del Plata or Chubut), pieces of salame, olives in brine, french fries, maníes (peanuts), etc.; picadas are eaten accompanied by an alcoholic beverage ("fernet", beer, wine with soda, to give some common examples).
The people of Argentina greatly enjoy helado'' (ice creams of Italian lineage or sorbets Spanish lineage). In Spanish colonial times a type of sorbet was made from hail or snow.
Eating habits
Breakfast typically is small and consists of coffee (or mate) and pastry. In most parts of Argentina, lunch is the largest meal of the day. Excluding the largest cities, such as Buenos Aires, Rosario or Cordoba, most towns close for lunchtime. This is when most people return home to enjoy a large meal and siesta. Traditional lunches in Argentina are long and well developed. Argentinians often have a light evening snack (called a "merienda" – typically a coffee or mate and a pastry) and it is common to not eat dinner until 9 at night, or even later on weekends.
See also
Italian cuisine
Spanish cuisine
Uruguayan cuisine
References
External links
SaltShaker – Blog on Buenos Aires "food, drink, and life".
Pick Up the Fork – Guide to Buenos Aires' food, restaurant and bar scene
Argentina on two steaks a day |
2224 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April%208 | April 8 |
Events
Pre-1600
217 – Roman emperor Caracalla is assassinated and is succeeded by his Praetorian Guard prefect, Marcus Opellius Macrinus.
876 – The Battle of Dayr al-'Aqul saves Baghdad from the Saffarids.
1139 – Roger II of Sicily is excommunicated by Innocent II for supporting Anacletus II as pope for seven years, even though Roger had already publicly recognized Innocent's claim to the papacy.
1149 – Pope Eugene III takes refuge in the castle of Ptolemy II of Tusculum.
1232 – Mongol–Jin War: The Mongols begin their siege on Kaifeng, the capital of the Jin dynasty.
1271 – In Syria, sultan Baibars conquers the Krak des Chevaliers.
1601–1900
1730 – Shearith Israel, the first synagogue in New York City, is dedicated.
1820 – The Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Milos.
1832 – Black Hawk War: Around 300 United States 6th Infantry troops leave St. Louis, Missouri to fight the Sauk Native Americans.
1866 – Italy and Prussia ally against the Austrian Empire.
1886 – William Ewart Gladstone introduces the first Irish Home Rule Bill into the British House of Commons.
1895 – In Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. the Supreme Court of the United States declares unapportioned income tax to be unconstitutional.
1901–present
1904 – The French Third Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland sign the Entente cordiale.
1906 – Auguste Deter, the first person to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, dies.
1908 – Harvard University votes to establish the Harvard Business School.
1911 – Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovers superconductivity.
1913 – The 17th Amendment to the United States Constitution, requiring direct election of Senators, becomes law.
1918 – World War I: Actors Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin sell war bonds on the streets of New York City's financial district.
1924 – Sharia courts are abolished in Turkey, as part of Atatürk's Reforms.
1929 – Indian independence movement: At the Delhi Central Assembly, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt throw handouts and bombs to court arrest.
1935 – The Works Progress Administration is formed when the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 becomes law.
1942 – World War II: Siege of Leningrad: Soviet forces open a much-needed railway link to Leningrad.
1942 – World War II: The Japanese take Bataan in the Philippines.
1943 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an attempt to check inflation, freezes wages and prices, prohibits workers from changing jobs unless the war effort would be aided thereby, and bars rate increases by common carriers and public utilities.
1943 – Otto and Elise Hampel are executed in Berlin for their anti-Nazi activities.
1945 – World War II: After an air raid accidentally destroys a train carrying about 4,000 Nazi concentration camp internees in Prussian Hanover, the survivors are massacred by Nazis.
1946 – Électricité de France, the world's largest utility company, is formed as a result of the nationalisation of a number of electricity producers, transporters and distributors.
1950 – India and Pakistan sign the Liaquat–Nehru Pact.
1952 – U.S. President Harry Truman calls for the seizure of all domestic steel mills in an attempt to prevent the 1952 steel strike.
1953 – Mau Mau leader Jomo Kenyatta is convicted by British Kenya's rulers.
1954 – A Royal Canadian Air Force Canadair Harvard collides with a Trans-Canada Airlines Canadair North Star over Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, killing 37 people.
1954 – South African Airways Flight 201 A de Havilland DH.106 Comet 1 crashes into the sea during night killing 21 people.
1959 – A team of computer manufacturers, users, and university people led by Grace Hopper meets to discuss the creation of a new programming language that would be called COBOL.
1959 – The Organization of American States drafts an agreement to create the Inter-American Development Bank.
1960 – The Netherlands and West Germany sign an agreement to negotiate the return of German land annexed by the Dutch in return for 280 million German marks as Wiedergutmachung.
1968 – BOAC Flight 712 catches fire shortly after takeoff. As a result of her actions in the accident, Barbara Jane Harrison is awarded a posthumous George Cross, the only GC awarded to a woman in peacetime.
1970 – Bahr El-Baqar primary school bombing: Israeli bombers accidentally strike an Egyptian school. Forty-six children are killed.
1975 – Frank Robinson manages the Cleveland Indians in his first game as major league baseball's first African American manager.
1987 – Los Angeles Dodgers executive Al Campanis resigns amid controversy over racist remarks he had made while on Nightline.
1992 – Retired tennis great Arthur Ashe announces that he has AIDS, acquired from blood transfusions during one of his two heart surgeries.
1993 – The Republic of North Macedonia joins the United Nations.
2004 – War in Darfur: The Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement is signed by the Sudanese government, the Justice and Equality Movement, and the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army.
2006 – Shedden massacre: The bodies of eight men, all shot to death, are found in a field in Shedden, Elgin County, Ontario. The murders are soon linked to the Bandidos Motorcycle Club.
2008 – The construction of the world's first skyscraper to integrate wind turbines is completed in Bahrain.
2010 – U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sign the New START Treaty.
2013 – The Islamic State of Iraq enters the Syrian Civil War and begins by declaring a merger with the Al-Nusra Front under the name Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham.
2020 – 2020 United States presidential election: Bernie Sanders ends his presidential campaign, leaving Joe Biden as the Democratic Party's nominee.
Births
Pre-1600
1320 – Peter I of Portugal (d. 1367)
1408 – Jadwiga of Lithuania, Polish princess (d. 1431)
1435 – John Clifford, 9th Baron de Clifford, English noble (d. 1461)
1533 – Claudio Merulo, Italian organist and composer (d. 1604)
1536 – Barbara of Hesse (d. 1597)
1541 – Michele Mercati, Italian physician and archaeologist (d. 1593)
1580 – William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, English noble, courtier and patron of the arts (d. 1630)
1596 – Juan van der Hamen, Spanish artist (d. 1631)
1601–1900
1605 – Philip IV of Spain (d. 1665)
1605 – Mary Stuart, English-Scottish princess (d. 1607)
1641 – Henry Sydney, 1st Earl of Romney, English general and politician, Secretary of State for the Northern Department (d. 1704)
1692 – Giuseppe Tartini, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1770)
1726 – Lewis Morris, American judge and politician (d. 1798)
1732 – David Rittenhouse, American astronomer and mathematician (d. 1796)
1761 – William Joseph Chaminade, French priest, founded the Society of Mary (d. 1850)
1770 – John Thomas Campbell, Irish-Australian banker and politician (d. 1830)
1798 – Dionysios Solomos, Greek poet and author (d. 1857)
1818 – Christian IX of Denmark (d. 1906)
1818 – August Wilhelm von Hofmann, German chemist and academic (d. 1892)
1826 – Pancha Carrasco, Costa Rican soldier (d. 1890)
1827 – Ramón Emeterio Betances, Puerto Rican ophthalmologist, journalist, and politician (d. 1898)
1842 – Elizabeth Bacon Custer, American author and educator (d. 1933)
1859 – Edmund Husserl, German Jewish-Austrian mathematician and philosopher (d. 1938)
1864 – Carlos Deltour, French rower and rugby player (d. 1920)
1867 – Allen Butler Talcott, American painter and educator (d. 1908)
1869 – Harvey Cushing, American surgeon and academic (d. 1939)
1871 – Clarence Hudson White, American photographer and educator (d. 1925)
1874 – Manuel Díaz, Cuban fencer (d. 1929)
1874 – Stanisław Taczak, Polish general (d. 1960)
1875 – Albert I of Belgium (d. 1934)
1882 (O.S. 27 March) – Dmytro Doroshenko, Lithuanian-Ukrainian historian and politician, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and Prime Minister of Ukraine (d. 1951)
1883 – R. P. Keigwin, English cricketer and academic (d. 1972)
1883 – Julius Seljamaa, Estonian journalist and politician, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Estonia (d. 1936)
1885 – Dimitrios Levidis, Greek-French soldier, composer, and educator (d. 1951)
1886 – Margaret Ayer Barnes, American author and playwright (d. 1967)
1888 – Dennis Chávez, American journalist and politician (d. 1962)
1889 – Adrian Boult, English conductor (d. 1983)
1892 – Richard Neutra, Austrian-American architect, designer of the Los Angeles County Hall of Records (d. 1970)
1892 – Mary Pickford, Canadian-American actress, producer, screenwriter and co-founder of United Artists (d. 1979)
1896 – Yip Harburg, American composer (d. 1981)
1900 – Marie Byles, Australian solicitor (d. 1979)
1901–present
1902 – Andrew Irvine, English mountaineer and explorer (d. 1924)
1902 – Maria Maksakova Sr., Russian soprano (d. 1974)
1904 – John Hicks, English economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1989)
1904 – Hirsch Jacobs, American horse trainer (d. 1970)
1905 – Joachim Büchner, German sprinter and graphic designer (d. 1978)
1905 – Helen Joseph, English-South African activist (d. 1992)
1905 – Erwin Keller, German field hockey player (d. 1971)
1906 – Raoul Jobin, Canadian tenor and educator (d. 1974)
1908 – Hugo Fregonese, Argentinian director and screenwriter (d. 1987)
1909 – John Fante, American author and screenwriter (d. 1983)
1910 – George Musso, American football player and police officer (d. 2000)
1911 – Melvin Calvin, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1997)
1911 – Emil Cioran, Romanian-French philosopher and academic (d. 1995)
1912 – Alois Brunner, Austrian-German SS officer (d. 2001 or 2010)
1912 – Sonja Henie, Norwegian-American figure skater and actress (d. 1969)
1914 – María Félix, Yaqui/Basque-Mexican actress (d. 2002)
1915 – Ivan Supek, Croatian physicist, philosopher and writer (d. 2007)
1917 – Winifred Asprey, American mathematician and computer scientist (d. 2007)
1917 – Lloyd Bott, Australian public servant (d. 2004)
1917 – Hubertus Ernst, Dutch bishop (d. 2017)
1917 – Grigori Kuzmin, Russian-Estonian astronomer (d. 1988)
1918 – Betty Ford, American wife of Gerald Ford, 40th First Lady of the United States (d. 2011)
1918 – Glendon Swarthout, American author and academic (d. 1992)
1919 – Ian Smith, Zimbabwean lieutenant and politician, 1st Prime Minister of Rhodesia (d. 2007)
1921 – Franco Corelli, Italian tenor and actor (d. 2003)
1920 – Carmen McRae, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and actress (d. 1994)
1921 – Jan Novák, Czech composer (d. 1984)
1921 – Herman van Raalte, Dutch footballer (d. 2013)
1923 – George Fisher, American cartoonist (d. 2003)
1923 – Edward Mulhare, Irish-American actor (d. 1997)
1924 – Frédéric Back, German-Canadian animator, director, and screenwriter (d. 2013)
1924 – Anthony Farrar-Hockley, English general and historian (d. 2006)
1924 – Kumar Gandharva, Hindustani classical singer (d. 1992)
1924 – Sara Northrup Hollister, American occultist (d. 1997)
1926 – Henry N. Cobb, American architect and academic, co-founded Pei Cobb Freed & Partners (d. 2020)
1926 – Shecky Greene, American comedian
1926 – Jürgen Moltmann, German theologian and academic
1927 – Tilly Armstrong, English author (d. 2010)
1927 – Ollie Mitchell, American trumpet player and bandleader (d. 2013)
1928 – Fred Ebb, American lyricist (d. 2004)
1929 – Jacques Brel, Belgian singer-songwriter and actor (d. 1978)
1929 – Renzo De Felice, Italian historian and author (d. 1996)
1930 – Carlos Hugo, Duke of Parma (d. 2010)
1931 – John Gavin, American actor and diplomat, United States Ambassador to Mexico (d. 2018)
1932 – Iskandar of Johor (d. 2010)
1933 – James Lockhart, American scholar of colonial Latin America, especially Nahua peoples (d. 2014)
1934 – Kisho Kurokawa, Japanese architect, designed the Nakagin Capsule Tower and Singapore Flyer (d. 2007)
1935 – Oscar Zeta Acosta, American lawyer and politician (d. 1974)
1935 – Albert Bustamante, American soldier, educator, and politician
1937 – Tony Barton, English footballer and manager (d. 1993)
1937 – Seymour Hersh, American journalist and author
1937 – Momo Kapor, Serbian author and painter (d. 2010)
1938 – Kofi Annan, Ghanaian economist and diplomat, 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations (d. 2018)
1938 – John Hamm, Canadian physician and politician, 25th Premier of Nova Scotia
1938 – Mary W. Gray, American mathematician, statistician, and lawyer
1939 – John Arbuthnott, Scottish microbiologist and academic
1939 – Trina Schart Hyman, American author and illustrator (d. 2004)
1940 – John Havlicek, American basketball player (d. 2019)
1941 – Vivienne Westwood, English fashion designer
1942 – Tony Banks, Baron Stratford, Northern Irish politician, Minister for Sport and the Olympics (d. 2006)
1942 – Roger Chapman, English singer-songwriter and guitarist
1942 – Douglas Trumbull, American director, producer, and special effects artist (d. 2022)
1943 – Michael Bennett, American dancer, choreographer, and director (d. 1987)
1943 – Miller Farr, American football player
1943 – James Herbert, English author and illustrator (d. 2013)
1943 – Chris Orr, English painter and illustrator
1944 – Hywel Bennett, Welsh actor (d. 2017)
1944 – Odd Nerdrum, Swedish-Norwegian painter and illustrator
1945 – Derrick Walker, Scottish businessman
1945 – Jang Yong, South Korean actor
1946 – Catfish Hunter, American baseball player (d. 1999)
1946 – Tim Thomerson, American actor and producer
1947 – Tom DeLay, American lawyer and politician
1947 – Steve Howe, English guitarist, songwriter, and producer
1947 – Robert Kiyosaki, American businessman, co-founded Cashflow Technologies
1947 – Pascal Lamy, French businessman and politician, European Commissioner for Trade
1947 – Larry Norman, American singer-songwriter, and producer (d. 2008)
1948 – Barbara Young, Baroness Young of Old Scone, Scottish academic and politician
1949 – K. C. Kamalasabayson, Sri Lankan lawyer and politician, 39th Attorney General of Sri Lanka (d. 2007)
1949 – John Madden, English director and producer
1949 – Brenda Russell, African-American-Canadian singer-songwriter and keyboard player
1949 – John Scott, English sociologist and academic
1950 – Grzegorz Lato, Polish footballer and coach
1951 – Gerd Andres, German politician
1951 – Geir Haarde, Icelandic economist, journalist, and politician, 23rd Prime Minister of Iceland
1951 – Mel Schacher, American bass player
1951 – Joan Sebastian, Mexican singer-songwriter and actor (d. 2015)
1951 – Phil Schaap, American jazz disc jockey and historian (d. 2021)
1952 – Ahmet Piriştina, Turkish politician (d. 2004)
1954 – Gary Carter, American baseball player and coach (d. 2012)
1954 – Princess Lalla Amina of Morocco (d. 2012)
1954 – G.V. Loganathan, Indian-American engineer and academic (d. 2007)
1955 – Ricky Bell, American football player (d. 1984)
1955 – Gerrie Coetzee, South African boxer
1955 – Ron Johnson, American businessman and politician
1955 – Barbara Kingsolver, American novelist, essayist and poet
1955 – David Wu, Taiwanese-American lawyer and politician
1956 – Michael Benton, Scottish-English paleontologist and academic
1956 – Christine Boisson, French actress
1956 – Roman Dragoun, Czech singer-songwriter and keyboard player
1956 – Jim Piddock, English actor, producer, and screenwriter
1957 – Fred Smerlas, American football player and radio host
1958 – Detlef Bruckhoff, German footballer
1958 – Tom Petranoff, American javelin thrower and coach
1959 – Alain Bondue, French cyclist
1960 – John Schneider, American actor and country singer
1961 – Richard Hatch, American reality contestant
1961 – Brian McDermott, English footballer and manager
1962 – Paddy Lowe, English engineer
1962 – Izzy Stradlin, American guitarist and songwriter
1963 – Tine Asmundsen, Norwegian bassist
1963 – Julian Lennon, English singer-songwriter
1963 – Terry Porter, American basketball player and coach
1963 – Donita Sparks, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1963 – Alec Stewart, English cricketer
1963 – Seth Tobias, American businessman (d. 2007)
1964 – Biz Markie, American rapper, producer, and actor (d. 2021)
1964 – John McGinlay, Scottish footballer and manager
1965 – Steven Blaney, Canadian businessman and politician, 5th Canadian Minister of Public Safety
1965 – Michael Jones, New Zealand rugby player and coach
1966 – Iveta Bartošová, Czech singer and actress (d. 2014)
1966 – Mark Blundell, English race car driver
1966 – Andy Currier, English rugby league player
1966 – Charlotte Dawson, New Zealand-Australian television host (d. 2014)
1966 – Dalton Grant, English high jumper
1966 – Mazinho, Brazilian footballer, coach, and manager
1966 – Harri Rovanperä, Finnish race car driver
1966 – Evripidis Stylianidis, Greek lawyer and politician, Greek Minister for the Interior
1966 – Robin Wright, American actress, director, producer
1967 – Kenny Benjamin, Antiguan cricketer
1968 – Patricia Arquette, French-Canadian Russian/Polish Jewish-American actress and director
1968 – Patricia Girard, French runner and hurdler
1968 – Tracy Grammer, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1971 – Darren Jessee, American singer-songwriter and drummer
1972 – Paul Gray, American bass player and songwriter (d. 2010)
1972 – Sergei Magnitsky, Russian lawyer and accountant (d. 2009)
1973 – Khaled Badra, Tunisian footballer
1973 – Emma Caulfield, American actress
1974 – Toutai Kefu, Tongan-Australian rugby player
1974 – Nnedi Okorafor, Nigerian-American author and educator
1975 – Anouk, Dutch singer
1975 – Francesco Flachi, Italian footballer
1975 – Timo Pérez, Dominican-American baseball player
1975 – Funda Arar, Turkish singer
1977 – Ana de la Reguera, Mexican actress
1977 – Mehran Ghassemi, Iranian journalist and author (d. 2008)
1977 – Mark Spencer, American computer programmer and engineer
1978 – Daigo, Japanese singer-songwriter, actor, and voice actor
1978 – Bernt Haas, Austrian-Swiss footballer
1978 – Rachel Roberts, Canadian model and actress
1978 – Jocelyn Robichaud, Canadian tennis player and coach
1978 – Evans Rutto, Kenyan runner
1979 – Alexi Laiho, Finnish singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2020)
1979 – Amit Trivedi, Indian singer-songwriter
1980 – Manuel Ortega, Austrian singer
1980 – Katee Sackhoff, American actress
1980 – Mariko Seyama, Japanese announcer, photographer, and model
1981 – Frédérick Bousquet, French swimmer
1981 – Ofer Shechter, Israeli model, actor, and screenwriter
1982 – Gennady Golovkin, Kazakhstani boxer
1982 – Brett White, Australian rugby league player
1983 – Tatyana Petrova Arkhipova, Russian runner
1984 – Michelle Donelan, British politician
1984 – Ezra Koenig, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1984 – Pablo Portillo, Mexican singer and actor
1984 – Taran Noah Smith, American actor
1985 – Patrick Schliwa, German rugby player
1985 – Yemane Tsegay, Ethiopian runner
1986 – Igor Akinfeev, Russian footballer
1986 – Félix Hernández, Venezuelan-American baseball player
1987 – Royston Drenthe, Dutch footballer
1987 – Jeremy Hellickson, American baseball player
1987 – Elton John, Trinidadian footballer
1987 – Sam Rapira, New Zealand rugby league player
1988 – Jenni Asserholt, Swedish ice hockey player
1988 – Kim Myung-sung, South Korean baseball player
1990 – Kim Jong-hyun, South Korean singer (d. 2017)
1993 – Viktor Arvidsson, Swedish ice hockey player
1993 – Zac Santo, Australian rugby league player
1994 – Josh Chudleigh, Australian rugby league player
1995 – Cedi Osman, Turkish professional basketball player
1997 – Kim Woo-jin, South Korean singer
1997 – Saygrace, Australian singer and songwriter
1997 – Arno Verschueren, Belgian professional football player
2002 – Skai Jackson, American actress
Deaths
Pre-1600
217 – Caracalla, Roman emperor (b. 188)
622 – Shōtoku, Japanese prince (b. 572)
632 – Charibert II, Frankish king (b. 607)
894 – Adalelm, Frankish nobleman
944 – Wang Yanxi, Chinese emperor
956 – Gilbert, Frankish nobleman
967 – Mu'izz al-Dawla, Buyid emir (b. 915)
1143 – John II Komnenos, Byzantine emperor (b. 1087)
1150 – Gertrude of Babenberg, duchess of Bohemia (b. 1118)
1321 – Thomas of Tolentino, Italian-Franciscan missionary (b. c. 1255)
1338 – Stephen Gravesend, bishop of London
1364 – John II, French king (b. 1319)
1450 – Sejong the Great, Korean king (b. 1397)
1461 – Georg von Peuerbach, German mathematician and astronomer (b. 1423)
1492 – Lorenzo de' Medici, Italian ruler (b. 1449)
1551 – Oda Nobuhide, Japanese warlord (b. 1510)
1586 – Martin Chemnitz, Lutheran theologian and reformer (b. 1522)
1601–1900
1608 – Magdalen Dacre, English noble (b. 1538)
1612 – Anne Catherine of Brandenburg (b. 1575)
1691 – Carlo Rainaldi, Italian architect, designed the Santa Maria dei Miracoli and Santa Maria in Montesanto (b. 1611)
1697 – Niels Juel, Norwegian-Danish admiral (b. 1629)
1704 – Hiob Ludolf, German orientalist and philologist (b. 1624)
1704 – Henry Sydney, 1st Earl of Romney, English colonel and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (b. 1641)
1709 – Wolfgang Dietrich of Castell-Remlingen, German nobleman (b. 1641)
1725 – John Wise, American minister (b. 1652)
1735 – Francis II Rákóczi, Hungarian prince (b. 1676)
1848 – Gaetano Donizetti, Italian composer (b. 1797)
1860 – István Széchenyi, Hungarian statesman and reformer (b.1791)
1861 – Elisha Otis, American businessman, founded the Otis Elevator Company (b. 1811)
1870 – Charles Auguste de Bériot, Belgian violinist and composer (b. 1802)
1877 – Bernardino António Gomes, Portuguese physician and naturalist (b. 1806)
1894 – Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Indian journalist, author, and poet (b. 1838)
1901–present
1906 – Auguste Deter, German woman, first person diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (b. 1850)
1919 – Loránd Eötvös, Hungarian physicist, academic, and politician, Hungarian Minister of Education (b. 1848)
1920 – Charles Griffes, American pianist and composer (b. 1884)
1931 – Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Swedish poet Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1864)
1936 – Róbert Bárány, Austrian physician and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1876)
1936 – Božena Benešová, Czech poet and novelist (b. 1873)
1941 – Marcel Prévost, French novelist and playwright (b. 1862)
1942 – Kostas Skarvelis, Greek guitarist and composer (b. 1880)
1947 – Olaf Frydenlund, Norwegian target shooter (b. 1862)
1950 – Vaslav Nijinsky, Polish dancer and choreographer (b. 1890)
1959 – Marios Makrionitis, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Athens (b. 1913)
1961 – Joseph Carrodus, Australian public servant (b. 1885)
1962 – Juan Belmonte, Spanish bullfighter (b. 1892)
1965 – Lars Hanson, Swedish actor (b. 1886)
1969 – Zinaida Aksentyeva, Ukrainian astronomer (b. 1900)
1973 – Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter and sculptor (b. 1881)
1974 – James Charles McGuigan, Canadian cardinal (b. 1894)
1979 – Breece D'J Pancake, American short story writer (b. 1952)
1981 – Omar Bradley, American general (b. 1893)
1983 – Isamu Kosugi, Japanese actor and director (b. 1904)
1984 – Pyotr Kapitsa, Russian physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1894)
1985 – John Frederick Coots, American pianist and composer (b. 1897)
1990 – Ryan White, American activist, inspired the Ryan White Care Act (b. 1971)
1991 – Per Ohlin, Swedish musician (b. 1969)
1992 – Daniel Bovet, Swiss-Italian pharmacologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1907)
1993 – Marian Anderson, American operatic singer (b. 1897)
1994 – François Rozet, French-Canadian actor (b. 1899)
1996 – Ben Johnson, American actor and stuntman (b. 1918)
1996 – León Klimovsky, Argentinian-Spanish actor, director, and screenwriter (b. 1906)
1996 – Mick Young, Australian politician (b. 1936)
1997 – Laura Nyro, American singer-songwriter and pianist (b. 1947)
2000 – František Šťastný, Czech motorcycle racer (b. 1927)
2000 – Claire Trevor, American actress (b. 1910)
2002 – María Félix, Mexican actress (b. 1914)
2002 – Harvey Quaytman, American painter (b. 1937)
2004 – Werner Schumacher, German actor (b. 1921)
2005 – Onna White, Canadian choreographer and dancer (b. 1922)
2006 – Gerard Reve, Dutch author and poet (b. 1923)
2007 – Sol LeWitt, American painter and sculptor (b. 1928)
2008 – Kazuo Shiraga, Japanese painter (b. 1924)
2009 – Richard de Mille, American Scientologist, author, investigative journalist, and psychologist (b. 1922)
2009 – Piotr Morawski, Polish mountaineer (b. 1976)
2010 – Malcolm McLaren, English singer-songwriter (b. 1946)
2010 – Teddy Scholten, Dutch singer (b. 1926)
2011 – Hedda Sterne, Romanian-American painter and photographer (b. 1910)
2012 – Blair Kiel, American football player and coach (b. 1961)
2012 – Jack Tramiel, Polish-American businessman, founded Commodore International (b. 1928)
2012 – Janusz K. Zawodny, Polish-American soldier, historian, and political scientist (b. 1921)
2013 – Mikhail Beketov, Russian journalist (b. 1958)
2013 – Annette Funicello, American actress and singer (b. 1942)
2013 – Sara Montiel, Spanish-Mexican actress and singer (b. 1928)
2013 – José Luis Sampedro, Spanish economist and author (b. 1917)
2013 – Margaret Thatcher, English politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1925)
2014 – Emmanuel III Delly, Iraqi patriarch (b. 1927)
2014 – Karlheinz Deschner, German author and activist (b. 1924)
2014 – Ivan Mercep, New Zealand architect, designed the Te Papa Tongarewa Museum (b. 1930)
2015 – Jayakanthan, Indian journalist and author (b. 1934)
2015 – Rayson Huang, Hong Kong chemist and academic (b. 1920)
2015 – Sergei Lashchenko, Ukrainian kick-boxer (b. 1987)
2015 – David Laventhol, American journalist and publisher (b. 1933)
2015 – Jean-Claude Turcotte, Canadian cardinal (b. 1936)
2019 – Josine Ianco-Starrels, Romanian-born American art curator (b. 1926)
2020 – Rick May, American-Canadian voice actor (b. 1940)
Holidays and observances
Buddha's Birthday, also known as Hana Matsuri, "Flower Festival" (Japan)
Christian feast day:
Anne Ayres (Episcopal Church (USA))
Constantina
Julie Billiart of Namur
Perpetuus
Walter of Pontoise
William Augustus Muhlenberg (Episcopal Church (USA))
April 8 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Earliest day on which Fast and Prayer Day can fall, while April 14 is the latest; celebrated on the second Friday in April (Liberia)
International Romani Day
References
External links
BBC: On This Day
Historical Events on April 8
Today in Canadian History
Days of the year
April |
2226 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad%20hominem | Ad hominem | Ad hominem (), short for argumentum ad hominem, refers to several types of arguments, some but not all of which are fallacious. Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself. The most common form of ad hominem is "A makes a claim x, B asserts that A holds a property that is unwelcome, and hence B concludes that argument x is wrong".
Fallacious ad hominem reasoning occurs where the validity of an argument is not based on an attribute of the person putting it forward, but on deduction or syllogism.
Valid ad hominem arguments occur in informal logic, where the person making the argument relies on arguments from authority such as testimony, expertise, or a selective presentation of information supporting the position they are advocating. In this case, counter-arguments may be made that the target is dishonest, lacks the claimed expertise, or has a conflict of interest. Another type of valid ad hominem argument generally only encountered in specialized philosophical usage refers to the dialectical strategy of using the target's own beliefs and arguments against them, while not agreeing with the validity of those beliefs and arguments.
Ad hominem arguments were first studied in ancient Greece. John Locke revived the examination of ad hominem arguments in the 17th century.
History
The various types of ad hominem arguments have been known in the West since at least the ancient Greeks. Aristotle, in his work Sophistical Refutations, detailed the fallaciousness of putting the questioner but not the argument under scrutiny. Many examples of ancient non-fallacious ad hominem arguments are preserved in the works of the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus. In these arguments, the concepts and assumptions of the opponents are used as part of a dialectical strategy against the opponents to demonstrate the unsoundness of their own arguments and assumptions. In this way, the arguments are to the person (ad hominem), but without attacking the properties of the individuals making the arguments.
Italian polymath Galileo Galilei and British philosopher John Locke also examined the argument from commitment, a form of the ad hominem argument, meaning examining an argument on the basis of whether it stands true to the principles of the person carrying the argument. In the mid-19th century, the modern understanding of the term ad hominem started to take shape, with the broad definition given by English logician Richard Whately. According to Whately, ad hominem arguments were "addressed to the peculiar circumstances, character, avowed opinions, or past conduct of the individual".
The earlier notion of ad hominem arguments would be maintained among later Catholic Aristotelian scholastics, into the 19th century and even the 20th century. For instance, the Dominican friar and Cardinal, Tommaso Maria Zigliara, doubtlessly drawing on earlier scholastic discussions, distinguished between absolute and relative demonstrations, referring to the latter as ad hominem arguments: “An ‘absolute’ demonstration is one which proceeds from premises whose truth we admit and assume in order to then draw an inference, absolutely speaking, as when we demonstrate the real existence of God on the basis of the contingent character of creatures, and other such demonstrations. However, a relative (that is, ad hominem) demonstration is one which proceeds from principles which are admitted by the person we are arguing against and which we assume for the sake of refutation, setting aside the question of the truth of such principles, as when someone assumes principles admitted by materialists or by rationalists, in order to convince them that their doctrine is false.”
Over time, the term acquired a different meaning; by the beginning of the 20th century, it was linked to a logical fallacy, in which a debater, instead of disproving an argument, attacked their opponent. This approach was also popularized in philosophical textbooks of the mid-20th century, and it was challenged by Australian philosopher Charles Leonard Hamblin in the second half of the 20th century. In a detailed work, he suggested that the inclusion of a statement against a person in an argument does not necessarily make it a fallacious argument since that particular phrase is not a premise that leads to a conclusion. While Hablin's criticism was not widely accepted, Canadian philosopher Douglas N. Walton examined the fallaciousness of the ad hominem argument even further. Nowadays, except within specialized philosophical usages, the usage of the term ad hominem signifies a straight attack at the character and ethos of a person, in an attempt to refute their argument.
Terminology
The Latin phrase argumentum ad hominem stands for "argument against the person". "Ad" corresponds to "against" but it could also mean "to" or "towards".
The terms ad mulierem and ad feminam have been used specifically when the person receiving the criticism is female.
Types of ad hominem arguments
Fallacious types of ad hominem arguments
Fallacious ad hominem reasoning is categorized as an informal fallacy, more precisely as a genetic fallacy, a subcategory of fallacies of irrelevance. Several types of ad hominem fallacies exist. All of these follow a general scheme where instead of dealing with the essence of someone's argument or trying to refute it, the interlocutor attacks the character of the proponent of the argument and concludes that the attack refutes the argument.
Circumstantial
Circumstantial ad hominem is an attack on the bias of a source. It points out that someone is in a circumstance (for instance, their job, wealth, property, or relations) such that they are disposed to take a particular position. A simple example is: a father may tell his daughter not to start smoking because she will damage her health, and she may point out that he is or was a smoker. This does not alter the fact that smoking might cause various diseases. Her father's inconsistency is not a proper reason to reject his claim.
Circumstantial ad hominem arguments are not necessarily fallacious. They can be fallacious because a disposition to make a certain argument does not make the argument invalid (this overlaps with the genetic fallacy – an argument that a claim is incorrect due to its source). They can also be sound arguments if the premises are correct and the bias is relevant to the argument. This could be the case when someone (A) attacks the personality of another person (B), making an argument (a) while the personality of B is relevant to argument a, for example, B speaks from their position as an authority figure.
Appeal to motive
Appeal to motive is a special case of the ad hominem circumstantial argument in which an argument is challenged by calling into question the motives of its proposer.
Ergo decedo
Ergo decedo, Latin for "therefore leave" or "then go off", a truncation of argumentum ergo decedo, also known as the traitorous critic fallacy, denotes responding to the criticism of a critic by implying that the critic is motivated by undisclosed favorability or affiliation to an out-group, rather than responding to the criticism itself. The fallacy implicitly alleges that the critic does not appreciate the values and customs of the criticized group or is traitorous, and thus suggests that the critic should avoid the question or topic entirely, typically by leaving the criticized group.
Guilt by association
Guilt by association, that is accusing an arguer because of his alleged connection with a discredited person or group, can sometimes also be a type of ad hominem fallacy when the argument attacks a source because of the similarity between the views of someone making an argument and other proponents of the argument.
This form of the argument is as follows:
Individual S makes claim C.
Individual S is also associated with Group G, who has an unfavorable reputation
Therefore, individual S and his views are questionable.
Academic Leigh Kolb gives as an example that the 2008 US vice‐presidential candidate Sarah Palin attacked Barack Obama for having worked with Bill Ayers, who had been a leader in the Weather Underground terrorist group in the 1960s. Despite Obama denouncing every act of terrorism, he was still associated by his opponents with terrorism.
Guilt by association is frequently found in social and political debates. It also appears after major events (such as scandals and terrorism) linked to a specific group. An example, given also by Leigh Kolb, is the peak of attacks against Muslims in the US after the September 11 attacks.
Tu quoque
Ad hominem tu quoque (literally: "You also") is a response to a personal attack (or ad hominem argument) that itself is a personal attack.
Tu quoque appears as:
A makes a claim a.
B attacks the character of A by saying they hold a property x, which is bad.
A defends themself by attacking B, saying they also hold the same property x.
Here is an example given by philosophy professor George Wrisley to illustrate the above: A businessman and politician is giving a lecture at a University about how good his company is and how nicely the system works. A student asks him "Is it true that you and your company are selling weapons to third world rulers who use those arms against their own people?" and the businessman replies "is it true that your university gets funding by the same company that you are claiming is selling guns to those countries? You are not a white dove either". The ad hominem accusation of the student is relevant to the narrative the businessman tries to project thus not fallacious. On the other hand, the attack on the student (that is, the student being inconsistent) is irrelevant to the opening narrative. So the businessman's tu quoque response is fallacious.
Canadian philosopher Christopher Tindale approaches the tu quoque fallacy somewhat differently. According to Tindale, a tu quoque fallacy appears when a response to an argument is made concerning the history of the arguer. This argument is also invalid because it does not disprove the premise. If the premise is true, then source A may be a hypocrite or even may have changed their mind, but this does not make the statement less credible from a logical perspective. A common example, given by Tindale, is when a doctor advises a patient to lose weight, but the patient argues that there is no need for him to go on a diet because the doctor is also overweight.
Whataboutism
Whataboutism, also known as whataboutery, is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument.
Abusive ad hominem
The term "ad hominem" is sometimes used to refer to abusive language which is not directly connected to an argument over a particular proposition. For example, a politician who refers to an opponent as "a crook", might be accused of arguing "ad hominem".
Poisoning the well
Poisoning the well (or attempting to poison the well) is a type of informal fallacy where adverse information about a target is preemptively presented to an audience with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing something that the target person is about to say. The term was first used in the sense of an ad hominem by John Henry Newman in his work Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864). The origin of the term lies in well poisoning, an ancient wartime practice of pouring poison into sources of fresh water before an invading army, to diminish the attacked army's strength.
Valid types of ad hominem arguments
Argument from commitment
An ad hominem argument from commitment is a type of valid argument that employs, as a dialectical strategy, the exclusive utilization of the beliefs, convictions, and assumptions of those holding the position being argued against, i.e., arguments constructed on the basis of what other people hold to be true. This usage is generally only encountered in specialist philosophical usage or in pre-20th century usages. This type of argument is also known as the ex concessis argument (Latin for "from what has been conceded already").
Ad hominem arguments, testimony and authority
Ad hominem arguments are relevant where the person being criticised is advancing arguments from authority, or testimony based on personal experience, rather than proposing a formal syllogism.
An example is a dialogue at the court, where the attorney cross-examines an eyewitness, bringing to light the fact that the witness was convicted in the past for lying. This might suggest the conclusion that the witness should not be trusted, which would not be a fallacy.
Usage
Improper usage
Contrary to popular belief, merely insulting someone is not a fallacious ad hominem. A character attack is only considered a fallacious ad hominem if it is used in exchange for a genuine argument.
Examples:
Pure abuse: B says of an opponent A, "You are a moron". In this case, there is no argument, only abuse.
Fallacious: A makes an argument, B responds with "You are a moron and you are also ugly, you cannot possibly be correct". B has not offered a genuine response or argument, only abuse – this is fallacious.
Non-fallacious: A makes an argument, B responds with "(Genuine refutation of As argument), also you are a moron". While potentially childish, B has genuinely offered a response to As argument and has just bolted on an insult. This is not a fallacy, as an insult or character attack was not exchanged for an argument; rather one was provided alongside of an argument.
Usage in debates
Ad hominem fallacies are considered to be uncivil and do not help create a constructive atmosphere for dialogue to flourish. An ad hominem attack is an attack on the character of the target, who tends to feel the necessity to defend himself or herself from the accusation of being hypocritical. Walton has noted that it is so powerful an argument that it is employed in many political debates. Since it is associated with negativity and dirty tricks, ad hominem attacks have erroneously been assumed to always be fallacious.
Eithan Orkibi describes two forms of ad hominem attacks that are common during election periods. The first is the precedent ad hominem, according to which the previous history of someone means that they are not fit for the office. For example: "My opponent was (allegedly) wrong in the past, therefore he is wrong now". The second one is a behavioral ad hominem: "My opponent was not decent in his arguments in the past, so now he is not either". These kinds of attacks are based on the inability of the audience to have a clear view of the amount of false statements by both parties of the debate.
Criticism as a fallacy
Walton has argued that ad hominem reasoning is not always fallacious, and that in some instances, questions of personal conduct, character, motives, etc., are legitimate and relevant to the issue, as when it directly involves hypocrisy, or actions contradicting the subject's words.
The philosopher Charles Taylor has argued that ad hominem reasoning (discussing facts about the speaker or author relative to the value of his statements) is essential to understanding certain moral issues due to the connection between individual persons and morality (or moral claims), and contrasts this sort of reasoning with the apodictic reasoning (involving facts beyond dispute or clearly established) of philosophical naturalism.
See also
Appeal to authority
Appeal to emotion
The Art of Being Right
Character assassination
Discrediting tactic
Fair Game (Scientology)
Fake news
Fundamental attribution error
Gaslighting
Hostile witness
Mockery
Negative campaigning
Presumption of guilt
Race card
Red herring
Reputation
Shooting the messenger
Smear campaign
Straw man
Tone policing
References
Sources
External links
Argumentum Ad Hominem
Genetic fallacies
Latin logical phrases
Latin words and phrases
Propaganda techniques
Pyrrhonism
Rhetoric
Informal fallacies
Fallacies |
2230 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis%20of%20algorithms | Analysis of algorithms | In computer science, the analysis of algorithms is the process of finding the computational complexity of algorithms—the amount of time, storage, or other resources needed to execute them. Usually, this involves determining a function that relates the size of an algorithm's input to the number of steps it takes (its time complexity) or the number of storage locations it uses (its space complexity). An algorithm is said to be efficient when this function's values are small, or grow slowly compared to a growth in the size of the input. Different inputs of the same size may cause the algorithm to have different behavior, so best, worst and average case descriptions might all be of practical interest. When not otherwise specified, the function describing the performance of an algorithm is usually an upper bound, determined from the worst case inputs to the algorithm.
The term "analysis of algorithms" was coined by Donald Knuth. Algorithm analysis is an important part of a broader computational complexity theory, which provides theoretical estimates for the resources needed by any algorithm which solves a given computational problem. These estimates provide an insight into reasonable directions of search for efficient algorithms.
In theoretical analysis of algorithms it is common to estimate their complexity in the asymptotic sense, i.e., to estimate the complexity function for arbitrarily large input. Big O notation, Big-omega notation and Big-theta notation are used to this end. For instance, binary search is said to run in a number of steps proportional to the logarithm of the size of the sorted list being searched, or in , colloquially "in logarithmic time". Usually asymptotic estimates are used because different implementations of the same algorithm may differ in efficiency. However the efficiencies of any two "reasonable" implementations of a given algorithm are related by a constant multiplicative factor called a hidden constant.
Exact (not asymptotic) measures of efficiency can sometimes be computed but they usually require certain assumptions concerning the particular implementation of the algorithm, called model of computation. A model of computation may be defined in terms of an abstract computer, e.g. Turing machine, and/or by postulating that certain operations are executed in unit time.
For example, if the sorted list to which we apply binary search has elements, and we can guarantee that each lookup of an element in the list can be done in unit time, then at most time units are needed to return an answer.
Cost models
Time efficiency estimates depend on what we define to be a step. For the analysis to correspond usefully to the actual run-time, the time required to perform a step must be guaranteed to be bounded above by a constant. One must be careful here; for instance, some analyses count an addition of two numbers as one step. This assumption may not be warranted in certain contexts. For example, if the numbers involved in a computation may be arbitrarily large, the time required by a single addition can no longer be assumed to be constant.
Two cost models are generally used:
the uniform cost model, also called uniform-cost measurement (and similar variations), assigns a constant cost to every machine operation, regardless of the size of the numbers involved
the logarithmic cost model, also called logarithmic-cost measurement (and similar variations), assigns a cost to every machine operation proportional to the number of bits involved
The latter is more cumbersome to use, so it's only employed when necessary, for example in the analysis of arbitrary-precision arithmetic algorithms, like those used in cryptography.
A key point which is often overlooked is that published lower bounds for problems are often given for a model of computation that is more restricted than the set of operations that you could use in practice and therefore there are algorithms that are faster than what would naively be thought possible.
Run-time analysis
Run-time analysis is a theoretical classification that estimates and anticipates the increase in running time (or run-time or execution time) of an algorithm as its input size (usually denoted as ) increases. Run-time efficiency is a topic of great interest in computer science: A program can take seconds, hours, or even years to finish executing, depending on which algorithm it implements. While software profiling techniques can be used to measure an algorithm's run-time in practice, they cannot provide timing data for all infinitely many possible inputs; the latter can only be achieved by the theoretical methods of run-time analysis.
Shortcomings of empirical metrics
Since algorithms are platform-independent (i.e. a given algorithm can be implemented in an arbitrary programming language on an arbitrary computer running an arbitrary operating system), there are additional significant drawbacks to using an empirical approach to gauge the comparative performance of a given set of algorithms.
Take as an example a program that looks up a specific entry in a sorted list of size n. Suppose this program were implemented on Computer A, a state-of-the-art machine, using a linear search algorithm, and on Computer B, a much slower machine, using a binary search algorithm. Benchmark testing on the two computers running their respective programs might look something like the following:
Based on these metrics, it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that Computer A is running an algorithm that is far superior in efficiency to that of Computer B. However, if the size of the input-list is increased to a sufficient number, that conclusion is dramatically demonstrated to be in error:
Computer A, running the linear search program, exhibits a linear growth rate. The program's run-time is directly proportional to its input size. Doubling the input size doubles the run-time, quadrupling the input size quadruples the run-time, and so forth. On the other hand, Computer B, running the binary search program, exhibits a logarithmic growth rate. Quadrupling the input size only increases the run-time by a constant amount (in this example, 50,000 ns). Even though Computer A is ostensibly a faster machine, Computer B will inevitably surpass Computer A in run-time because it's running an algorithm with a much slower growth rate.
Orders of growth
Informally, an algorithm can be said to exhibit a growth rate on the order of a mathematical function if beyond a certain input size , the function times a positive constant provides an upper bound or limit for the run-time of that algorithm. In other words, for a given input size greater than some 0 and a constant , the run-time of that algorithm will never be larger than . This concept is frequently expressed using Big O notation. For example, since the run-time of insertion sort grows quadratically as its input size increases, insertion sort can be said to be of order .
Big O notation is a convenient way to express the worst-case scenario for a given algorithm, although it can also be used to express the average-case — for example, the worst-case scenario for quicksort is , but the average-case run-time is .
Empirical orders of growth
Assuming the run-time follows power rule, , the coefficient can be found by taking empirical measurements of run-time } at some problem-size points }, and calculating so that . In other words, this measures the slope of the empirical line on the log–log plot of run-time vs. input size, at some size point. If the order of growth indeed follows the power rule (and so the line on log–log plot is indeed a straight line), the empirical value of will stay constant at different ranges, and if not, it will change (and the line is a curved line)—but still could serve for comparison of any two given algorithms as to their empirical local orders of growth behaviour. Applied to the above table:
It is clearly seen that the first algorithm exhibits a linear order of growth indeed following the power rule. The empirical values for the second one are diminishing rapidly, suggesting it follows another rule of growth and in any case has much lower local orders of growth (and improving further still), empirically, than the first one.
Evaluating run-time complexity
The run-time complexity for the worst-case scenario of a given algorithm can sometimes be evaluated by examining the structure of the algorithm and making some simplifying assumptions. Consider the following pseudocode:
1 get a positive integer n from input
2 if n > 10
3 print "This might take a while..."
4 for i = 1 to n
5 for j = 1 to i
6 print i * j
7 print "Done!"
A given computer will take a discrete amount of time to execute each of the instructions involved with carrying out this algorithm. The specific amount of time to carry out a given instruction will vary depending on which instruction is being executed and which computer is executing it, but on a conventional computer, this amount will be deterministic. Say that the actions carried out in step 1 are considered to consume time T1, step 2 uses time T2, and so forth.
In the algorithm above, steps 1, 2 and 7 will only be run once. For a worst-case evaluation, it should be assumed that step 3 will be run as well. Thus the total amount of time to run steps 1-3 and step 7 is:
The loops in steps 4, 5 and 6 are trickier to evaluate. The outer loop test in step 4 will execute ( n + 1 )
times (note that an extra step is required to terminate the for loop, hence n + 1 and not n executions), which will consume T4( n + 1 ) time. The inner loop, on the other hand, is governed by the value of j, which iterates from 1 to i. On the first pass through the outer loop, j iterates from 1 to 1: The inner loop makes one pass, so running the inner loop body (step 6) consumes T6 time, and the inner loop test (step 5) consumes 2T5 time. During the next pass through the outer loop, j iterates from 1 to 2: the inner loop makes two passes, so running the inner loop body (step 6) consumes 2T6 time, and the inner loop test (step 5) consumes 3T5 time.
Altogether, the total time required to run the inner loop body can be expressed as an arithmetic progression:
which can be factored as
The total time required to run the outer loop test can be evaluated similarly:
which can be factored as
Therefore, the total run-time for this algorithm is:
which reduces to
As a rule-of-thumb, one can assume that the highest-order term in any given function dominates its rate of growth and thus defines its run-time order. In this example, n2 is the highest-order term, so one can conclude that . Formally this can be proven as follows:
A more elegant approach to analyzing this algorithm would be to declare that [T1..T7] are all equal to one unit of time, in a system of units chosen so that one unit is greater than or equal to the actual times for these steps. This would mean that the algorithm's run-time breaks down as follows:
Growth rate analysis of other resources
The methodology of run-time analysis can also be utilized for predicting other growth rates, such as consumption of memory space. As an example, consider the following pseudocode which manages and reallocates memory usage by a program based on the size of a file which that program manages:
while file is still open:
let n = size of file
for every 100,000 kilobytes of increase in file size
double the amount of memory reserved
In this instance, as the file size n increases, memory will be consumed at an exponential growth rate, which is order . This is an extremely rapid and most likely unmanageable growth rate for consumption of memory resources.
Relevance
Algorithm analysis is important in practice because the accidental or unintentional use of an inefficient algorithm can significantly impact system performance. In time-sensitive applications, an algorithm taking too long to run can render its results outdated or useless. An inefficient algorithm can also end up requiring an uneconomical amount of computing power or storage in order to run, again rendering it practically useless.
Constant factors
Analysis of algorithms typically focuses on the asymptotic performance, particularly at the elementary level, but in practical applications constant factors are important, and real-world data is in practice always limited in size. The limit is typically the size of addressable memory, so on 32-bit machines 232 = 4 GiB (greater if segmented memory is used) and on 64-bit machines 264 = 16 EiB. Thus given a limited size, an order of growth (time or space) can be replaced by a constant factor, and in this sense all practical algorithms are for a large enough constant, or for small enough data.
This interpretation is primarily useful for functions that grow extremely slowly: (binary) iterated logarithm (log*) is less than 5 for all practical data (265536 bits); (binary) log-log (log log n) is less than 6 for virtually all practical data (264 bits); and binary log (log n) is less than 64 for virtually all practical data (264 bits). An algorithm with non-constant complexity may nonetheless be more efficient than an algorithm with constant complexity on practical data if the overhead of the constant time algorithm results in a larger constant factor, e.g., one may have so long as and .
For large data linear or quadratic factors cannot be ignored, but for small data an asymptotically inefficient algorithm may be more efficient. This is particularly used in hybrid algorithms, like Timsort, which use an asymptotically efficient algorithm (here merge sort, with time complexity ), but switch to an asymptotically inefficient algorithm (here insertion sort, with time complexity ) for small data, as the simpler algorithm is faster on small data.
See also
Amortized analysis
Analysis of parallel algorithms
Asymptotic computational complexity
Best, worst and average case
Big O notation
Computational complexity theory
Master theorem (analysis of algorithms)
NP-Complete
Numerical analysis
Polynomial time
Program optimization
Profiling (computer programming)
Scalability
Smoothed analysis
Termination analysis — the subproblem of checking whether a program will terminate at all
Time complexity — includes table of orders of growth for common algorithms
Information-based complexity
Notes
References
External links
Computational complexity theory |
2233 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86lle%20of%20Sussex | Ælle of Sussex | Ælle (also Aelle or Ella) is recorded in early sources as the first king of the South Saxons, reigning in what is now called Sussex, England, from 477 to perhaps as late as 514.
According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Ælle and three of his sons are said to have landed at a place called Cymensora and fought against the local Britons. The chronicle goes on to report a victory in 491, at present day Pevensey, where the battle ended with the Saxons slaughtering their opponents to the last man.
Ælle was the first king recorded by the 8th century chronicler Bede to have held "imperium", or overlordship, over other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. In the late 9th-century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (around four hundred years after his time) Ælle is recorded as being the first bretwalda, or "Britain-ruler", though there is no evidence that this was a contemporary title. Ælle's death is not recorded and although he may have been the founder of a South Saxon dynasty, there is no firm evidence linking him with later South Saxon rulers. The 12th-century chronicler Henry of Huntingdon produced an enhanced version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that included 514 as the date of Ælle's death, but this is not secure.
Historical context
Historians are divided on the detail of Ælle's life and existence as it was during the least-documented period in English history of the last two millennia.
By the early 5th century, Britain had been Roman for over three hundred and fifty years. Amongst the enemies of Roman Britain were the Picts of central and northern Scotland, and the Gaels known as Scoti, who were raiders from Ireland. Also vexatious were the Saxons, the name Roman writers gave to the peoples who lived in the northern part of what is now Germany and the southern part of the Jutland peninsula. Saxon raids on the southern and eastern shores of England had been sufficiently alarming by the late 3rd century for the Romans to build the Saxon Shore forts, and subsequently to establish the role of the Count of the Saxon Shore to command the defence against these incursions. Roman control of Britain finally ended in the early part of the 5th century; the date usually given as marking the end of Roman Britain is 410, when the Emperor Honorius sent letters to the British, urging them to look to their own defence. Britain had been repeatedly stripped of troops to support usurpers' claims to the Roman empire, and after 410 the Roman armies never returned.
Sources for events after this date are extremely scarce, but a tradition, reported as early as the mid-6th century by a British priest named Gildas, records that the British sent for help against the barbarians to Aetius, a Roman consul, probably in the late 440s. No help came. Subsequently, a British leader named Vortigern is supposed to have invited continental mercenaries to help fight the Picts who were attacking from the north. The leaders, whose names are recorded as Hengest and Horsa, rebelled, and a long period of warfare ensued. The invaders—Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians—gained control of parts of England, but lost a major battle at Mons Badonicus (the location of which is not known). Some authors have speculated that Ælle may have led the Saxon forces at this battle, while others reject the idea out of hand.
The British thus gained a respite, and peace lasted at least until the time Gildas was writing: that is, for perhaps forty or fifty years, from around the end of the 5th century until midway through the sixth. Shortly after Gildas's time, the Anglo-Saxon advance was resumed, and by the late 6th century nearly all of southern England was under the control of the continental invaders.
Early sources
There are two early sources that mention Ælle by name. The earliest is The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, a history of the English church written in 731 by Bede, a Northumbrian monk. Bede mentions Ælle as one of the Anglo-Saxon kings who exercised what he calls "imperium" over "all the provinces south of the river Humber"; "imperium" is usually translated as "overlordship". Bede gives a list of seven kings who held "imperium", and Ælle is the first of them. The other information Bede gives is that Ælle was not a Christian—Bede mentions a later king as "the first to enter the kingdom of heaven".
The second source is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a collection of annals assembled in the Kingdom of Wessex in c. 890, during the reign of Alfred the Great. The Chronicle has three entries for Ælle, from 477 to 491, as follows:
477: Ælle and his 3 sons, Cymen and Wlencing and Cissa, came to the land of Britain with 3 ships at the place which is named Cymen's shore, and there killed many Welsh and drove some to flight into the wood called Andredes leag.
485: Here Ælle fought against the Welsh near the margin of Mearcred's Burn.
491: Here Ælle and Cissa besieged Andredes cester, and killed all who lived in there; there was not even one Briton left there.
The Chronicle was put together about four hundred years after these events. It is known that the annalists used material from earlier chronicles, as well as from oral sources such as sagas, but there is no way to tell where these lines came from. The terms 'British' and 'Welsh' were used interchangeably, as 'Welsh' is the Saxon word meaning 'foreigner', and was applied to all the native Romano-British of the era.
Three of the places named may be identified:
"Cymen's shore" ("Cymenes ora" in the original) is believed to be located at what is now a series of rocks and ledges, in the English Channel off Selsey Bill, on the south coast, known as the Owers. It has been suggested that Ower is derived from the word ora that is found only in placenames where Jutish and West Saxon dialects were in operation (mainly in southern England). It is possible that the stretch of low ground along the coast from Southampton to Bognor was called Ora, "the shore", and that district names were used by the various coastal settlements, Cymens ora being one of them.
The wood called "Andredes leag" is the Weald, which at that time was a forest extending from north-west Hampshire all through northern Sussex.
"Andredes cester" is thought to be Anderitum, the Saxon Shore fort built by the Roman rebel Carausius in the late 3rd century at Pevensey Castle, just outside the town. Some believe Andredes cester may have been an imperial stronghold somewhere else as Henry of Huntingdon described the place as a fortified city and gave a very full account of the siege which is inconsistent with the geography of ancient Pevensey and little archaeological evidence of sustained settlement there. Also, in his "Britannia", William Camden suggests that it could be Newenden, Kent.
The Chronicle mentions Ælle once more under the year 827, where he is listed as the first of the eight "bretwaldas", or "Britain-rulers". The list consists of Bede's original seven, plus Egbert of Wessex. There has been much scholarly debate over just what it meant to be a "bretwalda", and the extent of Ælle's actual power in southern England is an open question. It is also noteworthy that there is a long gap between Ælle and the second king on Bede's list, Ceawlin of Wessex, whose reign began in the late 6th century; this may indicate a period in which Anglo-Saxon dominance was interrupted in some way.
Earlier sources than Bede exist which mention the South Saxons, though they do not name Ælle. The earliest reference is still quite late, however, at about 692: a charter of King Nothhelm's, which styles him "King of the South Saxons". Charters are documents which granted land to followers or to churchmen, and which would be witnessed by the kings who had power to grant the land. They are one of the key documentary sources for Anglo-Saxon history, but no original charters survive from earlier than 679.
There are other early writers whose works can shed light on Ælle's time, though they do not mention either him or his kingdom. Gildas's description of the state of Britain in his time is useful for understanding the ebb and flow of the Anglo-Saxon incursions. Procopius, a Byzantine historian, writing not long after Gildas, adds to the meagre sources on population movement by including a chapter on England in one of his works. He records that the peoples of Britain—he names the English, the British, and the Frisians—were so numerous that they were migrating to the kingdom of the Franks in great numbers every year, although this is probably a reference to Britons emigrating to Armorica to escape the Anglo-Saxons. They subsequently gave their name to the area they settled as Brittany, or la petite Bretagne (lit., "little Britain").
Evidence from place names in Sussex
The early dates given in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the colonization of Sussex are supported by an analysis of the place names of the region. The strongest evidence comes from place names that end in "-ing", such as Worthing and Angmering. These are known to derive from an earlier form ending in "-ingas". "Hastings" for example, derives from "Hæstingas" which may mean "the followers or dependents of a person named Hæsta", although others suggest the heavily Romanised region may have had names of Gallo-Roman origin derived from "-ienses".
From west of Selsey Bill to east of Pevensey can be found the densest concentration of these names anywhere in Britain. There are a total of about forty-five place names in Sussex of this form, but personal names either were not associated with these places or fell out of use. This does not necessarily mean that the Saxons killed or drove out almost all of the native population, despite the slaughter of the Britons reported in the Chronicle entry for 491; however, it does imply that the invasion was on a scale that left little space for the British.
These lines of reasoning cannot prove the dates given in the Chronicle, much less the details surrounding Ælle himself, but they do support the idea of an early conquest and the establishment of a settled kingdom.
Reign
If the dates given by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are accurate to within half a century, then Ælle's reign lies in the middle of the Anglo-Saxon expansion, and prior to the final conquest of the Britons. It also seems consistent with the dates given to assume that Ælle's battles predate Mons Badonicus.This in turn would explain the long gap, of fifty or more years, in the succession of the "bretwaldas": if the peace gained by the Britons did indeed hold till the second half of the 6th century, it is not to be expected that an Anglo-Saxon leader should have anything resembling overlordship of England during that time. The idea of a pause in the Anglo-Saxon advance is also supported by the account in Procopius of 6th century migration from Britain to the kingdom of the Franks. Procopius's account is consistent with what is known to be a contemporary colonization of Armorica (now Brittany, in France); the settlers appear to have been at least partly from Dumnonia (modern Cornwall), and the area acquired regions known as Dumnonée and Cornouaille. It seems likely that something at that time was interrupting the general flow of the Anglo-Saxons from the continent to Britain.
The dates for Ælle's battles are also reasonably consistent with what is known of events in the kingdom of the Franks at that time. Clovis I united the Franks into a single kingdom during the 480s and afterwards, and the Franks' ability to exercise power along the southern coast of the English channel may have diverted Saxon adventurers to England rather than the continent.
It is possible, therefore, that a historical king named Ælle existed, who arrived from the continent in the late 5th century, and who conquered much of what is now Sussex. He may have been a prominent war chief with a leadership role in a federation of Anglo-Saxon groups fighting for territory in Britain at that time. This may be the origin of the reputation that led Bede to list him as holding overlordship over southern Britain. The battles listed in the Chronicle are compatible with a conquest of Sussex from west to east, against British resistance stiff enough to last fourteen years. His area of military control may have extended as far as Hampshire and north to the upper Thames valley, but it certainly did not extend across all of England south of the Humber, as Bede asserts.
The historian Guy Halsall argues that as Ælle immediately preceded the late sixth-century King Ceawlin as Bretwalda, it is far more likely that Ælle dates to the mid sixth century, and that the Chronicle has moved his dates back a century in order to provide a foundation myth for Sussex which puts it chronologically and geographically between the origins of the kingdoms of Kent and Wessex.
Death and burial
Ælle's death is not recorded by the Chronicle, which gives no information about him, or his sons, or the South Saxons until 675, when the South Saxon king Æthelwalh was baptized.
It has been conjectured that, as Saxon war leader, Ælle may have met his death in the disastrous battle of Mount Badon when the Britons halted Saxon expansion. If Ælle died within the borders of his own kingdom then it may well have been that he was buried on Highdown Hill with his weapons and ornaments in the usual mode of burial among the South Saxons. Highdown Hill is the traditional burial-place of the kings of Sussex.
See also
Timeline of the Anglo-Saxon invasion and takeover of Britain
Notes
References
Primary sources
Secondary sources
External links
510s deaths
6th-century English monarchs
5th-century English monarchs
Anglo-Saxon warriors
Founding monarchs
People whose existence is disputed
South Saxon monarchs
Year of birth unknown |
2234 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari | Atari | Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French publisher Atari SA (formerly Infogrames Entertainment SA) through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc., founded in Sunnyvale, California, in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, was a pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles and home computers. The company's products, such as Pong and the Atari 2600, helped define the electronic entertainment industry from the 1970s to the mid-1980s.
In 1984, as a result of the video game crash of 1983, the home console and computer divisions of the original Atari Inc. were sold off, and the company was renamed Atari Games Inc. Atari Games received the rights to use the logo and brand name with appended text "Games" on arcade games, as well as rights to the original 1972–1984 arcade hardware properties. The Atari Consumer Electronics Division properties were in turn sold to Jack Tramiel's Tramel Technology Ltd., which then renamed itself to Atari Corporation. In 1996, Atari Corporation reverse-merged with disk-drive manufacturer JT Storage (JTS), becoming a division within the company. In 1998, Hasbro Interactive acquired all Atari Corporation related properties from JTS, creating a new subsidiary, Atari Interactive.
Infogrames Entertainment (IESA) bought Hasbro Interactive in 2001 and renamed it Infogrames Interactive, which intermittently published Atari-branded titles. In 2003, it renamed the division Atari Interactive. Another IESA division, Infogrames Inc. (formerly GT Interactive), changed its name to Atari Inc. the same year, licensing the Atari name and logo from its fellow subsidiary.
In 2008, IESA completed its acquisition of Atari, Inc.'s outstanding stock, making it a wholly owned subsidiary. IESA renamed itself Atari SA in 2009. It sought bankruptcy protection under French law in January 2013. In 2020 Atari launched the Atari Token in partnership with the ICICB Group, where ICICB Group is 50% owner of the company, Atari Chain LTD, registered in Gibraltar. Also Atari issued an exclusive license to the ICICB Group to launch a gaming platform using crypto-currencies. The ICICB Group is a holding company with multiply license in FinTech, Blockchain, Crypto Exchanges, financial houses and hedge funds.
History
Logotype
The name comes from the Japanese term atari, used while playing the ancient board game Go. The word ataru means “to hit a target” in Japanese and is associated with good fortune; in Go, it indicates a situation where a player will be able capture one or more stones of the opponent in the next move.
The Atari logo was designed by George Opperman, who was Atari's first in-house graphic designer and drawn by Evelyn Seto. The design is known as "Fuji" for its resemblance to the Japanese mountain, although the logo's origins are unrelated to it. Opperman designed the logo intending for the silhouette to look like the letter A as in Atari and for its three "prongs" to resemble players and the midline of the "court" in the company's first hit game, Pong.
Atari Inc. (1972–1984)
In 1971, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney founded a small engineering company, Syzygy Engineering, that designed Computer Space, the world's first commercially available arcade video game, for Nutting Associates. On June 27, 1972, the two incorporated Atari, Inc. and soon hired Al Alcorn as their first design engineer. Bushnell asked Alcorn to produce an arcade version of the Magnavox Odyssey's Tennis game, which would be named Pong. While Bushnell incorporated Atari in June 1972, Syzygy Company was never formally incorporated. Before Atari's incorporation, Bushnell considered various terms from the game Go, eventually choosing atari, referencing a position in the game when a group of stones is imminently in danger of being taken by one's opponent. Atari was incorporated in the state of California on June 27, 1972.
In 1973, Atari secretly spawned a competitor called Kee Games, headed by Nolan's next-door neighbor Joe Keenan, to circumvent pinball distributors' insistence on exclusive distribution deals; both Atari and Kee could market nearly the same game to different distributors, each getting an "exclusive" deal. Joe Keenan's management of the subsidiary led to his promotion to president of Atari that same year.
In 1975, Atari's Grass Valley, California subsidiary Cyan Engineering started the development of a flexible console that was capable of playing the four existing Atari games. The result was the Atari Video Computer System, or VCS (later renamed 2600 when the 5200 was released). The introductory price of $199 () included a console, two joysticks, a pair of paddles, and the Combat game cartridge. Bushnell knew he had another potential hit on his hands but bringing the machine to market would be extremely expensive. Looking for outside investors, Bushnell sold Atari to Warner Communications in 1976 for an estimated $28–32 million, using part of the money to buy the Folgers Mansion. Nolan continued to have disagreements with Warner Management over the direction of the company, the discontinuation of the pinball division, and most importantly, the notion of discontinuing the 2600. In 1978, Kee Games was disbanded. In December of that year, Bushnell was fired following an argument with Manny Gerard. "[W]e started fighting like cats and dogs. And then the wheels came off that fall. Warner claimed they fired me", recalled Bushnell. "I say I quit. It was a mutual separation."
The development of a successor to the 2600 started as soon as it shipped. The original team estimated the 2600 had a lifespan of about three years; it then set forth to build the most powerful machine possible within that time frame. Mid-way into their effort the home computer revolution took off, leading to the addition of a keyboard and features to produce the Atari 800 and its smaller sibling, the 400. The new machines had some success when they finally became available in quantity in 1980. From this platform Atari released their next-generation game console in 1982, the Atari 5200. It was unsuccessful due to incompatibility with the 2600 game library, a small quantity of dedicated games, and notoriously unreliable controllers. Porting arcade games to home systems with inferior hardware was difficult. The ported version of Pac-Man for Atari 2600 omitted many of the visual features of the original to compensate for the lack of ROM space and the hardware struggled when multiple ghosts appeared on the screen creating a flickering effect.
Under Warner and Atari's chairman and CEO, Raymond Kassar, the company achieved its greatest success, selling millions of 2600s and computers. At its peak, Atari accounted for a third of Warner's annual income and was the fastest-growing company in US history at the time. It ran into problems in the early 1980s, however, as interference from the New York-based Warner management increasingly affected daily operations. Its home computer, video game console, and arcade divisions operated independently and rarely cooperated. Faced with fierce competition and price wars in the game console and home computer markets, Atari was never able to duplicate the success of the 2600.
These problems were followed by the video game crash of 1983, with losses that totaled more than $500 million. Warner's stock price slid from $60 to $20, and the company began searching for a buyer for its troubled division. In 1983, Ray Kassar had resigned and executives involved in the Famicom merger lost track of negotiations, eventually killing the deal. With Atari's financial problems and the Famicom's runaway success in Japan after its July 16, 1983, release, Nintendo decided to remain independent.
Financial problems continued to mount and Kassar's successor, James J. Morgan, had less than a year in which to tackle the company's problems. He began a massive restructuring of the company and worked with Warner Communications in May 1984 to create "NATCO" (an acronym for New Atari Company). NATCO further streamlined the company's facilities, personnel, and spending. Unknown to James Morgan and the senior management of Atari, Warner had been in talks with Tramel Technology to buy Atari's consumer electronics and home computer divisions. Negotiating until close to midnight on July 1, 1984, Jack Tramiel purchased the home computing and game console divisions of Atari for $50 cash and $240 million in promissory notes and stocks, giving Warner a 20% stake in Atari Corporation who then used it to create a new company under the name Atari Corporation. Warner retained the arcade division, continuing it under the name Atari Games, but sold it to Namco in 1985. Warner also sold the Ataritel division to Mitsubishi.
Atari Corporation (1984–1996)
Under Tramiel's ownership, Atari Corp. used the remaining stock of game console inventory to keep the company afloat while they finished development on a 16/32-bit computer system, the Atari ST. ("ST" stands for "sixteen/thirty-two", referring to the machines' 16-bit bus and 32-bit processor core.) In April 1985, they released the first update to the 8-bit computer line — the Atari 65XE, the Atari XE series. June 1985 saw the release of the Atari 130XE; Atari User Groups received early sneak-preview samples of the new Atari 520ST's, and major retailer shipments hit store shelves in September 1985 of Atari's new 32-bit Atari ST computers. In 1986, Atari launched two consoles designed under Warner — the Atari 2600jr and the Atari 7800 console (which saw limited release in 1984). Atari rebounded, earning a $25 million profit that year.
In 1987, Atari acquired the Federated Group for $67.3 million, securing shelf space in over 60 stores in California, Arizona, Texas and Kansas at a time when major American electronics outlets were reluctant to carry Atari-branded computers, and two-thirds of Atari's PC production was sold in Europe. The Federated Group (not related to Federated Department Stores) was sold to Silo in 1989.
In 1989, Atari released the Atari Lynx, a handheld console with color graphics, to much fanfare. A shortage of parts kept the system from being released nationwide for the 1989 Christmas season, and the Lynx lost market share to Nintendo's Game Boy, which, despite only having a black and white display, was cheaper, had better battery life and had much higher availability. Tramiel emphasized computers over game consoles but Atari's proprietary computer architecture and operating system fell victim to the success of the Wintel platform while the game market revived. In 1989, Atari Corp. sued Nintendo for $250 million, alleging it had an illegal monopoly. Atari eventually lost the case when it was rejected by a US district court in 1992.
In 1993, Atari positioned its Jaguar as the only 64-bit interactive media entertainment system available, but it sold poorly. It would be the last home console to be produced by Atari and the last to be produced by an American manufacturer until Microsoft's introduction of the Xbox in 2001.
By 1996, a series of successful lawsuits had left Atari with millions of dollars in the bank, but the failure of the Lynx and Jaguar left Atari without a product to sell. Tramiel and his family also wanted out of the business. The result was a rapid succession of changes in ownership. In July 1996, Atari merged with JTS Inc., a short-lived maker of hard disk drives, to form JTS Corp. Atari's role in the new company largely became that of holder for the Atari properties and minor support, and consequently the name largely disappeared from the market.
Atari Games (1984–1999)
After the sale of the consumer electronics and computer divisions to Jack Tramiel, Atari was renamed Atari Games Corporation Atari Games retained most of the same employees and managers from the coin-operated games division and continued many of the divisions projects from before the transition. In 1985, a controlling interest in the coin-operated games division was sold to Namco, which also took the Atari Games name. Warner renamed Atari Games to Atari Holdings, which continued as a non-operating subsidiary until 1992. Meanwhile, Namco later lost interest in operating Atari Games. In 1987, Namco sold 33% of its shares to a group of employees led by then-president Hideyuki Nakajima. He had been the president of Atari Games since 1985. Atari Ireland was a subsidiary of Atari Games that manufactured their games for the European market; while under Namco, Atari Ireland also manufactured Sega's Hang-On (1985) for the European market.
Atari Games continued to manufacture arcade games and units, and starting in 1988, also sold cartridges for the Nintendo Entertainment System under the Tengen brand name, including a version of Tetris. The companies exchanged a number of lawsuits in the late 1980s related to disputes over the rights to Tetris and Tengen's circumvention of Nintendo's lockout chip, which prevented third parties from creating unauthorized games. The suit finally reached a settlement in 1994, with Atari Games paying Nintendo cash damages and use of several patent licenses.
In April 1996, after an unsuccessful bid by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, the company was sold to WMS Industries, owners of the Williams, Bally and Midway arcade brands, which restored the use of the Atari Games name. On November 19, 1999, Atari Games Corporation was renamed Midway Games West Inc., resulting in the Atari Games name no longer being used.
Hasbro Interactive (1998–2000)
On March 13, 1998, JTS sold the Atari name and assets to Hasbro Interactive for $5 million, less than a fifth of what Warner Communications had paid 22 years earlier. This transaction primarily involved the brand and intellectual property, which now fell under the Atari Interactive division of Hasbro Interactive. The brand name changed hands again in December 2000 when French software publisher Infogrames took over Hasbro Interactive.
Atari SA (2001–present)
In October 2001, Infogrames (now Atari SA) announced that it was "reinventing" the Atari brand with the launch of three new games featuring a prominent Atari branding on their boxarts: Splashdown, MX Rider and TransWorld Surf. Infogrames used Atari as a brand name for games aimed at 18–34 year olds. Other Infogrames games under the Atari name included V-Rally 3, Neverwinter Nights, Stuntman and Enter the Matrix.
On May 7, 2003, Infogrames had its majority-owned, but discrete US subsidiary Infogrames NA officially renamed Atari, Inc., renamed its European operations to Atari Europe but kept the original name of the main company Infogrames Entertainment. The original Atari holdings division purchased from Hasbro, Hasbro Interactive, was also made a separate corporate entity renamed as Atari Interactive.
Between 2004 and 2011, Atari produced and marketed Atari Flashback retro consoles, reminiscent of the Atari 2600 design. Since 2011, these consoles have been produced by AtGames under the license from Atari. Atari Flashback Portable is a handheld game console sold since 2016. In April 2011, Atari re-released their back catalogue of arcade and Atari 2600 games to be played on mobile devices.
On March 6, 2008, Infogrames made an offer to Atari Inc. to buy out all remaining public shares for a value of $1.68 per share, or $11 million total. The offer would make Infogrames sole owner of Atari Inc., thus making it a privately held company. On April 30, 2008, Atari Inc. announced its intentions to accept Infogrames' buyout offer and to merge with Infogrames. On October 8, 2008, Infogrames completed its acquisition of Atari Inc., making it a wholly owned subsidiary.
On December 9, 2008, Atari announced that it had acquired Cryptic Studios, a MMORPG developer.
Namco Bandai purchased a 34% stake in Atari Europe on May 14, 2009, paving the way for its acquisition from Infogrames. Atari had significant financial issues for several years prior, with losses in the tens of millions since 2005.
In May 2009, Infogrames Entertainment SA, the parent company of Atari, and Atari Interactive, announced it would change its name to Atari SA.
In April 2010, Atari SA board member and former CEO David Gardner resigned. Original Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell joined the board as a representative for Blubay holdings.
As of March 31, 2011, the board of directors consisted of Frank Dangeard, Jim Wilson, Tom Virden, Gene Davis and Alexandra Fichelson.
On January 21, 2013, the four related companies Atari, Atari Interactive, Humongous, and California US Holdings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. All three Ataris emerged from bankruptcy one year later and the entering of the social casino gaming industry with Atari Casino. Frederic Chesnais, who now heads all three companies, stated that their entire operations consist of a staff of 10 people.
On June 22, 2014, Atari announced a new corporate strategy that would include a focus on "new audiences", specifically "LGBT, social casinos, real-money gambling, and YouTube".
On June 8, 2017, a short teaser video was released, promoting a new product; and the following week Chesnais confirmed the company was developing a new game console – the hardware was stated to be based on PC technology, and still under development. In mid July 2017 an Atari press release confirmed the existence of the aforementioned new hardware, referred to as the "Ataribox". The box design was derived from early Atari designs (e.g. 2600) with a ribbed top surface, and a rise at the back of the console; two versions were announced: one with a traditional wood veneer front, and the other with a glass front. Connectivity options were revealed, including HDMI, USB (x4), and SD card – the console was said to support both classic and current games. Also, according to an official company statement of June 22, 2017, the product was to be initially launched via a crowdfunding campaign in order to minimize any financial risk to the parent company.
On September 26, 2017, Atari sent out a press release about the new "Atari VCS", which confirmed more details about the console. It will run a Linux operating system, with full access to the underlying OS, but it will have a custom interface designed for the TV.
On January 27, 2020, Atari announced a deal with GSD Group to build Atari Hotels, with the first breaking ground in Phoenix in mid-2020. Additional hotels were also planned in Las Vegas, Denver, Chicago, Austin, Seattle, San Francisco, and San Jose. The company plans to make the hotel experience immersive and accessible to all ages. Hotels are planned to include virtual and augmented reality technologies.
On December 16, 2020, Atari shipped the first units of the Atari VCS exclusive to backers of the systems crowdfunding campaign. Atari urged the backers to give feedback on the system so that the company could make changes to improve the product on its official launch.
In 2020 Atari Token was launched by Atari in equal partnership with the ICICB Group. Atari Group announced in March 2020 that it granted ICICB a non-exclusive license to run a crypto currency online casino on Atari's website, based on the Atari Token.
The group partnering with Atari opened a new company in Gibraltar called Atari Chain LTD.
In March 2021, Atari extended its partnership with ICICB Group for the development of Atari branded hotels and the first hotels will be constructed at selected locations outside the United States, with Dubai, Gibraltar and Spain.
See also
Golden age of arcade video games
History of video games
References
External links
Atari official site
Former Atari brand's official global site
The Atari History Museum – Atari historical archive site
The biggest Atari Archive – Atari softwares archive site
Atari Times , supporting all Atari consoles
Atari On Film – List of Atari products in films
The Dot Eaters: classic video game history – Comprehensive history of videogames, extensive info on Atari offerings and history
Video game companies established in 1972
Home computer hardware companies
Video game companies of France
Video game companies of the United States
Video game development companies
Video game publishers |